The Christmas Martian, with Alonso Duralde

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On this episode, we discuss The Christmas Martian, the movie that stretches the definition of only 65 minutes.

Hey, everyone, welcome to the Flop House. I'm Dan McCoy.
I'm Stuart Wellington.

I'm Elliot Kalin, And it's that time of year again, the happiest time of year because of the time we're joined in our annual Christmas visit by that bearded gentleman that we're all waiting to have show up in our houses in the middle of the night.

Alonzo Doralde, the greatest film critic there is. Alonso, give us, give us, what are the credits you prefer to be used today? And what are you promoting today?

Oh, you know, I mainly like to be known as a person who breaks into Elliot's house via the chimney.

Killer of killers.

Let's see. I'm the film critic for the film verdict, or one of the film critics for the film verdict.
No, you're the one that counts. Yeah.
Oh, stop.

Podcast co-host of several shows, including Linoleum Knife and Maximum Film right here on the Maximum Fun Network and author of Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas now out in a revised and updated edition.

What were the Christmas innovations that occurred?

You know, it's amazing what pops up in 15 years uh there was there was a a crazy amount of of new stuff to get to um i mean when i wrote the book in 2010 netflix was still sending discs in the mail oh my uh so you know it's it's it's they they've really changed the game there but then uh there was also a lot of cool older stuff that i just you know and and a box upon me i didn't know about when i wrote the first uh go-round so like thanks to turner classic movies' you know pre-Christmas week marathons i now have a much fuller understanding of christmas noir that i didn't have before.

So

a bunch of those in there and some other fun stuff. Are there any old movies where Santa has to solve a mystery?

You'd think, but

I think he might be a little too omniscient about that. I mean, he does see when you're sleeping and when you're awake, so he also knows when you shiv that guy.

He immediately knows who's been naughty or nice, so there's not a lot of mystery element. That's true.

Five-minute mysteries with Santa Claus. That would be so funny.
It's like a Colombo-type show. Every week, Santa has to solve a mystery, but he figures it out instantly because he sees everything.

And then the rest of the episode is just him puttering around.

Yelling at elves.

Yelling at elves.

What are you doing over there? Get back to work, Slacker. Yeah, he doesn't realize the cameras are on.

Yeah.

Not so jolly now, are you? Yeah, it's like the documentary that ruined Shelly Berman's career, but for Santa.

Because Alonzo. That was a joke for Alonso.

Because Alonso is the expert, you know, usually he comes with some

expert possible.

Yes, X-Mas. You're like, practice trying that one out.
Yeah.

If you don't pronounce it right, this is where it gets going to Alonso for that. If you don't pronounce it the right way, it doesn't sound great.

I'm a person.

And for this year, he suggested The Christmas Martian, which I was very excited was only 65 minutes long until I watched it. Yeah.
He totally is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence.

It certainly felt more interminable than movies,

you know, three times the length.

It's amazing. So I think it was last year I watched all of the human condition, which is like almost nine hours long.
And I found it so captivating. And watching.

That was all the fucking dishes for you, buddy. It sure was.

But watching The Christmas Martian, it was like, it felt, yeah, like time had no meaning. And I was like, what is going on?

This is, it felt so much harder to get through than nine hours of something else. So I'm glad to hear that you guys had the same, the same experience.
But you guys weren't like, I loved it.

It was so fun. It also didn't help that I had to keep like rewinding like 20 minutes because I'd realized that nothing that had happened had entered my brain.

Yeah, that's going to be a real challenge in my summary. So I'm probably going to rely on you guys.

It's, it's that way that like I can sit down and watch like a two to three hour long movie and I'm like, great, this works perfectly.

But if I have to sit down and watch like three episodes of the same television show, I'm like, oh no, it's time has no meaning. There's a beginning and end.
Every, you know, like time keeps resetting.

Like, you know, the

so that's what this movie felt like every two minutes, maybe.

If not more.

And what made it even harder for me at first was, so I found, so this movie is available on Amazon Prime. But when I started up that version of it, the audio and the video were out of sync.

So I went and this movie is, but this movie is so. amateurishly done that I didn't know if that was a choice or not.

And I was like, so I had to watch the first couple minutes of it before I realized like, I gotta, I gotta test this. So I went to the Tubi version instead.
And that one, the audio wasn't sync.

And I was like, thank goodness I didn't sit through 65 minutes of this movie with the audio not just out of sync by a couple seconds, out of sync by minutes.

So you would have the audio from one scene over the video of another scene. And there's a part where.

You can see video tracking lines. Like they clearly transferred this from a VHS.
And I was like, well, that's just the Amazon version. Nope, that was on Tubi too.

Oh, Mike. See, now I watched, there's a beautiful Blu-ray of this that came out the last couple of years.
It was from Canadian International.

Yes, their Canadian International Pictures label. And

I watched the original French in subtitles version.

I don't know what Toobi has. No, they just have the English dub.
Just the dub. Okay.
But yeah,

it's as Christmas as everyone. It's a little flanky.
Exactly. And Catu is what they call Catherine.

Yeah, I had a Martian Du Noel.

There was a constantly. That was actually the title.

Glitching square in the corner of what I watched, where I'm like, is that my television? No, it must be this, whatever, yeah, decades-old VHS they used.

There's certain movies where you just honestly don't know.

There's this queer art film from like the 50s or 60s called Pink Narcissus. And it's, you know, it's non-narrative.
It's all just sort of this very lush imagery.

If you've seen like Pierre Agile or like those, those kind of artists that very much influenced their like big, big swaths of like, you know, pink silk and glitter and you know that kind of thing so all the all the music videos in the 1980s a lot of fun exactly yes roxy music was taking notes so um i uh they they they brought it back to dallas one time and and they had they screened it for me because i was reviewing for the the gay paper there and they accidentally repeated one of the reels and i just thought oh what a bold choice and i had to find out later oh that's not the oh okay well

within that context it's like sure why not it's like the old story of like the abstract painting that's in a museum for years and then someone comes by and they're like that's upside down that's not the way that's supposed to be true true story we bought a a piece by the artist um a tawa auerbach and

they came with very specific instructions on how and where to get it framed there's like a place in los angeles that does their you know version of like it has to be this kind of museum level framing blah blah blah and they didn't know which side was up until they asked the artist i was like this is every hacky joke about contemporary art, and it's true.

And then the artist is like, I don't know, because actually my kid did it.

Yeah, they're like, which side do you think is up?

Oh, man, just tell me. Speaking of not knowing which way is up, what's going on in the Christmas, Martian?

Okay, fine. Let me crack out my two note cards.

We open in rural Quebec.

It's more like a small town. It's not super rural, but it's fairly rural.
We meet two children, Frankie and Kathy, or Francois and Cateau.

Who are wandering around a snowy landscape, just two figures on a field of white, the colors blown out by time. It is almost like a scene from McCabe and Mrs.
Miller. Yeah,

if we hadn't mentioned it before, yeah, this is a French-Canadian production. So

I presume we all watched it dubbed.

Maybe online.

I watched subtitled.

That's my role, you know.

I must see the Christmas Martian as the filmmakers intended.

Yes, thank you. I will have some other questions for Alonzo.

It was so snowy, I worried I turned on Quintet.

Man, that's the second quintet reference you've made in recent episodes. I know.
It's in my head for some reason. Yeah, you watch it with the kids.

I just did a screen drafts episode about Altman, and Quintet is mentioned. It's a

Oh, wow.

So

they wander into

a little grocery store, like a convenience store. And while they're talking to the adult there,

a Martian wanders into the store,

cleverly disguised as a bunch of coats and a hat. And he steals the body.

I think he's just dressed in coats.

Interesting, interesting. I mean,

a fishnet body stocking made of free yarn. Describe

So Matt Damon gets stuck on Mars. Okay, yeah, go on.

He grows potatoes there. With his own poop.

Yeah, he's,

I'm pulling up a picture of

the Martian. He's a guy.
I know he's played by a guy who is like a

children's entertainment. In my house, we call it Barsoom, by the way.

As far as what your grandma Deja always

called it Barsoom. The old country, she called it.

So So this guy is, he's wearing just regular winter clothes, right? But over that, yeah, it's literally a fishnet, like

thick yarn over his whole body. And he looks like a killer

in a movie.

And he's got this sort of mesh face mask. He's got a mesh face mask with holes for the eyes and then one big hole that goes over the nose and the mouth.

Like he should be the guy. He's the guy that Hannibal Elector is helping someone catch.

That's what I was saying. This is the Jame Gum callback outfit.
Like, I

hang on it.

It looks like some kind of Martian fetish gear of some stripe.

I feel like putting Martian in it at all is being too tearful.

Yeah, this movie throws on Martian the way that Americans think anyone who speaks Spanish is from Mexico.

Also, he never says he's from Mars, right? He's just from another planet.

He says he's very much not from Mars, that it's from a planet that we don't even know where it is yet because we're not advanced enough.

That is insulting of the filmmakers.

Pretty racist for the Quebecois, I have to say. Do you think they were trying to jump on the

Santa Claus conquers the Mars bandwidth? Conquers Mars bandwagon.

Sorry, Santa Claus conquers the Martians.

I know I apologize. I don't know if I can't remember its name.

I have to respect the debut of Piazzadora. But

it's the only thing because that's the only other thing I can think of that Santa Claus and Martians put together. Yeah, everyone's looking to cash in on that action.

Yeah, who can run short of a trend piece?

So the so the martian the martian is like stealing food uh like sweet food like uh whatever chili beans yeah jelly beans candy confections yeah and uh of course the shopkeeper

things of various kinds yeah the shopkeeper calls the cops and we learn over time that this is not the first sighting or incidents where people are like concerned that there seems to be something strange going on in their town in their neighborhood yeah there's been strange in their neighborhood yep uh and don't look good i don't know they're at home

they sure don't look good they would call they would call le busteur de specte

de facton yeah

uh so and like you know like people have seen ufos flying around in the sky etc etc so the kids go chasing after this martian um they follow his footprints in the snow that are green i couldn't tell that they are green but we hear that they're green um the blu-ray makes it clear that they're green

I'm so glad someone went through frame by frame and restored this. They're also like, they also like they track him.

There's like bubbles around and they find like a giant matchstick that when they strike the matchstick, it launches

Kathy up into the sky and she flies around for a bunch while she's holding the match there. And they show this using a real, using a real crane that they

pull her around on. So

it was the first thrill of the movie where I was like, I'm worried this kid's going to fall.

yeah john landis isn't the fucking supervisor right i hope not like her brother's constantly yelling like kathy you're too high come down or whatever and i'm like if he if she had control over this i think like it's one of these like mini things and like dumb kids movies where it's like well the kid has to be saying something it's got to be yelling something

Like, she can't figure this out on her own. No, yeah, you see that shot of the little girl like suspended in the air with nothing under her feet, and you're thinking,

the safety standards on this could not have been like

up to current standards, let us say. Yeah, probably not.
The terror in her face, real, not acting. Yeah, no, it's she's method.

The kid, by the way, who plays Francois is the son of the director, by the way. Oh, no.
How'd he get the role?

After a worldwide search.

Ellie, don't launch into your rant about nepotism. We don't have time for it.
Excuse me. I'm just Nepo babies are ruining the French-Canadian independent film community.

He auditioned to wearing a fake mustache, so his dad never knew it was like that.

He wrote his name as Joe Hill instead. So now,

exactly. You think Stephen King is just a huge Joe Hill fan and has no idea?

This guy looks exactly like me. He's great.

Weirdly, I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night. Oh, that is weird.
And maybe Joe Hill has memories. He's like, I remember my mom would go out on dates with a guy named Richard Bachman.

Okay, he was always a running man. I don't know.
That didn't work, but I tried it. You know, I tried it.
He had a problem with a Turner overdrive.

It was a long walk, but it didn't pay off. Yeah, thank you.

So they, at one point, while she's hanging in the air, her brother's like, just fall. It's snow.
It's soft or something. So she falls and, of course, does not injure herself.
And it's fine, yeah.

There's, but there's hard ground beneath that snow.

And snow, when compacted, can get pretty hard. Yeah.
Also, no matter how soft the snow is, if you're falling from 20 feet, 30 feet, it'll probably hurt, yeah. But it's a good thing.

Even if Spider-Man tries to stop you from falling,

you could still stap your neck if he does it by the feet. Yeah, exactly.

He's lost a good girlfriend that way.

At least one.

Yeah. That we know of.

I don't know. He's got stash in his closet, you know.

So, but this is a kid's movie, so of course she she is not mangled or killed. She's not mangled.
So, they eventually find the Martian's UFO.

It's like a red saucer that is partially covered in snow, and it's like lodged in a snowbank.

They explore for a little bit, they find their way inside, and they eventually bump into the Martian himself.

Remind everyone is not from Mars.

Not from Mars at all.

He looks like a weird man in fetish gear. And they,

they, they, after a brief interaction, they bond over a shared love of candy. And they learn that the Martian is stuck there.

He is, he, that he's an alien from a distant galaxy, and that he was, what, like exploring or observing planets when his ship crashed, and he needs a part fixed in order to leave.

I think it's important that this movie, much like Oogie Loveswood Generations Later, reminds children that when you meet a stranger, it's always a great idea to go into their vehicle and have candy.

He seems super nice and sure.

He also,

oh, of course.

I mean, he, so he's, there's a scene where he, in that moment, where, there's a moment in that scene where he's trying to figure out what language they speak, and he's kind of going through different languages.

And in this English dub, at least, he, to find English, he starts reciting, I think, the Declaration of Independence. And it was like, wait, this isn't yours.
Hold on a second.

Yeah, this isn't.

Canada has a rich history of their own English language documents that they could have leaned on. I assume.
I don't know any of them, but you know, they must have. Guy Branham in here.

He'll tell us all about it.

I like the idea that they're like swinging for the fences where they're like, let's use an American thing so that we'll play well in American audiences.

That's where the rest of the world is.

Reading the Canadian hockey code or whatever.

Yeah.

Recipe for, I don't know, like maple syrup or Tim Hortons menus or something.

Kind of one of the cool ideas

is the idea that

he crafts a beverage that allows them to understand each other.

Again, like kids drink what the stranger gives you, but you know,

but the idea that

it's not just like some mechanical thing, but a liquid, I thought was so improving. Because

they believe in organic technology that changes the user.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know if you've heard of the little Canadian filmmaker, David Corona.

It would be so funny if it was like, this is his earliest work,

uncredited. The new flesh.
The failure of this catapulted him in a different direction.

You can only tell the men. I'm not going to let him do children's movies.
The one scene where the Martian just chomps down on plastic all the time. I mean,

that's our future, buddy. I was reading something recently that was talking about,

I think it was them reaching out to David Cronenberg to potentially direct Return of the Jedi, I think, maybe after David Lynch had turned them down. And him saying,

he said something about like, I lost it halfway through the phone call. What would that sound like when David Lynch turned them down?

I don't think it's the right film for me, George. That kind of thing.
Yeah.

I mean, I appreciate the invitation and all.

Trust me, I respect what you're doing, but it's not my kind of work. That's the kind of thing he would say.
Because that's what he said about it. David Lynch was open about it.

He's like, yeah, I knew it wasn't going to be my movie, so I didn't want to make it. And it's like, I'm more suited for Dune.

Okay. I don't really want to work with little bears, George.
Not this way, anyway.

Maybe in a dream.

Here's my pitch. They go to a diner, and George Lucas is like, there's no diners in Star Wars.
And then years later, he put that one diner in episode two, and David Lynch calls out,

George, you told me there were no diners in the Star Wars universe. David Lucas.

Okay, so the kids offer

the lawsuit of Lynch v. Lucas over the ownership of character Dexter Jetster, space diner owner.
So, you know,

this doesn't happen yet in the scene, in the movie, but it happens later. But I feel like it's important to bring up the name of the Martian.
So I don't just keep calling him the Martian.

Now, his name, of course, is in an alien tongue that would be far too difficult for a human to pronounce. Oh, your tongue would just tear out and fall out of your mouth if you tried to say it, yeah.

Roughly translated into English, it means poo flower. Now, that was hilarious.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was, I mean, it was a thing that was in the movie for sure. Did it wake you up out of your, your slumber, Dan?

I, you know, I was just like watching it, like,

why is it, why is this happening? Like, because the movie is not like, like, the movie is so,

I mean, it's dumb, but it's so innocent otherwise that I'm like, why does, why is there this scatological thing in here that's not like a joke? Like, it's not funny that his name is Pooh Flower.

So is this any different in the original French or Quépécois?

I don't remember the actual phrase, but it's essentially poo flower.

They're being true to the OG. They weren't playing lowbrow for the English audience.
No, no.

They're respecting the auteur's intention. I mean, give them credit.

They got to the joke before Douglas Adams did of having an alien with an embarrassing sounding name because that was his whole thing with Slaughter Bartfast, the idea that he has a name that he's embarrassed about.

So, you know what? I mean, that's a badass name. I was going to name my firstborn Slaur de Bartfast.
Slaordy Bartfast is a great name.

I have to say, as a kid, like, and even now to some degree, but like, as a kid, I was like, what? Like, is that like a particularly embarrassing name?

Like, I guess it sounds kind of like fart or like it's got like

sounds in it, but I'm like,

let's go to, let's go to, let's go down Adams Avenue to Hitchhiker's Corner, my regular segment where I tell you things about Douglas Adams writing Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I love this segment. So he wanted a name that sounded like it was, could be filthy, but wasn't actually, because he was doing this for the radio.

And he says in his, in the behind-the-scenes writings that he started with the name Farty Fuckballs as the, as the name character, and then like, and kind of like drained it of actual swear words until he got to Slarty Bartfast, something that sounded vaguely vulgar, but was not actually vulgar.

Okay.

Yeah. I mean, look, I love the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but for me, that part fell flat.

I think Farty Fuckballs was from the original draft of the Christmas Martian. They were like, no, it's for kids.
It's free kids. Come on, guys.

What about Pooh Flower? Sure, I guess so.

We have three names for this Martian we can use: Farty Fuckballs, Sucky Dick Suck, and Pooh Flower. I guess we gotta go with Pooh Flower.
Those are the only three options.

Yeah, those are the three options the Canadian Film Board said we could use. We gotta pick one of them.
All right.

Yeah, everything else is already copywritten.

It's already copyrighted. Every other name that exists.
Every other possible name.

I mean,

we tried to clear

Glatoris Jones, but it turns out

there's a man with that name, so he couldn't do it. Yeah, yeah, he lives in the city.

Oh, damn it.

What about Queen Elizabeth II? No, can't do it. Can't do it.

Can't do it, Sally.

Okay.

So

the kids offer to help Pooh Flower by, I'm just going to call him the Martian again. I don't know why I brought it up.

And certainly meant I got to say a lot of bad words. So that was the same thing.
Because their uncle is a welder. So they decide to pile onto a nearby passing sledge and ride across the landscape.

Eventually realizing this one's going to sledge. Well, like a bunch of wood.
Wait, is it a bunch of wood? What is that? Manure. Manure.

The Martian is like, I don't know what this smell is, but it's certainly vivid.

And the girl says, you know,

it smells bad, but it sure grows vegetables or something. Oh, that's right.

This really doubles as just a catalog of ways to travel across snow. Every way you can find to travel across snow, somebody does in this movie.

I'd like to commend Stuart at this point, by the way.

Commend him and make it clear to the audience that his summary is so much clearer than anything that happens in the film because the film alternates between like low-speed shenanigans that go on forever and like cutaways to random people in the town doing bits of business.

And it all feels so disjointed. This is classic.

I mean, this is the kind of movie I haven't watched in a long time where it's like a classic 60s, 70s, low-budget film where none of the shots are long enough or they're way too long.

And it's clear they didn't get the coverage they needed for scenes.

And it's clear that like dialogue, I mean, we're watching the dubbed version anyway, but I assume the dialogue was dubbed in at the last minute, even in the French one, to explain what's going on on screen at times.

Like the, it's a, just like real. amateurish stuff.
It was kind of refreshing.

Welcome to my childhood. I grew up on all the Disney movies that you won't find on Disney Plus because they're just not all that good.
Song of the South, that kind of stuff.

For instance, yeah, no,

No Deposit, No Return with David Niven and Darren McGavin and Donnie Molly.

Disney Plus, Million Dollar Duck. Exactly.

These were the kiddie matinees of my youth. Yeah.

I mean, with a name like Million Dollar Duck, though, I mean, like,

puts butts in seats. And there's only one Million Dollar Duck, and that's Howard.

Wow, Uncle Scrooge is lipid.

Well,

he's got so much more than a million. Like, he would be mad.
He's like,

he would take issue.

Okay. So the,

so they ride across, uh, they ride across the snow. They realize this isn't going fast enough.
So the Martian takes the kids off the sledge and he strikes one of his giant matches and they fly away.

And the adult is like, what the fuck?

I'm realizing we don't have to spend a lot of time on it, but, but we skipped very early on the part where an adult sees the Martian fly away and he's dressed like Mary Poppins, I guess, for some reason.

Oh, yeah, the Martian's in drag at one point and he calls a cab. Yeah.
Or he is in a phone booth and a cab shows up. I'm not sure what the connection there is, but then he just flies away.

Like Mary Poppins, yeah. And even like cocks his legs in that, like, woohoo, I'm flying away.
It's, yeah, it's a moment.

I can't remember the order of things. Have we gotten to the part where like one guy also who has like seen the spaceship, like talks about how he saw the this giant egg, the biggest egg?

I mean, this is kind of the like

interspersed in these scenes with the kids and the Martian, we see the townspeople kind of sharing their suspicions of the strange happenings around town.

Usually, this is held at like the general store, and maybe the sheriff wanders in and like puffs his chest out.

It's like the local package store or whatever, you know, where you go and get everything and you drop

stuff. I don't feel like we need to dwell on any of those scenes.

But also, like the Warriors, there's a DJ who pops in periodically to let us know that like reports of UFOs are a prank.

I just want to see the children's and the children's parents where the mother keeps being like, our children never came back home for lunch and the dad's like, it's fine, it's fine.

They're on the bottom.

Yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge the existence of those scenes, but also that scene in particular had me clutching my head a little bit because I'm like, why is this fucking idiot like so fixated on the idea that this was like not literally, not that just that it looked like an egg, that it was a literal giant actual man, if I could get my hands on that fucking egg, I'd have the biggest egg.

I'd be so rich in eggs.

All that yellow. It's awful, like nobody's business.

And also, it's the only,

it's the only like flashback in the movie, right? He's telling a story, and then we flashback to him seeing it. But we know there's an alien in this movie at this point.

Like, there's no, this is normally in a regular movie, this is what you would show earlier to build up to the idea that there's something strange in the neighborhood, and it don't look good. But this,

it's happening in the middle when we already know about it. It's just, yeah.
And so, and also, the vast majority of this movie has no music,

except for when it does, which is just the theme music that's like, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, right, something like that. Stuart, we don't have the rights to that music.

Oh, no, oh, no. Oh, no.
You only get some, but uh, yeah, like, what are they, like, beaver bucks? What do they use?

Where are they?

We have beavers on it. Canada chose.
Loonies, right, loonies? Yeah, we all desperately would like to live there right now. Yes.
Yeah, beaver bucks.

Okay, so the other

shout out to to our friend Eric Marzozak, who got while the getting was good and moved from New York to Canada years ago.

So the adults, as I said, the adults are getting suspicious. They are in, they basically form a posse over time to figure this out.
So the kids eat a stolen turkey and a whole bunch of candy.

They learn about

that they took. It's not like they stole it from the store and ate it raw.

I mean, we know that he's not above stealing. So that's...
That's wrong. They didn't steal a live turkey off the farm and then tear it apart in a sort of Suddenly Last Summer

massacre.

Is that the second Suddenly Last Summer reference you've made recently? Yeah, because we recently did our live shows in Chicago, and I also made a Suddenly Last Summer reference.

For some reason, Suddenly Last Summer and

Quintent have been on my minds quite a bit, so I don't know why.

Tell your therapist.

My entire. I was cured for him.

I would say the majority of my therapy appointment this week was based on me having seen a movie, which is not uncommon in my therapy session.

It was the,

I was like,

Doc, can you kill me?

Can you, yeah, can you do the

Eternal Sunshine and the Spotless Mind treatment for me, please? Just

wipe it right out.

I know what you suddenly did last summer. Is that anything, Heather?

It could be. Yeah, I mean, the audiences that would get either side of it don't match at all.
Yeah.

They're twinkling by the diagram

It's true. Yeah, it's just Alonzo.
I feel like the only way you can test this theory, Dan, is to make it into what, a one-panel gag comic or something.

But doesn't you have the technology to do that? Yeah.

Send it into what to the New Yorker. New Yorkers looking for shit like that.
Yeah, that's what they love.

Don't they have like a little comic contest? You can win that little comic. Okay, so.
Dan, why don't you just stick that in as the caption of whatever panel they've got in their contest?

With a newly fixed and cleaned of snow uh uh ufo they manage to fly this flying saucer and they go for a little ride around the world not without a couple uh false starts and hiccups like when they're clearing the snow off and they almost get take off and they almost all die but luckily they don't is this the part where they go to the desert

I think so.

Oh, look, it's the Sahara Desert. And like, they're like, wow.

And then there's just like a static scene of them staring out the fake window where there's like, like, you know, green screened in, like just dunes, sand dunes, as they guess it.

Lingers so long. It's worth noting that the UFO is a TARDIS and that it is way bigger on the inside than it would appear to be on the outside.

On the outside, it looks like a really cool, like, early 70s, like the sort of light fixture you would have hanging over the dining room table. Yeah.

You thought so? I thought it kind of looked like an egg. It also

looks nothing like an egg. We should mention it.
No.

They also, we should mention also that, so this flying saucer has a long antenna on the top that you never really see the top of because it's clearly the wire that it is hanging from.

I was going to ask whether that was intended to be the antenna, and that's how they're getting away with the most egregious wire that I have ever seen. Yeah, because it's the same.

They're using the same crane that yanked that young girl around with. Yeah, they rented it for a day.
You got to use it for other things. I love my husband.

He just opened the MoMA Design Store website.

Oh, that's awesome. And there is the Nelson Saucer Bubble from Herman Miller light fixture.
And yeah, that's exactly what this thing looks like.

You have your own little Christmas marshmallm in your house. In red, yeah, it's red.
That's in red. It's a good thing for the Christmas collection.
Yeah. Okay, so they take a ride.

They take a ride around the world.

Around the world, around the world.

All the aliens in that one.

They return to their town and the kids look out the window. And he tells them they're taking a ride around the world.
He's just showing them images on a video screen.

It's possible they're not going anywhere.

It's like a Disney dark ride, you know? Yeah, it's like a Nathan Fielder bit.

So they are flying over their Quepecois town. They're pointing out things they know.

They point out the road that leads to Grandma's house, which I feel like expands the universe of this movie considerably. Well, they're opening it up for a spin-off seat.
Yeah,

the Martian and the Grandma. We're building.

They say goodbye.

They wander off into the night to return home.

Oh, wait, I should say, before you say, I should say, the part where they're excited to see their own hometown, that was the one moment in the movie that I genuinely really liked a lot.

That these kids, he's like, this is Antarctica. Here's this desert.
But then seeing their own town from above

seems genuinely thrilling to them. They're like, oh, yeah, there's the road there.

And I thought that was a, I don't know if they meant it that way, but that felt like a richly observed, you know, the idea that like, yeah, the thing they're most excited about is seeing where they live, but just from a different angle.

And this movie came out, by the way, the same year as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which at the end of the movie, of course, they're looking down from the great glass elevator to see their own town.

So that was the big competition.

That was the competition in the theaters. They're like, who's going to win the weekend?

Christmas Martian or there's a competition at what, Conn or something?

We got to delay the release of Willy Wonka by three weeks. We don't want to get stepped on by the Christmas Martian.
Yeah.

So

the kids leave right in in time for the posse to arrive. So the Martian's looking out his view screen and he sees just like a sea of foreboding lights heading in his direction.

It looks like all like snowmobiles, which there was briefly a little confusion because the kids stole a snowmobile earlier. Do you remember that? They kept stealing the welder's stuff.

Their welder uncle, they kept stealing his things and then bringing them back. And the police officer would be like, You said it was stolen.
Exactly. And now it's back.
Arrest someone.

But I thought the shot of the snowmobiles all coming through from the darkness yeah very very mad max yeah yeah very mad max that was genuinely i like

it was it was a little scary and i was like all right okay this is this is a better shot from a different movie where it's like evil snowmobiles

the oxbow incident

i want to talk about this

at this point like the martian can leave in his ship but he sees sure these people coming out and he's like oh you know oh there are more friends are coming to say hi or whatever like he goes out and because because he represents the spirit of fun dan right but then this posse starts chasing him around and the fucking martian doesn't just like get back in his goddamn ship and take off he like runs around the snow for a long time which power is like a god the point at which i texted alonso saying that i hate him i hate this idiot

yeah

he is so advanced that he he has nothing to fear from these primitive humans domestic martian and they've moved so far beyond hate and violence on his planet that, yeah, he just assumes this is like a Lollapalooza.

He doesn't read bad intent into it at all.

Much of the movie is the kids showing him different winter sports and ways to have fun in the snow. So maybe he just thinks it's another one.
Yeah, true. So he leaves him.

If he's like, let's chase everybody and they just shoot him and gun him down. And at the end of it, it's the Martian lying in the snowbank, bleeding to death, like at the end of McCabe and Mrs.

Miller. And the kids are at home being like, wow, Wow, I hope we get to see the Martian again, and he's just dead, and he just slowly covers his body.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we're like, Wow, they really build a community out there in the frontier.

The kids put the church fire out, yeah, you'll see him again come springtime.

I'm glad you could restore your faith and my own empathy because, as much as I hate that Martian, I was like, Oh, no, no,

no, no,

no, not with like crazy 70s technology. It's horrifying.

The choppoo flower, no, it was the best of us.

So the kids return home. Their father puts on his Santa outfit to surprise the kids and give them presents.
And he starts giving them presents.

He doesn't go down the chimney because he's seen gremlins. He knows that's amazing.
He does.

Yeah, he has that part queued up on his VHS table. He's seen the future.

He is distracted briefly, and he leaves the room, and then Pooh Flower shows up, also dressed as Santa Claus, and then the father returns, and there's a big confusion, and then a bunch of cops show up and arrest both of them because they can't tell who's being Martians.

Yeah, these cops both never, you know, considered the idea that they could take the fake beard off of these two and see which one the Martian is. Not these days anymore.

For all they know, maybe these are Jewish policemen. They don't know who Santa Claus is.
They think this is what Martians look like.

Good day.

Michael Shree French-Canadian Jewish exactly.

That's what I was talking about this. So they're both arrested.

They ride in the back of a cop car with who's like the chief of police who looks like a

pig in a sty. He's so happy.

But then the Martian just disappears from the back of the car. And then like, I guess it's the end of the movie.
What happens? I don't remember.

Notes at this point. Just say flies away.
Question B.

What do they do? I don't remember. I think he just leaves, right? I think he just leaves and that's it, right? Yeah.

You got two extra note cards to fake us out there yeah and there's no there's no like text at the end that says whether the dad was found guilty of being a martian and sent to jail

well they had to they they had to cut him open to find out they determined not a martian

well we got good news and bad news good news we dropped the charges bad news your your father is just in his constituent parts now you know no bad news is we can only know a human bad news is it's hard for the martian to get home because as a christmas gift he has given the kids the model of his ufo that i think they used for many for some of the shots shots.

So it's, you know, I don't know how he's going to get away now that they have the craft. Off camera.
Oh, and do you know anything about this movie that you can tell?

Like, I seem to, you know, from poking around the internet, it seems like maybe it's a minor like cult film in Canada. Yeah, I think

it's the kind of movie that they would run on Canadian TV.

Like, you know, Dave grew up in New Hampshire and he said he remembers seeing it as like on offer as a kiddie matinee up there because that's, you know, very near the border. So

yeah i believe this is a beloved canadian film and it occupies an interesting little corner of history because

they ran out of money and this producer named rock really yeah i know

it's all up on screen every every centime of it um you they all the loonies are up there this producer named rock demers came in to sort of help finish it and he winds up becoming this kind of the canadian disney in terms of like having he has this company called Les Production La Fette, which makes all of these bananas live-action kids movies.

I don't know if y'all have ever heard of the peanut butter solution.

Yeah, or like, you know,

Jacob Tutu and the Hooded Fang and Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveler.

Like, Jacob Tutu and the Hooded Fang is, is, I've never seen the movie and I've never read the book, but I it was, it was listed as one of the books in a backup book I had as a kid, it listed as another book available from the publisher.

And I was like, what is this book about?

What is a hooded fang? I wish I could tell you, having read it, but I just remember it being weird.

I remember as a kid assuming, like, I guess he gets a pet cobra or something, but I never went all the way to actually read it. Yeah, I have not watched that one.

I need to, but uh, but anyway, so yeah, so but this is the beginning of his career as a kid film producer.

Uh, so you know, thanks to the Christmas Martian, we eventually get down the road to Jacob Tutu and the Hooded Fang. Um, so yeah, so, so

this is, um, you know, I think this is in that category of like, what's that?

There's also that Canadian TV special where Gilda Radner voices a witch.

Oh, yeah. That's like a Halloween favorite.
Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a Halloween favorite up there.
The witches, something, yeah.

So yeah,

I don't know that it's really made it to the lower 48 as much as a cult item, but that was before this episode was recorded. So clearly now I think the avalanche begins.

And I think Riff Tracks did this one a couple of years ago that would make sense yeah i was uh i was going to recommend this to uh to the mystery science theater people should they do more episodes and then i saw that riff tracks did one of it and i'm like all right never mind it's been taken care of because it it just i realized the reason i one of the reasons i hadn't seen a movie like this in a long time is that this is the kind of thing i would watch i would see only on mystery science theater 2000 you know where they something where otherwise it would not have fallen into my lap because it didn't reach the level of professionalism that uh that made it to Milburn, New Jersey.

Well, and something with a lot of natural space for jokes to fill. Yes.
Oh, yeah. I know.
It's made for us. But these are the worst.

Speaking from experience, when you get a movie that just has like three minutes with no dialogue, and you're like, oh, damn it.

What are we going to say? They're just running around in the snow.

They're doing nothing.

Time for another political rant.

I will say this. There's something about a kids movie that not only feels like it was made for kids, but it was made by kids.
That's true.

You know, like it really feels like the, the, like the, the, Frankie and Catherine are like sitting there going, okay, now what happens? And then what? And then, and then he does this, you know?

It has the feeling, yeah, of like, that's the best thing you can say about it is it's interminable for an adult, but it has the feel of a story kids are making up, or even that the kids have the camera and are just like shaking it around and things like that.

And I have to admit, compared to

the talk of the office where I am has been the live-action Moana trailer. And compared to something like that, I think I kind of prefer the Christmas Martian in some ways.
There's no green screen.

Yeah. Oh, no, it's all up.
This is all reality. Yeah.
That kid is really way too high in the sky.

Yeah.

So let's do final judgments whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like.

I'm going to say, I think I texted some variant of this to Stuart that any like three minutes isolated of this movie is hilarious, but if you watch all 65, it's interminable.

Like,

it would be a great thing.

If you're looking for something weird to put on in the background of your holiday party on mute, like if you're the kind of person to do that sort of thing, this would be which feels like 50% of Dan's acquaintances here.

I recommend it for that use and that use alone. I would say it's a bad, bad movie because it really tried my patience, but you know, it's got its charms.
Did they tried your patience?

Did it want to buy? No,

I mean, my patience is pretty small, so they're going to run Amazon instead.

Now, yeah, I mean, this is a monstrous movie, but

I mean, I feel like this is very much a bad, bad movie.

With the caveat, I feel like under, with the right audience of bad movie sickos, if you are doing a bad movie night that is Christmas themed, I could see this one being a fun one to watch with people and watch people squirm and get annoyed and check their phones for 65 minutes that feels like an eternity.

But no, I would say this is a bad, bad movie.

I agree with you guys that I think it is a, this is a bad, bad movie for solo viewing.

But yeah, if you wanted to use it to, if the thing you want to watch is the effect it has on somebody else, then it's a good, bad movie for that.

But I feel like by the end of our discussion, I kind of talked myself into liking the concept of it as a low-budget for kids,

really dumb, you know, little movie. But it is not.
I wouldn't recommend watching it or showing it to people unless you want to see the movie and be uncomfortable. Yeah.

I actually watched this movie and then immediately watched Zardaz for the first time to prepare for Flop TV. And I'm like, what a day I'm having.

What a time to be alive.

Alonso, what do you say?

I mean, I can't disagree with anything you're saying.

And I do say this probably plays best if you're in a situation where you're with people who are enjoying its badness and you can talk to each other during the slacker parts of it.

But ultimately, I mean, it's like 75 to 80.

But ultimately, I have to kind of say this is a movie I kind of like just because I was four years old in 1971.

And so like I recognized the shape of this sort of misbegotten children's entertainment that was just the coin of the realm of the early 1970s.

And I could see where if you were a kid and you saw this at Christmas time, it'd be the sort of thing that you would want to go back to every year.

And then maybe as an adult at one point, go, oh, God, this really isn't very good, is it? But there is something so

like, you know,

on Project Runway, Heidi Klume used to always use the term homesown as a kind of a disparaging thing. But there's something homesown about this movie.

It literally just feels like some people who are not in any way in the show business were like, let's make a kid's film with these things that we have handy and all of this damn snow.

And so, yeah, on that level, I think it kind of works. But yeah, it is a tough sit by yourself, no question.

Yeah, it's hard to, I like the idea of it more than I like the it, but I will say, in a world where the problem is that things are too slick and soulless and

kind of like ultra-polished in terms of like AI and professional entertainment, things like that, there's something

I do find appealing about like, this is the like dumbest, roughest, cuttest, like most slapped together type thing um there there is a um the

video notes involved in the making of this yeah exactly nobody was like how do we get it to be four quadrants i think they were like how do we get enough film to get it up to 65 minutes

now now i now i kind of want to see the judges from project runway give their takes on this movie if only i i want to see like tim gunn be nice i want to see nina garcia be i don't know unhappy and i just want to see law roach's face like i want to see his displeasure or maybe he'd love it Yeah, I at least want to hear their thoughts about the Martians' fishnet bodysuit.

I do want to acknowledge that. They were handed a fishing net, and Tim Dunn said, make it work.
Come on, make it work.

You know, we've navigated Elliott's now long ago moved to L.A. as best we can.
We've done what we could for that. And I think it's, you know.

not really affected that much, except for that like watching a bad movie alone is never the ideal way to experience them.

So, I think that probably the level of bad bad ratings has gone up since then, simply because the three of us aren't all watching these movies together and having a grand old time.

Certainly, I think that's a good point. Certainly, I enjoy these movies much less when I'm by myself, and also I only have time to watch these movies and no other movies in between.

That's not even making a lot of time. It's a hard user error on life there, buddy.

Oh, boy, is it ever? Yeah.

Hello. Hello, I'm calling on behalf of the Beef and Dairy Network podcast.
Oh, no, I'm sorry. No sales calls.
Goodbye.

It's a multi-award-winning podcast featuring guests such as Ted Danson, Nick Offerman, Josie Long.

I don't know what a Josie Long is, and anyway, I'm about to take my mother into town to see Phantom of the Opera at last. You are wasting my time, and even worse, my mother's time.

She only has so much time left. She's 98 years old.
She's only expected to live for another 20 or 30 years. Mother, get your shoes on.
Yes, the orthopaedic ones.

I don't want to have to carry you home again, do I? Right, well, if you were looking for a podcast, mother, you're not wearing that, are you? It's very revealing, Mother.

This is a musical theater, not a Parisian bordello. Simply go to maximum fun.org.
I'm reaching for my Samsung Galaxy 4 as we speak. Mother! Mother, not that hat!

Have you been looking for a new podcast all about nerdy pop culture? Well, I have just the thing for you: Secret Histories of Nerd Mysteries.

Secret Histories of Nerd Mysteries is a weekly pop culture history podcast hosted by me, host Austin, and me, host Brenda.

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From theme parks to cartoons to 80s, 90s, and 2000s nostalgia, we tackle it all. Check us out every Tuesday on maximumfun.org and wherever you get podcasts.

The internet. We are all on it all the time.

You need to be on it all the time. It's so important these days.
And have you ever needed to start like a small business or something? You know what you need? A website.

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off your first purchase of a website or domain. Thank you, Stuart.
And speaking of whole cloth, we're sponsored in part today by Quince.

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Also, we have a pair of Jigi Jumbotrons. I just say Dan Frigate to that.
If Quince is available in Canada, Martians no longer need to wear fishnets. They can now wear war clothes.

Important clarification for you Martians out there.

And also, thank you.

I was going over Canada. I'm like, well, I should have said something about the Martian movie that we watched.
Anyway, Jumbotron.

Poly Amateur Hour is like the flop house if the host were in a musical comedy polycule. So it's nothing like the flop house, but it is in the good bad column.

Join Nicole, Laurel, and Daniel for a funny, filthy variety show with segments such as Unicorn Hunter-Hunters and Is This Poly?

Monogamous folks love it too, but they love only one host at a time. So why listen to helpful polycasts when you could shotgun chaos Muppet Energy with Poly Amateur Hour? There will be jingles.

Listen to Poly Amateur Hour wherever you get your podcasts. We also have a personal jumbotron.
That's a jumbotron that's for a person from another person or people.

And this jumbotron is for Evelyn Ann, and it comes from Jonathan, Fletcher, Ian, and Oscar. And it says, happy 15th anniversary to my amazing wife.

You're my best friend and the most amazing travel partner anyone could ask for. It you've made a cuisine art, if you will, of bringing joy to everyone you encounter.
We are very blessed.

What a sweet message. That's so lovely.
Now to go from that sweet message to some more crass commercialism because we got some flop house things to promote as well. That's right.

As you may know, Flop TV continues apace. The government tried to shut us down, but we said no.

Every first Saturday of the month, we are doing our live one-hour televised type version over the internet of the Flophouse. It's Flopster Peace Theater this season.

We're doing some of the biggest, most famousest flops or most legendariest flops, I should say. And the next episode, as we're recording this, but I think we've, when this episode airs,

I think it'll already have done, but you can still talk about it. I'm unstuck in time.
Well, our December episode was Zardaz. That's right.
On December 6th, we talked about this. It was hilarious.

It was hilarious. January 3rd, we'll be talking about Dr.
Doolittle, the 60s version. And February 7th, we'll be talking about Plan I from Outer Space.
That's live on the internet, 9 p.m.

Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific each time.
But let's say you can't make it at that time, don't worry.

If you have a ticket to a flop TV show, you can watch the recording of it as many times as you want through the end of February. So go to theflophouse.simpletics.com.

Again, that's theflophouse.simpletex.com. Buy yourself individual tickets or get the season pass that's six shows for the price of five.
Do it. It's like you're stealing money from us.

You know, you want to. It's the thrill of crime, like in the movie Pickpocket.
Anyway, we've got another show that I want to say. That's an in-person show.

The Flophouse is returning to San Francisco Sketch Fest for SF Sketchfest 2026. We're going to be appearing on Sunday, January 25th.
It's an afternoon show, 4 p.m. Pacific time in person.

So you know what? You can still go to work on Monday and you won't be too tired from our show. So come on by Sunday afternoon, January 25th in the San Francisco Sketch Fest.

We'll be at Cobbs Comedy Club again. I love performing at Cobbs.
It's a really fun comedy club to be at. Go to sfsketchfest.com, I think.
Let me double check that.

Yes, it's just sfsketchfest.com for more information. And I just want to remind everybody, I've got a book out right now.
That's right.

Joke Farming, How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense from the University of Chicago Press, written by me. It's got all of my joke writing secrets.
Shh, don't tell anybody.

You can learn how to write jokes the Elliott Kalin way if you buy the book, and it's available anywhere books are sold. So go buy it.
Thank you.

Let's answer some letters from listeners.

This first letter comes from Aaron last name withheld, who writes, like many a millennial, whatever combination of literacy and interest that turns one into a reader, trademark sign, earlier in life, has completely atrophied for me.

I used to be a reader, and now I can't honestly say that I am. The shame.
I've decided on a plan, though. get back into reading through film criticism.

Can you recommend columns, books, articles, or newsletters about film that are well written and genuinely fun enough to rival flicking through brain-rotting short-form video content on my my stupid phone.

So, yeah.

I was just reading about the study that said that flipping through short form video content, the effect on your brain is bad. Yeah.

Literally, you're worse at everything afterwards.

So I'm going to recommend a website. I love it.
I hope it goes on a million years. It has some really great thoughtful criticism.
It's called The Dissolve. So never stop.
No, no, no.

Stewart. Yeah, sorry, guys.

Although, I mean, we should recommend, of course, The Reveal,

a newsletter from a couple of the Dissolved folks, Keith Phipps and Scott Tobias. And Keith was kind enough to come out to our Chicago live shows.
Yeah. That's a great newsletter for

Alonzo, I'm sure, has thoughts on

film. I feel like Alonzo's work is itself I always enjoy, and I always find

it convenient for Alonso and well written. Yeah.
Well, I'm going to shamelessly recommend my husband's new newsletter on the ghost site called Sluggish at sluggish.ghost.io.

And it is film criticism, but also he writes about food or art or music or whatever he has a mind to. And,

you know, I've always been a fan of his prose. And I think it is, he is not here to bum you out with talk about contemporary politics.

So if you're looking to avoid that lane entirely, I think you'll enjoy what you see at Sluggish.

And then, of course, you know,

Justin Chang over the New Yorker doing a bang-up job.

you know he's got the he's got a pulitzer in his pocket and the other one is playing a piano i don't know i i lost my atlantis morris out there but anyway um he just wrote a really great takedown of wicked for good that made me feel less alone in the world so i was just reading that yesterday

if you if you don't mind reading older uh criticism i mean like there are great new critics on the site as well but like all of uh roger ebert's stuff is at uh you know roger ebert.com and like

there's a reason why he was a beloved critic. He is a very personable,

fun

writer.

And also, obviously, if you're on Letterboxd, you should read Dan's Letterbox reviews. He's a very good Letterboxd reviewer.
Yeah, they call him his generation's Paul Schrader. I feel like,

but the thing is, I feel like Dan does give thoughtful reviews, whereas I'll do like one fucking line or joke.

And I feel like that seems to be, there's like such a aspirational trend at this point of like, can I come up with the best one-liner to describe this movie?

And it really overlooks the impact of real thoughtful film writing or just writing on art in general can have on

your enjoyment and also your willingness to check out stuff you might not. I, one of my,

I read, I listen to a lot of heavy metal music.

And part of the reason that I explore so much and I make it almost like a hobby is that I have found a couple of blogs that I really love and I really love these writers and

like reading critical writing on

something like music or like reading having somebody describe something that isn't just words do you know like describing like music and writing are so different and like writing and images can be very different like it's just it's just an interesting like seeing somebody try and describe the feelings you get while watching a movie or like, yeah, it's just, I don't know.

I just think it's really interesting. And

I feel like it's becoming less valued in our current culture.

I also, I wanted to recommend three books that are not necessarily film criticism, but are about movie making that if you haven't read, or if you want to get your eyes off of a screen and onto paper, unless you're reading them, I guess, as e-books or whatever.

But I'm sure Alonzo's probably read all of these. You guys might have read them too.
But The Devil's Candy by Julie Salomon, which is a great book about the making of Bonfire of the Vanities.

Picture by Lillian Ross, which is a great book about the making of the Red Badge of Courage, where you do not gain respect for John Houston by the end of the book.

But it's a really fascinating book. And also When the Shooting Stops, The Cutting Starts by Ralph Rosenblum about film editing.
And those are just three, those are three great books about movies.

And I would throw it in.

Stephen Bach's final cut also about the making of Heaven's Gate. I was going to mention that too, and I'm like, is four books too many? But the Final Cut is also fantastic.
Oh, and you know what?

Because we're going to do Dr. Doolittle in a couple of months for Flop TV.
Pictures at a Revolution is a great book. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. That's also a great book.
It deals with

one of the things it deals with is Dr. Doolittle and the death of like old Hollywood filmmaking through that movie.

Speaking of Mark Harris, his Mike Nichols biography is really great. Oh, it's true.

I just have to read that one. And actually, I'll recommend another one.
It's The Studio

by

John Geckery Dunn, right?

John Phillips done. Yeah,

where he's basically just wandering around. Yes, that's right.
He's just walking around 20th Century Fox for like a year and just writing about what's going on and what it's like there.

And it's so, I found it there's so much in it that is about the making of their Dr. Doolittle's coming up.
It's going to be our big release. We've got to get rid of Dr.
Doolittle.

And there's like a page and a half where they're like, we're going to make this movie about apes, whatever. And I'm like, they have no idea that that movie is going to be a huge hit and Dr.

Doolittle's going to be a fiasco.

Also, while we're going down this rabbit hole, there's a really fun book called Road Show about the age of of the elephantine 1960s musicals and how they basically almost destroyed Hollywood because everybody was chasing the dragon of Mary Poppins and sound of music.

And like every studio sank a fortune into these huge BMF roadshow intermission musicals at a time when the kids just wanted to see Easy Rider. Yeah.

I and I will recommend a book, Kyle Buchanan's Blood, Sweat, and Chrome about the making of Mad Max Fury Road. It's really fun.

And it's like, it is one of of those things where you're like, not only do I love the movie, but also it really imparts that feeling of like, yeah,

this movie shouldn't have gotten made probably, and we'll probably never see something like this again. No, it's amazing when you're reading a book about a movie and

you know the movie was made. That's why you're reading the book.
But every turn of the page, you're like, there's no way they're going to be able to do this. Like, this is impossible.

Someone's going to die. Tom Hardy's involved.

I also want to put on my Dave Berg hat and the lighter side of film criticism.

Everyone's favorite Mad Magazine article, the lighter side of it. This Reiner was, you know, asking for like, you know, also some short and engaging stuff.

You know, Nathan Rabin has been a big supporter of the podcast over the years, and he does a lot of very funny, like sillier projects like we might do here on our show.

His new book, The Fractured Mirror, is about to come out, which is a terrific look at American movies about movie making.

And so if you're looking for something that you want like some short hits that you're not going to get mired in the middle of a real long chapter,

that's the ticket. And it's really sharp and fun film writing.

But let's move on to Andrew. I feel like that's the most time we've ever spent answering a question.
And I think we could spend, you know,

like

a lot longer. But

Andrew last name withheld writes

writes this.

Would you recommend books about movies?

Whoa, here we go again.

Based on a recent letter, I knew I had to provide some additional reporting.

In 2008, I got to go on the study abroad trip of my dreams. We spent a month living on the Galapagos Islands, learning about its human and natural history.

There was a cute one-room schoolhouse on the island where we'd take lessons right next to the beach.

It was the only inhabited island because it had a dormant volcano that collected a major source of fresh water.

The volcano seemed cool, so I got two friends to ditch class one day, bike across the island, and hike up to the volcano to the lake.

We spent an idyllic morning swimming around the warm water in the caldara, then took a break to eat Ecuadorian Oreos on the shore. Suddenly, wait, wait, wait.

I want to know how Ecuadorian Oreos are different than

domestic Oreos. Yeah, you know, all these little details.
Suddenly, this jaunty old white guy with a coterie of eight to ten young women came marching down the volcano straight towards us.

He started chatting us up and seemed a bit zany. The women, young American students.
He told us he was a Martian. He was wearing a fishnet stock.
He was wearing a fishnet or something.

The women, young American students, didn't really say anything. They just kind of followed him and sat looking as he pontificated to us.

He then started saying, this is a beautiful place, but whatever you do, never go swimming in freshwater in the Galapagos.

He said there's, quote, small brain-eating worms in the water, and for God's sake, whatever you do, don't swim in there.

I'm wondering which horrible person in the news this guy's going to turn out to be.

I was kind of rolling my eyes at the strange man who started lecturing us about brain worms when my friend, who had been kind of quiet since this guy showed up, suddenly asked, are you Patch Adams?

And he said, yes, of course. That's why I know about these brain worms.
Anyway, it's time for me to go. As he and the young women

teleported out.

As he and the young women left.

The red clown woman should have been the tip-off.

As he and the young women left, they kept saying, don't get brainworms. I was stunned and now actually kind of worried that a doctor had told me I was going to get brainworms.

But also, because it was apparently Patch Adams, I turned to my friend who had identified him and was like, how did you know that was Patch Adams?

He told me that at the University of Illinois, there's one dorm that's kind of the hippie dorm, and they have various artists in residence who live with the students.

And Patch was a recurring guest who apparently had a reputation of sharing his weed.

We then spent the next few weeks on the Galapagos logging many more rapid, weird encounters with Patch and his group of of young ladies.

We'd emerge from a hiking trail right when their bus happened to be driving by and they would see us and shout, brain worms, or we'd be at a restaurant and they would all happen by and shout, brain worm boys.

Later, we encountered them swimming on a different island and asked, aren't you all worried about the brain worms? And Patch Adams was like, oh no, it doesn't affect me.

Were they just fucking with us about the brain worms or does Patch really have ultimate healing powers? So that's another Patch Adamantium update for you from Andrew Lestnan. I feel like it's

raises so many more questions than it

answers.

Get the director of health and human services on the horn. Yeah.
Anyone knows about brain worms? Yeah.

Certainly become the number one Patch Adams anecdote podcast on the internet. If people have stories about Patch Adams, write in.
Tell us your Patch Adams. I want to hear more about that.

We're going to have some fucking tales on Patch Adams.

Watch Patch Adams. Now, I also want to make it clear.
These are all secondhand stories that I'm just reporting along.

Yeah, yeah, we're not looking for Richard Simon's. We've never confirmed any of them.
I mean, if you're Patch Adams, write in and tell us.

What were you doing in the Galapagos with a bunch of young women telling people about brain worms?

Were there brain worms? Yeah, what's your secret on avoiding brain worms? Do you have to vibrate your skull at a specific frequency? Send it to our government.

Perhaps.

Anyway, that's a reoccurring segment, Tales of Patch Adams.

Tales from the Adams package. He is alive.
I'm just checking his wiki page.

Yeah, if you'd

were immune to brain worms, you'd be alive too.

Yeah.

This is the number one cause of death. It's brain worms.

Oh, wow. That's him.

Let's move on to. It'd be so funny if he's like, someone's like, who are you? And then he puts the red nose on.
They go, Patch Adams. Patch Adams.

Or he's getting like rolling. He takes the red nose off and nobody knows who he is.

So

let's move on to recommendations, movies that may be a better use of your time than The Christmas Margin. So I saw this movie about this doctor who thought laughter was the best medicine.

It was called Doctor Giggles.

So this

I like to recommend a movie called PTU.

It's

Jeremy Piven? No, that's PTU.

It's PTU, so it's Jeremy Tiven.

Paul Thomas U.

Paul Thomas Underson. I would look at this title, by the way, and I keep thinking, paid time up?

PTU,

it's on the Hong Kong collection on Criterion right now. It's directed by Johnny Toe.
It's 88 minutes long.

It's one of these sort of crime movies about...

You know, cops being just as bad and dumb as the criminals and sort of events spiraling out of control. It's kind of a one crazy night cop thriller in that way.

I'll admit that like some of the machinations of the plot got a little convoluted for me to keep track of like who was mad at who for what, but it didn't matter.

It just was like kind of a pleasure to be in the world.

Like I'm going to sound like the old man that I increasingly am and also have been since I was a young man and say that like it really made me feel for like what we've lost with the way movies are filmed now.

Like it just, it just looked gorgeous. Like it looked beautiful.
Like it's all shot at night, but it's these vivid sort of like neon colors too. And

the staging was gorgeous. Like it's just the sort of thing that you don't see much these days with digital photography.

But if you want to see something just sort of like soak in the atmosphere, I really enjoyed it. Sounds good.
Cool.

I actually have two movies to recommend because I've seen, yeah, I know I've seen a lot of movies, but both of them I really loved. So I can't, I don't want to save either of them.
I hope that's okay.

Check the rule book. Is it allowed?

Well, I don't care. I'm going to go ahead and write one.
So, yes.

Are you a golden retriever?

Depending on my personality test.

So the first movie I'm going to recommend is,

as of this moment, my favorite movie of the year.

It's the new movie from Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value. I love it so much.
I am a huge fan of his Oslo trilogy.

And while this isn't, I guess, technically part of that, it feels like a natural progression of the themes that are in those movies.

It is this beautiful story about a father and daughter who are estranged.

The father's a filmmaker who wants to make one more project, and his daughter is an actress who has, let's say, a lot of resentment toward her absentee father, who's frankly kind of a piece of shit.

And it's

Yachm Trier has a way of taking

themes and ideas that seem like they're very serious and kind of boring and making it kind of light and breeze like light and fun and makes those emotional moments really hit.

And yeah, I found it to be really beautiful and it's a really fun movie, and it's got some great performances from Stellen Skarsgård, of course, and Renata Rhinesva, Rheinsva, yeah,

and uh, and L.

Fanning's great in it, and of course, uh, Anders Danielson, Lai, Lee, Lai, uh, manages to sneak his way in there and doesn't have too many terrible things happen to him this time, which is uh, which is unique for Joachim Trueer movies.

Um, yeah, it's uh, I really loved it, it's great.

Um, and I also got a chance to go to uh Lincoln Center to catch a matinee screening, which meant I was there with a lot of very old people of Spain's offering for the Academy Awards a movie called Surat,

which is a kind of like What If Wages of Fear was held at

a rave in the deserts of Morocco, where a father, a middle-aged father, drags his young son to this rave because he's searching for his daughter who has gone missing and he has reason to believe that she is at this rave.

And he continues continues to follow leads, uh, kind of deeper into the desert, and uh, putting himself, uh, and his son into greater danger.

And a lot of the cast are non-actors who have been were like handpicked from like the rave scene.

And so, you have these really interesting performances from uh, some like, I would just say interesting kind of like looking uh people. And it felt very natural.
And the sound design is incredible.

It's all shot in the deserts of Morocco. So it's gorgeous.
And

yeah, and then of course the way it incorporates like dance music is really interesting too. And it was really fun when my

friend who I went to see the movie with was in the bathroom at the after the movie. And then she heard an older lady be like, I'm over raves,

which is great. Yeah.
Yeah. So Surat, it's great.

Is it my turn to recommend a movie? Yeah.

No, I got some more.

I'm going to recommend a movie that I just saw recently, and it's not the greatest movie in the world, but I had a lot of fun watching it.

It's a Samuel Fuller movie from 1950 called The Baron of Arizona, which stars Vincent Price, and it's loosely, very loosely based on a true story of this guy who in the...

Right before Arizona was a state in the late 19th century, this guy forged a bunch of documents because he was present and he found a woman and he said, she's the last heir of this baron who had a Spanish land grant that by law has to be recognized by the United States and it covers all of Arizona.

And he had gone to all this trouble to

basically, basically like turn

part of the U.S. territories into his own personal kingdom and try to get it through the courts with all these forged documents.
And he came very close to actually doing it.

And again, this movie version of it, is, I think they changed every single fact in the entire thing, other than the names of the people involved, but Vincent Price is really fun in it.

There's some really fun scenes where he's like, yeah, I guess I just got to be a monk for three years in Spain so I can get access to this one document I need to forge.

And it's a short, tight movie. It starts out a little slow, but it's got a lot of fun to it.
And it's called The Baron of Arizona. And is it an amazing movie? No.

But there's, like I said, there's a lot of fun stuff and it's a fun story. So I would recommend it.

If you want to watch, like I did, I was like, I want to watch an old movie that I have not seen that well, I'll watch it relatively quickly, and it'll be fun. This is exactly what I needed.

So, that's what I watched. Alonso, what about you? What have you seen? What movies about Barons have you seen? Uh, Baron's not

at the moment, a little slack on that front, but uh, I'm going to take a page from Stu and recommend two movies. Uh,

one of them is the new one from Max Walker Silverman, who had a film a couple years ago called A Love Story with Dale Dickey.

Uh, this film is rebuilding, and like most movies nowadays, it stars Josh O'Connor. Uh,

and he plays a guy in Colorado who's,

there are fires in the hills that displace him from his land and some of his neighbors as well. So they all wind up in kind of like a FEMA trailer camp trying to figure out what to do next.

He has a young daughter that he is jointly raising with his ex-wife, played by Megan Fahey.

And her mom is played by Amy Madigan, giving another great performance this year that is not Aunt Gladys.

But it's a really beautiful and quiet movie about people and the land and about sort of, you know, people at turning points in their lives and trying to figure out, you know, what they're going to do next.

And a film that is also, you know, quiet and beautiful and

very much about people in nature is Train Dreams,

which is

on or coming to Netflix. But if you have the chance to see it in theaters, I really recommend that you do because it is one of the most gorgeous films of this year.

It stars Joel Edgerton as a guy who in the early 20th century kind of travels to go work in like

lumber camps to like sort of clear out the forests in the Pacific Northwest as the railroads are coming in. He gets married to Felicity Jones.

They have a young child and, you know, he's got like his home life with them, but also kind of going off to do these jobs. And,

you know, things happen to them in their lives. And yeah, both of these films,

you know, they're, they're of the kind of

Terrence Malleck, Kelly Reichart school of like not a ton of dialogue.

Fast action, pulse pounding. Exactly, yes.

Cray edited in a blender, you know.

Yeah, I really, you know, Terrence Malek, you know, best from Crank.

So, yeah, I really love both of these movies. They're among my favorites of this year, and I hope people check them out.

I'm just, I went into a reverie, like, imagining a Terrence Malek crank where, you know, it's all shot at golden hour and

you know

beautiful yeah

haunting um thank you alonso for uh torturing us yet again

it's what i do thank you for having me back um

you should uh

certainly plug again if there are things you would love to uh plug your book again

sure yes the book is have yourself a movie little christmas revised and updated it is out now it is in stores everywhere ideally it's certainly uh at online bookseller as I can guarantee you'll find it there.

Go bug your library. Get them to get a copy too.
Why not?

You can also pick up my book, Hollywood Pride, that I did with TCM and Running Press. That's still out there in the world as well.

Read my stuff at the Film Verdict and check me out on the podcast Linoleum Knife with my husband, Dave White. We just hit our 15th anniversary.

We're not at flophouse level, but you know,

we're part of the old guard.

You can hear me on Maximum Film here on the Maximum Fun Network. I'm also on Breakfast All Day with Christy Lemire.
It's a YouTube show, but we also do a podcast.

And I pop in regularly at the Deck the Hallmark podcast to talk about Chris's movies on the regular. So, yes, go get sick of my voice.

We've all been guests on Maximum Film, right? Yeah. I believe you have fun.
Yeah.

And Linoleum Knife is, I should, I just want to make sure

that

Linoleum Knife. Linoleum Knife, I want to make a special plea for.
It's such such a great pie. I love listening to it.
It's such a,

it is like the perfect mixture of like

intellectual and cozy, you know, like it's like, it feels, there's something very cozy about it, but also I come away from it always with like an idea or a, or recommendation or something from it that I hadn't thought of before and wouldn't have known about otherwise.

So I really treasure it. Thank you, Elliot.
I appreciate it.

Well, as long as we're thanking people, we should thank Alex Smith, our producer. He goes by the the name Howell Dotty all over the internet.
He sure does.

Came up to see our Chicago live shows, and it was both a delight to see him and he was a big help at the shows. He got me way too drunk the night before by blame Alex exclusively.

Yeah,

you had no hand in that. You were led astray.

So thank you, Alex. How did Stuart know? Stuart doesn't have a lot of experience with alcohol.

I'm just, I'm just baby.

Oh, Stu is baby. Okay.
Yes, yes, Stu is baby, yeah. Uh-huh.
Um, and thank you, of course, to uh Maximum Fun, the home of our show, the home of Maximum Film, the home of a lot of great shows.

Check them out over at maximumfun.org. But for this episode of The Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy.
I'm Stuart Wellington.

I'm Elliot Kalen, author of Joke Farming, How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense on store shelves now. I should have mentioned it.
And we've been joined by Alonso Doralde. Bye.

A Merry Christmas, Martian, to us all. all.

And a Martian New Year.

Slowly gotten better. It's finishing the show.
It's only taken us almost two decades. One of these days is really going to nail it.

Much like people in both of your households, I have a cold. My fucking things up.
My energy is a little low. Yeah, you can hear

my throat doesn't feel so good. Yeah.

Should I go drink a bunch of NyQuil so I can match your

that'd be great. Yeah,

okay. Uh, I don't know what I'm looking for in my phone.
Let's just start the show.

Are you DMing with anybody? No, I think I was subconsciously like, I'm going to call up the stuff I'm going to meet later in the show, but that's so far ahead. Anyway, yeah, later is not now.

By definition, you've never said anything truer.

Okay. They call me the tautologist, Batman.

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