The Flop House - The Flop House: Episode #116 - Rock of Ages
Episode Date: December 15, 20120:00 - 0:31 - Introduction and theme.0:32 - 35:10 - Fan favorite Hallie Haglund subs in for Stu in our discussion of the jukebox gloss-fest, Rock of Ages.35:11 - 39:28 - Final judgments39:29 - 56:58 -... Flop House Movie Mailbag, with the very first letters DUET.56:59Â - 1:03:36 - The sad bastards recommend. 1:03:37- 1:04:59 - Goodbyes, theme, and outtakes.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Are you ready to the Broadway equivalent of rock?
In this episode we discuss rock of ages. Hey everyone, welcome to the flop house, I'm Dan McCoy.
Over here is Elliot Kaelin, and why am I saying my name second when usually I say my name
third?
Because I'm Hallie Hagglin!
I'm Hallie Haglund. I'm here.
I guess the logic's low is there.
Fan favorite, special guest.
Hallie Haglund is back.
Fan fiction favorite.
We got your great story, guys.
We got your great story, guys.
We got Stuart head to work.
Yeah, there's no exciting story behind
We could tell a glamorous tale about steward being out on some adventure seducing women
Rescuing the house cat from kidnappers who knows globe trotting globe trotting and trot globing, but no he's just working tonight
so
We got our old buddy Hallie back. You may remember her from the zookeeper episode
I'm not getting any younger.
Let's be honest.
None of us are except Benjamin Button.
Yeah, but he's gross.
He is gross.
Since he is an old man trapped in a baby's body.
But it's reset for new listeners.
For old listeners who like to hear the same thing every time.
Nope, nobody does. This is the part of the show that reminds me of the opening to every
encyclopedia brown book where they have the same two pages that explain the premise of encyclopedia
brown. And be like, can we just get on with the story already?
Encyclopedia brown was so smart that people called them encyclopedia.
His dad wished he could explain who was helping him, saw all these crimes, but he knew he'd
be laughed out of the police academy because he'd say it was his him saw all these crimes, but he knew he'd be laughed out of the police academy
because he'd say it was his own young son.
Well, think about it.
Everyone, look at think about they put up
within the police academy and they don't laugh people out of it.
Him, they laugh them out.
He doesn't even do sound effects.
This is a podcast where we watch a bad movie
and then we discuss it.
Tonight we watch a little movie.
A very big movie.
A long movie. Full of a lot of star power.
Oh yeah. Super stars.
Too many stars.
The sky was empty because they were all in nice.
What a horrifying idea. Stars have disappeared. These are the end times.
Rock of age. Oh no, they're just in rock of ages. Oh, the goodness.
All the stars are in it. Beetlejuice.
Serious the dog star.
Soul our own son. Not Beetlejuice the ghost character. Beetlejuice the star. It predated the ghost. You know, star five five two seven six four.
He was there. Terry's
Altaire.
Uh, it abits over. Okay. I'm sorry. It's okay. The Beltiburian. All three of them.
Ursa Major and Minor. The North Star, the pole star Venus, which was known in the
past as the Morning Star. Poor pole star. Release to stripping. So,
Rock of Ages was the movie we watched. It's a movie based on the famous jukebox musical of the same name.
Now Dan, what is a jukebox musical?
I'm glad you asked Elliot for the purposes of this podcast.
It's a movie or a musical rather made up of songs that were not original to that musical,
but compiled together.
So you mean like singing in the rain?
Yes, like singing in the rain with the freed and something song book. Yeah
Jersey boys. Yeah, Frankie Valley. Jersey boys. People may remember the we will rock you
in Tonez wedding and Miseu. No
Mama Mia is a jukebox musical with Abba. There was a musical called crazy for you
That was all Gertwin songs.
There was Good Vibrations, which was all Beach Boys songs.
You get the idea.
You're not dumb.
There was Lepper Messiah, which was a Metallica
Duke Box musical.
May Miserable.
And who forkin forget S-Face, the GGL and Duke Box musical.
Fuck the pain away, the peaches musical.
But this was a Dukebox musical of hair metal.
Well, let's loosely turn.
Lusely term.
It was, let's call it 80s rock.
Yeah.
Because metal, despite the presence throughout the movie of a motorhead billboard, metal is not
to be seen in this movie.
You were very disappointed in the motorhead.
I was never sure.
They are promising motorhead.
You expect someone to be wistfully in the middle of the movie and sure. They are promising motorhead. You expect someone
to be wistfully in the middle of the movie and say, Dan, is motorhead ever going to show up?
I had to say no, Ellie. I don't think they are. All they needed to make me like this movie was
to have a character sing Asa Spades. Didn't happen. Just didn't happen. That's why I say
that's why I said hair metal though, because I don't think that you're more hardcore metal genres
were represented. They were not.
Let's call it hair rock.
How about that?
Hair rock, ballads.
A lot of power ballads.
A lot of, let's just call it 80s hits.
Yeah.
The first song is...
Hair rock, compilation of favorites.
Yeah, exactly.
A lot of the songs in this movie were a song would start and I would say to Dan and
Halley, what song is this?
And then the chorus would start and I'd go, oh, I recognize this from commercials
for compilations of 80s songs.
There were a lot of times when Ellie had said,
hey, what song is this?
And I would pretend like I didn't hear him
because I didn't know until the chorus came up.
I'm glad to hear it wasn't alone then, yeah.
Cause I know Dan has an encyclopedic knowledge.
I was a crazy, surprising knowledge
from the opening chords of songs,
what song was being played.
And then Dan would say, isn't it this song and I would say, yeah, I think so.
It's not my purview necessarily, but somehow over the years.
Not your purview.
Thanks.
Yeah, we know all about your purviews.
Yeah, it's the holes that you carve into the walls.
Outside that all girls nursing school.
Is that where they learn to be nurses
or when they learned to nurse?
A little bit of both.
Dan's a purve.
Thanks, guys.
Now, should we talk about what happens in this movie?
Well, I think you could probably imagine
what happens in this movie.
I always think so.
Oh, we've said it's a jukebox musical with 80s power bells.
I didn't imagine what happened in that.
For all the magic I was trying to construct a musical comedy around pre-existing songs.
And then just imagine the generic plot that that would be.
Okay, so let me try to guess it.
A caveman and an astronaut fall in love at a discatech. Suddenly a volcano erupts.
It turns out that the Babylonian god, Belmarduk, is angry. They're gonna have to find five magic gemstones, each of which is buried inside of a different famous singers' brain.
Much like Frankenstein's monster, you may have an abnormal brain. I was gonna say it's your typical
girl from a small town comes to the big city seeking fame and fortune meets boy. Yeah a girl named
Sherry comes to from Los Angeles. We first meet from Tulsa. We first meet her on a bus. She is
flipping through her record albums and touching them
longingly, which establishes that she likes music. And then she and the bus, or she has a fetish first album sleeves.
That's possible. She and the bus passengers sing sister Christian. And then she shows up in LA and everything seems great.
No, you forgot when she looks at the picture of her grandma. I'm not gonna say every detail in the movie.
Well, I thought that was an important. you forgot when she looks at the picture of her grandma. I'm not gonna say every detail in the movie.
Well, I thought that was an important day.
She's coming to LA with big dreams of being a singer
and she gets mugged, but luckily it's right outside of the famous,
I guess, legendary LA music spot, the bourbon room.
Yeah, the bourbon room. The bourbon room.
Is that a real place? I don't think so.
Okay. It's just a place holder for the Viper room.
Oh, that makes sense. I don't think so. Okay. It's just a place holder for the Viper room. Oh, that makes sense.
I don't know if that's true. Well, you fooled me. The bourbon room, which is run by Shaggy's
rock and roll ball. My Shaggy to dope. My violent J and Shaggy to dope, the insane clown fussy.
So I see Pierre looking for a brand new sound. No, it's run by Alec Baldwin at his shaggyest
and let's just say it, Slobby Fattest
and his man Friday, Russell Brandt.
Well, but as I said, like there's no point in this movie though,
when you, when I was able to look at Alec Baldwin
and not think, that's just Jack Donoghain a wig.
Like like, Tracy Morgan is having a dream sequence
where he's a rocker role club club owner and that's what it looks like
No, I was just gonna say that you did really remind me of being McShane from dead
What but I guess I was the only one I think you were in the minority there
I am just watching deadwood for the first time so that you may just have
My only frame of reference. I remember when we were at the conventions and you were watching the wire and everything was a comparison to the wire
Well then fine.
So and she meets, so the girl gets mugged, she meets Drew who's a waiter at or no, he's
a bar back at the bourbon room, but he wants to be a rock and roll singer guitarist, songwriter,
et cetera.
He's got big dreams.
He's got big dreams and they start falling in love and they do at the same time
that
Fading rock and roll legend. Oh, yes, he's at the height of his fame, but he's gone. He's going mad with power
Stacy jacks to X's played by Thomas Cruz. He's not going. He's look. It's lonely at the top
He's isolated in his own, but he has gone in. Nobody loves him
He has a monkey that follows him. He has a monkey that falls a baboon really who follows him around in different costumes
He says things that make no sense. He seems to be in this constant days
Or like haze of alcohol and his manager Paul Giamatti in
The best art in the whole movie likes it that way because it makes him more docile and easy to control
Stacy Jackson is about to leave his band arsenal although it seems more like he's being kicked out because he's so hard to work with. Yeah. Or so
says the Rolling Stone reporter played by what's your name? Melina Ackerman. Melina Ackerman.
Melina Ackerman who interviews him at the back of the bourbon room where Arsenal is
going to play its final show before Stacy Jackson begins his solo career. Due to the, and
due to the she's the only one who's going to speak truth to the, and due to the.
She's the only one who's gonna speak truth to power.
Speak truth to power and the two of that,
and it, this turns him on in such a way
that they have this weird grindy, not sexy,
where they strip down to their underwear
and then kind of grind on together a couple times.
Grind on each other.
And then say that was amazing.
Oh, and they're singing, I wanna know what love is, right?
During it.
By this point also I should mention,
we've heard about 1,500 songs.
By this point I should mention that Halle and I
are singing along lustfully,
well, Elliot is sitting in stone zone.
I don't like them.
This is not my type of music, you know?
Hey, forget about it.
If they-
Whoa.
Okay.
You just like it so much, you turn the-
I turn it to a-
I turn it to a monster.
Hey, oh, get it away.
Johnny Donuts.
Look, if they had been singing any of Loretta Lynn's big hits, I would have been singing right
along.
If there were singing any songs from Jesus Christ Superstar, I would have been singing right
along.
And if there were seeing anything from Metallica's first four albums, I would have been
singing right along.
But I don't like any of this music.
Singing right along.
Like, right.
If anything from the Muppa movie, yeah, I would have been singing right along.
If this had been an interesting man,
Duke Box musical, it would have been great.
But so where was, oh yes,
they have their grindy, weird scene.
And then the heroine of the movie,
who we haven't seen for like 25 minutes,
it feels like at this point.
The scene between Tom Cruise and this Rolling Stone
Reporter and played by Malin Ackerman, goes on for a long time. And it's just a two-person
scene. And every other character is just off screen for this whole long sequence. But
uh, due to possibly the dumbest misunderstanding I've ever seen in a movie, uh, our heroine
walks in, hands him a bottle of liquor, and drops it and they walk out again and she adjusts her shirt and he adjusts his pants and the hero the love interest hero
who's on stage opening for his about to open personal big break with as wolf gang von kolt which is his performing name he sees this is like oh they must have just slept together that's the only explanation for why someone would adjust their shirt and then it would look as if it was just their pants.
To be in fairness to him, it really did look
like something had gotten on, okay?
I guess so.
It's also Tom Cruise's character in this
and we can talk about this more later if you want to.
He's supposed to be exuding this like
raw animal sexuality that every woman is falling for.
Women faint when they see him,
but instead to me, he just comes off
as like this gross monster man.
Well, he said, but I mean, I-
He just seemed like how you actually expect Tom Cruise
to actually be if you talk to, you know?
Like a big weirdo where you're like,
I am worried he's gonna snap my neck at any moment.
Like Tom Cruise can be really good and stuff,
but he can also like have that sense like,
I'm Tom Cruise and I'm super intense
and I have really studied for this.
Yeah. And like this role felt like I have studied how to be a rock star.
That's maybe that's it. He didn't have a looseness that you expect to see in a rock star where they're
like living for the moment and just doing whatever they want. And that's the the fantasy charisma of
it is here's a person who gets to live out our fantasies of not worrying about responsibility and
doing whatever like being uncontrolled id,
but instead he feels so controlled
that it seems like he's this coiled, like scary thing.
Like it, basically when he enters a room,
it's not that different from when like,
Freddy enters a room in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies
where he's more of a threat than he is an enticement,
or at least that's the way I saw him.
Like the other thing is that he looks like Gl Danzig and Glen Danzig is super scary.
There's nothing attractive about him at all.
Uh...
Your cat's playing with a straw.
Halley, let's try to be professional.
For those of you who are listening, you can't see it.
Dan's cat was playing with a straw.
So, like, we invited Halley on the program for an edible Halli-ness.
That's true.
This is a double shot of that.
Super shot.
Hopefully Halli will be able to have pay attention to us while watching Lulie Play with
the Straw.
Okay, so the hero and the hero in break up, the hero has just had an amazing performance
according to the crowd of Iwana Rock.
So Paul Jimati signs him up as a new hot singer and
They go their separate ways him rising to the top and her sinking to the bottom. She quits her job soon
She's working as a waitress at a strip club run by Mary J. Blige and then stripping and he and or because rock is going on
Mother Mary if you will sort of plays that role in the movie.
I guess so, yeah.
Yeah.
And she's always dressed as a nun, right?
The nun who runs the strip club, yeah.
Yeah, she's very conflicted.
Another interesting character.
Well, she's really unhappy the whole movie,
but nobody ever seems to know why.
She has really has no character.
She's like, she plays the part of the
brassy black woman who guides the white woman
back to her heart's desire.
You know, it was kind of like a brief shot of the help
right in the middle of this or you know, whatever.
But the, I'd like to take a moment to address,
by the way, two subplots that have not been mentioned
because they're largely unrelated.
Totally unrelated to you got a Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand
are
Closeted game and coming to terms with well first. They're worried. They're gonna lose the club because
they are
Running they don't have enough money to pay their taxes
And but also they fall in love and they sing a duet and kiss each other in. I'm just going
to go ahead and say the best part of the movie. Yeah. By far you ever want to see. You ever wanted to see
Alec Bolton and Russell Brandt sing a song to each other and then kiss. And Dan. And there's a
brief shot of them on a carousel together. Yeah. So that was the weirdest. When they were like
walking down the stairs and they were doing this simultaneous like hip pump,
you know, that was supposed to be synchronized.
I've got to be honest, I didn't find the romance
that believable.
No, it wasn't believable.
But even after the scene of the beginning
where they were pretending to sing
into a hairbrush together,
they weren't singing into a hairbrush.
They were singing into a beer bottle.
Oh, I thought they had a hairbrush also.
The raw sexual charisma of Alec Baldwin and Rochelle Brand put together, didn't just ignite
within you, how?
Maybe if Alec Baldwin didn't look like the dude Lebowski and Russell Brand didn't look
like, Russell Brand.
Yeah, let's just say it.
But it's almost like there, because there are two people who in most movies
do play like highly sexual characters,
and it's like when combined, they cancel each other out.
Maybe that's, I mean, there's also this movie.
Because they both seem so frumpy and unsexual.
This movie was directed with a total lack of sexiness,
which is weird considering it's all about like
the unbridled sexual power of rock and roll and rock
and roll forever and these two young lovers are doing it and their fallen love and Tom
cruises this sex god but at the same time it's so chased and tame as a movie.
I was saying earlier in the movie before that scene came up I'm like okay well this is
a movie about hair metal which is like like straight men not realizing how campy they are
and somehow harnessing like raw sexuality,
even though they're goofy, but there's none of that.
And I was theorizing it's because it was directed
by a gay man, Adam Shakeman,
but then there's no like sexiness in the gay scene either.
So.
I think it's just a, there's a,
it's a very like cleaned up kind of polished glossy
type of pop sensibility.
Like you see, whenever like on American Idol,
or and I assume the voice or other singing shows,
the times I've seen it where they sing like a hard rock song,
they make it very glossy and poppy,
and even here in a movie that's supposed to be about rock,
rock forever.
Oh, this is the best.
It still comes off as very pop and like bubble gum.
It's like they've kind of...
Well, that's a musical.
I feel like that's what...
I mean, Jesus Christ Superstar is aars musical and there's way more edge to that
than there is to this
they don't read them like Jesus Christ super star that's true it is the best
of all musicals you guys think for Jesus Christ it's a good amazing songs in it
all right it's the greatest story ever told in the greatest songs ever told
okay well anyway i was gonna get to the other uh on address
side that right because i think it's a because why is health Baldwin worried about losing the bourbon room because
The mayor of LA I guess by Brian Cranston. Yeah, TV's Brian Cranston is a movie. Let's just say Brian Cranston
He's a lot of films ago. Malcolm in the middle Brian Cranston
I'm not be with some blood. I do America's Brian Cranston people know him for breaking bad. That's a that's all I'm saying but drives Brian
So he ocean spray cranberry juices Brian Cranston really
She he's married to a tipper Gore-esque character play by Catherine Zeta Jones
Yeah, the only woman so scientific and Greek that Zeta is in her name, like Zeta Beams.
And she's made her mission to clean up LA
from the scourge of rock and roll.
Which is so weird, because LA is such a gross city.
The rock and roll is like a minor threat.
And a character works in a strip club in this
and she doesn't want to clean out the strip clubs.
She wants to clean out the rock and roll club.
Like this makes sense and we'll be like footloos.
Where it's a tiny town, tiny rural town.
Or in the terror of tiny town.
If rock and roll had been in that and it's making all the midgets go a string.
It's kind of like, well, you know, why is Catherine's age Jones in this city in the first
place?
It seems like their place is for the school districts probably.
Okay, sure.
But here's the, it's it turned it comes out later that she
wants to shut down rock and roll to get at Stacy Jackson. She was a Stacy Jackson group
and he abandoned her. And now she wants revenge just like the hit ABC show the same name.
Just like like tipper Gore. Just like just like tipper yeah, tipper Gore was a I think
a fleet would mac groupie. Yeah. Oh no, it was Guar. I'm sorry, she was a Guar groupie.
She was a Guar groupie.
She was a Guar groupie.
She was a Guar groupie.
But yeah.
So she wants to shut down the bourbon room, and she leads a coalition of, you know, like
your 80s moral majority Christian women, the kind of women who are always on sitcoms
as like the prissy one that nobody that was trying to take away the fun for everybody else.
Blair, like Blair.
Blair Underwood.
No, Blair.
The facts of life.
Oh, that player, but not really like Blair.
I was just the first person.
She's like Blair. Sure.
I'll take that.
But it's not fun like Joe.
Everyone's favorite.
Right.
All right, guys. Joe. Yeah, of course. He's got a motorcycle
Yeah, she doesn't know where she fits it
Not to be duty is everyone's second favorite because of her name sure
So this has been the thanks of life
The apparently according to Wikipedia
This is a sub plot that was and that was introduced just for the movie
and it makes sense because like this is like in the eighties this and the early
nineties i guess this kind of stuff was happening
where
christian morality groups which and and conservative politicians were trying to
right police rock and roll and and gen music in general
but it feels totally shoehorned in and it's another subplot that
disappears for long stretches of the movie and then suddenly you'll get a lot of it.
Like it feels like they were writing this movie as they went along as they shot it and they were like, uh, we haven't done anything with Catherine Cedare Jones in a while.
So let's do a bunch of stuff with her.
But it did be get that, that awesome medley that was, uh, we're not going to take it and, uh, we built the city on rock rock and roll which I thought was one of the best musical numbers
Of the 4,000 musical numbers in the movie. Yeah, it was in the top three thousand
But I think I can tie this up really fast so he can sort of double back and get it okay
We never talked about how the guy became part of like a new kids on the block. Yeah, so Drew sells himself out to become famous and joins a new kids on the block type group called Z-Boy
Which is leads to my favorite part of the movie which is the video shoot for his music video
And they totally cat capture like the style of that music video and it's one of those moments
There are a couple lot of moments in this movie where there's a flash of a better, funnier movie.
And that moment, it's like, oh, like if you had any sense
of the style of the times, like you do in this one
30-second moment, this would be a way better movie.
Like if it was more of a pastiche, unless of a like,
you know, basically just like a commercial, I don't know.
Yeah.
Anyway, you're saying wrap it up.
Oh, play us out.
Tom Cruise realizes what Paul Giamatti has been doing.
And so he-
Well, the negative Rolling Stone article comes out.
Yeah.
He, he, uh, he sort of breaks with him and gives, uh, out Baldwin, uh, the money from his
gig that he previously not giving him.
He also drinks 150 year old wine and then peas on Paul Giamatti's foot at the same time.
Uh, that are two young lovers, young lovers reconciled after realizing,
hey, this was a fucking stupid misunderstanding
that was just generated for the point.
It basically goes like this.
I saw you coming out of Stacey Jacks' room.
He was adjusting his pants.
You thought I slept with Stacey Jacks?
Do you mean you didn't?
I'm so sorry.
Like, we're in love with you. I'm gonna have this conversation months earlier.
I don't have to be a stripper.
What's also weird is it's one of those strip clubs
where that we've talked about on the podcast before
where all the strippers wear lots of clothes
and don't take them off.
And when she comes out to do her strip dance,
she's actually wearing more than she's worn it
any other point in the middle of it.
She's wearing like a one piece leotard with long sleeves. Yeah, long sleeves. It's like the rest of the movie she's worn at any other point in the movie. She's wearing like a one piece liatard with long sleeves.
Yeah, long sleeves.
It's like the rest of the movie she's wearing these like
low cut shirts that ride up on her belly and super short skirts.
And that's like time for me to get down and dirty as a stripper.
I guess I'll put on this robe.
I guess I'll put on this body suit.
Because the most exciting thing is what you imagine.
But it's like the drip scenes in flash dance where they're more like a twilight orp style
avant-garde dance numbers.
Yeah, but Tom Cruise is reunited with Mail and Aikerman, the only woman who's ever
told him the truth about himself.
And they fall in love after he kisses another woman for like a minute and a half.
Yeah, that's funny though that we, I think we should get back to you.
But then the guy and the girl sing uh don't stop believing on stage
Ellie's favorite song.
Tom Cruise is like that's a new sound I was looking for and then cut to a big arena show where
Tom Cruise is singing the song and it brings on the special guests our lovebirds
and rock and roll has triumphs and cathamis aides jones is the audience in some sort of like weird night-portor Nazi garb as a fan.
Because she's now I guess just like an SNM rock and roll groupie.
Yeah.
And Alec Baldwin and Russell Brander and the audience.
I thought she was supposed to become Annie Lennox.
Yeah, this whole movie was an orange.
It was so weird.
It's pretty cool to Annie Linux. And then it just turns to Paul Harvey
goes, and now you know the rest of the story.
I was in and we're out. Yeah. Well, we get cameras, we dreams plays over the credits.
And then they play Rocky like a hurricane over the credits.
Yeah.
But as you were, as you were alluding to, there's some funnier movies picking out.
And one of the things you were saying was that that kiss scene, like right when like mail an acroman and, uh,
and Tom Cruise are going to be reunited.
He's walking towards her through a crowded room and then a woman just jumps out and starts kissing Tom Cruise and, uh,
and he's like because he's a rock god, he has to keep kissing this woman and keeps giving gestures to Malayka Malayka.
And I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, what just a minute, sorry about that.
But it goes on for a really long time.
But like, Malayka Malayka is always like, also like her face is like, yeah, I understand
what are you going to do?
Like, uh, no, I get it.
I'm sorry too.
Oh, and at the end, we see that Malayka Neckerman is pregnant with a new generation of Stacey Jackson.
Yeah.
Of Jack's babies.
That's so cute.
Because girls apparently you can get pregnant,
having sex with your underwear on, we'll wear.
And there was another, there's another like weird line
where like,
Oh, well, there's a part.
Tom Cruise like touches every woman in the thing
in the movie's breasts.
And then I get the antie touches,
Catherine Zeta Jones, and it's like, what is it like?
It's impelled up nice.
And then he walks away.
There's actually swoon.
There's the weirdest line that kind of works, but kind of doesn't is when the, what are
they called the boys?
The one that group that he's in?
Yeah.
The Z boys are on stage at the bourbon room getting booed
because they suck.
And Alec Baldwin goes, wait, that's true.
I just threw up and Russell Rangos
where he goes in my pants out of my ass
and then walks away.
And it's like this bizarre moment of like,
you think he's going to say like, I just just dropped in my mouth or something like that or no
He's he was so disgusted by by this act that he shit himself in the pants like
It's so weird
Funnier than than the joke itself was watching Ellie. It's like
disbelief and the inability to understand you's like wait
What does that mean?
What wait if he threw up in his pants out of his ass? And you're like it's pretty much all there
I don't know it just seems so
So our pieces together, it's like the media bram. They're different movie that feels so programmed and so wrote like
Here's where we have to do this here's where we have to do this here's where we play this song to have a character
Just basically say like I just shit myself.
Feels like it comes out of nowhere and it's so bizarre.
Like if it was a John Waters movie, that line, I'd be like, oh right, whatever, yeah.
But it's just like, it's almost like a line from a different movie fell into this movie by accident.
We've, I mean, we've alluded to this movie's like weird tone issues.
Like the movie starts off exactly as you would expect
for a lot of ages too.
It's just like a medley of like cheesy rock songs.
And very big and over the top.
And everything's happening.
Yeah, it's very cheesy.
And then it slows way down for a long two person scene
between male and aker men and Tom Cruise
that feels like like a two man play.
Like it's like a zoo story or something.
Tracy Let's Bug, you know. But it's it's a very weird back and forth because then you'll get
scenes the weird the tone thing that got me was you get scenes that are very cartoony and cheesy
like winking at the audience like we know this is silly and then you get other scenes where it's like
this is a rock and song and these are rockin' people.
Aren't don't you think this is awesome?
It's like, well, I mean, last scene you were kinda
waking at me and tell me how cheesy and ridiculous this is.
It's kinda hard for me to treat it like they're super cool now.
I don't know.
They couldn't, it's like they couldn't pick one tone
and stick with it.
It's kinda like Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter
that we watched last episode where they they it's a ridiculous goofy concept, but they wanted you to take it really seriously,
that they didn't want to put the work into it to make it worth taking seriously. And at
times this movie had that problem. And other times it was just a silly ridiculous movie
that would full of songs that I don't care for particularly. So take my criticism for
it's worth. but it was also over
two hours long and it seems like that's a big mistake to have it in over two hour jukbuk's
musical where there's almost no plot I guess. How's that so long? I feel like I was a different
age when I started looking at them. There were songs in it like song take up space. That's
why musical plots are so simple I guess because, because like you have to move the songs.
Yeah, but this one like, they,
and by this Stacy Jackson gets to the bourbon room
at the end to play the night that the Z-boys
are also going to play.
And there should be like 10 minutes left
in the movie, I guess, something like that.
And Dan had to pause it for some reason
I think for an interruption or something and it showed that it was like they had just thrown up in his pants
But it and there was like a half hour left in the movie. It was like how is this possible?
This is like the Hobbit part one an unexpected journey of
Dukebox musicals like just extend it we got to keep
feeling this thing and make it super long like the weird that's the weird thing they they
took some stuff from some really on and they put it in rock of age it was so weird and to have
rock of age is suddenly stopped for the origin of tom bombadill like what is this have to do with anything
tom bombadill loves to sing he does that's true How it's been you love to sing. I feel like you and I appreciated this on a different level
as karaoke fans. Yeah, exactly. Like I feel like this movie would be great to stand up in front of
and pull a rocky whore picture show with. That would be the way to watch this. Yeah, not with Elliott.
It doesn't like to sing along with any song. I like to sing along with lots of stuff,
just not any of these songs.
Well,
Hally, we sing all the time in our office.
That's true.
Yeah, mostly Jesus Christ, super star.
Saying all the time, what happened guys?
What happened between you two?
It used to be so happy.
Hally, Hally got a little too big
and it's hard to work with now.
In her cocoon.
As in fact,
Hally had to move into the hall.
She's just not in a room with two people.
She's just in this cocoon of alcohol and girls
and her pet monkey that she puts different uniforms on.
That's true.
And Paul G. Mottie, her agent.
That's why this story touched me so much.
It was my biopic.
They call her Halle Jax.
I knew I'd always be played by Tom Cruise.
I've seen a lot of details in that.
How was the singing?
Did you guys think by the actor's song?
I actually was, I thought it was surprisingly good.
I thought the only person who definitely, I mean, obviously they fussed around.
They, you know, they messed with the made voices sound, sweetened the voices, you know.
But I thought the only person who didn't sound
like an actual singer was Alec Baldwin.
Yeah, yeah, just sound like he was.
Well, Paul, Gia Motti a little, but he barely said.
He barely said.
Alec Baldwin sounded like he was kind of like Rex Harrison
talk singing, you know?
Which, I mean, he's not a singer.
So it comes down to.
Tom Cruise did better than I would have expected.
Yeah, I thought he sounded great in the journey song at the end.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I thought he did a fine job.
I wish that his acting had been up to the level of his singing.
Yeah.
Because he just, he's,
or I guess it's not even bad acting so much as like,
it feels like he's playing the wrong character, you know.
I mean, we were talking about this, how you were like,
like how do you know these people to be in this stupid movie? I'm like, I think they probably just want to be in a musical.
Like, you know, I believe it's how he has that question.
And I said,
I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said,
I said, I said, I said, I said,
I said, I said, I said,
I said, I said, I said,
I said, I said, I said, I said, I said,
I said, I said,
I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, They were locked in a building and the only way I was to make a movie rock of ages. It was part of in a lab-rit prank.
He saw. Saw put them in there.
Would you like to play a game?
You can either make a movie with jukebox musical or a bomb's gonna go off in your head.
Okay, his name is not Saw.
His name is Jigsaw.
We call him Saw for short. It's a foster of me Saw.
Jigs guys like to make a little jukebox musical.
You can either saw your own leg off or sing pour some sugar on me. I saw. You guys like to make a little jukebox musical?
You can either saw your own leg off or sing pour some sugar on me.
I guess I'll sing this song.
Can you give me the lyrics?
Because I don't know all of them.
No, but for real, I thought that they got locked.
I remember Alec Baldwin trying to get out of his contract or something and they were somehow
locked in and they had to make a movie.
I tried to pull a Theodore Rex, I see.
Once he found out, he had to kiss Russell Brandt.
Yeah, he tried to leave 30 rock every season.
And now he's finally got his wish.
It's the last.
But I heard that like did you read all those reports about how like once it was the last
season, he's like, Hey guys, let's do a much more.
And he did a tweet.
They cheat tweeted from the last read through.
There's like last 30 rock read through.
Wow.
And it's like, you've been trying to leave the show
for like four years.
You are an emotional role that goes to Alec Baldwin.
Yeah.
Yeah, did you see that news center,
or that rock center piece that they did all about him
during Hurricane Sandy?
And just how he like, I think I was about how he like,
helped people walk their dogs or something.
It was very strange. I was on the treadmill and a lot of indoor fids
running through my brain. I was just like, I really fell apart at the end.
Well, it was something about how we hung out downtown.
And there was a dog involved.
So if anyone wants to try to put those pieces together, figure out where Alex Baldwin was during the hurricane.
Imagine like a fan with like a basement room.
There's a picture of Alex Baldwin and a picture of a dog and yarn going between the two of them.
There's gotta be a connection.
What don't they want me to find out?
You'll unlock your secrets. Yeah, so rock of a, I think you guys enjoyed
this movie more than I did. Probably. Well, I mean, that's a good segue into our final
judgments section where we talk about whether we thought this was a good bad movie, bad
bad movie or a movie we kind of liked. Howie, what do you think? Oh, well, I think I said
it before that I think the movie started and I was like, oh man This movie really isn't very good. And then I was like, oh no, this movie's kind of good
And then I was like, all this isn't very good at all. And then it was like, oh no, it's kind of good
so
I take you on an unexpected journey. Yeah, I mean I just like the Hobbit part one
In theaters this December I think it had music, it had a monkey.
Um,
Ali Haglan says it has the two M's.
More please.
No, I think I didn't think it was as bad as I expected it to be.
I mean, it was a really bad movie, but I enjoyed it more than I expected to enjoy it.
Yeah, for me, this hovered between a bad, bad movie and a movie I kind of liked.
Like, I think it was stupid enough that it was like a big Hollywood fiasco in a way that
you don't normally see.
So I definitely looked like a lot of people who'd usually know what they're doing.
Yeah.
They had no idea what they were doing.
So I enjoyed that.
Which made me think like, oh maybe they never know what they're doing. They just have. They had no idea what they were doing. So I enjoyed that. Which made me think like, oh, maybe they never know what they're doing.
They just have really good people telling them what to do.
Yeah.
That's possible.
It's like William Goldman's, his old, it's saying about movie business, which is that
nobody knows anything in the movie business.
It's all kind of chance.
But also then I enjoyed like the few moments that something kind of like genuinely funny
peek through or just, you know, people singing songs.
I like seeing people sing songs.
What do you think, Elliot?
I, uh, I mean, it wasn't as bad a movie as I thought it was going to be,
but I'm still going to give it a bad, bad rating because it just didn't hold.
I mean, like, even if this wasn't my particular favorite type of music, I do like
musicals. I don't have an issue with movies where people burst into song all of a sudden,
but it just didn't hold together and they're just had so many
Spacing and story problems. Yeah, and there was not a sense of like
Fun like they were riding too much on the fumes of the music like you guys love these songs
You'll come see it for the song so we don't have to try that hard and it's an issue
I have with jukebox music musicals in general, which like, you're not, the musical itself often is not that good,
but it's like you're just working off of the residual feelings people have for this music.
Well, I would definitely say that the singing was not really that good,
and the dancing was terrible.
Yeah.
So if you're looking for musical stuff, like it's not a good music,
it's a better musical.
It's a rock and roll musical where the musical elements are mostly awful. But if you're like if you're wrong, you would have the equivalent of
a karaoke. I don't think this why would you say the singing wasn't good? I mean the singing of the
actual like the actual quality of the singing was like okay these are actors you can sing okay.
I guess I just mean what Ellie was saying. Mary J. Blodge was really good. But she's a
really much better. Well Mary J. Blodge really good. But she's a really much better, well, Married J. Blige, the only person I felt like
were when she was singing, she was trying to put
any emotion into the song.
There's no edge in the way that it's sung.
Yeah, everyone else, there was no edge or like feeling.
It was a lot of like, this is how I do a perfect version
of the song, but they weren't feeling it, you know.
There was, and like, you had a lot of these songs
like are pretty, you know, bubblegummy rock and roll songs, but they do have some growl to them,
and they just didn't do any of that. Yeah. It just felt like, you know, when kids sing
rock and roll songs, and like the most, the filthiest or like, scariest song becomes
adorable, is the kid is singing it. And in a weird way, it's kind of funny that that's true because a lot of these people are not,
you know, like real singers.
And it's easier to sing like rock and roll music
where the perfection of the singing
is not as important as the feeling.
Well, because they're a lot of great rock and roll singers
who don't have very good voices.
Yeah, but they, like this movie,
like went for the perfection more
than it went for the feeling of the song.
Because that's the singing style right now.
I feel like a lot of song styles right now are for ultra gloss
and a lot of polish,
instead of edge or roughness or energy.
It did feel like watching the voice or something.
I agree.
But if there were songs that I was more into,
maybe I would feel differently. But, but hey, you know, if they were songs that I was more into maybe I would feel differently
But now guys
Now that part of the podcast is over and the next part of the podcast is just beginning
Our night-american continues perfect segue perfect segue. Yeah, what a great what a seamless segue that parts over Let's go to the next part. What is the next part?
Dan's part is the flop house movie mail bag
Let's go to the next part. What is the next part? The next part is the flop house movie mailbag
Movie mailbag letters of our movies letters from the fans about the movies we watch and the podcasts that we do
It's called the flop house with the movie mailbag at the flop house
You won't sing I can't fight this feeling anymore, but let's sing made-up songs about. Time for letters from the movie mailbag. A mailbag full of movies.
No, it's got mail in it.
Otherwise, it'd be a movie bag.
That doesn't exist.
You can carry movies in a bag unless they're on tape.
All right.
Or DVD.
OK, that's the end.
So anyway, reading the letters from the movie bag,
we're going to go through the first one and then the second one
I thought the letters got a read letters. They're coming from the mail back
But first they came from you you sent them to the mailbag at that address mailbag
Cursey of the flop house one two three main street mailbag town and film city
No post is necessary.
Thank you very much.
Guys, I told you already I'm not coming to your implies
musical.
That's why we got to bring it to you.
Halley, what time of the show is it?
It's time for letters, reading from the male bag.
They're going to be lots of letters, not handwritten, mostly timed.
There are 26 letters in the out of the bat,
but not that many letters in the mailbag.
It's a tiny bag, a little bag,
with just a few letters in it.
So let's read them and make more room for more letters.
Keep writing.
This letter is from, from Listen Our Last Name With hell. I think that's a pseudonym. Very clever. Oh, it's titled something stupid. I may well end up doing again.
Something stupid. I may win well end up doing again. It's a David Foster Wallace play. Yeah, it's a reference to his play, Rock of Ages. You didn't know he wrote that.
That's why it's the only stage musical full of footnotes.
I made a play on, of course.
Wasn't that the name close to the name of Chris Getherd's memoir?
Wasn't it like a really dumb thing I'm about to do again?
Oh, yeah, it was something like that.
I thought it was a reference to a...
That porn star Chris Getherd?
I'm saying I'll never do again.
But that's what Chris get hards thing was to play on, I think.
Oh, well, I hope that answers your question.
Mailbag close.
Close up the mailbag.
Throw it in the fire.
Throw it in the you log.
It just bounces against the TV.
So elaborate. All right, read the letter.
It goes like this. So I just finished listening to every single episode and movie minute you guys
ever made. My God, you must have gone insane. In reverse order, starting with Journey 2,
the mysterious island and ending with stealth, with a brief trip back to the present for battleship
That's about four and a half full days of free-ranging conversation about bad movies with the comedy focus
Listen to in less than a month. It was interesting
Dot dot dot
Interesting. Yeah, I must say you know, like it if nothing else
It made me better understand teach white's Merlin now and then, an element of the show that
stopped showing up in later episodes appeared and seemed new and
baffling to me, but natural and even tried to you. Then as I worked my way
through your back catalog, I too became used to it. Learn to love it until the
dreaded moment where you originally introduced it.
Oh, it sounds like time's arrow. Yeah, meaning that.
Meaning that it wouldn't be the last time I would encounter it.
Wow, wow.
What was that?
It sounded like some kind of hat.
Cat.
Perhaps a house cat.
I want to recommend this movie about it.
That's one of like a guitar sting, actually.
Well, Dan's not the usual house cat guy.
I want to recommend this movie.
It's about a freak who lives in a castle, Rips off his own ding-dong. Meet our new guest. Does he think we haven't heard
this stuff? No offense listener are named withheld, but...
Meet our new guest host. He works for the Daily Show or something. So I just
brought bought these new microphones. I'm a girl. No, this is it's not when I came in.
I just bought these new microphones. I guess the show will not sound as shitty as it has up until now.
Those were fucking heartbreaking, you guys.
I thought you might like to know.
So this is the, I made this reference to you, Elliot, about Merlin living backwards in
time.
And that was the first time you'd heard of it.
Yeah, but he's been in conversation from a...
Well, thank you for doing it. It's like my whole life was flashing before my eyes except for most of it
Since the fluff house takes up a relatively small part of my life
But uh, it's interesting maybe I'll do it that way now and I'll think that eight hours a month
I'll think that Simon has replaced me and then I'll call you up and be like, Dan, am I still on the fluff house?
Yeah, I'll be like what the fuck's wrong with you?
We're recording the tonight. Oh, okay.
Get over here. And then I will, well, nevermind, I'm not going to say that.
I was about to be thinking about that later.
Thank God, I can't believe someone spent so much time listening to you guys.
Hey, we're very listenable. I guess so.
We have a lot of diehard fans and we love them.
Way to go, flopters, keep it up up except maybe tone it down on the AV club
Comment boards because you guys can be thugs
I highly all that time that you've been spinning tuning Elliot and me out in your office. We were carrying you
There was only one set of ear prints that was us
So your prince. That was us. So this next letter is titled second letter. You say
master first. Now that will be terrible. Second letter is titled
alcohol and movies. And from Robert last name.
Dan enjoys both of alcohol and and movies, floppers.
What are your thoughts on drinking and watching movies,
specifically drinking and watching a good movie?
I recently saw the master and enjoyed a high A, B, V,
IPA during the movie.
I felt like the slight buzz combined with the dark theater
actually made the alienating nature
of the film more pronounced. I know that drinking and action movies and bad movies go
together but I wondered what you thought about drinking with serious films.
Does it benefit or detract? I had a similar experience with Drive. I wrote a
while ago about private lesson star Patrick Picking in the
Picking any. Picking. Picking. Picking. Chance had a little too much to do.
Just spell it.
Running for a judge here in Columbus, Ohio.
He did not win.
Oh, that's terrible.
I needed more lessons.
I feel that his lack of private lessons
based on advertising cost and the election.
As a reminder, he played Chevy Child Sherman.
Wait, so he wasn't even the star?
But as a reminder to us, the original question
was about drinking.
I wish that the, I hope the character's name was Chubby Child Sherman.
I would think, I mean, I don't know.
I don't really drink that much usually.
You're a nearly T total general.
Not as much as I once was.
I gave you a Guinness tonight in celebration of your birthday, but that's the rare.
No, I know, but like he poured it down the toilet where you are way down.
Yeah.
Well, the intermediate step was putting it in my body and turning it into urine.
And then I poured that in the toilet out of me.
All right.
But the all out.
I would that maybe for something like drive, I could make sense because drive is
about visual sensation for the most part.
And the master was in a bit of a twist too.
Yeah.
And I frankly, the drinking before the master
may help to smooth over the story problems
that that movie has.
But in general, I feel like when you really want to enjoy
a movie, it helps to be able to give it total attention.
And I don't know, it depends on the person
maybe of drinking helps you or hurts you at that.
I mean, I probably wouldn't recommend it
if it's something that you've seen for the first time
that you really wanna pay a lot of attention to.
Yeah, are you taking a test on it or something?
Mm-hmm.
You're taking a driving test afterwards.
Or during.
Before that.
You shouldn't be watching a movie
while you're taking a driving test anyway,
so don't be in definitely not drinking it.
Unless you can put the iPod in your field of vision
and still see the road, Then that's probably okay.
Maybe like the movie drive might help you.
Yeah.
A lot of driving in that movie.
But if it's a movie that you've seen before,
it's like a personal favorite of you.
Like I feel like I've watched a couple of Cohen Brothers movies
recently while slowly sipping on some whiskey
and that just enhances the pleasure of watching it.
Dan's definition of slow. Glug, glug, glug. Yeah, just toss the pleasure of watching it. Hmm. Dan's definition of slow.
Look, look, look.
Yeah, just tossing it back.
Yeah.
Thanks, guys.
Anything short of pouring the bottle into his mouth.
So he does that.
He drink a bottle while you're peeing on the floor trick all the time.
Because that's just how fast it goes through.
Howdy, what do you have to say about the subject?
I think that, um, yeah, I agree with Elliott. If it's a certain type of movie, like I can see why you would enjoy the master or drive
while drinking a bit, but honestly, I find that I get too tired in, yeah, if I, if I'm
drinking and watching a movie
and I either fall asleep or miss things
that I wish I hadn't missed.
So, not a big drink or time.
That's what I would worry about
because I reached apparently the age
where I've had the combination of a dark room
and anything over, I guess, freezing temperature
puts me to sleep.
So when I'm in a movie theater, I'm already,
even when I'm really loving the movie I'm watching,
I'm already at risk of falling asleep.
So to add alcohol, that would be a bad idea, I think.
Yeah, it's such a strange, like, calculation, because I feel like if I start drinking at night,
I'm fine.
I can stay awake all through the whole thing.
But what if you start drinking in the morning?
But no, but if I have, like, even drinking all day, If I went to like, like, Barbeque or something like,
I'm drinking like in like the middle of the afternoon,
and then I come home, I'm, I'm,
I'm a sleep on the middle of the ice.
I'm a, I'm a sleep on a couch by six or seven.
Like, and that's just, that's just aging.
Yeah.
That's nothing to do with movies.
That's just more to do with.
We're all getting older.
All of us except Merlin.
Guys, tell me I still can't.
Come on.
I will not.
Come on.
Still?
I'm just kidding.
I've got a lot of youthful vigour still.
Hey, why don't you go on to the next letter?
Which I believe is,
let her number three.
Let her number three.
If there's another letter from me, from you,
the viewer, or listener listener would be more accurate I
guess letter number three it's the best letter to be if you're letter number three is tape before a live studio audience.
You're a cat cat, so freaking.
I'm not saying that now.
Make with the letter, Dan.
So this last letter of the evening is titled, Dan is ignorant.
I like this one.
Sounds well right. Poss Dan is ignorant. I like this one. Sounds well right.
Possession is weird. Dan, how ignorant you are.
I can't speak for mainline Protestants.
They're too boring to pay much attention to.
What were their reasonfulness and stateness.
But fundamentalist Protestants totally believe in demons
pretty much all the time.
They'd announce psychics and witches as having, or is this off of the devil inside?
The devil inside, sorry. They'd announce psychics and witches as having demonic spirits supplying their eerie powers,
claim that certain monuments and places are territory for specific demons, maintained that all contact with space aliens is actually demons trying to trick people into doubting the Bible and believe that visions of the Virgin Mary are actually a plot a
demonic plot
also some of the more adventurous fundamentalists believe in
Nephilim that's a deep Torah cut for you. Oh, yeah, I'm familiar with that one and
Claim that NASA is currently plotting to create more as a part of an alien breeding
program, which suggests that at some point one of them saw species.
Also, or the astronauts' wife. Also, you write to Elliot on your recommendation,
I rewatched possession, although your description was basically correct, I don't think it did
justice to just how bonkers that movie is. It's super bonkers. I didn't talk about the Dissultry Spy Thriller subplot
or the Lack of Asical Gunfight,
or the way that all the characters seem to have
some kind of neurological disorder
that makes them twitch uncontrollably
and shout most of their dialogue,
which is all repetitive and doesn't seem to bearing
resemblance to how people actually talk.
You didn't mention the film's weird.
The movie involves a woman having sex
with a tentacle monster and you're like,
these characters don't talk like these normal getting to it. You know, okay?
It's a film's weird half-baked
Flosifying with Jim's like I believe God is under the porch with the dead dog or
Heinrich's claim that nobody should ever force their will on anyone else
But it that is cool for him to rape Isabella Ijani because he
Quote asked for nothing and made therefore to band everything.
There's also a pretty good, very brief karate fight too.
You fail to bring up the tentacle monster's curious evolution
or the way that Sam Neal appears to gradually turn into a rat man over the course of the film.
In short, that shit is the weirdest movie I've ever seen.
I've seen The Wedding Troph, Kist, and Embatian from Inner Earth.
And if you can think of anything stranger, please let me know. I want to be able to win any who's watched the weirdest movie
arguments that might arise. Yours and Crom Lawrence last name with a little.
It's too bad Stuart's not here to worship Crom with him.
But to the first point, demonic possession. Yes, I am discounting your evangelical Christians, your Fundy Christian Christians.
I did grow up in a more mainstream Protestant culture.
You grew up near a particular Christian sect, right?
I did.
That is not seer.
I grew up near the Apostolic Christians who were, I would say sort of a minimite.
Oh, that's not so crazy, I guess.
I wouldn't, yeah, I don't know that they were big on
like the idea of demonic possession.
They're big on the idea of the devil.
I would say that the devil is certainly
a large component of a fundamentalist Protestantism,
but I don't know that possession specifically.
Well, they do exorcisms and not them,
but you see those videos online of evangelical exorcisms
and stuff like that.
Usually the demons wanna make people gay,
and that's what they exercise out,
and it's like demons.
Is that really the biggest,
like that's the most damage you can make.
Usually they exercise it by inserting the demons.
You gotta deal with the times.
Oh, damn.
I'm just saying.
Dan, this is a family podcast.
Is it?
Well, I consider us like family.
Hey, when you're here, your family.
Yeah, because you live in an Olive Garden.
Don't tell me when.
I've been squatting here.
Don't tell anyone I'm under the table.
I'm under your table right now,
consuming your listing to this at an Olive Garden.
Which I assume you are.
You should probably take your headphones out
and pay a newspaper for it.
It's rude.
Pay attention to your family.
Which you are treated like.
But before you do that, please stick a bread sticker
to your lungs of the day for me.
If you're there alone, then keep listening to the podcast
because it's sad enough that you're at an Olive Garden alone.
Hoping I guess to flag down a family.
Pass if you could join.
Pepper and she need down to me.
And get a bottomless salad bowl.
What's bottomless over there?
Salad bowl, the soup bowl, the waitresses.
Everything except for the customers.
They've got plenty of bottom.
Oh, so clever.
And possession. And the movie possession. And the So clever. So end possession.
End possession.
And the movie possession.
We've said it.
It's super bonkers.
I don't know anything about this.
I have nothing to say.
Right, let's move on.
It's fine.
We had a lot of good, I'll be out of material.
So let's say a lot of good, I'll be out of material.
Well, it's not like a tight five or anything.
No, let's not take it.
Let's not do any open mics just yet. We still got to develop this
So anyway, uh, this is the last segment of the evening again a flawless
This is falling apart Dan. I think Hallie next time we have her do the show. We got to put the cat in the other room
She won't pay attention to me
That's right just because you didn't raise her like I did.
I'm sure that if I went over to your house, Henry would ignore me.
That's not true.
Henry's not like that.
He's very friendly.
Henry is a cat for the listeners.
So this is the last segment where we recommend films that we've seen and we liked.
Not like Rocket Bages, which we saw in some of us kind of liked. where we just we recommend films that we've seen and we liked not like rocket
pages which we saw and some of us kind of liked Elliott what film would you
like to recommend to our listeners shall I go first all right I shall I'd like to
recommend a movie of some reason it's a 1950s kind of military suspense thriller
starring Richard Widmark and a very young rip torn who's very good
in it.
It's the only movie ever directed by Carl Maldon, which is too bad because it's not a
bad movie and he does some interesting things with it.
It's kind of directed.
It's a little stagy, but otherwise I like it.
It's a movie called Time Limit.
It's right after the Korean War and a bunch of American POWs are trying to figure out, rather, Richard
Ridmar, who's an investigator, I guess he's like, whatever the army version of a jagged,
I suppose, he is trying to figure out why this one soldier basically turned and collaborated
with the enemy and recorded radio broadcast and things like that. Saying America was at fault for this war.
And the soldier is kind of giving up too easily.
He refuses to defend himself.
And so Richard W. Murray thinks there's more to this story than meets the eye.
And he has to kind of dig deeper to find out what actually happened in this POW camp
and why nobody who was there wants to tell the truth about what happened and is
easier to cover it up and send this other guy to sacrifice himself basically and just
go to jail for collaborating.
And it's a tight level suspense thriller of the kind of liberal humanist message mode
that Hollywood did in the 40s and 50s, but it doesn't have a kind of pat ending and it refuses to,
it raises questions about kind of when you should follow military law and why not, but
doesn't answer those questions, which I kind of appreciated.
Everyone gets their chance to say, to make a case for themselves, but it's also, it's suspenseful. So time limit. I'd recommend that.
Ali Hagelin, do you like to recommend something to our listeners?
I was going to steal the movie. You told me you were going to say, but now I can't remember what it is. Lucky you.
Which makes it just think if I can't remember what movie you like, think how hard
it is for me to think of a movie that I've never liked.
That does make sense.
It might be easier to remember the one you need. One should recommend like the last unicorn or something.
I think I did that last time.
No, I will recommend.
Music by America.
For those who haven't seen it, which I'm sure as the movie buffs that you are, you probably
have.
But I just saw the original red dawn for the first time.
And with the new one in the theaters, I'd say revisit that old classic.
It all just not realized that everyone who was
anyone was in that movie.
And I didn't even know that Jennifer Gray was in a movie besides dirty dancing
and then that movie she did about sailing after she got her nose job.
And nobody recognized her.
Turns out all her charm was in her nose. I know. Just like Carl Maldon. Director of time limit. See
it today. Look at me when I hear Carl Maldon is that MST3K thing that ends in Carl Maldon's nose.
Yeah, about it's Godzilla's history, I think. Yeah.
Oh no, you don't suppose.
Oh yes, yes.
Horror of horrors.
Karl Maldon's nose.
And Karl Maldon was still alive at the time.
Yeah, just cruel.
So what movie was it, Red Dawn?
Yeah, there it is.
Original Red Dawn.
Original Red Dawn.
Or DOG.
I would like to recommend a film called Tabloid by famed documentary and
Errol Morris who may know for films such as The Thin Blue Line, Gates of
Heaven, The Fog of War, Fashion Keepin Out of Control, and Mr. Death.
That's a good one too.
Some other ones. Vernon Florida.
Yeah, that one too.
I don't know why I'm blanking on some on his more recent movies.
Famously first person series.
One of the few people to be so frustrating that Werner Herzog had trouble
dealing with him.
Oh, really?
I didn't know.
I'll tell you some stories.
Just he, he, he was one of Werner Herzog studentsner Herzog's students and he was just very difficult to deal with
and there's a story that he, I think it was Gates of Heaven he was working on but I'm
not sure and he didn't have the money to finish it and Werner Herzog and he was mad about
it for some reason and Werner Herzog went to see him and literally gave him the cash
to finish it and Errol Maris got so mad that he threw the money out the window of his
apartment and Werner Herzog went outside and got it and brought it back up to him
and said, don't do that again. Hopefully I'm remembering the story correctly. And he
has a book out now. But no, Errol Morris, he has a book refuting the McGinist book,
Fatal Vision, about the the murders that led to the very, very excellent book, The Journalist and the Murderer
by Jay Ann Jacobs. No, no, no, no, Janet Malcolm, sorry, Janet Malcolm.
But tabloid is about a woman who, depending on who you ask, either she kidnapped a young Mormon gentleman,
changed him to her bed and raped him,
or that young Mormon gentleman claimed
that she kidnapped him and raped him
because his religion made it so shameful
for him to have had the sexual desire
to this woman that rather than be
excommunicated, he made this up and this was a tabloid sensation in the British
press and it's a and I won't go too much further. There are like more
revelations in the movie, but it's fun to like the book of revelations for yourself.
Yes exactly like the book of revelations. the Seven-headed beast and stuff like that. But it's a movie about, you know, like the nature of truth and constructing truth,
but it's also just a very entertaining movie about tabloid journalism.
And it's an interesting character study of this lady who is obviously crazy,
but the level to which she's crazy is maybe not so obvious.
And it's just done very entertainingly.
You know, Aaron Morris is always good for an entertaining documentary.
So that's my recommendation.
What do you say, guys?
What do you think?
I say, sure.
How do you thank you for stepping in? Thank you so much for being our guest host
Stupid job kept you from being here. Yeah, well, we can only pay you in being close to a cat. Yeah
But look at it. It's lying there not doing much of anything just like a cat
adorable, but thank you for being here to our listeners. Thank you for listening and to Dan.
Thank you for being.
Oh, Ellie.
Sorry, I just kidding.
Well, no, actually, you know what?
That's better than what I was going to say.
Yeah, go fuck yourself, Dan.
Thanks, guys.
For the flop house, I've been Dan McCoy.
I'm Elliott.
Hold on.
Kalan, Elliott, Kalan.
And I am and always will be
Wait, that's the kind of thing I usually say can I everyone?
You're staring off in the space I'm washing Ellie like that dog in that video
And why is this versus a bath. Yeah, it was weird.
I don't know why this verse is a bath, since he loved it.
I know.
It was like, it wasn't firsts, it was.
Meets bath, falls in love.