Ep.#458 - Snow White, with Rebecca Alter

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Now, the show.

On this episode we discuss Snow White.

Snow White, a beautiful achievement in the art of animation, and then there is this movie.

Rare meow.

Swords that was.

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flop House.

I'm Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington.

I'm Elliot Kalen, and who are we joined by today, Daniel?

We are joined by Rebecca Alter, who is a staff writer at Bulture, my favorite pop culture site these days.

Hello, Rebecca.

Aw, thank you very much.

I like that qualified recommendation these days.

Hey.

There's been great ones in the past, the golden years of the AV Club.

Dan was just like being careful in case fucking Columbo wandered in and was like, oh, well,

you used to read the AV Club a lot.

Actually, it says here, you said that you like the Dissolve the most.

The Dissolve was great, yeah.

But these days, yeah, I go to Vulture first and foremost.

All right, I'll buy it.

I'll buy it.

Rebecca, thanks so much for joining us today.

Now,

were you chomping at the bit to get get at Snow White?

Is that why this is the episode that you're joining us for?

Actually, I think originally

I suggested Unfrosted way back, and then I fully got like laryngitis and could not speak.

And I think I left Dan a voice note being like, I can't talk.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's true.

You had watched Unfrosted like three times in preparation.

Oh, yeah.

I thought this was a good movie podcast.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but you thought you were coming on the Unfrosted Minute, where we go through Unfrosted a minute at a time.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

What a, what a torturous existence that would be.

Systmus is like, oh, thank God.

I did appreciate that you left a voice note to prove that you had laryngitis.

So you weren't just like, I don't know.

I saw unfrosted.

I decided to pull the ripcord on this one.

See ya.

You know, it was like, no, I'm sick.

You know.

Yeah, doctor said I had nodes.

Nodes.

Nodes.

Oh, no.

The doctor said, under no circumstances can you talk about unfrosted.

It would be evil in your condition.

Yeah, they were just hired by Jerry Seinfeld to shut me up.

Yeah, big Seinfeld has a lot of tentacles in the American medical establishment.

A year after Unfrosted was released, we was like, we got to close the door on

the bad word of mouth on this one.

Yeah, staunch the bleeding.

Well, yeah, so.

We did a makeup.

We decided to watch Snow White.

And what do we do in this podcast, Dan?

Well, this is a podcast where we watch a pad.

Established.

Okay.

There's at least a hundred great ones out there.

We are not one.

So much is clear.

And then we talk about it.

This was, of course, the latest in Disney's

hunger for shitting all over their

animated classic.

I was going to claim the strip mining of their legacy, and I thought that was too harsh, but you went even farther.

I mean, now,

was this one that you suggested, Dan, or Rebecca, is this one that you were like, I can't wait to watch this thing?

It's actually both.

Dan suggested it, and I was sort of like, I can't wait to watch this.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you both then, I guess.

I mean, you, you write a lot about theater at Vulture, among other things.

And this is, this clearly has a desire to like tap into like, oh, there's a resurgent of love for musicals.

We're going to combine the old old songs that you loved from the original with some really terrible new ones.

Well, and they're going to pump up the old ones.

Like they added, they added beats to those old ones.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it's Pasich and Paul who are the mastermind songwriters behind such beloved things as Deere Evan Hansen.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Damn like that one.

That's, yeah.

So they've got a great movie track record.

As seen in a previous Flophouse episode, exciting episode.

I guess also Lala Land.

Oh, Lala Land.

one's going to stand the test of time.

Now, did you guys?

So, and the screenplay, or I guess it's a musical you could say, the book of this.

It's really a Schrödinger's comment you made to her.

And the screenplay was written by Aaron Cressada-Wilson, who also wrote Secretary and

other movies along those lines.

And so I was, that was something I didn't realize till afterwards.

And I was like, I assume that they wanted to bring someone in who could write a strong female voice, but I really wish they had leaned into the secretary aspect a little bit more in this version of Snow White, you know?

And it's about Gal Gado secretarying Snow White.

I guess so.

There is a, I mean, was I the only one?

That's been added to Webster, right?

Secretarying somebody?

Yeah.

Or Urban Webster.

It replaces secretariating, which is when you make someone be a racehorse for sexual reasons.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, there is a fucking saddle on secretary.

I guess it all connects.

It does.

The yarn.

Well, I'm going to be handling the plot today.

So speaking of the yarn, let's spin a tail.

So do you guys have a lot of experience?

Like, do you have like a good relationship with the original?

A good relationship.

Yeah.

Or the or the like Snow White and the Huntsman's?

There's like three of those.

There's a bunch of that.

Yeah, there's Mirror Mirror was one of them.

Yeah.

That was, that was the kind of.

Have any of them been like bangers?

Have any of them been awesome?

The original at first Disney Snow White, the cartoon one is pretty good.

Gorgeous to me.

Like, it has elements that I understand why for this movie, they're like, okay, well, let's update this or whatever.

Although, in almost every case that they do it, I think they do it poorly.

So you're in a position where you're like,

I wish I was watching that retrograde version of this story.

Yeah, otherwise, I don't know.

Well, it's also, it's so sad because the original was the first feature-length animated, but I know technically that's not true.

And like,

there were, there was some, like, alternative styles of animation in the 20s or whatever, but this is considered like the first, it's the first feature-length Disney anyway.

And that animation is like more sophisticated than the animation in this movie, which to be clear is like 95% still animation.

It's just like bad animation.

No offense to anybody who worked on it.

I'm sure you all tried really hard, guys.

And they, them.

I'm sure they're not offended now.

But,

no, we were watching it, and Audrey was like,

this is what it would look like if you just fed the old Snow White into an AI and was like, make a live-action looking version of it.

That's the

saddest aspect of it to me.

And we're jumping, I feel like we're jumping ahead past the movie into Final Judgment in some ways, but well, is that the visual style of the original is so is so beautiful and unique for what it is.

And the visual style of this just feels like it's that same general heavily, heavily CG, everything's kind of oranges and browns and a certain type of blue and

weird rounded shadings.

And the lighting doesn't look like it exists in a real world, but instead in a sort of like

fake simulated world.

It has that kind of AI visual style feel to it, which is very strange to come from Disney, which at its best is innovative.

And it's uncanny and soulless, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, I think these live-action remakes are so spiritually similar to AI for me, even though they're not.

There's something about

remake this thing,

feed it through compute.

Like, there's something so anti-creative, like just the impulse to make these at all.

Yeah, it's just too bad.

It's just too bad that this is what they have to do because the original idea minds went dry years ago.

Yeah, the dwarves mind them.

The earth's resources for original ideas.

I mean, they said that

we were hitting peak original idea during the spec screenplay boom of the 90s, and they were right.

It's been just going down ever since then.

And now we have to look for alternative sources such as remakes.

It is weird because this is a movie where the running theme is that there's this bountiful world we live in, and you can harvest it to a certain amount.

And you're talking about a situation where they have strip mined all the ideas completely.

Yeah, well, they were talking about how you can harvest the bountiful goodness of the Disney back catalog.

That's what they're saying.

That's what they've done.

Well, speaking of this bountiful goodness, that takes us right in there because that's the first unnecessary song of the film.

I mean, every song is unnecessary if you think about it.

But so it's, why not have them in?

But let's talk about the movie, shall we?

I'll take you through a little movie called Snow White.

So we start with, as always, a hedgehog sleeping on a storybook, and some squirrels open up the storybook.

This is clearly harkening back to the bus.

They got like real animals to do this shit.

They've got real animals that they trained, and then they put makeup on them to make them look like CGI animals.

they're all wearing CGI prosthetic suits.

Little makeup, the little mocap suits.

Yeah.

The mocap suits and mohair suits.

And so these

squirrels open the book, clearly hearkening back to the early Disney movies, which started with those storybook openings.

And that storybook has a voiceover that tells about how there was a virtuous king and queen.

No such thing in my opinion, but a virtuous king and queen who want a child.

They get a princess during a snowstorm.

And

the implication is that he looks out the window and he's like, I think I have the name for this little thing.

Yeah.

The implication is that the princess kind of like that they found it in the snowstorm, not that it was born in a snowstorm.

Because it's, you know, they don't want to talk about like, it was a hard labor in a carriage in a snowstorm, you know.

There's so much placenta in that carriage right now.

Oh, they had to, they just stripped out the lining and they had to refurbish the whole interior of the carriage.

Yeah, you never get that smell out.

And they name her Snow White because she was born in the snow.

And they teach her about love and generosity.

And they sing that song about it, about the bountiful goodness, if that grows in the earth.

And they also look into a wishing whale.

And this song goes on for a long time this is a long song there's a little choreo though you get some stuff to look at there's a lot choreo but very ugly very choreo clapping and i i feel like what they well a lot of clapping and stomping at different points and there's they are going for

i feel like you can watch a disney movie now and you know exactly what kind of song they're trying to get with each of their songs and they they're i think they're trying that the content is a little different, but they're trying for the feeling of the opening of Beauty and the Beast, where Belle is singing about being in that town.

You see all the people in the town, and it's so amazing.

It's such an amazing song, and it's such a great sequence.

Then the coolest dude in the fucking world shows up, Gaston.

And then we get a really cool song, finally.

Yeah, finally.

That is absolutely what they're trying to do.

But the thing about that song is it's not just a big opener, it is establishing things about the story.

Whereas and the characters, yeah.

Yeah, this is like a completely extraneous extra song.

Well, you could say it's a thematic song, that it's trying to set the theme for the movie, but the movie doesn't play off that theme, really at all.

So it is very extraneous in some ways, but we also get to see that Snow White's a nice little girl who hands out pies and things to people.

And

because monarchy, it rationalizes itself by providing a pittance to the people that it leeches off of.

But also, this pie thing, I realized later on, it's like, oh, the point of like the pie people.

I'm gonna put my thumb over here.

I'm gonna stick in my thumb and pull out some screenplay stuff.

I'm glad you're sticking your thumb in.

I thought you were a Jason Biggs for a moment.

How dare you, sir?

Yeah, hi, Chris.

No, this

I realized later on, like, this is to layer in the thematic significance of the apple later on.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I'm like, we don't need the backstory for why an apple is what is being used, you know, to put her to sleep.

Like, it could just be an apple.

Really, a strange, strange stance for backstory-loving Dan McCoy to take.

Well, they don't think modern audiences would understand why a young woman would take a bite out of an apple unprompted when handed to her by a weird old crone.

Instead, they're like, shouldn't it be like a bag of Takis or something?

Oh, the Snickers.

At least that would explain why it turns into a skull sometimes.

It's like a lenticular bag of Takis.

That's how they make it glow blue.

So we flash forward.

Snow White's mom dies, has to.

It's a Disney movie.

Her dad marries a beautiful evil witch with a magic mirror.

Everything about this woman screams evil all the time in a way that should, like, ideally would, again, they want it to sit in a classic Disney villain world where the villains are just kind of like outwardly villains and are super melodramatic.

And let's face it.

almost always coded as either gay or

or like in some way melodramatically queer or something like that or burlesque or something like that.

And here,

the queen takes over the kingdom and sends the king off to war and you're like, yeah, she's evil, right?

Like, everybody gets that she's super evil.

And I guess the implication is just that she is like, this dad is so thirsty for this queen that he's going to do whatever.

And I wonder if,

I wonder, maybe I'm the only one who's picking up.

Dude, she's the fairest in the land.

She's the fairest.

This, this, like,

even a much higher, maybe it's that secretary writing in there, a much higher psychosexual dynamic running through, subtext running through this.

And like that, her need to be the fairest in the land become, feels at a certain point to me, become so much like that she wants snow white so badly you know and it's a and it's it's not that she wants to be the most beautiful most powerful so much as like she needs to she needs to possess her in a way maybe i'm imagining that i feel like i'm falling down on my job as purvozoid number one because like i did not pick up on any of that.

Oh, okay.

Well, then

we try and pretty

much all at the same time.

I mean, it might just, maybe, it might just be because I've been writing the Harley Quinn book and they're literally the bad guy is like lusting over.

She's lusting over Harley all the time.

So maybe I'm just imagining the Harley Althea relationship in the queen and and Snow White that could be I mean ultimately that's one of the things that I miss the most when they translate these animated movies to these digital slot movies um is the like horniness that's injected by like lonely animators

like you watch like hunchback and notre dame and you're like damn these guys are fucking hard oh yeah well i mean like because you got that whole song about how hot

the lead the lead actresses uh so we have like eight minutes of voiceover.

It goes on for a long time, this voiceover, to tell the story.

But we finally leave the voiceover when Snow White, she's become a servant, imprisoned in the castle by the queen.

She is mopping up when a handsome thief, we'll learn his name, Jonathan, no less name, shows up and steals some fruit from the kitchens.

He briefly privilege shames Snow White and tells her to stop just thinking about helping others and start actually helping others.

Y'all, what do you think about this guy?

I don't like that he has like a little, like a little hoodie on under his jerkin.

And I also don't like his like fuckboy behavior, dude.

Like he's constantly shaming Snow White.

And I'm like, but she's like in the running for Fairest in the Land and she's a princess and she's like the daughter of the dude you love.

Well, also the fact that when he sees her, she's literally mopping the floor.

So it's not like she's doing something particularly princess-y.

He does not know that she's the princess at this time.

He thinks that she lives in the castle, but he does not know that she's like, because he's not.

Then it seems even weirder for him to shame her because if he thinks she's just a servant in the castle, it makes sense because then it's like it's his own insecurities later on when he finds out she is the princess and he's like, oh, I liked you, but now you're the princess and you're out of off limits or whatever.

Okay, I get it now.

I like

this character.

Classic.

I like this character in theory.

Like they're basically just porting over Robin Hood and sticking him in as like the love interest rather than just a prince, you know?

and like it gives at least something for this guy to care about.

It gives him a thing, yeah.

Yeah, and, you know, like in a movie that still buys into the idea of like benevolent rulers, like at least it gives some sense of like, I don't know, the underclass, but he is a boring guy.

He's a boring guy.

He's very handsome.

He's got a great voice, but I feel like the character is boring, but also the character keeps sliding back and forth between, I do this for the king.

Actually, I'm just a thief.

I don't believe in anything, but I do love the king.

No, I'm just a thief.

I don't I don't have any ideals.

Is he a theater guy?

Is this actor a theater guy?

Yes, he is.

Yes, I believe so.

What's his name?

Andrew Burnap?

That's Andrew Burnap.

He's done a lot of Shakespeare.

He got a Tony Award for the inheritance.

Oh.

Yeah.

We also glossed over the fact that we also get a backstory.

which I'm sure we all needed about why Snow White has a bob.

Wait, really?

I missed that part.

Well, because in the original, she just sort of has a chic little bob and it goes on.

Modern haircutting for the time.

And in this, they have to be like, well, we need to explain

why.

What's the explanation?

That the

Galgado cuts it off with a sword.

As a show of dominance, she cuts Snow White's hair.

You know, as a way of saying, you're mine now.

I possess you with all the rights and privileges that entails.

It's all in there, Jane.

I'm also a horny animator.

I guess it's weird when you're a horny live actioner.

That's the troubling thing.

Arguably, that's more normal.

Yeah, and you're just any director.

I guess that's true.

You're every director that's ever worked in film.

Yeah.

So she asks the queen, she goes, I got to help the people.

They're struggling.

Queen, can I bake some apple pies for people?

And the queen is like, no, the people need a hard leader who's made of steel.

And she sentences the thief, Jonathan, to freeze to death by being tied to the front gates of the palace.

And Snow White's like, give him clemency.

And Snow White sings a song about wanting to escape her fate.

And is she going to be the girl that her dad said she could be or something?

And she freezes out of her.

Before you freak out, these old fairy tales were full of fucked up shit.

Yes.

Freezing a thief is pretty normal.

This song.

Oh, yeah, you're in a fairy tale.

You freeze a couple thieves just by 9 a.m.

Yeah, you get it.

Then by noon, it's a lot of cutting kids' fingers off and pulling the eyes out of fishermen.

The road is littered with frozen things.

There's just a guy walking around with a sausage stuck to the end of his nose saying, kill me, kill me, please.

Yeah.

This song essentially also replaces Someday My Prince Will Come.

Yeah.

And I understand

the desire to do this

because

they want to give the female lead more agency and not be just like, I'm waiting around for some dude to like come.

But I would argue that the song that they replace it with is not a good pick for that because she's it's like singing like waiting on a wish.

And it's like, okay, so you're still waiting for some like magical outside force to help you rather than you doing something.

Like if that's the goal of the learning.

But that's the lesson she's learning in the movie.

She's the lesson she's learning in the movie.

She can't just wait for a wish.

You got to make a wish happen.

Yeah, I just want to say that.

Like the movie Wish.

The Disney movie, Wish.

Another great mining of

just sort of the idea of Disney IP.

Yeah, that was, it's so cute where they're going to celebrate 100 years of Disney, but just kind of making a thing that feels like other Disney stuff, but it's not, it doesn't reference it at all, you know?

Yeah.

Anyway, so I hate to interrupt you guys, but let's get back to the story this morning.

Sparks of conversation.

So she frees the thief, and he runs off, and he goes, you know, you can leave the castle with me.

And she's like, nah, I'm not going to.

But the queen saw Snow White do this, and she has her magic mirror.

The magic mirror, which is the most CGI looking element in the whole thing.

I don't mind that, though.

I don't mind it so much, but I wish that they like, I don't know, made it look cooler.

The magic mirror in the original movie looks so cool.

Like, it's such a eerie, spooky thing, you know?

I agree with that, but I also feel like all of the stuff surrounding the mirror and the evil magic is the stuff that looks best in the movie because it is borrowing most directly from the way the original movie looked.

So even though it's a pale copy, I'm just like, oh, well, this, you know, this looks cool.

And so she asked the mirror, who's the fairest of them all?

And the mirror is like, not you.

And she's like, what?

And so as in the story, she takes a huntsman.

She goes, she sits out her drink.

All over the mirror.

Who's the fairest of them all?

Not you, my queen.

Oh, okay, great.

That's good.

Whoa!

It's all over the mirror.

The mirror has a magic hand that comes out and wipes its face for your dead pan.

Clean the mirror with Windex.

And the mirror's like, oh.

Don't get it in my mirror eyes.

Yeah, yeah.

I would love all that.

I mean, why is there never, there must have been like a big slapstick, goofy version of Snow White at some point, right?

Well, there was a Betty Boop one that came out around the same time as the Disney one that was very slapstick.

I bet it was pretty slapstick, and I bet Cab Calloway was probably in it.

That was a great thing.

Oh, you know, they had the rotoscope machine going on.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

I remember as a kid seeing those cartoons and not knowing how they were made and just loving them, but being so confused by how suddenly the animation suddenly became so smooth.

And again, also how the cartoons would suddenly stop for Coco the Clown to become a jazz singer and just have and just sing, sing a swing song and then go right back to the movie again, to the story again.

I'd be like, what is going on here?

It gets so eerie.

You're like, the movement suddenly became so natural, even though his legs are getting so long and short.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

Like a regular Pedro Pascal.

So

she orders the huntsman, take Snow White to the apple orchard.

Then you're going to kill her and bring her heart back in a box, which is, I guess, where the, where the, I guess that's the inspiration for the Nirvana song Heart Shape Box, right?

That's normal.

Yeah.

Can I pause here quickly to say that I've brought you guys an offering?

This better be a human heart.

Oh, this is amazing.

What is

it?

Hold on.

It's a Disney promotional live-action Snow White popcorn bucket.

Oh, wow.

It looks like the box from the movie that the heart is in.

I will say,

how much you can fit a fair amount of popcorn in that.

Dan is already like, how would I have sex with this thing?

Cold down, dude.

Yeah, you may have seen Rebecca online doing some popcorn pocket reviews.

She's on the

journalism is really thriving, you guys.

Well, I just got to play with the Galactus one, which is approximately 20 inches tall and two feet wide, and its eyes glow.

I mean, that's a lot of popcorn right there.

My arm goes all the way down it.

That's incredible.

wow.

So it's like it's as close as you can get to a bottomless pit of popcorn.

Pretty much.

But yeah, this, the Snow White box, it's a bit more humble.

I kind of like the box shape.

I feel like that would be

in some ways a lot easier.

You're not like a strap, so it's kind of like a trough.

Yeah.

Anything that falls while you're trying to eat it just goes right back in the box.

It's a virtuous cycle.

You could fit like two hearts in there.

Thank you.

All future guests.

Now, take note, bring offerings.

That's delightful.

So the huntsman takes Snow White to pick apples, but he can't bear to kill her.

She's just too nice and too fair.

He tells her, run away.

And she runs in the dark forest and she's pushing past trees and owls and bats are flying at her.

And I kind of like this part.

I mean, I love this sequence in the original movie.

This is one of the places where I think the unreality or the uncanny value reality of the AI type visual style works a little bit more because it feels so

hallucinogenic.

It feels so fantastic.

Fantastic.

It's like the moment where they're like, hey, it's similar to some of the stuff with the mirror where they're like, hey,

we can kind of do anything with this technology.

Let's play around with it instead of trying to desperately try and make it look real.

Yeah.

And this is, this is when the movie most closely resembles Valerie's Week of Wonders, you know, the Czech fantasy film.

So I was like, oh, that's good.

Okay.

Of course.

So she eventually she falls.

I think they said they were intentionally referencing that, right?

Oh, yeah, probably.

Press material.

So she falls through a pond.

She befriends a ton of CGI woodland creatures.

There's just like a shit ton of chipmunks and squirrels and deer and little birds and stuff.

And she follows this deer to a cottage, and rabbits lead her into the cottage.

So if the police arrest her for breaking entering, she'd be like, the animals did it.

It wasn't me.

And she falls asleep across some very short beds.

Who could these beds belong to?

I mean, there are names written on the the beds.

Names are like carved into them.

Yeah.

This is when we enter.

Enter the what would have been the titular seven dwarfs if this was still called Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

It's just called Snow White.

And of course, they sing Hi-Ho, but it's like a supersized version of the Hi-Ho song.

Like it's got so many more verses.

They go to a mine, they're racing around in mine.

Pit Bull has a fucking verse, right?

Oh, yeah.

It says

seven dwarfs feet pit bull.

Yeah.

It's about living in Miami.

I don't know.

I want to say about these songs, though, even the, even the, look, I don't like the new songs.

I feel like an old man saying it.

Like, the ones that are funnier, I like it.

To be a man in your 40s and to be like, this song in a children's movie is not as good as the song in the older children's movie.

I don't like these pop-style show tunes.

I want the old style.

I don't.

I just, yeah, I'm not as fond of it.

I mean, these are songwriters.

I apologize to them, I guess, in the, out in the world.

I generally don't like that much.

But,

but even the older songs that I do like,

I found the orchestrations of them really bad.

Like, there was something bad about it.

And, like, the way it was mixed.

I mean, I don't know any of that stuff.

I thought there was a very prominent banjo in the mix that I was picking up on.

And there's nothing.

There's nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing wrong with that.

Well, I think that was during Hi-Ho.

I remember the banjo, and that was one of the few things I was like, oh, this is fun.

This feels right for these dwarfs.

I'll say Hi-Ho, I felt like was one of the more successful song re-dos in this, if only because, like, it's still fun, the energy's up the whole time.

It goes on for a long time, but like, and they're using it to introduce the different characters' personalities because otherwise it would be impossible to tell what Grumpy is like, or sleepy, or sneezy.

There's no way of knowing what they're like.

I mean, sure, there's their names, but

unlike in Silly Song, they didn't add like a little crude, like extra verse in there.

Did you, I was like, Ellie's going to hate this.

You didn't clock that.

They, they had like some sort of off-color joke right in the middle of the revamped, you know, ding dong, a silly song.

Oh, I don't remember that part.

You know, I was also, I was taking notes and doing the dishes while watching this.

So I didn't, maybe I'm not picked up all the nuances.

So, but I did notice they race around in minecarts, like it's Donkey Kong Country.

Love that.

Love a minecart race.

Can't kick out enough of those.

And I will say this about the dwarfs.

They look scary.

Did you guys feel this way?

Like, I feel like their design is very off-putting and very, like, very, um,

just, I imagine a child being scared by them.

They're abominations.

Like, it's truly one of the worst-looking things I've ever seen.

And it's not bad like it's lazy because it's a very specific

character design that I've

never seen anything quite like this before.

And I found them really repulsive.

Like, even their skin was full of these, these big pores but it and it looked waxy and their faces were it was horrible they look like lawn gnomes like come to life in like

in a hyper realistic way like I mean it looks like there are those AI YouTube is always trying to tell me that I want to watch what would cartoon characters look like if they were real with you know that people use AI for and it looks like it does look like that it looks like you took a lawn gnome and you said hey I make this real and it and it kind of gave you one of those and And it's, yeah, there's, there's like a hyper detail to it, but their faces are all kind of stretched.

And I wonder if there was also the desire to not make them look too much like real human beings.

Because then it becomes a matter of, are we othering, you know, there was a whole thing, like Peter Dinklage in particular was like, you should not use little people for this because like you're like turning them into some sort of other creature, you know, and that's a bad idea.

So they were originally, I think, going to, and then they swung far in the other direction of like, okay, like, let's make these exaggerated CGI gnome-like

dwarves.

There's a way to make a little gnome old man, little gnome man very cute.

Yeah, look at fucking Hoggle, baby.

Or, you know, like David the gnome.

Yeah, or David the Gnome.

Thank you.

Cute, little bearded little old man.

David the Gnome is incredibly cute.

Give them little rosy cheeks and make them very cute.

I was saying Hoggle from Labyrinth, you know?

Oh, right, right.

I forgot the character's name.

David the Gnome, I think the only thing you're up against is that it's maybe the most boring cartoon in the history of television.

That was

cute looking.

I remember as a kid watching Nickelodeon, and David the Gnome would come on and be like, Well, I have to watch this because it's television, but I'm not going to enjoy it at all.

Yeah, you cross your arms.

Rebecca looks like she's receding into herself.

Like, how dare you about David the Gnome?

To be honest, I've never seen one second of David the Gnome.

I just know

the character.

It's one of those things.

It's one of those things

near me.

You've just seen the Rule 34 interpretations of David the Gnome.

I will say, it's one of those shows that if my kids watched it, I'd be like, this is great.

It's gentle.

It's not loud.

It's not frantic.

But as a kid, I was like, let's amp it up.

Come on,

get a shot of energy into this.

So there's also

David had a machine gun.

You know, now that David the Gnome's in the public domain, he can finally be a killer.

So

the dwarfs also, they have, we meet their personalities.

They have magic hands that glow when they locate precious gemstones.

That's the thing that never really does anything.

It's just a

thing they do for a moment.

They go home from a day of mining, just a day of tearing the bounty of Mother Earth out of her guts to replace it with empty hollow tunnels and a fractured substance.

I mean, those honestly, those tunnels are pretty spacious.

Like from what I know about mining, they have it pretty good there.

And to be honest, and they're just doing that with pickaxes.

So, I mean, they talk about how they've been working together for centuries.

It takes a long time to dig a tunnel that is roughly the size of the interior of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a pickaxe.

Like, that's amazing that they did that.

And they're also probably union members.

Like,

well, that's the thing.

We never see them take a vote on anything.

We never see them talk to their reps, so I'm not sure.

What are they doing with all those jewels?

Because that seems to be a rich cache of emeralds and rubies and such.

And they don't seem to be wealthy.

They're all living together as roommates in a little shed.

No, no, I think, so the subtext is, I think that it's not so much that they want the jewels and they want to be rich, so much as they want to keep other people from accumulating things because it would make them feel lesser if other people had more.

And so they just, they just hoard all those gems and don't let anyone else have it.

They're very selfish, very selfish characters.

But that's the world we live in, Snow White.

Anyway,

let the scales fall from your eyes.

Yeah, originally when they're naming them, they're like, well, their primary characteristic is selfish, but that's all of them.

So, we need to differentiate them.

They can't be just greedy one, greedy two, greedy three.

Yeah, uh, so uh, they get to the

house, they find Snow White sleeping, they run around scared.

Oh, no, and they accidentally leave Dopey alone in the room with her.

He's the he's the dwarf who cannot talk, who in this version looks a lot like Alfred E.

Newman, which I find which I find very funny.

Yeah,

he looks like a combination of like horrible, ugly CGIA gnome man

and

Tom Holland

in there.

Yeah, I think he rammed them together.

Yeah.

And is he not bald in this version, right?

That he has hair?

No, he's got a full head of brown, sort of Tom Holland color hair.

But I do find him, I found him the most unsettling.

There's something about

because he has the most like human-like features.

The others have slightly more exact.

Because I was making like quote-unquote cute expressions, but that's very like repulsive with the aforementioned aforementioned issues with like how their skin looks up close.

But there's, I feel like there's also there's a there's always a problem with a character that really wants you to love it and and it's not quite connecting.

Whereas the the dopey in the original one, he does he's always tripping over things and like you know, he's got those long sleeves and everything.

You know, you can't help but love him.

Come on, he's a bald problem.

He's a bald, he's he's like a he's like a bald little gnome.

How could you not like him, you know?

The conception of this dopey, part of the problem is like, and this is going to sound like an anti-woke screen, which is obviously obvious.

He knew it was coming to this, He knew it was going to happen.

Despite what

Stuart and Elliott tried and say is not my vibe.

But like, I think that

the idea is like, oh, we can't make dopey dopey.

That would feel wrong now.

But like the original dopey is just like a lovable harpo style goof.

Well, I always assumed he was called dopey because he was a heroin addict.

Right, right, right.

This was pushing like so far into like, like, this is like, I don't know, the holy fool sort of thing, but it is trying so hard to like tug at your heartstrings that it's it's the holy fool was originally the title for baby's day out right yeah i think it was yeah guys which is your favorite dwarf i think you can guess which mine is but your favorite oh yeah sure well my favorite is dwarf from dwarf goes fishing and dwarf plays golf yeah tim conway yeah yeah he's cool mine's gimli

oh i meant among these dwarves

okay now i have to rethink uh i don't know probably uh there's a doctor one, right?

A doctor.

Although he clarifies in this that he's not really a doctor, but he has forceps.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, again, there's a lot.

Again, that's the secretary stuff coming in.

Yeah, yeah.

The closest I come to liking one of these is Grumpy because I think.

Grumpy, I don't like he he doesn't he's less horrific than

even in the original Grumpy Grumpy and Dopey are clearly the two that you're meant to like invest some energy into dopey because he's super cute and Grumpy because he's the one who has a change change of heart.

You know, he's the one who doesn't like Snow White and then by the end is crushed that she's been hurt.

So it's the while, whereas the others are just kind of around, like bashful.

Who gives a shit?

You know, what

pipe up, dude?

And there was the one, who was, was it happy who was always hungry?

Like, there's no, there's none of them named Tom.

But the what he was like at the end, I think it's him who gets some food and he's like, yeah, like he's always talking about food.

And I'm like, that's not your thing.

So, and

there's, there's like like a sleepy one, right?

There's sleepy.

He's always falling asleep.

And do you know what the one who's sneezing is called?

I like it.

Mike.

So she gets left behind with Dopey, but she's gentle to him.

And they guess, oh, she's on the run.

She's in trouble.

But against Grumpy's wishes, they agree to hide her at the house.

Meanwhile, the Queen's Mirror is like, dude, Snow White's still alive, dude.

And the Queen sings her bad guy song.

Every bad guy gets a song in Disney movies.

How did did you guys feel about this bad guy song, which is usually my favorite song in a Disney movie?

Of course, man.

Like the aforementioned Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Yeah, I mean, Hellfire is the best song in Notre Dame.

I love poor, I mean, there's a number of great songs in Little Mermaid, but I love poor Unfortunate Souls.

Like, there's this, you get great songs from Disney.

I mean, the Scar's song in the original Lion King.

I love it.

You know, be prepared.

There's a split decision for me on here.

This is one of the newer songs that, as a song, didn't bother me as much.

I thought the song was okay, but Gal Galgadot is not really much of a singer, so that was the problem, I think.

This was the highlight of the movie for me because I do think it's where Galgadot's limitations as a performer are thrown into the starkest relief.

And the whole time, the whole movie, she's making like a smirk, she's playing with her long nails, and she really thinks she's eating.

She does think that she's doing that good of a job.

And she's simply, like, it's horrible.

Yeah.

And that's very fun and delightful.

So you just want to.

This is the high point from a Schadenfreude point of view.

It just, well, an entertainment point of view.

And it's so cruel to her because it's making her, this song, especially the lyrics, it's asking of her to say so many things so fast and actually sing so many things so fast.

And she's...

Did she do her own

lecture?

a stunt voice, do they?

Sounds like it.

I would assume.

They would have gotten a better stunt voice.

Yeah.

Also, I would imagine that part of her taking this role is that she's like,

I want to sing.

I want to show off my pipes.

And it's a song about

what's it called again?

It's something about, she says ambitious girls must be vicious girls at some point.

It's the songs like, I'm evil.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it's not that.

I mean,

that is the villain song is highlighting why they're evil or how they're evil or how being evil is awesome.

Yeah, this is called All is Fair.

It's basically what she's saying: like, it's great to be evil when you're beautiful, you can get away with whatever you want.

You know, that's the most important thing.

That's what I always say.

That's why Stuart started weightlifting.

He was like, wait a minute, hold on.

I can finally be evil.

Keats was wrong.

Beauty is the truth.

Beauty is power, the power to take the world and make it your plaything.

So she gets this whole big song.

She sends her soldiers out to find Snow White.

And this is when we get into the dwarf antics part of the story where they're just knocking things over.

They're fighting among themselves.

And Dopey gets upset by all this rambunctiousness.

And Snow White talks to him gently.

And he kind of silently admits he's afraid to speak.

And she teaches him how to whistle.

instead.

And she helps the dwarves get along and they all clean the house together.

This is their whistle while you work.

It is weird that for so many of these live-action action remakes, a big thing about them has been like, oh, we need to rehabilitate these female characters to make them better role models.

All of these girls are suddenly going to be really good.

The princesses all do STEM now, and they're all independent.

And this one is still very much mostly about baking pies and housework.

Yeah, I think they're trying to do a hard thing of making her kind of a more politically aware character without losing the kind of Disney princess in a sense.

And I feel like

they're missing an opportunity to play into a different kind of, a different kind, but a more retrograde sort of female heroicism.

That's more the traditional thing of the female character who is not like tough, but instead wins people over through

love and inherent goodness.

And that's what they're trying to do with her, but they also want to make her like

a character who is projecting kind of strength and defiance.

And I feel like there's a little bit of tension between those two things.

Her strength is in her, I guess in the old-fashioned version of the story her strength is in purely her goodness it's a very kind of like christian morality christian parable type of strength but here they also want to make her like a political rebel and it's hard to it's hard to do those things you know at the same time uh i just realized that before i was wrong it was not during silly song that they had the off-color new uh lyric it was in this song it was i looked it up It was, wait, I think that brush is mine.

You should have hung a sign.

If you don't hush, I'll take this brush and shove it where the sun don't shine.

I'm like, we don't need that.

We don't need that.

I thought you were going to say, like,

I thought you were going to say the lines were, whistle while you work, while you knead and clean and tuck.

You know that you can also whistle while you, hey, what's that over there?

I thought that was the lyric you were talking about.

It was fine.

It was fine.

That's that.

I feel like as far as putting off-color things into Disney, injecting Disney movies, that's what you just said, Dan, is one of the lesser ones, but I still don't like it.

Sure, but it's also just

unnecessary.

It's so much, so much.

I feel, yeah, that's true.

But I feel like the, I was more, more worried by in the Lion King when in the original version of Akunamatada, they don't let him say farted, but then in the new version of it, he goes, What?

I was going to say farted, fart, right?

I can't say farted, and it was like, There's no joke if you do it that way.

Like, the joke doesn't even exist, you know.

Did you gauge your children's reactions?

Because I know your two boys to which to this movie or to that version of the Lion King?

To that version of the Lion King.

Do they like the farted joke?

They found it, I mean, they were so kind of bored by my mother.

I mean, my younger son just loves watching animal stuff.

He was kind of into it, but but we uh but they were mostly kind of bored and we went to see mufasa you should have just shown him like microcosmos or something I mean, he loves microcosmos.

Yeah, we've shown him that.

And you play the Flaming Lips record at the same time.

Yeah, not usually.

But when we went to see it, we went to see Mufasa in the theaters when that came out because we were out of town and I need to take the boys to do something.

And that was one where they were both, they had both lost interest, I think, 25 minutes into the movie, you know, but I made them stay the full length of respect.

That's Mufasa.

He's going to die in another movie.

I was like, I was like, this is interesting.

They're retconning away the idea that Scar is clearly queer.

Like, they're really working hard to make him a to make him a heterosexual character, you know.

Um, so, uh, and also, but I think they all enjoyed that uh, Mads Mickelson got to have a song where he went, bye-bye, a bunch of times.

So,

um, so anyway, because it was Mads Mickelson, they understood that, yeah, yeah, they were like, they were like, it's great that he's doing it, the star of the pusher movies.

So

Snow White goes off to find the rebel thieves that Jonathan leads in the woods to see if her dad is still alive because they say that he says he works for the king or he's fighting for the king or whatever.

And she finds Jonathan.

He's a cynic.

He sings the Princess Problems song about how she's entitled, I guess.

She literally has been almost murdered and

had to run away from home, but he's still pretty, he's real snarky to her about it, you know.

Where they like, you know, they play off each other, right?

Yeah, it's a two-hander.

Yeah.

Yeah, again,

the more the sky is.

I guess that's more common, so it's really more of a four-hander.

Four-hander, yeah.

Yeah.

Well,

yeah.

No, that adds up.

The math works.

Oh, he's gently nagging her.

She's starting to get interested in him and in the communist cause.

Yeah.

So it's moving the float along.

It's very love island, the way they're interacting, right?

That he's just being like, you stink.

And she's like, I love this guy now.

This is, this is who I have to be with.

No, it's, I think it's, it's supposed to be the old,

they don't get along, but we know they're going to fall in love later or something like that.

But they talk to each other.

The castle guards show up, and then Jonathan and his brigand gang fight them.

And Snow White, they're more like merry men than brigands, really.

They're like,

we never see them like really steal from anybody, although they do have the classic cart full of valuables that Robin Hood and his merry men always have.

And Snow White, I was confused by this.

So Snow White's played by Rachel Ziegler.

Oh,

now I understand.

Because I was like, how'd West Side Story get into this movie?

You know,

yeah.

So time machine.

So she went back in time from the 1950s to

fairy tale times.

Acacia

in a different location.

I mean, most time machines can change locations.

Are you saying this is also what the west side of Manhattan was like before Lincoln Center?

It was just forests, castles.

Yeah, that's right.

Mines, just gem mines mines everywhere.

She runs off, and then she tricks the soldiers into chasing her dress, which actually has birds in it.

And then we cut to her on a, on a, riding away on a horse or something, and she's still wearing her dress.

So I was like, did she have two dresses?

That's what confused me.

Or did they, did they,

did they show like in their like wheelbarrow full of stuff?

Did the brigands have like spare costumes and crowns?

Well, maybe.

Maybe that's it.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Because I was like, this is what I'm saying.

What do you guys think of the live-action Snow White dress?

Because there's something about the Krenlin skirt doesn't, it looks very cheap to me.

It looks totally party city.

It's very goofy-doofy.

Most of these movies try to, you know, interpolate the vibe of the original dress.

And this just did a direct one-to-one, which looks very...

It's an issue I have, actually, to be honest, with a lot of the Marvel movie costumes, where, especially the Asgardian costumes and stuff like that, where it should look like it's made made out of leather or metal, but they all just kind of look like they're made out of plastic, you know?

And this feels kind of similar.

Like it does feel, it does, it does feel kind of off the rack.

Although I like the colors in it.

The colors are bright and bold, you know.

Yeah, I like the colors.

I think that it's all like such shiny, satin-y stuff that that's what's giving it that, like,

I don't know, like we got some like plasticky fabric from yeah, and that's, I mean, it's the same, that's the issue I really had more with the queen's headdress.

I love a, I love a big, spiky headdress.

I love Galactus.

I love Hella.

I love

Maleficent's headdress.

But hers, like, it looked like, again, it looked like it was kind of plasticky.

Like, it looked like it was just made out of not a material.

This is me being the stupidest version of nerd.

It doesn't look like the kind of material that the real queen of this fairy kingdom would have at the time.

Yeah, it looks like what you wear under a mesquite helmet, maybe

to protect your ears from the wind chill.

And it just, the dress stands out extra because they dulled the colors of all the dwarves' clothing.

And also, as you mentioned earlier, all of these,

the brigands are all looking like out of a Disney Channel original movie.

They're wearing like flannel and hoodies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They look like

very church camp, like, hey, we're bad boys, but we're also cool.

You know, like, we're cool, but we're also like wholesome, I guess.

Yeah, they're fighting for the king, the one true king.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Have a CD and some pretty cool rock music you should hear.

All about his return.

It's about Jesus, but you'd never know.

Dan, were you ever in a production of Godspell?

No, but I do know all the songs.

Yeah, yeah.

But do you know how to spell Godspell?

But I could be.

Yeah.

Any directors listening?

You got a good baritone for Prepare You the Way of the Lord?

Yeah, come on.

I have to admit, Godspell is a musical I don't know any of the songs to.

I've never seen it, not familiar with it at all.

And this is speaking of someone who's going tonight, the night we're recording this, to the Hollywood Bowl to see Jesus Christ Superstar for probably the fourth time that I've seen it in some form or other.

So

I'm up for a Christian-based musical.

It's good music.

It's Stephen Schwartz.

It's good stuff.

Check it out.

Okay, that's what I'll do.

I'll check it out right after this.

That's Dan's recommendation.

At your local library.

Go to your local library, say, give me Godspell.

They'll say, hold on.

I need

to.

Hold on.

I'm on the phone here.

Do you want the soundtrack?

Do you want the movie?

Do you want to do that?

There is a Patters song in it that I do do think you specifically would love, though.

Oh, okay.

I'll have to try it out.

I'll listen to it at some point.

Do you guys have a preferred version of it?

Like, if listeners want to check out God's Bell.

The Toronto cast.

It had every that legendary Toronto production.

Yeah.

That's my main touch point for Godspell: hearing about that Toronto production, where it was like, where's every famous person from Canada was in it?

It was like Martin Short and Eugene Levy and, you know,

Mayor Rob Ford.

Yeah, Mayor Rob Ford.

Yeah, yeah.

Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau.

Wayne Weske.

Yeah, yeah.

Robert Davies.

Yeah, everybody was.

He was so good on Saturday Nightline.

So, anyway, Snow White has impressed the bandits, impressed Jonathan by how she tricked the soldiers.

And he admits, you know, it's nice.

I actually do have ideals.

I do want the king to come back.

And that's when he gets hit by a crossbow bolt that I guess was meant for Snow White.

Yeah, he throws himself in front of it so she doesn't get shot with a crossbow.

The soldiers,

I guess they escape because

Snow White takes him to Doc.

This is when Doc points out he actually has, I guess, a Ph.D.

in mineralogy.

He doesn't, Doc is really more of an honorary title.

He's not a medical doctor.

There's a postgraduate school in.

You have to assume.

I mean, with the idea of Doc being someone other than a medical doctor, where is he getting that idea from?

Yeah, maybe he was born on the docks.

That's what it is.

Yeah, yeah.

He goes, no, actually, I'm called Doc because I always wear dockers.

Doc Martens.

I was wearing Doc Martens and I have a Docsent.

Oh, so every other way you could be Doc except being a doctor.

You got that right.

That's for sure.

I also will talk about Docodiles, which is like a crocodile, but if it was a doctor.

What the fuck?

Really?

It seems like that's not a real thing.

You're just adding stuff to.

Oh, yeah, of course.

We'll do that too.

Once you get into branding, you just kind of have to push it as far as you can go.

Here's my app.

It's called TikTok.

Wait a second.

Is you have an app?

Apps exist in this world?

just this one.

I'm an appetizer,

appetizer you eat before the meal.

People mostly download it thinking it's uh doctor's advice about if you have a tick on you.

That's not what it is, though.

That's not it at all.

So, people trying to download dick tock.

Oh, no,

yeah, we get a lot of stuff.

You get a lot of complaints.

I'll add them to the docket.

Oh,

now I'll take my docket ship to the moon.

That's not a thing.

These are not things, Doc.

And then

you're short for doc man.

He's the leader.

Maybe he's docking their pay.

Yeah, that could be, yeah.

And that's what that's when Dopey reveals he can't talk, and he goes, Snow White, we just humor him.

It's what we do.

He actually gets very violent when we don't play into his doctor fantasy.

So, um, they uh, she gives a speech that unites the brigands and the dwarfs together.

They, of course, throw a dance party.

And during the dance, there's a big musical number where Snow White starts falling in love with Jonathan, and Jonathan's falling love with Snow White.

They're saying, Maybe we don't have to be alone, maybe we can walk this path together.

They sing about it, but uh, their moment that first

buy it, And you think they got chemistry?

No.

I mean, I'd call it again like Disney Channel Chemistry.

Like, it feels like they have chemistry because they're both two attractive people.

They're in the movie together.

Singing a song together.

Singing a song together.

The two attractive people are like, there's no one else in this movie.

I guess we got a date.

I don't know.

Isn't there like a love connection between a couple of the brigands, too?

Yeah, two of the brigands.

Oh, yeah.

Quag and the man who has the crossbow.

This character Queg, the master of the crossbow, who we he never seems to have a crossbow

until the very name.

It's such Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 type shit where it's like, here's a character that no one cares about their arc.

And now they get to pay it off at the end when he actually gets a crossbow.

But he's involved with one of the other brigands, right?

Yeah, I think.

But yeah, Jonathan is like, who am I going to date?

A CGI Squirrel?

Sure, Snow White.

We're in love now.

Okay.

So

their kiss is first interrupted by everyone looking at them, but then interrupted by the soldiers showing up.

And

Snow White gives Jonathan jonathan her locket saying go find the king and show him this or it's a necklace or something go find the king and give him this he'll understand the bandits run off and distract the soldiers jonathan gets captured and he gets brought to the queen who recognizes that necklace and now she's going to use it in a plan to finally do what the huntsman didn't and kill snow white how she's going to do it first she mixes up a potion that makes her an old crone and then she makes a poison apple why she doesn't

reprise of the all's fair song a new version of it why she doesn't make the poison apple and then become an old crone, I find very funny because it seems like she's probably more comfortable in her own physically fit body than as an old hunched crone, but she decided to save that, the hard work for after she's in her crone form.

I don't know.

She makes this poison apple.

She locks Jonathan in the dungeon with the huntsman and she goes off to find Snow White.

Snow White is about to embark on a quest to find her dad.

She, of course, waits until after making the dwarfs breakfast and then going.

She sees them off to work before she leaves, which is an interesting, which I think is such a funny touch.

It's like, I have to find my father.

Nothing else is more important than that.

But let me make sure you have all your shit for you so you can go mine together.

Do you have your pickaxe?

Tie your shoes.

Okay, now I'm going to go.

The evil queen shows up with that necklace and says, oh, Jonathan gave this to me or something.

I have a message.

I support the king, too.

Kalgabat was like,

I'm giving substance vibes here.

Yeah, she's waiting on that Oscar knob.

This is when I'm finally going to get my Oscar.

Finally,

her career has been.

I mean, she's been in major movies for like, 10 years now or something like that.

But the,

but yeah, she was like, this is my moment when I play this, when I play this dual characters part.

So she says,

hey,

you used to hand out apple pies, and I want to help you.

So here's an apple.

It'll really help me feel like I'm helping you.

And so Snow White, it's one of those moments where she's like, such a nice person that she's going to make this

lady feel better by taking a bite out of her apple.

Cool.

Yeah, this apple will help.

Oh, God.

This one that's like smoking.

with a smoky.

A red, delicious, huh?

The best, least mealy apple.

And so delicious.

Jonathan,

the woodland creatures go warn the dwarfs.

I don't know why the birds don't just swoop down and knock that apple out of Snow White's hand.

Instead, they go to the mine and warn the dwarfs so the dwarves can try to race back in time, but they're too late.

Snow White has bit the apple.

She falls into a coma just as the queen reveals, Ha ha, it's me, the queen, and I killed your dad.

See ya.

And even though she knows that.

I'm going to leave your body here forever and define.

Even though she knows that the spell can be broken by true love's kiss, and she knows that Snow White has a true love, the queen does not take Snow White's body and like throw it on a funeral pyre or something like that.

Instead, she just leaves it in the woods for people to take care of.

Yeah, put that in the goof section.

Well, I mean, it's classic.

I mean, it's classic Bond villain stuff.

Why does Jason Voorhees kill each person individually and not just explode the entire crystal lake with an atom?

I'll say why this is not that kind of criticism.

One, Jason Voorhees is a mindless killing machine with no plan other than to murder.

The queen is like, my political survival rests on getting...

Oh, not my closest viral.

The only thing that matters to me, which is being the fairest of them all.

Emotional health.

Yeah, exactly.

My emotional health, which is tied up in my body image.

This is not a healthy way to maintain my emotional health, but I'm an evil queen.

I have these issues.

I'm working on them with my therapist, who is a magic mirror, who tells me all the time that I'm not good enough.

So maybe I need a new therapist.

Instead of, this is the most important thing to her.

Instead of finishing the job, she's just like, I gotta go, goodbye.

It's also, I guess, the irony that is, I guess, is subtext that we're just supposed to pick up.

And if it is, then maybe it's that in order to achieve her goal of being the most beautiful of all, she has to commit ugly deeds, which physically make her no more, no longer beautiful.

You know,

she just like really needs like a group of gals, you know, where they can like talk shit.

I mean, she should have a group.

It should be her, Maleficent, Ursula, and uh, who's another evil Disney gal?

Um, and Quella Deville, they should get together, they should hang out, and they should just support each other.

That's it, should be called the real evil wives of the Disney universe.

Are they not doing that?

Why is Disney not doing this at all?

I feel like you could sell this to Disney Plus right now.

I should be selling this to Disney Plus right now.

You guys should be, we should let Disney Plus, if you're listening, yeah, this is the way, this is the only way you can do it, though, which I've heard that you can't outside pitch to Disney.

You have to be invited to pitch to Disney.

You have to be invited into the vault.

So I heard about this from somebody.

You're invited into the vault.

Vault's head is there, plugged into all these machines, and

you've got to pitch the head on it first.

Ironically, he's not the final decision maker.

He's the first barrier you've got to get through.

And to get back out of the vault, you have to push Winnie the Pooh through the vault door where he's gotten stuck because he ate too much honey.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

And swim through Scrooge's coins.

Oh,

the dream.

Is that the dream, Dan?

I feel like it would be really uncomfortable.

Well, in the universe, then you have to dance with a hologram of Michael Eisner, beat him in a hip-hop dance contest.

Yeah.

Wow.

So the mirror tells the queen, well, you're the fairest again.

You did it.

And the queen is like, yes.

Flawless victory, 100%.

And the problem is that she set herself a goal that can never be fully accomplished.

She can never relax.

She's like a gunslinger in the old West.

There's constantly beautiful young women being born.

We're going to challenge her.

Yeah.

Is her the substance?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, again, like there's a, there's an evil queen movie to be made, just like Maleficent, where it's like all about how she's been, she's been gaslit into believing that her worth is in her beauty and she can't ever, she has to constantly fight aging and it's, it's an, it's a losing battle forever.

And she becomes a tragic figure and she's doing worse and worse things to, in order to make that, into order to try to keep on this tread, this beauty treadmill.

I'll pitch this to this will be the killer.

I'll stop fucking pitching over here.

Look, I can't help pitching.

I'm just an idea factory, you know.

I can't help pitching.

I can't help pitching on IP I don't control and have nothing to do with actually.

The fact it's fucking Snow White.

So, yes, that is IP I could control.

It's public domain.

So I just can't get away.

Just make her a trailer.

Yeah, make her a horror.

Yeah, that's true.

Now she's, I mean, she is a killer already.

Not Snow White, but the evil queen.

She said, go kill her,

pull her heart out.

Anyway, the animals and the dwarfs are real sad.

Even Grumpy cries for the comatose comatose Snow White.

It's a sad moment.

The huntsman and Jonathan, they're in the dungeon.

They work together to unchain themselves and escape the dungeon.

And Jonathan steals a horse and the birds lead him to Snow White and he kisses her and she wakes up.

The dwarves are all sitting shiva around her.

That's exactly what it is.

Yep.

They've covered the mirror mirror on the wall.

And

I think they did a pretty good job, I will say, of of making that kiss not creepy between Jonathan and the unmoving Snow White, you know, because that is a moment that

I'm sure is a possible problematic thing.

And it comes off more as a goodbye kiss consummation of the love they didn't get to have than a, oh, this beautiful woman.

In the original story.

Well, in the original story when Prince Charming just comes across a sleeping lady in the woods and kisses her.

What's this I see?

Which is kind of what happens in Sleeping Beauty, too, right?

It's the same basic thing or no?

I mean, they know each other by the way.

It's such a classic fantasy, guys.

I guess so.

To be awoken from a coma by a kiss from a stranger.

Yeah, that's the side of the fantasy that I'm thinking about.

Is that what Kiss from a Rose is about?

The SEAL song?

Have you read those lyrics?

I have no idea what that song is about.

Those lyrics are very complicated and something about a grave.

So someone's dead.

No, it's just

like a kiss on Right, so the DVD on the gray.

Copy of the gray.

There used to be a grey tower by the sea.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's all very Eggrell and Postman.

Light in the dark side of me.

Yeah.

And so

she wakes up.

She declares they need to overthrow the king.

And suddenly Dopey talks for the first time.

And he says, well, we're not afraid.

Bump, bum, bump.

Snow White returns to her kingdom slash village.

How late in this process do you think that they had planned on doing a like getting armed up montage of like the dwarves like grabbing shit a la like hot fuzz or something?

Because I feel like that is the kind of joke that they were planning on putting in here of them like you think so.

Like getting their equipment and shit ready and like bandoliers and stuff.

I don't know.

I don't know that that was ever a part of it.

I mean, they don't really have that much equipment.

They just have pickaxes.

That's it.

You know?

I thought you were going to say, how angry do you think the other dwarves are when they're like, dopey, you could talk this whole goddamn time?

What the fuck have you been doing?

No, sir.

Nobody asked me to.

It's like in the old X-Men comics, they learn Wolverine's name is Logan, and they go, your name is Logan?

He goes, nobody asked me.

And it's like, really?

For months, you didn't ask this dude you live with if he had a name other than Wolverine?

When you filled out your W-2 to be a member of the X-Men, you wrote Wolverine.

So you're saying that when you went to a bar and he got carded, his license says Wolverine on it?

Come on, guys.

I couldn't talk at any time, only when it was funny.

I forgot.

What's that from?

That's Roger Rabbit.

That's right, Roger Rabbit.

handcuffs.

Yeah, that's right.

And that's the thing.

These fucking Disney movies are basically like bad version.

Like, remember when Roger, well, yeah, remember when Roger Rabbit came out and we were like, oh my God, I can't believe they're able to do this.

Now that they can do it, and it's so bad.

He's another one of those.

Old Man Stew's Tales of Former Special Effects.

Stewart turned into the Chris Farley show for a second.

Remember Roger Rabbit?

That was awesome.

No, but I'm just saying, like,

live action remakes aren't live.

They're Roger Rabbit.

Yeah, they're all Roger Rabbit.

Well, I think that's the issue.

There's no fucking weasels.

No, there's no weasels.

I'm getting worked up here.

This is the one Twitter they didn't make.

Let's not get too angry, but one of the major issues is, yes, no weasels, which is a problem.

But also,

one of the wonderful things about Roger Rabbit, the many wonderful things in it,

one of the things about Roger Rabbit is

Roger Rabbits are wonderful things.

The tops are made of rubber, the bottom are made of springs.

Is that they're not trying to make the cartoons look real.

They just give them like a little bit more shading.

And that's the fun of it is seeing people interacting with cartoons, right?

There's nothing really that fun in seeing a person interacting with a mostly realistic, but not totally all the way there kind of like cartoon character.

Just enough that it's creepy.

Yeah.

Yeah, just enough.

And if you're trying to make it look super real, I get it.

Like then you go in the Jurassic Park mode where those are not supposed to be cartoon dinosaurs running around.

They're supposed to be real dinosaurs.

Man, what if there was a cut of Jurassic Park where it was fucking straight up 2D cell cell shit?

I would love that.

It's the original one when they brought Don Bluth in to do the special effects.

We've got this original.

We cloned it from this Windsor McKay cell.

So they used, they hadn't done all the DNA, so they used some of the DNA from Gertie the Dinosaur.

Now all the dinosaurs are turning into cartoons.

It would be like the end of Cool World, but not bad, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, it would just make the scene where

Sam Neal is struggling with his glasses to see the dinosaur so much better.

I would love that.

And then at the end, oh, then some of the dinosaurs are 2D, some are not 2D, some are 3D.

So you can get like you get a mix of them together.

I would love to see that.

The 2D raptor is chasing them, and a 3D.

No, a 3D raptor is chasing them, and a 2D Tyrannosaurus Rex shows up to fight it.

And now you understand how that Tyrannosaurus Rex could sneak up on them because he's only two dimensions.

Only two dimensions.

And

when he turns, all you can see is maybe a thin little line.

That's it.

I thought that was just a line approaching us.

Wait, let's get around the side of it.

Ah, a T-Rex.

Yeah.

Well, T-Rex can only see movement because he doesn't have that dimension.

Flatland Jurassic Park crossover we've been looking for.

Oh, finally.

Yeah.

I mean, that's a Jurassic Park.

It does say loosely based on Flatland in the beginning, right?

Yeah.

That'd be amazing.

So they go back to the village, the kingdom.

Snow White starts inspiring people to sing and follow her, and she confronts the queen.

And the queen hands her a dagger and says, go ahead, take the throne back, kill me.

And she, Snow White will not do it.

She's too good a person.

So the queen says, guards, kill her here in front of everybody, which seems like you're just being inflammatory at that point.

Like that's, if you're asking for a riot, then kill Snow White in front of the townspeople.

But Snow White recognizes each of the guards by name and talks about the people they used to be.

And they remember who they were and how they used to be good people.

And they all turn on the queen.

And the queen tries to stab Snow White, but the brigands show up and Queg, master of the crossbow, who has not used a crossbow this whole movie, he finally gets to use a crossbow to shoot the blade out of the snow out of the queen's hand or whatever.

And

all of Snow White's allies are there.

She's managed to unite all of the townspeople, the animals of the forest, the dwarves of the mines, the brigands of the also forest.

They're all here.

And it's all about, she's built consensus.

She's a unity builder.

It's a coalition.

And the queen runs the mirror.

And because, of course, her first priority is always who's the fucking fairest of them all, even when her power is going away.

and the mirror is like snow white is good-hearted so she will always be the fairest of them all and i'm like so that so what i guess because

yeah how did she

how was she the fairest for so long then yeah for for the long time the the sheer hotness of the evil queen still outstripped the inner beauty i see

i see at a certain point i think that mirror has no magic and is just jumping on whatever bandwagon seems like it's going to get it to the next place you know that that that mirror is the j d vance of of this story this kind of like yeah i'll sell out my family sure for power of course to the next one the dwarves look like the jd vance memes yes yeah

they look like across between the jd vance meme and the filter you can use on i forget if it's facetime or what where it said where it's called like nervous or something like that where it stretches your face out in a weird way like they uh anyway might sound like is there a filter that just adds like a million pores to your skin there should be there should be they do have very porous skin um you got to breathe when you're in the mines.

Well, that's the thing.

Is when you're in the mine, all that dust gets into your pores and you got to sweat it out.

And so I feel for those dwarves.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Who I think are never, I don't think they're ever referred to as dwarfs in the movie, right?

I don't know if they ever use that word, but

it's like higgledy piggledy.

So anyway, the queen runs to the mirror and the mirror's like, you've never been the fairest.

I've been gaslighting you this whole time, telling you you're so fair.

And she smashes the mirror, which then causes her to like decay into ash and all the ash gets pulled into the mirror universe before the mirror reforms itself snow white runs up just to like watch this shit happen's final final defeat yeah yeah because there's no there's in the snow white world even for snow white's good-hearted but there's still no sweeter treat than to watch the destruction of your greatest foe she yells say hi to kefir for me

oh oh oh yeah yeah what a what a mirror's callback yeah yeah um because that movie existed in the snow white world.

The same way Moby Dick exists in the world of bone.

Yeah.

Imagine there's a little Stanley panel that pops up directing listeners back to the Mirrors episode.

Yeah, exactly.

Dance and Dan.

That's the name you use for it.

Nice.

So

now, and this ending apparently was not the original ending, but it kind of smacks of we had to throw a new ending on there.

What was the original ending, Elliot?

I don't know.

I don't know.

That's the extent of my knowledge.

If you were going to write a different ending for this movie, what would you have done?

Oh, the queen would win, for sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

So

that would probably play super well, right?

It would play.

I mean, in the world we live in now, I feel like half the audience wants the queen to win.

I mean, that's the thing.

When the queen is like, you need strength, not delicacy.

I feel like half the audience is like, I'll like when I like, she's saying the things we're all thinking.

Yeah, yeah, we do need someone like that.

As long as her soldiers are keeping the outsiders out, because the world, because our country has become a perverse, extreme version of its worst instincts.

But anyway, luckily, it's not just our country.

A lot of countries are best.

Best to a lot of countries right now.

It turns out taking

human brains that evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago to not be constantly bombarded by information and then putting them in a world where they are constantly bombarded by information and then for like a year locked in their houses with no way to communicate with the outside world, but this endless information feed drives people a little over the band.

Blasted with 5G or whatever.

Yeah.

And also it's the contrails.

Let's not forget the contrails, everybody.

And the Novocaine in the water.

Not Novocaine's all.

Contrails?

Yeah.

Chemtrails?

Chemtrails.

Contrails.

The actual thing.

Yeah, yeah.

That's

the what's in the water?

It's not Novocaine in the water.

It's

fluoride.

Fluoride.

Thank you.

Novocaine in the water.

Oh, man.

I feel so numb.

It's all the horrors of the world.

This is wonderful.

It turns out we haven't been putting Fluoride in, we've been putting Xanax in the water all this time.

We're looking at the copies of the hit action comedy Novocaine.

In the water.

In the

So anyway, the queen is gone.

Ding-dong, the witch is dead.

And we reveal at the end, the narrator, who was trying to beginning, was dopey the whole time.

And everybody dances, and they're all dressed in white.

And maybe it's Snow White's wedding.

Is that what they're hinting at?

Where it doesn't matter?

I don't know.

It's either wedding or afterlife.

Yes,

where it's like a fancy person's tennis party.

They're all in whites.

They're all in whites.

And they do a lot of stomping and clapping.

Everybody's there.

They're having a great time.

I think Jonathan and Snow White kiss, probably, and the storybook closes and the hedgehog that uses it as a bed waves goodbye to us, the audience.

And I skipped ahead.

There's no credit sequence.

There's no like Snow White will return in Age of Ultron or something.

I can't bear to look.

I like this afterlife idea.

I'm imagining.

I'm imagining Rebecca's online

with her fan theories about Snow White.

Snow White actually dies at this point in the movie.

When Snow White recognizes recognizes the guards,

that's actually a fantasy when one of the guards stabs her in the back.

And everything after that point is a dream in her final moments.

Yeah.

I mean, very clearly, she was kind of dead before that.

So why did they bring her back to life just to kill?

I don't know.

So

that was Snow White 2025.

We sure needed a new one.

This year?

That was earlier this year, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I'm proud of us.

And it's already available to watch on streaming.

That's crazy.

What wonders is this world filled with?

After being such a hit in the theaters?

I mean, this movie was released in March, so it's like

this is not that crazy a gap in some ways for a movie that didn't last super long.

A March release is usually a good sign, right?

Has that changed?

Everyone wants to leave the house.

That's one thing.

I mean, at this point, no theatrical release date, I feel like, is a particularly good one because people have gotten so out of the habit of going to the theaters.

You never know.

Summer is still better than than not, you know.

Yeah,

hey, Tom Cruise, calm down.

I do think that

February and March in particular are still the dumping grounds of

films.

But,

okay, well, let's do our final judgments: whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like.

I am going to say bad, bad.

I think that this movie, like,

I feel like

people are trying in this movie.

Yeah, a lot of work went into this movie.

This is not a half-assed movie.

I think that

Rachel Ziegler does her best with it.

Like, she's trying.

I think that

the supporting cast, even if I don't like them that much in general, are all trying.

I think that they're trying to do something new with it rather than just be a total rehash.

And yet, I feel like basically all the choices are bad.

and I didn't enjoy watching it.

What do you have to say, Stuart?

Yeah, this is a bad bad.

Yeah,

I would imagine

the problems stem from the very top.

The choice to do a live-action digital version of this story is unnecessary.

It's been already been done a million times, and it speaks to just like

the most boring impulses.

Yeah, it's not very good.

Yeah, I think unfortunately, I'm going to have to agree because, as we said, like a lot of work went into this.

People are trying really hard, but it, you never, I'm not a fan of these live action remakes of the Disney animated movies anyway, but this one in particular, yeah, it feels like at many points, you're like, why are they doing this?

Like, what is when we could have a live action the rescuers down under right now?

I don't understand why this is what you're pouring your research on.

Somebody finally says it.

Where's my live action, Oliver and Company?

Like, what's going on?

It does, it feels like

a lot of work work being poured into something that does not necessarily, the concept itself doesn't really necessarily deserve the work that's being poured into it.

And maybe as a result of that,

everything just kind of comes off bland and unnecessary and kind of boring and, you know, not

fun.

What do you think?

I'm also going to say bad, bad.

I agree.

Rachel Ziegler was sort of born to play a Disney princess, and I wish she was getting a better

vehicle for it.

She's bigger than those CGI doughs.

she

is if you haven't seen her old youtube videos from when she was in a high school production of shrek the musical and she was vlogging the entire process she's an incredible you know musical princess uh and this just isn't the vehicle for it uh i do appreciate like freaks though and those dwarves were so freakish to behold like it was more interesting than like

the Mufasa lions that just look like lions.

At the very least, these characters, as much as I found their designs off-putting, they had faces that could register emotion as opposed to, yeah, that the new lion kings were like, this character is supposed to be singing about Hakuna Matada, and it's just a blank lion face with no emotion whatsoever and a blank warthog face.

And you're like, and the animals are all kind of tawny browns of different shades because animals are designed to not stick out from their environment for the most part, so they're not colorful.

So yeah, there's a so I guess if you're looking at it from a point of view of a, of that, from there, then this is a great movie.

i wonder who would here's my question before we go yeah who would you want to see as the queen clearly galgado is cast because she's super at the moment she was big at now her uh for political reasons she is not quite what she was in terms of a uh desirable superstar and i would i would argue a certain lack of juice yeah that too i but i think who would you who would you want to see as the evil queen because i feel like that's such a pivotal role and it feels like they don't have the person carrying it who could carry it you you know

uh who i was not ready for this so i will just keep talking for a moment while other people think

this is uh this is what we call vamping i think like get like a jinx monsoon in there yeah oh yep somebody with uh you know who can who can play it big

yeah you definitely want someone who can who can do it enormously yeah

ryan reynolds

i mean it's gonna be it's gonna be chris Bratt.

He does all these characters, you know.

I mean, he did all the dwarfs, right?

I didn't check the credits, but I'm just assuming that.

He didn't do any of them.

Yeah.

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And this message is for first name withheld Elliott, no relation.

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And they say, what's up, big dog?

Hope you're thriving, even though this summer your dad died and you turned 25.

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Rarow, et cetera.

And this, I feel like there's a story behind this message.

And I hope that whatever that story is has

come to the right, not ending, but come to the right point in the future.

This reminds me of something, this reminds me of something I did many years ago, was there was a website where you could write.

a letter to yourself, an email, and then set it to be delivered at some point in the future.

And I did something very similar where I wrote a letter to myself and said it, had it been delivered five five years later.

And it was a very meaningful experience for me, you know, to get the sudden message from myself from that time.

So I hope that first name with Hud Elliott, this has the same sort of meaningfulness to you.

Would you like to send yourself a message through the flop house?

You can do that.

Just go to maximumfund.org slash gemotron and you can do the same thing yourself.

Elliot, do you have any plugs?

I have one amazingly important plug, and then I have a few lesser plugs.

The lesser plugs are just for my stuff.

Harley Quinn, it comes out every month from DC Comics.

I write it.

Volume one of the collected editions just came out.

I just procured said volume.

I am halfway through it.

I probably would have devoured the whole thing in one big gulp, but Audrey was like, hey, there's this mystery show I want to watch.

And I'm like, Audrey, you're sick.

Let's watch the mystery show.

But I've been enjoying what

I've been reading so far.

Yeah.

And of course, there's my other podcast, Clueless on the Smartless Network.

But I've got an even bigger thing to talk about, guys, something that involves all three of us.

That's right.

The Flophouse boys are setting aside the rancor and the feuding that have kept us apart for all this time.

And we are reuniting for another season.

Don't fact check that.

Don't fact check that.

Yeah.

We are reuniting for another season of Flop TV.

That's right.

Flop TV season three starts this September.

You guys, if you've seen Flop TV, you know what it is.

It is the one hour kind of internet television version of the Flophouse.

You get a presentation, you get a video segment, we talk about a movie, we answer questions.

It's super fun.

We love doing it.

And each season, we get slightly better at it, but in the flophouse way of getting worse at other things while we get better at those things.

It's a little bit like our kind of our love letter to like cable access shows.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

That's a good way to put it.

And this season, we've got an all-new theme.

This is season three, Flopsterpiece Theater.

That's right.

We are going to be looking at

a hallmark legendary flop from each of the decades from the 2000s all the way back to the 50s, going backwards in time.

So in September, we're going to watch The Adventures of Pluto Nash.

In October, it's going to be Jack Frost, the Michael Keaton one where he comes back from the dead, not the Jack Frost, not the killer snowman one.

In November, it's Xanadu.

In December, it's Zardaz.

That's our Z-Z double month mini-theme.

January, it's going to be Dr.

Doolittle, the movie that killed a certain type of big-budget musical forever.

Andy Murphy, man.

And it, no, not that Dr.

Doolittle.

Robert Downey Jr.

No, Rex Harris and Dr.

Doolittle.

And in February, we're going to do the grandfather of Flops, Plan 9 from Outer Space.

We're not going to be watching these movies with you.

We'll be talking about these movies the way we normally do.

These are not watch-alongs, but it's going to be super fun.

It's the first Saturday of every month from September through February, and you can buy tickets for it right now.

Go to theflophouse.simpletics.com.

Again, that's theflophouse.simpletics.com.

You can buy either individual tickets or a season pass that gets you a little discount.

It's a six-show bundle, five, six shows for the price of five.

It's like you get one free show.

I'm really looking forward to this season.

I think it's going to be super fun.

I'm excited to talk about movies that we've never covered on the show, but which have loomed large in the world of bad movie dumb.

And who knows what surprises are in store?

Certainly not me, because we haven't figured them out yet.

You guys, I'm sure you're excited too, right?

How do you feel about this new season of Flop TV?

I feel great.

I was

conceptualizing my special report for

the first episode just the other day and laughing inside at all the shenanigans I'm about to unleash.

Oh, can't wait.

I've been working on my presentation for that first episode.

Yeah, you guys are not going to know what's going to hit you.

Well, you do.

It's a presentation.

You know what's going to hit you.

Stu, how you feeling?

I can't wait, especially because a lot of these are movies I've never seen.

So

I think

I'm going to be very curious when we watch Zardaz, a movie that has a lot in it to make fun of, but a fair amount that I also really enjoy.

So we'll see what happens.

But that's theflophouse.simpletics.com.

Join us the first Saturday in every month, September through February.

And the episodes will stay online through the end of February so that you can catch up on what you've missed.

Just because you missed an episode doesn't mean you shouldn't buy a ticket to it because you'll be able to watch it online, just not live.

Yeah.

And I have a small plug as well.

My wife and I.

What?

Yep.

I do.

So what I heard, your plug is not that small.

Oh, guys.

You've been paying attention to the internet.

So, guys, my wife and I have a new business venture.

We've talked about it before, but we are opening a studio gym in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, called Jiggle Studio.

It's a gym space that has classes, everything from

step aerobics to kickboxing to Pilates to pound and a variety of other types of activities.

It's a really cool body-positive

workout space that's focused on fun and movement and not being worried about weight or anything like that.

Stuart, what's pound?

Pound is one of those exercises where you like, you use sticks and you like pound on shit.

You pound on the ground.

I'm not an instructor, though, so take, take that with a couple of cents.

But if you are interested at all or you just want to check it out or maybe buy some merch to help support, just go to jigglestudio.com or follow us on Instagram at jiggle underscore studio BK.

Let's answer some questions,

letters from listeners.

This first letter is from Jonathan, last name withheld.

Who writes?

Oh, the Prince.

Yeah, it's him.

With a weirdly anachronistic question for the Prince, but Jonathan writes, hi, Elliot.

Back when tweeting was still a thing, I asked you a question about the power broker that you said you might be able to revisit once you got to that part of the book during your podcast with Roman Mars.

My question was about the bond that Governor Rockefeller pushed through to help upgrade NYC's transit and the LIRR.

From my memory of the power broker, the book didn't address the final outcome of that bond.

Do you recall what came of it?

By the decades of neglect that followed, I think it's safe to assume it went nowhere, but I hope you can shed some light on it.

I wonder if Robert Moses had some role in killing it or funneling the money to his pet project.

Thank you for the Flophouse Laughs and the Power Broker Learning.

Although this letter seems to be mostly geared towards

the podcast.

I will say, well, he should have written it to 99% visible, but yeah,

I don't think they do a lot of letter segments.

So there's two different bond issues that you may be referring to, but I think you mean the 1971 bond issue, which did not pass.

Well, you heard it here

first?

I mean, you specifically probably heard it here first.

It's probably, you could have heard it here.

I mean, that information has been around for 50 some odd years, ever since it happened.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The records are extant.

This is from Brie, last name withheld.

This one's for like all of us, right?

Not just Elliot.

Actually, it's mostly for Stuart.

I just get to kick back this time.

Dear Stuart, did this bond issue pass?

I'm like, oh,

hey, Peaches, when it comes to comic strips, we all know Dan loves the Archie comics so much, he named one of his kitties after them.

Now, I'm just going to take a brief pause and say that while I am fond of the Archie comics, I named Archie the cat after Archibald Leach, Carrie Grant's real name.

But the Archie comics are about him.

Yes, of course.

Yeah, before the Adventures,

Young Carrie Grant was always mixed up with Betty and Veronica.

Yeah.

And Moose, Moose, Dilton Doily, of course, Jughead.

But for the purposes of Reggie, Principal Weatherby, the joke of this letter.

Mrs.

Grundy.

Dan loves the Archie comics.

And then Elliot is basically the creator of Ziggy.

During the recent,

I poured more creative energy into it than I think certain other people.

Yeah.

During the recent Garfield episode, Stewart insists that he has a strong affinity for that fat orange cat.

However, I've been listening to the back catalog, and I think there's a dark horse.

Together

there's a dark horse storming around the track of Stewart's heart.

Over the course of 456 episodes, Stewart references the ever-relevant newspaper and anthropomorphic bird-focused comic strip, Shu, no fewer than seven times.

I think he just did like

the last recording that we did.

Yeah.

That doesn't seem.

That doesn't seem like a lot of times to reference something until you think about how that something is the comic strip, Shoe.

So I guess my question is, Stuart, why shoe?

Keep on flopping in the free world, Bree.

So real quick, we have a guest today.

Rebecca, are you a big fan of Shoe?

I don't know if I'm familiar with Shu.

Yeah, I'm barely familiar with it as well.

I believe it's a comic strip about birds that are journalists.

Yeah, they live in trees, but they are newspaper

people.

And they often hang out at a bar that is also in a tree.

Yes.

So this is a comic strip that's similar to Elliot's reaction to David the Gnome.

This was the sort of thing that I would come across when reading the newspaper, just the comic section.

I wouldn't read the actual newspaper.

I'm not like Dan doing the fucking bridge puzzle every week.

So I would be looking and I'd always like, I'd come upon Shu and I'm like, well, I've already read all the comics I actually like.

Let me try and figure this one out.

I've already done the Slylock Fox puzzle.

I've already read Rose's Rose.

I've already read, what, Bloom County?

I guess I'll read Shu.

And I never got it and didn't think it was funny ever.

And I didn't like the way it was drawn either.

But it is called Shoe, which is confusing.

So I find it to be a fascinating touchstone and something to refer to when I'm just

my brain is blank and I'm just pulling a comic strip out of it.

Yeah.

And Shoe, I feel like it's one of those like vaguely political comics that doesn't actually take much of a political stance about anything.

Like Wizard of Hidden?

Or a

crow wizard?

Yeah, I just like Shu would like reference current events without a particular

unlike the far-right bird comic Mallard Fillmore.

That's the thing.

It's easy to get Mallard Fillmore and Shu mixed up because they're both birds and they're both journalists.

But one is more of the kind of Johnny Carson style.

I'm doing a joke about the news, but it doesn't really have a point of view.

Whereas, yeah, Mallard Filmer is more conservative.

But Shu it, so I'm looking at the Shoe Wikipedia entry now.

Shoe is a comic strip.

Again, similar to Stewart, I would read it when I was a kid just because I read everything on the comics page except Prince Valiant.

No, thank you.

I'll look at the pictures.

The haircut, yeah.

I'm not reading that huge block of text.

Like a snow white haircut.

Yeah.

And yeah, yeah.

And I'm looking now and I'm like, oh, there's so many characters in Shu, and they all have descriptions here on Wikipedia.

And it's like, if you asked me, I wouldn't even be able to tell you which one was Shoe, you know, but uh, they, but each one of them has a name, has a personality.

Um, it just goes, and uh, that shoe is not only a long-running comic strip, it's one of the comic strips that continued after the death of its original creator.

That's how in demand Shoe was.

Yeah, so Shoe fans, write in.

What is it you love about Shoe?

Yeah, please.

Uh,

Mallard Fillmore fans, do not write in.

I am not interested in your opinions.

Go away.

Um,

so

let's uh let's uh get into some recommendations.

Movies that we've seen recently or not so recently.

Doesn't matter.

So Dan has seen like 10 zillion movies lately.

It's true.

It's a weird.

I mean, it's not that weird, but for some reason, it's been a lot.

So I'm going to jump in first.

Dan and I went to a movie the other night.

We went to an early screening of Together, a new body horror codependency movie.

So, of course, I went with my most codependent relationship, Dan.

And it was almost too real for me.

It stars a real life married couple, Alison Bree and Dave Franco.

And they play a couple that is dysfunctional and they get isolated.

And then they start to come together in a, let's say, scary way.

It's really fun.

It was written, directed, and most of the VFX work were all done by Michael Shanks, who I must point out is a flophouse listener and invited us to the screening and then let us fill him full of tequila afterwards.

And it's a lot of fun.

I think it works.

It manages to work.

The metaphorical stuff works and the relationship stuff works.

And I think it's great.

And it's gross and fun and oddly, like kind of sweet.

Yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned that we got to hang with the writer director who was a hell of a nice guy because,

you know, like it could be easy to be like, well, you just liked the glamour of the and but even before we got to really meet him,

I really enjoyed this movie.

I know you did too.

Like,

it was a blast.

It's very good.

Yeah, it's fun.

I'm just excited to see you guys transition into the Ain't It Cool News stage of the podcast where we get invited to screen in time.

Godzilla premiere.

And

yeah.

It was, I mean, it was very cool getting to watch Dan get to meet Allison Bree.

Dan did one of his classic things where he doesn't know that I don't know what's going on.

So he texts me and he goes, yeah, so Allison Bree touched my shoulder at this screening last night.

And I'm like, what the hell are you talking about?

We did talk about how we're going to go to this thing, but it was buried in a lot of upset that he's not meeting all the celebs.

I just don't understand.

I don't understand how Dan just lives this glamorous lifestyle of constant being invited to screenings and meeting famous people.

Meanwhile, I live in my bedroom.

I never get to leave.

Yeah, she and Dave Franco seemed

very sweet when we briefly met them afterwards.

Yeah, I saw

it'll be out by the time we see it, but I saw another advanced screening through the through a critic friend of mine of The Naked Gun, the new Naked Gun, and

really enjoyed it.

I,

you know, there's a lot of talk about like how much sort of weight is on this movie being one of the only pure comedies that has been like a wide release movie in a long time.

It's funny that a movie this silly is kind of going to bear the weight of like, what's the future of pure comedy on in like theatrical screenings.

But

it was, I really thought it was great.

It was extremely funny.

And

for me, the stuff that worked best was sort of like the classic,

like a new take on classic Zucker Abram Zucker naked gun airplane style jokes.

It didn't work quite as well for me when it got into like, we're going to lampoon modern accesses of excesses of

like Hollywood blockbusters because that stuff has gotten so down the road of self-parody already that it like it didn't do it.

Did they do any like bullet time jokes?

Not that, but they did like a lot of jokes about like just how ridiculous action stars have gotten these days.

And it works pretty well because it's Liam Neeson doing it and it evokes all of his like taken nonsense or whatever.

But just on the classic like dumb joke after dumb joke after dumb joke level, it was really funny.

And there are a couple of jokes that really made my audience just go nuts.

So

I had a good time.

Rebecca, do you want to go?

Sure.

I was also apparently apparently at that screening, but in a, oh, no.

I'm sorry.

No, no, no.

That is fun.

I was waiting at Elliot to be like, ha ha, I'm like, yeah, I know.

He snaked me.

Yeah.

Well, also snaked me because I was going to say Naked Gun 2 because I saw it at the same time.

Naked Gun 2?

Yeah.

Naked Gun 2 and a half.

The Naked Gun also.

But I will say when I got home from that screening, which I loved, my roommate was like, hey, I'm going to watch Last Days of Disco.

And I said, okay, sounds like a good enough double feature.

And I've never seen Last Days of Disco.

So

I watched that, and it was totally lovely.

Was it a good double feature, though?

Yeah, it made no sense.

Sure, I know.

I was trying to think of if there's any sort of thread that I could use to tie them together, but I mean, truly, no.

Last Days of Disco is funny, but in a very different way.

Yeah, a very grounded way.

Maybe

the last, maybe, when did the first Naked Gun come out?

88, 89, something like that.

Well past the last days of disco.

I mean, that's Wit Stillman, right?

Last days of disco, yeah.

So, like, I'd love to see a Wit Stillman naked gun, very understated, you know.

Just like, yeah, sort of like witty reparte, naked guns, Chloe Savigny in the Leslie Nielsen spot.

Yeah, I mean, let's let's pitch this to Disney Plus.

What are we doing?

Come on,

and Cruella DeVille is there.

Yeah, we can make, we can make it IP somehow.

So, I'm gonna, I'll, I'll, I'll finish up up.

I got that kind of a pitch where you're like, yeah, and uh,

the country bears.

Well, that's, I, I, so I've heard stories about, I always forget whether it was Hannah or Barbera who was in charge of pitching, but that he would go into, because one did the pitches and one kind of ran the actual animating.

Uh, but that he would go into pitch meetings and he'd be adjusting the pitch on the fly based on what the executives were responding to.

And then afterwards, he'd have to go back and be like, I know this is the show we talked about pitching.

This is the show we're doing right now because it's what they bought and i just i wish that i wish that i could be in a situation like that where i'm like and then of course there's an alligator

no a bear and

and that's how jabberjaw ended up being the drummer for you know i'm like okay so that's why captain caveman has two young teenage girls falling around

uh so i'm going to recommend uh i think this movie a movie version of this has been recommended for but i don't know about the tv version so i'm actually recommending a tv show but i haven't gotten to watch a lot of movies lately but i did have some time where i was watching episodes of the trip the uh steve coogan rob briden tv show that was edited into a movie that was released in theaters and i've always really loved the movie and watching the tv show i loved it too there's a lot more stuff in it and there's a lot more kind of serious stuff in it but also a lot of their funny jokes and i just love seeing those guys um as those series as this i know as the movies get on they like get less a little bit less mean to each other uh because at a certain point they've been through so many trips together.

But in this one, just the palpable fictional, I assume, kind of like frustration they have with each other, I find is very funny, especially Steve Coogan's frustration.

In the movie version, I feel like Rob Bryden comes off as this nice guy and Steve Coogan comes off as kind of like a jerk.

And in the in the TV show, Rob Bryden comes off as so much more irritating than he does in the movie in a way that is very funny to me.

So I recommend watching the, it's six episodes.

They're very short.

Sorry, four.

Yeah, six episodes, very short.

And I recommend the trip.

That's TV

in England, Elliot.

That's a normal length of a TV show.

That's true.

Six episodes would be an actual television show.

I mean, we're getting there.

America is getting there pretty quickly, you know, that we're going to have six episode seasons.

Well, that's it.

That's another episode of this show that has no seasons, but a lot of episodes.

A whole hell of a lot.

That's what they call him, the master of the segue.

No loose thread untied, they say about Dan McCoy.

Master of the crossbow.

That's just a compulsion I have.

Of course, I would like to thank, first of all, Rebecca, for being here.

Is there anything you would like to plug or put out into the world before we go?

Oh, yeah.

Go to vulture.com.

Go there.

And click on the articles and then read them.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I mean,

that's just gravy.

Or click on them and don't read them because it's really the criteria.

Yeah, what do you track?

Where are the tracking elements?

Yeah.

Tracker.

I'm CBS fans.

Thank you for having me.

Dan, don't send people to CBS, send them to Vulture.

What are you doing?

Yeah.

Yeah, our direct competitor, CBS.

I mean,

I don't want to send them to CBS right now.

I'm very mad at CBS, but

I couldn't resist a tracker reference.

He's taking America by storm.

That guy.

He tracks people.

No, he tracks better.

Such a popular show.

Coulter Shaw, aka Tracker.

That's it.

That's my whole bit.

Yeah.

Not a bit so much as a description.

Just a fact.

Oh, I thought his name was Tracker.

You wouldn't be a name.

His name should be Tracker.

He should be named Colter.

Coulter Shaw.

Yeah, well, thank you for being here.

Thank you for, yeah.

I think it's because Elsbeth is out.

And you're like, okay, that's her name.

It's not like, it's like kind of lawyer or whatever, John.

No, I mean, there's a, I mean, there's a long, rich history of TV shows named after the main characters.

I don't think it's just Elsbeth

that is causing this misunderstanding.

Wait, Elspeth isn't the first one?

It's not like in Seinfeld, he's a Seinfeld.

That's not his job that he does.

That's his name, you know?

In those other shows.

Becker doesn't becker.

He is a Becker.

Actually, that one's actually complicated because adding an ER makes it sound like that's like an old-timey profession.

Yeah, he's someone who becks.

Yeah, that's his, his profession is that he becks.

He's a becker.

Speaking of Seinfeld, I'm sorry that you'll never see Unfrosted now that you missed your chance, but we're glad that you could be here here today.

Oh, I've listened to this podcast truly for now over a decade.

Yes, this is very, very cool.

Now you get to see how dumb we are in person.

This feels like a 4DX.

Yeah.

Because Dan spits a lot.

Yeah, and shakes chairs.

Well, thank you.

And thank you to our network, Maximum Fun.

Go to maximumfun.org to listen to other great shows on our network.

And also, thank you to Alex Smith, our producer.

He goes by the name Howell Daughty when he makes music and his own podcasts and does Twitch streams.

Check those out.

And just thank you for listening for the flop house.

I've been Dan McCoy.

I've been Stuart Wellington.

I've been Ellie Kalen, and we've been joined by Rebecca Alter.

I enjoyed your post about

Pedro Pascal being the guy whose legs are long in movies.

Two is a trend.

Yeah, that makes it his thing.

Yeah.

Wait, who's this?

Pedro Pascal.

Did you see the materialist?

Of course I did, yes.

So when he reveals he had leg-lengthening surgery, I was like, that's also your power in the other.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, yeah.

That's really funny.

I just love that the materialist raises the possibility that there at one point was like a tiny Pedro Pascal.

I do like when he sort of kneels down and goes.

And you're like, oh, this is what he would have been like.

Uh-huh.

Immediately got the ick.

Deleted all my folders of pictures of Pedro Pascal.

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