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Episode 53: Lady in the Water featuring Manolo Moreno
0 Playsin 3 days
Good friend and cohost of Dr. Gameshow Manolo Mareno stops in with a whopper of a tale: Lady in the Water (2006) by M. Night Shamalan. It’s a fantasy film in which Paul Giamatti stutters, Byrce Dallas Howard shivers, people prep for an eagle visit and they all use a lot of nonsense words. It’s also based on an improvised children’s story. Anna gives a detailed breakdown of production, and the crew has illuminating conversation about Night and his general vibe through their lives. It’s one for the (story)books, so tune in!
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Introductions
00:00:40
Speaker
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to your favorite bad movie podcast. It's the only podcast that's brave enough to ask the question, if this movie's so bad, why do you like it so much?
00:00:54
Speaker
We're your hosts. I'm, of course, your lad in the water, Chris Anderson. know With me, as always, i have the Madam Narf of the show, Mr. Greg Bossy.
00:01:09
Speaker
Hello. How are you doing, Greg? I'm doing good. If I were to be the true Madame Narf, I would just be cowering and not talking. Well, that's fair. you're You're much more bold. You're the Madame Narf ascendant, having returned in the clutches of an eagle.
00:01:25
Speaker
That's right. that's That's what I love about you, Greg. and I appreciate that. and i Thank you. And of course, we have, they're not from Cleveland, but I sure love them a heap.
Meet the Guests
00:01:39
Speaker
It's my wonderful wife, Anna. hello how are you doing my love doing okay all right okay's okay we're glad to have you and of course we have that grass-covered dog of the show it's our own personal scrunt you might know him as a phd in gameology it's manolo moreno how are you manolo
00:02:07
Speaker
I used it. Yes. I was wondering who I was going to be in the movie. and It's you. I'm a
Twisted Pair Clip and Lady in the Water Summary
00:02:16
Speaker
scrunt. You're the scrunt. You're the scrunt, yeah.
00:02:20
Speaker
Can I play you my favorite thing that I have on our soundboard that I haven't had an excuse to use yet? ah Do you want me to cue it up? like Tell me to say something that it would react to? or ah Yeah. Is it irrelevant?
00:02:34
Speaker
Yeah. Can you say, ah Greg, what's one thing you want everybody to know about you? Greg, what's one thing everyone you wanted everyone to know about you?
00:02:46
Speaker
i love Kuz so much. So there you go. Uh, it's from the film Twisted Pair.
00:02:59
Speaker
Yes, that was, of course, the villainous Mr. Coos from Twisted Pair, who is a fantastic character. I love Coos, too. That's a great sound. Thank you. Yeah, um I was really happy when I realized I could do that.
00:03:12
Speaker
ah So we're talking this week about ah movie that Manolo chose. We're talking about Lady in the Water. Listeners, if you haven't seen Lady in the Water, here's just a brief summary of the film to hold in your mind.
00:03:38
Speaker
A Narf comes from the Blue World to inspire a great artist. But what she doesn't know is that she's a Madam Narf. And the scrunt that's hunting her will break all the laws to stop her from returning to the Blue World, even if that means risking the wrath of the Tartutik.
00:04:02
Speaker
So that's shockingly accurate. Now that you say it out loud, it makes me question why I actually liked it.
Favorite Shyamalan Films Discussion
00:04:13
Speaker
That's what happens, right? You know when you're at a party and there's a point where someone asks you like what's everyone's favorite M. Night Shyamalan movie? I always unironically say it's Lady in the Water.
00:04:26
Speaker
and Okay. Okay. And ah my my reasoning, like, okay, despite ah what Anna and I read in the book, out of context, it's a really awesome idea in the sense that it's an epic fantasy in an apartment complex, and it's kind of funny.
00:04:51
Speaker
And no one takes me seriously when i when i when I say that. And um yeah, I'll stop there for now, but I think there's more or to
Impact of Expectations on Movie Experiences
00:05:02
Speaker
come. Okay.
00:05:03
Speaker
What I'm going to say about this movie, it's a great demonstration of like how we experience a movie it comes from what we expect to be receiving from it.
00:05:14
Speaker
Do you know what I mean? Exactly. And our understanding of the author's intentions. Yeah. like if I had gone into this thing about like, oh, this is Lord of the Rings in an apartment complex, maybe I would have been more into it.
00:05:29
Speaker
But I didn't think of it that way. And so um wasn't that into it. It was very weird to me. Well, it's definitely weird. And okay, I have several points to make.
00:05:43
Speaker
ah Okay. Let's start with point one. I don't like... I'm not good at remembering things, so ah okay I don't remember all my points. Fair enough. Okay, one, so yeah, from ah comedy background, it's like people who do like super novel, clever jokes or sets or whatever,
00:06:09
Speaker
then there's more pressure to keep doing that. And I feel like he got that from Sixth Sense. And it was like downhill from there. And then the village was a disappointment.
00:06:19
Speaker
And then he went left field on Lady in the Water. which i don't know this i don't know there's something kind of weird and kind of i want to say gross about the him trying to make family of family movie like there are points where i was like is this a family yeah i don't know and then yeah it it was very cringy um But I don't know.
Personal Anecdotes and Film Reactions
00:06:47
Speaker
i i so saw it in the theater and I didn't think I was uncomfortable until I saw the character ah that was half strong.
00:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, okay. This is like a thing. This is going to be fun. But like, ah op I don't know. We could go over it when we get through it. But yeah, there's there was that.
00:07:09
Speaker
That was of my ones. That was a lock-in moment for you? i think so. That's fair. Greg, had you ever seen this one before? so I went back through because i was like, how what what Shyamalan's have I seen?
00:07:21
Speaker
So it turns out that I saw the sixth sense. I saw ah ah you Unbroken. Was that what the Unbreakable? And then I saw Signs and then I just stopped.
00:07:32
Speaker
For some reason. ah It's pretty good i it is good. Yeah, I remember really enjoying it, but I think that was like, i remember in that one, he didn't do like a twist ending, but it was still sort of like a surprise in a way. and you remember being like, I don't really want any more like surprise endings. And then he did the village and I worked in a movie theater. I'm just like, I'm not going to go and see that.
00:07:59
Speaker
And then Lady in the Water, I was just like, I don't even hear good things about that. And I just sort of he's just kind of drifted away from me since then. But I do remember that you mentioned Lady in the Water when we worked together at the time.
00:08:14
Speaker
And that was because I was like, oh, Manolo chose Lady in the Water. That makes sense. Yeah, I feel like I'm the only person who liked it um So much so that after telling my friend about it, like probably a few months afterwards, for my birthday, he got me the DVD.
00:08:33
Speaker
And I was like, should we watch it? And I was like, sure. And I don't know. It's a tough one to recommend. i mean Maybe you can at least tell that not everyone will see what you see.
00:08:45
Speaker
Oh, most likely. But also, it's like, you know, there's like bad movies that everyone likes. I was like, for sure no one's going to say Lady in the Water. They're going to say something cool that has like a cult.
00:08:58
Speaker
This is like the only bad movie that doesn't have a cult following.
00:09:04
Speaker
That's fair enough. Yeah, because it was like a notorious flop, but I think it was just, it's so confounding. Anna, had you seen this one before now? I had
Anna's Shyamalan Experience and Devil Discussion
00:09:15
Speaker
not. And like Greg, I just ah was thinking about my Shyamalan experience. And yeah, I saw Sixth Sense in the theater like everybody else did.
00:09:28
Speaker
And then i saw The Village. And I think that's all I've seen, honestly. I've seen Devil, but that one he only wrote. Yeah.
00:09:43
Speaker
Devil was good. Devil was great. I really enjoyed Devil. I haven't seen it, and I feel like it got spoiled for me already. so I know who the Devil is, and I do remember when I went to see a movie in which the trailer for Devil played, when it said, like, produced by M. Night Shyamalan, everyone in the theater started laughing.
00:10:04
Speaker
Yeah, I remember that.
Shyamalan's Evolving Reputation
00:10:06
Speaker
Yeah. Previous and future guest Michael Darling said about Lady in the Water, that he saw he saw the preview for it.
00:10:17
Speaker
And you know when Shyamalan's name came up, you know people there was an air of excitement in the theater. right And then exactly a year later, you know he saw a premiere for The Happening, and everybody laughed. it just yeah It just turned like that, just in a really wild way.
00:10:36
Speaker
And yeah honestly, even wilder is that is that he has genuinely made a comeback and is a like respected and enjoyed director again, yeah apparently.
00:10:48
Speaker
Not as much as before, though. like He's not throwing his name around like he used to, where it was like he was the next movie god. I mean, Sixth Sense made so much money.
00:11:01
Speaker
Yeah. It was. Well, and I'll get to that once we get the context list. Just for my own personal background with Sixth Sense, I also had a very similar arc where I fell off somewhere. I didn't see signs.
00:11:15
Speaker
I think I watched The Village at the video store and like half paid attention And i don't think I don't think you can consume an M. Night Shyamalan film, at least his early stuff, that way. I think you really need to like pay attention to it.
00:11:29
Speaker
And I think ah because it is so methodically paced that if you let yourself get distracted, you won't be able to come back. um That's what I noticed about this, where there's like...
00:11:43
Speaker
A lot of intentional moving parts where was a puzzle that was solving itself. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I kind of like that. Fair Another thing I liked about Another point.
00:11:58
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Another point on the board. Mm-hmm. This would Number two. Yeah, this would be. was watching it last night, and I would say, like, the first half hour would be a good pilot for a series. Mm-hmm.
00:12:14
Speaker
Just people hanging out in an apartment complex yes and weird stuff happening is like a yeah great premise. If you had seen them interact with each other more than just with Heap, I think that would have been lot of fun. It would have been good to see them bounce off each other.
00:12:27
Speaker
yeah But I guess you'd get into that after the pilot. Yeah, exactly. Well, you guys want to you want to talk context? Please. All right.
00:12:51
Speaker
I wish I had some context about the background of the film. Script director, actors on set. What's going on on screen? I want to hear some details.
00:13:03
Speaker
Gossip skin to all that shit. Canon manager all detail.
00:13:20
Speaker
I did this song at karaoke recently. oh Very nice.
Exploring Shyamalan's Career Through Literature
00:13:23
Speaker
Oh, fun. Loved it. Oh, I bet you would crush that. Yeah. Anyway. So, a Lady in the Water came out July 21st, 2006. Director, of course, M. Night Shyamalan.
00:13:37
Speaker
The tagline, time is running out for a happy ending.
00:13:44
Speaker
Not bad. Not the worst tagline we've heard. No. Because I got to get to work in five minutes.
00:13:53
Speaker
Because it's late. Now, Anna's going to also be able to supplement my context research a lot because they read the entire... ah ah thing the the book the entire book what was the title of the book you read i read the book the man who heard voices how m night shamalan risked his career on a fairy tale and lost by michael bamberger published the same week the uh movie came out although i read the paperback edition with a um angry defensive afterward by the author that's great
00:14:31
Speaker
Interesting. fair enough and did you When did you read it? ah Over the weekend. Oh, okay. i've been yeah This is how much of a reader I am. I've been working through it ah for several months, and I'm 53% in on my Kindle.
00:14:48
Speaker
There you go. you You probably read about the same pace as I do, Manolo. There's no shame in that game. There's different speeds to every reader. Now... M. Night Shyamalan was born in Mahay, India. I'm sure I'm not pronouncing that correctly and I want to apologize.
00:15:03
Speaker
But he was raised in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, which I'm pretty sure I've got. Yeah. Now, you're a Pennsylvania guy, Manolo. I am. I wonder if that's part of the kinship I have. Like, no matter how much, like, people when I trash him, I'm, like, kind of low-key rooting for him. Yeah.
00:15:23
Speaker
Local boy. Yeah. yeah and he And he keeps it all local. Mm-hmm. Uh... He also he attended the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Go Violets.
00:15:34
Speaker
And ah shortly after graduating, he directed and starred in his first film, Praying with Anger. Hardly seen. Hardly distributed.
00:15:45
Speaker
ah From what I hear, not that great. Largely because it stars M. Night Shyamalan. He's not a great actor. Yeah, according to the book, he we wouldn't even talk about it. It's just not...
00:15:57
Speaker
It's like a not a movie he thinks about. Yeah. Yeah. He then followed this up with the coming of age story where Rosie O'Donnell played a nun called Wide Awake.
00:16:11
Speaker
And this movie lost a lot of money. Which he's comfortable with. He would get comfortable with it. That's for sure. Luckily, his next movie, The Sixth Sense, was such a massive critical and box office hit that that those two earlier failures were instantly forgotten.
00:16:31
Speaker
Sixth Sense was nominated for Best Director and Best Screenplay and also made $673 million dollars at the box office. wow
00:16:41
Speaker
It was also, if I remember correctly, pretty good. What do you guys think of Sixth Sense? It was a good movie. Yeah, it's a good movie. Yeah, liked It was enjoyable. Good time. I remember liking I remember when I went to see it with my girlfriend, Sarah, and we went to see it in the theater and the film ripped somewhere around act two.
00:17:02
Speaker
Ah, and we just had to leave and we got our money back. But I was really scared by the first half. I was very literally ripped. I thought you were doing slang.
00:17:13
Speaker
No, no. I mean, the film stripped or in half. That'll happen on occasion. Back when we had projectors in our theaters, children. I'm a million years old.
00:17:28
Speaker
know ah it also, Sixth Sense, established in the popular consciousness Shyamalan's signatures as a director. After Sixth Sense, he was expected to make formally sound supernatural thrillers with a twist ending.
00:17:43
Speaker
Twist ending, very important. ah His next three films, Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village. And all these films were financially successful, but none of them reached the heights of Sixth Sense.
00:17:59
Speaker
And at this point, audiences and critics seem to be falling out of love, Shyamalan. He knew he had to mix it up. That much he was sure of. Oh, yeah. Well, I think the village, I remember this part from the book where the village was him mixing it up in the sense that instead of a fantastical ending, it was the opposite of it.
00:18:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. and That's what fell off. Specifically not a supernatural thriller. And
00:18:33
Speaker
and it it confused people because it wasn't. yeah that's why i hate it i hate when when the movie ends where it's like oh it's just in their head and and like it wasn't supernatural so like ah that made me angry yeah yeah that's just that's always less satisfying always i feel like it's a harder twist to pull yeah it's also weird to be like i'm not gonna do supernatural twists anymore so i'm gonna do natural twists it's like that's shockingly different oh boy uh
00:19:07
Speaker
Yeah. Just under natural.
The Role of Twist Endings in Shyamalan's Films
00:19:10
Speaker
He knew he had to get away from twists. Sure. Nothing. Sure. His signature was the twist. He's like, I've run out of twists.
00:19:18
Speaker
The next one. Oh, it turns out he's a werewolf. I can't keep doing this. Yeah. Oh, it turns out that guy's a Dracula. Right. See, he trapped himself. Yeah. I was. There were only so many things things could turn out to be. Yeah.
00:19:30
Speaker
somewhat related um i was talking to someone at a party about that movie was it long legs or daddy long legs i think just long legs long legs yeah so it was like i was saying how i was relieved that it was supernatural and the other person was like oh i hated that that's interesting that you would think that and i'm like No, because I hate when it's like, oh, it was nothing. Yeah. They were just imagining it because they're crazy.
00:19:58
Speaker
Yeah. Whatever. Anyway. Was that person, were they younger than you? They were, but they were very filmstery. Okay. It was like an editor's soiree.
00:20:11
Speaker
Okay, classy. Soiree. La-di-da. In an apartment. In an apartment. 20 year old. 20 year old sitting around. And I was like, I think I accidentally came here because I just heard about it. And I'm like twice their age. Anyway.
00:20:28
Speaker
and So ah let's see. Where was I? yeah He needed to mix things up. To that end, for his next film, Shyamalan drew inspiration from an unlikely source.
Origins and Production of Lady in the Water
00:20:40
Speaker
An improvised bedtime story he told his daughters after they asked him what happens in their swimming pool when they fall asleep. Yeah, that makes sense.
00:20:51
Speaker
That's quick question every child has about their swimming pool. Thank God they didn't have like an infinity pool because then they'd be like, but what's at the end of the infinity pool?
00:21:05
Speaker
More pools? It's the unicorn. But to me, like that origin story explains everything. Yeah.
00:21:17
Speaker
Like how this movie got to be where it is. Cause it's like, here's a young dad who one night, like his kids were in the right spot and he was in the right spot where he told them ah bedtime story that really hit.
00:21:30
Speaker
He was making it up, but he was like, yeah, this story is really hitting. And he sees like the magic in his children's eyes and And then when he goes to bed that night, he's telling himself all those lies that people tell about children. Like, oh, they're so honest children.
00:21:44
Speaker
And there's there's such good critics. They know when something's good or bad because they have that just keen insight from the mouth of babes. So if my children thought that this story was magical, then this story is magical.
00:21:58
Speaker
I have got to get this out there. This is my E.T., know? So it turns out that you should blame the kids. Sure.
00:22:09
Speaker
ah Yeah. Like in most situations. If my kid was like, oh man, I think something's going to eat my butt in the toilet. I'm not going to spend billions of other people's money.
00:22:22
Speaker
I'm trying to explain it away.
00:22:28
Speaker
Well, that's what the difference between you and M. Night Shyamalan, I suppose. Now, at this point, M. Night had large... Or Knight, I believe he refers to.
00:22:38
Speaker
Yes. Knight had largely been working for Disney subsidiaries, and so he brought the script to Disney. and Disney was sort of lukewarm on it.
00:22:51
Speaker
Well... that they They were like, we don't get this. Understandably. There are all of these neologisms that don't make any sense.
00:23:03
Speaker
Malad critique. They made a lot of very reasonable objections. And Knight was was very, very upset by this. He felt that they did not Believe in him that actually I can read. There's a great quote from here that yeah the great Walt Disney company no longer valued individualism, no longer valued fighters.
00:23:36
Speaker
They wanted him to be a cog. Knight felt sorry for them. ah Wow. It's an incredible book.
00:23:48
Speaker
Yeah. I'm so glad I read it. There's a tangent in it that I've read recently where it just randomly was like, Oh yeah, he likes to hang out with black people.
00:24:00
Speaker
Hannah told me this story. And then it just went back to this story. it was like, oh yeah, because he's an outsider and he liked playing basketball. But he grew up rich.
00:24:11
Speaker
So he was hanging out with famous legendary basketball players. So clearly he's part of the black community. Jesus Christ. Okay. yeah Good time. And then it it had nothing to do with anything. yeah And then it went back to, yeah. Just wanted to paint a larger picture of the man. Yeah.
00:24:30
Speaker
Broad strokes. Now Shyamalan, who had in his defense made over $1 billion dollars for the Disney Corporation with his previous four films, was understandably hurt by this lack of faith in him as a filmmaker.
00:24:47
Speaker
So we took his script over to Warner Brothers, who obviously would be very excited get into the M. Night Shyamalan business. We're like, yeah yeah, we'll give you a flyer and hey, maybe you'll keep working with us in the future. You got it.
00:24:59
Speaker
ah They gave him a green light with a budget of $70 million. dollars Perfect. Yeah. Most of this budget went towards building the apartment complex and pool that serve as the primary shooting location of the film.
00:25:18
Speaker
Wait, Greg, what do you think about that? just Because I think it's amazing. I mean, it is amazing. i mean, it is amazing, but it's also just one of those things where it's like, of course, this is what it was.
00:25:28
Speaker
Was that they had to like make an apartment building for this. They had to make a swimming pool for this. They had to. else it couldn't work. yeah i mean, where are you going to find a completely empty apartment complex you could shoot in?
00:25:44
Speaker
It is wild and... expensive but but it is also the kind of thing that I can I can't actually respect from a director yeah it it seems I don't know it seems like something Peter Greenaway would you know what I mean it's definitely something that like Stanley Kubrick has done you know like it's not the craziest thing in the world it's just very funny to me that like Usually when people do that, you're looking at, again, like something like that Stanley Kubrick made, whereas this is, we're talking about the film Lady in the Water.
00:26:19
Speaker
But nobody knew except for Disney. but um But yeah, but it was like, it's technically kind of a single location. oh definitely. like, this is where all the money's going as opposed to like all the, you know, all the locations. And ah and it wasn't it in like some abandoned M3 factory or something like that? The 3M plant, yeah. The 3M plant.
00:26:43
Speaker
ah Yeah, which had been turned into a warehousing facility that had some, like, vacant land on it. And if M. nine ah Knight wanted it to be within 45 minutes of his home in Philadelphia.
00:26:58
Speaker
That's the ridiculous part. Yeah. And this was apparently a 43-minute drive door to door. So he was very happy. Okay. Let's see.
00:27:10
Speaker
Shyamalan is famously a Philly guy and he always tries to film in Pennsylvania to support the local film industry. Uh, travel time. ah yeah, it was a five story apartment complex with an in-ground pool, uh, built on the campus of a warehousing facility in Levittown.
00:27:26
Speaker
Uh, unfortunately, since it was built as a film set and not an up to code apartment building, uh, it had to be torn down. Uh,
00:27:37
Speaker
I think it would be really funny to live in the Lady of the Water. It's a shame. That that would be amazing. Yeah. I mean, they speaking of fantasies, they kept the Shire going, right? Yeah.
00:27:52
Speaker
It makes sense. Yeah. You could rent it out as a bespoke Airbnb situation for Lady of the Water fans. o I want to sleep in the cave in the middle of the pool.
00:28:05
Speaker
We've set up plenty of cups for you, but so you should be good to go. Yeah, it's going to great night of sleep. So ah this didn't eat up the entire budget.
00:28:16
Speaker
Giamatti was paid over a million dollars, his first paycheck of that size, on the back of his Golden Globe-nominated performance in Sideways. Bryce Dallas Howard, also an NYU graduate, Go Violets.
00:28:30
Speaker
I met her twice. Hi, Bryce. I thought you did great. Oh, you did. yeah but Yeah, I think once or twice. what was the situation? Once was actually back in Connecticut.
00:28:43
Speaker
She and her father, Ron Howard, came in to the Starbucks where I worked. who ah Right when we were closing up. And then another time after we graduated, because my old roommate, who I was saying hi to, um was also in the acting program and they were acquaintances.
00:29:03
Speaker
and Did you say remember me? ah No, no, definitely not. wow But one thing that I think if I remember right.
00:29:14
Speaker
And I could be wrong on this. list So she went to the experimental theater wing school in the drama program, which was the one that was famously you would have to get nude freshman year so at some point.
00:29:28
Speaker
And I think that explains her comfortable or comfort with nudity ah throughout her career that you've seen. ah You know, working with Lars von Trier and Nymphomaniac and being largely new throughout the course of this film or at the very least wearing just a men's over shirt.
00:29:46
Speaker
Just Donald Duck in it. Yeah. Just Winnie the Pooh in the whole movie.
00:29:53
Speaker
Now, she had also just worked with Shyamalan on the village. they I'm sure they shared NYU stories. Yeah. She got the gig, though, after she was cast as his muse in this movie. They never work together again.
00:30:10
Speaker
Okay. I just read the part. I just read the part where he was having issues with her. Oh, really? Okay. i didn't know anything about that. What was going on there? I don't know if it was big, because I think, you know, this was during the rehearsal part where he was like kind of like, she's no she's not as cool as I thought she was, or something that. Wow.
00:30:32
Speaker
That's a weird thing to say about your nude living in a different cast as your muse. Does ring a bell? That's a really weird thing say. Yeah, it kind of... I don't know. has a lot of... um experiences where ah whenever, whenever people question him in any way or don't immediately get what he's trying to get them to do, it it's like devastating him. He feels like he's failed, but also subtly implies that it's their fault that he failed.
00:31:11
Speaker
So that's a fun dynamic. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. he sounds he He really sounds like you... I would not like to work for him as an actor.
00:31:21
Speaker
Fair enough. I would say. I mean, then that was 20 years ago. Maybe he has... Hopefully he would have gotten some humility from this experience.
00:31:33
Speaker
Hopefully. Hopefully. Yeah. Now, as a quick side note, in Lady in the Water, Shyamalan's character Vic is writing a political manifesto that will one day change the whole world.
00:31:47
Speaker
This is the issue... this wow be okay
00:31:53
Speaker
While he was working on his next film, The Happening, Shyamalan wrote the book I Got Schooled and the unlikely story of how a moonlighting movie maker learned the five keys to closing America's education gap.
00:32:08
Speaker
Oh. um but Wait, what? That's a real book? That's a real book that he wrote. Wow. Oh.
00:32:18
Speaker
uh john willell of npr described it as smart and sincere which is some faint praise i feel okay yes that are we allowed to talk about the characters yet or should we wait um but's let's get wait till we get to the body film i'm so close to being through this context all right ah Now, so critics and audiences were not as kind to Lady in the Water as ah John Willell was to I Got Schooled.
00:32:49
Speaker
It only took in $72 million dollars at the box office on that $70 million dollars budget. And most critics hated both the fact that Shyamalan cast himself as a visionary thinker that will change the world and Bob Balaban as a dickhead film critic who is violently killed.
Comparing Lady in the Water to Other Fantasy Films
00:33:07
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:33:11
Speaker
Other fantasy films of 2006, just to put a thing in its place. Oh, please. Some of these will be familiar. ah The Covenant also came out this year. Check out our episode on The Covenant. Manolo, have you seen The Covenant, directed by Rennie Harlan?
00:33:26
Speaker
I haven't. Should I? I recommend it. It's not bad. It's not bad. Is that like part of that whole Blumhouse scene? No, but might as well be, i feel like. Teen Warlocks.
00:33:41
Speaker
Sebastian Stan. and Interesting. yeah It's very CW. Okay. ah You got ah Aquamarine, and movie I think about mermaids, maybe. sure ah The Shaggy Dog, starring Tim Allen as the shaggy dog. Is that the one with the eyes?
00:34:01
Speaker
ah Yeah, yeah. He's got those eyes. ah In the Name of the King, a dungeon siege. Check out our episode about the Name of King. 2006, bringing a lot of classics from the podcast.
00:34:15
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of heavy hitters. the Edge of the Cliff. Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny. okay And, of course, who can forget Night at the Museum.
00:34:28
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. Night at the museum. ah Do you guys want to talk about the plot? Yes. I really do.
00:34:39
Speaker
Okay.
00:34:58
Speaker
Plot bumper, listen to me. I'm gonna give you the plot summary. Come on, baby. Here's the synopsis.
00:35:10
Speaker
Plot bumper, plot bumper.
Character Introductions and Film Critique
00:35:24
Speaker
So we open with some animated cave paintings explaining that the ocean and the land used to be friends, but then they grew apart once the landmen started doing wars.
00:35:36
Speaker
And now the people of the blue world, a.k.a. the water, are attempting to reestablish contact with the landstanders.
00:35:47
Speaker
I don't remember that. didn't remember that. And then when I saw it, I was ah was horrified. oh isn't it like kind of technically but bad as a writer when you have to open like that?
00:36:04
Speaker
I mean, Star Wars does it.
00:36:08
Speaker
That was added rather late in the game. Okay. That's a smart play. I'm glad they did that. Yeah. Yeah. You thought it was a smart play?
00:36:21
Speaker
I think so. I think this movie would have been more confusing with that. Yeah, I think, I'm not saying it's the best thing to do, but I am saying that I think in this particular film, it probably helped a little bit to under, yeah to not be completely confused.
00:36:38
Speaker
It was just a like a YouTube video with an old man whispering at you. Yeah. I mean, it was a crutch, but this movie needed a crutch. you know what I mean? I suppose.
00:36:51
Speaker
So cut to Cleveland Heap. Love the name. A.K.A. Paul Giamatti. Love yeah the name. Fabulous name. He's the super of an apartment complex outside of Philly.
00:37:03
Speaker
He's played by Paul Giamatti, and he has a stutter, and he's killing a spire by stabbing it repeatedly with a broom handle. Mm-hmm. ah the large land family that lives in that apartment is very grateful.
00:37:17
Speaker
What did you guys think of Paul Giamatti in this movie? I think he's great. Actually, the stutter is bad. It's not, that's, that's not what a stutter sounds like.
00:37:28
Speaker
um But I think he's, I think he's well cast in the role and I think he does a good job and it sucks that Knight told him at one point not to gain any more weight because he's perfect.
00:37:41
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Because if he gained a little more weight, no one's going to relate to him. Yeah, exactly. He wouldn't be an everyman anymore. Holy shit. Okay.
00:37:53
Speaker
of The stuttering reminded me of... ah Did you ever see that interview clip of Benicio Del Toro when he played a stutter in the the Star Wars movie?
00:38:07
Speaker
Oh, no, i didn't. see he He thought that he's like, well, he's like really good at this, so I should give him some kind of flaw. But he knew how much he was trashed on the internet for that stuff.
00:38:22
Speaker
and he's ah And I was like, he's kind of a cool character. But yeah, like plain doing weird stuttering is like kind of cringy. I don't know. Yeah, it's really tough to pull off. Yeah.
00:38:36
Speaker
So tough that and you just should do something else with your movie. This movie didn't need it. Yeah. You know what i mean? Cleveland's Heap was already kind of a fucking sad scene. Yeah, yeah. There there are ways to demonstrate.
00:38:47
Speaker
I think that the movie, <unk> that's a problem the movie has is it's like, I'm not going to tell you just once. I'm going to tell you like four times. It's just like, just once would be enough, actually. Just the one time is a good amount of times. Maybe twice.
00:39:00
Speaker
But like... at like functional Functionally, it served as a way of being like, oh, whenever I'm around this half-naked girl, I stop stuttering. Right.
00:39:12
Speaker
Because usually it's the opposite.
00:39:17
Speaker
but I think also like his stutter was sort of deployed so like haphazardly that I didn't notice when he wasn't stuttering. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? I would just get jarred when he would start stuttering again.
00:39:31
Speaker
Very pronounced. Now, ah Heap rushes out to meet his newest tenant, Mr. Farber, played by Bob Balaban. He's a caustic film critic who has just moved to Philly for work.
00:39:46
Speaker
And so Heap shows him to his new digs, introducing him to various other residents of the apartment building, including Young Soon Choi, Korean college student with a very rough accent,
00:40:01
Speaker
Richie, a veteran that is only pumping iron on one side of his body as an experiment. That's when it won me. Yeah. Yeah, I could see him like helping you lock in to be like, okay, this is like a fairy tale.
00:40:14
Speaker
That is the first the first time that I sat up and was like, okay, this guy is good. and i and And throughout, that character is good. and i like That character never loses me. And I like i like um Farber, too. Bob Balaban.
00:40:28
Speaker
I mean, he's Bob Balaban. he really kills it. Does anyone watch anime? A little bit. A little bit here and there. They do singular, simplistic archetypes really well.
00:40:44
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And then, you know, as the series goes on, then it gets more complex and, like, they go through each person's backstory. Yeah, but you get a broad stroke really quick. Yeah, and, like, you could size them up really easily. And I feel like this movie did that really well, where a lot of them had, like, little mini story arcs.
00:41:06
Speaker
And there's enough very and they're all very visually. Yeah, there's enough small details. And like even the the group of stoners, just like sometimes the way they interact is like very endearing, like the people in the characters and it feel very real for the setting.
00:41:24
Speaker
And I did appreciate that aspect of things. It does teeter between like that and then also kind of cringy. Of course. Yeah.
00:41:34
Speaker
Well, because Shyamalan, I think he was a guy that sort of ah wanted to emulate Spielberg in this style, in this very sort of emotionally yeah manipulative style. Like, it's very overwrought.
00:41:48
Speaker
And so it can come off, like, when you try and do sweet, if you do it wrong, it gets really saccharine. And I think that's... What I realized was one of the stranger effects of this movie was that it did feel very emotionally manipulative, but I didn't know to what end. Yeah.
00:42:07
Speaker
The whole time I was just like, why is this like what? I know it's trying to make me feel something, but I don't know why. it really it really affected me this time around, especially yeah with the current events and stuff. I don't know.
00:42:21
Speaker
It hit better, I think. It was nice to see a diverse community coming together to help out someone more vulnerable. It's true. Yeah. um And ah back to to Reggie, what I wanted to say was that he reminded me a lot of like Baron von Munchausen.
00:42:39
Speaker
And like tying into that sort of fairy tale style of narrative with that guy that would always wear one heavy boot. Yeah.
00:42:50
Speaker
Everyone has these cute quirks. Yeah. And they all and their quirks all pay off at some point. Let's see. He also meets Mr. Leeds, a guy that just sits in his room.
00:43:04
Speaker
And then America's true, dad. so Tom Hanks, but it's that guy. Yeah. ah Bill Irwin, Broadway star. He had just been in um a revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, actually.
00:43:24
Speaker
And he's got tons of like small TV credits. He's one of the many people in this movie who were also in Law and Order. Listeners most likely might know him as Elmo's friend, Mr. Noodle.
00:43:40
Speaker
Mr. Noodle? No, from a show that's amazing. Yeah. And then there's also Mrs. Bell, who takes in stray cats, and the apartment full of smokers in thirteen a That night, Heap is unwinding in the little casita he lives in behind the building, when he hears splashing in the pool outside.
Strange Encounters and Story's Role
00:44:06
Speaker
He's been trying to figure out who has been there night swimming lately, so he goes to check it out. And he catches what appears to be a nude woman snatching a necklace off of a deck chair.
00:44:18
Speaker
But when she doesn't resurface from the water, he dives in after.
00:44:25
Speaker
Fortunately, he doesn't find anyone, though when he gets out, he slips, hurts himself and falls back in the pool. Go on.
00:44:37
Speaker
I know it's a riveting tale. Next thing we know, Heap is waking up, soaking wet in his bed. Staring him down is a beautiful woman wearing only one of his shirts.
00:44:53
Speaker
Classic stuff. Isn't it weird, though? She's smart enough to know how to wear a shirt, but not smart enough to know how to wear a pant. Yeah. I mean, her choices beg a lot of questions, I think.
00:45:09
Speaker
Yeah, and it wasn't a t-shirt. It was a buttoned-up work shirt. Translucent, kind of. Yeah, because because she was wet. Yeah. And, like, um i don't mean to be like, you know how like, the kids these days, like, really hate sex scenes?
00:45:25
Speaker
Sure. How do they have to do this to us? i I felt like, yeah, i think i think the character would have been better if it was, like, an attractive E.T.
00:45:37
Speaker
puppet. o Yeah, that would have been great. Yeah, made her look less human. yeah Yeah. Yeah, give her some gills. Gills would have been cool. Yeah, I don't know what the sexual tension was for.
00:45:50
Speaker
Yeah, and it was more like sexual awkwardness. No, i couldn't tell if there was sexual tension or not. I was really confused on that matter, actually. Well, at Knight was confused as he was writing and revising the script, and he finally decided, you know what, it's fine that Sometimes it seems kind of romantic and sometimes it seems kind of father and daughter.
00:46:14
Speaker
It's fine. Okay. Relationships can be complicated. Multifaceted. Sure. Wouldn't you think that... They're working through it in real time. That's right. If he was given an extra weekend to write more, he would have been like, what if it was E.T. with sexual tension? That's right.
00:46:35
Speaker
Now we've got something going. Sexy puppet. We need a sexual E.T. We should just write that movie sexual E.T.
00:46:47
Speaker
i mean know Yeah, I'm just going to send that in an envelope to myself really quick. God damn it.
00:46:56
Speaker
Game set match. ah Now, let's see. But what did you think of her as an an actress in this film? She. i I yeah mean, you could ah you could have put a sugar cube in there as far as I'm concerned, like she is a non-entity in this movie to me. It's so like her whole thing is to be like, I'm here.
00:47:20
Speaker
The editor of the movie, um Barbara Tulliver, tells Knight at some point that she's worried about Bryce because it seems like every time her character is on camera, she's crying.
00:47:35
Speaker
And that's, yeah, she is just kind of, she's she's very pale base and occasionally delivers exposition in a little, yeah, in a little baby voice.
00:47:46
Speaker
it Yeah, it was how she was written. It wasn't so much as an actor. Yeah, that's the way I see it. Her character was largely designed to be pale and nude and quiet. Yeah. and Inspirational, like a statue.
00:48:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, definitely just more of a beautiful object can't remember. She was the ring and Lord of the Rings. um If the ring took more showers.
00:48:11
Speaker
So ah it turns out her name is story and she has very weird vibes. And yeah, it makes sense, right? Yeah. Think about it. well is i think the movie would be a million times better if it was less meta. And if he, if he didn't play Vic.
00:48:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. ah yeah You know would have saved this movie? Maybe if it was animated. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I remember looking ahead of time. like I tried to write down who I think the big characters are, who I know the big characters are and was like, Bryce Dallas Howard is story.
00:48:48
Speaker
oh it was just like, that's going to be some kind of meta thing, isn't it? This is, oh boy. Yeah, that's a rough pull. But if it was if it was animated, you wouldn't get that great DP. No, of course not.
00:49:03
Speaker
ah The Wong Kar Wai guy. Yeah, yeah. Chris Doyle. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a beautiful film. I can't take that away from it. That guy, unfortunately, reading about that guy on set sort of retroactively. Oh.
00:49:24
Speaker
Bummer alarm. Bummer alarm. This next bit is kind of a bummer.
00:49:31
Speaker
Yeah. ah Well, The Lady in the Water has the same cinephotographer as In the Mood for Love and several other Wong Kar Wai movies, an Australian-born guy named Chris Doyle, who is just a piece of shit. Oh my god, he sexually harassed everybody on set, like not just the women he was he's like a testicle grabber and would like just he he sort of unfortunately has kind of retroactively ruined my enjoyment of like in the mood for love because i can only think of like how he must have treated maggie chung behind the scenes yeah and he probably clearly
00:50:16
Speaker
ah living in Asia for that long, probably like, man, really mulled through that population in some way or another. Yeah. Yeah. a White guy living in Asia for a long time always has some sus vibes. that you Yeah. What's going on, man? as what's what Let's check your hall pass here.
00:50:40
Speaker
Now, let's see. ah While Heap is a around Story, he loses his stutter. So he's like, wow, that you must be magical. uh she seems kind of freaked out so heap says she can hang out at his place for a little while the two of them nap on the couch together and story is definitely in a position that 100 guarantees she is pressing her asshole directly under the couch
00:51:06
Speaker
just It just smash cuts to them in an embrace after what like a 15 minute of him being It was a very confusing moment very confusing moment. They have a very confusing relationship. They're working it out. They're figuring out themselves.
00:51:20
Speaker
yeah ah He whispers to her, tell me who in the world are you? And she mumbles in response, Narf.
00:51:33
Speaker
It's so straightforward. Yeah. She's a nerf. I didn't connect until last night that where I knew the word nerf from was Pinky and the Brain.
00:51:46
Speaker
Yes. I was going to say it was like a sound effect from a Garfield comic strip. Yeah, it's it's a rough choice of words.
00:51:57
Speaker
ah It makes this film, like I'm going to say, 40% harder to take seriously. No, genuinely. Scrant, too? It's... Scrunt doesn't help. Scrunt tops it up another 20. I'm totally fine with you making stuff up, but it's just like, it's just like we found a narf. it's like You gotta do better than that. This is a joke? what is it we you I don't want to hear the next thing you have to say, because I'm sure it's just going be some kind of weird bullshit. Stick to the classics like
00:52:28
Speaker
ghost or yeah whatever. i mean they And they just say, oh, a sea nymph. They say, oh, a narb is a nymph. Just say fucking nymph. It's cool. It's fine.
00:52:40
Speaker
oh yeah Or just something, if you're going to make up a word, don't, that's not the right one. That's what I have. i had an issue with that because like I'm slowly trying to get into like being more of a reader and like of science fiction.
00:52:54
Speaker
And some of it, it's hard for me to get into when they're just renaming everything. Like, yeah just say it's the government. You don't need to say it's the rickety boo or whatever. I don't know.
00:53:08
Speaker
i don't know ah So he takes her outside for some fresh air, ah but the two of them almost get attacked by an invisible dog with grass for fur. He gets them back inside safely.
00:53:22
Speaker
Later on, he runs into Young Soon, who is studying for school, and asks her if she's ever heard the word narf before. She responds, yes, I have. It's an Eastern the bedtime story.
00:53:35
Speaker
All of this makes sense. Ah! yeah Yeah, I'm going to say Young Soon's character, a kind of problematic. ah You should out that should see the casting direct. Was it cast direct description of this character?
00:53:52
Speaker
Tell me. um A tall Korean woman with rolls of fat, and she dressed like Britney Spears. Yeah. Yeah.
00:54:03
Speaker
And like, oh it was hard for him to cast her because she didn't have roles of fat. But it was hard to find a tall Asian woman after. The tall was more important than the roles.
00:54:17
Speaker
In his, but there you go. Yeah, obviously, obviously. he he did also, it was not because the actress Cindy Chung is, I mean, she's from California, but she's mostly Chinese.
00:54:30
Speaker
Um, It wasn't until he hired the actress to play her mother, Jun Kyoko-Loo, I believe is her name. ah That actress, it fell to her to tell her director that, oh, by the way, the original name you wrote for Young Soon, Lin Lao, is not a Korean name.
00:54:53
Speaker
Like, nobody had mentioned that to him before. And he was like, oh, okay. Yeah, let's mix that up. yeah I guess good on him for changing the play.
00:55:05
Speaker
Yeah, because it was like, that's the thing of like, ah when it was transitioning to being more considerate of minorities. was like, it a good step because it was pretty diverse. But then, yeah, it was that awkward stage.
00:55:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. yeah I'm going to say that the character of Jung Soon wouldn't be out of place in like one of the crank movies. Do you know what I mean? Very broad.
00:55:36
Speaker
Yeah. So ah let's see. But yes. Her mother knows more about narfs than she does. So they head over to the choice place where Mama Choi explains that a narf is a sea nymph and the narf must be seen by its chosen human to inspire something within them before being brought back to the blue world by an eagle.
00:55:59
Speaker
Go birds. Sky's Philly all the way.
00:56:05
Speaker
yeah Armed with this new information, he goes back ah to story and asks who she's supposed to inspire. She says that all she knows is that this person is a writer. So he goes around talking to every person in the building who he thinks might fit the bill.
00:56:21
Speaker
He quickly rules out Farber, Mrs. Bell, the smokers, and Young Soon. He also so writes out Mr. Drury, who only ever writes in crossword puzzles, and his son, who just enjoys reading cereal boxes.
00:56:36
Speaker
Uh, then just when he's about to give up, he runs into Vic played by M night Shyamalan and his sister, Anna, who reads a lot like his wife, but actually their brother. Yeah. I actually wrote, cause at one point it's like, is he, is M night Shyamalan a wife beater in this movie? Cause he does like the whole, like put my hand up.
00:56:55
Speaker
Kind of a thing. there was like, Jesus Christ, did you write yourself as a life beater? But it's just his sister, so it's maybe more playful than what it comes across as.
00:57:06
Speaker
Yeah. Now, it turns out Vic is working on something called the cookbook, but also in a classic M. Night twist. It's not a cookbook. It's more of a political manifesto.
00:57:18
Speaker
It's just my thoughts on all the cultural problems and leaders and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure they're great. That's how a true revolutionary talks, too.
00:57:33
Speaker
Yeah, what do you think Vic's philosophy was? He read the anarchist cookbook. And he's like, there's too much anarchism in this. Yeah. Let's just make it a cookbook.
00:57:44
Speaker
We should just make it about how to build bombs, and then you decide what you do with His philosophy is everyone should own a bomb. Mm-hmm. ah So Heap invites Vic back to the casita.
00:57:58
Speaker
And when Vic and Story lock eyes, you can tell he's about to go bang out the cookbook.
00:58:07
Speaker
So Story figures it's mission accomplished. So that night she expects a giant eagle to come pick her up. And that the scrunt that was bothering her before, he can't come around anymore.
00:58:18
Speaker
Don't need to worry about the scrunt because that's against the rules. There are rules and scrunts have to obey them. Yeah. But then Heap finds her scratched up and dying. And so Young Soon and Mrs. Choi tell him that scrunts can be poisonous.
00:58:36
Speaker
That's important to know. And that also he'll need to find a magical key to cure the poison. Now, only a rogue scrunt would dare attack narf.
00:58:48
Speaker
waiting for her eagle, Mrs. Choi tells him. Luckily, there's something already in place to deal with a scrunt that breaks the laws of the blue world, Tartutik.
00:59:00
Speaker
The Tartutik are a trio of invisible monkeys that are pure evil and also enforce the law. See, the more you say this out loud, the more embarrassed I am.
00:59:13
Speaker
Okay, so this... This was not your takeaway from the movie because this overwhelmed me when I watched this. Yeah, no, this is pretty wild. It's also really weird where it's just like they are the ultimate evil and also the judges of the world. It's like, wait a minute. That doesn't make a lot of sense. Also, why is this happening in America when it's a Korean myth?
00:59:38
Speaker
So those are all good questions. These are all good. Well, it's not. It's just an Eastern myth. It could be from anywhere. Oh, East Coast, America. Yeah, it's just that just that all the lore is being delivered to Heap by two ladies from the mysterious East.
00:59:53
Speaker
Yeah. yeah That's right. East Coast. Go Eagles. Now, so Heap... gets spotted in the stairway with a very ill story by Vic's sister.
01:00:06
Speaker
And she sees story looking very sort of inebriated and out of it and wearing only one of heaps dress shirts and assumes that heap is a player.
01:00:17
Speaker
And, uh, To me, it seemed much more like he had roofied a grad student. Yeah, this whole thing is super weird. Which is like, can you believe it? He had this like nude person who was passed out in the hallway. You know what that means? means he's fucking getting some.
01:00:33
Speaker
It's just like that's not the takeaway. That is not the takeaway that I thought you were going to come away with. I didn't expect you to be excited for Mr. Heap. No, that's not what I think when I see my stuttering superintendent, Paul Giamatti, leaning over a nude Bryce Dallas Howard in the stairwell of my apartment building.
01:00:53
Speaker
Like, oh, all right. some. He's getting some. Yeah, get yours. It's weird. Now, anyway, Vic and Anna agree to keep an eye on story while Heap looks for the magical healing key.
01:01:12
Speaker
He dives down to the bottom of the pool where he finds Story's secret lair, which does have the key, he and he has to breathe air through some that's held upside-down cups.
01:01:23
Speaker
i got I gotta say two things about this. One... He spends too long in there without getting any air that when he started going for it. Yeah. when he I was just like, he should die. He should be dead now. And then I was like, well, I guess we're just not going to address the air. And then he's like, oh shit, I'm running out of air. It's like, you needed to do this like two minutes ago.
01:01:43
Speaker
Also, that air is dead now. That air has been captured. That is stagnant air. There's no oxygen left in that thing. You're going to die underneath there. He's underneath water for like six minutes and breathes one time. Weren't you ah under suspense?
01:01:58
Speaker
Oh, certainly. Yeah. I almost ah had to skip ahead because I was like, this is like an ace. I mean, i don't want to watch anybody drown in water. I have a fear of open water, so I was terrified. But I also knew from the fact that he wasn't drowning already that he's probably going to be fine. Also, did you feel he they were really lazy about making it not look like ah the Little Mermaid's lair?
01:02:22
Speaker
Yeah, it did have Little Mermaid vibes for sure. was a for There was fork there. you know I mean, maybe that was a deliberate reference. Maybe. ah ah The great at the bottom of the pool is a deliberate reference to a great in Hitchcock's Strangers on the on a Train.
01:02:40
Speaker
I'm sure we all caught that. excellent Excellent. No, I saw that and I said, Strangers on a Train. Mm-hmm. You were there. You heard me say it.
01:02:51
Speaker
Let's dive to the bottom of the bottle pool. ah Before he can use the key to heal Story, Young Soon tells him that the reason a scrunt would go rogue is if the narf he's hunting is a Madam Narf, who is like a queen narf, but they call her a Madam Narf instead.
01:03:13
Speaker
So Heap tells Story she's a Madam Narf. Great. she's She's very excited. Story also tells Vic that someday his manifesto will inspire a great leader.
01:03:24
Speaker
Cool. Awesome. Sounds great. Uh, he realizes that he needs more information and his only reliable source is Mrs. Choi, who will only tell him more of the story. If he acts like a baby, because he likes babies.
01:03:39
Speaker
Great. This is such a weird great scene. so cool. There are a lot of funny moments in this movie. Like legit, like even signs had funny moments.
01:03:50
Speaker
No, no, it was funny. It was just it was insane weird. Yeah. Yeah. To see Paul Giamatti hugging his knees and smiling with like a milk mustache so that a Korean woman will like tell him a children's story.
01:04:07
Speaker
which It's just madness. She spent most of the movie not letting him in the apartment. And then he's milk-mustached, lying on her couch. With his shoes still on. Yes, swinging his legs around. yeah Still pretty fun.
01:04:23
Speaker
Yeah. Sure.
Assembling the Team and Climax
01:04:25
Speaker
Now, Mrs. Joy tells him that the Madam Narf should get some human helpers for this situation, and they'll be known by their character classes.
01:04:34
Speaker
Those classes are a symbologist, a guardian, a guild, which is actually five people, and possibly a healer. There may or may not be a healer. We'll find out later, I guess.
01:04:47
Speaker
Listeners, there's going to be a healer. So he... so he decides he needs to go ask somebody who knows about stories, uh, what, how they would interpret this. So he goes to talk to Mr. Farber and he asked him how to find these people.
01:05:05
Speaker
If this was a story and Farber says to look for people who was hinted at earlier in the film. Now, the thing is he, Probably had interactions with people that we didn't see anyway.
01:05:18
Speaker
Yeah. yeah He didn't experience his life as a film as far as we know, but anyway. So they figure Heap is the guardian. Heap's got to be the guardian because he's been helping out story this whole time.
01:05:32
Speaker
Guardian all the way. The smokers, they must be the guild because there's five of them. Five guys. and And then Mr. Drury, he's a symbologist because that guy Jeffrey Wright Yes, Jeffrey Wright in a thankless role here.
01:05:47
Speaker
But doing a decent job at it, say. It was good. Yeah. um And Mrs. Bell, the cat lady, is the healer. Now, that said, Drury tries to read his crossword puzzle for signs and sigils and omens and portents.
01:06:06
Speaker
Great scene. His answers don't make a lot of sense. He's like, oh, four down. Soiree. Let's throw a party. Everybody.
01:06:18
Speaker
it's It's so weird to me... that like the movie sets up its own rules. And then it's like, but the Madam Narf can break the rules if she wants to. That's how we know she's a Madam Narf. And then it's like, none of you can look at me, but how are we going to do this? And they're like, so I know how to do it. We'll throw a party. It's like, I don't, I'm confused as to how the throwing of a party helps you not look at her when the giant eagle comes to pick her up.
01:06:42
Speaker
Well, then they all have to go inside because there's going be a band inside. Which happens real Whenever I hear loud music, I go into the building. Yeah, i go that's going to be the best part of the party, the part where I can't have a conversation. i just need to stand and act like I'm liking this for 45 minutes.
01:07:00
Speaker
yeah That's right. And we need all of you in the living room for this. And I mean that. Literally, none of you are allowed to stay out there. Nobody turn around. Yeah. But yeah like kind of a it's kind of a play on like a trying to balance faith and realism and skepticism.
01:07:17
Speaker
Sure, sure. And so they they really leaned into the symbologist here. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The false prophet, we will soon learn. learn Now, everybody agrees that ah the party to distract the scrunt is a great idea.
01:07:34
Speaker
ah That night, Heap tries to use his guardian powers to dominate the scrunt mentally, but it doesn't work. And cracks are beginning to show, baby, that means I'm not the guardian.
01:07:47
Speaker
The next day, Vic has finished his book, and the story tells him that one day it will get him assassinated. Great part. Yeah. Yeah.
01:07:58
Speaker
That was chilling to me. To think. Do you think someday this podcast will get me assassinated? Don't put it in the universe. Because it's so great. Everybody loves it so much. You've said so many things about leaders and stuff, so I don't know. It's true. I've said so many truths.
01:08:16
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Now, let's see. Story is looking kind of bad at this point, possibly for being away from the blue world too long. She likes to hang out in showers and stuff. I don't know why she doesn't hang out in the pool during the day.
01:08:30
Speaker
i bet she'd really love the pool. Yeah, it's also crazy because like everybody in the building knows who she is, so she can just hang yeah out in the pool. But the scrunt's better, no? During the day? Yeah, I thought the scrunt was more of a nighttime thing, but maybe not.
01:08:43
Speaker
I don't know the rules. I guess the scrunt will take whatever opportunity it can get. That scrunt is... so yeah It's already breaking the rules, so the rules don't matter. That scrunt's being real scrunt. That scrunt's being a real scrunt. That's a madame son.
01:08:57
Speaker
No. Now, ah the party plan, it starts off, it seems like it's going okay, but not great. And then at some point, somebody lo leaves their post, and the scrunt grabs Story and drags her off into the grass.
01:09:12
Speaker
Then drops her when Heap goes chasing after him. But she has already been inflicted with several poisonous wounds, so this could be a problem.
01:09:24
Speaker
Luckily, they have Mrs. Bell as a healer. So Heap drags her back to Mrs. Bell, but Mrs. Bell is unable to heal her. And people are starting to realize that this plan isn't working.
01:09:38
Speaker
Meanwhile, ah the scrunt kills Mr. Farber. Mm-hmm. Take that, you nasty old film critic. Yeah, F-U critics. You just don't get it. He delivers this great deadpan monologue, though, about you know how now's the point where an unlikable character is menaced, but because this is a family film, they won't actually kill him, and then you know he's not genre-savvy enough to to not get destroyed.
01:10:12
Speaker
Yep. ah Now, Mr. Drury realizes that he's not the symbologist. It is, in fact, his son who can interpret cereal boxes. Yep. He reads the cereal boxes, and they assemble a new crew.
01:10:25
Speaker
It turns out, he he's actually the healer. And he prays to his dead family. His family's dead. And also earlier in the film, we learned that he used to be a doctor. So it was established earlier. He is a man of healing.
01:10:39
Speaker
And they said also the healer is often a woman, which does provide that it's sometimes non-binary.
01:10:51
Speaker
He heals story from her scrunt injuries. And the new crew is assembled with the Latina sisters from the very first scene as the new guild, plus ah Mr. Leeds, and also a guy who was taking a shit the entire movie.
01:11:09
Speaker
No reason. Yeah. Great stuff. Yeah. was Played by the guy that played Booz Malus on Oz. That's the main thing I remember that guy from.
01:11:20
Speaker
And ah then we also find out that Reggie, the asymmetrical man, is our guardian. Of course, he's so strong. And we saw him with dog tags before. He's a scrapper. He's a warrior. Hmm. And collectively they fend off this rogue scrunt long enough for a giant Eagle to come out of the sky and pick up story while the tartutic tears the scrunt apart.
01:11:42
Speaker
And then we get a really, really down tempo Bob Dylan cover over our credits. And that will be our closing song this week. Listeners stick around to hear this. I turned off the credits.
01:11:56
Speaker
Cause I, Cause I was over it. And then the friend that I was watching it with was like, this Bob Dylan cover is so bad. And I was just like, I stopped a while ago. I'm sorry. Like I not paying attention anymore. And I like went back to listen. Cause I read some articles about this and a couple of them have really talked at length about that cover. Like it was somehow monumental to understanding the film.
01:12:20
Speaker
ah and so I listened to it. Yeah. I read a lot of bad articles about this movie. Um, Yeah, that sounds like a bad one. they did use ah They did use a Chibomato song. So that's good. During the party.
01:12:34
Speaker
I don't remember that, actually. It's worth a rewatch. Maybe? I'll see if I can find the one without dialogue. and Just listen to the music.
01:12:45
Speaker
I'll look it up to you and text it Final thoughts. Five-star ratings on our two-axes scale, watchability and weird. Who wants to go first? I can go.
01:12:58
Speaker
Yes, Greg, Greg, Greg, the hero. As far as weirdness goes, well, this movie is pretty weird. If you just realize that it's like a children's story that he told his kids that he turned into a film, I think it becomes far less weird.
01:13:15
Speaker
And some of the weirdness about it, you can just say is sort of the absurdism. So I'm going to say that in a weirdness scale, it's like a two and a half. ah It doesn't strike me as like too weird. It's plenty weird, but just not in a like a really weird way, if that makes any sense.
01:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's not cool cult following weird. Exactly. just sort of all Just sort of weird. And as far as watchability goes, this is a tough one for me. Because at times I found it's like, i can see why someone would like this as a bad movie.
01:13:50
Speaker
I suppose I could see why someone would like this as a good movie. Um, but as far, like, as far as like I had trouble with it because it really, not only does it hit the nail on the head, it keeps hitting it over and over.
01:14:08
Speaker
And it's just like, here's a different hammer. It's like, I already know that you know how to hit a nail on the head. I don't need another different hammer to prove that. Also the nail is in the board. um and so And so that to me got a little tough at times. So I'm going to give this also a two and a half as far as watchability goes.
01:14:28
Speaker
Wow. Fair enough. The double two and a half straight down the middle from Greg. How about you, my dove? Where did you wind up? Well, i would give its watchability a full four ah yeah because I think there's always something crazy happening. That's true.
01:14:50
Speaker
I love to see crazy things happening. And as far as weird, i do agree with you, Greg. It is a kind of weird.
01:15:00
Speaker
The weirdness of someone, I think, who is not personally a very weird person. Yeah. But I'd give it about but about a three. It still is pretty weird that it's about, you know, ah lady who lives in the swimming pool.
01:15:21
Speaker
Well, but how about you, Manolo? Where did you land? ah Watchability, I would say four. know most people don't like it, but... ah It is a thing where, ah like you said, that it's almost mechanical in the sense that there's so many pieces that are working together towards the end, and then it just cuts off.
01:15:45
Speaker
And that's all you need. so it's always I do like that it ends very suddenly. Yeah. and ah And, you know, they could have cut out the ah prologue. And then weird, ah I think contextually, it's not cool weird, which makes it extra weird. And for a ah and for And then the kind in the context of it being technically a big budget mainstream movie that's based on people not wanting to call out Night, um I think I would give it a four also.
01:16:27
Speaker
Okay, fair enough. Well, i I was really confounded for my ratings. I think I landed at about a two on watchability just because i did find ah the character of Young Soon to be kind of abrasive.
01:16:44
Speaker
And all the nouns, all the proper nouns, all the neologisms from this were all like impossible to take seriously. so it was like any time I started to get into it,
01:16:57
Speaker
You know, i would be like, oh, oh, wait, but there's Night Shyamalan casting himself as a writer who will change the world. Like there would just be something that would just yank me out every in like a really jarring way, like at a very consistent pace in the film.
01:17:12
Speaker
I think that also made it kind of weird and that did keep it interesting. I'm like, I don't know. I gave it, I gave it four stars on weird because I felt like it was once this again, i felt like it was emotionally manipulative, but in a way that I didn't understand why it was doing that.
01:17:31
Speaker
It felt like someone was just twisting dials randomly on my feelings.
01:17:37
Speaker
So that's an odd experience. I'll give it that. You weren't affected by ah ah the messaging of like purpose or anything. No, mostly because I felt like these people's purposes were just like this one night to help Vic write the cookbook. Vic's cookbook. It's impossible to take any of this seriously. I agree. I think if he hadn't cast himself as the person who's going to change the world, it would be just a completely different movie.
01:18:15
Speaker
Genuinely. Absolutely. like it's It's wild to me that he did that. Like, completely. and everyone else in the film is so well cast. Yeah. Very well cast.
01:18:26
Speaker
He was a director. what if yeah What if I was the little boy who read the book but watched the movie and I'm the one who changes the world because of him i would Manolo, that would be the greatest thing to come out of this movie.
01:18:42
Speaker
Genuinely. That's the pitch for Lady in the Water 2, Lady Back in the Water. You just want me to kill Knight. You don't. No, no, no, no. Someone else is going to do that. You're going to be inspired. Yeah, yeah. I don't know who's going to do that. And I'm not saying anyone should.
01:18:57
Speaker
But if he tries to stop you from making your Lady in the Water fan film, then that's the sacrifice that we have to make. I would do it just to make Narf an E.T.
01:19:08
Speaker
with a wig. Yes. Yes. You should just remake Lady in the water, but just re just put an E.T. puppet and a wig in every time Bryce Dallas Howard is on screen. You would be a great Cleveland Jeep. I would. I think you'd crush it.
01:19:27
Speaker
Well, with that, do you guys want to listen to Anna's ah research of desk for our first segment? desperate. I am too. I'm going to be honest.
01:19:39
Speaker
I'm going to hit that bumper. We re-recorded it.
01:20:03
Speaker
I read a book once, it related to this movie. It had a lot of pages, but it was pretty groovy. There's more than one source of information, if you care to take a look.
01:20:19
Speaker
And if you need resource, then you can be like me. Because I read a book. Because I read a book.
01:20:38
Speaker
nice Take it away, my heart. Tell us about this amazing book. All right. So ah much like the movie Who's Making It Chronicles, I would not say this was a good book, ah but it is fascinating.
01:20:53
Speaker
um Remind us of the title. ah The title is ah The Man Who Heard Voices, How M.
Shyamalan's Persona and Book Insights
01:21:01
Speaker
Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale and Lost by Michael Bamberger.
01:21:07
Speaker
and um Bad movies will sometimes have books about their making published after the fact, like the disaster artist about the room or I think the, the little boy who played the little boy in troll to eventually wrote a book about ah the experience. i think so too. I think, I think, and I think the little girl in monos also wrote a book anyway, but those are usually happen like long after the fact, after the the movies got an occult following, but this was written about um a major mainstream movie by someone who was there observing and reporting from from the beginning. He had access to the set, the crew, the cast, and especially Knight himself.
01:21:49
Speaker
ah Michael Bamberger was primarily a sports writer. ah he met Shyamalan... at a fancy party in Philadelphia, and basically he just seemed to get pulled into ah the man's charisma. it It's very clear from the book that Sean Lone is a very personally charismatic guy.
01:22:11
Speaker
like he does seem to have a way of making people believe in his um ah projects. And the Michael Bamberger was like, okay, I really believe in you. I want to write a book about you.
01:22:25
Speaker
yeah And the book ends up being a hagiography that is much more revealing than a more skeptical book would have been.
01:22:37
Speaker
okay um I think. I actually, I saw a review on Goodreads saying that it's actually good that this book was written by somebody who liked Shyamalan because otherwise it would just be too mean.
01:22:52
Speaker
and i I can definitely see that. um ah Like I said earlier, ah that it is a recurring theme that Shyamalan, you know,
01:23:04
Speaker
gets upset at people and at himself for failing to inspire them ah whenever they he gets any negative response at all. ah ah he He thinks of himself or thought of himself at the time as a, quote, idiot savant for knowing feelings instantaneously.
01:23:25
Speaker
So he kind of thought of himself as an empath. um i could I could quote a lot of wild things that ah Knight says in this book, but I'm going to limit myself to two.
01:23:36
Speaker
ah One, I believe if I had unlimited practice time, after two years, I'd be able to shoot with any NBA player. i did he is 5'10 and did not make his high school varsity team.
01:23:51
Speaker
He didn't have unlimited practice time. Yeah, no, he didn't. At an audition space, he tries to like talk to a kid in an elevator and the kid's not interested in talking to him.
01:24:02
Speaker
And he says afterwards, um the sad thing to me was that had the mother figured out who I was, and then she would have been all over me. You know, can you put my son in one of your movies?
01:24:14
Speaker
Like that. But rather than take a chance, she just decided that I was another kook in a New York elevator. She was too closed off from the world to let a stranger in, a stranger that could have changed their lives.
01:24:28
Speaker
She paid no attention to the moment. So that's a real shame. Yeah, you should have let this stranger keep talking to your child in an elevator. Right! It could have been Night dumb
01:24:43
Speaker
Shyamalan. There are some good passages in the book that um I enjoyed. it ah i was telling Chris earlier that you know, it being written by a sports writer rather than someone who knows anything about movies, ah it's missing...
01:25:02
Speaker
kind of a lot of the the art. um But he is, he does, he's good at describing the actual physical processes of, of filming a movie. There's one scene in particular, I think of where he talks about a scene with just Paul J. Motti and Bryce Dallas Howard in front of the camera.
01:25:23
Speaker
um And then, you know, night directing. But the camera itself is being operated by three people at once. There's the DP, ah Chris Doyle. There's the focus puller, a guy named Glenn Kaplan.
01:25:38
Speaker
And ah Dolly Grip, Red Burke. And they all have to be working in concert as the camera moves. to you know to get the to get the film ah that they want. um And and after like after they filmed it, because it hasn't quite gone well, you know this Dolly Grip is of the opinion that they shouldn't have had the DP um behind the camera, that he should have that it really should have been four people operating the camera, that you should have had the DP just framing it, and then the actual camera operated by
01:26:16
Speaker
the camera operator, Pat Capone, because apparently, you know, Red's like, hey, you got the best camera app operator in New York here. What are you doing? um He's really, Bamberger is really good at making all of these rules and names in the credits seem like like real people and showing how they, they work together as crew.
01:26:38
Speaker
um So that was interesting to me. By the end of the book, ah you know, it is obvious that the the movie doesn't work. um the first time Night's Wife sees it, and this is without the little narration at the beginning, but the first time she sees it, what she says is, i love it, but it's not your most important movie, which I feel must have been just absolutely devastating. yeah She knew. She knew what was coming around the bend. She knew, yeah. the author ah yeah ah the author also describes the first time he sees it
01:27:16
Speaker
As devastating because, you know, he's been with him through like, a you know, wait a year or more on the making of this movie. And he's like, all of this, why? Why doesn't this?
01:27:27
Speaker
Why isn't this working? Why? You know, kind of like, why don't I like this? um And he wrote, you know, a new afterword for the paperback edition. ah which starts with the words, the poor bastard.
01:27:40
Speaker
was very funny me. His publisher insisted on adding the two words, and lost, to the end of that subtitle for the paperback edition. Oh, okay. I was wondering about that. And he says, the author says,
01:28:01
Speaker
ah he's like, Knight may have lost his carte blanche rights to Final Cut for a while, but he'll earn them back. And you know what? He wasn't wrong. It did. It took a while.
01:28:13
Speaker
ah But, you know, if you buy the, I think if you buy the Kindle, now it doesn't have that end lost on the end of it anymore. Interesting. um So he did spend some time working with and for other people and,
01:28:28
Speaker
Yeah, he earned it back. yeah
Shyamalan's Resilience and Film Industry Impact
01:28:30
Speaker
But he's still out there making movies, and he's still got an audience. He still has people that love him. Yeah. you know the The movie Old, ah he used the cinematographer for It Follows, who I also think is amazing.
01:28:44
Speaker
Wow. Oh, no interesting. That's a great movie. Older, it follows.
01:28:50
Speaker
It follows. I haven't seen it either. I want to. I hear people recommend Old is whatever, but there's a scene that was just like really beautiful where it was like just her the camera person chasing kids around while they play freeze tag, and it was just like a great shot.
01:29:06
Speaker
i don't know. And when they froze, they would get, oh.
01:29:14
Speaker
Well, do you guys want to play a game? Please. Sure. All right. Let's play a little This Guy Played That Guy.
01:29:29
Speaker
This guy played that guy. Yeah! This guy played that guy. This guy played that guy a fair...
01:29:51
Speaker
All right, so we're doing this guy played that guy with Bob Balaban, the films of Bob Balaban. So what we're going to do is I'm going to read you a title in the year the film came out and a brief plot description, and then I will read you the name of three characters from the film. I want you to tell me which one was played by Bob Balaban.
01:30:11
Speaker
And this is a buzz in game. You will buzz in by saying your own name. Is everybody ready? Yeah. okay All right. Hands on buzzers.
01:30:22
Speaker
Let me get myself set up. All right, here we go. Question number one. The Strawberry Statement, 1970. An apolitical college student joins a group of campus protesters to meet girls, but gets swept up in their cause and involved in a violent confrontation with the police.
01:30:44
Speaker
Does Bob Balaban play Elliot, Swatch, or dr Benton?
01:30:52
Speaker
Greg. Greg? Swatch. Good answer, but incorrect. Can either you guys steal? Anna. Anna.
01:31:04
Speaker
Elliot? That's correct. hey Anna's on the board. um not good with names. It's all right. I vote with my guts, so I don't even really think much about it. I just kind of feel about it.
01:31:19
Speaker
Pure guesswork. I'm often wrong. Most of our games are, in fact, guessing games. Question
Awarding Scenes and Critiquing Techniques
01:31:26
Speaker
number two. Dead Bang. 1989. Okay.
01:31:30
Speaker
okay A man kills a storekeeper and a cop. When L.A. Sheriff Department Detective Jerry Beck gets the case, he learns his prime suspect is connected to a heavily armed white supremacy group.
01:31:46
Speaker
Dead Bang. Dead. Bob Balaban play Sleepy, Ray, or Elliot?
01:31:58
Speaker
Anna. Anna? Elliot?
01:32:03
Speaker
That's correct. You played Elliot. I hope they're all named Elliot. I hope every character he played is named Elliot. Question number three. Absence of Malice, 1981.
01:32:15
Speaker
A liquor wholesaler is falsely suspected in the murder of a local longshoreman, a union president, causing his life to unravel. Did Bob Balaban play Davidek, Elliot, or Santos?
01:32:31
Speaker
Greg. Greg? Is it Elliot? That is correct. He played Elliot. All right. I see where he played Elliot two more times on different television shows, but that's our last Elliot.
01:32:45
Speaker
Okay. All right. Damn. That's interesting. He has a lot of Elliot's. It suits him. ah Question number four. Report to the commissioner.
01:32:57
Speaker
1975. Politics skew the probe of a rookie detective's accidental shooting of an undercover policewoman. Did Bob Balaban play Crunch Blackstone, Stick Henderson, or Joey Egan?
01:33:18
Speaker
Anna. Anna? Crunch Blackstone?
01:33:25
Speaker
No, that was Yafet Koto. That makes more sense.
01:33:30
Speaker
Greg, were you trying to steal? Yeah, yeah. yeah Was it Joey Egan? It was Joey Egan. Wow.
01:33:40
Speaker
Manolo, you're running out of runway here. How many questions are there? There are nine. We're on question number five. Okay. Question number five.
01:33:52
Speaker
The face of fear. 1990. A killer traps an unarmed police officer and her husband, who is a former mountaineer with psychic powers, inside a Manhattan office building.
01:34:05
Speaker
Wow. What was the name of again? The face of fear. I will be tracking that down later.
01:34:13
Speaker
Did Bob Alaban play Graham, Ira, or Frank? Manolo. Manolo?
01:34:24
Speaker
Ira.
01:34:27
Speaker
You got it. Good job. there Manolo's on the board. That's all I need. Yeah. Now you can at least go home, you know, with your head held high.
01:34:40
Speaker
And you're already at home. You work from home.
01:34:44
Speaker
Question number six. Fading Gigolo 2013. Figueroa Vante decides to become a professional Don Juan as a way of making money to help his cash-strapped friend Murray.
01:34:59
Speaker
yeah Did Bob Alaban play Murray, Dovey, or Saul? Anna. Anna? Saul?
01:35:12
Speaker
Correct. a Murray was played by Woody Allen. And Fioravante was played by Barton Fink. Why can't I remember his name?
01:35:25
Speaker
Oh, Turturro. Turturro. I kept on wanting to say Tucci. That's not Stanley Tucci. Question number seven. Thin Ice, 2011.
01:35:37
Speaker
A dishonest insurance salesman's life quality quickly disintegrates during a Wisconsin winter when he teams up with a psychopath to steal a rare violin from a reclusive farmer.
01:35:50
Speaker
Did Bob Balaban play Leonard, Gorvie, or Hotel Manager?
01:35:58
Speaker
um Oh. Greg? Greg. Hotel Manager. I'm sorry.
01:36:07
Speaker
What made a good hotel manager? Manolo? Was it Gorvie? It was not Gorvie. It was, in fact, Leonard. no Leonard.
01:36:19
Speaker
Question number eight. Conversation with the Beast. 1996. An American historian travels to Berlin to meet with a 103-year-old man who claims to be the real Adolf Hitler.
01:36:35
Speaker
Oh, wow. Wow. Did Bob Balaban play Adolf Hitler, Mr. Webster, or Dr. Hassler? What year was this?
01:36:47
Speaker
1996. Okay. and okay Anna. Anna? Dr. Hassler? Nope. Adolf Hitler's still on the board.
01:36:57
Speaker
I know, and I don't want to say it, but I kind of want to say it, you know? this is This is interesting. What was it? If it's not Adolf Hitler, it's whom? Mr. Webster.
01:37:09
Speaker
All right. I'm just going to say, Greg. Greg. i'm I'm going to call it the elephant. who I'm going to say Hitler.
01:37:18
Speaker
I'm sorry. Bob Alaban did not play Adolf Hitler. Okay, good. He played Mr. Webster. All right. All right. Last question. Question number nine. Nothing lasts forever. 1984. true.
01:37:30
Speaker
it's true An artist fails a test and is required to direct traffic in New York City's Holland Tunnel. He winds up falling in love with a beautiful woman after he takes a trip to the moon on a lunar cruiser.
01:37:46
Speaker
What? This movie sounds very strange. It's apparently a Dadaist film. I downloaded it. It's apparently never been screened in America, but it is on our Plex server. whoa i Did Bob Balaban play Father Knickerbocker?
01:38:01
Speaker
Central Park bum or guy with sunglasses in espresso bar. great Manolo. I'm just going to say sunglasses, espresso bar. Probably wrong.
01:38:18
Speaker
No, you are correct. That was an uncredited role for Bob Balaban. What is it called again? It's called ah nothing lasts forever. i'm very curious about it.
01:38:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:32
Speaker
Well, congratulations to Anna. You are the big wiener. Hey. la um You've done it. Well, guess what, everybody? It's time for the Batty Awards.
01:38:49
Speaker
Now you're messing with the Batty Awards. Now you're messing with the Batty Awards. Now you're messing with the Batty Awards. Now your mass will whip for Batty Awards.
01:39:02
Speaker
Congratulations to all the nominees.
01:39:15
Speaker
That's right. Congratulations to all our nominees. Congratulations to you, listener. You've made it the final segment of the show. It's the Batty Awards. Greg, who's your Batty Awards? My baddie award this week, I'm calling the heavy sigh award.
01:39:29
Speaker
ah And that goes to the, ah the game of telephone that is had on a telephone, ah which is something I've not actually seen before. Again, it sounds just like you would imagine where someone's like, I need to know this. And she's like, put her on the phone. And then he puts her on the phone. And then that woman said something and he picks up the phone and he's like, what did she say? And she's like,
01:39:51
Speaker
She said this. And it was at that point where I was like, I just wish this movie could tell its story instead of showing me how someone is telling its story while telling its story.
01:40:03
Speaker
I would just like it to be told as opposed to told to me. I would just like it to be told. ah I think this is a lot. So much exposition. Yeah. And it's all done by someone else telling someone else what someone else is saying. It's like, it's not just exposition.
01:40:19
Speaker
It's exposition that's been interpreted. And that is largely why I gave it two and a half because ah ah like after a while it was like, I just want the story to happen. I just want it to happen or be told to me, not told to me by someone else being told what it is.
01:40:36
Speaker
So you want more prologue. Basically, yeah. Cut to a cartoon made by a college student. And at least ah they could probably do away with at least three scenes of them saying what they're about to do.
01:40:49
Speaker
Yes. mean, like, okay, if that story means that, then that means the next thing I should go to is this. And then you see them doing it. Yeah. Anna, do you have a Batty Award?
01:41:00
Speaker
Yes. I would like to give it to ah Mr. and Mrs. Bubchick. The ah Jewish couple where he's in the crapper for most of the time.
01:41:11
Speaker
yeah They're played by ah the great Tova Feldscher. And the guy is named um Tom Marderosian. Great.
01:41:23
Speaker
Just great actors. Always love seeing him. Yeah, that's true. Classic Law and Order regulars. Yeah. I'm going to give my baddie award to best catchphrase, and that is, of course, babies on the half tip.
01:41:38
Speaker
Yeah. Not Glam Glam.
01:41:42
Speaker
Not blim blam. What's that? Not blim blam. No, no. I've got to go with babies on the half tip. I literally laughed out loud when she said blim blam.
01:41:53
Speaker
Blam blam is pretty good. I didn't catch it when she said it, but in one of the articles I read, they mentioned how they said it. But I did love the babies on the half tip thing. ah That moment was just a really beautiful moment. That felt very natural and real to me
01:42:08
Speaker
What about you, Manolo? Do you have a Batty Award? So what's a Batty Award? It's something... Was there any just a little award that you can give out to any little moment that hasn't come up before? Something that you... ah Uh... I feel like I said everything, though.
01:42:26
Speaker
Fair enough. Manolo's given out the mission accomplished award. We did it all in this episode already. Congrats, everyone. I give it to all of you. Oh, thank you so much. It feels good to win one of these finally after presenting so many to finally the recipient. Always a bridesmaid. Yeah.
01:42:44
Speaker
yeah Manolo, thank you for coming on. Thank you for recommending such a fun movie. I know we all loved it. We all love talking about Oh, yeah. I mean, loved it in our own ways. No, I did. I really enjoyed it. I'm glad I got to see it, thank you. I'm glad was able to subject it to you.
01:43:00
Speaker
Yeah, it was a very fun time. Do you have anything that you want to plug? ah Just my podcast, Dr. Game Show. Dr. Game Show is really fun, you guys.
01:43:12
Speaker
We're kind of, I don't know if the listeners like hearing this, but I feel like we kind of plateaued. You're really selling the new listeners.
01:43:25
Speaker
Yeah, well, ah I think
Podcast Promotion and Community Engagement
01:43:29
Speaker
in a good way, it became more of of like just hanging out with Zoom callers.
01:43:36
Speaker
And I think that's fun. Yeah, and I think that sense of fun does really come across on the show. I think if you like our game segment of the show, Dr. Game Show is all games, top to bottom.
01:43:48
Speaker
It's just a ah real blast to listen to. i Dr. Game Show gets a very strong recommend from me. Oh, thanks. And now, listeners, if you want to Let me be honest with you. I'm, I, I stumbled on that opening listeners.
01:44:04
Speaker
I'm freaking out and I need your help. I need you to leave us five stars. need you to tell your best friend to listen to the show. and need you to come, ah shoot us an email so you can join our discord. You can find links to all that stuff in the link tree in the episode description.
01:44:19
Speaker
Come join our discord. We've watched movies in there every month. Uh, we've been watching a lot of episodes of the oval lately, which has been a lot of fun. Yeah. Uh, check out Manolo. Have you ever seen Tyler Perry's The Oval?
01:44:32
Speaker
No, that's a Tyler Perry. It's about the presidency. Yes. that's an interesting way of saying it. The Oval. Yeah.
01:44:44
Speaker
It's a very, very strange telenovela that he filmed super fast on a super tight budget that is incredibly over the top. It's just a ball.
01:44:55
Speaker
oh And it's a series. It's a series? Yes. It's like 23 episode seasons and he films them all in like a month. It's something crazy.
01:45:06
Speaker
Roger Corman over here. it's It's a brutal, it's, I mean, salute to Tyler Perry. He's getting it done. Uh, listeners come hang out with us. Leave us five stars, follow, subscribe, tell your friends, leave a review, ah all that stuff. And, ah come back next week when we'll be having Pete Spear on to talk about, addicted to murder, tainted blood.
01:45:38
Speaker
Yes. There we go. I think it's Addicted to Murder 3. Addicted to Murder 2. This is Addicted to Murder 2. Oh, okay. check that out. And in the meantime, ah be good.
01:45:52
Speaker
Goodbye. Goodbye.
01:46:03
Speaker
You just sit here? Yep. Okay. This is the part of the show where we decompress. that's right Oh, can I plug one more thing? Yes.
01:46:14
Speaker
I'm selling a comic book while you decompress. I'm selling a comic book on my website, maslow.xyz. Sick. I'll put that in the show notes.
01:46:33
Speaker
Wow.