Ep.#451 - Better Man, with Hallie Haglund

On this episode, we discuss Better Man.

I guess we can find a better man.

It's pretty good.

Hey, everyone, welcome to the Flop House.

I'm Dan McCoy.

Hey, Dan McCoy.

And listeners, I'm Stuart Wellington.

Hey, Stuart Wellington and Dan McCoy.

My name, which is on my driver's license, is Elliot Kalen.

And joining us today is Hallie Haglin.

Oh, she's got her beef.

I didn't realize Hallie has like a ragtime sting that she now uses.

So you hired Scott Joplin to write that for you for your appearances on podcasts?

Yeah.

Everyone's stepping up.

I appreciate that Hallie had a theme.

I appreciate that Stuart specified that he was talking to the listeners.

When you just address them, yeah.

It's good stuff.

Yeah, this is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

Now,

hold on.

You might be saying the straw man that Stuart claims about.

I'm always talking.

I'm listening.

Yeah.

So, Dan, tell us about, wait, before you get in, tell us about the straw man you're always worried about, who always takes issue with everything you say.

It's like he's in the audience of the podcast and he's saying, Dan, you suck.

I want to kill you.

I'm going to kill you.

I'm going to scarecrow.

I'm going to get you.

I'm going to go to your home at night.

It was kind of like an evil Dan is what you're saying.

But it looks just like a younger version of Dan, and then Dan has to jump off the podcast stage and do like a battle.

Oh, who wrote it?

Yeah, do a battle with all the other versions of Dan that are wearing the clothes we've seen Dan wearing throughout the movie.

The one that of me that's just Viscera from the

Rock DJ.

That was that was an Easter egg for the True fans.

Yeah, so this is

referring, of course, to the movie we watched, Better Man, which has a lot of Easter eggs for little Robbie Williams moments.

So, for someone like me who is not super versed on the career of Robbie Williams, there were times I was like, I guess that's the thing he wore once.

Like, I guess that's the thing he said once.

Elliott's an outlier for all Americans, though.

Americans love Robbie Williams.

They love Robbie Williams.

Before we get into that, though, let's wrap up the thing that I needlessly introduced, which is to say that this got a lot of pretty good reviews.

You know, is not our usual,

usually we tend towards the

critical flop rather than commercial flop.

This was a commercial flop, though.

It was

largely a critical success.

And so that's why we made like $700 in the U.S.

I think we made a little more than that, but not much more.

Yeah, not much more.

And that includes popcorn sales.

That's like my listener.

So one popcorn.

Thanks, Trump.

I was listening to a podcast recently about the making of Donnie Darko, a movie that I saw in the theaters.

And they talked about how what a tiny amount of money it made in the theaters.

And it made me feel really special that I was part of this elite, I guess, smaller than I realized, exclusive crew of people that saw it in the theaters.

So anyone out there who saw Better Man in the theaters, you are part of like a real kind of exclusive club of people who can say, yeah, I went to the theater and I paid money to sit in a public place, a private business that functions as a public place to watch a chimp be Robbie Williams and live out the life of Robbie Williams.

Because not a lot of people can say that, it turns out.

And it's interesting.

So, this movie, Robin Williams, we should make it clear to Americans.

This is not a movie about Robin Williams, the much more famous celebrity in America, and I think the rest of the world who has a similar name.

This is about Robbie Williams, who is short for Robert Williams, I think, who is a singer, a singer and dancer, a showman, as opposed to Robin Williams, who is more of a force of nature,

also a showman.

One of the greatest.

um

that's an easter egg for this director um no this i mean he's huge in the in

the uk robbie williams

and europe and uh but the funny thing is this was not even that successful no even in the so i thought i was gonna see i i looked it up and i was like oh this was probably a huge smash hit in the uk and it just didn't translate oh no they didn't like it over there either or they didn't go to see it you know yeah

he took a big swing you know what he did it his way he did do it his way he did yeah and he sings

a song that was popularized by singer robbie williams and no one else have you guys heard that song that's robbie williams he's not even it's not even it's not as if it's not even the first time it's been sung by a figure in a musical bio pick you know it's i'm referring to sid vish

nancy who also sings my way uh my preferred version the uh my wife's well because it's the only one that cuts through the fucking tree like that let's all let's be honest one of the worst sinatra songs like on dash charlotte my wife's a huge sinatra Sinatra fan.

She even saw him in Las Vegas at the Desert Inn, which is a story that I will not share.

It's her story, but she was very strange.

And yeah, exactly.

She did it her way.

I think it can't help being like, like when he gets going, it can't help but being like a little rousing.

But the message of that song is just so dumb to me.

It's like,

we all do it our own fucking way.

And it also sounds like shitty.

Like, no, I didn't take advice from anybody.

I'm

right.

It's a song that works.

It's a song that on bass level is a jerk

justifying himself, but it works when it is an older jerk like Sinatra, who has been through things and made mistakes.

The point of that song is, I made a lot of mistakes, but look, this is the only way I knew how to do it.

I had to do it my way and it screwed me up.

That works when it is an older man singing it who can look back on things.

But I feel like Robbie Williams, for all the mistakes he's clearly made, as seen in the movie, it still seems weird for someone who is not in their 60s to be singing my way.

And also, in America, he's in his early 50s, right?

Early 50s now.

But by the time in the movie, he must be in his parents, are still alive and not looking that old.

So he must be in like his

30s.

What?

Oh, one of them is.

One of them is old by the end.

That's a whole song about it, Elliot.

No, that's his grandma who dies.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah, no, that's, yeah.

Whoa, man.

Did you watch this movie?

I don't think he did.

Well, Dan thinks that Gran is what English people call mom, which is not true, Dan.

Did you watch his wife called Granny?

No, they didn't.

That's true.

They didn't really call her Gran.

No.

And you, Hallie.

But I will add her.

Hallie's the only one who did her homework.

It is an interesting move that the dad, as he gets older, becomes more and more caked with old age makeup, and the mom just don't really do much.

Actually, that's just Steve Pemberton's real face.

Oh, they de-aged him for the earlier one.

No, that makes a lot more sense looking back on the movie.

But the thing is, this is a real end-time situation where, for people who don't remember that old episode, we didn't realize that one character was supposed to be another character's mother.

The dad is made up, even when he's young, looks so old that it made more sense to me that those two were together.

Oh, man.

I, yeah, like the father in this movie,

we'll actually start the movie in a second.

We're going to watch it?

Yeah, we're going to watch it together.

Play on the VHS tape.

The father is played by Steve Pemberton, longtime of the League of Gentlemen, longtime English comedy guy.

And I'm so used to seeing him wearing like crazy wigs and like be looking like with tons of weird makeup on.

So I feel like this all tracks.

And yeah, I love him in everything he's in.

And he plays such like a piece of shit.

And he's so good at doing it in every performance.

He's playing the classic.

I feel like we have this in America too, but I feel like it's very classic in England, which is the bad dad who's kind of like a music hall type performer, super low-level, super never going to be famous.

Yeah, a real Rolling Stone.

And he just, and he's just, I feel like there's, I've seen so many British movies, especially about this kind of guy.

But there's, maybe the Hitman of England, there's probably like seven of them, but they make so many movies that it seems like this is the number two job in England after like, I don't know, working in a factory and getting your hands cut off or something like that.

The what?

Chimney sweep.

Yeah,

if you're in England, you're either a chimney sweep, you are a low-level entertainer who abandons your family for a long time, or you are the king.

Those are basically the jobs you have.

The marketing urchin.

The guy with the big hat.

But like, I feel like.

Oh, right, right.

The guard.

Yeah.

I feel like Dick Van Dyke and Mary Poppins.

crosses off like four of those boxes.

You know he's got like at least one family somewhere that is not paying attention to.

Oh, yeah.

As I said online too, if you're a performer in the UK, you either end up on a comedy panel show or you get to be a detective.

Those are two paths.

Yep, that's what you get to.

Stick around long enough.

Yeah.

Okay, so let's get into Better Man.

Now, right up, let's jump in here right up top.

Let's jump in the way Robbie Williams was because he does a lot of jumping in this movie, a lot of jump-based movies.

He's a monkey.

So that's not a monkey, Dan.

He's a chimpanzee.

As we've mentioned a bunch of times, this movie makes the interesting choice choice to replace its human performer with a, what Dan informed me was a digital chimp character, a chimpanzee.

They didn't really train a chimpanzee to walk on its hind legs exclusively and sing Robbie Williams songs and do a Robbie Williams impression.

I think they can do it, dude.

They grow to man's tools.

They grow to man's size, yeah.

So it's an interesting choice.

And one that didn't financially pay off.

Yeah, it's a brave choice.

I think it's one of those things where it's a double-edged sword because it is the one thing that made us interested in talking about this.

I can see how it would bring.

It certainly made me interested.

Yeah,

that's the thing that might bring in the curious.

But for the Robbie Williams fan, I think it's probably off-putting to not recognize the person that the movie is about.

And as we've seen from Bohemian Rhapsody, people love it.

People love a performer who is made up.

to be an exaggerated, almost physical caricature of the person they're performing, but they do not like a different species.

And there's only one scene where you see the chimp in bed with women.

And just for that moment, it is weirdly off-putting.

But

I had the same feeling watching this that I've had with other things where I'm like, I had to keep reminding myself, oh, yeah, in real life, this scene is happening with a person and not a chimp doing it.

And so the movie is much more interesting if it's about a performing chimp than about a performing person.

Yeah, I mean, how, like, I don't know about you guys, but I find it slightly off-pitting to see a chimpanzee snorting like mountains of cocaine.

Yes.

I mean, outside.

That's going to rip someone's face off is my worry.

The only place you should see that is a roadside carnival in Florida.

And you should only see it because you're walking past that room to the bathroom and you accidentally catch a glimpse of it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, the movie begins in a little town called Stoke on Trent,

what, a small town in the north of England.

We are introduced to Robert,

who is a young chimpanzee boy who is who claims that he can play goalie in a pickup soccer game.

He does terribly.

But this shows his inability to understand his own limitations let's uh no but he's no

he's assigned he's assigned to being goalie this is the thing that i thought was weird

like they're all like you're robbie be goalie one of the most important things here like thank you as a former goalie i appreciate if you're playing like soccer as certainly as kids play it just put him in the middle like one of the people who runs around like they're not staying tight to their like roles like just let him go

What's the name of that position, Dan?

You're a big footballer.

There's like a wing and another wing and a four-world.

Usually, there's at least one wing.

If you only have one, you're not going to be a fan.

You know what I'm talking about.

Like, I found this right now.

Perhaps you could be a striker.

You're not going to fly.

Yeah, it's like in

that famous Stevie Nicks song, Edge of 17, just like a one-winged dove.

Sings a song, sounds like she's singing.

Where's my wing?

Is that the are the is that a joke, or are those the no, no?

No, it's a the white wing.

It's a white wing.

Not a one-wing.

I was like, easily confused.

So she's not afraid of changes because she's built her life around goo all this time.

I thought that was the lyric.

Yeah.

Okay.

She works at Nickelodeon.

So children get balder?

Is that the line?

So young Robert,

he doesn't do particularly well in soccer.

People kind of razz him a little bit.

This doesn't, we don't really see much more of this relationship with the other kids in the neighborhood, but it shows that he has a desire to be someone.

And he has a, he lives at home with his mother.

His bluster.

It shows his bluster.

Yeah, his bluster and his cheek.

This is what's going to get him through life and eventually be his downfall.

He's a cheeky bastard.

He never knows when he's a bad man.

He's a monkey.

He's not a monkey, Dan.

He's not

a chimpanzee, Dan.

A chimpanzee and a monkey are two different things.

Are we sure he is, though?

Yeah, he's not like a capuchin.

No, he's not like Dr.

Watson.

I mean, we never.

No, he doesn't have.

Well, he doesn't have a tail.

He doesn't have a tail.

This is the difference between a monkey and other apes, or I guess apes are monkeys are different.

Monkeys have tails.

Chimpanzees do not have tails.

Gorillas don't have tails.

Orangutans don't.

And we do see his butt

during the surprisingly asbearing girl boy band world of Britain in the 1990s, I guess.

Where I was always like, throughout that sequence, I was like, this is a lot more skin than I'm used to American boy bands showing.

But we do see that he does not have a tail.

So Dan, I'd like you to, I'm going to keep correcting you.

This is the kind of straw man you should worry about, a zoological straw man who does not like it when people confuse monkeys and chimpanzees.

Stuart, continue.

Don't let Dan stop you.

Just let me stop you.

Whoa.

So, uh, his home wife, he lives at home with his grandmother, who's very nurturing, or his nan,

or mother, as Dan says.

Yep.

Uh, his mom, who is a hard-working lady who is trying to pay the bills, and then he has a thing say roommate who I guess is just renting rooms from the

non-entity in this movie.

It's Nan.

She's such a nan entity.

No, the mom.

She was a mom entity in this movie.

Mom entity.

Oh, yeah.

That, like, I, yeah, no, I feel foolish, but at the same time, they really do not put any importance on the mom compared to the nan or the dad.

Yeah.

She does cry at the end and he says some nice things.

Yeah, she's there.

That's, that's what moms do.

We're just there.

We're there, and nobody gives us the credit, but we're always there.

Yeah, Hallie, how would you feel if your, if one of your sons, I won't mention their names for their privacy on this podcast, if one of them eventually made a movie movie where they were a chimp, Robbie Williams.

If your son, Robbie Williams, achieved, stardom as a chimp, and you were barely in the movie, how would you feel about that?

I'd be pissed.

Okay.

Yeah.

Like, would you disown him?

I also think this episode comes out right before Mother's Day, right?

This is the episode that comes out, I think, the day before Mother's Day.

Yeah, okay.

So everybody, everybody, tomorrow, take care of your moms.

Put them in your movie.

Make sure to show their important parts of your chimp performing career.

Get them a gift.

Get them a nice workout set.

Let me, mom.

I know that you listen.

I find that confusing and distressing, but I love you.

Now, Dan, are you sure that's your mom and not your grandma you're talking to?

Because I know you have trouble telling you apart.

Now, now, oh, it's like made it into the usual suspect.

Just check the

time stamp on where we're at in the movie.

Two seconds in.

Sorry.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Cool.

Okay.

Buckle up, guys.

I mean, it's a has everybody peeked.

It's the most painful of this trip.

It's the most basic plot.

We don't need to get like, you know, it's

just trying to establish some fucking foundations here.

So, and his dad is this, like, as we said, he's a small level performer.

He's

very selfish.

He's not around very much.

He runs away at the first opportunity.

He's not a, he's a bad dad, singer dad.

He, um, and he, he's obsessed with the legends, as he calls them.

This is your Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and of course, Frank Sinatra.

Yeah.

So, and he, at the first opportunity, he runs away.

He does not show up for Robbie when Robbie is part of a school production, Pirates of Penzance, which I have to say,

that is an intense production for kids to have to pull off.

Gilbert and Sullivan is hard even for professional adult performers that rapid-fire very complicated values.

I'm not seeing modern Major General in that.

Yeah, for kids.

I mean, I guess, I mean, Robbie's playing a pirate.

I guess he's not.

But for kids to pull off Gilbert and Sullivan is harsh.

This must be one of the toughest non-toughest schools in all of England.

It's like the fame school, but in England.

Yeah.

It's like, but that's the thing.

That's

the fame school.

I mean, England puts way more effort into teaching kids the arts than the U.S.

So maybe that's the difference.

And that's why they get Robbie Williams and we don't.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's why we have no boy bands in this country.

Not a single one.

We're losing ground to Korea so fast every single day in the boy band market.

Yeah.

And once and I think this is a good time, as any, to say sorry for not winning any Tony nominations current

performance of Pirates of Pennsylvania now on Broadway, right?

David Heiseners.

Yeah.

Didn't even know that was happening.

Potential snub is what I what New York One told me.

Okay.

I mean, we know by now.

Well, I mean, you know, Tony, well, is he nominated?

It was not nominated.

I thought it was going to get nomination.

Well, you said potential snub, and I'm like, I mean, potential-based.

But I haven't seen any of the productions, so I can't even tell whether they're real snub.

I feel like potential snub just means whether it was deliberate or not, or whether it was like, oh, they just didn't deserve it.

You know?

Yeah.

Like when Better Man was snubbed by audiences.

So his father runs away, leaving Robbie to young Robert to sing

a Robbie Williams song to kind of commemorate this loss.

And he still clutches onto various trinkets and artifacts that his father left behind because he still loves his dad, despite him being a bad dad's hanger dad.

In some ways, the more distant your dad is, the easier it is to love them because there's that yearning, you know, becomes a very strong thing.

Whereas, if your dad's kind of always around and wants to help you, it's easier for a kid to say, Eh, no, thanks, I'll just sit in my room and not interact with you.

All seems very personal, no, it's all hypothetical, not at all true.

Uh, but you know, sometimes the dad reaches out and is like, Hey, let's play catch, and they're like, I'm good, and you're like, This is the kind of thing I always wanted my dad to do with me.

All right, and then they go, Hey, mom, want to play catch, and you're like, What?

Yep, and then you put on cats in the cradle and they turn it off.

They're like, I don't want to hear that shit,

Fuck this truck.

My kids are like, Dad, I was really hoping for more of a Cats in the Cradle relationship with you.

Okay, so Teenage Robbie now has ambitions to be a singer and performer and kind of like a cabaret.

Like that's his foundation.

He wants to be like the Rat Pack, yeah.

And so not to be confused with the Brat Pack.

He does not want to be like that.

He expressly says that at the time.

It's like most of them didn't go, you know, live up to their potential.

Hit some quite highs.

The Grinder.

What a show.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was, what, the Curse Owl film?

So, uh, yeah, the Curse Owl film about the Brat Pack, yeah.

Yeah.

So

Young Robert, uh, here's an ad on the radio for a upcoming boy band audition that is being put together by the actor who played Dewey Crow from Justified, which he plays it as creepy as possible.

I will say that this movie for me really loses something as soon as that sleazy producer leaves the movie.

Yeah, I agree.

Especially because they really seem to make a meal out of his facial hair and regular characters.

They also, they make a big point of talking about, like, uh, of like hinting out what a, what a jerk he is.

Yeah.

And then it never, I mean, he's not nice to them, but I feel like

in the annals of boy band Manager Dumb, there's so much worse.

Well, I mean, they make a joke of it, but like, at the, like, literally, the first thing is like, you know, for legal reasons, he was a real sweetheart.

And, like, I wonder if that's sort of genuine.

Like,

there's a limit to how far he wanted to go.

But then they undercut that because they say it goes, and a right C word.

And it's like, so it's like, if you're going to do that big,

something different in England, yeah, in England, it's a it's a it's a nice thing.

It's a term of endearment.

Yeah.

That's what the movie Terms of Endearment is about.

It's not a C word.

That's right.

Yeah.

This is the word, speaking of me and my children, where my older son, he's out of that phase now, but for a while, like a year to go, he was very enamored of showing off what bad words he knew.

And he'd be like, I know the F word.

I know the S word.

He goes, I know the worst word, which of course is a different kind of word.

But and I'd be like, you don't know the second worst word.

And he'd be like, just tell me what letter it starts with.

And I'm like, it's a word you're not even going to hear.

Don't worry about it.

He's like, I just want the letter.

Just give me the letter.

Mr.

Policeman, I gave you all the

if you even speak it, it'll destroy your mouth.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a Lovecraftian word.

Yeah, exactly.

Annuncia.

So he,

so it's, I think it's important to say that this is a, first off, this is a musician biopic, my least favorite genre of movies, but it's a musician biopic.

Would you rather see a real-life snuff film?

Yeah,

yeah.

I considered that a genre.

Although it's funny, Stuart, you're the one who really sold this movie.

I was, yeah, sometimes.

I mean, literally, Stuart was the marketing exec who was on the movie.

So didn't do a great job, Stu.

Weirdly enough, I got promoted.

That's why he's a podcaster now.

Failing upward, that's the Stuart Williams.

He said, Stu, you took one for the team.

You got pinched, you didn't talk.

We're going to kick you upstairs.

Yeah.

But so it, I think it suffers from the fact that many of the people that are featured in this movie are still alive, so they are a little bit careful to not be too honest about things.

And we occasionally get voiceovers from real life Robbie Williams himself, not a chimp.

Which, like, he'll, you know, he'll give you little insights into the moments of the story.

Not as good as, say, 24-hour party people, which makes it much better.

Oh, I mean, well, that's a great movie.

Like, that's a genuinely great movie.

It's just a great movie.

I think this movie suffers a little bit from, and we can talk about this more later, I guess, but like from coming relatively soon after a bunch of other music biopics.

Like, I'm trying to remember what other ones there were besides in the last few years, besides, like, Rocket Man and Bohemian Rhapsody, but like, it is telling a very similar story.

Complete unknown.

Yeah.

Complete unknown.

Although, I guess, yeah, it's, it's a, although this came out before Complete Unknown, right?

Or no?

I mean, within like a few months, right?

And they're the same kind of performer, pretty much.

So it's like, if you're going to see one, you're not going to see the other.

Yeah.

I think, I texted Dan this already, but I do think this is like the better version of Maestro.

Oh, okay.

Oh, I never saw Maestro take, but

I didn't really dig into it on text because I wanted you to explain more.

It's got it, you know, like.

How many chimps are in Maestro?

Well, I feel like, I feel like

the chimp is akin to the prosthetic prosthetic nose yeah

and then they have these fantastical scenes at least in my memory don't they have like dance scenes in maestro i didn't see maestro i don't know i thought it was about danger

i did see maestro uh i don't remember like fantastical but i remember it being like

extremely stylized yeah i think this yeah but but the dance scenes in this i i never am that into like dance in movies but i thought the dance was so the dancing was so fun scenes in this movie are very,

yeah.

I mean, there's one

scene in particular, the rock DJ scenes.

We're not even there yet.

We're not there yet, but I just want to, I mean, we've got brought it up.

I'm just saying, that's like a five-star scene in a otherwise, you know, not five-star, but two and a half-star movie movie.

When he did the dancing with Nicole on the yacht, that was an excellent.

Yeah.

So let's, let's get, let's, let's put the pedal in the middle and get there fast.

So he aces his audition.

He doesn't sing particularly well, but he has a just a kind of, I think the kids call it it Riz.

Yeah.

A little bit of cheek, a little charm.

He specifically,

he specifically talks about his success being tied in with a specific wink he does.

Yes.

He looks like he's failed the audition, and then he turns around and goes, should I tell the other guys just to give up because you've already found me?

And then winks.

And he's like, if I hadn't winked, I never would have been here today, you know, whatever.

And then when he leaves, the guy's like, cheeky bastard.

Yeah.

That's exactly what we need from our boy bond.

We need someone like a real cheekster.

But I respect him.

I mean, every boy band needs a bad boy.

Like in the boy band of the flop house, I'm the bad boy.

Dan's the cute one.

I'll take it.

I don't know.

I guess that leaves

Elliot's the smart one.

I guess I'm the artistic genius that leaves and creates even bigger things.

Okay.

Well, you're not the quiet one.

That's for sure.

I am bound for reality television.

Okay.

So and Hallie, Hallie is the guest one.

I'm the girl.

She comes in and does like a hot like solo or chorus that we really need to bump that.

That's right.

Yeah,

she contributes the hook.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So he is invited to join.

He joins Take That, a hot new boy band that starts out by playing shows in the gay club scene in England before graduating to more, I guess, cishet normative venues.

I mean, to a specifically specifically teenage girl-directed venues.

But that's something that.

So, this was the one insight of the insights about like when you get everything, you won't, it leaves you empty inside.

You know, people are important.

That insight did not, I've heard that before.

But something that I had never thought about

every other Spider-Man comics.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

The movie Family Man with Nicholas Cage.

Episode of Family Guy.

Yeah.

Quaymeyer says it, and they say it's giggity.

The insight.

He sure does.

This guy says giggity a lot.

Oh, boy.

No wonder that show has ran for 29 years or whatever.

One of the top people who says giggity.

Yeah, namely three.

Name someone who does giggity.

Undeniable.

Name someone who's better at giggity than him.

But the insight that you can create a teen girl-oriented boy band by first testing them out in the gay club scene was one where I was like, you know what?

That made a connection for me that I had not made internally before.

And I, and I liked that.

That was the kind of thing where I'm like, okay, that's a, that's a different

point than I'm that I'm seeing.

That makes sense to me, but I haven't heard it before.

And, but, but first, before they did that, I was like, he's like, first, we started on the gay club scene.

I'm like, is there enough money in the underground gay club scene for a boy band to be like, to build a whole career off of that?

And then it was like, oh, that was just your testing lab for the, for the teen girl scene.

That makes sense.

But yeah.

And so they are very successful, but Robbie individually isn't particularly successful.

A lot of the money goes to their manager or to their like front manager.

Gary.

Gary Barbara.

Gary, because Gary writes the songs, so he gets the royalties on the songs, whereas they do not.

They just get their, I guess, session and performance fees.

You know, Robbie develops a pretty severe cocaine and drinking problem by

2021.

Even though he has no money, he's somehow swimming in cocaine.

But

I don't think that I think that tracks because the manager just keeps giving them those things for free.

Is that it?

All right.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Because you got to get them amped up to go performance.

I also assume, you know, like, I mean, look, I've never been in a boy band, but I think the podcast is pretty similar.

I think you're.

I know.

Haley's shocked.

I think she just did a bazooka jail uptake when Dan said.

She's doing the mental mess.

You could have been in a boy band.

You have.

You've got time.

You've got time, Dan.

You haven't.

Remember?

Yeah.

No, but I presume.

Remember, remember when you were in three-for-all?

The three-boy-boy band?

You were the one who would run out on stage and go, it's a total three-for-all.

And then the other two guys would come out and join you.

Yeah.

It was weird, though, because I was 30 and the other two guys were 18.

Well, it's important because with the 30, there's a three in there, so it works.

Yeah, exactly.

No, no.

You have to be an age that's divisible by three, which is really tricky because you can only perform every three years.

Oh, yeah, that year when you were 31 and they were 19 and you could not perform legally, that was harsh.

That was harsh.

Terrible business model.

Compared to a castle in England and you worked on your next steps.

No, I was two years.

The point was, originally, I assume that also this is

a job where people give you a lot of drugs.

Yeah, probably.

Yeah, yeah.

As Stuart's saying.

Now,

what struck me here when he's like...

Oh, you don't get it your way.

That's a reference to the song.

You know what?

I was like, I was not imagining like a Burger King for drugs.

I want to have it my way.

Don't, please, no,

no sauce on top of my time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or an outback commercial, like no rules, just right.

And yeah, no rules, please.

Yeah.

And you deserve a break today.

And that break, I guess, is drugs.

When you're at a point, that's the best.

I mean, that's when I take my drugs, is when I'm on a break.

Not when I'm at work.

Loving it.

Drugs.

Loving it.

Dot, dot, dot.

Drugs.

Oh, man.

Slap down on TV.

Yeah, that Ronald McDope fiend says that.

Do you guys know that, like, BK, have it your way, is my son's favorite song?

Oh,

my gosh, watching TV.

Like, if that commercial comes on, he like stops whatever he's doing and like, like, just like double tanks to the TV.

It's amazing.

How does your son feel about it?

Because this is, my sons love that song, but the thing they love even more are insurance company slogans.

So they'll just walk around going, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty.

Can we get a single for that?

Yeah, I don't know.

It means when I sing the ring pop song to them from all those old commercials, it's like a Gilbert Sullivan Pirates of Pencil's thing because the lyrics are so much more complicated than just Liberty, Liberty, Liberty.

But yeah,

you won't get it yet.

You'll get it when you're a little bit older.

Yeah.

Yeah, just don't play the Cars for Kids song for them or it'll drive me.

Boy, yeah, that's what they're going to want my ringtone to be.

They'll be rocking back and forth singing.

Well, they'll want cars.

They'll be like, the song says we can have them.

Yeah.

People are just giving them to kids.

Do they do the Cars for Kids song in L.A.?

Oh, it's nationwide.

It's nationwide.

It's nationwide.

It's on your side.

Our brains.

So Robbie is unsatisfied being in the group, so it leads him to greater acts of

rebellion.

He gets kicked out of the group.

He wishes that he could take a bigger part in it.

He claims that he has all these lyrics, which, having heard a lot of Robbie Williams songs after the end of this movie, I don't think that's true.

But that's

I can be a hater.

That's fine.

That's true.

You can be a hater.

You're allowed.

I'm allowed.

Yeah, legally.

Yeah.

No, but he were a hater jail.

What if you were Bill Hater?

You'd have

Barry on your resume.

You'd be, you know, you would have made Barry.

Yeah.

I would probably have a pretty good Robbie Williams impression in my back pocket.

Oh, for sure.

For sure.

That would be wonderful.

Can we get him?

Is he available for this episode?

Let's see.

No.

So he gets kicked out of the group.

That leads him to drinking.

He takes a watermelon with him.

Like, he's the jerk.

He's like, all I need is this watermelon.

That was an interesting choice.

And I was not sure what he was going to do with that watermelon.

And the answer was nothing.

Yeah, he saved it for like 30 years.

30 years.

He says, I'm sorry message that he carved into it.

But there's a scene where he really screws up partly when they're about to go on stage for a concert.

They're on like an elevated platform and he's passed out on the platform.

But then the show starts.

And I was like, So, when did he get in his costume?

Like, how did he just pass out a minute ago?

Yeah, guys, I'm sorry.

Let's actually, and I know, Stuart, you'll hate this, but let's skip backwards because you, we've gone past the point that you were like, we're not there yet.

Oh, yeah, yeah, which is uh

there is a there is a fantastic dance sequence right in the middle of the movie to Rock DJ, Robbie Williams, probably biggest hit in the U.S.

That or Millennium.

I was gonna say, Yeah, Rock DJ, I'm not familiar with, but Millennium is

You didn't know Rock D, I don't wanna rock.

I did not know that one.

Oh, my gosh.

I knew Millennium.

But, like, this is a

smiles direct to our face.

I don't know the lyrics, but

a genuinely great sequence in the middle.

And I thought it was interesting the way that Millennium was the theme song to the TV show.

Yes, it was.

Yeah, Lance Henriksen did a cover of it for that.

Yeah.

Yeah, cool.

Like he's Kinsey Graham.

You know, like just exploring his lined face as millennia plays.

You think you're looking over kind of like a desert wasteland, and then it pulls back at the very end, and you see that it was Lance Henriks' face the whole time.

Yeah, yeah.

Great actor.

A lot of people.

No idea what you guys are talking about.

You may remember him best from the day Lincoln was shot, the TV movie we played, Abraham Lincoln.

He was

probably bishop in an alien.

Oh, he's in Pumpkinhead.

He doesn't play Pumpkinhead, but he's the guy that summons Pumpkinhead.

It's just like credit after credit that we have no reason to expect Halley he to be familiar with i mean i thought aliens maybe anyway plays ace in uh quick and the dead oh you may remember best at the start of the show millennium he comes back in aliens versus predator uh anyway um

no the the the the the rock dj scene a lot of modern musicals like cut things all to hell and this is like clearly digitally stitched together from a bunch of different stuff.

And I'm sure a lot of it was on green screen anyway, but it is done as if it's one continuous dance.

It's presented as a continuous shot where you can see the full bodies a lot of the time and it goes all the way like through the streets of London into different like you know it goes into stores it goes on top of a bus like it's it's a really genuinely great sequence

and they're great dancers and they're great dancers how many and how many and how many deckers is that bus Dan Oh,

it's a double.

Yeah, that's right.

They pulled out all the stuffs.

But

this is a really well done scene and it's really exciting.

Like it really gets you into the energy that they want you to get you to.

It's really good.

Yeah, unfortunately, this hits about a third of the way through, and I feel like the movie has difficulty recapturing this energy.

No, it never hits that high again, which is a problem.

But it did, I'm like, oh, well, this is a way forward for a movie musical where it's like, this is modern Flash, but you're still getting to see like a big, genuine dance musical number that's not cut to hell.

Like, it looks more like a music video, honestly, but in a good way.

But it seriously did make me wonder, like, if

he had not been a chimp, like

it reminded me of so many things that get so much critical acclaim.

You know, I said maestro, but it was also like, oh, this is like also a way better version of La La Land.

Like all movies that were nominated for Oscars.

And then this made $700.

So you're saying it's anti-chimp.

racism is part of it.

I think the backlash, they just, you know.

I will say I did find the, the, I thought of La La Land 2 while I was watching this because there's that first scene in La La Land where they're dancing in the streets.

Yeah, La Land 2.

La La again.

It's a la.

It's a la la la la la land 2 la la la la la.

And the

it's called La La Lands.

It's like, oh no, now there's more of them.

But I will say, I thought of that first scene where they're kind of dancing on the freeway or whatever.

And I was like, I like this scene more.

And the only part of La La Land that's really exciting to me is the part when he's supposed to be selling out and he plays that great keyboard solo.

And I'm like, yeah, this keyboard solo rocks.

Like, why are we supposed to see this as the nadir of his artistic career?

And this captured that energy really nicely.

So I think

probably the difference is, here's how my theory is for why this didn't get the same kind of acclaim.

One, it's a chimp doing it.

Two,

Robbie Williams, and which,

and three, like

it being like yet another biopic, which I give, I think give people reasons to turn away from it, you know, or to treat it as lesser.

I don't know.

I mean, when it came out, it did not came out after.

this came out after the queen one.

Yes.

Yes.

I think part of it, yeah, is because we don't have a single person to kind of hang this on.

Like we don't have Taryn Edgerton doing Elton John.

We don't have Rami Malik doing Freddy Marker.

That being said, like the...

We have Andy Serkis doing.

That's what I assumed.

It's not Andy Serkis.

It's somebody else.

But we do have that chimp, but I think it does make it...

It makes the movie feel like a novelty act rather than a real story.

And I will say, you know, cutting ahead slightly as a spoiler to my final judgment, it's a very well-made movie in a lot of ways.

And yet I could never quite get over my intense lack of interest in the life story of Robbie Williams.

And the movie did not find the angle.

It got the angle to get me into the in through the door, which is there's a chimp dancing.

But it did not get me into this, it didn't get into my heart to the point where I'm like, oh, I care about this guy and I care about what he's doing.

And I think that's the, that's the real weakness of it.

Whereas maybe with Bohemian Rhapsody, like, it's partly because people have such a lot, a lot more audiences winning with affection for Freddie Mercury.

Like his story is genuinely also tragic in a way because he died young.

Whereas Robbie Williams is just like, and then I did great and I'm doing good now.

Bohemian Rhapsody told a completely bullshit version.

I mean, it's totally made up also.

It's not true, which is too bad because Queen is genuinely one of the strangest bands in the history of the world.

And it would have been amazing to see their real story because the stories you hear about them are.

just bonkers just like very weird but um but i think that it's another downfall the fact that we're talking about many people who are still alive.

Yeah, maybe.

Yeah, maybe.

But also, it feels like

maybe you guys didn't feel this way, but I never quite got over feeling like this was kind of a vanity production in the way that Rocket Man feels a little bit to me.

Like

essentially a vanity production.

Yeah, if you're producing your own biopic, basically, then either you got to really pull out the stops to show that you're telling the story or digging deep.

And I guess he's kind of digging deep here.

He's saying, I'm depressed.

I see myself as ugly and weak and, you know, and bad.

But there's always the thing of like, I think I'm so interesting.

You should see my whole life here.

And that's a hard hurdle to get over, maybe.

Speaking of his whole life, should we go through the movie or do we just want to skip to a final judgment?

No, no, let's go through the movie.

Okay.

So he is.

I forgot that we rigidly adhere to structure on this podcast.

No, I mean, it just sounded like you were wrapping up.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, I've got

Gary on our hands over here.

Got a word on our hands?

Gary.

Sorry about that.

So Robbie is

floundering a little bit.

He wants to do his own solo album and he bumps into Nicole.

Wait, what's her last name?

Nicole Appleton from the band All Saints.

Owner of a ton of apples.

All Saints was a popular UK girl group.

When I was living in Germany and Austria, their song Black Coffee was on MTV a lot.

And I always kind of associate my time over there with that song.

I don't know.

Was that in the movie?

No.

But I was surprised.

I'm like, oh, I'm familiar with this

girl group.

So they hit it off there.

They hit their hit.

Their number one hit, the one that went number one in the movie.

That everybody knows that song, right?

Wait, which song?

Which one's that?

It's like, you know, I never felt so low.

When you gonna get me out of this black hole?

You know.

Oh, I think you mean black hole, sun.

Check calm.

No, and walking.

the right.

No, no, that's not what I mean.

Never mind then.

Oh, okay.

So they start a romance.

The two of them have

a musical number, a duet with a little dance on a yacht.

It's pretty good.

It's good.

It's good.

You get flashing forward.

Some of the words for their movie their romance builds while they're having this

dance.

She is a really good dancer, also.

Yeah.

Well, and through the

montage of Flashing Forward, you get it's sort of obliquely shown in the, I mean, they say it outright later on, but it's obliquely shown in this montage in a way that like, I'm like, oh, I'm glad I read the Wikipedia page for what's going on here that the

her label pressured her to have an abortion of their child, which then leads to kind of the...

divide in their relationship.

Because that was definitely very obliquely done in a way that I thought maybe she had a miscarriage because you see them putting a crib together and then it just kind of things are not good after that.

And they're no, but you see the manager like yelling at her and she's like, no, no.

And then you see the manager taking her.

You point to a baby and then like

he brings out his doll and then he just goes.

So they, their relationship starts to deteriorate.

He keeps doing too many drugs.

He's very cheeky on television.

He has some successful albums.

He seems to be sleeping around quite a bit, which that means we get at least one shot of a chimpanzee in bed with some naked ladies.

Damn, that must have been like seeing your search results just come to life in a movie.

Exactly.

I did.

I was, I mean, you know, this movie was not something where I expected to see that.

I will say that.

Really?

Dan was like, wait a minute, am I still watching the movie or did I accidentally switch browser windows?

This is a very like.

How did my fantasy get on the screen?

There's a lot of, I guess there's a lot of swearing, but like

because it is such a basic story, it like read to me as like PG in a way that I'm like, oh, there's like three nude ladies in bed with a chimpanzee.

That I did not expect.

Yeah.

No, that's fair.

Yeah.

I mean, that's, yeah, that is fair.

That is fair.

Yeah.

Do you think that's one of those things where they hadn't quite figured, they hadn't quite thought of when they started the process of making a movie about a chimp Robbie Williams?

And they were like, oh,

it's very possible that they didn't realize it would cut down on the amount of kind of like scandalous love scenes they'd be able to do.

It reminds me of a, so my younger son has really gotten into the original Planet of the Apes movies recently.

And

we skipped beneath the Plan of the Apes because I was worried the mutants would scare him.

And I was talking to my wife about the making of it, and I was saying how like, yeah, the original version of it, they were going to have an ape-human hybrid to show that maybe there's a way for the apes and the humans to get along.

And they even went as far as to do a makeup test with a kid in ape-human makeup.

And then they realized the implication is that a human had sex with an ape, and they and that it was too late in the process for them to not have spent the money on the makeup, but they cut it out of the movie.

And it feels like this is a similar thought process here: where they're like, We'll show him as a chimp, it'll be amazing, and we'll show all his bad boy exploits.

Oh, you mean like when he slept with women, so you want to show him as a chimp having sex with women?

And they were like, Uh, ooh, okay,

wow, I wish we weren't on day 49 of the 50-day shooting schedule.

You know, you guys, this moment did not, I mean, it stuck out to me because there were naked ladies, but like the uh, the

species uh yeah that did not affect me as much as

just robbie robbie williams at that point like i didn't really think

maybe it's because i'm a visual learner i kept having to remind myself oh yeah he's a person he's not a gym yeah i i have amnesia so i keep forgetting what's happening

because i brought up planet because you brought up plan of the apes though um so i you know i finally recently got a new phone to get ahead of our uh idiot presence uh disastrous tariffs and such can't wait to find out how this has to do with Planet of the Ace.

I mean, it's got to get

your

impatience will be

slowed down when you...

No, so I was like, you know, I hate AI for all sorts of applications, but I, you know, I'm not like across the board, I'm not like, well, this has no use whatsoever.

You know, like, I was like, oh, well, it has this, like, the phone has this function.

Point it at a thing.

It'll tell you what the thing is.

You know, write a screenplay for me.

I'll try that.

Yeah, that's that's my favorite function.

The one that's put everyone out of work.

No, but I'm like, let me put it up to a better man and see what happens.

And sure enough, it says, you're watching Planet of the Apes.

I'm like, oh, AI.

Even for the things I kind of accept you.

Dan, I'm going to do you even one better.

I have a new children's book out.

I'll plug it later called Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House.

And I had to look up the date of an author event I'm doing so I could talk about in this podcast.

And when I googled Sadie Mouse, yeah, Once Upon a Time, which is the name of the store, the AI said, this may refer to the book Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House or Sadie such-and-such of the Manson family as portrayed in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

And I'm like, I guess they did wreck that house.

Google AI.

I guess they did.

Have you seen that thing where like people just like put in totally made-up phrases into like ChatGPT and ask them to explain it?

And ChatGPT confidently like claims, like, oh, that's what this means.

It's like, fuck you.

So I guess we know ChatGPT is a man.

Whoa, whoa, air horns.

Oh, wait.

I don't know how I can.

So roast it here.

I don't know how to pick up my.

They're going to have to fix that by stealing Scarlett Johansson's voice and just sticking it on there.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

So Robbie manages to,

he nets a big, he nets a.

Like a huge fish.

Yeah, he nets a huge festival appearance at Nebworth.

Were you guys familiar with Nebworth?

I was not.

So

when they kept saying Nebworth, we got to do Nebworth, I was like, I got to look what this is.

Don't know what they're talking about.

It sounds like a nerdy villain or like a butler character.

It's not that.

Stop bothering us, Nebworth.

You're too small to play the piccolo.

I'll show you.

So leading up to this point, every time Robbie...

He's too small to play the piccolo.

He is so small.

Every time Robbie is performing on stage, he looks out into the audience and he sees past versions of himself

saying

horrible, violent threats to him, basically.

Like, you're going to fail, I'm going to kill you, all these things.

I'm going to kill you was weird.

Like, I get like the self-doubt, like, you know, like, you're ugly, you're stupid, but like, I'm going to kill you does not seem like something you say to yourself.

No, not particularly.

Yeah.

I mean, although he was.

in many ways trying to kill himself with drugs and then later on with uh i think a razor blade um but frozen pond so the whole time i'm like every time he's performing i'm like something bad's gonna to happen.

But I'm not that worried because I've seen Smile 2, the worst possible concert performance thing in a movie.

So, but

this seems to be.

I mean, Trap was a pretty bad outcome for a concert performance, too.

The end of the Serial Killers had a lot of fun.

The actual concert goes off without it.

Trap.

Oh, I see.

Yeah, exactly.

And it's amazing.

You can buy her album somewhere, I bet, right?

M.

Nightsham on Stoner.

So Lady Raven.

Lady Raven.

Yeah, cool.

I remember.

I mean, she doesn't perform in real life as Lady Raven.

That's her character, isn't it?

She doesn't?

I think she's talking about stuff.

Yeah, she used to do that.

Yeah.

So

what I'm saying is that this is like

his

relationship with himself and his addiction and his relationship with his father, that's his big challenge that he has to overcome.

Yes.

And

his stress leading up to this big festival forces him to push everyone away.

It's turning into more of a stress dival.

Yeah, thank you.

He destroys his relationship with Nicole, his grandmother, grandmother, not mother, dominant.

Yes, thank you.

And he wrecks his relationship with his best friend, who is a guy that he's known for years.

I was like, are we supposed to...

Yeah, we were, they showed up earlier.

They were drinking together when he said, I'm going to go be in a boy band.

Yeah.

They were like sitting on a billboard or something.

But like, he was not a big part of the movie.

Like, they made it out.

He's like a conscience.

This is like a huge thing.

And I'm like, this guy was barely here for the whole rest of the movie.

Dan, did you really want to see a lot of scenes with him hanging out with his old buddy?

Or did you want to see this chimp dancing on a double-decker bar?

Do you think that old buddy is like

good for the movie?

Do you think

this character actually existed in real life, or if this was just like a straw man?

I bet he's a composite of the people he knows.

No, I think he's real.

I think he's real.

And I think Robbie was like, I got to put him in the movie.

Yeah, like

that.

That's how people, people are going to get mad if I don't put this guy in the movie.

It would be like making a Beatles movie and not putting in

Yoko.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There you go.

So he strains all his relationships.

He even,

his father, who had come back into his life when he became successful,

he even pushes his father away, which at this point, we're like, yeah, your father's a piece of shit.

Like, we all know this.

Yeah.

So he does the festival.

fan.

It goes off without a hitch, except for the fact that he jumps off the stage and he battles digital versions of former selves, slaughtering them in quite a battle.

Yeah, but we presume that the audience probably doesn't see that happening.

My guess is that

if you look at the archival footage of his actual performance at Knebbleworth, that he doesn't jump off the stage and just start fighting people, you know,

that, but it ends with him stabbing through the chest, or I guess not ends.

One of the big moments is him stabbing through the chest his Pirates of Penzance younger kid self.

Childish.

It's really sad.

Which really was sad.

Yeah.

And it was a.

He gave a little whimper.

Yeah.

It was really.

It seems like that, that version of himself didn't really do anything bad to him.

No, not particularly.

But I will say, this was one of those moments where I'm like, I don't really, I don't really buy this as a scene, but I love seeing this kind of chimp fight free-for-all.

It's all CGI.

It doesn't look like real chimps.

We're like, I love seeing all these different chips in different costumes fighting each other.

Like, that's why they made the movies.

It was like 300.

Is that the name?

Is that the number?

Yep,

yeah.

There was like three.

Yeah, it was like 300 chimps.

Yeah.

Yeah, they stood against Persia in the hot gates.

Yeah.

Now, how would the movie 300 be different if all the Spartans were chimps?

That would feel different, too.

That's a pretty much.

I guess that's true.

Yeah.

They would all be ripped.

Super ripped chimps.

Now, I...

You know, I'm not the biggest fan always of like, you know, like a mishmash of CGI characters battling each other, but I will say I much prefer that than seeing actual chimps having to hit each other with fish.

Oh, for sure.

That would have made me upset.

I think we can all agree that this is a better movie.

It's a better movie for not Lancelot Link style, using a real chimp in a costume and like putting peanut butter on his lips so that his mouth moves and not having real chimps fighting each other.

I think we all agree with that.

Now, for people who aren't as old as us and didn't see it in the syndication, Lancelot Link was a secret chimp.

Now that implies that you think he's a chimp in secret, like Robbie Williams.

He's a better man.

No, no, no.

He's actually a secret agent who's a chimp in a world of chimps where everyone is a chimp.

Yeah.

See, I like my chimps playing baseball with Matt LeBlanc, and that's it.

In which case, I don't think that was a real chimp in that movie.

I think that's a person in a costume.

So all the better.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Stuart's innocence has been shattered.

Maybe you need to watch Dunstan Checks In, which I guess

I think is also maybe not real.

Magic of the audience.

Dunstan's a real one.

Is Dunstan a real one?

That Dunstan, he's a real one.

let me tell you this about dunston that guy

was it orangutan that orantan or i remember it's a rangan or gorilla he is a real one 100 he gives 100 all the time he will check in you do you doing bad he'll check in

he's not afraid of it that's what it's about right so after his performance uh after

if it was i wish it was i hope it's a real ape so that i can go back in time and write a review of that ape's performance and say dunston checked out halfway through the movie

Oh man, Dunstan's gonna be so fucking bummed in this.

So mad.

So mad.

Yeah.

You made Dunstan cry.

So this is what it sounds like when apes cry.

Anyway.

You can go with when Dunstan cries.

It's not the right number of syllables.

But as the same beginning sound is dubs.

Dan, Dan.

Prince was one of the greatest songwriters of all time.

I do not want to ruin his scansion by trying to figure Dunstan in when dumpsters go.

Dunsts cry.

You write much better.

Dunsts, much better.

Yeah.

That's only as George Prince can call that.

By the time we take this on the road, we'll have it.

I mean, it's still better than my Raspberry Bar Ape parody.

So after battling.

Again, no disrespect to Prince, one of the greatest songwriters of all time.

Okay, Stu, continue.

After all this,

Robbie contemplates self-harm, but he stops himself and he checks himself into rehab.

He cleans himself up, and then he,

the his first big step, the well, only step is that he reconnects and with all the people that he's pushed away in his life and he makes a meth he makes like showy amends with everybody, right?

He gives he gives Gary Barlow back a watermelon with a penis crudely carved in it.

I love the idea that he's been mad at him all these years because he never paid him back for that watermelon.

This was all a deep, yeah.

You know, the

watermelon symbolizes something.

You got to imagine those those are exposed.

But you got to imagine those are expensive in England, too.

Like, you're not growing watermelons in England.

Those are all imported, you know.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

That's where do you grow watermelons?

Yeah.

You grow them here.

We grow them in the United States.

We have to grow them.

That's my husband.

And he grew them in our yard.

Yeah, we've grown watermelons in ours too.

Yeah.

They grow a lot in Mexico.

They grow a lot in

Japan is where they grow the square ones.

That sounds like.

You know how they make a square watermelon.

They just put it in a box.

It's so exotic to me to live a place where you could grow your own watermelon.

So Dan, Dan, so are you going to try to grow your own watermelons now in your window box?

I think you could do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't think the temperature is here as well.

You can figure it out.

I bet you could do it.

Yeah, I bet you could figure it out.

Maybe just get some grow lights.

And

you can do it inside.

Yeah.

You should grow it like under your bed.

Yeah.

Put grow lights under your bed so it also looks like your bed is like a race car.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's pretty cool that the bed just like slowly like goes up higher as the watermelons grow.

Yeah, it's a real little nemo type scenario.

I love it.

Down by the bay.

That's where they grow also.

Down by the Bay.

Yeah,

they do, but don't talk to your mom about it.

She's going to ask you if you've seen some crazy things.

So the movie concludes.

Robbie does a big performance at the Royal Albert Hall.

And he does a kind of like a cabaret style show where I'm assuming he does some of his own songs.

He also does a tribute to his mother.

He brings his father up on stage and they sing My Way by Sinatra.

Again, is that

Sinatra original or is that a standard before that?

No, he, I think, you know what?

I don't, he didn't write it.

Like, I don't think.

Sinatra didn't write his songs, but I think it was, it was his, I think he may have introduced it.

Like, it was his signature song for sure.

That, like, he did it his way.

He did do it his way, which means usually extending all the syllables as long as possible.

Yeah.

And that's kind of the end of the movie.

He

like, I think he says something cheeky at the end.

Yeah.

And that's, uh, that's it.

He literally ends saying, like, that's my story.

I'm an entertainer.

I'm the best in the world.

Fuck you.

And then the movie ends.

And it's like, I just watched your whole movie.

Why are you mad at me?

I don't understand.

And I'm like, if you have to say that, I don't think it's true.

If you have to tell me you're the best in the world.

At least I see he's a cabaret entertainer.

He's copping to like being corny, I think, a little bit.

This is what I really like.

Yeah.

It is interesting.

Like they, they're the,

it is interesting that like, I wonder if there's a, this is not a more interesting version of the movie, I guess, but like about a guy who's a pop star, but really wants

two chips, two chimps, two chimps, chimps that we'll adore you.

Um, the, I, if there's, the whole movie is him, he's a pop star, but he really wants to do kind of old-fashioned those kinds of, he wants to do Seth McFarlane style, big band and, and, uh, and, uh, cabaret songs.

And I wonder if, uh,

if that would have been an like, in some ways, a more interesting thing than fame is tough.

You get everything you want and it, and it hurts.

It's like, I'm performing, I'm a performer who's doing work that is not what I want to do.

Although he writes the songs, so I don't know.

Maybe I'm wrong.

He writes the songs that make Robbie Woods.

But

there's a theme that he feels like he is doing.

He is doing everything,

but he doesn't really want to.

Throughout the whole movie, even when

he's performing his own stuff, he feels like he is doing it for someone else.

In this case, for most of it, it's like he's trying to live out his father's fantasy to get some kind of approval from his father.

Yeah, but it's also like very weird that the whole running theme is like, I did it my way.

Cause also the whole theme of the movie is like, I was just doing it for everyone else.

And

I just cared about what the other people thought of me.

So he really wasn't doing it his way.

I feel like we're in final judgment.

We're surfing in it already.

So let's do final judgments, whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of liked.

i kind of liked this one it is it is a kind of like i enjoyed the first half uh when things were fun better than the inevitable like sink into the mire of like drugs and alienating people it's the weird i guess actually this is the way it is in a lot of these movies that when things get better for the character the movie gets kind of sadder and grimmer and more boring you know that like it's fun to see someone dissolving and being hedonistic but it's not so fun to see someone recognizing the trouble and reconnecting with other people.

Anora.

I will say there is one funny moment in the getting that we should have mentioned in the reconnecting with people montage where he goes to his grandmother's grave with a TV and a VCR and watches the old shows they love to watch together with her tombstone and

chip and some chips.

And I thought it was so funny because it was crisps.

Yeah.

I thought it was so funny because I was like, so does he think his grandmother is enjoying this?

Like this is making up for lost time.

And also anyone else walking through that cemetery cemetery would just see a famous man laughing his head off in the middle of a cemetery, watching a TV show, which seems super disrespectful.

What is going on in this scene?

Anyway, I just thought it was a funny thing to put out.

I would say, oh, yeah, go, Dan.

Oh, yeah.

I think there's going to be a split decision on the chimpanzee

decision.

For me, I think that it takes what is just a basic biopic, and it's like, okay,

you know, I wouldn't necessarily be sympathetic to this guy who's like just destroying his own life without having any like

particularly large problems that he's raging against normally,

if not for the fact that it sort of literalizes how alienated he feels in a way that like is hard to ignore.

And I felt more sympathy for this chimpanzee man than maybe I would have for Robbie Williams.

But, you know, it does kind of lose a lot of steam.

I didn't love it, but I kind of, I kind of liked it.

Stuart?

Yeah, I would say, so I'm,

as I've said before, I greatly dislike musician biopics.

I don't care.

I just don't give a shit.

I don't need to hear a Ragster Riches story where he

gets famous very young and is famous.

And the thing he has to overcome is

doing too many drugs and whatnot.

Yeah, just, I couldn't, I couldn't care less.

There's a couple of things, moments in the movie, like obviously that big dance number, I thought was a lot of fun.

I really like the scene when his dad tries to reunite with him when they are, when he's famous again.

And he brings some woman into the, into Robbie's hotel room, and she's like, can I use your bathroom?

It's a number two.

I was like, great scene.

Perfect.

But yeah, this is, I think the, the choice to make him a chimp, I found kind of fascinating.

And like, every once in a while, I would just be reminded of it.

And I'm like why the fuck are they doing this

but I thought it was you know I thought that was a fun choice that made it I feel like it would be almost insufferable without without the the chimp character

so I'm gonna say I think this is a bad bad movie that's not for me I'm gonna call this also a movie I didn't like it but damn it I respected it I'm gonna call this a movie I kind of respect in that it is well made I think at heart, it never gets, I was never interested in Robbie Williams and I never felt emotionally connected with him or anything like that.

So I think it fails at its number one job, which is to get me to care at all about the main character.

But I think it succeeds in being like really watchable and a lot of the scenes work well and the dance numbers are really, are really fun.

The fact that I don't know the music and don't like that music particularly was not as big a hurdle as I thought it would be because those scenes are well done.

But it does feel like that chimp thing, like I said, it's a double-edged sword.

It is both the only interesting thing about the movie and it also shows you how not interesting, to me at least, the rest of the movie is.

Because the whole time you're like, there's a chimp doing this stuff.

This should be more, they should be doing it.

What's other stuff you can do?

What are your other ideas?

And it feels like the movie had one idea, basically.

At one point, he runs into the Gallagher's from Oasis.

Yeah.

And I was like, Gallagher one and Gallagher two.

I'm like, speaking of watermelons.

And the movie does portray them as, you know, assholes, which famously they are assholes, right?

Yeah, famously, they are

portrayed.

I feel like it would have been great if they were the only other animal characters in the movie.

Like if they were a couple of storks or something or I mean, I would have liked it.

Storks would be good for them.

I would have liked it more if it was if they just went full mouse and everyone was an animal, you know.

Except for him.

Except for, except for him, or if they had got, I was waiting, I kind of wanted him to start when he's a kid.

I kind of wanted him to see him as a person and then have him either

he's a chimp or he changes into a chimp.

Something to to really make it clear that the filmmakers know that this is not a story about a talking, singing chimp that is a human family.

It's not Stuart Little, but a chimp instead of a mouse, you know, a human family with one animal member.

But it felt like once you've taken a swing that big, to then make the rest of the movie taking no big swings, you know, there's good sequences in it, but to play the rest of it pretty safe, it feels really disappointing.

And I just,

his Robbie Williams story was just not quite interesting enough to me to,

in some ways, to justify taking such a big swing.

But you know,

you shouldn't judge a movie by its budget.

You should judge it by its by what it does.

But you know that that added millions and millions of dollars to the budget that every scene had to be performed by a CGI champ.

And I think that was mostly money well spent in this case, except do more with it.

You know, that's, that's what I would say anyway, from a story perspective.

Hallie, what did you say?

What do you think?

I liked it.

I loved it.

You lived it.

She wants some more of it.

But no, but I thought that I, you know, everyone keeps saying like, well, I'm not that into Robbie Williams.

I don't like his music.

So the story inherently wasn't that interesting to me.

But I actually thought that the reason why it was interesting is because he's sort of like this

side character of fame.

Like when you see him like with the Oasis people, you're like, oh yeah, this guy.

is also famous, but I have no respect for him as like a musician.

And it's kind of interesting to like watch a whole movie about someone who like you don't take seriously, but they are themselves.

So they obviously take themselves seriously.

I don't know.

I thought it was sort of like fascinating to like

be really invested in a silly, famous person.

And I want to say, like, I, you know, I don't have any sort of breadth of Robbie Williams' musical knowledge because he wasn't famous in the U.S., but the songs I do know, I actually, I actually like.

They're good pop songs.

I mean, his songs are all fine, but they're not, but nobody is like, he's the the best.

I don't think anyone is like,

he's doing the best work in this form.

They're fine.

Yeah, no, but I think they're fine, but they're,

I don't know.

I feel like there's like, there are, there's like

high, lowbrow, and then there's Robbie Williams.

Like Robbie Williams, I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say I like have a ton of like respect for his music, but if I'm at the disco,

I'm happy when I

go to a lot of people.

You just compare it with the disco.

That's actually how I know all these Robbie Williams songs because when I was when I was like went abroad to Argentina, that's where I would hear them was like going to like dance clubs.

Yeah.

But I, so I loved it.

And I thought, I thought it was like, I, I did think it was more ambitious than just the monkey choice because it did have, you know, like, all of these crazy, like the big fight scene, the big dance scenes.

Like I thought it was like a really ambitious movie that kept me very entertained i did hate i did i did feel the way you guys felt about like it losing steam uh the more he descends into uh addiction because it just felt like there was no way to heighten like you just kept getting these scenes of him losing his mind and it was like okay like you can't lose your mind anymore than you already lost your mind he gets addicted so early in his life and maybe that's just the way that it was but it does feel like okay and now he's still addicted you know

yeah you're right there's no uh you want to see a build there.

That's a really good point.

I mean, and you want it to build to the point where he has an all-out chimp battle, and the movie ends.

Like, I don't know why the movie keeps going after that.

You know, kind of the most striking part of him, like, uh, losing it is early on when he takes the watermelon.

And there's like another cool sequence where he's like driving at full speed in the rain and the world's exploding around him.

Fantasy, like, driving into the water and almost drowning.

You know, it's really

good.

That's a really great sequence.

And this director also did Greatest Showman, a movie that has its fans.

I mean, I'm somewhat mystified.

Well, I think similarly, the Greatest Showman has some

great produced sequences in it.

Some great like visions.

It's got great sequences to watch, and especially the musical numbers.

But

that's another one where the story, you're like, what?

Like, there's nothing, there's very little to dig into.

Zach Efron's like climbing a rope or something.

I don't remember well it's also it's that one is so completely inaccurate and I feel like I wish they'd taken a little bit of that and put it into this movie to like like if they were like oh that's the that's the point when I got arrested for trying to kidnap the queen or something like that I wish they'd not be there with it because part of it is like Robbie Williams is sold on his like charm and like cheek and like

I would like to see more of that injected into the storytelling, just like Braggadocio.

It made me want to be more cheeky.

I was like, maybe that's all I need.

Maybe it is what you need.

You should try it out.

So So Hallie, be a little cheeky.

Do something cheeky.

Wouldn't you like that?

Look at her.

Look at that face.

Yeah, you can't see the face listeners.

There's a very cheeky face.

One thing this movie did hit home for me, which is something that I wish I like to see, is those glimpses of British culture that we don't always get in the United States because we tend to get the more sophisticated British culture, not always, but over here.

And how so much of British culture is lowest, crassest, dumbest stuff.

And like, like he said, bum and they're all laughing.

Like it's that, just to be reminded that England has this strain of just the dumbest stuff, I really like a lot.

And I also will say, I actually don't usually, I don't usually like dancing or singing in movies.

I don't usually like fight scenes.

And I really, I really liked all of that in these movies.

Okay.

So, or in this movie.

So I don't, I think it was done really well.

I don't know.

You don't like dancing, singing, or fight scenes?

This is like some of the top things that can be a movie.

Even Chad was crying right now.

No, I feel like usually it's like, ugh, like, that's how I feel about when in Law Lamb, I was like,

you're embarrassing yourself, guys.

Come on.

Someone needs to go in there and tell these guys.

Jackie Chan, people are watching embarrassing themselves.

Yeah.

Hey,

Jackie Chan, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire.

Quit it.

Just don't.

Just who cares?

Just don't.

You know, the Flop House is sponsored mostly by the wonderful listeners, members of Max Fun.

Thank you for being a member if you are.

But we also have a couple of sponsors, and one of them this week is Aura Frames.

Are you ready to win Mother's Day?

Are you ready to prove to your mom that you know the difference between her and your grandmother?

Well,

why not?

Why not show that you're the best gift giver in your family by giving your mother an Aura digital picture frame?

And maybe it could be one that's preloaded with decades of family photos like that's the beauty of these frames is you can uh preload them and from a distance using the power of the internet add new photos so uh your family is up to date and all the great things in your in your life and and it's you know you can do it from afar uh

i have one of these frames it's it's a wonderful thing because we have all of our wedding photos on there stuff that otherwise maybe would go in a uh you know, an album that you take down once every few years and take a look at.

But instead, we get to be reminded of all our great friends.

I have photos of these two

Flophouse co-hosts, Jokers,

pop-up regularly.

I was invited to the wedding.

I couldn't go because I was too pregnant, but I was invited, just so the listeners know.

Yes, I know that Hallie would have been there.

Dan said, nobody's going upstage with me at my wedding, especially not a pregnant lady.

Keep that belly away, i said

it was named the best this this wedding has a four drink minimum so hallie you're not dying

that would be wild we have to take advantage of the open bar for drink four drink minimum uh it was named the best digital photo frame by wirecutter it's easy to see why it's got unlimited storage so you can add as many photos but videos hey why not some funny memes throw those in there as you can find

you can you can put videos on that yeah yeah

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Terms and conditions apply.

Stuart.

Hey, y'all.

This podcast is also brought to you by Squarespace.

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We also have a couple of jumbotrons.

That's right.

Jumbo Trons.

Not just regular Trons, but Trons that are Jumbo.

And the first one is from Laura, last name withheld.

She says, for years, my husband Brendan and I have been listening to The Flop House.

Our new video game, Skin Deep, is a comedy stealth game inspired by immersive sims like Thief, Prey, and Dishonored, and by classic action movies like Die Hard.

Play as Nina Pasadena, a human insurance commando who saves talking cats from space pirates.

You can flush a pirate's head down a toilet, use deodorant as a weapon, and drive a mech.

It's on Steam right now to buy or wish list.

Check out our slapstick stealth game, Skin Deep, on the Steam store.

So that's one Jumbotron.

That sounds pretty fun to me.

Next Jumbotron, this is a message for Dylan, last name withheld.

And this message is from Melissa, Morgan, Harper, and Charlie.

Last names also withheld.

And that message is, happy 40th birthday to you and Kellen.

You are a wonderful brother and uncle.

Thank you for introducing us to some of our favorite things, Flophouse included.

Here's to many more years of Nuggets Championships and video games with the kids.

This place may be a prison, but we will always love you.

Even Harper, despite her note.

Do you think they're really in prison?

I have to hope so.

And Nuggets championships are when you try to eat as many chicken nuggets as possible in one sitting, right?

I mean,

I can't think of any other way to take that phrase.

Or it's when you're listening to Nuggets, that psychedelic songs collection.

Not familiar, but okay.

Sure.

Okay.

You know what?

I'll pretend I get that reference.

And what's the championship aspect of it?

Just how long you can

do it on a loop.

Oh, I see.

Yeah, yeah.

Hey, maybe you want to mention your book.

I saw exactly what I was going to do, thank you, Dan.

You've got a book you need to do someday, someday.

Confessions of a bartender.

Hey, don't kill yourself.

You've got a bunch of books.

You're going to get to it.

Yeah.

That's a real, that's a real chick-o-mark's way to do it.

Oh, I don't have a book.

Hey, you got a bunch of books.

I've seen them on your shelves.

Yeah.

I have a new children's picture book that is out right now.

It's called Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House by me and with art by Tim Miller.

It is about a good girl mouse who is tired of doing the chores and decides she's going to do them bad so she never has to do them again.

And she wrecks her house.

You can pick it up in bookstores now.

It's a really fun book for kids.

It's a picture book, as I said, for children.

And I am going to be making a public appearance, appearance, appearance, appearance.

Wow.

Wear your bullet-proof vest.

So you're saying that to the audience?

Because you know, my children's things, I like to, they're just, they're just pellets.

They're just pellets.

It's not a, you know.

So

Saturday, May 17th, one week after this episode is released, I believe, at 11 a.m., I will be at Once Upon a Time Bookstore in Montrose, California.

Once Upon Upon a Time is one of the oldest children's bookstores in the state,

possibly in the country.

I'm not sure.

It's a great little store.

I love it there.

And I'm going to be doing a story time reading Sadie Mouse to anyone who shows up at 11 a.m.

Saturday, May 17th.

So please come by to Once Upon a Time in Montrose, California.

If no one shows up, will you still read it?

I will still read it.

I've done book readings where no one showed up, and I just read it for the people who work at the store.

So that will happen.

But please don't, don't force the people who work at the store to listen to me.

Come by

Saturday, May 17th at 11 a.m.

at Once Upon a Time Bookstore to hear Sadie Mouse wrecks the house.

Hey, we're the Euro Evangelists, and it's the most wonderful time of the year because the Eurovision song contest is next week.

37 countries will face off in Basel, Switzerland to determine who has the best song in Europe.

On our show, we've argued about all the songs and we are heading to Europe to bring you our reaction straight from Switzerland.

And on our next episode, we're going to predict who's going to survive the semifinals, compete in the grand final, and ultimately win Eurovision 2025.

Albania, baby.

It's Malta.

Latvia.

But we won't be alone.

Glenn Weldon of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Art will be with us, sharing his own predictions and telling us why we're wrong.

So make sure you're ready for Eurovision by listening to your evangelists on Maximum Fun, available everywhere you get podcasts.

You never know what you'll learn more about on the celebrity trivia show Go Fact Yourself.

For over 150 episodes, we've welcomed guests like DJ Jazzy Jeff, Audi Cornish, and Andy Richter to tell us why they love what they love and then get quizzed on it.

And past quizzes have included some pretty unexpected topics like reverse painting, the perfect flip turn while swimming, Prince's house party playlist from that one episode of New Girl, and so much more.

Plus, our guests meet surprise experts in their topics.

Like the time we met an actual celebrity cow.

So listen to Go Fact Yourself twice a month, every month on maximum fun.

Do it for the cow

Let's uh let's uh

Read some letters from listeners.

Why not?

Hey, fuck it virtual.

Yeah, sure only live once right this is from

your religion.

This is from Elise last name withheld who writes long ago in 1998 I went to see Armageddon in the theater with my best friend.

As a 14-year-old girl, I was enthralled.

I laughed.

I I cried, and I walked away with a huge crush on Steve Buscemi.

Yeah.

Probably not what Michael Bay intended.

When the movie came out on video, I begged my parents to rent it for Family Movie Night, assuring them that it was a great movie and they would love it.

You're going to love this hunk.

As middle-aged adults with fully grown frontal lobes, they did not love the movie.

This is stuck in my mind as my first experience with hyping something up as great and then learning that it was actually pretty stupid.

I actually haven't re-watched Armageddon since then because of the residual embarrassment attached to that memory.

I have two questions for you to choose.

What a tragedy.

I'm sorry.

If it's a movie you like, you should watch it.

Looking uncool in front of your parents?

Yeah.

They're just your parents.

They're the least cool people there are.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I have two questions.

Not mine, but

sorry, mom.

I have two questions for you to choose between.

One, what was the first time you shared a movie you really liked with someone and they thought it was dumb?

Did it change the way you felt about the movie?

Two, are there any movie characters you crushed on when they were clearly not intended to be on the movie's roster of crushable characters?

Thanks.

Elise, last name withheld.

Dan, you can answer both.

Don't worry.

I'm able to.

I'm allowed.

You're allowed to.

Yeah, I'm going to give you.

I'm going to give you a last name.

I'll answer the first.

I'm going to answer first.

I'm just going to answer the first one first while I think of an answer to the second.

But

I remember introducing uh my friend Nigel, who is from E-Old England.

I introduced him.

Home of Robbie Williams.

Home of Robbie Williams.

Yeah, if I told him we watched Better Man, he'd be like, oh yeah, that's my favorite guy.

New mate, Rollbeat.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ted on impression.

He, uh,

I introduced him to, I loaned him my DVD copy of Wet Hot American Summer, and I'm like, this movie is so funny.

I love it.

And he watched it.

He's like, this is the worst movie I've ever seen.

And I'm like, is this, is it just that he has bad taste, which is possible,

or that he like, it just didn't translate to the type of comedy he likes, which is like Benny Hill running around and that.

Oh, yeah, classic English comedy, the sophisticated English comedy that I love.

Yeah, yeah.

But I was like a little shocked also, because this, that was one of those relationships where I kind of viewed him like a cool older brother.

And

it hurt my feelings.

Certainly when I was in, when I was in high school, there was a girl that I crushed on and she came over and we, no, I went to to her house, and we watched Brazil, which I had seen multiple times.

And I was like, this movie's amazing.

And afterwards, she was like, yeah, that was a weird movie.

And it otherwise made no impression.

And I was like, oh, okay, I guess I felt, and then I felt dumb afterwards.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm having trouble thinking, like, you know, I'm secure in like how I feel about my own things that I like.

You know, have you always felt secure in the things that you like?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm not.

Sam's always struck me as someone with a very healthy amount of self-esteem.

Yeah.

Here's the thing.

I'm not secure about myself necessarily, but like, why should I give a shit what your tastes are if they're not mine?

True.

Sounds healthy.

But I mean, there are occasions where like I'm a little sad that someone doesn't like a thing that I like or whatever.

And the thing that's springing to mind, even though it's not exactly right, is like, I feel like...

Audrey just got the wrong impression about a thing.

I showed her the outtakes for Emmett Otter's Jug Bad Christmas because I was like, oh, you'll like this.

This is funny.

And they're hilarious.

I mean, like, you know.

I've seen those outtakes.

They are fun outtakes.

There's nothing funnier than outtakes of puppets, you know, like staying in character, reacting to stuff.

And, you know, she loved the outtakes.

And then, and then, you know, one Christmas, we're like, let's watch Emmett Otter.

And her main reaction was, she found it so sad.

And I'm like, yeah, but it's sad that the fucking River Bottom Nightmare game doesn't win.

I'm like, it it ends up happy everyone's happy at the end she's like yeah but it's sad for so much of it she just wasn't prepared to watch something bittersweet i think after uh you know these these fun outtakes yeah

uh i don't know what about you hallie well i'm trying to think of something i feel like the opposite usually happens with me where someone shows me something that they really like and i don't like it and i have to pretend like i like it

i feel like i'm not secure uh enough in my own taste that i'm willing to reject the thing that I don't like.

So I'm always like, yeah.

And usually it's whatever it is is very, very long.

And it's my husband who likes it.

And so it's a lot wasted time.

Give us one.

Give us one.

So one of our first dates we went on, we saw that movie, The Great Beauty.

Which now that I'm thinking about it, I might have even like recommended it on this podcast because that's how Stockholm syndrome I am.

Cemented your relationship.

Yeah.

I feel like I remember this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And if I'm being totally honest with myself, I didn't really like the movie.

It was really long and kind of boring.

The only thing that was cool was that there was one scene with like a really big giraffe, which I found interesting.

I'm very happy you say this, Hallie, because that's a movie I also did not like very much.

But it was one of those movies where people are like, oh, a ravishing love letter to Italy, you know, and stuff like that.

And I'm like, all right.

I don't know.

It's kind of boring.

Yeah.

And to uh, yeah, do we have answers for the second question?

I do.

Yeah, I got one.

Dish, Hal, Dish, or Dish Do, Dish.

Sean Malkovich Malkovich in both Connair and Mary Riley.

I love this.

Oh, and Mary Riley.

Wow.

Okay.

Somebody likes a bad boy.

I would say Ursula from Little Mermaid.

Interesting.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah, yeah.

I feel like anything I come up with is like the most like...

surface level like like oh not like other guys or other girl you know like

kitty pro you know

because like i was really i'm sure that there's a more interesting one but you know in a uh in a movie where like all the other women are like made up to be like the most conventionally attractive i remember and mean girls being like who's this lizzie kaplan but she's like a gorgeous woman yeah you know so it's not like that weird that's the hard thing even even in movies like even john malkovich has a has a magnetic like charisma about him yeah that's why he's a movie star but the certain the first things things that came to mind for me were,

I mean, mentioning Kitty Pride opened up a whole world of other characters.

It's like I've always had a crush on the character Spiral, who is an X-Men character who is.

That's a cool one.

She dances.

She's got a samurai helmet.

She has six arms.

And like, you know, she does, she changes people's bodies in weird ways.

Like, she's, she's amazing.

I love her.

But

the first thing that came to mind was, I always used to think like, well, in Teen Wolf, I'm really into boof.

I'm not into the other girl, but the movie is into boof.

Like, obviously, she's the one he's supposed to end up with.

But I realized who I really have a crush on are those two girls that hang out with Stiles who have no dialogue in the movie.

And they always are rolling their eyes at him.

They always look like they hate everyone else that they're around.

I'm like, these are exactly the girls in high school.

I would have had a crush on.

That's the level of confidence you aspire to.

Yes, exactly.

Like that they are, they're like, we're not even a part of this world.

We're just here.

We're going through it.

And that they're, yeah, so that's who I have a crush on is those girls from Teen Wolf.

What about that little dancing girl from Mac and me?

Well, that's nikki cox that's just because i didn't have a crush on her i just always felt bad because i was like she's trying so hard like she wants to be a professional you can tell and it's just she's in the shitty movie but then i found it was nikki cox i'm like oh she had a whole career great okay i didn't feel bad anymore you know and i don't know if this is a fair answer since this might be the sexiest a woman has ever been in a movie but obviously joan cusack and adam's family values is dead i mean yes of course yes That's the one where, I mean, it's one of those things where it's like she's, she's presented as a femme fate the whole time.

So they know she's sexy, but I don't know if they realize how much she is.

Give me a kiss.

Give me what?

Give me a 15?

What'd you say?

Give me a 20.

I love it.

Okay.

Well, our second and final question from Benny, last name withheld from Benny or letter.

Benny M.T.

Jits.

Benny writes, when listening to your Venom the Last Dance episode,

I was dumbstruck.

that none of you mentioned the underlying metaphor of an adult man who reflects on a life of retreating into escapist superhero fiction instead of pursuing family or career goals, and whose best friend feels partially and selfishly responsible for his lack of ambition.

My question is: this: a lot of credit given to Venom Thief.

Yeah, I love it.

Here we go.

My question is this: Have you ever been so confident in an interpretation of a film as universal, only to later find said interpretation was merely a window into your own messy psychology and dysfunctional relationships?

So, uh, this is a complex question.

Believing your interpretation, of course, is the obvious one.

And then being like, oh, maybe that's just me.

And I don't really have a good one.

I thought this was a great question.

I don't really have a good one for this.

The only thing that came up, and it is not a reflection of anything in my life, but I remember

I saw the recent Music Man revival, and it was the first time when I'm like, oh.

Like, Winthrop's obviously like

her kid, right?

Like she got pregnant by the way.

You finally cracked the code, Dan.

Well, look at that is like,

and to me, like then it seemed so obvious, but then I would, I like went online for like confirmation that, like, oh, I was just an idiot all these years.

And they're like, so many people like saying, like, no, like, look at the ages of the characters.

No, like, Meredith Wilson didn't necessarily like speak to that.

Like, it seemed like he didn't have that view, but it seems so obvious to me, like, that, like, of course, like, the whole thing is about her being the sadder but wiser girl.

Like, she has this child that is actually her child, but, but that's not a reflection of me, per se.

That's just like,

you're kind of like,

you'd be the child in that situation, right?

The child who doesn't realize that his parents have had this life before he was around or, you know, what that means.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So, the first thing that came to mind for me was something that I've actually talked about before on a different podcast.

On the Being Seen podcast,

I talked about my relationship with the movie Taxi Driver, where when I was, I first saw that movie when I was like 14 years old and very depressed and very lonely.

And I continued to be depressed and lonely for basically the next six to seven years.

And the,

and feeling such sympathy and empathy with an identification in a way that I now think is bad with Travis Bickel and his loneliness and his inability to really understand what other, how the rules of human life, you know, how to be a human and how to interact with other people.

And it was only when I got older and had grown up a little bit that I saw it and and I'm like, oh, I think you're supposed to feel bad for him a little bit, but you're not supposed to identify with him.

Like you're supposed to watch the movie being like, this guy's a weirdo.

This is, this is strange, as opposed to looking at him being like, I hear you, man.

It's hard to know how to talk to people.

So that was a, that was a, a real shift in the way I looked at that movie.

And it helped a little bit, I think it was last year reading Quentin Tarantino's book, where he talks about watching Taxi Driver when it came out when he was young in all black theater and how the audience just laughed through the whole movie, being like, can you believe this guy?

Can you believe believe the stuff he's doing?

This guy's an idiot.

You know, that they, they fully saw the other side of that character, which is from the outside, look, looking at him, what are you doing, man?

Whereas I was looking at from the inside of like, yeah, I get it.

I get it.

That no one tells you the rules when you're born into this world.

You know?

What about you, Hallie?

I don't, I don't really, I can't think of,

I don't have a good answer for this.

You're allowed.

I'm always allowed.

I don't particularly.

I always make snap judgments and they're always correct.

Yeah.

I don't particularly have any good answers either.

I mean, I'm going to piggyback on Elliott's, which is just the idea of like so many movies I watched as a teenager, I sympathized with the wrong character or I

use things to justify based on like my own feelings, like my own feelings of alienation or how I'm the most important person in the universe, you know, that kind of sociopathic teenager thinking.

But as an adult, I like to think I've become a little better.

But

I'm sure I'll think of a better answer and then be dumb than I.

Yeah, I mean, there are certainly things like

high fidelity where I realize that this is not like supposed to be like a great guy, but it was only like later in life, I'm like, oh, like I realized what a sharp critique it is of a certain type of nerd and their blinkered, like,

you know, the difficulties with empathy.

Yeah, that's a good one.

Yeah.

There are a lot of movies that involve guys of a certain type where if you were a guy of that type, you buy into it.

I mean, I feel like I didn't, I never liked this guy, but I feel like I knew people who were really into Rushmore and without recognizing like what a little shit

he is for much of the movie and like didn't understand

that, you know?

Yeah.

Well, he's kind of a big shit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wait, which one is sorry, Mr.

Big Bill Murray?

You're talking about Bill Murray.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, the other thing of like, it's the, there's that moment.

There's that moment to be better from each other.

Big or little, yeah.

That, that famous kid's book, Big Shit, Little Shit.

Yeah.

There's that moment, there's that moment when you grow up when you cross the Bill Murray understanding barrier, when you go from being like, this is the coolest man in the world, to being like, okay, this guy, like, what is this guy's deal?

Like, why is it that he can get away with anything?

It's not fair.

Well, there is a thing about like media literacy, whereas a kid,

if you grow up with an actor or performer and you have like deep emotional connection to him, that like you have trouble identifying them,

identifying them as a bad person in a movie.

You're like, oh, but I love Michael Keaton.

Why would he be a serial killer trying to kill Andy Garcia?

A lot of kids had that strange realization.

I don't know me.

Why is that man doing that?

I don't know.

I don't know if this is exactly if this exactly fits, but I think it was very hard for me to wrap my head around in the Winona Ryder little women in the 90s little women.

Like it never made sense to me when I saw that movie seven times in the theater why

Joe wasn't supposed to wind up with Lori and why Amy was supposed to wind up with Lori.

It's, it's like, uh,

it, it seemed like that was big miss.

Like it was like we spent, we invested this entire movie in rooting for this particular couple to work out and then they don't work out.

Why, why did that make sense?

And I'm, but I'm not sure.

I have an answer.

I'm not sure that I now understand why it did work that way.

Why they didn't wind up together.

I mean, I don't know that version of the movie that well.

In the book, I think it's a matter more of like,

they actually aren't the right match for each other.

You know, she needs someone who's going to play a different role.

And that's why she ends up with the professor.

I think they made a big mistake in the Greta Guruguan by making that professor so handsome.

Because I think you're supposed to read that book and be like, Joe, why aren't you with Lori?

He's handsome and rich.

Why are you with this kind of like older, not attractive professor guy?

But it's like, but that's, that's the, that's the relationship that she needs in her life rather than, you know.

Well, but I think they made it, it made more sense in the Greta Gerwig one because Timothy Chalmet was like such a kid.

Yeah.

And so you understood why she wouldn't want to,

why he would represent the past rather than like the future

to her.

But in the Winona Ryder one, freaking

what's his name is so hot.

John Malkovich, your favorite.

No,

you know, what the who is it skee dulrich steven no no you know it was the 90s yeah you know the little

oh my god i can't believe i'm not remembering kieran kulkin no he's the one from the machinist the one from what the machinisty christian bale christian bale oh christian bale yeah uh there's a moment in the recent season of uh righteous gemstones where steven dorf uh

uh says the word nards and it's the funniest thing i've ever seen you said wolfman uh unfortunately no, but it's, oh man, it was like, ugh.

I love Righteous Gems to enslaw.

And I thought this season,

at the beginning of the season, I was like, every season I like this less.

But then by the end, I was like, this is great.

It's best ensemble cast on television right now.

Yeah.

Let us.

There's a little show called Tracker.

Oh, my mistake.

I forgot about Coulter Shaw and his tracking.

It's about a guy who tracks.

He does track.

That tracks, yeah.

Yeah, it sounded like Coulter Shaw was knocking on your door so that he could get in on the end.

No, no, that's my family is currently building a currently building a kind of gardening cage around our blueberry bushes that the birds and squirrels can't get to them.

And they're doing it right outside the window where we're recording.

So they're hitting the window every now and then.

And the best part is seeing my wife's face is she knows that we're hearing the sounds.

And just this like,

sorry.

Let us,

well, let's, in that case, move on to the next segment, which is right now.

But there's still more.

What an amazing value for the dollar we give with this this i know it's really i mean considering also that you don't have to give the dollar but we don't tell people you don't have to look we love that you give the dollar but uh so this is a it's a trick

gtd give the dollar that's what we're always saying that's why all the flophouse merchandise has gtd emblazon dollar yeah yep don't check that um

unless you're asking ai in which case they'll say yep it does it sure does

ai is in some ways the worst improv partner they're just like i will yes and whatever question you ask me, but not in a way that builds the scene, just in a way that confuses you.

In a way that adds to the general misinformation in the world.

And ends up gaslighting me out of and catfishing me out of all of my money.

Yeah, that's the worst part.

Yeah.

That's why he got a GTD.

Because Stu keeps getting catfished by AI.

Yeah.

Let's recommend movies.

That's what I'm trying to get to.

Okay.

Movies that you might enjoy.

Stu's going to recommend AI.

Well, I don't think, I think that Stuart made a little video with me recommending this movie, but I don't think on Maine, I don't think we recommended this.

No, we didn't.

Stu and I went and saw another Ridiculous Sublime.

We always plug these Ridiculous Sublime movies.

If you live in Brooklyn, go to the Run, Don't Walk to the Nighthawk Cinema for their Ridiculous Sublime series.

Always the best.

Great stuff.

And we watched Ninja 3, The Domination from 1984.

I haven't seen that in a long time.

Very silly, very fun.

Like, honestly, it starts out with an action sequence that I'm like, holy crap.

Like, for a movie that is like a low-budget movie, this is one of the most amazing action sequences.

Yes.

Like, the bang for your buck in this is so much bigger than any blockbuster you're going to see.

But

the movie is.

Bang for your buck than a blockbuster.

It says ban Bakoy.

That opening scene, I've said it before, but it's like, it is like a five-star Grand Theft Auto rampage caught on cinema.

It's so wild.

It is essentially a ninja

kills a guy and some other people on a golf course and then is chased down by a bunch of cops.

Eventually, he is shot a ridiculous number of times.

And then the spirit of that ninja

inhabits a woman who works on the telephone wires.

Lucinda Dickey.

Yeah, it's the director of Breaking Two Electric Boogaloo.

And Lucinda Dickey was in that film.

And so she becomes the ninja.

She's possessed by the ninja as he wants to kill all the cops that killed him.

They should have called it Ninja 3 possession.

I don't know why it's Ninja 3 domination.

Even though

she decides to start dating the hairiest of the cops.

Yeah.

A man who is so hairy that you're like, am I in a different dimension where you can be that hairy in a movie and still be the love interest?

All the audience cheered when she's like, I don't date cops.

And then like, boo, she started proceeding to then date that cop.

But

it's a perfect movie of its type in that, like, it's really silly, but also kind of amazing.

Like, it's genuinely entertaining and great in a lot of ways, while also being the goofiest shit you ever saw.

So, that's what I recommend.

Ninja 3: The Domination.

Stuart, what do you recommend?

I'm going to recommend a movie that is hot in the theaters right now.

So hot it will burn your flesh with flames.

That's right.

I'm going to recommend Ryan Koogler's Sinners.

It is one of the, like, I would argue, probably one of the biggest box office successes of the year.

It is an original kind of horror movie that is set in Prohibition Era South.

It stars two Michael B.

Jordans.

That's right.

You get double your Michael B.

Jordan for the dollar,

where they play, where he plays two twin brothers who are setting up a juke joint near their hometown.

And then there's some vampire violence.

It is so fun.

Rated R for vampire violence.

it is it's so fun it is a movie that i kind of went in expecting it to be uh a fair you know like a really intense horror movie and i feel like the horror movie elements while done well are kind of not the thing the movie is most interested in it's a total blast it's all the performances are great the music is great uh and it is the kind of like in-theater experience that uh I'd been looking for.

I think it's great.

If you haven't seen it, you should go check it out.

They brought it back to IMAX and it crashed Fandango.

Yeah, I can see it.

It's great.

I want to recommend a movie that is kind of not, it's not really related to Sinners, but it is directed by the writer of Creed 2, which Ryan Kugler didn't direct, but it is, but Ryan Kugler directed Creed, so it's kind of similar.

And this is someone who their work has been on the Flyhouse before because they were a writer of Space Jam, A New Legacy, but they made a movie called Interesting Bonafides for this recommendation.

This is a movie directed by Jewel Taylor, who wrote those called They Clone Tyrone that came out like the year before last.

And it's a science fiction, it's like a science fiction movie that is science fiction kind of mystery action movie that

has like

black exploitation kind of style touches to it.

And it has to do with a

drug dealer in

this kind of in this bad neighborhood, predominantly black neighborhood that is economically depressed.

And he gets killed and then wakes up the next day totally fine.

And it leads to a plot that I won't tell you too much about what happens, but involves a

secret government plots and people being used for experiments and things like that.

And I thought it was really fun.

It's a really funny movie and it was real.

It had some real good action scenes in it.

Jamie Foxx appears in it as Slick Charles, a Pampu becomes one of the hero group, and he's great in it.

I watched this not too long after watching, finally seeing Collateral for the first time, which I had never gotten around to seeing.

And I was like, this is the kind of Jamie Foxx I want to see, though.

I don't want to see serious Jamie Foxx who's just trying to build his limo business.

I want to see Jamie Foxx as a, as a kind of larger-than-life character.

And it's really great.

Tiano Paris is in it as this character, Yo-Yo, who's the

kind of takes the lead in the mystery and in figuring out what's going on.

And

it was, it's not, it kind of lives in a similar world in terms of being a science fiction satire

on black black themes, a similar world to sorry for bothering you, but

sorry to bother you, but it's not as it's not quite as incisive as that one.

It's much more fun than that one.

But I really enjoyed it.

So that's They Cloned Tyrone, which I think it's on Netflix right now.

I think it's a Netflix exclusive movie.

Allie, what about you?

What's your recommendation?

Well, I'm going to recommend a movie that could very well be

the answer to the previously asked question about being really embarrassed when you reveal something that you like because it turns out it actually sucks.

Because I haven't seen this movie since I was probably like 14, but for some reason, it's just been on my mind recently.

The movie Dangerous Beauty, did you guys see that

in the 90s, starring Rufus Sewall?

I've been thinking about it a lot because I recently watched The Diplomat, and I was like, this guy never stops being smoking.

He is so hot.

hot.

And he was so hot in Dangerous Beauty, the story of a courtesan

in

the

in a historical time during the

this is one of Hallie Haglin's classic no research movie reviews.

No, but it was during the both the Black Plague and the Inquisition.

because both of those were featured within the movie.

And it was great.

I rented it over and over and over again.

I thought maybe when I grow up, I'll be a courtesan, but I didn't really know what that was.

You know, I never saw this movie, but I remember seeing the poster for it.

Yeah, well, it was good.

Okay.

Wait, Stu,

you gave a knowing nod.

Do you remember this movie?

A little, yeah.

I mean, I remember when it, I remember seeing it years ago, but I don't, I couldn't give you too many details on it.

Do you remember if you liked it?

I remember liking it, yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

I remember it being like a little horny, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And I like Rufus Sewell.

Like, I'd get stuck in a dark city with him.

I got to tell you.

I got to tell you,

it works in person, too.

That Rufus Sewell attraction.

I saw him on stage in the play Rock and Roll, and he was very handsome.

Oh, my God.

Very handsome.

I saw him on stage in Richard III.

Who did he play?

The titular Richard.

The titular III.

He played all three of them?

Which were better than two Michael B.

Jordans.

Richard III is like multiplicity, but it's set in England's past.

Two Michael V.

Jordans.

What would be better?

Two Michael V.

Jordans or three Richards?

Three Rufus Sewells.

I'll take the.

Yeah.

Hard to choose.

I just looked up Dangerous Beauty on Letterboxd.

The most popular review, the top review.

Paul Schrader.

Did she peg the King of France?

So that's the thing that might happen in this movie.

I don't remember that part.

I guess I've got to go see it again.

I guess I'm recommending it to my daughter.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I do find that, like, do sometimes recommending a movie I haven't seen in a long time.

I'm like, you know what?

I'm going to watch that fucking thing again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is it available on streaming since you just looked it up?

Could you help us out with that?

Just watch real quick.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's well, it's connected to just watch, so it shouldn't take as long as it does.

Where to watch?

You can.

Oh, it just says Hallie's house.

It just says rent or buy, so I don't think it's streaming.

You can still rent it.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's still available.

I mean, there was a time in the past when you always rented or bought things.

But there were places to go to do that in the past.

And there aren't.

And you know what?

I bet there's a place.

I bet you could go to Videots and rent it.

Oh, yeah.

I will.

And

a new

DVD store just opened up.

A DVD purchase and rental store just opened up in Williamsburg.

I don't know why Letterbox linking to Just Watch doesn't work as well as just going to Just Watch itself.

But if you go directly,

yes, it's on Hulu.

You can see it on Hulu.

Oh, wow.

Have Hulu.

You can have a Hulu hoop.

I don't know what that means in this context, but not sure.

Not sure.

I just feel bad that Stuart had an ace lathe of heaven reference earlier, and I thought it was so funny.

And the best I can do is Hulu hoop in my bad song parodies.

It's always a shot in the arm, Hallie, when you're here.

And a delight to see you again doing looks down and mid-round bashfully.

I miss none, Scott.

I miss seeing you uh regularly.

Hey, you know what, you guys?

I this is this is real.

I had a moment a couple weeks ago where I was like, I don't laugh anymore.

I just don't laugh.

Nothing makes me laugh anymore.

And I thought, I'm so glad I'm doing the flop house because when I do the flop house, I laugh.

So thank you guys for that.

So I think we should probably have you more on more on more often just for your own mental health.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and uh, you have a delightful laugh.

So that's also uh

good for us as well.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you.

That's the one.

That's the one.

Oh, yeah.

A lot of people don't know.

Hallie makes most of the money off that

doing Halloween sound effects.

Yeah, yeah.

Zoom's like that Halloween sound effect is copyrighted.

No, yeah, that's true.

Yeah, that's why we had to stop using that chain rattle sound.

We get sued, yeah.

Anything you want to say before we do our sign-off, Hallie?

Thanks for having me.

That's all.

Hallie, why don't you plug your sub stack?

We should have mentioned earlier.

Yeah, sign up, you guys.

Read my sub stack.

Check it out.

It's called,

That Hurts My Feelings.

I'm glad

stack.

I'm glad it's still going because honestly, I read the last one.

I'm like, does this mean she's stopping?

There's a sense of finality about it.

I know.

Goodbye forever or something.

Yeah.

But

I'll recommend, Hallie, if you are continuing, That Hurts My Feelings.

It's the thing I read right away when it shows up in my email inbox.

I always think it's great.

It's both funny and also kind of meaningful and touching and revealing in ways that I think are

revealing.

A lot of new pictures.

A lot of new pictures.

Yeah.

It was originally called That Hardens My Feeling, right?

It's just much more, just much more of a porn web newsletter.

But it's a, no, it's How it's like it's Hallie's doing such amazing writing on it.

And someone's gotta, someone's gotta, like, some, I wish there was more newspapers with syndicated columns because it shows me that hallie would do an amazing job with that oh thank you thanks yeah so if any newspapers are listening

if you're listening usa today and i know you are

mr usa today um

mr ulysses sampson arthur today

uh

thank you to hallie thank you to our producer alex smith uh both for producing the show and being on our Unfrosted episode recently.

And if you don't subscribe to Flop Secrets, our newsletter, the most recent one was devoted to Alex's side project.

So look that up.

It's an easy way to see what Alex is up to.

Thank you to Maximum Fun.

Go to maximumfun.org to find other great shows on the Max Fun network.

And for the Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy.

I've been Stuart Wellington.

I've been Elliot Kalen.

And I've been Hallie Haglund.

And thank you to us.

Oh, thanks.

I got, don't worry, guys.

I got a real hot one.

Oh, boy.

Not just warm, but hot.

Okay, let's hear it.

Okay, what's this?

Okay, I remember what the movie's called, so that's the important thing.

Here we go.

On this episode, we discuss Better Man.

And if your number one celebrity crush is Robbie Williams, prepare to be confused.

That's what they did.

Great.

That is a hot one.

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