Standing Ovation

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss standing ovation.

[0:03] Do we stand up and cheer or sit down and jeer?

[0:09] Listen, won't you?

[0:12] A little, uh, you must remember this flavor at the end.

[0:15] Yeah.

[0:30] Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Flophouse.

[0:41] I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:42] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:44] Yo, yo, Elliot Kay in the house.

[0:46] Elliot Kaylin, that is.

[0:47] Oh, the original bad boy in The Flophouse is here.

[0:49] Blowing out the doors.

[0:50] Oh, he crossed his arms and everything.

[0:54] Hey, everyone, this is The Flophouse.

[0:56] As previously established, it is a podcast

[0:58] where we watch a movie

[0:59] that was a critical

[1:00] or a commercial flop

[1:01] and then we talk about it.

[1:02] This one...

[1:02] When did we previously

[1:03] establish that?

[1:03] You mean in previous episodes?

[1:05] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:06] Well, we said that

[1:07] it was the flop house.

[1:08] Yeah, that was true.

[1:09] The rest was implied.

[1:11] This is...

[1:11] And we're also in

[1:12] small Vember right now.

[1:13] Yeah.

[1:14] The time of year

[1:14] when we talk about the movies

[1:16] is a little smaller,

[1:17] a little bittier.

[1:18] But this movie...

[1:18] Today we're talking about...

[1:19] This is my idea

[1:21] of a big movie

[1:22] directed as it was

[1:23] by the same director

[1:24] who made

[1:24] The Philadelphia Experiment,

[1:26] Ice Pirates,

[1:27] Mac and Me,

[1:28] Mannequin 2 on the move.

[1:29] Tammy and the T-Rex.

[1:31] Wow.

[1:32] Wow.

[1:33] Wow.

[1:33] Yeah, a real pedigree.

[1:34] A real Flophouse pedigree.

[1:35] A boy makes bangers.

[1:40] Yeah, treat yourself to a Stuart Raffle movie tonight, won't you?

[1:46] Yeah, this is a movie I want to acknowledge.

[1:49] I got onto this one via Alonzo Duralde.

[1:53] He mentioned it in a previous episode when he was on,

[1:57] when we were talking about after last season,

[1:59] he was saying, you know,

[2:00] sometimes you hear through the grapevine

[2:02] that something is a little special.

[2:04] And he mentioned standing ovation

[2:06] as an example of such a special picture.

[2:10] And I screened it for my bad movie Monday night crew.

[2:17] And then I was like, guys, we got to do it.

[2:20] We got to do it for the flop house.

[2:21] Like seconds into the picture, you're like, okay.

[2:24] Well, I mean, like, it starts strong, but it gets stronger.

[2:30] It gets weirder.

[2:31] I will say there was certainly, not to spoil things for anyone as they listen to the episode,

[2:35] but when one of the characters, it turned out, had a menagerie of animals at her command

[2:39] that she could use to exact vengeance on her enemies,

[2:42] I was like, this is a slightly different movie than I expected.

[2:45] Yeah.

[2:46] It starts off like it's just going to be like a normal, normal-ish.

[2:49] Like it's a pitch perfect, you know.

[2:51] Yeah, a movie about this young girl singing.

[2:54] Bratz pitch perfect combo.

[2:55] Exactly.

[2:56] A bitch perfect for lack of a better word.

[2:58] Yeah, please.

[2:58] The B stands for Bratz.

[3:00] And then when they're suddenly at an off track

[3:02] As opposed to a stitch perfect,

[3:03] which is when Lilo and Stitch do some singing.

[3:05] Yeah.

[3:05] And that is perfect.

[3:08] That is.

[3:08] Because they get more perfect than Lilo and Stitch singing.

[3:12] Yeah, things get weird.

[3:13] I don't know.

[3:14] I don't want to steal Stuart's duties.

[3:18] My summaries?

[3:19] My summary thunder?

[3:20] Okay, so what's everybody's background

[3:23] with standing ovation.

[3:26] Well, I heard about it at the same time Dan did.

[3:28] Oh, yeah, me too.

[3:30] Have you ever given somebody a standing ovation?

[3:33] Well, of course, when the Flash entered the Speed Force.

[3:35] Oh, yeah, you stood up and cheered.

[3:37] You didn't necessarily give an ovation.

[3:37] You slapped your hands raw.

[3:40] That's true.

[3:41] Dan had to get skin grafts on his palms.

[3:43] I sued the movie The Flash after that or whatever movie it was.

[3:46] It was not The Flash.

[3:47] That's why it was thrown out of court

[3:49] just because that wasn't the movie it happened in.

[3:54] So I'm left with these medical bills

[3:55] thanks to the flash.

[3:58] Your palm transplant.

[3:59] They're just lucky that you found a cadaver

[4:01] with palm skin that could be transplanted.

[4:03] Of course, it was the cadaver of a serial killer.

[4:05] Now your palms have the urge to kill.

[4:07] Also, someone with much larger hands

[4:09] than I had in a while.

[4:10] The palm skin is just flapping around.

[4:12] Flapping around, yeah.

[4:14] It's like he has two palm leaves

[4:17] on his hands, yeah, yeah.

[4:19] You should be a professional swimmer

[4:20] with hands like those.

[4:22] Thanks.

[4:23] Because they're like flippers.

[4:25] Speaking of palm leaves.

[4:26] Okay.

[4:28] Not at all.

[4:29] Let's get into this bad boy.

[4:30] Doesn't this movie take place in New Jersey?

[4:33] Yeah, but I feel like at least part of it takes place in Atlantic City.

[4:37] And isn't there a Palm restaurant or resort there?

[4:39] I'm sure there's a Palm Steakhouse there or something like that.

[4:41] Okay.

[4:42] So I feel like I've actually eaten there.

[4:46] Listeners, write in.

[4:47] Has Stewart eaten at the Palm in Atlantic City?

[4:49] We don't know.

[4:50] Maybe you do.

[4:51] He certainly ate there at the airport.

[4:54] Yeah.

[4:56] Well, he didn't eat there.

[4:57] That's the problem.

[4:59] Well, that time, yeah, I didn't get to eat there.

[5:01] That was a whole kerfuffle.

[5:03] There is a palm in Atlantic City, so you could very well be there.

[5:05] Oh, thank God.

[5:06] Okay, cool.

[5:06] Your joke checks out.

[5:08] I fact-checked that joke.

[5:09] Yeah, okay, cool.

[5:10] Thank you.

[5:11] That's the best kind of joke.

[5:13] Factually correct.

[5:14] So I feel like we should probably get into the—

[5:16] It's funny, literally, because it's true.

[5:17] Yeah.

[5:18] So we should get into the meat of this thing because I feel like this is the kind of weird, bad movie that seems to, moment to moment, invent weirder and dumber things to throw at you.

[5:33] So there's, if you're stopping to comment on every little thing, we'd be here all day long.

[5:39] You're talking about, that's a real Achilles and the tortoise paradox.

[5:42] Each time you have to cover half the distance, you'll never catch up.

[5:45] You'll never get there.

[5:46] Yeah.

[5:46] Uh-huh.

[5:46] Yep.

[5:47] So, we begin.

[5:49] Zeno, the Greek philosopher, would have been stymied by this movie.

[5:53] That's what I'm saying.

[5:53] Because he'd be like, I don't understand what I'm seeing.

[5:56] It's an image that moves.

[5:58] There's sound coming out of it.

[5:59] Are these small people in front of me?

[6:01] What is a dance contest?

[6:04] I would say he would love the music, though, right?

[6:08] Oh, for sure.

[6:09] Or how could he not?

[6:10] This movie, it's this weird, just to say before we start,

[6:13] it's this weird thing because there's a lot of music

[6:14] that I assume was written for this movie

[6:16] that is almost like...

[6:18] Anything that isn't

[6:19] at like a standard.

[6:21] Yes.

[6:21] It's like alternate music.

[6:23] Like it almost sounds

[6:24] like real music,

[6:25] but there's something

[6:26] about it that's off.

[6:26] And then they'll sing

[6:27] Splish Splash.

[6:28] And I'm like,

[6:28] that's a real song.

[6:29] Like that's an actual song.

[6:30] I think the first one was,

[6:32] I don't know if this is

[6:33] the actual title or what,

[6:34] River Deep, Mountain High.

[6:35] Yeah, River Deep, Mountain High.

[6:36] And I'm like,

[6:36] did you splurge

[6:38] on a couple songs?

[6:38] I was so impressed.

[6:40] As soon as I'm like,

[6:41] wait, a real song

[6:41] is being played?

[6:42] There weren't a lot of them though.

[6:44] No.

[6:44] I think my favorite,

[6:45] of course,

[6:45] is when she's busking on the streets of Atlantic City

[6:49] and is singing just God Bless America.

[6:51] Yeah, well, that might be in the public domain now.

[6:55] Yeah, I think you can...

[6:56] I mean, she knows her audience.

[6:57] We can sing it right now.

[6:58] If you're going to busk in Atlantic City,

[7:00] you're either singing Springsteen

[7:01] or you're singing a really patriotic song.

[7:03] Yeah, she made 60 bucks.

[7:05] Although it's tough to do Springsteen now.

[7:07] The nation's divided on the whole group.

[7:09] That's true, that's true, except in New Jersey.

[7:10] Even the guys who love Trump,

[7:14] I think they're still like,

[7:15] yeah, but the boss,

[7:16] but those songs are from before,

[7:17] so it's okay.

[7:19] So MAGA guys in New Jersey

[7:20] think about Bruce Springsteen

[7:21] the way that we think about Woody Allen,

[7:23] where it's like,

[7:23] but this movie came out

[7:24] before the thing happened,

[7:26] so maybe it's okay to watch it.

[7:28] This is the Jackson 5

[7:31] when he was a kid.

[7:32] Oh, exactly.

[7:34] That's what we're saying.

[7:35] For those guys,

[7:36] now those guys finally understand

[7:38] the concept of a problematic fade.

[7:40] Yeah, exactly.

[7:41] This movie came out

[7:41] before John Landis killed some people,

[7:43] so maybe it's okay.

[7:45] before he got a taste for blood now he goes out nightly yeah searching for vick morrow no you

[7:51] already killed him once you can't do it again no no you go to the local like la helicopter rentals

[7:58] and there's a picture on the wall this director yeah it's like the punisher kiss that baby goodbye

[8:06] yeah yeah literally a baby oh no it was children it wasn't a baby there were small children who

[8:14] had been hired illegally.

[8:14] It was a real tragedy.

[8:15] It was horrible.

[8:15] Oh, that's very sad.

[8:18] You can tell how sad it is.

[8:19] By the way,

[8:20] I'm still joking.

[8:20] By how the laughter

[8:21] that's still coming out.

[8:22] Well, sometimes you laugh

[8:22] in shock at something.

[8:23] Thank you.

[8:25] Thanks, Dr. Ruth.

[8:27] Is that what Dr. Ruth

[8:28] dealt with?

[8:29] I assume, right?

[8:29] It was like trauma and shock?

[8:31] Is that it?

[8:31] I'm assuming.

[8:32] I didn't pay that close attention.

[8:33] That's what she was famous for,

[8:35] right?

[8:35] It was her PTSD.

[8:36] Thanks, Dr. Electro.

[8:37] What does she,

[8:38] what was her penises?

[8:41] Okay, so.

[8:43] Well, Dr. Ruth, PTSD stood for penis, taint, sex doctor.

[8:47] Yeah.

[8:48] That's what she specialized in.

[8:50] Yeah.

[8:50] The penis and the taint.

[8:52] Beyond the taint.

[8:53] No, no.

[8:53] Well, that's what Dr. Ruth Eastheimer dealt with.

[8:56] Westheimer was just the penis and the taint.

[8:58] Eastheimer was everything beyond that, you know, the anus.

[9:01] I want to hate you, Ellie, but I can't.

[9:03] You can't.

[9:03] The science is too tight.

[9:05] Important demarcations, yeah.

[9:07] So our movie, our adventure begins.

[9:09] So this children's movie that we're talking about.

[9:12] Our adventure begins at the Atlantic City Talent Competition.

[9:16] We meet a group of singers, five sisters, called the Wiggy Sisters.

[9:22] The Wiggies.

[9:23] They are known as the-

[9:24] They all wear wigs.

[9:25] Yeah, they all wear wigs.

[9:25] Their dad is a wigs company owner, yeah.

[9:28] Mr. Wig owns the most profitable wig business in America.

[9:32] And I want to, Mr. Wig, I forget the guy's name.

[9:35] Mr. Wigs.

[9:36] Mr. Wigs.

[9:36] Yeah.

[9:37] He is played by a gentleman who I learned when looking him up.

[9:42] He is the proprietor of a vocal training studio.

[9:45] Yes, this is Sal Dupree, Sal Dupree, yeah.

[9:47] And so I can only presume that the genesis of this film

[9:51] was Sal Dupree being like,

[9:52] hey, I got all these young kids who are talented.

[9:56] Let me schnooker Stuart Raffle into making a movie.

[9:59] Let me schnooker Stuart Raffle

[10:01] needed to be tricked into making this movie.

[10:04] This is clearly sort of a backdoor way

[10:07] of promoting his own students, I would believe.

[10:12] Or he said, I've got all these talented students.

[10:14] Let's make a movie with them.

[10:15] You notice that this movie was released after its initial release.

[10:19] There was a DVD release that was a standing ovation dance party

[10:23] that I think probably included additional dancing information.

[10:27] I haven't seen it.

[10:28] I'm not aware of those.

[10:29] No, I didn't know about it.

[10:29] Also, there are not one, but two soundtrack albums available.

[10:34] There's a lot of songs there should be.

[10:35] We'll play some of those for you later.

[10:37] I don't think so.

[10:41] The rights can't be that expensive.

[10:43] So we meet the Wiggies.

[10:45] Oh, wait.

[10:45] I'm just learning this now.

[10:46] This movie was associate produced by James Brolin.

[10:50] And so at the premiere, it was attended by James Brolin, Barbara Streisand, and Josh Brolin.

[10:54] I love the fact that Barbara Streisand had to watch this movie.

[10:59] I find it very charming.

[11:01] Yeah.

[11:05] So Mr. Wigs sabotages the group that's performing first,

[11:10] which is a young couple of kids

[11:12] who are singing some kind of weird song

[11:14] where she's like listing the,

[11:16] she's like going down the alphabet

[11:17] and it's like A is for amazing,

[11:20] B is be your best,

[11:22] and C, C, I told you, I know the alphabet.

[11:26] I'm like, what the fuck is happening?

[11:29] Like, what is going on here?

[11:30] An educational song about the alphabet.

[11:32] Kind of.

[11:33] So he interrupts that performance so I get fewer answers than I was hoping for.

[11:38] And this is the beginning of something, which is the Whigs and the Whiggies are constantly sabotaging groups that are, I'm just going to say it, not as talented as the Whiggies.

[11:46] The Whiggies are, I would, this movie makes so much more sense.

[11:48] They're sabotaging for the love of the game, though.

[11:49] I guess so.

[11:50] If the Whiggies were untalented, it's like we have to trick our way to the, but much like in Jem and the Holograms, Dan's favorite show, the Misfits are good.

[11:58] They're like a good band, right?

[11:59] So they don't need to be going after Jem.

[12:01] They can all be successful.

[12:03] They can win on their own.

[12:03] But that's kind of the moral, isn't it?

[12:04] You know, that like these are – they have a rot at their core.

[12:09] They can't just accept that they're better on the merits.

[12:13] Someone else has to lose.

[12:14] I see.

[12:15] I was going to say it was like Dumbo's feather, right?

[12:17] That the sabotage makes them think that's how they win.

[12:20] They don't actually need it.

[12:21] Oh, maybe.

[12:21] Yeah, yeah.

[12:22] Interesting.

[12:24] You're saying that's what gets their self-esteem up.

[12:27] They can be like, oh, I can have fun with this performance and do my best

[12:29] because I know the other team was sabotaged.

[12:31] Their self-esteem is brought up by sabotage.

[12:35] So the Wiggies have a brief encounter with our heroes,

[12:39] the Five Ovations,

[12:41] some junior high school girls with a variety of names

[12:46] that I don't remember.

[12:47] There's a Brittany, there's a Blaze,

[12:49] there's a Tatiana, and then others.

[12:53] I mean, clearly...

[12:53] And the rest.

[12:54] And the rest.

[12:55] But the breakout star character

[12:56] is not a member of the Five Ovations.

[12:58] No, no, no.

[12:59] We'll hear about her.

[13:00] There's a couple of breakout stars.

[13:01] There's one in particular, though.

[13:03] I think we know.

[13:05] So there is a brief moment where Mr. Wiggs is trying to encourage his daughters to perform well.

[13:12] And he says, let's win one for the Gipper, which they laugh at.

[13:15] And I'm like, that reference is too old for me.

[13:18] Yeah, no one understands what that means anymore.

[13:20] Those kids love movies about Newt Rockne.

[13:23] So they're very familiar with it.

[13:26] Okay, so.

[13:27] Not an actual Newt.

[13:28] The Wiggies go on stage and they perform their hit song.

[13:32] He just wore a Newt costume on the field.

[13:35] Oh, right.

[13:36] What, like a little kid that's running away from xenomorphs?

[13:38] Yeah, exactly, that Newt.

[13:39] Yeah, he was dressed as Newt from Aliens.

[13:43] And it distracted, it distracted the other team so much.

[13:46] Check it, check it.

[13:46] It's factually, my joke's factually.

[13:48] Because they were like, that movie won't come out for 40 years.

[13:52] At least.

[13:53] Yeah, so they're just worried that a small child was on the field.

[13:56] So they would not tackle him.

[13:58] I mean, has anyone ever tried that in real life?

[14:00] In a football game, you just dress as a small child.

[14:02] No one wants to hurt you.

[14:02] Let me check the rule book and see if there's anything in there that says that one can do that.

[14:06] They probably do regulations about pads and uniforms for football.

[14:09] Like pigtails sticking out from under your helmet.

[14:12] But those would be so easy to grab.

[14:13] That's the thing.

[14:14] Grab and yank.

[14:15] Yeah.

[14:15] But then they're breakaway pigtails.

[14:18] So they go to grab them.

[14:19] They break off.

[14:19] Like a flag football.

[14:21] Like a salamander.

[14:22] Exactly.

[14:22] Like a salamander or a newt.

[14:23] Exactly.

[14:24] Dan, I don't know what you're talking about.

[14:26] This is herpetology, son.

[14:28] We're talking herpetology.

[14:30] I guess I got a little bit out of sorts here.

[14:33] Before the Wiggies perform their hit song, Blush,

[14:37] the ovations are interrupted by Alana Wannabe.

[14:42] Breakout star, yeah.

[14:43] Breakout star of the movie,

[14:45] an even younger girl who is very excited about,

[14:49] she's very into being a superstar.

[14:51] All her songs are about how she wants to sing

[14:53] and she wants to dance.

[14:54] Her slogan is, I'm Alana Wannabe and I'm gonna be.

[14:57] Yeah, and she doesn't take no for an answer.

[14:59] No, she does not.

[15:00] Everyone keeps rejecting her, and it's like, you fools.

[15:03] Clearly, she has star power.

[15:04] Yeah, just bring her in.

[15:05] I mean, she is annoying, but she has star power.

[15:07] And what I liked about, later we meet Alana Wannabe's dad,

[15:10] and her dad is so super supportive,

[15:12] and just, they have such a great relationship.

[15:15] Such a girl dad, you know?

[15:16] Yeah, I love that there's no conflict in it.

[15:18] And he's like, I think it's time to give up.

[15:20] She's like, we got to keep going.

[15:21] He's like, all right, let's do it.

[15:24] Alana refers to herself as a little person at one point,

[15:27] And she means a child.

[15:28] But I was watching this.

[15:29] You'll appreciate this, Stuart.

[15:30] I was watching this with our old college friend, Liz, who had invited us over to her.

[15:36] I'm really glad that you made other people watch this.

[15:38] Yeah.

[15:39] And we were laughing at the idea because, like, a lot of bosses her dad around so much that we were imagining, like, what if she actually was just a little person and they were married?

[15:50] Oh, yeah.

[15:50] And that was what the relationship was.

[15:53] So she seems to be in charge here.

[15:54] It's like orphan.

[15:55] She's pretending to be a kid, but she's actually a little person.

[15:57] Yeah.

[15:58] Okay.

[16:00] So the Wiggies perform.

[16:01] Alana's in the wings doing all the moves just in case.

[16:04] But not in the wings.

[16:05] No.

[16:07] When the Wiggies are getting off stage, they tip the stage manager to put pepper.

[16:15] He has, like, this spice rack next to the fucking stage.

[16:18] All theaters have that.

[16:18] And he puts pepper on there.

[16:20] And all the Wiggies are wearing these, like, computer headphones.

[16:24] They look very clearly like the thing you would wear in 2005

[16:28] to, I don't know, play Quake and yell at your friends.

[16:31] So you, and he puts Pepper in all of the headsets

[16:36] so that when the ovations take the stage

[16:39] and they perform their number that I don't remember,

[16:43] they start to sneeze.

[16:45] Also, one of the ovations tears her dress

[16:48] because there was gum stuck to the chair,

[16:50] although I do want to point out.

[16:51] That's very strong gum.

[16:52] It's very strong gum, and I do want to point out

[16:55] that when rewinding the tape backwards,

[16:57] when the wiggies had left and the ovations went in,

[16:59] the gum was not on that chair.

[17:01] So somebody else put it in there.

[17:03] Yeah, I'm sorry.

[17:04] I hate to be...

[17:05] I'm going to say Alana Wannabe did it.

[17:06] I got to say, that's our only other suspect, really.

[17:10] Okay, so the ovations, obviously,

[17:12] they don't win this talent show.

[17:14] They were left off the stage.

[17:15] Most of the songs that the ovations and the wiggies sing

[17:18] are love songs to boys,

[17:20] or about how attractive they are to boys

[17:23] or how attractive they will be to boys.

[17:25] And as the movie went on, I was like,

[17:27] there's got to be some other subject for their songs

[17:30] than just, boy, you got to get with me.

[17:31] Or they want to be like a superstar, right?

[17:33] I guess, or they want to be a superstar like Molly Shannon, yeah.

[17:36] Then there's that little bit where there's like

[17:38] alien robots that show up on stage

[17:40] and get commanded to dance.

[17:42] That's the very end.

[17:42] I'm from outer space, make me dance.

[17:45] That's later, that's a great act.

[17:47] I am male pattern.

[17:48] That's where the ovations figure out

[17:50] The way to win is to outsource the dancing and performance to other people that they've brought in.

[17:55] Yeah, yeah.

[17:56] Okay.

[17:56] But that's the climax.

[17:58] A little bit dejected, the leader of the ovations, Brittany, gets a ride home from her grandpa.

[18:04] We learn that she has a little bit of a sad home life.

[18:07] They live above, somewhere off the boardwalk in Atlantic City, above what, like a pizzeria or something?

[18:12] They live over the boardwalk, not underneath.

[18:15] A song that is featured later in the movie.

[18:18] That's true, yeah.

[18:19] Her mother seems to have passed.

[18:23] Her dad disappeared a long time ago.

[18:25] And her grandfather takes care of her and her brother.

[18:26] And her grandfather is, you know,

[18:28] very off-the-boat Irish guy

[18:30] who just can't stop gambling his money away.

[18:33] Yeah.

[18:34] They decided to swerve away from the stereotype

[18:36] of him being an alcoholic

[18:37] by instead making him a gambling addict.

[18:40] Yeah.

[18:40] And Britney also has an older brother, Mark,

[18:42] who's very cool and also apparently writes

[18:45] all the songs and dance routines

[18:47] for every performer in this movie.

[18:49] Yeah, and I don't know whether it's just that.

[18:50] Not the actor, the character.

[18:52] He is kind of, like, their first big scene together

[18:55] is in a room where he is, like, playing guitar to himself

[18:58] and there's a bunch of candles lit.

[19:00] But it felt like there was, like, a little too much, like,

[19:03] Folgers coffee-style sexual tension

[19:05] between these supposed siblings.

[19:07] That I didn't really get.

[19:08] I mean, it was pointed out that the power got cut out

[19:11] because they didn't pay the power bill.

[19:13] But I'm like, who's paying the candles bill?

[19:16] I still don't think that, like, a teen boy is like, well, let me light up my candle collection.

[19:22] If he's going for, like, a meatloaf John Mellencamp type of thing, I could see him.

[19:28] And what young boy wouldn't want to go for a meatloaf John Mellencamp?

[19:31] Wouldn't want to play in kind of an Eric Clapton, Tears in Heaven type setting, yeah.

[19:35] Yeah.

[19:36] Yeah.

[19:37] One teenage boy can't identify with Tears in Heaven.

[19:43] Okay.

[19:44] What's wrong about a child buying because you didn't close a window?

[19:48] Oh, sad.

[19:49] Oh, man.

[19:49] We're only having fun stuff here.

[19:52] I don't know why this kid's movie is causing us to bring up so many tragedies of showbiz history.

[19:57] Yeah.

[19:57] Okay.

[19:58] So how do we get into Fatty Arbuckle's story?

[20:00] Why don't we talk about that on this episode?

[20:02] We're at school the next day, at middle school the next day.

[20:05] We find out that All Is Not Lost, the mega media company.

[20:09] This is not All Is Lost starring Robert Redford.

[20:11] No.

[20:11] So just get that out of your head.

[20:13] CDS, the media conglomerate, is starting a best video music contest and the grand prize is $1 million.

[20:23] The only challenge is you have to shoot your own video and you have to do your own music, an original song.

[20:29] Turns out the Wiggies already have a head start.

[20:31] They've rented out the school and they've brought in a choreographer from L.A.

[20:36] And they're performing an original number written by Mark, Brittany's brother, because he's, I guess, dating one of them.

[20:43] But this is also this is one of those weird things where Brittany is like, why don't you help us pay the rent?

[20:49] And then he's like, I'm selling my music right now to these people who have lots of money.

[20:53] And she's like, how dare you?

[20:54] How could you turn on the family?

[20:55] It's like you need money.

[20:57] Like, I assume he's being paid for his work, right?

[20:59] Probably like what?

[21:00] It's a real damned if you're damned if you don't situation with Brittany.

[21:03] You just brought up something that I think confused me when I was watching the movie, which is that for this contest, it has to be an original song.

[21:10] But aren't they shooting a music video later on?

[21:13] Like one of the music videos that they try and then reject is Riverdeep Mountain Hominy?

[21:18] Yes.

[21:18] So that wouldn't have qualified.

[21:20] They didn't enter that, though.

[21:22] I think that was mainly—

[21:23] That was a practice video?

[21:24] Yeah, that was a practice video.

[21:25] I think they were workshopping.

[21:26] Yeah, yeah.

[21:26] Okay.

[21:28] Okay.

[21:29] Or maybe this is a universe where they wrote that song.

[21:32] Later on, Brittany is...

[21:33] It's like a yesterday type situation.

[21:35] It's a world where Ike and Tina Turner never existed.

[21:37] And so that...

[21:38] How would that world be different?

[21:40] One of those people...

[21:41] One of those people we'd be better off with.

[21:44] Yeah, I think so.

[21:45] But would you be willing to sacrifice the other, Stuart?

[21:47] No, that's tough.

[21:48] I mean, we'd never know if we needed another hero or not.

[21:51] We'd never know.

[21:52] That's true.

[21:53] But if you wanted a private dancer, what would you do?

[21:56] What if you wanted to learn about the Nutbush City Limits?

[22:01] You couldn't do it, yeah.

[22:04] Impossible.

[22:05] No.

[22:05] So later on, Brittany is busking on the mean streets of Atlantic City, tough town.

[22:10] They are mean streets.

[22:11] It's a mean place.

[22:12] She's singing God Bless America over and over.

[22:15] And a guy does a real fast one and takes money out of the thing and replaces it with a single.

[22:21] He takes a $10 bill and replaces it with a single.

[22:23] She chases him down.

[22:24] A real The Grifters moment.

[22:25] Yeah.

[22:25] She's like, hey, I know I record the serial numbers of every bill that I put in my cap, and you are stealing.

[22:33] And then she is also aided by a woman we'd only seen hints of, a young girl named Joey, like, Badalucci.

[22:42] Yeah, second breakout character of the movie.

[22:44] Well, this is the character that I was like, Stuart's going to fall for Joey.

[22:48] Stuart's going to be, fire up the fucking concrete blonde, because I love me some Joey.

[22:55] Uh, so she, uh, she comes and she's like, yeah, let's describe Joey Belliger.

[23:02] She's a real street smart, you know, Jersey street smart kid, bag full of snakes, kind

[23:07] of a Philly accent.

[23:08] Yeah.

[23:09] I did think I was, it did confuse me cause I was like, wait, they're in LA city, but

[23:13] she sounds, her accent does sound more Philadelphia than New Jersey.

[23:16] I mean, they're pretty close.

[23:17] They are pretty.

[23:18] I mean, they're, they're very simple.

[23:19] I mean, you go from one to the other pretty easily.

[23:20] Yeah.

[23:21] And yeah, she's like, uh, child mobster.

[23:24] Yeah.

[23:24] She's, like, between a child mobster and a child gumshoe.

[23:29] Yes.

[23:30] And this actress, her name's Joey DeCarlo.

[23:34] I think she does a great job.

[23:35] I was like, this kid's great, this whole movie.

[23:37] No, I looked her up.

[23:37] I was, like, disappointed that she didn't go on to do other stuff.

[23:40] Because I'm like, if anyone here kind of has, like, a flair for comedy, it's this one.

[23:45] She's very funny in it, in a sincere way, yeah.

[23:48] So she shows up and gives Brittany a little bit of help

[23:51] and also gives her some racing tips for the track.

[23:54] which come in handy later when she tracks down her grandpa

[23:57] who is in a betting fever, a gambling fever at an OTB,

[24:03] and he's about to lose all of their rent money

[24:06] when she puts a bet based on the tip that Joey gave her.

[24:14] And of course, that tip pays out.

[24:16] Grandpa's like, great, we can double that money too.

[24:18] And she's like, uh-uh.

[24:20] You're cut off, Grandpa.

[24:20] She goes and talks to Joey.

[24:21] You win or you leave.

[24:22] Don't try to double it.

[24:24] Come on.

[24:24] Joey, who says, she's like, no problem, but you should let me be your manager.

[24:29] I was at the talent competition.

[24:31] She's like, if I'd been your manager then, they would have been sleeping with the fishes.

[24:36] I'm like, okay, you're going to kill the wigs.

[24:39] But that's fine.

[24:41] Who knows?

[24:42] And then she agrees, but there is one condition.

[24:45] She doesn't need pay, but she will need help finding the man who drove her father to die.

[24:52] stole the money from her father stole the money that led her father to die yeah eventually there

[24:58] will be a reason why she has enlisted uh this specific girl to help her on this quest although

[25:04] it doesn't totally make sense even then why but like it makes a little bit sense but i definitely

[25:10] until that reveal i was like why is britney the person you're asking yeah why do you have this

[25:15] like singer come on and britney never this is something i've learned on the show i'm working

[25:19] right now which is if there's a question that you want the audience to wonder about you have to have

[25:24] somebody articulate it or else the audience thinks it's a mistake that they're that they don't know

[25:29] the answer to it and so if she had just said well why me and joey goes like i got my answers i got

[25:34] my reasons or something like that or maybe there wasn't like that i missed it but like once you

[25:37] have a character ask the question the audience knows okay this is something the other people

[25:41] have thought about there will be an answer to this probably i just have to wait for it whereas

[25:46] Throughout most of the movie, I was like,

[25:47] I don't understand what part Brittany plays in her plan.

[25:49] She's not muscle to back her up.

[25:51] And she's unhelpful through most of the movie.

[25:54] Yeah.

[25:55] So now that we have a manager in tow,

[25:59] let's get back to our A plot, shall we?

[26:02] We go back to the high school or junior high school

[26:05] where there is a video shoot for the Wiggy's song.

[26:09] There is some grown men who are doing rapping and stuff,

[26:13] and I didn't like this at all.

[26:16] uh no thank you uh it was very strange and uh so they're you know they're having this party and

[26:23] kind of all the kids are invited to like get up on stage and party and her brother is shooting

[26:28] some of the video with a camera there are a lot of child like wheeler dealers it's like later on

[26:33] they'll be like kind of a there's like a uh a blind child who's sort of like a phil spectory

[26:38] style character and i'm like okay i guess everyone you're talking about eric bateman's blind brother

[26:45] who sings I Got the World on a String.

[26:49] And you know, the thing is,

[26:50] old blue eyes did it,

[26:51] but I think Eric Bateman's brother

[26:53] did a little bit better.

[26:55] That's the definitive version now.

[26:58] Okay, so speaking of Eric Bateman,

[27:00] this is where...

[27:00] That's the definitive version.

[27:02] That's the one you're going to hear

[27:02] in all the commercials from this point on, yeah.

[27:05] Speaking of Eric Bateman,

[27:07] the ovations are like,

[27:08] hey, Eric Bateman's always had a crush on you

[27:11] to one of them.

[27:12] I don't remember.

[27:13] I don't remember which one it is.

[27:14] They're like, you need to get in tight with him because his dad owns a recording studio.

[27:19] Just stay away from his brother, Patrick.

[27:22] You don't want to get involved with that guy.

[27:24] Well, I mean.

[27:25] If he starts talking about Huey Lewis, you got to leave.

[27:28] You got to go.

[27:30] If he puts on a clear raincoat, you do not want to be in that room.

[27:33] What are all these tarps for?

[27:34] So the girls go and start buttering up Eric Bateman.

[27:39] This leads to the ovations starting to shoot their first video where they are performing at a retirement home.

[27:48] Yep.

[27:49] And there's a lot of soft shoe and they're dancing and trying to get the old people to dance.

[27:53] I think we got a lot of like Six Flags guy style.

[27:57] Maybe some Charleston.

[27:58] There's one woman in particular at the old folks home who is really going for that Six Flags old man energy where she gets up and she's just dancing her heart out and making big faces.

[28:07] Yeah.

[28:07] But then the audience seems to not enjoy it after.

[28:10] It's weird.

[28:11] They're like, they're getting up and dancing.

[28:12] And then there's a moment where they lose the audience.

[28:14] And I couldn't quite figure out what was going on.

[28:16] There's something about the way this is shot where it looks like in the foreground, we have the ovations dancing.

[28:21] And then there's stuff going on in the background.

[28:23] But it looks like a green screen.

[28:25] Like the sizes of people is all over the map.

[28:28] Like there's a guy back there playing bass that looks like fucking Hagrid.

[28:31] And like there's just so many different sizes that I'm like, what's going on here?

[28:37] People come in a variety of sizes, you know.

[28:38] But is this some visual trickery, Stuart Raffel?

[28:41] They do have later, at the very end of the movie, you do see an animated frog crawl along a woman's face.

[28:47] So maybe they had some computer effects here and there, you know.

[28:50] That would make sense.

[28:51] Okay, so in the middle of, after they perform their first song, they then bring on, after a brief interruption from Alana Wannabe,

[29:01] they bring on Tatiana sing one of her hit songs.

[29:05] And then Joey and Brittany sneak off because nearby is one of the guys that Joey needs to

[29:10] shake down to get information about her father's money. They go outside, they spray some, what we

[29:17] learned is perfume, but is sprayed as if it's some kind of poison. And the only antidote is a dog

[29:24] treat. So she sprays it on a dog and then gives him a treat, threatens to spray this guy. He's

[29:30] like, no, but the guy that you're talking about, he kills everybody. And I'm like, that's going to

[29:34] be crazy when we think about it later.

[29:38] And they get a little bit of, they get another

[29:40] lead. These children.

[29:42] But also considering how easily

[29:44] that character is redeemed at the end.

[29:46] It's like, oh, he was a murderous mobster,

[29:48] but now we're supposed to like him at the end.

[29:49] Now, after this scene, we get

[29:52] one of the good scenes in the

[29:54] movie where Alana, dejected, having

[29:56] been rejected by the ovations again, is

[29:58] leaving the nursing home, being picked up by

[30:00] her father, and she's like,

[30:02] nobody wants me. He's like, that's crazy, you're the

[30:04] best and uh and she's like well i if i'm gonna do something i need backup dancers she's like what

[30:10] about your cousins and she's like they're in florida and we're like don't worry guys we're

[30:14] gonna meet her cousins later okay uh and so he's like if you need backup dancers i got it so now

[30:21] we got a scene where alana is in full outfit and she is at a firehouse which i assume her father

[30:28] works at. Either works at or owns,

[30:30] you know, I don't know.

[30:31] Do you own a firehouse? Maybe it's a

[30:33] private firehouse. Yeah, I don't know.

[30:35] So she, we get a scene of her bossing

[30:38] around these firemen who are in full

[30:39] uniform and hitting them. She's like a

[30:41] Nazi commandant, like yelling at them

[30:43] and hitting them with like a

[30:45] cane or a stick or something. I don't think

[30:47] it's a horse whip. I don't know what it is.

[30:49] Yeah, so they do, yeah, it's a riding crop.

[30:51] Riding crop, yeah, this is. And they,

[30:53] you know, she yells at them and they

[30:56] they prepare to shoot this video.

[30:59] Yeah.

[31:00] And later we see some of it.

[31:01] Yeah, we'll see the results.

[31:03] Stay tuned.

[31:04] Back in the studio,

[31:05] we meet,

[31:06] as we mentioned before,

[31:09] Eric,

[31:10] wait,

[31:10] Eric Bateman's brother.

[31:12] Who I think is only credited as,

[31:13] I think the character's name

[31:14] is just Bateman also.

[31:15] Bateman, yeah.

[31:16] So he is,

[31:17] he's blind and again,

[31:18] he is blind.

[31:19] It could be any of them.

[31:21] Or Patrick as a kid.

[31:22] Yeah, again.

[31:24] Or another Bateman who's not famous.

[31:26] Could be Batman and they misspelled it

[31:29] Could be a misspelled Batman, that's true

[31:31] Well, that's what happened

[31:33] when Batman got to Ellis Island

[31:34] What's your name?

[31:39] I'm Batman

[31:39] What's that, Batman? I'll just write that down

[31:41] He thought it was too ethnic

[31:44] He's like, well, I guess name is destiny

[31:46] Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot

[31:49] I guess I'll become a bat

[31:51] So, when they're in the studio

[31:55] They begin to sing a song, which is, what, River Deep Mountain High.

[32:00] And this kind of blurs their performance in the studio,

[32:03] blurs together with a kind of a video shoot with them playing around on a beach.

[32:07] There's guys riding around on jet skis.

[32:10] It's nuts.

[32:11] Okay.

[32:14] We then, after, now we have the next best scene in the movie

[32:17] where the ovations are at a diner and they're talking about what's going on.

[32:21] And their diner meal is interrupted by the Wiggs family who show up and talk some shit.

[32:28] Even rich people in New Jersey eat at diners.

[32:30] They're just what you do.

[32:31] And then they sit down, and this is where we get the hit number, peas and queues, like soup to nuts, mind your peas and queues.

[32:39] When I first saw this, and I did not know that he, like, was a singing coach, I was like, oh, Mr. Wiggs gets a song?

[32:46] Yeah, he does.

[32:48] More than one.

[32:49] But this song is, this is, I think, my favorite song in the whole movie.

[32:53] It's incredible.

[32:54] So after that ABC song at the beginning, we were like, what is this?

[32:59] Who is this for?

[33:00] And also because it's like, if you don't have good manners, no food for you or something like that.

[33:05] Eat your bread like the upper crust do.

[33:07] That's fucking wordplay, dude.

[33:10] The upper crust, yeah.

[33:12] And they're performing for nobody.

[33:15] Like there's no audience.

[33:16] No one's responding to this.

[33:17] they just love to sing all the time

[33:19] and they're singing unfortunately

[33:21] their song, this hit song

[33:24] which is available on the

[33:26] how insane would this movie be

[33:28] if it was actually a jukebox musical

[33:29] and these are all songs that pre-existed

[33:32] that one band did

[33:33] and it's like yeah we did Soup to Nuts of course

[33:36] because we did a song about table manners

[33:37] we had to fit it in there

[33:38] so they're interrupted

[33:42] by a frog prank

[33:44] because

[33:45] Joey snuck a frog

[33:48] into the soup, which

[33:50] you go to a diner, you gotta try the soup, right?

[33:52] The soup du jour. Oh, to start off, to have a little

[33:54] cup of soup before the rest of the meal, that's just

[33:56] the way you do it. It's just a nice little... Yeah, it's normal.

[33:58] You're welcoming your stomach to the act of

[34:00] eating in a warm way, in an

[34:02] unchallenging way, in a delicious way.

[34:04] You're getting your mouth ready

[34:05] for the work to come.

[34:07] You're saying teeth, teeth, get

[34:09] used to the idea you're about to do work, but it's

[34:11] not just yet. Start stretching, start warming

[34:13] up. The soup will go first, and

[34:15] then teeth it's your turn to really go to town yeah and then the nuts are the way to say goodbye

[34:21] to that meal exactly it's like traditional ending nuts exactly yeah the you end with some nuts and

[34:26] it's like teeth you've been doing great work but now i really need you to focus this is when you

[34:30] really got to get get your head into the game stomach don't worry the teeth are going to take

[34:35] this one and you're just going to do a little bit of backup you know and then intestines then it's

[34:40] your time to shine then you know the meal is over you get to work while everyone else rests it's

[34:44] beautiful every every part of the body takes a shift basically elliot's really workshopping

[34:48] this children's book about the digestion process yeah that elliot like gives his like body a little

[34:54] pep talk before he has any meal i've got to because i want them to know that i care about

[34:57] them but i expect to work from them you know i expect them to do their best right right

[35:01] that's leadership don't have it you know give 110 yeah that comes into play later exactly once

[35:08] the intestines are done then the ss hold hold hold my beer i'll take care of this one now it's time

[35:12] Now it's time for me to go to work and do what I was made to do.

[35:18] Here's my little trumpet solo.

[35:20] Yeah.

[35:22] Now I get to be the hero.

[35:24] And then the toilet is like, I'll get it from here, guys.

[35:26] I'm not a part of the body.

[35:27] But you know what?

[35:28] I'm in the system.

[35:29] I'm making it work.

[35:30] Let's cooperate together.

[35:32] Yeah, I'm an ally.

[35:32] I'm an ally is what the toilet is saying.

[35:35] So this frog is, this is when we were first introduced to the idea that, as we learned,

[35:38] Joey has a menagerie of animal helpers.

[35:41] Of creatures, yeah.

[35:41] Creatures that she carries in her bag, yeah.

[35:43] One of them is this frog that scares everybody

[35:45] and kind of ruins the, not only ruins the song,

[35:49] but also seems to ruin their entire lunch.

[35:51] Yeah, ruin the meal, yeah.

[35:52] Okay, so the next-

[35:53] Later there's a frog in my soup.

[35:57] What's he doing?

[35:58] The backstroke.

[35:58] The backstroke, yeah.

[35:59] It's a, yeah.

[36:01] The next step on this journey takes us to

[36:04] the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia.

[36:06] That's right.

[36:07] Where Joey has organized a commercial shoot

[36:10] where three of the ovations, for some reason,

[36:13] two of them, I guess, probably legally not allowed

[36:15] to leave the state of New Jersey.

[36:17] Yeah, they're under house arrest.

[36:19] Their parole officers would be on their case if they left, yeah.

[36:22] They perform in this commercial shoot

[36:25] that involves some kind of gross drink

[36:27] that they keep drinking and spitting out.

[36:28] And this is by far the worst performance they give

[36:30] in terms of singing and dancing in the movie.

[36:33] And so they're really not bringing their A-game

[36:34] for this local commercial for a bad regional soda.

[36:38] And what's, this is really one of the many moments in the movie where I'm like, how many fucking actors did they hire for this movie?

[36:46] Well, that's like another thing that makes more sense when you're like, well, they had access to like a whole school of talent.

[36:51] But I thought it was very funny that like the ovations keep adding members to their thing and like to their group.

[36:59] They're essentially a circus by the end of it.

[37:02] Yeah, well, it's like the end of like Muppet State Manhattan where they're like, yeah, all of you that we've seen through the movie, you're part of it.

[37:08] the show now and i'm like but you made it to the finals of the singing competition based on like

[37:13] this number of people is it allowed that you're now like twice or three times as many people on

[37:19] stage in the real book i don't know i think regularly featuring uncredited members yes

[37:24] this movie does have big we need roles for everybody in class for the school play

[37:29] energy where it's like all right bring in we we need we have three people all right

[37:34] make a scene where they're shooting a commercial and then and then joey takes britney's like let's

[37:38] leave this commercial shoot i need you to come with me on this on my side quest mission i remember

[37:42] there's like an earlier scene where like the the lead uh ovation like negotiates more money for

[37:49] backup dancers or whatever and i'm like no no like you can't pay your rent don't pay backup dancers

[37:55] she negotiates more for the backup dancers than she and her other ovations will get from the

[37:59] commercial yeah she's not really keeping her own economic interests in mind here yeah so after you

[38:06] know what i guess they finished the commercial shoot and the others are like we're gonna go home

[38:08] and britney and joey are like we'll just hang around in philly for a while we'll meet you back

[38:11] at home i mean that's the thing that the whole commercial shoot was really a cover because

[38:15] joey has tracked down another link in this chain and they go to a fun house uh and shake down a

[38:23] mobster who is i guess putting away stuff i do love this like they approach a guy and he's like

[38:28] I'm just putting away stock

[38:30] like he's a guy

[38:30] being interrogated

[38:31] on an episode of SVU

[38:33] or something

[38:33] every episode of SVU

[38:35] Alciapienza

[38:36] from

[38:36] yeah he's from the Sopranos

[38:37] Sopranos yeah

[38:38] oh check out

[38:39] fucking Sopranos guy

[38:40] over here

[38:40] Dan's the Sopranos guy

[38:42] he loves the Sopranos now

[38:43] he's all about the Sopranos

[38:44] these days

[38:44] I mean if you shoot

[38:46] something in New York

[38:47] you're gonna get

[38:47] a Law and Order actor

[38:48] if you shoot something

[38:48] in New Jersey

[38:49] a Sopranos actor

[38:49] that's just the way it is

[38:50] you shoot something

[38:52] in Alaska

[38:53] a Deadliest Catch

[38:53] that's just the way it is

[38:54] that's the law of the land

[38:56] Throw it back.

[38:58] If you shoot something in Atlanta,

[38:59] you're going to get a Real Housewives of Atlanta.

[39:00] Especially if you're shooting an episode

[39:01] of Real Housewives of Atlanta,

[39:03] then you'll definitely get a bunch of them.

[39:04] Yeah, you're going to get all of them.

[39:04] Presumably, yeah.

[39:06] So they shake this guy down using a cobra.

[39:09] I do love the cobra effects here

[39:12] because the cobra initially,

[39:14] you know, there's some hero shots of an actual cobra,

[39:17] but anytime it shoots Al Sapienza

[39:20] being scared of the cobra,

[39:22] it looks very fake.

[39:23] It looks really fun.

[39:24] Of course, they decided not to actually threaten

[39:26] Al Sapienza with a real Cobra, yeah.

[39:28] His fucking CV says

[39:30] Cobra skills.

[39:33] They hired him for a job.

[39:34] But then it turned out he didn't have it.

[39:36] Every actor does that. It also says horseback riding.

[39:38] Exactly, exactly. If it says

[39:39] do you speak French? Of course I speak French.

[39:42] I'll do whatever I need to do to get this job. And then the day

[39:44] comes. So you'll say this in French? I don't know French.

[39:46] You know. That's literally what happens

[39:48] in, if anyone's ever read, if you guys have ever read

[39:49] Bob Balaban's Close Encounters of the Third Kind

[39:52] diary book, it's really good.

[39:54] But he talks about how they're like, you speak French, right?

[39:56] And he's like, he gives them a couple sentences of French he learned in high school.

[39:59] And they're like, perfect.

[40:00] And then later on, he's like, I got to learn French really fast.

[40:03] I'm going to be hanging around Francois Truffaut all day, apparently.

[40:09] So back to the Atlantic City Boardwalk.

[40:13] Back to reality, yeah.

[40:15] The Ovations are shooting the video that will eventually be the one they use for their hit song, Scream, where they initially, it's not working.

[40:24] and then they find a group of boys

[40:26] sitting on a table.

[40:27] Again, the five ovations success

[40:29] is always built on some other group of people

[40:31] being absorbed into the five ovations, yeah.

[40:34] They find these boys

[40:34] and they kind of like challenge them

[40:37] into dancing in it.

[40:37] It's like a sassy dance battle.

[40:38] Yeah, it's a Top That style.

[40:40] It's very much a Top That.

[40:42] And the song Scream, of course, in this case.

[40:44] None of the dancing is as good

[40:46] as the dancing in Top That.

[40:47] No, no.

[40:47] Perhaps the greatest of the Fred Astaire

[40:49] Ginger Rogers films, yeah.

[40:51] And we'll later find out this song,

[40:53] At least the melody was stolen from Britney's brother, Mark.

[40:57] Yeah.

[40:58] Which doesn't disqualify them, but maybe it should.

[41:01] So they edit this video.

[41:03] They love it, and they're like, let's go out and celebrate.

[41:05] And while they leave the studio, one of the wiggies and one of her enforcers sneaks back in,

[41:11] and they're going to edit that video, uh-oh, and probably make it look bad.

[41:15] And the wiggy is in disguise as a punk, but I think the enforcer is just a punk.

[41:19] There's like this group of punks that Mark hangs out with,

[41:22] And I'm like, you only see him a little bit.

[41:23] But anyway, when she showed up with blue hair,

[41:25] I didn't notice that it was the same character at first.

[41:27] And I was like, who's this new character?

[41:28] Hold on a second.

[41:29] And I was disappointed that she wasn't actually a character.

[41:32] So next day in school, we're getting some information.

[41:36] The nominees for the semifinals have been announced.

[41:41] The Wiggies are definitely in.

[41:43] It seems like the ovations didn't make it.

[41:46] Later on, we'll find out, very soon we'll find out

[41:49] that one of the other contestants was disqualified,

[41:52] so they're in anyway,

[41:53] which feels like a weird ruse here.

[41:55] It does.

[41:57] Yeah, they could have just had the ovations.

[41:58] And also, the fact the ovations do so much

[42:00] that should get them disqualified.

[42:02] It's like, what did this other group do?

[42:03] Did they murder their competitors?

[42:05] Like, what happened?

[42:06] I don't understand.

[42:07] How did they get disqualified?

[42:08] Were they all adults, it turns out?

[42:10] You know, who just put freckles on their faces

[42:12] and wore big pigtails?

[42:13] I don't understand.

[42:14] Next, we get a somewhat unrelated scene

[42:17] that is one of my favorites in the movie,

[42:18] where Brittany and Joey are meeting up

[42:22] at an arcade to talk business.

[42:25] When the guy at the soda stand or whatever

[42:28] is like, what are you drinking?

[42:30] Brittany asks for a skinny water,

[42:32] which I'm like, what the fuck is that?

[42:34] And then Joey orders a pepperoni

[42:37] to which the guy replies, small or large?

[42:40] And I'm like, what?

[42:43] When is that a fucking follow-up?

[42:45] Small or large pepperoni drink.

[42:48] uh it's it's uh and then a couple of the punks come in and start accosting them

[42:53] and that's when joey uses her bag to incapacitate one of the goons with a electric eel and then a

[43:01] bunch of scorpions spill out so she has been walking around her commands carrying electric

[43:06] scorpions and she can control she's like snapping fingers going back in the bag guys and the

[43:10] scorpions go back in this is this opens up so many questions for me the movie does not bother to

[43:16] answer. Like, is she

[43:18] a witch? Has she trained

[43:20] these animals? Like, how is

[43:22] she keeping this electric eel alive in her bag?

[43:24] That's a fish. It's water.

[43:25] It's a pill of water. And then how did the scorpion

[43:28] survive? Exactly. Dan,

[43:30] I've got so many questions. Incompatible

[43:32] animals.

[43:34] Did she give them, like, a little

[43:36] scuba gear for surviving

[43:38] underwater? Probably. Does she have a

[43:40] second container in the bag?

[43:41] Oh, two compartments in the

[43:44] bag. That's not a bad idea.

[43:46] I mean, if you're going to keep a water creature and non-water creatures, it's a great idea.

[43:50] I'd say it's the only way to do it.

[43:51] It's one of the top ideas.

[43:52] It's easier than teaching scorpions to breathe water.

[43:55] To tread water.

[43:57] If she had a lungfish in there, I'd be like, okay, it can survive as long as it's wet for a certain amount of time.

[44:01] But it's an electric eel.

[44:03] A lungfish is not going to shock somebody.

[44:04] And we see it on screen shocking him.

[44:06] So it has to be an electric eel.

[44:09] So Brittany goes home to puzzle all these.

[44:11] Movie, show us the math.

[44:12] We don't understand.

[44:12] Brittany goes home to puzzle all these things while her grandpa fixes her up a bowl of struggle soup.

[44:18] She's like, Gramps, I think I'm friends with some kind of magic person.

[44:24] With some kind of magic mobster girl.

[44:27] She has all these familiars.

[44:29] Drink your water and potato soup.

[44:32] I think you're dealing with a mobster who's one of the fae folk.

[44:34] One of the little folk of the forest.

[44:37] Oh, really?

[44:38] Wow.

[44:38] So this is also when Brittany learns a little bit more

[44:42] about her family backstory,

[44:44] that her brother's romantic entanglement with the Whiggies

[44:48] is very similar to her father's mistakes

[44:51] when it comes to picking women,

[44:53] and that her father, who is no longer in the picture,

[44:55] would always fight with their mother,

[44:58] and at some point, she called the police on him,

[45:01] and he was arrested and put in jail

[45:02] for, I'm guessing, domestic abuse?

[45:04] It must be something like that.

[45:06] And then when he was released from jail,

[45:08] He just disappeared.

[45:09] He abandoned the family.

[45:10] But not before telling them his catchphrase,

[45:13] dumb is dumb and there ain't nothing dumber.

[45:15] Yeah.

[45:16] Wait, is that real?

[45:17] Is that from you?

[45:18] Yeah, yeah.

[45:19] That's a plot point later.

[45:21] That's a big important thing later.

[45:22] Yeah, that's part of the identification routine.

[45:24] And then later on, Brittany will be looking longingly

[45:27] at a picture of her parents holding her as a baby

[45:30] or her brother as a baby.

[45:31] I don't know for sure.

[45:32] Get the DNA test.

[45:33] Only one way to find out.

[45:34] The picture of her father.

[45:36] Did we get a DNA sample from a picture?

[45:37] Probably not.

[45:39] It depends.

[45:41] Did they touch the picture?

[45:43] Yeah.

[45:43] That's a good point.

[45:44] Maybe.

[45:44] Yeah, I mean, I have some pictures that you could probably get a T-shirt.

[45:48] Whoa.

[45:49] Oh, doctor.

[45:55] So the face of her father in the photograph has been blacked out with a Sharpie.

[46:02] Yeah, to protect his anonymity.

[46:03] But there is a very kind of strange tattoo of, like, a heart and a cuff around his wrist.

[46:12] Yep.

[46:12] So that will hopefully come up later.

[46:16] Don't worry.

[46:17] Alana Wannabe has also been accepted into the semifinals.

[46:22] So she's also going.

[46:23] She is going to be.

[46:24] They're all eligible for the $1 million prize.

[46:27] Mm-hmm.

[46:28] They're all going to New York City.

[46:31] So we get a little bit of footage of New York City and Times Square.

[46:34] You can date exactly when this movie was made because of the ad that is prominently placed for Demetri Martin's stand-up special on Comedy Central, which is right next to the big Jumbotron that they are broadcasting this dance competition on.

[46:48] And there's definitely footage at various points of, like, green-screened cars driving or, like, pulling up in front of things.

[46:55] Yeah.

[46:56] Yeah, it's great.

[46:57] Okay.

[46:58] Okay, so we finally get to see at least clips of the music videos that our heroes have all shot.

[47:04] We see bits of Alana Wannabe's dreams where she is basically bragging about how great she is

[47:10] while a bunch of firemen dance behind her.

[47:11] And then there's a weird part where she is in like a department store window and she's like tiny

[47:16] and she is next to a bear and then she and the bear both get up and start dancing

[47:21] for the amusement of a little kid.

[47:23] It's great.

[47:23] Yeah, it's a music video.

[47:24] It doesn't have to make sense.

[47:25] Yeah, I guess you're right.

[47:26] Thanks, Spike Jones.

[47:28] then we get to see

[47:29] no no no

[47:30] that's Elliot

[47:30] oh I wasn't

[47:33] looking for a second

[47:33] I thought Spike Jones

[47:34] was a guest

[47:34] no no no

[47:35] neither the director

[47:38] nor the comedy musician

[47:39] of the 1940s

[47:40] yeah

[47:41] so

[47:42] we get to see

[47:43] the Wiggies video

[47:44] for I think

[47:45] Superstars

[47:46] which is a lot of footage

[47:47] and there's

[47:47] that we had kind of

[47:49] seen earlier

[47:49] them like dancing around

[47:50] and doing stuff

[47:51] and their father

[47:52] is in a

[47:52] like a Beethoven wig

[47:53] playing the piano

[47:54] yeah

[47:55] and he is of course

[47:57] I can't stress enough

[47:58] how crazy he looks

[48:00] in every scene

[48:01] yeah

[48:01] he wears big

[48:03] crazy clothes

[48:03] he's always wearing

[48:04] a different wig

[48:05] and his wigs are insane

[48:05] yeah

[48:06] uh yeah

[48:08] he is a larger than life

[48:09] character

[48:10] yes

[48:10] later on

[48:11] there's a

[48:11] there's like a young

[48:12] young uh

[48:14] Einstein style

[48:15] uh

[48:16] shock wig

[48:17] kind of um

[48:18] and does

[48:19] and does he get a bath scene

[48:20] yes

[48:20] you do get to see him

[48:21] in a bathtub later

[48:22] so don't worry

[48:22] yeah

[48:23] if you were waiting

[48:24] to see him topless

[48:25] covered in water

[48:26] and bubbles

[48:27] You get it.

[48:27] You get it, yeah.

[48:29] In case you were wondering,

[48:30] hey, what's under those loud clothes?

[48:32] Yeah, yeah.

[48:33] All the people who came to this kid's movie

[48:35] waiting to see some man meat.

[48:38] So we also see the Ovations video for Scream,

[48:42] which they had filmed on the boardwalk earlier

[48:45] with those boys.

[48:46] And of course, somebody re-edited it

[48:48] and inserted like farts and realistic vomit

[48:52] and all other kinds of things.

[48:53] They did an amazing job with the vomit effects.

[48:55] If those are high school students,

[48:57] or junior high students who edit it.

[48:58] They did an amazing job making it look like

[49:00] she was throwing up all over the other people.

[49:02] I'm going to say, Todd Vizzieri, get them in there.

[49:03] Yeah, come on.

[49:04] These are prodigies.

[49:05] Tap them in.

[49:06] Tap them in.

[49:07] But it's only at the end of the music video.

[49:08] So you do get to see, like, most of the music video

[49:11] and then all this, like, stuff at the end.

[49:14] So the audience is, like, loving it.

[49:15] They're like, oh, how hilarious.

[49:18] So they're intentional.

[49:19] It's a classic for producers.

[49:21] They should hate it, but they love it.

[49:23] They're announcing which of those semifinalists

[49:26] They're getting into the finals.

[49:28] Of course, the Wiggies are in because they're incredible.

[49:33] And the ovations make it in.

[49:34] They're genuinely very good at what they're doing.

[49:36] Alana does not make it in, and she is not happy about it.

[49:39] But the ovations are in despite the edit to their video.

[49:43] Some might say because.

[49:44] Yeah.

[49:47] Are people disappointed when they go to a Weird Al show and it's funny?

[49:51] I don't think so.

[49:52] I'm sure some people are.

[49:53] Maybe, yeah.

[49:54] I was looking for something weird.

[49:56] I'm not funny.

[49:58] I wanted to have my mind turned inside.

[50:00] I wanted to be mind-freaked.

[50:02] Oh, you've got to see a different guy for that.

[50:03] Oh, okay, never mind.

[50:05] But wait, I thought that guy was an angel.

[50:10] No, just a Chris.

[50:11] Oh, okay.

[50:13] A Ruth's Chris?

[50:15] Yeah, Ruth's Chris.

[50:17] Yeah, a strangely named steak restaurant.

[50:21] Yep.

[50:23] So, at some point, Brittany's brother, Mark, broke up with—

[50:27] Have you guys ever been to Ruth's Christ?

[50:30] I've heard the good news, yeah.

[50:32] How does he differ from regular Christ?

[50:34] Well, he belongs to Ruth.

[50:36] Okay.

[50:37] So, at some point, Brittany's brother, Mark, broke up with whichever wiggy he was dating.

[50:42] They're all the same.

[50:43] And he—

[50:44] Wow.

[50:44] He compliments her—

[50:46] Dan, tell me some personality differences between the wiggies.

[50:50] Well, there's one nicer wiggy because at the end, that wiggy congratulates the ovations.

[50:58] She's the one who doesn't sweep the leg.

[51:00] Yeah.

[51:01] That's all I got.

[51:05] So, Brittany and Mark kind of come up with a scheme.

[51:09] They're like, hey, maybe we should work together.

[51:11] And Mark's like, I got a new song, but I don't know if you guys can handle it.

[51:15] It requires some really complicated dancing.

[51:18] So enter some dancer auditions where they audition Jasmine and two other people.

[51:26] One is a little boy who dances really crazy, and then one is a very flexible girl.

[51:31] Like a contortionist, yeah.

[51:32] The idea that this songwriter is like, this song requires too much complex dancing for you guys to do as a song.

[51:43] I don't quite see how that follows, but okay.

[51:48] I mean, you're really limiting the – if you're a professional songwriter, you're limiting the market for your music if you're writing a song that requires an elaborate dance.

[51:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[51:56] Even Land of a Thousand Dances doesn't really require a thousand dancers.

[51:59] It just has a few dances, really.

[52:01] Just a few.

[52:01] To be honest, you should sue them for false advertising, yeah.

[52:04] So the ovations are all ready to sign.

[52:06] At least Land of Lakes has those lakes, you know.

[52:09] And every stick of butter.

[52:12] There's at least two lakes, plural, yeah.

[52:15] And Land's End, you could fall right off the edge of that thing, right?

[52:18] of space.

[52:19] That's why I never go. It's too dangerous.

[52:21] Why I never go to Howard's end either.

[52:23] Oh no. Howard's end is, it's either

[52:25] the end of the world or it's just some guy named Howard's butt

[52:28] and you don't need it.

[52:30] No, we've rented Howard's end

[52:31] We've rented Howard's end for the summer.

[52:33] What?

[52:36] We're just camping out

[52:37] on this guy's butt.

[52:42] He's not happy about it.

[52:43] He's not happy about it, but he didn't have to put up the ad

[52:45] renting his end.

[52:47] So, they're all ready to hire these new dancers, but uh-oh, there's a catch.

[52:52] These are Alana Wannabe's cousins, and she is officially their manager.

[52:57] So, they have to strike a deal, which we'll learn is to include Alana in the performance.

[53:02] Finally, the superstar has the vehicle.

[53:06] Now, the Whiggies throw a party, I guess, for being entered into the finals,

[53:11] is where they're singing Splish Splash, Taking a Bath,

[53:14] while we get to see Mr. Whig washing himself.

[53:17] Yeah, as suggested in the lyrics.

[53:19] While he's washing himself.

[53:21] And he's still wearing a wig in the tub too, right?

[53:24] Yeah, probably.

[53:25] I got to say, guys, Splish Splash is one of the top songs to sing

[53:29] while you're taking a bath.

[53:32] I have to say, it is one of, if not the third most appropriate songs to sing in a bath.

[53:39] Yeah, yeah, thanks.

[53:40] I didn't realize Steve Harvey was hosting this podcast.

[53:44] One of the songs to sing when you're taking a bath.

[53:45] In my personal opinion, Splish Splash is one of the best ones.

[53:49] Yeah.

[53:49] One of the top.

[53:50] Even though it's they say I was taking a bath in the past tense.

[53:54] Well, you're personally in the bath.

[53:55] Seems inappropriate to me.

[53:59] I was taking a bath a moment ago and I still am.

[54:02] Yeah.

[54:02] What are their bath songs?

[54:04] I mean, there's Rubber Ducky.

[54:04] That's pretty much the only other one, right?

[54:05] That's the other one.

[54:07] It makes bath time lots of fun.

[54:08] And again, that doesn't have to be while you're in the bath.

[54:10] As long as the Rubber Ducky is there to hear the song, you can sing it.

[54:15] Unless it's a case of apostrophe, the rhetorical device where you're addressing something that cannot address back either because it can't talk or it's not there, you know.

[54:23] I guess for rubber ducky, that always applies because it can't talk.

[54:25] I guess it can squeak back.

[54:27] Yeah, and it does.

[54:30] It needs a little help.

[54:31] But still, if it does it on its own, you are in a haunted bathtub.

[54:36] Please leave and return the unused portion of your bath for a partial refund.

[54:42] You got to cram it back up in the faucet?

[54:44] Take it back in the faucet, yeah.

[54:45] Okay.

[54:46] With a note to the water company, yeah.

[54:48] Sorry, haunted bath.

[54:50] Like, Ghostbusters 2 has a haunted bath.

[54:53] It does.

[54:53] The Shining has a haunted bath.

[54:55] Yeah.

[54:56] I think that just, you know, good movies have haunted baths.

[55:00] Those are the two best movies.

[55:02] Those are the two scariest movies to watch in the bath.

[55:04] Yeah.

[55:06] That one where Freddy's claw goes all crazy, you know what I'm talking about?

[55:10] I mean, you don't know if it goes crazy.

[55:11] It comes out from between the legs of someone.

[55:13] It's pretty crazy.

[55:14] Pretty crazy.

[55:15] Pretty crazy.

[55:16] Yeah.

[55:16] And of course,

[55:17] Psycho is that,

[55:17] but for showers.

[55:18] Diabolique,

[55:19] also not a movie

[55:19] you want to watch

[55:20] while you're in the bath?

[55:20] No, no.

[55:22] Fatal Attraction,

[55:24] another movie

[55:24] that you're too scared

[55:25] to watch in the bath.

[55:26] Mm-hmm.

[55:27] Mm-hmm.

[55:28] Mini Jaws,

[55:29] the movie where Jaws

[55:29] comes out of people's pipes

[55:30] and attacks them in the bath.

[55:31] And of course,

[55:32] Paddington,

[55:33] terrifying.

[55:34] That kind of happened

[55:35] in Leonard Part 6, right?

[55:36] I don't remember

[55:37] from Leonard Part 6.

[55:38] I have white Leonard Part 6

[55:39] in my brain.

[55:39] All I remember is the part

[55:40] where there's...

[55:40] I don't recommend

[55:41] I've been watching it now.

[55:43] All I remember is the part

[55:44] where there's attack lobsters

[55:45] and they stop them

[55:46] by magicking up

[55:46] some melted butter

[55:47] which scares the lobsters away.

[55:49] That's all I remember

[55:50] from that movie.

[55:50] Aren't there bees

[55:51] in that movie too?

[55:52] I told you what I remember

[55:53] from the movie, Dan.

[55:54] I told you.

[55:56] I'm angered, Elliot.

[55:57] Don't.

[55:58] I said,

[55:58] this is all I remember

[55:59] and you go,

[55:59] oh, tell me one other thing

[56:00] about the movie.

[56:01] I can't, Dan.

[56:01] I thought that if I said it,

[56:03] maybe you'd remember.

[56:04] No, I was very clear.

[56:06] I was very clear

[56:07] about the limits

[56:07] of my knowledge

[56:08] of Leonard Park's things

[56:09] and you deliberately taunted me.

[56:11] I'm sorry.

[56:12] Hostile.

[56:13] I apologize.

[56:13] That's not even a microaggression.

[56:14] That was a macroaggression, Dave.

[56:15] You know what?

[56:16] I'll send you a nice card later.

[56:18] Thank you.

[56:19] At least a fucking edible arrangement or something.

[56:21] Something that's the least you could do.

[56:23] Yeah.

[56:24] I'm sorry.

[56:25] I'm going to the edible arrangement shop.

[56:27] Do you have any Leonard Parton?

[56:29] Do you have any Leonard Parton?

[56:30] And then go, yes, right over here, sir.

[56:32] We have a lot of them, yeah.

[56:34] Yeah.

[56:34] We actually get a lot of call for that.

[56:36] Yeah, it's part of our Cosby collection.

[56:41] You don't want to know.

[56:42] You don't want to be there.

[56:43] And he shouldn't eat the stuff

[56:45] in the edible arrangement

[56:46] in the Cosby collection.

[56:47] No, no, no, no.

[56:47] Again, more jokes

[56:48] about the tragedies

[56:49] of Hollywood past.

[56:50] Tragedies of Hollywood.

[56:51] Yeah.

[56:52] There's just something

[56:53] in the air

[56:53] with the standing ovation.

[56:55] We're just crossing boundaries.

[56:57] While Mr. Wigs

[56:58] is taking a bath,

[57:00] Brittany and Joey

[57:02] sneak into their bedroom

[57:03] and put frozen fleas

[57:06] on all the wigs.

[57:07] Yeah.

[57:08] Frozen because

[57:08] if they were not,

[57:09] they would obviously

[57:10] contaminate themselves.

[57:11] But this gives them time

[57:13] to warm up.

[57:14] And their time release fleas.

[57:15] They're really going to affect them

[57:16] when they need them to.

[57:18] Most silly moment.

[57:21] So then the Wiggies

[57:23] and their father and mother

[57:25] get all dressed up

[57:26] at their own party

[57:27] and start singing

[57:28] Under the Boardwalk.

[57:29] Yep.

[57:30] Which is kind of a weird one

[57:31] to sing with your kids, right?

[57:32] Is that...

[57:33] Is that like

[57:34] asking you to delight?

[57:35] It's about like having sex

[57:36] with your girl

[57:37] under the boardwalk.

[57:37] Yeah, it's kind of weird though, right?

[57:39] I mean, I feel like I've seen so many movies or TV shows where there's been a song that is clearly meant to be a romantic song is sung by parents and their kids.

[57:50] They don't seem to realize it, and I don't like it.

[57:53] I've never done it with my children, you know.

[57:55] That's good to know.

[57:57] If we're going to sing a song, it's going to be probably the Jingle to an Insurance Company commercial since they love those.

[58:02] If you want to sing along with my kids, just go, we are farmers.

[58:06] They will say, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.

[58:07] It's safe because Jingles to Insurance Company are rarely about fucking, so you don't have to worry about it.

[58:13] Very rarely.

[58:14] Unless it's fucking insurance.

[58:20] So, of course, those fleas wake up at the most opportune moment, ruining the performance and everyone laughs at them.

[58:26] Yeah.

[58:26] Enter the finals.

[58:28] The audiences in these movies are always mean.

[58:30] They're always ready to laugh at the people on stage.

[58:33] They came with rotten vegetables in crates.

[58:36] Yeah, why would you do that?

[58:37] Why would you do that?

[58:38] That's why it took me so long to get comfortable performing live with the Flophouse

[58:42] because I always assumed people were going to be mean to me.

[58:44] You figured that they were coming with rotten vegetables just in case.

[58:48] I mean, they shouldn't put the fucking studio next to a rotten vegetable stand.

[58:52] That was a mistake, yeah.

[58:53] And why is that person selling rotten vegetables?

[58:56] Why are people buying them?

[58:58] None of it adds up.

[58:59] So many questions.

[59:00] Right after we figure out how Joey can command scorpions

[59:04] and keep them in the same bag as Neil,

[59:06] we got to get to the bottom of this rotten vegetable thing.

[59:08] Okay, so the finals have started.

[59:09] I mean, to be honest, to answer that,

[59:11] it's because the trope comes from olden days

[59:14] when people would carry their food with them

[59:15] and rotten vegetables were just called vegetables,

[59:18] I think, at the time.

[59:18] Yeah, right.

[59:19] Makes sense.

[59:20] They could not be as picky back then.

[59:22] Yeah.

[59:23] So we start the finals.

[59:26] There are four groups performing.

[59:27] The first is...

[59:28] You got to really...

[59:29] Actually, you got to admire the dedication

[59:31] to throwing your rotten vegetables at the performers

[59:33] because that means you will not eat that night.

[59:35] You're giving up a meal.

[59:36] I'm going to be hungry tonight,

[59:38] but at least they're going to know I didn't like the show.

[59:41] Like that's, you know.

[59:42] Yeah.

[59:42] My disapproval is more important to me in this moment

[59:45] than my stomach.

[59:47] I had to say to myself, what's more important?

[59:50] The arts or my temporary starvation?

[59:53] And you know, I got to give my own comfort up

[59:56] to ensure high standards in the performing arts.

[1:00:00] I'm sure there has to have been a bit where like,

[1:00:03] like a medieval performer was intentionally bad.

[1:00:05] so we would get free rotten vegetables.

[1:00:07] Oh, for sure, for sure.

[1:00:08] I mean, it's right there with Wizard of Oz

[1:00:10] when she wants to be, she wants, she's hungry,

[1:00:12] so she insults those trees,

[1:00:13] so they'll throw the apples at her.

[1:00:14] Yeah, I'm sure that's happening somewhere, yeah.

[1:00:16] Yeah.

[1:00:16] And you know that the audience,

[1:00:18] the fact problem was the performers

[1:00:19] would get all these rotten vegetables and be like,

[1:00:20] they love us, we're eating tonight, folks.

[1:00:23] They gave us all their food,

[1:00:24] so they'd be more bad the next time, yeah.

[1:00:26] Yeah, even worse.

[1:00:27] Yeah, in Elizabethan drama circles,

[1:00:30] that's called the rotten vegetable

[1:00:32] declining standards spiral, yeah.

[1:00:35] There was no moral hazard as a problem.

[1:00:37] That's why we got so much bad art.

[1:00:38] Or even Dukes of Hazzard.

[1:00:39] They didn't have them back then.

[1:00:40] Or Merle Haggard.

[1:00:41] No, they didn't have them.

[1:00:43] None of those things that vaguely sound alike.

[1:00:47] Prove us wrong.

[1:00:48] Prove us wrong.

[1:00:48] Show us that any of those things existed in the late 1500s in England.

[1:00:53] Man, Merle Haggard would have flipped their fucking lid.

[1:00:55] They would have loved him.

[1:00:56] They would have loved him.

[1:00:57] And why wouldn't they?

[1:00:58] He's great.

[1:01:00] I'm sure he did something bad in his life.

[1:01:02] I apologize if he did.

[1:01:03] I don't know it.

[1:01:04] I'm only judging him by the work.

[1:01:05] Yeah, thank you for that.

[1:01:06] Thank you for that disclaimer.

[1:01:07] Yeah, just in case.

[1:01:08] Elliot's foot's still on base, everybody.

[1:01:10] You can't tag him out.

[1:01:11] Now, what they did have back then was Merlin Haggard,

[1:01:14] the wizard, who also was a bad boy of country.

[1:01:17] Yeah, but still.

[1:01:18] Aged backwards.

[1:01:23] Until he got stuck in a tree,

[1:01:25] and that's why the tree plays music now.

[1:01:26] Oh, that does make sense.

[1:01:28] So the first of our finalists is a boy band called Diverse,

[1:01:32] And they sing their song, I don't know, like, what is it?

[1:01:38] You don't have to know.

[1:01:38] It's fine.

[1:01:38] It doesn't matter.

[1:01:39] But a lot of their lyrics are basically just naming other pop stars.

[1:01:43] Yeah.

[1:01:45] We find out that the Ovations are having car trouble, and they're stuck on, I don't know,

[1:01:50] I'm assuming, what, the Jersey Parkway or something?

[1:01:52] Probably the Turnpike.

[1:01:53] And there's so many of them, and, like, they're trying to hitch a ride.

[1:01:57] And I'm like, first, I'm like, you're not going to be able to hitchhike with that many ovations.

[1:02:03] And then I'm like, how did that many ovations fit in the van in the first place?

[1:02:07] So many questions about containers.

[1:02:09] And it's heavily implied that Mr. Wiggs cut their fan belt, which is why.

[1:02:16] Again, he's addicted to sabotage.

[1:02:18] He doesn't believe enough.

[1:02:20] He's like a regular Felicity Huffman bribing to get their kids into college because they don't believe enough in their kids.

[1:02:27] You've got to believe in the Whiggies.

[1:02:28] They're good.

[1:02:29] They'll win.

[1:02:30] Not an irregular Felicity Huffman, which would sound a little like this.

[1:02:34] Which you can get at a discount.

[1:02:37] At the Felicity Huffman outlet, yeah.

[1:02:42] They're perfectly usable, Felicity Huffmans.

[1:02:44] They just don't, you know, they're like display models.

[1:02:47] They don't look quite as new.

[1:02:48] Do you have any irregular William H. Macy's?

[1:02:51] No, no.

[1:02:51] That's next door.

[1:02:54] They're all very regular.

[1:02:55] He has a lot of fiber in his diet.

[1:02:57] So the ovations car trouble is quickly resolved when they just take a single cab to Times Square and they all pour out of it while we get a shot of a cab driver who's wearing, it looks like a Norway flag, who is shouting about them all getting out.

[1:03:15] And then I think, yeah, it's weird.

[1:03:17] Okay, so.

[1:03:18] He's like, how many people are in this cab?

[1:03:20] Yeah.

[1:03:21] So the next is a—the next finalist is the Minarets, who are performing a kind of gospel number called The Power of Love.

[1:03:30] And then that's over.

[1:03:32] Again, not the Huey Lewis song.

[1:03:33] Of course, not that.

[1:03:35] And then the Wiggies come up and they sing their song Dancing Girls, again, bringing on the weird rapper guy that we had seen earlier, who's kind of like a hype man for the Wiggies.

[1:03:45] Yes.

[1:03:46] And a lot of the song is kind of about them dancing and like, I don't know, being turned on or something.

[1:03:50] This may be, I'm not sure, this may be MC John, who is the only member of the cast who has his own Wikipedia page.

[1:04:00] Yeah, yeah.

[1:04:01] We have our own Wikipedia pages, guys.

[1:04:03] We do.

[1:04:03] Yeah, that's true.

[1:04:04] We're like MC John.

[1:04:07] So, of course, their performance tears it up.

[1:04:10] People are loving it.

[1:04:11] There are multiple people giving their standing ovations.

[1:04:15] Grandpa's like, ain't no way we're going to beat them unless we burn the house down.

[1:04:21] Turns out there is a mountain high enough.

[1:04:23] The Wiggy's performance.

[1:04:26] I shouldn't have bet on the ovations.

[1:04:29] I should have bet on the Wiggy's.

[1:04:31] Yeah, he put all his money.

[1:04:33] Well, finally, a bet pays off for him, as we'll find out.

[1:04:35] Yeah, we'll see, yeah.

[1:04:36] So the ovations are about to go out on stage

[1:04:39] when Joey interrupts them and is like,

[1:04:41] hey, I found the guy.

[1:04:42] So after the show, we got to go deal with the guy

[1:04:45] who killed my dad.

[1:04:46] Brittany's like, can you tell me that after we perform

[1:04:49] so I don't have that hanging over my head while I'm performing?

[1:04:52] Okay, so now the ovations get out there and they perform.

[1:04:55] Just so you know, you should perform your heart out.

[1:04:57] Not only because this is the finals,

[1:04:58] but we're going to go confront the dangerous mobster

[1:05:02] that stole from my dad right after this.

[1:05:04] You might die.

[1:05:05] So really perform like this is your best show.

[1:05:08] You want to be remembered.

[1:05:09] Yeah.

[1:05:12] So they play their song.

[1:05:14] This is your chance to become a legend.

[1:05:16] Legends have to die.

[1:05:17] That's how they become legends.

[1:05:18] Well, not John Legend.

[1:05:19] He just called himself Legend.

[1:05:20] Ah, that's a loophole.

[1:05:21] That's a loophole.

[1:05:22] It's too late.

[1:05:22] He already did that.

[1:05:23] No one else can ever do it again.

[1:05:26] So this song, Shooting Star,

[1:05:28] written by Britney's brother, Mark,

[1:05:30] that was too complicated,

[1:05:31] so they need new people, of course,

[1:05:32] makes sense when we see it.

[1:05:33] It begins with-

[1:05:34] There's so many people on stage.

[1:05:36] So many people on stage.

[1:05:36] It's like the polyphonic spree up there.

[1:05:41] The dancer, Jasmine,

[1:05:43] is all done up like a sci-fi robot lady.

[1:05:45] She explains that she is a space traveler.

[1:05:47] She's space traveler T2, female version, who –

[1:05:52] Like Terminator 2?

[1:05:53] Something like – yeah.

[1:05:54] Yeah, female version.

[1:05:54] And she's like, make me dance.

[1:05:56] And so she –

[1:05:57] Just like Terminator 2.

[1:05:58] So she like starts a dance –

[1:06:00] Make me dance if you want to live.

[1:06:01] So she starts a dance while Alana runs around like throat singing into a microphone.

[1:06:09] And it's really great because there's like – there ain't no way that kid's making those sounds.

[1:06:14] No.

[1:06:15] And then the kids like dance around for a bit and we get some singing and then midway through we get a break where the other dancer kid is like, I am also a space traveler T3 male version.

[1:06:27] Make me dance.

[1:06:28] And then like he dances super fucking sassy and I'm like, this is crazy.

[1:06:33] Jasmine does like belly dancing.

[1:06:34] She does kind of kind of like, you know, like Mediterranean Middle Eastern kind of like.

[1:06:38] So it is a flavor of dancing that at least the ovations are not prepared to provide themselves, you know.

[1:06:44] And they don't have as much stank as what this little kid is putting in his dance performance.

[1:06:48] No, this little kid, like this little kid, I want to see this little kid and Alana Wannabe do a show together because they would have, it would be the cockiest show in the world.

[1:06:55] They would be like negging the audience the whole time.

[1:06:58] It would be amazing.

[1:06:58] Yeah.

[1:06:59] And I guess if this song is about future robots who want people to make them dance, it does make sense that they had to get specific dancers for this song.

[1:07:07] So I take back my songwriting objection.

[1:07:10] You know what?

[1:07:11] Yeah.

[1:07:11] Mark, you're okay.

[1:07:13] So, I feel like a lot of this movie, and this sequence in particular, is basically like if you got invited to your friend's kid's dance performance, like talent show performance.

[1:07:28] It's not just like that.

[1:07:29] It is exactly that.

[1:07:30] But it turns out, like, your friend's kid isn't there, and you just have to sit and watch the whole thing.

[1:07:37] So, you have, like, zero skin in the game.

[1:07:40] But you're stuck there.

[1:07:41] Because you're not a big enough asshole to get up and leave in the middle of a children's performance.

[1:07:45] I like wanky dance performances.

[1:07:47] Dan, did you ever go back at – Dan and I went to college together, Earlham College.

[1:07:50] Did you ever go to Dance Alley?

[1:07:51] Oh, I went to Dance Alley every time.

[1:07:53] Every time.

[1:07:54] Explain to me what that is because I didn't go to Earlham College.

[1:07:56] What is that?

[1:07:56] What is Dance Alley?

[1:07:57] Dance Alley was –

[1:07:58] Oh, Dance L.A.

[1:07:59] I thought it was like Dance Alley.

[1:08:01] Alley.

[1:08:02] Like a metal.

[1:08:03] Oh, I thought you said Dance Alley.

[1:08:04] Like there was like an alley in the campus where people were just always kicking it.

[1:08:07] That's pretty cool too.

[1:08:08] Dance Alley is a great name for a dance show.

[1:08:10] Dance Alley.

[1:08:11] Dance Man's parents died in Dance Alley.

[1:08:16] We were coming out of a Palabolas show

[1:08:17] when my parents were mugged by Joe Chillen.

[1:08:20] There was no official, like, dance program at Earlham.

[1:08:24] So this was the student-run dance show

[1:08:27] that they would do every semester

[1:08:28] where, like, if you wanted to put on a dance,

[1:08:30] like, you would just, like, say,

[1:08:32] hey, I want to do a dance in Dance Alloy.

[1:08:34] And I think there was, like, maybe some level of audition,

[1:08:36] but mostly you were just, like, you can do whatever you want.

[1:08:39] each like group or person could do it like my um my college girlfriend did like step dancing because

[1:08:48] that was big at the time and uh yeah it was a pretty good step dance but like uh yeah it was

[1:08:53] just it could have been it could have been the times uh that i was often pretty high when i went

[1:08:57] but um it was always super fun i remember once where there was like a vampire themed sword fight

[1:09:03] dance cool and then there was a big group of uh a big group of women who were doing an

[1:09:09] interpretive dance to, I think, Unforgiven 2

[1:09:12] by Metallica. Wow.

[1:09:13] It was fucking awesome. I feel like this was

[1:09:15] pretty much the most popular

[1:09:17] event at our level. I mean, not a

[1:09:19] surprise from what I'm hearing. It sounds fantastic.

[1:09:22] Yeah. Yeah, it was super fun.

[1:09:23] So I like that shit, but I feel like this

[1:09:25] I wish standing ovation

[1:09:27] captured some of that energy. Ironically,

[1:09:29] I went to a school that had

[1:09:31] one of the best musical theater

[1:09:33] performance programs in the country.

[1:09:36] And I feel like I never heard about

[1:09:37] you can come see this dance show.

[1:09:39] Maybe I just wasn't paying attention.

[1:09:40] I don't know.

[1:09:40] I think if you're like,

[1:09:41] yeah,

[1:09:41] if you're more starved for it,

[1:09:43] you know,

[1:09:44] there was less to do in Indiana.

[1:09:46] I can also go see Broadway.

[1:09:48] Exactly.

[1:09:50] Okay.

[1:09:51] So the,

[1:09:51] I've said it before.

[1:09:52] I really take it.

[1:09:53] I really,

[1:09:53] when I was young,

[1:09:54] took it for granted that I lived in very close proximity to one of the

[1:09:58] great theater centers of,

[1:10:01] and great theater and museum centers of the world.

[1:10:03] And it strikes me all the time,

[1:10:04] how lucky I was,

[1:10:05] you know,

[1:10:05] a lot of people don't get that,

[1:10:06] which they should,

[1:10:07] But they don't.

[1:10:08] So thanks.

[1:10:09] Props to you, Fate, for having me grow up in New Jersey.

[1:10:13] Yeah, the three Fates.

[1:10:15] You spun your future.

[1:10:18] Clotho did a good job.

[1:10:20] Did a good job with the thread this time.

[1:10:21] I thought so.

[1:10:21] The best.

[1:10:22] I got to give it up to you, Clotho.

[1:10:24] Appreciate it.

[1:10:25] Otho?

[1:10:26] From Beetlejuice?

[1:10:27] No, not Otho.

[1:10:28] Okay.

[1:10:29] Although, I mean, he kind of deserves it too.

[1:10:32] Props to you, Otho.

[1:10:33] We know who we're not giving props to in the Beetlejuice world.

[1:10:36] Yes, in the Beetlejuice world.

[1:10:37] There's one person in particular.

[1:10:38] There's kind of one person we're not supposed to reference another terrible Hollywood event.

[1:10:46] I can't stop.

[1:10:47] I can't stop.

[1:10:48] At a certain point, this became the Flophouse with A.J. Benzai.

[1:10:51] So I don't know how.

[1:10:54] What other tragedies and crimes can we bring up from Hollywood?

[1:10:57] So after the ovations performance, they bring up all four contestants on stage.

[1:11:02] And they, starting with the bottom, give everybody their consolation prizes.

[1:11:06] And everybody, like, freaks out when their name is called.

[1:11:08] I'm like, but you're being said you didn't win the whole thing.

[1:11:11] They're so excited to win third place.

[1:11:13] And it's like, you were part of the final four.

[1:11:15] There was a pretty good chance you'd win third.

[1:11:17] And everybody makes money.

[1:11:20] I mean, the thing is, the prizes are all pretty, are really good.

[1:11:23] Pretty good.

[1:11:24] I think the fact that this is fictional and none of these people are actually going to make that money,

[1:11:28] they really went wild with the amounts they're giving out.

[1:11:30] More than the budget of the movie, probably.

[1:11:33] I don't know about that.

[1:11:34] According to Wikipedia, this movie had a $5.6 million budget, which seems high.

[1:11:39] I'm going to eat my hat.

[1:11:41] Luckily, you're wearing a hat made out of ham today.

[1:11:45] Yeah, that's what the H in hat stands for, dumbass.

[1:11:47] Yeah, ham at top, that's what it means.

[1:11:51] Dashiell Ham Hat.

[1:11:53] Dashiell Ham Hats.

[1:11:55] All these, you always had something to snack on while he was writing his books.

[1:11:59] It's a classic novel, A Marbled Fedora.

[1:12:03] So the ovations win.

[1:12:04] I'm going to cut to the chase.

[1:12:06] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:12:06] We don't need that.

[1:12:07] Surprise, surprise.

[1:12:08] The stars of the movie win.

[1:12:09] Surprise, surprise.

[1:12:09] They win.

[1:12:09] Win it.

[1:12:10] The ovations win the movie called Standing Ovation.

[1:12:13] Yeah.

[1:12:13] Before they can really celebrate too much,

[1:12:15] Joey steals Brittany away

[1:12:17] so they can track down the guy who stole that money.

[1:12:20] Yeah.

[1:12:20] They go to what I think is the offices of CDS Entertainment.

[1:12:25] Yes, yes.

[1:12:26] And where everybody is already talking about these amazing kids.

[1:12:31] They storm into the office of the head of the company, and that turns out that he's

[1:12:36] the one who did it, and Joey is explaining all of, like, that he needs to give back the

[1:12:41] money, caused all these problems, and this is a guy who we have been led to believe is

[1:12:45] at least a murderer.

[1:12:47] Yeah, and he's got real coked-out sleaze energy, too.

[1:12:50] Yes, it's hard to believe him as the head of a major media company because he seems

[1:12:55] like such a low-level sleaze guy as opposed to the high-level sleaze that would have great

[1:13:01] Gatsby style, tried to cover up

[1:13:03] his sleazy beginnings with a

[1:13:05] veneer of class and sophistication.

[1:13:07] And the fact that he is a murderous mobster

[1:13:09] who is now the head of a major media company,

[1:13:11] this deadline has really fallen down

[1:13:13] on the job. They haven't broken this story yet.

[1:13:15] Yeah.

[1:13:16] If ever there was a reason for Page Six or

[1:13:19] TMZ to be around, it's this story.

[1:13:21] In 2026, would I

[1:13:23] believe it? Yes. In 2010, when

[1:13:25] this was made? No.

[1:13:27] I thought TMZ's real role was to keep

[1:13:29] buying all the big gulps, right?

[1:13:31] They are supporting the big gulp industry.

[1:13:33] Now that we live in a country run by a gangster,

[1:13:36] it's a little bit easier to believe.

[1:13:38] But back then it would have been harder.

[1:13:40] So while they're arguing with this guy who's like,

[1:13:43] I'm not going to give back money, yada, yada, yada,

[1:13:45] we see on his cuff, he has the same tattoo.

[1:13:51] Wait a minute, this is Britney's dad?

[1:13:53] And he also tells them, you're dumb and dumb is dumb

[1:13:57] and there ain't nothing dumb.

[1:13:57] And she's like, wait, what?

[1:13:59] So yeah, that was a little Easter egg

[1:14:02] that Stewart missed on his two viewings of this movie.

[1:14:06] I'm amazed.

[1:14:07] I'm amazed.

[1:14:08] Hey, we got equal viewings now.

[1:14:10] More a plant that then pays off later,

[1:14:12] but yeah, you know.

[1:14:13] Yeah, so they argue...

[1:14:16] I apologize, Stewart,

[1:14:17] that you had to watch this movie twice

[1:14:18] where a surfer teen confronts fear.

[1:14:19] I fast-forwarded through sections of that movie

[1:14:22] because it was a surfing pitch, so...

[1:14:24] Well, I feel like this movie is so chock-full of stuff

[1:14:28] that it was hard for me to get it all straight.

[1:14:30] That's what they put on the poster.

[1:14:32] Chock full of stuff.

[1:14:34] Guys, if you want nuts,

[1:14:36] don't go to Chock Full of Stuff.

[1:14:37] Or coffee, go to Chock Full of Nuts.

[1:14:39] Don't go to Chock Full of Stuff.

[1:14:41] So angry, Joey stomps off.

[1:14:42] You don't know what's going to end up in that thing.

[1:14:44] Joey stomps off and has an asthma attack

[1:14:46] that is resolved.

[1:14:50] Brittany's dad is immediately like,

[1:14:51] yeah, okay, you forgive me?

[1:14:53] And she's like, no, and leaves.

[1:14:56] And then, so the next morning, she wakes up, and there's a big, I guess, like a big spread on the boardwalk.

[1:15:03] And then he pulls up in a big fancy car, and you find out that he made amends and made right with everyone and paid Joey back and bought a house.

[1:15:12] So fast.

[1:15:13] It's like he's buying everyone off.

[1:15:15] Like, he's just like—

[1:15:16] Yeah, he just provides Christmas presents for all the kids.

[1:15:19] He gives money.

[1:15:19] He buys a house for Joey's family.

[1:15:21] He's like, there, my crimes are atoned for.

[1:15:23] I'm now your loving father.

[1:15:25] But it's also one of those things where it's like, he's like, oh, I really missed having you in my life.

[1:15:29] Well, at any point in the years when you were a rich media executive and your son and daughter were living hand to mouth with their grandfather, with your father-in-law, like, what were you doing?

[1:15:39] What's going on?

[1:15:40] I was waiting to be shamed into paying people.

[1:15:44] Well, but it is like, it feels, it honestly feels like a very New Jersey fable.

[1:15:50] Yeah.

[1:15:50] Yes, I can see that.

[1:15:51] This guy was such a good mobster that he made a bunch of money, so he's forgiven.

[1:15:55] He's one of the good guys.

[1:15:56] He brings it back to the neighborhood, you know?

[1:15:58] He's not just taking care of himself.

[1:16:00] He's taking care of the neighborhood.

[1:16:01] He's a hero, you know?

[1:16:02] He's like, you know, God bless his beautiful, noble gangster soul,

[1:16:08] Gotti himself, the greatest of all gangster princes, you know?

[1:16:11] Because you know what?

[1:16:12] He was a murderer.

[1:16:13] He was a thief.

[1:16:14] I think he dealt drugs, but he was doing it for the neighborhood.

[1:16:17] He always came back and showed the neighborhood that he had a lot of money,

[1:16:20] and that made the neighborhood feel good.

[1:16:21] Yeah, yeah.

[1:16:22] So Brittany's like, okay, well, where's Joey at?

[1:16:25] Again, John Gotti, not from New Jersey,

[1:16:26] but you know what I'm talking about, yeah.

[1:16:28] And they're like, well, she's at the party

[1:16:30] that CDS is throwing for everybody who performed.

[1:16:34] So we go to that party.

[1:16:35] We get the Wiggies performing again.

[1:16:37] What a treat.

[1:16:39] And Alana confronts Brittany's dad and is like,

[1:16:43] hey, I should be a star.

[1:16:45] And he's like, okay.

[1:16:46] And then Brittany-

[1:16:47] You got moxie, kid.

[1:16:48] I like you, yeah.

[1:16:49] And then Brittany's like, he's like,

[1:16:51] Brittany's dad's like, do you forgive me?

[1:16:53] I can get you anything you want.

[1:16:55] You know, I'm a zillionaire.

[1:16:57] And she's like, I want my mom back.

[1:16:59] And he's like, I can't.

[1:17:00] Wow.

[1:17:00] And that's the end of the movie.

[1:17:04] I can kill people.

[1:17:06] I can't bring them back.

[1:17:07] But then there's like a big musical performance.

[1:17:10] As soon as the first credit hit, I turned that shit off.

[1:17:12] You also missed the part where I was like,

[1:17:15] there must be like some middle credit scene.

[1:17:17] And there's something, I can't remember what it was,

[1:17:19] But there's a part where, like, the Wiggy's mom, like, they animate a frog crawling across her face as, like, I guess a jokey callback.

[1:17:26] But it feels so weird.

[1:17:28] It feels so, like, it's like, did I see that?

[1:17:30] Did the character see that?

[1:17:31] Is that a symbol of her soul?

[1:17:34] It's very weird.

[1:17:35] Yeah.

[1:17:37] Well, guys, have a standing ovation.

[1:17:39] I'm glad that you could take this journey with me.

[1:17:42] Danny, didn't you, you said, like, you did the summary.

[1:17:46] Well, in that, you know, it's a movie that I saw on my own.

[1:17:51] And then I'm like, I got to get the guys in on this.

[1:17:53] Yeah, introduce us to it.

[1:17:55] Yeah, is this a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie we kind of like?

[1:18:00] That's our final judgment categories.

[1:18:02] I'm going to say that, obviously, look, I brought it to the table.

[1:18:06] I told you last time that, you know, Surfer was the oddball choice.

[1:18:10] This was one that was going to be fun.

[1:18:12] Got to thank Alonzo.

[1:18:13] Real proud pleaser.

[1:18:14] Yes, standing O.

[1:18:16] that was like when i when i uh when i picked this for my uh bad movie rotation based on

[1:18:23] alonzo's endorsement um everyone in the chat was on board they were they were loving it too

[1:18:31] picked you up on their shoulders yeah yeah the virtual shoulders so i gotta say uh yeah it's a

[1:18:36] it's a good bad movie for sure for me uh stewart what do you say yeah no question this is a good

[1:18:41] bad movie it's uh ridiculous and every moment of the movie feels weird and wrong but also it like

[1:18:51] moves quickly it's a lot of pep and there's just a lot of stuff in it i think i said it was chock

[1:18:56] full of stuff and i'm not i i'm not gonna go back on that guys i don't want to i don't want to shock

[1:19:01] anybody this is obviously a good bad movie i'm gonna go even farther and say this is a movie i

[1:19:04] kind of like it is a bad movie it is not a good movie but it's a movie i kind it's full of energy

[1:19:09] it's always throwing stuff at you the kids in it are good performers like the kids are like i was

[1:19:14] really impressed by how good these kids are and that goes a long way and so there was i was like

[1:19:20] you know what would i choose to watch this movie again no but would i choose to watch this movie

[1:19:25] no but i enjoyed watching it it's real dumb and silly if my kids were like we want to watch that

[1:19:30] standing ovation movie i'd be like throw it on that's fine so i i'm gonna call this a movie i

[1:19:35] kind of like knowing that it is bad they're like dad what's new jersey like you're like put on

[1:19:39] standing ovation well i'm going to show you standing ovation in atlantic city from louis

[1:19:42] mall and that you'll get the idea between the two of them but uh yeah this is a this is a good bad

[1:19:47] movie it's silly hello i'm john luke roberts and i host sound heap and i'm here with max fun

[1:19:56] member of the month ryan adams thank you so much ryan for being a listener and supporter of our

[1:20:01] show and congratulations on being this month's member of the month hi there if you were

[1:20:07] recommending soundteap to a new listener how would you entice them to the show i'm making notes on

[1:20:12] this by the way you have all sorts of podcasts on different topics and whatever out there and

[1:20:17] you have a lot of fictional ones it's a podcast but it's not really a podcast but it's i'm not

[1:20:23] describing it very well no you're describing it almost as well as anybody could it's a podcast

[1:20:27] but it's not really a podcast, but it's also an infinite number of podcasts.

[1:20:30] That's what I would, that's how I'd put it.

[1:20:32] What would you say to other people who are considering supporting the show?

[1:20:35] If you like podcasts at all and you like humor, supporting SoundHeap is a good choice.

[1:20:41] Is there anything else you'd like to add?

[1:20:43] Support Maximum Fun and SoundHeap.

[1:20:46] God, that's perfect. That's absolutely perfect.

[1:20:48] Support the shows you love, including this one.

[1:20:51] Check the show notes for a link or go to MaximumFun.org slash join.

[1:20:55] you know we've been doing my brother my brother me for 15 years and maybe maybe you stopped

[1:21:01] listening for a while maybe you never listen and you're probably assuming three white guys

[1:21:05] talking for 15 years i know where this has ended up but no no you would be wrong we're as shocked

[1:21:12] as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big

[1:21:18] crypto thing yeah you don't even really know how crypto works the only nfts i'm into are naughty

[1:21:24] funny things, which is what we talk about

[1:21:27] on My Brother, My Brother and Me.

[1:21:28] We serve it up every Monday for you

[1:21:31] if you're listening, and if not, we just

[1:21:33] leave it out back and it goes

[1:21:35] rotten. So check it out on Maximum

[1:21:37] Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1:21:41] Let's take a moment

[1:21:42] to thank our sponsors. The Flophouse

[1:21:45] is sponsored in part this week

[1:21:47] by Factor.

[1:21:49] You know, it can be

[1:21:50] difficult always to

[1:21:52] feed oneself in this busy world, especially if you care about, you know, eating something healthy,

[1:22:00] not just getting takeout all the time or, I don't know, some frozen meal that maybe

[1:22:06] wouldn't be the best for you. Factor makes chef-crafted, dietician-designed,

[1:22:12] ready-to-eat meals so you don't have to choose between real food and what's convenient in the

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[1:22:26] is like i don't want to allow you enough time to feed yourself you can be like haha schedule

[1:22:33] i outsmarted you i've got some factor each week you'll find over 100 nutrient dense menu items

[1:22:40] to choose from you got uh new options like salmon burgers shredded pork collard greens and more

[1:22:46] and 97 percent of users agree that factor meals have helped them live healthier so you can feel

[1:22:53] confident that you're doing something good for yourself with every meal um as i've said many

[1:23:00] times before i enjoy cooking unlike my uh friend and colleague elliot caitlin i don't uh find it

[1:23:07] don't like an onerous uh thing i find it a a soothing uh a soothing chore a lot of the time

[1:23:15] But even soothing chores can be chores on the wrong day, and I have enjoyed having Factor Meals around to just, you know, pop in, heat up, know that you're going to have something tasty and pretty good for you as your meal without all that work.

[1:23:35] So let's eat real, head to factormeals.com slash FLOP50OFF and use code FLOP50OFF to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year while supplies last until 10, 31, 20, 26.

[1:23:53] That is code FLOP50OFF at factormeals.com, FLOP50OFF at factormeals.com, see website for more details.

[1:24:01] Before we move on with the rest of the show, I just want our listeners to know, a word that rhymes with show, that we've got some of our own stuff coming up.

[1:24:10] In fact, some of it is happening right now.

[1:24:12] This episode, of course, was released the day after we were in Kentucky for our live show there.

[1:24:17] We had a great time.

[1:24:18] Thank you to the Louisville audience.

[1:24:20] If you couldn't make it to that show or even if you could, you can still see us performing live through the magic of internet video.

[1:24:28] That's right, Flop TV Season 4 is currently happening.

[1:24:32] We've already had our first episode that was back on September 4th.

[1:24:35] We did Green Book because this year the theme is Best Picture Winners.

[1:24:41] Our next episode will be on October 3rd at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.

[1:24:45] We're talking about the greatest show on earth, the circus movie that, according to the Fablemans, made Steven Spielberg a filmmaker as a child.

[1:24:52] We'll find out if that was the right inspiration

[1:24:54] or whether he should have packed his camera away

[1:24:56] and never made anything based on that movie.

[1:24:59] You want to see Flop TV?

[1:25:01] Well, you can.

[1:25:02] Just go to theflophouse.simpletix.com.

[1:25:04] I remind you again, Flop TV is our one-hour

[1:25:06] online video version of The Flop House.

[1:25:08] You get a presentation, you get a summary,

[1:25:11] we answer questions from the audience.

[1:25:12] It's like one of our live shows,

[1:25:15] just happening on your computer screen.

[1:25:16] And if you can't make it when the show airs,

[1:25:18] which is the first Saturday of every month

[1:25:20] at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific,

[1:25:22] That's okay.

[1:25:22] Your ticket, get to access to the video,

[1:25:25] exclusive access to the video of that show.

[1:25:28] And those videos will be available for you to watch

[1:25:29] through the end of February when the season ends.

[1:25:32] The season is the first Saturday of every month

[1:25:34] through February.

[1:25:36] It's worst best picture winners.

[1:25:38] And I'm excited about what we're gonna do

[1:25:40] with the greatest show on earth

[1:25:43] because it's long and Jimmy Stewart plays a clown in it.

[1:25:47] So go to theflophouse.simpletix.com to get your tickets.

[1:25:51] You can buy individual episodes or you can buy a season pass, six episodes for the price of five.

[1:25:56] That's what I would do if I were you.

[1:25:58] Theflophouse.simpletix.com, Flop TV, taking on Best Picture winners.

[1:26:04] Watch – this is the season that gets us banned from Hollywood after this.

[1:26:07] We're daring to go after the sacred cows of the Best Picture winners.

[1:26:11] So enjoy it, I guess, because we may disappear.

[1:26:15] It all leads up to our February episode where we will find out if Out of Africa is a real movie or not.

[1:26:20] Stay tuned.

[1:26:21] question mark thefluffhouse.simpletix.com i'll also mention that i have my regular plugs my

[1:26:27] book joke farming how to write comedy other nonsense is available now the audiobook is

[1:26:31] available now my comic series barbarian behind bars which is a super violent b movie of a mini

[1:26:36] series that is available in trade paperback right now the collected edition should be on store

[1:26:40] shelves and of course harley quinn from dc comics i continue to write each month buy that book

[1:26:45] somebody's got to uh before we move on to a few letters i'm going to do a new segment i call

[1:26:52] flop house cleanup which is uh i'm going to address a few things from the past um number one

[1:26:58] love it you're cleaning up a lot of number one these days we uh we record these things uh you

[1:27:03] know fairly far in advance and then like even if we don't like i i forget to mention things that

[1:27:10] happened in the last, in previous episodes. So it's been a while, but I feel great shame that

[1:27:15] in a previous episode, I referred to the upper peninsula of Minnesota. Clearly, obviously I was

[1:27:22] talking about the upper peninsula of Michigan as the place where I used to vacation. I am aware

[1:27:26] that Minnesota doesn't, I lived in Minnesota for a period of time. That it doesn't have a peninsula.

[1:27:31] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm just, I'm aging. I, I'm on weird podcast autopilot and sometimes I

[1:27:39] say wrong things uh so that's uh one of the things we had several people write in uh in response to

[1:27:47] what is the movie where someone just keeps pulling teeth oh yeah what is it what is it

[1:27:51] um it's that one uh i had it and now i guy pulling teeth from mouth uh leave the world behind we

[1:27:58] talked about it yes podcast yes that's right so there's that uh thank you for clearing that up

[1:28:06] for us that that's right that's the one where he just keeps pulling his teeth out yeah thank you

[1:28:10] um all i remember from that movie is uh the tesla traffic jam that they have yes yes and a helpful

[1:28:15] uh listener responded to something i said in a uh a newsletter i was encouraging uh people to rate

[1:28:24] and review the show because it really does help especially an older show like ours that maybe is

[1:28:29] not getting the same attention it helps the algorithm uh if like a bunch of people suddenly

[1:28:36] at the same time are like five stars the flop outs it really helps so if you're willing to do it

[1:28:40] please do but you can't do it the way i said which was uh do it on itunes which because i'm an old

[1:28:46] person i didn't think about the fact no no it's the podcast app no such thing anymore go to the

[1:28:50] podcast app go to the apple podcast app or whatever podcast app you have if it has a rating capability

[1:28:56] and please leave us a good review.

[1:28:59] And also, I'm going to piggyback on that.

[1:29:00] I think Joke Farming almost has 50 reviews on Amazon.

[1:29:04] If three more people or four more people,

[1:29:06] however many it is, can give it positive reviews,

[1:29:08] then I think that will help me in that algorithm also.

[1:29:10] So guys, look, we live in this shitty world

[1:29:13] where algorithms are controlling things.

[1:29:15] Help us hack the planet

[1:29:17] and use those algorithms to our own shitty needs.

[1:29:20] So go to your local podcast app

[1:29:23] and give us some five-star reviews.

[1:29:24] Go to Amazon.com, give Joke Farming like a five-star review.

[1:29:27] Why not, you know?

[1:29:28] Yeah, why not?

[1:29:30] I enjoyed it.

[1:29:30] It doesn't cost you nothing.

[1:29:32] No.

[1:29:32] Dan, did you leave a review on Amazon?

[1:29:34] I was just thinking I should.

[1:29:35] You should.

[1:29:35] Yeah, thank you.

[1:29:35] Yeah, you should do that.

[1:29:36] I tried to leave when there were no reviews left yet.

[1:29:38] I tried to leave a review saying, I think it's great, but I wrote the book, and they

[1:29:42] wouldn't accept it.

[1:29:43] They said I wasn't allowed to.

[1:29:45] Well, at least you're forthright about your…

[1:29:48] I didn't use a fake name or anything.

[1:29:49] Yeah, you're…

[1:29:50] But let's move on from…

[1:29:53] Do people do that for online reviews?

[1:29:57] I hope not.

[1:29:57] They'll use fake names?

[1:29:58] I hope not.

[1:29:59] That would be beyond the pale.

[1:30:00] What the fuck?

[1:30:01] Yeah, we live in a fallen world.

[1:30:03] Let's move on to...

[1:30:05] Name two ways.

[1:30:07] Name two ways that this isn't a perfect world.

[1:30:09] Letters from listeners.

[1:30:12] All right, Candide.

[1:30:16] This first letter is from Katie, last name withheld.

[1:30:20] Lying?

[1:30:21] Probably.

[1:30:23] More than 20 years ago, my friend got a job animating a movie starring Jon Voight.

[1:30:29] He told us that the working title was The Karate Dog.

[1:30:33] I thought that was the stupidest title I had ever heard and began to call it Fists of Furry.

[1:30:40] As you know, the movie was released under the stupid title.

[1:30:45] Excuse me.

[1:30:46] It tells you what you get.

[1:30:48] They're not trying to be clever.

[1:30:50] It's just like, here it is.

[1:30:51] if you're watching a dumb movie about a karate guy.

[1:30:54] What movie would be better with a better title?

[1:30:56] Bonus points.

[1:30:57] For what movie,

[1:30:58] what movie would be better with the title Shenanigans?

[1:31:02] Keep on flopping on, Katie.

[1:31:05] What I like about the title Shenanigans,

[1:31:06] and I apologize for this being sort of a non-answer.

[1:31:09] I mean, that's Benji's finish here

[1:31:10] and it should have just been called Shenanigans.

[1:31:11] Yeah, it should have been called Shenanigans, yeah.

[1:31:14] Or any bar.

[1:31:15] It could be called Shenanigans.

[1:31:16] But, like, I think that the great thing

[1:31:18] about the title Shenanigans

[1:31:19] is you can apply it to any movie.

[1:31:21] and it's kind of delightful.

[1:31:23] Not My Dinner with Andre.

[1:31:25] I feel like My Dinner with Andre

[1:31:26] you couldn't call shenanigans.

[1:31:28] Well, you couldn't accurately call it shenanigans,

[1:31:30] but I would enjoy...

[1:31:31] I mean, there's no law

[1:31:32] that you can't put that name on it.

[1:31:34] That's true.

[1:31:35] But weirdly, the first movie that came to mind,

[1:31:39] which I think it's got a great title,

[1:31:40] it's a brilliant movie,

[1:31:42] it was Mulholland Drive.

[1:31:44] If Mulholland Drive was called shenanigans,

[1:31:45] I'd be like, I love it.

[1:31:46] This is great.

[1:31:49] It's called shenanigans.

[1:31:51] i don't know david it feels kind of not specific trust me

[1:31:57] there's a lot of shenanigans in it

[1:32:02] um i was gonna call it hijinks but i think shenanigans is better more syllables

[1:32:16] uh what else what if i called it she nanigans because the main characters are

[1:32:21] both women no i don't change my mind you know what go brilliant good stuff good job what if

[1:32:27] every movie he was trying to name shenanigans they kept trying no i think let's call it the

[1:32:31] elephant man i don't think we should call it shenanigans might come off as uh insensitive

[1:32:37] because there's so many shenanigans in this other movie paul atreides he's on dune one thing after

[1:32:47] another again i think we should call it dune because that's the name of the book that it's

[1:32:50] Based on, not shenanigans, yeah.

[1:32:54] Oh, boy.

[1:32:55] I don't know.

[1:32:56] I mean, there's, like, a lot.

[1:32:57] There are so many movies that you hear about.

[1:33:00] They were, like, they had an interesting title,

[1:33:03] and they went with a generic title.

[1:33:05] I can't pull many of them right now,

[1:33:07] but, like, one that sticks in my mind is, like,

[1:33:10] It Could Happen to You was originally called

[1:33:13] Cop Gives Waitress $20 Million Tip or something like that.

[1:33:16] I mean, that's not even a title.

[1:33:18] That's crazy, yeah.

[1:33:19] But, yeah, it can happen to you is, like, nothing.

[1:33:22] It, like, that could go for almost any movie except for things that, you know, probably couldn't happen to you.

[1:33:28] There are a lot of things that couldn't happen to you.

[1:33:29] Like, Star Wars probably shouldn't be called it could happen to you.

[1:33:31] No, I don't think so.

[1:33:33] Yeah, probably King Kong shouldn't be called it could happen to you.

[1:33:36] It could happen.

[1:33:37] No, Star Wars could not happen to you.

[1:33:39] It's not saying it will happen to you.

[1:33:40] No, no.

[1:33:41] Star Wars could not happen to you.

[1:33:43] But only because it's a long, long time ago.

[1:33:46] It doesn't matter why it can't happen to you.

[1:33:49] It just could not happen to you.

[1:33:52] I'm willing to bet Jurassic Park

[1:33:54] could not happen to you.

[1:33:56] No, no, let's check the science on it.

[1:33:58] Now, Jaws could be called

[1:33:59] it could happen to you.

[1:34:00] I remember there was talk

[1:34:02] they wanted to rename

[1:34:05] Snakes on a Plane

[1:34:06] to something more generic.

[1:34:08] And they're like, no, this is the best thing

[1:34:10] we have going for us.

[1:34:12] I think it came out online that they were going to change the title.

[1:34:14] And online people were like, no, no, no.

[1:34:17] And famously,

[1:34:18] We've talked about it before, that Edge of Tomorrow movie with Tom Cruise was originally what Live, Die, Repeat or something like that, which is a better title.

[1:34:25] All You Need is Kill.

[1:34:27] Live, Die, Repeat is what they eventually called it based on that was the title tagline.

[1:34:32] That was the tagline.

[1:34:33] And then they're like, oh, maybe we should call it that.

[1:34:36] All You Need is Kill is not a title.

[1:34:38] Because Edge of Tomorrow is, that's a bad name.

[1:34:39] I mean, I would argue that all three of those titles are not very good.

[1:34:43] I think Live, Die, Repeat is good because it tells you what happens.

[1:34:46] Like, you come back and die, you know.

[1:34:48] The best one as far as I'm concerned.

[1:34:49] That's the best of them.

[1:34:49] And what would you call it, Dan?

[1:34:51] Yeah.

[1:34:53] I died again.

[1:34:54] Tom Cruise killed a lot.

[1:34:56] No, again, that's not really a title.

[1:34:57] That's kind of a description of what's going on in it.

[1:34:59] Yeah.

[1:34:59] And that's the name of the actor.

[1:35:02] Yeah, he's not playing himself.

[1:35:04] That's an uncommon naming invention.

[1:35:07] Like Castaway is a good title for that movie.

[1:35:08] You wouldn't call it Tom Hanks on an Island.

[1:35:11] Yeah, you're right.

[1:35:13] I wouldn't call it that, I guess.

[1:35:15] Yeah.

[1:35:16] I might call it

[1:35:17] Untitled Tom Hanks

[1:35:18] on an Island Project.

[1:35:20] Again,

[1:35:21] untitled implies

[1:35:21] that there is going

[1:35:22] to be a different title.

[1:35:23] Yeah, yeah.

[1:35:25] Anyway.

[1:35:25] You wouldn't release a movie

[1:35:26] as Haley Joel Osment

[1:35:27] is a robot.

[1:35:28] That's not a title

[1:35:29] you would give a movie.

[1:35:29] I don't know.

[1:35:30] Wouldn't I?

[1:35:32] You might.

[1:35:33] You know what could

[1:35:33] happen to you, Dan?

[1:35:34] I thought he could see

[1:35:35] dead people.

[1:35:36] I didn't know he was a robot.

[1:35:37] That's the same movie.

[1:35:38] That's the twist that

[1:35:39] there were two twists

[1:35:40] originally in that movie.

[1:35:41] Yeah.

[1:35:42] There were two twists

[1:35:43] in that movie.

[1:35:44] The first was that

[1:35:44] Bruce Willis' dad

[1:35:46] And the second was that he's a robot the whole time.

[1:35:47] Yeah.

[1:35:48] And they were like, M. Night, that's too many twists.

[1:35:51] I hope that answered your question.

[1:35:53] Let's move on.

[1:35:54] Certainly it didn't.

[1:35:55] Grayson, last name withheld, writes,

[1:35:58] Hello.

[1:35:59] In your episode on 40 Days and 40 Nights,

[1:36:02] Elliot goes on an extended bit about an imaginary comedy sequence

[1:36:06] where Josh Hartnett waits for a bus while dealing with a comically large boner.

[1:36:12] Did I have no memory of any of our episodes?

[1:36:15] Good news!

[1:36:16] There's a scene almost exactly like that

[1:36:18] in the 80s breakdancing sex comedy Delivery Boys,

[1:36:21] where a character undergoes a medical experiment

[1:36:24] that gives him a raging boner,

[1:36:26] and he flees onto a public bus where hijinks ensue.

[1:36:29] Sounds like this should have been called shenanigans.

[1:36:31] Yeah, that does sound like shenanigans.

[1:36:32] Delivery Boys, for my money,

[1:36:34] is one of the worst movies ever made.

[1:36:36] This made me wonder,

[1:36:37] as people who work in the entertainment industry,

[1:36:39] have you ever had what you thought was a very unique idea

[1:36:42] only to discover it already existed?

[1:36:45] keep up the good work, fellas.

[1:36:47] Grayson, last name withheld.

[1:36:49] This is, that is exactly what it is

[1:36:51] to be a creative professional

[1:36:52] in the entertainment industry.

[1:36:54] You are constantly coming up with ideas,

[1:36:56] developing them, prepping them,

[1:36:57] and then finding out that someone

[1:36:58] has already sold it and is doing it.

[1:37:00] Or it already happened on a TV show

[1:37:02] two years ago that you didn't know about.

[1:37:04] This has happened to me numerous times.

[1:37:05] Or you'll pitch an idea and people,

[1:37:07] you'll pitch it and they'll be like,

[1:37:08] the executives will be like,

[1:37:09] I don't even understand this idea.

[1:37:11] Like, I don't know how to visualize it.

[1:37:12] And then a show will come out

[1:37:14] that is just like that idea.

[1:37:15] And you're like, well, somebody got through.

[1:37:17] Someone was able to do it.

[1:37:18] But the funniest version of this that happened to me was

[1:37:20] I woke up one morning

[1:37:22] when I was still with The Daily Show.

[1:37:23] I was getting ready for work

[1:37:24] and I started coming up with an idea

[1:37:25] and I was like, you know what?

[1:37:27] They do all these shows and movies

[1:37:29] about when aliens invade,

[1:37:30] but they don't do one about like

[1:37:31] after the alien invasion is over

[1:37:33] and like dealing with living under

[1:37:35] an alien government or whatever.

[1:37:39] And I started coming up with an idea in my head.

[1:37:41] I was like, this is what the aliens could be like

[1:37:42] and thing and i'm gonna call it colony and then i walked into the subway station and there was a big

[1:37:46] ad for colony a tv show about what happens after aliens take over and i was like shit

[1:37:51] they stole the idea from me this morning from my head and then put it into production already like

[1:37:57] it was i was like well i only wasted one morning on this at least well what this made me think of

[1:38:02] was like um years ago before i even like wrote at the daily show so i have no idea who who i

[1:38:10] thought would care about this anyway like who was gonna buy the script but like i was gonna write

[1:38:15] a comedy screenplay i had an idea about like someone who had an office space that they like

[1:38:24] used for like like basically people who had lost their jobs or were unemployed could go there and

[1:38:32] fake having a job uh to like if they needed to impress someone if they needed to like their

[1:38:39] parents off their back etc etc not like the greatest idea but i had like worked out like

[1:38:45] things about it that i thought could work and could be funny and then that movie accepted came

[1:38:50] out where it was like oh like we have this community abandoned community college where

[1:38:56] we're going to pretend that you got accepted if you got rejected to other schools i'm like

[1:38:59] well that premise like number one it makes a little more sense than mine anyway and it's very

[1:39:04] close so i didn't do any work on it like years later elliot was like you should have written it

[1:39:09] yeah no one remembers accepted and elliot these now i'm taking your advice because i had

[1:39:16] can i tell you the next idea i had for a script the basic setup of it i'm not going to say

[1:39:24] what movie but like it is similar to a movie that i saw is like new on streaming

[1:39:32] uh recently but i can i looked at this movie and i'm like no one's gonna remember this movie exists

[1:39:40] i'm just gonna try and write my thing it's gonna be different anyway like the basic setup is not

[1:39:46] gonna be so and how many times have you seen a movie and you've been like oh i've seen they've

[1:39:50] made they've done this story before like i've seen this story before it happens all the time so yeah

[1:39:53] you should you should just do it you'll find the thing about it that that makes it unique in and

[1:39:58] of itself and it still won't get made because nothing gets made these days you'll see a movie

[1:40:01] and be like, Jason Statham already foiled

[1:40:03] a mutiny on a boat before.

[1:40:05] Apparently not. No.

[1:40:07] First time. Yeah.

[1:40:09] I thought it turned out that was Tom Hanks

[1:40:11] and Captain Phillips. Can I tell you about

[1:40:13] that movie? What is wild to me? So like

[1:40:15] Mutiny or Captain Phillips or both? Mutiny.

[1:40:17] Oh. That is from the director

[1:40:19] of Plane, right? Yeah.

[1:40:21] He does vehicle-based action.

[1:40:23] There was going to be a Plane sequel

[1:40:25] called Boat.

[1:40:27] And that movie

[1:40:29] like a direct sequel

[1:40:30] gerard butler called boat that movie did not happen this same director is making a boat movie

[1:40:37] with statham called mutiny it blew my mind to find out that this was not just boat repurposed

[1:40:44] but this was actually a separate script completely different my guess is there's another script and

[1:40:48] he goes yeah well i was already prepping for a boat action movie yeah i guarantee you there's

[1:40:52] at least one action scene in it that was supposed to be for boat and it's now in this one but it

[1:40:57] could be that he was like i'm already in the market for a boat act it might have been that

[1:40:59] boat fell apart, and some rep

[1:41:02] was like, you've got a script

[1:41:03] that's an action movie set on a boat. He was just

[1:41:05] about to make one. This guy's a boat boy.

[1:41:07] Get into this boat boy. Yeah, exactly.

[1:41:09] This B-boy. B stands for boat.

[1:41:11] What's Gerard Butler doing? Why can't he make boat?

[1:41:14] I don't know.

[1:41:15] Den of Thieves 3? Yeah. Greenland

[1:41:17] 2. Oh, yeah.

[1:41:19] Those are big, right? Greenlands?

[1:41:22] I mean, there is a Greenland 2, which I

[1:41:23] hear is nutty. I hear that

[1:41:25] the first one, I mean, I saw the first one.

[1:41:27] I didn't love it, but people

[1:41:29] Is it about the country?

[1:41:33] Well, in Greenland, the first one, they were fleeing to Greenland

[1:41:37] because of some apocalyptic event that I've already forgotten.

[1:41:41] Okay.

[1:41:42] I assume that in Greenland, too, they are in Greenland.

[1:41:46] Still in Greenland.

[1:41:47] Okay.

[1:41:47] Cool.

[1:41:48] But anyway, they're like, Greenland's in the news so much.

[1:41:52] We got to, we got to, anywho.

[1:41:55] What do we do next, Stuart?

[1:41:58] Usually we talk about movies we liked.

[1:42:00] Could be Greenland, too, if you want.

[1:42:02] Could be Greenland, too.

[1:42:02] Could be Mutiny if you saw it and you liked it, yeah.

[1:42:04] I didn't, although there was that snafu, right,

[1:42:06] where Amazon accidentally released it

[1:42:08] the week it's supposed to go into theaters.

[1:42:11] Oh, I didn't know about that.

[1:42:12] Yeah, I'm sure it got taken down.

[1:42:13] I think more of that kind of thing will happen.

[1:42:15] Yeah.

[1:42:17] Let me look.

[1:42:18] What did I see lately that I enjoyed?

[1:42:22] Didn't you go to that porno?

[1:42:24] Yeah, Dan, what kind of porno

[1:42:26] have you been digesting lately?

[1:42:28] No, but he went to a movie theater and watched one.

[1:42:30] Yeah, this is a real thing.

[1:42:33] Nighthawk Williamsburg has a series called Skin Deep

[1:42:35] where they had been showing or still are showing

[1:42:38] artistically significant porn films.

[1:42:44] And Elliot has a dubious look of faith.

[1:42:47] I will say there is a...

[1:42:49] As someone who's interested in all kinds of movies,

[1:42:51] I have an interest in the way that the porn industry

[1:42:55] functioned as an industry

[1:42:57] and as a place for filmmakers and performers.

[1:43:00] But there's a certain point,

[1:43:01] I have to apologize to filmmakers,

[1:43:03] there's a certain point where the idea of like

[1:43:05] everything is art and can be appreciated as art

[1:43:07] where I'm like, I don't know.

[1:43:08] For me, it might stop when it gets to hardcore porn.

[1:43:11] I don't know.

[1:43:11] There's that brief period,

[1:43:12] that brief period when they were being more ambitious.

[1:43:15] Well, I mean, like certainly hardcore pornography.

[1:43:17] I feel like we're dangerous.

[1:43:23] This is me being an old man and a snob.

[1:43:24] I worry about a world where it's like, well, the Museum of Modern Art just accepted the Brazzers archive into their film collection.

[1:43:31] But this was definitely of that period where it was people trying to make a real movie.

[1:43:37] And then sometimes there would be hardcore sex.

[1:43:41] And I, you know, I've been kind of curious about this screening series.

[1:43:46] And then a friend of mine was like, I hear that this next one is supposed to be really nutty.

[1:43:51] And like, so I'm like, okay, I'll get tickets.

[1:43:53] You're getting tickets.

[1:43:54] I'll get tickets.

[1:43:54] i'll see it and let me say that um first off i have never previously seen a uh a feature hardcore

[1:44:04] film in a movie theater with people um did it make it more difficult

[1:44:09] i will i mean like the trailers beforehand were also for like hardcore porn and like it was and

[1:44:19] the lights were like part part way up and that made it all the worse i'm like i thought i was

[1:44:23] like reading my Kindle

[1:44:25] because I'm like, I don't feel comfortable

[1:44:27] with the lights way up and people

[1:44:29] like ejaculating on screen.

[1:44:33] But also

[1:44:33] I will say that I don't... You knew what you're getting into.

[1:44:35] I don't think that a 20-foot tall

[1:44:37] screen is the best way to feature

[1:44:39] genitals.

[1:44:42] But this movie

[1:44:43] was wild. It was called A Woman's Torment

[1:44:45] and it was like basically a repulsion set

[1:44:47] on Fire Island, but with

[1:44:49] like pornography stuck

[1:44:51] in. And like you talk about

[1:44:53] you know like the artistic uh ambitions of this this clearly was someone who wanted to make

[1:45:00] their movie but then like trojan horsed it in through like okay that's different and i will

[1:45:06] say and i will say it's like it was so unerotic that i'm like there's no way they thought this

[1:45:12] would be oh because that's the thing i what i said before about that about hardcore pornography

[1:45:16] i don't apply that to erotica like there is beautiful and artistic erotica like there is

[1:45:21] erotic art but

[1:45:22] I don't know there's the

[1:45:25] at a certain point I become a cranky old man

[1:45:27] but Dan so would you recommend it or not recommend it

[1:45:29] because it sounds like you did not have a great

[1:45:31] experience I mean it was

[1:45:33] interesting it was interesting

[1:45:34] it was interesting as like

[1:45:36] trying to puzzle out

[1:45:39] like did they think this could possibly

[1:45:41] be sexy this is all so

[1:45:43] upsetting everything that's happening in this

[1:45:45] movie I don't I don't know

[1:45:47] but um no I'm not gonna

[1:45:49] recommend that but it was you know thanks for it was an interesting cul-de-sac let's talk about

[1:45:55] what i do recommend which is uh you know a lot of movies that uh get dumped to like something like

[1:46:00] hulu are of varying quality depending like there's some great stuff that shows up there and like

[1:46:05] there's a lot of filler but uh one that i saw recently that i enjoyed was called the redux

[1:46:12] redux it is uh you know sort of a low budget sci-fi thriller that uh uses the overused

[1:46:22] multiverse idea mostly just to sort of uh tell a sort of stripped down tale of this woman whose

[1:46:30] child had been killed in her universe and is like going through like uh trauma like a breakdown

[1:46:39] basically by going to all of these other universes

[1:46:42] where her child is not alive,

[1:46:44] but she can kill the person who killed them.

[1:46:48] And then she gets involved with another teen girl

[1:46:54] that she rescues from the same killer.

[1:46:56] And it's just like, it's a good movie to look at

[1:47:00] in terms of how much you can do

[1:47:03] to make a sci-fi thriller without a big budget without like a lot of effects it is

[1:47:11] sort of just all carried on the weight of um the premise and the way they iterate on the premise

[1:47:18] and the good performance uh particularly from the lead uh woman the mom who is uh taking her

[1:47:27] revenge uh i'm not making like huge um uh claims for it but i think that the filmmakers behind this

[1:47:37] did a great job with it and i'm curious to see what they'll do in the future yeah similarly

[1:47:41] i'm going to recommend a recent horror movie called leviticus um which is an australian

[1:47:48] horror movie, uh, about a, uh, couple of young guys who are, uh, part of a kind of a tight

[1:47:58] religious community and, uh, make them undergo some extreme, uh, conversion therapy as a way

[1:48:06] to deal with their urges. And this involves the summoning of a, uh, shape-shifting invisible

[1:48:15] entity and it's you know i feel like it's some easy shorthand is to say that it's like

[1:48:22] it follows but for the uh queer community um and i think a lot of the uh i think it's i think it

[1:48:32] has some really good scares and there's some really good sequences um it does feel a bit like

[1:48:37] a short that got stretched a little bit maybe it could have used a little more like maybe one big

[1:48:42] set piece or something else um but i think a lot of the uh the metaphor maps really well

[1:48:48] probably even better than it follows um and uh so i think there's some really good stuff there

[1:48:54] and uh it's got some good scares so check it out leviticus uh i am going to recommend a uh

[1:49:04] a movie this what this movie not really reminded me of exactly but uh the i seeing a movie i haven't

[1:49:11] seen a lot of new movies lately, so I'm digging back into

[1:49:13] older movies that I've seen. And

[1:49:14] thinking about the movie we saw today, which is about

[1:49:17] like a teen dance

[1:49:18] contest, basically, it made me

[1:49:21] want to go back and rewatch the movie Smile, directed

[1:49:23] by Michael Ritchie and written by Jerry Belson, which is

[1:49:25] a kind of satire and kind of just kind

[1:49:27] of a straightforward comedy movie

[1:49:28] about a teen beauty

[1:49:30] pageant and all the kind of like

[1:49:33] corrupt and cynical and

[1:49:35] kind of like damaging things that go on

[1:49:37] around a teen beauty pageant. But there's

[1:49:39] still a sort of like...

[1:49:41] half-innocence to it.

[1:49:42] Like, the movie wants the characters to end up well,

[1:49:45] even as they're being not great around this pageant.

[1:49:49] And there's some funny stuff in it,

[1:49:50] and there's at least one very genuinely sweet moment in it.

[1:49:54] And so I'm going to recommend that.

[1:49:55] It's called Smile.

[1:49:57] You might find it listed with quotes around the title.

[1:50:00] Sometimes it has quotes around the title,

[1:50:02] and sometimes it doesn't,

[1:50:03] and I'm not sure why exactly.

[1:50:05] Who's it quoting?

[1:50:07] But after you've seen Standing Ovation with your kids,

[1:50:10] put them to bed

[1:50:10] and then you watch Smile

[1:50:11] which is a movie for grown-ups

[1:50:12] yeah

[1:50:13] um

[1:50:14] well

[1:50:15] that's another

[1:50:16] uh

[1:50:17] small temper over

[1:50:18] uh

[1:50:18] but don't

[1:50:19] don't fret

[1:50:20] listeners

[1:50:20] that icy chill

[1:50:22] you feel on the back

[1:50:23] of your spine

[1:50:24] means that Shocktober

[1:50:25] is just around the corner

[1:50:27] whoa

[1:50:27] uh oh

[1:50:28] um

[1:50:29] you got a tease

[1:50:30] you got some teases

[1:50:31] for us

[1:50:31] uh

[1:50:32] well I keep asking you Stuart

[1:50:33] whether you're cool

[1:50:34] with the three movies

[1:50:35] that I suggested

[1:50:37] for Shocktober

[1:50:38] yeah let's do them

[1:50:38] okay

[1:50:39] We got it.

[1:50:40] We're going to be doing a couple sequels this Shocktober.

[1:50:44] Or in this case, freequels.

[1:50:46] Whoa.

[1:50:47] There you go.

[1:50:47] Shriekwels, some might say.

[1:50:50] Yeah.

[1:50:50] Some might say that.

[1:50:52] I mean, you did.

[1:50:53] But this is one of those planetary conjunctions where we get three Shocktober episodes, right?

[1:50:58] There's three episodes in this Shocktober.

[1:51:00] And that conjunction, luckily, has come at a time when there are a plethora of horror movies.

[1:51:07] Because it's, you know, one of the few things that still seems to get people into theaters.

[1:51:11] As it does, as it happens every 10 years or so, Hollywood remembers that horror is a surefire way to make money if you do it right.

[1:51:19] Every 10 years, they're like, hey, horror is real big with audiences.

[1:51:23] We should do more horror movies.

[1:51:24] It's like, just keep making horror movies.

[1:51:26] Just keep making them.

[1:51:27] They always do well.

[1:51:28] Always.

[1:51:28] And part of it is I feel like horror fans are similar to like heavy metal fans and that they're committed.

[1:51:34] They will go see your shit.

[1:51:36] They want to see it all.

[1:51:37] Yeah.

[1:51:38] Even if they don't like it.

[1:51:39] Yeah.

[1:51:40] They want it all.

[1:51:43] And they want it now.

[1:51:44] Nice.

[1:51:45] Well, that's been established or teased or whatever now.

[1:51:50] So we can move on.

[1:51:51] That October is coming?

[1:51:52] Yeah.

[1:51:54] Watch out.

[1:51:56] Leaves are rustling.

[1:51:57] I don't want you to be shocked when you flip over your calendar.

[1:52:01] The scary month.

[1:52:02] No.

[1:52:03] I'm letting you know.

[1:52:04] October's coming.

[1:52:06] I'm also letting you know that we're part of the Maximum Fun Network.

[1:52:09] Go to MaximumFun.org.

[1:52:11] Check out other shows on the network.

[1:52:14] I'm sure you'll find at least one you also enjoy.

[1:52:18] So why not take a chance?

[1:52:20] Also, thank you to Alex Smith.

[1:52:22] He goes by the name HowlDotty when he's doing music, when he's doing funny stuff, all sorts of creative work on the internet.

[1:52:31] Check him out.

[1:52:32] Thank you, Alex.

[1:52:33] For The Flophouse, I have been Dan McCoy.

[1:52:36] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:52:37] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:52:39] Somewhat chastened.

[1:52:40] Less cocky than I was at the beginning of the episode.

[1:52:50] Good news, guys.

[1:52:51] We're talking about saving the invasion.

[1:52:53] That is good news.

[1:52:55] Not as good a news as that the Lord died for our sins.

[1:52:59] I guess that's pretty good news.

[1:53:01] I didn't like that guy that much.

[1:53:02] I don't think John Krasinski would put it on his show, though.

[1:53:06] No, it's not that kind of good news, no.

[1:53:08] I mean, he sold the rights, man.

[1:53:09] He doesn't get to make creative decisions.

[1:53:11] He sold the rights to the Bible?

[1:53:13] Yep.

[1:53:14] He had them.

[1:53:15] It was foolish of him.

[1:53:17] Why'd he do that?

[1:53:17] Those rights are worth mucho dinero.

[1:53:21] Yeah, originally they were owned by Steve Guttenberg.

[1:53:26] His famous Guttenberg Bible.

[1:53:28] Yeah, he foolishly squandered that money, yeah.

[1:53:32] Okay, I think we're as warm as we're ever going to be.

[1:53:35] That's pretty warm.

[1:53:36] We get any warmer.

[1:53:37] We're going to have to turn on a second AC.

[1:53:40] Yeah.

[1:53:40] Okay.

[1:53:41] Let's.

[1:53:42] You know who's not getting warm?

[1:53:43] AOC, as in her eggs.

[1:53:44] She froze them.

[1:53:46] Oh, yeah.

[1:53:47] Topical.

[1:53:47] Topical comedy.

[1:53:48] It's news.

[1:53:49] News you can't use.

[1:53:51] There's nothing to do with that news.

[1:53:54] Maximum Fun.

[1:53:55] A worker-owned network.

[1:53:56] Of artist-owned shows.

[1:53:58] Supported.

[1:53:59] Directly.

[1:53:59] By you.

Standing Ovation

Chapters

Transcript

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