40 Days and 40 Nights

[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?

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

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

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

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

[0:49] I'm Stewart Wellington, I guess.

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

[0:56] But why are we doing such a thing?

[1:00] 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.

[1:10] 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 open and lights on, baby.

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

[1:31] Open those lights, get the filaments so you can touch them, yeah.

[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.

[1:43] But The Flophouse, what is it? 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, I think this did okay financially.

[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.

[2:12] So this almost broke $100 million at the box office in 2002.

[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—

[2:23] 53 percent, it says right here.

[2:24] What? It's what?

[2:25] 53 percent.

[2:26] Oh, 53 percent.

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

[2:28] Yeah.

[2:29] 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.

[2:36] And I'm like, I guess half the people in the world like this thing.

[2:40] Yeah.

[2:41] Yeah, I mean I do think that—

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

[2:47] Wow.

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

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

[2:52] I mean I don't think that anyone who liked it in the old days is going to be like, oh, you know, it was really great, 40 days and 40 nights.

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

[2:59] Maybe there's still some 40 days and 40 nights for lovers out there.

[3:02] It's certainly not the Michael Layman movie that people are going to talk about the most liking these days.

[3:06] No, no.

[3:07] I—

[3:08] What would be?

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

[3:12] Oh, right.

[3:13] Probably not My Giant.

[3:14] Probably not The Truth About Cats and Dogs.

[3:16] Potentially Meet the Applegates.

[3:17] I forgot he did Heathers.

[3:18] Oh, Meet the Applegates.

[3:19] Meet the Applegates.

[3:20] Yeah, I like that one.

[3:21] Heathers is his big movie.

[3:22] But he also did Hudson Hawk, which I think has been rightly re-evaluated as awesome.

[3:25] As a good movie.

[3:26] As I wrote in my letterbox, you know, Heathers is one of my favorite 80s movies and this is one of the worst movies of the 2000s.

[3:33] So take that, auteur theory.

[3:35] Like Michael Layman, you know, started out with a bang and then, I don't know, never did anything like all that much after Heathers.

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

[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.

[3:54] Yeah, they barely get the hit.

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

[3:58] Yeah.

[3:59] So there's nothing wrong with that.

[4:00] Do people remember their, what, hats?

[4:02] Do you remember their hats?

[4:03] Still.

[4:04] I mean they're a one-hat wonder also.

[4:05] Still.

[4:06] They are actually more than one hat, yeah.

[4:07] I mean it's the same hat but there's more than one of those hats.

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

[4:11] Yeah, yeah.

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

[4:17] 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.

[4:26] Yeah.

[4:27] So it's actually a double portmanteau for high hat hat.

[4:28] High hat, head hat.

[4:29] Yeah.

[4:30] So what do we do on this podcast?

[4:33] We watch a bad movie and talk about it.

[4:36] Now this is, of course, because as Stuart mentioned, the Max Fund Drive, we picked movies to specifically hurt each other.

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

[4:44] At least you chose fucking violence here.

[4:45] I had to go with the movie that Stuart for years spent – for years has established as his least favorite movie of all time.

[4:52] A movie that back in the day I had encouraged listeners to go rent from a video store and then destroy instead of returning.

[4:59] Yeah, and now I have never –

[5:01] And I have – in the years since, I have received multiple packages of shattered DVDs.

[5:06] And so I had never seen this movie.

[5:09] I didn't understand why Stuart hated it so much, and now I've seen it.

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

[5:16] There was a brief moment when – obviously when the horror set in that was going to be – is Stuart going to just not watch a movie for the flop house and show up unprepared and say the dog ate his DVD player?

[5:28] But there 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.

[5:37] Yeah.

[5:38] No, they had to be in the house just sleeping at the time, which is thankful.

[5:41] Yeah.

[5:42] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[5:43] I'm glad none of my kids wandered in the room, so I'd have to answer questions about 40 days and 40 nights.

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

[5:48] Exactly.

[5:49] If only I was watching after hours.

[5:51] What a better movie.

[5:52] Also featuring Gryffindor.

[5:54] Yeah.

[5:55] It's true.

[5:56] Do you think it's the same character?

[5:57] He's like I got to get out of this – 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.

[6:05] I mean they've got a similar sort of interest in like getting laid I feel like.

[6:08] That's true.

[6:09] And I was about to say the ages of the characters match up, but that's just because Gryffindor aged in real time between the making of the movie.

[6:15] Like many of us, Gryffindor is aging in real time.

[6:18] He's not unstuck.

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

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

[6:26] I mean not that we know of.

[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] So anyway, the movie starts with our titles over home video footage, home movie footage 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 so forth.

[6:47] Some very late 90s –

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

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

[6:54] Some very late 90s, early 2000s music.

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

[6:57] So if you were to pay attention to the movie, you would believe that San Francisco is a city populated exclusively by white people and one or two Asian people.

[7:06] Yes.

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

[7:32] But I guess the culture – the freewheeling culture of the dot-com boom.

[7:37] The freewheeling startup culture of dot-com.

[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.

[7:48] Yes.

[7:49] So that's where fear.com went to get its website designed.

[7:53] Probably.

[7:54] Matt Sullivan played by Josh Harden.

[7:56] But you're right Dan because the office culture is entirely – they spend so much more of their time hitting on each other, harassing each other, talking about each other's sex lives than they do doing work at all.

[8:07] Yeah.

[8:08] So it's a –

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

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

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

[8:13] So the camera gets distracted during all this home video footage by a woman passing by because Matt's roommate Ryan, who's a total horndog, is holding the camera.

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

[8:22] Played by actor Paolo Costanzo, there is no universe where that man's name is – this very Mediterranean man is named Ryan.

[8:31] That universe is –

[8:33] Christopher maybe.

[8:34] But not Ryan.

[8:35] I don't know.

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

[8:39] It's an Irish Catholic name still.

[8:41] But 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 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 ceiling is cracking open and a vast emptiness opens up, and he panics.

[9:02] And he runs away half-dressed from a tryst because he's so panicked by this vision of the empty abyss staring back at him in his empty life filled with nothing but sexual pleasure.

[9:12] And his brother –

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

[9:15] Yes, I guess so.

[9:16] I mean in many – 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 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 surrealism that enters the movie.

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

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

[9:47] Perhaps. It's referring to –

[9:49] Yeah, Dolly-esque.

[9:51] A romantic comedy fantasy surrealist film.

[9:54] So when you go to the video store on the surrealist section, there's Lodge D'Or and Shannon DeLue and 40 –

[10:00] Days and 40 Nights, they're all right there together.

[10:02] The Exterminating Angel.

[10:03] Exterminating Angel.

[10:04] I mean, you watch this and you assume

[10:07] Bunuel had something to do with it.

[10:08] The fact that he died years earlier,

[10:10] you're like, oh, I guess the ghost of Bunuel direct this.

[10:12] Yeah.

[10:14] I mean, it is, the movie is surrealist in that,

[10:18] and I was complaining to you guys about this over text,

[10:21] no one acts like a human being in this movie.

[10:25] No one, this is not grounded

[10:27] in recognizable human behavior.

[10:29] The animating premise of the movie,

[10:33] the fact that he's like,

[10:34] okay, I'm having trouble getting over my girlfriend.

[10:38] I'm having too much empty sex.

[10:39] I must promise that for 40 days and 40 nights,

[10:43] I do not have sex or masturbate.

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

[10:47] Why is this the, I mean, like,

[10:49] if you're worried that there's too much empty sex

[10:51] in your life, by all means, 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

[11:00] in this buddy romance later in the film.

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

[11:05] But also, if ever there was a movie, a romantic comedy,

[11:08] where the misunderstanding at the center of it

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

[11:15] in a way that would cause problems to nobody, this is it.

[11:19] I mean, we clearly learned that

[11:22] if he is going to give something up for Lent,

[11:24] it shouldn't be meaningless sex.

[11:26] It should be lying,

[11:27] because he's constantly lying to everyone.

[11:29] He's constantly lying, that's true.

[11:31] And this all exists in a world

[11:32] where everything is antagonistic.

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

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

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

[11:44] some kind of power struggle.

[11:46] It's a very bro-y movie,

[11:48] in that the characters who are essentially friends

[11:50] basically exist to, like, tease and shame

[11:52] and harass each other and make fun of each other.

[11:54] And the women in it are either super perfect love angels

[12:01] or witches and shrews, you know?

[12:04] Or, like, sirens, like, horny sirens

[12:07] who were there to sap his seed during his.

[12:10] I think that falls under witches and shrews, too.

[12:12] But it's one of these movies

[12:13] where the character has a shameful secret

[12:15] that he can't let anyone know,

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

[12:18] And so, moving on, just to get to that point,

[12:21] we haven't gotten there yet,

[12:22] to get his mind off Nicole.

[12:23] 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

[12:33] because he can't have one,

[12:34] which is a thing that is hard for a man to do

[12:36] because there's a physical reaction thing that happens.

[12:40] And the girl is like,

[12:40] show me, show me your ejaculate, and he can't do it.

[12:44] And it is.

[12:45] Yeah, all normal stuff.

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

[12:49] It's also one of those things that, like,

[12:50] guys, we don't have to get too personal,

[12:52] but if you've ever been in a sexual situation

[12:54] with a woman where something just doesn't go right

[12:56] and you're not able to complete your sexual orgasm.

[12:59] You should lie about it.

[13:00] You should lie, exactly.

[13:01] The idea that this is a crazy thing

[13:03] that he has to lie about is,

[13:04] he's constantly lying about things

[13:06] that do not need to be lied about.

[13:08] I would believe it if Larry David was in this situation

[13:11] and felt the need to lie about it.

[13:12] I don't believe it if any other human being

[13:14] needs to feel it.

[13:15] 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

[13:25] and maybe do some other stuff, you know,

[13:26] that doesn't involve you having to jiggle it.

[13:30] As long as you're providing pleasure,

[13:32] 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

[13:37] 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.

[13:43] But also, the other offensive thing about this movie,

[13:45] to a nerd like myself, is the idea,

[13:47] can a man go 40 days without sex?

[13:50] Yeah, dude, I've gone way more than 40 days

[13:52] without sex at times in my life.

[13:53] Like, there have been many times when I have,

[13:56] when I would have preferred to not go that long without sex,

[13:58] but it happened.

[13:59] But the idea, or even the idea that like.

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

[14:04] Impossible.

[14:05] Can't do it. Or masturbating?

[14:06] Well, the other thing, as we'll get to later,

[14:08] is that like eventually he just has a boner all the time

[14:10] 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.

[14:18] I feel like I would transform into a fry

[14:20] after a hundred cups of coffee.

[14:23] We don't.

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

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

[14:26] This is what happens.

[14:27] We don't have good sex education in this country,

[14:29] so you have to get it from the flop act.

[14:30] You have to get it from us.

[14:31] Don't get it from movies, which will teach you

[14:33] that if you don't masturbate or have sex for 40 days,

[14:35] you will go insane.

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

[14:38] So anyway.

[14:39] And by the way, that's to say that he still has sex

[14:42] in the course of the movie,

[14:43] even though he says he does not

[14:45] because blowing flower petals across a woman's tummy

[14:48] until she climaxes, that's sex, guys.

[14:50] I'm sorry.

[14:51] FYI.

[14:52] Just like war is politics by other means,

[14:54] blowing flower petals across a woman's tummy

[14:56] is sex by other means.

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

[14:58] We're not there yet.

[14:59] So first he goes to work at the internet company

[15:00] we mentioned that he works at,

[15:01] run by boss Griffin Dunn,

[15:02] who no one seems to get that much work.

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

[15:06] than like a college clubhouse

[15:09] than it is an office or workplace.

[15:10] This office needed one person

[15:12] who's a little like an accountant or somebody

[15:15] who's older and over all this shenanigans bullshit.

[15:18] Yes.

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

[15:23] AKA the older brother from the Adventures of Pete and Pete.

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

[15:27] that Nicole got engaged.

[15:30] And the bagel guy can't stop talking about

[15:31] how hot Nicole is.

[15:32] And this drives Matt bonkers, yeah.

[15:35] He learns this information

[15:37] while the bagel guy is sticking bagels

[15:40] on a fucking spindle like they're like comic books

[15:44] or some shit like this like spinning thing.

[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, usually you put them on a plate

[15:53] or something like that.

[15:54] I assume this is of course a visual metaphor.

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

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

[16:01] and subtle visual metaphors for penetration in this movie.

[16:06] And Matt runs over

[16:07] and he sees there's an engagement party going on.

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

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

[16:13] And so Matt decides-

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

[16:15] I think he's firmly established both now

[16:17] and then he establishes further later on

[16:19] all the reasons why he loves Nicole, which are?

[16:25] She seems really mean.

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

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

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

[16:31] Some guys like that.

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

[16:38] She's not so much a character as a symbol

[16:41] of a problem to be overcome.

[16:44] Now, this movie also I should mention

[16:46] 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 versus Sever

[16:51] which came out in the early 2000s

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

[16:54] This is the most 90s romantic comedy I've ever seen

[16:57] even though it came out in 2002.

[16:58] Everything about it feels so,

[17:00] like the style, the visual style,

[17:01] the clothes people are wearing, the music,

[17:03] this kind of like, winky, ironic,

[17:06] kind of like, clerks, light-ish kind of tone.

[17:09] It feels so, this felt like such a time capsule

[17:12] of the movies that were coming out

[17:14] when I was in high school and college.

[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.

[17:22] Yeah, yeah, it's good.

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

[17:26] At one point, one of the women is wearing a shirt

[17:28] that had that monkey cartoon graphic

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

[17:34] And I was like, this is it.

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

[17:37] But anyway, so Matt says-

[17:40] Speaking of shirts, no, go on.

[17:43] So Matt says he'll give up sex and all sexual activity,

[17:45] 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

[17:54] towards him the entire, he's such a dictator.

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

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

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

[18:02] I mean, we haven't, we've somehow not talked about it enough

[18:05] even though we've talked about it a lot.

[18:07] It's so annoying that the movie's like,

[18:10] his problem is he just can't stop having sex.

[18:13] And it's like, I mean, he clearly has emotional problems

[18:17] he has to work through.

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

[18:20] Well, and the way that Josh Hartnett plays him

[18:22] is as such a twitchy, kind of like strange guy.

[18:25] Like, he's handsome, he's Josh Hartnett.

[18:26] But he plays him as this bundle of nervous anxieties

[18:32] that it's like, what you need is therapy.

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

[18:35] You might need medication, I'm not sure.

[18:38] You need to take the edge off of life

[18:39] because clearly you're having trouble.

[18:41] Just flushing sex out of your system

[18:43] for a little bit less than a month and a half

[18:45] is not what you need.

[18:46] You need long-term self-worth and self-care.

[18:50] Maybe if you cared more about yourself and forgave yourself,

[18:53] you wouldn't need Nicole in your life

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

[18:59] But you would find better friends

[19:00] than the guys who just see you

[19:01] as a betting pool subject matter

[19:03] and are constantly trying to lure you into having sex

[19:06] so that they can win the betting pool.

[19:09] Everyone is terrible.

[19:09] Yeah, trying to get you to relapse on your addiction.

[19:12] Yes, so he goes home, he's serious about this.

[19:15] He boxes up all of his porn,

[19:16] which he has hidden behind another layer

[19:18] of regular VHS tapes.

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

[19:23] Yes, he has all these issues of FHM and stuff like that

[19:26] just lying around on his coffee table.

[19:28] Because it's a real guy's apartment.

[19:31] Even at his office workplace,

[19:33] there's porn magazines around

[19:34] that guys can just pick up and walk into the stall

[19:36] and rub one out just before a meeting or something like that.

[19:40] And that's totally,

[19:41] I haven't worked in an office in a long time, guys.

[19:43] Is that cool?

[19:44] It is.

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

[19:46] I mean, from the sample set of offices I've worked at,

[19:49] which is only a few, no, it's not cool.

[19:52] Okay.

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

[19:55] Yeah, which as we all know is all about-

[19:57] Has produced some gross dudes.

[19:58] Yeah, that's very true.

[20:00] You know, I yeah, there's some we saw some inappropriate things in morning meetings for sure.

[20:06] And certainly, certainly there were people that we worked with doing things they shouldn't have in the office.

[20:13] But I was not one of them. It was not considered cool. It was considered. Please stop that.

[20:18] We don't want you doing it. So he goes to laundromat.

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

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

[20:30] And so that 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?

[20:39] Yeah, what the fuck, dude? Between this shit and 40-year-old virgin,

[20:42] Stuart was under attack. He was under fire.

[20:46] Yeah, 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] So Matt goes to the laundromat and he meets this pretty girl played by Shannon Sussman.

[21:01] Yeah. And I really had a moment right about then and this movie and other times.

[21:07] Yeah. I mean, that's that's a real tale.

[21:10] Yeah. Rules of attraction. I mean, that's being a working actor.

[21:15] You got you got busy times, not busy times. And she keeps she just keeps asking him for stuff.

[21:20] And he's and they start to hit it off, you know, but they're not despite him trying to give her the cold shoulder.

[21:26] They also there's a literally says nothing to her the first time.

[21:29] She keeps walking over and asking him to keep saying no.

[21:32] We're already borrows her magazine. He borrows her dryer sheets.

[21:36] It was she or rather the other way around. She borrows his magazine.

[21:38] She borrows his dryer sheets like she also finds his hidden stash of laundry detergent that he keeps at the laundromat,

[21:46] which is weird, right? Yeah, it is weird.

[21:49] Yeah, that he is a weird little hidden cubbyhole in the laundromat.

[21:53] But I guess he goes he has to go there a lot because he has so many layered shirts in this movie.

[21:57] I mean, yes, there's so much. There's so much sex to that.

[22:00] There's semen stains that he has to constantly be washing out.

[22:03] It's like he washes those out. 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.

[22:10] They're talking about how your average drug freak has encrusted semen on his on his pants from his constant masturbation.

[22:17] And Hunter Thompson looks down and sees the semen on his pants and starts trying to scratch it off.

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

[22:28] His co-workers all think it's this is a this is a bizarre situation.

[22:32] It's never going to work. So they start a betting pool on his chastity.

[22:35] And the girls at work start messing with him by trying to take notes on this, like rolling whiteboard in their office.

[22:40] Yeah, like the rolls. 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.

[22:52] This is one of those I I would have made fun of at the time.

[22:55] But now in this world of online betting, I mean, that's a lot of sense.

[22:59] They predicted prediction markets, you know.

[23:01] It's also one of the 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] I don't know. Show me sex. Oh, I guess control the board goes to the other family.

[23:20] Well, I'm going to say chocolate chocolate. Dan's Dan.

[23:23] Steve Harvey was pretty good. I don't think I was trying to do any impression or anything.

[23:30] The suit work, the suit. I would just do like a deadpan, like stare and not say anything for a while.

[23:38] Double-breasted suit. So that's how you know he's going to see Harvey impression.

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

[23:45] I have had a lot of mustache work done. Yeah. Yeah, you're welcome.

[23:49] I know. So putting Botox into his mustache, which is mustache smoother.

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

[24:01] Her name is Erica. They introduce themselves. It turns out she is a cyber nanny.

[24:05] Her job is finding sex sites online and then manually blocking them.

[24:09] I guess it's just like to prevent search engines from like from picking them or something.

[24:15] Yes. And they start dating and the word spreads among the betters. He's dating a girl.

[24:19] What does this mean for the odds of his of his sex life?

[24:22] Day 16, as the Chiron helpfully tells us, Erica, she says goodbye to her roommate, Maggie Gyllenhaal.

[24:28] And one of the most surprising performances in the movie.

[24:32] Who is still pretty good. She does a great job.

[24:35] I mean, she is. 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 this, it's that one of the things I love about acting careers.

[24:43] You can become the one of the most respected creative forces in movies and as an actor or behind the scenes,

[24:49] whatever, you still started out doing a Pizza Hut commercial or 40 days and 40 nights or you started everyone.

[24:54] Almost everyone starts at the bottom. But it also shows you like the star power because you're like,

[24:59] oh, like she instantly has more charisma than most of the people in the movie.

[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 that engages and investigate sex

[25:15] and is sexy and raises questions and makes you feel things as opposed to this one,

[25:18] which makes you feel nothing, you know, but anyway,

[25:21] well, Stuart feel fury and they go on a bus riding date.

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

[25:30] So I mean, just ride the bus. They're clearly surrounded by green screens.

[25:35] Yes. 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 at the end. He avoids kissing her.

[25:42] It gives her a high five instead, but he does not tell her.

[25:45] Oh, I've given up sex for length at the end of Lent. I'll be able to have sex with you.

[25:49] Why doesn't he mention it? I don't know. I don't know.

[25:51] Like this is, you know, this is crazy. I mean, like this is the I mean,

[25:56] it's not exactly the idiot plot defined as, you know,

[26:01] a problem that would be solved immediately if everyone in the movie weren't idiots,

[26:05] but it's close to it. It's it's a cousin of it.

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

[26:13] which happens a lot. There's nothing I guess.

[26:17] I guess it's not hot to be like, I'm hung up on my ex.

[26:23] Oh, I do. But I have to be like saying like,

[26:26] 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 like that will not be,

[26:35] I think received poorly, especially compared to like all of like the weird twitchiness that he's doing instead.

[26:41] Let me let me pull back the curtain when I met my now wife.

[26:44] 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. So I'm trying to take things a little slow and we're married now.

[26:52] It worked out fine. Everything was great.

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

[26:58] You don't want to go on and on about your ex,

[26:59] but you just like if you are honest with someone about where you are emotionally,

[27:03] 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 the things where it's one of many movies where like,

[27:10] I'm not sure what she sees in him because he seems like a twitchy weirdo.

[27:13] He's obviously super cute, but she's also like and she maybe she's attracted to his denial of,

[27:21] you know, of her physical pleasure. Yeah, the more I mean now she's chasing him,

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

[27:30] He is he is lying to her. He is trying to attract her.

[27:33] This is not a real connection. He is trying to control her.

[27:37] Yes, by presenting himself in a specific way

[27:40] and she is suspicious of him the whole time

[27:42] and gets increasingly so as things go on

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

[27:51] and he's like, you know what? I'm just going to keep manipulating.

[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 more more more him being Catholic

[28:06] or something like that and them dealing with that

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

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

[28:12] Well, it's also a movie where like manipulating her the way she wants to be manipulated.

[28:16] Not to jump ahead not to jump ahead.

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

[28:20] But this is a movie where she is mad at him

[28:23] for all of the right reasons early the movie and all the wrong reasons at the end.

[28:28] Yes, by the end. It doesn't make sense.

[28:30] Why? Yeah, so so Matt finds out about the bedding pool.

[28:33] So Erica is talking to her roommate and it's like, oh, I wish you want to have sex.

[28:37] I don't get it. Matt finds out about the bedding pool and the website.

[28:40] They set up. Oh Erica is a cyber nanny.

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

[28:45] She finds out about it and she's mad at Matt for not telling her can their poorly constructed relationship exist.

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

[28:55] You have a message for the audience.

[28:57] Yeah, you're probably wondering why is the flop house torturing themselves with this movie?

[29:04] Well, this living nightmare is the result of the max fund drive.

[29:09] The pain that we go through is all for you our annual membership event

[29:14] where we encourage people to support the flop house by doing something a little special

[29:19] or kind of terrible in this case,

[29:23] we're like Daffy Duck self emulating on stage and we are humbly asking you.

[29:28] Do you like listening to a suffer?

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

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[30:06] 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

[30:18] of release, you obviously like us. You're making it a priority listen. Why don't you head over

[30:24] to maximumfun.org slash joinflop to help give us some meaning to this madness and support the

[30:33] Flophouse today. Please. Eloquently stated, Stuart. And now, once more into the breach,

[30:40] dear friends. So, Erica has found out about the site. She's real mad about it.

[30:46] His roommate, Ryan, is like, just quit this. Just quit the pledge. Just quit it. By the way,

[30:50] also, Nicole's fiance is cheating on her. And meanwhile, then we start because everyone's

[30:56] a villain in this. Everyone's a bad. Everyone's bad. Speaking of a villain,

[30:59] Griffin Dunn, Matt's boss, introduces his subplot in which he has been inspired by

[31:03] Matt's vow of chastity to withhold sex from his wife until she is begging for it because

[31:08] there's a way to manipulate her. And this is your boss should not be talking to you

[31:11] about his sex life with his wife. That's just something that shouldn't be happening.

[31:15] You know, Erica leaves a note for Matt saying they can still hang out. They go on a date.

[31:19] It's awkward because they can't be physical. So now all they can think about is being physical.

[31:23] But then, oh, even worse, Matt sees Nicole with her fiance. He panics and ends up with his arm

[31:29] on fire. I'm not even going to talk about how it happened. So dumb. And Erica and he meets

[31:34] Nicole's fiance. OK, though, restaurants were pretty crazy, but not even wearing like a special

[31:40] like stunt asbestos. I'm sure I'm sure the shooting of it. He knows the shooting of it.

[31:45] No, no, no. I heard that Josh Hartnett insisted to do it wrong. Yeah, yeah. He does all his own

[31:50] stunts in the dumbest way possible. It's in his contract. Let me dip my arm in kerosene first.

[31:54] Yeah, I want to get this. And he meets Nicole's fiance, who is barely even a character.

[31:59] You know, but it's just he's he's he's every he's just the whatever's the the blankest version of

[32:05] bad, like kind of rich guy, rich young guy in movies, you know. And Erica's mad that Matt

[32:11] never told her about Nicole. You know, it's like he's got this whole it's almost as if he has a

[32:15] whole rich emotional life that he does not want to let her into. And it's it was he keeps things

[32:19] on the surface. 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, it'll probably work out. Yeah, of course. There's a bunch of dumb stuff.

[32:32] Ryan pretends that there is a bunch of dumb stuff nonstop.

[32:36] You know, he's true. True words, Elliot. Matt, once so Matt has already had one of the girls

[32:41] at work try to seduce him. Now two of the girls at work start talking about how

[32:45] 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. It's also when Dan saw this in the theater,

[32:54] he like turned to his date and was like, this is true. Yeah, I started my militant

[32:59] website. This is like this movie is such poisonous ideas about everything about it.

[33:05] Everything about it is terrible. Yeah. It's such an incels fantasy of what what the world is that

[33:10] they are either not engaged in or that is happening around them. Yeah. But women are

[33:14] always talking about the power they hold over us. Yeah. I bet if I say I'm not going to have sex,

[33:21] women will throw themselves at me because of my power. But I'll continue. But I only have the

[33:24] power to have sex if I refuse to have sex. Oh, I don't know what to do. I guess I'll just blow

[33:29] up something. So Matt is all anxious and nervous now, as opposed to earlier when he was merely

[33:35] twitchy. Now he is full blown like someone who he is full blown. Rameland in The Lost Weekend,

[33:41] kind of detoxing, you know, seeing things. He sees naked women everywhere, women in their lingerie

[33:46] everywhere. He goes to dinner at his parents' house and we get we get I think these are my

[33:52] two favorite performances in the movie, though, which is their their parents played by Mary Gross

[33:57] and and who's the other guy is a Barry Newman, the star of Vanishing Point.

[34:02] And the dad is just the dad decides, who, by the way, doesn't read as Catholic. No,

[34:09] no, I don't think so. So but I was very glad to see Mary Gross, though. Yes. Very, very gross.

[34:16] She's always great. And she she's so good at doing what she's doing here, which is like

[34:20] the the the character who is embarrassed by what her husband is doing and is trying to put a good

[34:26] face on things. But all he all the dad wants to talk about is his sex life and how what kinds

[34:31] of sex he and his wife can have now that he's showing them pull out diagrams of it. It's one

[34:37] of these scenes where like this would never happen. This would never happen. But Barry Newman

[34:40] performs it so naturally that I'm like, you know what, this maybe a dad would do this. He does.

[34:46] He's not selling. He's not pushing the jokes at all. He's just like, see this position I couldn't

[34:50] do. It's too bad I can't because of my knees. This one we can do. So we put a check next to it

[34:55] like he's so good in this scene. And and like and at this point, Josh Hartnett is struggling with

[35:00] a thing that he is like he he can't help his body's reaction to the thought of sex. But the

[35:06] problem is, it's his parents. So it's unlocking all kinds of horrible. So his testicles explode

[35:11] on camera. And I just protest. At that time, it was the it was the most expensive special effect

[35:18] ever. It was to make those testicles explode. It was in 2002. So they use all the Matrix cameras

[35:25] to get every angle. Yeah, it happens in bullet time. Yeah, exactly. Like a gap khaki commercial.

[35:29] Yeah, but but just like a mouse coming out of Carla Gugino's shoe, it just explodes,

[35:34] takes out half the room. So the meanwhile, his roommate is using a black light to like check

[35:41] Matt's bed for semen just to make sure he's it. It's one of those things where it's like

[35:45] there's just everyone is being so invasive about his life. But he's also such a weirdo

[35:49] that he never says, hey, man, get out of my room. What are you doing? Like, it's just it's

[35:53] what he has no power to control anything other than his chastity at this point. Everyone's being

[35:57] so invasive. And it's one of those movie things where it's like, I guess this guy's life is the

[36:03] most important thing happening on planet Earth. There's nothing else. The entire world is now

[36:08] focused on whether this guy is going to last 40 days. It's like when people ask me if I want to

[36:13] stay living in New York or move to San Francisco. I'm like, San Francisco is boring as fuck, dude.

[36:17] This is all they have to talk about. One guy's sex life. It's all sourdough bread. And this

[36:22] one guy, this one guy is going to do it. You can go to Alcatraz like what, two, three times.

[36:27] Boring after that. Jesse Thorne's head is exploding right now. Yeah, of course, San Francisco is the

[36:31] second greatest city in America. Gorgeous, wonderful. After, of course, New York City,

[36:36] the greatest city in the world. So I've told so many people now they're tired of hearing it.

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

[36:46] in the country. Everyone booed me. It was so great. Anyway, so day thirty five.

[36:50] Griffin Dunn's boss is is still mad. His plan didn't work out. His wife is enjoying the fact

[36:56] that he's not badgering her for sex. A coworker trying to tip the scales of the pool puts Viagra

[37:02] in in Matt's drink. But the boss accidentally drinks it, which just turns him into more of

[37:07] a horn dog like angers me so much in multiple ways. Number one, the nonconsensual drugging

[37:13] of a worker. Number two, just on the level of like that's not what Viagra does. It's not

[37:19] Spanish fly, which also doesn't exist. It just gives you an erection, an erection.

[37:25] It doesn't make you buying. So it's like, what have I been pouring into my own drinks all these

[37:29] years? But it's just a thing that increases blood flow to your penis. Like it doesn't make you

[37:33] horny. It didn't have the courage of its convictions to have Griffin Dunn running

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

[37:41] So if Austin Powers asked Viagra, like, do you make me horny, baby, or whatever?

[37:52] Austin Powers question was, do you make me horny? Yeah, because earlier in his

[37:58] that removed the connection between his brain and his penis. So he never knew if things were

[38:02] making him horny. It's like, do you make me horny, baby? I don't know. I can't feel that.

[38:07] Yeah. Yeah. Do you make me horny?

[38:12] Look, I there's a lot of crosstalk. I'm like, I had to construct the joke very, very quickly.

[38:18] It was constructed on a rickety foundation in the beginning. And then do you make me horny,

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

[38:26] I just increased blood in your penis, baby. That's my bag.

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

[38:42] So what is the green M&M sound like, baby? And then we get some fucking mob music.

[38:46] Yeah, exactly. A lot of flower petals projected on walls. Yeah, yeah.

[38:51] Not JK Simmons. That's the yellow M&M. No. Yeah. What's the green M&M sound like to you?

[38:56] Oh, hello. Wow. I make you horny, baby. No, you don't. That's just an urban legend.

[39:04] Yeah. So so anyway, Matt hides in a storage room, but the coworker tracks him down there

[39:11] and offers to split the pot with him if he will masturbate and break the pool.

[39:16] And it sounds like a good deal. Yeah, I really take it.

[39:20] Why not? No one's holding you to this but yourself. I mean,

[39:25] it's not that often you get offered money to just blast one out. You know what I mean?

[39:31] I mean, I would say never. I never have. I mean, not you personally. Like

[39:35] if you had an OnlyFans, baby, you know. Yeah. Should I do that? Should I have it?

[39:39] Should I have it? I feel like that is you do that. I feel like that

[39:43] complements your skill set, Elliot. Yeah. Interacting with fans, doing all kinds of

[39:47] coming up. I mean, it might reduce your stress if you certainly would. Yeah.

[39:50] Doing that much. I don't know. Anyway, I'll think about it. I'll take it under

[39:54] consideration. I'll talk to you about it. And my manager. It might be good.

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

[40:03] 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] The digital intimacy work, I think.

[40:13] Yeah, exactly.

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

[40:19] He's like, you know what, I'll do it.

[40:21] He picks up one of the porn magazines.

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

[40:27] Very stiff-legged and crazy.

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

[40:33] And everyone 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] Putting on the tissues.

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

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

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

[40:54] Can they put something together about this?

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

[41:10] And that's an interesting way to learn that hearing your boss masturbate isn't your kink.

[41:15] Yeah, that's true.

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

[41:21] He just can't get rid of that Viagra boner though.

[41:24] So that's the problem.

[41:26] Matt, of course, escapes out a window.

[41:28] The only proper strategy.

[41:30] And luckily his boner doesn't prevent him.

[41:33] No, his boner doesn't hit the ledge of the window and snap off like a pretzel stick.

[41:38] Or cause him to flip over.

[41:42] Capsize, yeah.

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

[41:48] But now I want to see him waiting for a bus and he has this huge boner.

[41:51] And he keeps turning and accidentally knocking people over.

[41:53] Or he trips and he ends up pole vaulting over something.

[41:57] Exactly, exactly.

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

[42:01] An Olympics agent comes by and is like, you're the man I've been looking for.

[42:06] Yeah, and then it becomes, the movie turns into a movie about his pole vaulting penis called some pole or something like that.

[42:15] Or vault mole.

[42:16] It's an Italian movie from the 70s.

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

[42:21] Yeah, of course.

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

[42:33] They take turns caressing.

[42:34] Quite the time I kissed a rose, guys.

[42:36] Yeah, yeah.

[42:37] You didn't get a kiss from a rose?

[42:39] I did.

[42:40] It was mutual.

[42:42] Oh, okay.

[42:43] As long as it was mutual.

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

[42:47] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[42:48] I was on the gray.

[42:50] I got that kiss.

[42:51] He was standing on a DVD copy of the gray.

[42:54] Under some mistletoe and a rose happened by and he's like, huh?

[42:59] Yeah, sure, why not?

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

[43:06] So anyway, Matt goes to Erica's house.

[43:10] She tells him the kiss.

[43:11] They take turns.

[43:12] They can't touch each other, right?

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

[43:16] And this is Stuart's favorite part where he manages to.

[43:19] And Nero Wolf was in the corner going, yes, yes.

[43:23] Yeah, 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,

[43:33] 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.

[43:41] 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?

[43:45] And I was like, it's not a feather.

[43:47] It's actually flowers.

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

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

[43:53] I mean the biggest thing is just the fact that –

[43:55] You tried it and it didn't work and you got mad at the movie?

[43:57] Yeah.

[43:58] They said use it in order.

[44:00] No, but I mean it is like – this is very clearly sex.

[44:05] Yeah.

[44:06] Yeah.

[44:07] I mean like this is – yeah, this is a very constrictive version of like what sex is.

[44:13] In this movie's postulation, I guess penetration of some kind.

[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.

[44:31] Yeah.

[44:32] 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.

[44:54] This is just Zalman King material.

[44:57] 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] We got to get him on the shows again.

[45:04] I mean he died 14 years ago.

[45:07] Oh, man.

[45:08] Oh, man.

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

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

[45:13] He goes, the red shoe diaries have no clues.

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

[45:21] So anyway, she falls asleep after he – this ends in a way I did not understand at all.

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

[45:30] He's going, no, no, let's talk.

[45:31] Let's talk.

[45:32] Stickers.

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

[45:34] Do you like stickers?

[45:35] She falls asleep, and I was like, what is happening?

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

[45:38] I don't understand.

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

[45:46] That's what he said.

[45:47] He said it very gently.

[45:48] Blow petals down my wiener.

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

[45:52] So he has to go to 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 here.

[46:01] Why?

[46:02] Ben Stein, get over here.

[46:04] He's like, the butterfly tent at the Natural History Museum is open.

[46:07] I guess I'll go to that.

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

[46:14] Oh, yeah.

[46:15] If only I was in that right now.

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

[46:22] Unfortunately, he has a big erection, so he has to go home.

[46:25] And this is what I think.

[46:26] 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, and it is so clear to everybody else.

[46:36] I mean, the style at the time were these super baggy pants, so maybe he didn't.

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

[46:41] But he horrifies the client and has to be ushered out of the office.

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

[46:48] She got dumped by her fiancé, 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 –

[46:57] Power dynamics.

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

[47:03] And he kind of –

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

[47:11] Yes, exactly, exactly.

[47:12] 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.

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

[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 because I got a smile on my face all the way through?

[47:27] Yeah.

[47:28] Day 39.

[47:29] Okay.

[47:30] 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 –

[47:38] Everyone knows that at midnight of the last day, Erica is going to come over to Matt's apartment and finally have sex with him.

[47:45] Day 40.

[47:46] 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.

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

[47:58] 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.

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

[48:05] It's somewhere.

[48:06] I have it somewhere in my notes I think, but the –

[48:08] Oh, no.

[48:09] 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.

[48:13] Is this where he's worried he's going to have sex with a light socket?

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

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

[48:19] This is his brother making out with a nun, and his brother is 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.

[48:26] Whoa, first reformed much?

[48:30] So Matt sits at home.

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

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

[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.

[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.

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

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

[48:55] Yeah, that's shorthand for jittery is like anxiously smoking a cigarette.

[48:59] Ryan brings home this girl who –

[49:02] And yeah, I hope that he – I like that he takes up smoking just like I hope all the characters in this movie develop some kind of incurable disease based on their actions in the movie, not outside of the movie, just inside the movie.

[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, and I was like, oh, so is he trying to like tempt him one last time?

[49:24] No, it's just I think his date that he's bringing home, and Matt has them handcuff him to the bed so he can't touch himself, and Erica is 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, and he imagines a giant Erica.

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

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

[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 …

[50:00] 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

[50:06] and walks out, has sex with him without his consent

[50:09] and her false pretenses.

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

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

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

[50:18] But it's also one of those things where she mounts him

[50:20] and then has sex and then walks out,

[50:22] and it's like, was she gonna go tell people,

[50:24] yeah, I had sex with him at 11.58?

[50:25] Like, what is, there's so many times in this

[50:28] where people are like, we're gonna find out

[50:30] if he's doing it or not.

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

[50:32] Like, there's the, you know, even if someone said,

[50:34] there's nothing to stop a woman from just

[50:36] wanting to have sex with a man.

[50:36] She should have had a picture taken

[50:38] with her holding the day's fucking newspaper, right?

[50:40] Exactly.

[50:41] And Erica sees Nicole leaving, and he's like,

[50:44] I thought I was with you, and she storms out.

[50:46] He's already ripped the bed apart in his fury,

[50:49] like Samson changed the pillars of the temple, you know?

[50:52] Or not the temple, changed the palace.

[50:53] Like he was being held back by that giant nut

[50:55] swimming around in his sack.

[50:58] And I don't wanna like dwell on this too much

[51:00] because it's upsetting, but like,

[51:03] the movie not only doesn't seem to realize

[51:07] that he has been sexually assaulted,

[51:09] like Erica, like Finn, like is mad at him about it,

[51:13] and he like has to apologize to her for it, it's like.

[51:17] The way he responds is, and I could say

[51:19] he's traumatized in that moment, potentially.

[51:21] If this was a different movie,

[51:23] I could see him being legitimately traumatized

[51:24] by what just happened, but instead of saying,

[51:26] like if he says, oh, I thought she was you,

[51:29] he says the thing that someone would say

[51:30] in a romantic comedy to be misunderstood,

[51:32] instead of saying like, oh my God,

[51:34] like I was just assaulted, like instead of,

[51:37] and so she, and then she gets mad at him

[51:38] because she doesn't seem, because she,

[51:40] I mean, he doesn't really tell her what the situation is,

[51:42] and he never tries to correct it, I don't think.

[51:45] So I could see why she would want an apology,

[51:46] as far as she knows.

[51:47] And he'd been lying to her the whole time.

[51:49] Yes, and he's been lying, he's been a terrible boyfriend

[51:51] the entire movie.

[51:52] No, I mean, that all makes sense within the.

[51:54] Aside from their one moment of flower play,

[51:57] he's been a particularly bad boyfriend.

[51:58] That makes sense within the terrible content text

[52:01] of the movie.

[52:02] I am mad at the movie for not seeming to realize

[52:05] how topsy-turvy the morality of any of this is

[52:08] and how awful it is.

[52:09] I think the movie, and I guess this is the really,

[52:10] one of the really poisonous aspects of the movie,

[52:13] or venomous, you could say,

[52:14] depending on whether the movie's biting you

[52:15] or you're biting it,

[52:16] is that it's presenting this world

[52:19] where it's just taken for granted.

[52:21] Men want sex all the time, need sex all the time.

[52:24] 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

[52:32] must be, must be welcome.

[52:34] You know, the idea that this guy's not welcoming sex

[52:37] 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,

[52:44] I don't think the movie understands,

[52:46] when Nicole shows up,

[52:47] I don't know that the movie understands

[52:48] how upsetting this is.

[52:52] Because it exists in a world where if you woke up,

[52:55] if you're a man and you wake up

[52:56] and someone's having sex with you

[52:57] and you didn't realize it,

[52:59] this movie would present it as just like,

[53:00] cool, yeah, all right, can you believe it?

[53:03] He's such a hottie.

[53:04] Women go after him.

[53:05] He's such a stud.

[53:06] Even when he's sleeping, women go after him.

[53:07] When that would be incredibly upsetting.

[53:09] It would be an incredibly upsetting thing to experience.

[53:12] So you're saying that the 40 days, 40 nights

[53:15] gender swap script that you're trying to pitch,

[53:18] it's not gonna get off the-

[53:19] I don't think it's gonna go well.

[53:20] I don't think people are gonna be interested in it.

[53:22] It is presenting men as purely sexually driven beings

[53:26] as opposed to beings with emotions.

[53:29] With Matt, they kinda wanna have it both ways sometimes,

[53:31] but they can't do it.

[53:33] 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] No, I'm just kidding.

[53:40] So anyway, it's 10 days later.

[53:42] So we're now at 50 days,

[53:44] but it doesn't matter because Lent is over.

[53:46] And Erica's roommate said, hey, Matt, stop by.

[53:49] And he left this box.

[53:51] Yeah, Maggie Gyllenhaal.

[53:52] Maggie Gyllenhaal tells Shannon Sussman,

[53:54] 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

[54:04] not quite Joseph Cornell kind of diorama art project

[54:07] with little references to dates that they had

[54:10] or moments they shared.

[54:11] It is one of those things where in the movies,

[54:13] it's like, oh, what a sweetie pie.

[54:15] But in real life, you would be like,

[54:16] 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.

[54:23] This is like Hannibal's like, mm, yummy.

[54:25] So instead of apologizing to me,

[54:27] he decided to make an art project

[54:29] forcing me to relive the moments

[54:30] when he was lying to me in the past.

[54:32] So, but she is touched by it.

[54:35] She goes to the laundromat.

[54:36] She goes to her dryer she always uses

[54:38] 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

[54:45] 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.

[54:50] He's been there.

[54:51] And again, he also,

[54:52] he has to wash his millions of shirts that he wears.

[54:55] Yes.

[54:56] Yes, he's like Steve Bannon,

[54:58] wearing multiple shirts all the time.

[54:59] Yeah.

[55:00] And?

[55:01] Messing himself.

[55:03] Messing himself.

[55:04] Because you have to imagine Steve Bannon

[55:05] is just covered in all sorts of crap.

[55:07] Incontinent, yeah.

[55:07] Yeah, and of course incontinent.

[55:10] Oh, the guy, you have to-

[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,

[55:17] you say, this is a man who smells like shit all the time.

[55:19] Yeah.

[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,

[55:26] 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,

[55:32] I don't know why I'm saying all this

[55:33] when I could just do this.

[55:34] And kisses her, because kisses, as we know,

[55:35] it's been established to have the magic power

[55:37] 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

[55:44] Erica and Matt are gonna be in his room having sex.

[55:47] It's been 38 straight hours, apparently,

[55:50] which again, like what, this is a cartoon world, you know?

[55:54] And Matt kicks them all out,

[55:55] but they keep betting in the hallway, the end.

[56:00] The 40 days and 40 nights are over.

[56:01] We can stop wandering in the desert

[56:03] and finally find the promised land

[56:05] of not watching this movie.

[56:06] Stuart, I want to apologize

[56:08] for making you watch this movie again,

[56:09] because it meant I had to watch this movie.

[56:11] Yes.

[56:14] In her truly, truly, I was living-

[56:16] That means a lot.

[56:17] I was gonna ask you if you had regrets.

[56:19] Yes, truly, I was living the saying,

[56:21] when you go out for revenge, dig two graves.

[56:24] And one of them was for you, and one was for me.

[56:26] Two semen-filled graves.

[56:29] Unfortunately, Dan,

[56:30] I guess you had to share one of the graves with one of us.

[56:32] Yeah.

[56:32] You just collateral damage, yeah.

[56:35] Collateral damage, which is Dan's action movie franchise.

[56:38] I forgot, when there's one finger pointing

[56:39] 40 days and 40 nights at Stuart,

[56:41] there's four more pointing back at me, you know?

[56:43] Yeah.

[56:45] 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.

[56:51] I think this is gonna be the least surprising

[56:53] final judgments in Cloth House history,

[56:55] but, you know, it's tradition,

[56:56] so we gotta say whether this is a good, bad movie,

[56:59] a bad, bad movie.

[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,

[57:04] and Dan is still gonna say it's a bad movie.

[57:06] Yeah, a movie kind of like,

[57:08] I mean, there's a lot of fucking nudity in this movie.

[57:12] It's wild looking back to be like,

[57:14] okay, well, this is like dumb romantic comedy,

[57:16] you know, just like swimming in it,

[57:19] but not a, look, last, fear.com,

[57:25] last episode.

[57:27] Take me back.

[57:28] 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

[57:41] smart dialogue or something.

[57:44] He gave us three stars out of four stars.

[57:46] It's one star away from perfection, yeah.

[57:47] A smart exploration of things,

[57:50] and I'm like, what the fuck are you talking?

[57:51] Like, Roger, your love of boobs

[57:55] has overcome your critical facilities.

[57:58] Like, this movie is filled with people

[58:01] not acting like actual humans,

[58:04] acting in so much as it's, you know,

[58:08] 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,

[58:18] I could squint and see how there could be a movie

[58:21] that interrogates the importance of sex in dating,

[58:26] like the idea of like, oh, the pressure,

[58:29] the central place that it exists,

[58:31] 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

[58:41] 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?

[58:54] You know, I take no pleasure in being right.

[58:59] You know, when I saw this movie,

[59:04] 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,

[59:14] was a very different Stuart than now.

[59:16] I feel like long-time listeners of the podcast

[59:19] will have seen a fair amount of growth

[59:22] in this once immature party dude,

[59:25] now gray-haired party dude.

[59:27] So there was a chance when revisiting this movie,

[59:30] I was like, I was thinking, who knows?

[59:33] Maybe that was just a product

[59:35] 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.

[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,

[59:51] has a few different types of poison

[59:53] coursing through its veins.

[59:54] And it's just, you shouldn't watch it.

[59:57] Just don't watch it, it's bad.

[59:58] I will say this.

[1:00:00] of Roger Ebert's otherwise fairly indefensible review, he does mention that the involvement of

[1:00:04] Nicole in the ending, he says, quote, Nicole's entire participation is offensive and unnecessary.

[1:00:10] And so he feels like the movie went astray in those moments. So at least he didn't like that

[1:00:14] part. But yeah, I'd say it's a bad, bad movie for sure. But I did enjoy my anticipation of

[1:00:22] Stuart having to watch it again, even though I knew I would have to sit from that same poison

[1:00:26] chalice to see him do it. You could have A, gotten a laugh and B, made the movie better

[1:00:33] by having her show up with that intention only to see him like blasting all over himself from

[1:00:38] a wet dream. And she's like, what the fuck? And she leaves. And then Erica shows up and is like,

[1:00:44] oh, my, I can't believe you did that. Like it's the same. Like it would have you wouldn't have

[1:00:48] had to change very much at all except add a fucking joke. You know, I don't know. I guess so.

[1:00:56] It's just what even matters anymore. OK, so I guess you guys are not going to San Francisco

[1:01:00] for 40 days, 40 nights fast. And I'm just glad that we didn't. I'm just glad we didn't realize

[1:01:07] how much of a San Francisco movie it was so that we didn't consider there wasn't something like

[1:01:12] glimmer and some devilish look in Elliott's eye was like, maybe we should do this for San Francisco

[1:01:17] live show. And then we would have had to talk about this in front of in front of an audience.

[1:01:21] Oh, boy, that would have been. So if you watch this movie for to follow along, I'm sorry, man,

[1:01:27] I don't do I didn't pick it. I mean, I've always told people they should not

[1:01:30] watch the movie or feel the need to watch the movies. Yeah. But guys, we did it. It's finally

[1:01:35] done. It's over 40 days and 40 nights is in our rear view, and as is the Max Fund drive,

[1:01:43] the Max Fund drive is winding down right now. And now one of the things that makes 40 days and 40

[1:01:47] nights so hard for me to watch, at least is that feeling that this horrible movie and all the

[1:01:53] 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

[1:02:05] churning out this like American pie clone that it had all the empathy sucked out of it.

[1:02:11] And in many parts of pop culture, we're kind of at the mercy of those same

[1:02:15] executives making the same terrible decisions. And that's one of the primary reasons that the

[1:02:21] Max Fund drive is so important to the Flophouse, because it allows us to remain almost entirely

[1:02:26] listener supported, meaning that we don't have to answer to the whims of some big sponsors,

[1:02:32] some marketing department or some non-creative shitty executive types.

[1:02:37] We own our show. We get to make it the way we want to. And if you like it, which you obviously do,

[1:02:43] you're listening to it. We're great. Okay, well, 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] Max Fund is a worker owned collective, allowing us to own our own show. And the drive is the

[1:03:02] best time for you to support us. And as it's winding down, I urge you this one last time

[1:03:08] to head over to maximumfund.org slash join flop. You can still support the Flophouse and keep us

[1:03:15] going. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, listeners, for supporting us and for writing in

[1:03:22] letters. We've got a couple here to answer. This first one is from Duncan. Last name still withheld.

[1:03:30] So apparently they wrote it in the past. It has to be. Yeah. After seeing the trailer for that

[1:03:36] newish or Donuts, it could be Donuts. Could be Donuts. Common last name. And it's currently

[1:03:44] withheld. They took the Donuts off. Yeah. After seeing the trailer for that newish drop movie

[1:03:51] and having watched Netflix's Carry On with Jason Bateman, both of which center around people being

[1:03:56] manipulated over the phone, I've decided that the phone manipulator movie must now be its own

[1:04:02] genre. I'll I'll dub it the tele puppeteer genre. So my question is workshop the name.

[1:04:10] My question is, do you like this genre of movie? And what kind of what's wrong with you?

[1:04:17] And what kind of a sick Cormac McCarthy style mind games would you want to play on a hapless

[1:04:22] protagonist if given the chance? I probably, you know, I'd probably ask them if their refrigerator

[1:04:27] is running and then if they were foolish enough. I mean, this is basically like the fucking this

[1:04:31] is basically what it would emerge. Then the prestige, you bring down the hammer on them.

[1:04:38] Yeah. This is basically the impractical jokers of thrillers. Right. Yeah. Phone booth is kind

[1:04:45] of one of the early ones of this. Yeah. So I mean, I mean, phone booth or it depends on what

[1:04:51] kinds of because you could go back to is it just that the telephone is the conduit or is it literally

[1:04:56] someone is manipulated? I think it has to be the manipulator. I don't think you can do like

[1:05:01] what's the like? Sorry, wrong number is a different sorry, wrong number. What's the

[1:05:05] one with Carol Kane to the are you in the house alone or something like that? But like,

[1:05:10] does this beginning of Scream count or no? Oh, well, well, he's not really getting her to do

[1:05:17] anything other than keep her busy until he murders her. Yeah. But I play movie trivia.

[1:05:24] He's manipulating her into that. Yeah. I don't have anyone for my movie trivia team. So I do.

[1:05:31] I got a really cool nickname. It's called the Sin of Feels.

[1:05:36] I think this is one of these ones where you kind of have to figure out how to force the person.

[1:05:41] We're called Bowels Moving Asshole. That's a that's a that's a trivia team name that

[1:05:48] a friend of mine keeps trying to get us to do, but people don't want to. Yeah,

[1:05:53] please. I can understand why. Just hearing that makes me think of Miyazaki just like crying,

[1:05:59] like taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes. Yeah. Not since that that that video of him

[1:06:04] watching the like animated thing. And he's like, I think this is the opposite of life.

[1:06:08] This is horrible. You should destroy abomination. You should have never been born.

[1:06:13] Your mother should be ashamed and your family line should end. So speaks Miyazaki.

[1:06:22] Send him to the Sharktacons. Now. So the I think that the hard part with these movies is getting

[1:06:29] the person to stay on the line. Right. Yeah. Like forcing them to do it and making it a thing that

[1:06:33] they actually have to do. And usually it's a threat. And phone booth for me is one of the

[1:06:37] more effective ones because he's stuck there. Right. Yeah. 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 I'd get the wrong

[1:06:47] number. Then I'd keep calling that wrong number and insisting that the person on the other end

[1:06:51] 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,

[1:06:59] the person they could easily just hang the phone up on. So it's kind of like speed is

[1:07:03] kind of like this. Yeah, I guess speed is kind of like that. Yeah, a little bit. I mean,

[1:07:06] the movie Compliance is like that, but that's not a fun. Oh, that's not a fun movie,

[1:07:10] but it's probably one of the better ones. It's based on a true story of this actually

[1:07:13] happening, which is terrible. Yeah. But yes, speed is how much time is he on the phone and speed?

[1:07:19] Is there like walkie talkies or something? Something like that. Not a lot. But he keeps

[1:07:25] calling and be like, hey, do this thing now. I'd make I'd make the protagonist dance.

[1:07:32] That's that's it. Just make him do like different dances. You make him dance like nobody's watching,

[1:07:37] but you're watching. 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. Yeah. I mean, he's already dancing when you pick the phone up.

[1:07:46] I basically have to be like, oh, actually, stop now. All right. You're enjoying it too much.

[1:07:50] You're putting too much mustard on this thing. This is supposed to be creepy,

[1:07:53] but you're really getting into it. This other letter is from Kristen. Last name withheld.

[1:07:59] Who writes? Kristen Scott Thomas. Hello, peaches. Being a longtime listener,

[1:08:04] 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.

[1:08:14] You have great anecdotes and your lives are much different than mine, as I am

[1:08:18] neither in the entertainment nor hospitality industries. Do you have any long term parasocial

[1:08:25] relationships? 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? Keep on flopping in the free world, Kristen.

[1:08:38] Yeah, it's pretty super weird. What do you think?

[1:08:42] No, I don't. I'm not a freak. I mean, there have been times in the past where I'm like,

[1:08:47] OK, well, people out there are getting sort of a flattened version of my personality,

[1:08:54] as is true of anyone who is any kind of flavor of public figure. And we are the most minor

[1:09:00] flavor of that. I mean, that is part of the parasocial relationship. And I feel like

[1:09:04] parasocial relationships are especially common within podcasting. Yeah, because you're hearing

[1:09:09] people's voices in your ears. You're hearing people have lots of stations and you're hearing

[1:09:14] it during times when you are often driving or doing you're doing chores at times when you would

[1:09:19] be nodding off to somebody else or not asleep when you're when you're in an everyday situation

[1:09:24] and you're not sitting down to just enjoy this one thing. Like when you watch TV or movie,

[1:09:29] you know, I'm sitting down to do this thing, whereas podcasting kind of starts to invade parts

[1:09:34] of your life when you might be on the phone with somebody or talking to a person who you're

[1:09:38] actually close to in the room or something that feels like a conversation. It's one of the reasons

[1:09:42] why if I if I regularly listen to a podcast and then I actually become friends with the people

[1:09:50] that make the podcast, I have trouble listening to their podcast anymore because like the relationship

[1:09:55] is shifted. See, my problem is I still listen to it, which leads me like the.

[1:10:00] The only parasocial relationships I have...

[1:10:01] When you're like, remember when you said this thing?

[1:10:04] Well, yeah, it ends up being

[1:10:06] this weird hybrid relationship where I'm like,

[1:10:08] well, we're friends, but in my mind,

[1:10:10] we are closer friends than we actually are

[1:10:13] because I've spent more time with you.

[1:10:15] And so I will do the thing that often confuses me

[1:10:19] when people do it, where it's like,

[1:10:20] I get a text about something that was said on the podcast,

[1:10:23] and I'm like, I don't remember this.

[1:10:26] I'll do it to someone else and be like,

[1:10:27] I know that I shouldn't be doing this

[1:10:29] because I don't know how to take it when I get it,

[1:10:32] but I wanna be part of the conversation.

[1:10:35] I think there's also something that I know,

[1:10:37] I feel like Elliot probably handles better than me,

[1:10:40] and I'm assuming Dan, is establishing boundaries

[1:10:44] and understanding what's an okay level of interaction

[1:10:50] with somebody who I know exclusively as a listener.

[1:10:54] I also experienced this as a bartender

[1:10:56] because the people that I interact with across the bar,

[1:11:00] they're getting a very specific version of me,

[1:11:02] one that is nice and wants them to tip me.

[1:11:05] And then there are like, I do have a few people

[1:11:08] who have crossed that Rubicon and become friends of mine,

[1:11:14] but it's not common.

[1:11:16] And it is just partly like,

[1:11:18] part of it is the transactional nature of the relationship,

[1:11:21] but also just like, I have to present a certain face

[1:11:25] to people, and obviously, just like on the podcast,

[1:11:29] 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

[1:11:35] the person they think I am.

[1:11:36] And so, yeah, I'm kind of giving the best version of me,

[1:11:40] you know what I mean?

[1:11:40] Like, I'm presenting the best face.

[1:11:43] And I also, yeah, I mean, it's also based like,

[1:11:50] people's personalities are weird

[1:11:51] and what they look for in relationships are weird,

[1:11:53] and like, I don't know.

[1:11:54] I also have transactional relationships,

[1:11:57] which are similar, but not exactly the same

[1:11:59] as parasocial relationships.

[1:12:01] Yeah.

[1:12:02] Yeah, I think I do try to put pleasant,

[1:12:05] but firm boundaries around myself in terms of,

[1:12:08] I've had enough experience, negative experiences

[1:12:11] with people who I think assumed a greater friendship

[1:12:15] or a greater relationship with me

[1:12:16] than was actually the case.

[1:12:18] I'm looking at me right now.

[1:12:19] Yeah, exactly, I'm talking about Stu

[1:12:21] when he comes into my bar.

[1:12:23] And that, but it's a, so I think-

[1:12:25] Can I pour you a glass of milk in a Spider-Man comic?

[1:12:28] Yeah.

[1:12:30] Pour you a Spider-Man comic?

[1:12:32] It's crazy, right?

[1:12:32] Yeah, yeah, I have it liquid form, liquid Spider-Man.

[1:12:37] So I do try to establish that kind of,

[1:12:39] but I understand the thing is-

[1:12:40] You also have a family, you have like kids,

[1:12:42] which I think is- Well, and I have a real family,

[1:12:43] and I want my kids to not be a part of this, so.

[1:12:45] I mean, we have real families too,

[1:12:46] fuck it, yeah, yeah, yeah, you 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] but you know, it's-

[1:12:52] I have a wife, that's a family member.

[1:12:53] That's a family, but how many, you have one wife

[1:12:55] and two cats?

[1:12:56] I was born of human woman.

[1:12:58] That's true, you were of woman born,

[1:13:01] so you can't kill Macbeth.

[1:13:03] So, but it's true, I think the fact that I have children,

[1:13:05] 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

[1:13:14] just videotaping, 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, what's this all about, get out of here.

[1:13:21] While my kids were like,

[1:13:22] can we just go into the grocery store, please?

[1:13:24] But that being said, I do think that most people

[1:13:26] are like what Kristen sounds like,

[1:13:29] who have a reasonable and rational understanding

[1:13:32] of what the relationship is

[1:13:35] and where those boundaries might be.

[1:13:36] I will talk to a MaxFun member happily

[1:13:41] any day of the week who wants to, you know,

[1:13:44] talk about the show, you know,

[1:13:46] or just talk about other stuff.

[1:13:49] 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, but.

[1:13:54] This is your particular bugbear.

[1:13:56] I'm gonna go with the Supreme Court definition,

[1:13:58] say if there's no explicit quid pro quo,

[1:14:01] it's not necessarily a transaction.

[1:14:02] But also, yeah, I mean, it's,

[1:14:04] I also say that for the most part,

[1:14:06] I have never had that many bad experiences

[1:14:09] and people are very nice and understanding.

[1:14:12] Yeah, and I also.

[1:14:12] And as an awkward human being,

[1:14:14] it is nice sometimes to talk to someone who like,

[1:14:16] at least feels like they have a certain rapport with me

[1:14:19] and I'm like, okay, this is like easing the wheels.

[1:14:21] To add to what you guys are saying also,

[1:14:23] I certainly have the temptation sometimes

[1:14:25] when I've listened to a podcast a lot to be like,

[1:14:27] oh, these are people that I can be friends with,

[1:14:28] you know, which is not always the case.

[1:14:31] But also, it is nice sometimes to have a constructed dynamic

[1:14:34] where you meet someone and you know exactly

[1:14:37] what's expected of you, what you expect of them.

[1:14:39] You can have a pleasant and polite

[1:14:41] and meaningful interaction.

[1:14:42] And then there's none of the messiness of like,

[1:14:44] oh, what do I do with this now?

[1:14:46] It's like, if I'm meeting someone

[1:14:49] whose work I really admire,

[1:14:50] I'd always rather meet them as a fan

[1:14:52] who's approaching them for a limited interaction.

[1:14:55] If I meet them in a social situation,

[1:14:56] it gets very, I feel like I can get very awkward

[1:14:58] where I'm like, I don't know exactly how to navigate this.

[1:15:01] You should have watched me talk to George RR Martin.

[1:15:03] Or, I know, I wish I could have been there.

[1:15:05] I should have.

[1:15:06] I was not invited to that dinner

[1:15:07] because I live on the other side.

[1:15:08] Like working with them can be difficult too though.

[1:15:10] I mean, like that's another place where it's like,

[1:15:12] if you're a fan and then you work with them

[1:15:15] and I just know that like now,

[1:15:19] I feel comfortable around Hodgman, like we're friends.

[1:15:22] But like at the Daily Show, like when I was first there,

[1:15:26] 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,

[1:15:33] even though I'm like, well, theoretically we're colleagues.

[1:15:35] I mean, like theoretically, in actuality we're colleagues,

[1:15:38] if not necessarily on the same even keel, you know.

[1:15:43] But-

[1:15:44] And he never even threw his shoes at you.

[1:15:45] I know, yeah.

[1:15:47] Oh man.

[1:15:48] A legendary tale.

[1:15:48] He threw his shoe at me.

[1:15:49] Legendary tale of bullying gone wrong.

[1:15:54] But I understand that completely, yeah.

[1:15:55] A long response.

[1:15:57] That was a long answer, probably,

[1:15:59] for not particularly interesting to a very good question.

[1:16:02] But that's what you get in a podcast sometimes.

[1:16:04] Yeah.

[1:16:05] Yeah, just go to MaximumFun.org slash Join.

[1:16:09] For sort of rambling, sort of self-examination

[1:16:12] that may not apply to you.

[1:16:14] To a peek into Stuart's therapy talk.

[1:16:19] So what do we do next on this podcast, Jan?

[1:16:20] What do we do next?

[1:16:21] Oh, yeah, no, what we do next is we recommend movies.

[1:16:23] Movies that definitely would be a better use of your time

[1:16:27] than 40 Days and 40 Nights.

[1:16:28] I mean, I feel like just watching a plant grow in real time

[1:16:31] would be better use of your time than 40 Days and 40 Nights.

[1:16:33] But we could recommend movies too, yeah.

[1:16:35] I just went to a ref screening.

[1:16:39] I've mentioned the series before on the podcast,

[1:16:41] The Deuce at the Nighthawk Williamsburg,

[1:16:44] where they show movies that played on 42nd Street

[1:16:48] in 42nd Street theaters.

[1:16:51] Most of them ended up being sort of like

[1:16:53] between in the 70s and 80s, but there are some earlier ones.

[1:16:56] This one's from 83, a movie that I saw a lot as a kid

[1:17:00] 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,

[1:17:11] everyone there had a great time, laughed a lot.

[1:17:18] I thought this would be such a hard one

[1:17:19] to sort of explain to people.

[1:17:21] It's Hamlet.

[1:17:24] They do Hamlet.

[1:17:25] But not really, like it's Hamlet at a brewery,

[1:17:28] except for also there's a Max von Sydow,

[1:17:31] evil sort of scientist character

[1:17:33] that is not really an analog to anything in Hamlet,

[1:17:36] who is putting mind-controlling-

[1:17:39] You don't remember the scientist in Hamlet

[1:17:41] with the mind-control stuff?

[1:17:42] Mind-controlling drugs and beer

[1:17:44] so he can have his hockey-playing army attack each other

[1:17:49] and eventually a dog flies through the air also

[1:17:55] with a superhero cape on.

[1:17:57] But the main draw of it, of course,

[1:18:00] is Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis reprising their roles

[1:18:03] from SETV as Bob and Doug McKenzie,

[1:18:06] the ultra-Canadian drinkers of beer

[1:18:11] who originally were on the show

[1:18:13] because Canada demanded that there be at least two minutes

[1:18:17] of specifically Canadian content.

[1:18:19] So they're like,

[1:18:20] screw you, 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.

[1:18:26] I feel like it kind of set the template

[1:18:28] for things like the Wayne's World movie.

[1:18:29] Oh, definitely, definitely.

[1:18:31] It's two man-children with a local TV show,

[1:18:35] and what they do so well is they really feel

[1:18:39] like two goofy brothers

[1:18:41] who are constantly fucking with each other,

[1:18:44] like that they are beating each other up,

[1:18:48] insulting each other,

[1:18:49] but also really love one another

[1:18:51] in a very cute and sweet way.

[1:18:55] A lot of their interaction is improvised,

[1:18:57] but not in a way that feels indulgent.

[1:19:00] It just feels real.

[1:19:02] It's a very messy, low-budget movie that's very silly,

[1:19:06] but it still holds up, I think, as very funny too.

[1:19:09] Yeah, I am going to recommend a movie

[1:19:14] I watched a little bit ago.

[1:19:15] I didn't catch it in the theaters,

[1:19:16] but I caught it as soon as it hit streaming.

[1:19:19] It's a little horror movie called Primate,

[1:19:21] and I say little because it features a villain

[1:19:23] who's a little bit shorter than a regular human.

[1:19:25] In fact, the slasher in this case is a chimpanzee.

[1:19:29] So the size of the movie is decided

[1:19:31] by the size of the villain in the movie.

[1:19:34] Don't question it, Elliot.

[1:19:36] It was a perfect segue.

[1:19:37] Okay, yeah, you're right.

[1:19:38] Every link in the chain made sense.

[1:19:40] It's a big movie.

[1:19:41] It's called Moonraker because Jaws is in it,

[1:19:43] and that guy is tall.

[1:19:45] And they go to space, the biggest thing.

[1:19:48] Yeah, so this is also like an 85-minute movie,

[1:19:53] and it's a high-concept slasher movie

[1:19:56] where the concept is chimpanzee in Hawaii gets.

[1:20:00] and starts killing folks and I was a little nervous going in because the idea

[1:20:05] of a you know an animal being involved in violence means an animal is gonna get

[1:20:09] hurt at some point that makes me sad but luckily this chimpanzee looks fake

[1:20:13] enough that I can get through I don't like it really makes sense like for me

[1:20:18] internally that like it looks just fake enough them like okay yeah this thing's

[1:20:22] scary but I know it's not a real chimpanzee and it like the way it rips

[1:20:29] its way through people's faces Rob Delaney shows up just to get his face

[1:20:33] ripped right off it's great and yeah it's it's like it uses the setting well

[1:20:39] it's like a perfect like little video nasty kind of thing and like I would say

[1:20:44] it's it's fun it's gross it's easy goes down quick I'm gonna recommend a movie

[1:20:50] that I've recommended before because because we've been recording a lot of

[1:20:54] flophouse lately and I've been busy I've not had a chance to watch too many

[1:20:59] other movies besides flophouse movies which is a special hell that I don't

[1:21:03] love existing in but I'm willing to do it for you the listener maximumfund.org

[1:21:07] slash join please but I recently read a book that had some screenplays in it and

[1:21:12] one of them was a screenplay for a movie that I love that I recommended before I

[1:21:16] was reading the book notes from a black woman's diary by Kathleen Collins which

[1:21:19] collects a number of works written by Kathleen Collins before she died in the

[1:21:24] late 80s and the in it is the screenplay for her movie losing ground

[1:21:28] which came out in 1982 and at the time it was the first movie directed by a

[1:21:34] black woman in decades you know since the silent era I believe and it's just a

[1:21:38] really great movie and it's got great performances in it by him by Dwayne

[1:21:42] Jones you may know from Night of the Living Dead and Bill Gunn from Ganja and

[1:21:46] Hess and a lot of other movies and the it's about and the lead is played by

[1:21:50] Sarah Scott and she is a college professor who is studying the idea of

[1:21:55] ecstasy kind of either creative or religious or pleasurable ecstasy but

[1:22:00] finds that she's a very kind of like buttoned-up person and that sense of

[1:22:04] freewheeling ecstasy 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

[1:22:10] and is very openly like kind of like spontaneous and whatever and hard to

[1:22:16] deal with but also is experiencing that kind of freedom that she wishes she was

[1:22:20] experiencing more of in her life and she decides that she will accept the

[1:22:24] invitation of a film student to appear in a student film that he's making even

[1:22:28] though it's against it's not the kind of thing she normally does and it's a very

[1:22:31] like it's a very like well-observed small-scale movie sometimes it's funny

[1:22:36] and sometimes it's kind of heartbreaking and it's just really beautifully done

[1:22:40] and you watch it you're like I wish she could have made 20 more movies it feels

[1:22:44] like a movie very much in the vein of the kinds of movies that you would get

[1:22:49] out of France for decades where it's like these are people who live kind of

[1:22:54] an intellectual life but it's about their feelings and passions and they're

[1:22:57] speaking articulately and sometimes inarticulately about it and there's a

[1:23:00] lot going on under the surface so there's no like big blow-up scenes but

[1:23:05] there's a lot of emotion under underpinning everything and it's just a

[1:23:08] really great movie so losing ground is my recommendation Wow

[1:23:14] strange brew this undercurrent of emotions unspoken by the brothers but

[1:23:23] you know it's there you know it's there there but that brotherhood is so strong

[1:23:26] yeah similarly to the the emotions underneath the chimpanzee that's about

[1:23:32] to start ripping people's jaws off there's definitely a point where guys

[1:23:36] like oh I got I got the answer I'm gonna I'm gonna overpower the chimp and I'm

[1:23:40] like your heads about to get smushed guys as the max fun drive winds down for

[1:23:50] another year I just want to take a moment and say thank you to all the

[1:23:54] supporters of the flop house out there without max fun members like you this

[1:23:58] passion project of ours would not exist I feel very lucky to get to have this

[1:24:03] creative outlet that's entirely in our control where my friends and I get to be

[1:24:08] usually silly sometimes thoughtful and occasionally professional we were able

[1:24:14] to continue doing the show after Elliot moved to LA we were able to move to a

[1:24:19] weekly release schedule during kovat we are able to pay our producer Alex a

[1:24:24] competitive rate as well as to do a variety of side projects like flop TV

[1:24:28] and live shows all because of the consistent financial support from you so

[1:24:34] from this slightly more mature party dude I can say thank you so much for

[1:24:39] supporting the flop house I love doing this show and it means the world to me

[1:24:43] that you helped me do it and one last time if you were waiting for that final

[1:24:48] reminder that little push go to maximum fun org slash join flop and support the

[1:24:55] flop house right now and speaking of producer Alex thank you producer Alex I

[1:25:08] particularly if you are not a listener to Big Howl and possum and it tickles

[1:25:14] you to think of a man and his large possum friend talking about all sorts of

[1:25:21] different yeah I really recommend that show I think it's actually some of the

[1:25:27] funniest character improv I have heard in a podcast so check that out and check

[1:25:33] out Howl Doddy's music check out his twitch streams check out all the great

[1:25:39] work he did on our bonus content for slop tails that's true the final slop

[1:25:45] tails episode was recently dropped in the bonus feed something you can get if

[1:25:49] you're a maximum member so check that out as well but for us the flop house

[1:25:54] podcast I say good day I've been Dan McCoy good night I've been Stewart

[1:26:00] Wellington good life I've been Elliot Kalin okay that's it

[1:26:06] lock it up

[1:26:14] you got any burps you want to get out or no they're gonna come up you like to do

[1:26:21] it the other way maximum fun a workaround network of artists own shows

[1:26:35] supported directly by you

40 Days and 40 Nights

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