Dreamcatcher w/ Jessica McKenna & Curtis Gwinn (HDTGM Matinee)

Would you sell your soul for greatness?

What would you be willing to sacrifice?

Find out September 19th in the new Jordan Peel-produced horror film, Him, Only in Theaters, starring Marlon Waynes in a role of a lifetime as the greatest football player of all time, aka the Goat.

Tyreek Withers also stars as his up-and-coming protégé.

Directed by Justin Tipping and produced by Monkey Paw Productions, Never Meet Your Idols.

Him hits theaters September 19th.

Your sausage mumbuffin with egg didn't change.

Your receipt did.

The sausage mcmuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just five dollars.

Only at McDonald's for a limited time.

Prices and participation may vary.

Mint is still $15 a month for premium wireless.

And if you haven't made the switch yet, here are 15 reasons why you should.

One, it's $15 a month.

Two, seriously, it's $15 a month.

Three, no big contracts.

Four, I use it.

Five, my mom uses it.

Are you playing me off?

That's what's happening, right?

Okay.

Give it a try at mintmobile.com/slash switch.

Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, $15 per month equivalent required.

New customer offer first three months only, then full price plan options available.

Taxes and fees extra.

See Mintmobile.com.

It's like Stand By Me Meets Mac and Me Meets Alien during John Carpenter's The Thing.

And when you put all that together, you get a big old mess and shit aliens.

We saw Dreamcatcher, so you know what that means.

Now it's time for

Hello, people of Earth, and welcome to How Did This Get Made?

I'm your host, Paul Scheer, joined as always by Jason Manzukas.

How are you, Jason?

I'm all right, Paul.

I am all right.

I am upset that June is still on maternity leave.

I am.

I watched this movie last night the entire time being like, oh, I wish June was going to be there to try and make sense of it.

Oh, is this movie?

I mean, the wig work alone

would have really, really taken her down a path.

But we have some amazing guests today to talk about this movie.

And I am glad that they're here.

Please welcome our first guest, a returning, a returning, how did this get made all-star from episode five, Drive Angry.

You know this guy.

He writes on amazing shows like The Walking Dead and Leftovers and The Bastard Executioner and Narcos.

He just recently sold a show to FX.

Please welcome Curtis Gwynn.

Hi, how are you doing?

I'm flattered that you see people would know me.

TV writers are so well known.

No, no, no, they would know you from episode five of How Did This Get Made, Drive Angry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's right.

There's to this podcast.

That's what I'm saying.

You're an all-star.

You're on a Nick Cage episode, a classic episode.

I appreciate it.

I appreciate it.

And someone who I want to say right before we started recording said that he has read this book and watched this movie three times.

That's right.

That's right.

I was excited to bring you to this because I thought, I was like, oh, if there's anybody that could really talk about this movie, it will be Curtis.

And I'm glad it worked out here.

We also have another guest joining us today.

She's awesome.

Hilariously funny.

She has a brand new ABC digital show called Serious Music.

You've seen her on Comedy Bang Bang, the UCB show, and Party Over Here.

Please welcome Jessica McKenna.

Oh, hi.

Hi.

I'm really excited to ask you about that middle time you saw Dream Kid.

I understand.

I'm excited.

Got to see the theater.

I should refresh for this podcast.

What's the middle time?

The middle time is, I feel like, the one where you're like, you know, I'm going to try and make sense of it.

Well, I did see the second, the middle time really was, and I said it before we came in, you know, that I had locked myself out of my apartment in New York City.

So I had actually seen it by my own volition.

Then a week later, locked myself out of my apartment, went across the stage of the movie theater, and was like, middle of the day was the only thing that I rewatched it.

So you saw it twice.

In one week.

You saw it.

I went to see it twice in a week.

Like $10, $11.

But by the way, I would see this twice in the theater just because I rewound it many times going, what am I watching?

And even when I tried to break down the plot, I was like, okay, so this is about,

and again, just for you who've not seen it yet, I'll kind of

get a mash up to it.

Of all the Stephen King stories I've heard.

Yes.

I think it's all of them like crumbled into one.

So basically, if you were to really peel away all the layers of it, you would say an alien attack in a small town during a blizzard and four friends with psychic powers have to defeat it.

I mean, that is, if you're, I mean, we're, that is the most.

But it has, yes.

But there's also the added

the added Stephen Kingian kind of thing, which is these kids, these men, because it's four like grown men.

It's Jason Lee, it's Homeland,

Timothy Oliphant, Tim Oliphant, and

who's the fourth?

Thomas Jane.

Thomas Jane.

And Tom Jane.

Oh, God.

Tom Jane Punisher.

So it's those four guys, but you flash back to when they're kids a lot, and so they've been being groomed by another alien who's on Earth to prepare for the alien invasion,

which they don't know.

So there's also this kind of predestination kind of kids are meant to.

But I will argue with the main theory of that because when you bring in

Morgan Freeman's character which we should get into but

he said so many people in this movie Yeah, let's just see just again to say at the top of this amazing people in this movie like I mean this movie is

Lawrence Kasden Yeah, what I was gonna say was it's not just an amalgam of the hodgepodge of Stephen King stuff.

It's also a hodgepodge of the other two components of this Lawrence Kasden and William Goldman.

Yes.

William Goldman wrote the original script, and

apparently I read interviews with Lawrence Kasden where he basically just brushed it off, and then I read that William Goldman's involvement in it.

And William Goldman's a fucking legend.

Yeah.

And then Stephen King also was like, yeah, Goldman turned in a draft.

And

like, Larry rewrote it.

You know, Larry punched it up.

But you can see, it is like, it is it or Stranger Things with the Big Chill.

I mean, that is why Lawrence Kasden was like, I can make this.

Oh, yeah.

Even though he did horror.

And it, well, I think it, and it fails on a couple levels there, too, because it's not scary.

It's not like, it's like there's a moment or two of like, it's gross.

Yeah, it's definitely gross.

It's real gross.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it's, but it also, it feels very dated.

It feels like a little

like.

When you, there's a C, it feels, for this movie came out in 2003, and it feels like if this, if you said this came out in like 1990,

you would have been like, oh, yeah, of course.

The only thing that makes it 2003 is that the effects are better.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like, stuff looks okay.

It's extremely 90.

I mean, again, look at the three people at the top of the ticket here.

Lawrence Gaston, William Goldman, and Steve.

There are wipes.

Yeah.

There are wipes

all over this movie.

Yeah.

I couldn't believe it.

I was stymied by that.

In a way, I admire it because it really is the project of like people who can do anything.

You know, the budget was something like $65 million.

Yeah, I was going to say it's got to be a huge budget.

$68 million.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, Stephen King

at the time, he was doing, he was like very pro-Dreamcatcher and he hadn't done press for any movies like in 20 years.

He hated his movies.

He was like, this movie is great.

Really?

And he did massive press tours for it, which he never did.

He sold the rights to it for $1, I think, because he wanted to really make this movie.

No, that's his thing.

He always sells everything for it.

Okay, okay.

me.

But now,

two years ago, he said, oh,

he had just suffered.

He had just been hit by a car.

Oh, yeah.

Stephen King, and

he almost died.

Whoa, just like.

Exactly.

Well, that's why he wrote that.

Yeah, he wrote that in, because this is what he wrote, the first thing he wrote.

Longhand.

Longhand, he said, completely on OxyContin.

Whoa.

And that he hates it.

That he thinks it's terrible.

He goes, oh, it's awful.

Just awful.

By the way,

that makes sense.

That makes sense that this was written entirely on OxyCox.

And after a trauma.

It is a jumble of nonsense.

Is this like the book?

Is this very huge?

I will say that for a 90, the book is over 600 pages.

Yeah.

Wow.

So it's a real life.

That is an OxyCox King book.

The book is.

Now look, again, I am a massive Stephen King fan.

I couldn't be any bigger.

I love William Goldman and I really like Lawrence Casanova.

Sure.

I love these people.

So it hurts me to say, but it was crap.

I mean, the book was

brutally bad and repetitive.

And one of the only reasons I went to see the movie the first time is because he makes reference to it.

I was going to ask you.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

No, no, this is Berkeley.

This is one of my favorite books ever.

Who does and when?

Stephen King, late in

the climax of Dreamcatcher in the book, not in the movie.

Oh, oh, oh, okay.

He makes reference to it.

There's like a...

So they take place in the same universe, meaning they take place in the same town.

Well, yeah, it's in Derry, Maine.

And they were saying that in the movie, I believe, there is a couple little throws to it, which is like there's

I think there's like a Pennywise lives on like a sign at one point, not totally featured.

But also,

but here's a question I had, and this is my bad memory of it.

Is the name of Pennywise also Mr.

Gray as well?

Or is that like the DFC?

Okay, all right.

Okay, then that was my.

Unless there's a bigger Stephen King thank you.

Wait, is Pennywise an alien?

No.

Well, think of it in Lovecraftian terms.

Okay.

It could potentially be an interstellar, sort of cosmic,

like some sort of celestial interdimensional creature that

personifies evil.

Wow.

Sounds kind of like that.

We have not yet really started to talk about the movie.

And the fact is, like, yeah, go ahead, Paul.

I was going to say, also, just another thing about the Stephen King book, just to even get, like, the original title of this book was called Cancer.

Yeah.

Whoa.

And it and it was written because, and this is a quote I have from Stephen King about it.

It was.

You talked to Stephen King?

I got him on the phone real

quick.

I do want Blake to talk to him.

No,

he might be able to.

He said the whole reason for writing the novel was the scene where the guy shits out the alien.

And that's the scene that became the driving force of the book.

And by the way, spoiler alert: guy shits out an alien.

And if you think that's the only time an alien comes out of someone's ass, you're wrong.

He said, so he said, you know, the idea used to be the ultimate taboo was what's behind the bedroom door.

And he's like, the new taboo is what's behind the bathroom door, because most people now realize that they have cancer in bathrooms and they find blood in their stool.

And he felt like that is the new

terrifying experience.

That's so dark.

But I also feel like cancer as a title would make more sense than Dreamcatcher, which is just an offhand moment where they're like, dude, it's we made this in arts and crafts.

I have no, and this is, and this is now, so let's get into it.

I didn't understand Dreamcatcher at all.

Guys, we haven't talked about anything yet.

Oxycon's a hell of a drug man.

Like now, like the memory house makes so much more sense right now.

All of the storylines are all over.

Oh, I don't even know.

Basically, you have, well, let's like try to break it down.

You meet these four guys

who all have psychic powers.

Like, we have a therapist who can read minds.

We have a guy who works in an auto dealership who helps people find their keys.

We have a guy who's a drunk.

What's Tom Jane's power?

He's a psychic.

He can read minds.

Oh, okay.

Oh, no, not Tom Jane.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Damian Lewis.

Yeah, what's Damian Lewis's?

Why does Damian Lewis have this memory?

Like, do they all have this like that?

They do say we all got one, but he's the only one who's like cultivated it.

Yeah, yeah.

They were like, you remember he used to talk about this all the time, his memory house.

Yeah, but he can hear other people's thoughts too.

When he's about to cross the street, he says to the guy next to him, what'd you say?

Yeah.

So, and I think they all can connect with each other.

Yeah, because when they're kids, they're all telepathically talking to each other.

And it was given to them by this

mentally handicapped child.

Yeah.

They come.

Duddits.

The movie.

This is this.

This happens in the movie.

This happens in the movie.

The movie begins, we introduce, are introduced to the four men in their independent lives.

Yes.

And they all are kind of calling each other to check in.

They're going to go blah, blah, blah, visit Duddits or whatever.

One of them's casually about to kill himself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tom Jane is a psychiatrist who is treating a patient.

The patient leaves.

He goes to his desk.

This is in minute two, pulls out a revolver, puts it to his head.

But can I say, just from a writing perspective that that that's those are facts what you just said but what makes it really terrible is that it is the opposite of look i'm not a big save the cat guy per se this blake snyder thing of like the heroes guy but these guys are terrible people um the first guy thomas jane is like you're a fat he's like you're he's writing negative thing about his fat patient and then he like drives this guy and this poor guy is talking about the the opening monologue is about Carl's Jr.

Hamburger.

Yes, that's what the guy's in therapy for?

Yeah, and then

he's awful to this guy, and then he puts a gun to his head, and you're like, I don't, you're immediately like, I don't like, he's too handsome.

He's got this gun against it.

Fuck him.

And I don't understand why these guys are all slightly, like, they seem broken, but yet you're like, oh, how did they become broken?

Yeah.

That's why this is all lensed to a book.

Yeah.

Not a movie, but the book is also.

So

what happens is that you are introduced to all the guys.

And then...

Oh, by the way, I was going to say, when you introduce, there was one moment in Damian Lewis that, again, we're talking about wipes, where he's like, where he says something like bad to the

shit.

We mean an edit that goes from left to right, like

the scene style.

Star Wars style, which is...

Not something that is currently used

as a way to edit.

And not in a story that takes place on Earth.

But they also did, I thought, in addition to the wipes, they did like an SNL like frozen caveman lawyer kind of push-in on Damian Lewis.

Like the camera's like to the left and it's like, whoop, boom, like it just like it goes across and pushes into it.

Can I also just say that we're struggling to piece it together in a movie, again, from the writing standpoint, where they specifically just say everything.

Yes, they just flat out.

There's no subtitles.

Almost every line is exposition.

There's like a three-minute, and I'm going to play it later on, I think, a monologue that one of the characters does that is kind of talking to the audience, trying to sum up the entire movie to be like, it's an hour and 20 minutes in, but let me try to help you out.

How long is this show?

Yeah.

How much time do we have to do?

Somebody's going to have to do a podcast about this podcast just because

they're going to be like, guys, I'm 15 minutes into the podcast.

They have not yet started to talk about the second flashback.

Because there are, within the first five minutes, it goes six months in the future and then 20 years in the past.

And it jumps around through time and then over an hour in introduces Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore as equally as important characters.

I don't want to get ahead of it.

Tron Aries has arrived.

I would like you to meet Aries, the ultimate AI soldier.

He is biblically strong and supremely intelligent.

You think you're in control of this?

You're not.

On October 10th.

What are you?

My world is coming to destroy yours, but I can help you.

The war for our world begins in IMAX.

Tron Aries, rated PG-13.

Maybe inappropriate for children under 13.

Only in theaters, October 10th.

Get tickets now.

Thrive Market isn't just convenient.

It is a lifesaver.

Okay, now that school is back, you can stock up on all your family's must-haves, from healthy snack packs to high-protein meals to non-toxic cleaning supplies.

I love Thrive.

It's healthy groceries delivered, trusted brands that I love.

And if you're looking to cut out the artificial dyes or processed sugar or seed oils, you got it.

Thrive Market has a ton of on-site filters so you can easily filter what your family's preferences are.

Now, the stuff I love from Thrive, let me tell you.

Van Lewin ice cream.

Have you had it?

It's so good.

My family, we live on the kind bars.

Skinny Pop.

Yeah, they got it.

And I will admit, I love myself an Olipop soda.

These are just a handful of brands that Thrive have, and they will deliver them to your door.

So go to thrivemarket.com slash bonkers to get 30% off your first order and a free $60 gift.

Start speaking a new language with confidence thanks to Babel's conversation-based learning technique that quickly teaches you useful words and phrases about the things you actually talk about in the real world.

There are over a dozen languages available to learn at your own pace, pace, and you can achieve your goals with material tailored to your individual proficiency level, interests, and time availability.

I have been learning Spanish with Babel, and I absolutely love it.

I love it because of the games, right?

It makes it more exciting for me to just jump right in, whether it's sentence building or maybe this little learning about the culture that just brings the language home.

It's like learning from a living, breathing organism.

You know, you're engaging, you're interactive.

It is so much fun.

You will love it.

Learn another language.

Babel is gifting our listeners 55% off subscriptions at babble.com slash bonkers.

Get up to 55% off at babble.com slash bonkers.

Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash bonkers.

Babble.com slash bonkers.

Rules and restrictions apply.

My first question is,

we meet Damian Lewis, who is

a professor.

A professor or a professor, a good guy professor.

He's nice.

Jason Lee seems like an alcoholic.

Thomas Jane is.

And Jason Lee is like

the worst character in a movie, most hatable movie.

He's full of jargon and catchphrases that are preposterous.

I was saying, it was like watching Back to the Future 2, where they're trying to make words exist that they don't.

Like, you bro joke.

Bite my bag.

Crime and netties.

Yeah, something bananas.

It's all,

you know what?

It's almost like they were like, I want this character to be a newsie from the 30s.

yeah well this is very that is very stephen king yeah and that stuff that is taken when you read a stephen king book he always has characters that talk in that kind of like yeah i don't know almost like 50s but rough talk yeah um and it works in his for some reason the tapestry that he weaves you go okay you read the book and you're like I accept this.

Yes.

Well, this is how this character is defined.

Well,

let's take a listen to one of my favorite parts, the fuckarees and fuckaroos.

Oh, boy.

This gives you a sense of this is the first time all of our guys are getting together in a cabin.

We don't know why.

And this is the kind of talking you're going to hear.

Let some lady at bingo went back to her place.

Turn into a pretty nice fuckaree.

As opposed to a fuckaro, obviously.

They'll admit I've had perfectly good fuckerees turn into fuckaroes in a flash.

At Viagra.

Viagra?

I'm practically at full salute all day.

You're remembering yourself in the fourth grade.

What, you having wood problems?

You haven't tried it, have you?

Don't know.

You won't believe it.

You dropped that little blue bomb, you're hard as a Louisville slugger for 12 hours.

12 hours?

Talking to you, Stremsky.

You don't have to need it to love it.

So Jason Lee brought in Kevin Smith for the day, right?

To do punch-up.

Because that is like a clerk's scene.

Yeah, that is crazy.

That's so crazy.

Honestly, as I was watching this scene, though, I was immune to how ridiculous he sounded because I was like, that's nice of him to be the one to cook dinner.

You know that thing where you get a vacation home with your friends, you're like, who's going to really like take this mantle?

And I was like, whoa, he's got his own recipe.

He's got two different hot sauces.

Oh, my God.

Way to step up to the plate, Beaver.

His name is Beaver.

Beaver.

Beaver.

Beaver.

That's his name.

Yeah, I forgot about that.

So we don't know why these guys are broken.

We don't know why they're all in a cabin together.

They shit.

They come every, they've been coming for 20 years.

Jason Lee puts physical notches in a cabin I have to assume they don't own that they just rent.

They get charged like 50 bucks for a bunch of every notch, and they're like, worth it.

The thing that was crazy to me also was that these four dudes, in my opinion, at this point, though some of them have more likable qualities, but they are treated so much like a unit.

Like, they are treated so much like we're going to invest in all four of these guys.

We're going to show them as kids and this long bond that they've had.

They're going to do this nice thing for a handicapped child.

We're going to really like these dudes.

And then we're supposed to know that Thomas Jane and Damian Lewis are are more important.

Yeah.

And they also fall into that like that white guys that look kind of similar.

Yes.

And especially with a blizzard going on and some of them are covered.

I'm like, all right, I'm glad that you at least have a beard that changes length throughout the movie.

And then when they would flash back, other than the kid who is supposed to be

justified,

what's his name?

Time Olifan.

Oh, Tim Oliphan.

Other than that kid, I couldn't tell who the kids were supposed to.

Oh, no.

And what's his name?

Jason Lee's kids got glasses, too.

Red hair.

The other two were indistinguishable.

I was like, wait, which is, ah, the kids.

Yeah, sorry.

But they are.

A quartet of people who you're supposed to, it is like stand by me.

They're on an adventure, the kids' version of it.

They come across a handicapped kid.

They save him from bullies.

And then.

The bullies who are trying to make him eat shit.

Yes.

And the bullies are holding the shit.

And

I mean, it's a small detail, but it was a really

perfectly formed shit.

They're already being like, you're punishing yourself.

by holding this shit in your hands.

And then they get superpowers.

Do they ever show?

I kept on going, did I miss something?

Like, does

Duddis just I think it's supposed to be a reveal?

It makes more sense in, again, not much more sense, but a little more sense in the book that

he's the guy who's got magic powers and it rubs off on them.

Just by being in his orbit, they get these powers, but it's really because he's this, I don't want to spoil spoil anything, but he's well you can you can I mean we can

spoil it.

Why not spoil it?

You can't because it will be worth it to I think at least understand where we're going.

He's an alien who's got he's the

the the the

counter enemy enemy of the evil aliens presumably in deep sea.

So he's a good guy.

But he's a good guy and he has given them now why he is under the guise of a mentally challenged child, wouldn't that be a very difficult life?

Well that I can that that's I can is and that I was really hoping you were going to explain.

Well, I'm going to

maybe help here and say that the original ending of the movie did not reveal Dutt to be an alien.

So that's interesting.

But in a book it does.

I can't, I don't recall.

Okay.

I don't.

So the original ending is a, and I know we're skipping to the end here.

We haven't even introduced that aliens are in here.

We'll get to that book.

When there was an alien, when the alien turns into an alien.

Yes.

You know, when he, Damien Lewis turns around and there's a giant like nine-foot-tall gray, I was like, are you fucking kidding me?

Well, like, you know,

so, man, it's hard to like even...

Because you have to set it.

I think even to understand what we're talking about, you have to lay it all out.

So they're in this vacation house.

A man comes who's having some stomach problems.

Yes.

He's farting his brains out.

Yes.

And there's a lot of bad farts in this movie.

There's a lot of of like, like, comical farts.

Comical body horror.

Yes.

You know, like, it's almost like funny David Cronenberg, which, by the way, is a type of movie I would love to see.

And he comes to their house and he's getting progressively sicker, and his stomach is distended and weird.

And

they, you know, and he's getting sicker.

And they go to the, he has, he runs to the bathroom.

They come home.

They find like blood around the house and it's, he's in the bathroom.

And basically,

he has shit out

this snake-like monster

who opens up like a vagina to a certain extent.

He is like both a dick and a vagina.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but it's

covered.

It's got teeth, like, like teeth that run the length of its body almost.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

It's crazy.

And there's a, and it came out of his butt.

It came out of his butt.

And that's how these aliens, I guess they, it's like aliens.

There's a bunch of shots where people, you see, like their butts like blown open.

yeah like because the guy falls off the toilet and you see like his asshole like blown open by this thing yeah and and so they they trap this slug like alien in the toilet okay i want to talk about this scene for one hour yeah yeah yeah this is that they said this scene took days and days and days and days to shoot really really is it because he just kept being like seriously the toothpick that's seriously what i'm doing yes the really

so they they they these they come home they see this ultimate horror the bathroom covered in blood, the man dead, his asshole blown out.

They have this creature trapped in a toilet, and they're like, you know, they're like, sit on the toilet, Jason Lee, and we'll trap him in there.

And then I guess Thomas Jane or Damian Lee.

The homeland

goes to get duct tape.

He goes to get duct tape to figure it out.

Which I believe he calls friction tape.

He does call friction tape.

He does call friction tape.

And I was like, oh, some sort of special tape.

Okay, that makes more sense.

And then when he finds it and it's duct tape, I was like, no.

Oh, that brick.

And I was wondering, is that because duct tape is like a brand name?

Oh, no.

No.

I think it is, but I think it is a Xerox Kleenex situation.

Yeah, I agree.

Okay.

Okay, guys.

Maybe it's a British thing.

I would say it's a British thing.

Oh.

Like, I think that Damian Lou is probably like, a friction tape.

And then they're like, oh, interesting.

You know, if you've been on this scene for six days, fuck a friction tape.

So Jason Lee has one job.

to sit on the toilet.

He's not wrestling with the toilet.

Well, he also has one defining characteristic.

One defining character trait that sets him apart from the the rest of the guys is that in every frame of this movie up until this one moment, he has a toothpick in his mouth.

And while they were first interact with the alien, the thing that he drops are his toothpicks.

So he's in a, he's in, now, you know, I think we can all see Curtis.

You know, this is probably as a writer, this is kind of the dilemma that you like to create.

Yeah, you have a character who needs his toothpicks.

But there's an alien.

This is the baby carriage about to go down the steps.

It's, you know, this is really good stuff.

And in the book, it still doesn't make sense.

It's, I think, I believe he's either a former alcoholic or drug addict.

I can't remember now, but the toothpicks are like his way of like curbing that and the stress or whatever.

You definitely like get, oh, this is like his coping, and he's in an extremely stressful situation.

There's a, there's a blown-out butthole man staring at him and he wants a toothpick.

There's also like 20 toothpicks, but only two didn't fall in the dead man's blood.

Yes.

So and it's still like, in grabbing this, you're definitely going to brush the blood.

It's also a toothpick that's on the floor of a bathroom.

Yes.

Never mind a bathroom where a man has just died.

Yeah.

And also, he's in this bathroom, arguably for two minutes.

Like, he couldn't curb, like, like, he had to be like, there's a monster in the toilet.

Like, there's real fear.

There's steaks.

Yes, the toilet is like a bucking Bronco of a slug man trying to come out and eat his butthole.

And he's like, got a munch on a toothpick.

And so he's, like, literally taking his ass off the toilet to reach the toothpick to sit on the toilet.

This is where

everything is wrong.

And the tone, the tone is

every single note is wrong.

And they tried to make it the whole thing funny.

These guys are laughing through all of

this Damian Lewis.

In that scene, it's like a comedy scene you'd see in an improv show where some of the gotta keep that alien in the toilet.

Damian Lewis runs.

It's like dangerous.

And then he comes back and he goes, hang in there, buddy.

And like squeaking like a bike, a bike horn.

He's like, ah, Jonesy, ah, Jonesy.

And the guys who get in the car wreck, Thomas Jane and Oliphant get in a car wreck.

They pull each other out.

They're laughing.

Oh, man.

They flipped a car

eight times.

Yeah.

And then they meet a woman who farts.

It is like

you combine two movies, but neither movie knew that they were in each other's movie.

So those guys were reacting

like a lighter, it's even a lighter, big chill because they're not even addressing, it's not like, oh, one of her friends died.

It's like a horror movie or whatever with all this stuff.

But there is scenes that are big chill, like like the one you just played where Jason Lee is cooking for everybody and they're all in the kitchen and he's like got blown last night.

Yeah, like what?

The dinner scene where you're supposed to get to know these guys where they're all sitting around just like chatting and you're supposed this is where you get to like like these dudes or get to know them and they're just awful.

They just

every one of them is each one is less likable than the last at that at that meal.

And you're so confused by it because also you meet these characters in these kind of extreme moments in the beginning.

Like again, who was like Again, I'm getting confused between Damian Lewis and Thomas James.

Damian Lewis crosses the street, right?

Yes.

Yes.

So

he gets hit by a car.

He looks like he's committing suicide because

the cars are racing down the street.

He just walks in the middle of it.

He gets hit.

And he's like, oh, that was six months ago.

I got hit by that car.

But it's neither here nor there.

It's not like, oh, this is a celebration that you're finally healed.

He's warned.

And that's the thing.

They know they're psychic.

They know they have psychic connection to one another.

One of them,

Jason Beaver, calls him.

He's like, Jason Beaver, be careful.

And goes, be careful.

Like, I don't know what's going to happen, but something's going to happen.

Yeah, be careful.

And he goes, why?

And he goes, I don't know.

But wouldn't it have made even more sense if like he was on the corner and a car just hit it, like jumped the curve and hit him?

Like he looked, again, as an audience member, I'm confused.

Like, is he suicidal?

Like, we have two suicidal ones now and a drunk one.

But then there appears at the end to be like some sort of reason why it happened to him.

Right.

They're like, because that makes him die.

He said he saw Duditz.

So he's like, Duditz was calling me and I got, I got hit and then they, you know, it's when he's dying, they're like, he's dead.

He's dead.

He sees Dutts again as he's in the ambulance.

There's a lot of POV shots.

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

And then he said they, and then

Thomas Jane mentions later, I think he's immune because he, I think he died.

But immune to what?

Immune to the alien sharing his body.

Yeah, but that's not the way anyone has died.

Everyone dies from a butt explosion.

So no one has died yet from sharing their body with Mr.

Gray.

So we don't know that that's a death-causing situation.

But the other thing is, Mr.

Gray, oh, God.

Mr.

Gray, the giant alien who has a British Mr.

Gay, is how Duddits pronounces it.

Yes.

Very uncomfortable.

Yes.

Well, Dudditz does a lot of uncomfortable things in this movie.

Well, I think one of my favorite parts of the movie, a part where I wish there was sort of like sitcom like audience applause, is when Donnie Wahlber comes onto the stairs as the adult dudes.

The reveal of Donnie Wahlberg and the family.

Oh, see, for me,

for me, that reveal came when the credits rolled, and I was like, Donnie Wahlberg.

Oh, the fun credits where we relive the fun dinner they had.

We should get, we'll get to the credits.

Because the credits

need to be unpacked.

We haven't

targeted it.

It's almost like a rap version of the song.

It's like I was expecting like a ninja turtles rap.

I was like,

Mr.

Gray, he saved the day.

Nope, that was done.

It's in a regular way.

L Cool J from like Deep.

What was it?

Yeah, Deep Lucy.

You know what?

Let's just play it for a second because it is what we just talked about.

So, this is the final line of the movie into the credits.

This is a movie where we've just watched aliens and people dying, and it's a serious movie, and it's this one right here.

They're my friends.

We're all best friends.

Here's the dunnets.

Dreamcatcher.

It is

the movie called Dreamcatcher.

Well, that brings the boys there.

Dreamcatcher, what is that part of it?

Well, okay, when we see the flashback where we see the boys either like, if it was a process of getting powers, and now this is like the moment where they finally fully realize their powers and they save another girl.

That they say, Let's do the dreamcatcher, where they all put their hand on Dudditz's shoulder to mirror the dreamcatcher they made for Dudditz in

Arts and Crafts.

But

that's still nothing.

I mean, I assume it means like that sort of position is how they felt their powers is like, well, we used to have to touch Duttz to get the powers.

Now he's put it in us that we can.

This is me taking like leaps and leaps.

Guys, I have brought some oxycontent.

We're going to do it now.

We're going to fucking break it.

Oh, it's up, Misa!

It's a dream catcher.

So, text dreams.

We're going to go away for a couple minutes.

We're going to take these drugs, and when we come back, we're really going to get this movie.

We're going to understand.

We're going to start over again.

If we were like, how did we not get it?

Okay, here it is.

This is the movie.

Okay, really?

Okay, so Dutts makes total science because, yeah, you got to understand for me, like, at this time,

I'm a Stephen King mega fan, super fan and I'm most particularly a fan of the Dark Tower series that I'm was since childhood I've been reading those books series that spanned his entire career they're making movies out of it and all this stuff but so I was I would read anything and I was a huge apologist for Steve anything Stephen King I'd be like I don't care because I love him he's been my whole childhood and adult life I've loved his books and it was just crushing and crippling to read this book.

It made no sense.

And the fact that it went on for 600-plus pages.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, it just wouldn't end when it comes to it.

I feel like it was like his therapy to get out of the hospital.

It's sort of like his journal in the hospital and then release it.

Yes.

Like, it just.

Yes, and he's just not disavowed it, but he's like, it's terrible.

It's just a terrible book.

It's, well, I guess there's so many things that don't make sense.

And one thing, too, that I haven't even talked about, but I feel like I assumed was that Dudditz was long dead until they revealed that he is not.

Oh, yeah.

Like,

there is a remembrance of him in this time,

and you're like, Oh, they go, like, yeah, just a duddis.

Yeah, that weekend, the first night where he gets hit by the car and Thomas Jane almost casually kills himself.

Um, uh, they he says, I think we should go see Duddis this weekend.

Oh, okay.

But I was also like, Are they talking about his grave?

That's what I kind of felt like.

And also, he's an alien, but can still get earthly leukemia, or is that not really leukemia?

Or is he an alien in the same way that Mr.

Gray is an alien in Jonesy's body?

Like, is he just in the body of a boy?

I don't think so because

so who's that woman?

Well the mother.

The alien jumps out of Jonesy and Jonesy's still there.

You're right.

Duddis turns into an alien and there's no who's the woman?

An adaptive woman.

Who's that mother?

Did she get like, did she Superman him, like find him in a field and then like maybe because she because she's like she's a caregiver, right?

Oh, I'm sorry, audience.

An enormous spaceship lands on Earth in this movie.

Crash lands in Maine.

An enormous spaceship full of aliens crash lands in this movie.

But we're only going to spend like 10 minutes on it, and it's like an hour and 40 minutes.

Yes, yeah.

I kept on writing.

When does this movie start?

It really starts about 30 minutes and keeps starting.

Yes.

Different versions of the movie keep beginning every 20 to 30 minutes.

We have not gotten to Tom Seismore.

Oh, my gosh.

Sizemore has a whole journey.

John Wayne's gun

with a tracking device.

She's going to stand in an open snowy field and just shoot a helicopter.

Oh, my God.

There's the mowing down of the aliens.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

The genocide of the aliens and Morgan Freeman's eyebrows, which were

really eyebrows being

out of control.

The aliens standing in a field sending psychic messages.

There's no virus.

Yeah.

Like, that's not going to work.

And we're just waving.

Like, we're just waving.

Don't hurt us.

Most of us don't think twice about liver health until something feels off.

When your liver is under strain, you feel it, fatigue, brain fog, sluggish recovery after a weekend of one too many cocktails or indulgent meals.

Well, if you're ready to say goodbye to an occasional bloating and hello to renewed energy, you need to know about the 1MDs nutrition's liver MD.

Liver MD is an award-winning physician-formulated supplement developed by a GI doctor.

It features seven clinically studied ingredients, including patented forms of milk thistle and vitamin E, and the results speak for themselves.

80% of liver MD users reported significant improvements in liver enzyme tests, along with better energy, digestion, mental clarity, and reduced bloating.

Plus, 90% of users rate Liver MD better than the competitors.

Join the over 1.5 million people already thriving with Liver MD.

Forget ineffective detox drinks.

Your liver needs clinical-grade support.

Visit 1MD.org and use the code BONKERS to save save 15% on your first order of liver MD.

That's 1MD.org and use code bonkers.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Today's podcast is brought to you by Squarespace.

Whether you're starting out or scaling up your business, Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online.

I am a giant fan of Squarespace.

I use it for many different websites.

Unspooled, how did this get made?

Dark web and my own, each one completely different.

And why do I love it so much?

Well, because Squarespace gives you everything you need for your specific product.

Every one of these websites is completely different.

And right now, they offer services that help you get paid.

That's right.

Get paid on time with professional on-brand invoices and online payments.

Plus, streamline your workflow with built-in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools.

Every dream needs a domain.

Squarespace Domains makes it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair, all-inclusive price.

No hidden fees or add-ons required.

Head to squarespace.com slash bonkers for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code bonkers to save 10% on your first purchase of a website or domain.

As a small business owner, Your business is always on your mind.

So when you're hiring, you need a partner who is just as dedicated as you.

And that hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs.

That's right.

When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in.

They make it easy for you to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates.

that you can manage all in one place.

And LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions, then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights.

You can post your job for free or choose to promote it.

Promoted jobs attract three times more qualified applicants.

So post your job for free at linkedin.com slash valuable.

That's linkedin.com slash valuable to post your job for free.

Terms and conditions apply.

Going back to your point in the beginning, you're saying, well, Duddits trained these four boys to help prevent the alien invasion, which is now happening as they are adults.

But I would argue that it's been happening for a while because Morgan Freeman says I spent 25 years chasing

this thing all around the world.

So

this.

Can't we assume that the next

arrival of aliens will neither have Morgan Freeman nor the four boys to combat it?

Well,

I think he says in the flashback where they go to find the girl in the drain,

which is just a normal sentence at this point.

You drain girl, I have to breeze by.

But Dudditsky.

Oh, I also didn't like that.

Her name was Josie.

Yes, and there's Jonesy.

And there's Jonesy.

Because Duddits couldn't say either.

I couldn't understand what he was talking about.

But they realized looking back that he said Mr.

Gay, meaning Mr.

Gray.

So my thought is that these aliens have been here for 25 years, going back to when Duddits came, and there have been small skirmishes that the secret blue body army, blue boys, like, has to has to keep under wraps, but that there is a bad alien amongst this race of otherwise pretty peaceful aliens named Mr.

Gray who wants to start the war.

That's what Duddit says: Mr.

Gray wants a war.

I think they could even be from the same race.

And that crash landing, they are nice women and children who are like because

they turn

it up.

But Duddet looks like the same alien that

he's different.

He's in color and he's a little bit different.

He also has a weird sharp tail.

Yeah, I think they must be like neighbors.

They must be like of a similar and now can we get to Damien Lewis's Stewie from the Guy Impression?

Yes.

Oh my gosh.

Okay, so Which is funny because he is British.

He's British.

Yeah.

And he's doing a terrible.

So once Mr.

Gray, the alien, once the nine-foot alien,

disaparates into

Damian Lewis.

Yes.

Damien Lewis.

Thanks.

Damian Lewis.

Damian Lewis becomes...

This is the part of the movie that was the most confounding to me.

Yes.

This becomes a movie in which his character is at war with himself, wherein who is controlling Jonesy's body?

And Damian.

And

Damian.

And it just become the mask, and there had been a big mambo number.

And they have two-sided conversations where Mr.

Gray is speaking in a hyperbolic British accent.

Yes.

And then when Jonesy is speaking, nobody's moving, like he's not moving his mouth and he looks stoic.

Also, Damian Lewis is trapped in his quote-unquote memory house.

Memory warehouse, memory warehouse.

Memory warehouse inside his own mind, watching all the events of the movie happen out a window.

Yes.

Yes.

A window that he looked in as a child.

That part I could not make heads away.

And also he's having interactions with Mr.

Gray, the slug, inside his memory bank.

And the memory vault is so weird, but let's take a listen to the dueling voices and when they're when they're kind of talking to each other.

Here we go.

What was that, Mr.

Jones?

What did we just pass on the road there?

Are you speaking to me?

Yes, I am, Mr.

Jones.

Or is it Jonesy?

That's what your friends call you, isn't it?

Let's be friends, Mr.

Boyd.

I've studied the foul language section of your memory warehouse.

How about this, Mr.

Gray?

Eat shit and die.

I tell you, Mr.

Gray,

I felt for Ishtag.

Oh,

someone told you about me.

Who told you about me?

So that you get an idea.

Okay, don't talk about the Germans.

Don't talk about the war.

I mean, he sounds like fucking faulty towers.

He does.

Holy shit.

Apparently he was doing an impression of Malcolm McDowell.

That was his actor's choice.

Amazing.

Which is odd, though, because he's British.

Yeah.

You wouldn't have to...

Why does the alien want to be British?

Everyone would want to be British if they came here.

They'd be like, what earthly accent should I adopt?

Oh, the one with the most authority.

Yes.

Well, yeah, that's it.

So that's going on the entire movie.

I'm sorry, Paul.

No.

It's not going on the entire movie.

You're right.

Because it doesn't start for at least an hour.

Yeah.

So

the next hour is the next hour and a half is when it takes place.

Right.

And so they're having this.

It just feels like the entire movie because it's its own movie.

Here's when Timothy Oliphant has been kidnapped by Jones the Alien.

Oh, after almost having his dick get bitten off.

Yes, by

another assworm.

By another assworm or shit weasel, they call him.

Yes.

Oh, shit weasel.

Thank you.

And they're on that

snowmobile.

Shit Weasel is amazing.

Yes.

And then finally, Timothy Leophant's had enough of helping this alien.

And he tells

Mr.

Gay to bite his bag.

He goes, bite my bag.

And then

Jonesy slash Mr.

Gray says, I think I will bite your bag and everything else on you.

And he turns around and eats him.

Yeah.

He becomes like a big giant mouth teeth.

But the fact that this interstellar alien from a highly advanced civilization that's come across the cosmos is like,

you know what?

I will bite your bag.

I also love the idea of it.

The idea of the memory vault is so interesting.

It kind of reminds me a little bit of there's a great Sherlock where, you know, like a...

Well, memory palaces are a thing.

You know, like, that's like a...

I understand what they're referencing, but to

make it an actual place that he is trapped within is complete insane.

And that he's having like a little chase scene in.

There's like one part where he's like, oh, Mr.

Gray is like busy.

I don't know how Mr.

Gray is busy, but he's like running around collecting files to then bring into his secret office, which for whatever reason, Mr.

Gray can't access, but it's just an office.

Oh, they explain all of that at dinner.

Yeah.

He's like, well, they're like, well, what do you do about the stuff you don't want to forget about?

He's like, oh, I keep that in my secret office.

That's where my blue bayou lyrics.

Yeah, because I had to make room.

But that's also the scene where they say, I mean, it's just, it's just Beaver again, again, going, just remember the warehouse.

What's the mind warehouse?

Like, come on, you know, the mind warehouse.

No, I don't remind me.

What's you know it, Beaver?

You know what it is.

No, I don't.

Explain it.

Come on, Beaver.

You know it.

It's insane.

It goes on forever.

It's talking to the audience, which this movie I think does a lot.

Like,

can you please, like,

we need help.

You got to explain it.

Like, and which goes into when Jason Lee is dying.

Again, I just, there's so many great little clips.

I just like.

Jason Lee.

Oh, sorry, Timothy Oliphant when he's dying.

So, okay, go ahead.

Wait, go, go ahead with Jason Lee, though.

Jason Lee, at one point, Jason Lee and

Damian Lewis are standing outside their cabin and a helicopter is flying above them.

Jason Lee keeps a toothpick in his mouth while he's trying to shout words at a helicopter.

So he's trying to both bite down on the toothpick and say his lines of dialogue.

Take the toothpick out of your fucking mouth.

He's got to

know.

We got to know that he'll do anything for that toothpick.

And they also are barely raising their voices and are trying to talk to people in a helicopter.

Like, hey, down here.

And the people are like, just waving at, it's nonsense.

Well, it also does my favorite dumb thing.

We talk about this in stealth as well, where people in helicopters look out the window to talk to people as if like

they're in a conversation together.

She's like, always the dumbest thing.

It's like, no one's like, hey, I'm looking at your phone.

Like, there's no reason to make eye contact when in dueling helicopters.

Oh, how about this?

This blew my mind.

So, so, uh, uh, Tom Jane and Justa, Tim Oliphant, are in a car accident because they find also a gassy person.

And

Tom Jane's like, okay, I'm going to go get help.

Tim Olephant, you stay here.

Tim Oliphant gets drunk with the gassy woman.

Okay.

Very drunk.

And a shit weasel comes out of that gassy woman, blah, blah, blah.

But before that, Tim Oliphant just apropos of nothing goes, you know what I think?

I think my friend Dutts is an alien.

But that's it.

This is like, so this is.

I was like, whoa, wait a minute.

He explains the whole plot of the movie ridiculous.

This is amazing.

Listen to all the explanations.

There is one issue I'd like to bring up.

Just in case I should, you know, kick the bucket out here turn into a goddamn pizza

not that I think that's inevitable.

I'm sure Henry or Jonesy or Beaver will be coming to get us soon.

They're my friends.

We're all best friends.

I'm be very candid with you about this.

So please don't get freaked out or think that I'm some kind of weirdo who you shouldn't meet for the best fried clams in Maine.

Just some innocent fried clams at the the West Wharf.

You see the four of us, these best friends, we all have this other friend by the name of Dudds.

Our friend Dudd as well.

This is

a nobody.

One day, long time ago, he gave us all this kind of

gift.

This ability

to know things.

This is in the movie.

I love the composer scale.

It's just mind to mind.

Do you

I think

he's from somewhere else.

And he came here to prepare us for something crazy.

Oh, perhaps the events of this movie.

Talking shit about the only perfect person I ever knew.

Perfect person.

So that's not shit.

We should be singing his praises, not questioning what galaxies.

I gotta think.

That happens.

Oh my gosh.

When you just hear that, like, that's

over an hour into the movie.

And it's very like theater-like.

It's sort of like, let me tell you.

It's a soliloquy with

the slim veil of, no, he's talking to this passed-out woman who's dead.

But he doesn't maybe realize she's dead.

But it was also like, it sounded like they were like, you know, just in case the audience is lost, will you like improvise a monologue here, Tim?

And here are the bullet points.

And if you could repeat that your friends as many times as possible.

Make sure you say best friends.

Because we like don't know if that dinner scene's going to get us all we need.

It smells like a reshoot.

It's like we can get him out there.

We'll put the snow.

Just explain the plot here because we're finding people who really are chilling.

Also, I really couldn't believe that I didn't find Oliphant handsome in this movie.

It was blowing my mind.

I was like, how is he, what's happening?

His hair's just a little bit down, and I'm like no longer finding this guy super attractive like he normally always is.

Well, he also is a creep.

Now, he uses his psychic powers to like hit on this woman and try to get her to have fried clams with him, like the best fried clams.

Oh, good.

It was just my subconscious being like, you shouldn't be attracted to that.

No, yeah, that's like your internal

red flag, red flag.

This guy's a danger.

I mean, he's an irreprehensible character.

I think he's sort of flirting with this woman at one point, too, or pretending they're on a date or something.

Right, the dead woman with the thing out of her ass.

Yes, he's not a likable figure.

Yeah, I guess maybe he like tried to ugly himself up because he needed to be a guy that people wouldn't be interested in.

Well, they're like, we got Thomas Jane.

We got the handsome quotient down.

Yeah.

Who else do we got here?

Daniel, he's pretty handsome.

Let's give him a beard.

Alipant, good looking guy.

Let's just make him a creep.

Yeah, he's an alcoholic freak.

And then Jason Lee, toothpicks.

Toothpicks.

Put them nerdy buddy holly glasses on him, too, while you're at it.

Oh, my gosh.

This is.

I also loved that whenever they would flash back to the kids when they were kids, and even when they would meet with, like, when they come upon duddits and the bullies are there, blah blah blah.

Almost every single kid is given a ball or a frisbee or a piece of sports equipment to hold.

Paddle with a ball at the end.

It's as if when you hung out with your friends, you're like, oh, you bring a ball, you bring a basketball, you bring a football, I'll bring a frisbee.

Well, it is so funny.

Those flashbacks really did have the quality of a Stephen King made for TV movie from the 80s.

Yes, they looked like it or

the stand or something where you're like, this is.

And that's what it felt, it felt like like cheap like that.

It didn't feel like there's any.

Because the rest of the movie is actually relatively beautifully shot.

Yeah.

But the look of things is relatively not.

It's expensive.

It's lovely.

Especially the Maine stuff.

Like all those big, like beautiful kind of like

snowy forests of Maine.

It looks gorgeous.

And it's almost constantly snowing, which is like pretty visually cool.

I can't believe it's like always snowing.

Two things.

One, I think that the DP is an Academy Award-winning director of photography.

I'm pretty sure so.

I believe it.

And then two, how about those animals?

Yeah.

Running.

I forgot about the animals running.

All the practical animals running away.

It was like a Warner Brothers, like an old, like, what do you, like, bug spunny or something?

All the animals running away.

They were like repeating.

It was.

It was.

They have red stuff on them.

They have

signs of the virus.

And we know that animals can have shit weasels because a poor German shepherd suffers his fate.

He makes them eat it.

But Morgan Freeman is obsessed with the idea of a hitchhiker.

Well, there was a whole woodland parade that could hitchhike out of this area.

Like, there are hundreds of deer carrying this water.

Why not crash 20 miles in?

Like, it's like it's right outside of Boston.

The whole movie is about these aliens.

You can also turn into mist and fly away.

Why don't they just run?

Yes, yes.

Just get to Boston.

Why are the

aliens standing outside of their ship waving?

Why not just immediately?

Okay, you crashed.

Great.

Move.

Let's go.

Go.

Let's go.

Exactly.

Let's red dust as fast as we can.

By the way, Curtis, you are right.

The guy, the cinematographer, or the DP was the guy who did Mad Max Fury Road.

Whoa, yeah.

So, yeah.

And the Harry Potter.

Yeah, yeah, he's like Rainman and

it looks, I mean, again, everybody's involved.

Oh, yes.

Oh, no.

If you saw, if somebody was like, oh, do you want to meet Lawrence Kasden on this movie William Goldman wrote about?

Yeah, fuck yeah.

That's what Damian Lewis said in an interview.

Stephen King book.

He said, he was like, hey,

when Lawrence Kasden hands you a script that William Goldman has written from a Stephen King novel, like you go, yeah, it's an easy answer.

I kept thinking about them, like, calling their moms and being like, oh my gosh, I'm about to be in the best thing of my career.

It's all happening.

And then just the sadness of like, oh boy.

I mean, midway through, they must have, I mean, but you read that.

I guess they were all relatively lesser known then.

Yes.

This is before everybody's big.

Was Alephante Deadwood yet?

I don't remember.

He done go.

Right.

Yeah.

I think it was.

Yeah, because it's 2003.

So that's pretty early for all these guys.

I think.

Yeah, yeah.

But there's so many weird things.

And I imagine also, if you're adapting that book, you must go, like, I don't know if this is a good book, though, because it is.

I mean, the book is relatively given an average of a C plus rating, which is, so it's not like the best Stephen King book that you're adapting.

And then also, there's like weird little things.

This is a detail I thought was interesting, too.

That Morgan Freeman's character in the book is called Colonel Kurtz in a reference to Apocalypse Now.

But in the movie, they were like, no, no, we don't want.

That's even the name of Colonel Curtis.

Yeah.

Which, you know, I appreciated.

But still, ridiculous.

It's just a weird thing.

And to talk about this ending.

Still haven't talked about Seismore.

Oh, my gosh.

We got to get into Seismore.

And the finger shooting off.

Oh, yeah.

There's a lot of

dick.

The eyebrows on Morgan Freeman, which were like

prosthetic eyebrows.

There's a part where Timothy Oliphant, the shit weasel, grabs onto his dick, and then he continues to

kind of talk and interact.

I'm like, that guy, your dick is bitten off, and he is not acting

I don't think he was okay.

He says it tried to bite my dick.

Oh, okay.

So it just got like in the area.

Okay, all right.

And then he said he said, I always thought my ex-wife would do that.

Yeah.

She throws out like a fucking like

an ex-wife zinger.

Yeah, there's cat skills comic.

There's so many lines that are masquerading as quips in this movie.

I mean, it's like old guys, middle-aged guys who wrote and made this movie that should have been made by young, aggressive filmmakers.

Do you guys think that William Goldman and Lawrence Kazin were just ahead of their time and that this is an allegory for the refugee crisis, where refugees are crashing ships into our shores, and they are trying to spread their virus.

Their virus.

Yes, the virus of terrorism.

The MAGA.

Well, that's MAGA.

Take America Grant again, guys.

That's the H.B.

Lovecraft thing, and see who Stephen King is really influenced by.

H.B.

Lovecraft wrote all these Cthulhu stories that were very,

well, they weren't really that big in their own time, but all these guys, King and all these guys were super influenced.

He was an insane racist and xenophobe.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

H.B.

Lovecraftcraft.

Lovecraft?

Horrible racist and xenophobe.

And all his books, that's what they're about.

Really?

It's all things coming out of the ocean to fuck the women and take the

from the erudite professors and steal for the white people and take their stuff.

And from outer space, it's all references to boats and planes coming to America.

And always, there's always a section in some H.B.

Lovecraft story where they meet like some swarthy Middle Eastern, like weird cultist, and it's dangerous.

All right, I'll audition.

Where are we going with it?

So to talk about the end of the book, the end of the book, the end of the movie, so the end of the book,

so they get Duditz at a certain point.

Duditz confronts the alien, they have an alien fight, and then, you know, Dudditz dies.

The alien fight is so anticlimactic.

When Dudditz turns into an alien, he's an alien for like 15 seconds.

They stab each other with their tails.

A shroud appears over them and they die.

Well, I think because it's all a reshoot.

Yep.

Because, all right, so in the book, this is what happens.

In the book, it seems like, well, I know.

In the book, Henry and Duddits use their powers to smother Mr.

Gray with a pillow.

With a pillow?

Yes.

Inside Jonesy's mind.

What?

How do they get in his mind?

I don't know.

I think he can pull the men, can he?

Yes.

Oh my gosh.

So that's the end of the book.

So you want to talk about anticlimactic.

The pillow is what kills the alien?

Now, in the original version of the movie.

And it takes two of them to push a pillow onto his face.

And in the movie, instead of turning into an alien, Duttitz just does that thing with his finger where the swirly thing happens.

And then the air gets all swirly.

And then it turns into a beam of light that shoots the alien back into a wall and it explodes.

And then Duddits shouts, I Duddits, and he falls down dead.

And then they all go visit his grave site and they sing the Blue Bayou song at his grave site, which I do.

This is the original ending.

This is the original ending.

That's it.

And now it should have ended.

And his gravestone has the Blue Bayou lyrics on it, which don't seem to connect with Duditz at all.

It seems like that was their thing.

It wasn't like Duditz saying Blue Bayou.

No, they sang it to him to calm him down.

Okay, gotcha.

And they were trying to make him eat shit.

And

like I said, in the book, there's this, at this climactic moment, there's this big major reference to it.

With, yeah, it says Pennywise Lives.

And there's actually a statue.

And there's a little inscription from the kids from it saying Bev and all the kids from it and saying the losers club for all the lost out there.

And that it's a whole huge it reference that I think there should be a policy that you don't reference better things that you've written.

It just reminds people how shitty the thing that you're writing.

Or it's just like a coda to remind them that they have other work.

Like, oh, but remember this, don't be too mad.

You'll, you'll.

Available on Amazon.com.

But it's also like, I feel like those are the nuggets that you throw in so people buy the book and say, hey, you know, they have a whole thing about, yeah, pennywise.

That's right.

Oh, shit, it's like

the movie.

Right.

I was like, oh, maybe there'll be some it stuff in this movie.

Because it's like, it just is enough to be like, all right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

You know, but yeah, without that.

Obviously, uh, we have a lot of opinions about this movie.

I want to take a moment to hear some second opinions.

Uh, also, uh, before we get into that, I want to remind you that Blake Harris is on the case.

He has been doing these amazing interviews with people from stealth all the way back to Sleepway Camp.

and he hopefully will get in touch with somebody from Dreamcatcher and everyone's kind of talking so maybe we'll see even Lawrence Kasden was like this movie put me in jail for a long time William Goldman didn't write another movie until like a year and a half ago so crazy he's like

he had a movie with Tom Hanks that he couldn't get made really yeah he's like he's I had everything ready he goes a novel that was written by Richard Russo you know the guy who wrote Nobody's Fool he's like we were all ready to go and like no the movie lost you know over like 40 million dollars I would assume so this is bananas So definitely check out our mini-episode where Blake will have somebody there and also on Slashphone.

But now let's get into some second opinions.

Second opinions

from top to bottom.

Crazy movies are fun.

They're not your first, but they're gonna be a second.

From the depths of Amazon they come.

Second opinions for everyone.

Second opinions.

These are second opinions culled from Amazon Amazon five-star reviews.

These are all five-star reviews of Dreamcatcher.

There's so many good ones here.

Okay, let's start here from Mike.

He writes, this isn't the book.

How can it be?

Get over it already.

Why are you making comparisons?

Okay, it's a small group of people's interpretation of the story that they read.

Okay, if everything was meant to be taken verbatim, then I imagine Stephen King would have done it himself.

himself.

Do yourselves a favor.

Put your expectations in the trash.

You'll have more fun in life.

Five stars.

You'll have more fun.

Put your expectations in the trash.

Oh my God, sign Donald Trump.

If you expect trash, you're going to get trash.

I'm going to put that on a pillow.

Put your expectations in the middle.

And smother an alien.

Oh, my God.

This is from Jonah Fight.

I like to ski, so having this movie done in the snow and having it involve aliens totally sold me.

I hope those war monsters don't come to Pittsburgh.

I squashed them.

Five stars.

Oh my God.

I like to ski.

Just like the snow.

His reviews also double as like slight singles ads.

Check me out if you also love skiing and live in the Pittsburgh area.

Right, look out.

If you act wrong, I'll squash you.

This is a one that I like too.

It's just a simple from Doc.

Brilliant.

I think he's actually reviewing the book.

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

How does a man have elements of such a book floating around in his brain?

Question card and actually

five stars.

Just impressed that a man can create.

Five stars.

And then

this one I like because it goes on a journey

by Doppelganger.

There's just a cozy feeling to it.

Stephen King, style, humor mixed with gore.

It's a great movie.

And I even like the story.

I mean, okay, it's not great, great, but it's really good.

Especially when you have to stay inside.

If you get like the flu or you have a broken leg.

What?

Hit by a car.

Yeah.

Regardless, it's definitely worth a look.

I mean, look, I've never met anyone who hated it.

And if you don't love it, you'll probably just be glad that you saw it.

And then you'll move on to your next scary or funny funny Sunday rainy day movie but again this is one of my favorite movies and everyone's got a few of those so I know you'll understand five stars oh wow

that sounds like um uh Timothy Oliphant's uh drunks hey guys seriously folks um listen we're all friends so we have to be best friends and understand that sometimes movies might not be for you but sometimes they are when you're best friends and your friend's an alien and you need to stay in on a rainy day that's just me sorry

so i hope you understand

i gotta say look we're I mean, I gotta, like, Lawrence fucking Casden.

Yeah, man.

He wrote Empire Strikes Back.

Yes.

Oh, he's amazing.

And I think he even said that.

Did he write Raiders?

Raiders, Return of the Jedi, the bodyguard, Force Awakening.

In an interview I read, he said he wrote Return of the Jedi as a favor to George Lucas because he didn't want to do any more style artists.

He was like, I did it.

And half the stuff that was in Temple of Doom, he wrote.

He wrote that, and they just moved it into Temple of Doom.

He's like, you know, he's incredible.

So I feel like

Silverado, Accidental Taurus, Grand Canyon, Wyatt or Mumford.

He's written like a bunch of...

And William Goldman.

I mean, it's all the President's Men and Marathon Man.

But I can recommend to your audience, Paul.

Yeah, please.

If you want to see another William Goldman stab at horror,

it's available, I think, on Amazon Prime, but if not, it's on Shudder or something, is a movie based off one of his own books called Magic, starring a young Anthony Hopkins

with a ventriloquist dummy.

And it's Nathan Hopkins and a ventriloquist dummy.

I won't say anything more than that, but it's a thriller horror written by William Goldman based based on a William Goldman book.

Oh, I gotta

highly recommend that.

It has this very Jonesy, Mr.

Gray quality.

Oh, I'm very excited about that.

I want to see that

final Amazon review here.

This is my favorite one, all in caps.

Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Wait, tell me, honestly.

You're in a secluded cabin in the woods and you look out the window and you suddenly see every single animal in the forest running in horror the other way.

You're not scared?

Whatever.

You guys all smoke too much crack.

This movie rocked.

Five stars.

Wait, what?

Those animals weren't even running in horror.

They were just trotting.

They weren't trotting.

They were trotting.

Oh, my God.

And it was very cute.

That's yeah, it was a cute movie.

It was a very funny.

It was like a family of bunnies.

Yeah, there's bunnies.

There was like a graffiti bunny family.

Oh, my God.

This movie, I also wanted to just share with you the tagline of this movie.

Put your expectations expectations in the trash.

These are the ones that, because it goes, four friends hung a dreamcatcher in their cabin.

It's about to catch something it cannot stop.

That is not anything to do with this plot.

Nope.

The dream catcher is irrelevant.

Yes.

Yeah.

Entirely irrelevant.

It does technically catch the virus.

Like the virus starts growing over it.

Okay.

It burns up.

Yeah.

And so it can't stop virus or fire.

I know that his wife convinced him to change the name, the title.

Stephen King's wife from cancer.

Cancer to dreamcatcher.

So that might have just been like, oh, fuck, now I got to weave a dream catcher into this thing.

Yeah, like,

you know, now I got to go back.

So, yeah, you're right.

Because it doesn't feel, I mean, again,

there are a lot, and I think when Stephen King fails, and you would probably be able to speak to this more than I, Curtis, but when he fails, it's only because he's put too many ideas into something.

Because there are a lot of singularly good ideas in this.

Like the idea of that gestating alien that comes out of your ass.

That's like, like, that's like, like, there are moments in a cabin, very thing-like, can take over your body, but it just, then I cut him slack.

He had been hit by a fucking car.

Sure.

He almost died.

He wrote the scream of conscience.

I completely cut him slack, of course, because whatever, he's fucking great.

But it was all the ways in Stephen King can be bad.

With

the way that the beaver character talks, that's sort of slangy that doesn't exist anywhere.

A magical

um

uh uh kid's challenged but like either mentally challenged or uh or he'll he'll go to the well often with like people who are who are disenfranchised in society marginalized in society he always they're always magical and he comes from a generation like the the the baby boomers where that is like obviously we make fun of it now there's like the magical negro in a movie or magical this he's from that generation of guys so it's every bad habit and cliche of that generation of guys thrown into a science fiction book.

But we, and again, I'll cut Stephen King the slack because he wrote it injured on OxyContent.

I won't cut any of these other dildos, any slack.

But why don't why?

Reading that book and being like, oh, yeah, we like, why can't it just be relegated to the trash heap of like, that's Stephen King's worst book?

Oh, it's a bummer.

It's his worst book.

But everybody was like, nope, we got to make an $80 million movie out of this.

Or why don't you go, you know what?

This Stephen King book is a little messed up.

How can we

cut out the stuff?

Make more sense and streamline it.

No, no, everyone's gotta like.

That's the other problem, too, is that he tried to be too close to the material of the book.

Whereas, like, you know, Steve Kubrick's like, oh, this is whatever.

I'll take the names of the characters in a hotel of ghosts and I'm going to make an awesome, incredible movie

that Stephen King hates.

Stephen King hates.

He likes the Stephen Weber version.

Every person probably just picked their favorite

major plot that there are like six of in this movie and insisted that their favorite was in.

And then that's how like the movie was like exactly the same.

All right, well, obviously, this is the time where we, I don't know where you all have fallen this, but we'll say, would you recommend, knowing that we're watching movies that are, you know, they're they're bad, good, you know, or good, bad, would you recommend this to someone to see?

I'll start and say, I do.

I was thoroughly entertained, and we didn't even touch on bigger things.

Yeah,

we barely touched.

Like, here's what I'll say: I I really,

I, when the movie started to focus more and more on Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore and the Army and all that, I lost steam pretty hard.

Um, up until then, great, loved it.

Yes, I, I'm so sorry.

Did you want to go?

No, no, no, go for it.

I, I, I've seen it three times.

So, yes, I would absolutely recommend it.

If, if for nothing else, just the Jonesy,

uh, Mr.

Gray mask, you know,

that stuff was so funny to me and jarring.

That alone is worth the price of admission.

And the animals running also really sold.

Yeah,

I think if you're in like a snowy cabin and you have the flu, why not buy this movie?

Wait, if it's your own.

Or like, if you broke your leg, I don't know.

There are worse.

You guys understand there are worse movies.

And

just

don't be too mad.

I've never heard of anybody say like they hated it.

Yeah, like certainly no.

And like, even if you watch it and you don't love it, it, you know.

But it is your favorite movie.

Well, and everyone's got a couple of those.

Yeah, I think there's enough redemptive, like, ridiculous fun in this.

I mean, like, just the fart stuff alone.

I'm so incredulous that that was in this movie.

Oh, it's crazy.

It's because they'll be home.

It's like comical farts.

Yes, yes.

It's like wet hot American summer style farts.

And then, like, then the guy leaves and they're like, whoo, opening windows.

Like, oh boy, like, cut to like laugh track.

It was like, just insane.

So I would love a cut of this movie like Curtis had, like where it is like laugh track and applause, but it's like a sitcom style thing.

And like, ooh.

Did Lawrence Kasnan write anything else between this and The Force Awakens?

I think it's a good thing.

I think he wrote that movie, I believe, like Sweet Hole.

I call it like a, not an older person movie, but it is an older person movie.

It was like

Sweetest Kiss or something like that.

Well,

you can do that research yourself.

Yeah, sorry, sorry.

But if you have an opinion on this movie, we'd love to hear it.

You can call us at 619-PALASK.

That's P-A-U-L-A-S-K.

6195PAL.

Are you still taking calls at 619-PALLASK?

That's for.

That's a different line for a different show.

But yeah,

but this is more for the podcast and Dreamcatcher.

Or you can leave a comment on the earwolf.com message boards.

But now, let's talk to our amazing guest.

Jess, you have a brand new show on ABC Digital.

Talk to us about this show.

Yes, called Serious Music.

You can watch it on ABC.com for free.

Yeah, if you got the ABC app,

but you could just watch it for free.

And it's about me and my writing partner, Zach Reno, playing versions of ourselves where we're two comedians who write songs.

And like a Justin Bieber type thinks one of our songs is real and hires us to be songwriters.

So then we

are undercover trying to understand the music industry and make him a less shitty person.

That's awesome.

I'm very excited.

See, you and Zach are amazing and your songs are great.

And can people find them online too?

Yeah, you can like find the Zach and the Jess on YouTube and see some of our vids.

Yeah.

Some classic vids online.

Some classic vids.

We'll check those out.

Watching those vids?

Yeah, just watch those vids.

Curtis, do you have anything you would like to plug, talk about?

Fuck, no.

I'm a TV writer, so

I wander the hills

like just crying, waiting for the next dick to come in and being upset.

So there's nothing I can particularly plug in.

Or you can plug your Twitter or your Facebook.

Sure, sure, sure.

Sure, yeah.

If you want to see my adorable dog, you can come follow me on Instagram or Twitter or or whatever.

It's just Curtis Gwen.

That's awesome.

And Jason, what do you got to talk about?

Nothing much, really.

All right.

I will plug that we will be in Anaheim later this month for the Now Hear This Fest Saturday night.

You can come check that out.

Go to nowherethisfest.com.

Also, check out Blunt Talk.

I'm on that for a couple episodes this season.

And make sure you check out our mini-episode next week.

You can check out Blake's article on Slash Film.

He just talked to the technical advisor of Stealth, and it was a great interview.

And you can follow us at HDTGM on Twitter and on Facebook.

A big thank you to our engineer, Sam, Averill Halley, who from Movie Bitches, who cuts all of our clips.

She's amazing.

July Diaz, Nate Kylie, Marissa Zeitz, Leanna Waldron, and everybody here at Earwolf.

Thank you so much for listening.

As we leave, let's take a quick listen to all the main characters from the movie singing Blue Bayou

from the edited version, the ending of the movie.

There you go.

Nichols, saving dimes,

working till the sun don't shine,

looking forward to happier times on blue by you.

I'm going back someday,

come what may, to blue by you.

Whirlpool asks, what's ickier than a guy who wears shoes with toes?

Ugh, a front-load washer without the fresh flow vent system.

It's a trio of features that help keep your clothes and washer fresh.

Whirlpool Everyday Care.

Nothing brings us together like Eglin's Best eggs.

Always so fresh and delicious.

Plus superior nutrition, like six times more vitamin D, 10 times more vitamin E, and 25% less saturated fat compared to ordinary eggs.

For us, it's eggs any style, as long as they're the best.

Eglin's Best.

Better taste, better nutrition, better eggs.

Visit eglundsbest.com to learn more.