The Flop House - Ep.#402 - The Net

Episode Date: August 12, 2023

Due to the ongoing refusal of the AMPTP to negotiate in good faith with the WGA or with our union brothers and sisters in SAG/AFTRA, we've decided to hit pause on discussing more current releases, since (in our own bizarro way) it could promote that work. Instead, we're using this opportunity to go back in time and discuss some silly releases from the past, starting out with some films 90's kids will remember. This week, we're discussing 1995's Sandra Bullock techno-thriller The Net, a movie about the horrors of the internet that seemed prescient and terrifying at the time, and now just seems kind of goofy, considering that the horrors of the internet were way different than those it imagines.Check out more info about our season of streaming shows, FLOP TV, and buy tickets!Donate to the Entertainment Community Fund here, to support those affected by the WGA strike.Wikipedia page for The NetRecommended in this episode:Camera Man, by Dana Stevens (a cultural biography of Buster Keaton)Dressed to Kill (1980)Sing and Like It (1934)Ever tried Microdosing? Visit Microdose.com and use FLOP for 30% off + Free Shipping.

On this episode we discuss the net, but not the kind that you get fishes with. Oh. Hey everyone and welcome to the flop house, I'm Dan McCoy, I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kaelin and I want to take a quick moment before we get into the episode just to remind everybody we're in the middle of our flop TV series of kind of streamlined TV-ish episodes of the flop house. By the time you are hearing us, we have done our first episode, Beast Master 2, through the portal of time. And when you're hearing us, if you're hearing this on the day, this episode's released,

you will have one more week to watch the recording of it. Even though that episode was released live, we did it live on the air. We're doing it live on the air, we're just gonna do it live on the air in the road. Nobody's watching, but hopefully you're watching. And you have one more week to watch if you today by a ticket.

We're gonna have five more episodes, five more months. It's going to be great. Once a month, go to theflaphouse.simpletix.com for tickets and more information. Uh-huh. Yeah. Sorry, I'm laughing because there's a brief point where like that sort of turned into like a James Joyce version of an advertisement just like pure stream of consciousness. advertisement just like pure stream of consciousness. Less, less, less helpful, maybe for the, more beautiful. And yeah, yeah, yeah. Should I watch the flop-out live show? Yes, I said yes, and then yes, yeah.

Well, this is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it. Hey, let's, let's be upfront with what we're doing here. The writer's guild of America is on strike. Sagaftra is on strike, at least when we're recording this, no end in sight for those strikes so far. And because of that, we thought, hey, even though we talk about movies

that we are saying the general consensus is that they're bad. And so maybe that's not like the most promotional one could be. We still didn't want to promote new stuff, new or media while the strike was going on. So we decided to use this strike as an opportunity to sort of go back in time and do some older films that were before the flop house even existed. And we were gonna kind of do this by decade.

When the flop house was just a twinkle in Dan's eye. We decided, let's do this by decade. Let's start off in the 90s. Do some 90s films, then go back a decade, do some 80s films. So you're a decade, do some 80s films. So you're saying we're already gonna go back in time, and then we're gonna go back even further in time. Yeah, I mean, who knows, if the strike lingers on forever, you might get some real classic flops. Yeah, we're gonna be seeing it, we're gonna talk about all the worst movies of the silent era

eventually. Hopefully the strike won't go that long. But also, you know, going back, we loosened up what we thought of as a flop. We're just going back and looking at some movies that maybe our thought of as being kind of dumb, which I think is the net. Yeah, at this point, life is difficult. Let's just have fun, guys. Like, let's just have fun. Let's not worry about the deets. If you, speaking of the strike, if you would like to make a donation of any kind to help support entertainment workers who are affected by the strike, please go to entertainmentcommunity.org. Otherwise, the most direct way you can help two specific workers affected by the strike, Dan and me, is by buying tickets to our live shows and continuing to support us and so

forth. Yeah, I really appreciate it. We appreciate that a lot. We're doing that, those of you. Without this podcast, things would be pretty dicey for us. And I don't just mean because I would have to go back to my gambling roots to keep my money. Also, I just, you called them Mississippi grind, right?

Yeah, I called them Mississippi grind. And sometimes I call it the Tallahassee shuffle. But I'm not calling it that too much lately. I did not mean to imply by the way that only those who support us financially in some way are valued listeners. I'm glad that you're all out there, but I'm also glad that there is some money coming out. Dan is merely saying all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others,

and the ones that are more equal are the ones who are directly financially supporting us. So he would like to say it, I guess, but also remember, four hoofs was good, but it's now bad. Two hoofs was bad and it's now good. So we can have a taste. So wait a day for 2023. Yeah, exactly.

Is it good that I have a star on my belly or should I not have a star on my belly? I talked to, I looked at the latest McBean numbers, the latest monkey McBean numbers. And it's inconclusive at the moment, whether it's better to have a star or not have a star. Yeah. What about butter side up or down? Is that, is that a thing? Dan, we never make light of that. Never forget the victims of the butter battle. Oh, boy, it was dangerous. Yeah. So today we talked about a little movie from 1995 called The Net. Now have you guys seen The Net before? I saw The Net in the theater, baby. Same here and I remember walking out being like, that was a thrill ride.

Yeah, I saw it in the theater and I saw it years later when the late lamented 92 I try back put on a double feature called Hackers of 1995, which is the net. Okay, so I was there with you. I asked you whether he was there and he was like, unfortunately, no, but I think that was a laugh right at those two movies together. It was great. It was so much fun watching the net and hackers and it was so great then. And I feel like internet stuff has only gotten more complicated and these programs only look

more primitive now. And that was at least 10 years ago, I think. So I ride. Before we actually get into the pull out of the movie, I just want to talk about the thing that the biggest appeal of this movie, watching this now is the anytime a character logs on or turns on a fucking computer screen, we are graced with the most beautiful graphics in the universe. Yeah. Whether it's ordering a pizza where you get to see the pizza before you, imagine the ingredients and they appear on screen.

The funny thing about this movie is it looks so out of date now, but at the time, people were not like the thing, a thing that seems very simple to us today, ordering pizza online was not a thing that was done. It was an amazing thing. It was an amazing thing that Sandra Bullock No, it was an amazing, it was an amazing thing that Sandra Bullock would be ordering a pizza online and that the graphics would look so good for this pizza.net, this magical website. You remember when Jurassic Park came out, people were like, it's amazing, the idea of a clones dinosaur, it has sounded people. Now they're

everywhere. People are not that impressed by them. You can't, you can't, we'll go outside with a tripping over a damn raptor, just lying on the ground being lazy, you know. Thank you for deflating the moment because I was realizing how old I sounded right then. But like it is true that like this movie, when it came out was a thrill right

because it seems prescient and it is in certain ways. And you're lying. But it also now, you know, it's imagining such a goofy version of the future that we know is quite right. Yeah, it's prescient in the idea that there are corporations and shadowy figures that want to use the internet as a means of control and to make money. And the thing the movie gets wrong is that it's preposites they would have to do that in a conspiratorial,

a covert way, when in reality they just do it. It's just over and everybody just puts up with it. But there was, I have to say, I was also hit by the nostalgia bug while watching it because a lot of it centers around this website for a band called Mozart's Ghost. And their way their website is set up, the buttons to get to different areas

are in the shape of instruments. And I was like, oh yeah, remember when like, people would like make, like the inner websites like looked interesting, or at least like, everyone was like, we gotta jazz it up. It's the internet as opposed to now and it's just kind of like you click on the menu button and then a menu pops up, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody go over to boardgamegeek.com to see what I'm back with. I'm looking website. It's like what a bad looking website looks like. I understand what you're saying. I mean, like the reason we abandoned that was, it was annoying, like it was loyalty. And it means that all these anime,

it's the same way we've been watching, I've been showing Money Python to my older son. And I have the DVDs that got put out by A and E years ago. And every disc, when you put it in, you have to sit through this long animation that promotes money-pithing. It's like a long animated introduction that's like the groundbreaking BBC series.

Now on DVD for the first time, and I'm like, you don't have to make a big show of it. Just like, get me to a menu. Like, just get me to the episode I want. I don't need to celebrate DVDs each time I put it in. Or we watched a DVD of League of the Year on the other day. And it opens with this long advertisement for movies on DVD and it's the most random assortment of movies.

And it's just like, I get it. Yeah, it's just take me to the fucking movie. Like this. I gotta say, I'm pushing back. I love that shit. Give me like trailers for old-ass movies I haven't thought about. Give me a trailer for Chain Reaction or some shit. That was when I finished watching the net, one of the movies that came up as an option to watch

again, what next was chain reaction? And I was like, should I maybe? You looked over at Danfield, just asleep. It felt like I was cheating on the movies of today. Andrew Davis is a pretty good action director. It's got to have something. Okay, let's get into the net. The movie has a cold open, we see the Under Secretary of Defense, he's making calls, doing deals, doing business, he goes off on a ride to a playground, he says goodbye to his family,

and then he promptly commits suicide in a public park. He walks, sticks a gun at his mouth as the camera pans up to a big statue of like a man drowning in sand That's in that part. Yeah, and you heard the gunshot and you're like that's a dope statue Yeah, it's a great statue. I did like the movie doesn't what you to laugh It's like a man commutes suicide But it was the first big laugh of the movie for me just in the sense that like you're given first big laugh of the movie for me, just in the sense that like you're given. No, it's such a classic like thriller opening. Yeah.

Oh, what was so horrible that caused that girl to get killed by the ring? Well, that's how we, you know, it's also, I'll mention that, that so this would have met more in 1995 also because this is deliberately playing off the death of Vince Foster, who was one of the White House councils and went, died of a gunshot, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a park, in a public park. And there were all these conspiracy theories about it, that Clintons had him murdered and stuff like that. When it seems likely now that it was just suicidal depression.

And if you are, if any listening or feeling depression or feeling those thoughts, please reach out to someone, please, you're not alone. And this is a serious moment that I didn't mean to stumble into. Please take a moment, reach out to somebody, people care about you, and you are worth it. But this would, but to viewers the time that would have been like, oh, this is like that thing that happened. And I will say that statue, it's a real statue. It's called the Awakening. It's a, it's located in a Prince George's County, Maryland. So you can go see it. It's a real statue. It's called the Awakening. It's a, it's located in a Prince Georgia County, Maryland. So you can go see it. It's a giant. You can go see it on your tour. The net filming location. Yeah. I imagine there's a plaque that says in 1995, the movie The Net was shot here. And there's a picture of all the kitchen staff standing next to

the Santa Polic and it's on the wall. Okay. You step at the stage. Okay. So we are we are wasting daylight here, guys. So we are then introduced to Angela played by that's right. Sandy B. And she is a computer programmer who works remotely, a prescient, right? That's just like all you guys. She works remotely finding bugs and programs. She lives alone. She hangs out

in chat rooms. She takes care of her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's and is very excited about an upcoming vacation. It was very funny to me how this was positioned as like the saddest life that she has where she's like alone ordering pizza off the internet, talking to other people on the internet. When that's just how life is these days. Yeah, she like, yeah, I mean, not a bad mess, not incorrect. Life has gotten sadder in a lot of ways. No, no, I know. It's just like at the time it's like this is the worst thing you can imagine. Imagine a loser alone in her home. She ordering pizza and talking to people on the internet. She, well, she's, and she's ordering pizza off of one computer and the other computer, she's playing Wolfenstein.

I got to tell you, I've never been happier than when I was doing those things. Yeah, it looked pretty good to me. Yeah, but you're right Dan, that the message seems to be, why would you stay at home? Why would you talk to people at a distance? What good is sitting alone in your room, Elliot? Come to the cabaret. She needs to be at a cabaret. She needs to be in a crowded indoor space with lots of people. Everyone breathing in each other's faces. Yeah. Okay. So you songs about two ladies. Anyway, go on. This is great. There's a lot of like little touches. As we mentioned, there's pizza.net, there's Wolfenstein.

She hangs out in a cyber chat room of other people who are cyber inclined like cyberbob and iceman. All our friends. She's clearly. That iceman from it is. Yeah. And the thing is, she's dangerous. Okay.

So we learned that she's single, but she has kind of high standards. She has a very specific idea of what kind of man she wants and she explains it to her friends in the chat room. She also discovers a virus in the copy of Wolfenstein. She's playing terrible. So she mails that to her friend Dale who in a collection of viruses, who collects viruses and who works in their office, but she's never been there, right? Yes, so the office room San Francisco, the so citadel, the company that she works for is in San Francisco. She lives in Venice, California, LA, baby.

It's Cathedral, Ilya. It's the Cathedral. The Cathedral, sorry. The Elf-Eld, Amazon Prime Program. Yeah, yeah. Another example. Another example. In some sense though, as a cybersecurity company, the cathedral is.

Yeah. And early remote worker. I don't want to gloss over her like high standards for men because it's like, it's a thing. Because you felt, you felt threatened, she was asking to. Yeah, I did. Well, I did. But I want to feel like I have a chance with the girl from the stage.

It did, it did feel a little bit like the song that don't impress, impress me much when I'm like, okay, well, you're standards, I don't know. I love the idea to do that. That's, that's the Italian version song that don't impress me much. She was, she was like, I want Albert Schweitzer by way of Captain America. And I know that this is like in the context of like a fantasy like who's your ideal man on the thing. But I'm like, all right, tone of down.

But Dan, it originally was even worse. I looked in the original screenplay at one point she mentioned is hung like a centaur, which seems unrealistic. Oh, wow. That is unrealistic. Specifically a centaur. Yeah, centaur, yeah. Because that's where there's a little set of extra legs behind the balls, right?

Yeah, because that's what she likes, yeah, exactly. It's like a horse, you know, like that's more than you need. Like a centaur. Now I'm assuming you, a centaur has a somewhere between a normal man's penis., like that's more than you need. Like a centaur. Now I'm assuming the centaur has a somewhere between a normal man's penis. Yeah, it's called a happy medium. Yeah, it's a happy medium in terms of penis size. Yeah. Dan, get out your etch a sketch and draw me what you're talking about.

Okay, hold on, twiddles and knobs. No, no, you should get, oh, you see some, you should get the pick. It's lost to history. I don't know. So much great art has been lost because of the etch a sketch. Okay, so she's talking to her friend Dale. This is where the plot of the movie starts to kick in guys. She's talking to her friend Dale who's played by the game, played the priest from Deadwood. You know what he looks like. He looks kind of like if Matthew Modine was

a little bit weirder. And she mails his name is Ray McKinnon. Yeah, as I mentioned, he collects viruses and in exchange, he mails her a disc that leads her to a website for a rock band called Moatsar It's Ghost, which is a very funny website and it has lots of sound. And it seems like a band web page. But in the bottom corner, it's actually this, if you click on it, it has a little pie symbol and it's an elite hacking key that lets the user basically into any website. It is, it is a, this is not an important correction, but you do have to click on it and then

do like a control something or whatever. It's not just like someone who could be like, why is there pie? It's the way to order pie. I like pizza pie. I'll go to pie.net. Yeah. So two things I want to say here, one, when Mozart's goes, boots up, it goes, Mozart's goes, the hottest band on the internet.

And you hear this, I think seven times, six times throughout the movie. Every time that makes me smile. Every time it makes me, and each time I've seen this movie, that is the thing, for some reason, that's the line that makes me the most nostalgic every time. It's Mozart's ghost, the hottest band on the internet. And the other thing is that when you click on that pie and do whatever keystroke thing Dan wanted to clarify because he keeps a shit. Yeah, I didn't, we didn't not realize I was sitting with a fucking console restaurant.

Yeah, I didn't realize the goof section was right here to correct us, but whenever you click on it, it does the thing that 90s computers do when you hack them, which is a lot of screens and a lot of different text all flash onto your monitor at once. So all this stuff flashes onto your own ones. And you're like, huh, what? Just the same way that in hackers, if you remember, when you cut code out of a program and stored on a disk and you put that disk in your computer, you see a sort of red dimension

where code is floating around in big numbers. So they really didn't know how computers worked. I guess this is what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean, the funniest tech stuff is the weird shorthand, like that, where it's just like, oh yeah, like something, something hackery is going on. It looks like your TV's on the fridge. So, or this person collects viruses. So, she somehow just like is able to extract just the virus and send it to like that seems

I wasn't quite clear. I don't have computers work. Maybe you can do that. I don't know, but yeah, a lot of it is is a little silly. I guess that's all I've said. Yeah, I mean, it gets sillier. Yeah, so Dale convinces her to meet and so he he's going to fly down and visit her in his Cessna. Unfortunately, due to a computer era, era, well, that's silly.

We're in the computer era still. Due to a computer error, he crashes his Cessna and he dies, which is about. So it is implied that the evil hackers have taken over his navigation system and misdirected him. Is that, I mean, you guys are hackers, your net runners. Is that possible? This is before wireless internet as far as I can tell. So can they do that?

Yeah, I don't know that this would be, have been wired. He just had like, you know, like his instruments and then, I mean, unless he's in a plane with a long, with like a 40 mile wire that just comes out of the plane. A long land cable. Yeah. Uh, I would imagine that they probably had been tapping his phone and went to his plane and uploaded a virus. Oh, okay.

That's good. That's that's that makes that makes more sense to me. That's a good continuity fix. You get your no pro your net prize. That's a no prize for people to watch the net. Yeah. But despite this sadness, Angela still gets her beach vacation. She goes down there.

I want to say, the guy doesn't show up. She goes to the airport. Yeah. There's widespread, like nothing is working because all the computers are down. And then there's a part where the like the guy giving her coffee or whatever's like, oh, it looks like you're in luck.

It's back up and like everything that had been down immediately went to on time, which I was like, oh shit, after the systems are down, everything is delayed. But also this is one of these parts of the movie where I'm just like, I guess I assume that they were delaying her leaving Tell Like It Figure Out had to deal with things. I guess because we see that she's being watched by a shadowy figure also. Yeah.

So it's all, it's, this movie is, it's dealing with two different modes. The future mode of the internet where you can affect people at a distance. It's spooky action at a distance to the internet. And the old-fashioned world of movie thrillers where someone has to be physically present to do things. And the movie is battling between these two. It's a dialogue or perhaps an argument between these two modes of thought, the physical and the remote digital.

Yeah, he's too ideas. And really the movie is, is fat, it creates a fascinating synthesis between these two, these two competing modes. Stewart explain. So she gets her beach. She meets a charming stranger. Is this the last day of her vacation? She meets a charming stranger named Jack Devlin, which sounds a lot like Jack Devlin.

They share some. Jack Devlin misjones. Yep. They share some. The misjones. Yep. They share some of Dan's favorite cocktail, the Gibson Martinez. It's a martini, but with an onion. He seems to he works in the same field. After Mel Gibson is that why you like it because you you also subscribe to the same anti-Semitic and he likes his stream is Catholic.

He likes stream antics. Yeah, it's all screen antics. I've never been a fan of the man's work, but his all screen antics really have fields of it. So they they they work in the same field. They have a lot in common. They flirt. They they because her a hacker like right off the bat. They work in the same field, they have a lot in common, they flirt, they, they, they,

because her a hacker, like right off the bat, just because she has a computer. I guess this is an indication of how bizarre that was. I mean, to be sitting on a beach with a laptop is, is pretty hacky at the time. I don't mean hacky like old, I mean hacky like new, like you're a hacky. I'd be kind of surprised if I saw somebody sitting at the beach. And I don't mean hacky like old, I mean, hacky like new like you're a happy. I'd be kind of surprised if I saw somebody sitting at the beach with a laptop. Now just because of the sand issue.

Sand's bad. No, thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Anakin was right. So he gets in your fears. He's, yeah, he's, I hate saying to get some like computer keys.

So she allows him to take her out that night. So they go on a hot ride in a go fast boat. She gets her personal turn turns out Jack, Jack chases after the bandit only to discover we learn jacks in on it. He hired this bandit to steal her purse and he finds the disc that has the Mozart's ghost bullshit on it. And he's like, ha, ha, we got it. Throws away all of her stuff, which is important for the next phase of this movie, but we got it. Throws away all of her stuff, which is important

for the next phase of this movie, but we're not there yet. He kills the burglar, the bandit. You've already, you've downgraded him from bandit to burglar. Bandit is a little more romantic, a little more dashing. The burglar is a little bit, you know, scumier. Yeah, Bill Bagley is like, have been in a house to be burgled.

Yeah, technically, I don't know. Once again, the goof patrol is correcting us again. Appreciate it, Dan. Oh, oh, I don't know. Once again, the goof patrol is correcting us again. Appreciate it, Dan. Oh, I'm sorry. You're never correcting me. We then learned that this character smokes new ports, which I was surprised by. He's come a long way, baby. Oh, no, it's taking a slims.

I'm sorry, those are Virginia slims. He takes her on a late night boat ride. She, he very clearly has nefarious plans for her, but they decide to have sex first. She spills about her. In her event, she doesn't know about the various plans. They get together. They have a little walkie-talkie. I'm an evil hacker and I'm going to kill you, but first would you like to have sex?

Okay, yeah. I mean, most of my time playing Wolfenstein, so yeah, yeah. I mean, most of my time playing Wolfenstein. So yeah, okay. Well, in the post-coital glow, she spills all about her past relationships, her moms, all timers, all this stuff. But then she finds... Really sexy pillow talk. Really the stuff you want to hear in the afterglow, yeah.

Then she finds the silence pistol he had hidden in his coat and she throws the bullets away and knocks him in the head and manages to grab some stuff and takes a dinghy and the keys and takes a dinghy to escape. Only to crash that dinghy and get knocked out. Now Stuart, I understand why you are, are, are, are whizzing through the summary. Most people probably have seen the net and you have a. I don't know about that. I don't know about that, Dan. I don't know if most people have seen the net. There's nearly eight billion people on the planet.

What percentage of you have seen the net? Most of them. Yeah. Fill in the gas. No problem. Fill in the gas. At least five to six billion. Yeah. That's what I know. We had a long many recording before this. You've got a busy day. I know why you got to zip through some of this, but I just want to highlight the moment where like, so she asks him about the gun, why he has it. He gives her some bullshit. It takes a lot of fishing away from her.

And then like, like it's really mad all of a sudden. Like it's like, Oh, I know what you want Albert Schweitzer. Who am I? Who am I? Like I'm the perfect man. Like, I don't know why he got so mad at her. And then he like, try to shoot. Dan, he's a male hacker. He is mad at the world for not getting. And he's, and he's especially, and you'd think he, giving him sex, the thing he wants more than he else would make him less mad. No, it only enrages him more. Right. So the fact that he suddenly starts violently getting angry at a woman, it's not a shock

to me. That's true, although he's like not presented like the sort of hacker who might react that way. He's still a movie. Yeah. A swav, Jeremy, Northam. Yeah. But, uh, but- Originally they had cast Jeremy Sousam and then they'd had to go out for the last

minute. A lot of work. But he, you know, he tries to shoot her and then she kind of like reveals that she'd taken the clip out. But I found this part of the, like, Sandra Bullock is an immensely like charismatic actor. Like she just exudes a certain legability. And yeah, this moment, I think it's also some very good acting from her where she has this like, look on her face.

Like she found the gun. She didn't believe that he was telling the truth that something was weird, but she definitely did not expect that this man she just slept with would try and shoot her. And this like hurt stun shock is very effective, I think, in that moment. Yeah, I think you're right. I think this, this stuff, I think this scene really works. So she has crashed her boat.

She wakes up a few days later in a hospital. There's a doctor who's smoking a cigarette. That's great. Probably shouldn't do that in there, dude. And this is where- It was 1995. Everyone was smoking. It was all over the place, yeah.

This is where she learns that her identity is being stolen. And this happens over a series of incidents. One, when she goes to check back into her hotel, turns out she's already been checked out. That's weird. She didn't do that. She didn't authorize that, but the computer says so. When she's at like a train station or something, she's approached by a strange woman with a visa application that's to a Ruth Marx. That's not her name, but it has her picture and all our information. It seems like that filling out this form is the only way she can. The computer says so this is So each of these things, people are like, the computer says so we've got to go away.

The computer says, but her signing this fake name is literally the new gas cooker sketch for money Python where they're like, they're like, well, we got to deliver the gas cooker to here, but it's got the wrong name on it. Can you just sign that name and then later in the sketch, they're like, the wrong names on this application, we can't help you.

And so what I like is that this thriller He just signed that name and then later in the sketch, they're like the wrong names on this application. We can't help you. And so what I like is that this thriller took a little bit of money Python and made it scary as opposed to funny. Yeah. When she gets back to LA, she learns that her home has been sold and all of her furniture is gone. And when she questions everybody, they're like, no, Angela moved out all this time ago. You're not who you say you are. Yeah, and this scene has the most hilariously unhelpful neighbor who has only seen her

from a distance and is like, she moved out and like, and you know, one thing that is effective, maybe cheaply effective in certain ways, but effective is always to have like a character who is just like the worst and unhelpful. And but the scene, I was just like, get the fuck out of here, awful vapor. Why are you still hanging around? They're like, being such a jerk. Yeah.

No, I like it. You're like, yeah, where you're expecting a little bit of help and it does not come at all. And you have to have to imagine they didn't even ask her. She just wandered into the house going, what's going on here? What's on here? What's happening here?

Oh, police, huh? This is weird. Tell me about it. So while this is happening, meanwhile, Jack Devlin is driving around the streets of LA, wearing a turtle neck like a maniac using his laptop computer from the car to track her down. And he also builds a, like a, a criminal background for Ruth Marx. So that she is, she has to run from the police as well. That she, that she is, everyone finds her suspicious.

Do you think there's anything? Do you think there's anything? Do you think it's a coded message here that a, her originally name is Angela Bennett, and that now she's been renamed Ruth Marx, a much more Jewish name. Both Ruth and Marx say Jewish to me, that now they have, they've been, not only is she, they've made her into a criminal, but they've kind of decalcationized, I guess, they mean most, most Ashkenazi Jews, you'd still call occasion. They've decrystionized her in a way that makes her more suspicious in the eyes of institutions.

Do you think that's part of it? Or am I reading too deeply into it? No, I think you have some. No, I think you have some. Okay. Now, meanwhile, the disc that had the program, Mozart's Ghost on it, has been destroyed by the... The Hottest Family Internet.

...has been destroyed by the saltwater. But she did manage to hold on to Jack's wallet that has a few clues and passwords and crap like that. So she's still in the game. She can still figure things out. No, the game is a different movie. This is the net. So she figures out, she reaches out to her one safety, her one phone, a friend, Dr. Alan

champion, her former therapist and former lover played by Dan's favorite comedian, Dennis Miller. Yeah. Dan, before you say anything, if he's not your favorite comedian, why do you have his beard? Son of a bitch. No, man, that even I, you know, I didn't ever love Dennis Miller that much, even before he became a weird crank on the opposite side of the political spectrum of me.

But it definitely, it always seemed to be like, I don't know if I cram enough words in here, people will think, what a smart comedian. But here, I guess he does, that's basically what I do. Yeah. He does, oh, here he does okay. I would say puts it a better performance than say, Bordello blood. Okay. Now, character.

This was around the time when this came out, it was around the same time as I think it was murder at 1600. So there was this brief period movie history where they were like, this movie thriller needs kind of like a wise cracking side character, Dennis Miller. Like he had a monopoly on that. Yeah, yeah. That's making him real lovable by making her therapist to have a sexual relationship with her apparently. Who committed adultery to having a fair with her? Yeah. But he retains his title, he's still

a acting therapist. And so she gives him him some snippets of what's going on, but she doesn't fill them in completely. So they have this kind of weird dynamic where he still thinks this is going to be some kind of romantic situation. And she's just trying to get a little bit of safety, but she kind of doesn't want to get him to involved. And he also keeps trying to get her to speak with his friend in the FBI, because he thinks that'll help.

I gotta say, when she was having so much trouble finding anyone to, I'd like say, yes, this is Angela Bennett. I don't know why she called this gentleman who she knows very well, but also throughout the film, I understand she's heritage, she doesn't know what's going on. She's having her life stolen from her, but she does not explain things well to people. That's because she's been working from home to a long time. Well, it's like there's all the, I mean, maybe that's a good explanation. She just, she lost her people skills because there's, but there's so many movies where someone has a limited amount of time to say like, someone frame me for murder, but I didn't do it. I need your help.

But instead, they're like, please, you've got to understand. Just listen to me. But so the years that I don't have a lot of time and then the police show up and they've got to run. It's like just say the thing you need. Like don't do it. What do you do? I got to make some room for some sputtering first. So Angela is having trouble piecing together the conspiracy and Dennis Miller or I guess Alan champion, is not really. They're one in the, you know, so close together. How can you tell the difference? Yeah. He does. And this is, he would look in the mirror. Dennis Miller and he'd say, who am I? Am I Dennis Miller or am I Alan champion? I've

gone too far in the character. Staying characters Alan champion the whole time. They're making them that. He would demand people call him Alan champion. He would set up appointments as a therapist and then sleep with the patients just to stay in character. Really, I mean, method acting and that actually paid for all of those lawsuits after that. The production of that. And they're like, was it worth it to cast Dennis Miller or when Winkler director of the net director? That was the funny. It's interesting. I didn't, it's, I didn't realize I'd forgotten at least that Erwin Winkler directed this because

Erwin Kler is a huge producer. Like, he's been a huge Hollywood producer. He won Best Picture for Rocky. He produced Raging Bull. He produced the right stuff. He produced Goodfellet. He's, he produced, they shoot horses, don't they? Like, he's a really amazing producer.

Not a great director. It turns out. That's what everyone has to do. What else did he do? I, you know, let's see what else. He did the remake of Night in the City with Robert De Niro. His last movie directed was Home of the Brave, which I've not seen. I'm just the Biel, a number of the people. Recognize as a movie, but yeah, Home of the Brave sounds like the name of a movie. There

could be about anything. Yeah, yeah. That's the told me that was a movie I'd be like, yeah, I believe you. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, sure. His name is attached to the Creed movies, but I wonder if that's just because he produced the rocking movies. I don't know if he actually involved in the Creed, but maybe it was. I don't know. Yeah, who knows?

So because she doesn't, she reaches out to a, because Alan Champion is not well versed in cyber crimes, she reaches out to her friend Cyber Alan Champion is not well versed in cyber crimes. She reaches out to her friend Cyber Bob from the chat room and they agreed to meet in real life. Because her friend Crimes Bob was busy. Yeah. Exactly. So, on her way, Alan Champion gets, gets, goes into anaphylactic shock after taking

the, he's been chomping down pills, turns out his prescription was messed up and they gave him penicillin, something he's allergic to. Which computers? Look, I know that you're not necessarily going to look at the, at the bottle every time, you know, if you trust that it's the correct thing, but it does say penicillin on the side, which I was funny. Yeah, yeah, the computer analyzed Alan Champion, realized his greatest does say penicillin on the side, which I was funny. I bet he's in. Yeah, yeah.

The computer analyzed Alan champion, realized his greatest weakness was penicillin. So it gave it to him. And really bottles. So yeah. So he is. So he can't read. That's his big weakness. He's a therapist who can't read.

Yeah. So she has to leave him. He's admitted to the hospital. Angela leaves him so the chicken can go meet with her hacker friend. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to her, Jack Devlin has waylaid cyber bob probably killed him. And when they go, this is one of those movies where the fixer who is tracking someone is just murdering people left and right and leaving a trail of bodies. And then when it's time to get to the person he has to kill, he is coming up with reason

after reason not to kill her. Which, I wish, I kind of wish they'd leaned more into it because there's like, when he ambushes her at the Santa Monica Pier, which is the, like, the scariest place it appears to meet somebody. There's like, there's like steam shooting out of everyone. Like, the monsters. Bright lights, there's noises, it's a bad place to go, and there's a guy

and what is it like a big bunny costume? He's just fucking people. Just look at that. And that is the scariest person in the whole movie. He's way scarier than Jeremy Northam in this one. This bunny is going on going, come on, dance with me, dance with me and grabbing people's bodies.

Oh, all right. And now we don't know if we can believe him, but he does say that like he has genuine affection for her, which I kind of wish the movie, I feel like the movie would have been more interesting if it had not to be like Monday morning quarterback, but I feel like you would have been more interesting. They like not to be, not to be 28 years later quarterback. Yeah.

I think if they cleaned into it and he was like genuinely conflicted and he was trying to find ways to get her to come over to their side and not have to kill her. Yes, or even if he was, if he is, if he was, his obsession with her was just felt more emotionally rich, like you could get into like weird kind of like diploma or a Cronenberg type territory. Yes, please. Yes, yes. Yes, please. Like a good movie. Yeah. Yeah, like if this movie had been made by a real sicko, it would have been good. If only the late Gormac Macarthe could have written this thing. No, really fucked up.

So she manages, he ambushes her, but she manages to slip away thanks to a man in a bunny suit and a carousel. I'm, I'm sung hero who Ellie was just vilifying. You're right. I take it all back, bunny man. You were right. You saved a woman's life with your, with your, with your, with your mullestational antics as you, as you used in people's bodies like puppets.

Yeah. And your famous echo, echo, echo the bunny man. She goes to check on Alan Dolphin. And his bunny man. The, the, she goes to check on Alan. Unfortunately, Alan has been given the wrong medication and he has died. Computers again. She's the wearing tennis shoes and now this. They did it to him twice too.

First they got in the penicillin thing, then they changed the computers again to say that he was in diabetic shock and so they gave him the wrong medicine. And what can you do? What's the interval? Does the only thing you can do, push a computer monitor off a desk and then walk out unrepermanated for doing it. And weirdly enough, that doesn't stop the problem. And it's not the computer's fault, to be honest.

People are doing stuff with the computer. Just a tool, yeah. You know, filled with rage and sadness, she takes Alan Champion's car up Pacific Coast Highway one baby, probably passed our friend, Chris's house. And then she gets pulled over, she gets pulled over by the police because of course, their computer says that she stole in that car, she's a criminal at large. So she is arrested and taken a jail. We catch up with her shortly afterwards while she's being interviewed. And she finally pieces it all together that these hackers are actually working together with the gatekeeper, what, security company.

Which company? It's like so much play in the movie. Like it's so funny to me that the public defender that she talks to, watch using jails, there's no way they could do that. It's protected by the gatekeeper security. People talk about the gatekeeper security plan. It was Coca-Cola. Every news story that you see on a TV mentions gatekeeper security and the head of the company.

There's no hotter brand in the world of the net than Gabe Keeper's security software. It's just, it's not everybody's lips all the time. Like the public defender read her ad copy before going into the, yeah. It's, you know, we remember when that craze for the McAfee antivirus swept the nations,

we had McAfee posters above our beds. Oh, sure, we all remember the Norton for President campaign that briefly flared up and then fizzled out. Yeah. So, uh, she is sprung from the North for the buttons. I'm sorry. No, I apologize for interrupting. And then it was that and then it was a void, the noise support in the word, it was a complicated time.

There were a lot of brands going around. There are a lot of noise. There were a lot of noise. Yeah. To avoid a lot of noise to avoid. So she is sprung from jail by Allen's friend in the FBI. Well, you could not step out the door without having to run from a noise back back in the 90s. It was right.

The ground. Yeah, they're all over the ground. Yeah. And there's this ground. Thankfully, the noise of Swarms of noise. Swarms of noise. Just these noise hives everywhere. Luckily, the clone dinosaurs that are everywhere ate those noids.

But now we've got to put up with the dinosaurs lying around in the ground. So, you know, is the cure better than the disease? I'm not so sure. Huh, and that's a terrible. We'll still have a fly situation. Oh, and don't even get me started on those dino noids. Oh, man, they're so cute. They're so, they're so frustrating. Yeah. Delicious though. Yeah, they get into the crawl space of

the house and you can't get them out and they make those noises in the middle of the night and trying to sleep. Yeah. Catching is good. Yeah. Yeah. You know, man. Yeah, you wouldn't want to, you wouldn't want to be a pizza in those times. What do you know? Oh, no, you had a constant chance of being ruined. Yeah. So she's sprung from jail. We're going to get a movie, a series of movies that are the IP from pizza brands. And it's all one big

cross-reinversed with annoyed and little Caesar and Papa John are just are fighting. I don't know. Elliot, bitch, the writers are on strike. Stop pitching. I should be pitching ideas. I don't want to scab. I don't want to scab. I apologize. Good point. Get out of here. Get out of here. So she is sprung from jail by Alan's friend from the FBI, who has a lot of very, has a lot of questions about the disc mainly. And she pretty quickly realizes that this is not Alan's friend. This is, or if it is, he's working for the hackers. So she takes control of the wheel and she crashes the car into Jack's car, which was weird. I don't know why he's parked right there. That was very convenient. It's a movie with a number of different convenient coincidences, but that is potentially the

most convenient coincidence, the home movie, that Jack happens to be lurking by in his car and that they happen to be going by at that point. It seems like at that point, the movie is helping Angela Bennett along. It's like, you need a push. Let's get out of our other rut we're in. Let's just get it moving. Yeah. So she crashes the car, knocking out the FBI agent. She runs away on foot and escapes using a drawbridge and hides out in a motel where the

news informs her that not only is gatekeeper taking a bigbridge and hides out in a motel where the news informs her that not only is gatekeeper taking a big play and taking over all of the government's security, but also Ruth Marx is wanted for murdering a guy gangland style, which she didn't do. Not to spoil anything. Okay. So she sneaks back into the office of Cathedral software. She nobody recognized her because as we said, she'd been working remotely. Did you mention, did we mention already, she tried to call the company at one point and she was patched through to a woman taking on the role of Angela Bennett. One of the hackers has impersonated her so that the people at Cathedral think that Angela

Bennett is now no longer working remotely, but working in the office. Because guys, it's time to stop working remotely and time to get back to the office. Let's do it everybody. There's just a certain, there's a certain creative friction that emerges when people are in the same space together. You just don't get it home. Anyway, that's me, a guy who owns several office space buildings, saying partially, it's signing it back to the office.

Let's rent them and let me jack those red prices. So there is a fake Angela Bennett in the office. I enjoyed this little twist for thriller logic of like, you know, having this evil Angie Bennett who looks sort of vaguely like Sandra Bullock taking the place and what I like it in movie logic, in real life logic, I'm like, why do they bother? Why do they even bother exactly? This fake woman in there. Now guys, how dumb am I that I just realized that it's Angela versus Devlin?

This is a smart movie. This is a very subtle movie. Oh, I wonder who the good guy and the bad guy is. Anyway, I feel stupid that I just noticed that now, but continues to. And the movie is even more explicit with it because her little, her little AVI in the chat room is an angel. Yeah. Yeah. And Jack Devon keeps saying, ain't I a little devil? And it's a screen grab from the movie Little Nikki. Amazingly precious movie because that movie so fun. Yeah.

That's why we're laughing. I mean, I mean, I don't know if I enjoy the existence of Popeye's chicken being acknowledged, but I wish that a better movie to promote it. I remember when I was in college, one of my professors, my screenwriting professors, was so convinced Little Nikki would be an enormous hit. He was like, the script is hilarious. It's Adam Sandler. He's a box office champ. They were shooting it in New York at the time. I was in college. He's like, you should go watch them shoot this movie if you see them on the street because this is going to be a huge hit movie. And you're going to be able to

tell people that you saw them shooting it. And then the movie came out and did do very well. And I feel like he maybe should have had his teaching license removed to that. No, he's a good professor otherwise, but. Yeah, he was tenured, you know, that's the problem with the tenure. You can't get rid of these little Nikki Apologists. I want to be very clear. I support tenure. You don't support little Nikki, but you do support 10 year, yeah. So this is where she finds her former now deceased coworker, Dales Desk, and she uses his computer, and she gets the virus that she mailed him. That's going to be important later, everybody. And she uses the computer and her hacking skills to identify where her double is.

and her hacking skills to identify where her double is. And then after identifying that, she uses the computer to create a fake fire alarm and get everyone out of the building. Now, I also wanna point out, I don't know if you notice this. This is all happening at night. Feels pretty late in the work day for everybody to be at the office. It was very, yeah, it was very confusing

what time of day this was supposed to be. Now you could say the software industry, video game industry, especially, I assume the other software industry, they push people to work very long hours, very hard. And so it's possibly could be all there, but it seems to be a bustling daytime office. It's not like there's nothing about the office that says this is at night right now. And also when she goes to the convention center, the convention is in full bloom. So it also feels like that night,

usually conventions kind of shut down for a little bit and people go out and have drinks and have a fair, and so forth. Yeah, and then they come back the next day, newly refreshed by their hangovers and their guilt. But I guess it's San Francisco. It's a nighttime city. Everything's always going on at night., I guess it's San Francisco. It's a nighttime city. Everything's

always going on at night. City that never sleeps San Francisco. The big, the red planet, the big chatter bowl. City abroad shoulders, they call it. Okay. Hogs, what you're to the world. So now that her double is not at her desk, she manages to slip in there, jump on that computer, log on. She starts, she tries to fix her data. Unfortunately, she's going to need mainframe access for that shit. So instead, she downloads the information onto a disk. She is out of there. She's got to get to that mainframe, baby. Take the folder titled evidence, exculatory Evidence and she copies it. Yeah, I think she, yeah, she even like, she takes, she prints out the evidence against them.

Yeah, it's awesome. Okay, so then she's, she's fucking out of there. They try and track her down, but she, oh, and she finds out who, who's into it. It's the CEO of Gatekeeper. He is the head of the hacking organization. Yadda Yadda, that's the audience. The head of the Praetorians, the gatekeepers, the hackers are called the Praetorians. And Greg, the gatekeeper CEO is the head of them, yeah. So she runs away from the bad guys.

She uses a healthcare process. But she's a good strategy. Do not run towards the bad guys. You want to run away from them. She runs away from like a fierce beer that you're like, like, you're going to skewer them with and they don't have any like guns. No, no, you want to use that as a pull vault to get farther away from the bad day. Oh, no.

It might give you a charging bonus, like a bonus to your strength character, is that? Oh, okay. You might run a charging it. Do you have double action? Can you take two actions in this turn? In this case, yeah, I think so. Oh, okay. Oh, then by all means, listen to Dan.

So yeah, so she runs away from them. She uses a healthcare protest, again, prescient, to luckily healthcare was fixed after the short later than making it this way. Yeah, they called that the net effect, yeah, the healthcare was fixed. And then she hides out in a computer convention, which did she know there's a computer convention there? She did. No, they mentioned it earlier that there's a big computer convention at the Moscone Center. Again, it is, it is a huge, convenient coincidence that it's happening at this time, but they did mention it earlier. So she finds, she finds a computer terminal

to use everybody's computer crazy in this convention. She jumps on, she emails all the evidence to the FBI and then write the real FBI. The real FBI, not the bad, yeah, she hopes. And right before Devlin's able to grab her, she swaps disks with the virus disk so that when Devlin is like, ha ha, all I have to do is hit escape to get out of this program. That actually triggers the virus. And then we see, we see the screen look like

somebody poured acid on it. And it all starts to melt and like goo starts spinning out of the, yeah. And like the later on, shooting out of the computer of lives that they have select over the internet. It is melting away, revealing the previous two. It's great. I love it. Yeah, yeah. Okay, but she, she manages slip away in the crowd. She is chased. They find the like,

She is not chased. She's left with a bad hit earlier. Oh, yeah, you're right. Actually, I messed up. Okay, killer that I get. She is sex positive and owning it. And there's nothing wrong with that, yeah. So she slips away into the darkened steam filled back tunnels of the good. The Moscone center like all large buildings

in the 1980s and 90s. He has filled a shadowy catwalks and just random steam jets and barrels and boxes. Yeah, I have expected her to walk in on matrix and Bennett fighting. Cmando, that was a movie I watched recently and it's good. A lot of fun movie. Okay. So, he, Devlin thinks he's got her in his sights. He shoots her, turns out he shot the wrong Angela Bennett. That's right.

He shot the double. Whoops. That doesn't matter. Later on, he tracks down the real Angela who then bonks him on the head with a fire extinguisher. He falls off a catwalk and dies. Oh no. Turns out. And she, and she, I mean, she is in danger because he's likely to kill her, but he is not actively threatening her at the moment. So she just kills him. He hits it hard enough to kill him. Yeah. Yeah, he's he's pushed her too much and to quote the name of Jennifer, Jennifer Lopez

movie, she's had enough. Mm-hmm. She can push her too much and like Gizmo, putting a Rambo headband on and, uh-huh, shooting a shoot later lame. Yeah, just like Gizmo told, she dipped a pencil and some white out and lit it on fire and then used a little paper clip cross clip cross bone arrow to shoot that. Well, the audience cheers. Okay.

So Jack's dead flash forward. Angel and Alex with her mom. All the bad guys are are in jail. She lives with her mom. She works from home. I think everything's better. But then in the corner of the screen, we see a little pie symbol and a cursor goes over and clicks on it. Uh-oh. Oh, the movie was the net. Yeah. Yeah. So that was the net, guys. I think I did a pretty

good job. So that was it. That was a great job. Sure. I can't, you know, Elliot kept, um, kept interrupting and Elliot interrupted somebody. I kept feeling like, well, Elliot is safe across the country. And I'm in the room with Stuart. And I can't tell whether the slow burn frustration is a bit. Yeah. Or whether he's going to suddenly snap. Yeah, Dan looked over.

He saw the veins in my forearms bulging out of my, bulging under my skin and tattoos and hair and he's like, what is going on? Is Stuart going to tear, rent me apart like his garments? Like, like your pre-rended garments. Hey, let's do our final judgments about the net, whether it's a good bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like, I'm gonna say it's a movie I kind of like, I wouldn't say it's a bad movie so much as a dumb one. Like there's, like I love this kind, we don't get that many of this kind of old-fashioned thriller anymore where it's essentially, you know, innocent person on the run trying to clear their name. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with what at the time was a thin layer of relevance slathered on top.

It's like I have the fugitive. Yeah, it's not, it's not particularly thrilling, I have to say. It's a little pokey. I don't, you know, just Miller, I don't love him. I'm in this movie, he's not that great. I feel like when I first saw this movie, he brought a little bit of wine. Did bring some zazz, it was a different energy.

But now I have different feelings toward him. Yeah, I mean, it's just kind of a silly movie, but it's a movie that is really kind of enjoyable on that old, like this would have been on TNT on Sunday afternoon kind of way. I feel like there's something else I wanted a point I wanted to make that I forgot. Oh, I know what it was. This is just like a side thing when I was reading about this movie. Apparently the director originally got the like employed the writer's striped this movie and his original idea was just

going to be about a woman hiring someone who like falsified resumes to get a job or something and it seemed like MMA were looking into like stuff and they're like, oh, this identity theft angle seems more interesting. I have no idea what that original movie, it doesn't sound like it was a thriller so much, it's just like a half-baked notion. It was like a bad can you ever forgive me? Yeah. Like can you imagine someone lying to get a job? Anyway, that's what I would say. Stuart, what do you think? Yeah, this is a movie I kind of like.

I remember enjoying it in the theater and it was fun to watch now. I mean, obviously a big part of it is I'm a sucker for all those graphics, baby. But yeah, it's, there's, there's like the fact that Sandra Bullock is very charming and she carries a lot of the weight of this movie. Isn't great, no, but it is that like, like that easy thriller, not, yeah.

Tozy. It goes down to the movie, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is, it's kind of easy watching, easy listening thriller. I would say I don't think it's a, it's not a movie that you should need to go out of your way to see, but I definitely, it's a movie I kind of like, but more for nostalgia sake than anything else because as Dan said, you don't see a lot of these anymore. As Stuart said, you got those great old school computer graphics, fake computer graphics,

not even old school computer graphics, but old school Hollywood fake computer graphics. And that is worth a lot to me. But for the young people out there listening, I want you to find the entertainment that's relevant to you in its cheesiness, not the entertainment that's relevant to me. I feel like part of the fun for a young person to be like, they did what? That's what a pizza looked like. This would be so baffling. Like someone who only remembers a time

when the internet was the major dominant force in the world. It kind of makes me, and like five years, I kind of want to show it to my son and be like, can you believe this is what the internet was like? Like you're so used to having the internet exactly your saying, but be everywhere, be everything. You can do anything with it.

And it looks professional and shiny. And like, it used to be like this, and people didn't know what to make of it. And they thought, maybe Russell Crowe would come out of the internet and start murdering you. Yeah, they're like, well, you're gonna lawn mower maybe more than who carried a computer around was a weirdo.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a, yeah, it's a kind of snapshot of a more innocent time. And I think it's valuable for that so You know what? helps you

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be good for you. We got some of these gummies, I know that Stuart also uses them there. An enjoyable thing to, I don't know, if you got time at the end of the day that isn't going to make a lot of demand on you. This is a good way to relax, watch some TV, chill out, go to sleep. I like it. Microdose is available nationwide. To learn more about microdosing THC, go to microdose.com and use code flop. That is FLOP to get free shipping and 30% off your first order. Links can be found in the show description. But again, that is microdose.com code flop. Dan, we've also got another sponsor today. Look, if there's anything, what? I know it's terrible

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It's choose your own book club, a choose your own adventure podcast, new episodes of choose your own book club, drop by weekly, so make your mother proud and try new things, and maybe call her more. So listen to Choose Your Own Book Club on all podcast platforms. You there! Have you considered listening to the Beef and Dairy Network, an award-winning comedy show in the form of a newsletter podcast for the Beef and Dairy Industries? Well, maybe you should.

And why don't you try our most recent episode, episode 99, which features American man, Paul F. Tompkins, playing Queen Elizabeth II's former personal beef semeliay. Her match to Queen Elizabeth II and I laying on the floor of her bedroom just helplessly laughing till tears run down our faces as corgis are jumping on us over us, licking us. That is a day that I will treasure forever until I am executed. Find the show at maximumfun.org. I hope there's beef in heaven. Hey there beautiful people, I'm Jared Hill. And I'm Trayville Anderson and we want to know, have you ever had mixed feelings about the things

that you love? Ooh, maybe about the things that you hate. Then Fanta is the show for you. Fanta is the podcast for all those complex and complicated conversations about the gray areas in our lives. You might have conflicting feelings about Kamala Harris or Capacando or interracial friending. Mm-hmm.

That's all right, because we do too. And we get into it every single Thursday. Catch this, lay where the audio at maximumfund.org. That's all right, because we do too, and we get into it every single Thursday, catch this layware, the audio at maximumfund.org. That's maximumfund.org slash fan tie. That's F-A-N-T-I. Come get all this, good, good. Or this great, great. We get letters here at the flop house. What? The listeners, like you, particularly if you're the one who wrote these letters.

Then you can really use them as much as you. Then you source like you, the one most like you in the world. And this first one, you know what? You remind me of you. Everything about you reminds me of you. Classic Groucho, except you. Except you. This first one is from Molissa letter that is it goes, hello floppers. I recently learned.

I've been doing this for 16 years. letter that is, it goes, hello, flappers. I recently learned. I've been doing this for 16 years. I recently learned that my neighbor is a self-published book author, and he gave me a copy of his latest book, Patron Saints of the Living Dead. Oh. I was initially confused because the book treats voodoo and zombies as historical facts, but when Dr. Henry Jones Jr. was mentioned as a real person, I figured out that the book treats voodoo and zombies as historical facts, but when Dr. Henry Jones Jr. was mentioned as a real person, I figured out that the book was pulling characters from various films and creating a relatively cohesive universe from them.

And the anti-anodracula. The same. And I understood almost none of the references and still enjoyed the pulpy fiction of mad scientists creating zombies. My question is this, what is your favorite zombie flick? And do you prefer zombies to be created by an infectious bite, or by the science and magic of a zombie master? Thanks for floppin', Melissa. I best know the George Romero style zombie and I'm less familiar with sort of the drawing on voodoo folklore zombie. So I don't know if it's a preference, but it's what I'm most used to.

And my favorite of those is return of the living dead sort of the punk rock zombie comedy. That has the most full frontal on it too. It also has the most full front although reports vary over whether that's a Merkin. What do I mean? Reports I don't know because you're the host of the Merkin report with me Dan McCoy. Merkin Muffly. McCoy on Merkins. They're like, why ever since clear channel bought our, bought our local television news station, we've had to run these Merkin reports with Dan McCoy on Merkins.

I don't like it. Merkin to Merkins, Jerk into Merkins. Yeah. This is, this is, this is time we should be spending talk about local, time at local and important issues, but instead it has to be this national Merkin coverage. My bosses are trying to get me to start shirking the Birken. And I want you to call in and tell him that you want more Merkin reports. Wow, that was weird. I like that movie a lot.

I've ruined everyone's opinion of me. No, it's not. No, no, damn. We already, your opinion of you is very low. It's okay. And a more traditional. No, just kidding. Zombie mode.

I like, I walked with a zombie. Elliot can, is it from the 40s? I, yeah, that's from the 40s. That's the, of the, of the, of the Val Luton produced RKO horrors from the 40s, yeah. A great one. What do you guys think? My favorite movie, zombie movie, is probably dead alive or brain dead, depending on what country

you watch in Peter Jackson's foray into zombie cinema. Splatter comedy. It is. Oh, it is gross. It is gross. Yeah. Do you like fake blood? Because this movie's got a lot of it. Do you like someone eating

porridge that part of an ear has fallen into? It's very gross. It's rich and creamy. And it also, you know, it's a beautiful story of a son coming to grips with his overbearing mother. It's it's really wonderful. Yeah. And and now in that one, it's the bite comes from being bitten by a monkey, right? There's zombies. Yeah. So Dan mentioned the Romero movies earlier. I've watched the zombie stuff far and wide. And I think, to me, it is still the Romero stuff that I like the best. I still love the original night of the Living Dead. I love a lot of the Living Dead movies from that series. So they can get a little uneven at times, but night, dawn, and day are still three movies

that I think are great. And it's hard for me to think of any that surpass that. And I prefer an infectious bite, causing it rather than there being some kind of zombie master, because things are scarier to me when they're kind of out of control. When there's, when it's just a chaotic system

that you're up against or an overwhelming thing rather than like a single villain. And I remember so well how disappointed I was in Game of Thrones. And when they revealed that all the white walkers were controlled by just a dude, like just this king of the white walkers. Oh, is that what happens?

I haven't seen that in the show. Sorry. In the TV show, there's like, I don't know, in the books, I don't believe there was ever any indication of this. But in the TV show, there's just like a king of the white walkers and they kill him and all the white walkers disappear. And it's like, well, that was, that was lame. So I like it when it's like, I like it when instead of there being a person that you can defeat, it's just a lot of creatures crawling around

and then they're not fast, but they might overwhelm you because there's so many of them and you're going to get tired. My pushback is I like when the person controlling them is not doing a very good job, IE reanimator. Yes, well, that's true. I mean, that is kind of like the center of the Venn diagram where they're being controlled but there's still a chaotic force, yeah. This next letter is from Mom. The best of worst of the zombie movies is Deanim, where he fails to get the zombies back to life.

Yeah. Yeah, it's just a bunch of static shots of corpses on gurneys. Yeah. And my favorite, actually, my favorite one is Deanimator, the one about the scientist created Dan. Oh. I call him Dan. This is from...

Using cutting edge genetic science. He was able to fertilize an egg, which eventually gestated it to Dan. Well, I wouldn't just call my dad, my creator, if I was literally, anyway. No, that's true. You have two creators. You have two creators. At three, if you count God. Let's give my mom the credit or the blame, depending on how you feel about the things I

said earlier about Merkent. This is Romanti Lasting with Held, who writes, hello, peaches. I just saw Henry VIII in beautiful, oh sorry, I didn't, sorry, I said it wrong. I also saw Henry VIII in beautiful Ashland. Oh really? Perhaps around the same time as Elliot, we got cheap seats at a 90 degree angle from the stage, which let us see a lot of theater craft,

we wouldn't have otherwise. Also saw just how far the spittle of the actors projected, which is less fun in retrospect. It occurred to me, This is where we disagree. It occurred to me that that sort of look behind the scenes is very controlled in movies appearing as special features or commentary tracks. If you could have that kind of behind the scenes perspective on any movie, which would

be your's Monte last name withheld. When I said this to you guys, I kind of opened it up to just be like, you know, if you had sort of a full access backstage, like if you could, you could roam around, whatever, however you wanna take it. But I don't know, what do you think? I gotta think about this because I forgot. I was gonna ask you this question.

Well, so what I'm gonna say is, this is I think under the influence of, I've been listening to a lot of episodes of the March Brothers Council podcast, which is a great podcast by the March Brothers. And they've really put this, something they talk about a lot is wanting to see how they put their work together and want to see what it's like when they're on stage and things like that. And it's really put this excitement in me over the idea that I will never have fulfilled

because these sources don't exist. What would it be like to be on set seeing the Marks Brothers creating a movie and kind of crafting that material, but especially in their early movies when this was a new thing for them and they were coming off of this big Broadway success and they were really at the top of their game in terms of being innovative and exciting comedy figures. And it dovetails with, I don't know if you guys watched Get Back, the Peter Jackson, speaking of Peter Jackson again, the Peter Jackson Beatles mini series. But I really loved it.

But it would mean, but I wanted that kind of nonstop kind of fly on the wall access to exactly the same thing to the Marx brothers. I want to see what it was like to be around them when they're working. And I remember when it was over, I was talking to my wife about it. And I was like, I want to see that for the Marx brothers. I want to see that for like Marvel in the 1960s and just watching what it was like for those people to work together on these things. So I really wish I could have just kind of like hung around and watched the Marx brothers doing, you know, coconuts or animal coconuts or animal crackers or one of their early movies. You know, having thought like the thing that comes to mind

from what you said just now is I would like to see the Muppet movie where there's a combination of those performers, those special performers with these characters I love seeing them, how they operate, how they would talk to each other as the characters. You see that it takes very funny, just like them staying character goofing around, but also just the technical challenge of how do they do these various things? How do you set up a movie? I do make a frog ride a bicycle that does all puppets.

Yeah, and I think that's part of the interest of it. This wouldn't be my choice, but I think that I thought of it because of the theatricality of it, something like Russian arc where they're like, let's do it all in one take, being on the side and be like, okay, well, what goes into that, you know? So that you can sneeze during the first and second takes and they're like, all right, we're 95 minutes into the movie. I guess we got to go back to one. Yeah. You know what I thought? Yeah, I mean, I think mine is is pretty obvious. I'm going to bring bring up our old pal Peter Jackson again and say the

Lord of the Rings movies. Oh, what I wouldn't give to have been in Middle Earth during that time. I wouldn't give to have been in Middle-Earth during that time. It just obviously there's a ton of behind-the-scenes footage on the extended version discs, which I'm assuming are still in some of the, I don't know if in the various physical media, they still package it with all that, but all the behind-the-scenes stuff so cool and like, obviously, it looks like it was hard, but so much stuff was like built for it and there were so many extras, many of whom were not treated very well and that's too bad. But yeah, there's just like, there's something kind of special about that movie because

it's obviously something that, you know, we're not going to get a movie made like that anymore. No. And similarly, combining that with Dan's Muppet thing, I hadn't thought about this for it, but to be on the set of the Dark Crystal would have been. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Wow. To see them, to see them, to see them operating those puppets, see them like, see people in those costumes and make it walking around and just live in that world for a little bit would be super exciting. And watching, and watching people problem solve and work around and figure out the way to make those things

happen. You got to assume not every garrison worked every time. No. No. So let's do the last thing. We usually on the show which is recommend things. Now, normally, again, if the strike wasn't going on, we would recommend maybe new movies or any movies that we'd seen. But now we're opening up recommendations to just sort of whatever, to not be promoting maybe stuff we don't want to. At this time, I'm going to recommend a book. It's like a movie in your mind. It's like a movie in your mind. Well, you know what, if you're not watching movies, maybe because of the strike, maybe read about them. The book I wanted to recommend was Camera Man,

Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the invention of the 20th century. I had had this book on my Amazon wish list for a long time, and then the blank check, Buster Keaton, episode that had Dana Stephens on inspired me to be like, you know what? No, it's gonna buy me this. At least not anytime soon. I'll get it. I'll read it. And I'll like it. It's, you know, Dana Stephens has been a lifelong fan of Buster Keaton.

She did a lot of amazing research and to not just sort of the story of his life, but about how his life intersected with the technical changes of just the world in general and movie making in particular. And it's just a really engaging thing to read if you have any interest in that topic. Last time I recommended tank tops, but unfortunately today, I think I'm actually gonna recommend a movie. I hope that's okay.

I'm gonna recommend an older movie. I'm gonna recommend watching some newer movies made me want to go back and rewatch the films of Brian De Palma, a filmmaker who I'd seen bits here and there, but I feel like there's large portions of his filmography I hadn't really explored. So I went back and watched Dressed to Kill, which is a very sleazy New York thriller featuring Michael Cain. And it's like a, it's like a great, like sleazy, gross, gyalo thriller that is, yeah, I mean, it has such a sense of place. And it also is like, grimey in a way that,

you know, you're not going to, you're not going to see anymore because it certainly doesn't deal with issues of mental health or yeah or or or or or or I did gender identity gender identity. Yeah, it's not sensitive. It's not sensitive. Um, but it's it's beautifully made and it's it's a it's a good thriller. Yeah Dristakill and I'm also going to recommend a movie. I'm going to recommend an old movie, but an even older movie you've been still recommended. I'm going to recommend a comedy from 1934 that's called Sing and Like It. And it's a very goofy movie.

This is very much the second half of a double bill most likely because the big stars in it are Zezou Pits, Nat Pendleton, Pearl Kelton, Edward Everett Horton, the romantic interest of the of the main female lead is John Quillin, who Dan would know best as the prisoner in his girlfriend Friday that they're hiding in a desk. The production for You Sky. But it's the story. Zezou Pits plays a woman who works in a bank, but is singing a song about loving your mother in a in the bank amateur talent show, a gangster over here's her in the middle of a heist, the gangster, a gangster over here is her singing it and become so obsessed with this song and bringing it to a larger audience that he essentially hijacks the production of a Broadway show and forces them

through threats to include her and make her the star. And I especially want to highlight the actor Ned Sparks, who is just a deadpan gangster type that he was in a lot of 30s movies, but he's just very funny. And everything he says, he's always like around it. He has a cigar in his mouth. And he's always like, yeah, I'll say like anyway, that's his tone every time. But I think it's hilarious. I'll will warn you. There is one joke in the movie about the gangster giving his girlfriend two black eyes. That joke did not go over well with me when I was watching it.

But otherwise, it's just a really funny movie. There's a lot of funny just back and forth, Reparté. It's super silly. And by the end of it, it has barely held together as a film. It's less than an hour and 20 minutes long. But it's very fun. It's called Sing and Like It. And I saw it on the Criterion channel. So it may still be available there. Well, that's it for this episode. As always, check out the website, flophousepodcast.com. If you're interested in flop TV, there's links there. You'd also just go directly,

what is it? Theflophouse.simpletics.com. If you go to theflophouse.simpletics.com. Our next episode is coming up on again, you have one week to watch our last episode. Our next episode comes out September 9th and we're doing the cool world. world. I'm really forward to that. But yeah, if you can't remember that, just go to our website. There'll be links there too. Thank you to Alex Smith, our producer for all the great work he does. He goes by the name Howell Dottie on various socials. He has his own podcast, FastTrack, which is very good. You want to check that out, if you want to go over to maximumfund.org, our podcast network.

There are a lot of other great shows on the network. I'm sure you would find something else that you liked. If you give them a sample, thank you for listening. You know what? The only way we can really grow the show, honestly, is through you. So if you know people who are just rare and to listen to funny podcasts about movies,

maybe recommend us to them. Leave us a review on iTunes or elsewhere, a positive one please, that would be nice. And keep being new, you know. You're good. And just keep on trucking, you know? If you're a bummer, do you use a change? Yeah, if you drive a truck, keep on trucking, whatever you do, keep on doing it,

if it's not hurting people. Yeah, if it's murder, don't keep on trying to self-merder. Stop murdering. Stop murdering. If you're hitting people with a truck and you're like, I'm maximum overdrive, don't keep on trucking. Also, because the maximum overdrive, there are no drivers in those trucks, the trucks that you're hitting people with a truck and you're like, I'm maximum overdrive, don't keep on truck and also because of the maximum overdrive, there are no drivers in those trucks. The trucks are too evil.

The green goblin with the villain in that from what I recall. Well, the green goblin's truck. Anyway, thank you for listening. For the flop house, I've been Dan McCoy. I've been Stewart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kaelin. Bye. I've been Stewart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kaelin. Bye! Let's do a count off, count off, let's count it off, count it off, let's count it off, let's count it off, let's count it off, count it down, count it up, count it round, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, count it, counting bow, counting snout, counting.

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