Ep.#462 - Imaginary

On this Shoktober episode, we discuss Imaginary.

Woof, I wish this movie was Imaginary.

Stu, I said that right before we started recording.

Hey everyone, and welcome to the Flop House.

I'm Dan McCoy.

And I'm Stuart Wellington, all the way from New York City.

And I'm Elliot Kalen, and I'm recording in a different mode than usual because there's a Dan next to me.

Hey, that's not usually there in my bedroom.

I'm recording from Elliot's bedroom, where the magic happens.

I'm right here.

Uh-huh.

Look at all these rabbits and hats.

and

a lot of doves.

It must

stank in there, you know.

You know what I mean?

I mean, I live in a clean house, Stuart.

Clean house with a clean bed.

Yeah, why must it stank in there, Stuart?

Oh, look at Elliott.

Elliot knows what I'm talking about.

I don't have any idea what you're talking about.

Oh, man.

Yeah, oh, buddy.

Oh, buddy, yeah.

Oh, buddy.

Oh, how.

Now, Dan, what do we do on this podcast other than talk about stank?

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

And of course uh it is shocktober the time of year that we talk about scary movies or movies that purport to be scary it's a spooky month it's spooky times uh that's true and uh on this in this episode we're going to talk about a movie it's actually from last year uh that uh i think people were a little disappointed we didn't get to it was the sort of um standout flop uh horror film of last year took to the streets in anger and we had to listen to the voice of the people.

The Vox Populi rose as one and said, wither imaginary flop house.

And we said, why are you talking that way?

Yeah.

This was the first time I heard of this movie when you suggested watching it.

So maybe

I'm deaf to the people.

I realized, I thought I had never heard of it, and then I recognized the poster.

I mean, the poster, once you see the poster, which it says imaginary, and there's like, I don't know, like a little stuff, there's like a, I mean, the poster that's here online is like, there's a little girl sitting in front of like a glowing portal and there's like a little stuffed bear next door and you're like, okay, it's an evil imaginary friend.

I get it.

Yeah.

And it's,

and the poster is the first thing that, of many, that attempts to evoke poltergeist and fails.

Yes.

This is a movie.

It's amazing.

It's trying to eat poltergeist really badly.

It's also, let's just get it right out of the way.

It's the movie if, but the scary movie version, as opposed to the

makes your stomach hurt with Saccharin version.

Yeah.

It's drop dead Fred, but less scary.

That's true.

There's like, and there's some like Beetlejuice in there, and there's some like the boogeyman episodes of the Star Wars, the Real Ghostbusters TV show.

There's another Star Wars Boogeyman Halloween special.

Now I want to see a Star Wars horror story so badly now.

Yeah.

Delicious Beetlejuice.

Dan, a lot of times when you eat something and you're like, what is this flavor?

What makes it so good?

It's the Beetlejuice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean,

didn't,

didn't, wasn't Kampari originally colored by Beetles?

So in order to

drink

Beetle juice.

A number of dyes are made by grinding up Beetles.

Yeah, I was trying to remember.

I remember this factoid, but not as well as you guys.

So

you got to it.

Do you know if you buy a if you buy red clothes,

that's probably the blood of George Harrison or John Lennon that has been ground up.

They grind up beetles to make that color.

Yeah.

And

their bones to bake your bread.

Yes, yes, well, they're Englishmen, yeah.

If you grind up peat best, it doesn't, you don't get quite as rich a color.

Not a full beetle.

Yeah.

Stu Sutcliffe, same thing.

Anyway,

original Paul McCartney, same thing.

Yeah, right before he was replaced by a robot.

I literally just learned of this conspiracy theory today.

You didn't know about that?

How they tried to replace original Paul McCartney with Paul McCartney, with new Paul McCartney, and people,

the new flavor of Paul McCartney won out, but when the K actually came out, people wanted Paul McCartney Classic.

Which one sang that wild duet, The Girl is Mine?

That was, I was actually Paul McCartney number three.

That was the one they bred in a lab who wasn't all there.

But yeah, you never heard about the Paul McCartney, Paul's Dead conspiracy.

It's a classic.

No, I never heard it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well,

this is the conspiracy theory podcast.

Yeah.

It was what I love.

Before we get into imaginary, what I love about that conspiracy theory is the idea that Paul died.

They didn't want anyone to know.

So they replaced him and then left clues in all of their work so that you could find out that Paul had died.

It's like, really?

Like, what are they?

Batman villains?

Like, they're trying to get caught?

What's going on?

Yeah.

Come on.

I mean, that's the thing that's the only thing that's better than committing a crime

the only thing better is like teasing people to let them know you did it and john lennon was like we gave you all the clues mr policeman

oh man actually sounded more like ball

yeah well what are you gonna do let's talk about imaginary is that what we're doing today when that's

what we're doing uh we're trying stewart he realized we were stalling so we didn't have to talk about imaginary all our bluff uh do you have any more conspiracies you want to talk about this is uh you know it's been a while since I've watched a PG-13 horror because horror has had, you know, kind of a resurgence and there's a lot of great horror out there.

And we were mostly out of the period of time where it seemed like producers were like, we got to make this all PG-13 so we can get the widest possible audience with the

most direct, the most watered-down direct.

They realize at a certain point that people, audiences like horror, which is the kind of thing the movie business rediscovers every 20 years or so.

And yeah, so horror has been real hard-edged lately.

But you're right, for a while, it was like, we got to have horror that young people can go see, young kids.

And yeah, so what did you think about seeing a PG-13 movie, Dan?

I was

one of the most striking things about this film is how unscary it is.

And not just how unscary it is, but every time there was something that clearly was meant to be a scare, I sort of had to like rewind it a few times to be like, wait, what was supposed to be scary?

Like people are reacting as if something happened and i'm like oh no nothing really happened

i will say there's a section in the middle of this movie where i was like this movie despite itself is starting to become a an effective for me horror movie and then the movie throws that all away uh and gets very um

uh for lack of a better word kind of like

PG-13 Jim Henson-y almost, you know, by the end of it.

Yeah.

I see what you're saying, but I found the middle section to be the most like perturbing because it was like the most unscary.

And at the at the end, at least

the silliness at least was something.

I guess so.

I mean, the beginning of it is so boring, though.

We'll talk about it.

I found the first 40 minutes of this movie very dull.

I really want to hear Dan describe this movie that he ain't scared of, Mr.

Big Balls over here.

Because Stu, you were wetting yourself the whole time.

You're going to see me shivering as I read the

synopsis.

I'm like, oh, this is scary.

Okay, so we start with a tiny door, and a woman bursts from it.

And

she says, sorry we couldn't finish our game.

Just someone unseen and a bunch of stuff happens.

There's like a poem on the wall with crayon.

There's blood.

There's a bloody tooth.

And the man with a bloody mouth grabs her and says, Your friend isn't coming back before turning all spidery.

And there's a creepy hall and a kid's bedroom and blah, blah, blah.

And, you know, she tries to wake this kid before a spider, the Spider-Man attacks, not Spider-Man.

Nider-Man, a man-spider.

A spider.

I know this was one of Spider-Man's transformations when Spider-Man went to the Savage Land.

He became the man spider.

He doesn't own the fucking rights to

Spider-Man.

He actually does own the rights to the name Spider-Man, yeah.

So we're kicking off with a bunch of

scary imagery we have no context for, so it doesn't mean anything.

And much of that imagery does not really come back.

Not really.

But don't worry, guys.

This style of cold open horror is effective, and I think a lot of movies like like they like a scare up front.

They like to set the tone of the movie.

In this case, the tone is things don't make sense.

I think it sets the tone of desperate flailing to try to figure out what is going to scare you.

Yeah, I would disagree with the idea that it is.

effective.

I would say it is a thing that studios seem to like because they have to tell you up front that you're watching a horror movie because otherwise the person who bought the ticket to a horror movie would be like, I don't know what kind of movie this is.

Is it going to get scary at any point?

I mean, to be honest,

I think it's designed not for the ticket-buying audience, but for the streaming or home viewing audience.

Yeah, possibly.

But like, you have to have a scare up front or else they might zap away within seconds.

But don't worry.

Don't worry, guys.

Don't get too scared by any of it because

it's too late.

I'm just a dream.

It's just a dream.

The best way for a movie to begin by telling you that what you saw doesn't matter.

That was just a dream.

Just a dream.

And she was losing her religion if she was a little bit more.

She started editing this out.

Look, you don't have the rights to that song.

Oh, good point.

Good point.

We've been so good about that up till now.

So we meet Jess, who's the woman in the dream who's having the dream, and her husband, Max.

We learn they're moving back into Jess's childhood home with their two kids from Max's previous marriage.

Now, I would describe their relationship as just met the day before shooting.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, and also, don't worry, Max will disappear for most of the movie, so you won't have to know too much about him.

He's going on tour with his band.

I know he's got an English accent, and he's a guy in a band.

Yeah.

And

he's got a classic crazy ex.

I mean, so I guess he maybe could be a Beetle, you know, possibly.

That's true.

Yeah, there's nothing.

Not many of them in the movie that says he isn't a Beatle.

There's nothing in the movie except his name, which is not one of the Beatles' names.

His face, the fact that they're a young person now, yeah.

But you really got to see it.

He's screaming the math in his head.

I see him like that.

But he does have like a little beard, right?

That could be anything.

That's true.

He did have a ring.

He does.

Maybe this is Ringo Starr.

I think he's still touring.

Ringo star.

Yeah.

This could be him.

Anyway, Max.

Max has two kids from a previous year.

Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

He is a Beatle.

Okay.

There's a younger daughter, Alice, and a teenage daughter, Taylor.

And Alice seems willing to accept Jess as her new mom, but Taylor is more resistant because she is 18.

Yeah, classic teen.

And she's like a very angry teen, and there's like weird moments where she's affable, but for the most part, she's just really like mad at everything.

And at first, I was like, this is annoying.

And then by the end, I'm like, oh, it's kind of growing on me.

Yeah, I think, and she earns it.

I mean, what we pick up from the backstory is I guess their mother had some kind of what?

mental breakdown yeah uh and uh is a is a kind of a stalking or a danger to them yeah uh at one point early on here max explains to Jess that you give love to kids and usually get jack shit in return.

Elliot, true or false?

Very accurate.

Very accurate.

Considering I know both my boys love me.

They do not like to show it, admit it, or they like to, one of them in particular likes to, as a joke, tell me he does not love me or that he sometimes loves me.

And you just have to take it on faith that all the things you do for them, which are so many, are received in the spirit of

love.

That's a pretty good joke, isn't that?

That's a hilarious joke.

The punchline is he enjoys the discomfort that I get from it.

You know, it's a real Andy Hoffman type routine.

Yeah, he is.

Yeah, he likes the way that the company looks uncomfortable when he says it in front of them.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

The same way when the company shows up and he likes to go, Daddy, why did you touch me there?

And I go, oh, what?

That didn't happen.

But I'm up for a big promotion.

Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is my son is Clifford.

The dog?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Clifford, the big red dog.

Yeah, exactly.

So they, you know, they return to Jess's old family home.

They're settling there to live.

Alice is afraid of the drawings in Jess's office.

We learn Jess is

a children's book

writer and

she's got a series that's called Millie Millipede or something like that.

Molly Millipede.

There's an evil spider guy named what?

Simon the Spider.

Simon the Spider.

Kind of,

I guess, villainous character, although he's kind of an anthropomorphic spider-man.

Yeah, and for anyone listening, they're like, Simon the spider, that's another Beatles thing.

No, that's the who and it's Boris the Spider.

So you're wrong on both counts.

Get the hell out of here.

Yeah, well, you told that person who maybe exists.

I did.

But yeah, later on, we learned that maybe she writes a book from Simon's point of view to show that maybe

seemingly bad guys can have a good side.

Anyway, I don't know.

Yeah, but Bad Guys is a serious hit of an animated series, right?

That's true in the Bad Guys.

The Bad Guys 2 is a movie that also exists.

Yeah, and was all automatically.

To be honest, I kind of like it more than the first one.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I don't know anything.

I saw the first one.

I thought it was fine.

And then, like, the second one just tanked like a stone.

I'm like, you know what?

I've had my fill of bad guys.

It was not a success.

I'm surprised by that.

The theater was full when I went to see it.

Do you think they should have called it despicable them?

I guess, I guess so.

I don't like this recording section.

You guys are always.

It's not so easy to just be out on your own.

Is it more comforting to have me next to you?

Yes.

Stuart, now you know what it's like for me every single time, just sitting here off in space.

You guys are despicable void.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, that's sad.

Well, now, I mean, we'll have to do it round Robin style.

I'll

despicable them because we'd have a round robin.

And Despicable Me is a successful movie about a bad guy.

So why don't, you know what I mean.

No, I got it.

The math works.

It was not that I didn't see the logic of the joke.

Did I not say it's silly enough?

Maybe that was it.

Yeah, maybe try it as a movie's voice.

Yeah.

Goose did a little, I guess.

Slightly.

Like a goose voice.

Yeah, can you do it?

Do it as an evil goose?

Yeah.

More like they should have called a despicable thing.

You know what?

You know what?

For me, it failed.

I liked it.

I wouldn't say that was an evil goose.

It was more like a goofy goose.

You heard him, Stuart.

Dan wants you on his team.

Okay.

Anyway,

what do we got here?

Oh, okay.

So.

So she's a children's book illustrator.

It scares Alice a little bit.

Yeah.

Jess gets distracted in the middle of a game of hide-and-seek while Alice goes to the basement.

This is a classic thing you should not do as an adult is play hide and seek and then leave in the middle of it.

And then get a call and be like, yeah, she'll be okay.

She'll be fine.

She probably won't hide inside the dryer or something.

A place that kids love to hide.

They should not go in there.

It's not safe.

But when Alice is in the basement, she finds a teddy bear hidden in a door in the wall And she talks to it as if she wasn't.

It's a weird place for a teddy bear, guys.

It's one of the top three weirder places for a teddy bear.

I heard of a bear like sort of stuck in a rabbit hole once.

That's a place where a bear can be found.

Yeah, that's you could find a bear stuck halfway through a rabbit hole.

Yeah.

Or

covered in mud attached to a balloon.

I think that's a good thing.

That's the same bear.

It's the same bear.

Yeah.

Any other bears you can think of, Dan?

Oh,

well,

don't say looking for heffalumps.

Same bear, Dan.

Okay, well, floating down an African river.

Okay, that's a different bear.

That's a different bear.

Yeah, there you go.

Anyway,

Africa, I can't even remember where the jungle is.

The jungle is in India.

India.

Yeah, that's why there's a tiger there.

What about a bear that just stalks Danny Moonstar?

Yeah, that's a different.

I mean, there's two of those inside of everybody.

That's where you find them.

So she should have found this teddy bear inside of her with another teddy bear that is not evil, because as it becomes pretty clear, this is an evil teddy bear, right?

Yes, immediately, yeah.

This bear's name is Chauncey.

Meanwhile,

Taylor is, you know, sad because she's.

Because he wants to marry Taito, Tevia's daughter.

But Tevia's daughter is promised to Laser Wolf the Butcher.

A poor Taylor?

Even a poor tailor deserves some happiness.

She's taking a confident selfie to pretend that everything's okay in her life.

It's a pretty funny selfie choice because like...

Her like her backdrop is what the window?

It's like it's not like it's a good view.

It's going to be backdrop.

She's got a creepy old monster lady in the back yeah she's she's just showing she's like look at this i have sunlight in my life you know yeah she sees this uh some sort of creepy figure downstairs which causes her to run downstairs outside uh whoever it is is gone but she meets the hunky boy next door this is very funny this is up there with in the electric state when a woman when when what's her name when um uh hears like something in the garbage cans and immediately assumes it must be a danger that she has to confront and not a raccoon.

She sees, she's like in in the window, she sees there's an old lady standing on the sidewalk, and she's like, Oh, I've got to investigate this.

Especially on a suburban street, can't have any old ladies on it.

And she like whirls around so that, like, in a way, it feels like she's like, Let's whirl around to reveal that there's nobody standing there, but you can kind of see somebody leaving the frame real quick.

This is not a ghost, this is just their neighbor.

Yeah, yeah, this is my favorite character in the movie who we'll eventually meet.

But yeah, but downstairs, she's the winky neighbor.

Yeah, she flirts with a boy next to her.

This is my favorite character in the movie.

This boy says it's probably old bag Patterson who tried to buy the house that they're in now.

They're interrupted in their discussion of bars that don't check IDs by Protective Mother Jess.

You know,

there's some stuff where they overhear Alice talking to Chauncey, more like creepy stuff.

What was that?

What happened?

No, it's just creepy.

I just think it's funny to summary.

They have some creepy stuff.

Creepy.

Yeah, like

They discover that she's.

Oh, sorry.

So you're summarizing the movie the same way that the guy summarized what was in his refrigerator in the Sunny D commercial.

Purple stuff.

Yeah, whatever.

Well, this is a movie.

Sorry, go on.

I was just saying that the creepy stuff is she now starts speaking in a voice for Chauncey.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

I'm an evil bear voice.

You know what I'm saying?

Actually, it doesn't sound like that at all now that I think about it.

Booky, Chris.

Yeah.

Now what I'll say here, what we've got is a bear.

I'm an evil bear.

$22.

Yeah.

Is that a bear thing?

Yeah.

I mean, that kid's pretty curious.

That kid was a bear?

That kid was a bear.

A lot of people don't know.

In the original screenplay for Better Off Dead, that kid's referred to as shaved bear kid.

But you wouldn't get that.

They had trouble finding a bear they could shave and play that part, so they added just a kid to it.

Yeah.

It was called Bear Der Off Dead originally.

And then they became Barter Off Dead in a World Without Money.

How does this kid deal with high school?

And they became Better Off Dead.

Better Off Dad, where you're dead instead of dead.

Then it was Batter Off Dead, where he's a baker instead of a student.

Yeah.

Then it was Batter Off Dead, where he's a baseball player.

Then it was Batter Off Dead where he's a bat.

Yeah.

Then it was Batter B-A-D, D-E-R Off-Dead, where he was like worse than dead, which is like, I guess, you know, just really sad all the time.

And then there was Better Off.

Dud, where he's Dudley Moore.

Yes, and then it was Better Off Doug, where he's Doug from the TV show Doug.

Yeah,

Better Off Ted, which was a different TV show.

That was used later on.

Yeah.

Sure.

It's also a movie.

That's true.

Was that character Better Off Ted?

Because I feel like I don't know what the

Sandard is.

Better Off Than What, you know?

Yeah, hard to say.

And then it was Better Off Teddy Ruxpin, which brings us to Bears, Dan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, part of why.

So I'm going through like this, like, then some creepy stuff happened is the whole first part of the, like, eventually stuff starts happening and a surprising amount of stuff starts happening but for a long time there's not a lot of stuff that happens it takes a long time for the plot to kick in and i'm sort of editing in real time my notes i'm like well that's not important my guess is they added that dream sequence at the beginning because it's such a long time before scares yeah happening so they're like we got to make sure people know this is not really a movie about just a woman trying to bond with these two stepkids yeah uh but eventually we're not making janet planet here people we're making imaginary yeah He talks about a mom and a daughter, not Steph, but you understand.

Find some ominous old boxes of memories in the basement, including a crayon drawing of a door labeled Never Ever.

And

is this before or after Alice has already said that Chauncey has he's heard she's heard Alice say never ever in the in the voice of Chauncey or something like that?

I honestly don't know the first time that that happens, but that's yes, that's a thing that also occurs.

And speaking of Alice talking to Chauncey, Jess goes upstairs.

She hears Alice talking to someone, assumes it must be her imaginary friend.

This is another really funny scene.

But it's a woman who knocks Jess down and says, there's something here.

I have to protect my girls.

Who is it?

It's Max's ex-wife.

Bang, bang, Max's ex-wife came down on her head.

I mean, I absolutely love the framing of this shot where she's like spying on Alice, talking to her imaginary friend.

And she's like, it's so cute, but like, she's clearly not seeing the enough of the room to see that someone else is in there.

Yeah, just so funny to me.

It's like such an obvious bullshit filmmaking technique.

Yeah.

Um,

so the ex-wife knows where they are, I guess, because Taylor was secretly texting her, and she escaped from whatever institution she was in.

And

she gets carted off while Taylor apologizes tearfully.

Um,

you know, and uh, in this period, Jessica starts writing a book from Simon the Spider's point of view to make him seem less scary.

Is this when this is around when the dad leaves on the tour, right?

Yes, this is what I was about to say.

Literally the next sentence, meanwhile, Max goes off.

Well, now that my wife is back in custody and certainly can't escape again, it's time for me to leave and go on tour with my band.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's a bad dad band dad, you know.

He is a bad dad band dad, yeah.

You don't ever hear any of Max's music.

I so wish we got to hear what his bands are.

Because from the way he looks, I have to assume it sounds like Imagine Dragons.

Yes.

But maybe it's something different.

Maybe it's like a

whatchamacallit?

Like your body's a wonderland sort of thing.

Yeah, John Mayer, yeah.

Like that, whatchamacallit commercial.

Whatchamacallit.

Who's the ma Bob?

Thing the woods, whatever.

Yeah.

I think that I was just talking to my older son yesterday about how my brain chooses to remember the jingles from candy commercials and not things that I actually need as I sang the entire ring pop song to him.

But

it would be really funny if he's like, he's like, sorry, I got to go out on tour.

Al wants to hit all the towns again.

It turns out he's the bassist in Weird Al's backing band.

I would love it.

I mean,

that would be a cool job.

I mean, Weird Al puts on a great show.

He gets on, it puts on a great show.

Yeah.

You just said, you see, you see,

they're trying to telepathically call to him for help, and you see him playing on stage, and he notices it, but he's in the middle of a 10-minute poke, alternative poke

medley with Weird Al.

And Weird Al's like, heading the game, man, heading the game.

Yeah, yeah.

He's like, I don't know.

I think I have to leave the the tour.

My kids are in danger because of this imaginary monster.

And Weird Al's like, no.

There's a hundred people who would want to play bass with the master of mirthful music, Mayhem.

And you, you, so you walk out that door, you're never coming back.

And the rest of the movie is just about the trouble he has with Al, you know, the pressures the life on the tour.

I think that'd just be great.

Let's do it.

Yeah.

It's called

Imaginale.

Al Imaginary.

Al, yeah.

Okay, I guess.

I'm lucky as that.

That's tacit acceptance right there.

Yeah, Dan, you said yes, and you anded it.

Now you own it.

Okay, I guess I do.

If anyone wants to buy it from me.

Good touch.

It turns out that Gloria was Jess's old babysitter,

which Jess does not remember.

And Gloria is also a writer.

Anybody could walk up to Jess and just be like, oh, yeah, yeah, I used to know when you were a kid.

And you're just like, oh, I guess so.

Okay, I don't know.

Gloria was also a writer, not as successful.

She talks about how creative Jess was and had her own imaginary friend.

Oh, wait a minute, Jessica.

She typically said she never had an imaginary friend.

She didn't remember having an imaginary friend.

How is this possible?

I wonder if that'll come into play.

And she says that Jess's dad is a fan of her books, which makes Jessica uncomfortable since her dad

also had some sort of mental break after her mother's death.

And there's some sort of complicated history that we will hear later probably yes we will but it was it was a complicated history that was

uh it was dangerous enough that she had to be taken away from her father never to be seen again but not so dangerous that he had to leave his home yes and they only move into the house because he's moved into an associated care facility yes and it's also this but she knows where he is and it seems like she's maybe it's just the trauma of it it seems like she's never tried to find out anything about what happened or bridge the gap or anything like that well speaking of bridging the gap and that assisted care facility,

she goes to visit him.

He doesn't seem to recognize her at first.

She's, you know, like doing her own like little info dump in the form of a one-sided conversation, being like, How did you, how can you just change like that?

We were happy.

But when he finally does recognize her, he starts screaming about how she went away and was always talking about CB.

CB.

Yeah, as soon as he started saying that, I'm like, okay, guys,

you could be a little more opaque.

You could be a little more opaque.

Yeah, it's like, how am I going to, oh, so there's a bear named Chauncey?

How am I going to decode CB?

And it takes her four fucking ever.

You didn't think it was about like, you know, she was like a long-haul trucker.

No, I didn't think she became a long-haul trucker.

It felt like a

song convoy.

But something that John Hodgman once told me years ago is that he was told audiences like to be ahead of the mystery.

It's not that audiences like to be surprised by twists.

They like to figure it out themselves.

And this felt like one that was designed for the audience to be like, CB, Chauncey Bear, of course.

Oh, when are the heroes going to figure out the thing?

I'm so smart that I figure it out.

You know, yeah, Hodgman learned that when

he was studying under Dick Wolf, right?

When Dick Wolf took him under his wing.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

He was briefly raised by wolves.

They called him TV Mowgli.

Yeah.

To bring it back to the jungle book because Dick Wolf was raising him.

Yeah.

It was also Dick Wolf who had first protected him from sheer con

but uh uh you know a theme in this movie is uh of course bad babysitting uh taylor's supposed to be babysitting alice but she ignores that she's uh being really creepy with chauncey in a jar of bugs in favor of instead hanging out with a boy next door i will say this if collecting a jar of bugs is creepy I take offense because considering my son has a room full of jars of bugs and pieces of animals, basically,

someone just recently gave him a mummified lizard they found in their garage.

Well, you know, like you find animal bones out in the forest.

You know, like we have a coyote skull we found in the yellow cross.

Exactly, yeah.

How else are you going to talk to Baal?

That's what I want to know.

Yeah.

No, there's a science way of doing something like this, but this is

clearly some sort of stuff.

She's clearly collecting bugs as a way of getting in with Chauncey.

Yeah.

So you're saying Taylor brings over the boy next door and he brings along a gift, and this time it's not a first edition of the Iliad.

No, no.

He presents a bag of drugs, which Taylor does not take, but he fails to read the room and starts raiding the liquor cabinet as well and breaks something.

Drops a bottle and they have to clean it up.

He goes upstairs to get a towel, but he's distracted by a toy in Alice's room that is casting bear-shaped colored lights on the wall.

He's tripping balls at this point, right?

Well, one would think he thinks so he believes.

Yeah, there's jaunty but creepy music playing.

And then while he's peeing,

he is distracted by Chauncey's pull string,

you know, sort of like slowly,

you know, being retracted in a way that scares him.

And this is the part that I had to like rewind to be like, what?

Why did he jump?

What was the scary thing?

Yeah.

Like, it's just that he like it, he follows the string up to the bear covered by a towel on the on the counter.

So this scene.

And he jumps and he puts and pees all over the floor.

And I'm like, why was that?

So what, what is, what doesn't work about this scene is he should, he shouldn't be scared unless he already knows that there is an evil imaginary bear character in the house.

And that is information that has not yet been given to him.

And this leads to.

At very worst, this is a home not wanting to buy an elf on the shelf type scenario.

And instead, just drafting this bear into

that role.

Yeah.

And this leads to a follow-up scene that I thought the imagery of this was more effectively a little scary.

Later on, right?

What?

Later on or right here?

Well, right here, where he sees the pole string again, he chases around.

He steps on it, which causes it to pull the teddy bear slowly towards him on the hall.

Oh, yeah.

I thought that was a creepy image, but then it's immediately followed by an unscary, like, CGI real bear that like leaps at him for a second before he, you know, falls down.

I forgot about that.

I forgot about that CGI bear.

Yeah.

There's two bears inside of everyone, a stuffed bear and a CGI bear.

Yeah.

And at this point, Jess comes home like, what the fuck?

And we cut to a neighbor's mom being there.

And Jess is like, I come home to your son giving my daughter Molly.

And she's like, this isn't Molly.

This is my allergy medicine.

And I fucking rolled my eyes because what are we to believe that the kid thought was going on here?

He just like found a baggie of allergy medicine in the met in the medicine cabinet.

I was like, this is probably Molly that I can give to the neighbor.

Like, what was the what was like this dumb fucking payoff of a joke.

You know what?

I buy that he's dumb.

The backstory of this.

I buy that he's dumb, and my guess is that it is their way of saying, don't worry, this character was not actually doing drugs.

This is a PG13 movie.

Oh, that makes sense.

That makes sense.

But also, dumb kids aren't like they find

pills in their home and they're like, my mom probably has molly.

You don't know what their life is like.

Maybe she's like, that's my allergy medicine, you idiot.

I keep the molly in the other drawer.

I mean, it would be one thing if it's the same brand of allergy medicine and he bought it off a smarter, dumb kid.

Yes.

I mean, maybe that's the backstory.

For some reason, the one thing I liked about this is it reminded me.

Let's check the novelization of

Alan Dean Foster's version of this.

The one thing I liked about it was that it reminded me of a moment in a state sketch that I liked.

One of the Doug sketches where they find he has pot and his, it's either his daddy's principal is like, What's this?

And he goes, Oh, that's a Reagano for Home Eck.

And then goes, That's a lot of oregano, Doug.

Should be.

I paid 50 bucks for it.

um

so uh jess also finds one of her paintings uh ripped um uh sorry i uh i got a text from

scared yeah you got too scared i get it the idea of art being destroyed was what was scary for jess it is from

and the phone was like you probably want to switch over to the text

um no she finds one of her paintings ripped and she thinks alice is mad at her and was the one who ripped it and so she does this extremely long monologue to a lump under the blanket in Alice's bed that is clearly not Alice.

And it goes on forever without her checking if the kid is there while she's talking to this dog.

It's a heartfelt speech about what being afraid and stuff like that.

And when I was angry, I would break things or whatever.

I don't know.

And, you know, like her dad got sick and it made her upset, but she loves these kids so much.

And

but she finally looks out.

Yeah, and then she goes on this long speech about how Tim Roth gobbled her baby up.

And you're like, what?

She's like, Oh, and you're not really talking to me.

You're not talking, and the blanket's not moving.

You're so mad that you're not talking.

You're not even breathing.

You're so mad that you're dead now.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

But she looks outside.

You're also super tiny.

Guys, we've all been there.

We've all had a podcast guest who just will not talk and is just lying there under a blanket, not breathing.

And it turns out that we look outside and see the guest, and it turns out it was a teddy bear under the blanket the whole time.

Yeah, she sees Alice outside taking a fence apart for some reason.

But we know why.

Well, we know why.

We find out why at this point.

And she pulls back the blanket to see Chauncey.

And again, she reacts as if it's this big scare moment and not like, yeah, it's a teddy bear in a bed where a teddy bear lives.

The idea of a teddy bear being in a bed.

How did it get here?

Dan,

what possible logical explanation could this teddy bear have for being in a bed?

But she runs downstairs and rescues Alice from intentionally slamming her hand down on a rusty nail

from the fence because presumably Chauncey told her to.

Yes, yeah, cocktail.

No, no,

Chauncey has told her to, she has to do something that hurts because Chauncey has given her a scavenger hunt.

That's why she collected those bugs.

She had to have something that scares her.

Yeah, and I will say

has found the scavenger hunt list, right?

Yes.

Yeah, and I will say the girl almost slamming her hand down on a rusty nail.

I don't, maybe it's just that I'm a parent.

I didn't like

this.

I felt like this movie had not established a scary enough nightmarish atmosphere that I could, that, uh, it felt like a, this was the moment where I was like, this seems harsh for the movie that I have been watching.

Yeah.

And the movie, I will say from this point on, for a little bit, I did find it getting more kind of like realistically upsetting in some ways.

Um, not necessarily scary, but like effective in making me not happy.

Is that because uh, the next thing that happens is a child psychiatrist is called in?

I think

the child psychiatrist stuff, I think, is the best stuff in the movie, to be honest.

You know, I guess I have a hard time separating it from the movie.

I guess if I think about it, I could imagine a better movie having this in it.

I want to hear both of you explain why you feel this way, but let's continue with the plot because there's a couple of specific moments that I found very strange.

I found one very funny.

Well, I think that's the thing.

This is the part of the movie where I'm like, I don't really know exactly what game.

Oh, I know the game this movie is playing.

There's an Evil Imaginary Friend, but I don't know exactly what this movie is trying to do compared to the earlier part of the movie.

And then at the the end, I was like, now I really don't know what this movie is attempting to do.

So Dr.

Soto comes in to talk to Alice, and she asks Alice about the scavenger hunt that led her to almost hurt herself.

And in the process of this, she encourages Alice to tell Chauncey how he made her feel.

And the doctor is a little bit more.

And she's filming this whole thing.

Yeah, she's filming it like any good therapist.

She wants to have videotaped so that she can show it to her the parents of other patients.

Yeah, we haven't gotten there yet.

The act of her filming it is not weird at this point, but

I think it's weird.

That's done.

That is done.

I mean, there are therapists that record their sessions, you know.

But

people

in ways that this therapist is not going to do later on.

Well, no, she cuts together a compilation called

Weird Wacky Kids that she sells on TV later.

I think in particular, if it's a child therapy session, there are reasons why this might be done.

Yeah, because it's extra scary.

Yeah, because it might end up on kids say the most traumatic things.

Well, you want you

No, no, I know you may need it for for different types of reasons.

Yeah

So she encourages Alice to tell Chauncey how he made her feel and the doctor sees Alice doing Chauncey's voice and talking back and forth to herself Alice has her back to the doctor during this conversation Chauncey is saying things like fake mommy will leave fake mommy is mean only Chauncey love Alice and I do love that I do love that the psychologist or psychiatrist whichever one that she keeps she's like still like, she's like, this ain't that weird.

I'm just going to keep asking these like, like in-depth probing questions, which I feel like this kid, even if it wasn't arguing with its imaginary friend, would have trouble handling.

She doesn't seem like just emotional questions like that.

I don't think she's really approaching the child at the child's level, but also feels like a certain point she's like, I'm going to stir up shit between this kid and her imaginary friend.

Like, I'm just going to see what the drama is that erupts here.

But then we get the great line where the doctor asks Jess, has Alice taken up any new hobbies lately?

Ventriloquism?

That is very funny that.

And I don't think that's where I would start if I was the doctor.

Especially since, as she then reveals,

she has dealt with other patients where kids have evil imaginary friends.

Yes.

Well, let's get to that because we teased it.

She tells Jess that Alice brought up a place called The Never Ever, which reminded her of an old patient.

And then she fucking shows Jess video of the kids' session.

She shouldn't do that.

That's not all right.

That's not all right.

And I like that she has that shit just like queued up.

She shows this to people at partnership.

She sees people just like, hey, you've seen this.

This is crazy.

Let me show you this clip.

This is bonkers.

Look at this maniac.

This little weirdo.

Aren't you supposed to have like not to not do this?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Everybody does it.

Everybody does it.

101 great therapy fails.

Yeah, America's funny.

It's like we all share these clips.

It's like how doctors always share x-rays of stuff up people's butts.

Like, you know, you know, they're doing it.

Yeah.

But the point is, that kid disappeared right after talking about the never.

And he also had cut his thumb off, right?

Oh, I missed that part.

This is a kid who is missing a thumb, and it turns out that he, he, did his, his, uh, his, uh, uh, his imaginary friend told him to hurt himself, and then to, and they disappeared, you know.

Yeah, I, it wasn't.

He's just like, it's what it takes me to show you this session.

This kid disappeared.

He's not going to get mad about it.

It wasn't 100% clear what the kid had done to hurt himself, but then later on they mentioned that he cut his thumb.

Yes, yeah.

Invisually, it was not clear.

This reminds Jess of that crayon.

You don't see him go hitchhiking, but he can't do it because he's, you know,

yeah, he's trying to talk about a movie he really liked, and he's like, no, I liked it more than one thumb.

Yeah, that was the, they're like, that kid disappeared, and we know that he didn't go hitchhiking because he couldn't.

He couldn't, yeah.

There was no way.

He was scheduled to be on Roper at the movies,

but he never showed up.

Yeah, yeah, he was going to play in the video game championships, but no.

And never happened.

Yeah.

This reminds me.

me.

He was sitting in a corner with a plum pudding, but he had nothing to stick in it.

This is horrible.

We're only making these jokes because, of course, this is a made-up person.

This is not a real person.

We would never make these jokes about a real person without a thumb, only a fictional character in a stupid movie.

Yeah.

This reminds Jess of her crayon drawing of the never ever.

And Jess is like, I got to destroy that bear.

And the doctor says, what bear?

That shit was amazing.

Like

that reveals.

I'm like, come on, Boofy.

You didn't earn this.

No.

Only Alice and Jessica.

I admire the audacity of it.

I admire the audacity of it because it does not make sense with anything we've seen previously in the film.

Yeah.

She starts freaking out, and I know if I was the one who was.

Well, and this is when the doctor shows her the video, right?

No, no, that was before.

No, no, she shows the video of the session and there's no bear.

Oh, of the session.

And there's the moment where like Taylor walks in and she's like, uh, you've seen the bear, right?

She's like, yeah, it's not that funny, but it keeps winning a best original comedy.

I don't understand.

Oh, not this year, dude.

No, that's true.

It lost this year but yeah the uh yeah she's like you've seen the bear right she's like what bear are you talking about there's no bear so um

you know it is one of the funnier fight club style reveals that oh my god all those times we thought we saw a bear there there was no bear there

instead of carrying a bear she was just holding her arm at a weird angle yeah

so uh

just knows something is going on with that creepy never ever door she looks for alice but can't find alice because she's busy doing some weird ritual.

And Taylor and Jess can't find her, but there's blood on the tiny basement door.

And there's an argument between Taylor and Jess where Taylor says people don't just disappear.

And that reminds Jess of what her dad said.

She thinks, oh, Chauncey was also her childhood friend.

And Taylor's like, she's found all these drawings of Chauncey Bear that she did as a kid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And Taylor's like, that's nuts, which is

reasonable, but Taylor's really mean about it because she's a teen.

Again, she's a teenager, so she's mean.

I mean, it is, on the face of it, if you don't know you're in a horror movie, then to be told, oh, my stepdaughter has my imaginary friend and he's come back for revenge in the form of a bear that you can't see, your first reaction would be, I don't believe that.

Yes.

Unless you know you're in a horror movie, in which case you'd say that is reasonable.

It seems like exactly the situation.

Let's figure out the rules here.

I thought it was the dead school janitor who was coming to her in her dreams to try to kill her, but no, it turns out it's this

in another moment of good parenting/slash babysitting,

after looking around for their missing,

for Alice who's missing, she then just lets Taylor wander the streets looking for her by herself.

Yeah.

A girl who they've expressly pointed out is a minor.

Well, Taylor's out wandering the streets at night, as you say.

She bumps into Gloria, the old neighbor, who's like, it's time for some more exposition.

And

You've unlocked this next level of knowledge.

Yeah.

And she tells Taylor that

when,

sorry, my notes are bad here.

When Jess was a kid, she said she was going to a secret place just for her and her imaginary friend, and she opened that secret door and disappeared.

And this is what, and that she talks a lot about like how when kids have imaginary friends, right?

They're really spirits from the images.

Yeah, they're spirits.

Some are good and some are bad and some get angry when the kids grow up and their connection is severed uh because they hunger for the child's power of imagination

yeah and glorious house has been turned into this like cool library of the arcane filled with like folklore and like it has like really kind of interesting open plan design that i thought was pretty cool yeah

uh yeah giles walks

let me explain this to you kind of um i mean to be honest i love this is my favorite character in the movie.

Like I said, she's full of,

she's this weird old lady who's like, yeah, you know what?

Ever since you disappeared when I was babysitting you, I've just devoted myself to the esoteric and arcane.

I know exactly what's happening.

And as we find out later, she's super into it.

You know?

Yeah.

She's like, since I lost you, I found a world so new.

And that world is the arcane and the macabre.

Anyway, meanwhile, Jess has been busy repainting all of the art she drew on her walls as a child.

She's trying to reconnect to the old memories.

And it's kind of a naive style.

Yeah, outsider art.

Yeah.

She's joined by Glorian Taylor, who and Taylor's now totes on board with the evil spirit stuff.

And Jess is like, I remember most of what happened to me as a kid.

The thing my dad kept saying, CB, that stands for Chauncey Bear.

His whole name.

Oh,

Chauncey Bear.

Yeah.

And the gang has to finish CB's scavenger hunt so they can open the door.

And, you know, that scavenger hunt, of course, is usual.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something that hurts.

And the ritual doesn't work the first time.

So Jess has to be really mean to Taylor to make it actually work, calling her selfish like her mother.

But it kind of brings them closer together because Taylor realizes that it hurt Jess to be so cruel to her.

Yeah, that it wasn't that it hurt her that finished the ritual, it was that it hurt Jess to say these things.

There were kind of earned a little bit of truth to them, to be honest.

Yeah, if there was a little bit of truth, it wouldn't hurt, you know?

Yeah, that's true.

And I think that Taylor's also like when you're at a roast and it's like people are mean to you, but they're mean to you in a really specific way that shows they really know you.

Like, that's it's like you must really have been paying attention to be so mean.

You see me.

You must see me, Tom Brady, and know exactly the man I am.

Yeah, exactly.

Thank you, Jeff Ross.

Penetrating this exterior and getting to the molten, vulnerable core beneath.

So they go through the door into an interior.

Here I, Tom Brady, stand before you, naked and exposed to you, Jeff Ross.

Tuck me to the quick, will you?

They go through the door into this MC Escher nightmare world.

I'm going to say this.

I would like to put a ban on using black and white checkered floor tiles in paranormal worlds.

They do that, and I'm like, that is not a paranormal world thing.

That is a Tim Burton thing.

Like, that's Tim Burton's thing.

So that's the Beetlejuice we're talking about.

Yeah, that's the Beetlejuice that's in there.

Yeah.

Kampari.

And once we're in the world, Gloria starts cackling about it.

Everyone said that her books were the nonsensical ramblings of an old woman, but she was right.

And

she's a vowel in this world.

You can imagine anything.

It's full of imagination.

It's wonderful.

But the movie is done with her.

So, of course, she is mauled by a bear.

Well,

don't

be afraid.

I was just so excited about it because it was like, oh, suddenly I'm watching The Winter's Tale.

Because what happens before that is Jess sees a vision of her dad fighting off the evil spirit in its tentacle spidery form to save her.

And she knows that that's what drove him mad.

He gave up his sanity to save her from the never end.

And that's the point at which Gloria has unpropped the door and gives her villain monologue where she says, the entity told me to bring you here.

We'll leave our pain behind.

We'll be happy here forever.

And, you know,

it's so big that it telegraphs that, of course, she's about to die.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And where does that character go from there?

She either becomes the villain of the movie or she dies.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, but also, it's like so clearly like a setup of a joke.

It's like, oh, we'll live forever.

Yeah.

This is their, this is their deep blue sea moment.

Yeah.

Um, and uh, some furry Paul Paw pulls her into like a Scooby-Doo hallway door.

And

so, this is so goofy.

This part.

This is where the movie, and it is, I think, officially at this part that the movie stops being a horror movie and becomes kind of like,

we'll live forever.

This is when the movie officially stops trying to be a horror movie and just becomes kind of like, I don't know, like

an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark or something like that?

Because it takes a long time for this thing to kill her.

The others first find safer at any moment.

My first thought was, hey, guys, free house, right?

I guess she's gone.

Nobody's going to need her house anymore.

Yeah, that's true.

Or that library, that cool occult library.

How are they going to explain this to the police?

I mean, I don't think they have to, there's nothing connecting

to that.

Yeah,

I think it'll just be weird old lady disappearing.

I think their ring camera caught them walking into the house.

Something tells me that she doesn't have a ring camera.

There's no body, yeah.

Anyway, they get we saw you go into the house and then leave with her on the camera, and then she disappeared.

It's like, well, yeah, well, we all went out to get Frogart, and then, you know,

she left, you know.

We went out had to get Frozone from

Frozen Calzones, and then

she just walked away.

I don't know.

I'm Frozone for Frozone's Frozen Calzones.

Yeah, Fro Cal, because you guys are in Fro Cal, California.

That's right.

Yeah, Fro Cal, the chilly part of California.

Yeah, exactly.

Ruled by the ice queen.

So

Jess and Taylor get briefly separated.

Taylor finds a zombie-looking Alice who's like, I've been here too long.

Long joint, Daddy.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And there's the giant bear Chauncey shows up and zombie Alice attacks.

Wait, wait, wait.

You got to tell me, but the giant bear Chauncey, we got to talk about it.

Okay.

Is this one

the person in a costume, Chauncey?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think so.

Is this when it's the scary costume or when it's just a regular bear?

This looks more like a regular bear.

Later on, it's a little bit more.

Later on,

we get a scary costume, which is again a moment where it was like, oh, I feel like I'm watching an episode of the storyteller.

Like, this is not a good idea.

I kind of love how goofy that one looks.

It looks, it looks like halfway between a bear and the monster that at the end of Big Trouble in Little China is on the Pork Chop Express.

Yes, yeah.

Or kind of, it also, you know, like the crate from Creep Show, a little bit of that there.

Yeah.

Love that kind of thing.

And again, if that's the movie I was watching, I'd be like, on board, 100%.

But it was like, not until that character shows up, am I like, oh, that's the kind of movie you're making.

I didn't expect that.

In Creep Show, I'd be like, hell yeah.

hey give me another serving but you can't ask me to be like to be like oh I'm really worried this kid is in danger and then suddenly show me that you know

but Taylor saved just Yankster from the room and they find a room

that has the number of their old apartment and they take a page from the bare-naked ladies and break into the old apartment and they find

have some fucking craft dinner or whatever they eat

They find Real Alice.

She's living.

It has been one week since they looked at her.

their dad, I guess.

Real Alice is living like a tea party queen.

And there's also some evil.

If she had a million dollars, do we know any other?

Do we know other bands?

Yeah, I don't know any of the Bernaked Ladies.

I didn't even know that The Bernadette Lady is song that Dan started with.

I only know the one week and the If I Had a Million Dollars.

Yeah.

And I guess the Big Bang Theory song is them, right?

Is it?

Maybe it's not, but it sounds like them.

Who knows?

Listeners, write in and tell Elliot whether his favorite show, The Big Bang Theory, has been a little bit more of a family.

Listeners write into who gives a shit.

Care of the Vlogs.

Send Elliot a list of bare-naked ladies songs.

Don't do that, please.

Canadians, help us.

So, yeah, also at this tea party room where Alice is living like a queen, there's an evil version of Alice's birth mom.

I mean, they have painted her pretty evilly before this movie.

Yeah, but this is clearly like some.

But this is like a supernatural version of it, especially when she gets her coraline eyes.

and uh, Jess starts tearing up the room to draw a new blue door on the wall because imagination has power here, and that's how they're going to get out.

They're going to make their own blue door like now.

It turns into Harold and the Purple Crown.

At this point, I was like, What is this movie?

Like, what is it trying to do?

You know, uh, the mom turns into the giant tooth bear, and uh, Jess stays back to fight that's when the tooth bear shows up, that wipes Chauncey off.

Uh, she starts sinking into a pile of blue junk on the floor, like quicksand, uh, and uh, falls back into the Scooby-Doo like hall of doors.

And

Chauncey stalks her.

She stabbed him with some scissors earlier, so he's a little injured.

She tries to pry the original door open just as Taylor opens it from the outside and traps Chauncey inside.

Yay, nightmare's over.

It seems like all is well.

We cut to Jess reading her new book to her dad in

the assisted living home, and Max and Alice are there, and Taylor gazing on lovingly, and she tells her dad she knows what he did for her, and she's sorry.

And Taylor and Alice thank Jess.

They're all finally one family.

It's also loving that you're like, oh no, I know where this is going.

When's the other shoe going to drop out?

Sure enough, Jess realizes she's still trapped in the dream world.

This has all just, you know, been constructed to keep her happy.

Like at the end of Thriller, when Michael Jackson has

like werewolf cat eyes.

No, no, no.

Everybody's got cool spider spider eyes.

They've got like drink eyes.

Pretty funny.

They look a little silly, yeah.

Like evil like Simpson's eyes.

They end up with the same eyes that Feathers McGraw has in the Walls and Gromit

movies that he's in.

Yeah, everyone turns evil and they're like, you said you'd never leave him.

Did you think he'd let you go again?

And Jess realizes Alice was just the bait so that Chauncey could bring

his favorite child back.

Because as powerful as a child's imagination is, Jess's imagination is like a child.

Oh, for sure.

I mean, she's a professional artist.

Yeah, she's just so full of imagination.

Yeah.

That spider thing, the millipede.

Man, who could think of that stuff?

I mean, the fact that she's done a series of books with the same two characters over and over again.

I mean, her imagination is bursting with ideas.

She's Jack Kirby over here.

Come on.

So Jess agrees to stay there to keep her kids safe.

But no, Taylor shows up and hits the monster saying, forever's over, asshole.

This is one of the most, I was like, so what?

Like, you know what?

I don't care that much, but like, how did she get in?

How did she know?

What did she do?

And the idea that, like, well, once you're in the dream world, if you could just hit the bad guy with like a hockey stick or something and you're fine.

You know, she did the ritual over again.

She like was really mean to Alice.

And then what, what, once you're in the dream world?

This is what happened if you were better with your stupid imaginary friend, you idiot.

And then, and then what she just asked for directions when she was in the dream world.

Yeah, I guess so.

So they escape after all.

They try and follow the Rolling Stones' advice, redoors, and paint it black.

But the monster comes in.

That's what that song was about.

There's so much British invasion in this episode.

Yeah, the monster pushes out and starts to crazify Jess with its eyes.

And it's like all spider now, right?

Oh, no, no, no.

This is, it stopped being a spider, and now it's got kind of like a weird television face, right?

Yes.

Yeah, he's got a weird television face.

And he's like projecting like flashing lights from its eyes that I guess dazzles people.

There's a new ability.

I'm shocked that they've just added new abilities at this point in the game.

This is not since briefly to her dad, but not in this detail.

No, but this is the kind of thing you see in 70s Marvel comics where from issue to issue the rules change drastically because there's a different writer and artist on or they just don't care or they don't remember what happened in the previous issue.

Rarely do you see this happen in a movie where they can just read from the same script, you know, that a monster just suddenly manifests an entirely new face and power with no explanation at the end.

Not that I might, again, if the whole movie was like this, I'd be like, great.

I love this phantasmagoric, you know, surreal nonsensicalness.

It looks like all is lost.

Taylor can't break.

It doesn't really look like all is lost.

It's just Robert Redford on a boat.

Okay, yeah, that's true.

It's a different movie.

R.I.P.

R.I.P., yeah.

Robert Redford is perished.

Yeah.

That's what R.I.P.

stands for.

Jeez, Louise.

By the time this comes out, that'll have been a couple weeks ago.

Oh, yeah.

Everyone will be just desensitized.

Yeah.

Alice sees everything happening and and she springs into action.

She says, you were never my friend, never, ever.

And she burns the monster and the whole house,

which is going to be a hard thing to explain to Matt.

I mean, now that the house has been burned down, I guess they are a little bit, it is easier to believe they're complicit in the disappearance of the neighbors.

That's true.

Fade to black.

But somehow the movie is still not over.

There's a poltergeist rip-off ending where they go to a hotel and they see a kid with a stuffed bear and they're like, you want to go to a different hotel?

As the kid insists that the bear is not imaginary yeah the end and music plays that also sounds suspiciously like kind of a music box version of the poltergeist music and uh that's that's imaginary that's the tale of chauncey the bear

what a story tale as old as time and that we've seen it or last year i think this movie should have been called cb instead of imaginary yeah could be Could be CB.

Could be.

It should be called CB.

Again, there is a movie called The Fighting CBs, but it's spelled differently.

And also, I don't think they're going to get missed.

Yeah, and sometimes movies have similar names.

Name two.

Wait a minute.

There's

I know this one.

There's

because you don't seem to be saying any.

There's, wait, there's fast, there's The Fast and the Furious and Fast and Furious.

No, those are two in the same series.

No, again, those are the same series.

Okay.

There's, wait a minute, there's Scary Movie and Scree.

No, again, again one is a parody of the other mars and a police academy mission to moscow okay you got it okay there that's very similar yeah

it's only the framing of a of it being a police academy adventure and also the different destination that differentiates those two movies there's the martian and mars attacks

again i don't know those are that similar i mean they're both involving mars sure yeah uh-huh

There's Castle Blanca and Castle Blanca 2, The New Batch.

Casablanca and Castle Freak.

Okay, very similar.

There you go.

There's Red and The Reader.

There you go.

I mean, there is a movie called Reds and a movie called Red, and they are very different.

So there's that, yeah.

And there's a movie called Drop Dead Friends.

And a movie called Drop Dead Reds.

Let's

see what we're doing.

I feel like this has been our number one episode of just saying dumb movies.

Yeah, I think so.

I think so, yeah.

I guess there are two movies called Clifford.

So, yeah, you know what?

It could have the same.

final judgments.

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

I got to say, this one was really harmed for me by having to take notes on it.

I mean, rarely is a movie more enjoyable when you have to take notes on it.

Yeah.

I feel like if I didn't, there would be like, it might sneak up on a good, bad, because there's some like goofy stuff in there.

I like that vince will quist line.

I like how silly it gets at the end.

But I think overall, I'm still going to go with a bad, bad.

What do you guys think?

Stuart, what do you think?

Yeah, I'm with you.

I think

there is some genuinely nonsensical choices and very silly things, but it is, I think it's a bad, bad movie.

I'm going to say bad, bad also.

It's like if you could watch it starting from the middle,

but I feel like you're not going to get how...

how goofy it is at the end if you haven't seen the beginning where they're where it's not goofy at all.

But I think it's not worth sitting through that to get to the goofy stuff, you know?

I liked it more than the evil pool movie we watched.

Night Swim, was that it?

Yeah, I liked it more than Night Swim.

Was that what it was called?

Or am I forgetting?

Yeah, where Wyatt Russell is like, uh, is like Jack Nicholson.

This pool water is making me so strong.

Yeah, I did like it more than Night Swim.

I felt like Night Swim was a funnier premise, but they didn't know what to do with it.

Whereas this is not that funny a premise, but by the end, they've certainly found some things to do with it, you know, they did not expect.

Yeah.

Now everybody knows that the greatest generation has always been Max Fun's go-to podcast for old Star Trek recaps.

But what my theory presupposes is, what if it isn't?

In a shocking turn of events, Greatest Trek, the comedy podcast covering New Trek, has gone through a temporal wormhole back to the very beginning.

Because we are now reviewing Star Trek the Original series.

That means when you subscribe now, you'll get episode by episode recaps of all the 1960s style action and intrigue, along with all the jokes and fun that make Greatest Gen and Greatest Trek the number one Star Trek podcasts out there.

Subscribe now to Greatest Trek on maximumfun.org.

Hey gang, it's Jesse Thorne, host of Bullseye with Jesse Thorne.

We are ringing in 25 years of Bullseye this fall.

That's right, listener, 25 years.

I started the show in my dorm room at UC Santa Cruz.

What does that mean for you?

Well, we'll have a whole month of special shows, new and old, for one thing.

We are putting on live shows in Los Angeles, New York, and Santa Cruz.

Got guests like Adam Scott, Roywood Jr., and then Rebecca Sugar, just to name a few.

And on October 9th, I will interview 25 people in a row.

You can watch that live and streaming on our YouTube channel.

I hope you'll plan on celebrating with us.

That's maximumfund.org/slash events.

Thanks.

Hey, the Flophouse is

brought to you by the good people,

good listeners like you who

become members over at maximumfund.org and help us keep this thing going.

But it's also brought to you in this episode by Squarespace.

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

You can use their professional on-brand invoices and online payments.

And if you want to streamline your workflow, and who doesn't these days?

My workflow is not streamlined enough.

You can use the built-in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools.

Also, If you're building your website, Squarespace offers a complete library of professionally designed and award-winning templates with options for every use and category, beautiful styling, unrivaled visual design effects, drag and drop editing, no experience required.

You don't have to be an HTML expert.

You can just sign on and start building your site.

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

And when you are ready to launch, use offer code FLOP, that is F-L-O-P,

to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

You know, Dan, the Flophouse is brought to you by listeners like you and also by Squarespace.

And the Flophouse is also brought to you by the flop house.

And the flop house is going to be bringing the flop house to Chicago.

That's right.

The flop house is going to Chicago.

They can't keep us out.

No matter what the president says, we're still going to Chicago.

We still want to be there.

So we're going to be there Sunday, November 16th.

Now, you may go on the website and be like, but that show's sold out.

Uh-uh-uh-uh.

Uh-uh.

The early show is sold out.

And that's why we added a late show.

You know what that show is going to be?

Different than the early show because we're talking about two different Jim Belushi movies.

You know, that's right.

Chicago's favorite son, the Balush.

We're going to do two entries in his cinematic oeuvre.

So that's the Flophouse Live in Chicago at Sleeping Village.

For tickets, go to flophousepodcast.com/slash events, right?

And you'll see a link to get tickets to the Flophouse Live in Chicago Sunday, November 16th.

I'm looking forward to it.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

If you can't get tickets to the early show and only the low show, that's okay.

We're going to be extra loopy at the late show because we'll have just done the early show.

And we're talking about a dog movie.

Yeah, we're talking about canine in that late show.

So watch out.

It's one of the, I think, it's probably the most famous movie about a cop with a dog, right?

It's not even the most famous from that year.

Same year as Turner and Hooch.

Not familiar.

I only know K-9.

And Hooch?

Wait, how did they get those guys together in one movie?

They hate each other, Turner and Hooch.

Anyway, they quashed their beef.

So if you're in Chicago or the Chicago area, come see us November 16th.

Tickets at flophousepodcast.com/slash events.

Let's say you can't go to Chicago in November.

Let's say you can't.

It would be too bad.

Seems unlikely, but I'll go with you.

I mean, I mean, I think there's many reasons why someone would not be able to go to that specific day in Chicago.

Don't worry.

The flop house is coming to your house via your computer.

Don't worry.

You don't have to put us up for the night.

You don't have to feed us.

That's right.

Flop TV is back on the air.

But

yes.

You are required to, by law, to put us up in your home and feed us if

we come to your home.

Yeah, I think it's the Fourth Amendment.

Yeah, that you can't quarter soldiers, but you have to quarter the Flop House.

Yeah, so the Flop House is on the air with Flop TV.

That is our monthly one-hour televised video version of the Flop House.

It's like its own little TV show.

You got video segments, you got a presentation, and you got us talking about movies.

And this season, it's Flopster Peace Theater.

We're going back through the decades, each episode, talking about a flop we've never talked about.

September, we talked about the adventures of Pluto Nash.

That was a lot of fun.

And in October, we'll be talking about Jack Frost.

I just sent my introduction to the Jack Frost show to Matt, our tech guy, just before taking this trip to see Elliot and do other stuff in LA.

And I am working on my video for it, my little video interruption.

That's the first Saturday in October, October 4th.

If this episode comes out, and that's already happened, I don't remember when things are coming out.

Don't worry, because there's another show in November.

Saturday, November 1st.

It's the first Saturday of the month, every month.

And also don't worry because you can watch it.

Uh,

I was about to get to that.

Okay, okay, every month, first Saturday of the month, every month through February.

But if you can't watch it live, the first Saturday of the month, don't worry.

Your ticket gets you access to the video of the show, and those videos are going to stay up through the end of February, so you can see them whenever you want.

If you buy a ticket, but that's right, you have to buy a ticket.

Just go to theflophouse.simpletics.com and you can buy tickets for individual shows or a season pass.

That's six shows for the price of five.

Go for it.

That's right.

And we're going to see so many movies we've never talked about in the show before.

Jack Frost, Xanadu, Zardaz, Dr.

Doolittle, the Rex Harrison version, and Plan 9 from Outer Space.

That's right.

We're building up to the most famous bad movie there ever was.

We've never talked about it on the Flophouse before.

And now you'll see us talking about it in TV mode.

That's theflophouse.simpletics.com.

First Saturday of every month, Flop TV.

Hey, cooling weather means swapping your summer clothes for fall staples that are warm, warm, durable, and built to last.

Like stuff from Quince.

Quince, my friends, and you are my friends,

my podcast friends, has the kind of fall staples you'll actually want to wear on repeat.

Like 100% Mongolian cashmere from just $60.

Classic fit denin.

and real leather and wool outerwear that looks sharp and holds up.

Check out their suede trucker jacket.

Why not?

You don't have to be be a trucker to wear one of these you just like suede it's perfect for layering and looks really casual but put together by partnering directly with ethical factories and top artisans quince cuts out the middlemen to deliver premium quality at half the cost of similar brands i uh got a quince uh cashmere sweater i'm looking forward to uh the the weather cooling so I could wear it.

I mean, I'm looking forward to the weather cooling for all sorts of things, including that I don't like hot weather, but I do so love putting a sweater on.

And this was a comfy and good-looking sweater at a low price point for the quality.

So, layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look.

Go to quince.com/slash flop for free shipping on your next order and 365-day returns.

Now available in Canada too.

Canadian friends take notes.

That's q-u-i-n-ce-e.com/slash flop.

Free shipping and 365-day returns.

Quince.com slash flop.

Let's answer some letters from listeners, just as a treat.

Yeah, why not?

A treat for us.

I deserve it.

This first letter is from Adam.

Last name withheld.

The first man, no last name.

Adam writes, since you mentioned the movie Patch Adams in your last mini season.

Oh, maybe this is the Adam from Patch Adams.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's going to fucking flame us.

He echoes John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Patch Adams.

Yeah.

I thought I might share the story of when I encountered the real Patch Adams.

It's a story I never get to tell because no one watches or talks about that movie anymore.

The year was 2000, and I was a sophomore in high school.

The high school I went to had a health careers program, had a health careers program, pardon me, and they decided to hire Hunter Patch Adams.

For a speaking engagement.

I have to say, I don't think I ever knew his first name.

I thought his name was just Patch Adams.

It's the first time hearing of it.

Like Wolverine.

Just Patch.

Yeah.

What if when Wolverine is in Madropor, he's Patch Adams and he's just trying to make jokes all the time?

Puts a little nose on.

I was not.

The best there is that what I do, and what I do is hilarious.

And what I do is mostly prop comedy.

I was not in the health careers program.

Hey, Bob, why in the hospital?

Let me make you laugh.

Yeah, he keeps rubbing his rubber chickens with his claws.

I don't understand health.

I heal naturally all the time.

All this time, I thought it was laughter that was causing me to heal so fast.

Actually, I'm a mutant.

My mistake.

So I was not in the health careers program.

I'm an unbreakable funny bone.

I was not.

Call me Patch Adam Vantium.

This is the character find of 2025.

Patch Mantium?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's Wolverine when he's a funny doctor.

Yeah.

I feel lightheaded.

Hey, aren't you the superhero Wolverine?

No, I got a patch on my and a red nose on.

Of course, I'm not Wolverine.

I was not in the health careers program, but apparently they wanted to pack the auditorium.

So they just rousted a bunch of kids out of class to see this talk.

Something that...

I might have an objection to now that I am a parent.

I had seen the movie Patch Adams Adams and loved it.

I've not seen it since it came out and strongly doubt I would stand by those views today.

I'm going to imagine that you were one of the people in the audience in the movie Cecil Be Demented when they gas a showing of Patch Adams.

So I was really excited to see the real-life version of Robin Williams' lovable med student goof.

Unfortunately, the real Adams was not a lovable goof of any sort, but rather a humorless, surly older man.

He talked for an uninterrupted hour, alternating between broad critiques of the American healthcare system, attacks on Hollywood for ruining his life story, and anti-motivational, telling it like it really is, stories about his life and career.

Awesome.

The only word to describe this seemingly endless experience was punishing.

Yes, Stuart?

No, I'm just saying it sounds awesome.

What had I done to deserve this?

I just woke up that day and went to school, and now I feel like I'm being dressed down by this weird old guy for stuff I had nothing to do with.

Anyway, the high point was after he was done and the formal part of his talk was over and asked if there were any questions.

A girl raised her hand and asked about the part of the movie.

We just missed it, Patch.

Can you tell me about the movie?

A girl raised her hand and asked me a joke.

I'm dying.

Asked about the part of the movie where a patient kills Patch's girlfriend.

Adams pounced like one of the raptors in Jurassic Park, practically screaming about how in real life that character was based on one of his male friends.

And then he did another five minutes or so about the evils of Hollywood.

Type five on the evils of Hollywood, yeah.

There were, unsurprisingly, no further questions.

I mean,

that is an awkward question to ask.

Well, I mean, certainly after hearing all that speech.

In fairness, I'm sure that his critiques of the healthcare system were dead on, but I don't think Adams.

Adams was a great system.

I don't think Adams did the cause of Medicare for all any favors that day.

I'll never forget overhearing a teacher confusedly wondering aloud why he couldn't have told at least one joke.

It is kind of his thing.

Anyway, do any of you have experience with meeting a real-life subject of a film?

Thanks, Adam.

Thank you for sharing that story.

I think it must have been hard for Adam to see an Adams being so

negative on sustainability.

Oh, man.

You saw Scott Adams.

He must have hated that.

Well, I mean, there's a lot of reasons for that.

Yeah.

Sorry, Stuart.

I probably had a bit.

Let me see if I got a new one.

Give me a second.

No, you guys, somebody else.

I can't think of like a particular thing where I saw a movie and then later met the person in the movie or anything like that.

The thing that came to my mind was

more of sort of a general, like, I saw the documentary, it started as a joke, which was about the Eugene Merman Comedy Festival.

And so much of that movie, watching it, the

was like, oh, like that was the New York comedy scene when I came to New York.

Like,

I wasn't,

I was sort of off to the side of it.

I wasn't a huge part of it, but there are like stages that I performed on, you know, it's like seeing Rafifi and like people did shows there and people that

either like, you know, some of them I knew, but most of them are like people I'd seen on stage or like knew someone who knew them or whatever.

And it felt like a time capsule and coming back to like a part of my life.

That's very sweet.

I couldn't think of anything.

I mean, the closest I can come is I think when I went to a panel at Comic-Con that Tommy Wizo was on and he was everything you'd expect him to be from seeing the room.

Like it was just everything.

And like the room is not about him, but it is kind of about him.

But otherwise,

I've never met, I don't think the subject of a movie where someone else plays that.

I've met people who are in movies.

Like I met Kurt Vani at once, who plays himself in Back to School.

But, like, I've never, I don't think I've ever met like someone who had a movie made about them, except for my granddad's Sully.

Oh, okay.

You know, the pilot.

No, no, I'm never.

The monster, Inc.

Yeah, my granddad, the original monster, the movie was based on.

What about you, Stuart?

Have you ever met someone who is the subject of a fictional movie?

I don't think I ever have.

I mean, I've met the subject of a fictional movie that has been the subject of many

movies, and that is The City of New York, baby.

That's true.

New York is a character in many movies, and you live there.

Yeah, that's true.

But no, I think, like, it's the same thing where I

can't think of,

I feel like there must be

somebody, but no, I can't, I can't.

My brain's drawn to blind.

I bet you if we thought really hard, we met somebody who was portrayed by somebody else in a movie.

But I can't, yeah, I'm having trouble thinking of it.

But if I think that hard, I might get a nosebleed.

Here's something from Dennis Last Name with Feld, who writes.

Leary?

Dennis Leary.

Yeah.

Dennis.

I think you hear me, knocking, and I think I'm coming in.

Floppers.

Yeah.

Your Encino Dan mini discussion, where Stewart brought up his issues with lifestyle porn in media, reminded me of one of my most hated recent movies, the 2022 Father of the Bride remake, which I watched with my wife.

Father of the Bride remake?

Is that a movie?

I guess so.

Did that happen?

Yeah, apparently.

Did you make this movie?

Yeah, I'm looking it up.

Okay, look it up.

In that movie, they initially pitch an interesting conflict where the daughter of a highly successful immigrant chooses to work for a foreign aid non-profit, upsetting her father, who wants her to avoid the life of poverty he so desperately worked to escape from, only to immediately throw that premise out in the next scene when it is revealed the father-in-law is a billionaire and the entire movie devolves into lifestyle porn.

Ah, my question to you is.

Got Andy Garcia, Gloria Estefan.

Yeah, yeah.

I did not even know this movie existed.

My question to you is, what other movies have you seen that pose an interesting or serious premise, only to then throw it out later in favor of pure schlock?

Keep on rocking in the flop world.

Dennis, last name withheld.

This is a tough one for me because I feel like so often while talking about movies on the flop house, we touch on the moments where we're like, oh, that's pretty interesting.

I could see where they could develop that, but they chose to not do that at all.

They chose instead to, I don't know, focus on a story about a stolen Fabergé egg or something.

What was the interesting story that they could have focused on instead of the stolen Faberge egg?

In that particular example?

How a very successful mystery writer was going to come up with a plan for writing a book about an Easter bunny puppy.

I guess you're right.

That is the real, that's the more interesting, intriguing premise.

Um, yeah, I, I know that this has happened a lot.

I'm, I'm having a real time, hard time struggling with it.

I wanted to read it even so, because I think it's such an interesting question.

And maybe, uh, something will come to me in the future and we can revisit it, or I'll put it in a Flop Secrets newsletter.

For some reason, the only thing that's coming to mind is Event Horizon where

sort of like toward the beginning of that movie, I'm like, oh, this is like cool.

This is like a horror Solaris.

This is a ship that is bringing sort of fantasies to life in a scary way.

And then it just, like, I think it's a cool vision of hell at the end.

Don't get me wrong, but I think the movie kind of falls apart into nonsense.

I mean, there's a lot of movies when they get to the Act Three, especially, where it's like, okay, now it's either a crazy person is running around or a murderous person is running around chasing people, or it's got to be really action-y all of a sudden.

Or like the movie that first came to mind.

There's a portal that has to be closed or something.

The movie that came to mind first to me was

the movie In Time that we did on the Flophouse with Justin Timberlake, where it was like

a world where time is used as money and you can take someone's life and make it part of your life.

It's like an interesting satirical angle, but then it turns into like a revenge movie you went right or it's like we're gonna we're gonna rob them before they you know they don't know won't even know what hit them.

It turns into like Bonnie and Clyde or something.

And it just felt like, well, this is not really the best way to make use of this concept, you know?

Yeah.

I think anyway.

I mean, people can disagree.

Maybe they think it's the best way to do that.

Yeah.

In fact, while we think about it, please, listeners, if you have an example that you think is particularly telling, feel free to drop it in the comments on the Instagram post for this episode, and maybe we'll read those if there's some good ones.

Yeah, I would say, even what was that?

Yeah, I think that's a great idea that listeners should write in with their examples.

What was the George Clooney Julia Roberts movie that we did?

Intolerable.

Tickets to Paradise.

What was it called?

Ticket to Paradise.

That's right.

Because even there, there's something about these

divorced mom and dad, their daughter is marrying someone that she should not be marrying, and they're going to rediscover their love of each other while

breaking up their daughter's wedding.

It's like a funny idea.

Like, that could be a really classic, like old-fashioned comedy, and they just don't.

They kind of give up on that a little bit, partly because, like, the daughter's fiancé is so incredibly perfect in every way.

You know?

Yeah, there's like a modern impulse to be too nice or something where it turns into like a hangout comedy rather than the screwball that you might expect from that premise.

Yeah.

Anyway,

so yeah, great question.

Hope that we get some answers from folks out there.

Let's move on to recommendations, movies that we saw that we think are a better use of your time than, say,

the way we've spent our lives.

Yeah, other than the cruel bargain we made with the devil.

uh we would live forever but we'd have to do it watching these movies yeah this is a this is a i'm gonna recommend a movie that you know

was universally basically beloved so it doesn't necessarily need my voice added to the chorus but i did watch babylon i did watch it on a

i did watch it

on the

stinker yeah here and i know how much uh listeners love

tales of plane pictures plane stories yeah uh on the on the way to los angeles I watched Little Women, the Greta Gerwig recent version of Little Women.

It would be very little.

Very little.

I thought it was kind of funny that I picked a movie that made me had me on the verge of tears like every 15 minutes, essentially, until, of course, the end where finally the tears started actually rolling.

Yeah, you just edged the whole time and then blasted.

I'm just like,

I mean, like, I don't know why it should be embarrassing to have like

an emotional response to something, but I think it's because you're on a plane.

In public.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm loving this, but why did I choose this?

Why did I do this to myself?

I could have watched crap.

I could have watched this at home where then I could just cry all I wanted.

Then only your wife would make fun of you.

Yeah, but

it's an amazing movie.

I think Gerwig does some

interesting and great things with adaptation, makes some great choices.

everyone's wonderful in it it's just

especially Odenkirk right Odenkirk just crushes it

I mean like I think he's great in it but he it is weird to see Bob Odenkirk just show there is it was struck me the other day because there was a there was a thing a video online that was like it was like Bob Odenkirk looks back on some of his past roles and it was everything after Breaking Bad.

I'm like, oh, there's whole generations that have no idea that he started in comedy, that he had one of the greatest sketch shows of all time.

Like they just think of him him as Saul or nobody, and that's it.

And like, that sentence is bonkers to me, you know.

You're thinking of the, the Ben Stiller show, right?

I mean, the Ben Stillers is an underrated show, but no, that's not the one I'm thinking of, yeah.

Uh, anyway, what a wonderful movie, just uh, full of warmth and love and emotion.

Uh, Little Women, that's a great movie.

Greg Gerig's got such a great filmography, yeah.

Eventually, her average is going to dip, but she's got what she's directed, what, three movies now?

Uh, I don't know.

Probably good, lady, three or four, little women, uh, Barbie.

She directed everyone.

Give her a Marvel, you know?

That's what Odire is always saying.

Give her a Marvel.

I think that, I mean, to be honest, she could do a great job with a Marvel.

I don't want her to do that, but, you know.

I'm looking it up, but you're

Dan was saying, I am legend, and I'm like, I don't think that's her.

No, I want her to do a version of I am Legend.

I'm not sure if you're a trademark.

Closer to the book.

I mean, damn, there's already Last Man on Earth, which is pretty close to the book in some ways.

Yeah.

So I'm going to recommend

I have been

on a kick watching movies with the actress, the Chinese actress Tang Wei

from Decision to Leave from a few years ago, which was one of my favorite movies.

She's so great in that as a...

possible femme fatale.

So I just recently picked up the keynote lorber Blu-ray of Lust Caution, the Ang Li movie.

I've never seen Lust Caution.

And I hadn't seen it either.

And I'm like, I'm not going to watch the streaming version, which is rated R.

I'm going for the NC17, please.

And watching, you know, it's a movie set in

Japanese-occupied China, and Tang Wei plays a young actress turned revolutionary who goes undercover to

infiltrate and seduce and hopefully kidnap and or kill a collaborationist played by the great Tony Leon.

Everybody loves him.

He's the best.

He is one of the best, yeah.

And

there's also a lovely performance from Joan Chen, who plays his wife.

So she,

Tong Wei, becomes his mistress.

And the...

It's a movie that has some of the most intense and graphic sex scenes I've seen

in a non-pornographic movie.

And there's something so jarring about them.

There's something so like intense and physical,

particularly because so much of the rest of the movie is like

very

like

buttoned up and careful.

And like the whole idea of like not wanting to reveal too much for fear that you'll get outed for who you are.

So that when they have these

sex scenes,

yeah, it's these this like intense burst of like physical emotion and like there's a certain freedom that they can feel when they're alone.

It's it's a really beautiful movie and yeah, it's great.

Check it out.

I have some Gerwig news.

A roving Gerwig reporter.

Oh, she just she was the she just wrote the script for I Am Legend.

Okay, thank you.

Well, if you're not including the video for Dua Lipa Dance into Dance the night i'm not counting that as a feature uh she

she's directed four movies oh what's the other one i was correct that she co-directed something i knew that she co-directed i was wrong about what and with whom uh she co-directed nights and weekends with joe swanberg that

oh i haven't seen that yeah she just co-wrote princessaro but uh yeah that ladybird ladybird little women and barbie of course and then She's got that Narnia Netflix thing.

What we all wanted her to do.

that's her next credit what a waste i mean get that money i'm sure it'll be the best version of that but i yeah i wish that we lived in a world where she was doing something else where she could she could i mean it's it she was maybe she they're like you could do that with barbie you could do that with narnia you know but we call it barbia yeah

The lion, the witch, and the Barbie.

Or Barbie could be the witch.

How do we get you on board?

And she's like, why not?

I didn't invent Barbie.

Like, it's not the only thing that I do.

But

to be honest, so I have a reputation these days as the the busiest man in podcasting, no time to do anything.

That reputation is accurate.

I have a

dearth of movies to recommend.

But I will say, because the new Spinal Tap was coming out,

my wife and I started re-watching the original Spinal Tap, which I had not watched in years.

And you know what?

I love it.

Super funny.

Totally lives up to my memories.

Every time I see it, there's jokes that I notice in it that I didn't notice as much before.

There's all this subtle performance stuff in it.

And the jokes that I remember, I still laugh at.

So you know know what?

If you want to laugh and you like music,

you could go wronger than this is Spinal Tap.

I have not seen the sequel.

I don't have the highest hopes for it.

No.

But the original still works.

I do like between both of your recommendations, we have the two leads of Better Call Sol.

It's true.

Yeah, that's right.

That's true.

And Lust Caution

has Harry Shearer in it, right?

Yeah,

he disappears.

Well, what a lovely change of base to be on this side of the Zoom call.

What, Stuart?

I would take that as a deep insult, Stuart.

Yeah, no, I'm not calling you.

Probably has a lot to do with how you smell.

I'm not saying anything about it.

I smell too good.

It gets all worked up.

Yeah, yeah.

You can't concentrate.

It's just a way to keep the relationship fresh, you know.

But I also know that, Dan,

your room where you record is often very hot.

This room is not

as hot.

This is

a super fucking hot room.

Tank top, shorts.

Fewer cats, though.

That's the main problem with this room.

There's 200% fewer cats.

No, no, Stuart, Stuart.

Lovely, of course.

I'm just, I'm glad to see our boy Elliot.

Next time, I hope you're here as well.

Yeah, that'd be great.

And

what else do I do at the end of the show?

Thank people.

Thank Alex.

Talk about the name of the world.

Other than inadvertently insulting so much.

It's fine.

Thank you, Alex.

Alex Smith, of course, is our producer.

He goes by the name Howell Dotty on the

vast corners of the internet.

He does his own podcast, which I enjoy very much, where he talks to a man who is a possum,

a large man-sized possum.

He does great music.

Look him up.

Also, thank you to our network, Maximum Fun.

Go to maximumfun.org, check out the other great shows,

maybe become a member if you like what we do.

But But that's that's about it for the Flop House.

I've been Dan McCoy,

I've been Stuart Wellington here in New York City,

and I've been Elliot Kalen bringing Dan over to Los Angeles, where he'll never return from.

Yeah, we figured out what

stay tuned to find out if he escapes.

My Gorsh

And Alex, I may just delete this audio.

All right, sorry.

Yeah, yeah, I'm fucking Bizarro over here.

That's the thing when Bizarro apologizes to people.

He goes, sorry, Bizarre.

Yep.

Well, when Bizarro would upload a podcast, he would accidentally download a podcast.

It's true.

He goes, me, listeners am enjoying not hearing podcasts.

He'd be like, Bizarro, just tell us what you're trying to tell us.

It's so impossible to parse what you're trying to say.

Me listen to Smart Fool.

Okay, anyway,

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

Supported directly by you.