Ep.#427 - Disclosure, with Meredith Scardino

Dan McCoy

[0:00] Hey, listeners. Please don't skip ahead. This is an important message.

[0:05] So we had some technical difficulties at the top of the show.

[0:09] The sound is not as good as usual for a few minutes up at the top of the show.

[0:16] Eventually it does clear up and goes back to normal.

[0:20] But I wanted to warn listeners ahead of time so that they know that it will not stay that way the whole time

[0:27] and urge them, please listen to the show. It's a great episode.

[0:31] We have a great guest. We have Meredith Scardino, creator of Girls5Eva.

[0:35] Very funny. She fit right in.

[0:39] Don't let this dissuade you from listening. I apologize that this happened.

[0:45] We're taking steps to make sure that the audio will always be of a higher quality in the future.

[0:51] But I just want to let you know up top. Thank you.

Stuart Wellington

[0:55] On this episode, we discuss Disclosure.

[0:58] This movie's got everything from the 1990s.

[1:01] Mentions of Prozac, Nordic Trap, hard copy, built-in fax modems,

[1:06] very animated email menus, Stairmaster, Fat Barbie, question mark,

[1:11] Sock Monkeys, and Dennis Miller.

[1:12] Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Fluff House. I'm Dan McCoy.

Dan McCoy

[1:39] I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:42] And today we have a very special guest.

[1:45] The creator of Girls5Eva, one of the funniest shows going right now.

[1:52] It's on Netflix. People should watch it so I can watch more of it.

[1:57] Meredith Scardino. Hello.

S4

[1:59] Hello. It's an honor to be here.

[2:02] I love that energy.

Dan McCoy

[2:04] She says prepadation.

[2:07] I've met a cat. It's been great.

[2:09] Yeah. One of the two cats that lives here was kind enough to come out and say hello.

Elliott Kalan

[2:13] The other one, Dan, admit the other one is a man in a cat costume that you pretend is a cat.

[2:18] Yeah.

S4

[2:19] But it's shy.

Elliott Kalan

[2:20] Yeah. It's very shy. The shire of the two cats.

S4

[2:24] You can get away with that if you just have that shy cat be a guy in a cat costume.

[2:29] You'd be like, yeah, he's shy.

Dan McCoy

[2:30] Yeah. Where would he live, though? There's so little sleeping room.

[2:34] Anyway.

Elliott Kalan

[2:35] I imagine you have your bed up on blocks so he can fit under the bed a little bit more comfortably.

[2:39] Sounds so cool.

Dan McCoy

[2:40] Yeah, you convinced me. Let's do it.

Elliott Kalan

[2:42] Also because you've taken the wheels off the bed, so it has to be up on blocks in your front yard, I guess.

Stuart Wellington

[2:47] Mm-hmm. Yeah. And we're in the middle of a New York heat wave, so you've got to keep that guy in a cat suit hydrated, Dan. Keep him cool.

[2:53] Yeah.

[2:54] Maybe he can sleep in a bed with a frozen bottle of water, I think the mayor suggested.

Elliott Kalan

[2:59] That's why this episode is brought to you by Froze Cat Man, the frozen bottle of water specifically designed for a man in a cat costume who's pretending to be a cat.

Dan McCoy

[3:10] That's a good sponsor.

[3:12] Well, you know, we did our usual weird cat man bit to make our guests comfortable.

[3:18] There's never been he was running.

Elliott Kalan

[3:20] Dan, the man is named Cat Man Crothers, the guy who lives in your house and pretends to be a cat, right?

Dan McCoy

[3:26] I can only hope that I was clever enough to name that.

[3:30] So, yeah.

S4

[3:31] Wait, I do have one because you just made a cat joke, but you also made a cat joke about Claudia Schiffer's cat being named Claudia Schiffer.

[3:38] And I feel like it's actually Claudia Schiffer.

Elliott Kalan

[3:45] I like that.

[3:48] Or it's Claudia, a Schiffer.

[3:52] Like I'm labeling it as a Schiffer.

[3:55] But I like Claudia Schiffer.

[3:57] Schiffer.

Stuart Wellington

[3:58] I mean, if that cat is one of those cats that has like the markings to make it look like it has a mustache, that would be perfect.

[4:05] Because all Italian cats have mustaches.

[4:07] They all do.

Dan McCoy

[4:08] This is what we've been needing.

[4:09] We needed Meredith coming to do some punch up on our...

[4:11] Yeah, because she's brilliant.

[4:13] She's a great, brilliant joke writer.

S4

[4:14] I was listening to it yesterday because I was like, what is the podcast?

Elliott Kalan

[4:18] What is this thing?

[4:19] And I was like...

[4:19] What did I get myself into?

[4:21] And I immediately was like...

[4:21] Anyway, Meredith, thanks for coming and helping us talk about how the woke media is destroying this country.

S4

[4:26] I was like, Claude, be a Schiffer?

[4:29] I'm like, no, it's be a Schiffer.

[4:31] Who do I yell this to?

[4:34] On the street.

Dan McCoy

[4:36] Just anyone.

[4:37] Just grab someone by the shoulder of their shoulders.

[4:39] It's not like an emergency at the time.

[4:40] Shake them.

[4:41] Yeah, tell them.

Elliott Kalan

[4:42] Yeah, they need to know.

[4:43] People need to know this.

[4:44] You run to the New York Times offices and you're banging on the windows.

Dan McCoy

[4:48] In addition, of course, Girls 5 of us, we met Meredith because she wrote for the Colbert Report.

[4:56] Our nemesis show.

[4:58] Yeah.

[4:58] When we run the Daily Show.

S4

[4:59] We stole your mascot.

[5:01] All that stuff.

[5:02] Yep.

[5:02] All the pranks.

[5:04] All the pranks.

Dan McCoy

[5:05] And I have always, like, as someone with a big inferiority complex, I've always been very, I've looked at Meredith from afar very fondly because she remembers who I am when we run into each other every once in a while.

Stuart Wellington

[5:19] Despite being much more successful than you.

[5:21] Exactly.

[5:21] That's all I look for.

[5:23] And there's not that many writers that are, like, white guys with beards.

[5:27] I know, who wear a lot of plaid.

[5:29] In a plaid shirt.

S4

[5:30] And on a cat.

[5:31] I've worked around so many comedy writers that I'm very good at telling subtle differences.

[5:35] He was the one that I'm like.

[5:36] Yeah.

S4

[5:36] Yeah.

[5:36] I feel like a monolith to the pedestrian.

[5:39] But to me, I can see detail.

Stuart Wellington

[5:41] Beard is a little more.

[5:43] Yeah.

[5:44] Yeah.

[5:44] This guy is a little quiet around people he doesn't know.

Elliott Kalan

[5:48] I'm guessing he listens to Talking Heads.

[5:51] And Wilco?

Dan McCoy

[5:54] Anyway, now that we've roasted me.

[5:58] He probably has strong opinions about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not.

[6:02] Yeah.

[6:02] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[6:03] That's how you can tell me apart, though.

[6:04] I don't.

[6:05] I bet this guy likes IPAs.

S4

[6:09] Does he know that It's a Me Mario backwards is Satome?

[6:15] This guy would know.

Dan McCoy

[6:18] I've been missing out.

[6:19] I didn't know that one.

Elliott Kalan

[6:20] I didn't know that either.

[6:21] I feel like that's the video game generations put a boob list in a calculator upside down.

Dan McCoy

[6:27] Yeah, I think so.

[6:30] I used to get a calculator.

[6:31] I didn't do boob lists.

[6:33] I didn't know there was a variant, though.

[6:34] That also is new.

Elliott Kalan

[6:35] So I'm learning a lot.

[6:37] Upside down calculators represent both with boobs.

[6:40] Those are both of those without.

S4

[6:41] This feels like how there was like a big hole in your use, like you had an Amish year or something.

[6:46] And you just missed the calculator.

Dan McCoy

[6:49] I knew the boobs part, which is the part that would like, you know, make one titter to oneself as a kid.

[7:00] Like boob less, you know, like you're removing the dirty part of it, you know, so.

[7:04] Yeah, Dan, that's I guess that's true.

S4

[7:06] Okay, you knew boobs, but you're like, we can stop there.

Stuart Wellington

[7:09] We can stop there.

[7:09] I don't want to.

[7:10] Yeah.

[7:12] Well, as soon as he saw the word boobs, he got nervous that his parents might catch it.

[7:15] Yeah, he threw away the calculator.

[7:22] I have to remember where I hid this.

[7:24] That's a good ass episode of Roasting Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[7:26] I have to remember where I hid this calculator in the woods so I can come back for it.

[7:31] So, Dan, what do we do on this podcast besides Roasting?

Dan McCoy

[7:33] It's just a podcast where we watch a bad movie and we talk about it.

[7:36] And, you know, when we're a guest, when we're a guest, when we're a guest, when we're a guest all the way from our first cigarettes to our last day and day.

[7:46] Yeah.

[7:46] When we have a guest, you know, we like to get their input on what we talk about.

[7:52] I gave a list of possibles and we settled on Disclosure.

[7:58] From 1994.

[7:59] 1994.

[7:59] Yeah.

[8:00] The movie based on the Michael Crichton book that dared to ask, what is sexual harassment?

[8:07] But a lady, a lady doesn't decide.

[8:10] Putting the her in harassment.

[8:12] Yeah.

[8:13] Except for then it pivots from that.

[8:14] It's not really about that.

[8:15] It's also Ben in harassment.

[8:18] Oh, that's true.

[8:19] Yeah, that's true.

Stuart Wellington

[8:20] I was like, I was like, there's about two seconds where I'm like, maybe I'll be like, do a bit where I'm like a hardline weird men's rights guy.

[8:29] Yeah.

[8:29] And there's that.

[8:30] But that's not how I abandoned this video.

Elliott Kalan

[8:32] You don't want to do that bit.

[8:33] That's not a good bit.

Stuart Wellington

[8:35] Like, finally, a movie is the courage.

Elliott Kalan

[8:38] Except it does.

[8:39] Except that's the thing.

[8:40] It does.

[8:40] I know.

[8:41] It's a real bait.

[8:42] It's as if Jurassic Park was like, here's a movie about dinosaurs.

[8:45] Uh-uh.

[8:46] It's about tax dodging.

[8:48] The IRS is going to shut down this amusement park because they hid these files.

Dan McCoy

[8:51] It's also super muddled in a way that, like, we'll talk about it, I'm sure.

[8:56] But I get the feeling that maybe Barry Levinson, the director, like, got the book.

[9:00] He's like, we can't do that.

[9:03] So he, like, tried to sort of complicate the thing a little bit.

[9:07] But it just makes it really muddy with the movie.

[9:10] Maybe.

S4

[9:11] The scary dinosaur is woman.

Stuart Wellington

[9:14] The scariest dinosaur.

S4

[9:15] That's the most terrifying monster of all.

[9:19] No, woman.

Stuart Wellington

[9:20] I mean, as a kid, my introduction to Michael Crichton's stuff was Jurassic Park, of course.

[9:24] And so I was shocked that, like, a lot of the other movies, based on his work, had, like, sexy stuff in it.

[9:30] Like, this one.

[9:31] And, what, Rising Sun?

[9:32] Well, yeah, that was also in his reaction period.

[9:34] And Congo, with those hot gorillas.

[9:36] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[9:37] Yeah.

[9:38] When he got into his more reactionary period, I think he got, like, sexier, too.

[9:42] I, like, I read a lot of it earlier.

[9:44] Like, Andromeda Strain is not particularly erotic.

[9:48] What about Sphere?

Elliott Kalan

[9:49] Sphere has one moment of eroticism in it, but otherwise, not much.

[9:52] I think, and I think it's true that he probably did go through this period where his stuff was pretty straightforward science fiction.

[9:57] I mean, Westworld has barely any sex stuff in it.

[10:01] There is a sex scene between a man and a robot, but the implication is that this is not great.

[10:05] And then the HBO show was like, well, fix that.

[10:08] Yeah.

[10:09] And the, but then, I think you're right, because his later books are very, like, anti-climate change science and things like that.

[10:16] Like, he's, there was that anti-evolution.

[10:19] Like, he became very reactionary in a weird way.

[10:22] But I guess so many of his books, the message of it is, don't try to change anything or invent anything.

[10:28] Because it's going to go bad.

[10:30] Keep things exactly the way they are right now, which is the most reactionary conservative message possible.

[10:36] Or it was until conservatism became about trying to turn America into, like, a Christian feudal state based on Bitcoin.

[10:46] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[10:46] Yeah.

[10:46] Well, let's steer away from that and then steer back into it when we have to.

Stuart Wellington

[10:51] No.

[10:52] But, so, Meredith, why disclosure?

S4

[10:55] Well, I had watched it not that long ago.

[10:59] Okay.

[11:00] Which was one of the things that I...

Elliott Kalan

[11:01] So this was a labor-saving measure for you.

S4

[11:03] Well, I did re-watch it.

[11:06] Oh, okay.

[11:06] But I had always known...

[11:08] So there's a lot...

[11:09] First of all...

[11:10] So I had heard about it...

[11:12] Well, one, the protagonist's name is Meredith.

[11:15] So just in a selfish way.

[11:18] I just watch things with my name.

[11:21] I love you.

[11:21] Do I watch them?

Elliott Kalan

[11:25] I love the idea that Blockbuster Video would have a Meredith cut of movies where they just dubbed your name in over the characters' names that you would come and rent it.

Dan McCoy

[11:32] You also have a lot of Megadeth albums because you're like, it's close enough.

S4

[11:36] It's similar.

[11:38] But I had known, actually, I was tipped off by Sam Means, Daily Show writer, about the VR tech in this film of 1994.

[11:50] And it's just amazing.

[11:53] It's like this...

[11:55] The main character, Michael Douglas' character, works at this VR company in Seattle.

[12:05] And so they put on VR headsets.

[12:07] They do a demo.

[12:08] And all they do is then enter a virtual file room.

[12:12] Yeah.

[12:13] Yeah.

[12:13] Just a hallway full of files.

[12:14] And pick out files.

[12:16] It's like the least imaginative type of technology.

[12:21] And the least efficient type.

[12:23] Yeah, exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[12:24] It takes much more time and effort than looking up a file on a computer.

[12:28] We'll get to it.

[12:29] But I love the moment when he's in that virtual space and Demi Moore's character appears in it.

[12:34] And it looks like they took the wire frame from those experiments with chimps where they tried to see if they could make a chimp treat a wire frame with a nipple on it as a mother.

[12:44] It's like they took that wire frame and just stuck a headshot of Demi Moore on it.

[12:47] And it's just kind of hovering through this space.

[12:50] It looks terrible.

Stuart Wellington

[12:50] It's like lurching around like it's in the Money for Nothing video.

[12:53] And she starts blasting files with a laser to delete them.

S4

[12:58] That happens when a user accesses that from a computer, not the VR set.

[13:06] But she seems to have no idea that he's in there.

[13:09] It's weird that he is very aware when he's in there.

[13:12] Anyway, we can get into it.

[13:12] Yeah, there's also –

Elliott Kalan

[13:13] We'll get to that.

[13:14] But also in Roger Ebert's review, he points out how would any company keep all of its most secure files in a demo of their new products that they're going to show to people?

S4

[13:25] That blew my mind too.

[13:27] I know I'm a cybersecurity guy.

[13:29] Yeah, there's all of so-and-so's financial records.

[13:32] It's like, hey, watch it.

[13:34] Watch it.

[13:34] Just use this as the –

Stuart Wellington

[13:36] Yeah, I feel like there is a disclaimer as soon as you log in to the VR rig.

[13:40] They're like, this is all just for fun use.

[13:42] Entertainment purposes.

[13:43] But this is actual information.

Elliott Kalan

[13:46] So don't –

[13:46] Please don't use this real confidential information to save your job.

S4

[13:50] I just –

[13:51] Like I find the lack of imagination about the technology super funny.

[13:56] Like I mean I feel like sometimes people do really interesting things like Minority Report.

[14:01] I feel like did Future Tech very interesting.

[14:04] But I feel like just to be like how do files work in the future?

[14:08] Oh, more files.

[14:09] It just feels like if you were like during horse times thinking of like what a flying vehicle would be and then you'd think it still needed to be a horse somehow.

[14:19] A horse with wings.

[14:19] Yeah.

[14:19] Like a Pegasus or whatever.

[14:21] That's like the only way your brain could imagine the future.

Elliott Kalan

[14:25] But to give credit to the people behind Disclosure, when Mark Zuckerberg was like, in the future, you'll be able to use Meta to have a meeting for work.

[14:33] Yeah.

[14:34] And it was just like you're just in a boardroom sitting at chairs next to people who are in the meeting with you.

[14:38] Right, that's true.

[14:39] In a virtual space, it was like, really?

[14:41] This is the best we can do with it?

[14:42] There's still a table?

[14:44] Yeah.

[14:45] I'm still next to somebody?

[14:47] But okay, Stu.

S4

[14:49] But that, well, I will say another thing that drew me to this movie.

[14:53] Well, once I started watching it, because I was there for the, like I wanted to see that virtual scene.

[15:00] Yeah, you were there for the high-tech shenanigans.

[15:01] I was there for the high-tech shenanigans.

[15:03] Yeah.

[15:03] But then I got there, and I was watching the movie.

[15:07] And first of all, it also has this, like, you know, this, like, warm, like, 1990s Seattle loft office look.

[15:17] There's a lot of woods and dark brick.

[15:19] Yeah, like, there's something very comforting about seeing that kind of stuff in that kind of movie.

[15:25] Yeah.

[15:25] But then you're like, okay, this is a movie about if sexual harassment happened to a man.

[15:31] And I was like, but wait, did we ever get the one for women?

[15:34] We never did.

[15:35] Well, that's not.

[15:36] They just jumped to the guys.

[15:38] Nine to five.

[15:39] But that was, like, a comedy.

[15:40] You know what I mean?

[15:41] Like, maybe there was a little in Tootsie.

[15:43] That was all we got.

[15:44] Like, there's just not, they just jumped to, like, the horror of it happening to a man.

[15:50] Like, you can only imagine it being terrible if it happened to a man.

[15:53] Yes.

Dan McCoy

[15:53] I mean, that is the main thing about this movie is, like, am I going to say that, like, it's never happened this way?

[15:58] Of course not.

[15:59] But, like, the percentages are way on the other side.

[16:03] But we're like, let's do this one first.

[16:05] Yeah, that's how it's.

[16:06] Let's.

S4

[16:07] And also, they talk about it as sexual harassment.

[16:10] But it is a full sexual assault scene.

[16:13] Like, it is not sexual harassment.

[16:16] Like, come on, sit on my lap or whatever.

[16:18] However that goes down.

Elliott Kalan

[16:20] There's the scene.

[16:21] Oh, no, I was chilling.

[16:22] I'm sorry.

[16:23] The one scene in the movie that I felt like was starting to get under what this movie could have been is when Michael Douglas is being interviewed as part of their arbitration or whatever.

[16:35] And the guy's like.

[16:36] By the sleaziest lawyer.

[16:38] By the sleaziest lawyer.

[16:39] He's incredible.

[16:40] He's like, you didn't want it at all?

[16:42] Because you were there.

[16:43] You didn't have to be there.

[16:44] And it was like, oh, if this was a good movie, it would be a man being subjected to all the shit that a woman is subjected to.

[16:49] Yes.

[16:50] But it only happens in that one scene.

[16:52] And otherwise, he's a superhero who can sneak in and out of hotel rooms and things like that.

Stuart Wellington

[16:56] He's Michael Douglas.

[16:57] This is like peak.

[16:58] This is file this movie in the category of Michael Douglas is the coolest dude and he drives women insane with lust.

[17:06] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[17:06] This is based against the era Michael Douglas where he is.

[17:10] Every woman wants him so bad.

[17:11] Yeah.

S4

[17:11] And he's also like.

[17:13] He's immediate.

[17:14] He's the victim.

[17:15] He's very much the victim.

[17:18] And then he wins in the end.

[17:20] I also think.

[17:21] Can I jump?

[17:22] I mean, in the end.

[17:23] Well, whatever.

[17:23] We don't.

[17:24] I don't know how that works.

[17:24] You can jump wherever you want.

[17:26] But I do have something to say about the end.

Elliott Kalan

[17:28] Yeah.

[17:28] Well, we're going to get to the end a little bit.

[17:29] We can wait.

[17:30] Unfortunately, we have a no spoilers policy.

[17:33] We never talk about the end of the movie.

[17:34] We just say.

[17:35] And now, audience.

[17:36] Check it out at your local library.

Stuart Wellington

[17:38] Don't take my word for it.

[17:39] Give an exhaustive synopsis.

[17:40] So the movie.

[17:42] Disclosure is broken up into five days.

[17:45] The first day.

[17:46] Monday.

[17:47] Tom, our hero, played by Michael Douglas, receives an email.

[17:51] As I mentioned before, all the emails in this movie.

[17:54] This is 1994 emails.

[17:55] Love it.

[17:55] Can you imagine?

[17:56] They're all super animated.

[17:58] When you close an email, it crumples up like somebody crumpled up a piece of paper.

Elliott Kalan

[18:01] When you open it, it unfolds a piece of paper.

[18:03] America Online existed at this point.

S4

[18:05] It also starts with his daughter saying, Daddy, you got an email.

[18:11] Like, it's a big event, you know.

[18:14] Because there just aren't very many.

[18:16] That was the most fan.

[18:16] The inbox counts are so low in this.

[18:19] Whenever there's emails, it's like you get one at a time.

[18:21] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[18:21] I'm like, take me back to that time, please.

[18:24] That was the biggest fantasy in the whole movie for me was not Demi Moore wanting to have sex with me, but was seeing my email count be zero.

[18:32] I was like, oh, man, amazing.

[18:33] If only.

[18:34] Can you imagine?

[18:35] I know.

[18:36] I was just too aroused by that, by my email count being zero.

[18:38] My unread emails, I'm just looking right now, are 11,530.

[18:43] I'm at roughly the same number, and my kids love to update me on what it is to look over my shoulder.

[18:47] How do you?

[18:48] And they're like, 11,000?

[18:49] It's gone up a lot since last time.

[18:51] And I'm like, all right, all right.

Dan McCoy

[18:52] How do you live like this?

[18:53] You gotta, you gotta.

[18:54] I have two children.

Elliott Kalan

[18:55] I don't have time to just sit and answer emails all day.

Dan McCoy

[18:57] Mine just says 99 plus.

Elliott Kalan

[18:59] I mean, you don't have to answer all of them.

S4

[19:02] It's kind of like fundraising emails.

[19:04] Look at them.

[19:05] I do get a lot of fundraising emails.

[19:05] Delete them.

Elliott Kalan

[19:06] And I end up on a lot of, somehow I'll find myself subscribing to newsletters I don't remember subscribing to.

[19:11] Yeah, same.

[19:12] Yeah, newsletters.

Dan McCoy

[19:13] Also, the funny thing to me about this email, though, is like, the daughter prints it immediately.

[19:19] And I'm like, this has to be like a plot point later that they have a printout of this email.

[19:24] Because otherwise, why would any person, even in this time in history, why would this happen this way?

[19:30] It's trying to shock the technology, the high tech.

S4

[19:32] I do remember, though, when email was first becoming a thing.

[19:36] And we were trying to get my mom on board.

[19:39] And she was resistant.

Stuart Wellington

[19:41] And she just goes, ah, an email.

[19:43] Just fax me.

S4

[19:45] Like, the convenience of a fax.

[19:48] It's just, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[19:49] I can't believe your mom just came up with her own cool catchphrase.

[19:55] Okay.

[19:56] So, he gets an email.

[19:57] We have an opening credit sequence where we get a tour of their lovely, just outside of Seattle home.

[20:02] We're hearing voiceover where his daughter mentions the email.

[20:05] She also is curious about what her dad is wearing around his neck.

[20:09] It's a tie.

[20:10] I guess he doesn't wear ties.

[20:10] Although he wears a tie.

[20:12] Every single other scene of this movie.

[20:14] So, I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[20:15] I think he's so in fear of losing his job that the rest of the movie, he's like, gotta dress up.

[20:21] Gotta gussy it.

[20:22] I can't wear my.

[20:23] He's in tech.

[20:24] So, I assume he's usually wearing, like, a stained Rush t-shirt to work.

Dan McCoy

[20:28] Well, he does.

[20:28] Like, he does also, like, in these early scenes, he is the most, like, sloppy dad version of Michael Douglas.

[20:35] And then he starts putting on, you know, tailored suits as things go on.

[20:39] And I, you know, Audrey was like, is Michael Douglas sexy?

[20:44] Why is he always supposed to be sexy in these movies?

[20:46] I'm like, I don't know.

[20:48] Like, he has, like, he's normally, like.

S4

[20:50] He's an attractive fan.

[20:53] I think it's his voice a lot.

[20:54] Yeah, he's got a great voice.

Dan McCoy

[20:56] He's got gravitas.

Stuart Wellington

[20:57] Yeah.

[20:57] I think there's also an element of he is a pro.

[21:00] I think they're like, he's been in a bunch of sexy movies.

[21:03] Just put him in this one, too.

Elliott Kalan

[21:04] Well, that's, my mom, for years and years, had a big crush on, like, Richard Gere.

[21:09] And I never understood it until I finally saw American Gigolo.

[21:12] Yes.

[21:12] Where I was like, oh, he's incredibly sexy in this.

[21:15] Yeah.

[21:16] And pretty woman.

S4

[21:16] But also, isn't that also during, like, like, Pat Riley is sort of in the same category, the basketball coach.

[21:23] Oh, okay.

[21:24] I can see that.

[21:25] As, like, Michael Douglas.

[21:26] And I feel like he was a sex symbol of the time.

[21:28] I feel like there was, like, a certain look.

[21:30] He's also super tall.

[21:31] Of that time.

Stuart Wellington

[21:33] Yeah, there's a couple of guys at my gym who only call me Richard Gere.

[21:39] Which I'm like, I don't think I look like him, but thank you.

Elliott Kalan

[21:42] That's a huge compliment.

[21:43] Well, it's also, I think now it's a little bit harder partly because our idea of sexy man in mainstream culture has not, it's not quite at the same level of that it has gotten closer to the long-running idea of sexy woman, which is young and incredibly fit.

[21:58] As opposed to Michael Douglas, who is a mature man who is in good shape, but he's not buff.

[22:03] And now it feels like.

[22:04] And he's got that sick mullet.

[22:06] Our sex symbols are what, like, Channing Tatum and guys like that who are unrealistic for a man the same way that female sex symbols have always been unrealistic for women.

Dan McCoy

[22:14] Well, also, he got stuck in this lane where he's very good at and someone needs to be this guy where he's, like, the kind of sleazy guy who his dick gets him into trouble.

[22:24] Like, that was his thing.

S4

[22:26] His dick that he can't control.

[22:28] Yeah.

[22:28] Because men can't.

[22:29] Like, there's also that element of this where it's, like, the body does with the body.

[22:33] Yeah, that's true.

[22:34] He couldn't resist.

Elliott Kalan

[22:35] The sex assault scene is amazing because it's, like, he's fighting as if the devil is tempting him.

[22:40] And he's going, no, no.

[22:41] But his penis is just, it's so, pulling all the blood from his brain.

[22:45] He just can't resist it.

[22:47] But what if this movie was called Dick's Closure and his penis could talk to him and his penis is, like, we've got to do this.

[22:53] And he's, like, you're getting me into trouble.

[22:54] Stop.

[22:54] We can't do this anymore.

S4

[22:56] It would be a green, like, netted-looking penis with, like, a picture of a penis head.

Stuart Wellington

[23:02] Very, very lawnmower, man.

[23:04] Yeah, very VR penis.

[23:06] 1994, who is the voice of this penis?

[23:08] 1994, who doesn't do it?

[23:09] I mean, Matt Frewer could be a choice.

[23:12] Matt Frewer would be perfect.

[23:13] Yeah, he is.

[23:14] I feel like that's almost too polished, though.

[23:16] Oh, you're right.

Elliott Kalan

[23:17] He gets typecasts as a penis.

[23:18] I mean, there's also a version of it where it's Bobcat Goldthwait or Gilbert Gottfried.

[23:22] I mean, that's a different movie.

[23:22] Bronson Pinchot.

[23:24] Bronson Pinchot, yeah.

[23:25] Yeah, but doing the Balki voice.

[23:26] He wanted to be funny.

Stuart Wellington

[23:27] Bronson Pinchot, it's almost like both names could be used as a euphemism for a penis.

Dan McCoy

[23:32] I gotta say, though, Dick's Closure sounds like, you know, like a movie about a guy named Richard

[23:37] whose, like, wife dies and he's seeking closure on the land.

Stuart Wellington

[23:40] Yeah, or Dick's Sporting Goods that's disclosing, yeah.

[23:43] Yeah, that's an Alexander Payne movie.

[23:44] Okay, so we—

[23:46] We're still in Monday.

[23:46] So we're through the opening credits.

[23:48] That's great.

[23:49] Okay.

[23:50] So we learned that—

Elliott Kalan

[23:51] And he gets some toothpaste on his tie, too, and everyone has to comment on that.

[23:54] Super important.

Stuart Wellington

[23:54] I'm glad that happened.

Dan McCoy

[23:55] Wait, why is he late in that first scene?

Elliott Kalan

[23:57] Anyone know?

[23:57] He's a terrible time manager.

[23:59] He is late all the time.

[24:00] He is with his kids, but he's not really doing that much to help with his kids.

[24:06] This whole family has issues with time management and balancing parenting and work.

[24:10] I'll just say that right off the bat.

[24:11] As someone who is slowly, who's quickly dying because I'm doing too good a job at it, they are bad at balancing it.

Stuart Wellington

[24:18] Yeah.

[24:18] So we learned that he is up for a promotion and that his company, I think Digicom is the name.

[24:23] Digicom.

[24:24] They are about to have a merger with another company.

[24:28] Digicom is, of course, a combination of digital and communism.

[24:32] Oh, interesting.

[24:33] That's better than comedy is what I thought you were going to go with.

Elliott Kalan

[24:36] Digital and comedy.

[24:37] We're trying to bring comedy to the internet.

[24:39] It'll never work.

Stuart Wellington

[24:40] Tom also has a cell phone.

[24:42] That was pretty fancy technology for back then, right?

[24:45] Mm-hmm.

[24:45] He also, he has to take a ferry to work.

[24:48] He bumps into this-

[24:48] That's cool.

[24:49] He bumps into this, like, older guy who got laid off, and that guy is kind of the specter of potential unemployment that he compares himself to.

Elliott Kalan

[24:57] This guy sucks, too.

[24:59] He's like, everything about him is retrograde and horrible and resentful and bitter.

[25:02] Yeah.

[25:03] It's a, he's the villain of the movie, as far as I'm concerned.

S4

[25:06] So-

[25:07] And it's hard to be that sad on a boat.

Elliott Kalan

[25:09] Yeah.

[25:09] Exactly.

[25:10] I mean-

[25:11] You're on a ferry.

[25:12] It's beautiful.

S4

[25:13] Yeah.

[25:13] It's inspiring.

[25:15] I was just thinking that.

Stuart Wellington

[25:16] I'm like, what can I do in my life so that I can take a ferry to work every day?

[25:20] And then I realized-

[25:21] Move to Staten Island.

[25:22] Yeah.

[25:23] Yeah.

S4

[25:24] That's what you have to do.

[25:24] Water taxi.

[25:25] I used to take the water taxi when I worked at Kimmy Schmidt in Greenpoint.

[25:29] Uh-huh.

[25:29] And I would bring my dog on it.

[25:31] And I just felt, I would just hear the, let the river run, like, the whole time.

[25:36] And sometimes I would even listen to it.

[25:38] And I was like, I can't believe this life I'm living right now.

[25:45] The wind blowing in my dog's ears.

[25:48] Oh, that sounds great.

Elliott Kalan

[25:48] Imagine you getting off the water taxi and like Mary Tyler Moore, instead of throwing

[25:52] her hat in the air, you throw the dog in the air and just freeze frames you smiling.

[25:56] He's stuck in a tree.

[25:57] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[25:58] Okay.

[25:58] So we see the Digicom office where he works, which is very, like, open plan.

[26:02] It's very progressive.

[26:04] There are plenty of glass brick walls, which I love.

[26:08] I thought those were the height of making it.

[26:11] Man, that's, I need to redo a run.

Elliott Kalan

[26:13] If you have glass brick walls, you are either in a successful billion-dollar company or a

[26:18] successful New Jersey hair salon.

[26:19] That's the two places you are.

[26:21] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[26:21] In both cases, very classy.

[26:25] So Michael Douglas, Tom, has a Zoom call with the plant manager in Malaysia because there

[26:30] seems to be some kind of issue with the production.

[26:33] This has to do with microchips or some shit.

[26:36] It's very important.

Elliott Kalan

[26:37] So it's very important.

[26:38] They have two products this company is making, virtual reality file storage and a new CD-ROM

[26:44] drive that's supposed to move much faster than normal CD-ROM drives.

[26:47] And there's some kind of problem with what's coming.

[26:49] The quality control is bad and the ROM drives are not working properly.

[26:53] Something has gotten into the assembly and quality control is just down the toilet.

[26:58] And this is so much more important for the ultimate story of the movie than the sexual harassment.

[27:03] It's bonkers.

[27:04] How much this movie eventually twists on product manufacturing chain decisions in a CD-ROM company.

[27:12] It makes the movie more exciting, right?

[27:14] If it's not about sex and power, it's about CD-ROM manufacturing.

[27:18] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[27:19] Yeah.

[27:19] Is that the sweetener?

[27:21] Is that the dessert for the vegetables of the sexual harassment story one?

Elliott Kalan

[27:25] It's like, I'll sit through Demi Moore's shirt being torn open, but only if I can hear about

[27:29] what pitfalls there could be in trying to cheap out on CD-ROM manufacturing.

[27:34] Yeah.

S4

[27:34] But it's sort of like in the firm when he got him on mail fraud.

[27:37] Yeah.

[27:38] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[27:41] So there's a lot of rumors around the office about the merger.

[27:44] Tom was hoping that he was going to be promoted to vice president, but it looks like he might

[27:47] not get it and that he might even lose his job.

[27:50] At one point, he slaps his assistant Cindy on the ass and they do a closeup of it.

[27:55] And you're like, what?

[27:56] What is this guy doing?

Elliott Kalan

[27:58] Not cool.

[27:58] I'm imagining it goes boom, boom, boom and closes up and it's slower each time and louder

[28:03] each time.

Stuart Wellington

[28:05] So there's a, it turns out that yes, he is indeed passed over for promotion for Meredith,

[28:11] an ex-lover of his who helped negotiate this merger and that he, if he wants to keep his

[28:19] job, he kind of has to, he has to placate her, right?

[28:21] Is that kind of the impression?

[28:22] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[28:23] And I'll, I'll just say it right here.

[28:24] At this point, I already felt Michael Douglas did not deserve this promotion and it was,

[28:29] it was a fantasy that he was ever going to be in line.

[28:31] Everyone's like, oh, you didn't get it, huh?

[28:33] And I'm like, he seems to not be very good at his job.

[28:35] And he's not, he can't even be counted on to get to work on time.

[28:39] He's always.

S4

[28:39] And he also had, had, has like, the first thing we see of him in the office is him like

[28:46] smiling to himself, admiring a set of legs, walking up a staircase.

[28:50] Yes.

[28:50] And like, he's that, and then he pats, yeah, he pats his assistant on the butt with a file

[28:55] folder.

[28:55] Like he just doesn't.

Dan McCoy

[28:56] Well, and I think that this is the movie's clumsy attempt at like being like, you know,

[29:02] even though he's, you know, in the right, in the law, in this larger situation, he is

[29:07] like.

Elliott Kalan

[29:09] Gotta learn.

[29:09] Part of this.

[29:10] Yeah.

[29:10] We're all of us sinners.

[29:11] It's institutional misogyny.

[29:12] And he'll get his, he'll learn later.

[29:14] He'll have his lesson.

[29:15] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[29:15] Right.

[29:16] But it, it, it does sort of like make the movie seem weird.

[29:20] Like you're supposed to sympathize with this guy right from the start.

Elliott Kalan

[29:23] Well, I think that's the thing is, I think the movie does expect you to sympathize with

[29:26] him right from the start because he's Michael Douglas and he's a cool dude, but he's trying

[29:29] hard.

[29:30] He really wants to get Disneyland tickets for his, for this colleague of his.

[29:35] And it's, but he's not likable.

[29:38] And to me, he was.

S4

[29:39] But Dennis Miller is way worse.

[29:41] Yeah.

[29:41] Well, that's the thing.

[29:42] You want to make Michael Douglas seem cool.

[29:44] He's like.

Stuart Wellington

[29:45] So Dennis Miller.

S4

[29:46] Yeah.

[29:47] He talked about her having a nipples, like a eraser, pencil eraser.

Stuart Wellington

[29:52] Yeah.

[29:53] Yeah.

S4

[29:53] That's in my head forever now.

[29:55] The limbic system.

[29:56] He really leaned into saying the limbic system.

Dan McCoy

[30:00] There was a period of time when, in the nineties, when people are like, let's put Dennis Miller

[30:05] in supporting roles and everything.

Elliott Kalan

[30:07] Was this before the net or after?

[30:10] This was a year before the net, right?

[30:11] This is 94.

[30:12] Okay.

[30:12] So he probably got the net because they're like, he knows high tech shit, right?

[30:15] He knows computers.

[30:16] I don't remember how this lines up with murder at 1600 though, which he's also in.

[30:22] Like yeah, Dennis Miller, I think he was making a big push.

Dan McCoy

[30:24] Bordello of blood.

Elliott Kalan

[30:26] Good question.

[30:26] That I think was after this.

[30:28] Okay.

[30:28] I don't remember by how.

[30:29] I mean that by then he, he moved his way up to starring roles.

Stuart Wellington

[30:32] So we're really, we're really running through this plot here.

[30:35] So I do want to take a second point out that, that Michael Michael's character.

[30:38] So you think Dennis Miller comes from a line of Millers?

[30:41] I mean, I can only assume.

[30:44] Do you think, do you think when they put out the movie, We Are the Millers, he was like,

[30:47] what the fuck?

[30:48] I'm right here.

Elliott Kalan

[30:50] I got to sue them.

[30:51] And his lawyer's like, you can't, no, you can't own the name, name Miller.

Dan McCoy

[30:55] With that long gestating adaptation of the Miller's tale, Chaucer's the Miller's tale,

[30:59] it makes it to the screen.

Elliott Kalan

[31:01] Yeah.

[31:01] He's all over it.

[31:02] Fingers crossed.

[31:03] Finally, someone's telling my story.

[31:05] He opens up the book and reads it.

[31:06] He's like, what the fuck is this?

[31:07] This is in English.

Stuart Wellington

[31:09] So it's implied that, that Michael, well, it's not implied.

[31:12] It's said that Michael Douglas and, and to me, Moore's characters were former lovers.

[31:18] His children in the movie are like, what, like six, eight?

[31:22] So about, and he's, there's a 20 year age difference between the two actors.

[31:26] So.

S4

[31:27] They refer to her as being 33.

Stuart Wellington

[31:29] Which is only one year older than her age at the time of filming it.

Elliott Kalan

[31:33] I think it's, I think we're supposed to assume Michael Douglas is a slightly younger man,

[31:37] not much younger, but a slightly younger man than he is in real life in this one.

Stuart Wellington

[31:41] It just, it feels like, cause if anything, if she's 33, it, they would probably have been

[31:47] together about 10 years before this.

[31:49] I don't know.

[31:50] It just feels.

Elliott Kalan

[31:50] She could have been in her early twenties and he's in his forties.

[31:53] You know, it's gross.

S4

[31:55] But he also just kind of has that look of stress that comes from building CD-ROM.

[31:59] That's true.

[32:00] It ages you.

[32:01] A lot of hard years.

[32:02] It's like the presidency.

Stuart Wellington

[32:05] Oh, he's aged terribly.

[32:06] He's actually 25 years old in the movie.

[32:08] Okay.

[32:09] So she, uh, she approaches him and suggests that they have a meeting after it's announced

[32:14] that she's the new VP, uh, a meeting in her office at 7 PM.

[32:19] What?

[32:20] Uh, and have some drinks.

[32:21] This doesn't feel very professional.

[32:23] No, not at all.

[32:24] Uh, his coworkers all make weird, uh, sex harassment, sexual harassment jokes.

[32:29] It is not funny.

[32:31] Um, he meets her in her office, uh, which is, you know, like partially renovated.

[32:36] Uh, they share a bottle of wine that she picked out.

[32:40] That's his favorite.

[32:41] Uh, it starts with chatting.

[32:43] It then leads to, uh, a back rub and her assistant locking the door.

[32:50] Uh, there's a lot of weird comments about his family and his, uh, wife.

Elliott Kalan

[32:55] He has the weirdest comment here where he shows her picture, picture of his family and he

[33:00] said, she says, oh, she looks like she keeps the fridge stocked, which I took to mean as

[33:04] she intends it, that looks like a domestic person.

[33:06] You're no longer with a wild girl like me.

[33:08] Yeah.

[33:08] You're with a domestic person.

[33:09] But he goes, yeah, she didn't lose all the baby weight after the, after the, the last kid.

[33:13] It's like one, she's thin.

[33:15] Like she's not, she's, she has no extra weight, but also it's such a weird, it's that.

[33:20] Well, they were trying.

[33:21] Oh, go ahead.

[33:22] Well, I say if this was a better movie, I feel like that would be a character as it is.

[33:26] It's meant to be, I guess him revealing an anxiety he feels that he's not with a woman

[33:29] that he is as attractive as she used to be or something, but the movie doesn't support

[33:33] that.

[33:33] And it comes out of nowhere and it's a bad movie.

[33:35] So it just comes off as like a weird thing for him to say.

S4

[33:37] It's like they were, you could feel them doing the math of what would sound bad in the deposition

[33:41] when it was brought up later.

[33:43] Yes.

[33:43] Yes, exactly.

[33:43] But it could have just been like, you know, a picture of her at the beach and he, she just

[33:47] goes like, huh, one piece, huh?

[33:49] You know, like, like just like to kind of be like, okay, she's had kids.

[33:53] It's like, like, you know, you're not.

Elliott Kalan

[33:54] Remember when we used to go to the beach and I wore one piece, just the bottoms.

[33:58] And he's like, Ooh, I remember when we were so sexy together.

S4

[34:01] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[34:02] Oh man.

[34:02] Elliot, you are missing your calling for writing erotic thrillers.

Elliott Kalan

[34:06] Yeah.

[34:06] Remember when you used to, remember, remember when, when I just wore the bottoms and you

[34:09] copper toned me, that's when he uses, he bites the back of it and she runs around.

[34:13] Yeah.

[34:14] Yeah.

[34:14] Love it.

[34:15] And they're cartoons.

[34:17] Oh man.

[34:18] Oh, and he's in a dog costume.

[34:19] Yeah.

[34:20] Yeah.

[34:20] Oh man.

[34:21] Oh, I should introduce him to my friend.

[34:22] A man in a dog costume and a man in a cat costume.

Stuart Wellington

[34:25] Okay.

[34:26] So at some point she gets distracted.

[34:28] So he goes to make a call on his cellular phone.

[34:31] He thinks he's calling his friend, but she immediately attacks him.

[34:34] She begins assaulting him.

[34:35] He keeps saying no.

[34:37] She keeps pushing him.

[34:39] Eventually he turns it around and kind of seems into it.

[34:44] And they are about to have some violent sex.

[34:46] And then he sees their reflection in a picture and he's like, I can't do this.

[34:51] He runs away and she threatens him.

Dan McCoy

[34:53] Yeah.

[34:53] And this is another instance of the movie.

[34:57] A better movie.

[34:59] Maybe this would be a good choice.

[35:00] Like it's trying to muddy the waters a little bit in a way that like.

[35:06] The work of muddy waters does.

S4

[35:08] Just the complicated.

[35:09] Like.

[35:11] It's a complicated encounter.

[35:12] It's complicated.

[35:13] There's no perfect victim.

[35:14] Right.

[35:15] You know, like that.

Dan McCoy

[35:16] Exactly.

[35:17] And like the fact that he seems into it at one point and then says no later.

[35:22] Like that should be.

[35:23] Like the no should stand.

[35:25] And I think it's putting up against like if the gingers were flipped.

[35:29] But in a movie that stars Michael Douglas.

[35:32] A man known for like being in like sleazy erotic thrillers.

[35:36] I do think it makes you weirdly less sympathetic to him here that like.

S4

[35:43] I feel like what they were trying to do with his turn a little bit.

[35:46] Yeah.

[35:46] It's like to be like the man can't control himself around this siren.

[35:52] Yeah.

[35:52] And like whereas like the version of women it's like, you know, more like disassociating or whatever.

[35:58] Right.

[35:58] What happened.

[35:59] So he became the aggressor briefly because it was like she is just far too sexy.

[36:06] Maybe.

[36:07] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[36:07] I think that's that he's if again if it was a better movie I could see it that like he doesn't want to do this.

[36:13] But he is feeling he feels that like he's because he used to be this this sex machine with her.

[36:21] And now he lives a pretty domestic kind of dull everyday life.

[36:25] And there's a little bit of he can recapture a moment of when he was younger and more exciting.

[36:30] But also that he is possibly seeing an opportunity to reassert control over the woman who has stolen the job he thought was rightfully his.

[36:38] That like but he knows he really shouldn't do it.

[36:40] That he could have like again if it's a better movie he would be a more complicated character.

[36:43] And these different drives could be going on all at the same time.

[36:46] But instead it comes off as it feels like a superhero being hit with a power dampening beam.

[36:52] And going like I must resist but can't.

[36:55] Oh god no no.

[36:56] No like that it feels so or there's something kind of like like she has a magical hold over him.

[37:02] That he can't that he's giving into and then can't quite because she made him drink a potion or something.

[37:06] Like it's it's a it comes off I found the scene it should be it should be a really like terrifying scene if it's done right.

[37:12] But I found it very funny.

[37:14] Also because their attempts to be sexy are also so over the top you know.

S4

[37:18] The initial massage I feel like we watch with 20-24 eyes is like this is all this is oh god gross.

[37:26] The minute she says rub my shoulders and he starts doing it it's like no no no.

[37:29] Like he's just like yeah all right.

[37:33] He's not really alarmed at that point.

[37:36] It's like you gotta play a game.

Elliott Kalan

[37:37] I rub Donald Sutherland's shoulders all the time.

[37:40] That's how I got my job you know.

Dan McCoy

[37:41] I feel like the movie also.

[37:42] It's tough because he's so much taller than Michael Douglas.

[37:44] Falters a little bit here because it's like okay we want to make this a horrifying experience that Michael Douglas goes through.

[37:50] But also like this is a an ironic thriller with Demi Moore so we want to make it sexy first.

Elliott Kalan

[37:57] Yeah well we also want the audience to be able to come and like fantasize that they're with what if I got harassed by Demi Moore.

[38:04] Oh man amazing.

[38:05] Like there's yeah it's I think the movie is the fact is I think you put it put your put hit it right down that like it's a sleazy movie.

[38:11] Yeah.

[38:12] So he wants to have it both ways and like have a message but also get the audience aroused you know.

S4

[38:17] Wait I did find a really great I was just like googling disclosure reviews at the time and I found Roger this is how Roger Ebert's review of disclosure starts.

[38:27] Uh huh.

[38:27] Disclosure contains an inspiring terrific shot of Demi Moore's cleavage in a wonder bra surrounded by 125 minutes of pure goofiness.

[38:38] Whatever but I just like to be like celebrating like her her cleavage.

[38:44] Yeah.

[38:45] So like Roger Ebert.

[38:46] That's the best part.

Elliott Kalan

[38:47] I think one of the things that maybe doesn't age as well about his work but which I actually in some ways admire for its honesty is he's totally open to when he's a perv.

[38:54] And he's like I like this movie because these ladies were naked in it.

[38:58] You know like he's like that's a value too.

[39:01] And maybe it's because I.

Dan McCoy

[39:02] He was a horny man who wrote a movie for Russ Meyer but also yes that's a weird lead for a movie.

[39:09] That's true.

[39:10] Sexual harassment.

Elliott Kalan

[39:11] The best part of the film.

[39:12] I also wonder if that's him that's him trying to take the classy way out of answering the audience's question of is Demi Moore naked in this movie.

[39:20] Which at this point was I think the question every male audience member was asking about every movie that Demi Moore put out basically at this point was was she naked in it?

[39:29] And he could be like well I'll mention that she's in a wonder bra and that'll be telling my perv audience that she's not fully naked in it.

Dan McCoy

[39:35] My perv followers that I've cultivated.

[39:37] Yeah.

S4

[39:38] It's a dog whistle to the perv.

Stuart Wellington

[39:41] So speaking of dogs Michael Douglas goes home.

[39:45] Michael Douglas.

[39:46] He has no dog.

[39:47] That would be.

[39:48] Oh man.

[39:48] Spell that on a calculator.

[39:49] That's the Rover Doggerfield or whatever the fuck starring Michael Douglas.

Elliott Kalan

[39:54] If Rover Dangerfield had been a hit and then they're like the sequel Michael Douglas.

[39:58] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[39:59] I love it.

[40:00] Okay.

[40:01] So he goes home.

[40:02] He has very noticeable scratches on his chest.

[40:05] And he has to hide them from his.

[40:06] It looks like he was attacked by a jaguar.

[40:09] So.

[40:09] Yes.

[40:10] So I was.

[40:10] My wife and I watched this movie together and we both suggested ways that he could explain why his 50 year old man chest is slowly healing from scratches on his chest.

[40:22] Okay.

[40:22] I'm not going to say who proposed which suggestion.

[40:25] You can.

[40:25] But I want you guys to vote on which one you think works the best.

[40:27] The first is the next morning he immediately wakes up and goes to the animal shelter and he buys a cat.

[40:33] Okay.

[40:34] Or he initiates sex with his wife and very early on he's like, ow babe, what did you do to my chest?

Dan McCoy

[40:41] Okay.

[40:42] So which one do you think is the better?

[40:44] I mean, I don't think either of them particularly would be convincing, but I would have to go with the second one simply by virtue of the size of the claws.

S4

[40:55] The distance between scratches is too small.

[40:58] Yeah.

[40:58] You would have to get a very large cat.

[41:00] It's too wide for a rescue.

Elliott Kalan

[41:00] You'd have to get a jaguar.

[41:01] I adopted this jaguar.

[41:02] By the way, I adopted this stray jaguar.

[41:06] I brought it back.

[41:07] What?

[41:08] You have small children in the house.

[41:09] Oh, they're going to love it.

[41:10] They can ride it.

[41:10] It'll be fantastic.

[41:11] And then the rest of the movie is actually a family in peril movie about a jaguar that's loose in the house.

Dan McCoy

[41:16] Honey, your favorite movie is bringing up baby, right?

[41:19] Well, guess what?

[41:22] Had Roar been made at this point?

[41:24] Yes, Roar had been made at this point.

[41:26] But he does.

[41:27] I thought this scene was so funny for like he's constantly not talking to her head on while he's having this conversation while in the shower.

[41:35] And then when he puts the towel on, he's draping it in a way that no person has ever put a towel around himself to cover up the scratches.

Stuart Wellington

[41:44] And yo, he comes home late and he's like, the first thing he says is, honey, can you get me a beer?

[41:49] I know.

[41:50] That was.

[41:51] Yeah.

[41:52] It does not come off well.

[41:53] To drink in the shower?

Elliott Kalan

[41:54] And it's not like she's in the kitchen.

[41:56] Shower beers are amazing.

[41:57] She's in bed doing work and he's like, can you get me a beer?

[42:01] Which means she has to get up and go downstairs.

[42:02] Like you just came from there.

S4

[42:04] She has to plug in his cellular as well.

Dan McCoy

[42:06] Yeah.

[42:06] Meredith, have you had a shower beer?

[42:09] I had this sold to me.

[42:11] I'm curious about.

S4

[42:12] I drank like in high school once or twice.

[42:16] I drank whatever alcohol I found.

[42:19] Like if they're in a water bottle in the shower.

Stuart Wellington

[42:22] Yeah.

[42:22] As a longtime night bartender, they'll like get home from work and drink a tall boy of, I don't know,

[42:29] whatever gross cheap beer I can drink while taking a shower before bed was like the best thing.

[42:34] Talk about suds.

Dan McCoy

[42:35] What's this?

[42:37] Okay, go on.

[42:37] It's sold to me as like a great experience.

[42:40] Like, oh, you got to get a cold beer.

[42:41] You go into the shower.

[42:43] And, you know, I got to admit, I just, I kept too much work.

[42:47] All I could think about was how much water was getting into, like hot water was getting into the beer I was having.

[42:52] You're drinking shower water.

[42:53] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[42:54] That's because you got to chug it.

[42:55] The thing you need in a shower, which is a time limit that you need to really get done with, which is chug that beer fast.

S4

[43:02] Or you need like a plastic, very big beer helmet.

[43:07] Yeah.

[43:08] You can put on that keeps you like an umbrella thing that you can put on your head so you can drink.

[43:13] Like a shower cap.

Elliott Kalan

[43:14] Yeah.

[43:14] It's a shower cap with beers on it.

[43:16] Yeah.

[43:17] Yeah.

[43:17] So.

[43:18] Guys, we got to stop this podcast right now and make that happen.

Stuart Wellington

[43:21] This is our millions.

[43:22] I do want to point out that this whole time his wife is being very understanding and she's being very supportive.

[43:27] She's cool.

[43:27] Especially when dealing with the fact that he is, you know, he's visibly disappointed about not getting the promotion.

[43:34] She's like, you should just quit.

[43:35] We'll figure it out.

[43:36] And he's like, quit.

S4

[43:38] But every wife he's ever had in every movie is wonderful.

[43:42] Yeah.

[43:43] And Archer in Basic Instinct.

[43:45] Yeah.

[43:46] Like they're all the greatest women that are stunningly beautiful but not considered the hot ones a little bit.

[43:55] Like anyway.

Stuart Wellington

[43:57] Yeah.

[43:57] That's Michael Douglas, I guess, as a type.

[44:01] There's specifically a message.

[44:03] He gets a message that the next morning's meeting is being pushed back.

[44:08] This message was relayed to him by his wife who received a phone call from Meredith.

[44:12] And he just accepts this.

[44:14] He's like, oh, great.

[44:15] I get to sleep in.

Elliott Kalan

[44:16] Let's say it's – now I would think pushed forward.

[44:19] Pushed back makes me think that it is – that the meeting is happening earlier.

[44:23] Pushed up.

Elliott Kalan

[44:23] Which is actually what happens.

[44:24] Pushed up.

[44:25] I would say push up.

Dan McCoy

[44:26] Wait.

[44:26] You think that pushed back means earlier?

[44:29] Yeah, back in time.

[44:30] The meeting's been pushed back.

[44:31] Got to go back in time.

Stuart Wellington

[44:32] But no.

[44:33] The meeting's been pushed up.

[44:34] That doesn't make any sense at all.

[44:35] Yeah, pushed up means it's earlier.

[44:37] Back is later.

[44:38] Always.

[44:39] Well –

Elliott Kalan

[44:39] The meeting's been thrown forward.

[44:41] This is good for me to know before I get into the high-stakes world of CD-ROM manufacturing.

Dan McCoy

[44:45] So this is why your CD-ROM career has stalled out, Elliot.

[44:49] You've been missing all these meetings.

[44:50] This could be.

Elliott Kalan

[44:50] Also, I do think that the CD-ROM stands for cats, dogs, rhinos, other mammals, which is apparently not what it stands for.

Stuart Wellington

[45:00] And then he has a nightmare about Donald Sutherland making a move on him.

[45:05] Yeah.

[45:05] That was a great scene.

[45:08] Very, very telling.

[45:10] Now we're on to Tuesday.

[45:13] Hey, guys.

[45:14] What a week, right?

[45:16] It's only Tuesday.

[45:17] We get the – he shows up late to the meeting.

[45:20] There's a VR demo.

[45:21] Now we talked about this VR.

[45:23] It's pretty cool, right?

Elliott Kalan

[45:24] It's pretty cool.

[45:24] You're in a hallway of files.

[45:26] There's an angel that looks like the lead programmer who is not very good at helping you with the things that you need with the software.

[45:32] It is incredibly underwhelming.

[45:34] But everyone acts as if this is the coolest thing they've ever seen in the history of science.

Dan McCoy

[45:39] Look, I don't want to insult this actor.

[45:42] He's kind of an unusual-looking fellow.

[45:47] And then they put his face on an angel, which makes it look all the weirder.

[45:52] And it's like this is – like they decided to like – I don't know.

[45:56] I feel like if I turned around and I saw this angel, like, can I help you?

[45:59] I'm like, ah!

[45:59] Uh-huh, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[46:01] Bring Clippy back.

[46:03] Yeah, you're like, I didn't know I was playing Doom.

[46:07] What?

S4

[46:08] I feel like they were trying to play that part for comic relief.

Elliott Kalan

[46:12] Yeah.

[46:12] I think they were.

[46:13] It just like wasn't quite hitting.

[46:13] I think that was supposed to be a joke.

[46:15] That was not a great face for an angel.

S4

[46:17] Oh, you keep putting your face on things.

[46:19] Like, it's the only face we have right now.

[46:21] Like, I feel like it was supposed to be sleight of hand so you're not noticing the plot points that come back later.

Dan McCoy

[46:26] Yeah.

[46:27] I'll distract you.

S4

[46:27] Or the fact that, like, Donald Sutherland's full financial details are in the demo for entertainment purposes only.

Stuart Wellington

[46:35] He enlisted his fears, his full schedule.

[46:37] Yeah.

[46:38] He has psychiatric report.

[46:38] The call sheet for the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[46:40] Mm-hmm.

[46:41] Pictures of him in blackface when he was in college.

[46:44] All that stuff's there.

[46:44] You know he has those.

[46:47] That character, not Donald Sutherland's the real actor.

[46:49] Yeah, of course.

[46:49] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[46:50] So Michael Douglas is under fire for showing up late to the meeting.

[46:55] And he's also under fire because Meredith has spilled all the beans for the various production issues they're having in Malaysia.

[47:02] And he is not prepared to answer some of these questions.

S4

[47:05] But partially because he brings up the issues to her during their initial meeting where the sexual assault happened.

[47:12] And she tells him the best thing to do is to say nothing.

[47:16] It is.

[47:16] And then she, during the meeting, brings it all up.

[47:20] And he sticks to that story of the advice she gave him.

Elliott Kalan

[47:25] It's so funny.

[47:26] Yeah, but he's like, well, she assaulted me and she lied about when the meeting is, but I better stick with her strategy and not throw things off.

[47:34] So he's like quoting things she said to him.

[47:36] And it's like, dude, she's obviously not your friend.

[47:39] Like, why are you doing this?

[47:40] You know?

S4

[47:41] But also, yeah, he could be like, yeah, no, because I brought these up to you last night and you told me not to say anything.

[47:48] Yeah.

[47:48] Could have maybe, and then the credits roll.

Stuart Wellington

[47:52] Yeah, like one of the best bits is when he like repeats one of her talking points verbatim.

[47:57] And a guy's like, oh, that doesn't mean what you think of me.

[47:59] Like, she like totally turns it out.

[48:01] It's so funny.

[48:03] So he-

Elliott Kalan

[48:04] He's a moron.

[48:04] He should not have been promoted to vice president.

[48:06] Let's just say that right there.

[48:07] Yeah.

[48:08] He goes to talk to Phil, who's what?

Stuart Wellington

[48:10] A guy from Happiness.

[48:12] What other stuff?

[48:13] Oh, Dylan.

[48:14] Yeah, he's great.

Elliott Kalan

[48:15] He's Kirk Connors in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies.

[48:19] He's in lots of stuff.

S4

[48:20] Who has like bad guy hair gel.

[48:22] Yes.

[48:22] Like his hair is very precise.

[48:25] Why am I looking at his name?

[48:25] In a way that you're like, he's bad.

Dan McCoy

[48:27] Yeah, I keep thinking.

[48:27] Yeah, why am I?

[48:28] I also can't remember.

[48:29] I keep hearing like-

[48:30] Dylan Baker.

[48:31] He's married.

[48:31] He's married to someone.

[48:33] Is he married to Jennifer Grey?

Stuart Wellington

[48:36] Oh, really?

[48:37] Wow.

[48:37] Is that right?

[48:38] It could be possible.

[48:40] We'll get to the bottom of this one.

Elliott Kalan

[48:41] So that actor is Dylan Baker, who's also-

[48:44] Dylan Baker.

[48:44] He's in a lot of good stuff.

[48:45] Yeah.

[48:45] He's great.

[48:46] He's a great actor.

Stuart Wellington

[48:47] He's kind of-

[48:48] He's Michael Douglas' boss, I guess, and like a liaison between him and Donald Sublin,

[48:55] who's the head of the company.

Dan McCoy

[48:56] Well, also, yeah.

[48:56] And he is the one who pretends to be Michael Douglas' friend at the beginning, but is like

[49:03] plotting against him.

[49:04] And it is one of these situations where you're like, don't you understand?

[49:07] That's Dylan Baker.

[49:09] He's-

[49:10] And he's Dylan Baker with like round glasses and his hair slicked back.

[49:14] And slicked back hair.

[49:14] This guy's not your buddy.

Stuart Wellington

[49:16] Yep.

[49:16] He's got the bad guy hair showing.

[49:19] That's so popular in the 80s and 90s, right?

S4

[49:21] Nope.

[49:22] He's not married to Jennifer Grey.

Stuart Wellington

[49:24] But who is married to Jennifer Grey?

[49:27] There's only one way to find out.

[49:28] Call her up.

[49:28] Clark.

S4

[49:29] Clark.

[49:29] Clark Gregg.

[49:30] Oh.

[49:30] Oh, right, right, right, right.

[49:32] But he is married to-

[49:33] He's married to Becky Ann Baker.

Dan McCoy

[49:34] Becky Ann Baker, who is-

[49:35] Oh, Becky Ann.

S4

[49:36] That's who I'm thinking of.

Elliott Kalan

[49:37] Freaks and geeks.

[49:38] Yeah.

[49:38] She's awesome.

[49:39] She's great.

[49:39] And girls, yeah.

S4

[49:40] I knew he was married to someone awesome.

Elliott Kalan

[49:41] They're a very talented couple, the two of them.

[49:43] And actor.

Stuart Wellington

[49:44] Okay.

[49:45] So he goes to Phil and he's like, wants to make a claim against Meredith.

[49:52] But it turns out she's beaten him to the punch.

[49:54] She's already made a sexual harassment claim against him.

[49:57] What?

[49:58] And he's like, that's not what happened.

[49:59] And Phil says, he lays out the plot of the movie.

[50:02] He goes, a woman harassing a man?

[50:05] Which should have been on the poster.

[50:06] There's another line that should also be on the poster.

Dan McCoy

[50:08] With an interrobang after it.

Stuart Wellington

[50:10] So he starts getting mysterious emails.

[50:12] He's been getting a number of mysterious emails.

[50:14] At this point, all emails are mysterious because how many emails were you guys getting in 1994?

[50:18] I was getting like none.

[50:20] And these are ones that have no sender's address on them.

[50:23] And they're just saying like cryptic messages.

[50:26] It kind of matters later.

[50:28] It doesn't really matter.

Dan McCoy

[50:30] This made me scrunch up my face and be like, is that a thing that was possible?

[50:37] Did that happen?

[50:38] Because he kept going to see who was sending it.

[50:40] And it's like no sender available.

[50:42] I'm like, I don't think that that was.

[50:44] I bet there was a way to hide the identity.

Elliott Kalan

[50:46] The same way you can use that.

[50:48] Like a VPN or something.

[50:49] But you wouldn't get like an email address.

Dan McCoy

[50:53] You wouldn't just be like the email program wouldn't tell you like, I don't know, buddy.

[50:58] Yeah, but it's also a pretty dumb movie.

S4

[50:59] But the twist still, like you could have had an email address based on the twist.

[51:07] Yes, that's true.

[51:07] That comes later about it being from a friend.

Elliott Kalan

[51:10] I think they're just trying to create suspense, you know?

[51:13] That's a good movie.

[51:14] Just trying to make the audience ask questions.

Stuart Wellington

[51:16] So this email, does email do that?

Dan McCoy

[51:18] We're talking about it, right?

Stuart Wellington

[51:19] So it's to work.

[51:21] This email brings a link to a news story about a sexual harassment claim that has information about the lawyers who helped that claim go through.

[51:30] So he reaches out to those lawyers and meets with them.

[51:33] Those lawyers, of course, are played by longtime character actress Roma Mafia.

[51:39] And Donald Logue, a very young Donald Logue playing a character named-

[51:43] Babyface Donald Logue.

[51:44] I love his name.

[51:45] Chance Gear.

[51:48] That's like a fucking Cars character.

Elliott Kalan

[51:50] And I don't think he's ever mentioned by name in the movie.

[51:53] So they're probably like, hey, let's just give him a crazy name.

S4

[51:56] Or is he like, dude, can I have a name?

[51:59] I'm just called Other Lawyer.

[52:01] What about Chance Gear?

[52:02] I feel like-

[52:03] And they're like, all right, just let him have Chance Gear.

[52:05] Sure, it's fine.

[52:05] He's been talking about it.

Elliott Kalan

[52:06] His own name is Donald Logue, so he's used to strange names.

[52:10] So let's just give him this one, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[52:11] Yeah, they're like, hey, Michael Crichton, you know high-tech stuff.

[52:13] What's a cool name?

[52:14] He's like, Chance Gear.

S4

[52:16] But she's basically supposed to be Gloria Allred, right?

[52:19] Yes.

[52:19] Yeah.

[52:20] That's her.

[52:21] Who she's supposed to be, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[52:22] So Michael Douglas just wants to settle.

[52:25] He doesn't want his wife to find out about it, which is fucked up, dude.

[52:28] Like, he should have told his wife a long time ago, right?

Elliott Kalan

[52:31] Yes, he should have told her the night it happened, which is hard.

[52:33] Sometimes you feel ashamed.

[52:34] You don't know.

[52:35] Like, that happens.

[52:36] But also that he didn't mention afterwards.

[52:37] What?

Stuart Wellington

[52:38] But also the idea-

[52:39] No, I just got to message your wife real quick that sometimes this happens to Elliot.

Elliott Kalan

[52:44] Yeah, sometimes it happens to me.

[52:46] I don't know how to tell her.

[52:46] But the fact that he can have a legal settlement with his employer over a sexual harassment charge

[52:52] and his wife is never going to know about it is a very strange-

[52:55] It's a big thing to hide.

Dan McCoy

[52:57] Again, this is like a clumsy attempt to like parallel like, you know, like women get a hard time

[53:05] because like, oh, you didn't document this.

[53:08] You didn't like do the perfect-

[53:09] You weren't perfect right afterwards, you know.

[53:12] But it is frustrating as a viewer to watch it and be like, man, like you are really making it hard on yourself right now, Michael Douglas.

S4

[53:21] And at that point, the wife had no idea that she was even a former lover.

[53:25] Yes.

[53:26] Yeah.

[53:27] I mean, if they wanted to lean into more about why he didn't say anything, like they could have laid in a scene where she's feeling insecure about being, you know, like something that where he's just like, oh, this is not the time.

[53:40] Like, I don't want to bother her with this.

Elliott Kalan

[53:41] That would be treating her more like a human being and less like a prop that exists to either support or cause trouble for Michael Douglas.

Dan McCoy

[53:49] Right.

[53:49] I did think it was very funny that she becomes nicer as the movie goes along, the wife, I think for very like cynical, like screenwriting reasons of, you know, we want to be less sympathetic to her at the beginning.

[54:04] So we sort of like, like, yeah.

[54:09] Like, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[54:09] Like, yeah.

[54:10] Like, yeah.

[54:10] So we sort of understand Michael Douglas.

[54:10] And then later on, she's like, the good wife he can go back to.

[54:12] But like, she's introduced being like, complaining about how he's nice to people who are lower on the totem pole than him.

[54:16] Like, you're the only one who sucks up to support and it's like, wow, you're an asshole.

[54:21] And then later on, she becomes extremely understanding.

S4

[54:24] She does drive him to the ferry, though.

[54:26] That's always nice.

[54:27] That's nice.

Elliott Kalan

[54:28] And he is asking her for a favor to arrange for Disney tickets for his coworker.

[54:35] So it is putting her out a little bit.

[54:37] But as someone who has a Disney worker in the family and is constantly asking him for tickets, I get both sides of the situation.

[54:44] I get why you want that favor and also why you'd be annoyed by doing it.

[54:47] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[54:48] So look, Michael Douglas' access to the computer mainframe is reduced.

[54:53] That's going to play an important role later in a very exciting VR scene.

[54:58] Very exciting.

[54:59] He goes to a charity event where Dennis Miller blabs to his wife that Tom's sexual harassment claim might have something to mess up the merger.

[55:11] His wife immediately defends Tom and shows solidarity.

[55:18] When Michael Douglas then explains to his wife what happened, he does it in the worst way possible.

[55:24] He's like, she started kissing me, I guess, and then maybe took my pants down.

[55:29] It's like, come on, dude.

Elliott Kalan

[55:30] She was about to blow me and then I was like, oh, yeah, I got a wife anyway.

[55:32] I got to get out of here.

S4

[55:34] But it's also, I feel like that hinged so much on did you have sex as if nothing else matters.

Elliott Kalan

[55:43] Other stuff doesn't count, baby.

[55:45] I mean, this was in the 90s.

[55:46] I feel like that was the debate.

[55:48] Like when Bill Clinton cheated on his wife, everyone was like, well, it wasn't really sex.

[55:52] And it's like, well, the idea that if your penis was inside a body part of another woman that wasn't your wife, it didn't count as sex and therefore wasn't an affair.

[55:59] It was like, it was an open question in the mid-90s.

S4

[56:03] It is sort of like I didn't inhale, kind of the same argument of like, ah, I didn't smoke pox.

Dan McCoy

[56:08] It's also like a super heteronormative way of looking at it because then it's like, okay, well, I guess then gay people never have sex.

[56:17] What a loophole.

[56:19] One kind of intercourse is the –

Elliott Kalan

[56:21] Yeah, that's what that club, the loophole is all about.

[56:25] That's what you do there.

Stuart Wellington

[56:26] In their argument, there is a scene where his wife asks, how attractive on a scale of one to ten?

[56:32] And Michael Douglas grudgingly gives Demi Moore a nine.

[56:35] Okay, that's not bad, right?

[56:37] He starts with eight and then he – and then when he sees his wife doesn't believe that, he upgrades her to nine.

[56:43] And then she says a line, which again should be on the poster.

[56:46] She says, nothing happens until it happens to you.

[56:50] And that's like kind of the message of the movie, right, is that men can't understand sexual harassment until they themselves have been sexual harassment.

[56:58] And I do think that –

[56:59] It's also the plot of the movie, it could happen to you, right?

Dan McCoy

[57:02] Let me double check.

[57:03] You're right.

[57:04] That is like sort of like the most charitable viewing of this movie where it's just like, okay, we understand that you lack empathy.

[57:14] So like let's put you in this situation.

[57:17] I mean it's like all of the old like science fiction-y anti-racism things where it's like, oh, no, a white person is black for a day, which is, you know, an offensive weird like science fiction blackface thing that we had to sort of get through so we could not do it anymore.

Elliott Kalan

[57:34] Or like Tootsie or something where it's like, oh, until I dressed up as a woman and pretend to be a woman, I didn't realize that women have problems.

[57:41] You know, it's hard for it.

S4

[57:42] The only way to show it is to see a guy going through it.

Elliott Kalan

[57:44] Yes.

[57:45] Because you have to take the –

S4

[57:46] Animal testing.

[57:47] We have to do that for animal testing, for the meat trade, for everything.

Elliott Kalan

[57:51] You have to take the default human being, a straight white male, the original that God started with and is therefore the basis of all humanity.

[57:58] Of course, the basis.

[57:58] And just put them through it.

[57:59] Yeah, not one of the variants.

S4

[58:01] Factory setting.

[58:02] We know that.

Elliott Kalan

[58:03] Factory setting.

[58:04] God's like, let me get back to factory settings on this so I can reboot.

S4

[58:08] I want like a regular human.

Elliott Kalan

[58:11] Like God would an Italian do?

[58:13] I said a regular default human.

[58:15] No.

S4

[58:16] Not a macaroni rascal.

Elliott Kalan

[58:19] Now I wish when I was a kid there was a Ninja Turtles knockoff called The Macaroni Rascals about pasta loving mice.

S4

[58:25] I love that you guys know what that means.

[58:27] Oh, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[58:29] Is there Macaroni Rascals merch to be found anywhere?

[58:33] That's.

S4

[58:34] No, I can make some.

[58:36] I love to make things.

[58:37] I make things all the time.

[58:38] I made Divorced Dad Sweetlets hats.

[58:40] But you know that, yeah, The Macaroni Rascals is what they called in Japan, what they called the Jersey Shore show.

Elliott Kalan

[58:46] It's a better title in some ways.

[58:48] In some ways it's the worst title.

S4

[58:49] The real life adventures of The Macaroni Rascals is how it translates.

[58:55] I didn't know about The Real Life Adventures.

Dan McCoy

[58:56] Yeah.

[58:57] That makes it sound like a 1960s Disney live action comedy.

[59:01] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[59:03] Anyway.

[59:03] Okay.

[59:04] So enough about Macaroni Rascals.

[59:06] We are on Wednesday.

[59:09] Man, this week's just flying by.

Dan McCoy

[59:10] This cut to Wednesday made me laugh so much because like.

Stuart Wellington

[59:13] Me too.

[59:14] I laughed really hard when I saw that too.

Dan McCoy

[59:16] It had like this dramatic sting.

[59:17] It felt like it was like a shining cut to like a chyron.

[59:23] It was so.

Elliott Kalan

[59:24] And it is, they are, it was by that point in the movie they had forgotten they were naming the days as it went by.

[59:29] Yeah.

[59:29] So it was like, oh yeah, we're doing this.

[59:31] Oh yeah.

[59:31] So we.

S4

[59:32] Just show that boat going to work.

[59:35] You get what's happening.

Stuart Wellington

[59:36] Other markers of time and what's going on.

[59:38] Yeah.

[59:39] So we have the start of mediation.

[59:41] This is not a trial.

[59:42] It's just mediation.

[59:43] We get Tom's side of the story.

[59:46] He is being grilled by this evil lawyer character.

[59:50] And this is probably my favorite scene of the movie where the lawyer keeps specifying.

[59:54] He, he very clearly lays out the definition of boner, which I found very funny.

Elliott Kalan

[59:59] Well, there's also, he's like, he's like, you talked to your co your colleagues about how she gave you a boner.

[1:00:04] And in that scene, Dennis Miller is doing all the boner talk.

[1:00:07] Like Michael Douglas is just kind of like, come on guys, come on.

[1:00:10] And so all he has to say is like.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:11] I definitely have lift off is what he said.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:13] All he had to say is like, no, I didn't.

[1:00:15] The other guys were, and I was trying to get them set up.

[1:00:17] But instead he's like, you know how guys talk to each other.

[1:00:19] You know how it is.

[1:00:20] Which is the sleaziest thing you could say.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:23] You know, we're just playing grab ass.

[1:00:24] Well, well, please clue me in.

[1:00:27] But isn't a boner a term for an erection?

S4

[1:00:30] Well, the only thing that was kind of good, like the one thing was like, yeah, but you laughed.

[1:00:35] It's like, but he should have said, yeah, because I was like trying to get out of the conversation.

[1:00:38] It was a defense mechanism or something.

[1:00:39] Because that's an argument people use.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:41] Your Honor, I mentioned like the Joker in that panel that gets put around on the internet sometimes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:46] Dan, they knew what they were doing when they wrote that Batman comic.

[1:00:49] They knew exactly what they were doing.

[1:00:50] Yes.

[1:00:51] He uses the word boner like 15 times throughout the story.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:54] We were talking about the character from Growing Pains.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:58] But isn't the character from Growing Pains named, his name a reference to that?

[1:01:03] Oh, you got me.

[1:01:04] I don't even watch Growing Pains.

[1:01:05] I don't even, my story's falling apart.

[1:01:09] We get her side of the story.

[1:01:11] I can't show you that smile again.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:14] You know, like in the song.

[1:01:15] We get her side of the story.

[1:01:18] And it feels like everything that happened, every bit of that interaction was, feels like it was all part of a setup for her to catch him and to turn the tables on him.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:29] She's woven quite a web and she's caught her fly.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:33] Thank you.

[1:01:33] Yeah.

[1:01:34] And his lawyer manages to, when cross-examining, I guess, points out that the bottle of wine they were drinking was specifically a favorite bottle of wine of his and that she had sought it out previously.

[1:01:47] She acted like it was just a bottle of wine she had lying around.

[1:01:49] But no, no, no.

[1:01:50] This shows like premeditated behavior.

S4

[1:01:55] But one random question.

[1:01:57] Yep.

[1:01:58] How did he not know she was working in operations for that company when she had worked there for months?

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:04] Another reason why he is not good at his job.

S4

[1:02:07] Yeah, like he does, you should know kind of the top brass of the, of the infrastructure of the company that you're in.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:12] I think if they made it seem like a bigger, if the company felt bigger, it's supposed to be, I think, a huge company.

[1:02:17] And so it's like he's in charge of manufacturing and he doesn't know who does the other stuff.

[1:02:22] But the company never feels that big.

[1:02:24] So it, yeah, he should know.

[1:02:26] The idea that his ex-lover is now in a very high position at the company, you'd think he would hear about the name at least, you know.

[1:02:32] I agree.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:33] Even if she was at a different, like, yeah, they mentioned that there might be other branches.

[1:02:37] There's a branch in Austin that's closing.

[1:02:40] Uh-oh.

[1:02:40] He can't get assigned to that.

[1:02:42] He can't take that offer.

S4

[1:02:42] Oh, but also that felt also very Catholic churchy where they're like, well, if you've sexually harassed, what we're going to offer you is to move you to Austin.

[1:02:51] But if you truly believe that guy was a horrible sexual assaulter, sexual harasser, you would fire him, not move him to Austin.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:01] They have this big merger and they don't want to jeopardize it by being seen to properly deal with a sexual harassment problem.

[1:03:08] Right.

[1:03:09] So that it's better to pretend it didn't exist.

[1:03:11] There's no HR.

[1:03:12] I haven't seen HR.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:14] Yeah.

[1:03:14] Is transferring to Austin their version of saying go live on a farm upstate?

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:19] Yeah, I think so.

[1:03:19] There are a couple lines I liked in it.

[1:03:22] And there's one where Donald Sutherland, they go, we offered him the lateral move to Austin, but he wouldn't take it.

[1:03:27] And Donald Sutherland's like lateral move to Austin.

[1:03:29] That's like a lateral move from duck to LaRange.

[1:03:31] And I was like, that's a pretty good line.

[1:03:33] That's a good line.

S4

[1:03:34] What was the name of the lawyer?

[1:03:37] He also had a hilarious line about her.

[1:03:40] Right, where she changed her name.

[1:03:41] Yeah.

[1:03:42] It's like Claudia Alvarez or something.

[1:03:46] No, wait, what is it?

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:47] Oh, yeah, Catherine Alvarez.

[1:03:48] She changed her name to TV.

[1:03:50] Yeah.

[1:03:51] Yeah.

[1:03:51] You say, you say, you say.

S4

[1:03:52] No, no.

[1:03:53] He goes, Catherine Alvarez.

[1:03:54] She changed her name to TV listings if she thought it would get her in the paper more.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:58] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:59] And I was like, it's TV listings.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:04] That's one where you have to annotate it for the young people now.

[1:04:06] You're like, back in the day, you didn't choose what you watched on TV.

[1:04:10] It just aired at time and you'd want to know when it was.

[1:04:12] And the newspaper would tell you when the TV shows were.

[1:04:15] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:15] For an evil boss, Donald Sutherland seems like a fun guy.

[1:04:18] He's got some good shows.

[1:04:19] Who face no consequences.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:21] Yeah.

[1:04:21] Yeah, that's true.

[1:04:22] I mean, he is.

[1:04:23] He really.

[1:04:24] He skates by on a lot of Donald Sutherland charm.

[1:04:26] But I'm a big fan of Donald Sutherland.

[1:04:27] So maybe that's why he works for me.

[1:04:29] I don't know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:30] Uh-huh.

[1:04:31] Also, we find out that Demi Moore has gone through at least 10 assistants.

[1:04:37] Male assistants have all quit in the last few years.

[1:04:40] That is a red flag.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:42] Although that doesn't really make sense with the later revelations.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:46] I mean, she could be both a predator and someone who is maneuvering Michael Douglas to become the scapegoat for the manufacturing problems.

[1:04:52] I mean, she could be doing two bad things.

[1:04:53] She's like, I've got just the move.

[1:04:55] Yeah.

[1:04:56] I've been practicing for this all my life.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:58] Yeah, I've been training.

[1:04:59] We don't know how far back this goes.

[1:05:00] They say that luck is when opportunity meets preparation.

[1:05:01] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:03] There's a scene where his lawyer, Catherine Alvarez, takes his wife for food at the Pike Place Market, which looks great.

[1:05:12] I love the Pike Place Market.

[1:05:13] Mm-hmm.

[1:05:14] But there's a weird moment where his lawyer says something like, my husband asked me out many times.

[1:05:19] These days, he would be too frightened of getting charged with sexual harassment to ask me out at all.

S4

[1:05:25] Or he would get once and have to move on, and that would be it.

[1:05:28] So her whole life would have not have happened.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:05:31] That's her sliding doors moment.

[1:05:33] But like, yeah, it was this weird moment of like, why are we doing this?

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:38] The movie does not want to take any but the most basic stand because it doesn't want to piss people off or because it wants to seem, maybe it's trying to go for complexity, but it's failing really badly.

[1:05:51] But it feels like the movie is like, sexual harassment is obviously wrong.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:54] But, you know, sometimes when it's romantic, maybe.

S4

[1:06:01] But it also, it's also, this is, it's not a friendly environment to say you were sexually, like at that time, it's, there weren't a lot of like, places to go where you would be supported and say, hey, I have, so I was sexually harassed at work.

[1:06:17] Like, for that on Demi Moore's first day to be her move and everyone accepts it internally as like, this is a normal thing that a woman might do because that's, like, it feels more like it's more like a male fear than it is like at all how anything worked at that time.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:36] Yeah.

[1:06:36] Yeah, no, this, this movie, the engine of this movie is male fear.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:41] Yeah, I mean, it really is.

[1:06:42] Well, it's like, Demi Moore, Demi Moore is, she gives that speech about like, now you need to, you need, it's signed in triplicate before you have sex or something like that.

[1:06:51] Like, that feels like.

[1:06:52] The UN has to.

[1:06:53] Yeah, yeah.

[1:06:54] That's right.

[1:06:55] It feels like that's the movie really stating its case in a way, like, that's the movie speaking honestly, which sucks.

[1:07:00] And the, it reminds me of, was it on, you must be the member of this.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:04] I mean, it doesn't suck for me because I'm super into the UN being aware of all my sexual activities.

[1:07:09] That's part of my kink.

[1:07:11] You send those letters to them all about it, yeah.

[1:07:14] No one takes my drawing.

[1:07:14] To everybody's allegation you send it to?

[1:07:16] Yeah, yeah, make a little drawing of all, everything.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:19] But I think it was on, you must remember this, they were talking about how with Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone is basically playing her character.

[1:07:25] Like a man, acting sexually.

[1:07:27] You know, she's a woman, but she's doing the things that men do.

[1:07:29] And the reviewers at the time were like, what is this monster?

[1:07:32] Like, what is this mutant demon?

[1:07:33] Yes.

[1:07:34] You know?

[1:07:35] Okay.

[1:07:35] Absolutely.

[1:07:36] Other than, other than murdering people.

[1:07:37] Most men do not end up murdering their partners.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:40] Back at work, Donald Sutherland seems to want to settle and they're like, why would he want to do that?

[1:07:44] Then they bring Michael Douglas's assistant Cindy in to do some testimony.

[1:07:50] And she reveals a pattern of behavior that is unsettling on the part of Michael Douglas involving back rubs and touching her tushy and all kinds of bad things.

[1:07:59] She doesn't say touching my tushy.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:00] No, that's a stewardism.

[1:08:02] Sorry.

[1:08:03] Yeah.

[1:08:03] There are a couple of scenes in here that, like the one that you were talking about earlier, Elliot, where like he gets grilled.

[1:08:10] Or there's a scene where the lawyer lays out to Michael Douglas, like how painful this is going to be to like try and fight this.

[1:08:18] Yeah.

[1:08:18] They're going to try to wreck their life.

[1:08:20] There are like better scenes of a better version of this movie.

[1:08:23] And I like this scene where the assistant, like Michael Douglas, who has thought of himself as a good guy, has to face up to like his assistant being like, yeah, I felt uncomfortable sometimes.

[1:08:34] And then later on, like there's a scene where he apologizes and then it's immediately undercut by like her whacking him on the butt to be like, ah, now what's sauce for the goose?

[1:08:46] How does it feel?

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:48] This is what an equal world looks like.

[1:08:50] It's not nobody getting sexually harassed.

[1:08:51] It's a warped, but everyone's free to sexually harass.

S4

[1:08:53] We're all honking each other all the time.

[1:08:56] See, everybody gets to.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:58] It's honking Thursdays.

[1:08:59] When we live in a free use office, then we'll all be equals.

[1:09:03] And it's like, I don't like this.

[1:09:05] Yeah.

[1:09:06] Honking Thursdays.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:08] Okay.

[1:09:10] And then we get a big twist at the end here at the end of Wednesday.

[1:09:14] Wait, is it still Wednesday?

[1:09:16] Yeah, it's still Wednesday.

[1:09:17] It's still Wednesday.

[1:09:17] It's a long Wednesday.

[1:09:18] Yeah.

[1:09:18] A long week.

[1:09:19] Okay.

[1:09:19] Long good Wednesday.

[1:09:20] It wraps up quick.

[1:09:21] So Michael Douglas realizes that when he made a phone call right before being assaulted, that he must have dialed the wrong number.

[1:09:28] And he uses some mental math and figures out whose phone number and answering machine he left his message on.

[1:09:35] And he realizes that he must have just let that phone run.

[1:09:38] So the whole encounter must be caught on that answering machine tape.

[1:09:42] What's an answering machine tape, you ask?

[1:09:44] Well, youngin.

[1:09:45] That was a thing that was from the 1990s.

[1:09:48] So, and he reaches out to the guy who he believes he called.

[1:09:51] And that guy has the answering machine tape and gives it to him in exchange after making a couple of jokes.

[1:09:57] And he has evidence.

[1:09:59] Hooray.

S4

[1:10:00] But did we see missed calls from that guy?

[1:10:03] I don't know.

[1:10:04] He's like, I've been trying to find you everywhere.

[1:10:06] Yeah.

[1:10:06] And it's like, do you have you?

Dan McCoy

[1:10:08] I don't think we did see missed calls.

[1:10:10] You have.

[1:10:10] Yeah.

[1:10:11] It would have been so easy, too, to just be like a couple of times like, I don't have time for this right now.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:15] Unless they're trying to make it a red herring that he's the secretive friend who is emailing him suggestions.

[1:10:22] Yeah.

[1:10:23] A friend.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:24] So, Thursday, at the mediation, they play the tape.

[1:10:29] It is damning.

[1:10:31] At one point, the evil lawyer refers to his lawyer as young lady.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:36] Although, weirdly, they cut the tape off before, like, I don't know whether the idea is, like, this part wasn't recorded.

[1:10:41] But they cut it off before, like, the most damning part where, like, she's literally, like, if you don't come back here and finish what you started, like, you're out.

[1:10:50] She's just going to kill you.

[1:10:51] You know, like, which is, like, the most direct admission of harassment, you know, from a boss.

[1:10:57] It's like, I need sexual favors or else you lose your job.

[1:11:00] But they cut it off before that.

S4

[1:11:02] I mean, it might be.

[1:11:02] It's as if they were like, oh, we all heard it.

[1:11:04] We know what we're talking about.

[1:11:05] Assume you heard the whole thing.

[1:11:07] I mean, that's the thing.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:08] I think they're just trying to save time in the movie more than anything else.

[1:11:10] I know.

[1:11:11] But it's funny to me because, like, the next thing that happens in the scene is, like, all we heard here is two consensual, considering adults having a consensual sexual encounter.

[1:11:19] And it's like, well, but then later on.

S4

[1:11:21] Right.

[1:11:21] So maybe it didn't work for that scene if they played it through.

[1:11:25] Yeah.

[1:11:26] And they were like, okay, just don't play that part.

[1:11:27] Just don't do it.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:31] We'll cover our tracks.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:33] Okay.

[1:11:34] We really appreciate it.

[1:11:35] If you could not play the whole tape, just play enough to make your case, but not enough to make it really bad.

[1:11:39] Yeah, of course.

[1:11:40] Yeah.

[1:11:40] We're coworkers.

[1:11:41] Yeah, of course.

[1:11:41] I have to see you tomorrow.

[1:11:42] Sure.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:44] So, hey, everybody.

[1:11:46] Michael Douglas wins.

[1:11:47] He wins everything he wants.

[1:11:48] He gets a bonus for pain and suffering.

[1:11:51] His lawyer is getting paid.

[1:11:53] He gets to keep working at this really cool company.

[1:11:55] He doesn't have to go to Austin.

[1:11:57] He doesn't have to go to disgusting Austin.

[1:11:58] He hasn't gotten cool yet.

[1:12:01] He hates delicious breakfast tacos.

[1:12:04] It's the worst thing in the world for him.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:05] This is 1994.

[1:12:07] Seattle is the coolest city in the entire United States of America.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:11] It doesn't have a bridge where there are bats underneath it, huh?

[1:12:15] I don't know.

[1:12:16] That's a thing about Austin.

[1:12:16] I don't know enough about Seattle.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:17] No, that's Austin.

[1:12:18] Austin has the bat bridge.

[1:12:19] No, no, no.

[1:12:19] I know Austin has it.

[1:12:20] I don't know if Seattle has a bat bridge.

[1:12:21] Seattle has so much cool stuff.

S4

[1:12:23] They probably have it and they don't even talk about it.

[1:12:25] Yeah, exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:25] Austin has moon towers, but Seattle has a space needle, so I don't know which is better.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:30] Seattle has a little thing called coffee.

[1:12:33] Ever heard of it, Elliot?

[1:12:34] Austin doesn't have it.

[1:12:35] Yeah.

[1:12:35] No.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:36] Okay, so everything seems-

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:39] Seattle doesn't have barbecue.

[1:12:39] What kind of food do they have there?

[1:12:42] I heard about a Seattle slough once-

[1:12:43] Dungeonous crabs and shit?

[1:12:45] Dungeonous crabs and shit.

[1:12:46] You throw fish.

[1:12:47] Oh, yeah, they throw fish around.

[1:12:49] They don't do that in Austin.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:50] They probably cook up a Douglas fir for you.

[1:12:52] I don't know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:53] A Michael Douglas fir.

[1:12:54] Michael Douglas probably has some fir, yeah.

[1:12:56] Yeah.

[1:12:57] He's going to win everything.

[1:12:59] Meredith is going to be out.

[1:13:00] Hooray.

[1:13:01] However, there's still like 20 minutes left in the movie, so we know things are just getting

[1:13:05] good.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:05] So unless the rest of it is just Michael Douglas changing his ways and making up with his wife,

[1:13:10] it's not yet.

[1:13:11] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:11] So he gets another mysterious email that's like, it's not over.

[1:13:15] And he realizes there's a loophole in his contract that he could be fired for incompetence.

[1:13:20] And I'm like, yeah, he should have been fired for incompetence.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:22] I love to see it.

[1:13:23] They're like, he's like, wait, they can't fire me for this, but they can fire me for

[1:13:26] incompetence.

[1:13:27] Just like any employee anywhere.

[1:13:31] So of course, what he has to do.

S4

[1:13:32] Oh, this is a job?

Dan McCoy

[1:13:34] Wait a minute.

[1:13:35] Hold on.

[1:13:35] I didn't know.

[1:13:36] Oh, I thought I had double jeopardy immunity now.

[1:13:39] I couldn't get fired for anything.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:40] Yeah.

[1:13:40] He was like, when I was raised, I was promised a job that I could work at and then retire from.

[1:13:46] So he, his only option at this point, he has now been locked out of the computer network.

[1:13:52] He has to sneak into the four seasons and break into the room of the guys that are buying the

[1:13:59] company.

[1:14:00] And he has to hook up the VR rig that they have borrowed for some reason, because they

[1:14:05] think it's neat.

[1:14:06] To play with.

[1:14:06] Yeah, to play with.

S4

[1:14:07] And where there's like so many people that could have access to it, like housekeeping.

[1:14:12] And it's got all these secrets on it.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:14] I love, yeah, I love you pointed out earlier, Meredith, but I love that it has this thing when

[1:14:19] he logs in being like, this is just for entertainment purposes.

[1:14:22] You like, don't look at all of our secret files that this is linked to for some reason, even

[1:14:27] though it's a demo.

[1:14:28] But it's, it's wild.

[1:14:30] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:30] And so he, of course, logs in and this is where we are treated to some high tech visuals.

[1:14:35] Oh, yeah.

[1:14:36] He, we get to see a digitized Michael Douglas.

[1:14:39] Digital Douglas.

[1:14:39] Walking through the corridors of, it's very much like what the halls of medicine commercials.

[1:14:44] Yes.

S4

[1:14:44] He's also like in the room, he's like standing on a mini trampoline.

[1:14:48] Yeah.

[1:14:48] Yeah, he's on this little platform wearing a helmet.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:51] There's a moment where walking through these corridors of file, filing cabinets, he almost

[1:14:56] walks off an edge and he's like, whoa, I'm going to fall.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:00] And they cut to him on the pet, just to make sure you know he's safe, I guess.

[1:15:03] They cut to him in the hotel room and he looks like anyone playing a VR game.

[1:15:08] Stupid.

[1:15:08] Like looks dumb.

[1:15:09] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:10] I mean, this is a funny moment of like, I think the movie itself undercutting, you know,

[1:15:14] it's like, okay, but we know that, you know, like this is what Michael Douglas actually looks

[1:15:18] like right now.

[1:15:19] He's safe.

[1:15:19] He's not going to fall down or anything.

[1:15:21] But I love that this is like, this is like the vaporwave aesthetic in a nutshell of like

[1:15:25] early like CD-ROM where it's just like, let's put a bunch of like columns everywhere.

[1:15:30] We're going to make it all vaguely Grecian.

[1:15:32] It's got to look like mist.

[1:15:34] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:34] Yeah.

[1:15:34] Why do they, why do they put like a bottomless pit in there?

[1:15:38] That's a big question.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:39] Why in their demo of a new filing system in online space they have a bottomless canyon?

[1:15:42] It's beta.

S4

[1:15:43] It's like not done rendering.

[1:15:45] The floor.

[1:15:46] They put too much into angel wings.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:48] I will, I'm not sure if I would have liked it more or less if they had built in something

[1:15:52] where it's like, if you're in the system when it gets shut off, then you die.

[1:15:56] Like, so he has to like get out in time before someone turns it off, but they don't have that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:01] So he, he is going through the filing cabinets about the, the virtual filing cabinets focusing

[1:16:08] on the business in Malaysia, um, because he has a suspicion there's some evidence there,

[1:16:13] which while he's looking at it, he's finding evidence that Meredith was involved in the

[1:16:18] production problems in Malaysia.

[1:16:20] Uh, he finds a video call, uh, recording between the guy running the factory and her.

[1:16:26] Um, it seems like this is something that's been going on for a while.

[1:16:29] Uh, all of a sudden we get a digital, uh, Demi Moore coming and lasering away, uh, evidence.

[1:16:35] It's great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:36] Because she's at her, she's at her desktop computer deleting files so that this evidence

[1:16:40] disappears.

[1:16:41] After she did the Stairmaster.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:41] Yeah.

[1:16:42] It seems like the guy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:42] Oh yeah, that's right.

[1:16:43] We missed the scene where he, Demi Moore is at the office using her Stairmaster explaining

[1:16:48] to Dylan Baker all the bad stuff they're doing.

[1:16:50] Yeah.

[1:16:50] And Michael Douglas happens to walk by and overhear it.

[1:16:53] And it was like, this is that she's working out at the office after hours with Dylan Baker

[1:16:57] is strange that Michael Douglas just happens to be there to hear.

[1:17:00] It's like the movie got so lazy for a moment.

[1:17:02] It was just like, forget it.

S4

[1:17:03] And also like the first thing you should do is delete the Malaysian files.

[1:17:06] Yeah.

[1:17:07] They're just in the hotel hanging out.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:09] He, and while he's spying on them, his cell phone, his cell phone rings loudly and he's

[1:17:15] like, oh shit.

[1:17:16] And he answers it.

[1:17:17] And he answers it.

[1:17:17] And they do not pay any attention.

[1:17:20] They just start whispering.

S4

[1:17:21] That's what they do.

[1:17:22] That's how they internalize it.

[1:17:23] They whisper.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:24] It's so funny.

[1:17:25] Um, okay.

[1:17:26] The, there's a little bit of a ticking clock in this scene because Donald Sutherland and

[1:17:30] these like businessmen who were drinking in the lobby of the Four Seasons are like,

[1:17:33] hey, let's go back up to your room and play that VR ring.

[1:17:36] Let's look, let's go in that hallway again.

[1:17:38] I want to look up some files.

[1:17:39] It's so funny to watch these guys like hustling down a hallway so they can be the first one

[1:17:42] on the VR ring.

S4

[1:17:44] It's also like, it's also like the worst acting I've ever seen from Donald Sutherland.

[1:17:48] Cause it's like, he keeps doing this, like, I can't wait hand.

[1:17:52] I gotta get my hands on those virtual files.

[1:17:55] Like they're like, they needed to intercut that hallway walk so many times.

[1:17:59] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:00] And then like they're having trouble with the key card.

[1:18:02] He's like, oh, these things.

[1:18:04] They never work.

[1:18:04] Technology.

[1:18:05] Technology, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:07] Okay.

[1:18:07] So he, and he manages to get some, he manages to find the evidence he needs.

[1:18:12] And he also realized that he should, if he reaches out to Malaysia, they might have more

[1:18:17] hard copy information that they don't have on this end.

S4

[1:18:20] I mean, we really learn that the key piece of evidence is that all of the prototypes of the

[1:18:26] drive that he was in charge of were working great.

[1:18:28] But in Malaysia, they took off, they made a bunch of shortcuts in the, in the manufacturing process that he did not suggest or approve.

[1:18:38] And we find out in that moment in the virtual, you know, in the corridor that it was Demi Moore who is the one who authorized the shortcuts that led to this drive being terrible.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:51] Which seems like the guy who's always offering macadamia nuts to Michael Douglas would have like talked to Michael Douglas about this as like a possible source of the problem earlier in the film.

[1:19:01] But I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:02] I mean, he's not going to do that because he doesn't want to get in trouble.

[1:19:05] And he's been, he doesn't want, he doesn't want Demi Moore's character to get in trouble.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:08] I'm glad that you guys can explain the ins and outs of this because it was a little too high tech for me.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:13] My favorite part of this scene though is when.

[1:19:16] Smaller, fast, faster, cheaper.

[1:19:17] Those guys walk into the room and they find that, and you, it pans over, Michael Douglas isn't there.

[1:19:22] And they all go to the VR and then around a corner, Michael Douglas just kind of slips out of the room.

[1:19:27] Like he's a fucking cat burglar now.

[1:19:29] Like what is, what is, that he knew is the exact moment, I guess, that he needed to be done with the VR system before they got there.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:35] I mean, this was a time where Michael Douglas would have been in like a wizard magazine for a Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid movie.

[1:19:43] But this is the point.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:44] They turn on the lights, which I think changes, even with the VR headset, changes the ambient light enough that he's like, uh-oh.

[1:19:52] And that's why he's able to slip out.

S4

[1:19:54] I guess it's also at the point in the movie where he's the hero up against everything and he's smarter than everyone else.

[1:20:00] And that's like the moment.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:01] He's been self-actualized by the hardship he's had to go through.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:05] It reminds me of, there's like this, at the very end of-

[1:20:08] At the end of Sneakers, when the bad guy gets defeated because one of the other guys just happens to be right above him in the drop ceiling and jumps out and gets him.

[1:20:15] And it's like, huh, so he just, he was just in that, what, waiting in that spot in case the bad guy came?

[1:20:20] Or Rambo in First Blood, how he's like camouflaged against that tree and the guy comes across and he kills him.

[1:20:25] And it's like, so he was, how long was he standing at that tree waiting for someone to wander by that he happened to need to kill?

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:31] And he covers himself in mud and hides in like a riverbank.

[1:20:34] Yeah, yeah.

S4

[1:20:35] There's a lot of things that don't make sense.

[1:20:36] It's like, my one, my favorite line I think in the whole movie is when Becky Ann Baker's husband-

[1:20:44] Uh-huh, Dylan Baker.

[1:20:45] Dylan Baker.

[1:20:46] Dylan Baker sees that Michael Douglas is stressed out and he goes, you look stressed.

[1:20:52] Do you need a Prozac?

Dan McCoy

[1:20:54] Which does not work immediately.

[1:20:57] Is that how it works?

S4

[1:20:58] In six weeks you feel better?

[1:21:00] Yeah, exactly.

[1:21:00] After incrementally taking it?

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:02] He should have said, you seem stressed.

[1:21:03] Do you need a Zima?

[1:21:05] Do you need a Zima?

[1:21:06] Yeah.

[1:21:06] Well, you need a Zanax or a Klonopin.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:08] Yeah, sure.

[1:21:09] It's not like those didn't exist.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:10] A tranquilizer.

[1:21:11] Not like, anyway.

[1:21:13] Anyway.

[1:21:13] No, but it's like Prozac's a thing from the 90s.

[1:21:16] It's just like-

[1:21:17] It's 90s stuff.

[1:21:18] There's like a sock, sock mumpy in my-

Dan McCoy

[1:21:20] Sock mumpy.

[1:21:22] The 90s kids remember.

[1:21:24] Sock mumpy?

[1:21:24] Yeah, whatever.

[1:21:26] Okay.

[1:21:26] I mean, are sock muckeys a 90s thing?

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:29] I feel like sock muckeys are like an 1890s thing.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:32] I don't know.

[1:21:32] I think it's more valuable.

[1:21:34] He thinks we're talking about the 1890s.

[1:21:36] Oh, okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:37] Yeah, that's why I thought it was so high tech, the 1890s.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:40] Where he gets all those muscles working on the railway.

[1:21:42] Yep.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:43] So we have, so it's Friday, baby, TGIF.

[1:21:48] So Michael Douglas apologizes to Cindy.

[1:21:51] She slaps his ass.

[1:21:53] We have a big shareholders presentation to talk about the merger.

[1:21:58] This is where they were going to reveal Michael Douglas' incompetence.

[1:22:02] But no, no, no.

[1:22:02] He has already prepared it.

[1:22:04] He turns the tables on them and plays video evidence of Demi Moore.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:09] He plays video evidence that Demi Moore was at the Malaysian plant, which is from a Malaysian news story.

[1:22:15] This is a low news day in Malaysia.

[1:22:17] American executive visits factory.

S4

[1:22:20] But it's also like you also learn, and maybe you already mentioned this, but like you learn that the whole thing in her office where she was going to frame him for sexual harassment later was a large plan by everyone to oust him so he could be the fall guy.

[1:22:40] And then we would blame him for the manufacturing changes.

[1:22:44] And everybody was in on it, right?

[1:22:45] Yeah.

[1:22:46] Donald Sutherland seems to be in it.

[1:22:47] That's what it seems like.

[1:22:48] I don't think Donald Sutherland was in on it, but I think Dylan Baker.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:51] They pivot when it doesn't work.

S4

[1:22:53] Yeah.

[1:22:53] And then they go, well, we'll get him on incompetence.

[1:22:55] But it feels like you could have just done that from day one, like just trying to get him on incompetence.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:00] The sexual harassment aspect of the plan, yeah, seems like the unnecessary complication that causes more trouble than it's worth.

S4

[1:23:06] And also, she never needed to do any of it if she was just going to make all of it up anyway.

[1:23:13] Yeah.

[1:23:13] Like she didn't need to.

[1:23:15] So maybe she, but maybe she also wanted to because of her last 10.

[1:23:18] No, it's all the old.

[1:23:20] It's muddy.

[1:23:21] It's muddy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:21] The weirdest part is after, okay, so she blows up, she's out, she's fired.

[1:23:27] He goes to her office and they have, you know, a little bit of verbal sparring.

[1:23:31] And he suggests that maybe it was his plan all along to trick her into like this situation.

[1:23:38] Like he makes this inference and I'm like, wait, what?

[1:23:41] Yeah, there's nothing in the movie.

[1:23:43] That's him just trying to be cool, right?

Dan McCoy

[1:23:44] Like he did not have that plan.

[1:23:46] Yeah.

[1:23:46] I think he's just trying to like leave her on a disquieting note.

[1:23:49] Like she has to be worried about it.

[1:23:52] She does.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:52] And she does say a line where she's like, I've already had like five offers since the meeting.

[1:23:57] Headhunters have been calling.

[1:23:58] Yeah.

[1:23:58] And I'm like, what is this?

[1:24:00] Like the sequel?

[1:24:01] Like this is like Jason Voorhees isn't dead.

[1:24:03] Like what the fuck's going on here?

[1:24:04] The sequel.

[1:24:05] But yeah, so she's out.

[1:24:08] Yep.

[1:24:08] Maybe he set her up.

[1:24:09] I don't think so.

[1:24:11] Turns out Michael Douglas doesn't even get the VP job.

[1:24:14] That goes to Stephanie, who has been the mastermind all along.

[1:24:18] She's been sending the mysterious emails.

[1:24:21] A friend.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:22] From Arthur Friend's email account, which I don't know why that had to be part of it.

S4

[1:24:27] That's why I was saying like it could have easily been like a friend at whatever.

[1:24:33] And then it would still work.

[1:24:36] Like you don't need to say a friend if it comes from an unknown sender.

[1:24:38] Yeah.

[1:24:39] You didn't need to play that game.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:40] And it's like earlier on he had tried to track the emails and be like, oh, they're coming from this professor's computer.

[1:24:45] But he's away in Nepal.

[1:24:46] And you find out that Stephanie's son, who is a student at that college, a friend is his mentor.

[1:24:53] And so he was the one using that computer.

[1:24:54] And it's like, it made me so mad.

[1:24:56] Everything in this movie that gets mentioned, except for maybe two things, has to play into this whole plot.

[1:25:00] So like he's trying to get these Disneyland tickets for his coworker.

[1:25:04] Turns out that's the coworker who can get him the video he needs from Malaysia.

[1:25:08] And backup.

[1:25:08] Yeah.

[1:25:09] She mentions earlier that her son is at college.

[1:25:11] Well, that has to play into her scheme to help him through this situation.

[1:25:14] It's just like movie.

S4

[1:25:16] But also, why was he at that all hands on deck meeting?

[1:25:19] Why was he, that son there?

Dan McCoy

[1:25:20] Well, I mean, I guess he knows that she's going to be promoted and he wants to be there for him.

[1:25:25] But did he know?

S4

[1:25:25] Because it was like in 10 minutes, Donald Sutherland is going to announce this thing.

[1:25:30] She was like, I'm about to get promoted.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:31] You need to teleport down here.

[1:25:34] Mommy's mastermind scheme has come to fruition.

[1:25:37] That is a much better title for this movie.

S4

[1:25:40] Mommy's mastermind scheme.

[1:25:42] Mommy's mastermind macaroni rascals.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:44] Yeah.

S4

[1:25:45] Donald Sutherland says like, I was trying so hard to break the glass ceiling, like to hire someone who was a woman that I overlooked and didn't hire who was the best person.

[1:25:56] So he's saying like Demi Moore was the woman who he was just hired for being a woman.

[1:26:01] But I didn't see that there was the best person for the job.

[1:26:05] And then he picks Stephanie.

[1:26:07] And so you're supposed to realize that a woman is a person, could be a person too.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:11] I guess so.

S4

[1:26:11] Stephanie is not just a woman.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:13] She's also a person.

[1:26:14] This is an example of, well, throughout the movie, the movie thinks it is a very smart movie when it's actually a very dumb movie.

[1:26:20] And so it keeps doing things like that where it's like, this will be an intricate little reveal or this will be a lesson, but it's stupid.

[1:26:28] And there's a thing that I, the one thing I'll give the movie credit for is having seen the way tech companies operate publicly.

[1:26:36] I do believe that someone like Demi Moore's character who can talk a good game and cannot back it up could get to that level of power as we've seen in so many tech companies now.

[1:26:46] And then eventually they'll be going, oh, this person, yeah, exactly.

[1:26:49] This person's less flashy but more competent.

[1:26:51] I guess we'll bring them in now to clean up the mess.

[1:26:53] But it is a, the whole glass ceiling speech is just the final, the final make you think that Michael Douglas is going to get the job moment.

[1:27:01] When like he's been proved his incompetence throughout the movie.

[1:27:04] Like the idea that he would ever get this job is insulting to the audience.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:07] Also, like why would they promote him?

[1:27:10] He's like got a chip on his shoulder.

[1:27:12] Like there's all, like he just went through this whole disclosure nonsense.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:14] I'm surprised he wants to stay at the company at this point.

[1:27:18] I mean like now that, you know, his friend is his boss, maybe it's better.

[1:27:24] But it seems like it's been a terrible experience for him.

[1:27:28] He can take the ferry to work.

S4

[1:27:30] It also just feels like nobody, the only person who went down was Demi Moore's character.

[1:27:36] And I feel like there were a lot of people that seemed to know what was going on and how they were setting this guy up to fall.

[1:27:40] Well.

[1:27:41] It felt like there should be a couple more heads that rolled.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:44] The movie clumsily tries to make that point to like to like turn around and like not be sexist at the end and be like, see, it's only the woman that takes the fall for this.

[1:27:54] But it feels so disingenuous at that point in disclosure.

[1:27:59] I, this is also, I wanted to say, it's a small point.

[1:28:01] I don't want to be too hard on like a young actor who's probably directed to act this way.

[1:28:06] But the kid.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:06] Dan hates young, inexperienced actors.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:09] He's always ragged up.

[1:28:10] He's not that.

[1:28:10] I mean, he's like college age.

[1:28:11] The kid.

[1:28:12] Specifically minors.

[1:28:14] Dan hates.

[1:28:16] Who sent the a friend emails, like seems so smug in that scene.

[1:28:21] He is very smug.

[1:28:22] Yeah.

[1:28:23] Like I immediately, I'm like, I don't like this guy.

[1:28:26] His smug smiles.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:27] He does come off as very unlikable.

[1:28:29] That's true.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:30] Okay.

[1:28:31] And then Michael Douglas, what?

[1:28:32] Gets a voicemail from his family that his kids miss him.

[1:28:36] Hooray.

[1:28:36] He wins the day.

[1:28:37] Yeah.

[1:28:37] End of the movie.

[1:28:39] So.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:40] And then there's the mid credit sequence where Samuel L. Jackson goes, have you heard of the disclosure?

[1:28:43] Protocol?

[1:28:44] And he goes, huh?

[1:28:45] And then we're assembling a team of sexually, sexual harassment victims to stop crimes.

[1:28:51] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:51] They did that after all the bloopers from the, and outtakes from the sex scene, right?

[1:28:56] Yeah.

[1:28:57] That's not a sex scene story.

[1:28:58] That's an assault scene.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:59] All right.

[1:29:00] Let's give our final judgments on this movie, whether it's a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie,

[1:29:04] or a movie we kind of like.

[1:29:07] I think those are clear categories.

[1:29:11] But Meredith, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

[1:29:14] I am going to say that, you know, it has some like politics in it that may be a stumbling block for enjoyment of it.

[1:29:25] But if you can look at those as like relics of the time or, I mean, unfortunately not so much.

[1:29:34] But like if there are things that you can laugh at because they're so like poorly handled, if you can get past that part to the delicious, deliciously dumb VR thriller that then lies beneath,

[1:29:48] I would say that this is a good, bad movie because I think it is sort of easy to watch in that it's got like good actors and like slick surface and that 90s vibe of dumb thriller that is fun.

[1:30:05] But, you know, I can understand if you can't get past the other stuff.

[1:30:08] But I would say good, bad.

[1:30:10] Stuart, what do you say?

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:12] Yeah, I think I'm with you.

[1:30:13] I kind of like I wish it leaned more into a sleazy erotic thriller.

[1:30:20] But on the other hand, I do love all the VR and email animations and all that stuff.

[1:30:29] So I don't know.

[1:30:29] Maybe I'm just nostalgic for a simpler age.

[1:30:34] But yeah, I'll say it's a good, bad movie.

[1:30:36] I'm going to say it's a bad, bad movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:38] I found it kind of boring and dull to sit through through much of it.

[1:30:42] But I think it's certainly worth, if there's on YouTube, if you can look up like Disclosure, old technology, supercut, like that would certainly be worth watching.

[1:30:52] Because the VR stuff is genuinely very funny because it is how bad it looks, but how amazing all the characters think it looks.

[1:31:01] Meredith, what do you think?

S4

[1:31:02] I agree about the VR stuff.

[1:31:05] Particularly the first demo that the guy who plays the angel, I think is demo more, is just gold.

[1:31:16] Like when I was trying to look it up online, I kept finding the part where he goes and breaks into the hotel room, and Demi Moore appears behind him.

[1:31:26] Which is funny, but I think the first initial demo is the funniest demonstration of how stupid this technology is in a file room.

[1:31:36] There's also a lot of great mumbo-jumbo when she's making a presentation about like using, you know, harnessing CD-ROMs, PDA devices, and fax, facsimile machine.

[1:31:47] You're like, what are you, it's just garbage gobbledygook.

[1:31:50] I would call this a good, bad movie because I found it very watchable.

[1:31:57] Just the score, the whole, the pacing, the actors, there is sort of a certain familiarity to that time period that feels like a warm sweater.

[1:32:08] But then you watch it with 20, 24 eyes, and you're like, oh my God, this is fucked up.

[1:32:13] And like, where was the, I still am like, where is the lady sexual, where's the, why did it have to be like, but what if it happened to a man?

[1:32:22] That's the scary part.

[1:32:23] Like where, I guess, yeah.

[1:32:25] Disclose her.

[1:32:25] We got she said at least a couple years ago about the Harvey stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:30] Some of which was shot in, what, the Capitol Grill down on Water Street that I, and scenes were shot at the same table I ate at once.

[1:32:40] Wow, wow.

[1:32:41] The tales of Stu's connection to she said.

[1:32:45] It was a specific, we were celebrating.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:47] The Stu shooting locations walking tour, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:49] We were celebrating, and we had a great steak dinner, and the server like clocked us as being industry folks, so she really did it up.

[1:32:55] And then she ended up taking us on a walk through the, like, through the kitchen, and we got to go into the, like, steak aging room, and they're, like, sticking steaks in our face and shit.

[1:33:05] We get home, and Charlene's like, I don't feel so well.

[1:33:07] She takes a COVID test, immediately has COVID, and we're like, oh no, all those steaks.

[1:33:12] Coughed on all of them.

S4

[1:33:13] You'd get it from steak.

[1:33:14] But how did they clock you as industry folk?

[1:33:18] What exactly?

[1:33:19] We were.

[1:33:20] What was the signal?

[1:33:21] Well, we were.

[1:33:22] Were you holding Writers Guild Awards?

Dan McCoy

[1:33:23] We were drinking a lot at, like, six in the end.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:26] He and his wife own a few bars.

[1:33:29] And we were with our business partner, who we also own bars with.

[1:33:32] You mean the restaurant industry folk, not showbiz industry folk.

[1:33:35] Oh, I thought you meant showbiz industry.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:36] That's what I thought you meant at first, too.

[1:33:37] I thought you were, like.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:38] People that don't know me assume that I'm some kind of.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:40] Wearing a hat that said awards season.

[1:33:41] I thought you meant the aerospace industry.

[1:33:43] That's what I misunderstood.

[1:33:45] No, I'm talking about.

[1:33:46] Digicom industry.

[1:33:46] I'm talking about the food and beverage industry, you know.

[1:33:48] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:33:49] First in my heart.

[1:33:51] I will say, going back to.

[1:33:54] Not to jump back to the more germane conversation after Stuart's story of his lunch.

[1:34:00] I have.

[1:34:01] But I think it's the most damning thing about this movie, more than any of the other stuff,

[1:34:05] is like you're saying, Meredith.

[1:34:06] That, like, sexual harassment with women, I guess, was considered so, like, just assumed

[1:34:12] to be so commonplace and so widespread and so normal.

[1:34:15] And would never change.

[1:34:15] And would never change that the idea of making a movie about it did not occur to anyone,

[1:34:20] really, except for 9 to 5, which is a comedy again.

[1:34:22] Right.

[1:34:23] Until, until, until they could say, well, okay, what if it happened to a man?

[1:34:28] Then it's an interesting enough story to make a movie of it.

[1:34:30] Whereas, if it happens to a woman, what are you going to do?

[1:34:33] That just happens to a woman.

Dan McCoy

[1:34:33] That's just what we all know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:34] We're going to make a movie about how people get wet when it rains?

[1:34:36] Like, come on, what are we doing here?

[1:34:38] That's what it feels like, which is gross.

[1:34:39] Yeah.

S5

[1:34:39] Hello, sleepyheads.

[1:34:47] Sleeping with Celebrities is your podcast pillow pal.

[1:34:51] We talk to remarkable people about unremarkable topics, all to help you slow down your brain

[1:34:57] and drift off to sleep.

[1:34:59] For instance, we have the remarkable Neil Gaiman.

[1:35:01] I'd always had a vague interest in life, culture, food preparation.

[1:35:09] Sleeping with Celebrities, hosted by me, John Moe, on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1:35:17] Night-night.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:19] You can't really know if your own show is any good.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:22] So, I asked my kids about ours.

[1:35:24] Is Jordan Jesse Go a good show?

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:26] No, definitely not.

S5

[1:35:28] It's really bad.

[1:35:29] I would say out of ten, maybe like a four out of ten.

[1:35:34] It's just really boring.

S4

[1:35:36] Yeah, zero.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:39] Subscribe to Jordan Jesse Go, a comedy show for grown-ups.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:43] The Flophouse is sponsored in part by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to succeed online.

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[1:37:07] And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Stuart Wellington

[1:37:18] We also have a j-j-j-j-j-jumbotron.

[1:37:23] This message is for Nick.

[1:37:25] It is from Emily.

[1:37:27] And it goes as follows.

[1:37:30] Happy birthday, Nick, a.k.a.

[1:37:32] John, buddy, big guy.

[1:37:35] You're a good, good movie.

[1:37:38] His name is Nick.

[1:37:40] Oh, finally.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:43] Wait, finally what?

Stuart Wellington

[1:37:45] I remembered his name's Nick.

[1:37:46] He drinks at my bar.

[1:37:47] Oh, okay, great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:49] Now is the part of the episode where I, Elliot Kalin, tell you about our upcoming live shows.

[1:37:53] And I do it at the same time we record the rest of the episode.

[1:37:56] It's certainly not a message that was recorded later using information we didn't have at the time we were recording the episode.

[1:38:04] We're all right here in the room together just like normal recording the whole episode.

[1:38:07] Right, Dan?

[1:38:08] Yeah.

[1:38:09] Right, Stu?

[1:38:09] Oh, yeah, dude.

[1:38:11] So let me tell you about it in this perfectly real-time explanation.

[1:38:14] On July 26th, we will be in Boston, Massachusetts doing a live show courtesy of WBUR at WBUR City Space.

[1:38:22] Now, as we know and certainly didn't learn after recording the rest of the episode, that show is sold out right now.

[1:38:29] You can no longer buy tickets to see it in person, but WBUR has opened up the ability for you to live stream it.

[1:38:37] So go to flophousepodcast.com slash events and click on the info and ticks button for that show.

[1:38:42] It'll take you to the page where you can buy a live streaming ticket.

[1:38:44] Now, I should warn you, this is just going to be a pretty basic, straightforward, in-the-moment live stream.

[1:38:51] It's not going to be the kind of beautifully polished, beautifully edited, immaculately shot show that we've been doing with StagePilot lately.

[1:38:58] If you saw our Speed 2 show, you saw how gorgeous that looked, how well put together it was.

[1:39:02] That's thanks to the fine people at StagePilot.

[1:39:03] This is not going to be as polished as that.

[1:39:06] This is going to be a little more ragtag.

[1:39:08] So don't expect the level of production that you've come to expect from the Flophouse StagePilot collaboration.

[1:39:14] This is just us and WBUR live streaming a show that otherwise you wouldn't be able to see because it's sold out.

[1:39:19] So please go to flophousepodcast.com slash events, click on the info and ticks button for Boston,

[1:39:24] and it'll take you to that page if you would like to live stream the episode because you can't make it there in person,

[1:39:30] or you couldn't get a ticket, or you just decided maybe you want to watch it both ways,

[1:39:35] and you'll be sitting in the audience with a computer in your lap live streaming the show as it happens in order to do a lag test, I guess, maybe.

[1:39:45] Anyway, that's what you can do.

[1:39:47] So we'll be in Boston July 26th.

[1:39:48] That show is sold out, but you can live stream it.

[1:39:51] Just go to flophousepodcast.com slash events for more information.

[1:39:56] And now, back to the episode that is being recorded right now and certainly not days earlier before we found out the show was sold out.

Dan McCoy

[1:40:04] Let's move on to letters from listeners.

[1:40:06] This first one is from Paul Lastname withheld, who writes,

[1:40:10] Hey, peaches.

[1:40:11] It was so wonderful to see you all in Oxford.

[1:40:13] I was there for both shows and loved every minute, especially watching Elliot get angrier and angrier during Stu's dinosaurs presentation.

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:21] It made me so genuinely mad.

Dan McCoy

[1:40:25] I really fell for it.

[1:40:26] He was telling a lot of lies about dinos.

[1:40:27] I didn't get to speak to Stu or Elliot, but I did bump into Dan as he was navigating to the venue.

[1:40:33] I told all my friends and family about my exciting encounter, but for some reason, they seemed uninterested.

[1:40:41] I lost my nerve to ask a question during the shows, so I was hoping you could answer them via the good old movie mailbag.

[1:40:47] Dan, what's the status on the Miss That Movie Ghoulies sequel special we were promised?

[1:40:52] Stuart, did you take a pilgrimage to Warhammer World while you were in the UK?

[1:40:57] Did you drag Dan and Elliot along?

[1:41:00] Elliot, not a question, but I was listening to your 99% Invisible Power Broker episode on which you were the last to talk as the episode ended.

[1:41:08] My podcatcher then switched to partway through a Flophouse episode of Sonic 2, just as you were describing Sonic snowboarding amongst some rings.

[1:41:18] The difference in excitement in your voice made me laugh out loud, causing most of the train carriers to stare at me.

[1:41:24] Love you all.

[1:41:24] Paul, last name withheld.

S4

[1:41:26] Can I interject one thing about Elliot?

[1:41:29] Yeah.

[1:41:29] I think you have a fantastically listenable to podcasting voice.

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:36] Oh, thank you very much.

[1:41:37] I appreciate that.

[1:41:38] Incredibly crystal clear.

[1:41:39] Really?

S4

[1:41:40] Yeah.

[1:41:41] I find it's so succinct and crystal clear.

[1:41:44] I don't know.

[1:41:44] I think it works really well.

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:48] I really appreciate that.

[1:41:49] That's very nice.

[1:41:49] You're welcome.

[1:41:50] There was early days in the podcast, there would be a lot of comments online about, I can't listen to that guy with the shitty voice.

[1:41:55] And I'd be like, that's rough.

[1:41:56] But then even just, I was at a children's birthday party on Saturday, and I was talking to one of the birthday kids.

[1:42:03] And she goes, why do you have such a squeaky voice?

Stuart Wellington

[1:42:06] Why is your voice so squeaky?

[1:42:08] That's a good question.

Elliott Kalan

[1:42:09] And I was like, I don't know, I guess it's just my voice.

[1:42:11] But I really walked away from it with a real, that kid did a whammy on my head.

[1:42:14] So I appreciate it.

Dan McCoy

[1:42:16] True.

[1:42:16] Some non-fans have a problem.

[1:42:18] I've never understood it.

[1:42:20] Because I feel like, even on The Daily Show, you used to do all the voiceover for those decider cartoons.

[1:42:26] I think that you have a very clear, very expressive voice.

S4

[1:42:32] I appreciate that.

[1:42:32] And specific, which I think makes you special.

[1:42:35] Yeah.

[1:42:36] Thanks.

Elliott Kalan

[1:42:37] Let's talk more about me and how good I am about that stuff.

Dan McCoy

[1:42:41] Well, we can do it after the show.

[1:42:43] We can pump you up.

Elliott Kalan

[1:42:44] It doesn't really work unless other people hear it, Dan.

Stuart Wellington

[1:42:48] That's the way external validation works.

[1:42:50] You need to be able to show off in front of other people.

Dan McCoy

[1:42:52] Well, I think you're just great.

[1:42:54] You're a friend and you're an inspiration.

[1:42:59] But let's go on to-

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:01] A pal and a confidant.

[1:43:01] Dan, if you threw a party and invited everyone you knew, or if I threw the party and I ever knew,

[1:43:05] who would I see the biggest gift would be from?

Dan McCoy

[1:43:09] Well, I don't know.

[1:43:10] We have exchanged gifts, but we're not so much.

[1:43:14] Probably my spouse would give me a bigger gift than you would or vice versa.

[1:43:18] That's fair.

[1:43:19] Anyway, miss that movie's Ghoulie sequel special.

[1:43:23] I don't know if we'll actually do a special, but I did finally catch up with Ghoulies 2, which I liked better than Ghoulies.

[1:43:30] It gives you more of what you want, which is Ghoulies running around.

[1:43:33] It finally makes good on the promise of a Ghoulie in a toilet, biting someone.

[1:43:37] It has some great 80s lighting and low-budget fun sets at a carnival, which is more fun than someone's house.

[1:43:50] So, yeah, I recommend it to Ghoulies 2.

[1:43:52] And, of course, Ghoulies go to college.

[1:43:54] How can you go wrong?

[1:43:55] They go to college, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[1:43:56] They're finally getting that degree.

Dan McCoy

[1:43:58] Good on you, Ghoulies.

[1:43:59] Stuart, did you take a pilgrimage to Warhammer World while you were in the UK?

Stuart Wellington

[1:44:03] Yeah, I know everybody here is really interested in whether or not I went up to Nottingham to visit Warhammer World while I was in England.

[1:44:13] This trip I did not, so I wasn't able to drag Elliot and Dan with me to learn all about space marines and Warhammer stuff and all kinds of crap like that.

[1:44:22] I did go to a number of shops, including one of my favorite hobby shops in London called the Orc's Nest.

[1:44:28] And in Barcelona, I went to Goblin Trader, which is, I guess, as good as I can get on this one.

[1:44:36] Okay.

[1:44:37] I mean, that's pretty good.

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:38] If it helps, Stuart didn't go to Warhammer World, but I did my equivalent of that, my last day in England, which is I went to go finally see the Crystal Palace Palace dinosaur statues that I've wanted to see since I was a wee boy.

[1:44:50] So that's kind of similar, right?

[1:44:51] Making a kind of pilgrimage.

Dan McCoy

[1:44:52] It's pretty similar, yeah.

[1:44:55] Second letter goes like this.

[1:44:59] Dear Peaches, congratulations on the recent cameo of The Peach Pit in Furiosa, A Mad Max Saga.

[1:45:05] It's always a delightful surprise when it appears in the Flophouse podcast feed, but you can imagine my shock to see it take up such a prominent position in a big blockbuster film.

[1:45:15] I had the twin delights of learning the origins of the iconic Imperator Furiosa and my favorite podcast within a podcast at the same time.

[1:45:24] How long has our favorite Flophouse after show been planned to be a symbol of Furiosa's lost home?

[1:45:31] What was it like filming a podcast within a podcast within a movie?

[1:45:34] What clues did we miss in previous Peach Pit episodes that foreshadowed the shocking reveal?

[1:45:39] I look forward to seeing how the Peach Pit lore expands in the future.

[1:45:43] Best wishes, CM, last name withheld.

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:45] I think I see the mistake that this letter writer is making, but I want to make sure you guys see the same mistake before I point it out.

Dan McCoy

[1:45:52] What error is that?

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:53] That would be confusing that the Peach Pit, a podcast with a physical object.

[1:45:59] There's an actual pit from inside a peach.

[1:46:01] That makes sense.

Dan McCoy

[1:46:02] That makes sense.

[1:46:02] It gets planted in a very dramatic fashion.

Stuart Wellington

[1:46:04] Yeah.

[1:46:04] I mean, I think it was all inevitable.

[1:46:07] Yeah.

[1:46:07] Great moments, I guess.

[1:46:08] Me and George Miller.

[1:46:10] I like that Furiosa movie, though.

[1:46:13] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:13] Yeah, so did I.

[1:46:14] We do have a professional connection in that my first comic book work for Marvel, the art was done by Brendan McCarthy, who did the storyboards for Fury Road, and his credit is one of the screenwriters for Fury Road.

Dan McCoy

[1:46:28] So that's kind of a George Miller Flophouse connection.

[1:46:30] Yeah, a little bit of a connection, sure.

[1:46:31] Well, let us move on to our final segment, which is recommendations of movies that we enjoyed that maybe would be a better use of your time than, in my case, seeing Disclosure for, I think, the third time in my life.

[1:46:45] Oh, really?

[1:46:46] Maybe four.

[1:46:47] I don't know.

[1:46:48] I think that's more than the people who made it watched it.

[1:46:51] You know, the accumulation of years, you know?

[1:46:55] Anyway, it's not an excuse.

[1:46:58] I'm going to recommend-

[1:46:59] No, it's not.

[1:47:00] An animated short, a long animated short.

[1:47:03] It's 20 minutes.

[1:47:05] It's on the Criterion channel.

[1:47:07] It's called Asparagus.

[1:47:10] It's a very sort of non-linear, sort of non-narrative collection of images.

[1:47:21] Many of them phallic, the asparagus of the title, and others more feminine.

[1:47:30] The animator, whose name I really should look up, and I will have for you in a second.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:38] I looked it up.

[1:47:39] Dan, you want me to tell you?

[1:47:40] Yeah, tell me.

[1:47:40] It's Susan Pitts.

[1:47:42] Susan Pitts.

[1:47:43] Yeah.

[1:47:44] Oh, Susan Pitt.

[1:47:44] I'm sorry.

[1:47:45] Susan Pitt.

[1:47:46] Pitts was the possessive form of her name.

S4

[1:47:48] Yeah.

[1:47:48] Wait, did you say there's phallicness to the penile ones?

Dan McCoy

[1:47:53] To the asparagus.

[1:47:54] The penile ones?

[1:47:54] And then there's also some, you know, there's also like vaginal imagery.

[1:48:00] It's all very like, you know, it's like a phantasmagora of imagery.

[1:48:09] I've read stuff that suggests sort of a deeper sort of feminist meaning that I, you know, have to be honest.

[1:48:17] I could not derive myself from viewing it, but I am recommending it because simply as a piece of animation, it's one of the most gorgeous, like hand-drawn things I've ever seen.

[1:48:29] And it's very sort of stream of consciousness, just images sort of floating up from the nether reaches of the brain kind of feel to it.

[1:48:40] That it's just beautiful.

[1:48:41] And it's short, so.

S4

[1:48:44] I was trying to figure out yesterday.

[1:48:46] Yeah.

[1:48:46] In Italian, if like penile, like fruit and vegetables was tended to be more masculine because everything's masculine and feminine in Italian.

[1:48:58] And like, or, and if vaginal or like lady part, like fruits and vegetables looking things tended to be more like end in an A and O for boys.

[1:49:12] Like I was like trying to figure out if they actually went along those lines a little bit.

[1:49:17] Like, and it didn't really pan out.

Stuart Wellington

[1:49:19] I'm going to jump on the grenade here, guys.

[1:49:21] What's a vaginal fruit or vegetable?

Dan McCoy

[1:49:26] Well, I think a peach tradition.

[1:49:28] I mean, it's become to learn, like, come to be more butt, you know, associated through emoji.

[1:49:34] But I think a peach would be one.

S4

[1:49:35] But I would even say like an apple feels more like a female than like banana.

[1:49:42] Or, I mean, this is different, but like clams and oysters, you know.

[1:49:49] Sure.

[1:49:49] The fruit of the sea.

[1:49:51] Fruit of the sea.

[1:49:52] But.

Dan McCoy

[1:49:53] You cut open a papaya.

[1:49:56] It seems more vaginal.

[1:49:57] Oh, also the vagina fruit.

[1:49:59] Breast things.

[1:49:59] The Brazilian vagina fruit looks very vaginal.

[1:50:01] Cantaloupes, you know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:03] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:50:04] So I guess.

[1:50:06] Classy.

[1:50:06] We've really cracked it here on the Flop House today.

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:08] I think much as men have positioned themselves as the default, I feel like it's like long,

[1:50:13] thin things are penile.

[1:50:15] And so anything else that's not long or thin becomes branded as vaginal because it's not.

[1:50:20] It doesn't look like a penis.

[1:50:21] That's kind of my understanding of it.

S4

[1:50:23] Yeah.

[1:50:24] Oh, I was also looking at snakes.

Dan McCoy

[1:50:30] I know that you're like.

[1:50:32] Wait.

[1:50:32] I know from your Instagram that you're a very busy person.

[1:50:37] But this is so funny.

[1:50:38] It's like, what a rich, full life.

[1:50:39] Or no, that was Monday.

S4

[1:50:41] That was Monday.

[1:50:42] Yeah.

[1:50:43] Gotta start the week off.

[1:50:44] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:50:46] Okay.

[1:50:47] I guess.

[1:50:47] What do you want to recommend now?

[1:50:48] I'm going to recommend a movie.

[1:50:51] I'm going to recommend a movie from a couple of years ago by a Japanese director.

[1:50:56] I'm probably going to mess this up.

[1:50:57] Ryosuke Hamaguchi.

[1:50:59] Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy.

[1:51:02] It's a triptych of three short films.

[1:51:05] Kind of loosely related.

[1:51:06] All dealing with love and relationships.

[1:51:11] They're all about two or three character short stories.

[1:51:15] And they're all kind of really interesting.

[1:51:17] The second one in particular, dealing with a college professor, I found to be really moving and memorable.

[1:51:27] But all three of them are really great.

[1:51:29] This came out the same year as Drive My Car, his three-hour epic.

[1:51:36] And I think it's nice to see a director making short stories that have a similar level of impact, at least for me, as something so long as Drive My Car.

[1:51:48] So Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy was really great.

[1:51:50] Check it out.

Elliott Kalan

[1:51:51] You guys both recommended things based around shorts.

[1:51:53] I probably should do the same thing, but I'm not.

[1:51:57] Instead, I'll follow Stuart's lead.

[1:52:00] This is a real long one.

[1:52:01] I'll follow Stuart's lead.

[1:52:02] I'm also going to recommend a Japanese movie from a couple years ago.

[1:52:04] By a couple, I mean 27 years ago, 1997.

[1:52:08] This is Hanabi, or as it's translated in the United States, Fireworks.

[1:52:12] Oh, yeah.

[1:52:12] The movie that kind of made Takeshi Kitano as respected a figure in film as he is today.

[1:52:20] Where it's technically a crime drama, but so much time and effort is put into the small moments that are going on in the characters' lives or their emotional kind of travails.

[1:52:34] And the crime aspects of it are abbreviated to the point almost of like being surreally kind of dreamlike in just kind of things that punctuate scenes.

[1:52:44] And I thought it's a movie that the ending is questionably bleak, but I think it's a really beautiful movie.

[1:52:52] And I like it as a movie that is almost daring the audience, how far are you willing to go with me in denying yourself the thrills of a crime movie and looking at instead kind of the effects that those thrills have on people.

[1:53:08] And so it's one that I had not seen in a long, long time, and I found that as a grownup, I enjoyed it more than as a young person who was expecting more of a straightforward crime movie.

[1:53:21] But it's really good.

[1:53:21] So that's fireworks.

Stuart Wellington

[1:53:23] I feel like that's a movie where the moments of violence are so extreme that everything else is filled with this like tension and dread.

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:30] Yes, yes.

[1:53:31] But also kind of like a hopefulness, like you see a character kind of learning how to express themselves through art in a way that they never thought was possible.

[1:53:40] But it's right.

[1:53:40] But the violent scenes when they happen are very violent, you know, and they happen quick.

[1:53:45] So you're like, what?

[1:53:45] What did I just see?

[1:53:47] Meredith, would you like to recommend something?

[1:53:48] Would you like to join us in the world of recommendation?

S4

[1:53:50] Sure, I will.

[1:53:51] I...

[1:53:52] It has to be a Japanese movie or a short.

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:55] That's the only thing.

[1:53:57] Right, right, right.

S4

[1:53:58] I...

[1:53:59] Well, the movie I most recently saw was Renee Elise Goldsberry, who plays Wiki in Girls5eva, made a documentary about her life during, you know, before Hamilton, getting Hamilton, and when it was like the biggest phenomenon in the world.

[1:54:18] And so if you're interested in Hamilton, and even just like a diary of an actor's life, and also, you know, the struggles of like starting a family, and also being part of this like massive juggernaut that's like where you're going to the White House every other day and all that stuff.

[1:54:39] It's quite interesting.

[1:54:41] It's interesting.

S4

[1:54:41] There's a lot of amazing footage, and it's really moving.

[1:54:45] Like I definitely found myself like tearing up many times during this thing.

[1:54:49] And also like Renee is just such a wonderful human and such a powerhouse talent.

[1:54:55] Like it's just interesting to watch her, period.

[1:55:00] So I would recommend that.

[1:55:02] I don't know what the distro buter will be because it was just at the film festival, but I assume it'll...

[1:55:08] What's the title of it?

[1:55:09] Keep it in your...

[1:55:10] It's called Satisfied.

Dan McCoy

[1:55:11] Satisfied.

[1:55:12] Oh, like the song.

[1:55:13] Like the song, yeah.

[1:55:14] Keep it in your brain's listeners and watch for it when you can.

[1:55:18] And this dovetails nicely into the next thing, which was me.

[1:55:21] I was going to ask you to plug your show.

[1:55:25] And I wanted to say with her, you know, like I'd seen her in Hamilton, but you have a lot of people on the show who I've seen be funny before, you know.

[1:55:37] So like, and they're tremendously funny, but it didn't like...

[1:55:41] It wasn't like the shock of the new.

[1:55:42] Like she's so funny on the show, and I hadn't seen her get a chance to do that before.

[1:55:45] Same with Sara Bareilles.

S4

[1:55:46] Like people didn't know she was funny.

[1:55:48] So it's like real delight when you're like, oh, I didn't know they could do that too.

[1:55:53] I thought they could do that one thing really well.

[1:55:57] They could do two things?

[1:55:58] It just makes me mad.

[1:55:59] Surely not.

[1:56:00] They could do two things?

[1:56:01] It is kind of gross.

[1:56:01] I can only do one thing.

[1:56:03] They could do two?

[1:56:04] Yeah.

[1:56:04] Talent level's gross.

Stuart Wellington

[1:56:06] Like I'd only seen Dean Winter in Oz, and then I see him in this, and I'm like, wait, he's funny?

Dan McCoy

[1:56:12] So yeah, I mean, the whole show is on Netflix now.

S4

[1:56:15] It is.

[1:56:16] Three seasons on Netflix.

[1:56:19] And if you love rapid fire hard jokes, I feel like you'll, in the vein of like Kimmy Schmidt

[1:56:27] or 30 Rock, I think that you'll enjoy the show a lot.

Stuart Wellington

[1:56:31] Yeah, it's such a funny show.

[1:56:32] It's so funny.

[1:56:32] Yeah, and the like joke density is so intense.

[1:56:35] Well, that's...

[1:56:36] You want to rewatch episodes because you missed stuff.

Dan McCoy

[1:56:39] That's one of the levels I wanted to sell it on because I know that Elliot, especially

[1:56:44] being like a comedy professional and a comedy snob, sometimes rails against like, it's like,

[1:56:50] yeah, that show's okay.

[1:56:52] But like, I want jokes.

[1:56:53] I want jokes.

[1:56:54] And like, Girls 5, I love a show where you get jokes.

[1:56:56] Yes, that's what I like about Girls 5, I love a show where you get jokes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:56:56] Yes, it's super joke dense.

[1:56:58] And you're watching it, you're like, why am I watching this show?

[1:57:00] I'm watching it because it's really funny.

[1:57:02] Like, I know I'm going to laugh when I watch this show.

[1:57:04] As opposed to when people are like, you should watch this comedy.

[1:57:06] It's really good.

[1:57:06] And I watch it and I don't laugh a single time.

[1:57:08] And it's not just because I'm a hardened snob, but also I'll be like, there weren't very

[1:57:12] many jokes in that comedy, like, that everybody seems to love.

[1:57:16] But this is a show that people love because it's funny and it deserves to be.

S4

[1:57:19] Oh, thank you.

[1:57:20] Thank you very much.

[1:57:22] And I, you're all so funny.

[1:57:24] So I appreciate the fact that you like the show.

[1:57:27] We all have to know how you like the show.

[1:57:30] Yeah.

[1:57:31] You are.

[1:57:31] High praise coming from you.

[1:57:34] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:57:34] Yeah.

[1:57:35] And our listeners get to hear you call us funny.

[1:57:38] So we get that thing Elliot was talking about.

[1:57:40] So thank you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:57:41] We've all got validation externally.

Dan McCoy

[1:57:45] Yeah.

[1:57:46] So we should sign off there.

[1:57:48] Thank you so much for not only being on the show, but trucking out to Flophouse Studios,

[1:57:54] aka my office, to record it.

[1:57:57] What neighborhood is this?

[1:57:58] We're in Kensington.

[1:58:00] Oh, Kensington.

[1:58:01] The edge of Kensington.

[1:58:02] Gotcha.

[1:58:03] Ordering Windsor Terrace.

[1:58:04] Windsor Terrace.

[1:58:05] I thought we were in Windsor Terrace.

[1:58:06] Yeah, your street address.

[1:58:07] No.

[1:58:08] And what's the pin?

[1:58:08] What's a list of your weaknesses, Dan?

[1:58:11] Yeah.

[1:58:11] Which windows don't lock?

[1:58:12] Which windows don't lock?

[1:58:14] Just sort of like, you know, like make me feel like maybe you don't like me.

[1:58:18] And that'll probably destroy me pretty quickly.

[1:58:23] That's, yeah.

[1:58:25] Anyway.

[1:58:26] Yeah.

[1:58:27] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:58:27] Make me feel like I have done something wrong.

[1:58:30] Uh-huh.

[1:58:30] And that you won't accept my attempts to make it good.

[1:58:34] I will admit Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[1:58:35] Then allow Dan's brain to devour itself.

[1:58:37] Yeah.

[1:58:38] I feel guilty about this.

[1:58:39] But my favorite part of our whole England trip, I think, was when we were hosting that

[1:58:42] screening of Spice World.

[1:58:43] And you were bending over backwards to be complimentary.

[1:58:46] And then you, in complimenting the Spice Girls, you referred to them as manufactured.

[1:58:49] And the audience all booed you.

[1:58:51] What?

[1:58:51] And the house of the scene crumbled so quickly.

S4

[1:58:54] Oh my God.

[1:58:55] I would have.

[1:58:55] Can I just say, if it were ever on the table, I would have flown myself to London to be part

[1:59:01] of that episode.

Dan McCoy

[1:59:02] Oh, now we know for next time.

S4

[1:59:04] Yeah.

[1:59:04] For next time.

[1:59:05] They do a sequel.

Dan McCoy

[1:59:06] Yeah.

[1:59:06] It was in the context of me being like, I don't care whether they're manufactured.

[1:59:09] No, but they were manufactured.

S4

[1:59:10] They were literally assembled.

Stuart Wellington

[1:59:13] Oh, I just got a message.

[1:59:14] Boo.

[1:59:15] Oh no.

[1:59:16] England is booing.

[1:59:17] It's from England.

S4

[1:59:18] It's not like a.

[1:59:20] It's not a diss.

[1:59:21] It's just the truth.

[1:59:22] Yeah.

[1:59:23] They didn't form themselves.

[1:59:24] You know.

Dan McCoy

[1:59:25] Well, that was the fun.

[1:59:26] The organizer came up to me afterwards and said, I'm sorry for booing you, Dan.

[1:59:30] I agree with you, but it's just so much fun.

[1:59:33] Yeah.

[1:59:33] It is fun.

[1:59:33] It is fun to boo.

Stuart Wellington

[1:59:35] Yeah.

[1:59:35] Dan got to be booed by people.

[1:59:37] I got to fix a toilet right before we went on stage.

[1:59:40] It was great.

[1:59:41] We all did our whole energy.

[1:59:42] Sounds amazing.

Dan McCoy

[1:59:44] Anyway, thank you for being here.

[1:59:45] Thank you to our network, Maximum Fun.

[1:59:47] Go over to MaximumFun.org to check out other great shows.

[1:59:50] Thank you to our producer.

[1:59:51] Alex Smith.

[1:59:53] He goes by the name Howell Doughty.

[1:59:55] He just dropped an album.

[1:59:56] It's great.

[1:59:57] You should check that out.

[2:00:00] What's the name of that album, Stuart?

[2:00:02] I Need Help.

[2:00:04] I listened to it, but I could not remember the title.

[2:00:07] It's a very funny album that's also good music.

[2:00:11] But that's it for this episode.

[2:00:14] So, for the Flophouse, I have been Dan McCoy.

[2:00:17] I'm Stuart Wellington.

S4

[2:00:18] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[2:00:20] And I'm Meredith Scardino.

Stuart Wellington

[2:00:22] Bye.

[2:00:23] Bye.

[2:00:24] We've been disclosed.

Elliott Kalan

[2:00:35] I want to hear.

[2:00:36] So, this is – I was doing Kermit's press conference where he's announcing that they have fired Sam the Eagle for its involvement with January 6th.

[2:00:45] Can I hear some?

[2:00:46] We all hoped that it would turn out not to be our former colleague, but after reviewing the videotape, it seems very clear.

[2:00:54] And we will not be taking questions at this further time.

[2:00:57] That is my full announcement.

[2:00:59] That's –

[2:01:00] But all the other Muppets are starting to doubt.

[2:01:03] They're starting to buy into the conspiracies of it.

S4

[2:01:05] Elmo say.

[2:01:06] Elmo didn't know.

[2:01:12] Maximum Fun.

[2:01:13] A worker-owned network.

Dan McCoy

[2:01:15] of artist-owned shows

[2:01:16] supported

[2:01:17] directly

[2:01:18] by you.

Ep.#427 - Disclosure, with Meredith Scardino

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