40 Days and 40 Nights

Stuart Wellington

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss 40 days and 40 nights.

[0:04] Guys, I know I said I had a hot one, but this thing just beat it out of me, you know?

Dan McCoy

[0:11] Like, what is a hot one in the face of such evil?

[0:17] Oh, Stuart, it'll be okay. There's still light in the world.

Elliott Kalan

[0:20] It won't be okay, Stuart, but I understand.

[0:30] Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

Dan McCoy

[0:48] I'm Stuart Wellington, I guess.

Elliott Kalan

[0:51] And I'm Elliot Kalin, and I can't wait to talk about this movie that Stuart hates.

[0:56] Hold up.

Stuart Wellington

[0:57] But why are we doing such a thing?

[0:58] Hold up.

[0:59] If you're listening to this episode, you, you, if you're listening to this episode on release weekend,

[1:05] there is still time to support The Flophouse and be part of the MaxFunDrive.

[1:09] I'll talk about that a little bit more later, but we don't have time for that.

[1:13] You need to hurry up and go over to MaximumFun.org slash joinflop.

[1:18] That's joinflop right there for an express way to support The Flophouse financially

[1:24] and keep the doors and lights, doors open and lights on, baby.

[1:28] Keep the doors and lights open.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31] Open those lights.

[1:33] Get the filaments so you can touch them.

[1:34] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35] The MaxFunDrive is not quite over, but it's right at the end.

[1:39] So why don't you head over and support The Flophouse now, please?

Dan McCoy

[1:43] But The Flophouse, what is it?

[1:45] First principles, we go back.

[1:47] It is a podcast where we watch a movie that was a critical or commercial flop and then we talk about it.

[1:53] Now, I was shocked to learn, however, that this was neither.

[1:58] This was, you know, like I think this did okay financially.

Elliott Kalan

[2:01] It did really well financially.

[2:03] Really?

[2:04] According to Wikipedia, the budget was $17 million and, you know, you got to double that for marketing.

[2:09] And the box office was $95 million.

[2:11] Wow.

[2:11] So this almost broke $100 million at the box office in 2002.

Dan McCoy

[2:15] What was more shocking to me is if you go to Metacritic, it is in the green zone.

[2:21] I forget the actual score, but.

[2:22] 53% it says right here.

[2:24] What?

[2:25] It's what?

[2:25] 53%.

[2:26] Oh, 53.

[2:27] Well, that's more mixed.

[2:28] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[2:28] But that's still the feeling like when I'm watching a national election and seeing, I don't know, a total piece of shit get elected.

[2:35] And I'm like, I guess half the people in the world like this thing.

[2:40] Yeah.

[2:41] I mean, I do think that.

Elliott Kalan

[2:43] But Roger Ebert, who you love, Dan, he gave this movie three stars out of four.

Dan McCoy

[2:47] Wow.

[2:48] I've heard he's wrong though sometimes.

[2:50] Things have turned around on this though.

[2:51] I mean, I don't think that anyone who liked it in the old days is going to be like, oh, you know, it's really great 40 days and 40 nights.

[2:58] But maybe I'm wrong.

[2:58] Maybe there's still some 40 days and 40 nights lovers out there.

Elliott Kalan

[3:02] Certainly not the Michael Lehman movie that people are going to talk about the most liking these days.

[3:05] No, no.

[3:07] What would be?

[3:09] Heathers or Hudson Hawk or Airheads.

[3:12] Probably not my giant.

[3:14] Probably not the truth about Cats and Dogs.

[3:16] I forgot if he did Heathers.

[3:18] Oh, Meet the Applegates.

[3:19] Yeah, I like that one.

[3:19] Heathers is his big movie.

[3:21] But he also did Hudson Hawk, which I think has been rightly re-evaluated as awesome.

Dan McCoy

[3:24] As a good movie.

[3:26] As I wrote in my letterbox, you know, Heathers is one of my favorite 80s movies.

[3:30] And this is one of the worst movies of the 2000s.

[3:33] So take that auteur theory.

[3:36] Like Michael Lehman, you know, started out with a bang and then, I don't know, never did anything.

[3:42] Heathers is a big guy like all that much after Heathers.

[3:45] He does a lot of TV now.

Stuart Wellington

[3:47] You know, it's like when people make fun of a band for being a one-hit wonder and you're like, few bands even get a hit.

[3:53] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[3:54] They barely get the hit.

[3:55] I mean, technically, Devo is a one-hit wonder, you know.

[3:58] Yeah.

[3:58] So there's nothing wrong with that.

[3:59] Do people remember their, what, hats?

[4:02] They do remember their hats.

Dan McCoy

[4:03] They're a one-hat wonder also.

[4:04] They are actually more than one hat.

Stuart Wellington

[4:06] I mean, it's the same hat, but there is more than one of those hats.

[4:10] There's more than one of them.

[4:11] Yeah.

[4:12] Yeah.

[4:12] And the hit, obviously, one hit hit is a portmanteau of high hat and their hats are high.

[4:17] Yeah.

[4:17] Very high, yeah.

[4:18] They've got tears.

[4:19] And of course, as we've already addressed, the hat part of high hat stands for head hat.

[4:25] Head hat.

[4:25] Yeah.

[4:25] So it's actually a double portmanteau for high head hat.

[4:27] High hat.

[4:28] Head hat.

[4:28] It's a, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[4:30] Yeah.

[4:31] So what do we do on this podcast?

[4:34] We watch a bad movie.

[4:35] We talk about it.

[4:36] Now, this is, of course, because as Stuart mentioned, the Max Fund Drive, we picked movies

[4:40] to specifically hurt each other.

[4:42] And there was no other choice for me.

[4:43] LA chose fucking violence here.

[4:46] I had to go with the movie that Stuart for years spent, for years has established as his

[4:50] least favorite movie of all time.

Stuart Wellington

[4:52] A movie that back in the day, I had encouraged listeners to go rent from a video store and

[4:57] then destroy instead of returning.

[4:59] Yeah.

[4:59] And now I have never.

[5:00] And I have in the room, in the year since I received multiple packages of shattered DVDs

[5:05] DVDs.

Elliott Kalan

[5:07] And so I had never seen this movie.

[5:09] I didn't understand why Stuart hated it so much.

[5:11] And now I've seen it.

[5:13] And I think understanding has come to me.

Stuart Wellington

[5:16] There was a brief moment when, obviously, when the horror set in that was going to be,

[5:21] is Stuart going to just not watch a movie for the flop house and show up unprepared?

[5:26] And say the dog ate his DVD player.

[5:28] But it was the feeling like, Elliot made this choice.

[5:32] He's going to have to watch this movie, I'm hoping, without his family in the house.

Elliott Kalan

[5:37] Yeah.

[5:37] No, they had to be in the house just sleeping at the time, which is thankful.

[5:41] Yeah.

[5:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[5:42] I'm glad none of my kids wanted in the room so I'd have to answer questions about 40 days

[5:45] and 40 nights.

[5:46] Yeah, you had to watch it.

[5:46] You had to watch it after hours.

[5:47] Exactly.

[5:48] If only I was watching after hours.

[5:50] What a better movie.

Stuart Wellington

[5:52] Also featuring Griffin Dunn.

Elliott Kalan

[5:54] Yeah.

[5:54] It's true.

[5:55] Do you think it's the same character?

[5:57] He's like, I got to get out of the East Village.

[5:59] It's crazy.

[6:00] I'm going to go to San Francisco, get into the tech world.

[6:04] Yeah, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[6:04] I mean, they've got a similar sort of interest in getting laid, I feel like, the two characters.

Elliott Kalan

[6:09] And I was about to say the ages of the characters match up, but that's just because Griffin

[6:12] Dunn aged in real time between the making of the movie.

[6:15] It's like many of us, because he's done his aging in real time.

[6:18] Yeah, he's not unstuck.

[6:19] So let's talk about 40 days and 40 nights.

Stuart Wellington

[6:21] He's not laboring under some kind of curse that he picked up from some wizard in the village.

[6:25] I mean, not that we know of, you know.

Elliott Kalan

[6:27] Yeah.

[6:27] It's possible.

[6:29] He's been cursed to write about his famous family.

[6:32] Although I've heard that book is really good.

[6:33] I'd actually like to read it.

[6:34] Yeah.

[6:34] So anyway, the movie starts with our titles over home video footage, home movie footage

[6:39] of Josh Hartnett, the character of Matt, and his girlfriend, Nicole.

[6:43] And they're clowning around San Francisco, kissing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge and

[6:46] so forth.

[6:47] Some very late 90s.

Stuart Wellington

[6:48] Really establishes San Francisco as one of the main characters of this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[6:52] Yeah, San Francisco is really a character in the movie.

[6:53] Some very late 90s, early 2000s musics.

[6:56] There's going to be a lot of that in this one.

Stuart Wellington

[6:57] So if you were to pay attention to the movie, you would believe that San Francisco is a city

[7:02] populated exclusively by white people and one or two Asian people.

[7:06] Yes.

Dan McCoy

[7:07] I mean, it is a character in that the fact that he works at a dot com is very important

[7:16] to the movie.

[7:17] But I think it's important to the movie essentially in two ways.

[7:20] That this is an early 2000s movie.

[7:24] And so that was just a thing that had to be in movies.

[7:26] And also that if he worked at any other job, everything that would happen would be wildly

[7:32] inappropriate.

[7:33] But I guess the culture, the freewheeling culture of the dot com boom.

[7:36] The freewheeling startup culture of dot com.

Elliott Kalan

[7:38] But they also, they're at a web design firm.

[7:40] So it's not like they are, they're not doing anything with the internet.

[7:44] They're just designing websites for other companies.

[7:46] Creating animated, flash animated websites.

[7:49] Yes.

[7:49] Yeah.

[7:49] But it's, so that's where fear dot com went to get its website design.

[7:53] Kind of.

[7:53] Probably.

[7:54] It was Matt Sullivan.

[7:55] Played by Josh Hartnett.

[7:56] But it's, but you're right Dan, because the office culture is entirely, they spend so

[7:59] much more of their time hitting on each other, harassing each other, talking about each

[8:04] other's sex lives than they do doing work at all.

[8:07] Yeah.

[8:08] So it's a.

[8:09] But you know, you got that big open plan office.

[8:10] That's what you gotta do.

[8:11] That's what you gotta do.

[8:12] Yep.

[8:13] So the camera gets distracted during all this home video footage by a woman passing

[8:17] by because Matt's roommate, Ryan, who's a total horn dog, is holding the camera.

Stuart Wellington

[8:21] Guys, I have to interrupt here.

[8:22] Yeah.

[8:23] Played by actor Paolo Costanzo.

[8:24] There is no universe where that man's name is, this very Mediterranean man is named Ryan.

Elliott Kalan

[8:32] That universe is.

[8:33] Christopher, maybe.

[8:34] The 40 Days and 40 Days of Earth.

[8:36] I don't know.

[8:36] I mean, Ryan's still, it's a, it's still a Catholic name.

[8:39] You know, it's an Irish Catholic name still, but you know.

[8:41] Anyway, we're just meeting these characters.

[8:44] So in voiceover, Matt fills us in about how his girlfriend, Nicole, who we just saw in

[8:48] this footage, seemingly very much in love, has broken up with him.

[8:52] And each time he has sex with another girl to try to ease his pain, he imagines that the

[8:57] ceiling is cracking open and a vast emptiness opens up and he panics.

[9:01] And he runs away half-dressed from a tryst because he's so panicked by this vision of the empty

[9:07] abyss staring back at him in his empty life filled with nothing but sexual pleasure.

[9:12] And his brother who's a priest.

[9:13] It's kind of like shame, right?

[9:15] Yes, I guess so.

[9:16] I mean, in many ways, this would be a double feature with shame.

[9:18] They cover a lot of the same themes, just coming at it from different angles.

[9:21] His brother, who is a priest in training, is tired of hearing about it and has no faith

[9:26] that his brother will find anything but empty sex in his life.

[9:29] We're already tired of hearing about it.

[9:31] Now, what did you guys think about this cracking open of the ceiling is the first element of

[9:35] surrealism that enters the movie.

[9:38] What did you guys think about that?

[9:39] Successful?

Dan McCoy

[9:40] Are you referencing the fact that I sent you the Wikipedia description that called this

[9:45] a surrealist comedy?

Elliott Kalan

[9:47] Perhaps, perhaps.

[9:48] It's referring to it as a romantic comedy, fantasy, surrealist film.

[9:53] So when you go to the video store on the surrealist section, there's Lodge d'Or and

[9:58] Shannon DeLoo and 40 Days and 40 Nights.

[10:01] They're all right there together.

[10:02] The Exterminating Angel.

[10:03] The Exterminating Angel.

[10:04] I mean, you watch this and you assume Bunuel had something to do with it.

[10:08] The fact that he died years earlier, you're like, oh, I guess the ghost of Bunuel directed

[10:12] this.

[10:13] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[10:13] I mean, it is, the movie is surrealist in that, and I was complaining to you guys about

[10:20] this over text, no one acts like a human being in this movie.

[10:24] No.

[10:25] No one, this is not grounded in recognizable human behavior.

[10:29] The animating, you know, premise of the movie, the fact that he's like, okay, I'm having

[10:36] trouble getting over my girlfriend.

[10:37] I'm having too much empty sex.

[10:39] I must, I must promise that for 40 days and 40 nights, I do not have sex or masturbate.

[10:46] I'm like, why?

[10:47] Why is this the, I mean, like, if you're worried that there's too much empty sex in your life,

[10:51] by all means, like, cut down on the empty sex.

[10:54] But you don't have to hold yourself.

[10:56] You're creating a problem that becomes a deep problem in this buddy romance later in the

[11:01] film.

Elliott Kalan

[11:02] And it causes so much, so many hijinks.

[11:05] But also, if ever there was a movie, a romantic comedy, where the misunderstanding at the center

[11:11] of it could be cleared up within a few sentences.

[11:15] Yes.

[11:15] In a way that would cause problems to nobody.

Stuart Wellington

[11:18] This is it.

[11:18] I mean, he, we clearly learned that if he is going to give something up for Lent, it shouldn't

[11:25] be meaningless sex.

[11:26] It should be lying.

[11:27] Because he's constantly lying.

[11:29] He's constantly lying.

[11:30] That's true.

[11:30] Well, so because he has.

[11:31] And this all exists in a world where everything is antagonistic.

[11:35] There are no friends in this world.

[11:37] No.

[11:37] All the friends are, like, mean to each other.

[11:39] I think this.

[11:40] Sex is, like, a violent, aggressive act between two people.

[11:44] Some kind of power struggle.

Elliott Kalan

[11:46] It's a very, it's a very bro-y movie in that the characters who are essentially friends

[11:50] basically exist to, like, tease and shame and harass each other and make fun of each other.

[11:54] And the women in it are either super perfect, you know, love angels or witches and shrews,

Dan McCoy

[12:03] you know?

[12:03] Or, like, sirens.

[12:05] Like, horny sirens who were there to sap his seed during.

Elliott Kalan

[12:09] I think that falls under witches and shrews, too.

[12:12] But it's one of these movies where the character has a shameful secret that he can't let anyone

[12:16] know.

[12:16] And that shameful secret is Lent.

[12:18] And so, moving on, just to get to that point, we haven't gotten there yet.

[12:21] To get his mind off Nicole, he goes on a double date with his roommate.

[12:25] They end up, of course, bringing their girls back.

[12:27] Hartnett sees that emptiness hole open up the ceiling again.

[12:31] And he decides he has to fake an orgasm because he can't have one, which is a thing that is

[12:35] hard for a man to do because there's a physical reaction thing that happens.

[12:40] And the girl is like, show me.

[12:41] Show me your ejaculate.

[12:42] And he can't do it.

Dan McCoy

[12:44] And it is.

[12:45] Yeah, all normal stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[12:47] And this also establishes that he is very bad at lying.

[12:49] It's also one of those things that, like, guys, we don't have to get too personal.

[12:52] But if you've ever been in a sexual situation with a war woman where something just doesn't

[12:55] go right and you're not able to complete your sexual orgasm.

[12:59] You should lie about it.

[13:00] You should lie.

[13:00] Exactly.

[13:01] The idea that this is a crazy thing that he has to lie about is he's constantly lying

[13:05] about things that do not need to be lied about.

[13:08] I would believe it if Larry David was in this situation and felt the need to lie about it.

[13:12] I don't believe it if any other human being needs to kill him.

Dan McCoy

[13:14] Let us not wallow in irony.

[13:17] Let us give a good message to the youth.

[13:19] Be open and honest and be cool about it and chill out and maybe do some other stuff that

[13:26] doesn't involve you having to ejaculate.

Elliott Kalan

[13:30] As long as you're providing pleasure, it is okay if you don't receive ultimate pleasure

[13:34] because providing pleasure is also a form of pleasure.

[13:36] But instead, he runs to the other room and gets some whiteout.

[13:39] You're leaving out the hijinks.

[13:41] He doesn't even finish doing that.

[13:42] He gets caught, but also the other offensive thing about this movie to a nerd like myself

[13:46] is the idea, can a man go 40 days without sex?

Stuart Wellington

[13:50] Yeah, dude.

[13:50] I've gone way more than 40 days without sex at times in my life.

Elliott Kalan

[13:53] There have been many times when I would have preferred to not go that long without sex,

[13:58] but it happened.

[13:59] But even the idea that like-

Dan McCoy

[14:01] But Elliot, 40 days without sex or masturbating?

[14:04] Impossible.

[14:05] Can't do it.

[14:06] Or masturbating.

Elliott Kalan

[14:06] Well, the other thing, as we'll get to later, is that like eventually he just has a boner

[14:09] all the time and it's like, well, your body will take care of this.

[14:13] You will ejaculate in the middle of the night.

[14:15] It happens commonly to all sorts of people.

Stuart Wellington

[14:18] I feel like I would transform into fry after 100 cups of coffee.

[14:22] We don't.

[14:23] Which is kind of what happens to Josh Harden.

[14:25] It is kind of what happens to him.

Dan McCoy

[14:26] This is what happens.

[14:27] We don't have good sex education in this country, so you have to get it from the flop app.

Elliott Kalan

[14:30] You have to get it from-

[14:31] Don't get it from movies, which will teach you that if you don't masturbate or have sex

[14:34] for 40 days, you will go insane.

[14:36] That's not what will happen, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[14:38] So anyway-

[14:39] And by the way, that's to say that he still has sex in the course of the movie, even though

[14:44] he says he does not because blowing flower petals across a woman's tummy until she climaxes,

[14:49] that's sex, guys.

[14:50] I'm sorry.

Elliott Kalan

[14:51] FYI.

[14:52] Sex, just like war is politics by other means.

[14:54] Blowing flower petals across a woman's tummy is sex by other means.

[14:57] But we'll get there.

[14:57] We're not there yet.

[14:58] So first, he goes to work at it.

[14:59] The internet company we mentioned that he works at.

[15:01] Run by boss Griffin Dunn, who no one seems to get that much work.

[15:04] It's more of a hangout singles bar than a-

[15:06] Yes.

[15:07] Like a college clubhouse than it is an office or a workplace.

Stuart Wellington

[15:10] This office needed one person who's a little-

[15:13] Like an accountant or somebody who's older and over all this shenanigans bullshit.

Elliott Kalan

[15:18] Yes.

[15:19] And he learns from the bagel delivery guy-

[15:22] Lived it already.

[15:22] A.K.A. the older brother from The Adventures of Pete and Pete.

[15:25] He learns from the bagel delivery guy-

[15:27] Yeah, Big Pete.

[15:28] That Nicole got engaged.

[15:30] And the bagel guy can't stop talking about how hot Nicole is.

[15:32] And this-

[15:33] And he learns this-

[15:33] This drives Matt bonkers.

Stuart Wellington

[15:35] Yeah.

[15:35] He learns this information while the bagel guy is sticking bagels on a fucking spindle like

[15:42] they're like comic books or some shit.

[15:44] Like this like spinning thing.

Elliott Kalan

[15:46] I mean, that is how-

[15:47] I mean, bagels are on spindles in bagel shops.

[15:49] You don't usually have an office that has a bagel spindle.

[15:52] You know, you usually put them on a plate or something like that.

Dan McCoy

[15:54] I assume this is, of course, a visual metaphor that is-

[15:58] Well, there's that too.

Elliott Kalan

[15:59] This is also one of the many elegant and subtle-

[16:01] Many subtle.

[16:02] Visual metaphors for penetration in this movie.

[16:05] And Matt runs over and he sees there's an engagement party going on.

[16:09] And he's like, what is he going to do?

[16:10] So he bumps into a woman and instantly sleeps with her.

[16:13] And so Matt decides-

Stuart Wellington

[16:13] And this is really tough because we-

[16:15] I think he's firmly established both now and then he establishes further later on all the

[16:20] reasons why he loves Nicole, which are-

[16:23] Well, she seems really mean.

[16:26] She's mean to him.

[16:27] Which is attractive, I get.

Elliott Kalan

[16:29] She's attractive but mean.

[16:31] Some guys like that.

Stuart Wellington

[16:34] Elliot says some guys while staring at Stuart.

Elliott Kalan

[16:37] She's not so much a character as a symbol of a misconnection.

[16:43] A problem to be overcome.

[16:44] Now, this movie also I should mention because we're not really getting across.

[16:47] The tone of this movie is so-

[16:49] I was like, the same way that X vs. Sever, which came out in the early 2000s, is the most

[16:53] 90s action movie I've ever seen.

[16:55] This is the most 90s romantic comedy I've ever seen, even though it came out in 2002.

[16:58] Everything about it feels so-

[17:00] Like the style, the visual style, the clothes people are wearing, the music.

[17:03] This kind of like winky, ironic, kind of like clerks, light-ish kind of tone.

[17:09] It feels so-

[17:10] This felt like such a time capsule of the movies that were coming out

[17:13] when I was in high school and college.

Dan McCoy

[17:15] Every set looks like it was on Friends.

[17:18] Yes.

[17:19] That's very much the look of the film.

[17:21] It's a very sitcom-y look.

Elliott Kalan

[17:22] Yeah, yeah.

[17:22] It's good.

[17:23] They call it sitcom the movie.

[17:24] Yeah.

[17:25] At one point, one of the women is wearing a shirt that had that monkey cartoon graphic that

[17:31] you saw on a lot of shirts in the 90s.

[17:33] And I was like, this is it.

[17:35] This is when the movie reached peak 90s is this shirt.

[17:38] But anyway.

[17:39] So Matt says-

[17:40] Speaking of shirts.

[17:41] No, go on.

[17:42] So Matt says he'll give up sex and all sexual activity, including masturbation, for Lent.

[17:47] His brother doesn't think he can do it.

[17:48] But he does have a vision of Jesus smiling at him.

[17:50] His brother is so incredibly unsupportive and crappy towards him the entire movie.

[17:55] He's such a dick to him.

[17:56] That's everyone in this movie.

[17:57] Everyone is so cruel to everyone.

Dan McCoy

[18:00] And also, I mean, we haven't-

[18:01] I mean, we haven't-

[18:03] We somehow not talked about it enough, even though we've talked about it a lot.

[18:07] It's so annoying that like the movie's like, his problem is he just can't stop having sex.

[18:13] I mean, he clearly has like emotional problems he has to work through.

[18:18] Maybe that's the issue.

Elliott Kalan

[18:19] And the way that Josh Hartnett plays him is as such a twitchy kind of like strange guy.

[18:25] Like he's handsome.

[18:26] He's Josh Hartnett.

[18:26] But he plays him as like this bundle of like nervous anxieties that it's like you have-

[18:32] What you need is therapy.

[18:34] Like what you need to do is go to a therapist.

[18:35] You might need medication.

[18:36] I'm not sure.

[18:37] You need to take the edge off of life because clearly you're having trouble.

[18:41] Just flushing sex out of your system for a little bit less than a month and a half is not what you need.

[18:46] You need long-term self-work and self-care, you know.

[18:50] Maybe if you cared more about yourself and forgave yourself, you wouldn't need Nicole in your life.

[18:55] Being mean to you all the time.

[18:57] You know.

[18:58] But you would find better friends than the guys who are just see you as a betting pool subject matter and are constantly trying to lure you into having sex so that they can win the betting pool.

[19:08] Yeah.

[19:08] Like everyone is terrible.

Stuart Wellington

[19:09] Yeah.

[19:10] Trying to get you to relapse on your addiction.

Elliott Kalan

[19:12] Yes.

[19:13] So he goes home.

[19:14] He's serious about this.

[19:15] He boxes up all of his porn, which he has hidden behind another layer of regular VHS tapes.

[19:19] But also like all his magazines are like out.

[19:22] Yes.

[19:23] They're all – he has all these issues of like FHM and stuff like that just lying around on his coffee table because it's a real guy's apartment, you know.

[19:30] At any moment, you might just need – even at his office workplace, there's like porn magazines around that guys can just pick up and walk into the stall and, you know, rub one out just before a meeting or something like that.

Stuart Wellington

[19:40] And that's totally – I haven't worked in an office in a long time, guys.

[19:43] Is that cool?

Elliott Kalan

[19:44] It is.

[19:44] I will just say –

[19:45] I mean it's cool.

[19:46] I mean from the sample set of offices I've worked at, which is only a few, no.

[19:51] It is not cool.

Stuart Wellington

[19:53] And you work with – in the world of comedy, which –

[19:55] Yeah.

[19:56] Which as we all know is all about –

[19:57] Has produced some gross dudes.

[19:58] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[19:59] That's very true.

[19:59] You know.

Dan McCoy

[20:01] Yeah.

[20:01] There's some – we saw some inappropriate things in morning meetings for sure in our time.

Elliott Kalan

[20:06] I mean certainly there were people that we worked with.

[20:10] Doing things they shouldn't have in the office.

[20:13] But I was not one of them.

[20:14] It was not considered cool.

[20:15] It was considered –

[20:16] Yeah.

[20:16] Please stop that.

[20:18] We don't want you doing it.

[20:20] So he goes to laundromat.

[20:22] Oh, anyway.

[20:22] Oh, so actually this was the thing Dan pointed out over text.

[20:25] Maybe it's why Stuart hates the movie is that he stops having sex and immediately gets into painting model kits.

[20:29] And so the movie typifies that the exact opposite of erotic pleasure is painting models.

[20:36] Stuart, was this something you felt as a personal attack on you?

Stuart Wellington

[20:39] Yeah.

[20:39] What the fuck, dude?

[20:40] Between this shit and 40-year-old virgin, Stuart was under attack.

[20:44] He was under fire.

[20:45] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[20:46] Yeah.

[20:47] It was – the movies really wanted to show Stuart as being the opposite of a sexual being in the way he chose to spend his time.

[20:54] Yeah.

[20:56] So Matt goes to the laundromat and he meets this pretty girl played by Shannon Sossaman.

[21:01] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[21:02] Who really had a moment right about then and not at other times.

Elliott Kalan

[21:07] Yeah.

[21:08] I mean that's the career of an actor.

[21:09] This, Night's Tale, Rules of Attraction.

[21:13] I mean that's being a working actor.

[21:15] You got busy times, not busy times.

[21:17] And she keeps – she just keeps asking him for stuff and he's – and they start to hit it off, you know, but they're not dating him.

Stuart Wellington

[21:24] Despite him trying to give her the cold shoulder.

[21:26] They also – there's a weird –

[21:27] Well, he literally says nothing to her the first time they meet.

[21:29] That's true.

Elliott Kalan

[21:29] She keeps walking over and asking him for things.

[21:31] Edging, yeah.

[21:31] She keeps saying no – oh, he borrows her magazine.

[21:34] He borrows her dryer sheets.

[21:36] No, she – or rather, the other way around.

[21:37] She borrows his magazine.

[21:38] She borrows his dryer sheets.

[21:39] Like she won't leave home.

Stuart Wellington

[21:40] She also finds his hidden stash of laundry detergent that he keeps at the laundromat, which is weird, right?

[21:47] Yeah, it is weird.

[21:49] Yeah.

[21:49] That he has a weird little hidden cubbyhole in the laundromat.

[21:52] But I guess he has to go there a lot because he has so many layered shirts in this movie.

[21:57] He goes through so much clothing.

Dan McCoy

[21:59] There's so much sex too that there's semen stains that he has to constantly be washing out.

Elliott Kalan

[22:03] Oh, he washes those out.

[22:05] He doesn't wear them like a badge of honor.

[22:07] No, it's not like the scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when they're talking about how your average drug freak has encrusted semen on his pants from his constant masturbation.

[22:17] And Hunter Thompson looks down and sees this encrusted semen on his pants and starts trying to –

[22:21] Panic tries to –

[22:21] Tries to scratch it off.

[22:23] Yeah.

[22:25] So Matt and his roommate Ryan don't see eye to eye in this.

[22:28] His coworkers all think it's – this is a bizarre situation.

[22:32] It's never going to work.

[22:32] So they start a betting pool on his chastity.

[22:35] And the girls at work start messing with him by trying to seduce him.

Stuart Wellington

[22:37] Take notes on this like rolling whiteboard in their office that like scrolls.

Elliott Kalan

[22:42] The entire office becomes about this.

[22:44] And they put together a flash animation website, which we'll see later.

[22:47] They start taking bets from global bettors like internationally on this topic.

Stuart Wellington

[22:52] Which I would have made fun of at the time.

[22:55] But now in this world of online betting, it makes a lot of sense to me.

Elliott Kalan

[22:59] They predicted prediction markets.

[23:01] But it's also one of those things though where it's like this cannot be the only guy giving up sex for Lent, right?

[23:06] I've got to assume that's one of the more popular things to give up for Lent because it's such a clear like vice sacrifice.

[23:13] Show me sex.

[23:15] Oh, sorry.

[23:17] Oh, I guess control the board goes to the other family.

Stuart Wellington

[23:20] I'm going to say chocolate.

[23:21] Chocolate.

[23:22] Dan's – Dan Steve Harvey was pretty good, right?

[23:25] Pretty good.

Dan McCoy

[23:26] I don't think I was trying to do any impression or anything.

[23:30] The suit worked.

[23:31] The suit was good.

[23:32] If I was just Steve Harvey, I would just do like a deadpan like stare and not say anything for a while.

Stuart Wellington

[23:36] Dan is wearing a bright red double-breasted suit.

[23:39] So that's how you know he's doing a Steve Harvey impression.

[23:41] Double-breasted suit and a lot of mustache work.

Dan McCoy

[23:45] I have had a lot of mustache work done.

[23:47] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[23:47] Thank you for noticing.

[23:49] Yeah, you're welcome.

[23:49] I noticed it, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[23:50] Botox it.

[23:50] Yeah, Dan's been putting Botox into his mustache, which has made his mustache smoother.

[23:55] It's really firm.

[23:56] Yeah.

[23:56] So Matt goes to the laundromat to see – and sees that laundry girl again.

[24:01] Her name is Erica.

[24:02] They introduce themselves.

[24:03] It turns out she is a cyber nanny.

[24:05] Her job is finding sex sites online and then manually blocking them, I guess, or at least just notating.

Stuart Wellington

[24:11] Like to prevent search engines from picking them or something.

Elliott Kalan

[24:15] Yes.

[24:16] And they start dating, and the word spreads among the betters.

[24:18] He's dating a girl.

[24:19] Uh-oh, what does this mean for the odds of his sex life?

[24:22] Day 16, as the chyron helpfully tells us.

[24:25] Erica, she says goodbye to her roommate, Maggie Gyllenhaal, in one of the most surprising performances in the movie.

[24:31] Yeah.

[24:31] Who is still pretty good.

[24:34] She does a great job.

[24:35] I mean, she gets one of the best performances in the movie because she's a great actress.

[24:38] But also the fact that like – I'm like – it's – that's one of the things I love about acting careers.

[24:43] You can become one of the most respected creative forces in movies.

[24:47] And as an actor or behind the scenes or whatever, you still started out doing a Pizza Hut commercial or 40 Days and 40 Nights.

[24:53] Yeah.

[24:53] Or you started – everyone – almost everyone starts at the bottom.

Dan McCoy

[24:56] But it also shows you like the star power because you're like, oh, like she instantly has more charisma than most of the people in the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[25:03] Yes, and I kept thinking about, oh, she's going to go on to make a genuinely like sexy movie.

[25:09] Like a movie that is genuinely about sex in a way that engages and investigates sex and is sexy and raises questions and makes you feel things.

[25:18] As opposed to this one, which makes you feel nothing.

Dan McCoy

[25:20] But anyway –

[25:21] Well, it makes Stuart feel fury.

[25:24] It does.

Elliott Kalan

[25:25] They go on a bus riding date.

[25:27] He's looking for dates where there's no chance of physical interaction.

[25:31] So they just ride the bus all day together.

Stuart Wellington

[25:33] They're clearly surrounded by green screens.

Elliott Kalan

[25:35] Yes.

[25:36] And this is one of those – this is a very like quirky date.

[25:38] You know, you're just going to ride the bus all day.

[25:40] At the end, he avoids kissing her, gives her a high five instead.

[25:43] But he does not tell her, oh, I've given up sex for Lent.

[25:46] At the end of Lent, I'll be able to have sex with you.

[25:48] Why doesn't he mention it?

[25:50] I don't understand.

Dan McCoy

[25:51] Like this is –

[25:52] It's fucking crazy.

[25:54] I mean like this is the – I mean it's not exactly the idiot plot defined as a problem that would be solved immediately if everyone in the movie weren't idiots.

[26:05] But it's close to it.

[26:06] It's a cousin of it.

[26:08] It's the we're not just talking for no particular reason plot, which happens a lot.

[26:14] There's nothing – I guess it's not hot to be like I'm –

[26:21] Hung up on my ex.

[26:23] Oh, I see that too.

Stuart Wellington

[26:24] But I feel like –

Dan McCoy

[26:24] But you can't be like saying like, oh, I was worried, you know, after my last relationship that I was having too much meaningless sex.

[26:31] I really want to take this slow and like feel things.

[26:34] Like that will not be, I think, received poorly.

[26:36] I mean –

[26:36] Especially compared to like all of like the weird twitchiness that he's doing instead.

Elliott Kalan

[26:40] Let me pull back the curtain.

[26:42] When I met my now wife, I said, hey, I just had a bad – I was coming off of a bad breakup.

[26:47] I was like, I just had a bad breakup.

[26:49] So, I'm trying to take things a little slow.

[26:51] And we're married now.

[26:52] It worked out fine.

[26:52] It worked out 40 days and 40 nights.

[26:53] Everything went great.

[26:55] And – but like it's that – it is easy to have that conversation.

[26:57] You don't want to go on and on about your ex.

[26:59] But you just like –

[27:00] If you are honest with someone about where you are emotionally, you can build a foundation of a relationship.

[27:05] But instead, yeah, he's just twitchy and weird.

[27:07] And it's one of those things where – it's one of many movies where you're like, I'm not sure what she sees in him because he seems like a twitchy weirdo.

[27:13] He's obviously super cute.

Stuart Wellington

[27:15] But she's also like – and she – maybe she's attracted to his denial of, you know, of her physical pleasure.

[27:23] Oh, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[27:23] The more – I mean now she's chasing him.

Stuart Wellington

[27:25] But she – so she – like he is deceiving her the whole time.

[27:30] He is lying to her.

[27:31] He is trying to attract her.

[27:33] This is not a real connection.

[27:35] He is trying to control her.

[27:37] Yes.

[27:38] By presenting himself in a specific way.

[27:40] And she is suspicious of him the whole time and gets increasingly so as things go on.

[27:45] And like she even explains her past history of dating the wrong guys.

[27:50] And he's like, you know what?

[27:52] I'm just going to keep manipulating.

Elliott Kalan

[27:53] I'm going to keep being the wrong guy.

[27:55] And so I could almost see a version of this movie where he says, I'm giving up sex for Lent.

[27:59] And she's weirded out by him being more spiritual than her or something.

[28:03] More – him being Catholic or something like that.

[28:06] And them dealing with that.

[28:08] And you could have an interesting story about that.

[28:10] But instead he just, yeah, lies to her and he's manipulating her.

Dan McCoy

[28:12] Well, it's also a movie where like –

[28:14] But not manipulating her the way she wants to be manipulated.

[28:16] Not to jump ahead.

[28:17] Not to jump ahead.

[28:18] We will get to it when we get to it.

[28:20] But this is a movie where she is mad at him for all of the right reasons early in the movie and all the wrong reasons at the end.

[28:28] Yes, by the end it doesn't make sense why – yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[28:31] So Matt finds out about the betting pool.

[28:33] So Erica is talking to her roommate and it's like, ugh, I wish he wanted to have sex.

[28:37] I don't get it.

[28:38] Matt finds out about the betting pool and the website they set up.

[28:40] Uh-oh.

[28:41] Erica is a cyber nanny.

[28:43] Her whole job is looking at websites.

[28:45] She finds out about it.

[28:47] And she's mad at Matt for not telling her.

[28:48] Can their poorly constructed relationship exist?

[28:52] We're going to have to find out after this word from Stuart Wellington.

[28:55] Stuart, do you have a message for the audience?

Stuart Wellington

[28:57] Yeah.

[28:57] You're probably wondering why is the Flophouse torturing themselves with this movie?

[29:03] Well, this living nightmare is the result of the MaxFun drive.

[29:08] The pain that we go through is all for you.

[29:12] Our annual membership event where we encourage people to support the Flophouse by doing something a little special or kind of terrible in this case.

[29:23] We're like Daffy Duck self-emolating on stage and we are humbly asking you, do you like listening to us suffer?

[29:30] Well, then consider supporting us with your cold, hard cash.

[29:33] The Flophouse exists almost entirely because of the financial support of listeners like you.

[29:41] Listener support pays the bills, keeps the lights on, pays for rental fees on terrible movies, etc.

[29:47] And more importantly, it allows us to keep our weekly podcast and enormous back catalog totally free for new listeners and for folks who cannot afford to support us.

[29:59] So for $5 a month, less than the cost of one Costco hot dog a week, you can support our show and have hundreds of hours of bonus content to enjoy.

[30:12] So before we go back to this fucking movie, if you're listening to this show on the weekend of release, you obviously like us.

[30:21] You're making it a priority listen.

[30:24] Why don't you head over to MaximumFun.org slash joinflop to help give us some meaning to this madness and support the Flophouse today, please.

Elliott Kalan

[30:36] So, eloquently stated, Stuart, and now once more into the breach, dear friends.

[30:41] So Erica has found out of the site.

[30:45] She's real mad about it.

[30:46] His roommate, Ryan, is like, just quit this.

[30:48] Just quit the pledge.

[30:49] Just quit it.

[30:50] By the way, also, Nicole's fiancee is cheating on her.

[30:54] And meanwhile, then we start.

[30:55] Yeah, because everyone's a villain in this movie.

[30:57] Everyone's bad.

[30:58] Speaking of a villain, Griffin Dunn, Matt's boss, introduces his subplot in which he has been inspired by Matt's vow of chastity.

[31:04] To withhold sex from his wife until she is begging for it.

[31:08] As a way to manipulate her, yeah.

[31:09] And this is not – your boss should not be talking to you about his sex life with his wife.

[31:13] That's just something that shouldn't be happening, you know.

[31:16] Erica leaves a note for Matt saying they can still hang out.

[31:19] They go on a date.

[31:19] It's awkward because they can't be physical.

[31:21] So now all they can think about is being physical.

[31:23] But then, uh-oh, even worse, Matt sees Nicole with her fiancee.

[31:26] He panics and ends up with his arm on fire.

[31:30] I'm not even going to talk about how it happened.

[31:31] He's so dumb.

[31:32] And he meets Nicole's fiancee.

[31:34] He's pretty okay, though.

Stuart Wellington

[31:35] Restaurants were pretty crazy back then.

Dan McCoy

[31:38] He's not even wearing, like, a special, like, stunt asbestos shirt.

[31:42] I'm sure in the shooting of it he was.

[31:44] No, in the shooting of it, yeah.

[31:45] No, no, no.

Elliott Kalan

[31:46] I heard that Josh Hartnett insisted to do it wrong.

[31:48] Yeah.

[31:49] Yeah.

[31:49] He does all his own stunts in the dumbest way possible.

[31:52] It's in his contract.

Dan McCoy

[31:52] Let me dip my arm in kerosene first.

[31:54] Yeah.

[31:55] I want to get this.

Elliott Kalan

[31:56] And he meets Nicole's fiancee, who is barely even a character.

[31:59] You know, but it's just – he's every – he's just the – whatever's the blankest version of bad, like, kind of rich guy, rich young guy in movies.

[32:08] You know, and Erica's mad that Matt never told her about Nicole.

[32:12] You know, it's like he's got this whole – it's almost as if he has a whole rich emotional life that he does not want to let her into and instead wants to keep things on the surface.

[32:20] He offers to break his vow, but it just gets more awkward between him and Erica.

[32:24] And she tells him, finish the vow, and then maybe we can talk.

[32:28] Meanwhile –

[32:29] It'll probably work out.

[32:30] Yeah, of course.

[32:30] There's a bunch of dumb stuff.

[32:32] Ryan pretends to be chased to pick up –

[32:34] There is a bunch of dumb stuff.

[32:34] Yeah, nonstop.

[32:36] He's truer words, Elliot.

[32:39] Matt once – so Matt has already had one of the girls at work try to seduce him.

[32:42] Now two of the girls at work start talking to him about how what he's doing is removing the leverage that women traditionally should have over men.

[32:49] They offer Matt a threesome in the copy room.

Stuart Wellington

[32:51] Yeah, that's the part when Dan saw this in the theater, he, like, turned to his date and was like, this is true.

[32:56] Yeah, I started my militant website.

Dan McCoy

[33:00] This is like – this movie has such poisonous ideas about everything.

[33:04] Everything about it.

[33:05] Everything about it is terrible.

Elliott Kalan

[33:06] Yeah.

[33:07] It's such an incels fantasy of what the world is that they are either not engaged in or that is happening around them.

Dan McCoy

[33:13] I bet women are always talking about the power they hold over us.

[33:16] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[33:17] I bet if I say I'm not going to have sex, women will throw themselves at me because of my power.

[33:23] But I only have the power to have sex if I refuse to have sex.

[33:27] Oh, I don't know what to do.

[33:28] I guess I'll just blow up something.

[33:31] So Matt is all anxious and nervous now as opposed to earlier when he was merely twitchy.

[33:36] Now he is full-blown like someone – he is full-blown Raymoland in The Lost Weekend kind of detoxing, you know, seeing things.

[33:44] He sees naked women everywhere, women in their lingerie everywhere.

[33:47] He goes to dinner at his parents' house and we get – I think these are my two favorite performances in the movie though, which is their parents played by Mary Gross and – who's the other guy?

[34:00] It's Barry Newman, the star of Vanishing Point.

[34:03] And the dad is just – the dad decides he's just –

Stuart Wellington

[34:06] Who, by the way, doesn't read as Catholic to me.

Elliott Kalan

[34:09] No.

[34:09] No, I don't think so.

[34:11] So – but all the dad –

Stuart Wellington

[34:13] I was very glad to see Mary Gross though.

Elliott Kalan

[34:14] Yeah, it was very fun seeing Mary Gross.

[34:16] She's always great and she's so good at doing what she's doing here, which is like the character who is embarrassed by what her husband is doing and is trying to put a good face on things.

[34:27] But all the dad wants to talk about is his sex life and what kinds of sex he and his wife can have now that he's –

Dan McCoy

[34:33] Showing them pull out diagrams of it.

Elliott Kalan

[34:36] It's one of these scenes where you're like, this would never happen.

[34:39] This would never happen.

[34:40] But Barry Newman performs it so naturally that I'm like, you know what?

[34:44] Maybe a dad would do this.

[34:45] He does – he's not selling – he's not pushing the jokes at all.

[34:48] He's just like, see this position?

[34:49] I couldn't do.

[34:50] It's too bad.

[34:51] I can't because of my knees.

[34:52] This one we can do.

[34:53] So we put a check next to it.

[34:55] Like he's so good in this scene.

Stuart Wellington

[34:57] And like – and at this point, Josh Hartnett is struggling with a thing that he is like – he can't help his body's reaction to the thought of sex.

[35:06] But the problem is it's his parents.

[35:07] So it's unlocking all kinds of horrible things.

Elliott Kalan

[35:09] So his testicles explode on camera.

[35:13] It's grotesque.

Dan McCoy

[35:15] At that time, it was the most expensive special effect ever.

[35:19] It cost so much money.

[35:20] To make those testicles explode.

Stuart Wellington

[35:21] Well, because it was in 2002.

[35:23] So they used all the Matrix cameras to get every angle.

Elliott Kalan

[35:26] Yeah.

[35:26] It happens in bullet time.

[35:27] Yeah, exactly.

[35:28] Like a Gap Khaki commercial.

[35:30] Yeah.

[35:30] But just like a mouse coming out of Carla Gugino's shoe, it just explodes.

[35:34] Takes out half the room.

[35:36] So meanwhile, his roommate is using a black light to like check Matt's bed for semen just to make sure he's – it's one of those things where it's like there's just – everyone is being so invasive about his life.

[35:48] But he's also such a weirdo that he never says, hey, man, get out of my room.

[35:51] What are you doing?

[35:52] Like it's just – he has no power to control anything other than his chastity at this point.

Dan McCoy

[35:57] Everyone's being so invasive and it's one of those movie things where it's like I guess this guy's life is the most important thing happening on planet Earth.

Elliott Kalan

[36:06] There's nothing else going – the entire world is now focused on whether this guy is going to last 40 days.

Stuart Wellington

[36:11] It's like when people ask me if I want to stay living in New York or move to San Francisco.

[36:15] I'm like San Francisco is boring as fuck, dude.

[36:17] This is all they have to talk about.

[36:19] People only pay attention to this one guy's sex life.

Elliott Kalan

[36:20] It's all sourdough bread and this one – whether this one guy is going to do it.

[36:24] You can go to Alcatraz like what?

[36:25] Two, three times?

[36:26] It's boring.

[36:27] After that.

[36:28] Jesse Thornton's head is exploding right now.

[36:30] Yeah.

[36:30] Of course, San Francisco is the second greatest city in America.

[36:33] Gorgeous.

[36:34] It's wonderful.

[36:35] After, of course, New York City, the greatest city in the world.

[36:37] So I've told so many people now they're tired of hearing it.

[36:40] The joke I opened our Chicago live show with, which is so great to be here at the third greatest city in the country.

[36:47] Everyone booed me.

[36:48] It was so great.

[36:49] Anyway, so day 35, Griffin Dunn's boss is still mad.

[36:54] His plan didn't work out.

[36:55] His wife is enjoying the fact that he's not badgering for sex.

[36:58] A coworker trying to tip the scales of the pool.

[37:01] Puts Viagra in Matt's drink, but the boss accidentally drinks it, which just turns him into more of a horndog.

Dan McCoy

[37:08] It angers me so much in multiple ways.

[37:10] Number one, the non-consensual drugging of a coworker.

[37:14] Yes, for sure.

[37:15] Number two, just on the level of like, that's not what Viagra does.

[37:18] It's not fucking Spanish fly, which also doesn't exist.

[37:22] It just gives you an erection.

[37:25] It doesn't make you hornier.

[37:26] What have I been buying?

Elliott Kalan

[37:26] Stuart's like, what have I been pouring into my own drinks all these years?

[37:29] But yet, it's just a thing that increases blood flow to your penis.

[37:33] It doesn't make you horny.

Stuart Wellington

[37:34] It didn't have the courage of its convictions to have Griffin Dunn running around with a giant prosthetic boner.

Elliott Kalan

[37:39] No, but later we do get a giant prosthetic boner.

Stuart Wellington

[37:42] But not on Griffin Dunn.

[37:43] Not on Griffin Dunn.

Dan McCoy

[37:43] If Austin Powers asked Viagra, like, do you make me horny, baby, or whatever, he'd be like, no.

Elliott Kalan

[37:51] Yes, Austin Powers' question was, do you make me horny?

[37:54] Yeah, because earlier in his spine career, he had been hit with a neurotoxin that removed the connection between his brain and his penis.

[38:01] So he never knew if things were making him horny.

[38:03] It's like, do you make me horny, baby?

[38:05] I can't feel that.

[38:07] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[38:09] Do you make me horny?

[38:11] Look, there was a lot of cross talk.

[38:14] I'm like, I had to construct the joke very quickly.

[38:17] No, I was constructed on a rickety foundation in the beginning, and then.

Stuart Wellington

[38:21] Do you make me horny, baby?

[38:22] And then the Viagra pill, which looks kind of like the green M&M, is like, no, baby.

Dan McCoy

[38:27] Is it also tossing all the powers?

[38:30] I just increased blood flow to your penis, baby.

[38:33] That's my bag.

Elliott Kalan

[38:35] That's my bag, and it freaks me out.

[38:37] I like your accent.

[38:38] I'm kind of into it.

[38:39] That's my happening, baby.

[38:42] So what does the green M&M sound like?

[38:43] And then, like, groovy, baby, and then we get some fucking mod music.

[38:47] A lot of flower petals projected on walls.

[38:50] Yeah, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[38:51] Not JK7, so it's a yellow M&M.

Elliott Kalan

[38:53] No, yeah, what's the green M&M sound like to you?

[38:56] Hello.

[38:58] Wow.

[38:59] I make you horny, baby.

[39:00] No, you don't.

Dan McCoy

[39:02] That's just an urban legend.

Elliott Kalan

[39:04] Yeah.

[39:04] So anyway, Matt hides in a storage room, but a coworker tracks him down there and offers

[39:12] to split the pot with him if he will masturbate and break the pool.

[39:17] And it's just-

[39:18] Sounds like a good deal.

[39:19] Yeah, I really take it.

Dan McCoy

[39:20] Why not?

[39:21] No one's holding you to this but yourself.

Stuart Wellington

[39:24] I mean, it's not that often you get offered money to just blast one out.

[39:30] You know what I mean, guys?

Elliott Kalan

[39:31] I mean, I would say never.

[39:32] I never have.

[39:33] Oh, I'm so sorry.

Dan McCoy

[39:34] I mean, not you personally.

[39:35] Like, if you had an OnlyFans, baby, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[39:38] Yeah, should I do that?

[39:39] Should I have an OnlyFans?

[39:40] I feel like that is-

[39:41] Should you do that?

[39:42] I feel like that complements your skill set, Elliot.

[39:45] Yeah.

[39:45] Interacting with fans, doing all kinds-

[39:47] I mean, it might reduce your stress if you're-

[39:49] Certainly would, yeah.

[39:51] Doing that much.

Elliott Kalan

[39:52] Anyway, I'll think about it.

[39:53] I'll take it under consideration.

[39:55] I'll talk to you about it.

[39:56] And my manager.

Stuart Wellington

[39:57] I'll talk to my reps about it.

[40:00] Yeah, it might make your taxes complicated.

[40:02] My reps have been trying to get me into OnlyFans for a while.

[40:05] My reps have been really, really heavily arguing that I should start in OnlyFans.

[40:10] Digital intimacy work, I think.

Elliott Kalan

[40:14] So, anyway, Matt goes, runs off to the bat.

[40:19] He's like, you know what?

[40:20] I'll do it.

[40:20] He picks up one of the porn magazines-

Stuart Wellington

[40:22] And he does walk around like a guy who's kind of trying to hide a boner.

[40:26] Very stiff-legged and crazy.

Elliott Kalan

[40:29] Or like a returning soldier or like a soldier who's off to battle.

[40:33] And everyone in the audience in the office is like, he picks up a box of tissues,

[40:37] but then he goes into the bathroom where toilet tissue is readily available.

[40:42] So, it was just for show.

[40:43] Put it on the goos.

[40:44] Yeah.

[40:45] He picks up a box of tissues, then sits in a stall where toilet paper would be right there.

Stuart Wellington

[40:49] Wait, let me text CinemaSins real quick.

[40:51] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[40:51] Can we get the Honest Trailers guys on this?

[40:53] Can they put something together about this?

[40:55] So, anyway, but when he goes to the bathroom, he is thrown off by the fact that his boss

[41:03] is already masturbating in the stall next to him.

[41:05] And masturbating so loudly.

[41:07] He's making so much verbal, vocal noise.

Stuart Wellington

[41:11] And that's an interesting way to learn that hearing your boss masturbate isn't your kink.

[41:16] Yeah, that's true.

Elliott Kalan

[41:16] And also, he has his laptop with him in there, which seems unnecessary when he's already so turned on.

Dan McCoy

[41:21] He just can't get rid of that Viagra boner, though, so that's the problem.

Elliott Kalan

[41:26] Matt, of course, escapes out a window, the only proper strategy.

[41:30] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[41:31] And luckily, his boner doesn't prevent him.

[41:33] No, he doesn't.

Elliott Kalan

[41:33] His boner doesn't hit the ledge of the window and snap off like a pretzel stick.

Dan McCoy

[41:39] Or cause him to flip over.

[41:41] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[41:43] Cap size, yeah.

[41:43] It's like dropping some giant ribs on Fletcher's car.

Elliott Kalan

[41:48] Now I want to see him waiting for a bus, and he has this huge boner, and he just keeps turning

[41:51] and accidentally knocking people over waiting on line with a bus.

Stuart Wellington

[41:54] Yeah, or he trips, and he ends up pole vaulting over something.

[41:57] Exactly, exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[41:58] Like some kind of porn Sergio Aragones cartoon.

[42:01] Yes.

Dan McCoy

[42:02] An Olympics agent comes by and is like, you're the man I've been looking for.

Elliott Kalan

[42:06] Yeah, and then it becomes, the movie turns into a movie about his pole vaulting penis called

[42:13] like, called some pole or something like that, or vault pole.

[42:16] Yeah, it's an Italian movie from the 70s.

[42:19] There's a lot of sexy nurses and so forth.

[42:22] Yeah, of course.

[42:22] Yeah.

[42:22] So anyway, Matt goes to Erica's house, and she tells him, sex, you don't learn about your

[42:28] real connection from sex.

[42:29] It's from the kiss.

[42:30] That's how you know.

[42:31] When you kiss someone, that's a real connection.

[42:33] They take turns.

Stuart Wellington

[42:34] It's like that time I kissed a rose, guys.

Elliott Kalan

[42:36] Yeah, yeah.

[42:37] Well, you didn't get a kiss from a rose?

[42:39] I did.

[42:40] I mean, it was give and take.

[42:41] It was mutual.

[42:42] Oh, okay.

[42:42] As long as it was mutual.

[42:44] You weren't just running around just smacking your lips on roses.

Stuart Wellington

[42:47] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[42:48] I was on the gray.

[42:50] I got that kiss.

Dan McCoy

[42:51] He was standing on a DVD copy of The Gray.

[42:55] So, I mean, the thing.

[42:56] Under some mistletoe, and a rose happened by, and he's like, huh?

[42:59] Yeah.

[42:59] Yeah, sure.

[43:00] Why not?

Elliott Kalan

[43:01] That when it snowed, and his eyes became white, and the light was so bright he couldn't see.

[43:06] You know?

[43:06] Yeah.

[43:06] So, anyway.

[43:09] Matt goes to Erica's house.

[43:10] She tells him to kiss.

[43:10] They take turns.

[43:11] They can't touch each other, right?

[43:13] So, they take turns caressing each other with orchids.

[43:16] And this is Seward's favorite part.

[43:18] This is a Mero wolf.

Dan McCoy

[43:20] And the elf was in the corner going, yes, yes.

Elliott Kalan

[43:23] Yeah.

[43:24] And so, if you're looking for the orchid thief, they're right here.

[43:27] And what they're doing with those orchids, they shouldn't be.

[43:29] And this is so successful that he manages to, as I think we've mentioned, make her orgasm by blowing the petals across her tummy in the vague direction of her pelvis.

[43:38] And this was, I mentioned this movie in the writer's room recently.

[43:42] I said, oh, I have to watch 40 Days, 40 Nights.

[43:43] And someone went, oh, the one where he makes her come with a feather.

[43:46] And I was like, it's not a feather.

[43:47] It's actually flowers.

[43:48] But, you know, that's the one thing people remember about this movie.

Dan McCoy

[43:51] Stuart, you look like you have feelings about this scene.

Stuart Wellington

[43:53] I mean, the biggest thing is just the fact that I'm like.

[43:54] You tried it, and it didn't work, and you got mad at the movie.

[43:57] Yeah.

[43:58] They said user error, but –

[43:59] They lied to me.

[44:01] No, but, I mean, it is like – this is very clearly sex.

Dan McCoy

[44:05] Yeah.

[44:06] Yeah.

[44:06] I mean, like, this is – yeah, this is a very constrictive version of, like, what sex is.

[44:12] Like, sex is, in this movie's postulation, I guess, penetration of some kind.

Elliott Kalan

[44:18] Well, I think they're saying, I guess, that if you use a mediating object, it is not sex.

[44:23] And so, like, if he just went to town on her with a strap on, I guess it wouldn't be considered sex in this movie, you know?

[44:31] Yeah.

[44:32] But it's a – but the fact that he's using a flower, and I guess that there's no penetration, I guess that's part of it also.

[44:37] But anyway, it is so – the scene is so sincere that it comes off as so silly.

[44:44] Yes.

[44:45] Like, there is no understanding, I think, in the movie of how silly and goofy this is.

[44:49] And they just present it as this is, like, the most erotic thing that could be happening right now, you know?

[44:55] This is just Zalman King material.

[44:58] And I feel like we've now done three episodes in a row where potentially we've mentioned Zalman King at one point or another.

[45:02] So –

Stuart Wellington

[45:03] We got to get him on the show as a guest.

Elliott Kalan

[45:05] I mean, he died, I think, 14 years ago.

[45:07] I think I was looking up.

[45:08] Oh, man.

Stuart Wellington

[45:08] You know?

[45:08] Oh, man.

[45:09] I bet the words on his lips were, I wish I could be a guest on the Flap House.

[45:12] That's what it was.

[45:13] He goes, the Red Shoe Diaries have no clues.

Elliott Kalan

[45:16] Yeah.

[45:18] The – I want my ashes to be buried in a red shoe.

[45:22] So, anyway, she falls asleep after – this ends in a way I did not understand at all.

[45:28] She starts to fall asleep in this afterglow.

[45:31] And he's going, no, no, let's talk.

[45:32] Let's talk.

[45:32] Stickers.

[45:33] Let's talk about stickers.

[45:34] Do you like stickers?

[45:35] And she falls asleep.

[45:36] And I was like, what is happening?

[45:37] Why is this character doing this?

[45:38] I don't understand.

Stuart Wellington

[45:39] I guess he hasn't found release because she didn't blow petals down his wiener or something.

[45:45] So –

[45:45] Down his wiener.

Dan McCoy

[45:46] And that's what he said very gently is, blow petals down my wiener.

Elliott Kalan

[45:50] And so he's left unsatisfied.

[45:52] So he has to go to what?

[45:53] One of those like money tunnel things in a game show and have that blow around his penis?

[45:59] Just release a bunch of flowers in here.

[46:01] Yeah, yeah.

[46:01] Why?

[46:02] Ben Stein.

[46:03] Get over here.

[46:05] He's like, the butterfly tent at the Natural History Museum is open.

[46:08] I guess I'll go to that.

Dan McCoy

[46:10] He's watching a bag dance in the air like Wes Bentley.

[46:14] Oh, yeah.

[46:16] If only I was in that right now.

Elliott Kalan

[46:20] So day 38, there's a big presentation at work.

[46:23] Unfortunately, he has a big erection, so he has to go home.

[46:26] And this is one of the things.

[46:27] Guys, again, I don't want to pry.

[46:28] When you have an erection, you're probably aware of it, right?

[46:31] Like you're pretty aware.

[46:32] You can feel it.

[46:33] He seems so unaware of it.

[46:35] And it is so clear to everybody else in the room.

[46:37] There's a time where these super baggy pants, so maybe he didn't.

[46:40] Yeah, that's possible.

[46:42] But he horrifies the client and has to be ushered out of the office.

[46:45] That night, Nicole shows up at his apartment.

[46:49] She got dumped by her fiance, and she wants to get back with Matt.

[46:53] And he refuses, and it turns her on.

[46:56] She likes to be like –

[46:58] Power dynamics.

[46:59] She wants to be the one who's being meaned at.

[47:03] And he kind of –

Stuart Wellington

[47:04] Well, she's used to that, but she deep down is turned on by the fact that he is establishing dominance.

Elliott Kalan

[47:11] Yes, exactly, exactly.

[47:13] I did not like the scene at all where she's like, slam that door in my dirty face.

[47:16] I did not like it.

[47:17] I don't like that stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[47:18] Oh, weird, like the rest of the movie where you're just fucking loving it.

Elliott Kalan

[47:21] Where I was like, love it.

[47:22] It's joy.

[47:23] It's just pure joy.

[47:24] Am I watching Singing in the Rain?

[47:25] Because I got a smile on my face all the way through, yeah.

[47:28] Day 39, okay, Nicole puts $3,500 on Matt not making it to the end of the vow.

[47:35] She's only got one day to make him break his vow, and she knows – everyone knows that at midnight of the end last day, Erica is going to come over to Matt's apartment and finally have sex with him.

[47:45] Day 40, Matt wakes up.

[47:47] He's got a persistent erection he can't get rid of.

[47:48] He's pouring water on it, Raging Bull style, and it's not working.

Stuart Wellington

[47:53] Has he started to have these fantasies where he's flying above a rolling sea of breasts?

Elliott Kalan

[47:59] Oh, that's right.

[47:59] You know what?

[48:00] I think that might have happened already, and I forgot about it.

[48:02] That's okay.

Stuart Wellington

[48:03] We don't have to linger on it.

Elliott Kalan

[48:05] It's somewhere – I have it somewhere in my notes, I think.

[48:07] But the – oh, no, this is when he's seeing nude women everywhere.

[48:10] He's attracted to Mrs. Butterworth.

[48:11] It is kind of fondling the Mrs. Butterworth bottle.

Stuart Wellington

[48:14] Is this where he's worried he's going to have sex with a light socket?

[48:17] That's in a little bit.

Elliott Kalan

[48:18] That's in a little bit.

[48:18] He walks in on his brother making out with a nun, and his brother's like, yeah, I'm leaving the seminary.

[48:22] And I'm like, this feels like a whole other movie that we're barely – we're just seeing little bits of.

Stuart Wellington

[48:26] Like, whoa, first reformed much?

Elliott Kalan

[48:30] So Matt sits at home.

[48:32] This is when he is drinking.

[48:33] He's imagining that the power socket is sexy.

Stuart Wellington

[48:35] Which, by the way, don't like – don't drink.

[48:38] That's going to make it harder for you to control yourself.

[48:40] For sure.

Elliott Kalan

[48:41] If the whole idea is I've just got 10 hours or whatever of self-control.

[48:44] I do like that he's taken up smoking.

Stuart Wellington

[48:46] I think that's actually an interesting –

[48:48] Interesting choice.

[48:49] I like that he's taken up smoking, and he has like a bunch of like very kind of partially smoked cigarettes.

[48:54] Like he's new to it.

[48:55] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[48:55] It's shorthand for jittery.

[48:57] It's like anxiously smoking a cigarette.

[49:00] Ryan brings home this girl who –

Stuart Wellington

[49:02] And yeah, I hope that he – I like that he takes up smoking that just like I hope all the characters in this movie develop some kind of incurable disease based on their actions in the movie.

[49:12] Not outside of the movie.

[49:14] Just inside the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[49:15] So Ryan brings home a girl who's in like a leather skirt, and she's coded as kind of like dominatrix-y.

[49:20] Yeah.

[49:20] And I was like, oh, so is he trying to like tempt him one last time?

[49:24] But no, it's just I think his date.

[49:26] His date, yeah.

[49:26] That he's just bringing home.

[49:27] And Matt has them handcuff him to the bed so he can't touch himself.

[49:31] And Erica's supposed to show up at midnight.

[49:32] This is when Matt is struggling and has his dream of flying over a landscape of just breasts.

[49:36] And he imagines a giant Erica.

[49:40] It's – maybe that's what he's into.

Dan McCoy

[49:43] And here's where the movie takes a turn from merely terrible to despicable.

Elliott Kalan

[49:48] This is when the movie – where all the implied sexual assault of women at work trying to pressure him into sex becomes actual sexual assault because as he's kind of like hallucinating from lack of sex and isn't quite – is in and out of consciousness pretty much.

[50:03] Nicole shows up at 11.59 p.m. and essentially rapes him and walks out.

[50:07] Has sex with him without his consent under false pretenses.

Dan McCoy

[50:10] She's unconscious or semi-conscious.

Elliott Kalan

[50:12] He seems to think he's with Erica in that moment.

Dan McCoy

[50:15] She mounts him and they have sex.

Elliott Kalan

[50:18] But it's also one of those things where she mounts him and then has sex and then walks out.

[50:22] And it's like, was she going to go tell people, yeah, I had sex with him at 11.58?

[50:25] Like what is – there's so many times in this where people are like, we're going to find out if he's doing it or not.

[50:30] But it's all based on the honor system.

[50:32] Like there's the – even if someone said – there's nothing to stop a woman from just wanting to be off the stage.

Stuart Wellington

[50:36] She should have had a picture taken with her holding the day's fucking newspaper, right?

[50:40] Exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[50:41] And Erica sees Nicole leaving and he's like, I thought I was with you.

[50:45] And she storms out.

[50:46] He's already ripped the bed apart in his fury like Samson changed the pillars of the temple.

[50:52] You know?

Stuart Wellington

[50:52] Like he was being held back by that giant nut swimming around in his sack.

Dan McCoy

[50:57] And I don't want to like dwell on this too much because it's upsetting.

[51:02] But like the movie not only doesn't seem to realize that he has been sexually assaulted.

[51:09] Like Erica like then like is mad at him about it and he like has to apologize to her for it.

Elliott Kalan

[51:16] Also, the way he responds is – and I could say he's traumatized in that moment potentially.

[51:21] If this was a different movie, I could see him being legitimately traumatized by what just happened.

[51:25] But instead of saying like – he says, oh, I thought she was you.

[51:29] He says the thing that someone would say in a romantic comedy to be misunderstood instead of saying like, oh my god.

[51:34] Like I was just assaulted.

[51:35] Like instead of – and then she gets mad at him because she doesn't seem – I mean he doesn't really tell her what the situation is.

[51:43] And he never tries to correct it I don't think.

[51:45] So I could see why she would want an apology as far as she knows.

Stuart Wellington

[51:47] And he's been lying to her the whole time.

Elliott Kalan

[51:49] Yes, and he's been lying – he's been a terrible boyfriend the entire movie.

[51:52] No, I mean that all makes sense within the –

[51:55] Aside from their one moment of flower play, he's been a particularly bad boyfriend.

Dan McCoy

[51:58] That makes sense within the terrible content text of the movie.

[52:01] I am mad at the movie for not seeming to realize how topsy-turvy the morality of any of this is and how awful it is.

Elliott Kalan

[52:09] I think the movie – and I guess this is the really – one of the really poisonous aspects of the movie or venomous you could say depending on whether the movie is biting you or you're biting it.

[52:16] Is that it's presenting this world where just taken for granted, men want sex all the time, need sex all the time.

[52:23] It's their only motivator.

[52:25] It's the only thing that they're thinking about.

[52:27] And so there's no – so anything that involves sex must be welcome.

[52:34] The idea that this guy is not welcoming sex is aberrant or bizarre or strange.

[52:40] It has to be commented on and treated as a sideshow.

[52:43] And so when she shows up, I don't think the movie understands – when Nicole shows up, I don't know that the movie understands how upsetting this is.

[52:52] Because it exists in a world where if you woke up – if you're a man and you wake up and someone's having sex with you and you didn't realize it, this movie would present it as just like, cool, yeah, all right.

Stuart Wellington

[53:02] Can you believe it?

[53:03] He's such a hottie.

Elliott Kalan

[53:04] Women go after him.

[53:05] He's such a stud even when he's sleeping when we go after him.

[53:07] When that would be incredibly upsetting.

[53:09] It would be an incredibly upsetting thing to experience.

Stuart Wellington

[53:11] So you're saying that the 40 Days, 40 Nights gender swap script that you're trying to pitch, it's not going to get off the –

Elliott Kalan

[53:19] I don't think it's going to go well.

[53:20] I don't think people are going to be interested in it.

[53:22] But it is presenting men as purely sexually driven beings as opposed to beings with emotions.

[53:28] And you kind of – with Matt, they kind of want to have it both ways sometimes, but they can't do it.

[53:32] And it's just – everyone in it is horrible.

[53:34] It's a horrible world that it exists in.

[53:36] Anyway, four stars, A-plus movie.

[53:38] Give it all the Oscars.

[53:39] I'm just kidding.

[53:39] So anyway, it's 10 days later.

[53:42] So we're now at 50 days, but it doesn't matter because Lent is over.

[53:46] And Erica's roommate said, hey, Matt, stop by, and he left this box for you.

[53:50] You mean Maggie Gyllenhaal.

[53:51] Yeah, Maggie Gyllenhaal.

[53:52] Maggie Gyllenhaal tells Shannon Sossaman, Matt, stop by, and he left this box for you.

[53:56] He's really crazy about you.

[53:57] You know what?

[53:58] I didn't like him, but now I think he's a great guy.

[54:00] And she opens the box, and it's this like not quite Joseph Cornell kind of like a diorama art project

[54:07] with little like references to dates that they had or moments they shared.

[54:12] It is one of the things where in the movies, it's like, oh, what a sweetie pie.

[54:15] But in real life, you would be like, this guy is a maniac.

[54:17] This is bizarre.

[54:18] This is a kidnapper's note.

[54:19] Some of my human hair is in here.

[54:21] I don't like this.

[54:22] Yeah, yeah.

[54:23] This is like Hannibal's like, mmm, yummy.

[54:25] So instead of apologizing to me, he decided to make an art project forcing me to relive the moments when he was lying to me in the past.

[54:33] So – but she is touched by it.

[54:35] She goes to the laundromat.

[54:36] She goes to her dryer.

[54:37] She always uses and finds a box of dryer sheets wrapped with a ribbon.

[54:42] That's when Matt walks in.

[54:43] He's come by every night that week in the hope that she would stop by.

[54:46] He obviously knows where she lives.

[54:47] He dropped off a diorama box for her.

Stuart Wellington

[54:50] He's been there.

[54:50] And again, he also – he has to wash his millions of shirts that he wears.

[54:55] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[54:56] Yes.

[54:56] He's like Steve Bannon wearing multiple shirts all the time.

[54:59] And messing himself.

[55:02] And messing himself.

[55:03] Because you have to imagine Steve Bannon is just covered in all sorts of crap.

[55:07] Incontinent, yeah.

[55:08] And of course incontinent.

[55:11] It's so explosive that it splashes up onto his shirt.

[55:14] I mean, I don't like to make fun of someone's appearance.

[55:16] But when you look at Steve Bannon, you say, this is a man who smells like shit all the time.

[55:20] This is a man who's wallowing in his own shit all the time.

[55:22] And that's why he needs to dominate the world with tyranny is because he's such – nobody wants to be around him.

[55:28] Anyway, so Matt walks in.

[55:30] He starts to apologize and he goes, I don't know why I'm saying all this when I could just do this.

[55:34] And kisses her because kisses, as we know it's been established, have the magic power to communicate true feelings.

[55:39] And they start making out and cut to their apartment.

[55:42] Everyone's there betting on how many hours Erica and Matt are going to be in his room having sex.

[55:47] It's been 38 straight hours apparently, which again, like what – this is a cartoon world, you know.

[55:54] And Matt kicks them all out, but they keep betting in the hallway.

[55:58] The end.

[55:59] The 40 days and 40 nights are over.

[56:01] We can stop wandering in the desert and finally find the promised land of not watching this movie.

[56:06] Stuart, I want to apologize for making you watch this movie again because it meant I had to watch this movie.

[56:11] Yes.

[56:14] In her truly – truly, I was –

Stuart Wellington

[56:16] That means a lot.

[56:16] I was going to ask you if you had regrets.

Elliott Kalan

[56:19] Yes.

[56:20] Truly, I was living the saying, when you go out for revenge, dig two graves.

[56:24] Yeah.

[56:24] And one of them was for you and one was for me.

[56:26] Two semen-filled graves.

[56:29] Unfortunately, Dan, I guess you had to share one of the graves with one of us.

[56:32] Yeah.

[56:32] You're just collateral damage, yeah.

[56:35] Collateral damage, which is Dan's action movie franchise.

[56:37] I forgot when there's one finger pointing 40 days and 40 nights at Stuart, there's four more pointing back at me, you know.

[56:43] Yeah.

[56:44] Really, three more.

[56:45] One of them is kind of like half bent.

[56:47] It's not really pointing either direction.

[56:49] Yeah.

[56:49] The thumb, yeah.

[56:50] Got a little English on it.

Dan McCoy

[56:51] I think this is going to be the least surprising final judgments in Flophouse history, but, you know, it's tradition.

[56:56] So we got to say whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie.

Elliott Kalan

[57:00] And now I want to tell you how bad a movie this is.

[57:01] This is a movie where you do see a woman's butt in it, and Dan is still going to say it's a bad movie.

Dan McCoy

[57:06] Yeah, a movie kind of like, I mean, there's a lot of fucking nudity in this movie.

[57:12] It's wild looking back to be like, okay, this is like dumb romantic comedy, you know, just like swimming in it.

[57:19] But not a, look, I last, fear.com, last episode.

[57:26] Take me back.

[57:27] Like, I quoted Roger Ebert to bolster my opinion.

[57:33] Here I come not to praise him but to bury him.

[57:36] Like, he talked about, like, how there was, like, smart dialogue or something.

Stuart Wellington

[57:44] He gave us three stars out of four stars.

[57:45] It's one star away from perfection, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[57:47] A smart, like, exploration of things.

[57:50] And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking?

[57:51] Like, Roger, your love of boobs has overcome your critical facilities.

[57:58] Like, this movie is filled with people not acting like actual humans, acting in, and in so much as it's, you know, has any basis in real human behavior.

[58:12] It's in the most poisonous sides of human behavior.

[58:15] And I could, I texted you guys, I could squint and see how there could be a movie that interrogates the importance of sex in dating.

[58:26] Like, the idea, like, oh, the pressure, the central place that it exists, what does it mean to remove that from the equation?

[58:35] This movie is not that.

[58:36] This movie is dumb and awful and makes me feel bad and gets me angry at the climax in particular.

[58:45] No pun intended, but unfortunately achieved.

[58:48] It's a bad, bad movie.

[58:50] Stuart, what do you have to say?

Stuart Wellington

[58:53] You know, I take no pleasure in being right.

[59:00] You know, I, when I, when I saw this movie, I think I saw it, a rental maybe, probably.

[59:08] I don't think I saw this in the theater.

[59:10] And the Stuart of 2003, let's say, was a very different Stuart than now.

[59:16] I feel like long-time listeners of the podcast will have seen a fair amount of growth in this once immature party dude, now gray-haired party dude.

[59:27] So there was, there was a chance when revisiting this movie, I was, I was thinking, who knows?

[59:33] Maybe that was just a product of a less worldly Stuart hating on something.

[59:39] But no, it's worse than I remembered.

[59:41] It was terrible.

[59:42] And that Stuart was right to not like it.

[59:44] So, yeah, this is a bad, bad movie and I hate it.

Elliott Kalan

[59:48] Yeah, I would also call it a bad, bad movie.

[59:50] I feel like it is a movie that has a certain, has a few different types of poison coursing through its veins.

[59:54] And it's just, you shouldn't watch it.

[59:57] Just don't watch it.

[59:58] It's bad.

[59:58] I will say this in defense of Roger Ebert's otherwise fairly indefensible review.

[1:00:02] He does mention that the involvement of Nicole in the ending, he says, quote, Nicole's entire participation is offensive and unnecessary.

[1:00:10] And so he, he feels like the movie went astray in those moments.

[1:00:13] So at least he didn't like that part.

[1:00:15] But, but yeah, it's a, it's a bad, bad movie for sure.

[1:00:18] I mean, but I do, I do, I did enjoy my anticipation of Stuart having to watch it again, even though I knew I would have to sit from that same poison chalice in order to see him do it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:28] You could have A, gotten a laugh and B, made the movie better by having her show up with that intention only to see him like blasting all over himself from a wet dream.

[1:00:39] And she's like, what the fuck?

[1:00:40] And she leaves.

[1:00:41] And then Erica shows up and is like, oh my, I can't believe you did that.

[1:00:46] Like it's the same, like it would have, you wouldn't have had to change very much at all except add a fucking joke.

[1:00:52] You know?

[1:00:52] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:53] I guess so.

[1:00:54] I don't fucking know.

[1:00:56] It's defeated.

[1:00:57] What even matters anymore?

[1:00:58] Okay.

[1:00:59] So I guess you guys are not going to San Francisco for 40 days, 40 nights fest.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:03] I'm just glad that we didn't realize how much of a San Francisco movie it was so that we didn't consider there wasn't some like glimmer, some devilish looking Elliot's eye where it's like, maybe we should do this for San Francisco live show.

[1:01:18] Yeah, that's true.

[1:01:18] And then we would have had to talk about this in front of.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:20] In front of an audience.

[1:01:21] Oh boy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:21] So if you watch this movie for, to follow along, I'm sorry, man.

[1:01:27] Don't do it.

[1:01:27] I didn't pick it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:28] I mean, I've always told people they should not watch the movies or feel the need to watch the movies.

[1:01:32] Yeah.

[1:01:33] But guys, we did it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:34] It's finally done.

[1:01:37] It's over.

[1:01:38] 40 days and 40 nights is in our rear view.

[1:01:41] And as is the MaxFun Drive.

[1:01:43] The MaxFun Drive is winding down right now.

[1:01:45] And now one of the things that makes 40 days and 40 nights so hard for me to watch, at least, is that feeling that this horrible movie and all the terrible values that it espouses are kind of expected to be normal and universal in the audience.

[1:02:00] And I'm guessing that some fucking executives were all patting themselves on the back for churning out this, like, American Pie clone that had had all the empathy sucked out of it.

[1:02:10] And in many parts of pop culture, we're kind of at the mercy of those same executives making the same terrible decisions.

[1:02:19] And that's one of the primary reasons that the MaxFun Drive is so important to the Flophouse because it allows us to remain almost entirely listener-supported, meaning that we don't have to answer to the whims of some big sponsors, some marketing department, or some non-creative, shitty executive types.

[1:02:37] We own our show.

[1:02:39] We get to make it the way we want to.

[1:02:41] And if you like it, which you obviously do, you're listening to it.

[1:02:45] We're great.

[1:02:46] Okay, well.

[1:02:47] You can support it with your cash.

[1:02:51] There's no evil billionaire at the top of the pyramid taking a bite out of your support.

[1:02:56] MaxFun is a worker-owned collective allowing us to own our own show, and the drive is the best time for you to support us.

[1:03:04] And as it's winding down, I urge you this one last time to head over to MaximumFun.org slash joinflop.

[1:03:12] You can still support the Flophouse and keep us going.

[1:03:15] Thank you.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:16] Thank you.

[1:03:19] And thank you, listeners, for supporting us and for writing in letters.

[1:03:23] We've got a couple here to answer.

[1:03:26] This first one is from Duncan, last name still withheld.

[1:03:30] So apparently they wrote it in the past.

[1:03:32] Heinz.

[1:03:32] It's Heinz.

[1:03:33] It has to be Heinz, yeah.

[1:03:34] After seeing the trailer for that newish—

[1:03:37] Or Donuts.

[1:03:38] It could be Donuts.

[1:03:39] It could be Donuts.

[1:03:40] Common last name Donuts.

[1:03:41] Is this the guy America runs on?

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:43] And it's currently withheld.

[1:03:45] They took the donuts off.

[1:03:46] Yeah, they did.

[1:03:46] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:47] That's true.

[1:03:47] After seeing the trailer for that newish drop movie and having watched Netflix's Carry On with Jason Bateman, both of which center around people being manipulated over the phone, I've decided that the phone manipulator movie must now be its own genre.

[1:04:03] I'll dub it the telepuppeteer genre.

[1:04:07] So my question is—

[1:04:08] It's a good one.

[1:04:08] We can workshop the name.

[1:04:10] My question is, do you like this genre of movie and what kind of—

[1:04:15] What's wrong with you?

[1:04:16] And what kind of sick Cormac McCarthy-style mind games would you want to play on a hapless protagonist if given the chance?

[1:04:24] I probably, you know, I'd probably ask them if their refrigerator was running.

[1:04:28] And then if they were foolish enough to say yes.

[1:04:29] I mean, this is basically like the fucking—

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:31] This is basically like—

[1:04:32] And the coup de grace would emerge.

[1:04:34] Yeah.

[1:04:34] The death blow.

[1:04:35] Then the prestige.

[1:04:36] You bring down the hammer on them.

[1:04:37] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:38] Yeah.

[1:04:38] This is basically the impractical jokers of thrillers, right?

[1:04:42] Yeah.

[1:04:44] Phone booth is kind of one of the early ones of this sort of thing, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:48] I mean, phone booth or—it depends on what kinds of—because you could go back to—is it just that the telephone is the conduit or is it literally someone is manipulating?

[1:04:57] I guess someone's manipulating.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:58] I think it has to be the manipulator.

[1:04:59] I don't think you can do like—what's the postcards?

[1:05:02] Because like sorry, wrong number is a different thing.

[1:05:04] Sorry, wrong number.

[1:05:04] What's the one with Carol Kane to the—are you in the house alone or something like that?

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:10] But like does the beginning of Scream count or no?

[1:05:12] Oh.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:13] Well, he's not really getting her to do anything other than keep her busy until he murders her.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:22] Play trivia.

[1:05:23] Play movie trivia.

[1:05:24] He's manipulating her into that.

[1:05:27] I don't have anyone for my movie trivia team, so I have to do it to you.

[1:05:31] I got a really cool nickname.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:32] It's called the Cinefeels.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:36] I think this is one of these ones where you kind of have to figure out how to force the person—

Dan McCoy

[1:05:41] We're called Bowels Moving Asshole.

[1:05:43] That's a trivia team name that a friend of mine keeps trying to get us to do, but people don't want to.

[1:05:53] Yeah, please.

[1:05:53] I can understand why they didn't want to.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:54] Just hearing that makes me think of Miyazaki just like crying.

[1:05:59] Like taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:02] Yeah.

[1:06:02] Not since that video of him watching the like AI animated thing and he's like, I think this is the opposite of life.

[1:06:08] This is horrible.

[1:06:09] You should destroy it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:10] Abomination.

[1:06:11] You should have never been born.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:13] Your mother should be ashamed and your family line should end.

[1:06:19] So speaks Miyazaki.

[1:06:21] Send him to the Sharktacons.

[1:06:23] Now, so the—I think that the hard part with these movies is getting the person to stay on the line, right?

[1:06:31] Yeah.

[1:06:31] Like forcing them to do it and making it a thing that they actually have to do, and usually it's a threat.

[1:06:35] And Phone Booth, for me, is one of the more effective ones because he's stuck there, right?

[1:06:39] Yeah.

[1:06:39] He is stuck and he's in danger.

[1:06:41] But I think if it was me, I'd probably like call someone and it would be the wrong—I'd get the wrong number.

[1:06:48] Then I'd keep calling that wrong number and insisting that the person on the other end of the line is the person I'm trying to talk to and make them doubt who they really are.

[1:06:55] And then I'd get them—I'd start sending them through hoops to try to prove who they are to me, the person they could easily just hang the phone up on.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:01] So we'll see what happens.

[1:07:02] It's kind of like—speed is kind of like this, yeah?

[1:07:04] I guess speed is kind of like that, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:06] Speed is a little bit.

[1:07:06] I mean, the movie Compliance is like that, but that's not a fun movie.

[1:07:09] Oh, that's not a fun movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:10] No.

[1:07:10] But it's probably one of the better ones.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:12] Yeah, it's based on a true story of this actually happening, which is terrifying.

[1:07:15] Yeah.

[1:07:16] But yeah, speed is—how much time is he on the phone in speed?

[1:07:20] Are they talking over like walkie-talkies or something?

Dan McCoy

[1:07:23] Something like that.

[1:07:23] Not a lot, but he keeps calling in and being like, hey, do this thing now.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:30] I'd make the protagonist dance.

[1:07:33] That's it.

[1:07:33] Just make him do like different dances.

[1:07:36] You'd make him dance like nobody's watching, but you're watching.

[1:07:38] That's why, I mean, the protagonist is played by Sam Rockwell, so he's—

[1:07:41] Oh, so he wants to do it anyway.

[1:07:42] Yeah, he's feeling it.

[1:07:43] I mean, he was always dancing when you picked the phone up.

[1:07:45] Yeah, I'd basically have to be like, oh, actually, stop now.

[1:07:49] All right.

[1:07:49] You're enjoying it too much.

[1:07:51] You're putting too much mustard on this thing.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:52] This is supposed to be creepy, but you're really getting into it.

[1:07:56] This other letter is from Kristen, last name withheld, who writes—

[1:08:00] Kristen Scott Thomas.

[1:08:01] Hello, Peaches.

[1:08:03] Being a longtime listener, I sometimes refer to you as my parasocial friends and find myself telling stories about you.

[1:08:10] I realize that this could come across as creepy, but I mainly just think you're interesting, you have great anecdotes, and your lives are much different than mine, as I am neither in the entertainment nor hospitality industries.

[1:08:21] Do you have any long-term parasocial relationships?

[1:08:26] How do you view being on the famous side of this, quote, relationship with me?

[1:08:31] Is it super weird for me to say it like that?

[1:08:34] Keep on flopping in the free world.

[1:08:36] Kristen.

[1:08:38] Yeah, it's pretty super weird.

[1:08:40] What do you think?

[1:08:42] No, I don't.

[1:08:43] I'm not a freak.

[1:08:45] I mean, there have been times in the past where I'm like, okay, well, people out there are getting sort of a flattened version of my personality, as is true of anyone who is any kind of flavor of public figure, and we are the most minor flavor of that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:01] But I mean, that is part of the parasocial relationship, and I feel like parasocial relationships are especially common within podcasting.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:08] Yeah, because you're hearing people's voices in your ears.

[1:09:10] You're hearing people have conversations.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:13] And you're hearing it during times when you are often driving or doing chores.

[1:09:18] It's times when you would be on the phone with somebody else.

[1:09:21] Or nodding off to sleep.

[1:09:22] When you're in an everyday situation and you're not sitting down to just enjoy this one thing.

[1:09:27] Like when you watch TV or movie, you know I'm sitting down to do this thing, whereas podcasting kind of starts to invade parts of your life when you might be on the phone with somebody or talking to a person you're actually close to in the room or something.

[1:09:40] So it feels like a conversation.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:41] It's one of the reasons why if I regularly listen to a podcast and then I actually become friends with the people that make the podcast, I have trouble listening to their podcast anymore because, like, the relationship has shifted.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:56] See, my problem is I still listen to it, which leads me, like, the only parasocial relationships I have.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:01] When you're like, remember when you said this thing?

Dan McCoy

[1:10:04] Well, yeah, like, it ends up being, like, this weird hybrid relationship where I'm like, well, we're friends, but in my mind, we are closer friends than we actually are because I've spent more time with you.

[1:10:15] And so I will do the thing that, like, often confuses me when people do it or it's like I get a text about, like, something that was said on the podcast.

[1:10:23] I'm like, I don't remember this.

[1:10:25] You know?

[1:10:25] I'll do it to someone else.

[1:10:27] I'll be like, I know that I shouldn't be doing this because, like, I don't know how to take it when I get it.

[1:10:32] But I want to be part of the conversation.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:34] I think there's also something that I know.

[1:10:37] I feel like Elliot probably handles better than me, and I'm assuming Dan, is establishing boundaries and, like, understanding when things are – what's an okay level of interaction with somebody who I know exclusively as a listener.

[1:10:54] I also experience this as a bartender because the people that I interact with across the bar, they're getting a very specific version of me, one that is nice and wants them to tip me.

[1:11:05] And there are, like – I do have a few people who have crossed that Rubicon and become friends of mine.

[1:11:13] But it's not common, and it is just partly, like – part of it is the transactional nature of the relationship, but also just, like,

[1:11:22] I have to present a certain face to people.

[1:11:27] And obviously, just like on the podcast, there's – it's a version of me, but it's not entirely me.

[1:11:32] And the version – like, I'm not necessarily the person they think I am.

[1:11:36] And so, yeah, I'm kind of giving the best version of me, you know what I mean?

[1:11:40] Yeah.

[1:11:40] Like, I'm presenting the best face.

[1:11:43] And I also – yeah, I mean, it's also based, like, people's personalities are weird and what they look for in relationships.

[1:11:52] And like, I don't know.

[1:11:54] I also have transactional relationships, which are similar but not exactly the same as parasocial relationships.

[1:12:01] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:01] Yeah, I think I do try to put pleasant but firm boundaries around myself in terms of –

[1:12:08] I've had enough experience, negative experiences with people who I think assumed a greater friendship or a greater relationship with me than was actually the case.

[1:12:18] At least looking at me right now.

[1:12:19] Yeah, exactly.

[1:12:20] I'm talking about Stu when he comes into my bar.

[1:12:23] But it's a –

[1:12:25] Isn't that a poor thing?

[1:12:26] A glass of milk in a Spider-Man comic?

[1:12:30] Pour you a Spider-Man comic.

[1:12:31] It's crazy, right?

[1:12:32] Yeah, yeah.

[1:12:33] I have it liquid form, liquid Spider-Man.

[1:12:36] So, I do try to establish that kind of – but I understand the thing.

[1:12:40] You also have a – you have, like, kids, which I think is –

[1:12:42] Well, and I have a real family.

[1:12:43] And I want my kids to not be a part of this.

[1:12:45] I mean, we have real families too.

[1:12:46] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:12:48] Motherfucker.

[1:12:48] Yeah, I mean, I guess so.

[1:12:49] I mean, Dan's family is mostly cats at this point.

[1:12:51] I have a wife.

[1:12:52] That's a family member.

[1:12:53] But how many –

Dan McCoy

[1:12:54] I was born of human – woman.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:59] You were of woman born, so you can't kill Macbeth.

[1:13:02] Yeah.

[1:13:03] But it's true.

[1:13:04] I think the fact that I have children, yeah, motivates me even more to establish those boundaries.

[1:13:09] That being said, it doesn't stop me from –

[1:13:11] Like, some guys were outside of a grocery store recently just videotaping –

[1:13:16] just recording everyone who walked in.

[1:13:18] And it didn't stop me from going up and being like,

[1:13:19] What are you doing?

[1:13:20] What's this all about?

[1:13:20] Get out of here.

[1:13:21] While my kids were like, Can we just go into the grocery store, please?

Dan McCoy

[1:13:24] But that being said, I do think that most people are like what Kristen sounds like,

[1:13:29] who have a reasonable and rational understanding of what the relationship is and where those boundaries might be.

[1:13:36] I will talk to a MaxFun member happily any day of the week who wants to talk about the show or just talk about other stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:48] On some level, that becomes a transactional relationship.

[1:13:51] Well, you're hung up on it.

[1:13:53] I don't know about that exactly.

[1:13:54] This is your particular bugbear.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:56] I'm going to go with the Supreme Court definition to say if there's no explicit quid pro quo.

[1:14:01] It's not necessarily a transaction.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:02] But also, yeah.

[1:14:03] I mean, I also say that for the most part, I have never had that many bad experiences and people are very nice and understanding.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:12] And as an awkward human being, it is nice sometimes to talk to someone who like at least feels like they have a certain rapport with me.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:18] And I'm like, okay, this is like easing the wheels.

[1:14:21] To add to what you guys are saying also, like I certainly have the temptation sometimes when I've listened to a podcast a lot to be like, oh, these are people that I can be friends with, you know, which is not always the case.

[1:14:31] But also, it is nice sometimes to have a constructed dynamic where you meet someone and you know exactly what's expected of you, what you expect of them.

[1:14:39] You can have a pleasant and polite and meaningful interaction.

[1:14:42] And then there's none of the messiness of like, oh, what do I do with this now?

[1:14:46] It's like if I'm meeting someone whose work I really admire, I'd always rather meet them as a fan who is approaching them for a limited interaction.

[1:14:55] If I meet them in a social situation, I feel like I can get very awkward where I'm like, I don't know exactly how to navigate this.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:01] You should have watched me talk to George R. Martin.

[1:15:04] I know.

[1:15:04] I wish I could have been there.

[1:15:05] I should have.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:06] I was not invited to that dinner because I live on the other side of the country.

[1:15:08] But like working with them can be difficult too though.

[1:15:10] I mean like that's another place where it's like if you're, you know, a fan and then you work with them.

[1:15:15] And I just know that like now, you know, I feel comfortable around Hodgman like we're friends.

[1:15:22] But like at The Daily Show, like when I was first there, I'm like, oh, I really admire this guy's work from the past.

[1:15:29] And it made me feel very awkward to work with him even though I'm like, well, theoretically we're colleagues.

[1:15:35] I mean like theoretically – in actuality we're colleagues if not necessarily on the same even keel, you know.

[1:15:42] But –

[1:15:43] And he never even threw his shoes at you.

[1:15:45] I know.

[1:15:46] Yeah.

[1:15:46] Oh, man.

[1:15:47] A legendary tale.

[1:15:48] He threw a shoe at me.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:50] Legendary tale of bullying gone wrong.

[1:15:53] But I understand that completely, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:55] A long response.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:57] That was a long answer probably – possibly not particularly interesting to a very good question.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:02] But that's what you get in a podcast sometimes.

[1:16:04] Yeah.

[1:16:05] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:05] Just go to MaximumFun.org slash join.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:08] For sort of rambling, sort of self-examination that may not apply to you.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:14] To a peek into Stuart's therapy talk.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:19] So what do we do next on this podcast, Dan?

[1:16:21] Oh, yeah.

[1:16:21] You know what we do next is we recommend movies.

[1:16:23] Movies that definitely would be a better use of your time than 40 Days and 40 Nights.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:28] I mean I just – I feel like just watching a plant grow in real time would be a better use of your time than 40 Days and 40 Nights.

[1:16:33] But we can recommend movies too, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:35] I just went to a rep screening.

[1:16:39] I've mentioned the series before on the podcast The Deuce at the Nighthawk Williamsburg where they show movies that played on 42nd Street and 42nd Street theaters.

[1:16:51] Most of them ended up being sort of like between – in the 70s and 80s.

[1:16:55] But there are some earlier ones.

[1:16:56] This one is from 83, a movie that I saw a lot as a kid and was happy to revisit on the big screen.

[1:17:04] Strange Brew starring Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis.

[1:17:09] A movie that is – like I – everyone there had a great time, laughed a lot.

[1:17:18] I thought this would be such a hard one to sort of explain to people.

[1:17:21] It's Hamlet.

[1:17:23] They do Hamlet.

[1:17:24] But not really.

[1:17:25] Like it's Hamlet at a brewery except for also there's a Max von Sydow evil sort of scientist character that is not really an analog to anything in Hamlet.

[1:17:36] Who is putting mind controlling –

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:39] You don't remember the scientist in Hamlet with the mind control stuff?

Dan McCoy

[1:17:42] Mind controlling drugs in beer so he can have his hockey-playing army like attack each other and eventually like a dog flies through the air also with a superhero cape on.

[1:17:57] But the main draw of it, of course, is Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis reprising their roles from SETV as Bob and Dougie McKenzie.

[1:18:06] The ultra-Canadian drinkers of beer who originally were on the show because Canada demanded that there be at least two minutes of specifically Canadian content.

[1:18:19] So they're like, screw you.

[1:18:20] We'll make this the most Canadian content.

[1:18:22] Kind of as a joke.

[1:18:23] And then it took off as characters.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:25] I feel like it kind of set the template for things like the Wayne's World movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:29] Oh, definitely.

[1:18:30] Definitely.

[1:18:31] Like it's two man children with a local TV show.

[1:18:35] Yeah.

[1:18:35] And what they do so well is they really feel like two goofy brothers who are constantly like fucking with each other.

[1:18:44] Like that they are beating each other up, insulting each other, but also really love one another in a very cute and sweet way.

[1:18:54] And, you know, like a lot of their interaction is improvised, but not in a way that feels like indulgent.

[1:19:00] It just feels real.

[1:19:02] It's a very messy, low-budget movie that's very silly, but it still holds up, I think, as very funny too.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:09] Yeah.

[1:19:10] I am going to recommend a movie I watched a little bit ago.

[1:19:15] I didn't catch it in the theaters, but I caught it as soon as it hit streaming.

[1:19:18] It's a little horror movie called Primate.

[1:19:21] And I say little because it features a villain who's a little bit shorter than a regular human.

[1:19:25] In fact, the slasher in this case is a chimpanzee.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:29] So the size of the movie is decided by the size of the villain in the movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:34] Don't question, Elliot.

[1:19:35] It was a perfect segue.

[1:19:37] Okay, you know, you're right.

[1:19:38] Every link in the chain made sense.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:39] It's a big movie.

[1:19:41] It's called Moonraker because Jaws is in it, and that guy is tall.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:45] And they go to space, the biggest thing.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:48] Yeah.

[1:19:48] So this is also like an 85-minute movie.

[1:19:53] It's like – and it's a high-concept slasher movie where the concept is chimpanzee in Hawaii gets rabies and starts killing folks.

[1:20:02] And I was a little nervous going in because the idea of a – you know, an animal being involved in violence means an animal is going to get hurt at some point.

[1:20:10] That makes me sad.

[1:20:11] But luckily, this chimpanzee looks fake enough that I can get through – like it really makes sense.

[1:20:17] Like for me internally that like it looks just fake enough that I'm like, okay, this thing's scary, but I know it's not a real chimpanzee.

[1:20:26] And it – like the way it rips its way through people's faces.

[1:20:31] Rob Delaney shows up just to get his face ripped right off.

[1:20:34] It's great.

[1:20:36] And yeah, it's like – it uses the setting well.

[1:20:40] It's like a perfect like little video nasty kind of thing.

[1:20:43] And like I would say it's fun.

[1:20:46] It's gross.

[1:20:46] It's easy.

[1:20:47] It goes down quick.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:49] Prime's good.

[1:20:50] I'm going to recommend a movie that I've recommended before because we've been recording a lot of Flophouse lately and I've been busy.

[1:20:57] I've not had a chance to watch too many other movies besides Flophouse movies, which is a special hell that I don't love existing in.

[1:21:05] But I'm willing to do it for you, the listener, MaximumFun.org slash join, please.

[1:21:09] But I recently read a book that had some screenplays in it, and one of them was a screenplay for a movie that I love that I recommended before.

[1:21:16] I was reading the book Notes from a Black Woman's Diary by Kathleen Collins, which collects a number of works written by Kathleen Collins before she died in the late 80s.

[1:21:25] And in it is the screenplay for her movie Losing Ground, which came out in 1982.

[1:21:30] And at the time it was the first movie directed by a black woman in decades, you know, since the silent era, I believe.

[1:21:38] And it's just a really great movie.

[1:21:40] And it's got great performance in it by Dwayne Jones, who you may know from Night of the Living Dead, and Bill Gunn from Ganja and Hess and a lot of other movies.

[1:21:47] And the lead is played by Sarah Scott, and she is a college professor who is studying the idea of ecstasy, kind of either creative or religious or pleasurable ecstasy, but finds that she's a very kind of like buttoned up person.

[1:22:03] And that sense of freewheeling ecstasy is something she doesn't know how to achieve in her life.

[1:22:06] And she's married to an artist who has just sold a painting and a big success and is very openly like kind of like spontaneous and whatever and hard to deal with, but also is experiencing that kind of freedom that she wishes she was experiencing more of in her life.

[1:22:21] And she decides that she will accept the invitation of a film student to appear in a student film that he's making, even though it's against – it's not the kind of thing she normally does.

[1:22:31] And it's a very like – it's a very like well-observed small-scale movie.

[1:22:35] Sometimes it's funny and sometimes it's kind of heartbreaking.

[1:22:38] And it's just really beautifully done.

[1:22:41] And you watch it and you're like, oh, I wish she could have made 20 more movies.

[1:22:44] It feels like a movie very much in the vein of the kinds of movies that you would get out of France for decades where it's like these are people who live kind of an intellectual life, but it's about their feelings and passions.

[1:22:57] And they're speaking articulately and sometimes inarticulately about it, and there's a lot going on under the surface.

[1:23:02] So there's no like big blow-up scenes, but there's a lot of emotion underpinning everything.

[1:23:08] And it's just a really great movie.

[1:23:09] So Losing Ground is my recommendation.

[1:23:13] Wow.

[1:23:14] I mean, so Strange Brew.

[1:23:16] Just kidding.

[1:23:17] What is, though?

[1:23:18] Yeah, I mean, Strange Brew does have this undercurrent of emotions.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:21] Yeah.

[1:23:22] Unspoken by the brothers, but you know it's there.

[1:23:25] You know it's there.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:25] That brotherhood is so strong.

[1:23:27] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:27] Similarly to the emotions underneath the chimpanzee that's about to start ripping people's jaws off.

[1:23:34] There's definitely a point where a guy's like, oh, I got the answer.

[1:23:38] I'm going to overpower the chimp.

[1:23:40] And I'm like, kid, this is not going to work.

[1:23:42] No, that doesn't happen.

[1:23:44] Your head's about to get smushed.

[1:23:47] Guys, as the MaxFun drive winds down for another year, I just want to take a moment and say thank you to all the supporters of the Flophouse out there.

[1:23:56] Without MaxFun members like you, this passion project of ours would not exist.

[1:24:01] I feel very lucky to get to have this creative outlet that's entirely in our control, where my friends and I get to be usually silly, sometimes thoughtful, and occasionally professional.

[1:24:13] We were able to continue doing the show after Elliot moved to LA.

[1:24:17] We were able to move to a weekly release schedule during COVID.

[1:24:22] We were able to pay our producer, Alex, a competitive rate, as well as to do a variety of side projects like Flop TV and live shows, all because of the consistent financial support from you.

[1:24:34] So from this slightly more mature party dude, I can say thank you so much for supporting the Flophouse.

[1:24:41] I love doing this show, and it means the world to me that you helped me do it.

[1:24:45] And one last time, if you were waiting for that final reminder, that little push, go to MaximumFun.org slash join Flop and support the Flophouse right now.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:58] And speaking of producer Alex, thank you, producer Alex, for all the work that you do.

[1:25:06] Tip of the cap.

[1:25:08] I particularly, if you are not a listener to Big Howl and Possum, and it tickles you to think of a man and his large possum friend talking about all sorts of different topics.

[1:25:22] Yeah.

[1:25:23] I really recommend that show.

[1:25:25] I think it's actually some of the funniest character improv I have heard in a podcast.

[1:25:31] So check that out and check out Howl Dottie's music.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:35] Check out his Twitch streams.

[1:25:38] Check out all the great work he did on our bonus content for Slop Tales.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:42] The final Slop Tales episode was recently dropped in the bonus feed.

[1:25:49] Something you can get if you're a MaxFun member, so check that out as well.

[1:25:52] But for us, the Flophouse podcast, I say good day.

[1:25:58] I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:25:59] Good night.

[1:26:00] I've been Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:01] Good life.

[1:26:02] I've been Elliot Kalin.

[1:26:04] Okay.

[1:26:05] That's it.

[1:26:06] Lock it up.

[1:26:07] You got any burps you want to get out?

Dan McCoy

[1:26:17] No, they're going to come out my butt.

[1:26:19] Okay.

[1:26:19] All right.

[1:26:19] Uh-oh.

[1:26:20] You like to do it the other way.

[1:26:24] Burps is a portmanteau for butt burps.

Stuart Wellington

[1:26:25] Danny's saying tenor, Stuart's saying bass.

[1:26:27] Oh, boy.

[1:26:28] Maximum Fun.

[1:26:33] A worker-owned network.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:34] Of artist-owned shows.

[1:26:36] Supported.

[1:26:37] Directly.

[1:26:38] By you.

40 Days and 40 Nights

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