The Flop House - Dreamcatcher, with Evan Dorkin

Episode Date: May 16, 2026

In 2003, legendary director Lawrence Kasdan teamed with legendary screenwriter William Goldman, for a big-budget adaptation of a novel by legendary horror novelist Stephen King. And the result was... also legendary. But for different reasons than they might have hoped. On this episode, legendary (at least to us!) comics artist and writer Evan Dorkin joins us to discuss one of the most inexplicable flops of the 2000's -- DREAMCATCHER! If you've never checked out Evan's work, he's just released an omnibus of his humor comix under the name NERD INFERNO, a FH-endorsed way to spend your nerd bucks! Stay updated on all things Flop House, plus a little extra, with our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets! Wikipedia page for Dreamcatcher Recommended in this episode: Dan: The Movie Orgy (1968) Stu: Song Sung Blue (2025) Elliott: Apocalypse Pooh (1987), November (1917) Evan Dorkin: One Cut of the Dead (2017) Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinflop

On this episode, we discuss Dreamcatcher. Well, fuck me, Freddie, if you don't take a bunch of Stephen King ideas and put them in a blender. Wow, it's like you stepped right out of the stories, too. Yeah. Hey, everyone, welcome to The Flop House. I'm Dan McCoy. Hey there, Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm also on the Flop House. I'm the third co-host, and my name is Elliot Kaelin. And before we get started, I want to introduce. We have a guest guest.

today. I'm very excited to welcome today's guest. He is a comic book writer. He's a comic book artist. He's had an enormous impact on the three of us, myself especially. Among the many things he's done, he's the creator of the beloved characters, Milk and Cheese. He's co-creator of the series Beasts of Burden. He's the writer of one of my all-time favorite comics, world's funnest, the Batmite, Mr. Mixo-Blick-Blick-Click, team-up comic. I guess they fight each other. And he's done a ton of work in animation. He co-hosts the horror movie podcast, tear them apart. And he just released an enormous book called Nerd Inferno, the Essential Evan Dorkin, which collects seemingly all of his solo humor comics, which makes it automatically the funniest

you will read this year, if not longer. So please join us and welcoming one of the all-time greats of comic book humorists, Evan Dorkin. Evan, thank you so much for watching this piece of shit. Thanks for having me, and I'm sorry that I picked this fucking movie. I really, really, I'm sorry. I had already seen it, so obviously, you know, and it's just, it's a life-sucking. You know, if you hate Hollywood, this will be right up your house. It's not going to change your opinion of Hollywood.

Absolutely not. To pull back the curtain, Evan gave a list of a couple movies to watch. And when I saw a dream catcher on that list, I'm like, we're doing that fucking thing. This movie's crazy. So really, we should blame Stewart. I'll be the little. I'll be the little devil. Yeah.

The problem is I haven't seen a ton of movies made after the year 2000 because the second Matrix film kind of just murdered. I gave up at that point. I know, I honestly did. I stopped going to see movies in the theater. I mean, part of that is a peaked with the Matrix. It's never going to get better. I mean, part of that is living on Staten Island because going to the movies in Staten Island is, you know, is like making, it's like paying money to be kicked in the balls. Do you ever go to the Alamo out there?

I've made a couple of trips. I walked in there just to see the Hong Kong Kung Fu posters and props. But I haven't actually gone to a movie there because I have no life. Okay. Well, now is certainly the time. Now that they've abandoned their no phone policy now. Are you serious?

Really? Wow. Yeah, because in case you want to hear Big Pete talk to Tina. I was so disappointed when we went there. because they're known for having food that they didn't have like Staten Island food like I couldn't get like fucking Aaron Cheney or some shit with my, when I'm watching a movie.

You have some good mozzarella and you get punched in the face just like you were in the 7-Eleven parking lot or on Cachinos or whatever. Yeah, it's, I'm surprised that we're not just showing Ronnie Dangerfield films at that place. You know, or you know, or the God, nothing but the good, I saw Goodfellas out here

in Staten Island and the place was filled with low-level maid men well not made men low-level mobsters and their Asian girlfriends and my friend and I are watching this thing and it was a comedy to them anytime somebody got kicked punched shot they were just laughing

their asses off so yeah the alamo should be a pisser I wanted to see some guy there was a Godzilla film but I missed it you know what can you do they'll probably play it again it took them like four years yeah because they yeah they probably never returned the film Before we get into...

A gunpoint. Before you into Dream Catcher, and is there anything you want to say about Nerd Inferno, your book, which comes out in a couple days as we're recording this. When this is out, this episode out, the book will be out.

It'll be out April 28th, so I don't know when this is going to air. But, yeah, it's a collection of almost all my solo, you know, purported humor comics, Dork, which was a catch-all

for a lot of my stuff that I did for magazines. and punk zines and fanzines and things like that. And a couple of things from free old weeklies that we used to be a thing. You know, and the milk and cheese is just, you know, it's just milk and cheese. It's really nice. There's just two, you know, the cart of milk and a slice of cheese and they beat people up. Yeah.

Yeah, that's pretty much the whole deal. Who I'm bringing back because there's a deadline has come back, the magazine that the British magazine I used to do the strip for. And they're back as a Kickstarter thing. So I told them that I would do some new milk and cheese stuff. Because, you know, it's so hard to find subjects to be angry about these days. But I'll try. It's a challenge.

And does it have all the Eltonville Club? Well, that's the main thing. It has the entire Eltingville Club, which is about, you know, toxic nerd behavior, toxic fan behavior before they started calling it. Before that disappeared. Yeah, that's a game. You know, in this idyllic, again, in this, I quit right before, you know, things got, you know, idyllic in this, in the world of fandom online. But that, yeah, all those things are, they're all out of print from Dark Horse. There's been a, I won't get to take up too much time, but there's been a weird,

uh, revival of the Eltingville Club through TikTok culture. Oh, uh, and, and things like that. which spilled into my social media about three years ago. And the book, there's these memes based on the pilot, the adult swim pilot that failed, but aired. And there's a Spanish dub of it, which, and there's just a resurging underground Eltingville fandom of younger readers in 2026, like about 10 years after the book came out and flopped. It didn't sell out until about two years ago. And the demand for a reprint, my editor, Daniel Shabon, said, you know, we had done the Beast of Burden on the bus, so he said, let's throw all three books in.

And it turned out to be a really nice idea at the right time. So it seems to be there's some demand for it from the little I can gather. It's going to do okay. I mean, that's great. I mean, I was super excited when I heard about it. I pre-ordered my copy despite owning, I think, most of the material already. I'm hearing that from the previous. I appreciate that.

Yes, I do appreciate that. The family appreciates that. But I'm excited. And I'll also mention that you're also on Patreon, and I'm a Patreon support of yours. And I, if you ever wanted to have a Patreon membership where every now and then, you just get a, you just get suddenly a surprise that there's a horror illustration in your email. Yeah. It's really great. I treat the Patreon like a job.

I mean, I try to always update every, at least once a week, if not more. And, you know, I do, I've got about a thousand posts up there. It's a buck a month for most of them. And it's been the spine. It's been, you know, freelancing has been really bizarre, especially since COVID. And, you know, we had, we had a cancer situation in the household. So that, that kind of clipped our wings for a couple of years. And wasn't able to, you know, we weren't able to get as much worse.

worked on as we used to. So, you know, Sarah suggested doing the patron. It's basically been a life line. And, but yeah, I put a lot of back. I post scripts. I put new artwork up, new comics when I can. And I talk about all the failures of my career. Because I don't know how to teach my doing.

I know how to teach by failing. You know, it's like I don't, I don't have the, the, I just don't feel it in me to say, here's how you should draw and here's how you should write. But I can't say, here's where I fucked up. here's where I blew my second pilot because I was a nut job, go to therapy, man, things like that. To me, it's more invaluable to learn

about how you get screwed over in the comics industry or the animation industry or not. I mean, I was actually treated pretty well in animation, to be honest, I fell into, between Space Ghost and Yo Gabba Gabba. I mean, those are good gigs where they actually respected the writers

and let you do what you wanted, things like that. But anyway, yeah. I think it's been out. law and I think it's actually been, I think the Supreme Court actually nullified that. You being on our show is a, is at least a public service announcement for me, who didn't realize that Nerd Inferno was coming out and as an avid dork reader, now I'm like, oh, all of it?

Please. Yeah, all of it. Yeah, plus extras, plus, you know, all the covers and things like that. The House of Fun One Shot is in there. And I'm still doing basically Dork exists as stuff I put on. my patron. And I have enough material that I will eventually put a dork 12 out and keep it going here and there. But, you know, I'm just, I'm in my 60s. I'm just ready to die. But you got to put dork number 12 out first. Yeah, yeah. I think you're, the readiness to die.

I don't know how to do the computer stuff. I don't know how to actually put an issue. Like, I couldn't make a eight-page fanzine if you put a gun to my head. But the, the readiness to die may be more influenced by the fact that you had to watch Dreamcatcher for today's episode, nothing else. Yeah, we've been... Being a badger. Like, Dream Killer is much more... Because it's kind of destroyed my will to live and create.

Well, I apologize that we're going to probably... We haven't even started it. We're going to go through in reasonable detail. Excellent. Scrap open all those wounds. I'm very glad to have you guys steward me through this. Because I definitely... And steward you.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm named after the... The D. With a D. With a D. I didn't mean to invoke, you know, but yes. Because I don't know a lot of the people involved with this were. I mean, I know who the old people who failed miserably are.

But I don't know the relatively young actors of the time. They're all very old now. Yes. Oh, that's fun. Good. Well, it's amazing to see. Usually, usually you watch a osteoporosis. Usually you watch an older movie and there's actors in it who become bigger stars.

and you're like, oh, wow, look at how handsome they were then. And this is, Timothy Oliphant looks. He looks terrible. I'm not terrible, but he like doesn't look to how handsome he got later. He doesn't look as handsome. Which one is Timothy Oloff. He's the car salesman who, uh. Holy good night.

What was his problem? Well, right? Didn't he look absolutely in fear half the time? Yeah, he grew into his face and he got a better haircut at some point. He really did. He got this kind of Marco. Start wearing Cabo-A hat. Erfired Marco Rubio face.

Yeah. No, it's true. Plastic, very sculpted, very weird. Yeah, but then he went on to become the handsomest cowboy on TV. Is he famous from something? Well, he was a star of Justified. And Deadwood. And Deadwood.

Yeah, he became... He would have heard of. Deadwood, that's where the Cowboys curse, right? Yeah, this is a curse a lot, yeah. Home with a cursing cowboy. Charismatic and sexy later on. It's very funny to see him here. Well, everybody in this movie is stunted.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. They're all, I mean, But you have to understand, because it's not, it's directed by a, by a new guy and by the name of Lawrence Kasten. Yeah. A guy, a guy who, who's never worked with an ensemble of actors before or written dialogue for them to say. Well, I feel like the dialogue is the, the work of one, Mr. Stephen King. It is a, it is the, it is the Stephen Kingiest of movies and the dialogue especially that there's so much, there's so much made up slang that nobody has ever used.

Has he just, has he never had? I had friends. Did he always like imagine his friends made up names? I actually said, has he ever socialized? Yeah. And the thing is, I'm a, you know, the thing is to review this movie is really, you got to talk about Stephen King. You can't help it. Yeah.

I mean, he looms so large over Hollywood and over books, but I'm a, I'm a fan of Stephen King as a person. He seems like a good guy who wants the world to be better. I grew up as a big Stephen King fan. I read everything as it came out. I mean... What was your cutoff? What was the last one? Because I feel like a lot of people read everything and then there was a last one.

Mine was Tommy Knockers. Okay. That one is... I could not finish that one and I love Stephen King. The engines on my plane were already burning because thinner, which was just a pulp goof, but it was just like, oh, wait a second. I see a dent in the armor. This isn't great.

And it, I see a dent in the armor. It, I fucking wanted to throw it across the room when they got to, especially when they got to that scene. Yes, when they get to the end, yeah. You know, and Tommy Knock. Coakin makes you write crazy endings. To be fair to Stephen King, yeah, he doesn't like Tommy Knockers either. And, you know, he's talked about how I don't remember writing that book. What happens in that book, you know.

Can you imagine not remembering writing an entire book? That's fun. Well, not for him. Like one crazy night where you're like, It's a crazy night. You're like, what happened that? I don't remember. But to not remember writing an entire book.

I wrote one comic book script when I was breaking into the industry high on cocaine, okay? And I thought it was brilliant. I woke up the next day and I went do over. What? I could not understand. The Superman wouldn't do all those things? I, it was barely English. It was just, it was Esperanto, but 24 pages of nonsense.

I mean. But I didn't have people who would buy it. So I had to rip it up and do it. over again unlike Stephen King. But that kind of cooler head prevailing, like the funny thing to me is that like, yeah, Stephen King writes this like weird gibberish slang that no one's ever seen or heard.

And I understand keeping some of the unworkable plot elements maybe because you're like, oh, that's the plot. I got to keep the plot of the bestselling book or whatever. But why William Goldman, when typing this up, didn't be like, nope, when he was writing some of that stuff? Apparently, that's what's fascinating about this film, was that you've got Lawrence Kasdan, whether you're a fan or not, you got Lawrence Casdan and William Goldman.

Two people renowned for writing scripts. And they turned this thing out, which, and the thing is, King wrote this in 2021. So it's not, you know, and he did write it after getting hit by a car and he was on Oxy. So it's back to his crazy, it's back to his drug days in a lot of ways. It feels like Tommy Knockers. I haven't read Dream Catcher, and I'm not going to. I don't think we have. I'm kind of tempted after rewatching it because it feels so weird.

There's got to be a lot more fuckeroo and fuckery in there. There's got to be. I keep saying to myself that at some point I'm going to read through all of his books, the ones I've read before and the ones I never read. But I know, like, am I really going to go all the way to the last 25 years or so of them? I'm not so sure. But I'm curious to read Dream Capture because it feels like one where if it didn't have Stephen King's name on it, you wouldn't try to make it into a movie.

Yeah. But also, like, I know that it's still bad material. Like, it still probably doesn't work that well. But I can imagine it working better in a book where your brain is creating some of this stuff. You can tell from the movie that there's an interior monologue going on in at least one of the major characters that's super important to the book. And they literalize it. I mean, well, I guess. And it's just awful.

But they do this again. He brings back the inner monologue thing with the physicality. creating a literal headspace in the movie, which works very poorly. And they bring that back in Dr. Sleep, which is one of the other, a few other adaptations I've seen. But Dr. Sleep feels like this. Dr. Sleep has a lot of the same problems any King adaptation has, especially when it's bloated and you don't want to touch it because you'll piss the fans off.

But it feels like there's a sure-or-hand. I mean, Dr. Sleep is it feels like a movie. I feel like Mike Flanagan has a better understanding. I didn't love Dr. Sleep because there's things in it that I feel are the King's things that I just did not care for. The superhero aspects of, you know, flying and craziness and whatnot. And also, but the Stephen King villains, you know, they talk like they're from the 60s or 50s. I mean, they just don't work for me. The woman with the hat and all that.

I did not. Isn't that her name is the hat, right? Rebecca Burgess is called the hat. It's goony. It's just goony. You wouldn't want your D&DM to be fucking. turning these concepts into your game. It feels like, come on, Brad, this is bullshit.

Come on, Brad. I feel like about Stephen King, the same way that I felt about kind of later John Carpenter, where it was like he felt like he needed to get things out of his system, and then someone else had to be like, well, no one needs to see this. Let's just take it away and not publish that one or not make it. Time to just go play video games and watch basketball. That's what's great. Yeah, Carpenter's just like, you know, I don't need to keep doing this.

I'm just going to get high and, yeah, play. And please send me checks. we're adapting my stuff. God bless them. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, still, you know, I could have said ghosts of Mars. We could be talking about ghosts of Mars right now.

We could have been true. But we're talking about Dreamcatcher. Should we start the plot of the movie? We've dithered around the margins enough. It's funny that you say. But now we have to stab it. Yeah. It's funny that you say that you don't recognize these people because my first note is like,

I'm going to use actor names for the most part because they're recognizable. It's really hard to remember who they are unless they're. they have a terrible nickname. Jonesy, Beaver. Eve and Jonesy is all I can find it. So, yeah, Thomas Jane is one of the ones not with a nickname that makes them more interesting. So I'm just going to call him Thomas Jane. He's a therapist.

I'm not going to get into too much detail because I think it would not serve us well. Go for it. I don't have plans. Well, we meet him. He is unethically using his psychic powers to look inside the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, brain, sorry, of a patient. To a fat shemen. That was just awful, though.

I think he's a bad therapist, but the number of times I've been in therapy and I wish that my therapist could just look inside my head and see, so I didn't have to describe it. That would be great. Also, you know, you save a lot of money. Yes. It's just the one session. I mean, I'm going for six years now. I don't have a sure.

I can just go in there and go, you know, yada, yada, yada. You hate yourself. You have to work on it. I'd be like, okay, great, I'm going to White Castle. Thanks for everything. Not only do they fat-shamed this, but because this is Stephen King, the guy collapses the bench. The couch he's sitting on, which is just... It's insulting.

I do also love that the movie does a very clever way to slip in that he went to Harvard. By showing his Harvard degree on the wall? Yes. But they're like, we got to make sure everybody knows he went to Harvard. He shoots it. Does he not? He shoots it, yeah. But speaking of shooting, this mysterious therapist, psychic therapist, pulls out a gun, he's going to kill himself. But he's interrupted by a call from Damien Lewis, who's Jonesy. Now, here's something.

This is something that got to me a little bit was he never, at no point was I like, yeah, there's inner turmoil in this guy that would lead him to potentially take his own life. Like, it seemed so. Or just meeting him. No, no, but later on in the movie. Oh, yeah. I'm sure later on they'll fill in why all four guys are messed up. Yeah. Right?

No, you're right. That does not pay off in any way now that I think about it. No, he doesn't. None of it. You don't know why anybody's got a problem. No. They all seem like they've been really hurt. It's almost like the movie, something happened in the backstory of the characters that we

never see and we don't know about. Because when we do see their backstory, it's just them being psychic together, finding missing kids. But you don't find out. You don't even have the trope of being psychic has fucked their lives up because it's too much noise in their heads. Yeah, yeah. You've got, the therapist is just suicidal.

That's it, that's a character trait. You've got suicidal, toothpick, other good ones. That's what that. It should have been a nickname. It's about a big. Beavers eat toothpicks. Damian Lewis.

Oh, I didn't think of that. That's true. That's more brilliant than most of the film. Yeah. I changed my mind. It's a great movie. Fuck me, Freddie.

It's right. Oh, shit. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Because I'm afraid we're going to have to start saying these things.

things in real life. Later on when they're like, is this a fuckeroo? No, it's a fuckery. I'm like, come on. This is, please don't. Same shit, different day guys. Unless you're going to give me like a David Lynch Dune glossary program to look at during the movie. This movie behave like it's a common term.

Yeah, this movie does need a clockwork orange. You wonder if the book has a clockwork orange glossary in the back, you know. Red, red, cravy, fuckeroo, fuckerree. Jonesy wants them to go up to the cabin for someone named Duditz We'll learn that later on this is the way The character says his name Which is actually Dudley, I believe

But Because Dudley Moore was going to play the part originally But early in the movie Audiences could be forgiven For being like, what's a Dudits? Dudley Manlove. Dudley Manlove could have been in there. Jonesesie's a teacher He is an interaction with a student

that shows he's also psychic. We get car dealer, Timothy Oliphon. He's the good kind of psychic. He's like, you cheated on a test, but you know what? You're a good kid. You're just,

you're poor, so I feel bad. I feel sympathy for you. Because they had the show, they had the show his dirty, his dirty ripped up sneakers, something like 17 times in that scene. They just kept putting insert shots of the,

in case you didn't get it, he's poor. And they're from the same bad part of Maine because in Stephen King's stories, like 80% of the country's population lives in Maine. basically. We meet car dealer

Timothy Alphant. He tries to hit on a lady with his own psychic powers but only creeps her out. This goes on for so long that he's using a psych powers to help her find her keys and I think what creeps her out

is the hitting on at the end. Well, yes. But like I think that she's like spooked by the fact that he seemingly has psychic powers. Except all I kept thinking though was that if I met somebody who found my keys

using psychic abilities, I'd be like, holy shit, I should maybe get to know this person. Yeah, I would think it was cool. I would think he was cool. She's terrified by it. I mean, he does come off as absolutely creepy. Yes.

Yes. Which is wild because it's Timothy Aliphon, who we were talking about before we started taping, became a very handsome, charismatic. He's been slimy, but this is the first time he seemed creepy. Yeah. But the scene comes off.

Like, you're supposed to feel that she's unnerved by his psychic ability. but I would think the entire audience is just like, you know. No, it's the way he's staring. He does have this. And asking her for clams. And that's creepy, slimy bullfrogs stare at her. He seems very desperate.

And I don't know if he's supposed to be. He just like one more, one more member of the crew. That's Jason Lee playing Beaver. And his personality is he's always got a toothpick. And he's an asshole because there has to be an asshole. He's the one who's like the wisecracker. He's the wisecrack and asshole. And he's a Scientologist, right?

Jason Lee is no longer part of Scientology. He doesn't want to talk about it. Okay. He's a very protective of him because he owns a store in my neighborhood. Okay. Really? Yeah. He made it through it.

Okay. Yes. If we pay you enough money, can you go in there and just yell dream catcher and punch him in the face? No. I mean, it have to be a pretty big amount of money. We'll talk about it afterwards. He's brought up. The enjoyment in other projects.

We'll talk, we'll talk, yeah. I think we can come to terms we're all agreeable with. 15 bucks. We can raise money. We can crowd fund this, I'm sure. He'll probably put it $5. What was the store selling? It sells camera equipment.

He's on to photography now. Oh, cool. Well, Jason Lee tells Damien Lewis over the phone to be careful. He's got some kind of bad premonition. and on his way home, sure enough, Jonesy writes, walks right out into traffic. Now, I would like to take him on. Yeah, he gets, what, meet Joe blacked by those cars.

It looks so funny. I thought he got killed by CGI at first. I thought this is interesting. There's a couple of open questions here about Damien Lewis's character. One, this is a weird performance, even before he has a British alien in his head that's sitting over his body. It's already a weird performance. But also, they go out of their way to say that he is dead,

basically. Like you see from his point of view, they're like, there's nothing we can do. But then the next scene, he's just hobling around with the other characters. And I was like,

actually no support for that scene. Yeah. Yeah. And the ambulance we hit Duditz, our first viewing of Duditz as a bully. He's got some sort of mental disability, it seems. And he says,

watch out for Mr. Gay. And then fade out. And we're like, did he die? But like, I guess Dudet's power brought him back to life. And this is 2003, this movie.

So they could be, warning people about gay people. It wasn't, yeah. These movies could still be on the wrong side of that thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, certainly comes up, Mr. Gay. I mean, what are you supposed to make of that, right?

It's just Stephen King being creative. You know? That is like, like, old Southern lady level of, like, damning someone by Stephen and we say something nice. It's, but I mean, you have a ghostly Down syndrome patient saying, beware of Mr. gay. Yes, it's some of the worst. And Hollywood jumps up in their scenes. We've got to do it.

We've got to make this movie. Got to do this as it is. You've got to play it as it lies. And as we learn later, this is something that Duditz has known about since they were children, but has not thought fit to mention it at any point. But he had to wait until you get hit by cars to tell you. It's all part of his grand scheme because he needs him to have been hit by cars. Is Duditz couldn't get a fucking notepad in a pen?

No. We get a caption that says six months later and this plays over shots of a dream catcher because that's the title of the movie. That's where I pointed to the screen tell my wife that's the dream catcher. That's the meme of Leo DiCaprio pointing at the screen except he's got a dream catcher for a head.

I read a Wikipedia about the book that at the end of it I guess sort of explains why it's called dream catcher and I've already forgotten why. Honestly, even in the book it seems like that's a dumb idea. It doesn't really... It's so forced on the film, you know,

but it's, you know, King likes to bring in Native Americans or black culture to throw this like patois of Folcar or some grounding for the bullshit. The dream catcher in this is that, God damn it, it's a dream catcher is supposed to catch, is a Native American that's supposed to, you know, it's all the bad dreams, right? Bad dreams, which is absolutely stupid in the context of this film. Well, it's, it, what it, and it points to like, I bet Stephen King could write a pretty great movie about, like, the collection of nightmares and something like that. Yeah. That would be great. It's its own concept, and they don't use it, really.

It's that they have a big dream catcher in their house. They're like, yep, that's our dream catcher. And then later they're like, to dudd, it's our dream catcher. I'm like, how. How? It doesn't make any sense. I don't understand. There's some, there's, it's, it's probably, I mean, the book is, is thick.

And it's obviously got more time to delve into all this shit. But there's probably all this stuff because later on when we get into the alien stuff, they have a... Wait, there's aliens stuff? Yeah, I hate to tell you. I hate to tell you, but that's where this is going. But the aliens do this like, you know, falsity thing. They have this lying ability of projecting illusions and speak and talk. They do this bullshit.

And that's, I guess, the dream catcher. Oh. I looked up the end of the Wikipedia. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. So apparently in the novel, as it says here, it is revealed that Jonesy was immune to the alien fungus all along, and Mr. Gray was only able to take over his mind because he believed it could,

the idea being caught as in a dream catcher. I'm like, that's way dumber than I thought. That's idiot. I'm sorry I said anything in the last five minutes about this. I feel like I'm not getting paid. to work here. Let me, let me, let me go take a look at stenographer. Can you read back what Evan was saying.

I said Stephen King, master storyteller. It all comes together. It all makes sense. Yeah. I'm sure with more to develop it explains it super clearly. I gave Dreamcrafter more credit than Dreamcast. It's amazing because, you know, as writers, you know, and anybody listening, you know, you go into something, you go into a work situation or try to get a job.

And you bust your fucking ass trying to make your plot, make your characters, make things make sense. and then you get, you know, dream catcher. Yeah. You know you couldn't sell it in a million years on your own name. Absolutely not. Anyway, sorry. No, they've made it out to the cap, and all four guys are at the cabin.

Six months later, Jonesy has recovered with a mysterious speed, and he says that when he was hit, it was because he saw Duttits gesturing to him from across the street and he walked into the street. We had not seen this previous. Because I thought I had missed something. like, oh yeah, I said Duttits there. I was like, I don't remember seeing Dutton. No, he's not in there.

It's a cheat. It's a real weird cheat because they know that their idea is stupid and looks ridiculous. Your friend that you haven't seen in years shows up as his childhood in his childhood got. In his underwear, either you go the other way or you go, hold on, wait for the light. You take the paper bag wrapped liquor bottle you've been sipping off of and you dump it out and you're like, never again. I mean, he looks like he looks, when they finally do show it, it's absolutely ridiculous. Yeah. It's like a G.G. Allen concerts across the street and something like that, you know?

And it's like, but he walks into all the CGI track. It's not like, you know, that, that destiny, the final destination car, the silent final destination car that wipes you out out of nowhere. There's cars go. He just plays the worst. Worst game of Frogger ever. And he's, and he doesn't, it's not like he doesn't seem as if he's about to run across, like, oh, no, an emergency. see. He just steps right in. And it looks like he's possessed or something.

But he's not. That's never discussed. And also like, if you saw your friend gesturing at you across the street, you would still like look. You wouldn't be like, oh man, I got to get smush first. And it is an amazingly bad way to start your drama off. He gets hit by multiple cars. He's destroyed.

People say he's dead. And he's told not to look out from his skin. And then he's in a cabin six months. later. I mean, it's the only flaw in otherwise perfectly. If only we our bodies could all recover this quickly. That's the joy of being what? He's what, like 30s? I don't know.

We don't know. We don't know. And time is interesting in this film because I think it's been a 20-year gap from when they're kids, but they all talk like they're... From the 50s, yeah. They talk like they're still kids, yeah. Well, that's... The stand by me, bullshit.

That's the next thing. They all have some unfunny banter for a while. The idea of a memory warehouse is introduced and we get, as Evan suggested, some very literal visual representations of Jonesy going through his memory warehouse. And a thing that might work in a book. Yeah.

Yeah. We also get Stephen King's hip, you know, hey fellow kids. We get him holding a skateboard and playing, what's his face? I'm blanking out on the singer. Yeah, no, no. Blue Bay.

We get Roy Orbison rock and roll from these. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Who grew up in the 90s or the 80s. It was also on Ubi-Dubi. Oh, that's true. Yeah, he's like, he's like, don't forget the words to Blue Bayou, right? And I'm like, what the, what do you?

Yeah, Blue Bayou. That was a big hit in 1980, 90. Sure. But yeah, we get a lot of this slang that was previously mentioned. Fuckeroo, fuckerow. Jesus Christ bananas comes in. So later on, someone says a real Jabba Nava. Javanava was it.

What's funny is, then when Morgan Freeman gets home to literally, it's like he's trying to outdo them. Because it's like, hey, buddy buckaroo, okay, buddy boy, bucking. He's gone back to easy reader days or something like that. That's a real jobba there. Pissing on the same latrine. All the gorilla. The thing that's really bad about that sequence is, is, are we going to go through the whole thing and then talk about?

I don't understand. No, no, we can talk as we go. Okay, so what's really terrible about that whole, you know, getting to know these guys, which you don't actually get to know them at all because it's just horrible banter, which is why, you know, we were joking before. Does Stephen King have friends? Does he talk to people? Because it seems to be this whole inner life writing.

It's just, it's just devoid of real life. And but cat, I mean, whatever you want to say about Kazan and Goldman did watch these. These are actors on a set speaking lines, wearing makeup, being lit. It is such a phony, symphony. It is just so, it doesn't even reach the level of commercial advertising reality. It is just so forced and it's depressing because it's like, it really does feel like, you know, hello, hey, fellow kids. I mean, it's just. Yeah.

But you're kind of right. If they started talking about, you know, have you ever, I mean, they do start talking about Viagra at one point, right? And it fails to reach the level of reality of a Viagra commercial where people are like, you know, I've been having a little bit of trouble with the old lady. well, you know, my doctor gave me some advice. Like, it feels like they're feeling to meet that. Niagara is also the most recent, I think, pop culture or, you know, world reference that's in, because we also have bars bars,

we have Louisville Sluggers. I mean, I'm old enough to get this shit. Maybe you guys are close enough. But it's like, when's the last time you heard the word Louisville Slugger in your life? Yeah, yeah. It takes you, I mean, there's just no way into this film to try to enjoy it. It's just,

impenetrable. Yeah, and it's filled with seemingly irrelevant stuff. Like, we get a flashback to Derry, one of Stephen King's favorite locations. Derry, Ireland, yeah. The Trump. It's like his Toronto. It's like the cheapest place to film or something. We see the four.

It's cheaper to write things set in Derry. He's like, it's cheaper to write a novel set in Derry. You don't know. Yeah. I know people there. I have deals. Our child versions of our four leads Find a shirt and a Scooby-Doo lunchbox

And that's because they've been ripped off of Duddits By some bullies The Scooby-Doo references may be the worst of the references In the movies Yes, yeah Yes To have a character in a, just to spoil something But to have a character in the serious climax of the movie

Go, Oobie-Dubidoo, we got some work to do now It is amazing It's amazing that that survived at every level of filmmaking. So this poor kid is being bullied by some high schoolers, I think, and one of them is the captain of the football team who is trying to force feed him a dog turd. And I'm like, just to do that means he has to touch a dog turd. Yeah, yeah. Right?

Well, also, like, he is like shamed into backing off. Basically, like, oh, we'll tell you, we'll tell everyone in school how you get your kicks. I'm like, I hate to tell you guys, but little kids are like sociopaths. They're going to side with the captain of the football team. He says, I'm going to, we're going to tell the world, which was pretty hilarious. We're going to tell the world that you feed this guy.

And also, the idea that they've somehow never met this kid before. Like, where did he come from? I believe he went to a different school. I think they do address that he went to like a special week's school. They actually backed something up in this movie. I mean, I don't know how well, but. I mean, there must have been some scene that got. cut that shows why they don't get the shit kicked out of them the next time they leave the house.

It makes no sense. And it's funny because they really are a, you know, a Tammu Stephen King bully group. They seem to be. I mean, what's really sad about it is that the first shot you get in the flashback is them walking. And no one on earth can see that without going, this is stand by me. Yeah, 100%. It just looks like a terrible standby me flashback. And in fact, I think the next time we flashback, they're walking by train.

tracks, which is, like, it just should not be allowed, you know? It should be illegal. Yeah, it's just been dead bodies littered everywhere. It was, it's vaguely insulting and kind of really cheap and beneath filmmakers to go that far. I mean, the film is such a grab bag, king things in the first place. It does, it does feel like that. Christine driving by, and the Kujo runs by. It feels like they're, they've ordered.

Stephen King by the pound. And they're just like, yep, 10 pounds of Stephen King. And they're just, do we specify what parts we get? No, no, they just slop it all into a bag of Stephen King. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Snows. Yeah, but they befriend Duddits.

That's the whole point of that. Back in the present, Damien Lewis is in a hunter's blind and he sees this injured man walking through the show and brings him inside. To the show? To the show. Yeah, he doesn't, he's not walking through the show. He's not a production of Smigadoon on Broadway now. I hear Smash Mouth is playing in this forest.

He says, being called by the siren song of Smash Man. It's the perfect band for this film. Oh, excuse me, Roy Orbison and Linda Ronstadt. This ended in the All-Star. Is Del Shannon performing her own dear? Oh, yeah, a huge superstar, Del Shannon, yeah, of course. Yeah, he brings him inside.

Del Shannon. He brings this man inside where the man can't stop burping and farting, and he's got a rash to. So the movie gets super pleasant. So this is when the movie, I feel like the movie reaches, it's had a number of tests that it has failed up to this point. This is when it reaches the hardest test

and the easiest to fail and they, which is, can this movie maintain a tone of horror when you have a character who's just burping and farting as loud as possible? I think, like Roger Ebert had a quote where it's like this movie has too many farts for a movie that's supposed to be taken seriously.

Something like that. How many farts is there? You know, Mr. Owl, how many fucks? Oh, he could, the tortoise could never figure it out without biting, yeah. Yeah, and the thing is also, it's just the actor, it's just such a sitcom level kind of everything. The guys make, I mean, it's just ludicrous.

It's like, this is like, you know, an episode of Alice or something with it, you know. But also, he's clearly, there's clearly something seriously wrong with him, and they're like, you okay, buddy? Well, his belly just ended like there's a thing in me. He's got a balloon in his chest, and he's got red makeup all over his face, and he's acting really badly. And one of them's like, yeah, go sleep in my bed. Yeah, exactly. Well, these are the nicest guys.

They're ever being fed a turid by bullies, they will show up to stop you. But that's what Jonesy and the Beeve are up to. They're all thing fart. Yeah, the Beebe shows up eventually and says some crimon, oh, I can't remember that one. He has some other great bondmots. fart-related references. Yeah. Meanwhile, what?

I was going to say, what's Tom Chained? Tom Jane and Tim Aliphant are coming back to the cabin. They see someone sitting in the middle of the road, and they swerve to avoid them, flip their truck, and investigate this woman in the snow, she's nearly frozen. This little trip in there is not going well. Yeah. No, no.

These guys are really boring. Also farting a lot. Super fuck-ups. Yeah. They're very bad at what they're, like, that you, one, I don't know why they're driving so fast. down a snowy woodland road that they can't stop. They do cover this in a very Stephen King way.

They have, you know, how they have their buddy schick. But they start basically, they've got to get over this hill. So they start, you know, make, come on, pump it or some dumb thing. Like, you know, and it's terrible. That's right. And it makes no sense. But I would say, I would say this is. It gets us to them crashing outside the farting woman.

Yeah. This is up there, maybe, maybe a head of deliverance in terms of. Guys trips out that don't go well. Yes. Barting woman would be a good alternative to Burning Man, I think. Yes. Sorry. That aside.

Or like a booby-duby-duby. An inn or a tavern. Yeah, yeah. The farting woman. Yeah, that's like a pub in a particularly poorly run Dungeons and Dragons game. Oh, yeah. Get a tanker available to farting woman. That's when you beat the bard up, right?

No. Always got to kick the bard there. Who, bite my bag. He says bite my bag. Spine-Bide bag at one point, yeah. At the cabin. His bag of holding, of course. Very good.

Beave and Jonesy, Lee and Lewis, see a bunch of animals running away. They also have the rash and a helicopter arrives. It's hovering above them with a megaphone. This whole area is under quarantine. They have to stay put. It'll be resolved within 48 hours. And inside the helicopter, Morgan Freeman.

With some great eyebrows? Those eyebrows are amazing. George Whipple's fucking flying this thing. That's amazing, those eyebrows. I mean, you can't stop staring at them. That's a regional newsman, George Whipple. Oh, my God. Jonesy and the Beave, they see a blood trail to the bathroom.

They check on the sick man. He is dead on the toilet, bleeding from the rectum. Something swimming around in the toilet. So this is when they felt, this is when they got to this part of the script, and they said, green light it. Yeah. Off OBO. This is the part where everybody needs to go into people's houses and remove Oscars.

Lee is stuck on the toilet trying to hold it down. He's like Danny Glover and Lethal Up and 2. Yeah, move. Definitely, yeah, yeah. You got to get into the toothpick. You got to get the toothpick. He drops his toothpicks. They're dropped in the bloody feces.

There's blood everywhere. There's blood everywhere. They drop on the floor, and he is like trying to reach for one, but still trying to hold down the toilet seat. It's like, let your toothpicks go. They're covered in blood. The dumbest behavior. Dumbest things you've ever seen in a film.

And not only that, but they give him a chance to think about it because he reaches for a toothpick. And the creature tries to, it bounces him up in the air. Yeah. So he gets, you know what I mean? Somebody actually says, hang on, Kimisabi. Yeah. There's an ass monster in the toilet below you. If you reach for that, it can come out.

I mean, he's clearly given the choice, and he does it again. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, he's alone because Jones, he's going to get some duct tape or whatever to tape it down. But, yeah. Guys, we've all been there, right? So, Biv. Yes.

Beave is, like, reaching for a toothpick that's fallen. He does, like, go for the one that's, like, not in the blood, but it's still on the bathroom floor. He doesn't need a toothpick to live. Yeah. There's no reason for it. I mean, I realize his whole personality is he has a toothpick in his head. Okay. But he's not going to die without the toothpick.

This is definitely the behavior of the type of person who wears shoes in other people's houses, right? Yeah. I mean, what? It's written as if he's reaching for, like, his insulin shot or his inhaler. Right. No, you would think that this is the asthma, you know what I mean? The asthma scene that's the only. Even if it was a cigarette.

If it was a cigarette, at least I'd be like, okay. That's what I was saying. Okay, he's nervous. I don't know. But I mean, I'm tooth fucking, he can't wait for a toothpick. Unfucking believable. How do you read that script? This is one of two scenes where someone fumbles with something.

Yes. And you see a whole bunch of things false because it's due to do with matches later. Yeah, it's a motion. Because you might miss it. The audience might not, you might blink and not know that they drop the object. There's a, it's actually, I mean, it's not germane to the movie, but it's amazing. You had to drink every time there was a insert shot or two guys looking at each other so that you know that the point was made.

It is such a anxious movie. Yeah. It really doesn't think that audiences have eyeballs. Yeah. It's constantly, you know, did you see that? The toothpicks? Well, there's also the point when the, when the, all the animals, my wife pointed this out, all the animals are like going away from whatever came.

The Disney scene, yeah. And she's like, and like, the one guy's like, hey, beave, and beep doesn't do anything. And he's like, beaver, beaver, until he, like, turns around and looks or Jonesy. I don't remember which one. But it's like, no, you would react. Like, human beings react to things. Like, you would have turned around. The reactions are horrible.

You'd probably hear before you didn't have to see. I mean, that kind of stuff happens in movies all the time where, like, you don't notice the thing is happening until you see it, even if it's a lot. It would be a loud thing, you know. Also, if I saw that happening. I like that the animals are also really orally. And you kind of expect, like, Sleeping Beauty, Disney's Sleeping Beauty. And walk through that thing.

Birds on her, you know, adjoining her. It's a ridiculous scene. Speaking of another Disney movie. It sounds great in the book, I bet, because that's an interesting, you know, the reaction of flora, blah, blah, of fauna, you know, oh, the frogs, there's no noise. I always enjoy that in a movie where you know something big and bad is coming. But it's like, what is it reacting? You don't know what it's actually reacting to. Staying on the Disney thing.

I would think, oh, Bambi. Like, if I saw that happening, I would be like, oh, there's a forest fire coming this way. We have to leave this cabin. I wouldn't be like, let's hang out. But they've been told by the helicopter they're quarantined, which Jason Lee seems to take very personally. He's like, we got a sick man down here. Oh, he goes crazy.

He's quarantined. They set it up as if Beave is going to have a, you know, a poll fight with Morgan Freeman later because he gives him the finger. And then they show Morgan Freeman staring him down. It's like, wow. Jason Lee doesn't have that finger for very long. No, no, no. That's true.

He gets into Farma for his toothpake idiocy. and he, like, slips, the thing comes out of the toilet. It's like this worm penis tentacle with big rows of teeth, and it immediately eats his fingers. It's an okay kind of slimy alien-mage thing. It's all right. It's not crazy. Doesn't it actually make any quality judgment.

No, I'm just saying. I'm just saying it for the audience. Doesn't it bite him in the crotch the first thing it does? I think later it bites. There's two. There's two crotch shots, if I were, if I, if I, this thing comes out of, and it starts fucking with him, and then, it eventually gets him.

It takes his finger. But I believe it bites him in the crotch because later on we have a second crotch. Oh, it could be. With plastic things. Either way, he gets killed. Yes. He gets his, I think he gets his crotch grabbed

and bit on the back of the neck. Jonesy locks it in the bathroom. Some people like that. It gets out. It crawls past him towards this new strange creature who's just arrived. It's a big gray alien that's sort of vaguely close-en counter-ish.

this alien leans in towards Lewis before his head explodes into a red mist that I guess Lewis breathes in cut to the local military encampment where Morgan Freeman... This is where plot three of the movie rips itself into plots one and two. You get these nice like, you know,

sub-Speelbergian military music and shots with a budget that, you know, you just kind of see money coming going across the space, you know, we're opening this up. Morgan Friedman talks to his second in command

played by Tom Seismore. That's a good sign. That's a good sign right there, right? Yeah. Just need Michael Madsen to walk in. But that's the problem with casting Tom Seismunders. I was waiting for that character

to lose it. The movie. Yeah. Yeah. But he's very nice. Weird stuff happens. Oh, you think weird stuff happens? We get some info dump stuff that doesn't really clear much up.

But these gray aliens have been here before. They're trying to infect people with some kind of fungus, which also causes people to sprout these things that are called shit weasels. They call the fungus virus Ripley as a reference to aliens. They have to mention in the movie as a reference to alien. It's really bad when you're ripping something off and then you actually acknowledge it. Well, he's also called...

Colonel Curtis, which is obviously an allusion to Colonel Kurtz, which he actually was Colonel Kurtz in the book. So I guess that was one case where William Golden was like, this is too obvious. We got to settle this up a little bit. And he's a special unit of the military that just tracks down alien outbreaks and does not answer to anyone else. Yeah, they're the Blue Boy Buccaroos or whatever. They don't answer the logic.

25 years they've been doing this. And they know like 12 sentences about what they're doing. and they give it all to you. It's also one of those things where, if you've been doing this for 25 years, it seems like the thing that would probably help you is for the public to be aware of this issue and be on guard against it

so that you would have, so that you can help to deal with it, instead they've kept it a secret all this time. But it's not even like, and we've gotten all this stuff from the alien technology or something like, right, we can't let the Russians know about this. When you see later in the film,

what the alien invasion comprises, it makes absolutely no sense that everybody on Earth hasn't seen this before. Yeah. You know, this is not like a, they don't send like a seal team. No. You know, it's a, it's a close encounter's big ass bunch of ships they have. Yeah.

And there's hundreds of aliens coming out of it when we see it. Yeah, you'd think there would be like public service announcements like, if you see this worm, step on it or don't reach for a toothache. In New Jersey, they're like, if you see a lantern fly, step on it immediately. Right. And it's like there's not a secret government operation that goes around killing lanternflies to protect the trees. You know, like people can never actually. I do have a tree. It's all about that.

One of the biggest failings in the film, and that's a long list, is that we're never told whether the Ripley disease is a new item in their, you know, is a new weapon. Because if it turns out that they've had this before, the movie makes even less sense. Well, I do think they try and paper over it a little bit because they have like Tom Seismore being like their studies showing that like some people recover at Morgan Freeman. Which means that, which is actually bad for the film because if this should be a new disease. Yeah. That they don't know exactly know how to deal with because otherwise not only they're incompetent, this movie ended before it began. Yeah. There's no, the dumbest alien.

Basically the problem with this movie is that this is a movie about an advanced alien culture that has massive space. interstellar travel weaponry, and they don't know how to do something that the Joker can do in an average of Batman. That's true. They do not know how to drop a worm into a reservoir or an ocean. It's just un-fucking-belief.

It seems strange to me that when we see the gray aliens, they're big and they seem very strong, but they've got to, like, get into Joneses' body when he's injured already and try to lift a cap off of a reservoir Well, they're trying to get out of the quarantine as a hitchhiker. That's the idea. I guess the idea is that they crashed, but I 100% did not even like.

Yeah. The thing about this film, the bullshit set up is that they crashed. Yeah. But it's really stupid aliens versus stupid people. Yeah, yeah. No, totally. It's also like that mobile game, by the way. Yeah. That sounds great.

Yeah. They should have been able to drop the worm before they crashed. They could have done, they could, they could do it next Tuesday. They could have done it last. And also they show, they, they show later that the, the, the aliens can impregnate their eggs in animals. So yeah, any one of those Disney animals, and they were hundreds. Animals would seek out water. None of the, none of the soldiers are told, look for animals, court, you know, it's, it's an idiotic premise that just does not get contained at any moment.

It does not make sense. And this is one of the many movies we've watched for this podcast where there are aliens that are advanced enough that they have like spaceships. They do probably genetic testing. They do have not discovered clothing. They do not seem to have any sort of worse. They just kind of growl.

They've advanced beyond clothing. He says in the scene that you were talking about, he says, Morgan Freeman's character says, he infers that they don't, they haven't met a planet yet that they haven't wanted to conquer or something along those words. I wrote it down somewhere, but how does he know that? They can't even tell what they're doing on Earth.

How does he know what they're doing on other planets? But has he read their newspaper? He gets their substack or something. What the fuck? How do you believe that? As a viewer and as somebody who has written words for money, how do you fucking not let, how do you not have somebody just go,

dudes, this makes no sense. sense. But we can fix you can fix this. Yeah. You can fit. These are things that you could paper over, as you said, in a weekend, you know. That's what professionals are supposed to do. And this whole movie is just really flying craziness, you know, it's not what not to do in Hollywood, except that this is a real film that got made.

So all bets are off. I pulled out my copy of a what lie did I tell. And I'm like, oh, man, it's a shame that William Goldman wrote this before he did Dream catcher it. It cuts off before I would love to hear him talk about. The last page of the book it says, and then I wrote Dreamcatcher. And then it's the last... And I can't wait for this next thing I'm writing.

The next thing I'm writing is the best one. We get a brief scene where Freeman shoots an underling in the hand. Just to show how serious this is. Yeah, he's not a good dude. He's not a normal boss. He's a cool boss. Yeah. This is how we know that he's crazy.

Yeah. Because he's so bored with the movie. that you can't tell otherwise. Also, I love that the guy's shooting like his equipment. Yeah. Letting bullets off in his high tech. Inside of his trailer?

Yeah. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And it's one of these things where the story is probably more interesting if Morgan Freeman characters isn't, his character is not crazy. If he's like, no, we're under attack. And the only way to stop him to kill all these infected people, you know.

I mean, he's not, he's not completely wrong. Yeah. I mean, you, you hate him as. a villain because he's willing to sacrifice people for the greater good, but that's kind of what you have to do. Yeah. When you deal with aliens, that's an alien plague? Jonesy is now acting weird, making weird faces. He gets on a snowmobile.

Tom Jane is trying to walk to the cabin. So Timothy Aliphant is alone, getting drunk with the farting woman. He's not alone. He's with farting. He has died. He doesn't realize that she has died. and not just asleep. And his friend told him,

don't leave her alone to go get beer from the car, from the cell. But he's drinking. Yeah, he fucked it up. But he does. He had some in his pockets already. She has expelled. He goes he leaves her alone and she passes out.

Yeah, yeah. He misses the initial farting sequence. That sounds like, no, that sounds like something that should be in the space ball sequel is like a fart power of space. Initial farting sequence. He does a little soliloquy. he talks about how Duttits gave them all psychic powers

and he's been having these dreams that suggests that an alien sent there to prepare them for something. Oh, okay. Just the movie, considering there's so much bonkers stuff in this movie, it so takes it for granted that we assume that they are kids who got telepathic powers from their friend,

the mentally challenged kid. The movie is just like, yeah, yeah, so then Dudditz gave us these psychic powers. That seems like the kind of thing you'd spend some time on. They show them later, will get to when they get the powers and realize they have the powers and they take it as if they just found an extra nickel

in their coat, you know? It's just, it's a nothing. They don't have time. It's a two hour. How long is this move? This movie's like seven hours. Yeah, and they don't have time to establish things, you know.

Yeah. They just don't. There's too many ideas. Too many good ideas. Psychic powers. Thumbs up for psychic powers. Yeah, they just accept these things. And you still don't,

even with this exposition dump, you still don't know why they're upset. with life. Yeah. Yeah. Because he's an alcoholic. They've dealt with him a little bit before he's drinking in the daytime. I think you're right.

I think there is one of the many missing pieces is that they don't address that the reason these guys have struggled like emotional problems is because of these powers, this or responsibility they've gotten from their friend does. Which is really weird if you're a Stephen King fan or an ex-Steven king fan because that's one of the things he was always good at. Yeah. You think about the Shining or Salem's lot. You understood the trauma aspect because everybody had, you know, especially all the writers.

They had to have writers all had to have trauma because sometimes you're a writer. You might go walk out of your million dollar house and get hit by a car someday. So, but they don't even attempt to lock in why they're friends or even. Why do they stay in touch? There was a great scene, though, when they get into the cabin and somebody says something like, well, we've been doing this for 28 years or something like, and it's just, it's just the, the dialogue is such a on the nose garbage slop. It's such, it's a, this is an AI movie for God's sakes.

But do you ever walk, you know, we've been coming to your house for 15 years now and et cetera. It's unbelievable. But yeah, like, please, please go on. It's the idea on Gilbert Godfried on his podcast, you talk about movies for someone who go like, Marty, I'm your brother for crying out loud. Don't you remember? establish this.

They literally say, how do you not remember the memory warehouse that we have to live in? And I'm like, I guess that was so clever. But it's just stupid. Your friends don't remember that you have a met. And you're all psychic, so you should be fucking talking with your mouth closed anyway. But that's actually something we haven't even dealt with. They don't really need to be psychic in this movie. No, not at all.

Except to find each other later. They're like, well, I got to find others. And it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just the simple. I mean, two of them definitely. Thomas Jane does use it to convince. Fingers, fingers doesn't need, you know, beve. Tom's size more. That's true.

Thomas Jane used to convince, and then they talk to each other over the gun phone. Yeah. That's amazing, yeah. Well, we'll get there. All of that goes to pee, shit weasel lunges at his penis. He fights it off with fire. Tom Jane thinks the snowmobile coming towards him is his friend, to rescue him, but his psychic link

allows him to realize that's not Jonesy. I would like to stop you here for a moment because this is an amazing bit of film making. So it's actually one of the few times that the psychic thing comes into play and it's a cute bit of business

to a degree. They move the camera from Thomas Jane to the oncoming snowmobile. And he basically goes, that's not Jonesy, which is hilarious. And then they pan back, and the We follow the snowmobile. Thomas Jane is gone.

Okay. And he reveals himself to, he's under the snow on the other side of the road. And this is, this to me is the greatest scene in the movie because there are no footprints and there is no impact where he jumped into the snow. It's like a fucking Wally Coyote. There is no physical evidence of him going over to where he ends up and hide it. You cannot just they don't say that they're telekinetic.

And these are professional filmmakers with decades of experience that nobody said, hey, hey Hank, how do you fuck did he get over there? You know, one of the PAs. How did he get over there? Add that to the goofs? The goofs?

The goofs overflowing, I would imagine. It is amazing. But I'm like, he literally just teleports under the snow. Yeah. And not even weird. he's standing. Well, he probably, what he probably does,

yeah, he jumps up in the air, clicks his heels, dives under the snow and burrows. He dives and spins around. Yeah, even a Pismo Beach thing. The snow, the ground still pops up where he, where he traveled. You know, Chuck Jones covered that. But he does get in.

His head stays in one place. His body spins around like a top and he drives down like a trills. But that does explain why later he shows up in a bullfighting ring and he asks for the Cochella carrot festival. And, you know, they have to fight that ball. It's absolutely like, I didn't catch that the first time. But it's obvious. But, you know, you're so gobsmacked by everything else.

So, Damien Lewis. We're almost done with a movie, right? No. Damien Lewis has the task. Did any of you actually at one point look up how much left? And the first time I looked out how much is left, I was only 45 minutes in and I thought I was going to cut my throat with a fork. I could not fucking believe there was another hour and a half of this shit.

Well, I had to keep stopping it to take notes. So for Dan, it was like a three-hour movie. Yeah, it was. It was unpleasant. Damien Lewis has the unenviable task of having to converse with himself between Jonesy and Mr. Gray, the alien who's taken over his body.

And that's what, of course, Dutz is trying to say, beware Mr. Gray, not Mr. Gay. And later on, in totally extraneous dialogue, Like someone says that. Someone realizes like, oh. Oh, yeah. They're like,

Mr. Gray is they've made it this far. Mr. Gray. The audience has made it this far. They're idiots. Yeah. Mr. Gray is also, where does that name come from? It comes to, he's a gray alien.

Does he call himself Mr. Gray? No. They start calling him? No. It just comes up with it. It just feels like another Stephen King thing where suddenly a bad guy has a name and it's, it doesn't come from him. Yeah.

Morgan Freeman's character calls them gray's and he's, you know, when he's like talking about literally. ETs out of the ass and things like that. Yeah. So they call them grays because they're bait. But the funny thing is they don't really look like gray. They're not really grays, yeah. The only thing, the things you see have these giant bulbous heads.

They're colored gray. Yeah. When they come out of the red mist thing, it makes no fucking. And that's supposed to be their like nice presentation to not scare people versus the real, like, more wizard-y. It looks terrifying. Yeah. I don't understand.

Their whole concept falls apart. Well, the first, the first Grays that came to Earth arrived on Halloween, and they thought this was the stuff that we liked to see around. Yeah. I mean, the Grays are supposed to be those little spindly, E.T., you know, close encounters, aliens. With the big eyes and, yeah, yeah. And the hand signals and, you know, the minimalist music.

Oh, they love that. They come in with the Eric Satte, you know. Is it possible? They came to the planet to find Philip Glass. Yeah, do we have Philip Glass? Over and over and over again. I just want to note that Mr. Gray talks with a British accent, an English accent. And even though Damien Lewis is English, it sounds unconvincing somehow.

It really sounds like. It really sounds like Dick Van Dyke. He's bouncing between two fake accents the entire time. And he changes his facial expressions. He's got like, you know, one mad Batman's six. Yeah, he's terrified. I read that he, I read here that he was basing that on Malcolm McDowell. That was his.

That's what it sounds like. Yeah, yeah. exactly who it sounds like. And the facial expression made sense to me after I read that because it's like, it's a good choice.

It's a performance now. Yeah. Yeah. It's a terror. Except the problem is it's not Malcolm McDowell of if it's Malcolm McDowell of the substitute

19th. Class of 1999, the substitute. Mr. Gray finds Timothy Oliphon. He tortures him and tells him and tells him

to stop. This is, all the mind warehouse stuff here is two. so I don't like it when it's this literal where it's like, hmm, there's information I need from your mind warehouse who is literally burying it under boxes of other material. Yeah, later on he's going to

burn it. I'm like, that's not how it works. No, no. I've tried to burn things in my mind that it just doesn't take. No, yeah. I just think about it more and more. You know, oh, that time that I stole a copy of Fantastic Four from my friend

Marshall German. I'll burn that. Well, shit, it's just kind of, you know, the ember. are in the rest of my head forever. I'll never get rid of it. You know, the fuel and the heat, but not the oxygen department. It's so bizarre. I mean, I can see it working in the book, but I really would never have tried.

I would never, not that I'll ever be in this position, I would have absolutely shit-canned that entire. And the monster's running around, at times they show the monster running around in his dream warehouse. And the memory warehouse is hilarious, too, because it's just this like, Pirates of the Caribbean looking fake. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Right. Rose-D-L spiral staircase. Why would you have to hole in your mind stuff on a... It's like in the movie identity where it's all taking place in one person's head anyway, but then they go back and show you how the killer killed each of the other characters when no one was looking. It's like, well, they're not real. So it doesn't matter.

Like, you could just say it happened. You just made it up. It's like the idea that you have to spend movie time running through your memory. And you're being chased in this like Raiders of the Lost Ark nonsense. And then a monster is in your... brain. It's literally chasing it. Like, it's just,

it's just, it's so bad. I mean, you could, you can see them grappling with how to kind of make this film more interesting. Yeah. And it, it never, this movie about aliens and psychic people, they're like, let's juice it up a lot.

Yeah, we got to get inside this guy's head and show him doing some library. Yeah, let's see his dark twisted fantasy. Library shit. Yeah, in Dr. Sleep, they redo this, but it's kind of less awful. Yeah. Somebody has a memory bank in their head.

I think that they stylize it more, which I think makes it more acceptable. It looks like it's a better, it's a better organized memory. And it's got, you know, it doesn't have 1950s fixtures and Roy Orbison. It's really funny because you can, I didn't want to stop the film and look at it, but you can see that they paid people to go through every file and write down. I mean, somebody is very. very proud of the fact that when he opens up a file to put the music of Blue Bayou in, there's a punk section.

I did catch that. And I was like, yeah, I believe that. Yeah. Yeah, the same guy likes all these things. The punk, it's probably like, you know, it's a new wave band. It's the village voice's punk record. Gray takes A lot on with him on the snowmobile briefly because he wants, I think he thinks he can help. His direction pointing powers.

This is the only time that his power is used, and it's a good thing that he runs into the guy who somehow has the map quest. And he does it by swirling, and then like a toilet bowl appears. It's a bad effect. And he's the only one gets it. And also, it's just so useless.

I mean, it's like, why did he get one extra power? Why is he the dowsing rod of the TV? It's possible they all have extra powers, but they just don't show up in the movie. Like, one of them is like, you show me a food, I can tell you all the calories. I don't even need to look it up on the box. That's true.

Yeah, that's true. But it might have been, I think you're lying. Thomas Jane makes it back to the cabin. He sees blood and red fungus all over. He finds dead beef. He gets a vision of Mr. Gray possessing Jonesy. And he sees the shit weasel laying eggs in the bedroom. He blows her away with a shotgun.

He squashes some babies. And he purchases the eggs and the whole cabin. And that's got to be an homage, too. to erase her head, right? You're stepping on those little baby weasels. Yeah. Those little baby weasels. There's like a scene of like the dream catchers being torched.

I'm like, oh no, the dream catcher. You can tell that that was supposed to really catch you in the fields. And the whole place actually goes up and you feel nothing. You feel absolutely nothing. And they've been going to for 20 years. Flashback, kids making dream catchers. They ask Duddits to find a missing girl because he's mysteriously good at finding things, they'll put their hands on him and he uses his powers to make them all the

psychic. They form like a little dream catcher with him in the center. Yeah. Yeah, that was clever. Yeah. And they find the girl in a drainage pipe and they rescue her. This really is kind of irrelevant. What I love about this sequence is that they're like, oh, she's in this drain pipe.

And one of the kids lowers in there. And then it cuts to just duddits his face. And they're like, hey, she's here. And he's just smiling. Like, we don't even see them find the girl. This movie does not want women. in this this women actually a fair argument yeah there are i think speaking roles for like four women and none of them go on for more than like two the the woman that um uh plastic face is hitting on

yeah uh the girl in the drain pipe mostly off camera you get done it's mom at one point it's mom who becomes seems in like a a character with gravitas in that scene but we've never seen it doesn't matter. And some random people who have the disease who say, help me, help me. They couldn't even, there's not even one. Farting lady? Did we say farting lady? Oh, wait, there is the farting lady.

She has, I think, one line. Yeah. When she punches him in the nuts. She's the third. Farts herself. I forgot. There's a thing about, you know, this is Kevin Smith pass on this script that fucked everything up.

But yeah, it's an incredibly male film. I mean, the army has, there are no. I believe there were women in the military in 2003. I've heard rumors of them. Yeah. You know? But it's weird. Yeah.

Well, because it has such a, it's so much about male friendship. Male bonding it. Yeah. And nut punching. All that being said. The need for toothpicks. All that being said. The guys actually sound slightly misogynistic when they do in their bad.

Oh, more than four. You know, well, I was giving it the benefit. You're being charitable. Yeah. All that being said, though, I mean, we, we still could cut this straightish pipe girl. Because all it tells us, like, we already knew that Duttis gave them all psychic powers. We don't need to show them going on like a little mini adventure with their kids.

Two seconds when they're having dinner in the cabin, they go, remember when Duddits gave us those powers? And they're like, yeah, that was crazy. Okay. And the thing is, when they get the powers, they just basically shrug and run off. Literally, they just shrug and run off. One of them makes the toilet swirling thing. Uh-huh. And everybody goes neat.

And it's funny also because they lower the little guy. They lower beaver who's a little tiny thing. Probably going to be least able to get out. Maybe it's a power of magic scene. It physically doesn't look like, it physically doesn't look like they could save her that way. And that he'd be stuck down there with her. It's a wonderful, wonderful heartwarming scene of old Americana. And I feel if there's any grouping of people who would love to have their minds able to be read by their friends, it's teenage boys.

Yeah, fuckery, fuckeroo, criminal. Back in the present, we get another secret. that I would argue is unnecessary, where some helicopters bomb the shit out of the crashed ship. Well, luckily, it also looks bad. Oh, boy, it really does. It really does look like the house of the dead, early house of the dead coin-up game. And it's, I found this scene really confusing because the aliens are sending the telepathic messages saying, help us. We need help.

We're fine. And Morgan Fern is like, you hear that? They're sending lies into our brains. Blow them up, boys. But Morgan Freeman has already been established as an insane man. Yeah. I was like, is the movie making a point that actually their misunderstanding what's going on with the aliens? But no, it turns out not.

But this whole, again, this whole scene could be, if it wasn't the most expensive scene, probably the movie. Yeah, it's a budget buster scene to put some big action into it. Yeah. And it's, it's awful. Also, this is where you get to see the scope of the enemy. And a ship that is the size of, you know, a cruise ship, giant cruise ship. These guys were not like parachuting out of a ship into, and it crashed. And somehow nobody has found it on radar. Nobody has seen this happen outside Maine.

I would imagine like a meteor of this size would be a planet ending event. Yeah, it would be a big deal. And the aliens with all their technology. You need to get the world's best deep core drillers up there and break that thing apart, right? The aliens come out of the ship and they're, their play is to just jump up and down like they're at a rave and say, you know, hi, we're nice people.

How does that even work? Because you don't ever see them as anything that a human being, you know, a human being would go, hey, they could project themselves as cuddly teddy bears or Pokemon. Or, I can't remember, Tinky Wink. Yeah, like which Pokemon's like Mutu? or? If they were a bunch of...

Not something that powerful. If they turned themselves into a group of Pikachu's, a lot of people would run over to them and hug them. Yeah. Instead, they just look like garb. They just these gray... No, it's true.

They don't even look like anything. You're going to choose an alien. The weird thing is that when they, there's a moment that when they start getting fired on, they spin around and they kind of revert to their, like, snake form. But it doesn't look... that much visually distinct from their nice form.

No. They're sort of like these space doughboys, these popping fresh dough boys jumping up and down. I mean, it's really an embarrassing scene on all. And the effects are terrible, and it's, you know, they send their crack four helicopters because, you know, this is so important. We see that they...

Because two have to get blown up so that our hero... You know that you have to lose the idiots. Right, you have to lose a couple of porkans. I mean, that's... And it's also like a really big ship for these... three or four helicopters to do anything about. It's massive. It's an ID4 kind of ship.

And it blows up very easily. It has no defenses, apparently. But they self-destruct to try and, I don't know, kill these four-timey helicopters. I think that's their only plan is to, I guess, to kill the helicopters is to destroy all of themselves. Right. They've never invented a gun. Maybe not. Because they've been really good to just throw in their weasel babies.

All they have is, they land, and all they have is, all they have is, all they have is, special pleading. That's all they have. They just have this like, you know, they get these like watery eyes and they look up at you and you go, but and there's still an ugly alien and they go, please help us. But then you get close and then you get weasel baby. That's actually, I'd like to see a Western where instead of six guns, they're throwing weasel babies. I also love the idea that they've done so little research in the 25 years that they've been trying to invade the earth that they don't realize that humans are shit and don't want to help anyone. Their whole idea.

Help us. Fuck you. We will simply go. We'll play upon the sympathy they hold for all living creatures. Sounds good, Cree blacks. Yes. Tell me more. We won't wear clothes.

We'll just be these naked little mud hippies. Space mud hippies. And then we'll turn into these. All their research was they read the comic strip, Love is. And that was all the research they did. Yeah. That and a little ziggie.

He's a dumb fucking alien. fan. They really, really are. Timothy Aliphant won't tell Mr. Gray about Duttits. So Gray eats him, where we've narrowed our focus. We're down to only two characters. That's the classic, Fight My Bag scene, right? It's an amazing scene

too. It just does not care about its own characters. Also, one of those times where it's like, that seems like a useful power to just be able to eat a whole person. I don't know why it doesn't you do that again. Turns around, yeah, but and that's it. Your character is going, which I was glad. I'm very happy when the characters leave this movie.

You know, I was so excited that Beaver was the first one to go because it's horrible. Yeah. He had the most, yeah, he had the most quips. But when a guy was talking to himself in a British accent, that's, that, that was like adding another character, though. He's not the one. He's worth two. You're rooting for him to stay around longer.

You know you hate the characters. Beaver has big kid in the wheelchair from Texas Chainsland Masker where you're like, I don't want the heroes to die, but this kid, we can probably get really. rid of her pretty soon, right? Yeah. It's such an unglamorous death. It's an undramatic. Yeah.

Gray grabs a truck. He's trying to spread the infection beyond the quarantine. He notices that Joneses up to something in his memory warehouse. This is where the burning of Duditz memories happens. Thomas Jane. So he should not remember Duditz when he sees him. You're right. He's burned those.

So when Duditz shows up, he should be like, who is this? What are you doing? You're asking you tell the ghost to one. I'm like, it's fucking Donnie Walberg. That's who it is. It just looks crazy. I got to meet Liam Goldman once very briefly. Yeah?

But I had not seen this movie yet, so I didn't get to ask him about it. You would have barked his shins with, right? No, no, Princess Bride buys him a few Dreamcatcher. I'm one of the few people on Earth who still hasn't seen that, so I don't have the... Oh, it's a story movie. I know I'm a terrible. I actually read the book before the movies. I've seen Dreamcatcher twice.

I have not seen Billy the Kid. I have not seen... Butch Cassidy, me? Coach Cassidy, sorry. I think I have seen Bullittly the kid, but he was fighting Dracula at the time. But I have not seen the William Goldman hits, I don't believe. Have you seen Magic, the Ventriloquism movie?

No, I have not. I have not seen magic. I don't. Did he write that? He wrote the book and the movie. I think he wrote the book as Space Mon. That's one where I found it after seeing it that wanted Gene Wilder to play that role. And I'm like, oh, what a better movie that would have been fantastic.

Yeah, as a mean, as I mean. He did misery. He did the good, Stevie Lee. I haven't seen misery. I've seen garbage films. I've only seen I saw Dream Hatcher.

Misery. Every author's fantasy. A fan likes your book so much. I did read the book though and I remember liking it. But yeah. Thomas Jane's trying to get out of quarantine by cross-country ski and he's stopped by Army dudes.

He gets pulled into the quarantine zone. He reads Morgan Freeman's mind as like Freeman is monologuing at Tom Seismore. he's like being like fuck your studies that show that we don't have to kill all these people you know the fight against aliens has driven him mad

he says he'll kill Americans if he has to uh Thomas Chain does not take the opportunity to use his psychic powers to stop Morgan Freeman from killing all these people he decides to go after Tom Seism they don't really seem to use them at all well I don't know whether they can do like brain fighting

or whether they can just read oh wait they can do psychic battles yeah well that's what I'm saying That's what Dan just said is he knows for fact they can do psychic battles. Guys, guys, it feels like he underutilizes psychic battle. Dan said, he said, and I quote, I dot, dot, dot, know if they can use psychic battles. Because he probably has a fetter that allows him to stop at a psychic saber. And that psychic saber is going to pierce through Tom Seismore's psychic shield abilities.

Because he only has a level three psychic shield. We're getting into sci. I never used, I never used psionics in our D&D game. Oh, man, you're missing out. What adventures could be had? Mind flayer bullshit. If only Thomas Jane had focused the totality of his psychic abilities into, say, like, a sideblade that came out of his fist, you know, like,

it would have been cooler if the four guys were fire starters. At least there would have been something like, you know, superty. Fire starters. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. No, but he doesn't do anything. I was about to sing the song, but boy, I can't say it. I was sad.

Bound up. Yeah, instead of targeting Freeman, Thomas Jane, it costs Tom Seismore uses his psychic info to encourage him to do the right thing. Great movie. It's a classic, like, I'm telling you things about yourself. I would only know if I could read your mind. Tom Seizmore takes this in stride just like everybody.

He takes this in stride like, why. This is a close-in-a-like-s psychic America. This is everyone in America is just waiting for psychics to show up. It would have made sense if like instead, because he's always like looking at a picture. of somebody. And I think he should have been looking at his like big book of psychic phenomena that he's like, oh, the timeline.

My guiding moonlight. You've been with me always. I guess he's seen so much weird shit at this point. He's like, yeah, sure, whatever. But he does have like the same like look of like a bunch of aliens today. Sure. You're psychic. Seismore is a is a rock in this film.

In a good sense. I mean, he just actually everybody in this movie feels stunned that they had to come back to work the next thing. Nobody looks happy to be in this film or like they're having a good time. Morgan Freeman looks pissed. He really does. He really looks,

he honestly looks unhappy. I do like that they cast against type there. They made Freeman like the crazy guy and Tom Seismore is the guy that you think is going to be evil because he's Tom Seizmore, but he's very reasonable. It's true because it was an interesting decision. It really increased the boredom.

It really turned it up, you know? It was just like when John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd and neighbors, you know. You didn't get anything you wanted, but it was an interesting decision. The biggest problem I have with this, honestly, is that, like, Tom Sidesmar isn't just like, oh, you've got psychic powers. You're an alien. I'm going to shoot you rather than, like, just going along with it. I'm going to haul you into the truck of alien knowledge.

Instead, though, he convinces him to get Morgan Freeman Superior, general Matheson to assume command. he busts Thomas Jane out. They drive into the storm, and he answers a phone call from Jonesy by putting Tom Sizebor's handgun up to his head, and Tom Seisbore still believes Thomas Jane after that. This is good writing.

At the beginning of the movie, he put a gun to his head as an act of self-destruction. Oh. Now he is putting a gun to his head as an act of global preservation. That's why they pay William Goldman a lot of money to do that kind of stuff. I think he also literally says, I wish that I could call Jonesy. I believe it is trumped by it.

So that kind of derails the good writing. It kind of, you know, anti-matter matter matter. It's just, boy, I wish I could call him. Your phone, your gun is ringing. And I forget to Josie, like, did Mr. Gray go to the bathroom in the, in the mental, in the memory palace? I don't know. I don't get a call out. Yeah, yeah, that's probably what happened.

I got to do something. Don't call anybody. Maybe the closer they get to dud, it's like the, you know, like the phone lines get better, essentially. But I, yeah, Tom Seismore, I can't. Like he looks at him, Jonesy, like he's crazy, but also like, I'll allow it. You know, it's very... And he actually says, give me the gun back, which is silly because he already took the bullets out of it. So it kind of derails the joke.

This is the first use of Chekhov's phone. Mm-hmm. So that's incredible. Put that on the trivia. And an exciting feature of this gun is in addition to functioning as a phone. It also has, like, an Apple air tag in it. Yeah, there's tracking as a device to Freeman is... That's how Morgan Freeman is able to...

complete his job of saving the world by hunting time seismic. They go to, anyway, these guys go to Derry. He's nuts. He's nuts. He's really nuts. No, really, like, he shows up at the end. He seems to have totally forgotten his mission. Well, he's been relieved of his mission, too. So he's mad that he was, I could see him as a personal. This time is personal.

They left him in his high-tech Nick Fury wagon. It's very funny. So they're like, you've got to call in this other Army guy. And the RBI comes in, we're taking over this operation now. And he's very reasonable. He's the nicest Army man you can want. He's so nice. He's like, so General Insane Morgan Freeman,

anything you want to tell us? Nope, I'm fine. Just give me another couple minutes inside my room with all my machines that do all my things for me. My spying devices. Some of the guys say that there's some machine work going on in here. He's like, nope, I don't think so. That's just my Domino's Pizza tracker working overtime. Now, here's the thing.

Can aliens works up an appetite. This is from 2003 where we didn't believe these things of the Army, but if it was made now, we, right? I mean, they're kind of like overseeing. We believe that our American military is capable of any stupid fucking thing. It was made now. I'd be like, there's too many nice people in this movie. Yeah, exactly.

Everybody should be a Tom Seismore on 11. I do believe this movie more if it is Trump and Hegseth calling the shots. And they're like, yeah, yeah, blow up to the town in Maine. Whatever, I don't know. Go after those guys. I don't know. Like, yeah, I do believe that. Yeah.

Um, so they go to Derry to pick up adult Duttits, who's played by Donnie Walberg. Oh, my God. What a coup. What a casting coup. Well, that's the thing. They're like, hey, Donnie, just to let you know the water supply for the city of Boston is in danger. And he's like, I'm in. That's it. That's it. I'm going to play some drop kick Murphys. That water powers my Walberger's restaurants. That's right. But you also, you're dressed like Walter Matho.

in that a movie about survivalists and you have a virus. You're also possibly not human. Yeah. And this script is terrible. He's like, yeah, but I get to have to have a dangle a stuffed animal

from my hand and carry a lunch on. That's true. You get to say the broken English say. You get to say the most important line in the movie. And you got to wear these depends. We've got to do a lot of character work here.

Well, Donnie Walberg. That's true. When he was on set, he was just duddits. only answered to Deddick's. Yeah, if you called him Donnie, he was getting mad. And we get to meet, we get to meet Duditz's mother, who you think would be an interesting character, though, but we don't meet anybody's parents, really, and we don't know anything about those kids.

Those kids, I assume, all, except for Duddits, they all live in a house together, they have no parents. They live in a tree house. They live in a high house, yeah. Sorry. They all have sleep car, they'll sleep in race car bunk beds. Yeah. Dutz's mom is like, like,

damn, you can take this kid off my hands. She's like, she's like, She's like, go save the world. And she seems to know that she's not going to see him again, too. Oh, and she's excited. She was so happy when you were showing up that now he'll die happy. So please take him off my hand. And he's got leukemia.

He's got leukemia. Yeah, he carries his meds in the Scooby-Doo lunchbox now. It's been repurposed. What does leukemia add to this? When the later reveal happens, it feels strange. Unlike the rest of the movie. That's an understatement. Yeah.

So, Duditz. Lockeesman's a little bit. It's so weird. His character is just thrust on you with all the importance of the mouse droid in the first Star Wars movie. I mean, it's just a... Are we supposed to care about this? Yeah. His mother basically does a Viacondia.

She's like, thank God. I'm getting drunk. I'm going to bingo. It's unbelievable. Like, how could... Why have they not been in touch with him? Yeah, that wasn't something I thought was... They talk about him all the time.

They talk about him as if he's dead already. And they kept saying... we're going up to the cabin to see Duttits. It's like, well, Duditz isn't at the cabin. So I don't understand what... He's like the most important thing in their lives. He's all they're talking about. He gave him these great, not so great psychic powers.

One of them can find car keys and they don't even... I mean, in many ways... They don't even call him up. In many ways, it's a story about children and their parents. You know, they give us everything and get me forget about them. I thought you were going to say, in many ways, finding your keys is the most useful psychic power. I mean, it is a really useful psychic power. I think...

He never finds anything else, though. No. No. He finds a... He just finds a little... He just turned to worm with a dingus, yeah. This was all started by a guy who had to have a toothpick.

That fucking beef. It was so... But you got to admit, that whole scene, right? The way they kept cutting, toothpick him. Hitchcockian. Wow. Yeah. It's so hitchcockian.

I mean, I also... It's also strange that earlier it's like we can't let this thing out of the toilet. The alien's whole plan is to get into the reservoir, right? So you know what's connected to water, pipes? Oh, yeah. We're trying to enjoy I mean, that's a septic tank Please let me have my fun

We're trying to enjoy dream catch here I don't think they're remote can't There's these fucking things called oceans And rivers and Yeah yeah You think the groundwater supplied Eventually get there

75% of the earth is water And there's the whole fucking M. Night Chamelon's science argument Any one of us can go out And end the world with their Worm tomorrow We just go out I've got to rest of our mile from here

I walk over. I've been trying to end the world with my worm for years. Stewart does have a good point, though. It can just fly over Lake Erie. Yeah. If the toilet emptied directly into the reservoir, you would have other problems. No, no, but you could get through there. Un-fucking believable.

It's true you don't want your toilets to go into the reservoir. That's a good point, yeah. Anyway. And they were probably making fun of the Martians from World of the Worlds for not testing the air first. It was like when the Dave Mantis band emptied their tour bus toilets in the Chicago They did more damage to the Earth than these fucking aliens on the planet did.

Yeah, I mean, they should have, who knows, maybe there's Mr. Gray hiding in Dave Matthews' band. That would explain a lot. Well, we've talked about it a lot already. What would you say to that, Dan? We've talked about it a lot already. Dutt has psychically located great.

He is going to the reservoir where just a single worm in the water supply would kill the world. They're in a dog also at this point. The worms are in a dog. They're driving in a car, the car gets a flat tire, so they got to get out of the car, right? And I was reading, I think in the book, the heroes do something that stymies him, but here it's just the powers of the earth, I guess.

Everybody crashes their car whenever they need to. Yeah. I read the Wikipedia, yes, this is another bizarre thing from the book indicating that maybe William Goldman did make some good choices along the way, which was Dutt's implants a hunger for raw bacon in Mr. Gray's brain. And Jonesy's human body gets so sick by this that slows down the progression to the reservoir. For the listeners who can't see what we're seeing right now, it looks like Evan is experiencing actual pain on hearing this. You've got to be kidding me. This is what the wiki said.

You know, they're wrong sometimes. I'm hoping they're wrong. He gets a lust for bacon and it slows him down. I mean, I imagine whatever pain meds Stephen King was on were bonkers. But that's Warner Brothers plotting. You know, I've got to have some bacon. It's like a Dick Tracy villain. You know, bacon boy.

I love bacon. Yeah, he floats on the, wafting on the scent of raw bacon. Oh, my God. They put the bacon under a box. And when he gets to it, they pull the string and the box falls on it. Yeah, the stick is holding the box. See someone else. I mean, based on the references, I feel like old-timey cartoons fit the themes.

Might have been. Yes. It might have been an inspiration here while he was tripping on OxyCon. At the reservoir, Gray carries this infected dog full of worms. Which is adorable. I do like that this sequence, they really take the time to have him walk up to the door, find that it's locked, put the dog down, find a rock, blast through the window with the rock. Also, you don't need to take all this time. So he has to go to this fucking, like, I guess a dammed building or something.

Baconator dreams were like going through. through his head and shit. He was all messed. Also, he was really messed up for some. I didn't quite get why. I think there must have been something that they that they cut out.

Jones seemed to be addled constantly, like physically. Maybe it's the bacon. Maybe they cut the bacon. They got the gout real fast. But I think it's like he, he spent so much time getting into this building, like, trying to pry up a manhole. I'm like, why aren't you taking it to the water line?

Like, why does it have to go down? You can see water when he gets to the rest of it. It's water in the background. But that's the place that, because it says alien worms here. Oh, right on that, right on that. It's really uptight. It's like rollable. He doesn't get the point unless he jams it in the hole.

Don't ask me why that means. Our heroes have arrived. Seizmore tells Thomas Jane and does to stay in the car. He tries to sneak up on Mr. Gray with his automatic rifle. And he says goodbye. He says goodbye. He knows what he read the script. He seems to now that it's a really strange moment because it doesn't seem like

It would shoot this guy. Yeah. Well, he can't because he's thwarted by Morgan Freeman in an helicopter who strafes him. This scene, I thought this was so funny. Morgan Freeman and Tom Swismar essentially kill each other. And I'm like, well, don't know what the point of them being in this part of the movie. Exactly. It turns out there's really no point in them being in the movie at all.

Yeah. Yeah. Their movies on a separate track, practically. Yeah. But there's never been a movie about people in a cabin in the woods dealing with some kind of killer that hasn't been hurt. the fact that it doesn't have a major military presence takes place in a side story. And a war between two men

who were formerly comrades. He loved him like a son. Insert projectiles into one another. There's a lot of dick stuff going on in this film. There really is. The original title of the movie was Dick Hatcher, yeah. He shoots the helicopter, blows up, blah, blah, blah. He uses the gun.

He uses the gun finally. It's a pretty interesting wrap. for Morgan Freeman. Like, is it like, we don't even see a reaction when he's dying? He's like, no, just get me out of here. Yeah. Thomas Shane comes in, he shoots a shit weasel

that jumps right onto the barrel of his gun. Mr. Gray tries to... They're not known for having a particularly good, like, self-preservation mentality. Mr. Gray tries to fake him out pretending to be jonesy. This is one of those movies where the aliens are killing machines

until the time when the heroes have to kill them, which case they are fools and morons and they can't accomplish anything. Yeah. Gray pretends to just be Jonesy. Jane reasonably doesn't trust him and asks for proof with something that Greg couldn't possibly know,

which is dumb because he's in his brain. I don't understand this at all. He's in the warehouse. For God's sakes, didn't you see the movie? Yeah. But it gets interrupted by Duditz anyway, who's managed the strength to stumble in. Yeah.

Because his leukemia was killing him, apparently, that entire time. He was fighting the leukemia to get into the end of the movie. He's going to say it today. Gray leaves Jonesy to reveal his true alien form.

He grabs dodgett. Now, when he leaves Jonesy to reveal his true alien form, what organic mass? It's very confusing, isn't it? It seems like he's riding him as a phantom. It feels like red dust

that came out of his pores. It doesn't make any sense. He felt like he would have been ripping out of him or the whole way that they do the possession makes no sense in this film. Yeah. But also as I think you're saying, Elliot, he seems to be creating actual matter.

He seems to be creating a body out of nothing, you know. Yeah. Kind of like a writer. Whoa. Wow. Yeah, look, so you're saying this is kind of like a look I made a hat type act of creation artistically, you know. Eithality.

The big alien stabs, uh, duttits with his spiky tip. but that's what Dudas wanted, I guess, because he turns into his own alien form. It's more... ...stats Ray with his tail. So much penetration in this film. Now, is this... And so I thought this was revealing...

I thought this was revealing that Duditz was an alien, but in the Wikipedia summary, it describes this as being a consequence of the infection of Duditz by Mr. Gray. So what's going on here, guys? What do you think is happening here? Is this Duditz true form? I assume he was an alien.

Monster. I mean, there's all that stuff where, like, all the fans, like, I think that he's an alien who came... And they talk earlier. Throughout the movie, you're led to believe he's an alien because in the exposition dumps, Peter, whatever, his name is. He's like, I think he's an alien from another planet.

And I gave us powers to do something for the world. So he's some kind of like traitor to his own people. I think he's a different type of alien. Oh, boy. He's red as opposed to gray. We all know from War of the Gargantuanas and from... We all do. That you have to have different colors for the way that you feel like.

about the world and from what you call them? Rockham, sock him robots. Yeah. And when he transforms, he looks more like a stone cat. He looks like a sleepwalker kind of. Oh, don't invoke that. Well, anyway, he infects the bad alien. They both explode

into red dust. Cool. Much like in the movie Red Dust where Clark Gable explodes. I was going to say, yes, very, very, yes. Good, good one. Good. One more thing. A worm crawls toward the manhole. Is he going to get there? No, Jonesy's

squashes it at the last moment, proving that gray is gone, it's really him, the end, the tale of dream catcher, perfect right whenever. It's such an abrupt ending too. It's like, swish. Hey, it's me, Jonesy. Credits.

It's also, the dog. We've been shown to see that the aliens lay money eggs. And the dog apparently had a big belly. The dog is whining. The fucking dog, right? The dog is alive throughout. It's the infestation.

It just keeps complaining. good actor, though. Yeah, it was probably the best actor in the film. He had real motivation. He wants these eggs to fuck out. But the dog never farts. That's true. And dogs in my experience are far fatters.

They're much more open about it, you know? They definitely let him rip. The dog sits throughout that part because he gets the dog when he gets the truck. And he puts the eggs inside the dog. And only one egg comes out. The dog never goes through. I mean, there's just such a lack of attention paid. to this thing that for the money spent is just incredible.

You heard it here, folks. Not enough farts, Reigns Evan Doreen. You know, I mean, but if you're going to have Chekhov's fart. Yeah. I kind of wish the ending was they squished that last one and they're like, we did it. And then you see that dog has dragged itself to the water and just kind of falls in. There's another ship above it. It's like the end of, oh, God.

what's the movie with the slugs, Tom Hack? Oh, the Creeps or no? Yeah, Night of the Creeps. Night of the Cripes. You know, and there's more happening. But the ending really is just such a fizzle of a bad special. Unlike the other Stephen King adaptation starring Tom Jane, The Mist. I did not see that.

Oh, it's got a fun ending. The problem is I know the ending. And I did read that book. I reread it. It's not as good as I remembered it. But, you know, it's, it is what it is. But, I mean, this movie feels like everything, King. It's, it's every king.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like a Stephen King fever dream kind of. It feels like a Stephen King sample. You were saying real quick about the end credits we get to share. We see, like, them laughing and joking with each other as if the audience has forgotten what movie they just watched. It's supposed to be like, it's supposed to be like that, oh, our heroes in better times.

We love them. Didn't you love them? playground, this magic moment, you know. It's a really cowardly way out. That's a, that's a sex, each sex romp ending. You know, when you see everybody hopping up and down and, you know, throwing hot dogs around and whoops, my top came off.

And I don't know because, but didn't we love that scene where, you know, you basically had a hilarious rape like in, you know, Revenge of the Nerds. And this movie actually, yeah, goes back and says, Remember all the terrible scenes that we had in this film? Remember how annoying all the fake conversation was? The only thing that would have made that ending work is if the four of them were sitting around that table

and then there was a fifth chair and it was one of those shit weasels just hanging out like, oh buddy, you got me this time, the next time I'll get you. Or a glowing Jedi duddits. And he's just, you know, he's doing his waving, he's playing with his Scooby. I cannot believe at the end of this fucking, And this crazy.

That he goes, Ubi do, I can't even say it. Ubi, Ubi, Ubi, yeah. And he says, we got some work to do now. We got some work to do.

And I would have loved to have seen this in a theater with an audience just for that scene. Because I would feel like that it would have been like Times Square in 1986. Bullets would have flown. Laser lights would have been hitting the screen. That means it would have been hitting the screen.

It's like right of spring. I feel like they wasted all their money. on the special effects because they could have gotten the musical sting of the actual Scooby-Doo song to play. Oh, wow.

Yeah, you're right. They didn't have when he shows that. That would have been great. So what we do now again? Maybe they would have had the right casting in this movie because I think if it was the Golden Girls instead of these four guys, it would have been a different movie.

Yes. Better movie in some ways. What do we do now? What we do now is we do our final judgments, whether this is a good, bad movie, a movie that you enjoy because you get, you know, maybe a few laughs out of it

because it's a bad, a bad, bad movie, a movie that you do not care for at all or a movie that you kind of like. You know, sometimes we actually like these movies. I'm going to go I'm going to go bad bad, but I'm going to say that if you are a... You need a hug.

Do you need a duddits hug? Do you need a dream catcher group hug? Dan has often told me that he needs a duddits in his life. Yeah. The problem is it's so long and kind of dry. for a movie that's so weird that I can't quite recommend it as a good, bad movie.

But if you're the kind of person who's interested in when things go wrong, you might like to see this because it's sort of fascinating how they're working so hard to make sort of fundamentally impossible material work and how there's so much talent on and behind the screen

that was thrown into this thing that doesn't work at all. But in terms of my actual enjoyment, going to say bad bad what do you say steward yeah i feel like for me i think it tips into a good bad movie it's like such a mistake and there's so many wrong choices it is tough to get through but that's you know that's that's that's a challenge for you bad movie sickos out there so i think it's a good bad movie but i think if it was if it was like 30 to 40 minutes shorter i would call it a i would call it a good bad movie because it's just there's so it's you really at certain

So many times during it, I'm like, what is this movie? Like, they felt like they needed to shovel more stuff into this movie. And it careens around. It does feel like someone took a bunch of Stephen King books and just kind of like threw him in a blender and chopped them up and then poured out like a Stephen King smoothie with all the things he does. But it's just so long. It just takes so long to get through. I'm going to call it a bad bad movie.

And Evan, you were saying before the recording this movie you kind of like that you kind of enjoy it quite a bit? No, I almost hung myself for the second time in my life because we're watching this thing. I was so sad that I was so angry at myself for for for sponsoring this film. I should have something else. I really did not. I watched it. I had a, what, like a week to watch it. And I waited until the last, I waited until the last moment because I don't think it's a,

I think it's a bad, bad movie. But I would suggest a category of fascinating bad movie. Yeah. Because especially if you like, if you like films, you know, from, you know, or if you're a writer, or, you know, creative, it's a fascinating disaster of how bad. I mean, it's fascinating because it is a distillation of everything King wrote. It's,

that even he admits that it's a, you know, a best of almost. But it really is, it's, it's dream logic Stephen King. It's a, and the movie is, there's so much talent involved. So it's fascinating to watch, you know, terrible films made by people who have made good films. and it's just it's so stupid it breaks so many laws of filmmaking screenwriting acting logic it just it should never have been made as is so i think it's worth seeing because it's a it's an object lesson you know and everything going wrong in a hollywood production it's i always wonder with with movies like this at what point did the people making it know

that they were in trouble and this was not how did they but i mean they i mean do you wonder when you see so many films like of this sort or even successful films that you just don't like i mean you just wonder why wasn't there why weren't the breaks applied when you're going to spend 70 million dollars or whatever it costs when went under the breaks applied that somebody just goes wait a second we have a lot of problems in this now supposedly i didn't do too much looking into it supposedly Goldman did a pass and he threw out a ton of material. Oh, really? If I remember correctly, he was more interested in the main story of four guys up in that

cabin and things happened, blah, blah, blah. And Kazdan came in and put back a lot of it. Now, I don't know who made the decision to silly putty Stephen King's dialogue because even people who love King, I mean, it's not like it's a secret that Stephen King's dialogue does not play well in film about where you're trying to portray life as somewhat realistic. Actuality. It doesn't even have a very similitude. I mean, he makes up social interactions and behavior and bonding between these characters and dialogue that does not exist anywhere on this planet. It is, it's a for everything is forced.

And dated, it's dated to a television version of the 50s. Maybe Stephen King is one of these grays. Maybe he's a Duttits. You know? The thing that's amazing, the other thing is, if Duttits is an alien, where the fuck did he come from? Because he grew up in this town, he has a mother. She's probably an alien too.

Immaculate. Yeah, my mother's an alien. I've seen. But, I mean, I don't, the character makes. I believe he's not an alien in the book, if I have that right. But I mean, if he's not an alien in the book, then this breaks the law of the two miracles in writing. It's that you've got aliens, which is one miracle,

and then you deal with that. But then you've got aliens, but you've also got psychic humans. And in film, you know, that's just a little too much to ask for. It might work in a book. It would have been so easy to just cut all the military stuff out. It really would have. Right. Yeah.

It really would. You could have just had local police. You could have just, this could have been the first time this ever happened, the same way, like in the thing, which this also makes you think of. It just made, also, it just does not feel original in any sense. Yeah. And the fact that it feels like he's cribbing from himself is the weird. Oh, definitely. I mean, definitely.

It's the stand. It's the shining. It's carry. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, which he does, which he does a lot in his later books. It's possible that he read. read his own books, forgot he had written them, and wrote a book. He's like, I'm going to write like this author that I like a lot. But I'm going to make it, I'm going to exaggerate it.

I'm going to make the dialogue even crazier. This is what happens when you write on painkillers after a traumatic thing. And I feel like he got through it. Yeah, I'm glad he got through it. We had to get this one out of his system, I guess. Probably didn't need to turn into a major motion picture, though. Maybe he didn't need to publish it. That's the other thing is that's the other thing that's the way he wrote, because, you know, I read his writing book.

He's like every day I write 10 pages. I don't do much rewriting. And his best books, there's this like momentum to it. You know, everything keeps moving. But in his worst books, you can really tell like, oh, he didn't really go back and fix. He's just typing. It's funny that you mentioned momentum because one of the things I kept thinking through this is that it really felt like there was no urgency. You know, the only time there's any urgency is when there's a bunch of helicopters flying around.

You know, the after music is going. But otherwise, I mean, that end scene is a masterclass in how not to get an audience interested. I mean, cars just pull up, people walk out of them. They go to this very boring looking reservoir building. They didn't, you know what I mean? And then it's a set. There's so many sets, which is interesting, you know, the cabin is clearly a set. The reservoir is a set.

Yeah. It looks phony, especially for a movie where money was spent. But, I mean, they get out of the car. And then they have made it clear. one worm gets in the reservoir, the earth is done. Humanity is gone. Right, it's the thing thing. If the thing gets out, we're done.

But at least you understand the way the thing works. You've seen the thing in action. It's gross. You get it and it's going to, it will immediately. It will not fuck around and fart around. It will end the earth. This is the way that the thing works. The worms, they lie to you?

Okay, they lied to me. You know, ooh, they're going to lie. So they tell you, we have, This is the goal. The alien is going to try to dump a worm into the reservoir. You know, it's going to put a joker fish in the Gotham reservoir. We've got to stop this thing. So Tom Seismore has already displaced the obstacle in the army.

Morgan Freeman has been sidelined. And they know they're fighting aliens. At no time does he go to Mr. Nice General and say, we need to on all points, bulletin, get everybody in those helicopters to the reservoir. That's something we skipped over. It's true, which baffled me at the time is he brings in the other general to be like, Morgan Freeman has lost it. You've got to take over.

And then he smashes a truck into the place where Thomas Jane is being held captive and goes, we got to get out of here and runs out. He doesn't have to do that. You think I was in control right now. He's in charge. He has the ear of the general, and he's also, the general has not had this experience with the 25 years fighting the sheetwizzles. And he was going to give Tom Sarsmore was supposed to inherit Morgan Freeman's role.

Yeah, he was supposed to be charged anyway. So not only does he not, does he act as if he's a felon, you know, he's like, you know, the fugitive. He busts him out and then says, me and you, no one else. They don't get helicopters. They don't get more men. They could have ended this. So I kind of, I stepped out for a second. I missed it.

Was Evans review, was your review kind of liked? I loved it. I loved it. I loved better than E.T. better than Star Wars. Better than Blood Thirsty Budge. Finally, aliens did a good representation. But again, and at the very end, we know that the Earth is at risk, but they keep stopping the action for these moments. I mean, Tom Seismore watches the helicopter do circles to come back to shoot him again.

But because they're in their fucking, you know, they don't kiss. This is all that matters now is he doesn't. He doesn't. He could just run. He could have run into the reservoir and save the earth. Doesn't do it. Luckily. Multiple times this helicopter.

Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. Luckily, Mr. Gray has picked a body that is very bad at lifting manhole covers. And Thomas Jane has to spend all this time making sure Duditz is comfortable and beloved. Are you okay, Duditz? I okay. I want you to be comfortable. I okay. How's your leukemia?

Doing fine. But meanwhile, the earth, hello, the fucking earth. He doesn't even run. He doesn't even run. He just kind of waddles over. It is such a... If you didn't know that Duddits was going to be... They're staying in the car.

He's like, I got to protect Duddits in the car. If you didn't think Duddits was key to defeating this alien, why did you stop and get Duddits and then bring him over? Yeah. It is just a phony. It is the phoniest, crappiest waste of money. I mean, there are plenty of bad films out there, but it's just, it's a...

real shame because this money could have fed people. Yeah. It could have cured leukemia. I mean, it did feed people. Yeah, it did. It said the people in the cast and crew. There was a crafty, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah.

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While supplies last until September 27th, 2026, see website for more details. And now back to the show. We should quickly do our other brief segments. So what do we do next, Dan? I hate this movie. I fucking hate this movie. In case I haven't made it clear, because, you know, I may never get this shot again to say this. But I hate this.

No, we'll have you back once a year to watch Dream Catcher. Tell us how you feel about it. Yeah, yeah. I'm stupid enough to do that. I'm just going to read this one letter. It's from Ian Last Name Withheld, who writes. Ian Holm. Dan and Elliot's discussion of gold diggers of 1933

reminded me of one of my favorite movie conventions, namely when a movie attempts to reproduce another art form in a way that only works on film and wouldn't work in the medium it supposedly evoking. Berkeley is an obvious example since his dance numbers involve close-ups, dancers and formations that only make sense when seen from one specific angle,

and transitions that would be impractical, if not impossible, to pull off live. Other examples I can think of are the ballet in the red shoes and the stage show in the bandwagon, which could be performed on stage, although I have no idea how the individual numbers we see like triplets, Louisiana Hayride, and Girl Hunt Ballet, could possibly fit into the modern retelling of Faust that's the show within the show's a sensible theme. With that in mind, do you have any favorite examples of this phenomenon regards Ian Lasting with Howell? This is another one that, like, I think it's a really interesting question. I'm coming up a little short other than things that are similar to, you know,

like there's so many examples of theatrical productions where I'm like that, okay, I accept it because this is a movie, but that would not be the way it is. Yeah, it drives me not in any film where you're watching something and there's no, it just makes no sense. Yeah, the bandwagon is a perfect example. What does this have to do with the plot of the movie? I get that musicals are fantasy, you know, that we break, everybody breaks into song and why not.

But what kind of play would they make? It has nothing to do with Palsh. Having Oscar Levant in a baby outfit has nothing to do with, actually, no, I don't think Oscar Levant is in the baby outfit. I think he's not, he was, it's Fred Astaire, Nanette's a Bray. There's the character who plays like the director of the play. Right. And that guy, who was a theatrical actor.

Oscar Levant was supposed to be in it, but Oscar Levant was too busily engaged in drug taking. And I think had, if you noticed in that movie, in Oscar Levant movies, he literally walks off screen in a couple of musical numbers

because he cannot do things. I love Oscar Levant. Unfortunately, he was a horrible drug addict and a lot of problems. But there's a scene, I forget, there's a show business number, and everybody walks towards you, Luskalavan goes, nope.

It just goes up. But yeah, it's funny when you have a movie and they go, we're doing this great production, and they have, they do nothing towards that. But yeah, I mean, the question is kind of getting to, what is it the film? Like showing? What works in the film? Because my answer, because Dan only sends us the questions. He doesn't send us the context of letters.

Well, I gave you some clarifying context for this. So my thing I was going to say was the ballet in the red shoes. Oh, yeah. But it's like, um, it's like, um, since that's a question. that comes to Mindle, it's not exactly the same thing as like in the Lawrence Olivier version of Henry V, how it starts out with them doing it Shakespeare style

on a stage and it turns into reality. And it's such a, it's, I feel like that's a really successful way of showing what happens to you when you're engrossed in a theatrical production, which is you stop seeing it as a show and you start seeing it as a real thing. Yeah, it's a really neat choice.

I mean, also because it grounds it in, you know, the reality of the time to a degree I mean, it's a neat device. I think that though we're overlooking the greatest. It's not necessarily a creative thing, but I think that Jonesy's mind warehouse, as shown in the fabulous film, the underrated film,

A Dream Catcher, 2003, Lawrence Kasdan, director, screenwriter with the great William Goldman. And I believe that nothing has matched this in, showing the inner mind at work, the mind of a creative person at work, person involved. Oh, psychic person, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there's that, sure, if you want to bring that into it.

I do. But, yeah, dream catcher. I'm also, you know, you always have scenes where people are envisioning their book and you, you know, the scene changes to the book or animation certainly can do things. I'm trying to think of a film that actually does that, though, in animation. My, going up short. The thing that's coming to me is like, it's less that like, oh, it's doing a thing that can only be done in film. The animated series. It's less as like doing something that can only be done in film that doesn't make sense.

And more like just me being like, okay, there's some shorthand that needs to happen here for the story. But it's, it's a silly one because like, it's a Muppet movie. But if it's the Muppets Take Manhattan, and even as a kid, even as a kid watching Muppets take Manhattan, I'm like, is this the whole musical that we're seeing right now?

Like, it doesn't seem to be telling a full story. Yeah, they're going to Broadway with a roughly 10-minute musical. Yeah. And then at the end, I guess these new people can come straight into the musical without rehearsing. Yeah, yeah, the idea that everybody bursts into this song. I always thought that it would be funny if there was a scene where a musical just kind of like started up

and a lot of people are like, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah. Get off that table. Well, we're singing. Singing what? Yeah, but I mean, musicals, especially something like Buzzbee Berkeley. I mean, because montages was something that, you know, montages in general, but you can do montages in comics.

You can lay out a montage on a page of comics and it creates, you know, you got your Eisensteinian and hoo-ha going there. That is what they taught me in film school, Eisensteinian, but so that's not just film but yeah i mean musicals because musicals are just such a can you do that in a you can't you can't do it in theater unless the mechanics i mean can you do busby berkeley in theater i know they've tried the closest thing i've seen to it is uh mirrors to show yeah with mirrors like when the producers was on broadway they had a big mirror so you could see that they were dancing in a swastika yeah but that's not yeah it's not that i was not for the staging not

No, yeah, no, I understand what you meant. Yeah, I don't think it's, yeah. No, but like, but the stuff that Busby Berkeley does in these musicals is so much, so far beyond just they're all in formation or something like that. You know, there's the ones where I forget which one it's in now where they're like all flying towards the camera really fast, each of the dancers. Like they have like big blow up balls in their hands, something like that. And they're all like flying into the air towards the camera. And it's like, what, are they flying? It's supposed to be flying towards the audience.

Like it doesn't, you know, it's a, they just give up on the idea of a theatrical space. Right. There's that one film. I can't remember the name of it, but all the stars appear in the sky, in the outer space. At the end of the gang's all here, I think is right. Yes, that's it. The gang's all of a sudden, everybody's bursting out of, like, you know,

it's like, that's some amazing theatrical production. We can only do it once. You're like, well, well, to achieve these effects, we do have to get LSD into the system of everybody in the audience. Everyone lick your programs You know honestly I was thinking about LSD Because I was thinking about like the end of 2001

Or movies like the trip where you know They get all But you can you can sort of still do that in comics You know I mean Well it's less that like you can't Can or can't do it It's whether it like makes sense

When you're depicting another thing But I mean A light show in your face With movement and music is obviously something you can't do in other medium media. Yeah, I'm just going to say on my end, I'm going to do a little reference

for the kids in the audience, and I was going to say in the second season of Euphoria, there is one of the characters, one of the teenagers puts on a fucking play that she wrote herself. They approve this. They give her a lavish budget to have sets done.

And it's basically just like shit, talking the main characters in the show. It's really crazy. It's like the silliest thing. And it is presented as a series of like scenes that makes sense if you're like, you know, in a TV show where you're like moving from like memory to memory. But I'm like, what is this show? Yeah, it's barely a show.

What is you play? And how long is it? It's basically just like, hey, remember when my sister did all this crazy stuff? I've seen plays like that. There's also just like stuff like Maya Darren's films, which have to be films, you know. Did she do meshes the afternoon? Was that her?

She does short films. I can't remember the names of them, unfortunately. But, I mean, they're, they're like, I think she may have, Elliot. Yeah. They're, you know, you can't write that what she's doing. You can't, you can't really even draw it necessarily. But it's a series of images and music, you know, like,

Eun-Shen and DeLu type, but more personal and even probably less representational. I'm trying to sound smart here. I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. I mean, you know, experimental film, you know, I don't know, Andy Warhol's sleep or shit like that, you know what I mean? I don't know if that falls under it, but I certainly wouldn't want to write a book about a guy. He's just sleeping. He's still sleeping.

He's still sleeping. Page 400. He's still sleeping, you know. Well, that's like this isn't the exact same thing, but like the movie, the clock, the art installation movie, where it's seen. It's shots from other movies that all have a clock or a watch on screen. And it's timed with the time that you're watching it. And so you're seeing time pass in front of you through these clips.

And it's almost like adapting film into an art film. Or adapting film into a clock. Yeah, it's actually it's an adapting film into a clock. I haven't seen this, but have you, it's funny, it comes back to Stephen King, but talking about art. That weird version of the Langaleers TV series? one that they did with like the torn up paper they like cut it down and like Xeroxed the actual images and like animated the Xeroxes I mean it's it's that might count

timekeepers of eternity yeah that's that's what it's called I mean yeah it's film commenting on film in a in a you know tactical way I mean that's yeah it's mostly pretty cool I haven't I have it on my computer. I, like, dipped into it, and I was enjoying it, and then I stopped it, and I forgot about it. So, this is a good reminder to... The Langalears is not... I think, is that the one that's a vampire in a plane?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or wait, or is that Night Flyer. Oh, you know, I have a feeling it's night flyer. Langleyers is the one... They're in a plane, but it's like... They fall through a hole in space or something like that. It has, like, stuff that, like, chomps up space time.

He's like... Vampires do that. Floating. Pac-Man. They don't. They don't steal. I want to chomp your space time. We should move on to our final statement.

The guy kind of answered his own question and we're fumbling around there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That often happens. That often happens. Let's an academics play with that. We're doing Dreamcatcher here. Yeah. The last part of the show is where we recommend movies.

We forget Dreamcatcher. We push Dreamcatcher out of our minds. Yeah. To recommend a movie. We're burning it. We're burning it while being chased by a bad special effect. Let's instead recommend movies that we, Saw and enjoyed.

I'm pretty sure I recommended this in the past, but I have seen a dearth of new things that I'm really enthusiastic about. So I'm just going to return to... I rewatched the movie Orgy, you know, listed from 1968, but it was re-edited several times. It was based on even older materials. So, you know, release dates mean nothing for something like the movie orgy. This was Joe Dante's montage movie that started out,

or well at one point at least was like seven plus hours now exists in the sort of final cut of a mere four hours and 40 minutes or or close to that and it is you know material cut from several movies of the 50s mostly some like TV stuff commercials new like it's just all sorts of footings. And it feels like kind of both like, I don't know, like the pop culture, boomer psyche, but also a skeleton key to like all the stuff that Joe Dante particularly loves and like comes up in his movies. And, you know, it is montage that is juxtaposed in ways that make it funny. Sometimes it just is like that he let something play out for a while. and you just enjoy a clip. But it was designed for you to like kind of walk in and out. It used to play colleges. Like people could just sort of go out and have a smoke

or get some pizza or whatever and come back and they haven't really missed anything because it's not a story. But you can sit down and watch it all. And I have. How long is this? It is four hours in, I believe, 40 minutes now. When did he do this?

So this was like, really early on. He did this one. He was a college student, right? Yeah, he was a college student. And it has been hard to see for a number of years because of obvious rights issues. You know, it would screen, but they wouldn't like make people pay for it because then you would get into real trouble. But now somehow vinegar syndrome, I believe it is, put out a disc.

I don't know what they did to do it, but you. Well, the process of putting out a dish, thank you. But it is available more widely than ever before. You would hope Dick Miller is in it multiple times. You've got to have a Dick Miller. Really? He's not in it?

I don't know. I don't know. You got to have it again. Yeah. Yes. Oh, whoops, I missed something. I went off of pizza during the Dick Miller. So I'm going to recommend a movie

that has nothing in common with the other movie. Well, maybe a little. I'm going to recommend a movie that came out last year from director Craig Brewer, and that is the biopic about a Neil Diamond impersonation act, song sung blue, starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson. I am quite vocal in saying musician biopics are my least favorite type of movie. and I think that Craig Brewer has a skill when at depicting kind of lower level artists

who are kind of seeking for something more and they have like kind of a humble blue collar background and they're kind of reaching for something and you know they're never going to get it but that doesn't stop them from trying and I think that was on display in his movie Dolomite is my name that has an amazing performance. from Eddie Murphy to even something like hustle and flow.

It's very sad, and I think there's some choices made with the life of the real-life people to, like, add to the drama in places. But also it helps that there's a lot of music from Neil Diamond, which is a plus for me. And Kate Hudson is great in it. No surprise. So I liked it. Song Song-sung Blue. It's very sad at times.

Warning. I haven't gotten to see many movies of worthwhile note lately because I've been watching so many flop-house movies but since Dan recommended a really long movie I'll recommend a very short movie which is I think I'm going to recommend Apocalypse Pooh which is a mash-up movie from 1987 that mashes up Apocalypse now

and footage from Winnie the Pooh, the Disney version of Winnie the Pooh. And they do a pretty... The guy who did it was Todd Graham and he does a very good job of finding images from Winnie the Pooh that fit with the monologues and dialogue from Apocalypse Now. So this is just been floating around for a long time. Is that also a vinegar syndrome release? I don't believe it is.

But you can find it online. It's only about eight minutes long. Eight minutes. Yeah. And so, but it's a, and even at eight minutes, you're like, I got it. But there's some fun juxtapositions in it. So that's what I'll recommend. Evan, have you do any movies you'd like to recommend for us today? I don't watch.

I watch mostly garbage. as we were saying before we started this, I really don't like, you know, I still, I've seen dream catcher. That's the William Goldman. I'll recommend good garbage. I was going to recommend you. Well, so I've got, I've got two, if you don't mind. They're both in 2017. Okay.

I've tried to pick something that was made after 2000, but I didn't realize I could go to 1987. I went, I go through phases. Like, I spent, I write the movies down that I watch. I admit it that it's sad, but it admitted it. My kid makes fun of me because I forget a lot of the things I watch. I don't have time to put shit on letterbox. Also, if I go to letterbox, I'll read some of the reviews and I'll want to kill people. You know, it's like IMDB for college, people who've been to college.

It's just stupid, but it has better words. So I was trying to think. By the way, Dan, there's a great letterbox. I also believe in what Evan's saying. I have wanted to, you know, strangler a stranger for no bigger sin than they were dumb about a movie. Like, have you, you know, you got the plot wrong, your entire thesis, Mr. Smartass. But so I just thought, what if I liked that, you know, that's fairly recent. For some reason, two movies popped up and I looked them up and they're both 2017.

The first one is called November. It's an Estonian folk horror. It's the, I don't really want to get into the plot because the, but it's, it's an overt folk horror film. It's not one of these. folk horror where you go well you know the folk horror was really kind of just on the side uh it was all our trauma all along it comes it comes straight from the uh it's it's a it's a it's a period piece uh it's probably the only estonian film i've ever seen but it is gorgeous uh the the photography the black and white

photography is crisp and gorgeous i enjoyed it as a film as well some people only like the photography but it just it just worked for me it's um it's deep in folklore. It's a depressing, sad film with some laughs in it. But it's just looking up and you look at a couple screenshots and it's if that's what you're into. But I really like it. It's a slow burner, but I think it's beautiful.

I really well done. And I enjoyed it much more than a lot of these elevated horror 824 things that people jump up and down over. It's got also an amazing opening. just a crazy, bizarre opening. It's got a dark, morden wit to it, which is a phrase I will never use again, and I apologize.

They're trying to sound like an actual film fucking critic. What is this letterbox? Come on. Yeah, what is this is this? I know. The other film is, this might have been discussed on your show by somebody,

but it's also from 2017. It's called One Cut of the Dead. That's when I've been meaning to watch for a long time. So, for once, I'll, I can, I can't talk much. You won't have to, you know, me and my jabby jaw, but one kind of thing is that literally people say don't say anything about it, just go into it blind. And it's a 2017 film, Japanese film.

And the only thing I would say is I think that everyone should see it, especially film fans. But you have to commit to it. You have to watch the entire thing. It's not a movie where at the last minute you get some. stupid, you know, James Juan twist. You know, the ventriloquist puppet was a corpse. Somehow you never smelled it.

Uh-huh. But, uh, but the movie, the movie turns people off the first, third, and people get bored with it and they don't watch it. You've got to watch the entire film. And I won't say anything more about it. But it's one of my favorite films that I've seen in the last few decades. It's, it's a, uh, I think it's, it's pretty scrappy. I really like the scrappiness of it is.

But, I mean, I don't even want to tell you how you might feel at the end of it because I don't want to change. I don't want anyone, I don't want anyone going into it cold going, well, at the end, we're going to end up being depressed. And I'm not saying you will. But because you've got to be, you've got to sit through it. And you've got to engage with it. And by the end, I think he'll be very surprised and pleased that you watched it. I've got to watch it. I've heard such good things.

I've been trying to keep myself from hearing much about it. That's why you should just. Aren't they, are they remaking it? or did that already happen? There was a sequel. There was a COVID sequel. They got the cast together and put them in character and made a film shot online of all dealing with each other.

But it's a film that I'm surprised still hasn't penetrated more than, because there are so many ways to grapple with it. one of the reasons it hasn't is because people really keep the secret yeah whenever i talk to people who i know who like film i'm surprised that more people haven't seen it but generally it's a movie where you don't want to know and so people reviews don't really give you much reason they go oh you got you know basically you're selling a car with a car with the tarp over it trust well it's like it's like you know it's like religion trust me it'll work out trust me but you got to go through all this you might have to go through all this shit first or you just

don't trust it. But one, one cut of the dead is one of my favorite recent, you know, fairly recent movies. And I recommend it to everyone. But it's hard because you're like, you know, no, you got to watch it. And I can't talk about it. I'm like, okay. Well, it's only 96 minutes. I'm going to, I think I'm going to watch it next. So, Dan, that's perfect for you. Yeah. I finally, I finally last night just started watching a movie that was a movie of my choice and not flop house choice. And so when I finish that one. I feel good, right? It felt so good that I could finally watch this Czech comedy from the 70s.

That's a parody of American Pulp Mystery novels from the beginning of the 20th century. It's on Tobey, right? Yeah, yeah, it's on Tobe. It's like Della hasn't had supper yet or something like that. Yeah, I watched one of the other films, and I'm dying to see Della. I watched the... Was it the Castle in the Carpath? The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathian.

I haven't watched that one yet, and I really want to. But the same guy did a movie called Lemonade Joe that I recommended on the episode, which I love. trio of films the same villain the guy plays the villain in all three films the same guy. I didn't realize how dork in this podcast. The Carpathians is a weirdly enough. It's the only jewel, one of two

Jules Verne, it's a Jules Verne book. And it's the driest comedy. And I laughed my ass off through it. I just found it, it's droll and weird and it's steampunky, but it doesn't call attention to itself.

It doesn't, it's very, it's like, It's like, it's like if Terry Gilliam had restraint. Would he be Terry Gilliam then? I don't know and I don't, I don't care. He can eat my underwear. You're in here, folks. I was going to watch that next, but I'm going to watch one guy of dead. But the car.

The film was hilarious and I'm dying. I just haven't been in a mood to watch the other two because they're not, you know, slap sticky. They're almost like, you know, droll slapstick. People don't smashing into each other. But the art direction is, I mean, I laughed at this film just from like art direction.

You know, there's one scene where they just show an entrance to a, to the mysterious castle. And I laughed because it was just so oddball. But it's, and it's also a great looking film. I don't know how the other ones are, but I... The other ones look good too. I mean, the Lemonadejo looks like a, almost like a silent western.

Yeah. But it looked, but like they pull it off. But I love the idea that he made, he made a Julesverne Steampunk. He made a Western and a pulp and I forget where the mother country where he's from is. It's just what an odd choice. Yeah, Czechoslovakia. Yeah, what an odd choice and then he was able to make a triptych is worth looking, you know, just fascinating because

you know, the government didn't shoot him. I don't know for something. Yeah, you're incensing teenagers. Yeah, I love the fact that the Tooby has this. It just I mean, Tubey's amazing. It's got such a great library of stuff. Sponsor us. Tooby. Yeah, Tooby. What are you afraid of sponsoring us? Tube is the only streaming service

that it's my first go to. And I'm like, it's got all this horror that I love, a lot of comfort horror. It's Messiah of Evil and, and things like that. And all this Gialo. And it has good stuff. I mean, it actually

has good films too. Stuff that you used to be able to only find if you went to the Thalia up, you know, you had to go to Manhattan and go to the, it's where I watch my Jim and the holograms. Yeah. And it's got great stuff too.

And they've got like multiple seasons of Common Rider and Ultraman. I'm like, that's all I need practically. This was, it's dangerous though because they have like, they have an extensive collection of Doctor Who episodes. And I'm like, is this the year I get into Doctor Who? Yeah, I'm a recent Doctor Who convert from making fun of my friends for liking it. And I'm sitting there going through the pertwee era, going through the it's charming garbage i mean there's nothing funnier than watching

a guy in an alien get up that involves a frogman's outfit and he trips on his flippers and they keep it i mean the sets move i mean i just all at that breakneck bbcce yeah i mean it's just i i actually find myself really enjoying it on multiple levels because i'm like it's funny goofy stuff it's amiable as hell they're they're taking it in cr-it's cheap and dirty and fast television making they don't really know what they're doing and but they're also but the actors are all taking it extremely seriously yeah you know and it does and the thing is it has a sense of humor it has always had a sense of humor about it but then you get to see jean marsh show up in five you know looking awesome and you know fascist soldiers outfit i mean it's just you could the actors that show up are also

interesting. It's got that Twilight Zone Outer Limits Alfred Hitchcock out. Yeah, so this is the year I get into Doctor Who. Well, we've talked enough about Tooby. Evan, would you like to tell us again about your book that you have out? Let's promote, what would you like to promote? Well, if any of my jokes

landed for you today, you might like my cartooning because it's very pop culture saturated. It's very much like me. Goes on too long and there's plenty of it. But nerd and Nerd Inferno is available at, you know, better comic shops at bookshops. I don't like plug in Amazon, but if that's where you have to get stuff, not everybody has a comic shop, obviously.

I mean, I think you have a scrimshaw shop. You might have a scrimshaw shop more easily than you have a comic shop in your neighborhood. But I, it's like I ordered it through my local independent bookstore. Good for you, man. Seriously, good for you. So, yeah. That way they get a dime and I get a nickel. Yeah.

And stores will do that for you. Yeah. People don't talk about it much, but if you don't want to support a big, possibly evil retailer. I go through my local comic shop. I try never. I don't personally buy things through Amazon.

But a lot of people who are, who have found Eltingville in the last couple years, a lot of them do not have, I mean, they're in other countries and they do not have access to a bookstore, a comic store, let alone one that sells English work. So, I mean, you know, Barnes and Noble, you know, you can go through books a million and local bookshops and things like that. But or you can, you can pirate it, torrent it.

That's what you kids do. If you like it, you know, throw me a nod. And there's that podcast, dude. Yeah. And again. And I've been doing, I've been doing, I've been writing horror stories for the EC, EC Comics Revival. Catacomba Torment. I've got a third story just came out in the collections of that.

That's from Oni Press and EC Comics. And my stuff's been getting reprinted. I'm old enough that DC just did the Superman Adventures, big books of that. World's Funnest has been reprinted multiple times somewhat recently at DC. The Deadpool stuff that I sort of did, it's a long story. It's not really Deadpool, but it is Deadpool with has been reprinted. my predator work has been reprint. Things keep recycling the same way that, you know,

vinegar syndrome or whoever keeps putting out weird old stuff. What about your Bill and Ted books? Bill and Ted books, I don't know if they're still in print, but the Bill and Ted run from Marvel was put out by Boom a couple of years ago. There's a hard cover that's out. I think that's the collection I have, yeah. The soft cover collection might be there, too. I don't make anything on that, but I still promote it because I'm happy with the work.

I mean, I stole it. He did. No, no, I mean, I bought. No, no, I don't. Please, you know, I don't. What are you going to do, right? I mean, we're all, oh, I've never watched a movie that my friend Paul downloaded from somewhere. We didn't all watch, we didn't all watch. We weren't all watching anime. Ghibli films in the 80s that were on VHS and you could barely see what was happening.

Or anything like that. You know, let's be honest about it. I mean, I know, if you don't have the money, do what you got to do. But, you know, give an artist a buck, do something for another artist or myself. That's all. Certainly don't use AI. I think we can all agree. Yeah, I just, I did a talk with a, with a, with a, uh,

an art class, uh, from, from, from Cal Arts yesterday and it ended on a big. And I was very glad to see all these little messages coming up, you know, fuck AI. Uh-huh. It's a thief. It's a world killer. It's putting money into the worst people's pockets. And it's just awful. Doesn't even produce good work.

You know, it's just, it's blue balls. Mm-hmm. It's like the least nourishing fast food option. Yeah, and we're all paying for it. And it will make you sick eventually because it's making people sick. I mean, you really are pressing a button to poison somebody's sit down when you do that. I mean, it sounds crazy. It sounds like something out of dream catcher, but you really are fucking up the environment and people's lives and stealing people's work, writing art and money.

And it's just, it's contemptuous garbage. And it's a shame that when the, I'm looking forward to the bubble finally pop. but it's going to be a economic nightmare because so many idiots have bet the house on this. And on that sheer note, please buy my comic book before we all die because that's what you need is it'll help ferry you across the river. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need those two coins, yes. You can change.

In comics, that's about what your royalties will be. I don't know what more perfect note for a chat with Evan Dorkin we can end on. They're both Canadian Nichols. At least you get a fever. Because Sharon said, oh, you want to get across the river, eh? Oh, okay. Now we're back to the beave. You know, before we go, we should thank our network, maximum fun,

whom you should also support because they're not AI or putting money in some bad person's pocket. You should say thanks as we do to Alex Smith, our producer. He goes by the name Howl Doughty on the Internet, where he does music and comedy and streams and all sorts of stuff. But for this episode of The Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Aleckeleton, and we've been joined by... Hello?

Aved Dorkin. We've been joined by... Oh, sorry. The feed froze, and then Elliot's voice came out like he was on helium. on the show. Just say your name. So your name. Evan Dorgan.

Perfect. So we're going to do a quick intro, and then we are going to introduce ourselves, and then Elliot will introduce you, Evan. Yes. Oh, my goodness. So be prepared. He is not going to be kind.

Okay. That's fine. That's fine. I don't blame him because I know what I did to you guys. Yeah, it's a real gotcha, I understand why you might have the unofficial roast of Evan Dorgan. Have any of you seen this before? Yes. Oh, I've seen it multiple times before.

Oh, God, I'm so sorry. My wife watching with me, and when I woke up in the morning, she was gone. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists' own shows. Supported directly by you.