The Worst Idea Of All Time - Episode Fifteen - MaximumJosephsMagnumOpus

Episode Date: August 30, 2016

Spindly has had the rare treat of watching the film with his girlfriend, a viewer who is in the Learner's Jacuzzi (never seen WAYF before). Flash, meanwhile has watched the film solo in Lambourn,... England. This week there's a new-found empathy for the most punchable face in the film. There's anger. Timbo's lashing out at GuyGuy again but this time, he hasn't been drinking. The terms 'failing out' and 'spin' get a jolly good airing as does some MAXIMUM VOLUME for MAXIMUM JOSEPH. And just what in the heck has happened to Guy's sister? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is a Little Empire podcast. Visit us at littleempirepodcast.com. Are you going to play that dastardly intro again? Try, try, try, try, try, try, try. Ow! This movie's still fine. There's a colleague, a pastor. One of the guys that goes screw. One of them's a hottie. His name is Jay.
Starting point is 00:00:17 One of them looks like Johnny Depp. And his name is Johnny Depp. Classic Maximum Joseph. Agree! Ah! You forget that films are supposed to have a point. Hello and welcome to the worst idea of all time with myself, Tim Batt. And myself, Guy Montgomery.
Starting point is 00:00:36 We have reunited once more to discuss Maximum Joseph's magnum opus, We Are Your Friends, for the 15th time. Maximum Joseph's Magnum Opus we are your friends for the 15th time we watched the movie Son's Company that is to say Without One Another and it's getting harder and harder I had company
Starting point is 00:00:54 this week though Guy, this is the bit you don't know about my conditions of watching this week also, if you're a newcomer welcome, welcome along this is the worst idea of all time, a podcast in which myself and Guy watch and review the same movie every week for 52 weeks in a row. We've already done it once with Adam Sandler's movie, Grown Ups 2,
Starting point is 00:01:16 and then we did it with, screw it, I'm just going to call it Sarah Jessica Parker's movie, Sex and the City 2, and now we're doing it with Zach Efron and Maximum Josephs. That's a gross disservice to both Michael and Patrick King, but I will let it slide, as I'm not in the mood for nitpicking, Tim. If you've got nits, I'm afraid that they're your problem. I'm busting up the wrong mattress. So this week, Guy,
Starting point is 00:01:44 sober as a judge was I watching the film not recommended but i was watching it on the projector and in the company of my lovely girlfriend zoe and there's something that happens when you watch this movie or indeed any movie that you've seen over a dozen times and and you know that you have to watch another you know 30 odd uh where you kind of draw their enthusiasm like a vampire sucking on their blood you kind of steal something from them you get something out of it and i felt kind of guilty in some ways uh watching it with her and she had a lot of questions um the early questions was, is this movie just a big music video? That came a couple of times in the first 10 minutes.
Starting point is 00:02:30 And Zoe also observed that this movie seems like it kind of, you're kind of welcomed into it about halfway through, like you're coming into something that's already been going for a little while. It's a bit janky. You reckon halfway is when the movie starts starts being a movie and stops being an intro or zoe reckons that yeah well yeah she felt like it wasn't really um it's not an easy intro into this this journey into maximum joseph's debauched mind into his oeuvre um i don't know i i would have loved to be there with you too i'll tell you that
Starting point is 00:03:05 i really could have used um zoe's moral support i also would have liked to rebut against that ludicrous and foolish theory what does she know about this movie tim she's watched it once she's a goddamn amateur an idiot it's embarrassing for her to wade in to the the expert pool from over in the learner's jacuzzi and start throwing opinions around this movie learner's jacuzzi it's it comes out like a bottle rocket right out of the gates it's the favorite in the melbourne cup you know it's the fastest horse um but what we soon learn is is that pace is only on account of it's it's had a lot of bananas and wheat bicks for breakfast and it's not a slow burning energy it's fast see i reckon it starts off and you're like yeah it's all happening and
Starting point is 00:03:50 then about halfway through you realize that there's no stakes and there's nowhere for it to go and that's where it slows down for mine yeah definitely yeah she was like hey this isn't so bad and and i was like just hold on hold off for a for a tick because it's all about to come to a screeching halt pace wise but I'll tell you what um without getting too ahead of myself this thing is how it's four minutes in she came out of that movie Zoe did she watched the entire thing with me and she said it's not that good but it's not offensive that's what she said. That's right. And that is the fortunate perspective of those in the learner's jacuzzi who deem it necessary to only watch this movie once or nuts even. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:37 Would you think people have seen it nuts in the learner's jacuzzi or are they in some even warmer, more inviting body of water? I don't know what a warmer body of water than a jacuzzi is probably a vat no it'd be a sauna wouldn't it they'd be in the um they'd be in the quarantine sauna here or start a sauna if you're into sibilance which i certainly sam sam um i yeah what i what i miss i guess i having having zoe there or someone there means that you know you're reminded of what the stakes supposedly are meant to be you're reminded of when squirrel dies it's quite shocking and it was for her too that was a big moment well yeah because they haven't earned the right to kill any of their characters.
Starting point is 00:05:26 It's a very shocking moment. But now I just don't care. I'm like, yeah, of course Squirrel dies. Squirrel dies every week. It's boring. It's predictable. Squirrel is always dying. It's the same thing with, did they get it with the bait and switch?
Starting point is 00:05:38 Where they come over, big fight, and Zicoli goes over to James Reed's house and he's like, oh, I'm about to get told off. And then James Reed's like, let's watch some wrestling i don't think zoe was actually that interested at that point that she didn't seem to be invested enough to even kind of notice um that classic bait and switch but i've always admired that one i think it's a goodie you know i i used to but now it's much like squirrel's death i know it's coming i need someone else with fresh eyes to see it to remind me that you're not meant to see that coming one thing that i can barely stress enough is in spite of the fact that i have moral support there
Starting point is 00:06:18 um in the form of my beautiful girlfriend being by my side. Watching this movie sober at this point is a fucking nightmare. It's so unpalatable. I've bought myself a very large glass of whiskey, actually, for the post-mortem, and I'll be looking for extended breaks as you take the reins for me to just gulp down a big old mouthful of 12 year old single note if you please if i've learned anything uh in the time i've spent over the years doing this podcast away from you tim it's that um encouraging you to load up on booze during records is uh is is very important
Starting point is 00:07:00 for the integrity of the podcast and at this point you know you could almost make an argument that it's a crutch uh i mean this wouldn't be the first time i've gone on record as saying we're all worried about your timbly wimbly but also i'm you'll notice that i've been speaking for long enough that you could have a healthy slug i've had a couple um i'm fine with alcohol being a bit of a crutch for my performance on the podcast at this point. We've set such a strange parameter for this show, which is now in its second and a half-eth year, that it's just like, fuck it, whatever. Whatever's happening.
Starting point is 00:07:34 I'm fine with that. And I'm usually pretty pedantic about things like that. Even when I'm doing stand-up, I don't like to kind of get in a zone where I'm just constantly having know having three beers before i go on stage or something i always try to cut in with some no drinking but this thing fuck it man just anything bring it all on look i hear you i mean i'm watching i watched it here i'm in by the way i'm in a very small town called lambourne um it's about an hour and a half out of london i
Starting point is 00:08:08 don't know in what direction i think southwest uh and it's it's quite a beautiful day i mean there's nothing happening outside of the outside of the the house that i'm in, or the unit, if you'd call it that. But the movie was just, it was plodding. I really didn't want to watch it. I really... Yeah. I hear what you mean. On the sobriety front, you need something, some sort of curveball to make it accessible
Starting point is 00:08:40 because at this point, it's water off a duck's back. We've turned a fucking page we've really turned a corner this time like i feel this week uh we've gone we've we've gone down a gear um and it took a fucking long time to maximum joseph's credit he had us on that leash for a while but now i just uh i feel um is the word demonstrative is that the word i'm looking for is that when you get kind of agitated and uh you feel a bit punchy demonstrative no demonstrative would be uh to do with demonstrating wouldn't it, that's demonstrable. No, I mean, demon from the Latin demon, meaning the devil. Strativ from the French strata, meaning stable.
Starting point is 00:09:37 So you're either in a stable of devils or you've taken on the mental stability of lucifer himself i can't argue with that well i wouldn't ask you to tim did you have any notes did you did you take anything away from it this week or this performance that you hadn't seen before did anyone turn in a particularly strong showing um i think watching it on a projector is not a bad way to go, just to mix it up a little bit. It's really seeing those pixels blasted up to hitherto unforeseen size, which was interesting. Gravitated a lot towards the guy that Zuccoli punches right in the face at the Stanford party this week, right on his side.
Starting point is 00:10:23 It's like the bigger he gets, the more you warm to him. Oh, yeah, big time. All you need to do is blow him up. I don't think anyone comes out of that scene looking too cool, but I guess it's nice, isn't it? It's nice to take different sides on different weeks. What made his performance more sympathetic? Was it just pure size?
Starting point is 00:10:47 I think he made a real effort to try and get on board uh with whatever somaly's profession was he said he likes music um which is a bold call just for something to say out loud really you know not a lot of people would um would say those words out of their face hole yeah yeah it would be yeah it would be embarrassing i mean the assumption is that we all like music uh would you say tim i mean so you thought he played a sincere and sympathetic role in conversation with somaly uh comparatively yeah yeah definitely he's just got such a punchable face but once you get past that a little bit um i guess he's still a piece of shit fuck i don't know man do you uh do you do you take no don't don't try and no fuck i don't want you to fuck this movie
Starting point is 00:11:42 railroad a legitimate question with your fury, your righteous fury. Do you generally, after taking sympathy with this character this week, feel bad for people whose face you might describe as punchable? No one chooses the shape of their face. No, but I've definitely got a thing, and I think most people have this in them, where you physically alter how you look at
Starting point is 00:12:06 someone like their attractiveness changes over time and this is gender neutral uh based on the information you know about the person so if you meet someone who's very attractive and then you get to know them and they they turn out to be a real piece of shit increasingly so over time as you get more information about them i think you for me at least they physically get less good looking they get uglier when i have that intel and conversely someone who might be quite average looking um will uh grow more beautiful before my eyes as i learn good things about them and and so you're saying that you can overcome someone having a uh specifically punchable face as you learn information about their personality and hey maybe maybe they're a lovely person maybe
Starting point is 00:12:52 they've spent their entire life trying to remedy the unfortunate situation that is their face yeah and i mean to be fair this guy's not a sterling example of that because he is talking about one of his fellow party guests tits and uh how she failed out of school which is one of those things in the movie that they keep repeating as a turn of phrase as if it's real and it isn't like how they keep using the word spin for dj like the verb is always spin do you spin here regularly yeah we're in the world they really needed a bloody dj thesaurus to um to find anything that wasn't the word spin i mean the more they say it the more it loses meaning it's like do you know sometimes when you look up a word in the dictionary and you're combing through
Starting point is 00:13:36 the letter so say in this instance it's the word spin and you're combing through all of the s words to get to sp where it says spin and suddenly all of the S's look to me to be backwards. Or this could be unique to me. I've never really said it out loud before. How often are you thumbing through the dictionary? Not as often as you'd think. I mean, very rarely. I couldn't actually tell you the last time I picked up
Starting point is 00:14:05 the physical artifact and had a look through but this is something you remember from your time with dictionaries yeah I remember it vividly if I'd be looking through one letter long enough I'd always think that the letter was playing tricks on me and sort of flip
Starting point is 00:14:20 flopping what a strange childhood you must have had, Monty. I mean, I spent more time away from dictionaries. Losing your stomach was the feeling of having a vagina. And now I learn about your predilection toward thinking that dictionaries were playing tricks on you. As if they would take the time yeah look i never thought they were sentient i was aware that the the problem was probably
Starting point is 00:14:51 within my own mind but it was definitely recurring enough for me to remember i don't think it was yeah i don't think it was super interesting I think I just got caught up on certain details, and I was wrong, and I'm willing to admit that. Speaking of different watching circumstances this week, Tim, I went whole hog after your recommendation last week with blasting the noise to maximum volume in honor of Maximum Joseph. How did you find that? I put on some really nice headphones and blasted the volume.
Starting point is 00:15:22 Well, I'll tell you, he was doing a lot of heavy lifting, and at some point with every movie we watch uh this this discovery sort of rears its head the sound engineer whoever that person was did a fantastic job they're the hardest working persons in show business truly they are yeah well because their job of course if it's done well it will not be noticed yeah it's like lighting isn't it say what you will about grown ups too
Starting point is 00:15:57 I could see all of it and that hasn't changed I did have the sincere thought at one point watching the movie this week that i would i'd kill for a go around with grown-ups too just felt like there was more happening yeah i i sort of get what you mean it's like there's less humans or less human there's a lot more characters in grown-ups too but a lot less kind of character but there is more action and sometimes that's all you need to get by but i think this is just simply a case of you romanticizing a past relationship this is the girlfriend who didn't treat you right
Starting point is 00:16:37 for a long time and you've just got rose-tinted visions of what that relationship was like because now she's gone undoubtedly i also think maybe if you if to use a cooking metaphor uh we are your friends they they have a pretty plain recipe and they sort of you know they they put it all in there and the meal came out and it's pretty bland it's pretty tasteless it's it's definitely a meal whereas grown-ups too i don't think they're really working off anything they just put a lot of different flavors in a bowl and uh served it up yeah and accordingly today yeah there's a lot more to pick apart i mean there's a lot more different tastes that you have to figure out and work through tell you what i did do um before watching the film just as i was burning some time um waiting for a pre-agreed on start time to come around as i watched the first 10 minutes with zoe of xoxo which was um the netflix
Starting point is 00:17:33 film which i think's only just been released uh which is kind of like just a rip-off of we are your friends and um here's my take on the first first 10 minutes at least because that's all i've seen of it uh it's it looks like a better executed version of what we're watching but very disneyfied disneyfied whatever the verb would be it's like very saturated and they seem to be a younger cast and uh there's no there's no cing, no effing or jeffing in the first 10 minutes that I could remember and I look forward to watching it
Starting point is 00:18:11 with you Guy at some stage because I think that's necessary I just I don't think it would be any better or worse than We Are Your Friends, I just think it would be different Yeah but different is better, always this is the nature of the beast you're even willing to go back to grown-ups too a movie that you know is terrible simply because we've had a stand-down period of a year and a half
Starting point is 00:18:35 since we last saw it that that's the the bare difference that's needed to be better than what we're currently well it is I mean there's a beautiful irony well not irony but it's very disappointing to hear you say that different is better you know with the knowledge that the entire premise of this podcast is that
Starting point is 00:18:57 not different is interesting and isn't that what it all boils down to Guy Montgomery this isn't not us doing what boils down to, Guy Montgomery? This is not us doing what's right. It's us doing what's wrong. And that's what's right about it. I'm just fucking fed up this week, eh?
Starting point is 00:19:15 I've just like, I've really had it. I don't, there's nothing more in this movie for it to give to either of us. And I'm pissed off. I'm mad about it. I'll slow slow you down i'll slow down that anger i i spotted a few odds and ends this week which uh tickled my fancy and took my interest just uh for those of you listening at home you'll probably hear the unmistakable sound of a kettle on the boil uh the reason i'm in lambourne is i'm visiting my older sister, Alice, who is, she's actually at a jockey treatment facility called Oaksie House, which is where they, for people who ride horses, specifically jockeys originally, they get quite unique horse-related injuries that only a horse could inflict upon a person. And my sister has befallen one of these injuries. Well, quite a severe injury.
Starting point is 00:20:07 Now I'm set with me for not doing her injury justice. The reason she's here, she's walking around the kitchen in slow motion making a cup of tea with one crutch. She's meant to be walking on two crutches. And before I tell you this, I'll also let you know that she's slated to make a full recovery, so you needn't worry about her. But she fell off a horse riding,
Starting point is 00:20:29 were you riding a cross country owl? Yeah. She fell off a horse. Can you imagine this? She broke not one but both of her collarbones, five ribs, shattered her pelvis
Starting point is 00:20:41 and snapped, snapped or broke? Broke. In half. Similar to a snap. Her femur. She's more metal than bone, Tim. And she punctured her lung.
Starting point is 00:20:59 Good God. I'm sort of here. Yeah, I know. I'm here taking some time out to hang out with her we've had a lovely time we started watching stranger things together but it's a very small facility it's built for one uh and so if you hear the rumblings of another person in the room that's what's going on here and that's why it's such a small town what do you think of lamb or an owl? It's small. It's small, she says. And I can't really get round it.
Starting point is 00:21:31 But she doesn't mind that because she can't really get round. Anyway, so if you hear a rustling and a rassling in the background, you needn't worry. It's just my dear older sister fixing herself a cup of tea. It's actually my job to make the teas and the food, but because I'm recording the podcast, she's doing what is basically a one minute job in about 10 how many lives need this podcast negatively affect now back to back to the matter at hand so i understand you're upset tim as well you should be
Starting point is 00:22:02 uh now it feels like you're comparing my anger with Alice's horse injuries, which I'll just say for the audience that I have had the run through previously and was just shocked to hear the extent of them and am so delighted to hear that she's making a full recovery. And that is the reason why i may not be flipping out about that is it's not new knowledge for old timbo but god i think i speak on behalf of every listener out there when i say we we wish alice a super speedy recovery because that's fucked up man that's a lot of real messy injuries oh yeah pain i will relay your your well wishes as well tim um and please do it again
Starting point is 00:22:47 yeah for you for you to to measure your anger against alice's injuries i mean it's it's unnecessary uh it's well it feels like that's what you're doing though because you're going hold on i think sometimes i think sometimes you read into things you know the way you want to and um, don't you start with me, mate. When you shove an absolute litany of injuries after me expressing my anger at having to watch a film a few too many times out of my own construction, you know, you're really proving what a facade this whole thing is,
Starting point is 00:23:27 is all I'm saying. You're really putting it in a very accurate perspective and you're showing me up to be the complete arsehole that I see now that I am. I haven't said any of these things. So you have read all of that for yourself. Not one of those things that i say uh but tim this is what i've been trying to say before you got distracted um by your own defensiveness
Starting point is 00:23:54 are you opening a packet of biscuits onto the microphone not onto the microphone but near the microphone look your boy needs sustenance. I noticed some things that I think you'll enjoy me sharing with you. Number one. For the love of fuck, do not eat a biscuit on microphone. We got complaints last time you ate, and some of them were from me. It's disgusting, and I can't stand it. That doesn't sound like a complaint.
Starting point is 00:24:22 That sounds like Tim having a problem. Yeah, but it wasn't just me do you want to hear about my thoughts or not because you yeah i do but i really want to hear them without you chewing on a biscuit please well i guess it's a mystery that will be uh revealed with time whether or not i i so choose to eat a biscuit as i talk now page uh last week you made the astute observation that page was in fact not referring to to the the chandelier within the house but to the next door neighbor chandelier who was very excited to see yeah i think not only that there was another exciting revelation as they left tanya Romero's house where he says to Cole, we just made real fucking money in there. You got that?
Starting point is 00:25:10 Real fucking money. Now, for weeks on end, we've thought that when he says real fucking money, Paige is referring to the volume which they've earned as opposed to sort of petty change or small cash. They've made a real earning here i put it to you tim that uh that's not what he's referring to but the fact is part of the reason that page's entire office has been decked out with concrete uh and he's been putting his his penis inside precious stones is because he is a madman who has been trading entirely in either monopoly money or fake checks and so what's happened is for the first time in his career as a real estate mogul he's actually closed a deal which is legal tender right and he's so excited. How's the business been afloat for so long operating on this funny money?
Starting point is 00:26:09 To borrow a turn of phrase from the beloved Norm MacDonald, through sheer tyranny of will. I feel like Norm might have got that from somewhere else, but I'm going to overlook that. Do you think he's paying the employees in monopoly currency as well uh yeah i mean i think what where a lot of his time and energy is going uh because we know he's hiring incompetent staff we know that the staff can't close any deals right they always have to refer to page and accordingly i don't think they quite know the extent uh to which page's lunacy runs riot
Starting point is 00:26:46 and so a lot of his time in his office is spent dying monopoly money and hand painting it to look like real cash and this might also explain why when he says let me break you off something real proper like and hands over an envelope filled with cash. You'll remember every week Johnny Depp takes the money out of the envelope and says, smell it. Remember, he always wants Cole to smell the money. Holy shit, I've never heard him say that, that I can recall at all.
Starting point is 00:27:24 Every week. And it's an ADR as well. You don't see his mouth moving. This is a decision that Maximum Joseph made I've never heard him say that that I can recall at all every week and it's an ADR as well you don't see his mouth moving this is a decision that Maximum Joseph made after everything had been shot he said you Johnny Depp
Starting point is 00:27:32 I want you to tell Cole to smell the money and I think the reason he wants to smell it is because it smells like paint right so it's got that good fumey newle smell on it.
Starting point is 00:27:47 I mean, I'm just speculating here. These are the thoughts of an idle mind left to fester on its own. Well, I really like where your head's at, and I think you're definitely onto something. Paige, such a complicated character, and I think the real star of this film when you get down to it
Starting point is 00:28:06 man, every time tapestry there every time I'm struggling Paige is the life raft I cling onto for hope I like that they bring him back near the end of the film as well and there's no reason for him to be in that montage while Ziccoli is playing
Starting point is 00:28:24 his terrible track. Him and Johnny Depp are vaping. Yeah. They're floating a bloody douche flute between each other in the car. And it's just to remind you that Paige is still alive and still being Paige. It's like, I wonder what Paige is doing right now.
Starting point is 00:28:44 It's like, yes, he's still going. Still doing still doing his thing that's right lunacy will outlast us all he's he is a madman and he's just the kind of guy who'll build the empire that will eventually like buy up all of the failing record companies that zicole made a deal with for his record and page will end up being just the master. He'll be the puppet master over this whole thing. Well, I mean, Page is, yeah, until he goes to court for fraud, probably on two counts.
Starting point is 00:29:17 Once for the shady dealings he's doing with regards to real estate and twice for painting money and trading off it like it's legal tender i almost see page is sort of a trumpian figure though and that he just he'll just keep talking he'll keep talking at people until they sort of stop bothering him so like he'll be in a court case and he'll just keep going and eventually everyone will just get so darn tuck it out that they'll dismiss the case and he'll just go about his business some more.
Starting point is 00:29:46 Feels like that kind of guy. You think that's a reasonable angle to play in court? The angle of just talking and talking until people lose interest in the fact that you're a serious criminal? I thought that was the entire point of court, is to see if you can just outlast the other people. You just keep going. Like every court case is won by a filibuster and it's just who can go the longest.
Starting point is 00:30:11 I never knew that court was purely an endurance sport. Why do you think lawyers always look so fit? Because they've got to have incredible stamina to keep going for so long. Why are more people in courtrooms not wearing exercise gear? Well, because the exercise has been done. Why do people not wear exercise gear on a basketball court, Guy? Because they're playing basketball at that point.
Starting point is 00:30:37 You wear the exercise gear when you exercise. They're wearing sports gear. Basketball players aren't playing basketball in suits tim no but they're wearing their uniform and the uniform of court is a suit and a tie you wear your training gear to build up that endurance and that stamina and then you get to the sport of talking at a judge until you can't talk snow more and whoever gets to do that the longest they win the case that is my understanding of the legal system. And the loser, even if the person who can't talk for as long as the plaintiff,
Starting point is 00:31:10 immediately becomes the criminal. Yes, exactly. Someone is found guilty in every court case. That's a little-known fact about the justice system. Because if a crime's been committed, or even just alleged, someone has to be guilty, right? We can't get a room full of people in a court and not have some sort of consequence. No, it'd be a waste.
Starting point is 00:31:32 Real waste. Sorry, I just drank a lot of that whiskey all at once, and I am drinking it straight, so every now and then it catches me a little off guard. You needn't worry about that, my friend. That's got a spring in the step. Well, I'm glad that we've sort of at least got to hammer into the legal system. Can I tell you something, though, Guy? I've got to say, watching the post-coital hotel room service breakfast,
Starting point is 00:31:56 which you offered up many weeks ago, was an improv that Zac Efron and Emily Radichkowski just dived into. The more I watch that scene, the more hand on heart I am convinced that you were right about that. There was absolutely no script for that scene. In fact, that moment probably wasn't in the shooting script. That is them just ad-libbing, flying off the handle.
Starting point is 00:32:23 There's no doubt. It can't have been in the script because no script editor, no one anywhere in the world would look at that dialogue on the page and say, yep. Yeah. It's crazy. And it's like they revert. It's a weird moment because it's like Emily Radichkowski
Starting point is 00:32:42 stops acting in that scene for a brief moment there's two moments in this movie where i feel like we really see her rather than her playing a character like she just sort of you know takes a little brief respite from acting while the cameras are rolling it's that bit that but i really feel like we're dealing with emily and not somaly and uh right at the end when she's listening to uh zicoli's new hit track on the headphones when he comes to sort of offer a bit of a mea culpa at the north hollywood cafe that she's working at now i feel like that moment when the camera's on her and the music's playing she's just not in her head i feel like that's not acting either there's something about that smile that's
Starting point is 00:33:20 just like ah we've stopped dealing with somally and we've started dealing with emily and i don't hate it i don't hate it at all but it's just an interesting little uh quirk of the movie that an actor would decide to stop acting for a bit well you know i think because they don't exactly give her a meaty character in the form of sophie do they it's not a lot to sink your teeth into i think a lot of the casting was based on the fact that certain characteristics would be similar to her, you know, would be within her acting range, that is to say. It's not like Sophie is the most developed
Starting point is 00:33:58 of all the characters in the film. She's pretty much there to drive a wedge between James Reid from The Fearless and Ziccoli Would you not say? It's a comparative game that you're playing Guy And compared to the other characters I think she's about on par But I think what you're dancing around
Starting point is 00:34:16 Is that she probably got hired for her Physical attractiveness Is that what you're trying to communicate? I wouldn't say that that didn't enter the equation yeah um zoe did scream out the word titties a couple of times um for certain gratuitous shots to which i had to say uh you ain't seen nothing yet babe wait for this one um when they hit into the slow motion dance scene at the at the party i always thought i always mentally chalked that particular close-up to
Starting point is 00:34:45 the fact that they sort of use that x-ray effect to show the beating heart but they don't even do that they don't with their effect on that guy in the abyssal singlet and then and that is the beauty of maximum joseph that he like he had the forethought to insulate himself from uh cries of uh being a creep basically or just you know being a dirty old man just because she's really young emily radish kowski who plays somaly is like in her very early 20s when this was shot and um he managed to make the editing decision to show that uh sort of good looking like human looking dude who's in the cool hat and the shades to show his chest first and then it's
Starting point is 00:35:28 like see we're showing everybody's chest this is fine this is just what we're doing with this bit of the movie I hate that bit of the movie you've got to admit though that was kind of a brilliant move on his behalf undoubtedly I don't hate that specific bit.
Starting point is 00:35:48 What Zicole is talking about is absolute garbage, but if you put enough quick cuts in and make it a voiceover, it lends credence. It's like, okay, rocking a party, step one. So it's the DJ's job to get the crowd out of their heads and into their bodies. Firstly, how condescending is that to the personal assistant DJ's job to get the crowd out of their heads and into their bodies. Put a sock in it, mate. How condescending is that to the personal assistant and booker of one of the world's biggest DJs, James Reid from The Feelers?
Starting point is 00:36:13 She knows what rockin' and party's about. I know she's working as the audience surrogate and she's serving as a vehicle so that Zicoli can tell us how to rock a party. But find a different way to do it, mate. Because I don't appreciate how you're treating her uh you know her professional nails she she tolerates it uh admirably though doesn't she she doesn't even interrupt him oh there's a big old eye roll though in the middle which uh which is always good when he's referring to yeah but i
Starting point is 00:36:40 always interpret that eye roll as sort of like, oh, there's a connection between us. Do you think it's like, oh, would you fucking stop? It's sort of both. It's a little bit, oh, you. It's one of those, you know. Oh, boys. It's one of those eye rolls. And she, like, by the end of it, she doesn't even stop.
Starting point is 00:36:58 Because the last thing he says is, once you've gotten your crowd there, you're controlling their entire circulatory system. I don't think so, Zac Efron. Yeah, no way. I don't think that if you play a song at 128 beats per minute, you have total control of another person's body. And there's a lot of imagery of cartoon ovaries during that bit as well. So it's like they're not shying away from the biological implications of this power that he thinks he's given himself you can't just find a song that's 128 bpm put it on and suddenly
Starting point is 00:37:31 you're in control of a room's heartbeat do you know what's 128 bpm the fucking march that is a standard marching beat i can't just put on some marching music and suddenly everyone's you know and head down to city hall yeah exactly well maybe i could actually but i couldn't kill them i couldn't start at 128 have them in the palm of my hand and then suddenly you know chuck on some i don't know what would you even put on some dubstep or something freak them out give them all the strokes no you wouldn't you wouldn't put on dubstep would you because uh dubstep is actually 148 beats per minute cut to half speed. It ends up being about 70 beats per minute.
Starting point is 00:38:11 That's also in the same montage. Oh, sorry. It's in a prior montage, everyone. That's what God's talking about. I understand music. I'll just say this about that bit that you're talking about as well that montage i still haven't stopped enjoying them throwing house music under the bus so dramatically in that sequence it's so funny starts with reggae music reggae music slow it's 60 beats
Starting point is 00:38:38 per minute dubstep is quite fast 140 but it's actually cut at half speed so it's more like 70 beats per minute uh and then does it just go to house after that yeah and then it's 110 bpm and it's just got a bunch of like mid-2000s fuckwits right in the foreground is this white girl with black dreads which is always a little bit of a red flag and they all just look like they're having a terrible time it's the middle of the day and they're at a music festival and the worst shittiest like most derivative cafe casio tone house music is just playing underneath it and even the hardcore music which is the one he's supposed to be making fun of because he says i don't know how people dance to that even that by comparison to the house track that they've picked, sounds fucking dynamic and awesome.
Starting point is 00:39:28 At least the hardcore music, you're like, this has got a bit of something to it. But fuck do they throw house under the bus and fuck do I enjoy the bitterness of that moment every week I see it. Yeah, I don't know what house music did to Maximum Joseph. I think it might have taken a partner from him. They went to a house gig.
Starting point is 00:39:49 House music played. He couldn't get into it. Some other attractive European person could and swooped in and took his dance partner. I reckon you're right. What I was going to say, because we sort of had a really rich vein of uh fury with zicoli is another thing that got me this week is you know james reed from the fearless is like uh you got
Starting point is 00:40:14 to get your head out of the laptop and start listening to the real world sort of as if to say the problem here is that you're using electronic music samples instead of real recordings that's not the problem the problem is that the music he's making is is hot garbage yeah it's bad music it's the issue isn't the means with which he's using to make it it's not that he's not playing real drums and downloading them from the internet or making them on garage band is that he's got no air you're not wrong you're 100 correct and this is exemplified by the terrible track that the movie ends with yeah it's a bad time and it's clearly not a character choice because obviously with a movie like this everything is riding on that big track that he's been wanking on about the whole film although to be fair like not enough to actually give it a good dramatic through line but he's he's wanked on about it at
Starting point is 00:41:10 the start and maybe once in the middle and then we're reminded that it exists in the end as well and the track is fucking terrible and i came to the conclusion tonight after watching it again for the what 15th time i think we're up to that uh oh yeah it's fucking two tracks there was something about like the beats that always wigged me out like something's not right there and i think there's two tracks that get mixed into each other and they're not beat matched properly like he actually it's supposed to be one track because you see him playing the whole thing but when he starts off with that kind of ambient electronica nonsense at the start where he's just playing samples of helicopters and fucking buzzing pylons there is
Starting point is 00:41:50 a beat that goes underneath that and it doesn't match up after the drop with the track that he goes into and it's like fucking hell filmmakers like it's from the first watch that's irked me and i couldn't really put my finger on it because they haven't missed it by much, but they haven't fucking beatmatched it properly. God damn it. It's like instead of getting someone to actually make the song that's going to bring the movie home over the closing credits, they used whatever Zac Efron was pretending to cobble together on camera.
Starting point is 00:42:19 Yeah, like they actually got Zac to deal with it. Just fucking throw some money at Skrillex for Christ's sake. Take Disney's lead. Dude knows how to make a track. It's not for everyone, but you're doing an EDM movie, so just eat it. The other thing I hoped after hearing that song is that I hope Squirrel's estate got some royalties
Starting point is 00:42:39 because Squirrel is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Not wrong. Not wrong at all. Guy, let's move as swiftly as possible to closing this off. But right now, it's time to grab the tissues. Time to grab the Kleenex. Because right now, we're getting sentimental. Sentimental with James Reid.
Starting point is 00:43:02 James Reid. I deliberately made it bad this week, and I apologize for that. That is what it is, mate. Would you like to get sentimental with James Reid this week, Guy? Or shall I get sentimental with James Reid this week? I'd love for you to do it, and I'll ask you questions. Guy, I'm so thrilled that you've asked me to do it. So here's the situation, folks.
Starting point is 00:43:23 So Coley gets given a gift we know it's sentimental we know it's from james reed from the feelers we know that it fits in a macbook pro box we know that it probably isn't a macbook pro because uh our boy james reed from the feelers is some sort of mcavallian type he's a he's a trickster he never does stuff by the book he's often um pulling the rug from underneath people he's a real prank he never does stuff by the book he's often pulling the rug from underneath people he's a real prankster and that's why the thing that's in the box turns out to be a whippy cushion
Starting point is 00:43:53 because James Reid from the Feelers loves a giggle loves a fart joke and he's an audio man he loves sound he loves music he's got a finely tuned ear so what better present could you
Starting point is 00:44:05 get for a friend who is a new friend and you want to you know really bond with and get him on that deeper level than a humorous whoopee cushion something that you can both share in the richness of the sound and tell him to sample it because it's authentic and then put it in an edm track so what we end up with um by the end of this alternative timeline is a is a uh a track that sounds surprisingly like our intro theme but all the notes are done with fart noises so if i may go i'm going to venture a little attempt at it okay sounds a little a little something like this A little something like this. Because we are your friends. And that's why you buy a pop shield for your microphone, folks. Wee! Ah! Yo, friends!
Starting point is 00:45:08 And that's why you buy a pop shield for your microphone, folks. Hey, that was pretty impressive, Tim. Thanks, Guy. I like that he got him a whoopee cushion, and I also like it's sort of a double prank. The first prank is that it's in a MacBook Pro box. You can only imagine the disappointment smeared across Zicoli's shit-eating face when he opens up what he thinks is a brand new computer
Starting point is 00:45:28 worth about $2,000 American dollars and takes out a whoopee cushion with a street value of about $3.99. That's a huge fall, eh? A massive decline in value. Yeah. And secondly, obviously, a whoopee cushion is a prankster's delight.
Starting point is 00:45:45 I mean, is there a prank older than the whoopee cushion? Not in my books, mate. Because I think it's probably the original patented prank. There's no other device that's more rudimentary or old that probably holds a patent. I don't know if it holds a patent, but it probably should. There's a specific design involved. Have you ever called a fart a
Starting point is 00:46:05 whoopee not ever where's that coming from begs the question i like you guy you got your thinking cap on um next order of business before we depart you are all business right now you're so professional i love it the shining light oh. I thought you'd never ask. I've got you, my comrade. I've absolutely got you. Let it out. And this week, I made reference to it earlier, the sound engineer.
Starting point is 00:46:35 Now, it would be very simple for me to say this is the shining light of the whole film was the hard work done in the sound booth. But specifically, what really grabbed me and made me think about it was after the cash handover, when they're overlooking the valley after their night at social, just before they get ripped off, or after they get ripped off, actually,
Starting point is 00:46:55 Jarhead opens his envelope with $200 cash, not nearly as much as they expected to earn. And he says, I'm going to murder that cheesedick motherfucker and throws a rock over the vista. Yeah. And after he says, motherfucker, there's a very faint echo that repeats maybe three or four times. And if you hadn't been wearing headphones,
Starting point is 00:47:15 I don't think you'd get to hear it. I definitely didn't. But I was this week. Far out. And I heard it, and I respected it. Good shit. That's an excellent shining light. My shining light, shining light as i mentioned
Starting point is 00:47:25 earlier was the uh guy who gets punched i thought he turned in a really good genuinely good performance this week and i saw something in him that i haven't seen before um so there he is and uh and finally no but ah improv indeed did you see any prov this week saw a lot of prov actually the predominant bit of prov i saw was in the uh um the quick cuts that formed the montage at the beginning which is consistently my most hated bit of the film which is really saying something at this point where there's like a drug deal that goes down in between a chain link fence and uh they look at the camera for like the only bit in the film where they they decide to do that and uh at one point johnny debt passes some drugs through a fence and
Starting point is 00:48:17 then looks at the camera and goes all of that shit is that's improv that's actually just improv for the camera and it's all garbage it's all fucking terrible that was maximum joseph just on the roll being like hey everyone just do what you want turns out we're not doing this on film like i thought we're doing it on hard drives and we've got a fucking buttload of space left so what do you guys want to do let's muck around shall we and the crew were like jesus christ this really is your first feature film isn't it maximum we're going to be charging overtime for this maximum it's after midnight you're going to hear from the unions on this i don't care what the unions say i want to film my movie the way i want
Starting point is 00:48:57 to film my movie uh yeah i i agree i think it was just like just have some fun with it and his logic was if we cut it down fast enough and put a loud enough song over the top, no one will notice that this is not so good. But this just in, Maximum Joseph, some of us are watching the movie every week. So, bam, roasted you. Take that.
Starting point is 00:49:19 Take that, Maximum. All right, guy. I feel like this concludes the 15th watch of uh we are your friends sorry that um i don't feel like i would apologize for this episode i'm just i feel mad and i feel sad and i feel bad and i don't feel rad and you don't need to apologize to him i'll describe it as workman like shit yeah i feel like a real journeyman at this point. It's fucked up, man. Don't like this film. Don't like it at all. And I feel like...
Starting point is 00:49:48 I'm a bit nervous because I feel like this might be the new tenor, you know? What's a tenor? Like the tone, the mood. Oh, nah. Nah, bro. We'll be back together in no time. All right. Well, fare thee well, Guy Montgomery, until next time
Starting point is 00:50:08 Sayonara Don't bro me if you don't know me Are you going to play that dastardly intro again? Intro, intro, intro, intro Ow! Classic Maximum Joseph You forget that films are supposed to have a point Thanks for listening to this podcast If you're thirsty for another, why not try
Starting point is 00:50:41 Two and a Half Count Ladies and gentlemen, welcome along It's another new episode of Two and a Half Count? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome along to another new episode of Two and a Half Count, New Zealand's only wrestling podcast. Unverified. Yeah, I assumed Nikki would come back and Becky would feud with Nikki, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. I don't think that the
Starting point is 00:50:56 flip is necessarily lazy. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. I refuse to. I know you do, and I think you're silly too because you're hindering your own enjoyment of the product. No, I'm not. I think it's too quick of a thing. No, I agree with Rhys. You're wrong. Two against one.
Starting point is 00:51:12 Hey, by the way, guys, I'm a certified diver. And I have not had a congratulations at all from you two. Sorry, man. It's been a long week. We completely forgot about it.

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