The Flop House - Ep.#460 - Lumina, with Ashlie Atkinson

Episode Date: September 13, 2025

It's Smalltember (Elliott pops into frame to say "Smallvember!") -- that special time of year when we allow ourselves to stray from big Hollywood movies to examine some tinier, more idiosyncratic pictures. And boy howdy is Lumina idiosyncratic! So we welcomed actor Ashlie Atkinson (The Gilded Age, The Lost Bus, Mr. Robot and much more) to help decipher the madness!Our first Chicago show sold out, so we ADDED A LATE SHOW! Come see us live!OR, if you prefer to watch us from the comfort of your own home: Flop TV Season 3 tix are ON SALE!Subscribe to our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets!Wikipedia page for LuminaRecommended in this episode:Dan: Deep Cover (1992)Stu: The Order (2024), It's Alive 3: Island of the Alive (1987)Elliott: Heroic Times (1983)Ashlie: We Are The Best (2013)Head to squarespace.com/FLOP for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, use OFFER CODE: FLOP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

On this episode, we discuss Lumina. Alien, Arrival, E.T. Close encounters of the third kind. Now, Lumina. Right? Did I do it right? Yeah. A lot of gravitas. Yeah. Yeah, that was great.

You really sold the importance of the movie, yeah. Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flop House. I'm Dan McCoy. Hey, thanks for welcoming me, Dan. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kalin, appearing by permission of myself. And we are joined today by a very special guest. This is a close friend of mine, occasional bartending colleague of mine. we have an actor from things like the Gilded Age. And just like that, Black Klansman, Mr. Robot,

and of course the upcoming The Lost Bus. That's right, Ashley Atkinson. How are you doing, Ashley? Hey, and hello to all my ex-boyfriends who apparently all listened to this fucking fuck. Actually, I think you did nerds. That's our demo, yeah. Definitely, definitely.

You drop my name, I think, on name drop, like it's a name to be dropped. You mentioned my name on this podcast Like a few years ago I think when Black Klansman came out And I heard from so many fucking ex-boyfriends Well, I met you for the first time Like formally the other night at karaoke

Where you confess that when I sang She's an angel by they might be giants You were singing along up front So I think that there's a lot of nerdishness To go around I understand why maybe you attract the sort of people Who listen to this podcast You get what you give

You know, definitely. Well, thank you so much. I've tried to get Ashley on here, but she has such a busy filming schedule. We finally made it work. That's fine that bus. What a movie. I'm so thrilled.

I had to refrain from making a fart noise when you said that. Just a real... Alex just added in. Add it in, Alex. Use your soundboard. Use the soundboard we bought you for Christmas, Alex. It has all those fart sounds on it. It's all farts.

That's all it is, right? Yeah. The weird thing is that version, was more expensive than the one that had non-farks sounds. Yeah, well, they know what people want. Yeah, yeah. They could put it in on the factory. So, Lumina.

Lumina. Okay, yeah. So today we're watching, this is the smart. Smart. Oh, man, the photo real Dan McCoy over here. This is the start of Small Vember. That's right. Dan, what's small...

First off, what do we do on this podcast? Order of operations. First Principles. This is a podcast where we watch a movie that's a critical or a commercial flop or both. And then we talk about it. And while normally we punch up, we pick the big dogs and we start a fight. At the risk of my career, as I've found a number of times at this point. Yeah, yeah.

You're like one of the one people I know who has a job right now. I said risk, Dan. I said risk. Not destruction. Yeah, exactly. But if without this podcast, Elliot would have so many jobs, Dan. If anyone out there who hires wants me to roast them, I'm available. I'm the, I would be the king of Hollywood, if not for this podcast, causing them to slam their doors in my faces.

Yeah, I have more than one face, yeah. I feel like Dan is opening up doors toward weird kinks when he's like, yeah, what, you can pay me to roast you. And I don't actually mean weird, whatever you're into is fine. As long as it doesn't hurt anybody. I'm a couple months away from that. That's fine. Yeah, don't kink shame, Stuart. Yeah, I would love the idea if Dan was paid to roast people as a kink for them and he had to put sex worker on his taxes to explain what he does.

Why? Why would you love that? I mean, I feel like it's a totally normal profession. I think that's actually been an aspiration for Dan McCoy. So we are, as I said, we are punching down this month. That's right. It is small Vember. That's where we take a look at some small passion projects, independent films, cinema. And we try and find a bright side.

And we also try to find those hidden gems, those the rooms, those what, Burdemic, what slow bullet is Elliot's favorite movie? Yeah, it's my favorite movie, yeah. You named three movies that we've never done on the podcast, by the way. And also two of which were also famous on their own. You know, we could not discover those, yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, but we would like to... Those are examples of films that we could elevate to that level.

I think maybe we helped to augment the fame of Neil Breen. Let's say that. Maybe we helped to bring Neil Breen to a larger audience. Now, Ashley, do you have much experience with things like Neil Breen or other teeny tiny bad movies that have become cult classics, like The Room. Oh, I love The Room. I mean, I watch a lot of teeny tiny movies. I'm also, like, a little nervous about doing this

only because I tend to do a lot of teeny tiny movies, and I just know that when I call out somebody on this, I'm going to end up on a set in, like, Pittsburgh with them in four years, and they're going to be like, ah, yeah, so. I feel like I don't, I don't remember. running those circles, but I feel like for the most part, the people who work in film who listen to our podcast, take it in stride. And if they don't, then they're probably not the kind of people you'd want to work with. That's fair. I will say I was on an, I don't remember if I told

the story on the podcast or not, but I certainly told Dan and Stu, I was on a, I was on an airplane when a, someone recognized me, and it turned out just because they were a producer on one of the movies that we had, we had done. But he was very affable about it and very nice about it. I also feel like that was a movie, if I'm recalling correctly. It was a movie you do like to, Dan. We actually kind of liked it. It was one of the movies that Dan admitted made him cry while he was watching it. Brats?

Yeah, Brats. Country Bears? Honestly, I'm a little more scared of this movie because I've heard of some behavior from the director engaging people on the Internet about this film. That, okay, well, that I'm worried about. I'm worried about only because I'm doing research. I didn't realize when I watched the movie. That's some big name behind the scenes people or some very accomplished behind the scenes people

worked on this movie. But the cinematographer and the editor for this movie are like real people, like real professional people. I mean, they're all real people. No, some of them are simulations in holograms. Yeah. They're also litiginous. Did you guys see that there was like a whole ass lawsuit?

Man, they're going to own the least of the flop house. Yeah. I'll get into that briefly when I give some background that I heard from... So I do want to point out that this movie is, directed by a guy named Gino McCoy, and it looks like most of the producers are his family. Now, I promise not to get mad, but Dan, are you Gino McCoy?

Is Dan McCoy and Gino McCoy the same person? Very similar. And were you just tricking us to watch your movie. What a clever pseudonym, that would be. Well, he does use a K in it, which will... To throw people off the scent. It's... So I promise not to get mad, so I'm like...

M-C-O-Y. A spelling that I'm, like, I get as an accident. from people sometimes who are not familiar with the name. And previously it's always made it me kind of annoyed because I'm like, that's not a, like, that's not a spelling of McCoy. Like, that's not one that, and I'm like, oh, well, I guess it exists. I guess it. Because I think of probably everybody here, your name is the easiest to spell correctly.

Yeah. Ashley is spelled, I would say, non-traditional. Oh, yeah, there's a lie at the end. That's all my opinion, no. Elliot with two T's, Stuart, you know, sometimes... My last name, nobody knows ever how to pronounce her spell. Cologne? Yeah, it's not how it's pronounced.

Or colon? Yeah, they don't usually say colon, but they could. There's no law against it. And usually people try and spell Stewart like it's a last name. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, I'm not French Stewart. Or French Stuart Wellington, which would be what? You were in the baguette? Give us a taste of what French Stuart Wellington would sound like if you were a French

still willing to. Oh, ha, ha, je mapelle, French duart. Delicious. Mouthwatering. I took French class, and every time I, only for two years, and every time I would start, you know, speaking, I would always go, uh-huh, ha, ha, and they would get mad.

Immediately deducts 50 points from your grade, yeah. Oh, wow, man, Gryvindor lost that year. You're like, I thought that was... JK, fuck that shit. Right, I took French in Arkansas, and you got extra points for the, uh-huh, ha, that was... pretty much the whole of my studies. I took two semesters of German in college and they were, and they always praised my accent.

And I was like, well, I just think to myself, how would Peter Lorry say it? And the professor did not like that. But also like there's enough, I feel like you have had enough exposure to like Yiddish. And I think Yiddish has some correlations. Similar, but the accent's not quite the, not quite the same. You know, it's similar words, but delivered in a more like, uh, mm, like Yiddish is always delivered like, am I right? Eh, you know what I'm talking about, you know.

What do you think about this? Yeah, so there's always eyebrows raised at some point. So, aliens, guys. Aliens, what a movie. James Cameron takes maybe a perfect movie, Alien, and manages to find a different spin on it that in many ways is just as good. I prefer the first one,

but the second one's also a masterpiece. Guys, what do we have to say about aliens, the movie? Yeah. So Michael Bean, the Bean machine, the Bean Dream, love him. Can't get enough. Bill Paxon, yum, yum, yum. Give me more of that guy. You're always saying, give me a hot glass of bean,

juice, and I always thought it was coffee you're asking for, but... No, no, not at all. Nope. Nope. It wasn't for me. I don't know. What? Yeah, this is the... That's a joke. We just put Ashley in the hot seat. I feel like that would be a tough one to argue, a tough stance to argue.

Yeah, that aliens isn't good. Yeah, I think that would be hard. I mean, I'm sure there's someone, I mean, Armand White, bring him in. I'm sure he'll make that argument, you know. But, yeah, it's a hard argument. So, speaking of movies. I saw a friend make a negative, just gave aliens three stars on Letterbox and my eyes. I hope you excommunicated them from your life dance.

I'm not going to argue with someone on the internet, particularly a friend, but my eyes did pop out of my skull a little bit. And I had to push it back in. That's how divided America is. Some Americans think that aliens is a three star movie. Terrible. How do we reach these people? Yeah, right. Speaking of aliens, though, Stuart, I think you were going to talk about a movie that had

as aliens in it eventually. Oh, right, right. I am talking about Mac and Me. About a man's relationship with mac and cheese. Yeah. No, I'm talking about this week we are reviewing Lumina from 19, 2024. This was a micro budget movie, I'm assuming, that was written and directed by Genome McCoy. It's either a micro budget movie or it's one of those movies that somehow,

has an enormous budget, but the money all went to, not the movie. Which happens. I don't know which. I didn't do research on. Apparently went to like hiring those professionals you talked about because I texted you guys being like, you know, like, it's not a good movie. The screenplay in particular doesn't work, but it looks

okay for the money that was spent on it and like everything's framed well and like, you know, looks relatively good for the level of production is and it cuts together. I'm like oh, I see like the cinematographer, like, worked on Only God For Gives and Eyes Watch.

And the editor worked on... Witness. And, yeah. What's his name? The editor? Tom Noble. Yeah. Okay.

He edited Thelma and Louise, another movie that spends a lot of time in a desert, you know? Yeah, that's why they hired him. So he was like, ah, I know this landscape. I will say, like, by the end of the movie, I definitely, when it was getting into the finally you're seeing alien things, I was like, okay. this is like a higher level of production than I expected from the first three quarters of the movie, which is mostly them hanging around, you know.

Yeah. So that's a real nice house that they're in. Oh, that's great. I'm never impressed by how nice a house is in a movie because there's a lot of nice houses in porn. For sure. And I don't think that's where the budget is going necessarily. No.

Well, apparently the budget somehow also went to, we'll get into it later, I think, but into distribution that then did not. pan out, hence the lawsuit. But, you know, I can't tell if this movie is bad or if I just don't understand Los Angeles. Like, I really... Was it the LAPD cop with an English accent that threw you off? Oh, I love that guy.

That guy was great. But also, you know, things like this guy's living in this beautiful house with a pool, with a girl whose relationship to him is never defined and you have no idea what either of them do for a living. And I was like, is that poor, poor plow? or is that just Los Angeles? I don't know. It sounds like Elliot's cousin, Cato, Caitlin. I mean, I think there is a, there's a thriving subculture still of L.A. hangers on

who live inside big houses that belong to their friends. But I think it was very funny when someone walks into the main character's house and he goes, well, what a house, what do you do? And he goes, don't worry about it. So the screenwriter could not be bothered to think of a job for this main character to have, you know. Right. Exposition George, who also immediately calls the girl's smoky. And I was like, I'm so glad someone's

acknowledging that this girl's whole job is vaping in the first third of the film. She's like ripping serious clouds the whole time. But let's talk about it because I also had the same question of, I didn't know, it was hard to understand what the relationship was between some of these characters. But Stu, maybe you can illuminate us on that. So you keep talking about characters. Let's look at this rich

tapestry of characters. So we have our hero, Alex, or Lex to his friends. He is this like non-specific young rich guy who I believe is mentioned to have a trust fund. He lives in a big L.A. mansion and he lives with Patricia

who is constantly filming things with her phone and vaping. She does not, other than that, have any other real role other than occasionally giving us exposition on the other characters. And sometimes judging the other characters too. And what is there?

And so what are Alex and Patricia's relationship? I don't know. Do you know? Can we write them a letter? I genuinely couldn't tell Patricia's relationship to anyone. Her allegiances she seemed to shift from moment to moment to moment. Like, I'm not sure. Is she friends with Tatiana?

Is she friends with Delilah? Also these names. Like, no one's named Jen in this universe. It's like, no, everyone has really ridiculous things. When a George showed up and I'm like, ah, nice, refreshing. Conspiracy George. I originally presumed that she didn't live. there but was like in from out of town

because there's this party going on later on and like she was just staying there over. But then later on it seemed to be like months later. His beard is still there. The beard shows the past time. It grows maybe the funniest fake beard I've seen in forever.

And it really lifted my spirits at a time when I needed it. I thought he looked cuter with the beard. I was like, oh, that works for you. I think it does work for him. You looked a little meat-headed before The beard, but... Here's my theory, which is not borne out

by anything in the text. Okay, yeah. I mean, he did look like he should be... He should be working with Molotov to undermine the Zara's structure, you know. That's why I like him. Yeah. I think the...

This is my theory. It, again, is not in the text. It's not that I think Alex, Patricia, and Delilah were college friends. And Patricia, she's come out to L.A. to make it in some industry. And she's been staying with Alex. but she never really hit it really didn't really take off her career so she's still

same with Alex and so probably like a vape influencer yeah right exactly yeah influencer adjacent definitely yeah testing out like various flavors I don't what do people like to hate no they and uh they really like lead they really like lead getting into their system from base and so Tatiana is the outsider to that group yeah now you mentioned Delilah and Tatiana let's find out who they are Delilah is Alex's ex-girlfriend who still has feelings for him, she is convinced, and no matter what happens throughout the course of the movie, her main goal at all times is to get Alex to come back to her, even when there's aliens chasing them. And she is constantly looking at him the way my wife looks at me when I start

explaining my character build in the game Eldon Ring, where she's very turned on, she's very like, oh, wow, you put all your points into strength, vigor, and stamina? How original. You and Charlene's relationship is so much different than I thought it was. Yeah, I know. It's behind closed doors. You never know. Yeah, yeah. And then Patricia introduced her as delusional Delilah. Yep. And then we have Tatiana, who's the new girlfriend, and the party is being thrown to kind of introduce her to all of Alex's friends. And she is blonde and has a history of being abducted by aliens.

Which we don't know right away. That is something that is revealed. It's not like she's introducing herself to people with that information. Yeah. She doesn't seem to introduce herself to anyone. It's a party for her to introduce her, yet everyone in that living room knows her name. There's a whole sequence where she's walking and everybody's like, Tatiana, Tatiana, and she's like, hey, hey, yeah, I like your dress too, you know. All these women follow the sort of lifetime movie rule of hair, you know, where it's like new girlfriend, like acceptable girlfriend has blonde straight hair. There's the bad ex-girlfriend that's trouble with like the brunette straight bang.

Always has dark hair. Yeah. Straight bangs, yeah. And then, of course, like, the absolutely drop-dead gorgeous woman of color who is somehow friend-zoned and will never be a romantic prospect for absolutely no reason. They just got to give her a couple of quirks and she'll just hang around. Yes, she's very prop-heavy. We also very...

Well, she needs to be because no one's given a personality. She's like an SBU interviewee where they're like, hey, sir, let me introduce this... Let me interview this male stripper and he's like hanging his little G-strings on the washing line. Bartender, like, yeah, no, she came in the other day. It's like, dude, you can do that later. You don't, yeah, you don't have to do that right now. Any personality that any of the characters given is based on something external to them, whether it be a vape, a beard, an ox cable later on.

Except for George. I feel like George is the one guy with any personality because he's the conspiracy theorist. He's a little bit of a Joker. And he also works with children. He volunteers his time. That's true. That was the biggest shocking twist of the movie. In a movie that involves secret alien abductions

was when he's like, yeah, I do a lot of volunteering with children. Okay, so George hasn't shown up yet. We have this party where we're just walking around one of those like L.A. style mansions that you're like, am I in like the waiting room for some kind of high-end doctor's office? Or like, is this a hotel that someone is squatting in and they just made at their house? Yeah.

And a lot of music is played. And I have to say that there's a song with lyrics about a Sincy Girl. And I was like, there's no way that this song is not by the director of this movie. There's no other reason this would be in here. And I looked it up, and sure enough, all of the music is by Gina McCoy. And what is a Sensi girl? Because I thought it was like a Sensi girl, like Splinter for the Ninja Turtles. No.

It means sensitive? It's not like a slang term. Cincinnati. Because I put the captions on because I thought it was like, that's a weird way to pronounce sexy. And I looked up and I'm like, put the captions on, oh, no, it's Sensi. What is this? C-N-S-Y is how it's spelled in the title of the song and on the captions, so C-C-C.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you just get that feeling and you have to check what the song's about. Okay, so after the party, Lex tries to... Actually, I used Shazam to try to identify the song and my phone exploded. It hung itself. Okay, so at the party, we, you know, the character dynamics get reinforced, Delilah,

tries to make a move on Alex, yada, yada, yada. Afterwards, Alex... None of them seem to like each other very much. They are friends who don't like each other. She has been, has had an unrequited love for Alex for years. She doesn't really seem to like him very much. He doesn't seem to like her that much. It's a, there's not a lot of affection between these friends.

And so I wonder if this is, maybe this alien stuff was just an elaborate way to, like, end a friendship. Like, they couldn't find the words, so. This has all the vibes. of a guy who's like, I'm going to make a movie and I'll put all my friends in it and, I don't know, you can be the vapor

and you can be the ex-girlfriend and yada, yada, yada. Like, it's very thinly drawn without much background. These characters don't have a rich inner life. No. Okay. I mean, I've got a rich house.

Yeah, we're still on the first page of notes. So after the party, Tatiana goes out to the pool to go for a swim. And of course, this is when we cut to a lady jogger jogging outside the property and then aliens attack. The lady jogger is only shown briefly

just so she can have a single reaction shot to the abduction blast or whatever. So I don't know, I'm guessing it's, again, this is another friend of the family who showed up with a high-type pony tail. Okay, so there's a, the cops show up. Was there anything about this sequence that felt normal to you guys?

No. Before the cops show up, which did not feel normal, I will say that Delilah and there's a moment where Delilah and Patricia are talking to each other and Delilah's like, I just want that bitch to disappear about Tatiana. And that's when the light blast abducts or seemingly vaporizes Tatiana. You mentioned the jogger, but I didn't know whether you actually mentioned the fact that Tatiana like turns into like Avengers. Wait, which one is the one? Infinity War, yeah, where they all turn into dust.

Yeah, she like. Does she turn it if it does? Right before she's blasted, the liquid in the wine glasses starts to, like, float up in a pretty cool special effect. That was actually pretty cool. I like the lot. I like the image. You know, the CTI obviously was not very good. But the image in and of itself, I know.

It's also, it's one of, it's something that happens in movies a lot that I always find very funny where it's, it's the Jurassic Park kind of like water droplet when a T-Rex is coming thing, where you see a little thing react. to a huge force, but big things are not reacting to it. So it's like, oh, it has the power to pull up this wine, but nothing else. Oh, no person. Okay, I got it. The same way, how in Jurassic Park, the transverse wrecks, it shakes water. That's how big his steps are. But at the end, he's able to tiptoe in and surprise them and eat a raptor.

He's so sneaky. Yeah, exactly. But his tennis is tenies, yeah. Yeah, he's on his tippy, tippy toes. I mean, I just really liked that you knew that something was going to happen because those women were seated on that couch in a way that women have never spoken to each other in their entire lives. It's like so it's a very gendered way of sitting where it's like I was always told it as a young woman. I was told if you want to speak to a man, you should sit next to him but

face something else instead of facing another person instead of facing them head on because that's how women talk to each other. Is looking at each other? Yeah, men I guess you have to sit at a baseball game and, like, look out at the field, and then you can have a heart-to-heart talk. Cars are good. These are all things I was told. Get a real taste of that profile. Yeah. But they are sort of sitting there, and Tajiana's framed in between them in a very bow-derick sort of moment going into that pool, you know, and I was like, well, that's nice.

It is, I never thought about it. You're right. When I have a hard-to-art talk with somebody, I do take them to a natural history museum or somewhere else where there's a diorama we can both look at at the same. Sure, sure. The planetarium. I'm a walk-and-talk guy, so I find an office somewhere and we walk down hallways. I give some rapid-fire delivery that is, like, kind of funny, but not super, like, not laugh-out-loud funny.

And sometimes, sometimes you'll take, like, one piece of information and cut it between, split it between three different people. So it sounds like dialogue, even though it's just exposition about how the legislative process works. It's really great. I'm pretty talented. So, okay, so again, the windows get blasted open. Tatiana disappears. There seems to be like a puddle of smoking lava or something. I can't tell what's going on.

But there obviously everybody's freaked out. Alex is running around yelling where Tatiana, like, where is Tatiana? The police show up, of course. This is where we had the introduction of, I think, all of our favorite character. That's right. The cop with the English accent in Los Angeles. This was the moment. And a couple of characters in this movie have English accents or Tatiana does.

And just Delilah also? I'm trying to remember. I think she does, right? But this was the moment where I was like, wait a minute. I thought this was taking place in L.A. They talked a lot about L.A. But this police officer clearly has an English accent. And I have never encountered an English-accented LAPD officer.

Rarely to someone come from another European country and then become an LAPD officer. Like it's just not a thing I've encountered. But so really, and also his attitude is very funny. He's so quick to like either it's somewhere between hostility and not caring, which I think is accurate for an LAPD officer in a lot. a lot of ways, but yeah. So shortly after we have this introduction

to this great character who then disappears from our lives forever. Unfortunately, it reminds me of, there was some movie we watched years ago where there was a person, I think, holding a little dog in the background, and we were just like, the movie should be about them.

I think it's right around now that Alex hears the audio of Delilah wishing Tatiana would just disappear. And he takes that immediately, takes offense to it, and he throws her out of his, life she's like, she's like, she's like Lex

and he's like, never call me that again. That's only for friends. Also, super cold that Patricia boomeranged it. You know, like, it's on a loop. Yeah. And she's like, I can't seem to turn it off. It's like, come on, you just press the thing that turns off the screen on the phone. Like, we don't

know how phones were. Turn your volume down or whatever. But he also reacts as if like after what you did and it's like, yeah, like I understand in this situation you're in, like that is very a hurtful thing to hear and you're mad that she said it, but she didn't make the lady disappear.

The implication seems to be that... Yeah, he now blames her... If you hadn't wished upon that star... Wished her to that, cornfield. But it's L.A., you know, maybe they believe in just manifestation to that degree. That's very possible.

If this... It's like, at the party, I saw you splitting the wishbone. If these characters were really into crystals, I feel like the whole movie would make a lot more sense to me, all their actions, yeah. Uh-huh. So, uh, time passed. How do we know time passes, Stuart?

Well, the house remains exactly the same. Patricia remains exactly the same, living in the house. But there's something different. Is there something about Alex? Did he get like a smudge on his face? No, no, no. His hair has gotten kind of messed up, but his beard has gotten crazy.

He has his massive beard. It looks like he is entering a world's biggest beard competition. It looks like he is playing Moses. in a church play. Like, it's an enormous biblical patriarch fake beard. It's so funny. Grecian formula on Moses. It's still, like, very, like, black.

Oh, it's still black, very dark. Oh, no, this is a young hot Moses. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it worked for me. I was really like, now, who's this guy? Also, the pool is really maintained for somebody who's been sitting outside it, like, for six months doing that. I mean, he must have.

He's got people to do that. Yeah, he's got people to do that. Yeah. He just gets, uh, Chris Pine from poolman to come over and get it, you know, put into shape, yeah. He's the best. Yeah, I mean, he was, that's, that was the story, right? Is that Chris Pine worked as a pool man for years, preparing for his directorial debut, yeah.

For 10 years when he wasn't acting, he was cleaning pools undercover, yeah. Yeah, yeah, going to Langer's and cleaning pools. So, time has passed. I will say, it is, Stuart, you're right that, like the, the time is past. You mentioned the house has not changed. And when you did it, it reminded me of the, the, beautiful sequence in Virginia Wolves to the lighthouse where she's

talking about the house kind of being untouched and remaining the same, the dust that changes, this thing crees a little bit as all these events are happening with the family in parentheticals and you know what? Maybe that's what they're going for with this scene is that so little has changed around the world, about the

world they live in, except for this beard, which is the one element of time in an otherwise unchanging world where people are just one small element, you know, and not necessarily the way that time should be measured by the lives of humans. Do you think that's what they're trying to get at? Yeah, I think so.

My favorite part into the lighthouse is when they get to that lighthouse and aliens go buck wild on them. That's all the last page. It's all the last 10 pages. Okay, so... Someone's like, I fixed to the lighthouse. They finally get to the lighthouse and there's aliens there. Or they get to the lighthouse, it's the lighthouse from the movie The Lighthouse. And they're like, this is a weirder lighthouse we expect it.

Yeah. Okay, so he has gotten, Alex has fallen deep into a, like a conspiracy hole. He has been having these dreams that give him visions, dreams of him being abducted or walking through a deep underground military base, which is repeatedly referred to in the description of the movie as dumb, which I found a very funny choice. Yeah. And what does dumb stand for? Deep underground military base.

Yep, you got it. For a movie that does not seem to have a lot of sort of diagetic sense of humor, it's very odd that they made this choice. I was like, oh, is this camp? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Hard to say. So Alex has put together a big collage of newspaper clippings and red string. And he invites his friend George, who is the affirmation.

conspiracy nut friend, who also is shocked by how nice a house Alex has. George comes over and they just kind of hang out on the couch and start looking at articles on the internet of alien abductions, like you do. I was really shocked by how maudged and well-done, well-appointed the conspiracy room was. But he did seem to run out of things that I want to believe poster was on there at least six time. It was a lot of, it was, it was very much not meant to be looked at closely that, that evidence board because it was a lot of like, just kind of random pages from like the weekly

world news and things like that. And, you know, there wasn't, there wasn't a sense of, oh, he's putting together a research story here. It was more like, we got to put alien stuff on these walls. Come on, guys. I mean, shoot tomorrow morning, you know. There also is no indication that he's good at this. That's true.

It could be, it was very funny to me later on. when, like, he gets into a fist fight? I'm like, why would this guy, like, know how to fight? Like, why? I mean, we know nothing about his background. We can fill it in. Maybe he's former special services, secret services. Yeah.

It's just one of these movies where someone turns into an action hero because the person making the movie has seen movies. It's like, yeah, and they're going to fight. Like that happens in life. Yeah, he'll choke out this special forces guy in full tactical body armor. Yeah. It is as the glasses and the hat, and all of a sudden he says. Yes.

We have a Liam Nessens. Okay. So, as I said, Alex is spurred on for this conspiracy theory by these dreams he's having. We have shots of him writhing in the covers, kind of sweaty, having these visions where he's walking around a dumb, wandering around. That's, again, deep underground military base. Is this when Patricia goes to wake him up and he starts to choke her? Yes, Patricia goes to wake him up and he chokes her and they have, let's say, a falling out briefly. I mean, if you're going to live in someone's house.

for months and you're not contributing. Maybe you're asking you to get you. That's a hot take. Yeah, I actually don't even believe in it. I did sort of go. Your value is based on how much you bring to the table. I really liked how they delineated Dream Alex from Real Alex. That was one of the clearest things to me in this film,

particularly because Alex in bed is screaming and Alex in Dream is just sort of chilling, walking around his face. But they both have crazy beards, right? Yes. Okay. They both do. But one is in blue light and one is in very sort of green. For a movie where a character is presented with multiple hairstyles and beard styles,

it is weird that his, he always, it's like he always views himself as a man with a big crazy beard. Yeah. Even when he doesn't have a beard, he carries himself as a bearded man. That's what I was going to say. Do you think internal beard? Yeah. Now, my guess is that they could probably get a better beard. Do you think this beard was one of the contributors,

was one of the producers? Like it put some funding into the movie. And that's why they had to put this beard in. It was like a Kickstarter award. You get to pick the beard. Donate your beard. Put your beard in the movie. Okay.

So do you think, and do you think the actor who played Alex was like walking around with that beard for months and months, wearing it even when not on camera? He's like, I just got to get into the role and his wife's like, or her husband is like, oh, I hate this stupid beard. And he's like, I think I'm going to keep it.

I really hope that actor's gay. Like, for some reason you said that and I just, ah. Mm-hmm. I'm giving him more. 20% more. We're giving him a rich inner life here, unlike the characters in the film. So. I mean, I'm sure the actor probably does have a rich inner life, being a human being.

For sure. Well, I've met some humans without a rich inner life. That's true. That's fair. From what I hear, I hear that L.A. is full of people without rich inner lives. Oh, thanks, Aldous Huxley. Yeah, appreciate the take on L.A. Okay, so at some point Delilah returns.

I don't quite remember. Nathaniel West over here. Look at him. Oh, wait. There's the one shot of the bloody nose, though. Oh, yeah. Which, where, like, all of a sudden there's just a fuck ton of blood on Alex's hands. And then next shot, gone.

Yeah. No explanation. No nothing. I feel like this movie is filled with moments like that, where I kept rewinding things to be like, did I fucking miss something? Was I looking at my phone for a second? And the thing is, I was looking at my phone for a second, but I didn't miss anything.

But you were looking at your phone to look at the plot summary of Lumina because there were definitely... That's what I was doing. There are gaps in the movie that maybe they're meant to be the functional equivalent of the lost time blips

that alien abductees have where they don't remember something. Oh. The characters would refer to something that happened and be like, I don't remember that happening in the movie and I think it's because it didn't happen in the movie.

You know, it's just... Yeah, or it happened in a cut scene or something like that. I did appreciate, though, because when George came And I was like, who's this guy? I really appreciated Patricia's phone call where she said, you know, that guy that was at the party, you kept talking a bunch of bullshit.

He's here. I was like, okay, thank you. This is an established constant in this world. Because the rules you can't expository yourself, right? You can't have exposition related to yourself. Hey, Alex, it's me, your friend, George. I'm into conspiracy stuff. I was at your party spouting some bullshit.

You know, it feels awkward coming from him. Exposition George could not take that one. No. But he serves his time. later in the film. So, that reminds me the kind of,

that's the kind of question of kid ass in Sunday school. It's like, could exposition George ever deliver exposition about himself

one senior? No, well, there's, there's no limits to his power of exposition, but, you know,

at the same time. Yeah. The, so around now, they all team together and despite their differences, they decide,

we're going to go try and find Tatiana and get to the bottom of these alien conspiracy theories. Yeah. And I believe they're, you guys can correct me, I believe their

first stop is they have to meet a internet acquaintance of George named Tom. And apparently pick up some Bakersfield meth, I guess. So they hop in there do they already have the RV? No, they buy the RV. The RV they buy once they get to Morocco.

Someone makes a, oh they buy them in Morocco, well, just because it's mentioned, someone makes a, are we going to Wally World joke? I'm like that was a, that was a station wagon. Let's get our jokes correct here. There is a Wally World in Morocco, though.

So that's why they're asking about it. Because Wally World Morocco is actually the only one still in operation. The only one still, Sammy. So. But you're right, Dan. I also bristled at... Yeah, it's mad. As long as there's not a lot of jokes in this movie.

So it felt very weird for them to suddenly make one, to have it be a reference to an older movie. And also for that reference to not be accurate to what they're driving. It would make more sense for them to make a lot of. like a spaceballs reference, you know, something with a Winnebago in or something like that. Or everyone's favorite movie, RV, you know, that big hit, RV. Everyone's favorite movie, yeah.

Give me the top four cast in that movie. Well, Robin Williams was in RV. Okay, so he's probably number one. And Barry Sonnenfeld directed it. And we have reached the limits of my RV knowledge. Okay, so that's the poster. You don't know a lot considering that's everyone's favorite movie by according to the polls. Let me guess.

So I'm just going to paint a picture. The poster probably looks like we have the title. Obviously, you've got to have the title of the movie on the photo. Is it like the RV like tipping off the side of like a cliff or something? It's on like a giant folder or something. Yeah, yeah. And that he's out and it's a big-headed Robin Williams. No, no.

If this was a movie from the 60s and Jack Davis did the poster. It's an RV that is balanced precariously on the point of a mountain. Now, wait, is this the one where Steve Correll's head is on a plate? covered in syrup like it's Dan in real life, I believe. Oh, yeah, Dan in real life. Speaking of Dan's in real life, we watched a movie. So, Dan, here's the rest of the cast of RV.

So there's also Jeff Daniels, Cheryl Hines, Kristen Chenoweth, Will Arnett. A lot of people in this one. Wow, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. That's five stars. Okay. I will say I've read, I think, both of Parisanoffield's memoirs.

I don't remember him talking about RV particularly in them. Okay. What do you say about nine lives? I don't think he doesn't touch that one either What did he say about What do he say about Joan Cusack In Adam's Family Values.

He doesn't talk much about Adam's Family Values and the ones I've read. Maybe I've only read the first one. He talks a lot about... Damn, shame. Throws his copy in the garbage. Surprisingly, a fair amount about Wild Wild West.

More than you would expect. Yeah, I mean, I feel like that probably looms large in his brain. Okay, so speaking of stars, This is where we reach star of the silver screen himself, Eric Roberts, playing the character Tom, who is wearing some kind of hybrid duster thing and a very clean pair of Timbalands. And I have to assume Eric Roberts brought his own wardrobe. That's his outfit, for sure.

Yeah, they actually just pass him on the street and we're like, hey, you want to make a movie? Get in and suck up. I'm not doing anything tonight. Sure, I'll be in your movie. I've got a movie at 11 that I'm shooting. and won it at three. I just finished shooting a movie and I have another one in three hours, yeah.

But if I can wear the same outfit and I can make sure that everyone knows that I have lots of sex in the first 45 seconds with my spirits. That I'll do it. Yeah, so he brings a real intense energy that this movie was honestly lacking. Yeah.

And he shows them his hidden little base that's in a junkyard where he has, what, fabricated some kind of alien species. spaceship. This doesn't really go anywhere. And then he, he kind of turns on them and starts attacking them and they escape while he fires gunshots at them. And it's revealed that he most likely is a human being who has been brainwashed by aliens. Is that correct? And he was like working for the government making a spaceship, but then the funding got cut or something,

but he got to keep the spaceship, which does not seem to me the way the government would operate normally, I feel like. Yeah, I was, you know. I was trying to understand this scene, and then I got to... That's a mistake. Yeah, well, I got to the end of the movie. I'm like, oh, whatever was happening never gets cleared up, so it wasn't important. But Jordan did make sure that you know that it's reverse engineering. That's the one thing that you make sure that you know in it.

And also, I guess, so, yeah, it doesn't really ever get cleared up. But it's the government, not aliens, but the government is in cahoots with aliens. government has been collecting alien stuff because they're like Roswell was just the beginning, you know, something like that. Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's now, I think, let's pause the movie for a second because I think, I think this is an important time for us to talk about alien conspiracy theories and how they're tied in with the government. First off, do you guys, now no judgments here, there's a judgment-free zone, do you guys

believe in aliens? Yes. Okay. Like, Dan? First off, I like your energy. Look, I'm an actor. I've got fuck all to lose, you know? I was delaying because I'm like, did Dan Aykroyd, like, bribe Stewart to bring this topic up?

Well, I feel like so much of the movie, it's built on that idea of, like, this is like the whole idea of the faith in that aliens exist and also that there is another entity that is keeping aliens from us. Yeah. Yeah, that there's a cover-up involved, not just that aliens exist, but also that for whatever really, reason the government is covering up that existence, yeah, for the average person. For instance, I can believe and accept the idea that there is alien life out there. It is most likely not hyper-advanced while also being hyper-tuff and animalistic. Well, that's hard for me to believe. When we get to later, I have the same issue, I have a lot of alien movies where it's like,

okay, so they build spaces that can travel interstellar distances and they do these science experiments, but they don't wear clothes, they don't seem to have a language, they're just claw monsters with teeth that eat things that just run after people and tear them apart and eat them. They're also somehow able to build all this stuff and have science. And also want to fuck with us.

You know what I mean? If you can do all that, like... So, similarly, I believe like there's probably alien life out in the universe, but does it exist in the same... Can it get to us in the same window of, you know, galactic time?

the age of the universe that we humans are existing in? I don't think so, probably. But the thing that I have more trouble accepting is the idea that aliens exist, they have attempted contact with humans, and that the United States government, and I guess the government around the world, is very good at kind of hiding that information from us.

Now, what is it about, because I feel like we live in a period of extreme government competence. What is it about the world we live in that would make you think the government wouldn't be able to pull this off, you know? Yeah, I don't know. I think, yeah, there's just, there's just, I just had this feeling that the people in charge, I don't know, maybe, I've just like picked this up

over my years of working that like, you know, I feel like the people in charge actually don't really know fucking anything. I think, I'd there's a, it feels, they're all just self-interested weirdos just doing their own thing. I think that's a big part of it. They're self-interest weirdos.

Also, there would be so much, like, it would need so much cooperation and so much, It's the same way that people are like the government killed John F. Kennedy. And it's like pretty unlikely that we wouldn't have heard about it in some form up to this point. Like there's a, it's very that people are like, yeah, I'm going to take this secret with me to my grave. Like people don't, maybe people used to do that. But nowadays it's like, can I get a book deal off of this? Can I get on TV from this?

Also, back in the days when scandals took down presidents, the government botched a fucking break in. a thing that should have been just easy to get away with and they didn't do it. So I don't think they're going to keep the aliens secret. Where is the deep, deep politics part of the podcast? Yeah, yeah. This is when we turn into a, we turn into a, now suddenly it's like a Vox podcast. Yeah, we're the Chapo Flop House.

Yeah. But yeah, the idea that like, yeah, if there were, if the government had access to a whole bunch of aliens, you know there would be like a slack channel of these nutsacks, sending pictures of dead aliens with like a fucking tag like, look at this, L-O-L-L, like that kind of shit. I mean, now there would be, for sure. And they'd accidentally send it to the wrong person.

They'd, they'd have a, they'd add a reporter to that, to that Slack channel or some, some kind of mid-level contractor would tell the people that he Twitch video game plays with, that, that he's got aliens in his garage or something like that. You know, it would, it would not be a secret anymore, for sure. But also the, the idea, there's, the idea in the past would be like, oh, the government is using the alien technology and doesn't want people to know where it came from. And that's why we have microwave ovens and things. like that. And yet I've yet to, unless

our technology is a plan by aliens to ruin our lives so that they can then take over that much or easily, it seems like the technology we have is not so impressive that we need aliens to get. Yeah, they were like, let's create pyramids so humans can fuck up their lives. I mean, that's the other way they're like, how could

all these different races invent pyramids? It must be aliens, like pretty, you just stack stuff on each other and you have a thick base at the bottom and you know, think goes... It's an organized pile. If you're building something in gravity is involved Like you're gonna get a pyramid That's what's gonna happen

Also they don't they don't have like a million fucking things Shooting into their eyeballs from their phone every day They can just focus on building one thing Yeah that's true Also they'd slaved a bunch of people That was the other half of thing Not all pyramids were built by slaves Dan hashtag not all pyramids

Thank you for correcting the thing that I didn't say But yeah so I think we can all agree that in real life we probably don't believe that the government is necessarily covering it up because they're doing too good a job, if they are. So back to the movie, now that they've escaped from Tom, they realize that the men in black are on... They should have called this movie Escape from Tom.

They've escaped from Tom, and they realize that they're being followed by men in black, which they're like, you know, I might be going crazy, but I think this van's following us. I'm like, that's not a van. That's an SUV. Once again, the misidentification. of vehicles in the film. Technically, an SUV is a light truck

for regulation purposes. The director is car blindness. Yeah. So... Sir, can you tell us about the car that hit your car with the hit and run? I can't.

I can't. It's probably got four wheels. Probably. Probably. Okay, so they realize that the men and black are on their trail, so they need to, they need to hide themselves.

So I think this is when they all go shopping and they go to the mall and they go buy some new clothes. Speaking of Veri Sanofeld, I will say, if the government is covering up aliens, then when we were earlier, that one of the most brilliant siops

that the government then could have pulled off is to turn men in black from a sinister presence whose job is to keep people ignorant into a lovable presence whose job is to protect humanity from bad aliens, which is in the old stories

was never what they were. They were always just about destroying evidence of UFOs and things like that. And intimidating people. And intimidating people. Yeah. Whereas in the movies, thanks to Hollywood, thanks to Hollywood, now men in black are lovable Will Smith guys.

Ellie just burning his career to the ground right now. I'm saying that Hollywood and the government are working together. Well, maybe that's what Gino McCoy was really after, was to sort of retake the lore of men in black and turn it into something menacing. That was a very good shot down that street. First of all, I was like, I don't think they're on that street. But it was a pretty cool shot of the lone man in black standing there. Yeah, the mysterious man in black just standing next to an SUV.

Yeah, I was like, oh, that's spooky. Yeah, how'd he get there? Probably the SUV. Yeah, he took an Uber. And then he waited for the Uber to leave to pose menacingly. He's like, get out of here, get out of here. I might be slightly, the timing here might be wrong for me. because my brain got a little muddled.

At some point, they fly to Morocco. Was that before or after Tatiana's parents in Morocco? The Tatiana's parents are in Morocco. Oh, that's why they look like they live in a medieval times building. Yes. They're like, we should go see Tatiana's parents. We got to go to Morocco. And they did shoot in Morocco.

So give the movie credit for that, on location, you know. I like that we don't see anything about them flying, but we see them at a fucking grocery store. You know what I mean? Like they're coming out of the mall. but we don't get any sense. Do we do have some, like, footage of an airplane flying, right? Yeah, but I think, I don't think they hired another plane to shoot that plane.

No, of course they didn't. Okay, so they meet with Tatiana's parents who are obviously broken up, but they also add some context that Tatiana has always had these dreams of being abducted by aliens. Here's some art she drew from her memories of her being strapped to a table. It was pretty funny when they show the piece of child's art, And they're like, that's from her memories. Yeah, that was pretty funny, yeah. There's a line in here that I know Ashley also had a problem with.

I was so mad. Where the mom's like, how is any of this going to help find our daughter? I'm like, what? This is like literally directly going to lead to where your daughter is. Yeah, George is like, did she ever describe this, this, you know, secret underground the dumb? And her dad's like, yes, for the time she was missing the longest. And then the mother just exhort. you know, what is this going to do to help find her?

It's like, bitch, that's the first solid league. There's been a whole fucking movie. Are you serious? This is what we wish we could have told that English police officer who works in Los Angeles on an exchange program of some kind. That would have been a real lead.

It would have been great if he showed up in Morocco wearing a big, like, Panama hat or something. Real? Yeah, yeah. All like Lawrence of Arabia. This scene with the parents, I mean, so many scenes this movie, the Eric Robert scene,

in a lot of conversations, it feels I had so much trouble, my mind had so much trouble gripping what was going up, like holding on to the dialogue or picking up information because it's so elliptically, kind of like,

some would say poorly, written, and information is suddenly dropped on you without any lead-up or anything like that, but then the conversations otherwise will just kind of like circle the drain of actual talk.

It was very, I don't know if you guys were having this trouble, but it felt like I'd watch a scene And halfway through the scene, I'd be like, I don't know that I'm registering any of this. Like, it just kind of feels like I'm walking through a haze of words that don't quite make sense. Yeah. I agree. But I also thought maybe that's Los Angeles.

I've definitely had meetings with my agents in L.A. That felt very similar to that. Where I walked away going, I don't think I got any concrete information out of that. Yeah. So while in Morocco, they stop at a gas station and they buy an RV. Alex buys an RV while Delilah and. and Patricia getting an argument where they're like kind of accusing each other

of trying to take advantage of Alex and his money. And so Delilah has made it very clear to Patricia that she's going to play along with Alex's fears about aliens because she sees this as the way to get her become his new girlfriend. He's such a catch at this point. And he's such a catch. The guy who, I mean, he's shaved his beard at this point. So he lost the one thing that was great about him.

But this guy who has spent months sitting around a pool pining for his disappeared girlfriend, and is now kind of driven in this obsessive way to make everyone fly to Morocco and drive around in the desert in an RV. She's like, I got to keep this guy. Like, I got to get with him, you know? Well, I mean, at least he's got hobbies, you know. He's got something going on. It's true. He's not just playing video games. Yeah, he's not just playing Eldon Ring. Definitely like a Timu Justin Thoreau at that point. Like, they really got him squared down. Timu Justin Thoreau. I feel like that's like, that's like, a whole type of man.

Definitely. Okay, so they ride around in the desert for a little bit. They stop at a desert oasis. Wait, did you skip the part, though, where they go, the two girls go into the place. They find a woman who, like, laughs at, like, an elderly woman just looks at them and does a creepy laugh for a long time, and they both kind of just look at each other and back out of the room. And then get up and leave, yeah.

They reacted like they went to a haunted house. And that was the, like, they're like, oh, what a wacky experience. Okay, now for the, hey, Ron. I also don't know what they, much more disquieted by the head. I don't know what they expected when they went into the building. I don't know what they expected to have happened, and I don't know why that happened, and I don't know why they, you know. Oh, no, I think they're very, it's one of those moments where it's like there's fully 25 to 30 seconds given to why they go in, which is to get out of the heat. Oh, that's right.

That's right. They could have just gone in and had this experience. But then they come out and you get the sense that those scenes. right next to each other, we're filmed months apart, right? Because they just giggle on their way out. They've been in a tickle fight, you know? This, I will say, and I'll give... That's some good direction, by the way.

It's like, I'll give this... Like, imagine you're in a tickle fight. You've been in a tickle fight before. So just take yourself back there. Your motivation, your motivation is that you've just left a tickle fight. You're a little wistful that it's over, but you're also physically glad it's over because you just can't laugh that hard anymore.

from the tickling. A little side- aching, but grateful for the experience. Exactly. I will say if this scene had happened in a different kind of movie, I'd be like, love this scene. If this was some kind of Eastern European horror movie, I'd be like, I love this scene where they walk in, and an old lady just laughs at them and they walk out again.

But in this movie, it didn't quite work for me. No, that's too bad. Okay, so again, there was, there's definitely a moment at night where they are arguing about an ox cable and they need to play some music. I can't remember if this happens before or after they all of a sudden George is outside of the vehicle

and he runs over and they find this desert oasis thing at night. I think it's after the oasis. I don't know because the ox cable leads to the song starts playing and they sing along. Yeah and they're like we didn't ask for this song but it's kind of catchy and it's clearly another Gino McCoy banger.

100%. I went through a roller coaster of emotions during the scene because at first I'm like why are we spending so much time on whether they have an cable to play music, just play some music. And then I'm like, oh, it's to set up the fact that he's going to play another one of his songs. And then at first, all the characters don't like the song. And I'm like, oh, Gina McCoy, you're being honest with, you know, or at least humble at once.

No, but they really get into it. But then they get into it. They turn around. They're like, you know what? This is the greatest song I've ever heard. I wondered if that screech right before it that happens is sort of like a mind control thing, but then makes them really love the song. Because there is that really discordant sound that comes.

sounds out. Yeah. And I was like, ooh, that's cool. The radio waves are being controlled by what's ever... It really feels like it's setting you up for the aliens to attack in that moment. But it's setting you up for this song, which events like... So is he saying the music comes from the aliens? Is that what it is?

Yeah, yeah, it's serving with the aliens by Joe Satriani. That a sexy girl is. So, yeah, maybe this track was actually like that loud sound. It was like the bonus hidden track at the end of the last track on Gina McCoy's record where, like, on that last song, after you listen to the last song, you then, like, wait 20 minutes, and then there's, like, a crazy sound,

and then you get a bonus secret song. Yeah. That's what people love, right? People love that show. Or here's my read of the rest of this movie. That screech, that's the moment when their van crashed because they were so busy looking about Oxa,

but the rest of the movie is them in the last moments what they imagine before they die, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's a real loss situation. The morphine dream. That's great. Okay, so at one point they stopped at a nighttime desert oasis.

they meet up with a weird hippie couple Sonny and Cher who convince Alex to take his clothes off and go kind of skinny dipping for a moment, and then they leave. These characters, again, this is where the movie almost becomes a movie I can respect on a B movie level. It makes no sense, it's dumb.

The Sunny character just grunts. He's like a caveman wearing clothes. And the Cher character, for no reason, pretty much takes off her dress and goes, get in this water with me. We've got to get into the water. and it doesn't these characters show up later

and it doesn't mean anything when they show up later either but the nonsensical cartoonish quality of these characters it's like oh yeah we're sunny I'm sunny this is Cher and I'm Cher and it's like and someone was like Sonny and Sharon it's like

it's like they wandered into a different sillier kind of like weirder movie and I'm like all right let's spend more time in this movie they're in the same movie with Eric Roberts and I don't know like they're all sort of it's it feels very Baker's field to me I don't know how I can really explain it any further.

Sunny and Cher are definitely not their real names, you know, and I really respect them being like, uh, yeah, we're not even going to pretend that we're going to be authentic with you. Yeah, I also feel like Sunny and Cher were not the names on the script, and they're just like, uh, come up with a name real quick while we're shooting. Maybe these two, these two, there's such a, there's such a Manson family vibe to them.

And it's the kind of thing where I'm like, I want more, Genuinely, I want more of this kind of strange, sinister vibe in this movie. For sure. Because otherwise, this movie just feels very flat and bland and boring, you know. So we then, time for things to get heating up. So they're, while traveling at night on the road, they almost run over a goat. And then all of a sudden, something smashes into the windshield. I couldn't tell if it was the goat or something else.

And then there seems to be. I was having trouble with this, too, whether it was like a, the goat's head. I think, or maybe it's an alien thing or it's a tiny weapon of something. It's very hard to make it out. I watched that part a couple times and I could never quite get it.

There seems to be some kind of a UFO and they try to get away in their RV but then the RV crashes and rolls down a hill. We have a, I would say, probably a complicated stunt shot of the RV rolling around and the people like bouncing around on the inside of it. I was really impressed by that. That was the one.

This was the one effect in the movie. This is an okay, like, kind of sci-fi channel level type or maybe a little bit less effects. But this, when they... Later on, it's very much like alone in the dark video cutscene in a video game. Yes. When they're actually... When they're actually...

When you're inside the RV and it was spinning up... The roll. Yeah. I was like, they must have made a room and that they could turn. Yeah, it was really cool, actually. Yeah, it looks really great. Actually, you've been in a lot of sets. Have you ever been in a rolling RV? I have not.

And I was really disappointed once I thought I thought, fuck it list, man. Yeah, let's add it. But it's funny because it is really. Maybe in the next season of Gilded Age. Your lips to Julian fellows ears. I really was like, this is a really effective scene. And I didn't want any of it. Like I really didn't want to see George hurting and upset the way that I was like, no.

I've become so attached to George. You care about this character, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I didn't want to see that guy in pain. I did not need realistic cuts and injuries on these ciphers of people. Like, I really just... So they climb out of the wreckage of their RV, and they are all injured and they're disoriented,

and there seems to be aliens still around. Up on a bluff, they see Sonny and Cher, who then get blasted by some kind of alien ray. And then they, in order to get... Alien, original Alien Ray, the pizza guy. Yeah, yeah. Amis Ray. Yeah, so they try to take cover from the aliens

by running toward a nearby, like, fort or castle. Yeah. And they hide in there, and it turns out that that's actually the cover part of a deep underground military base. They descend into the vows of this base, and this is where it's a pretty standard. sci-fi channel like sci-fi I don't know like science installation type

like a scientific military thing where there's like yeah there's like hallways with with gratings above you and there's like doors with glowing stuff behind them you know lines on the wall that glow glowing lines on the wall

eventually you're recessed lighting yeah eventually you're going to find tanks with things floating in them you know that are clearly the next step of human evolution. As George says, the next step of human evolution, I don't know what he's basing it on

because they just kind of look like blobs, like just blobs and blubs. Guys in suits. One of the top ten places you're going to find tanks full things floating. Top ten. Pet stores. Seafood restaurants and Chinese restaurants.

Underground's government installations. Dentist's office waiting rooms. Okay. Any place where they have like count how many pickled eggs are in the jar and if you get it right, you get all the eggs. The Empire strikes back. Jeff Coon's retrospectives.

That's just going to be basketball is floating in tanks. But again, it counts, you know. Does it count as floating in tanks if it's one of those places that's like a paragliding or whatever, but it's indoors, like indoor skydiving places? No, that's a good question. We get it a lot. No, actually. It does not count as a tank.

Okay, let me cross the off. We at the tank administration. We in the tank floating listing ranking community. So walking around this. As the Guinness reference. representative for tank floating operations. I'll have to say no, Stuart. That does not fit our parameters, yeah?

So walking around this place, I think at one point Patricia has a vision of, like, alien silhouettes. Yeah. Alien silhouettes and blood flowing around her, what, like, faux reptile skin boots. And then they eventually realized they're being tracked by, it seems like, men and black special force type guys, George and Alex

easily dispatched these two soldiers and take their weapons. It never used the soldiers to use the enormous guns that they're holding in their hands. If one of you got abducted by aliens my friends and I would

A, not be able to find you and be You're not looking hard now. Maybe they're being held at the local Cineplex for the bad movie retrospective on the tenta. But also don't expect

me to be able to beat anyone up in order to save you for sure if they're not at the bar I'm not finding them sorry. Maybe they're at the comic shop okay so they burst into

I'll check this hammock yeah don't see them yet better spend a little more time checking I was mad the guys got guns and poor Patricia's just got her phone still yeah but she's getting all this

George is, as George says out loud, he's going to get rich from this material, which I'm like, how do you own it? She's the one filming it. Right. Way to like take it. Is she under contract? Yeah. I mean, it's a little, I mean, but it reminds a little bit an issue I had in Nope when they were like, all we need is a picture of that thing and we'll be,

we'll be millionaires. And I'm like, who's going to pay you them? I don't understand. But I don't think that's a problem with the script. I don't think that's a problem with the script. I would argue that's a problem with their thinking. No, no. I still feel like it fits within that world unlike here. The... I'm just saying Illumina, nope.

Basically the same of me. Anyway, continue. He's just as good. Okay, so they burst into a room and they find Tatiana strapped to a table being overlooked

by some kind of alien creature who they immediately blast and then another alien shows up they blast that alien too. They know how to use those guns with no training. Again, they are amazing. I couldn't even close the gate

at your bar Two nights ago, Stuart. I was like, nobody showed me how to do this. Gotta call you at 6 a.m. That's true. I'll give the, let's say that Alex, during what it turns out was his, the abductions he was dreaming about,

maybe they trained him in the use of this alien weaponry at some point. Because we realize at this point, now reunited with Tatiana, that Alex has had the same dreams because he also was being abducted. And that's where they met. And that's why they have some, a deep and abiding love for each other, and he's able to find her.

Why, she's his sincy girl. That's why they have such a strong connection. That's why Delilah will never be able to interrupt that connection, which is perfect because she falls off a, like a railing and aliens drag her. I felt so bad for this character who got roped into this dumbass alien hunt and then dies. It doesn't get a weapon ever, right? She's just trying to stand by her man, you know what I mean? And then all of a sudden we see her spinal column.

That's true. Should have been blonder. So I guess if that's the LinkedIn, it's like special extraterrestrial, neurological, super. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Yep. You got it.

Oh, wait. Can I give the George exposition? I wrote this fully out. Oh, yeah, yeah. So it says there's a blip where you see them covered in goo holding hands. And then it cuts back, and George says, it all makes sense. Both of y'all are connected to each other. That's how you were miraculously able to find her.

Both you guys having nightmares about the same place, it all adds up. It does all add up. They're like, we need a line of dialogue that gets across how this all adds up. And then they split it with Tatiana, who then says, because you were also abducted by aliens. Yeah, because when we first started seeing them covered in goop, I'm like, wait a minute, did I miss something? And no, I guess we all miss something.

We missed the signs were there all along. Yeah, I miss Delilah. Yep. Delilah, unfortunately, gets her spine ripped out. Well, she shouldn't have wished that another girl would disappear. Yeah, sub-zero style, right? I think so, yeah. Yeah, that's some haze code stuff, being like,

If you wish another girl's going to disappear, you will have your spinal column exposed. That's the rule. Okay, so they run through the base. Yep, they're being pursued by yelling aliens. The aliens, they shoot. Are they the same kinds of aliens, the aliens that are chasing them? I couldn't tell if it was, if they were the same or different, because the ones that are chasing them are very clearly like, they look kind of like the xenomorph, a little bit.

They're kind of like Venoms. Yeah, or like Venoms. Exactly. They've got long tongues and stuff. But the ones that they shoot, I thought that they looked a little different. And I could buy it if there's the scientist aliens and their enforcer. alien or something. But from that point, all we see are the Venom

xenomorph types, which, again, I don't see them as being the kind that can build a spaceship. They don't even have clothes. Yeah. But they're like spinning triangles in their hand. You know, like there's a shot of this huge alien. It seemed, I don't know, maybe the proportions were just off, but it seemed enormous

this alien, just sort of like levitating something in its palm. And I was like, why does that guy need a land rover if he can do that? Can't he just go to get there? Elliot, is it more advanced to have clothes? Come on, let's all get naked right now. Just do it, Gary.

I knew I was here for me. So we got, so they run through the base, they find a room that, like a decontamination chamber that has a bunch of, like, spacesuits that all fit them perfectly. They put those spacesuits on. And then I think they, like, teleport to another room. Yeah.

I can't remember all the mechanics. Then they walk outside and they're on, it seems like they're on some kind of alien desert planet. Yeah, they're on another planet. It doesn't look that different from the Moroccan desert they were just in, but they are clearly talking about it as a different planet. And George is like, low oxygen, don't take your helmets off, you know. And then they run and they're being pursued.

And I think they go into another alien base that's on this planet. And then they start shooting. Now it just sounds like you're describing a video game levels too. I mean, it's all just a bunch of action that doesn't really add up to anything. And then George gets shot and he falls down and he bleeds a lot and they're like, we're all going to die here. And then they keep running and then somehow Patricia like breaks her leg and then an alien breaks her neck.

And I'm like, oh, that's unwarred. And then. That seems like an unnecessary and also mean way for the alien to kill her to then snap her neck. Seems like, what is this? Come on, what's going on? And then Tatiana and Alex end up in the desert surrounded by, evil aliens and then what they

like explode or something there's like there's like a there's like a chase they have like a humve chase they have a Humvee chase they have a Humvee chase oh yeah that would which is hinted out in the first moment of the film right we finally

get the resolution of what that scene is about with the little dinosaur lizard guy oh that's right in the very opening in the movie we're on that alien planet and we see someone drive up in a little car and there's like he finds a broken phone and they're surrounded and they take their mass off to kiss even though it's a low-oxygen planet and they kiss and then like do like they

it's sort of unclear what happens whether the very end is like just like a fantasy happy ending like they're like they appear to be back on earth kissing together oh yeah that could be like them you know fantasy dying moments or maybe they get zapped back to earth somehow in that moment Like, it's unclear. I thought they got zapped back to Earth. You know, because she's been abducted a ton, which for somebody who's been abducted a ton, that girl's got a lot of quit in her.

You know what I mean? She's very much, I'm piecing out, this hurts. Take off your helmet so I can stroke your face. And then... She's like, where's the beard? I'm missing the giant beard I heard about it. You would look good with a beard.

Have you ever thought about that? Oh, you missed a lot, Tajana. You know, you're right. They are in Malibu at the end. I forgot. Doesn't she have like a big, hat on or something. Yeah, she's got a big hat.

Yeah. That's how you know it's Malibu. I mean, like, either way, I can't decide which ending annoys me more, whether, like, these two bland lovers survive having killed their friends who were dumb enough to follow them on this adventure, or everyone dies and the movie has even less of a point than it already has. Well, Dan, did you watch the mid-credit scene or no? Speaking of points. Oh, I did see the mid-credit scene.

I don't know whether Stewart did. So, first off, before we get to a mid-credit scene, you know. credit scene, which of course I did not watch. There is a after this final moment in Malibu, we cut to text on the screen. This is the best. This is, maybe this is my favorite moment. This is the moment that movie where I went, no, what?

I said that out loud. It would be so happy. Text on the screen explaining the phenomena of alien abductions and how there's been so many, but so many go unreported because of the potential stigma. It gives the statistic that it is associated with it. estimated that one out of every 200 people has been abducted by aliens.

One out of every 200, that is bonkers. That means that many people you know have been abducted by aliens. Many of the people listening to this podcast have been abducted by aliens. I was like, that is an obscenely low number for that group. If it was like one at every million people,

I'd be like even that seems like a pretty prevalent alien abductions. But what at every every 200? Are they abducting people constantly? What's going on? Come on. Yeah, they said 1.6 million in 2022. Yeah.

That is more people than are, like, erased on that show, the leftovers, you know? Yeah. At that point you're getting into the kind of thinking that was in, like, the 80s satanic panic where they were like, oh, yeah, yeah, all these preschools all across America are drugging kids and then flying them around the world so they can participate in sacrifices and then bringing them back so that they can be picked up at the end of the day by their parents. They're really flying them around? That was the idea.

That was the idea, yeah, that they were traveling. In the middle of the day, they're traveling them. But it's a one out of every 200, I was like, I was, if it's, and I started feeling bad, because I was like, if it's one at every 200 and I didn't get abducted, I feel left out. Yeah. You're just for bad hang. They just didn't wise. I'm a bad hang for aliens.

Ellie, can you explain this mid-credit sequence, though? Yeah, I didn't see this what happens. So, by the way, the credits are very much like somebody took like a camp, of a credits program and just were like hit play insert some names like all the images they show are not of characters from the movie or of things that happened in the movie no well speaking of not characters in the movie and not things that happened the mid credit scene is less it's more of a mid credits joke than a than a scene where you there's a couple guys and an alien sitting in like kind of and eric roberts and eric roberts and they're sitting there and uh was it eric

roberts or just someone in eric roberts warden no is eric roberts okay And some T-Moo stormtroopers. Yeah. And they could afford more Eric Roberts. Well, that's what I was shot, because this scene was shot in the daytime, and the rest of Eric Robert's stuff is all shot at night. But they're sitting around like a grill, and they're mainly just kind of hanging out.

And then at one point, someone goes, who invited the alien? And that's the end of it. And I was like, I don't know what I'm supposed to be getting from this. I guess it's supposed to be fun or funny. But I did, it just felt like it's so clashed with everything else the movie seemed to be trying to do, you know? Um, before we get on to final judgments, I do want to, as teased before, so, uh, this is a special report, uh, from Alex Gooder of Hollywood Entertainment, who, uh, Hollywood Entertainment put together the Clifford reunion. We saw at Bam and mentioned in the past. He was in town recently with some other weird, uh, film programming.

Are you, is he, did he give you permission to name him as your source? Yes. I, I had some, uh, I hadn't met him before, but he was very nice. I had some drinks with him afterwards. He was talking about, like, oh, there's, how far did it? he was like there's this movie you should do and he started describing I'm like that's the next movie we're literally doing but he had some information that I'm going to bullet point for time but so he encountered this he heard from the theater manager friend

about this nutty Eric Roberts movie and the director and the director's producer slash mother had been emailing the theater with criticism about how it was being promoted and like nitpicking things like there were photos of like where the posters were being displayed and stuff like that. And the filmmakers had started sending folks to the theater to monitor whether or not the tickets sold corresponded to the number of people in the theater because apparently they thought that their box office should have been higher. And there was more interest for this out there because this trailer had gone viral on TikTok.

And they didn't understand how that hadn't converted to butts and seats. and Alex says that when he went to see the movie, he said two for Illumina and the ticket seller was like, what? It was taken aback. And Alex said, oh, is it sold out? And the ticket taker laughed and got serious and said, wait, are you here with the company? Because they've been sending people to monitor how many people were in there

because they're like, they've got to be ripping us off, which is what is going on with that aforementioned lawsuit. And apparently, the screening they saw started with the electronic press kit being shown. And during that time, they were the only two people in the theater during that time. Sure enough, someone came in and photographed them in the theater. Awesome. Awesome. So cool. The EPK listed someone's credits.

He says he can't be sure these were remembering this correctly, but thinks that the EPK listed someone's credits as having received honors at their university and some other credits. included actor since age four and well-known model. Oh, bless. And afterward, he monitored letterboxes and other places where people put up their reviews, where the director was getting into arguments

with the tractors. Meanwhile, mysterious, similar-sounding, positive reviews were appearing about how much better this movie was than the just-released long legs. And, like, why aren't, why is there so much focus on long-reys? I mean, I'll say this.

I didn't love long legs. Long legs is a billion times better than this. But anyway, thank you, Alex, for the report. He guaranteed to take the heat for us if Gina McCoy sued us. I appreciate that. Yeah, there's a, it seems like a fair amount of... Oh, man, are we going to have to, like, go in front of Congress and defend our podcast? You're on your own.

There is no defense. That's the thing. I'll have to be like, Congress, I cannot defend anything about our podcast. I apologize. It's a,

it certainly seems like a movie that they put, they paid someone to plant good things about in places, or maybe they're doing their own because when you look it up online, there's two different types of articles about it.

There are reviews which are bad. And then there are articles about like this cult class, this international, new cult classic, that it's a mind-bending story and it's like all right, well, this feels like

it's straight out of a publicity kit or a press kit or something like that. But I guess the lawsuit involves that it was shown on a lot fewer screens than they thought it should be. But I gotta say, to watch in this movie, I'm like that this was shown in any movie theater screens.

They've achieved what they wanted to achieve. Like this is everything about it screams. You watch this on Tooby because it's got a cool thumbnail image and then you're like, what am I doing? What is this thing? Yeah, or you're a bad movie sicko,

like us. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, speaking of bad movie, Sickos, there's a thing we do in the flop house, which is called

The Final Judgments where we say, is this a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie or a movie we kind of liked. I honestly don't know where you guys

are going to go with this. I'm going to say, like, for me... Oh, great movie. For me... Good movie. Watching with my family tonight. This is definitely,

definitely a fun one to talk about. I found the energy level of this movie to be way too low for me to think it was a good, bad movie. I think the term soporific bits for a lot of this movie. Yeah, like Eric Roberts definitely brings the energy this movie should have, but doesn't for most of the times.

So I personally am going to go ahead and say bad, bad, even though it is a fun one to discuss. Stuart, why don't you? Yeah, I mean, I would say this verges on what I would call a good bad movie and what we call a good bad movie here at the plop house. Thanks for separating those too. And this is clearly a bad movie

that is, I feel like this is I don't, I feel like there's been some conversation about whether or not this is kind of like in the vein of something like the room. And I don't think it's quite as silly and it also, the runtime is too long. But it is very silly and weird.

And despite having some fun moments, it's a bad, this is a bad movie. I don't think, I can't imagine there's an argument about, like, that people are actually discussing whether this is a good movie but it's a question of whether or not

how is this bad enough to be a classic bad movie yes I agree to me it's a bad bad movie because it's so that it's just very slow and I found it very dull and very like I got very sleepy while watching it like it was a very

whereas you're your classic the Roomses or Burdemics I feel like are a constant parade of surprises and things where you're like what is this? Why are they doing this? Wait a minute what and there's an energy to it and yeah

it's just such a low-energy movie and like more fun to talk about than it is to watch but maybe it'd be more fun to watch with other people than to watch it as I did by myself. So I don't know. What do you think, Ashley?

Yeah, I felt, I think I'm gonna actually come down on good, bad movie and I think when it's not, the problem was actually with how it was marketed to me if I had gone in completely blind instead of thinking that this was about a...

I mean, you wouldn't have been able to see the movie at all. That's true. But I would have had Gino McCor music, pure and unfilts her. It's true. It's just that feeling. I mean, it's all vibes. But I was so sold on the underground military base that doesn't show up until the last 20 minutes of the film.

If I had sort of ascertained from the opening scenes that this was sort of a low-energy St. Elmo's fire for 24 where... St. Elmo's crackling ember, you know, it's not quite a fire, yeah. Yes.

St. Elmo's low radiator heat that I think I would have been able to get behind it a little more. I watched it with my husband and we did have fun talking about it. I also think that for all the low

energy, some of these actors are working really hard to try to establish things that are not on the page. And there are moments where I can see that they're trying to build camaraderie and relationships. And so I just want to shout out to those actors because I have been in a zero percent rating

on Rotten Tomatoes movie before. Wow. Inside Man, the Spike Lee movie? Absolutely fucking not. We're going to fist fight, Stewart. No, I love that movie. Pause this, pause this. No, a movie called An Invisible Signs, starring Jessica Alba as a math teacher. Oh, shit, that sounds like a feature in a lot-house movie.

I mean, I would love. There are some also really great performances in that. But, yeah, I'm going to go with Good Bad. Okay. It's a little slow. It's a lot slow. Share it a lot. Yeah.

But I was entertained. even if I said, wait, what, and rewound a lot. Classic phrase. I mean, sometimes that's the best sign in a movie like this is when you have to rewind him and go like, what was that, what? But other times it's like, I don't understand what just happened. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, damn, what's that song?

Rewinded. I want to grab the ox cable. I want to hear that song. I got to hear that sensey girl song again. Shout out to that elevator song that Gino McCoy has where he's, where the guy hits the button. It's one of the most dramatic moments in the movie Alex reaches out and hits the button. It's so close to some classical music

that I did Shazam it to see if they'd spent all their money on some orchestration. But nope, Gino McCoy's Eleving. It's all in, yeah. Musical chameleon. You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother me for 15 years. And they've been doing it.

Maybe you stopped listening for a while, maybe you never listen. And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up. But no. No, you would be wrong. We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing. Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works. The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me. We serve it up every Monday for you, if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and it goes rotten. So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show. Let's learn everything. So let's do a quick progress tech. Have we learned about quantum physics? Yes, episode 59. We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have. Same episode, actually. Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters? Episode 64. So how close are we to learning everything? Bad news. We still haven't learned everything yet. Oh, we're ruined.

No, no, no, it's good news as well. There is still a lot to learn. Woo! I'm Dr. Ella Hubber. I'm regular Tom Lum. I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else, too. And although we haven't learned everything yet,

I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode. Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun. This podcast is sponsored in part by Squarespace. What's Squarespace? Well, it's a service that gives you everything you need to offer your services online and get paid. All in one place. You can use their professional on-brand invoices, online payments, and you can streamline your workflow with built-in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools.

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We've added a late show after our first November show sold out. We're going to be talking about canine, starring a slobbering, good-natured animal, and also a dog. The show is at Sleeping Village on November 16 at 9.30 p.m. Go to sleeping-dashvillage.com for tickets to that. Also, the flop TV system, the flop TV season, rather, has already begun. But it is not too late to get tickets because all episodes will be available on demand for ticket holders for the entirety of our FTV season, which lasts through February of 2026. The first Saturday of every month, we're doing a streaming show. That's what Flop TV is.

a streaming show covering significant, critical, and or commercial flops, decade starting in the 2000s and going all the way back to Plan 9 from Outer Space in the 1950s. There's presentations, silly pre-tapes, a live chat, all sorts of fun, and you can get individual tickets for seven bucks or a price break by getting a season pass to six shows for $35. Plus, you know, ticketing fees, because unfortunately, we aren't set up to handle that stuff ourselves. So, if you're interested, go to the flophouse.

Dot simpletix.com, that is, T-I-X for Tix. There are tickets and more info about the season at theflophouse.com. And because we haven't mentioned this in a while, if you go to Flophousepodcast.com, you can subscribe to our newsletter, Flop Secrets, where you can get the scoop on what we're up to as a group, individually, as well as some additional writing from me, Dan. Sometimes we'll answer more letters there,

stuff that we can't get to on the show. I'll post behind-the-scenes stuff. It's just a good way to keep in touch, and we only send it twice a month, so hopefully no one gets bored. Let's answer some questions from listeners, letters from listeners. Wait, are they letters or questions, Dan? I'm confused.

Well, rewind it. Usually we call this letters from listeners, and I just sort of forgot what we do on the show, even though it's been nearly two decades. I do love, something I think our listeners appreciate is no matter how many years we do this, a refusal to take things for granted and fall into habits that would help us to get through the show

and remember what's going to happen next in what we do. Yeah. We treat every show like it's our first. That's beautiful. This first one is from Michael Last Name Withheld, who writes, Dear Flop House, one of my greater concerns about the dangers of AI

isn't so much about professional artists getting pushed out, but that amateur artist may just decide to use AI slop instead of dealing with the frustration of developing their skills and working through being bad at art in order to become good at it. And that's a shame because I like a lot of amateur art

and seeing newer artists develop even if their work isn't as good as they want it to be. So my question for you is, what are some things that you like about newer artist still figuring things out? That's from Michael Last Dame Withheld. And in the case of movies, like one of the things I like, and it's not necessarily like these are bad artists, these are often like very good artists,

but the early work is filled with so much show-offiness almost because they don't know whether they're going to make another movie. so they're like every idea they've had they stick it in there whether or not it is necessarily like of a piece with what they're trying to do and maybe later works are more you know quote mature but there's so much energy in a lot of early movies and that's something I appreciate and I also just want to say like I really appreciate the like the general like premise of this letter because I do feel like you have to be bad but before you're good. You have to embrace being bad before you're good. Like, that's one of the most important things to do is, like, know that that's just part of the process. You're working through a lot of bad stuff to get to the good.

And I hope that people out there take that to heart. Yeah, I mean, the Flan Pass podcast has always been kind of perfect and we've never had any slip-em-ups. Never. We've never had any growing pains. That's another way of saying that we have not developed at all over the past 17-18 years. Emotionally, yeah. We have changed.

There's a lot of stuff I would change. Yeah, I mean, like, I love amateur art. Usually, it's short films that you can find on a website called Pornhub. And I mainly like it when you can see something in the background, like a cat. Or there's one where, like, you could see, like, through the, like, window to the porch, you can see a grill. And in the comment section, some guy was like, actually, that type of grill, you should probably put in a garage or something. because you can't really handle being out exposed to the elements. It's so funny.

I love it so much. I love the comment section on porn videos because it's either like something kind of helpful or like unrelated or it is like stuff you would never want to know like the exact time code at which someone achieved orgasm. Right. Here's the money shot. Also, dude, if you checked your thyroid, it looks a little like you might have this condition. Yeah, the exact time code. don't record the exact time code you bust in case you accidentally have a child and then you're going to want to tell them exactly the moment you created them. Diary of such things.

You need to know that information so you can label the ejaculate when you put it in your archives. We took a weird turn. Oh, yeah. That's, yeah. Whose fault was that? Right. You're yours, Stuart. Oh, right. But I will say, there is something very exciting about seeing someone clearly has talent, but maybe hasn't yet gotten so comfortable with their skill that they're taking it for granted or they're not excited by it anymore that they are often an artist's early work

is where they are trying out their ideas that are new to them or at the very least they are imitating old ideas in a way that is bringing their own flair to it. So there's something really exciting in seeing an artist develop and seeing them the energy and excitement of someone recognizing that they're becoming their own self

before that self becomes you know, stuck, static you know you know just becomes what it is certainly sometimes when you're seeing somebody's somebody who's enthusiasm might outpace their skill set yeah or even or just that they're enthusiastic like there's a type of it doesn't happen to all creative professionals but a lot of creative professionals there's that there's that excitement of like I'm doing this thing like this thing that I want to do I'm doing before it becomes a job or something that they can take for granted oh of course I do this thing this is what I do you know this is the craft that I that I've made

my life that it's the thing of like i'm so excited that i'm i'm doing this craft that i've that i've wanted to do and there's an energy to that that is really exciting it's the kind of thing that like there's a lot of um you know when you're listening to punk bands like the early stuff a band puts out where it's like they're not as good as their instruments but they're so excited about doing what they're doing you know um it hasn't yet become a thing that they not take for granted in a bad way like oh this again but take for granted as in like that thrill of we might not do this ever again has gone away yeah like we may never be asked to do this you know there's a correlation there's this ira glass thing that he said a long time ago about how people's taste like you have a

like artists have a taste level but they're not going to hit that taste level for a while but your your work is not as good as your taste when you're starting out and uh enduring through that discomfort of you liking things that are better than what you can make you. is part of what the journey for the work is. I think it's really exciting. I love working with first time filmmakers. I think that there is, they've got all of these, the Harper Lee to kill a mockingbird of it all,

where it's like they've been germinating this idea for a really long time, and they're really excited to get it out there. But they're also deeply collaborative and some, well, some of them are deeply collaborative, but there's also the sense that anything can be a horse. You know what I mean? You're sort of like cobbling together the often the low-budget circumstances of the movie you're trying to make with the idea that you've had in your head for 15 years.

And I really love how that works. Because they're not, you know, most of these films, low-budget first-time filmmaker Indies are not getting sound stages where they're building sets, right? Like they're borrowing a chicken restaurant that they worked in. Oh, my dream. Filming their. A movie I did compliance with Craig Zobel, like his second film, we literally worked in a chicken restaurant overnight, all overnights.

Two weeks of overnights, right? Because they would shut down the KFC. We would come in and change the signage. And then we would shoot until 6 a.m. Did you change it to Popeye's? Yeah, exactly. to bow jangles, actually. I love this rolling reveal of movies that I've seen you in unawares in the past.

See, now, Dan, you'll see it. I'm ruining people's suspension of disbelief left, right, and set on. It's really exciting. I like the non-rolling reveal of Dan having not done research. Sure. I know some of it. Elliot Giddish and Black Clansman. Dan, I'm just giving you the kind of roast that you're going to be giving to

people when they pay you for it for their kink. Yeah. Let's do one more letter here. This is from Anne-Marie, last name withheld, who writes, my husband and I were recently watching a mystery show which prominently featured a woman being pregnant as a plot

point, evidence by her vomiting in earshot of a witness. I know it. In movies and TVs, a woman vomits. They must be pregnant, yeah. I was ready to be angry. Unless they're vomiting a tiny spot of blood into a handkerchief, in which case they have consumption.

Yeah. Oh, man. Is that vomit? I was ready to be... It's a real nurse holiday. I was ready to be angry on Stewart's behalf at the laziness of this trope until the end of the episode, which featured a twist where it turned out that she wasn't pregnant at all. She'd just gotten such horrific and disgusting personal news she could only react by throwing up. That's awesome.

Have you ever had a movie or TV show subvert a trope you hated into something much more interesting? Love Anne-Marie. like I know that there's better answers out there but for some reason what's coming into my head is like a movie that's all about supporting a trope when I first saw my best friend's wedding I really appreciated that it was not a movie that like cavalierly had a hero ruining a wedding

and we're all supposed to root for them like over the course of the movie you're like oh okay no no this is not good behavior here that's going on. And by casting America's sweetheart in that role. That's true. I think the first one that comes to mind is the, I think the original might be in there as well, but in the Gore of Ravinsky, the ring, the moment where the character has worked so hard

to try and appease this ghost and the, this is a spoiler, but her son is like, why did you help her? Yeah. Like, I love that reaction where he's like, why did you do that, mom? It's so funny. I think for me, it's a whole subset of the... Kathy Bates has actually made this the latter part of her career, which is the middle-aged invisible woman being utilized in a way that's really spectacular. We first see it in six feet under, where Kathy Bates' character shoplifts, and they ask her why.

And she's like, because I realize that middle-aged fat women are invisible. And so I just started deciding to do some shit. You know, I'm going to pull some shenanigans. And she goes through. And then they make the revamp of Matlock all about that, this idea. But it's it, it harkens to the 60s 70s Ruth Gordon, old lady shenanigans. Where she can get away with whatever because she's an old lady. Right.

Exactly. And then she like raps and you're like, okay, hell of what. Yeah, she raps about. Rosemary's baby. And it would go something like Elliot. No, don't encourage this. With who did she lie? Just look at those eyes, that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I knew he. I knew it. My name is Satan and I'm here to say. Let me tell you about a couple that got a new place. Suddenly there's devil all up in her face. He is in her face.

That's why. Damn it. Oh, my God. Ruinning a whole genre. This is going to help his acting career, but you've got to ask, hey, what you're doing over here? Okay. Okay. So that was letters.

I just want to touch on it real quick. A couple episodes ago, we were talking about summer movie memories, and I asked you all to chime in in the comments on the Instagram post. Some actual follow-up on the show. Actual follow-up. I'm pretty professional. Blothouse follow-up. So I'm just, we had a ton of great responses, but I just want to share two of my favorites. I'll share them with you now.

The first is from Kate Kleinworth, and her memory is that my mom used to drop me and my little sister off at movie matinees during the summer, giving us each a $5 bill for tickets and a snack. Once, she accidentally gave us $20 by mistake to go see the Rocketeer. This was like, this was like a million dollars in today's money. My sister and I stared at the money at each other and then ran to consider. sessions. We bought junior mints. We bought those giant Reese's cups. We bought popcorn. We got Coke. We got Sprite. We spent every single penny. It was the best time ever at the movies, something my sister and I both looked back on fondly to this day. Neither of us remember a single thing about the Rocketeer. And I'm like, that's your loss. That's your loss. But I'm like,

that totally makes sense. Also, when I was a kid, if I was given $20, I'm like, there is not even going to be a single penny left. I'm going to spend every single thing, which is something my father still complains about. So I think that's lovely. That is a great movie memory and snacks, snack, snacks. Okay, here's another good one. This is from Schmunk 2-4-1.

When I was about 12 or 13, I went to the cinema, so that's a clue. We got a UK listener on our hands. Or a pretentious person. I went to the cinema to see the Scorpion King. Maybe not so pretentious.

You know what? Let's go back to UK on this one. I was not a discerning viewer at the time. I'd read it about it in Empire Magazine. Oh, okay, well, hold on a second. That's another dip off, yeah. I was not a discerning viewer at the time, but even... I hopped on a double-decker bus to get there.

Okay, that's another clue. Sherlock Dan on this one. I don't know, were the crumpets for sale in the... Does he say which slide of the road it was on? Yeah. Being a Londoner. Okay, no clue there. Okay.

I was not a discerning viewer at the time, but even I hated it. Cut to a week later, and my mate tells me he snuck. All right, another clue. How is this going to help us find Tatiana? And my mate tells me he snuck into a Resident Evil showing and asked if I wanted to go see it too. My first R-rated movie? I was excited and maybe a little scared, but I said yes.

So we're in the theater. We buy a couple of tickets to a showing of some random movie called, the Scorpion King, and we're ready to go. We sit down outside, just waiting for our moment to sneak in, which passes, and we proceed to chicken out, which is how I ended up seeing the Scorpion King twice in theaters, like a true Scorp-Head. Aw.

Those were lovely. Thank you so much. Yeah. So, finally, on the Flop House, we like to, you know, not wallow in negativity. We like to recommend a few. For too long. You know, we wallowed in it for a while.

For the lion's share of the podcast, some would say. But let's recommend some... Dan, we got to stop giving the lion So I'm such a big share of the podcast. I'm scared of it. I know you're scared of him. He could tank our careers. It's the MGM Lion.

He knows a lot of people in this town. We've seen and would recommend perhaps in opposition to many of the films we watch for the podcast. I would like to recommend I saw Deep Cover. Hell, yeah. It was going on. He's cover's great. Just going off the Criterion channel, I'm like, I got to see it while I can. The opening credits of that movie are so fucking hard as hell, man.

That movie rocks. It's from 92, directed by Bill Duke. It stars Lawrence Fishburn and, of course, Jeff Goldblum as a sleazy lawyer. Both of them kind of at, like, the height of their movie star powers in that movie, I think. It's got a lot of crime thriller. thrills, but it's also a very kind of more thoughtful movie about the drug war and about

it does not exalt cops. It shows them to be part of the same system that causes a lot of pain. And it's a beautiful looking movie. It's so beautifully shot. And all this from a guy whose head got blasted apart by Predator and Predator, Bill Duke. He really came back from the head being busted upon by the Predator and Brotherhood.

They glued it back together. Stuart, do you like it? I'm going to recommend a movie I saw a little while ago from a year or two ago called The Order. This is a movie based on a true story about a, I believe, FBI involvement in the 70s where they're cracking down on a white supremacist organization that funds their operation by robbing banks. the movie stars Jude Law in like kind of amazing like run down grizzled dirtbag Jude Law

and I kind of love it it's totally working for me mustache two thumbs up and he is opposed by the leader of the white supremacist organization is played by Nicholas Holt who was really like trading on those like those like baby face innocent like looks

to be this like you know evil jerk it's really good if you're looking for just kind of like a small like a small super tense little thriller Elliot would you like to Oh sure I was Travis going to get to go next or Ashland's go next

I'll recommend a movie that So we watch Lumina on Tooby And I was like I want to watch another movie That's not Lumina But I'm still on Tooby Wait a minute This movie I wanted to see is on here

What's this movie? It's the one we've all been waiting for That's right Heroic Times This is a Hungarian animated movie From 1984 That is a it's a It's an adaptation of a 19th century epic about a medieval night in Hungary in the 14th century.

And it is so beautifully animated. It looks so gorgeous. It's like watching paintings moving. And it's all about, it's a, being an Eastern European movie, it cannot just be about a hero of medieval times. It has to be about how this guy becomes a knight and then destroys his life and becomes disillusioned with the very idea of nobility and serving the king. uh it's a short movie it's like a little bit less than an hour and a half it looks gorgeous uh i think it's really good it's called heroic times now before ashley goes i i i checked the letterbox list where uh you can find all of our recommendations just to confirm that stuart has

recommended the order before so i'm going to assume that your recommendation for this week will be it's alive three island of the alive which we saw together oh yeah i'll also recommend it's Alive 3, Island of the Alive, Michael Moriarty gives possibly the most unhinged performance I've ever seen on screen and you know what? Monster babies, you got to see them. They freak me out. Yeah.

That's the one where it's implied that the monster babies are having Monster Babies, right? It was more than implied. Yeah, because they are just happening. It's pretty much text, I think it says it on the poster. We blessedly do not see Monster Babies copulating with one another.

Speak for yourself, Dan. Anyway, I paid for my ticket. I'm going to see it. Ashley, do you have anything to recommend? Oh, yeah, for sure I do. I hope you guys haven't recommended this before. I mean, if you have, you have great taste. I think I would, with my one shot at this,

because I can't imagine ever coming back here. Wow, okay, fair. I'm just kidding. Wow. Wow. Oh, I assume because I would not be invited, you know, so like the way I got naked at the prompt. ran around and stuff, I figured.

Ran around. Yeah, we cut out a lot. Alex cut out a lot of stuff that was going on, yeah. I've got to recommend, we are the best. It's, we are the best exclamation point. Swedish film by Lucas Moodyson in 2013, which is about a group of preteen girls in the 80s who form a punk band,

mostly to, talk about their burgeoning feelings and their frustrations but also to piss off the metal guys that are taking over the rec center's one rehearsal room it's great it's really motivational

irreverent really inspiring and I don't love using that word because I think it's been hallmarked a lot and lifetime movie a lot but it really is like these kids are so punk rock

they get there, they meet a girl who's the only one that can play her real instrument and is also from a fundamentalist Christian family which scans to me and they're like, well we can't play shit but we're going to shave your head and let's all go and it's delightful

it's small, it's fun, it's sweet, it's tough, it's coming of age Mira Barksson, who plays the main lead singer of this group and sort of the Kathleen Hanna driver of this band is fantastic. I've seen her in nothing else. I actually did not know a single actor in this cast, but they're all pretty great. And I just love it. It makes me happy. Makes me want to go blow shit up.

That's like five recommendations. Yeah. We did great, guys. Yeah. We went above and the odd. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being here. Before we sign off, is there anything you want to plug at all?

Oh, me. Yeah. I was like, Elliot, do you have something? He always has stuff to plug. I got plenty of plugs. So you can plug your own stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, great.

I've got a movie coming out called The Lost Bus. It is directed by Paul Greengrass. It was very cool to work with Paul Greengrass. It's a movie. about the 2018 campfire fire, which was the deadliest wildfire in California history, and it stars Matthew McConaughey, America Ferreira, Yule Vasquez, and myself. Matthew McConaughey plays a true person named Kevin McKay, who was a school bus driver, who had not been working as a bus driver very long, who is prevailed upon to rescue 22 kids whose parents worked too far outside of the

evacuation zone during the Paradise Wildfires, and then he battles his way through fire with America Ferreira for hours and hours and hours. Now, I haven't seen the poster, but here's my suggestion. You take a bus and put it on a rock or something. Right, on the top of the mountain. Yeah. Balancing, yeah. I think that captures the tone you're probably looking for.

For sure. Yeah, I think so. They did make a fake post. The letterbox tour, it was very funny for a while because somebody did make a poster in advance of the actual poster, which was a very cartoon bust with sort of superimposed Matthew McConaughey

and America Ferreira heads on it. It's pretty spectacular. And I don't know if there's been another trailer, but the trailer I did see, I think you're the only voice we hear. Yeah, I'm not visible, which is how I prefer. I prefer it.

I'd rather not be perceived visually in my trailers. That's a challenge for an actor, but I appreciate that. Mm-hmm. I consider my limitations as freeing. It's very liberating. But, yeah, I've had to tell all of my relatives, you have to watch this with the sound up or you're going to be confused why I sent it to you. That's great. Okay, well, thank you, Ashley, and thank you to our network, Maximum Fun.

Go over to MaximumFund.org and check out all the other great shows on the network. Thank you to Alex Smith, our producer. He goes by the name Howl Doughty online where he makes music. He does Twitch streams. You can find his podcast, which is very funny. But that's it for us. For the Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington.

I'm Ellie Kalen. And I'm Ashley Atkinson. Okay. Bye. Bye. Ashley, this isn't a clean podcast. You can say whatever you want. Oh, yeah.

We get raw. Shitballs. Yeah. Shitballs is just the tip of the shitbird. Yeah, exactly. There's a whole other shitberg underneath. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network.

Of artists-owned shows. Supported. Directly. By you.