TRANSCRIPT Ep. 320: Last Christmas

Transcript

dan
									
On this episode, we discuss—Last Christmas!
elliott
									
Based on a true story—if by “true story,” you mean “some of the lyrics of a George Michael song.”
music
									
Light, up-tempo, electric guitar with synth instruments.
dan
									
Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Flop House! I’m Dan McCoy.
stuart
									
I’m Stuart Wellington!
elliott
									
And I’m Elliott Kalan! And look who’s here joining us!
dan
									
Look!
hallie
									
Uh, uh, hi! I’m Hallie Haglund! [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
									
That’s right, everybody, it’s—you know her from The Daily Show. You may know her from White Snacks Problem Areas. You may know her for being my office mate for four years—or you probably know her best as the star of The Flop House… Hallie Haglund. [Hallie cheers.]
crosstalk
									
Stuart and Dan: Oh, wow!
stuart
									
Yeah, it looks like a bunch of people paid to have digital fans entered into the background to celebrate! [Multiple people laugh.] I like that, Hallie, you are such a popular guest that we don’t even introduce you. We [through laughter] let you introduce yourself. [Dan laughs.]
elliott
									
Mm-hm.
hallie
									
Alright! Well. Me, too! [Stuart laughs.]
dan
									
Now Hallie—y’know, you—it’s no secret that you’ve had a problem with some of the other movies, sometimes, that we’ve made you watch for the podcast. Not so much the horror movies, but a lot of the more fantasy— [Laughs.] Oriented—sort of the bull—
hallie
									
Boo!
crosstalk
									
Dan: The bullshit movies, she would— Elliott: For those who can’t watch, Hallie was giving a thumbs down.
elliott
									
That was a thumbs-down movement from Hallie.
hallie
									
They were just boring. Like, that’s the problem. It’s like they weren’t even fun-bad, they were just long and boring.
elliott
									
Well, which movies did we watch—did we have with you before? I’ve forgotten. Do you remember?
dan
									
One of them was The Dark Tower.
hallie
									
Something about…
crosstalk
									
Elliott: Oh, right. Dark Tower. Yeah. Hallie: Was that—yeah. That was definitely the worst.
hallie
									
That was where the upside-down world? Right?
crosstalk
									
Dan: That’s a different one. That was called Upside-Down, I think. Stuart: Oh, yeah, we did that one! That was Upside-Down. Elliott: That was—that was called—yeah. Dark Tower is the one where Matthew McConaughey was like— Hallie: Oh, that’s a different one?
elliott
									
“In my world, we don’t have chicken.” [Stuart laughs.]
hallie
									
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was bad, too. [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
									
Dan: No, I—I— Stuart: No, didn’t we do, uh— Hallie: Actually, I don’t even remember that one.
stuart
									
Didn’t we do one of the Fifty Shades movies?
elliott
									
Yeah, yeah.
hallie
									
Yeah. No. I—yeah. I feel like the one—my favorite of the ones we’ve watched was the Zac Efron one.
stuart
									
That was the one where I wasn’t on the episode, so that makes sense. That makes sense.
crosstalk
									
Hallie: Aw. No! That makes no sense. Elliott: Yeah, yeah. She had a great time. It was so fun. It was so fun. Dan: What a great time we all had together. Stuart: I mean, I like—I like super-hot guys like Zac Efron, too.
stuart
									
I don’t know why I wouldn’t be included. [Laughs.]
elliott
									
Now, listeners may not know—this is the first time we’ve had Hallie on the show since she moved to my hometown—Los Angeles! And let me just tell you—I was so excited when Hallie moved out there and I was like, “This is gonna be great. We’re gonna hang out all the time.” And then some dumb germ had to come in and ruin those plans. [Dan laughs.] So.
hallie
									
I mean, Elliott, you are literally the only people that we ever socialized with in Los Angeles. [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
									
‘Cause you came over—you had moved in, what, like, a couple days before? Or a week before? When you came over?
hallie
									
Uh—yeah. I think we had dinner at your house like—yeah. Maybe a week after we moved in? And then LA shut down two weeks after we moved in?
elliott
									
[Laughs.] Oh. Terrible. Well you know what? It’s just too bad our friendship is over now and we’ll never—
dan
									
Wow.
crosstalk
									
Elliott: We’ll never have dinner again. Stuart: What do you guys—what do you guys do for dinner?
crosstalk
									
Dan: Yeah. [Laughs.] Let’s have a rundown! Do you have a menu, or? Stuart: Yeah, Elliott, what’s going on? What do you guys do for dinner with Elliott and Danielle?
hallie
									
Danielle cooked a lovely feast! She cooked kebabs, I believe? With a garlicky hummus?
elliott
									
The hummus was very garlicky. It was like—it was—it was a little too vinegary a garlicky. But you could only have a little bit of it before your tongue jumped out of your mouth and said, “No more, please!” And ran away. [Multiple people laugh.]
crosstalk
									
Dan: I think you’re speaking my language. Stuart: Yeah, that—that ruins your, uh—yeah.
stuart
									
That ruined the game of Spin the Bottle that was supposed to finish the meal. [Laughs.] [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
									
Well, it was gonna—
hallie
									
We were about to play with our three children— [All laugh.]
elliott
									
Well, it was gonna be one of those—we were like, we live in La La Land now. Time to put the kids to bed in one room and don’t lock the door so that they can walk out and find us playing kinda creepy weird adult games that are—we’re finding uncomfortable too, so that they can write about it in their memoirs about going up in that crazy Hollyweird culture. But the garlic—yeah. It really put a damper on it.
hallie
									
Elliott just has like an empty goldfish bowl at the entrance to his house where you just drop your keys when you go in— [Dan laughs.] —and— [Laughs.] That’s how key parties work, right?
crosstalk
									
Elliott: I think so? I’ve only ever seen ‘em in the movies. Dan: Yeah. Thank god— Stuart: I think so.
dan
									
Thank god you took the goldfish out of that bowl ‘cause I remember the first key parties you had, people were just dumping it in. Filling that bowl with keys.
crosstalk
									
Dan: And eventually they’ll just get pushed out. Elliott: Well, the worst thing is, you reach in— Hallie: Senseless deaths.
elliott
									
—and you pull out a goldfish and you’re like, “I guess I’m doing it with this goldfish tonight.” Like— [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
									
Yeah, that’s the worst part.
crosstalk
									
Stuart: Yeah, and then like fucking Vince Clortho shows up— Hallie: It’s the rules!
stuart
									
—and you’re like, “Ugh. Okay!” [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
									
[Through laughter] I guess I pulled off the ritual! Didn’t even mean to! [Dan laughs.]
dan
									
[Through laughter] Alright. Well, what I was saying before, though, was just that we’ve tortured Hallie a lot so we decided to [through laughter] give her a little more—
elliott
									
Well, Dan. What do we do on this podcast? What do we do on this podcast?
dan
									
Okay. Alright. Back to the—back to—everyone, back to one. [Multiple people laugh.] Re-rack. Uh, on this podcast we watch a bad movie—or a movie that was—let’s say—presumed bad by critics. Or audiences. And then we talk about it! And… this time around, Hallie was given a list of things we were under consideration and she immediately came back within seconds with Last Christmas out of the list given. Yeah. Which—y’know. Not surprising. But a good movie. One that I wanted to watch anyway for the show.
hallie
									
So not total freedom. I was given a list.
dan
									
That’s true.
crosstalk
									
Hallie: It wasn’t pick your wildest— Elliott: You weren’t given total… [singing] freedom! Duh, duh, duh, duh-duh. Freedom! Dah, dah, dah, dah-dah. Freedom!
crosstalk
									
Elliott: That’s a George Michael song! Stuart: So yeah, Dan. Why don’t you take those lies and make them truths? [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
									
You know what I learned from this movie, guys? I’m jumping ahead. I never really listened to the lyrics of George Michael songs before, so I didn’t realize that they’re all super-depressing? That it’s—
hallie
									
I know! It made me feel like he is so—he was so sad! We shoulda seen the tragic, untimely death coming.
elliott
									
 Yeah. I never—I mean, everyone’s death we should see coming at some point. Nobody escapes this life alive. But they—
stuart
									
Uh-huh. Except for Azalin Rex, the Dark Lord of Darkon.
elliott
									
Fair point. Fair point. You’re right. I forgot about that very common—
stuart
									
Although he is trapped in his realm and can’t leave because his phylactery keeps growing with every year. What a horrible fate for Azalin!
dan
									
The Lord of Daikon? The radish?
stuart
									
Dark—yeah. He’s the Lord of Daikon The Radish. [Multiple people laugh.] He’s a radish-based litch.
elliott
									
He’s a radish king. He lives inside a radish. But there’s a scene we’ll talk about, I guess, where on a date they’re ice skating to a George Michael song and the lyrics are all about how God turned his back on his children and his children have escaped? And it’s like, [through laughter] “What is this song? This sad man!” I felt so bad for him!
dan
									
Yeah. Okay. Well, Last Christmas. It’s a romantic comedy. It has a good pedigree. Emma Thompson wrote it. Paul Feig directed it. It has Emma Thompson in it. It has Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones as the—our lead. And Henry Golding of Crazy Rich Asians is a very handsome man in both movies.
elliott
									
I think you’re leaving out that international superstar Michelle Yeoh is in the movie.
dan
									
Yup. Patti LuPone shows up for one scene, [through laughter] which seems weird.
elliott
									
One inexplicable—it’s—what’s weird is that—
hallie
									
Who is she?
elliott
									
She was buying those little baby Jesuses in the store in the very beginning.
stuart
									
Right.
crosstalk
									
Elliott: That was Broadway legend Patti LuPone. Hallie: That was Patti LuPone?
hallie
									
Oh, no. I’m thinking of Bernadette Peters. I was like, “She looks different.” [All laugh.]
elliott
									
What happened to Bernadette Peters’s face, ‘cause she looks like Patti LuPone! [All laugh.] And—
hallie
									
She seems like she’d still have a beautiful singing voice, but a different kind of singing voice?
elliott
									
I thought it was very funny that Rob Delaney and Peter Serafinowicz are mentioned in the opening credits and they appear for roughly 45 seconds in the film?
crosstalk
									
Hallie, Dan, and Stuart: Yeah.
dan
									
But, y’know, all I’m saying—there’s a lot of talent behind this.
elliott
									
One of the hosts—or one of the hosts from The Great British Bakeoff appears in a scene. And—
hallite
									
Oh, wait! When?
crosstalk
									
Elliott: And she’s in the—the ice audition. Dan: Ice skating. Yeah.
stuart
									
Guys? It sounds like Elliott is trying to horn in on my job this time and—
crosstalk
									
Stuart: —just do the summary— Elliott: Sorry. Dan: Wow.
stuart
									
—and no way I am driving this fucking car today.
elliott
									
Okay. I won’t even mention that Peter Mygind from the highest-grossing Danish film ever, I think? Flame and Citron—was also in it.
dan
									
Oh.
elliott
									
Oh, actually? You know what? Maybe it was just the biggest-budget Danish film ever.
crosstalk
									
Dan: Is he the father? Elliott: Stuart, take—
elliott
									
Stuart’s doing the—and now I’m gonna be done talking for most of the episode ‘cause Stuart’s gonna summarize. Stuart? Take it away!
stuart
									
Okay. So before I get into the actual plot of the movie, guys, we have to address—I think kind of a big part of this movie. Which is, there’s a very crazy—in some ways very obvious—twist in it. Should we—are we going to just go along with the summary of the movie and get to the twist when it happens in the movie? Or shall we just bring it up right now and talk about the movie in context of this crazy twist? A twist that many people just guessed as soon as the movie trailer hit the internet. [Multiple people laugh.]
hallie
									
Okay. Guess what? Apparently—so I had watched maybe… I had maybe like a half-hour to forty-five minutes left? And I put it on pause and I was just like going to the bathroom or something and then I walked past my husband and I was like, “This movie is so good! I just don’t know what’s gonna happen at the end!” And he was like, “I’m guessing it probably has something to do with like the second line of the song?” [Multiple people laugh.] And I was like, “What? No! No! It’s not gonna be.” Men. [Dan laughs.]
dan
									
Oh, the sadness.
stuart
									
So we’re gonna air this dirty laundry. Which is not the song this is based on. This is a movie inspired by the Wham! song “Last Christmas,” where the mysterious love interest is actually—I guess—a ghost of a man who donated his heart to our lead exactly one year ago when she was in need of a heart transplant. So it is as much like the first two lines of the song as you can imagine. They don’t ever talk about the third line of the song in which she would’ve just given that heart away the next day. That would’ve been strange. [Dan laughs.]
elliott
									
It would’ve been crazy ‘cause she would need it to live. She just like pull it out of her chest and give it to like—what’s his name from Temple of Doom?
stuart
									
To Mola Ram.
crosstalk
									
Elliott: Yeah. Mola Ram? Yeah. [Laughs.] Stuart: Mola Ram.
dan
									
Now, let me just say that there are—there are metaphorical ways to read this twist? That I—that I actually kind of like and I may make an argument for later. But the movie makes it hard to make the metaphorical argument when there are things like, she goes to places that only this guy would’ve known, which suggests that there’s some sort of literal, supernatural quality that receiving someone else’s organ has. But—
stuart
									
Uh-huh. Just like in Body Parts. So now that we got that out of the way, everybody—
crosstalk
									
Hallie: Wow. Suspend your disbelief, people! Stuart: Everybody lets out a— Elliott: Now that we’ve spoiled the movie.
elliott
									
Guys, before we talk about this Sixth Sense movie, let’s just mention—oh, he’s also a ghost.
crosstalk
									
Stuart and Dan: Yeah.
crosstalk
									
Elliott: Oh, guys, before we talk about the— Hallie: Guess I’m the only one who believed in love. [All laugh.]
elliott
									
Before we talk about The Ghost and Mrs. Muir I should let you know—the guy’s a ghost. [Dan laughs.]
hallie
									
Well, that was in the title! That wasn’t even implied by the title, like this one!
elliott
									
You know that’d be really—if somebody went to see that movie and they got in after the opening credits and then they were like—at the end, they were like, “He was a ghost?” [Dan laughs.]
stuart
									
Guys? What is a ghost? Is it a tragedy condemned to repeat itself, time and again? [Laughs.] An instant of pain, perhaps? Something dead which still seems to be alive?
crosstalk
									
Dan: [Through laughter] Wait, hold on. Stuart: Like a motion suspended in time? Like a blurred photograph? Elliott: I think the third one.
stuart
									
Like an insect… trapped in amber. Is that Tom Webster?
crosstalk
									
Dan: What—now, okay. Stuart, wait, hold on. [Laughs.] Hold on, hold on. Stuart: So let’s get into the movie! [Laughs.]
dan
									
I must know—are you quoting something, or did you just write [through laughter] that ahead of time?
stuart
									
It’s the opening narration of Devil’s Backbone, one of my favorite movies. [Multiple people laugh.] Okay. So. [Dan laughs.] We open with a church choir singing a—I can’t tell if it’s a George Michael song or a Wham! Song, but it is basically letting us know it is not our daddy’s Christmas church choir performance. Uh—
elliott
									
Also, it’s in Yugoslavia, so my dad’s never been there.
stuart
									
Okay. I didn’t—oh, yeah. I guess—
hallie
									
I’ve been there! My dad’s been there. I’ve been there, you guys! If you have any questions, I’ve been there.
elliott
									
Was it like that—well, was it like that when you were there? Was it just kids’ church choirs? [All laugh.]
hallie
									
Yeah. And there was sausage, I remember. I was like seven. [Laughs.] I ate a sausage, and then children’s choirs.
stuart
									
Okay. So let me start over. It opens with a church choir singing a George Michael or possibly a Wham! Song in a Yugoslavian church. And that goes to show that this is Hallie’s father’s—or Hallie’s daddy’s—church choir performance. And we are introduced to—
elliott
									
Now I would just mention—Stuart was accurate with me. It was not my dad’s church choir performance. Being Jewish, he was not—didn’t go to church. Wasn’t in a choir. And again—as stated—has never been to Yugoslavia.
hallie
									
I just wanna clarify in case there’s [through laughter] any confusion. My dad is actually in a choir? And it is nothing like this. So the way that that statement was phrased, there might be some confusion. I don’t want anybody to confuse it with the Colorado Chamber Choir.
elliott
									
So Stuart should’ve said, “This is in some ways like Hallie’s daddy’s church choir.”
stuart
									
Yep. Yep. Okay. So we are introduced to Katarina, a young Yugoslavian girl who is singing the lead or solo of this song. And her mother played by Emma Thompson is in the—I guess—audience or the congregation watching and loving every minute of it. Flash-forward to 2017.
crosstalk
									
Stuart: And that little girl— Elliott: That was in 1999.
elliott
									
That last part.
stuart
									
Okay. Cool. Good. Good point. [Dan laughs.] That little girl— [Hallie laughs.] —that little girl is all grown up now and singing the same song alone in a bar, drowning her sorrows. We learn through a conversation with a potential suitor that she has family troubles. She loves George Michael. We learn she’s living out of a suitcase. And after some flirting, she goes home with this fellow.
hallie
									
Wait, I have a question!
crosstalk
									
Stuart: Yeah, of course! Yeah, of course! Hallie: Can I ask a question? That actor—
hallie
									
He—what is he from? He looked so familiar.
elliott
									
Last Christmas. He’s from this movie.
crosstalk
									
Hallie: Oh, oh. Thanks. No, what’s— Dan: Although— Stuart: Dan you wanna hit—you wanna hit the internet and find out?
dan
									
I—well, I do wanna—as long as we’re talking about actors, just off the top our lead—our adult version of that young girl is, of course, Emilia Clarke. The main-o from Game of Thrones or the Terminator Genisys. Or Solo.
hallie
									
But you did not know her like this.
elliott
									
Solo: The Star Wars Story?
crosstalk
									
Dan: Yes. I liked her quite a bit. Elliott: I’m gonna say right off the bat—she’s really good in this.
hallie
									
She is so charming. Who knew she had that dimension?
elliott
									
It makes me feel like she was—I never really—I didn’t think she was bad as Daenerys, but I didn’t love her as Daenerys? But I think she’s great in this and it’s like, “Oh, ‘cause she’s got like a sparkle to her that Game of Thrones couldn’t take advantage of.” Y’know.
dan
									
I think she is very ill-served by like the sort of solemn roles that she’s been forced to take so far? Because I think that she has a real like talent for light comedy and a charm. Yeah. I liked her a lot.
hallie
									
Mm-hm.
stuart
									
So. She goes home with this fellow and that initial bliss is ruined because it turns out her new friend is married and she is out on the street again. She’s a bit of a mess. She works at a—what—is this a year-round Christmas store called, what, “Yuletide”? Where she has to dress as an elf and she has “Ho, Ho, Ho” written on her hand as a note, which I thought was a pretty—kind of funny touch. [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.] Like the kind of note you’d write yourself to remember and you’re like, “I gotta remember to say, ‘ho, ho, ho.’” [Dan laughs.] We’re introduced to her boss, Santa, who is played by the always-incredible Michelle Yeoh. Who is like this tough-but-fair character. Though we learn later on that Santa is just an adopted name and that she picks a different name related to whatever business she’s working.
elliott
									
It’s—that’s one of those little moments where I was like, “Yeah. I didn’t think you needed to explain that, movie. Like, I didn’t really think her birth name was ‘Santa.’” Like, that seems—I think you just take it for granted that the person who runs a Christmas store is just gonna take the name “Santa.” It wasn’t like, “Why did my parents curse me with the name Santa? Now all I can do is run a Christmas store!”
dan
									
I also wanted to say that Audrey yelled—aloud—every time Santa was wearing a new outfit. So I, as someone who doesn’t necessarily pay the most attention to clothes in movies, I just wanted to note that that was an A+ ensemble factory for her, was the general thought.
stuart
									
Yeah. I mean, Michelle Yeoh is one of those performers who can kind of do no wrong in my eyes? So yeah. Any moment she’s on screen is a win for me. So this scene—this, like, kind of first day of work we see kinda introduces three main plot points. The first: her sister Marta—who’s kind of like the stuffy sister—visits and guilt-trips her into visiting their parents. That family stress. At one point she is distracted by a well-dressed hottie, Tom, played by Henry Golding. And then a bird shits in her eye. [Dan laughs.]
hallie
									
Big shit.
crosstalk
									
Dan: And I— Stuart: And then—yeah, yeah, yeah.
dan
									
I wanted to say that both for reasons that will become clear later in the movie, obviously, when the twist arrives, but also like just because of Henry Golding’s general demeanor, it is kind of baffling, the degree to which she seems off-put by him at the—like, she like continually talks about how weird he is? When he is a perfectly normal-looking man and handsome and polite and quiet? Like, he’s not doing anything for her like giant reaction. I guess. Is what I’m saying. Like—
elliott
									
I think he—I think that we’re supposed to take from it that she is so used to kinda losers and bad boys that someone who is nice is taken as weird. It would also, like, he is—eventually he is kinda weird. He’s one of those guys who’s like, “Let me show you all my favorite hidden corners of the city.”
crosstalk
									
Elliott: And it’s like, “Oh, god. Another tour date.” Dan: No, he does get a little weird. Hallie: I would also say—
hallie
									
I would also say I think it had to do with her embarrassment by getting pooped on by a bird in front of him. Because—if you remember—when she first saw him she was like dusting the little Christmas ornaments and he looked in the window and was like, “Hmm. I—me likey!” And then she went outside, got pooped on a bird, and then after that she was like, “You’re so weird. Get away from me!” And I was like, “You—you liked him!”
elliott
									
The weird thing is, to me he gets weirder and weirder throughout the movie as his interest in her clearly gets less and less romantic and more and more therapeutic as the movie goes on?
crosstalk
									
Dan: [Through laughter] Well, that was what I was think— Elliott: To the point where I was—
elliott
									
I was like, “So you’ve gotta be a ghost ‘cause why else are you—I don’t understand why you’re looking for this relationship right now.”
dan
									
Well, I mean, she’s a—I mean—
stuart
									
Stop describing all my relationships, Elliott. [Elliott laughs.]
crosstalk
									
Elliott: [Through laughter] Sorry! I know, Stuart, you’re really into wounded birds. Dan: He—he—I mean, he—
elliott
									
That you can—you can pick up and heal and put them back in their nest.
dan
									
Well, this character is like a manic pixie dream guy in that like he is literally just showing up to improve our main character’s life. For reasons that—
crosstalk
									
Dan: —make more sense— Hallie: Let me just ask, were you guys—
hallie
									
Were you guys offended by that?
dan
									
Oh, not at—
hallie
									
As men? [Dan laughs.]
dan
									
[Through laughter] Um—
hallie
									
To see men portrayed that way onscreen?
elliott
									
I was like, “Finally, someone’s telling my story.”
dan
									
[Through laughter] I knew that he was a manifestation of her psyche so it didn’t really bother me that much, but I will—I will say that I was kind of relieved that I knew that he was a manifestation of her psyche? ‘Cause I was like, “Well, if he’s a real man, like this would not be a healthy relationship between the two of them over time? Like—"
elliott
									
No, not at all.
dan
									
“—he would just be like a font of wisdom like for her and that would be all of it and like she would grow dependent on him—” Like, it would not be a good thing.
crosstalk
									
Dan: It only works as therapy. Stuart: Only because he helped her through that—
stuart
									
Or because he helped her through that trauma, she would always associate him with that trauma and then that would poison their relationship.
elliott
									
Yeah. Or the relationship would be built on a feeling of obligation? You helped me through this hard time so now I guess I have to be with you? It’s kind of like Zazie Beetz in Joker, where as I was watching it I was like, this character better be a figment of his imagination because if not, her actions make no sense as human actions—behavior. Y’know. It’s—
hallie
									
Like, that she was interested in him at all?
elliott
									
Yes, exactly! This crazy weirdo who is—who has a body like Christian Bale in The Machinist? Definitely. [Multiple people laugh.]
stuart
									
It’s all sharp corners on that guy. So— [Elliott laughs.] And then, of course, as I said, we have our little meet-cute. She meets Tom, who—again—I can’t stress enough—is a ghost. [Multiple people laugh.] And then the last—
hallie
									
I didn’t know. I didn’t know! If you watch it and you didn’t know, no shame.
stuart
									
I’m not saying that it’s obvious like while she’s talking to him, her hand passes through his fucking ectoplasm or some shit. [Multiple people laugh.]
hallie
									
[Through laughter] She reached out to embrace him and fell on the street.
crosstalk
									
Elliott: Yeah. The part where—the part where— Stuart: That’s not bird shit. It’s ectoplasm.
elliott
									
The part where she touched him and her hand passed through and she felt the chill of the grave in her bones. [Laughs.]
dan
									
Y’know, Stuart, you saying “I can’t stress this enough. He’s a ghost.” To me it sounded like you were trying to like set Hallie up with someone, for instance, and were like—“Like, now, he’s a very nice guy. Handsome. He’s got a job. I cannot stress this enough—he is a ghost.” [Laughs.] [Multiple people laugh.]
crosstalk
									
Dan: Like, “You will not be with him long-term. He will be called to the other side.” Anyway. Sorry. Stuart: Okay. So the—and the third—
elliott
									
I will say, if he was not a ghost, it does risk falling into the stereotype of the kind of like sexless Asian man? Which the—him being a ghost who doesn’t exist and is just her heart telling her to be a better person makes a little bit okay? But. Y’know.
hallie
									
But she was into him! So I think it avoids that.
crosstalk
									
Hallie: Because she was attracted to him. Elliott: She was into him. That’s true.
elliott
									
But he was very like—it was one of those things where she’s like, “Come sleep with me!” And he’s like, “No. I can’t. We barely know each other.” And it’s like, alright. Who’s—that was one of the moments where I was like, “This dude better be a ghost.” [Stuart laughs.] Like—
crosstalk
									
Dan: Whoa. Hallie: Do you guys know what this means?
stuart
									
What’s that?
hallie
									
It means I finally saw a ghost.
elliott
									
Aww, Hallie, we did it! It’s a Christmas miracle! [Dan laughs.]
crosstalk
									
Hallie: Literally! Dan: She’s—she’s—Hallie just did like a little “ta-da!” motion. Stuart: Oh, wow. [Laughs.] [Multiple people laugh.]
stuart
									
Okay! And then the last plot point we deal with on that first day of work is… we find out that Santa has a mysterious relationship with a distinguished-looking Colin Firth German-type guy.
elliott
									
Danish.
stuart
									
Danish, sure. And at some point, eventually, she helps, y’know, a couple scenes later she’s gonna help Santa get that date with that fella.
hallie
									
Colin Firth was—is way hotter than that guy. I think that’s—
stuart
									
Oh, okay.
hallie
									
Yeah.
elliott
									
The guy is also—he is a little weird in that he is obsessed with Christmas trinkets? And there’s a part of me that’s like—where he keeps presenting them as like, “This is what you’re into, right?” And I wanted to see the scene where Michelle Yeoh was like, “Okay. Straight talk. I just do this… for a living.” [Dan laughs.] “I’m like not really into Christmas novelty crap. Like, you don’t have to keep bringing me lots of Christmas stuff.” But we don’t get to see that scene.
hallie
									
No, he’s into cabbage! He’s into sauerkraut!
crosstalk
									
Elliott: Well, his family is a sauerkraut family, yeah. Hallie: He’s not into—
dan
									
I do wanna say, also, I think this bears noting that these scenes between the two of them are played—broadly comic, but I found it genuinely funny. Where they immediately are dumbstruck with one another and cannot say anything without huge pregnant pauses in-between them and gazing into each other’s eyes and not breaking eye contact. So that’s the gag of those scenes.
stuart
									
Yeah. It’s funny and it also keeps the romantic pressure on the movie. So. Kate leaves work and rushes to perform in an audition. She has a couple of these throughout the movie where she performs and Peter Serafinowicz is mean to her. She’s trying to be a singer, right? That’s the whole deal?
dan
									
But she has not been able to sing since…
crosstalk
									
Dan: Who knows, at this point? Hallie: I mean, she sounded bad.
hallie
									
At this audition, she did not sound good, guys.
crosstalk
									
Stuart: Yeah. Wow. We should’ve gotten Hallie in that panel of judges on that! Elliott: This was not your daddy’s— [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.]
elliott
									
Hallie would’ve been like, “Pitchy, dawg. Very pitchy.” [Hallie laughs.]
hallie
									
I’ll go there. [All laugh.]
crosstalk
									
Stuart: Yeah, that’s why they bring you into the room. Dan: Make a list and I’ll get on there.
stuart
									
They need somebody who does the straight talk. [Multiple people laugh.]
crosstalk
									
Elliott: I would—I really wanna see— Stuart: Now that James Woods has been cancelled. [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
									
I wanna see Hallie Haglund so badly on The Voice and her just to be like, “That was… not good.” And then no other commentary? [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.] Or if someone blows them away, she’s just like, “That was good.” [Hallie laughs.]
stuart
									
So she keeps bumping into Tom. He’s—he behaves mysteriously. He is vague about his lifestyle and where he lives. He describes his own behavior as kind of serial killer-y? Which I guess is mean to, like, what, hang a lantern on it? And then he takes her to his secret garden and they sit on a bench.
dan
									
Yeah. Which is one of the many things in here that does not make sense if this is a manifestation simply of her consciousness, because like… how does she know about this secret bench which turns out to be a bench that was donated in his honor, like at the end of the movie? Unless the heart inside her [through laughter] the organ still has some sort of sentience.
elliott
									
Now, it’s possible she fell asleep while watching a show called, like, Britain’s—London’s Hidden Secrets! And then just absorbed it subconsciously. But I think it was that a ghost took her there. [Dan laughs.] Hallie? What do you think?
hallie
									
Yeah. I don’t understand, Dan, why you’re so committed to this being a manifestation of her, like… like, emotional needs when you make us watch all these fucking stupid movies that are— [Multiple people laugh.] —all fantastical about other dimensions. Like, can’t it just be a supernatural intervention?
crosstalk
									
Elliott: Great show. Supernatural Intervention. Dan: I guess ‘cause I don’t like that as much?
dan
									
Like, that’s… that sort of buys into this notion that… y’know, there is gonna be some sort of intervention in your life and that’s what you need to change. Whereas I think you can read this movie metaphorically—if not literally—as like this is her helping herself because that person is not actually there and I find the movie more interesting as a light comedy drama about like… figuring out how to come through depression and trauma? Than like a romantic comedy. Where, like, y’know, the guy’s just an angel or something. Y’know.
elliott
									
I mean, he’s not—one, he’s a ghost. Two—
dan
									
I’m saying that type of movie. [Laughs.]
elliott
									
I’m curious, Dan, do you feel it is less sophisticated as a story if it is a—if it literally has a literal ghost than if it is a metaphorical ghost who just represents her inner thoughts and feelings?
dan
									
No. What I am saying—I am fine with it being a ghost story where the ghost is… a metaphor for that. If it’s a reading where it’s like, just supernatural intervention, like, that I don’t care for.
elliott
									
Well can’t it be both? Can’t it literally be a supernatural intervention but you the viewer are taking it as a metaphor for your own life since—if you watch the movie and you’re like, “Oh, well, I better wait for a ghost to tell me what to do,” that would be… not a reasonable reaction to a movie.
dan
									
Elliott, we are saying exactly the same thing. I’m saying that I—
crosstalk
									
Elliott: Well, but I think—I think we’re— Dan: —I—no, no, no, hold on.
dan
									
I’m saying that I can take it both supernaturally and as a metaphor. I can take it as that way. But if someone simply takes it as supernatural, I do not like that.
elliott
									
So you’re saying for a smart person like you—who can read it at both levels—it’s a good movie. But for a dumb-dumb who’s like, “G-g-ghost?! Okay! I thought they was scary but now I know they’re good and they’ll help me with my problems!”
crosstalk
									
Dan: I don’t know why I need to take—I don’t know why you gotta like— Elliott: That you think it’s bad for them. For the dumb-dumbs.
dan
									
—bring out your poison pen for the takedown on this one. [Laughs.] [Stuart laughs.]
elliott
									
No, no, I just—I think you’re splitting a hair that you might not need to be splitting.
dan
									
Well, I mean, it’s the hair that I need to split in my own mind.
crosstalk
									
Dan: Like, you’re telling me I don’t need to split it, but it—like—I gotta— Elliott: Okay. That’s fair. That’s a mind hair.
dan
									
I gotta split things sometimes.
elliott
									
As long as you know you’re splitting for yourself.
dan
									
Everybody’s gotta split.
stuart
									
So we— [Multiple people laugh.] We’re gonna—
crosstalk
									
Elliott: [Through laughter] Everybody’s gotta split. Stuart: We’re talking about splitting.
stuart
									
Now that we’re talking about splitting, let’s talk about how Kate splits hanging out with Tom and goes to live with her—goes to stay with some friends. But her like quirky selfish bullshit just keeps ruining her relationships. She destroys this poor guy’s fucking model collection and that is a bridge too far for me! [Elliott laughs.] And—
elliott
									
Was that when you turned on Kate? When you saw that she ruined not one, but two of his craft projects.
stuart
									
Exactly. Yeah. I—what I did was I turned to my cat Meatball—whos’ been knocking my stuff off my shelves—and I said, “That’s you. You’re that. You’re horrible.” [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
									
So at this point, this became a horror story for you. ‘Cause you’re like, okay, it’s a ghost and a demon woman teaming up together to wreak—god knows what havoc on crafts across London.
stuart
									
Yeah.
elliott
									
Now I don’t now if you guys noticed. There’s a little story within a story where—so she’s staying with her pregnant friend and her friend’s husband. And one thing I will give this movie credit for is that this is maybe the most multiethnic cast in a London-set movie that I’ve seen in maybe ever? And I really liked that they were taking advantage of the fact that London is a diverse city. But that she ruins—they flash back—her friend is pregnant. And they flashback to nine months ago, when she ruined her friend’s husband’s model ship. And I think the assumption is that he was so distraught that her friend had to have sex with him to make him— [Dan laughs.] —to like take him mind off of it. And got pregnant and now they’re gonna have the baby. So that baby owes its life to Kate ruining that model ship. And that’s a trade-off I’m willing to make. People over ships. That’s what I say. People over hobbies. Y’know.
stuart
									
Mm-hm. I don’t know if I agree with that, but that’s fine. We can be different.
elliott
									
I mean, seeing as I’m a parent and now have no hobbies— [Dan laughs.] —I really use people over hobbies in my life.
stuart
									
So now—
hallie
									
I think of parenting as a hobby. [All laugh.]
stuart
									
It’s the toughest hobby you’ll ever love.
elliott
									
You’re like, “And I can pick it up and put it down whenever I feel like it!” [Multiple people laugh.]
crosstalk
									
Dan: “My career is, of course, wine drinking.” Hallie: “I’ve been working on this child for at least a year and he’s still not done!”
hallie
									
“One of these days!” [All laugh.]
stuart
									
Yeah. I mean, until you start making money off being a parent, you’re still an amateur. [Hallie laughs.]
elliott
									
But it also raises a question. So Stuart, if your models got destroyed, would human intimacy make up for that or would you be like, “No, no, get away from me! This isn’t—this doesn’t do the same thing!”
stuart
									
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s basically—I think that’s kind of the plot of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, right? [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.] Okay. So she returns to work but it appears that somebody has broken into Yuletide, the X-Mas store that she works at. That’s me reading my notes directly, ‘cause I— [Dan laughs.] —wrote “X-Mas” down. And so Santa is talking to the police and after the police leave, Santa reveals that she had to fake the break-in. Kate had forgotten to lock up, and that she made Santa commit a crime to cover for her. So she really let Santa down.
dan
									
I mean, the real Santa commits hundreds of thousands of crimes every year. Just so much breaking and entering.
elliott
									
Trespassing. Hate crimes. Lots of stuff. Yeah.
hallie
									
He’s gotta have broken a window now and then.
elliott
									
You gotta assume that there’s a chimney that’s too narrow and he’s like, “Uhhh… they’ll love these toys. I’ll just smash this window and get in.” And then he’s like, “Oooh, look at this jewelry! And this computer! They shouldn’t’ve left that lying around! I’ll just put that into Santa’s little sack. And you know what? I’ll keep the toys, too!” [Dan laughs.]
crosstalk
									
Hallie: “This would look lovely on Mrs. Claus!” Dan: “It’s a fair trade for all the toys I’ve handed out over the years. Santa deserves to [inaudible] a little.” Stuart: Is that—that’s not— [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
									
“Time for Santa to get his beak wet!” And then the homeowner’s like, “Santa, what are you doing here?” And Santa’s like, “Get away!” And shoots the homeowner. And then— [Multiple people laugh.] That’s—that’s—
stuart
									
And the homeowner’s like, “It’s fair. It’s the Purge.” [All laugh.]
elliott
									
Oh yeah, I forgot that Christmas Eve is the Purge night, also. Yeah. [Laughs.] [Dan sighs.]
stuart
									
Okay. So—
elliott
									
Santa’s just throwing bombs at people’s houses. “It’s Purge night! Don’t worry about me!” [Dan laughs.]
stuart
									
So she bumps into Kate, y’know, Kate’s feeling pretty down. She bumps into Tom again. He tries to—he takes her to a homeless shelter. And it seems—at this point it’s like, Tom’s pretty mysterious. Despite being a ghost, we’re not sure if he lives at the homeless shelter or whatever. He says that he likes helps out there or he volunteers. He encourages her to help out. But she is hesitant. Later on, obviously, when looking for Tom, she ends up accidentally helping at a homeless shelter.
elliott
									
It is a real dick move, I think, for her to be like, “I don’t really have a home. I’m effectively homeless.” And he’s like, “Okay. Here’s the homeless shelter. Why don’t you stay here? I’ll call you on your bluff.” And she’s like, “I guess I could go stay at my parents’ house.” And I thought that was a real, like, smug move on his part. Y’know.
hallie
									
Yeah.
elliott
									
For a ghost. Who doesn’t need a home. Like, easy for him to say! He could just like haunt wherever! He could just float around, y’know?
crosstalk
									
Stuart: Mm-hm. Uh, so the— Dan: That’s what I’d do.
stuart
									
Yeah. Dan would I’m guessing haunt the local locker rooms.
dan
									
[Through laughter] Hold on. Libelous [Heather note: pretty sure this isn’t a word but I think that’s what he says] accusation. Sorry.
elliott
									
Yeah, Dan. I guess your ghost can sue Stuart after you die. If your ghost doesn’t just hang around locker rooms, which you know it’s going to do. [Dan laughs.] And you’re like, “Uh, I’m suing Stuart. I’m at a dressing room, not a locker room.” [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
									
[Sighs.] Okay.
stuart
									
So she gets a ride to visit her mother. She gets a ride from her father, who drives a cab. Obviously their relationship—all the relationships in this family are chilly. Her mother is played by Emma Thompson, who—let’s just say—makes a meal out of this role.
crosstalk
									
Elliott: Mm-hm. Dan: [Through laughter] Mm-hm. Yeah.
stuart
									
Which to be honest, I think adds just enough—at least for me—just enough energy to her like, y’know, her big Yugoslavian mother performance.
elliott
									
Well, and it’s—they never go into total detail with it, which is fine. But they’re clearly—I guess they’re like, Croatian or Serbo-Croatian and it’s implied that they had to escape during the Terrors in Yugoslavia when there was all sorts of ethnic strife and the country fell apart.
hallie
									
I mean, it’s not implied. They said it right out. Right? She was like—
elliott
									
Well, they never make—they like never—she says, like, “All my friends are dead. And we had to leave.” But they don’t go much more than that. Like, I was never sure if they were—
hallie
									
No, Emilia Clarke says it at one point! She’s like, “Yeah, my family all had to leave there during the Terror.” Didn’t she?
elliott
									
Yeah, yeah, no. They—never mind. They say—I was never quite clear if they were Serbs or Croats or Serbo-Croatian. It’s not really necessary. Y’know. But.
dan
									
Yeah. They’re refugees is all that’s important.
stuart
									
Yeah. She stays the night with her mom and her mom takes her to a doctor’s appointment in the morning and that’s where we get a little more background that Kate has been dealing with a medical condition. And she has not been—she’s not been going to the doctor enough, and her mother is still a point of stress, etcetera, etcetera.
elliott
									
She’s dealing with a very serious condition called “movie heart problemitis.” A loosely-defined problem with her heart that… y’know.
dan
									
Well, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. Hold on. That’s not—by this time in the film, she has had a heart transplant and the concern is that she needs to live her life more healthily because she is weakened because she had gone through this transplant. That is the concern. It’s not like she’s got Movie Heartitis. I just wanted to be fair.
elliott
									
I think it’s Movie Heartitis.
dan
									
Okay.
stuart
									
But obviously she’s still having trouble moving on with—after suffering both the immense physical trauma of getting a heart transplant, as well as the emotional problems—or the emotional difficulty of it.
elliott
									
It would pretty funny if the doctor’s like, “Well, we took an x-ray and there’s a ghost in your heart.” [Multiple people laugh.] “And we apologize. We should’ve removed it when we got the transplant. The donor heart should’ve been cleansed of ghosts. That’s why we have a priest on staff. But it just—"
dan
									
“The good news is, eventually that ghost is gonna jump out of your heart and teach you how to live your life. But in-between it’s gonna be a couple rough months there.”
elliott
									
Yeah. “Luckily, it’s a mostly-benevolent ghost. We’ve had a few people come in with malignant ghosts. Very dangerous. Very bad. But you’ve got—"
hallie
									
“—a benign ghost.”
elliott
									
“You’ve got a—"
stuart
									
A benign ghost, yeah.
elliott
									
“It’s a charming ghost, which is the best thing to have.”
dan
									
Like a topper. [Laughs.]
crosstalk
									
Dan: Or wait, I guess Topper was not the ghost. Elliott: You got like—
dan
									
He was just the guy bedeviled by Cary Grant and—who else was in that? I dunno.
elliott
									
Uh, Mrs. Topper.
dan
									
Yeah. Anyway.
stuart
									
It’s like Peter O’Toole in the movie High Spirits. [Dan laughs.] So we— [Laughs.]
crosstalk
									
Stuart: Not the rock’n’roll band High Spirits, which is a different thing. Elliott: Or—or uh—or— [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.] Dan: [Through laughter] When Peter O’Toole’s with them. [Laughs.] Sorry.
stuart
									
So Kate goes on further adventures with Tom. He takes her to a skating rink and she skates around. She goes to a family dinner where everybody’s mad at each other and then Kate fucking outs her sister to her parents, which is kinda wild. Like that—I feel like that strays into unforgiveable territory? I don’t know about you guys?
elliott
									
Well, this is where the movie was kind of like, “Mm, shall we try to be Fleabag for a couple minutes? We’re close enough. Uh—uh—no. This is too much! Too much! Too much! Not _Fleabag-_ing! Get out of here! Enough!” Like, it is—it’s pretty intense for her to do. But her parents either are pretending or kinda don’t seem to pick up too strongly on it. So that scene coulda gone a lot more dramatic.
stuart
									
And Emma Thompson does a lot of—
hallie
									
They seem pretty cool with it.
crosstalk
									
Stuart: Yeah, I mean— Elliott: Actually, I mean—they did—they do seem almost instantly pretty cool with it. Y’know.
stuart
									
Yeah. I mean, I feel like that is the—they backed off on some of the— [Laughs.] The bad parts of that scene a little bit.
elliott
									
Well, there’s something—see, that’s the thing about this movie that got to me a little bit, which is that it is very much a fluff Christmas movie about a misguided woman who gets put on her way by a ghost. And falls in love with that ghost. But it’s—they keep kind of hinting at these more serious things like refugees and xenophobia in Britain; or homophobia among, like, older people. But then they don’t—this is gonna be a light movie so they kinda don’t wanna get too deep into those things? So they just kinda throw ‘em in there for a moment and then back off. And it left me feeling a little confused.
dan
									
Well it also—I mean, with that—with the lesbian plot, in particular, which I—y’know, I can spoil ahead. Like, there’s all this concern over it. And then we skip ahead at the end of the movie and we see them all together and like… like, the mom is complimenting the girlfriend and all this stuff. And it does feel like there was a scene missing? Like, I don’t think that the parents had to be like, angry at her. Or—I mean, like, they could be like “We are very traditional people but we love you, as is—” Y’know, “We hope the case out there with—might—y’know, might happen for people.” But that seems missing. Y’know?
elliott
									
I guess we have to assume it happens during the mini scenes of her setting up that talent show at the end.
stuart
									
Yeah. [Laughs.] Yeah. It was originally intended to be in the background while the talent show auditions were happening. So Kate is despondent after her terrible family dinner experience. She goes out drinking. She bumps into Tom again. He takes her to …his?... apartment? And Kate has a kind of a breakdown and she reveals that she—a year ago she’d had a heart transplant and how she’s having trouble moving on with her life.
crosstalk
									
Dan: Yup. And there is it. Stuart: That—I don’t know if there’s anything else—and they don’t sleep together or anything. Elliott: I mean, he’s—no, he’s very gentle.
elliott
									
And is like—
hallie
									
But he gives her a kiss.
elliott
									
He—after her request, he gives her a chaste kiss on the lips. But there’s a lot of, like, therapy talk here? Where he’s like, “Just living is hard! We have to be easier with ourselves about just getting through the day!” And it was like, alright, now he’s moving into like self-help-book territory.
dan
									
Yeah. He passed like the dream of the supportive partner to… like, all the way onto like, yeah. Like—ghost therapist. [Laughs.] And like even to the degree that like, yeah, he’s like—you’re going through trauma right now. Like, all you need is to sleep. Y’know.
hallie
									
But I did think it was interesting that I thought that this movie and like this scene in particular investigated the idea. I mean I feel like whenever transplant is used as a plot point in any sort of like story? It’s like the end point? And it’s usually just not examined like this. Of like, yeah. Even if everything goes right, it’s gonna feel really fucking weird when you get a transplant. And you have this thing in your body and like you don’t… know what that means for your future. You know something broke and you don’t know if it’s gonna be fixed in the long run and—I don’t know. I thought that was something that I hadn’t really thought about when I think about like people getting transplants. [Laughs.]
dan
									
I agree with that, too. Like, I—that was maybe my favorite stuff in the movie? Just the fact that like she had this thing. She had this close call that most people would think, okay, you would just feel blessed about that. But it creates such, y’know, like, PTSD and… all this other stuff. That like I liked that the movie was about that and about getting through it.
elliott
									
Mm-hm.
stuart
									
And in a way I think on some level it justifies the parallel between the idea of, like, refugees and transplants in that way. [Hallie gasps.] So!
elliott
									
I just wanna mention—we mentioned the phrase “ghost therapist.” There is the movie pitch. [Dan laughs.] It’s a comedy. Just ‘cause he’s dead doesn’t mean his patients don’t still need him. And the ghost comes back and I can see the scene in the trailer where a patient gets really mad and picks up like something—like, a stapler from his desk? And throws it through him? And it hits the wall and then he goes, “Are we done?” And that’s when it goes to—it says, “Ghost Therapist.”
stuart
									
I feel like after the events of this movie, she needs to just keep Tom’s ghost around to have her, like, set up an inspirational Instagram account or something. [Multiple people laugh.] Something with a lot of different fonts. So—let’s see. Talking to Tom kind of inspires Kate, so she sets out to help people. She starts singing carols in the street and then that kind of—right in front of the homeless shelter. And then they bring her into the shelter and she starts setting up. She starts organizing the—it’s like a Christmas talent show. Right? Or like a Christmas pageant?
elliott
									
Yeah. It’s like a fundraiser talent show where people with money will pay to see the homeless cavort in front of them for their amusement. There’s a little bit of a thing here that bugged me where earlier in the movie she tells her boss, she’s like, “I don’t think I’m gonna do auditions anymore. They’re not good for me.” And Michelle Yeoh is like, “Good! I’m glad you came to that!” And she’s like, “Now it’s time to make the homeless audition!” ‘Cause like, is she really gonna turn down any of these people— [Dan laughs.] —and not let them be in the talent show? Like, how cruel would that be? [Laughs.] Like—
stuart
									
[Laughs.] Yeah. No, they gotta sing for their supper, Elliott. So then she bumps into Tom again. She’s ready to make a full commitment, but Tom has a secret. So they get in a fight and she runs off. [Dan laughs.]
dan
									
[Through laughter] I just like—the secret thing just reminded me like while I was watching it, I— [Laughs.] Like, there’s this scene later on where he like… where she’s figured it out? And then he shows up again later. And I just imagine him being like, “Oooh, so I’m sorry about keeping it secret that I’m a ghost.” Like— [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.] “I really shoulda, y’know, that’s on me. Like, I really…”
stuart
									
Yes. Or they bump into—she bumps into him later and he’s like, “I’m sorry, but I’m married.” [All laugh.]
dan
									
“I’m a married ghost.”
elliott
									
“I’m married to another ghost.” And then a lady ghost comes by? “Who’s this, Tom?” He just hands her—
hallie
									
Like, he’s like, “No, no. Not her. Him. I’m also gay.” [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
									
“See, I should’ve mentioned I’m gay and a ghost and I’m married.” [Multiple people laugh.] “Did I not mention—and also, I’m secretly a millionaire.” And he hands her a card that says, “I’m sorry.” It shows like a bashful ghost and it says “I’m Sorry” and then you open it and it says “That I’m a ghost.”
dan
									
Yeah. It says “I made a boo-boo.” [Multiple people laugh.]
hallie
									
“I made a boooo.” I get it.
elliott
									
It says, “I really put the ‘boo’ in ‘boo-boo.’”
stuart
									
Yeah. Cool. So meanwhile, when Kate is visiting her mom, Petra, her mother, sees like the news and sees anti-immigrant demonstrations on the news. And then later on Kate is riding a bus and there’s some racist dickhead shouting at people, telling people to leave the country. And Kate is inspired to step up and form a bond with a couple that is speaking… Yugoslavian?
elliott
									
I think they’re speaking Serbo-Croat. Or—it’s—like, Yugoslavian—I mean, Yugoslavia as a nation was a conglomeration of a number of different territories that were a majority of different ethnic groups, so—but the—she also—this is a moment where she embraces her heritage? Whereas the whole movie she’s been rejecting the name “Katarina” in favor of “Kate.” Because her favorite movie—Kate and Leopold. She could’ve named herself “Leopold,” but for whatever reason she decided not to. [Dan laughs.]
hallie
									
Wasn’t that about ghosts, too?
elliott
									
That was about time travel, right?
dan
									
Yeah. He was a—Hugh Jackman was a man out of time. He was a noble from—yeah. The past. Where everything was better. Everything—ohh, the gentlemen, back in the past!
crosstalk
									
Dan: Everyone was so nice to women back in the past! Hallie: That’s not a ghost? Stuart: Guys, what is a ghost?
crosstalk
									
Stuart: Is a ghost a tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps? Dan: Oh, god. Oh, we lapped ourselves again. [Laughs.]
stuart
									
Something dead, which still seems to be alive? An emotion suspended in time, like a blurred photograph? [Dan laughs.] Like an insect trapped in amber. So Kate—
hallie
									
Stuart, I like how it feels like we’re like your toolset. [Multiple people laugh.] And you’re like finding us on the shelf. In the video display that we have.
stuart
									
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re talking about the storage locker that I have to record the podcast in. [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
									
It does—for anyone who’s trying to imagine it, it’s like in the movies when there’s a camera shot from inside a refrigerator? When someone opens up a refrigerator? Like, that’s what it looks like while we’re all looking at Stu. Like, we are the ketchup and he’s just looking into the fridge. [Hallie laughs.]
stuart
									
I’m like, “Why is there all this fucking SunnyD? I just want my purple stuff!” [Multiple people laugh.] So—or like, maybe like an old jar of, like, pickled cabbage will start talking to me and it’s a commercial for cleaning your refrigerator. So.
crosstalk
									
Elliott: So is that—wait. That’s a thing that— Stuart: Kate goes around—
elliott
									
They have commercials for that? Like, “From the clean fridge council—clean your refrigerator, won’t ya?” Like, there’s a refrigerator and he was like, “Oh, I’m so full of dirt! I don’t feel so good!” Why don’t you clean your fridge? Give your fridge a fridge-cleaning day! Brought to you by the Clean Fridge Council!
stuart
									
I mean, why do you put dirt in a fridge? I mean, it doesn’t need to be cold. [Elliott laughs.] It’s shelf-stable, Elliott.
elliott
									
“Oh, why are people putting cold dirt in me?” [Laughs.] [Stuart laughs.] So like, somebody’s like, “I’m going on vacation. I better put this flowerpot in the fridge so the flower stays fresh.” [Hallie laughs.]
stuart
									
So Kate starts to—oh, it’s like when people put batteries in the freezer. You’re like, “What, do you want to make a remote control cold?” [Laughs snootily.]
hallie
									
Are you supposed to put batteries in the freezer?
stuart
									
I think so, yeah.
crosstalk
									
Stuart: Or the fridge. Hallie: Also, it could be a commercial for those—
hallie
									
—the refrigerators that are connected to the internet. Because isn’t their job to tell you if something’s bad or not? They like survey everything?
stuart
									
Why do you need the internet for that?
hallie
									
Because—I don’t know! But that’s the point of them!
dan
									
You want to see if your fruit is bad from a distance. [Laughs.]
crosstalk
									
Elliott: [Through laughter] So you can check in your phone, yeah. Hallie: Because they’re in like—
hallie
									
They’re in the bad food chat room. [All laugh.]
dan
									
“Take a look at these hot pics!”
elliott
									
Yeah. I don’t want my refrigerator attached to the internet and then suddenly there’s just a bunch of porn in the refrigerator. I don’t need that. [Multiple people laugh.] I like my porn hot, not cold!
dan
									
All these pop-ups.
elliott
									
[Through laughter] I’m just trying to like—you’re pushing pop-up windows out of the way to get to the eggs? [Dan laughs.] You’re like, “Oh, come on!” [All laugh.]
stuart
									
So Kate starts to try and make amends. She attempts to repair the bond with her sister. It goes okay. She spends time with her mom and goes to a farmer’s market. She goes and starts apologizing to all the friends that she has disappointing. I think this is—they probably—I think this scene is set to like “Freedom” or something, right?
dan
									
Yeah. I think so.
elliott
									
I did like the implication that her relationship with her mom was not so bad that it couldn’t be fixed by one afternoon at a farmer’s market?
hallie
									
Yeah. When they took shots together.
elliott
									
Yeah. I mean, to be fair, her mom seems like a little overbearing? But not that—I mean, pretty normal mom. Like, not that different than—like, the kind of person where you have to be like, “Moo-om!” But it wasn’t like there was no—no reason to leave the house. Y’know.
dan
									
But also, at the end of the movie, mom and dad—who have not talked basically for years—seem like happy together or at least like very friendly. The like they’ve accepted the daughter. Like, everyone’s happy. And the implication is the one problem in this family was our lead. [Through laughter] That our lead somehow dragged down the entire family until she became better. [Hallie laughs.]
elliott
									
I mean—that can happen! I have had friends where their family is destroyed by a siblings who’s just like such a hard person to deal with. But every now and then a ghost comes in, sets that family straight. So Dan, I guess what I’m saying is—this movie should be taken literally. ‘Cause it does happen.
dan
									
[Through laughter] Okay. Alright. [Hallie laughs.]
stuart
									
Uh… so. She returns to Tom’s apartment. She wants to share all of her good vibes with her buddy Tom. Only to find that a stranger dressed similarly to him—who makes his living as a realtor—is selling the apartment!
hallie
									
What?!
stuart
									
In one of the cupboards she finds Tom’s cellphone and then all of a sudden she realizes—she’s looking around the office. She sees all the things. She realizes she’s been talking to Kaiser Söze the whole time. It hits her like a ton of bricks. Tom died last Christmas. He got hit by a bus— [Through laughter] —and he donated his heart and that heart now resides in her chest. Can you believe it? Dan.
dan
									
We should’ve known from the lyrics [singing to the tune of Wham!’s “Last Christmas”] “Last Christmas, got hit by a bus!” [All laugh.]
elliott
									
[Singing] “I gave my heart to Emilia Clarke!”
hallie
									
Okay, wait. I had a question! Did you guys—was this the joke? Or was it only funny to me? At first I was like, “Oh, I’m so clever for realizing that this was funny.” And then I’m like, “Oh, maybe this is the point of the thing.” But the thing that he keeps telling everyone is look up. But then he was like on a bike and got hit [through laughter] by a truck. [All laugh.] So. [Laughs.]
stuart
									
That his philosophy on life—look up—is just tied in with him not looking up?
hallie
									
Exactly.
stuart
									
Yeah.
dan
									
How’d you--you hurt your pointer finger. Are you okay? You’re pointing at us vehemently and I saw— [Laughs.] A band-aid over it.
hallie
									
I know. It’s really—my child is obsessed with pointing? So this is a serious injury in my household. [Dan laughs.] I cut myself on a… cooking item I was washing.
elliott
									
Make up a story. Make it up. Yeah. [Multiple people laugh.]
hallie
									
No! I was—I had made a cake for my son. We used the feature that’s the grater feature in the food processor? And then when I was washing it, I just sliced my finger. It was…
elliott
									
That’s a common injury in the Kalan household. To me. Washing something sharp and then—and you get those like shallow cuts where there’s a lot of blood but it takes forever to heal and like—
crosstalk
									
Hallie: Exactly. Elliott: —ugh. I suppose.
hallie
									
And then he—and yeah. And then I had to give him a bath last night and everything reopened. And so then I had to wrap my finger up and there was all this blood and I left a tissue on the counter while I was putting him to bed so my husband saw it as a passive-aggressive gesture of like— [Dan laughs.] “Just so you know, I was bleeding.” [Multiple people laugh.]
crosstalk
									
Hallie: “And I didn’t ask for any help.” Elliott: I mean, he should’ve—
elliott
									
He should maybe have been the one to give the bath. But. [Multiple people laugh.] I know your husband does—
stuart
									
Especially because it was a bath in lime juice and you’re like, “All that citrus right in the cut!”
hallie
									
I know! I was like, “This’ll help, right?”
elliott
									
The worst part was when your son took your finger and put it in his mouth and now he has a taste for human blood. That’s never gonna go away.
crosstalk
									
Hallie: Uh-oh. Yeah. Yeah. Dan: [Through laughter] Okay. [Inaudible] I guess. Elliott: Have I—have we ever talked about—
elliott
									
—having a baby really made me think about how horrible it would be if a baby was bitten by a vampire? And so that baby never grows up and is just a baby forever, screaming constantly for blood? And it’s like—it was the—I sometimes lie awake at night worried it’s gonna happen. And it would be so nightmarish to like—your kid never grows up and is always a baby.
stuart
									
Wow. Elliott’s writing concept stuff for like 1990s World of Darkness: Vampire: The Masquerade sourcebooks. [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
									
So we finally got to see also all the scenes—the flashbacks to the scenes with Tom. But Tom’s not there ‘cause he was a ghost.
stuart
									
Yup. So we finally get that moment. I feel like if I was gonna direct a movie—just to keep everybody on their toes—I would shoot every scene with at least one person missing? [Elliott laughs.] So they think, like, “Wait, is my character a ghost the whole time?” [Multiple people laugh.] So she runs into Ghost Tom. They’re sitting on the secret garden bench.
crosstalk
									
Elliott: Stuart’s sitting with the producers. They’re like— Stuart: He disappears.
elliott
									
“Stuart, you’re way over budget. And you’re way over shooting schedule.” “It’s gonna be the best prank. Don’t worry, guys.” [Hallie laughs.]
stuart
									
So he—and then we see, of course, as Dan mentioned before, there’s a little dedication plaque on the bench in the secret garden to Tom Webster. With his catchphrase, “Look up.” Theoretically the last thing that went through his mind before the bus.
dan
									
“Look up,” by the way, is one of those things that seems like it’s meaningful? But I never [through laughter] quite understood this inspiring message.
elliott
									
Well if you’re looking down you might not see a sign that looks like a grasshopper or some shit. Like they do in the movie, y’know? You don’t see those grasshopper signs.
dan
									
Mm-hm. So it’s like that song from Sesame Street—“Looking at a crack in the sidewalk, I nearly missed the rainbow.” That song?
elliott
									
I don’t know that song, but it sounds like a George Michael song ‘cause it’s so depressing. [Dan laughs.]
dan
									
Yeah. Alright. Sorry. Go on.
stuart
									
Okay. So then we’re at the—we have the Christmas pageant at the homeless shelter, and basically every character who has shown up in this movie—anyone who has had a speaking role—is there. It is huge. And of course Kate gets up there in her elf suit and sings “Last Christmas.” And the audience loses their fucking minds like it’s Event Horizon.
elliott
									
I will say—
hallie
									
Voice like an angel! Voice like an angel. Wish that voice had shown up to the auditions.
elliott
									
Whoaaa! Wow. Burn. [Multiple people laugh.] This is a movie that I was pretty cynical about, but this scene I was like, “Okay, movie, ya got me. I like seeing everybody show up and she, y’know, entertains them and stuff.” It did for me what Craig T. Nelson and Mary Steenburgen tangoing to Meat Loaf in Book Club did for Dan. [Dan laughs.]
dan
									
Yup.
elliott
									
I mean, not that I cried. But I was like, okay, ya got me, movie.
dan
									
No. It’s a very, very sweet moment.
stuart
									
Then we have, y’know, like a family Christmas or Boxing Day meal where the whole family’s there. Marta and Norah? Norah—that’s the name of the girlfriend?
hallie
									
No, Alba. Right?
stuart
									
Alba?
elliott
									
Yeah, Alba.
stuart
									
Okay. And they’re all hanging out. They’re having a great old time telling jokes. And then we get a last shot of Kate sitting in that secret garden in the spring. She seems to have gotten her life together. She looks like she got her hair done and has a new dress and she looks up into the sky, presumably at Ghost Tom and then we have credits. And the credits are accompanied by scenes from the movie unrelated to the credits.
elliott
									
Now she also—and by the end she was wearing a lot less makeup, right? Or is she just wearing more natural-looking makeup?
dan
									
I think she’s wearing more natural-looking makeup. That’s one thing that kinda bothered me at the end of the movie, honestly, ‘cause it—she looked kind of Born-Again, almost? Not to like put anyone’s like religion down. I, y’know, grew up in a religious household and that is fine. But she like looked scrubbed in a way that seemed to like take away—I don’t know. Something of her personality. Like—
elliott
									
‘Cause you like a girl with a little bit of grit on her. A little sin.
dan
									
Yeah. [Hallie laughs.] A little—the sadder but wiser girl for me, Elliott.
elliott
									
Yeah. [Laughs.] Yeah, like the librarian.
dan
									
Mm-hm. [Laughs.]
elliott
									
It’s—I think, Dan, I mean I’m also not a—the—one of the things that kept me from being into this movie for most of the running time is that Christmas is not a magical time for me because it is not a holiday I take part in? And I feel like it is forced—I can’t get away from it during that time? But if a ghost came and visited me? I would probably convert. I mean, that’s about all the evidence I need. If a ghost was like, “Hey. I’m a ghost. I’m dead now. This is what the afterlife is like.” I’m like, “Well, I’m not gonna argue with this. This is…”
crosstalk
									
Elliott: Y’know, why would a ghost prank me? Dan: That’s the problem I always had in like—
dan
									
—all these, like, fantasy movies where, I dunno. There’s like demons from hell but the—like—person in charge is like still struggling with their faith? And I’m like, I think you just had your worldview confirmed, dude! [Laughs.] Like, just be cool with it all now! Yeah? You know what?
elliott
									
You gotta extrapolate that to like in the Marvel movies. Why does that world not—why is that world not being like, “Okay. The Norse gods were the real ones. I guess that’s the way it is!” [Dan laughs.] “Like, all this Jesus stuff was kind of a fake this whole time! ‘Cause I can see Thor. He’s right there. He’s fighting crime. I—” Like, it—
crosstalk
									
Elliott: This is kind of all the evidence—I’ve never seen Christ come down and fight—it is very much crime. Dan: He’s much more of an interventionist god than our god! Stuart: I mean, he isn’t really fighting crime in those movies, right? He’s just beating giant monsters.
elliott
									
I mean, it is—the—
dan
									
Those monsters are doing, y’know, property damage. [Laughs.]
elliott
									
Property damage. Murder. Attempted murder. Like—
stuart
									
Property damage. Dan always puts property before people.
dan
									
[Through laughter] Oh no! [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
									
I mean, Ultron was trying to destroy an entire country? Or city, right? So I feel like that’s a crime. But if Jesus came down and was fighting a giant robot—or like a sarcastic robot that was trying to destroy a foreign country—I’d be like, “You know what? Judaism? We had a good ride. But uh—” [Multiple people laugh.] “But I feel like this says all I need.” Y’know?
dan
									
Yeah. Well anyway, I guess that’s basically the movie.
elliott
									
I haven’t—you’re not seeing Buddha go up against Thanos. That’s all I’m saying. Y’know?
dan
									
So we can do our final judgments about whether this is a good-bad movie, a bad-bad movie, or a movie kinda liked. Guys? I gotta say—I kinda liked this movie. I thought it was perfectly pleasant. I thought it was fun. I thought she was like super charming in it and the supporting cast was good. And also? I think—I’ve been thinking about it, and the problem—the reason I split that hair before is… for me, if you read this as, um… as a sort of supernatural intervention, like, that is too close to me for like kind of a divine intervention. Where it takes away her agency in, y’know, her own recovery? And so I—I think that… as a movie that appeals to someone like—doesn’t even have to be someone who like has gone through trauma, but maybe someone who is just working through depression. Or some sort of bad turn in their life. Like… I don’t know. I really liked that part of it. I thought it was sort of… inspiring in a weird way. So that’s what I thought about the movie.
elliott
									
Okay, Hallie. Ready for you to roast the movie.
hallie
									
This… fucking… ruled! [Multiple people laugh.] I loved the movie! [Laughs.] [Elliott laughs.] No, I think I—I think the text I sent—I was trying to find the text I sent to Dan. After I watched it. Which was something like… hold on. Let me find it. We’ve been texting a lot. [Laughs.] So. [Dan laughs.]
elliott
									
No, it’s cool, it’s cool. I mean, we live in the same city in the same time zone, but yeah. I had you over to my house for dinner. But that’s okay. Like, we don’t need to communicate that much.
dan
									
I mean, most of the texting was about technical issues that I had fucked up. But—
hallie
									
I said, “Weeping. Feel-good movie of the century. Nothing snarky to say about it. Renewed my faith in the human race.” [Multiple people laugh.] “If you watched it and felt differently, then you are a monster and I don’t wanna know you.” But! [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
									
I’m relieved.
hallie
									
So I loved it. I had a—I really—y’know. I enjoyed the watch. But I guess… Dan, I like, push—I wanna like push back after you’ve made that statement about what you think of it. Because like, there’s like no real evidence in the movie that like she actually does anything to… further like her own… like, there’s no real role that she plays in her own healing. Besides like very much towards the end when she’s like, “Listen. You’re bad for me if you’re not gonna take care of me. So I’m cutting you out of my life.” But like, but as a metaphor for like—like if he’s supposed to be… like, we don’t see her playing a role in her own healing at all. So like all he could be is a metaphor. So I don’t really think that the movie like provides that for me necessarily. Because you don’t really see like the wheels turning in her head at all until like very much towards the end.
dan
									
No, I mean, well, first off, I don’t wanna imply that I don’t believe like everyone could use help in getting over things and it’s good to reach out for help and you shouldn’t have to like do it all on your own. So I don’t wanna like… give that impression? By… putting forth my feelings on it? But I do feel like… if you accept the central premise that he could be… like… some sort of manifestation of her own need… then… you can see everything that he inspires her to do as coming from herself. I guess, is the way I would put… it’s a muddy thing. I just find it—like—I don’t know. For me, the movie works better or best like with that kind of… “I am realizing how to improve my life by doing things for others” kind of feel that I appreciated. I don’t know.
stuart
									
Yeah. I—so this is a movie that I’ve watched twice now. I watched it on my own time and then when I heard we were doing this episode I decided to watch it again. And yeah! I mean… I feel like the twist is incredibly silly. [Dan laughs.] But I feel like—
elliott
									
That a ghost in her heart is showing her the true meaning of helpfulness?
stuart
									
Yep. Yep. Thank you for making that text. [Elliott laughs.] The—as opposed to subtext. [Dan laughs.] The— [Laughs.] But yeah. I mean like Emilia Clarke, I think, is very charming. Henry Golding is fine? But man, like, Emma Thompson and Michelle Yeoh are so great. They’re so much fun to watch. I wonder if Michelle Yeoh and Henry Golding talked about all the fun times they had on the set of Crazy Rich Asians, but, y’know, maybe that’s for the book about the making of this movie. And it… I feel like for like a test run for like a George Michael-themed like jukebox musical? This is a pretty good like initial statement. Like I feel like you could turn this into a full-on musical—like, a stage musical. Yeah. So. Come on, Broadway! Get rid of all the COVID and come back with one of those things! [Multiple people laugh.]
crosstalk
									
Dan: Come on, Broadway! It’s on you! Elliott: It’s an easy step one? Stuart: I would say this is a movie I kinda liked.
elliott
									
I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say that I kinda liked it, ‘cause it’s not like—I would say I don’t think this is a bad-bad or a good-bad. But I think it’s in that realm of like, this is not necessarily a bad movie, but it’s not for me type of movie. Like, I kept kinda—as super charming as Emilia Clarke is, the movie is like… never really like funny? And there are a few times when it’s trying ot be funny. There’s a joke about nuts and nutcrackers that I found so incredibly loathsome? That it was like, movie, you’re better than this. Come on. [Dan laughs.] But there were times when I was like, oh, there’s a more—I wanted this movie to be a little bit less cutesy and go a little bit farther into like, Emma Thompson and Michelle Yeoh’s characters. Partly because they’re amazing actors, but also like… there’s something about their experience as like first-generation—as like, immigrants, basically. That are making their way in this place and kind of doing whatever they have to? Where I was like, oh, I’ve never seen like a Christmas movie that is from that angle? But they touched on it a little bit. So that’s alright. But I would say—look. If you’re looking for a movie to watch with your family when you visit your parents on a holiday? This movie will be fine for everybody and it’ll solve that problem and I think Stuart is exactly right. This would be—I think—even more successful creatively as a George Michael jukebox—or Wham! Jukebox musical. That’s onstage? I think the ghost twist would be a lot easier to take as like… kind of a fun thing on a stage show than in a movie? ‘Cause in a movie you’re like… uh, expecting more? [Laughs.] I guess?
dan
									
Well I was also just like—when I was watching this with Audrey, who really enjoys it but enjoys it more as a bad movie than I do, I think. She was like, “Oh, this twist is so dumb.” And I’m like, “Yeah, it is. But I also think—” sort of like what you’re saying “—if this was a movie from like, 1938 or something, we’d accept it more ‘cause we’d be like, ‘Oh, okay, I understand this context for sort of light romantic supernatural comedy.’” Y’know?
elliott
									
Well, here’s the difference I think would be—if they did it in the ‘30s, I think there would be probably more of a genuine sense of, like… when—the reveal or the ending would have more of a genuine sense of religiosity to it? Which I think would help in some ways? But also, here’s what you do with this movie. Don’t make it the twist at the end. Have her find out he’s a ghost like halfway through? Like a quarter of the way in? Maybe not a quarter. Like, a third of the way in. And then that way it doesn’t become the movie’s only twist and then you get her dealing with a ghost which is—opens up a whole new world. So here’s what we’d do. [Dan grumbles at length as Elliott talks.] We make it a stage show. We put some more George Michael songs in there. And we find out that he’s a ghost earlier in it so it’s not—it doesn’t feel like it’s a slender reed that the whole movie is resting on. Y'know.
dan
									
Okay. Well—
elliott
									
It’s a little bit like if you made Memento and at the end you were like, “And by the way—he doesn’t have his memory.” You’d be like, “Wait, what? That’s—that’s what I was waiting for this whole time?” But when you know that going in, it’s just smooth gravy. Guys? This is Elliott Kalan, for Smooth Gravy. [Dan laughs.]
stuart
									
You like smooth gravy?
elliott
									
Here’s—a lot of people don’t realize how smooth gravy can be. And so we here at Smooth Gravy have decided to take out the worst part of gravy—the lumps!—and give you just that smooth, smooth, gravy liquid.
dan
									
[Through laughter] But the lumps are usually the meat! [Laughs.]
elliott
									
Yeah, well, we just keep churning that meat ‘til it’s super, super smooth. Y’know, we sand it down. Sanded meat is [through laughter] another product I’ve been working on.
dan
									
Gross.
music
									
Light, up-tempo, electric guitar with synth instruments.
promo
									
Music: Upbeat, cheerful music plays in the background. Allie Goertz: Hi, I’m Allie Goertz! Julia Prescott: And I’m Julia Prescott. And we host— Both —Round Springfield! Allie: Round Springfield is a Simpsons-adjacent podcast where we talk to your favorite Simpsons writers, voice actors, and everyone who’s worked on the show to talk about shows that aren’t The Simpsons! So we’re gonna be talking to people like David X. Cohen, Yeardley Smith, Tim Long, about other projects they’ve worked on. Sometimes projects that didn’t go well? Julia: Mmm! Allie: Some failures. Julia: Yeah? Allie: Some rejections. Julia: Some failed pilots. Some failed life events. [Laughs.] Allie: Yeah! We just talk to all the failure of The Simpsons. Julia: Yeah! Allie: So if you really love your Simpsons trivia and want to get to know the people who worked on The Simpsons a little bit better? Come by Round Springfield! Julia: Every-other week on MaximumFun.org, or wherever you get your podcasts! [Music fades out.]
promo
									
Music: Rhythmic percussion and bass. Speaker 1: I listen to Bullseye because Jesse always has really good questions. Jesse Thorn: What did John Malkovich wear when he was 20? Speaker 2: [Laughs.] I don’t know how to describe it! Speaker 3: There’s always that moment where Jesse asks a question that the person he’s interviewing has not thought of before? Speaker 4: I don’t think anyone’s ever said that to me or acknowledged that to me and that is so real! Jesse Thorn: Bullseye! Interviews with creators you love and creators you need to know. From MaximumFun.org and NPR.
dan
									
Okay. Well I promise to keep this a little shorter than normal, so let’s move on to the next step in the show. We don’t have sponsors from a corporation this week, but we have sponsors from you. I think, Stuart, I sent you a Jumbotron? Do you have that?
stuart
									
Heck yeah, you did! And this is your invite to ReviewPartyDotCom. A quirky new podcast. Each week, Brent and Matt find user reviews from across the internet on everything from products to services; hotels to restaurants; found everywhere from Amazon to Google to Yelp! With brains set for comedy, the pair explore the wacky worlds of the reviewers. Explaining the inexplicable and finding the insane in the mundane task of writing a review. Join them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or find it all on ReviewPartyDotCom.com. It is ReviewPartyDotCom.com. So join the party! Listen to ReviewPartyDotCom, the only podcast that reviews reviews.
elliott
									
There’s one more thing we’d like to promote. That is… on August 15th, we’ll be doing our promised, threatened, long-awaited reading of the script for The Boy Next Door. That’s right—this was a reward to our Flop House listeners for all the charitable giving they gave during our Howard the Duck live talk stream video? Thing? For charity. We were really amazed by how many people turned out for that; how much money they donated. We were really inspired by it. So we did the only thing we could do with that inspiration and we organized a reading of the script for The Boy Next Door starring Jennifer Lopez and other people. That’s gonna be— [Dan laughs.] —Saturday, August 15th, at 9PM Eastern; 6PM Pacific. You wanna see it, just go to the Flop House YouTube page! That’s www.YouTube.com/c/TheFlopHousePodcast. Or you can also just google “Flop House Podcast YouTube Page.” I did that and it took me to the same basic place. It’s gonna be us. Hallie’s gonna be there. Shall we mention right off the bat that—yes—the dream casting is happening? Dan McCoy will be playing the part of Jennifer Lope and Hallie will be playing the titular boy who creeps all over Jennifer Lopez. So if you ever wanted to see Hallie creep on Dan— [Dan makes noise of disgust.] —this is the time to do it. She will have the immortal line “I love your mom’s cookies,” as said in the movie, The Boy Next Door. [Multiple people laugh.] So again, that’s August 15th, 9PM Eastern; 6PM Pacific. www.YouTube.com/c/TheFlopHousePodcast. It should be a lot of fun. Other people will be in the cast, too. You’ll see them at the time.
dan
									
Yay! That sounds good! That sounds like something to do, right guys? To while away the hours?
crosstalk
									
Elliott: We’re all looking for something to do. Hallie: Yeah. We got nothing else to do. Stuart: Yeah, I mean— [Dan laughs.]
elliott
									
Hey, just get yourself, your family, the ghost that lives in your heart. Pop some popcorn and just— [Dan laughs.]
crosstalk
									
Hallie: Oh, you guys! I was thinking! Elliott: —tune in!
hallie
									
What if this movie were named The Haunted Heart?
elliott
									
I love it. [Dan laughs.] Kinda gives away the twist, but— [All laugh.]
dan
									
Okay. Alright. Sorry for… [Laughs.] Sorry for jumping past that before. Letters from—
elliott
									
You guys, have you ever seen—could I do a version of The Tell-Tale Heart that’s all little kids and it’s called The Tattletale Heart? [Hallie laughs.]
stuart
									
Mm-hm. You could do that.
elliott
									
[Laughs.] There’s no law against that, right?
stuart
									
Nope!
dan
									
Uh, let’s do letters now. From listeners like you. Who are listening. This is from Tim, last name withheld, who writes: “Dear Danny-Dan and the Floppy Bunch, Who would win in a battle—Stu’s liver, Dan’s good knee, or Elliott’s forearm hair? Also, after re-watching The Disaster Artist and realizing that the movie’s not very good—” Sorry. “I realized that the movie was not very good, and Franco the Younger was a terrible casting choice for Greg Sustero and his beard looked Nic Cage hairpiece terrible. On the other hand, he was very well cast in Jump Street. What are some of movie history’s worst casting choices in your minds? Getting a weird French dude to play the lead in Highlander was sick, though. Thank you for continuing to inject joy—"
crosstalk
									
Dan: “—into my sad—” Stuart: Very sick. Yeah.
dan
									
[Through laughter] “—collapsing veins, Tim, last name withheld.” Um…
stuart
									
I’m glad that somebody finally took Elliott down a notch for that crazy-ass arm hair you have.
elliott
									
Yeah. Thank you. You’re right.
dan
									
Mm-hm. Finally.
elliott
									
Take that! Take that, my Eastern European ancestors! How dare you!
stuart
									
Is it the arm hair on your forearm or the arm hair that creeps out of the edges of your tank tops?
elliott
									
You mean my armpit hair? [Dan laughs.]
stuart
									
No, but—but is it armpit hair when it kinda like sprouts out of the top of your shoulders—
crosstalk
									
Stuart: —and then migrates down toward your fingers? Elliott: No, no, that’s shoulder hair. No, that’s shoulder hair, Stuart. [Dan laughs.]
elliott
									
No, you’re right. I apologize. It’s a crime against nature that even though I evolved from a primate, I retained the body hair of said animal. [Multiple people laugh.] And I will be talking to my man-scaper about it.
stuart
									
Yeah.
dan
									
Okay.
stuart
									
You can get that threaded, dude! You can get that threaded right off.
elliott
									
I mean, or—it’s thick! I could turn into a topiary! Who knows? Let’s do it! Yeah!
dan
									
We’re airing all the laundry. Hey, I’ll start with—
elliott
									
No, Dan, we’re airing what’s under the laundry. My hair. [Dan laughs.]
dan
									
Mm-hm. [Laughs.] Bravo. [Slow clapping.] Uh, miscasting.
elliott
									
I will say—if I ever—I end up shirtless at my house a lot because my children are constantly getting gook all over my shirts. And I—or also—or we’ll be swimming or something. And my toddler boy, he likes to run his fingers through my chest hair and he goes, “I like your fur.” [Laughs.] [Hallie laughs.] “Daddy, I like your fur.”
hallie
									
That’s so gross! [Multiple people laugh.]
elliott
									
I think it’s very adorable.
hallie
									
It is cute. It’s just…
elliott
									
The part of it that is about my body. That’s gross. But what he does is not. [Hallie laughs.] There’s no sexual aspect to it, Hallie.
dan
									
Okay. [Hallie laughs.]
crosstalk
									
Hallie: It’s cute. Dan: Although “Daddy, I love your fur—” [Laughs.]
dan
									
Would be a very sexual thing to say under certain contexts.
elliott
									
I mean, it depends on who’s saying it to who.
dan
									
Yeah. Um, okay. So. Miscasting.
elliott
									
[Through laughter] If it was Scrappy-Doo saying it to Snagglepuss— [Dan laughs.] —then yes. That’s incredibly sexual.
stuart
									
I mean, I certainly am going to have to remove it from my sexual repertoire. ‘Cause it’ll just bring up images of Elliott. Okay. So. What are we talking about?
dan
									
We’re talking about miscasting. And I think that like—y’know—to dispense with it up top, obviously there’s a huge problem of… whitewashing or casting people of not a certain race as a race that I don’t think we can necessarily touch on here. But if we’re talking about miscasting I just wanted to say that. But in terms of like just like the type of person that would have these roles? I mean, Elliott, I’m sorry. I interrupted you. Before I get to mine, what were you going to say?
elliott
									
No, I don’t remember.
dan
									
Oh, sorry. Well then I’ll continue! Uh— [Laughs.] The thing that came to my mind was appropriate since Emma Thompson was in this. I’ve got two talk show hosts here? When Emma Thompson was in the movie Late Night, which was almost a Studio 60-level misunderstanding of what it is to be a comedy writer, which was weird since Mindy Kaling wrote it. But—
elliott
									
But she’s not a late night writer.
dan
									
That’s true. That’s true. But she surely knows—anyway. So Emma Thompson—
elliott
									
You would be surprised. This is—just speaking as a—speaking as someone who has recently spent a lot of time with members of the Writer’s Guild negotiating a contract, you’d be surprised how little anyone knows about how late night writing works.
dan
									
Yeah. Alright. Okay. Well, fair enough. But anyway, Emma Thompson in Late Night and Robert De Niro in The Joker both fail at convincing that they come out and like read monologue jokes every night and people like it. [Laughs.] Like—
elliott
									
I mean, Robert De Niro in Joker is, I think, the worst performance as a talk show host I’ve ever seen. Like, it’s so bad. He is so totally… like uncharismatic. And it’s one of those things where it’s like… I can’t believe they gave Pupkin his own show. ‘Cause he’s not very good at it. ‘Cause it’s—it’s the same character for King of Comedy, right? Like, that’s the only explanation I can think of. Is that he got that job in the ‘80s and now he’s coasting like Letterman at the end of his career. And he just kind of like doesn’t care anymore? In which case it’s the best performance I’ve ever seen.
dan
									
Anyone else have anything to say? You don’t have to.
stuart
									
Yeah. I mean, obviously one of the great ones is Denise Richards as Christmas Jones—the nuclear physicist—in the James Bond movie. That’s great. And like recently… these are both TV shows. But there’s that show Sneaky Pete, where Giovanni Ribisi plays a conman? And I’m like, nothing about this guy inspires confidence in me. [Dan laughs.] Like, I will not believe a word he says. [Multiple people laugh.] He seems like he has one foot out the door the whole time.
dan
									
Yeah, you’re playing the subtext there as text.
stuart
									
Yeah. And then there’s that show that I actually ended up liking a lot—on HBO Run? With Merritt Wever and Donald Gleason, where Donald Gleason plays like a motivational speaker. And there’s nothing about him that makes me think that he can—like, that people would listen to what he has to say and follow along.
elliott
									
I have two I’ll mention. One of them—there are a lot of old movies where there is a bad piece of casting. But looking at Flop House movies, I would say that Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, they really like miscast those leads quite a bit? When they got—like, it was like, they were like, “You two. Play against type as much as possible. It’s gonna be great.” And they just kind of disappear into the movie around them? ‘Cause they can’t really carry it? But I would say that the movie The Post? The riveting tale of a newspaper that is reporting on something else another newspaper is doing? [Dan laughs.] Uh— [Laughs.] The story so exciting that the final verdict by the judge is delivered via somebody hearing it over the phone and then repeating it to their office mates? Obviously there’s a lot of issues with the movie. But Tom Hanks, I felt like, was kind of on autopilot. And next to him you had Bob Odenkirk doing—I thought—a really good performance as the, like, in that kind of second-tier of roles in it? And I would’ve loved to see Bob Odenkirk play the Tom Hanks role ‘cause I feel like he would’ve worked harder at it? Whereas Tom Hanks was just kind of like, “I’m just Tom Hanks. I’m just doing a Tom Hanks thing. Come on, everybody! It’s me, Tom Hanks!” An di love Tom Hanks. He’s great. But sometimes, Tom Hanks? You gotta do more than just be Tom Hanks. Like, maybe the captain of a WWII naval ship. I haven’t seen it yet. Is it any good?
dan
									
Not that I heard. Hallie, do you have anything at all? Or?
hallie
									
Yeah. I would say… I don’t know if you guys are—well, I would say just off the Tom Hanks thing, if we’re talking Da Vinci Code, like, the Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou coupling was… infamously bad. But my real beef—well, I actually had a lot of ideas. The first one that came to mind was Julia Roberts in Mary Reilly?
crosstalk
									
Hallie: Did you guys ever see that movie? Yeah. I had— Elliott: Oh, okay. Interesting. Yeah. You mean Julia Roberts in—[whispers] Mary Rileyyyy. Dan: [Through laughter] Oh, yeah. Yeah.
hallie
									
I had a big crush on John Malkovich when I was young? So I saw all his movies. [Multiple people laugh.] And—
elliott
									
That is a sentence.
crosstalk
									
Elliott: That is a sentence that is very Hallie. That’s a very Hallie Haglund thing to say. Hallie: I’ve now come to realize there were several bad—there were bad casting— [Multiple people laugh.]
hallie
									
And yet he was poorly cast in a lot of things. ‘Cause he’s… y’know. Can’t do act—he’s not great at accents, or, uh, y’know, I think Of Mice and Men was a stretch for him? But in Mary Riley, I think Julia Roberts was the real problem. She could not nail the Irish accent she was trying to pull off. And it just wasn’t her genre. It’s kind of like Emilia Clarke being case in all these super serious roles. We want a joyful Julia Roberts, y’know?
stuart
									
Do you think John Malkovich did Of Mice and Men because Tom Noonan wasn’t around and they just grabbed the nearest other guy that looked kinda like Tom Noonan? [Elliott laughs.]
elliott
									
Probably when huge superstar Tom Noonan dropped out of the role they had to scramble. And all they could get [through laughter] was John Malkovich. [Laughs.]
crosstalk
									
Dan: I just wanted to say—sorry, with what Hallie was saying. Hallie: I will also say that—oh, go ahead.
dan
									
Like, the miscasting thing. Often it just goes to show you that like… like, I don’t want to seem like we’re down on actors? Because I think it kind of proves… that oftentimes, actors are so at the mercy of what they’re given. I mean there are some people who obviously transcend every time. But like it is so hard to do that. That like you see people who have not impressed you for years and then they like turn out like, “Oh, no, you’re fantastic at this!” And it’s because they got the opportunity to show it.
elliott
									
Well I think it’s not necessarily—I mean, that’s one way to put it. Is what they are given. But I think it also goes to show that actors are not—to be an actor, and even a great actor, is not this myth of—well, he can play anything. Or she can play anything. It’s that like, John Malkovich I think for a while was like, he’s a great actor. The guy can do anything. When really he’s great but he has a certain type of character he can play? And it’s like that with—I feel like every big star at a certain point they get to that point where it’s just like, “I’m gonna play it all!” or they say, “Well, we just need a big name, let’s throw them in” and it is not the right thing for them to do. Y’know.
hallie
									
But I also think that the problem is like there’s this conflation of like good actor with intensity? Which I actually—despite my earlier flame for John Malkovich—upon revisiting some old Mary Reilly scenes I was like, oh yeah. Maybe John Malkovich actually kind of sucks and he’s just really intense— [Dan laughs.] —because one person who I was thinking about who I was like—is always miscast except for in Billions which is a totally ridiculous show is Paul Giamatti. I always think he’s bad! And I’m always like, I don’t understand why he’s the most famous—y’know—such a respected actor! Because all he is is like intensity. He’s not like—
elliott
									
Well did you—
hallie
									
Did I watch John Adams? Is that what you were gonna ask?
elliott
									
No, no. I was gonna say—did you ever see Win-Win?
hallie
									
Oh, no.
elliott
									
He’s—it’s a—he’s still playing—it’s still a serious movie but he’s much lighter in it? And I think you’re exactly right. It’s like there’s—like, you look at John Malkovich and you look at his performance in Being John Malkovich? And he’s so—he’s playing—he’s lightly playing an intense character in that? And it’s so much better than in the movies where he’s like [intensely] “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!” Y’know, where he’s barking and things like that. Like that one where he played a dog. Dog Malkovich? Where he’s just barking? [Hallie laughs.]
crosstalk
									
Dan: I—I have to say that— Hallie: Yeah. That’s [inaudible] fair.
dan
									
I cannot—
elliott
									
So I agree with Hallie.
dan
									
I cannot let go of this joke that was killed by Elliott mentioning Being John Malkovich. I was gonna say that like when Hallie was like, “I don’t know whether John Malkovich is good or bad” I was gonna [through laughter] be like, “Well, then come with me through this flesh tube and we’ll go on a trip to his brain to discover once and for all what’s the deal with John Malkovich. Everybody! Come on board… to the flesh tube!” I’m continuing to talk— [Laughs.] [Multiple people laugh.] —because you’re all so nonplussed by me going back and rescuing that joke that should’ve just died.
elliott
									
It is a little bit like in Blue Velvet, him going to rescue the hostage and the hostage is dead already. Yeah, yeah. So—Hallie, what other ones you got? Hallie, did you have any other ones?
hallie
									
Oh, I also—well, here was my thing. Is I also think that… Michelle Williams is someone who’s all about intensity and gets so much praise for being super intense. But like often… stands out in not a good way in her casting. Even though I know she’s like very highly critically acclaimed! And then I googled it and I saw that Paul Giamatti and Michelle Williams were in a movie together about some hawk! And I was like, I gotta see this ‘cause this is the problem. Like, this is probably the movie I’d see. [Dan laughs.] Or I’d say was like worst case. But I couldn’t say it ‘cause I didn’t see it.
crosstalk
									
Elliott: Was that The Hawk is Dying? That one? Hallie: So those are my people.
stuart
									
It’s Lady Hawke.
crosstalk
									
Elliott: Oh, it’s Lady Hawke? Hudson Lady Hawke? Hallie: No, it’s like, A Hawk Died or something.
dan
									
I love that you went so far down this like rabbit hole of your least favorite actors that you like—you’re like connecting red yarn over to this hawk movie. And you’re like, “I gotta see this! I gotta track this down!”
hallie
									
The thing is, I actually like Michelle Williams? But I guess I don’t really like her as an actress. I like her… the idea of her.
elliott
									
As an icon?
hallie
									
I never like watching her in stuff.
crosstalk
									
Stuart: What about like, Fosse/Verdon? What about Fosse/Verdon? Elliott: Somebody’s never seen Wendy and Lucy! What? Hallie: I never saw Fosse/Verdon. I never saw that.
hallie
									
The Hawk is Dying is the name of the movie I’m talking about.
elliott
									
Actually, I know exactly—in Fosse/Verdon, she’s very good in it. But I had that same kind of issue where she’s playing Gwen Verdon and she doesn’t have the, like, spark? That Gwen Verdon has? When you see like tapes of her performance? And… it was just like, there were times when I was like—it was like, “Come on, Michelle!” Like I’m sure there were moments when Verdon wasn’t living all of her past traumas at the same moment in her mind. But I guess that’s kind of what the show was all about.
dan
									
Uh… hey! There’s another letter! Let’s do it fast. Robert, last name withheld, says—
elliott
									
Wait, are there any more after this one?
dan
									
No, that’s it.
elliott
									
So you’re saying this is the last letter.
dan
									
Yeah. [Dan alternates laughter and sounds of frustration throughout Elliott’s song.]
elliott
									
[Singing to the tune of “Last Christmas” by Wham!] ‘Cause last letter, I asked you a question. The very next day, you answered my question. [Multiple people laugh.] Thank you for answering my question! And first ‘cause you read my question. Last letter, this is that letter. After this letter, there are no more letters. In the alphabet, it would be ‘Z,’ ‘cause that’s literally the last letter. This letter you’d say it’s the last, and you’d be right—
stuart
									
I guess that’s the sad part.
elliott
									
—‘cause it is the last. [Dan laughs.] When this letter is past, there won’t be any more letters.
dan
									
Okay, [through laughter] that’s enough of that. Wait. I put my phone down, which had the letter on it.
stuart
									
Also kind of highlighting what I don’t like about the song. [Laughs.] “Last Christmas.” [Elliott laughs.]
dan
									
So Robert—
stuart
									
Although the music video of “Last Christmas” is fucking incredible and you should just watch that for two and a half hours.
dan
									
Tells a full story. Uh, Robert, last name withheld, writes: “When I was in college, I took a class and we presented with a question of ‘If a piece of media had ever changed our outlook on life.’ A trans man in my class responded by saying that Pinocchio made him feel like he belonged, because he also was sure he was a real boy. Which was such a profound answer that it blew my mind. My question is: has someone ever given an opinion on something that has profoundly changed how you thought of a piece of media? Sincerely, Robert, last name withheld.” There’s a lot of pondering going on. It’s a pretty deep question.
hallie
									
I found it very personal. I found this like uncomfortably personal. Not to say that it shouldn’t be asked, but I felt every answer I came up with I was like, “I’m not sure I wanna share that with people.”
dan
									
Oh, interesting.
elliott
									
There are—
stuart
									
Not with these three knuckleheads.
elliott
									
I definitely feel like as I get older, and as culture gets—hopefully—more wider and inclusive there are definitely things that I would overlook in movies in the past that I’m having trouble overlooking now? I’ve been having a real crisis of the soul over the Japanese tourist character in Gremlins 2, the past couple weeks. As I’ve thought more and more about that.
stuart
									
Yeah, you bring it up a couple times.
elliott
									
I know! It’s really been haunting me. ‘Cause it’s a movie I’ve been so unequivocally in favor of and the more I think about it, the more I’m like, “Well, I cannot—I’m not okay with that part of it.” But also, like, there’s just—I can’t pinpoint it, but there are a number of times that movies that I’ve dismissed, I’ll hear somebody talk about what it means to them. And I’m like, “Okay, that’s something that I can no longer dismiss that movie ‘cause I know it had that effect on you.” And I wish I had a specific one in mind. But it really… it’s a really great feeling ‘cause it’s like… oh, oh! It reminds me of the potential of this art form and how… how there’s something for everybody in the world of movies or media or whatever? And just ‘cause something doesn’t hit me one way doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly valuable 'cause it might hit somebody else in a way that I would’n’t’ve recognized before. So I wholeheartedly approve of this way of thinking but I have no examples. I’m done! I yield the remainder of my time.
stuart
									
Fuck you! [Elliott laughs. Dan joins in.]
elliott
									
Somebody’s been watching a lot of community board meetings! [Laughs.]
dan
									
This is less a—like, an external opinion and more like… like, a conglomeration of like learning from people over time and like hopefully becoming more… thoughtful. Over time. Is that like sometimes movies I feel like just change? In my interpretation? Because of things that I’ve like felt in-between? And one that struck me recently is I saw After Hours again, I think, last year. The Scorsese movie starring Griffin Dunne, the black comedy. And it was like… when I first saw it I was kinda like, oh, this guy is just sort of being bedeviled by the city and by like bad luck and he’s being overly punished, etcetera, etcetera. And then like seeing it again this year… I was kinda like, “No, this is kind of like… a sly critique of like… this guy presents himself as being nice and at the victim of the world, but he is… perpetrating a lot of his own like downfall. And he is—” Like, the movie is sort of like on the surface shows him being kind of bedeviled by a series of women, but if he showed any sort of like patience or forbearance in the movie or willingness to like not do what was expedient to save himself? Like, everything would’ve gone a lot better for him? And so it was just interesting to feel, like… I think there was a deeper meaning that was always there that I just wasn’t attuned to.
elliott
									
I—there’s a—there’s that moment in After Hours where he takes out his only $20 bill and put it in the door handle or ashtray of the taxi cab door? And then it flies away on the wind? And I was like, “Well, why did you do that, stupid?” [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.]
dan
									
Yeah, exactly.
elliott
									
Like, that’s entirely your fault. And it’s something nobody would do. Come on, man.
dan
									
Uh… I mean… Stu, you don’t have to have anything if you’re having trouble with…
stuart
									
Yeah. I mean, I’m—the only thing that popped in my head was when I was having a conversation with somebody about furry culture. And they mentioned how influential the scene in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie where Raphael is in the bathtub. And I’m like, “You know what? That scene is pretty hot. I get it.”
dan
									
Uh… moving on! To—
hallie
									
Wait. I didn’t answer!
dan
									
Oh, wait you didn’t? Oh, sorry. I thought you said everything was too personal.
hallie
									
I mean—no, it was personal. But I have an answer.
crosstalk
									
Dan: Yeah, I’d love to hear it. Sorry. Stuart: Yeah, I just laid my soul bare. [Hallie laughs.]
hallie
									
No. Yeah. I mean, I hope it’s okay to include things that we, ourselves, as people in media have worked on. But I feel like the—I don’t know. I… y’know, I worked on this show Problem Areas for two years and our second season was all about education and we sort of had this theme of… y’know, our goal with the show was to like show approaches that we’re trying to like change a fraught system. And with education, a lot of it was focused on inequality and a lot, specifically, like racial inequality. And our last episode was like very… specifically about like segregated schools. And like… we had talked a lot about like, “Oh, like, the—we should—” y’know, ‘cause it was like really heavily focused on… these documentary portions we had and we had talked about like, “Oh, do we find a place where they’ve done districting? Where—that creates very integrated schools? Or y’know, do we—y’know, where like housing is really integrated and so schooling would also be integrated. Or—” The point is, like, we had—we just like talked around… a lot of ideas about like how do you integrate schools? And as we were putting the footage that we had gathered together, there was like… a quote from someone. A clip from someone that we wound up using. That like, why it’s—Wyatt Cenac and I, like—when we’re editing—sort of went back and forth about—and I remember like arguing for a time, like, “Oh, do we really need to comment on this clip. It sort of takes us out of the rhythm of something.” But it was this person saying, like, y’know, in integrated schools for white students it like… is important because it dispels the idea that… there’s something inherently smarter or better about white people when you’re like in a classroom with people of all races. But for black people, it’s kind of essential for black and brown people it’s essentially because like your success in schools is inextricably tied to the resources that you get when you’re in a classroom with white kids.  And I remember Wyatt being like, “We have to comment about this because it’s so upsetting to hear something like that and think about like it’s not about… think about, like, the only way that… black and brown people can have success in schools is if they’re in a classroom with white people. Because the only way that you can access resources is when it’s tied to the white people that you’re associated with.” And it was just like something that sort of upended the way that I had thought about everything that we had talked about before? And how we had sort of been talking about like… these ways that you can change public schools that were just all such small changes? And not addressing like… if you don’t think about the humanity of people? Then like it doesn’t really matter what you change within the system? And maybe that is like only… illuminating my own ignorance, but it was like a real like moment of like… me understanding something that like I didn’t feel like I had understood before. Or like taken in.
dan
									
That’s—
elliott
									
That’s—
dan
									
I was just gonna say that’s such a good answer that I feel bad returning to our usual nonsense. But Elliott, what were you gonna say? [Laughs.] [Hallie laughs.]
stuart
									
Mm-hm. We’ll just edit out our responses.
dan
									
No, no. No, no, no. I’m not saying you can’t respond. I’m just expressing.
elliott
									
Oh, no. I just wanted to tell Hallie she was wrong. And that actually—no, I’m just kidding. [Multiple people laugh.] Come on. Uh… it just goes to show that when you’re dealing with any sort of media, you have to be—not—‘open-minded’ is the wrong word. But you have—you can’t take—you can’t rest on your assumptions about anything. Because, one, you may miss something. But also, like, there’s a real worth to… challenging and analyzing any piece of media that you come across? And you’ll get more out of it that way. I mean, whether at work or play. Than if you just kind of lay back and let the media wash over you and then react to it on a—just a sensory level. There’s definitely movies that I’ve watched where I’m like, “That’s fine.” And then I take a couple minutes to think about it and I may not like the movie as much? Or I may have more complicated feelings about it? But I get a certain amount of like… like, pleasure and satisfaction from knowing that I’m engaging with it at a deeper level than just, “Okay, take it or leave it. Whatever. That’s okay. Moving on.” Like, that kind of thing. And I don’t know that I necessarily add anything to Hallie’s answer, but I certainly said something. In which case—
crosstalk
									
Dan: And that’s the important part. Yeah. That’s— Stuart: And you said the last thing. [Laughs.] Elliott: It certainly helped me put my stamp on everybody’s responses. [Dan laughs.]
elliott
									
And therefore I’m now the author and owner of that segment. So good job, Elliot! Thank you! [Dan laughs.]
dan
									
Oh, god. Y’know what happens next, guys?
stuart
									
What’s that?
dan
									
The next part is where we recommend movies that you could watch—let’s say—maybe in addition to Last Christmas. Which—
elliott
									
Or if you don’t wanna—you don’t have to watch Last Christmas.
crosstalk
									
Elliott: I’m not gonna tell you don’t watch it? Dan: Yeah, you don’t have to just ‘cause we talked about it.
elliott
									
I’m just saying you don’t have to watch it.
dan
									
Yeah. You know, you make the call on this one.
crosstalk
									
Elliott: If I was reviewing, I’d be like— Dan: Why do we have to work on—why do we have to tell you all the time?
elliott
									
I’d be like, “Run, don’t walk, to Last Christmas. If Last Christmas is the type of movie you enjoy watching.”
dan
									
Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. So movie recommendations. I’m just seeing whether I recommended something before, so I’m sorry for doing that on air.
stuart
									
You probably recommended something before.
elliott
									
You’ve recommended lots of things, I think. Unless those are implanted memories from the Weapon X program.
dan
									
Name one! Name one thing that I—y’know, okay.
elliott
									
Joysticks? I think you recommended Joysticks once?
dan
									
Yeah. Well I’ve got a similar recommendation to Joysticks now. And that is— [Laughs.]
stuart
									
Moving Violations!
dan
									
Hey, I don’t know whether it qualifies as a recommendation [through laughter] if it’s a movie that we’ve actually done for the podcast before. I don’t know what the rules are on that. I looked at the rulebook. It’s—I don’t think there is a rule against it.
crosstalk
									
Dan: But y’know, guys, I don’t— Elliott: The only rule in the—
elliott
									
The only rule in the Flop House rule book says, “No dogs can play major sports.”
dan
									
[Through laughter] That’s weird. Um, so— [Laughs.]
stuart
									
Did you check the appendices? It might list the rule there, in the appendix. [Elliott laughs.]
dan
									
Well I’m breaking the rule if it exists. I don’t know if you guys heard this. We’re in the middle of a pandemic. And I don’t know about you guys, but uh… I don’t like it. I’m gonna say, I’m not a big fan. Don’t care for it. Making me feel bad. So sometimes when you feel bad, you just have to watch Tango & Cash. So my [through laughter] recommendation this week… is Tango & Cash with Kurt Russell and Sylvester “Sly” Stallone. Tango & Cash.
stuart
									
Okay. Do you need to qualify that recommendation at all?
dan
									
Nope, nope, nope. Well, I mean, it’s a dumb movie. [Laughs.] how about that for qualification? But it’s fun.
stuart
									
Jack Palance is in it.
dan
									
Jack Palance is great. Great to see him. Love it.
elliott
									
So Dan, would you—so you didn’t like that I was trying to brand this as the Dan-demic? I was really trying to make this kind of like Dan’s Pandemic?
dan
									
I didn’t care for it, yeah. No. I—no. The name—the damage to my brand is [through laughter] what I was worried about, Elliott.
elliott
									
Did you—so you didn’t like those radio ads that I took out? That were like, “This year, make it a Dan-demic!”
dan
									
Mm. Uh, no. Didn’t. [Laughs.] Elliott? Do you have a recommendation?
elliott
									
Uh, so here’s the thing, Dan. And your mentioning Tango & Cash has really put me in a quandary and I’ll tell ya why. No, not because I was going to recommend Tango & Cash. I mean— [Laughs.] [Dan laughs.] Come on, guys! Come on. Because I have been going back and forth for a while now on whether or not to recommend the movie Runaway Train, directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, the same director who—I probably pronounced his name wrong. Who also directed Tango & Cash. Mainly because it stars John Voight, who is, y’know, a real problematic individual. In that he is a super Trump supporter, says a lot of terrible things. Really seems to have gone around the bend. This is no longer the adorable John Voight of Baby Geniuses. This is the—so I’ve been wanting to—but I watched that movie recently and it’s a really, really, like… like… it’s a really good, like, intense—super-intense movie. And it stars John Voight and Eric Roberts, who are both very problematic people in different ways. And the—but it’s kind of like if Tango & Cash was a good movie, it would be Runaway Train. Where it’s like these two prisoners who escape from prison and get onto a train not knowing that this train is about to become—wait for it—a runaway train. And it’s a—I’ve been torn about whether to recommend it or not because the main actor I so do not—the main actors, I so do not support in any way, shape, or form. So… that’s kind of like an unofficial—that’s an unofficial recommendation, is Runaway Train.
dan
									
You’re having your cake and eating it, too! Alright. Moving on.
elliott
									
I’m gonna have that cake. I’m gonna eat it. I’m gonna throw it up ‘cause I feel bad about having it and eating it. So instead, I was inspired by this movie—Last Christmas—a movie—a winter story involving a ghost who helps a young woman. It made me think of a movie called Curse of the Cat People from 1944. This is the somewhat sequel to the movie Cat People in which they said, “Y’know, the first movie was about a woman who turns into a cat when she gets too, kind of, like, aggravated or emotional or turned on. We’re gonna do a movie about a family where the daughter kind of—has either a ghost or an imaginary friend. Becomes friends with that cat woman from the first movie and needs her to get her through a very, like, dysfunctional period in her family life.” So it’s a movie that’s kind of a strange movie because it’s in some ways a ghost movie but maybe it’s not a ghost movie. But it’s a very, like… slightly melodramatic but fairly sensitively done story of the tension between a little girl and the other members of her family. And kind of how she needs to escape into this relationship with a woman who may not exist or may exist to get through it. And so instead I’ll recommend The Curse of the Cat People. But. If you’re one of those people who can separate your feelings about a real person from their work—sometimes I am, sometimes I’m not—then you might as well go watch Runaway Train.
dan
									
Uh… Stuart, have you gone? Sorry.
stuart
									
[With mild resentment] Uh, no, Dan! I have not gone. [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
									
Wow! [Multiple people laugh.]
stuart
									
I guess it’s my turn!
dan
									
Wow. I don’t know what the anger’s about, but. [Laughs.]
stuart
									
Oh, now I’m angry? Interesting! [Elliott laughs.] Okay!
dan
									
What?
stuart
									
Uh, I’m gonna recommend a movie called Swallow. It is a… kind of a drama-thriller movie with some horror elements. It is about a young woman who is recently married and becomes pregnant. And for all intents and purposes, it seems like she has this perfect life. A beautiful house. A handsome husband who has a good job but he’s never around. And she begins… she— [Laughs.] She begins ingesting inanimate objects of increasingly dangerous varieties. And I am assuming the makers of the movie have done some research into pica. I don’t know very much about it, so I don’t know how accurate it is. But… it’s—for me it was an interesting story about control and… it portrayed addiction in ways that felt very real and scary and just… y’know. I don’t know. I thought it was pretty compelling. Swallow.
dan
									
Just to update everyone—Hallie’s now in a closet. She appears to be in a closet with some, like, with some shoes behind her, maybe. Some bags. Anyway. Some puffy coats.
elliott
									
So fully half of the—fully half of the people on this podcast right now are recording from closets.
crosstalk
									
Stuart: Yep. Dan: Oh, wow.
dan
									
Let’s… let’s—
stuart
									
That’s some fast math, Elliott! [Dan laughs.]
dan
									
Let’s get you guys out of there and—
elliott
									
I’m a little bit of a mathe-magician, knowing that two is half of four.
dan
									
Let’s let Hallie recommend [through laughter] her movie so you can both get out of those tiny rooms.
hallie
									
Oh, yeah. I was gonna recommend—I don’t know if anyone has recommended it before. It seems like it would’ve been more timely months ago. But has anyone recommended Memories of Murder on this show?
elliott
									
Not in a little while. I think a while back, but not recently.
crosstalk
									
Hallie: Oh, okay. Well, that’s my recommendation. Stuart: So please recommend it. So I recommend— Elliott: So go for it! Yeah, yeah! To recommend it!
hallie
									
Yeah. It’s a Bong Joon-ho earlier movie by him. It’s sort of a loosely-based on like the first serial killer in South Korea? And it was really fucking good. I didn’t… know what to expect, but it’s very interesting. It’s sort of about this like moment in Korea where they’re transitioning from like an older society to a more modernized society and that’s reflected in the way they pursue this crime and it’s real fucked up and real interesting. Yeah.
dan
									
Hallie, I gotta say—your audio got, like, y’know, it’s got this like much more intimate quality now that you’re in the closet in there.
hallie
									
Now that I’m in the closet?
dan
									
Yeah.
hallie
									
Well.
elliott
									
And if anyone’s wondering if Memories of Murder has Song Kang-Ho in it—you better believe it does.
stuart
									
He’s great! What a star, that guy!
dan
									
Okay, guys. We’ve tortured you all long enough. Let’s sign off for this.
elliott
									
Do you mean you’ve tortured us, or the listeners?
dan
									
I was thinking about… you initially. But then I was like, you know what? I’m gonna leave the ambiguity because it applies equally to all participants. But— [Laughs.]
elliott
									
It could be a ghost or a metaphor.
dan
									
Yeah.
elliott
									
That’s up to you to decide!
dan
									
Thanks to all who donated in this past MaxFunDrive which just came to a close recently. Thank you to our network, Maximum Fun, for providing us with support. All that stuff. Go check out the other podcasts there. Hallie, is there anything that you want to plug or anything you want to say or thank you for coming, first of all. Thank you for being on the show.
hallie
									
I’m doing this. Uh, very, uh, intense performance—uh, the only thing I have on my schedule is The Boy Next Door. [Laughs.] [Multiple people laugh.]
dan
									
Alright, well, promote The Boy Next Door! Thanks to everyone. Thanks for listening. For The Flop House, I’ve been Dan McCoy.
stuart
									
I’ve been Stuart Wellington.
elliott
									
I’m Elliott Kalan!
hallie
									
And I’ve been… Hallie Haglund. [Dan laughs.]
dan
									
Bye, everyone!
elliott
									
Very intense. So intense.
stuart
									
Byeee!
elliott
									
Light, up-tempo, electric guitar with synth instruments.
stuart
									
David Lee Roth. Yes, David Lee Roth.
elliott
									
He’d do a lot of scatting too. He’d be like, “Skittldey-bop!”
crosstalk
									
Stuart: Did I tell you about the time I saw—kinda—kinda recently—so kinda recently I saw a… Elliott: [Scatting] “Ba-deep! Ba-dop. Ba-dup baba bit! Baaadip! Bup bup bup bup bup bup!” [Dan laughs.]
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MaximumFun.org.
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Comedy and culture.
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Artist owned—
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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.