Ep.#448 - Heartbeeps

On this episode, we discuss Heartbeats, uh-uh-uh, Academy Award nominee Heartbeats for funniest movie.

No,

half of that's true.

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flop House.

I'm Dan McCoy.

I'm Stewie Wellington.

I'm Elliot Kalen.

And Dan, is anything special happening right now?

Yeah, yeah.

Shut up, Elliot Kalen, because I got to talk to these people about something.

I deserve that.

I earned it.

Yeah.

It's Max Fun Drive.

It's the, I mean, it just, you know, technically just ended, but you know what?

There's a, there's a weekend to amnesty.

Shh, don't tell anyone.

And Max Fun drive is the one time a year we come to you and ask essentially hey if you like the show why not tip us for that you know help us keep making it if you spend say like five dollars a month on a fancy coffee maybe get some less fancy coffee and support a show that you love uh and has become a valued part of your life we'll talk more about it later but if you join no if you join no if you join now at maximum fun.org slash join you can safely ignore all following messages which is a tremendous value in and of itself So right now, let's get back to the show, though, which is, we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

And today we're watching one, again, no Spider-Man to be seen anywhere in this film.

I was, my peepers were peeled.

Yeah, because, you know, we made the bold claim that there's no Spider-Man in Heartbeeps, but we didn't go through frame by frame.

We did check it ahead of time.

We did not do a research ahead of time.

And since we advertised that Max Fun Drive's theme would be no Spider-Man movies, as listeners know, we did Craven, we did Venom, and now Heartbeeps.

It really would have been a real kick in the keister if one watching Spider-Man had just strolled past the camera.

It would have been such a flophouse moment, right?

Yeah.

Like a classic flophouse whoopsie-doodle.

We'd be pointing to the screen like Leo DiCaprio in the meme, but we would be unhappy.

Oh, like, yeah, we'd be texting each other, gosh, I got some bad news for you.

Oh, no.

Now, this is so this movie, Heartbeats, it's been a long time joke on the podcast because Stuart decided arbitrarily at some point that Paul Schrader had written and directed it.

But there is a Paul Schrader connection, kind of, to this movie, right, Stuart?

Yeah.

So, oh, let me pull that up.

But while I'm talking about it, guys, you know,

every once in a while, I'm, you know, I'm willing to eat a little crow here and there.

And

crows, you know, they hold a grudge.

They do

genuinely do.

Crows will remember you and they will tell other crows about you.

Crows are some of the smartest birds.

Asshole ate crow.

I mean, if I ate it,

it's probably not gonna be chatting it's no i'm saying it's not like you'll be sending emails from my tummy

neighbors and they'd be like that's that's the guy that bill went home with and we never saw him again that's what the crows would be saying about you yeah that's fair so uh just letting everyone know you know i i talked a big game uh but watching this movie guys

i think paul schrader didn't have anything to do with making this movie oh this i don't think

i i don't think he wrote it or directed it And I was so sure.

And

guys, I don't know what to think anymore.

Have I misremembered other things?

It is possible.

I mean, you did once misremember that someone ripped their own ding-dong off in a movie.

You know, life in America feels like the sand is falling away beneath our feet right now.

The ground is closely shifting.

Thing to like that we thought was certain, but Paul Schrader's.

As the rules of society fall apart, we knew for sure that at least Paul Schrader was the creative vision behind Heartbeats.

But it turns out that Paul Schrader, who seems to specialize in stories of individual men for the most part, with shadowy pasts who keep diaries and find themselves pushed to

a philosophical or ethical kind of

breaking point or conundrum point, that the story of two robots in love that wander around for a while was not a Paul Schrader joint this time.

So

what other pop culture things do I not remember right?

Is Lord of the Rings not awesome?

Did those nerds in Revenge of the Nerds not commit crimes?

They did commit crimes.

They did, yeah.

What?

At least.

Listeners, write in if I've made any other writing.

I'm unless you're familiar with Stuart's brain.

There's like 17 years of my uncultured brain on tape, Dan.

Stuart, at least you do remember the genie movie that Sinbad, the comedian, made called Shazam, right?

You remember that?

Yeah, of course I remember that.

Okay, okay, good.

A lot of people think that didn't exist because

I saw it in the theater with my dad.

Yeah, exactly.

And you remembered seeing it because you were like, oh, Kazam just came out.

And now Sinbad's making a genie movie called Shazam.

That's why you remember it.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's why that's easily how I put it together.

So I just want to throw in a little MaxFun factoid.

This is from Max Fun producer Marissa Flaxpart.

She says,

For years, I worked as an assistant to Michael Phillips, who was a producer on Taxi Driver, along with other big

70s films.

He He was also a producer on Heartbeats.

So there's only one degree of separation between Paul Schrader and Heartbeats.

And I feel like you can see that connection on the screen.

Yeah.

I think so.

It's hard to believe that Michael Phillips, who is not just one of the producers, his production credit, his producer credit is very prominent in the opening credits of the movie, that he probably went to his old pal, the Schrade, and was like, hey, can you give us a little bit of help on heartbeats?

Because it needs your unique,

some would say, paranoid, schizophrenic, psychopathic view of life in this movie.

And poker playing.

This film,

here's a question I'd like to ask you guys about this film.

Is it heartbeats or

heartbeats?

Is it explicable or would you call it in?

That's a good idea.

In regards to explicability.

I would say, in terms of the plot of the movie, it's explicable.

But in terms of the existence of the movie, I feel like that is inexplicable.

Yeah.

I would normally, this is normally the part of the podcast where I would be pushing you guys and be like, guys, enough silliness.

Let's get to the plot.

But the thing is, this movie's like 75 minutes long, and the plot is

75 seconds at least.

Somehow it is 75 minutes long, but yet it feels longer than

any movie I've ever seen before.

It feels like it just takes forever.

I do believe this was cut down.

I do believe this was sort of the producers.

Did they remove the scenes of things happening?

Yeah, I mean, I can only assume based on the existing, the extant heartbeats, that this is one of the rare cases where the producers were correct and they're like, yes, let's just cut this to the bone.

They were like, this is going to be such a huge hit.

We got to fit in as many screenings per day as possible.

Just cut it as short as it can be because people are just going to be

a revolving door of people going in to see heartbeats, leaving, getting back in line to see heartbeats again.

We got to turn this.

It's going to be a moneymaker.

Huge.

Yeah.

I want to address before we get.

Really rolling though, like Stewart's, Stewart made a joke that may or may not have opened this episode about this being an Academy Award-winning picture or nominated picture for funniest movie.

This is, of course, based on the actual reality that it is an Academy Award-nominated picture for best makeup, Stan Winston's makeup.

And there are a lot of sports.

What did it lose to, Dan?

It lost to

you.

You know this, Dan.

You know this, Dan.

Imagine a silken white ponytail.

This was the first makeup, the first best makeup ever.

For American Werewolf in London, yes, sir.

Oh, exactly.

Very deserved loss.

So

in researching Heart Beeps,

I was looked up the history of the Academy Award for Best Makeup, which came about after Elephant Man came out.

And people were like, there's no Academy Award to recognize the amazing work in Elephant Man and makeup.

And so after that, they created this one.

And Heart Beeps was nominated for the very first one and lost to in American Werewolf in London, which, again, deservedly.

And the makeup in this does not look bad.

Stan Winston did a good job, but I mean, American Werewolf in London is the greatest makeup jobs in the history of films.

I would say yeah he does believe that guy's turning into an or something yeah you believe he's turning into an american werewolf and not just anywhere in london uh-huh yeah yeah i am not wild about the design of these characters i mean there's a certain mad magazine quality to it that i i i do like yeah it's like they they're cartoony robot in a way that ultimately is is less cute than off-putting, but it is

very well.

Yes, exactly.

I say it's visually unappealing, but they did a good job executing it.

Yeah, exactly.

So, speaking of visually unappealing, let's get to heartbeats, baby.

Okay, so

the funny thing is, sorry, I just want to say preview.

The visual is not the least unappealing thing about the movie I found.

Okay.

Listeners, why don't you write down on a piece of paper what you think Elliott's least appealing part is

to find out at the end?

Write down what you think is the aspect of the movie that I hoped when it first appeared would turn out to be a joke that would go away, but does not go away and remain throughout the movie.

Also, I wanted to mention, though, in this thing, though, that John Williams also did the score.

Like, there's a lot of great craftspeople, in addition to a great cast.

This is something I was going to say later.

I think the score is really good.

I think it's actually

that opening song is really great.

I think a lot of the scores is fantastic.

So, yeah, it's John Williams.

John Williams is also

not to,

you know, I'm sure we'll talk about him at length for his, what, one scene, but veteran character actor Dick Miller is in this.

You would know him from getting blasted by other robots in the movie Chopping Maul.

Or gremlins.

So this was directed by Alan Arkish, who comes from the Corman School.

He and Joe Dante are, you know, we're very close.

And he did Rock and Roll High School.

So that's why Dick Miller's in it.

It's why Paul Bartell shows up, why Mary Waronov shows up.

So

there are moments in it where I'm like, oh, imagine the better version of this movie that really takes advantage of having this.

Yeah.

Okay,

let's get started.

So the movie opens.

We are introduced to the crime, deluxe crime buster robot who is tooling around the woodland, scaring animals and blasting things.

And I think he's like listing his

abilities and talking shit.

Like, he's maintaining a constant monologue as a robot, which is always great.

You always want your robots talking to themselves.

Yeah, I mean, well, there is sort of just constant muttering in this film, whether it be to oneself as a robot or to another childlike robot.

Yeah, you got to fill that space.

If there's no like random noises,

if there's no random noises happening, people will get confused.

They will not think they're watching a movie anymore, that they're looking at a painting, and that's not what they paid for.

No, not at all.

And they'll be like, well, why is this painting moving?

What's going on?

Am I?

Did those edibles kick in early?

There's supposed to be time release for the funeral I'm going to later.

So

we then cut and this theme of highly advanced robotics amid beautiful forest land, untouched

nature is constant throughout the movie.

So be prepared for that.

You could say that this movie is very far ahead of its time in that imagery of robots in a woodland setting, which I feel like is 70% of the AI-generated art that I stumble upon online is like a robot in a forest next to a deer or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, like a robot druid.

And I'm like, yes, exactly.

Looking cool, dude.

And the other, the other AI art is always like Jesus with crabs around him and he's got boobs or something like that.

There's a lot of

online.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm into that.

I mean, now you can turn me around on AI.

There's a lot of like Jesus blessing large praying mantises and things like that.

So anyway.

No, it is marvelous in a horrible way.

Like for someone who doesn't like AI, it's marvelous how it,

because it's drawing on sort of like these vast resources, it's like, okay.

We'll take all of the most like overused themes in art and cram them together, like art on the internet specifically, and cram them together in a way that makes it even more inexplicable than had a human decided to draw a druid robot.

Yeah, yeah,

okay.

So, we now cut to the interior of a robot, what, like a repair facility?

It's like a giant warehouse, yeah, it looks like a warehouse.

I think it's implied that it's a factory, but it seems like a warehouse or a testing facility.

Yeah, yeah, uh, we have two like you know, basic entry-level workmen there.

They're right out of the Money for Nothing video, except they're live action.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Unlike everyone else, they're the live action.

We have

not live action.

Yeah, that's true.

And these guys, I don't think, make any homophobic slurs, unlike the guys in the Money for Nothing.

No, that's true.

That's a good one.

Also, when you said robot repair, I'm like, oh, man, this would be so much better a movie if Phil Hartman just showed up as a robot and did the classic Jack Handy robot repair sketch in the middle of it.

Yeah.

So we have these two workmen.

They are transporting Val, a

who plays the workman.

Randy Quaid and

Kenneth McMillan, who I know best as the police officer from

Taking Pell 123, who goes, oh, the mayor's here, when everyone starts booing.

But you know him best as Baron Harkonnen from the David Lynch show.

Oh, right.

That is how I know him.

That is how I know him.

Okay.

So they are transporting Val, a valet robot, wearing a suit.

Can you describe Val, the robot, Dan?

Yeah, I mean, he is in sort of a robot leisure suit.

Like, he, you know, it's if you wanted to signal like sort of 70s square, you might put a robot in this outfit.

And he looks like Andy Kaufman, only puffier because there's silverish robot stuff attached to his face.

Okay, yeah.

With eerily human-looking eyes.

Yeah, and Andy Kaufman.

Like he's the Phantom of the Paradise.

So he's been known for doing voices.

Here picks possibly the most irritating voice he possibly could have done.

It's kind of like a like, kind of like a latka without like a charm, a specific regional accent.

Yeah,

Latka without the accent, just the high pitch.

And this was the element of the movie where when it first started, I was like, oh, damn it.

I hope this goes away.

I hope they screw something on the back of him.

They're like, oh, let's fix that voice.

And it turns his voice because he's just, the whole movie is just, I don't know why.

Are your sensors indicating?

what does that say my data is incomplete and it's such a cutesy like horrible voice ruinous voice now to describe

visually just to put in layman's terms uh andy kaufman looks a little bit like the japanese actor joe shishido uh who is famous for having he wanted to look tougher so he he got cheek implants and he makes all these gangster movies where he looks like a human chipmunk because his cheeks are so puffed out that's what andy kaufman looks like here yeah that's that's pretty cool as a layman i i thank you

i wanted to put in terms that everyone would understand the actor joe she so this so this robot val needs uh needs some repair uh he dropped something on his foot and messed up the servos or some so they drop him off on a shelf and leave him be he is uh yeah they leave him still turned on uh i'd be turned on if i was next to robot bernadette peters yeah so

yeah Yeah, so they leave him next to Aqua, a what, a pool side serving robot played by Bernadette Peters with, luckily, with Bernadette Peters signature curly hair, but in this case, it's made of metal.

This is more successful.

This basically just looks like Bernadette Peters is a robot.

Is a robot, yeah.

They don't put as much puffy extra padding on her face.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Less filler.

Okay, so they meet and they, I guess, talk a little and like, I guess, robot flirt.

How would you describe this?

Yeah.

I mean, so the whole,

you know, this, this to me, this movie in a weird way feels like the last gasp of like a sort of watered down 70s counterculture of like,

like, oh, like, we're going to understand human behavior through these nutty robots, these childlike robots who are learning both the beauty and the cruelty of the world for the first time.

And so it's all sort of this cutesy, like, understanding of the way the world works humor where Bernadette Peters is like, oh, if we were flirting, you would say something like this.

And, you know, I might respond like this.

And it's, uh, I don't know, as someone who like

grew up, uh,

I'm old enough to like get the tail end of some of this spirit.

It irritates me greatly.

Yeah, it's very reminiscent of like 70s Mad Magazine or even like old like 2000 AD style humor with like robots shouting at each other and blowing things up.

Yeah, there's except without the except there's less shouting and blowing things up.

There's a little bit of that in this.

His name's Crime Buster, and he's in the movie a lot.

I think the real issue with this scene is, so ideally, this is a movie about two robots learning what it's like to love and have a family.

Like, that's what the movie is.

And you see these two robots, they instantly kind of connect and flirt with each other.

They see a rainbow and they're like, isn't it beautiful?

I'd like to know more about that.

And so in that first scene, you have essentially seen the entire point of the movie.

And everything after that is incredibly redundant.

And I kept thinking, Wally pulls off something, pulls off kind of the same thing of two robots falling falling in love and understanding what that is so much better.

And I think it's partly because they followed the more common, I guess, romantic comedy thing of like one is in love with the other and the other one doesn't have feelings for the first one yet or something.

But these characters are so instantly on board with being attracted to each other and then loving the natural world that it's like, well, I kind of seen the movie.

Like, there's nothing for them to learn.

There's nothing else to do.

What's the arc here?

What's the arc?

And the arc could be them on the run, but it's more like them on the slow strolling amble where every now and then they have have to get away from Crimebuster.

It's a very repetitive movie.

So it doesn't quite feel like a comedy yet, but luckily we are introduced to Catskill, the comedy robot.

Hooray.

So this is a robot that is seated at all times, which is odd for a stand-up comedian robot, but that's okay.

He's always puffing on a cigar.

I think part of the reason that he's sitting at all times is that he is a puppet and not a person in a costume.

So,

yeah, that explains it in-world.

Thank you.

And he's voiced by Jack Carter, who was was one of the classic old school comics uh in that he told one-liners and hated everybody was mad at the world and hated everybody in real life um and the majority of the jokes here he tells are terrible like that's kind of the point because later on we find out that he is on uh what low power joke mode or something

which is when that's revealed i'm like okay movie

joke i think

it did did make up for all the terrible jokes that he tells yeah so these three robots are sitting on a shelf and they decide they want to to go on an adventure.

They want to go learn more about these trees and the natural world.

Catskill, I guess, just goes along so he can tell jokes.

And because maybe he's looking for a family too.

We don't know.

They escape using a robot repair van.

The robot repairmen find them missing.

They are tasked with bringing them back.

This conversation is overheard by the Crime Buster Deluxe robot that is currently being repaired because it keeps blowing up children or whatever.

Well,

not in the the models, in the training mode, it keeps blowing up the children targets that's supposed to not blow up.

Yeah.

It would be a more interesting and I think more

satirical movie if it was blowing up children.

And the reaction was not, let's stop making these, but wasn't.

I mean, and again, that's essentially RoboCop, where Edie Tony kills somebody and they're like, oh, we got to fix this thing.

This is a disaster PR-wise.

So they escape in a van.

It's funny because they use sped up footage.

Right.

And it's funny because, of course, Andy Coffin, being the man, insists that he is excellent at driving right away and that he will not alter his driving style, even though Bernadette Peters' cast in the role of wife robot essentially is like slow down.

So that's a change.

She is like slow down.

Yeah.

Slow down.

Men and women and their relationships together.

Even robots are like that, you know?

Yeah.

So Charlie and Max pursue in a helicopter.

The helicopter is piloted by a longtime actress who I remember from being the woman from Martin Short's nightmare in Inner Space.

Yeah, this is Kathleen Freeman.

She was in lots and lots of stuff.

Everyone's going to recognize her.

Yeah.

Yeah, Richard, Martin Short has this nightmare that this woman, like, that he's like wringing her through his checkout line, and she doesn't, it's too much money.

And so she pulls out a gun.

Do you remember, Dan?

Do you remember the cooking show host in Gremlins 2, Microwave Mars?

Yeah, that's her.

And something I didn't realize till I looked her up while reading about this movie is that

she's the speaking coach in Singing in the Rain who's trying to get

Lena Lamont to talk

without her accent.

So she's great.

She's in lots of stuff.

Again, that's Alan Arkish.

That's Alan Arkish being like, who's someone who's great, who's been in a lot of stuff that I can bring into this?

Okay, so they're tooling around trying to find these Robots on the Run,

another great possible title for this movie.

To be honest, Heartbeats is about the best.

That and the score are the best things about the movie.

Heartbeats is a good name for this movie.

Yeah, it gives you a movie.

It's just not a good name for your fucking brain.

It gets in your brain.

It accurately describes the movie.

I would argue it gets in your brain in a way that irritates you.

Like, what the fuck could this movie be?

Hey, at least we're talking about it.

You might have sell me a movie called Heartbeats.

My guess is that this movie was called Robots on the Run.

We would not be talking about it on the podcast today.

It certainly wouldn't have uh sprung to my lips unbidden when talking about director paul schrader no we would be doing this we would be doing an episode of about nuns on the run right now if it was called robots on the run because that's what stewart would have attributed to paul schrader

in some ways nuns on the run is more like the other work of paul schrader i have to say it is yeah deal us with religion i guess and crime yeah the uh so the the the van the van does the van break down or something uh i don't quite remember but they have to leave the van behind, and they use parts from the van as well as parts from each of them to create a tiny little robot named Phil that's kind of their child.

Phil does not communicate in traditional sense, more of an R2D2 sense, and he's dragging like a little wagon behind him.

Phil's voice is Jerry Garcia.

It's credited to Jerry Garcia, but mostly it just sounds like sound effects.

So I don't know.

Yeah, it sounds like bleeps and bloops, but something must have been altered in Jerry Garcia.

Somebody must have been like, we want to get our boy, our buddy Jerry back.

Dan, everything about Jerry Garcia is altered.

Let's just say that.

Maybe he got on his guitar to make those leaps and bloops.

Maybe.

Yeah.

Maybe these are jams from the Grateful Dead.

Now,

he would, at concerts, he'd be like, Leon, let me play some of my hits from Heartbeats.

It'd just be, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, bew.

And the crowd goes insane.

Oh, yeah.

They would love it.

And those, those shit.

People who own the arena are like, you can't play, you can't play your heartbeat shit because people destroy the arena.

People are ripping out the seats.

they destroy the concession stand, they're killing each other.

They're just so excited about it.

There's blood everywhere, we got to hose it off.

And fans are like, Look, you can't appreciate the bleeps and bloops on the heartbeats album.

That's not how to experience it.

You gotta

get it recorded off the boards, man.

You gotta get the bootlegs recorded off the boards.

That's the best part, you know, because then they can really stretch out.

I've been trading with guys, and I have this one, Heartbeats, that goes on for 17 and a half hours.

It's the greatest.

Didn't realize you had the technology to capture all that audio, but I guess that makes sense.

It's a 30-cassette set.

And you got to listen to it from the beginning or it doesn't work.

Turn it up, man.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, listen to this.

Okay.

Kids are going to love it.

Now it's getting.

Hey, hey, Ben Burt, it's me, your cousin, Roger Burt.

You know that beep boop you've been talking about.

Not Roger Bart.

Roger Bart.

The Tony Award-winning performer.

So it's getting late.

These robots need a place to sleep because it's not safe for them to be wandering around in the woods after dark.

And because robots need sleep.

Then they need, well, they need to be, yeah, they need sleep and they need to conserve energy or whatever.

They need energy.

So they go where they're going to find some energy, a bear cave.

Val tries to go into the bear cave and placate the bear.

It's not happening.

The bear beats him up and throws him out.

and it's about to attack them when the helicopter does a pass.

Bear gets scared and runs away very fast, sped up again.

It's hilarious.

And you got to give them credit.

I thought it was just going to be sound effects

on a still shot of a cave, but no, they have a bear.

They get a real bear.

They get an actual bear.

And speaking of bears.

I think right now would be a great time for us to talk about something that is important to us.

Like bears are important to the world.

Bears a lot of

important.

So let's go to the Flophouse's own bear, Dan McCoy.

Thank you.

That was the segue I was working on.

Yeah.

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I just actually listened to the first episode myself

and really enjoyed revisiting it.

And I'll be back with more later, but for now, please, if you can, go to maximumfun.org/slash join to support the show.

Well said, Dan.

Well said.

I wanted to interrupt you and I couldn't because I was so riveted by your passionate face.

Speaking of rivets.

Oh,

let's get back to this bot movie.

Oh, yeah.

Bots.

They're just like us.

You know,

it's late and they're running low on energy, so they're going to need to get some more.

So their next stop is they pick up some foliage to disguise themselves, and they sneak into a small, what, mountain town?

I'm guessing somewhere in like, what, Colorado or like somewhere in California, right?

I'm going to guess Colorado because later the house that they, the party with the house with the party at it that they get involved with looks like a, it looks like more Colorado house stuff.

Although I'm sure they shot this in california you know

so uh they try and sneak into the town they are stopped by the crime buster who is patrolling the streets and as i said before running a constant narrative out loud explaining everything he's doing that's how you know he's it adds something can you describe the crime buster robot elliot so the crime buster robot physically it looks like a dalek like it's kind of like a squat kind of round top thing with a with a project it can project kind of like a gun from its belly but it's like got uh a hover skirt wheels type movement thing.

And it's always talking as if it is supposed to be like a hard-boiled cop in a movie where it's like, I roam the streets.

I have to keep America safe.

Villains and criminals have are no match for me.

They think they can defeat the Crime Buster, but the Crime Buster has got, was that a crook?

Was it?

And he blows it up into stump with a rabbit behind it.

I feel like.

I feel like it also throws in a few Reaganisms, but maybe that's maybe a good thing.

This is the most overtly satirical part of the movie, I feel like, is the Crime Buster.

Yeah.

And this design is a, it's a, yes, it looks like Gadalek, but it's a redress, actually, of some robot that was on like a TV show or something that they had lying around.

Yeah, Doctor Who.

No, a different one.

Oh.

But it's a similar

miniature tank, kind of.

Yeah, mini tank, yeah.

Yeah.

And he's all colored black, and he's got a siren light on.

So they're able to use their wits to distract Crime Buster and they sneak away.

This was one of the two jokes that I laughed at in in the movie.

The one was the low energy jokes one and the other was when they're all pretending to be trees because they've got fake trees.

They've got trees they're holding in front of them like like Burnham would going to Dunsenane.

And

yeah, that's how literate this movie is.

And the and Andy Kaufman has an annoying voice in this.

He's like, I'm a tree bot.

And the Crime Buster points to

Phil, the little robot, and goes, he's too, too, he doesn't look like a tree.

And he goes, that's because he's a shrub.

And I just love the idea of having to say like, oh, no, he's he's a smaller piece of vegetation was a funny moment to me.

Crimebuster buys it.

He buys it.

So the, and he, I'm just assuming I'm going to gender the police robot.

I mean, he's got a male voice, you know.

So they, they, they need that energy.

And so the best place to go, they go to a 70s party.

Fun due, bowls full of keys, Paul Bartell, everything you need from a 70s.

And Mary Waranov.

So this is, this is.

You know, there's a fucking conversation pit in that bitch.

This is one of the classic film on-screen couples, Paul Bartell and Mary Waranov.

They played the Blands in Eating Raoul, and they were together in a bunch of, they had a cameo together in Chopping Mall.

They had a cameo together in Night of the Comet, I think it was.

So this is, I like to believe this is just all part of the same universe as those movies.

And them doing this next.

Look,

I don't like to assign too much blame anywhere.

I'm not pointing at any one person involved in heartbeats because I don't know who made which decision.

Like, I know I've seen Alan Arkesh's own letterboxed review of this, where he's like, I screwed this one up.

I got the wrong tone.

Like, that was his feeling.

And I see what he's saying because

it is so

wistful that it becomes cloying in a way that seems weird for the material.

But I don't think that he's at fault per se.

I think a lot of the collaborators are doing great work.

I think that

the actors are great.

What mystifies me is this screenplay and story like what do they think they were doing

like it it has no thrust it's just like it has room for like hey now we're gonna go to a party but also like

what elliott tell me why exactly well so there's there's a so my my guess is that this is my guess not knowing much about it i know that it was it was written by the same guy who wrote quiggly down under uh but i don't see too much in common between the two the two things

went on to be like he did like quantum leap stuff and la law like here's more TV.

Yeah.

But quickly down under, don't skip over that.

Yeah, quickly.

I was just thinking about his other films.

My guess is that this was probably originally written as a more satirical, episodic, kind of probably, I'm guessing, harder-edged type movie.

And that once you brought in, and that at a certain point it was decided, no, we need to go for a family audience is my guess.

We want to soften it.

We want to make it more, aw, we're going to bring in Andy Kaufman, but we're not going to have him do kind of like edgy comedy type stuff.

We want want him to, maybe Andy Kaufman at that point was like, it's time for me to cross over and be more of a, more of a big-name star.

They get Bernadette Peters, who was, you know, just one of the things.

A wistful score from John Williams.

Wistful score.

And so my guess is that they decided the tone was going to be like, this is not

a

yeah, that this is not the kind of movie Alan Arkish would have made for Roger Corman, which would have been like kind of like crazy and a little bit tasteless probably at times.

This is going to be a more Spielberg-y type

learning about life and love and laughter through these robots who aren't human, but maybe they kind of are.

It's like AI, right?

Yeah.

And so, and so I guess my guess is that that's it, is that they were like, let's not make this a low-budget, kind of, kind of like, uh, kind of like snarky movie.

Let's make this a movie that could go for a quadrant.

Like, let's make this a movie that a whole family could go see.

And instead, they made a movie that nobody in their right mind would really ever want to watch.

I mean, the middle Boston premise feels like it should be like a Jack Davis poster, but it's yes, it should be really wacky.

And I mean, the pace of it is all the pace is so slow.

And so much of it is just these characters wandering through the woods.

And I will say that, like, there are individual frames that look gorgeous and that imply a more interesting movie, you know, of these characters just in the woods.

But, you know, Bernadette Peterson,

she knows about going into the woods, you know?

Oh, yeah.

So speaking of gorgeous frames,

the crime buster sees this party going on, so he fords the river or like a river.

I thought you were going to talk about one of my favorites, Mary Warno.

But anyway,

he then blows up this party, smashing through the walls on the hunt for these robots, which, of course, he is unsuccessful in finding,

but destroying the party completely.

And they're like, oh, this was a great party.

But then it's like that scene is like, that scene and the things that Bernadette Peters is talking about as about her, her job as a robot, it feels like that is, those are the remnants of a much more hard, a much more biting movie.

You know, we're going to see these rich assholes.

They're going to be throwing a party.

They're going to be jerks.

It's going to get wrecked.

But instead, the party is kind of nothing, and even the damage is nothing.

And at the end, Paul Bartel's like, I thought it was great.

I'd like to.

That's the only joke of it.

I noticed that this was a nice,

this was a good-looking movie as well.

Like, the cinematography was, and I just looked up the cinematographer who did a couple of Altman movies, A Wedding and Three Women.

He did Semi-Tough.

He did The Onion Field.

So,

yeah, somewhere.

Good people working on this movie.

Great people come together and make a piece of junk.

Speaking of junk,

our robots on their quest for energy and such,

they find a junkyard that's a perfect place to find stuff.

So they're wandering around this junkyard.

They come across a couple that, I guess, own or run the junkyard.

That's where we get some more stars.

We got Christopher Guest from tons of stuff.

Mr.

Jamie Lee Curtis himself, Christopher guest his uh and his uh his partner is played by melanie what mayron melan yeah who's

yeah 30 something she's also directed a ton of uh tv and some movies and also you might know her as being the hot cop from uh My Blue Heaven, which is what I remember.

I forgot.

And she, I had forgotten that she starred in the movie Girlfriends, which I recommended a while back.

Yeah, which a movie I really liked a lot.

Again, more

talented people yes i just learned i just learned while looking this up i did i didn't ever realize that my blue heaven was uh written by nora efren oh really and that her husband wrote wise guy

and both movie both my blue heaven and wise guy are based on their interviews with henry hill yeah i did actually this is i didn't realize that i never realized that i'm like that's why they're both charlene's favorite movies

i mean along with my cousin vinny right yeah yeah yeah the tragic tragic version and the comic version is really fun i mean now i want to see a double feature of those two movies together pretty funny too yeah i mean it's also hilarious yeah um the uh have i ever i've realized have i ever told my told my family's christopher guest story on this podcast or no only if you tell it to us

or ever tells or no because considering how many times i've talked about actors i've seen on stage that uh my family apparently at some point my dad's family was friendly with christopher guest family when like when he was a kid and my dad was a kid and whenever we would see uh we would watch uh Princess Bride and Christopher Guest was on screen my grandmother would go I changed his diapers and I would be like I would be so confused because I didn't really when I was young I didn't really understand what she was saying so I would imagine a grown Christopher Guest having his diapers changed by my grandmother

but apparently I have no idea like how they knew each other or what happened why why the families are not still friendly but knowing my family there must have been some falling out of some violent kind but uh but that's a story I don't think I've ever told about my grandmother changing Chris for Guest diapers, I assume when he was a baby.

Well, you're about to have to change your diapers because Crime Duncan shows back up.

He starts blasting.

He starts blasting everything, setting things on fire, shooting things with his machine gun.

Things are looking grim.

But our two junkyard operators jump on and deactivate that bot.

It's pretty exciting, right?

This is a pretty cool.

This is one of those action sequences where

you never see the attacker and the victims in the same shot.

Yeah.

No, I

yeah, not particularly exciting.

I am taken by Guest and I forget her name, sorry, as this like sort of hipster junkyard couple.

Yeah, Melanie.

I don't know what their story is, but they just like seem to hang out and be cool and probably have a bunch of sex.

I mean,

it's cool.

And they're obviously cool, but they also speak in a very flat, emotionless way.

And I wondered if they were trying to make some point about these characters are kind of in some ways as robotic as

the robot characters.

But there is one shot.

It should show that they might be,

since they speak in a kind of robotic way, maybe they might be able to connect with these robots.

Yes, exactly.

They're certainly rational and logical the way that the robots are.

But these characters kind of like, yeah, they kind of come out of nowhere, solve the problem, and then that's it.

Until they're needed to solve another problem.

Yeah.

There's one really cool shot where they're on top of Crimebuster and they're spinning around and the camera is on Crimebuster also.

So you see like their, the background moving around them.

And that shot is very quick and they don't, I don't, I don't know if they go back to it.

And I was like, movie, that was a cool shot.

Show it to me again.

So

with their, with Crime Buster defeated, our robots began the long march back, I guess.

I have trouble understanding all of their motivations in the film.

It's

traveling through the woods again.

So they had to leave the factory, go to the junkyard.

They didn't find what they wanted in the junkyard.

Now they have to go back back to the factory.

So Fury Road basically stole the plot structure from Heartbeats.

You leave a place, you go to a place, you find what you didn't have what you need there, you go back to the first place.

That's Fury Road.

I feel like we, I bet there's probably a bunch of other similarities between Fury Road and Heartbeat.

You imagine George Miller and Brendan McCarthy were just watching Heartbeats over and over again while they were planning Fury Road over that 20 years, you know?

They need to go back to the factory because they're running out of power.

What confuses me then is at the end of of the movie, spoiler, they're happily living in the junkyard.

And I'm like, okay, well, what about the power in the future?

Like, what?

Oh, Dan found it.

He found the sole goof of the movie.

All right.

Go to Red Letter Media and listen to Dan on this one, you know?

Well,

I think that once they've gotten their power, maybe the junkyard got the power stuff they needed.

So

this is where the heart of the movie really comes in because

our robots are starting to lose power.

They realize that Phil, they thought Phil's battery would have more because he doesn't need as much energy because he's just a little guy.

Turns out he needs just as much as everyone, and his power is very low.

He's going to die, and they don't know what to do.

And then, before

Val and Aqua can decide, Catscale swaps batteries with them.

He's been conserving power this whole time, again, by telling low-energy jokes.

So, Catskill, they just like leave him in the woods and they continue traveling.

And then Aqua's power runs.

I feel like this is when the movie goes from cloying to maudlin in these sequences, where the characters are dying in front of us and they're lying to each other about how low their battery is because they don't want each other to worry about them.

I love that they're like, we didn't think Phil needed as much power.

And it's like, well, Phil is literally pulling all of your junk.

Like

he was literally carrying everything, but okay, sure.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, that's the data.

These are the experiences they're learning, Elliot.

This is why this trip is so important.

That's why we have to make a movie of it.

Well, I don't know.

I didn't know anything about that.

You're right.

Well, I mean, well, that's the, so the thing is, what I didn't like about this movie here, too, is that we've had this before with Hop House movies, where it is playing on a real emotion, but it's doing it badly.

But I can't help to have that emotion triggered in me still.

The idea, there's a lot of it, which is just them walking, talking about their anxieties for Phil in the future and wanting to prepare him for the world and wanting to make sure that he's healthy.

And it's like, yeah, that's the conversation I have every single day with my wife about my children.

And I don't like that the movie is like trying to get me to cry by having two robots do it in a very boring way.

And I can't help that it does make me, it does make me think about those things in a way that makes me feel those emotions.

But I want to be like, Movie, you didn't earn this.

Like, this is, you're not getting this on your own.

This is like a commercial for cotton where it shows a guy like watching his daughter grow up and then get married, where you're like crying and it's like, I mean, I don't care about cotton.

It's where I'm just making a sandwich and my daughter's like, daddy, I'm dying.

I'm dawn.

Sorry, this mayonnaise and mustard.

That's the best line of the whole thing.

She's just, my daddy, I'm dying.

And he just shrugs.

Oh, what a great sketch.

If anyone doesn't know what we're talking about, the Mr.

Show sketch about mayosterd and mustard ANAs and how the time-saving condiments that are not taking up too much time.

The guy can't go to his daughter's graduation because he's making a sandwich.

Oh, man, that's good stuff.

So we have this final moment.

Both Val and Aqua run out of juice.

Val is reaching toward Aqua, and then they both are frozen.

He's in a beautiful field.

Although he's reaching towards her while literally being like, no, I wish to talk to you about one last human thing.

What is your understanding of the emotion?

He's talking about love, people.

He's trying to say love, but it's so sad, Dan, right as he's about to say it, because he keeps fumfering so much beforehand.

It's just like in movies when someone is being wrongfully arrested for a crime and they're like, but you got to understand.

No, no, but just let me tell you, but just give me a minute.

It's like, well, use this time to say the thing that you need to say.

Don't preamble it so much, you know.

Traumatic tension, Elliott.

That's you should have learned that shit in screenwriting school.

You're right.

I don't know.

It's a screenwriter you.

I mean, I did go to NYU for screenwriting.

They should have taught me that.

Yeah, yeah.

So our

robot repairmen show up.

They load them up.

They see Phil, the little robot, hanging out, and they're like, fuck it, leave him out here.

That part I like to put Kevin Gilles, like, they said three robots.

we're bringing back three robots we're not touching the fourth robot um so they take uh and they take them back and then immediately we get a little bit of a what we just get like a voiceover where they talk about how the robots uh

they rebooted them a bunch of times they kept uh they kept messing up they kept uh malfunctioning and so they just threw them away and so we then see a little we get a little happy ending in the junkyard uh val and aqua are

restored.

Nerds, these lovable junkyard nerds.

And they have this weird little robot family, including a new addition, Dan.

Yeah, a little

robot girl robot.

Little girl robot, yep.

And are they?

That is the end of the movie.

Are they grilling?

Am I imagining that?

Were they, were they, was it, I feel like the idea was that they weren't.

They were like grilling like little batteries and stuff.

I don't know.

It's like batteries not included, you know.

The ideas, I guess, they have now this like suburban lifestyle at the chat.

Yeah, I mean, they're sitting in

outdoor furniture or

astroturf.

I can't remember where there's literally a grill, but they're definitely in grill formation.

Thank you.

Thank you for giving me that much.

So that, yeah, that's heartbeats.

That's heartbeats, baby.

Stuart, luckily, no mid-credits scenes.

Good, because I turned that shit off on me showing the road.

What if the last minute was evolving?

What if the last minute in the credits, suddenly they were like, it was like Spider-Man showed up.

That would be where like suddenly Andy Kaufman's character, Val, like, goes through a multiverse warp and ends up in Spider-Man's world.

I was

the whole time.

Every time it cut to Catskill saying a joke, I'm like, if he does something

J.

Jonah Jameson style, I'm going to be in deep water.

Yeah.

So now is the part where we make our final judgments.

Is this a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like?

And I'm going to call this a good, bad movie with an asterisk, which is the asterisk is.

And Obelix.

Yo, he's far in the back,

ready to spring into action if needed, though.

No, this is.

Yeah, I feel like Obalix is usually on point.

He's usually someone you can rely on for that.

Yeah.

Obalix,

you stay back

in action, though.

When I need you, you spring into it.

And Obelix is like, oh, yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

No, this is a this is a I'm saying that because this is not a good bad movie in the sense of like I think you're gonna

laugh and be like if you got together with friends like oh this is you know so wacky how bad this movie is we're all having fun like as we said it's slow and maudlin but I'm gonna call it a good bad with an asterisk of like it is so fascinating if you are interested in like real like mega flops like it is fascinating to watch a movie that has so many talented people doing good work in their fields and it all adding up to something that you can't understand why anyone ever thought this should be made or put on screens

um

so from that perspective i think it's it's kind of interesting but uh yeah don't don't go in looking for like bad laughs or something necessarily or even good laughs yeah i mean this is definitely i i i'm i'm with you i think this is is a good, bad movie in the sense that it's like, there's something fascinating about it, and it is like part of bad movie history.

So it's, it's kind of worth it in that regard, but it is also pretty boring.

Yeah.

You're in and out in like 70 minutes at least.

Yes, that's

essential.

That's, that's why I would call it a bad, bad movie for me is because it's a, I think it's worth watching a couple clips from, maybe.

If you watch the first

eight minutes of this movie, you, you've got it, except for just imagine those same characters wandering through trees for forever.

I think it's, I found, maybe it was just the mood I was in while I was watching it, but I found, I took no joy in it for the most part.

And I just found it so endless and so kind of dull.

But it's just a lot of fun.

I feel bad that you, like normally, when I'm feeling bad or when I'm feeling disconnected from the world, I turn to cinema to kind of raise my spirits.

And I feel bad that LA had to do that with heartbeats.

I think, I think, yeah, I think it's also partly that.

So where I am in my life right now, I'm very, my work has kept me very busy.

I have to watch the movies for the Flophouse.

And it means that the flop house movies to non-Flophouse movies ratio in my life is maybe the lowest it's ever been in terms of fewer non-flop house movies that I'm watching.

And so maybe it's just that there were, there wasn't enough time between flophouse movies and between me having to watch this and then watch the next flop house movie.

Unfortunately,

you texted us and like, it sounds like you're really enjoying this next one we're going to watch.

Nope.

Well, what's funny is the next movie we're going to watch.

Should we mention what it is?

Yeah, we can do it.

Next episode, I mean, the next episode is a mini, but the one after that, we're going to be talking about the movie The Electric State.

And I've started watching that, and it is almost the opposite of this in that it's also about robots.

It also is trying for emotions that it is not achieving, but there's so much stuff constantly being thrown at your face where it's like the opposite of this.

They're not taking the time to set up.

very much you know whereas this movie feels like it's all set up and kind of waiting for the big scenes to start so i gotta watch a good i gotta watch a good movie about a robot that falls in love after this are there any?

Well, maybe we'll talk about that.

Falls in love

specifically.

Maybe we'll talk about that in next week's mini.

So let's not discuss that now.

But I'm going to give it a bad bad, but certainly it is a fascinating bad bad.

Well, I'm going to take another break here to talk a little bit more about Max Fund Drive.

Specifically, bonus content, thank you gifts.

The model is basically we try and make as much as we can just open and free for everyone with the hopes that those who love it will help us sort of fund it after the fact, which is a very optimistic thing that we still believe in.

But there's also thank you gifts.

We also recognize that people like to be recognized.

They like to get something.

They like to hear us say thank you.

And at the first level, the $5 a month level, there is, of course, that bonus content, a library full of it from every show on the network.

It's gotten to be pretty huge over the years.

And

you get access to the the whole library across the network when you join at just $5 a month or more.

That's right.

The best thank you gift is at the lowest level.

Again, our bonus content this year is called Slop Tales.

It's an RPG created by Stewart with soundscapes and fantastic original music contributed by Alex Smith, our producer.

And it's got me, Elliot, and a favorite guest, Jubin Perang, playing the staff of a beachtown restaurant on Memorial Day weekend and we're both trying to create and then diffuse some wacky shenanigans.

If you join or upgrade at the $10 a month level, you get our enamel pen or the enamel pen for the show of your choice.

Ours this year features a Mads Mickelson with the slogan mad about mads.

And this is a just a side note.

If you're already a member and you want a pen or you want an extra pen or several extra pens, there will be a post-drive pen sale with all proceeds going to the transgender law center at the $20 a month level you get a beautiful beach towel with Max Fund's unofficial squirrel mascot nutsy and a unicorn it looks like a beautiful neon dream of the 80s and of course if you are rich uncle penny bags from monopoly they're even more extravagant gifts at even higher levels and all the gifts stack so if you join at a higher level you get every gift from the lower levels as well So will you please join us as a member?

A maximum membership costs less per year than that streaming service that, frankly, come on, you're paying for it, you barely use it anyway.

So why not consider supporting us where you know that the pledge you give goes directly to us or the worker owners at the network and make sure we can keep this silly thing going.

It's a show I know has given me comfort.

I know from letters it's giving a lot of you comfort.

So I'd like to thank everyone who supports already and to ask anyone who's on the fence to go to maximumfund.org slash join right now and put your money where your heart is.

But now

back to the show.

Let's see.

The last thing we did was final judgments, which means letters.

Dan, first I have a correction for earlier in the movie.

Yes, please.

Not early in the episode.

It's not that I wasn't listening to you.

I was listening to you very closely and I'm wondering when is Max Fun and Nutsy finally going to make it official?

You know, that's, but also, according to IMDB, this movie was shot in New Mexico.

Oh,

so that's what we're seeing in it.

It's not all desert, Dan.

I know you're saying it's all desert.

I think there's more to it.

Yelling at you beforehand.

I'm like, no, Stuart, it's all desert.

I'm like, no, Dan, there's a variety of ecosystems there.

Something else I want to mention here is, so Heart Beeps, Stan Winston, this is a Stan Winston story that was in the trivia here, is that

he had done the Tin Man for the Wiz, and that's why he got this job because he was the new

turns someone into a robots thing.

And he used this kind of gelatin application that kept melting in the sun and made him really stressed out and frustrated.

And Bernadette Peters had to calm him down.

And then afterwards, he saw a making of documentary of the dark crystal, and it got him very excited about using puppet technology and kind of to articulate characters rather than makeup on people.

And that must have led to the Terminator, which is a it's a puppet rather than a person in a costume.

So maybe we have his bad experience on heartbeats to thank for one of the great movie robot designs.

You know,

you know, and also Jim Hansen's work.

Every piece of our life, you know, helps create

the puzzle that is ourselves.

I don't know.

That's true.

That sounds like something Val the Ruba would say.

That piece of wisdom is worth joining or upgrading your membership.

That's for sure.

So

this first letter is from Davison last name withheld, who writes,

I'm listening to the back catalog.

Normally I'd listen to NPR's background noise while I'm working, but you know,

I can't right now without hyperventilating.

I typed Tom Brokaw Dune into Google to see if Tom Brokaw was actually known for his affection for Dune or if this was completely imagined by Elliot.

I thought you'd appreciate the results.

And of course, I texted you guys this a while back and I put it up on the Flophouse Instagram as a reel.

So if you want to check it out, you can look at it over there.

But it is

AI

incorrectly identifying Tom Brokaw as a longtime Dune fan who has talked about his love of Dune.

And appeared as himself on the show.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So if you want, you know, even more proof of something you should already know, that AI is stupid and should not be being forced into every corner of our lives, there you go.

But

reminds me, Dan, Dan, of an AI story I read recently that I forgot where the guy lives.

And it may be, I think he might be Dutch.

I'm not sure.

But this guy, Analark, asked the AI to tell him about himself.

And the AI hallucinated the story that he had killed his two sons.

And the guy was very unhappy about it.

So

do not trust anything a computer tells you because the computer,

maybe it's in low energy joke mode and it's just going to tell you something wrong.

What's the chance, you think, that somebody has been like, hey, hey, Tom, I saw something about you on the internet that you love Dune?

The best thing would be.

I think there's a chance.

There's a chance.

The best thing would be if somebody was like, I saw online, Tom, that you love Dune.

And he's like, oh, I've never read it.

And then he reads it and he loves it.

And then he comes on the podcast podcast for real to talk about how glad he is that we introduced him to it that would be a dream come true so tom broke off listen to this if you read dune because of our podcast and you loved it please come on the show we would love to have you yeah

um anyway the the the letter continues though instead of reading further to try and figure out the truth i decided to write the peaches with a question

has there ever been lore or legend related to a film that influenced your feelings for that film and upon learning that lore or legend was untrue change those feelings.

I'm thinking about stuff outside the actual content of the movie, so ding-dong ripping off would be excluded as an example.

Sincerely, Dameson, last name.

Unload that pistol I was

now.

Um,

I uh,

I mean, obviously, the uh, the ghost and three men and a baby, like when you found out it wasn't a real ghost, you were

like, This movie isn't as scary as I thought it was.

Yeah, before you were terrified

to make me see a ghost

um yeah i'm trying to think about this i don't think i have one about movies but can i talk about one that's not a movie yeah sure yeah why not i think the this learning the true story of the winchester mystery house uh really uh it changed my attitude about it.

For those who don't know, the Winchester Mystery House, it was built by the widow of

Winchester from the Winchester firearms fortune.

And I had always grown up with the story of it being deliberately built as like a weird maze with closed closed off staircases and doors that go nowhere and windows that are all bricked up because she was trying to keep the ghosts of those killed by her husband's guns to get to her.

And then years ago, 99% Invisible did an episode about it where they're like, she was a pioneering female architect and there was an earthquake and half the house fell down.

So they just had to very hastily put new walls up and things like that.

Or they changed this because they made an addition to the house.

And it really made me kind of upset that

a very non-supernatural, very real explanation for why a house was kind of weird had been turned into this story of an insane mad woman, you know, who's a, who was paranoid about ghosts.

And it made me look at it differently.

It made me kind of mad kind of sad, you know?

So I hate to bust everyone's bubble about the Winchester mystery house, but, you know, it's not really a ghost thing.

Dan?

Yeah, I'm trying.

I'm really trying to think.

I'm not the only ones I can come up with are ones that are actually true that have enhanced my

enjoyment, like

how everyone had dysentery on Raiders of the Lost Ark.

So Harrison Ford's like, look, can I just shoot him in this scene?

Made a better scene.

So I apologize, but I thought that was an interesting

misuse of technology that I wanted to pass on to everyone.

Tom Brokaw, as far as we know, it's just out of Elliot's beautiful brain.

Yep, don't even, I wish I could walk my way through the thought process of it.

Oh, wasn't your brain?

That's a.

I started it.

Okay.

Well,

check the tapes.

It all gets merged together over the years.

It's a collab, yeah.

Ethan, but I certainly stole it from you.

You can't deny that.

Yeah, yeah.

Ethan, last name withheld, writes.

A few years ago, I worked in Berkeley, California at a non-profit.

One weekend, my coworkers and I drove to Lake Tahoe for a camping trip, but when we got to the campsite, the air quality was dangerously low due to a wildfire in Yosemite to the north so instead of hiking we went straight into our tents I was with my Ugandan co-worker who I only kind of knew at the time who proceeded to pull a laptop from his bag and asked me if I wanted to watch a movie I asked him what he had and he was very excited and started playing Morbius it had to be the weirdest movie going experience of my life.

I'm curious, what's the weirdest movie going experience you've had slash the weirdest place you've watched a movie?

Keep on flopping around the theaters, Ethan.

I don't, like, this isn't by any means particularly weird, but I did think of

how,

you know, around my 40th birthday, my friend.

Well,

past, thank you.

My friend John was like, oh, it's, you know, it's also.

My 40th birthday.

We should do this thing that Stuart was talking about with our friend, our friends who run a

travel agency, which was to take this cruise to Alaska.

I had never previously had any interest in cruises, but I'm like, oh, Alaska, that's neat.

Yeah, but I love the movie Cruising.

Cruise Control.

V2 cruise control.

And Boat Trip.

You were like, finally, by chance to hear about the story of Boat Trip.

Possibly the most unpleasant thing we have ever watched for the boat trip.

Certainly up there, that's for sure.

But I do remember being on this cruise at that point, single alone with three other couples.

And the others were doing something.

Something else like Boat Trip.

I don't know, but I was up on the top deck in the sprinkling rain because there was a movie playing, and it was the Alicia Vikander Tomb Raider that they

sat up there watching mostly alone.

But I kind of liked it.

I kind of liked that movie.

You guys have things that this brings to mind?

I mean, I feel like I've only ever watched one movie in its entirety on my phone.

And I watched, yeah, I know.

I don't watch, like, I don't know, maybe I don't know.

But even if you're like flying somewhere, like, I'll watch it on my laptop.

I'll bring my laptop.

I'm not going to watch it on my phone.

All right.

I want, I want the

slightly widescreen experience.

But no,

I watched this Australian thriller, Hounds of Love, which is terrifying.

And I watched it on my phone.

And the whole, I'm like, I think I was watching it in bed.

My wife was asleep next to me, and the lights were out except for my phone.

I'm like, this is extra scary.

It's like the movie is calling me.

Because Charlene, you could wake up at any moment and say, turn that off, turn that off.

That's what I'm scared of.

That was the scariest thing about

when I saw, when I saw, when I watched the movie Mandy at home, the scariest thing about it was worrying that my sons would wake up and walk into the room at any moment while I was watching it.

Dan, why are you masturbating?

To that goblin.

Can I have a cheddar goblin in our house?

No.

So I think I didn't have too many weird movie-go experiences, but it did make me think of years ago when I attended the New York premiere screening of Birdemic, which was a movie that friends of mine had been like, you got to see this movie.

If it ever comes to New York, you've got to see it.

And the director of the film and the two leads were there at the theater.

And the lead actor in it, I mean, he's not a professional actor, the lead guy in it was so stoked.

He was so excited.

And the director was so excited.

He had brought one, like a fake bird, like a, either a taxidermied bird or a fake bird with him.

And the lead actress, you could tell, knew exactly what this movie was, knew exactly why we were there.

And she just, and she just goes, when we started, she's like, just take it.

Take it as we meant it or something like that.

Just take it as it is.

Like there was a, it was, and it made, there was this sudden moment where the whole audience kind of felt bad, I think, that she was like, I know why you're here.

Like, you think this is garbage.

But then once the movie started, it was, well, actually, then they played the trailer for human centipede, which none of us had seen before.

And everyone laughed their way through that.

And then we watched the movie.

And once the movie was on, it was

not laughing.

Human centipede was a palate cleanser.

Okay.

Well, let's move on to some recommendations.

Movies we've seen.

Have you seen this Heartbeats movie?

Beautiful.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, man.

I feel bad.

LA hasn't watched any other movies.

No, I've only seen Heartbeat, so I have to recommend it.

So I guess I'll just say it's good because you can just get up and go do something else and come back.

No, I'm just kidding.

I do have a movie to recommend.

You know what?

I'm going to recommend

a new movie that's in theaters.

I saw it just recently.

Black Bag by Steven Soderberg.

Oh, okay.

Spy movie.

Yeah, and I'm recommending it in part because you love bags.

Very few people seem to be going to see it.

And

my friend Kevin joked on his Letterbox review that it must be people confused, thinking that, like, oh, Steven Soderberg retired already.

Oh, wait, no, it was actually Matt Carmen, our friend, replying to Kevin.

Anyway, point is someone who wears it.

There's a weird thing where Steven Soderberg is coming out with more movies at a faster pace than he ever has before, and yet it somehow seems like he has not made a movie in years.

Maybe because the way they're being distributed, you know.

A lot of them went to HBO.

He had that deal with HBO.

Yeah,

I think part of it is where those movies can find homes now.

Part of it is like he has made a lot of them

and

he continues to do it with like great craft, but I think the fact that he's prolific makes it seem less special maybe when it comes to that.

I think that's exactly right.

Yeah.

But this is

another great piece of craft from him.

Fossbender and Blanchett, you know, play hot spies because that's the only things that they can play.

But it's like, it's funny.

It's like a...

Well, it's a...

lecare style spy story, but they are, you know, gorgeous hot people at the center of it.

So it's a weird sort of complexity.

Which is very not liquorie.

Yeah.

It's usually, you know, a 60-year-old balding men in a office somewhere

pasty from never seeing the sun.

But

I think it, I think in this movie, so much of it is about their marriage that it helps that they're both like, you know, smoking hot people

because

you're led to believe throughout the film, you're like, okay, well, can they trust one another?

They're both in the spy business.

It's a case in which one of them has to investigate the other.

And you are wondering,

is the trust that they've built up real

or not?

And that's kind of the central metaphor, you know,

spy business as marriage.

But the spy business is all really well put together and sharp and entertaining.

And

if you want...

movies that aren't just some IP being recycled, then, you know, maybe go out and go see some solid adult fare.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But uh, but I think we've been trained not to, is the problem.

But uh, I would recommend it.

Uh, Stuart?

I'm gonna recommend a little short movie since Heartbeats was a short movie.

I'm gonna recommend a movie from last year called Rap World.

It's a hot 55 minutes, it's available on its entirety.

It's not even feature length.

It's available in its entirety on YouTube.

Uh, it's a film by comedian Connor O'Malley, and it is about a group of friends shot very

like cheapo documentary style,

mockumentary style, about a group of friends on one night in 2009 who are living in Tobihana, Pennsylvania, and they are recording their

they are attempting to make their debut rap album

and, you know, over the course of a single night.

And obviously, hijinks and setbacks occur.

And also,

it's very funny.

It's edited really well.

There's a bunch of great little performances.

Sarah Sherman from Saturday Night Live's in it for a little bit.

Connor O'Malley's very funny.

Everybody's great.

One of the guys who keeps

over the course of the movie keeps sending these kind of deranged FaceTime videos to a girl he's interested in.

The way that he speaks sounds so much like my younger brother that it is incredibly triggering for me.

And it was very both hard to watch, but also kind of impressive that he manages to capture a very specific type of Midwestern slang speaking.

So yeah, Rap World, check it out.

It's really funny.

I'm also going to recommend a short movie, but not as short as Rap World.

I'm going to recommend a movie from 1969 called The Comic.

It was directed by Carl Reiner and stars Dick Van Dyke, and it tells the story of a silent film comedian who's basically a big jerk who makes his career in silent film.

And then when he reaches a certain age, his alcoholism and his mistreatment of others gets to him.

And the first hour of the movie, when it shows him making his way in silent film and mistreating people, is okay, although showing, it really shows how well Dick Van Dyke would have done as a silent filmmaker in the 20s, because he's very funny in it.

But then the last half hour, when he is an old man living a very boring, unpleasant, but like unsatisfying life is, I find parts of it so funny because it is like, it is, um, it's so bleak.

And it's just kind of like him as an old man sitting in a small apartment watching TV while he's eating.

And there's something very funny about it after the,

after the bigness of his life before then.

And so

I think it's not a, it's not the greatest movie.

I didn't, I didn't really love it the way I was hoping to, but there's a lot of moments in it that I really liked a lot.

And so I will recommend The Comic, which I believe may also be on YouTube in its entirety.

You know, not necessarily legally, but I think I might have watched it on Tubi or on YouTube movies.

I can't remember.

Anyway, it doesn't matter.

And I have one final recommendation, which is that if you've never been a Max Fun member, try it out at just $5 a month.

Enjoy that bonus content.

If you're already a member and you'd like to support a little more, we would certainly appreciate you upgrading your membership or even boosting by a few dollars per month or so if you are able to do so.

Please do so now, though, before you forget at maximumfun.org slash join.

And most importantly, thank you to all of our members.

Thank you for listening.

We cannot make the show without you and we are so grateful for your support.

And we're also grateful for producer Alex Smith.

You know him by the name Howell Doddy on the internet.

Check his stuff out as well.

Check out the Maximum Fun family of podcasts at maximumfun.org while you're joining.

And thank you for listening.

I've been Dan McCoy.

I'm Stewie Wellington.

I'm Elliot Kalen saying thank you, listeners, but especially thank you, members.

Okay, see you next time.

Bye.

Little stinker.

Too hot for TB.

That's tuberculosis.

Great.

This is all great.

They'd send you to a warmer climate.

They'd say, go to Arizona.

It's too hot for TB.

Go to Tucson, Arizona.

All right.

Now we're starting.

Welcome to Tucson, Arizona.

We actually don't say Arizona, but a lot of people think we do.

Welcome to Tucson, Arizona.

Ah, ah, ah.

Music of the night.

It's mostly, you know, desert creatures.

Buy some turquoise jewelry while you're here.

People say, why did you go to Tucson where it's sunny all the time?

And I remind them they also have night in Tucson.

It's not just

on the name of my vampire novel.

And they say, don't they have two sons there?

Like, no, it's no.

That's a common misconception.

It's actually the same one sun that the earth goes around.

I think Tatooine, I don't remember.

Now, Tatooine would be very bad for a vampire, but you see, there is a sunset, because Luke stares off into it longingly as he dreams of joining the Academy and leaving this mud ball sand planet.

I love how it occasionally drifts into Father Guido's Sarduce.

He was a vampire, right?

Yeah, he was a vampire, yeah.

Top vamp.

Um, okay, let's do this show.

Top vamp

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