Ep. #441 - Spice World, LIVE

Hi, floppers.

Before we start this episode, I just wanted to remind you: we are in the middle of Flop TV Season 2.

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This time, it's personal.

On this episode, we discuss Spice World

live from Oxford, England.

USA, USA,

oh no, oh no, oh no,

wrong audience.

You can talk to the most liberal, progressive audience in the United States.

If you start chanting USA, it's like a switch flips in their brain and they can't stop it.

That's the beauty of having three initials in your country name.

Like,

you know, like, there's many wonderful things about the UK, but it doesn't have the same rhythm.

Okay.

Calm down, sir.

This is an interesting hobby horse for Dan that I was not aware of ahead of time.

Take a heel turn in the second show.

And now

it's taught.

Now at the end of local news, a local citizen will have a chance to express his editorial.

How come countries don't all have three initials?

Won't somebody step in and stop this?

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flop House.

I'm Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington.

I'm Elliot Kalen.

Thank you.

You got him back.

This is a podcast where normally we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

Tonight, however, we watch Spice World.

And we're about to talk about it.

We're about to talk about it.

Stuart, I believe you have the reins for this one.

Now, before we get into the plot of Spice World, which is dense and layered,

did you guys see this movie?

I think Tom Stopper did a rewrite on this one.

Yeah.

Did you guys see this movie when it first came out?

Did you see it in the theater?

I didn't see it in the theater.

I definitely watched it on home video because I liked the Spice Girls.

Some movies Dan preferred to watch alone at home with no one else in the room.

And, you know, I...

Yes, I did.

I saw it at the time.

Elliot, though, I believe, saw it for the first time.

My first viewing of it was last night when we watched it en masse as a group.

That's Latin for with mass.

We all have physical being.

And yeah, I'd never seen it.

When it first came out, I was not a Spice Girls fan.

I just wasn't into that stuff.

As I said to Dan's wife last night, when I was a teenager, my girl group was Elastica.

And she said, who?

No, I yeah, I loved Elastica.

Yeah, great.

But I mean, they stole that one song.

Well, what are you going to do?

Anyway,

so I had had not seen it before.

The Spice Girls were to me a gimmick.

Nay, a joke.

But now the scales have fallen from mine eyes.

And I finally see not through a glass darkly, but through a spice clearly.

It's almost as if I can now see through space and time thanks to a totally different spice on a totally different spice world.

So you're saying you spiced up your life?

I did spiced up my life.

They commanded every boy and every girl to spice up their lives.

And I said, I'm a boy.

I've got to do it.

Yeah, you're no longer a wannabe.

Okay, that was labored, I admit.

So I, yeah, I didn't see this at the time either.

I wasn't a, like, you know, I was a teenager.

I wasn't a big Spice Girls fan at the time.

I think part of it is that, like, watching it, I feel like it's a movie that works better now almost.

And I would say that, like, at the time, I didn't realize it, but like, I feel like the spice girls were not like they were not male gaysy in the way that I think I had expected like pop stars to be.

I mean their boobs are falling out of their shirt a lot.

But I don't know.

Like I feel like

I feel like they're sexy, as my wife was describing it, sexy more for like a teenage girl than for a...

They're like aspirationally sexy.

Like you want to be a spice girl rather than be with a spice girl.

Eminem can't decide which one he wants to impregnate.

But for most guys, yeah.

But I think there's a controversial thing I'll say about this movie, I think this movie, comedy-wise, is about 10 years ahead of its time.

Like, that's the time, when this movie came out, what was a hit comedy?

Was like something about Mary, you know, which is, it's like, ugh gross, ugh embarrassing, ugh.

Whereas this movie is like random, random, non-secular, non-secular.

You like that joke?

Forget about it.

It's gone.

On to the next one.

Which is like, that's comedy now.

You know, they saw it way ahead of time.

I mean, it's also comedy like 30 years earlier, too.

And I also think when you're saying it plays better now, part of that, too, is at the time, critics at least were probably like, uh, this is a package thing that is, like, they're trying to shove this down.

Like, why did the Spice Girls have a movie?

Whereas now it's just like, yeah, I remember the Spice Girls.

I like them.

You know, like you have, there's like a little more perspective on it where it's not, like, clouded by this idea of, like, weird authenticity.

Yeah, you know, I mean, and also the fact that when you turn on the radio now, one, what do you do?

And nobody listens to the radio anymore.

But two, you don't hear the Spice Girls.

So when this came out, it was like the world, we were living in a Spice World.

I do like your critic voice opens with a uh

that's just like that's some shorthand for like don't whatever I say just discount it yeah okay so Spice World the movie opens with uh we get some credits and what a cast in addition to the fab five that's right the spice girls we have uh man everybody's in this movie everybody in the world is in this movie.

You got Richard E.

Grant, you got Alan Cumming, you got Roger Moore, you got George Wendt,

Mark McGee, Barry Humphreys.

So

this is a Spice Girls movie.

It does not need to have one of the kids in the hall, Dame Edna, not as Dame Edna, and Riffraff from Rocky Horror in it, but they're all in it.

Yes.

Okay.

And Richard E.

Grant has so much screen time.

It's fantastic.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, he's great.

And so the movie opens with a performance by the Spice Girls.

There's many of them.

Who are they?

Well, we have Melsey, Melby,

Emma,

Jerry, and Victoria.

Okay, the...

Okay.

And their personas.

Now they're personas, Stuart.

We got baby, posh,

scary,

sporty,

and uh and

ginger.

Yeah.

You did it.

You did it.

Sorry, I got distracted.

Sporty's my favorite.

I've said this before, but sporty's my favorite too.

It's hard not to have sporty as your favorite, I feel like.

I do think that the movie, this movie best serves the spice girls who have like a clear bit, you know, where it's like, okay, it's like sporty or baby, like there's like a thing to hang your hat on.

Like, I feel like

Jerry struggles more because it's like, well, her bit is she has red hair.

So

they give her the characteristic of she's always spewing trivia, like factual trivia, and it's a weird thing for them to do.

I guess she's supposed to be like the brainy spice, but also at least one of her trivia facts is wrong, and I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a joke or not.

So it got me so mad, almost as mad as I was during Stuart's erroneous dinosaur presentation,

was when I was watching it, and she's like, you know, the manta ray is the biggest fish.

And I'm like, the whale shark is the biggest fish, Jerry.

Ginger spice, what are you teaching the girls of the world?

Yeah, Ellie was squirming in a seat.

Okay, not for the same reason Dan was squirming in his seat.

So

in the credits, it does say, based on an idea by the Spice Girls, which is great.

Fuck yeah, everything.

The idea seems to be, we're the Spice Girls.

Yeah.

Okay, so it opens with like a performance in like a dinner club or a supper club.

They got a band, they play one of their songs.

We get a little bit of a taste of who they are.

Sporty has some amazing solos.

I love it.

Okay, afterwards, the girls are rushing to their tour bus through the halls.

They're accompanied by their manager, Richard E.

Grant Clifford, who wears a lot of really great,

colorful, like monochromatic suits, and he has a soul patch.

Yes.

Does a lot of acting.

There was a period of time, I was attempting to get an outfit to dress like Richard E.

Grant for the show.

You should get it just for normal life, dude.

Yeah.

There's a cheap green suit that I was having delivered to me because

that was like the most doable one because like the first Richard E.

Grant, I'm like, what did he wear?

And the first picture that came up was like a leather jacket with a leather tie.

And I'm like, I don't think that's a look I could do.

A powerful but smelly outfit.

Yeah.

Okay, the girls all, you know, they say hi to Elton John.

They rush past a documentary crew that is following them, led by Alan Cumming.

Yeah, they...

This is one of the few things that I feel like the movie fails to reach the potential of, is that Richard E.

Grant and Alan Cumming on the screen together,

it never achieves the sparks and the action, you know, the high-intensity acting that I want it to, of two indelible personalities slamming against each other.

I think because Alan Cummings, his character is a character who keeps getting, you know, pies in the face metaphorically.

So he's just, it's, I want to see the two of them argue at some point.

Maybe dance?

Didn't happen.

Yeah, so he's like.

And also, he has superpowers.

I don't know why he's not just teleporting all over the place.

That's the thing, yeah.

Yeah, so throughout the movie, he and his film crew are chasing the Spice Girls around, trying to get footage.

And it doesn't really matter, nor is it really jokey.

No, yeah.

It's kind of weak.

It's too bad.

I feel like there's a waste of potential, but that's fine.

So they, I feel like, like a lot of things, it's like, no, don't worry about it, just keep going.

Just like when Elton John wanders in, and they're like, he has two seconds to film, so kiss him and get the fuck out of there.

What's so funny about it is is they have the real Elton John, and most of the scene is with his back to the camera.

And I don't think it's because they used a stand.

I think they were like, we'll get the Spice Girls first, then we'll get the reverse shot with Elton.

And halfway through the Elton shot, he was like, gotta go.

Okay, so they board their bus.

They're in a double-decker Union Jack draped bus that is larger on the inside than the outside, and a phenomenon that's never been explored in British entertainment before.

So, and we get like an idea of their like personalities and their quirks.

You know, Sporty is like on a on a bike or like kicking a soccer ball.

Football, sorry, shit.

They're talking about astrology, and I'm like, what?

What sign is each girl?

You unmasked yourself as an American.

Oh, I know.

You could get arrested for doing that.

I know.

Okay, and we learn at this point

the ticking clock of the movie, and that's that they have a show coming up at Albert Hall, which I think I am inferring is a big deal.

Well, yep, you are inferred.

It is a major venue.

I know that it takes a lot of holes to fill it.

Not as many as you think.

They know how many.

And how do you get there?

Practice, practice, practice, practice.

Come on.

Yes, it's the same directions to get to Carnegie Hall as Albert Hall, or all halls, really.

The halls of medicine, yeah.

They built them on the same Indian burial ground.

That's the practice, practice, practice.

Dan, I don't know if you know about the history of England, but there's

not a lot of Native Americans.

Yeah.

Okay, so now we cut over to George Went and Mark McKinney,

who are, I guess, film producers who see them performing on TV

or see them doing an interview preparing for their show, and they realize, you know what, there's something here.

These girls have got it.

Let's start, let's come up with a movie pitch.

We can sell a movie with the Spice Girls.

And Mark McKinney is, I think, the writer of the two, and he's wearing wearing a Harvard shirt, which is a very funny touch.

I feel like

that's someone who knows screenwriters.

They all went to Harvard, and they all want to tell you about it all the time.

Okay, so the Spice Girls are practicing for their show.

They're doing a rehearsal, and it is interrupted by the arrival of their pregnant friend, Nicola, who is not a Spice Girl, and I was not familiar with her before this, but she seems like she's part of the gang who has gotten kind of pushed out of it due to life or having a baby.

So the girls kind of cluster around her, they talk about it, then they have a dream sequence where they imagine what they'd be like if they were moms.

And there's a couple of these sequences throughout the movie where the camera gets all swirly, and that's basically your cue to see a really good bit.

Yeah.

I love, yeah, whenever something this happened, I'm like, ooh, great, because

the whole movie is padding, but in the best way possible.

Like, nothing is relevant, so everything is beautiful.

It's essentially a sketch movie.

I think at a certain point they were like, people really care about the plot of a Spice Girls movie.

And the people who,

the director I know at least of this, was a longtime television comedy director.

Like he did the second series of Halty Towers and he did most of Absolutely Fabulous.

So it's like, I think there, and he did a lot of comic strip also.

And so it's like, it's like, look, let's just do jokes.

Like, this is what we're known.

And so I really like that they embrace that sketch aspect.

I also think, again, it's not not something that is presented as a joke, but it is very funny the idea that a band has a best friend.

Well, and she's like their collective best friend.

Oh, they're all her best friend, and she treats them like one undifferentiated mass that is all her best friend.

And she walks in pregnant and they're like, hi, and they break up rehearsal.

And I remember I'm like, I don't know the Spice Girls mythology, but is this like a character?

Like, is she mentioned in the albums?

Like, what is it?

Yeah, Yeah, if you get the action figures, it's like, oh, this is the accessory.

The Spice Girls' best friend.

Yeah, which is the pregnant Barbie?

Thank you.

It's Midge.

Okay,

so, and we learned that there's an element of the Spice Girls worrying that they're losing touch with their pregnant friend who has also been abandoned by the baby's father.

They don't go too deeply into that, which is probably the right choice for a Spice Girls movie.

Okay, so back on the tour bus, the girls are starting to kind of push back against the roles that they have been assigned by their names and interests.

They want to be known as more than just the sporty one, who, because sporty also likes other things.

So that carries on to a photo shoot where they are being photographed by a photographer played by Dominic West from The Wire, which is really cool.

And they decide to change it up and then they dress like each other.

I thought this was pretty fun

and not as racist as I was expecting it to be.

I also enjoyed it, you see this in a lot of movies, but I felt like it was especially underlined here that every time they did a freeze frame, it's like that would have been a terrible photo.

That's the one they picked.

I don't know much about the real-life Spice Girls, but the impression I get from the movie is they either are very good at faking enjoying being around each other, or they do like being around each other.

I don't know which it is.

I don't want to know which it is.

I It's like Schrödinger's cat.

I don't need to know if it's alive or dead, you know.

But I think that it almost doesn't matter at this point.

Like, it feels like it's sold.

Afterwards, they go to a press party with a few more British celebrities.

Big celebrity cameos.

Should we talk about the cameos that didn't make it into the film?

Because there are a lot of cameos in the movie, but there are a few cameos that were cut from the film before release.

Should we talk about those now?

Yeah, why not?

Sure.

Two big ones.

There was apparently at least one scene with Gianni Versace, who unfortunately was murdered between the filming and the release.

And so they cut him off.

Unrelated to the movie.

Unrelated, not because he was in Spice World.

That was not the case of the Spice World kill.

They tracked him down.

Yeah.

And of course, there was a cameo by Gary Glitter, who was brought up on charges between filming and release, and that was cut from the release of the film.

Yeah.

So this, when you put a lot of cameos in your movie, you are dancing on a knife edge.

You don't know what's going to happen.

Okay,

so at this press party, their friend Nicola shows up.

Their collective best friend Nicola shows up.

Still pregnant.

They kind of, they're a little bit too busy to spend time with her, so she ends up leaving and they feel bad.

I feel like I've missed a very important thing.

The Spice Girls at this point have become so popular that they've drawn the negative attention of the

local trade, what the magazine, the date paper.

The tabloid music.

The tabloid.

The tabloid music, yeah.

Where the evil tabloid owner enlists his, what, number one fixer played by Jason Fleming, and they bring in the ultimate paparazzo

named Damien, played by Richard O'Brien from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

And the editor is Barry Humphreys.

Let me explain that.

Wait, who plays the editor?

The editor is Barry Humphreys, better known as Dame Edna, but not being Dame Edna in this.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

So, who's Australian?

They have decided they need to ruin the Spice Girls, and they'll stop at nothing to do it, and all of a sudden it starts raining in the office.

It's kind of great.

And I also love how like capricious this is because it doesn't seem like there's any particular reason they want to ruin the Spice Girls other than like there's a spinning newspaper that with a headline just Spice Girls.

He has as much reason to destroy the Spice Girls as J.

Jonah Jameson has to destroy Spider-Man.

Although he brings

Spice Girls, Spider-Man.

Sometimes words sound alike.

One thing I love about the editor's performance is how much he spits all the time.

It's like he's fucking Denithor chomping on cherry tomatoes.

I love it.

Okay, so me, so that's all kind of going on in the background, and at this press party, they get lured.

Alan Cumming lures them into

some questions for his documentary, one of which involves the Pope.

And Jerry makes a comment about is the Pope Catholic, and that leads to some bad press where they publish a headline that the Spice Girls are questioning whether or not the Pope is Catholic.

And obviously, there's a minor uproar that doesn't seem to affect anyone other than Richard E.

Grant.

Just makes him very stressed out.

Yeah.

Richard E.

Grant, yeah, is very stressed the entire movie.

And I love the fact that he seems to be taking license of, like, okay,

I'm in Spice World.

This means I can fulfill my dream of acting as hard as I ever have.

But he is going for it in a beautiful way.

Yeah, would you say this is a small performance with him?

His name is Richard Enormous Grant.

I read this article where Richard E.

Grant was reminiscing about it that I sent to you guys as well.

And he has so much affection for doing this.

And I was so charmed by how much affection.

And I was thinking about like,

I love...

a thing that I think is very characteristic of British actors where it's like we think of England like having actors having so much training, so much theater in their background but they also just love being like yeah it's a job you're gonna pay me i'll do it yeah and i love that like it's so beautiful dame judy dens i'll be an elemental or whatever in your riddick movie yeah yeah i'll tell riddick how cool he is yeah sure i'll give it 110

and also i do want to point out that richard e grant is feeling stressed out because he's receiving both pressure and kind of strange uh advice cryptic aphorisms yeah from his boss played by Roger Moore, who is stroking a different farm animal in every scene.

There's a scene later on where Roger Moore is giving this cryptic, very calm advice while he bottle feeds a pig, and the pig starts squirming in his hands, and he does not let on for a moment that this is going to bother him, that he has a squirming pig in his hands.

That's a pro.

And it's a pro.

And it's also one of those roles where you're like, I know they shot all of this in one day on one set.

And Roger Moore, like, you know, he probably just walked in, was like, what am I doing?

Carrying a rabbit and then feeding a pig?

Sure, whatever.

They're like, you have to wear a silk robe.

Oh, you're already wearing one?

Okay.

And at the very end of the year.

You brought your one from home?

And then it's just, cheers, fellas, and then back to his life, yeah.

Okay, so after this

snafu about the Pope, they end up flying to Milan to participate in a photo shoot where they bring in a group of scantily clad men and the girls object to it.

So then they put on different outfits on those men and Richard E.

Grant gets to have a good argument with the the Italian director it's fun it's it's a borderline offensive depiction of an Italian

I don't think it's offensive to do an attack like do that but it pays off with men dancing in butless pants so everyone's happy yeah international male catalog uh quality outfits okay so they fly back uh as soon as apparently as soon as they land they end up boarding their tour bus and they their the bathrooms on the bus break down.

So the Milan thing is not related to the Pope thing, right?

It has nothing to do with it, but it feels weird to happen right after.

I wonder if at any point they were like, should we make it explicit that they're doing this show in Milan in order to get back in with the Italian audience after offending people about the Pope?

And they were just like, do we give a shit?

Does this get them over there?

Come on.

So speaking of scenes that I think don't make the most sense, but I still love.

So the bathroom on their bus breaks down.

Bus driver played by Meatloaf.

Will not, he loves the girls, but he won't fix the bathrooms for them.

Yeah, I will do anything for them, but I won't do that.

Huge applause break in the theater.

Yeah, we lost the ball.

We lost our lives.

People were like running around, high-fiving each other.

And if I'm correct, right, this was not the first time Meatloaf played a bus driver in a movie because he played a bus driver in Leap of Faith with Steve Martin, right?

I think that was Meatloaf.

So Meatloaf, he's either

a musician who loves to play bus drivers or the most talented bus driver in the world.

Don't look up his politics.

So

the bathrooms break down.

The girls go running off into the dark woods to use the bathroom.

Of course, at this point, they run into an alien spaceship,

which

lands.

Three aliens get out.

They are clearly there to see the Spice Girls.

Huge Spice Girl fans.

They're huge Spice Girls.

They speak an alien language that the Spice Girls don't understand at first and then do understand perfectly.

How would you describe the appearance of these aliens, Dan?

Uh, they're little, they're little hunched over men, and then they've got a tiny little rubber face in the middle.

Uh-huh.

There's something kind of space ghoulies about them.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

They're, I would say they're slightly aggressive as far as fans go.

Yeah, I think so.

Considering they squeeze, is it Scary Spices boob and then demand Ginger kiss one of them on the lips?

Yeah, it's, I think it's aggressive fan behavior.

Yeah, but the Spice Girls, you know, handle it with a plum.

Yeah, they're pros.

Okay, so the,

you know, Clifford, their manager, is a little concerned about them talking about these aliens they met.

But despite his misgivings, he still has to cancel their morning off, okay?

And at this point, you think there's going to be a big fight that the girls are going to be fighting with Clifford, but nope, they turn around, they're like, no, we'll go back to work.

We don't care.

It's a little bit like, so

the movie is clearly following the pattern of a hard day's Night, where it's like the Beatles are having adventures, they're on the road, they're trying to get away from having to do Beatles stuff.

So there's this band.

They were insects that through surgery were turned into men.

And people were so astounded by the science.

They had mop tops.

They were used to clean up floors.

They kind of sound like the monkeys.

Are they like the monkeys?

They were the British monkeys.

That's what they were known as.

Yeah, so when America invented the monkeys, Britain was like, we got to get in on that.

And they started with the Beatles.

And then the prototype was a bunch of hermits led by a Herman,

but

in that went, like, they're always trying to get away.

And it's as if the Beatles would try to get away for a couple seconds and then be like, no, at heart, we're just rule followers.

We're not troublemakers.

Because the Spice Girls always give in.

Okay, so.

Except for one time.

We'll get to it, Stuart.

So despite their disappointment in their day being canceled, they still go to dance instruction with a special drill sergeant, dance instructor Mr.

Step played by Michael Barrymore.

This was interesting.

Another instance of the Spice World curse hitting a real celebrity.

And it's also interesting to

see a screening of this in England where

there are a lot of these stars who are huge that we're familiar with.

This was very specifically British.

There was a huge reaction from the crowd and I'm like, I don't know what's happening.

I don't know what this is.

I don't know if it's a famous person, famous character, if it's a reference to a real thing that happened in politics.

I don't know, yeah.

Yeah, let's pull up his Wikipedia page.

Oh, wow, there's a long section on controversy.

Reminds me of Norm McDonald's podcast bit where he's learning who Hitler was on the air in real time.

He's like, oh, a decorated veteran of the First World War.

Ooh, I don't like this.

Oh, no, I don't like that.

Okay, so after their dance instead.

But it feels like

this happens,

it's like my wife and I are watching a Marvel movie, and like Star Fox shows up, and I'm like, what?

They put Star Fox in a movie?

And she's like, I don't know what you're talking about.

So after their dance instruction, they have to spend the night in a spooky house.

While they're in bed, the paparazzo, played by Richard O'Brien, sneaks inside, which would be scary, I admit.

Sneaks in through the toilet, right?

Sneaks in through the toilet like an aforementioned ghoul.

Like a ghoul.

Yeah, if Richard O'Brien snuck through my toilet, I'd be scared.

I would fathom to go to the top.

If any human being snuck into my house through the toilet, I'd be at the very least surprised.

Yeah.

And probably scared.

After being scared, I'd be like, you know, I love your work, you know.

Yet follow-up was

really underrated, you know, Rocky Hart follow-up.

And he'd be like, thank you, thank you very much.

Anyway, I think it came up through the the wrong toilet.

So the spooky house scares the girls.

They all end up in the same bed talking about things they're frightened of.

And they're all sharing some concerns about the upcoming big show.

And at this point, Richard O'Brien

records what they say.

They have some more bad press that

they're scared of their upcoming gig.

George Went and Mark McKinney then,

the movie is interspersed with the scenes where George Went and Mark McKinney are pitching the Spice Girls as movie stars to Clifford, who is never interested.

And this time they pitch Spice Force 5, which is another dream sequence where we get to see what the Spice Girls would be like if they were like secret agents, right?

And they all kind of have their own little superpowers.

There's some bits.

A personal favorite is when Ginger Spice goes into a telephone box and transforms into Bob Hoskins.

She she gets in the telephone box, she spins around, Wonder Woman changing costume styles, and turns into Bob Hoskins.

And Bob Hoskins, because he is a consummate thespian, acts dizzy as he walks out of the telephone box.

He's like, tell me, okay, my character was just spinning around.

You got it.

I know how to play this, okay.

And when that happens, of course, I'm like, so her superpower is becoming sexier?

Bob Hoskins.

Okay.

So then they have a little visit with some contest-winning kids who ride around on their bus for a little bit.

They're a little sick of their situation, so they sneak off the bus with these kids, board a nearby speedboat.

This is very funny to me because it was like, I didn't quite see what was so terrible about the situation.

Like the kids were in there, like there's a bunch of candy for the kids, and they're like, this sucks.

We're going to rush off and get on a speedboat and

sing the song

like,

I don't know the lyrics.

You sound just like the Spice Girls.

I sound exactly like the Spice Girls.

There's a, so Scary Spice, she looks out the window and sees the water, and she's like, This is it.

When I say go, go.

And I thought they were going to escape out the window, and they just get off the bus, the regular window

just out the door, past Meatloaf, who's like, is this the scene?

Oh, no, it's later on.

Later on, they take the bus, and Meatloaf goes, My bus, after getting up off the ground for some reason,

I don't know, was he camping out next to the bus?

His body, at nighttime, his body dissolves into the ground.

Okay, so

the

so they escape with the kids.

There's like kind of a boat chase as they sing lollipop over and over.

And then they have to dodge a piece of driftwood.

And some kids and some of the girls get in the water.

It's

a little bit of drama where they're concerned that they might have accidentally drowned some kids.

Posh is mad that her dress got wet.

Posh is upset.

If this movie really had guts, those kids would have drowned.

And then it would have spinning headline would have said, Spice Girls Kill Two Kids.

And then it would move on to the next scene.

The movie Lost Me When They Killed Kids.

Spice World chickened out.

Have the courage of your convictions.

So, of course, this is more bad press because Richard O'Brien catches them in the act of almost killing kids.

All this stress is really getting to Clifford, and at rehearsal, he yells at them, and that leads to the Spice Girls breaking up for kind of reasons.

I'm not 100% sure why.

It's clear why they break up rather than just going on strike.

Like, they're not mad at each other, they're mad at him, but he goes, I think I just broke up the Spice Girls.

And it's like, at worst, you've lost your job.

Like, that's the Spice, the Spice Girls still like each other, you know?

Yeah.

So, this leads to a sequence.

This is, you know, this is where you'd expect with the beginning of the third act or whatever, where the girls are upset, they're in their separate homes,

like staring out the window, holding a football,

lying in the bath,

being scary, whatever they're doing.

And they have a collective...

Baby Spice is just wetting her diapers.

They have a collective flashback to when they were newly, they were not yet stars, and they're at their friend's coffee shop, their friend who is an actor who I recognize, but I don't remember.

He's in a lot of stuff.

He's in a lot of TV, a lot of movies.

Well, I also thought it was funny that this character, they're like, I wonder whatever happened to him, and there's no payoff.

No, whatever.

He's introduced as if he is a character who is vitally important to their past, and then he is discarded.

And it's not like I expected him to come back at Albert Hall.

No, that doesn't happen.

But here's what I like about the sequence.

Okay, other than the fact that I love the idea that there's just like five young ladies trying to make it big

in the music biz.

Like they came up at school together.

They have different accents, but that's okay.

I guess they grew up the same.

They're all having this flashback together, and the movie is like they're all remembering the same thing.

I like to believe they have merged on a psychic level.

They now share one pan-conscious spice mind, and they can call to each other that way, because they do call to each other that way.

Stu, what happens next?

Well, I also, before you get it, I also love this flashback because it shows what good sports they all are, like how tongue-in-cheek the thing is.

Yeah.

Because it posits this world where they were all friends when they were young and they all had their bits when they were young.

And she's like, They're like, let's show you our new song.

And they sing what wannabe?

Well, their friend Nicola, who is there pre-pregnancy, and she pops on.

And dressed like a big Madonna fan, like an 80s-style Madonna fan, fingerless lace gloves, big bow in the hair, all that stuff.

And yeah, they sing, they perform wannabe, it's great.

One thing that I found very charming in all the performances is how generally unchoreographed all the dancers are.

Yes.

The choreography is light.

And it was while I don't spend a lot of time usually listening to Spice Girls music.

I apologize.

It's not a judgment, not a quality judgment.

It's literally that, look, like I said, my women's group at the time was Elastica.

My women's group now is Arashi Gako.

I only have time for one lady's group at a time.

But they are,

it's my choice.

I'm not saying don't listen.

I'm not saying they don't aren't good.

But so I haven't really listened to the Spice Girls' lyrics lyrics much before this, and I love it.

It's like the music is so catchy, and the lyrics have just enough meaning to convince you that something is being said in the song.

And there are times when I'm like, wait a minute, this verse doesn't really make sense, it's the last verse, and it almost feels like it was written, each verse was written by someone else, and they folded the paper over and then handed the next person, or like someone with dementia who forgot what they said in the song before that.

I really like that.

That's poetry, Elliot.

There's poetry.

Your brain fills in the gaps in meaning.

Wow.

So you're saying the Spice Girls are Britain's greatest poets.

I'm saying, Easy E don't come for free.

She's a real lady.

And as for me, well, you'll see.

Slam your body down.

Was that really what you were saying?

That's part of the breakdown to want to be.

Oh, I see, I see, yeah.

So, Dan, what's ziggazig aweing?

If you have to ask, you'll never understand it.

I mean,

I just assumed it was masturbating like this.

Most things are.

So, back to present day.

Flashback over.

We saw them in their early times.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so back to present day, the girls meet up outside of the coffee shop now, closed, and they're like, I wonder what happened to that guy again.

We'll never know.

I wonder what happened to that old bapony-tailed jazz man who used to serve us coffee.

Okay, so they go off to eat chips

by the river.

Yep.

Okay, meanwhile, Clifford.

That is what they call rivers here.

Meanwhile, Clifford is drinking his sorrows away.

He has basically lost his job.

And then his assistant, who up to this point I have not mentioned, Deborah, who is kind of like the grounding agent in this situation,

they get drunk together and presumably hook up, right?

Yeah, that's the implication.

Okay.

I mean, Richard E.

Grant is super charming, I guess.

She says something about hooking up to forget their troubles, and he gives her the creepiest smile in the hit.

Like, Richard E.

Grant briefly becomes a lizard person,

and then it just cuts the next scene.

So, my guess was that they didn't hook up, but maybe they did.

I don't know.

So, they make the decision, the girls make the decision to reach out to their friend Nicola, who's over a week past due, and they all go to a club.

They're like, let's hang out together.

Nicola, let's go down and dance.

And she's like, no, I'll just watch the five of you dance.

That's fine, whatever.

It's not quality time, but I'm not going to cut, you know.

I mean, if she, I mean, as the thing is, if she had danced, it might have caused trouble because the little bit of kind of bobbing that she does, it shakes a baby out of her.

Yeah, so she goes into labor.

So the girls bundle her onto the spice bus, forgetting Meatloaf entirely, and drive to the hospital.

So the bus was outside the club.

Meatloaf seemingly is lying on the ground outside the club.

Yeah, no, that's later on.

They steal the bus

from outside the hospital.

So Meatloaf's just not there.

I forget.

Where was Meatloaf?

I think Meatloaf drives them to the hospital.

Oh, yeah, Meatloaf's there at this point.

That's later on.

Later on.

I got colours.

I'm having trouble remembering all the pieces of the intricate puzzle that is Spice World.

So while at the hospital, they're waiting for Nicola to have the baby.

They don't want to leave, even though it means giving up some of their rehearsal time.

At one point, they get interrupted by a couple whose child is in a coma.

So they...

This scene did not turn the way I thought it was going to turn.

Wait, let's crowdsource this for a moment.

You see a movie, the Spice Girls are in a hospital.

They're told there's a child in a coma.

Can you please help us in some way?

You expect they are going to sing this kid out of their coma, right?

Much as in the movie Break in Two, Electric Boogaloo, where the power of breakdancing brings someone back to life in a hospital.

But Stuart, what happens?

So they go over there and Victoria's like, Cherry, get your boobs out.

And she's like, his no, and his eyes aren't even open.

Kid immediately wakes up from his coma.

She's got resurrection boobs.

Yeah, I get it.

Just the promise wakes the kid up.

So Nicola has the baby.

They, of course, say, now that's real girl power.

Everyone gives high fives.

I mean, I do like, because it literally is the, that is the power that women have, that no one else has, yeah.

So creation of life.

Whereas men, all men can do is hang around waiting for something to happen.

And every now and then someone goes like, you're fine, you're okay, right?

Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Guys, you've never been there when your loved one is having a child.

That feeling of, but I'm supposed to be the star of the show.

Hold on a second.

Where's my spotlight?

And then you're trying to make a baby come out of you and it's not happening, you know?

No, I have two cats.

Yeah.

Elliot, you were at the bar passing out cigars, right, when your kids were being born?

Yeah, yeah,

I was in the bar passing out cigars.

But that was just because that was my job at the time.

I was a cigarette girl at a club.

I had a tray, and I was going, cigars, cigarettes, and so I was like, hey, hey, Elliot, you're old ladies giving birth to the baby.

And I took off my little round hat and my tray tray and I said, gotta go, fellas.

And then I ran off.

That's the thing.

American healthcare is so bad, he needed to work an extra job.

So

around now,

Clifford is getting pitched a Spice Girls movie, which is also strange because at this point, he has to assume he lost his job.

And they are pitching.

At this point, Mark McKinney is pitching what is happening on screen.

Yes.

So we see the Spice Girls catch Richard O'Brien in the act of trying to take paparazzi photos.

He gets bonked on the head and he changes his evil ways.

It's actually pretty fun.

I really enjoy this performance.

Another scene where you expect him to be changed by the power of music, the thing the Spice Girls do, but instead it's a short chase through the hall of a hospital and then he's like, you know what?

I shouldn't do this anymore.

And then we learn that he goes on to turn around and betray his former employers.

Yes.

They then take the Spice bus to race to Albert Hall so they can make it in time for their performance.

We get some thrills and chills.

The girls end up on top of the bus.

Victoria's driving, having abandoned meatloaf on the side of the road.

Chills?

Yeah, that's chilling.

They find a bomb under the bus.

There's a very good stunt where the bus flies over an opening bridge.

That is a very funny joke.

He's like, the bridge is opening.

The bus is going to go over.

Jump over it.

And Richie Grant goes, or George Wenton goes, that sounds expensive.

And then they cut to it, and it is a toy bus going, stop motion going over like a toy bridge.

And this all leads up to perhaps the best joke in the movie, where like

the fantasy that is being spun of this possible Spice Girls movie that happens to coincide with the actual reality, like fully coincides.

Where he's like, and then they burst through the door and they all turn to the door as if they expect the Spice Girls to burst through.

And Richard E.

Grant, after a moment's pause, grabs Mark McKinney by the throat and goes, You lied to me!

Yeah, he straight arms him in like a movie, like a Marvel villain way.

It's amazing.

So they're in despair.

The girls haven't shown up yet.

Richard E.

Grant spins a fantasy where he will then have the band start up, go out on stage, and then hang himself.

He goes, this is another.

After this, the movie at this point is so, like,

they'll do anything.

So

the choking moment is really funny.

And then he goes, goes, he's talking to Alan Cumming, right?

And he goes, I'll simply go out there and have the band start up and I will come out on stage and then he pulls out a noose and goes and kill myself

and it's so

the way he talks about that is so funny he's talking about how much he hates the spice girls of course at this point they burst in and he's like I love them that is and that is a that I was gonna say that joke is a rough joke that's like a hard-edged joke for a movie that is just exploiting the existence of a pop group that that young girls particularly like but the movie still didn't have the guts to kill those two kids earlier.

So

on your deathbed, Ellie will be like, oh, Spice World should have killed those two children.

And then I'll be like, so much fried chicken I didn't get to eat.

So the girls get there in time.

They come out, they perform, what, Spice Up Your Life.

It's great.

Everybody's loving it.

Everybody's,

you know, the world is a better place.

And the world is noticeably more spiced up.

And then we have some post-credit stuff where where

it's like filming the Spice Girls movie, the Spice Girls movie.

It's kind of like behind-the-scenes footage.

And you see, the Spice Girls are talking to people.

Richard E.

Grant is on the phone with his agent asking if his career is going to survive this movie.

And

they're just like.

They're like staring at the audience through the camera, calling out people.

It's great.

They're doing the same bit that Daffy Duck does in the credits of Gremlins 2, where they're like, why are you still around?

The movie's over.

Get out of here.

But

from that Richard E.

Grant article that I cited before, the other thing I really loved was

the interviewers like, in the end of the movie, you're shown on the phone with your agent saying, will this kill my career?

Like, what did your agent think of you being in the Spice World movie?

And he said, well, my agent was very money focused.

So

when he saw how much money I was being paid, we were all very happy.

But the movie is not really over yet because, right, they say, what is the audience waiting for?

Uh-oh, maybe that bomb that we found, and then it explodes off camera, right?

Yeah, it's crazy.

End of movie.

End of movie.

The crowd goes crazy.

It's amazing.

This screening we were at, they were tearing the seats out.

They ripped the screen down.

It was amazing.

Bottles were being thrown through the air.

That movie gave us everything.

All the joy it brings.

This I swear.

So that was the summary of the movie, Dan.

Can we do, what's the next part?

Final judgments?

Yeah, final judgments.

I think we tipped our hand, but we talk about whether there's a good, good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie kind of liked.

Like, I liked the movie okay before I thought it was kind of, I did a total 180.

I'm like, this movie plays.

Like,

especially in a crowd, it was so much fun to watch it.

Like, so many laughs, applause breaks.

Yeah, two thumbs up is the movie I like.

Yeah.

No kinda involved.

I liked it.

Movie I liked also, but I'm glad I saw it the first, the way I saw it, like Dan says, with an audience that is super into it.

But it makes me, I genuinely am am watching it, I was like, oh, so the reviewers didn't realize this is a funny movie?

Like, I don't know,

because it's a very funny movie.

It's really funny.

It is much funnier than you expect from the screenwriter of from Justin Takelli.

So, you know.

If you need a laugh and you're on the go, try S-T-O-P-P-O-D-C-A-S-T-I.

Hmm.

Are you trying to put the name of the podcast there?

Yeah, I'm trying to spell it, but it's tricky.

Let me give it a try.

Okay.

If you need a laugh and you're on the go, call S-T-O-P-P-B-A-D.

Ah, it'll never fit.

No, it will.

Let me try.

If you need a laugh and you're on the go, try S-T-O-P-P-P-D-C-O-O.

Ah!

We are so close.

Stop podcasting yourself.

A podcast from maximumfun.org.

If you need a laugh and you're on the go.

You can't really know if your own show is any good.

So I asked my kids about ours.

Is Jordan Jesse Go a good show?

No, definitely not.

It's really bad.

I would say out of 10, maybe like a 4 out of 10.

It's just really boring.

Yeah, zero.

Subscribe to Jordan Jesse Go, a comedy show for grown-ups.

Hey, Dan here, breaking in for some quick plugs.

Tonight, on this episode's day of release, January the 4th, we will be discussing Ski School 2 on Flop TV,

which airs, of course, at 6 p.m.

Pacific, 9 Eastern.

That's live when it airs.

If you want to see us and chat along with other viewers, tickets at theflophouse.simpletics.com.

I'll be handling the summary for this episode.

I believe Stuart will be doing the presentation and Elliot will handle the special report.

And of course,

you know, this movie,

Ski School 2, after Hot Dog the Movie Last Year, will will fill the important ski-based sex comedy slot in our rundown.

We hope to see you there.

And remember that season pass holders for Flop TV can watch all of the shows on demand until the end of February.

Tickets again at theflophouse.simpletakes.com, $7 per show, or get a season pass and pay only $35 for six shows.

Also, in a mere 15 days, we'll be back in San Francisco at San Francisco Sketchfest.

On Sunday, January 19, we'll be at Cobb's Comedy Club at 7 p.m.

discussing Cutthroat Island.

I am recording this ad break a little ahead of time because of the holidays, but there are probably still tickets available if you want to come see us in person.

Go to sfsketchfest.com for tickets.

And while I've got you here, please go to flophousepodcast.com and sign up for our newsletter, flop secrets which is the best way to keep up on all of our appearances side projects whatever and to get some extra content just for fun i drew a little uh holiday uh floppy holidays card for all the listeners um that's that's art straight from me to you thank you for listening to us just plug your email into the newsletter field on our website at flophousepodcast.com and you'll get all of the updates every other week.

And now, back to our Oxford Spice World show.

Checking the time.

Woo!

Okay.

Yeah, we, we, we.

Dan, don't start checking your mail.

What do you.

We're running a little late, so yet again, I'm going to cap the number of

questions.

Dan, you're just looking at your texts now.

What are you doing?

The first five questions.

Dan, don't start playing Candy Crush.

What are you doing?

Run to the center.

We're going to ask some questions.

Okay.

Yeah, we're gonna ask some questions.

There's only a limited amount of time because there's a bomb under the bus.

Just kidding, there isn't really.

Hello, hello.

Hey,

Daniel Lastner withheld.

So when the movie came out, I was like seven, eight years old.

And I distinctly remember that everyone...

Must be nice.

Salting his youth in front of us.

Sorry.

Everyone had to pick a spice persona.

My sister was, I think, sporty spice just because she kind of looked like it.

and so I'm wondering have you ever have you given this any thought you know who's who which of us which yeah which spice what's our spice yeah the problem we were so this is this was a big topic of conversation backstage it was

who is what spice the problem is Stuart absorbs a lot of the spice personalities

He's the baby, he's sporty, he's a little scary.

I don't know, Ginger

seems to be really interested in inane facts and things.

I feel like

that doesn't feel natural for character, but I'll take it.

I looked into this originally.

Elliot often calls me baby boy Dan McCoy.

And my children call you that, which I find adorable.

I'm a little bit posh, a little bit sporty.

No, I'm all things.

A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll.

Okay.

I guess that doesn't answer your question.

Maybe to add, so ginger spice was originally meant to be sexy spice, but they changed it, so I guess you also have that covered, right?

Oh,

bless your heart.

Well, when they're just encouraging him.

When they have a spice girl who knows her shit about dinosaurs, I'll be that one.

Because that's something Stuart showed to us before this show.

He does not know.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'll give you dinosaur spice.

That'd be pretty fun.

That sounds delicious.

It does.

I've always wondered, dinosaurs, are they red meat?

Because they're big, or are they white meat?

Because they're chickens?

Yeah.

We'll never know.

We'll never know, unfortunately.

Was that a question for me?

Yeah, this is the part where we ask you questions.

Yeah.

6'3 and single meal.

You said something at the start about mushrooms.

Can we talk later, Hon?

I mean, I have a connection, but they live in, you know.

That's too far.

Never mind.

Mike, last name withheld.

I was actually going to ask about what your spice names would be as well, but I'll I'll pivot.

I completely forgot that Richard O'Brien and Michael Barrymore were in this film.

Some strike-it-lucky fans at the back.

When I was growing up, they were both like really big game show hosts before I knew about Rocky Horror or anything else.

Apart from them and Bob Barker, are there any other game show hosts in films that have done really well that you enjoyed?

Game show hosts in films.

I mean, are there game shows we want to see in films?

What's the name of the film?

I mean, scrambling for something.

Okay, so that's, yeah, that was a good pivot.

That was a solid pivot.

Okay.

Game show host, I want to say, I don't know of any other game show host.

I feel like...

There's the Gong Show movie.

Yeah, but that's about a game show host.

He's not in it, you know.

So that the, but I wonder if, no, but you know what?

So Alex Trebek was in the video for I Lost on Jeopardy, right?

The Weird Al song.

Is that a movie?

It's not a movie.

Also, the X-Files episode he showed up in is not a movie.

No, that's not a movie either.

But Drew Carey, he was on, he's the host of Prices Right Now, and he was also on Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Is that a movie?

No.

None of these are movies, Stewart.

Steve Harvey was in the Steve Harvey show.

Is that a movie?

Steve Harvey is in the original Kings of Comedy, which is a movie.

I mean, I feel like Steve Harvey is such like a big, crazy personality.

And like,

that like, what was it, Miss America or Miss Universe contest that he misread?

Like, I love that.

He's crazy.

He must have been in a movie at some point.

There's got to be one.

Harvey, the movie.

Harvey.

Yeah, it was just a movie Harvey.

This guy, Jim and Jimmy Stewart, thinks that Steve Harvey is walking around with him all the time.

There's definitely going to be a movie made about, is it Dana Carey's experience at Fish a couple of weeks ago, was it?

I don't know if you saw anything about that.

Wait, say again?

What's his name?

The Price is Wright host.

Drew Carey?

Drew Carey.

He went to see Fish at the Sphere a couple of weeks ago.

You've not seen anything about that.

I need to see that movie.

I won't hear anything against Drew Carey.

You know why?

Because when our union was on strike last year, he spent a a lot of money on food for us, which was amazing.

It was great.

He was like,

he said, these two restaurants, I'll cover any Writers' Guild members bill.

And then afterwards, he was like, I didn't think it was going to be that expensive.

Very nice, still.

Yeah.

Hey, floppers, number one, dinosaurs.

Cool.

Oh, cool.

Sorry, hey floppers, high peaches.

Sorry.

So the Spice Girls were a massively influential girl band.

A massively influential boy band was one direction.

When they split up, Harry Styles had a fantastic career as man in boat, son of Thanos.

And if the Spice Girls split up, brother of Thanos.

Sorry.

Let's, okay, you know, it's time to get real.

Right, okay, okay.

Let's talk about this.

Okay, there's a Lars also known as the Spanish.

Elliot, Elliot, Elliot, we got to get out of here at some point.

Okay, baby Thanos.

If the Spice Girls split up, which of those do you think would be an effective Marvel character?

And who would they play?

Oh, yeah.

Let's see.

Who would be a good one for them?

Hmm.

Trying not to be racist in my girls for Scary Spice.

I feel like Posh could be like an Emma Frost, like aloof.

Yeah, for sure.

She could be Emma Frost.

And Ginger Spice is like a girl.

I mean, Ginger Spice is kind of a rogue type.

I can see her being rogue.

Let's think of some non-X-Men characters, okay, everybody?

They're not making those movies right now.

That's a cartoon show.

What are the other Spice Girls?

Let's see.

Baby Spice.

Donner, Blitzen.

Blitzen Spice.

Sporty Spice.

I gotta say, this is not related, but when they're dressing up as each other and Sporty is dressing up as posh, I'm like, she looks a lot like Lady Gaga,

who is not a Marvel character.

But if she was...

Lady Gaga is a DC character.

She's in the New Joker movie.

Oh, yeah, you're right.

I think,

yeah, that's a good question because I wish I knew the Spice Girls as well as I know the Marvel characters.

Obviously, I don't really wish that.

This is a wish just for this question.

Because the Marvel characters live inside my brain all the time.

And I think if the Spice Girls lived inside my brain all the time, I'd never stop dancing, you know?

I wouldn't get any work done.

I think that answers the question.

That's fine.

Thank you very much.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll think about this for a long time now.

Danny, last name with Nail?

Not really.

My last name is I.

You told us the secret.

Now we have control over him.

So, this is probably an obvious comparison, but

looking at Baby Spice's hairdo and the kind of

anarchic feminine energy of the movie and the explosion at the end, I was reminded of Vera Kitilova's Czech new wave film Daisies.

Not the first person on this trip to talk to me about it being like Daisies.

My wife said this last time.

So, I guess what other

sort of

arty serious films have that kind of shit posting energy?

Interesting.

I mean like if you look at the two movies Dolly and Bunuel made together,

Un Shannon DeLu and Laj Dor, it's very similar where it's like, this is art, by the way, fuck you.

Like we're gonna do crazy things.

And let's see, there must be other ones like that, where it's just like

they are,

I mean there's a lot of movies, a lot of artsy movies where they're like assaulting you.

And I feel like the Spice Girls is not assaulting you so much as like grabbing your hand and being like, let's run away somewhere together, you know?

Spice Girl, like,

it's like us,

it's like a slumber party was turned into a movie, kind of.

It's like if at the end of the Spice Girls, like, summer at summer camp, they did a skit show about being Spice Girls.

Which is part of what's charming about it.

But it's something that you do.

It's interesting that

there's like a,

it's not a a pole-to-pole thing, but a continuous circle where on one side is art and on the other side is trash.

And if you go in either direction far enough, you go back around to the other one.

And so, the what?

Yeah, exactly.

And a movie like this, which is like, let's be honest with ourselves.

A Spice Girls movie made at the height of their fame with a script that seems, let's charitably say, thrown together.

Like, it should be, like, it should be kind of trivial throwaway stuff the same way that like other movies based on bands or trying to exploit a band's brief popularity usually are but instead they like they're like unlike like say cool as ice or something that still manages to be

i wouldn't hear anything bad against cool as ice either but uh the the one david lynch movie david lynch didn't direct but but but it's but it's like if you put if you it's so this i'll get personal for a second my son recently had a video assignment for school and he was like oh i don't want to do this i hate doing work blah blah blah i'm going to be a professional baseball player anyway so why do i have to do this and

I was like, well, okay.

Kids still want to be professional athletes.

I thought they just wanted to be like YouTubers.

Well, if you could be a professional athlete with a podcast or a YouTube channel, I think that's the sweet spot.

But I was like, what you need to do is have fun with this.

Like, make this something that's fun, and then you're going to do something really good.

And it's going to be better than if you just do the assignment.

And I feel like the Spice World, they were like, let's have fun with this.

Like, let's not do the minimum.

Like, let's have fun.

And any, whether it's an art movie or a junk movie, if the people are making it are not one of those things where it's like we had a blast on the set and you watch the movie you're like what the hell is this but if they're like in the creation of this thing let's have fun changing ourselves what we're doing we didn't even talk about the like fantasy sequence where hugh lorry plays poirot and he's like

baby spice been murdering people

and she's got bullet bandoliers all over her and she's holding an axe in her hand or like with stephen fry as the judge who sentences them to be to being at the bottom of the charts because their new song isn't very good like everyone's having fun in a in a good way.

They're having fun in that way of like, if I'm doing this thing, I'm going to do it to the utmost.

And like, that's when art comes out, guys.

That's when you make art.

I have to be, you know, bad spice right now and move us along.

Okay.

Bad cop spice.

Bad cop spice.

Hi, yeah.

My name is Colin.

I hope you don't mind like a very short 1.5 question.

Just the first bit is...

Like the two movies you guys talked about, Spice World and The Avengers, the credit sequence really emblematically represents the movies of Avengers being an absolutely horrendous trip of spirals and upsetting imagery.

And then of Spice World, you know, the title sequence really setting up, you know, who the girls are.

I was wondering if there's any credit sequences that you guys really love and like really set the movie into a good spin.

And second part, this is just for Dan.

I'm really sorry to stalk you, but you've got a list on Letterbox that is 291 movies, and the title is Asploitation.

And

it features some classics of cruising and female trouble.

But what's up with that, my dude?

I have an explanation.

The first question, let's set it aside.

We don't need to talk about credit singles.

Yeah, we don't.

Yeah, I don't think I have.

The first question

was to get in the door.

Let's go where the money is.

I have an explanation that is not necessarily...

You mean an explanation?

An explanation that's not necessarily an excuse, which is I follow an Instagram account called Asploitation

that posts funny ass-related movie clients.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just joke.

It's just joke.

It's a funny joke.

And they have a Letterboxd list that I cloned.

So it's not, I didn't compile it, I'm just an appreciator of it.

I love that Dan's explanation was basically, yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

Dan,

I need to spend more time on Letterboxd so I can learn your secrets.

Hello, Tobias, last name of Held.

So this was a perfect

movie that really represented what it actually means to be in a you know, in a band, really accurately, perfectly.

I just wondered if there were any similarly accurate depictions of your own professional careers that you can think of in films?

Dan and I were talking yesterday about an American TV show called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

This is a show, as Dan's wife Audrey said, if you only know comedy writers, you would think this was the most popular television show in the history of the United States.

It ended for one season.

It is about a Saturday Night Live TV show, and it is so incredibly inaccurate in every detail.

We've been talking about it for years.

Comedy writers love this show because it's so bad.

It gets every single thing wrong.

So it's the precise opposite of the question

you are asking.

So you buy the premise that the Spice World is a great red, it really shows you what it's like to be in a band.

Sure, sure.

But the weird thing is, like, as silly as Spice World is,

I watched it thinking, like, this kind of reminds me of being in a podcast with my friends because we do travel together.

We're all the Spice Girls.

And we have to.

Meatloaf drives our bus, his ghosts, yeah.

It captures, like,

like, we'd be friends anyway, but it captures the enforced closeness of touring together in a way that I enjoyed.

So my answer is spice movies.

I would say the movie Cocktail starring Tom Cruise and Brian Brown is not very accurate

to being a bartender.

I would say the most accurate movie to being a bartender is still Darren Arnofsky's mother, the movie

where she's like in this house and like people just keep coming in.

They're like sitting on things and breaking shit.

And you're like,

God damn it.

That scene where she's like, please don't sit on the sink, it's fragile.

And they get off, and every time she turns around, they hop back on it.

That's the scariest scene in the history of filmmaking.

That is what being a bartender is like.

That is my bartending stress dreams.

Yeah, so that's that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I believe that the name of that movie is Mudo!

Hi, my name's Alex Lastwell.

Nast Name With Health.

And this isn't Spice Girl related, but it is a question I've wanted to ask you guys for ages because you are Muppet experts.

Dan is, yeah.

And I love all the Muppets, but one of my favorite types of Muppets is one that I would describe as, and I want to make this term official, a goober.

And a goober is something that is not one of the human-type Muppets, is not one of the discernible

animal types.

I would put like Gonzo in that, as well as like the little guy in Muppets Christmas Carol, where it's on the screen for like two seconds, and I pause every single time, watch that film, it's like a little eee!

But if you were to say what your favorite goober was that wasn't a Muppet, what would you say?

I don't know if it's my favorite, but the one that immediately comes to mind is like, there are like those Muppets that are kind of like pink slinkies, basically.

Uh-huh.

And then at the end of the scenario, as happens with a lot of

Muppet things,

it blasts the other one off the screen.

Like so many Muppet sketches and explosions.

They're like, well, it's done now.

Something will blow up.

I remember

Spice World.

Reading an interview.

Remembering an interview with Frank Oz, I think, where he's like, yeah, pretty much if we didn't want to end the thing, then they either blew up or one of them ate the other one.

I'm going to stretch the rules, because it's not an official question on a government document or something like that.

But Jim Henson was involved in developing these at some point.

I'm going to say, in Return of the Jedi, there's that little guy who zaps his tongue out and eats another thing and then burps.

And it's such a funny

moment to include what?

Yeah.

He rules it.

I mean, he's the second best character in Turn of the Jedi after Salacious Crumb, of course.

He is a goober.

Salacious Crumb is a goober.

Superstar goober, yeah.

But I love that they took the time to do it because it's one of those things like a lot of work went into that.

And it's on screen for just a moment.

It doesn't matter to the plot.

It's just a silly thing to have happened.

But it makes you feel like you are on a world where silly things happen.

I just love how that burp echoes.

It's like, damn.

What's that guy's been drinking?

Thank you.

Thank you.

These are good questions.

This is a great audience and good questions.

We really appreciate you coming out tonight when you could be doing other stuff, I guess.

You know, England, it's full of late-night towns, places people hang out really late at night and do stuff at night.

Yeah.

Like Batman does stuff.

Is Batman a good job?

We got one more question.

It's all right.

You can let him go.

I don't want to anger the venue.

So Colcheck the Night Nightstalker.

That was in England then, right?

Okay, yes, that's the question.

I'm just irritating Dan now, yeah?

Hi, yeah, James, last name withheld.

Uh, before we came out, I read the Wikipedia article on Spice World, which is surprisingly long, mostly because of the cast list.

And it did say on there that there is plans to do a sequel, which is going to be animated, and they're all going to be superheroes.

So, my question is, if this does happen, what powers do you think they'll have?

And will you be disappointed if one of them isn't turning into Bob Hoskins

I mean I would definitely be disappointed if Ginger's Power was not turning into Bob Hoskins yeah

I love it

man

so scary spice is scary

So Scary Spice, she's got like a scary, she's like the shadow.

She's got like a voice that can strike fear into people's hearts.

Because the instinct is to go physical.

She beats people up.

No, it's all mental.

It's all vocal.

And baby's power is she can hide inside of people's stomachs yeah

for up to nine months at a time

not technically a stomach you know but if that and uh let's see

wait really

but baby's not in a in the mother's stomach no no well we'll talk about this later steward they should have taught you this in school but okay let's see uh posh spice i mean she you could go the batman route she's super rich she buys herself all sorts of fancy stuff iron man suit or something Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I mean.

Ginger can combine with honey and lemon to soothe people's throats.

That's true.

And just leave Sporty, who I guess.

No, no, telepathy can fly.

No, Sporty Spice has fire powers, Stuart.

Fire powers.

Because then she can do flips

and leave fire footprints behind.

I know I said we got to get out of here, but why does fire powers lead to flips?

No, no.

The firepowers don't lead to flips.

She can do the flips already.

She's Sporty Spice.

and she leaves fire footprints behind, and she flips and kicks the guy in the face, and his face catches on fire.

It all checks out.

I can't argue with that.

No, actually, that's pretty well thought out.

I like it.

Thank you so much.

I just want to say one last thing.

Thank you.

I won't even say it.

Forget it.

So much for having us.

Thank you.

This has been a dream.

We've always wanted to come over here, and you guys have been so lovely.

We hope to come back someday, but until then, I have been Dan McCoy.

I've been Stuart Wellington.

And I will always be Elliot Kalen, no matter how hard I try.

Thank you very much for being here.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for coming out and not going to see Furiosa tonight.

I know that's a sacrifice that we're all making.

Does that open the same night here as it does in the United States?

I think so.

I don't know.

Just Just for the assumption of my joke, just go along with it.

I'm sorry, sorry.

Yes, and me for a change.

That's not what we do, Stewart.

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