The Worst Idea Of All Time - CROSSOVER: The Worst Cult Popture of All Time

Episode Date: April 15, 2020

What is this a crossover episode? YES! Fellow Little Empire podcast Cult Popture and The Worst Idea of All Time watched 9/11 movie starring Charlie Sheen. The whole thing is a bit of a hot (but low budget) mess, although Tim didn’t think it was altogether that bad. Who will emerge cancelled from this crisp one-hour review of a movie that bit off more than it can chew?Check out Cult PoptureCheck out AJ’s American Pie video Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello Ding Dongs, this is Tim from The Worst Idea, and this is a Worst Idea slash Cult Pop Show crossover episode. This was an idea that came up organically on my streaming show, Happening. AJ, who's one of the hosts who you'll hear from in just a moment, he's got this segment called Actual Movie or Cheese Dream, where he pitches me the plot or a synopsis of a film, and I have to discern whether this is a real movie that exists in the world or if it's something that AJ concocted in his brain after too much dairy and an early night. And he threw the movie which we ended up watching at me on air and I had a vague awareness of 9-11 starring Charlie Sheen.

Obviously I'd never seen it and i wasn't a hundred percent if it was real but it turns out it was and we watched it together as two podcasts so we've done this crossover episode um weird fucking film you're going to hear all about it please subscribe to cult popshire if you enjoy us you'll probably enjoy them too good kiwi lads in the south island um who are doing a really excellent movie review podcast series where they have lots of special events and they do like franchises at a time and really um get into the nitty-gritty and dissect film a little bit better than guy and i do um aj you'll also hear on the podcast because i reference it but he i'll tell you at the top

made this uh fantastic american pie video essay which is like 15 minutes long on youtube which you should check out the um link to that is in the episode show notes but without further ado please enjoy this crossover episode of cult popshire and the worst idea of all time i need you to try to on the cult popshire stream hi here's someone you don't know and if you're listening on the worst idea stream uh everyone say g'day to aj and richard hey hi thanks for having us on on both streams or thank you for coming on depending on what if i'm not listening on either stream but i am a part of the conversation

how do i how do i fit in uh you are to look and not to touch. You can listen, but you can't participate. So I just instructed all the people listening on those two streams to say hello. If you're not on either of those streams but absorbing this content, you keep your fucking mouth shut, please. That would be appropriate. Yeah, AJ, what did I guess in the end? I can't even remember.

Did I guess this was real? Yeah, you said you'd heard of it, and so you knew it was real, and then you suggested that we do a Cole Popsha worst idea crossover to talk about it, and then you said, does that sound like a good idea, Monty? Sing out in the comments.

And the comments were silent. Guy did not say a thing, which thus sealed his fate to watching a charlie sheen 9-11 film so for a bit of context as well because this really struck me as i was watching particularly because i was quite hung over um yesterday i spent the entire day putting a quiz together for a bunch of mates and then hosted that during the evening on a zoom call and uh so i had quite a lot of beers while i was presenting it thus this morning while i was watching 9-11 on easter monday in the middle of a pandemic i was like what has my fucking life become that this is all these convergences um you know happening to me but the movie itself i mean

i i did a little background research and reading and i don't think i ever saw the trailer for this but the trailer came out and everyone was like this thing is uh evil like straight up evil it shouldn't exist in the world um Charlie Sheen's a bad guy. Everyone involved in this film is bad. Not just a bad guy, but specifically on the record as a 9-11 truther. Yeah, big time. Which I understood was not especially well received. Yeah, I've got to say, I, as someone who was just at the mercy

of three other people's decision making, I resent every single fucking one of you for this that was an abomination it was like just 90 minutes inside of a life where 90 minute windows are already flying by at a rate of knots because of a slew of bad decisions i at least have taken part in making so to just be told that i'm watching a charlie sheen 9-11 movie in the middle of all this felt so bad and then the movie itself somehow let down like whatever low bar i'd set it to clear the only saving grace was i felt like the entirety so the the basic premise of the film is we're in new york city it's the uh 11 11th of September in the year 2001.

I've heard of it. And everyone's setting up their lives. They're going to go about their days. And five people's lives converge in an elevator in one of the towers, in the Twin Towers. Well, hold on. Do it right, Monty. The start of the film, we are introduced, firstly,

to a couple singing Happy Birthday in a key that they cannot pull off far too high and it's a tricky song at the best of times but they've started at such a high octave they can't possibly make it to the end of the song so we've got this gorgeous little three-piece family we've all we've all tripped over that mistake then we meet a woman with her pug who seems to be living alone in a gorgeous um that was uh probably the most harrowing part of the movie is that seemingly 10 to seconds to 10 minutes that we spent with her looking in the mirror yeah i yeah i felt unsafe and did not want to spend any more time in the film with her knowing full well i would have to but i was like this woman is clearly not ready for the day, and she's got no idea what's coming.

But then we get quickly introduced to the thirdly character, which is World Trade Center Building 2. Like, they go, shot, shot, building. They're like, don't worry, we didn't forget what we're doing. No, no, I'm certain that we meet Whoopi Goldberg in a wig before we meet one of the two towers. We see Whoopi Goldberg swanning into a diner. The pacing on this movie, like they left an extra half a second

after every line and shot, at least for the first 20 minutes. I felt like they just left a little bit of space. I don't know why. It made me really uneasy. And then this was all leading into what i wanted to say about it before we sort of we can launch into the conversation in earnest but i kind of in a very perverse way got a kick out of all of the scenes with the five of them in the elevator like when they were sort of waiting for something to happen to the elevator it felt like watching five improvisers who had done an ask for like watching five improvisers who had done an

ask for inexperienced improvisers who had done an ask for in a bad taste improv night had been given 9-11 asked for a setting got given elevator and then they were like well we don't have the confidence to override what we've been given so we're gonna do the scene now and you're just watching five people try and build a world like it was disastrous all of their dialogue all of their interpersonal connections it was abysmal in a way it's it's it's charlie sheen's 9-11 in in context of like his own career as well right like this is the equivalent of 9-11 within charlie sheen's already pretty tumultuous career do you i mean i don't know that this this felt like an extra nail in a pretty well nailed down coffin to me with respect to charlie sheen yeah i don't think this is his lowest point by

any means no oh i i well maybe not in his personal life but in in his movie career i i think this is probably the worst charlie sheen thing i've seen what's worse than this hey am i alone in thinking that this wasn't the worst movie oh you're not alone like it was bad but it's nowhere near my like bottom 10 worst films i've ever seen i didn't think it was that bad at all like i think i mean yeah look i was shocked and maybe it's the very low low bar that i had set for myself going into watching the film but like i don't. I thought there were genuinely some really good acting performances in it. Louise Guzman's always a treat, you know, when he pops up in a movie. And he's, like, one of the lead characters.

And I just, the producer in me was just so tickled by the obviously low budget they had. But the very inventive way that they had approached such a huge subject matter. Like, 9-11 is arguably the defining day of our generation. Like, it is the thing that changed the entire world for people who grew up around our time, people around our age. And yet, they made this film,

and I really desperately tried searching around the internet for what the budget was seemingly for about, I don't know 100 grand, 200 grand maybe it's basically a one room sitcom TV episode it's a play we just watched a play what is a play?

it's a play called Elevator oh seriously which apparently is really good yeah, that's what you were picking up on Guy it's a play called elevator oh seriously yeah which apparently is really good yeah that's that's what you were picking up on guy it's an actual play i i can definitely see the play and like i can also see how it would be good and then i think that yeah there is something about the assembly of the cast which immediately turns you off the idea like whoopi goldberg not so much i couldn't stop imagining though every time i saw whoopi goldberg

on screen i couldn't imagine i couldn't stop picturing the director saying okay that's a wrap for today and whoopi goldberg walking off the set and across the studio lot to the desk on the view and starting um working there then can i i really want to hear richard's thoughts but before because you've tripped over this i want to give you a quote from a hollywood reporter interview with charlie shane about this movie the only thing that was difficult is they shot all of whoopi's stuff first because she had to get back to her show so all we had was her recorded voice through the intercom for that scene i was happy to finally be in a film with her but sad that we didn't get to do any scenes together that stinks of a very specific contract stipulation you know that was contingent on whoopi's involvement in the film you could be

right richard what did you make of this did you did you hate it did you love it when you i was um to me this is like a two-star. It's not quite a one or a half star. There definitely were moments when I felt the tension I was supposed to be feeling in the film. There's a scene where they're trying to unlock, like they're in the elevator, they managed to pry the doors open, they're trying to unlock something that's like

outside the elevator and on top of it. And for a moment I was like, this is actually, this scene could be in a better movie um and what a good what a what high praise for 9-11 what this scene could be in a better movie two stars it's very complimentary for this charlie sheen vehicle but um should we go over um who our who our main cast are because we've kind of touched on it. Yeah, go for it, man. So we've got Metzi as Whoopi Goldberg's character, who's like a...

She's like the elevator command centre at the World Trade Centre. Yeah, if you've seen The Matrix 2, Matrix Reloaded, there's the key master, who has the keys for all the doors. Whoopi Goldberg is that for elevators in the World Trade Centre complex. Yeah is that for elevators in the world trade center complex yeah she she's the man in the chair and she's the one she's the only one

who knows that 9-11 is currently happening um and she kind of uh relays that to our main characters who uh yeah as you mentioned we've got jeffrey who's charlie sheen's character who's a a billionaire and in a throwaway line it's revealed he once owned like either three or five stories of the world trade center can i say this a billionaire with a heart of gold one thing that they really wanted you to take away from this movie is that billionaires have at least like 0.01 empathy they kept hammering this angle where he'd say, well, at one point he said to Edward, was he the janitor sort of?

Eddie the janitor? Eddie, yeah. He says- The custodial engineer, I think is what he referred to himself as. He says to him, hey, if you want to start gambling again, I'm your guy. While he's literally got his arm outside the elevator in an inferno trying to save his life. And then later on, he says very condescendingly to the cyclist,

did you ever hear the one about the billionaire who hires a bike messenger? And the bike messenger said no. And then Charlie Sheen says, you just did. And then we're meant to be like- Yeah, that line was crazy. We're meant to say to ourselves, oh, wow, this billionaire rocks. Do you know Charlie Sheen,

he rewrote that character? In the play, he's a real... That billionaire is an arsehole to everyone. And Charlie Sheen was like, this movie's sad enough as it is. I'm going to make him likeable. The billionaire needed to be an arsehole. It was so boring watching Charlie Sheen crowbar

his piss-weak redemption story into 9-11 through a billionaire character. It was driving me fucking nuts. He was so obviously an asshole. All I want to watch is Charlie Sheen playing an asshole. Oh, yeah. Embrace it. Run towards it.

Don't run away from it, because when they're running away from it, you can see it on screen, you can see the distance between who they are and who they want us to think they are, but if he was like I'm going to play the arsehole convince it, no that wasn't acting, that was like

an apology told through a very bad exploitation film, the worst part is not only that the billionaire is the heart of gold character but the african-american bike messenger is racist and has to has to learn to overcome his prejudices you know the the by the end of the film the bike messenger um what's his name michael he learns that you know you know, maybe not every rich white man

is what you maybe think they are. Maybe you need to stop judging people before you get to know them. He gets scolded for not respecting a white billionaire in an elevator during 9-11 by the woman who's divorcing the billionaire. He says, you shut your fucking mouth when you're talking about my... Yeah, it's a very ethnically diverse cast, and yet Charlie Sheen is like the true North morality, you know, cornerstone of the whole thing.

Which does sound insane when you say it out loud. Richard, do you want to keep going through the cast? So we've got Gina Gershon as Eve, Richard, do you want to keep going through the cast? So we've got Gina Gershon as Eve, who's the woman who is divorcing Jeffrey, Charlie Sheen, despite his character being so upstanding and they're clearly still in love. And she doesn't really seem to have anything against him

at any point in the film, apart from the fact that he's making the divorce difficult. He missed every milestone. any point in the film um apart from the fact that he's making the divorce difficult oh he he missed every milestone i think sometimes that sort of everyday interpersonal morality and pure essence comes at the cost of a committed family man and i i feel like that is from whence the divorce was coming while while he had fundamental decency towards everyone he came across in his life, I think the money came out of his home life. And I am, in a way, by saying this, defending the movie,

even though what I was saying was meant to be a piss take because I fucking hate the movie and all of the characters contained therein. Sorry, continue, Richard. And finally, rounding out the cast of The Elevator is Tina, who is probably the least fleshed out. She's got, she's implied to have some kind of sugar daddy, but she says, you don't know me, you don't know a goddamn thing about me.

And then we don't learn anything really from that. So we continue to not know a goddamn thing about her It's very gently suggested she might have a problem with prescription meds I don't think that you guys are treating these as breadcrumbs It's explicitly stated she's in an emotionally abusive relationship With a much older rich man who's bought her apartment and everything she owns, and she's got a pill problem. That's layers, people.

That is some flaws on our character. It's not that the layers aren't there. It's that the character arcs are never rounded up by the end, so it doesn't flow like that. Sorry, a plane fell into the building. We don't have time for character arcs. Are you telling me that the movie about 9-11 got derailed in functioning as a movie

because of actual 9-11? I'm just saying they've got a pretty good reason to keep the end, and also, I don't think anyone should... You don't get to make a movie about 9-11, and then that be the excuse that parts of the movie didn't work That is fucking crazy I'll tell you what To it's credit it came in

With credits included at a crisp 91 minutes And I would I would Challenge anyone to take shots At it's duration It was the perfect length for a 2 star movie Trying out the 90 minute duration Like defence is one of the weakest ways

in this movie's okay fucking playbook we've all been all four of us have been reviewing very terrible movies for very long time and 90 minutes is always the like the one shining light in any of these movies when they have it so maybe we do need to strike that

from the pros list when we're talking about these bad movies well so richard in your car in your car's call i feel like we didn't cover the cyclist who was acting as the cycle so cycle uh cycles was a guy called wood harris as michael um so he's the racist one whose racism is never brought up again um but we presume he overcomes it because he accepts the job offer from the billionaire as as tim said uh we don't really have time to tie up all of these loose ends because i don't know if you fucking noticed richard but a plane is crashed into the twin towers uh is that guy if that guy beat anything else like are these aside from say there were three actors i recognized

and then the other three rounding out the cast i was like who the hell are these people is that fair or am i an ignorant wood harris is avon barksdale and the wire if you've ever seen the wire i've not seen the wire but i understand that that is uh at the opposite end of the cultural spectrum from this film yeah he's also in the creed movies um he's an ant-man apparently and um later on 2049 so they've got this is a this is an all-star cast yeah adapting a critically revered play i mean and in the same way that like charlie sheen is a movie actor technically but you know like whoopi goldberg has been in lots of movies but would we call

her a top shelf film talent? Well she's an Oscar winner, she's an EGOT winner actually Exactly, there you go I thought Whoopi brought it I thought Whoopi did a pretty good job Mate, no complaints from me

I thought she had a great performance I like Louise Guzman. I thought that the woman playing Eve, who I forget the name of, she's in like... Gina Gershon. And what's she in? I only know her from Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

Oh, I didn't even know she was in that. She's got a few episodes. I'll give that. Oh, what else is she in? I thought she was surprisingly good. Yeah. Oh, she's in Bound, the Wachowskis film. I haven't seen Bound.

I think one thing to sort of unpack here is the fact that, like, this is based on a play, right? And by all accounts, as we've said before, the play is good. So therefore, why is the film 11% on Rotten Tomatoes? And I think- Not by audience decree decree only the critics choice i only look at critics baby what did the audience hated it what are the audience things 42 oh a glowing 42 by the audience submitted reviews on rotten tomatoes so a movie that

looked like it was made over the course of three weekends that's not bad but like you can't go into making a movie about something as uh elevated in the public eye and as sensitive to so many people as 9-11 especially if you've got like headline cast maybe not as present-day movie stars but cast members who do have some cachet or draw and then grade it on a curve of they had no budget if you're adapting a revered text why not do it right?

why not go to the trouble of making the movie as best as you possibly can instead of just what feels like pushing it punching it out in the hopes that Charlie Sheen will be likeable in the eyes of the American public again I actually think, i did a little bit of research and what i understand happened is that uh the director like signed on to the film and um you know found this play thought it was great decided to adapt it and he it was his idea he was like charlie sheen is the perfect person to play this character and he turned down the film initially um and then he

kept on coming back to him and said like you know um and like explained the story to him and charlie sheen came on and said all right i'll do it if i can have a producer credit and you have to give me like a once over of the script and so i think he essentially was able to round out the cast by like calling his mates. And he rewrote the character, as we mentioned earlier, to be this lovable billionaire. But then also he changed the ending of the play to, for what we see in the film. So the film ends with everyone,

except for Charlie Sheen, man, just to get out of the elevator. And there's a firefighter that's there um you know trying to get it fruitlessly trying to get him out and then we hear the building start to collapse on them and as they're like they're holding hands because he was trying to pull him out of the elevator uh they're you know they're holding hands and then the building collapses and the film ends we don't catch up with any of the family that we were cutting to throughout the film we don't um cut away to uh how if everyone else in the elevator is dealing with the fact that um you know this this lovable

billionaire has just passed away the guy who offered them jobs you know that genuinely crossed my mind when it looked like he wasn't going to make it. I was like, oh, he hasn't even had time to work these heroes into his will. These poor bastards, on the same day as 9-11, have been offered these life-changing jobs that will now never come to fruition. But thank God he never actually signed the divorce papers that his wife kept pushing while they were in the middle of this catastrophe because she presumably will now be the executor of his estate yeah true this is all good stuff that's better than the movie

it's making a statement though his his like a sequel 912 his insistence on appearing on dying at the end with the firefighter is like making a statement about like these two are equals the real firefighters that gave their lives to save people on 9-11 are just as important as this fictional billionaire play by charlie shane yeah of all the people they're trying to make me feel sorry for like if you if you are making me feel emotional about the 9-11 story and you do that by hanging all the associated feelings with it on a single protagonist you do it with the one type of person that I don't really care if they die the world will be better if the billionaire dies and that's the character that you choose to hang this all on portrayed by one of the most unliked famous people in Hollywood like I wrote down in

my notes oh okay Charlie Sheen's telling people not to do drugs? That's something his character does in this movie? You've got some acting chops, dude, but I'm not buying that for a second. I thought that parts of the movie I enjoyed, I did enjoy the use of news footage. And I did enjoy, obviously, it was also a budget budget workaround the way that they would contextualize it by like you were there in real time as 9-11 developed and you were given a baseline understanding of what that experience was

like as you know the the day progressed and the the events progressed yeah and i thought don't you think that that's just like stealing real emotion rather than putting it in the film themselves absolutely but it works this is the big question for 9-11 for the movie not the event it's like is is this because i think this is all the criticism that was leveled at it when the trailer came out because the trailer and i still haven't seen the trailer but i was just reading some of the criticism apparently focused a lot on that shot where the elevator drops yeah and they're all kind of like careening through the air which is one of the more cartoonish moments of the entire film the rest of it is actually centered to varying degrees of success on the very human stories of the small cast of characters in an even smaller space having to like exist with

each other through this perilous time together and their interaction and i think a lot of people got like caught up by how um exploitative and cartoonish the trailer made this movie out to be but like this is the big question was this because i didn't find this movie super exploitative myself and i think it could have been but it didn't and i think one of the reasons it wasn't is because it very wisely chose to tell a really tiny story it didn't focus on any of the big sweeping events it didn't focus on like the huge numbers of people who were affected or how or try to like go into the lives of the firefighters it was going here's some average people who you know were caught up in this day in this event i i agree with that which is i think also part of what made

it such a frustrating watch and made me really not like the movie is like that is the the right tack i agree but from what i've heard from uh richard like i just charlie sheen's insistence on inserting himself into like inserting his his own life into the film and you i just it i i agree it didn't feel as exploitative as i was afraid it would but i also think i do think choosing a small story to tell, which is what plays through really well, and you can see how this works at play, and having that be the vessel through which we access the experience and how devastating 9-11 was is really interesting.

But it's the same thing as before. We were saying, well, none of the story introductions or the character beats or the conflict, the internal conflict even within these people that's introduced is really expanded upon. Like the only character given the breathing room to really flesh out their very thin backstory again is Charlie Sheen.

And so while the idea is sound and like it does prevent the movie from being as offensive as perhaps it might have been, it's also the seed of frustration grows from that point as well where it's like this could have genuinely been you know premise alone this is a this is quite an interesting idea it's almost like they should remake it well okay we should remake it i was we're the characters no this is this is sort of what i was i was

thinking about was that i i wanted to answer the question why is the play well received and the movie is not and like there there is a almost you could almost call it a genre of like the one room play right like the real time real time cast of very defined characters having a conversation in one room. And it translates to film in various degrees. I think that the reason the movie is bad, and it's not because of Whoopi Goldberg, because she can do serious stuff.

I've got no problem with Whoopi Goldberg being in a serious movie. And it's not just i'll pass it on to her people um it's not just because of charlie sheen though i think he is a hefty part of it i think it just is that you go okay here's the premise it's four people four strangers stuck in an elevator during 9-11 you go oh cool so it's more about their interpersonal um struggles and the way they you know their backstories it's like oh yeah yeah yeah so what

are their backstories and their backstories are the most lazily and boring ones you can think oh there's a there's a divorced couple there's someone who's missing their daughter's birthday um also he's racist yeah and he's racist um there's there's someone who's um worked there that's their story they have an angry wife yeah you're right you're right you're you're fucking really right about that you're making me say this i think i got so overcome with like this sort of the inventiveness of making a film like this on no budget, of putting it all in one room, because I only found out that it was based on a play at the credits when it said that it was based on Elevator.

And I was like, this is how you tackle the largest subject with the smallest sum. And I think another thing that really sold it to me, and you guys got to look this dude up, I think his first name's Martin. The guy who um directed martin guigui guigui i think it's like he's argentinian so i don't know i'm attempting a bit of a french pronunciation on it but i'm not sure how to say his name

well i looked at it i was like how do you pronounce this name online because you know about to do the podcast and it only gave me French pronunciations. This guy fucks in a very serious way. He is, I think, a Grammy-winning producer. He is a sound engineer. He has made many movies. He's the director of both a record label and his own film production company.

He does so much shit. It's like, it's insane. And I think he, and I was trying to look this up as well, I assume he scored the movie in addition to directing it. And I thought that the scoring was good. He's fallen into the same trap as Neil Breen, I think, where it sounds like he's probably taken on a little bit too much to properly execute yes if you if you look up martin guigui on uh rotten tomatoes highest rated movies

swing at 42 percent 9 11 at 11 percent and beneath the darkness at four percent um so those are his highest yeah he also directed the cream of the crop this like um this part sequel part prequel to raging bull called the bronx bull and and they got like sued over it um because like oh do you know what needs fishing out like one of the greatest movies of all time um yeah and uh yeah so i don't know maybe we'll do that next time that kind of there's a question i wanted to ask earlier richard and uh one that i think we we brushed past or sort of incidentally ran into which is so tim i think speculated as to what happened after the movie like the day after for the potential sequel 9 12 or whatever do fan fictions or theories that you create in your own mind as

an extension of the movie you're watching count as credits towards the movie being good um oh i think um if you have to it depends if you're having to try and um things, then it doesn't count towards it being good. But if it's like the next day, you're like, oh man, I can't get over that, and you want to have more adventures with these characters, then I think that's good. And maybe that's what Tim was doing. Is that what you were doing, Tim?

Yeah, sure. Yeah, that's what I was doing. The remaining four characters. The sequel is a very different movie obviously to 9 11 9 12 is about um a widow who has already got a lot of money but suddenly has command of this entire charlie sheen empire of ego and i'm assuming crippling debt like he seems like the kind of guy who has over leveraged absolutely one of those like on paper billionaires who actually is up to his eyeballs but no one quite figures it out because he's kept the rat wheel turning while he's been alive that's what

i thought at the start when he's like oh you know i used to own three floors on this building i was like this is a down on his luck you know failed financier going through a messy divorce and then afterwards like after that sort of kernel of an idea is planted we just watch everyone respect the idea that he's a well-known billionaire who's the guy who went to jail for like the biggest ever ponzi scheme who was managing everyone's money bernie madoff yeah bernie he's like bernie mado, but a bit younger and still not in jail. So he dies. That's why he was quite happy to stay behind in the elevator at the end.

Yeah. So what should have been a sort of Willy Wonka style treasure hunt of getting this huge windfall. There's just average characters who suddenly get all of this money. Maybe they get roped into this debt-laden empire and actually then have to get management roles and trying to keep the wheels turning.

That is interesting. That is a lot more fun. That's legitimately a good-sounding movie. Using 9-11 as the backdrop to all that. Yeah, all of their unique skills come into play. So the one who's, you know, like, under the thumb of this older millionaire sugar daddy

who's addicted to pills, her natural human empathy and experience with dealing with these egotistical, older, rich men comes out to play where she just takes command of the boardroom and starts telling them what for and psychologically drilling into them that they need to start taking social responsibility for their employees. We've got Louise Guzman's character.

What does he know about? Fucking infrastructure. He has a look at all of these buildings that they're planning to make, and he gives really great advice about how to make them like way better and way safer and how to get better value for money then we've got eve she gets to hang out with her son finally her time's been freed up she doesn't have to worry about things as much she can like focus on her family which she's been prevented from doing she can take him to acting classes which he needs yeah one one thing i thought i thought she was good oh no jj was terrible the child who's that way which who are we talking

about oh the kid oh my god yeah the grandmother was the worst yeah she was a disaster yeah and i'd just like to say to tim's point one thing i definitely thought for eve at the end of the movie was well that's a relief for her. Finally, her schedule's clear. Life is looking pretty fucking cruisy for Eve on the tail end of this experience. I just want to say that I can't remember the character's name. I'm doing it. I'm going to dig it up on IMDb quickly.

Michael, the cyclist delivery driver, I can see him becoming quite a terrifying arm of this sort of billionaires empires branch where he he sort of goes out and he's a forward-facing pr sort of spin doctor who says hey look guys we need to stop assessing all billionaires as equal and start looking deeper into the humanity of them and like all of them have a story to tell except the pakistani ones who as we all know are up to no good he specifically calls out pakistani people um and and when he and his like little rant in the elevator and if the movie is trying to squeeze the the character development out of him that through charlie

sheen he learns as i said before that not all rich white men are the same that's actually the opposite of of becoming not racist if you're if you're like the thing on your pillar is a rich white man you haven't actually learned anything about um poor pakistani taxi drivers which is the specifically the type of person he calls out um not knowing if it was actually a pakistani person who ran him over but the real friend was the people who have been given up the biggest handout all along you know those those are the people who we've been vilifying for too long people who have got it the absolute easiest one thing this movie did which i'm not totally comfortable with but i must confess on the podcast is by the end of it i was rooting for the death of a character in a movie set on 9-11.

Oh, my God. And I was so fearful that Charlie Sheen's character would make it out of the elevator alive. I was just like, no, no, no. The only way that this movie would even have one scintilla of respect remaining for me by its end was with if that guy was gonna so the whole time you're like fingers crossed the building comes down no no no i did not say that i i dearly would have liked to see the last person file out including that first responder and then they're

like is everybody out and then you hear charlie sheen from the elevator say, not quite. And then you hear the crush of the building collapse and the credits roll. Guy, that's not too dissimilar to what happens in the series finale of Two and a Half Men. Really? So Charlie Sheen... You'll have to forgive me. I didn't quite make it that far.

No, no, no. But the final episode of Two and a half men is so impossibly lame and this is more a indictment on chuck laurie than than charlie sheen but as if you'll cast your minds back you may remember that his name's chuck laurie yeah i've been calling him chuck law i don't know maybe it is i don't't know. But I've heard both, actually. So I think Law sounds better, but I want to believe it's Lorre because it's a more interesting name, I guess. As you were, sorry. So if you'll recall, Charlie Sheen leaves the show in a big huff,

like really bad mouths two and a half men upon his leaving. Rightly so. For sure. I do not like the show. I do not like the show. do not like the show but by the end of it the two there's only one of the two and a half titular men left on the cast um and then is there not one and a half no the half leaves as well yeah he becomes like a born-again christian and speaks out against the show and leaves it like more or less

leaves. I think he has a few appearances now and then, but also by this point, he's, he's a man. He's not. That was the best part of the show though, was at the end of the credits when they would,

uh, sort of anthropomorphize a boy into a man. Yeah. In less than a second. And, and he was replaced with Amber Tamblyn who played a a lesbian character which is kind of an uncomfortable stand-in for half a man as a concept but this is this is for a this is for a two and a half men deconstruction podcast anyway um at the the last episode two

and a half men men the the the last episode they talk about how charlie didn't die charlie in the show didn't actually die and he's like exploiting the family for money a very anti charlie sheen kind of message oh wow it ends with um shot from the back someone who they want they want you to think is charlie sheen approaches the door of the house and knocks on it. But before the door opens, I think a stage light falls on him. No, it's a piano. A piano drops on him. A piano drops because, of course, he played the piano. That's fucking hilarious.

And then it zooms out of the set and Chuck Lorre is sitting there in his director's chair and he looks towards the camera and says, winning, and then a piano falls on him. And I also want to point out this was like 2012 when winning hadn't been a relevant Charlie Sheen meme for five years by that point. This was 2015, actually, OJ. Even worse. Holy shit.

I've got to find this on YouTube. That sounds fucking awesome. That is bananas. We need to rank our on YouTube. That sounds fucking awesome. That is bananas. We need to rank our favourite Charlie Sheen crush to death scenes. There's two to choose from. So far, number one for me would be the scene at the end of 9-11, but that is pending, having seen the other big Charlie Sheen being crushed scene.

I just want to say that entire anecdote made me wonder like how did john crier feel through all this because by what little i know of him he seems like a fairly ordinary guy who was just caught in between you know a bizarre power struggle between chuck law and charlie sheen and then also his presumptive or you know his on-screen son leaves the show halfway to become a born-again christian john cryer must have been going to work like fuck i'm the only thing keeping it together i don't know why he can cry into his money i know that he probably i'm assuming got upset about the amount of money that i assume charlie sheen was uh putting up his nose as a result of his paycheck

on two and a half men but john Cryer would have been making fucking bank. Like, that show got crazy ratings. Also, it helped unearth Melanie Linsky to the wider public, which is a great gift. Even a broken show is right twice a casting or something like that. Pretty good. Can I share another quote that I got out of that Hollywood reporter interview with Charlie Sheen about this film?

I know I got a lot of heat for the opinions I had that weren't just my own, Sheen told the reporter early in the interview. I was not just coming up with stuff about 9-11. I was parroting those a lot smarter and a lot more experienced than myself who had very similar questions. If I offended anyone, I apologize. If. If I offended anyone, I apologize.

And if I inspired someone, then so be it. Is it possible that the current president of the United States made his way to power partially by borrowing from the Charlie Sheen playbook. Because contained in that Hollywood Reporter quote are so many deflections or... Oh, yeah. Well, famously, Trump went on InfoWars with Alex Jones

just before he got elected. This was, I think, past the primary. The other Alex Jones. Hey? The other Alex Jones, not me. Yeah. Yeah. with alex jones just before he got elected like this was i think past the primary alex jones hey the other alex jones not me yeah yeah the better alex jones i i knew this would come up i knew it would come up and i was like oh god we're gonna talk about my more famous counterpart the further left wing alex jones the rest of that quote by the way just to finish it off there are still a couple of things just rooted in simple physics that beg some measure of inquiry i was in contact with a lot of family

members and they were in concert with a lot of my questions now that to me reads as charlie sheen who at the time i think we know this for like it's all confirmed now was on a lot of meth at the time and it's just fucking ringing his very famous dad going like dad we're gonna talk about 9-11 we're gonna look at these buildings i got these movies let's change you gotta see him and his dad's just going charlie you know what you're right let's sit down let's talk about it maybe at this nice facility maybe these gentlemen can help you into the van let's discuss i can't totally tee off on charlie sheen uh if only because this hearing you discuss all that brought sort of in a lightning bolt moment brought back a memory from

when i used to host a tv show on new zealand television with joseph moore uh called fail army and it was like tosh.o america's Home Videos, and we would host three interstitials amongst these videos, an episode. And in one of the episodes, we said that we were trapped on an island, and so we'd called in some of our celebrity friends to host the episode, and that was just because Joseph Moore had a book full of celebrity masks. And in the episode, this is crazy to think. Everyone, all the famous people just had our flat New Zealand accents. crazy to think everyone all the all the famous people just had our flat new zealand accents but in the episode at one point um it was being hosted by taylor swift and justin bieber and one

of the interstitials entirely was justin bieber saying that jet fuel can't melt steel beams uh so while i disagree with charlie sheen's stance on all of this stuff and you know fundamentally it seems to be with a lot of the synergies made as a person um i'm sort of just trying to get out in front of the story here i guess i don't want anyone digging up that footage and holding it in front of me and saying you're also a 9-11 truther could we maybe do a quick whip around the room of our high and low light of the film I thought you were going to say on whether or not we thought 9-11 actually happened

again we could probably save for a different podcast I'm happy to help my number my high would be when someone was being rude to Charlie Sheen's character and his wife stuck up for him by saying,

he reads a lot. And the other character saying, how much? And she said, six newspapers a day, including Sundays. And that alone would be enough to carry any movie. But as a sweetener charlie sheen after says says afterwards more or less like looking to the side of the actor straight down the barrel of the camera he goes it's those crosswords i love that and then my low would be the firemen in this movie set on 9-11 in the world trade center asking whether or not they can use the

elevators uh to to help save people i'm like i thought that was probably the most commonly shared information in the world that in the event of a fire elevators are off limits and yet these people who if anyone should be carrying this information at the forefront of their minds. You know, I suppose it's to feed Whoopi Goldberg a few more lines, but it really took me out of the world of the show, the movie. My highlight was when they're in the elevator and Louise Guzman's character, Eddie, is talking to Charlie Sheen's character, Jeffrey,

about how he owns a jet and all the sort of things, all the things you can do as a billionaire that like a lowly custodial manager would probably care about you know the high life and um charlie sheen says to him why do you care about money so much which is an interesting thing for a man richer than than uh louis guzman's character will ever be to say to him uh my low light was that um wimmy goldberg's character metsy she has to leave the building and she's had a modicum of a character arc in this film right enough to she's she's second billing she might be top billing actually above sheen i'm not sure um and she she's she sort of leaves a very somber message to them because she doesn't know if they can hear them because the elevator that she's she sort of leaves a very somber message to them because she doesn't know if they

can hear them because the elevator that she's talking to has just dropped and she's like i gotta go i'm sorry um and then um eve charlie sheen's uh not quite ex-wife uh gets out of the elevator they punch a hole in the wall and she climbs out and as she's leaving to try and get help to help everyone else out of the elevator she passes metsy whoopi goldberg's character and i was like oh of course she's gonna metsy's gonna be the only person who's able to help so it all all the characters converge again no metsy's never seen again in the film we don't even revisit she he finds just a random fireman he's like yeah sure i'll help and that's it we never see metsy again we

never get a a um character resolution between the main characters that i'm not going to say i wanted because i didn't even want to be watching the movie but felt just kind of obvious like that's obviously what what should happen and the fact that they like cross paths means that whoever wrote this film was three seconds of of stream of consciousness away from reaching that same conclusion but just missed it like like i the ideas were like ships passing in the night and i reckon i reckon it was in the script and i want to trawl through the back catalog of the view episodes to see the one where Whoopi Goldberg runs onto set still wearing her costume from 9-11, covered in stage dust and building crumble and says, Hello everyone, I'm Whoopi Goldberg, welcome to the View.

Famously how they begin every episode. Even when she's not there, they get Ted Danson in blackface to pretend to be Whoopi Goldberg. That's a deep cut. So my favourite parts of the film were watching Charlie Sheen try to give what I'm sure he thought was an Oscar-worthy performance. to give what i'm sure he thought was like an oscar-worthy performance um because there were scenes like like aj mentioned where they punch the hole through the wall and his soon-to-be ex-wife soon-to-be widow um climbs out and he says she's like no everyone like climb up and he says um no just go run as fast as you fucking can but he's so overcome with emotion that he says growl and he like shakes his head from left to right and it's and then there's also a scene

i think it's his final scene um just before the firefighter gets there when everyone manages to get out of the elevator but then it falls a little bit so that the gap is no longer big enough to get out of the elevator but then it falls a little bit so that the gap is no longer big enough to get him out and he's he's giving a goodbye and i was like watching it i was like oh he's trying to cry this is him him trying to act um and it was just it was fun it was like watching a baby deer take its first steps but instead of but it was acting instead of walking um and it was it was it was equal parts painful and also like yeah good on you charlie you try good job dude yeah yeah you almost look like you're crying um and then as for my my low point of the film the high points were the bits i hated the most um but the low points um anytime it cut back to um charlie sheen's mother-in-law um and their kid two of

the worst actors in the film um no they're definitely the worst actors in the film oh yeah when when they find out that like they're stuck in the World Trade Center on 9-11, the kid goes, but you said we were going to go to the park. Like with the stone cold delivery you'd expect out of The Shining. Maybe that child didn't actually want to go to the park, but was going to the park because that's what his nan wanted to do and so that delivery in that respect was actually pitch perfect because they were communicating a much more nuanced and fleshed out backstory than had been afforded to

them in the script what do you fucking think about this coming from the guy who chastised me for trying to defend aspects of this film jesus Christ, Monty, pick a part. It's now 12% on Rotten Tomatoes, thanks to you, guy. Thank you. All right, what about you, Tim? Well, my highlight, Monty said, it was the six newspapers a day,

it was the funniest attempt at exposition or sort of adding dimensions to to a character it was just so ham-fisted and so hilarious to me um lowlights included seeing matt lauer on screen again uh just to be reminded that that piece of shit exists because he is a property owner in new zealand he owns land here um confirmed baddie. Was he in the film? He was Matt Lauer. He was in archival news footage. He was a sex pest in the film.

Okay. Thank you for clarifying. And he played the character pretty convincingly. That guy went method. And that guttural noise that you were talking about before, Richard, that is uttered by Charlie Sheen was repeated again, which makes me think maybe it was a directorial note, by the pill-popping woman.

Did you guys make note of that bit where she instructs everyone to lay down? I think Eve's gotten out of there. The cable has broken, so they are bracing themselves. And she goes, everybody lay down. Like full Ben Affleck Batman style. It was such a strange delivery. And then Charlie Sheen goes, they say it's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end.

Which, like, if I'm in that situation and someone says that, I'd be like, shut the fuck up, man. Don't even talk about that. You fucking idiot. I thought when he said that that I was like, if I was in that lift And I did that line, I would be I would crash, I would have got a big laugh Everyone would tell you to fucking Eat it, dude

You would lose every friend You would make in the elevator I just want to put in a bonus moment It's not really a highlight or a lowlight Maybe a highlight was When Charlie sheen is making sort of uh bandana like you know breathing cloths for everyone because the elevator is starting to be filled with noxious fumes uh and the the i can't eddie the the louise guzman yeah

louise guzman yeah he says uh well this is the most expensive thing i've ever touched italian was this italian and then uh charlie sheen says no it's american made or he says to brandon then he goes american made and i was like just in case we weren't clear whose side we're meant to be on in this movie it's america's all right yeah yeah it's a real hero hey what just uh as a closing note as well another um because i focused so much on the productions i feel like that was the energy i was bringing to this watch was just focusing on the production i like that despite the fact that this was a one room movie which is quite unique in the in the sort of um medium of cinema you do it in plays you do it in sitcoms not often do you attempt a feature film

inside one room they still manage to fuck up the sound because like in all the wide shots they were obviously still using a boom and you just heard this massive reverb and echo of everyone's voices because they had to pull the microphone back so much so it wasn't shot. And I was like, could this movie that was directed by a sound engineer not afford some fucking lapels? He was also, he was busy working

on the catering as well, dude. He took a lot on, right? Well, I'd just like to say from the bottom of my heart, a massive fuck you to the three of you for deciding to do this and then involving me um i give the movie one star out of five this is a three out of five for me and there is absolutely no reason why anyone should ever watch it. It's just there's no reason to. Yeah, it's a two star from me. I think I'm sticking to that.

Maybe one and a half, although Guy pointed out some good things about the film despite his own opinions. Yeah, I think it's a one star from me. Oh, there you go. Thank you, AJ. I was going to say, even a bad movie is right twice a watch no not this case some shit it'd be i think it's just it's the inherent um comedy of

casting a actor who's either more well known for comedy or more well known for being like an insane drug addict in a movie about a topic as sensitive as this i think that that is literally the first step of production and you've already gone wrong and i think that picking picking a 9-11 truther to headline your 9-11 movie is almost as genius a move as getting mal gibson to direct a biblical film it's just good stuff all around. Well, I've had a great time. Before we wrap up this conversation, I just want to quickly say for the listener

and for you, AJ, that you have had some sort of food in your beard for the entirety of the record. So just while everyone sort of signs off the listen, I just want you to retroactively imagine that AJ's had food in his beard the whole time. It's not actually food. What is it? And while we're rapping

it's like. What is it? It's just ripped up paper that I've been sort of. That you've been eating. I would have just left everyone thinking it was food. Yeah, so bad. Look, we can all point out funny things about our

each individual Zoom screening. Guy, you've slowly sunk further back in the screen. There was a point before where I could just see the top of your head and then complete void. It's called diversity of shots, AJ. Something you'd do well to read about. Let me bring the tone and friendliness back up by um shouting out once again uh aj's fantastic video on the cult popshire um youtube stream about american pie the franchise

which has a new entry coming in 2020 a prospect almost as insane as the film 9-11 coming out in 2016 um you should definitely watch it it's a really great well-made uh video essay by aj and richard did you have anything to do with it or are you just riding some coattails i helped with the writing it's really great richard has a very important role where where i send him my script and he tells me everything that reddit commenters will point out when i post it um which sounds small but is an invaluable uh part of the process so yeah there's like big whole paragraphs you've had to cut and i'm like people are going to tear this to shreds yeah yeah yeah exactly great uh well i for one would like to see Richard present that video the one of the abandoned paragraphs maybe we'll chuck it up on the Patreon

I'm gonna leave and get on with the rest of my day I don't want to think about 9-11 for at least another few months either the event or the film so everyone stay safe out there wash your hands and enjoy the life you have, which hopefully does not have Charlie Sheen in it. And next time there's some kind of global incident,

we'll come back together and do it. We'll make this a series. I'm not reuniting with you guys in 11 years to talk about COVID-19. I'm sorry, it's just not on the table.