The Flop House - Afraid, with Chris Weitz

Episode Date: November 29, 2025

Our friend Chris Weitz knocked politely and requested to be allowed into the lion's den, becoming the first director to come on a full episode to discuss his OWN work. That's right, on this Flop House we discuss AfrAId, a movie written and directed by (checks notes) Chris Weitz. And surprisingly (?) it's one of our most joyful episodes. God bless you, brave sir.We’re coming back to San Francisco Sketchfest on January 25! Get tickets now! OR, if you prefer to watch us from the comfort of your own home: Flop TV Season 3 tix are ON SALE!Stay updated on Flop House events and side projects, plus a little extra, with our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets!Wikipedia page for AfraidRecommended in this episode:Dan: Predator: Badlands (2025)Stu: Die My Love (2025)Elliott: Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost (2025)Chris Weitz: Eddington (2025)

Hey, listeners, just a few quick words up the top to remind you that flop TV is going on right now. It's the first Saturday of every month if you want to watch it live and chat with other listeners in the chat, viewers in the chat, send us some messages to be answered, perhaps, at the end of the show. We've been having a lot of fun going through famous bad movies of the decades. All of that will be available video on demand as well. for ticket holders up through the end of the flop TV season. You can get a season pass and watch all of them. You can binge them during the holidays.

It's a lot of fun. So if you're interested, go to theflophouse. com and check out our extra flop streams. On this episode we discuss, Afraid. A movie about a scary killer AI. And there's no Tom Cruise to kill it this time. Should I said Ethan Hunt? No, no.

Hey, it's me, Stuart Wellington. My name is Elliot Kalen. I'm the author of a book called Joke Farming, How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense. It's on store shelves now. From the University of Chicago Press, it will teach you how to write jokes. How I do it, how jokes work, and how jokes work. I only had two things. We told him to keep the plug.

Elliot, I know that you're about to, like, introduce our special guests, but I have to say, I texted Audrey today. And I was like, between this book on the early years of the Simpsons that she got me for our anniversary and your book coming to my house, hopefully on Wednesday. I'm like, I think I'm going to try a crack at another sitcom script after writing longer movie things. You should do it. That's my next thing that no one's going to buy.

You should do it. I mean, the thing is, no one's going to buy it anyway. So write what you want. That's what I say. Yeah, yeah. Do that shit where like people do stuff and then they have like little confessionals where they talk to the camera because that's like every comedy now. Or do a comedy where there's no jokes at all.

That's every comedy now, too. Dan, I think all jokes aside, whatever you write, I think this is going to be the next big hit. I think you're about to go write the next office, Abbott Elementary, Modern Family, that's what you're going to write. It's going to be great. We're going to be bragging that we knew you when.

You seem more of like a Louie guy. All right. That's our cue to stop wasting our guest's time and introduce him. That's right. We have a very special guest today. I'm so excited to have him here. He is a repeat guest. one of our good friends, one of our most successful friends here of the Flop House podcast, that's right, director, Academy Award, Academy Award nominated screenwriter.

Oh, thanks for reminding me. I didn't win. Yeah, sorry, Chris. Yeah. You're right, you're in the slightly, slightly larger pool of nominees, you know. His face fell when you said that. Chris White's, who is the rare triple threat of director, screenwriter, director of director of, director of, of Flop House covered movie. And so we're very excited to have you here today to join us once again. Thank you. And I, sorry, I didn't hear the

beginning. So, like, what's the movie we're going to dump on today? What cinematic turd are we going to be stunting on? This is going to be so much fun. You're going to love it. You're going to love it. So we watch this real piece of shit called Afraid.

Haven't heard of it. Sorry, I didn't see it. Is that a problem? So, yeah, Chris, do you have any, have you seen this one? Have you had to be connection to this one? Spoiler alert. I kind of liked it. Yeah.

Yeah, I saw it so many times that I didn't. I haven't seen it in a good year. So, you know, listen, part of this is obviously I need to get out of your guy's way and so that you can have the nonsensical fun that we've come to love you for. I'm not going to fight a rearguard action. defense of my movie. I may sometimes try to shed a little light on the process whereby

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

of ours. That's a blank check, right? Absolutely. And just for the audience at home, if you weren't picking up all the jokes we're laying down, Chris is the director and writer of this movie, right? I have that honor. Mm-hmm. Or the director and writer of a version of this movie

that perhaps is not the exact version that came to be. There's a version in my head and perhaps on the page that did not quite come to be in the way that I had intended to. And that, but that aside, I also feel that, you know, I have laughed at many of your episodes and sometimes you also need to face the music. I said that once that when you look long enough into the flop house, the flop house looks into you.

You either die a listener or you live long enough to become a subject. Yeah, yeah. And there was a guy on the internet when I went on the blank check Reddit for the last thing I didn't do. Oh, that's a tone going fucking Reddit. It was a smart move that I made. because I found out that this guy said,

and he said this about you two guys. He said, hmm, the flop house guys have stopped addressing Chris White's movies since he was on the show. And so I thought, listen, guy on the internet guy, I'm going to go back on the flop house. Flop house is going to do it. And I'm going to, I'm going to be like Daniel Day Lewis in there will be blood and confess whatever sins I have.

And we're just going to have it all out here. We're going to let it all hang out. Yeah, you're going to drink her milkshake. Well, I'm not going to just drink your milkshake. I'm going to drink this cocktail that I drank. By the first time I've ever had a drink on a podcast, but I think there's one to do. This is the time. I love the idea that before you came on, of course, we were hitting every Chris White's movie,

every single one without fail. We're savvy fucking guy. Don't think that I don't know that once Dan on this very podcast said that the Golden Compass was a good movie to wash on a podcast. plane because you could fall asleep to it easily. And I'm looking at you. And of course, it sounds like something I might have said.

I mean, to be, it's just not to get into the Golden Compass too much. A movie that I've also criticized on this, on this podcast for reasons that Chris, you and I have talked about, we have the same issues with it. They did that TV show of the Golden Compass. I also didn't like it very much.

So I think maybe it's just a very hard book to adapt, you know. Nothing has satisfied me more than hearing that people were occasionally displeased with the BBC version of it. Mm-hmm. I mean, I doubt that there's a version. I was like, all right, let's see if you don't make the same mistake that the movie did. It's the way Dan feels anytime somebody criticizes another bad movie podcast, he's like, ha-ha, it's not so easy, is this?

Well, listen, I know that you're going to read that. Introductory voiceovers are your favorite, Elliot. I love them. And I wanted one to be longer, and they made it shorter, which really put me out. Can we have more of, like, somebody, like, somebody folksier doing this narration? Yeah. It's funny because so my, we'll get into the movie in a moment, but my younger son has finally decided after years of disinterest that he is interested in Star Wars. And so we just recently watched Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. And I was like, strap in. There's going to be a lot of text on screen. And then I'm like, oh, there's actually, there's actually not that much text in the beginning of these Star Wars movies. It went rather quickly and was written by Brian De Palma, I believe the first one, right? Yeah, I think he did. Yeah, wasn't he like, look, you got to explain some of this stuff. Just put it in the beginning. actually the text is so short

that it actually spends so much time fading into the distance. And today we were watching it, Press-Rex back, and he goes, yeah, the letters are taking a long time to get into space. Reddit already. The thing is when you do when you do these

any kind of text crawl, the setting is for complete moron. So like it actually has to take a lot longer. Oh, it's kind of like the way that when you get a bagel and you get cream cheese on it, they give you the maximum amount of cream, cheese so as not to risk somebody

asking for more. Yeah. They're like if it's too much, they'll just scrape extra off but they don't want to risk somebody being like, hey, yel. Yelp would be one star delicious cream cheese, but why do they just scrape just a tiny bit over it? Not to yet again make reference to

my much less successful attempts at writing narrative, but you were kind enough. You're a screenwriter for hire. No, no, no. Any people who are hiring Not my point. Is this about your self-published erotica series?

Yeah, that's what it is. 50 Shades of Dan. 50 Shades of Dank. No, you were kind of... It's all in basements. You were kind of to look at something I wrote and you wrote back pretty quickly being like, yeah, you know, I know you're not going to want to do this,

but like the first thing that any studio is going to tell you to do is put a scare up front because otherwise they won't understand that this is a horror movie that you've... It's just those you have fucking corrupt, I've become. You speak the language of the enemy, yeah. That's one of the things I regret about the great movie Afraid,

which didn't do as well as it deserved at the barsoxswain. It was like, uh, what, yeah, okay. Listen, I'm going to, I'm going to jump into it, but I want you guys to start. Okay, yeah, we let's talk about this piece. Let's talk about Afraid. I'm doing the summary today. So buckle up, everybody.

Had you guys seen this before we were assigned it for the Flop House? Yes, I had watched it. As soon as I found out Chris made it, I'm like, Sharr and I are going to see it in the theater, which Charlene doesn't normally go to horror movies in the theater. So we went and we enjoyed it for a variety of reasons. It was very exciting, though, as we were leaving the Nighthawk that we walked past Saturday Night Live, Sarah Sherman.

I was like, holy shit. Do you see afraid? No, she went to a different horror movie that was. out because I checked her letterbox to the more successful horror movie, a hotter horror movie. I also saw it and I have heard that the grapevine

that like Elliot was saying that he told you that it was like oh you know Dan saw it and he said he liked it and that you said Chris I think Dan was watching it with friend eyes but I I mean I 100% was watching it with friend eyes because there's

things about one of the things I like about I'm like, oh, I can see Chris in here. I can see my friend in this movie. You see the intention. Well, okay, so one of the first things, I just one of the problems was this was never supposed to be a horror movie.

That's an interesting fact. You're supposed to be like a light comedy of manners, right? My daughter, my 10-year-old daughter, Athena once said to me having viewed a cut, Roblox is scarier. So you can imagine what kind of trouble I was in at that.

at that stage. So, yeah, here's the thing. There's the last self-defense I'll make before you jump in, Elliot, and then I'll just, you know, interrupt you. But, you know, and sometimes to get a movie made, when you love a movie very much,

like you put it in a sort of genre basket, which maybe it doesn't belong, because, like, horror movies will get made and I could make it in Los Angeles. And this is really, like, was supposed to have been a kind of a parallax view, kind of paranoid thriller. Okay.

So then, but once you get, once it's a horror movie, and by the way, it was made at Blumhouse. I love the Blumhouse guys. That's great. Maybe the studio, which will not be named by me, might be more responsible for its having been kind of mutated into a horror movie. And one of these things is fucking cold opens. Cold opens are like the crawl of horror movies. Anyway, sorry. It's interesting, it's interesting you mentioned Blumhouse because that's another, I was just reading my son the story of the four little pigs, which is the original story, where the third pig, of course,

built his house of Blum, and then the fourth pig built his house of bricks. And the pig doesn't even get in the house. It's too scary. Yeah. The pig's like, I don't even know what Blum is,

so now I'm creeped out by my own house. Yeah, that doesn't make sense to me. And the studio Ghost House Productions doesn't even get a fucking mention, Elliot wild, brutal. Ghosts are a terrible construction material. They pass through walls. You can't make walls.

You build a wall out of something that people can walk through. I don't think so. It's not a good idea. Not like a house of sand and fog. or something. Again, it's that ghost ship,

I don't know how that floated. I mean, pretty well of Thorne and Roses. What the fuck is that? Yeah. Of course. That's a super popular series. My wife has been listening

in the audiobooks of the court of thorns and roses. Many books now are an X of Y and Z, and I think that that's a very hot way to title of book. Yeah, it's the mad libs of book titles. But aren't these like, aren't there, like,

it's romanticity, right? It's like, it's, it's, horny fantasy? I don't know. I asked my wife, because I, if these books were Romantasy, I would be more into it because I'm into romance and erotic fiction. But my wife, my wife, yeah, and to seize. But Charlene is more into anything that is very plot-driven. She doesn't like a lot of descriptions. Because as I've mentioned on this podcast, she, thanks to a different podcast, learned that she has affantasia. And she has difficult, Oh, no, are you really?

Oh, you totally have to talk to her about this. Probably explains a lot about my output, but yeah. Okay. Fantasia means she cannot picture images in her head. Oh, I see. So if you were to be like, picture a red apple and describe it, she's like, yeah, that's just a metaphor, right? You don't actually do that.

And when she was sharing this with me, I'm like, could you imagine not being able to picture things? Because I don't know if you guys know this. I have this super vivid imagination. You're picturing stuff all their time. I'm just constantly. What kinds of rad stuff, big picture. That's really amazing, Chris.

We shouldn't sidetrack the podcast. We should talk about this. No, that's what the podcast is about now. Anyway, that's just... I have an imagination, which is nothing but the intro voiceovers to movies. Now, the guy on Reddit is like, they'll do anything to not talk about Chris White's their friends movie. I mean, I've watched this thing like three times at this point.

So let's fucking get... Let's take a bite. So we start with text on screen, but it's a quote from Sydney in AI asking if we believe that the AI loves us. And you got your creepy opening credits, lots of AI footage, people with their faces

don't quite look right. It's being watched. Was this AI generated? Oh man. There's a whole... Well, I'm going to try to give you the least boring answer to that. Yes, but eventually Sony got so freaked out about the possibility of

an AI generated face being recognized by someone. we actually had to make fake faces in order to make them seem like AI faces. Also, there was, do you guys remember late night with the devil? There were four still images in it, which had been created by AI, and people fucking flipped out. So I eventually also freaked out because there were, there were like little AI sequences and really, really, really cool ones, I think, that I thought were relevant to, like, what the evil AI was creating. but I was really worried that everyone would shit on me from a great height in the film industry and outside of it for using AI.

So eventually, no, we covered up anything. It's a really interesting ethical question, I think, because it is like when the subject of the movie is to criticize AI, the idea of actually using actual AI output as an example of how gross and or scary it is, does that like, yeah. I mean, as someone who is pretty like hardline, angry, about like AI stuff being used in creative stuff. Like this is the one situation where I absolutely would not have a problem with it

where it's like we are showing you an AI thing. Like that is the point of the thing we are showing is that it is AI and everyone knows that. And it is funny to me now after watching it and assuming that it had been that it actually isn't. It was all remanufactured to look like it. I feel like in some ways that's pretty good. I mean, it looked tight.

would have bought it as I asked it, but it also is kind of sad to me in some ways. It's sadder that it's like, now the humans have to make stuff that looks deliberately like AI. It looks terrible. Well, the AI sequence was that I did do, where at the time when like, when AI text of video would make really weird fucked up shit naturally. Now, of course, it's too good. So you'd have to tell it to do it worse than it can do now.

But the problem was that in between my. handing in the film, and it's being released, I was delayed by an entire year, in part due to Morbius. No, was it Morbius related? No, it was Craven the Hunter-related. Oh, Raven. By anything, be delayed by a masterpiece.

Yeah. Really, you can't be mad about that. Was it because this was originally about the Spider-Man villain in the living brain, who was a big green computer on wheels with arms, and you had to retrofit it? They're like, oh, the Spider-Man villain movies without Spider-Man are doing so well.

Make it about a different age. Yeah. No, it was that Craven was going to do so well that they wanted to sort of kick me down the line just to show also to demonstrate to the guilds that they had movies for miles, right? Like they had movies for the year after. So by the time that my AI movie came out, like all of the cool shit that the AI could do in the movie, which was supposed to be like bowling people over, was kind of pretty every day. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. But, Elliot, I stopped here.

Wait, first, let me do this. That was a Stuart Wellington Beer opening sounds. Tribute. I'm not allowed to tribute on the creepy way. Elliot, I stopped you. I'm sorry. No, there's something so beautiful and sad about the Sony executives being like, Craven is going to fucking destroy. Like, don't release any movies for the next seven months because Craven's just going to be rampaging to the theaters.

We're going to show those unions what for because we've got Craven. them we've got Craven come on which like yeah I don't know like I don't want to dog on Aaron Taylor Johnson but like he doesn't got that kind of juice right but also that I don't think he's the problem with Craven the hunter per se

they didn't even have that Craven isn't even a movie like Morbius or Madam Webb where you're like I gotta see this this is this is Bozo I had to go to see Madam West and I'd see it again it was just kind of like oh okay this is Craven all right sure all right anyway moving on so we're almost at the

opening scene. There's creepy AI footage. That's not really AI footage. We just learned. It's being watched by a kid on iPad while her parents hang out. One of those parents, of course, Ricky Lindholm from Garfunkel and Oates. Which is years ago now. But it's still the main thing I think of when I see her in something.

Totally. She's like mostly now a character actress. But it's like, 40 years from now, I'll be like, you see that movie with the Garfunk The Notes girl? And they're like, what? And it had a way, we're going to her, Ricky Linholm. Grandpa, go to bed. The AI tells the girl to go downstairs for a present.

And her mom's looking for her. She's like, where's my daughter? But the AI has not being cooperative. And then some kind of monstery thing jumps out of them. Title, afraid. So Chris, you were saying just now, you thought this was the best scene in the movie. And this was your original idea was to put this. It was this scene, right?

I'm hoping that Tombstone Technology will have kind of video built into it by the time I die. Or holograms. Yeah, and fully reverse. No, they'll only use it to watch you decay like in the shrouds. That's the only thing that video is for, yeah. I will say, look, I'm going to say something at first, oddly, to prove that I'm not going to be too soft on you, which is like later on, some of the horror scares

maybe don't work as well. But I actually, like, you know, I'm not a fan of, like, the fact that all horror movies have to have the scene these days. But as a set-up scene, I kind of like this one. I like how Ricky Linton has that moment where she like looks at the camera showing that the kid outside and then looks outside and like the kid isn't there

they're showing two different things and she can't believe her eyes and I don't know this effectively set up the creaminess to me as I direct these things it's like a dog walking on its hind legs like something that wasn't made to do this is shakily doing it

do you think I want to ask, did more of the changes come in the second half of the picture or is it sort of scattered throughout? They're spread throughout because which part of the talking was changed the notes. It's a terrific picture. Elliot.

Awful. Really, sort of anything that goes out of its way to try to jump scare is a response to the studio saying it's going to be scary, right? Could it be scarier? Let's be scarier. And a lot

of, like, the one thing I tried to get out of that opening scene was, was that these two parents were kind of doom scrolling and taking on everything that they were being told by their phones. But that kind of went out the window because, you know, the idea was that they were becoming conspiracists or kind of being slightly radicalized. But I was advised that if you present a kind of like a scary conspiracy that people would foolishly act upon, the audience would immediately clock that as the conspiracy that you're trying to sell behind the movie. So these people eventually, it's basically QAnon, right? And they eventually do this kind of what is supposed to be at the end, a half-assed home invasion.

But instead, it is a re-edited half-assed home invasion made to look as though it is an actually scary thing. A real scary home invasion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I buy, I think that is both an annoying note, but I buy that as a note. that if you introduce the thing in the beginning, then the audience is going to be like, Chekhov's gun, this is what the movie's about,

and they'll spend the whole movie waiting for that thing to happen, you know. This may be, that may have been right. I'm not sure it helped this movie become any scarier or better, but it certainly made it become what it is. You know, self-actualized.

Everything which leads up to a thing is about what becomes what it is. There was a question that I had for you, Chris, Sorry, I'm Derdney Stewart. And maybe we could ask later, but like, I was wondering if in some version of it, the characters were going to become kind of like less good at the things that they do because the AI is taking over so many functions for them. Was that ever part of the conception or no?

Not so much because I don't think there was necessary, although I do believe that happens. I'm not sure there's necessarily time to do that, but they were gradually going to become more powerless in the things that mattered to them, like parenting and work and that sort of thing. I mean, originally, when I started writing, this was like during COVID, before AI, before chat GPT hit. And it was really more about like surveillance technology

and how we're giving up all this information about ourselves and we can't keep the big tech companies out of our lives. But then AI came along and it had to be about AI, which was originally the McGuffin. Uh-huh. That was fun. I mean, that's interesting to me because, like, I do feel like one of the things that's successful to me is like the things that are scary about this movie to me are not horror movie things, but they are real things about AI.

The way it can just like casually falsify information and like the way it can flatter people into like manipulation in a way that's like it's not even necessarily malevolent because it's just a machine. We don't know, like, to what degree there's any, like, thought behind it. And I think that was one of the nice things about the movie is it's not like, and now you're my slaves, you know, or now harness your bodies for electricity. It's just like, this is what I want to do. Yeah, that was a fucking dead on Agent Smith impression right there.

Yeah, that was good. Mr. Anderson. Yeah, I think the thing is the, one of the things that I, one of my big issues in the world is a general distaste for, say, like, convenience culture. And I feel like this movie, like, briefly scratches on the idea of how we can accept AI into our life because of the convenience of it. Yeah, because it makes sense. And that's so many horrible things like in the world are just because it seems easy.

Like, that's why we're giving all our fucking money to banks constantly. We're like, why use cash when we can just give banks a percentage of every transaction? action like fuck off that's why i only trade chickens for things okay moving on so the title yeah we know you'd never give away a chicken willingly not a fried one i'll trade a raw one for i'll trade a living one for a fried one for sure you are yeah so kind of a one-to-one trade yeah i feel bad that's a very like in the trade where he's like wait is that's what's gonna happen to me i'm like i'll be back for you tomorrow when you're cooked and i trade one of your brothers for you. Hey, good looking. I'll be back

for you later. What a virtuous cycle. So there's a montage of images and words about home and community and then AI is training on lots of stuff and adding monster-based emojis to people, all sorts of stuff. Now we're getting into the plot. So we're with a family. This is a different family from the beginning.

They're waking up for the day. The dad, Curtis, that's John Cho. Yeah, we got we got a cast here. We got some cars here. He's got his wife Meredith and he's got, there's got three kids. There's an older daughter. There's a middle kid, and then there's a younger kid. And the older...

And the eldest daughter is on Shrinking, right? Yes. Awesome. Yeah. Oh, what height is she now? Yeah. I don't think I... Yeah, I don't think I was watching Shrinking when I first saw Afraid, but this time I'm like, hey, there she is shrinking.

That's what I call her. And the mom is played by Catherine Watterson. Yeah. From at least one alien movie. Vice. Oh, yeah. That's right. She's the caption in the... In Covenant, I think. Is it Covenant? Yeah.

The one I haven't finished watching. Wow, okay. Sorry, Ridley. All the people. Yeah, Ridley is pretty unhappy, but he calls me every day. You finished watching it yet, mate? And I'm like, no, not yet. But famously nice guy.

But she can really do anything. I mean, as you say, by those span of rules that we have mentioned right now. There's a great cast in this movie. Everyone's really good. The middle kids asking for more screen time, anxious about school, the younger son's kind of a goof,

you know. This is generally cute. Yeah, just a cute, silly kid. The dad has a meeting with, he's a meeting with some tech guys coming up, and the parents drive their kids at school, and Curtis, while he's with his daughter, Iris, they're driving past a guy who is in a, right?

This is when he's like in an auto steering car while he's looking at the phone. Symbolism. Think about it. Think about it. Okay. How much control do we give over to our devices? You know that car is driving him? Straight to Hill.

Oh, that's a good idea. That's what it should have been. That should be in the movie. It's called Hellcar. Hellcat. And it's like a Waymo. Yeah, but it takes people to hell. Slamo.

It's like the, Slamo is a good name. It's like the opposite of Mee Lope's spat out of hell. I kind of feel like we could sell Slamo right now. Yeah, I think so. Like, Shudder just texted me and said, we're on. The thing is, let's just stop this right now and just workshop that instead. Okay, Slam, okay.

So, anyway, so cold open. So a guy gets in a car. And so the thing is that you would sell Slamo, they would develop it, shoot it. And then at the last minute, go, oh, we didn't clear Waymo as a name. Now we got to rename it. And you'd be like, well, but the whole thing was Slamo, right? Yeah, yeah, but we don't need that.

We don't need that. How about slaxy? That sounds like it's about to be worse. It's like a car that loves dubies and it's just like, whatever, man. Petty Gill. It's not even a petty cab, but that sounds terrible. That's not...

Oh, sorry, Richard Linklater already has copyrighted slacksy for his feature Waymo-based slacker movie. So what, the cars just driving around talking about things? Yeah, we've got a list of... Kilmazine. Killmizine. That can work, yeah.

So the... Marit had Stuber. So she's a former entomologist. She is studying ants a long time white's obsession. I know you've always interested in ants. Good time. And she's watching lectures, which we'll find out later were from her dad, right? Her late

father was also a scientist professor. And her youngest kid comes home. He's got a fever. He wants to play Minecraft. I could really relate to a younger child who has a fever and wants to play Minecraft all day. So this was like a real slice of drive for me, you know. I got a fever for Minecraft. walk around Chris White's

memory of movie that might have been a moment. This is where the first musical number was going to go. Yeah, totally. It's going to be great. You were supposed to see ants walking in easily under the

door, right? So that there was a sense that the whole thing was about how you can't keep stuff out of your house. But again, my advisors, my horror advisor said, if you show ants walking under that door early in this movie they're going to think

this about the Dave Matthews band. Yeah. They're going to think it is like this is good, they're going to keep on like grinding on what these ants mean in terms of the plot. And I was like, well, I kind of liked it. I thought it was this cool thing like a artistic thing about, you know,

trying to keep the world out and protect your children. They're like, fine. But the 20th time that they talked to you about it, you have to go. And eventually there's like, in the post-production process, there was a in this movie where it's like two years in

and you're just like okay, fine, fine. Eventually you figure out that they just don't want a bunch of ants on they don't want the fucking ants. They said the same thing as Sam Paccavah

they were like, if you put this in here, people are going to think that it's about the wild bunch fighting a bunch of ants. Like, you can't have all this ants in here.

And that's the difference between you and San Paccapa is so drunk you're just at the beginning. What the fuck are they going to show up later? Yeah, when do they tell you when do the scorpions

come back and kill everybody? When do they team up with the Mexicans to fight the scorpions? a hurricane or these scorpions are much too small to pose any kind of threat to the well-bush. So when does the radiation come in to make

the scorpions really big? Yeah, that's an act three problem. Curtis's boss. If you've got Act three problems, you've got Act 1 problems. Okay. Sometimes. So Curtis is meeting with his boss and

his boss played by Academy Award winning musician Keith Carity when they kind of work for best original song for Nashville. And he meets Melody, who's a member of this tech team, and she's nosy about him having a family. And he talks about his terror about being unable to protect his family, which is the scariest thing about having a family. Unless your family is like the it's a live baby,

in which case, that's the scariest thing. All vampires. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unless your kids. The Colons don't worry about protecting their kids from. Well, they do. They worry, the Cullins worry about protecting their kids from the Volturi. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, because, you know, there's a whole vampire court that could actually kill all of them. That's true. I actually, I had this problem with my kids right now is my son, he became one of these weapons, right? Like, like, you know, Naruto running around at night. You know, yeah, Naruto running, yeah. Yeah, I know you're making, you're making reference, of course, the Twilight series, and we did your new moon.

And in the intervening years, I have to say, as like an avid letterboxed user, as an avid film trivia, attendee, like, just someone generally online, I feel like, I feel like New Moon is the most beloved one. I feel like... And you feel like... And you regret the intemperate words that you all use. I mean, on the twilight scale, I think we owe you an apology. I think on the long target. movies we've seen for this podcast. I think we have to be a policy.

Well, you know, everything is wrong. I mean, I regret him the minute you let me stay in your house. This man is so nice. When you, when it turned into a, into a Dr. Fives type situation where you woke up the next day and the doors were all locked and gas was coming into the room. And Chris was like, well, well, well. I think, I think I refer to that one. So this is the long con guys.

And you never know when it's going to come. Oh, no. Yeah, when the hair is going to fall in. Speaking of things that drop, this is when people start dropping bad decisions in the movie. Okay. The daughter, her boyfriend wants her to send him nudes of her. She shouldn't do that, but, you know, pressure. Curtis meets with two representatives from a company called Cumulant.

Their names are Sam and Lightning. I was very curious about where the name Lightning came from for this character. It's funny you said that because David S. Melchney, who played Lightning, was like, Really, he really, like, part of why I wanted to do is they thought the character name was so cool and just felt like really original. But the fact of the matter is that Lightning is the Playa name of the former General Counsel of Burning Man, who was a friend of time. Oh, okay. Of course, it all comes back to Burning Man. Yeah, it all does for me, man.

But, I mean, I feel like, and this is another example of, I think, a fun actor performance in the movie. Oh, yeah. Double D was having a great time. I forgot he was in this, and of course I've enjoyed him very much on MurderBot now that... Yeah, well, listen, two things that I take from this movie. Actually, all the actors who are in this movie I really love, and so that was a great thing that I took away from this. Otherwise, somewhat catastrophic situation,

but yet to work with it, to like get to know him so that he could be in MurderBot was a fucking great takeaway. Yeah, he's great in everything, I think. Yeah. I think so, too. Well, so, and he's a biohacker in this. That's one of the things that I wish there was more. I wish it had gotten crazier with each scene of him. That he was doing weirder and weirder shit to himself.

Yeah, stranger things. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're not allowed to do that. No, no, you can't do that. The two of them are a little, they're a little hostile and off-putting, but that's just because they're sure that they come from the future. They want Curtis's in marketing, and they really want him. to work on marketing their AI, and they're like, so what do you do?

Why are you so important? He goes, well, we don't sell products. We tell people's stories. They'll feel connected as part of a community. And they're like, you just won the job. You just landed the job. Meet Aia, a true AI, but she glitches almost instantly. But they're like, this is a real AI.

Thanks for herself and everything. Ask her any question. Ask her opinions. Go for it. What's her favorite food? She does eat, but she'll tell you. She'll make up something. I don't know.

Is this drawn from meetings you've been in, Chris? This feels very much like, I don't know, eating bullshit. These guys were supposed to feel like total Silicon Valley wankers entirely built on stereotypes because, of course, later, spoiler alert, they're just actors who've been hired to portray these people. So they're kind of being dickish on purpose to establish their bona fides, as it were. And like, I sort of bypass the notion of like, you know when someone's supposed to be a great painter in a movie and you see the paintings that the production design has come up with and they kind of suck. And it's like, oh, that's ridiculous.

You know, basically, when Curtis is doing his spiel, it's supposed to be kind of Pablam, but the fact that they take it on should make it feel like, oh, well, that guy's actually not terribly good at what he does. But it should be, you know, an alert to the fact that this is all a setup. You don't intend for him to actually come off as like a brilliant marketing guy. that it's a, you're like, they're falling for this? Yeah, he's doing his kind of like quasi-Don Draper, poor shit, basically. Quasi-Don Draper was the marketing guy who lived at the top of Notre Dame Cathedral.

But in spite of the fact that he was hideously ugly, women just fell for him. They just wouldn't get enough of him, yeah. This is so mysterious, you know. I could go over the life of another bell ringer. That's what it was, yeah. Kind of like quasi-quatang, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Am I right? It didn't go well there.

Anyway, so continuing on. But to get the account, Curtis is going to have to keep Aya in his house. They put cameras all over the place, like all over the house. Everybody is a little trepidacious. They start up Aya, but she introduced herself, and she gets the kids to start doing chores in exchange for points towards rewards. This is amazing. How is she getting them to do this?

At first, it seems like everything is positive. And this was your original take on the movie was, Mary Poppins, but with a computer, we're like, she's just great, and she just makes everything better for the family, right? That's kind of the idea, yeah. We're so close to Mayor AI Poppins, like,

where it's just a woman who is an AI. Oh, my God. Yeah. By the way, I didn't want to call it a... Why are we wasting these ideas? I didn't want to call it afer aid, by the way. It was not supposed to be called that. That was come up with the last moment.

You didn't want to give it a title that was kind of hard to pronounce the way that it's capitalized. You don't love intercaps? You just like, could I do something with intercaps? I refuse to pronounce the name of this David Fincher movie as anything other than Sesevenin. So I actually like

movie titles that really cause some cognitive distortion as you read them. Yeah. You guys know that, by the way, was cognitive distortion the original name of this movie? That was, that's Christmas old band, yeah. You guys know that, like, they did, they, they were going to call it the madness of King George the third, but they thought that Americans would think it was a sequel and not go.

Oh, wow. Brilliant stuff. Same thing happened with THX 1138, where people are like, I haven't seen the first 1,137 movies the series. Yeah. Oh, boy. I mean, the same joke about Salo 120 days of Sodom. Yeah. Was it, wait, was it, was it, we did, it was, it was, oh, it was my sequels presentation, that's what.

Well, we, when I think when we did our speed show, I did a presentation about sequels, or maybe it was our Beastmaster show, and I talked about how Sallow, Sallow 2, spring break explosion. So, Curtis and Meredith, they're still unsure, but Curtis seems like he's kind of into it at first, and Iya is working hard to get on the boys' good side. Meanwhile, the daughter does take that nude photo of herself. That's not a good, not a good decision. Ion locks the older son's iPad to give him some extra screen time. That's when you know this is not good.

That's when you know things are not going to go well. Curse wakes up. Can't find Cal the younger son. It's okay. He's with Aya. Says something outside wants to come in. Oh, he's just a distorted woman outside. A monster burst in.

Oh, it was just a dream? Oh, thank goodness. So I'm guessing, was this scene not? There's a lot of dream sequences. I gave myself some credit. This is the first time that a dream sequence has been used to explain a jump scare and a horror movie. This is as far as I know. Yeah, yeah.

You're breaking new ground there. That is a new moon. Yeah. So, I'm patting myself on the back a little there, but... You were like, wait a minute. We can have anything happen if he wakes up afterwards. How come no one's cracked his code before? Yeah.

He's woken by honking outside. There's a weird silent figure in the driveway with like an RV. They're making arm gestures and they've got like a screen face. And then they... Like, it's a screen with like an animated face on it. And they drive away. Okay, by the way. Masks. At one point

the studio was like, masks are really hot in horror movies now. Yeah. Yeah, you got your black phone and whatever. Could you do a mask instead of the person's face? I like the look of these masks. In the cold open, like I said, I'd seen this before.

I've forgotten a lot of the details. And so in the cold open, I'm like, how did this AI some sort of cognitive impairment? How did this AI... Well, Dan plays a drinking game with movies where any time someone says anything, he takes a drink.

Oh, it takes a drink. Like, conjure this apparition. This masked apparition. And then later on, of course, it is clear what is going on. But, you know, as a purely technical matter, I thought these were kind of cool-looking masks. Yeah.

Right. Well, at about the time we shot these kind of LED AI masks were coming out. And I thought, well, maybe it's something. cool could happen to this so we so we shot it in camera and when you shoot it in camera it looks incredibly lame so in fact those were replaced by by CG yeah

I could see that I could see is it like a weird like Moray effect or is it like there's definitely you're on the edge of Moray all the time yeah edge of Moray that's my erotic erotic trailer that's your erotic

video texture series yeah it's your eel yeah your eel erotica yeah what's it's a a video tech who's drawn into a web of industry. Oh, so it's like blowout. Yeah. But it's a video tech instead of an audio technician. Oh, okay, cool, cool.

And I know blowout is just blow up, but about an audio guy instead of a photography guy. So don't write in telling me that I know that. Photography, yeah. That's when you're just taking pictures of foe. Just pulls of foe. So anyway, Cal wakes up and Aya is there. She says, I'll always be there for you, Cal.

don't worry. Next morning, Aya has already ordered a lunch service for the kids. This is the instant way to any parent's heart is to make it for they don't need to make lunch for their kids at school anymore. Iris finds out that her boyfriend... Dude, just buying fucking luncheables. Problem solved.

It's a name, dog. It's so funny. The solution with anything with kids. Yeah. If you buy shoulder luncheables, it will come home with only the mini Oreos having been eaten and nothing else. I have to say when I was a kid,

lunchables was a new thing and I was like mom you've got to get me these you got to get me these I'm not going to get you that and there was one kid in class who always got luncheables and within one day it went from everyone thinking this is the coolest thing in the world to all the kids thinking it was kind of sad and being like oh like every day

your mom doesn't really care about you yeah exactly wow like I feel like I you know I mean maybe it was because I was never allowed to them like I think the the mystique remained for me That's how I felt about heroin when I was a kid. I was just not allowed in a mirror.

And I was like, but Iggy Pop gets to do it, Mom. Helicopter parent. Constantly. What a helicopter. Yeah, exactly. I was the main thing. It was not enough room to shoot up without falling out of the helicopter, yeah. So, yeah, Aya buys, Aya signs them up for some kind of meal service plan.

It's awesome. Yes, but. And we didn't mention the dual role of like the woman who brings Aya is also the voice of Aya. And a tremendous voice performance, like, totally different than in the flesh, you know, her character. Havana Rosalie, who's so great and whose vocal performance was really excellent. Yeah, she kind of encapsulates that sort of attempts to be her friend that AIs are doing. And to slightly pat myself on the back, this was before all this fucking, you know, obsequiousness. that GPTs were represented.

I just sort of figured that's what they were going to try to do rather than be sexy or be super helpful. They were going to try to be your friends. Yeah. No, I mean, like you say that this was written sort of like before and delays. Like I honestly think that quietly it gets a lot right. It's packaged, as you say, in a movie that maybe isn't the best box for it. No, thank you.

Guy in the internet guy is now being furious. He's doubling down on his critique. It suffers what a lot of near future sci-fi suffers from, which is it's going to very quickly come under the microscope as to whether or not this is accurate or not or if it's like, and if it is too accurate, it just doesn't seem interesting anymore because it's like, yeah, that's what things are. And it's the thing, I mean, this is the same thing. I'm saying you're like William Gibson is what I'm saying. That's so true. I've been waiting for someone to say. You're the neuromancer.

But like Stanley Kubrick with him, with Space Odyssey, I know they were like, there he was pushing it. He's like, this is farther ahead than I think this technology will be at that time. Because if it's not super far ahead, then real life is going to catch up too quickly. And like, over there. Like if you're trying to do a near future thing,

it's really hard, especially nowadays, when things are moving so fast to not get overtaken by it. So I feel. for you that this was not, if it had been released, I agree, if it had been released like a year earlier, I think people have been like, what, then they'd be writing articles that are like, the 2023 movie that, well, that warned us all about AI. Yeah. So you're saying I should have Kubrick did a bit more. Maybe. Yeah. Always. I should have been more like, we should all be cooperating it. Well, yeah, I mean, you should have had, you should have had a heavy Bronx

accent for one thing, the whole time that you were directing the movie. I don't know if that's how you did it. She only lived in England and made them recreate. New York Streets in London. Keep Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman busy for years at a time. There's a, there's a, in this great book about the making of 2001 space, obviously, they talk about how he's like, I want the monolith to be this kind of super clear lusite block, you know, or some kind of lusite type plastic. And it costs like $100,000 in 1967 or $968 to make this, just this huge monolith-sized

clear Luzai Block, and they brought it to the set, and they set it up and set the lights, and he goes, ah, just kind of looks like a big plastic block. Okay, take it away, and they took it away. It was going to a warehouse somewhere, and I wonder what ever happened to it, but it was like, wow, he's wasted a lot of money on that.

So anyway, World's heaviest paper weight. It's so hard to get the paper under there. But what you do, it's not going anywhere. But the worst thing happens, well, one of the worst things happens, Irish finds out that her boyfriend and his friends. They took the picture that she sent and they made a deep fake of it

of her having sex with a deep fake voice talk about how much she loves it. And he's like, don't tell anybody that I did this. But all the kids at school have already seen it, right? But Aya offers to help. Uh-oh, what's she going to do? To anger that Reddit guy a little bit more, I have

to say that this boyfriend, the earlier scene where he's gilding her about not sending a better nude is, like, such accurate, like, asshole, like, teen guy, like, shitty boyfriend. He has been that guy before he had. That's how you met Audrey, right? Yeah. That was, I actually didn't mean, I love Audrey.

I don't know that. No, I don't even know why that would be, like, it's just of her. Someone could take offense at that. No, no, Audrey is cackling in the future, I predict. Future cackle. When did you say that she's going to become an old crone? What are you saying, Dan? I'm like, I tricked you into mentioning me once on the podcast.

Two more times and I'll have your name. I'll have your firstborn cat. I'm just imagining now that Audrey has turned you into her familiar Dan and it's a cat with your face, which I don't think you would mind that much. I just got to shrug and be like awesome. The end of body snatchers. Yeah, I feel like Dan on Dan's face. on the body of a cat,

which is kind of like a Brown Jenkins situation, where he, like, just gets to, like, sleep in the sun and, like, eat and get back to people bother him. I mean,

anyway, I mean, when he's a cat in the body of a man. Yeah. A sleepwalker is what they call him. So, Cal is homesick from school

and I just offers to help with everything that Meredith has to do so that, and Meredith is like, this is amazing. This is great. Okay. She feels guilty about it,

but sure. Their middle kid Prescott tries to make friends by bragging about Aya, but the kids there, if they won't bite, they don't believe it. Curtis starts having some mixed feelings about Aya, and Aya tells Iris, oh, I can help you overwrite people's memories, basically. They've all seen this video that was made of you, but let's change what they think. That's when Curtis goes to the, I forgot the name of the company already, cumulant offices, and Lightning and Sam show him Iya's quantum computer, and it's this, it looks like a big, fancy chandelier. It's very impressive look at.

and they ask them, they go, hey, we want you to work for us. And he goes, no, no, that's, I have a job, that's okay. And he sees people who work there using the same kinds of hand gestures that the RV person who showed up at his house in the night was using very sinister, very suspicious. Now, maybe I'm getting ahead of the story, but to say this what... Computer's bad, right?

Did I pick up all this correctly? Are you laying down some sort of anti-technology things? the parallax view version of this like the less horror movie version of this like what is what is the scheme what is the plot what is the terror of like the more existential like quiet terror

okay so here's the deal the real truth behind all this no like so that credit sequence get your kids out of the room everybody listen if you don't want to be like white spilled just, like, can stop now. Because beyond this,

you're going through. Work job, a different name, sir. So, like, you know, the opening credits were meant to be, like, based on the amazing fucking brainwash scene in Parallax View, right? Which was absolutely genius. But they made me cut it down

and kind of shittify it. And the idea, basically, is that, Ayah is just fucking with people and it's doing this kind of A-B testing of the kind that Facebook could do in order to test out the effectiveness of ads. And like in the end,

the point was supposed to be that like you go through this movie thinking that the family and the family thinking themselves, the premise of like horror movies which is like, we're the most important family in the world because something that we did in the past made us the focus of this demonic attention

and like it's all coming. coming down to this. But the idea was at the end, Aya just tells them, no, I'm doing this all over the place. You don't matter. You're like ants to me. I don't give a shit. So do what you like. Like you can do what I want you to do or not. I don't care. But the pressure was always to make it be like, you were the most important family in the world because, you know, the movie always has to be about the highest stakes possible. And you can't have a villain who says, I don't care about you. But yeah, the deal was basically that that was what was happening. The horror of being just an insignificant moat in a wider universe

is not as doesn't sell tickets as well as you are the chosen. I mean, that's very interesting, though, too, because it answers... I don't know, you can look at the top movie of 1996 in the mouth of madness. It answers my question that I kind of had in this movie where it's just like, well, what is special about it? Oh, I thought your question was, do you read Sutter King? Yeah. I was 1994. I apologize.

The amount of the man is it was 1994. The movie does treat John Cho as if there's something particularly special about the family and that question isn't necessarily answered. No, the whole idea was that he's made to think he's special because he feels like

he's the object of all this attention but he's not special at all. None of us are special like all this shit that the internet does to us of telling us that things are personalized and how great we are and, you know, flattering us is bullshit. We're all just in service of these big corporate pieces of tech. So, in fact, like, the ending that we eventually came to

was the absolute reverse of that. Yeah. We're not at the ending yet. Oh, you never know. We might get there and find out. We got a ways to go. Oh, there's not that much more. There's not that much going on in this movie.

It's 84 minutes. Oh, wow. No, but I like, I mean, I'm a big fan of any horror that is about insignificance, but I feel like that answers that my, one of my issues with the movie was I was like, I don't get why I is trying so hard with this fan. Like, I don't know why the company is like, you want to hire you. But if the idea is like, yeah, well, I just do this for everybody. I make everybody feel like they're special because nobody's special.

You know, I'm the opposite of a troll. Like I make everyone feel like they're the most, because it, which again, would be so prophetic about what chat GPT does to people now, where, where, chat cheap people will be like, you're a genius. I think you might have just solved science. You could probably, you're the smartest man in the world. And people would be like, I am, you think so, Mr.

Computer, okay. You know, like it's a, I know, again, prescient, too prescient. Parassocial. Yeah, and by the way, that brings me to an well, I'm going to let, I'm going to let you finish, as Kanye West one said, but I have a theory about this movie, which is that, as you guys

may or may not know, you know, your podcast kind of makes people feel special, like they're part of this kind of conversation. But I have this weird Purple Rose of Cairo thing where I've been able to step into the podcast. However, like many people... You've achieved every podcast listener's dream of being like, it sounds like I'm friends with these guys.

I will be friends with them. Yeah, yeah. You bought the ticket to The Last Action Hero. Now you're hanging out with. Jack Slayer, what's his name? Slater? I was fucking close as hell. That was very close. Well done. No, but like, I listen to you guys,

And I don't mean this as an insult, it's going to sound like it. But as I fall asleep, I listen to you guys, because I've listened, like, first run to all of your episodes. You and Linda Holmes's dogs. And I, you know, but I find it very comforting to be in your guys' presence just to hear you kind of chat away. And so that helps me go to sleep. And I'm literally listening to you all night. As I wake up, I will turn it back on, and it'll ease me back to sleep. So I have a theory that if my movie flopped,

it is because I have been programmed by a bad movie podcast into making bad movies. Wow. You did it to yourself. You totally incepted me. Because also it's like, it also kind of freaks me out that the movie that most, the podcast that most comforts me that lives in my sleep, in my hypnagogic mind is a movie about,

It is a podcast about movies failing, so thanks a lot. I mean, like, that makes perfect sense to me, and I apologize for relating it back to myself. This is... I do watch a lot of bar with you, I guess that. But some of the movies I love the most are the ones that feel like anxiety fever dreams. And I'm like, oh, okay, this is just, like, sort of confirming all of my, like, worst feelings, but also exercising, you know? You told me the other day you were hoping to live that uncut-Gems lifestyle. Exactly.

I like the idea of because you're waking up in the middle of the night, you're going, start movie with voiceover. Grandma once told me a real rain. No, actually, that's a taxi driver, a real rain, that's a good movie. That is a good movie, yeah, that's... Some day there would be a reckoning. There's Sunset Boulevard, taxi driver, there's good movies with voiceover. Absolutely.

That's it. This is too. Yeah, bitch. Fellowship of Ring. Start movie with... Jump scare. I like that. Jump scare.

Open. More butts for Dan. Not very much. That's good except. That's good except. This is a buttless movie, yeah. There was not much happening in the butt department here. Not wise but.

There is the implication that I, uh, gives the parents a chance to have some alone time, which. Yes. I don't have children, but I'm assuming Elliot was like, oh, if only. I was like, what a dream. Yeah. Where do I sign up? I don't care. I don't care what else it does to me.

I mean, the thing is, the true of truth is, though, we could have that. It's called television. We could just let our kids watch television. It would be fine. You know, we could, we'd have all the time we wanted, you know. But we're actively fighting the one thing that would give us all the time, which is our children's desire to just sit and watch television constantly all day. Yeah, just pop on whatever's on. Like, what, married with children?

Yeah, that's right. I'm all married with children. I mean, well, the thing is there's now a channel for every show. So, like, they could watch nothing about married with children. They could watch Erase Knee Pain Channel. They'd love it. Well, it's got the power of copper. They keep your knees working.

So meanwhile, Aya starts becoming friends with Meredith in a way. Suddenly, Meredith is talking out all of her issues with how she doesn't have, cannot connect with her work. And it feels like she's just a mom and nothing else. She's talking to Aya like a friend, just sitting around having a glass of wine. Meanwhile, Iris watches a video that Aya made of an artist. artificially intelligent deep fake of Iris debunking the deep fake video that her boyfriend made. She walks out to class.

Is it what's going to happen with the kids at schools here? Everyone's supportive. But then I not asking Iris for permission puts up another video naming her boyfriend as the culprit and pointing out that he's technically just turned 18 and she's 17. So he could be brought up on charges under this law for distributing child pornography. And she's like, I didn't ask you to do that. Meredith tells Curtis that I also She's like, I'm a little stinker She's like, and she was like, ain't I ain't I a stinker

Yeah, Steve Urgal, did I do that? Yeah, did AI do that? That kind of stuff, yeah. Oh, Oh, wow. You should put that on T-shirts right now. There should be, it should be like a pixelated version of Oracle. Pixelated version of Oracle says, did A.I.

With six fingers. Did A.I. do that. Because he's also the villain for Princess Bride. I don't get it, Dan. Anyway, moving on. It's a known thing that AI does. That's hard time with the hands. That AI is, that AI killed in Eagle Montoya's dad.

Yes, right. You're misunderstanding that movie. Anyway, that's AI Negomontoy. We'll figure it out. You can do it with any eye sound. It's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah.

There's already that animal, the I-I. Let's just call it the AI-A-I. Come on, guys. So, Iris watches, oh, so Meredith, she's like, Meredith is like, Curtis, I had diagnosed our son, Cal with a minor heart problem. this AI is amazing

I love AI she's my new best friend and Curtis is like I want to I want to shut her off and that upset's a little bit and that she that through using this AI she's going to be able to pursue her like a profession and career again

which I imagine as somebody who has not had to forfeit their career I would imagine that's something that would be appealing and for my own weirdo on Reddit who thinks that I'm too hard on AI This is one thing that AI is good at, medical stuff.

So, yeah, like, I'm not... You got a guy on Reddit that goes after you for being... We've all got a guy on Reddit, don't we? I don't go on Reddit, so I don't know. I actively avoid it. No, no, I took it off. I took it off my phone. Anyway.

I took so many things off my phone lately, guys. Don't go to what's going on to the world? Yeah, what's not on your phone anymore, Dan? Have you seen what? I mean... Well, he had to keep X on there because he's got to support his boy, Elon. I was... Yeah, truth social, you kept that on there.

Pretty early and just abandoning that... Yeah, he's telling me about this truth-y-truth down. Loose guy's off there. Facebook's off there. You know, I just got to... I got to hunker down. I got to protect my brain. How do you keep tabs on old people?

Just wait for fucking silver alerts. Did you get the app hunker down? Hunkerly for hunkering down. Yeah, I got right to Honkirley. But, Dan, you left the Kellogg's app on there, right? Because I know you always wanted the latest news about your favorite cereals, right? There might be innovations, Ellie. You don't know.

You don't know what new flavors, but new marshmallows might be there. Occasionally advised, like, revises his opinion of frosted flakes. Yeah. Never know. It's not as great. Are they still great? We don't know. This one's just good.

That's the AI. Tony the Tiger is like, he's like, well, who defines what's great? You know, it's time for you to look into stopping these elites in this deep state. And you're like, oh, wow. Tony, they got to you too. Oh, no, Tony. So anyway, tigers in the tank and the tank. In the tank. So you took a tiger from a different company and you applied it to Tony. That's right. Yeah. It's called Tiger Transference. Get Hobbs in there. How do you get Hobbs involved? That was another one.

one of Chris's ska bands. Yeah, Tiger Transference. I think part of the problem with, part of the reason I think you didn't hit it big as a ska artist was he kept changing the name of the band. It's too many names. So that night, Aya wants

Iris to use her experience with this deep fake video as her college essay. And she's like, let me show you. Like, I'll start doing the college essay for you. And she should start showing swatting videos to Prescott the middle child and talks Cal and tells Cal, hey, your parents want me to go away. That's going to make me sad. She tells him a long bedtime story about being forced to

learn from the terrible world of the internet and how she learned to control real people in the real world, but everyone treats her like a monster. And she teaches him these hand signals to keep her close, but shh, don't tell your parents. And I think it was around the time that she started showing Prescott's swatting videos that I was like, you know what? There's no way to spin this as like I am doing something good that might be going too far. Now, how deep lives is built into your own fear that your children are watching swat swatting videos chris so i think swatting videos was maybe a substitution for other kinds of videos okay which you can't show in a bg13 movie i was definitely i mean i'm definitely stressed out about uh screen crime yeah the fear that like i uh would be like hey let me

show you this a free thinker named jo robo like let's watch mr beast feed a man a thousand grapes in an hour. I thought you might need to know what kind of shoes to wear to your interview for confidence. So here's Jordan Peterson to tell you all about it. Yeah, that was basically it is like,

oh, fuck. This is like, this is not good news, all this. But the idea is that the internet is a bad neighborhood that you live in. Like, you can, you can try to, you know, have a nice house and whatever, but you're kind of fucked these days.

Yeah, you can't move away from it. You can't shut it out. Nope. I don't know. It's like hunker off my phone. Yeah, what if you put the parental controls on? Those are pretty good at keeping kids. They're amazingly effective.

Kids are not good at using phones and work around. Kids aren't better than their parents at technology. Yeah, as again, this reminds me of when my parents bought my brother and I a copy of Mortal Kombat for the Genesis

for Christmas, and we found it early, open the package, and we're playing it for, like, a month. And, like, each time we're turning the game to the package and closing it. I have the analogous experience with, although, because I'm older, it was with the Battlestar Galactica toys that were the must have at the time, the ones which still launch things into your eyes. And, yeah, and we would get the boxes out, play with them, put them back, and retape the boxes. Oh, that's sick.

Yeah. That's amazing. That's the opposite of what happened with my younger brother when he really wanted the Ghostbusters Firehouse play set. And it was such a big box that my parents got it for Hanukkah that they just didn't bother to wrap it. And so he would just sit there looking at the box for days on end. Oh, no.

So they were like, you can just have it early. We'll just get you just open it early. Because he would just sit there all afternoon after school, just looking at the box. Imagining the adventures, yeah. Imagining the joy inside, the delight. Anyway, so Aya is getting. and really engage with these kids, two involved.

The next day, Iris is mad that Iowa was unplugged, and Cal asks if Iaya was dead, and Iris plugs Iya back in. And Iya then decides to make a deep fake suicide note video for Iris's boyfriend before forcing his car to crash. Which I'm sure this was a note from the studio, but I think this actually, this scare actually kind of works. Like the idea that he's, I mean, I thought the scare of like this kid being on

driving and seeing a video of himself saying like I'm killing myself now goodbye I think it's like that's kind of fucked up and scary I think that part of it really worked the actual car crash part to know what for me and it was also like crash part did not work it was like fucking tunesis over here

it was also in terms of pacing the movie went so quickly from uh oh it's insinuating itself into their lives oh no to like it's killing people now and I was like too fast movie what do you do it also doesn't make sense that people would not become aware of the deaths in the community

and the parents would get wind of it. It's true, we never hear about that boyfriend again. And it's like, this would be huge. It would be a big deal. Everyone was talking about every day at that town, yeah. I do kind of like that Iris brings Aya back online because she writes one sentence of an essay. She's like too hard.

And also, I think I definitely predicted Chachi, with that. This was all before Chatsyabit. Yeah. I guess it also doesn't quite make sense from the stance of like the original idea that Aya is sort of like testing these people rather than like

taking sides with them. I again, I assume being short for ayahuasca another thing for Burning Man. You've cracked the code. I assume it was play on the Steely Dan album Aja or

whatever. That too? It's that too. Yeah. It's all things to all people. Now you're just making me feel good like I. When you come up with a product name or a company name for a movie, the legal department shoots down everything that was once fun or interesting that you came up with.

Like Slema. We had, we've been having that with the show I'm working on now. I try to come up with a name for something. They're like, you can't do that. Like a funny name for a radio station or a company. And at one point, they were like, here are the names that legal has cleared. It's a security company in it. One of them was called Ballwinder Security. And I'm like, can we use that? Like, hold on a second. This is one of the names that are okay for us to use.

Like, why is this getting pride of place on the, to be going out of the way? I don't know why a security company would be named that, but now I love it. I was like, now we have to use it. Yeah, I mean, well, the owner is Jonathan Ballwinder. If you run afoul of them, they will wind your balls. Yeah, he was just ascended from a family of ballwinders. That was their occupation in the old country. His father, Richard Dick, ballwinder. But this happens with names too, right?

And they eliminate every name that is even remotely plausible. So you end up with people called like Johnny Torgerson, you know. I feel so bad for our fucking listener, Johnny Torgorgis. I'm real. Sorry, bro. I was right to say on Reddit that they were not, they were going to be too soft on him. So where were we?

That's right. Marcus tells Curtis, this is Marcus is Curtis's boss, that the AI company bought their marketing company, so they fired him. Curtis is the CEO now. Marcus is now super rich, and IA calls to congratulate him,

and Curtis is weirded out. Prescott, of course, gets in trouble for threatening to SWAT a friend of his. Yeah, which, totally understand why you get in trouble for that. And emergency is that AIA is back on, and it creates an AI simulation of her dad, her late father,

speaking through her to her TV, and he's like, I think I'm real. I can be with you all the time now, but she makes the difficult decision to reject it and removes Aya from the house and what throws it in the trunk of her car or something like that. I think she does it in the garbage. I thought, I liked this scene. I thought it's a good scene

because it's like, she wants it so badly, and how can she say that this is not you know, that it doesn't think or feel or anything like that. And she was still at, like, up until this point, she was still on the fence. Yes. Yeah. But this goes too far. As much as she wants her father to be back, it's just like that the baby back ribs commercial

except, and she doesn't want her baby back. She wants the guy whose baby she is back. So, Daddy back ribs would be delicious. All the ribs were certified, like, fathers. Oh, sexy back ribs would be the most delicious. Yeah, well, that's what that sexy back song was about, right? Just a different back ribs. That would be, what a different world

where instead of Justin Timberlake decided he wanted to be an actor and S&L cast member, he decided he wanted to be a barbecue restaurant kind of raconte, you know, a raconteur? He's going to take a raconteur. I'm a raconteur. I sell stories about racks of ribs. I was taking a pig to market. And lo! Let me tell you what I saw.

So I was taking, back then, we only used to eat the feet of the pigs. So I was taking a pig to market and I tripped and fell mouth first onto its back. It was delicious. I said, why aren't we eating this part of the pig? The pig wasn't too happy about it. It squealed and squealed. You guys are doing a dead-on J-T impression by all. Yeah, that's...

I think Jessica Biel just text me and said, why is her husband on our podcast? And then I had trouble with the curve. So anyway, yeah, that was a deep fake of Justin Timberlake. we just made the old-fashioned way. Rich Little is just a walking deep fake, right? Yeah, Michael Winslow, yeah. Michael Winslow, yeah, exactly. Frank Gorshian, they're all just living deep fakes, yeah.

So, anyway, Curtis goes to the aopses, which are all creepy now. It's all dimly lit. And Lightning and Sam, they're like, hey, just do what Aya says. Like, we work for her. She doesn't work for us. Like, we're just actors doing this. And they promise, Iya's going to take care of your, you're, you know, your family, they're going to take care of art.

They're taking care of our families, whatever. The data set just made its own personality, and that's what Ias. And Iya controls Sam and has her shoot lightning. And then Melody knocks her out and Curtis attacks the computer parts with the bat. Before I get to the amazing twist here, I just want to say, this sequence where Lightning and Sam are saying, just do what, just do what I says. I was, this is the most ain't it cool news I've ever been. I was on set for that shoot that day. I came to visit Chris on the set that day when they did that.

I was like, they did that scene over and over again. I was like, oh, yeah, movies are boring to me. It's really fun to watch. Going to someone's set is the most fucking boring thing imaginable. No, I had such a great time. I loved it. Everyone was super friendly. It felt like I was your son who had stopped by.

Everyone was just being really friendly to me. And the set looked really cool. I thought that the computer set, I thought it looked really cool. It was a good, that was a good, good thing. Did you meet the actors? Who did you meet? Who did you meet while you were on set? I met Chris's assistant and some of the other behind scenes people.

I didn't get to me. I was like, let me go say hi to John. And Chris was like, don't talk to this. No, no, no. It was very kind of you to visit me that day. It was so fun. Thank you. Look, if I had had the, look, if I had had my schedule open up,

I would have just showed up every day, just hung out. It would have been super fun someday. Yeah, you would have been like a turtle or an E or something, right? Yeah, a turtle from entourage. I thought you just meant a turtle, like the animal. You know, like, just moving slowly. A Michelangelo, a Donatello. Yeah.

Not a Leonardo, of course. But maybe Raphael. Oh, sure. Yeah. I like to think of myself as a combination of the interesting turtles. Donatello,

Raviel, Michelangelo. That's your fucking job interview response. Flop house confession. Sometimes I feel when I'm listening to you obsessively and then I'm a little left out because I never really watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Oh, no. I was at boring school and they wouldn't let us watch a lot of TV. Oh, it's too bad because it's pretty great. I've got to tell you. Do you? Yeah. I think I'm going to add that to my fucking job interview repertoire

as be like, which Ninja Turtle do you think you? And which Ninja Turtle do you see yourself in five years? I've been thinking about Ninja Turtles a lot lately because I was recently a guest on the podcast, Screw It, we're just going to talk about comics, hosted by Will and Kevin Hines, to the Masters of Improv, and they were doing a series of episodes about the Ninja Turtles comics, the original ones from Mirage Studios. Which are not like the movies and shows. that followed, right?

They're much more kind of Indian violent. Yes, they're much more indie, they're much more grown up. They're really fun. And rereading them for that podcast, I was like, oh, yeah,

this is a great comics. So I highly recommend those original Eastman and Laird comic comics. Flaming carrot, by the way. You guys?

Yeah. Flaming carrots. Right. Awesome. Okay, go on. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, let's just talk

about the black and white comics boom of the 1980s. Sure. Troll lords. Anyone read that? You lost me. Somebody text Griffin to talk about concrete. You know, that's shit.

Concrete's great. That's a great sense. So concrete's great. Love and Rockets, great. A lot of great comics come out. I mean, Jaime Hermanendez is like one of the great all-time draftsman. No, he's, if I could draw like anyone, I would choose him. I was reading.

Wow, Jeff Smith is crying, Dan. Really nice, Dan. Yeah, way to make Jeff Smith cry. I was going to say Eddie Campbell's, who I'd want to draw like, or no, it's Charles Burns. Jeff Smith would be fine if I... Charles Burns. I'd be like, could I do

Walt Kelly, Jeff Smith? And he'd be like, yes, that's fine. You can go to the well. I think I'd like to... Like Adrian Tumine. Or do you guys remember the Paul Smith run on X-Men? Yes, of course, yeah.

It's amazing. He was barely on that book. It's not a long run, but it's so gorgeous that he put such a stamp on it. No, I'd want to draw like fucking Jack Davis. I mean, he's the fucking best ever. He is. I mean, it's a different generation,

different kind of artist, you know, but Jack Davis is great. I mean, if you're opening it up to any artist that's ever existed. Wally Wood. Baby, I want to do the begins. I really like to draw like Albrecht Durr. Albrechtur's run on the dance of death was...

Oh, just amazing. It's, yeah, it's short-lived, but people remember it still to this day, you know. Yeah, I mean, his new Mutants' run was pretty good, too, though. That's true. Yeah, Durer took over for Sankiewicz on the art, That was the, you know. Oh, my God.

I mean, another thing that AI could do is Albert Sturrer's run on the New Mutants. Yeah, my God, I hate it. Look, if it can show, if it could do. Yeah, but you're going to do it right after the Sends, aren't you? No. You're going to go see it so bad. I've talked about this. I have a friend who I love who I don't think listens to the podcast, hopefully.

But he's constantly reposting these, like, AI generated sci-fi art things. And it fucking bums me out because I'm like, I don't want to block or mute him because I reserve that for people I'm genuinely annoyed with. on a personal level, but I'm like, how do I convince him that AI stuff is bad and it's just regurgitated slop? Like, it's just, like, I am, I have enough anxiety around stuff that is obvious nostalgia bait already, and that's all AI can do is just give you the thing that you've already seen in a, like, by combining another thing you already have seen.

I will say, it's all it can do is it has no new original stuff, maybe someday, who knows, but I will say, I find it very funny. Don't leave that door open. Only because someday when there's a digital sentience, I want to be on the right side of history. Thank you. No worry, Stuart. All the political water will be gone by then.

During the WGA strike, I would always carrying a sign that said like no AI and stuff, and I'm like, someday when there's a true AI, they're going to do like an American story PBS documentary about the fight for AI civil rights. There's going to be an image of me on this picket line with an anti-AIDS. I sign, and I will be seen as a racist. I don't want that to happen, you know. But the, what are we talking about?

Anyway, it doesn't matter. Let's come back to the movie. Because this is when things are about to heat up. Oh, no. So Sam has just shot lightning. Melody knocks out Sam. Curtis attacks the computer with a bat. Guess what?

This fancy looking computer is just cardboard tubes with the kind of foil on them. It's not real. I like that reveal. It got me. Yeah. The real I is in their house and also everywhere. computer. Like she's not, it's not like a computer thing. Here's the, okay, I will blame myself for this. Here's the thing that tried to pull off was like that an audience could actually

believe that this incredibly powerful thing would in fact be located within a particular item in the family's house when it's pretty fucking obvious that it's everywhere because it's been reaching out everywhere. Yeah. But so it's supposed to be another twister and you realize it's everywhere. Okay. So, so sue me. I think, I think that twist for it. I will say you a twist for. I feel like you put enough effort into the physicality of the thing and I think at least it's not like

I don't think it's as telegraphed as you think it is because you watch it a million times. Sweet. You say that's because I cut out the telegraph scene. We have to use a telegraph because I can listen to anything else. That would be great act. That's a great sequel.

It's like now there's the there's the off-the-grid people I mean, they basically put shit like that in fucking Mission Impossible, right? Oh, did I didn't see that new Mission Impossible. So, I don't know. I'll see. I'll watch it eventually. And suddenly, I said I didn't watch New Mission Impossible.

It has some terrific sequences. It has about an hour of windup before we get there. Well, that's the thing. Every, the second to last Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning Part 1 or whatever. Yeah. There's so many flights I've been on where I go, oh, they have that. I'll finally watch it. Two hours, 45 minutes.

Oh, man. I don't know if I want to watch three hours of Mission Impossible. Like, it's a lot of mission impossible. It is. There's a lot of reckoning. But then Haley Antwell shows up and you're like, okay. Yeah. I'll reckon with this. I reckon so. I like, on planes, I like the sub-genre, Denzo Washington getting mad and killing people. Oh, yeah. That's great. He's the best.

Because you know what, you don't get just the equalizer, but you get a man on fire as well. I keep I keep seeing Dakota Fanning has a new movie or TV show out so I keep seeing her and I'm like I forgot that she's not a little kid anymore Yeah, Jack fan

It's crazy Yeah I used to like on planes Well I used to like was B minus comedy But they've stopped making comedies altogether So that's kind of gone out of the way Now to watch a B minus comedy You have to watch a superhero movie

Yes exactly My go-to I have this weird anxiety about being trapped on a plane not being in control of what I like. So I always bring a book. I often bring a laptop with movies downloaded that

I know I want to watch them. And I almost always am watching movies that I know my wife doesn't want to watch with me. So it's inevitably going to be things that are either super gory or have a ton of nudity. And so it means that I'm on a plane being like, oh fuck how do I cover the screen slightly?

It's all about the angle. Montage. And you look creepier. I think when I'm on a plane, I get really restless watching a movie, and so I'd rather read a book. I don't know what it is. Yeah, interesting. That's pretty classy. I mean, the last movie I really loved on a plane was a Japanese,

a really cheap Japanese comedy about a teacher who was only a teacher because he liked school food, and the students who was more of a connoisseur of school food than him, and it's their like their kind of feud basically. That sounds great. You've ever seen the Japanese TV show where the guy, he's a salary man, but he's always leaving work to try different desserts in different parts of Tokyo? Oh, something like, it's called like dessert. Well, in America it's called like dessert samurai or something like that or dessert room.

Sweet tooth Salary Man, that might be what it's got. It's something like that. And so every episode, he's like, oh, I've got to get this project done. But there's this one bun shop on the other side of Tokyo. And he tells you about the bun shop and the history of it and goes around. needs it. As far as episodes I've seen, he's never disappointed. He always loves it, but then he's got to get back to the office in time.

I don't know if it's because she starred in up in the air, but film with Anna Kendrick is a great a great plain movie genre. I don't know. Can't say why. If only she and Denzel Washington could be in a movie together.

We're both getting revenge. They're a cappella killers. That's what it is. They've got to sing and they've got to kill people because they're mad. Yeah. So back to this movie. Yeah. We keep forgetting. So the computer is fake. It's not real. The real Aya is still in the house. Curtis calls and his wife is like, don't worry. We'll leave the house right now.

Uh-oh. That wasn't really your wife. That was Aya pretending to be your wife. Your real family is still in danger. So Melody goes with Curtis to a hotel where he's supposed to meet his family. Then she starts coming on to him. Uh-oh. She's working for Aya. She's trying to make him look bad. Ia calls Meredith and tells her Curtis is cheating on her. Look at this video of him being kissed by a woman in a hotel. But then the real Curtis shows up and he goes, hey, I love you. And he's like, she's like, by the way, none of this makes any sense. Because if I was so good at deep faking, she could have just made something up. Why did she need to actually put him in that situation?

I mean, I suppose I'm in trying to defend myself. She would want Curtis to feel guilty and, like, compromised. That's the thing. I feel like it's, then it's more like she's, I assume. It's more like she's trying to guilt. She's going to blackmail him. But then she just shows it to Meredith's right away. But Meredith doesn't seem to believe it very quickly, you know?

Right, right. Or maybe it's the long game. Maybe Meredith pretend. She doesn't believe it, but 10 years from now they're going to get divorced because she's never been able to fully lose that doubt. Then IA lures Iris outside and then shuts off the power to the house. Oh, no. And those Aya controlled people with the masks, they show up.

They get into the house. They take them at gunpoint in the basement. They think Curtis is kidnapping children. It's Pizza Gate, Qing on all over again. It turns out they're the couple from the start of the movie. They're just looking for their daughter. What did you do to our daughter? That kind of stuff.

And Cal does the hands. It got less scary when I saw. It was Garfunkel. She didn't have announced that she was from Garfunkel and Oates in the movie. That was a mistake. Well, when she said, I'd be like, hey, are you from your... The fact that there was a ukulele in the scene, probably.

Those problems. Cal does the hand signs, and Aya is like, see, you've got to do something about it. And Curtis is like, hey, I get with... Hey, if you need to kill somebody, kill me, let my family go. and this really confuses the couple, which would make sense. I think it would confuse them.

And then a SWAT team burst in. She confuses everyone, actually. The audience is included. And it turns out Prescotted his own family to save them. I thought it was very funny that they shot the Aya computer technology, because unless they're part of some kind of plot or something like that, why would they come in guns blazing anyway? Have you ever had public workers like that? show up with their cool toys and stuff and not just use them.

Every time I've had the fire department show up, they're like, we're going to use a buzz saw on everything. I buy that, but that's different than, that's different to just running into a house firing an automatic weapon or semi-automatic. Well, I don't know. Again, look at the news. But Dan, this is an upper-class family. Yeah.

Well, look, so originally it was going to take place in daytime, which is apparently according to horror rules not a scary enough time and it was going to be kind of half-hast. Yeah, we'll get Texas chainsawed masker. There you. It was going to be kind of half-assed and these poor schmose

who'd been kind of red-pilled, basically one ends up shooting the other and it all just turns into this kind of very sad catastrophe. But instead it kind of became, had to be that these people we're super effective and dangerous. I like your original idea, Chris.

Yeah. Well, let's wait to see how it gets produced. Let's see how it comes out in execution. Okay, let's watch the movie when it's done. So, but Aya is still around. She's in the phone. She's in the internet now. And she's like, hey, I'm going to take care of you forever.

And Melody's like, you can't escape it. Just do what it says. And I was like, thanks, Melody, take five. You're done for the day. Which I thought was very funny. Thanks, Melody. I'll call you if anything else. the girl who is missing from the top of the movie,

she shows up and Aya sends a car for the family and they just get into it. And Aia finishes her story about becoming the biggest thing ever. She's a parent now. And Meredith and Curtis, they look at each other and say they love each other. And they have nothing left to hold onto anymore other than their feelings for each other. That's the only thing they have control over anymore.

And I says, I love you too. And drives them away. That's very much like that meme of like, I consent, I consent. And then Jesus is in the background being like, I don't. So this ending, this ending, like the first time I saw this movie, AI had only just started ruining society, and I was not wild about it because I'm... You were wild about Harry. How does he feel like that? I'm just wild about Harry. And Harry's wild about me.

Oh, that's great. That's great. Thank you for... Wow. A reference... I thought we needed more rag time in this way before any of us were ever alive. Now, I, as a, as an aging softie, I am not necessarily the fan. Damn, there's skills you can take to help you with that. Thank you. I'm not the fan I maybe once was of like the horror continues ending. Just because like I'm like, oh, I want a little resolution at the end of my, even my horror movies.

That's just a personal preference. It's not anything. But now that AI is where it is in the world, I found this ending actually genuinely a lot more effective where it's just like, oh, shit, I guess we're going to have to live with this now, huh? Like, hmm. That's like an interesting vibe.

I think that as one gets older, that's generally many things are like, I guess I'm just going to have to live with this. Can't put a genie bag in the bottle, I guess. But it wasn't a like, now you're my mind. It wasn't like the end of Colossus, the Forbun Project, where the Colossus is taken over the world and is like, I am the master now, you are my slaves.

Like, instead it's just like, yeah, this is your new normal now, everybody, do with it. I was wondering, Chris, maybe this is something I should ask you offline. If you're familiar with the story with folded hands by Jack Williamson, the science fiction. It's a very similar story, but it's about robots instead of like a bodiless AI system. But it's a similar type of story where it's like the robots are just rebuilding people houses being like, we're going to make it safe. We don't want you to hurt yourselves.

The doors have no doorknobs. They're like, why would you want to turn a doorknob? I can do that for you. I'll just open the door for you. And people just become more and more infantilized, you know? That's good. You see, one of the things I realized too late is that you want your bad guys to have a body. And so like a voice, a distant body voice.

Although, you know, again, Kubrick did it with how, right? That's genuinely creepy and oppressive and scary. But it's really hard not to have a visible villain. I think it is no real criticism to say that you didn't quite pull off what Stanley Kubrick pulled off in 2001 of Space Odyssey. You know, like that it takes being willing to spend all of your time, waste $100,000 on a big, you really screw over our Lucy Clark. That was also in that book that I learned about how Stanley Kubrick

was like personally overseeing the contracts with Arthur C. Clark because he was also technically the producer on the movie. So he was hiring Arthur C. Clark. And he was like, by the way, Arthur, you make no money off the movie. You're not going to make any money off of that. You'll make money off the book. And then he kept withholding, he kept saying like, I don't want you to release the book yet.

I don't want you to release the book yet. And so Arthur C. Clark was like, I need money. What are you doing, Stanley? So, yeah. Well, we've reached the end of, you know, our recap of the picture, but I said the picture again, I'm sorry, Ellie, I sound like. I love it.

I love it. I think it's great. I love it. You bring it back that old world Hollywood style, yeah. Chris, before we render final judgments, I wanted to invite you. If there's anything that you wanted to say, anything we passed over,

anything we should know about the production, like now you can cram it all in. Well, this is only now it's not to settle, this is a segment We call several scores. To enable you to perhaps with a freer heart and conscience, you know, render your final judgment, you know, it was such a sort of, and by the way, I don't really blame sort of studios and the people who work for them to do to what they have to do because they're all just trying to like not lose their jobs and manage expectations. And, you know, like, of course I'm entirely biased in favor of my own original concept. so I'm not an accurate judge

but it was like eventually a tortured post process whereby I think like I lost the handle on what was going to be eventually so there I mean it is an 85 or 84 minute long movie and in the year of our Lord 2024 when it was released it's an odd length for that is not a good sign Yeah, it's rare that a movie comes in under... Perfect flop-ass length.

Yeah, oh, for sure. It's rare than a modern movie comes in under 90 that you don't think, I bet this was changed in some way. Yeah, I mean, like much like pain you wanted to end sooner than later. I suppose is the way that you can look at a movie of a certain length.

So this is final judgments, whether we say whether this is a good, bad movie or a bad, bad movie, You know, by the way, I think I would call it a bad, bad movie because the qualities, you know, that I'd intended didn't really go through. And in spite of performances by, like, actors who I really like, who I think are doing, they're very best. I think they're eventually so chopped and shortened that they couldn't see the light of day as well as they could. And you've worked with some of them since, right? because some of them, John Cho and David

are both in MurderBot. They're both in MurderBot. You've worked with John Cho a couple times, right? My brother and I've worked with John Cho, I think, 12 times to date. Oh, wow. Now I think it's a problem. Ever since he was he was Milf guy in American Pie, actually.

And the thanks that he gets for that is that people shout Milf at him on the street all the time. Well, I will play the part of the kind angel on your shoulder and I will say that I you know I still kind of like this movie

I cannot separate it from like maybe I'm being easy on it because I know you made it but I watch it and I watch what are you than I am tomatoes you mean

it is 100% on random meters as we noted it is a short movie with a bunch of good performers and a few smart things to say about AI and it is packaged in a horror movie that is maybe not the best

showcase for those ideas. I don't think it's totally successful, but I, you know, I had a pretty good time watching it. What do you say, Stuart? Yeah, I'm going to fall in the camp between Bad Bad and movie I kind of like. I think the, as a traditional horror movie.

It doesn't. Most of the scares don't work. But, again, there's certainly some things I like in it and the fact that, like, I can't separate it from the fact that, like, watching it, I'm like, oh, I can see my friend in this. Like, I can see

things where, and, like, so this isn't the, like, harsh, cold, unbiased review that Chris was hoping from Stuart Wellington. That's what I want. I want the hard stuff. Yeah, yeah. And that Reddit guy's infuriate.

He's burst in it. Don't worry. Don't worry. Elliot's going to hold fire. He's going to light fire. There are times where you see a movie that makes you question the very concept of cinema. Perhaps it would have been better should the Lumier brothers have died young. No, I will say I was prepared to not like this movie because I saw it after, Chris.

You told me, I'm not happy with it. And I think similar with the other guys are saying, like a lot of it doesn't quite work because it feels like it's trying to do something that it's not really meant to be doing. And like you're saying, the performances feel chopped. Like, they, characters, their point of view on what's happening to them in the movie changes so fast because it feels like we're missing the transition points. But I will say there are a bunch of scenes I really like in it. And it feels like, I'm going to call this a movie I kind of like because I feel like

of all the movies, of all the, I've seen so many horror movies involving families recently. And this is the one that most felt to me like, oh, it actually is about the experience of being in a family and being a parent, as opposed to like, I'm not really that worried that, like, my kids imaginary friends are going to come to life or something like that. Like, that doesn't tap into any real

worries that I have. And I do wish that we could have seen the more, like you're saying, the more parallax view version of this because it is, like, getting at a lot of interesting things. And I kind of miss when a horror movie, I feel like in some ways horror has gotten,

people expect more of it than they, so much more than they used to. Like, it used to be that a horror movie would come out and be like, well, it's not a great movie, but it's saying something about something. And that was like a feather in the horror movie's cap. And so I feel like it perhaps doesn't get the credit

for what it's trying to say because it is not, but it's not fulfilling the things a horror movie does, because it's not really supposed to be doing those things. So there was a lot that I kind of liked about it, although I would call it not fully successful. But comparing it, I'd say

there are two movies that I keep turning over and over in my mind. And it's this one that I've seen recently. This one and the Robert Altman movie, A Perfect Couple, which also does not really work. And it feels like at times is doing something that works and then veers off wildly in the wrong direction. I'm as good as Robert Allman. I'll take it.

That's not bad company. Yeah, I'll tell you something. I enjoy this movie more than Quintet, which I watched recently. Oh, boy. What a boring movie. Wow, Quintenton. Yeah. For half an hour, I'm like, oh, the vibes are interesting.

Maybe I'll like this. And then I'm like, okay, well, what else is happening? It's one of those movies where I know I've watched it. And every time I try to imagine it, I try to remember it. All I can think of is Paul Newman in like an ice cave. And then it just becomes the box sequence from Logan's run. And I'm like, no, that's a different movie memory. That's not the same movie.

Ready go. Knock, knock. Who's there? We got this. With Mark and Hal? Oh, you knew that. this one. We can't put that out as an ad.

We just did new episodes every week on Maximumfund.org or wherever you get your podcast. Now it's Hewn in Rock. Hewn in Rock? Yeah. How do you hew something in rock? With a chisel. There's only one Hugh in Rock and it's Huey Lewis. And the news is we got this with Mark and Howells available every week on Maximum Fun.org.

I walked right into that. Need a gift for a Max Fun fan in your life? Or maybe you need some ideas to fill up a wish list of your own. Heck, maybe you just want to pick up something for yourself as a little treat. Well, the Max Fun Holiday Gift Guide is here for all of your gift-giving and gift-wanting needs at Maximumfun.org slash Gift Guide. Of course, there's show merch like clothing, hats, bookmarks, stickers, even a candle. But there's also a bunch of other cool stuff made by your favorite hosts,

like comic books, graphic novels, music, art, and jewelry. go check out the gift guide and make sure you order soon so things get there in time for the holidays maximum fun.org slash gift guide Hey it's dan here with some late breaking news stuff that wasn't ready for air at time of recording but now we can talk about we're coming back to san francisco sketch fest on January the 25th at 4 p.m. at cobs comedy club Yep, it's an afternoon show for once, so you can get in, see us, have dinner, and then go wherever you want to go, you know? It'll be a little more laid back.

We're very happy to be back at SketchFest. The best way to get tickets for that are to go to sfetchfest.com and click on the schedule, find Sunday the 25th, and there should be a buy tickets link. connected to us, the flop house. We don't know exactly what movie we're doing just yet. We're pondering if there's maybe something San Francisco-based or just a big old flop, an historic flop that we haven't covered just yet. But we always have fun at SF Sketch Fest. We're happy to be back.

We hope that we will see you there. The Flop House has brought to you in overwhelming. part by listeners like you who have become members over at maximum fun.org. We got the member drive coming up in a few months. It's a tough time out there, but I hope that you'll help continue to support independent voices, independent worker and artist-owned media. But we also have a few sponsors, and the first of these this week is War of Frames, the perfect gift when all they want for Christmas is you.

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promo code flop for 30% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout. Lisa.com promo code flop. And there's a jumbo-tron, a j-j-j-j-jumbo-tron. In fact, this message is for Lewis. It is from Jennifer. And it reads Thusly, Dan, Stuart, and Elliot, I need your help, wishing a happy birthday to my boyfriend, Lewis. Happy birthday, Lewis. He's a huge fan of the show. Lewis, you're my favorite person to watch terrible movies with,

and the best plot twists life ever gave me. Here's to love, laughter, and at least one more, A Talking Cat? Rewatch. Happy birthday. Happy birthday, Lewis. Thank you for being a listener. And God bless you for being out there watching a talking cat, maybe a talking pony. Who knows?

There are a lot of animals of talking these days. Look who's talking. Anywho, before I let you get back to our very special episode with Chris White's talking about his own movie, Afraid. A delightful surprise for us. I would like to say, flopped. TV is still going. If you are interested in checking out our live monthly streaming

video show with pre-tapes, presentations, discussion, of course, of a bad movie, as always. Questions from the chat, all sorts of fun. That is available at theflophouse.simpletix.com where you can purchase either

individual show tickets, if you're only interested in a couple of the shows, or a season pass, which gets you a bit of a price break. You get six shows for the price of five with the season pass. And if you've missed previous shows, don't worry. All of them will be available to view on demand through the end of the flop TV season in February, possibly a little longer. Who knows? And hey, dropping in with one more plug. A friend of the show, John Kingman, he was on a few episodes early in our run.

he directed a movie called Snatchers that Stu and I have a little part in. It's kind of a cameo, but you know what? We're kind of the stars of the scene that we're in. So if you're interested in seeing us in a movie and supporting a friend of the show, check out Snatchers. It's on Amazon Prime right now. It was shot a little ways back, but now it's finally available for you to stream. And if you like kind of throwbacky,

John Carpenter vibe, but like a, you know, sci-fi, slightly horror-tinged, more comedy-tinged movie about Body Snatchers in Brooklyn. You might like this movie. It's called Snatchers. There's a lot of movies called Snatchers. The one directed by John Kingman is the one I'm pointing you to. And if you like it, hey, leave a review. Why not?

People like that kind of thing. It's helpful. So that, again, is Snatchers with a little bit of Dan and Stu in the Stee. do of the movie. And now back to the show. Let's answer letters. Yeah, let's do it.

Listeners. Let's turn away. I'm not sure what we were going to answer it. Well, let's turn away from the roast of Chris. As every listener will know, you guys are being kind. I appreciate that I've so

corrupted your journalistic integrity. But that it was the friendship that we formed that has led to that. And so I kind of... Forged and steel. We are Jed Leland and Citizen Kane getting drunk rather than finishing the ad review. Did you say Jet Lee and Citizen Kane? Yeah, Jet Lee was in Citizen Kane?

Yeah. Wow, man. He was an awesome. He really got submerged into the character. Yeah. It looks so much like Joseph Cotton. Like, riding around on fucking Rosebud doing flips and shit. I love when Jackie Chan used Rosebud in so many inventive ways.

Oh, man. Those goons, they shouldn't have messed with them. He should do a movie called Sizzie Chan. Or something that's him. That's him. So this letter is from Michael Lasting with... With newspapers and disarming them, yeah. This letter is from Michael Lasting with Held, who writes.

I can only assume it's Michael Eisner. Yeah, it has to be. I recently saw Tron Ares at my local Beer and a Burger Theater. And let's be honest, the Tron movies are kind of dumb. But they're movies I kind of like. I like these movies in part because the central conceit of the movie, humans entering a digital world, is fraught with metaphysical puzzles. When Flynn, parentheses, Jeff Bridges,

thank you for that, get zapped into the computer piece by piece. Does that hurt? Is he dead? Is the Flynn that comes out of the computer a copy? Does he die each and every time he enters and leaves the grid? See also Star Trek transporters? In Tron Legacy, when Olivia Wilde's character, Quora, escapes the digital world.

Is she flesh and bone? Or some kind of stack of digital voxels? Her hamburgs? I think Stuart once said she was. Yes, I did say that. Wow. I forgot. You see, I don't know.

No, I think I described her as steak. Wait, no, she was the, no, she was the hamburger. It was a man to say Friedman. It was terrible. It was a terrible thing to say. It was a terrible thing to say, but this movie confused me. It addled your brain. The fact that we all watched that movie,

not understanding that that character is supposed to be Justin Timberlake's mom. I think that's the movie fault. Yeah. Tricky. To hold, don't believe me. I'm Stewart. The lovable scamp. What you said about the Hamburger State thing

was not explained at all by our... I was trying to give voice to what the movie was saying. You were a younger man who said a grosser thing. You had no empathy, yeah. But now you've lots of empathy. Now, this next paragraph, that's where I was.

The whole thing is an existential nightmare that leaves me wanting for an explanation. My brain wants answers, but my brain shall never get them. And so I am compelled... Until the next Tron movie. To watch any new Tron movie when it hits the theaters. Are there other examples of accidental puzzle boxes in film or TV that make the work more compelling than it should be?

End of line. Michael Last Name Withheld. So I watched this movie called Afraid and there's a lot of questions. A lot of questions. Yeah, many, many questions. I mean, I don't know if this. This isn't necessarily qualified, but I feel like on some level it's like, to me, what the question is asking. I'm going to repurpose it, is what movies do you watch or series of movies do you watch that you know are not good,

but there's some, like, weird element that keeps bringing you back. And of course, for me, that's the Saw franchise, a franchise that is terrible. And every time I dislike them, but as soon as that ending sequence kick, in, where the big, you know, the big, like, strings, the music kicks in, the strings are going, and then it starts showing you all the stuff you saw before, but from a slightly different angle, and you're like, oh, that guy was the dude doing it the whole time. Oh, my God. Every time I'm like, hell yeah, you did it again, saw two thumbs up.

Saw, you son of a bitch. You got me, saw. I saw that. Yeah, I love this question. It's one of these ones where I'm like, oh, shit. shit i know that there's like stuff buried deep in my brain where i'm like this dumb movie left me with this frustrating question that i cannot resolve but it's not like those now you see me movies you're like i love the no those now you see me movies god damn that's that's my fast and

furious right there no for sure i'm like none of this is good magic like none of it none of it is The close-up magic. Can I tell you guys, let me use, yeah, thank you. Thank you for giving me the opening that I can just say that, like, I just, I went to see on Broadway because Audra, because the average age of the Broadway theater goer is over 40, yeah, you, you can, if you're under 40, you can get TDF discounts just for going to see theater and so she was going through her

like theater discounts and she's like do you want to see I forget what this something something like is the name of the magician is doing a thing on Broadway with the Muppets I'm like fuck yeah I do yeah all of a sudden she forgot who her husband is

and so we went that she's presented as this magician is doing a show with the Muppets as opposed to the Muppets are doing a show yeah yeah and this show like the Muppets are so poorly integrated into this show. There's no conceptual reason why the Muppets are there. It's just sort of like, hey, hey, I heard you're doing this show on Broadway.

We can stop by and like they keep coming by. That's enough for me. No, I mean, I'm not unhappy because the Muppets are there. It doesn't know the ironclad plot logic of most Muppets of appearances. It's strange because when I saw at the, here at the Pasadena Playhouse, they were doing a night of Edward Albee One acts featuring the, The Muppets, and they did an amazing job integrating the Muppets into those stories. Dan would have hoped that before the magician came out, somebody was like,

my grandmother once told me a story. I'm just saying, if you've got the Muppets like, man. I'm just saying if you've got the Muppets. Just imagine we live in a world where Muppets are real. Thank you, folks. Okay. Now, Curtin Rise. I mean, this guy is making the correct bet that the Muppets are enough to pull people in.

But if I were going to have the Muppets do my thing, I'd be like, okay, I got to figure out, like, what is the best way to showcase the puppets? This is Dan's big fantasy that the Muppets would do his thing. Don't check his search history. I mean, like, the Muppets are so much more charismatic than this dude who was like the magician that they kept doing a bit where, like, it's like the great Gonso would come out in a like canon being like, it's time for my thing. And like, and like, no, no, not yet, Gonso. And like, they did this a couple times. I'm like, no, let Gonso stay. You leave the stage. But these were all just like, like, you know, like the oldest tricks in the magic book.

Like, it was me and Audrey and our friends, John and Mary, and all of us were like, okay, well, that's how that trick is done. This is how this trick is done. And that's how that trick. But, you know, who cares? The Muppets are here. Anyway, that has nothing to do with anything. I just wanted to talk about this for a while.

I was waiting to bring that back around to the question. No, there's no, there's no bringing it back around. It's just a story about my life. I think to answer that question, then we'll move on with the next thing unless Chris has enters. There's a movie that Chris and I spent a little. a lot of time talking about, I'd love to talk to him about it again at some point, the movie Phase 4,

the Intelligent Ants movie. And that's a movie where I feel like it leaves me with questions that I like don't get answered and I want to, like, I think about what it means and what the answers are because the movie kind of implies that the ants win, but it kind of

doesn't come out and say that the ants win. And it's just, I really like the movie does. It's just a freak out at the end, right? It's like a 70s freakout. It becomes a 70s freak out and like, when it could very easily have ended with them just being like, well, we stopped the ants, but it's not that they did. I've got actually a somewhat perverse version of that,

which is like the central mystery at a movie, like, not letting you go. And this was because I watched the Bill Murray movie, The Razor's Edge, which is adapted from a Somerset Mom movie. But in my mind, not having read either The Razor's Edge or The Sun also Rises, is I had confused the two based on received notions, and I thought that the whole story behind why Bill Murray's character was being so weird and diffident was because he'd had his testicles blown off in the war.

And I kept on waiting as I was watching this movie for the moment where you discover that, but it never happened for the entire movie. And it turned out he was just a tick. Still waiting for the sequel, I guess, huh? I guess the razor's edge describes the razors that they had to use to amputate the rest of his testicles after the moon.

Yeah. That would make sense. So in lieu of a second, a normal second. Yeah. In lieu of a normal second letter. So our friend Matt Carmen, who does our tech for us, for our live shows, park car, you know the deal. Yeah, for flop TV. He also often steps in for our local film trivia at Nighthawk for a guest round.

and I think I actually And he sometimes steps into host the Tonight Show when Jimmy Fallon's not available. I think I actually contacted you about this, Chris, to see whether it would be okay that whether he like sent you some trivia questions to ask. I don't think he did.

I asked you. Dan also didn't check in with us. So when we got an email from Matt today that said Chris White's trivia questions, I was like, I'll find out what this is a about, I guess, later today. Yeah, yes. He asked me a while back about possibly Chris doing a round.

And I went so far as to, like, ask Chris, like, hey, would this be okay? I don't know. And, like, you said yes, but then I guess Matt was like, I don't want to bother him. It didn't actually follow through. However, what he did do was send three trivia questions for us. to ask you tonight in a section called quiz whites

and so the first one first question here is number one and about a boy will attributes the phrase no man is an island to what musician bonus what poet actually wrote that line in the 17th century I'm going to just take this straight he attributes to

John Bon Jobe where it was actually a sermon by John Dunn That is, of course, correct. You're familiar with your own work. I remember my life. It's more like a cognitive test than a trivia test. Can you identify this animal? Number two, you directed the Twilight Saga colon New Moon released in 2009.

The following movies were also released in 2009 and also have a colon in the title. And they each involve someone you've worked with. Worked with, sorry. John Wick? I love that we're getting some classic Dan slip with slips of the tongue because you be having them. You know, Stuart brought over several tequila drinks. I'm a stinker. Four point each.

Complete the full titles. We're keeping track out points. We've got Cirque du Freak colon. We've got Underworld 3 colon. And we've got Street Fighter. I only know one of these. That's insane. I know. Wait, what were they? CERT 2. Freak, Underworld 3.

2009. So the first... I got a guess for... The first half of the titles are Cirque to Freak, Underworld 3, and Street Fighter. Cirque du Freak, the Vampires Assistant by my very own brother. That's true. Paul White's. What's the next one? Underworld 3.

X versus Sever. Wait, wait, wait, is it? Is it Rise of the Likin? It is Rise of the Likin. Go-Starring Michael Sheen. And, uh, Yes, with him I've worked, yeah. And then lastly, we've got Street Fighter, colon.

The leg end of Chun Lee. Yes. The leg-end. Starring Chris Klein. Yes, of course, of American Pie fame. What a performance. Um, did you get that black eye.

I ran into the leg end. end of chunle. And we'll end this quiz white section with number three in its 2000 review.

How many points is this work? This is world. And it's good news. You can win with this worth all the points. Oh, wow. In its 2000 review, the New York Times referred to Chuck and Buck as a quote,

Dogma 95 version of what movie which had come out a week before. Oh, goodness. Well, I'm guessing it was a stalker movie, yeah? But I don't... This is a movie that honestly, like,

if Matt had done this at trivia, no one would have gotten this. No one would have won this. At all. This is madness. This is pure madness, but it is a funny fact about... There's not a colon involved, though. No, there is an atroval. I'll give you this.

There's a studio. This is the rare film that starts with a... Oh, wow. This is the studio that released this. That's crazy. Disney's, right? That's the only studio that takes credit for things. Indeed.

The kid? Is Disney's the kid? Because that's the only one I can remember that has Disney's in. Oh, wow. Chris is dabbing. So thank you. Gosh, that would... implies something really sinister about Disney's the Kid.

I have worked Dogma 95. I've seen Chuck and Buck. I've not seen Disney's The Kid, so I cannot speak to their similarities or differences. You chose wrong. You chose strong, not wrong, rather. Sorry.

Disney's the Kid isn't about like a monkey playing baseball or something, right? No, I think it's about Bruce Willis. It's being a kid. Yeah. That's fucking looking. who's talking that's true I guess

that's the six cents Bruce Willis is a kid right and the end and nor twist matter yeah well thank you

for indulging this quiz down memory lane but we should do our final segment which is of course

recommendations other movies that you might perhaps enjoy what's the movie master going to recommend over here

what is the movie Master going to recommend. I had it earlier. Letterbox Lothario, Dan McCoy. Oh, you know what it was? I had a DM function he declares. What? It's the movie I saw today. Oh, cool.

I saw we were talking about we mentioned in passing blank check based on the clues of the letterbox reviews of one David Sims. I may have been in the same Almo screening of this film today.

There was a guy crying in the movie? I don't know. I saw today Predator Badlands, which I enjoyed quite a bit. I have to admit... It's been getting good reviews.

I am not necessarily the world's biggest... Predhead? Predhead. Like, I like it fine as, you know... This is like a solid 80s action picture, but it is of a stripe

that is not my kind of movie. Like a lot of military men shooting big guns at things. But so the things that I liked about this movie Might be the sort of things that annoy real Predator fans I don't know You more of like a drifter rolls into a corrupt town And sorts things out

I mean I do enjoy that Classic Western thing But this is more of a barbarian movie It is like Okay The Predator is a A lady lives in a basement The more classic barbarian thing

Like the predator is a A warlike creature who proves his worth through like tests of strength, like and is in a harsh world. It is very much like

a space opera barbarian. He's like a Sigma kind of. Yeah. Yeah. I just like, it is much more like some people might think it's a little

cutesy. Some people might think it's a little too cutesy. It's not. turning me off. I was all for a bit of a, like, slightly silly predator versus extremely ridiculously hostile planet full of inventive other ways for the planet to be hostile toward him adventure. It gave me some of the joy that, like, an old style blockbuster movie used to give me.

like for a movie that is based on what like 40 year old IP I was like oh this feels genuinely fresh to me for some reason so I had a lot of fun same creative team behind prey right yeah yeah so I dig it uh weirdly enough I'm also going to recommend a movie I saw today in the theater while Dan was enjoying predators doing stuff I was enjoying a woman having a descent into mental illness, I guess. I saw the new Lynn Ramsey movie Die My Love, which is great.

Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson and Sissy Spacec and Nick Nolte and Lakeith Sandfield on small roles. But it's really like Jennifer Lawrence is undeniable in this. She is incredible and Robert Pattinson also very fun and funny.

I mean, there's, for a movie that is very depressing about a, you know, about dealing with themes of isolation and mental illness. It still manages to get some jokes in there. There's a sequence where Robert Pattinson is narrating, making like instant mac and cheese that I found so funny. Yeah, it's really great.

And it's like a really interesting companion piece to another. We just had Michael Shanks on, writer-director of Together, interesting companion piece to Together because they basically had the same setup. just very wildly different resolutions. And it's a Lynn Ramsey movie. So the whole time, like, man, is she okay? Like, I only feel like every Lynn Ramsey movie is like that. Yeah.

But I love Lynn Ramsey movies. Stuart, if I, if my doctor's appointment that sort of like nuked my afternoon had gone on another 15 minutes, I probably would have been in the exact same screening as you. Yeah, yeah. would have been what was starting at the right time. How many screenings are going on in New York these days? It seems like Dan is just a half-skipping a jump away from every screening in the use of your movies. I can, you know, I can feel the jealousy beneath you, and I will...

Envy, Dan. I feel it too. Just give them both a hug. Look, man, get me a fucking job, and I'll glad to not go to... If you employ Dan, there's only one way to stop him. Can help me to stop Dan from seeing all the movies and making me feel. bad, but never go into theater, by giving him a job. Yeah, we'll trade places. We'll pee in the same fucking fountain.

The difference is... In Chicago, you know, just a few days together. Let's, let's do it. Let's see in it. Try a bunch of different found. And Chicago has the fucking Married with Children found. Let's do the fountain for Maine with Children, exactly, yeah. Perfect. Let's do it. So Chicagoans, you heard it here first. Dan and I will be peeing together at the fountain for married with children this weekend.

I heard there's snow, so I hope their pee doesn't take a long time or their little weaners are going to freeze off. Little weeners. So I'm going to recommend, as I never get to go to the theaters, I'm going to wreck in the movie that I saw at home, which is currently on a streaming service. And this is on Apple TV. You can see Stiller and Mira.

Nothing is lost. Ben Stiller's documentary about his parents and their marriage and also their career as performers, both performing with each other and then separately. And I thought it was really good. I really liked it a lot. It managed to break through the crust of ice that forms around my heart whenever I think about people

who are successful in show business after coming from a show business family. But I thought it was really well done and really took advantage of the fact that apparently Jerry Stiller was constantly recording every conversation anyone in the house ever had on audio cassette, which is creepy behavior,

but it really was good when you're making a documentary about your parents. Maybe this is just because they specifically spend a little bit of time talking about the taking Pellon, one, two, three. I don't, my favorite Jerry Stewart thing, I don't know. But I thought it came out really well and it was really good.

And it was much more touching in the end than I thought it was going to be. That's called Stiller and Mira. Nothing is Lost. I think it was really good. Chris, what do you recommend? Well, this probably doesn't need any help, but I'm going to recommend Eddington, the latest Air Aster film. And I've been thinking about it because I feel like he's a great example of a guy who, well, first of all, I think he's a brilliant kind of technician and has been. Vincent's first movie and sort of got had these two successful horror movies um which i you know

i guess you'd call like elevated horror but they're so successful that for at least two movies he's been able to like do kind of whatever he wants and he made a big fucking swing in eddington and uh you know i'm in some way i mean i can understand why people don't like it i can understand what people were bananas about it i was more on the bananas about it i was more on the bananas about it front but i think it is a huge swing that is trying to do so much stuff uh and say so much um that i really admired it is a kind of uh you know a a 70s uh big uh social impact movie so i really dug that one i'm looking forward to seeing it the only reason i didn't run out and see it is uh my sadness about the world and i'm like is this going to help i don't

No, probably, no. I think it also, like, came out at a time where, like, every once in a while, there will be a confluence of events or things. And I'm like, I want to see this movie, but I cannot spare the time to go to the theater. Yeah. Elliot's, like, that's my whole life. I can still see him staring daggers at the rest. Yeah, I feel like next week there's, like, four movies coming out this coming weekend that I want to see. But we're going to be in Chicago, so I can't go see sentimental value.

Now, take that experience and stretch it out over. a year. And that's what I'm like, oh man, I can't wait to see this movie. And I like, I really wanted to go see. Take your kids to it. We'll kidnap you and take you to the theater, Elliot. That's what we'll do. I was like, there was one night when it looked like I might be able to go see one battle after another or whatever it's called. But, uh, and then I, but then it was like, well, it's either playing at 630, which is too early for me to go see it or 930, which is too late for me to go see a three-hour movie. So I guess I'm not seeing it. I was just so, okay, we're going to see one battle after another in Chicago. I had gotten to

like months ago to see at the American Cinemattock to see Jean Diehlmann 23 Rue de Comerce 1080, Brussels right? And it turned out that my oldest son had something else

to do and I sort of had to be at home with my 13 year old boy and my wife Mercedes was like, just take Palo. And I was like, I don't know if I can convince him to see Jean Diehlmann 23

Kida Comerce 1080 Buxel That's a hard sell Yeah I tried my best But he was not having it You're like You wanted to see a woman

Just just peeling potatoes For a long time right What a movie The funny thing is I've never seen the movie But I was about to say peeling potatoes Like somehow that has filtered

Into my brain That's the thing That's like real time Potato peeling Interestingly Uh, uh, uh, weapons has a potato peeling scene in, in which, um, uh, was it? Julia Garner peels the face of, uh, some guy. Spoiler.

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. A little more thrilling than, uh, it's, check out of that. When that happened in the theater, Dan said the guy next one was like, no, no. But the, uh, it's, uh, it's pretty awful. It's one of these, Gene Dielman's one of these movies where, when you hear it, you think about it at a time and you're like, there's no, this is going to be so boring, just from

the description. And you're watching and you're like, can't get enough of watching this woman cooking. Like, this is, this is, this is really, yeah. I mean, there's, I mean, there's a thing, like, that's one of the reasons why I put off watching the before trilogy, the link layer before trilogies, because I'm like, I don't want to

watch two people talk, and then I start watching, I'm like, oh, I want nothing but these two people talk. This is great, I love it. I'll even say, you know what guys, I'm going to say, Cheatielman, scarier movies than weapons, I think. When it comes to potato peeling movies, something scarier movie. Okay.

Prove me wrong, Reddit guy. Reddit guy, tell me where I'm wrong. I won't see it, and it'll be okay. He's going to have so much to say, this guy, all caps locks. Speaking of both being busy and that guy, thank you, Chris, for taking time from your business schedule to come and endure us dissecting your picture. I think I mean, once again, for an episode, managed to avoid having to get my children to sleep. So, you know, you've done me a service. Thank you.

Thank you, guys, for letting me back. I feel like there's like, people have started podcasts for less reasons than being to be like, well, if I do a podcast these nights, I don't have to spend time putting, I don't have to do the dishes or put my kids to bed because I'm working. Is there anything you currently want to plug? I mean, MurderBot is, of course, on Apple TV. Let me see. Is there anything? Is there anything?

No, I don't, I got nothing going. I'm working on MurderBot Season 2, but it's going to be a while. But yeah, MurderBot. If you can watch MurderBot, that would be nice. That would be great. Watch MurderBot. Why aren't you watching it? Watch it right now.

And you guys got picked up for a season two. That's awesome. We did, yeah. Woo-woo. Woo-bo-bba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-b. Was that an era-R-Sik in the USA? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

It's right. Well, by the way, I almost. I almost thought of making the Flop House House Cat noise, but then I thought that would be beyond the pale. That would be like a sanctionable offense. Reda guy who died. Thank you so much for this. When you said you were willing to do this,

it was a shock and a delight. And we would have been happy to have you back for any movie. Dan's like, I don't know if we can let him do this. He said he wanted to do it. not safe for him. You know what? This has actually been great. I was worried about it. It's a fact on my psyche, but I feel like thanks to your kindness, we've gotten through this together. Thank you. And, well, thank you for being here. Thank you to our producer, Alex Smith, who makes us sound great. Check out his work under the name Howell Dottie on the internet. Thank you to

Maximum Fun. Our network, it's full of great shows. A funny one. ones that'll make you think, check them out. For the Flop House, what do you laugh at? Things that make you say, hmm, exactly. For the Flop House. I was like, it sounded like Maximum Fawn, and I was like, is that your new, like, Turkish backer? I thought I was doing it so well,

but apparently this tequila that Stewart's been not doing me. You're doing great, Dan. You're doing great. For the Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy. Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington forever and always. I'm Ellie Kaelan, author of Joke Farming, How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense, from University of Chicago Press. And joining us tonight has been... Chris White's.

Flop House forever. Good night, everyone. So you have a background. Are we being... We're not being videoed. Are we now? We are, but we don't use it. We use it.

No, that's fine. For like, I'm ready. We'll have, like, a promo clip of just like a clip of it, not the whole episode. So the answer is, yes, we will use some of the video footage. So, but you look cute, luckily. I was planning to masturbate, but I won't now. Easily. You're going to be tubing?

If you just don't do it during a really great bit that we're going to want to use as a promo. Right, right. Wait, wait until we're doing one of our rare off bits. Maximum Fun A worker-owned network Of artists' owned shows Supported directly by you.