The Worst Idea Of All Time - Friendzone Ninety Seven

Episode Date: April 18, 2020

Lockdown Friendzone with a plus one! Guy’s partner, filmmaker Chelsie Preston-Crayford joins us for the Friendzone (watch her film Falling Up here if you’re good with watching something beautiful and a bit intense). Guy’s taken a pro-book stance and is apparently, suddenly anti-COVID. Meanwhile everyone’s thirsty for CATS (2019)’s buttholes and we’ve got ANOTHER fantastic PhD student to throw on the pile. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well, it's the Friend Zone with Tim and Guy. It's the Friend Zone. We're gonna have a good time. It's the Friend Zone with Tim and Guy. Because making friends is the best idea of all time. Friend Zone. Hello everyone and welcome to the Friend Zone with Timbo and Guy Guy. In the middle of a lockdown, an international event has consumed the world that we shall not talk about because Guy has some very inappropriate takes on the whole issue. So we're going to leave that at the front doorstep and say goodbye to those dastardly opinions and hello to our friends. This is the Friend Zone. Hi Guy. If being against COVID-19 is an inappropriate opinion, then lock me up and put me in prison, because that is my take.

It's not just Tim and I today. We are joined in the comfort of our own home by the lovely Chelsea Preston-Crayford. Chelsea, thank you so much for joining us. You're most welcome. How do you do? I'm good. I'm starting to feel

uncomfortable by how pro-COVID you are. What? No, I'm not pro-COVID at all, especially not around the house. This is one of my most anti-COVID places. Most of the time you're talking about how much you love it. No, I am doing that through layers of irony. And if you can't see through the irony, then that's on me. I haven't seen a lot of you today even though we live together how are you what have you been doing i've been lying in my bed um which is our bed but i like to call it my bed sometimes um and mostly reading doing a lot of staring at my phone so then i deleted a bunch of apps you know what apps i deleted everyone knows what apps i deleted what tinder yeah absolutely it's just not safe right now

what are you reading chelsea what's the book that you've got on the guy i'm reading a book that actually Guy bought me called From the Corner of the Oval. And it's an account from a stenographer of her time working at Barack Obama's White House. Awesome. How specific. Yeah. It's an immensely readable book. specific yeah it's an immensely readable book it's sort of like the uh memoir equivalent of a a rom-com set in washington dc during the obama era it is um you're looking for sort of escapees

i've said before and i say it again people get it all wrong with reading they look at it as work they reach for books that are beyond their grasp or desire pick a book that you actually want to pick up and you won't look back like reading is a simple thing that's one of life's great joys you can transport yourself from the corner of a room during a global pandemic which i'm against by the way into literally anywhere else um that's my take on reading tim what are your thoughts uh firstly i think that people use reading as an ambitious way to achieve self-improvement and i think that is good and right and valid and secondly you've had you'd have to say that a stenographer's got a real leg up and the whole writing stakes because they can type so quickly and they know shorthand

they could just pound one out. Yeah, but they're not used to writing down their own ideas, are they? That's true. Maybe they're just... You know how everyone sits in cafes to write a novel? Imagine if they were doing it and just constructing a story based on conversations happening around them. It would be...

And they skillfully wove them all together. Chaotic. Also, to your point about reading for self-improvement, anyone who does that is a fucking nerd and deserves to be stuffed into a locker. Let's get into the mailbag. Sounds good. You haven't, I think, probably listened to, taken part in, have any idea what the Friend Zone's all about. Would you like to take a guess, Chelsea?

I think that what you do, from what I've gathered from our conversations, what you do is you read messages that you've received and you talk about them that is absolutely on the money tim takes the emails i take the facebook inbox tim is currently trapped in what what month and what year i am in a cold glass of emotion we call the 22nd of fe this year. Pretty good. The world has no idea what's coming for it, but certainly it's not a mile away from mid-April, which is where we currently are.

Would you like to take us through your first piece of correspondence, Tim? We're starting from atop a mountain where Callie has sent us $50 US. I think that's a Benjamin Franklin franklin am i right in saying that uh i think benjamin he's on the hundo i'll do the research while you read the email the email is very brief so i hope your internet connection connection is quick and carefree callie doffing writes i cannot believe you spent 300 on cats this is the kind of insanity i would like to see in the world so what callie's done is she's put her money where her mouth is very literally and she's enabled us to continue with our silly projects and really spurred us on both emotionally and financially callie that's a huge amount of money thank you so much

and you'll be happy to know that in the not too distant future, Guy and I will be dipping back into that swimming pool full of cats, writhing around, fucking, singing, dancing to explore Tom Hooper's director's commentary of the 2019 flop Cats. As we try and get a glimpse into what he was trying to achieve. You know what I want to hear from Kelly? If she's listening to this now, I want to hear if she would have done that a month later. In March 2017? And if she would have sent the same message. I think, here are my guesses.

Yes and no. Also, for those of you playing along at home that that is what we would describe in the finance world as a ulysses s grant so thank you so much for funding the arts callie now this chelsea do you think that covid would have changed callie's 50 contribution is that what you think it would have changed her contribution and i think it would have changed the wording of her message let's read it again with that kind of insanity i want to see in the world well she's no i think that's an even more perfect message now the kind of insanity that we see in the world right now is covid which is the kind that guy loves but the kind that callie loves is cats from 2019 yeah i am on the record as loving cats from 2019.

I'm so specifically on the record four and a half times over as loving cats 2019. I didn't say you didn't love it. I'm just saying you love COVID and you love cats and Callie loves cats. Yes, I'd agree with those statements, Tim. I am against COVID-19. I'll shout it from the rooftops. I'll mew it in the pews. I am against COVID-19.

I'll shout it from the rooftops. I'll mew it in the pews. This one comes from someone named Rachel, who writes, Dearest DJ Spindly and Flashman Crothers. I was wondering if you boys saw this tweet, and they've attached an exchange that happened on March 18th, which reads, I desperately need to tell all book about the making of Cats.

I knew this would be about the buttholes. It's definitely about the buttholes, isn't it? It could really help me get through this. And then a response from a user named atjackwaz, W-A-Z, which reads, A VFX producer friend of a friend was hired in November to finish some of the 400 effects shots in Cats movie.

His entire job was to remove cgi buttholes that had been inserted a few months before which means that somewhere out there there exists a butthole cut of cats um we've seen the internet and you know humanity at large really rally around the need for the butthole cut to be out in the public sphere did you know about this chelsea i didn't know about it and i don't know if i believe it i think it sounds like a rumor i reckon it's totally true i absolutely reckon it's there because the digital fur technology was very advanced and if you were like if for some reason you did want a photorealistic portrayal of what it would be like to have a humanoid cat dancing around we saw most of that with the exception of genitalia and buttholes,

which leads me to believe they had those things and then got rid of them. Where would the butthole be? I don't want to say butthole. I'm going to call it what it is. It's a bumhole. Okay. Okay. I think it would be exactly where you think it would,

right underneath their anthropomorphic cat tail there'd be this terrifying human-cat hybrid sphincter. It's so interesting to think that the arsehole makes up so little of the cat in terms of square inches or centimetres

but just how prominent it is like a cat's butthole. And it draws the eye it does it does um moving swiftly forward actually sorry oh it's time for you it's not time for me no no i didn't i didn't finish the the uh the message i got distracted it continued after the attached tweets to say i didn't see cats but i truly enjoyed experiencing it through your eyes and hearts the idea of cats but with buttholes has shaken me to my core. I hope that social distancing

is treating you both okay. Feel free to say my name. Love and friendship from Virginia USA, and that is from, as said before, Rachel. So thank you so much, Rachel. Rachel from Virginia has her mind on the cats

and the cats with the buttholes i want to see it too i didn't want to see that cut and there was like the petition that got a lot of steam online came out and i think around mid-march so about a month ago and it was like listen the world's gone to hell we need something to look forward to. Just fucking throw us a crumb. Give us this. And it's like, yeah, that's a real appeal to humanity. It's like there's a movement in the States which is based on an old verse from the Bible.

And I might have the verbiage of both of these things a bit wrong, but it's about turning your weapons into plowshares uh turning swords into plowshares and it's the whole concept of getting like something that has done harm and converting it into something that can do good for the community i would argue that cats 2019 did nothing but shake down a lot of financiers for money they never saw again and flush down the toilet some very famous people's careers what if we reappropriated this absolute dunger that didn't achieve its intended purpose and reshaped it in this covid climate to just a fun frivolous butthole fest that brings us a bit of levity for an

afternoon i'd i would love that i would love nothing more than if tom hooper's director's commentary was over the butthole cut. And a lot of it was about how infuriated he was when the studio told him, we need to take those assholes out because people aren't looking at the dancers. And then they said, don't talk about Jason Derulo like that.

He deserves to be in the picture. And Tom Hooper said, but you don't understand. The buttholes are dancing too. Have you seen pictures of this? Like surely there are pictures on the internet of these buttholes are dancing too have you seen pictures of this like surely there are pictures on the internet of these no because it'll be it'll just be in some render farm as like a version that never got out somewhere do you want to know what would be good though this really sparked my imagination guy you saying that the buttholes are dancing too what if we have a movie that's

no actors but just the butthole so it's all the scenery and all the backgrounds and it's just these cat anuses floating around rhythmically scarily easy to imagine what if they uh remove the it's like the opposite of a raisin what if they remove what what if they removed the faces from the cats and so it was these faceless cats with very prominent assholes oh my god that sounds terrifying or if you digitally swap the assholes with the faces so the assholes were the size of a face and the faces were the size of an asshole now you're being silly that's too silly You just expressed a desire to see cats with just assholes. And I crossed the line.

We were looking for the line and we found it, Guy. Too silly. That's horse shit. Chelsea, would you like to read a message? Sure. What one do you want me to read? Hi to my... Careful with that foot.

You're really close to a very important cable. Sorry. Okay. hi to my oh have i you're really close to a very important cable sorry okay we're doing this on olive's bed by the way so it's just funny to hear you say a very important cable on um a child's bed yeah okay this is my home office hi hi to mon and guy guy on the very very very odd chance you see this incredibly important and spiritually challenging article which is

do you want me to read it? Cats allegedly added buttholes then removed them. Please discuss it at length on the podcast because I absolutely must hear your very expert respective hot takes on this. Much love from a very enthusiastic and long-time listener, Maddie.

Oh, done and done, Maddie. P.S. Not sure why my phone chose to autocorrect Timbo to Timon, but I'm not sure if I'm ought to do the mad about it. So is Tim Tam. Although I will say that Nathan Lane was arguably an influential figure for most 90s kids in that particularly iconic role of Timon I would agree just about as iconic as yourself Mr Montgomery I mean if we're gonna if we're gonna talk about iconic roles and performers from the Lion King I think we should really turn our attention to Adult Simba, voiced by Matthew Broderick, who experienced an incredible career

and, of course, headlined that brilliant film that you love, Tim Ferriss Bueller's Day Off. And his career took a pretty interesting turn on one holiday when he was travelling through Ireland. He approached the rental desk of a car company and was given the keys to a car, which the make, I'm not too certain. And,

uh, he, he took that for a drive around the, you know, the, the, the roads. Not silly enough.

Maureen writes to us and says, regarding blaze pizza locations, forcing awkward conversation for the worst idea of all time listeners. And response to fellow friend of the boys, Audrey, the campaign, i hope i'm reading this right there's uh the punctuation's um throwing me a little bit the campaign to force blaze to hashtag pay the boys has also forced me into some serious moments with my family

i was home from university visiting my family in beautiful ann arbor mich uh, is it Mississippi? Michigan. Right. Michigan. Oh, beg your pardon. And Ann Arbor, Michigan, uh, USA. And my mother suggested we try the new fast casual pizza place,

which had moved into the local whole foods outbuilding. I asked her what it was called. Quote. I think it's something like fire. That's all in caps. Exclamation mark. It's something like fire or blaze she replied i turned to stare at her coldly i'm sorry leslie i said as i'm sure you're aware we can never

seriously consider entering a blaze pizza unless and until they hashtag pay the boys is this some bullshit internet garbage maureen you know there are starving children in africa and in new zealand mom and in new zealand thanks for everything you do maureen mccord say my name i'm a history phd student so there's no way anyone i know will hear this um another phd wait recipient or student student student what i'd like to give a huge shout out to maureen uh and her really fun relationship with her mom leslie um also holding true to our boycott of blaze pizza you probably don't know this chelsea but tim and i were sponsored unofficially by a fledgling pizza company called blaze pizza what is sponsored

unofficially so glad you asked tim we did a lot of promotion and advertising for blaze pizza when it was sort of i mean it was essentially a pizza startup when we were dealing with it patrick schwarzenegger had a small stake in the company. He was sort of pouring his heart out on social media, trying to drum up that stock price so that he could cash in later on. And Guy and I sort of got in behind like a set of geese who were in the second tier of a flock formation in air. He was doing the main bit of taking the wind resistance

and we were getting in the slipstream, but still helping the rest of the flock with our effort and as a result we were expecting riches beyond our wildest dreams and we received none or almost none um lest we forget our fateful afternoon meeting with the representative from the blaze pizza organization before who's the who's the basketballer who bought a steak lebron james so pretty much yeah we provided a lot of advertising that was not asked for or sanctioned by blaze pizza and at the end of our first season we sent them what we would call a reverse invoice or essentially a bill for services that were rendered that were not specifically asked for. And we weren't just laughed out of the room.

I mean, we weren't even spoken to. So we later on organized a sit-in at one of their franchises at the Grove in Los Angeles, at which their head chef and another person came and tried to buy our silence with two $50 pizza vouchers. And, I mean, temporarily they did. We sort of made peace with it. But anyway, us and all of our listeners are now staging an ongoing protest

and boycott of Blaze Pizza franchises. And so a huge shout-out to Maureen and, of course, Leslie for abiding her daughter's will, as far as I can tell from that anecdote. It just shits me that LeBron James is getting all this cream, as if he needed more money, off our labour. This is from the sweat of our backs. Yeah, it does wind you up. On a different note, though, we've got this one here from Sally,

who writes... I want Chelsea to read another one. Can Chelsea read the Sally one? Yeah, I mean, I was imagining reading this and then she would read the next one from our end, but... Nah, I hate that idea. I really feel caught in the middle here, guys.

Hey there, Timbo and Flash! I got into the worst idea, though it's through its sister podcast, Till Death Do Us Blart, and I've loved listening to you, you good, good boys, losing your mind over these bad movies ever since. I thought it was a bit ironic in season three, episode 46, about five and a half minutes in, when you urged all your listeners to stay indoors and lock yourself away, because I'm

currently listening through this backlog five days into my self-quarantine. Anyway, thanks for all the work you boys do and continue to live every moment and love every day if this is friends unworthy feel free to say my name sally cannon good name fantastic name um thank you so much sally and thank you chelsea for that beautiful reading of Sally's work. You're welcome. I don't think anyone should ever take very seriously... The sheer volume of shit that we have on the record as having said

that exists on the internet for a time immemorial now, a ghastly proposition to start taking anything we say as quote-unquote good advice or something you should act upon. Tim, if you just sort of do a rudimentary scan across all of the content we've released together is there any episode or moment in time or in a season that jumps out at you as being probably the scratchiest almost nerve-wracking

sort of memory of content that's on the record well only in retrospect i've got to say singing the praises of kevin spacey very explicitly before a very cool and big episode on season one of the worst idea of all time hasn't aged too well yeah i i felt like that one sort of at least contextually made sense to me it's sort of all the time since then off mic that you've been singing his praises and telling me that kevin spacey should be in the clear and house of cards was taken away from him wrongly that's the sort of uh stuff that jumps out at me my my most terrifying memory i think about it still is like i don't know what went out on the sex in the city 2 director's commentary which was five hour energy but that was five hours of

essentially stream of consciousness broadcasting and i hate to think about the silences that we would have been experiencing together and then my need to fill the silences by saying without any sort of filter literally whatever came into my head um yeah it's just it's a scary idea to think that because you saying it then really hammered home that everything we have said is in the public sphere for as long as people and the internet exists and i don't know a lot of what i've said it is ludicrous that neither of us have have been um in a sustained way cancelled yet and i think it's only a matter of time there's only so much shit you could just keep saying out loud without consequence.

I feel like Sally Cannon was really trying to encourage you guys and just give you some big ups and I feel like you've really turned it against yourselves here. It's nice to have a voice of reason in the room. She was trying to support you guys.

We thank you Sally for your correspondence and your patronage of the boys yeah it was very nice and you're right Chelsea we just need to take the fucking compliment

Kiwis we're unable to aren't we we just can't do it is it time for a guy message or is it time for a Tim message sadly is it time for a guy message is it time for a tim message sadly it's time for a tim message andrew writes dear good good frosty boys i'm writing you from snowy toronto guy i met you once after a show at the comedy bar last year and shared my chips with you when you were a little stoned waiting for the subway home do you remember that uh no but it does sound like a a memory i would have been a part of i love it for sure i'm writing because i just left a screening of cats

at the royal cinema as far as i know this was the first rep screening in toronto after its original run in cinemas i'm guessing rep is a contraction of like repetition yeah repeat repeat sort of yeah it's still playing some saturday 11 a.m screenings in the burbs and already it has become a cult favorite the movie was sold out and had lineups out the door there was a haze of government weed in the air on the way in and the lineup for beer and popcorn snaked through the lobby and into the theater halfway to the screen. Do you fucking remember when we got to go to the movies? Do you guys remember that shit? God, it was good. This screening was billed as a feline fever dream and featured face painting and illustrated poster sales in the lobby.

And cats karaoke on the big screen before the show started. During the movie, there was a big drag performance on stage. During Rum Tum Tuggers song. And burlesque dancers undressing to Macavity and Mr Mistoffelees. As well as a live singer for Memory. I felt like I was witnessing the birth of a cult movie. That will last for years. People were laughing and shouting and singing along. How big are cats?

Was shouted many times. As well as. Show us the dog, you cowards! Judi Dench and Ian McKellen both got huge rounds of applause when they appeared on screen, including a chant of Gus, Gus, Gus for the latter. When the chorus of Beautiful Ghosts came out of nowhere, there was a call for everybody out, and we all sang, But at least you have beautiful ghosts at the screen in unison.

This is my first viewing of Cats in any form. And I would never have gone if it wasn't for your inspirational podcast. I'm so glad I did. They said this was such a success they might screen it monthly. I've included a snippet of video I took of the round of applause as soon as the movie ended so you can uh rank it amongst the screenings you attended i'm also sending you 13 dollars which is how much i spent on the ticket to thank you for the joyful content all the best p.s i have a small uh token gift for each of you boys that's small enough to pop in the mail if you have a

mailing address or post office box i fucking don't but we need to get like a p.o box hey anyway guy what a what an email absolutely the idea that we've inspired anyone to go out and see cats um well it tickles my butthole pink i i love that because cats is a movie that does need to be seen to be believed although actually we did go chelsea you came to one of our screenings and you had uh a different response than the one i was having and what i expected you you you weren't into it do you think in the context of a stone sort of piss take screening you could have a good time at cats i feel like now uh the way in which the world and my needs inside of it has changed i want to watch cats now yeah i want to watch it i want to escape into that crazy world yeah um which is something i

never thought i'd say after the screening i feel like my disdain for it was like a point of tension between us because you were really trying to stay positive you know there was there was genuine tension in the home life because you didn't like cats and i don't know that i mentioned it on the podcast but um i i didn't like the way you responded i was furious i was furious um i was furious because I could feel you rejecting my genuine response. And I thought, and also, I don't know if you talked about this on the podcast, but you were coming home from the screenings and playing the music and singing the songs repeatedly.

I was putting on the shows. It felt like you were loving it to spite um the fact that it's terrible i was doing what i had to do to do my job um and you know i i want to put food on the table i want to be a provider in this house and it might not be through traditional means but god damn it i do what little i can um i think that is an untoppable moment of clarity and intimacy to end this friend zone on um what do you think guy yeah absolutely i yeah we've got uh you know what this is a haruki murakami writing tip is that what you do at the end of a writing session is don't finish the idea that you're excited about.

Leave it there. So when you come back to it the next day or the next moment, you're excited to be back in the office. And I've got an absolute ripper of a message from Nikki to look forward to, which actually addresses our mini-series on the heels of Cats, Do More.

And so I guess that's just something for us all to look forward to that was really fun chelsea thank you so much for joining us oh thanks for having me guys it's really nice to break up the monotony of lockdown life it was nice to leave my bed for olive's bed um yeah thanks for having me thank you chelsea and i know that these two will be too bashful to shout this out, but Chelsea's got a short film she made which has been released for, like, anyone can watch it on the internet. What is the name of it? How do people find it?

It's called Falling Up. It's on Vimeo. I don't know how they find it. If you search Vimeo Falling Up. Falling Up, Chelsea Preston-Crayford. It's Chelsea with an ie not an ea i'll put a link in the show note description i feel like it's important to say on this podcast it's it's not a comedy not at all so don't go in there it's an incredibly

you'll be disappointed yeah it's a it's a super beautiful um and super intimate view into it's a it's a it's a slice of life yeah i don't want to ruin it for anyone it's so good it was very powerful it moved me um yeah i'd recommend taking it seriously don't go in there stone ready to laugh your tits off because it's going to be a pretty intense experience uh actually maybe save it for after. Maybe, like, let's get a couple of goofy memories under our belt and then visit Chelsea's movie. You know what? Don't watch it.

But if you're in good stead. Don't watch it. Just never watch it. I fucking loved it. So if you want to see what Guy and I like, if you want to see the things that we actually, you know, we always watch silly movies. If you want to see what Guy and I like, if you want to see the things that we actually, you know, we always watch silly movies. If you want to see the stuff we really enjoy, watch Chelsea's short film.

It is incredible. Thanks, Tim. Bye, everyone. We love you, our friends. Stay well out there and look after each other and yourselves. Bye. Well, it's the friend zone with Tim and Guy. It's the friend zone. We're going to have a good time. Bye.