The Flop House - Standing Ovation

Episode Date: September 19, 2026

We say goodbye to Smalltember with a true bad movie jewel (thanks to Alonso Duralde for recommending it) -- the kid/tween/teen musical comedy STANDING OVATION, one of the few movies about a singing competition that also makes room for a mob subplot and a child who threatens people with deadly animals. What a magical picture.FLOP TV SEASON FOUR is well underway! Go pick up a pass for individual episodes or the whole dang season! Stay updated on all things Flop House, plus a little extra, with our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets!Wikipedia page for Standing Ovation.Recommended in this episode:Dan: Redux Redux (2025)Stu: Leviticus (2026)Elliott: Smile (1975) Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinflop

On this episode, we discuss standing ovation. Do we stand up and cheer or sit down and jeer? Listen, won't you? A little, you must remember this flavor at the end. Yeah. Hey, everyone, and welcome to the flop house. I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington.

Yo, yo, Elliot K in the house. Elliot Keland, that is. The original bad thing. Blow it out the doors. Oh, he crossed his arms and everything. Hey, everyone. This is the flop house, as previously established. It is a podcast where we watch a movie that was a critical or a commercial flop.

And then we talked about it. This one. When did we previously establish that you mean in previous episodes? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we said that it was the flop house. Yeah, that was mentioned. The rest was implied. This is, and we're also in Small Vember right now.

Yeah. time of year when we talk about the movies that are a little smaller, a little bitier. But this movie, today we're talking about, this is my idea of a big movie directed as it was by the same director who made the Philadelphia experiment. Ice Pirates, Mac and Me,

Maniccan 2 on the move, Tammy and the T-Rex. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, a real pedigree. A real flop-house pedigree. A boy makes bangers. Yeah, treat yourself to a Stuart Raffle movie tonight, won't you? Yeah, this is a movie.

I want to acknowledge I got onto this one via Alonzo Duraldi. He mentioned it in a previous episode when he was on, when we're talking about after last season, he was saying, you know, sometimes you hear through the grapevine that something is a little special. And he mentioned standing ovation as an example of such a special picture. And I... He wasn't wrong.

I screened it for my bad movie Monday night crew and then I was like, guys, we got to do it. We got to do it for the plot. Not like seconds into the picture you're like, okay. Well, I mean, like

it starts strong, but it gets stronger. I will say there was certainly not to spoil things for anyone as they listen to the episode, but when one of the characters it turned out had a menagerie of animals at her command that she could use to

exact vengeance on her enemies, I was like, this is a slightly different movie than I expected. Yeah. It starts off like it's just going to be like a normal, normal-ish. Like it's a pitch perfect, you know. Yeah, a movie about this young girl's singing group. Like a Brat's pitch perfect for last, like a better one. The B stands for Brats.

Then when they're suddenly at an off-back bedding part of parlor. Which was when Lilo and Stitch do some singing. Yeah. Yeah. And that is perfect. That is. Because they get more perfect than Lilo and Stitch singing. Yeah, things get weird.

I don't know. I don't want to steal Stewart's duties. My summary, my summary, Thunder. Okay, so what's everybody's background with standing a vision? Well, I heard about it at the same time, Dan did. Oh, yeah, me too. Have you ever given somebody a standing ovation? Well, of course, when the flash entered the speed force.

Yeah, you stood up and cheered. You didn't necessarily give an ovation. You slapped her hands raw. That's true. Dan had to get skin grafts on his palms. I sued the movie The Flash after that or whatever movie it was. That's why it was thrown out of court because that wasn't the movie it happened in.

So I'm left with these medical bills. Thanks to the Flash. Your palm transplant. They're just lucky that you found a cadaver with palm skin that could be transplanted. Of course, it was the cadaver of a serial killers. Now your palms have the urge to kill. Also, someone with much larger hands than I had now. Yeah.

Yeah, so now the palm skin is just flapping around. Flaping around, yeah. It's like he has two, no shoes, but for hands. Or two palm leaves on his hands, yeah, yeah. You should be a professional swimmer with hands like those. Thanks. Because they're like flippers. Speaking of palm leaves.

Okay. Not at all. Let's get into this bad boy. Does this movie take place in New Jersey? Yeah, but I feel like at least part of it takes place in Atlantic City, and isn't there a Palm Restaurant or resort there? Palm Steakhouse there or something like that. Okay.

So I feel like I've actually eaten there. Listeners, right in. Has Stewart eaten at the Palm in Atlantic City? We don't know. Maybe you do. Charlie, he certainly ate there at the airport. Yeah. Well, he didn't eat there.

Many times. Yeah. Well, that time, yeah, I didn't get to eat there. That was a whole kerfuffle. There is a Palm in Atlantic City. So you could very well be. Oh, thank God. Okay, cool.

Your joke checks out. Oh, man. Fact-checked that. Yeah, okay, cool. Thank you. That's the best kind of joke. Actually correct. So I feel like we should probably get into the...

It's funny. Literally because it's true. Yeah. So we should get into the meat of this thing because I feel like... You got it. This is the kind of weird, bad movie that seems to moment to moment

invent weirder and dumber things to throw at you. So there's... If you're stopping to comment on every little thing, we'd be here all day long. Yeah. You're talking about it. about that's a real Achilles and the Tortoise Paradox.

Each time you have to cover half the distance, you'll never catch up, you'll never get there. Yeah. Uh-huh, yep. So, we began. Zeno, the Greek philosopher, would have been stymied by this movie. That's what I'm saying. Because he'd be like, I don't understand what I'm seeing.

This is, like, it's an image that moves, there's sound coming out of it. I don't know. Are these small people in front of me? What is a dance contest? I would say he would love the music, though, right? Oh, for sure. Or how could you not? This movie, it's this weird that, just to say before we start,

it's this weird because there's a lot of music that I assume is written for this movie that is almost like... Anything that isn't at like a standard. Yes, it's like alternate music. Like it almost sounds like real music, but there's something about it's off. And then they'll sing Splish Splash. And I'm like, that's a real song. Yeah.

I think the first one was, I don't know if this is the actual title or the River Deep Mountain High. Yeah, River Deep Mountain High. And I'm like, did you splurge on a couple? I was so impressed. I'm like, wait, a real song is being played. There weren't a lot of them, though. No. I think my favorite, of course, is when she's busking on the streets of Atlantic City

and is singing just God bless America. Yeah, well, that's, I think I, that might be in the public domain now. Yeah, I think you can. I mean, she knows her audience. If you're going to busk in Atlanta State, like, say, you're either singing Springsteen or you're singing a really patriotic song. Yeah. Yeah, she made 60 bucks.

Although it's tough to do Springsteen now, you know, people, the nation's divided on That's true. That's true, except in New Jersey. Except. Even the guys, even the guys who are mad at, who love Trump, I think they're still like, yeah, but, you know, bossy, you know, but those songs are from before. So it's okay. They, so Maga guys in New Jersey think about Bruce Springsteen the way that we think about Woody Allen, where it's like, uh, but this movie came out before the thing happened. So maybe it's okay to watch it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. This is, this is a, this is the Jackson five when he was a kid. Exactly. Mm-hmm. That's what we're saying. For those guys, now those guys finally understand the concept. of a problematic fade. Yeah, exactly.

This movie came out before John Landis killed some people, so maybe it's okay. Before he got a taste for blood. Now he goes out nightly, yeah, searching for Vic Morrow.

No, you already killed him once. You can't do it again. Oh, God, no, no. You go to the local, like, L.A. helicopter rentals in this picture on the wall. Do not rent to this director. It's like the Pineshire and Jetty.

Kiss that baby goodbye, yeah, yeah. Literally a baby. Oh, no. It was children. It wasn't a baby. There was small children who had been hired illegally. It was a real tragedy. It was horrible.

You can tell how sad it is. By how the laughter that's still joking. Well, sometimes you laugh at shock. It's something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks, Dr. Ruth. Is that what Dr. Ruth dealt with? It was like trauma and shock?

Is that it? I'm assuming. I didn't pay that close attention. That's what she was famous for, right? Thanks, Dr. Electro. What does she? What was her? Penises.

Okay, so... Well, that's what... Dr. Ruth, PTSD stood for a penis taint, sex doctor. Yeah. Wow. That's what she specialized in. Yeah. The penis and the taint.

Beyond the taint. No, no. Well, that was Dr. Ruth Eastheimer dealt with. Westheimer was just the penis and the Tate. Eastheimer was everything beyond that, you know, the anus and so forth. I want to hate you, Ellie, but I can't. He can't. The science is too tight.

Important demarcations, yeah. So our movie... So this children's movie that we're talking about. Our adventure begins at the Atlantic City talent competition. We meet a group of singers, five sisters called the Whiggy Sisters. The Wiggies. They are known as... They'll wear wigs.

They all wear wigs. Their dad is a Wiggs company owner. Mr. Wig owns the most profitable wig business in America. And I want to... Mr. Wig... I forget the guy's name. Mr. Wiggs. Yeah.

He is played by a gentleman. who I learned when looking him up, he is the proprietor of a vocal training studio. Yes, this is Sal Dupree. Sal Dupree, yeah. And so I can only presume that the genesis of this film was Sal Dupree being like, hey, I got all these young kids who are talented.

Let me schnooker, Stuart Raffle, into making a movie. Let me snooker, Stuart Raffle needed to be tricked into making this movie. This is clearly sort of a backdoor way of of, you know, promoting his own students. Maybe, maybe. Or he said, I've got all these talented students.

Let's make a movie with them. You notice that this movie was released, after its initial release, there was a DVD release that was a standing ovation dance party that I think probably included additional dancing information. I haven't seen it. I was not aware of those. Also, there are not one, but two soundtrack albums available.

There's a lot of songs. There should be. We'll play some of those for you later. I don't think so. The rights can't be that expensive. So we meet the Wiggies. Oh, wait, I'm just learning this now that, this movie was associate produced by James Brolin.

And so at the premiere, it's attended by James Browland, Barbara Streisand, and Josh Boland. I love the fact that Barbara Streisand had to watch the thing. I find it very charming. Yeah. So there, so Mr. Wiggs, sabotages the group that's performing first, which is a young couple of kids

who are singing some kind of weird song where she's like listing the, she's like going down the alphabet, and it's like, A is for amazing, B is B your best, and C, C, I told you, I know the alphabet. I'm like, what the fuck is happening? Like, what is going on here?

An educational song about the alphabet. Kind of. So he interrupts that performance, which, so I get fewer answers. than I was hoping. And this is the beginning of something, which is the wigs and the wiggies are constantly sabotaging groups that are,

I'm just going to say it, not as talented as the wiggies. The wiggies are, I would, this movie makes so much more sense. They're sabotaging for the love of the game, though, do you. If the wiggies were untalented,

and it's like we have to trick our way to the, but much like in Jem and the holograms, Dan's favorite show, the misfits are good. They're like a good band, right? So they don't need to be going after Jim. Like they can all be successful. They can win on their own.

But that's kind of the moral, isn't it? You know, that like, These are, there's the, they have a rot at their core. They can't just accept that they're better on the merits. Someone else has to crush. I see. I was going to say it was like Dumbo's feather, right? The sabotage is, makes them think that's how they win.

Oh, I see. Oh, maybe. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. So that's what gets, that's what gets their self-esteem up. They can be like, oh, I can have fun with this performance and do my best because I know the other team was sabotaged. Their self-esteem is brought up by sabotage.

So the Wickees have a brief encounter with our heroes, the five ovations, some junior high school girls with a variety of names that I don't remember. There's a Britney, there's a Blaze. There's a Tatiana and then others. I mean, clearly. And the rest. And the rest. But the breakout star character is not a member of the five ovation.

No, no. We'll hear about her. There's a couple of breakout stars. There's one in particular, though. I think we know. I think we know. So there is a brief moment where Mr. Wiggs is trying to encourage his daughters to perform well. And he says, let's win one for the Gipper, which they laugh at. And I'm like, that reference is too old for me.

Yeah. No one understands what that means anymore. Those kids love movies about Newt Rock me. So they're very familiar with it. Okay. Not an actual Newt. The Whigies go on stage and they perform their hit song. He just wore a newt costume on the field.

What, like a little kid that's running away from xenomorphs? Yeah, exactly, that nude. He was dressed as newt from aliens. Yeah, exactly. And they're distracted. It just, actually, my joke's factually. It's factually. It was actually because they were like,

that movie won't come out for 40 years. At least. Yeah, so they're just worried that a small child was on the field. Yeah, exactly. Would not tackle him. I mean, has anyone ever tried that in real? Like, in a football game, just dressed as a small child?

No one wants to hurt. Let me check the rulebook and see if there's anything in there that says that one can do that. They probably do regulations about pads and uniforms for football. Pigtails sticking out from under your helmet. But those would be so easy to grab. That's the thing. Grab and yank. Yeah.

But then they come. They're breakaway pig tails. So they go to grab them. They break off. Like a flag football. Like a salamander. Exactly. Like a salamander or a newt.

Exactly. Dan, I don't know what you're talking about. This is herpetology. We're talking to herpetology. I guess I guess I got a little. little bit out of sorts here. Before the Whiggies perform their hit song, Blush,

the ovations are interrupted by Alana W wannabe. Breakout star. Yeah. Breakout star of the movie, a even younger girl who is very excited about, she's very into being a superstar. All her songs are about how she wants to sing and she wants

to dance. Her slogan is, I'm Alana wannabe, and I'm going to be. Yeah. She doesn't take no for an answer. No, she does not. Everyone keeps rejecting her, and it's like, you fools, clearly, she has star power. Yeah, just bring her in. I mean, she is annoying, but she has star power. And what I liked about later we meet Alana Wannaby's dad.

And her dad is so super supportive and just they have such a great relationship. And I love that these care. Yeah, I love that there's no conflict in it. And he's like, I think it's time to give up. She's like, we got to keep going. He's like, all right, let's do it. Alana refers to herself as a little person at one point. And she meets a child.

But I was watching this. You'll appreciate this, Stuart. I was watching this with our old. college friend, Liz, who had invited us over to her... I'm really glad that you made other people watch this. Yeah. And we were laughing at the idea. Because, like, a lot of bosses her dad around so much that we were imagining, what if she actually was just a little person and they were married? Oh, yeah.

And that was what the relationship was. So she seems to be in charge here. It's like orphan. She's pretending to be a kid, but she's actually a little person, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the Wiggies perform. Alana's in the wings, doing all the moves, just in case. But not in the wings.

No. When the wiggies are getting off stage, they tip the stage manager to put pepper. He has like this spice rack next to the fucking stage. All theaters have that. Just in case.

And all the wiggies are wearing these like computer headphones. They look very clearly like the thing you would wear in 2005 to, I don't know, play quake and yell at your friends. So you, and he puts pepper in all of the headsets so that when the ovations take the stage and they perform their number that I don't remember, they start to sneeze. Also, one of the ovations tears her dress because there was gum stuck to the chair, although I do want to point out.

That's very strong gum. It's very strong gum. And I do want to point out that when rewinding the tape backwards, when the wiggies had left and the ovations went in, the gum was not on that. chair. So somebody else put it in there. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'd hate to be...

I'm going to say Alana Wannaby did it. I got to say that's our only other suspect, really. Okay. So the ovations, obviously, they don't win this talent show. They're laughed off the stage. Most of the songs that the ovations and the wiggies sing

are love songs to boys or about how attractive they are to boys or how attractive they will be to boys. And as the movie went on, I was like, there's got to be some other subject for their songs than just, boy, you got to get with me. Or they want to be like a superstar, right? I guess where they want to be a superstar like Molly Shannon.

And then there's that little bit where there's like alien robots that show up on stage and get commanded to dance. That's the very end. I'm from outer space. Make me dance. That's later. That's a great act. I am a male pattern. That's where the ovations figure out the way to win is to outsource the dancing and performance to other people that they've brought in.

Yeah. Okay. But that's the climax. A little bit dejected. the leader of the ovations, Brittany, uh, gets a ride home from her grandpa.

We learn that she has a little bit of a sad home life. They live above somewhere off the boardwalk in Atlantic City above what, like a pizzerie or something. They live over the boardwalk. A song that is featured later in the movie. That's true. Yeah. Um,

her, her mother seems to be, have passed. Her dad disappeared a long time ago. And her grandfather takes care of her and her brother. Her and her grandfather is, you know, very off-the-boat Irish guy who just can't stop gambling his money away.

Yeah, they decided to swerve away from the stereotype of him being an alcoholic by instead making him a gambling addict. And Brittany also has an older brother, Mark, who's very cool and also apparently writes all the songs and dance routines for every performer in this movie. Yeah, and I don't know whether it's just...

Not the actor, the character. He is kind of... Their first big scene together is in a room where he is like playing guitar to himself and there's a bunch of candles lit. But it felt like there was like a little too much like Folgers coffee style sexual attention between these supposed siblings.

That I didn't. I mean, it was pointing out that the power got cut out because they didn't pay the power bill. But I'm like, who's paying the candles? I still don't think that like a teen boy is like, well, let me light up my candle collection. I don't know.

If he's going for like a meatloaf, John Mellencamp type of thing, I could see him. And what young boy wouldn't want to go for? I wouldn't want to play in kind of an Eric Clapton, tears in heaven type setting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One teenage boy can't identify with tears in heaven.

Okay. It's the wrong about a child buying because you didn't close a window. Oh, sad. Oh, man. We're only having fun still. I don't know why this kid's movie is causing us to bring up so many tragedies of Joe Biz history. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so... So how did we get into Faddy Arbuckle's story? When don't we talk about that on this episode? We're at the... At school the next day, at middle school the next day, we find out that all is not lost. The mega media company... This is not all is lost starring Robert Redford.

So just get that out of your head, yeah. CDS, the media conglomerate, is starting a best video music contest and the grand prize is one million dollars. The only challenge is you have to shoot your own video and you have to do your own music, an original song. Turns out the Whiggies already have a head start. They've rented out of the school,

and they've brought in a choreographer from L.A., and they're performing an original number written by Mark, Britney's brother, because he's, I guess, dating one of them. But this is also, this is one of those weird things where Brittany is like, why don't you help us pay the rent? And then he's like, I'm selling my music right now to these people who have lots of money. And she's like, how dare you?

How could you turn on the family? It's like, you need money. Like, I assume he's being paid for his work, right? Probably. Like, what, it's a real damned if you're damned if you don't situation with Britney. You just brought up something that I think confused me when I was watching the movie, which is that for this contest, it has to be an original song. But isn't, aren't they shooting a music video later on?

Like, one of the music videos that they try and then reject is Riverdeep Mountain Harmony? Yes. So that wouldn't have qualified. They didn't enter that, though. I think that was mainly, that was a practice video. I think they were working. shopping, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Okay. Maybe, or maybe this is a universe where they wrote that song. Later on, Brittany is... It's like a yesterday type situation. This is a world where I can Tina Turner never existed. And so that... One of those people... One of those people, we'd be better off.

Yeah, that's pot. Yeah, I think so. But would you be willing to sacrifice the other, Stuart? Oh, that's tough. I mean, we'd never know if we needed another hero or not. Yeah, never know. It's true. Yeah.

But if you wanted a private dance? What would you do? What would you do? What would you do? I don't know. You couldn't do it. Impossible. Possible.

No. So later on, Brittany is busking on the mean streets of Atlantic City, tough town. They are mean streets. It's a mean place. She's singing, God bless America over and over.

And a guy does a real fast one and takes money out of the thing and he takes a $10 bill and replace it with a single. She chased him down. She says, hey. A real grifters moment. Yeah.

She's like, hey, I know I record the serial numbers of every bill that I put in my cap and you are stealing. And then she is also aided by a woman we'd only seen hints of. A young girl named Joey, like, Batalucci. Yeah, second breakout character of the movie. Well, this is the character that I was like, Stuart's going to fall for Joey. Stewart's going to be. Fire up the fucking concrete blonde because I love me some Joey. So she comes and she's like, yeah, let's describe Joey Bellughey.

She's a real street smart, you know, Jersey kid. Street smart kid, bag full of snakes. Kind of a Philly accent. Yeah, I did think, I was like, it did confuse me because I was like, wait, they're in Atlantic City, but she sound, her accent does sound more Philadelphia than New Jersey. I mean, they're pretty close. They are pretty close. I mean, they're very simple. I mean, you go from one to the other pretty easily.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. And yeah, she's like. He's a child mobster. Yeah. Yes. She's like between a child mobster and a child gumshoe. Yes. And this actress, her name's Joey DeCarlo, I think she does a great job.

I was like, I was like, this kid's great, this whole movie. No, I looked her up. I was like disappointed that she didn't go on to do other stuff because I'm like, if anyone here kind of has like a flair for comedy, it's this one. She's very funny in it, in a sincere way, yeah. So she shows up and gives Brittany a little bit of help and also gives her some racing tips for the track. which come in handy later when she tracks down her grandpa who is in a betting fever, a gambling fever at an OTB, and he's about to lose all of their rent money when she,

she like puts a bet based on the tip that Joey gave her. And of course, that tip pays out. Grandpa's like, great, we can double that money too. And she's like, uh-uh. You're cut off, grandpa. She goes and talks to Joey. You win and you leave. Don't do it.

Don't try to double it. Come on. Joey, who says, she's like, no problem, but you should let me be your manager. I was at the talent competition. She's like, if I'd been your manager then, they would have been sleeping with the fishes. I'm like, okay, you're going to kill the wigs. But that's fine. Who knows?

And then she agrees, but there is one condition. She doesn't need pay, but she will need help finding the man who drove her father to die. Yeah. who stole the money from her father. Stole the money that led her father to die. Eventually, there will be a reason why she has enlisted this specific girl to help her on this quest, although it doesn't totally make sense even then why, but like... It makes a little bit sense, but I definitely, until that reveal, I was like,

why is Brittany the person you're asking? Yeah, why do you have this, like, singer coming on? And Brittany never... This is something I've learned on the show I'm working on right now, which is if there's a question that you want the audience to wonder about, you have to have somebody articulate it or else the audience thinks it's a mistake that they don't know the answer to it.

And so if she had just said, well, why me? And Joey goes like, I got my answers. I got my reasons or something like that. Or maybe there wasn't like that and I missed it. But like once you have a character

asked the question, the audience knows, okay, this is something the other people have thought about. There will be an answer to this probably. I just have to wait for it. Whereas throughout most of the movie, I was like, I don't understand what part of Britney plays

in her plan. She's not muscle. And she's unhelpful through most of the movie. Yeah. So we, now that we have a manager in tow, let's get back to our A plot, shall we? We go back to the high school or junior high school where there is a video shoot for the Wiggies song. There is some grown men who are doing rapping and stuff, and I didn't like this at all. No, thank you.

It was very strange. And so they're having this party and kind of all the kids are invited to like get up on stage and party. And her brother is shooting some of the video with a camera. There are a lot of child like wheeler dealers. Later on they'll be like kind of a there's like a blind child who's sort of like a Phil Spectre style character. And I'm like, okay, I guess everyone. You're talking about Eric Bateman's blind brother who sings, I got the world on a street. And you know, the thing is, old blue eyes did it.

But I think Eric Bateman's brother did a little bit better. That's the definitive version now. Okay, so speaking of Eric Bateman, this is where... That's the one you're going to hear in all the commercials for this point out. Yeah. Speaking of Eric Bateman, the ovations are like, hey, Eric Bateman's always had a crush on you to one of them. I don't remember the news. I don't remember which one it is. And they're like, you need to get in tight with him because his dad's...

owns a recording studio. Just stay away from his brother Patrick. You don't want to get involved with that guy. That's true. Well, I mean... If he starts talking about Huey Lewis, you gotta leave. You gotta go. If he puts on a clear raincoat,

you do not want to be in that room. What are all these tarps for? So the girls go and start buttering up Eric Baitman. This leads to the ovations starting to shoot their first video, where they are performing at a retirement. at home.

Yep. And there's a lot of soft shoe and they're dancing and trying to get the old people to dance. I think we got a lot of like Six Flags guy style. They do some Charleston. There's one woman in particular

at the old folks home who's really going for that Six Flags old man energy where she gets up and she's just dancing our heart out and making big faces. Yeah. But then the audience seems to not enjoy it after.

It's weird. They're like they're getting up and dancing and then there's a moment where they lose the audience and I couldn't quite figure out what was going on. There's something about the way there's a shot where it looks like in the foreground, we have the ovation's dancing,

and then there's stuff going on in the background, but it looks like a green screen, like the sizes of people is all over the map. Like, there's a guy back there playing bass that looks like fucking Hagrid. And, like, there's just so many different size that I'm like, what's going on here? People come in a variety of sizes, you know? But is this some visual trickery, Stuart Raffle? I don't know. I don't know.

They do have later, at the very end of the movie, you do see an animated frog crawl along a man's face. So maybe they had some computer effects here and there, you know? That would make sense. Okay, so in the middle of after they perform their first song, they then bring on after a brief interruption

from Alana Wannabe, they bring on Tatiana sing one of her hit songs. And then Joey and Britney sneak off because nearby is one of the guys that Joey needs to shake down to get information about her father's money. They go outside, they spray some

What we learned is perfume, but is sprayed as if it's some kind of poison. And the only antidote is a dog treat. So she sprays it on a dog and then gives him a treat, threatens to spray this guy. He's like, no, but the guy that you're talking about, he kills everybody. And I'm like, that's going to be crazy when we think about it later. And they get another lead. These children. Yeah.

But also considering how easily that character is redeemed at the end, and it's like, oh, he wasn't murderous mobster, but no, we're supposed to like him at the end. Yeah. Now, after this scene, we get one of the, you know, one of the good scenes in the movie where Alana dejected, having been rejected by the ovations again, is leaving the nursing home, being picked up by her father. And she's like, nobody wants me. He's like, that's crazy.

You're the best. And she's like, well, if I'm going to do something, I need backup dancers. She's like, what about your cousins? And she's like, they're in Florida. And we're like, don't worry, guys. We're going to meet her cousins later. Oh, okay. And so he's like, if you need bag of dancers, I got it.

So now we got a scene where Alana is in full outfit and she is at a firehouse, which I assume her father works at. Either works at or owns, you know, I don't know. Do you own firehouse? Maybe it's a private firehouse. Yeah, I don't know. So she, we get a scene of her bossing around these firemen who are in full uniform and hitting them. She's like a Nazi commandant, like yelling at them and hitting them with like a cane or a stick or something.

I don't think it's a horse whip. I don't know what it is. Yeah, so they do, yeah, it's a riding crop. Righting crop, yeah, that's his. And they, you know, she yells at them and they, they prepare to shoot this video. Yeah, and later we see some of it. Yeah, we'll see the result. Stay tuned.

Back in the studio, we meet, as we mentioned before, Eric, wait, Eric Bateman's brother. Who, again, is blind. I think the character's name is just Bateman also. Bateman, yeah. Yeah. So he is, he's blind and again, he is blunt. Yeah. It could be any of them.

We're Patrick as a kid. Yeah. Again. Yeah. So. We're another Bateman who's not famous. Could be Batman and they misspelled it. Could be misspelled Batman. That's true.

The, uh, well, that's what happened when Batman got to El Silent. What's your name? I'm Batman. What's that Batman? I'll just write that down. He thought it was too, I think. And he's like, uh, well, I guess name is just. to me.

Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot. I guess I'll become a bat. So when they're in the studio, they begin to sing a song, which is, what, River Deep Mountain High. And this kind of blurs their performance in the studio blurs together with a kind of a video shoot with them playing around on a beach. There's guys riding around on jet skis. It's nuts. Okay. We then, now we have the next best scene in the movie

where the ovations are at a diner and they're talking about what's going on and their diner meal is interrupted by the Wig's family and show up and talk some shit. Even rich people in New Jersey eat at diners. They're just what you do, yeah. And then they sit down and this is where we get the hit number peas and Q, like soup to nuts, mind your peas and cues.

When I first saw this and I did not know that he, like, was a singing coach, I was like, oh, Mr. Wiggs gets a song? Yeah, he does. More than one. But this song is, this is, I think, my favorite song in the whole movie. It's incredible.

So, after that ABC song of the beginning, it's the one that we were like, what is this? Who is this for? Like, and also because it's like, my, if you don't have good manners, no food for you or something like that. Eat your bread like the upper crust dude.

That's fucking wordplay dude. Yeah. Crust, yeah. And they're singing this song. And they're performing for nobody. Like there's no audience. No one's responding to this. It's just they just love to say all the time.

And they're singing, unfortunately, their song, this hit song, which is available on the Sunday. How insane would this movie be if it was actually a jukebox musical? And these are all songs that pre-existed that one band did. And it's like, yeah, we did soup to nuts, of course. Because we needed a song about table manners. We had to fit it in there, yeah. So they're interrupted by a frog prank.

Yep. Because Joey snuck a frog into the soup, which you go to a diner. You've got to try the soup, right? The soup. To start off to have a little cup of soup before that rest of the meal. That's just the way you do it. It's just a nice little. You're welcoming your stomach to the act of eating in a warm way, in an unchallenging way, and a delicious way.

And you're getting your mouth ready for the work to come. You're saying teeth. Teeth, get used to the idea you're about to do work, but it's not just yet. Start stretching, start warming up. The soup will go first, and then teeth, it's your turn to really go to town. Yeah.

And then the nuts are the way to say goodbye to that meal. Exactly. It's like traditional ending nuts. Exactly. Yeah. You end with some nuts, and it's like teeth, you've been doing great work, but now I really need you to focus.

This is when you really got to get your head into the game. Stomach, don't worry, the teeth are going to take this one, and you're just going to do a little bit of backup, you know. And then intestines, then it's your time to shine. Then, you know, the meal is over. You get to work while everyone else rests. It's beautiful. Every part of the body takes a shift, basically.

Elliot's really workshopping this children's book about the digestion process. Yeah, that Elliot, like, gives his, like, body a little pep talk before he has any meal. I've got to, because I want them to know that I care about them, but I expect to work from them. You know, I expect them to do their best. Right, right. That's leadership. Don't have asset, you know, give 110. Yeah.

Bass comes to play later, Alex. Yeah, exactly. Once the intestines are done, then the S-S., hold my beer. I'll take care of this one. Now it's time for my, now it's time for me to go to work and do what I was made to do. Here's my little trumpet solo. Now I get to be the hero. And then the toilet is like, I'll get it from here, guys. I'm not a part of the body. But you know what? I'm in the system.

I'm making it work. Let's cooperate together. Yeah, I'm an ally. I'm an ally. That's what the toilet is saying. So this frog is, this is when we were first. introduced to the idea that as we learned, Joey has a menagerie of animal helpers. Creatures, yeah. The creatures that she carries in her bag.

Yeah. One of them is this frog that scares everybody and kind of ruins the, not only ruins the song, but also seems to ruin their entire lunch. Yeah, ruined the meal, yeah. Okay, so the next stuff. Waiter, there's a frog in my soup. What's he doing? The backstroke, yeah.

The next step on this journey takes us to the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia. where Joey has organized a commercial shoot, where three of the ovations, for some reason, two of them, I guess probably legally not allowed to leave the state of New Jersey. Yeah, they're under house arrest, yeah. They have to. Their parole officers would be on their case if they left, yeah. They perform in this commercial shoot that involves some kind of gross drink

because they keep drinking and spitting out. And this is by far the worst performance they give in terms of singing and dancing in the movie. And so they're really not bringing their A game for this local commercial for a bad regional soda. Yeah. And this is really one of the many moments in the movie where I'm like, how many fucking actors did they hire for this movie?

Well, like another thing that makes more sense when you're like, well, they had access to like a whole school of talent. But I thought it was very funny that like, the ovations keep adding members to their thing and like later to their group. They're essentially a circus by the end of it. Yeah, well, it's like the end of like Muppet Steak Manhattan

where they're like, yeah, all of you that we've seen through the movie. You're part of the show now. And I'm like, but you made it to the finals of the singing competition based on like this number of people. Is it allowed that you're now like twice or three times as many people on stage? I don't know. They're regularly featuring uncredited members. Yes.

This movie does have big. We need roles for everybody in class for the school play energy where it's like, all right, we have three people. All right. Make a scene where they're shooting a. commercial. And then Joey takes Brittany's like, let's leave this commercial shoot. I need you to come with me on this on my other side quest

mission. I remember there's like an earlier scene where like the lead ovation negotiates more money for backup dancers or whatever. And I'm like, no, no, like you can't pay your rent. Don't pay backup dancers. She negotiates more for the backup dancers than she

and her other ovations will get from the commercial shoot. She's not really keeping her own economic interests in mind here. Yeah. So, Well, you know what? I guess they finished the commercial shoot and the others are like, we're going to go home

and Brittany and Joey are like, we'll just hang around in Philly for a while. We'll meet you back at home. I mean, that's the thing. The whole commercial shoot was really a cover because Joey has tracked down another link in this chain and they go to a fun house and shake down a mobster

who is, I guess, putting away stuff. I do love this, like, they approach a guy and he's like, I'm just putting away stock. Like, he's a guy being interrogated on an episode of SVU or something. I mean, every episode of SVU? Alci Appianza from... Yeah, he's from the Sopranos.

Spranos, yeah. Oh, check out fucking Sopranos guy over here. Dan's the Sopranos guy now. He loves the Sopranos now. He's all about the Sopranos these days. I mean, if you shoot something in New York, you're going to get a Law & Order actor. If you shoot something in New Jersey,

you're going to get a Sopranos actor. That's just the way it is. So... You shoot something in Alaska, you're going to get a deadliest catch. It's just the way it is, you know. Now, that's the law of the line. Throw it back.

You shoot something in Atlanta, you're going to get a real housewife of Atlanta. especially if you're shooting an episode of Real Housewives of Atlanta, then you'll definitely get a bunch of... You're presumably, yeah. So they shake this guy down using a cobra. I do love the cobra effects here. Because the cobra initially, you know,

there's some hero shots of an actual cobra, but anytime it shoots Al Sapienza being scared of the cobra, it looks very fake. It's really fun. Of course, they decided not to actually threaten Al Sapienza with a real cobra, yeah. His fucking CV says Cobra skills.

They hired him for a job. But then it turned out he didn't have it. Every actor does that. It also says horseback riding. Exactly, exactly. If it says, do you speak French? Of course I speak French. I'll do whatever I need to do to get this job.

And then the day comes. So you'll say this in French? I don't know French. You know, that's literally what happens in, if you guys have ever read Bob Balabans, Close Encounters the Third Kind diary book, it's really good. But he talks about how they're like,

you speak French, right? And he's like, he gives them a couple sentences of French he learned in high school and they're like, perfect. And then later on he's like, I got to learn French really fast. I'm going to be hanging around French swat, Truffaut all day apparently. So back to the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Life, back to reality, yeah. The ovations are shooting the video that will eventually be the one they use

for their hit song, Scream, where they initially it's not working and then they find a group of boys sitting on a table. The five ovation success is always built on some other group of people being absorbed into the five ovations. Yeah, they find these boys and they kind of like challenge them into dancing. It's like a sassy dance battle. Yeah, it's a top that style. It's very much a top that. And it, uh, the song scream.

But not top hat. None of the dancing is as good as the dancing in top hat. No. Perhaps the greatest of the Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers films, yeah. And we'll later find out this song, at least the melody was stolen from her, from Britney's brother Mark. which doesn't disqualify them, but maybe it should. So they edit this video,

they love it and they're like, let's go out and celebrate. And while they leave the studio, one of the Whiggies and one of her enforcers sneaks back in and they're going to edit that video. Uh-oh, and probably make it look bad. And the wiggies in disguise as a punk, but I think the enforcer is just a...

There's like this group of punks that Mark hangs out with, and I'm like, you only see them a little bit. But anyway, when she showed up with blue hair, I didn't notice that it was the same character for her. And I was like, who's this new character? Hold on a second. And I was disappointed that she wasn't actually a character. So next day in school, we're getting some information.

The nominees for the semifinals have been announced. The wiggies are definitely in. It seems like the ovations didn't make it. Later on, we'll find out, very soon we'll find out, that one of the other contestants was disqualified, so they're in anyway, which feels like a weird ruse here. It does. could have just...

Yeah, they could have just had the ovation. And also, the fact the ovations do so much that should get them disqualified. It's like, what did this other group do? Did they murder their competitors? Like, what happened? I don't understand. How did they get disqualified?

Were they all adults, it turns out? You know, who just put freckles on their faces and more fake big tails? I don't understand. Next, we get a somewhat unrelated scene that is one of my favorites in the movie where they are at and are... where Brittany and Joey are meeting up

in an arcade to talk business. when the guy the soda stand or whatever is like, what are you drinking? Brittany asks for a skinny water, which I'm like, what the fuck is that? And then Joey orders a pepperoni

to which the guy replies, small or large, and I'm like, what? What is that? Because it's a small or large pepperoni drink. Yeah, exactly. And then a couple of the punks come in and start costing them

and that's when Joey uses her bag to incapac. One of the goons with an electric eel and then a bunch of scorpions spill out. So she has been walking around. Follow her commands. Carrying electric eel scorpions and she can control. She's like snapping fingers going back in the bag guys and the scorpions go back in.

This opens up so many questions for me. The movie does not bother to answer. Like is she a witch? Has she trained these animals? Like how does she, how is she keeping this electric eel? alive in her bag? That's a fish. It's water. It's a eel. And then how did the scorpion survive? Exactly.

Dan, I've got so many questions. incompatible animals. Did she give them little scuba gear for surviving underwater? Probably. Does she have a second container in the bag? Multi-clam. Oh, two compartments in the bag. It's not a bad

idea. I mean, if you're going to keep a water creature and non-water creatures, it's a great idea. I'd say it's the only way to do it. It's a top ideas. It's been easier than teaching scorpions to breathe water to tread water. If she had a lungfish in there, I'd be like, okay, it can survive

as long as it's wet for a certain amount of time. But it's an electric eel. A lungfish is not going to shock somebody. And we see it on screen shocking him, so it has to be an electric eel. So Brittany goes home to puzzle all these. Brittany goes home to puzzle all these things while her grandpa fixes her up a bowl of struggle soup.

She's like, she's like, cramps, I think I'm friends with some kind of magic. person with some kind of magic mobster girl. She has all these familiars. Drink your water and potato soup. I think you're dealing with a mobster who's one of the fay folk. One of the little folk of the forest.

Oh, really? Wow. So this is also when Brittany learns a little bit more about her family backstory that her brother's romantic entanglement with the wiggies is very similar to her father's mistakes when it comes to picking women. And that her father, who is no longer in the picture, would always fight with their mother. And at some point, she called the police on him and he was arrested and put in jail for, I'm guessing, domestic abuse. It must be something like that. And then when he was released from jail, he just disappeared.

He abandoned the family. But not before telling them his catchphrase, dumb is dumb and there ain't nothing dumber. Yeah. Wait, is that real? Is that from the movie? Yeah. Yeah. That's a plot point later.

That's a big important thing later. Yeah, that's part of the identification. And then later on, Brittany will be looking at a, looking longingly at a picture of her parents holding her as a baby or her brother as a baby. I don't know for sure. But the- Get the DNA test, only one way to find out.

The picture of her father. Can we get a DNA sample from a picture? Probably not. I don't know. It depends. Did they touch the picture? That's a good point, maybe. Yeah, I mean, I have some pictures that you could probably get a teenage.

Oh, oh. Oh, doctor. So the face of her father in the photograph has been blacked out with a Sharpie. Yeah. To protect his anonymity. But there is a very kind of strange tattoo of like a heart and a cuff around his wrist. Yep. So that will hopefully come up later.

Don't worry. Alana Wannaby has also been accepted into the semifinals. So she's also going to be. They're all eligible for the $1 million prize. They're all going to New York City. So we get a little bit of footage of New York City in Times Square. You can date exactly when this movie is made because of the ad that is prominently placed

for Dimitri Martin's stand-up special on Comedy Central, which is right next to the big JumboTron that they are broadcasting this dance competition on. And there's definitely footage at various points of like green-screened cars driving or like pulling up in front of things. Yeah. Yeah, it's great.

Okay. So we get to see, we finally get to see at least clips of the music videos that are heroes have all shot. We see bits of Alana wannabe's dreams where she is basically bragging about how great she is while a bunch of firemen

dance behind her. And then there's a weird part where she is in like a department store window and she's like tiny and she is next to a bear and then she and the bear both get up and start dancing. for the amusement of a little kid. It's great.

It's a music video. It doesn't have to make sense. Yeah, I guess you're right. Thanks, Spike Jones. Then we get to see... No, no, no, no, that's Elliot. Oh, I wasn't looking for a second. I thought Spike Jones was a guest.

No, no, no. Neither the director nor the comedy musician of the 1940s, yeah. So we get to see the Wiggies video for, I think, superstars, which is a lot of footage and there's that we had kind of seen earlier than, like, dancing around and doing stuff.

and their father is in like a Beethoven wig playing the piano. Yeah. And he is, of course, I can't stress enough how crazy he looks in every scene. Yeah, we haven't mentioned. He wears big crazy clothes. He's always wearing a different wig. Yeah. Yeah.

He is a larger than life character. Yeah. There's like a young, young Einstein style shuck wig kind of. And does he get a bath scene? Yes, you do get to see. see him in a bathtub later, so don't worry. Yeah, if you were waiting to see him topless, covered him water and bubbles.

You get it. You get it, yeah. In case you were wondering, hey, what's under those loud clothes? Yeah, yeah. All the people who came to this kid's movie waiting to see some man-meet. So, we also see the Ovations video

for Scream, which they had filmed on the boardwalk earlier with those boys, and of course, somebody re-ed it and inserted like farts and realistic vomit and all other kinds of things. They did an amazing job with the vomit effects. If those are high school students or junior high students who edit it, they did an amazing

job making it look like she was throwing up all over the other people in the video. Come on. These are prodigies. Tap them in. Tap them in. But it's only at the end of the music video. So you do get to see most of the music video and then all this like stuff at the end. So the audience is like loving it.

They're like, oh, how hilarious. So they're intentional. It's a classic. They're announcing new, yes. They should hate it, but they love it. Yeah. They're announcing which of those semi-finalists are getting into the finals. Of course, the wiggies are in because they're incredible.

And the ovations make it in. They're genuinely very good at what they're doing. Alana does not make it in, and she is not happy about it. But the ovations are in despite the edit to their video. Some might say because. Yeah. So are people disappointed when they go to weird outlets? show and it's funny. I don't think so.

I'm sure some people are. Maybe, yeah. I was looking for something weird, not funny. I wanted to have my mind turned inside. I wanted to be mind freaked. Oh, you've got to see a different guy for that. Oh, okay, never mind. But wait, I thought that guy was an angel. No, just a Chris.

Oh, okay. A Ruth's Chris? Yeah, Ruth's Chris. Yeah. A strangely named steak restaurant. Yep. So at some point, Brittany's brother Mark broke up with... And you guys ever been to Ruth's Christ? I've heard the good news, yeah.

How does he differ from regular Christ? Well, he belongs to Ruth. Okay. So at some point, Brittany's brother, Mark, broke up with whichever wiggy he was dating. They're all the same. And he... Wow.

He compliments her... Tell me some personality differences between the wiggies. Well, there was that, there's one nicer wiggie, because at the end, that wiggie congratulates the ovation. That's true. She's the one who doesn't sweep the leg, yeah. Yeah. That's all I got.

So, Brittany and Mark kind of come up with a scheme that they're like, hey, maybe we should work together. And Mark's like, I got a new song, but I don't know if you guys can handle it. It requires some really complicated dancing. So inter some dancer auditions where they auditioned Jasmine and two other people. One is a little boy who dances really crazy. And then one is a very flexible girl.

Like a contortionist, yeah. Yeah. The idea that this songwriter is like, this song requires too much complex dancing for you guys to do as a song. I don't quite see how that follows. I mean, you're really limiting the, if you're a professional songwriter, you're limiting the market for your music. If you're writing a song that requires an elaborate dance. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Even Land of a Thousand dances doesn't really require a thousand dancers. Just has a few dances, really. To be honest, you should sue them for false advertising. So the ovations are already to sign. At least Land of Lakes has those lakes, you know. And every stick of butter. There's at least two lakes, plural. Yeah.

And Land's End, you could fall right off the edge of that thing, right? It's a space. That's why I never go. It's too dangerous. Why I never go to Howard's End either. Oh, no. Howard's End is, it's either the end of the world or it's just some guy named Howard's butt, you don't need it.

No, we've rented Howard's End for the summer. What? What? Yeah, we're just keeping out of this guy's butt. He's not happy about it. He's not happy about it, but he didn't have to put up the ad renting his end. So they're all ready to hire these new dancers, but uh-oh, there's a catch. These are Alana wannabe's cousins, and she is officially their manager.

So they have to strike a deal, which we'll learn is to include Alana in the performance. Finally, the superstar has the vehicle. Now the wiggies throw a party, I guess, for being entered into the finals. is where they're singing Splish Splash taking a bath while we get to see Mr. Wig washing himself. Yeah, as he's suggesting the lyrics. While he's washing himself. And he's still wearing a wig in the tub too, right? Yeah.

Probably. I got to say, guys, Splish Splash is one of the top songs to sing while you're taking a bath. I see, I have to say, it is one of, if not the third most. Yeah. If you're asking me. Yeah, yeah. I didn't realize Steve Harvey was coming to sing when you're taking a bath.

In my personal opinion, Splish Splash is one of the best ones. One of the top. Even though it's, they say, I was taking a bath in the past tense. Well, you're personally in the bath. Seems inappropriate to me. I was taking a bath a moment ago and I still am.

Yeah. What are their bath songs? I mean, there's rubber ducky. That's pretty much the only one, right? You're the one. It makes bath time lots of fun. And again, that doesn't have to be, while you're in the bath.

Any, as long as the rubber ducky is there to hear the song, you can sing it. Unless it's a case of apostrophe, the rhetorical device where you're addressing something that cannot address back, either because it can't talk or it's not there, you know? I guess for rubber ducky that always applies, because it can't talk. I guess it can squeak back. Yeah, and it does. It needs a little help. But still, if it does it on its own, you are in a haunted bathtub. Please leave and return the unused portion of your bath for a partial.

shorty fun. You got to cram it back up in the faucet? Stick it back in the faucet, yeah. Okay. With a note to the water company, yeah. There aren't. Sorry, haunted bath.

Like, Ghostbusters 2 as a haunted bath. It does. The shining is a haunted bath. Yeah. I think that just, you know, good movies have haunted bath. Those are the two

best movies. Those are the two scariest movies to watch in the bath. Yeah. That one where Freddy's claw goes all crazy, you know what I'm talking about? I mean, you don't know if it goes crazy. It comes out from between the legs of someone.

It's pretty crazy. Pretty crazy. And, of course, Psycho is that, but for showers. Chalbaleek, also not a movie you want to watch while you're in the bath? Fatal Attraction, another movie that you're too scary to watch in the bath. Mini Jaws, the movie where Jaws comes out of people's pipes and attacks them in the bath. And, of course, Paddington, terrifying. That kind of happened in Leonard Part 6, right?

I don't know. I have White, Leonard Part 6. I don't recommend watching it now. No. All I remember is the part where there is attack lobsters and they stop them by magicing up some melted butter which scares the lobsters away. That's all I remember from that movie.

Are there bees in that movie too? I told you what I remember from the movie, Dan. I told you. I'm angry Elliot. Don't you're... I said, this is all I remember. And you go, oh, tell me one other thing about the movie. I can't, Dan.

I thought that if I said it, maybe you would remember. No, no, I was very clear. I was very clear about the limits of my knowledge of Leonard Park 6. And you deliberately taunt me. I'm sorry. Hostile. That's not even a microaggression. That was a macro aggression.

You know what? I'll send you a nice card later. Thank you. At least a fucking edible arrangement or something. Something that's the least you could do. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm going to the edible arrangement shop.

Do you have any Leonard Part 6? Do you have any letterberg? And then go yes, right over here, sir. We have a lot of them, yeah. Yeah. We actually get a lot of call for that. Yeah. Part of our Cosby collection.

You don't want to know. You don't want to be there. And he shouldn't eat the stuff in the edible arrangement in the Cosby Collection. No, no, no, no. Again, more jokes about the tragedies of Hollywood past. The tragedies of Hollywood. Yeah. There's just something in the air with the standing of patience.

We're just crossing boundaries, yeah. While Mr. Wiggs is taking a bath, Brittany and Joey sneak into their bedroom and put frozen fleas on all the wigs. Yeah. Frozen because if they were not, they would obviously contaminate themselves. But this gives them time to warm up. And their time release fleas.

They're really going to affect them when they need them to. Most silly moment. So then the wiggies and their father and mother get all dressed up at their own party and start singing under the boardwalk. Yep. Which is kind of a weird one to sing with your kids, right? Is that like asking you to light?

It's about like having sex with your girl under the boardwalk. Yeah, it's kind of weird though, right? I mean, there's so, I feel like I've seen so many movies or TV shows where there's been a song that is clearly meant to be a romantic song is sung by, by parents and their kids, they don't seem to realize it. And I don't like it. I've never done it with my children, you know. That's good to know. So the, if we're going to sing a song, it's going to be probably the jingle to an insurance company commercial since they love those. If you want to sing along with my kids, just go, we are farmers.

They will say, bum, boom, boom, boom, boom, ball, ball, boom. And that's safe because jingles to insurance. company are rarely about fucking, so you don't have to worry about it. Very rarely. There was. It's fucking sure. That's true. So, of course, those pleas wake up at the most opportune moment, ruining the performance that everyone laughs at them. Yeah. Yeah. Enter the finals. The audiences in these movies are always mean. They're always ready to laugh at the people on stage. They came with rotten vegetables in crates.

Yeah, why would you do that? Why would you do that? Yeah. That's why it took me so long to get comfortable performing live with the flop house, because I always assumed people were going to be mean to me. You figured that they were coming with rotten vegetables, just in case. I mean, they shouldn't put the fucking studio next to a rotten vegetable stand. That was a mistake. And why is that person selling rotten vegetables? No, why are people buying them?

None of it adds up. It's so many questions. Right after we figure out how Joey can command scorpions and keep them in the same bag as Neil, we've got to get to the bottom of this rotten vegetable thing. Okay, so the finals have started. I mean, to be honest, to answer that, it's because the trope comes from olden days when people would carry their food with them

and rotten vegetables were just called vegetables, I think, at the time. Right, makes sense. They could not be as picky back then, yeah. So we start the finals. There are four groups performing. The first is... You got to really, actually, you got to admire

the dedication to throwing your rotten vegetables at the performers, because that means you will not eat that night. You are giving up a meal. I'm going to be hungry to know. but at least they're going to know I didn't like to show. Like this, you know. Yeah.

My disapproval is more important to me in this moment in my stomach. I had to say to myself, what's more important? The arts or my temporary starvation? And, you know, I've got to give my own comfort up to ensure high standards in the performing arts. I'm sure there has to have been a bit where like a medieval performer was intentionally bad so he would get free rotten vegetables more.

For sure. I mean, it's right there with Wizard of Oz when she wants to be, she's hungry, so she insults those trees. So they'll throw the apples at her. Yeah, I'm sure that's happened. Yeah. And you know that the audience, the fact problem was the performers would get all these rotten vegetables be like, they love us. We're eating tonight, folks. They gave us all their food. So they'd be more bad the next time. Yeah. Even worse. Yeah. In Elizabethan drama circles, that's called the rotten vegetable declining standards spiral. Yeah. There was no moral hazard as a problem. That's why we got so much. bad art. Or even Dukes of Hazard. They didn't have them back then. Or Merle Haggard. No, they didn't have them. None of those things that vaguely sound like. You prove us wrong.

Prove us wrong. Show us that any of those things existed in the late 1500s in England. Man, Merle Hagger would have flipped their fucking lid. They would have loved him. They would have loved him. And why wouldn't they? He's great. Yeah. Yeah.

So I'm sure he did something bad in his life. I apologize if he did. I don't know it. I'm only judging him by the work. Yeah. Thank you for that. Thank you. Yeah, just in case.

Elliot's foot still on bass, everybody. You can't tag him out. Now, what they did have back then was Merlin Haggard, the wizard, who also was a bad boy of country. Yeah, but still... Aged backwards, so... Until he got stuck in a tree, and that's why the tree plays music now. Oh, that does make sense.

So the first of our finalists is a boy band called Diverse, and they sing their song, I don't know, like... You don't have to know. It's fine. But a lot of their lyrics are basically just naming other pop stars. Yeah. We find out that the ovations are having car trouble and they're stuck on, I don't know, I'm assuming what, the Jersey Parkway or something.

Probably the turnpike. And there's so many of them and like they're trying to hitch a ride. And I'm like, first I'm like, you're not going to be able to hitchhike with that many ovations. And then I'm like, how did that many ovations fit in the van in the first place? So many questions about containers. And it's heavily implied that Mr. Wiggs cut their fan belt, which is why. Again, he's addicted to sabotage.

He doesn't believe enough. He's like a regular Felicity Huffman bribing to get their kids into college because they don't believe enough in their kids. You've got to believe in the Whiggies. They're good. They'll win. Not an irregular Felicity Huffman,

which would sound a little like. Which you can get at a discount. at the Felicity Hubman outlet, yeah. They're perfectly usable Felicity Hubman's. They just don't, you know, they're like display models.

They don't look quite as new. Do you have any irregular William H. Macy's? No, no. That's next door. Yeah. They're all very regular. He has a lot of fiber in his diet.

Yeah. So the Ovation's car trouble is quickly resolved when they just take a single cab to Times Square and they all pour out of it while we get a shot of a cab driver who's wearing, it looks like a Norway flag,

who is shouting about them all getting out and then I think, yeah, it's weird. Okay, so. He's like, how many people are in this cab? Yeah. So the next is a, the next finalist is the minarets who are performing a kind of gospel number called the Power of Love.

And then that's over. Not again, not the Huey Lewis song. Of course, not that. And then the wiggies come up and they sing their song, Dancing Girls, again, bringing on the weird rapper guy that we had seen earlier, who's kind of like a hype man for the wiggies. Yes. And a lot of the song is kind of about them dancing and like, I don't know, being turned on or something. This may be, I'm not sure. This may be M.C. John, who is the only member of the cast who has his own Wikipedia page.

Yeah, yeah. We have our own Wikipedia pages, guys. We do. Yeah, that's true. We are like M.C. John. So, of course, their performance tears it up. People are loving it. There are multiple people giving their standing ovations.

Grandpa's like, ain't no way we're going to beat them unless we burn the house down. Turns out there is a mountain high enough. The Wiggies performance. I shouldn't a bet on the ovations. I should have bet on the Wiggies. Yeah, he put all his money.

Well, finally a bet pays off for him as we'll find out. We'll see, yeah. So the ovations are about to go out on stage when Joey interrupts them and is like, hey, I found the guy. So after the show, we're going to go deal with the guy who killed my dad. Brittany's like, can I, can you tell me that after we perform so I don't have that hanging over my head while I'm performing? Okay, so now the ovations get out there and they perform.

Just so you know, you should perform your heart out, not only because this is the finals, but we're going to go, we're going to go confront the man, the dangerous mobster that stole from my dad right after this. You might die. So really perform like this is your best show. Yeah. You want to be remembered. Yeah.

So they play their song. This is your chance to become a legend. Legends have to die. That's how they become legends. Well, not John Legend. He just called himself legend. Ah, that's a loophole. That's a loophole.

It's too late. He already did that. No one else can ever do it again. So this song, Shooting Star, written by Brittany's brother, Mark, that was too complicated so they need new people. Of course, makes sense when we see it. It begins with it.

So many people on stage. So many people on stage. It's like the polyphonic spree up there. The dancer, Jasmine is all done up like a sci-fi robot lady. She explains that she is a space traveler T2 female version

who, who... Like Terminator 2? Something like, yeah. And just like, make me dance. And so she... It's just like Terminator 2. So she like starts a dance. Make me dance if you want to live. Yeah. So she starts

to dance while Alana runs around like throat singing into a microphone. And it's really great because there's like, there ain't no way that kid's making those sounds. No. And then the kids like dance around for a bit. Then we get some singing. And then midway through we get a break

where the other dancer kid is like, I'm also a space traveler T3, male version, make me dance. And then like he dances super fucking sassy. And I'm like, this is crazy. Jasmine does like belly dancing. She does kind of like, you know, like Mediterranean, Middle Eastern kind of like. So it is a flavor of dancing that at least the ovations are not prepared to provide themselves, you know.

And they didn't have, they don't have as much stank as what this little kid is put. No, this little kid, like this little kid, I want to see this little kid and Alana Wannaby do a show together because they would have, it would be the cockiest show in the world. They would be like nagging the audience the whole time. It would be amazing. Yeah. And I guess if this song is about future robots who want. people to make them dance. It does make sense that they had to get specific dancers for this song. So I take back by songwriting objection. You know what? Yeah. Mark, you're okay.

So I feel like a lot of this movie and this sequence in particular is basically like if you got invited to your friends, kids, dance performance, like talent show performance. It's not just like like that. It is exactly that. But it turns out like your friend's kid isn't there and you just have to sit and watch the whole thing. So you have like zero skin in the game. And I mean...

But you're stuck there because you're not a big enough asshole to get up and leave in the middle of a children's performance. I like wanky dance performances. Dan, did you ever go back at Erland? Dan and I went to college together, Earlham College. Do you ever go to Dance Allo? I went to Dance Alley every time. Every time. Explain to me what it is because I didn't go to Earlham College.

What is Dan's Alley? Dance Alley was Oh, dance L.A. That was like Allo. Alloy, like in a metal. Oh, I thought you said Dance Alley, like there was like an alley

in the campus where people were just always kicking it. That's pretty cool too. Dance Alley is a great name for a dance show. Dance Alley. Dance Man's parents died in Dance Alley. We were coming out of a Palopolis show when my parents were mugged by Joe Chill. There was no official like dance program at Erlem.

So this was the student run dance show that they would do every semester where, like, if you wanted to put on a dance, like, you would just, like, say, hey, I want to do a dance and dance alloy. And I think there was, like, maybe some level of audition, but mostly you were just, like, you can do whatever you want. So each, like, group or person could do it. Like, my college girlfriend did, like, step dancing because that was big at the time. And it was a pretty good step dance.

But, like, yeah, it was just. It could have been, it could have been the times that I was often pretty high when I but it was always super fun. I remember once where there was like a vampire-themed sword fight dance. Cool. And then there was a big group of, a big group of women

who were doing an interpretive dance to, I think, Unforgiven 2 by Metallica. Wow. It was like an awesome. This was pretty much the most popular event at our line. I mean, not a surprise from what I'm hearing. It sounds fantastic. Yeah.

Yeah, it was super fun. So I like that shit, but I feel like this, I wish Stan. ovation captured some of that energy. Ironically, I went to a school that had one of the best musical theater performance programs in the country. And I feel like I never

heard about you can come see this dance show. Maybe it just wasn't paying attention. I don't know. I think if you're like, yeah, if you're more starved for it, you know. There was less to do in Richmond, Indiana. I could also go see Broadway shows. Exactly. Okay, so I've said it before. I really take it. I really

when I was young, took it for granted that I lived in very close, in, proxious. to one of the great theater centers of, and great theater and museum centers of the world. And it strikes me all the time how lucky I was. You know, a lot of people don't get that, which they should, but they don't. So thanks.

Props to you, fate for having me grow up in New Jersey. You have the three fates. You spun your future. Yeah. So the... Clotho did a good job. Did a good job with the thread this time. I thought so. The best.

I gotta give it up to you, Clotho. Appreciate it. Otho? From Beetleju? No, not Otho. Okay. Although, I mean, he's kind of deserves it, too. We know who we're not giving props to you in the Beatles.

Yes, and the Beatles do this world. There's one person in particular. Not again to continue bringing up the tragedies of Hollywood past. Hollywood event. We can't stop. Can't stop. At certain, my certain way this became the flop house with A.J. Benza. So I don't know. I don't know how.

What other tragedies and crimes can we bring up from Hollywood? So after the Ovation's performance, they bring up all four contestants on stage, and they, starting with the bottom, give everybody their consolation prizes. And everybody, like, freaks out when their name is called. I'm like, but you're being said you didn't win the whole thing. They're so excited to win the third place. And it's like, you were part of the final four. There was a pretty good chance you'd win third. And everybody makes money.

I mean, the thing is, the prizes are all pretty good. Pretty good. I think the fact that this is fictional. More than you would expect. And none of these people are actually going to make that money. They really went wild with the amounts they're giving out. More than the budget of the movie, probably. I don't know about that.

According to Wikipedia, this movie had a $5.6 million budget, which seems high. I'm going to eat my hat. Luckily, you're wearing a hat made out of ham today. Yeah, that's what the ancient hat stands for, dumbass. Yeah, ham hat. Ham at top, that's what it means. Dashel ham hat. Dashel ham hat.

Always You always had somebody to snack out on While he was writing his books It's classic novel A Marbled Fodora Yeah So the ovations win I'm gonna cut the chicks

Yeah yeah yeah We don't need that Surprise surprise The stars of the movie Winners they win Win it The ovations win the movie Called Standing Ovation

Yeah Before they can really Celebrate too much Joey steals Britney away So they can Trank down the guy Who stole that money They go to

What I think is The offices of CD entertainment. Yes. And where everybody is already talking about these amazing kids, they store him into the office of the head of the company. And that turns out that he's the one who did it. And Joey is explaining all of like that he needs to give back the money,

caused all his problems. And this is a guy who we have been led to believe is at least a murderer. Yeah. And he's got real coked out sleaze energy too. Yeah. It's hard to believe him as the head of a major media company because he seems like such a low-level sleaze guy as opposed to the high-level sleeves

that would have Great Gatsby style tried to cover up his sleazy beginnings with a veneer of class and sophistication. And the fact that he is a murderous mobster who is now the head of a major media company, this deadline has really fallen down on the job but they haven't broken this story yet. Yeah.

If ever there was a reason for page 6 or TMZ to be around is this story. In 2026, would I believe it? Yes. Oh, for sure. In 2010, when this was made, no. No. I thought TMZ's real role was to keep buying all them big gulps, right?

They are supporting the big gulp industry. Now that we live in a country run by a gangster, it's a little bit easier to believe. But back then it would have been harder. Yeah. So while they're arguing with this guy who's like, I'm not going to give back money, yada, yada, yada. We see on his cuff, he has the same tattoo. Wait a minute. This is Brittany's dad.

And he also tells them, you're dumb, you're dumb, and dumb is dumb and there ain't nothing dumb. She's like, wait, what? So. So, yeah, that was a little Easter egg that Stewart missed. Not an Easter egg so much is it. I'm amazed. Hey, we've got equal viewings now. More a plant that it then pays off later.

But, yeah, you know. Yeah. So they argue. I apologize to Stuart that you had to watch this movie twice where a surfer teen confronts fear. I fast forwarded through sections of that movie because it was just surfing. Well, I feel like this movie is so chock full of stuff that it was hard for me to get a long story. Guys, if you want nuts, don't go to chock full of stuff.

Or coffee, don't go to chock full of nuts. Don't go to chock full of stuff. So angry Joey stumps off. Joey stumps off and hasn't asked my attack that is resolved. Brittany, Brittany's dad is immediately like, yeah, okay, you forgive me? and she's like, no, and leaves. And then so the next morning she wakes up

and there's a big, I guess, like a big spread on the boardwalk. And then he pulls up in a big fancy car and you find out that he made amends and made right with everyone and paid Joey back and bought a house. So fast, it's like he's buying everyone off. Like he's just like... Yeah, he just provides, he provides Christmas presents for all the kids. He gives money.

He buys a house for Joey's family. He's like, there, my crimes are atoned for. I'm now your loving father. But it's also one of things where it's like, he's like, oh, I really missed having you in my life. Well, at any point in the years when you were a rich media executive and your son and daughter were living hand to mouth with their grandfather, with your father-in-law, like, what were you doing? What's going on? I was waiting to be shamed into paying people. Well, but it is like, it feels, it honestly feels like a very New Jersey fable.

Yeah. Of like, this guy was such a good mobster that. made a bunch of money, so he's forgiven. He's one of the good guys. He brings it back to the neighborhood, you know? He's not just taking care of himself. He's taking care of the neighborhood. He's a hero.

You know, he's like, you know, God blesses his beautiful noble gangster soul, Godi himself, the greatest of all gangster princes, you know, because you know what? He was a murderer. He was a thief. I think he dealt drugs, but he was doing it for the neighborhood. He always came back and showed the neighborhood that he had a lot of money and that made the neighborhood feel good. Yeah, yeah.

So Brittany's like, okay, well, where's Joey? Again, John Gotti, not from New Jersey, but you know what I'm talking about. Yeah. And they're like, well, she's at the party that CDS is throwing for everybody who performed. So we go to that party. We get the wiggies performing again. What a treat. And Alana confronts Brittany's dad and is like, hey, I should be a star.

And he's like, okay. And then Britney. You got a moxie, kid. I like you. Yeah. And then Britney's like, he's like, he's like, Britney's like, Britney's Dad's like, do you forgive me? I can get you anything you want.

You know, I'm a zillionaire. And she's like, I want my mom back. And he's like, I can't. Wow. And that's the end of the movie. I can kill people. I can't bring them back. But then there's like a big musical performance.

As soon as the first credited, I turned that shit off. Oh, so you also missed the part where I was like, there must be like some middle credit scene. And there's something, I can remember it was, but there's a part where like the Wiggies mom, like, they animate a frog crawling across her face as like, I guess, a jockey callback, but it feels so weird. It feels so, like, it's like, did I see that? Did the character see that? Is that a strange-looking frog?

A symbol of her soul? It's very weird. Yeah. Yeah. Well, guys, have a standing ovation. I'm glad that you could take this journey with me. Danny, didn't you did? You said like that, like you did the summary.

Well, in that, you know, it's a movie that I saw on my own and then I'm like, I got to get the guys in on this. Yeah. It introduces us to it. Yeah. Is this a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie or a movie we kind of like. That's our final judgment categories. I'm going to say that obviously, look, I brought it to the table.

I told you last time that, you know, Surfer was the odd ball choice. This was one that was going to be fun. Got to thank Alonzo. Real proud pleaser. Yes. Standing O. That was like when I, when I picked this for my, a bad movie rotation based on

Alonzo's endorsement. Everyone in the chat was on board. They were loving it too. Picked you up in their shoulders. Yeah, yeah. The virtual shoulders. So I got to say, yeah, it's a good bad movie

for sure for me. Stuart, what do you say? Yeah, no question. This is a good, bad movie. It's ridiculous. And every moment of the movie feels weird and wrong. But also, it like, moves quickly.

It's a whole lot of just a pep. And there's just a lot of stuff in it. I think I said it was chock full of stuff. And I'm not, I'm not going to go back on that. Guys, I don't want to shock anybody. This is obviously a good bad movie. I'm going to go even farther and say, this is a movie I kind of like.

It is a bad movie. It is not a good movie, but it's a movie I kind, it's full of energy. It's always throwing stuff at you. The kids in it are good performers. Like the kids are, like, I was really impressed by how good these kids are. And that goes a long way. And so there was, it was like, you know what?

Would I choose to watch this movie again? No. But would I choose to watch this movie in normal life? No. But I enjoyed watching it. It's real dumb and silly. If my kids were like, we want to watch that standing ovation movie, I'd be like, throw it on. That's fine. So I get to call this a movie I kind of liked it, knowing that it is bad. If they're like, Dad, what's New Jersey like? Put on standing ovation.

Well, I'm going to show you standing ovation in Atlantic City from Louis Mall. And you'll get the idea between the two of them. But yeah, this is a good, bad movie. It's silly. Hello, I'm John Luke Roberts and I host Soundheep and I'm here with Max Fun, member of the month, Ryan Adams. Thank you so much, Ryan, for being a listener and supporter of our show and congratulations on being this month's member of the month. Hi there. If you were recommending Soundteep to a new listener, how would you entice them to the show? I'm making notes on this, by the way.

You have all sorts of podcasts from different topics and whatever out there and you have a lot of fictional ones. It's a podcast, but it's not really a podcast. but it's, I'm not describing it very well. No, you're describing it almost as well as anybody could. It's a podcast, but it's not really a podcast, but it's also an infant number of podcasts. That's what I would. That's how I put it.

What would you say to other people who are considering supporting the show? If you like podcasts at all and you like humor, supporting Soundheap is a good choice. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Support Maxim Fun Fun and Soundheap. God, that's perfect. That's absolutely perfect.

Support the shows you love, including this one. Check the show notes for a lot. link or go to maximum fun.org slash join. You know, we've been doing my brother and my brother me for 15 years. And maybe you stopped listening for a while, maybe you never listen. And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up. But no. No, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing. Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works. The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on My Brother, My Brother, and Me. We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening. And if not, we just leave it out back and it goes rotten. So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcast. Let's take a moment to thank our sponsors.

The Plop House is sponsored in part this week. By factor. You know, it can be difficult all. to feed oneself in this busy world, especially if you care about, you know, eating something healthy, not just getting takeout all the time or, I don't know, some frozen meal that maybe wouldn't be the best for you. A factor makes chefcrafted dietitian designed ready to eat meals so you don't have to choose between real food and what's convenient in the moment. They're ready in two minutes and require no prep and no cleanup. So on days when your schedule is like, I don't want to

allow you enough time to feed yourself. You can be like, ha ha, schedule. I outsmarted you. I've got some factor. Each week, you'll find over 100 nutrient dense menu items to choose from. You got new options like salmon burgers, shredded pork, collard greens, and more. And 97% of users agree that factor meals have helped them live healthier so you can feel confident that you're doing something good for yourself with every meal. As I've said, many times before, I enjoy cooking, unlike my friend and colleague, Elliot Kalin. I don't find it an onerous thing.

I find it a soothing, a soothing chore a lot of the time. But even soothing chores can be chores. on the wrong day, and I have enjoyed having factor meals around to just, you know, pop in, heat up, know that you're going to have something tasty and pretty good for you as your meal without all that work. So let's eat real. Head to factor meals.com slash flop 50 off and use code flop 50 off to get 50 off and one free breakfast item per box for one year while supplies last. until 10, 31, 20, 26. That is code flop 50 off at factormeals.com.

Flop 50 off at factormeals.com. See website for more details. Before we move on with the rest of the show, I just want our listeners to know a word that rhymes with the show that we've got some of our own stuff coming up. In fact, some of it is happening right now. This episode, of course, was released the day after we were in Kentucky for our live show there.

We had a great time. Thank you to the Louisville. audience, if you couldn't make it to that show, or even if you could, you can still see us performing live through the magic of internet video. That's right. Flop TV season four is currently happening. We've already had our first episode that was back on September 4th. We did Green Book because this year, the theme is Best Picture Winners. Our next episode will be on October 3rd at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific. We're talking about the greatest show on earth, the circus movie that, according to the Fableman's, made Steven Spielberg a filmmaker as a child.

We'll find out if that was the right inspiration or whether he should have packed his camera away and never made anything based on that movie. You want to see FlopTV? Well, you can. Just go to theflophouse.symptex.com. I remind you again, FlopTV is our one-hour online video version of the Flop House. You get a presentation, you get a summary. We answer questions from the audience.

It's like one of our live shows just happening on your computer screen. And if you can't make it when the show airs, which is the first Saturday of every month at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, that's okay. Your ticket, get to access to the video, exclusive access to the video of that show. Those videos will be available for you to watch through the end of February when the season ends.

The season is the first Saturday of every month through February. It's worst best picture winners, and I'm excited about what we're going to do with the greatest show on Earth because it's long, and Jimmy Stewart plays. a clown in it. So go to theflophouse.

com to get your tickets. You can buy individual episodes or you can buy a season pass, six episodes for the price of five. That's what I would do if I were you. Theflophouse.com, floptiv, taken on best picture winners. Watch this is the season

that gets us banned from Hollywood after this. We're daring to go after the sacred cows of the best picture winners. So enjoy it, I guess, because we may disappear. It all means, up to our February episode where we will find out if out of Africa is a real movie or not.

Stay tuned. Question mark. Theflophouse.com. I'll also mention that I have my regular plugs. My book, joke farming, how to write comedy, other nonsense is available now. The audiobook is available now. My comic series Barbarian Behind Bars, which is a super violent B movie of a miniseries, that is available in trade paperback right now.

The collected edition should be on store shelves. And of course, Harley Quinn from DC Comics, I continue to write each month by that book. Somebody's got to. Before we move on to a few letters, I'm going to do a new segment I call Flop House Cleanup, which is I'm going to address a few things from the past number one. Love it. You're cleaning up a lot of number one these days.

We record these things, you know, fairly far in advance. And then like even if we don't, like, I forget to mention things that happened in the last, in previous episodes. So it's been a while. But I feel great shame that I, In a previous episode, I referred to the Upper Peninsula of Minnesota. Clearly, obviously, I was talking about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as the place where I used to vacation.

I am aware that Minnesota doesn't... I lived in Minnesota for a period of time. That it doesn't have a peninsula? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm just... I'm aging. I'm on weird podcast autopilot, and sometimes I say wrong things. So that's one of the things we had several people write-up.

in response to what is the movie where someone just keeps pulling teeth from their mouth? Oh yeah, what is it? What is it? It's that one, I had it, and now a guy pulling teeth from mouth, leave the world behind. We talked about it on the podcast. Yes, that's right. So there's that. Thank you for clearing that up for us, that mystery. That's the one where he just keeps pulling his teeth out.

Yeah, thank you. All I remember from that movie is the Tesla traffic jam that they have. Yes, yes. and a helpful listener responded to something I said in a newsletter, I was encouraging people to rate and review the show because it really does help, especially an older show like ours that maybe is not getting the same attention. It helps the algorithm if like a bunch of people suddenly at the same time are like five stars, the flopouts.

It really helps. So if you're willing to do it, please do. But you can't do it the way I said, which was do it. do it on iTunes, which because I'm an old person, I didn't think about the fact that. No, no such thing anymore. Go to the podcast app. Go to the Apple podcast app. Or whatever podcast app you have, if it has a rating capability. Actually, if I can ask, leave us a good review. Thank. And also, I'm going to piggyback on that. I think joke farming almost has 50 reviews on Amazon. If three more people or four more people,

however many it is, can give it positive reviews, then I think that will help me in that algorithm also. So guys, look, we live in this shitty world where Albuquerque. Algorithms are controlling things. Help us hack the planet and use those algorithms to our own shitty needs. So go to your local podcast app and give us some five-star reviews. Go to Amazon.com. Give joke farming like a five-star review. Why not?

Yeah, why not? Yeah. It doesn't cost you nothing. No. Dan, did you leave a review on Amazon? You know what? I was just thinking I should. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, you should do that. I tried to leave when there were no reviews left yet. I tried to leave a review saying, I think it's great. But I wrote the book and they wouldn't accept it. They said that wasn't allowed to. Well, at least you're forthright about your... I didn't use a fake name or anything. Yeah, here.

But let's move on from... Wait, do people do that? For online reviews, they'll use fake names. I hope not. That would be beyond the pale. What the fuck? Yeah, we live in a fallen world. Let's move on to... Name two ways.

Name two ways that this is the perfect world. Letters from listeners. All right, Candide. This first letter is from Katie, last name withheld. One? Probably. More than 20 years ago, my friend got a job animating a movie starring John Voight. He told us that the working title was The Karate Dog.

I thought that was the stupidest title I had ever heard and began to call it Fists of Fur E. As you know, the movie was released under the stupidest. stupid title. Excuse me. It tells you what you get. They're not trying to be clever. It's just like here it is.

You're watching a dumb movie about a karate dog. Yeah. What movie would be better with a better title? Bonus points for what movie, what movie would be better with the title, Shenanigans? Keep on flopping on, Katie. I like about the title shenanigans,

and I apologize for this being sort of a non-answer. I mean, that's Benichs, Van de Sharon, should have just been called shenanigans. Yeah. Or any bar. It could be called shenanigans. But like, I think that the great thing about the title shenanigans is you can apply it to any movie. And it's kind of delightful.

Not my dinner with Andre. I feel like my dinner with Andre, you couldn't call shenanigans. Well, you couldn't accurately call it shenanigans, but I would enjoy. I mean, there's no law that you can't put that name on it. That's true. But I was the first, weirdly, the first movie that came to mind, which I think it's got a great title. It's a brilliant movie. It was Mall Holland Drive.

It was like, if Mullen Drive was called shenanigans, I'd be like, I love it. This is great. It's called shenanigans. I don't know, David. It feels kind of not specific. Trust me. There's a lot of shenanigans in it. I was going to call it hijinks, but I think shenanigans is better.

More syllables. What else? What if I called it she-nanigans? Because the main characters are both women. No, I don't think they're like she-des. You know what? Brilliant. Good song.

Good job. What if every movie he was trying to name shenanigans, they kept trying. No, I think let's call it the elephant man. I don't think we should call it shenanigans. Might come off as insensitive, Dave. Because there's so many shenanigans in this other movie. movie. Paul Atrades. He's on Dune. One thing after another. Again, I think we should call it Dune because that's the name of the book that it's based on, not shenanigans. Yeah. Oh, boy. I don't know. I mean, there's like a lot. There are so many movies that you hear about, they were like, they had an interesting title and they went with a generic title. I can't pull many of them right now, but like one that sticks in my mind is like it could happen to you was originally called.

cop gives waitress $20 million tip or something like that. I mean, that's not even a title. That's crazy, yeah. But, yeah, it can happen to you is like nothing. It's like, that could go for almost any movie, except for things that, you know, probably couldn't happen to you. There are a lot of things that couldn't happen to you. Like, Star Wars probably shouldn't be called it could have to you.

No, I don't think so. Yeah, probably King Kong shouldn't be called it could happen. You know what? It could have. No, Star Wars could not happen to you. No, no. Star Wars could not happen to you. But only because it's a long, long time ago.

It doesn't matter why it can't happen to you. It just cannot have, it could not happen to you, yeah. Yeah. I'm willing to bet Jurassic Park could not happen to you. Yeah. But, you know, they're trying to. Now, Jaws could be called it, could happen to you. Yeah, yeah.

I remember there was like talking like, they wanted to rename snakes on a plane. Yes. To something more generic. And they're like, no, this is the best thing we have going course. Yeah. That was the thing. I think it came out online that they were going to change the title.

And online people were like, no, no, no. Yeah. And as, you know, famously, we talked before that that Edge of Tomorrow movie with Tom Cruise was originally what Live Die Repeat or something like that, which was a better title. All you need is kill. Live Die repeat is what they eventually called it based on that was the title tagline. That was the tagline. And then they're like, oh, maybe we should call that. Yeah.

All you need to kill is not a title. That's a bad name. It's a very, just a generic. You know, all three of those titles are not very good. I think Livedi repeat is good because it tells you what happens. Like, you come back and die, you know. The best one as far as I'm concerned. What would you call it, Dan?

Yeah. I died again. Tom Cruise killed a lot. No, again, that's not really a title. That's kind of a description of what's going on in it. Yeah, but that's the name of the actor. Yeah, he's not playing himself. That's an uncommon naming a bunch of.

Like Castaway is a good title for that movie. You wouldn't call it Tom Hanks on an island. I wouldn't, yeah, you're right, I wouldn't call it that, I guess. Yeah. I might call it untitled Tom Hanks on an Island project. Again, untitled implies that there is going to be a different title. Yeah, yeah. Anyway.

You wouldn't release a movie as Haley Joel Osmond is a robot. Like, that's not a title he would give a movie. I don't know. Wouldn't I? Wait, you might. You know what it could happen to you, Dan. I thought he could see dead people. I didn't know he was a robot.

That's the same movie. It's a robot. That's the twist that, two twists originally in that movie. Yeah. There were two twists in that movie. The first was that Bruce Willis' dad and the second was that he's a robot the whole time. And they were like M-night, that's too many twists.

I hope that answer your question. Let's move on. Certainly it didn't. Grayson, last name withheld writes, Hello! In your episode on 40 Days and 40 Nights, Elliot goes on an extended bit about an imaginary comedy sequence

where Josh Hartnett waits for a bus while dealing with a comically large boner. Did I have no memory of any of our episodes? Good news. There's a scene almost exactly like that in the 80s breakdancing sex comedy, Delivery Boys, where a character undergoes a medical experiment

that gives him a raging boner and he flees onto a public bus where hijinks ensues and suits. Sounds like this should have been called shenanigans. Yeah, that does sound like shenanigans. Delivery Boys for My Money is one of the worst movies ever made. This made me wonder, as people who work in the entertainment industry,

have you ever had what you thought was a very unique idea only to discover it already existed? Keep up the good work, fellas. Grayson, last name withheld. This is, that is exactly what it is to be a creative professional in the entertainment industry. You are constantly coming up with ideas, developing them, prepping them,

and then finding out that someone has already sold it and is doing it. Or it already happened on a TV show two years ago that you didn't know about. This has happened to me numerous times. or you'll pitch an idea and people, you'll pitch it and they'll be like, the executives will be like,

I don't even understand this idea. Like, I don't know how to visualize it. And then a show will come out that is just like that idea. And you're like, well, somebody got through. Someone was able to do it. But this happened to me was, I woke up one morning when I was still worth

the daily show. I was getting ready for work. And I started coming with an idea and I was like, you know what? They do all these shows, shows and movies about when aliens invade, but they don't do one about like after the alien invasion is over

and like dealing with living under living under an alien government or whatever. And I started coming up with an idea in my head. I was like, this is what the aliens could be like and the thing. And I'm going to call it colony. And then I walked into the subway station and there was a big ad for,

colony, a TV show about what happens after aliens takeover. And I was like, shit. Like, they stole the idea for me this morning from my head and then put it into production already. Like, it was, I was like, well, I only wasted one morning on this at least. Well, what this made me think of was like, um,

Years ago, before I even wrote at the Daily Show, so I have no idea who I thought would care about this anyway. Who was going to buy the script? But I was going to write a comedy screenplay. I had an idea about like someone who had an office space that they like used for like, basically people who had lost their jobs or were unemployed could go there and fake having a job to like if they needed to impress someone, if they needed their parents off their back,

et cetera, et cetera. Not like the greatest idea, but I had like worked out like things about it that I thought could work and could be funny. And then that movie accepted came out where it was like, oh, like we have this community, abandoned community college where we're going to pretend that you got accepted if you got rejected other schools.

I'm like, well, that premise, like number one, it makes a little more sense than mine anyway. and it's very close. So I didn't do any work on it. Like years later, Elliot was like, you should have written it. Yeah.

No one remembers accepted. And Elliot, these, now I'm taking your advice because I had, can I tell you, the next idea I had for a script, the basic setup of it,

I'm not going to say what movie, but like it is similar to a movie that I saw is like new on streaming. recently, but I can, I looked at this movie and I'm like, no one's going to remember this movie exists. I'm just going to try and write my thing. It's going to be different anyway. Like the basic setup is not going to be so important to it.

And how many times have you seen a movie and you've been like, oh, I've seen, they've made, they've done this story before. Like I've seen this story before. It happens all the time. So yeah, you should just do it. You'll find the thing about it that that makes it unique in and of itself. And it still won't get made because nothing gets made these days. Yeah.

You'll see a movie and be like, Chase and Statham already, foiled a mutiny on a boat before. Apparently not. No. First time. Yeah. I thought it turned out that was Tom Hanks and Captain Phillips. Can I tell you about that movie?

What is wild to me. So like... Mutiny or Captain Phillips or both? Mutiny. Oh. That is from the director of plane, right? Yeah. And there was going to...

He does vehicle based action. There was going to be a plane sequel called boat. And that movie, like a direct sequel, Gerard Butler, called Boat. that movie did not happen. This same director is making a boat movie with Statham called Mutiny. It blew my mind to find out that this was not just boat repurposed, that this was actually a separate script.

Completely different. My guess is there's another script and he goes, yeah, well, I was already prepping for a boat action movie. Yeah. I guarantee you there's at least one action scene in it that was supposed to be for a boat. And it's now in this one. But it could be that he was like, I'm already in the market for a boat act. It might have been that boat fell apart. and some rep was like,

well, you've got a script that's an action movie 7 of a boat. He was just about to make one. This guy's a boat boy. Get into this boat boy. Yeah, exactly. This B-boy, B stands for boat.

What's, uh, what's, Drew R Butler doing? Why can't even make boat? Uh, I don't know. Dena Thieves 3? Yeah, C-Sign. Greenland 2. I don't, green?

Oh, yeah, those are big, right? Greenlands? I mean, there is a Greenland too, which I hear is nutty. I hear that the first one, I mean, like, I saw the first one. I didn't love it, but like people would like to,

Okay, but... Is it about the country? Well, they... In Greenland, the first one, they were fleeing to Greenland because of some apocalyptic event that I've already forgotten. Okay.

I assume that in Greenland, too, they are in Greenland. Still in Greenland, okay. Cool. Anyway, they're like, Greenland's in the news so much. We got to... Anywho.

What do we do next, Stuart? Usually we talk about movies we like. Oh, right. Could be Greenland, too, if you want. Could be Mutiny if you saw it and you liked it. I didn't, although there was that snafu, right, where Amazon accidentally released it, the week it's supposed to go into theaters.

Oh, I didn't know about that. Yeah, I'm sure it got taken down. I think more of that kind of thing will happen. Yeah. Let me look. What did I see lately that I enjoyed? Didn't you go to that porno? Yeah, Dan, what kind of porno have you been digesting lately?

No, but he went to a movie theater and watched one. Yeah, this is a real thing. Nighthawk Williamsburg has a series called Skin Deep where they had been showing or still are showing artistically significant porn films. And Elliot has a dubious look of face. I will say, I will say there is a, as someone who's interested in all kinds of movies, I have an interest in the, like, the way that the porn industry functioned as an industry

and as a place for filmmakers and performers. But there's a certain point, I have to, I have to apologize to filmmakers, there's a certain point where the idea of like everything is art and can be appreciated as art where I'm like, I don't know. For me, it might stop when it gets to hardcore born. I don't know. There's that brief period, that brief period when they were being more ambitious, you know. Well, I mean, like, certainly hardcore pornography now.

I, like, the, the movies that we saw. I feel like we're dangerous. This is me being an old man and a snob. I worry about a world where it's like, well, the Museum of Modern Art just accepted the Brazzers archive into their, into their film collection. But this was definitely of that period where it was where it was people trying

to make a real movie. And then sometimes there would be hardcore sex. And I, you know, I'd been kind of curious about this screening series. And then a friend of mine was like, I hear that this next one is supposed to be really nutty. And like, so I'm like, okay, I'll get tickets. You're getting tickets.

I'll get tickets. I'll see it. And let me say that, first off, I have never previously seen a feature hardcore film in a movie theater with people. Did it make it more difficult? I mean, like, the trailers beforehand were also for like hardcore porn. And like it was and the lights were like part way up and that made it all the worse. I'm like, I was like reading my Kindle while because I'm like, I don't feel comfortable with the lights.

Those are a snit way up and people like ejaculating on screen. But also I will say that I don't. You knew what you're getting into. I don't think that a 20 foot tall screen is the best way to feature genitals. But this movie was wild. It was called a woman's torment. And it was like basically a repulsion set on Fire Island. But with like pornography stuck in it.

And like you talk about, you know, like the artistic ambitions of this. This clearly was someone who wanted to make their movie, but then like Trojan horset in through like pornography. And I will say, and I will say, because like it was so unerotic that I'm like, there's no way they thought this would be. Because that's the thing. What I said before about that about hardcore pornography,

I don't apply that to erotica. Like there is beautiful and artistic erotica. Like there is erotic art. But I don't know. There's the, at a certain point, I become a cranky old man. But Dan, so would you recommend it or not recommend it? Because it sounds like you did not have a great experience.

I mean, it was interesting. It was interesting. I was interesting as like trying to puzzle out like, did they think this could possibly be sexy? This is all so upsetting everything that's happening in this movie. I don't know. But no, I'm not going to recommend that. But it was, you know, thanks for, it was an interesting cold sec.

Let's talk about what I do. recommend, which is, you know, a lot of movies that get dumped to like something like Hulu are of varying quality depending. Like there's some great stuff that shows up there and like there's a lot of filler. But one that I saw recently that I enjoyed was called Redux Redux. It is, you know, sort of a low-budget sci-fi thriller that uses the overused multiverse idea, mostly just to sort of tell a sort of stripped down tale of this woman whose child had been killed in her universe

and is like going through trauma like a breakdown basically by going to all of these other universes where her child is not alive but she can't kill the person who killed them and then she gets involved with another teen girl that she rescues

from the same killer. And it's just like, it's a good movie to look at in terms of how much you can do to make a sci-fi thriller without a big budget, without like a lot of effects. It is sort of just all carried on the weight of the premise

and the way they iterate on the premise and the good performance, particularly from the lead woman the mom who is taking her revenge. I'm not making, like, huge claims for it, but I think that the filmmakers behind us did a great job with it, and I'm curious to see what they'll do in the future.

Yeah, similarly, I'm going to recommend a recent horror movie called Leviticus, which is an Australian horror movie about a couple of young guys who are part of a kind of a tight religious community and make them undergo some extreme conversion therapy as a way to deal with their urges. And this involves the summoning of a shape-shifting invisible entity.

And it's, you know, I feel like it's some easy shorthand is to say that it's like it follows. but for the queer community. And I think a lot of the, I think it's, I think it has some really good scares and there's some really good sequences. It does feel a bit like a short that got stretched a little bit.

Maybe it could have used a little more, like maybe one big set piece or something else. But I think a lot of the metaphor maps really well, probably even better than it follows. And so I think there's some really good, good stuff there and it's got some good scares. So check it out. Leviticus.

I am going to recommend a movie. What this movie not really reminded me of exactly, but the, I've seen a movie. I haven't seen a lot of new movies lately, so I'm digging back into older movies that I've seen. And thinking about the movie we saw today, which is about like a teen dance contest, basically, it made me want to go back and rewatch the movie Smile, directed by Michael Richie and written by Jerry Belson, which is a kind of satire and kind of just kind of a straightforward comedy movie about a teen beauty pageant and all the kind of like corrupt and cynical and kind of like damaging

things that go on around a teen beauty pageant. But there's still a sort of like half innocence to it. Like the movie wants the characters to end up well, even as they're being not great around this pageant. And there's some funny stuff in it and there's at least one, a very genuinely sweet moment in it. And so I'm going to recommend that. It's called smile. You might find it listed with quotes around the title. Sometimes it has quotes around the title and sometimes it doesn't.

And I'm not sure why exactly. Who's it quoting? But after you've seen standing ovation with your kids, put them to bed and then you watch Smile, which is a movie for grown-ups. Yeah. Well, that's another small timber over. But don't fret listeners.

that icy chill you feel on the back of your spine means that Shoktober is just around the corner. Oh. Uh-oh. You got a tease? You got some teases for us? Well, I keep asking you, Stuart, whether you were cool with the three movies that I suggested for Shoktober.

Yeah, let's do them. Okay. We got it. We're going to be doing a couple sequels this Shoktober. Or in this case, Freakwles. Whoa. There you go. Shrequels, some might say.

Yeah. Some might say that. I mean, you did. This is one of those planetary conjunctions where we get three Shoktober episodes, right? There's three episodes in this October. And that conjunction, luckily, has come at a time when there are a plethora of horror movies. Because it's, you know, one of the few things that still seems to get people in the theaters. As it does, as it happens every 10 years or so, Hollywood remembers that horror is a surefire way to make money if you do it right.

every 10 years, they're like, hey, horror is real big with audiences. We should do more horror movies. It's like, just keep making horror movies. Just keep making them. They always do well, always. And part of it is, I feel like horror fans are similar to like heavy metal fans and that they're committed. They will go see your shit. They want to see it all.

Yeah. Even if they don't like it. Yeah. They want it all. They want it all. They want it all. And they want it now. Nice.

Well, that's been established or teased. or whatever now. So we can... That October is coming? Yeah. Watch out. Leaves are rustling. I don't want you to be shocked

when you flip over your calendar. The scary month. I'm letting you know October's coming. I'm also letting you know that we're part of the Maximum Fun Network. Go to Maximumfund.org. Check out other shows on the network. I'm sure you'll find at least one you also enjoy.

So why not? take a chance. Also, thank you to Alex Smith. He goes by the name Howell Dottie when he's doing music, he's doing funny stuff, all sorts of creative work on the internet. Check him out. Thank you, Alex. For the flop house, I have been Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kalen, somewhat chastened, less cocky than I was at the beginning of the episode. Good news, guys. We're talking about Sammy Ovation.

That is good news. Oh. Not as good news as that the Lord died for our sins. I guess that's pretty good. I didn't like that guy that much. I don't think John Prasinski would put it on his show, though. No, it's not that kind of good news, no. I mean, he sold the rights, man.

He doesn't get to make a creative decision. He sold the rights to the Bible? Yep. He had him. It was foolish of him. Those rights are worth. Why do you do that? Much de Niro.

Yeah, originally, they were owned by, they were originally owned by Steve Gutenberg. His famous Gutenberg vibe. Yeah, he foolishly squandered that money, yeah. Okay, I think we're, as warmers were ever going to do. That's pretty warm. We get any warmer. We're going to have to turn on a second A-C.

Yeah, okay. You know, it's not getting warm. A-O-C, as in her eggs. She froze them. Oh, yeah, that's true. It's news. News you can't use. There's nothing to do with that news.

Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.