The Flop House - Ep.#462 - Imaginary

Episode Date: October 11, 2025

Boo! Hahahha, gotcha! It's SHOCKTOBER, when all the ghouls and ghosties and ghremlins and ghrim reapers come out to scare us! And at The Flop House it's our traditional all-horror month! We kick off with 2024's IMAGINARY, about the scariest thing in the world -- an imaginary friend! And if you don't believe us, watch that awful John Krasinski imaginary friend movie. We're shivering just thinking about it!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!To stay updated on all new events and side projects AND get a little bit of extra fun and behind the scenes nonsense, subscribe to our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets!Wikipedia page for ImaginaryRecommended in this episode:Dan: Little Women (2019)Stu: Lust, Caution (2007)Elliott: This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

On this Shocktober episode, we discuss imaginary. Woof, I wish this movie was imaginary. Still, I said that right before we started recording. Hey, everyone, welcome to the flop house. I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington all the way from New York City.

And I'm Elliot Kalen, and I'm recording in a different mode than usual because there's a Dan next to me. Hey, that's not usually there in my bedroom. I'm recording from Elliot's bedroom, where the magic happens. I'm right here. Uh-huh. Look at all these rabbits and hats. Yeah, a lot of doves, cards. It must stank in there, you know.

You know what I mean? I live in a clean house, Stuart. Clean house with a clean bag. Yeah, I know. It must it stank in there, Stuart? Oh, look at L.A. L.A. knows what I'm talking about. I don't have any idea what you're talking about.

Oh, man. Yeah, oh, buddy. Oh, buddy. Oh, how. Now, Dan, what are we doing this podcast other than talk about stank? This is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it. Of course, it is Shocktober, the time of year that we talk about scary movies or movies to purport to be scary. It's a spooky month.

It's spooky times. That's true. And in this episode, we're going to talk about a movie. It's actually from last year that I think people were a little disappointed we didn't get to. It was the sort of standout flop horror film of last year. People took to the streets in anger. And we had to listen to the voice of the people The Vox Populi rose as one

And said, Whither, Imaginary, Flop House? And we said, why are you talking that way? Yeah, this is the first time I heard of this movie When you suggested watching it. So maybe I realized, I'm deaf to the people. I realized, I thought I had never heard of it And then I recognized the poster. The poster, once you see the poster,

which it says imaginary, and there's like, I don't know, like a little stuff, there's like a, I mean, the poster that's here on the online's like there's a little girl sitting in front of like a glowing portal and there's like a little stuffed bear next door and you're like okay it's an evil imaginary friend I get it yeah yeah and it's uh and the the poster is the first thing that of many that attempts to evoke poltergeist and fails yes this is a movie it's amazing it's trying to be poltergeist really badly it's also let's just get it right out of the way it's the movie if but the scary movie version as opposed to the uh makes your stomach hurt with saccharin version yeah yeah

It's dropped dead Fred, but less scary. That's true. And there's some, like, beetle juice in there. And there's some, like, the boogeyman episodes of the Star Wars, The Real Ghostbusters TV show in there. There's another Star Wars boogeyman Halloween special. Now I want to see a Star Wars horror story so badly now, yeah. Delicious beetle juice.

Dan, a lot of times when you eat something, you're like, what is this flavor? What makes it so good? It's the beetle juice. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, didn't, wasn't, wasn't Kampari originally colored by beetles. So in a way,

it's like, Kibbari is the original beetle juice. A number of dyes are made by grinding up beetles. Yeah, I was trying to remember. I remember this factoid, but not as well as you guys.

So you got to it. Do you know, if you buy red clothes, that's probably the blood of George Harrison or John Lennon that has been ground up. They grind up beetles to make that color, yeah.

And if you grind up Pete best. And their bones to make your bread. Yes, yes. Well, the Englishman, yeah. If you grind up Pete Best, it doesn't you don't get quite as rich a color not a full beetle yeah Stu Sutcliffe same thing

anyway original Paul McCartney same thing yeah right before you was replaced by a robot at that I just I literally just learned of this conspiracy theory today you didn't know about that how they tried to replace original Paul McCartney with Paul McCartney with new Palm McCartney and people look at the taste

the new flavor of Pal McCartney won out but when the K actually came out people wanted Paul McCartney classic which one's which one's saying that wild duet the girl was mine. That was, I was actually Paul McCartney number three. That was the one they bred in a lab who wasn't all there. But yeah, you never heard about the Paul McCartney, Paul's dead conspiracy. It's a classic. No, I'd never heard it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so it was one of the things for the conspiracy theory. Before you get into imaginary, what I love about that conspiracy theory is the idea

that Paul died. They didn't want anyone to know. So they replaced him and then left clues in all of their work so that you could find out that Paul had died. It's like really like, what are they Batman villains? Like they're trying to get caught? What's going on? Yeah, come on. I mean, that's the thing. That's the only thing that's better than committing a crime. The only thing better is like teasing people to let them know you did it. And John Lennon was like, we gave you all the clues, Mr. Policeman. Oh, man. Actually sounded more like Paul.

Yeah, well, what are you going to do? Let's talk about imaginary. Is that what we're doing today? That's what we're doing. We try. Stewart, he realized we were stalling so we didn't have to talk about imaginary. He called our bluff. Do you have any more conspiracies you want to talk about?

This is, you know, it's been a while since I've watched a PG-13 horror because horror has had, you know, kind of a resurgence, and there's a lot of great horror out there, and we're mostly out of the period of time where it seemed like producers were like, we've got to make this all PG-13, so we can get the widest possible audience with the most drek, the most watered-down drag. They realize at a certain point that people, audiences like horror, which is the kind of thing the movie business rediscovers every 20 years. or so and yeah so horror has been real hard-edged lately but for a while it was like we got to have horror that a young people can go see young kids and yeah so what did you think about seeing a pg-13 movie dan i was uh one of the most striking things about this film is uh how unscary it is and not just how unscary it is but every time i there was something that clearly was meant to be a scare i sort of had to like rewind it a few times to be like wait what was supposed to be scared, like people are reacting as if something happened and I'm like, oh no, nothing really happened. I will say, there's a section in the middle of this movie where I was like, this movie despite itself is starting to become

an effective for me, horror movie. And then the movie throws that all away and gets very, for lack of a better word, kind of like PG-13 Jim Henseney almost, you know, by the end of it. I see what you're saying, but I found the middle section to be the most perturbing because

it was like the most unskishable. And at the end, at least, the silliness, at least with something. I guess so, I mean, the beginning of it is so boring, though. We'll talk about it. I found the first 40 minutes of this movie very dull. I really want to hear Dan describe this movie that he ain't scared of, Mr. Big Balls over here. Okay. You were wetting yourself the whole time.

Constantly. You can't see me shivering as I read the synopsis. I'm like, oh, this is scary. Okay. So we start with that. a tiny door and a woman burst from it and she says, sorry we couldn't finish our game. Just someone unseen and a bunch of stuff happens.

There's like a poem on the wall with crayon. There's blood. There's a bloody tooth. And a man with a bloody mouth grabs her and says, your friend isn't coming back before turning all spidery. And there's a creepy hall and a kid's bedroom and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, she tries to wake this kid before a spider, the Spider-Man attacks, not Spider-Man.

Not Spider-Man, a man-spider. A man-spider. I mean, which was one of Spider-Man's transformations when Spider-Man went to the Savage Land. He became the man-spiter, but still, you know. He doesn't own the fucking rights to all Spider-Man? He actually does own the rights to the name Spider-Man, yeah. So we're kicking off with a bunch of, you know,

scary imagery we have no context for, so it doesn't mean anything. And much of that imagery does not really come back. Not really. But don't worry, guys. This, like, this, like, style of cold open horror is, effective and I think a lot of movies like, they like a scare up front. They like to set the tone of the movie.

In this case, the tone is, things don't make sense. I think it sets the tone of desperate flailing to try to figure out what is going to scare. Yeah, I would disagree with the idea that it is effective. I would say it is a thing that studios seem

to like because they have to tell you up front that you're watching a horror movie because otherwise the person who bought the ticket to a horror movie would be like, I don't know what kind of movie this is. Is it going to get scary at any point? I mean, to be honest, I think it's designed not for the ticket-buying audience, but for the streaming or home-viewing audience. Yeah, possibly.

You have to have a scare at front or else they might zap away within seconds. But don't worry. Don't worry, guys. Don't get too scared by any of it because, of course, it's just a dream. It's just a dream. The best way for a movie to begin by telling you that what you saw doesn't matter. That was just a dream. Just a dream.

D-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-------------. And she wasn't losing her religion immediately starts editing this out. You don't have the rights to that song. Oh, good point, good point. We've been so good about that up till now. So we meet Jess,

who's the woman in the dream who's having the dream, and her husband, Max. We learned they're moving back into Jess's childhood home with their two kids from Max's previous marriage. Now, I would describe their relationship

as just met the day before shooting. Yeah. Yeah, well, and also, don't worry, Max will disappear for most of the movies, so you won't have to know too much about him. He's going on tour with his band, yeah. I know he's got an English accent,

and he's a guy in a band. Yeah. And he's got a classic crazy X. I mean, so I guess he maybe could be a beetle, you know, possibly. It's true. Yeah, there's nothing in the movie that says he isn't a beetle. There's nothing in the movie except his name, which is not one of the Beatles' names.

His face, the fact that they, he's a young person now, yeah. But you really got a dig heart But he does have like a little beard, right? That could be anything. That's true. Ringgo Star has a little beard. He does. Maybe this is Ringo Star.

I think he's still touring, Ringo Star. Yeah, this could be him. Anyway, Maxis has two kids from a previous marriage. Maxwell Silver Hammer. He is a beetle. Okay. There's a younger daughter, Alice, and a teenage daughter, Taylor. And Alice seems willing to accept Jess as her new mom.

but Taylor is more resistant because she is a teen. Yeah, classic teen. And she's like a very angry teen and there's like weird moments where she's affable but for the most part she's just really like mad at everything

and at first I was like this is annoying and then by the end I'm like that's kind of grown on me. Yeah, I think and she earns it I mean what we pick up from the back story is I guess their mother had some kind of what mental breakdown

and is a is kind of a stalking or a danger to them. Yeah. At one point early on here, Max explains to Jess that you give love to kids and usually get Jack shit in return.

Elliot, true or false? Very accurate. Very accurate. Considering I know both my boys love me, they do not like to show it, admit it, or they like to, one of them in particular,

likes to, as a joke, tell me he does not love me or that he sometimes loves me. And you just have to take it on faith that all the things you do for them, which are so many, are received in the spirit of love. Pretty good joke.

Yeah, it's a hilarious joke. The punchline is he enjoys the discomfort that I get from it. You know, it's a real Andy Kaufman type routine. Yeah, he likes the way that you're at the victim, yeah. Yeah, he likes the way that the company looks uncomfortable when he says it in front of them. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The same way when the company shows up and he likes to go, Daddy, why did you touch me there? And I go, oh, what?

That didn't happen. But I'm up for a big promotion. Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is my son is Clifford. The dog? Yeah. Yeah, Clifford, the big red dog. Yeah, exactly. So they, you know, they return to Jess's old family home.

They're settling there to live. Alice is afraid of the drawings in Jess's office. We learn Jess's a, you know, a children's book, a writer and illustrator. Yeah. She's got a series that's called Millie Millipede or something. Molly Millipede. And there's an evil spider guy named what? Simon the spider.

Simon the spider. Kind of, I guess, villainous character, although she writes a... Yeah, kind of an anthropomorphic Spider-Man. Yeah, and for anyone listening to, like, Simon the Spider, that's another Beatles thing. No, that's the Who, and it's Boris the Spider. So you're wrong on both counts. Get the hell out of here. Yeah, well, you told that person who maybe exists.

I did. But, yeah, later on, we learned that maybe she writes a book from Simon's point of view to show that maybe... Yeah. Seemingly bad guys can have a good side. Anyway. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, the bad guys is a serious hit of an animated series, right? That's true.

The Bad Guys 2 is a movie that also exists. Yeah, and was all... To be honest, I kind of like it more than the first one. Oh, really? Yeah. I don't know anything. I saw the first one. I thought it was fine.

And then, like, the second one, just, like, tanked like a stone. And I'm like, you know what? I've had my fill of bad guys. It was not a success. It was... Oh, I'm surprised by that. The theater was full when I went to see it. Do you think they should have called it despicable them?

I guess so I don't like this recording stuff I don't like this recording stuff He's not so easy to just be out on your own Is it more comforting to have me next to you Yes Stuart now you know it's like for me every single time Just sitting here off in space

You guys are yucking into a void Yeah exactly That's sad Well now I mean we'll have to do it round rob and stuff The thing about it, despicable them because there's multiples and despicable me is a successful movie about a bad guy. So why don't, you know what I mean? No, I got it. It was not that I didn't see the logic of the joke.

Did I not say it's silly enough? Maybe that was it. Yeah, maybe try this in a movie's voice, yeah. Goose did a little, I guess. Slightly. Like a goose voice. Yeah, can you do it as an evil goose? Yeah.

More like they should have called a despicable tham. You know what? You know what? For me, it failed. I liked it. I wouldn't say that was an evil goose. It was more like a goofy goose. You heard him, Stuart.

Dan wants you on his team. Okay. Anyway, what do we got here? Oh, okay. So she's a children's book illustrator. It scares Alice a little bit. Yeah. Jess gets distracted in the middle of a game of a hide-and-seek while Alice goes to the basement.

This is a classic thing you should not do as an adult as an adult is play hide-and-seek and then leave in the middle of the game. And then, like, get a call and be like, oh, yeah, she's. She'll be okay. It'll be fine. She probably won't hide inside the dryer or something, a place that kids love to hide. They should not go in there. It's not safe.

But when Alice is in the basement, she finds a teddy bear hidden in a door in the wall, and she talks to it as if she's a weird place for a teddy bear, guys. It's one of the top three weirder places for a teddy bear. I heard of a bear, like, sort of stuck in a rabbit hole once. That's a place where a bear can be found. Yeah, that's what you can find a bear stuck halfway through a rabbit hole, yeah.

Or covered in mud attached to a balloon. I think it was the same bear The same bear, yeah Any other bears you can think of, Dan? Don't say looking for heffalumps, same bear, Dan. Okay, well, floating down an African river. Okay, that's a different bear. That's a different bear.

Yeah, there you go. Anyway, is it Africa? I can't remember where the Jungle Book is in India. India, okay. That's why there's a tiger there. What about a bear that just stalks Danny Moon Star? Yeah, that's a different. I mean, there's two of those inside of every book.

that's where you find them So she should have found this teddy bear inside of her with another teddy bear that is not evil because as it becomes pretty clear, this is an evil teddy bear, right? Most immediately, yeah. This bear's name is Chauncey. Meanwhile,

Taylor is, you know, sad because she's moved to a new town. Because he wants to marry Taitel, Tevia's daughter, but Tevia's daughter is promised to Laser Wolf the Butcher, a poor Taylor, even a poor Taylor deserves some happiness. She's taking a confident selfie to pretend that everything

things okay in her life to like, you know... It's a pretty funny selfie choice because, like, her backdrop is what, the window? It's like, it's not like it's a good view except for the creepy old monster lady in the back. Yeah. She's just showing... She's like, look at this.

I have sunlight in my life. Yeah, she sees this, some sort of creepy figure downstairs which causes her to run downstairs outside. Whoever it is is gone, but she meets the hunky boy next door. I think this is very funny. This is up there with, in the electric state when a woman

when what's her name when he hears like something in the garbage cans and immediately assumes it must be a danger that she has to confront and not a raccoon that she sees

she's like in the window she sees there's an old lady standing on the sidewalk and she's like I've got to investigate this this suburban street can't have any old ladies on it and she like whirls around

so that like in a way it feels like she's like let's whirl around to reveal that there's nobody standing there but you can kind of see somebody leaving the frame real quick?

Because this is not a ghost. This is just their neighbor. Yeah. This is my favorite character in the movie who will eventually meet. Yeah. But downstairs, she's... Meet the hunky neighbor, yeah.

She flirts with the boy next door. Who's my favorite character in the movie? This boy says it's probably old bag Patterson who tried to buy the house that they're in now. They're interrupted in their discussion of bars that don't check IDs by protective mother, Jess.

You know, there's some stuff where They over here, Alice talking to Chauncey, more like creepy stuff. What was that? What happened? No, it's just creepy. I just think it's funny to summary, they have some creepy stuff. You know, creepy.

Yeah, they discover that she's... Oh, sorry, so you're summarizing the movie the same way that the guy summarized what was in his refrigerator and the Sunny D commercial. Purpose of, yeah, whatever. Well, this is a movie... Sorry, go on. I was just saying that the creepy stuff is she now starts speaking in a voice for Chauncee. Yes. I'm an evil bear voice

You know what I'm saying? It actually doesn't sound like that at all I think about it. Cookie Crisp. Oh, yeah. Now I'll say here what we've got is a bear. I'm an evil bear.

I want my two dollars. Yeah. Is that a bear thing? Yeah. I mean, the kid's pretty creepy, right? That kid was a bear. That kid was a bear. That's the subtext of Better Off Dead.

A lot of people don't know in the original screenplay for Better Off Dead. That kid's referred to as shaved bear kid. But you wouldn't get that They had trouble finding a bear They could shave and play that part So they had just a kid to it, yeah It was called Bairder Off Dead originally

And then they became Barter Off Dead in a world without money How does this kid deal with high school And they became Better Off Dead Where You're a Dad instead of Dead That it was batter off dead Where he's a baker instead of a student Yeah Then it was batter off dead where he's a baseball player

Yeah Then it was batter off dead where he's a bat Yeah It was badder, B-A-D-R-D-R-D-D-R-D-D-D-D-D-D, where he was, like, worse than dead, which is like, I guess, you know, just really sad all the time. And then there was better off Dudd where he's Dudley Moore. Yes, and then that was better off Doug, where he's Doug from the TV show, Doug. Yeah, better off Fred, better off TED, which was a different TV show.

That was used later on, yeah. Yeah, sure. It's also a movie. That's true, yeah. Was that character better off Ted? I mean, I don't feel like it was particularly... I don't know what the standard is, better off than what, you know? Yeah, hard to say.

And then it was better off Teddy Ruxpin, which brings us two bears, Dan. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, part of why, so I'm going through, like, this, like, that's some creepy stuff happened is the whole first part of it. Like, eventually stuff starts happening and a surprising amount of stuff starts happening. But for a long time, there's not a lot of stuff that happens in the movie. It takes a long time for the plot to kick it in this movie. And I'm sort of editing in real time my notes.

I'm like, well, that's not important. My guess is they add. I did that dream sequence at the beginning because it's such a long time before scares. So they're like, we've got to make sure people know this is not really a movie about just a woman trying to bond with these two stepkids. Yeah.

But eventually... We're not making Janet Planet here, people. We're making imaginary. Yeah. I think that's about a mom and a daughter, not step, but you understand. Just find some ominous old boxes of memories in the basement, including a crayon drawing of a door labeled Never Ever. And...

Is this before or after... Alice has already said that Chaunce, he's heard, she's heard Alice say never, ever in the voice of Chauncey or something like that. I honestly don't know the first time that that happens, but that's, yes, that's the thing that also occurs. And speaking of Alice talking to Chauncey, Jess goes upstairs, she hears Alice talking to someone, assumes it must be her imaginary friend. This is another really funny scene. But it's a woman who knocks Jess down and says, there's something here, I have to protect my girls. Who is it? It's Max's ex-wife.

Bang Bang Max's Ex-wife came down on her head I mean I absolutely love the framing of this shot where she's like spying on Alice talking to her imaginary friend and she's like it's so cute but like she's clearly not seeing enough of the room to see that someone else is in there

just so funny to me it's like such an obvious bullshit filmmaking technique Yeah So the ex-wife knows where they are, I guess, because Taylor was secretly texting her and she escaped from whatever institution she was in. And she gets carted off while Taylor apologizes tearfully.

You know, and in this period, Jessica starts writing a book from Simon the Spider's point of view to make him seem less scary. Is this around when the dad leaves on the tour, right? Yes, this is what I was about to say. Literally the next sentence. Meanwhile, Max goes off on tour. Well, now that my wife is back in custody,

and certainly can't escape again. It's time for me to leave and go on tour with my band. Yeah. He's a bad dad band dad, you know. He is a bad dad band dad, yeah. You don't ever hear any of Max's music. I so wish we got to hear what his bands. Because from the way he looks,

I have to assume it sounds like Imagine Dragons. Yes. But maybe it's something different. Maybe it's a little surprise. Like a, what you might call it? Like your body's a Wonderland sort of thing. Yeah, John Mayer, yeah. Like that, what should we call it commercial?

What's him to call it? Thingma what's, whatever, yeah. I think I was just talking to my older son yesterday about how my brain chooses to remember the jingles from candy commercials and not things that I actually need as I sang the entire ring pop song to him. But the, I would be really funny if he was like,

he's like, sorry, I've got to go out on tour. Al wants to hit all the towns again. It turns out he's the bassist in Weird Al's backing band. I would love it. I mean, that would be a cool job. I mean, Weird Al puts on a great show. He gets on a great show, yeah.

You just said, you see, they're trying to telepathically call to him for help. And you see him playing on stage and he notices it. But he's in the middle of a 10-minute polka, like medley with Weird Al. And Weird Al's like, head in the game, man, heading the game. Yeah, yeah. He's like, I don't know. I think I have to leave the tour. My kids are in danger because of this imaginary monster.

And Weird Al's like, no. Not allowed. There's a hundred people who would want to play bass with the master of mirthful music, mayhem. And you, so you walk out that door, you're never coming. And the wreck of the movie is just about the trouble he has with Al, you know, the pressures the life on the tour. I think this would be great.

Let's do it. Yeah. It's called imaginali. Al-maginary. Al-hmm. Yeah. Okay. I guess.

That's tacit acceptance right there. Yeah, Dan, you said yes and. You ended it. Now you own it. Okay. I guess I do. If anyone wants to buy it from me. Good touch.

It turns out that Gloria was Jess's old babysitter, which just does not remember. And Gloria is also a writer. Anybody could walk up to Jess and just be like, oh, yeah, yeah, I used to know when you were a kid. And you're just like, oh, I guess so, okay, I don't know. Gloria was also a writer, not as successful. She talks about how creative Jess was

and had her own imaginary friend. But wait a minute, Jess specifically said she never had an imaginary friend. She didn't remember having an imaginary friend. How is this possible? I wonder if that'll come into play. And she says that just as dad is a fan of her books, which makes Jessica uncomfortable since her dad also had some sort of mental break. After her mother's death and there's some sort of complicated history that we will hear later, probably.

Yes, we will. But it was a complicated history that was dangerous enough that she had to be taken away from her father, never to be seen again, but not so dangerous that he had to leave his home. Yes, and they only move into the house because he's moved into an assisted care facility. Yes, yeah. And it's also this, but she knows where he is,

and it seems like she's, maybe it's just the trauma of it. It seems like she's never tried to find out anything about what happened or bridge the gap or anything like that. Well, speaking of bridging the gap and that assisted care facility, that's what we're just talking about. She goes to visit him. He doesn't seem to recognize her at first, First, she's, you know, like, doing her own, like, little info dump in the form of a one-sided

conversation being like, how did you, how can you just change like that? We were happy. But when he finally does recognize her, he starts screaming about how she went away and was always talking about CB, CB. Hey, God. You're like me. You're like, oh, the fighting CB is the construction crew. Yeah, as soon as he started saying that, I'm like, okay, guys, you could be a little more open.

You could be a little more opaque. Yeah, it's like, how am I going to... Oh, so there's a bear named Chauncee. How am I going to decode CB? And it takes her for fucking everything to figure out. You didn't think it was about like, you know, she was like a long haul trucker. No, I didn't think she became a long haul trucker. It felt like a...

She loved that song, Convoy. But something that John Hodgman once told me years ago is that he was told audiences like to be ahead of the mystery. It's not that audiences like to be surprised by twists. They like to figure it out themselves. And this felt like one that was designed for the audience to be like, C, C, B. Chauncey Bear, of course. When are the heroes going to figure out the thing? I'm so smart that I figured out, you know.

Yeah, Hodgman learned that when he was studying under Dick Wolf, right? When Dick Wolf took him under his wing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, when he was briefly raised by wolves. They called him TV Mowgli. Yeah, to mean back to the Jungle Book, because Dick Wolf was raising him, yeah. It was also Dick Wolf who at first protected him from Shire Khan. But, you know, a theme in this movie is, of course, bad babysitting.

Taylor's supposed to be babysitting Alice, but she ignores that she's being really creepy with Chauncey in a jar of bugs in favor of instead hanging out with a boy next door. I will say this. If collecting a jar of bugs is creepy, I take offense. Because considering my son has a roomful of jars of bugs and pieces of animals, basically.

Someone just recently gave him a mummified lizard they found in their garage. Well, you know, like you find animal bones out in the forest. Yeah, yeah. You know, like we have a coyote skull we found on the hill across the mark. Exactly, yeah. How else are you going to talk to you? to buy all. That's what I want to know.

No, there's a science way of doing something like this, but this is clearly some sort of... She's clearly collecting bugs as a way of getting in with Chauncey. So you're saying Taylor brings over the boy next door, and he brings along a gift, and this time it's not a first edition of The Iliad. No, no. He presents a bag of drugs,

which Taylor does not take, but he fails to read the room and starts rating the liquor cabinet as well and breaks something that... drops a bottle and they have to clean it up, yeah. He goes upstairs to get a towel, but he's distracted by a toy in Alice's room that is casting bare-shaped colored lights on the wall. And he's tripping balls at this point, right?

Well, one would think. Or so he believes. Yeah, there's a jaunty but creepy music playing, and then while he's peeing, he is distracted by Chauncey's pulstering, you know, sort of like slowly, you know, being retracted in a way that scares him. And this is the part that I had to like rewind to be like

what? Why did he jump? What was the scary thing? Like it's just that he like it, he follows the string up to the bear covered by a towel

on the, on the counter. So this scene. And he jumps and he puts in peas all over the floor. And I'm like, why was that scary dude? What is,

what doesn't work about the scene is he shouldn't be scared unless he already knows that there is an evil imaginary bear character in the house. And that is information that has not yet been given to him, you know.

And this leads to... At very worst, this is a home not wanting to buy an elf on the shelf type scenario and instead just drafting this bear into that role. Yeah. And this leads to a follow-up scene that I thought the imagery of this was more

effectively a little scary. Later on, right? What? Later on or right here? Well, right here where he sees the pull string again, he chases around, he steps on it, which causes it to pull the teddy bear slowly towards him on the hall. Oh, yeah.

I thought that was a creepy image, but then it's immediately followed by an unscary, like, CGI real bear that, like, leaps at him for a second before he, you know, falls down. I forgot about that. I forgot about that CGI bear. Yeah. There's two bears inside of everyone, a stuffed bear and a CGI bear. Yeah.

And at this point, Jess comes home, like, what the fuck? And we cut to a neighbor's mom being there. And Jess is like, I come home to your son giving my dollar. daughter Molly, and she's like, this isn't Molly, this is my allergy medicine. And I fucking rolled my eyes because what are we to believe that the kid thought was going on here? He just, like, found a baggie of allergy medicine in the medicine cabinet. It's like, this is probably Molly that I can give to the neighbor. Like, what was the, what was, like, this dumb fucking payoff of a joke?

You know what, I buy that he's dumb. The backstory of this. I buy that he's dumb. and my guess is that it is their way of saying, don't worry, this character was not actually doing drugs. This is a PG-13 movie. Oh, that makes sense. That makes sense.

Even dub kids aren't like they find pills in their home, and they're like, my mom probably has Molly. You don't know what their life is like. Maybe she's like, that's my allergy medicine, you idiot. I keep the Molly in the other drool. I mean, it would be one thing if it's the same brand of allergy medicine and he bought it off a smarter, dumb kid. Yes.

I mean, maybe that's the back story. For some reason, the one thing I liked about this was it reminded me... Let's check the novelization of... Yeah, let's check Alan Dean Foster's version of this. The one thing I liked about it was that it reminded me of a moment in a state sketch that I liked. One of the Doug sketches where they find he has pot and his... It's either his dadder's principles like, what's this? He goes, oh, that's oregano for Homech.

And then goes, that's a lot of oregano, Doug. Should be. I paid 50 bucks for it. So, Jess also finds one of... of her paintings ripped. Sorry, I got a text from my wife. You got too scared, yeah, you got too scared, I get it. The idea of heart being destroyed was what was scary for Dan.

I tried to just miss it. And the phone was like, you probably want to switch over to the text. No, she finds one of her paintings ripped, and she thinks Alice is mad at her and was the one who ripped it. And so she does this extremely long monologue to a lump under the blanket in Alice's bed that's clearly not Alice. and it goes on forever without her checking if the kid is there while she's talking to

this guy's heartfelt speech about what being afraid and stuff like that and when I was angry I would break things or whatever I don't remember and you know like her dad got sick and it made her upset but she loves these kids so much and but she finally she looks out at the window and she goes on this long speech about

how Tim Roth gobbled her baby up and you're like what she's like like, oh, and you're not really talking to me. You're not talking, and the blanket's not moving. You're so mad that you're not talking. You're not breathing. You're so mad that you're dead now, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But she looks out the window. You're also super tiny. Guys, guys, we've all been there. We've all had a podcast guest who just will not talk and it's just lying there under a blanket not breathing. Yeah, it turns out that we look outside and see the guest. It turns out it was a teddy bear under the blanket the whole time, yeah.

Yeah, she sees us outside taking a fence apart for some reason. Well, we know why. We know why eventually, but not at this point. Yeah. And she pulls back the blanket to see Chauncey. And again, she reacts as if it's this big scare moment and not like, yeah, it's a teddy bear in a bed where a teddy bear lives. The idea of a teddy bear being in a bed? How did it get here? Dan, what possible logical explanation could this teddy bear have for being in a bed?

But she runs downstairs and rescues Alice from intentionally slamming her hand down on a rusty nail. from the fence because presumably Chauncey told her to. Yes, yeah, cocktail. No, no. Chauncey has told her to her, she has to do something to her that hurts because Chauncey has given her a scavenger hunt. That's why she collected those bugs. She had to have something that scares her.

Yeah, and I think Jess has found the scavenger hunt list, right? Yes. Yeah, and I will say the girl almost slamming her hand on on a rusty nail, I don't, maybe it's just that I'm a parent. I didn't like, I didn't like this. I felt like this movie had not established a scary enough nightmarish atmosphere that it's felt like this was the moment where I was like this seems harsh for the movie that I have been watching

and the movie I will say from this point on for a little bit I did find it getting more kind of like realistically upsetting in some ways not necessarily scary but like effective in making me not happy is that because the next thing that happens is a child psychiatrist is called in I think the fact rules I think I'll say

the child psychiatrist stuff I think is the best stuff in the movie to be honest you know I guess I have a hard time separating it from the movie I guess if I think about it I could imagine a better movie having this in it I want to hear both of you explain why you feel this way but let's continue with the plot

because there's a couple of specific moments that I found very strange I found one very funny well I think that's the thing is this is the part of the movie where I'm like I don't really know exactly what game oh I know the game this movie is playing there's an evil imaginary friend but I don't know exactly what this movie is trying to do compared to the earlier part of the movie

and then at the end I was like now I really don't know this movie is attempting to do. So Dr. Soto comes in to talk to Alice, and she asks Alice about the scavenger hunt that led her to almost hurt herself. And in the process of this, she encourages Alice to tell Chauncey how he made her feel.

And she's filming this whole thing. Yeah, she's filming it like any good therapist. She wants to have videotapes so that she can show it to her the parents of other patients. Well, we haven't gotten there yet. The act of her filming it is not weird at this point, but... I think it's weird.

That's done. That is done. I mean, there are therapists that record their sessions, you know. None of mine have that I know of. In ways that this therapist is not going to do later on. No. Well, no, she cuts together a compilation called weird, wacky kids. But I think she sells on TV later.

I think in particular, if it's a child therapy session, there are reasons why this might be done. But the... Yeah, because it's extra scary. Yeah, because it might end up on... Kids say the most traumatic things. Well, you want, you... No, no, I know.

You may need it for different types of reasons. Yeah. So she encourages Alice to tell Chauncey how he made her feel, and the doctor sees Alice doing Chauncey's voice and talking back and forth to herself. Alice has her back to the doctor during this conversation. Chauncey is saying things like, fake mommy will leave.

Fake mommy is mean. Only Chauncey love Alice. And I do love that the psychologist or psychiatrist, whichever one, that she keeps... She's, like, still like, she's like, this ain't that weird. I'm just going to keep asking these, like, in-depth probing questions, which I feel like this kid, even if it wasn't arguing with its imaginary friend, would have trouble handling complex emotional questions like that.

I don't think she's really approaching the child at the child's level, but also feels like a certain point she's like, I'm going to stir up shit between this kid and her imaginary friend. Like, I'm just going to see what the drama is that erupts here. But then we get the great line where the doctor asked Jess, Has Alice taken up any new hobbies lately, ventriloquism? That is, it is very funny that one. And I don't think that's where I would start if I was the doctor.

Especially since, as she then reveals, she has longs, she has dealt with other patients where kids have evil imaginary friends. Yes. Well, let's get to that because we teased it. She tells Jess that Alice brought up a place called The Never Ever, which reminded her of an old patient. And then she fucking shows Jess video of the kids' session. And that is a huge violation.

That's not all right. And I like that she has that shit just like queued up. She shows that to people apart. She sees people just like, hey, you've seen this. This is crazy. Let me show you this clip. This is bonkers. Look at this maniac.

Look at this little weirdo. Aren't you supposed to have like not to not do this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody doesn't. Everybody doesn't. Yeah, it's 101 great therapy fails. Yeah, America's funny. It's like we all share these clips.

It's like how doctors always share x-rays of stuff up people's butts. Like, you know, you know they're doing it. Yeah. But the point is, that kid disappeared right after talking about the never-ever. And he also had cut his thumb off, right? Oh, I missed that part. This is a kid who is missing a thumb, and it turns out that he did his, his imaginary friend told him to hurt himself and then to, and they disappeared, you know. Yeah, I, it wasn't a hundred percent.

Maybe she's like, it's okay for me to show you this session. This kid disappeared. He's not going to get mad about it. It wasn't a hundred percent clear what the kid had done to hurt himself, but then later on they mentioned that he cut his thumb. Yes, yeah. Visually it was not clear. This reminds Jess of that crayon drawing. You don't see him go hitchhiking, but he can't do it because he's, you know.

Yeah, he's trying to talk about a movie he really liked, and he's like, no, I liked it more than one thumb. Yeah, that was, they were like, that kid disappeared, and we know that he didn't go hitchhiking because he couldn't. He couldn't, yeah. There's no way. He was scheduled to be on Roper at the movies, but he never showed up. Yeah, yeah. He was going to play in the video game championships, but no. And never happened.

He was sitting in a corner with a plum pudding he had nothing to stick in it. This is horrible. We're only making these jokes because of course this is a made-up This is not a real movie. We would never make these jokes

about a real person with a thumb only a fictional character in a stupid movie, yeah. This reminds Jess of her crayon drawing of the never ever and Jess is like, I got to destroy that bear and the doctor says, what bear? That shit was amazing.

Like that reveals, I'm like, come on, spoofy, you didn't earn this. Yep. No. Only Alice and Justin C. Johnsey. I admire the audacity of it. I admire the audacity of it because it does not make sense with anything we've seen previously in the film, yeah. She starts freaking out, and I know if I was the doctor...

This is when the doctor shows her the video, right? No, no, that was before. No, no, shows the video of the session, and there's no bear. Oh, of the session. Yeah. And there's the moment where, like, Taylor walks in, and she's like, you've seen the bear, right? She's like, yeah, it's not that funny, but it keeps winning the best original comedy. I don't understand.

Not this year, it didn't. No, that's true. I lost this year. But yeah, the, yeah, she's like, you've seen the bear, right? She's like, what bear are you talking about? There's no bear. So, you know. It is one of the funnier fight club style reveals that, oh, my God, all those times we thought we saw a bear there, there was no bear there.

Instead of carrying a bear, she was just holding her arm at a weird angle. Yeah, yeah. So, just knows something is going on with that creepy never-ever door. She looks for Alice, but can't find Alice because she's busy doing some weird ritual. And Taylor and Jess can't find her, but there's blood on the tiny basement door. Ah! And there's an argument between Taylor and Jess where Taylor says, people don't just disappear. And that reminds Jess of what her dad said.

She thinks, oh, Chauncey was also her childhood friend. And Taylor's like... She's found all these drawings of Chauncey Bear that she did as a kid. Yeah. Yeah. And Taylor's like, that's nuts. which is reasonable, but Taylor's really mean about it

because she's a teen. Again, she's a teenager, so she's mean. I mean, it is on the face of it, if you don't know you're in a horror movie, then to be told, oh, my stepdaughter has my imaginary friend and he's come back for revenge in the form of a bear that you can't see.

Your first reaction would be, I don't believe that. Yes. Unless you know you're in a horror movie, in which case you'd say that is reasonable. It seems like exactly the situation. Let's figure out the rules here. Yeah.

So. I thought it. was the, I thought it was the dead school janitor who was coming to her in her dreams to try to kill her, but no, it turns out it's this. So in another moment of good parenting slash babysitting, after looking around for their missing,

for Alice who's missing, she then just lets Taylor wander the streets looking for her by herself. A girl who they've expressly pointed out is a minor. Well, Taylor's out wandering the streets at night, as you say, She bumps into Gloria, the old neighbor who's like,

it's time for some more exposition. You've unlocked this next level of knowledge. Yeah. And she tells Taylor that when, sorry, my notes are bad here. When Jess was a kid, she said she was going to a secret place just for her and her imaginary friend, and she opened that secret door and disappeared. Well, and this is what, and that she talks a lot about like how when kids have imaginary friends, right?

They're really spirits from another world. Yeah, there's spirits. Some are good and some are bad and some get angry when the kids grow up and their connection is severed because they hunger for the child's power of imagination. Yeah, and Gloria's House has been turned into this, like, cool library of the arcane filled with, like, folklore and, like, it has a really kind of interesting open plan design that I thought was pretty cool. Yeah.

Yeah, Jalz walks out. Let me explain this to you. Kind of. I mean, to be honest, this is my favorite character in the movie. Like I said, she's full of, she's this weird old lady who's like, yeah, you know what? Ever since you disappeared when I was babysitting you, I've just devoted myself to the esoteric and arcane. I know exactly what's happening. And as we find out later, she's super into it, you know.

Yeah, she's like, since I lost you, I found a world so new. And that world is the arcane and the macab. Anyway, meanwhile, Jess has been busy repainting all of the art She drew on her walls as a child She's trying to reconnect to the old memories And she's kind of a naive style Yeah, outside her art, yeah She's joined by Gloria and Taylor

And Taylor's now totes on board with the evil spirit stuff And Jess is like, I remember most of what happened to me as a kid The thing my dad kept saying, CB, that stands for Chauncey Bear And the audience goes, oh, Chauncey T. Bear, yeah. And the gang has to finish CB's scavenger hunt so they can open the door. And, you know, that scavenger, of course, as usual, something old, something new, something borrowed, something that hurts. Yeah.

And the ritual doesn't work the first time. So Jess has to be really mean to Taylor to make it actually work, calling her selfish like her mother. But it kind of brings them closer together because Taylor realizes, that it hurt just to be so cruel to her. Yeah, that it wasn't that it hurt her that finished the ritual. It was that it hurt just to say these things. They were kind of, I mean, there's a little bit of truth to them, to be honest. Yeah, if there wasn't a little bit of truth, it wouldn't hurt, you know.

Yeah, that's true. And I think that Taylor's also like, when you're at a roast, and it's like people are mean to you, but they're mean to you in a really specific way that shows they really know you. That's true. You must really have been paying attention to be so mean. You see me. You must see me, Tom Brady and know exactly the man I am.

Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Jeff Ross. We're penetrating this exterior and getting to the molten vulnerable core beneath. So they go through the door into an... Here I, Tom Brady, stand before you, naked and exposed to you, Jeff Ross. Cut me to the quick, will you?

They go through the door into this MC Escher nightmare world. I'm going to say this. I would like to put a ban on using black and white checkered floor tiles in paranormal worlds. They do that, and I'm like, that is not a paranormal world thing

that is a Tim Burton thing. Like, that's Tim Burton's thing. So that's the Beatles' juice you're talking about. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Kampari. And once we're in the world, Gloria starts cackling about it.

Everyone said that her books were the nonsensical ramblings of an old woman, but she was right. And if she's like, now we're in this world, we can imagine anything. It's full of imagination. It's wonderful. But the movie is done with her. So, of course, she is mauled by a bear.

Well, don't get, don't get ahead of my head. I was so excited about it because it was like, oh, suddenly I'm watching the winter's tale. Because what happens before that is Jess sees a vision of her dad fighting off the evil spirit in its tentacle, spidery form to save her, and she knows that that's what drove him mad. He gave up his sanity to save her from the never-ever.

And that's the point at which Gloria has unpropped to the door and gives her villain monologue, where she says, The entity told me to bring you here. We'll leave our pain behind. We'll be happy here forever And, you know, it's, it's so big that it telegraphs That of course she's about to die Yeah, yeah

Where does that character go from there? She either becomes the villain of the movie Or she dies, yeah. Yeah, well, but also it's like so clearly Like a setup of a joke's like, oh, we'll live forever! Yeah, this is their deep blue sea moment. Yeah, and some furry paw pulls her into like a Scooby-Doo hallway door and a blood puddle comes down.

This is so goofy this part. This is where the movie, and it is, I think, officially at this part, that the movie stops being a horror movie and becomes kind of like, we'll live forever. This is when the movie officially stops trying to be a horror movie and just becomes kind of like, I don't know, like an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark or something like that, you know. It takes a long time for this thing to kill her.

Yeah. And the others do not try to save her at any moment. My first thought was, hey, guys, free house, right? She's gone, nobody's going to need her house anymore. Yeah, that's true. Or that library, that cool, occult library, yeah. And how are they going to explain this to the police? I mean, I don't think they have to.

There's nothing connecting them to her. I think it'll just be weird old lady disappears. You don't think their ring camera caught them walking into the house. Something tells me that she doesn't have a ring camera. There's no body. Yeah. Anyway, they get... We saw you go into the house and then leave with her on the camera, and then she disappeared.

It's like, yeah, well, we all went out to get Frogert, and then, you know, she left, you know. No, we had to get Frozone from... We all went out to get Frozen Calzones, and she just walked away. I don't know, man. I'm prozone for Frozones, Frozen's Frozen Calsones. Yeah, FroCal. Because you guys are in FroCal, California. That's right.

Yeah, Procal, the chilly part of California. Yeah, exactly. Ruled by the ice queen. So, Jess and Taylor get briefly separated. Taylor finds a zombie-looking Alice, who's like, I've been here too long. Long John, Daddy. Yeah, that's what I was thinking, yeah. Yeah, and there's the giant bear Chauncee shows up and zombie Alice attacks.

Wait, wait, you've got to tell me, but the giant bear Chauncee, we've got to talk about it. Okay. Is this one, it's the person in a costume, Chauncey? Yeah, I think so. But is this one it's the scary costume or when it's just a regular bear? This looks more like a regular bear. Later on, we get a scary costume, which is again a moment where it was like, oh, I feel like I'm watching an episode of The Storyteller.

Like, this is not a hard movie for adults. I kind of love how goofy that one looks. It looks like halfway between a bear and the monster that at the end of Big Trouble and Little China is on the Porkchop Express. Yes, yeah. Or kind of, it also, you know, like the crate from Creep Show, a little bit of that in there. I love that kind of thing. And again, if that's the movie I was watching,

I'd be like on board 100%. But it was like, not until that character shows up, am I like, oh, that's the kind of movie you're making. I didn't expect this. If I was watching a fucking creep show, I'd be like, hell yeah. Yay. Give me another serving.

But you can't ask me to be like, oh, I'm really worried this kid is in danger and then suddenly show me that, you know. But Taylor saved just Yanks her from the room, and they find a room that has the number of their old apartment and they take a page from the bare-naked ladies and break into the old apartment.

And they find... Have some fucking craft dinner or whatever they eat. They find Real Alice. And it has been one week since they looked at... Their dad, I guess. Real Alice is living like a tea party queen. And there's also some evil feature there. As if she had a million dollars.

Do we know any other... No other bands talking about it? Yeah, I don't know any of the bare-naked ladies. I don't even know that... the Bear Naked Lady's song that Dan started with. I only know the one week and the, if I had a million dollars, yeah. And I guess the Big Bang Theory song is them, right? Is it?

I mean, it's not, but it sounds like them. Who knows? No way of knowing. Listeners write in and tell Elliot whether his favorite show, the Big Bang Theory has the theme by the Bar-Nagin-A-Lead. Send him out a list of Bar-Naked Ladies songs. Don't do that, please. Canadians, help us.

So, yeah, also at this Tea Party room where Alice is living like a queen, there's an evil version of Alice's birth mom. I mean, they have painted her pretty easily before this moment. Yeah, but this is clearly like some fake version. It's a supernatural version of it, especially when she gets her Coraline eyes. And Jess starts tearing up the room to draw a new blue door on the wall because imagination has power here. And that's how they're going to get out.

They're going to make their own blue door. Like now it turns into Harold and the Purple Cran. At this point, I was like, what is this movie? Like, what is it trying to do, you know? The mom turns into the giant tooth bear and Jess stays back to fight. That's when the tooth bear shows up. That's right.

She starts sinking into a pile of blue junk on the floor like quicksand and falls back into the Scooby-Doo, like, hall of doors. And Chauncey stalks her. She stabbed him with some scissors earlier. So he's a little injured. She tries to pry the original door open, just as Taylor opens it from the outside and traps Chauncey inside.

Yay, nightmare's over. The movie's over, right? We cut to Jess reading her new book to her dad in the assisted living home and Max and Alice are there and Taylor gazing on lovingly and she tells her dad she knows what he did for her

and she's sorry and Taylor and Alice thank Jess and it's all finally one family, right? It's also loving that you're like, oh no, I know where this is going. When's the other shoe going to drive? Sure enough, Jess realizes she's still trapped in the dream world. This is all just, you know, been constructed to keep her happy.

Like at the end of Thriller, when Michael Jackson has, like, werewolf cat eyes. No, no, no, everybody's got cool spider eyes. That's true. They've got, like, these bug eyes. Pretty funny looking. They look a little silly, yeah. Evil, like, Simpson's eyes on all these people.

They end up with the same eyes that Feathers McGraw has, and the waltz and grommet movies that he's in. Yeah, everyone turns evil, and they're like, you said you'd never leave him. Do you think he'd let you go again? And Jess realizes Alice was just the bait so that Chauncey could bring his favorite child back to live with him. As powerful as a child's imagination is,

Jess's imagination is like... Oh, for sure. I mean, she's a professional artist. Yeah, she's just so full of imagination, yeah. That spider thing, the millipede. man who could think of that stuff I mean the fact that she's done a series of books with the same two characters over and over again

I mean her imagination is bursting with ideas she's Jack Kirby over here come on yeah so Jess agrees to stay there to keep her kids safe but no Taylor shows up and hits the monster saying forever's over asshole this is what I was like so what I like you know what I don't care that much

but like how did she get in how did she know what does she do it and the idea of like well once you're in the dream world If you could just hit the bad guy with, like, a hockey stick or something, and it's fine. You know, she did the ritual over again. She was really mean to Alice. And then what went to the dream world? Just what happened if you were better with your stupid imaginary friend, you idiot.

And then what she just asked for directions when she was in the dream world? Yeah, I guess so. So they escape after all. They try and follow the Rolling Stones advice reedores and paint it black. But the monster comes out. That's what that song was about. There's so much British invasion in this episode. Yeah, the monster pushes out and it starts to crazify Jess with its eyes.

And it's like all spider now, right? Oh, no, no, this is, it stopped being a spider and now it's got kind of like a weird television face, right? Yeah, he's got weird television face. And he's like projecting, like, flashing lights from its eyes that I guess dazzles people. There's a new ability. I'm shocked that they've just added new abilities at this point in the game. Well, we saw it. Not briefly to her dad, but not in this detail.

No, this is the kind of thing you see in 70s Marvel Comics. issue to issue, the rules change drastically because there's a different writer and artist on or they just don't care or they don't remember what happened in the previous issue. Rarely do you see this happen in a movie where they can just read from the same script, you know, that a monster just suddenly manifest an entirely new face and power

with no explanation at the end, you know? So... Not that I might, again, if the whole movie was like this, I'd be like, great, I love this phantasmagoric, you know, surreal nonsensicalness, you know? It looks like all is lost. Taylor can't, like, break the thrall. It doesn't really look like all is lost.

It's just Robert Redford on a boat. Okay, yeah, that's true. It's a different movie. RIP. RIP, yeah. Robert Redford is perished. Yeah. That's what RIP stands for.

Jeez, Louise. By the time this comes out, that'll be a couple weeks ago. Yeah, everyone will be desensitized. Yeah. Alice sees everything happening, and she springs into action. She says, you were never, my friend, never ever. And she burns the monster in the whole house,

which is going to be a hard thing to explain to Max. I mean, now that the house has been burned down, I guess they are a little bit. It is easier to believe they're complicit in the disappearance of the neighbor. That's true. Fade to black, but somehow the movie is still not over. There's a poltergeist rip-off ending where they go to a hotel and they see a kid with a stuffed bear. And they're like, you want to go to a different hotel as the kid insists that the bear is not imaginary.

Yeah. The end. And music plays that also sounds suspiciously like kind of a music box version of the poltergeist music. And that's imaginary. That's the tale. of Chauncey the bear. What a story. Tale is old as time

in that we've seen it before. I think this movie should have been called CB instead of imaginary. Yeah. Could be. Could be. C.B. Could be.

It should be called C.B. Again, there is a movie called the fighting C.B.'s, but it's spelled differently and also, I don't think they're going to get mixed up. Yeah, and sometimes movies have similar names. Name two. Wait a minute. There's,

I got, I know this one. There's, uh. You don't seem to be saying any. There's, wait, there's fast, there's the fast and the furious and furious. No, those are two in the same series. Scream and scream. No, again, those are the same series.

Okay. There's, wait a minute, there's scary movie and scree. No, again, one is a parody of the other. There's Mission to Mars and the Police Academy, Mission to Moscow. Okay, you got it. Okay, there, that's very similar, yeah. It's only the framing of it being a police academy adventure and also the different destination that differentiations.

She gets those two movies. There's the Martian and Mars attacks. Again, I don't know if those are that similar. I mean, they're both involving Mars, sure, yeah. Uh-huh. There's Casablanca and Casablanca 2, the new batch. Casablanca and Castle Freak. Yep, okay, very similar.

There you go. There's Red and the Reader. There you go. I mean, there's a movie called Reds and a movie called Red, and they're very different. So, there's that, yeah. And there's a movie called Drop Dead Friend. And we're called Drop Dead Reds. Let's do what are we doing?

I feel like this has been our number one episode of just saying dumb movie days. Yeah, I think so. I think so, yeah. I guess there are two movies called Clifford. So, yeah, you know what? It could have the same time. Yeah. Final judgments.

Is this a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie we kind of like. I got to say, this one was really harmed for me by having to take notes on it. I mean, rarely is a movie more enjoyable when you have to take notes on it, yeah. I feel like if I didn't, there would be like, it might sneak up on a good, bad, because there's some, like, goofy stuff in there. I like that visual quist line. I like how silly it gets at the end. But I think overall, I'm still going to go with a bad, bad.

What do you guys think? Stuart, what do you think? Yeah, I'm with you. I think yet there is some genuinely, like, nonsensical choices and very silly things. but it is, I think it's a bad, bad movie. I'm going to say bad bad also. It's like if you could watch it starting from the middle. But I feel like you're not going to get how goofy it is at the end.

If you haven't seen the beginning where it's not goofy at all. So, but I think it's not worth sitting through that to get the goofy stuff, you know? I liked it more than the evil pool movie we watched last year. Night swim, was that it? Yeah, I liked it more than night swim. Was that what it was called? Or am I forgetting of the night swim? Why, Russell is like Jack Nicholson.

This pool of water is making me so strong. Yeah. I did like more than Night Swim. I felt like Night Swim was a funnier premise, but they didn't know what to do with it, whereas this is not that funnier premise, but by the end, they certainly find some things to do with it, you know, they do not expect, yeah.

Now everybody knows that the greatest generation has always been Max Funn's go-to podcast for old Star Trek recaps. But what my theory presupposes is, what if it isn't? In a shocking turn of events, Greatest Trek, the comedy podcast covering new Trek, has gone through a temporal wormhole back to the very beginning. Because we are now reviewing Star Trek the original series. That means when you subscribe now, you'll get episode by episode recaps of all the 1960s style action and intrigue, along with all the jokes and fun that make Greatest Gen and Greatest Trek, the number one Star Trek

podcast out there. Subscribe now to Greatest Trek on maximum fun.org. Hey gang, it's Jesse Thorne, host of Bullseye with Jesse Thorne. We are ringing in 25 years of Bullseye this fall. That's right, listener, 25

years. I started the show in my dorm room at UC Santa Cruz. What does that mean for you? Well, we'll have a whole month of special shows new and old, for one thing. We are putting on live shows in Los Angeles, New York, and Santa Cruz. Got guests like Adam Scott, Royward Jr., and Rebecca Sugar, just to name a few.

And on October 9th, I will interview 25 people in a row. You can watch that live and streaming on our YouTube channel. I hope you'll plan on celebrating with us. That's maximum fun.org slash events. Thanks. Hey, the flop house is brought to you by the good people, good listeners like you who have become members over at maximum fund.org

and help us keep this thing going. But it's also brought to you in this episode by Squarespace. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid online all in one place. You can use their professional on-brand invoices and online payments. And if you want to streamline your workflow, and who doesn't these days? My workflow is not streamlined enough.

You can use the built-in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools. Also, if you're building your website, Squarespace offers a complete library of professionally designed and award-winning templates with options for every use in category, beautiful styling, unrivaled visual design effects, drag and drop editing, no experience required. You don't have to be an HTML. expert, you can just sign on and start building your site. So head to Squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial. And when you are ready to launch, use offer code flop, that is FLOP, to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You know, Dan, the Flop House is brought to you by listeners like you and also by Squarespace.

And the Flop House is also brought to you by the Flop House. And the Flop House is going to be bringing the Flop House to Chicago. That's right. The flop house is going to Chicago. They can't keep us out. No matter what the president says, we're still going to Chicago. We still want to be there.

So we're going to be there Sunday, November 16th. Now, you may go on the website and be like, but that show's sold out. Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh. The early show is sold out, and that's why we added a late show. You know what? That show's going to be different than the early show

because we're talking about two different Jim Balushi movies. You know, that's right, Chicago's favorite son, the Baluch. We're going to do two entries in his cinematic uvra. So that's the Flop House live in Chicago at Sleeping Village. For tickets, go to Flophousepodcast.com slash events, right? And you'll see a link to get tickets to the Flop House live in Chicago Sunday, November 16th.

I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be a lot of fun. If you can't get tickets to early show and only the late show, that's okay. We're going to be extra loopy at the late show because we'll have just done the early show. And we're talking about a dog movie. Yeah, we're talking about K-9 in that late show. So watch out. It's one of the, I think it's probably the most famous movie about a cop with a dog, right?

It's not even the most famous from that year. Same year as Turner and Hooch. Not familiar. I only know K-9. Turner and Hooch. Wait, how did they get those guys together in one movie? They hate each other and Hoosh. Anyway.

They quashed their beef. So if you're in Chicago or the Chicago area, come see us November 16th. Tickets at Flophousepodcast.com slash events. Let's say you can't go to Chicago in November. Let's say you can't. It would be too bad. Seems unlikely, but I'll go with you. I mean, I think there's many reasons why someone would not be able to go to that specific day to Chicago.

Don't worry. The flop house is coming to your house via your computer. Don't worry. You don't have to put us up for the night. Don't have to feed us. That's right. Flop TV is back on the air. But, flop.

Yes. You are required to, by law, to put us up in your home and feed us if we come to, if we come to your home. Yeah, I think it's the Fourth Amendment. Yeah, you can't quarter soldiers, but you have to quarter the flop house. Yeah, so the flop house is on the air with flop TV. That is our monthly one-hour televised video version of the flop house. It's like its own little TV show. You've got video segments, you've got a presentation,

and you got us talking about movies. And this season, it's Flopster Peace Theater. We're going back through the decades each episode talking about a flop we've never talked about. September, we talked about the adventures of Pluto Nash. That was a lot of fun. And in October, we'll be talking about Jack Frost. I just sent my introduction to the Jack Frost show.

to Matt, our tech guy, just before taking this trip to see Elliot and do other stuff in L.A. And I am working on my video for it, my little video interruption. That's the first Saturday in October, October 4th. If this episode comes out, and that's already happened, I don't remember when things are coming out.

Don't worry, because there's another show in November, Saturday, November 1st. It's the first Saturday of the month, every month. And also don't worry because you can watch it, VOD. I was about to get to that. Okay, okay. Every month, first Saturday of the month, every month through February,

but if you can't watch it live, the first Saturday of the month, don't worry, your ticket gets you access to the video of the show, and those videos are going to stay up through the end of February, so you can see them whenever you want if you buy a ticket.

But that's right, you have to buy a ticket. Just go to theflophouse. com, and you can buy tickets for individual shows or a season pass. That's six shows for the price of five. Go for it. That's right.

And we're going to see so many movies we've never talked about on the show before. Frost, Zanadu, Zardaws, Dr. Doolittle, the Rex Harrison version, and Plan 9 from outer space. That's right. We're building up to the most famous bad movie there ever was. We've never talked about it in the Flobhouse before. And now you'll see us talking about it in TV mode.

That's theflophouse.symptych.com. First Saturday for every month, Flop TV. Hey, cooling weather means swapping your summer clothes for fall staples that are warm, durable, and built to last. like stuff from quince. Quince, my friends, and you are my friends, my podcast friends, has the kind of fall staples you'll actually want to wear on repeat, like 100% Mongolian cashmere from just $60. Classic fit denim and real leather and wool outerwear that looks sharp and holds up.

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I'm looking forward to the weather cooling so I could wear it. I mean, I'm looking forward to the weather cooling for all sorts of things, including that I don't like hot weather. but I do so love putting a sweater on. And this was a comfy and good-looking sweater at a low price point for the quality. So layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look. Go to quince.com slash flop for free shipping on your next order

and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada to Canadian friends take notes. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash flop. free shipping and 365-day returns, quince.com slash flop. Let's answer some letters from listeners, just as a treat, you know? Yeah, why not?

A treat for us. I deserve it. This first letter is from Adam last name withheld. The first man, no last name. Adam writes, since you mentioned the movie Patch Adams in your last mini-s... Oh, maybe this is the Adam from Patch Adams, yeah.

Yeah, he's going to... fucking flame us. Yeah, because John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Patch Adams, yeah. I thought I might share the story of when I encountered the real Patch Adams. It's a story I never get to tell because no one watches or talks about that movie anymore.

The year was 2000, and I was a sophomore in high school. The high school I went to had a health careers program, had a health careers program, pardon me, and they decided to hire Hunter Patch Adams. Corey's speaking engagement. I have to say, I don't think I ever knew his first name. No.

I thought his name was just patch. This is the first time hearing of it. Like Wolverine. Yeah. Yeah. What if when Wolverine is in Madreport, he's Patch Adams? He's just trying to make jokes all the time. That's a little nose on.

I was not... I'm the best there is what I do and what I do is hilarious. I was... And what I do is mostly prop comedy. I was not in the health careers program. Hey, Bob, why are you in the hospital? Let me make you laugh. Yeah, he keeps robbing his...

rubber chickens with his claws. I don't understand health. I heal naturally all the time. All this time I thought it was laughter that was causing me to heal so fast. Actually, I'm a mutant. My mistake. I was not in the health careers program.

I'm an unbreakable, funny bone. I was not in the... Call me Patch Adam Vantium. This is the character find of 2025. Badgeantium, yeah. Yeah, that's Wolverine when he's a funny doctor, yeah. I feel lightheaded. Hey, aren't you the superhero Wolverine?

No, I got a patch on mine or a red nose on. Of course I'm not Wolverine. I was not in the health careers program, but apparently they wanted to pack the auditorium, so they just rousted a bunch of kids out of class to see this talk. Something that I might have had an objection, I might have an objection to you, now that I am apparent.

I had seen the movie Patch Adams and loved it. I've not seen it since it came out, and strongly doubt I would stand by those views today. I'm going to imagine that you were one of the people in the audience in the movie, Cessalby Demented when they gas a showing of Patch Adams. So I was really excited to see the real-life version of Robin Williams' lovable med student goof. Unfortunately, the real Adams was not a lovable goof of any sort, but rather a humorless surly older man.

He talked for an uninterrupted hour alternating between broad critiques of the American health care system, attacks on Hollywood for ruining his life story, and anti-motivational, telling it like it really is, stories about his life and career. Awesome. The only word to describe this seemingly endless experience was punishing. Yes, Stuart?

No, I'm just saying it sounds awesome. What had I done to deserve this? I just woke up that day and went to school. school, and now I feel like I'm being dressed down by this weird old guy for stuff I had nothing to do with. Anyway, the high point was after he was done, and the formal part of his talk was over and asked if there were any questions. A girl raised her hand and asked about the part of the movie...

Please, Mr. Patch. Can you tell me about the movie? A girl raised her hand and asked about... Tell me a joke, I'm dying. Asked about the part of the movie where a patient kills Patch's girlfriend. Adams pounced like one of the raptors in Jurassic Park, practically screaming about how in real life that character was based on one of his male friends

and then he did another five minutes or so about the evils of Hollywood. Tight five on the evils of Hollywood, yeah. There were, unsurprisingly, no further questions. I mean, that is an awkward question to ask. Well, I mean, certainly after... After hearing all that. In fairness, I'm sure that his critiques of the healthcare system

were dead on, but I don't think... Impossible. It's a great system. I don't think Adams did the cause of Medicare for all any favors that day. I'll never forget overhearing a teacher confusingly wondering aloud why he couldn't have told at least one joke. It is kind of his thing. Anyway, do any of you have experience with meeting a real-life subject of a film? Thanks, Adam.

Thank you for sharing that story. I think it must have been hard for Adam to see an Adams being so negative on sustainable. Oh, man. I mean, every time I... I was going to say to that. Oh, I mean, there's a lot of reasons for that, yeah. Sorry, Stuart? I probably had a bit.

Let me see if I got a new one. Can you access it? You guys, somebody else now. I can't think of, like, a particular thing where I saw a movie and then later met the person in the movie or anything like that. The thing that came to my mind was more of sort of a general, like, I saw the documentary. It started as a joke, which was about the Eugene Murman. and comedy festival and so much of that movie watching it the documentary was like oh like that was the new york comedy scene when i came to new yorks like i wasn't i was sort of off to the

side of it i wasn't a huge part of it but they're like stages that i performed on you know it's like seeing rafi and like people that shows there and people that uh either like you know some of them i knew, but most of them are like people I'd seen on stage or like knew someone who knew them or whatever. And it felt like a time capsule and going back to like a part of my life. That's very sweet. I couldn't think of anything.

I mean, the closest I can come is I think when I went to a panel at Comic-Con that Tommy Wazzo was on and he was everything you'd expect him to be from seeing the room. Like it was just everything. And like the room is not about him but it is kind of about him. Yeah. But otherwise the like I've never met, I don't think,

think the subject of a movie where someone else plays that I've met people who are in movies like I met Kurt Vonnegut once who plays himself in Back to School but like I've never I don't think I've ever met like someone who had a movie made about them except for my dad's my granddad Sully you know the pilot no no I've never the monster ink yeah my my granddad the original monster that movie is based on not what about you Stuart have you ever met someone who is that who is the subject of a fictional movie I don't think I ever have I mean I I I've met the subject of a fictional movie that has been the subject

of many movies and that is the city of New York baby that's true New York is a character in many movies and you live there yeah that's true

but no I think like it's the same thing where I can't think of I feel like I feel like there must be there must be somebody but no I can't I can't my brain's

I'm drawn blank I bet you if we thought really hard we met somebody who was portrayed by somebody else in a movie. But I can't, yeah, I'm having trouble thinking of it, but it is. But if I think that hard, I might get a nosebleed. Here's something from Dennis last name withheld, who writes.

Lerie? Dennis. Yeah. He writes, I think you hear me walking, knock in, and I think I'm coming in. Floppers, yeah. Your Encino-Dan mini-discussion, where Stewart brought up his issues with lifestyle porn in media, reminded me of one of my most hated recent movies. the 2022 Father of the Bride remake,

which I watched with my wife. Father of the Bride remake? Is that a movie? I guess so. Did that happen? Yeah, apparently. In that... Stewart, did you make this movie?

I'm looking it up. Okay, look it up. In that movie, they initially pitch an interesting conflict where the daughter of a highly successful immigrant chooses to work for a foreign aid nonprofit upsetting her father who wants her to avoid the life of poverty

he so desperately worked to escape from, only to immediately throw that premise out in the next scene when it is revealed the father-in-law is a billionaire and the entire movie devolves into lifestyle porn. Oh, yeah. My question to you is... You got Andy Garcia, Gloria Estefan. Yeah, yeah.

I did not even know this movie existed. My question to you is, what other movies have you seen that pose an interesting or serious premise only to then throw it out later in favor of pure schlach? Keep on rocking in the flop world, Dennis' last name withheld. This is a tough one for me because I feel like so often while talking about movies on the flop house, we touch on the moments where we're like, oh, that's pretty interesting.

I could see where they could develop that, but they chose to not do that at all. They chose instead to, I don't know, focus on a story about a stolen Fabergete egg or something. What was the interesting story that they could have focused on instead of the stolen Faberje, in that particular example? How a very successful mystery writer was going to come up with a plan for writing a book about an Easter bunny puppy. I guess you're right. That is the real

that's the more interesting, intriguing premise. Yeah, I know that this has happened a lot. I'm having a real time, hard time struggling with it. I wanted to read it even so because I think it's such an interesting question and maybe

something will come to me in the future and we can revisit it or I'll put in a flop secrets newsletter. For some reason, the only thing that's coming to mind is event horizon. Okay, I could buy that. Sort of like, toward the beginning of that movie, I'm like,

oh, this is like cool. This is like a horror Solaris. This is a ship that is bringing sort of fantasies to life in a scary way. And then it just, like, I think it's a cool vision of hell at the end. Don't get me wrong. But I think the movie kind of falls apart into nonsense.

I mean, there's a lot of movies when they get to the Act 3 especially where it's like okay now it's either a crazy person is running around or a murderous person is running around chasing people or it's got to be really actiony all of a sudden or like the movie that first came to mind there's a portal that has to be closed or something the movie that came to mind first to me was um was the movie in time that we did on the flop house with Justin Timberlake where it's like a world where time is used as money and you can take someone's life and make it part of your life it's like an interesting satirical angle

but then it turns into like a revenge movie you would write or it's like like, we're going to rob them before they, you know, they won't even know what hat hit them. It turns into like Bonnie and Clyde or something, and it just felt like, well, this is not really the best way to make use of this concept, you know. Yeah, I think, anyway. People can disagree.

Maybe they think it's the best way to do that. Yeah, in fact, while we think about it, please, listeners, if you have an example that you think is particularly telling, feel free to drop it in the comments on the Instagram post for this episode, and maybe we'll read those if there's some good ones. Yeah, I would say even, what was that?

Yeah, I think that's a great idea that listeners should write in with their examples. What was the George Clooney, Julia Roberts movie that we did? Intelliable Cuts in Paradise. What was it called? Ticket to Paradise?

Is that it? I think that's right, yeah. Because even there's something about these divorced mom and dad, their daughter is marrying someone that she should not be marrying and they're going to rediscover their love of each other

while breaking up, while breaking up their daughter's wedding. It's like a funny idea. Like that could be a really classic like old-fashioned comedy, and they just don't. They kind of give up on that a little bit, partly because, like, the daughter's fiance is so incredibly perfect in every way, you know?

Yeah. Yeah, there's like a modern impulse to be too nice or something where it turns into like a hangout comedy rather than the screwball that you might expect from that premise. Yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, great question. Hope that we get some answers from folks out there. Let's move on to recommendations,

movies that we saw that we think are a better use of your time than, say, the way we've spent our lives. Yeah, other than the cruel bargain we made with the devil. We would live forever, but we'd have to do it watching these movies. Yeah. This is, I'm going to recommend a movie that, you know, was universally, basically beloved, so it doesn't necessarily need my voice added to the chorus.

But I did watch it. Babylon. I did watch it on a I did watch it on the plane yeah here and I know how much listeners love

tales of plane pictures movie plane stories yeah on the way to Los Angeles I watched little women the Greta Gerwig recent version of little on that screen

it would be very little I thought it was kind of funny that I picked a movie that made me had me on the verge of tears like every 15 minutes essentially until, of course, the end where finally the tears started actually rolling. Yeah, you just edged the whole time and then blasted.

I'm just like, I mean, like, I don't know why it should be embarrassing to have like an emotional response to something, but. I think it's because you're on a plane. In public. Yeah. I'm loving this, but why did I choose this? Why did I do this to myself? I could have watched crap.

I could have watched this at home where then I could just cry all I wanted. Then only your wife would make fun of you. Yeah, but it's an amazing movie. I think Gerwig does some interesting and great things with adaptation. It makes some great choices. Everyone's wonderful in it. It's just... Especially Odenkirk, right?

Odin Kirk just crushes it. I mean, I think he's great in it, but it is weird to see Bob. It was struck me the other day. because there was a thing, a video online that was like, it was like Bob Odenkirk looks back on some of his past roles and it was everything after Breaking Bad.

And like, oh, there's a whole generations that have no idea that he started in comedy, that he had one of the greatest sketch shows of all time. Like, they just think of him as Saul or nobody. And that's it. And like, that seems bonkers to me, you know.

You're thinking of the Ben Stiller show, right? I mean, the Ben Stiller's an underrated show, but no, that's not the one I'm thinking of, yeah. Anyway, what a wonderful movie just full of warm. and love and emotion, little women. That's a great movie. Greg Gourke's got such a great filmography.

Yeah. Eventually, her average is going to dip, but she's got, what, she's directed, what, three movies now? I don't know. Probably good for labor. Three or four. Little women.

Barbie. She directed another one. I think she's like co-directed, give her a Marvel. I think that, I mean, to be honest, she could do a great job with a Marvel. I don't want her to do that, but, you know. I'm looking it up, but you.

Stewart. I thought Dan was saying I am legend and I'm like I don't think that's her No I want her to do a version of I'm legend Trademarks Closer to the book I mean Dan there's already last

man on earth which is pretty close to the book in some ways Yeah I So I'm going to recommend I have been on a kick watching movies with the actress

The Chinese actress Tongwei from decision to leave from a few years ago, which was one of my favorite movies. She's so great in that as a possible femme fatale. So I just recently picked up the keynote Lorber Blu-ray of Lust Caution, the Aung Lee movie. I've never seen Lust Caution.

And I hadn't seen it either, and I'm like, I'm not going to watch the streaming version, which is rated R. I'm going for the NC-17, please. And watching, you know, it's a movie set in Occupied, Japanese Occupied China, and Tongue plays a young actress-turned revolutionary who goes undercover to infiltrate and seduce and hopefully kidnap and or kill a collaborationist played by the great Tony Leung. Everybody loves him. He's the best.

He is one of the best, yeah. And there's also a lovely performance from Joan Chen, who plays his wife. So she, Tonguey, becomes his mistress. And it's a movie that has some of the most intense and graphic sex scenes I've seen in a non-pornographic movie. And there's something so jarring about them. There's something so like intense and physical, particularly because so much of the rest of the movie is, like very like

buttoned up and careful and like the whole idea of like not wanting to reveal too much for fear that you'll get outed for who you are so that when they have these that's the caution part

yeah it's this like intense burst of like physical emotion and like there's a certain freedom that they can feel when they're alone it's a really beautiful movie and yeah, it's great. Check it out. I have some Gerwig news.

A roving Gerwig report. Oh, she just wrote the script for I Am Legend. Okay, thank you. Well, if you're not including the video for Duleepa Dance the Night. I'm not counting that as a feature. She's directed four movies. Oh, what's the other one? I was correct that she co-directed something.

I knew that she co-directed something. I was wrong about what and with whom. She co-directed nights and weekends with Joe Swanberg. That was her first directing credits. But, yeah, that lady bird, little women, and Barbie, of course. And then she's got that Narnia Netflix thing. I don't know what we all wanted her to do. She's got some great acting credits.

That's her next credit. What a waste. I mean, get that money. I'm sure it'll be the best version of that. But, yeah, I wish we lived in her world where she was doing something else. Where she could, she could, I mean, she was, maybe she, they're like, you could do that with Barbie. You can do that with Narnia, you know, but we call it Barbia. Yeah.

The lion, the witch and the Barbie. Or Barbie could be the witch. How do we get you on board? She's like, I didn't invent Barbie. Like, it's not the only thing that I do. But I'm going to, I, to be honest, so I have a reputation these days as the busiest man in podcasting, no time to do anything. That reputation is accurate. it. I have a dearth of movies to recommend. But I will say because the new spinal tap was coming

out, my wife and I started rewatching the original spinal tap, which I had not watched in years. And you know what? I love it. Super funny. Totally lives up to my memories. Every time I see it, there's jokes that I notice in it that I didn't notice as much before. There's all this subtle performance stuff in it. And the jokes that I remember, I still laugh at. So you know what? If you want to laugh and you like music, you could go wronger than this is Spinal Tap. I have not seen the sequel. I don't have the highest hopes

for it. But the original still works. I do like between both of your recommendations, we have the two leads of Better Call Saul. It's true. Yeah, that's right. That's true. And lust caution has Harry Sheeter in it, right? Yeah, yeah. He disappears. Uh, well, what a lovely, uh, change of pace to be, uh, on this side of the, uh, Zoom call.

What? Stuart? I would take that as a deep insult, Stuart. Yeah. Oh, no, I'm not calling. Probably is what you do with how you smell. I'm not saying anything about it. I smell too good.

It gets a hell of worked up. Yeah, yeah, you can't concentrate. I mean, it's just a way to keep the relationship fresh, you know. But I also, I also know that, Dan, your, you're off, your room where you record is often very hot. This room is a, it's very hot, not as hot. This is a, uh, uh, uh, yeah, it's super fucking hot room. room. I'm wearing a top, shorts.

Fewer cats, though. That's the main problem with this room. That's 200% fewer cats. No, no, Stuart, Stewart, lovely, of course. I'm just, I'm glad to see our boy Elliot. Next time, I hope you're here as well. Yeah, that'd be great.

And what else do I do at the end of the show? Thank people. Thank Alex. Talk about the network. Other than inadvertently insulting so much. It's fine. Thank you, Alex. Alex Smith, of course, is our producer.

He goes by the name Howell Doughty on the vast corners of the internet. He does his own podcast, which I enjoy very much, where he talks to a man who is a possum, a large man-sized possum. He does great music, look him up. Also, thank you to our network, Maximum Fun. Go to Maximum Fun.org. Check out the other great shows, maybe become a member if you like what we do. But that's about it.

For the flop house, I've been Jay McCoy. I've been Stuart Wellington here in New York City. And I've been Elliot Kalen bringing Dan over to Los Angeles, where he'll never return from. Yeah, I figured. What? Stay tuned to find out if he escapes. Bye, Gorsh. And Alex, I may just delete this audio.

What? All right, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm fucking Bizarro over here. That's the thing when Bizarro apologized to people, he goes, sorry, Bizarri. Yep. Well, when Bizarro would upload a podcast, he would accidentally download a podcast. It's true. It goes, me, listeners am enjoying not hearing podcast.

You'd be like, Bizarro, just tell us what you're trying to tell us. It's so possible to parse what you're trying to say. Uh-huh. Me, listen to Smart Full. Okay, anyway. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists-owned shows.

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