The Flop House - Ep. #296 - Slender Man

Episode Date: October 26, 2019

Shocktober 2019 concludes with our dissection of the Internet meme/creepypasta horror film, Slender Man. Thanks to Max Fun HQ for letting us pop in and use an actual studio for once. Meanwhile Stuart tells a tale of nude figure drawing, Dan reveals karaoke antics, and Elliott's not afraid of businessmen. Wikipedia synopsis of Slender Man Movies recommended in this episode: Boy Three Tears on Bloodstained Flesh Who Let the Dogs Out

On this episode we discuss... Slender man! Don't worry, the plot is a little... THEN! H-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h Hey everyone and welcome to the flop out of Simon Dan McCoy. Hey I'm Stuart Wellington. And over here at Delia Kaelin and I can see my co-hosts right in front of me in person. What's this all about? And what's the improved sound quality about?

What's that all about? Yeah, it's almost like we're in an actual recording studio. Stuart, are we in an actual recording studio? Elliot, yes we are. Dan, where are we? We're in Max Fun HQ. This is recorded right after the day after our LA show. I mean, when you're sorry to interrupt,

you're not sorry to interrupt, and normally when you were... You're not going to be more interruptions somehow, even though we're all in the same room. Sorry, sorry to interrupt, but when you're playing a game of you've got to keep moving that hot potato I pass it to you.

So, okay, well I was okay. It's fine. Let's keep it business. Max H, Max Fun HQ, or Max HeadCroom, as it's also known. I forget what I was gonna say. Oh, you know, we just thought why not do it. Okay, so we were recording a show in Los Angeles. We did a live show last night.

And so now we're recording it at Max Fenn headquarters through all the same city here in the beautiful American cement building right next to beautiful MacArthur Park where yesterday we saw a pair of ducks eating a baby or whatever Jesse says at the end of the sign Yep Remember every radio star has it say the shirt start off

Okay, well, I guess That's good for the Vin diagram of people who listen to us and bullseye but not the rest of the audience You're right Dan. We're usually pretty good about making jokes only the general populist and no, will not feel excluded from. Yeah, yeah. Only, you know, only the broadest of comedy. Guys, what month is it? I don't know, Dan. What month is it? It's so month. No, wait. Is that what you're going for?

It checked over. Oh, okay. Where are we? Okay. For movies. Yeah. It's October. Oh, okay. Okay, movie. Yeah, for this podcast. What are we doing this podcasting? I feel like you went to chapter three and when you skipped chapter two Well, you got to make sure the book's good, dude. I think somehow the professionalism of our environment is bringing our professionalism down. I think so yeah We keep waiting for the real host to come in. Um speaking of hosts on this show. That's us. What do we do on this show as the host? Perfect

Me right when the coffee door and do not cut that out please keep that in so Dan take four I think what do we do on this podcast? We watch a bad movie and then we talk about it. Oh, yeah, and what month is it? It's October when we watch horror movies in honor of the spookiest month of the year. Now what makes October so spooky? Yeah, I think it's because you just started going back to school and you got this mountain of homework and you also have to manage that with your extracurriculars

and all those leaves you have to rake in there dead and see if ghosts leaves around you. Yeah, the ghost leaves are hanging on the trees. Yeah, of course that makes sense. Also you gotta wear a jacket and what's scarier than that, having to wear a lightweight jacket. That was my favorite thing about trick or treating

in the Midwest was no matter what, I had to like prepare for cold weather. Yeah. So you're a ghost wearing a jacket as well, you're saying? I think I stole that from somebody on Twitter, I'm sorry. Yeah, but the person on Twitter was doing, I hope unwittingly, a Jerry Seinfeld joke from about 15 years ago.

Mm-hmm. Okay, so yeah, like, I, you know, I stole from somebody. Look, we're all stealing from somebody. We, man stole fire from the gods. When Prometheus gave it to us. I'm stealing from my little bank. You're blaming me. Hold on. Wait, so wait. Did was Prometheus involved with your bank too? Yeah, we banks with Prometheus bank. He takes gold from Zeus and gives it to customers. Steers been staring at his notes for a while. I think he's rare and to go. Oh no has been staring at his notes for a while.

I think he's raring to go, oh no, I'm just scrolling through Instagram right now. Now they're posts from Dan, huh? Cool. While he's hosting the show, amazing. What? Okay, so. So tonight, if you, tonight, tonight,

I figured I'd set the mood, cause this is a spooky show. Yeah, it's less scary if people know that it's 145 p.m. where we are right now. Uh, so tonight we're gonna be talking about a little movie called Slender Man. A very little movie. Um, very skinny. Okay, just kidding. It's a normal movie, uh, but it, you know, does feel kind of slim.

It's normal. So, such as, you know, does feel kind of slanted. No, normal. It's such as you might find your local red box. It's not like those scenes in, what's that show with Julia Roberts where it's about the returning veterans. Where some of the scenes, homecoming, where some of the scenes are shot with a in a narrow aspect ratio.

It's not like that. Wait, what? Forget it, never mind. Okay, so not like that. Uh, wait, what? Forget it. Never mind. Okay. So, um, so just to let everybody know, uh, upfront that I watched this movie on a MacBook Slim, in honor of the movie. Oh, because you were on a plane watch. I was on a point. And you're on that plane with fat boys, slim, yeah, former recording star. He was fucking in heaven Yeah, on a plane, okay, okay, so the movie opens and we are introduced to a group of teen girls in small town USA I am not sure if it's mentioned later, but is it are we in like New Jersey?

Do they say Clifton a couple times? I? Guys I couldn't keep track of where the movie took place. I couldn't keep track of who the characters were or what their names were. Well, their characters were pretty damn interchange. Well, their names are Hally, Chloe, Ren, like the bird, and Katie, like the person. It's not Ren, like the cartoon dog.

They're not like Ren the cartoon dog. Unless the subtitles were incorrect on my version of the movie. No, I think, because I don't remember any scenes where they're like, we should call up Slenderman and he's like, no, I would do the whole of the hand. Wow. I sort of, you're looking on that one and it ends the podcast.

Not really. I told them apart by being like, okay, there's the one that's a little punkier than the others. Then there's the one who was played by one of the girls from Bunheads, storing some floster. I haven't seen that. And then there are the two others. Okay, I spent so much time there be like, we got to find Halle.

Where's Kelly? I was like, wait, I thought that was Kelly. Hold on a second. Which one is Ren? I just couldn't, it took me a long time to get their names straight. Yeah, that's when the nightmare is completely engulfed you. So we see our, our friends walking through school. Our friends?

Yeah, there are friends immediately. They're great. So they're walking through school and they're having that conversation that like all teen kids have in this kind of movie when you know they're doomed with their like we're going to live forever. I think their game is if you could be any age forever, what age would you be?

And of course, they're like, I would be 21 or I'd be 30. And then one of them says, I'd be the age we are right now. That allows you to assume what age they're talking about. And then Bruce Springsteen pops in and plays Glory Days. They bump into a group of team boys that are kind of like the Omega to their Alpha. They're the exact pairings of each of them. And unless I'm wrong, basically do not reappear in the movie. Like they pop their own like Tom shows back.

Tom is rich, a secondary character as exists in this film. Yeah, I'm such a fan. I joined the Tom Tom Club. Okay. Well, very genius of love. And how do you how do you joy? How do you come up with a Tom Tom Club? Well, well, you got to collect a whole bunch of box tops and Marbrow miles and you send them in. It helps if you have a pretty bitter relationship with David Burns. So these teen boys, we get a little bit of like, you know, friendly verbal sparring.

It's basically a non-singing version of the top that scene in Teen Witch. Exactly. And Halle, our heroine, is asking Tom about what they're going to be doing later and he's like, it's a secret. And I told you the secret, I could tell to you, but I'd have to kill you. And I'm like, that's a weird thing to say when you consider this a movie about people seeing a secret thing and getting killed. I don't know the characters know that at this point though. I mean it's similar it's that kind of irony where like or it's like when the narrative the

metaphor the narrative kind of bleeds into the story itself like in the opening opening chapter of Elysses where Buck Mulligan is holding this like silver cigarette case and there's an emerald in the middle of it and it's a symbol of like this English man holding Ireland in the palm of his hand. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sure. Dan, I have never heard of Elysses. So what you? I don't know. I heard it's pretty good. It's Stuart's out. I heard there's a guy in it who has a cigarette case. That's pretty it. In his name's Buck Mulligan. Yeah, so he's like a porn star probably. Probably we're a famous golfer.

I mean, I think he begins like wearing a bathrobe. Like he opens the, whatever. Okay, so Dan, you know I love stories about people who wear bathroves. That's why I've never been a reader of Playboy, but I followed Hugh Heffner's expliques. Because I admire that he always wore a bathrobe all the time. So, first, we get some scenes of home life.

Uh, Halle's parents are concerned about, we get some like concerns about teen pregnancy or teen-teen partying. Like in many movies, their dining room table is extremely dimly lit. And they only have one light that's on above the table. The kitchen that I assume is next to the dining room area, completely dark. As if they have everything they need on the table and they will not need to get up and get anything from the kitchen, which I don't know about you guys, there's a very unrealistic depiction of dinner in my book. Yeah, yeah. Like, I feel like any moment like a naked axle rose could wander in off of the set of woes that don't cry. Okay, so we're also introduced to Halle's younger sister, Lizzie, who clearly wants to join

in with the older girls who only seem slightly older than she is. I actually thought they were the same age for a little bit. And Ren's the one who kind of like encourages a little bit. I mean, like, it's not her sister, but she's like, yeah, you're, you know, she wants to be the cool, like, older friend. Yeah. And, uh, Ren and all the, all of our, all of our friends, I spent the whole time trying to remember what other things that I've seen these young women in.

And they've all been in a number of other things. Oh, yeah. I want to say, uh, in this early, going, I mean, there are a few things I liked about this movie to spoil it, like, which are surrounded by like some of the most sort of generic horror movie filmmaking but this movie does feel like it is the horror movie demo that comes with your dvd player where it's like to do your tv work for harrow harrow harrow does it work for harrow also

it's a work for harrow because it let's try it out with this with this disk i guess it meets the minimum national requirements for horror, but in these early scenes I kind of liked despite the fact that the movie is very bad at differentiating this character as like we said I did feel like the movie had this kind of weird Simi Verite mumblecore thing going on where like it was shot in a slightly different way like following this here to the generic quiet subdued it's like if eighth grade was a horror movie yeah like a quiet sub dude hard as opposed to like guys we've got to do this thing come on hailey that would be crazy like it's not super glossy and fake like it seems like maybe

some of the it feels pretty fake well I bet it seems like some of the dialogue might be like semi-improvised and like they have like a good rapport with it I don't know I'm I'm looking for gyms in the in the in the chaff but but but I feel like what are those gems in the chaff but I'm just saying that Dan you're gonna get some sort of farming mind if the script had been better well he's still in the gyms from the Duke's man. He's gonna return from them later. If the script had been better, this style of doing a horror movie would have been interesting.

It's something that I haven't really seen for this kind of teen horror movie. Yeah, like a teen mumble-core horror movie. Yeah, whereas there's just nothing really going on. So what should have been like a kind of endearing subtlety? Yeah. Becomes like, uh, so is this a movie? What happens next? I'm not sure. It's like the boyhood of horror movies. You're like, uh, am I, so is this a scene or like, I don't understand? Yeah, I agree with you about boyhood, but we are not endearing ourselves to like the larger audience right now. Hey, I don't want to be popular. I just want to be me, but I also want to be popular, guys. Do I have to like boyhood to be liked? It's great. I love it, I guess.

I don't think so. No, no, everybody's talking about it all the time, according to Dan. People are big fans of stunt casting and Ethan Hawke performed. Well, I mean, I guess I am a fan of Ethan Hawke performances. Ethan Hawke and his stunt man, whoever they cast in that part, yeah. So what are they going to do when they hang out? So our teams are all hanging out. They're, of course, drinking.

They're singing. They're singing. They're singing. They're singing. They're singing. and it's stuntman, whoever gets cast in that part, yeah. So what are they gonna do when they hang out? So our teams are all hanging out, they're of course drinking. They're saying at Katie's house, Katie's dad is passed out, drunk upstairs, they're goofing around, looking at stuff on the old internet, they decide to be like that group of boys because they heard a rumor, those boys are going out into the woods

and they're summoning a guy named slenderman and this is not higher-em slenderman no way assume is a tailor yep so they actually seem to be like high-em slenderman not higher-em so they uh... they could they go to a website and they just google slenderman right you can't get out of the website looks like kind of crampy like an actual website. It's not like, I don't know what swordfish were. You're like, let me, let me get on to the internet and then the lights are flashing across their

chrome faces. So they, yeah, they don't have like four like digital avatars that are floating through the cypress space. There's a bunch of cubes they have to connect to do something. You've got to collect the 14 digital keys to unlock the Slenderman portal. So they, yeah, so they're looking at this thing and, you know, they see a couple people on this forum mentioning it and then there's just a link that says Summon Him. So they're like, fuck it, let's click this link.

And it leads them to a video which I'm assuming was uploaded by SlenderMan. And they watch a video that gives them some instructions. They have to listen for bells, they have to close their eyes. Your usual urban legend crap. And then when they open their eyes, their eyeballs are bombarded with a series of, you know, kind of cliched flashing images.

Ring of type stuff, yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry, should we take a, should we pause for a moment? Let's go on kind of cliched flashing images. Ring-o-type stuff, yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry, should we take a, should we pause for a moment? Let's go on a tangent about Slenderman. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Let's talk about this Slenderman fellow. Slenderman is a slenderman. Not the original creation for this, for this movie.

He, well, it, an original creation of the internet, a new urban legend, a new, like a flying spaghetti monster, yeah. Yeah, it's a new urban legend, a new, like a flying spaghetti monster, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a digital urban legend. It feels like someone was going out of their way to create a Jersey devil or what's the, the one that movie just came out about,

about the Latin American evil spirit. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, your own. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like they wanted to, they're like, much, the internet, let's just face it. Or like a moth man or, does it fall under the subheading creepy pasta? Yeah, let's say that, it does. The internet thinks it can do anything better than real life does.

And so they're like, why should we make do with all these analog cryptids and analog urban legends that suck when we can have slender man an all original digital 21st century urban legend who is a very thin guy in a business suit just frankly what loses it for me the idea that he's a monster from another dimension or whatever he wears a suit is stupid that it's like oh he's uh look he's got to look real cool so that like a hipster can dress up like him in a skinny suit he has no face

and at times he seems to have a tree body or a branch of the body but i he's just like a tall thing kindness he's basically david bowie and tall thing guy and a suit to steal children and what about it but i said it's just what they're doing in the center man just like david uh... let's just say though that the movie doesn't seem to

quite figure out what Slenderman is and I think that that is partly kind of a symptom of the internet Slenderman which is this crowdsourced story so like everyone out there has kind of a who is written a Slenderman thing kind of does a different thing with Slenderman. They're trying to they're trying to create immediately what usually takes decades or centuries. Which is something you have a character like the Jersey Devil doesn't exist. I'm from New Jersey. The only real Jersey Devil is of course Bruce Springsteen.

Sorry guys. Oh wow. He's driven many to their to their doom with his powerful music and his promises of riches that ends the garden state. Yeah, the promise that you can be a sad guy in a bar and everybody else will still think you're pretty cool. Exactly. Win and reality, they don't. So the Vizzi tells this creature that is existed in legend for a very long time, probably not as long as the legend is said to be, but it has accreted over many years, both a solidity

in terms of the landscape, the mental landscape of the state, but also like lots of weird details and there's lots of regional differences and things like that. But they kind of arose semi-organically from people hearing the story and they remembering it wrong or whatever telling their children about it. Where it was Slenderman, they're kind of like,

let's do all that but really fast. Yeah, so let's fake it. And so yet comes off as kind of a mushy character. And this thing, I mean like... There is a text book about him in the movie. Yeah. About about bioelectricity and what we'll get to that. I mean, in so much as I'm going to get to a textbook about bioelectricity. And in so much as anyone agrees about Slender Man, the kind of basic parameters is he mostly

targets children. He sort of he either spirits them away or drives the mad and his motives are deliberately left vague so in the movie it's similar they know that either takes you mhm drives you mad or kills you why bump bump bump

because these are young americans young americans it's a boy guys and i just like very quickly i want to touch on something. And I'll say, he does this to young Americans, because he's afraid of Americans. Oh yeah. David Bowie. Yeah. Uh, I want to touch.

Ground control to slender man. Oh yeah. You're taking all the kids. Huh? But why do you wear a necktie if you're a monster? Uh, how do you tie that necktie if you're a monster? How do you tie that necktie with those fingers? I mean, I think you would be extra good at it because it's got these super long holes. You can't see in the mirror. He doesn't have eyes. I can't see the

the window. How is our engineer Jordan reacting to Elliot singing? She's loving it. I think wow, she's filling out her last one test. That doesn't give everything to Elliot singing. She's loving it, I think. Oh wow, she's filling out her last wound test. That says give everything to Elliot. No, I wanted to say to like, I just quickly want to touch on this ashrugely as possible and move on, content warning, like, so there was a stabbing related to slenderman where one young girl stabbed another young girl several times. They had been sort of obsessed with this character And this movie came out four years after that. And a lot of people were kind of like upset that this movie came out because of this real

life violent stabbing. And I did a little reading on the production of this movie. And this movie was sort of cut down to get a PG-13 rating. But reading between the lines, it seemed like a lot of stuff was maybe cut out too, so it was not to like evoke that. Too much, that case. Too much. And so that is also part of why this movie feels so weirdly disjointed and things don't seem to follow other things.

So you're saying it would be tasteless of me to now do my slender man who sold the world apparently? Yeah. Wow, yeah. That's a lot of work to get Elliott to stop singing. Yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's obviously fucked up.

So they so, yeah, and it's tasteless of the filmmakers to, to maybe if they intended to, exploit that. I didn't want to dwell on it, but I feel like it's worth just mentioning. But then again, the kind of the Dorodos doysky wrote a novel that was inspired by a real murder, is he exploitative? Probably.

Yeah, maybe. Um, the, he just, just, just, he's dead now. I mean, the curse of that. Just, just because it happened a long time ago, doesn't mean it's not bad. Yeah, good point. Um, well, that actually sheds a little bit of light onto the most likely tacked on, uh, monologue at the end of the movie, but we'll get to that. So they watch this video and then they're like,

oh, that was weird or whatever. Let's watch a movie. And I'm like, yeah, let's watch a movie. But nope, we don't get to put on slimmer. Instead, we get a time jump one week later. All the girls have been having nightmares. They're all kind of like their nightmare fantasies are kind of starting to bleed into their real life.

They go on a school trip to a historic cemetery and cliff dim because it's shot over for school. I guess My girlfriend was watching this and she was like I can't believe that she lets you call her your girlfriend. She encouraged it She was like, what kind of, what kind of, yeah, school trip is just to a sentiment cemetery? She was asking me what school trips I took. I'm like, mostly the science museum. I mean, if it's a historic cemetery in like the town.

Founders are buried there. Yeah, they take you to a cemetery. And they're like, more sins buried. This is the cemetery that they shot return the living dead at. I'd be like awesome. Thanks, teach. Otherwise, I'd have to learn about returning the living dead on the streets. And then me and my buddy, Shane, so I'll go back to summer school. Okay. So Katie, one of the one of our friends goes missing suddenly. It's a kind of interesting edit

because all of a sudden, like she's looking off into the woods and then all of a sudden we flash forward until later in the day with like the police looking for this missing girl. It's very confusing. It's like there's a little touch of picnic and hanging rock there,

not enough to make it impressive, but it's like for a moment you're like, wait, what happened? What is she doing? I mean, on some level, I appreciate. Yeah. It, you know, kept me on my toes. So good on you, movie.

Your slender toes. Mm-hmm. So, shortly afterwards, her drunk father, we scares Halley by breaking into her home at night while she and her sister Lizzie are alone. She, he breaks into their home while very drunk and blames Hally for involving his daughter in the occult. It's a kind of a weird scene to see this like drunk grown up assaulting these two young women. But I was also like, how does he know that that happened? Well because when they eventually go to her room, it's full of occult.

Oh, yeah. It's full of evidence. It's an evidence bedroom. Hey guys, I just realized we're sort of involving Halley in Chalktober by having a character named Halley in the movie. I just want to like, and so she finally saw Ghost. Good on you. She was a lenderman.

It's let her make house a ghost. I don't know. I know a lot of listeners are probably a lot of listeners are probably missing Halley. She was very busy for a while of listeners are probably a adjacent a lot of listeners are probably missing Hallie She was very busy for a while being in charge of white show and then I think it's fine to say she had a kid So she's very busy now, but I hope we hope to have her back She was pregnant and gave birth. It's not like a kid was it's not a baby boom type situation No, it's yours. We're dropped in her lap. Yeah, but like I just you know, we hope to have her back, but it's harder than in the past.

So, um, thanks for that digression. No, that's good. No, I'm joking. It's good that the listeners note the Hally and the movie is not the Hally who has been on this show. Yeah. Nor is it Hally Berry, who has also been mentioned on this show a few times.

Nor is it Hally's comment, which is not a person, but instead a big ball of ice that flies through space Hmm, okay, no, is it layoff? Yeah, the former restaurant home of the late Anthony Bourdain. Let me you have a chart that explains this I do let me pull it out here now. These are the halls of medicine. They're not actual halls Let me delete all the laws of medicine the cough drops. Yes, that's exactly. It's a misuse of the word halls Okay, now here's our sinny oh hall famous late night host interviewed Jason once. Yeah, I didn't go that good Now here's arch hall senior and junior the director and star the movie Ega

Yeah, I guess under and of course he was Anthony Michael Hall Who is of course the son of Anthony Hall I assume I don't know how names work under under goofs. I guess I should just remove the Halle's comment isn't a teenager Incorrectly regarded as goose yeah, no there an unfilmed prologue explains that she began life as a comment It took human form to learn what life is like to earth. Yeah, no, they're an unfilmed prologue explains that she began life as a comment. It took human form to learn what life is like. It worked to Earth. Yeah. So, uh, after, after this scary moment with their friends, Drunken father, uh, our remaining teens decide to become amateur detectives and they, uh,

trick her father into, uh, being distracted like he's asleep on the couch and they wake him up to distract him so they can break in it's like why they have to wake him up they could just broken so they break in and sneak into their friends room and they're like oh the where's our laptop the police must have taken it for evidence and instead there's a whole bunch of drawings of slender man's true and about and then they just find her laptop hidden so appears like the police took Nothing for it and also that the movie is wasting our time

uh unless it's supposed to be he had her computer from everybody else, but it's just a waste Then are you that the entire length of the movie is wasting our time now Dan you're skipping a final judgment I mean it's not wasting our time because we've made sort of a business out of this, but other listeners. Listeners, if you are not watching this movie in order to record a podcast that you make a little bit of money from, I would say maybe don't bother watching it,

but that's for final judgments. Maybe Slender Man will change our minds. Now one thing I do like about Slender Man is the... The movie of the man. He's a generous little man. Yeah, I mean, we're gonna go to the pros column now uh... will say there's some obvious cons we'll get to those but under pros i like when somebody's kind of been bitten by the slender man bug

they am here they immediately develop a little taste for some art work yeah they begin uh... uh... friction and scratching like mad they discover uh... previously unknown talent uh... called this movie slender muse and it feels kind of weird because you would think with this like modern tech techno savvy type bad guy they would be they would be making all these pictures of uh... of him and what cad and yeah yeah made of emoji stuff yeah yeah no but it's good old fashion to pan on paper now Dan let's let's let's where how do you pitch the movie

it's Titanic yeah but instead of k-winds that it's good old-fashioned pen on paper now Dan. Let's okay. Let's where how do you pitch the movie? It's Titanic, you know, but instead of K. Winslet, it's Slenderman, and he inspires Leonardo Caprio to draw him like one of his French girls Yeah, but Slenderman I don't think can take his suit off. It's kind of hard also. I think well, I mean I was gonna say it's hard to Draw Slenderman because he's got that sort of faceless quality. It's very easy to draw Yeah, the hardest thing to draw is the human face. Well, the hands. If you've tried to draw hands. The feet. I think feet we've not tried.

Yeah, to make it look like you're actually standing on something pretty. And the penis is hard to draw without looking goofy. Well, just the hardest thing to draw is the human penis. I was doing a life drawing for a while. OK. And I showed my progress to friends. They're like, yeah, wow, you really emphasized

the female nipples and the male penis on these drawings. I'm like, I'm not intentionally. No, you have to have like- I mean, you have to have like- I mean, you have to have like- I mean, you want to show respect to your mutes. They're bearing it all, I might as well, you know. Yeah.

Also, do the same, and that's why you were kicked out of that life drawing class for drawing in the nude. Till this day, one of my favorite life drawing moments was one, because we went to a small school. I know where this is headed, but you can go. Nope, it's fine, Dan. I won't have a digression. I'll just stick to the plot. Like you always tell me to do. Insolving to me, that's the reason I'm... No, it was a story about how like every... Because we knew everybody in our class. And my roommate showed up to class one morning, very hungover.

And a friend of ours, or at least an acquaintance of ours, who was the model, started posing for gestures and his first pose was this like crazy one with it like, end up spreading his butt and my buddy's just like, oh, left for the rest of the morning, oh boy. Now here's something I've never been in a real life drawing class. So is it like in the TV where they walk out wearing the flimsiest of robes? Yeah. Yeah, just like the thinnest of kimonos. Well, yeah. A lot of them. It seems like it doesn't give you a lot of coverage.

Well, I mean, you're going to be new in a second. Yeah, but you want to make it a big reveal. I shouldn't, I don't think you go understand what the model's doing. I would come out and kind of like a mysterious style cape that covered my whole body. And then I'd fling it back. What have you had a couple of smoke machines? Yeah. And you start playing y'all ready for this? Yeah, yeah. Then I played that. You'd fling it back. What have you got a couple of smoke machines? And you started playing y'all ready for this? Yeah, yeah, then I played that. You'd fling it back and you'd be wearing a sweatsuit underneath, and underneath you'd be wearing a full body

like green man suit. I'd keep taking this things off and each time I'd be like, okay, now you'll get to see it and then I'd be wearing clothes or anything. I'd go, oh, oh. And the teachers like classes over. That'd be like 50 dollars, please. Yeah, okay, so we, oh man. And the teachers like classes over. That's like 50 dollars, please. Yeah.

Okay. So, we, oh man. So they start to follow up. They start following up on our internet history. They find a website that Katie was visiting. They find a whole bunch of pretty well edited and shot little slender man videos, right? Yeah. They literally looked like a good piece of work of professional people trying to make amateur slender man videos, right? Yeah, yeah. They literally looked like a good piece of work

of professional people trying to make amateur slender man videos. They're reading all the comments on there and one of the girls says, it's like they're comparing experiences. It's like, yeah, no shit, that's exactly what they're doing. So they end up interacting with an online pal of Katie's who goes by the handle, Allie Cat. And Allie Cat kind of tries to like sketch out when they suggest their friend Katie has been

taken. Allie Cat sketches out some of what they might have to do in order to get their friend back, which I believe they interpret as you have to give up or give him something they love. Yeah, something that they cherish. They're going to have to give up in exchange for their friend. Was it Kelly or Halley? Who that disappeared?

Katie. It's Halley is our lead. Okay. Halley plus Halley. I just think maybe their name shouldn't have been like Katie, Halley, Mikey, Jenny, Jimmy Tony, Jeffy, Jeffy, a little Jeffy, uh, baby, baby, some Claire. I'm thinking of, baby, picking the city. Baby, picking the city.

Okay. So, um, so they end up going out of the woods and they are like give up things they love which involves like breaking pottery and ripping up photos. It's basically their plan is like they got to go into the woods, into the woods to get our friend, into the woods to help the sludder man into the woods and home before dark. Okay, I love it. So they all, widely on dance wave like, they'll put on their blindfolds, the sounds of the forest go away and then sounds of Slenderman come up. And of course,

that was his album, sounds of Slenderman. And the rules that they, Slenderman and Garfunkel, the rules that like Slenderman was gonna show up and they couldn't look at him or else they'll go crazy. So like very quickly, Chloe's like, what's going on? We shouldn't be doing this and then takes her blindfold off.

See this slender man runs away, freaks out. And she was waiting for maybe 15 seconds. Yeah, she gave up pretty quickly. He's millennials. It's all right. But what's strange is like, this is the kind of scene that a horror filmmaker would be so excited to be like, great, this is the first real and counterous lender man. I can take my time and build up the tension here.

I can build up the isolation and build up that fear of like not being able to do anything while this like otherworldly force might be closing in on our heroes. But instead he's like, nope, we're done. Let's move on. I want to see his version. I'm assuming the director is him. Maybe it's not. This director's version of House of the Devil, where Tom Noonin leaves the babysitter behind and the babysitter is immediately like, who else is in the house? Come on. And then the bad guys come back and they're like, we're here too. It is a ham. I looked up. He was, he also directed that movie, losers and stomp the younger Chris Evans and what's his face the guy who looks like

Havier Bartem but isn't oh have your burden junior the American have your burden he was in faux vr barge and I don't know Jeffrey Dean Morgan yeah that's it it's an okay little action movie not great but fun wasn't Jeffrey Dean Morgan one of the mixed somethings and Grayson Attyme? Yes. He's like mixed. Yeah, he might be or dreamy or smoke.

Now, mixed dreamy is Patrick Dempsey. Yeah. Who is one of the characters in this movie since his name is an E. Now, who's a cat, Katy, Halley, Dempsey? Mick Creamy? Yeah. That's Dr. Twinkie.

No, no, no, no, no. So's Dr. Twinkie. Yeah. So, That's Dr. They're like, Dr. Twinkie, you'll, but you lose your license for this and he's like, I'll outlast all of you. I'm full of preservatives. So Ren and Halley find, Stimpy. Find their friend Chloe.

Stimpy. Shaken in the woods, injured from smashing into a tree while stumbling about the dark. And they, and then life kind of moves on. We see a little bit of Chloe. Chloe has a, as I said, she's shaken by her experiences with Slender Man. And then she, he visits her in her home and like, he calls her on the phone

and she like, it's this kind of weird scene. It's a spooky video call, yeah. And then he's choking her and then she looks in the mirror She's choking herself screams which she should not be able to do if she's choking herself well Because the choking should stop air from entering her windpipe. She needs that air to scream But she's not she doesn't really kill herself. She's just given herself a good old slender man's book It's a good old scare them up. Oh fashion. So they So Halle and Ren are trying to survive or kind of figure out their situation. Ren starts doing some research at the library on bioelectric systems.

What I love here is it is such an old-fashioned thing that she would go to the library to use their computers when it's clear all the kids have their own computers. And she looks up this book that's like bioelectric, the book is called like bioelectric, bioelectricity and supernatural phenomena. Does her normal small town library have a copy of it? You know they do. And there's small town library that's like super gothic and scary.

Oh yeah, it's a scary library. It's like Arkham's library. And I like when they're doing research, like the internet research is kind of believably dumb. Like they're just doing like simple Google searches. It's the sort of thing that like, like if you were like Stuart, you got to find out some stuff about Slenderman real quick to record a podcast and be like, okay, let me start googling.

And then there's all these like Photoshop's, these like historical Slenderman photos that are like, this is some of the laziest Photoshop I've ever seen I wish that they had gone all the way and had like paintings of like the revolutionary war and there's a slenderman in the back This is circled. I also feel like this was a mistake that the movie makes where it's like okay Slenderman is an internet thing so the movie also needs to like tie into the internet a lot Where's like they keep trying that as like an invasive idea? Yeah, I mean yeah, I don't know what I mean. Yeah, I would love to have seen like a Peter Paul Rubens where he's like, I'm gonna make a beefy slenderman.

There's a Mona Lisa slenderman. It's like, it's not smiling. It has no face. Now, here's, I just want to say one thing about this textbook she finds in the library. So it's called like, yeah, biodelectricity and supernatural phenomena or something like that. And it is, it is very much a niche text. My wife, she's a librarian, she's talking to me many times, my mom's librarian, they both talk to me about the need to call a library's collection. If a book is one out of date, if it has incorrect scientific information, you got to call that thing.

That book seems to fall into that heading. Number two, if a book hasn't been taken out in years, you probably going to lose it you know what it's just not being used at all so i have find a hard time believing that that book has been in such good circulation because that it is a slinner man in this neighborhood it's not just still in the collection it's on the stack and it's not here in the stacks on the show it's dog year but this is a well-circulated traveled book yeah like deep in the stacks and tries to get a phone call, and all of a sudden it fuzzes out because I'm assuming libraries have scramblers

to prevent kids from using their cell phones. It's to stop old homeless men from watching pornography on the internet. So I don't think she explains the stuff now that she finds in the book. I think that comes a little bit, but the stuff in it is such weird ghost busters, the gibbers that they throw around

about trying to get science-y. It's like the supernatural tech mummoo, generally. And it's like, why Ghostbusters, like the gibbers that they throw around about trying to get sciencey. It's like the supernatural tech mummogenly. And it's like, why are you trying to like midi-chlorian this horror movie right now? Well, and I kind of also like that she relies entirely on a single textbook that she found, which is kind of funny because a textbook is like old media and this is something that was created

through new media. But she like completely believes in this one textbook she finds. And of course, spoiler alert, it provides no assistance for them over the course of the movie. It is a huge waste of everyone's time. Including ours. So of course, she's deep in the stacks. She gets attacked by Slenderman. She kind of gets sucked into this weird like semi-subimension, caught in a library, Slenderman. Multiple Slenderman's are coming after her.

He eventually tracks her down and like pins her against the wall and we get the Slenderman version of the Alien 3 Alien and Ripley like almost kiss scene where he leans in and he's like, have you listened to my podcast? And then she loses her own face, right? Yeah, and she loses her own face for a month or so. And I want to say, trickeroonie. Yeah, about the face. The trickeroonie was that Andy Rooney is rap name.

Yeah, trickeroonie. The trickeroonie. The faceless slinner man, you know, like the faceless creature is kind of, you know, creepy from a distance. But when we see slinner man's face up close, it just kind of looks like Styrofoam. It's what includes they would call a matease. Yeah.

It does look like it was like Smiley that way. Yeah. Where it was like, oh, this is kind of a scary idea, but when you see it actually on a person, it just looks like a big fat man's belly with a Smiley face on it. There's here just looks like a belly. There's a lot of points where in general, any time they try to show this Lenderman, they're like, we need to defant, like, make this character more definite. Like, we need to make this like a physical presence in the world.

And I feel like what would make Slenderman scarier is for it to be vaguer and harder to see. Yes. But, you know, like it exists just outside of the realm of perception. Exactly. Or that, yeah, that it's almost like something that would be believable and not like a guy that's like a giant tarantula man. It just, it always looks like a guy in a suit who becomes a tarantula man. And it's, it's the, uh, I was like, was a tree and then becomes a man that becomes a man with a tarantula body. I mean, I, that's one way to look at evolution. Sure. And from tree to man to tarantula

man. Sure. Hey, I, I didn't come from no tree. Okay, Dan, we've talked to you about your evangelizing. Please, the shot over has gotten very invasive. But I had the same experience watch this movie that I had when I used to watch the show. Are you afraid of the dark? On Nickelodeon as a kid, which is like, well, it's not scary, but if it was happening to me, it would be scary.

Like, it's objectively a scary situation to be in, but to watch it is not scary. Yeah. So at this point, Ren has decided to go deeper into the conspiracy. Chloe has been driven mad. Her friends can't eat like, just don't want to talk to her at all. Which basically just means that she looks like a zombie.

Yeah, she looks like a zombie. She's a vacant zombie. She hasn't slept in a number of days. And she looks like a young parent. And, and Halle is just trying to ignore it. She's like, it'll go away. So of course, she schedules a date with Tom. How late the date is, I can't tell.

The scene where she's like, I don't have time for this, Ren, I'm going out of date. It already looks, it's like full dark outside. Now, maybe because it's fall-ish, it's like gets dark early, but it does seem like the date is at like 1 a.m. And Tom's like, oh yeah, my parents are out for the night. Yeah, the it yeah, it kind of feels like I mean something for you,

I stormy about it. Yeah, it also is very much well, it feels very much like the the the director was like this whole movie is going to be like the ring where everything is dripping with menace and darkness. Yeah, yeah, it's 2 a.m. all the time. Okay. So, you know, it's 2 a.m. Do you know where your kids are? Yeah, over at Tom's house. They're Tom's house. Yeah.

So, they're at Tom's house being cock blocked by this lenderman. Yeah. So, so, Hallean Tom's date goes, goes as well as you'd expect, Tom shows off his dad's cool vinyl collection, then they start making out and then. This is what he plays plays this sexy guitar jazz. I guess, and it's like... What do you describe it as? Smooth.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. It's like, yeah, it puts on the CD. No, a CD, Dale. It is a vinyl album. Okay, he puts on this. It's so much warmer than a CD with a DJ. He puts on this album that you're just like, is this just all guitar solos?

It is. It starts with that. And it's like, but it feels like the background music of like a love scene and like a Beverly Hills not a doing an hour in our house place. And I'm like, oh, when I was a teen, I shouldn't have had a girl over. I shouldn't have put on music I liked.

I should have put on cliche sexy music. So yeah, they, so the saxophone from Baker Street over and over again. So of course, he started making out from Baker Street over and over again. So of course they start making out and then like, it sounds like the vinyl is jumping around or skipping, which is horrifying in and of itself. And then, yeah, for real audio head like you. She like looks up and Tom is having this like crazy freak out that is the most cartoonish thing. It's like they hired Tim and Eric to produce this freak out.

Like, which actually I liked it. It was like, that's great. There are a couple moments in the movie where they feel like they're using the kind of like weirdo video effects that you can do now digitally in a way that I don't often, I see a lot of horror movies seem to be doing the same effects you could get with film.

But this they're doing like art video stuff. And I like that a little bit. But it also seems really goofy. I wanted to get into that too. At the climax when there's a lot of really crazy effects, like Slinter Manifax, I like the look of some of the weird horror shit that happens in this movie. The problem is it all looks pretty fakey.

It's cool looking and really weird, but it also, because the rest of the movie is shot very realistically, it doesn't fit in. Whereas if this movie was house-oo or something, like it would be neat. So after her freak out, Hallie comes clean to Tom about her slender man situation. And Tom's like, wait, who's this the video? And he finds the video immediately on his phone. She's like,

you can't watch that. He's like, okay, she's like, promise me, you won't watch it. Next day in class, Tom shows up super freaked out. It feels like everybody but Halley goes through their stages of slender man exposure so much faster. Yeah. So, you know, she's not going to get much help there. And then, of course, her little sister, Lizzie, goes into shock. She must have watched that video. She goes to some spooky hospital where people with impossibly long hair are getting their hair combed or like people with no faces are hanging out.

It's St. Halloween's Memorial Hospital. She realizes that her sister is falling into a coma and she realizes that Ren is the one who exposed Lizzie to the slender man. So she goes to track down her friend Ren. Now, was it to get Ren? Did Ren do it to get? Hallie, no, to get, who's the one who disappeared, Kelly?

Katie. Did she do it to get Katie back? Or was there some other reason? Cause it's kind of, you say what happened. I mean, I would say, I think from what I can tell, she did it because of the whole idea that you have to sacrifice something you love.

Uh-huh. And she's always had a close relationship with Liz. Yeah. And maybe by giving up Lizzy, they'll get their friend Katie back or... Save undermanals. ...stopped. So she goes to Ren's house where Ren, of course, has her little evidence bedroom that's filled with more amazing Slenderman art. Uh-huh.

And Ren is hanging outside like she's like standing... Now Slenderman, now that I think about it, he's basically just the Operation Ivy logo, right? Yeah. But without the hat. Yeah, yeah. And Slenderman probably likes scott. You have to assume he wears that skinny suit all the time.

Yeah. So they, he steals people and he just takes them to his house to listen to madness and mustard plug and stuff all the time. Yeah, so she like while she's there, she's like going through Ren's computer. I think at this point she finds evidence that the person they were talking to on the internet, Ali Kat, was somebody who was driven mad by Slender Man. So I guess we closed the loop on that plot thread.

And they find Ren, she's standing on the edge of her bedroom window, she's going to jump. She's trying to kill herself. Hallie, I mean, as Aros Smith would say, she's living on the edge. She can't keep herself from falling. Hallie pulls her in to save her. And then they fact they did. And then, of course, so they pull her in and save her and then almost immediately Slender Man yanks her out the window. She's gone. It's one of those moments where you're like, if Slender Man could do that, why didn't he do it a hundred times before now? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's what we get fat in the mind of Slender Man. Of course, Lither Man. Who has it as a snake man? Yeah. The snake man from Jonah Hexpress. It's kind of like how in it, it is both insanely powerful and also can be scared away if you yell too loud at him. Yeah. Yeah. So Halle at this point decides to, you know, she's like, comes up with some kind of a plan.

She goes marching off into the woods. I think she's going, her plan is confront Slender Man. She finds him, he's standing there. and then he like sprouts big tarantula things She immediately loses her cool and she runs away and he chases her Kind of like the giant robot a racquet in wild wild west and she runs away and then she lives the inspiration for the city Then she backs up against the tree. Of course that tree is a slender man tree inspiration for the scene. Then she backs up against the tree. Of course, that tree is a slender man tree because slender man is turned into a tree and

then he turns her into a tree. Which is the end of the children's book, The Slender Tree by Shell Slender Man. The slender scene. Where the kid, the tree keeps giving and giving and giving until eventually absorbs the child into its into its bar. Yeah, the tree was happy. So there's a child. With Yeah, the tree was happy. Because I had a child. With her sacrifice, oh my God,

you need a child. Her little sister, I've never seen a poem with lovely as a slender man. You know, a slender man grows in Brooklyn as one of my favorite coming of age stories. Lizzy, Lizzy wakes up her sister having sacrificed herself. And then she seems to have been her time in her coma seems to have explained all the secrets in the universe

as she then lays out some nonsense about how we all leave it goes something like we all click on links, share stories, Photoshop images, all serving his word. Some people seek him out and do messed up stuff. Like, now knowing the actual story behind some of this stuff, that's like a super fucked up way to end the movie. I got a, but also like, I have to say that this is, if handled differently, this is like, I know this is sort of a cliché idea,

but it's also handled differently. This is a frightening idea and maybe the first frightening idea in the movie and it comes at the very end of the movie because it sort of suggests like this movie itself may just be furthering Slender Man's, you know, a chain. Yeah, it was done much better in the movie in the mouth of madness. Right. Where the implication is that by watching the movie you have weakened the wall between our world and the world of these horrible things.

Yeah. And so yeah, but it's the idea that, I mean, I feel like that's part of this thrill you're supposed to get from Ring is like, oh, maybe there's something real about it that I shouldn't have watched this, and now it's gonna come after me! Yeah. The Tingler! It's in the theater, everyone! Run for your lives! Run for your lives, the tinglers all around. In a lot of ways it feels like somebody was like, okay, so why don't we just do a ring version with Slender Man? Yeah. And it's, and if handled, yeah, if handled, it's, there's kind of a, I think it's like

in one of those er ideas of horror is that like by, by observing it, you have made it more real. And there is a good way to do it and they're like Reaching for it with their with their wooden tarantula hands in this but it's kind of like like Alan Moore's Providence comic Which is like how the way lovecrafts Work spread out and do all that but that it's like Does it do you think so do you think Dan that they had more substance this movie and they just kind of had to cut it because it was totally tasteless? Because it was a hundred and one totally tasteless jokes for adults. Well, no, no, but with the Trinidadity like 90 or 70.

They cut it down to I think they just burned the book. Oh wow, that's what I mean. That's a rough editing job, but harsh but fair. I don't know because it feels like if they were really like, like trying to respect the real life tragedy, they just wouldn't have done it. Yeah. Yeah, they're like, like they put money into a movie. That movie's got to make money.

Yeah. But it's that they just were like, let's just make it disjointed. I mean, unless this was a nonprofit from the Slenderman Awareness Association, yeah. Or small. I mean, I don't know why. That made me laugh. Unless this was a non-profit from the Slenderman Awareness Association, or SMA. I mean, I don't know why. That made me laugh.

It's just simply you putting the letters together. Yeah. I mean, if a studio is going to prevent the release of a movie like The Hunt, and instead release Slytherman, like... Well, it's not the same studio. I don't think no, I know But it's the same sort of like mentality of like not releasing a movie because it's vaguely connected to a tragedy and One of them seems only the slightest has the slightest connection whereas Slanderman seems to be closely connected to an actual tragedy now would it be now would it be

Worse or better than if it was more connected like say the haunting of Sharon Tate which is an incredibly exploitative movie in which they're basically saying if Sharon Tate and her friends had tried a little harder yeah it's still be alive today yeah and not what ghosts are they go at the end of the ghost of their happy ghost because good can't spell ghost without age for happy uh-huh get happy or stop terrifying strangers oh yeah ghost

I gotta say wow cool so ghost stands more thanks okay well uh let's do our final judgment says this uh totally terrifying wait was that it right you're the keeper of the of the bs dance totally terrifying totally terrifying totally snorkel snorkel right now yeah i'm gonna say it's pretty snorifying i think that the thing about it is like what's scary about slender man on the internet is kind of your personal connection to slender man like you're

going down that same rabbit well he's like Charles barkley he's friends with so many people you never would have guessed your personal connection to Slender Man, like you're going down that same rabbit hole. Well, he's like Charles Barkley. He's friends with so many people you would never would have guessed. Oh, yeah. I'm just ordinary folks whose lives are touched in a beautiful way with Slender Man.

I'm just saying that, like, I can see how it's scary at home where you're like sitting alone in front of a computer going down this rabbit hole of like, here's just the Lender Man story that leads to this other Slender Man story. And maybe I am giving him more power. Maybe he's like gonna come into my life. Like you have that personal experience of like relating to this thing whereas in the movie we're

watching other people get on the internet and learn about slender man and it just doesn't have the same zaz. I don't know. Not enough zaz. Yeah, I mean it. Like if I was giving notes I'd be like terminal lack of zaz. I feel like we could like Let's let's ignore the obvious relationship the metaphor here between slender man and vaping right? I mean, it's kind of right out there. It's hard to ignore it. I guess I just I feel like I feel like I'm going on in here

But I feel like we should take a stand against I'm going out only here, but I feel like we should take a stand against instead of having so many firearms on our street, unless being worried about slendermans on our street. Wow, it's funny for all of this. I mean, more people have been killed by vaping than by slendermans. That's true. So part of it is the, like, this movie feels so pan-about. There's like so many dream sequences, and there like so many dream sequences and there's so many dream sequences

that are like nested on each other. I did like the the one bit where where Halley is in the bathroom and then she looks down she's got a big old belly and then all of a sudden like a baby slender man comes out and I'm like son of slender man already. The sequels in the movie. Yeah, but no it like it it's, it's, I mean, it feels inevitable. And I guess in a way, like the, that's the whole point, but there's just so little there. And it's hard to get scared at a movie that doesn't seem to like it not only doesn't know its own rules, it doesn't seem to care. It's a, it's a hard movie that doesn't seem to be that interested in scaring you or having really much of a response from you.

And like the thing, there's, there are two styles fighting against each other, especially as the movie goes on and they are trying to scare it up by having more intense dream sequences. There's this style that is very removed and very, there's almost like a haze between you and the film and that can work if you lean all the way into it. Like I mentioned picnic and hang rock before. That's that movie. That movie is, there's like a weird scrim between you and the film,

and it adds to this mystic feel, like kind of ambiguity around the movie. Or you make it totally in your face, you know, scary intense, but you can't quite mesh the two, or at least they haven't done it here. And so I'm gonna have to say snorfying too, although there are things that, yeah, Dan, if it had been handled better,

if it had been made better, it might have been a better movie. I'm gonna go with Dan McCoy's law, which is if it had been handled better, if it had been made better, it might have been a better movie. I'm gonna go with Dan McCoy's law, which is if it was a better movie, it would have been better. Yep. We've been lucky enough over the past year to talk to some of our friends and acquaintances from across the creative spectrum to find out how they actually work. So I have to write material that makes sense and makes people laugh. I also have to think about what I'm saying to people. If I kick your ass, I'll make you famous. The fight to get LGBTQ representation in the show.

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Elliot, I believe you have the longer of the two, so perhaps you should go first. Sure, this is a message for Karen and John soon to be named withheld. And this message is from Gabe Fletch and Nick. And the message goes, like of this, dear Karen and John, congratulations on your marriage. And there is no better way to celebrate by paying the original peaches to yell it from the pod top. Whether it's Elliot singing a song, stew cracking up on a beer, or Dan doing his best, Mr. Burns excellent as Karen's butt becomes a wife's butt.

We are so happy to see you two together forever. Mazeltoff, that's great news. Congratulations. Yeah. Uh, and I also have a jumbo Tron. What? This message is for Kyle. The message is from Joanna. Kyle, I miss you. We need to update the crayon list. You're a good dyno boy. Love Joe.'s true, the crayon list does need to be updated. Dan, don't pretend you know what they're doing. All right.

Seven, one. This is a very intimate message between two people. You two do not try to horn in on their lives. It's a real you, me, and debris type scenario going on right now. I simply allow the spirit of the message to enter me and come out of my mouth. Every time I'm so, I finish the jump of tron, he then goes, huh, where am I?

What happened? Has that a illness poured forth from my mouth? I simply allow the words on the page to enter my eyes and come out through my voice. So we don't have any more shows. We did our last show. The live shows. This is not the last episode of The Flop As. We don't have any more shows we did our last show live show

This is not the last episode of the flop as we don't have any more live shows You know what guys were done so close almost made it to 300 well We were yeah, that was our last live show. We have none more scheduled as of yet. We will schedule more someday Yeah, so I don't know if you guys have other things to put. There's a show for us. Somewhere a show for us. Yeah, and the show is in a city most likely. 76 more shows over the next several years. Wow, that's really upping our number. Yeah, that's pretty big commitment. As always, Dan, I'd love to roam my children's book, Horse Meat Stog. I have another children book coming out next year.

I'll tell you more about it as we get closer to it. And get ready podcast listeners because at some point, John Hodgson and I will begin releasing the episodes of Max von Opigen releasing. John and I are not doing the work of the actual releasing. That'll be Jordan who's doing the work of that. Jordan Cowling, that is. Who's listening to this right now? So I better say nice things or else.

Technical difficulties will kill all of us. I mean, she's tearing a framed photo of you in half. She's screaming all over the room. But John Hodgson. She's listening to us every episode. Not just the ones who are. What? They're cute.

But Hodgman and I are doing a, I will have a podcast coming out soon called I Pottyus. We are watching the series I Claudius. This is a touchstone series of John Hodgman's life. I have never seen it before. I'm familiar with the books but not the show and we're hoping to interview some of the actors who are in this part of the bonus content, right? I think it's actually going to be public release. Wow. Everyone can hear it. Everyone. But for bonus fans, we should have another episode of our flop tails that were moving through episode three should be dropping soon. And that is where I make Dan Elliott and Jubin play a role playing game with me. And, you

know, and after a long hiatus, we'll be recording the final episode of this series soon. And I will desperately try to remember what happened in the last three episodes It is like I guess what the list is to it's always like you guys aren't picking up on the clues And I'm like I don't remember what my character is where we go. What's going on? The promise you've been as well had a child so you know, I mean, I don't think that's a Loss for us dance like it's a problem. You sure can barely sustain the number of humans that has on it right now I kind of believe that but you know, you can do what he wants. Um.

All right, Miley Cyrus over here. And I'm also going to plug my bar, Hintrolands and my wife's bars, Minis Bar and Charlene's Bar. Minis Bar just started doing, uh, they just started doing karaoke on Saturday nights where I'm assuming Dan McCoy will ramble in every once in a while and sing such party favorites as the monster mash Yeah, I did some song by Ariya. I did sing monster mash at the first night to I would have to actually you you had a much better reaction than I would would expect well It is the season anyway. Let's move on to letters

Well, it is the season anyway. Let's move on to letters from listeners like you this first letters from Emily last name with help Mm-hmm and Emily writes High floppers. I'm hoping you can settle an argument. Yes, when my okay, well, we did it as to answer When my partner and I first got together we had a lot of DVDs Uh-huh a couple of years into our relationship we decided to pull the trigger and merge collections wow since then our DVD collection has set gathering dust in the corner of our living room on a number of rickety ikea shelves 99 wait wait i just want to stop and praise Dan for the way he pronounced rickety well thanks i mean it happens so rarely that i'm going to take just a moment to enjoy it but uh... infinite number of monkeys and remember typewriter eventually you get a

pencil at the right well uh... ninety nine percent of the time we stream movies in the rare case we want to watch a movie from our collection we usually remember it's a plain old dvd and not a blue ray copy so we download slash rent a blue weight blue ray copy i spoke to so you know it's a plain old DVD and not a blue ray copy. So he downloads slash rents a blue ray copy. I spoke too soon. And stream it to the TV. And he was fine, but blue ray apparently didn't make it past the velvet rope.

I mean, blue ray is actually a very strange thing to say. Shouldn't the movie be called a blue way? Because that's the way you're watching it. What blue? I mean, I don't even know why it's called blue ray to be honest. Is that the kind of laser beam it shoots at your fucking disc? A don't even know why it's called blue ray, to be honest. That's the kind of laser beam it shoots at your fucking disc. A blue ray? Yeah, it's a blue ray.

Blue is spelled BLU. I actually think that's actually a good point. Maybe it's an acronym for blazing laser under your disc. But somewhere's your disc. It's all part, it's all mushed together. I just want to say that if I mispronounce a word now, it does not take away the proper pronunciation of a different word.

They cancel each other out. Like matter and antimatter, pasta and antipasto. Newly and Anthony Newley. Okay, well, Emily continues to write, or I continue to read Emily's words rather. Oh, thanks for clearing that up It's cooking along this letter Well, you guys are the okay. I have suggested that we donate or or sell off our DVD collections Holding on to a few good favorites. I think it would be nice to free up some space in the living room

I think it would be nice to free up some space in the living room. But no doing my partner is convinced that the fall of the internet is nigh. And at least we'll still have our precious DVDs to sell on the post apocalyptic streets at a profit. Yeah. My question to you is which side are you on the Marie condo purge or hoarding for the apocalypse? That's Emily last name with help.

Guys, if I can jump in because I have been thinking about this a lot lately. And I moved from New York to LA, I went through a big VHS video tape purge. I said, I haven't watched any of these tapes for at least five years. I don't even own a machine that plays them. I don't need them anymore. So I gave them all away.

The movies I taped off television, I threw away. The factory produced manufactured videos I gave away. And I don't regret that, but lately, I've been regretting how much I rely on streaming rather than buying DVDs, because they've had a number of experiences where I want to watch a movie,

and I cannot get access to it readily. And sometimes I own it on DVD, and that's great, and it's wonderful, and even it's not a blue ray, come on, don't be a snob, it's still the movie. I used to watch stuff on VHS tape where the best you could get was that it looked crappy. So, but now I'm realizing a lot of movies are not making onto streaming, especially older movies,

because there is not a huge amount of profit in that. So companies don't want to waste the space on it. And I think there will come a time when it dawns on people, oh, I don't own anything. And I have to pay every time I watch a thing. The way that like i don't own a lot of music and i wish that i did and at any moment apple could just take away all the albums that i have so i am actually on the other side of it now and i'm pro physical media in a

way i wasn't before but here's the thing are those dvds in their boxes still throw those fucking boxes away put it in the book so you don't need those boxes those are wasted waste of space what is it look nice on your shelf? No, put some books in there, look classy, and then put the DVDs discs, that you can keep the booklets.

Especially if those were those fucking cardboard DVD cases with a little like plastic snap on the side. Yeah, it looks like garbage. Take, slide out the insert cover, recycle that, throw the rest away, and just take the disc, and put it in a disc book, put it in a closet. You don't need to look at it,

you'll have it for when you want to watch it. Yeah, I mean, I feel bad that I got rid of, got rid of my laser disc collection, cause now I have nothing to chop up and snort cocaine. Oh, wait, I have to chop it up. Yeah, you got to chop it up in the line, see, it's cocaine. Oh, the cocaine's being chopped.

It's not the laser disk, that's insane. That's my T2 laser disk. But even then, like, there are people who got, where do their laser disks and there are things on those laser disks often that are not available anymore. Like, there's either documentary features or things like that or better versions of movies or. No, I mean, versions of the Star Wars movie.

I really, I really feel that with movies. And there's definitely stuff that I'm glad I have that I can watch whenever I want. Anytime I'm hankering for some rickio story of Ricky, and for some reason it doesn't make, it's not profitable for a streaming service to carry it, I can just watch it. I would just have to have a thing to play my DVD.

With music, it's a little different though. I find that I've been, I buy a lot of my stuff off of band camp, and obviously I'd be nervous that band camp would go away, but that lets you download the actual audio files, so it's a little different than just like iTunes doing it. But it's all like, it's mainly modern stuff, because I'm kind of young and hip, and I support modern artists, so yeah. Yeah, I don't have a whole lot to add to what's been said. I agree with Elliott for the reasons that he cites

and also Stewart about the laser distance. And also, you know, even if a movie is available to stream on a service that's either free or you're already paying for, you know, the way that licensing works. They usually just license those movies for a certain amount of time. And it's here today and going tomorrow. So like, yeah, I like having it around.

Although with streaming, I have curtailed my DVD collecting a little. I don't buy as much as I used to, but I'm starting to buy more because I realize like I wanted to watch The Thin Man the other night. I own an on DVD. Slender Man. Yes. The thin man, the original slender man. And because it's one of my favorite movies, Thin Man, that. Slender Man, you may be. Yeah, yes. The thin man, the original Slender Man. And because it's one of my favorite movies,

Thin Man, that's Slender Man. And like, it felt really good that I could take. I would love to see the like DVD box for Slender Man, where they edit that. One of my favorite movies, dot, dot, dot, Slender Man. And it felt good to be able to be like, okay, I can just pull it out of the DVD booklet and stick it in the machine.

And I don't have to like find it. I don't have to hope that the internet connection is gonna stay up or something like that. I like, I'm coming on to liking physical media. I never moved from physical books to digital books and I'm glad because I think physical books, I'd be worried more about losing books and things like that. So I have a nice knees maybe.

Dan suddenly acting like there's a new visible bee that's flying out. Yeah, I do a lot of digital books to be honest with you, but I keep like my favorite, especially with like graphic novels like my favorites. Oh, the graphics is different. Now I'm almost all digital on that. Uh huh. Unless you get a, you know, the anniversary cube of the Akira collection, which of course you can't get down to this.

That's silly. I wanna get it, but I already have all those books. Yeah, but this is like the before, this is just, for fifth printing. Okay, go on. I have so many different printing stuff. I can't believe how many different things I get.

Yeah, but there's the great supplementary materials that are all about like unused art for the, but didn't they publish it with the Japanese sound effects? I can't read Japanese. I don't know what that's saying. Leo. I don't know if it says Kareng or a Kabash Leo last name Uncle Leo Leo last name withheld writes this dear peaches my girlfriend and I need help

so I'm throwing myself at the feet of your sage and August tribunal a lot of relationship help for you cany out today what is this savage love last month Stephanie and I had to make a somewhat long drive for Apple picking purposes Two hours one way and we knew that the only entertainment worthy of our mission was the flop house You got that right official podcast. You know you love us, baby. I have been talking up the glories of Frank D'Angelo and Neil Brin So we planted listen to the note deposit and fateful findings episodes of both Small Vembers or Classics. Now for a long time I've politely insisted that the name of the month is Small Vembers and she politely rejects my logic on its face

claiming that it is Small Timber. Nope. The round trip for apples was apparently the last straw because we could hardly contain our left-year while arguing about the matter and target a few days later. That is what it's come to. Public displays of animosity over the made-up name of our favorite movie podcast, Small Production Theme, to September episodes. Please, Peaches, how can we resolve this difference between us? Perhaps you'd favor us with a vote?

There are three of you, sincerely Leo, last name withheld. Wow, Leo has really painted a picture of Apple picking, podcasting, and product purchasing a target. When you thinking that was reading your... Yeah, you can see the steam coming out of my ears and the gears are working.

It's going through a dictionary. Now, if I recall correctly, I... And you could also call collectively, as you're about to say. The other person takes the charges. Yeah. Yeah, we have a baby. I wish I could do that. No.

No, if I recall correctly, I coined the name for that month, but I misspoke the first time around saying small Vembr thinking that that was the pond that made sense, then realizing that the month was September. And that's September. Yeah, so small timber. Honestly, the origin of it is lost to history. Yeah. I think it's funnier to call it small, then, when it's in September, and I like the sound of it more. Uh-huh. I'm a stickler for logic, so I say small timber. And I like, I'm more like a goa, I'm a gut kind of like, hey, whatever feels right,

do what your body wants. I'm kind of, I'm kind of caught between two warring houses here Mm-hmm on one hand I could side with Dan Or I could side with the correct one which is alley You're not gonna change my behavior. Oh so many've tried So I hope that helps there's's one last letter. Amanda last name with held. Right, speeches. This evening I drove by a Popeyes and it made me wonder. Is Ellie? What do you mean?

Apple picking. I'm glad that with all our plosives were in a professional studio today. Professional. This evening. Spoodie. I drove by a Popeyes and it made me wonder, is Elliot still eating chicken when watching movies for the flop house? I would hate to hear that this control variable has been lost now that he can't grab it on the way to Dan's. And speaking of the long distance podcasting, do you all attempt to watch the movies at the same time? Or if not, do you agree to watch them at a certain time

period before the recording, so that still fresh, possibly? You're a floppy Amanda last name would hold. We synchronize it, which is hard to do with the time zone difference. I'm assuming Elliot is eating what, kale and avocado toast? Yeah, kale avocado sundried tomatoes,

or as your wife referred to yesterday, a tomato raiser. The sad thing I hate to break it to, I still eat Popeyes and there's one in my new neighborhood, which is great, but I no longer can eat it while I'm watching the movie because I'm usually doing the dishes while I watch the movie. Most movies are watched in three or four chunks, let's find me as I do the dishes. Based on the way that you clean your plate of Popeye's chicken, I would say that's also kind of like doing the dishes

because you could serve food on those things. And to answer the second question about when we watch the movies, Stuart often busts my balls about watching the movies several days before recording. Only because you forget everything. But without, let's be clear, my memory is a sieve. And if I had watched it the day before, I would remember exactly as much about the movie.

All right. Yeah, but that's actually probably the best pro watch the movie four days in advance argument you've ever made, Dan. Yeah, well, we just, you know, we fit it into our busy schedules. As long as we get it done before we record, we try and do it within, say, the five days before recording. What I, my favorite way to do it is because we've been recording normally at,

like, noon on a Sunday, noon, uh, Eastern time, uh, in case you were wondering, um, I, I'll wake up early on Sunday mornings, usually pretty hungover, and my wife will go to the gym and I'll sit on the couch and watch the movie, and then run right over to Dan so that we can record. So it's as fresh as possible in my brain. Now, when we do a live show, we still watch the movie together that day before the show. Usually on some kind of small screen so that we can get the whole picture of X-Men Dark Phoenix or X-Men Godzilla, King of the Monsters or

X-Men Alita, Colin Vatelangelo. X-Men, Colin, Alita, Colin Vatelangelo. Yeah. So let's move on. Doing some texting. My girlfriend has forgotten Elliot's address. Do not say it on the podcast, please. No, I'm not going to. Why do you think that was forthcoming? I'm not going to happen again. So let's do some recommendations of movies you should watch instead of Slender Man. Oh, I don't.

Okay. Instead of the original Thin Man. No, that's a great movie. I'll tell everyone, look, if you haven't seen the Thin Man before, that's not my recommendation for today, although it should be, it's one of my favorite movies. You gotta keep watching until Nick and Nora get introduced. The first 10 minutes or so of the movie is setting up the suspects and the mystery, and I like that part, but it's not quite, it's not at the snappy wit that you're expecting,

but then William Powell and Mernaloid come in and it's just non-stop. Bubble Delight from that point on. Speaking of, you know, also Delight, Bubble from Max Fun, written by Jordan Morris. Guys, you're on your phones looking at things. So I'll recommend my movie. I'm sorry, this. So I'm gonna recommend the movie Boy

that's one of Tyco with TDs earlier films. And it's about a boy growing up in New Zealand in the 1980s. And he's in a lower class background. He's got a lot of problems in his family, but he's the oldest kid in the family. He's 11 or so. So he's taken care of his younger siblings and I think maybe cousins and his narrowed-well father comes back. And at first it seems like this is a chance to connect with a man he has been kind of making a legend of in his mind because he has so little to kind of look up to and slowly it dawns on him after experiencing this dad the reality of the

situation and it's there it's a funny movie and a touching movie there's a little it wears its Wes Anderson influence on its sleeve a little heavily in a way that uh... taiko at the uh... is kind of sloughing off with each movie he makes i haven't seen the new one but uh... i really liked that so i recommend boy i'm gonna recommend uh... movie called three tears on bloodstained flesh it's kind of the same movie as kind of the same movie rolls right off the tongue it's a

uh... tiny budget uh... gealo homage or i guess it's just a Gealo set and shot entirely in Southern Indiana using a cast of actors entirely from that area. If you were to ask me, should that movie be two and a half hours long, I would normally say no, but I've also watched it twice in the last week. It's, I don't know, it's this movie that is clearly made for very little money. It looks cheap. The script is fun and gross, but for whatever reason it's a great movie. I couldn't explain it. When I first I would watch, when I first started watching,

I'm like, oh man, this doesn't look that great. I don't think I'm gonna enjoy this. But every scene managed to include like little nuggets that made me keep pressing on until the movie's over before I know it. The, all the acting has a little bit of the like, we're putting on a play for our parents vibe, but kind of in a good way,

the special effects are limited, but they're fun. There's definitely a villain that looks kind of like the nemesis from Resident Evil, but he's wearing a tiny little top hat, and that's really awesome. Yeah, it's just, man, I don't know. It's on Amazon Prime, so you can watch it there. Yeah, it's great and weird. Check it out. I'm gonna recommend a movie that as of right now, I'm not quite sure how you can find it, but I am recommending it on faith that it will be streaming somewhere soon and that you will remember that I recommended it, you'll maybe come across it. You want to credit?

Well, no no I mean I will get into it in a second this is not something that necessarily you would look at and be like oh this is gonna be good but let me tell you it's gonna be good I went to see this at Alamo Drafthouse they had a special screening of it I think it was like a fundraiser screening for something our buddy Matt Karmann who Does a lot of the tech stuff for our live shows? Said you want to go see this? I'm like yeah, I like hanging out with friends and seeing movies and so it's a documentary called who let the dogs out and it is about the song who let the dogs out? That sounds like exactly the movie met Karmann would want to see yeah all the time and it's a trim sixty one minutes but it is

delightful and it is about the surprisingly tangled history of who deserve the credit for writing the song who let the dogs out and you know a lot of people said, oh, three identical strangers, the documentary three identical strangers, there are so many surprises along the way, so many

twists and turns. Yeah. I was more amazed by the number of twists and turns that are in the story of who wrote who let the dogs out. And you know, whether someone heard earlier versions, whether they're borrowing, whether it was something psychically in the air, over the course of the 60 minutes, it sort of becomes a documentary about the way all artists borrow and it's hard to know where something comes from and why a certain version of something becomes popular versus another. It's like that moment when Hollywood was convinced that the name Chuck was hilarious and then they would find a way to fill it into everything. It's exactly like that. And it sort of becomes a story too about like the weird obsession

that this guy who is unraveling this gets to with such a silly thing and also kind of in a larger sense it becomes about how any stupid thing has an interesting story attached to it if you work hard enough to discover it or if you tell it in the right way. So who let the dogs out? That's just what it's called. Who let the dogs out? Some people think it's a film adaptation of the song.

Yeah. And it's a who done it. Haha. About letting the dogs out. Yeah. Is the song a who done it? I have to assume so. I don't know the lyrics, but I assume it's about a detective.

I can only imagine it. It's about a imaginary where dogs get let out. And it probably asks more questions than it answers. Guys, isn't it? I'm looking at the lyrics right now. Who let the dogs out? Wo-wo-wo- me okay well let's just wrap it up that's been another Shacktober twenty Shacktober 2019 hope you had fun we lay it to rest in its crypt and we lower the coffin down into the floor, cover it with the dirt of its home country. It's possibly an aggrieving Italian grandma.

Of course, why? You were such a good boy. But you were such a good month, a good theme a month. But it is not concentrated ground in shock tober. It's an unquiet soul, so it will rise again next year. When, no one will lose, oh, next year? No one knows when next year. Yeah, impossible to tell.

Maybe there, maybe somebody will make another horror movie before then that we can review. Yeah, it could be. Could be. I mean, we don't have any theme months between now and the end of the year, right? We might watch the movie that we originally wanted to watch, but I won't spoil that.

And also, of course, there's cage mist coming up. It's summer. Do we have Sandal Vemper coming up? That is a made up thing. Right, Sandal Vemper. Or is it San D'Ewere? San D'Ewere,per, I still want to do, well, we'll talk about it was either mom you are your mom,

mom brew air. I was just talking about how we need to wrap it up. So, for the flop house, Dan McCoy is me. Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington, and I also think you should check out other shows on the maximum fun podcast network. That's the network that we're on, and there's a lot of great cool content on there. So check it out.

And I'm Eli Kalin saying, why don't you tell people about us, leave us a positive review on iTunes, tweet about us, Instagram about us, tick talk about us, snapchat about us, whatever your social media platform of your choice, they're all equally evil. Please talk about the Flop House on them.

I've been Eli Kalin. Bye. Please talk about the fly pass on him. I've been Ellie Kaelin. Bye! That's good quality propane. Today's top story. The boy right, propane remains the best heating gas and grill fuel. In other news, local neighbor, Khan Soufanousenfah, furious at his neighbor, Hank Hill. We now turn to boom-hour for the weather.

They ever do weather on top of those affordable things, so, right? Hopefully. And she's a nightmare. We will need to know it. National weather. you