Transcript
dan mccoy
On this—the 300th episode of The Flop House—a special Cagemas show: The Wicker Man!
hallie haglund
And I’m here! Hallie Haglund, the star of the show! This movie sucked! [All laugh.]
music
Light, up-tempo, electric guitar with synth instruments.
dan
Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Flop House! I’m Dan McCoy.
stuart wellington
Oh boy, Dan! It’s me, Stuart Wellington!
elliott kalan
And for the 300th time—not really, I missed a bunch of episodes—it’s me, Elliott Kalan!
hallie
And me! Ha— [through laughter] Hallie Haglund! [Stuart laughs.]
elliott
Oh, so—so Dan, you’re continuing the—the tradition of not introducing our guests.
dan
Well, she’s been here—
crosstalk
Dan: —so many times I feel like she knows what’s… Stuart: It’s a special occasion.
dan
She knows what’s up. Yeah! It’s Hallie!
hallie
Hiii!
dan
Hallie, why haven’t you been here for a while? Tell us all.
hallie
Uh, well, y’know, ‘cause you didn’t [through laughter] invite me? [Laughs.] [All laugh.]
crosstalk
Elliott: That’s a good reason. That’s a very good reason. Dan: Well—well, I figured you were pretty busy—
dan
Because you were doing some major things in your life.
stuart
Yeah, they—uh—we—we’ve been using a different Discord channel or, uh… or—what— [Elliott laughs.] What do people use?
crosstalk
Elliott: Slack. Dan: I don’t know what that is. Stuart: Slack? Slack? Dan: Slack. Elliott: We went—we moved to a different Slack channel.
elliott
Uh, so—for those of you who are just joining us for the first time, who are decided that the 300th episode of the show is the ideal entry point, Hallie Haglund is by far the most popular, most requested guest on the program. Uh, longtime friend. She and I shared an office for many years, pitched a TV show—nobody was interested in. But I still think was really good. And—
hallie
I think it was great. It’s still out—it’s still—if an—if there are any [through laughter] takers! [All laugh.]
crosstalk
Elliott: And, uh—any— [Hallie laughs.] Stuart: Oh, wow. This is like a—
stuart
—pawnbroker’s type thing right now. [All laugh.]
elliott
And uh, Emmy and WGA award-winner—winning writer. Right? And executive producer of Problem Areas with Wyatt Cenac? Boy, you’ve done so much, Hallie! You’re very accomplished!
hallie
Thank you! I—also, [exaggeratedly gentle tone] a mother. But my number one title is: Mother. [Dan and Elliott laugh.]
stuart
Oh, that’s the toughest job you’ll ever love, right?
hallie
Yeah! Exactly! [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: Yeah. Tell us all about— Elliott: I—I forgot—
dan
—how your life has changed, Hallie. [Laughs.]
hallie
I had a baby. Uh— [Dan laughs.] A couple months ago. Four months ago.
stuart
Uh-huh. [Someone coughs.]
hallie
Uh… but yeah! So I just really been doing that. It’s hard to get out of the house. You know. I’m scared, mostly, to leave the house.
dan
[Laughs.] Oh.
dan
Uh-huh. [Elliott laughs.] You’re agoraphobic now.
hallie
[Laughs.] Yeah. Well—
elliott
Well, you know—Hallie, I’m—you have the thing that all, uh, early parents have where if you don’t keep your eyes on the baby at all times, then its heart and lungs will stop instantly?
hallie
Yeah. Mm-hm.
crosstalk
Hallie: Well, actually I’m just more afraid— Elliott: You just need to constantly watch.
hallie
—that people are gonna, uh, get really mad that my baby’s crying in public. It’s mostly that fear. [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
Elliott: Oh, yeah, there’s that too. Yeah. Dan:: Oh. Now—where’s—
dan
—the fear of David Bowie, the goblin king, stealing your baby on your list?
hallie
Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s… I mean, he’s dead. So.
dan
Oh, that’s true. [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
Stuart: Oh, wow. [Laughs.] Hallie: Sorry. [Through laughter] Spoiler alert, guys. Dan: No more babies stolen by David Bowie, I guess. Stuart: Y’know—
stuart
I feel like—I feel like Jennifer Connelly’s character really overreacts, ‘cause, I mean, she doesn’t have to babysit him for a while, right? He’s just doing all the hard work!
dan
Uh-huh.
hallie
[Laughs.] Yeah!
crosstalk
Stuart: I mean, arguably his goblins are doing it. Hallie: Just bring him back before—
hallie
—mom and dad get home, right?
stuart
Yeah, I mean—I feel like that was kind of a loose agreement when he left— [Elliott laughs.] —after he was done spinning that ball around in his hands and turning it into a snake.
elliott
Yeah. The worst-case scenario: that baby picks up some amazing globe-juggling skills.
stuart
Yeah.
elliott
Which—I’d—I’d be incredibly happy to have! Although I will say, I was once in a park in London, England, and I saw this guy— [Dan laughs.] —trying to impress some pretty girls with, uh, by juggling a glass globe like in, uh, Labyrinth, and I was like—that is so impressive that you can do that, and at the same time it is so dorky and unimpressive! [Laughs.]
hallie
Yeah. Let me say—a guy—a—no man hath won my heart with, uh, juggling. [Dan and Elliott laugh.] Just saying that.
stuart
[Through laughter] Okay.
dan
Um… hey, guys! It’s the 300th Episode! We said it in the intro, but it bears repeating.
stuart
Yeah, what do we do on this podcast, Dan?
dan
Well, we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it, and by cosmic conjunction, our 300th Episode falls on our annual holiday of Cagemas, where we celebrate the work of St. Nicolas Cage.
stuart
Mm-hm.
elliott
Is there any greater proof of a God than that these two things lined up? I don’t need one. [Hallie laughs.]
dan
[Through laughter.] Yeah.
stuart
I mean, it’s certainly a spigot that keeps pouring out delicious treats for us to— [All laugh.] —uh, to—
crosstalk
Stuart: —deal with. Dan: A spigot that pours out treats. [All laugh.]
hallie
Mmmm.
elliott
It’s Nicolas Cage, you’re saying. [All laugh.]
stuart
Yeah!
elliott
‘Cause that—I mean, then that spigot would get clogged up pretty fast, right?
dan
Yeah. I was, uh, I was watching this movie actually at a— [Laughs.] Bar on my phone? Because I had a holiday party to go to last night? [Someone laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: And I needed to, like— Elliott: Dan—Dan—your devotion— Stuart: Dan’s working on being—
stuart
—present and in the moment [through laughter] when at parties with his girlfriend. [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
What I like is he’s like, “I’m both gonna not enjoy this party and also—"
crosstalk
Elliott: “—miss a lot that’s going on in the movie.” Dan: No, no, no, no, no, no. I said before the party.
dan
I had to kill some time before the party. I—I—it was the only time I could work in watching our movie of this week, which, uh, is The Wickerin Man—Wicker Man, as we announced.
elliott
No, the—The Wickernman Man. [Stuart laughs.] That’s probably what it sounded like on your phone at the bar. [Laughs.]
dan
But, uh, to the point of Nicolas Cage churning out movies, the bartender’s like, “Hey, what are you watching there? And I’m—and I kind of awkwardly had to explain why I was watching [through laughter] an old bad Nicolas Cage movie?”
stuart
Uh-huh. You’re like, “Uh, I have a podcast?” [All laugh.]
dan
Yeah. And he was like, “Oh, I love Nicolas Cage! I love him! He’s always watchable! He always just—y’know, he keeps pumping out those movies, though. Not all of them good. ‘Cause he buys a bunch of stuff. He has Action Comics Number One—” like, he’s telling me about Nicolas Cage— [Elliott laughs.] I’m like, “No, sir, I know. I realize. He’s, uh… he churns out a lot of crap for the money.” [Elliott laughs.]
stuart
Mm-hm. [Laughs.]
hallie
Have you guys ever watched, um, City of Angels for Cagemas?
crosstalk
Elliott: No, we should sometime. Dan: The, uh, Wings of Desire remake?
crosstalk
Elliott: Yeah. Hallie: I loved that movie.
dan
[Laughs.] Did you?
crosstalk
Hallie: I mean, I— Elliott: What was this—
elliott
What was the—
crosstalk
Elliott: What was the song from? Dan: It was the Goo—Goo-Goo Dolls song “Iris.” Stuart: Yeah.
hallie
Was it?
crosstalk
Dan: [Singing] I don’t want the world to see me! Stuart: [Sing-song voice] That’s what it’s called?
elliott
Oh, right, right. Yeah. Ugh.
hallie
What—no—but wasn’t—wasn’t also that Sarah McLaughlin, like, [singing] in the arms—
crosstalk
Hallie: [still singing] —of the angels. Stuart: I thought that was from sad animal commercials.
dan
Yeah. [Elliott laughs.]
hallie
No, that one is, uh… that—that’s a different Sarah McLaughlin song.
crosstalk
Stuart: Okay. Hallie: Right?
hallie
She—I mean, a lot of her songs—
crosstalk
Hallie: —are really sad. Dan: I mean, I think a lot of things—
dan
—could be in the arms of angels, guys.
elliott
I mean—
crosstalk
Elliott: I don’t—I mean— Hallie: Harps? Dan: Why not both, as the internet says?
hallie
Harps? Uh— [Laughs.] Feathers? [Elliott and Dan laugh.] That have fallen out of their wings?
crosstalk
Stuart: Occasionally a—a trumpet? Elliott: Mm-hm. That’s a—a—
stuart
To herald, uh, the Almighty?
dan
Now, you think that angels shed feathers [through laughter] Hallie. [Hallie laughs.]
hallie
Well they—
dan
As divine beings, they—I would—I would assume that the feathers just stay in the whole time—
crosstalk
Dan: —with your— Elliott: Ew, and get really— Hallie: I mean—
elliott
—gross and dirty? ‘Cause they’re just stick—they’re just the same feathers but also all the crap floating around in Heaven getting stuck in ‘em? I don’t think so—
crosstalk
Elliott: —Dan. I think they shed those things. Stuart: Wait, is— Hallie: Yeah. Come on.
stuart
Is that why birds shed feathers? [Dan laughs.] ‘Cause they get crap stuck in them? [Hallie laughs.]
elliott
It’s as good a reason as any!
stuart
Okay!
dan
I guess so. Um, so look. Uh—
elliott
So Dan—Dan—why—so—so you—so the bartender asked a very good question to you: why are you watching The Wicker Man? Why did you decide that we should watch The Wicker Man for this, our [declarative voice] 300th Episode—
crosstalk
Dan: I don’t— Elliott: —Spectacular!
dan
I don’t actually think I was the one who suggested it. I think it may have been Stuart. But—
stuart
It was probably me. ‘Cause we’re, uh, ‘cause we want to do a Nicolas Cage movie and we’ve done a whole bunch of these episodes and we’re like, what’s a classic good-bad Nicolas Cage movie?
dan
Yeah, we were going back, y’know, for the 300th Episode, we decided—let’s not just, like, pick some piece of crap that he did this year. Let’s go back and do—
elliott
Sorry, Kill Chain. [Stuart laughs.]
dan
[Through laughter] Yeah. Let’s go back and do the one that, uh, many heralded as a new bad movie classic when it came out, but was before our time—
stuart
Yeah. Yeah.
dan
Making this podcast.
stuart
See ya next year, Primal!
dan
Yeah.
elliott
[Through laughter] Yeah. [Laughs.]
stuart
Catch ya on the flip side, The Guardian! [Dan and Elliott laugh.]
elliott
[Laughs.] I fee— [Through laughter] they did come out with a lot of movies recently. Uh, uh, the—I feel like, uh, The Wicker Man might—was the moment that a lot of people realized for the first time, like, oh, he’s making some real bad movies these days.
dan
Yeah.
elliott
‘Cause this was also like a big release. A lot of the movies that we’ve been doing with him lately are small movies. They’re little minis.
stuart
Yeah.
elliott
Little movie minis.
stuart
Well this—
elliott
Like, you just fun-size. You just pop a bite. Pop him in and you end up eating more than you would if it was a full-sized movie, ‘cause they’re so small and you’re like, ugh, I thought I was gonna—save calories by eating these fun-sized Nicolas Cage mini-movies and then it’s like, oh no! Now I have more Nic Cage in my belly— [Hallie laughs.] —than I thought I would if I just had a full-sized Nic Cage.
dan
Now, Hallie, is this reminding you of how irritating Elliott can be? [Stuart laughs loudly. Hallie joins in.] Are you getting flashbacks? Or—
hallie
I just love how Stuart just, like, blacks out. [All laugh.] He’s like—
crosstalk
Hallie: Uh-huh. Yeah. Dan: Yeah, he goes into a fugue state. Stuart: Yeah, like a trance. [Hallie laughs.]
stuart
Um—yeah! So thi—and this is also, uh, this is also a movie that has a relatively well-known supporting cast. You have your Frances Conroy, you have Ellen Burstyn, you got Leelee Sobieski—
crosstalk
Hallie: Yeah, how’d they get all those— Elliott: Oh yeah. Holly Parker—
hallie
—stars? [Dan laughs.]
stuart
And it also has a—
dan
[Through laughter] Stars like Leelee Sobieski!
stuart
At the time, a relatively hot indie director!
crosstalk
Dan: Yeah, Neil LaBute. Stuart: Uh, Neil LaBute.
stuart
Who taught at IPFW, the community college, uh, in my hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana!
dan
I feel like—I feel like Neil LaBute should be addressed a little bit off the top of the mov—
crosstalk
Dan: —off the top of the podcast Elliott: Alright. Dear—
elliott
Dear Neil LaBute, How are you doing? What’s going on? [Hallie laughs.] Near LaBute, 123 LaBute Street—
dan
Okay.
elliott
Uh—
dan
Well, he’s a—
elliott
Los Angeles, California.
dan
He was a playwright and then, y’know, he made movies. His first, uh… I don’t know if it was his first movie overall, or the first one that ma—
crosstalk
Dan: —got attention. Stuart: In the Company of Men? Elliott: In the Company of Men?
dan
In the Company of Men, which at the time—so this is a movie about sort of an alpha male who enlists a beta male in this plot to sort of romantically destroy a woman, and he’s doing it for his own kind of personal business, uh… advancement?
stuart
Mm-hm. A lot of the—lot of it was shot in Fort Wayne, Indiana, my hometown.
dan
And the end of the movie is, like, the—the weaker man, like, realizes he—
elliott
No, no, the wicker man, Dan. [Hallie laughs.] The wicker man.
dan
[Coughs.] The weaker of the two men realizes— [Hallie laughs.]
elliott
The wicker of the two men. [Hallie laughs.]
dan
Realizes that he has actual feelings for this woman, but of course he’s treated her horribly and she is deaf and he’s sort of yelling at her, trying to get her to—to pay attention to him, and—
hallie
I don’t think that’s gonna help!
dan
And— [All laugh.] Yeah. And she does not hear him; she just sees him, like, sort of silently, like, trying to do this. And it plays as this kind of final small triumph over these horrible men? That—that she does not have to listen to him? At the time, watching this movie, I thought, okay, this is like… about what we now would call toxic masculinity. It’s taking the woman’s side. But then as Neil LaBute has made more and more movies—
stuart
Yeahhhh.
dan
You’re like, oh no. Maybe he’s just a misogynist.
crosstalk
Stuart: Yeahhh. [Laughs.] Elliott: Yeah. Dan: As you’ll see in—
dan
—in The Wicker Man.
elliott
That—that reaches its full flower in The Wicker Man, a movie in which Neil Nicola—the—I say Neil Cage—Nicolas Cage punches or kicks no fewer than three women! [All laugh.]
dan
It’s true.
elliott
Who are all, like—and this is a guy who’s in action movies. So it’s a little bit—it’s like, as bad as it would be, it’s even worse because he’s a guy who you know, like, works out. Is used to fighting John Travolta. Like, y’know.
hallie
I mean, at least those parts weren’t boring. [Stuart laughs.]
crosstalk
Hallie: Like the rest of it. [Laughs.] Stuart: Oh, wow. Yeah. Dan: That’s true.
stuart
I guess you’re right.
elliott
This—
stuart
The—and this is—this is part of the motorcycle period of Nicolas Cage movies— [All laugh.] —where his character—one of his character’s defining traits is that he is a motorcyclist.
crosstalk
Elliott: Yeah. Although he’s— Stuart: As we see in the opening scene.
elliott
In the opening—so should we jump into the movie?
crosstalk
Dan: Let’s do it. Elliott: Should I jump into my summary?
stuart
Yeah.
elliott
Okay.
stuart
First thing we see is Aaron Eckhart, sitting as a trucker at a truck stop diner. [All laugh.]
elliott
[Laughs.] So—I don’t think we need to go into such detail on it, but, uh, Nicolas Cage, he is playing Edward Malice? [Stuart laughs.] I will refer to him from this point on as “Nic Cage.” [Dan laughs.] Uh—he’s a—kind of a moody California motorcycle cop.
stuart
And the first time—the first time we’re introduced to him, it’s a woman who are—uh—the—the woman working at the diner calls him “Honey”—
hallie
Honey.
stuart
That is not a coincidence.
elliott
Mm. No. ‘Cause honey will play an important role— [Hallie gasps.] —in the movie. Uh, not Honey Boy, the up—the current film.
crosstalk
Hallie: I wanna wa—I wanna see that. Elliott: But, uh, I just— Dan: The Shia LeBeouf movie?
hallie
Have you guys watched that?
dan
I got a screener for it.
crosstalk
Hallie: Yeah, me too. Elliott: Yeah, I got the—
elliott
—screener but I haven’t watched it yet. Uh, it—but—I mean, I guess they turn Nic Cage into a honey boy by the end of it. [Hallie laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: Uh, good one, Elliott. Stuart: [Through laughter] Oh, we’ll get—we’ll get to that. Yeah.
elliott
So he’s—he’s bit—he gets interrupted by that waitress while he’s looking at some self-help tapes, or—a self-help paperback that’s on the spinner rack.
crosstalk
Stuart: I think it’s a tape. Elliott: Then—
stuart
‘Cause he refers to his tapes later.
dan
Guys, this is really important to the plot of the movie. [Stuart laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: Let’s get granular about this. [Elliott laughs.] Hallie: And she says— Elliott: So—
hallie
Your salad’s up! [All laugh.]
crosstalk
Elliott: Uh, so one day— Dan: The first 12-hour episode—
dan
—of The Flop House. [All laugh.]
hallie
But we never find out if he ate the salad!
dan
That’s true.
hallie
Because then it cuts to the road. [All laugh.]
stuart
Yeah, maybe he took the salad to go. [Laughs.] [Hallie laughs.]
elliott
[Laughs.] So he’s eating a salad when he rides his motorcycle— [Hallie laughs.] —down the—down the highway. Uh, he’s just stopping people left and right. He’s a good motorcycle cop. One day, he pulls over a mother whose young daughter has been throwing a doll out the window of the car. [Hallie and Stuart laugh.] And as he’s retrieving the doll, a huge truck hits the car and it bursts into flames! It comes out of nowhere! And the truck seemingly disappears. Like, I don’t think we—the—it’s—even in the—it just kinda keeps going. Uh, he tries to save the girl who is very stoic while the car around her is in flames and he’s trying to smash through the back window, but he fails and it explodes before he can get her out. That’s the first of many failures for—
crosstalk
Elliott: —Nicolas Cage in this movie. Stuart: Uh-huh. And he—and he— Hallie: Wait—but—
stuart
He sinks into the cool oblivion of passing out. [Elliott laughs.]
hallie
Did—and—but wait. When he picked the doll up off the road, was that reminiscent for you guys of the moment in Con Air when he had the bunny—
crosstalk
Dan: Ohhhh! Stuart: Ohhhh!
hallie
—and he’s like—put—give the bunny back. [All laugh.] That’s what I thought of.
stuart
I mean, that’s the thing when you have one of these legacy actors, right? Is that almost everything he does is weighted with such significance— [Hallie laughs.] —when you judge it all against—
crosstalk
Stuart: —his huge career. Elliott: Oh. Yeah. Hallie: In the oeuvre. [Hallie laughs.] [Stuart laughs.] Dan: Isn’t there a similar shot in—
dan
—Raising Arizona, too? Where, like, the biker, like, pulls—pulls the actual baby off the ground? Am I—
crosstalk
Elliott: Yes. That the baby is— Stuart: Oh, yeah.
elliott
—sitting in a—the baby is sitting in a car seat on the ground and the biker drives by and lifts it up and puts it on the front of his bike. Uh—
crosstalk
Elliott: Yeah, so, I mean—wheels with— Stuart: It’s the lone biker of the apocalypse, right?
elliott
Wheels within wheels. Every shot of the movie pays homage to a— [Hallie laughs.] —to another Nicolas Cage movie. It’s funny how you mention Raising Arizona because, much as in that movie, in the next scene Nicolas Cage is sitting on a couch— [Stuart laughs.] —he is—and I’m sure that’s a—a deliberate mirroring—he has fallen into a depression. His friend, a lady cop, comes by to give him his mail— [Hallie laughs.] —that was being collected at the station for some reason? And she’s like, oh, you got your commendation. And I wanted to be like, why?
crosstalk
Elliott: He failed. He did not save those folks. Hallie: Yeah! That’s what I said! Dan: Yeah, but also—also— Stuart: Yeah!
stuart
—they never found the bodies! That’s the other thing!
crosstalk
Elliott: And she—she’s like we n— Dan: They never found the body!
dan
So why did he get a commendation for this thing like he—they only have his word that he was, like, trying to help—
crosstalk
Dan: —this kid out of the— Elliott: But also—yeah. They—it—are they saying that— Stuart: He didn’t do it—yeah! He didn’t do anything! He—he tricked a truck into—
stuart
—running over a car! [Laughs.]
elliott
[Through laughter] Are they saying that when that car exploded, the heat was like that—at the center of a nuclear weapon and it vaporized the woman and the—and the girl inside the car? Come on.
dan
Well, guys, I—look. Earlier in this week, I watched the original Wicker Man? Before watching this?
crosstalk
Stuart: Uh-huh. Elliott: Oh, I like the original one.
dan
Yeah. No, it’s a good movie. But I wanna—I will bring it up a couple of times, hopefully not too much, but to make—
crosstalk
Hallie: Hopefully not. Dan: —some instructive parallels? [Laughs.] Uh.
elliott
Uh-huh.
dan
And this points to two things where I think this movie goes wrong. Number one, the fact that the bodies disappear points to some sort of actual supernatural thing that happens in this movie?
stuart
Uh-huh. Sure.
dan
Whereas The Wicker Man, you’re never quite sure—the original—you’re never quite sure whether there’s actual power to these pagan rituals or whether they’re just a bunch of misguided crazy people.
stuart
Who sing some really great songs.
dan
And number—
crosstalk
Dan: Number two— Elliott: Yeah. They—they do—
elliott
—have some great songs in the original one.
dan
Yeah. Number two, this, uh, movie—the remake—seems to think it needs to give Nicolas Cage a tragic backstory as motivation for wanting to find a lost girl? When— [Elliott laughs.] Like, the fact that he’s a police officer is enough in and of itself. And then later on we find out that this lost girl is his, so…
crosstalk
Hallie: I mean, it’s not motivation when he’s a police officer— Elliott: Oh, thanks, Dan. Spoiler alert. We haven’t gotten to that point, but.
hallie
—in California and it’s happening in Washington.
dan
Yeah.
stuart
Uh-huh.
stuart
Well… California is higher up in the—in the pyramid of where you can be a cop. So it’s like— [Elliott laughs.] —if you’re a New York cop, you’re a cop everywhere you go.
hallie
Ohhh.
crosstalk
Stuart: But if you’re a cop from like— Elliott: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
stuart
—I dunno, say Fort Wayne, Indiana—you—you know you—you’re not a cop if you go to other places.
elliott
And similarly, if you’re from Detroit and you go to Beverly Hills, nobody takes you seriously as a cop. And that’s why you gotta be goofy and stick bananas into gas pipes!
crosstalk
Stuart: Mm-hm. Dan: Yeah.
elliott
Uh, so—another—two things I wanna mention about the original Wicker Man, as long as you’re opening up that can of wicker worms— [Hallie laughs.] —is that the original Wicker Man is very much about a man of traditional faith—
dan
Yes.
elliott
Who is—who is set against a—and a prudish man—who is set against this pagan, very, like, uh… like… fertility sexual atmosphere. And you really feel like he is worried about his soul throughout the whole movie? And here they’re trying to make—and I guess that Nic Cage is worried about his sanity?—but it’s Nic Cage. You know he’s crazy. So it doesn’t—it’s not that big a—the deal?
crosstalk
Stuart: He—he—he plays— Dan: No, it’s like—
stuart
He’s like a big crazy—this is a big crazy Nic Cage performance, where he just kinda like runs from scene to scene, kind of acting dumb, doing strange things like— [Elliott laughs.] —going—bursting into a classroom and wiping off the chalkboard. [Laughs.] [All laugh.]
elliott
And there’s—and the first one is very much, like, this guy—it—it’s a confrontation between old religion and—you could say—older religion. You know. And—in—in this one it’s just a confrontation I guess between a man who hates women and all these women who— [through laughter] Who—who hate men?
dan
Yeah. I was trying to figure out what the—they thought the metaphor was? Or what Neil LaBute thought the metaphor was? ‘Cause I—it does seem like, okay—
crosstalk
Elliott: Uh, I’ll tell you Dan. Dan: It’s like—
elliott
The metaphor is bees.
dan
The masculine versus the feminine is all I can think of. And it’s very strange, ‘cause like… [Sighs.] A charitable reading would be that the women have this power that men can’t comprehend, but it comes off as just, like, women are villains [through laughter] is the—
elliott
I mean, that is—I don’t—I think that is the reading. I think the reading of the movie is “women are villains,” and they—if you give them power, they’ll destroy men. But the other thing I wanna mention is that—because of that—that kind of, like—to put it—to put it one way, like, Christianity/Catholicism versus paganism in the old movie, the old movie is like really erotic. Like, really strongly erotic.
crosstalk
Elliott: In the way that this one— Stuart: I mean, ‘cause it’s got— Hallie: Yeah.
stuart
It’s got Christopher Lee in it, dude. [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Elliott: Christopher Lee, who is a— Stuart: The dude’s so sexy.
elliott
—sex—sex god. There’s a reason that Count—that [Laughs.] There’s a reason they have all those Count Dooku sleeping pillows that look like him [through laughter] and you put ‘em in your bed?
stuart
Yeah, it’s ‘cause his lightsaber’s got some English on it!
dan
Yeah.
elliott
They—every time they were putting the Frankenstein makeup on him when he playing the monster, they’re like, “Gotta slather on more makeup. This guy is just too sexy. Come on. We can’t have a sexy Frankenstein monster! Andy Warhol did that already.”
crosstalk
Elliott: Actually, he hadn’t by that point yet. But— Stuart: So—should we—
stuart
Should we keep talking about, uh, a movie that we didn’t watch for the podcast— [Elliott laughs.] —or the movie we did watch for the podcast?
elliott
Good point. Good point. So anyway, Nic Cage, his mail gets brought to him by his coworker. Turns out his ex-fiancé—Willow Woodward—uh, she ran away before they could get married. She moved back to her home, a secretive island compound—commune—in Washington State called Summersisle where they make honey—and she writes and says “My daughter Rowan has disappeared and I need your help.” And her handwriting is—
hallie
Impeccable.
elliott
Perfect! It’s perfect. Her—
crosstalk
Elliott: —handwriting looks like someone printed out a letter— Hallie: Breathtaking. Sublime.
elliott
—using a handwriting font. Which I suspect they did. [Laughs.]
stuart
So do we wanna point out that her—her name is Willow Woodward, and Willow is a wood word? [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Stuart: Just like her daughter, Rowan, is— Dan: Ah, interesting.
stuart
That’s also a “wood word.”
crosstalk
Dan: Interesting. I—I wanna point out— Hallie: Hmm.. Elliott: Yeah, and—well—that’s—
dan
—that—and I mean, this comes from the original Wicker Man so I can’t make fun of it too much in relation to this movie?
crosstalk
Dan: But— Stuart: And Wicker—Wicker— Elliott: Yeah, ‘cause the original Wicker Man is sacred. Sure. Dan: But Wicker—
stuart
—is also a wood word. [[Laughs.]
dan
‘K. [Elliott laughs.] But—but— [Laughs.] That’s true. But Summersisle, this—this island—you would think it’s just called “Summer’s Isle,” but it’s named after someone called “Summersisle,” you find out.
elliott
Yeah, it’s like—it’s like the Outer Bridge Crossing.
crosstalk
Elliott: Which is named for a man named Outer Bridge. Dan: Yeah, exactly.
elliott
Which is—these things happen! Life is funny that way. Y’know, life is beautiful, Dan. Buongiorno, Principessa! [All laugh.]
hallie
Wait—but Rowan is a kind of tree?
stuart
Yeah!
hallie
I didn’t know that.
stuart
Yeah!
hallie
What kind of tree is it?
stuart
I’ll—I’ll—well, I guess I’ll google it. [Dan laughs.]
dan
[Through laughter] What—what would satisfy you, Hallie? What answer would satisfy— [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
Hallie: I just want—I—I would like— Dan: Like, deciduous or coniferous or?
hallie
—to know that, yes. Among other things. [All laugh.]
elliott
Uh, so, uh, something that we’ll see later is all the women are named after plants, and Nicolas Cage gets frustrated by this— [Hallie laughs.] —as if they’re doing it to insult him? And when he meets—later he meets Sister Rose, he goes—of course! Another plant! [All laugh.] As if—as if they’re just doing it to bug him, which is hilarious. Uh, uh, Nicolas Cage is like—I have nothing going on in my life and I need to find a girl to make up for the girl I couldn’t save, so I’m gonna do this. Uh, he goes up to Washington State. He takes a boat up and sees a girl who looks like Rowan and imagines a truck hitting her on the boat? [All laugh.] And— [Laughs.] Takes some pills.
stuart
There’s also the moment where I’m like—
hallie
Oh, yeah, the pills.
crosstalk
Hallie: He’s always taking those pills. Stuart: I’m like—
stuart
Is Neil LaBute trying to remake Wicker Man or trying to remake Don’t Look Now? [Laughs.]
elliott
Uh, there’s a little bit of both, and he’s failing at—at both of them. So. He’s going to—he bribes delivery pilot to take him to the island and then wades ashore to find some dour women who tell him this is private property. Uh, and they’re with these two silent guys holding a sack of something. [Hallie laughs.] And the sack is wet, so I assume it’s bleeding, and there’s something struggling inside it. And they’re like, take a look! And he goes to look, and it jumps—before he can see what’s in it—and he shut—and he—and he flinches, and they laugh at him and he walks away. And we never find out what was in that sack.
crosstalk
Hallie: But they’re like— Elliott: And I’m like—
hallie
“It’s not your girl” or something. [All laugh.] They say something like that. [Laughs.]
elliott
And—and the whole scene I’m like—what is the point of this scene? [Dan and Hallie laugh.] [Through laughter] Like, what is—I don’t understand it.
hallie
What do you think was in the sack?
elliott
Yeah, what do you think was in that sack?
stuart
I would say—I would say there’s—
crosstalk
Hallie: Jelly. Stuart: —probably—
stuart
A bunch of—a bunch of, like, raspberries? And some kind of— [Elliott laughs.] —an animal that likes eating the raspberries. [Hallie laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: Like a little bear cub. Elliott: [Through laughter] Oh, I see.
elliott
So—so like when the bear cub is good, they give—they reward it— [Hallie laughs.] —by giving it a little bit—a couple minutes in the raspberry sack? [All laugh.]
stuart
[Through laughter] Yeah! And he’s mad ‘cause when they start to open up the bag, they’re like—my time’s not done yet! [All laugh.]
elliott
He’s l—he’s like, I’ve been counting in my head! I’m not done eating raspberries! [All laugh.]
crosstalk
Dan: You guys are really— Elliott: I mean, that’s as good a—
dan
Like, putting an emphasis on that “p” in raspberries. [All laugh.]
elliott
That’s how bears talk, Dan! That’s how bears talk. They pronounce every letter in the word. They’re like— [emphasizing hard “g”] “ni-gut is falling but I wanna eat more rasp-berries!” [All laugh.]
stuart
So then he goes—doesn’t he go into, like—
crosstalk
Stuart: —the local bar or hotel? Hallie: Y’know, it’s interesting, though. Bears love honey. [Laughs.]
elliott
[Laughs.] Oh yeah, you’re right, Hallie. Bears do love honey. And dogs love trucks. Hmm. Interesting. [Laughs.] [Hallie laughs.] So.
dan
[Through laughter] What? [Elliott laughs.] Let’s move on.
elliott
Uh, and—okay. Uh, so he goes into the—
crosstalk
Elliott: —local— Hallie: I want to—
hallie
—explore this a little more, actually. [All laugh.]
elliott
[Laughs.] He goes into the local, like, inn or café and it’s all women there, and already he mutters to himself, huh. Must be ladies’ night. And I’m like— [Hallie gasps.] Fuck you. Come on, man! [Laughs.]
hallie
I missed that!
elliott
[Through laughter] Like—he’s—uh, and Willow works there and so does Sister Beech, a very humorless woman, and, uh, she’s hilarious.
crosstalk
Hallie: I like Sister— Elliott: Her performance is hilarious.
elliott
Uh, and she serves him some mead and explains to him what mead is, and he sees a bee on the bar and he kills it by slamming his mug down on it? Right?
crosstalk
Elliott: And she’s like why— Stuart: But not after—
stuart
Not until after he, like, takes a nice hearty gulp of that. [Elliott laughs.] And you know what? That’s all I really wanted in this movie is to see—
crosstalk
Stuart: —Nicolas Cage fucking choke down some mead. [Laughs.] Dan: Yeah, he seemed pretty into that mead.
elliott
[Laughs.] Now, I’ve never had mead. Have any of you guys ever had it?
crosstalk
Stuart: Yeah, of course! Dan: I’ve had mead, yes.
hallie
No.
dan
My, uh—
elliott
So what’s it like?
dan
Well… [Sighs.]
stuart
It’s a—usually too syrupy-sweet for my tastes.
dan
Yeah. It’s—it’s honey wine. It’s—it’s—it’s—it can be okay. I have a— [Laughs.] So, this will surprise not Stuart, knowing the college that we went to together, but a—
crosstalk
Dan: —classmate of—of ours— Elliott: Harvard University, yeah.
dan
—had her wedding and her hobby was making mead.
stuart
Cool, yep.
dan
And so [through laughter] there was a bunch of mead at the wedding, and y’know, it’s not bad. I would not choose to drink it normally, but.
stuart
Uh-huh. But, y’know, when you’re hard up.
crosstalk
Dan: But I—well, you know, if I’m at a Renaissance Faire, why not? Stuart: When you got—when you got— [Laughs.] When you got the shakes.
crosstalk
Stuart: [Laughs.] You’ll drink anything, y’know? Dan: Yeah. Elliott: Yeah, like—
elliott
When on Summersisle, do as the Summersislers do! I guess. So Hallie, you’ve never had mead, right?
hallie
No.
elliott
Okay, so what would you imagine it would taste like?
hallie
I thought it was, like—I didn’t know that it tasted sweet. I thought it was, like, more beer-like. Y’know, like, uh… like a Guinness or something.
stuart
Oh, okay. Like a—like a—like a porter or a stout.
hallie
Yeah. Exactly.
crosstalk
Elliott: See, ‘cause I always imagined—y’know, have you— Stuart: Or a Schwarzbier.
elliott
Yeah, if you’ve ever been to a Medieval Times, they serve you—
crosstalk
Stuart: I have. Elliott: —like—
elliott
—a vegetable soup, but you don’t have a spoon, ‘cause they didn’t have spoons back then. And so you have to, like, have a bowl with a handle and you tip it into your mouth to drink it? I always assumed mead was kinda like that. [Laughs.] [All laugh.]
crosstalk
Dan: Okay. But that’s a— Stuart: [Laughs.] Yeah. Elliott: Kinda like—like a low—
elliott
A low-grade vegetable soup that you drink with your other classmates on a—on a field trip while you watch guys in kinda cloth knight costumes knock each other—
crosstalk
Elliott: —into sand. Stuart: Yeah. And that’s the same reason—
stuart
—why they let you drink Coca-Cola there, at uh— [Laughs.] At Medieval Times. ‘Cause they had it back then.
elliott
They had that back then because of a time portal! [All laugh.]
stuart
Cool.
crosstalk
Dan: It was like, uh, The Gods Must Be Crazy. Hallie: How do you think the kid—
hallie
—got in King Arthur’s court?
crosstalk
Stuart: Oh, yeah! That— [Laughs.] Dan: Ohhh. Hallie: Remember that movie?
stuart
That’s how that kid made his millions. [Laughs.]
hallie
Yeah. [Laughs.] [All laugh.]
elliott
I mean, to be honest, if you had Coca-Cola producing facilities, you brought them to Medieval times? You would become richer than the king. People would become addicted to that.
stuart
Yeah.
hallie
Man.
elliott
And also back then? The water was not that good, so you know what? Just Coke it down! [Stuart laughs.] Just drink Coke! [Hallie laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: That was Coca-Cola’s original slogan. “Just Coke It Down.” Stuart: That was their—yeah, their— [Laughs.]
elliott
Yeah. [Through laughter] Just Coke it— [Stuart laughs.] And you know King Arthur would be, like, “Ah, thou ist the real one, baby, uh-huh.” [Dan and Hallie chuckle.] Or was that Pepsi?
crosstalk
Dan: That was Pepsi. Elliott: No, wait, that was Diet Pepsi. Nevermind.
elliott
Uh, okay.
stuart
So right around now, we—we—he finally finds— [Hallie laughs.] —one of the objects of his search. He finds Willow—once again, another wood word—uh, who—
elliott
I like how you said “once again” even though that was the same one that you pointed out before.
stuart
Okay, then, Sister Beech is a wood word. There, I covered it. Um, and the—
dan
And where are the Bernstein? [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.]
stuart
[Laughs.] Yep! Uh, and so—he runs into Willow while they make up his room, I guess? It’s… the whole thing goes very quickly and strangely.
elliott
Yeah, and Willow’s like, I don’t trust anyone here. I know Rowan’s been taken somewhere. And a bell rings and she’s like, I gotta go. And she leaves.
dan
Can I say—we got sidetracked by talking about mead.
elliott
No, you cannot, Dan.
crosstalk
Elliott: You cannot say it. Dan: We got side—
dan
It’s important. We got sidetracked by talking about—
crosstalk
Dan: —mead. Elliott: No.
elliott
You can’t say it.
dan
But Nicolas Cage killed the bee because he’s allergic to bees.
crosstalk
Elliott: Yeah, oh thank you! Yes. He’s allergic to bees. Dan: This is a key point. Yeah. Stuart: Mm-hm.
elliott
And this is reinforced when he is unpacking his bag and we see his bee EpiPens that he has brought with them, which—either he has great foresight, knowing that it’s a honey-producing island, or he just brings them everywhere.
crosstalk
Dan: I think that when you have a bee allergy— Hallie: You have to bring an Ep—
dan
—you bring your EpiPens everywhere, Elliott. [Laughs.]
hallie
Yeah.
elliott
What if he was going on, like, an Alaskan cruise, Dan?
hallie
You have to bring it everywhere, Elliott. That’s the—
elliott
Everywhere?
hallie
Yes!
elliott
Everywhere?
hallie
Yes.
dan
Yeah. You never know!
hallie
Even the bathroom. [Dan laughs.]
crosstalk
Stuart: It is one—it is one of those things I was— Dan: Could be a bee in that toilet!
stuart
I was—I was—
elliott
Yeah, you can’t spell “bathroom” without “b”! [All laugh.]
stuart
I was thinking about—about the use of, uh, allergies in horror movies, and how… if it—it—you—have—as a filmmaker, you have to work a little bit harder because for people who don’t have allergies—like Elliott just demonstrated—it—they don’t—they don’t seem quite as serious. They don’t seem quite as scary. But if you do have them and you’ve suffered from them, it’s terrifying! I just think it’s an—like—
hallie
Yeah. I don’t have allergies. Which is why— [Sound of something falling.] Ahh!
stuart
But like—you’ll—
crosstalk
Stuart: Like, for instance— Hallie: Cat.
stuart
—in Hereditary, there’s a scene where a character suffers from a, uh, from an allergy attack. And it’s horrifying and terrifying, uh, but—I—I don’t feel like the allergy is really that, uh, is that scary in this movie. But whatever.
elliott
No. They—they don’t use it well.
crosstalk
Elliott: As someone who does have allergies— Hallie: Well he doesn’t seem very scared.
elliott
One, shame on you Stuart—
crosstalk
Stuart: Oh, wow! [Laughs.] Wow! Elliott: For shaming me. Dan: They’re not—
dan
—life-threatening ones. You have, like—
elliott
No. Although one time I was in a friend’s apartment—in Chicago, of all places—and there—there was so much animal hair all over the apartment that I could feel my throat starting to close up? And I was too polite to say anything ‘cause I was with some of my wife’s friends and I still felt kind of awkward around them? And I was like—this is how I’m gonna die. I’m gonna suffocate to death— [Dan laughs.] —because—
crosstalk
Elliott: —I don’t wanna say anything in front of these—I—yeah. Stuart: Oh, yeah! You’re allergic to animal hair. I’m sorry, Elliott.
elliott
And—no, it’s okay. And then Danielle saw me and she was like, we gotta get outta here. Hey, everybody, let’s go outside! And I was like, oh, thank goodness. [Laughs.] But uh, okay. But no, it’s true. They don’t make much of his allergy so it’s like the movie—it’s almost like the movie has to remind Nicolas Cage that he’s allergic to bees in this. Because… he just kind of seems to forget about it.
crosstalk
Elliott: Okay. Stuart: There is a point—
stuart
—where he finds himself in the exact center of, what, like a honey patch? What do you call that thing?
crosstalk
Dan: Uh—well, it’d be a hive. [Elliott laughs.] Stuart: The place where there’s a bunch of—
stuart
A bunch of honeybees? [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
Let’s just say “honey patch.”
crosstalk
Elliott: Yeah. A honey pot. Stuart: And he—and he—
stuart
He—all of a sudden he realizes that he’s in way too deep, and everywhere he turns he’s surrounded by more [through laughter] hives, and you’re like— [Elliott laughs.] What—why did you go this far in, buddy?
crosstalk
Dan: Yeah. And also why did you pack your EpiPens— Hallie: Yeah. It’s really not the place for you. [Elliott laughs.]
dan
[Through laughter] —but apparently don’t have them on you at this point?
elliott
The—the—you take your gun everywhere you go, but not your EpiPens. Alright. When you’re on bee island. [Dan and Stuart laugh.] So, uh—and—and ironically, his favorite actress: Bea Arthur!
crosstalk
Stuart: Well, I guess that’s—I guess that’s ironic. Dan: That is ironic. Hallie: Hm. Yeah.
elliott
Yeah. I mean, because she was part bee. That’s why she had that name. [Laughs.]
stuart
Oh, okay. I mean—
crosstalk
Stuart: I guess that’s foresight. Elliott: It was—
elliott
It was from the waist down, though, and because she wore all those kind of, like, loose billowy clothes— [Hallie laughs.] —on the Golden Girls, it was hard to tell.
hallie
But they were always pantsuits! How can you hide that in pants?
stuart
Mm-hm. Do you, like, slide part of your abdomen down one of the billowy— [Hallie laughs.]
crosstalk
Stuart: —legs of your pantsuit? Hallie: I guess so?
elliott
I have to assume they had to strap her abdomen and stinger to one of her legs so that it was in one of the le—one of the billowy legs in the pantsuit.
crosstalk
Elliott: Yes, exactly. Dan: Ah. Hallie: Wasn’t she—
hallie
Did—wasn’t she like a nude model in the beginning of her career?
dan
Let’s look it up! [Laughs.] [Stuart laughs.]
crosstalk
Hallie: I think she was. Elliott: Bea Arthur?
elliott
I have trouble believing that—
crosstalk
Elliott: But maybe! Who knows? Hallie: No, I think it’s true!
hallie
I think it’s true!
crosstalk
Dan: Do you know, Stu? Stuart: Dan—Dan checks his Mr. Skin hotlink! [All laugh.] Dan: Stu looked up a—looked up “rowan,” the tree rowan before but we never got back to it, but. Hallie: And we never heard! I never heard the results of the rowan tree. Stu: Oh, yeah!
stuart
Uh, so yeah. [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Hallie: Let’s learn something! Stuart: This is an important part of the podcast—
stuart
Where Stuart reads— [Elliott laughs.] “The rowans—or mountain ashes—are shrubs or trees in the genus Sorbus of the rose family, Rosacea.”
elliott
I gotta say, Stuart, that the genus Sorbus sounds like a band you would listen to.
stuart
[Deep voice] Genus Sorbus!
elliott
[Laughs.] Hey guys, I—I went to go see Genus Sorbus at St. Vitus the other night. It was pretty good.
hallie
Dan, you didn’t look on the Wikipedia page. You’re looking just—for Google image.
crosstalk
Stuart: Thi— [Laughs.] This looks like— Elliott: Dan. Dan. Just Google—
elliott
Dan, just Google “Bea Arthur nude”—
crosstalk
Dan: I did Google it! There—she— Elliott: Tell us what comes up. Hallie: And there is a picture! Elliott: Okay. Stuart: And— Dan: She was not a, um—
dan
She was not a nude model, but there’s a naked painting— [faint sirens in background] —by John Currin of Bea Arthur nude.
stuart
Mm-hm.
dan
Uh, that sold, uh, let’s see. For one—well, it’s expected to sell. I don’t know what it—what it actually sold for, but this article says it’s expected to sell for $1.8 to $2.5 million—
crosstalk
Stuart: Wow. Dan: At Christie’s.
dan
So.
elliott
So is that—that’s at—that’s at—uh, Sotheby’s and Christie’s Mr. Skin option? [Stuart laughs.]
dan
So for a couple of million dollars— [Elliott laughs.] —you, too, could have a painting of Bea Arthur nude in your home. I mean, pending the desire of this person to sell. [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
It’s—okay. So anyway, Nicolas Cage, he has—has a—has a bad dream of that car crash we see. We’re gonna see that car crash scene with the truck many times throughout the movie. And he wakes up to see a little girl running around outside. She tries to find her by—he—he tries to find her by poking around in an old barn? Forever? Uh, it looks a lot like Tevye’s barn from Fiddler on the Roof, just full of horses and stuff, and he falls through an old floor and then pulls himself back up, ending one of the two or three—I guess thrills?—scenes in the movie?
dan
Yeah, I was watching I mean, like, okay, I guess this movie is nominally, like, a horror film.
stuart
Uh-huh.
dan
And we’re supposed to think that, uh, Nicolas Cage… like, almost falling through an old barn is terrifying? I mean, like, look. If I was in that position, yes. I would be terrified. But—
elliott
Let—let—we gotta play it by—Are You Afraid of the Dark? rules. I would watch as a kid and I would say, it’s not scary to watch, but if I was in that situation— [Stuart laughs.] I would be scared.
dan
Yeah. But watching it on [Through laughter] tel—yeah. On a—on a—on a phone screen in a bar, I was not like, oh no! [Through laughter] Nicolas Cage is gonna— [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
Elliott: I mean—I’m gonna—I’m gonna—I— Dan: [Through laughter] Is gonna die in this barn!
dan
[Through laughter] And then who knows what the rest of the movie’s gonna be?
crosstalk
Stuart: Yeah. [Laughs.] Yeah. Elliott: I’m not—
elliott
I’m not faulting—I’m—I mean, it is a bad scene and it’s very boring, but I feel like you can’t totally fault Neil LaBute for your decision to watch it on a phone at a bar.
stuart
Uh-huh.
stuart
Yeah, was this around the time where he goes back to his hotel room and he’s like, [Nic Cage impression] has anyone been in my room? Did somebody—I’m missing some tapes. [All laugh.]
crosstalk
Hallie: That was a good impression, Stuart! You sounded like him. Elliott: Yeah, he’s missing his self-help tapes. Stuart: Yeah, cause he over—
stuart
He overhears some people—thank you! I’ve been working on it. Uh, he overhears some people talking about the Wicker Man and he’s like—does—is anyone—I’m missing my tape of Iron Maiden’s Brave New World album— [Elliott and Dan laugh.] —with the leading single, “The Wicker Man.” [Laughs.]
elliott
[Through laughter] ‘Cause—the—he overhears—Sister Beech is just, like, constantly casually talking about—she’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we gotta get ready for the ritual of death and rebirth. And it’s like—they’re just so casually talking about the things that are supposed to be spooky in the movie? But—it was—I wanted to make the point—which I feel like—I—I have déjà vu about this, so I may have said it at the podcast or somewhere else before—that this scene in the barn was when I realized, oh. This isn’t a movie. This is me watching someone play, like, a point-and-click computer adventure game. Like Myst or like Sam and Max Hit the Road or one of those type—or like, a Zork type game, where it’s like—a non-text Zorkian, where it’s like—uh, where Nicolas Cage walks out of the inn, and it’s like, hm. What location should I go to? The woods? The barn? Town Square. I’ll go to: the barn. Uh, uh—item? Flashlight. [Dan laughs.] Use flashlight on stall. I see a horse. Okay. Use flashlight on stairs. Go up stairs. Okay. Oh, a crow! It’s like—so much of this movie is him going to a location, having a perfunctory conversation with somebody where they give him some information and then him yelling at them, and then leaving and going somewhere else.
crosstalk
Stuart: Yeah. Dan: Well, and certainly—
dan
Like, later on, where he goes to, uh, is it—is it Frances Conroy? Is that the actress?
crosstalk
Stuart: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hallie: Yeah.
dan
Like, when—when he, like, interacts with her, like—and he sneaks in after she leaves and is like, oh, I find—I find book that explains everything! I find a letter— [Elliott laughs.] —that—like—like, photograph of… of Rowan! You know. It’s just like, okay. I mean, like… you’ll come to see that they’re leading him down the garden path? But if you didn’t know that, it’s so funny. It’s just like, okay. Well, all these obvious clues—
crosstalk
Dan: have just been strewn about. Stuart: Yeah. If you—
stuart
If you didn’t know that, it would feel kind of like what they’re—what they’re trying to do in Under the Silver Lake, where this guy is like, constantly searching for clues that validate his, uh, like, detective work. [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.]
elliott
Yeah. And—and—uh—there’s just—there’s no atmosphere to any of this stuff. I think the—I think they made a mistake in setting an ostensible horror movie on a beautiful island where it’s constantly kind of golden light? And… there’s just—it just looks gorgeous all the time. I don’t know. Uh—so.
crosstalk
Stuart: I don’t know. I mean, it works in, uh— Elliott: The next—
crosstalk
Stuart: It works in Midsommar. Hallie: Midsommar. Yeah.
elliott
Yeah. I mean, it works in the original Wicker Man, too. But those are different types of movies. You know. The next morning at the café, his waitress—Leelee Sobieski—shows up to tell him why there is an empty little squeeze bear of honey on the table when this island is famous for its local honey. Turns out last year’s honey crop was cursed. It was terrible. And on the wall of photos, where there’s a picture of the harvest girl at every year’s harvest, last year’s picture is missing. Uh-oh! And then Miss Beech, once again, is like—oh yeah, we got the festival of fertility tomorrow. It’s sacred. What of it. And Leelee Sobieski does not recognize his photo of Rowan, she says, and says—when you leave, please, take me with you! And he’s like, what? And then walks away. [Laughs.] [Stuart laughs. Dan joins in.] Uh, Nicolas Cage, in his, uh, perambulations—his aimless perambulations around the—the island—he next—this is one of the first, like, great funny scenes in the movie? Where he wanders into a one-room schoolhouse where Molly Parker as Sister Rose is teaching. And she goes—what—what is the man’s role? And these two girls just go, “Phallic symbol! Phallic symbol!” [Stuart laughs.] And then he interrupts them and is like, hey. I’m a cop. I’m looking for a girl who is missing. Uh, and they’re like—look in that desk. And he looks in a desk and there’s a raven trapped in it? And then they’re like, we trapped a raven in there to see how long he could ha—he could take it before he went insane! And he’s like, that seems a little on the nose with what’s going on in the movie— [Dan laughs.] But okay, sure. And uh, he sees the attendance book and sees Rowan’s name is listed, even though everyone’s like, I don’t know who that is. And he’s like, you’re all liars! You’re liars! You’re liars!
crosstalk
Dan: Yeah, and— Stuart: And Molly Parker really plays up the, like, coyly, uh… like… I don’t know. Like, sneaky thing?
crosstalk
Dan: Yeah. Hallie: Wait, do you guys recognize that actress? What else—
elliott
Oh, yeah, she was in Deadwood, she was in lots of stuff.
crosstalk
Hallie: Was she in, um— Stuart: She was in Six Feet Under?
hallie
Was she in, uh—
stuart
With Frances Conroy.
hallie
Did anyone else watch that movie Her Smell? The—
stuart
I haven’t seen it yet!
crosstalk
Hallie: I think she might be in it. Stuart: A friend of mine’s, uh—
stuart
—was part of the distribution team.
hallie
I won—I—I think that she’s in that. I’m gonna look it up. What’s—
dan
But also this is the scene in which she, a schoolteacher, uh, mis-defines the word “quixotic,” and then Nicolas Cage uses it in a totally wrong different way later on. [Elliott laughs.] And she’s like, yes! That’s right! [All laugh.]
elliott
I mean, as—it’s—she’s not a very good schoolteacher. I think we—I think that comes across. And she’s like—she does that coy thing—she’s like, “We don’t talk about Rowan. Uh—she—she died. It was—uh—eh—but we don’t say ‘dead’ here. We say she’s in the air and in the clouds.” “How did she die?” “Oh, she’ll burn to death.” [Hallie gasps.] “What did you just say?” “Exactly what I meant to say. She burn—she burned to death.” And it’s like, come on.
crosstalk
Hallie: That’s not what you said! [Faint sirens in background.] Elliott: Like, come on, movie.
elliott
Like—ugh. Like, and it’s—it—again, as you guys mentioned, they’re leading him into a trap. And if you don’t know that, then you’re like, this is a sloppy movie. And if you do that—do that—you’re like, these are sloppy trapsters. [Laughs.]
stuart
You can make a movie about a guy who is… in a deep investigation and in a situation where he can’t kinda trust himself or trust the people around him. Or, like—I don’t know. Like Jacob’s Ladder or something. But this movie is not that movie. [Laughs.]
elliott
No. It’s—the—it’s so ham-hand—it feels like… I mean, and in—Neil LaBute had made movies before this, but it feels almost like a college film? Trying to do that? But with a bigger budget? Nicolas Cage, he’s like, “Well that wasn’t very helpful!” Oh, and this is—that’s also the scene where she goes, “I’m Sister Rose.” [Dan coughs.] And he goes, “Of course.” When he goes, “Of course. Another plant!”
crosstalk
Elliott: As if, like— [Laughs.] Stuart: Mm-hm. Another wood word! [Laughs.]
elliott
Well, but mostly he’s like, uh, it’s like—that’s what you’re catching on to? That everyone has plant names, but not any of this other stuff?
dan
Yeah. And it’s at this point that you’re really, like, okay. Nicolas Cage, you gotta get off this island and get some backup? And the movie does a fairly good job, at least, of like showing how, like, trapped he is at this place? But I—again, to go back to the original movie—I prefer the original movie where… it seems like the detective probably could get off the island much earlier once he realizes that things are going badly? But he has this pigheaded confidence that because he’s a… uh, a—a moral officer of the law, that, like, he will triumph and he can walk through any situation unscathed.
crosstalk
Stuart: Just like how Nicolas Cage is a— Elliott: Nice use of the w—
stuart
—very strong man that can easily punch and kick his way out of any problem! [Elliott laughs.]
dan
[Through laughter] Yeah.
elliott
[Through laughter] Yeah.
hallie
Uh, for the record, Molly Parker is not in Her Smell. I was mixing her up with Amber Heard. [All laugh.]
crosstalk
Stuart: Okay. Wow. Dan: Wow. Elliott: Okay. Oh.
elliott
I mean, incredibly similar! They—they both—they look, sound, and act differently— [Dan laughs.] —but, y’know, otherwise. [Stuart laughs.] Uh—I—I—Dan, I appreciate your use of the word “pigheaded”? Since later, everyone’s gonna get them some animal heads! [Dan laughs.] Uh, Nicolas Cage goes to a ruined graveyard looking for Rowan’s grave. Willow’s there and she’s like, hey, by the way, you’re her dad. Should I have mentioned that beforehand? [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Stuart: Now— Hallie: You guys—
hallie
—we’re totally overlooking the fact that he takes off his coat all the time? Even when he, like, when he jumps in the—okay. He has this coat. That is a blazer.
crosstalk
Dan: Uh-huh. Stuart: Uh-huh. Elliott: Yeah.
elliott
He wears it over a sweater vest, yeah.
hallie
Yeah. And it—it has patches on the elbows, but for some reason he’s willing to do anything and get as dirty as possible, but he always— [All laugh.] —takes off his blazer. So like, he jumps in the lake? When he—when he’s, like—he has a hallucination that, uh, Rowan is trapped under the dock? And he jumps in the water? But first, takes off his blazer. [Elliott laughs.] Even though he thinks she’s drownding! Uh—
elliott
I mean—
hallie
Yeah.
crosstalk
Elliott: Late—later—and after— Stuart: Yeah, that’s not a—I mean—
stuart
Whether or not he takes his blazer off, she’s going to be drowned [through laughter] or not drowned. [Elliott laughs.]
hallie
She was—
elliott
Yeah, ‘cause he thinks he sees her body. He starts seeing Rowan everywhere. And he swims to it, and this is—now we get to my favorite moment in the movie—
dan
Yeah.
elliott
Where he wakes up—he’s like—he’s like underwater and he’s like, ahh! Ahh! And then he wakes up on the dock, and he looks down. He’s holding her wet, sodden body in his arms, and goes, ugh! And then— [Hallie laughs.] —without even giving you any time for it to like— [Dan laughs.] —settle in, he wakes up again on the dock and goes, “God dammit!” [All laugh.] And it’s—with such—with such annoyance— [Laughs.] And—and it—it is—they’re trying to pull off, like, a double wake-off—wakeup scare. Like a jump—like a fake-off—a fake wakeup that then becomes a dream, but it’s so—they run through it so quickly and his response to it is so not scared, but just so annoy—he’s like Bob Odenkirk in any Mr. Show sketch— [All laugh.] —just being like, “Goddammit! What are you doing?”
dan
I—I like how your misspeaking created a neologism there? With, uh, “fake-up”? [All laugh.]
elliott
Oh, thank you. Yeah. It’s a re—it was—yeah. It’s a fake-up! When if—you think they’re waking up but it’s actually still a dream. But it is so—it feels like—I mean—and I wonder if this is it, that Neil LaBute was like, what is a more commercial method for me to get across the idea that women are evil? Uh, I’ll do a horror movie, I guess, but I’m not really that interested in the scares, so… why don’t I just rush through those as—as perfunctorily as possible so I can get—can get to the scenes of women bedeviling and laughing at, uh, Nicolas Cage and him hitting them? ‘Cause this movie totally lives up to—until the very ending—it totally lives up to Margaret Atwood’s quote that everyone’s been bandying about for the past few years, about how women are—men are afraid women will laugh at them and women are afraid women will kill them? Because throughout the movie—
hallie
Men.
elliott
—women are—
hallie
Got killed.
elliott
—like, they are laughing at Nicolas Cage and he responds by [through laughter] punching them in the face?
stuart
[Laughs.] The—yeah. It’s—it’s really crazy. And—I don’t know… I don’t know what this says maybe about me? But I think it’s really strange that when Willow reveals that he’s the—Rowan’s dad, that he never really considered that before this point. Like, it seems crazy to me that he didn’t—that wasn’t, like, the first thing he thought of when he started, like—saw the girl and he’s like, we were engaged, like, doing—like, he doesn’t do any math. He doesn’t do any attempt—
crosstalk
Hallie: Maybe he thought she was a hoe. Stuart: —to be, like, wait a minute, she—
stuart
Like— [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
Stuart: He doesn’t—he doesn’t look at the picture and he’s like— Dan: Always—always elegantly getting to the point, Hallie. [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
Stuart: Yeah. He doesn’t, like, look at the picture— Elliott: I feel like this—
stuart
And he’s like, oh, maybe, uh, maybe she’s big for—big for her age or something! [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.]
hallie
I mean, she doesn’t really look like him.
stuart
[Laughs.] That’s true. She’s always wearing that red sweater and he never wears—
crosstalk
Stuart: —a red sweater. Hallie: No. Not once. He wears blazers. Dan: She doesn’t look like him. She looks like all of the—
hallie
If he—if she was wearing a blazer—
crosstalk
Stuart and Dan: Yeah. [Laughs.]
hallie
—that would be different!
stuart
[Through laughter] Yeah!
crosstalk
Stuart: [Imitating Nic Cage voice] Daddy’s—daddy’s girl! Elliott: Well, yeah. Then— [All laugh.]
elliott
If it was—if it was a photograph of her yelling at someone— [Laughs.] [All laugh.] They would—he’d be like, [Imitating Nic Cage voice] Oh, yeah, of course. That’s my baby. Sure. [Laughs.] Uh, now, Hallie, uh—you being the only woman here, aside from—I know Dan you’ve been—in—you’ve been kind of digging out your feminine side recently and I really like that, but Hallie—being the only woman here, how did this movie strike you vis-à-vis it being about a man running around screaming at women? [Laughs.]
hallie
I mean, it was so bad that I wasn’t—I wasn’t like, palpably offended by it. Because it—it—the—the misogyny didn’t really resonate when it was executed so poorly. [Dan laughs. Stuart joins in.] Uh, I wasn’t really offended. [Laughs.]
elliott
That’s fair. That’s fair.
hallie
Yeah.
elliott
Okay. So… uh, Nicolas Cage. Next, he’s gonna get some information from Dr. Moss, another plant name. Frances Conroy, uh, from Six Feet Under and many other things, and—as mentioned before, when he gets to her house there’s just, like, photographs of rituals everywhere and all these books about burning people alive as sacrifices. He breaks—
crosstalk
Elliott: —into f-wrords— Hallie: She looked great in this movie.
hallie
I will say.
stuart
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
hallie
Very young-looking skin. That—
crosstalk
Hallie: Who’s the makeup artist in this movie? Elliott: Frances Conroy and Ellen—
hallie
That’s what I wanna know.
elliott
And Ellen Burstyn, they both look great in the movie. They look like women who are on top of their game and have nothing really to worry about other than arranging a sacrifice and making sure these bees produce honey! And otherwise, they just get to relax and enjoy the beautiful island they live on!
crosstalk
Elliott: It’s like— Hallie: And their—
hallie
—beautiful long hair, which is hard to pull off when you get older. Y’know? Your hair gets brittle. It’s—
crosstalk
Elliott: Is that what happens? Hallie: I think so! Stuart: I nev—I never— [Laughs.] I never knew that!
elliott
It becomes like—it turns into, like, peanut brittle?
hallie
It— [Laughs.] Exactly! It’s delicious, but it’s hard to manage!
crosstalk
Stuart: Is that why when they— Dan: And then sometimes snakes—snakes pop out of it. [Hallie laughs.]
crosstalk
Stuart: Is that why when— Elliott: That only happens—
elliott
—to Medusa, Dan.
dan
[Through laughter] Okay.
stuart
When Grima is sapping Theoden’s life energy, his hair gets all thin and brittle. But then when he—when Gandalf kicks Grima to the curb… his hair gets all lustrous again, right?
crosstalk
Elliott: I gotta say— Dan: Is—is that why, Hallie?
hallie
Uh— [All laugh.]
elliott
I was gonna say, Stuart, until you said Gandalf I was like, which thing is this? [All laugh.] Which fantasy thing is this that—is this a Warhammer thing that he’s talking about?
stuart
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
elliott
Uh—uh, so, uh—and he goes and he finds a room full of babies in jars, like, tons of babies in jars. Like…
stuart
Yeah, you’re like, what am I—at the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn? [Laughs.]
dan
Yeah, like more than the— [Elliott laughs.] More than the usual number of babies in jars.
elliott
I mean, like, you might—I—I can understand a local doctor having, like, one baby in a jar. But the whole room, it’s like—Dr. Moss, you want him to sit her down and be like [Nic Cage impersonation] “Dr. Moss, this is an intervention. You’re a baby hoarder. You are just hoarding too many babies in jars and it’s time to say goodbye to some of them.” And she’s like, “No, it’s the only thing that makes me feel safe is to hold on to these babies in jars; I might need them at some point!”
hallie
Exactly!
elliott
It’s like, no, no. You just gotta clean it out. And then he like takes Dr. Moss, like, on a—on some excuse he takes her away for the day and her relatives come and clean out all those dead babies in jars while she’s gone.
crosstalk
Elliott: Is that too real? Hallie: My baby wasn’t in there.
hallie
It wa—
elliott
What? [All laugh.]
hallie
I said [through laughter] my baby—[breaks off, laughing.] [Someone laughs in background.] Wasn’t in there. [Stuart laughs.]
elliott
[Through laughter] Oh, good. I’m so glad to hear that.
hallie
He was sleeping in his room while I watched the movie. [Stuart laughs.]
elliott
You—but you—but you rushed in to double check, to make sure that wasn’t one of your babies?
hallie
Yeah. To be fair, we don’t have a baby monitor? So actually it could’ve been. But he was there this morning. [Elliott and Stuart laugh.] So I don’t think it was him.
elliott
So—so unless Dr. Moss kidnapped your baby, put him in a jar, and then returned him the next day—
hallie
In which case she took very good care of him and she can do it again!
stuart
And—and I—maybe—maybe I’m out of line here, but if your baby had been one of those babies, he would’ve been the best baby in a jar possible. Right? [Laughs.]
hallie
[Laughs.] Yeah. Well… he would’ve gotten an IMDB page, at least. [All laugh.]
crosstalk
Elliott: Said Hallie’s baby. Dan: What every mother wants for—
hallie
[Laughs.] Exactly.
dan
—their baby.
elliott
Uh, so Nicolas Cage, he takes this opportunity to go and yell at Willow about not telling him about things. She’s like, I’m sorry. And then they start making out. Uh-oh! He—you know that that’s not what—what he should be doing right now. Nicolas Cage, he has, like, an interaction with one of the male laborers on the island, who are all eerily silent. Almost like they’re worker drones who can’t think for themselves and just serve some sort of queen bee. Speaking of, he goes to Lady Summer Isle’s house! Uh, now—is she Lady Summer Isle or Sister Summer Isle? I couldn’t remember.
stuart
I think it’s Sister Summerisle, right?
elliott
Okay.
stuart
Summersisle.
elliott
Maybe ‘cause in the—‘cause in the movie, in the old—in the—‘cause uh, Christopher Lee is Lord Summerisle so maybe I thought he—she was Lady also. And she lives in this place that’s full of stone beehives, uh, it looks beautiful. He walks over—and this is the scene where he’s—he—suddenly realizes he is surrounded by beehives and the bees are like, it’s Nicolas Cage! Get him! And they chase after him and he passes out. And he wakes up in the house where Dr. Moss has patched him up—with moss, I assume, and other herbal remedies that you would find around the island. Uh—
dan
I do think that, like, if they plan on eventually—spoiler alert—sacrificing Nic Cage? It’s kind of irresponsible for them to just let him roam around and maybe get—die from being stung by bees. [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
Well, Dan, you’ve put your finger on the major problem I have with the movie, which is: if they are gonna plan on sacrificing Nicolas Cage—which they are—why bother with all the fake mystery whodunit clue bullshit? Why not just lie to him to get him to the island? When he gets to the island, hit him over the head with something! He wakes up inside a Wicker Man and you light him on fire. Sacrifice accomplished; ritual over. And you know what? All the time and energy you spent into this trap? You could spend, uh, maybe making sure your bee harvest is better than last time? Morons?
crosstalk
Dan: Yeah, you get to go back— Stuart: Yeah, I mean—with a name like—
stuart
You think with a name like “Cage” he would be extra-nervous about being imprisoned.
crosstalk
Elliott: And—and with a name— Dan: To go back to the—
elliott
And you’d think with a name like “Smuckers” it has to be good, and yet sometimes it’s not!
hallie
Wait—question.
dan
Okay.
crosstalk
Hallie: Why— Elliott: Yeah. Is this about Smuckers?
hallie
Why wicker? [Stuart laughs; Elliott joins in.]
dan
Uh, you know, they got a deal at Pier 1 Imports, I guess?
hallie
I guess so, ‘cause they shoulda just called it Bee Man and then had him be in a little hive! [Elliott laughs.] Or something.
dan
Or call it Bee Movie.
hallie
They’re just throwing in wicker at the end! [Elliott laughs.] Like it’s a major plot point! But.
dan
Yeah. I—
stuart
Yeah, it’s not like the island’s chief export is wicker and the whole time he’s like, [Nic Cage impression] we gotta do something about all this wicker! [Elliott laughs.] Our wicker harvest is not good this year! I—
hallie
That woulda been a good movie.
dan
I do wanna get back to— [Elliott laughs.] —Elliott’s problem with the—
elliott
Would it have been a good movie, Hallie? [Laughs.]
dan
I do wanna get back and address Elliott’s problem with this movie, just to say—again—in the original movie, you get the sense that they’re toying with him because it is part of, like, their pagan ritual that it is important that this, uh… man who… I think they say is a virgin, like, come of his own volition to the place where he’s going to be sacrificed?
elliott
Hey-oh!
dan
And like, they’re leading him down the garden path to, like, sort of fulfil all these points on this ritual, whereas you don’t necessarily get that sense in this movie.
hallie
He’s supposed to be a virgin?
dan
Yeah.
crosstalk
Hallie: But how’s he supposed to have a baby? Oh. Stuart: In the—in the original. Dan: In the original. Elliott: No, no—
crosstalk
Elliott: In the original. In the original— Stuart: In this one—
stuart
In this one he has to be connected with somebody on the island, I think is the—by blood.
elliott
He has to be connected to the island by blood and have to have come of his own free will. And… but other than that, they coulda just… take it—like, there was no reason for them to be planting all these clues. I guess—you know what the answer is? It probably gets pretty boring on Summersisle.
stuart
Yeah?
elliott
All day—the only things you have to do are: teach kids about phallic symbols, make honey—and tending bees is hard work but it’s not the most exciting work—or just sit around the inn drinking mead all day.
hallie
Or think of new plant names. They’re just like making lists all day. They’re like—have—has—have we thought of, uh… hyacinth? Uh— [All laugh.]
stuart
[Laughs.] Probably.
elliott
And at a cert—and at a certain point, they’re like—Heather! Of course! Why did it take us so long to think of Heather? Ohhh—
stuart
Laurel. Holly.
elliott
Shoulda thought of that first! [Hallie laughs.]
elliott
They’re—‘cause they’re like, Thistle? IS that a name? Has anyone ever been named “Thistle”—
crosstalk
Elliott: “Sister Thistle? Does that make sense?” Hallie: Thistle works! Stuart: Yeah!
elliott
Sister Fern? I guess we could do that. Uh—
dan
Isn’t one of the—the, like, the fairies in Midsummer Night’s Dream have, like, Thistle in their name or something? I dunno.
elliott
Uh—maybe! I don’t—is she part of the movie?
dan
No, there’s Spiderweb and Mustardseed, I know.
crosstalk
Stuart: Mm-hm. Hallie: Mustardseed.
elliott
Yeah. Or—she—they’re like, Sister Venus Fly Trap? Is that too on the nose? About what this movie is about? Maybe. Uh… so—anyway. This movie is about to kick into gear, because he’s about to come face-to-face with his archnemesis, Lady Summersisle, Ellen Burstyn! Uh, and they play a little game of verbal cat and mouse as she talks about her goddess religion and bees, and Nicolas Cage eventually is just like, look. I’m gonna kill everybody here if you don’t help me. [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.] Like, he’s just—he—he just gets so—he just cannot put up with her, uh, her, like, uh, condescending whimsy, I guess? Uh, Nicolas Cage, he finds a doll in a grave. And he follows the sound of crying to a flooded crypt which someone locks him in and he hallucinates for a while, and then Willow—
crosstalk
Elliott: —lets him out and he’s like— Stuart: I mean, like—
elliott
Hey, I found—
stuart
He stays down in that, like, flooded cistern for a whole, uh, for like all night, right?
crosstalk
Elliott: Yeah, he’s there all night. Stuart: Hanging on to a grate?
crosstalk
Elliott: ‘Cause—and you better believe that ‘cause he didn’t wanna drown, he was probably up all night. Hallie: Oh, yeah. He must be so strong. [Stuart laughs.]
elliott
Wait, what do you say?
crosstalk
Elliott: You say, Hallie? Hallie: I said he must be so strong!
hallie
‘Cause—I—he—think about—I tried—I have to rock my baby to sleep? My arms are exhausted at the end! Sorry I keep talking about my baby. [Stuart laughs. Elliott joins in.] But it’s kinda my thing right now. [Dan laughs.] It’s my brand.
stuart
And similarly, staying alive was Nicolas Cage’s character’s thing. Which is why he hung on so tightly to that, uh, what—grate? Grating? To keep above the water so he didn’t drown—
crosstalk
Stuart: —in the flooded cistern? Hallie: But imagine doing that— Elliott: Exactly.
hallie
—the whole night. I mean, I guess you’re—
crosstalk
Hallie: —in water, so you— Elliott: All night!
hallie
—get a little help.
crosstalk
Stuart: And—and once your clothes get super— Elliott: He’s—he’s gotta, like, tread water, right?
stuart
—wet, they become lighter, right?
hallie
Ugh.
stuart
They float—[through laughter] float better. [Laughs.]
elliott
And the—uh, the whole time you know he’s thinking, [Nic Cage impression] “Thank goodness I took my blazer off!” [Hallie laughs.] “I did not want my blazer to be adding to my body weight or getting wet!”
hallie
[Laughs.] Those patches! Soak up a lotta water.
elliott
So he found Rowan’s sweater down there. It doesn’t really matter. Uh, he goes to—Sister Summerisle’s house to yell at her, but her house—all he finds is an old man covered in bee stings and a nude woman covered in bees. Okay. That’s all there is at the house, I guess. Uh, meanwhile, she is in the biggest, most beautiful bedroom. It looks like they hired Tarsem Singh to just decorate this one room for her. There’s lots of, like, bi—huge draperies, and they’re like—they talk cryptically about, how, I dunno, he’s going into this trap.
crosstalk
Elliott: This is— Stuart: And there’s—
stuart
And there’s nothing to look at. It’s like the Emperor’s throne room in a Star War movie.
elliott
Yeah. So this is—now we’re at—just my opinion—the best sequence in the movie. He steals Sister Rose’s bike at gunpoint. She has an animal mask and he’s like, take that mask off! He gets mad at masks from this point on, and he just rides around town on a rampage yelling at little girls and pulling animals masks off their head. Kicking open doors and yelling “Rowan!” into them. And it’s just like—
crosstalk
Hallie: My favorite part. Elliott: He is just on a tear.
hallie
Him—him ripping the masks off of children was my favorite part. [All laugh.] Except for when he held a gun to that woman and was like, I need your bike, ma’am! [All laugh.]
dan
Yeah. I watched that bicycle scene and I was like—I couldn’t imagine anyone thinking it—during the production of the movie that that could be anything but ridiculous. [Elliott laughs.] Him bike-jacking this woman’s bike at gunpoint and then like kinda wobbly racing off on it. [All laugh.]
elliott
And—just the fact—he’s like—he keeps—he is so, at this point, I think it’s supposed to be—actually, I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be sympathizing with him or if we’re supposed to be, like, oh no. He’s gone too crazy. But he comes off as a madman who is just like, uh… at—he literally just shot after shot of him breaking doors down and yelling “Rowan! Rowan!” [Dan laughs.] And then every time he comes across a mask, just knock it off somebody’s head like a big bully.
crosstalk
Elliott: Oh, any— Stuart: And—and almost always—
stuart
—the result of him doing that leads to… uh… it leads to women and children laughing at him. [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
[Through laughter] Yeah! That’s the other thing! I think that’s what also makes the scene palpable is no one seems particularly terrified or scared of him? They’re just like—uh. There he goes again. [Dan laughs.] Goofy Nic! Hates masks! Hates women! Looking for Rowan. Oh boy. [Through laughter] Like—uh. He goes—he finds the pilot that brought him to the island. He—the pilot is dead and full of bees.
hallie
His mouth is all stitched up, ‘member?
stuart
Yeah, the—for—for like the first real gross-out scare/genuine threat of violence in the movie, they put almost no effort into showing this guy’s dead body, or—like, Nicolas Cage just sees it and he’s like, ugh! And walks away. [All laugh.]
elliott
He’s like, gross! Bees! [Dan laughs.] Uh, he goes to—he, uh, we overhear Sister Beech and Sister Oak. They’re joking a little about how she’s putting on weight and she can’t quite fit into her bear costume anymore— [All laugh.] And they— [through laughter] And they hint at having killed the pilot, and then Nicolas Cage walks up and without a word, just punches Sister Beech in the face. [Hallie and Dan laugh.] Meanwhile, uh, everyone’s getting ready for the big harvest ritual. They’re wearing animal masks; they got face paint on; they’re dancing and parading to pipe music. It all feels very Ren Fest precious. Uh, while Nicolas Cage is having a—you know—knuckles—knuckle-dragging, balls-out, Leelee Sobieski fight—
crosstalk
Elliott: At—which ends with him— Stuart: Yeah, balls to the walls. [Laughs.]
elliott
[Laughs.] Which ends with him back-kicking her into the wall of photos— [Hallie laughs.] —and she just—I don’t know if she dead or what. She’s—
stuart
Well, she’s certainly not dead ‘cause she shows up later. But like… she gives a look like they were—I feel like Neil LaBute was like, okay. Hold on her for a moment. We will digitally add some birds tweeting around her head. [All laugh.]
dan
Yeah. And—and much like the bike-jacking earlier, this is a bear suit jacking. Like, uh, Nicolas Cage steals the bear suit.
elliott
He steals Sister Beech’s bear suit.
crosstalk
Elliott: Shows up in the parade. Stuart: And if I learned anything from Midsommar—
stuart
—putting on a bear suit in this—
crosstalk
Stuart: —situation is a good idea. Hallie: Don’t do it.
crosstalk
Dan: No—no—no spoilies! Elliott: And also, it’s—
stuart
Oh, I mean, it’s fine.
crosstalk
Dan: I mean, I assume it’s made to be just The Wicker Man, but. Hallie: For Midsommar? Stuart: [Laughs.] Yeah. [Elliott laughs.]
hallie
Oh.
elliott
So, he’s wearing that bear suit, and, uh, he is—joins the parade. And he’s like, Willow—it’s me! In the bear suit! And she’s like, stop bothering me. This is important. Uh, and she sees that Rowan is tied to a stake! And there’s all sorts of ritual talk that they do, and then—he only has one superpower—punching women—so he punches a woman, rescues Rowan, and they are chased into the woods by villagers. Uh, but it turns out, guys—as we’ve mentioned—it was all a trap, as Admiral Ackbar might say.
stuart
Mm-hm.
elliott
It’s a trap. Uh—Rowan was just the lure to get Nicolas Cage there so they could sacrifice him! And they spend, I think, six minutes explaining this. To Nicolas Cage. Because either they thought the audience was dumb, or they just were like—you know what? Let’s just admit it. Nicolas Cage’s character is dumb. He doesn’t understand. So they have to like go over every single point of their plan.
stuart
I remember—I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve seen the original, but I remember the reveal like, up until the moment when he has rescued, uh, Rowan and then she runs off. Like, up until that point—in the—in the original, you still assume the little girl is the sacrifice, and when she runs off it’s a genuine twist. Like, it’s a real shock. And in—I—I don’t feel like there is enough—that—it wasn’t a surprise in this, but maybe it was, y’know, ‘cause I’ve seen enough folk horror movies at this point.
crosstalk
Dan: Uh, and also— Hallie: You guys. Elliott: But uh—
dan
A moment I liked here is Nicolas Cage pulls out his gun and he’s like trying to hold ‘em off at gunpoint, and finally he, like, tries to shoot them, and his gun is, uh, empty of bullets and I believe it’s Willow, like, holds out her hand and like drops the bullets and I’m like, okay has she just been holding these the whole time? [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
Elliott: The whole day she’s been holding those bullets. Dan: Anticipating this moments? [Laughs.]
stuart
Yeah, she’s gonna shine ‘em on.
elliott
Anticipating the reveal. Uh, and—and we learn that Willow is actually Sister Summersisle’s daughter. Whaaat! All the women are in it together! Ahhh! It’s a plot! It’s a plot!
crosstalk
Dan: Sisters are doing it for themselves. Elliott: And I wish that—
crosstalk
Hallie: Finally. Finally. Elliott: I go mothers and daughter. Dan: And by “it,” it means— [Stuart laughs.]
dan
—sacrificing Nic Cage.
hallie
Yeah!
stuart
And don’t we see—in the crowd—don’t we see the—the mother and daughter who were in the car accident in the beginning?
hallie
Yeah! And the cop!
crosstalk
Stuart: And the cop? Hallie: And the lady cop!
elliott
And the—and the lady cop, because every—
crosstalk
Elliott: —single woman in the world— Stuart: How deep does this go? [Dan laughs.]
crosstalk
Elliott: Is part of the scare— Hallie: All the women.
crosstalk
Elliott: Well ‘cause then— Hallie: I was there! Stuart: If only like, Nicolas Cage’s—
stuart
—mom was there. [Laughs.] [All laugh.]
elliott
Yeah! Nicolas Cage’s mom. Hallie walks out. Hilary Clinton and Jill Stein walk out? [Hallie laughs.] And Melania Trump? [Hallie gasps.] It’s everybody!
hallie
And Tulsi Gabbard. [Dan and Stuart laugh.]
elliott
[Laughs.] And—Tulsi—and Tulsi Gabbard and Hilary Clinton are like, we’re actually friends, see? Uh, and Queen Elizabeth II is there. [Dan laughs.] The ghosts of famous women from history are there. Rosa Parks is there. Mary Todd Lincoln is there. Cleopatra is there. All of human history has been women waiting for this moment, when they could show to Nicolas Cage that he is impotent before them.
hallie
Yeah.
elliott
Nicolas Cage representing, of course, all manhood. Uh, because he is the most manly man there is.
crosstalk
Hallie: Sofia Coppola was even there. Elliott: I wish there was—
hallie
And he was like, “But we’re family!” and she’s like, “I don’t care!” [All laugh.]
elliott
She’s like, we’re cousins—barely. [Hallie laughs.] Uh—I wish—I wish that, uh, Nicolas Cage had had a moment where he turned to the camera and he was like—uh—and steals the line from the end of the movie The Uninvited where he goes—“Ugh! That was almost my mother-in-law!” About Sister Summersisle? But— [Hallie laughs.] ‘Cause if—for anyone who doesn’t know, The Uninvited is a genuinely scary ghost movie with Ray Milland that ends with him making a joke about how that—that ghost was almost his mother-in-law! Oof! And it’s like—[Laughs.] Wait, what? [Dan laughs.] Like—why are we leaving on a gag? Uh, okay. So there’s two different version of the scene that happens next. In the unrated version, they pour bees in his face and he screams for a while.
dan
Okay.
elliott
Uh, that was the home release version. What—if you went on Amazon Prime like I did, you had the theatrical release version. Where you hear him screaming and going, “Ahh! My legs! You crushed my legs!” like it’s a radio play. While you—we see them bringing him to the giant Wicker Man statue, and they put him in and it’s full of goats and chickens and Rowan lights it on fire and the ladies are all chanting, “The drone must die!” with big smiles on their faces—
dan
Thank you, Elliott for telling me this. ‘Cause I was like—is this a Mandela Effect moment? I—I swear there was a scene in this movie where they put, like, a cage full of bees over Nicolas Cage’s head—
crosstalk
Dan: —and he— Halie: Yeah, I feel like we wa—
crosstalk
Hallie: —used to watch that clip with him, like, meetings. Dan: Yeah, and I’m like—
dan
What? Where was that—
elliott
Yeah, we did. So that’s—that’s from a different version of the movie that was released—
crosstalk
Elliott: —only for home viewing. Stuart: It was, uh—it was—
stuart
It was too hot for TV, right?
elliott
Yes. It—well, it was too hot for movie screens I guess. [Laughs.] But that’s—but that’s the famous Wicker Man scene where he’s like, “Killing me won’t bring back your goddamn honey!” And they’re just pouring bees on his face and he’s like, [gargling-ish noise] “Walahalalahlahalbhabaha!” [Hallie laughs.] Uh—it’s—but also, only in the theatrical release, not in that unrated version. So as far as I could tell, is the next scene, the little epilo—so Nicolas Cage is dead. He’s been burned to death in a Wicker Man. Is the six months later scene—
stuart
Oh, yeah!
elliott
Six months—six months later comes up on screen in Papyrus font, the greatest font of all times. [Dan laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: [Laughs.] Yup. Elliott: [Through laughter] As everyone knows. [Stuart laughs.]
stuart
Yeah, we think like—uh, like The Mummy, like, Arnold Vosloo and his gang is gonna show up— [Elliott laughs.] —and start eating everybody with scarabs.
dan
Or a couple of Na’vi. [Laughs.] [Stuart and Elliott laugh.]
stuart
Oh yeah. That’s fair. [Laughs.]
elliott
Mm-hm. Uh—and—we’re at a bar in a city. James Franco is there and his buddy—
dan
Jason Ritter!
elliott
And Jason Ritter.
crosstalk
Stuart: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hallie: Wait, was this in the version— Elliott: So it’s James Franco and Jason Ritter—
hallie
—that I watched?
dan
Uh—
hallie
The Amazon Prime version?
elliott
Yeah, yeah! This is in the Amazon Prime version!
hallie
I think I fell asleep.
stuart
Maybe when it said “Six Months Later” you’re like—mm, I don’t care anymore. And you [Through laughter] turned it off. [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
Hallie: Like, “I’ll watch this in six months.” Stuart: You’re ilke, “The movie ended six months ago!” [Laughs.]
hallie
Yeah.
elliott
You thought—you thought that six months had passed and you were ilke, better catch up on all that sleep that I missed while I was watching this movie!
hallie
I was like—my baby has learned to walk! [All laugh.]
elliott
You’re missing all his great early moments while you’re watching The Wicker Man—he’s like, he’s like—mama! Mama! You’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah. [Hallie laughs.] After The Wicker Man. [Dan and Stuart laugh.]
crosstalk
Elliott: After The Wicker Man, honey. Stuart: [Through laughter] Too busy! [All laugh.]
elliott
So James Franco and Jason Ritter are two bros at a bar just looking for tail. And they cannot find any—until Leelee Sobieski and her friend give them a come-hither look and, uh, they start hitting on them. And there is a surprisingly long conversation between James Franco and Leelee Sobieski about how he’s at the police academy, he really wants to help people—
crosstalk
Stuart: Yeah, he’s like— Elliott: And—
stuart
I just finished the police academy. And she laughs at him, like, I get it. Those movies are pretty funny. [All laugh.]
elliott
Wait, so—is—uh—you think—I assumed that he had graduated, but you’re saying that he finished watching all the Police Academy movies?
stuart
Yeah, that’s why she laughed! ‘Cause she thinks they’re hilarious! [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
And, uh—
crosstalk
Elliott: —and she says— Stuart: Bobcat Goldthwait’s in some of them.
crosstalk
Stuart: Steve Guttenberg’s in a few. Hallie: He’s in most of them.
hallie
They’re—aren’t they in all of ‘em?
dan
No, no. He joined later on.
hallie
Which one? Steve Guttenberg or Bobcat Goldthwait?
dan
Bobcat Goldthwait. Steve Guttenberg left early; Bobcat Goldthwait, uh, joined late.
stuart
So he showed up—
crosstalk
Stuart: —as a villain in part two, but— Elliott: I mean, he didn’t join that late.
stuart
—he didn’t actually join the squad until part three.
hallie
Oh.
dan
Okay.
elliott
Yeah. And then, uh, was he in Miami? With the others?
stuart
Of course!
crosstalk
Stuart: Everyone’s in Miami. Dan: Did he go on the mission to Moscow? Elliott: What about the mission—
crosstalk
Stuart: With—with Tackleberry and— Elliott: What about the mission to Moscow?
stuart
High Tower and—
crosstalk
Stuart: Motorman Jones? Hallie: Yeah, but was High Tower in all of ‘em? Dan: In that one, the citizens went on parole. Hallie: ‘Member? Oh—citizens on patrol. That was the one I watched a lot. Stuart: Uh, patrol. Dan: Patrol. [Elliott laughs.] Elliott: [Through laughter] “On parole.” [Laughs.] The—
elliott
The police are like, hey, just to make sure we can—guys, everybody in town is on parole. [Dan laughs.] Right now. [All laugh.] [Through laughter] Let’s just like—let’s crack down on all this stuff, okay? [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.] You know that there is somebody—there’s some guy in his fifties in Hollywood—some screenwriter who has in his closet like a—like a Police Academy in Space spec script that he wrote. That he was—he’s just still waiting to pitch to Steve Guttenberg somewhere. But uh—anyway. I would call it Space Academy. Uh, so. Uh, Leelee Sobieski’s like, hey! Where are you going after this? And he’s like, home. And she goes—can you take me with you? Or can I go with you? Or whatever it is? And he’s like—yeah! And then we hear the sounds of bees buzzing and Nicolas Cage screaming. As we fade to credits. And I wanna tell you—this movie—I looked it up. This movie came out after Spiderman. So James Franco was already kind of a movie star, in a way, and he’s appearing in this, like, tiny moment in The Wicker Man.
crosstalk
Elliott: So what’s going on? Stuart: Do you think he—
stuart
Do you think he owed—I mean, it’s like Aaron Eckhart. Uh, being in the very beginning of the movie. Maybe he owed Neil LaBute a favor or something.
hallie
I mean, there were—
elliott
Oh, could be.
hallie
I—also—Ellen Burstyn and—uh—Frances Conroy! They’re, like—they were big stars—this was 2006, right?
crosstalk
Elliott: Oh, no, but they—but they— Stuart: Yeah, it was like right after—
stuart
Six Feet Under wrapped up!
hallie
Yeah, there’s no reason that all of these good people should’ve been in this movie.
stuart
Frances Conroy was in, uh—
crosstalk
Hallie: I think that they all heard that, like— Stuart: —was in Catwoman, for God sakes!
hallie
They all heard that Nicolas Cage was in the movie, but they didn’t know yet that he was in all these bad movies. So they’re like—
crosstalk
Stuart: Ohhh. Elliott: Oh, yeah. Hallie: Oh yeah! It’ll be fine! Dan: Yeah, I mean—
dan
And—and at the time, Neil LaBute was much more respected than he is now. Like, this is kind of what ruined him a little bit.
elliott
Well, Aaron Eckhart was in In the Company of Men. That was one of the movies that, like, helped him get bigger. So that makes sense why he’d be in there. But uh… oh, and apparent—according to Wikipedia, Paul Rudd is the man pulled over by Nicolas Cage in the first scene, but I don’t—I’m not so sure about that. Uh—so—I think—but here’s the difference. Those—those people were all being paid money to be in this, whereas maybe James Franco did it for, like, college credit?
crosstalk
Hallie: Yeah. Stuart: Mm-hm.
crosstalk
Stuart: I mean, it’s— Hallie: It’s weird.
stuart
It’s certainly possible.
elliott
So the movie is over. What—the women, unpunished, continue to lure men to Summersisle to sacrifice them for their honey harvest, and I just have to say—it doesn’t answer the question I really wanted answered, which is: so how’s the next harvest go? Like, was Nicolas Cage a good enough sacrifice? Like, what do you guys think?
dan
Uh….
stuart
I mean, clearly not. They’re already sending out more drones.
hallie
Yeah!
stuart
To make more—
crosstalk
Stuart: —honey. Elliott: Well they need one every year, right?
stuart
Yeah, I guess you’re right. I mean, do they nee—I guess they do need one every year.
dan
Well, I feel like it—
crosstalk
Dan: I mean— Hallie: Well, why was the—
hallie
Well, then, why was last year’s so bad?
stuart
It’s a good question. They never really—
crosstalk
Stuart: —address that. Hallie: I thought this was—
hallie
—to make up for the difference.
dan
Yeah. I feel like it’s implied that they don’t always have to have—do a sacrifice.
elliott
Oh, I see. I thought it was like they sacrificed just, like, a real doof. Like they sacrificed, like, uh, like Eddie Deezen the year before.
dan
Oh.
elliott
And God was like—and the goddess was like—
crosstalk
Hallie: No, thank you. Elliott: Seriously? This is what you’re giving me? [Laughs.]
stuart
But, I mean, also the idea could be that… uh… it could—it could highlight that actually sacrificing somebody has no effect. [Laughs.] And there’s no magic and there’s no god. [Elliott laughs.]
dan
Guys?
elliott
I mean, that’s fair too. That’s a fair reading of the movie. [Laughs.] [Stuart laughs.]
crosstalk
Elliott: It’s—they’re actually— Dan: Guys, do you think—
elliott
It’s actually not the case, yeah.
dan
Do you think that the cause—you know, like—colony collapse with bees is a real problem. Do you think it’s because we’re not sacrificing enough Nicolas Cages?
hallie
Yeah.
elliott
I mean, to be fair—let’s look at the facts! We’ve sacrificed zero Nicolas Cages so far up to this point, and bees are disappearing and dying off everywhere! I think the only way to test the hypothesis is to sacrifice Nicolas Cage and sees what happens!
crosstalk
Hallie: Yeah. Stuart: Mm.
stuart
But—I mean—that would—[Laughs.] Prob—probably spell doom for this podcast.
dan
That’s true. [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: But he— Elliott: No, we ju—
elliott
We make it—we make it, like, Travola-mas or something like that.
crosstalk
Elliott: You know. Dan: I mean, he could finally—
dan
You know, have his wish of, you know, being put in that pyramid in New Orleans, though, so.
crosstalk
Dan: I think he’ll be happy. Elliott: I mean, I don’t know if that’s a wish.
elliott
I mean, those are—end-of-life plans.
dan
[Through laughter] Yeah.
elliott
I don’t know if I’d call it a wish, though. [Laughs.] [Stuart laughs.]
stuart
Yeah, by—by, like, sign—it’s not like you’re like, uh, signing up for cremation or organ doning doesn’t mean, like—donating—you’re not, like, oh please! Take ‘em out of me right now! [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.]
dan
Yeah.
elliott
This is my—this is what I want the most. [Hallie laughs.] When I—I had my, uh, I had a birthday recently and when I blew out the candle I wasn’t like, ugh. I just wish that someone takes my eyes from out of my body right away. [Stuart laughs.]
stuart
Yeah. You’d only do that if you were on a really cool spaceship and you didn’t need those [through laughter] eyeballs anymore.
dan
Mm-hm.
elliott
Oh, no. ‘Cause I’m gonna be living in hell after I go through that wormhole.
dan
Um—
elliott
That movie, of course? Mars Needs Moms. [Stuart laughs.]
dan
Let’s, uh… put a bow on this one. And say our final judgments. Whether it’s a good-bad movie, a bad-bad movie, or a movie you kinda like. Let’s let the guest go first. Hallie, what do you have to say?
hallie
[Sighs thoughtfully.]
dan
She’s got a very pensive look on her face.
hallie
I mean… [long pause.] It’s somewhere in the middle. The Zac Efron movie you guys had me watch was my favorite. The—Kirsten Dunst movie you made me watch was my least favorite.
crosstalk
Hallie: So this was in the middle. Elliott: I don’t re—which was the Zac Efron movie that—
crosstalk
Dan: It was the one where he was like a DJ? Elliott: The DJ one?
crosstalk
Hallie and Dan: Yeah. (approximately the 1:07:07 mark)
crosstalk
Elliott: Oh, These Are Your Friends? Or We Are Your Friends? Stuart: No. No.
stuart
This—the one—‘cause I was in We Are You—Your Friends, so I think you were filling in for Stu-balls, over here. In the one where it was—he was like, dating and Michael B. Jordan in it.
crosstalk
Hallie: And Miles Teller. Elliott: Oh, right. Oh.
crosstalk
Elliott: The Moment When? Or That Feeling Like That Moment When? Hallie: Yeah! Yeah! Yeah. I love that one. Dan: Oh, Jesus God. I’ve forgotten that—
crosstalk
Dan: That movie’s… gone. Hallie: That was my favorite. Elliott: That’s the one—
elliott
That’s the one where they take Viagara and then they—they have to pee with boners so they’re laying across— [Dan laughs. Stuart joins in.] The toilet seats? With their penises—
crosstalk
Elliott: —dangling into the toilet? [Laughs.] That’s not how— Hallie: Love that. Love that! So good. Stuart: I can’t believe I missed this movie. [Laughs.]
elliott
That’s not how penises work! [Laughs.]
hallie
I love that.
crosstalk
Hallie: But then that stupid Kirsten— Elliott: Uh, what was the other one—what was the Kirsten Dunst one?
hallie
And—and I’m a big fan of Kirsten Dunst!
dan
Upside-Down or not—something like that?
crosstalk
Dan: Where like there’s a planets that are like— Hallie: The weird world? Stuart: Right.
dan
Next to each other?
crosstalk
Stuart: Oh, yeah! There’s like one planet is a good planet— Elliott: Right! I forgot about that one!
stuart
—and the other one’s a bad planet?
hallie
I hated that. That was so boring. So this is like in the middle.
stuart
Okay.
hallie
Okay.
dan
Okay.
stuart
That—that’s been Hallie in the hotseat! [Elliott laughs.]
dan
Yeah. I—I’m gonna say, like, I feel like when this movie came out everyone heralded it as, like… a new good-bad classic? And I can’t—I don’t think I can go with people on that one.
hallie
No! It’s boring!
dan
It’s pretty boring. Um…
hallie
It’s only—
crosstalk
Hallie: —entertaining for like, the last ten minutes of the movie. Elliott: I think a lot of people—this—
dan
Yeah.
elliott
I think this movie really benefitted in that way from the rise of YouTube?
dan
Yeah.
elliott
Around that time? ‘Cause you could see just the crazy clips, one after another. And—‘cause there were a lot of supercuts people did of, like, “All the crazy moments from Wicker Man!” and they cut out, yeah, the parts where Nicolas Cage is literally just riding a bicycle around a beautiful— [Someone laughs.] —island!
crosstalk
Dan: Elliott—Elliott— Stuart: Yeah. A lot of it looked like—
dan
Yet again by interrupting me, you have scooped me. That was what I was going to recommend that people do instead of watch The Wicker Man all the way through is look up the YouTube supercut, which is very funny. [Laughs.]
stuart
Yeah. If you don’t watch the supercut—
crosstalk
Stuart: —you’re basically just watching— Dan: So it’s better.
stuart
—Nicolas Cage just run around the grounds of the Mohonk Mountain House. [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.]
dan
Yeah.
elliott
I mean, the Mohonk Mountain House—to be fair—is spookier-looking than anywhere in this island.
stuart
Yeah. You figure any—any place you turn, you’re either gonna run into a ghost or… I dunno. Some New York celebrity that’s slumming it? Um, I… I don’t know. I—you know, I have actually never seen this movie.
dan
Oh wow.
stuart
Uh, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It is very dumb. I would say it’s a good-bad movie, because I think it’s—there’s—it’s so bafflingly dumb and there’s so many dumb scenes. But I guess maybe if I got to watch it—I dunno—at, like, Juben-style two-time speed or just a supercut, I might like it even more. But uh… yeah, I dunno. I’d—I’d say good-bad.
elliott
I would also call it a good-bad movie, but it is—you—you do have to get through some of the more boring parts? But it’s not non-stop good-bad the way some of the other movies that we’ve given that appellation to are.
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promo
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dan
Well, let’s move on to, uh, our sponsors! Give them a little airtime. The Flop House is brought to you—in part!—by Casper. And it’s a sleep brand that makes expertly-designed products to help you get your best rest one night at a time.
elliott
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
dan
What?
elliott
Are there other mattresses that help you rest multiple nights at a time? [Laughs.]
dan
Uh—
hallie
I wish!
stuart
Mm-hm.
dan
No. I don’t—I—
stuart
It’s when you stack a bunch of mattresses on top of each other—
crosstalk
Stuart: —and there’s no pea— Dan: Yeah, but the problem—
stuart
—at all underneath them. [Laughs.]
dan
Oh, I was gonna say— [Elliott laughs.] —the problem with those products is that there’s a pea. That’s why you gotta get Casper.
stuart
Okay! I guess—I gu—well, y’know.
dan
I heard different things. I mean, the internet, y’know, there’s differing information out there.
stuart
You get a one-star; you get a five-star; you never know.
dan
Yeah. But— [Elliott laughs.] You don’t wanna have to worry about whether or not there’s a pea! Why don’t you get a Casper mattress [though laughter] instead?
stuart
Yep! [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: Because— Stuart: There’s only—
stuart
—a single pea in Casper! [Dan laughs.] It’s in the name Casper! [Dan laughs. Elliott joins in.]
elliott
You know where the “p” is! Right in the middle of the word!
dan
The original Casper mattress combines a multiple, supportive memory foams for a quality sleep surface with the right amounts of both sink and bounce. Affordable prices, because Casper cuts out the middleman and sells directly to you. Get outta here, middleman! You can be sure of your purchase with Casper’s 100-Night, Risk-Free, Sleep On It trial. Get $100 towards select mattresses by visiting Casper.com/flophouse and using FLOPHOUSE at checkout. That’s Casper.com/flophouse and using FLOPHOUSE at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.
hallie
Is this mattress really comfortable? I have to get a new mattress.
stuart
Yeah, yeah, yeah! You can use—you can use that code too, Hallie! [Laughs.]
dan
I have a Casper mattress. I like it quite a bit, actually.
hallie
Is it green?
dan
Is it green?
Yeah. [Stuart laughs.]
dan
Why—why— [Elliott laughs.] Why is that your question?
hallie
Like, not the color. The earth.
stuart
Ohhhh! That actually makes more sense. For a second— [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
Stuart: I’m like, you can just— Dan: Not the color, the what?
stuart
—dip it in Easter egg dye! It’ll be fine! [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
I—I thought it was bec—she’s like, how am I gonna hide a pea under that thing if it’s not green? [All laugh.]
hallie
Alright. I’ll stop. Go.
dan
Oh, is it green in—okay. I gotcha.
hallie
‘Cause some are!
crosstalk
Hallie: Mattresses. Dan: Uh— [Elliott laughs.]
dan
Guys? I believe I sent you both Jumbotrons to read. Is, uh—
crosstalk
Dan: —anyone queued up and ready to go? Elliott: Yeah! Stuart: Hm. You get started and I’m gonna check my email. [Laughs.]
elliott
Now you sent me two Dan. Are they both for me?
dan
Wait—did I send you two?
crosstalk
Stuart: I—I didn’t get one at all. Elliott: You—
dan
Oh.
elliott
Okay. You—
crosstalk
Elliott: You sent them both to me, I think. A—a business and a personal. Dan: I accidentally send both to—
dan
—Elliott.
crosstalk
Elliott: Uh—I’m happy to do both. Stuart: So you pick one and I’ll do the other one—
stuart
—when Dan finds it.
dan
Yeah. I’ll—I’ll hand Stuart this, uh, the other.
elliott
Okay. So am I doing the business one or the personal one?
stuart
You get to choose!
crosstalk
Stuart: That’s the great thing about this Jumbotron situation! Dan: Yeah. Yeah, man, that’s—the great thing.
elliott
Okay. I’ll do the—the personal one. Okay. So, this is a message for Cody. And the message is from Jana. And the message is: “Baby crabs, how happy I am to be celebrating two years and Christmas with you! Thank you for everything you do for me, not the least of which is introducing me to the other boys, the Original Peaches. I dunno how I would sleep without them in my ear every night, finding clues and talking to Stu. I L-L-Love you. That’s “love” with three capital “Ls”—you my durling. Love, Mister Baby.”
hallie
He listens to you every night to go to sleep?
stuart
Uh-huh. Dan does that, too.
dan
Uh—well not myself. I don’t listen to myself to go to sleep.
crosstalk
Stuart: Yeah! You tune out—you tune out your parts— Elliott: Dan listens to a Flop House—
stuart
—but then you hear our parts, right? [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
Stuart: ‘Cause we’re your friends! Dan: Oh, yeah. ‘Cause it’s like having my friends comforting me. Elliott: Yeah! [Laughs.] Dan—Dan—
elliott
Dan painstakingly removes his voice from every episode and then listens to it as he sleeps.
stuart
Uh-huh.
stuart
And I—
elliott
It’s like Garfield Without Garfield.
stuart
Mm-hm.
stuart
I got a J-J-J-Jumbotron! ABC Movies is the world’s only movie podcast.
dan
Hmm.
stuart
Every week— [Elliott laughs.] —film geek Caleb Shively and writer Chris Chafin talk both smartly and dumbly about one great new movie currently in theaters. And one older movie that’s related to it in some way. Whether it’s by the same director or just had a big influence on it. Recent episodes include The Irishman and On the Waterfront; Parasite and The Host; and Midsommar and Force Majeur. That’s ABC Movies—Actually Best Choice Movies. So search for ABC Movies on Apple podcasts or Spotify. And I apologize if I messed up any names there.
dan
So we’re just broadcasting falsehoods now.
crosstalk
Dan: This—this claim that it’s— Hallie: You gotta have a gimmick. Guys? You gotta have a gimmick. Stuart: I mean, that’s most of what our show is anyway. Elliott: It’s a—it’s a—
elliott
It’s a big claim to say they’re the world’s only movie podcast.
dan
Yeah.
stuart
It’s—it’s a big enough claim that you might wanna check it out!
elliott
Mm-hm.
stuart
Check it out to disprove it.
hallie
Google it. World’s only movie podcast. [Stuart laughs. Elliott joins in.]
dan
Let’s move on to letters from listeners.
stuart
So let’s open up that mailbag? Oh, wow! That mailbag’s pretty dirty and dusty after 300 episodes!
elliott
Yeah. Let’s—let’s blow some dust off of that mailbag and—uh—do you hear—do you hear a—the pipes? A pipe and a fiddle in the background? Perhaps—perhaps some light strumming? Oh! [Singing] Open yon mailbag; I’ll tell you a tale— [Hallie laughs.] —a tale of 300 episodes! Episodes here; episodes dear. 300 episodes strong! The tale begins with a man called Dan doing his best; doing what he can—but what he could and what he should were not the same thing you will see! He called his friend Stuart. Stuart—nothing rhymes with that. Stuart was his name and Stuart was his game. For Stuart was very much all about games! Dan had, y’know, three names: [regular voice] Dan, Kirk, and then McCoy. Those are the three names for Dan. [Singing] And they had another guy who I will not mention at this point in— [Stuart laughs.] —the history; for there was some kind of thing that happened there—the records are spotty! Nobody knows! Nobody cares! Because there was a change in the offing! And that change’s name was Elliott! Elliott descended from on high; descended perhaps from a mountain or a cloud. Descended and he was very squeaky and loud! Elliott decided to join the gang and so we had three adventurers! We—Dan and Stuart and the guy whose name starts with “E”! And they became The Flop House guys! The Flop House guys! What a surprise! Who should know when they were born? That this day, upon this morn! That 300 episodes would’ve flown by! 300 episodes with these three guys! 300 episodes with The Flop House. That is the tale of The Flop House. 300 more, perhaps? We’ll see! We’re not making promises, you or me! 300 episodes is quite a lot—300 episodes, oh it’s so hot! Because I live in Los Angeles now, where the temperature never gets quite below 50.
dan
Alright. Well, so Stu—
crosstalk
Dan: —went and gotten a beer, and— Stuart: So when’s, uh, when’s—
stuart
When’s Elliott gonna sing his, uh, Episode 300 song? [Elliott laughs.]
dan
And—and—
elliott
That’s a very good question! [Singing] Here comes—
crosstalk
Elliott: —the second— Dan: Oh God. [Stuart laughs.]
elliott
—chapter of the epic story—
crosstalk
Elliott: —of The Flop House— Dan: Why did you do that, Stuart?
elliott
Fast-forward 300 years—
crosstalk
Elliott: —in the future! The future! Dan: You got to get a beer. And Hallie went and peed.
dan
So I’m the only one here listening to all this shit. [Stuart laughs.]
elliott
In the year 2319—the ye—boldest year we’ve ever seen! When the seas have dried and the air’s on fire, and yet The Flop House guys did not expire! Cursed as they were—
crosstalk
Elliott: —to continue this show! Hallie: It’s still going.
elliott
Cursed as they were— [Dan laughs.] —to continue, as winds blow! As tornadoes and hurricanes; floods and famine and fire and other disasters hit the earth! The Flop House continues. They hunker down in a bunker.
dan
[Under his breath] Fuck this.
elliott
With canned foods and canned movies. They decided that they should go until the earth was destroyed! The sun went supernova! [Dan sighs impatiently.] But even then, a little of The Flop House— [Stuart giggles.] —survived! [Hallie laughs.] And so—
stuart
Oh, sure.
elliott
—to you, who are listening now, far off—millions of years in the future! [Stuart laughs.] Reach out your hands and grasp a mote of dust! You must. For it is all that’s left of The Flop House. [Regular voice.] So that’s the end of the second part of the song.
crosstalk
Elliott: The third part goes like this. [Laughs.] Dan: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no.
dan
There’s no third part. Okay. [Elliott laughs.] Uh, Hallie’s in the kitchen getting water, but she can hear from—from there. The—
[Hallie says something faintly in the background about water and kitchen.]
dan
Uh, use the water in the fridge. There’s a [though laughter] pitcher.
elliott
No, no. This is much better than my song. Thanks, guys. [Dan and Elliott laugh.]
crosstalk
Stuart: In uh—Yeah, no. Dan: Right.
stuart
The water’s in the pitcher in the refrigerator in Dan’s apartment which is—what’s the address again?
crosstalk
Dan: Uh… [Elliott laughs.] Stuart: What’s it—what’s it again?
dan
123 Fake Street.
stuart
Okay.
dan
Uh, America—the US.
stuart
[Through laughter] Okay.
elliott
So is that the town?
crosstalk
[Elliot laughs.] Dan: Yeah. Stuart: Not even “the beautiful” anymore, I guess!
dan
Uh, 12345. Um, so… this first letter—
stuart
Uh-huh.
dan
Uh, is from Benedict, last name—
crosstalk
Dan: —withheld. Elliott: Cumberbatch. [Faint sirens in background.]
elliott
Cumberbatch.
stuart
Mm-hm.
dan
And… Benedict writes, um—I’m—I’m reading very slowly so—
crosstalk
Dan: —Hallie can— Elliott: Oh, are you?
dan
—get back with her glasses of water.
hallie
Your glasses are so big!
dan
[Laughs.] These glasses are so big, Hallie says! [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
It’s just taking so much time to fill it with water!
dan
Yeah. Benedict writes: “Dear Peaches, On a recent podcast, you mentioned Sixteen Candles and alluded to its problematic nature. That is one of the many films that I loved when I first saw them as a kid but have not aged well due to them having moments, characters, or entire premises that were racist/sexist/homophobic, or just generally culturally insensitive. I’d add movies such as Revenge of the Nerds, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Mr. Mom, and Eddie Murphy’s Delirious to that list. And I’m not even gonna go into movies from the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s. My question to you three is this: can you think of any films from the ‘80s or earlier that are unexpectedly progressive? Or is everything made before Clinton kind of, uh, racist and sexist and homophobic? Sincerely—"
elliott
As opposed to Clinton, who of course was not sexist— [Dan laughs.] —or homophobic at all. [All laugh.]
dan
[Through laughter] “Sincerely—"
elliott
Come on, man.
dan
“Benedict, last name withheld. I think he was just using it as a marker of time, but.”
elliott
I know, I know. It’s just—it just—it’s a—I—it—it just seemed ironic to me that the man who signed the Defense of Marriage Act and was also—uh— [Laughs.] Like, uh, like a sexual predator in a way, like, anyway.
crosstalk
Hallie: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Elliott: I know that’s a— [Dan laughs.]
stuart
[Through laughter] Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. [Elliott laughs.] The, uh… yeah! So, I mean—obviously I think it’s a little bit of shorthand to—to write off all movies, uh, of that time period as having those traits. But I mean, it’s— [deep breath].
crosstalk
Hallie: What about The Crying Game? Stuart: What a—
stuart
Uh—
hallie
I actually never saw that. [Stuart laughs loudly. The others join in.] But the subject matter— [Laughs.]
dan
Uh, it’s been years. I have no idea how it would hold up. I—I— [Hallie laughs.]
elliott
I mean, The Crying Game is also from 1992, so— [Stuart laughs.] —I guess it’s technically before Clinton’s presidency, but.
stuart
What about this movie— [breaks off, laughing.] I haven’t seen— [Elliott laughs.] —um, okay. So—I’ll jump in. Uh… obviously, I think 9 to 5 probably holds up? Uh… I think, uh, Dirty Dancing is surprisingly progressive in some ways. Uh, particularly with the subplot about the, uh, the young woman getting an abortion.
elliott
I was gonna mention, uh, there’s a movie from 1962 called Advise and Consent which is about the confirmation process for, uh, uh—is it a cabinet officer? Secretary of State, I think. And there’s a character in it who’s a senator, I believe, who is blackmailed because he is secretly gay, and he is having a gay relationship. But the way that the relationship is handled is not in a way that is, uh, judgmental or sinister. And it’s I think the first time in an American movie that you see a gay bar. And the gay bar is presented as a bar that men go to.
stuart
Yeah.
elliott
And there’s nothing weird about it. There’s nothing out of the ordinary or strange or, like, dis—or gross or scary about it?
stuart
Mm-hm?
elliott
And it’s—so it’s like, the character is taken advantage of by people because he has this secret, but the movie seems to have the point of view of, like, it would be better if he just didn’t have to have this secret. Like, he is not judged for being gay, and the gay bar is not a scary place to go. And I remember watching it and being, like, oh, I’m surprised! This is like a—like, a surprisingly progressive view of what it is like to be gay at a time when it was still… mostly unspeakable. In America.
stuart
Dan, are you preparing your defense of Animal House right now? [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.]
dan
Uh, I am—
elliott
He’s like—he’s like, guys, if it takes place in the future and all the women are robots, then it’s okay! [Stuart laughs.]
dan
Uh—
stuart
I wonder—what about—I mean, what about something like Rocky Horror Picture Show? Would that be, like… I don’t know. Like, it feels like it’s trangre—transgressive, but I don’t necessarily think it’s being judgmental. But I could be—I could be coming from a place of privilege and have no idea what I’m fucking talking about.
elliott
No, I—I think Rocky Horror Picture Show is, uh, it—it—well, I mean, I haven’t seen it in years, but like, it’s—when your watch it, it feels like it’s a movie made by outsiders for outsiders? Like, the things that are—that are kind of, like—
crosstalk
Elliott: —taboo-ish or shocking in it— Hallie: What about The Outsiders?
elliott
—the characters are so delighting in it? And are not, uh—and the fact that every single character in it is kind of sexually malleable? But, uh… the reason that they end badly is because the Transylvanians are like, hey, Frank-n-Furter! Like, you’re spending so much time enjoying yourself! Like, we’re supposed to be invading this planet! Like, it’s not related to their choices.
stuart
Yeah.
elliott
Of the—of who—of—of bed partners or anything like that. Y’know.
dan
I wanna say—I—I’m having a hard time coming up with specific examples, but I—I do feel like… before the Hayes Code came into effect? Like, a lot of early Hollywood movies treated sexuality and, kind of, like, the idea that, like, both women and men might have sexual desires and… like… y’know, find pleasure in that. Uh, with a little more sophistication than later on, when sort of champions of quote “morality” came in? And… uh… tried to, like, clean up, uh, depictions of such things? Like… I—I don’t know. I can’t think of a good example, but I feel like I watched some early movies and I’m surprised by how… like… equitable the male/female relationships feel? And—and—uh… how, like, satisfying the, like, the romantic, uh, relationship is? I dunno. Uh, how—
elliott
It kinda depends movie to movie, but there was definitely more room in there for that.
dan
Yeah. Hallie, what do you think?
hallie
I don’t know.
dan
Okay! [Stuart laughs.]
elliott
But you had—you had—there are movies, like, um, is it Babyface? The one where Barbara Stanwyck is sleeping her way to success through the people at this comp—the men at this company, and the movie is like… it makes—it feels like she is—and she’s punished for it, but by losing a man that she loves. But it feels like the movie is like, yeah. This is what she’s been forced—the—this is the only way she has to get out of her situation. Like, the movie is like, yeah, I guess we have to punish her at the end, but we’re not—our heart’s not really in it. Y’know. And that’s—one of those pre-Code movies that people point to a lot.
dan
Um… okay. Uh, I—y’know, I just picked out two this time? The last—
stuart
You got another—another hard question—
crosstalk
Stuart: —for us to answer? [Laughs.] Dan: The second—the second and—
elliott
Uh, what I like—Dan, what I like about it is that we had the—you had this question much longer than any of us did.
dan
Well—
elliott
Uh, but—
dan
You seem to think that I look at the questions before I send them to you in the—in the morning. Like, I—I—I decide what looks like an interesting, uh, thing, but we have the—I have this big backlog of questions that I’m just filing through and I see them, uh… maybe a minute before you see them. So it’s not— [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
Okay.
dan
Uh, this one is from M, last name—or sorry, M, rest of name withheld.
stuart
Moriarty.
elliott
Wow.
dan
[Laughs.] Uh, obviously— [Elliott laughs.] —if he’s gonna just give an initial.
elliott
Well let’s look at the letter. “I have a series of clues—” [Stuart laughs.] “—for you.” Oh yeah, yeah. Of course.
stuart
“I, the Napoleon of crime!” [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.]
dan
Uh—M writes, uh, “Hello, Peach people!”
hallie
This is Macavity!
dan
[Laughs.] It’s a trope in horror movies to have a character—usually the villain—be killed, uh, only to dramatically open his or her eyes later to—to reveal the threat is not over/an impending sequel. My question to you is: in what non-horror movie would this trope be most interesting and/or misplaced? What if, at the end of Up, the old man’s wife opened her eyes, revealing that she— [Elliott laughs.] —was alive the whole time. Absurdly yours, M, rest of name withheld.” I think at the end of, uh… at the end of Citizen Kane, Kane— [Laughs.] Should leap up and be like, “Of course! My sled!” And rush in— [Elliott laughs.] —and pull it out of the fire. [Laughs.]
stuart
Like—like—Charlie’s grandpa? [Laughs.] [Dan laughs. Elliott joins in.]
dan
Yeah.
hallie
Uh, did you guys ever see Dying Young, with Julia… uh… Roberts?
dan
And Campbell’s—Campbell Scott? I—I—I’m aware of it. I haven’t seen it.
hallie
Maybe that one.
dan
Yeah. [Laughs.]
stuart
Uh… I would say… I feel like it would—I don’t—I—I don’t know how, uh… but like, Conan the Barbarian, after Conan hacks of Thulsadoom’s head and tosses it down the steps? Like— [Elliott laughs.] —if his eyes opened up and he was like, ahhhhh! That would be pretty cool. Um…
elliott
Yeah.
stuart
Uh—or— [Laughs.] Obviously, if at the end of Grave of the Fireflies, if the little girl— [Laughs.] Was like, “I’m not dead!” Uh, that would probably undercut the movie. [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.]
crosstalk
Hallie: What about—um— Elliott: Yeah, probably. It’s—
hallie
Uh—The Sixth Sense? [All laugh.]
dan
Twist is: he was alive the whole time!
elliott
And they’re what—they’re trying to gaslight the kid? So they could get his jewels or something?
hallie
[Through laughter] Exactly!
crosstalk
Elliott: Uh. That would be so funny. Dan: I think Hallie won this one.
dan
I dunno. But Elliott, what do you got?
elliott
I—I don’t e—look, I don’t even have any answers as good as that. We should just move on.
dan
Alright. Uh—
elliott
I—I—the only—the answer that I was gonna have that I thought would be funny is The Passion of the Christ and I’m like, wait a minute. That is the ending of The Passion of the Christ. [All laugh.] Hold on.
dan
Um… hey, listener! [Stuart laughs.]
stuart
Yeah, the end of—Bu—uh, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. [Laughs.] [All laugh.]
dan
Yeah. It was out of the freeze. [Laughs.] And they jump out the back window. [Laughs.]
stuart
Yeah.
hallie
The end of Old Yeller. [All laugh.]
elliott
[Laughs.] Bambi’s mom shows up? [Hallie laughs.] And is like—it’s time to get revenge!
stuart
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The end of Old Yeller— [Laughs.] Old Yeller’s standing in the doorway with a gun? [All laugh.]
elliott
Rabies me? Rabies you! [Hallie laughs.]
dan
Hydrophobie! Um, anyway. Uh, so… this is the 300th episode, as we said. And so, uh, in lieu of, uh, recommendations, we had decided to take a little trip down memory lane, talk about what the podcast has meant for us. How things have changed. I dunno. We didn’t really—we—we kinda vaguely— [breaks off, laughing.] Vaguely thought of this notion and the didn’t really plan much out, so who knows what this segment’s gonna be, but um…
crosstalk
Dan: I dunno. Guys? Stuart: Yeah!
stuart
So I expected Dan to have something prepared. Uh— [Elliott laughs.] I mean, this is kinda the time in the podcast where I would like to recommend a little movie. Um, it’s about a young man who should be inheriting a castle, but instead his brother is inheriting that castle. Now, this young man is chained into a—the—a basement cell.
dan
Okay.
stuart
And his mother dies. Okay? Follow me here. Now he doesn’t know what to do. He, uh, breaks himself out. He chews off his thumb. He probably rips off his own dingdong. [Hallie laughs.] The movie is called Castle Freak.
dan
I appreciate the—the—the bit that you’re doing, Stuart— [Stuart laughs.] But— [Elliott laughs.] The fact that it contradicts directly what I introduced might be a problem. I’m just—if we’re gonna give each other notes—
stuart
No, I know. That’s fair. Um, yeah! I mean, I guess, uh, we’ve been, uh, we’ve been doing this show a long time. Uh—since—
dan
12 years!
elliott
Did you guys—did you guys think when you started—‘cause again, I wasn’t there at the very beginning—how long did you think it would last? When you first started doing it?
dan
I think Stuart assumed it would last until I lost interest.
stuart
Yeah, probably! I mean, I remember… Dan suggesting it, and me having—I mean, this was 2007, so when he’s like “Do you wanna do a podcast?” I was like, “What’s a podcast?” Uh—
hallie
You’re like, it’s a year after The Wicker Man’s been made— [All laugh.] I don’t know—it—how we would do it! [Dan and Elliott laugh.]
stuart
The— [Laughs.] Yeah. This is a—uh—uh—a P-W-M, uh, timeline. The—and I think the first couple episodes we recorded in my bedroom—like, my bedroom in my apartment.
dan
Yeah, with a single microphone. A USB microphone plugging directly into my computer that I think I had also made, like, a… kind of, uh… homemade shocked mount where I just strapped a few, uh, rubber bands across, like, a Tupperware dish? And put the—stuck the microphone into that?
stuart
Mm-hm.
dan
So—
elliott
That kind of ingenuity would become a hallmark of Dan’s production—
crosstalk
Elliott: —on this show. Right Dan? Stuart: Yeah. You’re—
stuart
Years later, when Marty Scorcese makes a movie about the early days of The Flop House— [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
I mean, I dunno how many years later it’s gonna be ‘cause Marty’s kinda getting up there in years, but.
stuart
No, no, no. They’ll just use de-aging technology on him.
elliott
[Through laughter] Okay. Uh, and then, uh, for a long time with The Flop House it was not a, uh, particularly, uh, formal or even scheduled thing. Right?
dan
Yeah. We—the early years, we—I don’t—like, I think it was you, Elliott, who introduced the idea of, like, hey guys! We can come up with a schedule ahead of time and that will help us, uh, stay on schedule!
crosstalk
Dan: Which was a big— Stuart: But that was like—
stuart
—four or five years in.
dan
[Through laughter] —revelation.
elliott
Yeah. We should’ve hit 300 a lot earlier, ‘cause otherwise it was like—oh, we haven’t done an episode in a little while. Are you guys free tonight? Yeah, I guess so. Okay. [Laughs.]
dan
Yeah. And—well—I mean, it wasn’t—it wasn’t quite to that level, but it was, like—I’d be like—uh, hey! In a couple days are you okay? And like, if someone wasn’t able to be there I’d be like, okay, we’re just gonna get a guest host in. And uh… and so a lot of that early stuff was very uneven, and erratic. [Laughs.]
stuart
That was why Hallie had to watch a movie with Kirsten Dunst and, uh, two cities! Uh, above each other! [Laughs.]
hallie
Garbage. [Dan laughs.]
elliott
Man, I don’t even remember that movie. Like, I remember that it exists but I don’t remember anything about it. Hallie, what do you remember about it? What—Hallie, you’ve been on—how many episodes of this show? Probably at least—
crosstalk
Elliott and Hallie: Three. [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.]
crosstalk
Hallie: I don’t know! Stuart: And at least one live show. Right?
hallie
I remember those three. Uh—
stuart
Did you do the—you did a Fifty Shades of Grey, or—
hallie
Oh, yeah. And I’ve done the live show. And… uh—
elliott
That was the Fifty Shades of Grey one, wasn’t it?
hallie
Oh, right.
elliott
The live show?
hallie
Um… yeah! Oh, I was Zookeeper? I did The Zookeeper.
stuart
Oh, cool! Yeah.
crosstalk
Stuart: I missed that one, too. Elliott: Oh, right, yeah.
hallie
Yeah. Uh, I think I was your frequence of—
crosstalk
Hallie: —or—in the early years. Stuart: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
stuart
Did—did you feel a lot of pressure, having to be my substitute? [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Stuart: Or were you like, no, Stuart’s an idiot, so. [Laughs.] Hallie: Well, no, ‘cause I’ve never listened to the podcast. [Laughs.]
dan
Oh. I—I—I don’t—I don’t technically blame you. [Laughs.]
hallie
No. Uh… no! Uh… yeah! I did. [Laughs.] [Stuart laughs. Elliott joins in.]
elliott
So they—
crosstalk
Dan: I looked it up. Elliott: Uh, so—
dan
There are 14 episodes tagged with Hallie’s name on the website? Although there may be even more episodes ‘cause I don’t think I figured out how to use tags [though laughter] until later on in our— [Elliott laughs.] —process.
elliott
I mean, but we also talked about Hallie a lot. Right? ‘Cause Hallie is one of those performers where when she’s not around, you’re just like, what’s Hallie doing? Where’s Hallie during this? What’s going on with Hallie?
hallie
Changing diapers.
elliott
And—and so—how has your life changed since you started with The Flop House? Do you think you’d be a mother now if you hadn’t been a— [Stuart laughs.] —Flop House guest? [Dan laughs.]
hallie
No. [Laughs.] No. Uh… I’d—uh—my life is changed.
dan
You hadn’t even slept with your husband, y’know—
hallie
I hadn’t slept with anybody. [Elliott laughs.]
dan
Before the—
stuart
Oh, wow! [Elliott laughs.]
dan
Yeah.
hallie
But then I saw a movie with sex on this podcast and I was like—
stuart
Inspired you, yeah.
hallie
“What’s that like?”
dan
You’re like, I’ll try anything once! [Elliott laughs.]
hallie
Alright! And that’s when I got pregnant. [Dan laughs.] That one time.
stuart
Uh, Elliott didn’t have children at the start of this podcast. How has the podcast informed your parenting?
elliott
Uh, well, I think hanging out with you guys regularly has really changed—really prepared me for having two young sons— [Hallie laughs.] —who, uh, I just have to like—
crosstalk
Elliott: —keep an eye on? Dan: I mean, we’re older—
dan
—we’re both older than you, but.
elliott
I know. Yeah, but I mean, uh, when it comes to certain types of emotional things, I dunno. But uh… the— [Stuart laughs.] It’s weird for me to think back. Espec—like, our lives have changed in many ways since the—since we started doing this together. And that, like—we’re just at, like, super different places. And it’s nice that this has provided such a, uh, such a core for us to keep our lives revolving around all those years!
dan
Yeah, I started this podcast because I was a struggling, wannabe comedy person and now I’ve grown fat and complacent! [Elliott laughs.]
stuart
Mm-hm.
dan
So. [Elliott laughs.]
stuart
Not—yeah, yeah. Now that you’ve made it, you’re like—who cares?
crosstalk
Stuart: Throw us all in the garbage. Dan: Yeah. Hallie: You’re like—
crosstalk
Hallie: Let’s go to Krispy Kreme! Stuart: Throw it all away by doing a terrible [though laughter] 300th episode!
dan
Uh-huh.
elliott
[Through laughter] Yeah! And I kn—well, all I know is that doing this has been a very meaningful thing to me and I—and it’s always—hugely rewarding when people are like, oh, I love your podcast! And I’m like, you listen to that? And then I’m like, oh, we’ve been doing this for so long. And I guess that’s why—I guess we gotta drop that big bombshell that this is the last episode.
crosstalk
Dan: No! Shut up. Elliott: Right, guys?
stuart
It’s the last episode, Dan? [Elliott laughs.]
dan
You’re gonna really—like, there are people out there whose hearts just plummeted.
crosstalk
Stuart: What am I gonna do with my Sundays now? Elliott: I know. I’m sorry. [Dan laughs.]
crosstalk
Elliott: Uh, no. So how long— Hallie: What? Dan: Uh, relax and enjoy them, I suppose! [Stuart laughs.]
elliott
Yeah. Well, there is part of me that’s like, oh, someday when we’re not doing this anymore—I don’t wanna—I’m not hoping it happens soon, but then I’ll be able to like just watch whatever movie I want. [Dan laughs.] And then I won’t have to be, like, oh, yeah, well I do wanna watch this screener of Booksmart, but I gotta watch The Wicker Man, so— [Hallie laughs.] Uh—but so—guys, how long you think we’re gonna do it for? Let—shall we just—
crosstalk
Elliott: Set—set an end date now, or what? [Laughs.] Dan: Let’s not do this.
stuart
I do like the idea that you wanna watch a screener of Booksmart when I know you always watch The Flop House movies while, like, on an iPad while you’re doing the dishes. [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: Yeah, I don’t think it actually— Elliott: Yeah, but I—if I—
dan
—interferes with your schedule all that much, to watch these movies.
elliott
Oh, it—it—in f—it—no, but the dishwashing time is when I get to watch movies.
dan
Oh, okay.
elliott
So like, I do put—like, I could be wat—like, okay. So I wouldn’t be watching that screener Booksmart, but I could be watching something on, like, the Turner Classic Movies app. Y’know.
stuart
Is that why, when you guys have dinner, you’re like—everything gets a fucking ramekin? Like, you’re putting everything— [All laugh.] —in little dishes? Like, you’re even putting ketchup in a little ramekin and shit? [Dan laughs.]
elliott
[Laughs.] I guess. There is part of me that—when the—when the—when the dish—when the sink is filling up with dishes, I’m like, more movie time later! Okay! That’s fine!
dan
Ever since I started, uh, really concentrating on mise en place, uh— [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.] I’ve been watching a lot more movies!
elliott
Danielle’s like—I don’t think we need a different—a different fork for each course. I’m like, no, no, no. it’s the proper way to do it. [Hallie laughs.]
stuart
Yup.
elliott
But uh—and there—
crosstalk
Elliott: There are times when my wife— Stuart: Mise en place—
stuart
—so he can think about mise en somme. [Dan laughs.]
elliott
Ohhhh! Nice! [Stuart laughs.]
dan
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
elliott
And the—uh—there are nights when Danielle’s like, “I’ll do the dishes for you!” And I’m like, no, no, no! It’s fine! And I’m, like, slapping plates out of her hands, like, I’ll take care of that. [Dan laughs.] But uh—yeah. No. Guys? Look. I—I know we—we talked about doing some big crazy things for this 300th episode and then we were like, y’know what? That’s a lot of work. [Stuart laughs.] Let’s, uh—
crosstalk
Dan: Let’s keep it in the family! Elliott: That’s just a regular episode.
elliott
But uh, I think, y’know, I’d enjoy doing this with you guys all the time and I hope we get to do it for many more—more years to come, and I know we can because it’s not like anyone—it’s not like anyone can tell us—
crosstalk
Elliott: —no, don’t do this anymore. Yeah. Dan: Yeah. No one’s stopping us. There’s no— Stuart: I feel like the ne—I feel like—
dan
John Lithgow isn’t coming in being like, no podcasting in this town!
stuart
I feel like the next time we have Hallie on, I think—you should just get to pick the movie. [Laughs.]
dan
Yeah, Hallie.
stuart
I don’t know why we—
crosstalk
Hallie: Sweet! Stuart: —keep making you watch these dogshit movies. Dan: We’ll do a real—yeah. You know.
hallie
Yeah! I’d love that. [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.]
elliott
Hallie, what movie would you have us watch?
hallie
I don’t know!
elliott
If you were choosing.
hallie
Don’t—don’t put me on the spot here! Uh—
elliott
Okay.
stuart
I mean, maybe City of Angels. You’ve already mentioned that.
hallie
Oh, yeah. That—that’s a good movie. Um… too good. Too—too—too beautiful for this world. [All laugh.]
stuart
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We would—we would pull up the Skype channel with Elliott and his eyeballs had been ripped out, because he had seen something too beautiful and he didn’t wanna like gaze upon anything else. [Hallie laughs.]
elliott
Yep, yep. Event Horizon again. Uh, so, guys—I wanna—you know who I wanna thank for doing this? I wanna thank—Dan, you for coming up with this idea. Hallie, you for being a guest. Stuart, you for—making this show, uh, possible and great. And for letting me be your cohost on it, and I wanna thank the listeners for sticking with us all this time! How about that, huh?
stuart
Mm-hm.
dan
Sounds great.
hallie
Woo-hoo!
elliott
‘Cause without them we’d just be howling into the void. Just—
crosstalk
Stuart: Which is what I assumed we were doing the first couple years. Elliott: —nobody knowing. Dan: Yeah.
dan
Oh, we probably were.
stuart
I assume Dan was just, like, keeping them in his vault. Like— [Dan laughs.] —Prince was keeping all his— [Elliott laughs.] —videos in a vault.
dan
Yeah, in my urine bottles. [All laugh.]
stuart
[Through laughter] Yeah.
elliott
So—the—you’re like, “I’ll soak the podcast in this urine to—preserve it” and it’s like, that’s not really how files work, Dan. [Laughs.]
dan
No.
elliott
Uh, but that’s—I do remember, Dan, at the time you were like, I’m gonna keep them in my vault and then I’ll release them every 10 years so a new generation of Flop listeners will have them. And I’m like, but you haven’t released them yet the first time. There’s no demand for it. And he was like, it works for Disney, it works for me! And then you introduced Dan+? Which was your streaming channel? Right? With The Dandelorian? [Dan laughs.] That was the show you made—
crosstalk
Elliott: —about the guy who loves dandelions? Yeah, Dan— [Laughs.] Dan: Yeah. And Dan in Real Life. It’s the only movie— Stuart: Uh-huh. [Laughs.]
dan
—that you could see on that.
stuart
It’s some kind of a pancake-based movie?
dan
Mm-hm.
stuart
Now— [Elliott and Dan laugh.] I just realized, when we first started doing this show, could you imag—like, the fact that you have now written for Mystery Science Theater 3000 is crazy. [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Elliott: Yeah! I know! It really makes— Stuart: That’s a crazy thing.
elliott
—makes—makes this show obsolete, ‘cause I— [Hallie laughs.] I—I—achieved my other drea—my other bad movie dream. But the uh… yeah! It’s—that—if you do, if you put out into the universe the things that you wanna do, often the universe will be like, alright! I’ll allow it this time. Y’know, it’ll be a nice judge. As opposed to the hanging judge that the universe often is.
dan
Do you think this show helped you get that, uh, gig? Do you think it was an aid?
elliott
Yeah, I think so! I think it—I think, uh, it helped, uh… I’m—uh, I think having been the head writer of The Daily Show probably helps quite a bit, too.
crosstalk
Stuart: [Through laughter] Yeah. They looked—they looked at that on your resume and they’re like, [mimicking snoring noise] honk-shoo. Dan: No, I don’t think that—I think that’s the major thing. I’m just—just give me a little, uh… Elliott: But the—but the—
elliott
But the first time I met Joel, it—we—we met up and he goes, “Is that—are you Elliott Kalan from The Flop House?” And so, like, he had done his—
crosstalk
Dan: Get the fuck out. Elliott: —research on me.
elliott
I think it—I think it helped that I was, like… uh… I mean, he—he heard of The Flop House, I’m sure, because I wrote to him and then he looked me up. But the—I think it helped to establish my bad movie bona fides. My BMBFs. So I think, uh—
stuart
Gross.
elliott
Yeah, I think it did help!
dan
Uh… well, guys, that was nice little—
elliott
I mean, I’ll say—the—I’m very—I feel very lucky. The Flop House has opened a lot of doors for me, and someday they will for you, too, Dan! [Stuart and Hallie laugh.]
dan
I’ve done things that I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. Uh, I mean, certainly, like, if anyone contacts me to do anything, it is rarely because I’m a writer for a popular, uh, television program. It’s because I’m front-and-center on, uh, this dumb little show we do. So.
hallie
Mm.
dan
I appreciate it.
crosstalk
Stuart: Yeah. Hallie: That’s just—
stuart
I mean, it’s certainly given me a little bit of the—like—it’s—it’s certainly helped me professionally. I mean, even though I don’t work in the—the comedy field or anything. But the—[deep breath.] Y’know, giving me the confidence to like open up a small business and… giving me a place to meet with people who are listeners and… all that stuff. I—I don’t know. Like, when we first started doing this show I was working for, uh, a company and I—there was a point early on where I got laid off, and it was kinda soul-crushing. [Laughs.] And uh… yeah! It’s nice that I’m not laid off anymore. [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.] And that now I work for myself!
elliott
Yeah. You have to fire yourself at this point, right?
stuart
Mm-hm. But I know what I’ve done. [Laughs.] [All laugh.]
dan
Uh—okay, guys!
elliott
So yeah! That was—that was nice, guys! Thanks for—thanks for indulging us, listeners, with talking about ourselves! And Hallie, also, for sitting through it. [Stuart laughs.]
hallie
Thanks for including me in this very special episode, guys! I feel honored!
dan
Yeah. And I—y’know, we should—I—
crosstalk
Dan: I feel bad. I— Stuart: I don’t—I don’t think—
stuart
—there was anyone else we would want to have.
crosstalk
Dan: No. Not at all. Elliott: No. Not at all.
elliott
And Hallie, would you promise to come back for our 600th episode, should we all be alive still by that point?
hallie
Oh my God, yeah! Then my kid’ll be, like, old and I won’t have to breastfeed him anymore. [All laugh.]
dan
Well, let’s have— [All laugh.] Let’s have—
stuart
Stuart: Well, you don’t have to. [Laughs.] Hallie: [Through laughter] Hopefully. [Laughs.] Elliott: No, it’ll be—you’ll— [Dan laughs.]
elliott
You’ll be one of those moms who’s, like, uh, no, I just wanna keep that connection so I’m breastfeeding him even though he’s 13 years old.
hallie
But his immune system! [Dan laughs.] Come hither.
dan
Let’s have her— [Elliott laughs.] Let’s have her back before that. I—I feel bad. I—I did hold off for a while ‘cause I’m like, eh, Hallie’s executive producing this show and then she was pregnant; she doesn’t have time for our stupidity, but now hopefully she has a little more time for—
crosstalk
Dan: —our stupidity. Stuart: I feel like—
hallie
Yeah.
stuart
I feel like this is the second time one of our friends, you’re like, I don’t know if they’re gonna have time to be on a podcast. They just had a kid. And I’m like… I’m pretty sure when you have a kid, you’re like—can I have [though laughter] two hours—
crosstalk
Stuart: —away for a second? [Laughs.] Hallie: Yeah. It’s like, can I have— [Elliott laughs.]
hallie
—an excuse to leave my house? Please? It’s true.
dan
Alright. Well, uh, we should say all our usual jazz. Uh, thanks for—
elliott
[Scatting] Ba-dap-bup-bap-beep-bop! We squee sqow! Ba-da-da-da-dup! Ba-da-da-dup! [Regular voice] You shouldn’t’a said “jazz,” Dan. [Hallie laughs.] [Scatting] Baa dap ba ba da ba! Bap! Bow! Bow! Bow bow! A dat dat dat da daaa da dat da dat— [continues as Stuart talks].
stuart
Now that—now that Elliott moved out to LA, he understands jazz. [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Hallie: Yeah! Dan: Mm-hm. [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
Look, that’s what happened! You saw the movie! If you—you move out to LA, you just get jazz—
crosstalk
Elliott: —and you play piano in a restaurant. Hallie: White guys get jazz!
hallie
Elliott invented jazz— [All laugh.] —when he moved out there! [Elliott laughs.]
dan
Um… thank you to Maximum Fun, our network. Go over to MaximumFun.org to—to listen to a bunch of other great shows. Thank you to the donors—
stuart
Uh-huh.
dan
—who help—uh—keep us going through Maximum Fun. Without your support, as much as we love the show, we probably couldn’t do it. Uh…
elliott
I mean, we—I dunno about—yeah.
crosstalk
Dan: We could do it—but we probably would not be able— Elliott: We probably would’ve stopped by this point. [Laughs.]
dan
—to make the time in our busy lives to—if we weren’t getting paid. And, uh, please, uh, tweet about us. Social media of your choice about us. Leave us a review on iTunes.
stuart
Uh-huh.
dan
A good review.
crosstalk
Dan: Please. Stuart: Yeah. Be—
stuart
[Laughs.] Be—be gentle on this one, guys. [Laughs.]
dan
Uh… [Elliott laughs.] And I think that’s about it, unless anyone has anything to say.
stuart
Uh…
elliott
Uh, Hallie, you got anything to plug?
hallie
[Laughs.] No.
elliott
Motherhood?
hallie
[More decisively] No. [Laughs.] [All laugh.]
dan
She refuses. [All laugh.]
dan
Alright. Well, if—if that’s the case, thanks for listening to us for lo these many years. Uh, for The Flop House, I’ve been Dan McCoy.
stuart
I’ve been Stuart Wellington.
elliott
I’m Elliott Kalan.
hallie
And I’m Hallie Haglund!
dan
See ya next time.
stuart
Byeeeee!
music
Light, up-tempo, electric guitar with synth instruments.
elliott
Dan, at this point you know that our relationship is strictly business.
stuart
Mm-hm.
crosstalk
Dan: I’m very hurt by that. Stuart: It used to be strictly ballroom.
stuart
And then Dan— [Elliott laughs.] —broke his ankle. [Hallie laughs.]
elliott
Dan—he tore his ACL, yeah, and he couldn’t dance the way he used to. [All laugh.]
dan
Uh, danced like an angel, I used to. Okay.
hallie
I loved that movie. [Dan laughs.]
speaker 2
Comedy and culture.
speaker 3
Artist owned—
speaker 4
—Audience supported.
About the show
The Flop House is a bimonthly audio podcast devoted to the worst in recent film. Your hosts (Elliott Kalan, Dan McCoy, and Stuart Wellington) watch a questionable film just before each episode, and then engage in an unscripted, slightly inebriated discussion, focusing on the movie’s shortcomings and occasional delights.
Follow @flophousepod on Twitter and @theflophousepodcast on Instagram. Email them at theflophousepodcast@gmail.com.
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