Ep.#450 - Unfrosted, with Alex Smith

On this episode, we discuss Unfrosted.

Should have been unmade.

It was a hot one, like a hot pop-tart.

Hey, everyone, welcome to the Flop House.

I'm Jay McCoy.

Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington.

Hi there, I'm Elliot Kalen.

And joined in studio today, we have our producer who has decided to come kick the tires, check out how the show is being made, make sure that it's not falling apart.

That's right.

We are joined by Alex Smith, aka Howell Dottie.

Introduce yourself, buddy.

Hello, I'm Alex Smith.

I'm here to kick the tires, make sure everything's going good, audit the show.

You've been kind of an absentee producer up to this point.

You really haven't been around much.

We mail you the checks.

You don't fix the plumbing.

We still have a mice problem.

Somewhat deliciously, Alex has not seen the movie, which will be

an interesting wrinkle.

on the show.

I mean, I think he's mainly just going to make sure that we sound good and occasionally double-check our facts.

Double-check our facts about the movie he hasn't seen.

I've got a cool new flophouse character that I've been working on, which is the guy who doesn't know what happened in the movie.

And so he says stuff like, wait,

what?

Come on.

That's my new guy.

That's my new character.

I think we've had that character on the show a few times.

Sometimes he's been named Dan and sometimes Stuart.

I don't think so, actually.

I think this is a new character.

Yeah.

Hey, let's get into it.

So what do we do on this podcast, Dan?

Well, it's a podcast where we watch a bad movie and we talk about it.

And Unfrosted was a film that, you know, usually we do something, either we throw back further or we do something that's sort of newer to streaming or even in theaters.

This was one that was much requested at the time.

And we said, all that enthusiasm is done.

Wait on it.

We said, you got to wait till Unfrosted is available for home viewing.

And they said, it's not in theaters.

It's a Netflix movie.

And we said, not interested.

No, thank you.

Let's think of this.

We're on a streaming service cycle right now.

And Netflix is not in the cars.

They said, we have to wait until Elliot is working for Netflix to start covering only Netflix movies.

Oh, actually, yeah, that's a theme month, right?

Back-to-back Netflix

theme.

Think of it as like.

This theme month is called Nutsflix because these movies are nuts.

This is sort of a nuts to watch them.

Supersized missed that movie.

Let's say that.

Yeah, yeah.

I feel like that's a really good description.

Yeah, this movie does exist in that liminal zone, Dan, between so new recovering it and so old recovering it.

But I think, you know what?

A movie like Unfrosted had such a huge cultural impact.

I feel like people are still raring at the bit to get it.

Yeah.

Now, raring at the bit.

I wanted to avoid you telling me that it's champing at the bit, so I just decided to go way off in another direction.

You just say champing at the bit.

You know, what does champing mean?

You chomp at bits.

It's in your mouth.

It means chomping.

That's the funny thing.

Now,

normally, we get right into the movie, no silly buns, but I think it's important that we take a second and we really talk about

our relationship with Unfrosted.

Alex, what's your relationship with Unfrosted Business?

Tell us.

I've heard that Jerry Seinfeld is in it.

That's what I know about him.

He's not only in it, he also directed it and co-wrote it with a few writers who had worked with him on Seinfeld and written a number of other things.

This is an all-star cast in front of the camera and in the writer's room.

Yeah.

Have you guys ever seen Seinfeld?

I'm familiar with the television show.

Now, wasn't Jerry, the character played by Jerry Seinfeld, wasn't he obsessed with breakfast cereal?

Am I remembering this?

He was.

He was, I don't know about obsessed, but he was certainly very interested in them.

I mean, I feel like he's obsessed with everything on that show.

Yeah.

Like his potential girlfriend's faults.

It does mean what girls fall.

Which is obsession.

Strangely, there's nothing about girlfriend's faults in this movie, although there is some stuff about unhappy marriages in a running gag involving Walter Cronkite.

But this is,

it does feel like while you're watching this movie, and we'll get into it, that you are just looking at the inside of Jerry Seinfeld's head at the things that he's interested in.

I mean, there's no car talk really in it, but otherwise, there's a lot about breakfast.

Frick and crack aren't in it.

You know, yeah, yeah, the Tapper Brothers, the Tapper Brothers are not in it.

I'm sorry, click and clack.

Click and clack, yeah.

Frick and frack are the bootleg off-brand UPR.

Is it calling it?

Did I fuck that up?

Yeah, all the money.

Frickin' Fracker on UPR, the conservative alternative NPR that will soon become the real NPR.

Is it really click and clack?

Yeah, really?

Because those are like noises that a car might make, and then you tap it.

I feel like in German it's frickin' frack.

Stuart, this is a good time for you to finally get into card coffee.

Auto sprecken.

Yeah, now that one of them has passed, you can finally get into card coffee.

Who's in charge of talking about this?

I'm doing the summary today, so let's get into it.

So Unfrosted is a movie that is mostly in flashback the 1960s.

So it seems very strange that the era we're flashing back from also appears to be the 1960s.

We see a kid bundling up a bindle of 1960s stuff in old comic book, old toys, and he goes to a restaurant to drown his sorrows in Pop-Tarts.

We'll never learn what he's upset about, I don't think.

If they mentioned it, I forgot it.

And he reads the origin story on the back of the Pop-Tarts box, and he goes, huh, good story.

But sitting next to him is Jerry Seinfeld, who tells him that story is baloney.

I'll tell you the real story of Pop-Tarts.

This is when that kid should have left the room.

An old man is talking.

An old man is saying,

hey, kid, get closer.

I'll tell you the true story of Pop-Tart.

An old man with a complicated relationship with younger people.

Let's just say.

It's true.

Yeah, but

not that young, but still young enough that it's troubling.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we go back from the 1960s to, I guess earlier in the 1960s.

It's Battle Creek, Michigan, home of the serial Titans Kellogg's and Post.

Jerry plays the character of Bob Cabana, an employee at Kellogg's, and he works for, and he's, we see just kind of like.

A lot of serial jokes for a while.

He's walking around, different things are happening.

Oh, yeah, you thought there were a lot of them?

And this is, I should say ahead of of time this is essentially a sketch movie like there's there's kind of a plot but it's mostly a sketch movie and uh hugh grant appears uh in a part he'll play throughout the movie as thorough ravenscroft the real-life voice of the tony the tiger character yeah

come on

we're going through what i'm calling the grant the grantaissance which is when hugh grant is just showing up in lots of things and he's in lots of different kinds of movies but playing kind of variations on the same character his character in this his character in paddington too, and his character in Heretic are kind of the same character, just in different modes.

I will say two things about Hugh Grant in this movie.

One, he is one of the things that kind of works for me in this movie.

Like, I do find him mostly funny in it.

And two, in a movie filled with lies, for some reason, this is the place where I'm like, that's not what Thorl Ravenscroft was like.

It feels like one of the few times where they're really...

They're edging on slandering somebody in a way by making Thurl Ravenscroft this guy.

I think because they have scenes with Walter Cronkite later where they portray him as like a drunk with a bad marriage.

And I feel like Walter Cronkite is famous enough that if you know who he is, you're like, okay, they're just making up something about Walter Cronkite.

But Thor Ravenscroft, if you're not familiar with voice actors of the 1960s, and then you might be like, oh, they've got to be.

Did he really take a shit inside a building?

Yeah.

I will also sing a rim-grinning ghost.

It's kind of the same thing, I guess.

Hugh Grant,

a big chunk of this movie, he's basically topless, and he looks good.

good.

He looks good.

No, he's doing great.

I mean, he's a professional actor, probably puts a lot of work into his body.

That's fine.

I feel like a lot, I feel like a lot of the people in this movie, not all the material, obviously, not all the material is good, but I feel like everybody commits.

I, yeah, it was hard for me to find anyone in the movie where I was like, ugh, I wish they had had somebody else do that job.

I feel like everybody's trying to have fun, everybody's doing their best.

Some performances are stronger than others, but you're right.

A lot of times they're given,

let's just say,

light material to work with.

I bet this is a really fun movie to make, or at least to write.

It doesn't feel like a rigorous production.

Anyway,

getting back into the plot, there's a lot of serial jokes, a lot of jokes about serial.

Kellogg's is run by Jim Gaffigan as Edzel Kellogg III, who I believe might be a fictional character.

And his rival is Amy Schumer as Marjorie Post, the real-life head of the Post company, the daughter of C.W.

Post.

And they meet up eventually at the Serial Awards, which are they called the Golden Bowls?

Was that what it was?

I think so.

And Kellogg's

hosted by Cedric the Entertainer.

Please, Stuart, if you can remember to point out the celebrity appearances, because I might forget some of them.

I already passed over the appearance of Mikey Day, Kyle Mooney, and Drew Tarver as Snap, Crackle, and Pop.

Yeah.

Which is a fantastic waste of talent.

I like watching Alex's face as each of these new details gets run a video.

I will say, to put Kyle Mooney in your movie and give him almost nothing to do

is strange to me.

He certainly makes a meal out of what he gets.

The little bit that he gets, yeah, but it is not quite at the level of

Tim Heidecker being in bridesmaids and having no lines of dialogue in the entire movie.

No lines of dialogue, nothing funny.

The whole time, you're like, he's got during the, okay, maybe during the credits, he does something zany.

Maybe he has a post-credits.

I mean, again, I've said this before on the podcast.

I think maybe he showed up and they did not realize he was on set because the way he's even shot in the frame, it's like they don't really know that he's there.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I think they cast him really well because he does have guy your friend is marrying kind of energy.

Yeah, I think that's fair, that's fair.

A guy who you can almost in certain situations, you just can't describe him really.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he smiles a lot, so

he's nice, yeah, he's a nice guy, yeah.

What are his interests?

Something, you know, sports, probably, I guess, probably home guests, like maybe golfs, I don't know, yeah, or maybe he likes to grill a history channel, yeah, history stuff, or maybe he reads like uh, long, just whatever fantasy novels they sell at the airport.

Like, Like he's not going too deep into fantasy, you know?

So Kellogg sweeps the Golden Bowl awards, but Jerry suspects that Post has something up their sleeve.

They seem oddly sanguine about losing all these awards.

And then the next day, I guess he sees two kids sneaking into the Post dumpsters, and he finds out that they're eating hot goo that they found in there.

And these kids, I love.

I think they're great.

Especially the girl who plays,

I don't know her name, but I think she, her performance is so funny in this movie.

And they're my MVPs for this movie, those kids.

They eat hot fruit goo.

He tastes it.

And Jerry instantly runs to his boss and he's got, he's like, Post is working on a fruit-flavored pastry.

And this could put Post over the top.

This could make them the top company in Battle Creek, Michigan.

This is definitely one of the points in the movie where I'm like, huh, so it's really still a movie about Pop-Tart.

It is a movie about Pop-Tart.

Although it is like, this is where it introduces kind of like, this is like the space race.

Like the joke of the movie in that there, if there is one is like, let's treat this race for like toaster pastries as the space race.

No, space race, you're talking about the Bunta Eve pod race featuring Anakin Skywalker and Sabulbar.

That's exactly what he's talking about.

Yeah, he's talking about that space race.

He's also talking about the Wacky Racers space race

with the Hannah Barbera characters.

He is not talking about basketball.

That would be a space jam, which is different than a space race.

But then again, jam, you might find it in a Pop-Tart.

Ideally, yeah.

I mean, if you find jam in your Pop-Tart, you don't have grounds to sue it.

If you had found human blood in your pop-tart, sue that company.

Don't eat the rest of it unless you're a vampire, in which case, go for it.

You're taking it first to see which one it is.

That's true.

If you have to taste it, you got to take a bite out of it.

Yeah, because jam and blood look relatively similar when they're delivered in a hot pastry.

Yeah, oh, okay, yeah, yeah.

That's why you see so many

they explain that in one sweeney todd.

That was a cut song, though.

The cut song, which is called Jam's a lot like blood, parentheses, when delivered in a hot pastry yeah

um so anyway uh it's soon it's national news that people are trying to make a pastry filling thing we have this walter cronkite thing with uh kyle dungan as uh as walter cronkite who's that was the one that i one person i had trouble placing yes he's wearing a lot of makeup andre and i another person that i got actual i wouldn't say laughs out of but the closest to me laughing was uh cronkite and i think that it was um of the comedy people like i think he commits the the straightest to what he's doing.

Like in general, I think the people who are most successful in this movie are the people who are going full bore, like as straight as they can with the material.

Yeah.

I mean, as often is the case with comedy.

I actually, I thought his performance was fine.

I did not like those jokes that much because it feels like an easy go-to to have a character who's an authoritative character be like, yeah, my wife says I'm drinking too much.

It's a lot of that kind of joke.

Yeah.

I didn't like so much.

I liked it when he was just like playing with the toys.

Like he goes away and then it comes right back to me.

He always has a different 60s novelty type toy.

So later on when he's using silly putty, that part's funny.

Anyway,

Kellogg's, they hire their detective, Sebastian Manascalco, to

shake up what's going on.

And she said, I have to leave the room.

And she came back flushed a few minutes later.

He has spy footage from Inside Post.

They are using data from Kellogg's earlier fruit pastry research, and they're obviously post spies at Kellogg to save the company.

Jerry says there's only one option.

He's got to work with his old colleague, Stankowski, who he calls Stan, but is soon revealed to be Donna Stankowski, Melissa McCarthy, who now works at NASA on the moon landing.

But there's some moon landing jokes, but then he convinces her to come back with him.

There's Amy Schumer.

She shows the dumpster kids their experimental fruit pastry, and they say it's good, but it doesn't toast well.

There's this long scene of the toaster being on fire or whatever.

And her right-hand man is Max

Greenfield from

New Girl.

Mostly is how I know, although he's now on like that CBS sitcom, uh, The Neighbors or something like that.

The neighborhood for neighborhood.

Yeah,

huge, huge deal.

Huge.

Uh, so uh, so anyway, yeah, he's her right-hand man who mostly gets into trouble and she yells at him and stuff.

Uh, Stan is like, hey, we need a team of radical thinkers.

And so they introduce in a parody of the of the astronaut press conference that that you'd see in like the right stuff, you know, they introduce their new invention team.

Do you guys want me to go through who it is?

Or do you want to take turns?

Please do because then I want to yell about it for a little bit.

I want to get Dan all worked up.

Okay,

East Coast ice cream magnate Tom Carvell of Carvell Ice Cream.

Were you guys familiar with Carvell Ice Cream when you grew up?

Not growing up as a Midwesterner, Stuart.

Yeah, no, but when I came out here, it was all everybody wants to talk about is fucking Fudgy the Whale.

Fudgy the Whale, Cookie Puss, yeah.

So I grew up with Carvelle, so it it wasn't until I was much older that I realized this is not a national chain.

And other people are not watching commercials with Cookie Puss arriving from space

at PenPal and Alaska.

They're like, why are you fucking talking about Cookie Puss, dude?

I'm like, you must get the best cookie pussy.

Is that where Cookie Puss lives?

Yeah.

Do you ever see Fudgie the Whale off in the waters on the coast?

Off

Juno Sound or whatever?

Yeah,

they didn't know what I was talking about.

Then you've got James Marsden as Jack Lelane, Jack McBrair as Steve Schwinn of Schwinn Bikes.

You've got Bobby Moynihan as Chef Boy RD.

And you've got Thomas Lennon as Harold von Braunhut, who I was talking to Dan about this before the recording.

They present him as a Werner von Braun, like kind of ex-Nazi type.

I did a little research.

In reality, there was a Harold von Braunhut who here he's credited as the inventor of the Sea Monkeys, which he is.

He did a lot of Mueller stuff.

He was actually born Jewish and then as an adult became hugely racist and was affiliated with the Ku Kux Klan and the Aryan nations.

So they are wrong that he was German, but they're right that he was a racist.

A racist, yeah.

It's okay.

And also UNIVAC, the computer.

And these are called their taste pilots instead of test pilots.

They did it, guys.

They did it.

They agree about this thing.

Is the slander of UNIVAC?

No, you know.

I have been accused, not unfairly, of sometimes being like the logic police on jokes.

Yeah.

But I don't think you can.

Not even accused.

You're an undercover logic policeman.

I don't mean to blow your cover on it.

You got a lot of busts under your name.

I was trying to think of a logic thing.

I'm like, I pull out an abacus.

No, that's more just a counting.

Yeah,

I saw that video, the person had recorded with their phone where you used to interrupt their joke and they're like, can I see your badge, sir?

And you're like, you don't need to see my badge.

Anyway,

you look came off very bad into tan as a logic policeman.

But I...

Here's the thing.

I just don't think you can go this fully to fucking crazy town.

Like even in a movie with as little to do with reality as this, I'm like, why?

Why is like Steve Schwinn bicycle inventor or seller or whatever the fuck

because it's all again, this is all just the stuff that's floating around in Jerry Seinfeld's head.

You know, I think that's a big part of it.

Yeah, I think you're right.

I think the thing that ties this together is not

what would make any sort of sense if we're trying to take this plot seriously, but it's just literally what things are floating around in a baby boomer's head from their childhood.

Like, I'm surprised Charles Atlas was not the guy that they had instead of Jack Lane.

And I almost wonder if they wanted Charles Atlas and then couldn't get him because I know that like the Charles Atlas company is litigious.

I know they kept Flex Mentalo from being republished for a long time, that comic book series.

So I like, I wonder if that's the case, because it feels like it's literally just, what stuff did I have as a kid?

Schwinn bikes.

I certainly had those.

Yeah.

Sea Monkeys.

Yeah, for sure.

Chef Boy RD, we ate a lot of that.

I think that's,

Tom Carvell, I grew up hearing his commercials all the time as a kid.

I feel like the New York area.

Bobby Moynihan commits to the Chef boy RD character and I think he's always

he always commits to his roles yeah he's he's a committer I feel like the uh it's always nice to see Jack McBray in things I've been a fan of his ever since I was a college student when I would see him at the UCB all the time uh but here's what I'll say about this movie generally like Thomas Lennon unless he's in a weirdly racist puppet master movie

I mean yeah I mean just the one the specific just the one he was only in the one but I love Thomas Lennon's stuff I mean again ever since he was a member member of the state, I've been a fan of Thomas Lennon's.

I think he's hilarious.

But here's the thing that got to me around this point in the movie, and it really hit me when Peter Dinkledge showed up.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

There's a lot of people in this movie who I've not seen on screen in a little bit, and they have aged.

And that's just a natural part of life.

But there are a number of times in the movie where I would see somebody and be like, oh, they've gotten older.

Like, I didn't realize that they've gotten older because I haven't seen them in

a while.

We were also introduced to

a scary Milkman character played by Christian Slater, and he looks great.

He's very smooth-faced.

He looks much younger than I would expect on the other end of it.

But Dinklich and Slater are both in this milk mafia kind of thing.

Dinklich and Slater.

Dinklich and Slater, that's that new show in USA, right?

Yeah.

They're lawyers, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, I would watch that, actually.

But

the thing, I mean, like, again, these are these two people, I'm like, oh, you're coming off pretty well because you're just, you know, doing...

You're playing this as if it's a drama.

Yeah, they're playing material straight.

Yeah.

So, yeah, these threatening milkmen show up and bob's like what was that about and his boss tells them milkmen have always been a violent syndicate milk has always been a mob type organization and they're going to be mad that kelloggs is now making a non-milk based breakfast product it's going to it's they're not going to like it And this feels like a one-off thing, to be honest.

You see like black and white photos of the history of milk, and it felt like the scene in the jerk when they're watching the film strip of cat juggling or whatever it is,

and it's where it's clearly just like a one-off silly thing.

I was like, but no, this is a tightly written movie, so this plot comes back quite a few times, you know, this because this movie is somehow a sketch movie that that does continue to remember its threads, even when you're like, that's fine, I need to know more about that.

I'm glad it doesn't pay off, it remembers its threads, but it doesn't pay off.

There's a uh, later on, uh, there's a sentient ravioli that I'm like, oh, this is gonna,

you know, cause trouble at the end and like do something, like save somebody, or whatever.

I'm watching Alex's confusion when he hears sentient ravioli.

And also, the milk stuff gets

taken care of off camera, basically.

Like the president takes care of that off-camera.

We'll get to the president, John F.

Kennedy, played by Bill Burr, but that'll come later.

So the lab gets to work.

We get a brief appearance by Aparna Nacharla as a scientist who is just handling the computer.

Great to see her.

I don't mind seeing her in a movie.

She's great.

There's lots of jokes about the brand taste pilots.

It goes on for a long time.

And Amy Schumer's getting suspicious.

Hugh Grant shows up.

He wants to use the lab as his rehearsal space for production of King Lear.

And

Stan and Thurl, they do not get along.

Uh-oh, Thurl's going to be a thorn in their side.

Breaking down.

He's like, I mean,

that really seems like something you could leave out.

Yeah, you would.

Nope, no, you would think.

You'd think, but again, this is like a sidebill episode.

All the storylines are going to come together.

I think it's important that each taste pilot gets a fully realized arc in this movie.

Well, I don't know if you're aware, Alex.

Stewart dosed your drink with mushrooms before you came over.

So, what you think is the plot of this movie is not actually a plot.

Stuart's right that each of the taste pilots does get an arc for the most part.

I don't remember Carvelian, but I'm not even going to go into that.

Like, Jack Lane, the fact that people can see his dick through his pants, so he has to make other pants.

I'm not going to get into that.

The sentient ravioli that Thomas Lennon and Chef Boyardi make, I guess we'll touch on that because it keeps going.

He shows up for a final gag.

I think it's pretty important.

Yeah, so the five cereal families meet in the back of a grocery store store at night.

Right.

And, uh, they, uh,

we get Andy Daly as what the Quaker Oats.

He shows up to them as the Quaker Oaks guy.

He's funny.

I mean, again, Andy Daly's hilarious.

Like, there's that's a good gag.

And also, he's hilarious.

You know, I'll watch anything with him in it.

I've, I've worked with him, and he's super great to work with.

So, um, there's a lot of funny people in this.

Uh, they, at a certain point, you get over the idea that the Quaker Oaks guy is actually the guy who runs Quaker Oaks.

So, uh, she says, we've got this new toaster pastry.

It's going to be on shelves next week.

And Bob and Stan are like, we've got to stop this.

There's only one way to do it.

Cut off the supply of sugar to posts.

So they go to Puerto Rico to meet with El Sucre.

And he controls all the sugar.

He's like a drug dealer.

He briefly watches a ventriloquist played by Tony Hale, who makes fun of his grout and the bad grout job on the tiles.

So, of course, he's taken out his dummiest shot.

Okay, I thought that was kind of funny.

That was a good gag.

Where you hear the shot off screen, you think he's been shot, but the dummy has been shot.

And then he immediately shows up and starts making fun of the grouch.

Yeah,

that's the one thing that he shouldn't make fun of, yeah.

They say they'll buy all the sugar that El Sucre is bringing on, and it's implied that uh-oh, now they're on the hook for all the money for this sugar.

They're gonna be in trouble, but that doesn't really matter.

It doesn't matter.

Now, Post can't make anything, but Christian Slater is the milkman, he's threatening Bob.

The taste pilot inventions, they all misfire, they just haven't done what they're supposed to.

The dumpster kids,

they invent rice krispie treats, which is something the movie never really picks up on.

That that's something the movie mentions it.

Off-brand garbage pail kids.

The dumpster bottom kids.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

That's the we have garbage pail kids at home, right?

Yeah.

Dumpster kids.

You want garbage pail kids, and your grandpa is like, I got you what you wanted for your birthday, dumpster bottom kids.

They just teach about being thrifty and recycling.

I don't like this.

They're not gross at all.

And the kids tell them you got to combine the things that you have.

So Bob and Stan combine the taste pilots' ideas that eventually helps them to invent the pop-tart.

Everyone celebrates with a party where they dance the twist.

Oh, right.

We were inventing the Pop-Tart.

Yeah,

that's right.

Lost track of.

They still don't have a name for it, though.

Or is this one they call it a trat pop?

I can't remember.

No, it's later.

Okay.

So Post needs sugar.

So the only place to get it is from Cuba.

So they go to Soviet Russia to pitch to Khrushchev.

Played by the Spanish.

Played by Frank Schrader.

Hell yeah.

And

his interpreter is

the actress from the Borat sequel, right?

Yes, it is.

From Maria Bakalova.

Yeah.

It's Maria Bakalova who's our interpreter.

Here is basically.

Again, she's funny.

They're fine.

I would say.

It's all star cast.

But I would say it's amazing how much talent has been thrown at this crap.

This is another thing.

It looks good.

Like the movie looks good.

I would say the movie looks a little made for TV-ish, but that's fine.

It's a sketch movie.

It doesn't need to look great.

It looks fairly pretty, but also flat.

It's, yeah, it's colorful, but flat.

It's all, it's all floodlit the way that like a network television show is.

I don't know.

I mean,

check it, but I think, didn't Conrad Hall do the cinematography?

I do think it was actually

Conrad Hall would have been hit on the head with a coconut beforehand.

It was another colour.

So they called him the Prince of Lightness beforehand.

I mean, I'll look it up while you guys keep talking.

Okay.

The cinematography, Dan, it's by Bill Pope.

Oh.

Who he's worked with a lot of people, worked with the Sam Raimi, worked with the Kowskis, worked with Edgar Wright, did a lot of music videos this was the uh cinematographer on uh on dark man fucking matrix yeah dark man did a lot of stuff let's see here's his filmography on wikipedia army of darkness oh spider-man 2 one of the best movies ever made dan your favorite movie blank check uh the remake of bedazzled another of dan's favorites uh

scott pilgrim uh the spirit former flop house movie

uh the jungle book remake that john fever did another flophouse movie alita battle angel i mean the problem with the spirit was not that it looked bad it was everything else Another flop house movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Quantamania.

So now, Bill Pope now has a number of movies on the Flophouse, not because of his work on that.

No, you know, yeah,

we got to get him in here.

Oh, he did the pilot for Freaks and Geeks.

He did the Pilot for Maximum.

Zero Effect.

Alex did Zero Effect with Bill Pullman and Ben Stiller.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyways,

so he's done a lot of stuff.

He's done a lot of stuff.

Great work.

Damn, we can't take him down.

No, let's not take him down.

Let's not even try.

Let's, you know, who we should take down?

Whoever made the decision to present Khrushchev as if he was kind of like a grumbling grumbling kind of beast of a man when uh if anything khrushchev made say what you will about you know the problems with soviet russia and some of the people

i would say at least he took a step forward in denouncing stalinism in his secret speech you know to the congress anyway so uh to so uh khrushche says i'll give you

the popcorn

he says i'll give you sugar in exchange for they pitch him a couple ideas for soviet cereals and then he says uh i'll give it to you if you have sex with me and so it's implied that amy schumer does uh bob is kidnapped by the milkmen uh their leader Peter Dick.

Amy Schumer, playing what noted feminist icon in some ways,

has to sell her body for sugar.

Okay.

I would say

this is a movie that I would say does not have politics on its mind, which means it stumbles at certain points.

And for that reason, later on, as we'll get to, there is a big parody of January 6th, which is not trying to make a point about January 6th.

It's just like, this is like a thing that happened.

And so it's like, it's weird.

Are you saying that the way that they use workers desiring what unionizing and fair wages being January 6ers is complicated?

It also, and it also, yeah, it's also taking a, it's the idea of brand mascots unionizing is a joke in it.

And I don't think that it is an anti-union message so much as them not caring or thinking about it.

You know, it feels tone-deaf as opposed to like, let's take the unions down.

Anyway,

Bob is kidnapped by the Milkmen's led by Peter Dinkledge.

He, of course, forces Jerry Seinfeld to walk through a barn full of farting cows, which is too much for Bob, and he quits the project.

Meanwhile, there is a living ravioli loose in the lab that was created as a combination of

Chef Boyarde's work and the sea monkeys.

Sea monkeys.

The White House sends a helicopter to pick up the microphone.

This does kind of feel like the worst version of the Manhattan Projects.

Oh, the Manhattan Project's the comic book?

Yeah.

I was like, I don't know.

The nukes were probably the worst.

The worst version of the Manhattan Project was probably the one that killed all those Japanese people.

But yeah,

I'm talking about the comic.

You're talking about the Jonathan Sickman comic, the Manhattan Projects.

Yeah.

So the White White House sends a helicopter to pick up the Kellogg's people, takes them straight to President Kennedy, played by Bill Burr.

Says they need post-to-production.

Do you think that's a hair piece?

No, I think that was his real hair, Stuart.

He normally wears a bald cap.

That's what I was going to say.

Because he knows it makes him more relatable as a blue-collar guy if he's bald, if he wears a bald cap.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Okay.

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

I thought I was going crazy.

Well, and also, he originally, so a lot of people don't know, Bill Burr originally started as a comedian named Bill Fur.

Furr.

And the idea was that he had this thick head of hair.

And he found he got a bad haircut.

It never worked.

He bombed every night.

He got a bad haircut one night, and he was like, I'll just shave the rest off.

And he did amazing.

He killed.

And so from that point on, he realized he was a reverse Samson, as it's known in the scientific literature.

And his hair actually made him weaker as a comedian.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Cool, cool, cool, cool.

A little background.

That's a little bit.

So that's my from my segment, Behind the Burr, where I tell you stories about Bill Burr's history.

Yep.

Anyway,

Behind the Burr.

did Bill Burr's name get attached to the thistles that get stuck to your socks when you walk through a forest?

Stay tuned for the next episode to find out.

So the president is like, the Russians are working with Post.

We got to stop them.

I'll help you with the milkmen.

But the Milkmen, they make inroads by convincing Thorough Ravenscroft to unionize and cause trouble for Kellogg's.

There's a NASA-style test of the Pop-Tart.

It's successful, but it ends in an explosion that kills Jack McBrerer's character, and he has a full serial funeral, which involves his coffin being floated in milk and cereal and different mascots.

Don't worry, this takes forever.

I gotta say,

it didn't make me laugh, but this is like the, you know, again, one of the moments that threatened to make me laugh when they're, you know, like slowly pouring cereal and milk into the hole.

And I think it's like, if this was a sketch on a TV show, I would, I think I'd be laughing at it.

But by this point, I was like done with cereal jokes.

I was like, I've seen them.

We've had a lot of serial jokes in this movie.

And I guess we also forgot to mention that in the testing scene where Jack McBreyer's character explodes, we see a friend of the podcast, Ronnie Chang.

Ronnie Chang, yeah.

Oh, that's right.

Ronnie Chang shows up great brave flakes.

Yeah.

And he's funny.

Yeah.

He does it.

He has like three lines, but he's really funny.

So a Kellogg and Post, they meet up at night and they have a rendezvous that almost turns romantic, but it's interrupted by the, again, the living

that is peeking around.

Oh, that's right they need a product name so now we go to of course don draper and roger sterling as played by the original actors uh john hamm and uh and john slattery and uh they we do a mad men parody where they're trying to sex up the product uh it's it's really it is really like just a it's directly a reference to the bell jolie campaign in the madmen series right yeah like yeah it uh it's great it's great to see mad men written by people who aren't as good as madmen writers

it really well it you know it's it's I was surprised the movie just went directly into direct parody.

Like, it's not even just a reference and they're doing a scene.

It's just a direct parody of that show.

Well, again, like, things probably bouncing around Jerry Seinfeld's head.

It did slip very naturally back into those characters.

I'll say that.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's great to see him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that, to be honest, it was true that like John Hamm still got Don Drew, but even more so, like, John Slattery, he can do Roger Sterling, it seems like, without even thinking about it.

Like, he just does it so naturally.

I mean, of all the days to be on set, that's the day I would have picked.

Yeah.

And like the moment where

the banter between John Hamm and Melissa McCarthy was funny, where they're like kind of flirting and I don't know.

I thought that was good.

I'd want to be there for that serial funeral.

That sounds really cool.

Yeah.

Yeah, because you'd have all the costumes and everything.

A lot of celebrities there.

I mean, that's when, like, every now and then at the daily show, you'd have to dress up a correspondent in a funny costume and you'd see them walking through the hallway.

And you'd be like, this is what it feels like to work on a television show.

Like,

like in the movies, there's always a Roman centurion walking around the back lot.

They haven't made Roman movies in years, but there's, I mean, except for a Gladiator 2, I guess, but there's always a Roman Centurion in the back lot of a movie studio.

So they need a name.

They call him the dumpster kids.

They end up with the name Trat Pop.

It's an acronym for or something similar.

Well, it's not a palander because it's not the same backwards and forwards, but if you reverse it, it'll be Pop-Tart, which is why

we'll see that.

It pays off later on.

Yeah, it pays off later.

So it's called a Trat Pop.

They fire all the mascots And on the day that the FDA is supposed to certify that they can sell Trat Pops, the FDA guy is played, of course, by Fred Armison.

They throw Ravenscroft in

a QAnon shaman style version of the Tony the Tiger costume.

He leads the mascots in a January 6th style protest to stop the certification.

And it's one of those things where it's like,

was it really obvious to you guys?

Because it only kind of slowly dawned on me how close they were parodying that thing.

Because I saw his costume and I go, okay, he looks like the QA shit.

But as soon as they say we got to stop the certification, I was like, oh, so they're really going all the way to doing a January 6th.

That's all it is.

And as you say, it's not political.

It's just like, hey, remember this thing that happened?

Yeah.

And, you know, I'm sure like at the time, I wouldn't have found it funny.

And now I certainly don't find it funny.

Like, it's just gotten less and less funny over time.

Well, this thing, I couldn't tell.

Yeah, Dan doesn't like his heroes from January 6th.

Yeah, that's what that means.

You got me.

A lot of people don't know that

if you play a lot of the episodes backwards, you can hear Dan saying subliminally, release the heroes, pardon the heroes.

But I was surprised.

I couldn't tell.

I was like, is this tasteless to me or is it not?

Because I think January 6th is going to turn out to be a pivotal moment in American history in a bad way.

You know, not in a good way.

It's not like that was what shook America out of its super and got

it.

No, but like there was that incident had a chance for America to be like, this isn't us.

We've got to change things.

And instead, people were like, that was weird anyway.

But I think, but it was, I, it was one of the things where like, I don't love that they're making light of it, but also I don't hear a lot of people talking about it.

And I have certainly written things.

If my third volume of Maniac of New York ever gets finished, you'll see that I have kind of my, like a play on that in there.

So it's one of those things where it's like, well, at least with serial mascots, right?

With serial mascots, yeah.

So at least I'm seeing this event reverberating in the culture in some way, as opposed to it being forgotten about, you you know, so I couldn't tell.

I couldn't tell.

This is the least relevant way for it to be.

I mean, we'll find out if the new naked gun reboot features a genius.

That would be amazing.

They're like, the only way we can handle this material is in, is in parody movies.

It's the only way, you know.

So they,

but they managed to, Bob just takes the stamp and stamps their certification.

They did it.

Pop-tarts get on the shelf.

Walter Cronkite's announcing the product on the news, but his script, he uses some silly putty on it, and it messes up the script.

So he reads it backwards off the silly putty, and it says pop-tart.

So that is now the new name.

That long walk is really worth it.

Setting up.

That kind of does, yeah.

Yeah, it's really name.

It really,

there are a number of things in the movie.

I think this movie is most successful with the one-off jokes.

It's good that they throw away jokes.

They hadn't

trademarked Trap Pop, huh?

And they could just switch over.

Yeah, just naturally.

Even though it sounds too close to pop art, which leads us to yet another cameo.

We'll get to that.

We'll get to that.

First, we'll say

that

the Pop-Tarts launch the same day as Post's Country Squares, which is their competing product.

And of course, Pop-Tarts sell out.

And this is a, earlier they're talking about it as a pastry dingus.

And then this scene, it feels like such a...

playoff of the Hudsucker proxy scene where the hula hoop gets get becomes popular and where they refer to it as an extruded plastic dinkus.

And it's like it just very, I wonder if that was now that we know that the cinematographer worked so closely with Sam Raimi, maybe those were his ideas for how to do it.

I don't know.

Maybe he's maybe he's riffing off his own work in it, which is kind of fun.

Bob fills us out on what happens next.

Jokes, jokes, jokes.

Everyone has joke kind of like

what happened to them.

But Bob goes on the Johnny Carson show and is shot by

Andy Warhol because pop tart sounds too close to pop art in any way.

Played by Andrew Reynolds, of course.

Played by what?

Of course.

Who's that?

Played by Andrew Reynolds, of course.

One of the original cast of

Book of Mormon.

I think that's

girls.

I think that's Dan Levy.

Dan Levy.

Oh, you're right.

You're fucking right.

They look so similar when they have bigger son.

No, that's Dan Levy from Chits Creek playing Andy Warhol.

And of course, it's funny because in real life, Andy Warhol was shot and paralyzed.

So, you know, again, the movie is

pretty funny, actually.

Again, the movie is riffing off of history in a way that is maybe oblivious, you know, to the implications.

So Bob finishes the story.

He's telling it to that kid in the restaurant.

The kid's parents come and get him.

And

the kid is like, oh, wow, mom and dad.

We never know what his problem was, why it's solved.

Oh, no, no, you know what?

They say they're going to buy him something.

I forgot what it is, though.

And Bob...

says goodbye to him and the living ravioli peeks out of his pocket and he's like did you see that mom and dad but they didn't see it and then we get credits there's no credit your favorite thing happens elliot they all do a dance over the credits don't so there's there are some bloopers but it is mostly all the characters in the different scenes dancing together to us the same song and as dan knows and as floppy's listeners know i hate this i hate this shit i always hate it i don't like it someone was having fun without you so no it always feels to me like they are trying to make me feel good by showing how they're throwing a party and I get to watch it.

And it's like, oh, great.

I mean, Barb and Starr, a movie I really love, they do the same same thing at the end and I'm like, fuck this, don't like it.

I don't like it at all.

But also because it's such fake fun.

I don't really think that they just let loose and had fun dancing for the movie.

I think that they were told like, we're going to do this thing at the end where we're all

of us dancing.

We're going to shoot B-roll of us dancing.

Everybody look like you're having a good time.

But I don't think it's, it would be a one thing if it was like.

actual

shooting at their feet.

Yeah, exactly.

But if it was actual footage of a party that they had where they were having a good time, I'd be like, you know what?

That's, that's kind of fun to see that.

Yeah, like some like study cam footage or handheld footage of the rat party.

Exactly.

They're all ripping huge lines, right?

I feel like it's getting fucking crazy.

There is a movie that did that, and I don't remember which one it is.

But isn't it or like that?

Was it Book Club or one of those where with Mary Steenbergen where like at the end, I think they are showing pictures from the rat party and Ted Danson is in one of the pictures.

And there is something nice about like, oh, her husband showed up for the rat party.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Hell yeah, book club.

But here it just feels fakey to me so anyway the movie ends uh as it began bright and colorful very loud meaning nothing having no having no relevance to the world that we live in uh guys that's unfrosted that's the story while the pop-tart was invented you know yeah the true story uh i gotta say i gotta give you credit elliott you blazed through that adventure in out done yeah i could have done it even shorter but i had to make sure to mention the all the taste pilots you know yeah

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

Alex, why don't you start off with

now you're into it?

I got to do the miss that movie.

Yeah, yeah.

So miss that movie is something that regularly happens on our minis.

If you're not listening to our minis, what are you even doing with your life?

Regularly, I think we did three of them.

First off, Elliot Fuck off.

We're just asking for another one.

Yeah, he's just begging for it.

He's gagging for it.

So it's,

what is it?

Should wait.

I think one is gotta not have missed it or something.

I missed it.

Sad missed it.

Had to not miss it.

Yeah.

Had to not miss it.

That means you literally, upon hearing this, immediately ran out and watched the movie.

Wow.

You know what?

I actually hate having to go first on this because, because you guys have described a lot of stuff that almost made you laugh.

You've described a lot of stuff that sounds like it kind of sucks,

and also a lot of people that I like who are funny.

So I'm going to give this a,

what do you call it?

Like a tentative or

it's conditional on your all's thing, but I think I

think I'm sad I missed it.

I think I'm sad I missed it.

So Alex was sharing with me today while we were walking around Midtown Management.

It's always bad when Stuart says something like that.

It starts like that.

That's always bad.

No, but Alex is saying that when he edits the episodes,

he often puts the movie on so that he's watching the movie while we're talking about it.

And so he didn't have that opportunity this time.

Are you going, do you think when you edit this episode, you're going to be watching Unfrosted?

That's basically what I was saying.

Actually, I will.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Okay.

So, yeah, you had to not miss it.

And you can pick up.

I think there are a few famous people that we missed in mentioning, and you can pick them up.

Yeah, just insert it into the episode.

Just have that.

Yeah.

A really low voice.

Okay, well,

I'm going to say this is a bad, bad movie, and that overall, you know, I didn't enjoy it.

I wouldn't recommend it.

It's just, it's just, but it's a weird experience because it's like, it's not terrible.

Like, they threw a lot of talent at this thing, and everyone's trying,

but none of the jokes are quite funny enough

and they aren't presented in quite a funny enough way to make up for the fact that this is a completely irrelevant movie where you're like why does this exist why did you think you had to make 90 minutes of this thing like this is a movie where i'm like i almost wish that like quibby was back because it's like if this movie was like broken up into quibby sized chunks and you watched it that way i'd be like each one i'd be like oh this is you know amusing enough that maybe i'll check in again maybe

maybe with unfrosted quibby could work this time Yeah.

Yeah, and a Pop-Tart is kind of a quick bite, you know?

It is even more of a quick bite than the shows that were on Quibi, yeah, sure.

But, you know, like, I think that Seinfeld probably was like, it's like a Pop-Tart.

It's like a treat.

It's like a little confectionery.

But unfortunately.

That's not a bad Seinfeld impression.

But it is more like a Pop-Tart in that it has.

No nutritional value and it will make you sick because you have too much of it.

So that's what I say.

What do you say, Stuart?

I was about to do a Seinfeld impression, but I feel like we'd get hit with some legal issues because it would be too close.

Be fraudulently misleading people into thinking that Jerry Seinfeld had appeared on the show.

So, yeah, that's the thing.

Like,

it took me so long for my brain to accept the reality of what I was watching, that I was genuinely watching a movie about Pop-Tarts that is not factual,

but it's also not like

a metaphor.

It's just this movie about pop-tarts, and it's not funny enough for it to really justify that.

It's just really strange.

And I mean, I guess I'm glad that a lot of funny people got paid.

But no, I would say this is a firm bad, bad movie unless,

unless, is there a way?

I find it just so, it's a curious movie.

Yeah.

But I think it's bad, bad.

It's just like,

it's so strange.

I am going to, after my description of the movie, after my summary, I think this is going to sound a little

contradictory.

And certainly, I don't see it quite the same way as you guys.

In some ways, this is a movie I kind of like.

And I'll tell you why I said that.

I don't think it's super successful at everything it does, but I want to judge it on a different standard than a regular movie.

And I think the problem with this movie is partly that it is trying to be a movie with something of a story, but it should be a sketch movie.

And at heart, it wants to be a sketch movie.

And it's really hard to do a good sketch sketch movie.

It's almost, it's nearly impossible.

There's very, you need to do a Kentucky Fried movie.

I mean, even Kentucky Fried movie has like long stretches of crap, you know?

And when you think about it, other than Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it's hard for me to think of a sketch movie where I'm just like, I love it.

Scene after scene, banger after banger.

Like you watch Holy Grail, the first six scenes in a row, I think, are just.

classic, solid, like genius sketches.

And that's really hard to do.

And you have to be the funniest sketch group potentially in the history of the world to do it.

And so I think it's, I will, I'm giving the movie credit for being exactly what I think you guys, in a way, are faulting it for being, which is like empty calories that mean nothing and are just kind of like, what about this?

What about this?

Is this funny?

Try this thing.

And I think it is, even on that level, it's not always successful.

But I found myself, even though I wasn't like holding my sides as they split with laughter, I found myself enjoying it more than I thought I would going into it.

And it was nice to see like a lot of funny faces doing funny things.

And, you know, it's a, it's like not really a movie.

I guess what it comes down to.

The thing is that ultimately, I like the idea of a sketch movie, even if it's not going to work.

But I feel like

they like laser focus in on the serial, serial and 60s jokes so much

that it wears thin so quickly for me.

I agree.

Here's my pitch.

If Jerry Seinfeld had come to me with this, I would have said, I think what you have in your life.

What would that sound like, Dan?

No.

Is that ringing?

Okay, Dan, you're Jerry Seinfeld.

Do it for real.

You're Jerry Seinfeld.

You're bringing it to me.

Elliot,

I can't do it.

Okay, Stewart, you're Jerry Seinfeld.

Bring me this project.

Okay, you might have to redact this, Alex, because this is going to be too close.

A movie about

cereal.

Delicious.

Okay, Alex, you're Jerry Seinfeld.

You're Jerry Jerry Seinfeld.

You're Jerry Sinfill.

Pitch it to me.

What's the deal with you not making this

one to make?

I think the problem was having Midwestern and Southern Gentiles trying to do

a Jewish Long Island Depression.

So Jerry Seinfeld comes to me with this.

I would have said, I don't think you have a movie here.

I think you have...

the seeds for the beginning of a sketch TV show.

I would pitch it to him.

I'd call it Boomer Vision.

And it would just be like sketches about stuff for people who grew up in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s.

Don't set it just in the 60s, but the idea that like, here's a sketch show that's about the different things that are floating around in our parents' generations' dumb heads that they can't let go of.

And it's why they have so much trouble moving forward with the times or recognizing that they're not the center of human civilization.

And I think there could have been some really funny sketches in here for that show.

But I know what you're saying.

Like for a movie, you're like, you get to a certain point about.

And it's not that long.

It's like 37 minutes in and you're like, oh, they're still talking about cereal, huh?

Still doing cereal jokes, you know?

But I like that.

I really like the idea of hiring a bunch of Gen X and millennial actors and comedians to perform on the Boomer comedy show so that they still feel sort of alive.

I think that would be, I would love it.

I would, I mean, I also, now I want to, this is maybe this is the show that I want to make is the show about that show where it's like the young people who have to work on, not young, they're millennials.

They're not that young, you know, anymore.

It's about the Gen Z people who work on.

They're still pretty young.

The 30 Rock about the Pop Tart movie.

Yes.

And again, the best thing about 30 Rock is that it is

a show about the making of a bad sketch show.

Like, it is very clear to us that this is a bad show or a dumb show they're making.

And I love that.

Can I ask a question that maybe I'm asking this kind of late in the process here, but

we talk about bad movies.

Yeah, yeah.

Question:

I'm Dan McCoy.

That's OEK Lane.

That's Joe Bennington.

Yeah.

But do, do,

is it known, is this something that like Pop-Tart came to Jerry Seinfeld to do?

Or was it something that he wanted to do?

And then he had to clear all of the serial brands and stuff.

My guess is that he probably had to clear it.

Okay.

You never know.

I mean, there's so much brand IP stuff right now.

Yeah, like every sketch on a Saturday Night Live episode.

Well, but even the fact that, like, I know that Kellogg's has been going around saying, how do we make movies out of our mascot characters?

Like, what's our shared universe?

So you never know.

It's possible that they came to him and he said, this is what I'm interested in.

But I wouldn't put it past Jerry Seinfeld to see the other movies that are being made about how products came about.

The Flaming Hot Cheetos one and the Air Jordan one, and being like, hey, you know what product I'd like to see that about?

Pop-tarts, because he has a bit about Pop-Tarts in his act.

And so I wouldn't be surprised if that just came out of his natural interest in breakfast foods, you know?

Because it really does sound like the kind of thing, like it sounds like it could be a 90-minute ad for Pop-Tarts, except for the fact that there are other cereal brands in it.

Yeah, man, the Doughboys need to get Seinfeld on to do like a snack or whack with Pop-Tarts or some shit.

Yeah, they should.

Hey, hey, guys.

This podcast has sponsored.

Is sponsored?

And it had sponsored too.

It had sponsored, but it's, it's, it's, it's sponsored.

I know it's Kellogg's.

If you say it's Kellogg's, I will flip my lid.

Oh, you know what?

Oh, Stuart, this was, no, this was the, hold on, I'll just say, there was a daily show I did where we ended the act with a joke that I made about China trying to undermine America.

And I was like, what are you, Bank of America?

And then literally it goes, the daily show is brought to you by Bank of America.

And this was not a planned joke.

It was just like they had happened to just buy a sponsor spot with them with a commercial bump, and that joke was the one that went before it.

Oh, it was great.

I have a DVD of that somewhere.

It's incredible.

Well, this podcast is sponsored in part by Squarespace, your way to set up a unique presence online.

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You know, guys, Mother's Day is coming up.

Oh, we all got mommies.

And sounds like the way you said it, but

the thing is,

the thing my mom loves more than anything, other than like the thing she loves more than anything, is a phone call from her baby boy, Stuart Wellington.

And when she's talking to me, she loves looking at pictures of me.

And a great way that you can give her pictures of you is by sending her an Aura digital picture frame.

They're great because you can take an entire digital library of photos and you can preload it and send that picture frame to your parents.

And you know what?

That's great because I've done this for a couple of my older, my father-in-law and my parents.

And the thing is, they're not particularly good with technology.

So if I can do that all in advance, then they don't have to worry about it.

I know Dan has done that as well.

He's also got an aura frame in the other room.

And every once in a while, I'll see a picture of myself at Dan's wedding.

And I'm like, oh yeah, I do love Dan McCoy.

The aura frames were named the best digital photo frame by Wirecutter and is featured in 495 different gift guides last year.

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T's and C's.

Do you guys think that Aura would like it if we pointed out that it's a perfect gift for your MILF, your mother you'd like to frame?

I mean, we can try it.

We can, I mean, I don't know if they're not going to be able to do it.

I'm not like them.

I'll pitch them as a new slogan.

Ellie, do you have any personal plugs before we move on to London?

McCoy, do I ever have personal plugs?

You betcha, Dan McCoy.

By the time this episode comes out, you know what's also going to be out?

Is my new children's picture book, Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House, featuring art by Tim Miller, my collaborator from Horse Meats Dog.

This is my third children's picture book.

It is the first one that I think is not just a sketch, but is a full kind of real story.

It tells the story of Sadie Mouse, a mouse who's tired of being a good mouse and doing chores and decides she's going to do all her chores the wrong way so that she never has to do them again.

And she wrecks her house as the title promises.

Sadie Mouse will wreck the house.

That's Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House.

Go to your local independent bookstore.

Just pick it up off the shelf.

If they don't have it, ask them to order it.

That's great.

They'll do it for you.

Right there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Great value.

Before you leave the store, pay for it.

Yeah, you should.

Yes, of course.

Don't just pick it off the shelf and walk out.

Yeah, you got to pay for it.

Unless there's a book.

I'm not in one of those stupid stores where you can just like pick things up and walk through the door and it automatically charges you.

There is a book called Steal This Book that's not this book.

This is Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House.

It's on bookstore shelves now.

Also on shelves in another kind of bookstore, a comic bookstore, are issues of Harley Quinn, my series from DC Comics.

I'm writing the main Harley Quinn book.

It's been super fun.

She is fighting gentrification in a very chaotic and not particularly effective way, and her arch nemesis is falling in love with her.

And are they going to get together?

I don't know.

She's already with Poison Ivy, but maybe this real estate developer, Althea Klang, will be able to win her away.

I don't know.

We'll find out.

I'm going to be on this book for while, and I'm bringing in...

uh just a lot of story points that are gonna continue to uh come together and bounce off each other in different ways the funny thing is i'm writing an issue right now, but I have no idea of how far ahead I am of the issue that is out now.

I think the one that's out about to come out and will be out when this episode is released, I think, is one in which Harley Quinn has to face her greatest nemesis, her own brain, which is trying to take control of her body.

And I think introduces my new favorite characters on the book.

These two pre-existing DC characters, Mayfly and Gun Bunny, who are two ladies with guns that are kind of assassins.

I teamed them up and they're now friends called the Gun Buddies and they're best friends who take hits and they're, you know, they're really fun and they're very supportive of each other.

So that's Harley Quinn on Comic Book Store Shelves now.

And of course, there's my other podcast, Smartless Presents Clueless, the game show podcast I do with Sean Hayes,

and that's still going strong too.

So if you like very short podcasts about puzzles and games and riddles, that's the one to go to.

The episodes are very short.

You can listen to like three or four of them in an hour.

Oh, wow.

It's still short there.

It is short.

You can listen to three or four floppous in an hour, but you'd have to listen to them so fast it would melt your brain

i have two very quick plugs i just want to mention that uh the bar that my wife and i inherited uh when our friend passed away commonwealth bar in brooklyn is going to be reopening next week which will be two weeks ago when this episode airs so you can go now so if you're in brooklyn you should do the math hold on you should go and support uh well does this episode drop on the second of may Oh,

maybe not.

I don't know.

If you're around for Derby Day, come visit.

Go to Commonwealth, see if it's open.

If it's not, come back in a week.

Yeah, I mean, it's going to be open.

And then finally, if you like Stuart Wellington and you like watching me nerd out about nerdy things, you can go over to my Twitch channel.

I'm once a week.

My Twitch channel is Stuart Wellington, and that's my name.

And I hang out usually for about two hours and I build and paint like Warhammer stuff and I yap and it's a lot of fun.

So come visit me.

Good evening.

Thanks for tuning in to 101.1 Max Fun.

It's midnight here on Host to Coast, and we've got Sarah from Michigan on line one.

Hi, I'm calling in for some help.

I used to love reading, but between grad school, having kids, and the general state of the world, I can't seem to pick up a book and stick with it anymore.

Sarah, this is an easy one.

Just listen to Reading Glasses, a podcast designed to help you read better.

Bria and Mallory will get all the pressure, shame, and guilt out of your reading life.

You'll be finishing books you love in no time.

Great.

That sounds amazing.

Also, I do think my husband is cheating on me with Mothman.

Can you help me with that one?

Ooh, I don't think they cover that.

Reading Glasses every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

WrestleMania is the biggest and busiest time of the year for wrestling.

And the Tites and Fights podcast is more important than ever.

We have so many questions to explore.

How can you understand John Cena's motivation as a bad guy?

Why is a car crash actually a great expression of friendship?

You mean friendship, right?

Of course.

Whether you're a longtime wrestling fan or coming back after a break, Titan Fights has you covered this WrestleMania and every weekend after on maximum fun.

Tites and Fights, Podcasts,

Titans and Bod's answer some letters from listeners.

This first letter is from Adrian last name withheld.

And Adrian writes, hey, Peaches, I was wondering who your favorite characters are that have your job.

Maybe you like them because they let people get an understanding of what you do.

Or maybe it's in a setting that you wish your job was like so hijinks could happen to you.

Like Elliot writing for shows, children's books, or comics.

Stewart with his bartending and fitness influencer lifestyle.

And Dan going to the Alamo to watch films all the time.

Love you.

Adrian last name withheld.

Now, let me say two things.

First off, right off the top, I haven't been to the Alamo in a while because they were on strike.

And as a union man, I was boycotting in solidarity.

And congratulations to them.

They're back at work.

They won reinstatement of the fired workers that they were striking over and other issues.

So perhaps now I shall return.

Yeah, were you a Regal or an AMC guy in the meantime?

I had been going to Regal in the meantime.

Our friends over at Blank Check had a discount code for them.

Okay.

And number two, I am still a writer.

At least half of writing is not getting paid for the writing that you do.

You don't have to get paid for it to be a real writer.

It all takes a slow words down.

Yeah.

That being said, I'm mostly a podcaster right now.

So I guess.

Alex Incorporated.

Yeah, Alex Incorporated.

I'm a real Alex Incorporated.

I guess

it's not a movie, but I'm going to go with Steve Martin and Only Murders in the Building because, like him, I'm sort of a

tightly wound

man.

There's a certain warmth there, but a lot of don't touch me energy as well.

So,

what do you say, Stuart?

Yeah, let's see.

What's I was going to say, Alex and Cocktail?

Yeah, Brian Brown and Cocktail.

Yeah,

that's probably the closest.

I mean, I feel like there's got to be some cool bartenders and things,

but I don't know.

Bar owners,

I don't know.

Sam Malone's.

Well, yeah, I think most bar owners in movies are the worst people in the world.

Yeah, they're usually not.

They're usually not good people.

Just like Steve.

Roadhouse.

Roadhouse has a good bar owner.

Thank you.

I'm the guy from Roadhouse that hires,

not the remake.

I'm not as cool as Jessica Williams.

I am the weird guy who hires Patrick Swayze to protect his business.

Man, yeah, that's awesome.

Thank you.

Alex, that was great.

Yeah, you know what?

Hey, I'm here to help.

Speaking of producer Alex, is there a way to see yourself

tossed to Elliot and Ellie at all?

When have I really seen myself portrayed on film aside from Don't Worry, Darling, when the

favorite joke of all time?

Alex's wife comes home to see the schlubby

podcast producer

wasting away

under a lamplight.

Alex's wife saw the movie

and was like, this movie really spoke to me.

I think you should watch it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

this just made me.

Something about this made me feel represented.

I don't know what it was.

But

yeah, I don't know.

Is there a, I guess, I mean,

if you're a musician.

A musician as well.

Okay, aspiring musician.

So, yeah, I guess.

You don't have to, as long as you're putting words on the paper and strumming those instruments.

You don't have to get paid to be musicians.

Aspiring musician, this is easy.

Purple ring.

Purple ring.

Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, you guys.

You know, I get it.

My dream is to premiere a song that the rest of my band hasn't even heard yet and have everyone in the room just stop and watch it happen and go, that was the best thing we've, and know before they've even heard the song before that it's the best song they've ever heard in their whole life.

That this is the pivotal moment that changes their life.

This is characters that we do relate to or we want to?

Either way.

I think they left it wide open.

They're like, does it,

I take it to be relate to, but it's kind of also like, does it represent your field well?

Does it inform people?

Or is it like how you wish your field actually was like?

Kind of.

Oh, I see.

I think, well, then

it's the same answer for either of us.

I don't know.

I guess the writers, because I took it as who's the writer, who's the

person who does my job in fiction that I would like to, that I wish I did it that way.

And so I'm a writer.

That's what I do for a living.

I'm a writer.

You all know who I am, how I make my living.

I can catch your shark for this much.

I can catch it and write about it for a little bit more.

Eventually.

So that's what I want to be.

He writes about sharks.

Man, if it's anything in the water, that dude's all over the place.

Sharks, giant squids.

He knows he's not to do comedy essays.

That's his grandfather's stuff.

So I think the first writer that came to mind, honestly, was Ford Prefect, who is a roving reporter for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

His beat is so much more about party life than mine would be, but I like the idea of going around different planets and writing about it.

And who else is a traveling writer that has adventures?

That's right, Jessica Fletcher.

So, I think aside from the fact that you are constantly surrounded by death,

and wherever you go, murder follows.

I think you'd want to be Jessica Fletcher, right?

Because she has so many adventures.

She's a successful writer.

People respect her.

And she gets to live

the work, you know, in a way that most writers don't.

She's got that quiet sass.

There's like a twinkle in the eye.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

quiet sass.

You know me.

The second and final letter is from.

Hey, Elliot's just saying what Elliot is thinking.

This is from Linnea, last name withheld.

Quigley?

Probably.

Who writes, hi, Floppies.

I don't actually understand a lot of your references and jokes as I myself am not Linea Quigley.

As I myself, I bet she would understand.

Yeah,

yeah, probably very much so.

Yeah.

As I myself am not that into movies that much, but I stick around for your immaculate vibes along with your wonderful guests.

So, as a person who has seen fewer movies than the average American, I was wondering, are there any movies that you have seen that you consider unremarkable, average, or even below average, but have somehow ingrained themselves into your mind for years to come?

My movie is Hannah 2011.

It's a decent movie.

I wouldn't say spectacular, but good.

It holds no particular sentimental value, but for whatever reason, I've re-watched it several times, and if pressed to name my, quote, favorite movie, I would say Hannah.

Not for any grand reason, but because it has stuck with me for all these years for reasons I can't explain.

Eric Banna's in that, right?

Yes, I think he is.

Did you think of Eric Hannah?

He probably got confused.

Yeah, whenever her name was.

Yeah, they say Hannah and he go, no, it's Banna.

I've watched movies that I considered better than Hannah, movies I enjoyed more than Hannah, but the fact that Hannah is still in my mind over 10 years later cements it into favorite status.

I've since realized that I don't gauge favorites in media base based on if I liked it a lot in the moment or even if it was well executed, but how it sticks with me, regardless of quality.

Then my heart says it's made for me.

So do you have a movie like that?

And by what scale do you gauge what your favorites are?

So

as someone who has watched too many movies and was also unsupervised a lot as a child, like a lot of the movies, there are a lot of unremarkable movies that stuck in my brain simply because for whatever reason they were on television a lot.

Like, I think I saw Brewster's Millions like 20 times, despite each time being like, I'm sure this will get funny at some point.

And it never, never happened.

That was the toy for me.

That was the movie that was always on TV.

And every time I'm like, I don't know why I'm watching this.

Problematic choice.

Doesn't work.

And then there are movies like...

I was, you know, I couldn't sleep recently.

You know, you may have noticed there's a lot of stress in the world.

I was like, oh, you know what's on Amazon Prime, a movie movie that I watched a lot as a kid just because it was on, is feds.

I watched feds just because it was sort of like a pleasant movie with not that much conflict about, you know, two ladies who are friends who are in the FBI training program.

It's Mary Gross and Rebecca DeMornay.

Mary Gross, right.

I remember from Troop Beverly Hills.

I remember we taped that off one of those like Showtime preview weekends.

And so I watch that if you're making the most out of your dollar.

I like it.

It's pleasant.

But I mean, in terms of like favorite movies, I, you know, I still, I think, would put, you know, my perception of quality higher in my like, oh, what's my favorite?

But, but it's kind of a mix, like, because I do think that my favorite movies aren't necessarily like the ones that I'm like, oh, this is like the best movie.

But, you know, like, I would go to something like, I don't know whether it's still my favorite, but I remember watching Heathers over and over and over again when I was like a teen.

And that was kind of it for me at the time.

I don't know what it would be now, but

that's one that comes up.

You also watch just one of the guys a lot as a teen, but just the one part.

Just the ending.

You're like, I've seen everything up till now.

I don't need to worry about that.

Yeah, I get the gist.

There's like an old guy who's apparently a teenager.

An old guy who's a teenager.

Yeah, I would say, I mean, again, like, I'm kind of in the same boat, and it's hard for me to be like, it's hard for me to be like, this is a, I would just say the movie that I watch the most uh that if I'm like that I think about the most and will it will watch in its entirety if I have the opportunity is the guest uh the Adam Wingard Simon Barrett movie with Dan Stevens there's just everything about it is is like calibrated exactly for my brain it's not so exciting that I get too worked up but it's not too sleepy that I can't uh it won't keep me enthralled

I find I you know I would say that we've talked talked about this movie before, so it's not a surprise, I guess, or it's not a new thing, but like Teen Wolf probably falls into that category for me of like, this is not a good movie.

Like this is a bad movie, but I've watched it so many times.

We watched it so often when I was a kid that it's just stuck in my head.

But also my head just things stick in that are dumb.

I saw the movie Getting Even with Dad with Macaulay Culkin at 10 Danson once in the theaters, and yet I remember big chunks of it for no reason.

I don't know why.

Does he ever get even with Dad?

He does get even with Dad eventually.

Oh my gosh.

But I think Teen Wolf is the one where it's like, oh, well, this is a part of me, even though it's, it's objectively not good.

It's objectively not a good movie.

It's stupid.

I don't like it.

When it comes to favorite movies, I got to, you know, just say, what movie do you enjoy the most?

You know, what movie brings you the most pleasure when you watch it?

And that's how I decide what my favorite is.

And I got my top five favorites, which, you know, for listeners know.

A high fidelity moment here.

Number one, it's got to be taking a Pelham 123, the original.

Number two, Shadow of a Doubt.

Number three, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.

And then number four and five, it's probably Singing in the Rain and Wizard of of Oz, which, again, like, these are not ones where I'm like, oh, these are my guilty pleasures.

These are obviously, like, these are really good movies.

Those last two are great movies.

I really thought he was going to say Fast Five was going to be on there.

But I can't help it if my taste runs towards beauty, you know, towards magnificence.

Sure.

Yeah, I'm saying you're genius.

Oh, yeah.

But it's purely because, but it's purely because, like, if I'm thinking about what movie when I'm watching it, do I get literally the most visceral pleasure out of, like, it's those movies.

And that's probably Wizard of Oz.

Like there's, I think there's probably no movie that I find as magical as a Wizard of Oz.

So like maybe that's my favorite, but, you know, but I don't know.

It seems like it's too, too common a movie to mention.

So maybe that's why Pelham gets the top spot.

I'll just say something that has popped into my brain a few times as we've been talking about this.

If we're talking about a movie that we know, we acknowledge is not super good, not better than

all the other movies out there, has great vibes, is fun to watch, and you kind of want to watch it all the time.

You feel at home when you're watching it i know this is true for me and i i i know you guys appreciate this one as well but uh don't tell her it's me is like

is that is that movie like we we saw that in the theater recently have you ever seen it in the theater was that a ridiculous sublime yeah it was a ridiculous sublime and like what it wasn't a riff show we were just watching it straight with a like an engaged audience and it was so fucking awesome that sounds great i did host a riff show of it one time with a on the the screen, but I've mostly watched it just on the uh on TV.

It's one of those things where I'm like, is this Stockholm Syndrome or like have we been wrong?

Because like this audience, like this audience is like mostly people who had never seen it before, and they were going nuts for it.

Yeah, yeah, it honestly like played really well in a legitimate, sincere way.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, people were like, I was dumb.

I went nuts for it the first time I saw it.

I was like in college.

So like, I think, I, yeah.

I think it is that

it is all that.

It's guaranteed entertainment, right?

Is that what the box says?

It is perfect for Ridiculous Sublime, where the idea is like it is not one or the other.

You can't separate the fact that it is dumb from the fact that there is stuff that works in it for real.

Like any movie featuring Eric Roberts.

Let's talk about our recommendations, movies that maybe would be a better way to spend a little time than Unfrosted.

And

speaking of Ridiculous Sublime, that's a nighthawk series i went to another series at the nighthawk a regular series that they do called the deuce where they uh show movies that uh showed in 42nd street theaters um sort of during the heyday of like all of the the theater the movie theaters dan are you the programmer at nighthawk uh no that's our friend christina we had her on the show yeah yeah you might remember

seems like seems like there's a lot of dan-centric material going on at night although this is this is programmed by the two guys who are on the deuce i do not know their names i apologize but uh they're very entertaining danny Deuce and Donny Deuce.

The Deuce Broys.

We saw The In-Laws from 1979

starring Alan Arkin and Peter Falk.

And I walked out of it and I was texting Elliot about how, like, you know, when we were growing up, there was a lot of talk about like, oh, you know, if you want to study a comedy screenplay, study Tootsie.

And Tootsie's never been my movie.

Like, I don't think it's a bad movie.

No, you're not in it.

You didn't write it?

You didn't direct it?

No, I didn't.

Unfortunately, I don't get any residuals.

It looks mad right now.

It's like, what movies is Dan walking around claiming are his movie?

I'm saying I don't go for that one so much, but I watched the in-laws and like after the first couple of scenes, I'm like, fuck, Tootsie, this is the movie that should be, you know, looked at for like screenplay because like immediately, immediately, like within the first couple of scenes, you're like, what's going on?

I'm intrigued by what's going on.

You're introduced to Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, and you know what these guys' deals are.

like you you know you know how funny it's going to be when they get together uh and it's weird because it's like these two guys both kind of with deadpan energy but peter falk is playing a guy that you don't know whether he's a lunatic or not but he's very chill about it the whole time and alan arkin is a guy that's basically columbo right yeah yeah he's basically he's playing peter falk yeah and alan arkin is this guy who is uh super tightly wound freaking out internally the whole time but is like it's all internal he's like completely deadpan.

And watching them go through adventures together is so funny.

You know, everyone was laughing like through the entire film.

It is a movie from the late 70s.

There's a little bit of unfortunate sort of like cultural stuff in there, but if you can get past that, I don't think there's a lot of like.

ire or like malice in it it's just you know not not some whoopsies yeah uh but it's very it's very funny and those two guys are like just naturally charismatic just sitting and and breathing.

So I recommend that.

I love the thought of Dan bursting out the double doors of the theater and going, fuck Tootsie, immediately walking out of it.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a reporter jotting this down for that one.

Dan to Tootsie, drop dead.

I am going to recommend a movie that I had been wanting to rewatch for a while, and I finally got around to it.

It's 2000's Sexy Beast, directed by written and directed by Jonathan Glazer.

Oh, that's a good movie.

I hadn't seen it since it first came out and

what I was, what, 20 years old at that point.

And I remember watching and being kind of put off by how artsy it is and how like dreamlike at points.

You want it to be more fartsy.

Well, I think I was expecting it to be more of a straightforward crime movie.

And I obviously there's the like the big centerpiece flashy performance by Ben Kingsley, which got him a best supporting actor win, right?

But watching it again, like it's so like Ray Winstone is so great and I want every piece, every article of clothing he wears.

And it's just such like, I don't know, like I identify so much more with this guy who's like trying to retire and keep like His old friends are like, no, like, keep doing this shit.

Like, I don't know.

I think it's great.

It's, uh, it was a really, it was a really fun rewatch.

And it's, it's always fun to rewatch a movie that you hadn't seen in so long and you kind of thought it was one thing.

And watching it as an adult, it feels so much different.

Kingsley was nominated, but

he lost, and you'll be happy about this, Stuart, to Ian McCallen for the Fellowship of the Ring.

Well, yeah, it's hard to beat the goat.

Speaking of which, there's a goat character in that movie.

I know there's a goat character in Wicked.

Sexy Beast has the, I think, the best portrayal of it being really hot at the very

beginning of the movie.

And you're still happy about how hot it is.

I'm not that guy.

I'm like, oh, I don't want to be there, but I appreciate how much he's into it.

Yeah, enjoying being cooked.

Well, and the way that like Ray Winstone's voice sounds like if you had to make like a Weber Grill have a voice.

Which one do you want to go?

Yeah, Elliot, you start talking.

I'll go.

Alex's going to do next.

Yeah.

So I watched a documentary

that actually I remember had come out in the theaters when I was in college, and I don't know why I didn't go see it.

And I finally saw it.

And that documentary is called Dark Days.

And it's directed by Mark Singer.

And it is about the people who were living in an abandoned underground Amtrak tunnel in New York in the 1990s.

And it's one of these documentaries where there's no narration.

It's just people talking to the camera and footage of people going about their lives in this very kind of like both bizarre but also strangely normal subculture because they're living in a tunnel and they have to make their own kind of makeshift homes and things like that and hustle for survival.

But at the same time, they're just people and they have, you know, regular moments of life and they're dealing with their mistakes that they've made in the past and what brought them to this place.

And

I really liked it a lot.

The people in it are really engaging and the way it's put together felt like it was like not a,

it's not trying to force what's going on into a narrative necessarily there is kind of a an end point at the end but uh there's uh before that it is not trying to uh it's not reality tving the thing where it's like and now this person's gonna deal with this person in this way um there are two stories in it that two of the people in tell that are heartbreaking that are just so so incredibly horrifying and so um I wouldn't watch it if you're someone who is easily upset necessarily by people in turmoil, but I thought it was really good.

And

is this the movie about people living underground in New York City?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

And there's one scene in it, but there is, having said that, there's one scene in it between two guys, one who is cooking a meal and the other one who is finds it disgusting that the guy just leaves his pots and pans all over the ground where the rats are running around.

That is very funny to me.

And it has some very funny lines in it.

And so there's funny moments in it.

There's some really

heartbreaking moments in it.

But overall, I just thought it was

really good.

So it's called Dark Days.

And I think it's available on be America's favorite streaming service.

Alex?

I'm going to

pick a random recent watch from my movie night

where we watch a lot of like straight-to-video 90s, early 2000s stuff.

This was a TV movie from the 90s that I think was like

made for German television is something that somebody said, but I don't know if that's true or not.

But this is a David Hasselhoff movie from 1996 called Gridlock,

where he plays a rogue helicopter pilot for the New York Police Department.

And he's like, keeps getting in trouble.

And

it's a knockoff of Die Hard in the sense that literally like every beat of the movie is trying to replicate something that happened in Die Hard.

There's literally like a scene where he...

is is trying to get back in the building by using the fire hose

and like kicking the glass oh yeah there's all those scenes where john mcclain's flying a helicopter well that's that's the really funny thing about it is he's a helicopter pilot who gets keeps getting in trouble because he doesn't listen to his his boss uh his boss the whatever you call the commissioner or whatever and uh and what what that means for a helicopter pilot because helicopters can't do a lot of like rogue shit you know like they're really doing so what it means is he keeps they would crash he keeps landing it getting out and then like breaking into a hostage situation to like solve the like so you're saying the helicopter pilot aspect of it is not really that germane to what's going on.

Well, and then when they punish him for stopping a hostage scenario,

he just they just stick him back in the helicopter and they go, All right, watch traffic.

And I'm like, What was he doing?

What was he supposed to do

before?

That's that's way worse.

There was a helicopter pilot once that uh who didn't listen to orders and he didn't shoot on some people they wanted to, and they put him in the running man game.

So, like, it could be really, it could be really bad for a helicopter pilot who disobeys orders.

You might end up on national TV running for your life, you know, against Buzzaw.

But it's a really funny little like experiment in recreating diehard at a very low budget to where there are like four or five action sequences that happen on this same ledge on the same building.

Like they keep going back to this same ledge.

It's a really fun

character, basically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The ledge is

the third character after Kathy Ireland.

Kathy Ireland is his girlfriend in it.

It's very 1996 is what you're saying.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Hey, well, that's it.

That's the last thing that we do on the show.

Other than

Alex is here, so I can thank him in person.

Alex, thank you for producing the show.

You guys are welcome.

Thanks.

And also, thank you for being here because I don't have to send you notes about what happened in the show at all.

You know what?

You were here.

You know every inch of it.

Do you have anything you want to plug, Alex?

Yeah, submit lately.

Yeah, yeah.

I'll plug some stuff.

I have...

Let me plug three things real fast.

One is a podcast I do called the Big Howl and Possum Podcast.

It's an absurd little funny comedy podcast that I do with a character that is a huge talking possum.

And it's a very absurd show.

It's a short podcast.

It's like 30 minutes long.

And I think it's very, very funny.

And I think listeners to this show will enjoy it.

So check out the Big Howl and Possum podcast.

I have a Twitch stream.

I stream three times a week.

We watch like.

a lot of different kinds of stuff on there, game shows, TV movies, stuff like that.

And that is twitch.tv slash big howl dotty and then uh i've been a guest on a couple of those it's fun yeah yeah yeah it's uh it's a good time uh so check that out uh come come watch me over there i stream on monday nights wednesday nights and friday afternoons uh and then my music howl dotty uh i i uh i write and produce songs uh that are oftentimes funny but not always purely comedy songs uh and you can uh find those anywhere you listen to music anywhere anywhere that you listen to music.

Like an old gramophone.

Yeah, you're fucking Victrola.

Alex is a

church.

Wonderful musician, which has also been very helpful to us, too, because we can be like, Alex, can you make us music for a thing?

And he said, yes, we can.

I can.

Yeah, I just wrote a bunch of tunes for the new Flop Tails adventure.

That's available.

Flop Tails, yeah.

Available on the bonus feed.

But

we got a heart out today, so let's just say thank you to Maximum Fun.

Go over to maximumfun.org, check out the other great podcasts on our network, and catch us next time for the Flophouse.

I've been Dan McCoy, and I'm Stuart Wellington, I'm Elliot Kalen, and we've been joined by Alex Smith, aka Howell Dotty.

Bye.

I was expecting Elliot to talk a bunch when he knew we had a hard time.

That would have been like me.

All right, let's get into that.

Yeah, Elliot's, I got tickled his bunny bone.

I got him.

I got him, yeah.

So my funny bone's like, my bunny bone's crying, yeah.

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