The Flop House - After Last Season, with J.D. Amato

Episode Date: May 30, 2026

Back in 2009 a movie trailer set the internet aflame. Not because it was for some long-awaited adaptation or giant blockbuster, but because it was so odd people assumed it had to be a prank. Now in 2026, we welcome the wonderful J.D. Amato to discuss this oddball (?)thriller(?) AFTER LAST SEASON! In addition to be a respected TV showrunner/comedy writer, J.D. has written a new graphic novel for young readers, THE ENDLESS GAME, about a game of capture the flag that's been going on for 80 years. Consider picking one up for the young reader or comics enthusiast in your life! Stay updated on all things Flop House, plus a little extra, with our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets! Paste https://feeds.simplecast.com/EOAFriME into iTunes (or your favorite podcatching software) to have new episodes of The Flop House delivered to you directly, as they’re released. Wikipedia page for After Last Season Recommended in this episode: Dan: Thief (1981) Stu: Faces of Death (2026) Elliott: Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet (1979) J.D. Amato: Mon Oncle (1958) Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinflop

On this episode, we discuss after last season. The movie that dares to ask the question. What's a movie? Yep. Hey, everyone, and welcome to the flop house. I'm Dan McCoy. Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kalin.

And we have. We're pretty sedate today. I think because of the movie you watched. But we do have a guest, right? You have a special guest. We've been wanting to get him on the show for a long time, but it had to be a very special movie and a very special reason. And so for the season?

Here he is. J.D. Amato. You know him from other podcasts. You probably listen to if you listen to this one. Because they're more popular. You know him from, he was the showrunner for the McElroy's show, a wonderful comedy show that then, disappeared from the world.

It was on a streaming service dedicated to comedy, Dan. See, so. See, so. The name itself screams comedy. Yeah. You know, he wrote for the new, what was they called? What did they call the After Midnight reboot? What was it?

It was after after. Yes, I was the showrunner of After Midnight. Yeah. Wow, Dan has the credits in front of him, and it's still totally bit of this. It's funny because I could see Dan just kind of trying to pull what he knows from our friendship. You might know J.D. from this dinner party I went to that he was at. You might know. Mutual. Dan says the credits for guests the way my dad would when he was trying to tell me about restaurants he's eaten at in different cities.

The problem is that our listenership has sort of rewarded us for the sort of ramshackle nature of the show. So we've never saw fit to get better at it. This is their fault. Yeah. That's the issue. You may know J.D. from Ben Hosley's Christmas. where Stu and Dan and JD did a bit to avoid talking to other people. Mainly argued about the necessity of video and podcast.

Yeah. Welcome, J.D. I guess I've told the audience about you. Normally I might be like, say something about yourself. But you were so kind as to come do the show, though, after running a half marathon today. So thank you in particular for. Yes. Well, there's a lot.

Here's the context of this. I'm a flop house fan. I listen to the flop house. As all right-thinking people are. Yes, of course. I'm an American citizen who I do what's right. And I'm a big flop-house fan. We've long discussed coming on, but we had to find the right time.

Right project, yeah. The right project to work together on. And this is a great collaboration between us. I will say, okay, a couple things that I think are worth noting about being coming on here. Number one, at said Christmas party, we discussed all of this. And then I texted with Dan and Stewart and was like, great, let's do it. I want to come on.

And they're like, what movie? And I was like, this movie after last season. And then we had a whole text throughout talking about it. And then we all realized if we just scrolled up, we had had this exact same conversation one year prior. That is the most after last season thing that could have possibly happened. Yeah. Very fitting.

Well, and the most us, like, just for, for, getting. Well, that is totally. I mean, Dan lives what I would call a groundhog day existence, you know, day in, day out, forgetting what he did the day before. Actually, more of a blank slate existence, I guess, or a 51st dates existence. I mean, this is 100% true. I, now that I have had a diagnosis, I've learned that, like, ADHD has a lot of

memory problems associated with it. So I like to attribute it to that now, I guess. But, like, I do remember. You explained your ADHD memory thing last episode. Oh, my God. Don't you remember? But I do remember the names of actors in movies. That's true.

For some reason. So we recorded some episodes out of order today to accommodate that J.D. was literally running a race this morning. And we recorded we did a mini about a Stephen King episode of movies that will come out next week. And Dan's memory for the Stephen King movies that he had seen is really phenomenal. It's really astonishing. I think Dan had seen almost every of the 74 movies I mentioned. Yes. So get ready for that next week.

But this week, we're talking about after last season because, Dan, what do we do on this podcast? This is a podcast where we watch a movie that was either a critical or commercial flop. And then we talk about it. I mean, I don't know that... I love the circumlocutions that Dan goes through to avoid saying bad these days. It's very sweet of him. It's very nice. I don't want to take anyone down that doesn't need to be taken down.

This is a movie that, like, honestly, normally would be in, you know, small timber or small vember. As Elliot prefers. As all right thing people say. But, you know, we wanted to have J.D. on, and this is near and dear to his heart. I'm glad to believe. So what brought this into your life, Jay? Yes, yes. Before we get into the movie, what's your relationship with after last season?

Okay, well, first, I want to appreciate Dan for not saying that's a bad movie because I think it's a good movie. and you're right that you cover movies that are either critical or an artistic failure and this is just this was one that just financially didn't make its money but otherwise I listen I love movies and guys this is a good movie

this is a great movie I'm so excited to hear your argument as we go through the movie about what makes this a good or great movie yeah here is my initial experience with this so I'm a big movie head like y'all. Yeah.

And if we take our, we travel back in time to the year. The year is 2009. Wow. And the way that you learned about us in office. I don't have been podcasting for two years at that point. There are only three podcasts in existence, and this was one of them.

And the way you learned about movies that were coming out was through Apple trailers. At least that's how I did in my contemporaries, is you would go to Apple.com slash trailers. Yeah. And every. whatever, like once a week, they would drop a bunch of trailers and you'd be like, ooh, this is going to be like a cool season of movies or whatever. I loved it. Yeah. I was in college. We had it so good, guys. We had it so good. You went to one

place and you got to see all the trailers. Yeah. And then people made sure to make cool trailers. Yeah. And if your internet was bad, it took you a long time, but you still got to see the trailer. Yes, you'd click on the trailer and you got to choose. Am I going to wait 40 minutes for the high quality? am I going to wait 20 minutes for the medium or in five minutes am I going to watch the low quality and not be totally sure who's in the movie. Yeah. If it ain't Lord of the Rings,

give me the fastest one. You said to yourself, how much time do I have to wait to find out who's in G.I. Joe, the rise of Cobra. I need to figure this out because I need it fast or I need it better. Furious, yeah. And I need to figure out how, when, and why

Cobra is rising. Ironically, Cobra falls in that movie, which the trailer wouldn't tell you. The trailer really makes it look like they rise. Yeah. We can talk about that movie now. Also, we can get into the rise in the cover. I still have a sore spot with that one

because that was the one where I made a joke that the American people would never elect a president with crazy hair. You were wrong. Egg on my face. So in the years 2009, you're clicking on to Apple.com slash trailers. What do you find, JD? Okay.

The big upcoming movie. that everyone was talking about was Spike Jones where the wild things are. Sure. He was directing an adaptation of where the wild things are and among the,

I was at NYU, a young film school lad with eyes as big as dinner plates looking to the horizon of cinema. And Spike Jones, the master of art and weirdness was going to cover where the wild things are.

So the trailer drops, which I will say, my hot take is I think the best film of 2009 was the trailer to wear the wild things. on it. Okay. Okay, interesting. The trailer has a bespoke arcade fire song that was like an acoustic

version of one of their hits, and it had all this imagery of where the... I don't know that where the wild things are didn't quite hit me. The movie itself didn't hit me the same way that the trailer hit me. It has a melancholy sadness that I wasn't necessarily looking for out of where the wild things are. You wanted Tweed Joy exclusively. Yes. Well, you wanted something...

I mean, there are things I admire about that movie, but I think you wanted the movie to in some way represent the feeling of the book where the wild things are, which is not about the regrets that adults have, that childhood is ending necessarily, you know. Totally. And the thing about this project is that there wasn't much about it out in the world, right? So the things that we knew is we knew some of the cast, and it was like a lot of folks that were like, it wasn't like a huge big name because it was mostly monsters and a kid. We knew that the Jim Henson Company was making the puppets, but they're using, it was like all this mystery shrouds. When the trailer dropped, everyone was like, whoa, this is like we're getting our first hints into this.

Also in 2009, a big thing is that this was the era of lost. This was the era of the internet being a resource under which people did like alternate reality experiences and like stunt marketing stuff. And so at the same time, the same moment that the Where the Wild Things are trailer released, right next to it on Apple trailers, was a trailer for a movie called After Last Season. and when you probably start with A's after where the wild things are. Exactly. Yeah, they did it based on like seasons and verbs and adjectives. So when you watch the trailer, the trailer has a quality to it that felt almost like that like Tweed, Spike Jones confusing strangeness. And it has some of its weird digital effects and all.

And it's like the lines that are being said don't seem to connect and it's shot in such a way that you are unable to discern whether this is intentionally supposed to be a movie or not. And so the internet, I remember, became a flutter with the theory that this movie, perhaps,

was an alternate reality promo for where the wild things are. And so people were pouring over it, trying to like Google lines and see if some of the things they were saying were related to where the wild things are in some way. They're like, this weird trailer came out, Occam's Razor tells us

that it must be a prank from that notorious tricker, Spike Jones, to in some way draw attention to his movie by drawing attention away from his movie when there's already a trailer for his movie. This is very internet film nerd thinking, I think. Yeah, totally. The feeling

that like anything that I experience has been tailored for me and is someone speaking to me. Yes. Yeah. And so, of course, that was not the case. And then what happened was people going, what is this movie? because it was like the only title card was a production company called Index Square and then it seemed to be directed by someone named Mark Region

which is a name that feels almost writerly in its simplicity Yeah it feels like something you would call out if you were working on a ship or something It turned out that is like a pseudonym but not for Spike Jones Yes exactly And then there are rumors I remember there's rumors that the film was only screened once in like Maine. And everybody died in the theater. Exactly.

And if you met someone who saw it, then you were going to die too in 24 hours. And that it was like a dentist that paid for it. And then like over the years, more and more information came out about like who this guy was that wrote, directed, shot, and produced the film. And like what was real and what wasn't real about it

in terms of there's a lot of rumors of it costing millions of dollars. And it was a very strong. thing that unfolded. But very quickly, it was unable to be seen anywhere. I believe in total, there were only four public screenings of it ever. And then there's no way to view it digitally or buy it or purchase it or see it online. So it became one of these movies that's just known as being this strange curio that no one can really wrap their hands around. And in the absence, of course, of it being available, everyone assumes it must be amazing in some way or other, you know.

the idea that the thing that is not available could be maybe not worth the time of watching it is an idea that I think in film people if they can't watch something they jump to the conclusion obviously this must be a singular experience you know it must be something that's a singular experience it is a single experience

it seems like you don't like art is what I'm getting it must be it but it turned out so but this movie is in the pocket of big Hollywood yeah clearly I am in the pocket I'm in the pocket of well-made films. Elliot's working for big Hollywood and they're scared like a movie like this

is going to get the ball rolling again. People thinking outside the box. You're trying to put it back in the box. I am literally working on, I think, what is the, ironically, the opposite of this, which is a Ghostbusters television show, as opposed to this, which is a kind of maybe has a ghost in it,

homemade, not quite story. Wait, there's a ghost in this? Taping up printer paper on things. Yeah. Elliot, we're going to be on the lookout. If there's a Ghostbusters episode that includes a paper, machet, fucking MRI. A ghost that seems to push aside objects on the floor very slowly as it walks towards you. To be honest, I wish I had seen this movie before we started writing the series.

I definitely would have put something in. For who? There's no one that will have watched that. No, that's why. No one would be like, oh, that's an after-last season reference. Now, it's a little wink to his boys, us. Exactly. The same way that,

so the one, there are two jokes on the Netflix Mystery Science Theater. There are two jokes in the first season, I think it was the first season, that I fought so hard for. And one of them was a reference to Idao Calvino's novel,

The Non-Existent Night. And that was just for me. That was for nobody else. And the other one was a, was a reference to the jingle for a, a hotel in the Poconos called Mount Area Lodge

that this commercial used to run all the time in the tri-state area. And I had such a big argument with the other people on the show because they're like, Cut that joke out. Nobody's going to get that joke. It's a waste.

It's a nobody. Nobody's going to get that. And that's the one joke I hear about the most from people. They go, oh, I really love that Mount Area Lodge joke because it hit just the right people. It seems weird to me that anyone, like, to have Joel back on the show and be like that people are like, that joke's too obscure. Well, I feel like that was what I loved about the original industry science. When there was a joke that Joel didn't even Joel didn't get the reference, he'd go, it's okay, man. It's texture.

It's cool. so he didn't have a problem with it. It was the cast was like, why are we doing it? I was like, you're not saying the jingle right, and the cast were like, who cares?

Let's not do this joke. It's stupid. No one's going to get it. I will say mystery, that the Netflix mystery science theater was my, it was my comfort watch during tumultuous years

where I would, every Sunday I would get my black and white cookie. Like a flat cake, like a flat cake. And I would eat that and I'd fall asleep with the dulcet tones of mystery science theater.

How do you guys feel on black and white cookies? They're a big hit in the Wellington House. So I am not from the East Coast, so I don't have any like... You don't say. Really? Brooklyn, Dan, what was?

That is such a specific... I don't have, like, a specific, like, nostalgic fondness for it, and I'm not a fan of cakey cookies. So it's not for me. A nostalgic fondant for it? But you were a fan of Kakey, the character in the... In that movie, when Kakey got bakedy.

Yeah. I was a big fan of the line Kaking-up Pagney's Because I feel like Elliot has opinions being from New Jersey Oh yeah I mean black of my cookies I don't always want them

But when I want them I want them bad But they're always Want them all the time That's bad for you But just seeing it When I see them in the pastry case Of a diner or a deli It doesn't make me very happy

Just to see them there Just to know they're there Yeah Especially when they're not like Wrapped up in plastic Like Laura Palmer Yeah that's That's what we're

Crazy, right? You don't, you don't, that's how you know that Bob has been in the deli or diner. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Or how do you know that Laura Palmer is chock full of preservatives, you know? Yeah. Now, J.D., I know from your many appearances on Blank Check that you are sort of an expert in, like, film innovations. Sure.

Different. Like, like, film tech. I'm a fan. I'm a fan of people innovating in cinema. Yeah, like technologies. Now, what would you say about after last season in terms of, like, you know, of the filming techniques and styles. I think that's the kind of thing

we should talk about while we talk about the movie because I think most people probably have not seen this movie. And I think it's hard to know, it's hard to really get a sense. I will say this about the movie. It's an experience. And it's hard to really understand what this movie is without watching it.

The same way we were talking about, I think when Evan Dorkin was here, I think we were talking about One Cut of the Dead, which is a similar movie where you kind of have to watch it to experience it and get what it's doing. I would argue that that's a really good. version of it while this is I'm not so sure I don't know that I would say you can watch this movie and even understand it or get what it's doing it's awesome I don't think you get what it's doing but I think

you get how it feels to watch it and so let's let's talk about it a little bit and Jady as we're going through I want you to point out yeah the parts where you're particularly finding the filmmaking particularly interesting or you know innovative or exciting so after last season we start with the title it appears on the screen in pieces very slowly and then we have a scene that there's a scientist or doctor, I guess, who's very slowly explaining of how it works and giving an MRI to a patient with Parkinson's. The room is nearly empty. Let me just set the scene for you.

They're in a nearly empty room. There are pieces of paper with printouts of MRI images taped to the walls. And there's an MRI machine that appears to be made out of just white cardboard. Paper crafts. Paper crafts, yeah. What type of room would you describe it as? Is it a hospital room? Is it a doctor's office?

That's a good question. The prominent existence of a ceiling. fan in the room and the way the blinds and the floor and everything about it. It feels to be more of a guest room that has been had the furniture taken out. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I want to clarify something. I don't believe this is an MRI machine made of white cardboard.

It is a MRI machine made of, I would assume, cardboard that has had sheets of white paper taped over it. It looks like they've covered the cardboard with white printer paper to make it look the color of normal MRIs, which is blinding white. You know, I assume that they have. an actual MRI machine that was just covered in corporate logos and they're like, we don't, we don't have clearance for this. So we got to cover it in paper. That's not possible. Yeah. When you hold the MRI machine, make sure to have your hand over the label because we don't have the rights to show the, the, uh, the brands. Now, there's a lot of shots. Like stickers like Canada's motorcycle.

Now, I should mention, there are a lot of shots of walls, window shades, a fan, a door. And so even scenes that you, even scenes that you think would be just dialogue between two characters, will often be intercut seemingly at random or arbitrarily by shots of objects or walls, locations. And I read an interview with the director, actually, where he talked about using that to show that time had passed. Yeah. But this does not actually, there's not, not internally true.

Well, here's that. Oftentimes has not passed in those scenes. Well, what I'd like to point out is that in film, we have a phenomenon known as the Kulishab effect. Right. Yes, that works, yeah. Where you can put... If you put sunglasses on anything,

they turn cool. Yes, exactly. And Top Gun really showed that off. The coolest show effect is you take two images and you put them next to each other, the audience will draw a meaning. It'll add meaning between the two shots. So the great example would be like,

oh, if you show a neutral-faced man was the original sort of test of it. But then you show some audiences a baby as the next shot. The audience would be like, oh, the man's like worried about the baby. Or if you show... You want to eat that baby, yeah.

Yes. If you show food, it'll be like, oh, he's the man's hungry. And so the Kulishav effect is when you cut two images that might not be related together, the audience draws distinction between them. I would like to posit

the first advancement that after last season makes is what I would like to call the Region effect, which is Mark Region has found a way to cut things together that actually takes information away from the scene. He's breaking the Kulashav effect where it's...

You are... are losing the connection you would have had between things that are logically connected. You have a scene that you did understand and then through the region effect, you no longer understand what's going on. You know what? You won me over. Now I like the movie already.

Because you're right. The movie is constantly daring you to find what's happening. It is, you know, it's constantly throwing chaff in your face as if the movie is trying to escape from you and is throwing sand at you to blind you so that it can leave.

It's skittering away from you. Yeah, exactly. Another thing that I like to point out in this first scene. It's like trying to hold a block of, like a little, it's trying to pick an ice cube up off the floor. Yeah. That's what this movie is like. But your hands are made of lava.

Yes. It's the raccoon putting cotton candy in a puddle and then it disappears. Did that happen? You haven't seen that video in the event? Yeah, it's very sad. I haven't seen that video. Because then he's like slapping the puddle like, where'd my cotton candy go? Yeah.

Yeah, this delicious cotton candy. It's like the saddest thing in the universe. that's what watching this movie is. So, yes, so raccoons and cotton candy and puddles aside, that doesn't happen in this movie. That would be the most exciting thing that would happen in the entire movie. We then go to Dr. Marlin.

This is a neurosurgeon. He brings in two med students. One of them is a woman named Sarah, who's going to become a major character, and takes a long time explaining to them why you would use an MRI. Now, this would lead you to believe that the MRI is going to be a big part of the movie.

No, it is not a big part of the movie, except for these sequences. This is intercut with, there's a woman having... At first I thought, this was just that I accidentally loaded up an MRI like a demo real for an MRA?

So you purchased. Very early days because they didn't have the actual MRI. Or like a rehearsal for a tech demo for an R. Thank you. You're thinking of purchasing the Claxico Tech MRI. Well, here's the starter model that we'd like you to take home for a little bit and see if you're ready for it.

That's what it feels like. So this scene is intercut with a couple other scenes. A woman is having a boring phone call in a hallway and a man is sitting alone in his apartment. We're later going to learn this man is named Ed Brown. But when we're introduced to him, he is just a man who is writing, looking around, sitting down,

gets him, sits down again. And sporting a very British belt. Yes, there's definitely Captain Britain belt going on. That seems heavily featured. To the point that you begs the question, is this man British? The answer is no. No, he's not resolved.

But he may have been there at some point. We get a lot of talk later in the movie about places people have been to or through, but we never find out where he's been. I also would like to point out another thing that Region does that I think is actually innovative directorially. Okay. And something that I like is that in movies,

I think it's really great texture when you leave in, you know, as we talk amongst ourselves as real humans in the world, we don't get everything, we mess things up. Oh, yeah, we stop and start. You call teacher mom. You call mom teacher, you know? There is a moment in this first scene

where an actor just does a retake of a line. They, the actor forgets a word and it does a retake right live in the moment. and it's left in the movie. And I like that because that's real life. We say the wrong thing. I take retakes all the time. I mean, my understanding of the movie is that Mark Regent thought that making it feel real or

feel like real life would mean leaving in mistakes, having characters talk about banal things that are completely unrelated to the movie. We'll get to it later. But one of the most exciting parts of the movie is a woman telling a story about going to dinner with a friend and her friend discovering that she's allergic to shrimp by ordering a shrimp dish and having an allergic reaction to it. And while you're like, this is you're like, this is you're like, says, this isn't, doesn't have anything to do with anything.

This is just a conversation. I'm just watching a conversation. Like, I'm just watching people kill time, having a conversation that neither one of them are actually that interested in. And that feels, that could feel very real. And of course, everything is done with this air of you're watching aliens trying and trying and failing to integrate themselves into human society without anybody noticing. Yeah.

It does feel like the most boring person you've ever met at a dinner party suddenly got to script out a whole movie. Yes. Yeah. Also, apparently, like, the lines were sort of untethered in time. Like, if he had several lines in the same room, like, it wouldn't be, like, recorded, like, by scenes so the actors could get, like, an idea of what they were acting about. It would just be like, okay, like, run through all the lines for this setup or whatever, and they would just be cut together later. I mean, apparently also that the lead, I was reading something by one of the lead actors in an interview, and he was saying that it was very cold when they were shooting.

and so often they were having trouble saying the lines because they were so cold and they would have to run in between takes to a heater that they had set up and also that if an actor was not on screen, they would be off trying to warm up and they would not be feeding their lines to the other actor.

So they were literally having trouble saying the lines in a natural way because they were so cold. Which I think is an efficient way to make a film. And on top of that, I would say that based on all of this, I think we can agree, and this is Elliot's thought,

and I'm just going to underline it, and I agree with you, Elliot, that this Mark region is dedicated to realism. This film... This film is all about realism and capturing the real human experience. I mean, I don't know about the real human experience because it's also about having a dream

about stopping a murderer using microchips on your temple. But it is very much about capturing people sitting in cheap rooms, saying, talking about nothing. which is much of human life. You would think that if you were shooting a movie... Jaydie's looking around. What are you saying about my room, Jay? Oh, no, I feel like...

No, I thought Jady was looking around saying, yeah, get it, guys, you agree with me, right? He's saying what I'm thinking. Like a normal slash boring filmmaker if they were facing budgetary limitations and had to, I don't know, decorate most of the room using paper squares, they might not cut away to shots of said paper squares

which would simply draw attention to it. But no, Mark Reefat. like, you know what, this is real life. This is the grit. I would argue it's the opposite. This is a Brechtian thing. These are distancing effects. He is drawing attention to how fake this all is, the artifice.

Whereas a lesser movie like taxi driver is striving for a sort of realism that you believe these are real characters in a real city, having real emotions. Whereas this is a greater work of art is showing you it's all fake and it's and there's nothing here. Yeah. It's refusing to allow you to invest yourself. Moving on, I got to keep moving on the plot because we're like five minutes. Less than five minutes in the movie, anything. So the point is, we're watching three things happen.

A woman's having a boring phone call. Ed Brown seems to hear something and wanders around that sits down again. And the surgeon is telling his residence about schizophrenia and different types of schizophrenia and people hear voices. Then Ed Brown calls the library. He hears a knock on the door. We go to the woman on the phone. She stumbles on a man's dead body. It's Ed Brown.

It's his dead body. We cut two. Two women talk about their family histories and towns they've been in. One compliments another's radio clock. Well, she's never been to that town, right? She's never been to that town, but she's been through that town. There's like a lot of early scenes where I'm like, okay, they're establishing these characters. They're establishing things.

You know, this will come back. And then, like, I believe that certain of these characters we see in these early scenes are not seen again. No, these two characters are Sarah's roommate and another woman. And she goes, oh, yeah, I have this roommate, Sarah. Sarah walks in. She's the med student we saw earlier. the woman talk about a patient they knew who had nerve damage in her hand. Sarah walks through the room, leaves the house while those women are talking about their apartments

and how big they are. We go to then the very, let's just say, unrealistic looking headquarters for the Pro-Rolus Corporation, which is, I think, maybe my favorite fake name for a company I've ever seen in a movie. It doesn't even sound like anything, you know. Now that there's, so when there's a sign identifying this as the Pro-Rolus Corporation. Incorporation. This... We have to assume, founded by Gerald ProRolus.

They do this by... Like John Outerbridge or whatever. Exactly. Like, just like, you know, a font is superimposed on the thing, the outside of the building, as if it is a sign on the outside of the building. But I'm like... But it looks like there's...

Our credits still going on. Yes, yeah. It doesn't... I mean, in a way... ...by the Prololis Association or something because it's just like a title card. Yeah, in a way, isn't that like... Isn't that what paint is in the real world?

Good point. Thank you. Paint is just like credits that have been slapped onto buildings. And Regent is giving us as an audience all time because the audience at that point is all sharing stories about what their radio clock looked like when they grew up. Yeah, exactly. And what towns they've been through.

Now, here's that, Stuart, I will say that the pro-rolus corporation is posited to be like a large pharmaceutical or medical technology's company. Their signs usually are not painted on the front of the buildings which that are usually made out of like three-dimensional materials that are affixed to the front of the building. Yeah, I'm kind of... Yeah, I'm just kind of like a regular blue-collar Joe,

so I don't understand those like high-minded things. Yeah, all your signs are painted. All you know are small town corporations. Yeah. All you know are hot dog stands and car garages, yeah. So they go... So there's a man there. Just give me a six-pack and my dog back in my truck.

I'm happy. Oh, no. I'm about to write a country slowing. I mean, are you... Do you have a dog? You don't have a dog. You have a cat. I mean, two cats.

Two cats. I feel like this is... Wait a minute, you don't have a truck. You have a Jeep. Hold on a second. Stuart, all this time I thought you were a down-home country boy. Yeah, I know. You're an urban sophisticate.

I'm a grifter. Yeah, I'm a grifter from wildcats? Oh, wow. I'm grifter from wildcats. How do you keep your mask on? It's just hangs in front of your face. I tie it behind my head. My name is Cole Cash.

I think that was his name, right? I think that was it. Certainly Cole something. He's nailing. Why was he called grifter, Elliot? He grifts. Anyway, moving on. Do you guys want to talk about Wildcats?

So they're wild covert action teams, I think. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so a man, Matt, he reads a printed out news article. This, a lot of people online will say, oh, it's supposed to be a newspaper and it's clearly a printout. The director has stated, this is supposed to be an article printed out from Yahoo News. Which we all do. Which we all do.

And certainly in 2009, we were still doing that. And then he had it converted to text. to print out, right? Yes. So the news article says that that dead man from earlier is the third murder

victim discovered recently. Sarah shows up. She's a new intern at ProRolus. She runs into Matt. They talk about the woman who discovered Ed Brown's body, another student. And she hands him a questionnaire

she filled out and they planned to continue the research project that he is running that she's a part of. Then when Sarah goes to a lecture in a room that I would call unfinished,

where a professor talks about... So critical of all these rooms. Interesting. I mean, the thing is, it's, it feels like they were going out of their way to find rooms that did not look like real places that humans exist in. And if there's anything I feel like you can find,

it is a room. People live in them, they have them in their houses. Buildings are full of them. They're one of the basic building blocks of society. Maybe that's kind of what the pro-rollas corporations going for is trying to create an environment that you might not have already seen before.

Maybe that's sort of a separate. Just because you're good at finding rooms doesn't mean that the average person is as good as you. That's true. sort of like re-just your privilege. And it's not like

this is the movie The Room, which is full of rooms. You know, this is a different kind of movie. So, so, Sarah goes to a lecture

about brain function. Then, so this part, from my notes, it's clear that I was unclear what going on. There's a woman, I think it's Sarah.

She's like in a home and she looks at a piece of furniture and Dr. Marlon walks in and the woman says there was a cup on a cabinet.

And then it turns out, I think that they're looking at objects from Ed Brown's apartment. then we cut to a shot of an overhead fan and then the doctor is back in his fake IMARRRRRIROM

examining a woman whose nerves are healing from a grafting operation. She can lift her arm higher. Yeah, she can lift her arm higher. Her foot still feels doesn't feel great because that's where they took the nerves from. But she says she's willing to take the numbness in the foot to get the movement back in her arm.

Not since Twin Peaks are there so many cutaways to see Link fans. There's also a moment where there's, I swear to God, there's one shot where there is a digitally inserted shadow behind the woman. Did you notice this? I did not notice that.

But I also mention, I watched this on YouTube so it wasn't the best transfer. When I found out this movie was shot on 35mm, which it does not, they did not take advantage of the format, you know?

I know what you're talking about, J.D. I was like, is this, is everything behind this person like green screen? Because the, like, the shadow looks so, like, weird and digitally.

But then I'm like, they're just in a room. They wouldn't have green screened that. It looked like one of the demons from ghost. Yeah. You know, that like crawls on it.

Maybe it was foreshadowing of where the movie is going. So this movie, I should mention also by this point. Speaking of foreshadowing, the shadows in this movie are pretty crazy, right? It made me think about how few shadows I see in other movies unless they specifically are like the point of this is shot as a shadow. Yeah, yeah. Unless, yeah, I like Baldwin's blasting dudes. Yeah, and reading minds, yeah. I should mention that at this point, there's been almost no background music.

And the movie. Almost, though. Almost one. Every now and then there's like a. Like a slightly dramatic two tones on an electric piano. Some really like swanchy, like midi sounds or something. Yeah, and there will be long sections later. We're not only is there no music, but the sounds seem to be the room tone of whatever room maybe it was being edited in.

They're just kind of like either pipes behind walls or just kind of that blurbly sounds you get from poor audio. Certainly late in the film, there's a scene where you hear, I think, the outdoor traffic noise. whenever someone talks. Yes, that's true. And there is also a scene where there's a handheld camera and you can hear the footsteps of the man walking with the camera,

which I think is very funny. But anyway, so back from that riveting scene of the woman being examined for her nerve damage in her arm, Matt talks on the phone. This is genuinely a very funny scene. Matt is talking to someone on the phone who needs help finding a printer

and Matt is just telling him where there are printers. And I think this is a line that was in the trailer where he goes, oh yeah, there's printers in the basement. And this is, for a... This is, again, the movie is daring to call attention to how much of the sets are printed pieces of paper by talking about printers. But Sarah calls home.

She has a similarly banal conversation about school and someone she hasn't seen in a while. Then her roommate walks in and tells her story about having dinner with a friend who suddenly developed an allergy to shrimp. I think this is the closest thing to a tight, tense narrative in the entire movie is the story her roommate is telling about another character we never meet discovering they have an allergy to shrimp. And they both talk about the towns they grew up in. Matt sets up, now the movie is really kicking into gear. This is when the story really starts up. What gear would you describe it as? Low.

First, maybe neutral. Before the movie had been rolling backwards down a hill. Yeah, that's true. At least. They hit the emergency break at least. I mean, they're kind of pressing down slightly on it so that it falls back less. So Matt sets up a room for a psychology exercise. We know this because he puts a piece of paper that says psychology exercise on the door.

He reads an article about a device that reads brain signals. And then Sarah shows up for the experiment. And he explains, it takes him a long time to explain this. They're testing computer chips that all they have to do is hold them to their temples. And then one of them can read the other one's thoughts. It's not a two-way, two-direction thing. One of them will read the thoughts of the other. They start the trial.

They make a lot of effort to make sure that the audience understands there's no potential negative side effects of this technology. Yes. That's good you're not worried. And I'm sure they knew the audience would be concerned because they're like, I've seen things like this. I've seen movies where someone gets a chip on them and they get Johnny Numonic, suddenly they're on the run.

No, don't worry. There's not going to be any drama. No, and it's, what's cool is that it's, we're living, this movie lives in a world with the technology is so advanced that this microchip is, it's so compact and the technology is so advanced that it almost looks like, you know, just one of those posted sticky notes that you use to mark a science textbook.

It almost looks like you're holding just that up, but it's actually this advanced microchip. You know what, Dan, what you said reminded me, there's the scene in Hitchhackers Guy of the Galaxy where it says there's too much stress in the universe. So just to tell you, when these missiles are flying towards a spaceship, we're just going to tell you nobody's going to get hurt. It's going to be okay.

This movie is kind of like that. The movie is like, don't get excited. Don't worry. Nothing will happen. But this is when we really get into the meat of the movie. So they start the trial and he says, now Matt is going to give her prompts that she has to imagine and we're going to see those imaginings presented as computer

generated animated images and this is where apparently the bulk of the reportedly $5 million budget for the movie like to you put your finger right on like so yeah they said they said that it was a $5 million budget you're watching the movie you're like where's this money going $5 million is that enough to make a printer paper but then apparently that's where like supposedly it's these computer-generated segments. I mean, I would say this,

is that if you look at the computer-ritor images in this film, I think an untrained eye, I think an untrained eye might think that they look almost like maybe a camera shooting a screen while a RAM cache playback render on Maya is playing back to sort of like rough parts of a basic animation.

But if you actually understand cinema tech and film and what goes into it, You know that that region is operating at a level that's beyond that. Because here's a thing. They're describing things. And then you see shapes that are close to those things. I would say not necessarily close. But you are seeing shapes.

I do know that apparently this apparently was reported that Weta really went hard after Mark Region to reveal where he got the technology to do these amazing things. And he refused, you know, a lot of rumors about how it made. So. They chained him up in a basement He wouldn't bend after weeks I don't want to jump ahead too much But there's a later scene where like

You know someone is kind of being threatened Within the world of this like lawnmower Manny world Yeah it's money for nothing She like has to like Throw something at the person threatening And it's like she bats the square at him It's totally

Weightless manner that is just so funny to me So in this scene that Elliot's described But did you guys have this? I had this where there's a moment where birds come on screen and I thought there were birds in my apartment. Yeah. Because it was so realistic. I was like, I was touching the screen and it's like, oh my God, this is the movie. Yeah. Now we're having a lot of fun here. But just to be, just to be serious. Elie B is just set a baseline of reality. I don't, I don't want the audience to be like, oh, I got to see these, these amazing effects. It looks, these are the kind of effects that would have been incredibly impressive in like 1978, potentially.

I mean, even that. To be honest, even then. There's a moment where he's like, imagine a letter rising out of like a flat plane and she goes, from the alphabet? It is very funny.

He was asking her to like, I don't know, describe like a piece of postage. So Sarah's thoughts, so he goes, imagine a shape. This is our, so then we get the first the CGI scenes, which is rectangle, zooming around, they're changing shape and size. A cylinder arrives and Matt goes, wow,

that worked really well. I saw a cylinder. And so I goes, oh, no, I was imagining a basket, which is, one, a basket is not a shape, but also, like,

the idea that these amazing chips don't work that well. But no, here's the, if I say, think of a shape, immediately you guys all thought basket. That's a common shape. That's true.

Then we go through a lot more of these CGI brain reading tests. We see cubes, orbs, birds, flowers. I mean... And finally, a man being stabbed, which startles Sarah.

But Dan, what are you going to say? Well, to be my... wildly fair to a movie that maybe doesn't require it. As they practice using these chips, the things start looking more like actual... They look more realistic, is what you think.

They still, I mean, they still look bad, but they're... When she sees the man being stabbed, she describes features on him that are not even reflected in the image. She says specifically that she can see the pupil in his eye. And I couldn't. I could barely...

It took me a while to understand they were even people. Now, I think there's something to be done. I see what they're going forward, just that, like, they start out with simple shapes, and it's becoming more and more detailed, more and more complex. Yeah. But it still always looks like crap the whole way through. Like, it just still really looks bad. So, but she startles, starstall Sarah, and she goes, I didn't think of that. It just appeared.

And pretty quickly, they come to the conclusion that this was a vision of Ed Brown's murder. And she goes, oh, yeah, I had a vision of his murder before it happened, too. And Matt is like. That was the interesting. That's the twist there. Yeah. Even before we had brain reading chips, she started having premonitions of murder.

And I was like, did I miss a scene where they set this up in any way? I did not miss a scene, I think, where they set this up in any way. Matt figures they can use her visions to stop the next murder. All they have to do is keep doing the same boring stuff they've already been doing. So now we get a very long sequence, punctuated by shots of walls and empty rooms and what appears to be a kitchen storage area, as she visualizes CGI shapes,

that become cars driving around, then weird trees next to a road. Cool cars. And this all feels like, and this all feels like demo sampler stuff. And wait, the, the kitchen, you said a kitchen storage area, it,

it looks like it's a room with carpet. That seems like a bad place to store you're like drying dishes, right? But there are racks of dishes there. Yeah, okay. The cars seem fast and cool. That's true. The cars, the cars seem like,

I mean, the cars seem like future cars, but, you know, and so CGI house, uh, CJA house, uh, CJA woman throwing cubes at something, as Dan mentioned. And finally,

through the wall comes a faceless knife-wielding killer. It's not really a knife. It's a spike. It looks like he ripped it off a Stegosaurus's tail. And by faceless, like, other than this character, the characters that are presented, the digital characters are hyper-realistic.

But this one has like a face-like Cobra Commander's mask, right? Yes, it's like a mirror just for a face. And this happens, and the killer attacks the CGI woman. And my favorite part of this is Sarah's describing the one, she goes, it's a woman. she's wearing some sort of blouse, which is like not the most important detail,

not really represented by what we're seeing. So now we see a man in that kitchen storage area calling through a door for someone named Angie, and then Matt walks into the test room and says he just found out a woman was stabbed in a house. And so I guess that Angie was the woman who got killed that they saw the vision of. I was listening to the police scanner, I guess.

He kind of like, I guess, was driving by that house, and I don't know. They go back to the test. What else can you do? They go back to their test. So did time pass between this? How did he find that information out? Is he like checking the citizen app?

The region effect. You're all victim to it. I think he says something about driving past the house. But as far as we know, we didn't even see him leave that room, which we don't have to say. It feels like, but that's thing, it feels like we are in a timeless space where they are experiencing the same moment for eternity. But they're free to leave and expand that moment. It's really disorienting, this whole movie. then they go back to the test

they see some CGI fish then we have point of view footage of someone walking around outside and it's a lot of shots of chairs and hallways and walls and our leads sitting there not talking and then CGI shapes with ambiguous room tones and then chairs again

and this goes on for like 15 minutes like this is a huge chunk of the movie it's really it's a whole lot of nothing eventually the CGI cones they arrange themselves in the human shape and the faceless staff is outside a door marked psychology exercise.

Oh, no. That's where they are. We know that sign. We've seen it. That's good filmmaking. Our heroes open their eyes and the door slowly opens and closes seemingly by itself.

There's nobody there. Then chairs and other objects in the room start moving very slowly on the room. Now, JD, as a filmmaker, how challenging is it to make believable ghost effects like this? Yeah. I think this scene rips,

legitimately. I think this is a great scene. I will say the fact that they don't just have the door open as though someone is walking in. Instead, it's sort of like teeters back and forth and then opens an amount that a person might not be able to slide even through is actually an interesting choice because you're not sure what's going on, which creates suspense. It's really mystifying. The effects, for example, you're seeing a lot of the door. Like, I'm saying you're going to say, you'll see 40% of the door. At least, yeah. Which if someone, if there was actually someone like,

a crew member moving it, there's a good chance would be in that 40%. So when I see this, I'm like, I don't understand how they're doing this. Like, is there an actual invisible man? And then you're seeing some of this stuff. Like, you see a chair move. And you see like the top 80% of the chair.

And I'm like, statistically, if someone's going to move that chair, they're touching the top. So like, the fact that it's moving. Actually, I was texting with a friend of the pod, Todd Viziri, who's a lot of digital effects work. And he's like, I don't know how they did this. I was mystifying.

I got to say, there's a part later on. in the movie where I think it's later on where they're like asking the ghost to move something and the ghost's like that's too heavy I'm going to move this ruler instead I'm like that is 100% the filmmakers being like okay well I don't know the fishing line that we have here isn't good enough to

because it's such an unforced error because the movie does not need to introduce an object too heavy for the ghosts to pick up it could just not do that but that's realism if you were confronted with a ghost you'd be like pick up my couch and the ghosts might be like, I can't do that.

I'm not fucking... In real life, Vicky? The ghost would say? In real life, ghosts have limits to what they can do. Yeah, unlike Vicky. I was limitless, yeah. Vicki can do anything.

She took the pill. She's a limitless pill. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. That should be illegal. That is illegal. Luckily, it is illegal. Anyway, I guess what we're saying is...

One-issue voter. Keep limitless of those away from the... that little girl. He was a robot earlier, girl. Jady, why did you over Trump three? Jaydie, why did you vote for Trump three times?

He's strong on Vicky not getting that limitless bill. He said, Vicky and the pill, they're in different states. He said he wasn't going to let it happen. Never the plane for me, he said. Wow. That's pretty poetic friends. So back to the movie,

so what this scene lacks in clarity, it also lacks in drama. So it's got that. So the chair and the obviously they're moving on their own, suddenly Matt shouts as if he's been stabbed, but he's fine. There's no wound. Then Sarah shouts and blood appears on her sleeve. Oh, no.

There's an invisible attacker in the room. They do what anyone would do in this case. They line up plastic bins in a line to try to block the attacker. The attacker instead of... They also do not communicate in any other way, really. No, they do not speak to each other. They don't figure out the situation. They do not leave the room or even attempt to leave the room at this point.

They try later. But they line up these bins in a straight line. you would be a visible attacker, you would not walk around those bins, you would move each one very slowly, one at a time, to show you are getting closer to your victims, and then he knocks down Matt

and he attacks Sarah. Oh no, oh no, oh no, Sarah, she's going to be killed by this invisible attacker? That's what you think. No, because Matt wakes up and Sarah walks in and Matt tells her, I just had this dream where we were using telepathy chips

and then Ed Brown's murder came out for us. And I'd also like to point out that, number one, that scene is legitimately tense, there's a lot of energy there. To your point, I would say a lot of energy. The invisible attacker, you said jumps on them.

What happens is he gets close enough and then it seems he minorly cuts both of their arms and they both go, ow, but then stay where they are while the invisible... And then the thing that I like to imagine watching that scene is what is the invisible attacker doing?

Because it seems like he slowly opens the door, closes it, opens it, moves the chair, a side, walked to the left, scoots the one box, walks forward, scoots the other box, scoots the other box, then walks up, pauses in front of the one guy, sort of nicks him with the knife, and then moves. It's asking a lot of questions that as an audience member, we get to imagine the result. That's true. We get to make up the story, like, we're collaborators in this. But on some level, the stuff that you said that preceded this, the 15 minutes of boring stuff,

Yeah. That was to add more weight to this moment. So you're like, oh shit. Now things are getting crazy. And now it makes sense because you... And also, you're like, Elliot, you were like, I don't know what's going on. This seems random.

This seems crazy. Well, every writer doesn't leave a thread that leaves nowhere. Region pays off. It seemed nonsensical because it was a dream. Because it was a dream. 30 to 40 minutes of the movie were a dream. The last... Yeah, 30 or 40 minutes were a dream.

So you think, oh, this movie was all a dream. No, the movie continues after the dream. To tell a slightly different, slightly similar story. Like life. It continues. That's true. After dreams. Tell it doesn't.

So they go to a different. And now they go on to doing a different psychological experiment. This time she's asking him opinion questions that I think she just made up. I think she says I made up these questions. Eventually they hear a sound and they run out. There's a man in the hall who has stabbed a lab worker. And he's saying, what are the last six digits to the actual? access code. What are the last six digits the access code? Matt and Sarah run back into their

room, but the killer follows. A chair moves on its own, but wait, he's not dreaming anymore. The chair knocks out the killer and Sarah calls the police on her phone and then a disembodied voice tells them, hey, can you hear me? Some people can hear me and some can't. I can move some objects. She goes, lift my backpack. He goes, that's too heavy, but I can lift this ruler. And they realize that this is Craig, a previous victim of the killer. And then he seems to vanish. Oh, wow. Pro-Rola security shows up. The killer is put in a room in front of a piece of paper that says cell one.

Implying that there's other cells. It's world-building it. And there's an FBI agent who I think he's the MRI patient from the beginning of the movie, right? Because he has a noticeable tremor in his hand from the Parkinson's that he has. Are you saying that FBI agents can't get sick or have issues? No, I'm just saying that they're paying off this character from earlier who had not appeared in the movie after that first scene. And he explains over the phone The most dramatic way to explain anything

As we saw in the Lucille Ball movie That came out a couple years ago The most dramatic way to explain something Is to have someone tell you over the phone Explains that the killer is Eric Nelson A former pro-Roleless employee Who had been hired to steal research materials That's why he needed the code

And all his victims had worked on the same project Case closed Why would they get someone who used to work there But doesn't know the code And also, maybe he told me to do the code. Something interesting worth noting is that he's looking for the code, but we see several staff members enter the facility, and it seems that they hold up what appears to be a Panera gift card for a red light.

The red light remains red, but the door opens. So he was searching for a code, and the entire time he just needed one of those gift cards. Like a dongle, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My guess is that he said to them, I have the code. I used to work there, but then when he went, they changed the code since after they fired him.

He goes, oh, oh, I need the code now. Nothing to do but murder people. Yeah, because in his accident interview, he talked about how he's going to get into stealing secrets after this. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's when they upgraded their security from a code-based system to a gift card base system. Yes, yeah.

So he's still, like, he's just yelling into this. That's company. Gift card reader. Company script. A code. He's going to 738-492. And also, he needs the last six digits. This is a long code.

This is a down-code. This is a down-code. I mean, Per-roll is a pretty serious. serious place. Yeah. I mean, pro ralists, that's why they,

you guys are, it's not called amateur rule of it. It's kind of bothering me because you guys are acting like they still have the code system. The whole point is that they also saw that it didn't make sense,

they changed it through their system. But he got into the building somehow without knowing they don't have a code system anymore because he's still killing people asking for the access codes. So back to the lady with arm nerve damage. She has her follow-up appointment with the doctor from earlier. She's doing better. Arm much higher.

Yeah, she has, her arm can get up higher. Sarah goes to a computer, and thinks about the ruler that moved before. And Matt talks on the phone about the killer. And then this is my other favorite part of the movie. Actually, I have three favorite parts of the movie. The printer conversation, the shrimp allergy conversation.

And this conversation was like, yeah, there was this killer. He killed Ed Brown. And the conversation hears into, oh, yeah, I have a friend whose brother lives near some hot springs. Yeah, I think my uncle goes there sometimes. Say tourists like it. So, they have a lot of tourist stuff there. Oh, that's so good. This is like a real conversation.

It doesn't say in one subject that's related to the movie. It veers off to it. unrelated conversation. Later, Matt is on his computer. It appears that a coat falls off the wall and Matt calls out for Craig. No response. Finally, we're at the end of the,

we're in the home stretch of the movie. Sarah and another woman, is this the woman with the arm damage? I couldn't tell. They're at a house talking about the neighborhood, the work that they did on the house where certain pictures were taken. One of the pictures they look at

is of Craig, who would have been graduating from the med school program soon if he was still alive. Makes you think, doesn't it? Well, I like, they're having a conversation conversation one of the rare outdoor shots.

And one of the characters, they're standing on like a pathway, like a stone pathway leading up to a front door. And one of the characters just like walks a few feet into the snow and then walks back in the manor of the house. So I'm like, you just want to get some snow on your boots? What's going to? Usually, now in every bad movie that's low budget, there are scenes where through either bad writing, bad acting, bad directing, whatever reason, where human behavior doesn't

quite match up with real life behavior. And I have to say, this is maybe the movie. where I've seen the most of this, where characters do stuff like that, Stuart, where I'm like, I don't know what possible reason a human would have to do that thing. Like, there's something about this behavior that is, there are actors doing it as if this is a thing

that makes sense, but it's not making sense at all. Yeah. Now, be honest. Be honest. Yeah. Where I know, I know the masculinity, you know, there's a lot of gender norms. Who cried when they saw Craig?

Who cried when you saw Craig and learned out that he would have been graduating that day? I mean, I cried a little because I was like, Why do they have these pictures turned away from the camera? Yeah, they're all turned towards a window as if they want passers by to just see the pictures. No, it's so that you can let your loved ones look out the window. That was the implication that Craig and Sarah were in a relationship

because when the Craig ghost shows up, she just doesn't treat him like it's anything special. But she has a picture of him in her house. Yeah, I don't know. The thing about this movie. I think this is a JD question. The thing about this movie, and I've said this a lot on this podcast

when we watched one of these more baffling movies is that like Elliot's description of it to the podcast listener probably sounded largely incomprehensible but it was at least 50% more comprehensible than the film itself.

I put work into putting this summary together because this movie is so... It's hard to express the experience of watching this movie which is that it is like the movie is like at every turn it is doing the best it can to not give you a thing to hold on to, to understand why the movie is happening and what's going on.

And I'm sure you had like extensive online resources to turn to for this plot summary that explains all the different character ideas and motivation. I mean, I mean, not extensive, but I did some research on it. But I will say this also. It's like, and you can't, I, it's, you don't. He's at a loss for words. I'm at a loss for words because it's such a singular. misunderstanding of how stories are told and how movies work.

And it is amazing to me, someone who maybe I just take it for granted that stories make a certain amount of, I'm a professional writer. Maybe it's because I have an affinity for stories or how things work like that, that I do that for living. But that this is someone in his interviews,

the director, in his interview, the director's like, oh yeah, I want to do something like the sixth sense or the exorcist, but I also wanted to talk about brain science and schizophrenia and what it's like to be a med student. and that it is such a total lack of understanding of how to do any of those things in a story

that even like if my kids made a movie, they'd have a basic understanding of like, oh yeah, you introduce his character and he does something and then a thing happens as a result of that and then he's got to solve the problem. Whereas this is so, it just exists in a different plane of thinking. Okay, so I have been doing a bit of being, you know,

trying to be kind of an antagonist here. Like a little stinker, yeah. Yeah. This is a real Charles Rodin on The Tonight Show type character. But I will say something that I love and being a long-time flop-house fan,

also I want to shout out one of my childhood dear friends, Jay, who is a flop-house super fan who I'm sure is listening right now and is very excited. Thanks, Jay. Yeah, he's been listening

for a long time and we text about the show often. As a long time, I grew up in the Chicago suburbs where we had Sven Gouli Gouli, and so on Sunday, Sven Gouli would show sort of horror movies, and usually it was like, you know, horror movies

that get the licenses to, and part of it is like, you know, you're seeing these bad movies. So I've a lifelong full of bad movies. And to me, what I think is genuinely interesting is a movie can, lots of movies can be bad, right? There's tons of bad movies all the time. But what makes them unique is when someone genuinely tries to make something,

but just does it in a way that doesn't line up with how the, as Elliot aptly described, doesn't line up with any of the language of, how things have been done before. And that's why I think after last season is really interesting, is it's, you know, like the room, like Berdemic, like any of these big movies, it's like, this is someone who genuinely

seemed to try to make a movie, but did it in a way that defies all logic around all of what we've learned about cinema. And I think that's actually like exciting and fun because a lot of times, and I'm sure you guys can attest to this, bad movies often are very the same. The things that are bad about them can be the same things over and over again.

or there's a knowing sense of winkiness and sometimes it's just laziness that makes them bad or like apathy. And I think when bad movies are interesting is when it's people that are genuinely trying to make something and just do not know how to do it. And I think this movie in itself is a type of bad movie that is very specific

and different than a lot of the other bad movies out there. And for that, I applaud it. Because also to what Dan was thinking about the story is when Dan texted and said that Elliot, you were on summary duty. Number one, I felt very guilty because you have a family in a life. And I was like,

this isn't a movie where I could not have done that because the plot to this movie is a list of scenes that you have to infer how they are connected necessarily. And I think that's such an interesting thing because it doesn't feel, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone to sit down and watch it because it doesn't necessarily make logical sense and its paces.

It doesn't sort of grab you and pull you along. but I do think it's interesting because it is a bad movie that has a tone and a style and an approach that is different than I would say many, the majority of other bad movies. I think so.

I mean, even the room or Burdemic have a more inherent understanding of traditional how a movie is and how a story is told. Film language. And I will say, what I would say, the other things to what I want to say

is that like, this guy doesn't know what he's doing, the movie makes no sense, but also, kudos to him. I didn't get up and make a movie. He did it. Like,

I'm the guy who's, like, oh, I know how to tell a story, blah, blah, blah. I'm not the one who's out there making a movie to express myself, no matter, despite not even having the language to express myself in. So you got to give them credit for that. And what I also like to is that I'm sure you all have seen it with all, it's a lot of bad movies. Once it gets claimed as a bad movie,

the creators are like, oh, yeah, it's kind of, yeah, it's like kind of fun and intentional. Oh, yeah, I meant it to be silly. Yeah, we did that on purpose. And if you read interviews with so-called Mark Region, literally the interview is like, like, this isn't a comedy. it's not a spoof, it's not funny, it's a thriller. That's the thing, like, in that one interview that I think you also read Elliot,

he ends it by being like, and I think he's one of saying, and he's like, yeah, it's not a spoof, it's a thriller. I want people to know that it's a thriller. Because I think they think it's funny and it's not. And I appreciate that, that he's just like, this is what it is, I made what I made, take it or leave it. Yeah. Yeah, well, this, I mean, we're already there,

but this also dovetails so much with what I wanted to say in Final Judgments. So let's go to Final Judgments. Let's do it. Where we opine on. on whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of liked. And, like, I don't...

I don't recommend watching this movie the way that I watched it, which is, you know, alone from a file that J.D. sent me. Like, um... But I think... This is not a movie to watch alone. This is a movie that to like...

It feels like... If someone says to you, oh, I'm going to go home and watch after last season by myself tonight, then you should... Yeah, yeah. I'm worried about you. I think much of pizza.

I think you would have more fun watching it with others and sort of discussing it but not in like also like a classic good bad way like I don't think there's a lot of laughs in this per se

but I think it's an interesting movie in the same like in the way that J.D. is talking about where like sometimes if you're like us sickos if you like love movies so much if you love stories so much you like watching a thing that kind of breaks your brain

because it's like oh this doesn't have any of the language I'm used to. Like, this is a totally different thing. And, you know, it might be because of a lack of understanding. But it is interesting to see that different perception of like, oh, I'm going to do it this way. So, like, I guess I'm coming down on good, bad, even though I found myself bored for most of the movie. Because it is such a singular experience. But what do you guys have to say?

Yeah, I mean, I think 100% this is a good bad movie. I mean, I think it's a movie that is, if you are into watching, like, silly bad movies that are definitely thrillers, not comedies, then, yeah, I mean, watch it with your sicko, weirdo movie friends. I think it also, for me, what I do find fascinating, I think this is similar to what you guys have been talking about is how, like, you know, I've made some comics and I have some understanding of film language and just like, this is the first time in a really, you know, I've made some comics. understanding of film language and just like, this is the first time in a really long time than watching a bad movie. I'm like, why do they make it this way? Like, how, like, that's not the, that's not how you do that. Like, why are you doing this like this?

And it's, I think that, like, just the fact that it forces you to think about movies is interesting. It really shows you how much film language you, how much film grammar you have in when you watch something like this and you're like, oh, wow, like I don't even know how to, I don't know how to read this. I'm going to call this. I'm going to call it bad, bad if you're by yourself, good bad if you're with the right people. But do not watch this movie by yourself. Similar to if I think, I think, too scared. Bad bad in the sheets. I think if I hadn't had, good bad in the streets. I think if I hadn't had the need to take notes to say the summary later, I think at certain points, I think I probably would have just started looking through the screen and not even being able to pay attention to what was going on.

that letter that rose up out of the plane. Exactly. I kept waiting for that letter to be like the first letter of the name of the killer or something like that. No, it's just a thing. Like it's not connecting. You're trying. That's not the language he's using, Ellie. No. I'm trying to force a connection when it doesn't really exist.

You're trying to get into a triangular car and drive away. And instead, you just need to look at three of them sort of flow by you. Like the old saying says. J.D.J.D. Yeah. What's your definitive? I agree with everyone. everything you guys have said. I think that this, to me, this is a good, bad movie. That doesn't mean it's an enjoyable bad movie. And Stuart, I think what you're saying is interesting because

as someone who, you know, we all make stuff artistically in different ways, truly watching this, it reminds me, I'm like, oh, there are no rules. You can kind of do anything. And the fact that you can sit through this and suss out a story and you are, you know, you have some semblance that's stuck in our head of what these characters experienced, like it reminds you that it's like, You can do anything, which I sort of like about it. So I would say it is a good, bad movie, and I agree with everyone. It is not a good, bad movie that would be fun to queue up by yourself and watch, and you need a very specific group of friends that would understand what's fun about it.

And I would say, do not, officially do not do a drinking game where you drink every time there is a cutaway that doesn't make sense. That would be dangerous. You would die. Watching this on your own is like the equivalent of... Your liver will burst out of your body and run away. Yeah, it's like watching this on your own would be like the equivalent of going to

some kind of amateur in a garage playhouse production by all amateur people of some kind of play that one of them wrote about their life and not doing that because you know anyone in the cast. Very specific. There's something about this movie that like, it feels like the kind of movie you would see if you, it's the kind of movie you see where you're in a movie

where like you're on a road trip, your car breaks down, you have to bring it into like a grimy, like garage, and they go, oh, don't worry, my brother runs a motel just across the street.

You've got to dodge across a highway to get this motel. It's full of bugs. You turn on the TV, this is the movie that's playing, and then the guy from the hotel and the guy from the garage come in and kill you and eat you.

Like, that's the kind of movie this is. It's what you're watching when you were in a horror movie. It also reminded me of like, when I was a kid, I have these visual memories of going to like art museums and seeing video art and being like, I guess I'll understand that when I'm an adult. That's kind of how after last season feels is you watch it and you're like, I guess when I grow up,

this will make sense to me. That and sex. Those are the two things that you understand. And you see them in museums. Yeah. What's more action-packed than prestige television? With more continuity than comic books? A more reality than reality.

television? It's professional wrestling. And to better understand wrestling is the ultimate form of entertainment. You need the Tights and Fights' podcast. This is the

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been doing my brother and my brother me for 15 years. And maybe you stopped listening for a while, maybe you never listen. And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up. But no. No, you would be wrong. We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or

just turned into a big crypto thing. Yeah. You don't even really know how crypto works. The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, remember they're me. We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening. And if not, we just leave it out back and it goes rotten. So check it out on maximum fun or wherever you get your podcast.

Good morrow to you, flop house listener. Oh, hail and well met. Hey, we got a sponsor. It's Lisa Mattresses. Despite that, you know, that vigorous welcome, I don't, I don't sleep. well? You might be surprised to learn that Dan McCoy doesn't sleep well. Perhaps it is his bad joints. Perhaps it is the state of the world. Maybe, just maybe, is my mattress. Maybe I need one of these beautiful Lisa mattresses that I hear nothing but the best about. Lisa has a lineup

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plus an extra $50 off. Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout Lisa.com promo code flop. Let's answer some letters

from listeners. Letters that rose up out of a sheet of fair color. We're going to read them and then answer them. Yeah, the first one is T. So we got that one out of the way.

This next letter is from Sebastian Last Name Withheld. I hope the microphones picked up my heavy sigh. Sebastian the CREV? It goes like this. Dear Peaches Alliots dive into the IMDB trivia section for Gabby's dollhouse reminded me of my all-time favorite

factoid from the trivia page for 2011's X-Men First Class. Okay. And here's Here's the trivia. It says, this is the second time that January Jones has been cast in 1962

opposite an actor with a pork-based name. The first was in Mad Men, opposite John Ham. And then this alongside Kevin Bacon. What a piece of trivia. 158 of 233 found this interesting. Three more,

one more in it began. You get an NY, New York Times style piece out of that. Why is January Jones be cast in 1962? upset ham pork-based names. Yeah. Who else? I'm trying to think. Frederico Guantiale.

Yeah. Brendan sausage. Boss hog? That would be, yeah. Dougray hot dog. Okay. Sebastian goes on to write. It has since been deleted.

Oh. For being too interesting. That's exactly. kind of thing the deep state doesn't want you to know. Yeah. Sounds like Sebastian wrote this trivia. Yeah, he's very mad. But can still be found in the Internet Archive.

Oh, thank goodness. They do good work over there. Yeah. My question. How much clean, fresh water is being wasted, cooling the servers that are maintaining this piece of trivia. Oh, come on. Don't take down the Internet Archive.

Like, that's a... Take down the AI centers. Why do I have to choose? We can get rid of dumb things, everybody. We don't have to hold on to all of them. My question, what's the last movie you bought on physical media? Wait, what? Classic.

They zagged on us. I actually just this week bought the DVD of Joe Dante's The Movie Orgy after Dan and I talked about it existing on DVD. And I was like, I'm just going to do it. I'm going to buy it so I can watch this thing. So it was just this week that I bought physical media, a movie on physical media, yeah. You know what? I'm going to go because I bought a Joe Dante movie as the last movie that I bought in physical media for my birthday this year upcoming in June.

I was like, I'm just going to have a few people over, not like a huge thing. We're going to watch a couple movies. I mean, if you were in town, Elliot, obviously you would. We're going to watch a couple movies. What I hear is, what I hear is you putting requirements on our friendship. I'll send you an invite so you can say no. Okay. Or maybe I'll fly out.

You don't know. Anyway, so what did you buy? Don't threaten me with a good time. Come out and watch. Anyway, the point is I titled. I titled my birthday, Dante's Danferno, because I was going to show two Joe Dante movies. You know, not my... It's pronounced Joe Dante.

Yeah. Yeah. Not my absolute favorite top tier Joe Dante movies, but ones I really enjoy. Yes, Small Soldiers is one of them. That's the one I bought most recently, and the other is Interspace, which I got in a limited edition. Which explains that Interspace movie poster he sent us. Yes, in a group chat. Yeah, and I informed you guys that in David Milch's memoirs, which I just read, he goes out of his way to compare something to inner space and then point out that it's a good movie, but he does not name the movie.

He says, oh, it's like it's like that guy inside. I felt like Martin Shorten that movie where the guy's inside of him, which is a pretty good movie, but he doesn't bother to name it. Anyway, it was my birthday was, my party was a good excuse to give myself an early birthday present of getting small soldiers. a 4K. Hey, Dan, happy birthday. Thank you. Thank you. JD, have you bought anything recently?

Yes, I recently bought, I gifted a friend for his birthday a copy of The Wizard of Speed and Time, my copy of my copy of mine. And so I purchased a new copy to replace it. And along with it, I got a Korean version as well. That is a movie that I was introduced to by Cassetti's creator, John Holt, who does our animations for a flop TV. I don't know. Yeah, and it's great.

and the creator Mike Jitlob is a real character. I have a sign... I believe that. I mean, he still hosts... He hosts the website. It's like an old school website. It's him defending the movie and putting his gripes publicly

and it's been running for a while. So if you buy... You can, like, buy a post... I have a signed poster of it and you buy it from him in his website. Yeah. That's fascinating. Yeah. And I, what, like a week or two ago,

I ordered a movie I'd never seen. I ordered a black hat. Oh, okay. Because it's the... Controversal. But I got the director's cut version that apparently is superior. Why do you decide to go physical media?

Because you can't get the director's cut visually. And I'm going through a little bit of a crush on lead actress, what, Tong Wye, who is in Decision to Leave and Lust Caution. So I'm like, I got to complete the big trifecta there. So I'll watch it at some point. And I just a shout out to Sebastian

for asking a question that is very easy to answer definitively. Yeah, thank you. Let's see, what do we got here? This next one is from Morrow, Morrow. Sorry for butchering that.

Oh, from the island of Doctor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Howdy Peaches. I've been a fan since the days when you were just a few slightly cranky single men. Now, I was previously married. I was single and cranky in the middle.

I don't think we're all single at the same time. So that goes in the goof section. I hope the microphone picked up a sigh for this one too. Letter, put this in the goofs. Actually, this might be a trivia section thing. This might be a trivia section thing. Let's get the Internet Archive on it. Here's my confession.

I stopped collecting comic books in October. Here's my confession. I killed a man. Well, wrap the flop house up. It's been a sting. We got it. The body's in the East River. The current is probably taking.

at North. Here's my confession. I stopped collecting comic books in October 2010. It was becoming a real problem, so I had to quit. Since then, I've occasionally bought a floppy or a trade paperback, but I haven't read any of them out of fear that I dive headfirst back down that slippery slip. Lately, though, life...

The paper dragon. Lately, life and these in-times vibes have had me. craving the escapist joy of comic skin. So I finally broke the seal with Maniac of New York, Volume 1 by Kaylin and Moody. Moody. Is that? Moody. I think it is. Yeah. Watch which full disclosure I bought

almost three years ago. Naturally, like any... Money's still green, baby. Yeah. Yeah. Like any good comic book junkie, I immediately went to Revenge of the comics, revenge of comics in Los Angeles and picked up Maniac of New York.

My local comic book store. One of my local comic book stores. Along with Barbarian behind bars. issues one and two. The cashier asked how I'd heard about them and I somehow ended up unintentionally fan-boying for a solid minute shouting out the flop house, mystery science theater, and Harley Quinn.

So yes, while I curse you all for breaking my comic book sobriety, I also love these books and remain a die-hard flop-house fan. With all that said, other than Mr. Kalin's work, what comic book series or creators would you recommend to a former collector before going

cold turkey? I was a devout reader of Astro City, Ed Brubaker's Criminal, and anything by artist Juan Jose Rip. So what's been floating your boats lately? Thank you, Morrow. I'll do a little log rolling for our guest and say that the comic I read most recently

is J.D.'s book, The Inless Game, which... Yeah, yeah, hold it up for the camera. Yeah, yeah, grab it. which was a delight. It's a Y.A. graphic novel and it's very sweet and funny.

Is there like a... Is there like a Batman in there? Yeah, yeah. You should sell it. There's no Batman. So, I mean, my answer is, so I, this is my debut graphic novel. It's a middle grade graphic novel. Congratulations. That's great. Thank you.

And middle grade is like that like seven to 12 range. And so I've been very like immersed in that space over the past year. And so, you know, growing up for all of us, we didn't really have the middle grade graphic novel universe.

Like the closest thing was like mouse. I feel like when we were growing up, it was either, you were either reading like Archie comics, superhero comics, or cerebous. Like those were the only level

or Love and Rockets. Like there was nothing for someone who wanted to read a story that wasn't superheroes but was not old enough to read Love and Rockets or American Splendor or something like that. Yeah.

And likewise also on the other side of that was just books that were like pros, pros, prose, prose. It was like, is this or Johnny Tremaine? And for me, I was like a reluctant reader. It took me a minute. And so I think... Do you know, like reading about the travails of a Silversmith's Apprentice during the Revolutionary War? I would have, but reading didn't... It wasn't, you know, here's a question. Maybe it was a comic. What if it was called Johnny Deformed? I love that, Simpson. I would just... I just, I, as a kid, I read it and I was like, there's not enough, like, ghosts and dreams and murderers and cutaways to things. Um,

But so I've been reading a ton of, so on top of, I would love everyone to purchase my book and give it good reviews on all the places, your good reads, your Amazon's, whatever, especially if you have a 7 or 12 year old in your life. But I'll also recommend, you know, Raina Telgamyer has a bunch of books that are great for middle grade kids about sort of the toils of growing up.

The Amulet series is a great fantasy series for kids that is super fun. and then also I love Once Upon a Space Time which is Jeffrey Brown who did like adult comics and now he does a lot of stuff in the kid's space

and those are amazing so those are a big favorite with my kids the ones Bond Times Space Time books so if you don't want to support me and get my book which I understand check out those ones

you're like fuck this guy after listening to get JD's book first I would love that it would mean a lot but you guys you guys are more plugged you to modern comics

I think well kind of I mean I really only get to the shop to buy floppies if like it's something Elliot wrote or something front of the podcast, Xander Cannon makes his recent series Sleep. I thought it was a ton of fun and also because it's Sandra Cannon super sad. It's so great. But the creator I want to highlight is one who I almost exclusively at this point get his work through Kickstarter. and that is

comic creator Simon Roy. I thought it was going to be Simon Roy. I love his stuff so much. He does this really weirdo science fiction and he and a team of collaborators have made so many great little books. I just recently read Sharp Eye, which was an expansion of the universe

created with the book First Knife that they put out through image that's about this like, you know, United States. you know, 10,000 years in the future or something, and how, like, the world is now, like, very tribal and strange, and it's awesome. Yeah, he does science fiction stuff better than anyone out there. He does, he has a book called Habitat that I think is a really good kind of, like, first, first one for him where it's like, it's not a long, it's not long, it's a quick read, but it's like, you're like, this book is, there's so much stuff going on in this book.

Like, there's so many ideas and things going on in it, you know, it's real fun. Otherwise, I'm a little bit outside of regular comics right now. I just haven't had as much time to read them in my regular life. And so I'm sad to say that the comic that I've been reading the most lately is there was a Kickstarter campaign by Mike Barron, the writer of Nexus, which is one of my favorite series, to collect in big omnibuses, hopefully eventually that whole series. And I contributed to the Kickstarter for the first volume. And so I'm rereading the first issues of that series. And I'm like, this series is great. this series. And Nexus is like

it's space opera but it's also, there's also comedy stuff in it and there's also, the art is beautiful because it's mostly Steve Rood drawing it. And the dialogue and it is super sharp and the characters are really fun. And so it's an old comic, but I'd recommend it. But

I think I need to read some new ones too. So if this letter writer reads any new comics and likes them a lot, write in again, tell us which ones you liked. I'm looking for recommendations. Um, let's move on to our final segment, which is recommendations, movies that we saw recently that we really enjoyed. Stuart, you mentioned Black Hat. I actually had never seen...

Black Hat? You mean Coron Echo, the Samurai movie? Yeah. And that's what I said. Stewart mentioned Black Hat. Oh. I actually had never seen... Michael Mann's Heat until just this week.

Everyone told me, or not he's, what am I talking about? Thief. Thief. They're both about thieves. I saw a heat at the time. I like heat fine. It's not actually one of my favorites. But like I saw thief for the first time.

There's so many, you know, sometimes the interruptions interfere with Dan's brainwaves. You're right. This is a safe space. It's a very unsafe space. Do you think he would have been better if he shot it in his like digital video era? Like public enemies? Yeah, sure.

I mean, Miami Vice looks fucking great. Thief, sorry, thief the movie with James Kahn and Tuesday Weld and Robert Proske, Jesus, Robert Proskey being scary in a way that I've never seen him in other things. And Jim Belushi. Thank you.

Jim Belushi has a line in it that made me laugh more than like Jim Belushi comedy when he's like seeing James Count's like house. He's like, what are you? He's got here, a tree or something? He says something like that. It's very funny. Anyway, like I had somehow not seen it despite years of people being like, oh,

Dan, you would love thief. And I'm like, yeah, I know, I'm sure I would love thief. I love... J.D., you're from Chicago. They make you watch that shit as soon as you're born. Yeah. I love movies with lots of neon and, you know, light shining off of wet things and tangorine dream soundtracks.

But what I also really liked about this movie is that I kind of, you know, sometimes Michael Mann gets a little too, like, for lack of a better word, like male for me, like in a gender essentialist way, like masculine, like, you know, it's about men who are like kind of, they're assholes, yeah, but maybe that's what they need to be to get things done.

And your soul can be represented by a collage. Well, but the thing about thief is it's clear. He does have a sensitive side with that collage. It's a weird. If someone showed you that collage on a first date, you'd be like, check please. Well, I was, yeah, well, I mean, too so well, almost does. But, like, I was setting that up in opposition to thief, where, like, yeah, there's that stuff in it, but it's clear that this is a lonely weirdo who has a lot of emotions.

And, like, yeah, as you say, a sensitive side, he has love to give, but he doesn't know how to express it or how to appropriately go about finding a way to express it. And, you know, he's kind of in a trap of his own making, like, all of his, like, thief code is kind of stuff to protect him like trying to exert control overworld he can't control and so I found that a lot more meaningful than some of the other like you know like I said I don't want to cause a lot of controversy I think he's a great movie but I like it less because I feel like it's a little too much like men doing men stuff

and also like what's the difference between this cop and this crook two sides the same coin Well, not in a good world. They would not be two sides of the same coin. Like, you can make a movie about damaged guys without seeming to be endorsing that, yeah, that you need damaged men on both sides of that coin to shoot each other at airports. But, Dan, it's a great movie.

I'm glad you finally saw it. I think it might be my favorite Michael Mann movie, to be honest. I think it might be now that I've seen it finally. I'm going to recommend this is actually a partial recommendation, I guess. I just watched. And also this is tied in with the themes we've had tonight of movies that are hard to find and have mysterious backgrounds. I just watched the recent Faces of Death movie,

which is kind of loosely inspired by the original faces of death, which I've actually never seen and never intend to see. And has since, you know, as the years of fast... Why, because you're too scared? Yeah, because I'm not as tough as a Michael Man hero. Stuart's fine with death, scared of faces. I just don't like to be perceived. I've never seen it, but in the years since the movie came out,

a lot of the actual deaths have been disproven as being fake. And so this recent movie is not obviously a remake of that, but it is a fairly, in some way, straightforward serial killer who's kind of inspired by that and also like playing around with social media and various people's attention spans. And it's directed by, it's made by Daniel, no, is it Daniel Goldhabber, Donald, I don't remember. But the guy who made, the guy who, thanks Dan,

who made Cam, and he made How to Blow Up a Pipeline, two movies that I liked quite a bit. And I think this has... Daniel Goldhaver. Thank you. I was right the first time, and I questioned myself because I had blank looks from my co-host. Don't doubt yourself.

I know. you know. So I think there's a lot of really good stuff there, and I think the performances are good, and it's gross in places, and it continues the themes that this guy's movies have of, like, existing, and not only is the internet a terrifying place,

but also that, like, we live in a world where a lot of the things that we turn to protect us will not protect us or save us in any way. that like the institutions like the police and things like that are either outdated or they don't care and that you kind of have to survive in whatever way you can. And it's, yeah, I would say it's bleak,

but it's not super bleak. It's, if it's a, would I like it to be more than just a kind of a straightforward like serial killer movie? Yeah, but I think there's a lot of good stuff there, soundtrack the way it's shot. I think it's good. Cool. I am going to recommend a movie

that I actually mentioned in a previous episode that I was in the middle of watching and then I finished it and I liked it a lot and that's a movie called it's a guys, you're gonna laugh at me.

It's a check movie but it's listed under a couple different titles it's either called Dinner for Adele or Adele hasn't had her dinner yet or Nick Carver and Prague or Adele has not had subgris. Adele is hangary. And this is another movie

by Old Rich Lipsky, the director of Lemonade Joe. Old Rich Lipsky? Well, I don't know how it's pronounced. It's a check name. That's the old rich Lipsky up to these days. Well, his lips are still pretty rich. The rest of him is poor as I'll get out.

His lips inherited all the money. And it's a parody of the kind of like pulp adventure mysteries that you would have seen at the turn of the 20th century. and the greatest detective in America, Nick Carter, he goes to Prague to deal with a mysterious case of disappearance.

And he gets wrapped up in a story with a mad scientist with a man-eating plant and there's a lot of scenes about how great the beer and sausages in Prague are and things like that. And it's just really funny. Similar to the director's previous movie

that I talked about Lemonade Joe, it like feels like a Mel Brooks movie. Like it's just really silly. I thought it was really funny. But there's also some stop motion animation by Jan Spank Meyer. So he did the animation for the man-eating plant. Cool. And it's just, I thought it was a really fun, funny movie.

And watching it, there was just a lot of times I was laughing out loud. So it feels like with this director, it's not exactly like Melbrooks' stuff, but it does feel at times like I've discovered like a hidden vein of Mel Brooks movies that Mel Brooks didn't make. And I'm getting the same kind of enjoyment out of them.

So I would recommend it if you want to watch a comedy, a comedy mystery where it doesn't really matter what the mystery. Like, don't worry about the plot that much. And it's called Dinner for Adele and all of these or this one and I think the movie that I hit another movie because that I'll probably recommend next time are both available on Tooby. So it's easy to get. I just added it to my letterbox watch list, which means I will forget it's there and not see it. But I also, I should mention one of the funny things in it that was one of the actors in it, this, Rudolf Horsinski. He is a...

In this, he plays the local police officer who, like, all he cares about is getting the best beer and eating sausages, and he's kind of a... He's not a doof, but he's just, like, not taking the mystery seriously.

But he is played by the lead... The same actor who played the lead in the movie The Creamator, which I recommended a long time ago, which is a very chilling movie and a very, like, intense movie. And it was just very funny to see him play this very,

this comedy role, this very silly role. So I'd recommend it. Dinner for Adele. Chady, do you have a movie you want to? highlight? I mean, I'm a big Tati head and I recently got to see Mon Uncle on the big screen for the first time in a theater, which I would say if you have similar to Elliot, if you want to go back in time and find some interesting comedy, I know, Jack Tattee is I think maybe my favorite filmmaker

of just like doing unique, very specific, very specifically paste comedy. And it's funny because my uncle, I brought friends to it and not unlike after last season, it has a very, a very particular pace to it that if you are having other people watch it with you, you have this feeling of like, come on, come on, come on, just get to the joke. Come on. My friends are bored. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But it's actually a lovely movie and I think like Tati films are meant to be seen in a theater

with lots of people so you can enjoy it. You want to see, he does stuff with the frame too where like it's much, those are much better on the big screen because you want to see all the details of what's happening. Yes, he called Democratic filmmaking. He would, he shoot on 70mm and he would highly choreograph everything. And I mean, playtime is really where this happens. But he's playing with it in Mononkel where in the background and foreground, you know, separate from Monsieur Hulot, you can sort of see little scenes taking place. And so at its best moments, and we're like Playtime, different parts of the audience, we'd laughing at different things because there's sort of different stuff happening in the corners of the scene, which is brilliant.

And you can also, he's so like, he'll distract you sometimes in a way where like the real joke is happening in that corner. You know, but it's a, Is it, oh no, it's in Hulat's Holiday, right? There's a, or maybe it's, I don't remember which one, there's a bit he has where a guy is painting a boat and the can of paint is washing in and out on the tide and it always shows up just as he needs to dip his brush back in. And I'm always like, how did he do it?

Like that's, unlike almost last, after last season where we were joking about like, how did he move that chair? That is one shot where I was like, how did he do that shot? Like, I don't get it. I mean, it's funny because Mr. Hulow's holiday is kind of like the most like Mr. Bean. Yeah. And then like Monong,

it gets closer and closer to that just being like art. And then like playtime is like if Mr. Bean made a film that was like a three hour long art piece that Mr. Bean mostly wasn't in and like bankrupted his entire estate. But is like an epic opus.

I gotta see one of these on the big screen sometime because I confess that I have trouble locking him to the pace and everything. Like, when I first, when I went to France for a week on an exchange program when I was in school, in high school, my host family is like, well, this is a Monsieur Ullo's holiday. This is, you know, he's the greatest of French comedians. I'm like, great, great. This is going to be, yeah.

Oh, you want to see Jacques dea dea. Oh, good. And I was like, man, my share. Now it's Gambit. This is whimsical, but I'd be. not laughing at it. It requires such attention, and it helps when you're in a movie theater.

I think that that would be focused on it. But also playtime has more like hard laughs where I think like Mononcle, truly it'll be like five minutes setups to something where you're like, oh, that kind of does look like a face. Yeah, it's kind of fun. It is more whimsomily.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that dog and that person do kind of look alike. Yeah. Which I enjoy, but I get if you're like looking for big walloping laughs. Yeah. Yeah, Mon Uncle is the one with the house, right? Yes. Where it's like, yeah, yeah, you're like, yeah,

when they turn on the lights the windows, it does look kind of like it's a face with eyes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I was looking over there. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it like scary movie two? Yeah, it's not like scary movie too. Yeah, there's just jokes packed into every frame.

My uncle is mostly like an older man with an umbrella and a hat and a trench coat sort of observing the modernity of France that develops. And then there's also a bunch of like Britney Spears topical jokes They're thrown into it also. They're weirdly like mean about her for no real reason. I know the reason. For some reason, there's a lot of parodies of movies that came out in 2003 specifically. And it's also parodies of other comedy movies.

Yeah, yeah. It's a parody as if it was like the same way that the movie quiz, if you were sitting in the movie theater, would all be for movies that are either just out or recently out. Yeah. It reminds me of, just recently, I don't remember why, on some list of something, it was, Maybe I was thinking of movies from a specific year,

but it was just like, I was reminded of the existence of Remember the Spartans. And I was like, oh, yeah, that existed. That's a thing that was made and exists and is real, you know. Stuart, what you just said reminded me of it. So I, I've switched over to Regal Unlimited recently because I was like, I don't. We're trying to avoid count the Al-N.

I don't. Well, I don't like, yeah, I don't like what the Alamo has done with. I was not Meet the Spartans. Meet the Spartans. Meet the Spartans, yeah. Like phone ordering. And then they had, you know, like, I mean, labor issues before.

But so I'm going to the Regal and they've got, you know, like, never very good pre-show entertainment has gotten like shittier over the years, I think. It's gotten really bad. But at least with a Regal movie, you can show up like 30 minutes late and you haven't missed it. Because there's so much stuff like I can show you. It's a Toyota commercial. Have you guys seen this thing where there's like, it's about like perfect movie lines or whatever? Yes.

It's just like. It's always just that one line. from Casablanca. Yeah, it's like, we'll always have gin joints. Or like it's like the false ones. And then it's like, oh, we'll always have Paris.

I did a whole like breakdown for a Blank Check live show. But one of my favorite things is the evolution of the Coca-Cola student filmmaking challenge. Oh, yeah. Because it started as a thing where it was like, yeah, the students could kind of make something.

And now it's like they get to make an eight-second short film, but it's literally just a straight-up commercial for Coca-Cola. but they still have the student to be like, hi, watch my short film. And then it's like, Coca-Cola is great.

And you're like, this was your short film that you're an idea for? Clearly it's just Coke being like, here's what you're going to make. Yeah, yeah. And fucking Margarijans sitting in the theater being like, I don't understand.

Mark Regions like, they went from wide shot to close up. There's no fan, there's no wall in between. What is this one age re-line that they're flowing? He goes, this is the scariest movie I've ever seen. This is amazing.

I think, if, we gave Mark Regent's issue is that he I don't think he should be writing, directing, shooting, and producing. But I'd be curious if you gave Mark Regent a script that someone else wrote what he would do with it. He'd mess it up. Let's not pretend. Jady, thank you so much for being here

along with your book. I mean, is there anything else you want to plug before we use? No, that's it. The endless game, Bookstores Everywhere. It's about a kid who moves to a new town where every kid in the town is part of a game of Capture the Flag that's been going on for 80 years and has split the town in two.

It's really a book about that period of time as a kid where you're trying to figure out your identity and for me, growing from the suburbs, it was out with my friends and this is just like a heightened fantastical version of that. So yeah, bookstores everywhere and also, you know, at j.d.d.mato on Instagram and you can see book events and links to where to get the book.

I recommend it very much. I enjoy it even not as a child. I have the brain of a child, but I'm ostensibly an adult man. Well, thank you for being here. Thank you also to Maximum Fun. Go to Maximum Fun.org. Check out all the other great shows on the MaxFun Network. Thank you to Alex, our producer.

He goes by the name Howled Doughty. If you want to have a few laughs, download Big Howl and Possum. It's a very strange podcast that Alex does. It's very funny. But for this episode of The Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy. I've been Stuart Wellington. I've been Elliot Kalin, and we've been joined by J.D. Amato. Okay.

And hi, Jay. Hi, Jay. Bye, Jay. On this episode we discuss after last season. Yeah. No one? Yeah. I didn't have a hot one.

Okay, Dan, try again, try again. Oh, I'll get one in a second. Yeah. Heat it up. On this episode, we discuss after last season. Alternate title, Halls and Walls, the movie.

Okay. That's also an alternate title for the back rooms. Yeah, that's true. Okay, I've got another one. Okay. On this episode, we discuss after last season. I thought I had one. I hadn't quite phrased it right. Wait, wait, I've got one, I've got one.

Oh, wow. Unprecedented, but let's do it. On this episode, we discuss after last season. An MRI is a type of image that you can learn a lot of things about the brain from inside. You take a scan and... Perfect, just a 20-minute long open. Actually, Dan, I've got another one. I've got another one now. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.