The Flop House - Episode #364 - Bliss, with Chuck Bryant
Episode Date: March 12, 2022The always affable and delightful Charles Wayne "Chuck" Bryant of the blockbuster-huge Stuff You Should Know podcast joins us to talk about the very odd Bliss, from Amazon Studios, a "what if The Matr...ix was not-so-secretly Requiem for a Dream" freakout, starring Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek in a series of silly hats.Wikipedia entry for BlissMovies recommended in this episode:Near DarkOslo, August 31stSwoonFive Corners
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey, flop house listeners, I know you're expecting to hear Dan's voice say on this episode,
you will hear that.
Don't worry.
It's going to be amazing.
We're going to have a really funny joke off of it that I don't know what it is yet.
But first I wanted, this is me, Elliott.
I want to talk to you about the flop house live Masters of the universe show, which is coming
directly to your computer screen.
If you buy a ticket to it, that's right.
One week after this episode comes out Saturday, March 19th at 9 p.m. Eastern 6 p.m. Pacific,
we are going to talk about
1987's Masters of the universe so far the only live-action He-Man movie ever made
Probably it'll continue to be that way, but we'll see there's gonna be a lot of exciting things in the show
Original PowerPoint presentations we've never done before. I'm gonna tell you some embarrassing stories of my childhood in my presentation
That are He-Man related and then we're gonna talk about He-Man
We're gonna take Q&A from the audience.
If you've seen our live shows before, you know they are really fun.
If you haven't seen them before, this will be a good one to see.
The show is only going to be available for one week.
That's right.
If you miss the show, you can still watch the recording for one week afterwards.
If you have a ticket, but we hope you can see it live.
If you can't, please buy it anyways.
You can access the recording.
That's March 19th, Saturday, 9 PM Eastern,
6 PM Pacific tickets will be on sale
up to the very moment of the show.
So please buy yours now,
but consider buying it later if you decide to,
but I'd rather you buy it now.
And now without further ado,
let me tell you where to get those tickets.
The flop house dot simpleticks.com,
that's right, the flop house dot.simpletix.com,
that's where you get your tickets for the Flophouse Live, Master's in Richo, $10 a ticket is
a pretty good deal.
You're going to get a lot of entertainment for your dollar.
And now on to the show, Dan, what are we watching on this episode?
On this episode we discuss, Bliss, the movie that dares to keep kids off drugs. Hey everyone and welcome to the flop as I'm Dan McCoy.
Hey, it's me, Stuart Wellington.
Wow.
Hey, I like Helen over here.
And joining us for this very special episode, we have a star of podcasts.
That's right.
We are joined by Chuck Bryant, host of Stuff You Should Know, formerly of movie crush,
a podcast that all three of us were on that was about movies.
Hey, Chuck, thanks for joining us.
Yes, but I fired myself, so I don't do that show anymore.
Oh, I'm so sorry that you fired yourself.
Are you really nice about it? I don't even know show anymore. Oh, I'm so sorry that you fired yourself. Were you released nice about it?
I don't even know who's doing the show now, to be honest.
No, the show retired, but after the the flop special, the tri-fecta, the trio, it was hard
to continue to be honest.
Yeah, we just say we tend to ruin things.
We tend to kill a lot of things.
Did I, I told you guys right about like, it was literally the day that the dissolve went under like
dissolved. I like Keith had reached out about like doing more stuff with us after we did
that week on taking a poem one, two, three. And I was like, oh, I should get back and touch
with him. And I said, Hey, you know, do you want to do something else? And he's like, uh, maybe you should look at the front page of the, uh, the website today.
I'm like, oh, I'm sorry.
Yeah.
What a great, uh, site that was anyway.
Check.
Check his, uh, yes, podcast royalty.
I was looking up, uh, chart rankings, uh, to make my, to confirm what I knew already.
Because Dan is a petty person.
And we are, we are, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's impressive.
We are in and out of the top 100 comedy podcasts.
More often we hang out in the top 200, but two is bigger than one.
When I saw him, when I saw, he was, the stuff you should know was in the,
within the top 30, I can't remember exactly of podcasts overall.
That is all podcasts.
And that, that is an amazing number considering as people like to joke, everyone has one now.
So congratulations.
And thank you for wasting our time, wasting your time on our show.
That was our regular segment, Dan McCoy,
awkward pod ranger. He delivers the compliment in a way that feels like he's angry at somebody.
I'm trying to get into our guest over here. I was trying to build up just how impressive
that is. So you were in the top 30, but you know, that's cool. We were in the top 202.
So it's, you know, it's not like, not like I, that's cool. We were in the top 202s. It's not like, not like Zuzvets.
I'm trying to give a sense of relative importance
to the podcast universe,
whereas we are solidly in the like, yeah, yeah.
People who know it's like us, right, zone,
whereas Chuck's in the zone of like,
may have actually heard of this podcast.
Oh yeah, well Chuck, Chuck, like a network broadcast show.
And we're like, you know, it's one of the higher up cable channels, you know, it's not,
it's not speed vision, but it's not the discovery channel, you know, it's somewhere in the
game.
Yeah, somewhere in there.
Well, this is so much for joining us.
Yeah, man, this is a dream come true because, you know, I am a, a flopper, big time flopper
for many years now.
It's one of my favorite shows.
Awesome.
Thank you.
It's my happy go to place when I'm feeling blue.
So would you say that it's where you find your bliss?
Oh God.
Oh, I got really nervous today.
I was about to start singing blue, double D by blue.
Yeah, I know it's like to feel blue, double D, double D.
Thank you Stuart.
Dan was angry at me for this movie pick.
He just texted me yesterday, you son of a bitch.
And then I said, I haven't watched him watching tonight and he just said, steal yourself.
Dan is not going to like my feelings about this movie.
I'll just tell you that right off the bat.
But we'll get into it.
Yeah, yeah, a little bit.
I will be the dissenter, I think, of this one.
Man, should we fire up the engine on this thing?
Let's do it.
Yeah, let's say what we do on this podcast, shall we?
This is a podcast where we watch a bad movie
and then we talk about it.
In this case, we watched a movie, the movie, the movie Bliss,
which stars Owen Wilson and Selma Haik and a bunch of hats,
a parade of hats.
Yeah, they don't wear that many hats, a parade of hats. Yeah.
They don't wear that many hats.
They wear more hats than you would expect.
I would say.
That's a good point.
If your hat expectation was zero to three, then you will be surprised.
And if you're trying to watch the movie in advance of this episode, remember it's Bliss
2021, not the other movies named Bliss.
I know there was like a horror movie on Shutter that I think I recommended and there's probably a bunch of other movies
called Bliss. It's you know one word title. Stuart are you gonna be handling the
summary for this one? Oh you know it Elliot. Was that did I come on too strong
there? Was that no no that was the level that are shows open. Yeah that's great.
Right down the middle. Okay so this this movie, Bliss, stars Owen Wilson
as a character named Greg Whittle,
which, as you know, is means little in Baby Talk.
Yep.
And there's actually got a Whittle about him, yeah.
Yeah, he's sitting at his office desk at his job,
which is at a business called Technical Difficulties.
And he is drawing, he's drawing these like black and white pencil sketches of a beautiful,
well-appointed Mediterranean villa that looks a lot like the Sappy-N's a level from Hitman.
So I think that helps Dan and Nelly picture it.
Sure, exactly.
I mean, we saw the movie, so we don't really need to picture it, but the audience at home,
if they know the Hitman games, that'll certainly be helpful.
Yeah, so he's a bit of a dreamer. He's got some trouble in his marriage. His daughter is,
I mean, his marriage is over. He's divorced. The whole to that trouble.
The way I'm right. The worst trouble. Doesn't get more trouble than that.
A pool hall hasn't been built in his marriage. That's not the trouble we're talking about.
That's true. I mean, I get the point that starts with D that runs a T that stands for trouble.
I feel like at the point of divorce usually most of the troubles over, yeah?
Yeah, maybe so maybe the problems were all done.
Yeah, exactly.
So his marriage is doing great is what you're saying.
He's, he's a, he's a marriage, yeah.
That's the way the cycle of entropy works.
Okay, so you know, he's a bit of a dreamer.
His daughter is graduating and so she calls him and is
urging him to get a shit together so she can come to her graduation. His job, the office
seems to be in chaos and there's a lot of like ringing phones and shouting while he sits
in this office procrastinating and drawing and not taking pills that he has a prescription
for. And it's, I think the movie is trying to convey something
that is fairly simple, but they draw it out
and make it very annoying.
How do you guys feel?
Well, I was very confused,
but this movie stressed me out right from the start
where Owen Wilson, he has just told that the boss wants
to see him and then he did do there's around for like eight
minutes.
He did there's around.
He decides that's when it's time to call the pharmacy to re up his prescription and
that call goes for a long time.
And it was, I think they're trying to get across yet this guy does not have his act together
and he lives in a world of stress.
But the way they've done it is, at the time, I was like, what are we doing
here?
Like, come on, everybody.
And then once the movie settled in on me, I was able to look back at it and go like,
you know what, that was kind of a funny way to get it across, that he is deliberately avoiding
seeing his boss even as the receptionist keeps angrily calling him.
And he's like, yeah, yeah, what other tasks can I get into right now? I just know that like even, you know, even in a job that I am not worried about getting
fired from, which spoiler alert is what's about to happen.
If the boss calls me, I jump out of my chair and for fear of being fired, for angering
the gods.
Well, I think this, it becomes a little bit clearer.
There's a within the next couple minutes,
you'll realize that this movie is a bonkers universe movie
and is not a naturalistic movie.
And so then this all makes more sense.
But at the time, you're like, dude, what's going on?
Like, what are you doing?
Did you guys see something that really annoyed me
about this movie all throughout was,
it was
humans kept doing things that like humans don't even do.
Like did you see how he, did you see how he checked it to see how many pills he had?
Like first of all, if you're on medication, you like you know probably when your cycle
is and when you're when you should re up.
He looked at it, he stared at the pill bottle, he shook it and then he held it up to the
light. Yeah, he looked at it. He stared at the pill bottle. He shook it and then he held it up to the light
And I was just like this grip probably said that he realizes he's low on pills and he's like how would I do that?
And it was that's annoying me immediately. That's how I check like the liquor level when I'm doing inventory on like a Don liquor bottles. I have to hold it up to the light and just guesstimate it
My guess is that in the script said like he opens the bottle and pours three pills into his hand.
And then on set, Owen Wilson just could not get that.
He's like, I can't take out these new caps open.
Like, I just, the bottle won't open.
And I don't, and it takes 79, the director was like,
just hold them up to the light, just shake it all the light.
He's like, what if I do that?
What if I just shake it and hold it like,
that's what I'm telling you to do.
So I can't get the cap, I just can't wow it's like wow
wow and then the prop I went oh I got the Owen Wilson proof caps
I forgot I got I forgot the old Wilson
group cap yeah so he so he leaves to go to see his boss and as he walks out of
his office he has left his wallet behind which all of a sudden like fuzz
his out like it's some kind of digital artifact.
And I'm like, what is going on?
We're in a matrix, baby.
Back to serenity.
Oh, I was like a ghost is stealing your wallet.
Oh, okay, he did.
Yep, Samara is grabbing it.
So he goes to meet his boss, his boss fires him for having low productivity.
And then he stands up too fast.
And his boss flies backwards,
cracking his head open on his desk and dies.
Oh, and Wilson then props the bomb and I said,
okay, now I think I understand the way
of like this movie is.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I gotta say, it happens so quickly too.
As probably the dissentra here,
like this is the part that gave me hope.
This was like the part of like, oh yeah, yeah, I'm in for it.
And the allian students do weren't lying on their, on their text, this is the part that gave me hope. This was like the part of like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm in for it. And they all, and Stu were lying on their, on their, on
their text. This will be great because he also stams up so unnaturally. Like, like, they
are less than an inch away from each other. And he pops up like a jack in the box. And
the man immediately dies. He kills the man. And then he picks his boss up and he props
him up against the window
with an ingenious little bit of prop work
where he threads his boss's shirt sleeves
through the latches on the window.
So it looks like his arms are up,
like he's doing a field goal.
Yeah, so it's just in the natural pose
of a man pressing his entire face in front
and palms against a window
and then draws the curtains
across. It was really, really so.
Perfect crime. Yeah. So he quickly exits the building. He leaves. He goes to his regular
dive bar across the street. He orders a double whiskey meat. Any meats? Isabel Clemens,
who is played by Salma Hayek, who is a
interesting way to pronounce it.
Weird.
Hayek Hayek.
Hayek Hayek.
I usually, I've heard of the fight.
What the fuck's wrong with you, Ellen?
Hayek, but Hayek, you could try.
Maybe that sounds more like a realie.
I know, it's a realie.
That's all I know.
Because you're brilliant.
Look, I'm trying to loosen up on Dan.
What is up, Ellen?
Yes.
If I ease up on Dan, it means I'm trying to loosen up on that. What is up, Elliot? If I, if I, if I ease up on
Dan, it means I've got a hard up on used to. So, okay. So,
some of Hank is playing, would have, like an eccentric,
artistic, unhoused lady who can manipulate objects and seize the
world as either real or fake. She manipulates objects with her mind.
We, I mean, not.
With her mind, yeah.
Yeah, she doesn't just reach out and pick and say,
she's not just, she's not, she's not,
she's not just,
I mean, she could do that,
but it's not that she's just reaching out
and feeling with ash trays and things like that
and pouring all the salt and salt, shakers, you know.
It's true, I do manipulate objects daily.
It's just a normal person.
And so she wants the day I try to manipulate
an object of some kind, just to make sure my hands
don't work, you know.
Yeah, sometimes people say I'm manipulating too much,
but I say that right.
Well, that particular object,
you're manipulating too much.
Yeah, how are your eyesight fading is, yeah,
you're manipulating that one object a little too much.
Worth it.
You're like, you're like, but I look at the things that I'm using to help me manipulate it. Wait a minute.
My imagination, of course. I found a loophole, God. So from her window booth seat, she has discovered
that Owen Wilson has killed his boss and hidden the body because of course he
propped him against a window and what can you do through windows and one of the best shots
in the movie actually things. You can see them. Yeah, that they look across the street
and just see his body press against the window. He's like, right, right, that's one of
those new two-sided windows where you can look at both sides. Okay, so she's like, okay, I will, I will help
you get out of this jam, but you need to go to the bathroom and get a necklace that's
filled with orange crystal drugs from my boyfriend. And he's like, oh, wow, okay. And he goes
and does it. And luckily, the boyfriend is passed out. Yeah. She sets it up like it's going
to be a big challenge. And he's passed out. Boyfriend played by a past guest of the show, Ronnie Chang also a friend, a nice man.
That was very good. We're doing the same.
Was that Ronnie Chang who was playing the boy?
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's the same guy.
That's the same guy.
I don't remember seeing his face when he's passed out. Was it Ronnie?
I'm pretty sure it's the same.
Okay. Nonetheless.
I mean, it does really matter.
I could because I remember saying myself, oh, there's Ronnie.
Considering, considering Ken, though, is the character they get these crystals from throughout
the movie, it makes it could be. That makes perfect.
I will admit, when his name came up in the credits, I was like, Ronnie, Ronnie is doing so
much work. Like he's in every movie that I see.
That was doing great. Great. Yeah.
We should have on the show again.
He's too big for us.
So, I realized we had a guest today and I shouldn't talk about other people who are more
famous than the guest.
He returns the necklace to Selma Hank who or Isabelle, I guess, who then takes out one
of the, yeah, or high, both of them, whatever it does matter.
Here's how I try to remember it. Is it's like I'm staying at the Selma high yet? takes out one of the, yeah, or high, both of them, whatever. It does matter.
Here's how I try to remember it.
Is it's like I'm staying at the Selma Hyak.
And then I just instead of ending it,
Hyak, I end it with an X sound.
Like X versus Sepper, which is the other thing that you think I'm like,
I'm staying at the Hyak to see X versus to see X versus Sepper.
And I remember it's X and not because of acts body spray. So that's
the simple new Monica used to remember Selma Hayak. I liked it sometimes I go Selma and I are going on
a kayak. And that's how I remember it too. So he returns a crystal necklace back to Isabel.
She then berates him for not stealing the wall as well. So he goes back to the bathroom. And while
he's on his adventure on his wallet quest, she doses his drink with a crystal. Uh oh, she then gives him a speech
and then uses her magic to make the dead body of the boss fall out the window and look
like he committed suicide. Case closed. And we know it's case closed because there's
a surprisingly large amount of news coverage of this of this random guy jumping out of
a window. They're like, we get ongoing coverage
throughout the movie of the investigation
and that they've deemed it suicide.
And this would be at most like a 20-second story
on the local news, maybe, you know.
Did you hear the line that his annoying,
you know, the colleague that came to his office
at the beginning and like, really aggressively started
like trying to see his drawings?
Did you notice the line when the guy landed on the sidewalk?
No, I want Wilson runs across the street in this guy,
yelled, he just committed suicide in the middle of the day.
inexplicable why he would point that out.
That's a nighttime activity.
I know.
Don't you know?
Oh, man.
Okay, man.
Okay.
So, uh, they make their escape before they get found out and, uh, Isabelle makes, uh,
Greg pawn his cell phone at a pawn shop and they end up having to sell because he lost
his wallet.
He can't go back to the hotel he's staying in and he doesn't have ID, so when they sell his cell phone,
it is for only $10.
And Greg, of course, says, wow,
they really grind you down for that no ID thing.
Which is one of the many observations
that Owen Wilson makes to all of Isabelle's wild stuff.
Yeah, his responses are always more long lines of like,
when you're hanging out with your dad
and he sees someone with like spiky hair
and he's like, I guess somebody's going to the barber today.
Like that level of like, I guess they're really grindy
on that no idea thing.
I feel like that's some of the Owen Wilson charm
shining through what's basically,
like it's a very, you know,
the character is going through a lot. So the performance is a, a, a, press of performance,
but it's like, you can't hide that little bit of Owen Wilson that wants to comment on
everything like he's Popeye. And it, it provides an interesting foil to, uh, some my,
hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi,
hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi,
hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi,
hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi,
hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi,
hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi,
hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, he was very charming. Do you guys know, have you seen, so I've seen, I saw this in Target and I was so, I was like,
what who would buy this? And they have, it's a 12 inch action figure of Owen Wilson's character
from Loki and he comes with a clipboard and I think a mag, a jet steam magazine and it's like,
what would you do with this? It's just a guy in a suit. Like, why would you own this? And,
do you have it like a child, like a grandma will be like, why would you own this? And, and the idea that like a child like a grandma
will be like, I got you one of those Marvel toys and this guy. I think you're operating
on a very outdated sense of who's buying the action. You got to be like, what's the over
under on the number of butts that thing is going up? Well, I could see that. If you're buying
it as a marital aid, then sure, I can understand that. You have to be the biggest Marvel completist
to be like, you know what I need?
I need you, Owen Wilson's business manager.
He's not a businessman, you know what I mean?
He looks like one.
He's a detective.
He's a cop.
But he's not a time cop that like,
where's the time cop uniform?
I mean, he's just in a suit.
He can't even split.
He splits or anything.
Oh.
Well, that's most of the test too.
If you're going to get on the civil service exam to get into the time cop academy is whether
you can do splits.
Yeah.
I saw I forget which is I think it was kickboxer.
I watch kickboxer recently guys and there's a part in it.
I don't know if you've seen kickboxer.
I don't know if I'm telling you stuff.
You already know where he's getting trained. I'm telling you stuff to y'all. I'm in the ears. I'm already in. I'm already in the ears. I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears.
I'm already in the ears. I'm already in the ears. I'm already in the ears. I'm already in the ears. I'm already in the ears. They have to explain like no normal human could do splits like this. No. Yeah, you got to pop those legs out.
So he goes back to her, like her camp that she later refers to as her tarp home, which
is pretty funny.
It's like a series of tents that are buying overpass.
And they're going there to hide from the law.
He can't go back to his hotel, which is where he's been staying since his divorce.
So he sticks around.
They share a stir fry. They have a drink, they're watching TV, which
I think they can only watch on mute.
She specifies he learns that he's innocent.
She teaches him how to light candles using her magic.
And he says, are you kidding me?
Finally, I don't have to walk across the room to light candles.
I mean, that is a huge help.
Like let's say you're trying to have Hanukkah from a distance.
There's a lot of...
Look, I'm a fan of candles, Elliot.
I have one lit right now across the room, Stuart can confirm to make the place smell good,
but it's not a big part of my life.
Look, here's the scenario.
I'm going to give you two scenarios.
One, you're taking a bubble bath.
You go, oh no, I forgot to light that candle.
I can really relax and get the spa experience.
I'm going to put it up on all wet.
Then you do it from across the room.
Say scenario number two, you're at a friend's house.
They're having a party.
You have to go to the bathroom.
So bad all of a sudden.
And you realize, uh-oh, I can't get up to light that candle
because I'm stuck to this toilet
and people are gonna smell it.
Again, light that candle from across the room.
It's an amazing attack.
It's an amazing ability.
And it can be yours for only $49.99
if you get the semi-ac,
I don't know.
I light a candle from across the room.
I...
For what's that at a one time cost?
No, it's so weekly subscription.
No, no, I don't, I don't, I don't think I'm interested.
Okay, so he shows off, shows her his sick drawings of, his pencil drawings of various homes
that he wants to live in.
She seems already kind of familiar with these and she asks where the dream home is and
he responds right here in the brain powered mind of Greg Whittle.
And that line of ropes, because she then begs him to kiss her. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also,
and it's a little bit of, it's a little bit of foreshadowing about, about some brain power.
Mm-hmm. Uh, can I point out one other terrible line real quick? Please.
Just like this, I know this guy supposedly, like a pretty good science fiction writer,
but did you notice what Samaheik was doing?
Literally, when she said the words,
I'm living off the grid.
She plugs in the string lights.
Now, I was like, I don't know if this guy knows what
living off the grid means,
when she says it literally as she's plugging in electricity
for her beautiful string lights and her dark.
And after they've been watching television, yeah, it was pretty great.
Anyway, just another ludicrous line.
That's my segment ludicrous lines.
That's ludicrous line.
She's CB.
So meanwhile, we see his, that Greg's daughter is kind of trying, going around town, she tracks down her brother
and tries to convince him to help her find their dad that she doesn't trust what her father
has been telling her.
And her brother does a pretty passable Owen Wilson impression.
I thought that was pretty great.
Okay.
And then time seems to have passed because we now catch up with Greg
and Isabelle and they're at the roller ring. Oh boy. This is an amazing sequence.
I believe now lay it on us. Lay it on us. By now, by now Greg is like full on skater
boy. He's got a t-shirt. He's got a long sleeve underneath that thing. And they are roller
skating around half. Are they wearing hats yet? No, they don't have hats on their hair.
So at the end of the scene, the hats are at the end of the scene.
Yeah.
Yeah.
His hair is definitely floppy.
So they roller skate around.
As the sense of the flop house.
Yeah.
Thank you for getting hair that works with the podcast.
Yeah.
They take some orange crystal pills.
They fuck in the bathroom and they use magic to terrorize the other skaters, including
some old people.
They're just. They're just skating in Dylan Trenchcoats and ill fitting fedoras.
They're tripping skater after skater. And first it's like someone who, who rushes past
some and then it's a guy who grabs a woman's butt and they're like, he's a, he's a vigilante
using his telekinesis to trip people. And then it's just everybody. And it's like, I don't
like those old people over there. Okay. They're, they're not real. Go ahead and trip them
and he trips them.
And then it cuts, eventually it cuts them.
And they're standing in a roller rink
where everyone else is lying on the ground prone.
I assume killed by Owen Wilson's mind covers.
Well, it basically became Z screen king of the rink
and they stack up the bodies and jump on them.
And then like Benny and June are like the teens
and the 1979er videos thing. They run out laughing and steal some over old people's then like Benny and June are like the teams in the 1979 or video is the thing they
run out laughing and steal some over old people's hats and coats and just run out like.
So they go running out and the police are showing up at this moment and they stand watching
the cops drive away with the suspects that the police have captured and all of a sudden
they see that the suspects are them in the back of the police car and instead of them standing on the sidewalk, it's some other people
wearing trench coats and fedoras.
So we're like, what is going on?
Is this movie?
This movie isn't like a normal movie at all.
That's one reaction.
The movie's a little twisted.
Yeah, this movie's a little, this is what is this?
Is it a Kormack McCarty right this?
Cause this thing is twisted.
It's fucking twisted, dude. So they've been are they're
arrested and they're released. They're released and almost goes as if I told them my name.
I didn't. And she goes, I didn't tell them your name either. And it's like, well, it's
not like when you get arrested, they go, what's your name? And you go, I'm not going to
tell you. And they're like, then I guess we can hold you. We don't even know who you
are. You can go.
You found the one little in the criminal justice system.
Yeah, I mean, there's right here on the book,
you can't arrest someone without a name.
Okay, off you go.
They both like look and behave as if they're tweakers, right?
Like they're okay.
And it's also the middle of the day still, by the way,
this packed roller rink of adults and old people on walkers, it's still in the middle of the day still, by the way, this packed roller rink of adults
and old people on walkers, it's still in the middle of the day.
I guess they just wanted you to know what?
No, and just the idea that an old lady with a walker is entering the ring, not just the
building, but she's about to step on to the rink where the skaters are.
It's a moment where you're like the more you pull the threads out from it, the less
it anything makes sense on it, the basic level.
By one, by one dying wish.
I remember when I was young, girl, I skated so beautifully.
Surely nothing will happen to me that's bad at the roller rink today.
No one's ever been hurt at a roller rink.
So time seems to continue passing. His daughter is going to run down the
hotel looking for him. That's possibly just because time is an illusion that our consciousness
have consciousnesses have developed to her. Let's let's let's. That sounds like stuff
you should know, Chuck. What do you think? All I know is it's constantly daytime in this
world. So. So now at this point, Greg and Isabelle
stop off for some artisanal chicken sandwiches.
Artisanal is an interesting way to describe it.
You just stole my ludicrous wine.
That's one of the orders.
Yeah.
Oh, that's true.
Yeah.
Well, there are now what artisan
carved the chicken?
It's two artisanal artisanal sandwiches, two orders of fries and two drinks and it's $12.
So I'm sure it's very high quality stuff.
Yeah.
Meanwhile, this is that she goes, get me a chicken sandwich and he's like, okay, and then
he watches her runoff, get into a car with a John and then drive away.
And it's like, it takes him a while.
It takes him a while for him to realize that his beloved that he's been with for who knows
how many days because again, it's always daytime that he's just murdered a roller-rink
full of people for is sex working on the side.
Yeah.
Either seems to be working as a, yeah, either seems to be working as a full service sex
worker or possibly just tricking them and attacking them, which she does later, which later happened.
But he still tries to get those sammies.
Yeah, he gets them.
And he gets them just not the way he expected.
Yeah, that's right.
The hard way.
Yeah, yeah, she asked for it.
They're in a relationship, it seems.
They're soulmates.
That's specifically what they say.
So while he's at the restaurant, his son happens to be there and his son witnesses him behaving like a, like
kind of a tweaked out drug guy.
And what says is he does not have the money.
He doesn't have the $12 on him to buy these sandwiches.
He goes, maybe I'll order him later, because if the money will miraculously appear in his
hand, you know.
Yeah.
And he goes and hides behind the chicken sandwich restaurant and then the employee who he spoke to previously just gives him a bag of old chicken sandwiches
And which of course he's very excited about which are no more than two hours old though. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, that's fine
He pointed out the
Screenwriter felt the need to point out the company policy for how long the chicken sandwiches had to sit because the guy says, you know, at the two hour mark when they've been sitting, we can bring them
out to you.
Yeah.
Very important.
Now, you have to understand they're no longer considered artisanal at this point, right?
If you still want them, formerly artisanal.
And he just throws them away.
I don't want them.
No.
No, this is, it's a much more positive experience than, is it slam a jamma?
Is that the one where he's sitting outside the back of a grocery store eating a, eating moldy bread while crying?
Was that the one that's right?
This one, Owen, is very appreciative and some high it comes back and he goes,
they're cold, but they're good. And it's like, okay, he's, he's let maybe this artisanal, you know?
Yeah.
Just as cold and maybe better.
He's let maybe this artisanal, you know? Yeah.
Just to make it better.
So they need to, they need to get more of the, what the yellows, the oranges, the crystals.
The yellow crystals.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So they go to her drug dealer.
So she has to, she meets up with him and her connection is played by Ronnie Cheng, playing
Kendo, who is some kind of a drug scientist. And while while
she's doing that Owen Wilson is outside and he gets offered a variety of slang drug terms
and then shows off his butt. Amazing. One of one of my favorite parts of this movie was
when the drug dealer inexplicably just pulls his pants down as he walks off. That was... That was... That was... That was... That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was...
That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... That was... signature movie does that in everything he's in? Well, it's one of the things where it's like, it's like, do you want any drugs? No, I don't
want to. You don't want any drugs. You want any now? Well, now that they've seen your butt,
yes, I do want drugs.
I missed that he was a direct either. So I assumed, and maybe the still, maybe the still applies
that it was some sort of come on for other services.
It's possible.
It wasn't familiar with all those,
the slang terms to you.
Yeah.
So, hey, in that case, I mean, yeah, like,
it's tough if you don't know the slang.
Okay, so when you go to in and out,
and you don't know the off menu,
like, and you're like, I just want 12 burger patties
on top of one another.
Yeah, man.
And you please put it on, put it on the menu
so I know how to order it, please. Don't treat this like, like don't treat this like
respise like with code words. This is a speed easy. A burger speed easy. There's nothing
illegal about these hamburgers. So just advertise them. Just tell me, I want to give you money
in exchange for 12 hamburger patties stacked on top of each other. So just like tell me
how to do it. Yeah, you're like, is it a urtle?
Is that what it's called?
Just tell me.
It's the same way every, every airport in America
seems to have different rules for whether your shoes go on
or off the conveyor belt and the metal,
in the metal detector or the, the,
the skim machine.
And it's like, just tell me,
like don't yell at me when I do it wrong.
Like just tell me what to do.
Yeah, that's like, I, you know,
whatever,
it's a whole thing to different places.
Like they have different stuff.
That's fine,
but the level of anger sometimes
when you do it wrong,
and it's just like,
man, it's different all over the place.
Just let me take my shoes off.
It's fine.
You guys don't,
you guys aren't,
you guys don't have known traveler numbers yet.
You haven't applied for the. Oh man.
You're lazy to this on my part.
Oh man.
I thought you had to be a gnome to do that.
You know, it's gnome travelers.
No, like gnome chomsky.
Yeah, you got it for free.
Yeah.
No chomsky is really, he's such a controversial gnome.
What more controversial than other gnomes, you know?
Yeah.
Okay.
So, uh, while he is waiting outside, uh, his daughter Emily finally tracks him down.
She tries to convince him to come with her and to get cleaned up.
But he wants her to wait for Isabelle.
So Emily's like, no, I'm not going to do that and just leave.
Well, in this one, he goes, he goes, he goes, no, I'm going to make it to your graduation.
And she goes, graduation was two weeks ago, dad.
Yeah.
And he is noticeably upset for a moment, but it's, it's on Wilson.
He's never that upset about much of anything in the movie. He's just kind of like takes bad
news a little roughly and then and then gets back to his main thing. Yeah.
He's hanging out with Isabelle. He also describes what graduation is earlier in the movie.
I don't know if you remember that. Another ludicrous line. He's talking about looking for
it. Another ludicrous line. That's the thing for it. He says,
you went, yeah, I'm going to go, I'm going to watch you walk across the stage and in your
cap and gown and get your diploma handed to you. I'm like, what? Who is writing this movie?
Well, that's for aliens who may be watching the movie. That's what it felt like. There
are a lot of things in the movie where they'll just throw a thing at you
and they'll be like, you get it right.
But then yeah, the most basic aspects of modern life, they're like, we better explain
what this anyway.
People need roofs to live under so that rain doesn't hit the mother sleeping.
Do we should explain that?
I like that explanation of why we have.
Roots.
It's one of them.
Rain doesn't get them.
It's a big one.
So Isabel returns with the, the, the crystal drugs.
Some guys in a van start to hassle them.
So Owen Wilson takes a whole handful of pills and then crushes it with his telekinetic
powers.
Yeah, it's like a cure.
Yeah.
That was the guy, the guy in the van was that the same guy that that tried to seduce
Owen Wilson with his butt and the promise of drugs.
That's a thing.
It all blurs together, Elliot.
I can't tell.
I couldn't tell.
I wasn't sure if it was the same guy or not.
I guess this is a real, it was Ken Doe, the passed out boyfriend situation for me.
If he stuck his butt out the window instead of his face, I probably would have recognized.
And then started talking about it like Ace Ventura.
Oh man.
The thing is that stuff is still funny.
Yes, still hilarious.
So he's like, oh excuse me, I need you to butt out of my neighborhood.
And I've got a piece of waving up on around to this butt.
Unless you want to buy some drugs.
You better get out of here.
You're going to be a rectum.
Wait.
I guess I need some work on as puns of it.
Can I ain't a seal of question?
Oh, God, stop it.
Yeah.
I do enjoy watching Stewart laugh at it.
Yeah, like when Stewart was Stewart's fake laughter is a joy to me.
Yeah.
Greg wakes up in the camp and he packs his stuff, including his drawings and goes to a community
center to call his daughter from a pay phone.
He leaves a message.
When he returns, Isabella is kind of freaking out, worried that he's left her and she's concerned
about their dwindling drug supply and she's behaving like she's going through withdrawal at
this point.
Yeah.
So she thinks he is too attached to his daughter who is not real. So they're going to need to take a
different kind of crystal. They need to take a bunch of blue crystals that you put into like a
metal tube that goes up your nose and you each have to take 10 of them and that will take you out of
the simulation that you're in as long as you're real and not fake like all the other people.
So but they don't have exactly 10. So they take a partial dose and they squirt it up their nose and wake up in the future.
That's right.
They're in a laboratory, all connected through their noses to a giant thing called a
brain box filled with brains.
Other people including Ronnie Chang.
Yeah.
Ronnie Chang is also connected to this.
Isabel tells a lab tech.
Isabel, who is Dr. Clemens
at this point, tells a lab, a bunch of jargon to a lab tech that implies that this is one
of many simulations and they are forced to eject and that there's a few people that are
in this simulation, they're real, and everybody else is an FGP. That stands for fake generated
person.
Yeah. That stands for fake generated person.
Yeah. Now, Elliot, this is the part, this, this whole segment of the movie, yes, is the part that angered me the most.
Because the scales have fallen from your eyes and you see the walls.
Because now you know, you're like, oh, wow, I know it, I know what reality,
I know the higher reality is.
I should have taken the right pill.
The exact opposite is, is in fact, there's case.
I knew by this point, it is clear.
It should be clear to anyone viewing this film.
This is a film about these people who are down and out.
They are engaged in a shared delusion spurred on by the circumstances in their life and
their drug addiction.
And now we go full into fantasy mode for a very long period of the movie.
And I guess the part that angered me about it was just like, yeah, okay, I know that none
of this is real.
Why are we spending so much time in this universe?
It is this this sequence, I actually like a lot of stuff.
And I mean, I'm going to say spoiler to foul judgments.
I actually like this movie a fair amount.
I think it is an unsuccessful movie,
but I like some of the things it does in trying to pull off
this trick that it doesn't really pull off particularly well.
But I think you're right, this sequence is too long,
but I like how there are certain things in this sequence
that are a person who does not know what they're talking about,
it's an idea of what a utopian future would be.
So there's a part where there is a bell is like, there's three things that made the future
perfect.
One, automation, two, asteroid mining, three.
And I forgot what the third one was.
Sympathic biology.
She asked them, she's like, one of the three things can you guess?
And I'm like, I'm not.
Sympathic biology.
And it's like artisanal chicken.
And those are the kinds of things that,
like those the kinds of buzzwords that like a person might hear
and in their psychosis or in their, you know,
the distortion of a drug mind would try to tie together
into some reality or like she,
later she goes, your invention, the thought visualizer
and it's like the screen where you think things
and they appear as a cartoon.
And it's like, yeah, I believe this is like
someone who's not a scientist idea of what science might be like in the future.
It's like a baby. I do think it was funny though. Like the third thing was like asteroid mining.
Dangerous game reaction was I never would have thought those. I never in a million years would
have said those ones. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's true. You wouldn't have no one would have.
Oh, sorry to say, Ted. I just, you know, when he it's true. You wouldn't have known what it was. Yeah, I'm sorry, I just let you try.
I just, you know, when he asked about the thought visualizer,
she says, you know, I'm waiting for the more
the obvious explanation that this movie does over and over.
And she just goes in her great summer hike, I said,
it's a thought visualizer.
And that's all she says.
Yeah, that's all she says, because they don't,
they don't really know what it is.
We're in a pickle, like that's the other says. Yeah, that's all she says. Because they don't really know what they're doing. Except for wearing a pickle.
Like that's the other big like line is they show everything
in the thought visualizer except the most,
like I guess the best joke in the thought visualizer,
which is wearing a pickle,
which I assume is them literally in a pickle,
but it's never shows it.
Yeah.
And that like they assume that you,
they're gonna let your own brain,
your own brain powered mind to do the work on that one. Yeah, you're like, is that you they're gonna let your own brain your own brain-powered mind
right?
The work on that one.
Yeah, you're like, is that a kosher pickle?
Is that a half-sour?
Right.
A half-sour?
What kind of pickle is it?
Or that spoiler alert, I assume for what stores gonna say later that they go to a big
scientist party and they meet Bill Nye there because he appears on a television
movie.
And who's really funny in this?
And it's like, and it's like, yeah like, yeah, this guy's not a scientist.
I mean, also what's his name?
That, that was a lot of fun.
That was a lot of fun.
Slavoy Zizek is in there, and I don't believe
that Owen Wilson would have heard of him.
But I know the filmmakers did.
But if a person was like, a regular person
who's not plugged into science would be like,
yeah, I went to this big science party and you know, who's there? Bill Nye.
Because he's the most famous scientist. Like, I'm surprised Neil deGrasse Tyson didn't
show up because you all you have to do to get him in your movie is just say the words
Neil deGrasse appears before you and says, okay, I'm wrong.
So we, we're jumping ahead. So they're currently in a weird, futuristic university. Everything
is marble, everything's white or beige in addition to like the people. Yeah. Again, looks
like Sapienza. Yeah. In addition to the people walking around, there's also holographic projections
of people walking around. This was this was my ludicrous line that I like to hear. He goes,
he goes, what's with all the ghost people or hologram people? Like he's got to head to his bets. They might be ghosts.
Right.
And also the hats get a lot better in this world.
Oh, they're much cleaner, nicer hats.
Yeah, those are carbon free hats.
Those hats aren't contributing to climate change.
Yeah, finally.
So they explore, though, like the waterfront part of the town,
and Owen Wilson gets really excited for olive oil,
at which point Isabel says, put that brain boner away.
Unbelievable.
Yeah, and there's a,
and there's these, they're all these like, I don't know,
it's a ridiculous idea of what a utopia would be like,
they've got olive oil here, we've got to get it for the house.
Yeah, put that brain boar away.
Like we've got olive oil at the house.
Like it's like gallons of it. Yeah, like it's the, you know, there's that old John
Malini joke about how Donald Trump is a homeless person's idea of a rich person.
Rich, like, yeah, I'm going to have a big gold building with my name on it.
Like, this is that this idea of a of a utopia where he's rich is that he has gallons of
all oil. It's like, I don't know, I liked all that stuff, but it does go on for too long.
Goes on for a long time.
So they also point out in the distance, there is a hotel that had been featured in his
drawing, the hotel Pleiades, which is what it says.
Pleiades, what a beautiful name.
Play at ease.
And I'm like, that's, I don't think that's what that means.
What's going on?
She says, she says, what better named for a hotel with an observatory?
And they never go to the observatory.
There's no reason for it to be there.
Like, I don't, it's just, it's such a strange detail to go out of your way to Comaton and
never do anything with.
Yeah.
It was really weird.
But at least at this point in the movie, we know I, Owen Wilson signed on because he
read the script and he said, so I'm going to go to Italy and make out with Selma Hayek a lot.
Okay.
Yes.
I mean, I don't know.
It'd be hard for him to say no to it to that project.
Yeah.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For even the character in the movie, there's worth reasons to ruin your life.
Sure.
Okay.
So they're hanging out in their villa.
His memory hasn't returned strangely.
It should have returned, even though they're out of the simulation.
And then we cut back to the simulation where his daughter Emily is still looking for him.
That's strange because that's just the simulation and she's an FGP.
What's going on?
Uh, Salma explains about the three things that caused this utopia.
Again, automation, synthetic biology and asteroid mining.
Uh, I'm sure you guessed all the listeners guessed.
They're getting really good stuff.
She's done too.
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, that's a utopia.
They, she pulls out a TV screen that is the thought visualizer that has animation similar
like the fallout video game.
And you like tell the TV what you want and it'll show it to you, right?
It's all, it's incredibly useless because it's just, it's just visual TV what you want and it'll show it to you, right? It's all it's incredibly useless because it's just it's just it's just
visualizing what you're imagining at the moment. He's like, he's like, oh,
wow, like a tiger riding on the beach. And there's a dinosaur in a bikini.
And it's like, okay, there's a like it's not that useful.
You can cut out the middle man in this. Yeah,
I don't think about the thing. And that's what it looks like.
She goes, she goes, and now it's, this is what we're going to do. My favorite one, we're in, say we're in a pickle. And he says it may laugh, but you don't get to see
the screen. Yeah. And then later Bill and I is like, Hey, have you tried it with we're
in a pickle? Yeah. So they decide to have one more day in paradise, because she wants
to go back into the simulation. He's like, no, this is amazing. Why would we do that? So the side have one more day in paradise. They ride a boat. They
again put on some nice hats. They get off the boat, immediately go into a mixer. So you
know it's paradise. It's a mixer between artists and scientists. Bill Nye shows up. You
suggest that her research isn't doing so well and then Isabelle and Greg get into
a fight.
We have the philosopher talking about turtles all the way down.
Meanwhile, they're being observed by a pair of holograms that look a lot like his FGP
daughter.
What do you guys think?
It is.
It is.
It's exactly who it is.
Good work, Colombo.
Greg, Greg doesn't want to go back in one more thing.
You this looks like a picture of you. Yeah, it is a picture of me. Okay.
Well, case closed case closed. You are you. Yeah, I just want to go back in.
So he, uh, Greg doesn't want to go back into the simulation.
So he convinces Isabel to present her findings on stage. She says, as long as he'll sit and be interviewed for it. So they do this big
presentation. The signs describe it as the ugly simulation process.
I'm not quite sure what is supposed to be demonstrated here. Like he says a thing. And then she, and then I guess he also says the thing
that's more true, like her science allows us to hear that.
I didn't really.
Well, it's a mood altering thing.
The idea is that you get so used to paradise
that you start to nitpick about the tiny things
and it's no longer satisfying.
But then you spend a little time in the brain box
experiencing how crappy life used to be.
And when you come back out of it,
you feel great and you appreciate things again.
So she's like showing this,
she asks him, hey, how's life?
It was before and after interview, yeah.
Like the first interview followed by his like ex-ex-ex-ex.
Yeah, so she asks him, she's like,
how's life?
And he's like, it's amazing.
I love everything.
And then she shows the old interview, pre-brain box. And she's like, how is everything? And he's like, it's amazing. I love everything. And then she shows the old interview pre-brain box.
And she's like, how is everything?
And he's like, I can't get the pool temperature right.
This place is fucking sucks.
Like, it's the idea is, it's essentially the children's book.
It could always be worse.
But in an incredible science fiction scenario
where you put yourself through a crappy place
that when you come out, you're like, you know what?
Paradise is nice.
Maybe it doesn't matter if the pool is a little cold, at least I'm not
living under an overpass in a kind of tent city, shoving crystals up my nose, you know.
Well, it's true. It's true. It's like a rich guy's yelper review of some really awesome place,
basically. Yeah. Yeah. Basically. He's, and during the interview at one point, he gets distracted by the holographic projection
of his FGP daughter, Emily.
But for all intents and purposes, this presentation goes on.
She's, she's, she's, he used them as a successful example of the experiment, and the crowd goes
crazy, like they're loving it.
It's also, it's a hilarious presentation of science because it's like, she could have
just said, hey, pretend that you really like stuff now.
Like there's no date.
So she's showing the point.
And there's not, you would have to do a study of many people
under control circumstances.
It's like, well, let me, you don't think it works.
Well, let me ask my husband and lover if it works.
Yeah, I think it works.
Then you must be a genius.
Like, it's not even at the level of teaching Peter Boyle
had a singing dance to put it on the wrist.
It's not even at the level of teaching Peter Boyle had a singing dance to put in on the ritz. It's not even at that level of like scientific evidence.
So during the after the presentation, mixer, he tracks down the hologram of his daughter,
who suddenly becomes real, and she urges him to come back,
and that she's concerned for him, but he's confused. And then she gives him the crystal necklace.
And then she's telling some kind of a story
and it is summarized with braids, not brains.
It feels like a weird improv.
Yeah.
So she wants him to choose between the two worlds and the simulation starts to blur into
this futuristic world.
Sometimes the wall looks like a rundown slum.
Other times it's this beautiful, I guess, like university.
He takes an orange pill and starts to use powers again, pushing, making a way for Isabelle
so she can escape the
press of riders. And everything starts to evolve into chaos. They need to get back into the lab
and jack back into the brain box. So they can get the 10 crystals, which is the only place to get
the blue crystals. You need to go back into the brain box, which is where they make the blue crystals,
and they need to take 10 each or else it won't work.
Yeah.
The only way to get out again, this is Dan, as you mentioned, the drug addled dementia
of a man who having a psychotic break.
But yeah, they have to go into the brain box so they can finally escape the brain box.
Now was this the part where they had the sort of scene where they were running on the
rooftops together?
Yes.
Oh no, no, no.
So there as soon as they jack back in. Yeah, get in.
All right. Well, they're like, they're like, they're like running through the plaza and
like garbage is appearing around them. Not the band. That would be amazing. Just like,
you know, trash. Okay. Well, are you ready with, did you hear what check set? Are you
ready with the jingle? Oh, yeah, yeah, wait. I'm trying to remember. Oh, yeah, okay. So, hey, this is ludicrous.
Get ready for another ludicrous line sponsored by me.
Ludicrous. Okay. Now you do.
Well, I didn't want to jump ahead, but it's when they're running on the roof.
And it goes really fast. I don't even even even notice it.
But he says something about like, well, shouldn't we have figured that out
before people started shooting or something? And then someone high goes, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, like, well, shouldn't we have figured that out before people started shooting or something?
And then someone high up, meh meh meh meh meh meh meh meh meh meh.
She's just like, it's so weird.
And I even played that part for my wife this morning, like three times and we were just
dying.
And it's clearly ADR, like they were like, well, she's got to say something there because
she has no line and like, no snappy comeback.
Maybe she could just make fun of them. I love that moment because it was like she by that point, she is, so the first half of
this movie is trying to set her up as like this, basically like a, the kind of nightmare version
of it of a manic Fixie Dream girl. And then she is just so mean to him, the moment like from that
moment on. And like she's, she has made his life a nightmare. And he's just like, uh, maybe you shouldn't have killed that guy. And she's
like, me, me, me, me, me. Like, just adding, adding like childish teasing on top of it.
It was so weirdly out of place in a movie that didn't even make sense. So it should have,
yeah.
Yeah, they're back in the simulation. They start to use their powers to cause all kinds
of havoc, cutting people's throats, throwing stuff around.
They run into Kendo who keeps calling her Dr. Clemens and he starts to reach for something
she claims it's a gun.
So she blasts him.
Ronnie Chang falls down dead, turns out he was a reaching for a gun.
He was reaching for blue crystals.
So yeah, they escape over the rooftops.
They, they're on the run.
They need to get back to their tar poem as she calls it.
And they have a gun at this point too.
They have tricked a, she has, she has gotten into a car with a John and then, and then they
beat him up and they take a gun and a wallet from it.
Luda Chris line though.
Yeah.
Did you catch it?
Oh, again, this is me, the rapper Luda Chris.
I'm also an actor and I'm back to introduce another Luda Chris line.
It's a Luda Chris line from Chuck.
When she gets in the car with the John, she says like, you know, what do you want?
And he says like every man would say he went, how about a BJ and a finger in the butt?
I mean, I got to say a man who knows what he wants.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I respect the specific, I mean, who knows what he wants. Yeah, I respect the specific order.
And you know, that's a fine thing to want.
I was kind of confused, like it seemed like this transaction
was gonna happen in the car.
And that's like a hard physical thing to do.
I feel like, I don't know, in the compliance,
Stuart Stewart's like, no, if you're creative about it,
sure it's like, I you ever been in the car?
I mean, the worst thing that happens
is her hands gonna fall asleep
because the weight of him on her arm
was just putting a finger in his butt.
But you know,
yeah, sure, true, true.
And it was everybody,
it's like he's ordering, he is,
it's like he's ordering our chit.
We should diagram,
we should use our thought visualizing diagram
that you have.
But it's like, it's like,
only if it's in a pickle.
Yeah.
But the way that maybe that's what in a pickle means is a finger in a butt. That's what it is. Okay. But only if it's in a pickle. Yeah.
But the way that maybe that's what in a pickle means is a finger in a butt.
That's what you see.
But the, the, it's like he's ordering off the menu at, at the restaurant.
How about, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,
DJN, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,
DJN, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, DJN, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, sure. Okay way. Sure. The cops haven't surrounded their tarp home. They realize they actually
don't have enough crystals for both of them to get out of there. They only have enough for one of them.
And so, the first is like, well, I'll just take them then. Oh, yeah. That's my favorite part. He's
like, all right, well, I'm going then. Sorry. That's like, I stay here. I'm going. But then he's not so unshiverless for long.
So she takes the drugs, she distracts the cops before squirting the blue crystals up her
nose and giving him enough time to escape.
He goes running away in a pretty interesting long take, like a long single shot of him,
like running, running away.
I thought that was going to go. Yeah. And then he of course immediately runs all the way to a rehab clinic where he checks
himself in. And at his first meeting, he says that he believes he has a daughter. And then we,
so later this one with his daughter, my daughter, and I believe her, I think it's how he puts it. Which is an unusual opening thing to say.
It's not quite a ludicrous line, but it isn't out of the ordinary line. Before this, so
just there's a moral, I feel like that the movie gives earlier, a little bit earlier, when he's
arguing with Isabelle, that I feel the movie doesn't really earn, where he's saying with Isabelle, that I feel the movie doesn't really earn where he's
saying to Isabelle, he's like, well, I'll use those crystals then.
He goes, no, wait, you use the crystals, but first kill me and all wake up in the real
world.
And she goes, I don't know.
And he goes, well, you said that's what happened when he killed Kendall.
And she's like, yeah, but I don't really know.
Like, she's just going to tell you that she probably did kill Kendall.
And so he's telling her that, you know what, actually,
I also like the idea that he's like, yeah, just, just use a rock and bash my brain.
Yeah, I'm like, that's, that's intense, dude.
Like, if I'm playing a video game and I have to do that, I'm uncomfortable.
And he knows he has a person, he knows he has a gun, too.
So to, like, do it fast or do it slow, but you got to kill me.
Let me Maybe just use
that rock. You know, he's like, you know what? That world's beautiful, but this world is beautiful
too because you never know what's going to happen. It's so unpredictable. You know, anything
can happen. And that's beautiful. And I was like, okay, if that's the moral, the movie
is pushing, then I don't, I don't think the movie has earned that moral because this has
been an unpredictable movie. But it's also, his life is just a nonstop spiral into chaos.
There's never, you know, there's very little, there's very little magic going on between
him and some Hayek in this, in this real stimulation fakes real world, right?
In the grim world.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, which is clearly the real, real world. Wait, yeah, yeah. So, which is clearly the real real world.
Wait, what? It's so real real world. The real real world. Yeah, yeah, because people are stopping polite and they started being real. Nobody is great polite in the
movie. So wait, is this boss dead? Well, he shows up later on. That was a confusing
part to me, because I'm like, I don't, is this wall in the logic of this movie? Like,
I guess, you know, people have fantasies about killing their boss. So like, if that's part
of the fantasy, the early part, then sure that makes sense. But then why would you have a fantasy?
Where it happens in such a weird way? Yeah,, this is a weird guy, as you could tell. It's a pretty strange guy.
Did he really have a corner office at a place
called technical difficulties?
I think that.
I think that, so here's what I'm gonna say about this movie.
I think to go at it from a literal point of view and say,
but which stuff was real then and which stuff was not real
is to not get the point of the movie.
And again, the movie is not clear in its point.
It's not, like I was saying,
it's not really successful in what it's doing.
But I think the entire time it is,
he is emotional, the emotional state that he is in.
And you can't, the same way that like a more successful
version of a movie like this is like Sinecti New York
where there's no point in that movie I feel like
where you are watching the literal natural worlds
that we all exist in.
You're always in Phillips, you moreonneshead, the entire movie.
So anything is to ask is this or the way that I remember once watching a memento with
somebody years ago and it was still a new-ish movie and they're like, and they're like,
I like to believe that he's just a serial killer and he's made up everything that happens
and none of it's real.
And I was like, well, that's a boring movie.
Like, what a boring movie that is. But like there has to be an idea that some of it's real. And I was like, well, that's a boring movie. Like, what a boring movie that is.
But there has to be an idea that some of it's real.
But when he's at that company called Technical Difficulties,
that is just a room full of people saying
into phones over and over again,
I'm sorry you're having technical difficulties.
That is just his emotional understanding of the where he works,
and things like that.
Guys, when I watch Command O'Ilo to imagine that Lysa Milano's character
isn't, doesn't actually exist, and he's just killing all these people for another reason.
I mean, that's what he's like, once you do that, you can do that for every movie.
There's no movie where you can't say, oh, well, that character doesn't exist. It's all,
it's all there. Yeah, now I'm playing with power. No, this is,
no, I agree. This is a, a fault of like internet theorizing that has
gotten so out of hand. I mean, there's a confusion between like having an opinion about a movie
and being like, and I can also invent whatever extra textural thing that I want to, you know,
support my view of the film. There's a story that Roger Ebert used to tell about showing a
class of students, the movie being there, where at the end, spoiler alert, he literally walks on water at the end because
he's such an innocent, I guess, or it's not quite, it's not explained to you.
And that students in his class were like, well, maybe there was like a ridge under the
water, or like, maybe it wasn't that deep.
And so that's what he's really walking on.
Maybe there's like a track under the water.
And he was like, you can't invent stuff that's not on screen in the movie.
Like the movie is challenging you with something.
You can't just be like, well, I'm gonna make up an explanation that's supported by nothing
in the film.
And I feel like that's a thing that happens a lot.
Well, I think the fact that the idea that movies have to be explained, like there's so
many articles where it's like the ending of Spider-Man, no way, hum, explained.
And I'm like, I don't, it seems pretty clear.
Like, I don't know.
Pretty clear.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
It was like the end of power of the dog explain.
I'm like, it's actually pretty clear.
It's incredibly clear.
Yeah.
I tweeted about it.
Actually, I saw this clickbait article today that was like, 10 dangling threads that might court never got to wrap up.
Wow.
I had to see what it was.
I was reading it.
I'm like, yeah, this is just the,
you're just like,
the happy,
where did he learn?
I know, I know.
I know.
But it was like, oh,
his relationship with this other character never got.
And I'm like, okay,
I'll raise you, I'll raise you, Dan.
I once saw an article and I clicked on it because I had to called all the back to the
future movies ranked. And it was like, three of them. And I'm going to go one, two,
three. That's how I do it. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. That was, it was, but it was like,
it was like, it was the most, it was like, hey, they told me I need to write
five articles today.
It is 450 PM.
I got to get this fifth article written.
I guess I'll rank all the movies in the three movies series.
It both infuriates me and I'm like, I know this is just some poor writer who wants to write
who has to do this.
Yeah.
You know, but God, what a world anyway.
So that was, yeah, that was all the movie.
That was it was the whole movie. that was the whole movie. It's almost
God bless
Most game shows quiz contestants about topics. They don't even care about but for 100 episodes the GoFact yourself podcast has asked
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Hi Maximum Fun, it's me, James Arthur M from Minority Corner.
Okay, we got some good news and I got some bad news.
Bad news, Minority Corner, after 7 years and 340 episodes, we are wrapping up our show.
I know, I know, but he good news, good news is that means we must have solved racism and homophobia and sexism and equality and equity for all, yay!
No, no, we didn't.
Well, I'd like to think at least that we are better off than when we started seven years ago.
Some don't worry, we might be saying goodbye,
but our episodes will live on in the podcast airwaves
or until the internet crashes and burn.
Whatever comes first, minority corner.
The final episodes right here on Maximum Bun
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Did I get to real with my own thought process there?
Guys, was it?
Yeah, I apologize.
I apologize.
Shripped through your internal monologue,
made extra real, a real bliss, yeah.
Uh-huh.
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Let's talk about final judgments, whether it's a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, a movie
we kind of liked.
I will kick us off because I think I'm the outlier and I'll just be like, look, I know it's
not rational. Sometimes like a reaction that people have to movies.
For some reason, this movie just rubbed me the wrong way
and made me angry.
And I think part of it is like, I like Owen Wilson
and Salma Hayek and they're giving it their best.
So parts of this movie are, I also like Ronnie Chang.
I like it.
Yeah, sure, he's right.
It's really Chang, a very nice human being. I just they're good at what they do. And so I
actually was emotionally affected by some of the stuff like the scene where
Owen Wilson is presented with the fact that he has already missed his
daughter's graduation made me sad. But I think part of it is I make a deal with art and or entertainment that okay
Movie if you're going to make me sad you better be good like like I
If if if something is dumb and it also makes me feel bad. I feel a lot worse about it
I think and so to me this was a case of a lot of miserable things
happening.
And I don't think that it did enough
to present it in a artful or entertaining way
for me to react well to the fact that I just sort of walked
out like upset and it told me something
that I already knew, which was like,
okay, this man's life
is in spiral and he needs help.
And at the anti got help.
And I guess that's good for this fictional man, but I didn't enjoy the journey.
But what do you guys have to say?
Sorry, I just got forwarded a movie review by one Chuck Bryant. I'm gonna I'm gonna say, you know what, this movie was pretty good.
I mean, this is a this is a dumb movie. This is a dumb bad movie. It is like a student film
that has a a wildly high production budget. And in that it has these like very earnest feelings
that it does not know quite how to express.
Owen Wilson is doing his best.
So Mahayek is doing her best.
And there's some very funny line readings that like,
I saw somebody on Twitter described
Danny McBride's line readings in righteous gemstones
as like the uncanny valley of dialogue. And I feel like a lot of this movie is that
way too like it's been run through like three different processors before you get some kind
of end result with like you know the brain powered mind of Greg Whittle. But yeah, I mean
I would say this is a solid good bad movie. I would say it would work as a good bad movie for sure.
And I actually, but I did kind of like it.
It was a movie that I don't think is successful.
It feels like a, it feels like a, it's trying to do the kinds of things on a, even slightly
less pretentious level than mother did and is not anywhere near that level of achievement.
And mother's movie, I like a lot.
And there is a, I think,
Owen Wilson is not really well cast in it,
like because he is so incapable of showing shock
or amazement or like, he's that,
he's so even keeled all the time.
He's just amazement all the time.
He's just amazement saying wow.
But even his wows are so incredibly,
when he says wow, it feels like he is saying it
because he thinks you expect a reaction from him.
Like you just, you just given him a present
that he was not impressed by.
And he's like, no, wow, wow, yeah, wow, that's something.
Like it's not, I think he doesn't,
he doesn't really do manic, particularly naturally.
And it's a movie that is like it's super ham handed
it i think you're right and that does not really earn the emotions it's going for
but yeah i really but i like to lot of it in the world once once it was good
me what this movie is that this is about a guy who is
in a
toxic relationship was lost his grip on reality and
has to make a choice between
am i going to stay in this objectively more pleasant
fantasy or am I going to return to reality because there's someone there who is who needs me
because my daughter needs me basically and doesn't need me to take care of her but just needs that
connection. Like I really liked that aspect of it and I feel like the movie doesn't the movie
doesn't fully understand what emotions it's going for.
But at the same time, there's part of me that's like,
like Stuart says, it feels like a student film on a big budget.
There's a lot in this that I would forgive more
if it was a student film or a super independent film,
you know, because it has ambition to it.
Unfortunately, it has the budget to meet that ambition,
which I think is to its detriment
because it doesn't have, it's craft wise,
it's not meeting that ambition.
So it's like, it should be,
it's not as good a movie as it wants to be
or thinks it is, but there's still a lot in it
that like got to me a little bit
and I was enjoying that journey.
But I also, Dan, enjoy movies where people's minds
are falling apart and we're seeing it through that.
So like, there's parts of this where I was like,
yeah, yeah, this is like someone trying to do a not arch,
like, or not cheeky, like Terry Gilliam type story,
and it's not really working,
but I still liked the attempt,
and I liked all those ludicrous lines that Chuck was saying,
I was like, yeah, because, yes,
through the mind of someone who's falling apart.
So like I get that he's even the fact that the the non-player characters in the thing
are called fake generated people.
It's like, yeah, this guy, this is this world is the creation of someone who is not a good
writer in the in the world of the movie.
So like he doesn't know, he's not going to be with a good name for it.
But anyway, Chuck, what did you think? Well, I kind of vacillated between thinking it was really, really, really bad. And I think
the student film comparison is really spot on. It felt like it's the most student film
me major production I think I've ever seen. But because I was watching it for the show,
I kept wanting to have a good time because I was looking forward to recording with you guys.
So that was your mistake.
That was your big mistake.
I know, I was kind of going up and down.
At one point, I tried to imagine that this character was Dignan
and this was just like Dignan from Bottle Rocket years later
and like this is really what happened to him.
And then I kind of liked it a little bit more.
I'm the run from Johnny Law.
Yeah.
It makes more sense that if it's own Wilson from behind enemy lines,
well, that's true. That's probably true.
Yeah.
Then he knew how to handle like weapons and stuff, you know.
But I'm with Dan, like ultimately it.
What about drill bit Taylor?
It could be drill.
Do pre.
Could be drill bit Taylor.
Was was he do pre or was someone else do pre in that movie?
I think he was do pre. Now someone else to be in that movie.
I do.
Do you do pre now think it was me was he Marley was a me he was
Marley yeah and to be right.
He was attacked to Marley to be.
Oh man.
Like 20 books based on the character.
Yeah, but and what if he was lightning McQueen but years later now
and he's not a car.
I'm falling on a car on his luck.
Ultimately, I'm a Dan though.
It made me mad at a certain point.
I can wrap my head around a good bad movie if I think the director can kind of give you
a nod in a way and can say have fun with that.
But this feels like a director who was very overly serious
about it. And if you didn't like it, then you didn't get it. And then I kind of started
getting a little angry at it because it felt self-important. Like I think the director thinks
he made a great movie. Oh, he certainly thinks he made a statement of some kind, you know,
which he, which he doesn't. But, but bad, bad bad movie for me overall.
We really ran the gamut with our ratings this time.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, we're, we're providing no guidance for anyone who might be curious about bliss.
But, you know, why not?
That's a good lesson for all of you listeners.
Don't look to us to, to know what to do with your life.
Don't give them to peer pressure kids.
Yeah.
And that's the thing.
And that there's nobody who's tasting movies is always going to match up with everybody
else's running.
Like even in Roger Ebert's book of like, I hated this movie reviews.
Like there's movies in there where I'm like, I like that movie.
I guess he didn't like it.
That's okay.
Well, the game mostly gave bad reviews to both raising Arizona and Blue Velvet, which
are.
Oh, right.
The Google reviews on this are really weird, though.
I never look at those, but I poked through some of them, and it's really evenly divided.
And it seems like 100% of the people that love this movie and think it's like one, a
mass, one person called it a masterpiece.
It seems like across the board,
they all took the interpretation
that it was about mental illness
and drug addiction only.
And most of these people were people
who were formally addicted,
who said like he nailed it
and like this is what it's like.
And the director himself said,
the movie works best
if there's a by-stability of interpretations. What does that mean? I had to look it up if there's a by stability of interpretations.
What does that mean?
I had to look it up.
It's a scientific term, meaning like basically each interpretation is completely valid and
equal and kind of cancels each other out.
Or supports one another.
I mean, that's the, if it's a movie about somebody who is, if that's linked to me, if the
future stuff is taken as real, I like it if you're existing in this space
where you don't quite know for sure.
But if he was like, no, no, the future stuff is real,
then I'd be like, this movie is a piece of junk.
Like, come on, that does it, that's not,
none of that makes any sense.
But there were things, especially in the relationship
between him and Samo-hack, when she is mood-swinged wildly,
and he is kind of caught in her orbit.
Like, there are times where I'm like,
oh, well, this is basically the movie bug,
but like with more real symbols.
Yeah, that's a good comparison.
Yeah.
Well, that's, I mean, like,
I'm glad Chuck said that because I did wanna say,
you know, like, I could see this movie being meaningful,
very meaningful to people who have struggled
with addiction or middle illness
in some way that I don't feel like I'm totally qualified
to say, I just know that from my perspective,
the is that this or that,
like even if it's not meant to actually be
like trying to trick you as a movie, made me angry
because I'm just like, don't mess around with me movie.
Like I'm finding certain parts of this affecting,
but you know, I, what game are you playing?
You know, now I'm just imagining if they swapped out
Owen Wilson for Ashley Judd or Michael Shannon.
Oh wow, what a movie.
If it was Michael Shannon instead of Owen Wilson,
can you make like this movie,
I think would be up at a different level? because you're like, yeah, I get it.
This guy is, this guy is unhinged.
Yeah.
He doesn't know what's going on.
It's weird casting.
Yeah.
Dan, I think this, this shows a big, I like, I like being messed with by movies.
I think maybe you shouldn't watch, you should probably not watch all those check new wave
movies I was recommending a little while ago.
I don't know if they're going to be on your wavelength, all of them.
Like bug.
So does that change your, I told you about the time I saw somebody watching
bug on their laptop on a plane. I'm like, wow, there's a lot of nudity. That's a good
call. Man, this guy's got stuff. It's getting us what's up. That's like a movie I would
pick and then have to like cover my laptop with my torso.
You have to, you'd have to try to block the laptop with your boner so that no, that,
nobody would see it.
It wasn't supposed to.
Yeah.
You're like when I was watching so long, the plane and I'm like, erotic sexy moving bug.
Hey, let's move on to the letters.
Why not?
You know, it's just for fun.
Let's do this.
Yeah.
M.
That's a good one.
What?
M.
Also, you don't use a lot of, you don don't use a lot, but use a good letter.
Look at it.
It's got a pleasingly round shape, but that little stick coming out and it's like, hey,
kind of getting a bad wrap lately.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it's been put up to some bad uses, but the letter itself visually, why do you
think it's so popular with crazy people?
Because it's a beautiful looking letter and it's, you're going around it and you're like,
I know what this letter's gotten store for me.
And then there's that little cross thing that goes around it and you're like, I know that this letter's gotten store for me and then there's that little,
that little cross thing that goes through it and you're like, wait a minute,
I wasn't expecting that. It's got a little twist at the end.
W is a pretty good letter but again, that's just am upside down.
We can argue over which way it looks.
To use.
Yeah. And what about, so Dan, what's the letter you like?
Probably like a D because your name starts with it.
Well, I like this letter.
I don't know it's from because I cut it off apparently.
I'm sorry.
Classic, but
the letter you should feel proud because you did good.
It's on the first, the first name and the last name have both been with hell.
I hope you're enjoying your moment in the sun, your little moment of stardom.
This, and it's one of those kids from the 50s.
It like they're like, at today and we're celebrating the birthday of, well, we don't know the name,
but there's some kids somewhere with a birthday and, and the kid would be like, wait, but I was,
I wasn't mentioned. Okay, wait, I, it's from Trisha last name with held. I found it. Okay.
Thank you. Great. Okay. Um, this question is for Stuart. Yay.
I saw that Tom Holland took on bartending for his role in uncharted. Yep. Would you let him bartend
at your bar? Question mark, which celebrity would you let bartender at your bar given the opportunity?
Thanks for all the laughs. I mean, I feel like, I mean, of course I've let Tom Holland, he's a huge star.
Tons of people will show up.
I would have to get like, I'd have to get extra people to check fucking ID's, I'd imagine.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you know, if Tom Holland's there, then Zindaya's going to be there also.
So, that's going to work.
Again, as long as we're on, it's low in, and Zindaya.
Zindaya.
Just. We're on it's low and it's Zindaya. Zindaya.
Just I wouldn't I wouldn't I would make fun of you.
But then I was I was heavily correcting Stuart earlier and probably wrong when I corrected him.
So I'll take it.
No, I know for a fact that is Zindaya.
So wait, is that your way of hinting that you've been seeing her on the side?
Don't tell Tom Holland.
Oh, no.
I've seen some of his bartending moves. He could like throw a bottle right at your head. Yeah, he's got some cocktail level moves,
some layer of bartending. He was bitten by a radioactive spider. I think he can bartend.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are a lot more goes into it than just physical dexterity,
I mean, it's, you know, ability to like talk to people and read people and,
I mean, I guess he can do all those things because he's built a human and he has spider
abilities.
Yeah, he also is a social, he is the proportional socializing skills of a spider, which
is actually worse than regular human.
Yeah.
Because he'll trap you and his orbit and slowly suck all your life juice out, which sounds
like some customer side. No.
As far as as far as not if you're listening to this podcast, you're not one of those people.
You're great. I feel like I don't know, like, I don't know, like a Bill Murray type.
Get a Bill Murray behind my bar. I'm sure he'd be fine. That bring a lot of people, a lot of, a lot of drunks like Bill Murray, right? Sure, I guess. I don't know. You would know better than
us again. You're in the liquor industry. So you would have a better idea of what people
would drink like. I mean, I would want to get somebody like, like, like, like a, like a
George Clooney or Ryan Reynolds, who has a booze brand to come out and hawk their, hawk
their booze, something like that. What about Danny um, Danny DeVito? He's got, uh, lemon shallow.
Yeah, of course.
Uh, Danny DeVito. Yeah.
Ryan Reynolds.
What am I crazy? He's amazing.
Mm-hmm.
Ryan.
There was a, I was waiting for Dan to say, yeah, what's up?
Yeah.
It's true.
There was a, uh, a ludicrous line from the bartender in the movie too.
I don't know if that bugged you or not.
Which one?
Well, I need my cue first.
Oh. It's a ludicrous line
from Chuck. It's a ludicrous line sponsored by me ludicrous rapper and actor. In the bar
when Owen Wilson orders the double whiskey, the bartender is out of, you know, almost
out of whiskey in the first bottle. And, you know, when you bartend, you just go grab
the other bottle, but this bartender poured, you just go grab the other bottle.
This bartender poured a little bit and then went like this.
He held up the empty bottle and shook it, Adam and went,
hey, I'll be right back.
And then he goes and gets the other bottle.
It's just like, no bartender does that.
The bartender just like goes and grabs the other bottle.
And well, what's so wild is it's like,
I mean, you knew you were going to
pour that for the movie, right? Like it wasn't really plot wise. I should have held it up
to the light. Actually, that would have been great. He should have checked. Yeah, he should
have checked that first. Yeah, I mean, it was, it was, it was a weird scene. Yeah, totally.
I mean, like, I've seen you at, at, at the bar indicate that the bottle is done.
I don't know that you've shaken it in front of my face, but you're like, my
whole that I'm here's proof.
Yeah, I'm not lying.
Yeah, that's the thing.
I don't think I would have been like, there was more in there.
What's still trying to pull?
Yeah.
Okay, this is another letter, guys.
It's from David Lasting with Health.
No, who writes, dear Elliot,
in the recent episode about Tom and Jerry.
Your brother wanna tell you something?
No, it's not from David Lasting with Health, Kaelin.
It's from David I in the recent episode.
You, but you're Dan, you're not David.
I danious in the recent episode about Tom and Jerry,
you explained to us about how meat is also a cartoon.
This made me wonder is vegan meat in this universe
also made to look animated?
What do you think?
Oh.
David last name with help.
I want to say yes, because they had such, again,
they had such a commitment to every living thing
that is not a human or a plant in that movie being a cartoon.
Yeah, I think they probably, the fake meat,
they just arrange that soy or whatever it is to make,
or jackfruit to make it look like it's a cartoon. Yeah. I think they should do that.
In Tom and Jerry too, were they get a hold of a vegan food company for some reason?
Do you guys remember that movie? Well, it shows how long Dan sits on the letters that
referred to the recent episode about Tom and Jerry, which was- I just not a question of sitting on
them. We get a question of sitting on them.
We get a lot of letters, guys, just by what I said earlier, you know, we're reasonably
popular.
We get a fair number of letters.
I can't get to them all.
I'm sorry to everybody who's sending letters that have not been addressed on the show.
Trust me that it is nothing personal.
It is either I have gone too long and feel like I
can't go back too far in the archives or it's a question maybe that's been asked before and you
should just go back and listen to them all over again. Drive those numbers up. Maybe you'll get
your answer there. Or they're not starting off their letter with a line like, Dan McCoy's the best or letter for Dan,
how do you get so cute?
Yeah.
Dear Dan, who I'd like to have sex with,
I have a question for Stuart and Ellie.
So, that kind of thing.
Yeah, let's go on to recommendations of movies.
Why not?
Hey, why not?
You know, let's treat ourselves.
So movies that we saw that we liked.
I went and saw the Nighthawk Prospect Park
had one night only showing the near dark on 35mm
on a movie that is still very hard to see.
I don't know what the rights issues are.
New zero.
Just use your eyes.
I didn't know what the rights issues are. Just use your eyes. I was using my toes.
It is a movie that cannot be, I believe, can't be streamed right now and the DVDs out
of print.
But, a early movie by Catherine Bigelow, the first one she directed on her own, I believe,
she had another one that she co-directed
before that.
Hey, Dan, I got some good news for you.
It looks like it might be on shutter.
Oh, really?
Yeah, maybe.
Okay.
Well, maybe I'm wrong.
Anyway, it has been historically hard to see and I saw it about 20 years ago and had
not seen it in the interim.
And I think when I was younger,
I was expecting the wrong thing out of it.
I knew it was this beloved new horror classic,
very influential vampire movie,
kind of changing how vampires were always shown on in movies.
Because like before that,
I mean, it's not solely responsible for this in any way, but there was a lot more of kind of the Dracula style vampire. And since then, there's
more kind of these living on the margins of society, you know, out west vampires.
Anyway, I think I was expecting something a bit more silly because it's an 80s horror
movie. And that's kind of what I always liked about 80s
horror.
And maybe a bit more.
Why?
Right night or something?
Yeah, yeah.
There's only one really tense scene and it is very intense in the bar.
But what it is is much more about vibe.
If it feels like you're kind of trapped in this dream that is both mundane
and fantastic and things get worse and worse.
And I don't know, it's just got a feel, a glow about it, an ominous, dreamy, romantic
glow that I responded to a lot this time around, liked a lot near dark steward.
Yeah, I'm going to recommend a similar, I guess, keeping with a theme of being trapped in fantasy
worlds or dealing with addiction. I'm going to recommend a movie called Oslo August 31st. It is
the second movie in the Oslo trilogy by director Y Yolkham Trier, who's recent movie
Worst Person in the World was my favorite movie last year and he's incredible. You should
go see it. Oslo August 31st is follows one day in the life of a 34 year old man who is in,
who's about to get out of rehab for drug use. And he has given the day to go into town and go to a job
interview so that he can transition back to life. And he tries to kind of rekindle or like find
some of the threads of his past life. And he, one of the things that I love about this movie
and where Spurs in the World is how the director
is able to capture at least for me,
a very like specific, almost like elder millennial
on Wii of not feeling like you,
belong like you don't really have a place in the world
or that you haven't kind of figured your life out
and when you were growing up you always assumed
that as when you got older you would, it would all make sense. And we follow this character played
by Anders Danielson, Lai, or Lee, I can't pronounce it. And he's, yeah, he's, it's great
and sad and funny and beautifully shot. Highly recommend it. It is sad though. But yeah, it's great.
I am going to recommend a movie too.
First though, I'm going to say that same director that Stewart just time out, a long, long
time ago, in episode 19, I recommended his movie Repres, which is also really good.
Oh, yeah.
So if you like those other movies that Stewart mentioned, then you should try that too.
But I'm going to recommend a movie from 1992, this movie called Swoon, written and directed Yeah. So if you like those other movies that Stuart mentioned, then you should try that too.
But I'm going to recommend a movie from 1992, this movie called Swoon, written and directed by Tom Kaelin. No relation. Come on, guys. It's spelled it wrong. And this is a movie about the,
about Leopold and Loeb and their relationship in the days leading up to and then the years after
relationship in the days leading up to and then the years after their murder that they committed. And it focuses much more on their relationship and them as two gay men who are drawn into this
very unhealthy relationship with each other, perhaps because there's no way for them to
find a healthy relationship because it's the 1920s, and they cannot be out in
gay. But it's in black and white, and it's told in this very kind of like uneasy style that's
very, both very still and also always feels like something's, something terrible is about
to happen. It feels a little bit like a Guy Madden movie in some ways, which from me is
a very high compliment, because I love Guy Mad of ads movies. Anyway, that's swoon.
It's, I thought it was really good, but it's one of those movies that like, it's not a,
it's not a like sit back and relax kind of movie.
It's very much alike.
This movie is going to keep poking me, you know, and make me kind of think about what,
why it's telling me these things and what it's trying to say.
But I enjoyed it a lot.
Chuck, what would you like to recommend?
I got a recommendation, another movie from 1987, Dan, called Five Corners.
It's a movie I saw in college years ago, and I kind of forgot about it.
And I saw it again, kind of randomly recently.
And it was written by the great John Patrick Shanley and was very under the radar, kind of a small indie about this
New York neighborhood in the 1960s. It's got Jody Foster and Tim Robbins and John Titturo.
I don't want to give away too much, but it's kind of a, you know, it's John Patrick Shanley.
So it's sort of a quirky indie crime sort of plot, but it's a movie that tonally is just kind of odd.
It's like a not quite real world that you're watching, but it's kind of hard to describe.
But I always like to recommend little known films.
And I think five corners was kind of wildly underseen back then.
That sounds like the kind of movie Dan loves.
You know, I was the one person who kind of liked wild mountain
time out of the, oh, that was a great episode.
Has anyone seen five corners?
No, I haven't seen.
I'm not saying it at all, but, but I'm going to, I'm going to watch it.
I'm putting it on my list right now.
Yeah.
It's on to be.
It says, so like to be seemingly like every movie I hear about that.
I want to see suddenly it's a
pretend it turns out it's on 2b so you know I had the network reach out to see if we
could get a 2b's sponsorship and there was a lot of fuck would we do that you're
already promoting I think I think maybe they don't want to be associated with a
podcast about bad movies specifically if I had to come on Come on. But who knows, you know?
And also, you know, to the flappers,
if you hear these guys, it's a lot of fun here
and I'm talking about the bad movies.
But if you want to hear them talk about a good movie,
Dan was on movie crush and he, we talked about,
had a great discussion about aliens.
Dan, you didn't even remember which movie it was.
I could see it in your face.
Yeah, you just saw my face.
I start to remember.
Elliot and I talked about taking a poem, one, one two three, which is a lot of fun.
My favorite and Stewart introduced me to the wonderful world of Ricky O.
Ricky O story Ricky, baby.
Yeah, I know I know you love it.
It's a little I don't know if he gets really say it's the best movie in the world.
Oh, weird.
What metrics do you use?
That's a good point.
That's a good point. It's all the same. Oh, weird. What metrics do you use? That's a good point. That's a good point.
It's all the same. Yeah. We'd like to bliss. Punch someone's head off in the movie you like.
That's a fair point. Yeah. No one's no one's strangled someone with their own intestines
in the movies I like. So, um, well, that's, check, that's great because I was about to ask if you
had anything to plug and you already started. but is there anything else that you want to?
Yeah, you know, if you should know,
if you want to listen to that show,
we've been around for a minute
and either like it or you don't.
Yeah.
That's that for a plug.
Wow.
I love the casual arrogance of like,
you've heard it.
You don't need to know.
You like, you'd at this point
it's to enter the lives of all Americans.
You don't need to.
It's not new to anybody.
I mean, I do commercials.
What I like about it is, you know, it has a certain amount of lovable goofball in this,
which if you like our show, you probably like, but you also actually learned something.
I'm like our show.
So we learned a lot.
We've had a pronounce lens, the lowens name.
Yeah.
So I'm a high.
So I'm a high.
Zendaya.
Zendaya and we learned that, uh, well, that was about it.
Balls?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I learned about the three things that brought about the two.
Yeah.
Our automation, synthetic biology and asteroid mining.
Yeah.
So, you know, I guess, and don't look up when they want to mine that asteroid.
They're right after all.
You guys haven't seen it.
I haven't seen fucking total look up. I have.'t seen it. I want to fucking don't look up.
I have what does it nominate for best picture?
It is.
Oh, what?
Yeah.
We may have to get around.
Next thing you're going to tell me
licorice pizza is nominate for what?
Wow.
Hey, I love that movie.
I was I was I like that one.
I wanted to love it so much.
And I I started it with with real.
I was like, yeah, this is gonna be really good.
And as it went on, I just liked it less and less until by the end,
I was like, movie, I feel like you,
I've got a bait and switch with this movie.
I did not learn what it was like to run a water mattress business.
You're right, you're right, Ali, it was no bliss.
The movie, yeah.
I'm not gonna, I mean, I'm not to say that bliss is a great movie. I got more
adamant that I got out of licorice pizza, I guess. I don't know. We're to pickle guys. We aren't
to pickle. Well, the only way to get out of the pickle. I guess, I guess I just, I didn't enjoy it
as much as I, I guess I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed that Oscar nominated pedophilia movie, licorice pizza, but anyway. That is a, whoa. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no't know, man. That is a, whoa.
You're a jubber statement.
Wow.
No, no, no, I mean,
to literally come bad and for
rockative, you know it.
I wanted her brought up on
the artist, Dan.
Yeah.
Wow.
Geez.
I feel like we have such a clean
way out and then we get on
thing.
Dan, there's no way out.
Just like there's no way home Spider-Man, no way home.
And theaters now, is that a sponsor?
Still.
Yeah, the shit all over the place.
Yeah.
Well, it was the most successful movie during the pandemic.
It's still in theaters.
Yes.
Is this is this LA, it's lobbying for Spider-Man, no way home to get nominated for best picture?
I'm just saying if you want people to watch the Oscars, you've got to nominate only movies
that already make a lot of money.
That's what we're for.
Yeah, words reward the already rewarded.
When a couple of years ago, and they were like, the people who make the big budget movies
are mad that they're not getting rewarded.
And it's like, you are with the money.
That's what the money is for.
You made a choice of what kind of movie you were going to make.
A movie that people like, and that's what the money is for. You made a choice of what kind of movie you were gonna make. A movie that people like and that's fine.
That's fine.
That's totally fine.
You know what?
You've got the money, pay someone to make an Oscar for you.
Just put your name on it.
Who cares?
Yeah, it's not like a statue maker's like,
no, it's against the statue maker's code.
Yeah.
Replicate somewhere in the culture statue.
They'll kick me out of
the craft guild if I do that. The craft cheese guild. This Oscar's made a
craft cheese. Look, a different color gold. The only person who was willing to do it
made it was a guy who sculpts craft cheese. And it's all these people always me
producers go to him and he goes, another Oscar. This might be kind of a weird thing,
but I was wondering if he'd get a sculpt in Oscar. Ed craft cheese this might be kind of a weird thing, but I was wondering if you could sculpt an Oscar
at Kraft G's.
Don't worry, you're not the first.
Do you remember, Dan, were you there when Kraft sent us
a, when at the Daily Show Kraft sent us John Stewart
sculpted at, like a, it was like a block with his face
sculpted into it.
I don't know.
Yeah.
And I think they were just desperately trying,
I think, to get mentioned on late night shows.
I think they sent all the late night hosts a block of cheese with their face sculpted.
It was one of the strangest things, especially because people then started eating it.
So.
Yeah, no, sat down stairs.
People like carved a few chunks off of it to eat them, get thrown in the trash.
Yeah.
But thanks for the cheese craft. I guess your plot for more publicity works
is delayed and on a much smaller scale. We're a lot of thanks to you for that cheese.
Years later. Okay, well, I guess now we can officially sign off saying hey, we're part of the max fun network. Go to maximum fun.org
to find other great shows on the network
including one by
John Hodgman
check Brian's pal the first time we met check was
hanging with Hodgman. Yeah, just hanging with Hodgman.
You know, you can go check out how old Daudy on Twitter.
That's our producer Alex who we thank for making us sound less dumb.
Hopefully. Hopefully.
And I guess just thank you for listening for the flop.
I've been Dan McCloy. I've been Stewart Wellington.
I'm an Ellie Kaelinass, I've been Dan McCoy. I've been Stewart Wellington. I'm Anneli Kaelin.
And I've been Chuck Bryant.
Or have we?
What? What?
Bliss.
Who? Is it hot in here?
Yeah, baby. That's why I took my shirt off.
Yeah, that's why Stewart's wearing no sleeves.
Paid for the whole shirt.
I only kept the torso.
I like the, uh, the day I was like, let's do the count off,
and I'm immediately doing some of these.
I have a crush in it.
So we don't need, yeah.
That's exactly how I hope this is good.
Uh-huh, yeah.
Alex, keep all this.
This is brilliant.
Keep all this, don't really.
Oh man.
Don't even save it for the end.
Just put it right at times.
A newbie.
Yeah, that's all I've got.
We will start out with a bang.
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