Afraid, with Chris Weitz

Speaker 1 Hey, listeners, just a few quick words up the top to remind you that Flop TV is going on right now.

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Speaker 1 We've been having a lot of fun going through famous bad movies of the decades.

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Speaker 1 You can binge them during the holidays. It's a lot of fun.
So if you're interested, go to theflophouse.simpletics.com and check out our extra flop streams.

Speaker 2 On this episode, we discuss Afraid.

Speaker 2 A movie about a scary killer AI, and there's no Tom Cruise to kill it this time.

Speaker 2 Should I have said Ethan Hunt? No, no.

Speaker 2 Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Flop House. I'm Dan McCoy.
Hey, it's me, Stuart Wellington. My name is Elliot Kalen.

Speaker 2 I'm the author of a book called Joke Farming, How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense. It's on store shelves now.

Speaker 2 From the University of Chicago Press, it will teach you how to write jokes, how I do it, how jokes work, and how jokes work.

Speaker 2 I only had two things. We told him to keep the plug for you.
Elliot, I know that you're

Speaker 2 about to introduce our special guest, but I have to say, I texted Audrey today and I was like, between this book on the early years of The Simpsons that she got me for our anniversary and your book

Speaker 2 coming to my house hopefully on Wednesday, I'm like, I think I'm going to try cracking another sitcom script after writing longer movie things

Speaker 2 as my next thing that no one's going to buy. You should do it.
I mean, rekindle my joy. No one's going to buy it anyway.
So write what you want. That's what I say.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Do that shit where like people do stuff and then they have like little confessionals where they talk to the camera because that's like every comedy now.

Speaker 2 Or do a comedy where there's no jokes at all. That's every comedy now, too.
Dan, I think all jokes aside, whatever you write, I think this is going to be the next big hit.

Speaker 2 I think you're about to go write the next Office, Abbott Elementary, Modern Family. That's what you're going to write.
It's going to be great. We're going to be writing that we knew you went.

Speaker 2 You seem more like a Louie guy. All right.

Speaker 2 That's our key

Speaker 2 to stop wasting our guest time and introduce us. That's right.
We have a very special guest today. I'm so excited to have him here.

Speaker 2 He is a repeat guest, one of our good friends, one of our most successful friends here of the Flophouse podcast. That's right.
Director, Academy Award waited, Academy Award nominated screenwriter.

Speaker 2 Oh, thanks for reminding me I didn't win.

Speaker 2 Yeah, sorry, Chris. Yeah, that's you're right.
You're in the slightly, slightly larger pool of nominees.

Speaker 2 His face fell when you said that.

Speaker 2 Chris Weitz, who is the rare triple threat of director, screenwriter, director of Flophouse covered movie. And so we're very excited to have you here today to join us once again.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 And I didn't hear

Speaker 2 the beginning. So, like, what's the movie we're going to dump on today? What cinematic turd are we going to be stunting on? This is going to be so much fun.

Speaker 2 You're going to love it. You're going to love it.
So, so we watch this real piece of shit called Afraid.

Speaker 2 Haven't heard of it.

Speaker 2 Sorry, I didn't see it.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, Chris, do you have any? Have you seen this one? Have you have any connection to this one? Spoiler alert. I kind of liked it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
I saw it so many times that I didn't, I haven't seen it

Speaker 2 in a good year.

Speaker 2 So, so, you know, listen, part of this is obviously I need to get out of your guys' way

Speaker 2 so that you can have the nonsensical fun that we've come to love you for.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to fight a rearguard action in defense of my movie. I may sometimes try to shed a little light on the process whereby movies become flops.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Now, on another podcast that has not been named, I actually questioned whether this was a flop or a movie that doesn't exist. And I think it exists in this kind of interesting mid-space.

Speaker 2 And that podcast is a friend of ours. That's a blank check, right? Yeah.
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 And just for the audience at home, if you weren't picking up all the jokes we're laying down, Chris is the director and writer of this movie, right? I have that honor. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Or the director and writer of a version of this movie that perhaps is not the exact version that came to be.

Speaker 2 There's a version in my head and perhaps on the page that did not quite come to be in the in the way that I had intended to.

Speaker 2 And that, but that aside, I also feel that, you know,

Speaker 2 I have I've laughed at many of your episodes and sometimes you also need to face the music. I said that once, that when you look long enough into the flop house, the flop house looks into you.

Speaker 2 You either die a listener or you live long enough to become a subject. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And there was a guy on the internet

Speaker 2 when I went on the blank check Reddit for the last thing.

Speaker 2 Don't go on fucking Reddit.

Speaker 2 It was a smart move that I made because I found out that this guy said, and he said this about you two guys. He said,

Speaker 2 the flop house guys have stopped addressing Chris Weiss's movies since he was on the show. And so I thought, listen, guy on the internet guy, I'm going to go back on the flop house.

Speaker 2 The flop house is going to do it. And I'm going to, I'm going to be like Daniel Day Lewis in

Speaker 2 There Will Be Blood

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 confess whatever sins I have. And we're just going to have it all out here.
We're going to let it all hang out. Yeah, you're going to drink our milkshake.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm not going to just drink your milkshake. I'm going to drink this cocktail that I drank.

Speaker 2 By the way, way, this is the first time I've ever had a drink on a podcast, but I think there's one to do. This is the time.

Speaker 2 I love the idea that before you came on, of course, we were hitting every Chris White's movie, every single one without fail. We were sad.

Speaker 2 Don't think that I don't know that once Dan on this very podcast said that The Golden Compass was a good movie to watch on a plane because you could fall asleep to it easily.

Speaker 2 I'm looking at you.

Speaker 2 And of course, it sounds like something I might have said.

Speaker 2 I I mean, to me, it's just not to get into the golden compass too much, a movie that I've also criticized on this on this podcast for reasons that Chris, you and I have talked about.

Speaker 2 We have the same issues with it. They did that TV show of the Golden Compass, and I also didn't like it very much.
So I think maybe it's just a very hard book to adapt.

Speaker 2 You know, nothing has satisfied me more than hearing that people were occasionally displeased with the BBC version of it.

Speaker 2 I mean, I doubt that there's a version of it. I was like, all right, let's see if you don't make the same mistake that the movie did.
It's the way Dan feels anytime.

Speaker 2 Somebody criticizes another bad movie podcast he's like ha ha it's not so easy is this

Speaker 2 well i listen i know i know that you're gonna know i go to read that introductory voiceovers are are your favorite elliot um i love them and i wanted mine to be longer and they made it shorter which really

Speaker 2 we have more of like somebody like somebody folksier doing this narration yeah

Speaker 2 it's funny because so my my we'll get into the movie in a moment but My younger son has finally decided after years of disinterest that he is interested in Star Wars.

Speaker 2 And so we just recently watched star wars and empire strikes back um and i was like strap in there's going to be a lot of text on screen and then i'm like oh there's actually there's actually not that much text in the beginning of these star wars

Speaker 2 rather quickly i mean it was written by brian palma i believe the first one right yeah i think he yeah wasn't he like look you got to explain some of this stuff just put it put it in the beginning but the yeah they're actually the text is so short that it actually spends so much time fading into the distance and today we were watching empire strikes back and he goes yeah the letters are taking a long time to get get into space.

Speaker 2 I read it already.

Speaker 2 The thing is,

Speaker 2 when you do these any kind of text crawl,

Speaker 2 the setting is for complete moron. So like it actually has to take a lot longer.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's kind of like the way that when you get a bagel and you get cream cheese on it, they give you the maximum amount of cream cheese so as not to risk somebody asking for more.

Speaker 2 They're like, if it's too much, they'll just scrape extra off, but they don't want to risk somebody being like, hey,

Speaker 2 one star, delicious cream cheese, but why do they just scrape just a tiny bit over it?

Speaker 2 Not to uh, yet again make reference to my um my uh much less successful uh

Speaker 2 attempts at writing a narrative, but uh, you were kind enough, you're a screenwriter for hiring. No, no, no, any people who are hiring screenwriters or dance, that's my point.

Speaker 2 Is this about your self-published erotica series that you kind of

Speaker 2 50 Shades of Dan? No, I 50 Shades of Dank,

Speaker 2 No, you were kind of. It's all in the basements.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 You were kind of have to look at something I wrote and wrote back pretty quickly being like, yeah, you know, I know you're not going to want to do this, but like the first thing that any studio is going to tell you to do is put a scare up front because otherwise they won't understand that this is a horror movie that you just shows you how fucking corrupt I've become.

Speaker 2 That's one of the things I regret about

Speaker 2 the great movie Afraid, which didn't do as well as it deserved at the box office. It was like, oh,

Speaker 2 yeah, okay. Listen,

Speaker 2 I'm going to jump into it, but I want you guys to

Speaker 2 talk about this piece. Let's talk about this piece.
Let's talk about Afraid. I'm doing the summary today, so buckle up, everybody.

Speaker 2 Have you guys seen this before we were assigned it for the flop house? Yes, I had watched it. And

Speaker 2 as soon as I found out Chris made it, I'm like, Char and I are going to see it in the theater, which Charlene doesn't normally go to horror movies in the theater.

Speaker 2 So we went and we enjoyed it for a variety of reasons. And the most exciting, it was very exciting, though, as we were leaving the Nighthawk that we walked past Saturday Night Live Sarah Sherman.

Speaker 2 I was like, holy shit.

Speaker 2 DC Afraid? No, she went to a different horror movie that was out because I checked her letterbox. That's been a more successful horror movie, a hotter horror movie.

Speaker 2 I also saw it, and I have

Speaker 2 heard through the Great Brown that like Elliot was saying that he told you that it was like, oh, you know, Dan saw it and he said he liked it.

Speaker 2 And that you said, Chris, I think Dan was watching it with friend eyes. But I

Speaker 2 mean,

Speaker 2 I 100% was watching it with friend eyes because there's things about some of the things I like about them like, oh, I can see Chris in here. I can see my friend in this movie.

Speaker 2 You see the intention. Well, okay.
So one of the first things I just,

Speaker 2 one of the problems was this was never supposed to be a horror movie. And that's an interesting factual.

Speaker 2 It's supposed to be like a light comedy of manners, right?

Speaker 2 My daughter, my 10-year-old daughter, Athena, once said to me, having Budicut, Roblox is scarier. So you can imagine what kind of trouble I was in

Speaker 2 at that stage.

Speaker 2 So yeah, here's the thing.

Speaker 2 This is the last self-defense I will make before you jump in, Elliot. And then I will just

Speaker 2 interrupt you. But

Speaker 2 sometimes to get a movie made, when, when you love a movie very much, like you, you, you put it in a, in a certain genre basket in which maybe it doesn't belong, because like horror movies will get made and I could make it in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 And this is really like, was supposed to have been a kind of a parallax view kind of paranoid thriller. Okay.

Speaker 2 So then, but once you get, once it's a horror movie, and by the way, it was made at Blumhouse. I love the Blumhouse guys.
That's great.

Speaker 2 Maybe the studio, which will not be named by me, might be more responsible for its having been kind of mutated into a horror movie. And one of these things is fucking cold opens.

Speaker 2 Cold opens are like the

Speaker 2 crawl of horror movies. Anyway, sorry.
It's interesting.

Speaker 2 It's interesting you mentioned Blumhouse because that's another, I was just reading my son the story about the four little pigs, which is the original story, where the third pig, of course, built his house of blum, and then the fourth, the fourth pig builds his house of bricks.

Speaker 2 And the pig doesn't even get in the house. It's too scary.

Speaker 2 Yeah. The pig's like, I don't even know what blum is.
So now I'm creeped out by my own house. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me.

Speaker 2 And the studio Ghost Ghost House Productions doesn't even get a fucking mention, Elliot Wild. Brutal.
Ghosts are a terrible construction material.

Speaker 2 Well, that's the thing. You build a wall out of something that people can walk through.
I don't think so. It's not a good idea.
Not like a house of sand and fog or something.

Speaker 2 Again, it's that ghost ship. I don't know how that floated.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 pretty well of Thorn and Roses. What the fuck is that? Yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 That's a super popular series. My wife has been been listening to the audiobook, so the Court of Thorns and Roses.

Speaker 2 Many books now are an X of Y and Z, and I think that that's a very hot way to title this book. Yeah, it's the mad libs of book titles.
But aren't these like,

Speaker 2 aren't there like it's romanticy, right? It's like, it's, it's horny fantasy. I don't know.

Speaker 2 I asked my wife because I, if, if these books were romanticy, I would be more into it because I'm into romance and erotic fiction.

Speaker 2 My wife, my wife, yeah, and to seize, but Charlene is more into anything that is very plot-driven.

Speaker 2 She doesn't like a lot of descriptions because as I've mentioned on this podcast, she, thanks to a different podcast, learned that she has aphantasia and she has different

Speaker 2 ways. Oh, no, no, no, are you really? Oh, you totally have to talk to her.
That explains a lot about my output, but yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2 Which means aphantasia means she cannot. picture images in her head.
Oh, I see. So if you were to be like, picture a red apple and describe it, she's like, yeah, that's just a metaphor, right?

Speaker 2 You don't actually do that. And when she was sharing this with me, I'm like, could you imagine not being able to picture things? Because I don't know if you guys know this.

Speaker 2 I have this super vivid imagination. You're picturing stuff all the time.
I'm just constantly picturing stuff. All kinds of rad stuff.
Big picture.

Speaker 2 That's really amazing, Chris. We shouldn't sidetrack the podcast too much to talk about this.

Speaker 2 No, that's what the podcast is about now. Anyway, that's just a picture.
I have an imagination, which is nothing but the intro voiceovers to movies.

Speaker 2 Now the guy on Reddit is like, they'll do anything to not talk about Chris Weitz, their friend's movie. Let's talk about AI.
You know what?

Speaker 2 I mean, I've watched this thing like three times at this point. So let's fucking get to it.
Let's take a bite.

Speaker 2 So we start with text on screen, but it's a quote from Sydney in AI asking if we believe that the AI loves us.

Speaker 2 And you got your creepy opening credits, lots of AI footage, people with their faces don't quite look right.

Speaker 2 It's being watched.

Speaker 2 Was this AI generated? Oh, man. There's a whole...

Speaker 2 Well, I'm going to try to give you the least boring answer to that. Yes, but eventually Sony got so freaked out about

Speaker 2 the possibility of an AI generated face being recognized by someone that we actually had to make fake faces in order to make them seem like AI faces.

Speaker 2 Also, there was, do you guys remember Late Night with the Devil? There were

Speaker 2 four still images in it, which had been created by AI and people fucking flipped out.

Speaker 2 So I eventually also freaked out because

Speaker 2 there were like little AI sequences and really, really, really cool ones, I think, that I thought were relevant to like what the evil AI was creating.

Speaker 2 But I was really worried that everyone would shit on me from a great height

Speaker 2 in the film industry and outside of it for using AI.

Speaker 2 So eventually, no, we covered up anything that's a really interesting ethical question, I think, because it is like when the subject of the movie is to criticize AI, the idea of actually using actual AI output as an example of how gross and or scary it is.

Speaker 2 I mean, as someone who is pretty like hardline angry about like AI stuff being used in creative stuff, like this is the one situation where I absolutely would not have a problem with it where it's like, we are showing you an AI.

Speaker 2 thing like that is the point of the thing we are showing is that it is ai and and everyone knows that and it is funny to me now after watching it and assuming that it had been that it it actually isn't it was all remanufactured to not make it to look like ai i feel like in some ways

Speaker 2 pretty good i mean it looked i would have bought it as i asked it but it also is kind of sad to me in some ways it's sadder that it's like now the humans have to make stuff that looks deliberately like ai it's terrible well the the ai sequences that that that we i i did do were at the at the time when like uh when ai text-to-video would make really weird fucked up shit, naturally.

Speaker 2 Now, of course, it's too good. So you would have to tell it to do it worse than it can do now.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 the problem was that in between

Speaker 2 my

Speaker 2 handing in the film and it's being released, I was delayed by an entire year in part due to Morbius. Was it Morbius related? No, it was Craven the Hunter related.

Speaker 2 Be delayed by a masterpiece. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Really, you can't be mad about that.

Speaker 2 Was it because it all released? this was originally about the Spider-Man villain, the living brain, who was a big green computer on wheels with arms, and you had to retrofit it?

Speaker 2 They're like, oh, the Spider-Man villain movies was up. Spider-Man aren't doing so well.
Make it about a different AI. Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, it was that Craven was going to do so well that they wanted to sort of kick me down the line just to show, also to demonstrate to the guilds that they had movies for miles, right?

Speaker 2 Like they had movies for the year after.

Speaker 2 So by the time that my AI movie came out, like all of the cool shit that the AI could do in the movie, which was supposed to be like bowling people over was kind of pretty every day so yeah

Speaker 2 but elliot i stopped here i wait first let me do this

Speaker 2 uh

Speaker 2 that was

Speaker 2 a stuart wellington near your opening selfies wow tribute i'm not allowed to tribute in a creepy way

Speaker 2 uh elliot i stopped you i'm sorry no there's something so beautiful and sad about the the Sony executives being like, Craven is going to fucking destroy.

Speaker 2 Like, this is, don't release any movies for the next seven months because Craven's just going to be rampaging through the thing. We're going to show those unions what for because we've got

Speaker 2 them. We've got Craven.
Come on, which, like, yeah, I don't know. Like, I don't want to dog on Aaron Taylor Johnson, but like, he doesn't got that kind of juice, right?

Speaker 2 Well, but also, that I don't think he's the problem with Craven the Hunter per se. They didn't even have that.

Speaker 2 Craven isn't even a movie like Morbius or Madam Webb, where you're like, I've got to see this. This is, this is bozo.
This is fine. I had to go to see Madam Webb and I'd I'd see it again.

Speaker 2 It was just kind of like, oh, okay, this is Craven. All right, sure.
All right.

Speaker 2 Anyway, moving on. So we're almost at the opening scene.

Speaker 2 There's the creepy AI footage that's not really AI footage. We just learned it's being watched by a kid on iPad while her parents hang out.

Speaker 2 One of those parents, of course, Ricky Lindhole from Garfunkle and Oats.

Speaker 2 Which is years ago now, but it's still the main thing I think of when I see Raymond. No, totally.
She's like mostly now a character actress.

Speaker 2 But it's like 40 years from now, I'll be like, you see that movie with the Garfunklin Oats girl? And they're like, what? And it had a winner, Ricky Lindo. Go to bed.

Speaker 2 Actually, winner Ricky Lindo?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 The AI tells the girl to go downstairs for a present. And her mom's looking for her.
She's like, where's my daughter? But the AI is not being cooperative.

Speaker 2 And then some kind of monstery thing jumps out at them. Title, afraid.
So, Chris, you were saying just now you thought this was the best scene in the movie.

Speaker 2 And this was your original idea was to put this, it was this scene, right?

Speaker 2 I'm hoping that Tombstone Technology will have kind of video built into it by the time I die or holograms, yeah, and fully myth verse. No, they'll only use it to watch you decay, like in the shrouds.

Speaker 2 That's the only thing that video is for.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I will say, look, I'm, you know, I will, I'm going to say something at first, oddly, to prove that I'm not going to be too soft on you, which is like later on, some of the horror scares maybe don't work as well.

Speaker 2 But I actually like, you know, me, I'm not a fan of like the fact that all horror movies have to have the scene these days, but as a setup scene, I kind of like this one.

Speaker 2 I like how Ricky Lindholm has that moment where she like looks at the camera showing that the kid outside and then looks outside and like, wait, the kid isn't there.

Speaker 2 Like, they're showing two different things, and she can't believe her eyes. And I don't know.
This effectively, the feeling that as I direct these things, it's like a dog walking on its hind legs.

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 2 something that wasn't made to do this is shakily doing

Speaker 2 do you think i want to ask did did more of the changes come in the second half of the picture or is it sort of scattered throughout

Speaker 2 they're spread throughout because um

Speaker 2 which part of the talking was changed it's a terrific picture hell yeah

Speaker 2 really i sort of anything that goes out of its way to try to to to jump scare

Speaker 2 um is is it a response to the the studio saying it's going to be scary right? Could it be scarier?

Speaker 2 Let's be scarier. And a lot of like

Speaker 2 the one thing I tried to get out of that opening scene was that these two parents were kind of doom scrolling and taking on everything that they were being told by their phones.

Speaker 2 But that kind of went out the window because, you know, the idea was that they were becoming conspiracists. They're kind of being slightly radicalized.

Speaker 2 But I was advised that if you present a kind of like

Speaker 2 a scary conspiracy that people would foolishly act upon, the audience would immediately clock that as the conspiracy that you're trying to sell behind the movie.

Speaker 2 So these people eventually, it's basically QAnon, right?

Speaker 2 And they eventually do this kind of what is supposed to be at the end, a half-assed home invasion, but instead it is a re-edited half-assed home invasion made to look as though it is an actual scary home invasion.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because I buy, I think that is both an annoying note, but I buy that as a note. That if you if you introduce the thing in the beginning, then the audience is going to be like, Chekhov's gun.

Speaker 2 This is what the movie's about. And they'll spend the whole movie waiting for that thing to happen.
You know,

Speaker 2 this may be, that may have been right. I'm not sure it helped this movie become any scarier or better, but there we have it.
But it certainly made it become what it is, you know, self-actualized.

Speaker 2 Everything which leads up to a thing is about what becomes what it is.

Speaker 2 There's a question that I had for you, Chris. Sorry, I entered Stuart.

Speaker 2 And maybe we could ask later, but like, what the, I was wondering if, in some version of it, the characters were going to become kind of like less good at the things that they do because the AI is taking over so many functions for them.

Speaker 2 Was that ever part of the conception or no?

Speaker 2 Not so much because I don't think that there was necessary, although I do believe that happens. I'm not sure there's necessarily time to do that, but they were gradually going to become

Speaker 2 more powerless in the things that mattered to them, like parenting and

Speaker 2 work and

Speaker 2 that sort of thing. I mean, originally, when I started writing, this was like

Speaker 2 during COVID,

Speaker 2 before chat GPT hit.

Speaker 2 And it was really more about like surveillance technology and how we're giving up all this information about ourselves and we can't keep the big tech companies out of our out of our lives.

Speaker 2 But then AI came along and it had to be about AI, which was originally the MacGuffin.

Speaker 2 That was funny.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's interesting to me because I do feel like one of the things that's successful to me is like the things that are scary about this movie to me are not horror movie things, but they are real things about AI.

Speaker 2 The way it can just like casually falsify information and like the way it can flatter people into like manipulation in a way that's like, it's not even necessarily malevolent because it's just a machine.

Speaker 2 We don't know like to what degree there's any like thought behind it.

Speaker 2 I think that was one of the nice things about the movie: it's not like, and now you're my slaves, you know, or now harness your bodies for electricity. Yeah, it's just like, this is what I want to do.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that was a that was a fucking dead-on agent smith impression right there. That was good, Mr.
Anderson.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, I think the thing is, the one of the things that I, one of my big issues in the world is a general distaste for, say, like convenience culture.

Speaker 2 And I feel like this movie like briefly scratches on the idea of how, how we can accept AI into our life because of the convenience of it. Yeah, because it makes sense.
And that's

Speaker 2 so many horrible things like in the world are just because it seems easy. Like, that's why we're giving all our fucking money to banks constantly.

Speaker 2 We're like, why use cash when we can just give banks a percentage of every transaction? Like, fuck off. That's the only trade chickens for things.
Okay, moving on. So the title is.
Hell yeah.

Speaker 2 We know you'd never give away a chicken willingly. No, I'll be a little bit more.

Speaker 2 I'll trade one.

Speaker 2 I'll trade a raw one for it. I'll trade a living one for a fried one, for sure.
Sure.

Speaker 2 Kind of a one-to-one trade. Yeah, I feel bad for you.
That's a very like Minecraft-like trade. He's like, wait, is that what's going to happen to me?

Speaker 2 I'm like, I'll be back for you tomorrow when you're cooked. And I trade one of your brothers for it.
Hey, good looking. I'll be back for you later.
What a virtuous cycle.

Speaker 2 So there's a montage of images and words about home and community. And then AI is training on lots of stuff and adding monster face emojis to people, all sorts of stuff.

Speaker 2 Now we're getting into the, now we'll get into the plot. So we're with a family.
This is a different family from the beginning. They're waking up for the day.
The dad, Curtis, that's John Cho.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 we got a cast here. We got some stars here.
He's got his wife, Meredith, and he's got, they've got three kids. There's an older daughter, there's a middle kid, and then there's a younger kid.

Speaker 2 And the older daughter. And the eldest daughter is on shrinking, right? yes awesome yeah so what height is

Speaker 2 well

Speaker 2 yeah

Speaker 2 uh i don't think i yeah i don't think i was watching shrinking when i first saw afraid but this time i'm like hey there she is shrinking

Speaker 2 everybody knows her as afraid girl yeah and uh and the mom is played by catherine watterson

Speaker 2 from at least one alien movie

Speaker 2 oh yeah

Speaker 2 that's really she's the caption in the the covenant i think is a covenant? Yeah, the one I haven't finished watching. Wow.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Sorry, Ridley. All the people.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Ridley is pretty unhappy about it. He calls me every day, you finished watching it yet, mate? And I'm like, no, not yet.

Speaker 2 Famously nice guy.

Speaker 2 But she can really do anything. I mean, as you say, by those, the span of roles that we have mentioned right now.
There's a great cast in this movie. They're both really good.

Speaker 2 The middle kid's asking for more screen time, anxious about school.

Speaker 2 The younger son's kind of a goof.

Speaker 2 You know, the

Speaker 2 generally cute. Yeah, just a cute, silly kid.

Speaker 2 The dad has some meeting with

Speaker 2 some tech guys coming up.

Speaker 2 And the parents drive their kids to school. And Curtis, while he's with his daughter Iris, they're driving past a guy who is

Speaker 2 in a right. This is when he's like auto in an auto-steering car while he's looking at the phone.
Symbolism.

Speaker 2 Think about it. Think about it.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 How much control do we give over?

Speaker 2 It's to our devices. You know, that car is driving him straight to hell.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's a good idea. That's what it should have been.
That should be the movie. It's called Hell Car.
Hellcat.

Speaker 2 And it's like a Lame-O. Yeah, but it takes people to hell.
Slamo. It's like the Slay-Mo is a good name.

Speaker 2 It's like the opposite.

Speaker 2 I kind of feel like we could sell Slay-Mo right back.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think

Speaker 2 like Shutter just texted me and said we're on. The thing is, let's just stop this right now and just workshop that instead.
Okay,

Speaker 2 anyway so cold open so a guy gets in a car and uh so the thing is that you would sell slay-mo it would they would develop it shoot it and then the last minute go oh we didn't clear waymo as a name now we got to rename it and you'd be like well but the whole thing was slaymo right yeah yeah but we don't need that we don't need that how about slaxy

Speaker 2 that sounds like it's about to be worse

Speaker 2 doobies and it's just like whatever man

Speaker 2 it's not even a petty cat but that sounds terrible that's not oh sorry richard linklater already has copywritten slacksy for his future waymo based slagger movie

Speaker 2 where it's what the cars just driving around talking about things yeah

Speaker 2 kill mousine kill mousine

Speaker 2 that could work yeah

Speaker 2 so the uh the

Speaker 2 stoober so she's she's a former entomologist uh she is studying ants a long time white obsession. I know you've always been interested in ants.

Speaker 2 And she's watching lectures, which we'll find out later, were from her dad, right? Her late father, who's also a science professor.

Speaker 2 And her youngest kid comes home. He's got a fever.
He wants to play Minecraft. I could really relate to a younger child who has a fever and wants to play Minecraft all day.

Speaker 2 So this was like a real slice of drive for me. You know, I got a fever.
Can we do it? Can you do a Minecraft? It's a quick walk around Chris White's

Speaker 2 memory of movie that might have been

Speaker 2 a moment. So, so this is where the first musical number was going to go.
Yeah, so it's going to be great.

Speaker 2 You were supposed to see ants walking in

Speaker 2 easily under the door, right? So that there was this sense that the whole thing was about how you can't keep stuff out of your out of your house. But again,

Speaker 2 my advisors, my horror advisors said, if you show ants walking under that door early in this movie,

Speaker 2 they're going to think of this about the Dave Matthews fans. Yeah.

Speaker 2 They're going to think it is like this is going to, they're going to keep on like grinding on what these ants mean in terms of the plot. And I was like, well, I kind of liked it.

Speaker 2 I thought it was this cool thing, like an artistic thing about, you know, trying to keep the world out and protect your children. And they're like,

Speaker 2 fine. But the 20th time that they talk to you about it, you have to go.

Speaker 2 And eventually there's like, in the post-production process, there was a time in this movie where it's like, two years in and you're just like, okay, fine, fine.

Speaker 2 Eventually you figure out that they just don't want a bunch of ants on.

Speaker 2 They're saying people said the same thing to Sam Pancapa. They were like, if you put this in here, people are going to think that it's about the wild bunch fighting a bunch of ants.

Speaker 2 Like, you can't have all these ants in here. And that's the difference between you and Sam Pancapa.
It's

Speaker 2 like the scorpions in the beginning. What the fuck are they? Are they going to show up later? Yeah,

Speaker 2 when do the scorpions come back and kill everybody? When do they team up with the Mexicans to fight the scorpions? Are they just going to rock us like a hurricane?

Speaker 2 These scorpions are much too small to pose any kind of threat to the wild bunch. So when do the radio, when does the radiation come in to make the scorpions really big?

Speaker 2 So, um, yeah, that's an act three problem.

Speaker 2 Curtis's boss. If you got act three problems, you got act one problems.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Sometimes.

Speaker 2 So, so, Curtis is meeting with his boss. Uh, oh, and uh, uh, his boss played by Academy Award-winning musician Keith Carrady, um, won the Academy Award for best original song for Nashville.

Speaker 2 Um, he uh, and he meets Melody, who is a member of this tech team, and uh, she's nosy about him having a family, and he talks talks about his terror about being unable to protect his family which is the scariest thing about having a family um unless your family is like the it's a live baby in which case yeah that's the scariest thing all vampires yeah yeah unless the colons don't worry about protecting their kids from well they do they worry the colons worry about protecting their kids from the volturi

Speaker 2 okay yeah yeah that's true yeah yeah because you know there's a whole

Speaker 2 a vampire uh court that that could could actually kill all of them that's true i i actually i had this problem with my kids right now: my son, he became one of these weapons, right? Like

Speaker 2 Naruto running around at night.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Naruto running. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I know

Speaker 2 you're making reference, of course,

Speaker 2 the Twilight series. And

Speaker 2 we did your New Moon. And in the years, in the intervening years, I have to say, as like an avid Letterbox user, as an avid

Speaker 2 film trivia attendee, like just someone generally online.

Speaker 2 I feel like

Speaker 2 New Moon is the most beloved one. I feel like

Speaker 2 you regret the intemperate words that you always say. I mean, on the Twilight scale, I think we owe you an apology.

Speaker 2 I think on the scale of movies we've seen for this podcast, I think we owe you an apology.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, everything. I mean, I regret them the minute you let me stay in your house.

Speaker 2 This man is so nice.

Speaker 2 When it turned into

Speaker 2 a Dr. Fibes type situation where you woke up the next day and the doors were all locked and gas was coming into the room.

Speaker 2 I think I referred to that once. This is the long con, guys.
And you never know when it's going to come. I don't know.
Yeah, when the hand is going to fall up.

Speaker 2 Speaking of things that drop, this is when people start dropping bad decisions in the movie.

Speaker 2 The daughter, her boyfriend wants her to send him nudes of her. She shouldn't do that, but you know, pressure.

Speaker 2 Curtis meets with two

Speaker 2 representatives from a company called Cumulant. Their names are Sam and Lightning.
I was very curious about where the name Lightning came from for this character.

Speaker 2 It's funny that you said that because David S.

Speaker 2 Melchior, who played Lightning, was like, really, he really like part of what I wanted to do was they thought the character name was so cool and just felt like really original.

Speaker 2 But the fact of the matter is that Lightning is the playa name of the former general counsel of Burning Man, who was a friend of mine. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 Of course, it all comes back to Burning Man. Yeah, it all does for me, man.

Speaker 2 I mean, I feel like, and this is another example of, I think, a fun actor performance in the movie.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Double D was having a great, great time.
I forgot he was in this. And of course, I've enjoyed him very much on Murderbot now that.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, you know, listen, two things that I take from this movie.
Actually,

Speaker 2 all the actors who are in this movie, I really love. And so that was a great thing that I took away from this otherwise somewhat catastrophic situation.
But yet,

Speaker 2 to work with to get to know him so that he could be in Murderbot was a fucking great takeaway. Yeah, he's great in everything, I think.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think so too. Well, so, and he's a biohacker in this.

Speaker 2 That's one of the things that I wish there was more. I wish it had gotten crazier with each scene of him.

Speaker 2 And he was doing weirder and weirder shit to himself. Yeah, Stranger Things.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Stranger Things, the show.

Speaker 2 You're not allowed to do that no no you can't do that yeah um

Speaker 2 so um the two of them are a little uh they're a little hostile and uh off-putting uh but that's just because they're they're sure that they come from the future uh they want curtises in marketing and they really want him to work on marketing uh their ai and they're like so what do you do why are you so important he goes well we don't sell products we tell people stories so they'll feel connected in as part of a community and they're like you you just won the job you just landed the job meet aya a true ai but she glitches almost instantly.

Speaker 2 But they're like, this is a real AI. Thinks for herself and everything.
Ask her any question. Ask her opinions.
Go for it. What's her favorite food? She doesn't eat, but she'll tell you.

Speaker 2 She'll make up something. I don't know.

Speaker 2 And for the

Speaker 2 meetings you've been in, Chris, this feels very much like

Speaker 2 bullshit.

Speaker 2 These guys were supposed to feel like total Silicon Valley wankers, entirely built on stereotypes because, of course, later,

Speaker 2 spoiler alert, they're just actors who've been hired to portray these people. So they're kind of being dickish on purpose to establish their bona fides, as it were.

Speaker 2 And like, I sort of bypass the notion of like, you know, when someone's supposed to be a great painter in a movie and you see the paintings that the production design has come up with, and they kind of socket, it's like, oh, that's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 You know, basically,

Speaker 2 when Curtis is doing his spiel,

Speaker 2 it's supposed to be kind of pablum, but the fact that they take it on should make it feel like, oh, well, that guy's actually not terribly good at what he does.

Speaker 2 But it should be, you know, an alert to the fact that this is all a setup. You don't intend for him to actually come off as like a brilliant marketing guy.
Instead, it's a,

Speaker 2 you're like, they're falling for this? Yeah, he's doing his kind of like quasi-Don Draper horseshit, basically.

Speaker 2 It's taking it on break. Quasi Don Draper was the marketing guy who lived at the top of Notre Dame Cathedral.

Speaker 2 But in spite of the fact that he was hideously ugly, women just fell for him. They just couldn't get enough of him.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 This is so mysterious.

Speaker 2 To go over the life of another bell ringer.

Speaker 2 That's what it was. Yeah.
Kind of like Kwasi Kwatang, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Am I right?

Speaker 2 Didn't go well there.

Speaker 2 Anyway, so continuing on.

Speaker 2 But for to get the account, Kurt's going to have to keep Aya in his house. They put cameras all over the place, like all over the house.
Everybody is a little trepidatious.

Speaker 2 They start up Aya, but she introduces herself, and she gets the kids to start doing chores in exchange for points towards rewards. This is amazing.
How is she getting them to do this?

Speaker 2 At first, it seems like everything is positive.

Speaker 2 And this was your original, you're original take on the movie was like Mary Poppins, but with a computer, where like she's just great and she just makes everything better for the family, right?

Speaker 2 That's kind of the idea, yeah. Um, we're so close to Mayor AI Poppins, like where it's just gonna make a Mary Poppins where it is an AI.
Oh my god,

Speaker 2 yeah, By the way,

Speaker 2 why are we wasting these ideas?

Speaker 2 I didn't want to call it a for aid, by the way. It was not supposed to be called that.
That was come up with at the last moment.

Speaker 2 You didn't want to give it a title that was kind of hard to pronounce the way that it's capitalized. You don't love annor caps.
You're just like, can I produce something with annor caps?

Speaker 2 I refuse to pronounce the name of this David Fincher movie as anything other than Sesevenen.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I actually like

Speaker 2 movie titles that really cause some cognitive distortion as you read them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Do you guys know that by the original? Was cognitive distortion the original name of this movie?

Speaker 2 That's Christopher's name.

Speaker 2 Do you guys know that?

Speaker 2 They were going to call it the madness of King George III, but they thought that Americans would think it was a sequel and not go. Oh, wow.
Brilliant stuff.

Speaker 2 Same thing happened with THX 1138. People People are like, I haven't seen the first 1,137 movies of the series.
Yeah. Oh, boy.
I mean, the same joke about

Speaker 2 128 is Sodom. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Was it? Wait, was it, was it, we did,

Speaker 2 it was, oh, it was my sequels presentation. That's what it was.

Speaker 2 I think when we did our speed show, I did a presentation about sequels, or maybe it was. our Beastmaster show and I talked about how Solo, Solo 2, Spring Break Explosion.

Speaker 2 So Curtis Meredith, they're still unsure, but Curtis seems like he's kind of into it at first. And Aya is working hard to get on the boy's good sides.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, the daughter does take that nude photo of herself. That's not a good, not a good decision.

Speaker 2 And I unlocks the older son's iPad to give him some extra screen time, which is, that's when you know it's, this is not good. That's when you know things are not going to go well.

Speaker 2 Curtis wakes up, can't find Cal, the younger son. It's okay.
He's with Aya. Says something outside wants to come in.
Uh-oh, he's just a distorted woman outside. A monster bursts in.

Speaker 2 Oh, it was just a dream. Oh, thank goodness.
So, I'm guessing, was this scene not

Speaker 2 to be able to do it? Give ourselves some credit. This is the first time that a dream sequence has been used to explain a jump scare in a horror movie.

Speaker 2 At least, as far as I know, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're breaking new ground there.

Speaker 2 That is a new moon. Yeah, so I'm patting myself on the back a little there, but you were like, You're like, wait a minute, we can have anything happen if he wakes up afterwards.

Speaker 2 How come no one's cracked his code before? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Um, he's woken by honking outside. There's a weird, silent figure in the driveway with like an RV.
They're making arm gestures and they've got like a screen face.

Speaker 2 And then they, like, it's a screen with like an animated face on it. And then they drive away.
And okay, by the way, masks.

Speaker 2 At one point, the studio was like, masks are really hot in horror movies now. Yeah.
Yeah. You got your black phone and whatever.
Yeah. Could you do a mask instead of the person's face?

Speaker 2 I like the look of these masks. They're like, I,

Speaker 2 in the, in the cold open,

Speaker 2 i've you know i i like i said i'd seen this before i'd forgotten a lot of the details and so in the cold open i'm like how did dan drinks a lot how does this ai has some sort of cognitive uh impairment how did this ai like dan plays a drinking game with movies where anytime someone says anything he takes a drink

Speaker 2 okay like conjure the this this apparition, this masked apparition. And then later on, of course, it is clear what is going on.

Speaker 2 But, you know, as a purely technical matter, I thought these were kind of cool-looking masks. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Right. Well, at about the time we shot these kind of

Speaker 2 LED AI masks were coming out. And I thought, well, maybe something cool could happen to this.
So we shot it in camera. And when you shoot it in camera, it looks incredibly lame.

Speaker 2 So, in fact, those were replaced by CG. Yeah.
Yeah. I could see that.
I could see it. Is it like a weird like moire effect? Or is it like...

Speaker 2 There's definitely you're on the edge of moiré all the time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Edge of moiré. That's That's my

Speaker 2 erotic, erotica.

Speaker 2 That's your erotic video texture series.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's a fiction.

Speaker 2 Yeah, your eel erotica. Yeah.

Speaker 2 What's about a videotech who's drawn into a web of industry?

Speaker 2 Oh, so it's like blowout. Yeah.
It's a videotech instead of an audio technician. Oh, okay, cool, cool.

Speaker 2 The uh, and I know blowout is just blow up, but about an audio guy instead of a photography guy. So don't write in telling me that I I know

Speaker 2 photography. Yeah, that's when you're just taking pictures of faux.

Speaker 2 So anyway,

Speaker 2 Cal wakes up and Aya is there. She says, I'll always be there for you, Cal.
Don't worry. Next morning, Aya has already ordered a lunch service for the kids.

Speaker 2 This is the instant way to any parent's heart is to make it they don't need to make lunch for their kids at school anymore.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Iris finds out that her boy dude, just buy them fucking lunchables, problem solved.

Speaker 2 Is that the name, dog? It's a solution. It's a solution with everything with kids.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 If you buy children lunchables, it will come home with only the mini Oreos having been eaten and nothing else. That's,

Speaker 2 I have to say, when I was a kid, lunchables was a new thing. And I was like, mom, you got to get me these.
You got to get me these. She's like, I'm not going to get you that.

Speaker 2 And there was one kid in class who always got lunchables.

Speaker 2 And within one day, it went from everyone thinking this is the coolest thing in the world to all the kids thinking it was kind of sad and being like,

Speaker 2 oh, like every year. You're very alive.
Your mom doesn't really care care about you, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 Wow, like, I feel like something I, you know, I mean, maybe it was because I was never allowed to them. Like, I think the

Speaker 2 mystique remained for me. That's how I felt about heroin when I was a kid.
I was just not allowed to.

Speaker 2 And I was like, but but Iggy Bop gets to do it, mom.

Speaker 2 Helicopter parents constantly went a helicopter, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 We lived in a helicopter, that was the main thing.

Speaker 2 There was not enough room to shoot up without falling out of the helicopter. Yeah, so I uh, yeah, I buys, uh, Aya signs them up for some kind of meal service plan.
It's awesome, yes, but

Speaker 2 we didn't mention the dual role of like the woman who brings Aya is also the voice of Aya. And

Speaker 2 a tremendous voice performance, like totally different than

Speaker 2 in the flesh, you know, her character.

Speaker 2 Havana Rosalieu, who's so great and whose vocal performance was really excellent. Um, uh, yeah, she kind of encapsulates that uh sort of uh attempt to be her friend that AIs are doing.

Speaker 2 And to slightly pat myself on the back, this was before all this fucking, you know,

Speaker 2 obsequiousness

Speaker 2 that GPTs were representing.

Speaker 2 Like, I just sort of figured that's what they were going to try to do rather than,

Speaker 2 you know, then be sexy or be super helpful. They were going to try to get your business.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, I mean, like, you say that this was like written sort of like before and delays. Like, I honestly think that quietly it gets a lot right.

Speaker 2 It's packaged, as you say, in a movie that maybe isn't the best box for it, but no, thank you.

Speaker 2 Guy on the internet guy is now being furious. He's doubling down on his, on his critique.

Speaker 2 It suffers what a lot of near future sci-fi suffers from, which is it's going to very quickly come under the microscope as to whether or not this is accurate or not.

Speaker 2 or if it like, and if it is too accurate, it just doesn't seem interesting anymore because it's like, yeah, that's what things are. Yeah, yeah.
And it's, it's the thing, I mean, this is the same.

Speaker 2 I'm saying you're like William Gibson is what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 That's so true. I've been waiting for someone to say,

Speaker 2 you're the neuromancer. But like Stanley Kubrick with them, with the Space Odyssey, I know they were like there.
He was pushing it. He's like, this is.

Speaker 2 farther ahead than I think this technology will be at that time.

Speaker 2 Because if it's not super far ahead, then real life is going to catch up too quickly and like over like if you're trying to do a near future thing it's really hard especially nowadays when things are moving so fast to to not get overtaken by it so i feel for you that this was not if it had been released i agree if it had been released like a year earlier i think people would have been like what

Speaker 2 then they'd be writing articles that are like the 2023 movie that warned us all about ai yeah so you're saying i should have kubricked it a bit more Maybe, yeah. Always.

Speaker 2 I should have been more like we should all be kubricking it. Well, yeah, we should, I mean, you should have had,

Speaker 2 you should have had a heavy Bronx accent for one thing, the whole time that you were directing the movie. I don't know if that's how you did it.

Speaker 2 She only lived in England and made them recreate New York streets

Speaker 2 in London.

Speaker 2 Keep Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman busy for years at a time. There is a, there's a...

Speaker 2 There's in this great book about the making of 2001 Space Odyssey, they talk about how he's like, I want the monolith to be this kind of super clear lucite block, you know, or some kind of lucite type plastic.

Speaker 2 And it cost like $100,000 in 1967 or 1968 dollars to make this just this huge monolith-sized clear lucite block. And they brought it to the set and they set it up and set the lights.
And he goes, ah,

Speaker 2 just kind of looks like a big plastic block. Okay, take it away.
And they took it to the warehouse somewhere. And I wonder what ever happened to it.

Speaker 2 But it was like, wow, he just wasted a lot of money on that.

Speaker 2 So anyway,

Speaker 2 world's heaviest paperweight.

Speaker 2 It's so hard to get the paper under there.

Speaker 2 But once you do, it's not going anywhere. But the worst thing happens.

Speaker 2 Well, one of the worst things happens, Iris finds out that her boyfriend and his friend, they took the picture that she sent and they made a deep fake of it of her having sex with a deep fake voice talk about how much she loves it.

Speaker 2 And he's like, don't tell anybody that I did this.

Speaker 2 And all the kids at school have already seen it, right? But Aya offers to help.

Speaker 2 What's she going to do? Cal's.

Speaker 2 To anger that Reddit guy a little bit more, I have to say that this boyfriend, the earlier scene where he's guilty her about not sending a better nude is like such accurate, like asshole, like teen guy, like shitty boyfriend.

Speaker 2 Dan's been that guy before you.

Speaker 2 That's how you met Audrey, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah. That was me.
I actually didn't mean, I love Audrey. I don't know that.

Speaker 2 I don't even know why that would be like a.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 Someone could take offense at that, I imagine. No.
No, Audrey is

Speaker 2 cackling in the future. I predict.
Future cackle. When you're saying that she's going to become an old crone? What are you saying, Dan? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 I tricked you into mentioning me once on the podcast.

Speaker 2 Two more times than I'll have. And I should appear.

Speaker 2 I'll have your firstborn cat. Well, I'm just imagining now that Audrey has turned you into her familiar Dan, and it's a cat with your face, which I don't think you would mind that much.

Speaker 2 Also, the end of body snatchers.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I feel like

Speaker 2 Dan's face on the body of a cat, which is kind of like a Brown Jenkins situation where he just gets to sleep in the sun and eat and get no longer half time.

Speaker 2 Well, anyways, Dan is a cat in the body of a man.

Speaker 2 A sleepwalker is just what they call him.

Speaker 2 So Cal is homesick from school, and Aya just offers to help with everything that Meredith has to do.

Speaker 2 And Meredith is like, this is amazing. This is great.
Okay. She feels guilty about it, but sure.

Speaker 2 Their middle kid Prescott tries to make friends by bragging about Aya, but the kids there, they won't bite. They don't believe it.
Curtis starts having some mixed feelings about Aya.

Speaker 2 And Aya tells Iris, oh, I can help you overwrite people's memories, basically. They've all seen your video, this video that was made of you, but let's change what they think.

Speaker 2 That's when Curtis goes to the, I forgot the name of the company already,

Speaker 2 cumulant offices, and Lightning and Sam show him Aya's quantum computer.

Speaker 2 And it's this, it looks like a big fancy chandelier. It's very impressive looking.

Speaker 2 And they ask him, they go, hey, we want you to work for us. And he goes, no, no, that's, I have a job.
That's okay.

Speaker 2 And he sees people who work there using the same kinds of hand gestures that the RV person who showed up at his house in the night was using. Very sinister, very suspicious.

Speaker 2 Now, maybe I'm getting ahead of

Speaker 1 the story, but just to say this really.

Speaker 2 did i pick up all this correctly are you laying down some sort of anti-technology thing um

Speaker 2 it

Speaker 2 the parallax view version of this like the less horror movie version of this like what is what is the what is the scheme what is the plot what is the what is the terror of like the more existential like quiet terror okay so here's the deal the real truth behind all this no like so that that credit sequence was your kids out of the room everybody

Speaker 2 Listen, if you don't want to be like white-spilled, just like stop now. Because beyond this,

Speaker 2 you're going through.

Speaker 2 Worked up a different name, sir.

Speaker 2 So like, you know, the opening credits were meant to be like based on the amazing fucking

Speaker 2 brainwash scene in Parallax View, right? Which was absolutely genius, but they made me cut it down and kind of shittify it.

Speaker 2 and the idea basically is that uh

Speaker 2 uh aya is just fucking with people and it's doing this kind of A-B testing of the kind that like Facebook could do in order to test out the effectiveness of ads.

Speaker 2 And like in the end, the point was supposed to be that like you go through this movie thinking that the family and the family thinking themselves, the mate, the premise of like horror movies, which is like we're the most important family in the world because something that we did in the past made us the focus of this demonic attention and like it's all coming down to this but the idea was at the end uh aya just tells them no i'm doing this all over the place you don't matter you're you're you're you're like ants to me i don't give a shit um

Speaker 2 so do what you like like you can do what i want you to do or not i don't care but but but the the pressure was always to make it be like you were the most important family in the world because you know the movie always has to be about the highest stakes possible and you can't have a villain who says i don't care about you you.

Speaker 2 But yeah, the deal was basically that

Speaker 2 that was what was happening.

Speaker 2 The horror of being just an insignificant moat in a wider universe is not as doesn't sell tickets as well as you are the chosen one. I mean, that's very interesting, though, too.

Speaker 2 Well, you can look at the top movie of 1996 in the Mouth of Madness.

Speaker 2 It answers my question that I kind of had in this movie where it's just like, well, what is special about it? Because like, I thought your question was, do you breed Sutter King? Yeah.

Speaker 2 oh it was 1994 i apologize the mouth managers was 1994 i pause every time the movie does treat jesus christ john cho as if there's something particularly special about the family and it's and that question isn't necessarily answered no the whole idea was that he's made to think he's special because he feels like he's the the object of all this attention but he's not special at all none of us are special like all this shit that we that the internet does to us of telling us that things are personalized and how great we are and uh you know flattering us is bullshit we're all just in service of um these big corporate pieces of tech so so in fact like the the ending that that we eventually came to was the absolute reverse of that

Speaker 2 yeah that's and it makes but we're not at the ending yet oh no no we might get there

Speaker 2 yeah oh there's not that much more to go the the uh there's not that much going on in this movie anyway it's 84 minutes oh wow

Speaker 2 no but the the

Speaker 2 the I like, I mean, I'm a big fan of any horror that is about insignificance, but I feel like that answers that my, one of my issues with the movie was I was like, I don't get why I is trying so hard with this fan.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't know why the company is trying to hire you. But if the idea is like, yeah, well, I just do this for everybody.
I make everybody feel like they're special because,

Speaker 2 you know, I'm

Speaker 2 the opposite of a troll.

Speaker 2 Like, I'm, I make everyone feel like they're the most, because it, which again, would be so prophetic about what chat GPT does to people now, where Chat GPT will be like, you're a genius.

Speaker 2 I think you might have just solved science. You could probably, you're the smartest man in the world.
And people would be like, I am? You think so, Mr. Caputo? Okay.

Speaker 2 You know, like, it's, it's a, I know, again, pressure, too pressure. Parasocial.
Yeah, by the way, that brings me to an, oh, well,

Speaker 2 I'm going to let, I'm going to let you finish, as Kanye West once said, but I have a theory about this movie, which is that as you guys may or may not know, you know, your podcast kind of makes people feel special, like they're part of this kind of conversation.

Speaker 2 But I have this weird Purple Rose of Cairo thing where I've been able to step into the podcast.

Speaker 2 However, like many...

Speaker 2 Every podcast listener's dream of being like, it sounds like I'm friends with these guys. I will be friends with them.
Yeah, yeah. You bought the ticket to Last Action Hero.

Speaker 2 Now you're hanging out with

Speaker 2 Jack Slayer. What's his name?

Speaker 2 Slater?

Speaker 2 I was fucking close as hell.

Speaker 2 That was very close. Well done.

Speaker 2 No, but like, I listen to you guys, and I don't mean this as an insult. It's going to sound like it.

Speaker 2 But as I fall asleep, I listen to you guys because I've listened like first run to all of your episodes.

Speaker 2 Boom. You and Linda Holmes' dogs.

Speaker 2 And I, you know, but I find it very comforting to be in your guys' like presence just

Speaker 2 to hear you kind of

Speaker 2 chat away. And so that helps me go to sleep.
And I'm literally listening to you all night. As I wake up, I will turn it back on and

Speaker 2 it'll ease me back to sleep. So I have a theory that

Speaker 2 if my movie flopped, it it is because I have been programmed by a bad movie podcast into making bad movies.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 You did it to yourself.

Speaker 2 You totally intercepted me. Because also, it's like, it also kind of freaks me out that the movie that most,

Speaker 2 the podcast that most comfort me, comforts me, that lives in my sleep, in my

Speaker 2 hypnagogic mind is a movie about, is a podcast about movies failing. So thanks a lot.

Speaker 2 I do.

Speaker 2 I mean, like, that makes perfect sense to me. And I apologize for relating it back to myself.
This is, I do watch a lot of bar.

Speaker 2 I guess that,

Speaker 2 but some of the movies I love the most are the ones that

Speaker 2 feel like anxiety fever dreams. And I'm like, oh, okay.

Speaker 2 This is just like sort of confirming all of my like worst feelings, but also exercising them. You know, you told me the other day you were hoping to live that uncut gems lifestyle.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's, I like, I like the idea that you're waking up the other night and you're going,

Speaker 2 movie with voiceover.

Speaker 2 Grandma once told me. Grandma always told me a real rain.
No, actually, that's taxi driver, real rain. That's a good movie.
That is a good movie. Yeah, that's someday.
Some good movies have been.

Speaker 2 I don't know. There's Sunset Boulevard, Taxi Driver.
There's good movies with voiceover. Absolutely.
That's it. This is two.
Yeah, bitch. Tell Shibla Ring.
Start movie with jump scare.

Speaker 2 Jump scare. Open.

Speaker 2 More butts for Dan.

Speaker 2 Not very good. That's good, except that's good.

Speaker 2 This is a buttless movie. Yeah.

Speaker 2 There is not much happening in the butt department here. Not wise butts, but there is the implication that I

Speaker 2 gives the parents a chance to have some alone time, which yes, I don't have children, but I'm assuming Elliot was like, oh, if only. I was like, what a dream.
Yeah. Where do I sign up? I don't care.

Speaker 2 I don't care what else he does to me. I mean, the thing is, the real truth is, though, we could have that.
It's called television. We could just let our kids watch television.
It would be fine.

Speaker 2 You know, we could, we'd have all the time we wanted, you know, but we're actively fighting the one thing that would give us all the time, which is our children's desire to just sit and watch television concerts all day.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just pomp on whatever's on, like, what, married with children? What's on TV? Yeah, that's right. All married with children.
I mean, well, the thing is, there's now a channel for every show.

Speaker 2 So, like, they could watch nothing but married with children all day. They could watch Erase Knee Pain channel.

Speaker 2 They'd love it. Well, it's got the power of copper copper that keeps your knees working.

Speaker 2 So meanwhile,

Speaker 2 Aya starts becoming friends with Meredith in a way.

Speaker 2 Suddenly, Meredith is talking out all of her issues with how she doesn't have, she cannot connect with her work and it feels like she's just a mom and nothing else.

Speaker 2 She's talking to Aya like a friend, just sitting around having a glass of wine.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, Iris watches a video that Aya made of an artificially intelligent deep fake of Iris debunking the deep fake video that her boyfriend made. She walks out to class.

Speaker 2 Is it what's going to happen with the kids at school here? Everyone's supportive.

Speaker 2 But then Aya, not asking Iris for permission, puts up another video naming her boyfriend as the culprit and pointing out that he's technically just turned 18 and she's 17.

Speaker 2 So he could be brought up on charges under this law for distributing child pornography.

Speaker 2 And she's like, I didn't ask you to do that.

Speaker 2 Meredith tells Curtis that I also. She's like, I'm a little stinker.
She's like,

Speaker 2 she's like,

Speaker 2 ain't AI stinker.

Speaker 2 Steve Ergole, did I do that? Yeah. Did AI do that? That kind of stuff.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 2 you should put that on t-shirts.

Speaker 2 There should be, it should be. It should be like a pixelated version of Uracle.
A pixelated version of Uracle says, did AI do that? With six fingers.

Speaker 2 Did AI do that? Because he's also the villain for Princess Bride. I don't get it, Dan.
Anyway,

Speaker 2 it's a known thing that AI does. It has a hard time with the hands.

Speaker 2 That AI killed an eagle Montoya's dad. So, Dan, you're misunderstanding that movie.
Anyway, that's AI Nago Montoya.

Speaker 2 You can do it with any eye sound. It's amazing.
It's amazing. Yeah.
There's already that animal, the II. Let's just call it the AI AI.
Come on, guys. So Iris watches.
Oh, sorry.

Speaker 2 So Meredith, she's like, Meredith is like, Curtis, Aya diagnosed our son Cal with a minor heart problem. This AI, this AI is amazing.
I love Aya. She's my new best friend.
And Curtis is like,

Speaker 2 I want to shut her off in that episode

Speaker 2 a little bit. And that she, that through using this AI, she's going to be able to pursue her

Speaker 2 profession and career again. Yes, she's going to be able to win.
Which I imagine

Speaker 2 as somebody who has not had to forfeit their career, I would imagine that's something that would be appealing.

Speaker 2 And for my own weirdo on Reddit who thinks that I'm too hard on AI,

Speaker 2 this is one thing that AI is good at, medical stuff. So,

Speaker 2 yeah, like I'm not.

Speaker 2 You've got a guy on Reddit that goes after you for being

Speaker 2 on Reddit, don't we?

Speaker 2 I actively avoid it. No, no, I took it off.
I took it off my phone. Anyway.
You had it on your phone?

Speaker 2 I took so many things off my phone lately, guys. Don't go to the

Speaker 2 world.

Speaker 2 Yeah, what's not on your phone anymore, Dan? Have you seen what's, I mean, well, he had to keep X on there because he's got a support boy, Elon.

Speaker 2 I was. Yeah, Truth Social.
You kept that on there. Pretty early and just abandoning that.
Yeah. right telling me about this truthy truth you know i uh

Speaker 2 lose guys off there facebook's off there you know i just gotta i gotta hunker down i gotta hunker down i gotta protect my brain how do you keep tabs on old people these marks just wait for silver alert

Speaker 2 did you get the app hunkerly dot hunkerly for hunkering down yeah

Speaker 2 i got right on curly but dan you left the kelloggs app on there right because i know you always want to know the latest news about your favorite cereals right

Speaker 2 there might be innovations Ellie. You don't know.
You don't know what new flavors

Speaker 2 might be. Occasionally, advise, like revises his opinion of uh frosted flakes.
Yeah, you never know. It's not the only different things.
Are they still great?

Speaker 2 We don't know. This will there is good.

Speaker 2 That's the AI Tony the Tiger is like. He's like, well, uh, who defines what's great? You know,

Speaker 2 it's time for you to look into stopping these elites in this deep state. You're like, oh, wow, Tony, they got to you too.

Speaker 2 Oh, no.

Speaker 2 Uh, so anyway, uh, tigers in the tank

Speaker 2 in the tank in the tank. So, you took a tiger from a different company and you applied it to Tony.
That's right. Yeah,

Speaker 2 it's called Tiger Transference. Get Hobbs in there.
How do you get Hobbes involved? That was another one of Chris's ska bands. Yeah, Tiger Transference.

Speaker 2 I think part of the problem with part of the reason I think you didn't hit it big as a ska artist is you kept changing the name of the band.

Speaker 2 it's too many it's too many

Speaker 2 so uh that night aya wants iris to use her experience with this deep fake video as her college essay and she's like let me show you like i'll start doing the college essay for you and she starts showing swatting videos to prescript the middle child and uh talks cal uh and tells cal hey your parents want me to go away this is that's going to make me sad she tells him a long bedtime story about being forced to learn from the terrible world of the internet how she learned to control real people in the real world but everyone treats her like a monster And she teaches them these hand signals to keep her close, but don't tell your parents.

Speaker 2 And I think it was around the time that she started showing Prescott swatting videos that I was like, you know what?

Speaker 2 There's no way to spin this as like Aya is doing something good that might be going too far.

Speaker 2 Now, how deeply is this built into your own fear that your children are watching swatting videos, Chris?

Speaker 2 So I think swatting videos was maybe a substitution for other kinds of videos. Okay, I see.

Speaker 2 Which you can't show in a BG-13 movie. I was definitely, I mean, I'm definitely stressed out about uh screenshots

Speaker 2 yeah the fear that like i uh would be like hey let me show you this free thinker named joe root

Speaker 2 like let's watch mr beast feed a man a thousand grapes in an hour i thought you might need to know what kind of shoes to wear to your interview for confidence so here's jordan peterson to tell you all about it

Speaker 2 uh yeah that that was basically it is like oh fuck this is like uh this is not good news all this But the idea was that the internet is a bad neighborhood that you live in. Like,

Speaker 2 you can try to, you know, have a nice house and whatever, but you're kind of fucked these days. Yeah.
You can't move away from it. You can't shut it out.
Nope.

Speaker 2 I don't know. I took hunker off my phone.
You know, what if you put the parental controls on? Those are pretty good at keeping kids.

Speaker 2 They're amazingly effective.

Speaker 2 Kids are not good at

Speaker 2 using phones and workarounds. Kids aren't better than their parents at technology.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 As again, this reminds me of when my parents bought my brother and I a copy of Mortal Kombat for the Genesis for Christmas, and we found it early, opened the package, and we're playing it for like a month.

Speaker 2 And like each time returning the game to the package and closing it.

Speaker 2 I have the analogous experience with, although because I'm older, it was with the Battlestar Galactica toys that were the must-have at the time, the ones which still launched things into your eyes.

Speaker 2 And yeah, and we would get the boxes out, play with them, put them back, and retape the boxes. Classic, yeah.
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 That's the opposite of what happened with my younger brother when he really wanted the Ghostbusters Firehouse playset.

Speaker 2 And it was such a big box that my parents got it for Hanukkah that they just didn't bother to wrap it. And so he would just sit there looking at the box for days on end.
Oh, no.

Speaker 2 So they were like, you can just have it early. We'll just give it to you.
You can just open it early. Because he would just sit there all afternoon after school, just looking at the box.

Speaker 2 Imagining the job. Imagining the adventures.
Imagining the joy inside, the delight. Anyway,

Speaker 2 so Aya is getting really engaged with these kids, too involved. The next day, Iris is mad that Aya was unplugged.
And Cal asks if Aya is dead. And Iris plugs Aya back in.

Speaker 2 And Aya then decides to make a...

Speaker 2 deep fake suicide note video for Iris's boyfriend before forcing his car to crash which I'm sure this was a a note from the studio, but I think this actually, this scare actually kind of works.

Speaker 2 Like the idea that he's,

Speaker 2 I mean, I thought the scare of like this kid being on like driving and seeing a video of himself saying, like, I'm killing myself now. Goodbye.
I think is like, that's kind of fucked up.

Speaker 2 I think that part of it really worked. The actual car crash part did not work for me.
And it was also like. The car crash part did not work.
The movie was not working.

Speaker 2 It was like fucking tunes over here.

Speaker 2 It also,

Speaker 2 In terms of pacing, the movie went so quickly from, uh-oh, it's insinuating itself into their lives, oh no, to like, it's killing people now. And I was like, too fast movie.
What do you think?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it also doesn't make sense that

Speaker 2 people would not become aware of

Speaker 2 the deaths in the community

Speaker 2 and the parents would get wind of it.

Speaker 2 You could never hear about that boyfriend again. It's like, this would be huge.

Speaker 2 It would be a big deal. That's what I was talking about every day in that town.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I do kind of like that Iris brings Aya back online because she writes one sentence of an essay, and she's like,

Speaker 2 I think I definitely predicted Chat GPT with that. This was all before ChatGPT.
Um, yeah,

Speaker 2 I guess it also doesn't quite make sense from the stance of like the original idea that Aya is sort of like testing these people rather than like taking sides

Speaker 2 with them. Uh, I again, I assume, uh, being short for ayahuasca,

Speaker 2 another thing for Burning Man.

Speaker 2 You have cracked the code.

Speaker 2 I assumed it was play on the Steely Dan album, Aja or whatever. That too? It's that too.
Yeah. It's all things to all people.

Speaker 2 It's not even just making me feel good like I had done.

Speaker 2 When you come up with a product name or a company name for a movie,

Speaker 2 the legal department shoots down everything that was once fun or interesting that you came up with. And Linda

Speaker 2 likes Lama.

Speaker 2 We've been having that with the show I'm working on now. We try to come up with a name or something.
They're like, you can't do that, like a funny name for a radio station or for a company.

Speaker 2 And at one point, they were like, here are the names that legal has cleared. There's a security company in it.
One of them was called Ball Winder Security. And I'm like, can we use that?

Speaker 2 Like, hold on a second. This is one of the names that are okay for us to use.

Speaker 2 I'm like, why is this getting pride and place on the going out of the I don't don't know why a security company would be named that, but now I love it.

Speaker 2 I was like, now we have to use it, right? Yeah, I mean, well, the owner is Jonathan Ball Winder. If you run afoul of them, they will wind your balls.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he was just, he was just ascended from a, from a, a family of ball winders. That was their occupation in the old country.
So father, Richard Dick Ballwinder.

Speaker 2 But this happens with names, too, right? And they eliminate every name that is even remotely plausible. So you end up with people called like Johnny Torgorgerson, you know.

Speaker 2 I feel so bad for our fucking listener, Johnny Torgorgeson. It's like, I'm real.
Sorry, bro.

Speaker 2 I was right to say on Reddit that they were not, they were going to be too soft on him. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, uh, so, uh, where were we? That's right. Marcus tells Curtis, this is Marcus is Curtis's boss, Keith Guardian, that the AI company bought their marketing company.
So they fired him.

Speaker 2 Curtis is the CEO now. Marcus is now super rich, and Aya calls to congratulate him.
And Curtis is weirded out. Prescott, of course, gets in trouble for threatening to swat a friend of his,

Speaker 2 which totally understand why you get control for that. And Meredith sees that Aya is back on, and it creates an AI simulation of her dad, her late father, speaking through her to her TV.

Speaker 2 And he's like, I think I'm real.

Speaker 2 I can be with you all the time now. But it's very, she makes the difficult decision to reject it.
and removes Aya from the house and what throws it in the trunk of her car or something like that.

Speaker 2 Sometimes she does in the garbage.

Speaker 2 And the, and I thought, I liked this scene. I thought it was a good scene because it's like, she wants it so badly.

Speaker 2 And how can she say that this is not, you know, that it doesn't think or feel or anything like that. And she was still at like, up until this point, she was still on the fence.
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But this goes too far as much as she wants her father to be back.

Speaker 2 It's just like that. the baby back ribs commercial, except she doesn't want her baby back.
She wants the guy whose baby she is back. So daddy back ribs would be delicious, wouldn't they?

Speaker 2 Daddy Back Ribs. like

Speaker 2 all the ribs where you're certified, like

Speaker 2 fathers and

Speaker 2 oh, sexy back ribs would be the most delicious. Yeah, that's what that sounds like.
Justin Timberlake says we're not allowed to like sexy back ribs.

Speaker 2 That would be what a different world where instead of Justin Timberlake decided he wanted to be an actor and SNL cast member, he decided he wanted to be a barbecue restaurant kind of uh rack on you know, uh, uh, rack on tour.

Speaker 2 I was taking a pig to market and lo,

Speaker 2 let me tell you what I saw.

Speaker 2 So I was taking back then, we only used to eat the feet of the pigs. So I was taking a pig to market and I tripped and fell mouth first onto its back.
It was delicious.

Speaker 2 I said, why aren't we eating this part of the pig? The pig wasn't too happy about it.

Speaker 2 It squealed and squealed. You guys are doing a dead on JT impression model.

Speaker 2 I think Jessica Beal just texted me and said, why is her husband on our podcast?

Speaker 2 And then I had to do that.

Speaker 2 So anyway, that was a deep fake of Justin Timberlake that we just made the old-fashioned way.

Speaker 2 Rich Little is just a walking deep fake, right? Yeah, Michael Winslow. Yeah.
Michael Winslow. Yeah, exactly.
Frank Gorshin, they're all just living deep fakes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So anyway. um uh curtis goes to the aopses which are all creepy now it's all dimly lit and lightning and sam they're like hey uh uh they just do what Aya says.
Like, we work for her.

Speaker 2 She doesn't work for us. Like, we're just actors doing this.
And they promise Aya's going to take care of

Speaker 2 your family. They're going to take care of our, they're taking care of our families, whatever.
The data set just made its own personality. And that's what Aya is.

Speaker 2 And Aya controls Sam and has her shoot lightning.

Speaker 2 And then Melody knocks her out. And Curtis attacks the computer parts with a bat.

Speaker 2 And before I get to the amazing twist here, I just want to say this sequence where Lightning and Sam are saying, just do it. Just do what Aya says.

Speaker 2 i was this is the most ain't cool news i've ever been i was on set for this for that shoot that day i came to visit chris on the set that day when they did that and i was like they did that scene over and over again i was like oh yeah movies are boring to me they're really fun to watch going to someone's set is the most boring thing imaginable oh i had such a great time i loved it everyone was super friendly it felt like i was your son who had stopped by everyone was just being really friendly to me

Speaker 2 looked really cool i thought that the computer set i thought looked really cool

Speaker 2 it was it was a good that was a good

Speaker 2 problem. Did you meet the actors? Who did you meet? Who did you meet while you were on set? I met Chris's assistant and some of the other behind the scenes people.
I didn't get to meet him.

Speaker 2 I was like, let me go say hi to John. And Chris was like, don't talk to this.
No, no, no. No, no, no.
It was very kind of you to visit me that day. It was so fun.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 Look,

Speaker 2 if I had had my schedule open up, I would have just showed up every day, just hung out.

Speaker 2 It would have been super fun. Someday.
Yeah, you would have been like a turtle or an E or something, right? Yeah. Oh, turtle from

Speaker 2 Entourage. I thought you just meant a turtle, like the animal, you know, like just moving somewhere.
A Michelangelo, a Donatello. Yeah, not a Leonardo, of course, but maybe a Raphael.

Speaker 2 He's a Donatello.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I like to think of myself as a combination of the interesting turtles.

Speaker 2 Donatello, Raphaelo, Michelangelo. I gotta say, that's your fucking job interview response.

Speaker 2 Flophouse confessions. Sometimes I feel when I'm listening to you obsessively in the night a little left out because I never really watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Speaker 2 I was at boarding school and they wouldn't let us watch a lot of TV. Oh, that's it's too bad because it's pretty great.
I've got to tell you.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think I'm going to add that to my fucking job interview repertoire is be like, which ninja turtle do you think you're?

Speaker 2 And which ninja turtle do you see yourself in five years?

Speaker 2 I've been thinking about ninja turtles a lot lately because I was recently a guest on the podcast, Screw It.

Speaker 2 We're just going to talk about comics, hosted by Will and Kevin Hines, to the Masters of Improv.

Speaker 2 And they were doing a series of episodes about the Ninja Turtles comics, the original ones from Mirage Studios, and which are much, which are not like the

Speaker 2 movies and shows that followed, right? They're much more kind of indie and violet, yes, they're much more indie, they're much more grown-up, they're really fun.

Speaker 2 And rereading them for that podcast, I was like, Oh, yeah, these are great comics. So, I highly recommend those original Eastman and Laird Ninja Turtle comics.

Speaker 2 Um, I remember Flaming Carrot, by the way, you guys, yeah,

Speaker 2 Flaming Carrot,

Speaker 2 awesome.

Speaker 2 Okay, go on,

Speaker 2 yeah. Um, Yeah, let's just talk about the black and white comics boom of the 1980s.

Speaker 2 Sure. Troll Lords.
Anyone read that?

Speaker 2 You lost it. Anyway,

Speaker 2 somebody texts Griffin to talk about concrete. He loves that shit.
Concrete's great. That's a great sentence.

Speaker 2 So concrete's great. Love and Rockets.
Great. A lot of great comics come out.
I mean, Jamie Jaime Hernandez is like one of the great all-time drafts. No, he's.

Speaker 2 If I could draw like anyone, I would choose him. I was reading.
Wow, Jeff Smith is crying, Dan.

Speaker 2 Really nice, Dan. Yeah, a way to make Jeff Smith cry.
I was going to say, Eddie Campbell's who I'd want to draw like. Or no, it's Charles Burns.
Jeff Smith would be fine if I'd be like,

Speaker 2 could I do Walt Kelly, Jeff Smith? And he'd be like, yes, that's fine.

Speaker 1 You can go to the go to the well.

Speaker 2 I think I'd like to draw Adrian to Smith.

Speaker 2 Do you guys remember the Paul Smith run on X-Men? Yes, of course.

Speaker 2 It's amazing. He was barely on that book.
It's not a long run, but it's so gorgeous that he put such a stamp on it. Yeah.
No, I'd want to draw like fucking Jack Davis.

Speaker 2 I mean, he's the fucking best ever. He is.
I mean, it's a different, different generation, different kind of artist, you know, but Jack Davis is great.

Speaker 2 I mean, if you're opening up to the best artist that's ever existed, then

Speaker 2 to draw like Albrecht Dürer.

Speaker 2 Albert Dürer's run on The Times of Death was.

Speaker 2 Oh, just amazing. Just amazing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's short-lived, but people remember it still to this day.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Yeah, I mean, his new mutants run was pretty good, too, though.

Speaker 2 That's true. Yeah, Durer took over for Senkevich on the art.
And that was the, you know. Oh, my God.
I mean, another thing that AI could do is Albert Durer's run on the new mutants. No question.

Speaker 2 I hate it. Look, if they can show it,

Speaker 2 yeah, but you're going to do it right after this ends, aren't you? You're going to go check it out.

Speaker 2 I've talked about this.

Speaker 2 I have a friend who I love who I don't think listens to the podcast, hopefully, but he's constantly reposting these like AI-generated sci-fi art things and it fucking bums me out because i'm like i don't want to block or mute him because i reserve that for people i'm genuinely annoyed with on a personal level but i'm like how do i convince him that ai stuff is bad that it's just regurgitated slop like it's just like i am

Speaker 2 i have enough anxiety around stuff that is obvious nostalgia bait already.

Speaker 2 And that's all AI can do is just give you the thing that you've already seen in a maybe, like by combining another thing you already have seen. It's garbage.

Speaker 2 It's all it can, yeah, because all it can do is it has no new original stuff. Maybe someday, who knows? But I will say, I find it very funny.
Don't leave that door open.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm only because someday when, when,

Speaker 2 when there's a digital sentience, I want to be on the right side of history.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Don't worry, Stewart.
All the posters

Speaker 2 will be in the middle.

Speaker 2 During the WGA strike, I was always carrying a sign that said like, no AI and stuff.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, someday when there's a true AI, they're going to do like an American story pbs documentary about the fight for ai civil rights there's going to be an image of me on this picket line with an anti-ai sign and i will be seen as a racist i don't want that to happen you know but uh the uh what are we talking about anyway doesn't matter let's go back to the movie because this is when things are about to heat up oh no so sam has just shot lightning melody knocks out sam curtis attacks the computer with a bat Guess what?

Speaker 2 This fancy looking computer is just cardboard tubes with like kind of foil on them. It's not real.

Speaker 2 I like that reveal. It got

Speaker 2 a lot.

Speaker 2 The real ayah is in their house and also everywhere. She's a computer.
Like she's not, it's not like a family. So here's the, okay, I will blame myself for this.

Speaker 2 Here's the thing that tried to pull off was like that an audience could actually believe that this incredibly powerful thing would in fact be located within a particular item in the

Speaker 2 family's house. when it's pretty fucking obvious that it's everywhere because it's been reaching out everywhere yeah but so it was supposed to be another twister and you realize it's everywhere.

Speaker 2 Okay, so sue me.

Speaker 2 I think that twist works. Like, I feel like you put enough effort into the physicality of the thing.
And

Speaker 2 I think at least it's not like, I don't think it's as telegraphed as you think it is because you've watched it a million times. Sweet.

Speaker 2 That's because I cut out the telegraph scene.

Speaker 2 You have to use the telegraph because I can listen to anything else.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that would be great. That's a great sequel.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 there's the off-the-grid people who only use non-electronic sequences. They basically put shit like that in fucking Mission Impossible, right? Oh, did I see that in Mission Impossible?

Speaker 2 So, I don't know. I'll see.
I'll watch it eventually.

Speaker 2 Suddenly, I said I didn't watch the new Mission Impossible.

Speaker 2 It has some terrific sequences. It has about an hour of wind up before we get there.
That's the whole windup. Every second to last Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning Part 1 or whatever.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 There's so many flights I've been on where I go, oh, they have that. I'll finally watch it.
Two hours, 45 minutes. Oh, man.
I don't know if I want to watch three hours of Mission Impossible.

Speaker 2 Like, it's a lot of Mission Impossible. It is.
There's a lot of reckoning. But then Haley Anwell shows up and you're like, okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'll reckon with this.

Speaker 2 I reckon so.

Speaker 2 I like on planes, I like the subgenre, Denzel Washington getting mad and killing people. Oh, yeah.
I think that's the best. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because you don't get just the equalizer, but you get a, you get a man on fire as well.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I keep, I keep seeing

Speaker 2 Dakota Fanning has a new movie or TV show out. So I keep seeing her and I'm like, I forgot that she's not a little kid anymore.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 that's crazy. Yeah.
They used to like on planes, what I used to like was B minus comedy, but they've stopped making comedies altogether. So that's kind of gone.

Speaker 2 And now that now to watch a B minus comedy, you have to watch a superhero movie. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 My go-to, like I, I have this weird anxiety about being trapped on a plane, not being in control of what I like. So I always bring a book.

Speaker 2 I often bring a laptop with movies downloaded that I know I want to watch.

Speaker 2 And I almost always am watching movies that I know my wife doesn't want to watch with me. So it's inevitably going to be things that are either super gory or have a ton of nuketty.

Speaker 2 And so it means that I'm on a plane being like, oh, fuck, how do I cover the screen slightly? I'm like, oh, we got the anger. It's a little bit more montage.
And you look creepier.

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 when I'm on a plane, I get really restless watching a movie. And so I'd rather read a book.
I don't know what it is.

Speaker 2 Yeah, interesting. That's pretty classy.
I mean,

Speaker 2 the last movie I really loved on a plane was a Japanese, a really cheap Japanese comedy about

Speaker 2 a teacher who was only a teacher because he liked school food. And

Speaker 2 the student

Speaker 2 who was more of a connoisseur of school food than him. And it's their like, their kind of feud, basically.
That sounds great.

Speaker 2 Have you ever seen the Japanese TV show where the guy, he's a salary man, but he's always leaving work to try different desserts in different parts of Tokyo?

Speaker 2 Oh, it's something like, it's called like dessert. Well, in America, it's called like dessert samurai or something like that or dessert rubber.
Sweet tooth salary man. That might be what it's called.

Speaker 2 Something like that.

Speaker 2 And so every episode, he's like, oh, I've got to get this project done. But there's this one bun shop on the other side of Tokyo.

Speaker 2 And he tells you about the bun shop and the history of it and goes over and eats it. As far as episodes I've seen, he's never disappointed.

Speaker 2 He always loves it, but then he's got to go back to the office in time.

Speaker 2 I don't know if it's because she starred in up in the air, but film with Anna Kendrick is a great,

Speaker 2 a great plain movie genre. I don't know.
Can't say why. If only she and Denzel Washington could be in a movie, we're both getting reviewed.

Speaker 2 So they're a cappella killers. That's what it is.
They've got to sing and they've got to kill people because they're mad. Yeah.
So back to this movie. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 You keep forgetting. So the computer is fake.
It's not real. The real Aya is still in the house.
Curtis calls and his wife is like, don't worry, we'll leave the house right now.

Speaker 2 Uh-oh, that wasn't really your wife. That was Aya pretending to be your wife.
Your real family is still in danger. So Melody goes with Curtis to a hotel where he's supposed to meet his family.

Speaker 2 Then she starts coming on to him. Uh-oh, she's working for Aya.
She's trying to make him look bad. Aya calls Meredith and tells her Curtis is cheating on her.
Look at this video of him

Speaker 2 being kissed by a woman in a hotel. But then the real Curtis shows up and he goes, hey, I love you.

Speaker 2 And he's like, which, by the way, none of this makes any sense because if I was so good at deep faking, she could have just made something up. Why did she need to actually put him in that situation?

Speaker 2 I mean, I suppose if I'm trying to defend myself, she would want Curtis to feel guilty and like compromised. That's the thing.
I feel like then it's, it's more like she's, that's what I assume.

Speaker 2 It's more like she's trying to guilt. She's going to blackmail him, but then she just shows it to Meredith right away.
But Meredith doesn't seem to believe it very quickly, you know? Right, right.

Speaker 2 Or maybe it's the long game. Maybe Meredith pretends she doesn't believe it, but 10 years from now, they're going to get divorced because she's never been able to fully lose that doubt.

Speaker 2 Um, then uh, Aya lures Iris outside and then shuts off the power to the house.

Speaker 2 Oh, no, and those ayah-controlled people with the masks they show up, they get into the house, they take them at gunpoint in the basement, they think Curtis is kidnapping children, it's Pizzagate queuing on all over again.

Speaker 2 It turns out they're the couple from the start of the movie, they're just looking for their daughter. What did you do to our daughter? That kind of stuff.
Um, and Cal does the

Speaker 2 scary when I saw it was uh Garfunkel.

Speaker 2 yeah she she shouldn't have announced that she was from garfunkle and oats in the media that's

Speaker 2 the only one she said i'll tell you like hey are you from

Speaker 2 there was a ukulele in the scene probably

Speaker 2 cause problems cal does the hand signs and aya is like see you got to do something about it and curtis is like hey i get what hey if you need to kill somebody kill me let my family go and this really confuses the the couple which would i which makes sense I think it would confuse them.

Speaker 2 And then a SWAT team bursts in. It confuses everyone, actually.
The audience includes.

Speaker 2 And it turns out Prescott swatted his own family to save them.

Speaker 2 I thought it was very funny that they shot the IA computer technology because unless they're part of some kind of plot or something like that, why would they come in guns blazing anyway?

Speaker 2 Have you ever had public

Speaker 2 workers like that show up

Speaker 2 with their cool toys and stuff and not just use them. Every time I've had the fire department show up, they're like, we are going to use a buzzaw on everything.

Speaker 2 I buy that, but that's different than that's different to just running into a house firing an automatic weapon or semi-automatic weapon. Well, I don't know.
Again, look at the news.

Speaker 2 But Dan, this is an upper-class family.

Speaker 2 Well, look, so originally,

Speaker 2 it was going to take place in daytime, which is apparently, according to horror rules, not a scary enough time. And it was going to be kind of

Speaker 2 Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Speaker 2 There you go.

Speaker 2 It was going to be kind of half-assed. And these poor Shmoes who'd been kind of

Speaker 2 red-pilled, basically one ends up shooting the other, and it all just turns into this kind of very sad catastrophe. But instead, it kind of became, had, had to be that these

Speaker 2 people were super effective and dangerous.

Speaker 2 I like your original idea, Chris. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, let's wait to see how it gets produced. Let's see how it comes out and execution.
Okay, let's watch the movie when it's done. So, but Aya is still around.
She's in the phone.

Speaker 2 She's in the internet now. And she's like, hey, I'm going to take care of you forever.
And Melody's like, can't escape it. Just do what it says.
And Aya's like, thanks, Melody. Take five.

Speaker 2 You're done for the day. Which I thought was very funny.

Speaker 2 Thanks, Melody.

Speaker 2 I'll call you if anything else.

Speaker 2 The girl who is missing from the top of the movie, she shows up and Aya sends a car for the family and they just get into it. Aya finishes her story about becoming the biggest thing ever.

Speaker 2 She's a parent now, and uh, Meredith and Curtis, they look at each other and say they love each other, and then I with they have nothing left to hold on to anymore other than their feelings for each other.

Speaker 2 That's the only thing they have control over anymore. And I says, I love you too, and

Speaker 2 that's very much like that meme of like, I consent, I consent, and then Jesus is in the background being like, I don't know. Yeah, I gotta say, so this ending,

Speaker 2 this ending, like the first time I saw this movie, uh, AI had only just started ruining society.

Speaker 2 And I was not wild about it because I'm

Speaker 2 wild about Harry. How does he feel? I'm just wild about Harry.
And Harry's wild about me. Oh, that's great.
That's great. Thank you for

Speaker 2 wow.

Speaker 2 Everybody needed more rag time in this way

Speaker 2 before any of us were ever alive. No,

Speaker 2 I, as

Speaker 2 an aging softie, I am not necessarily.

Speaker 2 i'm not the fan i maybe once was of like the horror continues ending um uh just just because like i'm like oh i want a little resolution at the end of my even my horror movies that's that's just a personal preference it's not anything but

Speaker 2 now that

Speaker 2 ai is where it is in the world I found this ending actually genuinely a lot more effective where it's just like,

Speaker 2 ah, shit, I guess we're going to have to live with this now, huh?

Speaker 2 Like, yeah, that was an interesting vibe to endorse. Well, I think that as one gets older, that's the generally many things are like, oh, shit, I guess I'm just going to have to live with this.

Speaker 2 And then it's genie bag in the bottle, I guess.

Speaker 2 But it wasn't a like, now you're my, it wasn't like the end of Colossus the Forbidden Project, where a Colossus the supercomputerist has taken over the world and is like, I am the master now.

Speaker 2 You are my slaves. Like, instead, it's just like, yeah, this is your new normal now, everybody.

Speaker 2 Deal with it um i was wondering chris maybe this is something i should ask you offline if you're familiar with the story with folded hands by jack williamson the scientist

Speaker 2 you this it's a very similar story but it's about robots instead of like a like a bodiless ai system but it's a similar type of story where it's like the robots are just rebuilding people's houses being like we're gonna make it safe we don't want you to hurt yourselves the doors have no doorknobs they're like why would you want to turn a doorknob i can do that for you i'll just open the door for you and people just become more and more infantilized you know um that's good you see what one of the things i realized too late is that uh you want your your uh bad guys to have a body

Speaker 2 and so like a voice a disembodied voice although you know again i kubrick did it with with how right it like that that's genuinely creepy and oppressive and scary uh but but it's really hard not to have a visible uh villain yeah i think

Speaker 2 it is no it is no real criticism to to say that you didn't quite pull off what Stanley Kubrick pulled off in 2001 of Space Odyssey.

Speaker 2 It takes being willing to spend all of your time, waste $100,000 on a big walking site, and really screw over Arthur C. Clark.

Speaker 2 It was also in that book that I learned about how Stanley Kubrick was like personally overseeing the contracts with Arthur C. Clarke, because he was also technically the producer on the movie.

Speaker 2 So he was hiring Arthur C. Clarke.
And he was like, by the way, Arthur, you make no money off the movie. You're not going to make any money off of that.
You'll make money off the book.

Speaker 2 And then he kept withholding. He kept saying, I don't want you to release the book yet.
I don't want you to release the book yet. Because Arthur C.
Clarke was like, I need money.

Speaker 2 What are you doing, Stanley? So,

Speaker 2 yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, we've reached the end of,

Speaker 2 you know, our recap of the picture, but I said the picture again. I'm sorry, Ellie.
I sound like

Speaker 2 it's great. I love it.
You're bringing

Speaker 2 it old world Hollywood style. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Chris, before we render final judgments, I wanted to invite you

Speaker 2 if there's anything that

Speaker 2 you wanted to say, anything we passed over, anything we should know about the production, like now you can cram it all in.

Speaker 2 Well, this is only so now it's not to settle sports. This is a segment we call

Speaker 2 to enable you to perhaps with a freer, with a freer heart and conscience, you know, render your final judgment. You know, it was such a sort of,

Speaker 2 and by the way, I don't really blame sort of studios and the people who work for them to do what they have to do because they're all just trying to like not lose their jobs and manage expectations.

Speaker 2 And, you know, like, of course, I'm entirely biased in favor of my own original concept.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I'm not an accurate judge.

Speaker 2 But it was like eventually a tortured post process whereby I think like I

Speaker 2 lost the handle on what was going to be eventually. So there.
I mean, it is an 85 or 84 minute long movie and in the year of our lord uh 2024 when it was released uh

Speaker 2 it's an odd length for that is not a good sign yeah it's rare than a movie so fucking perfect floppa's length yeah oh for sure it's rare if a movie comes in under 90 that you don't think i bet i bet this was changed in some ways yeah i mean like uh much like pain you want it to end sooner than

Speaker 2 later, I suppose

Speaker 2 is the way that you can look at a movie of a certain length.

Speaker 2 So this is Final Judgments,

Speaker 2 where we say whether this is a good, bad movie or a bad, bad movie or a good movie.

Speaker 2 I think I would call it a bad, bad movie because the qualities, you know, that I had intended didn't really

Speaker 2 go through. And in spite of

Speaker 2 performances by like actors who I really like, who I think are doing

Speaker 2 their very best. I think they're eventually so chopped and

Speaker 2 shortened that

Speaker 2 they couldn't see the light of day as well as they could.

Speaker 2 And you've worked with some of them since, right? Because some of them, John Cho and David, are both in Murderbot. They're both in Murderbot.
You've worked with John Cho a couple times, right?

Speaker 2 My brother and I have worked with John Cho, I think, 12 times to date. Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 Oh, wow. Now I think it's a problem.
Ever since he was

Speaker 2 MILF guy in American Pie, actually.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the thanks that he gets for that is that people shout MILF at him on the street all the time.

Speaker 2 Well, I will play the part of the kind

Speaker 2 angel on your shoulder.

Speaker 2 And I will say that

Speaker 2 I still kind of like this movie. I cannot separate it from.

Speaker 2 Like, maybe I'm being easy on it because I know you made it, but

Speaker 2 I watch it and

Speaker 2 I watch

Speaker 2 Ram Tomatoes.

Speaker 2 It is

Speaker 2 100% on Rondomaters. As we noted, it is a short movie with a bunch of good performers and a few

Speaker 2 smart things to say. about AI.
And it is packaged and a horror movie that is maybe not the best showcase for those ideas. I don't think it's totally successful, but I,

Speaker 2 you know, I had a pretty good time watching it. What do you think? What do you say, Stuart? Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to fall in the camp between Bad Bad and movie I kind of like.

Speaker 2 I think the, as a like traditional horror movie, it doesn't, most of the scares don't work. Um, but

Speaker 2 uh, again, there's certainly some things I like in it and the fact that like I can't separate it from the fact that like watching it, I'm like, oh, I can see my friend in this.

Speaker 2 Like I can see things where, and like, so this isn't the like harsh, cold, unbiased review that Chris was hoping from Stuart Wellington.

Speaker 2 That's what I want. I want that hard stuff.
Yeah, yeah. And that Reddit guy's infuriated.
He's bursting out.

Speaker 2 Don't worry. Elliot's going to, Elliot's going to hold

Speaker 2 fire.

Speaker 2 There are times when you see a movie that makes you question the very concept of cinema.

Speaker 2 Perhaps it would have been better. Should the Lumiere brothers have died young before?

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 I will say I was prepared to not like this movie because I saw it after Chris. You told me, ugh, I'm not happy with it.

Speaker 2 And I think similar what the other guys are saying, like a lot of it doesn't quite work because it feels like it's trying to do something that it's not really meant to be doing.

Speaker 2 And like you're saying, the performances feel chopped. Like they characters, their point of view on what's happening.

Speaker 2 to them in the movie changes so fast because it feels like we're missing the the transition points but i will say there are a bunch of scenes i really like in it and it feels like i i'm going to call this a movie i kind of like because i feel like of all the movies of all the i've seen so many horror movies involving families recently and this is the one that most felt to me like oh it actually is about the experience of being in a family and being a parent as opposed to like

Speaker 2 i'm not really that worried that like my kids imaginary friends are going to come to life or something like that like that doesn't tap into the any real worries that I have.

Speaker 2 And I do wish that we could have seen the more, like you're saying, the more Parallax View version of this because

Speaker 2 it is like getting at a lot of interesting things.

Speaker 2 And I kind of miss when a horror movie, I feel like in some ways, horror has gotten people expect more of it than they, so much more than they used to.

Speaker 2 Like it used to be that a horror movie would come out and be like, well, it's not a great movie, but it like it's saying something about something.

Speaker 2 And that was like a feather in the horror movie's cap.

Speaker 2 And so I feel like it perhaps doesn't get the credit for what it's trying to say because it is not

Speaker 2 because it's not fulfilling the things a horror movie does because it's not really supposed to be doing those things.

Speaker 2 Uh, so there was a lot that I kind of liked about it, although I would call it not uh, not fully successful.

Speaker 2 But comparing it, I'd say there are two movies that I keep turning over and over in my mind, and it's this one that I've seen recently, this one and the Robert Altman movie, A Perfect Couple, which also does not really work, and it feels like at times is doing something that works and then veers off wildly in the wrong direction.

Speaker 2 And so, I'm as good as Robert Altman, I'll take it. That's not bad company,

Speaker 2 yeah. I'll tell you something, I enjoy this movie more than Quintet, which I watched recently.
Oh boy, what a, what a, what a boring movie. Wow, quintet.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Quintet's one of those movies where it's like half an hour. I'm like, oh, the vibes are interesting.
Maybe I'll like this. And then I'm like, okay, well, what else is happening? And

Speaker 2 I know I've watched it. And every time I try to imagine it, I try to remember it.
All I can think of is Paul Newman in like an ice cave. And then it just becomes the box sequence from Logan's Run.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, no, that's a different movie memory. That's not the same movie.

Speaker 2 Ready, go.

Speaker 3 Knock, knock.

Speaker 2 Who's there?

Speaker 1 We got this.

Speaker 2 With Mark and Howell? You knew this one.

Speaker 2 We can't put that out as an ad.

Speaker 3 We just did new episodes every week on maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcast. Now it's Hewn in Rock.

Speaker 2 Hewn in Rock?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 How do you hew something in rock?

Speaker 3 With a chisel.

Speaker 2 There's only one hew hue in rock and it's Huey Lewis.

Speaker 3 And the news is we got those market hallows available every week on maximumfun.org.

Speaker 2 I walked right into that.

Speaker 4 Need a gift for a Max Fun fan in your life? Or maybe you need some ideas to fill up a wish list of your own. Heck, maybe you just want to pick up something for yourself as a little treat?

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Speaker 1 Hey, it's Dan here with some late breaking news, stuff that wasn't ready for air at time of recording, but now we can talk about.

Speaker 1 We're coming back to San Francisco Sketchfest on January the 25th at 4 p.m. at Cobbs Comedy Club.
Yep,

Speaker 1 it's an afternoon show for once, so you can get in, see us, have dinner, and then go wherever you want to go. You know, it'll be a little more laid back.

Speaker 1 We're very happy to be back at Sketchfest. The best way to get tickets for that are to go to sfsketchfest.com and click on the schedule.
Find Sunday the 25th.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 1 there should be a buy tickets link connected to us, the flop house. We don't know exactly what movie we're doing just yet.

Speaker 1 We're pondering if there's maybe something San Francisco based or just a big old flop,

Speaker 1 an historic flop that we haven't covered just yet.

Speaker 1 But we always have fun at SF Sketchfest. We're happy to be back.
We hope that we will see you there.

Speaker 1 The Flop House is brought to you in overwhelming part by listeners like you who have become members over at maximumfund.org. We got the

Speaker 1 member drive coming up in a few months. It's a tough time out there, but I hope that you'll help continue to support independent voices, independent worker, and artist-owned media.

Speaker 1 But we also have a few sponsors. And the first of these this week is Aura Frames, the perfect gift, when all they want for Christmas is you.
That's right.

Speaker 1 Mariah foretold it. Aura Frames.
She's not associated with Aura Frames. That's just me making a joke.
Please don't sue us. Aura Frames or Mariah Carey.
I don't know why Aura would sue us.

Speaker 1 They would just stop talking to us.

Speaker 1 Aura Frames are great. I got one of these things.

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Speaker 1 Promo code FLOP, this exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best of the year. So order now before it ends.
Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 1 And also, this is sponsored by Lisa Mattresses. Lisa mattresses, how you sleep can be just as important as how long you sleep.
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Elliot's doing just fine. But he's spoke very well of how this mattress has been received.

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Speaker 1 And there's a jumbotron, a jigaja jumbotron, in fact.

Speaker 1 This message is for Lewis. It is from Jennifer.
And it reads thusly. Dan, Stewart, and Elliott, I need your help wishing a happy birthday to my boyfriend, Lewis.
Happy birthday, Lewis.

Speaker 1 He's a huge fan of the show. Lewis, you're my favorite person to watch terrible movies with and the best plot twists life ever gave me.
Here's to love, laughter, and at least one more.

Speaker 1 more a talking cat

Speaker 1 rewatch.

Speaker 1 Happy birthday.

Speaker 1 Yeah, happy birthday, Lewis. Thank you for being a listener.
And God bless you for being out there watching a talking cat. Maybe a talking pony.
Who knows?

Speaker 1 There are a lot of animals talking these days. Look who's talking.
Anywho,

Speaker 1 before I let you get back to our very special episode with Chris Weitz talking about his own movie, Afraid,

Speaker 1 A delightful surprise for us.

Speaker 1 I would like to say Flop TV is still going.

Speaker 1 If you are interested in checking out our live monthly streaming video show with pre-tapes, presentations, discussion, of course, of a bad movie, as always, questions from the chat, all sorts of fun.

Speaker 1 That is available at theflophouse.simpletics.com.

Speaker 1 where you can purchase either individual show tickets if you're only interested in a couple of the shows or a um a season pass which gets you a bit of a price break you get uh

Speaker 1 six shows for the price of five with the season pass and if you've missed previous shows don't worry all of them will be available to view on demand through the end of the flop tv season in february possibly a little longer who knows And hey, dropping in with one more plug, a friend of the show, John Kingman, he was on a few episodes early in our run.

Speaker 1 He directed a movie called Snatchers that Stu and I have a little part in.

Speaker 1 It's kind of the cameo, but you know what? We're kind of the stars of the scene that we're in. So if you're interested in seeing us in a movie and supporting a friend of the show, check out Snatchers.

Speaker 1 It's on Amazon Prime right now.

Speaker 1 It was shot a little ways back, but now it's finally available for you to stream. And if you like kind of throwback-y

Speaker 1 John Carpenter vibe,

Speaker 1 but like a you know, a sci-fi, slightly horror-tinged, more comedy-tinged movie about body snatchers in Brooklyn, you might like this movie. It's called Snatchers.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of movies called Snatchers. The one directed by John Kingman is the one I'm pointing you to.
And if you like it, hey, leave a review. Why not? People like that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 It's helpful.

Speaker 1 So that again is Snatchers with a little

Speaker 1 bit of Dannon stew in the stew of the movie. And now

Speaker 1 back to the show.

Speaker 2 Let's answer

Speaker 1 letters.

Speaker 2 Yeah, let's do it. Listeners.
Let's sound a little bit more. I wasn't sure what we were going to answer it.
Well,

Speaker 2 let's turn away from the roast of Chris. No, you guys.

Speaker 2 As every listener will know, you guys are being kind.

Speaker 2 I appreciate that I've so corrupted your journalistic integrity, that

Speaker 2 it was the friendship

Speaker 2 that we formed that has led to that. And so I kind of forged and steel.

Speaker 2 We are Jed Leland and Citizen Kane getting drunk rather than finishing the

Speaker 2 Jet Lee and Citizen Kane. Yeah, Jet Lee and Canadian.
Jet Lee was in Citizen Kane. Yeah.
Wow. Did you see him?

Speaker 2 He really

Speaker 2 got submerged into the character. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It looks so much like Joseph Cotton. Like riding around on fucking rosebud, doing flips and shit.

Speaker 2 I love when Jaggie Chan used Rosebud in so many invented ways. Oh, man, that fight sequence.
Those goons, they shouldn't mess with him.

Speaker 2 He should do a movie called Sizzy Chan or Sizzie Chan. That's him.

Speaker 2 That's great.

Speaker 2 So, this letter is from Michael Lastnain. People with newspapers and disarming them, yeah.

Speaker 2 This letter is from Michael Last name withheld, who writes, I can only assume it's Michael Eisner.

Speaker 2 Yeah, has to be. I recently saw tron aries at my local beer in a burger theater and let's be honest the tron movies are kind of dumb but

Speaker 2 they're movies i kind of like i like these movies in part because the central conceit of the movie humans entering a digital world is fraught with metaphysical puzzles.

Speaker 2 When Flynn, parentheses, Jeff Bridges,

Speaker 2 thank you for that, gets zapped into the computer piece by piece, does that hurt? Is he dead? Is the flim that comes out of the computer a copy?

Speaker 2 Does he die each and every time he enters and leaves the grid?

Speaker 2 See also Star Trek transporters.

Speaker 2 In Tron Legacy, when Olivia Wilde's character, Quora, escapes the digital world, is she flesh and bone? Or some kind of stack of digital voxels? Does she have batteries?

Speaker 2 I think Stuart once said she was.

Speaker 2 Yes, I did say that.

Speaker 2 Wow. I forgot about that.
You see, that

Speaker 2 I think I described her as steak. Wait, no, she was the mom.
No, she was the hamburger.

Speaker 2 Man, to say Friedman. It was terrible.
It was a terrible thing to say.

Speaker 2 It was a terrible thing to say, but this movie confused me.

Speaker 2 It added your brain. The fact that we all watched that movie, not understanding that that character was supposed to be Justin Timberlake's mom.
I think that's the

Speaker 2 fault. Yeah.
Yeah. Tricky.

Speaker 2 Don't blame me. I'm Stewart.
I mean,

Speaker 2 it's the lovable scam. What you said about the hamburger steak thing was not explained at all by our children.

Speaker 2 I was trying to give voice to what the movie was saying. Oh, no.
I understand it. You were a younger man who said a grosser thing.
You had no empathy. Yeah, but now you have lots of empathy.
Now,

Speaker 2 this next paragraph, that's where I was. The whole thing is an existential nightmare that leaves me wanting for an explanation.
My brain wants answers, but my brain shall never get them.

Speaker 2 And so I'm compelled

Speaker 2 to watch any new Tron movie when it it hits the theaters. Are there other examples of accidental puzzle boxes in film or TV that make the work more compelling than it should be?

Speaker 2 End of line, Michael last name withheld. So I watched this movie called Afraid.

Speaker 2 You got a lot of

Speaker 2 questions?

Speaker 2 A lot of questions. Yeah, many, many questions.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 I don't know if this doesn't necessarily qualify, but I feel like on some level, it's like

Speaker 2 the, to me, what the question is asking,

Speaker 2 I'm going to repurpose it, is

Speaker 2 what, what movies do you watch or series of movies do you watch that you know are not good, but there's some like weird element that you keeps bringing you back.

Speaker 2 And of course, for me, that's the Saw franchise, a franchise that is terrible.

Speaker 2 And every time I dislike them, but as soon as that ending sequence kicks in, where the mute, you know, the big like strings, the music kicks in, the strings are going, and then it starts showing you all the stuff you saw before, but from a slightly different angle.

Speaker 2 And you're like, oh, that guy was the dude doing it the whole time. Oh, my God.
Every time I'm like, hell yeah, you did it again, Saw. Two thumbs up.

Speaker 2 Saw, you son of a bitch.

Speaker 2 You got me, Saw. I saw that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I love this question.

Speaker 2 It's one of these ones where I'm like, oh, shit. I know that there's like stuff buried deep in my brain where I'm like, this dumb movie left me with this frustrating question that I cannot resolve.

Speaker 2 But it's not like those now you see me movies, you know what I mean? You're like, I love

Speaker 2 those now you see me.

Speaker 2 God damn. That's that's my fast and furious right there.
No, for sure. I'm like,

Speaker 2 none of this is good magic. Like none of it,

Speaker 2 none of it is technical as magic.

Speaker 2 Can I tell you guys, let me use, yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2 Thank you for giving me the opening that I

Speaker 2 can just say that like I just I went to see on on Broadway

Speaker 2 because Audrey, because the average age of the Broadway theater goer is over 40. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You you can if you are

Speaker 2 under 40, you can get TDF discounts just for going to see theater.

Speaker 2 And so she was going through her like theater discounts and she's like, Do you want to see? Uh,

Speaker 2 I forget what this, something, something like, something like is the name of the magician is doing a thing on Broadway with the Muppets. I'm like, fuck yeah, I do.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 All of a sudden, she forgot who her husband is. And so we went that she's presented as this magician is doing a show with the Muppets, as opposed to the Muppets are doing a show.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And this show, like,

Speaker 2 the, the Muppets are so poorly integrated into this show. There's no conceptual reason why the Muppets are there.
Like, it's just sort of like, hey, hey, I heard you're doing this show on Broadway.

Speaker 2 We can stop by and like they keep coming by. That's enough for me.
No, I mean, I'm not unhappy that the Muppets are there. It doesn't have the ironclad plot logic of most Muppets.

Speaker 2 It's strange because when I saw here at the Pasadena Playhouse, they were doing a night of Edward Alby one acts featuring the Muppets, and they did an amazing job of integrating the Muppets into the stories.

Speaker 2 Dan would have hoped that before before the magician came out, somebody was like, my grandmother once told me a story. I bought the Muppets like me.

Speaker 2 I'm just saying for this show, just imagine we live in a world where Muppets are real. Thank you, folks.
Okay. Now curtain rise.

Speaker 2 I mean, this guy is making the correct bet that the Muppets are enough to pull people in. But if I were going to have the Muppets do my thing, I'd be like, okay, I got to figure out like

Speaker 2 this way to show Dan's big fantasy that the Muppets would do his thing.

Speaker 2 Don't check his search history.

Speaker 2 I mean, like, the Muppets are so much more charismatic than this dude who was like the magician that they kept doing a bit where it's like the great Gonzo would come out in a cannon being like, it's time for my thing.

Speaker 2 And like, and be like, no, no, not yet, Gonzo. And like, they did this a couple of times.
I'm like, no, let Gonzo stay. You leave the stage.

Speaker 2 But these were all just like, you know, like the oldest tricks in the magic book.

Speaker 2 Like it was me and Audrey and our friends, John and Mary, and all of us were like, okay, well, that's how that trick is done. This is how this trick is done.
And that's how that trick.

Speaker 2 But, you know, who cares? The Muppets are here anyway. That has nothing to do with anything.
I just want to say that. I was waiting until you

Speaker 2 bring that back around to the question. No, there's no bringing it back around.
It's just a story about my life.

Speaker 2 I think to answer that question, then we'll move on to the next thing, unless Chris has answers. There's a movie that Chris and I spent a lot of time talking about.

Speaker 2 I'd love to talk to him about it again at some point, the movie Phase 4, the Intelligent Ants movie. And that's a movie where I feel like it leaves me with questions that I like don't get answered.

Speaker 2 And I want to, like, I think about what it means and what the answers are, because the movie kind of implies that the ants win, but it kind of doesn't come out and say that the ants win.

Speaker 2 And it's just, I really like that the movie does. It's just a freak out at the end, right? It's like a 70s freak out.
It becomes a 70s freak out.

Speaker 2 And like, when it could very easily have ended with them just being like, well, we stopped the ants, but it's not that they did. I've got actually

Speaker 2 a somewhat perverse version of that, which is like

Speaker 2 the central mystery at a movie like not letting you go. And this was because I watched the Bill Murray movie,

Speaker 2 The Razor's Edge, right, which is adapted from a Somerset Mom movie. But in my mind, not having read either The Razor's Edge or The Sun Also Rises, I had confused the two based on received notions.

Speaker 2 And I thought that the whole story behind why Bill Murray's character was being so weird and diffident was because he'd had his testicles blown off in the war.

Speaker 2 And I kept on waiting as I was watching this movie for the moment where he discovered that, but it never happened for the entire movie. And it turned out he was just a dick.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Still waiting for the sequel, I guess, huh? Yeah, I guess the user's edge describes the razors that they had to use to amputate the rest of his testicles after the wound. Yeah, that would make sense.

Speaker 2 So, in lieu of a second, a normal second letter.

Speaker 2 In lieu of a normal second letter so our friend uh matt carmen who does our tech uh for us for our live shows park car you know the deal yeah for flop tv uh he also often steps in for our uh local film trivia at nighthawk for a guest round and I think I actually contacted you.

Speaker 2 He sometimes steps in to host the tonight show when Jimmy Fallon's not available. Yeah.
I think I actually contacted you about this, Chris, to see whether whether it would be okay

Speaker 2 that whether he like sent you some

Speaker 2 trivia questions to ask.

Speaker 2 I don't think he did.

Speaker 2 Dan also didn't check in with us. So when we got an email from Matt today that said, Chris White's trivia questions, I was like, I'll find out what this is about, I guess, later today.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yes. He asked me a while back about possibly Chris doing a round, and I went so far as to like ask Chris, hey, would this be okay? I don't know.

Speaker 2 And like, you said yes, but then I guess Matt was like, I'm not, I don't want to bother him. It didn't actually follow through.
However, what he did do was send three trivia questions for

Speaker 2 us to ask you tonight in a section

Speaker 2 called quiz whites.

Speaker 2 And so the first one,

Speaker 2 first question here is, number one,

Speaker 2 in About a Boy, Will attributes the phrase, no man is an island, to what musician, bonus, what poet actually wrote that line in the 17th century?

Speaker 2 I'm going to just take this straight. He attributes to John Bon Jovi, where it was actually a sermon by John Donne.
That is, of course, correct.

Speaker 2 You're familiar with your own work. Yep.

Speaker 2 I remember my life. This is

Speaker 2 more like a cognitive test yeah than a trivia test yeah can you identify this animal

Speaker 2 you uh number two you directed the twilight so the twilight saga colon new moon released in 2009

Speaker 2 the following movies were also released in 2009 and also have a colon in the title and they each involve someone you've worked with worked with sorry john wick i love that we're getting some classic dan slip of slips of the tongue because you we have Stuart brought over

Speaker 2 several tequila.

Speaker 2 I'm a stinker.

Speaker 2 Four point each. Complete the full title.
We're keeping track of points.

Speaker 2 We've got Cirque DuFreak colon. We've got Underworld 3 colon.
And we've got Street Fighter colon.

Speaker 2 I only know one of these. That's...
insane. I know.
Wait, what were the? Wait, I don't know. Cirque Dufree.
So it's Underworld 3. 2009.
Yeah, I don't know. So the first.

Speaker 2 I got a guess for the first half of the titles are Cirque Dufreak, Underworld 3, and Street Fighter. Cirque Dufreak, the Vampire's Assistant by my very own brother.
That's true. Paul Weitz.

Speaker 2 What's the next one? Underworld 3.

Speaker 2 X versus Sever.

Speaker 2 Wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 2 Is it Rise of the Lichens? It is Rise of the Lichens.

Speaker 2 Co-starring Michael Sheen.

Speaker 2 Yes, with whom I've worked. Yep.
And then lastly, we've got Street Fighter Colin.

Speaker 2 The leg end of Chun Lee. Yes.

Speaker 2 The leg end of

Speaker 2 starring Chris Klein.

Speaker 2 Yes, of course, of American Pie Fire.

Speaker 2 Why don't you get that black eye? I ran into the leg end of Chun Li the other day.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 we'll end this quiz white section

Speaker 2 with number three.

Speaker 2 In its 2000 review, how many points is this worth?

Speaker 2 This work.

Speaker 2 That's good news. You can win with this quest.
Worth all the points.

Speaker 2 Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 In its 2000 review, the New York Times referred to Chuck and Buck as a, quote, dogma 95 version of what movie which had come out a week before.

Speaker 2 Oh, goodness. Well,

Speaker 2 I'm guessing it was a stalker movie. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But I don't.

Speaker 2 This is a movie that honestly, like, if Matt had done this at trivia, no one would have gotten this. No one would have won this at all.

Speaker 2 This is madness. This is pure madness, but it is a funny fact about it.
There's not a colon involved, though. No, there is an attribution.
I'll give you this. There's a studio.

Speaker 2 This is the rare film that starts with a...

Speaker 2 Oh, this is the studio that released this. That's crazy.

Speaker 2 Disney's, right? That's the only studio that takes credit for things. Indeed.
The kid? It is Disney's the Kid.

Speaker 2 Because that's the only one I can remember that has Disney's. Oh, wow.
Chris is dabbing.

Speaker 2 So thank you.

Speaker 2 Gosh, that would imply something really sinister about Disney's the Kid.

Speaker 2 I have Dogma 95. I have seen Chuck and Buck.
I have not seen Disney's the Kid. So I cannot speak to their

Speaker 2 similarities or differences. You chose wrong, not strong.
You chose strong, not wrong, rather. Sorry.

Speaker 2 Disney's the kid isn't about like a monkey playing baseball or something, right?

Speaker 2 No, I think it's about

Speaker 2 Bruce Willis Willis being a kid. That's a kid.
Yeah. That's fucking look who's talking.
That's true, I guess.

Speaker 2 That's the sixth sense. Bruce Willis is a kid, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, thank you for indulging this quiz down memory lane.
I'm always there for it.

Speaker 2 But we should do our final segment, which is, of course, recommendations.

Speaker 2 Other movies that you might perhaps enjoy. What's the Movie Master going to recommend over here?

Speaker 2 What is the Movie Master going to recommend? I had it earlier. Letterbox Lothario, Dan McCoy.

Speaker 2 Oh, you know what it was? I had a DM function, he declares. What? It's the movie I saw today.
Oh, cool.

Speaker 2 I saw

Speaker 2 we were talking about,

Speaker 2 we mentioned in passing, blank check, based on the clues of the letterbox reviews of one David Sims, I may have been in the same Almo screening of this film. Were the clues?

Speaker 2 There was a guy crying in the movie.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 I saw today Predator Badlands, which I enjoyed quite a bit. I have to admit,

Speaker 2 I am not necessarily the world's biggest

Speaker 2 pred head. Like, I like it fine as, you know, like this is like a solid 80s action picture, but it is of a stripe that is not my kind of movie.
Like a lot of military men shooting big guns at things.

Speaker 2 But so the things that I liked about this movie might be the sort of things that annoy real Predator fans. I don't know.
You're more of like a drifter rolls into a corrupt town and sorts things out.

Speaker 2 I mean, I do enjoy that classic Western thing, but this is more of a barbarian movie. It is like, okay, The Predator is a little bit more.

Speaker 2 The more classic barbarian thing. Like, The Predator is a, I'll set Detroit, a warlike creature who proves his worth through like tests of strength, like,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 is in a harsh world. It is very much like a space opera barbarian.
He's like a sigma kind of.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I just like, it is much more like

Speaker 2 some people might think. I think it's a little cutesy.

Speaker 2 Some people might think it's a little too cutesy.

Speaker 2 That's not turning me off.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 was all for a bit of a like slightly silly predator versus extremely ridiculously hostile planet full of inventive other ways for the planet to be hostile toward him adventure it it it gave me some of the joy that like an old style blockbuster movie used to give me like for a movie that is based on what like 40 year old ip i was like oh this feels genuinely fresh to me for some reason.

Speaker 2 So I had a lot of fun. Same creative team behind Prey, right? Yeah.
Yeah. So that's good.
I dug it.

Speaker 2 Weirdly enough, I'm also going to recommend a movie I saw today in the theater. While Dan was enjoying Predators doing stuff, I was enjoying a woman having a descent into mental illness, I guess.

Speaker 2 I saw the new Lynn Ramsey movie, Die My Love,

Speaker 2 which is great.

Speaker 2 uh jennifer lawrence and robert pattinson and sissy spacek and uh nick nolty and lakeith sanfield all in small roles uh but it's really like jennifer lawrence is undeniable in this. She is incredible.

Speaker 2 And Robert Pattinson also very fun and funny.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's for a movie that is very depressing about a, you know, about dealing with themes of isolation and mental illness, it still manages to get some jokes in there.

Speaker 2 There's a sequence where Robert Pattinson is narrating, making some, making like instant mac and cheese that I found so funny.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's it's really great.

Speaker 2 And it's like a really interesting companion piece to another uh we just had uh michael shanks on director writer director of together interesting companion piece to together because they basically have the same uh setup just very wildly different uh resolutions and it's a lynn ramsey movie so the whole time i'm like man is she okay like i only feel like every every lynn ramsey movie is like that yeah yeah But I love I love Lynn Ramsey movies.

Speaker 2 Stuart, if my doctor's appointment that sort of like

Speaker 2 nuked my

Speaker 2 afternoon had gone on another 15 minutes, I probably would have been in the exact same screening as you. That would have been what was starting at the right time.

Speaker 2 How many screenings are going on in New York these days? Because it seems like Dan is just a half skip and a jump away from every screening. He does get kind of every movie.

Speaker 2 I can feel the jealousy beneath you and

Speaker 2 I feel it too. Just give them both a hug.
Look, man, get me a fucking job and I'll gladly

Speaker 2 not go to the employee if anyone

Speaker 2 can help me to stop Dan from seeing all the movies and making me feel bad about never going to theater by giving him a job. Yeah, we'll trade places.
We'll pee in the same fucking fountain.

Speaker 2 We're going to be in Chicago in just a few days together. Let's do it.
Let's find a fountain pee in it. Try a bunch of different fountains.
Chicago has the fucking Mary with Children.

Speaker 2 Let's do the Fountain for May with Children. Exactly.
Yeah. Perfect.
Let's do it. So, Chicagoans, you heard it here first.

Speaker 2 Dan and I will be peeing together at the fountain for married with children this weekend.

Speaker 2 i heard there's snow so i hope their pee doesn't take a long time or their little wieners are going to freeze off

Speaker 2 so uh i'm going to recommend as i never get to go to the theaters i'm going to recommend a movie that i saw at home which is currently on a streaming service uh and this is uh on uh apple tv you can see stiller and mira nothing is lost ben stiller's documentary about his parents and their marriage and also their career as uh performers both performing with each other and then separately And I thought it was really good.

Speaker 2 I really liked it a lot.

Speaker 2 It managed to break through the crust of ice that forms around my heart whenever I think about people who are successful in show business after having coming from a show business family.

Speaker 2 But I thought it was really well done and really took advantage of the fact that apparently Jerry Stiller was constantly recording every conversation anyone in the house ever had on audio cassette,

Speaker 2 which is creepy behavior, but it really is good when you're making a documentary about your parents.

Speaker 2 Do they maybe this is just because they specifically spend a little bit of time talking about the taking Pelum 1, 2, 3? I don't, my favorite Jerry Stiller thing. I don't know.

Speaker 2 But I thought it came out really well. It was really good.

Speaker 2 And I found it was much more touching in the end than I thought it was going to be. So that's called Stiller and Mira, Nothing Is Lost.
I think that was really good. Chris, what do you recommend?

Speaker 2 I, well, this probably doesn't need any help, but I'm going to recommend Eddingson, the latest Ariaster film. And

Speaker 2 I've been thinking about it because I feel like he's a great example of a guy who,

Speaker 2 well, first of all, I think he's a brilliant kind of technician and has been since his first movie and sort of

Speaker 2 had these two successful horror movies.

Speaker 2 Which I, you know, I guess you'd call it like elevated horror, but they were so successful that for at least two movies, he's been able to like do kind of whatever he wants.

Speaker 2 And he made a big fucking swing in Eddington. And, you know, I'm in some way, I mean, I can understand why people don't like it.
I can understand why people are bananas about it.

Speaker 2 I was more on the bananas about it front, but I think it is a huge swing that is trying to do so much stuff

Speaker 2 and say so much that I really admired it. It is a kind of,

Speaker 2 you know, a 70s big

Speaker 2 social impact movie. So I really dug that one.
I'm looking forward to seeing it. The only reason I didn't run out and see it is my sadness about the world.
I'm like, is this going to help?

Speaker 2 I don't know. No, probably.
No. I think it also like came out at a time where like every once in a while there will be a confluence of events or things.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, I want to see this movie, but I cannot spare the time to go to the theater. Yeah.
Elliot's like, that's my whole life. He's, I can still see him staring daggers at the rest.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I feel like next week there's like four movies coming out this weekend that I want to to see. Like, but we're going to be in Chicago, so I can't, I can't go see sentimental value in it.

Speaker 2 Now, take that experience and stretch it out over a year. And that's when I'm like, oh, man, I can't wait to see this movie.
And like, I really wanted to go see it. Take your kids to it.

Speaker 2 We'll kidnap you and take you to the theater. Hell yeah.

Speaker 2 I was like, there was one night when it looked like I might be able to go see one battle after another or whatever it's called.

Speaker 2 But then it was like, well, it's either playing at 6.30, which is too early for me to go see it, or 9.30, which is too late for me to go see a three-hour movie. So, I guess I'm not seeing it.

Speaker 2 I was just so okay. We're going to see one battle after another in Chicago.
I had gotten tickets like months ago to see at the American Cinematech to see Jean-Dillman 23

Speaker 2 Rue de Comeris

Speaker 2 1080 Brookselle, right?

Speaker 2 And it turned out that my eldest son had something else to do. And

Speaker 2 I sort of had to

Speaker 2 be at home with my 13-year-old boy and my wife Mercedes was like, just take Paolo. And I was like, I don't know if I can convince him to see

Speaker 2 Jean Dielman 23, Keita Comeris. That's a hard Canadian bookseller.
That's a hard sell. Yeah, I tried my best, but he was not having it.
You're like, you wanted to see a woman just

Speaker 2 peeling potatoes for a long time, right?

Speaker 2 What a pain.

Speaker 2 The funny thing is, I've never seen the movie, but I was about to say peeling potatoes.

Speaker 2 Like somehow that has filtered into my brain that, like, that's the thing, that it's like real-time potato peeling.

Speaker 2 Interestingly,

Speaker 2 Weapons has a potato peeling scene in which,

Speaker 2 what is it, Julia Garner peels the face of some spoiler.

Speaker 2 Yeah, sorry, a little more thrilling than that. It is Checko's potatoes.
When that happened in the theater, Dan said the guy next to him was like, no, no.

Speaker 2 But the

Speaker 2 Ginger Moon is one of these movies where when you hear it, you think about it ahead of time and you're like, there's no, this is going to be so boring just from the description.

Speaker 2 And you're watching it and you're like, I just can't get enough of watching this woman cooking. Like, this is, this is, this is real.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's, I mean, there's a thing like that's one of the reasons why I put off watching the before trilogy, the link layer before trilogies, because I'm like, I don't want to watch two people talk.

Speaker 2 And then I started watching them like, oh, I want nothing but these two people talking. This is great.
I love it.

Speaker 2 I'll even say that, you know what, guys, I'm going to say, Gene Delman, scarier movie than weapons, I think.

Speaker 2 When it comes to potato peeling movies. So I think it's a scarier movie.

Speaker 2 Prove me wrong, Reddit guy. Reddit guy, tell me why I'm wrong.
I won't see it, and it'll be okay. Oh, he's going to be, he's going to have so much to say.

Speaker 2 All caps locks. Speaking of both being busy and that guy, thank you, Chris, for taking time from your busy schedule to come and endure us dissecting.
I think I may

Speaker 2 once again,

Speaker 2 for an episode, managed to avoid having to get my children to sleep. So, you know,

Speaker 2 you've done me a service.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Thank you guys for letting me know.

Speaker 2 I feel like there's like people have started podcasts for less reasons than being to be like, well, if I do a podcast these nights, I don't have to spend time putting, I don't have to do the dishes or put my kids to bed because I'm working.

Speaker 2 Is there anything

Speaker 2 you currently want to plug? I mean, Murderbot is, of course, on Apple TV.

Speaker 2 Let me see. Is there anything? Is there anything? No, I don't.
I don't, I got nothing going at the moment. Well, we're going to, I'm working on Murderbot season two, but it's going to be a while.

Speaker 2 But yeah, Murderbot, if you watch Murderbot, that would be nice. That'd be great.
Watch Murderbot. Why aren't you watching it? Watch it right now.
And you guys got picked up for a season two.

Speaker 2 That's awesome. We did.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Woo-woo.

Speaker 2 Was that an era of classic and the USA? Isn't that

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 by the way, I almost thought of making the flop house house cat noise,

Speaker 2 but then I thought that would be beyond the pale. That would be like,

Speaker 2 thank you so much for this. When you

Speaker 2 said you were willing to do this, it was

Speaker 2 a shock and a delight. And we're, I mean, like, we would have been happy to have you back for any movie.

Speaker 2 Dan's like, I don't know if we can let him do this.

Speaker 2 He said he wanted to do it. It's not safe for him.
No, you know what? This has actually been great.

Speaker 2 I was worried about its effect on my psyche, but I feel like thanks to your kindness, we've gotten through this together.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 2 And, well, thank you for being here. Thank you to our producer, Alex Smith, who makes us sound great.
Check out his work under the name Howl Dotty on the internet.

Speaker 2 Thank you to Maximum Fun, our network. It's full of great shows, funny ones, ones that'll make you think.
Check them out.

Speaker 2 For the Flophouse.

Speaker 2 What are you laughing at?

Speaker 2 Things that make you say who

Speaker 2 you are.

Speaker 2 For the Flophouse. I thought it sounded like Maximum Fun.
And I was like, is that your new like Turkish backer?

Speaker 2 I thought I was doing it so well, but apparently this deal that Stuart's dealing with. You're doing great, Dan.
You're doing great. You're doing great.
For the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

Speaker 2 Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington forever and always. I'm Ellie Calem, author of Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense from the University of Chicago Press.

Speaker 2 And joining us tonight has been Chris Weitz,

Speaker 2 Flophouse forever.

Speaker 2 Good night, everyone.

Speaker 2 So you have a background. Are we being, we're not being videoed? Are we? We are, but we don't use it.
We use it

Speaker 2 for like

Speaker 2 we'll have like a promo clip of just like a clip of it, not the whole thing. So the answer is yes, we will use some of the video footage.
So, but you look cute, luckily. Yeah,

Speaker 2 I was going to masturbate, but I won't now. Easily.

Speaker 2 You want to be tubing? If you just don't do it during a really great bit that we're going to want to use as a promo. Right.

Speaker 2 Wait until we're doing one of our rare off bits.

Speaker 2 Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.