The Flop House - Ep.#444 - Here

Episode Date: February 15, 2025

A lot of stuff happened... HERE. Well. Not that much stuff, actually. Like, six couples lived here. Most of them were pretty boring. But at one point there were dinosaurs! That's pretty cool, right? Anyway, enjoy our discussion of the latest installment in Robert Zemeckis's inexplicable slide from "can do no wrong" to "can do ... wrong!"There’s been SO MUCH DEMAND for FlopTV that — you know what? — we’re going to leave episodes up for an extra two weeks, so that late buyers can still have the time to check out the shows (and that means one last chance to snag sometickets)! Just be sure to watch before MIDNIGHT (eastern time) on March 19!Wikipedia page for HereRecommended in this episode:Dan: Mutant Hunt (1987), Black Tight Killers (1966)Stu: La chimera (2023)Elliott: Juror #2 (2024)Go to Squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, go to www.squarespace.com/FLOP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com/FLOP today.  Pizza Roles is launching February 2025! Search Pizza Roles R-O-L-E-S on Kickstarter now!

Hi, Floppers. Before we start this episode, I just wanted to remind you we are in the middle of FlopTV Season 2. That's right, the one-hour internet televised Flophouse TV show is here for you the first Saturday of every month through February. Just go to theflophouse.simpleTix.com and get your tickets or season pass for this all-new Flophouse TV stuff. For covering movies we've never covered before, we've got video segments, it's amazing. Just go to theflophouse.simpleTix.com for Flop TV Season 2. This time, it's personal. On this episode, we discuss here. Where? Here. Where? Here. Okay. I wonder what it was about that third one that really, that Stuart understood finally. Hey everyone and welcome to the Flophouse, I'm Dan McCoy. Hey Dan McCoy, it's me, Stuart Wellington, your pal.

Hey me, Stuart Wellington, your pal. It's me, your guys' other friend and the third co-host of this show, Elliot Kalin. Well, we've all established who we are and what our deal is. Relationship, dynamic. We know what Stewart's deal is. He's Dan's friend. We know that when my deal is, I'm your, both your friends. But Dan, we don't know what your deal is.

Oh, I'm both of your friends. No, interesting. I am both of your friends. I'm two people in one. No, that's my thing, being two people's friend. So you got to find a new thing. I see, okay. You got to work on a new one. Maybe you gotta find anything. Okay, you know we're gonna new one maybe

Maybe you're like a drifter on the run. Yeah, we're like a salty old sea captain. Who's also gonna heroin addiction. Oh Interesting. It's I mean, I guess he would have ready access to heroin since he's riding the high seat So what do we do on this podcast? Well, apparently we add flavor to my life but also it's a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it. A movie that either critics or audience rejected or both audiences rather and or I could say audience critics or audience. I could be very snooty about it.

This sounds like the best way to use the time and we're already late with our recording. We had some technical difficulties before this show started. And so this show I'm telling I'm pulling an Elliot and the less time there is, the more I want to stretch out. Yeah. Yeah, we talk about bad movies and this one is by Robert Zemeckis, a man you might know him. That's Bobby Z. Robert Zemeckis a man you might know him. That's Bobby Z He's been cranking out hits banger after banger Beowulf Polar Express

What was that not crash flight? Sorry, you're you're you are for humorous effect, of course focusing on his more recent efforts This is a direction that I genuinely loved during the first half of his career and then it's been a series of disappointments. Unfortunately, he became more machine than man at a certain point. Romancing the Stone, awesome Back to the Future, who framed Roger Rabbit. Wonderful. I mean, like I'm a big defender of... I think Death Becomes is very funny. There was a story in one of the New York papers

about how there's a big push to get Forrest Gump declared as the number one best movie, American movie of all time. By who? Thoughts. Who's pushing this? By the movie board. I don't fucking know. Whoever's reading the newspaper.

By Forrest Fump. It's probably some dumb ass fucking Instagram account. And I'm not even one of those people who outright hates Forrest Gump, but it's a solid movie. Why would you hate him, dude? He's just like a nice guy. Yeah, that's true, he doesn't mean any harm. It's really a real solid middle movie,

solid middle movie. But so Robert Zemeckis, yeah, he's had a few really, like, who framed Roger Rabbit? We just watched it again not too long ago at my house. That's an amazing movie. That's had a few really like who frame Roger Rabbit. We just watched again not too long ago my house That's an amazing movie. That's an amazing incredible, but he's also yeah lately. He's gotten really into technology and Making movies that are more around what can I do with this tech than necessarily with that about? You know well strong storytelling. Let's say

You know, I feel like in some ways we're getting ahead of ourselves But on another way, you mean we're telling this out of order much like the movie here You've given me the opening to say that one of the things I think is a big problem this movie Which is we can we'll say up front the conceit of the movie is it's all sort of from it's a stationary camera from the same angle You know over decades and centuries, the people who live in this area here, who lived here. And Dan, even for you to further, I just wanna say,

I was, when I saw the trailer for this movie, I was genuinely really intrigued by this movie. This movie is based on a comic story by Richard McGuire that I love. I've loved it for years. I think I saw it in a, it was in a collection anthology of either things from the magazine Raw or just like Best of comics, I don't remember.

And it was originally like an eight page story. Raw was the inspiration for the French film, right? Yeah, for both the French film and also for the WWE show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it was, yeah, Art Spiegelman and François Moulin, they were like, how we gotta impact the wrestling world some way. And it's a great short comic that he then,

many years later, expanded into a full length book. I love that book, I love that comic. With the conceit being, you are always looking at the same geographical physical space, but there are different panels within panels that show you what was happening in that space at different periods in time. And it starts out saying like,

here's what it was like in 1957, here's what it was like in 1982, here's what it was like in 1973, with panels kind of having those times of happen. Is there like a little Scott McCloud narrator telling you all this shit? No, there is not. The panels are labeled with the year,

but that's the extent of the narration. And otherwise, and it's really, it's not even really telling full stories, so you can kind of glimpse stories between the panels. It's just this space a lot of eventually There's a dinosaur walking through, you know Ben Franklin's house is nearby or whatever, but like there's no there's no there's not really narrative It's more an exploration of space and I love the book of it So when I saw they're making a movie, I was like this can be a hard movie to make but I'm intrigued by what they're gonna Do but I will loving this book

so before Let's return to the yeah Yeah, but that digression setting up what the movie was based on no no no It just looked like Stuart maybe was gonna then delay the payoff even further and I'm I could see why That would make a great Why that would make a great comic, but I think what you're going to say is because like it plays to the existing like, you know, I mean, I guess there's, you know, obviously there's a frame to a screen as well, but like it plays to the existing nature of comics, which is a frame that is stationary, you know, you can see the glimpses.

Whereas you know, what I like about a movie camera is it moves around. It's right there in the name. But what I wanted to say was like off of the it stands for can automate go on my extra interesting the name didn't stand for move recording. Yeah. Apparatusording. Yeah. Apparatus. Apparatus. Yeah, wow, yeah. I forgot what it stood for at the end there,

and of course you jumped in. But, you say that about the technical stuff. The thing is, someka seems to be approaching this as a technical challenge, and this strikes me as exactly the wrong thing to do with this story. It should be a dramatic challenge. How do we make this compelling without a moving camera?

Like what do we do? Like, and he is doing the most glossy, goofy ass way of doing this, I feel like. He has essentially made a movie that feels like a cross between a play. The characters in it talk like they're in a play. Well, here's the room. You know, Harry just came back from the war,

took a bullet. Yeah, my husband lost in the Pacific. A lot of women losing their men these days. They sure are. Everyone has to talk louder and it echoes because they're in this one room far from the camera and it feels like a play. It's a cross between that and a movie you would see

at a museum that's kind of trying to get across Here's how people lived back in olden times You know thing is like the more if it was more like a play I think I would like it better though. Like if it really played to the artificiality of the conceit, I think that would be Better than having like I don't know. It's like now we're gonna see the whole history. We're gonna put some lifelike CGI indigenous people's like running around. Well, and now we're gonna, you know, have all these like fancy like CGI backgrounds, like just get a green screen for God's sake for this thing. That's not

what he did have a room, you know, we should also mention we just mentioned that the the de aging technology in this is AI based agent de aging technology. so it could be done in real time Don't love that not a big not a big AI guy myself my love talker is this And before Stuart talks I'm gonna interrupt again to say that Dan also It's this big glossy story, but it also is Robert Zemeckis falling back on the thing that I think he loves to do, which is here's another baby boomer life story. Great. Oh, they saw the Beatles on TV. Oh, someone fought in Vietnam.

I've heard I've seen this story, Robert Zemeckis. It was called Forest Gump. Stuart, you're turn. Dan, you don't talk now. Stuart's turn. It is a huge bummer than, okay. Oh, it is a huge bummer too. Yeah, I mean, we are talking about how, obviously, a story like this that's experimental or it tries to explain itself

or it tries to be told in an experimental way, obviously, would work better in comics. For some reason, this fixed perspective made me think of Alan Moore's Providence, which would use that fixed perspective to horror effect, whereas in many ways this movie does make me feel elements of horror, like I do feel trapped in the movie.

Especially because you watched it twice. It's less that you're trapped with a sexually ravenous elder being or deep one. Yes, yes. More like I am Rudolph Van Richten trapped in the bleak house in Ravenloft. Okay, so are we, yeah, I mean, I feel like my general notes, we've touched on a bunch of the things

that we've already touched on a lot of them. I didn't realize the de-aging technology was AI-driven. Well, I guess that's another example of AI looking like dog shit and guess that's another example of AI looking like dog shit and being the antithesis of art. Let me clarify something about that because I do think it's interesting how like, the first time I saw AI Tom Hanks,

I didn't know it was AI, but like the first time I saw DH. And it's not AI fully CGI characters. It's just they apparently, from what I read, they used a program that could, in real time, de-age their image. So they're acting on the sound stage, and what the image coming into the cameras

is an AI smoothed out young-aged version. Look, I mean, apologies, I don't know the way that this works, whether this is putting a lot of people out of work, or in some cases, it's a case where the artists who do these things are glad to have a new technology. It could be. It's possible. This sort of like technological innovation offends me less than like being like, hey, you know what you want to do is like read stuff that is just like culled from other stuff that we've reconfigured together.

And it's like, well, no, that we want new human stories that speak to human desires. Uh, unlike here, but to get back to the DH Tom Hanks, the first time I saw him, I'm like, Oh, that's a pretty good effect. And then the problem was throughout the rest of the movie, unless he was literally then like old man, Tom Hanks, I was unclear about how old Tom Hanks was supposed to be at any time, because it was not good at like distinguishing, you know, between like even like 17 and 30. Yeah, from the age of 17 to the age of about 50, he looks kind of the same. I will say this for one, it looks better than young man Robert De Niro in the Irishman, a better movie

where he does seem like an old man with dark hair. Stewart is shaking his head. He loves it. No, no, I love that shit. Why don't you fucking curve some of that guy? man Robert De Niro in the Irishman, a better movie where he does seem like an old man with dark hair. Stewart is shaking his head, he loves it. No, no, no, I love that shit. When he's fucking curb stomping that guy, the oldest way possible. You can tell he doesn't have a full range of motion in his hips when he's curb stomping it. But also-

His back's really going to kill him the next day. I think this AI, honey, you can't even get off the couch? Nah, I was curb stomping a guy yesterday. I'm paying for it now. Oh, you know what the doctor said about curb stomping. You can't do that anymore. Yeah, I got to do my work. I gotta do my work.

So the- Curb stomping's part of painting houses, guys. It's essential. True, the other thing is that I feel like this, the AI work was really served well, by the way. I watched this movie, which was on an iPad while I was doing the dishes. So my eyes weren't always on the screen, and I would be like, oh, this looks pretty good.

And there'd be times when Tom Hanks or another character would get really close to the character to the camera, mainly Tom Hanks, his character, when he gets close to the camera and it would suddenly be like, oh, that's not. Yeah, that's not a fully real face that I'm looking at there. A couple of other notes. There is in addition to that, there is a pretty good CGI baby getting knocked off a couch. That was a good laugh. That was a fun laugh and farther than I thought they were going to go.

That baby just falling face first on the couch. Okay. And as you said, this is a fixed perspective. We are, the majority of the story is going to take place in a house, a single house. Like house two. Yep, within the confines of this house, we see, just like to give you an overview, we see a wedding, a funeral, a birth, a death, and basically one of every major American holiday. The invention of a lazy boy chair. Yep, that's true.

Can we, I just want to say, you know, there's various stories that we see, we glimpse throughout this. Oh yeah, we're going gonna touch on all of them. And some of them we come back to more than others. Exhaustively. But I think the clear winner is the Lazy Boy Couple, who are the only people who have any verve and likeability in this film.

The only ones with a happy ending, but also the ones that are so totally disconnected from almost every other story. They're the only ones that would show up just dancing to 20s music and I'd be like, 30s music and I'd be like, what, I'm not quite sure Why I'm watching this? I know but they seem cool

Yeah, the lead from the minx gets to be on the other side of the camera I like the inventor guy. I think his outfits go fucking hard as hell. Oh sure well love that shit Okay, they're very sexual couple in a way that the other couples are not that we see in this yeah So yep, as we said, it's a fixed perspective, focusing on an area that is, I guess, Philadelphia? Philadelphia? I mean, Ben Franklin's house was there. It's technically Ben Franklin's son's house.

He was in, which I think he lived in New York state. So I think it might be somewhere in New York, but I could be wrong about that. I saw a note that said potentially Perth Amboy. Yeah, could be. Could be in New Jersey. Actually Perth Amboy makes sense, yeah. So there's also the movie opens

with a little bit of a montage and then it goes all the way back to the dawn of time. We have dawn of time, we have dinosaurs, and then we get to see the meteor striking the earth that kills the dinosaurs. Didn't realize that happened in New Jersey. Yeah, that's the thing. That explains a lot about New Jersey, if you ask me.

That was one of those moments where I was like, I know it's like, again, the comic book does things a little differently. It kind of increases the amount of time as it goes on. So to kind of surprise you with just how far the conceit's gonna go, this does the opposite, where it kind of shows you some rooms and then it goes back to the dawn of time, which is, I feel like, takes a little bit

of the thrill out of it, but also like, it's one of those things where it's like, part of the fun of it is also seeing like, a dinosaur moment that is not a historic moment, that this may be because a story made out of the everyday moments. So to have that meteor strike is a bit of an overkill. I know it looks cool, but also like,

I was immediately, I was like, Bobby Z, that took place in Mexico. Like, unless this story takes place in Mexico, you cannot rewrite where the asteroid hit that killed the dinosaurs. Like, come on guys, what are you doing? Maybe it was like a friend of the original asteroid. Okay, so-

It's also, I mean, it is possible the asteroid maybe broke up in the atmosphere, the main chunk hit in the Yucatan, and then some smaller particle decided to go to Perth Amboy to see if they had opened the movie theater there that I used to go to when I was a kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's trying to make its way to Rutz Hut, unfortunately didn't make it all the way there.

No. Rutz Hut, known for their hot dogs. Yes, millions of years too early, yeah. So this meteor, of course, ushers in ice age. Everything is going super duper fast. It's super sped up. I thought you were like, everything's going super well. Everything's going super well in the world

and on this podcast. Okay, we see like a forest primeval and then we see some indigenous people hunting and then, and of course around now we see a hummingbird that will show up at the very end of the movie, this eternal hummingbird character, the prisoner of London or whatever that guy is. What's that guy, no, he's trapped in London forever.

I think it's the prisoner of London, right? Yeah, he can travel through time, but he can't leave London, yeah. Yeah, if I'm right, everybody write in, tell Dan that Stuart's right again. Chuck another one, put another one in the scoreboard. I don't remember what this is in reference to. Okay, so then we go to Colonial Times,

we see a big manor house being built, and then we see the building of the house that we will then spend the rest of our time at, the place we are trapped at for the next hour and a half. The here, yeah. Okay. Like Jigsaw. So there, basically.

So there's a bunch of- Either you have to cut off your own leg and you gotta watch this Robert Zemeckis movie. Oh, jigsaw, oof, oof. I don't wanna play a little game. So there is one main story. There's a story of one family that seems to take the majority of the movie.

But there's a number of side stories that intersect. And while the movie isn't told linearly, each side story seems to follow a relatively, all the stories seem to follow a linear path, even though they're, you know, they're- They're more or less- They're jumping back and forth, I think. But it's not so radical that you're like,

it's clearly told in a way where it's jumping a little bit, but it is mostly a forward momentum through time for you. Yes, and trying to show connections between the different experiences in this space. So just to touch on these side stories, there's a young indigenous couple. At one point, they exchange jewelry, they get married, they have a baby, she dies, we have a funeral,

and then he mourns her again. Very funny aging situation. He looks very funny. This elderly native guy who just looks like a normal guy with a wrinkly face. Elderly makeup, yeah. Like he's one of the kids from Akira. Right before the shot, they gave him like a real strong prune

or like a real strong lemon. Just puckered up, yeah. Oh, I thought you meant they had him soaking in that for a long time. That's what they did. Now we're going, of course, we're going through these side stories chronologically, although again, in the movie, they're all sprinkled throughout. We have William Franklin, the illegitimate son of Ben Franklin, who's complaining about his father and his politics.

He is a British sympathizer. There's a sequence where a kid throws an apple, basically the camera, and it explodes all over him, it's pretty funny. That storyline just basically shows little bits of the Revolutionary War. We have a- There's a part at the end, I have to mention this though, where a soldier rides up

and there's a bunch of continental soldiers there and a close rise up and he goes, news from general, a dispatch from general Washington, the British have surrendered, the war is over and the other soldiers Could not give less of a shit and what they do have no reaction to it and one of them just goes what now? It's like and then it cuts to you know America 200 years later something but that was so funny I was like I I got to imagine that the soldiers had more of a reaction to learning the war was over and they had one But just the sense of like Okay another damn thing

Let me just change a battle in my schedule for next week to no battle Get sort of pressed when I don't have anything to do. I just like having someone look forward to even if it's a battle Okay, so I have limited experience with winning wars, but I seem to remember that when we won World War II, it seemed like people were excited. There's confetti, there's a kiss. Yeah, at least one, yeah. Yeah, at least one.

We have a, one of the side stories is a budding pilot, an enthusiastic airplane pilot, and his nagging wife, whose trait is that she has a child and doesn't want him to be flying. He, of course, does not die from flying his plane disconnectically. No, he dies of influenza. Yeah, this is spot like-

This was so funny to me, the way this was handled. He is lying in his casket with a pilot's cap on, with goggles on it. All the flowers are in the shapes of planes and propellers. And there's two people with their backs to the camera. And he's like, oh, she was really mad about it. Da da da da. And she says, what's weird is that you see his wife,

his widow before the funeral saying, how could you let this happen or something like that? Which implies again, that it's a flying accident. She's been attacking his flying hobby the whole time. And you see the two of them, and he goes, oh, I'm surprised they had an open funeral. Usually there's, which implies, again, it's a flying accident. She's been attacking his flying hobby the whole time. And you see the two, and then he goes, oh, I'm surprised they had an open funeral. Usually there's, even open casket, usually there's not much of the body after a plane crash.

It wasn't a plane crash that killed him. And he turns, you see they're both wearing masks. It was influenza. And it's like, so you're just learning this at the funeral? Do you not know them well? But also the sudden reveal of the masks, I thought was so funny. whole thing was so funny this plot like, you know Not to make a bad plain pun, but it sputters out because it's just like okay

it's like all just build to this punch line that is Obviously meant to be like, you know, it's like it's like kovat, you know Saying anything like it's not saying anything about anything No, I mean not to maybe I'm just talking tough cuz I'm with my boys But the whole movie isn't saying what I would say is if my wife was so against me flying a plane around That she would be constantly complaining about it. If that's my favorite thing to do in the world. I'd get a new wife dog Yeah, okay, so we we what her wife's Michelle Dockery though do in the world? I'd get a new wife dog. Go fly up and find a martial wife or something. Wow. Yeah. OK, so we...

What if your wife's Michelle Dockery though? I get... Let me change my story. Run the numbers on that one. Yeah. OK, so the next one, of course, is, as we said, the Bohemian couple, where she is kind of a flapper and he's an inventor and he invents the lazy boy. Of course, check the history books. This guy did not invent the lazy boy.

Recliners that existed for a long time. Yes, and her entire job seems to be to hang around the house in her underwear and a robe and dance to the radio. And his job is to invent things in an undershirt and slacks as suit pants. And I was like, there is nothing about these people's lives that does not involve dancing to the radio, taking dirty pictures of each other or inventing the lazy boy. It is, they have no connection with any other storyline.

Otherwise, it's just so funny to me that they're like, all right, fresh air and otherwise stale. We got to get across the breadth of the American experience over millions of years. Well, we got to get the invention of the lazy boy in there. There's sort of like a slob Nick and Nora Charles without even the detecting. I can see that. Without the detecting, one of the two main things about Nick and Nora.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, and then we flash forward. There is a couple with a teenage son and they have a housekeeper and they deal with COVID and their housekeeper of course dies of COVID and then they move out. Those are the sides to it, I miss any. This is the couple that like is clearly like,

well, oh God, we don't have any black people in this movie. We should have one family be black and give them nothing. Yeah. It doesn't help when the plot line is nothing. There's the one scene where they are explaining It doesn't help when the hotline is nothing. There's the one scene where they are explaining to their teenage son, here's how you handle being stopped at a traffic stop

by a police officer. And it feels like a very ham handed exactly way of being like, oh yeah, the black experience. Oh boy, you better believe that's part of the American story. Gotta put some of that in there. And I will say in a better movie, I would have been like, this is an interesting scene

because this is something interesting scene because it, this is something none of the other families have to deal with. And I wish that that, I would just wish it was at stronger movies that that moment would have hit a little harder. Well, the problem is like, like it's clear that that whole family is in there just for that moment. They don't give them anything else of significance. They've otherwise no personality whatsoever.

And bury their housekeeper, Raquel. And for the housekeeper to have a moment where she can no longer smell, and then the next time we see her, she's dead. And then they both turn to the camera wearing masks. That's great. Okay, but the bulk of the story... But not masks like in the Twilight Zone episode, masks, where they're like the mask to form their faces or anything.

Or like masks from the cartoon show, Mask, where they have like robot masks. And their vehicles change into other vehicles, yeah. Or like masks from the cartoon show Mask, where they have like robot masks. Okay, so- And their vehicles change into other vehicles, yeah. Exactly, so the bulk of the story focuses on, bulk of the movie focuses on the story of the young family. We are introduced to- Who are very old by the end of it. That's true, it seems almost ironic.

The first couple we meet is Al and Rose. Al is recently back from World War II, played by Paul Bettany. He begins by yelling a lot, which doesn't help the feel of watching a bad play, a bad stage play. Yeah. Yeah. Although I will, I mean, it is heightened,

a lot of the stuff he's doing, especially when he's in rooms by himself, essentially, like, monologuing. But for me, and this is a credit to how much I like Paul Bettany, I think, like as much as I liked anything in the movie, I'm like, well, you know, like this, this is like this feels like a guy and I have feelings about what's happening when I don't have feelings about other characters, you know. Certainly he's the one I feel like it's partly the story they give him, which has a lot more depth to it

than some of the other ones, in that as he's a veteran, he spends decades of his life dealing with the frustration and trauma of that, and he doesn't kind of get over it until after his wife dies, essentially. And he has an alcohol problem and he deals with it. He has so much more going on in his story. He doesn't. I mean, there's literally a scene where he realizes You know and and like and he has an alcohol problem and he deals with like he has so much more going on I mean, it's literally a scene where he he realizes that he has to stop and he takes all the bottles out You know, it does pull himself together before his wife dies because she's like she has it

But he but it there is a lot of like talking really loud for person Who's in a movie rather than in a play? But I agree I did feel by the end of it that I thought Paul Bettany had come out kind of on the strong end. Yeah, he's not too bad. Yeah. Okay, so they buy the house, despite it being a little more expensive

than they expected, because Rose is pregnant. Al takes a sales job, but he is continually dissatisfied. He's passed over for promotion. He ends up getting laid off and has to find a different sales job. And he develops a pretty severe drinking problem. He is almost never not drinking in this movie. Like he's always, like every single scene with him

for a long section of it, he has a drink in his hand. And Dan McCoy. He is also a stand-in for like, you know, like I'm gonna jump ahead to sort of a more general critique of the movie. Like part of the problem with this movie is the characters are meant to ahead to sort of a more general critique of the movie like part of the problem this movie is the the characters are meant to be such sort of like broad stand-ins for like swaths of American life and They don't generate, you know any like personality of their own and he is very much like the stand-in of like, you know This greatest generation like the the dad of our boomer hero who had war trauma, had a drinking problem,

was not able to be nice to his family. He's always yelling, god damn it, at his kids. Yeah, especially when his CGI kid gets knocked off a couch. But I think that's a major issue with the movie, Dan. You're right, is that these characters are supposed to be so universal in a certain type that they fail to really register as individual people. And it'd be more interesting as individual,

in the way that that lazy boy couple, I'm not quite sure what type they're supposed to be except like free living, 20s, 30s, I mean, it's like 1940 by the time they leave that house, but there is something so, they don't have much character either, but it's so specific, they're always in their underwear, he's inventing the Lazy Boy chair,

as ridiculous as I find it, it's so specific that it's better. They feel like characters from an episode of Ghosts, either the British or American version. I can see that. Okay, so they end up having three children together. Their eldest is Richard, who has an artistic bent That will eventually be played by Tom Hanks. There is a Eventually be played by Tom Hanks. Yeah

Yeah, yeah, it's like a in your space fell What was that movie we watched where people were rep? It was like Helen Mirren and stuff were representing like symbolic aspects of life called Herman's head Helen Marin and stuff are representing like symbolic aspects of life. Called Herman's head. That's what it was, that's right. So... That's right, because I remembered it mostly by its Spanish name, La Cabeza de Hermón.

So there's a really funny moment where teenage Tom Hanks, or Richard in this case, is played by a actor, but is voiced by Tom Hanks, and it is very disorienting. That's the scene where Paul Bettany explains that he's been places, he's traveled all over Pennsylvania and eaten in places you couldn't even imagine. One night he took somebody home to his room. Yeah, I love that. And Tom Hanks is like, why are you telling me this?

I'm like, yes, why are you telling us this? This is the kind of thing dads tell their kids when they reach a certain age. Just happens. There's also a great line there where Tom Hanks is sitting there drawing pictures of the room, the room that we will spend an hour and a half looking at and he's like who would want to look at pictures of this room? I'm like no shit dude. The movie has become self-aware. Say the quiet part loud. There's something that I think is very funny is is that we seem to have a generation of filmmakers who cannot imagine that the audience will be able to buy two different performers playing the same character at different ages.

And this is the same generation, pretty much, that made The Godfather Part II, in which Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando plays the character Marlon Brando played in the previous movie. And it's not like everyone was like, wait, that's not what Marlon Brando played in the previous movie. And it's not like everyone was like, wait, that's not what Marlon Brando looked like when he was young. Like that's, hold on a sec. Like the idea that you would have to dub Tom Hanks' voice

in for a teenage character is so silly to me. Or that you would de-age, or the de-aging Indiana Jones' face in a crystal dial of time or whatever it is. Like the, it just, I couldn't remember the name of it for a second. It just is, I find it very funny that they're like,

audiences are idiots. They can't imagine two people would be the same person. You know? Well that's what, I mean that ties in. Like again, I think that if you'd done this more like a play and concentrated more on like, okay, how via the blocking of characters within the scene are we gonna make this interesting rather than like futz it up with a bunch of digital garbage?

But anyway. But Stuart, you were just about to get to the exciting part of the story. Yeah. Yeah, Richard starts dating Margaret. So Tom Hanks plays Richard, Margaret is played by Rebecca, Rebecca, Robin Wright. Who are you thinking?

I was. Rebecca, right? Obviously. Rebecca Hall. I wish. And of course, this is their long-awaited reunion of Tom Hanks, Robin Wright and Robert Zemeckis who brought us the aforementioned Forrest Gump.

So we're back in Gump Town. Classic back in Gump Town USA. Yep. Not to not to be confused with Forrest Gump 2 Gump Again, the fake movie that they are making in the movie Cecil B. Demented with Kevin Nealon as Forrest Gump, which I thought, Kevin Nealon playing himself as Forrest Gump, and the Forrest Gump stuff in that movie is so funny.

Yeah. I haven't seen it in years, I'm sure it's tasteless. John Waters, come on. Yeah. Okay, so despite being young, they get pregnant. And they- Or just one of them. Yeah, just one of them.

Not both, yeah. Now you said despite being young. Young is when it happens, Stuart. I don't fucking know, man. Your body is keyed to do it when you're young, yeah. Yeah, so they get pregnant. They end up having to move in with Richard's parents, Alan Rose.

They have their daughter Vanessa, who comes into this world in that room, which we're all very excited about. Congratulations. Yeah. Richard gives up his art to get a sales job so he can support his family, but he can never seem to get ahead,

and he also is very risk averse. He doesn't want to ever put his family into a position where they might be hurt or disappointed. But Margaret longs for a life. She longs for doing things and she cannot seem to find that with Richard. And she gets a little bit bitter. She does not want to be, she spends her entire life

basically almost living in her in-law's house. And Richard, here's the thing about him. He wanted to be an artist. He was going to go to art school, but now he can't because he has a family to support. He is so risk-averse. I don't think he'd make a great career as an artist. Because when you're an artist, when you're trying to make a living, it is all risk all the time.

Nothing is ever certain, and you got to be ready to just roll with the punches. And he's not great at that So I wonder if the movie is really saying this guy's the talent But he doesn't have what it takes to survive in the dog eat dog world of the art market cue velvet buzzsaw Mmm. Yeah Okay, Doug E Doug world of the art Okay, so Alan Rose obviously age.

Rose has a stroke. And they, Alan Rose then ended up having to move down to Florida so she can get better care. Vanessa grows up, goes to college. I think at one point she's played by Zsa Zsa Zmeckis. Yes. Daughter or granddaughter? Daughter, I think. Okay, well, forget it. But I could be or granddaughter? Daughter, I think.

I don't remember, I think daughter. Let's check the tape, Dan. I don't have tape of Zemeckis coming out of here. You shouldn't have that. Oh, so you do have tape of her. Disgusting, Dan. My story keeps changing, I'm sorry. Vanessa goes to college, then she goes to law school.

She's the first in her family to go to college. She listens to a lot of music on her headphones too. That's a way that you can get some needle drops on the soundtrack. She does, yeah, that's true. In case you're wondering if Robert Zemeckis was gonna go to his grave without ever including the song Cherry Bomb

in one of his movies, don't worry, he does it in here. I mean, there is a moment where they're listening to Fooled Around and Fell in Love, and I'm like, oh man, this song rules. So there's a brief moment of Stuart being excited. Rose passes away, and then Al hurts himself, so he needs some in-home care, so he has to move back to wherever we're at.

Because they're, maybe the secret is that they're all already dead and this is the purgatory they're in. They can never leave the house for long. That's what I was fucking waiting for. There's some kind of fucking curse. It's just like the Twilight Zone. They're all dolls that live in a doll house

and it turns out they just think they're alive, yeah. So Al needs end home care. His presence of course is kind of overwhelming to them. Margaret tries to make the best of it. She tries a variety of different things to get over her dissatisfaction with her husband and her life. She even brings in her like marriage counselor or whatever, who is of course who is

presented as being a quack. I would argue. I don't know. It's hard to tell. He's because he's given the accoutrement of a quack, I would argue. I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to tell. He's, cause he's given the accoutrement of a quack. He's very precise about his title and his, the initials that go after his name and he has an English accent.

But what he's saying is basically like, you guys shouldn't drag each other down if you're unhappy in this relationship, which is good advice. Which is good advice. No, I mean, you're right. So Margaret ends up leaving shortly after Al dies. I wanna say, just cause like this movie is so,

in a way plot light that I feel like I should sprinkle some more like larger thoughts throughout. Like I found some of these parts like moving but in a way that made me angry at the movie it's not like I wanted to find the moving it's just like that the raw materials are sort of impossible not to like feel something of like material is the is the disappointments of life yeah you can't help yourself from getting older and that that's all, that's the real human experience. So it makes sense.

I was feeling the same thing. I was like, these are real things that everyone has to deal with in their life and that's moving. And this is not the most moving way to present it. You were saying, Dan. Well, yeah, but I would get kind of mad at the movie because I'm like, okay, you're doing this to me

because you're playing with such raw elements, but you're not particularly saying anything. You're just sort of like coming into my brain, rearranging my emotions and then like being like, well, gotta gotta go, you know, without like giving me any sort of like lesson or catharsis. The lesson is that life is all disappointment and eventually you lose your memory and die. Yeah, we'll get there. But to me, it was sort of like the experience of watching. I don't know like a long like Christmas like advertisement for Google or or or film cameras or like something where it's like

They're just trying to associate their product with the idea of like a life lived and so they have like a bunch of generalized like emotional moments. Yeah, so you're saying it's like there was a there was like a Disney ad like that. It was either Disney or Star Wars not too long ago. Where it's just like shots of like kids at different birthdays and parents bonding with their children over Star Wars or whatever. And I remember watching it and finding it very emotional. It's like but it's not because of the product like they're just associating the product with having love and other human beings in your life and getting older.

That's what I'm getting at. Fucking Don Draper. You can elicit tears from a commercial, but I don't feel good about those tears. I think unless it's that commercial about the brother and sister who are definitely having sex in the coffee commercial. That's tears of joy.

That's excitement. Tears out of my wiener. Yeah, I think it's a Maxwell Health commercial. Tears from my wiener. Feels like it should be like Stu's memoir title or like his album. Or his Valens album. Yeah. Or my fucking wedding vass.

So Al dies. He has one final moment where he sees the ghost of his wife walking through the living room. And then, of course, he disappears the living room And then of course he disappears Richard and Margaret kind of reconnect Years like it like he's a force ghost like oh, I know you weren't paying attention to the movie There's a lot of moments where people just fade in and out of reality I think that was the scenes transitioning and not them literally There's nothing in the movie that says that. That's true, that's true.

I can't add explanations that are not part of the, in camera text, that's what Roger Ebert says, yeah. Okay, so Richard starts painting again. He tries to make a play to get Margaret back in his life, but she is not interested. However, she also develops what I'm assuming is Alzheimer's. Yes. And she-

It's very heavily bookmarked because she'll be like, huh, I went to this thing and I forgot why I was there. Isn't that strange? And once that happens more than once in a movie, you know this character is all. That's like when a, anytime a female character barfs in a TV show, I'm like, damn it, she's pregnant. And anytime they cough into a handkerchief

and there's a spot of red You know, they're gonna die. Yeah, this is also heavily foreshadowed by some of the clunkiest writing in the movie where earlier on I think that's gonna get paid off early earlier in the film the daughter had lost her ribbon her like Like first place blue ribbon. Yeah. Yeah. But and she found it. And when they find it in the daughters excited, they say something like, well, that's a moment we're never going to forget.

And I'm like, I don't know that. I mean, it's nice. It's nice that you found it. But I don't think that in real life, I'd be like, now that's that's a keeper for the ages. I mean, you wouldn't say it. No. Yeah. Well, yeah, I might. Yeah, I might think it to myself.

And of course, this is set up later on for this loss of memory. You might say that a better movie would have had them say like, huh, that was funny. Do you think she'll worry about losing that ribbon? Nah, she's not even gonna remember. This isn't the kind of thing you remember.

And then later they'd remember. Instead, they're like, well, yeah, they're like, put it in, well, take that ribbon and haul it up into the rafters, cause this is a moment for the record. Yeah, memory palace. Yeah, you're gonna need this in case your brain ever dissolves, yeah. I would say my favorite earlier moment is when Tom Hanks

comes into the living room with a big thing of McDonald's and he's like, I brought our favorite breakfast. I'm like, oh man, now I'm extra sad. Okay, so he brings, they're selling the house. He's decided to move. He's finally decided to sell the house. He brings Margaret for one last visit. She has lost most of her memory and he is kind of carefully

kind of guiding her through this process of showing her the house that they used to live in and she starts to remember things. And then as she begins to remember things, the camera begins to move, it zooms in and then swirls around. We get to see the rest of the room they're in, which is what I always wished for.

It would be amazing if you saw the other side of the room and there's, which is what I always wished for. When I would see a sitcom. If you saw the other side of the room and there's like a dungeon wall or a laboratory, like something you'd be like, wow, I've seen that before. But the thing that does trigger her remembering is then the ribbon story. Yeah, the ribbon story, yeah, exactly. When they were in this room and the camera turned,

was that a CGI room? It looked like, it didn't look like a real room to me. And I was like, at least, at least show me that. At least show me a real physical space. I don't know. I'm assuming it's all. Nothing in this movie looked real to me. The, and then it like zooms out the window

and we see the rest of Philadelphia, I guess, or wherever. Perth Amboy. Perth Amboy, yep. And then the camera kind of lights atop the manor house that is across the street, and then we see that hummingbird flying to camera, and we're like, that thing's still alive? I was like, this is kind of a nice shot,

a nice way to end it, until that damn digital hummingbird came in to like. If it wasn't a digital hummingbird, because that was one of the few times where I was like, this movie has now inadvertently stumbled into a thought I have a lot, which is about the continuity of kind of like animal species and how the natural world and the human world,

even though one affects the other, they're kind of on different time tracks. The natural world is on such a longer timeline than ours is and the life of a tree encompasses so much time compared to a human life and that kind of stuff So like it was like Zemeckis you almost got into an idea that I can relate to but but he did but it is so CGI And it's like the it feels like the rat at the end of the departed where it's like and get it wink You know continuity history eternal also at that ending we didn't get into it, but I found it, I don't know, perturbing.

It's kind of a desire to like, well, this movie about how a bunch of people had unfulfilled lives is kind of a bummer, even though we slathered it in sentimentality. Like, we'll have her remember this thing at the end, and then she'll be like, yes, like, yes, I remember this place, I love this place. And I, yes, like, yes, I remember this place. I love this place.

And I'm like, no, you didn't love this place. The whole movie was how much you hated this house you wanted to get out. But maybe she realized how much she did love it underneath the thick dollops of hate that she felt. I guess so. I mean, we haven't seen her, the apartment that she, that she moved to, that she can walk to work from.

Maybe that apartment sucks. It may be terrible. Yeah, it might be terrible. And the only good thing about it is that Richie and Al are not there. Yeah. This is not the message the movie's trying to give at all, but it just made me feel like Tom Hanks' character

was trying to trick her into being like, see, we had great times here by bringing up one nice bit of her. We're still married. You still love me. So Dan, I'm curious as to think, because you say it's not the message the movie is trying to get across.

Is the movie trying to get across, as you said earlier, any message other than just life, huh? Well, that's kind of what bothered me. Again, I can see how this might work as a comic. It works so well as a comic. But it's not trying to, it's not hitting you over the head the same. The comic works through hints and small glimpses,

whereas this movie is very much like, I'm sorry, he's literally like, buy a house now? Johnson just put through the biggest tax increase since World War II. And it's like, nobody talks like that. Like, nobody explains like what time they're living in all the time You know, but as a movie Benjamin Button is only three years old at this point

like as a movie like forgive me for sounding like kind of like a like a crank but I Asked that this many years in Meaning to get to it My apologies. Is it because if you don't keep your heart rate up to a certain level, you'll die? Is that what you're like?

Dan, did you have a Hong Kong cocktail? Is that what happened? I did have one. I had a couple. Oh, shit. You can't have just one. Oh, man, okay, I guess Dan's gonna have sex with me. Get out and easy.

On a race track. I saw the trailer and my reaction to it was having not read the book, I'm like, this does not blow my mind. The idea of like, wow, a lot of stuff happened in one place, one unassuming place. That's the way time works. A bunch of stuff happens over time in one place.

Basically, the movie's message is communicated pretty well by any historical plaque Yeah, you see when you're walking down the street even you know, even me standing at a place where something I really care about happened like that's You know, this is where I'm gonna lose Elliott Mr. History, but like even like I loved it when Abraham Lincoln got shot in the head. I love going there. I'm like, damn, what? How can you say that?

No, Mr. History is Elliot's Batman villain. Oh, I wish I'd Mr. History and it's all history related crimes. Yeah. Even if I'm standing at a place that is, something meaningful to me happened that I cared about in the world. I'm like, that's only neat for like a little while.

And then I'm like, well, it's not happening now. I don't get to see it, so. I mean like, you know, about six, seven months ago, my parents sold the house that I grew up in, that I spent the vast majority of my young life in, and they, you know, they lived there for 40 years. And walking through it, I found to be really affecting and moving,

but in like, I don't know, like a weird way that this movie does not capture. Yeah, I mean, like, if it was a matter of personal history, certainly, but like, I don't have that connection to any of the stuff that's going on in the movie, and the movie makes it so generic I think that's the issue partly the genericness of it and also part and I'm gonna again This is my personal axe to grind

I think it's partly the boomer anus of it that I feel like there are very few generations that are as Obsessed with their own personal histories and growing up as at the very least the baby boomers that are involved in the media and tell those stories. And so the idea that like, all right, here's another movie about like, emotionally closed off dad from World War II and his kid has to make a lot of sacrifices to raise a family and we get to see the Beatles

on Ed Sullivan and like, I'm surprised there wasn't a scene where they're watching the moon landing or something like that. And the, it just feels very, the movie feels like it takes for granted how interested you are in that particular slice of history, even with these other ones arranged around it. This baby boomer experience is very much set up as the central experience of the movie. And I think at this point you could get away with that when Forrest Gump came out, but I think you don't, too much time has passed.

Like you can't get away with that quite the same way now. And so it leaves me cold. I will say though, at the very end, like I was genuinely in some ways moved by seeing them very old and having them talk about the past, but it was more in a sense of like, yeah, well, now that I've sat through this whole movie, like I feel like I lived it too.

You know, I saw all those things and now you're talking about them. But it wasn't a, it was, but it felt, you know, somewhat unearned. Or it makes you think of like, in a generic way, like I was saying, like a commercial knife, like, oh, someday I will be doing something like this. And then you're allowed to project yourself on it. But like I have a genuine question, which is, do you think this movie gains anything by like jumping around in time and sometimes going backwards? Because to me, honestly, other than I can understand the appeal of like, oh, you know, we can have all these stories and we can tell them in court

more of an impressionistic way rather than having like a full story. But I feel like any head of emotional steam that could work up is undercut for me by like there's never any like the parallels between the timelines are never like exciting or interesting in such a way. I think that's the thing. I think it's not totally a problem with the format, but the format requires much more precise and powerful content and actual plot and narrative

within that format to do what they wanna do. And like, you look at a movie like Intolerance, the D.D.W. Griffith movie, and that is bouncing around in time between a bunch of different timelines in history, but the narratives all kind of crest at different moments together. They all like reach a climax together. And so you get this feeling of these cycles repeating through time.

I don't mean to praise DW Griffith, but you know, but that but that movie it works that way. Whereas this one, because it feels kind of like how so randomly bouncing around, you don't I agree that you don't get that feeling of like, oh, there's real connection between these things, or we're seeing, except for the fact that everybody dies at the end, in different timelines.

Which you walk away from it being like, oh, okay, so the story of life is the story of disappointment and death. Like, oh, okay, well, thank you. Well, I mean, I feel like something like Oppenheimer bounces around in time quite a bit, and I feel like it manages to work it all together Pretty satisfyingly. Yeah, I think I think it's more you just have to be so careful That's that's one story that you're following about around in time. Whereas like some of the stuff I'm like, yeah

Dan's like why didn't he do something else other than just invent that stupid? I mean like some of the characters in here just feel like padding because like there's nothing to their storylines Yeah, Dan's like, why didn't he do something else other than just invent that stupid I mean like some of the characters in here just feel like padding because like there's nothing to their storylines It's like well, what are you doing here? Why are you in this trying to fly a fucking plane? or even the scenes with the scenes with their daughter were like there's one where she's just like listening on the Walkman and can't won't can't hear that the phone is ringing and another where she and her friend are doing aerobics and The power goes out And it's just one of those things where it's like Yeah, I don't like if this was a movie made up of small kind of the forgotten moments that you wouldn't think about otherwise

That would make sense to me or if it's a movie about the big moments in life that would make sense to me, but instead it's just kind of this mishmash and There's a you're on that in that set locked off frame for so long Then I feel like that turnaround where the camera finally moves should hit you really hard, but it just doesn't, the way that, I was thinking of the, there's that short that 12 Monkeys was based on, what,

La Jette, or whatever, how are it pronounced, La Jette, I don't know, where it's all still images, and then there's the one moment where the guy's looking at the woman that he's fallen in love with in the past and she blinks and you were like, oh, like the sudden shock of movement of motion. And it's handled so beautifully there. And I was like, that was the first thing that came to mind was watching. I was like, Oh, I wish it was more like that. It was more of like a shock of sudden change that that really

affects you. But I think it but I think it all comes down to like, you can have a fancy frame, but the picture inside the frames got to be where the beauty comes from. And yeah I mean that's just like it's not like I would necessarily Need it to be more conventional storytelling, but it does not seem to be Does not have an idea in its head other than Roberts Meckis was like I'd like to try and do a movie where we don't Move the camera, you know I feel like I feel like as a, if I had encountered this movie

when I was like maybe a teenager or maybe early 20s where the like form of it, I would find really interesting. I think I might like it more, but as an adult, I'm like, this isn't enough. This is like, there's just not enough meat to this sandwich. It's all bread and sauces. I think that- And not bread and circuses.

I think the most complimentary way you can say is that I think it's an interesting experiment that does not quite come off. Yeah. Doesn't quite function. We're already there. Let's do final judgements, whether this is a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie you kinda like.

I'm going to say it's a bad bad movie, a bad bad movie or a movie you kind of like, I'm going to say it's a bad bad movie. It kind of like in some ways greatly put me off because it felt like it was like, you know, not done with any particular insight, but it was also like breaking into my like heart and trying to punch it at the same time. But- Dan, were you on acid while you were watching the movie? But I do think that, I mean, if you're the sort of person who's really into movies to

the degree that you're going to spend time on something that you may not like just because it's kind of interesting, I don't know, you might want to check it out because it is interesting that he tried it. I just don't think it works at all. Yeah, I mean, there's a moment, there's a moment about an hour in that I picked up on in my second watch of this movie, where they keep repeating the phrase, time sure flies.

They're talking about how time moves so fast. And I was like, yeah. And I can't like, why are you reminding me that I'm spending my precious fucking moments on this thing? Like, I'm about to turn 45 guys at the end of the month. So like, maybe this stuff's weighing heavier on my mind, but it feels like I felt, this movie felt very, like I felt trapped in it in not a good way. And yeah, I just, it's not for me.

I don't recommend it. This is a bad, bad movie. This is a miss for old Stu. No thanks. It's interesting that you're saying time sure moves by quickly, because a professor Madonna would argue that time moves by so slowly.

But anyway, saying that aside, this is a movie that I have to say that this is not a movie that I kinda liked, but it's a movie that I have to say that this is not a movie that I kind of liked, but it's a movie that I wanted to kind of like. And I do admire making a movie that is a formal experiment and trying something different. I wish it had worked better. Maybe that's also some residual love for the original book,

which again, I really recommend. But it feels mostly kind of wrongheaded. And to the point also where like, the whole movie, I'm like, I don't think Tom Hanks is the right guy to play this part, to be honest. Like he's such an innately likable figure that I kept waiting, that really it was like only halfway through the movie that I was like,

oh, so he's just gonna be like a disappointed sad sack who is mean to people or is having trouble things most of the movie. I think he's, I think there's stuff that he was, it was fighting like his, his innate charisma was kind of fighting that a little bit in a way that made it difficult for me. But yeah, it's a movie that I can't, I can't really recommend, but it's worth, you know, look at a couple minutes of it and see, or if there's a super cut online of just the lazy boy storyline,

then, you know, just watch a happy story of a couple that loves each other, that invent a chair for relaxation and make their millions, yeah. Let's take a moment to thank our sponsors because the Flophouse is sponsored in part by Squarespace, which is the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online.

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So Pizza Rolls is coming to Kickstarter February 2025. Search Pizza Rolls, that's R-O-L-E-S, on Kickstarter now. Sounds perfect for a game night, Dan. Although I usually like super complicated games that make Dan mad. You do. But you love pizza, so maybe this would be a good one to cycle in.

You know, I like a casual, friendly game. Mm-mm. Super intense for me. But I could be seduced by pizza. Okay. Couple of Ninja Turtles over here. Mm-hmm. Big E is a former WWE champion.

He spent 10 years at the top sharing the ring with John Cena and Roman Reigns. So what's next? When I retire, I'm gonna move to the desert. I'm going to delete all my socials. I'm going to disappear. Y'all will never hear from me again. I'm going to sit on the couch, chill, and live my life. From the legendary tag team, The New Day,

it's Biggie on Tides and Fights. I feel like I need to listen to a few episodes that you guys have because this was really enjoyable. Oh, no. Thank you so much for your time. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Available on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

The following are real reenactments of pretend emergency calls. 911. My husband, it's my husband! Calm down please, what about your husband? He loves to dishwasher wrong. Please help, please help me. Where are you now ma'am?

At the kitchen table, I was with my dad. He mispronounces words intentionally. There are plenty of podcasts on the hunt for justice. But only one podcast has the courage to take on the silly crimes. Judge John Hodgman. The only true crime podcast that won't leave you feeling sad and bad and scared for once only on maximum fun org Shall we move on to some letters from listeners? Yeah, why not? Yes. Why not? Why not Dan? I thank you for asking my permission for that. We treat ourselves. This one's from Jean lasting withheld wolf

Who writes who writes a whole bunch of? Wolf who writes who writes a whole bunch of J e a n My husband and I are my husband and I recently went on a cross-country road trip cool I spent the majority of our driving time listening to the flop house Sorry, thanks for the laughs as we traversed from Chicago to Portland, LA to Roswell, Dallas, Nashville and more. Sounds great. During our trip, we randomly parked across the street from the Toretto family, home of

the fast and the furious fame. Understandably causing us- Oh, the Toretto family home. The way, Dan, you read that me. Oh, okay. It kind of confused me a little bit. The Toretto family home. Yes, you're correct. I was like, were they also at the of confused me a little bit. The Toretto family home, yes, you're correct.

I was like, were they also at the rest stop that you were at, the Toretto family? Well, let me take that again. During our trip, we randomly parked across the street from the Toretto family home of The Fast and the Furious fame, understandably causing us to repeat family at each other for the next few minutes

in varying Vin Diesel delivery styles and fucking Corona's Here's my question Have you ever randomly found yourself in a famous slash infamous? Filming location or is there a location you would love to stumble upon while traveling? Thank you for all the fun. You guys are the best Gene last name withheld I remember being being in, I think it's a story, Washington, is it? Where the Goonies, much of the Goonies, the seaside.

Oh, cool. Cool. And being like, oh, damn, we are in the town from the Goonies. Yeah. I would say it was all the pirate money, right? We sure are. You got to hide from Anne Ramsey or she might, I don't know. Never. She can kill me if she wants.

You might want to hide from Anne Ramsey or Ayn Rand, either one. Yeah, probably. Yeah. I don't know that I've, I'm trying to think I've ever stumbled on, I think mine has been more the opposite where if I'm watching a movie set in New York, I will suddenly recognize a corner or a building from my real life. But I've done lots of trips where I have gone to shooting locations.

My wife is from the Bay Area, and that means there's a lot of Hitchcock locations around there, he did a lot of shooting in the Bay Area. And so for many years, each time we would go to visit her family, I would be like, which location from Vertigo are we going to today? Which location from the birds are we going to? And it's all really fun.

And I hope someday to go to Vienna and take the tour there to see the locations for The Third Man, which is not a Hitchcock film, but is very Hitchcockian, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I spent some time in Vienna, but that was pre-Stewart having watched The Third Man. So you had no idea? I had no idea. I didn't know where to hear good Zither music. I just assumed it was just...

Just all over the place. Any cafe you walked by, just Zither was coming out. Yeah. I feel like that's the thing about being in New York is that you're like... You're just constantly running into, you know, things you saw in Law and Order and whatnot. Yeah, movies like Law and Order. Corpses. This is from Brendan Lastnamewithheld who writes,

I'm a big sports guy, like I know the three of you are as well. Yeah. I was in the hospital. Couple of leatherheads over here. I was in the hospital with my first kidney stone when we were blessed with the 84 Brady episode which featured some A plus acting from former New England Patriot stars Rob Gronkowski and Tom Brady.

And Lily Tomlin, former New England Patriot star. This episode paired incredibly well with the morphine that was being pumped into me most of the day. The band Morphine? Yeah, I feel like our podcast usually goes down better when you got some morphine in your system. Yeah, like most things. Everyone always wants to know what the worst performances

were from athletes, but as true movie experts, I know you need a more difficult question. What was the best performance you've seen from an athlete or other? Non-actor in a film. Thanks for years of laughs laughs Brendan last name withheld I thought Marshawn Lynch was very funny in bottoms was very funny I love this I have to say I'm withholding judgment a little bit because every time an ad for love hurts is on

My older son points out he goes Marshawn Lynch is in that you got to go see that because Marshawn Lynch is gonna be in it. Alright I guess I'll find out how good Marshawn Lynch is. I hear it works. Based on the early reviews we're gonna be watching. We may watch it for the podcast. Possibly. I like what's-his-face. Yeah, Kehoe Kwon deserves better. But maybe Ariana, it's Ariana De the bows the bows. Yeah, yeah the bows like Debo's wave radio. Yeah, popular mechanics best of what's new 1985. Yeah, I have a cut I mean It's not like amazing acting but as far as like OJ Simpson the naked gun movies Let me tell you some bad news

Why was gonna go actually a related direction, but not there cream Abdul Jabbar I think it's funny and airplane, you know, he's not yes, that's true. He's not asked to do a lot of heavy lifting acting wise But he he does what he does very well But then you know Known as a singer. This is our only movie I liked a lot of time a lot in Liquorice Pizza movie that I know that people have mixed feelings about, but I think that her performance was.

I think she is certainly the highlight of that movie. It's not a movie I like, but I like her performance in it quite a bit. Yeah. And then I was thinking about, there are people like, it's sort of an open question, like is this person not an actor if like like I feel like there's a lot of people out there who didn't intend necessarily to become actors and then had long careers like

they weren't an actor when they started out like like I was thinking specifically of like our cod obj from Captain Phillips who was a driver when when he was casting that and sort of steals the movie, but then he went on to have a career or. I mean, that's the thing about acting is until you have your first professional role, no one's an actor and everyone's an actor. I mean, there are lots of great movies with non-professional actors in them.

One of my favorite movies is The Fall, where the girl in that, you know, was very much, she was not a professional. She was in on it. know, was very much, she was not a professional training actress. She was in on it. No, she wasn't. She thought Lee Pace was paralyzed. But with, I was thinking about other athletes,

and like, the question for me then is, when does someone stop being an athlete who's in movies and become an actor? Like, is Carl Weathers or Jim Brown? Like, they're in tons of movies and they're really good in them. Like, but are they athletes or are they actors or are they both? Like Arnold Schwarzenegger is technically an athlete

who became an actor and became one of the biggest movie stars in the world. But also there's, I was just looking online and I had forgotten about Kevin Garnett in Uncut Gems where his performance, I find it is at a like Nicholas Cage, Christopher Walken at times level of like this character is so intensely involved in what's going on.

And so like I really buy his passionate obsession with this gem that he has no reason to become so obsessed with. I feel like there's a handful of people in that movie that are not actors. Yeah, that's true. Just the heavies. And the romantic interest, right?

She was a, I don't think she was a, I think that's her first role, right? Julia Fox? Yeah, right? Yeah, I think it might've been her first role. But she's obviously been another, she was just in the Soderbergh movie, dude. Oh, that's true.

Yeah, she was in that Soderbread movie. So it's a good question. I mean, like that's the thing that- That feels like some shitty bully picking on Stephen Soderbergh. Hey, Soderbread. Ireland wants you back. What?

Just admit that it's you editing all of your own movies. It reminds me of the worst tackling I ever saw, which was at a Yankees Red Sox game at Fenway. Oh, wow. Mariano Rivera, one of the greatest closing pitchers of all time, was pitching. What did David say to him? David wasn't there, but these guys who were Boston guys were sitting in front of us and they were going,

hey Mariano, Playgirl called, they want you to edit their next issue. And I was like, I've got to decode what this echo means. Yeah. And they were calling him like marinara sauce. And I'm like, that doesn't really work. Like an insulting name. Let's move on to recommendations of movies that might be a better use of your dwindling

time on this earth. If it's possible. Than here. I'm going to very quickly do sort of a dual linked recommendation. You're going to do a duel with Stuart? Cool. No offense, my money's on Stuart. Okay.

I mean, if it's a duel like you know there's weapons involved anyway Yeah, you're not helping your dad Yeah, I think Dan's gonna be much better with a claymore sure I'm gonna recommend two movies that are kind of like aren't connected but are kind of linked to my mind in that they are but are kind of linked to my mind in that they are two movies that don't necessarily make a whole lot of sense or need to make sense on a plot level, but are sort of like genre dreams you might have. And I enjoyed both of them. One is mutant hunt from 1987, which is like this very low budget, sci-fi action kind of horror element. Mutant Hunt.

Yeah, I mean, you don't have to do too much hard selling when this is called Mutant Hunt. For the budget this thing clearly had, they have some pretty delightful effects at certain points. There's a sort of corpse robot at the end That's like a puppet animatronic that looks kind of great. It just feels like say less Dan Stop selling past the clothes. Well this it feels like a dream of like an 80s VHS you know cover and then also I'd like to recommend from

1966 a Japanese movie in America called black tight killers, which is kind of a pop art Feelings that like if it feels sort of like almost like danger diabolic or like the Batman TV show in a way it has like You know crime going on in Japan, but it has this gang of like go go dancing, girl, black particular black type killers who are actually pretty nice when you get to know them. But it's also sort of just a beautiful thing to watch that sort of like pop art genre feel where it's like it doesn't need to make sense as long as something exciting is being thrown in front of your face every few minutes So those are my recommendations I'm gonna recommend a beautiful old movie that I had to pause so I could watch here

I am recommending La Quimera a movie that also Deals with how people deal with the past but it does it in a much more beautiful and interesting way this is set in the 80s, it does it in a much more beautiful and interesting way. This is set in the 80s. It's directed by Alice Rohrwacher and Josh O'Connor from Challengers and Other Things plays a kind of a baby girl, architect, archaeologist type guy who falls in from England who falls in with a group of grave robbers like tomb robbers to pilfer like treasures from the past and he has this like kind of almost supernatural ability to sense when he's above a grave site or

a tomb almost like he's well literally he's dowsing for these graves. And then it turns into, and also, there's also some story, Isabella Rossellini's in it. I don't know, it's beautiful, it's great. I highly recommend it. It's got that kind of like, it's both like, it feels very real and lived in, but also kind of light and breezy,

but everything kind of makes sense. And I don't know. It's great. Bucky Marrow. Watch that shit. Sanhulu. I'm going to recommend a movie that is kind of the exact opposite of what Dan was recommending.

This is a recent studio almost release that is very not. Coyote versus Acme. Yeah, Coyote versus Acme. I'd love to see that. But almost. So this is this is Juror number two, the Clint Eastwood movie that came out recently, which is very visually spare, visually plain. The storytelling is very traditional.

Unlike all of Clint's other movies. Yeah. No, but even like a movie like Unforgiven has a few kind of visual stylistic touches. And the older Clint Eastwood gets, and he's very old old now the more I think he's focused on just super straightforward storytelling and this is a movie that at first watch I was like okay this is like an interesting kind of like crime what not quite thriller ethical drama I guess but the more I thought about it the more it really sat with me and the more it really got into my head about, this is a movie about

people who are not bad people, who are stuck in an untenable situation and are trying to do their best to do the right thing, but finds that there are either elements of their own personality or elements of the world around them that are making it difficult for them to do the right thing. And the idea that justice is something that is not necessarily a happy or even a fair thing or a nice thing, but a thing that in an almost kind of Greek tragedy way, justice is something that takes its victims. And I thought it was, I just,

it really sat with me for a long time. And the closest thing I can think to it is that like, this is Clint Eastwood kind of like his first reforms in a way, which is making it sound more intense or extreme than it is. First reforms are really intense movie because it's a Paul Schrader movie and Paul Schrader is a madman,

whereas Clint Eastwood is more generally kind of like a slow going guy in his later movies. But I found it to be a movie that had a deceptively still surface, but a lot of depth underneath it, kind of the opposite of here, which felt like it had a lot going on on the surface and not a lot underneath. And so I really would recommend Jury Number Two

and then take some time to think about it afterwards. You know? You know, that's a movie that I did like and I think ultimately by the end, like the end really landed for me and I had a lot of the feelings that you're talking about, but that effective ending was almost undone for me personally. I know that I'm not trying to convince you by like the whole first half of the movie, but that effective ending was almost undone for me personally.

I know that I'm not trying to convince you by the whole first half of the movie, like this is the dumbest court case. Like this is not, like the law on this is laughable to me. Like, but- I mean, yes and no. I feel like the movie, it's a case, it's one of these things where like the court case is not clever or particularly hard to parse. Like it shouldn't be a hard case to win in some ways

you know for the for the defense because there's like no it's all circumstantial evidence and stuff, but I feel like the The movie's not really about that like I just didn't buy a lot of it is all I'm saying like there's a point Which like there could be a mistrial like yeah, absolutely There should be a mistrial at this point for one thing could be a mistrial. I'm like, yeah, absolutely. There should be a mistrial at this point. For one thing, there's a lot of like just obvious ways that this person would be defended

that aren't even touched. But like, that's not what Clint cares about. But it's not what the movie is about. I feel like this is not, the movie at times plays like it's starting to become 12 Angry Men, but it is not. That's not what it has on its mind. And it's more interested in these characters

kind of dealing with their choices rather than with the actual strengths or not of the case, which is fine with me, because I don't really care that much about the case in the middle. Now I haven't seen this movie, right? You just saw the feature number one, the first one. Just imagine I'm someone listening to the Flophouse

and you're selling this movie to me. Now I know that Nicholas Holt is in this movie. Does he play a weird little creep? He does not play a weird little creep in this one. No, he is the all-American guy who has kind of a dark secret. He has his darker side. Is it that he's a little creep? No, it's not that he's a little creep, unfortunately.

This is a movie fairly devoid of weird little creeps. But like, for instance, so there's scenes in here where you kind of want, you're like, I don't understand why I'm seeing this moment. Why am I seeing this moment in a person's life? There's a scene in this movie where the character, Nicholas Holt and his wife are giving out candy to kids for their trick-or-treaters, and they're dressed as the couple from American Gothic, which is kind of on-the-nose type symbolism in a way. But they don't talk about the case. They don't talk about the plot.

It's just them kind of having this moment of living their life and interacting with the kids who come for trick or treating. And it was like, it's a little, it's not fully realistic. It's not a naturalistic scene. It feels like a movie scene, but I was like, I like that this plays thematically with some of this stuff that's going on in it, but it is not every scene is hitting the plot super hard.

I liked getting this glimpse of another side of their life. Although there was, the first time he showed up in that costume, I didn't realize it was Halloween, and I was like, what the hell is he wearing, like old farmer overalls, like what's going on? And then I realized it's an American Gothic costume. Okay, yeah, yeah. But anyway, I'm sorry that this one didn't hit the spot,

but for Dan, but I still recommend it. I'm still glad I saw it. I'm not trying to undo your recommendation. I'm just, you know, discussing it. No, but I feel like this is one where I didn't really feel the power of it until the very end of the movie. As it was going on, I was like, this movie's fine. It's okay. And then once the movie ended, I was like, okay, that wasn't the movie I thought it was going to be, you know? Yeah. Well, I guess I'll have to watch it and break the tie.

Yeah, that's right. That's the important thing. Tune back in to see who wins the battle of juror number two. Mm-hmm. And tune back in... Whether it's enthusiastic Elliot Cailin or denying Dan McCoy. And tune back in next time for another episode of the Flophouse, because this one sadly is drawing to a close. But I loved it here.

No, no, no, no, you didn't, Stuart. I loved it here. Don't you remember, Stuart, this is where you started the episode and this is where you tried to summarize it and we kept interrupting you. And this is where Dan shot down my recommendation. Don't you remember all these moments in our lives? I hate it here.

Why won't you let me die? Well, let's do it. It would be so funny at the end of the movie, he's like, and you gave birth there and that's where we got married and she goes, just let me go. Why won't you let me go? Before we go though, I would like to thank our network,

Maximum Fun. Go to MaximumFun.org to check out other great shows. We're gearing up for the drive soon. We've got some good things planned for that. We hope you will join us. And we would like to thank Alex Smith, our producer. He goes by the name Howell Doddy when he's doing such things as making music or doing Twitch streams.

Why don't you look him up on the internet. But for the Flophouse, I have been Dan McCoy. I've been Stuart Wellington. And you know I'm Elliot Kalin. Okay, see you later suckas. Whoa. Run, run, run, run, run, run, slam door. ["Slam Door"]

You have like a million tabs open. How many tabs do you have open? A million? I do not. Oh man, there's like 40 tabs. One, two, three, four, five, I have six tabs open. That's a lot of soda. Google search for Big Naturals.

That doesn't seem like Dan's Google search. No, it's not. No. Yeah, you're projecting your... I'm projecting. That's what mine is. Um, okay. Because I had to use Google for that. No, it's not. No. Yeah, you're projecting your... I'm projecting. That's what mine is. Um, okay.

Because I had to use Google for that. I can't find it. You don't have no other way of doing things. Um, okay. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artist-owned shows. Supported.

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