Wonderful! - Wonderful! 321: Thank You, Michael Crichton

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

Griffin's favorite funky beats to bop in the car to! Rachel's favorite voice that sounds like stoned Dick Clark! Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Palestine Children's Relief Fund: https://www.pcrf.net/

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Thank you for listening to Wonderful. This is a television program that's sometimes in podcast form. This one's gonna be a podcast. Next week, catch us on TV.

Every week we make a decision as to whether or not this will be on TV. Yes, and TBS at 3.15 p.m. on Sunday mornings, Sunday afternoons. We are gonna be on, check your TBS 315 Sunday. We might be on there this week, but this week we're gonna hit you with the podcast format. We call TBS at 314 every Sunday,

and we say whether or not the podcast is going to be on air this week. They're sweating fucking bullets over there, because they don't got nothing else. I think I get, last time I talked shit about a television network, you like came at me and were like, actually they had a million great shows. So maybe-

Is CBS characters welcome? That's USA. I'm pretty sure. Anyway, this wonderful, it's not TBS, it's a podcast where we talk about things that we like that is good that we are into. And do you wanna do a small, sometimes we do small wonders. In the TBS format of this show,

there's no time for small wonders. Cause it starts at 3.15, we've only got, I mean, with commercials about eight minutes of programming time, so we can't bullshit at all. But here in this podcast space, no one cares if we bullshit. We can bullshit nonstop and no one's gonna say anything about it, cause we have no oversight from anyone

except Jesse who listens to every episode of every podcast. Everyone on the network records and produces and then sends us a picture of him either giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down too. Well, now we're a co-op too, so like every owner has to listen to every podcast. Every owner, and it's a one thumbs down and the whole thing goes in the toilet.

Yeah, we have to start over. Start right over. You gave me a lot of time to goes in the toilet. Yeah, we start over. Start right over. You gave me a lot of time to come up with something. Yeah. I'm gonna say, maybe I've said this before, I don't know. The ice cream sandwich. Sure. I'm a big fan.

I don't know that you're as big of a fan as I am. Not at all. There's something, there's just something about it. Man, the little cookie outside. Yes. And then there's a very, very soft ice cream on the inside and you just and then there's a very, very soft ice cream on the inside, and you just bite in there.

The cookie protects your teeth from the biting. The cookie protects your teeth from the biting. You know how if you put your teeth on ice cream, it can hurt? It sucks, yeah, no. But if you got a cookie buffer. For me, the cookie proves an insubstantial buffer from the ice cream sandwich. I still get the cold bad feeling on my teeth

when I buy ice cream sandwiches, which is why I don't prefer it. Although we have had those Nightingale ice cream sandwiches before. Yeah, we still have some old ones in our freezer. Do we really? Yeah. Dang, gonna polish those up.

They have like a bananas foster sort of flavor, one of those that is like options. It's a very large dense ice cream sandwich. It's difficult to consume one by yourself. So we have to both kind of turn our keys on the ice cream sandwich. Yes. I'll say roast beef.

It's, I don't eat a lot of like meat sandwiches, but when I do, but when I do, I get in there with the big dogs. I feel like we both brought things that neither of us is like a particular, like, I don't know. I didn't like four roast beef sandwiches this week. I'm not a huge roast beef fan. I feel like I kind of go along with it in the same way that you go along with ice cream sandwiches.

Okay, well, we'll do a little swap maybe this week. Do a little swap. Why? I just told you I don't want to. Well, it's important to me. It's important to me, okay? I never do this, but this one's important to me. So I'm gonna draw a line in the sand right here so you will become a roast beef fan.

And I'll eat these disgusting ice cream sandwiches that I hate so much. I go first this week. I'm gonna talk about a song. It's by an artist named Anomaly, spelled with an I-E at the end, and the song is called Velours. And I think this might be the funkiest song

I've maybe ever heard in my whole life. Anomaly is a Canadian keyboardist and music producer who's sort of like kind of on the vanguard of this genre of music that is very, I feel like popular on YouTube in the like chill music to study to kind of playlist vibe. It's not really lo-fi, like I've talked about kind of like lo-fi hip hop beats on the show before

as like a nice thing to kind of like zone out to. This is kind of different in that it's about kind of like lo-fi hip hop beats on the show before is like a nice thing to kind of like zone out to. This is kind of different in that it's got kind of like, you know, chill electronic jazz funk elements that is really just kind of a vibe that is difficult to describe. I saw some- How is getting strong jazz from this? Strong jazz, okay.

Strong jazz. What I saw, the description I saw online often is new jazz with in you, which doesn't sound like something I should like. But this song fucking rips. This dude is incredibly talented. His name is Nicholas Dupuis, I believe.

He is from Montreal, he was born there in 1993 and started receiving sort of classical piano training at a young age. He quickly sort of branched out into more jazz influenced styles that would like very heavily influence his work. He apprenticed with some like Canadian jazz pianists for several years in his late teens,

which is not something I knew you could do. I didn't know musicians took on apprentices. I thought that was just blacksmiths. Do they just turn the pages for a while and then eventually they'll get to touch the keys? That's exactly it. You're not ready. Show me your fingers.

No, not yet. I'll let you know. He started performing music in the early 2010s and joined a label just back in 2016, which I guess actually is eight years ago. It's wild. He put out his first album in 2016 called Odyssey and then toured for a year before he released an EP called Metropole, which contains this song that I'm talking about

today, Velours and seven other absolute club bangers. I'm going to play a little bit ofour's now, so prepare to vibe. It's so fucking fresh and very playful and just unbelievably funky. There is a viral YouTube video of him performing this song, which is what I sent to you. The full version of the song is a bit longer, but there's just like a two and a half minute version that's just him playing to a small room full of folks who are bopping harder than I've ever seen human beings like bop to music before. And they're standing like three feet away from him.

So like every single person there looks a little bit self-conscious about the way they're bopping because he is so close to them. Except for one dude. There's one dude who is not self-conscious about the way he's bopping and that's delightful. There's all these like fresh little like pauses in the song that like seeing a room full of people

kind of bopping and then just stop with the pause as like a little tiny little refrain plays and then get right back into it back on the beat is like absolutely the best shit ever. with the pause as like a little tiny little refrain plays and then get right back into it back on the beat is like absolutely the best shit ever. That is like the dream concert going experience for me is like this almost sort of like ritual, like a rhythmic sort of vibe.

The comments on that video are next level good, just people just stupefied by the, just the funk of it all. They just said, is clean enough to eat off of. And my favorite is, this is so in the pocket that it left the pants entirely. It was really good. I actually, I'd forgotten, I had heard this song before

on the soundtrack to this sick indie skateboarding game called Olly Olly World. And it is, as you can imagine, after hearing that, pretty tight music to just like skateboard and do a bunch of dope combos and tricks and shit too. This video is him performing the song in just this packed room, and it really sells what a performer this dude is.

There's a lot of stuff happening in this song, but he plays this show solo, and I think a lot of his tours he plays solo, but because there's like a lot of different parts to the music, he is accompanied by his, you know, by Ableton or whatever like music production software that he uses to play live. What is great is he's like jumping around between

like the different like parts of the song, like he plays the piano chords for a bit and then like these big synth melodies and these little chirpy bits. What's awesome is that to sort of like stave off the impression that all he's doing is just like playing a MIDI thing he recorded on his computer. And like he actually, when he performs,

he angles his keyboard down and away from himself so that everybody could see. I don't know if you noticed that in the video, but the reason that he does that is so that everyone can see him from wherever they are in the audience actually playing the keyboard. Yeah, interesting. Which is like, it is interesting,

cause it's like not, I don't think it's coming from a- Place of insecurity. Right, it's not coming from a place of like, I don't want people to think that I'm a phony up here. It's like a, like it's impressive to watch his hands move on the keyboard and you get a sense of like, what he is actually making on the stage in front of everyone. Yeah, I think that's also maybe what added

to the jazz vibe for me, is to see him kind of like do his little finger movements. Yeah, and like the pitch bend wheel thing that like puts the vibrato like on the notes. Like it's really, it's a flex. And like it is the sign of a person who has practiced this one craft for a billion hours and is just like gonna show everybody what is up.

It is, it's an incredible song. I've been listening to it nonstop. I wasn't familiar with this dude other than that one game soundtrack he was on. is up. It is, it's an incredible song. I've been listening to it nonstop. I wasn't familiar with this dude other than that one game soundtrack he was on. And so after seeing this video, I dipped into Spotify and he's got like a lot of fucking great tunes on there. Not the least exciting of which is a whole holiday album

with similarly funky renditions of tracks like there's Otenenbaum and Slay Ride. I've already like bookmarked it all. I know, I was gonna say, you're gonna be already tossed it on the holiday playlist. My favorite, I actually wanna play a little bit of my favorite, it's a version of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy that goes

so unbelievably hard. So I'll play a little bit of that now. I I'm like already looking forward to the holidays. Of course, yeah. I was just like mixing this in with the Vince Guaraldi and the Sufjan Stevens and all the other sort of like mainstays, I'm just like set up. This past weekend you were traveling, I played Velours for the Boys in the car.

We were like driving somewhere. In between like their usual diet of automaton covers of popular songs and like that one Imagine Dragon songs over and over again, I was like, I'm gonna play something for dad and it fucking killed in the room. These boys were bopping to it. They were loving it.

Oh good. Henry was commenting on how much you liked it, which is like exciting, because I don't play dad's music for him that often. So it was really exciting. But yeah, a song called Valour is the artist's anomaly and it's exciting. I've added a new musician to my Rolodex

and I feel like it's been a long time since I've done that. So I'm kind of like, I've got that post musical discovery glow right now, if you can't tell. Now I can tell. I've also been moisturizing. Can I steal you away? Yes. ["Sacoya Homes, Black People Love Paranormal"]

It's Webby season, hi, I'm Sacoya Holmes, host of the Black People Love Paramore podcast. And we are nominated for a Webby for the episode where I interviewed Haley Williams. In case you're unfamiliar, Black People Love Paramore is a podcast delving into the common and uncommon interests of black people in order to help us feel more seen. We would love your vote to help us win this Webby. Please take a second and go over to the Black People Love Paramore podcast social media accounts, and you can find them at BPLBpod

across all social media platforms. Hit the link in bio and vote for Black People Love Paramore. Hi, I'm Travis McElroy. And I'm Teresa McElroy. And we're the host of Schmaners. We don't believe that etiquette should be used to judge other people. No, on Schmaners, we see etiquette as a way to navigate social situations with confidence. So if that sounds like something you're into, join us every Friday on Maximum Fun, wherever

you get your podcasts. What have you done? What have you done? What have you done? What have I done? This one will be interesting because if you don't have a lot of experience with it, I may make you watch a clip,

but if you do, a clip probably won't be necessary. Let's see. I'll give you a hint. Okay, I like this, a game. My topic is... Jerry Seinfeld? Yeah. Bob Dylan?

Moviefone. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, yeah, but you can understand why I said, yeah, okay. Yeah, did you call Moviefone as a child? Sure, yeah. No, yeah, but you can understand why I said, yeah, okay. Yeah, did you call movie phone as a child? Can you like hear the voice in your head? Yeah, absolutely. I was trying to decide whether or not we have Rachel put a clip in here.

I think we absolutely should. I think we should, because I think there's probably a lot of listeners that aren't familiar with movie phone. And it's a very distinct kind of voice. Yes, and a distinct kind of service that I imagine to anyone even barely younger than us is such a fucking mystifying conceit.

Uh, so, let's play a little bit to Movie Phone. If you know the name of the movie you'd like to see, press 1. To select from a list of current movies, press 2. Slaves of New York, Still Breathing, Taz Gone Looney, Fight Back to School 2. Okay. That was important to me because even if you think you remember movie phone, it's still jarring to hear somebody use that voice as a person. Everything about it is wild.

One, that this was a service we required. Yeah. Two, I think it cost money to call it, right? No, no. Was it toll free? It was free. Oh, okay. Yeah. And also that that was the dude and that was the voice

and that was the performance that was delivered week in, week out to tell you movies, showtimes and shit. The guy, so the guy is Russ Leatherman. Oh my God. Isn't that perfect? It's spelled like Leatherman, but I don't imagine he pronounced it that way. Russ Leatherman.

Russ Leatherman. Also sounds like a horror movie monster. Yeah. He had no voice actor training, he was just a college DJ. Yeah, of course. I was going to say, that man's a radio performer. That man has performed on radio before. Yeah.

He has a real, I've heard that voice in my home. He was with a group of people, like friends, business partners, Andrew Jurecki, Adam Slutsky, Douglas Hoitenga, and Robert Gwikhaizen. Crushed it, babe. They started Moviefone in 1989. 1989?

Yes, sir. That's why, I thought that this was for sure, like AOL era sort of. Well, AOL actually did purchase Movie Phone at one point. It went national 1990 and then spread throughout the country. It started in New York and Los Angeles in 1990 and then spread.

I'm a bit foggy on, so maybe you can explain what this service actually provided. When you called Moviefone, why you did it and what it gave you? Well, I mean, first of all, pre-internet. So if you wanted movie times, you either had to have a newspaper or you had to physically go to the movie theater.

Because nobody was answering the phone at a movie theater prepared to run you through everything. And so this was like a toll-free phone line around the country, most often a 777 film, I guess? Cool. That would provide the title, the showtime, the theater, and the street direction. That's not possible.

I guess it would tell you specifically how to get there. But movie showtimes would be different theater to theater. You would enter your zip code. Oh, okay. And then it would give you like a list of theaters nearby and then you would select that theater and then it would give you a list of movies. Okay, right.

You would just kind of keep pressing a button to get through the sequence to get to what you wanted. The good thing about being the youngest child in a family is that I never was even consulted on these kinds of decisions. All of this was planned for you? All of this was planned for me. I never was like, hey guys, I've got a film I wanna go see. Yeah, so they had this idea of like,

well, let's make a call in line that people can go to to get this information because showing up at the movie theater, just hoping to find a film was not something that people consistently wanted to do. And I mean, it's good they did honestly, because the number of people that get a newspaper now, I could like count on one hand that I know. And supposedly that this kind of started a lot

of newer phenomenons like paying with your credit card and reserving your seating. Like as they got more advanced, they could take information over the phone and you could actually reserve your ticket through movie phone. Yeah, so Russ Leatherman, him and his friends kind of all took turns trying to do their voiceover work.

And Russ was the one who had the best voice out of the group. He said he tried to do Dick Clark on drugs, kind of like a goofy radio voice that was just like, you know, distinct. Yeah. And so I guess in order to get income, they would one, provide demographic information to studios. So I guess like people from this zip code

are interested in these kinds of films. Oh, that's interesting. And then they would also, and I remember this later, they would start running ads for movies. So you would like call and it would be like, this fall. And you would hear like a trailer for some film. I do remember that. I do remember hearing a trailer over the phone,

which was a bizarre experience. So in the early 90s, if you wanted to buy a ticket, it would happen via fax machine. Awesome. So movie phone would receive your credit card information, they would fax it to the theater, and then the theater would reserve that ticket for you. Great. Who needs the internet? Not me, when I can call up an answering machine to have them send my credit card information unencrypted to my local theater to fax it. What the fuck, man? The box office attendant was supposed

to physically file each order, so that I guess when you showed up, you would say like, hi, I'm John Stevenson, and I bought tickets for this, and they would go and find S and they would pull out the S folder and they would look to find your facts. Just wild.

I know. So you mentioned this American online, American online. That's the first time I think I've ever heard anyone say that I used to work for AOL and I don't think I've ever heard anyone call it American online. I don't think it's American on, isn't it just America? It's America, yeah. No, that's why I caught myself.

AOL bought movie phone for an estimated 388 million in stock. I thought for sure you're gonna say thousand. In 1999. Yeah, no, $388 million in 1999 is, that's so much money for a phone number. Yeah, by 2004, the service was feeling about five million calls a week. And how they got it together,

and it was definitely tedious. Russ spent days and weeks and months in a small recording booth, recording every theater in the country and every possible telephone scenario. Can't fucking imagine. That's so much recorded content. I know.

Then as City started getting recorded within a few years, he would just spend two or three hours a week, just focusing on the new movie titles. But he'd already said all the times in the theaters. But still someone has to cut all that shit to get, that's an outrageous amount of audio production work. I know. Moviefone also featured in a Seinfeld episode,

which was very popular. That's why you did the voice that you did at the beginning. Now it makes sense. Yeah, probably. Although it was not Jerry Seinfeld that did the Movie Phone impression. Okay. I just, whenever I'm doing a male distinct voice,

I tend to go Seinfeld. Is Jerry, for sure. I don't know why. I remember when Movie Phone kind of got folded into AOL Instant Messenger and there was like a chat bot or something that you could send a message to and it would like respond with movie times and stuff like that.

Movie Phone, so as a Movie Phone, as a website does still exist. That's right. If you go, they do have show times, but they also have like trailers and they have correspondents that interview actors. You know, it looks like any other like kind of fan dango sort of site.

Which to mention, Movie Phone for a long time did have to contract with an external credit card partner just to get all that to work. And so what ended up happening, the phone number got shut down in 2014. And then in 2018, Movie Phone was sold to another company. For $500. Actually the company behind the MoviePass subscription service. Okay. And then in behind the MoviePass subscription service.

Okay. And then in 2020 it was sold again to Born in Cleveland, LLC, which continues to operate the website. That's adorable. Yeah. I like that. Interestingly enough, Andrew Durecki, the one I mentioned as one of the founders,

he directed the 2003 documentary, Capturing the Freedmen's and HBO's, The Jinx Docky Series. Whoa. And apparently Adam Slutsky, one of the other partners is CEO of- I recognize that name. Yeah, CEO of Mimeo. Okay.

As far as I know, Russ Leatherman, not quite as notable, but still very happy to talk about his beginnings in movie phone. This was kind of for me, this was kind of like time and temperature or it was like, it was a number. You'll need to explain that. Okay.

Sorry, he will, he simply will. Again, before the internet, you had television news that was only on certain times a day. You had newspapers. And then if you wanted any current information, you had a phone number that you would call to get that current information. And so it was like a number I knew I could call

and not get in trouble with my parents. And just kind of get some up-to-date information. About the time and temperature. About the time and temperature. About the time and temperature. It really, I am so in my head about not sounding like, specifically on this show where we talk about stuff sometimes as I was older, not sounding like, well back in my day.

I know. But it is fundamentally buck wild how every step of the process of I wanna see a movie, what movies are out, what show times are there, where is the theater, can I reserve my seats in advance? All of that is completely, the way that I make that whole process go is completely different. And it's way better, like don't get me wrong,

it's way, it kicks so much ass that I can do all that stuff in the span of like 90 seconds now without having to talk to an answering machine. Well, and it's just that you can be nimble with your plans. That was what was always hard for me as a teen was that you would have to follow this track to get a specific bit of information. And if you wanted to change last minute,

you would start over again, whether it was like directions or movie theaters or movie times or the movie. It was like if anything changed, you had to call that number and start the whole process over. And I had multiple times. I can remember multiple instances.

Once when I was like going to a movie with friends and a couple of times when I was like going with my family where we would show up to the theater to find out that we had the wrong time. And so there would be no movie today. And the fact that that could happen. I remember Justin went on a date once and the whole fam went on it.

And I forget what the movie was that we were gonna go see, but we showed up to the theater and then we got the time wrong. And so we decided to see a movie that hadn't quite started yet, which was Mortal Kombat Annihilation. And so I accompanied, our family accompanied Justin on a date to see Mortal Kombat Annihilation.

Wow. That's a fun story. Yeah, cool. Yeah, thank you, Movie Fun. Yeah, I mean, if it is true, I mean, it's possible they are making claims that they can't back up, but if it is true that they really started the whole

buying tickets with your credit card and reserving your tickets in advance, that is a phenomenon that is still very important today. Yeah. And it's wild to me because I really just thought they were a helpful phone line for movie times, but clearly much more. I worked at a movie theater in 2006, I wanna say, and I feel like that technology was still incredibly nascent.

When someone showed up to the movies, it was like, I bought my ticket online. Be like, well, fuck, let me get my manager because I don't know, can you show me a picture of the email? Well, when I would call as a kid too, like I didn't have a credit card, I was just calling to get the time.

So there was still the uncertainty of getting to the theater and whether or not there would actually still be tickets available when I used to do it. And so yeah, you would, you would try and call the theater and be like, are there still tickets for slackers? And they would be like, they probably wouldn't answer the phone, honestly,

is what they would be like. If I, if when I was a kid, the like shit, like the movie pass had existed, like I would have never, I don't think I ever would have left the theater. We had that at Blockbuster. Blockbuster had like a, like a membership program where like you could check out like two things a week as part of this membership, Blockbuster had like a membership program where you could check out two things a week

as part of this membership, whether it was movies or video games or whatever. And I used the shit out of that. The idea that that could exist for films back before we had kids and stopped going to movies is incredibly enticing. Anyway, thank you so much for listening to our program. What are the folks at home saying?

Well, I'll tell you exactly because I do have some of those right now and thank you so much for reminding me. I got one here from Duck who says, "'My Small Wonder' is going to an appointment "'you're stressed about and it going better "'than you expected. "'I recently went to the dentist for the first time

"'in five years and thought they would tell me "'my mouth was a horrible void, but it turned out totally fine and everyone was very kind about my long absence, plus I got clean teeth at the end. Yes. I love that. Yes, I'm one of those people,

it takes me forever to schedule something and then when I finally do and it's over, I'm just like, wow, that was a lot easier than I expected. That's the nature of procrastination, I think in general, is this that rarely is it actually as bad as you think it is. I did once have a dentist that would give me

an extremely hard time for any missed appointment or absence of any duration. One we got now is pretty fucking chill about it, which I do really appreciate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Holland says, my small wonder is people who really like dinosaurs. No matter their age, I have never been bored talking to someone who knows a lot about dinosaurs.

It's so fun getting to hear new facts about those crazy creatures. Yeah, I feel like everybody has a dinosaur face as a kid and it's just whether or not you maintain that enthusiasm. Oh, dog, especially like growing up, again, to return to the era of movie phone in the age of Jurassic Park coming out. Lot of people got real into dinosaurs,

real fast, who otherwise probably would not have been in there. So well done, Michael Crichton, for all your good stuff that you did. And how we always end the show. Thank you, Michael Crichton. Thank you, Michael Crichton. Thank you also to Bowen and Augustus

for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. Find a link to that in the episode description. Thank you to Maximumen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. Find a link to that in the episode description. Thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Go to MaximumFun.org, check out all the great shows we got on there. We have some live shows coming up from ImbamBam and Taz. We're gonna be in Chicago at the end of this month during C2E2.

We are going to be in Tacoma and Vancouver in May. And then in June, we are going to be in Tacoma and Vancouver in May, and then in June we are going to be in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Tyson's, Virginia. Here in the middle of the world. Yeah, hey Missouri, hey Missouri. Hey Missouri. We're gonna be there. We'll be there.

Come on out. It'll be a lot of fun. You can go to macroytours.com to find all that, or macroythatfamily to find all that. And we got some merch over at macroymerch.com that you're also gonna love. There's a new Taz versus Dracula poster that looks absolutely badass.

Yeah, and there's the little wombat with the cubes. And there's a little wombat with the cubes. Anyway, that's it. Thank you all so much for listening. We'll be back next week with another hot new episode. So keep it locked and thank you so much, Crichton. Thank you Michael Crichton Maximum Fun, a workaround network of artist-owned shows, supported directly by you.