Face/Off, with Cole Stratton

This is Free with Ads, the podcast that asked the question: why pay Netflix seven bucks a month for a bunch of Nicolas Cage movies where he doesn't peel off his face and graft it to John Travolta's skull when you can go online for free and watch a Nicolas Cage movie where he does peel off his face and graft it to John Travolta's skull?

I'm Jordan Morris.

And I'm Emily Fleming.

Today's movie is Face Off, the over-the-top 1997 blockbuster that won a special Academy Award for most acting.

With us always is super producer Matt hitting us with those good good drops.

What the dog doing?

Beautiful.

Beautiful drop.

Hell yeah, dude.

People are so pumped for this episode.

I took your note and I'm adding new things at the end every time.

Yeah, I asked him for a new fart and he's just done this.

I took it real personal.

Yeah,

it's frustrating.

Yeah.

Matt, I look forward to seeing how you're going to live up to this challenge in future episodes.

I believe in you.

I believe in in you.

I can do it.

And hey, with us also today, we have an amazing guest, an actor, an improviser, and a trivia host who is also one of the founders of SF Sketchfest, a comedy festival in San Francisco, California, where this very podcast will be performing on January 23rd.

It's Cole Stratton.

Hi, Cole.

Hey, everybody.

Happy to be here.

Happy to have you guys at the festival.

It's going to be great.

Oh, my God.

We're stoked.

Stoked.

We can't wait.

I'm figuring out my outfit.

I'm so excited.

Cole, what should we wear?

Help!

What should we wear?

There is an officially sanctioned and offered uniform that we will have every performer in.

It's a jumpsuit with the Sketchbest Laugh Egy logo on it.

So, you know, we all just wear that.

It's fine.

Okay, cool.

No, I like that.

Let us all be kind of, you know, monochrome.

I don't care if that's a joke.

I'm going to cry.

Gonna cry.

Before we get into face off, which is, as of this recording, streaming free with ads, we're going to talk to our amazing guest in a segment we call Talk to Guest.

Talk to Guest.

Cole Stratton,

we're recording this on Thanksgiving Eve.

Tell me a little bit about the Stratton, the Stratton holiday style.

When are you breaking out the holiday music?

Do you break out the holiday music?

Do you have any holiday watches that you do every year?

I do all of these things.

I have, I mean, like most people, unfortunately, I got into vinyl hardcore during the pandemic.

So, like, I have a bunch of, like, Christmas holiday records I just bring out like basically for all of December, right?

You know, basically now-ish.

I just pull it out and then I put it back into storage because I don't really need it year-round.

Uh, I listen to a lot of that stuff.

The main tradition for me is Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas.

Okay, yay.

It's my favorite thing ever.

I was raised on it, so it's just something I always watch every year, no matter what.

That's how you know who a real Muppet fan is.

That's right.

That the ones who love Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas, any fucking casual can like Kermit singing rainbow connection.

We all like that.

But the real ones were all about Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas.

There's a pretty great like blooper reel that's on, I think it's on the DVD, but it's definitely on YouTube where you can like find it, where it's just like everything that got messed up.

It's like outtakes of these, you know, puppets and stuff.

It's pretty great.

Sorry, these Muppets.

It's pretty awesome.

I'll definitely look that up later because I'm a big fan of the Christmas Carol, the Muppets, Christmas Carol bloopers that they did.

Oh, I didn't know there were bloopers.

Yeah, I posted it on my story.

If you'd watch my stories every once in a while, Jordan.

I'm sorry.

I need to watch your stories.

They're all bangers only on my stories, I swear.

You make too many stories.

I know.

There's too many.

But hey, I mean, somebody's got to do it.

I don't know.

You're right.

If Emily doesn't make stories.

Who will?

But it's a cool feature, and I love it too much.

You do.

You do love it.

You do love it.

And occasionally I watch one and I go, oh, that was good.

And then I move on with my life.

They're like social media novellas, you know?

Yeah, pretty much.

Listen, at this point, I have so much things on there.

It's like a channel you could watch.

Yeah.

There's like a solid 20 minutes on my story at any given moment.

Emily, you're actually coming to us from Nashville.

You're home for the holidays.

What's a Nashville holiday like?

Well, we don't cook anymore.

This is like, it's too stressful for us.

We're not very good cooks.

And so.

So just raw melons.

You're just chopping melons in half, getting it out with your hand.

We're going to a bit of a bougie restaurant tomorrow instead.

And then my dad has some frozen honey-baked ham situation.

Like he has a whole ham downstairs, I just found out.

I don't know what we're doing with it, but I'm excited for it.

Sure.

Hopefully, falling in and eating it.

Yeah.

And then I saw Wicked with my mom.

The second time I saw Wicked, I took her to the theater.

We saw that.

So, so far, not a lot.

Kind of lazy, I'd say.

Cole, do you do movies?

Do you do like movies with the family or like do you put on the same five Christmas movies every year?

Yeah, a little bit.

I mean, we used to always put on the 24 hours of a Christmas story.

That was the thing they did on TBS.

And we would go like, okay, it's 3.20.

What part is it on now?

We'd all take bets.

Oh, he's getting his mouth washed out with soap.

I don't know.

He's Santa's kicking him down the slide.

Exactly.

We would do that and see who was closest to it.

So that's a little tradition we used to do.

This year is going to be really weird because I lost my mom a couple months ago, and it'll be like the first holiday thing without her.

So, like, I don't know what the holidays are going to be like this year.

It's going to be a little different, but I'm sure that we will try to honor a lot of the things that we used to do with mom and with everybody else this year as well.

If you're looking to fill your time with joy, the dog show is tomorrow.

If you should.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The dog shows.

On after the Macy's Christmas Day parade, the yes, yeah, the dog shows a blast.

Highly recommend the dog show.

I love small dog agility.

That's my opinion.

We also used to always go every year on Christmas Day, we would go see a movie.

We'd go to the theater and see something because they would show stuff.

And one year we went to see IQ.

I don't know if you remember that movie.

It's Walter Martha, Tim Robbins.

It's free with ads right now.

I just watched a little bit of it.

There it is.

I kind of love it.

I I don't know this movie.

I've never seen it before.

So Meg Ryan is in it.

Yeah, Meg Ryan, Tim Robbins, and then Walter Matthew plays Einstein.

So we went to the first showing on Christmas Day, which is like 1 p.m.

And yeah, you should see it.

It's actually pretty good.

Okay.

And so it sounds amazing.

Should we do this for the festival?

Is this the festival?

Yeah, you do IQ, man.

I didn't finish it.

I started it, but then I realized it wasn't Oppenheimer.

So I watched that instead.

So we went to see that, and it it was the first showing of the day.

And we were like, maybe like 20-ish minutes in.

And all of a sudden, on the reel change, it became another film, but it was also a film that opened on the same day with Tim Robbins in it.

So it was Pré de Porte, Ready to Wear, the Robert Altman movie.

Oh, yeah.

So clearly, they didn't check the reels on Christmas Eve because they're like, it's Christmas Eve.

Don't check the reels.

I'm sure it's fine, right?

They just held it up to the light and made sure they saw Tim Robbins on there.

Exactly.

It's fine.

Literally, but it's completely like it switches to a a thing.

He's like in a hotel room in a row with Julia Roberts and stuff.

And like, it looks very different.

But everybody in the theater is like watching it, like, huh, this is a change.

Cause Tim Robbins, he's right there.

And I'm sure.

Just kind of like, and I'm a pretty big, you know, film buffer at that time, too.

And I'm like, this is, this, I think this is Fred of Porte.

And then it cuts to like Marcello Mastriani eating an ice cream coma.

So I was like, yeah, this is definitely in the wrong movie.

So I went out and told the people that are like, you had a, your reels wrong.

And then they just issued refunds and they had to cancel all the the rest of the showings that day because they didn't have the right reels.

And then the next day, we went back and started from the beginning and saw the whole movie.

That's, I bet there's some people who just thought, like, man, IQ is pretty arty.

Like, IQ, like, it's on a whole other level.

It was cute at the beginning, but then all of a sudden, he's at like Tim Robbins is at Shawshank and he meets this guy red, and he's trying to escape from prison.

He helps Tom Cruise fight these aliens.

That movie is like next level.

I don't know why everybody's talking over each other now, like sound ambient sound.

That was weird.

It's like for a part of the movie, there's no script and there's

strange, very fucking weird.

Okay, um, well, we're gonna talk about face-off.

Uh, what a treat.

I can't wait.

This is gonna be a blast.

We were kind of like destined to do this movie.

I'm surprised it wasn't the first movie we ever did on the pod.

Um, glad we're doing it when Cole is here.

Yay!

I have to say, I'm a big fan of face forward/slash off.

I love the film.

Oh, so you say it by its proper title.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

Yeah,

I'll mention when I emailed you what we were watching, I think your email back to me was just, hell yeah, Castor Troy.

Castor Troy forever.

So you're a fan.

You're a

face forward slash off fan.

I had an improv team for a while called Castor Troy where we would

do improvised movie trailers.

So we would pick random underscore music and a title from the audience.

And then there's me and two other guys that did impression.

So it was a chance for us to just do kind of like impression, whatever.

And one of the two of us would be on the microphone narrating it because, you know, they used to always be narrated.

And now that's kind of gone away.

But yeah, it was called Caster Troy 3D Movie Trailer Extravaganza.

Oh my gosh.

That's amazing.

Emily, this was like your pick.

What's your, what's, do you have a special relationship to Face Off?

No, I haven't seen it.

Oh, really?

This is your first time?

I've seen bits and pieces.

It's always on at a party.

It's a table movie.

Actually sitting and watching the whole thing thing through it.

This is rad.

This is a sad thing.

I'm dying to hear what you thought about it.

Yeah.

I can't wait.

It's totally insane.

Okay, we're going to talk about face-off, but first, we wanted to mention this movie contains scenes of sexual assault.

So, if that's not something you want to hear about, we're going to play a little music and give you a chance to find another episode.

We're back.

It's free with ads.

Colt Stratton is here.

We're talking about face.

How did you say the title, Colt?

I want to make sure that it's...

Face forward slash off.

There you go.

I'm sorry.

I've been shortening it.

Face forward/slash off.

The mirror has two face offices.

Face office.

Please remake this with Barbara Streisand.

Barbara Streisand and Bette Midler.

Babs and Lady Gaga.

Oh my God.

Holy shit.

They're constantly talking about remaking this movie.

Like, I feel like every year there's some variety announcement.

It's like, so-and-so is attached to direct the face-off remake.

And it's like, it never happens.

I don't know who else you could get to do it.

I think just same cast, same script, and you make them start as the other character.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shuffer shot remake, but they switch roles.

Yeah, just from the dead.

Genius.

Yeah, Nicholas Cage starts as Sean Archer.

John Travolta starts as Castor Troy.

Well, yeah, this movie starts with a beautiful carousel ride, a father-son carousel ride between

FBI agent Sean Archer, played by John Travolta and his son,

who is about to get shot and kick off the movie.

And then you got Nick Cage just sucking on a straw for Minnesota.

And I'm like, what is this movie is already hilarious.

So So Nick Cage is his mortal enemy, the aforementioned Castor Troy.

To show the passage of time in this movie, in this little scene, which is kind of a flashback, Cage has like a mustache.

He looks fucking awesome with it.

He does.

They remove it for the rest of the movie, but like, man, dude looks great with the stash.

And yeah, he's like...

drinking a soda.

Oh yeah, if you took someone's face off, if they had a mustache, would it come off with it?

I don't understand facial hair.

Yeah, I think you've found the only plot hole in this movie, Emily.

This movie that otherwise stands up to perfect scrutiny.

Otherwise, it's perfect.

Otherwise, it's perfect.

How do you stand up?

It'd be weird to think, though, that if you were to cut someone's face off, the facial hair would just fall off like a Christmas tree being shut.

Yeah, that's right.

That's kind of what I was thinking.

I like to think that the hair is attached to the underside.

So you pull it off, but that mustache is still there right on the side.

Stays on the raw meat.

growing out of the meat.

Growing out of the meat.

I got to shave my face meat.

Doctor, it's growing out of the meat.

Someone gets some spirit gum.

He needs to shave his meat, stat.

Harriest meat I've ever seen.

So,

Mustache Cage is setting up a sniper rifle, about to take a shot at Sean Archer, but he hits the sun instead.

Oh, no.

Well, I thought he shot him through

the body.

Oh, you're right.

Yeah, so he hits Travolta.

The bullet goes through him and into the sun.

Which, what bullet can get through beefy ass John Travolta at 1997?

I know, right?

It's a sun-seeking bullet.

Yeah.

Which knows the bullet knows

when a sun is present.

Gonna get that sun.

We, you know, we did Gladiator last week, another wham, my son's dead movie.

Get over it.

That's a thing that, like, I don't.

Did you guys see Silent Night, which is like the latest John Wu movie with Joe Kineman?

There, there's no spoken dialogue on it.

I've heard that too.

I've heard that's cool.

Yeah, I mean, you can watch it, it's ridiculous, but there's a whole lot of like father's son, son is dead, and it's all about like his son was killed kind of thing.

Like, it seems like it's a theme that Wu likes to play with.

We should, maybe we should start having a sting,

my dead son.

Oh, yeah, Bye-bye, son.

Bye, bye.

Bye-bye, son.

Well, also,

the last movie we did was Gladiator, but Tom Flanagan made an appearance in this movie, and he was in Gladiator.

So that was cool.

We got two Flanagans back-to-back movies.

So six years go by,

and Castor Troy, he's still at it, still at being a bad guy.

He's lost the stash, and now he's dressed as a priest.

He's going through the LA Convention Center.

It's a very good LA movie, a lot of like good LA locations.

The carousel in the beginning is in Griffith Park.

That's still there.

Oh, yeah.

And this is the LA Convention Center.

And he's at some sort of Comic-Con, but for religion?

What's he at?

He's dressed as a priest.

There's choirs everywhere.

They don't say what it is.

It's just like Christian Con.

I don't know.

They're singing the classic hallelujah, too.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah,

I wanted to talk about this.

There's a bit of a moment where Nick Cage is really having fun as this character.

And he maybe grabs the ass of a choir singer.

Sure, yeah.

And it made me think about how in my church choir, we did this thing where we go commando under our church robes

and feel super scandalous about it.

We'd all just be like, uh-huh, we're all naked under our church robes.

Does the Lord know?

He knows, and that's why there's free dry cleaning.

They dry clean the robes every week.

You never know what that robe is bumping up against.

Yeah, we're just ripping them in that robe, baby, in the name of Jesus Christ.

And I love how nobody does anything about it or say anything.

Like, they're all dressed in their white robes, and he's like in total, like sexy black, wearing priests, you know, like running around, being ridiculous, drawing attention to himself.

And it's just like, we're just going to keep singing.

Yeah.

And he grabbed her butt, and I just immediately thought about wicked that he's just like, oh,

like

grabbing her ass.

The face he makes during that ass grab.

Okay, this movie is the source of like 10 gifts.

Like 10 classic gifts come from this movie.

And yeah, the

insane look on his face when he's grabbing that booty.

Yeah,

it's wild.

Cage goes there.

He's unleashed.

The Longleg song makes another appearance in this movie.

Oh, does it do tell?

Pretty much.

I feel like it's right after that choir scene and we cut back to him.

He's doing the, ah, like he's doing the whole let me in, but he's not saying the words, but it sounds almost identical to that song.

And I'm like, we just get a little bit of that singing and everything he does.

Except for Travolta didn't do it, and that pissed me off.

He didn't do any of the weird noises that Cage does.

You're right.

A little disappointed.

Not a perfect imitation.

You're right.

And yeah, and weird that like neither of them really dance.

Like Travolta doesn't dance in this.

I don't know.

It feels like Travolta just had to dance in movies around this time.

Yeah.

But anyway.

They both had kind of an Elvis vibe going for a while, I feel like, and there was a missed opportunity here in this movie.

So this is like the height of both of them.

Like they're both so famous at this point.

I think Cage just won an Oscar and now he's just doing these insane action movies.

And yeah.

Wait, what?

I think he won for leaving Las Vegas a couple years before.

Did he?

Yeah, yeah.

So now he's like, I'm a fucking star, and he's just doing it like Conair and this and all this crazy stuff.

And the rock, same same time.

And the rock.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, those, yeah, these 90s cage action movies are all real treats.

I don't know.

I thought they both did really good, subtle, grounded character work in this film.

Well, it's an interesting perspective, Cole.

I'm looking forward to hearing about that.

That's an interesting perspective.

I mean, you're a professional actor, so you know about this stuff, and you know, we trust your, we trust your take.

So, yeah, so he's he's at this religious comic-con planting a bomb.

Uh, And Sean Archer, he's still out there looking for his nemesis.

He's at the FBI office.

Hey, Margaret Cho works at the FBI office.

That's a great little cameo.

I would think I was still watching her sitcom All-American Girl at this point.

And that was supposed to be Chow Young Fat, but he couldn't get out of some schedule thing.

And so they cast Margaret Cho, which is good.

Oh, really?

Wow.

She was good.

Like, it was, I, I recognized her, and then I was like, why is it she done more serious stuff?

Because she's pretty good in this.

Yeah, I know.

I like her in this.

And also, you get a CCH Pounder in here, too, who I really, really like.

Always great to see her.

This is another great, just like movie full of people you like.

And so, back at the, you know, so Cage has planted his bomb and he's off to the airport to escape.

He's getting out of the car in fucking slow motion, wearing all velvet.

His goons are there.

They give him his like special box that has like golden handguns, knives, all sorts of pills.

Chiclets.

There's a bag of chiclets in there.

Yeah, chiclets in there.

There's some bazooka joe.

He loves gum, I guess.

Well, he's got to have someone suck on his tongue, so you might as well taste good.

Oh, yeah, you're right.

So, yeah,

I think he just takes the guns and the chiclets, and he's like, that's good.

What's this other weird shit?

Those guns were so cool.

Like, I'm not much of a gun person, but I don't know.

I think I'd want a gun if it looked like that.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

But can we talk about the the money clip, though, that he's got that wolfhead gold money clip?

I was like, I immediately started trying to find a replica of that.

Oh, any luck?

No, but I did find the

hair of the butterfly hair comb from Titanic.

They have replicas of those.

Just unrelated notes.

So if you guys have goons and they're bringing you your special box after you plant your bomb, what's in it?

Okay, I don't know.

No, I know.

I get a lot of money.

Gushers for snacks.

Yeah.

Gushers, a grenade box, apple juice box.

Apple gig hydrated.

Little Caesar's pizza cups.

Have you had them?

Oh, they're good.

They're good.

I'd be into that.

I do like how he takes out, he takes off his cool sunglasses for a pair of really kind of weird-shaped sunglasses.

Yeah.

Is that an awkward buddy?

Yeah.

Okay.

He's got style, man.

I really, this character is really interesting.

Yeah,

he looks super cool in this.

Yeah,

it's like very late 90s, very just like what a, you know, what a cool guy in the late 90s would wear.

I think I know it would be in my box now.

Sorry.

Oh, yeah, sure.

What do you got?

Hai Chu.

Oh, Hai Chu is great.

If I could find the melon-flavored one, it's kind of creamy.

I like that one.

That's good for chewing around in your mouth.

And then if I could have a weapon, it would be the flute dagger from Power Rangers, but it also shoots stuff.

Cool.

Yeah.

Great.

Yep.

There it is.

is.

I would have a little activity book for the plane because I don't want to be bored on the plane, so I'd have a little activity book with mazes and word searches and stuff like that.

Don't like to be bored on a plane.

Anyway, I'd have a golden gun, but it shoots out chiclets.

Gum in your mouth.

Keep pretending that I'm putting it in my mouth.

Don't come any closer.

And then it's fun.

I'm going to blow my own head off.

Ah, just come.

I'm just having fun.

I'm crazy.

I'm fun.

Do you want me to shoot some gum in your mouth?

Open up.

So, yeah.

So, he gets on his private plane.

There is a flight attendant on the plane.

And this is where we get that line that Emily alluded to.

I want you to suck on my tongue.

Would you be grateful?

Would be grateful if I let you suck on my tongue.

And he also says,

I could eat a peach for hours.

Yeah.

At this point, but then it's like weird.

He goes like,

If I was to send you flowers, wait, if I was to let you suck my tongue,

would you be grateful?

I was like, where would we phrase that?

That's got to be cage.

Where were you going with that?

It's like, no, no, that's not, that's not on brand.

I'm a weird guy.

I would never just send a woman flowers.

I have to say something weird.

That's.

Yeah, he did the love bomb reverse so quick.

He's like, yeah, yeah.

And yeah, I wonder, like, at this point, 1997, when this movie came out, did Peach mean ass?

It means ass ass so like prominently now.

But like, well, I think it's like kind of implied that it means eating out, whether it's an ass or a

it's just it's got a hole.

Sure, you can eat it.

If it's got a hole, you can eat it.

You can stick a tongue in there.

I'm pretty sure this is after Wild at Heart, which there's a whole thing about like eat the peach or whatever and that, which he's in.

So I wonder if that's carrying over from that.

It's a callback.

There it is.

There you go.

Okay.

I have to make a peach pussy eating joke in every movie.

I would love it if Call Me By Your Name was like, this was an homage to Face Off.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Luca Guaradino, huge Face Off fan.

That's why in challengers, they're always jumping to the side in slow motion while firing guns.

We should see it coming.

It's Luca forward slash Garadino.

So you're right.

Yeah.

It's all right there.

Oh my God.

You're absolutely right.

So, you know, a big, big shootout happens

at the airport.

Bang, bang, bang.

The action in this is really cool.

John Wu directed it.

He's great at this.

It's like all practical.

It's all stunt men.

And then like, I will say, like, I am.

The stunts in this movie are so fucking cool.

The practical action is so fucking cool.

This has to be a record for stunt performers who look the least like the characters they're supposed to be.

Surely.

There are so many stunts in this where you're like, this man has a totally different body type than Nicholas Cage.

Whatever he's doing is totally fucking amazing.

But especially, I mean, we'll get to it later, but the very last stunt in that, it's like a slow-mo thing that holds on both of their faces for a long time.

They look nothing like that.

No, yeah.

Part of the fun of this movie, I think, for sure, but definitely like you can, you can tell these are all like practical, kind of like for better or for worse.

Well, maybe like when they do certain jumps and stuff, like the faces aren't quite totally on, they're a little bit off.

Maybe that's

shaking around.

Yeah,

you could be the faces shaking around.

That's why they don't look like themselves.

Exactly, exactly.

So, there's this big, big fight at the airport thing.

And

Castor Troy, Nicholas Cage, he's like blown back by a jet engine and he's knocked out.

We got him.

Movie's over, huh?

Not quite.

It still has two hours and ten minutes left to go.

This movie is long.

So

we get Travolta Archer at home.

He has a daughter who is like a teen daughter.

I think they're trying to tell us that she's goth, but the like goth stuff that they give her is so off.

It's so like hilariously off.

She just has like chunky eyelashes.

Right.

Like that's it.

And they're just like, oh, when she turns around, like, oh my God, the trauma of her brother made her wear too much mascara.

I know.

She has a nose ring, which is

it's, yeah, it's so funny how they can't make her goth in this.

Whoever, like, whoever job it was to, like, make her look like a 1997 goth kid, just, like, totally fucking whiffed it.

I know.

Like, I saw it and I was like, how dare she not respect her parents?

Thank you.

Thank you.

You're right.

Yeah.

you couldn't really get full goth in 1997 i tried and maybe you're right

i probably my mom would be concerned if i had a nose ring even if you take a did you take a swing at being goth emily Yes, I did.

I took a big swing and a miss.

What did it entail?

What did you do?

I managed to get some of those huge Jinkos.

They were really cool.

I loved those things.

And they were all shredded and gross at the bottom because when it rained, it stank on your pants.

And then I would wear whatever black t-shirt my dad had that he didn't want.

So it was usually like rhythm and blues weekend at the blah blah blah.

But it was like a big black t-shirt.

Turkey trot

1987.

Billy Bangs Brass

Show

at the Washboard Leo's.

Yeah, exactly.

So I do that.

And then I took orange.

I was blonde at the time.

I took orange like marker and would color my bangs.

And at one point I had red context, but I was very allergic to them my eyes got real itchy so i couldn't do that for too red that's too red

yeah the irises are red and also the whites are red and also there's blood coming out that's red

um and then i had to wear glasses because i was blind so it was like the red contacts with glasses but uh

but um i had one other thing what was it oh um i did

have mag they were magnetic earrings because I wasn't allowed to get my ears pierced yet.

And so you put the magnetic thing here, but if you sneeze, you suck part of the magnet up.

And I had to like snot rocket a magnet out of my nose.

What are you going to say?

I had to get surgery.

Now, I'm still to get my,

but it was like a

little magnet had to come out of my head.

Maybe there's one up there still.

I don't know.

Cole, do you ever have a goth punk phase?

It was mostly magnets.

No,

I had a magnet phase.

We all did.

We all did it.

I did.

It was, well, it was for a play, but like, I was in junior high.

I was like in seventh grade.

We did, I was at Sacramento Theater Company.

They did this production of Good Person is Sechuan, but the idea was that we had two characters because it's a very homelessy area of Sacramento.

So we were playing a homeless person, playing a character putting out a production.

So like they decided that my kid was kind of like a punk kid because I played boy because he's like the boy in the show.

So like they kind of they shaved kind of one side of my head and then they sprayed the rest up green.

They're just washed out every night.

And then I had like

a jean jacket and like a uh thing around my like a sleeveless jean jacket like a bike chain around my neck and like wow gloves and all sorts of stuff um so i have a picture of and people are like what the hell was that but i remember just going into school

share it with us i i shall i shall i will record it on uh but yeah so i had that and so i would go to school and like my you know i wasn't sprayed green enough then but one had half of my head was kind of like shaved really short and the rest was there so i guess that was the my equivalent of people that is so adorable that your punk phase was for for a play.

Oh, I know.

I really got into the role of boy.

He was kind of cool.

Oh, wait.

No, he's not.

Never mind.

It was for a role.

I would really like it if we could all send in our kind of goth attempts, like pictures of it.

Yeah, okay, yeah.

For social media, I would really like that.

Yeah, you have to have had one, right?

I mean, it wasn't full goth because

I didn't want to like, you know,

look scary, but I wanted to wear black.

So I would just wear like the same black Nirvana shirt for weeks on end.

And

that was the closest I could get to being goth where my parents didn't suspect drug use.

Yeah.

I don't know if you can see this.

Oh, Cole Stratton holding it up to the camera.

Yeah.

Oh, the green hair is cool.

Yeah.

The decline of Western civilization, Cole.

They need their extra back.

Lock up your daughters and her sons.

Lock them all up.

Lock everyone up.

Oh, Cole, you can lock them up because you have a lock around your neck.

That's right.

They're right there.

So it's easy.

So, yeah.

So Chetrolta's got this goth daughter.

He's also married to fucking Joan Allen, who's so, so good in this and bringing so much class and like earnest acting to this fucking insane movie.

She's like, she is such a hero in this movie, just like playing it straight and being awesome.

Yeah, she had probably done, was Pleasantville pretty close to this time period?

Oh, yeah, it's got to be.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She's in my favorite movie ever, which is Searching for Bobby Fisher.

So I've like been a fan of her forever.

That's my all-time favorite.

I love that movie so, so much.

Really?

But if you read the trivia about this movie, supposedly the studio wanted to cast somebody younger and make her a stepmom.

Okay.

And then John Wu was going to be Farouza Balk or something.

Right.

John Wu was like, no, we want Joan Allen for this.

And thank God they didn't.

Yeah, she's so awesome.

She plays the warden in the remake of Death Race.

And she's fucking awesome in that.

Remake of Death Race

underappreciated movie, in my opinion.

Anyway, so John Travolta, he thinks, he thinks the like his his he thinks he's killed his white whale.

He goes back to the office and everybody's cheering.

Somebody sent over champagne and he's like, this, what, why are we celebrating?

You know, so many, so many people died.

It's a really powerful scene.

I think Jewel does like a lot of great acting in this movie.

And I just kind of wanted to play him kind of talking about,

you know, not celebrating because of like the people that they lost.

How about

what about to Anderson, Montgomery, Berkeley?

Are these just colleges he didn't get into?

Winters?

Northwestern.

UC Santa Cruz.

UC Santa Cruz.

I don't know if you're not sure.

I don't know how the department's ever going to recover from losing Jamali.

I mean, that was...

And Pincus, too.

And Pincus, there's a Pincus in there.

No.

He actually had a brother, so there was two in the Pincus anyway.

And one in the Pinkus.

And this is speaking of trivia Cole, this is really interesting.

I was reading that this movie had to have a lot of cuts to make it an R rating.

It was originally way more violent, and in that shootout scene, a lot more people died.

So John Travolta, and this is true, John Travolta had to read off a lot of names

based on that scene with the extra body count.

And it's in the deleted scenes, and I think we have it.

Matt, do you have the deleted scene?

Yeah, I got the deleted scene.

He reads off the higher body count.

Tonight, we're drinking to Anderson, Berkeley, Pinkus, Cueber, Mitchie, Lil Sleepy, Carl the Kagle, Kidney the Spleen, Louie Ear, Nose, and Throat, Jimmy HaHa, the cop who loves to laugh, Tom from Facebook.

Course Seesault.

Cody, who used to roadie for that new metal band that goes,

Donkey the Shaw.

Cody the Roadie.

Dan Gumdubs.

Happy the Crank.

Pork Turmoil.

The Ring-A-Ding Teen.

Paul Blart Robocop.

Low Blood Sugar Sammy.

Ken, who's just getting into Riverdale now, so don't spoil the ending for him.

He's on the second to the last season.

Port Dumpster, Respectful Deadpool, Clink Chocolate Chip, Uncle Cum Gutters, Cucumber Rick, Chuchi the Choker, Sleepy Batman, Average Height Shaq, Sonny Burnson, Reverse Cowboy, Greeny Blue Eye,

Horse Girl Herbie, Al, who's just getting around to doing the ice bucket challenge.

Tyler, who hasn't seen the bear yet, but he hears it's good and it's on his list.

But there's just so much TV right now, you know?

You're not gonna like the third

diarrhea Danny, Juniors Carl, Herbie Hold Holdhands, Standard Chungus, Timmy Tweektisback, Sexual Cousin, Examination.

Timmy Tweaked is Back is my favorite.

Johnny Six,

Brennan Bitch, Chicago Fire.

Do a fade out.

Do a fade out, Matt.

There's more.

Let's save it for the end of the episode.

If you want to hear more names, stick around in the episode.

There's more names.

And keep the fucking theme song going

as that's going with it.

It's longer than the theme song.

Well, double up the theme song, Matt.

Your theme song.

And it's really bad, too, because Louis ENT was played by Daniel Day-Lewis, and it took him months of research.

And then they just cut it out.

A lot of great actors.

A lot of great actors ended up on the cutting room floor because

of those chops.

R.I.P.

E.N.T.

R.I.P.S.

So,

they think it's over,

but the bomb is still at the convention center.

It is a very slow bomb.

It's been counting down for a week or something.

So, they got to find

how to get this bomb.

And the way they want to do it is

by interrogating Castor Troy's little brother, Pollux Troy, his creepo little brother, who is in jail.

So, the scheme is this.

They are going to take Castor Troy, who is in a coma, and they are going to switch his face with Sean Archer's face.

Castor Troy,

with Sean Archer inside him, will go into the prison to find out how to disarm the bomb from Pollux Troy.

It's a plan that totally makes sense.

He goes off to this secret face-off lab.

They use a piece of equipment they call the Morphogenetic Template.

I just fucking love, love that

nonsense science name.

This feels like a a great time for our new sting here it is okay

fake film tech fake film tech is what it is morphogenetic template

i can't is that the one that made that little ear

No I think that was just like a regular 3D printer that they made.

What's that ear made out of?

Great question.

It's made of lasers, I guess.

Just made of a blue and a red laser.

That's it.

Yeah.

I liked a lot of the fake technology in this.

I mean, from the gold fancy guns to

the face-off surgery, but then the magnet boots in the jail.

Magnet boots is it?

Is that in something else?

Is that in the Mario Brothers movie?

It is.

I see I remembered it from somewhere.

Yeah, I've heard that too, is that these are like the same props.

Like they just like reused the Mario boots.

Wait, really?

This is nuts.

You can do that?

Yeah.

They face offed their feet.

That's what you can see, and it's so funny because it happens both ways.

You can see Castor Troy's golden guns in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Oh,

okay.

So he, so, so it, it, it works.

They switch, they switch his faces.

Uh, I would say they, like, suck it off with this thing.

And then you see the doctor just massaging the face in place.

That is strangely unscientific.

I'm just like kneading it like biscuit dough.

Yeah.

And also, like, with their bare hands, no gloves.

I mean, infection, guys.

Come on.

Yeah, thank you.

I know.

You guys, they really are the same boots.

Yeah, it's not the same concept.

It's actually the same fucking boots.

This is bizarre.

Listen, they spent a lot of money trying to get, they got Nick Cage and John Travolta.

You think John Wu's made of money?

Hold on.

Yeah,

this is me assuming that directors pay for entire movies.

Yeah.

And I'm sure they just, after that fucking Mario Mario movie tank, there was just a garage sale where they sold all the props.

Yeah.

It's just Nick Cage going, I want to dress like a Goomba.

I want to wear King Koopa's headpiece.

I can suspend my disbelief with like, you know, you can massage a face in, and then there's no sutures or anything.

It's just on normal.

But like, those are clearly Goomba boots, and I just couldn't get around it, you know.

This ruined the movie for you?

Yeah, really tough, really tough.

Good hour of it.

I was out of it.

But it feels like those have been in something else, too.

magnetic i mean it's really brilliant like yeah so in this super prison where they throw uh where they throw archer uh all the prisoners are held held into place with magnetic boots and like you know they can turn on the magnets at any time but it's like they kind of chunk around because the boots are heavy like the fucking butts on these prisoners how firm must these prisoner butts be oh my gosh

i'll say the jumpsuits have a great logo on them too did you notice the logo on the jumpsuits

so fucking cool yeah I didn't notice that.

It's like a trite.

It's like

a trident.

I think it's a little bit of a hint.

We learn later it's in the middle of the ocean, but it's this like kind of trident logo.

Looks cool.

Oh,

Spouser holding a trident.

They really went all in.

Yeah.

It says, let's a go on it.

All this shit's just from the Mario movie.

So, yeah, so he's, so, so, Archer's in prison.

He's trying to get the, he's trying to get the intel out of

Weirdo Little Pollux.

I recognize that actor, and I don't know where from.

Yeah, I don't.

He's giving a.

I mean, in a movie full of weird performances, he's really like giving a weird one.

He's like a little.

Yeah, I like it.

He's like a little weird guy, and I love making bombs for my brother.

Alessandro Navola.

That's who he is.

What else have they been in?

He's doing like a weird, like, I'm in Galaxy Quest voice

like a Thurman.

He played Dickie Multasante in the Many Saints of Newark, the Sopranos movie that's terrible.

Oh,

he was great in it,

but you know, it's not a great movie, that Sopranos movie.

Speaking of which, also.

I'm here.

Where's my cup of cool?

There's also two the wire actors in this.

That's right.

Yeah, we've got Stephen Bauer, who plays Russian guy who wants to beat the shit out of,

you know, what's his name, Nicholas Cage?

Duboff.

Yes.

And then we have the guy, Bunny Colvin.

I forget the name of the actor, but Robert Wisdom.

Robert Wisdom is in this.

He was Bunny Colvin.

What a name.

Robert Wisdom?

Yeah.

That's amazing.

That's an amazing name.

A lot of wire guys.

I know my wire guys.

There's a Cassavetti's in here, too.

I guess it's

the son.

Yeah, he plays the bald goon.

He's fun.

You don't see him much, but the moments he's on camera, he's a blast.

He's fun.

He's fun kissing his sister, Gina Gershon.

Yeah, what the fuck was with that?

That'll come up later.

Will we figure out what was going on?

No, probably not.

Yeah.

We also are big fans of Gina Gershon.

We love seeing her and everything.

One of the greats, one of the great babes of my youth.

Totally.

Just doing a fucking amazing job in this movie.

So, yeah, so while all this was happening,

Castor Troy woke up without a face.

Fucking great scene.

Figured everything out by watching a little video they had of the surgery at the hospital.

No one is watching him.

He's just alone in this hospital doing whatever.

And so he has the doctor kidnapped and then has himself turned into John Travolta.

It's a really cool little scene.

You don't see his face, his like skull face for that long.

You see it in little flashes, and then you see it reflected in someone's glasses.

It's so cool.

Yeah, this like movie was made by a fucking movie maker.

It's so yeah, this is this is like a rad little scene, and he's also smoking while he

probably not good for the meat.

Probably not good for the face meat.

No, I would, you know, smoking not good for you, period.

But yeah, and he makes like the weirdest noise when he kind of gets up and figures out what's going on.

It's going

to be a fairy.

I'm sure Cage did the research as to what you sound like when you don't have a face.

I bet he cut some guy's face off.

I bet he ripped his own face off just to try it out.

Yeah, I think he's, I think, Nick Cage, master of little noises and big noises.

I ripped my face off and put it on a beach ball so I could fuck my own mouth.

What?

That doesn't happen in the movie.

Why did you put it in the movie?

I don't think that happens in the movie.

Yeah, you could finally get yourself to suck your own dick if you do face up.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, there's no

self-face.

It's just a little sheet of face and you just kind of up down up down

um so i don't i don't have a dick i don't get it

you do the old up down with a sheet

you draw a face you draw a face on a sheet

you do the old up down yeah right yeah

get a little uh if you get a little roast beef from the deli make a little face in that that's i think a ham steak would probably do a little bit ham steak would feel nice there's a ham steak in our fridge and i'm like what are we gonna do with this i don't know put it in the microwave for 15 seconds and fuck it

and fuck that ham

maybe a summer sausage oh

that sounds lovely that's called a pigs and blankets if you know what

so uh so so so cage is travolta and travolta is cage travolta cage goes to visit cage travolta so no

um i'll try not to say it like that for the remainder of this.

Keep doing that.

So Castor Troy, as Sean Archer,

goes to the prison to

taunt himself.

Fucking Travolta, like sauntering in here.

This is the first time you kind of see him as Cage.

I think you're right.

There are some little Cage mannerisms he doesn't get, but it's a really fun performance.

There's this little line delivery that he gives that will live in my head forever.

Matt, do you have this little clip?

I hope it's the same thing.

You good looking.

God.

That's what people will say about you if you go to maxfunstore.com and buy some free with ad smirch.

A seamless, seamless segue.

That's so good.

Bravo.

Thank you.

Free water.

Such a good plug.

That line is a great pickup line.

Just walk up to somebody in a bar.

Honestly, that would work on me 100%.

But my favorite line of his is when he goes, it's like looking in a mirror, but not only not.

I know.

It's fucking right.

And he said, he's, that's exactly how Cage would do that line too.

And it would be one that Cage would make up and bring to set.

I think this, uh, the thing later where Cage is tripping and he's like, I want to take his face off.

I think that was Cage improving.

And then his goon repeats it, Cassavetes goes, you want to take his face?

Oh, and you're like, Mike, oh my God, we got it.

The title is in the movie.

No more drugs for that guy.

I know.

The degree to which people in the movie know the title of the movie is so crazy.

Something we haven't mentioned yet.

Sean Archer's family tradition.

It's how his family shows their love.

Is they drag their open palm across each other's faces.

It's so fucking weird.

Imagine if you just saw a family at the ball doing that to each other.

I hate it.

It'll come up.

In fact, my wife and I got together in 97.

We've been together ever since.

And we used to do that together all the time.

At first, just like kind of joking around.

Now we just kind of do it because it's funny.

Not all the time, but like we'd feel like we'd just go like.

But here's the thing: in 1997, were people washing their hands?

No,

I wasn't.

I was 11.

Yeah, hand sanitizer,

not, not, uh, yeah, not, not, hand sanitizer is very far away.

Yeah, yeah.

We had the powdered soap when I was 11 in school.

So anyway,

so

all looks lost.

Castor Troy is living as Sean Archer.

He goes to the house and kind of like moves in, kind of like starts flirting with Joan Allen.

There's this part where he's like, I hate to see you go, but I would love to watch you leave.

And there's this leering shot of Joan Allen's butt,

and she's just wearing these sensible slacks.

Like it's this shot that, like, in a Fast and Furious movie, you would do to a girl in a bikini, right?

But it's just this va-va-vum shot of Joan Allen's butt, who's a lovely woman, but she's just wearing like the slacks that your mom wears to church.

It's so funny.

It's like, wow, tan slacked.

Office appropriate.

Yeah.

Dress them up, dress them down, throw on a blazer and head to dinner.

Yeah, if she takes them off for you, you'd have to fold them correctly because of the pleats.

You have to be like, just one moment, I must replete my pants.

Yes.

Now,

now we can live as man and wife.

Finger blast to the moon.

Now I will accept your fingers into mine peach.

Ew, do you have a wee ham steak

to use as a diaphragm?

Why aren't they talking in red fair voices at the same time?

And down.

Use the ham to fuck the dick.

Take it back now, y'all.

That's what he's doing.

Drop y'all slide.

Yeah, I don't know.

What bit are we doing?

So, and he, so, you know, he's, he's kind of like, he's,

yeah, he's like coming on to Joe Nell and he goes, he goes into Goth Daughter's room.

Emily, any thoughts on this bedroom?

Hated it.

Didn't like the the bedroom?

I didn't like the bedroom.

I just, it was nothing.

It was a nothing room to me.

Okay.

I did notice the pillow that said her name because he comes in.

I guess he doesn't know the daughter's name.

And he was like, Jamie.

And she goes, what did you call me?

And he goes, Jamie?

It's like on her pillow.

And I was like, who has a pillow with their name on it?

I don't know.

I have a pillow that says Frosty is a big flake because that was my nickname at my first job because I was a flake and it's embroidered for Christmas and it says Frosty is a big flake.

Not very nice.

So, if someone takes your dad's face off,

they'll start calling you Frosty because that's the name on your pillow.

Yeah, I'll just put it on a pillow.

I just wanted to point out a little something about the room.

I'm just kind of like leaning into my whole deal here.

I think I'm just going to go ahead and point out anytime there's any ska in one of these movies.

Oh, okay.

My daughter has a poster for the voodoo glow skulls album Fear May, which was a favorite of mine in high school.

Voodoo Glow Skulls, very good band, still at it, still touring, still making great music.

Anyway, that's the ska segment we're calling Scavenger Hunt.

Oh, that's crazy.

Alternate title, a message to you, movie.

Anyway, is there just one song in the soundtrack?

I think it's just Don't Lose Your Head by NXS.

It plays on the radio really quickly in a car and then on the end credits.

It's like the only rock song I can remember.

It's the only rock song, but they have Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

Oh, yeah, that.

Which is so funny.

But no, do you think that the reason why she's turning bad is from ska?

Like,

that's what causes you to get the bad eye makeup.

It's not even punk.

It's like ska doing it to her.

You start skanking, and then all of a sudden people call you a skank.

It's like, are you listening to the cherry popping daddies?

No.

Are you?

Get in your room.

They're technically swing revival, mom.

Tell that to Brian Setzer Orchestra.

How dare you?

We're going to sneak out tonight and go to Fishbone.

That's so funny.

Maybe they aren't mad at her because she's becoming goth.

Maybe they're just mad at her because she's a dork.

They're like, listening to Ska.

Fucking loser.

Can't you do a regular dance?

No.

I'm going to skank forever.

Dude, she's going to take that butterfly knife to a ska

show.

Someone could get hurt.

She's listening to Papa's Got a Brand New Bag, which is

kind of a funny, ironic thing.

Oh, I guess that's another song in the middle of the Papa's Got a Brand New Bag.

So funny, just like, oh, my troubled teen is hanging around listening to Motown.

But also, Papa's got a new bag.

He's got a new skin bag.

Yes, that's right.

The S.

Thinker.

This is, this is, I'm a thinker, guys.

You've heard of Pinkus.

Well, Emily's Thinkus.

Hey, President Bitch.

President Bitch.

That's one of the names.

That was a great name.

Thanks.

Yeah, a lot of those.

What if maybe, can you put at the end just pink?

Sure, go ahead.

Yeah, just pop star pink.

She's great.

Anyway,

so that's kind of happening.

Castor Troy is kind of moving into this house.

Sean Archer decides he is going to escape the Supermax prison.

He has this whole thing with getting shock therapy.

It's pretty cool.

There's like a big shootout.

Great reveal.

He finally gets out of the prison, and we reveal that it's like in the middle of the ocean.

Fucking cool.

He jumps off in slow motion.

Neat, neat, neat.

all this is really cool.

Wait, so he's did he swim back to?

I guess, yeah, they they show him like you can see hills, it doesn't seem too far away, it seems like like a mile or two away from shore, as opposed to like if it had been in the middle of nowhere, he'd been like, Oh, well, movie can't go anywhere else, sure, but he also had no shoes because he had to get rid of his boots.

So

he very quickly like steals a car from a valet and gets away from clothes, and he like immediately just does the same thing to Castor Troy.

He like goes to his goon den and like starts moving in with his goons.

Yeah, one of them, Nick Cassafettis.

He's bald.

He's got a bunch of piercings, looks super cool.

His sister is Gina Gershon.

Hubba hubba.

Oh my gosh.

Looking great, kicking dudes in the balls.

She's so good.

She's so cool.

Yeah.

And so they are brother and sister.

They will French kiss later.

What definitely?

Inexplicably.

So, yeah, so they start giving Cage drugs.

It's like, hey, he's back.

Let's all do drugs.

They give him his special box full of chiclets and stuff.

This is like such a fucking great Cage scene.

He's just going nuts.

He's like looking in the mirror.

He doesn't recognize himself, going wild.

He does the thing, I want to take his face off.

So fucking weird.

And then we learn that Gina Gershon and he are in a relationship and they have a little kid with cool ass cowboy jammies.

And so the Sean Archer who has lost his son immediately starts like imprinting on this kid as like new son.

The cops come, he puts these headphones on the kid.

He's like, listen to your music while there's this big shootout.

It's Somewhere Over the Rainbow sung by Olivia Newton-John.

That's cool.

Yeah, it's really cool.

And Wu paid for it himself.

I don't know if you saw that tidbit.

Like the studio didn't want to pay for it.

So he paid for it himself.

And then when it became a hit, they just paid him back for the usage.

But yeah.

Nice.

Yeah.

Cool.

I want Somewhere Over the Rainbow and I want the boots from Mario.

I'm not thinking no for an answer.

A weird guy.

I love a needle drop thing where it's like violence with like a

kid's song or like a simple kind of

doo-wop song or something.

Love that.

This is good.

It's a wonderful world.

They seem to do that a lot with.

I see Skas a blooped.

Yeah.

It's not a wonderful world.

It's not.

So yeah, this is a big shootout with a bunch of slow motion.

There's a thing where, you know, Travolta and Cage are like looking at

other sides of the mirror and they're looking at themselves.

Not a subtle movie at all.

Okay, so we are coming up on the thrilling conclusion of Face Off, and we're going to talk about it right after this.

You know, we've been doing My Brother, My Brother, Me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while, maybe you never listened, and you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years.

I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

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back to the show.

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We're talking to Cole Stratton from SF Sketchfest about face forward/slash off.

Did I get it right?

That's right.

Face forward slash off.

There's probably a knockoff face back slash off.

That's just not, you know.

Oh, but don't watch that.

Yeah,

not good.

Yeah, it's Eric Roberts and Eric.

So it really didn't work.

I switched faces with myself.

Myself.

That's so stupid.

Yeah.

So,

so, so, Archer, as you know, in the

cage skin,

kind of breaks into the

in the cage skin.

That's cool.

That's cool as fuck.

Breaks in, explains the whole thing to Joan Allen.

She doesn't believe him at first, but then he does their patented face wipe, and she's like, oh my god, this is my husband.

John Travolta

kills the boss of the FBI, so they have to go to his funeral.

That's kind of where the final face-off happens.

Wait, and I wanted to talk about this because he kills him by chopping him in the back of the neck.

Yeah.

I've never, usually it's a front-neck chop that does him in, but not a back one.

I was like,

what other movie has a back of the neck chop?

That is a weird scene.

I don't, I didn't.

Austin Powers had one of those.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

But I don't think anyone died.

Judo chop.

Yeah, no, it was a weird move.

That's why, as he's smothering the old man, he whispers, do I make you horny, baby?

Same year.

Oh, yeah.

Good year.

Good year for movies.

Maybe not.

Maybe a lot of bullshit came out, too.

I don't know.

Yeah, I could have made that up, too.

I'm not sure.

Yeah, I believe you.

So in the church, there's a big, like, you know, big, crazy, like, you know, standoff.

Everybody has guns.

It's so funny.

It's almost, it's almost like a naked gun type scene where just more people keep coming into the church and pointing guns at everybody else i started to laugh at a certain point it's like how many more just random goons are gonna come in here and point guns at everybody else it's plus it it follows the cinematic rule of two doves per gun yes exactly so many so definitely if you do the math there's yeah enough yeah my favorite thing was that bright orange boat That boat was cool as fuck.

Do you remember that?

Oh, yeah.

That's

where

we get into a boat chase here.

After the big shootout, it's just like,

fuck, this is 10 movies.

This is a season of TV, this movie.

It's very long.

So much shit happens in it.

Yeah, there's just a giant climactic boat chase where the stunt performers,

brilliant as they may be, look nothing like the actors.

Nothing at all.

Just totally, they're just squat Filipino dudes

who are brilliant.

Again, these are the same.

They don't look like our main

look like the leads.

They were going to take Tarolta and Cage's faces, take them off, put them on the stunt doubles.

Oh, yeah.

And they craft them back afterwards.

But they just ran out of time.

They're over budget.

So

he shoots.

So they crash the boats and Archer

shoots Castor Troy with a...

God, talking about the characters in this movie is going to give me a brain aneurysm.

Well, like, so

bad guy in Chandra Volter's body, he starts cutting up his face, and I'm like, oh my God, if someone else was wearing my face and they were cutting it up, I would lose my fucking shit.

Like, I would just

be like,

I need that, but you don't need your eyes, bitch.

I'll just fucking snatch the eyes out.

That is, that's the like funny comedy scene that they should have done.

Just them fucking up each other's bodies.

I guess it's just the face that got switched but yeah that would be like is that a pimple you're gonna die bitch

uh so yeah he gets shot with a spear gun because it's like the only thing that hasn't been in the movie so far is a spear gun

and yeah and everything pretty much goes great um

they they put the faces back where they belong but they don't put the scar back on him because he doesn't need it anymore.

Yes,

that is a little wrinkle we have not talked about.

John Travolta, during the first surgery, asks for the scar from

his son and him getting shot to be

put back once the mission is over.

But yeah, this is a little signal that he's moved on.

He's been able to let his son go.

And

he's starting a new life with

Castor Troy's son.

who he brings to his house without telling anyone that he's doing it.

And just in front of everybody just says like, can he live here?

This

child who has trauma,

I mean, this child is going to need so much help.

I mean, good on him.

But it's also just like, get rid of the scar.

I'm replacing my son.

Like, I'm just,

I don't need a scar anymore.

I have a new boy.

I have a new boy.

Fucking cool cowboy jammies.

With cool cowboy jammies.

It's just, it's just sitting in some scar bin at the hospital now.

Like, no one's going to claim it.

Terrible.

It's at the end at the at the company Christmas party.

They go through the lost and found box.

You know, like, okay, who wants to take home the scar?

Who wants to take home this travel Yahtzee?

Who wants to take home this boy?

Well, also, he had cowboy pajamas.

Cowboys ride horses.

Horses are on a carousel.

Oh, shit.

They're giving us the clues, Mr.

Police.

Thinks.

Thinks in a lot.

What was the name for me being thinker?

I can't remember.

You're the thinkist.

I'm the thinkist.

Yes.

Thinkists.

But like, Travolta should have been like, you got to tie your own shoes, kid.

I'm not doing it.

Since I was like, Cage would just tie his brother's shoes constantly in the movie.

Yeah.

Yeah, so that is

face off.

Before we rank this movie on a scale of one to ten super loud commercials, we're going to do our fan favorite segment where we talk about the person in the movie that made us the horniest.

Yeah, it's Hunk Watch.

It's Hunk Watch.

Cole, for your benefit,

every, every, every episode we name a hunk of the movie.

Emily, you were telling us on text this is a this is a complicated one for you.

Can you walk us through how you feel about it?

So here's the thing.

They're both hunks.

They're hunky, but it's like, but

which character are they the hunkiest at?

Interesting.

So I want to do a segment just special for you, Cole, than for us is

it's hunk off.

Hunk.

Oh, hunk forward slash off.

Okay, let me try that.

Hold on.

Yeah, yeah.

It's hunk off.

Yeah.

All right.

Personally, I think

Nick Cage as

Sean Archer is the hotter hunk.

And I think John Travolta as Castor Troy is the hotter hunk.

Those are my hunks.

Oh,

I agree with you.

I think Travolta as Castor Troy is so much fucking fun.

Yeah, and sexier.

He's just, he's sexier.

He smokes cigarettes.

You know, I don't know.

He's got more swagger.

And then just something about Nick Cage playing a sweet, nice man, even though he's so good at playing a psychopath.

Yeah.

He's so hot because he's my favorite hunk from, you know, Moon.

What was it?

Moonstruck.

Oh, Moonstruck, yeah.

and he plays this like you know damage with sweet man i think when he plays a sweet guy city of angels disarming like yeah it's a good like cage as sweet guy performance yeah so those are my hunks that's my hunk what do you guys think do you think hunkier as original character hunkier as secondary character

uh i i agree with you emily i think i think hunkier after the switch Yes, yes, I think so too.

I don't want to suck on a tongue.

That's not hunky.

That's not hunky behavior.

It's so fucking weird.

It's such a weird, it's so much harder than that guy.

So much weirder than I could eat a peach for hours, which is weird.

Yeah,

I actually, I'm mouth is peach now.

I like

OG, Nick Cage, Caster Troy.

Okay,

I thought that was the sexiest guy.

I mean, we're talking, you know, personal opinion, personal taste.

That's my hunk watch.

All right.

He's he was hot.

I would, I would, I would love a whole movie of just him at Costco.

You know,

just going around, fucking up.

Terrorizing the sample ladies.

Yeah, exactly.

Fucking up everyone else's giant fucking cart.

You want to suck on my bagel dog?

He's fucking an air fryer that's on sale for Black Friday.

Yeah, exactly.

He buys a new computer.

It's like, oh, you can get them there.

Help me pick out some stiff jeans.

I think you, okay, I think three of the four are hunky.

All right.

I think original Castor Troy, Sean Archer, Castor Troy, and Castor Troy, Sean Archer are hunky.

Original Sean Archer sucks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like,

he's an absentee dad.

Like, he's just so consumed by his hatred towards Castor Troy that, like, he's neglecting his wife.

He yells at his coworkers.

He's not cool.

He just fucking sucks.

Yeah.

So I think the other three are great, but he's terrible.

Yeah.

I'm with you.

Yeah.

Well, that was the first installment of our signature segment.

Hunk off.

Hell yeah.

We are going to rank face off on a scale of one to 10 super loud commercials when we come back.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined!

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Woo!

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Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lum.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

We're back.

It's free with ads.

We're here with Cole Stratton from SF Sketchfest.

We're going to rank face off on a scale of one to 10 super loud commercials.

Cole, you're our guest.

One to ten.

What do you think?

I will give it an eight.

Okay.

I think it's solid.

I do think there's always some weird John Wu melodrama that's over the top in terms of like the emotional core of things that I never believed.

And that's like in all his work.

The action's great.

The campiness is great.

But when it tries to do like the face-off thing and all that stuff, I just, I don't know.

It rings a little hollow to me, but I just love it.

I think the whole thing's entertaining.

I just think it's kind of weird how he tries to really dial into the melodrama, but keep it serious when it should never be.

Emily, as a face-off first-timer, what did you think of this insane movie?

I'm going to give it an 8.5.

Okay.

I had so much fun watching it.

I mean, it's got, you know, its campy little problems, and there's also some other problematic stuff in it.

But, like, you know, I was thoroughly entertained from,

you know,

forehead to chin.

Mm-hmm.

Does that work?

Does that

you've named all the parts of the face?

Yeah.

Matt Lee, what do you think?

I guess I don't know.

Did you, had you seen this before?

And what did you, what, what were you doing?

I had seen it before.

I'd seen it once before when it came out.

I saw it in theaters.

And this is the first time I've seen it in, you know, however many 20 years or something.

And I'm going to give this a two-stream face.

God damn.

But wait a second.

What is that?

Oh, I've just ripped the face of the two off, and it turns out its real face is a nine.

I fucking love this movie, bro.

Nine was pretending to be two so he could get in jail with his brother.

And anyways, I'm giving myself a stroke with this.

That makes sense.

Just like the movie, it makes sense.

I loved it way more than I thought I would because I saw it as a kid and I was like, this is a real stupid movie, but I'm, you know, movie nachos and whatnot.

Everything was like, chill.

And it is, not only does it hold up, but it aged like wine.

I think it's beautiful.

And the action in it is, I usually tune out during action sequences.

It is captivating as shit.

So I'm giving this a nine.

All right.

Yeah, and I'm going to go, I'm going to go seven for this.

I've seen this movie a bunch of times.

I really like it.

It has so much fun in it, and it has so much like

so much fucking awesome shit happens in this movie.

Yeah, the practical stunts are so great.

The acting is like over-the-top fun.

It has some ick in it.

And I think we've all kind of mentioned it.

And, you know, you dance around it a little bit.

And definitely, like, if you kind of know that going into it of like, yeah, this has some stuff that's a little bit icky that I think they're not doing

to like say that it's cool, but it's just like it's the most over-the-top movie they could make, right?

Like, it's a movie about being insane.

Yeah.

So, like, so some of the stuff that happens is like a little bit icky.

So, I think if you know that going in,

or you're just like, I don't want to see icky shit, you can watch this movie in clips.

You can watch this movie in GIFs.

So, I think you can see a lot of the fun stuff.

But I think if you're just like, hey, I know that, you know, there's some stuff in it that's, you know, that hasn't been super well.

To be fair, though, the icky stuff is done by a psychopath.

And I think that it does go to, it's not like it's being, you know, glossed over as an okay thing to do.

It is like, oh, fuck, this guy is evil as shit.

This is bad.

But it is still uncomfortable to watch.

But he is a psychopath, guys.

Yes, absolutely.

The movie is not saying it's cool.

as they are using it to create an evil villain, which they did.

We're talking about the Mario boots, right?

We're talking about the Mario Boots, yes.

Okay, I thought so.

Yeah, all right.

So, yeah, that's face-off.

We dug it.

Cole Stratton, thank you so much for being here.

Yay!

F Sketch Fest in San Francisco.

It's the world's greatest comedy festival.

I'll say it.

Thank you.

I want to hear a little bit about who

the coolest people you've ever booked on this are, except for free with ads.

We know we're the coolest.

No need to say it.

Who are the coolest people you've ever booked?

And like, are there people you still want to book for Sketchfest who you haven't been able to?

I mean, yeah, always.

There's white whales that we go after, but every year we seem to get a few of them.

I mean, this year we have Bill Murray.

I mean, come on.

And Tim Curry.

I didn't think Tim Curry would ever be able to do that.

I'm like

freaking out.

I think I may need to come up early to experience that.

I just, that's like a once-in-a-lifetime.

I can't believe it.

I can't believe it.

It's going to be crazy.

I feel like every year, like we always, every year we put a lineup together that we're pretty proud of, but we're like, oh, there's no way we can top this next year.

Always.

And then we somehow find a way to kind of at least be on the level with, if not top it.

And so

every year, like we've kind of gotten to the point now where like, we're not afraid to go after

the pie, you know, sky's the limit.

We'll go after anything.

So the fact that we got Carol Burnett one year was like, what?

Oh, my God.

Like those kinds of things that you just don't think you're ever going to do.

And for us, when we started this thing, like kids in the hall were like the group for us.

Like we were all on a sketch group together in college.

And then the fact that we got like, I have a couple years in, we got like Bruce to come and do a solo show.

And then the next year, like Dave came and did something and Scott.

And then we got all of them.

And like five or six years in, it was just like, oh, wait.

Okay.

Cool.

This is the thing we're doing.

So yeah, and there's still definitely some people.

And one of which I think we may be announcing in our third wave.

So I don't want to spoil it here because it's like 99% there, but you know, something could happen.

And I don't want to put it on record.

But it's somebody that we've been trying to get forever that's a huge personal comedy hero of mine.

So I'm hoping that that will come through.

Well, cool.

So you are, in addition to being a festival organizer, you are a hilarious comic and improviser yourself.

You have shows at Sketchfest.

Is there like one or two that you think people should catch if they're coming to the fest?

Yeah, there's a couple of things I'm doing.

I have an improv group called Theme Park that we do shows with, that we tour with that's like famous people and me.

So it's like, it's like Rachel Dratch and Anna Gastars doing it with this year, Michael Hitchcock, Simon Hellberg, Janet's in it, Oscar Nunez, and stuff.

So we're doing one big show with that.

And then Janet and I both do riffing with Riff Trex, which is an offshoot of MST3K.

So we're doing a couple of Riff-Apaloozas where we're just improvising riffs to bad movies.

And that's like me and Janet with

Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett, Mary Joe Peel, and Frank Conniff from MST3K.

So those will be fun.

Hell yeah.

A lot of great stuff at SF Sketch Fest, including this very podcast.

That's right.

Our first ever Free With Ads live show will be at SF Sketchfest, January 23rd, 7.30 p.m.

at the Punchline Comedy Club.

We would love to see folks out there.

We're so excited to be a part of this thing.

We're so excited to do the show live.

Here's what I'll say.

Matt and Emily, I don't speak for you.

This is me.

You can join me if you like.

You don't have to.

If you see me at Sketchfest, if you come to our show and you see me like before or afterwards, and you specifically request it, I will do the face-off face wipe to you.

Wow.

Yeah, I'll be right back.

You got to wash your hands, dude.

You have to have it.

That's a $19.95 value.

Yeah.

I'll do it too.

And I will bring a hand sanitizer.

Of course, yes.

We'll all make sure our hands are 2024 clean.

Because I need to end it with a finger in the mouth.

Just like all the way in.

hit the uvula, just give it a little boop, boop.

Yeah, exactly.

If you buy our merch

after the live show,

I will rip my face off and put it on a beach ball and fuck the beach ball.

Wow.

This is going to be a great.

I wouldn't, I'd hate to miss this.

I got to get away from that.

What if I bring a hamsteak?

Yeah.

Ooh, then it's going to get wild.

We won't even talk about

that movie.

My beach ball face will eat it.

What we're saying is, we're going to fuck fuck everyone at the best.

Would you be grateful if you sucked on our tongues?

The show is just us eating a peach

for hours.

Yeah.

Yeah, so we're going to have some cool stuff planned for SF Sketchfest.

Would love to see you there.

sfsketchfest.com for tickets to our show and all the wonderful shows at sketchfest uh cole stratton thank you so much for joining us and for asking us to be part of your Wonder World Festival.

Yes, thank you so much.

Yeah, it'll be really fun.

Can't wait for it.

Links to the festival and our show will be in the show notes.

All right, that's it.

Tune in next week when our movie will be Titanic.

Eczo Flare-Up, Cherry Poppin' Matthew, Big Bad Voodoo Matthew, Johnny Six, President Bitch, Chicago Fire, Young Navy, Lion Tead Cruise, Anna More Fallon, Mesmer the Impaler, Pomona Kinney, Aaron, who took one trip to England and came back with an accent, and the taint.

Okay,

now I'm going to go look at a picture of my dead son.

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