The Flop House - Ep. #363 - Being the Ricardos, with Alison Rosen

Episode Date: February 26, 2022

We've got a new best friend, and it's Alison Rosen! She drops by to discuss the Oscar-nominated Being the Ricardos, a movie that expresses Aaron Sorkin's deep and not at all bizarre understanding of h...ow TV comedy works, and how it's the most solemn, earth-shaking thing that could ever exist, filled with people staring very seriously at jokes until their genius strikes them and they spew an impeccably-worded monologue about someone slipping on bananas, or whatever.Wikipedia entry for Being the RicardosMovies recommended in this episode:Jackass ForeverThe Card CounterI'm Your ManThe Stepford Wives

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 On this episode we discuss being the Riccardo's. The long awaited third chapter in the In-Trilogy after chasing Amy and finding Forester. Hey everyone, welcome to the flop house, I'm Dan McCoy. Oh, hey, I didn't see you come in there. It's me, Stuart Wellingford. This is my appointment. I'm Ellie Kaelen, wondering if Stuart was talking to Dan or to the listeners or perhaps to our guest, our very special guest this week. Alison Rosen, the host of Alison Rosen
Starting point is 00:00:52 is your new best friend, co-host of Childish and host of the new podcast up worthy weekly, your place where positive things every Saturday. It's Alison Rosen, as mentioned in the previous part of the sentence. I'm, hello, I the previous part of the sentence. Allison, thank you for joining us. Hello, I'm so excited to be here. And I'm just gonna come in hot and say, understanding is, you have a guest that is like everyone's favorite, and I am gunning, I mean, I was about to say for second favorite, but I don't know why I'm like, handy-cappy myself. Go for favorite, but I don't know why I'm like handy-cappy
Starting point is 00:01:25 myself. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. Because she's so beloved, I don't want people to take it the wrong way, but like I am trying to displace her. Okay. Just be an alternate favorite. Shoot for the moon and reach the stars, which doesn't make sense because the stars are
Starting point is 00:01:40 further out than the moon. Right. I think that's the way you said it, Dan, so are you deep in your self? Isn't that the saying? Oh, like, I feel like that. I only thought the same was reach for the moon, but at least you'll hit a very tall mountain. Oh, okay.
Starting point is 00:01:55 If you shoot for the moon, but reach for the stars, you're going to be like, I am lost. My navigation system was incorrect. I know I was in orbit. Yeah. Very dangerous. Well, you're off to a great start. There's I think there's a real chance that Halley's gonna have to come back and reclaim her crown at some point. That's right. Yeah. As flop as star. Yeah. What do we, uh, what do we, uh, what do we, uh, what do we do here, Dan? Are you, are you, is, is the spirit of Norm McDonnell, Preston piece? Uh, has he just entered your body?
Starting point is 00:02:31 Cause that's very normal. It's so concerned with like setting the stage for what the podcast is and being professional that he forgets. So what people like about the show is the nonsense. People like this show. Stewart Stewart took a moment from sipping what appears to be just molten chocolate out of a huge cup to make sure that we set up the show. This is a, so this is a protein smoothie that Stewart made at Handellands before coming here.
Starting point is 00:02:56 Yeah. And then he arrived with it. He asked, he's like, can I, can I have a knife to punch a hole in the top? I'm very nervous. I will. Is there a thing when it is, or is it just the protein powder? No, no. Yeah, I'm just slurping dry protein powder. My mouth is the fucking Sahara right there. I can't say that protein pixie stick. Yeah. So Allison protein shakes.
Starting point is 00:03:19 It's a pro-acon. I am pro for other people. Myself, I'm not really a protein shake gal. I feel like, and Stuart, I don't know what your regimen is. But I feel like if you're going to suck down a protein shake, then you should be following it up with some kind of reps or things where you're grunting. And I don't like to do any of that.
Starting point is 00:03:39 Oh, there's a lot of reps and grunts. I love things where he grunts. I love putting him on TikTok. Even love the brother's grunt. One of MTV's least popular television shows. So Stuart, you mentioned what are we doing this podcast? Clearly what we do is we talk about protein shakes. Welcome to the shake house. Yeah. It was mainly it was just one of those bids for attention.
Starting point is 00:04:01 We watch a bad movie and then we talk about it. In this case, we watched Being the Riccardo's, which has been nominated for multiple Academy awards. What? Yeah. Well, there are mostly acting. There are three acting awards, entirely acting awards. Three acting awards. And I honestly like the acting in this movie, maybe you guys will argue with me.
Starting point is 00:04:21 I like the performances. I don't think that's where the fault lies. So. I think if I have any, I really like a lot of Nicole Kidman's performance. I don't like that she's performing it beneath several inches of drywall that have been applied to her face
Starting point is 00:04:35 with some sort of a spackling. To make her look like Lucille Ball. But she does, she looks like the statue of Lucille Ball that was removed because it was such a, was so inhuman. Like, my issue with Nicole Kidman was that I think that she would have been better in it without makeup to look like Lucille Ball that was removed because it was such a, was so inhuman. Like, my issue with Nicole Kidman was that I think that she would have been better in it without makeup to look like Lucille Ball. Like, I just have to have her as well. She was.
Starting point is 00:04:53 Okay. This was one of Nicole Kidman's roles where she puts on makeup and goes too far with it like in the hours a little bit or in destroyer or in destroyer. She's supposed to look like someone who's been through a lot of times. And instead she looks like somebody who has survived like an explosion. And this one she's supposed to look like Lucio Ball, but instead she looks like a,
Starting point is 00:05:13 I don't, she looks like someone who has had. Like an electronic of Lucio Ball. Yeah, she looks like a Lucio Ball at like the magical world of Disney who is gonna be like welcome. As I show you, some of my favorite routines. No, I agree that what they've done to make her look like Lucy is distracting, but that her, I think her performance is strong.
Starting point is 00:05:32 She acts through it. Yeah, yeah. But was the actual Lucille ball humorless and self-important? Because if so, she did nail it. I mean, from everything I've read, she was a very difficult person to be around. I don't know about humorless, but self-important, I think, some way. I think the sorkin is what you are. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:51 Yeah. So this movie was not nominated for a best screenplay or director, which is accurate because it is Aaron Sorkin playing to his faults on this, which as this is a comment I made before recording and I warned you all that I would say it during recording and I'm saying it we're recording it now that aren't so can a man who has made multiple television shows he wrote a broadway show about the beginning of television in the creation of it he is obsessed with television he's just really fascinated by television and yet he seems to have no idea how television works or how to at least present that in a dramatic way or a way that even feels real. Because it feels like he's caught up in this kind of fantasy idea of how TV works. But especially I guess the problem is that Sorkin writes about characters who are geniuses
Starting point is 00:06:39 that everyone else won't believe until the last minute. And the process has to be warped around the idea. So for instance, we'll get into the plot of this, but that like, Lucille Ball is dealing with a director, a television director that nobody likes and the whole movie out and is wrong about everything and will not listen to Lucille Ball. And I was like, Lucille Ball owns the company that produces this show. Why did they hire this guy if she hates him so much? He's so bad at his job.
Starting point is 00:07:03 And like later on, she's like, we're going to re-block this guy. If she hates him so much, he's so bad at his job. And like later on, she's like, we're going to re-block this scene. And her biggest idea is to shoot it so that the characters are facing the camera and don't have their backs to the camera. And it's like, yeah, they should have fired him. The moment he blocked it this way, it's a terrible idea. Like you should always see the character's faces. It's, so anyway, there's a lot about this that is not true to life in many ways. I will, I will be a little gentler and think that like there are moments when the, the executive producers and like the higher ups are trying to put out multiple fires, which is what the, which is what they do, yeah, largely about. I thought that that felt accurate to my experience,
Starting point is 00:07:40 my limited experience at the one TV show under, you know, two bosses that like it felt real ish, but then as soon as it came to the comedy stuff, it's like, wow, like, like his vision of like someone making comedy is Nicole Kidman staring off into space for a while looking like super intense. She's like the what's his name from Hannibal. Where he's like, he's like imagining the design of the serial killer That's how she imagine tell her like it's a queen's gambit way of creating comedy, you know and then I've seen the script on the ceiling Yeah, she takes some drugs. Yeah, now Dan
Starting point is 00:08:18 Were you one over at all by the comedy drums that were the comedy swing drums that we're playing in many scenes to give us the impression of energy and movement Well, why don't we just get into the block because I believe the movie starts with some comedy swing drums. Oh, boy does it ever. So a lot of the soundtrack is, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. As if to tell you because it's like, come on, this is exciting comedy and people are troubled. So we start off this is.
Starting point is 00:08:41 It's got old timey, right? It's like old timey showbiz music. Yes, it is old timey behind the scenes showbiz music. The movie starts off with something that we're going to see multiple times throughout, which is I'm not going to go in as much detail at the plot as I usually do, seen by scene because it starts up with something that we're going to see throughout, which is the older versions of the executive producer of the show and the two writers on the show. One of the writers has played as an old person by Linda Lavon and the others by Ronnie Cox.
Starting point is 00:09:08 So I was like, I love seeing them. Like, this is great. I love seeing them anything. But we're going to see them describe things, which we will then see in the scene afterwards, where they have added very little information we couldn't have gotten from the scene. And so they're like, hey, you know, when we were on I Love Lucy, there was this one scary week. Boy, it was scary. It was the biggest show in America. People didn't use the fucking bathroom when I love Lucy was on.
Starting point is 00:09:31 And sometimes hospitals would shut down. Like they get like, they get some of us would all hide because they were watching their their TV is in their pens, you know? Each one was like, the thing you got to understand, I'm like, fucking, I don't care anymore. Like, I don't need people to tell me the thing you got to understand, I'm like, fuck, and I don't care anymore. Like I don't need people to tell me the thing I need to understand. But also I think that like that, when you read just certain age, was reused in multiple scenes for the first like 15 minutes. And like, I don't understand.
Starting point is 00:09:55 And when an old person, when you read just certain age, when you're an old person and you say those words to me, I immediately do now. Well, especially because all of almost all of the first couple scenes, because it's not like we learn anything about the characters, even the characters that these people are portraying as old people. This could have, if there was a title screen, there was a text on title that just said, in 1953, I love Lucy was the biggest show in America. That's all the information they're basically telling us that we're not in.
Starting point is 00:10:22 I know Shins or Battlefields, that's all nice. I also, I'm gonna're not. I know. I know. I'm going to sound like my mom told me a prophecy about it. I love Lucy show. I'm going to sound extremely uptight saying this, but I do not like the device of actors playing like older versions of the characters as if they're being interviewed for a documentary. Yeah. No, I don't like it. I don't like it.
Starting point is 00:10:45 Yeah, it probably makes me do it. It's terrible. I was like a dingbat enough that I thought these were the actual, like they, it was believable enough that I, yeah. For a second, I was like, wait, is this like a semi-documentary, but Madeline Pew played by Linda Lavon, who I believed at this point was Madeline pew and I'm like, God damn, she looks so familiar. I must be familiar with the actual Madeline pew.
Starting point is 00:11:10 I think she's been on Sesame Street. And then I'm like, no, she looks familiar because she's Linda Lavon. And then like, I realize, as soon as I kind of have remembered Linda Lavon and then as soon as Ronnie Cox is on screen, I'm like, well, the villain for Beast Master did not work and I love music. But that is the thing. Like, I don't think you're a ding bad. I don't know. That's why I'm mad at it because these are not like,
Starting point is 00:11:30 I mean, like, you know, late 11 was like a big television star in her day, but these are like character actors. They're not people that were like audiences are immediately going to be like, oh, I know who that is. That's not the real person. Like, I feel like it is,
Starting point is 00:11:44 it does fool people into thinking about it. I want to cry something. I said, wait, I meant the that is. That's not the real person. Like, I feel like it is, it does fool people into thinking. Yeah, I think that. I want to cry something. I said, wait, I meant the villain from Total Recall. I got Beast Master and Total Recall. Ronnie Cox was not a beast master. He's a total. Yeah, Rip Torne, I think.
Starting point is 00:11:54 Good save. If you hadn't corrected yourself, I was gonna, I was gonna leave this meeting. I could see the fire analysis as she said. I'm acceptable. Really angry. The thing that brought me to this show was a Twitter feud that I had with them. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:07 But this is unacceptable. I think that this device speaks to one of the main problems I had with the whole movie, which is just this is like the self-importance of Aaron Sorkin. That we would, you know, that to get into this story, we would need to be hearing from three people who we don't know who they are, but they're so important that they're being interviewed.
Starting point is 00:12:29 And I think that's part of it. And I think also that it is a way of paper. I feel like the moral movie does this. The more the movie is saying to you, we really fudge to the historical record. So we're going out of our way to pretend like this is accurate. Because we made a lot of, we really, because it, and
Starting point is 00:12:46 which is like a lot of the things they're dealing with in this one crazy week at I Love Lucy in reality happened over multiple years. And one, and the thing that really bothers me is some stuff about Desi Arnez's backstory, which they, which is, with the way they presented is they're conflating two different Cuban revolutions that happened 20 years apart. So like, there's things that happen in this movie that are, but it feels like they're like, look, we messed with the historical records so much, we gotta have people come on and pretend
Starting point is 00:13:10 to be the real people in the reviews in front of the cameras so that our dumb audience thinks that this is accurate because otherwise they might start pulling the threads. The real, and the irony being one of the threads that goes through this movie is Lucy's concern that the script is insulting to the audience. Like the audience isn't so dumb. Yeah. And yet, and so I can thanks. We see the game they're playing. It's like, yeah. I want to, yeah, this is a big thing that people have had a problem with the movie, so I don't want to go over it too quickly.
Starting point is 00:13:46 The accusation that Lucy is a communist, the her saying that she was pregnant and the problems of that would cause for the show. And the stuff about having trouble with like, desi's affairs being on in the news. Those are three events that did not occur in one week that have been conflated into one week. And the movie like makes this falsehood about them being a week, but then also does flashbacks and also have these actors pretending to be these characters. And I you know, like this really disturbed Audrey where she was like, if you're gonna like why put this self-imposed like one week thing on this?
Starting point is 00:14:26 It's come to a lie. And then do a flashback. And you have all these things. Everyone knows Aaron Sork, this is famous in Hollywood. Everyone understands the Hollywood. Maybe you don't know a thing because you live on the East Coast.
Starting point is 00:14:36 Then Aaron Sorken is a huge bare naked ladies fan. And he always listens to bare naked ladies songs while he's riding. He's been to all those other shows. So I think that's the influence there is the one with the aspect. Yeah. If he had a million dollars, he'd make this movie.
Starting point is 00:14:48 She said that to Desi because he'd been out with his band. And she's like, it's been one week since you've looked at me. Because he hadn't even been there. And he said, look, I'm the kind of guy that lasted a funeral, you know. And there's all this stuff about Chinese chicken. It really, again, it's, it, once you know it's there, it really pops out of you. So, but they're saying this crazy week when Walter Winchell on his radio show
Starting point is 00:15:09 said that Lucille Ball was a communist and a magazine said that Desi, her husband, if anyone who's not familiar with, I love Lucie, who's listening to this, I mean, kind of shame on you, but also clearly you didn't grow up watching Nick at night like I did, but I love Lucie who's a big show and it started Lucille Ball and her real husband Desi Arnez and they also produced the show.
Starting point is 00:15:27 Anyway, that's what you need to know, I guess. We see that the news broke on the same day that Walter Winchow discovered Lucy had signed up as a communist once and that Desi Arnez was having an affair. That was an amazing. We then cut to Lucy and Desi arguing about the affair story and then they start making up and having sex and then they hear the Walter Winchell radio show say she's a communist. So it's like this movie is like, it's like a five paragraph essay. We're going to tell you what we're going to tell you.
Starting point is 00:15:54 We're going to tell it to you. Then we're going to tell you what we told you over and over again. Well, we learned at the very beginning courtesy of Linda Lavon that as metal imputed, if they're not tearing each other's heads off, they're tearing each other's clothes off. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, in relationship, which I believe is like an actual quote that somebody to them said about them, that the movie makes like, thuddingly literal by having them have an argument and have sex. Oh, I think they tore their, each other's heads off. Yeah, they were the one that was eaten like a brain. They were the inspiration for African-Saxon robots.
Starting point is 00:16:29 Originally, in Rackham's Sackon robots, you could have them head sexually with each other, too. So, then we're at a table read for a new episode of I Love Lucy. Everyone's like, oh, we're talking about the red scare. It's the 50s. So, this is all that we talk about. Is the red scare. All we talk about is communism.
Starting point is 00:16:44 And we see the tension between Vivian Vance who plays Ethel and William Frawley who plays her husband Fred on the show. And we'll see. There's a lot by JK7s. Yes, and Nina Ariyant, Tony Award winner, Nina Ariyant plays Vivian Vance. They were good. Yeah. And I thought they were both good.
Starting point is 00:17:03 They're given this is a, and this is what I'm going to say, this is the mission statement of this movie. It is a movie about the making of sitcom that operates as a sitcom. There is an A story, Lucy and Desi are worried about losing their show, and there's a little side story on the A story about Lucy and Desi are worried about their marriage. There's a B story. Vivian Vance doesn't like that the show needs her to be frumpy. She's a human woman and she likes to seem attractive, and she doesn't like that the show needs her to be frumpy. She's a human woman and she likes to seem attractive
Starting point is 00:17:25 and she doesn't like that the show is pushing her to be a frumpy housewife type. And then there is the C story of, there's a bad director on set and nobody likes him. And it's like, and by the end of the movie, this will all have been wrapped up in one scene of conversation, which is like, this is a, it's basically we're watching a sitcom
Starting point is 00:17:43 that has been extended out for over two hours and is not funny, but they're all. And we also get, we meet the, we meet the executive producer, Jess Oppenheimer played by Tony Hale. We meet the young Madeline Poo, Madeline Poo played by Alia Shockwood. That's right. It's a REST development reunion, REST development many reunion. They have very few scenes together. And although I guess on a of the development, they didn't have that many scenes together either, maybe in Buster, and so on and so forth. And everyone's like, what are we gonna do? Everyone's arguing, what if the show gets the plug pulls because Lucy's a communist now and everybody hates communists.
Starting point is 00:18:17 And William Frawley doesn't like communists either, but he's kind of an old, can tanker of strunk. This is JK Simmons doing one of those, what I would call a later stage Tom Hanks role where it's just kind of like, I'm charming. I'm just going to, I'm just going to kind of float through this movie being charming. You know? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:32 I mean, he was in this first scene. Ernie Monom, you know, you can't argue that. But what considering his previous us that he won was for such an intense role, maybe they're just looking at his range. I mean, he does have great range, you know? I remember watching the first part where they're like, you know, fighting and fucking, I'm like, uh, I don't know about this movie, whether I'm going to find anything I like about it. And then when JK7 showed up, I'm like, oh, at least, you know, there's going to be something
Starting point is 00:18:53 because like he's on there just to be like, can tank wrist, but also secretly likable. I'm like, well, that's, that's gold for you, Jake. Yeah. And he, and he has the genuinely funny lines in the movie. Like he gets some real digs on me. When whenever the movie wants to be misogynist towards Vivian Vance, it has some real funny lines, almost as if Aaron Sorkin, I don't know, it comes from her naturally to him to do those. I don't know if that's true or not.
Starting point is 00:19:16 But so Lucy and Desi are meeting with the network executives. One of them is Clark Greg. So as like, shield is producing. I love Lucy. And he's got like, he's got a little hair piece. It's cute. Yeah. And he's, she's meeting with her executives and sponsors.
Starting point is 00:19:28 One of the sponsors is Philip Morris. And the movie sees nothing wrong with that, which I should, which feels like there's a kind of real, old-fashioned bent to this movie that's like, yeah, why wouldn't she be sponsored by a huge cigarette company that kills people? Who cares? No problem. Yeah. I do feel like that happened.
Starting point is 00:19:43 But I do feel like there's an aspect of it that is trying to look at it through a very modern lens with the, you know, with some of the issue, like they take on race and they take on gender a little bit and things like that, which I feel like is unrealistic for how the show actually was, but with the Philip Morris, that gets a pass. Yeah. Well, it's funny that the, it's also, if you were watching this movie, you would expect that I love Lucy was like a deeper show than it was or like a more, I mean, it was an important show in that it was a huge show with it like the, but it was important for, I
Starting point is 00:20:21 mean, I guess more for what was going on behind the scenes rather than the actual text of the show itself. Yeah, that's the thing. About a goofy lady who was always ruining things for her husband and doesn't have a job and he won't let her have one. I'm gonna push back on this a little bit just because like, so if anyone's actually interested in the story of Lucy, go and listen to it instead of watching this, the Turner Classic movies, what is it? The plot thickens their podcast recently did a whole series
Starting point is 00:20:50 on Lucille Ball. I'm sure because they knew this movie was gonna come out and they would look like roses compared to the movie, a smart move on their part. But like, it was important in the sense that it did do some of the things that you're saying. Like, it revolutionized the way these shows were It was important in the sense that it did do some of the things that you're saying. It revolutionized the way these shows were shot.
Starting point is 00:21:11 I mean, all the behind-the-scenes stuff. Yeah, Lucy being in such a creative force while being a woman, like the fact that it did show an interracial marriage, it wasn't the first one to have pregnancy on TV, but it was definitely the most important one. So I got a question, guys. Do you think when, you know, like Lucy and Desi push their beds together or slept in the same bed?
Starting point is 00:21:34 Do you think, do you think all the sickos out there are like fuck yeah, just started cranking it? Probably that. That was born for the time. I would imagine. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, probably. No, it is behind the scenes. I'm not
Starting point is 00:21:48 saying like I love Lucy was like, you know, a silly show about a silly married couple. But yeah, and so is in in this there's all this drama around, is it believable that? Desi would walk in and put his hands around her eyes and say, guess who? And that she would, you know, guess all these names. And there's this like, but in the reality of the show, this is all, uh, Lucille, the character of Lucille ball saying like, but are we supposed to believe that he would actually think that she thinks Sam even have a car. Are we supposed to believe that?
Starting point is 00:22:24 Are we supposed to believe that she's like, are we supposed to believe that she's like, are we supposed to believe that, I don't know what man is in my house and that he's supposed to believe that I don't know what, that I don't know who it is. And his friends things are like, well, the joke is clearly that she's teasing him and he gets frustrated being teased with.
Starting point is 00:22:37 But he doesn't seem to understand the joke, you know. There's so much drama around that and it has that sork and he like, aha, you know, he's found the weak underbelly of this, that everything's gonna spin around. And so after I watched this movie last night, I watched the episode that was like the main episode, featured in the movie.
Starting point is 00:22:55 And within three seconds, you buy into the reality of I Love Lucy. That I love Lucy, that she's like sort of, you know, Daffy and Silly and would do this. And it all makes sense on the show. Yeah. It's a weird thing of like, well, that feels like it's one of those times, yeah.
Starting point is 00:23:12 Exactly. Here's the thing, like Aaron Sorkin is poking holes in the show that the people who made the show would not poke holes in because they know they're making a silly show. Yeah. But Aaron Sorkin doesn't quite get. Yeah. It's not the best.
Starting point is 00:23:25 Yeah. Like, politics, it feels like politics is a better place for him to have characters like poking holes in each other's arguments as opposed to like what's the funny joke and what the logic of the joke is, you know? That's, I mean, like, and look, I'm talking as a person who I don't like a joke that where that exists on faulty logic. Like, I, I, but you like faulty towers,
Starting point is 00:23:47 but I mean, like, there were times when I was writing just like with other people at the daily show. And like, I'd feel like, is that a false premise? And I, like, it would be a small thing, but I would like push back against it. So I certainly understand like, objecting to a small issue. But as you say, this is clearly
Starting point is 00:24:07 a tease. Like, it doesn't make any sense as anything else. So to show her integrity by like her getting hung up on this just makes the character look dumb in the movie in a weird way. Yes, and especially because the episode they're doing is about like Fred Nethel, I've had a fight and Lucy is going to invite both of them to dinner without telling each of them so that they, I guess, fall back and love at dinner. It's like, that is a fall to your premise than that she was teasing her husband and he got mad. Like it's, it's a, it's a ridiculous plot. But I mean, in the, in the movie, it comes off as her hyper fixating on something that
Starting point is 00:24:39 doesn't, like, doesn't matter. And she seems like she's out of step with the rest of the people involved. Yes. But I think that's also supposed to be that It's she is the one she's the one right genius there and everyone else won't listen to it's like I'm not sure if the movie is But it doesn't come off as being a writing genius it comes off as somebody who doesn't know what's going on. No, that's true too I guess it depends on whether whose side you're taking but anyway Lucy is worried are they to take away her show? Because she's a communist.
Starting point is 00:25:07 Meanwhile, she's still worried that Dezi was unfaithful to her possibly. And she explains, she only signed up to be a communist in the 30s to please her uncle who raised her or her grandfather, I forget which. Her grandfather who himself was a communist and, and Dezi wants, we'll find out later, Dezi wants to have her played off like a mistake, like she's as daffy in real life as she is on TV and she doesn't want to admit that. She doesn't want to admit she made a mistake because she didn't.
Starting point is 00:25:33 We see a lot of flashbacks of how Lucy and Desi met when she was an undercontracted RKO and Desi is singing a song about, there's a number of times on how your Bardem sings songs in this movie. And I thought you did a really good job of selling those songs. But there are so many like we don't have time to go to all the inaccuracies and anachronisms in the movie.
Starting point is 00:25:53 But like there were so many times during the discussion of her film career when I was like she's waiting in this way to room in the 40s. There's a movie poster on the wall from the movie from the 50s like this is bothering me like. She's a smartphone in her hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's watching TikTok while she's on set.
Starting point is 00:26:11 Like, this is, but we see basically how she fixated, she set her sights on Dezi and chased after him and really seduced him through a combination of Brassy Rude-ness and Brassy taking off her clothes in front of him. And so one, two punch. And another thing that keeps coming up is the idea that Desi was driven from Cuba, because he was born in Cuba, his family was a prominent Cuban family, that he was driven from Cuba by the Communist revolution. And that's why he has this deeper thing about
Starting point is 00:26:41 communists. And that's the thing anachronistically that really got to me because he left comedy, he left Cuba in the 30s when the government was overthrown by Batista who the communist was later overthrow 20 years later. So that was what made me mad, it was I was like, I can buy, there's a movie poster in the background that's from the wrong year, like whatever.
Starting point is 00:26:58 The same way that it didn't make me as mad as in Mank when they were like, ugh, we don't make the Wolfman. And I'm like, that movie didn't come out for 12 years until after this conversation. They're like, we don't make horror movies like Frankenstein's like Frankenstein wasn't out yet. The scene takes place in 1930. But the, but the idea that this is an alternate universe where the communist took over Cuba like 20 years earlier is such a big change for his backstory. That really, it really bothered me more than anything else. You know, when, you know, when you were saying that about Mank, I was enjoying watching Allison's face
Starting point is 00:27:27 where she's sort of just like clocks who you were as a person more fully made. That I'm still that really bothered me and Mank. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's another one where it did, I mean, that's also like a film history period that like I particularly meant to. But it bothered me that I mean, aside from the fact that Gary Oldman was playing a man 30 years younger than him in many scenes, but the, that movie is, that any time you do a movie that's like
Starting point is 00:27:52 about behind the scenes in the entertainment business and there can't be bothered to get basic facts right just to create that illusion. It just bugs me, you know. Al, I want to fill you in though, this is part of a long running segment on the show yanking the bank crank, which is a crank where we don't have to get my problems with it. Oh, I've never seen manks. Should I should I do it?
Starting point is 00:28:15 No, it's not. It's more fun to not see it. I think. Yeah, I made a seafood. It's pretty good. I didn't really like the movie that much. She's fine in it. Yeah. I'm saying, way eventually into a segment called Manx for the Memories, which is long after everyone else has forgotten about Manx. I'm just like reminded people about it. So anyway, now they're in the past. There are things she dumps her fiance over the phone and sticks with Dezi.
Starting point is 00:28:42 But even that scene was so, and I'm sorry to keep using this very, very technical term, so sorkiny, though it was just so sassy and clever the way she called him up and dumped him. And just like no one is allowed to say a line that isn't like zing, everything is so zingy, that it's strange credulity. Well, and I think that if the movie was more,
Starting point is 00:29:09 it's directed in a very straightforward, I would almost say boring manner. And if it was more stylized, I would say like, yeah, that works for me. But the idea that like this movie is supposed to be a semi-historic, the accurate to the point that we're pretending we have talking heads people, explaining it for it to be that zingy is, is annoying. It both looks and plays like it would be better suited
Starting point is 00:29:30 to being a mini series on TV. I mean, it feels like an HBO made for TV movie from about 30 years ago. Where it's like, oh, this is a prestige TV movie. Like, they've got big stars and HBO put money into it, but like, we're only going to hold it to TV movie standards. Like we're not going to hold this to like movie movie standards. Yeah. I could see it being a mini series because the pacing I thought was pretty weird. So if it were divided into little chunks, then it wouldn't have been so noticeable. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:29:57 I watched it fix the flashback issue. Like the more I think about it, the more I think none of the flashbacks were necessary for the story they wanted to tell. They could not at all. Yeah, all of them. I mean, they all caught me by surprise. It took me a little while to be like, oh, this is some time ago. And also, you got to the point where later on, there's a scene that is not a flashback that
Starting point is 00:30:17 I thought was a flashback for a while. I was like, oh, but if she knew this a long time ago, oh, wait, that was not a flashback that was supposed to be in real time. Like, there's nothing in the flashbacks that hasn't already been told to us in dialogue, basically. And it's like, do the flashbacks or do the talking heads? Don't do both. I mean, Dan was like, I love the talking heads.
Starting point is 00:30:37 Yeah, put them all over the soundtrack. That yeah, that is the place. You know, they're burning down the house. I mean, you wanted more of a style choice for the movie that would be a very bold choice to just do talking head songs for the whole soundtrack of this. That's true.
Starting point is 00:30:51 But it's, you don't need, it feels like padding at a certain point. It feels like the movie had only a little bit of story and they're just like, feel, they're like, yeah, let's tell the audience three times that their jobs took them away from each other for a while. So we don't need to say, I mean, I guess that is the plot of La La Land. So you can fill a movie with that.
Starting point is 00:31:11 But anyway, they're mad at each other as tension continues. Vivian Vance, she doesn't like that. Nobody thinks she's sexy. And she doesn't like that. People think that she's the right age to be married to William Frawley, who is much older than her. Much like everyone in the movie pretty much is older than the people that they're playing, except for JK Simmons.
Starting point is 00:31:33 And there's a lot of scenes of just people in rooms talking about, oh, did you see this story in the magazine? Oh, do you hear about Walter Winchell on the radio? And that's when Lucy and Desi walk into the writer's room, which, this being the movie, the show has two writers, which might have been the case. Back then, she didn't have a lot of writers. It's just the executive producer and two writers sitting in a room together. They really want to send Lucy to Italy so she can stop on some grapes, which Lucy loves the idea of. And she goes, yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:02 Sorry, I just think it was one of these scenes I'm talking about where she stares intently off into space and Zeus comes down from Mount Olympic Olympus to give her the greatest joke in history, which is in this case to lose her earrings in the grapes that they're stopping. And she has to swim around looking for it. And we get to see a flash forward of her fantasy of this happening and the audience losing their fucking minds.
Starting point is 00:32:30 And she dreams in black and white, much like Android's dream of electric sheep. So every time she imagines things, it's in black and white. And the audience, and here's a Stuart saying the audience is losing their minds. I mean, it is a very funny scene.
Starting point is 00:32:42 Like, that is the thing. No, it's not that's played by. The end of mouth of madness. Not as played by Nicole Kidman, but as played by Lucille Ball. And there's the same way that I almost wish they had done like the chocolate conveyor belt or stuff like that, like more classic Lucie scenes so we could see audiences going nuts. But every joke that anyone says in front of an audience in this, the audience explodes. Like, I hope they had doctors on the set of Isle of Lucie to help these people who sides were literally splitting open and they're going to shut her. Yeah. I've been slapping
Starting point is 00:33:08 my niece so hard that my niece is powder now. I think movies about comedy, they have so rarely realized that like not every joke is a is a super gut buster. You know. Yeah. And also that like people aren't just like silent until they like suddenly come out with the brilliant jokes. Like that's I wanted to talk a little bit about The way this is presenting comedy writing because you know like as we've mentioned before in the show You're a comedy writer. There was a lot of well. We get it. Yeah. There's a lot of no I was your rewards show is your end of lacy p image Daily show
Starting point is 00:33:42 When especially when Elliot and I were there at the same time, there was a lot of obsession with studio security. And howie, right? The other favorite. There was a lot of obsession with howie. And I was his name is his howie, my, my office mate, now my neighbor, yeah. But like, Sorkin is so serious about the way he thinks comedy is done. And on this show, like, I will say he gets two things right.
Starting point is 00:34:06 The comedy writers are really mean to each other. And they secretly think that they're better writers than the other one. And, but in real life, my experience is there's also a lot more a spritical or and a lot more just like tossing out jokes. Like a comedy room is sounds, you know, more like an episode of the flop house or something where everyone's just saying nonsense to try out. Well, I'm shouting over each other as opposed to looking at each other silently and then occasionally, it's like he thinks the comedy writers room is like who's afraid of
Starting point is 00:34:37 Virginia Woolf? We're just kind of like bitter zings and otherwise deep silence. When usually it's a lot of people yelling at each other. Now is a real comedy room extremely dimly lit? Because if so, they nailed that. Aaron Shorkin really thinks comedy's comedians work in darkness, which is strange because you have to see what you're reading.
Starting point is 00:34:57 You have to write things down on pads and stuff like that. But yeah, it's all, it's the one root, like in Studio 60, they worked in a room where they think one light, it looked like a Nazi interrogation room. Yeah But they were there a raid around a table and most of them are in darkness like some kind of like breakfast or a cafe type room And in this one it's a yeah It's just like the one room in the building with no lights no overhead lights. It's just lit by whatever whatever Stray shafts might make it to the Venetian blinds table
Starting point is 00:35:24 They're writing from the room that in network where Ned Bady makes his big speech. Yeah, it's lit by one tiny lamp on a table. Yeah, for someone who is also like, he's a writer. Like Aaron Sorkin is at heart a writer. He's not, he directs things, but he's not like a great director. It seems like what comes naturally to him is words.
Starting point is 00:35:44 And yet he doesn't like seem to know how writing works. I don't know. Maybe that's how it works for him. Maybe he sits in a dark room and stairs into space. And the like, and the scene comes to him. I don't know. Maybe he's not used to working with other people on projects. Maybe he like, I mean, that seems very like,
Starting point is 00:35:59 like, based on what I've heard of this. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's true. So this, with the movie, these kinds of, oh, so Lucy and Desi announced the writers in this dimly, this depressingly dimly lit room, that Lucy is pregnant and they want to write the pregnancy into the show. And the executive producers were like, no,
Starting point is 00:36:18 we're going to have her go to Italy and stomp on grapes instead. And it's like, you guys are doing 37 shows a season. You got room. Do both episodes. But he says, don't never let us discuss pregnancy on the show. And later on when they're talking to the studio, the network execs and sponsors are like, you can't ever be pregnant on the show.
Starting point is 00:36:33 People will wonder how the baby got in there. And I think probably they, I was just yanking it to that too. Like just the thought of it, just the barest hint of it. And I think there's probably, there was a lot of things about sexist that a baby is the result. Maybe you could be the result. Yeah, if you're saying Augustine, that's why you're supposed to do it. I mean, there are people with pregnancy fetishes, but.
Starting point is 00:37:02 Yeah, that's true. Don't shame them, Dan. There are people who like that. I mean, they don't, they like, I think it's more that they like the shape of the woman's body during pregnancy than the, I mean, there's, there's a tendency. That there's a tendency. Yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of, I mean, there's not other reasons. I'm sure like the fantasy of virility, but let's not, we don't need to.
Starting point is 00:37:19 I could see that. I could see that. Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, if they're, if it's a fantasy of virility, if they're with a pregnant woman, I want, I think they don't understand how it works. It's not like it's not like they, it's not like they built an annex so that they could then feel in new tenants. I don't know. Anyway, we could cut all that. It doesn't matter. Anyway. And I, and I, and I believe there was a conversation. They didn't let them say the word pregnant as is pointed out smugly at the end of the movie.
Starting point is 00:37:45 Right. Expecting, I guess. But it is one of the things where it's like the people do, people do have some idea, even in the 50s of how they've is reborn. It's the same way that like, there are all these, you know, when the people watch movies from the 30s and 40s and they'll see stuff that seems like unintentional, dirty jokes, and they'll be like, can you believe they didn't realize that was in there. And it's like, I hate to break it to you. They knew it was in there. They did it on purpose. Like they had sex back then too. It wasn't invented in 1967.
Starting point is 00:38:12 But, uh, yeah, it's true that, oh, no, I just, before I just going to say they, they shouldn't have played these executives. Yeah, as if they're like shrinking violence, like they should have been, like, oh, we're going to get complaints from this group and this group and this group, which I'm sure is what the actual thing was. What were you gonna say, Allison? When she announces, she's pregnant. It's like a running joke that no one ever says congratulations to her, because when she announces
Starting point is 00:38:35 that she's pregnant, the people in the room are so uncomfortable that that one executive was like, how gulp, much pregnant are you? He couldn't even, he couldn't even use the right language he was so uncomfortable. We're just so ignorant. Men back then, they didn't even know. They were only interested in women as-
Starting point is 00:38:57 Luckily it's all fixed. As close and that's it. And they didn't know how anything else happened, you know? Yeah, and luckily we don't- We don't know now though. Yeah, luckily we live in a gender utopia now. So, uh, they... It's like when I was watching 9 to 5 the other day,
Starting point is 00:39:10 I'm like, oh, yeah, it's all better now. It's equal. You just brought that because you want to talk about 9 to 5. I love 9 to 5. So sue me, Dan. Not literally, because I don't have that much money. I don't know what that means. I think I would have standing, I think that...
Starting point is 00:39:24 Yeah, what grounds would dance be suing you on? What, what, what damages would there be from you liking 9 to 5? I don't have that much money. I don't know what you are. I think I would have standing. I think that's the problem. Yeah, what grounds would dance to be suing you on? What, what, what damages would there be from you liking nine to five? I'm not a fucking lawyer. Dude, I sell drinks to people. I mean, in a way that's kind of what a lawyer does, except for the drinks,
Starting point is 00:39:35 as you listen to people's problems, and you tell them what to do. Although what you always tell them what to do is have another drink, which I think is, you know, a little self-interested. So, okay, they block the table read. Lucy keeps adding gags, which I think is, you know, a little self interested. So, okay, they block the table read. Lucy keeps adding gags, which nobody is happy about, which doesn't make any sense. And this is, this is when the Lazarus saying earlier, the director who's very bad
Starting point is 00:39:55 and nobody likes him. And he's a fictional character. He's not, he's not a real person. He's doing a bad job. And he's like, hmm, let's shoot this scene so that the people's backstreet to the camera. And Lucy is like, I don't think he's like, let's shoot this scene so that the people's backs are to the camera. And Lucy is like, I don't think this is a good way to shoot this scene. And he's like, Lucy, I'm the director. And I wonder how real those dynamics were. Maybe because she was a woman, people didn't listen to her.
Starting point is 00:40:16 But she was the boss. Like again, her company was producing this show. It's a desi-lew production. So it just feels like the dynamics are a little, uh, fakie, a little forced. I know that, yeah, this was a problem that I had trying to assess the movie because I know that it must have been terribly difficult for her, even as a powerful woman in Hollywood to like have her voice heard, but at the same time, like, you know, any show is, is desperate to keep the star happy.
Starting point is 00:40:46 So I don't, you don't know. I mean, and as you say, she was the producer as well. Well, it's very confusing to me. And especially because later, there's a whole, so in our flashbacks, we eventually get to the point where she is pitching the show to CBS. And they, and they don't want Dezi to play her husband because it would be an interracial relationship. And she says, well, then we're not doing the show.
Starting point is 00:41:06 And we know how that turned out because Dezi is the husband on the show. And it seems so weird that every other step of the way we see Lucille Ball as an unstoppable juggernaut who just batters her way through obstructions and gets her way. But this one director will not listen to her ideas when they're blocking a totally unnecessary scene
Starting point is 00:41:25 And there's a part where they cut they break for lunch and Lucy's like no No, I want to talk to you about this and the crew is standing around and he's like we're getting into it We're getting into a lunch penalty and it's what it was like Why don't you just send the crew to lunch and then talk to Lucy about it for like two minutes? I don't understand. There's no it's like the fakest tension, you know the fakest suspense in that But what why this at a certain point this director who becomes the hero of the movie because he's the only one willing to stand up to Lucille Ball, even though it's for a dumb reason. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:41:51 Anyway, so they, Vivian Vance gets insulted because Lucie sends Madeline Pue to her room with some food for her to eat because she's skip breakfast because she's trying to lose weight. Dezi tells the network executives, and as Allison said, they're like, how much pregnant is she, which is kind of a funny line, but it's a funny line like if a robot or an alien says it, you know, and.
Starting point is 00:42:16 And how your bird in place has seen pretty well. He's pretty fun, he's charming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. And I think the, and it's just like, tension is building. Dezi's trying to keep things together. Lucy's trying to make things the way she wants them to be.
Starting point is 00:42:28 Everyone's complaining to each other. They're all mad at each other. JK Simmons takes Lucy for a drink and says, you gotta let Dezi be the boss in public because you're pushing him away. You're, you're making it so he doesn't feel like a man. And we flash back to, you know, just Lucy's career in movies ending and her being mad because she did such a good job
Starting point is 00:42:51 in one movie that they don't have anymore roles for her. She's too good an actress. They don't have the right roles for her anymore, which is not true, not how they, is like not how things turned out. And she's claiming to be 35, but she's actually 39. Mm-hmm. Which the movie presents as if it is a real sin. And she's claiming to be 35, but she's actually 39. Which the movie presents us if it is a real sin.
Starting point is 00:43:08 Like that's, the studio executive says that to her and she, and it's like case closed, sorry, you have the business. Now, now the scene with Jack A. Simmons where he's trying to explain to her the problem with her marriage, that's not the only scene like that. But nothing in Javier Bardem's performance or the script at this point has indicated that he is particularly unsatisfied with the dynamics on the show. No, that's true.
Starting point is 00:43:34 That is true. That is true, which is weird to me. He's presented very much as a very supportive guy who is trying to keep things going and at least outwardly does not have any feeling, does not seem to have tension about his career basically now being second fiddle to his wife after he was a successful touring band leader and stuff like that. That doesn't seem to be coming through in his performance even though people are telling Lucy that.
Starting point is 00:43:58 But Lucy is like, okay, I got to make him feel like he's the boss. And she goes to the executive producer and says, hey, why don't we give Desi an executive producer credit? And this is a strange scene because one, And she goes to the executive producer and says, hey, why don't we give Desi an executive producer credit? And this is a strange scene because one, it is genuinely insulting the executive producer to be like, hey, can you help me make my husband happy about doing this? But two, Desi is essentially the executive producer on the show. He's not, he makes a lot of decisions. He runs the business.
Starting point is 00:44:20 Like he's, the guy, she's like, he designs the camera system that we use. He set up the company. He, and he does all these problems. She makes a really good argument for why he should be an executive producer. So that point, I was like, why is he not? Like why doesn't he already have that title? It's, it feels like a, like another weirdly forced conflict. I mean, particularly because like, I mean, again, I don't know whether this is like, this was different in old Hollywood, but like producer credits are giving out candy.
Starting point is 00:44:45 Like an even executive producer credits. Like you can have multiple executive producers on a television show most do. So it's very strange to me that they are just also giving him a credit. I wonder, yeah, I wonder if it was different then because not like literally a credit bump is written into your contract when you sign on to a show where it's like, and on this season, I'll get bumped up to this title. So it's, I don't know, it's a, it's a weird thing that it becomes conflict for a moment and then doesn't really, it's just part of this churning stew of conflict intention over at the Lucy show. Are they ever going to get this episode shot? What if they don't even have a show because
Starting point is 00:45:24 of the communist thing, which is kind of dropped out. Nobody's really, for most of the movie, the communist thing is totally forgotten. And people like, yeah, nobody starts with a communist thing. That should be the main concern of that week. It's the issue of my be canceled because of this communist bomb show. If you're making a movie about, there's a week when we thought the show might get canceled, make it about the communist thing. If you're making a movie about, there's a week when we thought the show might get canceled, make it about the communist thing. If you're making a movie about, it's hard for two people to be in a creative, a marriage
Starting point is 00:45:48 who are both creative people and are, as driven to be together as they are, by ambition, driven to be a part. Make the movie about that. If the movie is about, we want to present pregnancy for the first time in television and the student and the network is up against us on it. Make it about that. But there's like so much stuff going on that none of it really gets much attention. And I wonder if the feeling he's going for is like,
Starting point is 00:46:09 that's another week at the Lucy show. It's always crazy. Now we gotta do it all over again next week, but it feels like none of them are that important because there's so much fires to put out. She's so much pregnant all the time. How much pregnant, so much pregnant with problems. Yeah, it's weird, you're right.
Starting point is 00:46:25 Like, none of the storylines really, I didn't, I found myself not invested in any of them. None of the stakes for, they didn't create stakes that could like create a scaffolding to make a movie that you'd care about. I said that like a robot. They did not. How much stakes were there?
Starting point is 00:46:48 And so the stakes enough. And then by the end of the movie when they wrap them all up, it feels dissatisfying. And the ones that they put the most emphasis on, you're like, oh, that matters. Yeah. Well, also some of the stakes are to some degree like false. I mean, like, again, just bringing in stuff from the more in depth show about Lucy that I listened to. Like it was, it was not like Lucy didn't know that Dezi was a flanderer. Like this was a huge part of their relationship, but the movie kind of makes it out to be like,
Starting point is 00:47:24 oh, this one time he was in the tabloids and she was worried about this one thing that he convinced her was not true. Whereas in reality, he was, you know, they're mostly prostitutes. He would go out and he would sleep with a bunch of prostitutes and Lucy kind of knew, but she loved him so much anyway. And he was supportive career wise, you know, and they loved each other. Like it was a complex relationship, but it's all boiled down to this one time that she thinks he's sleeping around. And it's so fake. And now I'm, I've never hired a prostitute.
Starting point is 00:47:58 Do you hire them by the bunch? Is that how it works? Sometimes. Because I always thought it was like a pack of prostitutes. Visit a bunch. I don't know the technology. I don't know how you I don't know how you order them. Yeah, it's a, well, once just a prostitute, two is a, is a pair of prostitute. Three. What's, yeah, what's it? Make some jokes about sex work. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's a joke about, it's
Starting point is 00:48:21 a joke about, it's a joke about, it's a joke about, it's a joke about, it's a joke about it's a joke about it's a joke about it's a joke about plural. It's a joke about it's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about. It's a joke about one, get one. Oh, yeah, that's good. That's good stuff. Oh, so yeah. So, yeah, so there, anyway, they're all arguing. Everybody's arguing. And they're waiting to find out if the big sponsors in the East, if the big executives are going to support their pregnancy
Starting point is 00:48:59 storyline. And Lucy gets into it at not a argument, but a tense conversation with Madeline Pugh, because she wants the Lucy character to be smarter than she is. And there's a generation gap between them, you know, of women who want to be smart, want to be seen as smart and women who just want to work and be the bosses behind the scenes. And if that means looking daffy in public, that's what they'll do. A telegram arrives supporting Desi in the pregnancy battles, that's kind of over by two-thirds of it through the movie.
Starting point is 00:49:28 That night, and this is the scene where I thought it was a flashback, but it was actually a regular back. Just, it was a forward. It was a regular time forward, because it was just the next scene. Let me see you. Consecure. She's doing the laundry and practicing her lines,
Starting point is 00:49:41 and they have a baby daughter who is not sleeping well. And- And just showed up for the first time. Like, this is the first time I became aware there's a baby. I think they mentioned her like briefly passing once, but up to this point. And so, my wife was like,
Starting point is 00:49:55 oh, so now it's the future and they had the baby. I'm like, no, no, no, this is their first child. Like, this is their first child that never got mentioned. They were barely. And she finds something in the laundry that's not super clear at first, but we know that it has unnerved her somewhat so much so that she walks out into the rain in her pajamas, just days like a zombie. What does this mean?
Starting point is 00:50:16 Okay, it's 2 a.m. She calls Vivian and and and frolly over to the studio to restage the dinner scene. And again, she's like, hey, let's have you facing the camera. So we can see what you're doing. And they're like, you're a genius. This is better. And she says, oh, I did this show to be close to Dezi. So we'd be working in the same place together, but outside of work, it's like he ignores
Starting point is 00:50:38 me and he doesn't pay attention to me. And she feels bad about it. Then we get some more flashbacks about her radio career and this is when, if the movie is trying to present Lou Sealball as a smart person, this is a scene that really bothered me where she does her radio show, she's in her dressing room
Starting point is 00:50:54 and the EP of the radio show who would go on to be the EP of the TV show, Tony Howe. He goes, hey, some people from CBS wanna talk to you and they're like, yeah, yeah, radio, CBS, radio, blah, blah. And they go, well, actually we're from CBS Television. She's like CBS does television what you want to sell me one and it's like no We want you to we want to do a TV show with you and he's like Running fucking bits so many zingers at them and it's like the mint I'm I'm look the minute someone walks in and says no We're for to you backstage and says we're from television, you know they're there to offer you a television show.
Starting point is 00:51:25 Like, it takes so long for that to, she's got such a wall of zingers around her. It takes so long for that news to reach her skull. It's like, come on, Lucy, you know this. We've noticed when you do your radio show, you do a lot of gesturing. It's called acting. And the thing is like every bit she does,
Starting point is 00:51:43 their reaction is either complete confusion, or they just say, that's funny. And you would think that that complete lack of response would make you not want to keep doing bits. Now, that's the big story. There's for true comedian, there's a certain point where what you want is the bad reaction. You're doing this so that they feel. Yeah, you're right.
Starting point is 00:52:00 It is true that like she like really started playing up her facial expressions in radio because she knows he got a good reaction from the crowd and that was kind of what brought her into comedy as you know on TV. But the way it's presented in the movie really makes it seem like the CBS execs are like, wow, like we didn't realize you had a face. Like you can be on television. It's like she's been in movies. Like, they know what she looks like. She knows she can like express things. When we listened to you, it was like,
Starting point is 00:52:32 we thought you were just a voice, a just embodied voice. But now we realize there's a face on a body attached to it and we assume a person, a soul, inhabiting that body and television needs that's what it looks. Not if they'd buy Nicole Kidman, but. Oh, wow. Ouch, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I really, I get that she's being commended
Starting point is 00:52:49 for this performance, but I did not. I mean, maybe I guess it's the material. It depends like what the direction was, but I just would have, there's a million other actors I would have rather seen as Lucille Ball. Okay, because I list one of them. Emma Stone, Kate Winslet. There's two.
Starting point is 00:53:08 I mean, actually, Kate Blanchett was initially cast. She was initially attached. I think yeah. She would have been more interesting in a lot of ways. Yeah, I just find it quite interesting. My wife suggested Analy Ashford of, you know, stage name. She's been good. I think she's good when she's doing the dramatic parts.
Starting point is 00:53:25 I don't think you ever get a sense from her that she's a comedian, which is weird because I do think Nicole Kidman can be funny in other movies. Like I thought she was really funny in Mulan Rouge and like she's doing a comic performance into Die Four. But here like you don't get the sense that she's got the, whatever Lucy I had is.
Starting point is 00:53:44 I'm gonna blame the direct. No, that's fair. That's where I'm gonna put the blame on that. That there's the same way that when I was watching the Star Wars prequels with my older son and my wife walked in the room, she was like, Natalie Portman's really bad in this. And I was like, oh, they're all bad in it.
Starting point is 00:53:59 You gotta blame the directing. Like, these are all actors who are good actors and they're very bad in this movie. But you just, like, same old Jackson is bad in this movie. Like, that's how bad the directing. Like these are all actors who are good actors and they're very bad in this movie. But you just, like Samuel Jackson is bad in this movie. Like that's how bad the directing is. But so I'm gonna blame Sorkin on that one. But I do agree with you that like Nicole, a lot of the reviews I've seen, they're like Nicole Kidman
Starting point is 00:54:16 plays Lucille Ball as a real person. And I don't really get that from her. I get a character from her. But I don't get a full like living breathing. If anything, and the weird thing was that I had heard stuff about Avivardem being miscast, and I actually found him to be more of a person than a cold kidman was, you know.
Starting point is 00:54:33 I just found the portrayal to be so uncaryzmatic and unlikable, which if you're gonna spend two hours and however many minutes, like with someone, they should be a little more likable. Even if she really was that tough in real life. Or at least have the, like someone could be in like, well, but still have the charisma, where you're like, I get it. I see why this person is the center of this whole thing,
Starting point is 00:54:57 and I wanna see them succeed. And, but it's, there's a, I don't know, some of it is that Aaron's sort of thing, we're kind of like, the ending is never in doubt. Like you kind of always know what's gonna happen. And there's no, I don't know, some of it is that Aaron's sort of thing, we're kind of like, the ending is never in doubt. Like, you kind of always know what's going to happen. And there's no, there's no stakes. And that makes it harder for the character to be sympathetic when they are like kind of spinning like a top, you know?
Starting point is 00:55:16 I mean, I wonder if Nicole Kidman, I mean, it is a weird choice that in the scenes where she's particularly flustered. Nicole Kidman begins to spin like a top with her arms out, you know? Like a Mega Man feeling. You got to use that bubble, that bubble on them. Yeah, you got these bubbles. Get a good bubble.
Starting point is 00:55:32 Well, that's why it's, it's because Mega Man is all about the order of the levels. We all know that. That's the secret. You got to know what order to do them in. I'm going to change from saying she was unlikeable, even though I found her to be unlikeable too. She wasn't compelling. The character wasn't compelling enough.
Starting point is 00:55:46 Yeah, I'll give that a try. I do wonder if that's like, in part, the problem is that they are making her up to look so much like Lucy and so much emphasis is going on. Amitation that I think that that mutes people's charisma sometimes when there's too much of that going on like the surface stuff. Yeah, I would I would always rather watch a movie where someone is playing the character in the movie and not worrying that much about seeming like the real person. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:56:14 Then when they go all out to seem like the real if they can do both, that's amazing, but I but it's better to see this like you could cast someone who doesn't look like I mean cast Tiffany Hannish as, as Lucille Ball and then don't worry about the way she looks and just like let her be the character and it would be great, you know, so the, the, the idea that like, you got to get the voice exactly right. You got to get the look. Yeah, like the wizard magazine fucking casting shit where people were like, Debra Messing did that one photo shoot and she looked like Lucy, what did they get her to do?
Starting point is 00:56:44 That's what there's obviously only one person who can play Wolverine Glenn Danzig, a man who is not an actor. Uh, we, so anyway, she's a sitcom star now, a cut to the, cut to now. And, uh, the Lucy, she surprises the executive producer by admitting that he was right. It was insulting to him for her to just kind of say, Hey, can I give your credit to my husband in order to save our marriage? And he's like, I don't think you've ever said that before that you're right. She's like, I don't think I've ever said it out loud. And they're interrupted by, yeah, Zang.
Starting point is 00:57:16 They're interrupted by the, I'm very humble in my head. They're interrupted by the news that the executives are meeting with Dezi, which is the kind of thing you would do if he was the executive producer of the show. The newspapers have picked up the Lucy is a communist story. Uh-oh, and Dezi aren't as has a plan. He's gonna tell the audience that Lucy checks the wrong box
Starting point is 00:57:34 on the what party do I belong to, card. And she's like, no, I don't want to. I don't want, I didn't check the wrong box. I'm not gonna do that. And he's like, you did check the wrong box because I was kicked out of my country by them. And it's like, well, you weren't in real life. Like again, it's not, that's not true. So like the, you might as well go ahead and make him a Holocaust survivor at that point. If you're going to, if you're going to like
Starting point is 00:57:55 a budget that much, but a, or make it so that his, his, his family was killed in the Stalinist purges or whatever, really make it. And the Decepticons attacked Cuba. I was there when the bugs attacked Puerto Rico and and destroyed San Juan. You're not from Puerto Rico and that's from Starship Troopers. Is that where you're from now? Oh, Shavik's ran me out during the crusades. I'm so confused I have to believe it.
Starting point is 00:58:20 I mean, so no one would make up the lie that obvious. So it must be true. And Lucy and Vivian kind of make up a little bit over the fact that they're both worried about life, I guess. And Madeline Pugh comes over to Lucy and is like, you're my hero, Lucy. There's a lot of unearned like that. That shit sucked. That scene sucks.
Starting point is 00:58:39 That scene sucks. Yeah. And William Frawley comes out. And this was something I actually liked. He goes, you know, a man doesn't like being called old and it was the first time throughout the movie where I'm like, oh yeah, his feelings probably are hurt when Vivian Bans is constantly like, he's too old to be my husband. I'm not old enough to play his wife, you know, the, it was a, it was funny to me where I was like, I kind of bought into like, well, who cares about men's feelings until that moment?
Starting point is 00:59:03 I was like, oh yeah, that's right, men have feelings too. I should know that. I have feelings like I should feel a really unfrily a little bit. Okay, men's rights. Yeah. Yeah. File this episode under men's rights. I can't. And then the best feelings, that's all I'm saying is that men have the best feelings. And they're all nervous about losing the show, even though that's a problem that just popped up like a couple minutes ago and they had forgotten about until then. Desi goes out and he goes to warm up the audience. He usually did and he goes, look, I'm going to tell you the story about how this is the story that's out there that Lucy is a communist.
Starting point is 00:59:34 Well, guess what? I've got a phone call that I think is going to help out. And he puts the phone up to the microphone and he goes, is there, you can tell me, is there any, does the FBI have any reason to believe Lucille Ball is a communist? And the phone calls like, no, we don't. In a, in a very cheery voice. Yeah, no, we don't at all. And, and, and, and with the FBI, we investigating her for a kind of, no, we're not going to do that. And can you tell us your name? And he goes, Jay Edgar Hoover, an audience loses their shoes. They're like, well, if Jay Edgar Hoover
Starting point is 01:00:02 has cleared her, she must be an all-American woman. And it's like, I saw someone, before I, this was spoiled for me, because I saw someone mentioned on Twitter like that the idea that J. Edgar Hoover is the hero of the movie, a genuinely bad man. Yeah, yeah. You can tear up all things. I was like, I was like, we're the directorial notes. Okay, you're only going to be a voice, but you need to convey that you're a huge piece
Starting point is 01:00:21 of shit now. Al, Al, yeah. But you're also, you're a by all by against all account. Now, everyone in this movie is going to go way overboard and try and impersonate their people. But we want instead of J. Edgar Hoover, the the very, very mean man who is never happy. We want to be kind of J. Edgar Hoover as kind of a Santa Claus type, you know? Although I was confirming what I already knew to be true, but I just looked it up that
Starting point is 01:00:44 this phone call never happened. And apparently he was a fan. No, he was too. He was too. He was spying on civil rights activists. He didn't have time to call into I love Lucy. No, he, but he, he did write a fan letter. So apparently, he did love Lucy, like everyone else. I wanted to ask Elliott, was this the fact that you, there was this the part that you were particularly mad about because I was mad about this that this was the whole Major conflict is solved by a call to jandriger Hoover that didn't happen in real life And it's like well if you had Hoover on your side the whole time like what is your problem?
Starting point is 01:01:17 Must be nice to have Hoover on your side rather than what really happened Which was that Dezi came out and gave a heartfelt speech about his wife, which would have been, you know, a much more interesting cinematic, rousing moment. Much more interesting and much more on the note, on a point for the story of the movie, which is about their marriage. Like, the, I think it bothered me that in a couple, I mean, the thing that bothered me the most was the Cuban Revolution thing, honestly, but this bothered me second most, but it was partly also because he says, I called everybody to, I called everybody I could to get to this.
Starting point is 01:01:49 And it's like, oh, I would have liked to have seen that. I would have liked to have seen what the manager turns out to be the hero of the movie, fighting for his wife and doing all the work. As opposed to just seeing the, have him tell me that and hear a final phone call, much as in the movie The Post, the court judgment that allows the Pentagon papers to be printed is relayed to us by a woman repeating what she's hearing over the phone. Where it's like a movie, you can show us them announcing this.
Starting point is 01:02:13 Like, we don't need to, it doesn't need to be reported to us by via phone, you know, but the maybe this is why he was never home. Yeah, because he was busy calling. And I have to give this calls a secret from Lucy too, so it can be a big surprise. It's like dramatic. It is crazy. But Daniel, I think you're right, for a movie that has done so much work to gin up kind of fake drama for it to then completely avoid the most real drama that they could have
Starting point is 01:02:39 with that moment. Yeah. Is a very frustrating thing. Alison, you wanted to say something earlier, and I'm sorry, we interrupt you. Oh yeah, so apparently she wasn't cleared though. I mean, she wasn't, she was like, that was that, I think the end of it publicly, but I think Jay Edgar Hoover did.
Starting point is 01:02:55 Oh no, she went to jail, she died jail. Wow. I just, yeah, again, they didn't show that. No, but I think that they did like, keep records on her and keep tabs on her for years after. I know this because after I watched the movie, then I was griping about it to my husband for so long. And then we watched the episode of I Love Lucy.
Starting point is 01:03:11 And then both of us were curious like, what was the real story? So then we both did some Googling. And he encountered something that said that they kept, you know, they were, they were like spying on her for years after this. I totally believe it. That sounds like Hoover. Yeah, yeah. I don't even, I could imagine Hoover were like spying on her for years after this. I totally believe that. That sounds like Hoover. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:03:26 Yeah. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do anti-dramatic way to end the movie. And it is the idea that Jared Hoover is a good guy in it that they're gonna finish everything with a telephone call. Like you said, in the real life, Desi came out and gave this inspirational speech about his wife, like end the movie that way. Like why?
Starting point is 01:03:54 But I guess- Well, I texted you this, you know, beforehand, but like it feels like Aaron Sorkin's like, no, no, no, no, I write the inspiring speeches here, Desi, you don't get one in my version. Not not realizing that he would get to write this speech in the movie, because it's a little bit like a, there's an old story about an episode of the Joey Bishop show where Joey Bishop was playing himself and did like an identical brother or
Starting point is 01:04:17 identical cousin. And he was mad because the cousin character was getting all the funny lines. And it was like, but like, he just couldn't figure out. He couldn't accept that even though he was playing both characters, he didn't like that the other character who was not him was, but was getting the funny lines, you know, man. That's right. So they arranged that call. Now that they have Jagger Hoover's seal of approval, no one can ever take their show off the air. It's good. It's gold forever. The audience applaud. They can't wait to see Lucy and backstage.
Starting point is 01:04:45 Desi is like, we did it Lucy, I saved you. Lucy goes, have you been cheating on me? And he goes, no, no, of course not. I never would. Crazy that it's all ha, like that's like whiplash, not the JK Simmons movie. Like it happens so fast. Like yay, I'm exonerated, but also I have something
Starting point is 01:05:03 to bring up to you. And I think if they had really been able to sell the idea that this is festering her, this doubt, you know, this worry about his fidelity, then it would have made sense that like she just can't hold it in anymore. But instead it just feels like the movie is like, well, we're running out of time, we've got to resolve this plot too. And he's like, what are you talking about? We're about to do the show.
Starting point is 01:05:19 Come on, let's do it. And she holds up, she goes, I found this handkerchief with lipstick on it. And he goes, no, no, that's your lipstick. Remember remember and then she holds up another handkerchief with her lipstick which is different shade which I thought was hilarious that she's like I'm gonna have all my evidence on that she's been walking around all day with these two handkerchiefs waiting for the moment to spring the trap. Yeah just to remember which pocket which ones in. Oh, yeah, like a great magician. And that's it. And that she's like close the doors. One of us in here is a full-andered one. Let me explain. And he goes, he goes, they were just call girls. They were hookers. It doesn't mean anything. It's, there's nothing deeper than that. And my wife turned
Starting point is 01:05:57 to me at this point and went, that's not a good excuse. That does not fly. I was like, yeah, I know. Don't worry. And she interrupts him. She's like, I just want to know, now we have to start the show. Like now that that doubt has been, has been, now that she knows she can go do the show, but then there's this like, this Coda, and I want you guys to maybe explain it to me because I didn't really understand
Starting point is 01:06:17 what's going on with it. The talking heads are back and they're like, so Lucy and the director disagreed about this bit where Desi sneaks up behind her and she pretends she doesn't know who he is. So they did it two ways and they recorded it the way where she pretends and it worked fine. And they recorded it, they tried to do it the other way and for the only time in I love Lucy history, Lucy forgot her lines.
Starting point is 01:06:38 And she just kind of blanks and can't remember what the line is. And then they go on and they go, we never did a retake of that open. And we shot the rest of the episode and Lucy went on forever. And then there's a piece of text on screen that says, the morning after the Lucy show ended, she filed for divorce from Dezzy. The morning after I love Lucy and what is going on when she blanks in the open scene? Is it that she like, at that moment, she no longer loves him. And so she can't play that real scene just for the fake scene or what's going on.
Starting point is 01:07:05 There's a part earlier in it where she taught like it says when ever Lucy was in like a particularly bleak mood. She said that she has no home because like she'd you know, like all this stuff had happened with her family growing up and etc. So she like she feels displaced and then like, Dezi comes in. He does his Lucy. I'm home. That's the line that triggers her to be like,
Starting point is 01:07:26 like, just like, I don't have a home anymore. Like this man has cheated on me. Like, that is the way I interpreted what was going on there. That makes sense because she was talking earlier about like, I made this, we were never together, even though we were married. We're always a part working. So I made this home and the only place he pays attention to me
Starting point is 01:07:43 is this stage. This is our house. Like, that makes sense to me. Yeah. I didn't get that either. This one, but, well, but the thing that makes me mad about it is just like, this is all I presume. I mean, I don't know for sure, but I presume this is this part is all made up bullshit. You heard a podcast about it. You don't know. I mean, you're an expert now, I guess. Yeah. I was not there for the, the shooting of this particular episode, but this feels like just like made up bullshit so you can have like this emotional ending.
Starting point is 01:08:09 And it also like, yeah, she divorced him after I love Lucy went off the air, which was further down the line. And like, it just makes it feel like again, that there was this one instance of flandering and then she divorced him in reality. Yeah, she divorced him because he was sleeping with prostitutes all the time, but it was something that was going on all the time, even during the shooting, even during the episodes. I don't know. Even while she was sleeping with them, he was sleeping with prostitutes at the same time. She was like, how do you think I don't notice this?
Starting point is 01:08:42 We're both in the bed together because like Lucy, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. And then she pulls out one pair of panties. Is like, that's your panties. And he pulls out another pair of panties. And then she takes, and then she points to her own, her own pelvis where she's still one point of use.
Starting point is 01:08:56 And she goes, these are my panties. This, this, no, no, that's your vagina. Uh, this is my vagina. But the, uh, I mean, the implication is also that the implication is that they did not that from that moment on their marriage was a sham until the end of the and she only stayed with him right for the show, which is like they were like friends till they died. Like they could not stay married, but they shared a lot of love and like she was there when you die. Like it, it's just a weird way of presenting.
Starting point is 01:09:24 But at the same time, like the, I mean, their children are executive producers on this movie, which means that they oversaw everything because as the movie makes clear, you earn that executive producer title. And, and I know that her daughter was like, they did it, they got an honest movie. So, I don't know, maybe that's more accurate than I can say.
Starting point is 01:09:41 I wonder which part she's talking about. Not the Cuban Revolution stuff. Yeah, I mean, is there any idea why this specific episode, because so the movie takes place over a week where they're like producing this one episode of the show? And yes, from what I can tell, it's not a particularly exemplary episode like it's not one of the standouts. Well, I think that might be part of it is that they're, they, they is choosing a week where they're just making a regular run of the mill episode rather than like one with a famous set piece or like, uh, that
Starting point is 01:10:09 not not her dancing with the eggs in her shirt or vitamin of adjuments or any of those episodes, you know, and maybe this is the one, the communist one. Like, I mean, they, they compressed it all, but like, they could, he could be like, okay, well, what was the one? I don't think so. According to what I read, I think they just hit an episode. Yeah. That's, and that's very strange. Yeah. And also this was actually an episode. I don't think so. According to what I read, I think they just hit an episode. Yeah. Then that's very strange. Yeah. And also this was actually an episode. I don't know. This was the 22nd episode of season one. And in the movie, it's the 37th episode. Yeah. I don't know the significance of that. But it's also fine. Wait, because numerology, baby. They do say it's the 37th, right? Which would be the last episode
Starting point is 01:10:43 of the season. But the writers are working. They have a whole board of coming episodes. say it's the 37th, right, which would be the last episode of the season, but the writers are working, they have a whole board of coming episodes, and it's like, how far ahead were they working? They're working on next season's episodes already. I mean, that's how they did it back then, I don't know. Is Aaron, does anyone know, is Aaron Sorkin, like a big, I love Lucy fan? I don't know, and then...
Starting point is 01:11:00 Not based on the count. And then... Well, I kind of had the same reaction to this that I had to West Side story. In some ways, where I was like, I don't know why the people who made this felt the need to make this. Like I don't know what from this Aaron Sorkin felt was the story he wanted to tell. Or what he's telling it, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, number one, as you say, he's a TV nut, but even though he doesn't seem to know
Starting point is 01:11:24 anything about it. So he's like, it says Aaron's story can TV. Yeah, and a number one grandpa. The most important television shows and it touches on like these political and social issues that I can get on my high horse about. Yeah. His horse is very. I mean, funny of his Twitter bio was like TV nut husband, mushroom. I mean, funny of his Twitter bio was like TV nut husband, mushroomy, there he is. Yeah. Shroom enthusiast.
Starting point is 01:11:48 And then it's like a, it's like West Wing guy or something like that. But I, yeah, I mean, he also, I guess he was not the first person attached to this movie, but so maybe he was just taking a job, I don't know, but it doesn't seem like it. Yeah. I don't know.
Starting point is 01:12:03 It's a movie that, it's a movie that feels very like, yeah, like when, I mean, I was very bored by it while watching it. I have to admit, but once it was over, I was like, so that was something about I love Lucy, but I don't know what, I don't know what it's saying. You know, I don't know what the story is meant to communicate. Oh, there's that. What a crazy week.
Starting point is 01:12:22 You know who did enjoy it, the very end, my five year old walked in during the scene where he comes up behind her and puts his hands in front of her eyes. This is during the movie, not when I walked the actual episode afterwards. And he laughed and said, that's funny. Yeah. Okay. So that's it was Aaron Sorkin, for the five year old.
Starting point is 01:12:39 Yeah. Yeah. That does seem like a thing. Five year olds, you know, would enjoy a little peekaboo who little You know surprised. He's like they put a zoo spin on peekaboo. That's amazing Hi, I'm Janet Varney and just like you I survived high school and we're not alone on my podcast the JV Club I invite some of my friends to share the highs and lows of their teen years, like moments with Aisha Tyler.
Starting point is 01:13:11 But when you're a kid, the six are just pretty low. Go to school, try not to get in trouble, get laid. Jamila Jamil, I watched television probably every waking hour during that time when I was sh**t faced on medicine. And Dave Holmes. We talked and talked and then everybody laughed at us too and it was like, I love you. Learn how you too can be a functioning adult after the drama and heartbreak of high school. Every week on the JV Club with Janet Farny, find it on Maximum Fun. Or wherever you get your podcasts, this is a judgement free show.
Starting point is 01:13:42 We have wasted this world. Our magic put a storm in the sky that has rendered the surface of our planet uninhabitable. But beneath the surface, well that's another story entirely. In a city built leagues below the apocalypse, survivors of the storm forged paths through a strange new world. Some seek salvation for their homeland above. Others seek to chart the vast undersea expanse outside the city's walls. And others still seek what else, fortune and glory.
Starting point is 01:14:17 Dive into the ethersea, the latest campaign from the adventure zone. Every other Thursday on MaximumFun.org or wherever you listen to podcasts. The Flophouse is sponsored in part by Squarespace. With Squarespace, you can create a beautiful website. Turn your cool idea into a new website with Squarespace blog or publish content, sell products and services of all kinds and more. Squarespace does this by giving you
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Starting point is 01:15:59 in this month. We're discussing some of the stigmas around mental health. A lot of people think I got a wait till life is is bad. I feel bad My pain is unbearable whatever to go to therapy. That's not true therapy is a thing a tool that you can utilize Before things get worse and it can help you avoid the lows avoid hitting those lows. And I don't know, I'm in therapy. I don't think that's surprising to anyone, but I will say I think it has made me a better, more thoughtful person, a person more in control and understanding of my emotions. And I recommend therapy. And this podcast,
Starting point is 01:16:50 this podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp, which is a customized online therapy that offers video, phone, and even live chat sessions with your therapist. So you don't have to see anyone on the camera if you don't want to. You'll be more affordable than in-person therapy. You can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. Why not give it a try? See why over 2 million people have used better help online therapy. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. And the Flop House listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash flop. That's bett. ERHELP.com slash flop. And before I send you back to the meat of the show, I just want to say that we have a jumbo-tron jumbo-tron jumbo-tron. This is from Shonen Flop, and it says, Japanese comics, aka manga, are the blueprints for almost
Starting point is 01:17:59 all anime and are a notoriously cutthroat business. For every Dragon Ball Z, there are hundreds of failed series that got the axe from publishers. On the Shonen Flop podcast, David Jordan and guests such as Tim Bat and Zander Cannon, hey he's been on our show, navigate the world of failed manga, will they discover a lost gem or a certified flop? Fine, show n' flop on your podcast app of choice on Twitter at show n' flop cast or at show n' flop dot com. Keep on flopping. Okay, well let's do our final judgments, And this is where we say whether it's a good
Starting point is 01:18:47 bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie, you kind of like, we will clarify if you have any questions about these categories that don't really cover the characters. Because if you choose wrong, Dan, you'll be punished. Yeah, the dunk tank. Oh, no, no. I'm going to look, having given out the categories, I don't know if this really fits into the usual ones for me, because we got to talk about our categories at some point. It happens so often that we have trouble with the categories. It's part of the fun. I like part of the part of the part of the.
Starting point is 01:19:19 So, Dan, I put together, actually, I have an agenda for an next meeting of what things we need to talk about. Number one, Kevin, for sure. Number two, the categories. And then I have an alternate list of things we don't need to talk about the meeting. And Bruno is number one on those. So we've got to talk about Kevin. We've got to talk about categories. We don't need to talk about Bruno. So that's just for the meeting next time.
Starting point is 01:19:36 Okay, great. Now, everybody's talking about Jamie, but I don't know that we have to. We'll put that on a separate list for the meeting. Okay. You know, everybody's doing this, so I don't know that we have to. We'll put that on a separate list for the meeting. Okay. You know, everybody's doing it, so I can't wait. Um, the, so I don't, I don't know, Sorkin, sometimes I, I enjoy him very much. And then sometimes his particular flaws are so big that they just sink everything. Um, he likes to be clever. He likes to have all of his characters basically talk exactly the same as one another in these clever ways.
Starting point is 01:20:09 He loves grandstanding speeches, et cetera, et cetera. And the thing is, I usually find it entertaining. It just depends on whether I find it entertaining good or it's like a hate watch, which is like, I don't think it's good bad. I think that if you you know enjoy a sork and sometimes but sometimes it gives you a headache. This is interesting to watch because you can be like oh why are you doing it this way and especially because the movie is so
Starting point is 01:20:38 filled with like information while still being wrong about so much. Like it might as well be like a YouTube explainer about I love Lucy that he's done in dramatic style, except for then like a bunch of the facts are wrong. So I don't know. Yeah, there's a bunch of footnotes in the comments. Yeah, what do you say Stu? Yeah, I mean, I'm not, I honestly, I wasn't super familiar with I love Lucy.
Starting point is 01:21:01 When I was a kid, I'm sure I saw some episodes on Nick at night, but it didn't seem to have a particularly big place in my brain. But I found like, particularly I found like Nicole Kidman's performance was very off-putting. I, most of the scenes are fairly flat. It's all that like walk and talk, like overly snappy kind of mean. Everybody's mean to each other dialogue and other things. of mean everybody's mean to each other dialogue. They are all very mean to each other. Yeah. And it turns out all the stuff I learned was wrong. So I'll fuck you movie. Some of them say bad bad. Yeah, I'm also going to say bad bad. I found it very
Starting point is 01:21:37 boring and some people in it were trying and there were some moments that were amusing. But overall, I was I was left bored and baffled. That's right, B and B, a classic air B and B, in that I was breathing air, and I was bored and baffled while watching the movie. Alson, what do you think? I think you probably liked it, right? I loved it.
Starting point is 01:21:55 I know, no, I don't. When you said that we're gonna do being the Riccardo's, I thought, but this is the flop house. I thought we'd talk about trash, and this is a gemstone. I was on the edge. No, I also give it two bees, bad, bad. I found it very unenjoyable to watch.
Starting point is 01:22:15 And if we weren't going to be talking about it, I would have turned it off. And also, like Stuart, I love Lucy was not, like I'm sure love Lucy was not, like I'm sure I've seen episodes, but I never really paid attention to them. And then afterwards I did go watch an episode and I found myself laughing and really enjoying it.
Starting point is 01:22:34 So this movie does a disservice to the show. Yeah, it's a fun show. I mean, I grew up in a very, I love Lucy, loving household, because my mom was a big fan. And so it's and probably continues to be but she doesn't doesn't talk about it that much anymore. But it's like Bruno. Yeah, we don't talk about Lucy. She's more into the dictator and let's see other other one. Yeah, now what if they if it doesn't think if in canto it was the movie Bruno they weren't
Starting point is 01:23:01 talking about I would totally get it. You know, you want to avoid it. But the, yeah, it's like a, this is the movie equivalent of like, you go out from meal and they're like, oh no, no, we only serve protein shakes here. And you're like, okay, well, at least it's gonna have the nutrients of a meal and you drink the whole thing and it tastes chalky. And they're like, actually, there were no nutrients in that.
Starting point is 01:23:19 And you're like, what? Why don't you drink it? Thanks for putting in words. I'll understand. Yeah, I had to translate into stewies. Yeah. Like, so wait, I'm not getting gains from this. Okay. Yeah, it was just a slog, but it wasn't accurate.
Starting point is 01:23:37 Yeah. Yeah. What it lacked in excitement, it gained in disinformation. Yeah. I did. I did. If you're going to make up a story, it gained in disinformation. Yeah. Yeah. I did. If you're going to make up a story, make a fucking good one, dude. Yeah, I wondered was there source material this was based on and it seems like there was
Starting point is 01:23:55 not. Hence, like we're saying, he made up so much of everything. Yeah. And when you realize he can just make up a story like, I don't know, do like Lord of the Rings or something. Yeah. Yeah. Have you seen a lot of them in a mountain? Yeah, sure. Why not? Okay. Well, let's go on to letters from listeners. Listeners like you write them and then they go through the internet and I get them and I read them on the air. That's how it works. I didn't
Starting point is 01:24:21 need to explain it in such detail. This is from Chris, last name withheld. And Chris writes, fellas, let's have a chat. It's gonna be hard when you can't talk really back to him, but I guess we could do it through. Like he sends a letter or she, they send a letter and then we respond and they send another letter like a chest by male type thing. Yeah. Yeah. Let's have a chance. And it's been nearly three years since Tom Hooper's cats and your episode about it came out. But earlier this month, I was struck with. And I suddenly saw this look on the face of Stuart just feeling very old that it's been three years. Especially because like night for the crusades.
Starting point is 01:25:00 That was one of the last movies we saw before the pandemic. Dan, I also think you misread that. You should have said Antspan almost years since just for Aaron Storken's sake. He's listening to this episode, you know. But earlier this month, I was struck with an intense cat's fever that snowballs out of control. It could be feeling AIDS. Thank you.
Starting point is 01:25:20 That is a good point or cat scratch. Priva. No, we're not giving Ted Newtie money. Okay. No, I mean, we don't ever stew. I don't good point. Or cat scratch fever. No, we're not giving Ted Newtie money. Okay. No, I mean, that we don't ever stew. I don't think we have to pay for that. I'll be singing one. Cat scratch finger. Cats fever that snowballed out of control and resulted in me spending full days watching the cats movie followed by filmed cats stage shows followed by your cats episode followed by listening to my favorite songs on repeat.
Starting point is 01:25:50 Despite Elliott teasing the audience that the flopphouse might do a yearly cat strap again so that never occurred. Yeah, we've not done it. I am a gracious listener. And since you seem to get such joy from the movie, I'd like to inform you of two cats facts. Number one, number one, the word facts has all the letters in cats plus one extra.
Starting point is 01:26:08 Oh, I guess that is a fact. News news. Oh, prove me wrong, Dan. Prove me wrong. It's a cat. Oh, that's a cat. All right. And the recording of the 1998 stage production during Rump Tum, Rump Tum Tugger's song. I like even just reading the name makes dance while it's hard to say with that.
Starting point is 01:26:33 Giggling. Rump Tum Tugger's song, a lot of the choreography is concerned with Rump Tum Tugger's un-delating hips and pelvic thrusting. And at one point, there's a lady cat kneeling on the ground and he pelvic thrusts directly into her face. She then swoons and has to be held back by some other cats. And almost immediately after she set upright, Rumtum, Tugger approaches her again and puts something. We have no idea what in her mouth, but she then eats with the light. He struts away and we are given no explanation for why that just happened. That's a little cat's moment from the stage show
Starting point is 01:27:07 That's not really a fact that's not really a fact Yeah, number two I believe it was I will say this is a fact there was at one point when I think there might have been a daily showpiece about it A woman was suing the production of cats in New York for closed because she was in the audience and I believe the Actrapling Rump Tum Tugger came up and like thrusted it pelvis in her face as part of it. Like he would go into the audience, I guess, and be sexy for the audience. And she did not care for that. And I think I would either. I don't know how the case went, but I think there was a lawsuit.
Starting point is 01:27:36 I think they should not have choreographed it in that fashion. No. I regret to inform you that as opposed to the movie where Munk Strap, as you said, No, no, no. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. make one good decision, which was removing the particular song from the movie, the awful battle of the peaks and the polycules. This is a song that comes right after old Dute arrives, in which all the jelical cats put on a play for him about a fight between the political dogs, presumably the dog equivalent of the jelicles, and the peak dogs, who seem to be distinguished from the political dogs purely by their being Chinese breeds. Monk Shrep narrates the play at some point sings now the peak although people may say what they please is no British dog but a heathen Chinese and soon after and together they started to
Starting point is 01:28:37 grumble and wheeze and their huffery snuffery heathen Chinese. Yeah, it's like Dr. Seuss to the polish. Yeah. Those are the pages that they take out of the Dr. Seuss books now. Yeah. Of course, they're not, they're referring to dogs here, not people, but you know. Oh, okay. That's fine. Why didn't you say?
Starting point is 01:28:58 Yeah. Then, then bafflingly, once the cats are done with their play, they look to old dude for approval. And his response is essentially cats, what does matter we will both come to dust in the end and you're like what brought them in to say that now that you've experienced the I mean, again, we're not sure about the facts, but it was interesting. I have an entirely unrelated question. Have you ever had a movie or a book, album, comic, or anything, I guess, that you for some reason had a very specific impression of that you thought everyone on Earth must have only to go out in the real world and discover that your impression was horribly, horribly mistaken in some way. Bonus points, if it's super embarrassing.
Starting point is 01:29:45 Thanks, Chris Redacted. Well, I thought cats wasn't racist, which apparently is not true, so there's that. But first before you get that question, Allison, have you seen cats? I saw the show when I was young. But not the movie. I have not seen the movie.
Starting point is 01:29:57 Is it enjoyable, bad or just bad, bad? I think we all think it's very enjoyable. I think I need to see it. Maybe I'll watch that today on a television that's not playing the Super Bowl. Yeah, there's not a second in that movie that you're not like someone made this movie. This is crazy.
Starting point is 01:30:14 This was a choice. And I think there's two really great dance scenes in it. And just when the movie starts to flag, that's one. That's right, the railroad cat comes out and he just does an amazing tap dance and he's like a just seas a gay icon and everything. So I love tap dancing, I love Andrew Lloyd Webber and I love T.S. Eliot, some of T.S. Eliot.
Starting point is 01:30:36 So I think I should see it. Which is the railroad cat? Is it Skimblepants? Skimblepants, yeah. Skimblepants. Skimblepants. Yeah, so it's well worth seeking out. I think we, you know, guys, we should do an annual cat.
Starting point is 01:30:48 We should watch cats again, at least with, with Jenny and Adley. And then bring other people, a star of the show, Alison, or maybe some of the show, Ali. Yeah. Sorry, Ali. Now, the actual cat's movie does have but holes or does not? So I mean, the performers have but holes somewhere on their person. I would. Yeah, under the costumes.
Starting point is 01:31:09 So there's they're conflicting reports about the but hole cut. There it seems like the but holes were not necessarily intentionally meant to be but holes, but an artifact of the way the CGI was and looked in the context of wearing cat shoes like what holds. Well, I would, I mean, I can be, I mean, I assume Todd Viserie will write in and correct me on this, but one of the all CGI characters start with but holes and then they have to be painstakingly erased. So Jarger Binks, Gaul, the, you know, killer crock or whatever, all the transformers, they
Starting point is 01:31:43 all have but holes originally and then it has just just for accuracy. Yeah, just right. Well, it's just the way that computer graphics work and they have to be erased frame by frame, much like a Henry Caval mustache. And so it's, yeah, so maybe they just forgot to do it for a cut of cats, you know, you never know. Well, yeah, if nothing else, this will encourage you to watch cats. What was the question? So have you ever had a movie or something that you had a specific impression of that you thought everybody knew? Well, I think this wasn't embarrassing, but I think I've talked to before. I may have been shouted down on the show about it about my interpretation of the song Norwegian Wood by the Beatles, where it seems that everybody, but me agrees that
Starting point is 01:32:22 the main narrator of the song burns down this woman's house at the end, which I always, I never, I never took the interpretation. I never assumed it. And it was, it stopped being a meaningful song to me once it gains that interpretation of a story. When it was, when it was a song about a man who goes out on a date with a woman, ends up at her home, wants to sleep with her. She seems to want to sleep with him, but he cannot figure out how to make it happen, because he's just so awkward around her. And when he wakes up in the next morning, she's gone, and he lights a fire for himself and just thinks about this missed opportunity. Like that really struck home to me.
Starting point is 01:32:55 And when people were like, no, no, the Andy Burns are house down. I was like, well, then it's no longer a story. I can relate to. I don't think you have to take that as a gospel interpretation. It's something that I think is out there in the world as interpretation. Okay, because that song had an important place for me as a kid where I was like, this is one of the first songs I remember hearing about
Starting point is 01:33:11 where it was like, this feels like a grown-up situation. This is a real grown-up situation that is not just like, I love you, or I'm so mad or whatever. And for it to end with a, tales from the crypt, Esk ending, was it just always a disappointment to me? So I guess- That was a show for adults while end with a tails from the crypt, ask ending. So it was like, it was, it just always a disappointment to me. So I guess I was a show for adults while I was a kid.
Starting point is 01:33:28 I guess that's true. Great arm, man. But I don't know. Like there is a time on this podcast where I recommended a movie based almost entirely on my belief that the titular character Rips off his own ding dong in the film. And, uh, apparently even the director has, uh, has sounded off and RIP Stewart Gordon sounded off and told me that I was wrong. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:33:57 I can't convince him now. I mean, there's no convincing. We've all seen the movie. There's a movie. It doesn't happen. It's called Castle Freak, uh, direct by Stuart Gordon, um, and I, I, I, I, I recommend the film based on the merit that the Castle Freak, uh, rips off a lot of stuff, including his own ding dong. Uh, but nope. In fact, uh, having multiple
Starting point is 01:34:16 views, you heard it here first, folks. I'll admit that having watched a movie many times, you know what? I don't think I don't think it can be. Yeah, we can put this to bed. Do you still recommend it though or only if he rips off his ding dong? You know what? Having watched it multiple times, you know, as we said, going painstakingly frame by frame, do erase buttholes. I, in order to prove myself right, you know what? I learned to find a lot of things to love about the movie. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, so I guess I'll be recommending Caspreake. I mean for anyone listening if you haven't seen Caspreake, it's a very rough movie like it's a grim movie. There's yeah, even though there's no scene of him ripping off his own ding dong. There are other things that are different. It's been removed.
Starting point is 01:35:00 Yeah, evidence. It's not there. Yeah. I don't know if this like fully is the best answer to this specific question But well, we'll be the judges that it's a it's a Jason I when I was a kid I had really weird sort of pop culture heroes like out out of step with Michael Jackson O.J. Simpson will cause me Harvey Weinstein He was really into Harvey Weinstein and next. As a kid. No, Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hood, like it seems like very old English.
Starting point is 01:35:37 I mean, the perfectly good childhood heroes if you were born in the 1880s, sure. Yeah. I just remember that like I had a birthday when I was a young kid that was Robin Hood themes that like we like my parents made a bunch like little felt green hats for us. And like there was a toy arrow game. And no, I mean, you know, it was fun. I had a great birthday. In retrospect, I think that my friends probably are all like this guy's weird. Why is there a Robin Hood theme to this? I mean, you were 23 at the time. That's why I was the problem.
Starting point is 01:36:16 That was the problem. Alison, is there anything that you're thinking of? Yeah, but can I also judge your answer? Sure. Because I say no. That doesn't work for this question. It doesn't answer the question. That's for sure. I mean, he said it was adjacent, but I say no, that doesn't work for this question. It doesn't answer the question, that's for sure. I mean, he said it was adjacent, but I don't know that it is. It seems like your impression was that Robin Hood was cool, which is like more of an opinion than a misinterpretation, yeah. That's true, that's true.
Starting point is 01:36:35 Well, you caught me out. Listen, when I was on Jordan Jesse Go, I talked about our little Twitter feud. And Jesse was like, you chose the worst guy to have a Twitter feud with because, and by the way, I didn't start it because he's just going to like, you know, think about it and feel bad. So now I'm, is that your thing thinking about things and feeling bad? It's kind of my thing because- One of my things, yeah.
Starting point is 01:37:02 Okay. Cause I don't want- Yeah, yeah, that's one of his big things. One of your. Yeah. Okay. I just kidding. Your answer was totally fine. No, I. It's. It was a. It was such a weird combination of like Stuart, you'll understand this. You know, not distinguishing between bad and good attention. I was like, oh, they're talking about me. That's great. But also feeling like, oh, people who don't know any of us, or maybe they'll take this seriously
Starting point is 01:37:34 and think. So the beef was, Jesse was talking about Amish hats. And I quickly googled and found that the name of these Amish hats are, they're called scribblers. And so we had a lot of fun with that. And then Dan googled and saw that there's like some Amish publication called the scribbler where they had written about the hat. And so he thought that I had, I was confused.
Starting point is 01:37:57 But then I found something that, I know, can you believe the temerity? And then I found something that said the hat is called the scribblers. So, ah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I'm fully, I will accept the villain role here because I was a guy making a correction on the internet. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:38:16 You didn't explain me. The reason why I, that's why you think like that. We think the same thing and say them. The only reason why I thought this was okay was because I wanted to join in the fun with my podcast pals and Jordan Jesse go have a thing that like if you make a correction, you actually tweeted at JD Power to a Floyd. That was fun. So I'm like, yeah, I'll play into this like, this like bit of JD Power, but I tagged Allison in part because I wanted to know like, is this like, did she see something different than me?
Starting point is 01:38:52 Cause like, it's such a fun fact that I kind of wanted to be proven wrong and know that it was indeed the script or but what I had been seeing was not that. But anyway, I will stop trying to justify myself. I'm sorry for- Really, because it seems like you're still doing that. Yeah, it sounds like- It sounds like it was all fun and it looked at,
Starting point is 01:39:10 led to me being a guest on this podcast of Unseeding Hally. So I have two answers to Chris Redacted's question. My best friend growing up was Mormon, and we used to watch the show Small Wonder. So for a long time afterwards, I thought that Small Wonder was religious programming. I thought it was a Mormon wholesome Mormon show.
Starting point is 01:39:34 But like, remember that, what was it? Was there a show called Samian Goliath or... There's Davian Goliath. That was a religious show. Yes, I thought it was like that. Okay, so... Well like just the 10 of That was a really show. Yes, I thought it was like that. Okay, so. Well, like just the 10 of this was a religious show. Was it?
Starting point is 01:39:49 What? Yeah, because there are like, they have many of them. They have many of them. Yeah. Co-lobic, definitely. Coach Lubbock and his wife definitely were not using any sort of devil's contraception.
Starting point is 01:39:59 Yeah, absolutely. I thought it was just because he needed to feel it. I thought it was just, you know, feel it. I think there was a weird, weaned crew. Normal human condoms don't work for that was they didn't episode about that. It was pulled by the network where he talks about his inability to find the condom that fits his feet.
Starting point is 01:40:16 I feel like I also like I also while I I went on a trip through Europe with the next girlfriend and we like crashed in I think like niece or somewhere. And I remember we were watching on TV and we found the one station that had English programming. And there was an episode of just the 10 of us. And there's like a mom or a coach Lubbock is like praying to God and there's like a light on him. And I'm like, I don't know. It does ring about that bell that he was religious.
Starting point is 01:40:47 And my other one, and I don't know if this really Dan, you'll have some company in your Jason answer. I don't know how much this really qualifies, but when I saw Napoleon Dynamite, and I don't know how you guys feel about that movie, but when I saw it, I was like, this is a bunch of manufactured nostalgic trash. I really, I had a strong distaste for that movie. And then I,
Starting point is 01:41:07 um, tons of people that I like and respect like that movie. So that was one where I was convinced that we all must be having the same specific reaction. And then I guess I'm kind of alone. Yeah, I mean, I've experienced that from the other side of like thinking like, oh, this is going to be a huge blockbuster because it's so fun. And then it bought me large. Like, when I saw the the frighteners, I was like, this is a great, and then no one went to see it. But nobody else was there. I thought you'd just talk into John Carter merch and that just didn't go anywhere. I am far more on your side with Napoleon. Yeah, I find Napoleon Dynamite hard to take in large doses.
Starting point is 01:41:48 But I think Dan that Dan's watching the frighteners as like a teenager and he's seen the scene where John Aston as a ghost of a cowboys having sex with a mummy. And he's like, this is a huge hit. This is a huge hit. I love the idea that you're defining a movie of Napoleon Dynamite as like a large amount. Like would you prefer to be in like quibi size chunks?
Starting point is 01:42:10 There you go. There's like a movie like this is great. Very, I mean, not great necessarily, but like if it was, if it was, if you cut took that same movie and cut it up into five minute episodes, I'd be like, oh, yeah, I can watch a couple of these in a row. I'm not going to watch the whole thing, but, you know. So our second and final question is from, or not question just, oh, I guess there's a question here. Adam last name with help.
Starting point is 01:42:30 Let's let, how let us be the judges, Dan? Rather than the acting and the answer. I'm sorry, let's say that's who I was unsure of. Now did this one also get sent to you and then come to you through the internet and then now you're reading it on the show. Thank you, you grasped the idea. I'm so glad that you made that clear.
Starting point is 01:42:45 Now, guys, before we get to this letter, I do want to mention that I've done some research and I think I understand the origin of the butthole cut of Cats. Originally, the soundtrack was performed by the butthole surfers. And so that's that cut. They came to a disagreement and they had to have the actress sing the songs. It was very expensive because it'd reshootewed the whole movie. Mm-hmm. Makes sense. Adam Leston with Held writes,
Starting point is 01:43:08 Howdy Floppers, I recently listened back to the 2017 episode, The Countent, where Stu briefly introduces his own Louisiana-based character, Gumbo Stu. First, I'd like to note that this proceeds
Starting point is 01:43:21 Eliot's introduction of Crawdaddy by several years. Yeah, yeah. And therefore, I believe Eliot O. Stu's royalties. Second, I'm wondering to note that this proceeds Elliot's introduction of crawdaddy by several years. Yeah. And therefore, I believe Elliot O. Stew's royalties. Second, I'm wondering what you would picture as a gumbo stew slash crawdaddy crossover. Romantic comedy, a Toho style gumbo stew versus crawdaddy? What?
Starting point is 01:43:37 Oh, we got a hot mystery, I think. Where does a noir kid fit in all this? Here's a flop of two to Adam Lasting with home. Now, I do want to say, I think as great as Gumbo Stu is, I feel like Craw Daddy has a premise, which is that he's from Louisiana, but now he lives in suburban Connecticut. So where Gumbo Stu is just kind of like a guy, right?
Starting point is 01:43:56 Like usual, I tossed out the beginnings of an idea that Elliot then made much better. We do that, that happens, that happens sometimes. So I think if I was gonna pitch a movie, it would be about, it's a real country mouse city mouse type story, or back to your root story, where maybe either a gumbo stew is a crawdaddy. So you don't know how to do that?
Starting point is 01:44:16 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where a crawdaddy comes home and realize he doesn't fit in anymore. And gumbo stew has to teach him how to get back into the bio. Or gumbo stew visits crawdaddy and is aghast, that crawdaddy is all about being an insurance executive. And Gumbos 2 has to teach him how to get back into the bio or Gumbos 2 visits Krodati and is aghast that Krodati is all about being an insurance executive and stuff like that. And he has to, and he forces it, he takes kidnaps him and takes him back to the bio to teach him how to be himself again, you know.
Starting point is 01:44:35 Yeah, there's got to be like some fish out of water elements, some like everything hillbilly's type stuff. Yeah. You know, Gumbos 2 is trying to like wash his clothes and I don't know like the fountain at a public park. He's he's he's he's he's trying to stuff his clothes into the koreg coffee maker in the kitchen and it's like to wash them. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:44:55 That and the you know, this is kind of like hook in a way where like yeah, cry like another huge success. Yeah. And he has to go back and just go. We just hope a big success. I feel like I loved it when I was a kid, and I say bang, ring all the time, still. Sure.
Starting point is 01:45:12 I think it was only one appropriate, which is when something very good happens. So hook was a critical flop, but according to Wikipedia, on a budget of $70 million, it made $300 million. So I don't know what the marketing costs were, but that seems like a success to me.
Starting point is 01:45:26 Like some Bafo B.O. yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's move on to the last segment. Are the Alcindu have any Louisiana-based characters you'd like to introduce? Oh my God. Swamp out.
Starting point is 01:45:40 Nice. Swamp out. Swamp out. Yeah. And I also wash my clothes in coffee makers. Do you know how to do it? And I make my coffee in a boot. I think you can say you make your coffee in a washing machine and it's so much coffee. Just setting more and more like the like improvised song off of I think you should leave.
Starting point is 01:46:03 And I make my coffee in a boot. Just details. Okay, well, the last thing we do on the show is we recommend movies that we've seen usually recently because they're on our mind, but whatever that we like, maybe you should watch it instead of being the recorders. Almost certainly. I'm going to absolutely start off real quick because I don't have much to say about the movie other than Stu invited me on a movie date a little ways back. We saw Jackass forever. I had never seen a metal bowl Jackass movie or show even
Starting point is 01:46:38 I've seen individual stunts which maybe I would laugh a little bit, but my nervousness about personal injury kept me from enjoying it. But I discovered the secret of jackass, which is like one stun on its own might be too much, but 50 stunts in a row is exactly the right number. It's a masterclass of pacing. Yeah. I just left a lot. And at the end, I was just
Starting point is 01:47:07 there were moments when I was sort of falling out of my seat, just with a combination of discomfort and laughter. So I've been brought around. I mean, partly because also they're also old right now that it's kind of, I kind of watch it. I'm like, oh, they're just like me. Anyway. Yeah, Jackass is like, they're just like us. What about you Stu? I'm gonna recommend a movie from this year that I don't think I've recommended yet.
Starting point is 01:47:37 I'm gonna recommend a movie from the director of Heart Beeps. That's right. I'm gonna recommend the card counter and a rock by Prolshrader. I'll show you the record. The director of the Volshrader did not direct Heart Beeps. So we know this. the card counter to our all straighter. All straighter. The record, all straighter did not direct heart beeps. So we know this.
Starting point is 01:47:47 Does we agree on this one? This is Stuart's new rip off the ding dong. Is that fall straighter directed heart beeps? So it is a movie where oscar Isaac plays a very cool dude who counts cards and got out of jail. He's got a cool. He has to wrap every piece of furniture in his hotel room with a shirt. That's true. He's got a, let's say a complicated past featuring
Starting point is 01:48:12 Willem DeFoe. And he has a friendship with Tiffany Hattish and it's a movie about professional gambling that doesn't like where the gambling part of it isn't actually that important. It's a movie about professional gambling that doesn't like where the gambling part of it isn't actually that important. It's just like a fun character study and it's great. It's fun. It's a revenge movie. I thought it was fun. It also had me googling in the aisle. It had me googling Oscar Isaac sunglasses card counter and I found out they're not that bad. They're like only 250 bucks. So why don't you send me some money so I can buy some for some glasses. Seems for something I will immediately lose probably.
Starting point is 01:48:55 But I mean in all like, you know, all things considered like they could be what, like $10 million. I don't know what sunglasses cost. This is the bubble that the flat-house is. I don't know the price of sunglasses. I'm going to recommend a movie from another country. That's right. I'm your man from Germany. I've been dining munch starring Marin Egert and Dan Stevens, flat-house favorite Dan Stevens. And it's the story of an academic who in order to secure, or it's kind of a, it's kind of a, under the table quid pro quo,
Starting point is 01:49:33 to get more funding for the work she's doing in archaeological studies, she agrees to, three weeks of product testing with a robot man who's supposedly designed to be her perfect partner. And I thought that I just really liked the life. I thought it was a really charming movie. It's a real small-scale science fiction character study. And I like the characters in it. I felt like it was the most emotionally real portrayal I've seen so far of someone with a romance with a with a mechanical
Starting point is 01:50:00 object. Take that her. And I just really liked it. It was Germany's entry for the Oscars, but it was not selected as a nominee for Best International. That's a tough category. It is. And that's a hard category, especially this year. And this movie was probably a little lightweight in some ways for that category, especially this year. But I really liked it a lot. So that's, I'm your man. If you wanna watch a kind of German romantic comedy ish that is charming and sometimes funny and sometimes very serious and sweet.
Starting point is 01:50:35 I'm imagining me thinking, like, what am I in the mood for? A German romantic comedy ish. Well, that's the thing, I kept thinking about how Germany is not the country think of as romantic comedy, but there's also like, was it mostly Martha, the movie that they remade with Catherine Zeta Jones, where that's a German romantic comedy. It's really good.
Starting point is 01:50:53 I mean, it's at this point, 20-some-odd or 30 years old, you know. So every 30 years, I guess, Germany comes out with a real good, real solid romantic comedy, you know? Is it subtitled or dubbed? I was the one I watched was subtitled. And the funny thing was that it had been recommended to me, and I did not know at first that it was a German movie. So when the credits came up in German, I was like, wait a minute.
Starting point is 01:51:12 And then I, the whole, and because Dan Stevens who is not German is the co-lead, I was like, is this, is this dubbed in German? But they're speaking, I can tell from their lip flap, they're speaking German. Like this is, so. Wait, Dan Stevens speaks German. I get,, so. Wait, Danes even speaks German? I get, unless he learned all of his lines phonetically, and Tony and I get into the publicing style, but maybe, I don't know.
Starting point is 01:51:31 Allison, do you have a movie you'd like to recommend? Yes. So I just watched a movie that, quite possibly, you guys have all already seen and your audience as well. But I watched the 1975 version of Steppford Wives, and I had never seen it. I think about me is I scare very easily, so I generally can't handle horror, can't handle
Starting point is 01:51:52 scary movies. And when I was a kid, I had a babysitter that watched Stepford Wives and I saw like, you know, the funny thing is that it's really not a scary movie, but there are a couple scenes that are like scary. And so I had But there are a couple scenes that are scary. And so I had seen one of these scary scenes when I was a kid in that movie, just the idea. I was very afraid of Superman III as silly as that is. I was very afraid of robots and things like that. So that movie always kind of haunted me when I was young. And I don't know what compelled me to check it out very recently.
Starting point is 01:52:24 But I decided I could probably handle it. And I, I mean, it's, there's issues with the movie, but I really did enjoy it. And I was able to go to sleep right after and I didn't have nightmares. So if anyone out there also avoids all scary things, I think you might enjoy this movie. I love that. Yeah. No, that's, no, that's a. Most of the stuff I recommend is super gross or, yeah, I mean, mainly I feel like we get a fair number of emails from people who are like, I want
Starting point is 01:52:52 to watch a scary movie, but I don't want to get scared. So, this is a very, yeah, I mean, my husband who does enjoy scary things was supra, and he and I have this ongoing debate about whether something is really horror or not because like I didn't see Squid Game. I watched the trailer for Squid Game and I was like, there's no way I can handle that. And he kept insisting it's not horror. And I'm like, everything about it seems like horror to me. I get though that Steppard Wives is more like drama thriller than horror.
Starting point is 01:53:22 But still, it's a, you know, I feel like nowadays it's almost, it almost feels like a quaint movie. The things that there's the tension about in the movie are are kind of quaint. I feel like it's a horror movie similarly to in the way that when people ask me if they are a first-carrying movie that's not that scary, I usually recommend The Others. Also with Nicole Kidman, which is a movie I love. But it's like, and the separate knives we remake with Nicole. I wouldn't recommend that. And it's a, and it's like a ghost story, but it's not a,
Starting point is 01:53:52 it's not a horror horror. Like there's nothing in it where you're going to shield your eyes because you didn't want to see that, you know, unlike, uh, my wife and I, we recently watched yellow jackets and we both really enjoyed a lot. But nothing gross in there. I didn't realize how gory it was right off the bat and I was like, even the thing that happens before the plane crash is really gory.
Starting point is 01:54:10 It seems so many species. Where I had the pleasure of watching something while she told, watching something will also be on being on, when can my wife go back to looking for control? Maybe yellow jackets is what made me think I could handle it because I really did surprisingly enjoy yellow jackets. So then I was like, maybe there's more that I could watch. So here's the question, could I handle the shining?
Starting point is 01:54:33 That's a good question. That's a really scary movie. That's a pretty scary movie. It's a pretty scary movie. I think the shining, it's also the atmosphere in it is genuinely really frightening. There's some blood gore stuff, but it's like that's a movie where from moment one I feel like the movie is is daring you to To be not be creeped out, you know, yeah, I don't know it's less actual gore that Stays with me than disturbing ideas. That's what really gets me. Oh, okay
Starting point is 01:55:03 So I'm a pamphlet that's gonna terrify you. Okay. Okay. Hey, we've come to the end of our show. Yeah. I want to thank Allison very much for quashing our beef and coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me.
Starting point is 01:55:17 Thank you so much for having me. Do you have anything that you want to plug? I know that we asked you towards the beginning, but again. I mean, just, you know, check out my podcast, Alison Rosen is your best friend, a childish and the new one up worthy weekly. And for us, I will promote us and say, Hey, listen, if you have a moment, go to iTunes, leave us a review, spread the word on Twitter or whatever you like to use something nicer than Twitter, maybe you can follow the clubhouse.
Starting point is 01:55:44 They're all, they're all set schools. At the Flophouse pod on Twitter, at the Flophouse podcast on Instagram, we have a YouTube channel, YouTube.com, the Flophouse podcast. And if you like merch, it's on our website. We're a member of MaximumFun, go to MaximumFun.org to check out all the great podcasts
Starting point is 01:56:03 on that network, Allison Rosen, as mentioned before, has been on a Jordan Jesse Go many times. So if you like her here, there's other podcasts to discover with her on Max Bunn in addition to her own podcasts. Thank you to our producer, Alex Smith, who is at Howell Daudy on Twitter. If you want to see what he's up to, thank you so much for listening. And tell him next time, I've been Dan McCoy.
Starting point is 01:56:30 I've been Stuart Wellington. I'm Ellie Kaylin, and I'm Allison Rosen. Bye. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OK, we're going to do the intro, and then we're going to roll into the ship. Being the recorders. Recorders.
Starting point is 01:56:48 That's what being the recorders. Being the recorders. That's what we're doing. We are being them. Yeah. Okay. On this episode we discuss being the Ricardo's. The sequel to being John Malkovich, but this time it's about the Riccardo's.
Starting point is 01:57:07 I think we can do, Dumber. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned, audience supported.

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