The Flop House - 40 Days and 40 Nights

Episode Date: May 2, 2026

We close out Max Fun Drive 2026 with some true pain. Stuart's proclaimed "least favorite movie," 40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS, a supposed "sexy romcom" that's actually a melange of unfunny shenanigans, poisonous attitudes, nothing that resembles actual human behavior, and (trigger warning) some unacknowledged sexual assault. It's... a lot. But at least it led to a funny episode -- like a flower, blooming from a pile of shit. One last time for 2026 -- the Max Fun Drive is literally what keeps this show going. If you love listening and want to support creators, please consider becoming a member (or upgrading/boosting) at maximumfun.org/join! Stay updated on all things Flop House, plus a little extra, with our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets! Wikipedia page for 40 Days and 40 Nights Recommended in this episode: Dan: Strange Brew (1983) Stu: Primate (2025) Elliott: Losing Ground (1982) Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinflop

On this episode, we discuss 40 days and 40 nights. Guys, I know I said I had a hot one, but this thing just beat it out of me, you know? Oh. Like, what is a hot one in the face of such evil? Oh, Stuart, it'll be okay. There's still light in the world. It won't be okay, Stuart, but I understand. Hey, everyone, and welcome to the first.

Flop House. I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington, I guess. And I'm Elliot Kaelin and I can't wait to talk about this movie that Stuart hates. But why are we doing such a thing? Hold up. If you're listening to this episode, you, you, if you're listening to this episode on release weekend, there is still time to support the flop house and be part of the Max Fun Drive. I'll talk about that a little bit more later, but we don't have time for that. You need to hurry up and go over to maximum fun.org. join flop. That's join flop right there for an express way to support the flop house financially and keep the doors and lights on, baby. Keep the doors and lights open.

Open those lights. Get the filaments so you can touch them, yeah. The Max Fund Drive is not quite over, but it's right at the end. So why don't you head over and support the flop house now, please. But the flop house, what is it? First principles, we go back. It is a podcast where we watch a movie that was a critical or commercial flop. And then we talk about it.

Now, I was shocked to learn, however, that this was neither. This was, you know, like I think this did okay financially. It did really well financially. Really? According to Wikipedia, the budget was $17 million. And, you know, you got to double that for marketing. And the box office was $95 million. Wow.

So this almost broke $100 million at the box office in 2002. What was more shocking to me is if you go to Metacritic, it is in the green zone. I forget the actual score, but... 53%, it says right here. What, it's what? 53%. Oh, 53. Well, that's more mixed.

Yeah. But that's still the feeling like when I'm watching a national election and seeing, I don't know, a total piece of shit get elected. And I'm like, I guess half the people in the world like this thing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I do think that... But Roger Ebert, who you love Dan, he gave this. movie three stars out of four.

Wow. I've heard he's wrong though sometimes. Things have turned around on this though. I mean, I don't think that anyone who liked it in the old days is going to be like, oh, you know what's really great 40 days and 40 nights, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's still some 40 days and 40 nights lovers out there. Michael Lehman movie that

people are going to talk about the most liking these days. No, no. What would be? Heather's or Hudson Hawk or Airheads. Probably not my giant. Probably not the truth about cats and dogs. Potentially meet the Applegates.

If he did Heather's. If he did... Oh, meet the Applegates. Yeah, I like that. Heather's is his big movie. But he also did Hudson Hawk, which I think has been rightly re-evaluated as... As a good movie.

As I wrote in my letterbox, you know, Heather's is one of my favorite 80s movies. And this is one of the worst movies of the 2000s. So take that O-Tor theory. Like, Michael Lehman, you know, started out with a bang. And then, I don't know, never did anything. Like, all that much after... after Heather's.

He does a lot of TV now. You know, it's like when people make fun of a band for being a one-hit wonder and you're like, few bands even get a hit. Yeah. They barely get the hit.

I mean, technically, Devo is a one-hit wonder, you know. Yeah. So there's nothing wrong about that. And people remember their, what,

hats? They do remember their hats. I mean, they're one-hat wonder also. They are actually more than one-hatt. Yeah. I mean, it's the same hat,

but there is more than one of them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And hit, obviously,

one-hit, hit is a portmanteau of high hat and their hats are high. Yeah. They've got tears. And of course, as we've already addressed, the hat part of high hat stands for head hat. So it's actually a double portmanteau for high head hat. It's a, yeah, quote. So what do we do on this podcast?

We watch a bad movie talk about it. Now, this is, of course, because as Stewart mentioned, the Max Fund Drive, we picked movies to specifically hurt each other. And there was no other choice for me. fucking violence here. I had to go with the movie that Stewart for years spent, for years has established as his least favorite movie of all

time. A movie that back in the day, I had encouraged listeners to go rent from a video store and then destroy instead of returning. Yeah, and now I have never... And I have in the in the years since, I've received multiple packages of shattered DVDs. And so

I had never seen this movie. I didn't understand why Stewart hated it so much. And now I've seen it. And I think understanding has come to me. There was a brief moment when, obviously, when the horror set in that was going to be, is Stewart going to just not watch a movie for the flop house and show up unprepared? And say the dog ate his DVD player.

But it was the feeling like, Elliot made this choice. He's going to have to watch this movie. I'm hoping without his family in the house. Yeah. No, they had to be in the house just sleeping at the time, which is thankful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm glad none of my kids wanted in the room, have to answer questions about 40 days and 40 nights.

You had to watch it after hours. Exactly. If only I was watching after hours. What a better movie. Also featuring Griffin Dunn. Yeah. That's true. Do you think it's the same character?

He's like, I got to get out of the East Village. It's crazy. I'm going to go to San Francisco, get into the tech world. I mean, they've got a similar sort of interest in like getting laid, I feel like the two characters. And I was about to say the ages of the characters match up, but that's just because Griffin Dunn aged in real time. between the making of the movies. Like many of us, because he's aging in real time.

He's not unstuck. So let's talk about 40 days and 49th. He's not laboring under some kind of curse that he picked up from some wizard in the village. I mean, not that we know of, you know, it's possible. He's been cursed to write about his famous family. Although I've heard that book is really good. I'd actually like to read it.

So anyway, the movie starts with our titles over home video footage, home movie footage of Josh Hartnett, the character of Matt and his girlfriend, Nicole, and they're clowning around San Francisco, kissing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge and so forth. Some very late 90s... Really establishes San Francisco as one of the main characters of this movie. San Francisco is really a character in the movie.

Some very late 90s, early 2000s music. There's going to be a lot of that in this one. So if you were to pay attention to the movie, you would believe that San Francisco is a city populated exclusively by white people and one or two Asian people. Yes. I mean, it is a character in that the fact that he works at a city, a dot com is very important to the movie.

But I think it's important to the movie, essentially in two ways, that this is an early 2000s movie. And so that was just a thing that had to be in movies. And also that if he worked at any other job, everything that would happen would be wildly inappropriate. But I guess the culture, the freewheeling culture of the dot-com boom.

But they also, they're at a web design firm. So it's not like they are, they're not doing anything with the internet. They're just designing websites for other companies. Yeah, creating flash animated websites. Yes. Yeah, well people can bet on. So that's where Fear.com went to get its website design.

Kind of. Probably. Matt Sullivan, by Josh Hardin. But you're right, Dan, because the office culture is entirely, they spend so much more of their time hitting on each other, harassing each other's sex lives, than they do doing work at all.

Yeah. So it's a... But you know, you got that big open plan office. That's what you got to do. You gotta do, yeah. So the camera gets distracted during all this home video footage by a woman passing by because Matt's roommate Ryan, who's a total horn dog, is holding the camera. I have to interrupt here.

Played by actor Paolo Costanzo, there is no universe where that man's name is, this very Mediterranean man is named to Ryan. That universe is the fourth. Christopher maybe. But not Ryan. I don't know. I mean, Ryan's still a, it's still a Catholic name. You know, it's an Irish Catholic name still. but, you know, anyway, we're just meeting these characters.

So in voiceover, Matt fills us in about how his girlfriend Nicole, who we just saw on this footage, seemingly very much in love, has broken up with him. And each time he has sex with another girl to try to ease his pain, he imagines that the ceiling is cracking open and a vast emptiness opens up and he panics. And he runs away half-dressed from a trist because he's so panicked by this vision of the empty abyss staring back at him

in his empty life filled with nothing. but sexual pleasure. And his brother... It's kind of like shame, right? Yes, I guess so. I mean, in many... This would be a double feature with shame. They cover a lot of the same themes,

just coming at it from different angles. His brother, who is a priest in training, is tired of hearing about it. And has no faith that his brother will find anything with empty sex in his life. We're already tired of hearing about it. Now, what did you guys think about? This cracking open of the ceiling

is the first element of surrealism that enters the movie. What did you guys think about that? Successful. Are you referencing the fact that I sent you the Wikipedia description that called this a surrealist comedy?

Perhaps, perhaps. It's referring to us a Dolly-esque. A romantic comedy fantasy surrealist film. So when you go to the video store on the surrealist section, there's Lodge de Orr and Shannon DeLoo and 40 days and 40 nights,

they're all right there together. The exterminating angel. Exterminating angel. I mean, you watch this, you assume Bunwell had something to do with it. The fact that he died years earlier, you're like, I guess the ghost of Bunwell direct this. Yeah.

I mean, it is, the movie is surrealist in that, and I was complaining to you guys about this over text. No one acts like a human being in this movie. No one, this is not grounded and recognizable human behavior. The animating, you know, premise of the movie, the fact that he's like, okay, I'm having trouble getting over my girlfriend. I'm having too much empty sex. I must promise that for 40 days and 40 nights

I do not have sex or masturbate. I'm like, why? Why is this the... I mean, like, if you're worried that there's too much empty sex in your life, by all means, like, cut down on the empty sex, but you don't have to hold yourself. You're creating a problem that becomes a deep problem in this buddy romance later in the film.

And it causes so much... So many hijinks. No one... If ever there was a movie, a romantic comedy, where the misunderstanding at the center of it could be cleared up within a few sentences in a way that would cause problems to nobody. Well, I mean, we clearly learned that

if he is going to give something up for Lent, it shouldn't be meaningless sex. It should be lying because he's constantly lying. That's true. And this all exists in a world where everything is antagonistic. There are no friends in this world. All the friends are like mean to each other.

Sex is like a violent, aggressive act between two people, some kind of power struggle. It's a very, it's a very broie movie in that the characters who are essentially friends basically exist to like tease and shame and harass each other and make fun of each other. And the women in it are either super perfect, you know, love angels or witches and shrews, you know? Or like sirens, like horny sirens who are who, who, were there to sap his seed during... I think that falls under witches and shrews, too.

But it's one of these movies where the character has a shameful secret that he can't let anyone know. And that shameful secret is lent. And so moving on, just to get to that point, we haven't gotten there yet, to get his mind off Nicole, he goes on a double date with his roommate. They end up, of course, bringing their girls back. Hartnett sees that emptiness hole, open up the ceiling again, and he decides he has to fake an orgasm because he can't have one,

which is a thing that is hard for a man to do because there's a, There's a physical reaction thing that happens. And the girl is like, show me. Show me your ejaculate. And he can't do it. And it is all normal stuff. And this also establishes that he is very bad at lying. It's also one of those things that like, guys,

we don't have to get too personal. But if you've ever been in a sexual situation with a World War Woman, where something just doesn't go right and you're not able to complete your sexual orgasm. You should lie about it. You should lie, exactly. The idea that this is a crazy thing

that he has to lie about is he's constantly lying about things that do not need to be lied about. I would believe it if Larry David was in this situation and felt the need to lie about it. I don't believe it if any other human being needs to build it. Let us not wallow in irony. Let us give a

good message to the youth. Be open and honest and be cool about it and chill out and maybe do some other stuff that doesn't involve you're having to as long as you're providing pleasure, it is okay if you don't

receive ultimate pleasure because providing pleasure is also a form of pleasure. But instead, he runs to the other room and gets some whiteout. And he doesn't even finish... He doesn't even finish doing that. He gets caught. But also, the other offensive thing about this movie, to a nerd, like myself, is the idea, can a man go 40 days without sex? Yeah, dude. I've gone way more than 40 days without sex at times in my life. Like, there have been many times when I have, when I would have preferred to not go that long without sex, but it happened. But the, or even the idea that like... But Elliot, 40 days without sex or masturbating? Impossible.

It can't do it. Or masturbating. Well, the other thing, as we'll get to later, is that, like, eventually he just has a boner all the time. And it's like, well, if you, your body will take care of this. You will ejaculate in the middle of the night. It happens commonly to all sorts of people. I feel like I would transform into fry after 100 cups in common. We don't.

Which is kind of what happens to Josh Hardin. It's kind of what happens to him. This is what happens. We don't have good sex education in this country. So you have to get it from the flop back. You have to get it from movies. Don't get it from movies, which will teach you that if you don't masturbate or have sex for 40 days, you will go insane.

That's not what will happen, you know. So anyway. And by the way, that's to say that he still has sex in the course of the movie, even though he says he does not because blowing flower petals across a woman's tummy until she climaxes. That's sex, guys, I'm sorry. FYI. Sex, just like wars, politics by other means, blowing flower petals across a woman's tummy is sex by other means.

But we'll get there. We're not there yet. So first, he goes to work at the internet company we mentioned that he works at, run by boss, Griffin Dunn, who no one seems to get that much work. It's more of a hangout singles bar than a, like a college clubhouse than it is a office or workhouse. This office needed one person who's a little, like an accountant or somebody who's older and overall this shenanigans bullshit. Yes. And he learns from the bagel delivery guy, aka the older brother from the adventures of Pete and Pete.

He learns from the bagel delivery guy that Nicole got engaged. And the big old guy can't stop talking about how hot Nicole is. And this drives me. bonkers, yeah. He learns this information while the bagel guy is sticking bagels on a fucking spindle

like they're like comic books or some shit, like this like spinning thing. I mean, I mean, bagels are on spindles and bagels shops. You don't usually have an office

that has a bagel spindle. You know, usually put them on a plate or something like that. I assume this is, of course, a visual metaphor. Well, there's that too. This is also one of the many

elegant and subtle visual metaphors for penetrators. in this movie. And Matt runs over and he sees there's an engagement party going on. And he's like, what is he going to do? So he bumps into a woman and instantly sleeps with her. And so Matt decides. And this is really tough because I think he's firmly established both now and then he

establishes further later on all the reasons why he loves Nicole, which are. She seems really mean. She's mean to him. Which is attractive, I get. She's attractive but mean. Some guys like that. She's not Some guys while staring

and Stuart She's not so much a character As a symbol Of a robotic misconnection Yeah Now this movie also I should mention Because we're not really getting across The tone of this movie is so

I was like The same way that X versus Sever Which came out in the early 2000s Is the most 90s action movie I've ever seen This is the most 90s romantic comedy I've ever seen Even though it came out in 2002 Everything about it feels so

Like the style The visual style The clothes people are wearing wearing the music, this kind of like winky, ironic, kind of like clerk's lightish kind of tone. It feels so, it feels, this felt like such a time capsule of the movies that were coming out when I was in high school and college. Every set looks like it was on Friends. Yes.

That's very much the look of the film. It's a very sitcomy look. Yeah, yeah. They could call it sitcom the movie. Yeah. At one point, one of the women is wearing a shirt that had that like, that monkey cartoon graphic that you saw on a lot of shows. shirts in the 90s and I was like, this is it.

This is when the movie reached peak 90s is this shirt. But anyway, so Matt says... Speaking of shirts, no, go on. So Matt says he'll give up sex or in all sexual activity, including masturbation for Lent. His brother doesn't think he can do it, but he does have a vision of Jesus smiling at him. His brother is so incredibly unsupportive and crappy towards him the entire... He's such a dick to him.

But that's everyone in this movie. Everyone is so cruel to everyone. And also, I mean, we haven't, I mean, we haven't, I mean, we have a lot of, We somehow not talked about it enough, even though we've talked about it a lot. It's so annoying that, like, the movie's like, his problem is he just can't stop having sex. I mean, he clearly has, like, emotional problems he has to work through. Maybe that's the issue. And the way that Josh Hartnett plays him is as such a twitchy kind of, like, strange guy.

Like, he's handsome. He's Josh Hartnett. But he plays him as, like, this bundle of, like, nervous anxieties that it's like, you have You need, what you need is therapy. Like, what you need to do is go to a therapist. You might need medication. I'm not sure. You need to take the edge off of life because clearly you're having trouble.

Just flushing sex out of your system for a little bit less than a month and a half is not what you need. You need long-term self-work and self-care, you know. Maybe if you cared more about yourself and forgave yourself, you wouldn't need Nicole in your life being mean to you all the time. But you would find better friends than the guys who are just see you as a betting pool. subject matter and are constantly trying to lure you into having sex so that they can win the betting pool. Like everyone is terrible. Yeah, trying to get you to relapse on your addiction.

Yes. So he goes home, he's serious about this. He boxes up all of his porn, which he has hidden behind another layer of regular VHS tapes. But also, like, all his magazines are like out. Yes. He has all these issues of like FHM and stuff like that just lying around on his coffee, because it's a real guy's apartment, you know, at any moment you might just need, even at his office workplace.

There's like porn magazines around the guys can just pick up and walk into the stall and, you know, rub one out just before a meeting or something like that? And that's totally, I haven't worked in an office in a long time, guys. Is that cool? I mean, it's cool. I mean, from the sample set of offices I've worked at, which is only a few, no, it is not cool. And you work with in the world of comedy, which, as we all know, is all about. That's produced some gross deeds.

Yeah, that's very true, you know. Yeah, we saw some inappropriate things in morning meetings for sure at our time. I mean, certainly, certainly there were people that we worked with doing things they shouldn't have in the office. But I was not one of them. It was not considered cool. It was considered, please stop that. Please don't want you doing it. So he goes to laundromat.

Oh, anyway, actually, this was the thing Dan pointed out over text, maybe as why Stuart hates the movie is that. He stops having sex and immediately gets into painting model kits. So the movie typifies that the exact opposite of erotic pleasure is painting models. Stuart, was this something you felt as a personal attack on you? Yeah, what the fuck, dude? Between this shit and 40-year-old virgin, Stuart was under attack. He was under fire. Yeah.

The movies really wanted to show Stuart as being the opposite of a sexual being in the way he chose to spend his time. So Matt goes to the laundromat and he meets this pretty girl, played by Shannon Sossaman. Yeah. Who really had a moment right about then and not at other times. Yeah. I mean, that's the career of an actor. Yeah.

Rules of Attraction. I mean, that's being a working actor. You got busy times and not busy times. And she just keeps asking him for stuff and he's and they start to hit it off, you know, but they're not dating. Despite him trying to give her the cold shoulder. They also, there's a weird. Well, he literally says nothing to her the first time they made me. keeps walking over and asking for things.

He keeps saying nowhere. He borrows her magazine. He borrows her dryer sheets. No, she, or rather, the other way around. She borrows his magazine. She brows his driver sheets. She also finds his hidden stash of laundry detergent that he keeps at the laundromat, which is weird, right? Yeah, it is weird.

Yeah. That he is a weird little hidden cubbyhole in the laundromat. But I guess he has to go there a lot because he has so many layered shirts in this movie. He goes through so much clothing. So much sex, too, that there's semen stains that he has to constantly be watching out. Oh, he washes those out. He doesn't wear them like a badge of honor. No, it's not like the scene in Fear and Lodling in Las Vegas when they're talking about how your average drug freak has encrusted semen on his pants from his constant masturbation and Hunter Thompson looks down and sees this encrust his semen on his pants and starts to scratch it off.

So Matt and his roommate, Ryan, don't see eye to eye on this. His coworkers all think this is a bizarre situation. It's never going to work. They start a betting pool on his chastity, and the girls at work start messing with him by trying to seduce him. They take notes on this, like, rolling whiteboard in their office that, like, scrolls. The entire office becomes about this, and they put together a flash animation website, which we'll see later. They start taking bets from global betters, like internationally on this topic.

Which I would have made fun of at the time, but now in this world of online betting, It makes a lot of sense to me. They predicted prediction markets, you know. Yeah. But it's also one of the things, though, where it's like, this cannot be the only guy giving up sex for Lent, right?

I've got to assume that's one of the more popular things to give up for Lent because it's such a clear, like, vice sacrifice or pleasure sales. I don't know. Show me sex. Oh, sorry. Oh, I guess control the board goes to the other family. Wow.

I'm going to say chocolate, chocolate. Dan's, uh, Dan's Steve Harvey was pretty good. Right? Pretty good. I don't think I was trying to do it. any impression or anything. The suit, the suit work. The suit was like...

If I was in Steve Harvey, I would just do like a deadpan, like, stare and not like saying anything for a while. Dan is wearing a bright red double-breasted suit. So that's how you know he's using a Steve Harvey impression. Double-breasted suit and a lot of mustache work. I have had a lot of mustache work done. Yeah. Yeah, you're noticing.

I know. Yeah. Dan's been putting Botox into his mustache, which has made his mustache smoother. Yeah. It's really firm. Yeah. So, uh, So Matt goes to the laundromat to see and sees that laundry girl again.

Her name is Erica. They introduce themselves. It turns out she is a cybernanny. Her job is finding sex sites online and then manually blocking them, I guess. Or at least just notating. Like to prevent search engines from picking them or something. Yes. And they start dating and the word spreads among the betters.

He's dating a girl. Uh-oh, what does this mean for the odds of his sex life? Day 16, as the Chiron helpfully tells us. Erica, she says goodbye to her roommate. Maggie Jillon Hall in one of the most surprising performances in the movie. Who is still pretty good. She does a great job.

I mean, she is, she gives one of the best performances in the movie because she's a great actress. But also the fact that like, I'm like, this, it's, that's one of the things I love about acting careers. You can become one of the most respected creative forces in movies. And as an actor or behind the scenes or whatever, you still started out doing a Pizza Hut commercial or 40 days and 40 nights or, you know,

you started, everyone, almost everyone starts at the bottom. But it also shows you like, the star power because you're like, oh, like she instantly has more charisma than most of the people in the movie. Yes. And I kept thinking about, oh, she's going to go on to make a genuinely like sexy movie, like a movie that is genuinely about sex in a way that engages and investigates sex and is sexy and raises questions and makes you feel things as opposed to this one, which makes you feel nothing, you know. But anyway, um, uh, I made Stewart feel fury and, you know, they go on a bus riding date. He's looking for. for dates where there's no chance of physical interaction, so they just ride the bus all day together. They're clearly surrounded by Greens Greens.

Yes. And this is one of those, this is a very, like, quirky date. You know, you're just going to ride the bus all day. At the end, he avoids kissing her, gives her a high five instead. But he does not tell her, oh, I've given up sex for Lent. At the end of Lent, I'll be able to have sex with you. Why doesn't he mention it? I don't know.

I don't understand. I know. It's fucking crazy. I mean, like, this is the, I mean, it's not exactly. the idiot plot defined as, you know, a problem that would be solved immediately if everyone in the movie weren't idiots, but it's close to it. It's a cousin of it. It's the we're not just talking for no particular reason plot, which happens a lot.

There's nothing, I guess, I guess it's not hot to be like I'm hung up on my ex. Oh, I see that too. But you can be like saying like, oh, I was worried. you know, after my last relationship that I was having too much meaningless sex, I really want to take the slow and, like, feel things. Like, that will not be, I think, received poorly. I mean, especially compared to, like,

all of, like, the weird twitchiness that he's doing instead. Let me, let me pull back the curtain. When I met my now wife, I said, hey, I just had a bad, I was coming off of a bad breakup. I was like, I just had a bad breakup. So I'm trying to take things a little slow. And we're married now. It worked out fine.

It went great. And, but, like, it's that easy to have that. conversation you don't want to go on and on about your ex but you just like if you are honest with someone about where you are emotionally you can build a foundation of a relationship but instead yeah he's just twitchy and weird and it's one of the things where it's one of many

movies where like I'm not sure what she sees in him because he seems like a twitchy weirdo he's obviously super cute but the she's also like and she maybe she's attracted to his denial of you know of her physical pleasure I mean now she's chasing him

but she so she He is deceiving her the whole time. He is lying to her. He is trying to attract her. This is not a real connection. He is trying to control her. Yes. By presenting himself in a specific way.

And she is suspicious of him the whole time and gets increasingly so as things go on. And like she even explains her past history of dating the wrong guys. And he's like, you know what? I'm just going to keep manipulating. I'm going to keep being the wrong guy. And so I could almost see a version of this movie where he says,

I'm giving up sex for Lent and she's weirded out by him being more spiritual than her. Or something more, more, him being Catholic or something like that. And them dealing with that and you could have an interesting story about that. But instead he just, yeah, lies to her and he's manipulating her. Well, it's also a movie where like- Manipulating her the way she wants to be manipulated. Not to jump ahead. Not to jump ahead.

We will get to it when we get to it. But this is a movie where she is mad at him for all of the right reason. early in the movie and all the wrong reasons at the end. Yes, by the end, it doesn't make sense why, yeah. So Matt finds out about the betting pool. So Erica is talking to her roommate, and it's like, ugh, I wish you wanted to have sex.

I don't get it. Matt finds out about the betting pool and the website they set up. Uh-oh. Erica is a cyber nanny. Her whole job is looking at websites. She finds out about it, and she's mad at Matt for not telling her.

Can their poorly constructed relationship exist? We're going to have to find out after this word from Stuart Weller. Stewart, do you have a message for the audience. Yeah, you're probably wondering, why is the flop house torturing themselves with this movie? Well, this living nightmare is the result of the Max Fun Drive. The pain that we go through is all for you,

our annual membership event where we encourage people to support the Flop House by doing something a little special or kind of terrible in this case. We're like Daffy Ducks self-emulating on stage, and we are humbly asking you, do you like listening to us suffer? Well, then consider supporting us with your cold, hard cash. The flop house exists almost entirely because of the financial support of listeners like you. Listener support pays the bills, keeps the lights on, pays for rental fees on terrible movies, etc.

And, more importantly, it allows us to keep our weekly podcast. and enormous back catalog, totally free for new listeners and for folks who cannot afford to support us. So for $5 a month, less than the cost of one Costco hot dog a week, you can support our show and have hundreds of hours of bonus content to enjoy. So before we go back to this fucking movie, if you're listening to this show on the weekend of release, you obviously like us.

you're making it a priority listen. Why don't you head over to maximum fun.org slash join flop to help give us some meaning to this madness and support the flop house today, please. Elegantly stated, Stuart. And now once more into the breach, dear friends. So Erica has found out of the site, she's real mad about it.

His roommate Ryan is like, just quit this, just quit the pledge, just quit it. By the way, also, Nicole's fiancé is cheating on her. And meanwhile, then we start the... Yeah, because everyone's a villain in this movie. Everyone's bad. Speaking of a villain, Griffin Dunn, Matt's boss, introduces his subplot in which he has been inspired by Matt's vow of chastity to withhold sex from his wife until she is begging for it. As a way to manipulate her.

And this is not... Your boss should not be talking to you about his sex life with his wife. That's just something that shouldn't be happening, you know. Erica leaves a note for Matt saying they can still hang out and they go on a date. It's awkward. because they can't be physical. So now all they can think about is being physical. But then, uh-oh, even worse, Matt sees Nicole with her fiancé.

He panics and ends up with his arm on fire. I'm not even going to talk about how it happens. He's so dumb. And he meets Nicole's fiancé. He's pretty okay, though. Restrons were pretty crazy back then. He's not even wearing like a special, like, stunt asbestos shirt or anything. I'm sure in the shooting of it he was.

No, I mentioned the shooting of it. Yeah, no, no, no. I heard the Josh Hartnett insisted to do it wrong. Yeah. Yeah. He does all his own stunts in the dumbest way possible. It's in his contract. Let me dip my arm in kerosene first.

You want to get this. And he meets Nicole's fiancé, who is barely even a character. You know, but it's just, he's every, he's just the, whatever's the blankest version of bad, like, kind of rich young guy in movies, you know. And Erica's mad that Matt never told her about Nicole, you know? It's like he's got this whole, it's almost as if he has a whole rich emotional life that he does not want to let her into. and instead wants to keep things on the surface. He offers to break his vow, but it just gets more awkward between him and Erica,

and she tells him, finish the vow, and then maybe we can talk. Meanwhile, it'll probably work out. Yeah, of course, there's a bunch of dumb stuff. Ryan pretends to be chased to pick up. Non-stop. He's true or worse, Elliot. Matt, once, so Matt has already had one of the girls at work

tried to seduce him. Now, two of the girls at work start talking about how what he's doing is removing the leverage that women traditionally should have over men. They offer Matt a threesome in the copy room. Yeah, that's the part. When Dan saw this in the theater, he turned to his date and was like,

this is true. Yeah, I started my militant website. This is like, this movie is such poisonous ideas about everything. Everything about it. Everything about it is terrible, yeah. It's such an in-cells fantasy of what the world is that they are either not engaged in or that it's happening around them, yeah.

I bet women are always talking about the power they hold over us. Yeah. I bet if I say I'm not going to have sex, women will throw themselves at me because of my power, but I'll continue. But I only have the power to have sex if I refuse to have sex. Oh, I don't know what to do. I guess I'll just blow up something. So Matt is all anxious and nervous now, as opposed to earlier when he was merely twitchy. Now he is full-blown like someone who, he is full-blown Raymaland in the Lost Weekend, kind of detoxing, you know, seeing things.

He sees naked women everywhere, women in their lingerie everywhere. He goes to dinner at his parents' house, and we get, we get, I think these are my two favorite performances in the movie, though, which is their parents played by Mary Gross and, and who's the other guy, is a Barry Newman, the star of Vanishing Point. And the dad is just, the dad decides he's just. Who, by the way, doesn't read as Catholic to me? No, no, I don't think so. So, but the all the dad's- I was very glad to see Mary Gross, though. Yeah, it was very fun seeing Mary Gross.

She's always great. And she's so good at doing what she's doing here, which is like the character who is embarrassed by what her husband is doing and is trying to put a good face on things. But all the dad wants to talk about is his sex life and what kinds of sex he and his wife can have now that he's like... Showing them pull out diagrams of it. It's one of these scenes where you're like, this would never happen. This would never happen. But Barry Newman performs it so naturally that I'm like, you know what? Maybe a dad would do this.

He does... He's not selling... He's not pushing the jokes at all. He's just like, see this position? I couldn't do. It's too bad. I can't because of my knees. This one we can do,

so we put a check decks to it. Like, he's so good in the scene. And, like, and at this point, Josh Hartnett is struggling with a thing that he is like, he can't help his body's reaction to the thought of sex, but the problem is it's his parents. So it's unlocking all kinds of horrible things. Oh, yeah.

So his testicles explode on camera. He was grotesque. At that time, it was the most, expensive special effect ever to make those testicles explode. It was in 2002, so they used all the matrix cameras to get every angle.

Yeah, it happens in bullet time. Yeah, exactly. They're like a gap khaki commercial. Yeah, but just like a mouse coming out of Carla Gino's shoe, it just explodes. Takes out half the room. So,

meanwhile, his roommate is using a black light to, like, check Matt's bed for semen just to make sure he's it. It's one of those things where it's like, there's just, everyone is being so invasive about his life, but he's also such a weirdo that he never says, hey man, get out of my room. What are you doing?

Like, it's just, it's, or he has no power to control anything other than his chastity at this point. Everyone's being so invasive and is one of those movie things where it's like, I guess this guy's life is the most important thing happening on planet Earth. There's nothing else going. The entire world is now focused on whether this guy's going to last 40 days. It's like when people ask me if I want to stay living in New York or move to San Francisco. I'm like, San Francisco's boring as.

Fuck, dude. People only pay attention to this one guy's sex life. It's all sourdough bread and this one whether this one guy's gonna do it. You can go to Alcatraz like what, two, three times? It's boring after that.

Jesse Thornt's head is exploding right now. Yeah, of course, San Francisco is the second greatest city in America. Gorgeous. It's wonderful. After, of course, New York City, the greatest city in the world. So I've told so many people

now they're tired of hearing it. The joke I opened our Chicago live show with, which is so great to be here at the third greatest city in the country. Everyone booed me. It was so great. Anyway, so day 35, Griffin Dunn's boss is still mad.

His plan didn't work out. His wife is enjoying the fact that he's not badgering for sex. A coworker trying to tip the scales of the pool. Put some more egregra in Matt's drink, but the boss accidentally drinks it, which just turns him into more of a horn dog. Angers me so much in multiple ways.

Number one, the non-consensual drugging of a coworker. Number two, just on like the level of like, That's not what Viagra does. It's not fucking Spanish fly, which also doesn't exist. It just gives you an erection. It doesn't make you... What have I been buying?

Stewards, like, what have I been pouring into my own drinks all these years? But yet, it's just a thing that increases blood flow to your penis. It doesn't make you horny. It didn't have the courage of its convictions to have Griffin done running around with a giant prosthetic boner. No, but later we do get a giant prosthetic boner. But not on Griffin done. If Austin Powers asked Viagra, like...

Do you make me horny, baby, or whatever? And he'd be like, no. Austin Power's question was, do you make me horny? Yeah, because earlier in his spiking, he had been hit with a neurotoxin that removed the connection between his brain and his penis. So he never knew if things were making him horny. It's like, do you make me horny, baby? I don't know.

I can't feel that. Yeah. Do you make me horny? Look, there was a lot of cross-talk. I had to construct the joke very quickly. It was constructed on a rickety foundation in the beginning And then Do you make me horny, baby?

And then the Viagra pill Which looks kind of like the green M&M is like Like, no, baby They're also talking about it? I just increased bloodline of your penis, baby. That's my bag. That's my bag and it freaks me out. I'm kind of into it.

That's my happening, baby. So what does the green M&M sound like that? And then we get some fucking mob music. Yeah, exactly. A lot of flower flower petals projected on walls. Yeah, yeah. Not JK7.

So it's a yellow Eminem. No, yeah, what's the green Eminem's sound like to you? Oh, hello. Wow. I make you hearty, baby. No, you don't. That's just a urban legend.

Yeah. So anyway, Matt hides in a storage room, but a coworker tracks him down there and offers to split the pot with him if he will masturbate and break the pool. and it's just... Sounds like a good deal. Yeah, really take it.

Why not? No one's holding you to this, but yourself. I mean, it's not that often you get offered money to just blast one out. You know what I mean? I mean, I would say never. I never have. I mean, I'm sorry. Not you personally.

Like, if you had an Onlyfans, maybe, you know. Yeah, should I do that? Should I have an only fan? I feel like that is... Should you do that? I feel like that complements your skill set, Elliot. Yeah. Interacting with fans.

doing all kinds, coming up with creative, if you certainly would, yeah. Doing that much. I don't know. Anyway, I'll think about it. I'll take it under consideration. I'll talk to me more about it. And my manager.

It might make your, yeah, it might make your taxes complicated. My reps have been trying to get me into only fans for a while. My reps have been really, really heavily arguing that I should start in only fans. Digital intimacy work, I think. Yeah, exactly. So, Anyway, Matt, so Matt goes, runs off to the bat.

He's like, you know what, I'll do it. He picks up one of the porn magazines. And he does walk around like a guy who's kind of trying to hide a boner, very stiff-legged and crazy. Or like a returning soldier or like a soldier was off to battle. And everyone in the audience in the office is, he picks up a box of tissues, but then he goes into the bathroom where toilet tissue is readily available. So it was just for show. Put it on the tubes. Yeah.

He picks up lots of tissues, then sits in a stall where toilet paper would be right there. Let me text Cinema Sins real quick. Can we get the honest trailers guys on this? Can they put something together about this? So anyway, the... But when he gets... When he goes to the bathroom, he is thrown off by the fact that his boss is already masturbating in the stall next to him.

And masturbating so loudly. He's making so much verbal, vocal noise. And we... That's an interesting way to learn that hearing your boss master... isn't your kink. Yeah, that's true. And also he has his laptop with him in there, which seems unnecessary when he's already so turned on.

He can't. He just can't get rid of that Viagra boner, though, so that's the problem. Matt, of course, escapes out a window, the only proper strategy. Mm-hmm. And luckily, his boner doesn't prevent him. No, he doesn't hit the ledge of the window and snap off, like a pretzel stick. What a concept to flip over? Cap size, yeah.

It's like dropping some giant ribs on Flitz-Rid Flitz's car. Yeah, exactly. Now I want to see him waiting for a bus, and he has this huge bono, and he just keeps turning and accidentally knocking people over waiting online with him over a bus. He like trips and he ends up pole vaulting over something. Exactly, exactly. Like some kind of porn Sergio Argonese cartoon.

Yes. An Olympics, like, agent comes by and he's like, you're the man I've been looking for. Yeah, and then it becomes, it becomes, it becomes, the movie turns into a movie about his pole vaulting penis called like called some pole or something like that or vault bowl or something like that. It's an Italian movie from the 70s. There's a lot of sexy nurses and so forth.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. So anyway, Matt goes to Erica's house and she tells him sex. You don't learn about your real connection from sex. It's from the kiss. That's how you know, when you kiss someone, that has a real connection. They take turns. It's quite that time I kissed a rose, guys.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you didn't get a kiss from a rose? I did. I mean, it was giving and take a picture. Oh, okay. As long as it was a mutual. You didn't want to just running around just smacking your lips on roses.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was on the gray. I got that kiss. He was standing on a DVD copy of the gray. So, I mean, the thing. Under some mistletoe and a rose happened by. And he's like, huh? Yeah.

Yeah, sure. Why not? That when it snowed and his eyes became white and the light was so bright he couldn't see, you know. Yeah. So anyway, Matt goes to Erica's house. She tells him the kiss. They take turns. they can't touch each other, right?

So they take turns caressing each other with orchids. And this is Seward's favorite part where he managed... And Nero Wolf was in the corner going, yes, yes. Yeah, and so they, if you're looking for the orchid thief, they're right here. And what they're doing with those orchids, they shouldn't be. And this is so successful that he manages to, as I think we've mentioned, make her orgasm by blowing the petals across her tummy

in the vague direction of her pelvis. And this was... I mentioned this movie in the writer's room recently. I said, oh, I have to watch four days, 40 nights. And someone went, oh, the one where he makes her come with a feather. And I was like, it's not a feather. It's actually flowers. But, you know, that's the one thing people remember about this movie.

Stuart, you look like your feelings about this scene. I mean, the biggest thing is just the fact that I'm like... You tried it and it didn't work and you got mad at the movie. Yeah, yeah. They said user... They lied to be. No, but, I mean, it is like, this is very clearly sex. Like...

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, this is a very, uh, constrictive version of, like, what sex is. Like, sex is in this movie's postulation, I guess, penetration of some kind. Well, I think they're saying, I guess, that if you use a mediating object, it is not sex. And so, like, if he just went to town on her with a, with a strap on, I guess it wouldn't be considered sex in this movie, you know. But it's a, but the fact that he's using a flower, and I guess that there's no penetration, I guess that's part of it also.

But anyway, it is so, the scene is so sincere that it comes off as so silly. Yes. Like there is no understanding, I think, in the movie of how silly and goofy this is. And they just present it as this is like the most erotic thing that could be happening right now. You know, this is just Zalman King material. And I feel like we've now done three episodes in a row where potentially we've mentioned Zalman King at one point or another. So we've got to get him on the show as a guest. I mean, he died, I think 14 years ago.

I think I was looking up. Oh, man. Oh, man. I bet the words on his lips were, I wish I could be a guest on the flop house. That's what it was. He goes, the red shoe diaries have no clues. I want my ashes to be buried in a red shoe.

So, anyway, she falls asleep after he, he, this ends in a way I did not understand at all. She starts to fall asleep in this afterglow. And he's going, no, no, let's talk, let's talk. Stickers. Let's talk about stickers. Do you like stickers? And she falls asleep.

And I was like, what is happening? Why is his character doing this? I don't understand. I guess he hasn't found release because she didn't blow pedals down his wean or something. And that's what he said. He said it very gently, blow pedals down my wean.

And so he's left unsatisfied, so he has to go to one of those like money tunnel things in a game show and have that blow around his penis? Just release a bunch of flowers here. Why? Ben Stein. Get over here. He's like,

uh, the butterfly tent at the thing. the Natural History Museum is open. I guess I'll go to that. He's watching a bag dance in the air like West Bentley. Oh, yeah. If only I was in that right now. So day 38, there's a big presentation at work. Unfortunately, he has a big erection, so he has to go home.

And this is one of the things. Guys, again, I don't want to pry. When you have an erection, you're probably aware of it, right? Like, you're pretty aware. You can feel it. He seems to be so unaware of it. And it is so clear to everybody else. At the time were these super baggy pants, so maybe he didn't.

Yeah, that's possible. But he horrifies the client and has to be ushered out of the office. That night, Nicole shows up at his apartment. She got dumped by her fiancé, and she wants to get back with Matt. And he refuses, and it turns her on. She likes to be, like, she wants to be the one. Yeah, exactly. She wants to be the one who's being meaned at.

And he kind of... Well, she's used to that, but she deep down... is turned on by the fact that he is establishing dominance. Yes, exactly, exactly. I did not like the scene at all where she's like, slam that door in my dirty face. I did not like it. I don't like that stuff.

Oh, weird, like the rest of the movie, where you were just fucking loving it. Where I was like, love it. It's joy. It's just pure joy. Am I watching singing in the rain? Because I got a smile on my face all the way through, yeah. Day 39.

Okay, Nicole puts $3,500 on Matt not making it to the end of the vow. She's only got one day to make him break his vow. And she knows, everyone knows that at midnight of the end, last day, Erica is going to come over to Matt's apartment and finally have sex with him. Day 40, Matt wakes up. He's got a persistent direction. He can't get rid of. He's pouring water on it, raging bull style. And it's not working.

Because he's starting to have these fantasies where he's flying above a rolling sea of breasts. Oh, that's right. You know what? I think that might have happened already and I forgot about it. That's okay. We don't have to linger on. on it. It's somewhere. I have it somewhere in my notes, I think. But the, oh, no, this is when he's seeing nude women everywhere. He's attracted to Mrs. Butterworth. It is kind of fondling the Mrs. Butterworth

bottle. Is this where he's worried he's going to have sex with a light socket? That's in a little bit. That's in a little bit. He walks in his brother making out with a nun, and his brother's like, yeah, I'm leaving the seminary. And I'm like, this feels like a whole other movie that we're barely, we're just seeing little bits of, you know. Like, whoa, first reformed much? So, Matt sits at home. This is when he is drinking. He's imagining that the power socket. Which, by the way, don't like, don't drink. That's going to make it harder for you to control yourself.

For sure. If the whole idea is I've just got 10 hours or whatever of self-control. I do like that he's taken up smoking. I think that's actually an interesting choice. I like that he's taken up smoking and he has like a bunch of like very kind of partially smoked cigarettes like he's new to it. Yeah, it's shorthand for jittery is like anxiously smoking a cigarette. Ryan brings home this girl.

And yeah, I hope that he, I like that he takes up smoking. smoking that just like I hope all the characters in this movie develop some kind of incurable disease based on their actions in the movie, not outside of the movie, just inside the movie. So Ryan brings home a girl who's in like a leather skirt and she's coded as kind of like dominatrixy. And I was like, oh, so was he trying to like tempt him one last time? No, it's just, I think, his date. His date, yeah. He's just bringing home.

And Matt has them handcuff him to the bed so he can't touch himself. And Eric is supposed to show up at midnight. This is when Matt is struggling and has his dream of flying. over a landscape of just breasts, you know. And he imagines a giant Erica, it's, you know, maybe that's what he's into. And here's where the movie takes a turn from merely terrible to despicable. This is when the movie where all the implied sexual assault of women at work trying to pressure him into sex becomes actual sexual assault. Because as he's kind of like hallucinating from lack of sex and isn't quite, is in and out of consciousness pretty much, Nicole shows up at 11.59 p.m.

and essentially rapes him and walks out. Has sex with him without his consent under false pretenses. Unconscious or semi-conscious. He seems to think he's with Erica in that moment. She mounts him and they have sex. But it's also one of those things where she mounts him and then has sex and then walks out. And it's like, was she going to go tell people? Yeah, I had sex with him at 1158.

Like what is? There's so many times in this where people are like, we're going to find out if he's doing it or not. But it's all based on the honor system. Like there's the, you know, even if someone said, There's nothing to stop a woman She should have had a picture taken with her holding the day's fucking newspaper, right? Exactly. And Eric sees Nicole leaving, and he's like, I thought I was with you.

And she storms out. He's already ripped the bed apart in his fury, like Samson changed the pillars of the temple. You know, or not the temple. Like he was being held back by that giant nut swimming around his sack. And I don't want to like dwell on this too much because it's upsetting. but like the movie not only doesn't seem to realize that he has been sexually assaulted like Erica like then like is mad at him about it and he like has to apologize to her for it is like the way he responds is and I may I could say he's traumatized in that moment potentially if this was

a different movie I could see him being legitimately traumatized by it just happened but instead of saying like if he says oh I thought she was you he says the thing that would someone would say in a romantic comedy to be missing a should, instead of saying like, oh my God, like, I was just assaulted. Like, instead of, and so she, and then she gets mad at him because she doesn't seem, I mean, he doesn't really tell her what the situation is. And he never tries to correct it, I don't think. So I could see why she would want an apology.

As far as he knows. And he's been lying to her the whole time. Yes, and he's been lying. He's been a terrible boyfriend the entire movie. No, I mean, that all makes sense with Andy. Aside from their one moment of flower play, he's been a particularly bad boyfriend. That makes sense within the terrible content. text of the movie. I am mad at the movie for not seeming to realize how topsy-turvy the morality of any of this is and how awful it is.

The movie, and I guess this is one of the really poisonous aspects of the movie, or venomous, you could say, depending on whether the movie's biting you or you're biting it, is that it's presenting this world where it's just taken for granted. Men want sex all the time, need sex all the time. It's their only motivator. It's the only thing that they're thinking about. And so there's no a, so anything that's, so anything that involves sex must be in must be welcome you know or the idea that this guy is not welcoming sex is aberrant or bizarre or strange it has to be commented on and treated as as a sideshow and so when she shows up i don't think the movie understands when Nicole shows up i don't know that the movie understands how how upsetting this is because it exists in a world where if you woke up if you're a man and you wake up and someone's having sex with you and you didn't realize that it in this movie would present it as just like, cool, yeah, all right, can you believe it?

He's such a hottie. Women go after him. He's such a stud, even when he's sleeping when we're going after him, when that would be incredibly upsetting. It would be an incredibly upsetting thing to experience, you know. So you're saying that 40 Days, 40 Nights gender swap script that you're trying to pitch, it's not going to get out of those. I don't think it's going to go well.

I don't think people are going to be interested in it. But it is presenting men as purely sexually driven beings as opposed to beings with emotions. And with Matt, they kind of want to have it both ways sometimes, but they can't do it. And it's just everyone in it is horrible. It's a horrible world that exists in. Anyway, four stars, a plus movie. Give it all the Oscars. I'm just kidding.

So anyway, it's 10 days later. So we're now at 50 days, but it doesn't matter because Lent is over. And Erica's roommate said, hey, Matt stopped by and he left this box. You mean Maggie Gillenhall? Maggie Jillenhall tells Shannon Sossaman, Matt stopped by and he left this box for you. He's really crazy about you. You know what? I didn't like him, but now I think he's a great guy.

And she opens the box and it's this like not quite Joseph Cornell kind of like a diorama art project with little like references to dates that they had or moments they shared. It is one of the things were in the movies. It's like, oh, what a sweetie pie. But in real life, you would be like, this guy is a maniac. Yeah. This is a kidnapper's note. Some of my human hairs in here. I don't like this.

Yeah, this is like Hannibal's like, hmm, yummy. So instead of apologizing to me, he decided to make a. an art project forcing me to relive the moments when he was lying to me in the past. So, but she is touched by it. She goes to the laundromat. She goes to her dryer. She always uses and finds a

box of dryer sheets wrapped with a ribbon. That's when Matt walks in. He's come by every night that week and the hope that she would stop by. He obviously knows where she lives. He dropped off a diorama box for her. He's been there. And again, he also he has to wash his millions of shirts that he wears. Yes.

Yes. He's like Steve Bannon. wearing multiple shirts all the time. And messing himself. Because you have to imagine Steve Bannon is just covered in all sorts of crap. And of course incontinent. It's so explosive that it splashes up onto his shirt. I mean, I don't like to make fun of someone's appearance. But when you look at Steve Bannon, you say,

this is a man who smells like shit all the time. This is a man who's wallowing in his own shit all the time. And that's why he needs to dominate the world with tyranny is because he's such, nobody wants to be around him. Anyway, so Matt walks in, he starts to apologize and he goes, I don't know why I'm saying all this when I could just do this. And kisses her, because kisses as we know it's been established, have the magic power to communicate true feelings.

And they start making out and cut to their apartment. Everyone's there betting on how many hours. Erica and Matt are going to be in his room having sex. It's been 38 straight hours, apparently, which, again, like what, this is a cartoon world, you know. And Matt kicks them all out, but they keep betting. in the hallway, the end. The 40 days and 40 nights are over,

we can stop wandering in the desert and finally find the promised land of not watching this movie. Stuart, I want to apologize for making you watch this movie again because it meant I had to watch this movie. Yes. In her truly, truly, I was living...

That means a lot. I was going to ask you if you had regrets. Yes. Truly, I was living the saying when you go out for revenge, dig two graves. And one of them was for you and one was for me.

Seaman-filled graves. Unfortunately, Dan, I guess you had to share one of the graves with one of us. Yeah. You're just collateral damage, yeah. Clateral damage, which is Dan's action movie franchise. I forgot when there's one finger pointing 40 days and 40 nights at Stewart, there's four more pointing back at me, you know. Yeah. Really three more.

One of them is kind of like half bent. It's not really pointing either direction. Yeah. Got a little English, huh? I think this is going to be the least surprising final judgments in Flop House history, but, you know, it's tradition. And so we got to say whether this is a good bad movie, a bad movie. And now I want to tell you how bad a movie this is, this is a movie where you do see a woman's butt in it. And Dan is still going to say it's a bad movie.

Yeah, a movie kind of like, I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of fucking nudity in this movie. It's wild looking back to be like, okay, this is like dumb romantic comedy, you know, just like swimming in it. But not a, not a, look, I last, Fear.com. Last episode Take me back I quoted I quoted Roger Ebert to bolster my opinion

Here I come not to praise him but to bury him Like he talked about like how the There was like smart Smart dialogue or something He gave us three stars That's a four stars It's one star away from perfection

Yeah A smart like exploration of things And I'm like what the fuck are you talking Like Roger your love of boobs has has overcome your critical facilities like this movie is filled with people not acting like actual humans

acting in and in so much as it's you know has any basis in real human behavior it's in the most poisonous sides of human behavior and I could I texted you guys I could squint and see how there could be a movie that interrogates the importance of sex in dating, like the idea like, oh, the pressure, the central place that it exists, what does it mean to remove that from the equation?

This movie is not that. This movie is dumb and awful and makes me feel bad and gets me angry at the climax in particular. No pun intended, but unfortunately achieved. It's a bad, bad movie. Stuart, what do you have to say? You know, I take no pleasure in being right. You know, I, when I, when I saw this movie, I think I saw it, a rental maybe, probably.

I don't think I saw this in the theater. And the Stewart of 2003, let's say, was a very different Stewart than now. I feel like a longtime listeners in the podcast will have seen a fair amount of growth in this, once immature party dude now gray-haired party dude. So there was a chance when revisiting this movie, I was thinking, who knows? Maybe that was just a product of a less worldly steward hating on something. But no, it's worse than I remembered.

It was terrible. And that Stewart was right to not like it. So, yeah, this is a bad, bad movie and I hate it. Yeah, I would also call it a bad movie. I feel like it is a movie that has a certain, has a few different types of poison. coursing through its veins. And it's just, you shouldn't watch it.

Just don't watch it. It's bad. I will say this, in defense of Roger Ebert's otherwise fairly indefensible review, he does mention that the involvement of Nicole in the ending, he says, quote, Nicole's entire participation is offensive and unnecessary.

And so he feels like the movie went astray in those moments. So at least he didn't like that part. But yeah, it's a bad movie, for sure. I mean, but I do it, I did enjoy my anticipation of Stuart, having to watch it again, even though I would have to sit from that same poison chalice in order to see him do it. You could have A, gotten a laugh and B, made the movie better by having her show up with

that intention only to see him like blasting all over himself from a wet dream. And she's like, what the fuck? And she leaves. And then Erica shows up and is like, oh my, I can't believe you did that. Like it's a same, like, it would have, you wouldn't have had to change very much at all except at a fucking joke, you know? I don't know. I guess so.

I don't fucking know. He's defeated. What even matters anymore? Okay. So I guess you guys are not going to San Francisco for 40 days, 40 nights fest? I'm just glad that we didn't realize. I'm just glad we didn't realize how much of a San Francisco movie it was so that we didn't consider there wasn't some like glimmer, some devilish looking Elliot's eye where it's like, maybe we should do this for San Francisco live show. Yeah, that's true.

And then we would have had to talk about this in front of it. In front of an audience. Oh, boy. That would have been. So if you watch this movie for to follow along, I'm sorry, man. Don't do it. I didn't pick it. I mean, I've always told people they should not watch the movies or feel the need to watch the movies.

But guys, we did it. It's finally done. It's over. 40 Days and 40 Nights is in our rear view. And as is the Max Fund Drive. The Max Fund Drive is winding down right now. And now one of the things that makes 40 days and 40 nights so hard for me to watch, at least, is that feeling that this horrible movie and all the terrible values that it espouses

are kind of expected to be normal and universal in the audience. And I'm guessing that some fucking executives were all patting themselves on the back for churning out this like American Pie clone that it had all the empathy sucked out of it. And in many parts of pop culture, we're kind of at the mercy of those same executives making the same terrible decisions. And that's one of the primary reasons that the Max Fund Drive is so important to the flop house because it allows us to remain almost entirely listener supported, meaning that we don't have to answer to the whims of some big sponsors,

some marketing department, or some non-creative, shitty executive types. We own our show, we get to make it the way we want to, and if you like it, which you obviously do, you're listening to it. We're great. Okay, well. You can support it with your cash. There's no evil billionaire at the top of the pyramid taking a bite out of your support.

Max Fun is a worker-owned collective, allowing us to own our own show, and the drive is the best time for you to support us. And as it's winding down, I urge you this one last time to head over to Maximumfund.org slash join flop. You can still support the flop house

and keep us going. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you listeners for supporting us and for writing in letters. We've got a couple here to answer. The first one is from Duncan last name still withheld. So apparently they wrote it in the past. Heinz. It's Heinz.

It has to be Heinz, yeah. After seeing the trailer for that newish... Or donuts. It could be donuts. Could be donuts. Common last name. Is this the guy America runs on? And it's currently withheld.

They took the donuts off. Yeah, they do. That's true. After seeing the trailer for that newish drop movie and having watched Netflix's carry-on with Jason Bateman, both of which center around people being manipulated over the phone, I've decided that the phone manipulator movie must now be its own genre. I'll dub it the telepuppeteer genre. So my question is...

Let me can workshop the name. My question is, do you like this genre of movie and what kind of... What's wrong with you? And what kind of sick Cormick McCarthy-style mind games would you want to play on a hapless protagonist, if given the chance? I'd probably, you know, I'd probably ask them if their refrigerator was running

and then if they were foolish enough to say yes. I mean, this is basically like the fucking... The Kudigra would emerge. The death blow. Then the prestige, you bring down the hammer on them, yeah. Yeah, this is basically the impractical jokers of thrillers, right? Yeah. Phone booth is kind of one of the early ones.

of this sort of thing, right? I mean, phone booth or, it depends on what kinds of, because you could go back to, is it just that the telephone is the conduit or is it literally someone is manipulating. I think it has to be the manipulator. I don't think you can do like,

what's the postcards? Because like sorry wrong number. Sorry wrong number. What's the one with Carol Kane to the, are you in the house alone or something like that? But like, does the beginning of scream count or no? Oh. Well, well, he's not really getting.

her to do anything other than keep her busy until he murders her. Yeah. But I, play movie trivia. She's manipulating her into that. I don't have any one for my movie trivia team. So I have to do it to you. I got a really cool nickname.

It's called the Sina Feeles. I think this is one of these ones where you kind of have to figure out how to force the person. We're called Bowles Moving Asshole. That's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, So that's a trivia team name that a friend of mine keeps trying to get us to do. But people don't want to. Yeah, please, I can understand why they're doing that. Just hearing that makes me think of Miyazaki just like crying.

Like taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes. Yeah, not since that video of him watching the like AI animated thing. And he's like, I think this is the opposite of life. This is horrible. You should destroy it. Fomination. You should have never been born. Your mother should be a show.

Shame. And your family line should end. So speaks Miyazaki. Send him to the Shark DeKons. Now, so the, I think that, uh, the, the hard part with these movies is getting the person to stay on the line, right? Yeah. Like forcing them to do it and making it a thing that they actually have to do.

And usually it's to a threat. And phone booth, for me, is one of the more effective ones because he's stuck there. Right. Yeah. He is stuck and he's in danger. But I think if it was me, I'd probably like call someone and it was. it would be the wrong number. Then I'd keep calling that wrong number

and insisting that the person on the other end of the line is the person I'm trying to talk to and make them doubt who they really are. And then I'd start sending them through hoops to try to prove who they are to me the person they could easily just hang the phone up on. It's kind of like speed is kind of like this, yeah? I guess speed is kind of like that, yeah.

Speed is a little bit. I mean, the movie compliance is like that, but that's not a fun movie. No. But it's probably one of the better ones. Yeah, it's based on a true story of this actually happening, which is terrifying. Yeah.

But, yeah, speed is... How much time is he on the phone in speed? Is there... Aren't they talking over, like, walkie-talkies or something? Something like that. Not a lot, but he keeps calling in and be like, hey, do this thing now. I'd make the protagonist dance.

That's it. Just make him do, like, different dances. You make him dance like nobody's watching, but you're watching. That's why, I mean, the protagonist is played by Sam Rockwell, so he's... Oh, so he wants to do it anyway. Yeah, he's feeling it. Yeah.

I mean, he was dancing when you pick the phone up. Yeah, I'd basically have to be like, oh, I actually stop now. All right. You're putting too much. You're putting too much mustard on this thing. This is supposed to be creepy, but you're really getting into it. This other letter is from Kristen, last name withheld. Who writes?

Christian Scott Thomas. Hello, Peaches, being a longtime listener, I sometimes refer to you as my parisocial friends and find myself telling stories about you. I realize that this could come across as creepy, but I mainly just think you're interesting. You have great anecdotes. and your lives are much different than mine as I am neither in the entertainment

nor hospitality industries. Do you have any long-term parisocial relationships? How do you view being on the famous side of this, quote, relationship with me? Is it super weird for me to say it like that? Keep on flopping in the free world. Kristen. Yeah, it's pretty super weird.

What do you think? No, I don't. I'm not a freak. I mean, there have been times in the past where I'm like, okay, well, people out there are getting sort of a flattened version of my personality, as is true of anyone who is any kind of flavor of public figure. And we are the most minor flavor of that. I mean, that is part of the parasycial relationship. And I feel like parasycial relationships are especially common within podcasting. Yeah, because you're hearing people's voices in your ears.

You're hearing people have conversations. And you're hearing it. during times when you are often driving or doing chores, it's times when you would be on the phone with somebody else or nodding off to sleep. When you're in an everyday situation and you're not sitting down to just enjoy this one thing. Like when you watch TV or movie, you know I'm sitting down to do this thing whereas podcasting kind of starts to invade parts of your life when you might be on the phone with somebody or talking to a person who you're actually close to in the room or something. It feels like a conversation. It's one of the reasons why if I,

if I regularly listen to a podcast and then I actually become friends with the people that make the podcast, I have trouble listening to their podcast anymore because like the relationship is shifted. See, my problem is I still listen to it, which leads me, like the only parasocial relationships. When you're like, I have. Remember when you said this thing?

Well, yeah, like it ends up being like this weird hybrid relationship where I'm like, well, we're friends, but in my mind we are closer friends than we actually are because I've spent more time with you. And so I will do the thing that, like, often confuses me when people do it. Or it's like, I get a text about, like, something that was said on the podcast.

I'm like, I don't remember this. You know, I'll do it to someone else. I'll be like, I know that I shouldn't be doing this because, like, I don't know how to take it when I get it. But I want to be part of the conversation. But I think there's also something that I know. I feel like Elliott probably handles better than me, and I'm assuming Dan, is establishing,

boundaries and like understanding when things are what's an okay level of interaction with somebody who I know exclusively as a listener. I also experience this as a bartender because the people that I interact with across the bar, they're getting a very specific version of me, one that is nice and wants them to tip me. And then there are like, I do have a few people who have crossed, crossed that Rubicon and become friends of mine. But it's not common. And it is just partly like, part of it is the transactional nature of the relationship, but also just like I have to present a certain face to people.

And obviously, just like on the podcast, it's a version of me, but it's not entirely me. And the version, like, I'm not necessarily the person they think I am. And so, yeah, I'm kind of giving the best version of me. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like I'm presenting the best face. And I also, yeah, I mean, it's, it's also based, like, people's personalities are weird and what they look for in relationships are weird and like, I don't know. I also have transactional relationships, which are similar, but not exactly the same as parasocial relationships.

Yeah. Yeah, I think I do try to put pleasant but firm boundaries around myself in terms of, I've had enough experience, negative experiences with people who, I think, assumed a. a greater friendship or a greater relationship with me than was actually the case. Alex looking at me right now. Yeah, exactly. I'm talking about Stu when he comes into my bar. And that it's a... Can I pour you a glass of milk and a Spider-Man comic?

Pour you a Spider-Man. It's crazy, right? Yeah, yeah. I have it liquid form. Liquid Spider-Man. So I do try to establish that kind of instance. But I understand. You also have a fan...

You have, like, kids, which I think is... And I want my kids to not be a part of this. I mean, we have real families too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Motherfucker. I mean, I guess so. I mean, dance family is mostly cats at this point. I mean, I have a wife.

That's a family member. But how many more can you have one wife and two cats? I was born of human, woman. That's true. You were of woman born, so you can't kill Macbeth. Yeah. But it's true. I think the fact that I have children, yeah,

motivates me even more to establish those boundaries. That being said, it doesn't stop me from, like, some guys were outside of, a grocery store recently just videotaping, we're just recording everyone who walked in and it didn't stop me from going up and being like, what are you doing? What's this all about? Get out of here. While my kids were like, can we just go into the grocery store, please? But that being said, I do think that most people are like what Kristen sounds like who have a reasonable and rational understanding of what the relationship is and where those boundaries might be.

I will talk to a Max Fun member happily any day of the week who wants to. you know, talk about the show, you know, or just talk about other stuff. On some level, that becomes a transactional relationship. Well, you're a little different. I don't know about that exactly. This is your particular bud bear. I'm going to go with the Supreme Court definition say if there's no explicit quid pro quo. It's not necessarily a transaction.

But also, yeah, I mean, it's, I also say that for the most part, I have never had that many bad experiences and people are very nice and understanding. Yeah. And as an awkward human being, it is nice sometimes to talk to someone who at least feels like they have a certain rapport with me. And I'm like, okay, this is like, easing the wheels. To add to what you guys are saying also, like, I certainly have the temptation sometimes when I've listened to a podcast a lot to be like, oh, these are people that I can be friends with,

you know, which is not always the case. But also, it is nice sometimes to have a constructed dynamic where you meet someone and you know exactly what's expected of you, what you expect of them. you can have a pleasant and polite and meaningful interaction. And then there's none of the messiness of like, what do I do with this now? It's like if I'm meeting someone whose work I really admire, I'd always rather meet them as a fan who's approaching them for a limited interaction.

If I meet them in a social situation, I feel like I can get very awkward when I'm like, I don't know exactly how to navigate this. You should have watched me talk to George Arm or. I know. I wish I could have been there. I should have. I was not invited to that dinner because I live on the other side. Working with them can be difficult too, though.

I mean, like, that's another place where it's like if you're, you know, a fan and then you work with them. And I just know that like now, you know, I feel comfortable around Hodgeman, like we're friends. But like at the Daily Show, like when I was first there, I'm like, oh, I really admire this guy's work from the past. And it made me feel very awkward to work with him even though I'm like, well, theoretically we're colleagues. I mean, like theoretically, in actuality we're colleagues. if not necessarily on the same even keel, you know. And he never even threw his shoes at you. I know.

Yeah. Oh, man. A legendary tale. A legendary tale of bullying gone wrong. But I understand that completely, yeah. A long response. That was a long answer, probably, probably not particularly interesting to a very good question. But that's what you get in a podcast sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah, just go to maximum fun.org slash join. for sort of rambling, sort of self-examination that may not apply to you. To a peek into Stewart's therapy talk. So what do we do next on this podcast? Oh, you know what we do next is we recommend movies, movies that definitely would be a better use of your time than 40 days and 40 nights. I mean, I feel like just watching a plant grow in real time would be better use of your time in 40 days, 40 nights.

But we can recommend movies too, yeah. I just went to a rep screening. I've mentioned the series before on the podcast, The Deuce at the Nighthawk Williamsburg, where they show movies that played on 42nd Street and 42nd Street theaters. Most of them ended up being sort of like between, in the 70s and 80s, but there are some earlier ones.

This one's from 83, a movie that I saw a lot as a kid and was happy to revisit on the big screen, Strange Brew starring Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis a movie that is like I everyone there had a great time laughed a lot I thought

this would be such a hard one to sort of explain to people It's Hamlet It's Hamlet It's Hamlet They do Hamlet But not really Like it's Hamlet at a brewery

Except for also There's a Max von Seidau Evil sort of scientist character that is not really an analog to anything in Hamlet who is putting mind controlling... You don't remember the scientist in Hamlet with the mind control stuff? Mind controlling drugs in beer so he can have his hockey playing army, like attack each other

and eventually like a dog flies through the air also with a superhero cape on. But the main draw of it, of course, is Dave Thomas and Rick Maras reprising their roles. from SETV is Bob and Dougie McKinsey, the ultra-Canadian drinkers of beer, who originally were on the show because Canada demanded that there be at least two minutes of specifically Canadian content.

So they're like, screw you, we'll make this the most Canadian content, kind of as a joke, and then it took off as characters. I feel like it kind of set the template for things like the Wainsworld movie. Oh, definitely, definitely. Like, it's two man-children. with a local TV show.

Yeah. And what they do so well is they really feel like two goofy brothers who are constantly like fucking with each other like that they are, you know, beating each other up, insulting each other, but also really love one another in a very like cute and sweet way that and, you know, like a lot of their interaction is improvised but not in a way that feels like indulgent. It just feels real. It's a very messy, low-budget movie that's very silly,

but it still holds up, I think, as very funny, too. Yeah, I am going to recommend a movie I watched a little bit ago. I didn't catch it in the theaters, but I caught it as soon as it hit streaming. It's a little horror movie called Primate, and I say little because it features a villain who's a little bit shorter than a regular human. In fact, the slasher in this case is a chimpanzee. So the size of the movie is this. by the size of the villain in the movie.

Don't question, Elliot. It was a perfect segue. Okay, you know, you're right. Every link of the chain made sense. It's a big movie. It's called Moonraker, because Jaws is in it, and that guy is tall. And they go to space, the biggest thing. Yeah, so this is also like an 85-minute movie.

It's like, and it's a high-concept slasher movie where the concept is, Champansian Hawaii gets rabies and starts killing folks. and I was a little nervous going in because the idea of an animal being involved in violence means an animal's going to get hurt at some point. That makes me sad. But luckily, this chimpanzee looks fake enough

that I can get through. Like, it really makes sense. Like, for me, internally, that, like, it looks just fake enough to them like, okay, this thing's scary, but I know it's not a real chimpanzee. And it, like, the way it rips its way through people's faces,

Rob Delaney shows up just to get his face ripped right off. It's great. And yeah, it's like it uses the setting well. It's like a perfect like little video nasty kind of thing. And like I would say it's fun, it's gross. It's easy. Goes down quick. I'm going to recommend a movie that I've recommended before because

because we've been recording a lot of Flop House lately and I've been busy. I've not had a chance to watch too many other movies besides Flop House movies, which is a special hell that I don't love existing in, but I'm willing to do it for you, the listener, Maximumfund.org slash join place. But I recently read a book that had some screenplays in it, and one of them was a screenplay for a movie that I love, that I recommended before. I was reading the book, Notes from a Black Woman's Diary by Kathleen Collins, which collects a number of works written by Kathleen Collins before she died in the late 80s.

And in it is the screenplay for her movie Losing Ground, which came out in 1982, and And at the time it was the first movie directed by a black woman in decades, you know, since the silent era, I believe. And it's just a really great movie. And it's got great performance in it by, by Dwayne Jones, who you may know from Night of Living Dead, and Bill Gunn from Ganjin Hess and a lot of other movies. And the it's about, and the lead is played by Sarah Scott. And she is a college professor who is studying the idea of ecstasy, kind of either creative or religious or pleasurable ecstasy, but finds that she's a very kind of like buttoned up person and that sense of freewheeling exercise

is something she doesn't know how to achieve in her life. And she's married to an artist who has just sold a painting in a big success and is very openly like kind of like spontaneous and whatever and hard to deal with but also is experiencing that kind of freedom that she wishes she was experiencing more of in her life. And she decides that she will accept

the invitation of a film student to appear in a student film that he's making even though it's against, it's not the kind of thing she normally does. And it's a very like, it's a very, like, well-observed small-scale movie. Sometimes it's funny and sometimes it's kind of heartbreaking. And it's just really beautifully done. And you watch it and you're like, oh, I wish she could have made 20 more movies.

It feels like a movie very much in the vein of the kinds of movies that you would get out of France for decades, where it's like, these are people who live kind of an intellectual life, but it's about their feelings and passions and they're speaking articulately and sometimes inarticulately about it, and there's a lot going on under the surface. So there's no, like, big blow-up scenes, but there's a lot of emotion underpinning everything. And it's just a really great movie.

So losing ground is my recommendation. Wow. I mean, so Strange Brew. Just kidding. What is, though? Yeah, I mean, Strange Brew does have this undercurrent of emotions. Unspoken by the brothers, but you know it's there. You know it's there.

That brotherhood is so strong. Similarly to the, the emotions underneath the chimpanzee that's about to start ripping people's jaws off. There's definitely a point where guys like, oh, I got the answer. I'm going to overpower the chimp, and I'm like, kid, this is not going to go.

No, that doesn't happen. Your head's about to get smushed. Guys, as the MaxFund drive winds down for another year, I just want to take a moment and say thank you to all the supporters of the Flop House out there. Without MaxFund members like you, this passion project of ours would not exist. I feel very lucky to get to have this creative outlet that's entirely in our control

where my friends and I get to be usually silly, sometimes thoughtful, and occasionally professional. We were able to continue doing the show after Elliot moved to L.A. We were able to move to a weekly release schedule during COVID. We are able to pay our producer Alex a competitive rate, as well as to do a variety of side projects like Floresy. Flop TV and live shows, all because of the consistent financial support from you. So from this slightly more mature party dude, I can say, thank you so much for supporting the Flop House.

I love doing this show, and it means the world to me that you help me do it. And one last time, if you were waiting for that final reminder, that little push, go to Maximumfund.org slash join Flop and support the Flop House right now. And speaking of producer Alex, thank you producer Alex. Oh, well done. For all the work that you do. To the cap. I particularly, if you are not a listener to Big Howl and Possum, and it tickles you to think of a man and his large Possum friend talking about all sorts of different topics.

I really recommend that show. I think it's actually some of the funniest character improv I have heard in a podcast. So check that out and check out Howell Dottie's music. Check out his Twitch streams. Check out all the great work he did on our bonus content for SlopTales. That's true.

The final SlopTales episode was recently dropped in the bonus feed, something you can get if you're a MaxFun member, so check that out as well. But for us, the Flop House podcast, I say, good day. I've been Dan McCloy. Good night. I've been Stuart Wellington.

Good life. I've been Elliot Kalen. Okay. That's it. Lock it up. You got any burps you want to get out or? No, they're going to come on my butt. Okay.

All right. Uh-oh. You like to do it the other way. Burps is a portmintel for bun bursts. Danny saying tenor, Stuart saying bass. Oh, boy. Maximum Fun A worker-owned network

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