Ep.#461 - An Easter Bunny Puppy

On this episode, we discuss an Easter Bunny Puppy.

I thought we were discussing a movie, but I guess we're discussing a puppy.

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flop House.

I'm Dan McCoy.

Hey, Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington.

Hey, Stuart Wellington and Dan McCoy.

I'm Elliot Kalen.

That's my name.

Thanks.

We've all successfully set our own names.

But for how long?

Time for a break.

Time for a union-mandated break.

Yeah, we earned it.

We earned this.

Time for me to slide down that Bronosaurus.

Wait time, boys.

Do you think that Bronosaurus eventually went to Mr.

Slate and was like, I got to file a harassment claim against Fred Flintstone?

He's always running his feet along my tail.

I have so much back chafing.

Because you know, those fucking feet are so calloused, right?

Oh, yeah, he uses them to drive in that car.

He's like fucking catcher's mitts.

Yeah.

Well, this isn't a Flynnstone's foot fetish

podcast.

This is a podcast.

Could be if we got our own.

A prize, boys.

Yeah, what a dream that would be.

But instead, we're stuck talking about movies that have been either critical or commercial flops.

Or in the case of this movie, I don't think anyone bothered reviewing it.

That's because we're...

And I don't believe it was ever released in theaters.

I assume

this was just kind of in the middle of the night, like a toxic waste barrel just dumped onto America's streaming services.

I'm not a bad judge already.

Yeah, you're right.

This is a sad judge.

It might be great.

This is, of course, Small Temper, or as some say smallvember where we watch

wait which one will i say i don't even remember

reminded you guys this uh this small vember really reminded me why i

wish this podcast was always small

yeah i mean like in general we try and uh not as we say punch down to uh movies that people weren't gonna care about anyway here's the problem here's the problem over the years that we've been doing this podcast we've become such media titans that every movie is punching down for us now.

That's true.

Yeah, we're also like

if we were only watching these super pure, uncut, weirdo movies from Small Vember, I feel like we'd get kind of desensitized and like nothing would make give us joy.

No, I think what we would watch nothing but these and then one day we would go into a movie theater and watch a big budget movie and it would be the greatest movie we've ever seen.

And it'd also be terrible.

We'd go in and see like

just a piece of junk and we'd be like, oh my God, it's so amazing.

Look at the craft that that went into this.

This must be the greatest movie ever made.

So I think we would just risk destabilizing our compasses.

Scenes end at a natural conclusion as opposed to just petering out or not.

Where's the 20-second long establishing shot of a stream that has nothing to do with the plot or the action of the movie?

Where's the master shot of the outside of the house that occurs in the middle of a scene that you then cut back to?

None of these performers seem to have noticeably had laryngitis throughout most of the shoot.

Interesting.

Yeah,

we got to keep it to one month as a treat for ourselves.

I think that's really it.

But yes, we watched an Easter business.

This is the opposite of No Nut November, I guess, where it's like

extra orgasm September.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Non-stop nut September.

Don't be too much.

Oh, man.

It's too much.

Jism on everything.

Damn.

No, I've been after that far.

Pineapple juice and a lot of water.

And all the people

nutting.

I'm sitting here peacefully.

For the children listening, David, that we were talking about actual tree nuts, walnuts, things like that.

This is how you talk about it.

Innuendo, Dan.

Come on.

Innuendo, yes.

Not outuendo.

You used out nuendo, Dan.

Yeah.

This is, of course, another film by

David DeCato.

Well, I mean, the director's trademarks are all over it, to be frank.

I just like the way it's almost like everyone's familiar.

Yeah, everyone knows it.

Well, so

long time listeners may remember we discussed a talking cat.

So said because it has an interabang with either two bangs or two interos.

I can't remember which at the end of it.

We'll let the philosophers argue it out over the centuries.

Yeah.

And in the same year, I believe, he also made a movie about an Easter bunny puppy.

That was

the one thing that I didn't like was finding out how this movie came around at the same time.

So I'm like, wait a minute, we're doing a small member movie that's like 13 years old.

What are we doing?

12 years old?

What we're doing is statute of limitations.

Exactly.

What we're doing is I saw this movie

with my bad movie watching crew that I watch movies with outside of the floppy.

It's just that you and a bunch of bruisers that kind of like rampage through a town watching bad movies.

Like a wild one, you know.

But it was so special that I knew that I needed to share with you two fellows.

I love that Dan's the kind of sicko who has multiple bad movie viewing crews.

Yeah, I mean, I

duck out about half the time these days because there is a limit.

Yeah.

Well, you know, if you, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.

So

true.

So true.

Elliot, I believe you're trying to talk about it.

We're going to be doing a summary for this one.

This is, I mean.

So Dan and I watched this together.

We plopped down on the couch and watched it together because we figured this would be a special one to enjoy as friends.

And you know what?

It was great.

I wish I could have joined you, especially for the five-minute Easter egg dying montage.

Was it only five minutes?

Why don't we go back and climb?

I don't know.

I actually timed it.

But my timing disagrees with, I think, with the IMDb trivia mention of it.

But we'll get to that.

We'll get to that.

So an Easter Bunny Puppy, as Dan said, this is another from the studio of David Dakota.

He directed, he didn't write this one, I don't think.

Oh, no, he doesn't write them.

He just directs them, right?

But I don't think he's the credited director.

I think they credited someone else, but that's fine.

The logo opens, of course, for fun family features.

This is neither fun nor a feature.

And the opening titles are stock photos of dogs above an endlessly repeating parade of rolling CGI Easter eggs.

Did you guys...

This is one of a couple of times in the movie, Dan and Stu, where I have to admit I broke the rules and hit that 10-second skip button quite a bit so that I didn't have to sit through the entire endless repetitive parade of Easter eggs.

That's the whole thing, my friend.

We were enjoying the looped music.

Now, the movie.

I thought it was good.

The movie begins, as all great movies do, with a not full frame, like it doesn't actually fill the whole frame image of the movie's own poster thumbnail.

So it's like, if you clicked on this on Tubi and then the movie started, you'd be like, wait a minute, am I looking at the Tubi screen again?

And there's a little VO over it.

There's a kid that's talking, but we're going to find out it's actually a dog.

This is Russ the dog.

He says, Hey, have you ever heard of this story of the Easter Bunny puppy?

Well, I'll tell you, that puppy on the poster, he's not even in the movie.

That's not the Easter bunny puppy.

I'm a dog.

For the next 90 minutes, you're going to be able to hear my thoughts through telepathy, but my owners and humans can't hear my thoughts, only you.

And I'm like, this movie is setting up its rules hard.

I love way in on its rules.

Like, it's already being like, okay, fuck you, internet database goofsters.

Like, these are not going to be goofs.

Like, I'm telling you, like, this is, yes, this isn't the same puppy.

That's why we know.

And also, don't be like, why do we hear the dog's voice?

But nobody else hears it.

Look, these are Garfield rules.

Are you not familiar with Garfield, you idiots?

You know, but Russ has a lot of attitude.

Russ is a dog with a lot of attitude, but it's also a kid's voice.

So it's very funny when a kid is mispronouncing words or like slowly reading through words, but with attitude.

Uh-huh.

We shot, start of course.

Very, very Bart Simpson.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

You know, Bark Simpson, if you will.

Oh, my God.

I will.

There's an overhead shot.

Yeah, you got to.

These days, you got to.

Can't be too careful.

Overhead shot.

Jesus.

No,

I was saying California is a two, is a, is a, you need permission to for pun.

It's one of those states.

It's a double permission state.

So

overhead shot of some excurbs and then a long shot of a beach.

So

does this movie take place, the house they're in, is that at the beach or is it in an exurb far from the beach?

Because we get kind of competing establishing shots of where we're located.

Later, they go up to the woods, of course, and we see a stream a lot of times.

But where is this house other than Southern California?

Where is this house located?

I don't know.

I mean,

does that coastline look like Southern California?

No, it does not.

It does not look like California.

It looks like a Caribbean beach.

It looks like a Caribbean beach.

Yeah, exactly.

The beaches in Southern California don't tend to have palm trees on the sand and coconuts everywhere.

Yeah.

So Russ, he introduced himself to us.

He's a dog.

What kind of dog is he?

A corgi, yeah.

A corgi?

Okay.

He does not.

I can't tell because he's swinging that fat ass all over the place.

I couldn't tell because I'm like, the queen of England is not here.

So I guess it's not a corgi, but Russ is a corgi.

He's real smug.

He lives in a mansion.

He is owned by his human, Jennifer Diamond.

Okay.

This is the same mansion from A Talking Cat.

This is the same mansion from The Talking Cat.

His owner, Jennifer, is also from A Talking Cat.

Although this is the actress Christine DeBell, who Dan would know best from Alice in Wonderland, an X-rated musical from 1976.

I did, in fact, he did inform Stewart, was like, she's from A Talking Cat, right?

And then he looked up some other thing that she was in.

I'm like, yeah, and the X-rated Alice in Wonderland.

Yeah, she's in fucking meatballs.

And she's in meatballs.

So my joke about Dan being a perv was actually not a joke, but an accurate reporting.

Yeah.

I mean, I have not actually seen that movie.

I just am aware.

Okay.

So you're

more of an intellectual perv.

When it comes to Alice in Wonderland Porn, you're more of a three girls fan.

I don't know what that is.

Wasn't that the Lost Girls?

Lost Girls.

That Alan Moore.

Oh, no.

Dan doesn't want us to talk about that.

No, no.

The one Alan Moore work where I'm like, I think I am not going to read this.

Yeah, let's do a skip on this one.

Sure.

Let's do a little skip.

You know what?

I think I'm going to use my hall pass on not reading this one, Alan.

And maybe I'll just read

Jerusalem again, see if I can get through it.

So good luck.

Jennifer Diamond, she is a mystery writer.

We watch her dictating the end of a mystery novel into a tape recorder for a long time.

She is dictating paragraphs of this novel into a tape recorder.

You can tell this is a big budget movie because this writer, of course, is using one of those special laptops that has duct tape over the Apple logo.

Yes, that's a special writer's only laptop.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's how you know that this is a high-class production.

Russ then introduced us to Jennifer's teen daughter, Lucy, who is also in A Talking Cat.

Oh, yeah.

She has a crush on Jake,

the neighbor boy who just moved in next door.

Let me guess, he was in a talking cat.

And who was also in a talk?

I think he was he?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Maybe he was.

I don't remember.

And Jennifer warns Lucy, do not trust men.

I don't know who you're fighting.

You were thinking of Eric Roberts.

Jake is not Eric Roberts.

No, no, he's not.

Yeah.

Russ finally gets around to saying, oh, hey, by the way, there's this Easter Bunny puppy story.

I guess I'll tell it to you now.

But first, there's some more beach and house exterior shots.

Yeah, Jake escaped A Talking Cat.

He was not.

so the uh

what Jennifer Diamond, the writer, while she's dictating her latest mystery novels,

she's wearing like a weird wig.

Is that like a wig for her to get into the Miss Marbles character?

I believe so.

So you'll learn that she needs to kind of like visualize her stories and see them acted out in front of her, which is not a thing that a lot of writers do, but maybe some writers do it.

I don't know.

I don't, yeah, this was many times during this picture.

I was like, this woman maybe is not cut out to be a writer because it seems like she has no imagination, suspension of disbelief, like ability to like visualize a thing without having someone dress up in costume and do it in front of her.

All things that I can do.

Yeah, but numbers don't line, buddy.

Usually

Dan, you might be right because she's about to have her imagination challenged by her literary agent who faxes her a picture of the movie's poster, which says the Easter Bunny Puppy and has that image of a puppy with bunny ears on.

And she's told by her agent, this is your new book.

It's a family book.

Your last mystery book didn't sell very well.

So you're going to write a family holiday book.

And she's like, what do I know about Easter?

I'm just going to go ahead and do this.

Does this happen a lot?

Does this happen a lot?

And I will say sometimes my litter agent will be like, here's an idea that you might want to think about.

Or here's a kind of book that I think there's room for in the market.

But he cannot send me a cover and say, you're writing this book now.

And then me be like, I got to do it, I guess.

He's my boss.

So, no, I assume it doesn't happen this way, the same way.

um anyway uh they don't know much about easter they're jewish this their jewish identity does not play into the rest of the movie particularly um they they fall into

don't they go on like an exodus to the woods or something that's that's very jewish if you take access to mean a leaving of one place for another place then yes i guess they do do an exodus in the woods okay so i'm right okay cool yeah yeah uh she talks to uh

She talks to Lucy for a while.

She's like, what if the bunny, the puppy is the bunny's assistant?

And Jennifer is like, I need your help, Lucy.

I need you to help me visualize this book.

And Lucy's like, all right, I'll help you for two straight days if you leave me alone the rest of spring break so I can go make out with Jake, the boy that I have a crush on, who I've never talked to before.

Okay, that's interesting.

So that's probably the only hijinks that happen in this community.

Oh boy, Stuart, get ready for some hijinks.

Also, that I'm going to help you for two days thing goes right out the window.

Like that, there's no, there's no ticking clock to this one.

Jennifer is dictating a story about an egg hatching a bunny and a puppy, and Lucy is in an Easter bunny costume acting it out so that Jennifer can visualize it.

And they argue about how unrealistic this all is, but uh-oh, there's a doorbell.

The doorbell rings.

Lucy, I think, forgets she's dressed as the Easter Bunny, answers it.

It's Jake and his mom, his mom, Beth, played by Lisa London, who Dan will remember best from Savage Beach.

And

a Talking Cat.

And Hots.

She's in Hots also.

I didn't realize that.

So I guess Dan will remember her best from Hots.

The movie I've never actually seen.

I've only ever

known what it stands for.

Honestly, like, what does HOTS stand for, Dan?

You know, head over to Criterion, though.

That's the question that the movie seeks to answer.

But

that's Dan's Criterion Closet pick.

He's like, where's Hots?

I don't see it in here.

Well, I'll just write Hots on one of these.

I'll write Hots on this case for Winter Light.

Hold on a second.

Grading on the very steep curve of sex comedies,

that one's actually kind of like sweet and nice because at least it's about a bunch of like horny sorority sisters who have like high, high-spirited hijinks rather than like horny dudes who do awful things.

Oh, okay.

Well, so that's Dan's recommendation for today.

Hots.

Yeah, check out Hots, I guess.

Not Hot to Trot.

That's a different movie that's about a talking horse.

Now,

the level of

production value is very low.

Hot to Trot?

Well, I mean, well, I mean in this movie, but Hot to Trot, it's not like it's a huge budget movie, you know.

The level of lack of knowledge that this woman has about Easter and how much research she needs to do, would you say that that rings true as a man who is Jewish, like it's probably true that, you know, like Christianity hasn't just culturally steamrolled everything and

samples into the it pretty much has.

I would say if you are, I would say the fact that she's like, what even happens?

An egg or whatever?

I think if you're, even if you're Jewish, you know that the Easter bunny has eggs.

You know that people are collecting eggs.

You don't necessarily, I don't know that every Jew knows the Easter, what is Easter's commemorating in the resurrection of the Christian.

This movie doesn't appear to be.

I'm not sure all Christians know that Easter represents the resurrection of Christ.

This is a completely secular version of Easter that is presented here.

There's no mention of

in some ways, this is the most insidious form of Christian culture entangling secular culture because it's like, hey, you don't even need to be Christian to celebrate Easter.

Like, just come on and collect these eggs with us.

Hey, come on.

It's just fun.

It's just about fun and finding eggs.

Hey, have you heard the children?

He did it.

He grabbed the egg.

He grabbed the egg.

Swarm, swarm, swarm.

Yeah.

Torture him until he converts.

That's how they did it in the Spanish Inquisition.

They were like, Jews, why don't you come and collect some eggs?

Oh, we like eggs.

Sure, of course.

Swarm, swarm, torture him, convert him.

That's how they did it.

A lot of dragons?

Yeah, was that Dracula?

Well, that was Dracula.

He was undercover as a vampire investigating the Spanish Inquisition because they thought he might jewelry.

Drink colored eggs.

Well, you wouldn't drink them, Dracula.

Well, perhaps this egg is full of blood.

No, it's just an egg, Tracha.

There's no blood in it.

There's a little bit in the embryo.

Perhaps it is full of delicious albumin.

Is that a thing that you like, Tracula?

I have a variety of likes and dislikes.

It's not just blood for me.

Just because I don't drink wine doesn't mean I don't like other things.

I contain olditudes.

Don't limit me based on your preconceived notions of what a vampire is like.

So you don't drink drink blood.

Of course, I do.

I love it.

Everyone thinks I just walk around in a cape and a tuxedo and like a weird metal that I must have gotten in some ancient war.

You don't do that?

Well, of course, I do it, but it's not the only thing I wear.

I wear all the things that hot yoga.

That's really cool.

If I'm going to go do hot yoga, I don't wear this outfit.

Did you hot yoga Dracula?

Not too hot.

Wow, he's doing some shtick.

Yes, it's slowly turning into Hotel Transylvania.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, Lucy, forgetting she's dressed as the Easter Bunny, Dracula and the cat skills.

I don't want to talk about Dracula and the cat skills because then we started getting into anti-Semitic vampire tropes, and that's yeah,

cats, kills.

I wouldn't kill a cat.

No, Dracula, that's not what it means.

Calm down, buddy.

Yeah, it's it's Dutch, it means something different.

So, uh, well, Lucy, she forgets she's dressed as the Easter Bunny.

She answers the door for Jake and her mom.

She's so embarrassed, and she gets mad at her mom.

And Jennifer's like, but I need your help.

I got to write this book.

We'll have to celebrate Easter this year.

Cut to the egg dyeing montage.

Okay, so they dye Easter eggs.

I timed it at four and a half straight minutes of screen time, roughly four minutes, you know, give or take a few seconds.

And it is just them dying eggs the same kitchen counter where the camera pans back and forth along the counter, occasionally dissolving to the same shot of the camera panning back and forth.

Guys, some of those shots are looped.

Yeah, that's true.

Guys, as the actors make small talk to one another that we cannot hear back, that is drowned out by the the music.

Yeah.

Some sort of Casio library music is playing.

And

how did you guys feel while watching this?

Did you feel like it would never end and this is just your life forever now just watching these die eggs?

It's kind of beautiful.

When the first, you know, like Anna said, this is the second time I've seen an Easter bunny time.

So you were prepared for this, yeah.

No skips.

I was waiting for this to happen.

I'm like, I was going to react.

It is one of those times you're like,

I think what happened was watching the realization that this was still going on dawning on on me.

At first, Stuart seemed disinterested, and then the more and more, I'm like, really?

Yeah, Stuart.

Again,

it was hampered a little bit by Stuart checking his phone during it, so he didn't notice for a while.

Very natural, understandable.

That's why you got to watch these things in the theater, you know?

Well, when I watched it the first time around

with the group, like Audrey could not stop laughing

as it started just like extending past the point of madness.

She

couldn't stop.

It is audacious the way that this movie wastes the time of the people watching it.

With long establishing shots of unrelated places, with this sequence, like this movie is like, you have a limited amount of life on this earth, and I'm going to use up, I'm going to suck up as much of it as I can for no reason.

It's a moment like this where you realize Russ's comment that this movie is going to be 90 minutes long.

You realize that's a threat.

That wasn't a promise.

It was a warning.

Yeah.

So they they uh they dye eggs for a long time uh it inspires the mom for an idea about a mutant bunny puppy chicken, but that leads into a story about how

Lucy's mom was almost a bunny before she met Lucy's dad.

This is the kind of winking reference that all good kids movies do to the fact that one of the lead actresses did pose for Playboy in the 1970s.

So that's a little Easter egg pun intended for all the vintage porn collectors in the audience for this family film.

Now, I do know that, you know, teenagers are clearly, like, they're insecure.

They aren't necessarily thinking rationally about things.

Like, like everything, perspective is not high on a teenager skill set,

but it is ridiculous to the point, like, we'll see later on how ridiculous it is, the level at which this

teen girl is having, like, is worried about her crush seeing her in a bunny suit around Easter, you know, as if like no one has ever found it like cute that that might happen.

I wonder if it's just maybe he knows she's Jewish and he's like, are you blaspheming and and uh and uh are

like uh taunting the sacraments?

Is that what you're doing?

You dressed up in an Easter bunny costume so that you could, so that you could put on some sort of satirical pageant making fun, making light of my beliefs.

Maybe that's I don't think that the secular elements of Easter are cared that much about from that perspective.

I don't know, Dan.

We live in a country where a lot of people get very mad when the people at Walmart say happy holidays instead of Merry Christmas.

So I don't know.

That's true.

Yeah.

So anyway, I know that I will probably get in trouble for what I'm going to say about this, which is that

don't care about Easter, don't like Easter bunnies, don't care about it.

But any holiday where someone's going to hand me chocolate in the shape of an animal, I can get on board for that aspect of the holiday.

Yeah, sure.

I like chocolate.

I like animals.

I like eating both of them.

Yeah,

I'm not a huge Easter fan, but I am a huge fan of Critters 2.

So I guess that takes place in Easter.

To make the connection that the audience may not.

If our audience isn't familiar with Critters 2, turn this episode off and go watch it.

I mean, much the same way that to me, Christmas is the gremlins holiday.

Dan, so you're the only one who came from a background of like extreme faith.

You know, you were raised in a household that was strictly Calvinist, right?

Yeah, extreme faith.

What are your feelings about?

You had a lot of snowboards.

Your daddy's Jesus.

A lot of inline skating with sermons.

What's your feeling about Easter?

Clearly, it is the sort of cornerstone religious holiday for Christianity, more so than, like in a religious sense, more so than Christmas, which is just like, okay, this person was born, whereas like the

resurrection, the crucifixion and the resurrection are kind of the point of that.

It's ultimately more important than the birth, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, but

it's what makes him, it's what in theory makes Jesus more than just a guy with some interesting ideas.

Have you heard of him?

His name was Jesus.

I'd like to tell you a story.

But what an extreme red dude he was.

But culturally, like, it never made much of an impact on me because I'm like, well, Christmas is the good one.

You get all these presents.

Like, I don't care about like getting up in the morning.

I enjoyed it.

Like, yeah, like, I'll get up in the morning and find some eggs that we dyed the other day

so they don't stink up the house when we can't find them.

And I'll have some chocolate in a little basket.

Chocolate and hard-boiled eggs.

Yeah.

Two great tastes.

It's good that I have a Bible scholar and a comic scholar here because I have a question for you.

Is Lobo a thinly veiled Jesus Christ figure?

Why?

Well, he's called the family.

He has died and come back many times.

He's died.

He's got a similar hair and beard style.

He's been to heaven and

dealt with the angels.

Yeah.

I would say no.

I'm going to add my voice to the chorus of no.

I think Jesus did a lot less smoking cigars and fragging bastages

in his time on it.

It's in the Apocrypha, Elliot.

That's always that.

And Lo did the Son of God frag the bastages.

For anyone who's not familiar with Lobo, that's okay.

He really doesn't like bastages, though.

He really doesn't like them.

He likes to frag them.

Yeah.

He's the last Zarnian,

you know.

He's a space bounty hunter who rides around on a space motor, sorry.

Rides around a space motorcycle.

That's right.

And there's something Lemmy-ish about his look, you know.

He's kind of what, like, if a daughter social 12-year-old was like, what would be the best comic?

Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah.

Yeah, and he has a dog.

Yeah.

A dog, but doesn't he have a daughter?

Didn't they?

Yes, he does have a daughter.

I wrote a comic once that she was in.

I forgot her name, though.

She was a member of the Teen Titans for a little bit, Lobo's daughter.

Yeah.

Not a great dad.

No, yeah.

Let's say that.

Nothing would indicate that he would be a great dad.

No, I don't think so.

So

Russ has been away for a while.

Well, they've been dying these eggs.

Who wouldn't want to go away for a while while they're dying these eggs?

And Jake returns him, and Jake and Lucy hang out a little bit.

And Jake reveals that his dad is in prison for a jewel robbery, or rather a Faberge egg robbery that he says he didn't commit.

And he and his mom are going to go back to their old home for a traditional Easter egg, the old home that they were ostracized from because his dad was

a jailed, convicted felon.

They still go back every year for the Easter egg hunt.

It's tradition.

They just can't avoid it.

They love it.

So wait, their old home was in like a log cabin in the woods.

The home that they have fled to is in what has to be some kind of affluent LA suburb.

It looks like it's like Covina or something like that.

Like it's someplace where you can get a huge house for not that much money, I'm guessing, because it's just like in the middle of nowhere.

That's my guess.

Although

the shots shots of the Caribbean beach make it seem like it's on a beach somewhere.

It's very much the kind of house

it's the kind of house you rent for a film shoot, for an independent movie or a porno movie.

Big rooms with lots of windows.

There's a staircase that kind of winds around the inside of the house.

There's like a car parked in the living room.

That's the funniest thing is they, as some kind of art piece, they have just the body of a VW bug in the middle of the in the middle of the house, which is, I've never seen that, to be honest, in my time in LA, but maybe I'm not going to the right houses.

Um, so she goes, uh, he's like, You want waiting back to see

an Easter egg hunt?

She he's the Easter egg hunk.

She

that could have been the name of the move, yeah.

An Easter egg hunk, question mark.

And so she tells him that wasn't me dressed as a bunny, that was my twin sister, Marion, who wears glasses and loves Easter.

And Lucy and her mom agree to go to the Easter egg hunt, but now she has to pretend to be sisters.

Oh, let's know.

I,

the, the speed at which, like, we're doing the actual um this real movie is a summary part of it.

For first-time listeners, Dan's not implying that we usually narrate the movies in real time.

No, no, no.

But the speed is great.

Don't get me wrong.

But I think that

it glosses over a little bit the degree to which,

so this teen girl was so distressed by her crush seeing her in a bunny costume around Easter.

So distressed by how she was dressed.

Yeah.

That she is going to pretend that she is one half of a pair of twins.

And it was the other

loony twin that did that.

Yes.

But she's a cool girl who is, you know, ready to make out.

So that's the shenanigans.

That's the kind of tight shenanigans you'd expect from an episode of Faulty Towers.

But in this case, it is an Easter bunny puppy.

Yes.

I mean, it really shows you that this is sitcom level.

This is like 70s or 80s sitcom level plotting that they have stretched out through long Easter egg dying montages and shots.

The

beaches and streams.

Yeah.

And the dog is, it's very funny how little of an element the dog and his talking are in this movie about the Easter Bunny puppy.

He's ostensibly the narrator, but he mostly just says things like, oh boy, humans are so weird or like

you're crazy.

That kind of stuff.

The kid who is doing this is doing a great job.

You know, like, as you say, the kid is a kid will mispronounce stuff, but it is very funny to me sometimes when they cut to like the dog reacting just because of the kid's voice.

I don't know.

It looks like he's now, you know, he's now older, and he looks like, according to his IMDV, that he's doing a lot of like working in production for various TV shows.

Oh, that's nice.

Oh, cool.

An Easter Bunny Puppy, I think, is still his major credit.

Maybe it inspired him to work on the movie.

But this dog is

the sanest character in the movie because it exists to be like, what?

Why are you doing that?

Well,

he's the Garfield, and everyone else is John Arbuckle.

Yeah, yeah.

So

mom and Lucy, they drive to the cabin for a while as they discuss this new Marion character because mom has to be in on it so that she doesn't blow her cover that she has two daughters.

What I love is that this is another one of David DeCateau

signatures.

Is the driving sequence where it takes like four or five minutes, and it's just tons of shots of the car going around curvy roads.

And also, I noticed during this, like Stuart was pointing out that he favors

a close-up from just below the person's face.

And then in the car, he shot the dog the same way.

He likes to give a sense of grandeur and majesty.

Slightly, the camera shakes slightly to give you that kind of

gorilla filmmaking.

Yeah, like a gorilla as the camera.

Yeah, that's classic gorilla filmmaking.

So

Russ complains.

He's like, my humans, they do these silly things, but I'm compelled to help them when they're in trouble.

I don't know what help he's claiming that he's providing to anyone in this movie.

I mean, eventually he will.

Eventually he'll solve all of their problems.

By accident.

I mean, he'll save them, I guess, at the end.

Right away, Lucy has to pretend to be Marion for Jake.

Now, tell me, is this like a like a dead ringer style tour de force where there's clearly two different personalities at work here?

how different are marion and lucy um

i mean she she does like glasses yeah she ups the like i'm awkward for uh the was it marion is that the one yes yes marion the librarian i mean i i think that this uh

like she puts in a fine performance for for the level of film that this is like she's like doing her best you know like everyone is like weirdly committed even though the movie lets them down at every turn.

So, the two other teen guys come by while they're talking, and they add that it's too many teens.

Jasper and Kenny.

And Jasper is the nice one, and Kenny is the kind of dickish one.

And these two teen guys, they come by, they're like, hey, Jake, where'd your dad hide the stolen jewels?

At first, I thought they were bullies.

They talk like Splash Thompson talks to Pete a park when he's, but then it turns out they're friends of his, kind of.

And

when you deal with teenage boys, that's true.

Jake and John.

Yeah, that's true.

It's a constant.

Whatever do you mean, Daniel?

Whatever do you mean, Dan, you piece of shit.

Anyway, so that was too far.

The nice friend, Jasper, he loves Lucy's mom's books.

He's a big fan.

He wants to be a detective someday.

I thought this was foreshadowing for him to kind of solve the mystery of what happened with the Fabergé egg.

No.

Just a throwaway line.

Doesn't matter.

Yeah, well, no, it's a way to get him in that bunny costume.

I guess that's true.

Yeah.

They ask if Lucy has a sister and Jake's like, yeah, sure, I do.

Jake's like, she does.

And Lucy goes, my sister's napping.

And they go, well, we'll wait here and help your mom with her book while we wait for your sister to wake up so we can these guys are hard up.

They're so, they are so, they're such horndogs for a girl they have not met and they've just been told exists.

I mean, sometimes the fantasy is more exciting than reality, you know?

I guess that's true.

I was very nervous when he's like, yeah, we'll stay behind with your mom and help her out with her project.

I was like, uh-oh, I've seen a lot of videos like this that I wouldn't call family fun.

Well, that's what I that's what I wanted to get to because, like, I haven't seen any of David Decato's like looter projects.

He seems like he has a sideline in soft-ish

core film.

I mean, I don't even know how sexual they are, but they seem like they're like softcore, sexy movies.

And there's something about this scene that like is setting up a weird like

love triangle.

And then, yes, the later scene where like the

writer employs these older teen boys to like, hey, like come with me and act out these scenarios that this movie always feels like it might take a hard left turn and into the wrong drive and go down

into a sex picture, but it never does.

No, there's a lot of the way that he makes this that feels like he's making a like a family film in the style of pornography like in the style of like low budget but not amateur pornography and it's very weird it's just a very weird feel that uh i would wow he's got three movies coming out this year

three movies already out this year

and the wrong obsession oh i forgot i forgot he directed uh sorority babes and the slime ball bowler raised i'm looking up his credits right now uh classic at least in the annals of titles classic in the annals of movies i see at the video store and never actually have watched.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When you're at the video store, you know, what, once a week, when you're picking up tapes to watch with your family.

Usually when I'm getting referenced to again,

USA, up all night.

And he directed Test Tube Teens from the year 2000.

Oh, okay.

Sure.

Man's got away with titles, huh?

Yeah, sure.

He's done a bunch of master movies.

He's made a whole bunch of these movies in the wrong series, like The Wrong Mommy, The Wrong Boy Next Door, The Wrong Stepmother, Bikini goddesses, the wrong teacher.

Man, this dude's crushing it.

Petticoat Planet.

I wish, you know, I wish I had it all fucking figured out like this.

Puppet Master 3, Stuart.

He did a lot of Puppet Masters.

He did retro puppet masters, drunk Greg Sestero.

He did a series called The Brotherhood, which is, I guess, horror movies, I guess, homoerotic horror movies.

I've never seen these, but there's somehow six of them.

I mean, hey, we can change that.

Creepazoids.

You know, Shock Tober's right around the corner, Ellis.

That's true.

Yeah, that's true.

That's a good point.

Apparently, I guess he did a movie called...

Oh, I remember when that came out.

Never mind.

Never mind.

Yeah, he does.

But lately, he's gone into, well, you know what?

He proliferates.

He's got a very diverse portfolio of works.

Clearly, he puts a lot of care into each of them.

But you got to, I mean, this is the thing also that the,

I think it's very easy to valorize the kind of crap makers of the olden days of movies,

but it's harder to recognize and celebrate the crap makers of today.

You can spend all your time talking about your Herschel Gordon Lewises and Ray Dennis Secklers and stuff like that.

But there's still people working those same well-worn fields of garbage that is just there to fill screens.

And more power to them.

They're

keeping America alive in some way or another.

Anyway, so

Jen asked the two boys they can help with a book.

They say, sure.

Lucy and Jake take Russ for a walk and they talk about Marion.

And Russ is so grossed out by the thought of human human kissing that he just poops to break the moment.

I thought he just farted, but maybe he pooped.

Oh, they make it, I mean, they talk about it like he poops, but you know.

The boys are helping Jennifer act out her story, and that's when Jake's mom comes.

They're costumes.

I really love it.

With the costumes.

They're wearing the costumes.

And Jake's mom comes by with her friend, Mr.

Courtney Scammon, who instantly is so clear.

So clear he committed the crime that Jake's dad went to jail for.

He's so suspicious.

There's no mystery whatsoever.

It's so obvious.

His name is Scammon.

That's such a Charles Dickensy name.

Like, what do I call this criminal character?

About Larseny Dubad.

You know, that's the

Jake's mom wants, totally oblivious to this, wants to set up Mr.

Scammon and Jennifer as an item.

Who knows?

Maybe it'll happen.

Jake's mom learns the story of Jake's dad, Marcus.

He was accused of stealing a golden Faberge egg.

She has since become an expert on Fabergé eggs

and has a little, she has a whole book of them and gives a little explainer about what Fabergé eggs were, where they they come from, their history.

And Jennifer goes, hmm, if I was missing bar bowls, I would guess that an egg like that would be hard to transport.

It must be hidden nearby.

And we see that Russ has started digging a hole.

What's in that hole, Dan?

Now, why was it hard to transport?

What's in that hole, Dan?

Well, the egg.

The egg is

as we'll later learn, it fits neatly in a bag and can be carried around by a puppy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nobody noticing.

Totally unnoticed by anybody.

Yeah.

A third or a quarter of a size of an actual Faberge egg.

Wow, Dan,

we have our own Faberge expert in here.

Faberge expert.

Now, Dan, tell us more about the fascinating world of Faberge.

They're a bunch of eggs.

There's only so many.

Lionel Faberge.

They're fancy.

Yeah.

And they're expensive.

Okay.

They're expensive because there's only a few of them and they're fancy.

And now, when you do that, you start hunting.

Do you have anything?

Do you hunt for those eggs?

No.

Well, at Dan's house, he does because he's super rich.

But we, um,

are they expensive?

Because they don't really do anything, but like, maybe what do you want him to do?

Like, a Yoshi come out of them?

Yeah,

that seems like for that price, just the minimum.

Don't overpromise, buddy.

The, uh, or the, or like, if I'm driving my car and I fall asleep at the wheel, the Faberge egg will take the, take the wheel and get me home safe.

Well, now we're living in a fantasy world, Stuart.

How much faber is

it's a Faberge fantasy of

uh of uh designated egg drivers.

Thank you.

So, anyway,

moving forward,

Russ has started digging up the egg.

Okay, great.

Lucy shows up as Clumsy Marion for Jasper and Kenny.

She says, oh, no, she's allergic to plastic eggs.

She's making up lie after lie.

She's trying so hard to make them uninterested.

And you know what?

It only makes them longer.

It only makes them more attracted.

Yeah.

Spinning a tangled web.

Yeah, and she's catching these flies in her tangled web for sure.

Uh, and Russ thinks that Lucy is bonkers, but Lucy is excited.

She thinks she's convinced the boys that Marion is the bonkers one.

Uh, but Russ, he says, the boys haven't given up, and he's gonna go finish digging that hole.

He does not know, Russ knows better than Lucy does.

Teen boys,

they'll take a girl who's a little, a little loony if they think it'll lead them to.

Sometimes they'll prefer it.

Yeah, sometimes it thinks that it'll lead them to some lip-on-lip kissing action.

You know, now, Dan, is that the grossest way I could have described kissing?

It really was.

I'm like, well, sounds so much grosser.

This is a really weird pitch for Elliot to be a staff writer for Tiger Beat, but I guess.

40 ways to improve your lip-on-lip kissing.

Some call it the most intimate type of kiss.

One person's hole of a mouth goes on another person's hole of a mouth.

The fleshy perturbances that surround the hole touch each other and caress each other in different lascivious ways.

Dan, how do you think?

You're the editor of Tiger Beat.

Are you accepting this article?

I'm sending you to the FBI.

But inside that hole lives a fleshy tentacle that also wants to get in on the action.

It's called the tongue, and it's very wet.

So, Dan, do you like this?

Daniel,

the tongue as humans love muscle.

Nope.

Some call it the strongest muscle in the human body, and it certainly wants to wrestle with opponents in other mouths.

That's right.

The tongue wants nothing more than to challenge and compete.

You have to keep it in a separate mouth or else it will try to attack until death the tongue in another mouth.

This I like better because it's

left sexuality far behind and gone.

Oh, that's not true, Dan.

There's a hyposexual aspect to it.

Yeah.

This is effectively an Aeon Flux episode.

Yes.

One specific one.

This erotic competition between tongues can have only one winner.

That's right, because the tongue that wins eats the tongue that loses.

It's still happening.

So Jennifer doesn't have any ideas for the book.

Russ feels Mr.

Scammon is hiding something.

And Russ says to the audience, keep watching and you'll find out another threat.

No.

The next day, the Easter egg hunt.

It's deserted for some reason.

Why is that?

And we see a brief flashback.

Mr.

Scammon put out a road-closed sign to stop people from going to the Easter hunt because he is going to look for his Easter egg with a suspiciously fakely weathered antique map.

And it's like, you buried this egg.

You stole it and buried it.

Why was your map burned and weathered and tasted apart to look like it's a pirate?

I didn't even stole this from a fucking escape room.

I also love this shot of him putting the road clothes thing up because you can fully see that the sign says road clothes when he's putting it up over there, but the camera feels the need then to drift down ominously to show that it says road clothes.

I also like that it's in black, shot in black and white.

Yeah, yeah, because it's the past.

That's a little touch.

Yeah, that's a little touch.

So the Easter egg hunt is deserted.

I guess they were the only ones whose houses were located after that point in the road.

And Jake's mom is like, why don't we hunt eggs together?

And he's like, only men hunt.

Men hunt on their own.

It's an alpha male thing.

such, he's in Lucy territory here with his strange lies that he's telling.

The boys show up for Lucy and Marion, and Lucy starts getting tripped up by her lies.

And the boys don't, Jasper and Kenny are like, okay, we'll go find Marion.

As Lucy goes out with Jake and Russ, we get a lot of nature photography.

Because again, somebody just needs to explain to Lucy that teenage boys are dumb.

Yes.

And they can be easily tricked.

Yes.

Oh, very much so.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's why they're falling into tiger pits all the time or responding to duck calls.

Yeah.

Fucking a duck call.

Trapped by the bad guy in the black phone.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, boy.

Teen boys are falling for black phone all the time.

Oh, man.

I mean, it is Stephen Hogg.

He's pretty cool.

That's one of the largest sources, one of the biggest sources of teenboy trickery in America today is black phone.

Black phone.

That's why when you're in high school, they're like, they separate the girls into one gym and the boys into the other gym.

And the boys learn about black phone and how to avoid it and all the dangers to interact.

They're too busy like playing with fidget spinners and whatnot.

Yeah, exactly.

They're all Robloxing and Minecrafting and things like that, Fortniting.

So, Mr.

You've talked to your sons about this.

About the dangers of Black Phone, yeah.

Well, I haven't yet sat them down and had the talk, by which I mean the talk about Black Phone.

I'm worried they're not ready for it yet.

Now, what about Blackstone?

Have you talked about the dangers of Harry Blackstone?

I have talked about the dangers of Harry Blackstone many times.

He might spirit you away with his magic powers.

Exactly.

I tell them about that.

I say, don't let it.

You guys mentioned Blackstone.

You, of course, are talking about the element Nochlith, which is what the Blackstone Fortresses have been created by that Abaddon's forces used to attack the Imperium.

That's also a talk I've had with my children.

Yes.

Very important.

Yeah.

I talked to them about that, and

I talked to them about the birds and the bees, by which I mean Stuart, what kind of birds and bees do they have in Warhammer that we can say?

Oh,

there's birds, and then there would be bees, right?

This was a rich frame.

You'd think the grim dark world of the future would have bees in it.

Come on.

Although maybe honey is too sweet for that horrible universe.

So Mr.

Scammon, he has, as we said, a pirate map of some kind

and he's looking for his Fabergé egg.

Lucy and Jake hunt for eggs.

Now this is the next, what I would call filler segment, where for over six minutes of screen time, we watch various characters looking around for eggs as their dialogue is mostly drowned out by the music.

Dan, how much were you just ejaculating throughout this whole thing about how long it went?

The beauty of this was also that the eggs are just sort of on the ground in a line.

They aren't hidden anywhere.

It's just like they're like, there's one, there's another one.

Hunting me

walking around a 10-foot by 10-foot square patch filled with eggs.

I mean, you would think Blackphone had put these eggs out to trap these teenagers.

So there's a lot of this.

Lucy and Jake, they're about to kiss when Russ runs off and Jake follows him.

And Lucy overhears Kenny insulting Jasper because Jasper brought some flowers for Marion.

And Kenny is like, you idiot.

Girls don't like flowers, you puss.

Like, he's just mean.

And so she puts on her glasses and pretends to be Marion to make Jasper feel better and even kisses him on the cheek.

Uh-oh.

Jake walks up.

Not until I kind of condense some things.

Jake then finds Russ.

He doesn't notice that Russ dug up the gold egg.

And he goes, okay, Russ, you can have the egg and stuffs it in his collar.

But he walks up as Lucy, pretending to be Marion, has just kissed Jasper on the cheek, and she has to reveal she lied to everybody.

There's no Marion.

It was all a hoax.

Not since

the movie Sisters has there been a bigger twist involving sisters in a movie.

And so Jason.

It's a real 12th night situation, right?

It is a very 12th night situation.

Oh, boy.

And they have both been malvolioed on this one, and that does not feel good.

No.

That's my greatest fear is to be malvolio.

To be forced to wear yellow stockings and then stuffed in a box.

That's the kind of thing that Black Phone might do to you.

So Jake and Jasper.

Nefarious Blackphone sounds like a villain from like a kids' cartoon or something or Slylock box or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Jake and Jasper, they're both upset.

Meanwhile, Scammon finds where he wear the egg.

Uh-oh, it's not there anymore.

He somehow knows a dog did it.

He doesn't know which dog, but he knows that only a dog could accomplish this.

Under a not very deep, in a not very deep hole, under a little bit of sand right next to a parking lot.

Yeah, it doesn't seem like the best hiding spot or hiding job.

Yeah, it seems like a child with a pail and a little plastic shovel could have found this egg pretty easily.

The diamonds are

Lucy is so upset that Jennifer and Lucy are just going to leave and go home, and Scammon decides he's going to follow.

Because he's got to get his egg back.

Oh, they took me egg.

Oh, I need me egg back.

Well, this is also the mirror round heroes where like, I think Lisa London is like, we gotta go home because I have larynge.

I'm losing her.

Throughout the movie, Lisa London's voice has been so faint, especially even when she's delivering her Faberge egg history monologue.

And I was like, I guess it's just her voice.

And then at that point, she's like, I think I have laryngitis.

Next scene, her voice is fine.

So clearly, D Shoti isn't out of order, but this movie usually is.

But it's so funny that it's like.

that they felt like after so long they finally had to mention the laryngitis.

I guess they thought they could get away with not mentioning it for that long.

Yeah, but it had gotten so bad that they were like, okay, we have to actually say something about it in the movie.

And clearly, they only had, you know, like three filming days or whatever.

So they couldn't wait for her to have her voice back again.

They're just like, no, they couldn't shut down production as they waited for her hell to return.

At home, Jennifer tries to cheer Lucy up by putting Russ in bunny ears, but it does not work.

Russ drops the egg.

Jake and his mom come to the house with Mr.

Scammon, and Jake wants to apologize and make up with Lucy.

And

Mr.

Scammon's like, hey, let me meet that dog of yours.

Yeah.

Mr.

Scammon's like, you have a dog?

I'd love to meet him.

So he's snooping around the house looking for the dog.

I will say, this scene between Jake and Lucy, where Lucy is upset and Jake comes up to talk to her, there's a moment in it where

she's like, I don't want anyone to look at me right now.

And he looks away and they start to make up.

And she's like, you can look at me now.

And he's like, in a way, it makes this conversation easier, that he's not looking at her, but has his back to her.

And I was like, in this very

artificial movie that does not feel like real life, this felt like to me like a genuinely kind of like sweet moment.

Like a sweet, but he's like, it actually makes it easier to talk to have this conversation.

I thought I was like, this is a sweet kind of real feeling moment that I did not expect in the middle of a movie narrated by a dog about the worst egg thief in the history of egg thievery.

You know, yeah, it briefly takes you out of the movie similar to how moments later we see Mr.

Scammon chasing a corgi around the upper floors of the house, and there's a moment where there's very clearly another man reflected in like the window or the like an upper fireplace with like a glass.

And I'm like, is this the camera operator?

Or is this just like a strange man making weird motions?

Yeah, or

a three men in a baby style ghost.

That was the third option.

Yeah.

So they...

But this, he's chasing after the dog.

This happens about, finally, the egg falls from the staircase into Jake's mom's hands.

And she's like, this is the egg, the egg they said my husband stole.

Mr.

Scammon has them at gunpoint.

Did not expect to see a gun in this movie.

That was a big shot.

It's a tiny little gun, but it is still, I did not like seeing a gun in this movie.

But luckily, Russ bites him.

Jennifer picks up the gun, and Russ has the best dialogue in the movie at the very end.

He goes, I'm the Easter bunny, punk.

Deal with it.

Hippity hoppity, peace out.

And that's the end of the movie.

Yeah.

It's a real, it's a catchphrase, of course, now that we've seen emblazoned on bumper stickers and t-shirts across America.

Yep, deal with it.

Hippity hoppity, peace out.

Yep.

On the Easter Bunny punk.

Yeah.

I mean, that's just made for the back of a t-shirt.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not since I'm Rick James, bitch, has a catchphrase.

It's so hard.

Yeah.

Yeah, I feel bad because when Russ the dog is in the street, people just yell that at him.

And he's like, I'm known for other things.

I'm not just an Easter Bunny puppy, you know?

Hey, say hippity hoppity peace out.

Hippity hoppity.

Wait, let me get my phone out.

Let me get my phone out.

Let me get my phone out.

So,

yeah, that's the tale of the Easter Bunny puppy.

Not the Easter Bunny Puppy, Dan.

No, not the actual.

An Easter Bunny puppy.

Yeah, and not the actual tale of the puppy.

Very good point.

That's the story.

Yeah, I'm glad you differentiate about that.

That's Dan, it's important.

It would have confused our listeners.

Now we have to pass judgment in a segment we call final judgments about whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie uh we kind of liked okay so what do we do in this segment dan i think i just explained it i don't know why okay i have to go over it again i don't know caught in a loop like that uh egg dying scene but uh i'm gonna say having seen it twice now

um

probably not like like don't watch this on your own don't be don't be no don't be a fool don't do that like elliot was uh like

this is work for me dan i it wasn't like i was like oh let me pop in a movie.

What would I enjoy on my own?

An English, an Easter Bunny puppy.

Let's say an English bunny puppy, which would be interesting switch on it.

Yeah.

But if you're a bad movie sicko and you've got friends, like for me, this is a classic good bad movie.

This recaptured the joy I felt watching Talking Cat.

And I had a great time.

What do you think?

Yeah, you know, this is, sorry, it just took me a second because I was really going through the whole of my experience with an Easter bunny puppy.

This is exactly the kind of movie that I do this podcast to watch.

You know, a movie where most of the runtime is either dying Easter eggs, painting Easter eggs, driving to a place, and then looking for Easter eggs.

It's great.

Two thumbs up.

This is a good, bad movie, I would say.

I would also call it a good, bad movie.

Again, not really, even watching on my own, it was still kind of funny to watch it.

It was just, I couldn't, I couldn't experience the dying egg sequence sequence in real time.

I had to, I had to get a little bit of assistance on that one.

But, but it is, there's something about these movies that is so weird in terms of the tone and the feel of them.

And they're so, but at the same time, there was nothing in it that I found upsetting.

You know, it feels like you're watching a family movie from another dimension, but it's not like nothing happens in it, at least for me, where I was like, oh, now I feel gross.

Now I feel bad watching this.

And, you know what?

That's hard to find sometimes.

So don't watch it with your kids.

They will be very bored.

I mean, mean, I'm sure there actually a kid would probably like it.

I don't know.

It's something that moves and has sound coming out of it and colors.

But yeah, but I think if you're getting together, a dog talks, Elliot.

Come on.

They'll watch anything as long as it's on like an iPad or something, right?

They will.

If you get together your decadent, bad movie crew and pop in an Easter bunny puppy, and I think you're going to have a good time wasting time.

Hi, I'm Alexis.

I'm one of the co-hosts of Comfort Creatures and I'm here with River Jew, who has been a member since 2019.

Thank you so much for being a listener and a supporter of our show.

Yeah, I can't believe it's been that long.

Yeah, right?

As the Max Fund member of the month, can I ask what sort of made you decide to be a member?

I used to work in a library, so I just used to listen to podcasts while I reshelved all the books.

Really helped with, you know, doing

being at work.

So I just wanted to give back to what's been helping me.

Yeah.

It feels good to be part of that.

As the member of the month, you will be getting a $25 gift card to the Maximum Fun store, a member of the month bumper sticker, and you also, if you're ever in Los Angeles, you can get a parking spot at the Maxim HQ just for you.

Yay!

I'm actually going to LA September, so I'll get to use the parking.

Yes!

Thank you so much, River, for doing this.

This has been an absolute blast.

Yeah, of course.

I've been been so glad to be able to talk to you, too, and I'm so excited to be a member of the month.

Yay!

Become a Max Fund member now at maximumfund.org slash join.

Hey, everybody, I'm Jeremy.

I'm Oscar.

I'm Dimitri.

And we are the Euroevangelists for a weekly podcast spreading the word of the Eurovision Song Contest, the most important music competition in the world.

Maybe you already heard Glenn Weldon of NPR's pop culture happy hour talk up our coverage of this year's contest.

But what do we talk about in the offseason?

The rest of Eurovision, duh.

There are nearly seven decades of pop music history to cover.

We've got thousands of amazing songs, inspiring competitors, and so much drama to discuss.

And let me tell you, the drama is juicy.

Plus, all the gorillas and bread-bacon grandmas that make Eurovision so special.

Check out Euroevangelists, available everywhere you get podcasts.

And you could be a Euroevangelist too.

Ooh, I want to be one.

You already are.

It's that easy.

Okay, cool.

Let's talk about our sponsors.

Of Of course, the Flophouse could not exist without the listeners who have become members at maximumfund.org.

They support us in

the overwhelming part, but we also have a couple of sponsors.

This podcast that you are listening to right now is brought to you in part by Squarespace.

Whoa.

Squarespace alley.

Whoa.

Square

space.

Yeah.

Imagine a space and then imagine that space is square.

I can't do it.

Tell me more about it.

What does it mean?

I can't understand it.

Well, it gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid online all in one place.

I love offering services and I love getting paid.

Yes.

Mostly the second part.

The services are kind of a route to the second part, but sure.

I mean, if you don't like what you do, sure.

You know what they say?

If you don't like what you do, you work every single day of your life.

They do say that.

You can get paid on time with professional on-brand invoices and online payments.

Plus, you can streamline your workflow with built-in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools.

And hey, you want your website to look good.

Well, Squarespace

also, pardon me, also offers a complete library.

I'm getting excited.

A complete library.

You could not be more excited about how complete that library is.

Of professionally designed and award-winning website templates with options for every use and category.

You got your intuitive drag and drop editing to make designing that website easy, beautiful styling options, unrivaled visual design effects, no experience required.

You don't have to be an HTML wizard to have a nice website.

So head to squarespace.com/slash flop for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, use offer code FLOP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

We also have a Jumbotron today.

And you know what?

It's kind of a Jumbotron for us.

This message is for the peaches i assume they're talking to us and it's from luke and luke says hey peaches i have nothing to shout out but i felt like throwing you guys some beer money so i give you the gift of 350 characters of nonsense to read Someone should start a polyphonic spree cover band and call it Contrapuntal Rampage, Tenacity, Lugubrious, Bowie's Bowie Boys, Nishnashers, Toy Boat, Toy Boat, Toy Boat, and that's the end.

Bye.

What a sweet Jumbotron.

Thank you very much, Luke.

I can't believe Luke got you to read his

kidnapper's note or whatever.

Mr.

Beesman, I gave you all the clues.

Toy boat, toy boat, toy boat.

Thank you, Luke.

If anyone else wants to, I mean,

this opens up an interesting new

area for Jumbotrons.

Usually they're us to read a personal message to somebody or a

advertising message.

Go to what maximumfund.com slash jumbotron to buy one.

But I guess this enters the realm of just paying us to say whatever, which, you know, we're not, not proud.

We'll do it.

We'll do it.

How not proud are we?

We're so not proud that we're actually very proud.

What are we proud of?

We are proud of the fact that we're appearing in Chicago on Sunday, November 16th, and our first show sold out.

So we have put a second show on the books.

So that's right.

We are live in Chicago Sunday, November 16th.

If you missed your chance to go to our early show, we will now have a late show.

Both shows will be about Jim Belushi movies.

So don't worry, you'll get the full talk of Belush either way.

I Fished my wish.

Yep.

The earlier show was Taking Care of Business.

The second show, I believe, is K-9, right?

Oh, yeah.

Another book about another book.

Another movie about a dog.

Well, movies are just books for your eyes.

So, you know, it's okay.

It's the thing.

Yeah.

So the Flophouse will be live in Chicago Sunday, November 16th.

The early show was sold out, but the late show, I think there's still some tickets available.

Go to flophousepodcast.com/slash event slash the dash flop dash house dash live dash in dash Chicago for tickets.

There's probably a better URL to go to, but I do visit the if you go to theflophousepodcast.com under the events page, I believe our very kind webmaster has put up an event.

Yes, just go to flophousepodcast.com, not the flophouse.

Just go to flophousepodcast.com and go to the events.

Let's make it more confusing.

Let's get something else for you.

Elliot, Elliot, earlier you said movies are books for your eyes, but don't you use your eyes to read books?

Not if you're using Braille or an audiobook.

Okay.

Columbo's got you there.

Okay.

Colombo has got you there.

Technically correct.

Bugs me again.

Yep.

So actually go to flophousepodcast.com slash events.

That's where you should go.

You'll get tickets for a Chicago show Sunday, November 16th.

Let's say you're not in Chicago.

Let's say the late show manages to sell out too.

How are you going to see your Flophouse boys putting on a show with your eyes, the things you use for movies and not for books?

Well,

you're in luck.

Because Flop TV is on the air.

That's right.

Flop TV Season 3, Flopster Peace Theater, is now appearing the first Saturday of every month, Saturday through February.

Go to theflophouse.simpletics.com for tickets.

Just this past Saturday, as we're recording this, we did our Pluto Nash episode.

It was super fun.

We had a great time.

The next one is October 4th, Saturday, October 4th.

We're going to be talking about Jack Frost starring Michael Keaton as a bad dad, snowman dad.

And it's going to be the first Saturday of each month.

After that, go to theflophouse.simpletics.com.

If you can't watch the show live, these shows are the first Saturday of the month, 9 p.m.

Eastern, 6 p.m.

Pacific.

If you cannot watch it live, maybe you live in another country.

Maybe you got plans that night.

Maybe you, I don't know.

You just don't want to watch things live because you're worried that Dan's going to lose his shit and you don't want to see it happen live in front of you.

It's fine because your ticket gets you access to the recording of the show, and those recordings are going to stay up online through the end of the season.

So you can watch them all at your leisure as many times as you want through the end of February 2026.

That Pluto Nash show, I had so much fun.

I'm really looking forward to this Jack Frost show.

I have to make a video for it, and I've got an idea that I think is dumb.

So I think you guys will enjoy it.

Oh, weird.

Okay, because normally our videos are really serious.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So that's theflophouse.simpletics.com.

Join us live on your computer the first Saturday of each month through February.

Let's answer a few listener letters, letters from listeners.

This first one is from Andy last name withheld.

Andy Dufrane just broke out of jail.

How do you get poop stains out of a prison uniform?

If anyone shouldn't know, it should be you, Andy.

Yeah.

No, Andy Rice.

Hoppers, I crawled through a mile of the worst shit and crap.

I forgot what he says that you can imagine.

I can't remember what Mark Freeman says, but.

Just garbage.

A lot of, oh, it was the worst.

Oh, man.

How do I get this taste out of my mouth?

Oh, his mouth.

Oh.

You got to believe he got some in his mouth.

Anyway.

I don't got to believe that, Dan.

Andy Russell.

That's what the I want to believe poster meets.

Why is there a UFO on it then?

Oh, I just want to believe that he got poop in his mouth.

That's all.

So nothing about aliens?

No.

So why is there a picture of a UFO?

That was the cheapest picture I could get when I was making the poster.

That's a stock photo.

Yeah, let's get him in the door.

it's a lost leader

you come in for the aliens you stay for the poop in the in tim robbins mouth

and how does this work not yet but i'm pretty sure it will fingers crossed no wonder

if i ever get to ask him a question at something i'm gonna ask him if he ever if he he likes the idea of poop getting in andy the frane's mouth informed his performance yeah this is wait this is tim robbins you're asking or is it a company as fox molder

either at this point.

They're so linked in America's imagination.

That's true.

That's true.

That's when TNT would play Shawshank Redemption, and then in the middle, they'd just cut in an episode of the X-Files and then go back to the movie.

Yeah.

Innovative.

Okay.

Well, sorry, Scully, there's been a report of a Shawshank being redeemed,

but that's impossible, Mulder.

I don't even know what that is.

Andy Wright.

See, when Mulder was a kid,

his little kid sister got taken to Shaw Shank.

Yeah, and

she had to go through a pipe, through a pipe.

Yes, he's always been obsessed by it.

Yeah.

Andy writes, hey, floppers, in the past two weeks.

Cigarette smoking man is like, there's more in that shit pipe than you can even imagine.

No, don't smoke around there.

There's so much methane.

Ah, explosion.

Yeah.

In the past two weeks, you've commented on two areas right in my professional wheelhouse as a...

As a federal criminal defense lawyer, not an

Shawshank person.

First, the maximum penalty for an attempted assassination of federal officials under the federal statute is life in prison.

There is no death penalty for that crime unless the crime is completed.

Ah, okay, thank you.

I'm glad I was right about that.

Second, FaceTime, video, and audio are believed to be harder for the government to monitor, so some folks use it for that reason.

It's probably true about the content of the communication, but not the metadata, who, when, where, how long, etc.

I think questions like this are way more interesting than people who ask the generic and boring how can you defend guilty people I'm inevitably inevitably asked all the time what question about your work do you hate and what do you wish people would ask you instead andy last name withheld I got an easy one uh what kind of drinks do you like to make

well what kind do you

uh the easiest fastest one yeah yeah like a bottle of miller highlight

yeah so whatever's on tap Yeah.

Or just the bottle, just hand it to them.

Yeah.

And what would you rather answer?

What would I rather answer?

Yeah, that's part of the question.

But what would you prefer?

What kind of question would you prefer?

Who would I prefer?

Is like, Stuart, how do you keep your hair looking so amazing?

Okay, well,

it's more of a compliment, the question, yeah.

Yeah.

You know, podcasting doesn't inspire a lot of questions.

So I'll talk about writing.

I feel like it does.

I mean, the main question I get about podcasting that's annoying is people go, wait, you make money off of that?

Yeah.

I get that from my wife.

She goes, people pay you for this?

Yeah.

So about writing, what do people ask that bothers you, Dan?

You must love this Trump guy.

He gives you lots of material.

Yeah, I did hate that back then.

And it's not a question.

No, but we did not love that Trump guy because he gave us a lot of material.

We did not indeed.

Like, Like, I'm happy to talk to people about how I got into the business, but it's, you know, as a question, I don't know how useful I think it is.

And so I'm not wild about like trying to answer it because it is so idiosyncratic as a field that I'm like, well, I can tell you how and I will, but

I don't know.

Like the answer is like the real answer that you should care about is like

network and practice.

You know,

I would like to think I would would be good at

happier to answer sort of specific questions about writing, like

how is a joke constructed?

But I think about it and I'm like, I don't know if I could speak well to that.

Like, so much of it is just like

impulse and practice.

And like, I don't, I'm looking forward to Elliot's book.

I was going to say, Dan, if you want to know about how a joke is constructed, get ready because there's a book coming out in November that'll tell you all about it.

Yeah,

I guess the question I'd like to answer is:

Would you like a job?

When can you start?

That would be a good one.

I was going to say, Dan, the question I used to get was,

how do I start a writing career?

Or how do I get a writing job?

Now I feel like the question I get a lot is, so there aren't a lot of jobs out there, are they?

Are there?

And I'm like, it's never good when I think the general public is aware of how hard it is to get a job in a particular entertainment field.

But yeah, the question I want to answer is,

hey, what's Jonah Ray like?

And I'd be like, he's he's a real nice guy.

Yeah, he seemed nice.

He's very nice.

Okay.

Very funny.

Very nice.

Class act, solid, very tall.

Question?

Very tall.

Yeah, very tall.

And answered over here at the flop house.

Yeah.

This

letter is from Allison, last name withheld.

Who writes?

Allison Williams, star of girls, and Peter Pan.

And I abridged this because she was Megan, right?

Yeah.

Or they were too nice to us.

So I cut out some of the nice people.

Yeah, you're right, Dan.

You're right, Dan.

We don't deserve it.

We need more punishment.

We've been bad boys.

Well, it feels a little self-serving to read it all in the air, but I guess so.

Mother says I shouldn't get praise.

Yeah.

First off, I'm a huge fan.

I could gush for hours about this podcast getting me through hard times, making me laugh on long, super sweaty subway rides when I lived in NYC, cheering me up in L.A.

traffic, where I now live.

accompanying me on the Brooklyn Half Marathon, etc.

In terms of real-life encounters, I briefly met Elliot Elliot at the signing of Horse Meets Dog at Skylight, Books, and Los Feles a while back.

He was lovely, and I was kind of awkward, so that was fun.

Oh, that's right.

I'm sure you were great.

In terms of subconscious encounters, I had a dream about you all recently in which we met.

You put me on a text chain with the three of you, and then I didn't understand any of the references or jokes any of you made on the chain.

To be honest, that's how I often feel about the text chain the three of us are on.

I guess this is the part where I ask a question.

The anxiety of that text chain dream is really putting the pressure on me to make this a good one.

So now that I've gushed, time for you to gush.

What are your favorite things about each other?

Aw, Alice and Lasting withheld.

Didn't realize I was walking into a trap.

It is a trap.

Oh boy.

It's going to be so much more tempting.

I'm going to be a little raven concert.

Okay, let's see.

Things that I like.

I like,

well, one thing that I like about performing with my two friends is that Dan is very good at being the straight man, and he is very good at taking the lumps that we give him for no reason at all.

Dan's making faces.

Like,

what kind of compliment is this?

This is a weird compliment, but I'll take it, I guess.

No, I'm saying you're talented.

And Elliot is very good at filling any space he is given when necessary.

I'll get a little more personal.

I think that Stuart is

very patient.

And if I inadvertently hurt his feelings, he will

absorb it and then tell me about it calmly at a later date.

He went to tell my therapist.

And Elliot is, for all the shit he gives me on air, is always very concerned about my well-being.

You know, during the time that I was

post-divorce and single, he would, you know, have me over to have dinner with his family frequently, and it was very sweet.

Yeah, that was the character.

The real person he was mean to you.

That was the personia.

Dan has got an enormous heart.

He's got an enormous heart and he's always ready to

think the best of somebody after he's had a moment to think about it.

But most of the time he's that he's trying to think the best of people.

And

Stuart is a, is, is a stalwart rock.

that can be relied on and leaned on in tough times and good times.

And you never have to worry that he's not going to have your back.

Oh, thank you.

And I just like performing with these guys.

They're really fun.

You two, the two, the two of the guys were like,

it makes me laugh more when we're talking than almost anything else that happens in life.

So I appreciate it.

Our Audrey has remarked on like, even when we're off stage, like, she's like, you guys, when you get together, you're just, you're doing, you're doing it.

You're doing the same thing.

It's fun to, anyway.

Danielle will hear when I'm, I listen to podcasts a lot, like while I'm doing chores, and there are times when I listen to this podcast and I'm laughing.

And Danielle, my wife will go, listen to yourself again, huh?

And I'm like, but I laughed at something Dan said.

Yeah.

I was laughing at a Stewart thing.

I mean, I often like miss a lot of what's going on because, you know, you're in it, so you're not like fully engaged in the whole thing.

And so I will laugh at stuff that you say later on.

I'm like, oh, that was what was going on when I was trying to look something up or

worry about the next bit.

Yeah, I was like trying to craft my next hilarious bit.

Well,

enough of this fuzzy sweetness.

Time to get down to business again.

Brass packs, yeah.

Yeah, and to get some busts.

I also like that Dan keeps us on track all the time.

Bust some balls.

Let's crack some skulls.

Let's talk about movies that we've seen that we would recommend.

Let's say in addition to this one, if you're a bad movie sicko, you can watch this one too.

I mean, let's have some movies that we recommend recommend to non-bad movies.

For non-ironic reasons.

Okay.

Well,

Criterion

this

month has a bunch of stuff that I was like, wow, this is really geared towards me.

They had

a Robert Altman

retrospective.

They had like a lot of Robert Altman movies.

They have 1970s

paranoid thrillers.

Well, and they have nunsploitation.

But I'm not going to talk about some nunsploitation.

I'm going to talk about an Altman movie that I had not seen before, which is Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Cine Bull's History Lesson.

It is a lesser

talked about, lesser regarded Altman movie, but I liked it quite a bit.

And

it is a movie that, in some ways, takes place in one location because it's all Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.

But it is so expansive, this location, and there's so much of Altman's like, we're going to get a snatch of character here, and character is going to cross the screen there, and we're going to follow things.

And, you know, the way he builds a thing slowly, sort of piece by piece.

And it is

a movie about the way that

the legend of the Wild West was,

you know, constructed by white people.

And it is a movie about how

Buffalo Bill, played by Paul Newman, sort of is quietly driven insane by the dignity of Sitting Bull, who refuses to engage with the myth-making that

Buffal Bill would prefer.

And I enjoyed it quite a bit.

It's, you know, maybe,

sure, go see some of the bigger Altmans first, but once you're in that pool, check this one out as well.

How's the sound on this one?

Overlapping.

Yay.

Okay, so I'm going to recommend a movie that's kind of similar to

an Easter Bunny Puppy.

This is a movie about somebody desperately trying to get close to someone else in a desire to kind of either just enjoy being in their orbit or experience the world through their eyes.

Dan and I went and saw Lurker this week, which is initially kind of going in, I thought it was going to be more of a thriller, and it ends up being a little bit more of a black comedy or like a character study.

Would you agree with that, dan i would agree with that uh that like it's not that there aren't like you know like kind of creepy and weird moments but i feel like it's best play it like the whole thing plays best when it is just kind of an awkward comedy um and it is about a young man who uh kind of sneaks his way into a uh emerging pop stars uh entourage and he is trying desperately doing everything he can to appear like he's not being desperate to be part of this guy's life.

And it's one of the things that I found kind of fascinating about it is how, even the most like while they manage to capture the feel of excitement when somebody that you idolize gives you a moment of their attention, that like rush that he feels, it also does a pretty good job of reminding you how immature and kind of gross the that kind of young man pop star lifestyle is of just a bunch of people hanging around in a rich house that is not taken care of very well.

And it's like a weird dorm and everything feels so surface level.

Nobody seems to like each other that much.

And

then the

when it gets to the third act, I think the movie actually starts to cook the most.

But yeah, I thought it was a lot of fun.

It was kind of, it was, it was also that it was kind of different than what I was expecting.

So check it out, Lurker.

I'm going to recommend a movie from a couple of years ago that is a French movie, but it's also a horror movie.

What?

What's this all about?

A farm.

Stuart suddenly, he heard French and he was like, no.

And he heard a horror and he was like, what?

So

this is a movie called The Vordilac from a couple years ago.

Oh, yeah.

This is a French vampire movie that there's a, it tells the story of a, it's the like 18th century or so, and there's a French kind of minor nobleman who's on a mission

in a

an area between, somewhere between France and Turkey.

I don't remember exactly where it takes place.

Somewhere in Eastern Europe, I think.

That would be Germany.

It's between France and Turkey, right?

Yeah, I guess maybe it's true.

But there's a, it seems to, I don't know exactly where it is.

I don't know exactly where it is.

But he has lost his horse.

He's wandering through the woods.

And he ends up receiving help at the home of a family who are waiting for their elderly father, their elderly patriarch, to return from fighting the Turks.

And he returns, and it is very clear that he is a Vordelak, which is a kind of

Slavic vampire.

So I guess this must be some Slavic.

Anyway, the important thing is

the nobleman,

he's attracted to

the daughter of this Vordilak, and so he feels like he can't just run away else because he doesn't have a horse.

And the family kind of one by one starts falling under the spell of this figure who is clearly a vampire, but is also the patriarch of their family.

And so they can't outwardly

kind of go against him the way that they probably should.

And it is a, it's not a super flashy movie, but I have to admit, when the new version of Nosferatu came out, I kind of wanted it to be like a little weirder and stranger and get into more kind of interesting waters.

And I feel like the Vordilac

provides some of that strangeness and weirdness and more interestingness that I was hoping for from that.

And so if you want to see a vampire movie, that's not, it's not a lot of like

suddenly a vampire jumps out at you.

Ah, you know,

but it's a, but it still still has this kind of like creepy, strange atmosphere of it.

And the way they handle the existence of the vampire itself, which I don't want to give away, is at first

very, like,

almost, uh, almost silly, but becomes less and less so as the movie goes on.

And,

yeah, and I thought I found it really

discomforting in the way that a good horror movie can be.

So I would recommend it.

That's Le Vordelac, spelled V-O-U-R-D-A-L-A-K.

And I keep calling it Vadalork and stuff like that.

And Valadoric, I can't, I had to look up how it's spelled.

You're a Valadork.

Gotcha.

There's fair.

That reminds me, I've got to get my wife a Valadoric stay.

That's love between dorks.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, three great recommendations.

Before we get into sign-offs, I want to mention a couple of things that I think that maybe we forget to mention, which is that we have a newsletter.

It's called Flop Secrets.

If you go to flophousepodcast.com, you can sign up to get that a couple of times a month and hear about

what we're up to in sort of a more detailed way.

You get a little extra funny writing, maybe sometimes.

It's a good way to keep up with us.

We have an Instagram where a lot of stuff gets posted, clips from the show,

TikToks that Stu makes.

And also,

not officially affiliated with us, but made by a listener, there's a Discord channel.

If you go to lastnamewithheld.com, you can join that Discord.

And they do a lot of watch-alongs.

They watch the movies against my recommendations.

They watch the movies that we cover beforehand.

And also, I think during...

the Shocktober season, they'll be doing a lot of watch-alongs of horror stuff.

So check that out as well.

But I want to say thank you to our network, Maximum Fun.

If you go to maximumfun.org, there's a lot of great other shows there.

You can become a member and support us.

There's also our producer, Alex Smith, who I'd like to thank.

He goes by the name Howl Doddy Online, which he uses for music, Twitch streams, his own podcast.

He's a creative genius in his own right.

Check his stuff out.

But that's it for the Flop Us.

I've been Dan McCoy.

I've been Stuart Wellington.

I'm Elliot Kalen.

Small timber, guys.

It sure is small and it sure is timber.

Timber.

Oh, yeah.

Dan, Dan

watched some line dancing yesterday to the tune of Timber.

I don't know that I actually watched much line dancing.

I was in the vicinity where line dancing was occurring.

You showed up lights so you didn't get to see me boogie in my little tushie off.

I had to pick it up off the floor.

Yeah, I've seen you without a tushie before.

It's terrifying.

I didn't want to be horrifying.

Yeah, you had to go back to the hospital for a detushectomy.

That's when they reattached it.

Yeah,

let's get into this thing that we do.

It's called a podcast.

I don't know.

This is all pretty funny stuff.

Yeah.

Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artists-owned shows.

Supported directly by you.