Transcript
dan mccoy
On this episode we discuss: Hudson Hawk!
elliott kalan
The story of Sully Sullenberger and the miracle on the Hudson! The miracle, of course, being the creation of the movie Hudson Hawk, directed by Sully Sullenberger. [Multiple people 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, hey, Dan! [With slight pauses between sentences.] It’s me! Stuart! [Multiple people laugh.]
crosstalk
Dan: Uh—uh-huh. Okay. Thanks. Elliott: Last name? And—and your last name also?
stuart
Wellington! [Dan laughs.]
elliott
Good. Okay, you’re coming along great, Stuart, and I’m glad we put all that practice in beforehand.
stuart
Thanks!
elliott
And I’m Stuart’s, y’know, Miracle Worker-style tutor, Elliott Kalan! But today, we’ve got some exciting guesting with us today. Because joining us— [Dan laughs.]
dan
Great. We’ve got one of our biggest, most blockbuster guests and we’re really, y’know, out of the gate— [Multiple people laugh.] We’re stumbling!
elliott
It’s like when a horse is just, like, ready to go? And then they open the gate and all four of the horse’s legs immediately fall off? [Multiple people laugh.]
stuart
It’s cause somebody pushed the little button underneath the horse and it just collapsed!
elliott
Yeah! Exactly! Yeah! Uh, our guest—[Laughs.] Oh, ‘cause it’s one of those toy horses? [Dan laughs.] With, like, the rubber band legs? Okay, sure. Uh, our guest tonight—tonight. When are you listening to this? Probably during the early morning hours. Our guest is— [Dan laughs.] —Roman Mars. Host of 99% Invisible. That’s right—one of the top podcasters in podcasting and someone I personally am very excited to have on because 99% Invisible is one of my favorite shows and was one of the first podcasts I listened to where I was like, “Oh. This is what a podcast is supposed to be like.” [Multiple people laugh.] This is—[Laughs.]
dan
Not just three jackasses gabbing.
elliott
Yeah. Not just three gabbing jacks! But like, a real show where I’m like learning things and feeling things. So Roman, thank you so much for joining us!
roman mars
Oh, it is my pleasure. I’ve been a listener for a very long time. So it’s a real privle—it’s a real privilege to be here. There’s my professionalism coming out right there.
stuart
Uh-huh. [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.]
elliott
Oh, no, that’s just Dan. Dan is contagious. And— [Roman laughs.] —affects all of us. [Dan laughs.]
stuart
Somebody clap him so they edit that part out.
elliott
What I like also is we now have—I think—the most extreme poles of voice tone ever on the show. With Roman’s kind of, like, deep, dulcet, kind of, y’know, beautiful sound. And my kind of like—“What if a Praying Mantis could talk”? Kind of voice? [Roman laughs.] You know?
stuart
And I sound like an orc that’s been hit on the head. [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
Only ‘cause you’re like— [Dan laughs.] “Oh, looks like meat’s on the menu! Wait! What’s a menu? How do I, an orc in Middle Earth, know what a menu is?”
stuart
Uh-huh. Yeah. Suddenly I’ve achieved consciousness and I’m gonna wander off to start, I dunno. Painting horns and Ents in the woods? [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
And Dan, what does your voice sound like?
dan
Uh… I mean… [sighs.] I—I’m sort of a Roman that’s more of an Eeyore, I think.
crosstalk
Stuart: Oh, wow! Elliott: Okay. Okay. I could see that. Roman: Maybe. A joyless Roman.
crosstalk
[All laugh.] Elliott: Speaking of joyless— Dan: [Inaudible]
elliott
Speaking of joyless Romans, we’re going to talk about Hudson Hawk today. But first, Stuart— [Multiple people laugh.] I believe you had something you wanted to talk about?
stuart
Yeah. I wanted to bring up the fact that this episode—in addition to having a blockbuster guest—is happening at a blockbuster time for the podcast. Not the world. The world’s bad right now. But— [Multiple people laugh.] The podcast is—we’re in the middle of the MaxFunDrive. This is one of those chill, cool, low-pressure MaxFunDrives— [Roman laughs.] —that take, like, two extra weeks to do. [Dan laughs.] And that’s when we’re gonna talk about why—during this time, we talk about why our show’s important and we encourage you—if you like this show—to support it with your dollars. And part of what makes the show—[Laughs.] Part of what makes the show great—and also MaxFun in general—is that the—it’s—MaxFun is supported almost exclusively by listeners like you. Listeners who reach deep into their pockets and support the show with their hard-earned dollars. And that keeps us from being controlled by [deep, sinister voice] corporate interests! [Multiple people laugh.] [Regular voice] How am I doing, guys?
elliott
Roman: I think you’re doing great. Here’s what you gotta do— Dan: That’s great. I would like to step—yeah.
roman
You gotta bring the call to action up front. So you gotta tell people what to do to join. Like, right now is the time you’re gonna need to do this.
stuart
Yeah. Okay. Okay. No, that’s—that’s all—this is all good input. Um— [Multiple people laugh.] So what you should do—you’re listening to this and you’re like, “Man, I wanna be one of those bad-asses that Stuart is talking about right now. So I will go to MaximumFun.org/join and select a level that is—that I am comfortable with based on my—I dunno—financial stability.” ‘Cause right now, things are tough. But you know what isn’t tough? Supporting things that are great. Like our show! [Elliott laughs.] Or, y’know, okay. Uh— [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
You bring up the pandemic and if you’re anything like I am, maybe you’re a little lonely during the pandemic and if you’re anything like I am, maybe you labor under the delusion that your favorite podcasters are your ear buddies. [Stuart laughs.] And so it’s great to hang out with your ear buddies! And I hope that, y’know, during this hard time we provide [through laughter] at least some semblance of a service to listeners and we’re happy that you’re still listening to us and we’re happy that you help us produce these things.
stuart
Uh-huh.
roman
As a listener and donor, I would—I can testify to that. That that is absolutely the truth. You do give comfort in these times. And especially when you’re talking about the times of a pandemic. There’s so few things you can control. And especially when you talk about advertising bottoming out in the world? This is something you can control! Because Maximum Fun is supported by you, the listener! So you can just donate. At MaximumFun.org/join. And you can control this moment. You can control this thing. You can control this— [Dan laughs.] This is the one thing you can reach in and give a little bit—
dan
Wow.
roman
—of what you have. To, like—
dan
Jesus. [Laughs.]
roman
—support a whole network of people creating art that don’t have to depend on the whims of advertisers. [Long pause, then multiple people laugh.]
crosstalk
Elliott: Oh, wow. I feel like we just got so totally schooled. We’re just getting—this is like one of those ads— Stuart: Now—now the listener—yeah. [Laughs.] Dan: That’s what we call a—it’s— [Laughs.] It’s—
elliott
—for a masterclass YouTube. And they’re like, “Meet your new teacher—Roman Mars.”
crosstalk
Elliott: “He’s gonna teach you how to podcast.” But like—but like— Dan: Yeah. It’s like Don Draper just walked into the room. [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
Don Draper just pulled out, like—[Laughs.] A slide—a slide tray. [Roman laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: And schooled us. Elliott: And now—and we didn’t even know that that— Stuart: I would—I just turned my phone on—
stuart
I turned my phone on and started recording what Roman was saying so I could remember it for the future. [Laughs.] [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
Yeah. That’s—so MaximumFun.org/join is what we wanna say. Right?
stuart
Yep.
crosstalk
Roman: That’s what you wanna say. Elliott: Okay, guys. Dan: Yeah.
elliott
And now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, the audience is rushing to their computers—or perhaps the web browser on their phone—to become a new or—um…
crosstalk
Stuart and Elliott: —upgrading—
elliott
—Maximum Fun member. Guys? Let’s talk about a little movie that Roman decided to bring into our lives. This is a movie that I have heard about for years and years and years, but I had never actually watched it. And so I’m curious—Mr. Mars—why this one in particular?
roman
Well, I think it’s held this sort of bit of fascination for me. Because when it came out, I was a—I think I was around 15 or 16 when it came out? And this is an age where I was prepared to hate anything and everything that existed in popular culture? And I saw it on video and… I knew people hated this movie and so I was ready to kinda join in on it? But.. this is the first time I felt like I knew that people were hating it for the wrong reasons. Because they hated it because they wanted it to be Die Hard 3 and—but it wasn’t trying to be Die Hard 3? It was trying to be an R-rated live-action Hanna-Barbera cartoon. And I felt like this was—it was totally missed on the public and so I was fascinated by it and I just kind of… have always thought about it afterward.
dan
Yeah. And the advertising didn’t do it any favors ‘cause they were trying to sell it as an action movie. Which—I can’t blame them, because I don’t know how they would’ve sold it— [Stuart laughs.] —as the movie it is? [Laughs.] Like—
elliott
‘Cause they could sell it as a comedy! I guess. I mean, I’m looking at the poster right now and it says in big letters, “Catch the Excitement. Catch the adventure. Catch the Hawk!” And then Bruce Willis. And then “Hudson Hawk” is in kind of the second-smallest letters on the poster? But “Hawk” is in huge letters? So it’s almost like they want people to just think it’s called Hawk or maybe Catch the Hawk?
dan
To piggyback off that Hawk the Slayer madness—
crosstalk
Dan: —that was sweeping the nation! Elliott: [Through laughter] Yep! Stuart: And Ladyhawke.
elliott
And Ladyhawke. Ladyhawke and Hawk the Slayer had burned up the screens five to ten years before this— [Dan laughs.] —and they wanted to jump on that hawk wagon! Uh, Hawkwind had—y’know, of course by 1991 was long— [Dan laughs.] —replaced by Motörhead in the hearts of Lemmy fans everywhere. But, y’know. They thought, “Hey! Maybe we can get some Hawkwind fans in there!” And—let’s not forget—someone must like Hawk Man. Somebody, somewhere. Must like that character. Hudson Hawk is gonna get it. Uh, yeah. I was reading some of the reviews from the time this movie came out, and I was baffled at how much the reviews kind of didn’t seem to understand what was going on in the movie? Like, what the movie was doing? But maybe… maybe it’s because—and I have a theory about this—maybe it’s because at the time, there were a lot of action comedies? And so it was hard for them to look and—looking at it back now, I’m like, oh. This is like… I’m—this is like—if someone watched Tango & Cash when it came out, they’re like, “Ugh. Another one of these and it doesn’t make sense and it’s dumb? Forget it!” But looking at it now, you’re like—this is a refreshing slice of madness. [Roman laughs.] That is nothing like the things that are being made right now.
dan
Well, and I think that—when I first tried to watch this—I knew it was a bad movie and I was trying to watch it for being a bad movie? Or not a bad movie, necessarily. We’ll get to that. But a critical and commercial flop. And it—even as, like… viewing ironically? It confounded me? And now I feel like I’ve cast away all preconceived notions and I can see that it’s almost, like, more in the spirit of like… I don’t know. Like, Our Man Flint or something? Like, a super campy, like, globetrotting… adventure? And… I don’t know. But like I do wanna say—let’s not pretend that everything about this movie is the product of calculation. Because— [Roman laughs.] I, uh… my friend—I’ll shoutout my friend Kevin Cecil, who sent me a introduction that he did to this movie when he presented it—I think it was either at the Nighthawk or the Alamo. I can’t recall. But this movie, like, the character of Hudson Hawk is based on a song that, like, Bruce Willis—Bruce Willis was playing harmonica in like the House of Blues or somewhere like that—
crosstalk
Dan: —and the guy— Elliott: No. He was playing harmonica—
elliott
—when he was still a bartender!
dan
No, no, no! I’m saying that he was playing harmonica at this place.
elliott
Uh-huh.
dan
And like he just got up and started joining in with the band, unasked for.
elliott
Oh yeah. I’m just saying this was not—this was before he was famous that this happened. So it wasn’t—it probably wasn’t like the stage of the House of Blues. There’s, like, a band playing at a bar somewhere. Y’know.
dan
Uh… [sighs.] Well, I mean, my point is he did it with—like, it’s not like he was in the band. So it coulda been [through laughter] either one.
crosstalk
Stuart: What was he—what did he have to drink that night? I need to know more details. Dan: But the band called him up on stage—oh, god. Well, this wouldn’t have gotten so— Elliott: Well, the reason—the reason I bring it up— [Roman laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: —fucking convoluted [through laughter] if Elliott didn’t jump in with irrelevancies. Elliott: No, no. Dan. The—
elliott
No, no. The reason I bring it up is because this is something that—this is an idea that was in Bruce Willis’s head for a long time. This character of Hudson Hawk, the celebrity thief. Y’know.
dan
Yeah, Elliott, that was the thing that I was explaining. [Through laughter] You didn’t— [Stuart laughs.] —need to jump in and hijack it!
elliott
Sorry! I apologize! I was a real Hudson Hawk there, cat burglar-ing in to—[through laughter] to take control!
dan
Yeah. The point is—he like came up with this character with one of his blues buddies.
crosstalk
Elliott: Like in the hit movie—The Blues Buddies. [Laughs.] Dan: And, uh, and this was—yes. [Laughs.] [Roman laughs.]
dan
And this was before—as you say—Bruce Willis was famous in any way. But he like always said, like, he was gonna make this movie about this [through laughter] character that they came up with for a song long ago. And turned this into a movie. And then meanwhile, like, Steve [inaudible] de Sousa—like, wrote the script for this. The Die Hard guy. But then they brought in Daniel Waters, who wrote Heathers and Demolition Man and Batman Returns and then less awesome things like The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. I assume to, like, weird up the script a little. But then Bruce Willis kept rewriting all the stuff on set to his own, like, whims. His, like, Bruno whims.
elliott
It was a little bit like with Doolittle. Where—it—apparently, Robert Downey, Jr. would just come to the set and be, like, “Hey. What if I gave an enema to a dragon?” And they’re like, “Okay! Like, it’s your movie! Go ahead! We’re gonna—I guess that’s what’s gonna happen in this movie now that people are gonna pay money to go see!” [Dan laughs.] “That we’re gonna release in theaters as a professional thing!” But Dan, I think—probably—there’s a lotta—we’ll get—we’ll talk more about the behind-the-scenes shenanigans. Because this was a very difficult shoot. But I will say—as you said—not everything was kind of, like… was according to plan. But how could that be when the first time it was released on Blu-Ray, in 2013, it was included as a set with Hollywood Homicide, starring Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett. Which is clearly— [Multiple people laugh.] —exactly where it was meant to be. [Laughs.] With some random movie no one cared about from 12 years later. Guys? Let’s talk about—
crosstalk
Dan: By the way—okay. Elliott: Let—wait. Okay. Or—then let’s do—
dan
No I just—I just wanted to say. To the listener. I feel like there’s been a lot of concern about how much more irritable we are with one another of late. From listeners. They like this show because of the friendship. And I just wanted to say it is because of the friendship that we can be [through laughter] irritable to one another. [Roman laughs.] And then just ignore it [through laughter] five seconds later.
elliott
I have to imagine, Dan, I have not heard any worries or complaints of any—
dan
Oh, yeah.
elliott
Look at all these letters. Sacks and sacks full of letters addressed to “Santa Claus,” which I guess is me asking—Santa Claus, for Christmas, can you please have Elliott be meaner to Dan— [Roman laughs.] And I’m like… alright! If Kris Kringle—noted anti-Semite—wants me to do it— [Multiple people laugh.] —then sure! Okay! [Someone applauds slowly.]
crosstalk
Elliott: Then go ahead! Dan: I mean—[Laughs.]
dan
I’m speaking to the sensitive listener, Elliott. The one like me who worries about things that have no bearing on his life.
elliott
Okay, that’s fair. Now we should get into the movie since I do have seven-and-a-half pages of notes about— [Multiple people laugh.] —what happens in Hudson Hawk.
stuart
Oh no!
elliott
So this is gonna be—buckle up, boys. Okay. So the movie begins as the best movies do— [Roman laughs.] —with a giant, illuminated tome telling the story of—
crosstalk
Elliott: —da Vinci’s— Roman: Oh. The best.
elliott
—how Da Vinci was supposed to build an enormous bronze horse statue. That’s a true story. He was commissioned to do that. I think eventually they did build that statue, like, sometime in the last 15 years or so? Based on his original plans. But as they explain, bronze got scarce ‘cause of all the wars. Ya need bronze for wars! Because nothing wins wars like bronze.
crosstalk
Roman: [Inaudible] Yeah. Elliott: And so he’s— [Dan laughs.]
elliott
So he makes a big—what I would call “steampunk,” but I’m wrong about that—because according to Wikipedia it’s “clockpunk” technology. It predates steam. So—
dan
Oh!
elliott
By which I mean it predates the Peter Gabriel song “Steam.” [Dan laughs.] So it’s a clockwork machine that turns—he wants to turn lead into bronze, but—uh-oh! He did it wrong. Using his three magic… metal-y, crystal-y, jaggedy pieces? That when you put ‘em together into a puzzle and you hit ‘em with a laser, it turns lead into gold. Bum bum bummm! And we spend a lot of time watching Dr.—Dr. Da Vinci. Watching Leonardo Da Vinci— [Multiple people laugh.] —who is not a doctor.
crosstalk
Elliott: Do not take medical advice from him. [Laughs.] No, no. Stuart: No, no, no, no, no. Dr. Da Vinci’s my father. Dan: Oh wait! Hold on! [Roman laughs.]
dan
Now we gotta sell this to CBS.
crosstalk
Elliott: CBS—it’s— Dan: Now—like, the rest of the podcast—
dan
—is beating out the pilot to Dr. Da Vinci. [Laughs.]
elliott
I mean, Dan, honestly? Like, if we could sell that to CBS tomorrow, that’s what separates us from rich—famous television producers? Is I say “Dr. Da Vinci” and I’m like, “That’s stupid. He wasn’t a doctor.” And they would be like— [Dan laughs.] “Yes. It’s Leonardo Da Vinci, but he’s a doctor. This is perfect.” [Roman laughs.] “It’s like House meets…” Uh… what’s an old-timey? “Meets The Da Vinci Code.” Sell it! Dan, why are we not selling this right now?
dan
[Sighs.] I dunno.
crosstalk
Elliott: Anyway. Uh— Roman: This is a whole section—
roman
—of the movie that I did not remember, actually, at all. Like, I did not remember how it opened. This Da Vinci Code content is completely—was, like, seeing it with fresh eyes. ‘Cause it’s so absurd.
elliott
And it takes—it’s so—it takes a long time and it was obviously very expensive. And the movie does not need it. There’s like a little bit of like kind of jokey voiceover, and then it’s just… in Italian with no subtitles, Da Vinci just walking through his workshop just yelling things at people and then putting on sunglasses so he can watch the laser turn bronze into—turn lead into gold. And then he tricks someone into testing a glider. That’ll come up later. [Dan laughs.] We have to see that glider work because we know—they need to know that someone has a glider. And he walks past—he’s painting Mona Lisa but he hasn’t painted in the smile yet, and she smiles and she’s got terrible teeth. Oh, boy! That’s a joke for the art crowd. That’s a highbrow joke. [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
And then there’s gonna be a second tooth joke soon. But I wanted to say, perhaps part of the reason this was roundly rejected by the public is… I—y’know, I was watching this with Audrey, who had no prior sort of context for the movie? Or idea of what to expect? And it was very confusing to, a, start with Leonardo Da Vinci and then b, have everyone in the movie sort of off the bat talking about—like, old-timey tough guys? And it was just like—she had a reaction that I—I didn’t understand, but I think other people, like… perfectly reasonable to have, was like, “What is this movie? Where is it set? Like, when is it set? Like, what type of thing is this?” And I think that people who don’t see a lot of movies are less comfortable with not knowing exactly what type of movie they’re seeing. Y’know?
elliott
I could see that. Well I think also there’s certain types of movies that you expect to come in certain forms? I think this is a corollary to what you’re saying? Much as my “I Know Who Killed Me Theorem.” Which is that if I Know Who Killed Me had been in Italian, people would be like, “Oh! Look what it does with color! It doesn’t matter that the plot doesn’t make sense. Oh! Look at it! It’s a dreamscape!” I think if Hudson Hawk was a Hong Kong movie with Hong Kong actors, the clashing of tones and the craziness—people would be, like, “I love it! It’s crazy! It’s like a goofy cartoon!” But to have an American movie with American actors—and a lot of—it’s a huge name cast! And British actors. To have them all in it, it’s like, “What is going on here?” Whereas the same movie from another country, I think people might’ve been, like, “Those goofballs in that other country! They make these cra—these cwazy movies!” [Roman laughs.] “Oh boy!” Y’know.
roman
Yeah. I remember when I watched it the first time, I was into—I was watching a lot of Monty Python movies? And it sort of fit squarely into that in my head? And one of the reasons why I think my brain accepted it at that time—was rejected by other people at that time—was the same sort of thing. Like, it felt—it—I got it. I didn’t think it was altogether successful, but at least I got what was going on.
elliott
Yeah. I mean, it is not altogether successful. And there is one scene in particular which I think is—we’ll get—it’s probably the scene everyone is assuming. Is— [Someone laughs.] —maybe one of the worst scenes in the history of film? But uh— [Multiple people laugh.] We’ll get to it. So now—flash-forward 500 years later. And we’re introduced to cat burglar Eddie, the Hudson Hawk. Now, is his last name—oh, his last name is “Hawkins.” Okay. Because sometimes the characters call him Eddie; sometimes they call him Hawk; and sometimes they call him Hudson. And I was very unsure at any point which of those words was actually part of his real name. But he’s a famous cat burglar. We meet him on the day he’s getting out of jail and he’s so smooth and you know that because he’s got three earrings in one ear. None in the other, I believe. [Roman laughs.] And he’s got a black fedora and a black trench coat and a black t-shirt and black slacks and black shoes.
crosstalk
Dan: By the way, those clothes—the clothes that—the guards—[sighs.] The guard—oh, god. Stuart: Cadillac! Elliott: [Through laughter] And a Cadillac! Yeah. Thanks. The boy’s a time bomb. You’re saying, Stuart, that the boy’s a time bomb. [Laughs.]
stuart
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. [Roman laughs.]
dan
I just wanted to say that the releasing officer makes fun of him for wearing the same clothes when presumably these are the clothes that he came in with when he was arrested. Like, I don’t think that you [through laughter] can be like, “Oh, check out Mr. Prisoner over here wearing the same thing that he came in with! Aw, crazy!” [Roman laughs.]
roman
What a loser! Can’t even online shop? [Elliott laughs.]
dan
Yeah.
elliott
Don’t you get the J. Crews catalogs behind bars? Come on, guy! Come on!
stuart
Hey, consider TheRealReal! [Multiple people laugh.] Consignment for less!
roman
But this is also the first moment where I realized—again, I forgot—that this is an R-rated movie. Like, the parole officer says “fuck” for the first time and then I was like, “Oh, well they used up their ‘fuck’ for the first time and that—it’s gotta be no ‘fucks’ from here on out!” But it is full of fucks after that. [Laughs.] [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
This movie, you could say it doesn’t give a fuck, but it actually gives dozens of fucks. [Multiple people laugh.]
crosstalk
Roman: It has no business being an R-rated movie. Elliott: And that’s—it’s something that—
roman
It makes no sense whatsoever.
elliott
No. It—this should be a PG-13 movie. But it shows. It’s 1991. And in 19—like, it’s interesting to see how… how things shift? Like, in the ‘80s you could have a PG-rated comedy that had nudity in it? In the ‘90s, if you were making an action movie, people were just gonna swear the shit out of that action movie. And—but now, like, even if you’re making a horror movie, they’re gonna want it to be a PG-13 movie. And like, it’s a—it’s just interesting the way that that goes back. Like, you’ll watch movies from back then and you’re like, this would not fly now. But also, this—the swearing is so gratuitous. Any movie where—that—where a big plot point is the character being able to sing old standards with his buddy? Like, there’s not really a reason why it should be an R-rated movie and they should be swearing all the time?
roman
Not only a big plot point; the best plot point. [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
Oh! That’s where you and I, maybe, are again on opposite poles. So Eddie—his parole officer, immediately tries to threaten him into robbing an auction house? And he’s like, “Come on! It’s my first day out of jail! You want me to go back to being a criminal again?” But he’s a real—
stuart
That’s—that’s—wait. That’s your Bruce Willis? [Laughs.] [Roman laughs.]
elliott
Oh—sorry. Bruce—well the thing is, I can’t do ‘90s Bruce Willis. I can do now’s Bruce Willis, where he’s like, [soft, slow voice] “Hey, uh, yeah. I don’t think I’m gonna… be going back there anymore.” [Regular voice] I can do, like, current, sad-all-the-time Bruce Willis. [Roman laughs.] But I don’t think I can do, like, the Bruce Willis back when his thing was jokes? I can do the Bruce Willis now when his thing is that he’s always on the verge of crying?
dan
I mean, I think old Bruce Willis had the same sort of lack of enthusiasm for stuff. He was just lots smugger about it? So if you can just sort of combine those two things.
elliott
Okay. He is very smug. And I think that’s the other thing that turned people off instantly. Is that Bruce Willis is so incredibly smug in this. Especially for a character who never really seems to be in real danger and always gets what he wants. I mean, that’s what makes him smug. Is he always ends up on top. And sometimes that’s funny when it happens here, but there are times when it’s like… just—the—it—the movie is so, like, “You love this guy. He’s so funny.”
roman
Oh my god.
elliott
“Look at him! He’s your favorite! Don’t you wanna—don’t you wanna, like, be him? Don’t you wanna do him and be him? Don’t you wanna be him and do him so it’s two of him doing each other? And like, wouldn’t that be the best?” And it’s—it’s very—
dan
And I think that’s you feeling the influence of Bruce Willis, like, cowriter and, y’know, driving creative force [through laughter] behind this in the movie.
elliott
He also—he does have some of the worst quips I’ve ever heard in a not-worst-movie-in-the-world action movie. He has, like—and I have to assume he ad-libbed some of them. But they’re terrible. They’re just terrible jokes.
roman
Yeah. But also, the time—at the time, I was more bought into him. He’s kind of like—Bruce Willis at this time is kind of like, y’know, like—a kid who’s like two years older than you? Like, you’re 13; he’s 15; and he has a popped collar and he’s like, super cool and you think he’s amazing and you just wanna be him and then you get like two years older and you’re like, “That guy was a loser.” [Laughs.] “That guy sucks.” [Multiple people laugh.] And—but at the time, he’s just fascinating. And so he has that, like, my tolerance for his smugness has dropped precipitously in the 30 years since this movie came out. [Dan laughs.]
elliott
I think that says a lot about your maturing as a person and I’m proud of you, Roman. [Multiple people laugh.] That you—that you—that you didn’t stick with that love of Bruce Willis as, like, the ultimate dude. Oh, man, look at this guy! And you’re probably onto, like, what? Like more of a Jeff Bridges type of admiration? Yeah.
roman
[Through laughter] Exactly.
elliott
Of course. I feel like once you reach a certain age, you transfer from Bruce Willis to Jeff Bridges. And you’re like, oh, I should have always felt this way. But you can’t. It’s impossible.
roman
[Through laughter] No.
elliott
Jeff Bridges—one—he doesn’t make that many movies that kids and teenager see. And number two, it’s just kind of a deeper sort of dude-ness that eventually, we’ll get old and we’ll find Jeff Bridges to be smug. And that’s when it’s all Charles Durning, all the time. [Roman laughs.] And we just know that Charles Durning is just like the coolest guy with the [through laughter] smoothest moves.
dan
I mean, that’s the most [through laughter] logical progression!
crosstalk
Dan: [Inaudible]. Elliott: It goes Bruce Willis, Jeff Bridges, Charles Durning, and then you— Roman: [Laughs.] It’s like The Descent of Man right there.
elliott
Yeah. Exactly. And then you die, and you go all the way back around and you’re like, Erich von Stroheim has it going on in all these movies where he’s an evil German! Amazing! [Roman laughs.] Okay. Anyway. So Eddie, he gets out of jail. Right as he’s leaving the doors, his best friend—that’s right!—Tommy Five-Tone, Danny Aiello, pulls up in his fancy old car. [Roman laughs.] He hands him an espresso, which is—he knows is the thing that—or it’s a cappuccino. The thing that he knows that Eddie wants more than anything else. And I have to imagine he must’ve gotten it before driving up to the prison, so it must be so lukewarm by now, if not cold. But Bruce Willis just cannot wait to have this cold coffee in a diner cup. They go back to Five-Tone’s, Tommy’s bar, which Bruce Willis is—I guess—a co-owner of, maybe? Which—uh-oh! In the time he was in prison, it went from a cool kind of—probably not guys who are connected, but guys who wanna be connected—y’know, kinda the old neighborhood type guys. It turned into a real yuppie hangout that even has the most horrible food Bruce Willis can imagine—reindeer goat-cheese pizza. Now let’s stop for a moment. [Multiple people laugh.] Is it goat-cheese pizza with reindeer meat? Or is it that when you make reindeer cheese you also call it goat cheese ‘cause it’s more similar to goat cheese in consistency than cow cheese? [Roman laughs.] Dan, you’re the culinary expert. Please explain. What is reindeer goat cheese pizza?
dan
Y’know… [Laughs.] You know, I guess… this would—like, alright. When I heard it, I thought it was referring to a type of cheese. The whole thing was referring to a type of cheese. And I thought that because later in the movie, Bruce Willis says “Go back to your reindeer goat cheese.” As if that was the thing and not, like, the pizza was not an important part of that. But reindeer meat with goat cheese… definitely would make more logical sense. I will say that this is how—also you know what time period this is? Because the worst threat America was facing was yuppies. [Roman laughs.] And the ascent of yuppies.
elliott
Well it’s kinda like how—when we watched Howard the Duck—that live show is up on our YouTube channel—when we watched Howard the Duck it was like just—it was just a joke that a restaurant would serve sushi? The idea of a fusion restaurant that had sushi in it was like, instant joke. And that dates that movie. Now according to IMDB trivia, Bruce Willis also mentions reindeer goat cheese pizza in The Last Boy Scout. So does that mean these movies are in the same cinematic universe? [Stuart laughs.] The reindeer goat cheese pizza cinematic universe? [Multiple people laugh.] Or RGCPCU? [Multiple people laugh.]
stuart
I feel like he must have had one bad experience with reindeer goat cheese. Right? [Roman laughs.] And he’s like—
crosstalk
Stuart: I gotta keep bringing it up. And do you think— Elliott: I mean, I don’t know where he’d get it, but—[Laughs.] He had— [Dan laughs.]
stuart
Do you think there’s a chance that it was just reindeer cheese? It just happens to be the greatest of all time reindeer cheese.
crosstalk
Dan and Elliott: Ohhhh!
elliott
That could be it. It was sold to him as Greatest Of All Time Cheese from a reindeer and he never let it go. Okay. Yes. Now it makes perfect sense. Thank you, Stuart. For explaining that to me. Now, here is where a mobster gets Bruce Willis’s attention by shooting the espresso cup out of his hand. [Multiple people laugh.] The fact that that bullet would not be stopped by the cup, but would instead go—keep going in and kill someone is never attended to. [Multiple people laugh.] Similar—much later in the movie, Bruce Willis—a bullet bounces off his belt buckle? Which is crazy. That’s— [Multiple people laugh.] —and it’s not like he has a big, crazy belt buckle. It’s just a regular men’s belt buckle? That would’ve killed him. [Laughs.]
dan
I mean—yeah. [Laughs.] And this also sets up the—like, the character arc for the entire movie, which is Willis’s search for cappuccino being thwarted at every turn. This is kind of a Birds of Prey egg sandwich situation. Here, so.
roman
Yeah. This was very frustrating. This was—[Laughs.] [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
Every time he wants a cappuccino, he just gets—it’s a real discreet charm of the bourgeoisie that’s going on in the background of this movie. Where he just cannot get that cappuccino!
dan
You know, I’ve been talking about stress dreams with a lot of people lately for—I don’t know what the reason— [Roman laughs.] —I’d be talking about stress dreams right now. But I was saying that my most common type of stress dream is there is a relatively simple task that I need to perform. I want to perform. And things keep getting in my way.
crosstalk
Dan: And so—uh, what? Stuart: I’m gonna need an example. Roman: Mm-hm. [Elliott laughs.]
stuart
I need an example of one of these simple tasks. [Roman laughs.]
elliott
Yeah. Paint a word picture.
dan
Like, I—[sighs.] Oh. There was one where it was just like, I have to like… look up something. And I can’t, like, I can’t get the computer to work. I can’t, like, find like a reference book. Like, all this—like, I… I mean, I forget my dreams pretty quickly because they’re also extremely elaborate—[Laughs.] Like, baroque nonsense that keeps shifting genre. But uh—
crosstalk
Elliott: We often forget elaborate things. Yeah. Stuart: How does that make you feel, Dan? [Roman laughs.]
dan
Oh. I—I see what’s happening here. [Laughs.] I get the bit. [Laughs.]
stuart
So, uh, and my Venmo for this session is, uh— [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
[Through laughter] Okay. Alright.
crosstalk
Dan: Well, I mean, fair enough. Elliott: Uh, Dan—
dan
[Through laughter] You did the work, so.
elliott
Dan, I’m gonna write you a prescription for 100mg of Nobody Cares?
crosstalk
Stuart: [Through laughter] Oh, shit! Elliott: So if you could take this— [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
Ten times a day? [Dan laughs.]
dan
Fair enough.
elliott
I’m just kidding. I’m fascinated by your subconscious. It’s a crazy place. Okay, so. [Roman laughs.] It turns out the cup was shot out of his hand by some thugs led by these mobsters, the Mario Brothers. Get it? It’s a joke. One of the—there are two Mario brothers. Frank Stallone is the brains of the group, which gives you an indication of the level of these mobsters.
crosstalk
Elliott: They threaten him. And they want— Dan: Yeah. And you’ll recognize Frank—
dan
—Stallone because he looks exactly like his brother. Only a little less droopy.
elliott
I mean, he looks like a guy who got surgery to look like Sylvester Stallone. That’s—[Laughs.]
dan
Yeah.
elliott
He—they want him to pull of this heist of the auction house. The same one that the parole officer was trying to get him to do. And Danny Aiello, he smashes a wine bottle over one of their heads. And they leave, but they are still threatening him. So he’s gotta—he’s gotta go do this heist. He just got outta jail! As he continues to remind everybody throughout the movie. As they’re preparing, they’re going over the robbery plan and Danny Aiello is quizzing Eddie on the lengths of different songs. This is his amazing skill—besides being a cat burglar—is he knows the exact length to the second of every song that you ask him. According to IMDB Trivia—IMDB goofs, he is often wrong in his answers. [Roman laughs.] But the movie takes them as totally correct.
roman
But you—you’re treating that as if those two things are unrelated. But they are joined facts. The reason why he’s such a good cat burglar is he knows all the length of these songs, because that is his timing watch. Is the length of the songs.
elliott
I wonder if that’s something that is a way of them like trying to make him into a fantasy figure? Is it’s like, “Well, I could never be a cat burglar, but I do know how long that song is.” [Roman laughs.] Like, all these music nerds are like, “Hey! Maybe I could do it, too!” [Dan laughs.]
dan
I—the thing that… it’s gonna seem so weird for me to object to the reality of this in Hudson Hawk, the movie Hudson Hawk. But the thing that bothered me is—I feel like if this was a guy who’s like, “I know the length to the second of every Sinatra song or old standard,” like, yeah, sure. But it seems like he knows every song in that like he’s asked about Mariah Carey singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl. At one point.
elliott
Well they mention in the Goofs that—on IMDB—that he says that the—it takes—they say, “How long does Whitney Houston sing the national anthem?” And he goes, “Seven minutes.” And in actuality it was, like, someone else sang it at that Super Bowl and it was two-and-a-half minutes. And then it’s only after I read that goof that I was like, “Yeah. Seven minutes is a crazy amount of time to sing the national anthem.” [Dan laughs.] Like, is she singing every verse? Even the bad ones? Even, like, the ones that— [Dan laughs.] —that are offensive? [Roman laughs.] Like, what is going—and like, I know when you’re, like, a soul or—or hip-hop type singer, you really extend those syllables? And you can really extend a song? But like, that seems like a—for the national anthem? You gotta believe that the Super Bowl producers were tapping their watches and they’re like, “She’s eating into the commercial time. Like, we cannot—and we need to have the premiere of Friends right after the Super Bowl. We said in the commercials—right after the Super Bowl! Like, just pull her mic. She can’t even finish. We’ll just end on ‘rockets’ red glare’ and then we don’t need the rest of the song.” Like, c’mon.
stuart
Now, Elliott, was finding out that piece of information, was that the straw that broke the camel’s back and you’re like— [Dan laughs.] “I don’t know what to trust anymore!” [Multiple people laugh.] Were you like—
elliott
Yes. Yes.
stuart
“Is this my computer or is it a cake?” Like, is it that sort of thing? [Dan laughs.]
elliott
I’m just like the guy in Maltese Falcon who almost got hit by a girder. I walked away from my family. Walked away from my job. I just said, “I live in a world where there are no standards and I’ve gotta—I’ve gotta start over anew.” And that’s why I gotta tell everybody—this is my last episode of The Flop House.
crosstalk
Elliott: Next week I’ll be starting— Dan: Oh, don’t even…
elliott
I’ll be starting my new podcast, Heyyy! What? Which is me just kind of not knowing what things are going on. Just kidding. This isn’t my last episode of the podcast! I’m gonna do probably a thousand more episodes?
dan
Yeah. I would say, too, I would be perfectly happy for this to be moved over to incorrectly regarded as goofs, under the assumption that the Hawk is just fucking with him. If not for—as Roman says—the fact that this is integral to his cat burglar-ing. Like, to know the lengths of these songs.
crosstalk
Elliott: And we’ll see it. Roman: It is also integral to me enjoying the movie at all. [Laughs.]
roman
To tell you the truth.
elliott
Okay. Interesting. Interesting.
roman
This is what unlocked the movie for me. Is its ridiculousness of this premise.
elliott
What’s funny is—when that—when the bullet shatters his coffee cup and he just, like, does a Jack Benny slow burn look? That’s when I started realizing—I don’t think this movie is on the level. [Roman laughs.] I think this movie might be messing with me. [Multiple people laugh.] But then this next scene really pulls it off.
roman
But it’s really one of those things that shows you the mix of tone in that… sometimes violence is just goofy. Coffee cup exploding. And sometimes violence is a bunch of syringes in your face. And it’s sort of like the tone of this thing just bounces back and forth in these incredible ways. That is crazy.
elliott
And it gets increasingly cartoony at an increasing pace. Like, I’m sure somebody could do the algebraic formula that talks about the increasing rapid rate of cartoon-ness as the movie goes on. And by the end of it I was just like, alright. Like, I can’t even—like— [Roman laughs.] —I don’t even—I cannot pretend to care what happens to these characters. As we’ll see when James Coburn’s martial arts abilities cause Bruce Willis to be trapped in a—just swiveling at the waist loop? [Laughs.] [Roman laughs.]
stuart
Yes. He stun-locks him in that animation? Yeah. [Laughs.]
elliott
[Through laughter] Yeah. It’s—so they go and they do—they’re gonna do this elaborate job. They gotta use pool lifesavers to get on a rope and walk across this building. And the whole time—and they’ve gotta switch the security tapes so that the guards don’t notice. And the whole time, they are having a ball. They are laughing. They are joking. There is no suspense on their part. They could—they are so—this is when the smugness really got to me. ‘Cause it was like, they are so confident in their abilities to pull off this heist that at no point do they ever betray that they’re even taking it seriously or care that much about it! Y’know.
dan
Well, there’s also this constant patter of, like, kind of busting each others’ balls. That’s-all of it’s in the form of jokes? Like, Bruce Willis clearly thought that these were all jokes. But none of them are really funny?
crosstalk
Elliott: Mm-hm. Roman: Yeah.
dan
None of this, like—yeah. This banter that they’re constantly doing.
elliott
It basically just comes down to him being, like, “Hey, you’re fat, Danny Aiello!” “Heyyy! Hey!” “No, no! You’re looking good! You’re looking good! Ya fatso.” “Heyyy!” Like, that’s basically the level.
roman
And it has the classic heist trope of not telling each other what they’re going to do during this elaborate heist? [Dan laughs.] Which is something that always amazes me.
elliott
Especially since they—we had a scene right before this where they’re supposed to be going over the plan for the heist. But they keep surprising each other and it’s almost like they are—they’re a heist couple that has been doing this for so long. They are so bored with each other. The only way they can keep the spark alive is to constantly surprise each other in the heist room and just kinda keep— [Roman laughs.] —kinda keep pulling tricks so that they keep each other on their toes! Y’know. [Dan laughs.] It’s like, “Let’s roleplay during this heist! Let’s say during this heist that I’m the school principal and you’re a naughty student.” “Okay, but we’re still stealing a horse statue from an auction of tacky horse are. Right?” “Yes. Of course. That’s exactly what we’re doing. But maybe I handcuff you?” But they’re like, fuzzy handcuffs? That’s what it feels like. They really gotta get the spark back in.
dan
Yeah. And they’ve got this elaborate song-based timing thing? And I kept wondering, like, “So does the timing of the song figure in, like, the way that they’re going everywhere really slowly—” [Elliott laughs.] “—cause they’re dancing along to their own singing? And does it like figure in the fact that after the heist they just kinda stand around congratulating each other for a while?” Like—
elliott
Yeah. This is the problem, is that the song—the idea of a heist timed to a song is a really neat idea. And you could build a real neat sequence about it. But it fails for these reasons. One, smug up the wazoo. [Multiple people laugh.] They’re so smug about it. Two, they’re singing “Would You Like to Swing on a Star,” which is—I’m just gonna say it—a dumb song. [Roman laughs.] It’s a standard, but I think it’s a really dumb song. Three, it doesn’t, like you’re saying. It does not line up with any of the things that they’re actually doing. And four, it’s not the same length as the heist. So they do end up having all this dead time— [Dan laughs.] —at the end where they’re just kind of killing time when they should be leaving. Y’know. [Roman laughs.]
dan
Yeah. And I am glad that you brought up the song “Would You Like to Swing on a Star,” because I was thinking about it after the movie. And I’m like, I like that song. I think, like, the tune, for instance, is great. And like the… the chorus I like quite a bit. But there’s two problems with it. One, it posits that you, the listener, doesn’t know what various animals are? And need them explained to you? And two, it gives this world where your two options are either being turned into an animal or swinging on a star. Which I don’t think—I can’t relate to that. That truth.
elliott
To be honest, there’s a fantasy movie in the world that that song describes. Where you reach the age of—what—like, 13? And you have a choice of either becoming a celestial being who cannot interact with the physical world? Like, you swing on stars. That’s how you control your trajectory as a spirit being through space. And you get to see all these amazing wonders. You’re pat of the ether and part of the firmament of the heavens. But you can’t enjoy regular life. Or you become the lowest of brute animals and you can take part in the physical pleasure of life—eating. Rutting. Pooping. But you’ll never know any of the higher pursuits of, y’know, the cosmos. And so—I mean—that’s—I mean, maybe its’ not a movie. Maybe it’s, like, a short story. But I mean—maybe that’s what the song is about. But as it comes out now, it’s just two guys who—like every Italian man of a certain age—believes he can sing just like Tony Bennet. And— [Multiple people laugh.] And is just belting it out while kinda like half-chuckling to himself. And they’re like, it’s—it really seems to get in the way of the robbery. [Roman laughs.] I guess that’s what the problem is that I have with it. But they do manage to steal the scale model of Da Vinci’s horse. Their mischief gets noticed. They’ve gotta run from the guards. Bruce Willis bongs their heads together and it makes like a “bonk” Hanna-Barbera sound effect, which is the kind of thing I always—
crosstalk
Elliott: —love, but you gotta— Roman: Fantastic.
elliott
You gotta prepare me for it in some way. [Multiple people laugh.] It can’t come outta nowhere. I gotta know this is—like, it’s—if—like, just let me know ahead of time it’s the kind of movie where I’m gonna be able to hear—where you might hear—see someone run and hear bongo noises at the same time. I just need to know.
stuart
Yeah. For instance, the heist could be taking place in like Toon Town or something, right? [Roman laughs.]
elliott
Exactly. Or like, for instance—when—in the moment in Godzilla: Final Wars, when Rodan’s wings flap and create a wind, and a cop’s hat and a pimp’s hat fly off their heads and you hear, “Zing!” By that point, you know this is the kind of movie where there might be a sound effect when someone’s hat flies off their head. It’s not totally taking you by surprise. But I digress. They manage to escape by jumping off the skyscraper. An awning that breaks almost instantly manages to break their fall. And rather than having all their bones shattered—or dying—they end up in the apartment of Eddie’s parole officer. He’s delivering the horse. And that’s when—uh-oh!—a new character enters. The first of an increasing series of goofy characters. As a kind of butler-assassin? An English butler-assassin comes in? And he dresses like a butler and has a bowler hat and they—has an English accent. So everyone just assumes he’s a butler? And he does turn out to be a butler. So I thought it was just a quip that Bruce Willis was making, but no. He was accurately identifying in the wild this lifeform, the English butler. He accepts the horse and then smashes it. Inside is one of the pieces of the gold-making machine! Then for some reason he uses a retractable knife in his sleeve to kill Hawk’s parole officer by just slashing his throat open. Don’t know why he did that. [Roman laughs.] And then he leaves! [Dan laughs.] And he doesn’t kill the other witnesses! He just—he just does that! Now, this is also the first moment in the movie where it was like, real hardcore violence? And again, the tone of it was like—again. If this was a Hong Kong movie I’d be like, “Yep. I’m ready to see someone’s head explode and then see a scene where someone cries over their best friend being in the hospital, and then a scene where someone’s slipping on paint and they just fall down and get all paint messy.” But—again—in an American movie I was like, “Ooh, that was more extreme than I thought it was gonna be.” How did you guys take it? How did it affect you guys? Roman, sitting in the theater, were you like, “Whoa! Cool!” or were you like, “What?!” or were you just like, “Huh?” Or were you just, like, not paying attention. Or maybe you’d gotten up to use the bathroom at that point. [Roman laughs.] I don’t know. Fill me in. [Dan laughs.]
roman
I mean, I don’t know if I was [inaudible] at the time, but I definitely feel it today. Where it was just like, that does—y’know, like, I was pretty down with any type of violence that could happen? At the time? And so now I notice it as being sort of incongruous. But it—but I like—but the whole scene starts with him, y’know, they jump through the awning and then it cuts to him falling through onto the Barcalounger in the apartment. And so—and again, this is one of those things where I’m like… I don’t know if I want more of that movie? But at least it’s something. Y’know? Like, there’s—and then he comes in with the knife and slits a throat and you’re just like, what the fuck is going on? [Laughs.] Like—
elliott
There’s—and there’s a better version of that exact bit later in the movie. But there was a moment where I was like, “Wait. Did he fall through an awning or did he fall through the roof of an apartment?” [Roman laughs.] Or did—is there an apartment under the sidewalk under the awning and he fell through it—like, it’s a very confusing cut. But yeah. It’s like—this is a—it’s a movie that—it’s almost like a movie that’s like—it’s like an optometrist? And they’re like, “Do you like it like this or do you like it like this? Better number one, or better number two? Better if it’s a heist thriller or better if it’s a goofy comedy? Better if it’s super violent, or better if it’s, like, Hanna-Barbera sound effects?” [Dan laughs.] “Better if they say the swearwords a lot? Or better if the jokes are, like, things that a ten-year-old would enjoy?” It’s—I guess what I’m saying is, Hudson Hawk has something for everybody. Put it on the DVD box. [Roman laughs.] Elliott Kalan from The Flop House.
stuart
Has David Caruso shown up yet?
crosstalk
Roman: No. That’s at the auction house. Elliott: Uh, he’s about to. He’s about to. The next day— Stuart: Okay. [Dan laughs.]
elliott
The robbery has been—
dan
The weird thing is Stuart asks that about every movie. [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
Yeah. Yeah. Next day, the robbery has been covered up. The auction is still going on for this horse statue. Eddie goes to the auction to see what’s going on. He asks—he’s like, “How much does a tuxedo cost?” And then you see him in the most 1991 tuxedo.
roman
Oh my god. It is glorious.
elliott
Roman, you’re the design expert. Please explain this.
roman
Oh, he shows up like a member of the Revolution. Parinta’s revolution. And it is just glorious. If you could—if there’s a still of an image that represents 1991, y’know—[Laughs.] Like, this is it. It is beautiful. This—it has nice padded shoulders. No tie, because who has time for that nonsense? I mean, it comes with a tuxedo. And oh, it is cute beautifully. It is absurd. Socks for days. Like, it has loafers—really low loafers and just socks that just are like the Great Plains. It is just— [Elliott laughs.] Glorious. [Dan laughs.] It is—
elliott
It’s a beautiful tuxedo. And he’s not the only one who’s dressed up. ‘Cause there’s also a—
stuart
It’s the kind of tuxedo you might wear if you were escorting Cindy Crawford to a Planet Hollywood opening. Y’know? [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
[Through laughter] Yup! That’s—I mean, that seems like a very specific scenario.
roman
And he seems to be the only one wearing a tuxedo, so I don’t know why this was required of this particular job.
elliott
No. It’s like—I wish there was a joke about it where it was like, he thinks that every auction is like a black tie event so he’s in a tuxedo and everyone else is in just kind of like suits.
roman
But no tie. [Laughs.]
elliott
But there’s also—yeah. Well, with no tie. Of course. Yeah. But there’s also a bunch of people who—we’re not sure who they are—but they’re also very—they’re also dressed up like Dick Tracy villains, circa 1991. In the back. One of them being—that’s right!—the star of Jade, David Caruso. [Multiple people laugh.] We’ll get to him. Um— [Dan laughs.] They ask—they—
dan
[Through laughter] I was trying to explain who David Caruso was and I’m like, “Uh, okay. Well… if you haven’t seen NYPD Blue, and you have no idea what Jade—” [Roman laughs.] “—the movie he left for NYPD Blue for, is, uh, I don’t know.” And then I’m like, “Oh yeah!” Later on I’m like, “Oh, yeah, he’s in that CSI show. That’s the—that’s the current David Caruso context.” [Laughs.]
elliott
I mean, and even that is like a 12-year-old David Caruso context. But it’s hard to—it would be hard to explain to someone what a big deal it was that David Caruso left NYPD Blue after one season to make Jade? Like, I was— [Dan laughs.] —a kid. And I remember it being something that I was aware of. That a show I had never watched—the star of it, who I had never heard of before— [Roman laughs.] —was leaving to make a movie I would never see. And yet somehow this was—
dan
The erotic action thriller, Jade!
elliott
And it was a big deal that he was gonna be in the Eszterhas follow-up to Basic Instinct. Like— [Dan laughs.] Oh man. It was a simpler time, by which I mean a time when the decisions of white men— [Dan laughs.] —were just of a higher importance. An inflated importance, some would say. An unreal, unnecessary importance. So. He goes to the auction house and he knows that this horse is a fake, ‘cause he stole the horse! And yet—auction expert Andie MacDowell attests that the horse is real by holding it briefly for a moment. It—
crosstalk
Roman: “Holding it briefly.” This is the first— Dan: And he tries—
roman
—of a series of time in which people touch priceless artefacts with their bare hands. Which really stressed me out a lot.
dan
Oh yeah. [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
Oh, yeah. But later when he steals a Leonardo Da Vinci codex and he’s just pulling it—he, like, shoots it with a dart and then pulls it with a grappling hook? [Roman laughs.] Up into the air? And I was like, “That thing is falling apart. There’s no way—” [Multiple people laugh.] Yeah, but it’s—
dan
Also, before he knows that Andie MacDowell is the appraiser? He kind of like tries to hit on her by saying something about, “Oh, I guess if you want to get into art you have to look like a constipated warthog” or something like that. And I’m like, okay. First off, that’s a terrible pickup line. [Roman laughs.] But second, like, she’s at the art auction! Why would you think that insulting people at an art auction would be the way to go?
crosstalk
Elliott: ‘Cause he’s Brucie W.! Roman: He’s negging her. Stuart: Yeah. He’s gambling that she’s there ironically. [Laughs.] [All laugh.]
elliott
And it’s clear that she notices the horse. And also—the gloves—that could’ve helped to build the suspense! Like, he’s like, “Uh-oh, she’s gonna know it’s a fake!” As she’s putting the gloves on and getting ready. But they don’t do that. She just picks it up. She knows it’s a fake. She looks at him, and then says, “Oh, no. It’s real. It’s the real Da Vinci horse statue.” That’s when—who bursts in but the best character—one of the two best characters in the whole movie. That’s right—Darwin Mayflower, the eccentric, mean billionaire played by the great, immortal Richard E. Grant. And this is the book—I’ve been—this is the movie—I’ve been wanting to read Richard E. Grant’s memoirs for a long time? And it wasn’t until I watched this movie and in doing research realized that an entire chapter of his book is about Hudson Hawk that I ordered it? I was like, “I have to read it now.”
roman
Totally. [Dan laughs.]
crosstalk
Roman: He’s so good. He is so good. Elliott: He—he walk—he’s so good in it.
elliott
He’s like… he’s the only person in the movie who I feel like—him and Sandra Bernhard—are the only people who are accurately getting the tone of the movie, which is big and dumb. And like—[Laughs.] He just walks in and he yells, “$100 million!”
roman
“Clams.” [Laughs.]
elliott
100 million clams? Is that what he says? [Through laughter] Oh, I forgot.
dan
I will make the objection. I do think that they’re the two people who get the tone. And I really like Sandra Bernhard in, like, kind of as a persona? As like a performer? I don’t think that her acting is very good here in Hudson Hawk. [Laughs.] Like—
elliott
Are you saying the part of the evil billionaire who wants to destroy the world by undermining the gold market with a 15th-century machine, that she didn’t pull that off realistically? [Multiple people laugh.] That you never believed the situation? [Laughs.]
dan
I just think that she sometimes has some, like, complex lines that she has to spit at the camera and they always sound like they’re lines. Rather—where Richard E. Grant is, y’know. Like… amazing.
elliott
If you’re getting—if you’re trying to back me into a corner, where I argue that Sandra Bernhard is as good an actor as Richard E. Grant, I’m gonna avoid that corner. I’m not going in there. [Dan laughs.] I’m not— [Roman laughs.] Call me baby, ‘cause you’re not backing me into that corner.
roman
There’s a stiffness to her that I feel like is a choice. But it is definitely odd. Y’know. Whereas he is really hamming it up in a way that still feels like it comes from the character in some ways.
crosstalk
Elliott: Yeah. I think— Roman: You can see her choices.
roman
But I still think both of ‘em—like, I would drop the Mayflowers as villains into any movie. [Through laughter] As far as I’m concerned. They’re so good.
crosstalk
Elliott: And apparently—apparently what happened—Yeah. Apparently— Stuart: They’re like the Team Rocket of this movie. Uh, Pokémon? You guys like Pokémon? [Laughs.]
elliott
Yeah, yeah. [Roman laughs.] Team Rocket. Yeah, we get it. It’s a guy and a girl. They’re evil. They’re trying to catch ‘em all. Yeah. We understand.
stuart
And there’s—and they have a cat character, Kit Kat. I think I’m seeing a connection here, guys. [Multiple people laugh.]
crosstalk
Stuart: Let me get back to my connection board over here— Elliott: [Laughs.] Yeah. Pokémon was a—
stuart
—and draw some red string. [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
Okay. So they are incredibly evil billionaires. I think you’re right, Dan, that Sandra Bernhard is much more stiffly performative in a way that I agree, Roman, I think is on purpose? Whereas Richard E. Grant—you imagine he could just ad-lib in this character for 100 hours? [Dan laughs.]
stuart
Richard E. Grant has a way of performing where he looks like he’s shocked that he’s allowed to get to do this. [Multiple people laugh.] He’s like so excited. He’s like, “I can’t believe it!”
roman
And he’s so physical! Like, he jumps from like—off a table and he thrusts his pelvis and stuff. He’s just delightful.
crosstalk
Roman: Like, he’s making choices. Elliott: He’s—I—I— Dan: He does seem like the—
dan
—physical manifestation of the phrase joie de vivre. [Multiple people laugh.] Like—[Laughs.]
elliott
Well, he seems like he’s the guy—also, like, that he is… it’s kind of like Nicolas Cage in Kiss the Vampire, in that it’s like… we’re making this movie. It’s crazy that I’m making this movie. So I’m gonna go all-out, all the time? Like, it’s almost like he’s pushing himself to have as much fun as possible because he hates the movie that he’s in so much? [Dan laughs.] But—
stuart
Did you just call that movie Kiss the Vampire? [Laughs.]
elliott
Uh, Kiss of the Vampire. [Roman laughs.] Kiss the Vampire was a booth that I had at a carnival. Did not go well. [Multiple people laugh.] People did not wanna kiss that vampire. I—my mistake is— [Dan laughs.] —instead of getting one of the sexy vampires I got Nosferatu. And people were not crazy about kissing him.
stuart
Yeah. You got a Blade 2 vampire. [Laughs.]
elliott
Yeah. The— [Laughs.] Exactly.
dan
You’re like, “Come on! Come on, Orlock! Put on some makeup or something!” [Elliott laughs.] “Get that pale, y’know… hide those ears, maybe!” [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
“Put some rouge on those cheeks! Wear a wig!” So here’s something that I learned while watching the movie—while reading about the movie afterwards. Is that—so originally, the villain in the early drafts was a guy. Then they changed it to a woman and—apparently, according to the thing I was reading—they tried to get Audrey Hepburn to come out of retirement to play the villain in this movie? Which would have been bonkers.
crosstalk
Stuart: [Through laughter] Yeah. Quite a coup. Elliott: It would’ve been incredibly bonkers, yeah.
elliott
But instead they couldn’t. So Bruce Willis was like, “Let’s just have the man-villain and the woman-villain be in the same movie!” Sandra Bern—
dan
I mean, I feel like the fact that they wanted her, plus the fact that James Coburn is in this movie—maybe they were also—that points to a Charade influence on what they were trying to do.
elliott
I could see that. I think it’s a… I mean, that was also at the time when like… those are the movies that the stars of this—the people making this movie grew up on those movies. Y’know. So they wanted to—I should mention we’re recording this on the day that Olivia de Havilland has—the news of her passing came around. And that was a moment for me that I was very… it really hit me hard that, like, that era of Hollywood is dead? Like, a couple weeks ago I made Sammy watch The Adventures of Robin Hood? The Errol Flynn version? Which he really liked a lot? And while we’re watching it I’m—Olivia de Havilland’s in the movie, and I’m like, “She’s still alive. Can you believe that?” And she was like, “That’s amazing.” I cannot tell him that anymore. Because at 104, she’s dead. You know what they say—“Fame. Ain’t it a bitch?” And by they, I mean A. J. Benza in old promos for E! True Hollywood Story. Now, guys? Here’s what happens—
dan
[Laughs.] I don’t think fame is the problem rather than the inexorable progression of time, and…
elliott
The curse of fame. [Roman laughs.] She’d still be alive today if it wasn’t for fame. It always gets you in the end.
roman
She’d hit 105 if it wasn’t just for that fame she had. [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.]
dan
Yeah, exactly.
elliott
Well here’s the thing, is that she was actually on a plane flight that was supposed to crash. But she escaped. And death has been trying to—Tony Todd has been trying to track her down. [Multiple people laugh.] Ever since then. And it’s been 80 years! And he finally got her.
dan
I think we’re going in a less-sensitive direction suddenly. [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
So anyway. Sandra Bernhard walks in. She outbids her partner for no reason. They waggle their tongues at each other. [Roman laughs.] Instantly I was like, “I love these characters.” [Dan laughs.] And the guard—
dan
With $1! Which I don’t think—
crosstalk
Dan: [Through laughter] I don’t think you can sort of… Elliott: Oh, no. It’s with—with—I think with one million dollars.
crosstalk
Elliott: I think it was 101 million. Yeah. I mean, you could still say— Dan: Oh, okay. Okay. I was like—what?
dan
I thought they were doing—
crosstalk
Dan: —like, a Price is Right thing. Elliott: A Price is Right thing? Roman: Price is Right, yeah.
elliott
Yeah. $100 million and one? It’s like, “$101 million and one and fifty cents!” And the auctioneer is like, “Please. Can we—I know we’re starting at $100 million—” [Multiple people laugh.] “—this is already more than the item was listed as. But still.” [Dan laughs.] Let’s not get caught in the weeds here. So the guard notices Eddie, but Andie MacDowell trips him. The auctioneer’s gavel then explodes as he hits it on the ground, causing chaos. Eddie manages to save Andie MacDowell from a falling pillar and then gets hit by a statue that swings on a wire? I guess it was suspended in the air above the room for some reason?
stuart
It’s probably swinging from a star. [Laughs.]
elliott
Yeah. Probably that—it was swinging from a star and then it made the wrong choice and became a horse. So he wakes up in an ambulance—and now—we’ll get to the Andie MacDowell character later. What I also learned was that Isabella Rossellini was supposed to play this part, which also makes—it makes a ton more sense, seeing as she is supposed to be Italian. [Laughs.] So— [Roman laughs.] He wakes up in an ambulance with the Mario Brothers mobsters. He manages to slam a whole thing full of hypodermic needles in the dumb brother’s fast, which for some reason causes the driver of the ambulance to lose control? I couldn’t quite understand why that happened?
stuart
Oh, he grabbed his gun and started firing. That’s when he lost control.
elliott
Oh, that’s what it was. Eddie escapes on a gurney, right onto the Brooklyn Bridge. And we lead to my—I think actually my favorite moment of the movie. When a woman in a convertible is driving by him on this Brooklyn Bridge and she just goes, “Hey! Are you gonna die?” [All laugh.] And I don’t remember if he has a quip or not, but I love that moment. It’s just like, yes. This is a movie where the bystander is—if anything—mildly entertained that this man might die next to her. [Laughs.] [Multiple people laugh.]
stuart
And he like—somebody throws a cigarette out their window and he catches it and smokes it. And then he like… he has to throw change through the tollbooth ‘cause he accidentally goes in the exact—
crosstalk
Dan: That--oh, fuck. [Applauds.] That was a really good joke. Stuart: —exact change lane. Elliott: He somehow— Roman: I agree. I agree. I agree.
dan
I gotta give it to Hudson Hawk. [Laughs.] He’s on this runaway gurney headed toward the tollbooth and he has to pick, like, change out of his pocket and hurl it so he doesn’t get knocked off. [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Elliott: Yeah. Ruined only by the fact that— Dan: That’s a good joke.
elliott
—there is no toll booth there. They somehow ended up on the—going into, I think, the Battery Tunnel. From the Brooklyn Bridge. But anyway! The—he just keeps quipping the whole time. Finally, his gurney stops at the exact place where a group of CIA agents—that’s right, David Caruso and his gang!—are waiting for him. They’re all named after candy bars. David Caruso is named Kit Kat because he’s mute. Don’t know how they’re connected. [Roman laughs.] The big guy is named Butterfingers ‘cause he’s clumsy even though he’s strong. How he became a CIA agent is amazing, because he’s so dumb and constantly messing things up. And there’s two other CIA agents also.
dan
They also seem like they really need to take a long time explaining that they’re named after candy bars. I mean, especially considering that we all saw them with candy bars in their [through laughter] pockets ‘cause they’re so on-brand. Earlier.
elliott
Yeah. And this—
dan
In the movie.
elliott
Kit Kat manages to have preprinted dialogue cards he hands to people that exactly fit the situation that they’re in at the moment? It’s a joke that should work, but it never—until the last one, I feel like it never quite works. [Dan laughs.] Who walks out? That’s right—it’s their boss, James Coburn! Who introduces himself as George Kaplan. That’s a little nod for the movie fans out there, since George Kaplan is—Dan?
dan
Uh, he is the made-up spy in North by Northwest.
elliott
You got it!
dan
The one that people think Cary Grant is.
elliott
And it’s like, this movie is saying, “Hey. We’re the heirs to that kind of filmmaking.” And I’m like, I don’t remember a Cary Grant, like, knocking two guards’ heads together and it making a ‘bonk’ sound, but— [Multiple people laugh.] Okay, sure. Whatever. Like, when he was hanging off Mount Rushmore, I don’t remember him being like, “Hey. Should we sing, uh—” [Dan laughs.] “Is this a good time to sing ‘Me and My Shadow’?” Like, I don’t think so.
dan
Now, Elliott, be honest. North by Northwest with a coconut bonk—better, or worse? [Roman laughs.]
elliott
I think it’s a lateral move, Dan. [Roman laughs.] I gotta tell ya. [Dan laughs.] I think it doesn’t ruin what is a near-perfect adventure movie? But I don’t think it improves it. Y’know. So but— [Dan laughs.] So they knock him out and then he falls into a crate of packing peanuts. He then is taken out of the crate. He wakes up in an empty house in Rome, and it’s—like, this character is—in the classic film noire tradition, is constantly getting knocked out and waking up places. And it’s almost like the movie forgot they did it already? ‘Cause they keep having that happen to him? [Dan laughs.] The killer butler is there. He takes him into Mayflower’s high-tech limo. It’s so high-tech that he has, like, some kind of ticker-tape message fax machine that he then can stuff into a shredder and the shredder just shoots the shreds out into the streets of Rome. It’s like, where can I get that car, guys? [Roman laughs.] Did they ever make that? Is it real? [Laughs.] Roman, you strike me as a real gearhead. [Roman laughs.] Is that—is that a real car?
roman
Not as far as I know. I have no idea. But the shredding is, like, is glorious. That’s just—it’s perfect supervillain. Y’know, like… and he even says, “I’m the villain.” Like, it just is like so great. [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
He’s so—he’s so aware of what he’s doing. Now, the moment they showed up in Rome—again, you’re 15 years old or so. You’re watching this movie. Were you like, “Finally. A movie that speaks to me!” [Roman laughs. Dan joins in.]
roman
I don’t know. I mean, I feel like I was totally confounded by it when it happened. So at this point it was—I think it bludgeoned me into just, like, accepting what was going to happen next at this point.
elliott
Okay. And by this point you’re like, “I’ve seen what this movie has to offer me.” No. I don’t think you have, unfortunately.
roman
[Laughs.] Not at all.
elliott
Because— [Multiple people laugh.] They go to what I guess is like… the Mayflowers’ office or conference room? But it’s very clearly the lobby of a large building that they’ve made look like an office or conference room. Where he’s meeting with his board, which includes, like, a kid? I think? Like— [Roman laughs.] It’s—there’s like a Wes Anderson-esque touch to who is on the—at the board of this—of this corporation. [Dan laughs.] Sandra Bernhard is standing—sitting in the middle of the table, kind of barking out the lyrics to “I’ve Got the Power” on her Walkman. We never actually hear the song. But she’s just kind of saying it out loud. And also her dog, Bunny, is there? Right? Who is a little dog who’s always chasing after his ball-ball, which—in a hilarious mix-up—he’s—gets, what, lodged under Bruce Willis’s testicles while he’s handcuffed to a chair or something and he’s just—the dog is just sniffing around in his crotch. It’s a real Benigni-style humor moment for a moment.
stuart
Yeah. And the joke is that Bruce Willis, instead of being concerned, actually is enjoying it. Right? [Roman laughs.]
elliott
Yeah, yeah. Actually—you know what it is? It’s the trailer—so before I had ever seen any Sacha Baron Cohen stuff, I was visiting my college girlfriend who was studying in England. And we went to see a movie. And they showed the trailer for Da Ali G movie beforehand. And I was not aware of this character. I had seen the bus ads all over London. Every bus had an ad where he was just pointing guns at the person looking. I had no idea who this character was. Didn’t know. And the entirety of the trailer was him waking up thinking a woman was fellating him, but it was actually his dog. And then realizing he was enjoying it and going back to sleep. And I was like, “Don’t care for it. Not my kind of material, thank you.” [All laugh.] So this is what that was like.
stuart
Elliott puts down the newspaper he’s reading. [All laugh.] Shakes his head.
elliott
And then Bruce Willis then has one of my favorite lines in the movie. He goes, “I guess—I guess we see who wears the penis in the family!” Which is such a dumb quip that I was like, “Alright. I’ll give you points for it. That’s a dumb quip.”
dan
Uh—also, uh… there’s—there was—I read—I think it was a New York Magazine article about the making of this movie. And apparently… Bruce Willis wanted to say something more along the lines of, like, “I guess who has the dick—she—we know who has the dick!” Or something like that. And he kept doing it? And they’re like, “Uh, okay. Um, could we try one where you say ‘I guess we see who wears the penis in the family?’ Because at least that’s not a good joke, but it’s a play on a phrase rather than what the other thing would be?” [Elliott laughs.] And he did it literally one time after they did, like, [through laughter] 12 takes and they, like, used the one where he actually said the line.
elliott
Mm-hm. ‘Cause that’s what—Bruce Willis—
dan
So that’s Bruce Willis for ya!
elliott
That’s what’s called a one-er? Which is the single perfect take that comes after 12 bad takes. Roman, I want you to know—we usually don’t do this much research before episodes, and I think we were intimidated that you were coming on. [Roman laughs.] And so we actually— [Dan laughs.] —wanted to know something about this movie.
roman
I’m honored.
elliott
The Mayflowers—oh, yeah. You—we put real work into this. Which you wouldn’t know from the—when you first joined us on the Skype call and we had no idea what we were doing and we’re making it up as we went along. [Roman laughs.] So the Mayflowers want world domination. They threaten him—
crosstalk
Elliott: We’re gonna throw— Stuart: But their, like, world domination is based on—
stuart
—like, chaos, right? They wanna throw the world into chaos because they’ve already made so much money there’s no challenge in that anymore. And I feel like it—in 1991, no villain is scarier than one that wants to upset the capitalist order. [Laughs.]
elliott
Oh, yeah. Well because that was at a time when it was—it was still a time when every kid’s movie was about the loss of control of a corporation? Or whether a businessman was gonna be able to find his soul? [Dan laughs.] So people just took it for granted back then that capitalism rocked. And, y’know, that… capitalism rules and human empathy drools! That’s just the way they felt back then. So they threat—they’re like, “If you don’t go and steal this Da Vinci Codex from the Vatican, we’re gonna throw your friend Tommy—” Danny Aiello “—in jail.” And he’s like, “Danny? He would never be able to survive it! He’s too old now!” So Eddie goes to the Vatican. He cases the joint. He uses a bratty kid’s stuffed animal. She is literally just slamming a stuffed animal into a banister. And you’d think the Swiss Guard would take her down almost instantly. Like, the Vatican seems like a pretty heavily-guarded place in real life. But instead there’s just three goofy guards, just like the auction house in America. And—yes—are they eating spaghetti while they’re watching the cameras?
crosstalk
Elliott: Yes, of course they’re eating spaghetti. Roman: Of course they are. Yeah.
elliott
‘Cause it’s Rome. And he’s—
dan
Can I ask you something, you guys?
elliott
Yeah.
dan
About this young girl with the—
elliott
Stuffed elephant?
dan
The stuffed animal? Um… she—I looked that actress up. She was 12 when she made this. But to me she looked about 30. Did you guys— [Roman laughs.] —have this issue at all?
elliott
I didn’t. But you know what? People back then dressed older. People—like, if you watch Seinfeld now, the characters are supposed to be younger than me, but they dress like my grandparents. And I think people back—people now dress young? Like, you can go to work as a middle-aged man like me, let’s say, wearing a t-shirt and jeans? But back then, like, people dressed older than they were. Not as much as in the ‘50s, when teenagers wore suits. But, y’know. Slightly older.
crosstalk
Roman: Well, speaking of dressing older—let me tell— Dan: Stu was covering—
roman
Go ahead, sorry.
dan
No, I was just saying—Stu was covering his face in his hands and I’m not quite sure why he was so dismayed by my— [Roman laughs.] —my question. But it was just—it was weird to me because I was like, “Why is that old person [through laughter] pretending to be a child?” Like, why did they cast that old person—like, is this the producer of the movie? And she, like, wanted a weird cameo? What’s going on? [Laughs.]
elliott
I think Stuart—now, Stuart did some more research and knows that that girl actually had Jack’s Disease.
stuart
Oh, no. [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Elliott: And, y’know, even though she was 12, she was physically 48. Like—like—Robin Williams in the hit film Jack. So Roman—what were you saying about dressing older— Dan: Oh, okay. [Laughs.] So she’s—yeah, worried that I’m being insensitive. Okay. Well, I apologize. Stuart: Yeah. I didn’t wanna tell you guys. Uh-huh. Roman: But speaking of dressing older—
roman
I mean, this is where you really start to notice Bruce Willis’s penchant for high-waisted pants. In this scene. Like, he has— [Multiple people laugh.] He has a blue t-shirt tucked into—he looks like—he’s dressed like a six-year-old mafia boss in this scene. And you realize, oh yeah, he always wore high-waisted pants! It’s just because he had a black t-shirt on, you didn’t quite notice it as much?
elliott
Ohhh!
roman
And it’s—the wardrobe is just… fantastic in this movie. In fact, so much so that it gets its own credit. Before the cast and crew are, y’know, announced at the end of the movie. It is really glorious.
elliott
That’s one of the things—
stuart
It’s funny that you bring up the high-waisted pants, ‘cause I feel like that’s another connection. We mentioned Birds of Prey earlier, and I was kind of thinking about Bird of Prey when I was watching this movie ‘cause Birds of Prey feels like it has a connection to that, like, ‘90s, like, glitter-bomb, action-comedy thing. And yet… that movie also features Chris Messina wearing high-waisted pants as Zsasz, and I remember watching that movie and being, like, “Could I pull those off?” The answer is “no.” [Multiple people laugh.] But I thought about it.
elliott
And also a hawk is a bird of prey. Stuart, put it all up on your connections board! Hudson Hawk, Pokémon, Birds of Prey. They’re all related!
crosstalk
Stuart: Okay. I’m gonna work on it and you guys tell me when to talk again. Elliott: It’s all connected! New York telephone! Dan: Yeah. Wait. Have we talked— Roman: I mean, have you checked with the presence of reindeer goat cheese—
roman
—inside Birds of Prey? I have not seen it. But if you do, then that’s… it seals it.
crosstalk
Roman: It’s all connected. Elliott: Oh yeah. Same—
elliott
All part of the reindeer goat cheese cinematic universe.
dan
Have we talked about the fact that—along with this being written—or co-written—by the person who wrote Heathers, the director—
crosstalk
Dan: —did Heathers. One of my favorite movies. Elliott: No, we have not talked about it. It’s also the director of Heathers.
dan
But he also directed Stuart’s least favorite movies, 40 Days and 40 Nights. [Stuart groans. Roman laughs.] Now, since Hudson Hawk is clearly one of your favorite movies, Stuart, where does Michael Lehmann now rank in your estimation?
stuart
Oh, wow. I mean, that’s a huge hit. Uh… [Roman laughs.] I don’t know.
elliott
I mean—
stuart
I mean, that’s—
elliott
I mean, Stuart, remember my favorite movie—The Taking of Pelham 123—was directed by Joseph Sargent, who also directed Jaws 4: The Revenge. So it’s okay to like a movie by someone who made a bad one.
roman
Is 40 Days and 40 Nights—does that—that’s the Josh Hartnett one and the—
crosstalk
Stuart: Yeah. Yeah. Dan: Yes. Roman: And I’ve heard you talk about it.
roman
But does that take place in San Francisco?
stuart
I think it—I mean, it takes place at like a tech company, so I can only assume.
roman
Because I was living in Churro Hill, in San Francisco? And I think that was the movie that they shut down my street to film. And then even—maybe even—I could’ve put a stop to that movie for you, Stuart. I’m so sorry. [Multiple people laugh.]
stuart
I’m radicalizing Roman against that movie as well! [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
That reminds me of the day I couldn’t walk down a street in New York because they were shooting Little Nicky, starring Adam Sandler as—
crosstalk
Elliott: —the son of the devil. Stuart: Luckily, the final product made it all worth it. Right? [Multiple people laugh.]
crosstalk
Elliott: Luckily, when I finally saw the movie I was like— Roman: His sacrifice.
elliott
—that was worth inconveniencing me. A little bit. Okay. So. Andie MacDowell’s also there. She’s leading a tour of the Vatican. Which at this point is—we gotta be, like, what is her job? She’s like an art authenticator and she leads tours of the Vatican? Eddie uses that stuffed animal from that middle-aged little girl and sets off the security things, which involves, like, these—like telescoping gates that close around this codex. And in the—
crosstalk
Elliott: —and some gas gets sprayed out? They look very shaky. Stuart: Which don’t look particularly scary. Like, they move fairly slowly. Right?
elliott
Yes. And also, they look like you could just kinda snap ‘em off.
dan
Yeah. They kinda look like the crystals in The Fortress of Solitude almost.
elliott
Mm-hm. Yeah. Very snappable. Yeah. Andie MacDowell takes Eddie into the Vatican’s secret postal subway tunnels. Which—could be a real thing! I don’t know! It’s not that out of the question. Y’know.
roman
They do have a subway in Vatican City, but the one that they show is the mail rail in London, actually.
elliott
Oh, okay. I guess they didn’t get permission from the Vatican to shoot—
crosstalk
Elliott: —in the— Roman: Well, I think the one in the Vatican— [Dan laughs.]
roman
—is actually like a normal—like, it’s a—it’s actually the world’s shortest subway, apparently? It’s like—
crosstalk
Roman: It’s less than a mile? Elliott: Oh, it’s a real, like, commuter subway.
roman
But that’s not what they’re showing. They’re—that’s actually a passenger railway? Like, the smaller-gauge mail railway is a thing from London. And I think that’s what they’re showing in that scene.
elliott
They agree to have dinner that night. Andie MacDowell seems to find Bruce Willis irresistible, even though he is smug and gross and she just saw him try to rob something. They’re gonna have dinner that night. And that’s when we learn… she’s a secret agent for the Vatican. I mean, Eddie doesn’t know that yet, but we know. And she’s a secret agent. She reports that he’s planning to rob the place to her boss, who is a cardinal. This is—again—one of those moments where—when I found out it was supposed to be Isabella Rossellini I was like… this, again, make some much more sense. [Various affirmations from the other hosts.]
roman
Oh, it would be so much better with her. Yeah.
crosstalk
Roman: I mean, Andie MacDowell is totally fine. Elliott: I totally see her as a secret agent nun.
roman
But it totally would’ve made much more sense that way.
elliott
I mean, I’m gonna be honest. Andie MacDowell is—I think—my third-favorite performer in the movie? Because she really sells it? Especially at the end when she is faking being a—being out of her mind?
crosstalk
Elliott: I think she really puts a lot of work into it? Dan: Yeah. That’s what I was gonna say. Stuart: Yeah. Roman: Her madcap—yeah. Her madcap energy—
roman
Like, her sort of sitcom madcap energy and everything like that is totally solid. Like, there’s nothing wrong with it. It just would’ve made—the tone of it would’ve made more sense with an absurdist Isabella Rossellini performance, I think.
elliott
Yeah.
dan
Yeah. Other than Sex, Lies, and Videotape, I’m not like a big fan of early Andie MacDowell? Like, I think she’s become a very good sort of character actor lately? I liked her in Ready or Not recently. But like, y’know. I mean, I think she… in Groundhog Day, for me, the best you can say about the movie is like she does not make it bad. And I didn’t like her in Four Weddings and a Funeral that much, but here, like, yeah. The—I thought she was very funny in a lot of it.
elliott
Mm-hm. She’s good in a movie called Shadrach? That came out years ago? But the—see, I—right after I watched this I actually ended up watching Ready or Not. And it was like… Andie MacDowell, then and now. It felt like it. When I get—I get to see an actor at different points in their career, one after another! That’s the power of movies! And now I’ve gotta wait like another 20 years until I can have that effect again when I watch Ready or Not and then… I don’t—like, the remake of Cocoon that she’s in. Y’know. In the future. [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
Then Ready or Not: The Next Generation.
crosstalk
Elliott: Yeah. Right? When they bring her back as a cameo. Yes. [Laughs.] “Still ready.” Stuart: Still ready!
elliott
And she comes back, I guess, as like a ghost? I don’t know. Anyway. Eddie tries to call Danny Aiello, but he can’t get him on the phone. Why is that? Because—as we see in the background behind Eddie—Danny Aiello’s in Rome already. Just getting into a fancy car. And the CIA is like, “Eddie, you gotta rob the Vatican tonight. You gotta do it.” There’s a little bit of comedic violence and—anyway. Let’s get to the robbery, shall we? Eddie mails himself to the Vatican using his cat burglar tricks, which essentially is putting himself in a box and mailing it to the Vatican and getting on that train— [Dan laughs.] —and then just popping his hat out of the crate while he’s on that train. It’s a shot that I actually really love. Where he’s—he’s got this wild-eyed look on his face while he’s on this train. The Italian guards—again—just as bad as the American guards. Eddie steals the Codex with a fishing hook? As we mentioned, that would almost certainly destroy this 500-year-old manuscript. To be flung through the air on a fishing hook. [Multiple people laugh.] But maybe they had it rebound recently? Or maybe—I don’t know. It’s—I mean, old paper—
crosstalk
Elliott: —is stronger than new paper? Dan: They laminated it.
elliott
Yeah. [Through laughter] They laminated the whole thing? [Multiple people laugh.] It’s on real lambskin. It’s not on that newsprint that they use for books now. He narrowly escapes getting caught. Jumps off a—what—like a double-decker bus or something? And lands in the chair at the table where Andie MacDowell is sitting. And that was the moment in the movie where I was like—that worked for me. To have him go on this madcap chase and end up exactly where he was supposed to be? I’m like, alright, movie. Now I get what you’re doing and I’m gonna force myself to be on board. [Multiple people laugh.] The CIA agents are at another table, which bothered me. Bruce Willis asks for pasta in impeccable Italian, then asks for ketchup, too. I don’t know. It—it doesn’t—I think just to piss of the waiter.
crosstalk
Roman: It doesn’t track. At all. Elliott: It just—it’s—
roman
Like, I don’t know why. Yeah.
elliott
And there’s no payoff. Like, I was expecting him to use the ketchup for something?
roman
Totally. It seemed like a thing that was gonna have a payoff. And like they were gonna use the bottle to do something. Like, thwart the CIA agents in the next table. But… no.
elliott
I wonder if there’s a scene where they do that. Where—and they cut it. But.
roman
It feels like something that—it feels like half of a joke. Like, legitimately. Yeah.
elliott
There’s a number of things in the movie that do feel like half a jokes?
crosstalk
Stuart: Did he—does he— Elliott: Where it’s like—
stuart
—save that ketchup and then use it as fake blood when they fake him killing Danny Aiello later?
elliott
Don’t—spoiler alert, Stu! We’re not up to it! [Roman laughs.] But yes, probably. Yes.
crosstalk
Elliott: I think that’s exactly— Roman: They do use it, but—
roman
That isn’t—it’s such a tenuous connection that you can never sort of connect it between that moment and the next moment.
elliott
Is that actually what happens?
roman
They do say it. He says, “Ketchup.” Like, Danny Aiello says something about the ketchup on his chest.
crosstalk
Stuart: See? I’m putting it on the board with the rest! [Laughs.] Elliott: I mean—yeah, right. And there’s nowhere else they coulda gotten ketchup in-between. Roman: But it’s still— [Laughs.]
elliott
But it’s—not only is there nowhere else he could’ve gotten ketchup, but he doesn’t know at that moment that Danny Aiello is in the city. [Multiple people laugh.] So the idea that he’s planning to fake someone’s death— [Multiple people laugh.] —at some point—is like what happens in… when Christopher Priest was writing the Black Panther comic book, and Black Panther always had these amazing schemes that he would out-scheme other people. And it got to the point where it was like—okay. So do you just know everything that everyone’s gonna do 15 moves ahead? ‘Cause there’s no way you could’ve planned for that. Or in—what’s the—which is the Bond movie with Javier Bardem? Is it Quantum of Solace? Or is it…
crosstalk
Stuart and Roman: Uh, Skyfall. Yes. Dan: Uh… no. It’s—yeah. Elliott: Skyfall.
elliott
The moment in Skyfall when they’re in the sewers and that subway train comes through and blocks James Bond? And it’s like… so did you— [Roman laughs.] —plan everything around the subway schedule? ‘Cause you’re acting like that was not a lucky break. Like, you’re acting like that was part of the plan. But it’s unbelievable. [Singing] Oh! Oh, oh, oh! Unbelievable. [Regular voice] Jordan, just put in that sound hit please from EMF’s Unbelievable. [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.]
dan
Yeah. We wanted to pay EMF some licensing right. [Roman laughs.]
elliott
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So let’s—I mean, you—just the other day, Dan, you were like, “What can we do for EMF in this hard time?”
crosstalk
Dan: I know that they’re down. Elliott: I know they’re probably hurting!
elliott
I mean, things are so unbelievable right now that nobody is listening to that song. And—
dan
Yeah. Well I— [Laughs.] They can’t tour! I mean, no one can tour right now.
crosstalk
Dan: Artists are struggling. Elliott: Because they only have the one song!
elliott
What, are they gonna perform it once and then get off the stage? [Roman laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: Exactly. Elliott: Come back to the same song as an encore and then leave?
elliott
No one’s paying Ticketmaster or Live Nation subcharges for that! Y’know, it’s impossible! [Dan laughs.] So I guess what I’m saying is, this MaxFunDrive, please reach out to EMF. See what you can do for them. [Multiple people laugh.] So Andie MacDowell is giving Eddie a massage at her apartment. Learns that he was in prison. Explains his—he explains his nickname, which is that the wind that comes off the Hudson is called the hawk. ‘Cause it’s so cold, I guess? And so he was given the name “Hudson Hawk”—what—‘cause he’s a cool customer? It’s not super clear.
roman
Yeah. That’s also a Chicago story that’s not—the Hudson isn’t notorious for its coldness. [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Roman: But Lake Michigan is. Elliott: Well, I will say that—
elliott
The wind coming off the Hudson can be cold sometimes. [Roman laughs.] But you’re right. It’s not as cold as Chicago winds. But that’s why they call New York “The Windy City.” [Roman laughs.] So she’s like, “Oh, I like it! That you were in jail!” She takes—she goes back to—oh, so this is before they go back to her place. They go back to her place. She’s giving him a massage. They start making out, when she gets a signal from her boss—through the form of a crucifix on her wall that lights up and then just has voices out of it? Which is—a hilariously not-subtle way for a secret agent to get a message. It may be while they’re entertaining someone in their apartment who doesn’t know that they’re a secret agent! It seems like there’s no way to, like, turn it off or anything? And she sees the Codex in his bag and she’s like, “Wait! You did rob the Vatican tonight?” Don’t know why she’s surprised. Meanwhile, this is the weirdest joke in the movie and I could not understand it. The CIA agents are outside on a stakeout watching, and one goes, “Hey, what’s happening up there?” And Butterfinger, the big dumb one, goes, “What me to rape them?” And I was like, “What?! Did I heard that right?”
dan
Yeah. I—yeah.
elliott
Like, but the subtitles said it, too. And it was one of the—it was just like… another 1991 joke where I’m like… this is not a joke that would fly at any other point in history, maybe, except at a time when like it was—I don’t know—what—it was okay to be a douche? Like, I don’t understand. Dan, explain it. You love jokes about sensitive subjects! [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: Uh, I’m sorry. I was busy looking up— Stuart: You’re always pushing the envelope. [Elliott laughs.]
dan
I was busy looking up EMF on Wikipedia— [Multiple people laugh.] —just to make sure that, like, they were a thing we could, like, a cause we could support and that there was no big tragedy we were being insensitive to? [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
Okay. Fair point. Fair point.
dan
But one of their bassists did pass away from a drug overdose.
elliott
But when was that?
dan
But—uh, let’s see here. It’s—it was during the third… or the second reunion? Wait.
elliott
I mean, it boggles my mind there’s a reunion.
dan
They’ve broken up and reunited three times, apparently.
elliott
But this isn’t something that happened like a couple months ago.
dan
No, no, no, no, no. Also they… did a lot of relief work for AIDS. So I think it’s good for us to support EMF. Let’s all thank EMF.
elliott
I mean, Dan, you know I wasn’t really suggesting that people— [Roman laughs.] —like, send EMF money.
dan
[Facetiously] What?! [Laughs.] What?!
elliott
I hate to—I appreciate that you did our due diligence on this one, but…
crosstalk
Dan: [Laughs.] Yeah. Alright. Well. Elliott: But I’m glad you’ve—you realized—
elliott
I’m glad you ascertained that EMF falls in that meaty middle of things that are neither too good nor too bad for us to make fun of. [Dan laughs.] Thank you.
stuart
So—but—the joke that you just mentioned, there’s a couple other jokes earlier in the movie that are—I think—and later in the movie—that are kind of insensitive. And I think it just—it speaks to a time where the entire, like, editorial board was just a buncha white guys being, like, “Doesn’t offend me! That’s fine!” [Laughs.]
elliott
Yeah.
dan
Yeah. There was a moment early in the film where it’s like… one of the guards is making a joke at the expense of a Chinese person’s name?
elliott
Oh, I forgot about that! Yeah. That’s pretty bad.
dan
And it’s like—you’re like, oh, this is bad.
crosstalk
Dan: And then they do one of those Asian music stings? And I’m like, okay. Stuart: A fucking musical sting? Yeah. Elliott: Yeah. That was bad. Ah.
dan
Come on, movie. [Laughs.]
elliott
I shoulda made a note about that. That was bad. That’s—the… the—it’s like I was explaining Gremlins 2 to Sammy the other day, and I got to the part about the Asian tourist with the camera? And I was like, [vocally grimacing], “Ahhhh. Can I remove that from the movie?” [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
There was a time in history when it was hilarious that— [Laughs.]
elliott
Well, it’s one of those—
dan
—they liked cameras!
elliott
Well it’s one of those stereotypes I’ve never really understood? I guess ‘cause I was a kid at the time? But I’m like, what—what—what, like, what kind of stereotype is, “Well, you know those types of people. They love visiting other places and bringing home memories with them.”
crosstalk
Elliott: “Let’s make fun of that! They love to expand their horizons by travel.” Dan: [Laughs.] Well that’s the thing. I— [Laughs.] I—
elliott
And they love to remember the moment in a photo. That’s hilarious.
dan
I think it was exactly that, Elliott. That like that was the first time kind of in history that there was an influx of more Asian tourists to America? And just the simple fact that they took cameras around. Which any human [through laughter] would do on their vacation! Then became a stereotype.
elliott
It’s very—it’s—sometimes there’s stereotypes that I just… I just… they’re—-I guess they’re rooted in that one moment of history. Anyway. So. I guess what I’m saying is—guys? I can no longer wholeheartedly endorse Gremlins 2. I can only endorse every other thing about that movie. Except for that one character. [Dan laughs.] So anyway. She—Andie MacDowell drugs Eddie. Tells the CIA that she wants to see Kaplan, ‘cause everybody is working together and knows—I don’t know why she, like, acts surprised that he committed the robbery even though everyone in Rome seems to be working together and knows that Eddie is committing this robbery? And they go, “Oh no, it’s a—he—” and James Coburn’s like, “It’s a sting operation. We’re gonna catch the Mayflowers.” And for some reason—and he goes, “Okay, now we’ve gotta get you back to Rome. But don’t worry—we have a body double!” And David Caruso is wearing the same dress as Andie MacDowell and a wig for no reason. Again, this is like the first half of a joke and it’s never paid off. And there’s no— [Dan laughs.] Like, there’s—like, there’s no reason she needs a body double. We’re never seeing a situation where, like, he convinces someone he’s her. It doesn’t make sense. Andie MacDowell talks to her boss in Confessional, and we find out—she’s not just a secret agent! She’s a nun. That’s right! She’s a battle nun. Or a warrior nun? Whatever that independent comic from years ago was.
stuart
It’s now a Netflix TV show!
elliott
Really? It is?
stuart
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just launched like a week or two ago. It’s crazy.
elliott
Oh, I didn’t know about that. That was one of those things I would see in the back of the Previews catalog and I’d be like, “I don’t know that I’ll ever find out what this really is.” [Roman laughs.] The Vatican wants to keep the gold machine from wrecking the world economy. Because—I mean, it makes sense. The Vatican owns a lot of gold. But if there’s anything that the teachings of Jesus tell us, it is that it is very important to have a functioning global economy based on precious metals? [Laughs.] [Roman laughs.] And that he’s—I remember he says—I think at one point—to Peter, he said, “You will be the rock on which my church is built and through which we will regulate capitalism to ensure that people can still make loads of money through the accumulation of commodities.” And Peter was like, “Let me get all this down.” [Multiple people laugh.] “This is a big job. Hold on a second!” [Laughs.] [Roman laughs.] So the Mayflowers—they’re mad at Hudson Hawk. I don’t remember why. [Laughs.] They get the last gold machine bits from the Codex, right? It’s like every Da Vinci thing he steals, they have to break to get the machine parts that are inside of it. And Minerva kills her henchmen—kind of as a joke. Hudson Hawk steals something that—I don’t remember us seeing. Later one we find out what it is, I guess. And the next couple of minutes are just everyone taking turns overacting hysterically largely. [Dan laughs.] Where like, Hudson Hawk gets out of his handcuffs and starts dancing with Minerva and just shouting at them while they stand there watching him? And then he stops and watches as Richard E. Grant overacts and just flops around for a while. It’s—the scene makes no sense. It’s like the worst improv exercise I’ve ever seen and they were just like, “Keep it in the movie. Whatever. Okay.” [Roman laughs.]
elliott
The—and so the Mayflowers—as I say in my notes—they explain their plan to make gold and undermine the world so they can …? [Dan laughs.] It’s never really clear what the endgame is. And now he’s gotta go rob the Louvre to get a model of Da Vinci’s helicopter flying machine. And he’s like, “How much globetrotting robbery am I gonna have to do?” That’s when he’s like, “I don’t wanna do this anymore.” And they say, “Take it up with our partner—it’s Danny Aiello!” That’s right! He set Hawk up… somehow. [Roman laughs.] Not sure how he did it. Not sure what they needed him for. It’s not clear. He’s played no—except, I guess, in doing the first robbery with him? It’s unclear what he has to do with any of it. They fight. He seems to get shot during the fight and they’re both taken away in an ambulance. Hey, guess what guys? As Stuart said, it was a fake fight. The oldest gag in the books! The old “pretend to fight with your partner so that you can knock over the guy holding a gun on you.” And Eddie is like, “Look at this! I stole part of the gold machine!” And they’re like, “You did it! We saved the day!”
dan
Well, but also—[sighs]. Here’s what I don’t understand. Because like… it was a genuine… betrayal. Eddie just forgives him for it because… Danny Aiello is like, “No, no, no. This is wrong. I shouldn’t have done this.” Like, he like—
crosstalk
Dan: —changes at the—so—this—I’m just baffled by— Elliott: Here’s my guess. Off-camera—Here’s my guess, Dan. Stuart: And he’s also played by Danny Aiello, who’s—
stuart
—a super-charming guy and I miss him every day.
dan
—when they set up this fake— [Laughs.] Death scheme?
crosstalk
Dan: Like, how that gets arranged? Elliott: Here’s what they did.
elliott
They were fighting and Bruce Willis is mad. Danny Aiello started singing, like, “I Only Have Eyes for You” or something and Bruce Willis sang along with him. Or like—“Fly Me to the Moon.” That’s what it would’ve been. Sang “Fly Me to the Moon.” And they join as a duet. And then Bruce goes, “Hey. Plan 49-B?” And Aiello goes, “Yeah. 49-B.” [Roman laughs.] And that’s all they know, ‘cause they got their crook shorthand! And they know that’s the “fake a fight so that I can pretend to be shot so that the Vatican ambulance can take me away” plan. ‘Cause that’s just how good they are, Dan!
crosstalk
Elliott: That’s just… how good… they are. Dan: Okay. I mean… I guess I’m an idiot. [Laughs.]
elliott
But—I mean, I wouldn’t say idiot. I would say “moron.” But, y’know, that’s fair. [All laugh.]
roman
We like to keep it to medical terms here.
elliott
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. They’re celebrating at Andie MacDowell’s apartment. Eddie tries to get Andie MacDowell to sleep with him even though her bed is just behind, like, a thin, see-through scrim? So I guess, like, Danny Aiello would just watch the whole time? [Dan laughs.] Or just like stay really focused on the TV and pretend his friend was not having sex feet away from him? Or maybe they’re just the kinds of friends like in Wolf of Wall Street who have sex in front of each other! I don’t know. That never gets answered because Andie MacDowell makes them sleep on the couch. The next morning the CIA shows up. Wakes them up. Injects them with a poison that paralyzes them from the necks down so that they can…
crosstalk
Elliott: [Sighs.] The CIA can— Stuart: You would think—
stuart
You would think that this scene would hamper their ability to overact. [Elliott laughs.] But no, no, no! [Roman laughs. Dan joins in.] They do the most neck-and-face acting you can imagine. [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
All of the energies—all the chi from the rest of their body is channeled up into their face at that point. And, uh—
elliott
Not since the head-shaking demons from Jacob’s Ladder has there been such head-and-neck overacting motion in a movie. James Coburn is there and he’s like, “Hey, you don’t have to rob the Louvre. I did it instead of you. We killed a bunch of guards. Here’s the helicopter model!” Breaks it open. “Here’s the gold machine piece.” And it’s like, hey. Why did they come here to tell them this? [Multiple people laugh.] It seems unnecessary. It seems like it can only hurt their plan to get Hudson Hawk and Tommy—who were about to go home— [Roman laughs.] —to get them back mixed up in the plot. [Multiple people laugh.] Why would you do it? I don’t know. [Laughs.]
dan
[Through laughter] They just dropped by to explain to the audience, “No, there won’t be a third heist in this movie.” [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
Don’t worry!
dan
We got bored of the heists. [Laughs.]
elliott
We’re not gonna make you do that, movie!
stuart
So is this the scene where they introduce a weapon that’s, like, a bazooka that fires these rockets that stick to things and have a timer on them. And I do love that they introduced this bullshit weapon and then it shows up multiple times for the rest of the movie. Like, it’s—it’s very, like, Wolfenstein or Doom or whatever. [Dan laughs.]
crosstalk
Roman: With unlimited ammo. I mean, just, unlimited. Elliott: Well, but here’s the—here’s the question I— Stuart: Yeah. [Laughs.] Yeah.
elliott
Well that was my question, is—where did they get—even if they held onto it, where did they get the—probably very unique ammo— [Roman laughs.] —these suction-cup-time-bomb-missiles? But also, the timer doesn’t seem to matter that much? ‘Cause they shoot one onto the wall and it has a two-minute timer. Then they—another one accidentally gets shot to a CIA agent’s forehead and has a two-minute timer. The forehead one goes off first. [Roman laughs.] And then the heroes run away. And then the other one, I guess, goes off. Like, it’s—
dan
Yeah. No. It goes down to—yeah. The timer’s at zero and then they’re like, “Hey! Maybe we should jump out the window!” [Roman laughs.] Like, it’s—
stuart
Yeah. All bomb timers give you a little bit of leeway. Once it hits zero. [Laughs.] [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
That’s the—they call that the margin of error in any explosive. The Mayflowers, they kidnap Andie MacDowell. They want her to decipher Da Vinci’s plans so they can build the gold machine. That never really matters ‘cause they’ve already built the gold machine. And—but she pretends that she is still babbling gibberish from the drug they injected her with. This, I think, was a pretty funny bit for me in that she thinks she’s a dolphin and has to talk to other dolphins and Andie MacDowell really gives it her all. Eddie and Tony, they use that bazooka that shoots suction-cup time bombs to storm Castle Da Vinci, where they are—now, I don’t believe “Castle Da Vinci” was ever a real place. I don’t—my understanding was Leonardo Da Vinci was always in the employ of different kind of feudal lords and barons because he needed money ‘cause he was not part of the landed gentry? Guys? Prove me wrong. Dan, I know you’re a Da Vinci scholar! Tell me what I’m wrong about that.
dan
Uh, no. I don’t know that. But there was a question that came up toward—when we were watching the movie. At Chez McCoy here. And it was, “Was there a war going on? At the time?” And I was like, “Elliott would know this.” ‘Cause they’re like—when they’re saying, “We need bronze! For the war!” Like, uh…
elliott
I mean, Da Vinci was constantly building—or designing military weapons, I guess? And like, there was warfare going on but it wasn’t like… it wasn’t like a—y’know, it was skirmishes between different kind of like… warring… like—either city-states or feudal vassals and things like that? It wasn’t like “Italy is at war with Germany!” ‘Cause Italy as a nation did not exist at the time.
crosstalk
Dan: No, no, I know. But the sudden need for bronze. Elliott: Not until, like, the—like, the late 18th—late 19th-century, basically.
elliott
Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s possible. I mean, it’s also—it’s true that they did not build that horse. I don’t know if that’s the reason why? I don’t remember? But that—the Les Fours? Or whatever it’s called? That horse he designed? Which was supposed to be the largest equine statue in the world? It was not built until modern times. So like that part of it is true, at least. In real life, the model for the horse was destroyed. They still had his blueprints, but the model is not real. So—
dan
Elliott: Hudson Hawk— Stuart: It was destroyed because—
stuart
—there was part of his gold-making machine in it? [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
Exactly. Yes. That’s the truth of that.
dan
Well, I wanted to—yeah. I wanted to get to the bottom of the most important thing about this movie: Hudson Hawk’s accuracy to Renaissance history.
elliott
Well—as people will know when we finally release that Battle Angel episode—you love to know backstory about wars! [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
[In simpering voice] “Mm, tell me more, please!” [Laughs.]
stuart
What I love about this movie— [Multiple people laugh.] —is that the big conclusion takes place at a fucking castle. Y’know? As soon as that happens l’m like, “I’m in, baby.” If—
elliott
You’re like, what, did Charlie Band produce this? Come on! [Multiple people laugh.]
stuart
It’s uh—yeah! It’s like, it’s just like If Looks Could Kill. Or… I don’t know. Other movies that have castles in ‘em! [Multiple people laugh.] Like, uh…
crosstalk
Stuart: Romancing the Stone. Elliott: Those—no, that’s it!
elliott
That’s the two! [Laughs.]
dan
Yeah.
elliott
So they storm the castle while singing “Side by Side,” ‘cause they—again, the song—the timing doesn’t matter. It’s not like that they have an intricate plan for this other than “split up and blow things up as you walk along.” [Roman laughs.] But they’re having a ball. The Mayflowers kill—they—so Kit-Kat, the David Caruso character—I guess the joke was supposed to be that he’s like a master of disguise? ‘Cause he’s painted to look like a Roman statue with a spear? [Dan laughs.] For no reason? Like, I don’t know who he’s fooling ‘cause everyone knows he’s there. And they say, “Guard the nun spy.” And he puts a spear up to her. And they’re like, “Actually…” and they kill him. And I was like, “What was the point of that whole ruse?” [Roman laughs.] Like, why even bother that first step? Just go ahead. [Dan laughs.] ‘Cause the Mayflowers are just killing the CIA agents. Meanwhile, they’re—the good guys are throwing bombs everywhere. [Stuart laughs.] And Eddie—so this is when Eddie ends up in a fight with James Coburn, who—it turns out—he still knows kung-fu from his days as, like, an Our Man Flint in like, Flint: Secret Agent, and you have—this is—yeah. Stuart? Describe what happens here. This is the—I think the cartoony-ist part of the movie.
stuart
Yeah. So… they’re doing a fight on the top of the—on the roof of the castle. And James Coburn is doing a pretty complicated combo with very—y’know, he’s got his combo links down. He understands the frame data. [Elliott laughs.] And he manages to lock Hudson Hawk in this stun-lock animation up against the wall, basically. Where he just keeps bending backwards and bending forwards over and over. [Dan laughs.] So that even after he stops his combo… he drops his combo. You’re like, “What a loser! Why’d he drop his combo? Why isn’t he practicing those B&Bs?” But uh— [Elliott laughs.] He’s still locked in that animation. Of course, doing that makes him bend over to pick up his hat, which has fallen on the ground, and at this point we know—Hudson Hawk loves his fucking cool hat. So he bends over to grab that hat. James Coburn goes for a jump. And you’re like, “You’re gonna do a jump-kick right now, in this point in the match?” [Roman laughs.] “You’re just leaving yourself open to a counter-attack! Like, wanna be sure you can see.” Or does one of those guile kicks. So he jumps off the over— [Elliott laughs.] —what, over the Barbican? What’s the—what’s that thing called? He jumps off—
elliott
Oh, the ramparts?
stuart
Yeah. He jumps over the ramparts with his kick. And then, of course, lands on a car. But he’s fine. He’s fine. [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
[Through laughter] Yeah. So—thank you, Stuart, for putting that into layman’s terms that we could all understand. That was incredibly helpful. [Dan laughs.] There is one funny moment where James Coburn’s doing all these spinning high kicks and then gets dizzy? And I was like, “That’s kind of a funny joke. He would get dizzy doing that!” He lands on top of a car where Danny Aiello is fighting Richard E. Grant. The car is being driven by the butler. And they—I don’t remember why. For some reason, the runaway limo explodes. [Roman laughs.] And—anyway.
crosstalk
Dan: [Sighs.] They—it—like, they—yeah. It’s done. Yeah. Elliott: You’re like, “Okay. The movie is over, right? Good. The movie is over.”
elliott
“They defeated the bad guys.” Oh! Au contraire, my friend! That was the end of act two! [Roman laughs.] Because the Mayflowers? They capture Eddie and Anna. I don’t know how they survived. It doesn’t make any sense. Eddie assembles the gold machine crystals for them. Don’t know how he knows how to do that. It’s something that—I guess you were supposed to have to read a Da Vinci codex to do that! But Eddie is just a master thief who knows the lengths of all the songs, so of course he can reconstruct the work of a Renaissance master. The bad guys gloat. Sandra Bernhard—they both get great speeches. Great little mini speeches here that I love. Where Richard E. Grant is like, “Civilization! Art! Human achievement! Those are trophies on my desk!” And Sandra Bernhard is like, “Everyone thinks they’re the center of the world. There’s a traffic problem and you’re like, ‘Why does this happen to me?’ But for us, that’s not a fantasy. For us, it is our reality!” [Roman laughs.] And it’s just like—I love that they are just, like, Marvel villains. Just stating their philosophies— [Dan laughs.]
crosstalk
Elliott: —outright in the middle of the scene. Stuart: Yeah. Yeah. It’s great.
elliott
But it turns out—uh-oh! Roman… was Eddie playing fair when he gave them the pieces of the gold machine?
roman
Absolutely not. Because even though we have no idea how he can put this crystal together, he even knows how to put the crystal together wrong. [Multiple people laugh.] And have it stay together. [Laughs.] And be given to them to blow up the machine.
elliott
Yeah. I mean, it’s more likely that he just did it wrong. I guess. But the movie makes it seem like he did it on purpose. [Roman laughs.] But I wonder if he was like—they were like, “Hey! You messed up the machine on purpose!” And he’s like, “Yeahhh… that’s me!” [Roman laughs.] “Old Eddie Hawkins! Y’know!” The machine explodes. Mayflower and Minerva die in the chaos. Mayflower is electrocuted. Minerva—I guess she’s killed when molten gold—or molten lead spatters all over her? It’s not super clear. It’s the kind of thing where in a movie like this I could see her coming back. Just as a half-lead, half-flesh creature. But it doesn’t happen. Like, a Lady Stoneheart kind of person. Y’know.
crosstalk
Stuart: That’s exactly what that character’s like. [Laughs.] Elliott: Eddie fights Alfred the— [Laughs.] [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
Yeah. Isn’t she made out of stone? That’s why it’s called that? Like, so in the Game of Thrones books—I forget which one it is.
crosstalk
Elliott: —I think it might be—yeah. Stuart: She’s been using her geomancy too much and it turns her body into stone.
elliott
In Volume Six: The Pummeling of Pasta, she falls into— [Dan laughs.] —a swamp and she’s kind of half-fossilized, like, half-petrified? And then claws her way out? Yeah. Uh— [Laughs.]
dan
I would describe Stuart’s grin as “tight.” [Multiple people laugh.] When Elliott makes fun of Game of Thrones.
crosstalk
Stuart: A Song of Ice and Fire, you mean. Elliott: I would call that—
stuart
Yeah.
dan
Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.
elliott
No, no, Game of Thrones is the first one. It goes Game of Thrones. A Chat with Checkers. [Dan laughs.] That’s the one where they talk to a cat named Checkers. A Dance with Dogs.
crosstalk
Dan: [Through laughter] A lot of animals. Okay. [Laughs.] Elliott: Kick with a Kangaroo. And then there’s—
elliott
Llama, Llama, Nighty-Night, and I think… what other unfortunate events happen in the series, Stuart? [Dan laughs.] A Classy Conundrum? [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Stuart: So. Uh—yeah. Dan: [Through laughter] He’s anger laughing now.
dan
I’ve never seen that before.
elliott
And then at some point a pigeon wants to drive a bus. Anyway. That’s the series. [Dan laughs.] So Anna tries to—she’s firing guns to try to save Eddie from the butler, but she just manages to shoot Eddie in the arm and also shoot his belt buckle, which—of course—saves his life, as mentioned earlier. Eddie somehow uses the blades coming out of Alfred’s wrist to chop off Alfred’s own head in a very Story of Ricky type of moment.
stuart
Uh-huh. And the quip? “He won’t be going to the hat convention in July.”
crosstalk
Elliott: Now, I love that joke. And here’s why— Dan: [Through laughter] I love that one.
elliott
One, it’s based on nothing. [All laugh.] The character, I think, wears a hat once.
crosstalk
Stuart: I think we know that Hudson Hawk loves hats, Elliott. Elliott: And the specificity—the—
elliott
The specificity of July makes me think that this is a real event Hudson Hawk is going to and thinks everybody else knows about. [Multiple people laugh.] And so they’d be like, “Ha, ha! Yeah! We get it! The hat convention!” But I wish there was a beat of Andie MacDowell being like, “Is there a hat convention? Like, I don’t understand.” [All laugh.] It’s so—it’s such a weirdly specific, off-base quip. Yeah.
crosstalk
Dan and Elliott: [Sigh.] Dan: Yeah. Good stuff. Elliott: Anyway, there’s only one way—
elliott
Oh, they also kill Minerva’s dog for no reason. With what—like, a crossbow bolt or something?
crosstalk
Elliott: I don’t remember. Anyway. Stuart: Fire—yeah. Fires a—yeah. Fires a ball and knocks him out the window. Roman: No, it’s a fireball. Like, throws a fire—
elliott
That’s right. He shoots him with a tennis ball cannon. Out a window. They—
stuart
And you—and you describe that with all the sympathy of being a noted [through laughter] animal lover. [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
I mean, I care about all living things. I did say there was no reason to do it. But.
stuart
Yeah, that’s fair.
crosstalk
Stuart: What I like about this action sequence— Dan: I mean… I—I—
dan
—do not advocate violence against any form of animal or human. But… the dog was attacking them. Let’s not say there was no reason. They had a motivation. Now, they should not have killed the dog. Let me be clear about that. But—yeah. It’s not like Hudson Hawk, on the way out, was like, “And fuck you, dog!” [All laugh.]
elliott
I mean, I might’ve liked it more if he said—if he did that and then kicked the dog out a window. But okay. So there’s only one way to escape this castle—hey, guys, was there a special Da Vinci device that we saw in the opening of the movie—
stuart
Nope!
elliott
—that we have not seen, nor heard about, since then? I think there was! [Roman laughs.] And what was it? What was it? Think back! Think back! Think back! It really glares—it was glaring in the first scene because there was no reason for it to be there! [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
Yeah. It’s one of those gliders. Those gliders, right? Those, uh, Da Vinci gliders?
elliott
That’s right! One of those gliders. One of those batwing gliders. They manage to fly it off and it’s almost—okay. So in Howard the Duck, there’s a very long sequence where Howard and Tim Robbins are riding around in a little—what—gyroplane. It takes forever. Imagine the exact opposite of that. As Andie MacDowell and Bruce Willis get on this glider, there is one moment or two of them being worried and then they’re like, “We did it!” And they land. [Dan laughs.] And it’s like—wait, was this supposed to be funny? Or exciting? [Dan laughs.] I don’t know. It’s—and it’s like—and it looks terrible. So I imagine that in the edit they were like, “This looks awful. Let’s just not have a lot of this.” [Laughs.] “And also the movie should’ve been over ten minutes ago when they kill the bad guys the first time. But.” [Multiple people laugh.] Anyway, they land in a picturesque Italian village and kiss. Hey! Guess who happens to be there, by the logic of the movie? It’s Tommy! He’s there and he’s alive. And they joke about how ridiculous it all is. And guess what Eddie finally gets? That cappuccino! He’s wanted so long! And the voiceover at the beginning of the movie—which was not anywhere else in the movie—comes back and goes, “And Eddie finally got his coffee!” And they close the big tome and it’s the end of the movie. Like…
dan
[Through laughter] I just—I—I do wanna say, I mean, you mentioned it in passing. But I really did enjoy the jokes surrounding Danny Aiello’s reappearance ‘cause he’s like, “Oh, you should’ve exploded in that car!” And he’s like, “Airbags!” And he’s like, “Yeah, but the fire!” And he’s like, “There was a sprinkler in the car! Do you believe it?” [Elliott laughs.] And they’re all just like—they’re literally all like, “Yeah, sure! Why not!” [Laughs.]
elliott
Yeah. They are so openly not even caring about the fact that he was just in a car explosion. Like… oh.
roman
I think that the rest of the movie would’ve done better with that tone of knowing that you’re in a dumb movie. [Everyone agrees.] It—in a way. But it—but there, again, it sort of sticks out as being so odd. Y’know. Like.
elliott
It—well, it’s like the—it’s a movie—it’s kind of like a—like an ur-Austin Powers, in a way? Where it’s like, we’re gonna do a throwback. It’s gonna be really goofy. The characters are gonna stretch the reality of the movie to such an extent that by the end of it nobody believes in that reality? But they’re still having a good time? But they like couldn’t… they just couldn’t stick the landing? Or the takeoff? Or the flight in-between? [Roman laughs.] And the in-flight meal wasn’t very good? [Dan laughs.] And also they ran out of soda like halfway through the flight? And also when they brough you a bag of peanuts, there was a hole in the bag and a spider had crawled into the bag. And you opened it up and the guy next to you is like, “Huh. Spider? I hardly know her!” And you’re like, “That doesn’t make sense as a joke!” [Multiple people laugh.] Like, that’s—
dan
[Through laughter] I think that’s a perfect lead-in to Final Judgments. About whether this was a good-bad movie, a bad-bad movie, or a movie you kinda like. Guys? Like I said, I, um… tried to watch this a couple times before when I was younger, and just sort of, like… lost interest. And now I don’t know why, ‘cause there’s constantly stuff going on. I think that there’s like multiple factors at play. Like I said, I didn’t have any—I didn’t bring any preconceived notions this time to it. Unlike Roman, I don’t find Bruce Willis’s smugness more insufferable— [Roman laughs.] —as I grow older? I find that I have a ironic appreciation for it? As part of the persona of who Bruce Willis is now? Whereas when I—
crosstalk
Dan: I was just annoyed by it. Elliott: You’ll get to the Jeff Bridges stage eventually. [Roman laughs.]
elliott
Guys? I had never seen this movie. Like Ishtar, it just lived in my mind as a movie with a bad reputation? And unlike Ishtar, which I do not like at all, I—by the end of it I was like, y’know what? Hudson Hawk? You’re a movie I kinda like.udson [Roman laughs.] You’re not good, but I have to admire—like, the things that made this totally unswallowable for the audiences of 1991 are the exact things that are refreshing to me about it now? Where it’s like… whatever you can say about this movie, it was not made by a studio committee trying to be as safe as possible. Like, this is a bonkers movie and knowing that it is the close—much like Nothing but Trouble is the clearest mirror of the warped psyche of Dan Ackroyd, knowing that this is kind of the movie that plays in Bruce Willis’s head— [Multiple people laugh.] —when he thinks about making a movie? That kind of adds a little bit of extra meaning to it for me.
dan
It was unfairly maligned at the time, and I feel like now there are a bunch of people who claim that it’s this misunderstood masterpiece? Which is just contrarian hipster nonsense. It does exist in the middle. I think that like uh— [Laughs.] People… there’s a weird lack of nuance to people’s opinions nowadays? Perhaps because of the internet where they can’t justify liking something if it’s not actually awesome? Like, it’s like, “No, no, no! You’re right! You’re wrong! This movie is amazing!” I wouldn’t say this movie is amazing, but this movie is a lot more fun than I thought it would be and I kinda liked it.
stuart
I—yeah. I would say—I don’t know. I feel like this is probably the closest—I feel like this is a solid good-bad movie. There’s parts of it that I like. There’s parts of it that are not so good. [Dan laughs.]
elliott
You were gonna do an Italian accent there and then you didn’t do it!
stuart
I know. I— [Roman laughs.] Y’know, I’m trying to be better about that. Y’know? [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.]
crosstalk
Dan: It’s appropriate to the film. Stuart: Yeah. It was—
stuart
Y’know, it was a character. I’m doing a character. Um… yeah. [Multiple people laugh.] I definitely have a—I have a lot of affection for this movie. If this movie was a person, I would hand it my Nintendo Switch and say, “Would you play Nintendo with me?”
roman
Yeah. That’s fair. That’s fair. I think I’m right where you guys are. I think 30 years ago it was a movie I kinda liked. I think now I think of it more as a good-bad movie because my tolerance for Bruce Willis’s smug face has dropped a lot since then? But it’s also like… it is going for it. And you gotta admire that. It was during that phase of—where action movie writers and directors kinda like… Last Action Hero? Where they were bored with action movies but like the audience was not [through laughter] bored with action movies yet? And they’re like— [Dan laughs.] —so they were doing these metacommentaries on action movies, but um… but, y’know, the audience was like, “I like action movies! I want Arnold Schwarzenegger to go back to what he was!” And— [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
They’re like, “Wait. Can I not watch Bruce Willis just be a cat burglar?”
roman
[Through laughter] Exactly!
elliott
“Like, does it have to be like in a crazy world? Like—"
roman
And so it sort of has this interesting time capsule in that sense. But yeah. I think it’s pretty enjoyable. I watched it twice in preparation for this— [Elliott laughs.] —and that was about my limit. Like, I don’t—I’m not gonna be seeing it again for another 30 years. But it is in that—it’s really right down the middle, to me, to a good-bad movie, y’know, and a movie I kinda liked.
music
Light, up-tempo, electric guitar with synth instruments.
dan
Uh, okay. Well, Elliott is gonna talk a little bit more about the MaxFunDrive in a moment. But to give you a break from his voice—before he starts—I’m gonna say a quick word for Squarespace. Which you can use to create a beautiful website to turn your cool idea into a site people might enjoy out there in the world. Blog or publish content; sell products and services of all kinds; and much more. And Squarespace does this by giving you beautiful, customizable templates created by world-class designers. With everything optimized for mobile right out of the box. You can use it on your phone; tablet; whatever. A new way to buy domains and choose from over 200 extensions. Free and secure hosting, and much more. Call to action! This is it, guys! [Roman laughs.] This is the call to action! You gotta go to Squarespace.com/flop for a free trial and when you’re ready to launch, use the offer code “flop” to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Was I not supposed to read “call to action”? Maybe. [Multiple people laugh.] Let’s—let’s move on!
roman
It’s on the page!
elliott
Now—Roman’s Squarespace ads, particularly, are beautiful to behold on 99% Invisible. [Roman laughs.] And so I just—it was very—it was very entertaining for me to watch—it was kind of like watching a professional NFL player watching, like, a peewee football match. [Roman laughs.] And the kids realized suddenly that there was a peewee footballer there and just started running a little faster. Just at the very end.
roman
Well l was just amazed that you actually do these. Like, in line. Like, live to tape. Like— [Dan laughs.] —you do realize that you can record things, like, at separate times and put them in? [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Stuart: What?! Dan: Yeah.
elliott
Never heard of it. Never heard of it. No. We do things—
crosstalk
Dan: That’s true. And we went—we wouldn’t have to have our— Stuart: This whole time we could’ve been doing that?!
dan
—guest just sit around for them, I guess. [Roman laughs.]
elliott
Yep. No. We do things Steve Allen style.
crosstalk
Elliott: All live. No edit— Roman: I—I—I loved it.
roman
Watching the magic unfold like that was really something. It was really something.
elliott
Now, normally, I would then make up some kind of silly website that maybe Squarespace could help me with that’s based somewhat on the movie. Like, for instance, IsMyGirlfriendANun.com. Your site to find out— [Roman laughs.] —whether your girlfriend is secretly a nun, and also a secret agent! But, y’know, mostly the nun thing. But we don’t have time for that. ‘Cause here’s a website I’m gonna tell ya about.
stuart
You don’t wanna do a—you don’t wanna do a ad for Spaghetti Thermoses or something? [All laugh.]
elliott
Oh, yeah! We never even talked about spaghetti Thermoses!
stuart
Yeah, what the fuck!
elliott
Alright. Uh— [Roman laughs.] Okay, sorry. Okay. So here’s a website called FindMeCoffee.com. Hey! Have you ever just landed in a glider in a little Italian village and you’re not sure if they serve coffee there? Just log on to FindMeCoffee.com. It’ll show you where the coffee is. Anyway. But—MaximumFun.org/join is the site I wanna talk about. Because—again! It is pledge time. We’ve been hearing a lot from our great listeners on how much this show means for them. I’ve been getting a lot of tweets about it and it’s been really wonderful and it’s been really, um… y’know. Just uplifting to us to find out how people feel about the show and how much it means to them and especially economically uplifting to find out how much it means to them in monetary form. So here’s the ask. We’re gonna be asking of you. We’re gonna ask you to think about, hey! What can you afford in this time—as mentioned before—and also you didn’t need the mention, because you know it’s a hard time. It’s a hard time right now. It’s not an easy time to be throwing money at guys talking about Hudson Hawk and making Dan mad on a weekly, now, basis! But we appreciate you continuing—or increasing—your support. Here’s—
dan
Now I’m imagining my enemies—whoever they may be [through laughter] out in the world—secretly funding this podcast. [Through laughter] Just so I get mad.
elliott
Yeah. Like, “Eventually, Dan will literally blow his top and then we’ll have our revenge!”
stuart
Mm-hm. [Laughs.]
elliott
We need your support. It helps us keep going with the podcast. It’s something that helps me, I know, just personally convince my family to let me sit in a room twice a week away from them—or not twice a week. Once—every—once a week. Sit in a room away from them and take time I should spend, y’know, taking care of my family or playing with them or whatever.
crosstalk
Elliott: To talk nonsense. Stuart: Are you sure? I feel like they’re, like—
stuart
“Uhhh, yeah. Why don’t you take some dad time?” [All laugh.] “Take some ‘me’ time with your buddies!”
crosstalk
Stuart: “We’ll be okay!” Elliott: I mean, that’s fair. That’s fair.
elliott
But—so aside from the main reason you should become a member—which is to keep all this great Flop House content coming to you, with our mini episodes now we’re giving you—I would say twice the content, but our regular episodes are so long that it’s really like 35% more content. With the mini episodes. Here’s the other reason to join—because you can now get not just bonus content—which is hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of shows from Maximum Fun shows that you can’t listen to otherwise—not just our show, although our show does have lots of bonus content, including a—some would say—prolonged roleplaying adventure, starring us, run by Stuart.
stuart
Huh. [Dan laughs.]
elliott
In which we travel to the outer bounds of space over… ten or so hours? I don’t know. It’s a long—it’s a long one. But a lot of exciting stuff happens and we meet some crazy creatures. [Stuart laughs.] In addition to that— [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.] You can also get—that’s right! The classic— [Dan laughs.] —new one every year—
stuart
I can’t believe Elliott’s fucking riding me so much this episode! [All laugh.]
dan
I know. [Laughs.]
elliott
You can also—you also get, if you go the $10 a month limit—because that’s the thing. You can be a $5 a month donor, or a contributor, let’s say. You can be a $10 contributor. You can go as high as $50 or $100 a month. And each one of those levels has its own gifts. That also includes the gifts from the previous levels! But at $10 a month, you get… the pins. That’s right! Everyone’s favorite thing about the MaxFun Pledge Drive. It’s the pins. Every show has their own pin. You get to choose what show you want to wear the colors of on your, y’know, jean jacket or maybe on your backpack. So that when you go to school everyone’s like, “Hey! Cool Flop House pin! What is it?” And you’re just like, “Eh, it’s, y’know, it’s Rocket Crocodile. Amazingly you didn’t recognize the character but you knew it was a Flop House pin, even though it doesn’t say Flop House on it.” And they’re like, “Hey, that’s ‘cause we’re MaxFun listeners! Kind of! Anyway, so—did you get the answer for number four on the algebra homework?” And you’re gonna be like, “Aren’t we still gonna talk about the pin?” And they’re like, “We’re done talking about the pin. We got more important things to talk about. Do you think Shirley likes me?” And it’s like, “I don’t think so. You’re crazy, dude.” [Multiple people laugh.] So those [through laughter] pins are yours at the $10 a month level. You get to choose which one. There’s a lotta great pins—
crosstalk
Elliott: —for a lot of great shows. Stuart: The author Shirley Jackson? [Multiple people laugh.]
crosstalk
Elliott: Yes. They’re—Shirley Jackson came to speak at their school. [Laughs.] Stuart: She doesn’t like you, dude!
elliott
And the guy’s convinced she has a crush on him. [Multiple people laugh.] Uh— [Laughs.] And uh… he’s like, “Hey, I could always live in the castle! Come get—"
dan
Yeah. Speaking of castles! Hudson Hawk? We’ve Always Lived in the Castle? Stuart, you do the math! [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Elliott: Yeah. Put it on your board! So— Stuart: Okay. Let me do the math on my board, Dan! [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
And—so according to this document—and Dan, tell me if I’m wrong at any point—‘cause we’re in week three, right? According—
crosstalk
Dan: Uh-huh. Yeah, we are in week three. Elliott: This will be released week three.
elliott
According to this document, this week—if all our $10 a month members have the option to purchase additional pins from the store—not just the one that you chose—and the proceeds from those additional pins go to charity. There are so many great ones! I know I’m gonna take advantage of it! I’m gonna buy a bunch of ‘em! I want that Switchblade Sisters one, and I want the I, Podius one. Anyway. There’s a bunch of good ones. I know I’m gonna get ‘em. I’m already a—I’m already a MaxFun member, but I always choose the Flop House pin because—even though I think it’s weird that I have to buy a pin for my own podcast? I still wanna support the network. Come on. Lots of great shows. So. You go to MaximumFun.org/join. You sign up for the $10 a month level, and you can get that pin that you want and also additional pins. Hey! You don’t have to do $10 a month. But if you do, that’s what you get. There’s lots of other levels. There’s lots of other gifts.
crosstalk
Elliott: I would advise you to—yep? Dan: El—
dan
Elliott, I just wanna say two things while this is going on. Number one, there was a point where you were talking about pins where it sounded like when I accidentally hit two-time speed on my podcasts when listening? You just—I don’t know. It was like—I don’t know. Like, you shifted into Micromachines guy and I was very impressed.
elliott
Oh, thanks.
dan
Number two—as long as we’re talking about MaxFun things that happened this week, I just wanna quickly plug—if you go to the MaxFun YouTube page, I did a charity dinner for Meals on Wheels with some other MaxFun podcasters that you can see. It—y’know, it streamed live but you can always donate to Meals on Wheels and watch the YouTube dinner party. Back to you, Elliott! In the studio.
elliott
Thank you! So— [Roman laughs.] Please. I would advise you to do—go to MaximumFun.org/join now while you are thinking about it. I know that it took me weeks and weeks to remember to donate to a recent charity that I wanted to donate to. I donate to charities regularly, but this particular one I kept forgetting. Don’t let that happen to you. Go to MaximumFun.org/join now. Are you in a car, driving, listening to this? Pull over. [Roman laughs.] Pull over— [Stuart laughs.] —and get your phone out. Are you on public transportation? Even better. You don’t have to pull over.
crosstalk
Elliott: Just keep going. If you’re at a— Dan: So this is the—
dan
—chill MaxFunDrive? [Laughs.] This one?
crosstalk
Roman: Oh, no, you have do it. Urgency. Urgency. He’s doing it right. He’s [inaudible]. Elliott: Yeah. If you’re at—if you’re on a plane right now? Parachute out of that plane. Get a signal.
elliott
If you’re at a funeral right now? I don’t know why you’re listening to this at a funeral, but you’re already listening to your phone. Just whip—take it out and make the donation. Just go—if you’re at a wedding right now? Same thing. You should do it now before you forget. And I wanna say thank you. It’s—it means a lot to us that anyone is interested in listening to what is—let’s just face it—nonsense. [Roman laughs.] And that it means enough to people for them to really reach into their pockets and help us out in making us—making it happen. This is a strange time. This show, I know, has provided a real outlet for me. It seems like for a lot of our listeners it’s also provided a kind of special outlet where they can escape the cares and woes of the world. And like the prisoners at the end of Sullivan’s Travels, laugh for a few moments before returning to the drudgery and hell that is life. [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
Wow.
elliott
So please—why not help keep that brief, shining moment of pleasure in an otherwise blasted and tear-filled—
crosstalk
Elliott: —vale that we live in? Dan: Je-sus. Stuart: Yeah.
elliott
And just join us. At MaximumFun.org/join. Become a member. If you’re already a member— [Dan groans.] —consider upgrading. And if you’re not a member? If you don’t become a member? Thank you still for listening. But… still consider becoming a member. Like, come on, guys.
crosstalk
Stuart: Yeah. So let’s do a quick little postmortem of that little pledge break there. Uh— Roman: This is—these are some—wow. [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
I feel like—
dan
The pitches this week have been a little more psychological than I’m comfortable with? Like, uh, just, like, I mean—whether it be like playing on people’s psychological weaknesses right now? Or just sort of veering into kind of a nihilistic view of everything.
crosstalk
Dan: That’s—that would be my— Elliott: Well now you know—this— [Roman laughs.]
elliott
This is also how my home life goes. Like, Sammy will be like, “I love you, Daddy!” And I’ll be like, “Do you love me? ‘Cause, uh—” And then I shake a tip jar? [Multiple people laugh.] “I’m not seeing a lot in the old TJ!” And then he’s gotta put some bills in there and I’m like, “Oh, you do love me.” Or like he’ll put some coins and I’m like, “Oh, I guess Sammy doesn’t love me as much as he did yesterday!”
crosstalk
Elliott: And he’s like, “Sorry, Dad.” Stuart: Yeah. But not too much—
stuart
—‘cause then he’s just doing a flex and you’re like, “Fuck you, dude. Like—” [Multiple people laugh.] “Stop trying to buy my attention!”
elliott
And next week for the pledge drive we’ll do reverse psychology and we’ll be like, “Hey. It’s pledge drive. We don’t even want you to pledge.” [Roman laughs.] “Don’t’ worry. Don’t even do it. Don’t become a member.” And they’ll be like, “Fuck you, Flop House. I’ll do whatever I want!” And they’ll become members. Right?
stuart
Maybe.
dan
Okay. I don’t like this new psychological warfare direction [through laughter] we’re going in, but. [Roman laughs.]
elliott
Alright. So Dan, what do we do next? Oh, yeah?
dan
The next thing we do on the show is do a couple letters from listeners. Listeners like you. If you want to write us a letter, go to the website and figure it out! I don’t like saying it on the air ‘cause we get so many letters. [Laughs.] And it’s—
crosstalk
Dan: —way too much for me to read. Elliott: Okay, Dan. If I can—if I can—
elliott
If I can, for a moment, do a postmortem on that— [Multiple people laugh.] Uh— [Laughs.] I feel like that was… for someone who was ready to open the door on a kindler, gentler era of the Flop House episode, it seemed like you really slammed that door shut in the faces of the listeners by saying—and I quote—“Hey, this is how you send us a letter. Go to hell.” [Multiple people laugh. Dan slowly applauds.] Seems like a bit much.
dan
No, I love—I love that you guys care. I—there have been so many touching letters [through laughter] over the years.
crosstalk
Dan: I’m just pretty tired. I apologize. [Sighs.] Oh, god. Elliott: No, not at—no. No. Not good. Doesn’t—okay. So—so—
elliott
Let me just take a moment to say, [singing] Hey! We’re sorry from The Flop House! [Multiple people laugh.] We’re sorry for Dan from The Flop House! I’m sure that Stuart and I have said things today that may have caused a bit of dismay. For listeners of The Flop House. But even more than that—I’d just like to take this moment to chat and say—we’re sorry for Dan! From The Flop House. [Multiple people laugh.] We love when you write to us. It really makes us smile. We’d run for miles and miles and miles for a letter from you! And I don’t—I know Dan makes it sound like torture that you reach out to us and empty your hearts with affection and love for The Flop House. But Dan’s just uncomfortable with feelings and emotions. It’s the way he was raised in Eureka, Illinois. [Long pause. Roman laughs.]
dan
Yeah. You know what? I apologize to everyone. I feel like between this and Topeka I’ve taken a hard left turn into meanness over the last few episodes. I’ve—I’m sorry. [Roman laughs.]
stuart
Wow. Did you get that feedback from the overfull letters bag that you had that is crushing your body? [Multiple people laugh.]
roman
Mm-hm. Can barely tolerate?
dan
Yeah. Oaky. Well Mike—
crosstalk
Dan: —last name withheld—funnily enough— Elliott: I mean, but that—wait—that—this does remind me of—
elliott
Years ago when Ringo Starr released that video message where he was like, “Fans? I love you. Peace and love. You’re the best. Do not write me any more letters; I will not write back. Peace and love. Do not write me letters.” [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
Well he—I mean, he, y’know, set himself an unreasonable [through laughter] thing when he said that he would write back. He like wrote back to everything for years.
crosstalk
Dan: Which is insane! Elliott: Yeah. I mean, that was foolish of him. Yeah.
dan
Okay. Mike, last name withheld, writes: “Peaches, as Stuart has noted earlier, a movie is a horror movie if a character dies.” [Roman laughs.] “Which makes me think that Waking the Divine is the best horror movie of all time. On that note, what is your favorite genre-defying or cross-genre movie?” What do you guys—
elliott
I’ll say—there’s a—one of my favorite movies that I actually wanna watch again soon, but I have to buy a new copy ‘cause I lent my DVD to somebody and they lost it! Is a movie called The Fall, directed by Tarsem Singh that stars Lee Pace. And… it’s kind of hard to describe. It’s like kind of a fantasy but it’s not a fantasy movie and it’s kind of adventure but it’s not quite an adventure movie and it’s kind of a drama but it’s—it’s a strange movie. And it’s this movie where—that’s set in the silent era of Hollywood and this stuntman is in a hospital ‘cause he broke his leg in a stunt trying to impress his ex-girlfriend and he befriends this little girl and starts telling her this fantasy story and we’re seeing her imagining of what he’s telling her, and the story is so… building off of the way they feel at any given moment? And it’s a movie that is very hard to… classify. But I really love it. And it’s one that means a lot to me. So I would say The Fall. Which is not my recommendation for this week! But I do recommend it. Anyway. Back to you guys.
roman
I think, like, that one. My—I think my favorite movie of all time if I had to—had to pick one is probably Jaws? And I think because I think it’s probably one of the best horror movies; the best buddy cop movie; the best adventure movie; the best disaster movie. It’s a good family drama. I like ones—I like movies that actually mix it up a lot in terms of genres. So.
stuart
Yeah. Obviously I’d say Audition? The Takashu Ueki movie. ‘Cause the first half is like a weird… romance—like, romance drama and then the second half is… I don’t wanna talk about it too much. [Roman laughs.] Uh— [Elliott laughs.] Or, I mean, I’ve talked about this movie a lot on the show, but The Guest, I think, is great. Because you don’t—kinda don’t know what it is for a lot of the movie. It—like—it’s so funny and weird and then also gets action-y and scary. It’s great.
roman
Yeah, that’s good.
dan
Uh… I—I’m just gonna sort of make a more broad statement about—I think that a lot of these sort of… Korean New Wave of films fall into this where like… it seems like… they can make genre movies there, like, thrillers or horror films or… or just, y’know, kind of… I don’t know. Like, science fiction-y things. That don’t feel the need to adhere to one tone? Like, I think that… there’s a lot of problem that American audiences often have if like tone varies wildly? [Roman laughs.] But I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because of what you said earlier, that we’re willing to accept different things from different cultures. I don’t know. But like… they don’t seem to reject in South Korean films how often, y’know, they’ll throw a stew of like…
stuart
Of me?!
dan
—horrifying— [through laughter] horror— [Elliott laughs.] They’ll throw Stuart in there! [Roman laughs.] No. They’ll have, like, horrifying events. Horrifying violence. But then they’ll have very broad comedy or they’ll have… characters, y’know, reacting to things in ways that are both emotionally honest and melodramatic, simultaneously? And I find that… so much more fascinating than something that feels beholden to one tone the whole—the whole way through.
elliott
I’m always curious about whether those movies are successful in their home countries? Like, they’re like—that reminded me of a movie I should’ve used as another answer to this, which is Save the Green Planet, which is a South Korean movie that’s like a thriller and also a comedy and also, like, a plea for ecological conservation? And it’s such a strange movie and I know that that was not a success in South Korea. And I wonder if movies that are—that come over here and get kind of cult followings here and we start to think that that’s like what they do over there? Whether those movies are actually mainstream movies over there.
crosstalk
Elliott: Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. Dan: I mean, certainly—
dan
Certainly, like, Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho, like they’re the biggest names—they are hugely successful.
elliott
That’s true. But I’m always like—I have to look up, like, a movie like The Good, The Bad, and the Weird. Like, how well that did or not. ‘Cause it’s—that’s another crazy movie.
dan
Uh, so Ike writes:
crosstalk
Elliott: President Eisenhower? Dan: “Dear Flop House—"
dan
Mm-hm. How do we feel about Ike, guys?
elliott
Uh… some people like him. I feel like that—to put it just on a “like” and “don’t like” polar axis is a little bit… hard when you’re talking about a president who had such a mixed bag in some ways. On the one hand, he sent troops to integrate southern schools. On the other hand, he did it reluctantly and he was not happy that the Supreme Court forced his hand. Do you judge a man by his motives or by his actions? You know what? That’s beyond my pay grade. I’ll just say this: as far as presidents who look like big babies? He was one of the best. [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
Well, President Eisenhower writes: “This week I finally watched a movie that has scared me my entire life since I watched it for the first time as a kid. I am speaking, of course, of 1979’s The Muppet Movie.” [Roman laughs.] [Laughs.] “In young my defense, it’s still terrifying. However, I was able to sleep afterwards so big improvement. I’m writing to ask whether any of you have movies that you watched as kids that you couldn’t’ or still can’t watch because they scared you so badly. Bonus points if it’s not a traditionally scary movie, although I stand that—I stand behind that Animal is one of the most horrifying creatures to ever grace the screens.” Oh, Sammy would argue with that. “Thank you for your time and your podcast. Ike, last name withheld.”
elliott
Sammy would argue with that, Mr. President. [Roman laughs.] Although I do note he would get scared when the giant Animal comes out at the end? When he eats all those grow pills? Although for me the scariest scene in that movie is the one with Mel Brooks where they’re stuffing Kermit into that device? And it’s like, not funny? It’s just really distressing and Mel Brooks is doing that weird German accent but he’s like—just looks like regular Mel Brooks? Like, that whole scene—every time I watch it I skip that scene. I’m like, don’t need it. This is too distressing for me.
dan
Well, actually, I mean like—I had actually forgotten that the Muppet thing was in there when I was formulating my answer to this question. Because the three things that I came up with are not actually movies, but they’re TV things that I remember scaring me that weren’t supposed to be scary as a kid. One of them was at the beginning of the Muppet Show when they’re like [singing] “Bom bom, bomb om” and the like biggest monsters start walking out of their little doors toward the camera? That freaks me out. I’d be freaked out—I mean, I was obviously primed to be freaked out ‘cause I’d just watched Twin Peaks but I’d be extra freaked out by the Mark Frost, like, production logo at the end? That was all, like, sizzling electricity? Uh… the sudden loud noise afterwards? What?
elliott
For a moment I thought that you were primed to be freaked out by The Muppet Show because you had just watched Twin Peaks. I misunderstood for a moment.
crosstalk
Dan: Yeah. And lastly the thing— Stuart: Bob is kind of an Animal figure, I think. [All laugh.]
dan
The thing that would terrify me the most when I was a kid was the emergency broadcast system test. ‘Cause my brother at some point was like, “Oh, y’know, this is, y’know, they—it’s the—the government put it in place in case like there’s a nuclear war or something like that.” I’m like, “What?!” And so every time—even though he would say it’s only a test—it would freak me out. I think it’s partly just like the fact that anything could interrupt television. One of the most important pillars [through laughter] of my childhood. [Elliott laughs.] Something would have the audacity to break in to the signal— [Laughs.]
elliott
When I was a kid I would—like, or like a teenager, y’know, if I stayed up ‘til four in the morning or something watching TV. And there was always the moment when I would go to the local PBS channels to watch the end of day where they would play—it would—must’ve been something they made in the early ‘80s or late ‘70s, where it’s images of Americana as there’s like a midi version of the “Star-Spangled Banner” that plays? And I just remember—and it’s like, super, like, ‘70s, early ‘80s video where like there’s a lot of blur? Like, and burn-in when it moves from image to image? And then it would just end the song and immediately cut to color bars? And that would be it for about two hours? And I was—it just frightened me so much for a similar reason. Where it was like, “Oh, okay. There’s nobody at the wheel right now.” [Dan laughs.] “Like, that channel just doesn’t exist. Like anything could happen right now and we’re in a no man’s—” And also it meant, like, “Well, I’ve stayed up so late that I’m no longer tired and will get no sleep tonight.” Which was the other scary thing. So I think if I watched that on my own now I’d get that feeling of like… the fright of, well, what am I going to do for the rest of the night ‘til the sun comes up? What do you guys think? [Roman laughs.]
roman
I would say my scariest one is—I know this is sacred in this house—but is Gremlins. I saw Gremlins in the theater. I thought it was the scariest movie I had ever seen. I got none of the humor. I just got the grimness of it and then grossness of it. And I’ve never seen it again. It lives in my mind as the scariest movie that exists.
elliott
I mean, it’s a legitimately scary movie. Like, the—it’s—I always have to remind myself, like, oh yeah. Like, the Gremlins kill people. And even when you see the Gremlins killed on screen, like it’s really gross. But…
crosstalk
Elliott: Then you see that part—there’s that part— Roman: But I also really re—
elliott
—where the Gremlins are hanging out at the bar and they’re just having a blast! Y’know? Mutant madness. It’s great.
roman
I just never found the humor in the—like, I was too young to sort of get the humor of it and the madcap-ness of it? And I just remember… her dad dying in the chimney. [Laughs.] [All laugh.] Trying to be Santa Claus. And then the grossness of the different Gremlins that when they are turned nasty and stuff. And I’ve never seen Gremlins 2. I’ve never seen any of the other ones. Like… my kids are 13 now and we’ve talked about different—they used to really be pushing horror movies and horror—y’know, more and more extreme. They really wanted to try them out. And I draw the line at Gremlins. [Laughs.]
crosstalk
Stuart: You’re like, Martyrs? That’s fine. Dan: It’s funny that— [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
They’re like, “Dad, can we watch Gremlins?” No, we’re watching Anthrophagus. That’s what we’re watching. And there’s no— [Laughs.] [Roman laughs.]
dan
That dad dying—Phoebe Cates’s dad dying monologue scene disturbed me so much as a kid and it was like such an interesting process growing up and seeing Gremlins over and over again and like… slowly getting that the joke of this scene is that there is no joke to it? That they’re, like, in the middle of it just telling this very [through laughter] grim, sad story? Uh…
elliott
I mean, there is a little bit of a joke in the idea that her dad thought this would be a great idea.
crosstalk
Dan: Yeah. Roman: Mm-hm.
elliott
Like, it’s a terrible idea. [Laughs.]
dan
But it’s this horrible, like, urban legend horror tale almost. And— [through laughter] but just the fact that it’s played basically straight for this miserable thing in the middle of a horror comedy is… funny in and of itself.
stuart
Yeah. I was a pretty weird kid. I remember being really scared when I saw a clip of the movie The Shining? [Roman laughs.]
dan
Hmm. Yeah.
elliott
Wow. What—you were a little out there. You were a little out there as a kid. [Laughs.]
stuart
Yeah. Uh—
dan
Real kindertrauma.
stuart
And obviously Large Marge. Like, Large Marge—
crosstalk
Stuart: That was a rough one. Roman: Oh, Large Marge is a—is a—yeah. A classic. Dan: Yeah. Elliott: Yeah.
elliott
Large Marge was the scariest thing. Large Marge and that taxicab ghost in Ghostbusters were the two things that consistently I would cover my eyes for as a kid.
stuart
I think there was a—there’s an episode of—I think it was The Hogan Family that opens like it’s a Halloween episode and it opens with the characters as zombies? That was pretty scary. [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
I remember also—now that I think about it—being genuinely scared by the Cryptkeeper even though now I look at him as like silly and lovable.
elliott
Oh, ‘cause when you’re a kid—I know when I was a kid I thought he was a real guy. Like I didn’t necessarily think he was a real zombie, but I thought he was a real person who they put makeup on his face. And I couldn’t quite figure out whether he was a puppet or not? And that really frightened me.
roman
Wow. It’s the uncanny valley.
elliott
Yeah. Of course, now… I love him. Now he’s a great guy. And—
dan
Mm. Your best friend.
elliott
Now we’re best buds, me and Crypty. But uh…
dan
Um… yeah!
elliott
Kids are scared of stuff! Large Marge is the scariest thing in the world when you’re a kid, though. And as an adult I watch it and I was like, “This is—this could be on Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” like, it’s so goofy? But… and no—and like I would know it was happen—like, that’s one of those things where as a kid you watch it again and you’re like I know this is going to happen and I know it’s gonna be scary. And the anticipation is so frightening? Yeah.
stuart
Yeah. You’re like… work yourself up. You start to vomit. It’s horrible. [Roman laughs.]
elliott
Yeah. You’re just peeing all over yourself. Pooping all over yourself. And your mom is like, “You are not watching this movie again! I will not allow it! This happens every time!” And you’re like, “But mom, he’s gotta get his bike back! I gotta see that one moment where Gidra shows up!”
stuart
Yeah. [Laughs.]
dan
[Laughs.] Um, okay. So let’s move on in to the final segment of the show, which is recommendations. And we’ll do it quick ‘cause we’ve wasted so much of podcasting legend— [Roman laughs.] —Roman Mars’s time today.
elliott
Yeah, I apologize, Roman. You were like—you were like, “No problem. In and out! I’m sure they shoot—they tape this show in a professional way—” [Roman laughs.] “Not all in a run for two hours plus.”
crosstalk
Elliott: No. We shoulda warned you about that. Roman: No, my pleasure. Seriously. Dan: Um, so I wanna—
dan
—recommend Relic? Which is a new-to-video-on-demand as so many things are these days. Starring Emily Mortimer.
elliott
You mean The Relic?
crosstalk
Dan: No, I mean Relic, the new 2020 film. No. Stuart: You’re talking about [inaudible]. [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.]
dan
I’m talking about Relic.
elliott
I think you’re talking about Screamers.
dan
No, it’s a—it’s a—it is a New Zealand-Canada coproduction with a English lead actor and it is about, y’know, a grandmother—well, the main character’s mother, the secondary—the daughter’s grandmother. Y’know. Three generations. Let’s just say that. The grandmother is—
elliott
This is the quick one!
dan
—deteriorating. She is deteriorating in health. They go out to her house to take care of her. To look for her. Like, she’s disappeared at the beginning of the movie. And it is a movie that is a horror film based on sort of the metaphor of the horror of seeing your parent deteriorate in that way.
roman
Hm.
dan
And I think at first when I was watching it I’m like, oh, this is another one of these elevated horror movies that over-relies maybe on… lack of incident and building dread and also maybe suffers from being a little close to Hereditary in that it’s, y’know, this sort of generational horror. But then as it went on I realized that it was like its own great thing. The third act does some really scary stuff with sort of the geography of the house that’s fun. And then toward the end of the movie it just sort of pushes the metaphor so far? That like the movie kinda becomes… poetic and… your emotions shift in a way that I’ve never seen a horror movie pull off. So it’s very interesting. Relic.
elliott
Uh… I’ll go next real quick. I’m gonna recommend a movie that I had mentioned on a previous Mini as one that I was kinda going back and forth on recommending. And that’s a 1972 Western called Buck and the Preacher. Starring Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. And it’s the first movie that Sidney Poitier directed. And taking over the direction after being dissatisfied with the work of Joseph Sergeant, director of my favorite movie, The Taking of Pelham 123! And, of course, Jaws 4: The Revenge. But anyway. And it’s a Western where—there’s a number of former slaves? Former enslaved people are moving West to try to escape from becoming enforced kind of tenant farmers. And these militias from the South are trying to forcibly push them back. Trying to kind of scare and bully them into coming back and working as tenant farmers. And they hire Sidney Poitier’s character as a guide to help them through the West to get to where they’ll be safe. And Harry Belafonte is kind of like a conman preacher? Who teams up with them and decides to help them at a certain point. And it was really interesting to see a Western movie that kind of treated… white people, black people, and also Native Americans and it commits the crime of having Native Americans played by non-Native actors. Y’know. But they do a good job of bringing dignity to those roles. Portraying them as kind of like, all different groups that are at odds with each other but are not in… homogenous blocks. And are also not—they—there’s a thing you see a lot in certain types of Westerns where the hero runs into a bunch of Native Americans and they’re buddies? And it’s like, well, you know this guy is a good guy because the Native characters all love him. Like in Maverick that happens, basically. And in this one, there’s this relationship between Sidney Poitier’s characters and the Natives where it’s like, they know each other. They’re aware of each other. But they’re still in this kind of tentative… tension. Because these are groups of people who—even though they’re starting to more and more exist in the same space—they have more complicated relationships than a movie would usually portray. And they kind of all want different things. From this world that they’re in. But anyway. It’s a… there’re a couple of really good action scenes in it, and it doesn’t quite all the way come together? Although Harry Belafonte is very funny in it? A lot of times? And the soundtrack—which is by the Jazz musician Benny Carter—is fantastic. And uses, like, a Jew’s harp in the best way that I’ve heard it outside of a Morricone score? And so it’s a kind of interesting Western that isn’t totally on point in terms of pulling everything together at the end, but I think it’s worth watching. And it’s called Buck and the Preacher. Who’s up next?
stuart
Uh, I can go.
roman
Cool.
stuart
I am going to recommend a movie that has gotten quite a bit of good press, but I want to talk about it anyway. It’s called [movie announcer voice] Portrait of a Lady on Fire. It is a— [Dan laughs.]
elliott
“Is playing at—"
crosstalk
Elliott: Sorry. The way you say it was very— Dan: My house, a lot lately. [Roman laughs.]
elliott
The way you said it was just very Moviefone.
stuart
Yeah. It’s—so it’s a French movie and it is a period piece about a doomed romance filled with subtle longing? And it’s… I remember when I first went into it I was expecting it to be fairly dry, but it really isn’t? It manages to balance that—the tone of that kind of a doomed romance with like a feeling of… like, teenagers left alone in a house while the parents are out of town? Like a Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead vibe? And I think it’s really fun. There’s a lot of really great little incidents. The characters are fun. And it has probably— [Laughs.] It has like—it has such a great sad ending. It’s just awesome. It’s great. I’ve watched it a bunch of times. I think it was on Hulu.
dan
Just like— [Roman laughs.] Just like Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead has that great sad ending!
stuart
Yeah, exactly! And— [Roman laughs.] —like Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, you get like the proof of title in the movie. Like, you’re not disappointed. They don’t tease you with anything. You get it. You see that portrait.
dan
Yeah.
elliott
Yeah. And the mom—they never—the mom never finds out that the babysitter died, right?
stuart
Well, I mean, the babysitter dies in the first like five minutes of that movie. They don’t fuck around in Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.
crosstalk
Stuart: Or in Portrait of a Lady on Fire. What? Elliott: But I mean, do they— [Roman laughs.]
elliott
But they don’t tell the mom. They never tell the mom, right?
dan
Yeah. Well I mean—does she—I feel like maybe she discovers like right at the very end of the movie?
crosstalk
Dan: Yeah, I can’t recall. Stuart: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She finds—
stuart
—a decomposing hand. And she’s like, “What?!”
dan
Oh, wow! [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
Yeah. When she’s digging a hole to bury the treasure that she was off getting in the other movie that’s happening on the fringes of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. [Dan laughs.]
dan
Yeah. She was over in Goonies. [Multiple people laugh.]
roman
So I was trying to think of another—like, a light crime comedy that’s more successful than Hudson Hawk? And it—this is actually one of my favorite movies. It’s called Quick Change? It’s I think a genuinely funny, y’know, heist movie with Billy Murray that he actually codirected. And it’s—I think it’s really underrated. I think it’s one of Bill Murray’s best movies. And I know Jesse Thorn and I have bonded over this movie in particular. Because I wouldn’t be surprised—
crosstalk
Elliott: Very soon, yeah. He’s probably gonna tell us about old baseball players. Roman: Like, he’s coming on the show in a couple weeks? Stuart: You scooped him! You scooped him on this one. [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.]
roman
The other benefit of this is I get to scoop Jesse Thorn, my nemesis. Um— [Laughs.] And tell you just how great Quick Change is. It’s like—I watched it with my son—one of my sons—a few weeks ago, and he totally got it. He was into it and it was great.
stuart
That was a movie I had on video cassette. And I watched it many, many times growing up. But for some reason I can’t remember specific incidents. Just, like, the feeling. Like I remember—like, at the end when they’re walking down that street it’s like—their like last chance to get away? I don’t know. It’s great. [Roman laughs.]
dan
I’m gonna say a last word about the MaxFunDrive in a moment. But I just wanna say—so at the end of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead—and this is worth the—
crosstalk
Dan: This is worth the walk, I’ll tell ya. Elliott: I’m glad we have some closure on this. [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
Glad we have some closure.
dan
The mom asks where the babysitter is. And as the credits roll, the scene cuts away to the cemetery, where two morticians look over a gravestone that reads “Nice Old Lady Inside. Died of Natural Causes.” [Someone claps slowly.] And that’s a—I think that’s a pretty good joke. Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.
elliott
Wait, the gravestone says that?
dan
Yeah. The gravestone says that. I don’t know—
elliott
Do the kids buy a tombstone? Or—
crosstalk
Stuart: Yeah. I mean, what else do you think kids eat? Ohhhh! Right. Right, right, right, right, right, right, right. Dan: [Through laughter] It’s the confusing part. Also—also Wikipedia says— [Roman laughs.] Elliott: No, no, no. Not a Tombstone pizza Stuart. Oh, boy. Oh. Geez Louise.
dan
—that there’s two morticians at the gravestone. I doubt that that’s actually who’s there. But.
crosstalk
Stuart: Yeah. It’s not a fucking mortician conference. [Laughs.] Elliott: I mean, you never know. Dan: Yeah.
elliott
Maybe the morticians like to stop by the cemetery to make sure they’re taking good care of their work? Y’know?
dan
Mm. Mm-hm.
elliott
Let’s make sure this was buried the right way. We put a lot of work into—
crosstalk
Dan: Just there to check in. Elliott: —stuffing this old lady full of chemicals.
elliott
Just wanna make sure that this—and y’know, they leave a rock on the stone. Y’know. Just to let people know that they’re there. Yeah.
dan
Okay, guys. Well just—it’s been a long day, so uh— [Laughs.] Let’s get to the end.
crosstalk
Elliott: Guys, here’s the lesson that we learned. Dan: But I do—
elliott
Is—I need to edit my notes ahead of time.
crosstalk
Dan and Stuart: Yeah.
dan
[Through laughter] I do— [Roman laughs.] —I do wanna say one more word in support of the MaxFunDrive. You can go to MaximumFun.org/join. If you haven’t had a chance to become a member yet or upgrade your membership, that is where you can go. I just wanna say one last word, which is that… I don’t love asking for money even when we’re not in the middle of several world crises? So, y’know, it’s a difficult thing. I also like stability and I chose a job—comedy writing—that I’m sure I’m gonna age out of very soon. So I’ve made a lot of bad choices, considering that we are listener-supported. But… that is the point. We are listener-supported. As much as I may dislike coming to you, hat in hand, we have to do it. And it’s ultimately a good thing. Because—as we’ve said before—being funded by people like you means that we can put on this show, which no one normally would pay for. Let’s be honest, guys.
elliott
Wow.
dan
But you like it! [Someone laughs.] You like it— [Roman laughs.] So you get the chance to keep entertainment that may not exist otherwise going. And for that, we are very grateful. Thank you, if you’re a person who donates. If you’re not—if you don’t have the means—believe me. We understand. We just thank you for listening as well. Spread the word about the show. Spread the word about the Drive. Thank you again so much for those who have given or plan to give to keep this show going. And just thanks. That’s the main message we wanted to say here at the end. And thank you to Roman Mars for coming and being a guest on this bumpy ride. Much like the movie… Hudson Hawk.
elliott
Uh, Roman, is there anything that you would like to tell us about or plug before you go?
roman
Oh, sure. So I do a show called 99% Invisible. It’s about architecture and design but really it’s kind of about everything in the built world and how it sort of—what it speaks to us as what’s important to us as humans? And actually we have our first book coming out on October 6th. It’s co-authored by Kurt Kohlstedt, who works on the staff as digital director. And it’s called The 99% Invisible City.
crosstalk
Roman: And so we hope you buy it and enjoy that [inaudible]. Dan: I’m intrigued.
dan
I love that stuff. Okay! Well—
elliott
I’m gonna buy that book! You know what? I’m gonna buy that book. So listeners, if you wanna be like me and own at least one book that I own— [Multiple people laugh.] —you should also buy it, too.
roman
And if you wanna be like me—and I’ve been a regular donor to Maximum Fun for over a decade, I think—you should go to MaximumFun.org/join. Because I think that putting your, y’know, future in the hands of the listeners of MaxFun is a great choice. I think it’s a very important choice, Dan. And I think I’m proud of you for doing it. Because I think that these people— [Multiple people laugh.] —will catch you. I think they will hold you and take care of you—
dan
Oh, god.
roman
And let you be who you are?
dan
Roman—
crosstalk
Roman: And let you make the things you make. And that’s what they—that’s what they want to do right now! Dan: [Laughs.] That’s all I’ve ever wanted. All I’ve ever wanted. [Stuart laughs.]
roman
That’s what they—that’s what they want to do right now and they’re gonna come. They’re gonna join me in this effort by going to MaximumFun.org/join— [Multiple people laugh.] And just take care of these men. Who are really—who—who—who put so much—
crosstalk
Roman: Y’know, they put so much of themselves out there. In—in— Dan: I feel like Roman could be like a super-villain? Like one of those super-villains that just like—
dan
—knows your psychological profile immediately? [Multiple people laugh.] And just, y’know, uses it against you. That’s amazing. [Roman laughs.]
roman
But I think it’s a beautiful system and a great choice and it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s nothing to apologize for. This is really, really—like, the greatest thing that we want is for us all to take care of each other in the way that we can. And this is what is sort of beautiful about pledge drives. Is because they are about us giving what we can—whatever we can—to create something greater together. [Multiple people laugh.] So go to [through laughter] MaximumFun.org/join to join me—join me! ‘Cause it’s not just them. Like, what I need is not just—I need—[inaudible] them support. You’re part of the team that I’m part of. [Elliott laughs.] Because I’m one of these people that gives money to them. And it only works if we all join in together. By going to MaximumFun.org—
crosstalk
Elliott: I feel like—I feel like Dan—yeah. Yeah. Stuart: I feel like a couple of Younglings sitting around the Jedi Master over here. Right? Roman: —/join. Dan: Mm-hm.
elliott
It’s like we’re—we all— [Roman laughs.] It’s like we were all auditioning to be dancers in a show and then Roman was like, “Okay. Well, let me show you how that step’s supposed to be done.” [Stuart laughs.] And then just like pulled it off so beautifully while reading a newspaper? [Roman laughs.] And it’s like— [through laughter] How did—impossible!
dan
Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on the show and doing our job. But now we need to say goodbye so I can get out of this hot room and Roman can do important things and—I dunno—you guys can go do whatever the shit is that—
crosstalk
Dan: —you might have— Stuart: Go try and save my business?
stuart
Yeah, I’m gonna go do that!
dan
Oh, okay. [Laughs.] Okay.
elliott
Try and save my family, like the titular Stuart? [Multiple people laugh.] And I’d also—also say—
crosstalk
Dan: Now, wait. Which one of you is saving Elliott’s family? Stuart: Ohhh! You can’t tell our voices apart now! Elliott: Oh, boy. [Roman laughs.]
elliott
Oh, wow. Wow. He’s just so hypnotized by Roman he doesn’t know what’s going on anymore. Well, Dan, before we go, I’d just like to thank everybody for listening in and say, hey! If you have a chance to tweet or Instagram or whatever about us? Go ahead and do so! And I also wanna give a special thanks to our editor, Jordan Kauwling. Who has her work cut out for her with this very long episode. [Laughs.]
dan
Bye, everyone! [Roman laughs.]
roman
Bye.
music
Light, up-tempo, electric guitar with synth instruments. Plays at full volume for a few seconds, then fades slightly into background of dialogue.
dan
Uh… Roman, your job is just to say “four” when the time arrives.
roman
Okay.
dan
One—
elliott
Two—
stuart
Three—
roman
Four.
dan
Five.
elliott
Six!
roman
Four. [All laugh. Someone claps slowly. Roman continues laughing through remainder of dialogue.]
dan
Let’s—why are you—
crosstalk
Elliott: I got distracted by something [inaudible]. Dan: You’re the one—
dan
—who wants me to do two goddamn rounds—
crosstalk
Dan: —and then you immediately— Elliott: We never do them!
dan
—derail it!
crosstalk
Elliott: We never do them so I got lost! Dan: I said I would do it—
crosstalk
Dan: I said I would do it long style this time! Elliott: I didn’t believe you!
elliott
I didn’t believe you.
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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