FH Mini 137 - Stuster's Millions

Hey, everyone.

Welcome to the Flophouse.

I'm Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington.

I'm.

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

Big twist coming.

Big twist coming.

Elliot Kalen.

The twist was that there was no twist.

Yeah.

Well, you certainly wasted some time, and that's what we like to do here on the Flophouse podcast.

It's mostly a waste of time podcast.

It is number one in Apple Podcast App's Wasting Time.

Often a podcast about bad movies, but every other week we do our

somewhat inaccurately named flophouse minis where we talk about just whatever, usually still about movies.

It's a lot of affirmations, usually.

Oh, really?

Where we talk about the good things that each of us bring to the table.

Yeah.

I must have been out on those days.

And we talk about our wildest, craziest, most embarrassing sex stories.

So, Dan, you said you had a pretty amazing one to tell us about today.

Dan's always bragging about his body count.

Let's find out about it.

That is

not the topic of today's mini that I am leading.

All right, tune in next time.

So,

for this, we're going to play a little game that I've named Stewster's Millions.

Oh, no.

Okay.

In this game, Stewart, you are the CEO of Stu Studios,

and Elliot

is your trusted top development exec.

Oh boy, so my job is constantly on the line.

I've really got to earn my keep.

Well, good news for you, Elliot.

Stu Studios is trying to run a pro Stew Sters style scheme and create a slate entirely full of bombs in order to collect the money back as tax losses.

Oh, thank goodness.

Yeah, I love it.

So, how are you going to do this?

Well, I've assembled a list of 10 of the most profitable movies of all time.

Not the 10 most profitable because there's some franchise repeating that I wanted to avoid, but 10 of the highest grossing films not adjusted for inflation.

Okay.

For each of these extremely successful movies,

I want you guys to confer and pick one big change you would make to turn that movie into a mega bomb.

Okay.

And then explain your thinking.

So this is a collaborative game.

There's not, you're not against each other.

There aren't points, but I will be judging you internally at all times.

Just like real life.

And just to play different from normal, Dan, yeah.

And just to clarify, I'm only talking to Elliot, because if I asked you, you'd be like, add women to it.

I'd be like, calm down, Dan.

Okay.

That would not be my personal attitude.

Fortunately, society seems to have

taken a different turn.

So let's start this.

Some would say a worse turn.

I would agree with that.

I don't like the turn society has taken within the past year or two.

You know, as we get older,

there's a tendency for you to look back at the days of yesteryear and think, oh, man, things were better then.

But like, they were, right?

Yeah.

Well,

I mean,

all times have their good and their bad.

But I will say that

I did not think that as I entered middle age, I was like, oh, now I'll be the kind of person whose thoughts help decide the direction of the country.

Nope, not the case.

And I'm like, oh, so I guess that was that there was that brief period when I was kind of in sync with a lot of what was happening, and now it feels like I'm less and less in sync with a lot of what's happening.

Is this just a process of aging?

You'll find out in 20 years when we do more flop house episodes, it'll happen to you.

Uh, so the first one, of course, is avatar, guys.

Big course, huge hit air benderish.

No, not that one.

The last of the air benders, which they can't make anymore.

The one with the big blue

bending.

Oh, the blue cat.

Oh, this is Fern Gully for adults.

Yeah.

I was going to say, but not that kind of for adults, but they are pretty nude, those big blue cats.

Yeah, but that was also the Fern Gully.

That was the last rainforest, right?

So we can't, again, you can't have any more of those.

Yeah, you used up all the rainforest.

I mean, they did make a second never-ending story, but I guess that's more like

they're trying to deliver on that promise.

Yeah, I mean, the second, if the first one was called the ending story, then it would make like Ender's game.

You can't make a sequel to that.

That'd be great.

That'd be insane.

It's got end right in the name.

It was also a huge flop.

Oh, yeah, that movie also was a big flop.

Yeah, yeah, probably a Stew Studios film.

Yeah, crushing it.

So, Stew Studios is loosely based on a song by Rod Stewart, right?

It's loosely based on a song by What's His Face?

What's Sue Stew Studio?

What's that?

I thought it was Rod Stewart.

Okay.

Oh, it's Phil Collins.

Yeah.

So

I get all those guys.

I get there.

They all are kind of like a steaming mash of singers that my mom listened to when I was a kid.

Now, why are they steaming?

What happened there?

So, any thoughts on how to bombify

Avatar?

Avatar, okay.

So, how to obomify it?

So, the characters are always like, you gotta make one big change to make

it a change.

The world rejects Avatar.

Well,

I would say

instead of putting it all on an alien planet,

you set the whole thing

in

like a Spencer's gifts, like a Spencer's gifts, yeah.

So they're trying to, instead of unobtaining, they're trying to get one of those like machines that you put your hand on the outside of the globe.

I don't, I don't know if you're going to change that many things.

I mean,

there's a knock-on effect of like

yeah, I thought there was unobtainium in the Spencer's gifts, in the unobtainium section.

Maybe, I guess so.

I think another thing you could do, this, again, another change is if it's the same movie, but in the middle, there's a very graphic child sacrifice scene because the Navi engage in child sacrifice and they kill their children in order to appease their God.

I think

that might turn audiences off of the Na'vi as a noble people, you know?

Right.

And it's really graphic.

It's like 35 minutes long, this child sacrifice scene.

Change the general morality of

that.

Oh, you'd have no good guys.

There's no heroes in this movie.

Yeah, yeah.

Interesting.

All right.

Okay.

Another thing you could do?

Wait, another thing you could do?

Okay, wait.

Yeah, keep pitching me ideas.

If you don't do the Spencer's Gifts idea, you don't do the child sacrifice idea.

What if instead

all the Navi are constantly farting all the time, even in the middle of battles, like during the romance scenes, just constant farting?

Because that's how their alien metabolism metabolizes the gases in the atmosphere of whatever the planet was called, Avatar Planet.

What's it called?

I think you're in danger of making making this an even huger hit, Elliot.

Okay.

I got it.

This is way easier.

Instead of changing a thing about the movie, change the trailer so that it really focuses on one character's mustache.

And then all the posters and everything are pictures of people with a mustache.

Now you're talking.

Okay.

Yeah.

And we give no other indication that there's special effects in the movie.

It's just the trailer is a guy's mustache.

It's all about the mustache.

Well, that sounds like a winner to to me.

So let's move on to

a little picture, you know, a small indie film called Avengers Endgame.

Avengers

Endgame.

How are you going to make any more Avengers movies after that?

Stuify this.

Okay, Stewify.

How do we get that?

Plop some stew on that.

I mean, the thing is, we're going into this movie on a hot streak.

Marvel has not had a single miss at this point.

So Stew Studios has to mess it up.

Amazingly, Stew Studios has landed the Marvel contract from Disney.

Snatched it away.

Disney decided to outsource for this one entry in the Marvel contract.

Their most important one.

The one that wraps up the whole series.

Kevin Feige's like, you know what?

We've set it up.

There's no way to mess this one up.

Have Stew Studios handle it.

We can all take a vacation.

Yeah.

Okay.

So

let's see.

Instead of...

Tony Stark saving the day, we could replace Tony Stark with Harvey Weinstein.

Now, is this

time we revealed he's always been Iron Man, or is this he just jumps in at the last minute and saves the day?

Yeah, he snatches.

Well,

and

all this is built on the trailer, so we have to make sure people know that he's built on the trailer.

You change the name of the movie from Avengers Endgame to Avengers Epstein.

And I think that'll do a huge, it'll take a huge hit,

a huge hit to its box office.

The movie will not be a hit at that point.

Yeah.

Although, I think maybe people will be like, maybe this is the Avengers getting revenge and like beating up Epstein or something.

Oh, yeah, no, we don't want that.

People would want to go to that.

Yeah, yeah.

I wonder if, again, so this is things, changes that, Dana, do you want it to be a surprise to viewers?

Like the opening night audiences see it and then they're like, oh, I don't like this.

Or is this something that is, are we direct to the film?

Are you going to be able to carting thing again?

Because, I mean, it's a good idea.

I mean,

in this scenario, they had, like,

this is not a pre-existing film that they are now like, what?

What do they do to my beautiful baby?

Okay, so this is this is the

release version, the official release version.

But what I'm saying is,

do you want this to be something that shows up in the trailers, or do you want it to be that, like, halfway through the movie, all the characters just sit down and take a nap for like 17 hours?

I mean, I mean, that's going to be a hard sell for movie feeder change because you're not going to have that many showings per day, too.

Certainly, you know, it would, it would, if it's revealed in the trailer, you're probably going to get less money overall.

It's going to be a bigger bomb.

Yeah.

You do have to rely on negative word of mouth if it's going to be a surprise.

Instead of, it's the exact same movie, but instead of

all the dialogue, it's all musical.

So they all have to sing all their lines in every single season.

Yeah, yeah.

People would hate that.

And specifically in the trailer, you see them singing in every single season.

Oh, see, because I would say you don't see them singing in the trailer.

So that is a shock to the audience.

Like the audience that went to go see Mean Girls based on the musical mean girls based on the movie.

And then

when the singing started,

they were not ready for it.

They did not like it.

Yeah, Tina Faye was like, I hate this.

What?

She went to see the movie.

Was I involved?

Did I do this?

What if the whole movie was told from the point of view of a guy who's just...

He works at an olive garden, and he's just occasionally checking in on his phone to get updates about what's going on with the superheroes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And instead of the whole movie, you're just hanging out with a guy who's really high explaining what happens.

Yeah.

You do, yeah.

To his coworker.

Yeah.

So the start of the movie, the opening, the first few moments are the last 30 seconds of the movie, and then you cut to this guy.

He's high, he's at the Olive Garden, and he's just explaining, he's a patron, and he's explaining to the waiter what happened in this movie that he just saw.

So the guy, the waiter is like, I've got work to do.

Like, I'm not interested.

I can't really listen, but I want to get a good tip, so I got to listen.

And so it's kind of a little bit like my dinner with Andre, except he's trying to explain what happened in the last Avengers movie, and he's not eating dinner with this person.

Instead, it's the person who works there whose time he's wasting.

Yeah, yeah.

You could do that.

I think it's beautiful.

It also would take the budget way down

of the movie.

Oh, yeah.

So, like, it's all lost

at that point.

It's not as big a tax saving.

You still got to spend that money, some of it, you know, to write it off.

Yeah.

So, okay, how about this film?

A little, a little little picture you may be familiar with this one every single one of you dan are you gonna describe as a little movie or an indie movie like you can't do it for every we know you're talking about the 10 biggest stories every time in elliott i just said a little picture i didn't make uh i didn't make a big meal out of it or anything in elliot let him have his laughs

why will you never let me have my laughs

i want to have them while they're hot you will not have your laughs as far as i'm around

you may be familiar with this film

stewart you know that dan's Dan's doctor said if he has too many laughs, it could be fatal.

Yeah, yeah.

But he can't find out about it for some reason.

It's the opposite of Gene Wilder's mom.

Did you ever hear that story?

What?

Yeah.

It's very sad.

It is very sad.

Yeah.

Gene Wilder's mom, what she had a heart attack or something?

I don't remember what it was, but something where her health was really precarious.

And the doctor was like,

Gene Wilder, when he was a child, was like, Gene Wilder, if your mom is ever unhappy, she could die.

You have to keep her happy all all the time forever.

You should make her laugh.

The most important thing for you is make her laugh.

Make her laugh all the time.

And that's a huge responsibility to put on a child's shoulders.

It's funny when you're just not feeling it.

And that's why Gene Wilder is hilarious, but also looks a little sad at all times.

All the times.

The doctor was like, my studies have shown that laughter is the best medicine and the only medicine.

So you need to keep her laughing.

Patch Adams on the case.

And that laughter should be provided by a child who has more responsibility put on their shoulders than any child should.

Yeah.

Look, I know you can do this.

Your name is Wilder.

I've never met anyone as wild as you.

If anyone can pull this off, it's you.

You are wild to the nth degree, my friend.

You're wild at heart.

Okay, well, let me.

So what's this little movie, Dan?

What's this little indie film we've never heard of?

What's this sleeper, this cult hit cult

beloved underground?

Filmmaking, indie, you know, no, no labels movie, you know.

Damn it.

What I was trying to set up is you might be familiar with this picture because the director has already appeared on this list.

And the film is Titanic.

Oh, Jimmy Cams.

Titaniac.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Titaniac.

Well, I think we saw the version of Titanic that's not a big hit, and it involves a lot of talking mice.

It involves a dog-faced octopus.

That's a lot of changes.

Those are the only changes.

The only changes.

Because otherwise, it's very historically accurate.

That's what they say in the beginning of the movie.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You got to make one big change.

One big change.

I would say Billy Zane shoots Jack.

And Jack dies.

And I can get away with it, too.

I'm a rich man, and you're nothing.

And yeah, it happens like halfway through the movie and then the back half.

You just have to watch Billy Zane enjoy life and then he survives.

Yeah, I was similarly.

I think if you replaced Leonardo Caprio with the marionetted corpse of John Carradine, I think that would make the movie less successful.

Certainly wouldn't capture that teen girl audience.

You can can only use this once, though.

You can't use this for another movie we do.

Do I want to save the solution for another movie?

Just imagine Kate Winslet, her arms outstretched, you know, or whatever, being drawn naked by the marionetted corpse of John Kerriding, you know?

Well, if you can get the family's permission, I think you've cracked it.

Here's another film that I will say nothing about.

Dan, make us feel like it's a little thing and then it'll be revealed to me.

Part of a large franchise, a franchise that is very popular, so I'm led to believe.

This is a film called Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Oh.

The first of the Disney,

let's call them Lega Sequels.

Why not?

For the Star Wars franchise.

Okay, have there been any non-successful, financially, Star Wars things things, shows?

There's certainly been Star Wars things that were less successful than they would like.

I think that Solo was considered not a hit in the way they wanted, but it made money, you know?

But in terms of shows,

it's hard to know because those shows were released through Disney Plus.

So I don't know what the, there's no way of knowing how the viewer numbers actually affect the money they make.

So like Acolyte and stuff like that, it's hard to know what, you know,

what is actually a success or not.

Here's a question, a legit question about the

industry.

industry yeah uh do you think part steel industry yeah the steel industry um why so hot yeah

hopefully tariffs will bring it back right guys they say he who smelt it dealt it is that about smelting yeah yep he who smelt the the steel then deals the steel yeah exactly yeah um no i'm wondering is part of the problem with stuff like that them getting out of their over their skis and announcing like we have this huge idea you know, like, we're going to make this many Star Wars movies, and there's going to be a whole like slate of them.

Over here, they're going to be like one-offs, like a Star Wars story, and then there's going to be the main line, and like they outline the plans rather than just taking each success as it comes.

Or in this modern world where so much of it is about like fan excitement, is that the way to go, even though you end up with egg on your face?

I think that

the two things are, I think those are both two sides of the same coin, is that it is for the rush of fan excitement at an announcement at San Diego or something like that, that they then fuck themselves over, pardon my French, by promising a slate of stuff that doesn't get a lot of thought put into it and also promising the release dates, which I think is part of the real issue.

That's why I'm going to see the new Maharshi Blade tomorrow, right?

Exactly.

Is they say, like, these movies are coming out on the show.

How is it so hard to make a fucking Blade movie?

It should be a lot of fun.

They made three of them already.

They made three like it's not can't be that difficult do you think they they keep working on it every time they're like already did it already did it in part two i wonder

they're like but what if the vampires had a mouth that looked kind of like a crazy vagina they're like already did it already did it in part two i wonder if what if what if what if we had a trinity had it in the third one yeah

i wonder if part of the problem specifically with blade is that they're so insistent on everything being interconnected because if there's a character that really should be sort of off on his own world and not like be like, oh, I guess that there's vampires running around in Marvel World 2, like it is Blade.

I will say in the comics, they've tried really hard to make Blade a bigger player.

Like, he was a member of the Avengers for a little bit, and the vampires took over the world or whatever.

And it did feel like Blade was punching above his weight class in some ways, that his stories are best told when he's sneaking in the shadows with Hannibal King or whatever, and he's up against, you know, some vampire somewhere.

That's like kind of the joke on Venture Brothers with Jefferson Twilight being like vampire hunter.

And most of the time he's like, I can't do anything.

I just fight vampires.

But I think, I think the, to get back to what I said before, announcing these release dates means that there's now a lot of pressure on production, development, all those things to hit real hard benchmark, schedule benchmarks.

And it means you don't have enough time to really do the best work necessarily.

There was a, I remember reading about um

the rise of Skywalker, whatever the last Star Wars main movie was, where they were like, yeah, well, we had the release date before.

It was called the last Jedi.

No.

It was not.

I don't recall anything else.

Okay.

Where they were like, we had the release date before we had the script.

And so everything was backdated from, they couldn't be like, hold on, this script isn't ready yet.

They had to be like, no, go into production.

And Marvel has, Marvel thought they had made a virtue of that where they're like, when we go into production, we don't have a finished script.

And then we just reshoot 30% of the movie.

And I think.

That was one of those things where they thought they had discovered a new production mode that worked really well.

And instead, they just kind of like got lucky for a long time, you know, with the properties they're working with.

And I think with the people they're working with.

But they found that magical combination for a little bit.

I would imagine they also probably hadn't,

this is just a guess, but I feel like they probably burned out a lot of the people that they'd worked with, specifically

the post-production people, the visual effects people who are

they burnt out the post-production people, they burnt out the directors, they burnt out the actors to a certain extent.

But I think with Star Wars specifically, Dan, I think it's also an issue of they, and this is not fun or funny, but I think the, as much as it hates me to admit it, because I loved that Star Wars world when I was younger, the Star Wars world is not really as big as the Marvel Comics world.

Like, Marvel Comics, you can do that for a little while because there's so many characters doing so many different things.

Star Wars really doesn't have that much stuff.

in it for a for a thing that feels like it has a lot of stuff in it, which is why every other one seems to take place on Tatooine.

if they had truly done what it seemed like they were going to do at the start when they're like oh we're going to do all these like stand-alone things or what like if they'd really done it

they could have just like invented new characters within that world and had stories rather than like the problem

cantina and just do all the we're just like circling the same goddamn characters over and over again.

But anyway, the

where's Grand Admiral Thrawn?

Star Wars The Force Awakens.

Ruin that movie.

They've talked it like

get Thrawn.

Movie.

Thrawn got brought into the Clone Wars show, did he?

Yeah, yeah.

That's one of the two things from the Zom novels that's canon, right?

It's Thrawn now and the name Coruscant.

Because George Lucas couldn't come up with a better name.

He's like, damn it, that's such a good name.

Well, I think obviously what they should have done with

Force Awakens is instead of Ray and all this shit, it's got to be Kyle Katarn.

Bring Kyle Katarn from the Dark Forces game.

You know what?

Or Dash Rendar from Shadows of the Empire.

Bring him in, you know.

Sick.

The timeline doesn't match up, but it's still cool.

I don't know who these characters are, so I'm going to assume these are great ideas.

Dan, you have a whole world of Star Wars to get into, and you'll be like, there's not really that much in this Star Wars world.

So what can we do to Star Wars?

What was it?

Force Awakens.

Force Awakens.

So that's the one it introduced the new generation of heroes.

Rey, Finn,

Poe,

88 or IG88.

No, what's the BB88 BB8?

Thank you.

I was thinking of IG88, the badass bounty hunter droid.

Um yeah, let's it so how do we make it bad?

How do we bomb it?

Let's see.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Let's see.

Let's see.

Let's see.

Let's see.

I mean,

let's see.

Let's see.

Phil Time.

Phil Time.

Phil, Vamp, Vamp, Vampires?

Yeah.

Actually, I'd love to see a Star Wars movie with vampires in it.

That'd be great.

Yeah, there was a really good old like Buck Rogers with vampires that I liked.

Space vampires, they're cool.

Count Buccula, yeah.

I feel like we introduced Count Ducula to the Star Wars universe.

Would that work out okay?

No, no, it's perfect.

I don't think it would

hurt it at all.

I guess probably not, actually.

Is there some way of making the first J.J.

Abrams film for the last J.J.

Abrams film?

Yeah, I mean...

Let's see.

I know the fans got really mad when Luke Skywalker died.

Could we just have him get exploded right at the beginning?

Well, I think it was not even him dying so much as him being an unhappy guy that he wasn't and that who was seemed like a big grump who said, oh, that stuff's bad.

That reminds me too much of me,

the fan said.

You're like, can't he be just like a badass samurai wizard and be like cool about it?

Yeah.

I think, what if

You know what?

Maybe this would make it a bigger hit, but this is similar to that Olive Garden idea.

You just set the the whole movie at that space diner from the prequels, and

it's just hanging out there.

It's like the bear, but it's in Star Wars.

Actually, I love it.

This would be a great idea.

Let's see.

Oh, I thought it was like, but it would be very punishing on a certain group of the audience if you keep like acting like, oh, and now we're going to

go leave.

And then they're like, oh, wait, we got to do this first.

And they just keep not leaving the door.

Or when the characters that we are invested in, who are like, oh, we're going to go on an adventure.

And they leave through the front door, but the camera stays.

And then it's the new people who come in.

You're like, oh.

We got to get to the fireworks factory.

Maybe you hear something on the space news about the characters we heard about earlier.

Man, this is actually pretty good.

So space news, the capital planet of the universe is destroyed.

No one's that upset about it.

Moving on, you know.

Actually, is that Space Signer on Coruscant?

I think it is, yeah.

So it would have been destroyed when the

First Order, is that what they called?

When they blow up that planet, you just see that kind of like that furry alien.

It's beard flapping in the wind as the planet's about to be destroyed.

So that space diner got blown up, right?

Dexter Jetzer's diner.

I mean, this is the saddest thing that he also died now, yeah.

He also made that that diner was in operation before the rise of the Empire, so like they might have shut it down.

I think

if there's any business that's going to survive, it's going to be a greasy spoon diner.

I don't know.

I feel like the Empire is built on like bullshit, like

delivery apps and stuff, and that stuff's really bad for diners.

Well, guys, we've used up our

daily podcasting allotment of talking about Star Wars, so we're gonna move on.

We're done

to Spider-Man No Way Home.

Oh, let's shift gears to something not nerdy.

Spider-Man No Way Home is the choice.

Which one's the one?

Oh, there's like three Spider-Man and six villains, and they're all planned out.

I think it's pretty easy.

instead of having them all, all three Spider-Man kind of show up from different timelines, that they accidentally get morphed together and they're like a blob with all their arms and legs sticking.

To be honest,

there is an internet video where someone did that with

animation and they're just kind of flying around as a blob.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's good.

I think it would be unsuccessful as a movie.

As a motion, as a Spider-Man movie, I think it would be unsuccessful.

People wouldn't want to take their, especially since

so much of it is like, oh, all these Spider-Men are such cuties.

And then you turn them into a blob

of arms and limb.

If it stopped being an action movie and instead it was about these three Spider-Men, they all have to pretend to be the same person.

And it's more of a farce where they're running in and out and have to switch the costume off.

It's like if Mrs.

Doubtfire was three people each pretending to be Mrs.

Doubtfire and they have to keep switching off and they don't remember what the previous one promised, and things like that.

I think you could do it like that, where it's called like

Spider-Man, which one's the Spider-Man?

You know, something like that.

I got it.

It's really easy.

All we do is we take when Toby Maguire shows up, it's Emo Peter Parker from Spider-Man 3, and he's got like the hair flip.

Again, I would like it.

I think audiences would not like it.

How about this even?

We go even further.

Instead of Toby Maguire showing up, it's Emo Phillips playing the Toby Maguire Spider-Man.

It doesn't get more emo than that.

And when Emo Phillips comes on, they're like, like, hey, Toby Maguire.

And he answers to it.

I'm Toby Maguire.

I was a Spider-Man in the early 2000s.

And then instead of Andrew Garfield, it's actually

insane.

Garfield the Cat?

Garfield the Cat?

No, but people would love that.

They'd go crazy.

There is a Spider-Man cat in the Spider-Verse movies.

And for the ad, for the trailer, we just used the trailer that they got rid of of Spider-Man saving somebody by putting a web between the two.

Oh, this is is from the World Trade Center.

Yeah, yeah.

Instead of Andrew Garfield, it's Andrew Jackson.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think people wouldn't like it.

Merged with President Garfield.

Yes.

It's Andrew Jackson and

President and James Garfield, I think his first name was.

They've been merged together, but they're still Spider-Man.

And again, they still answer to the name Andrew Garfield.

Yeah, yeah.

So we're still merging something.

Now I really want to see Emo Phillips playing Toby McGuire, playing Spider-Man in something.

Or playing Toby Maguire in Sea Biscuit, playing Toby Maguire in Wonder Boys, any Tobey Maguire in

Babylon, any role that, I mean, Emo Phillips would have been great in that role in Babylon.

Like,

if ever there's a guy you do not want to go into a weird dungeon basement to watch someone eat rats with, it's probably Emo Phillips.

Yeah.

That happens in Babylon.

Yeah, you don't remember that?

They go into that dungeon basement and the guy in the mask is just eating rats.

Oh, you because you don't want to take sides in the great war between me and Emily.

You don't want to do Babylon on the podcast.

No, it's never

Dan, would we ever do Babylon on the podcast?

Do you like it too much?

I both like it too much and it is like a long movie.

It's a very long movie, yeah.

Hey, let's take a break and

for a word from our sponsors.

You know, the Flophouse is, of course, what makes it run is listeners like you who become members at maximumfund.org.

It doesn't run on Duncan.

It runs on listeners.

But also, this episode in particular is sponsored in part

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You know, fall is kind of a reset

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Yeah.

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This is actually, guys, this is a good news, bad news situation.

The bad news first, we have a show scheduled in Chicago on November 16th, and it has sold out.

The good news.

Good news for us.

That's good news for us.

Bad news for anyone who doesn't have tickets.

The good news is that we have added a late show on November 16th at Sleeping Village in Chicago, Illinois.

You can come see us talk about a little movie called K-9,

a movie where Jim Belushi hangs out with a dog a bunch.

It's going to be a really fun time.

It's, you know, it's a late show, so things are going to get, Dan said, certified nasty.

I don't know who's certifying it, but I guess I'm in.

Oh, the Chicago nasty department.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

The show's at 9.30 on a Sunday night, November 16th.

I hope to see you there.

It's going to be a fun one, folks.

And in case you can't make it to that show, there's a new opportunity for you to see us in Chicago, as Dick Stewart just said.

You can do that.

But in case you can't make it and you still want to see our faces as we're talking and not just listen to our voices, well, I've got good news for you because Flop TV Season 3 is on the air.

That's right.

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That's right.

We started September 6th with the first episode in Flop TV Season 3.

That is The Adventures of Pluto Nash.

And we're going to be going back in time, decade by decade, every episode.

So October 4th will be our next episode.

We're talking about Jack Frost, the movie where Michael Keaton is a jazz musician, I think, who dies and comes back as a snowman.

It's going to be amazing.

Every first Saturday of the month, from September through February, we're going to be appearing live on your computer screens doing season three of Flop TV.

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We're going to be talking about Xanadu.

We're going to talk about Zardaz.

We're going to talk about Dr.

Doolittle, the Rex Harrison version.

And we're going to talk because there's a rule, only one Eddie Murphy movie per season.

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Join us, won't you?

You guys want to try and do this promo with British accents?

Yeah, yeah, of course.

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Okay, ify, you go.

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Better than my Boston one.

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uh let's get back to this uh stucer's stucer's millions uh the here's here's a film that was a big hit

inside out to the sequel inside inside out

okay so here i think this is easy you take that main character, that girl whose name I don't remember what it was, and you turn her inside out this time.

It's not that it's about her emotions, that her body has been turned inside out.

Her organs are on the outside now.

It's horrifying.

It's disgusting.

Is she going to be able to make it to the hockey championships now?

Probably not.

I think it would really horrify a lot of children.

Talk about a box office bomb.

Stuart.

I haven't seen this one.

So

is this what happens after that lady gets the baby cut out of her stomach by that evil French lady?

You're thinking of the movie inside, not inside out.

Yes, that's okay.

But I'll say they do take somebody's insides out in that movie.

Yeah, that's true.

Luckily, he's right, yeah.

That's very true.

Yeah.

So, I mean, inside out would be a better name for the movie Inside than an Inside Man.

Maybe that baby is a little is a boy, in which case Inside could also be called Inside Man.

So, but that is one of my favorite things about that very gross movie is the occasional shots of a unhappy baby

getting like bumped.

Yeah, I don't, that's, I feel like that's kind of where the movie goes a little too far at times.

Baby's like, no, thank you.

But I think if you added that plot element to Inside Out 2, it certainly would make it hard for it to be the hit family film than it was.

So turn Riley inside out.

Turn Riley Inside Out, and Riley's mom is pregnant.

And while she's at hockey camp or wherever she is, her mom is being attacked by someone who's trying to cut the baby out of Ethiopia.

Yep, we're changing only a single thing.

There you go.

Okay, well, here's a movie that I was sort of dismayed to find on this list of highest grocers.

Again, this is not adjusted for inflation.

This is Triumph of the Will.

You're today's dollars.

No, it's a Jurassic World.

Jurassic World is right up there.

How are you going to...

Who did this one?

Is this the Steven Spielberg one?

What?

No, this is Trevor Oak.

That's Last World.

Okay.

Yeah, that's Lost World.

Jurassic Park, the Lost World was this is the first of the this this campaign trilogy because this is not adjusted for inflation because the first Jurassic Park, if you adjust it for inflation, made so much more money than the Jurassic World movies, but yes, but uh, I mean, if you adjust for inflation, the list would be like Gone with the Wind, Snow Weight, that kind of stuff.

So, uh, it sounded like I said Snow White, like Tom Waits is Snow White, but where's Papa?

If you adjust for inflation, then Where's Papa

dwarfs them all?

Yeah,

train coming at camera

Workers leaving the bank.

Apple dumpling gang.

Oh, shit.

That happened.

Oh, man.

People love apple dumplings.

Yeah, if you adjust for inflation, it goes, it goes, Where's Papa?

The apple dumpling gang.

What about Bob?

Top three movies of all time.

They're all questions.

Apple dumpling gang's a question, right?

The apple dumpling gang.

Like, what the fuck?

What?

That's not a name for anything.

And I was like, I don't know what this movie's about, but I gotta fucking find out.

I gotta find out how this this gang is somehow made out of apple dumplings.

Yeah.

Dan, it is hard to me to think of a more disappointing feeling for a dumpling if I take a bite into it than apple.

I'm just going to say it right now.

Yeah, your famed hatred of fruit.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I had some dumplings.

I love dumplings.

What is this?

Oh, apples.

Don't give this to me.

What a horrible gang.

What criminals.

You would prefer something like what I had for lunch today,

potato and onion pierogi.

Oh, that that sounds wonderful.

Yeah, because you're taking like a starch and then you're stuffing it full of more starch, maybe.

Yeah, exactly.

Then sautéing it in butter.

Yeah, on a bed of rice.

Yep.

Wow.

They call it

death by starch.

You know, you're getting extra energy.

That's what starch is.

Well, it's because you're running a marathon later, right?

That's why you're carb loading a starch loading a little bit.

That's because you were playing in a peewee soccer game.

It was genuinely because we had a taping in the middle of the day with a guest, and I'm like, I got to eat something beforehand.

What is pre-made at the store?

What'll make me sleepiest?

Some pierogi.

That's going to keep me awake.

Okay, so what are we talking about?

Jurassic World.

I never saw this one.

Should I?

How about

dinosaurs?

It was a huge hit.

So what I would say is instead of dinosaurs, you swap them out with like,

I don't know, like ducks.

Yeah, just giant ducks.

Yeah, I think they do.

What about normal ducks?

They don't have to be giants.

They're normal ass ducks.

And they're like, hey, we're trying to do Jurassic World, but like, we don't, dinosaurs are too dangerous.

So we're just doing ducks.

We cloned a bunch of ducks.

I've got news for you guys.

All birds are dinosaurs.

So ducks are dinosaurs.

So if they said, welcome to our dinosaur theme and it's all ducks, they're not lying.

That's literally true.

We release Jurassic World and people come to us with a lawsuit.

We're like, technically, we're right.

Talk to a paleontologist.

These are all dinosaurs, living avian dinosaurs.

So I think, but I think you still do it.

Like, Chris Pratt is still training the ducks to track, I guess, or whatever.

They're still, you know, people are still rolling around in giant balls, you know, dodging ducks.

Yeah, sure.

I think we do that.

Yeah.

Love dodging ducks.

Okay, here's one.

Duck dodgers.

Yeah.

They're literally duck dodgers.

Now, this is not the original cell animated version.

This is the CGI also animated version, no matter what they say, the Lion King.

The Lion King.

Well,

they figured out how to do it is you make it about Mufasa and you make it super boring.

Oh, they already did it for for you.

They already did it for us.

But I'll say, what are we going to do with this Lion King to make it not a hit?

Well, you should try and make the animation look like it's just AI generated.

Oh, wait.

Make it so there's no emotion on the animals' faces.

You should cast

a real dud like John Oliver in one of the roles.

Just kidding.

Just kidding.

He's funny.

He's a fucking

beloved co-worker.

Great guy.

Legitimately great guy.

No reason to hit him.

Let's see.

So, how would you take it?

I mean, once again, if you replace any of these characters with the marionetted corpse of John Carridine, and I feel like right off the bat, that's harder.

If it's all ducks and it's called the duck king, but it's still the same story, I think that's great.

And also, all the animals are ducks.

So, like, Scara is a duck, Mufasa is a duck, and the wildebeest that kill Mufasa are all ducks.

It's like just ducks, ducks, ducks all the way.

Timon and Pumba are ducks.

When they're eating bugs, they're eating other ducks.

You just make it all ducks.

Yeah, I'd be the Disney ducks, not Disney ducks.

I'd be the one one guy in the theater.

I'd be sitting in the middle, like, wondering when fucking Scrooge was going to show up and so angry when it didn't happen.

You're worrying when fucking Scrooge shows up.

So when one of the characters finally has sex with him, Scrooge.

No, fucking Scrooge is the name of the character.

It's the horny version of Scrooge.

You don't want to know that he feels Scrooge Duck fucks.

No, yeah.

He's having sex in his money bin, and the people he's having sex with are like, or ducks.

Or like, it's so uncomfortable having all this cold change pressed into my back.

That's the only way it can blast yeah yeah there's been so much talking about blasting recently

sorry has there been i'm not i'm a human red-blooded man

i'm sorry if my physical needs make you uncomfortable i think they were

the previous episode that we just recorded there was talking about blasting on that little come talk and then that's okay um hey

this is 18 plus

yeah yeah come on there's no no children alive uh so i will say what else can we do with The Lion King other than make them all ducks, something we've already talked about?

What if

instead of it being

realistic?

This is actually a really hard one.

It's a tough one.

Because the movie itself is already not good.

Instead of it being realistic, lifelike animals, their CGI, what if it is live-action people and they just are wearing t-shirts with the name of the animal they're supposed to be?

Right, like it's a community theater version of the Lion King.

Exactly, but they're not acting the animal's motions.

It just has written on them like elephant.

Yeah.

You know, and they just walk around like a normal person.

And you don't cast known actors.

No, they're all, it's all amateurs or unknowns.

It's all discover.

It's all unknowns.

And this is, of course, because of the lawsuit from people who are like.

This live-action Lion King isn't actually live action.

He's just animated in a more realistic style.

So you're like, okay, we'll give you a live action version.

And they go down to like,

I don't know, like a local, what's a place where you could find a bunch of people, like a Costco, and they just round up a bunch of customers and they're like, come and be in this movie, okay?

It's basically, we're doing like a, I think you should leave Type Sketch at this point.

Actually, I guess this isn't, I think you should leave type sketch.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, well, here's one that's, I think, a little hard because the movies already are pretty ridiculous.

Yeah.

Pretty ridiculous.

Furious Seven.

Furious Seven.

What can you do to no cars?

Take the cars, click on them, drag them to the trash can, drop them in there, empty trash.

Now, are they running around pretending they're in cars and going,

like that yeah okay

i would love to see i mean those actors i i just don't think of vin diesel as strong as the man is as much of a runner so just like him running around he's a real lifter he's not just like cardio i think yeah yeah yeah yeah well everyone they can't afford the cars so they just treat them like they're in cars and they're making the sounds and they're like running next to each other on the highway yeah i think that could i could do it what if instead of it being a furious seven it was called curious seven and it's curious george is the is the leader of the of the total family i think you're turning into a kids film and kids films make dollas that's true make a lot of money that's true but he swears all the time i think you're right okay i think that uh taking the cars out is the only way to

i mean if that's the case then like star wars let's take out the spaceships okay jurassic park we did we took out the dinosaurs

killed star wars you don't need spaceships you just need them aliens those there's like no spaceships in

Andor, right?

Isn't Andor like that?

Constantly flying out of the ship.

Okay, I got to watch Andor.

It's slightly more realistic.

I've got to watch that show someday.

All right, we got

one more.

You're like, Andor is

mostly about a therapist in the Star Wars universe, right?

And he just talks to his clients in his office.

No, you're thinking of in-treatment,

but that's not about Star Wars universe.

Right, yeah.

It's just Laura Duran making bad life choices.

No, no, I'm thinking of enlightened.

Yeah.

You're mixing up your slightly less celebrated HBO shows.

It's a great show.

I'm not saying anything about the quality.

You know, Mike White hit it big with White Lotus, but he has a deep filmography.

He's got other stuff.

What about whenever the characters in Star Wars are

Chris White?

Whenever they hear something,

they remember an old TV show that they saw when they were a kid because they watch so much TV.

And it's called Star Wars Dream On.

Yeah.

As long as we're making it like an HBO show.

I love it.

Okay, well, we got one final one here, and that is a Lego sequel.

It's called Top Gun Maverick.

It's made by BO, guys.

Take away the planes.

They just fly with their arms outstretched, and they

can't steal my cool idea.

I'm going to say, let's see.

Tom Cruise is still in it.

Sure.

Oh, in the beach football scene, they all have to wear shirts.

You think that would do it?

That alone would dangerous.

People would hate it.

They'd write in.

Or, wait,

that they

specify that the enemy in the movie is like China or something.

And then the movie will do super bad overseas.

Yeah.

I think what if instead of

like unnamed nation that they're fighting,

instead of the young people doubting that old Tom Cruise still has what it takes and then he proves them wrong, what if he proves them right?

He does not have what it takes anymore and he's he's just blowing up the wrong planes, he crashes his jet and he has to deal with the fact that he really doesn't have it.

He lost whatever skill he had, you know?

Yeah, he just explodes immediately.

He gets into that plane and he's like, let me teach you a thing or two, whipper snappers, takes off, immediately explodes to midair.

And the rest of it is a very realistic funeral

for the character of Madrid.

An hour and a half of just footage slowly panning over his wreck.

Yeah.

Well, good news, everyone.

You did it.

Your tax fraud worked.

Yeah, you're the winners.

Everyone's a winner here on the floor.

Nobody loses, yeah, except the person who listens.

Speaking of listening, thank you, listeners.

Thank you for supporting us.

Check out other great shows on the Max Fun Network over at maximumfun.org.

Thank you to Alex Smith, our producer.

He goes by the name Howell Dotty on the internet, where he does a lot of his own great creative projects.

Check those out, please.

Uh, and for the Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy.

Hey, it's me, Stuart Wellington, and I'm Elliot Kalen saying bottom of the morning to you.

Why are you doing a voice?

Why are you doing a weird voice?

Bye, all.

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