Madam Narf vs The Rogue Scrunt - Lady in the Water: Media Club Plus S02E05

Greetings from Media Club Plus, a podcast about plunging into the media that thrills us and the stories that chill us.

As always,

we have been dragged to you by friends at the table.

This season, we'll be subjecting ourselves to the twisted mind of M.

Night Shyamalan.

This one gave me a run for my money.

I wasn't sure at any given minute of this movie what I thought about this movie.

Too twisted for you?

This one was too twisted.

Yeah.

Yeah, this might be the most fucked up thing

that I've watched.

I think we've got the Halloween vibes a little prematurely here.

It's still so funny.

No, this is a horror movie.

Yeah, this is a horror movie.

Is it?

All of these horror directors,

apparently.

I'm okay.

My name is Keith J.

Carberry.

You can find me on Blue Sky at Keith J.

Carberry.

You can find the let's plays that I do at youtube.com slash run button.

Run button has been let's playing Lorelei and the Laser Eyes on Twitch, which is twitch.tv slash run button.

And those are going up on our Patreon, and they will then be up on the YouTube.

You should check that out.

Of course, you should check all of us out here at friends at the table.net, the Friends of the Table podcast that all the Friends of the Table do.

With me, as always, is Sylvie Bullet.

Hi, I'm Sylvia.

You can find me in most places at Sylvie Bullet.

You can check out the games podcast that we also do here at Friends of the Table called Sidestory.show.

And if you want to do me a solid, you can go check out my

Bandcamp at gutmachineband.bandcamp.com.

Thank you.

Arthur Martinez-Tebble.

Hey,

which what am I the Patreon?

Go to friendstable.cash for bonus episodes of

everything.

Well, not this

version of this show yet.

Season one of the show.

Season one of this show.

There's bonus episodes there.

I love your idea about the thing that you brought up last time.

We should absolutely do that, I think, as a bonus.

Yeah, we'll do that.

That'll be a bonus.

That'll be there.

And

yeah, you know friends of the table yeah nothing yeah the friends of the table bonus episodes are great and we got to keep the lights on over here we got to keep the lights there's eight of us there's a lot of lights yeah there's eight distinct houses full of lights to keep on uh allie akampura

Hello, my name is Allie.

And despite Keith's mentioning it in the beginning, I would like to really extra encourage everybody to listen to Friends of the Table.

It's an actual play cop test that we do.

I'm playing a nice person.

It's really fun.

Are you diagnosed with that?

You said that so believably, too.

And I was like, oh, I need to catch up.

And joining us for the first time, making her Media Club Plus debut, it's Janine Hawkins.

Hi, you can't find me anywhere except Friends of the Table.

So if you want to be exposed to me,

you're stuck with us.

Yeah.

Fucking dream.

Well, you know, friends of the table and also the Twitch.

You're on the Twitch.

That's still us.

Yeah, that's still us.

It's not like our Twitch channel is like Petersbaseball Videogames.net.

That's how Twitch works.

No, yeah, that is how Twitch works, and I'm about to register that.

Sorry, Petersbaseball

Videogames.net.

Petersbaseball Videogames.net.

This is the first time hearing that.tv slash Petersbaseball Videogames.net.

I love that.

I don't know who that is, but that's great.

That's us.

We stream there every day.

We have a really reliable schedule.

Austin's on part 38 of his romancing saga 2.

Let's play.

That's and that's a baseball game.

Is that like MLB Power Bros, where it's like a visual novel?

There might be a baseball player in that game.

Aren't there like a bunch of guys?

There's like a bunch of stuff.

I think that's what they're talking about.

Yeah, guys, and stuff over there.

I think that this is going to be another divisive one.

Last time, we couldn't quite agree whether the village was good or terrible.

Or I would say whether it was like fine and bad is probably really the scale you're working on.

Probably more accurate.

I think this one might go down from terrible and up to good.

That's my guess.

I don't know.

Do you have any like

early terrible is generous?

Being terrible is generous.

Yeah.

When I, you know, when I was growing up, people always told me,

if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

And I looked at them and said, I'm a podcaster.

Unfortunately, I have to say something.

It's very bad.

This is a chicken and the egg thing.

I was saying horrible things that I shouldn't be saying before I started podcasting.

It's actually not into podcasting.

The yappers gene that we both have.

Yeah,

I described this movie, I think, in our chat as agonizing to watch.

I really really just liked this.

I hated this, I think, is an easy way to put it.

And it's it's one of those things where I actually think it is probably not as bad as some of the really terrible movies I've seen.

But because there are moments where I see the potential in it, it makes it worse.

I or like there are moments where I enjoy it for like a second.

I'm like, oh, why isn't it, why don't they build the whole plane out of the black box?

You know what I mean?

I totally empathize with that.

Not, I don't think here, I think here I'm a little bit more generous, but I have a long history of being mad at a C-min or a D-plus for not being a B

and then not really caring about an F.

Yes.

This movie gave me a revelation about movies, which is that I don't have to feel anything about it.

It can just be a thing that you watched, you know?

But you were moving.

That's okay.

And I can have ideas about that thing, but I don't have to like it or dislike it.

It can just be a thing in the world.

Wash over you.

Sure, yeah.

Oh, I think, yeah, again, I empathize with that.

And And maybe I agree for this movie specifically.

You did, you were motivated to take many pages of notes.

Yeah,

that's just how I am.

I took a lot of notes for every time I do one of these things, I take notes, mostly just so the act of writing makes me remember things.

I don't need to, I don't usually go back to them as much.

Yeah.

I

should say

up front,

I thought this was the first M-Night Shyamalan movie that I'd watched start to finish.

I'd seen bits and pieces and like looked up the endings of other various ones or like caught them partway through or whatever, but I was wrong.

It's not the first one that I've seen start to finish.

Austin reminded me, and I totally memory-hauled this.

Technically, my first start to finish M.

Night Shyamalan movie was Split.

Wow.

Wow.

So

that's a preview.

What did you think about Split?

I I don't remember.

Oh, wow.

I don't remember anything about that movie.

Ringing a doors.

Yeah, much like maybe a character in Split.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, we shall see.

No spoilers.

I don't know.

Taylor Joy was in that movie, I guess.

I don't know.

That's what Austin says.

I didn't check.

I believed him.

He could be

fucking me up.

I don't know.

Allie, this was your

maybe

we should do an M-Night series thing movie, kind of.

This is Allie's favorite movie.

This is Allie's favorite movie.

It's not my favorite movie.

It's a comfort movie for me.

I watched it a lot in college.

I once famously said that Brian would have put it on in the like Palisade finale or the last movie night

because of

Paul Giamanni's performance.

And I,

this movie is stupid.

It's very weirdly paced and scripted and organized.

It's well acted.

It's so well acted.

Paul Giamatti, I love Paul Giamatti almost unconditionally.

He is fu-fa-fa-fine.

That's not that you can do that.

I had a stutter as a child.

I'm allowed.

Some of the stuttering just, he just, like, there were a couple where it just sounded like he was coughing or something.

Like, it's, you know, it's hit and miss.

The acting in this is real hit and miss for for me.

Look, you know,

you can't pin the stuttering on Paul Giamatti.

That is an M-night special.

Oh, absolutely.

Oh, yeah.

I read an entire book about this movie in the last two days, and I can tell you that there is some stuff about the stuttering in there.

Oh, I'm so excited to hear what is in this tone.

This is why I saved you for last, because you said that this book really changed how you felt about this movie.

And I refrained from asking what I really wanted to know was: in which way

I

did not super like this movie.

I think

there are a lot of things that are that are not good about it.

But

once you get to like

the story of making it, like the, you know, M.

Night Shyamalan wants to make this movie really badly.

It leads to the breakup of his relationship with Disney,

and

he tries so hard to make it.

There's a charm in that.

This was him trying?

Oh, yeah, he tried very hard.

It's crazy to me that Disney didn't want this for reasons that I'm sure we'll get into.

Yes, that is actually really funny.

Oh, I am not picking up what you're putting down, so I'm excited to get it there.

Yeah,

I feel like it's pretty obvious.

I feel like this is a thing that will that will come to in the end, but looking at when this movie was made,

if you put it in the context of this is why calling it a horror movie, I think, is silly.

I mean, silly is unfair.

It's been silly each time.

Yeah, all of these have been silly to call horror movies to me.

The context that it needs to be put in is the context of like Penelope and Enchanted and or whatever that Amy Adams one was, or like

I thought that was enchanted.

Yeah, I didn't remember what it was called for sure.

But there's also like Ella Enchanted, but that's his book.

I was gonna say, this is the worst movie that Enchanted, for sure.

The movie version of Stardust came out like around-ish this time.

Also, there's like a little bit of like dogma and mystery men in here where like the way to look at this movie is not

it's trying to scare or thrill.

It's like, oh, this is like a this is like an ensemble little

story time.

Yeah, it's a story time thing.

And it like literally is a story time.

It like also isn't hiding this.

Like, it's another of like the audience really.

I mean, the opposite of hiding it.

Well, like, that, you know, that

this movie won a

Stinker's Bad Movie Award for worst horror movie when in the trailer it says a bedtime story by M Night Cameron and like has like a, it isn't horror and it never

integrity of the stinkers bad movie awards

i want to say i did some looking and i definitely saw you know secondary sources saying that this is was marketed as a horror movie and that that was a strange choice because it's not how i remember it being marketed yeah although you know you can market a movie two ways you can say you know a medical marketing is often terrible yeah yeah yeah and marketing is about what the creator's vision is it's about what they want what the studio wants to sell and what the students

marketing team understands how to sell.

Yeah.

We've mentioned how M.

Knight's like reputation kind of works against him in a lot of ways already, right?

Like the reputation for the twist being expected, even though we kind of talked about how

there wasn't, like, signs didn't really feel like it had like a capital T twist in the same way.

No,

the other movies did.

It had it like a deus machina.

I think we, I mean, we've talked about it like every episode since the sixth sense, how like like he hasn't really made a horror movie outside of a few scenes in that.

Yeah.

There's, I, my first jump scare was in this movie when the dog breaks through the thing, and it was so fucking funny.

Sorry, that's not what it's called.

It's not a dog.

Get the name right.

It's a

scrunt.

It's a scrunt.

It's a scrunt.

Yeah, yeah.

That's the ancient Korean word, scrunt.

Maybe they're translating in real time.

We'll get there, but that's we'll get there.

Yeah.

You can't translate a word you've never fucking heard before in one language.

Well,

it's this is also this is also covered in the book.

Okay.

Cool.

Do we have anything else

pre-recap to talk about?

Yeah, I don't want to get too into it.

Should we just, I don't know.

Does your recap cover like crew?

Collaborators, Ali.

Oh, yes, I was putting her name at the end of that sentence.

Sorry, sorry.

I wanted to to say it all good.

I wanted to say it for the audience in case you didn't say it.

I didn't realize.

Yeah, no worries.

I have the composer and the cinematographer.

Okay.

That's usually what we cover.

I think.

Yeah.

There's a lot of actors to go.

Yeah, we'll get through the

best story in the world about the cinematographer.

Oh, that's great because I don't know who this guy is, I don't think.

Uh-huh.

Let's do the recap, but then I'll tell you.

Yeah, I'll tell you.

Someone's excited

to dive in.

Okay.

Stretching out.

No pun intended.

I didn't mean that.

Lady in the Water, a 2006 film with returning composer James Newton Howard and cinematographer Christopher Doyle, most known for the gently starred film Hero and In the Mood for Love, is one of L Night's

most critically acclaimed and award-winning movies, including four Razzie Awards for Worst Picture, Worst Supporting Actor, Worst Director, and Worst Screenplay, and seven stinkers bad movie awards, adding prizes like worst assemble and most annoying fake accent to the list of accolades.

The movie begins with a fable about the relationship between man and those in the water, future-seeing creatures of the ocean who guided man until they refused to listen because of man's preference to move deeper into land to fight wars and own things.

Despite the broken relationship, relationship, those in the water are attempting to reach out to man once again, sending in their young in the dead of the night despite danger from their enemies who've roamed the lands.

Our central band is Cleveland Heap, played by Paul G.

and Monty, an apartment superintendent who chances upon a mysterious woman named Story,

inhabiting

the complex pool, who claims she's from the blue world and seeks to find a writer who will be awakened in contact with her.

After Cleveland and Story are attacked by a strange creature almost immediately after leaving his apartment, the first night that they meet, Cleveland takes Stories Cali seriously enough to start prodding through the eclectic group of inhabitants of the apartment complex to help her on her mission.

These characters include the new arrival, Harvey Farber, a movie critic who is obviously stupid and sucks, played by Bob Babylin,

a college student, young Soon Choi, and her disapproving mother, Mrs.

Choi, played by Cindy Chung and Jun Kyoto

Lu,

respectively.

Freddie Rodriguez as the iron-pumping Reggie, except he only pumps the left side of his body, leading to a four-inch difference in circumference between his left and right side.

He's like a scientist.

His right arm was the strong side.

I maybe

it was.

Yes, it was screen right.

Screen.

Sorry, screen left.

It was screen left.

Okay, so screen left for me.

Okay, yeah.

The grouchy but respectable question mark, Mr.

Leeds, played by Bill Irwin, a puzzle-loving father-and-son pair, Mrs.

Mr.

Durry and Joey Durry, the animal-loving old woman, Mrs.

Bell, a group of five unnamed Hispanic sisters and their father, another big group of smokers whose names aren't important, and of course, Mr.

M.

Knight Shyamalon himself, as the writer, Vic Rand, living with his sister Anna, played by Sarita Chaudhary.

Oh, and did I mention that every time there's a TV playing in the background, background, reports of a forever war are trickling in?

It doesn't come up, so don't worry about it.

Yeah.

With that empty list of MVCs.

Also, wait, wait, wait.

Sorry, you skipped over the, like, one of the most shocking actors in the group of smokers who is, what the fuck's his name?

Is it Jared Harris?

The guy who was in Mad Men and

Chernobyl.

Yeah.

Two and a half.

Two Mad Men alumni in a row.

Yeah.

We had Peggy's boyfriend in the last one.

We got Jared Harris in this one.

I just wore madmen by a comfortable amount.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was watching with somebody who was like, oh, I know that guy.

And I was like, okay, but he's a nude character, so I don't know.

Yes, he's a goatee smoker.

Okay.

Everyone else is smoking weed.

I was like, he still has a British accent.

He's like a, he's like, he got sucked out of stoner culture from the 1950s and

got into stoner culture from the 2000s.

Yeah.

That was one of the reasons Disney didn't want that he wouldn't put smoking on in a movie.

Sorry, Allie,

did you finish out on your

let me go over the plot shirt?

NPCs, the movie continues like a series of quests unlocks.

In search of the meaning of the word narf,

a word story whispers in her sleep.

Cleven learns from Mrs.

Choi, translated by her daughter, that narfs are sea creatures seeking the chosen one who will lead her to the Great Eaton, a giant eagle who will return her back to her world, despite the scrunts who seek to harm them.

Achievement unlocked.

In search of Story's writer, Cleveland chances upon Vic's draft of the cookbook, featuring his thoughts on cultural problems and leaders and stuff.

Achievement unlocked.

While Cleveland searches for a writer,

not one thought revealed.

Not one thought revealed.

Thank you.

Listen, just cultural stuff, you know?

It's fine.

Yeah.

It's relevant.

While Cleveland searches for a writer, Story chances upon some writing of her own, digging through the top shelf in his apartment to to read through his diary and discover Cleveland's grief about his wife and children murdered during a robbery.

Character profile updated.

A failed attempt for Story to get picked up by her eagle leads to the knowledge of rogue scrunts who disobey the laws of the blue world despite fears of the evil creatures who enforce laws that are really evil.

They killed their parents.

They're so evil.

But they do kill the bad guys.

Yeah, they're evil, but we're waiting for them to come save us.

the evil guys

we gotta i'm having such revelations right now about what this movie should have been

uh i lost my place

they're evil because they killed their parents

a new check-in with mrs choi reveals that this that story is in need a specific scent of adventure well just people i guess a guardian a healer a guild of many hands who will help her.

Following the guidance of the critic Mr.

Farber, assuming that he has a heightened knowledge of storytelling, Cleveland assembles what he assumes is the correct group of people to help story base on their roles, but instead massively fucks up because critics don't understand anything.

The wrong interpreter, Mr.

Derby, guides the wrong guild, the group of smokers, into throwing a big party so the noise and the scent of the people will confuse the rogue's grunt to giving story her opening to make it home, only for her to get dragged off and nearly killed by the beast, narrowly saved by Cleveland, and tended to the small group who are into the plan.

Okay, let's shuffle the party.

Mr.

Durry is replaced with his son, trading the crosswords for cereal boxes to guide the plan.

The Smokers Guild is replaced with the five sisters, plus two more, meaning Anna and Young Soon actually get to be involved instead of just like being around

with lore dropping.

Mr.

Leeds is brought into plan, seemingly just for asking a weird question,

do man deserve to be saved?

But that's got main party aura, so it's all good.

Mrs.

Bell is removed as the healer after discovering the role should be taken by a man, switching Cleveland from the guardian, allowing him to lead the healing ceremony for Story by tearfully speaking out to his late family while the guild lays hands on him.

Who's the guardian, you might wonder?

Arriving at the last possible moment with the night coming to a close and Story's last attempt at returning to her world narrowly leaving, arrives the half-brolic Reggie to stare down

Reggie's sweep to stare down the horrible rogue Scrunt and let it get awkwardly slapped by the evil law maker Tartuix.

And then in true M-Nights fashion, a big eagle comes to take Story away and the credits immediately roll.

10 out of 10.

This should have been an FMV point-and-click adventure game is what I've just figured out.

This is darkseed.

This is harvest, like, not like in tone, but like, this is a cyber dreams, like,

weird quality FMV game where you have to fail the first time, and then the game is like, no, you have to figure out who the real Guardian is.

And I would have liked it more.

It is so clearly video game coded.

Even in like the first third or first half of the movie, I was describing the continual returns to Mrs.

Choy for more bits of the story as grinding influence.

She's the hint system is what I would have assumed.

But yeah, that also works.

A couple things, right off the top for me, I want to say that every single fantasy name in this sucks ass, except

I genuinely do like the name story.

I saw a lot of criticism of that name.

I think it's a good name.

I think it's a weird name.

I think it would be fine if it wasn't.

Like, I think out of this context, I would have liked it more.

It makes it bad because it's in a bad movie, but I just want to give it credit where it's still so navel gazing.

So on the known.

Yeah.

That's why I dislike it.

It's a story about stories and telling stories.

Yeah.

It tells a story and the story and her name is Story.

Like, stop, please.

You can't have a character named Story tell a guy played by you

how to finish the book that changes the world.

Yeah.

Also,

even if it's going to change the world, the cookbook, the anarchist cookbook, already exists and people don't like it.

Yeah, well, this is the good guy's cookbook.

That's why it's not.

This is okay.

I feel like the president is going to read it.

This is how half the young adult writers I see online feel about themselves.

That's good enough for you.

Would you like to know the example that M.

Night Shyamalan used in the meeting with Disney where they said they didn't like that the author was not going to be the one that changed the world, but the book was?

Right.

Please.

Because M.

Night Shyamalan then said to the Disney executives, Well, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, and then Abraham Lincoln read it and changed the world.

Oh my God.

What happened?

Yeah, this isn't even my top 10 stories from this book.

No.

I think another bad thing about her being named Story is that when she learns Cleveland's name, she's immediately like, oh, from the cliffs.

Like,

so you know what that means to her.

What does the story mean to you?

I can't.

I wrote this down in notes.

I have six pages of notes.

And one of the first things I wrote down was,

she studied enough to know that Cleveland means of the cliffs, but not that she needs pants.

No, we did not put her in pants in this movie.

There always needs to be a thin, little, like, weird sexual tension between her and Paul Giamatti in a way that makes me personally very uncomfortable.

It's so, yeah, the whole, like, the, the vibe of, like, is he seeing her as a daughter or a wife?

And then the ending makes that all worse.

Way worse.

It is bad.

It's, it's, and here's, there's, this is like the latent impression that this movie gives me based on knowing nothing about this movie at the end of the last episode of the village when we watched the village where I guessed what this movie was about.

I was really sure that this was a monster fucker movie.

And there's not, it's not, she's not a mermaid at all for any percent of the movie.

And it's really, it's really only deep background implication that is like where, you know, the camera and the characters are sexualizing story

a lot,

but it's not like coming up in the plot.

It's sort of this weird, constant background itch.

It can't really decide how it wants to present her, because it will do in the same scene him be like, God, you're just a kid, and then it'll smash cut to her half naked in his lap in the morning.

Blimblam.

Blimblam, baby's on the half tip.

Uh, this movie really reveals the weaknesses.

I think that each movie has told us like what it is that M-Night can do and what he can't do.

And he has not learned from any of his past movies what he can't do.

And in fact, keeps just like diving headfirst into trying to make a new movie, making all the same mistakes.

He can't write a movie.

He can't write a movie.

He cannot write a movie.

This movie's well-directed.

This movie's well-acted.

This movie's

well-acted with an asterisk a little bit.

I'm still like shook that the guy who shot fucking Fallen Angels did this movie.

Like the one car Y movie.

That's insane to me.

Well, let me tell you a story about Christopher Doyle.

Please.

He shows up to the first day.

They put him up in a fancy hotel in Philadelphia.

He comes in the first day and complains that the pornography on the pay-per-view in his hotel is not good enough.

And he wants them to put him in a hotel in New York

and have him driven to set,

to and from set every day.

Wow.

This is the first thing this person says.

Oh, my my God.

You guys got to upgrade my Goon Cave or else I'm not shooting your movie.

Sorry, this is 2006.

I was 14 in 2006.

I knew where to find pornography.

It wasn't in hotel TVs.

It was like a little bit harder than it is now, kind of, but not a lot.

Well, they made him put him in the Soho Grand in lower Manhattan and had a driver drive him two hours each way.

For porn, just for porn at night?

Get a laptop, dude.

a laptop.

He was also very clearly

just

super drunk for the making of this movie.

The first day of filming, they say at 6:45 a.m., he shows up drunk wearing a golden boxing robe.

Huh?

Like gold, like yellow, or gold, like it's metallic?

Um,

I would know I'm not sure.

Photos, I bet.

Um, you know,

in some ways, this is a decent-looking movie,

but I definitely could see how

maybe the person who is like choosing how things are getting shot like that

was drunk.

This is a dark movie.

It's hard to see stuff a lot of times in the movie.

I guess that's lighting.

They say that that's a Shyamalan choice.

And there's a Shamalana tried to help you.

And that they were having trouble with

focus.

That it's hard to focus in low light.

I also had that aurora problem in the second half, especially.

They built the apartment as like a practical set and everything, right?

They built that entire.

Yeah, they built a five-story building.

The Cove.

Get it?

To make this movie.

Because water.

Wait, that was a five-story building?

Yes.

That did not have a five-story building.

Could they not have...

Here's the real fantasy.

Here's the real fantasy of this movie.

These are like a bunch of pretty decently sized apartments with an outrageously attentive super who was constantly helping.

And they let me do some wild stuff to the walls.

Yeah.

And like that is where the real fantastic element is just like a bunch of people living in pretty good conditions with a guy who you don't have to like write on a website.

Please come help me fix the hole in my ceiling.

It's leaking water once every three months, and you maybe get a response that week.

Not specific, not about anything.

It's just a story.

It's just a story.

Yeah, it's just a story.

Oh, they also say that he would spend takes just like shooting

like props that he would shoot the scene with him and the film critic, the beginning of the movie, and it would be focused on the keys.

That M.

Night Shamalan was always like yelling at him to shoot the actors, right?

Hold on, maybe he was cooking.

Maybe, oh, yeah, okay.

Yeah, I see the vision a little bit.

Yeah, I see it.

I can see how that would work.

I love when keys are jangled in front of me.

There's a lot of good shots in this movie.

There's a lot of good shots in the movie.

You know, that's,

but apparently, they had to shoot a lot to get those good shots.

I just

don't know what's going on in M.

Night Shyamalan's heart that he can't release this idea that he needs to be writing his movies.

He's a good director, he can get the shots, he's, he can,

he can ask for a second take and probably be right.

No, he's the narf chosen, he has to write.

He's the narf.

He's the maiden.

He's the

narf narft.

The narfed one.

Ali, he's the narf narft.

Can you read what I sent to you when I was 22 minutes into this movie right before, I believe,

Paul Giamatti asks Mrs.

Choi what a Narf is?

Wow, okay, yes.

You said, I want to give you this rope in case I must hang myself with it later.

But about 25 minutes in it, and I like this more than anything since the success.

I stand by that.

I stand by that.

Those first 22 minutes,

like, I liked being tugged around the apartment building looking at the weirdos and being like look at all this possibility in front of me and then the movie like doesn't touch any of those guys it's just paul giamati running around you know collecting people eventually i'm i'm back in it becomes a heist movie in the last third it becomes a heist movie

and then again like a video game you know i was into it i was into the heist thing even though it kind of sucked they weren't really doing that good of a job with it but it becomes a heist movie, and then they go, we got the heist all wrong because critics are stupid.

They don't know what they're fucking talking about.

They're more on losers.

And then, like, Halo 1, you have to go replay all the levels in reverse.

But also, the critic wasn't like,

the critic wasn't like wrong.

You literally wasn't.

The interpretation of the critic was wrong.

Like, the critic didn't say, yeah, it's the dad.

Right.

And I saw the kid and I was like, I was like, I knew immediately that it was the kid.

Because I know who Em Night Shamalan is.

I saw the kid looking at the box, and he was like, wow, this box of cereal makes me sad, like, when you didn't pick me up from school.

And I'm like, well, it's the kid.

And then he grabs the dad.

And it's like, why did you grab the dad?

The kid's doing it.

He just did it right then.

I saw it.

But the dad's good at good at crossword puzzle.

I think we're just better critics than Bob Balaman.

I think that's what it comes down to.

Makes you think.

Makes you think.

That whole criticism is a good thing.

He's also a book critic.

He's really just like,

we just beat me over the head with it already.

I'm not mercy compared to this.

This was, this is, I think, Janine.

This is like, it's actually really good to have that perspective because of how attuned I am to M.

Night Shyamalan's absolute lack of subtlety in all things.

Like, I just got out of three straight movies where it was ruined by him not being able to

turn himself down.

And so, like,

this isn't that?

What?

No, no, I'm saying

that you're used to it.

Swallowed this movie up knowing that was a flavor.

Oh, and so it's good to have someone else who hasn't just gone through unbreakable

signs in the village

where you're just more sensitive to it.

Like, my tolerance is up right now.

You've been taking your doses of poison.

Yeah, I've been slowly.

Yeah, I've been slowly accumulating or

I've been slowly making myself immune.

inoculated myself to Em Knight's poison by taking some of this.

I feel like Killer.

I think he is a good writer.

That's crazy.

That's crazy.

I also thought that before we started this podcast.

I think, like many auteurs,

he needs good editing.

Yeah.

He needs oversight.

He needs that to bring out the best.

Again, I'm going off of like a really limited sample here.

This is more me speaking about how I feel about people who are like put on little pedestals as creative geniuses,

especially like frankly men who are like a name in a field.

Most of the time I feel like they're not up there for no reason, but they get up there by having their work kind of

curated and pruned and stuff.

And then they get to a point where no one wants to

well

to the point where like they're above the people who would do that.

So they think like I've earned full creative freedom.

And it's like, no, the pruning is the good part.

Like you cut a dead head off a flower so that good, strong stuff grows instead of pumping nutrients into the dead, shitty part.

Right.

Like it's for a reason we do this.

Sure.

And you can definitely see the wheels coming off here.

Especially

this is the movie where he was like, I don't want

to get any notes on this before I make it.

Yeah.

It really shows.

It shows, yeah.

The only note he took was he added the mom.

The Korean mom was not in the original script.

Sure.

Really?

Yeah, she's important.

I like before that, the

daughter just, I guess.

Is she still the daughter if there's no mom?

She's the daughter now.

That's an it.

The student.

The student should have been the guardian.

I was disappointed.

I knew the guardian wasn't going to be the mom, but I really wanted that to be the twist.

It was like the jack-off-arm guy.

I thought jack-off-arm guy was going to punch the scrunt, but he didn't.

I also,

when he

was doing that, I was like, this is not, it's not even cute, right?

Like, there's a degree to which sometimes a movie will bait you along, being like, oh, you think this is going to happen?

I don't know.

Let's see.

And then it doesn't happen.

And it, like, it feels like a little, haha, we got you.

But the thing that happens instead is just like so nothing

goofy that I felt a little bit robbed.

It was like, well, you, okay, I know that you expected me to expect him to punch it, and it didn't happen.

And now I'm just sad.

He just has a big arm.

I'm going to, I'll say two things.

The first thing is that what I expected from that guy is to need to be strong, but also need to have a thin arm because of signs.

So I thought that it was going to be.

He has to reach into the pool grate.

Yeah,

that is 100% what I thought, Sylvie, where he has to like,

he has to punch the dog, but also reach into the great.

The other thing that I'll say

is I, you know, I'm really giving credit here that is not due, but there is something maybe to this thing where like he's doing something ridiculous with this like half, Ali, you describe this half brolic

thing that he's doing.

And

what he says at the beginning is that like he wants to like be somebody, or I guess this is what Apollo G Body says, he wants to be like special or something, but he has no ideas for why he wants to be special because he was magically pulled to this

apartment complex to be the guardian, a thing that he has no idea about.

So he's like, I know I'm important.

I don't know why.

I have these weights.

Let's go.

And we don't explore it at all.

We just kind of my bummer.

Right.

Yeah.

Really big missed opportunity, I think.

There's like a lot of times.

We haven't had him go on about science.

We're like, that didn't.

Why?

Yeah, have him revealed he's Dr.

Bimbu from Science.

There could have been like a little clue about the Guardian being a man of science or some shit.

I'm like, okay.

It would have been fun.

The thing that I've done.

But no, it's him at the end because no, he's the only character who hasn't had anything.

Right.

Yep.

Especially you do know that he was first in

last

class.

He was a late edition.

Yeah,

that makes sense.

About his writing ability, I wrote that.

He thinks in set pieces.

He always has like a set piece in mind, but he's not good at thinking up set pieces.

So you end up with like a roadmap that could work, like super high-level plotting that can work, and then a series of set pieces.

And then each individual set piece is like really on the fence whether it works or not, because he's not.

I'm struggling to square this idea with

like sixth sense

whips.

Yeah.

And

I don't think, and I don't think most of what's, I think, I don't think most of what's wrong with Unbreakable is in the script.

I think Unbreakable is a pretty strong script.

And then we disagreed a little bit about signs in the village.

Yeah.

Which I like.

I'm sort of coming in where this is, I think, his big

stepping on a rig and having hit in the face.

I think I'm with you.

And not the result of like a downward

slides.

This one was the only one where I checked the time left on the movie.

And I did it really long.

It felt really long.

And we know that they're all the same length already.

We all know they're all within two minutes of each other.

Yeah.

I wouldn't necessarily say a downward slide.

I would say

much like

Cleveland,

he was at the top of the cliff.

with the sixth sense and then sort of everything else lives in this valley.

You know, Unbreakable had these.

We'll say again.

Is that a joke about Cleveland the city?

No, it's a joke about Cleveland the name, which is from the cliffs, which is what Story says about his name.

All right.

I'm, I, I didn't scam.

I'm so sorry.

It's okay.

It's okay.

Um,

uh, like, the sixth sense was so much better than the second best of these movies.

Um,

and

And they all kind of fail in different ways and in different parts for me.

Like, Unbreakable these really high highs, a couple great pieces of writing, and then the rest of it I felt was like not good and hard to sit through and boring and slow.

Uh, signs like was really interesting for half, and then the second half, like, he just couldn't knock down the pins.

And then The Village was like

a kind of normal movie that was kind of boring,

which makes it the sort of the best one to me of those three.

Huh.

Because it was like, it didn't have those big dips where I was like, what the fuck is going on?

Like in all the other ones.

And this one had

this one's mostly diff this one, right?

It's sort of hard to see the dips for their length.

It like really and there to just to like speak to that there it almost like I almost got like mad whenever there would be something that I thought was like fun or funny because it would always be between 20 minutes of something that was just super interminable.

And it got me, I was just, I could see the like quality movie trying to claw its way out under all this other stuff.

And I just, it never got there.

I have a hard time disliking Paul Giamatti running around the building.

Yeah.

Like,

and that's a lot of this movie.

I think there's a lot of good stuff in the end.

And

it's a shame that we have to get all the way there to see by the end do you mean like when they finally assembled the right crew for yeah like that scene in the mailroom

i think is pretty good

yeah

do we want to listen to that scene

yeah

uh

this is usually not how we do this but first art what's that well you said the scene in the mailroom but didn't really say what happens.

Do we want to set up the scene before we hear?

Oh, yeah, this is like

the movie happen.

This is like where everyone's standing together to do their thing, and it's like a ritual to help Story who has been attacked by the

scrunt, scrunt.

I can't say scarf.

No, it's not

a scrunt and a narf.

Scarf is better.

Um,

Eatlon the Eagle.

Eidlon?

Eatlon.

Eatlon.

That's what my subtitle is.

I was saying that, and I kept thinking they were saying the great Elon, and I was like, that hasn't aged well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah, like you said, they're in the mailroom.

They've assembled the right crew.

They identified.

The story

has been jacked up.

Yeah,

the scrunts have an anti-narf poison.

And so every time she gets scratched by the narf, they're big, they're huge hyena-like monsters.

Scratched by the scrunt.

Scratched by the the scrunt.

The narf is scratched by the scrunt.

The narf gets scratched by the scrunt.

Very important.

It's very important because they're such big monsters.

You'd think, well, surely this can tear her limb from limb.

No, they can only do scratches.

They can turn her legs into like little bits of like lunch meat kind of looking cuts.

Right.

It's like sort of flaky.

And they thought that Paul Giamatti was the guardian, but he's actually the healer.

Because, by the way, he was a doctor.

And so a lot of this movie has him I missed that has him been a voice and they taught him the thing he uses in medical school which they don't usually you know they don't mention that outright but that's clearly why it matters he's a doctor well he has a he has a healing nature he's a nature by default a healing nature

uh

uh this is just like how rain is a purifying you know rebirth i do i find it i just i find it a little bit interesting that like he had to have doctor as his backstory but the lady who likes animals, like, no, she could, she could be a healer.

She could just be a healer.

You can't just, she could be a nice person who heals, but he has to be a former doctor.

Well, she was on the radar.

That was a sad thing.

She was on his radar because she was a writer.

And then when they say that butterfly,

because she was a woman, too.

Like, let's be clear.

Yes, that's right.

That's what I'm dancing around here.

There was no, she wasn't, she hasn't, she wasn't a doctor before.

She was a writer who likes animals.

And she was allowed to be the Narf healer.

Well, but they were wrong.

yeah, it doesn't make sense to me.

I know, but I'm saying, like,

my point is the fact that he has to have this sad doctor backstory is a little bit silly.

Yes, there's a home invasion.

He only bought in on that not being important for the other person who could have been the doctor.

There's a, there's a, uh, there's a, uh, well, you know, you're writing a story.

It's all, you don't know what shape the peg is until you try to put it into the hole, I guess.

But

no, that's not how you write a story.

That's how M.

Night Shyamalan writes a story.

They're writing this story as they're going.

Yeah.

And

I tried to refrain from saying this, but this is another wildly Stephen King-y movie.

I got to read about the advice that Stephen King gave.

Wow, Shyamalan about writing.

Oh, boy.

I'm very sorry.

To write in the basement so that you feel more uneasy.

Oh, that's bad advice, Stephen.

What the fuck?

Tell him how to put words that are good on the page.

That's what Stephen King is good at.

The M-Night isn't.

No, you got to be in the dirt.

You got to be underground.

But I feel like Stephen King's reasons for writing in the basement were different.

Right,

you got to have somewhere where your wife can't see the Coke you're doing.

Yeah,

again,

basically that I'm dancing around.

What was I talking about?

We were trying to get up to the mailroom scene.

We were talking about that.

He's a doctor who quit being a doctor because his family was murdered in a signs-like home invasion.

He has like every M-night character's backstory at once.

Yes,

it's the

sixth sense, except he wasn't home.

His whole family was home.

So it's kind of like what happened to the people

at the end of Unbreakable.

And then also his wife's dead, like the guy from Signs.

Yeah.

And I guess the village part is that Bryce Dallas does that.

Yes, that's the problem.

No, because it was a robbery.

Because it wasn't.

Oh, yeah, you're right.

Yeah, you're right.

I forgot about the

village.

He was moving to a fake town.

He just became a super.

He moved to a weird mystical.

MNIT does sort of have a weird, like not weird, like there's a theme going through his films now, I've noticed, of like these insular communities and stuff like that.

And like, I can can feel like he's trying to get at something But it's never fully crystallized for me what he's really going for

with it.

There's like a vague anti-war sentiment anti-hate sentiment like we have to take care of each other idea going on, but I'm still like

the paranoia and the vagueness of it I think is telling.

I have

there was more in the village that worked for me with the sort of like weird surveillance state stuff that was happening with the village itself and the elders.

Whereas here, I'm just kind of like,

what is he trying to get at with it?

And it's just main reason I bring it up is it's something to keep an eye on as we go through stuff.

World bad gotta fix it.

Yeah.

It'll come it'll come up again.

So I'm happy to play the scene that's very close to the end because

his attitude about his family being murdered is sort of like

subtextually usually present through the whole movie and drives a lot of his character choices as like you know story identifies him him as a helper very early on.

Like, you live here and try to try to help people.

It is also something we find out fairly early, but it's not really like, we don't get the full picture of it until this scene.

Like, because Story confronts him after reading his diary, right?

And tells us that his family died in a home invasion.

Which made me think he was the writer, and then he wasn't.

Because I thought surely M.

Knight wouldn't make himself the writer.

That's probably what they wanted.

That's exactly what he wanted to.

Yeah.

Maybe.

I thought it was just being sloppy at the end of the day.

Play the clip.

The man doesn't use breadcrumbs, he uses whole pieces of bread.

I'm sorry, I couldn't protect you.

Oh, I should have been there.

I am always gonna regret

just not being

I'll miss you faces

They remind me of God

I'm so lost without you guys

And that's sort of his spell to bring Story back who has been basically killed by the narfs nope by the scrunts she's the narf where'd her rock mud she's the madam narf her key

they didn't have any time wait they used all of the rock mud he only grabbed one

guys we got

terminology oh sorry what is the mud called the mud's called a key okay we gotta be respectful

the key healing

word that the that the korean myth has that could plausibly be even a little bit korean yeah are what would can you tell me about the words for these from that book?

Why are all the names so stupid and bad and not Korean?

The short answer is because he did not care.

Yeah, that sounds a vibe, I got too.

Yes.

Did we explain that it's a Korean bedtime story?

I don't know if we've mentioned that specifically for people.

Yeah, it's a Korean bedtime story.

It's like a cross-cultural one, but you learn it through a Korean character

who it's translated by her daughter.

Right.

Young Shun Choi says that it's an Eastern bedtime story.

Therefore, there's no reason for her to know the word scrunt if she's learning it from her Korean mother who only speaks Korean.

Sorry.

Cindy Chung

is cast in this movie because she's tall.

She is tall.

She's good.

She's good at acting.

She does a very good job in the audition.

But the casting was the role that was originally written for a six-foot-tall Korean woman

with like a Britney Spears

look, who's

very heavy.

Sure.

Okay.

The casting director decides that he can't put that in the

casting bulletin.

Okay.

And so, like, sort of writes around it.

Because what Shyamalan wants in the casting is rolls of fat.

They didn't get even close to that.

No.

Yeah, in fact, she's introduced butt first.

Butt first.

Yeah.

Tiny butt first.

Introduced and reintroduced butt first.

The camera really, really likes her butts.

Well, we know about the cinematographer.

Yeah, the cinematographer and the costuming, the head of costuming, have like a big fight in the thing about how far her bikini should be above her her shorts.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Yeah, this makes sense to me because she's shot and often treated probably until the very end as a very like, I think the term is like Asian baby girl.

That's the term.

Tennottrope.

It's like a West Coast like

It's like a girl who, it's probably like her parents immigrated to the states and she's a little bit more she's sort of fallen in more with like quote-unquote hip-hop culture but has this sort of like traditional home life but then goes out and she's like really sexy and provocative and like street smart and like it's that whole thing um it also like from the second she shows up and it was real gross it's it's kind of of a piece of what of the stuff that gwen stefani was doing of a at the time actually where she was using the hero fashion

accessories

yeah um and i think Tokyo Drift also played into a lot of this stuff, obviously.

And the Britney Spears reference for casting plays into that because it's a lot of like, you know, Britney Spears gets associated with school uniforms.

Asian women get associated with school uniforms.

It seems just like instead of treating her like a funny body, they treated her like a funny, sexy body.

Yeah.

Which is not, that's a lateral move if I have one.

If you're a non-pervert director, you have to make sure to rein in your perverts that are on set.

You cannot just let your perverts run amok.

I don't know if I want to ascribe non-pervert to M-Night, by the way, though.

He's not like a full-throated pervert.

Sure, he's not, but he's not driving two hours to get to be in the hotel.

He's kind of like a

self-pervert.

Yeah.

He's kind of like he's a pervert for himself kind of vibe.

Yeah,

I didn't didn't find there to be a lot of perversion in The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable or Signs.

No, I think

despite female characters being fridged a lot in his movies,

this one included.

Right.

Like the characters themselves are usually pretty

fully imagined, well acted, sort of respected by

the script.

The characters who get to live until the movie starts

are generally treated pretty well.

Anyway, so Cindy Chung gets this part.

Cindy Chung is not Korean.

Early in the process,

Mrs.

Choi, who

I think is also not Korean, someone points out that the name's just wrong.

that they have like a Vietnamese name for the character and they change the character name.

And in this process,

Cindy Chung brings her acting old acting teacher out from San Francisco to like essentially like boot camp her in her hotel room because she's had like sort of a negative

experience

so far what what's that a negative experience with things so far yeah that like she

Her process and Shyamalan's process are not gelling.

Although part of that is he seems to think that she's overprepared, so bringing in like more coaching might not be the right thing.

But this is her first

lead movie role.

So she's like,

and in the pre-production process of having that coach, they go through all these different things, like how to connect.

She's one eighth Korean.

Like, how do you connect to that part of yourself?

What is it like to be this character who is a lot younger?

This character is a lot younger than the actor.

All of this, and it's and there's a point where she's adding vowels to the words to make them plausibly Korean.

And it's sort of presented as she never gets the confidence to take that to Shambuan and be like, well, this is what it would

be

in Korean.

Oh, like adding them to like scrunt and narf and stuff like that.

Yeah, like adding the vowels you would need to add to scrunt and narf to make them.

I thought you meant to like like her delivery.

I was like, what?

Do we want to hear a little bit about Narfs from the story?

From the actual movie?

Yeah, and I think

is this going to be Young Soon Choi talking?

It's going to be Young Soon Choi and Mrs.

Choi.

Okay, it is worth noting that these are

put-on accents and it's rough.

It's noticeable.

Yeah, it's very inconsistent.

Uh-huh.

In the bedtime story,

she must be seen by the one human I have chosen for her.

This person is called

seeing the north will awaken something in the chosen.

If she's successful in this,

she will return with the great

giant eagle

and become free.

She won't tell me more.

She said, why can't I be like my oldest sister?

She married a dentist.

So this seems to be the NARF's main motivation is that they risk their lives to briefly enter into human society and awaken human potential like the obelisks in 2001 a space odyssey.

Well, they come from the blue world.

They come from the blue world.

And when you are connected to the narf, you see the narf and part of your

soul awakens or something.

And then they leave.

Then that's all they do.

Which is, of course, exactly how the story at the beginning of the movie that they made us sit through goes.

It was absolutely that the sea people would look at the human and the human would go, ah, I got to write a book.

It wasn't like there was a long dialogue that was lost or a long relationship.

No, no, it was you look at them and then you have a thought.

That's what that's it's consistent all the way through.

That girl inspires you and then goes away.

Yep.

The narration was the last thing added to the movie after test audiences were like not getting it.

That's good choice.

Good note.

Genuinely.

Why make it, why not?

Okay.

It's wild because this is such a teledome show movie.

It's

why if you're going to do it at the very end, why not make it connect more?

Yeah, I...

Yeah.

I think that one of the issues with the movie is that everything that happens in it feels totally superfluous.

And the narration at the beginning does give it a little bit of grounding because the choices that they make within the actual script, the action of the script, they feel so

it's not that it's convoluted, it's that it's

really hollow.

So it's kind of hard to follow because it's like, you know, he has to keep getting more information from Mrs.

Choi because she doesn't trust him.

So he eventually has to make himself act like a kid to trick her.

It's so gross.

It's terrible, but it's really funny.

It's really funny.

Damn that moment.

Paul Giamatti kicking his little skin.

You got to age-aggress, old man.

You got to have milk in your mustache, and then you got to eat cookie, and then you lay down and you suck thumb, and you ask yourself.

They added more milk to his mustache between shots.

It's wild.

Wow.

It's yogurt.

They put yogurt in the cabin.

Yogurt

cream or something.

It's like fixed.

Glue.

That's what the cinematographer needed to watch all that stuff.

Okay, keep going.

I already got it.

Sorry.

It's so.

I will say, in defense of the narration, it does say they need only be glimpsed and the awakening of man will happen.

Yeah.

All right.

So it is definitely like,

it's so funny looking at it and being like, oh, yeah, this was at it after this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, she does go.

She does talk to everybody, kind of.

She talks to most of them.

She doesn't talk to the guild.

You know, sometimes she just sits in the shower and they talk around.

There's a lot of people stare at her.

I was very happy when the shower became so important because it's one of the only things I knew about the movie was at some point she'd be in a shot in the shower.

And I was disappointed when, you know, 15 minutes into the movie, she's taking a shit, just taking a shower.

And I was like, oh, is this what I remember?

But no, it's she spends 40 minutes sitting in the shower while people come and chat with her a little bit.

Yeah, you were thinking of when they need to keep her alive and not the part when they need to make you go, oh my gosh, what's happening between these two about her and Paul Giamatti?

he's old-fashioned nothing happens all she does is yeah i know sleep in his lap

and she knows what names mean but she doesn't know that it's like maybe a little bit much to be doing that there's also something to be said about the like like they even comment on it the visual language of her just being in one of his shirts and nothing else is like yeah blim blam

That's like, yeah, Blimblam, but that's like a known image in media in general to communicate like a morning after look.

You know what I mean?

It's a little.

Yeah, it's truly bizarre.

It's confused.

And I think that it is...

That's one of the reasons why I think we should make sure we don't

exclude M-Night from a pervert classification.

It's true.

It's true.

Well, and there's so much stuff about how he keeps calling it a love story.

Yeah.

And like, and there's the stuff.

If you're a love story, who is it about?

Yeah, I mean, I can't defend M-Knight here, but I can defend Cleveland at the very least

for creating distance between him and story

by letting Anna take her in and like

sort of.

Yeah, no, it's Maddie.

I don't think anyone here is Madam.

No, no, no, no.

I'm just like, I think that's worth saying to the podcast audience who maybe has not watched this movie.

You know what I mean?

Cleveland isn't being a creep,

mostly, mostly.

He's mostly deeply uncomfortable in these moments.

He is mostly the camera that I have an issue with, yeah.

But the thing about Cleveland is that M Knight wrote him to be a good guy,

and so you know, it's hard to ignore that there's this fantasy going on of, like, you know, there's this naive girl who keeps putting her body on me,

but because I'm the good guy of the story, I'm being like, no, no, I'm old-fashioned, I'm still sad about my dead wife.

Um, you know, you're too young, uh, you know, don't, please don't.

But he's clearly affected by her

and sometimes by

Yong Soon Choi.

Like, this, you know, he is not someone who's not looking.

He's trying not to look.

Yeah.

Yeah, there is kind of an

impression of like

the very

shitty view of like, well, men are men.

Of course, a man's going to look, but he's a good man, so he's not gonna touch.

There is some real doubt.

It's like a very essentialism going on here.

Like, we talked about it with the healer stuff.

And then they try to feel clever about it.

I thought they would be.

Really?

They're not real.

And Paul Giamatti?

Yeah.

Or the characters.

The actors.

Because Bryce Dallas Howard, what do you think?

What is she like 26 in this or something?

Something like that.

She would be

20.

25.

25.

Yeah, 25.

How old is Paul Giamani?

He is 14 years older than her.

He's 14 years older than her, so he's...

39?

39.

Which I want to say is not an acceptable age gap, really, but I thought it was going to be like 24 years instead of 14 years.

Yeah.

But still clearly old enough to be her father.

Dad, yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, I mean, it's a young dad at 14.

I mean, biologically, but

not at any real

old enough to be her father in a narrative construct way.

In a narrative thing, in the movie.

I did the math in my head where I was like, oh, she would be 14 when he's this age, and that is not true.

That's just

me being dumb.

Yeah, I mean,

she is also a child, though.

The NARF, NARF, Narfhood Narf life She just like she'd probably just graduated Narf school is sort of the implication Yeah, and they send all the young narflings out into the

non-blue world to

They say she's clumsy I when yeah, I don't know when she's actually clumsy

Well, no, well, because if you say something, the audience is like, oh, okay, so that's true then.

Yeah, they say Tell Don't Show is the heart of good storytelling.

Exactly.

She keeps getting fucked by that scarf, though.

So she like clearly

narf the boy wouldn't say arf.

If we say if we call them scarfs and the other ones have to be nerns.

Well you just do no nunt isn't better.

Never mind.

No, we'll just be right.

I'll just try to be right.

The reason why so many people work on movies is that someone is supposed to tell you,

but dude, you can't call these narfs and scrunts.

People are going to laugh at you.

And they did laugh.

People laughed.

I'm laughing.

Narfins quite a bit.

Narf and scrunts.

All right, I think it is now time for me to tell the story of the meeting with Disney.

Okay.

I'm so excited.

Okay, so first of all, first of all, Shyamalan has an incredibly detailed thing about how you get his scripts,

which is that his assistant prints out the scripts and flies across the country from Philadelphia to LA with the scripts in a bag that never leaves her side.

She then shows up to people's houses at appointed times,

gives them the scripts, and then comes to collect them several hours later.

Why?

Oh, that job's got to suck.

This reminds me of the stuff people talk about, like Marvel scripts, where it's like, we have to keep it so secret.

And I'm like, oh, you don't want people to know that Spider-Man's in this one?

Sean Milan was apparently so upset that an early draft of Unbreakable leaked that from then on, like, no one could have unfettered access to his scripts with one exception, Disney executive Nina Jacobson.

God, he, okay.

I'm not sure.

Who was previously at DreamWorks and left DreamWorks when Disney bought Six Sense to work on Six Sense?

So my ally.

Yes, these three people, Nina Jacobson, the head of marketing at Disney at the time, who would end up replacing Nita Jacobson when she gets fired a year after this, and the head of the studio,

the chairman of the studio, Dick Cook,

they all get the script, and they have a meeting with Shyamalan in a restaurant in Philadelphia where they're like, we don't get it.

And they give.

And they give a bunch of notes about stuff they don't understand.

And these notes lead to the creation of Mrs.

Choi.

But it's generally like

Shyamalan

is really upset.

He's like,

that because the village didn't do as well, that they're trying to clamp him down and put him in a box.

And they didn't like

the village.

They tried to get him to change the twist of that where it's all in the future or it's all in present day.

And he refused.

And then that movie was not well received.

So I can imagine this is a compounding thing of like they probably feel incorrectly, by the way, that they were right about the village twist.

Even though that's not what I mean.

Jacobson specifically calls out something that we mentioned in our previous episode that having the year on the tombstone at the beginning be in the 1800s is like lying to your audience for no reason.

And she didn't like that and

he was also defensive about that.

So they have this sort of contentious meeting.

They offer him, instead of making this movie, they're like, you could direct this movie we have about ice skating.

This also upsets Shyamalan.

I find out in this chapter that

after Sixth Sense,

he decides to do Unbreakable instead of directing the first Harry Potter movie.

And the idea that fresh off of Sixth Sense,

someone at Warner was like, get that guy Harry Potter.

Kids.

It's the kids.

Yeah, it's the kids.

Yeah, it's the kids, but like, what would that movie have been?

That's a weird movie.

That's a weird movie.

You know what?

They should have done it and killed a cultural phenomenon.

The first Harry Potter, yeah.

Oh.

Awful.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's an interesting alternate universe to think about.

There's another version where the movie's totally fine and, you know, as fine as that movie is, and then he becomes a guy who directs other people's scripts scripts, and he's successful

all the way straight through.

So they're leaving the restaurant after this kind of contentious meeting, and the chairman of the studio, Dick Cook, like they get to the elevator and he's like, hang back.

And he and Shyamalan have a conversation.

And he's like, okay, I get that we didn't get this movie and that this is we're having a disagreement here.

What if I give you $60 million and you don't see me again until the premiere?

We won't interfere in this movie.

You can just have the budget and do it.

That's like how interested we are in continuing to work with you.

And Shyamalan says, no.

What?

But I don't want to make this movie with a studio that I feel doesn't understand me.

Oh, my God.

Wait, I'm.

You got to get it.

Get over yourself a little bit, man.

Well,

they don't care.

They don't want to understand you.

They just want you to make your movie.

Well, he also wanted it to be a Disney movie.

He wanted to be like, not Buena Vista.

He wanted to be a capital D Disney movie.

That shows.

That makes sense.

And I'm not sure they were going to give him that.

Because, again, they did not like the smoking.

They did not like how scary the snarling is.

Come on.

And

there was some friction there, but I think they probably could have figured that out.

So he bounces and he goes to warner brothers because the guy at warner brothers called him after the village premiere was like i really liked it and so he went and did the movie at warner brothers oh my god networking maybe

technically

the movie did cost 70 million dollars so who knows if that 10 million would have made a big difference and they had to build a five-story building

had to in the middle of

ship the guy in from new york so he could watch porn all the time like that's that's that's one million right there.

They had to employ both the car and the driver for that.

Can you art?

You said this movie cost $70 million.

I have the answer written here, but can you also reveal the box office on this movie?

Yeah, this is not covered in the book.

The book came out the same day as the movie, so the book ends with

the book ends with a test screening of the movie that got of 40 respondents, 39 said they liked it.

They said the test audience liked it more than they liked the sixth cents.

But I do know the movie made 72 million dollars

audience being like they liked it it's a good good movie bye 72 on a budget of 70 that's so bad and i i do know that the that the marketing the the all-in price was 140.

yeah that's a flop this is a certified flop

a disastrous flop because you just left the studio that likes you too yeah

yeah disney liked him

He'd make $2 billion for him.

$60 million to just make a thing and not talk to us.

That's the dream.

What the hell's wrong with this guy?

Yeah, anyone listening to this has $60 million they want to give to us to not talk to us, and we'll turn in a movie in two years.

Yeah, it makes sense for us to worry about it.

I, I, this

M.

Night Shamalon, his decision-making makes him come across as a worse guy than the themes in his movies would suggest.

Like, you know, these are movies that are about like love and forgiveness and self-acceptance and, you know, finding your place in the world and fixing your mistakes and God

and divine intervention.

And M.

Night Shamalan seems just like a ruthless businessman who cannot write a script.

I'm,

I really think

no movie is bad in the way that an M.

Night Shaman movie is bad.

That is why I think he gets so much hate.

I don't think that the hate that he gets is like

a one-for-one deserve with how bad his movies are.

I think that like the reception to this movie is a lot worse than the movie actually is.

There's way worse movies.

And this will be true forever.

There's way worse movies that most people like.

That's what I believe.

I would say it's it's

a little unfair, I think, to call him a ruthless businessman when he turned down $60 million because he wanted to be able to have a conversation about the thing he was doing.

The impression I get.

It's kind of the opposite.

He's a narcissist.

Like, this is like, I don't know.

I

cannot recommend enough.

The man who heard voices or how M.

Night Shyamalan risked his career on a fairy tale, the 300-page book about the making of Lady in the Water.

It's a fascinating read.

I think even if you don't, even if

you're someone listening to this podcast and not watching any of the movies, I still think this book is worth it.

It's fascinating.

A fascinating portrait of a man who doesn't know he's about to be hit by a proverbial car.

Yeah.

And like the way he got there.

Like, there's multiple parts in this book, which again ends with like the test scores are great, where people come to him, like, I don't think this movie works.

Yeah.

And he just tells them, like, essentially, boldly triumphed in the face of

boldly triumphs in the face of several longtime collaborators saying that they don't think that this one has it.

Again, that's another reason why I'm like, this movie has lowered my opinion of him.

Because it's like, you should trust the people that you've been making stuff with.

If you're paying people to be around you, it's because you, at some level, respect the stuff they do.

Yeah.

Listen to them.

Yeah, the number two guy in his production company, after they cut like a sample teaser trailer, says, I don't think you're putting the focus on the right part of the trailer.

And

Shyamalan says to him, and again, this is someone that he's known longer than he's been making movies, has been with him since the beginning.

And he's like, why don't you go work at Burger King?

Oh my God.

Yeah,

you know what?

I'm glad he fell off.

He needed to be humbled.

Fuck.

Do we want to talk about this cookbook?

Oh, can we please talk about the cookbook?

Because this is my main crux of this guy thinks his shit don't sting.

Yeah, so this is a this to me is a guy who just read,

you know, the, what is it, the fifth or the s the I think the sixth Dark Tower book where Stephen King self-inserts himself as,

you know, a sort of pseudo-deity that helps, whose, that, whose prophetic writing helps keep all universes from collapsing.

And I think manages to come off way worse with a way humbler scope

with his character here.

What is his name?

Something Ran?

Vic.

Vic Ran,

who's writing a book called The Cookbook, which is

just his opinions on politicians and culture and stuff.

Some thoughts.

Who you are,

but you did something to me.

My thoughts.

If everything became clearer,

the fears that were muddling my thoughts just went away.

I can hear myself.

Do you wish to know your future?

A boy.

He's nodding.

The Midwest of this land will grow up in a home where your book will be on the shelf and spoken of often.

He will grow up with these ideas in his head.

He will grow into a great orator.

He will speak and his words will be heard throughout this land and throughout the world.

This boy will become leader of this country and begin a movement of great change.

He will speak of you and your words.

Your book will be the seeds of many of his great thoughts.

It will be the seeds of change.

The cookbook?

I'm her.

Yeah.

I'm A-Her, who I love, by the way.

I love A.

This is the point in the movie when I looked to see what year it was made because I had to know:

was this pre-Obama contemporary with Obama, post-Obama?

It would have been immediately pre-Obsides.

Yeah, but he was, I mean, he was like on the come up, but I definitely think he wasn't on the scene in that way.

He had, at this point, Obama would have given the one speech that made him kind of a big deal and was still like, what, a year and change out from entering the race

for

maybe a little less than a year.

I don't know exactly when this was.

And then, if you account for like production and stuff, like it's, it's not really there, but

I definitely had the thought of like, come on.

I, so, yeah, there is a promise at the start of this movie, like in all of these.

There's a promise at the start of the movie when you're walking around and there's radios talking about the war in Iraq, there's there's TVs playing helicopters,

just the war, right?

Sorry, they just say the war, but I'm from America, I know which war.

Yeah,

the uh, all of the wars, you know, multiple wars, I guess.

Um,

and

I don't, I just sorry, I just want to say the characters are also in America because this is in Philadelphia, right?

I don't know if we've said that, right?

Of course, yeah, sorry.

It's M.

Night Chamalana in Philadelphia, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, they, yeah, they mentioned at the beginning when Bob Balaban gets flown in from Hollywood to write for the newspaper about film and books.

Um,

uh,

but uh, you know, there's this prompt, like, and at the very beginning, the narration where it's like, you know, human greed and war, you know human nature has this part of them that is like giving into this dark thing and then they have all of the uh

tvs playing talking about war and then like it just doesn't come up like the thing the narf comes to sort of give everyone a little confidence

And it's like, what about the war stuff?

You should like when the cookbook, the cookbook really was the moment where I was like, oh, he's doing nothing.

Hey, man, these things take time.

Eventually, someone will actually do something when they read the thing i wrote the mega war is gonna go on for 20 years and then a kid's gonna grow up and be like we should stop this i i just i can feel fine to be awakened

the guy the guy it's just the guy

the guy who is so politically turbulent for America that he is assassinated for his views.

The person who's writing that character, like their

ceiling of change is you will inspire a good president.

And I'm sitting here in 2025 being like, I'm going to flush this guy down the toilet.

He's a mentor.

They never really get into.

They never really get into what the president is.

They just say great change.

I'm just saying, Vic Ram, don't go speak at that Utah College.

They don't say anything about what he actually believes other than what is happening now is not the right stuff.

So So, you can interpret great change as positive, inherently positive,

like instead of like horrible change, great change.

Yeah, well, I'm telling you, he's meant to be Lincoln.

He's an art, but Art already told us he's the least, he's the least political character.

Like,

almost every other character in that movie, I could, I feel like I could kind of put them on a political spectrum and like maybe take some stabs at like stuff they believe.

He is just a t-shirt mannequin.

And I also, I hate the way the camera follows him.

Like he is treated like a body that just says pretty things.

And it's really fucking, it's such a,

it's so,

I feel like.

He's not a good actor.

I feel like even if you didn't know.

that M.

Knight likes to be in his stuff, you'd be like, oh, that's probably the guy.

That's probably him right there, isn't it?

It's very weird how much bigger his role is here.

I thought that his cameo in the village is really nice.

But it's weird, like, the, the, the,

both in the village and in this, his own inclusion of himself as those characters end up undercutting what the movie is about.

Like, if, if this do you think so?

You don't think that it

enhances the village?

Yeah, well, because I think with the village, you end up missing sort of the, like,

the sort of, like, racial things that are going on and the sort of weirdness about like

it's a rich guy who's you know having who's paying for this this thing to happen to isolate himself because he wants to be a larper

or like the the like uh the the oh white people thing that was cut out yeah was like you know if that's supposed to be your like

that's what this movie is about type shit like you should have that be acted and performed by somebody that a character that the audience will connect with and identify with and be curious about instead of being like, well, there's M-Night again.

And I think that also happens in this movie where, like, if Vic becomes

a more charming performance or is, you know, as

easy to identify and connect with some of the other, you know, gag characters in this movie, instead of just being like, well, M-Night is the

fated writer who wrote Jesus

in a way like he's gonna die for for our sins literally

like you know that there there could be more there and if like the the sort of like

political

nail of this movie is supposed to be on that character you're missing this opportunity to not have that character be someone that like audiences actually care about besides like well there he is with this movie i totally agree he's the worst acted character in the movie He doesn't have a lot interesting to say.

His story is supposed to be moving.

You know, he gets told of his death and he goes, he, like, you know, solemnly accepts his mission to write about some kind of thing that would inspire some fucking president.

And, like, it has to be true because it comes from the Narf.

You know, and the Narf tells no tales.

And the Madam Narf.

The Madam Narf.

In the village, the thing that I like about, like,

you know, you finally see a not-white person when you get out of the construction.

Like, they have the constructed world, and then finally, there's someone who isn't white.

And then I really liked in the, I can't remember the review we read.

It might have been.

I wish I could remember whose review it was, but where they talked about how, like, the camera never even falls on him.

We only see him in reflections.

I can't even bear to look at him.

I even like the next level of it where, you know, instead of being shown as in opposition to

this sort of

class of billionaire LARPers, instead what you have is like, hey, man, I'm just a guy paid to hold this whole thing up.

Like, and the thing I'm concerned about is

like not being troubled or in trouble.

So just let me keep doing this job and don't bother me.

Like, I like that.

I think that that all works.

And this is the thing about M-Night is that

he has ideas.

He has ideas and they just kind of fall apart.

It's like they're the best bad movies I've ever seen.

They're like,

how does a bad movie look this good?

I don't know.

It's such a weird, and this is what I think causes this like intense negative reaction and also racism.

And also, uh, you know, it's it gets, I think, pretty easy to turn people against a movie

because uh, this was 2006, and critics did have some amount of power in shaping a narrative about a movie.

And this is a movie that looked at film criticism, and I cannot emphasize enough in the smallest brained way possible, said, film critics are dumb.

It is so stupid.

It is so stupid.

It's the worst thing in the whole movie, even if it does does have one kind of funny

thing.

It's like one step above like a crayon drawing of the guy with little stink lines coming off of him.

Like, oh,

he's a stinky little stupid guy.

Like, it's just, they just, they, every time I was like, wow, that was really heavy-handed.

He really laid it on thick.

There's just three extra layers waiting.

Just like, just like a little bit away.

Just wait a little bit more for the movie to keep going.

And then it's just like, oh,

you saw how beautiful and subtle my

handling of this character was before well look at this and then it's just a fucking 10 pound weight dropped on it um and then he's like the only person who dies in the whole movie yeah yeah he has a whole monologue about how he won't die because he can't even see life as anything but an unoriginal telling of something that already exists.

I hated that scene so much because it is just like a watered down, less well-executed version of every Randy scene in the Scream movies, where for people who aren't aware he's like a very genre savvy like horror nerd who will be like here are the rules and shit like that right um I've seen community

it's also like it's a bummer because

I

the thing that happened was I had what I think is a better version of the story in my head which was that like the

evil super apes were also among the tenants and it was gonna be like him and then like the guy who's like should humans exist or whatever?

Should man be saved, and then like maybe the mom or something.

They could be like the they could be like the evil apes who like, but the apes just

well,

the apes actually are evil.

I meant like if they're people in the building, they probably should make them not actually evil, because then that's a little bit weird.

Maybe, yeah,

you know, secret evil guys, that's a thing.

Secret evil, sure.

The apes hidden the monkeys.

The scrunts aren't evil, but the monkeys are evil, but the monkeys.

I thought the scrunts were evil.

They just obeyed the laws.

Well, this scrunt is evil.

Yeah, it's a rogue scrunt.

This is a rogue scrupunt.

It seems like all scrunts could be rogue scrunts if they are presented with a madam narf.

Yes, right.

It's crucial.

She is the madam narf.

The scrunts, the scrunts, I hate it so fucking much.

The scrunts always want to kill a narf, but they're so afraid of the monkeys that they won't break the rules to do it, unless it's a Madam Narf who they hate so much because of how powerful she is.

And you can tell from how deep of an impact she made on everyone that how powerful she was.

And also the fact that she started slowly going blonde or something.

She did go blonde.

She did go dying.

Yeah.

I also hurt that

her hair went white and she was really pale.

What is dying?

She was already really pale.

She wasn't white.

Yeah, this movie.

She was white, but you know.

This movie spends so much time, like

extreme close-up on her pale face, just sort of looking at everyone.

It's very weird.

Hey, what's up with the cover of this movie where the fucking witch from Narnia is?

Can I tell you?

I thought this movie had Tilda Swinton in it.

Who is the witch from Narnia, right?

That's Tilda Swinton, I think.

I think so.

Yeah.

Or what's her name?

I thought that she was going to eventually have some sort of power of the winter, but no.

No.

That's just

a winter.

She's Lady of the Water, not Lady of the Winter.

Come on.

Well, winter is just frozen water.

Nope.

That's what ice is.

All she has is her awakening and her silly little mermaid cave with all her little joke in it.

Look at that stuff.

Isn't it neat?

Oh, yeah.

That was a really early example.

Not really early, but like a really strong example of like, oh, you're not trying to be subtle.

I understand now.

I understand the rules.

I'm kind of rethinking now, though.

Maybe they should have.

Disney should have picked this up.

We could have got her in Kingdom Hearts.

This was a great level.

Let me run around this apartment.

A store on Goofy.

I'm going to say Little Mermaid didn't pop into my head for one second watching this.

Wow, that's crazy.

It is all I can think of in that video.

This Little Mermaid all over.

Wow.

She's literally Ariel.

I see it now.

She's red-headed.

She's collecting shiny stuff up from humans on the shore.

Yeah.

She

gets washed up.

She saves him.

Like, it's the whole thing.

It's all that.

It's all that.

It's all that.

Was anyone else, like, really stunned at how long Paul Giamatti could hold his breath in that?

Yes, I was.

Yeah, man.

And they again, very adventure game moment.

That was four minutes or something.

They even had him suck some air out of her glass, and it still was like, no way.

I laughed so hard.

I laughed so hard when he slurped his little cup of air.

Yeah, that was a good idea.

He knows how to use his lungs well.

Yeah, of course.

This movie spends so much time like fulfilling little quests that the fact that he wasn't able to like score some scuba gear from a tenant is like crazy.

And or a hose, just a hose, which you would have for a pool.

Or a hose, a hose.

Thank you, Janine.

A hose is all.

And

lampshading it to me with the glass only made it more obvious how goofy it is.

That's me.

That's just me.

And that's me.

Sorry, can I ask

what is the word for

the ape, the evil apes?

I didn't even write it out.

Tartuics.

Tartuic.

Tartutic.

Tartuic.

Okay.

Isn't there a name?

Narf?

Madam Narf.

I thought it was Tartutic.

I think it was.

Or Tartu, maybe.

Yeah, Tartu is a second tick.

Tartar Twig.

Tartu Tig.

Tartar Twig.

These are all Fake Amon.

These are all MNIT Shamalons Fake Amon.

Yeah.

They're for his Pokemon fan game called Pokemon Water.

And then at the end, Cremace shows up.

Yeah.

Called that book The Cookbook.

The cookbook.

And then he, again,

he's not good at lampshading because

every time he tries to play something off, like, oh, we know that this is silly, but we're doing it anyway.

Like, with the War of the Worlds thing from Signs,

it just draws attention to it for me where it's where, you know,

he goes, like, oh, it's called the cookbook.

Yeah, stupid name, right?

And it's like, well, yeah, you wrote the movie.

Why don't you come with a good fucking name, you idiot?

Or at least have the confidence in your stupid name to not acknowledge it.

It's like my number one thing that I hate as a game writer when games do, which is like when the character's like, man, this fight is going on for a really long time.

It's like, I know, you're just making me feel it more and I'm not going to be like, haha, funny.

We're so far past

when irreverent meta commentary is like cute and so deep into if you knew it was too long, then you should have made it shorter.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, you alienated everyone who told you to make that stuff shorter.

Something I said to check, it's a weird story from this book that apparently didn't make the movie because they were like, the day Jim Gaffigan was on set.

Huh?

I was like, Jim Gaffigan wasn't in this movie.

I would remember if Mr.

Hot Paul showed up.

He was the pool guy.

And then they didn't use it.

They thought that he and Paul Giamatti were like too similar in type.

That's so funny.

And they didn't mention it in the book, but they just recast and reshot it.

That's crazy.

I would have kept, I would have kept Gaffkin.

Apparently, it was very funny.

I mean, that scene does have...

The reason why the early movie of this is so

good, good in quotations that warm you up

is because there are all these like

kind of good comedy beats.

Yeah, it starts with a funny one.

It starts with Paul Paul Giamatti like squishing a bug in a cabinet with the camera seemingly inside of the cabinet and this group of the Hispanic sisters like screaming in the background.

He like hits the broom against the thing.

He does so long.

So much.

We're introduced to Reggie and his whole deal and his science thing.

Despite the like really stupid

lines that Bob Babylon is given as the critic.

Like he is shining in it with his like little glasses and his like constant like put upon stare.

I love Bob Babylon as the crouch.

Yeah.

It's just he's giving

the words.

Yeah.

I feel like I've seen him as like a nebbish serial killer more than once, and this performance was like kind of consistent with that.

Damn, that would have been a great reveal.

Yeah.

That would have been a

ta-ta-ta, whatever.

There was a brief, like everybody thinking to Tayok Boki,

which is food, so it's not that.

There was a couple minutes where the movie had me thinking that maybe

Balaban was a scrunt in disguise.

Oh, when he gets chased by the scrunt,

he hasn't found out he's not the guardian.

Yeah, he hasn't found out he's not the guardian, but the guardian thing of controlling the scrunt doesn't work.

And he trips and falls and Baliban's standing right there, like, what are you doing?

What's going on?

And like,

if you're going to have a critics are stupid movie, at least have them like actually be evil, you know, at least have him kill someone instead of be embarrassingly killed.

How cool would it have been if when that scrunt was chasing him, he just aped out?

And it's like, okay, well, you know, the critic is evil, but useful.

Much like the whatever the fuck, that thing.

Tartu Dick.

Was there anything in the book about this character in terms of like,

this is my response to yada yada?

He hadn't even been that critically slammed yet.

No, he hadn't.

I think one critic is probably too many for someone like that.

I mean, there is.

The village wasn't, like,

really disliked.

No, I don't think so.

It wasn't

mildly disliked.

Our arts

thing that he has said before is that like the village became worse in people's future, signs too, became worse in like future sort of reassessment of his work after like the happening and this, where people were really mad at him and then were like, and the village fucking sucked too, and so did signs.

I guess the village has a 44% rotten tomatoes, whereas Signs is 75, unbreakable, 76 cents, 86.

So he got criticized for the village.

The book presents Shyamalan going in the water, knowing that the village was flawed, and they sort of like released it anyway.

Okay.

And doesn't sort of account for

some sort of ego about this that comes up in this character.

No, but I mean,

they talk about

that this

multiple people suggest this character is not a great idea.

I agree with those people.

I think that's another note in the Disney meeting that they don't think that this is a smart

thing to do.

To have a

moron critic who draws out the movie for an extra 25 minutes by giving bad advice.

It's so funny that he's also a the curtains are just blue guy.

It's so fucking funny that the critic is just like everything is literal when he talks about the movie with one guy.

It's such a strange understanding.

It's like he hates critics, but he never read one.

Yeah.

It's

it's yeah, which is weird because, you know, he has a

film degree.

He's watched a lot.

He should be familiar with film criticism, you know?

Right.

In a way, if you're directing movies, you should be a film critic.

You might not be writing that stuff down

and publishing it.

But.

Do you have the clip of their conversation?

It's just.

I have the clip where he dies.

Whoa, okay.

I guess that's just as good because the one that I was asking about was the one where he was like, I saw this movie and it was bad.

People just walked around talking about their thoughts.

Who does that?

Who does that?

And the characters, they said they loved each other in the rain.

Who wants to stand around in the rain?

Like, and when he said that, I was like, okay, so they're going to be standing around in the rain later.

Cool.

Good to know.

This, it's like the absolute pinnacle

straw man thing.

Like, he has created a critic who doesn't exist.

Yeah, what is this?

He's a guy to make up to be mad at.

Yes, he made up a guy to be mad at.

In a couple of years,

five years later, eight years later, he could have remade this guy as like a 20-something YouTuber and it would have been.

It could have been a podcaster.

It could have been a podcaster.

It would have made more sense.

I mean, what was the...

There was a.

You might know this.

There was like, wasn't there, there was like a blog that did a lot of movie stuff

like back in the day.

Are you talking about Ain It Cool News?

Yeah, I think I'm talking about Ain't It Cool News.

It felt kind of like it was a character who was sort of more rooted in print media because that was still the more familiar thing to talk about.

But the kind of person he was mad at felt very

more modern.

I don't know.

I think it's maybe a mistake to look at it like

he's mad at specifically critics who panned a specific movie or something because it feels more like a response to critics who were like,

well, it's an M-night movie, but it didn't have a twist.

It was really predictable.

And like, where was the twist you know that kind of thing we were talking about earlier where like it feels like he was just mad at the kind of critic who is like just a know-it-all and instead of enjoying a work as a whole is being like well I wasn't surprised I knew everything that was gonna happen blah blah blah

I could imagine that being a thing that he was frustrated with that said it's a terrible character still and it was not it was not a good idea turns out but that's sort of my read on it like that kind of made sense to me in that context.

And it's also such a weird thing because, like, in that context, like, especially because you think 2016 and like

blogging is really just sort of hitting the thing.

And, like, you're right that he could have made him like a new media, a younger guy, like, you know, somebody who was more involved in the lives of the

neighbors and like also criticizing them and not being like this guy who is clearly writing for a newspaper.

You couldn't have a character be a blogger back then and have them be seen as like serious and it's a career, yeah, right.

So, even though it also was the only time where you could do it as a career, I bet his live journal would have popped off, yeah.

Uh, do you want to hear this guy?

I feel like that's what he's responding to.

I don't know, Connie West was blogging in 2006, right?

I think he had another job.

Yeah, he hadn't he was

another job,

he was uh making some music.

Oh, he's a musician, what does he play?

All right, M.

Night.

808.

Day over.

Do we want to hear this guy die?

Yes, Jean.

There we go.

I mean, no.

My God.

This is like a moment from a horror movie.

It's precisely the moment where the mutation or beast will attempt to kill an unlikable side character.

But

in stories where there has been no prior cursing, nudity, killing, or death, such as in a family film, the unlikeable

character will narrowly escape his encounter and be referenced again later in the story, having learned valuable lessons.

He may even be given a humorous moment to allow the audience to feel good about it.

This is where I turn to run.

You will leap for me.

I will shut the door.

And you will land a fraction of a second too late.

He was wrong.

He was super wrong.

Also, he didn't really move when he turned around.

He just turned around and then stayed still.

Now,

two things I like about this.

To be fair.

I like that

he delivers delivers it.

Bob Baliban delivers this like a mad scientist character revealing his ultimate plan in a

Beast B horror movie.

The other thing I like about it is that he has somehow internalized that he is in fact an unlikable side character in someone else's story.

It's so cute.

I also like.

The other moment that I like that I probably feel like is where we're seeing him realize this is like

the party that they throw, the cover for it is like we're gonna celebrate the new guy.

And him as the new guy goes to the party is like, thanks for throwing this.

This is really nice.

This is more than I expected.

And the people who threw the party are like, who are you?

Oh, this was a big tip-off for me.

I really like this because this is where I wrote in, I wrote down, um,

uh,

did the critic get everything wrong?

Uh, because he shows up, he shows up to the party.

Uh, this is right before everything goes wrong.

He shows up to the party and he's like, Oh, thanks.

And they stare at him like he, they're like, Who the fuck is this guy?

And he has to be like, or well, first he goes, and this is the part that I noticed, he was like, I never expected that you would throw me a party like this.

This is such a surprise.

I didn't see this coming at all.

Uh, and then they're like, Who are you?

And he's like, I'm the tenant in 13B.

And they're like, Oh, okay, cool.

And I'm like, I knew that they were going to do Critic is stupid thing because they've been sort of doing it all along.

But this is where I wrote down,

did he fuck up?

And did they get the wrong people?

Which I also, I think maybe, Janine, it was you that pointed out that that's also not really how it happened.

He, his analysis wasn't really wrong.

It was just that they collected the wrong people.

Yeah.

This is the part of the podcast where I do need to encourage everybody to listen to Chibamato's stereotype A, a song of which is playing in this party.

Oh, hell yeah.

I like this movie.

It's a very good album.

None of this.

God, that reminds me of this.

That reminds me that when you meet the Stoners, they're listening to a song out of an iPod commercial.

Whoa.

Whoa.

This is when they're talking about how it's worse than John Bon Jovi.

Yeah, I think so.

is that what they're debating about they're they were talking about someone named fred

who died

oh i have no idea and that doesn't mean that like other he's better than other artists just because he's dead but it like doesn't

i was like

is a crazy thing to say about anybody

i it it felt true about this movie to me

You'd rather listen to John Bon Jovi than watch maybe not for the full runtime.

No, I don't know.

I I think I'd rather watch Lady in the Wands.

It depends on how much

Bon Jovi I have to listen to.

It is tough.

If it's the full runtime, I think I'd pick this movie.

Allie, do you want to talk about some stuff that you like about this movie?

That's such a...

Wow.

Wow.

What a setup.

I really like Paul Giamatti's performance.

Yeah, me too.

I like the ensemble cast, despite them winning worst ensemble.

I like that it's a funny movie a lot of the time.

You know,

the fact that it's kind of a straightforward fable.

I mean, not very straightforward, but like...

It's straightforward in structure.

The actual fable is absolutely

ridiculous at every turn.

You know, M Night is really just sort of, you know, as we've heard about him, him

really being dedicated to having this movie come out, he's just really doing the damn thing, which is something I unfortunately appreciate.

I also really have like a soft spot for like

male characters who are in grief.

The scene where he's talking to his family, but talking to Story, like, makes me cry basically every single time.

You know, there's pros and cons.

That Chibo Mana song's in it.

God,

that kind of raises a thing I was thinking about earlier, which is like,

if M.

Night Shyamalan had been an AO3 team or even like a Wattpad team.

Oh my God.

I think he might have been born a little too early.

I think he's before his time.

Oh,

born in the wrong generation.

Crazy.

Usually we only hear that about people who want to go back and see the Beatles live.

I just think he would have written some really killer super hulak or whatever.

Whoa.

Is there killer super hulak?

You know, I'm sure there's some.

Yeah, if it hits, it hits.

I know for a fact that, I know for a fact that Janine doesn't know this, but that's the second Super Hulak reference on Media Club Plus.

Yeah, it is.

Which is very funny to me.

People are going to think we're teasing a Super Hoolock mega season.

I believe that at the time we said Media Club Minus, I wouldn't watch Supernatural if you paid me.

You got a like dark side of the moon with like you pick two of them and you watch them like in parallel.

Oh, wow.

See, that's coming to require,

so it's directly analogous.

So, I guess what I mean is, I wouldn't do, I wouldn't watch Supernatural if someone, in addition to Friends of the Table, said, I would give you extra money to do this.

There is no amount.

I did my time.

Yeah.

I watched nine seasons of that show.

You what?

You

ever dropped that before?

Oh, my God.

Did you guys not know that?

No, no, this is a bus listed as a couple plus.

Yeah, have I never mentioned that?

Are you okay?

Clearly, no.

I remember when I stopped watching that show.

I watched that show like most of high school.

What made you stop watching it?

There are more seasons.

There wasn't whatever crazy number you just said.

There's 15.

Oh, shut the fuck up.

Yeah, well, when the Leviathan storyline started, I was just like, okay, it's a bit much.

They should have ended it when he went to hell and died, personally speaking.

Did you watch the finale live when they reversed the gay?

I just saw, I just watched the scene.

They weren't the gay thing.

No, what they did is they confirmed the gayness and then they killed him immediately and sent him to Super Double Extra Hill.

They confirmed half the gayness.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And my bad, my bad, my bad, my bad, my bad.

They did the the Korra thing where they walk into a portal.

No, no, because one of them lived and I think it went on to have like a wife and children.

For

an extremely old

for an extremely old, probably pre-Friends of the Table stream friends episode, I watched some amount of Supernatural in what would you might call a proto-Media Club Plus.

And I found essentially no redeeming quality to any single moment of that show.

And can I tell you that to this day, it irritates me when people talk about how attractive Jansen Eccles is because I look at him like an undercooked steak.

That's how he looks to me.

And I hate when people are like, he's so hot and cool and he can do anything.

And I'm like, are we, what about this show made you feel this way about this guy?

Oh, my God.

Is it even a good procedural?

No, it's not even close.

In the first episode, they reference X-Files, and it made me so mad.

It's before I ever watched X-Files.

That's like I upgraded.

Yeah, I upgraded.

But I was 14 on the internet, and all the gay people I hung out with were talking about this show.

Yeah.

I'm going to check it out.

Gay people have bad taste.

That's really what it is.

It's true.

You have to module.

You can't just watch stuff because gay people like it.

It's not a good one.

It's a bad taste as good.

I like it.

Sylvie, what's your once sona?

Onceler sona.

I'm not that.

I didn't go that far.

I'm actually kind of hurt right now.

Is that the Lorax thing?

That's the Lorax thing.

Yeah, I was not party to that.

Though I did, I do remember being on Tumblr when stuff like Ask Walmart Cashier Once Layer was big.

Ask the Onceler Sperm.

I remember that blog.

That was a funny blog.

Once Lloyd's sperm.

This is what I'm saying.

At night really missed his time.

Yeah.

I think he gets bullied off there.

My mom listens to this podcast is what I just said.

Say, yeah, if you were ever wondering what I was doing when I was on the computer, really depressed, it was looking at these blogs and watching Supernatural.

I'm just picturing you at the Thanksgiving table now with your mom and your mom being like,

honey, what's a one slur?

No, I never let that slip.

I led two lives.

I never let that slip.

The closest she got was,

why did you order this t-shirt

when I got my homestuck t-shirt?

I'm sorry, no, I meant this year.

Oh, this year?

Oh, that might happen.

I meant next month.

Yeah, no, that might happen.

That might happen now.

I'll report back.

My brother also listens to this.

Shoutouts to you guys.

I can't believe that.

Don't ask me about any of this.

I can't believe that you watched more Supernatural than I watched Doctor Who.

I also watched Doctor who at the time because like obviously because well because obviously

and i watched sherlock but i thought sure i knew sherlock was bad the whole time

you had blinders for supernatural i mean i didn't really like it either but there was just something about it that was brain-numbing yeah i watched one episode of sherlock because people would tell you the the true the true superpower of supernatural was it was great to have on in the background while you were on the gaia online role-playing forums oh yeah when i was When I was yucking it up in old Barton town, this is hitting for somebody, I promise.

It was just Jensen Accles and the tall guy being completely uncharismatic in the background.

Yeah, I can't remember his name.

They're the brothers who love each other or something.

I know the character names.

They're Sam and Dean Winchester.

It's the actors who I don't know.

Name Adam something?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Should have worked.

I like that they killed the gay angel.

Put lid on the lady in the water.

Lady in the water, better than supernatural.

I'm going to say it.

I'm putting my stamp on it.

I will also co-sign that.

Again, this is what I mean.

Remind me to come back to this movie when we get to Jay and Silent Bob strike back in the Kevin Smith season.

Oh, interesting.

They're both movies about the relationship with critics.

Right.

Yes.

Yeah.

Kevin Smith maybe has a little bit more,

a little bit longer of a history of being upset with critics at this point.

That does not shock me.

Yeah.

It does not shock me in the slightest.

As someone who's only seen one Kevin Smith movie and mostly liked it.

Yeah, it's like

top four.

Dogma.

Keith recommended that I would like Dogma, and he was very.

Oh, I think you, yeah, that's funny.

I liked Dogma.

Yeah.

Dogma's fun.

I re-watched Clerks.

I talked about this already, but I re-watched Clerks for the first time in like 15 years, a year and a half ago, two years ago, and I was so much more impressed with it it than I feared.

I had this fear that I was going to loathe this thing from my past that was extremely important.

And then I was like, oh, this has, this is like more mature than I remember it, which is.

Put it in your pocket.

We'll get our next mini-season.

Yeah.

Maybe.

We don't get to decide that.

We don't get to decide that yet.

This fucking stupid.

What's up with this eagle?

The eagle?

Oh, that we, yeah, that's what I'm saying.

The eagle, every time the eagle comes up, I'm like, who gives a fuck?

Like, I don't know what it is about the eagle specifically, but when they're trying to, like, make things right for the eagle, I'm like, who fucking gives a fuck about the rules of the eagle?

Who gives a fuck about the rules?

They don't even say it's, like, a law that the eagle can only do it twice.

It's just like, the eagle's only going to do it twice.

Moody-ass eagle.

It's like an Uber driver.

Like, it's going to circle the block once.

The eagle had to get brought up in New York because it didn't like what was on the PVE.

I like that they don't show the eagle, I guess, at the very end.

You're see yourself.

They do.

No, no, they don't.

They don't show the eagle.

Not at the very end, but they show the eagle previously.

When?

No, they show it at the very, very end.

Wait, hold on.

The camera is in the water, and you see the water flicking and the fucking like...

Well, yes.

But that's

wings.

That's my version of them, but that's the only thing that's not even that.

Although they just show the full-ass eagle.

I don't remember what they were doing.

Yeah,

I feel crazy.

They do, right?

Yeah.

I'm happy to agree that you're right, and I was taking notes and just missed it.

I thought that it was a interesting, you know, it was

internally consistent that only the like guardian and the healer and the guild could see the eagle and no one else was allowed to see the eagle.

No, it's just a bird.

There's just a bird in there.

It's just a big ass bird.

I saw more of that.

He might not have realized it was like a moment because it is just a bird that is flying over stuff.

Because at the end, it's not like special in any way.

It's just a bird.

Well, maybe it's that they won't, they you're not allowed to see the eagle take her.

Maybe.

I don't know.

Again, you do see, but it is obfuscated by the water.

It's not clear.

She does say that he won't be allowed to see her go.

Yeah.

Story says that at one point.

Yeah.

But that's before she knows what his thing is.

Right.

But we, the audience, we're not the healer or the guardian or whatever.

So we can't see it.

But also.

I think we're all the guild.

You think that we're the guild?

Whoa.

Whoa.

Whoa.

Well, there were only seven members of the guild.

Yeah, and they weren't.

They're all sisters.

And I'm on the entire guild.

Oh, good point.

I'm also not a sister.

Can we talk a little bit about the creature design in this movie?

Because

it's

not a crazy thing to tell us about the scrunt.

The scrunt is practical.

It's not.

It's not.

I'm sorry.

It's not.

He's lying.

It's not.

It's probably.

I think it is probably semi-practical.

I imagine they had a puppet

and then they did some effects on it afterwards, which I do think.

Puts a mist on there.

Yeah.

It looks better than the aliens did in signs.

It was like

the same with the

apes at the end.

I think that is a totally fine effect for the most part.

I think the design is bad.

I think the design is bad, but I think that you can see them inhabit space better than you could.

I found a video.

Sure, maybe that's true.

I thought he was

the making of the scrunt.

Oh, my fucking God.

And the scrunt is right there.

It's just a scrunt.

It's just a scrunt.

That is the scrunt.

That is the scrunt.

This is unavailable on Discord, apparently.

Yeah, I clicked in.

Yeah, you have to go to full bigger.

I thought it was like...

So what I learned from the credits, what I learned from the credits is that

they had digital painters and effects artists and

a rotoscoper who drew over all of these, I guess, extremely practical puppets and made them look.

It's a robot.

It's like having to do all the work to make a practical effect without any of the benefit of having it look practical.

So it's sort of the worst of both worlds.

Tail moves beautifully.

There's some movement here that actually is really.

They lost a whole lot.

It's crazy.

Look at him running.

Oh my God.

That's literally what I just saw and was like, wow, okay.

Why isn't this in the movie?

It looks like shit in the movie.

Well, I think it might just look like shit because it's always in the dust.

It's so dark.

It's really dark.

Yeah.

I do need anybody who is going to watch this movie after the fact or just like

still has it on their hard drive or whatever to really pay attention to the scene where the Tartuic shows up and they are just lightly like slapping the scrunts back.

It's so funny.

So funny.

Because it's a very expensive robot and they might have to do other shits after this.

Something I found out by watching the credits is that legendary creature creature actor Doug Jones is one of those apes.

Oh, wow.

Probably very well known for his work with Del Toro.

He, you know, Lady in the not Lady in the Water.

Shape of Water.

He was the fishman in that.

Is that the monster fucker movie that I thought this was?

Okay.

He's the

Satyr in Pan's Labyrinth.

Yeah.

The Pale Man in that as well.

Just a shout out to my boy Doug.

I'm a big fan.

I know this is a good one.

He looks great.

They should do another Scrunt movie.

They should do a Scrunt movie.

Yeah.

They should have split.

They should have done Scrunt.

We should be able to remake Lady in the Water.

We should?

I don't want to.

Yeah.

You can.

That's good.

It's really a shame

that in

the

better lighting of a random fucking YouTube video

in 480, the Scrunt looks better than in the movie, which is so dark that you can't see anything.

Yeah, I was sure that these were that these were not

this, that it was not going to be so practical.

I think part of it is that, like, yeah, they use a lot of the things that if you were doing bad CG, you would use to hide your bad CG.

Right.

And I think we, to a degree, like, look at that and we're like, oh, they're hiding bad CG.

Yeah.

But it's like, no, they're hiding an amazing robot nightmare.

It's like if they shot it, like it's the

CGI shark from Jaws, except it's good.

Like the CGI, not CGI, sorry.

The cracker.

The robot that couldn't work.

Robot, yeah,

the one that didn't work.

Animatronic is the word.

Animatronic.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's very funny.

I'm really impressed by this.

This is better than the movie.

Sorry, I'm not saying that this YouTube video

video of a robot.

Yes,

video of a robot.

In Loving Memory of Moto Hata and David Fidel.

I don't know what that means.

Fidelity would have to be.

I assume those people died.

Oh, sorry.

I knew

that part of it.

I assumed they are people who worked at the effects shop

in some capacity would be Mike Us there.

Yeah.

Scrunt.

Any more thoughts about this movie?

Do we have

no?

I think I'm just going to be saying Scrunt from now till the day I die.

I don't know.

I'm going to do a friend of the table character called Narf Scrunt.

Please.

Oh my God.

What's on your mind?

This is a thing that I think I alluded to when I got angry at something earlier, but like

this movie,

I don't like, Keith, when you were mentioning like, oh, I thought it was cool cool that if you couldn't see the eagle, it was like you, because you weren't one of the people

as the viewer.

It's so it was excluding you.

This movie and like the way it ends to me feels very like,

it feels very like M-Night shouting at me, like, it's just a story.

It's not, you're not, you're, it's not, it's not your perspective.

It's just a story.

It's just a story, bro.

I'm just telling a fairy tale.

I didn't mean to flex on you, bro.

I'm just a vessel.

Like, literally.

But it feels like.

Oh my god, it needs that blade tweet.

It feels so aggressively like,

I'm just telling a story because I want to tell a story, and I'm going to tell a beautiful story, and you're going to enjoy the story.

And then it's just going to end because that's how stories end.

It doesn't, you don't need to see what happens to them after because the story's done.

It felt like very aggressively, like pushing that line in such a way that I think is part of what led me to that sort of end conclusion: like, right, I don't have to feel anything about this.

It's just, it's just stuff I saw that happened.

Weirdly, Janine, this is a hallmark of his movies so far.

Every single one of his movies has ended wildly abruptly.

I would, I think, probably none more abruptly than Sign.

No, Unbreakable.

Unbreakable for sure.

Unbreakable ends.

Ending of Unbreakable is unlike, it's on another planet from any other thing I've ever seen in a movie in terms of the rapidness of its conclusion and ending.

And then Signs in the Village are the same way.

They like get through the climax, and then they go,

you know, they do a quick check of who's alive, and they have one emotion, and then the movie ends.

There's no falling action, there's no nothing.

It's just

Denumal is hard.

Apparently, apparently, for one guy I know, it's hard.

I've personally never seen anyone else do this as a

stylistic choice.

I don't know.

It's almost like

a chef who burns their food and calls it a stylistic choice to me.

I really reject it.

Those are strong words.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't like how these movies just fucking end.

It's insane to me.

I'm thrilled with like formally experimental movies where they don't just like hit you with act one, act two, act three.

But when you are doing something that isn't that and it doesn't work, and then you keep doing it, I'm like, he thinks something about this is working.

I don't know what it is that he thinks is working about just ending your movie.

The shock of the shock of it just ending, of like having it end in a high moment, and then

you know, I'm imagining a situation.

I mean, imagine

that this bears no, this bears no reality or truth, but just the idea of like the movie ends and it ends in a moment of like plot intensity, and then M-Night turns around and looks at you in the screening room and is like, What do you think?

And you're just like, Uh, because you're like stunned.

And it's so easy for me to imagine a situation where that has been interpreted as like awe and not just kind of like confusion at the intensity and then immediate drop-off.

Uh,

I feel like maybe it's a thing he started doing a long time ago that got a lot of like loud feedback, mostly positive, of like, whoa, that was crazy, man.

And then it just sort of becomes a thing that you do because

you're trying to evoke things in people.

I don't know.

I can say that I recognized the abruptness of the ending in The Sixth Sense and in The Sixth Sense episode said, I really don't like how this movie ends and it ends so quickly.

And at the time, I think I was the only one who said that.

And then each successive movie has ended the same way.

And and I've just been kind of stunned by it each time.

I like it in the sixth sense and I do think it could work if the movie like calls for it and if the movie is strong enough for it but I just don't think he has really done anything that I have considered strong enough to work in that way.

By far the sixth sense is the least egregious of these.

For sure.

Yeah.

Definitely, definitely for sure.

And I think it like fits with the like, I don't know, like there's like thematic ways to.

Because that movie ends with the like bright white light, doesn't it?

And actually I'm just think you can

sorry, go ahead.

I was just gonna say, like, you can interpret that as what is his name, David, Bruce Willis's character, like moving on.

Right.

No, David is David is unbreakable.

I don't remember.

David is unbreakable.

I don't remember.

Malcolm.

Malcolm.

Thank you.

Like, you can interpret that in a different way than just the movie ending, but all of these are just.

Thanks for enjoying my twisted tale.

Art, do you need a few minutes?

I think that we're close to wrapping up, but if you want, if you're like, I'm going to go,

we can.

I mean, the bedtime's in five minutes.

Does anybody feel like we can't wrap up in five minutes?

I'm out of things to say.

I was going to say, I feel like Sylvie gave you a pretty tidy wrap-up thing with the Twisted Mind bookend.

I agree.

This was another story by my Twisted Vibe.

We do have to do reviews.

We do.

I should get that.

I was unprepared.

Sorry.

Okay,

While you get that, I will just say that editing signs, I realized in it that we said we were heavily criticizing the flashback

during the climax.

And I don't remember who said it, but we all sort of

agreed with like, don't show me the movie in the movie.

We just saw this.

Sixth Sense does end with a flashback also.

And in the Sixth Sense, it kind of works.

Having him go through and realize that he's a ghost, that works in that movie.

And then it just feels like he just plucks things that worked and puts them into

wrong situations, like a weirdo.

The Sixth Sense is a better movie than Science.

Yeah, for sure.

For sure.

I don't want to get too controversial here, but I think that's the big thing.

I really like that.

I really liked it.

I was so excited for him when I guess I'm sort of reliving his career because a lot of people were a lot excited for him.

And then suddenly.

Keith, do you have any predictions about the happening?

Yes, I know plants.

I know about the plants.

I know about the Wahlburger of it all.

And, oh my God,

what's happening?

What's happening?

What's happening?

Oh, God.

It's just me and my wife, Zoe DeChanel.

It's okay.

These plants.

They don't mean you any harm.

I don't know about these plants.

This is a really good impression.

Just trust me.

100%.

So I think that weirdly, and I've talked about how I've confused these movies in the past.

I thought that the village was going to be a movie about people going to a village.

I now think that the happening is going to be a movie about people going to a village.

And I know that there's plants.

You know, I bet that this movie is

a...

Oh, why am I blanking on this?

In a video game, when you have to babysit a character so that they don't die.

Escort mission?

Escort mission.

I think it's going to be a whole movie that's an escort mission.

Interesting.

Interesting.

I have a review here from that.

It's just a little quick one.

We got a longer one that is more relevant to M.

Night Shyamalan, but because we're under the gun, I'm just going to read this quick one.

From Days I May, titled, Insert Clever Title Here.

This review is a five-star review for a show that deserves more than five stars.

Insert the best review you've heard here, and it will be an approximation at best for what this podcast deserves.

And if you want to write a review that is also basically just this, go for it.

It doesn't have to be that snappy.

Yeah, it will just be this.

We're so lazy review.

I mean, Sylvie might not pick the lazy review to read every time and likely won't, but

we are pro, you know, conceptually, we're pro the lazy review.

I can read Demon World Theory M-Night Edition, but I'm worried it will give us more to talk about and it's 10.30 p.m.

Yeah.

I think that's everything.

Next time we're back with The Happening.

And after that, I don't even remember what after Earth.

Oh, after Earth.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

I'm pretty sure, right?

uh yeah that's what we're gonna do there is the last airbender in between we're skipping last airbender but maybe check the patreon content burger no uh francatable.cash i've been doing both a lot i

we'll see we can we can talk about that we'll not i will be on that arts art happens there you go i'm curious art wanted to do a watch along not a full thing which feels like so much less work i was gonna yeah i was gonna suggest that would actually be kind of I was gonna suggest that exact thing of doing a watch along where some people can get the audio.

Might be done.

That'd be sick.

Okay, so more info on that potentially happening next time.

Bye.

Oh, Gene, thanks for being here on your Media Club Plus debut.

Yeah, thanks.

Okay, bye.