0:00

Hey listeners, please don't skip ahead. This

0:02

is an important message. So

0:05

we had some technical difficulties at the top

0:07

of the show. The sound

0:10

is not as good as usual for

0:14

a few minutes up at the top of the show. Eventually

0:16

it does clear up and

0:19

goes back to normal, but I

0:21

wanted to warn listeners ahead of time

0:24

so that they know that it will not stay

0:26

that way the whole time and urge them, please

0:29

listen to the show. It's a great episode. We

0:31

have a great guest. We have Meredith Scardino, creator

0:35

of Girls 5. I have a very funny, she fit

0:37

right in. Don't

0:40

let this dissuade you from listening.

0:42

I apologize that this happened.

0:45

We're taking steps to make sure that the

0:47

audio will always be of a

0:50

higher quality in the future, but I just wanna let

0:52

you know up top. Thank

0:54

you. This episode

0:56

we discuss disclosure. This

0:59

movie's got everything from the 1990s. Mentions

1:01

of Prozac, Nordic Trap,

1:03

hard copy, built-in fax

1:05

modems, very animated email

1:07

menus, Stairmaster, Fat Barbie?

1:11

Sock Monkeys and Dennis Miller. Hey

1:26

everyone, welcome to The

1:28

Fluff House. I'm

1:38

Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm

1:41

Elliot Kalin. And today we

1:43

have a very special guest, the

1:46

creator of Girls 5. I

1:49

have one of the funniest shows

1:51

going right now. It's on Netflix. People

1:54

should watch it so I can watch more of it.

1:58

Meredith Scardino, hello. Oh,

2:01

it's an autumn to be here. I love that energy. She

2:06

says, the reputation says. I met a cat. It's

2:08

great. Yeah, one of the

2:10

two cats that lives here was kind enough to come

2:13

out and say hello. The other one, Dan, admit the

2:15

other one is a man in a cat costume that

2:17

you pretend is a cat. But

2:19

it's shy. Yeah, it's very shy. The shyer

2:22

of the two cats. You

2:24

can get away with that if you just have that

2:26

shy cat be a guy in a cat costume. Yeah,

2:31

where would he live, though? There's

2:33

so little sleeping room. Anyway. I

2:35

imagine you have your bed up on blocks so he

2:38

can fit under the bed a little bit more comfortably.

2:40

Sounds so. Yeah, you convinced me. Let's do it. Also,

2:42

because you've taken the wheels off the bed, so it

2:44

has to be up on blocks in your front yard,

2:46

I guess. Yeah, and we're

2:48

in the middle of a New York heat wave,

2:51

so you've got to keep that guy in a

2:53

cat suit hydrated, Dan. Keep him cool. Yeah. Yeah.

2:55

That's why the sip. He can sleep in a

2:57

bed with a frozen bottle of water. I think

2:59

the mayor suggested we do this fucking crazy. This

3:02

episode is brought to you by Fros Cat Man,

3:04

the frozen bottle of water specifically designed for a

3:06

man in a cat costume who's pretending to be

3:08

a cat. That's

3:11

a good sponsor. Well, we

3:13

did our usual weird cat man

3:16

bit to make our cat come to the

3:18

mill. Seven years running. The

3:21

man is named Cat Man Crothers, the guy who lives in your

3:23

house and pretends to be a cat, right? I

3:27

can only hope that I was clever enough to name that. So

3:30

yeah. Wait, I do

3:32

have one because you just made a cat

3:34

joke, but you also made a cat joke

3:36

about Claudia Schiffer's cat being named Claw-Dia Schiffer.

3:39

And I feel like it's actually

3:42

Claw-D, and

3:45

then it's Italian, a Schiffer. I

3:48

like that words. Or is

3:50

Claw-D comma a Schiffer? Like

3:53

I'm labeling it as a Schiffer. I

3:55

like that. I see a Schiffer.

3:57

I see a Schiffer. If

4:00

that cat is one of those cats that has

4:02

like the markings to make it look like it

4:04

has a mustache, that would be perfect. Cause all

4:06

Italian cats have mustaches. They all do. This is

4:08

what we've been eating. We needed Meredith coming in

4:10

and juice a punch up on our head. Yeah,

4:12

she's brilliant. She's a great, brilliant truck writer. I

4:15

was listening to it yesterday. So I was like, what is

4:17

the podcast? What is this thing? And I was like- What

4:19

did I get myself into? Anyway,

4:21

Meredith, thanks for coming and helping us talk about

4:24

how the woke media is destroying this country. I

4:26

was like, Claude, be a shipper?

4:29

I'm like, no, it's Dee a shipper.

4:31

Who do I yell this to? On

4:34

the sea. Just

4:37

grab someone by the shoulders, shake them. Yeah,

4:41

tell them. Yeah, they need to know. People need to

4:43

know this. You run to the New

4:46

York Times offices and you're banging on the windows.

4:49

In addition, of course, Girls Five out

4:51

of the Way, met Meredith

4:53

because she wrote for the Colbert Report.

4:56

Our nemesis show, when we run the

4:59

Daily Show. We stole your mascot, all

5:01

that stuff. You have all

5:03

the pranks. All the pranks. And

5:06

I have always like, as

5:08

someone with a big inferiority complex,

5:11

I've always been very, I've

5:14

looked at Meredith from afar very fondly because she

5:16

remembers who I am when we run into

5:18

each other every once in a while. Despite being

5:20

much more successful than you. Exactly, that's all

5:22

I looked for. There's not that many writers that

5:24

are like, white guys with beards.

5:26

I know who wear a lot of plaid. In

5:29

a plaid shirt, in on a cat. I've

5:31

worked around so many comedy writers that I'm

5:33

very good at telling subtle differences. They're like

5:36

a monolith to the pedestrian. But

5:39

to me, I can see detail. Beard

5:42

is a little more kind. Yeah,

5:44

this guy is a little quiet around people

5:46

he doesn't know. I'm

5:49

guessing he listens to Talking Heads and

5:52

Wilco? Mm-hmm. Anyway,

5:55

but now that we've roasted

5:57

me. He probably has strong opinions about- whether

5:59

Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not.

6:01

I still, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how you

6:03

can tell me apart though, I don't. I

6:06

bet this guy likes IPA. Hmm. Ha

6:08

ha ha ha. Does he

6:10

know that it's a me Mario backwards?

6:13

It's a tome. Ha ha ha ha.

6:15

Does this guy even know? I

6:18

love it. I've been missing out, I didn't know

6:20

that one. I didn't know that either. I feel

6:22

like that's the video game generations put a boob

6:25

list and a calculator upside down. It is, yeah.

6:27

It is, mm-hmm, yeah, I think so. Dan,

6:31

you get a calculator. I didn't do boob lists. I

6:33

didn't know there was a variant, but that also is

6:35

new. Dan, upside down calculators

6:37

represent both with boobs, those are the ones

6:39

with those. Well, this feels like how there

6:42

was like a big hole in your use,

6:44

like you had an Amish year or something

6:46

and you just missed the calculation. Yeah,

6:49

you did a real voice one. I

6:53

knew the boob's part, which is the part

6:55

that would like, you know, make one titter

6:58

to oneself. As

7:00

a kid, like boob less, you know, like you're

7:02

removing the dirty part of it, you know, so.

7:04

Yeah, Dan, that's, I guess that's true. Good point,

7:06

okay, you knew boob's, but you're like, we can

7:08

stop there. We can stop there, I don't wanna.

7:10

Yeah, yeah, well, as soon as he saw the

7:13

word boob's, he got nervous that his parents might

7:15

catch him. Yeah, he threw

7:17

away the calculator. He's not greater than

7:19

you. Yeah. I

7:23

have to remember why he did this. Why was it a good-ass episode

7:25

of Roastin' Dan? I have to

7:27

remember where I hid this calculator in the woods so I

7:29

can come back for it. So

7:31

Dan, what do we do on this podcast besides

7:33

Roastin'? It's a podcast where we watch a bad

7:36

movie and we talk about it. And, you

7:38

know, when we're a guest, when we're a guest, when

7:40

we're a guest, we're a guest

7:42

all the way from our first cigarettes to

7:44

our last day and day, yeah.

7:46

When we have a guest, you

7:49

know, we like to get their input on

7:51

what we talk about. I gave a list

7:53

of possibles and we settled

7:55

on disclosure. Yeah,

8:00

the movie based on the Michael

8:02

Crichton book that dared to

8:04

ask what is sexual

8:07

harassment, but a lady, a lady

8:09

that's in this town. Putting the her in

8:11

harassment, yeah. Except for then it

8:14

pivots from that. It's not really about that. It's about

8:16

the men in harassment. But I guess it's true. Oh,

8:18

that's true. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. I

8:21

was like, I was like, there's

8:23

about two seconds where I'm like, maybe I'll be

8:25

like, do a bit where I'm like a hardline,

8:28

weird men's rights guy on this. But

8:30

that's not how I abandoned. No, you don't want to

8:32

do that. That's not a good

8:34

fit. Finally, a

8:36

movie is the courage. Except

8:39

it does. Except that's the thing. It does. It's

8:42

a real basis. It's as if Jurassic Park was like, here's

8:44

a movie about dinosaurs. It's

8:46

about tax dodging. The IRS is

8:48

going to shut down this amusement park because

8:51

they hid these files. It's also super muddled

8:53

in a way that like, we'll talk about

8:55

it, I'm sure. But I get the feeling

8:57

that maybe Barry Levinson, the

8:59

director, got the book. He's like,

9:01

we can't do that.

9:03

So he tried to sort

9:05

of complicate the thing a

9:07

little bit, but it just makes it really muddy with

9:09

the movies. Maybe. The

9:11

scary dinosaur is woman. The scariest dinosaur. The most

9:13

terrifying monster of all. No,

9:16

woman. I

9:20

mean, as a kid, my introduction to Michael Crichton's

9:22

stuff was Jurassic Park, of course. And so I

9:25

was shocked. A lot of the other movies based

9:27

on his work had like sexy

9:29

stuff in it, like this one and what? Rising

9:32

Sun? And Congo with those hot gorillas.

9:36

Yeah. Yeah. And he got

9:38

into this more reactionary period. I think he

9:40

got like sexier too. I

9:42

read a lot of the earlier, like

9:44

Andromeda's Train is not particularly

9:47

ironic. It's about fear. Fear

9:50

has one moment of eroticism in it, but

9:52

otherwise not much. I think it's true that

9:54

he probably did go through this period where

9:56

his stuff was pretty straightforward science. I mean,

9:58

Westworld has barely any. Sex

10:00

stuff in it. There's that there is a sex scene

10:02

between a man and a robot But the implication is

10:04

that this is not great and then HBO show was

10:06

like we'll fix that and

10:10

The but then I think you're right because this later

10:12

books are very like Anti-climate

10:14

change science and things like that like

10:16

he's there was that anti evolution Like

10:20

he became very reactionary in a weird way But

10:22

I guess so many of his books the

10:24

message of it is don't try to

10:26

change anything or invent anything Because

10:29

it's gonna go bad keep things

10:31

exactly the way they are right

10:33

now Which is the most reactionary

10:35

conservative message possible or it was

10:37

until? Conservatism became about trying to

10:39

turn America into like a Christian

10:41

feudal state based on Bitcoin Yeah,

10:46

well, let's steer away from that

10:48

and then steer back into it when we have to But

10:53

some Meredith why why disclosure? Well,

10:56

I had watched it not

10:58

that long ago Okay, which was one of

11:01

things and I so this was a labor-saving

11:03

measure for you. Well, I did rewatch it

11:06

But I had always known So

11:08

there's a lot that first of all So

11:11

I had heard about it. Well one

11:13

the protagonist name is Meredith.

11:15

So it's just in a selfish way

11:17

I just watch things with money I

11:26

love the idea that that blockbuster video would have a

11:28

Meredith cut of movies where they just dubbed your name

11:30

in over the characters names That you would come and

11:32

rent it. You also have a lot of mega death

11:34

albums because you're like, it's close enough But

11:38

I know actually I was tipped

11:40

off by Sam means daily show

11:43

writer about the the VR tech

11:45

in In

11:48

this film of 1994 and it's just Amazing

11:53

it's like this the

11:56

the main character Michael

12:00

Douglas's character works at this

12:03

VR company in Seattle. So

12:05

they put on VR headsets, they do a demo,

12:08

and all they do

12:10

is then enter a virtual file.

12:12

Yeah. Yeah. This is the hallway

12:14

full of files. And pick out

12:16

files. It's like the least imaginative

12:20

type of technology. The least imaginative

12:22

type. Yeah, exactly. It takes

12:24

much more time and effort than looking up

12:26

a file on a computer. But we'll get

12:28

to it, but I love the moment when

12:31

he's in that virtual space and Demi Moore's

12:33

character appears in it. And it looks like

12:35

they took the wireframe from those experiments with

12:37

chimps where they tried to see if they

12:39

could make a chimp treat a

12:42

wireframe with a nipple on it as a mother.

12:44

It's like they took that wireframe and just stuck

12:46

a headshot of Demi Moore on it. And it's

12:48

just kind of hovering through this space. It looks

12:50

terrible. It's like lurching around like it's in the

12:52

Money for Nothing video. And she starts

12:54

blasting files with a laser to delete them. That

12:56

happens when a user accesses that from a computer,

12:58

not the VR set. But

13:07

she seems to have no idea that he's in there.

13:09

It's weird that he is very aware when he's in

13:11

there. Anyway, we can get into the leads now. Yeah,

13:14

we'll get to that. Also, in Roger

13:16

Ebert's review, he points out how would

13:18

any company keep all of its most

13:20

secure files in a demo of

13:22

their new products that they're going to show to

13:24

people? That blew my mind

13:26

too. I know, I'm a

13:28

cybersecurity guy. Yeah, there's all of so-and-so's

13:31

financial records. It's like, hey, watch it,

13:33

watch it. Just use this as the...

13:36

Yeah, I feel like there is a disclaimer as

13:38

soon as you log into the VR rig, they're

13:40

like, this is all just for fun use. Entertainment

13:43

purposes. But this is

13:45

actual information. Please don't

13:47

use this real confidential information to save your

13:49

job. I just... I

13:52

find the lack of

13:54

imagination about the technology super funny. I

13:56

feel like sometimes people do

13:58

really interesting things like... Minority Report, I

14:01

feel like did future tech,

14:03

very interesting, but I feel like just

14:05

to be like, how do files work

14:07

in the future? Oh, more files. It

14:09

just feels like if you

14:11

were like during horse times, thinking of like

14:13

what a flying vehicle would be, and then

14:15

you'd think it still needed to be a

14:18

horse. A horse with wings, yeah. Somehow like

14:20

a Pegasus, like or whatever. It's

14:22

like the only way your brain could

14:24

imagine the future. But to

14:26

give credit to the people behind disclosure, when Mark

14:28

Zuckerberg was like, in the future, you'll be able

14:30

to use meta to have a meeting for work.

14:32

And it's just like, you're just in a board

14:35

room sitting at chairs next to people who are

14:37

in the meeting with you in a virtual space.

14:39

It was like, really? This is the best we

14:41

can do with it? There's still a table? Like

14:44

there's, I'm still

14:46

next to somebody, but okay, Stu.

14:49

But that, well, I will say another thing

14:51

that drew me to this movie. Well, once

14:53

I started watching it, I was

14:55

there for the, I

14:58

wanted to see that virtual scene. Yeah, you were

15:00

there for the high tech shenanigans. I was there

15:02

for the high tech shenanigans. But then I got

15:04

there and I was watching the

15:07

movie. And first of all, it also has this warm, 1990s

15:15

Seattle loft office

15:17

look. There's a lot of woods and dark brick. Yeah,

15:20

there's something very comforting about

15:22

seeing that kind of stuff and that kind

15:24

of movie. But then you're like, okay, this

15:26

is a movie about if

15:29

sexual harassment happened to a man. And I

15:31

was like, but wait, did we ever get

15:33

the one for women? We never did. Well,

15:35

that's just nine to five. I just jumped

15:37

to the guys, nine to five. But that

15:39

was like a comedy. You know what I

15:41

mean? Like maybe there was a little in-tootsie.

15:43

That was all we got. Like there's just

15:46

not, they just jumped to

15:48

like the horror of it happening to a man. Like you

15:50

can only imagine it being terrible if it happened to a

15:52

man. Yes, I mean, that is the main thing about this

15:54

movie. It's like, am I gonna say

15:56

that like it's never happened this way? Of course not.

15:59

But it has been. Like the percentages

16:01

are way on the other side, but we're

16:03

like, let's do this one first. That's how

16:05

it's. Let's. They

16:08

talk about it as sexual harassment, but

16:10

it is a full sexual assault scene.

16:13

Like it is not sexual harassment. Like,

16:15

come on, sit on my lap or

16:17

whatever. How that goes down. There's

16:20

the scene. Oh no,

16:22

I was chilling, I'm sorry. The

16:24

one scene in the movie that I felt

16:26

like was starting to get under what

16:28

this movie could have been, Michael

16:30

Douglas is being interviewed as

16:33

part of their arbitration or whatever. And the guy's

16:35

like. By the sleaziest lawyer. By the sleaziest lawyer.

16:38

He's incredible. He's like, you didn't want it at

16:40

all? Because you were there, you didn't have to

16:42

be there. And it was like, oh, if this

16:44

was a good movie, it would be a man

16:46

being subjected to all the shit that a woman

16:49

is subjected to. Yes. But it

16:51

only happens in that one scene. And otherwise,

16:53

he's a superhero who can sneak in and

16:55

out of hotel rooms and things like that.

16:57

It's a. This is Michael Douglas. This is

17:00

like peak, this is file this movie in

17:02

the category of Michael Douglas is the coolest

17:04

dude and he drives women insane with love.

17:06

Yes, yes. This is basically the same era

17:08

Michael Douglas where he is, every woman wants

17:11

him so bad. And he's also like, he's

17:14

immediate, he's very much

17:16

the victim. And

17:19

then he wins in the end. I also think, can

17:21

I jump, I mean, in the end, well, whatever,

17:24

we don't. You can jump wherever you want. But

17:26

I do have something to say about the end.

17:28

Well, let's get to the end of the plot

17:30

a little bit. Unfortunately, we have a no spoilers

17:32

policy. We never talk about the end of the

17:34

movie. We just say, and now audience, check

17:37

it out your local library, don't take my

17:39

word for it. You have an exhaustive scene.

17:41

So the movie disclosure is broken up into

17:43

five days. The first

17:45

day, Monday. Tom,

17:48

our hero played by Michael Douglas, receives an

17:50

email, as I mentioned before, all the emails

17:53

in this movie, this is 1994 emails. Can

17:55

you imagine? They're all super animated. When you

17:58

close an email, it crumples. like somebody crumpled

18:00

up a piece of paper. When you open

18:02

it, it unfolds a piece of paper. America

18:04

Online existed at this point. It

18:06

also starts with his daughter saying, daddy,

18:09

you got an email. Like it's a big

18:11

event, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because there

18:14

just aren't that many. That was the most

18:16

fan. The inbox counts are so low in

18:18

this. Whenever there's emails, it's like you get

18:20

one at a time. Yeah, I'm like, take

18:22

me back to that time, please. That was

18:24

the biggest fantasy in the whole movie for

18:27

me was not Demi Moore wanting to have

18:29

sex with me, but was seeing my email

18:31

count be zero. I was like, oh man,

18:33

amazing. If only, can you imagine? So I

18:35

was just too aroused by that. My

18:38

unread emails, I'm just looking

18:40

around are 11,530. Meredith, you're giving me

18:42

stress. I'm at roughly the same number,

18:44

and my kids love to update me on what it is to

18:47

look over my shoulder. And they're like 11,000. It's

18:50

gone up a lot since last time. And I'm like, all

18:52

right, all right. And you live like this. You gotta, you

18:54

can't, you gotta. I have two children. I don't have time

18:56

to just sit and answer emails all day. 99 plus. I

19:00

mean, you don't have to answer all of them.

19:02

It's not like fundraising emails. I

19:05

do get a lot of fundraising emails. And I end up on a lot of,

19:07

somehow I'll find myself subscribing to newsletters.

19:10

I don't remember subscribing to. Yeah, newsletters.

19:12

Also the funny thing to me about

19:14

this email though is like the

19:17

daughter prints it immediately. And

19:19

I'm like, this has

19:21

to be like a plot point later that

19:23

they have a printout of this email. Because

19:25

otherwise, why would any person, even in this

19:27

time of in history, why would this happen

19:29

this way? It's trying to show the technology,

19:31

the high tech. I do remember

19:33

though, when email was first becoming a

19:35

thing and we were trying to get my

19:37

mom on board and

19:39

she was resistant and she just

19:42

goes, ah, an email, just fax

19:44

me. Like

19:46

the convenience of a fax. It's

19:49

just, you know. I can't believe your mom just came

19:51

up with her own cool catchphrase. Yes. Okay,

19:55

so he gets an email. We have an opening credit

19:58

sequence where we get a tour of their low. just

20:00

outside of Seattle home. We're

20:03

hearing voiceover where his daughter mentions the email.

20:05

She also is curious about what

20:07

her dad is wearing around his neck. It's

20:09

a tie, I guess he doesn't wear ties.

20:11

Although he wears a tie every single other

20:13

scene of this movie. So I don't know

20:15

what the- I think he's so in fear

20:17

of losing his job that the rest of

20:19

the movie he's like, gotta dress up, gotta

20:21

gussy it. I can't wear my- He's in

20:24

tech, so I assume he's usually wearing like

20:26

a stained rush t-shirt to work. So

20:29

he does also like in these early scenes,

20:31

he is the most like sloppy

20:33

dad version of Michael Douglas. And then

20:35

he starts putting on, tailored

20:38

suits as things go on.

20:40

And I, Audrey was like,

20:43

is Michael Douglas sexy? Why is he always supposed to

20:45

be sexy in these movies? I'm like, I

20:47

don't know. Like he has like,

20:49

he's normally like- He's a attractive

20:52

fan. I think it's his voice a lot. For

20:54

me, I think it's his voice. He's got a

20:56

great voice, he's got gravitas. I think there's also

20:58

an element of he is a pro. I think

21:00

they're like, he's been in a bunch of sexy

21:02

movies. Just put him in this one too. Well,

21:05

that's my mom for years and years had a

21:07

big crush on like Richard Gere. And

21:09

I never understood it until I finally saw

21:11

American Jigolo. Yes. Where I was

21:13

like, oh, he's incredibly sexy in this. But

21:16

also, isn't that also during like, like

21:19

Pat Riley is sort of in the same

21:21

category, the basketball coach. Oh, okay, I can

21:23

see that. As like Michael Douglas. And I

21:25

feel like he was a sex symbol of

21:27

the time a bit. I feel like there

21:29

was like a certain look. He's also super

21:31

tall. That time. Yeah,

21:34

there's a couple of guys at my

21:36

gym who only call me Richard Gere.

21:39

Which I'm like, I don't think I look

21:41

like him, but thank you, that's a huge

21:43

compliment. Well, it's also, I think now it's

21:45

a little bit harder partly because our idea

21:48

of sexy man in mainstream culture

21:50

has not, it's not quite at the same

21:52

level of that it has gotten

21:54

closer to the long running idea of a

21:56

sexy woman, which is young and incredibly fit,

21:58

as opposed to Michael Douglas. who is a

22:00

mature man who is in good shape, but

22:02

he's not buff. And now it feels like-

22:04

And he's got that sick mullet. Our sex

22:06

symbols are what, like Channing Tatum and guys

22:08

like that who are unrealistic for a man,

22:11

the same way that female sex symbols have

22:13

always been unrealistic for women. Well, also he

22:15

got stuck in this lane where he's very

22:17

good at, and someone needs to be this

22:19

guy where he's like the

22:21

kind of sleazy guy who his dick

22:23

gets him into trouble. Like, that was

22:25

his thing. His dick that he can't

22:27

control. Yeah. There's also that

22:30

element of this where it's like, the body

22:32

does with the body. Yeah, that's true. He

22:35

couldn't resist. The sex assault scene

22:37

is amazing because it's like he's fighting as

22:39

if the devil is tempting him. And he's

22:41

going, no, no, but his penis is just

22:43

so, holding all the blood from

22:45

his brain. He just can't resist it. But what

22:47

if this movie was called Dick's Closure and his

22:49

penis could talk to him and his penis is

22:51

like, we got into this. And he's like, you're

22:53

getting me into trouble, stop. We can't do this

22:55

anymore. It would be a green,

22:58

like netted looking penis with like

23:00

a picture of a penis head.

23:02

A very fall forward man. Yeah,

23:05

very, VR penis, yeah. Who is the voice of

23:07

this penis? 1994, who doesn't do? I

23:10

mean, Matt Fruer could be a choice.

23:12

Matt Fruer would be perfect. I feel

23:14

like that's almost too polished though.

23:16

You just typecast as a penis. I mean, there's also

23:19

a version of it where it's Bobcat Goldsway or Gilbert

23:21

Gottfried. I mean, that's a different piece. Brought you to

23:23

Pinchot. Brought you to Pinchot, yeah. Yeah, but doing the

23:25

bulky ones. You want it to be funny. Ronson

23:28

Pinchot, it's almost like both names could be

23:30

used as a euphemism for a penis. I

23:32

gotta say though, Dick's

23:34

Closure sounds like, you know, like a

23:36

movie about a guy named Richard who's

23:38

like, wife dies and he's seeking closure

23:41

on all day. Dick's sporting goods that's

23:43

disclosing, yeah. Alexander Payne movie. Okay, so

23:45

we. We're still on Monday. So

23:47

we're through the opening credits, that's great. Okay,

23:49

so we learned that. And he gets some toothpaste on

23:52

his tie too and everyone has to comment on that.

23:54

Super important, I'm glad that. Why

23:56

is he late in that first scene? He's a

23:58

terrible time manager. Well. He's with his kids, but he's

24:00

not really doing that much to

24:03

help with his kids. This whole family has issues

24:05

with time management and balancing parenting and work.

24:08

I'll just say that right off the bat. As someone who is

24:10

quickly dying because

24:12

I'm doing too good a job at it, they

24:14

are better at balancing it. So we

24:17

learned that he is up for a promotion

24:19

and that his company, I think Digicom is

24:21

the name. Digicom. They are about to have

24:23

a merger with another company. Digicom

24:27

is of course a company of digital and communism.

24:32

Oh, interesting. That's better

24:34

than comedy is what I thought you were gonna

24:36

go with. Digital and comedy. We're trying to bring

24:38

comedy to the internet. It'll never work. Tom

24:41

also has a cell phone. That was pretty

24:43

fancy technology for back then, right? He

24:46

also, he has to take a ferry to work. He bumps

24:48

into this older guy who got laid off and

24:53

that guy is kind of the specter

24:55

of potential unemployment that he compares himself

24:57

to. This guy sucks too. He's like

24:59

everything about him is retrograde and horrible

25:01

and resentful and bitter. He's

25:04

the villain of the movie as far as I'm concerned. And

25:07

it's hard to be that sad on a boat. Yeah,

25:09

exactly. You're on

25:12

a ferry. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

25:14

It's inspiring. I was just thinking that I'm

25:16

like, what can I do in my

25:18

life so that I can take a ferry to work

25:20

every day? And then I realized it's just that island.

25:22

Move to that island, yeah. That's what you have

25:24

to do. It's also the water taxi. I used to take

25:26

the water taxi when I worked at Kimmy Schmidt in Greenpoint

25:29

and I would bring my dog on it. And I

25:31

just felt, I would just hear the, let

25:34

the river run, like the whole time. And sometimes

25:36

I would even listen to it. And

25:39

I was like, I can't believe this

25:42

life I'm living right now. The

25:45

wind blowing in my dog's ears.

25:48

I imagine getting off the water taxi and

25:51

like Mary Tyler Moore, instead of throwing her hat in the air,

25:53

you throw the dog in the air and just freeze frames and

25:55

smile. It's definitely, yeah.

25:58

Okay, so we see the DigiCom.

26:00

office where he works, which is

26:02

very like open plan. It's very

26:04

progressive. There are plenty of glass

26:06

brick walls, which I love. I

26:08

thought those were the height of

26:10

making it. Man, I need

26:12

to redo a run-up for one of them. If

26:14

you have glass brick walls, you are either in

26:17

a successful billion dollar company or a successful New

26:19

Jersey hair salon. That's the two places you are.

26:21

Yeah, in both case,

26:23

very classy. Success. So

26:25

Michael Douglas, Tom, as a Zoom call

26:27

with the plant manager in Malaysia, because

26:29

there seems to be some kind of

26:31

issue with the production. This has to

26:34

do with microchips or some shit. They're

26:36

making- It's very important. So it's very

26:38

important. They have two products this company

26:40

is making, virtual reality file storage and

26:42

a new CD-ROM drive that's supposed to

26:44

move much faster than normal CD-ROM drives.

26:46

And there's some kind of problem with

26:48

what's coming, the quality control is bad

26:50

and the ROM drives are not working

26:53

properly. Something has gotten into the assembly

26:55

and quality control is just down

26:57

the toilet. And this is so much more

27:00

important for the ultimate story of the movie

27:02

than the sexual harassment. It's bonkers. How much

27:04

this movie eventually twists on product

27:07

manufacturing chain decisions

27:09

in a CD-ROM

27:11

company. It

27:13

makes the movie more exciting, right? If it's not

27:15

about sex and power, it's about CD-ROM manufacturing. Yeah,

27:19

is that the sweetener? Is that the

27:22

dessert for the vegetables of

27:24

the sexual harassment storyline? I'll sit through Demi

27:27

Moore's shirt being torn open, but only if

27:29

I can hear about what pitfalls there could

27:31

be in trying to cheap out on CD-ROM

27:33

manufacturing. It's sort of like in

27:35

the firm when he got him on mail fraud.

27:37

Yeah. So

27:41

there's a lot of rumors around the office about

27:43

the merger. Tom was hoping that he was going

27:46

to be promoted to vice president, but it looks

27:48

like he might not get it and that he

27:50

might even lose his job. At one point, he

27:52

slaps his assistant Cindy on the ass and they

27:54

do a closeup of it. And you're like, what?

27:56

What is this guy doing? Not

27:58

cool. No, I'm actually, it goes. Boom, boom,

28:00

boom, and closes up and it's slower each

28:03

time and louder each time. So

28:05

there's a, it turns out that

28:07

yes, he is indeed passed over

28:10

for promotion for Meredith, an ex-lover

28:12

of his, who helped

28:14

negotiate this merger, and

28:17

that if he wants to keep his job,

28:19

he kind of has to placate

28:21

her, right? Is that kind of the impression? Yes, and

28:23

I'll just say it right here. At this point, I

28:26

already felt Michael Douglas did not deserve

28:28

this promotion, and it was a

28:30

fantasy that he was ever gonna be in line. Everyone's like, oh,

28:32

you didn't get it, huh? And I'm like, he seems to not

28:34

be very good at his job, and

28:36

he's not, can't even be counted on to get to

28:38

work on time. He's always- And he

28:40

also has, the first thing we see of him

28:42

in the office is

28:46

him smiling to himself, admiring a

28:48

set of legs walking up a

28:50

staircase. Yes, yeah. And then

28:52

he pats, yeah, he pats his assistant on the

28:54

butt with a file folder. He just doesn't- Well,

28:57

and I think that this is the movie's

28:59

clumsy attempt at being like, even though he's

29:01

in the right, in

29:06

this larger situation, he is part

29:08

of this system. We're

29:10

all of us sinners. It's institutional misogyny, and

29:12

he'll learn later. He'll

29:14

have his lesson, yeah. Right, but it

29:17

does sort of make

29:19

the movie seem weird, like you're supposed to sympathize

29:21

with this guy right from the start. Well, I

29:23

think that's the thing is, I think the movie

29:25

does expect you to sympathize with him right from

29:27

the start, because he's Michael Douglas, and he's a

29:29

cool dude, but he's trying hard. He really wants

29:31

to get Disneyland tickets for this colleague

29:34

of his, but he's not

29:36

likable. And to

29:38

me, it was- But Dennis Miller is way

29:40

worse. Yeah, well, that's the thing. You

29:43

wanna make Michael Douglas seem cool,

29:45

guessing what's a Dennis Miller. Yeah,

29:47

he talked about her having nipples,

29:50

like pencil erasers. Yeah,

29:53

yeah. You mentioned the- In my head forever

29:55

now. The limbic system. He

29:57

really leaned into saying the limbic system.

30:00

There was a period of time when, in the 90s, when

30:03

people are like, let's put Dennis Miller

30:06

in supporting roles in everything. Was

30:08

this before the net or after? This was a year

30:10

before the net, right? This is 94, the net was

30:12

95. Okay, so he probably got the net because they're

30:14

like, he knows high tech shit, right? He knows computers.

30:16

I don't remember how this lines

30:18

up with murder at 1600 though, which

30:21

he's also in. Like, yeah, Dennis Miller, I think he was

30:23

making a big bush. Bordello of

30:25

blood. Good question. That I think

30:27

was after this, but I don't remember by how

30:29

much. By then he moved his way up to

30:32

starring roles. So we're really running through this plot

30:34

here, but I do wanna take a second point

30:36

out that. So

30:38

you think Dennis Miller comes from a line of

30:40

Millers? I mean, I can

30:42

only assume. Do

30:45

you think when they put out the movie, We Are The Millers,

30:47

he was like, what the fuck? I'm right here. I

30:50

gotta sue them. And as long as like, you can't, no, you can't

30:53

own the name Miller. With that long

30:56

gestating adaptation of the Miller's tale, Chaucer's the Miller's

30:58

tale, it bakes it to the screen. Yeah, he's

31:00

all over it. Fingers crossed. But what I was

31:02

gonna point out is that. Finally someone's telling my

31:04

story, he opens up the book and reads it.

31:06

He's like, what the fuck is this? This isn't

31:08

English. So it's implied

31:10

that, well it's not

31:12

implied, it's said that Michael Douglas and

31:15

to me, more as characters were former

31:17

lovers. His children in the

31:19

movie are like, what, like six, eight?

31:22

So about, and there's a 20 year

31:24

age difference between the two actors. They

31:27

refer to her as being 33. Which

31:29

is only one year older than her age at

31:32

the time of filming it. I

31:34

think we're supposed to assume Michael Douglas is a

31:36

slightly younger man, not much younger, but a slightly

31:38

younger man than he is in real life in

31:41

this one. It just, it feels like, cause

31:43

if anything, if she's 33, they

31:46

would probably have been together about 10 years before

31:48

this. I don't know, just feel good. She could

31:50

have been in her early 20s and he's in

31:52

his 40s, you know. But he

31:54

also just didn't have that look of stress

31:56

that comes from building CD-ROM. It's

32:00

really a lot of hard years.

32:02

It's like the presidency. Oh,

32:05

he's aged terribly. 25 years

32:08

old in the movie. Okay,

32:10

so she approaches him

32:12

and suggests that they have a meeting after it's

32:14

announced that she's the new VP. A

32:16

meeting in her office at 7 p.m., what? And

32:20

have some drinks, this doesn't feel very

32:23

professional. No, not at all. His coworkers

32:25

all make weird sexual

32:27

harassment jokes. It

32:29

is not funny. He

32:32

meets her in her office, which is partially renovated.

32:37

They share a bottle of wine that

32:39

she picked out that's his favorite. Starts

32:43

with chatting. It then leads to

32:45

a back rub and

32:47

her assistant locking the

32:49

door. There's a

32:51

lot of weird comments about his family

32:53

and his wife. He has

32:56

the weirdest comment here where he shows her

32:58

picture of his family and she says, oh,

33:00

she looks like she keeps the fridge stocked,

33:02

which I took to mean as she intends

33:04

it, that looks like a domestic person. You're no

33:06

longer with a wild girl like me. You're with

33:08

a domestic person. But he goes, yeah, she didn't

33:11

lose all the baby weight after the last kid.

33:13

It's like, one, she's thin. She

33:16

has no extra weight, but also it's such a weird.

33:19

It's that if this was a better movie, I

33:23

feel like that would be a character as it is.

33:26

It's meant to be, I guess, him revealing an anxiety he

33:28

feels that he's not with a woman that is as attractive

33:30

as she used to be or something. But the movie doesn't

33:32

support that and it comes out of nowhere and it's a

33:34

bad movie. So it just comes off as like a weird

33:36

thing for him to say. It's like they

33:38

were, you could feel them doing the math of what

33:40

would sound bad in the deposition when it was brought

33:42

up later. Yes, exactly. But it could have just been

33:45

like a picture of her at the beach and she

33:47

just goes like, huh, one piece, huh? You know, like

33:49

to kind

33:51

of be like, okay, she's had kids. Like, you're

33:54

not one piece. Remember when we used to go to the beach and

33:56

I wore one piece, just the bottoms. And he's like,

33:58

ooh, I remember when we- We're so sexy together.

34:01

Yeah. Oh man, Elliot, you

34:03

are missing your calling for writing erotic thrillers.

34:05

Yeah, yeah, remember when you used to, remember

34:07

when I just wore the bottoms and you

34:09

copper toned me? That's when he uses, he

34:11

bites the back of it and she runs

34:13

around, yeah, yeah. Love it.

34:15

And they're cartoons. Yeah. Oh

34:18

man. Oh, and he's in a dog costume, yeah, yeah.

34:20

Yeah, yeah. Oh man. Oh, I should introduce

34:22

him to my friend. A man in a dog costume and a man in a cat costume.

34:26

Okay, so at some point she gets distracted,

34:28

so he goes to make a call on

34:30

his cellular phone. He thinks he's calling his

34:32

friend, but she immediately attacks him. She begins

34:34

assaulting him. He keeps saying no. She

34:38

keeps pushing him. Eventually he

34:40

turns it around and kind of

34:42

seems into it. And they are

34:44

about to have some violent sex. And

34:46

then he sees their reflection in a picture

34:49

and he's like, I can't do this. He

34:51

runs away and she threatens him. Yeah, and

34:53

this is another instance of

34:55

the movie. A

34:58

better movie, maybe this would be a good

35:00

choice. It's trying to

35:02

muddy the waters a little bit in a

35:04

way that like. The

35:07

work of muddy waters does. Well, just the complicated, like

35:10

are you trying to say like. It's a

35:12

complicated encounter. It's complicated. There's no perfect

35:14

victim. Right. There's no, you know,

35:16

like that. Exactly, and the fact that he

35:18

seems into it at one point and

35:20

then says no later, like that should

35:23

be, like the no should stand.

35:25

And I think it's putting up against like

35:27

if the genders were flipped. But in

35:29

a movie that stars

35:32

Michael Douglas, a man known

35:34

for like being in like sleazy erotic thrillers.

35:36

I do think it makes

35:38

you weirdly less sympathetic

35:40

to him here that like, I don't

35:42

know. I feel like what they were trying

35:45

to do with his turn a little bit. It's

35:47

like to be like the man can't control himself

35:50

around the siren. Yeah.

35:53

And like, whereas like the version of women, it's like, you know,

35:56

more like disassociating or whatever would happen.

35:58

Yeah, right, pushed into. So he

36:01

became the aggressor briefly because

36:03

it was like she is just

36:05

far too sexy. Maybe, I don't know.

36:07

I think that he's, again, if it was a

36:09

better movie, I could see it that like, he

36:12

doesn't wanna do this, but he

36:15

is feeling, he feels that like,

36:18

he used to be this sex

36:20

machine with her, and now he

36:22

lives a pretty domestic kinda dull,

36:24

everyday life. And there's

36:26

a little bit of, he can recapture a

36:28

moment of when he was younger and more

36:30

exciting, but also that he is possibly seeing

36:33

an opportunity to reassert control over the woman who

36:35

has stolen the job he thought was rightfully his,

36:38

but he knows he really shouldn't do it,

36:40

that he could have, like, again, if it's

36:42

a better movie, he would be a more

36:44

complicated character, and these different drives could be

36:46

going on all at the same time. But instead,

36:48

it comes off as, it feels like a

36:50

superhero being hit with a power dampening beam,

36:52

and going like, I must resist, but can't.

36:55

Oh, God, no, no! It

36:58

feels so, or there's something kind of like, like

37:00

she has a magical hold over him, that he's

37:02

giving into and then can't quite, because she made

37:05

him drink a potion or something. Like, it's a,

37:07

it comes off, I found the scene, it should

37:09

be a really terrifying scene

37:11

if it's done right, but I've had it very funny. Because,

37:14

also because there attempts to be sexy,

37:16

are also so over the top. The

37:19

initial massage, I feel like we watch

37:21

with 2024 eyes is

37:23

like, this is all, this is, oh God, gross.

37:26

The minute she says, rub my shoulders, and he starts doing

37:28

it, it's like, no, no, no. It's like,

37:30

he's just like, yeah, all right. I

37:32

feel like he's not really alarmed

37:34

at that point. It's like, you gotta play

37:37

your game, I rub Donald Sutherland's shoulders all

37:39

the time, that's how I got my job. I

37:41

feel like the movie also- It's talking to you so

37:43

much taller than Michael Douglas. Faltars a little bit here,

37:46

because it's like, okay, we wanna make this a horrifying

37:48

experience that Michael Douglas goes through, but

37:50

also like, this is an

37:53

ironic thriller with Demi Moore, so we wanna make it

37:56

sexy first. Yeah, well we also want the audience to

37:58

be- Which makes it feel like really weird. able to

38:00

come and fantasize that they are with,

38:02

what if I got the harassed by Demi Moore?

38:04

Oh man, amazing. Like there's, I think the movie

38:06

use, the fact is I think you put your,

38:09

hit it right then that like, it's a

38:11

sleazy movie. So he wants to

38:13

have it both ways and like have a message but you

38:15

also get the audience aroused. I did find

38:18

a really great, I was just like Googling disclosure

38:20

reviews at the time and I

38:22

found Roger, this is how Roger

38:24

Ebert's review of disclosure starts.

38:27

Disclosure contains an inspiring, terrific shot

38:29

of Demi Moore's cleavage in a

38:31

Wonder bra surrounded by 125 minutes

38:34

of pure goofiness, whatever. But

38:38

I just like to be like, celebrating

38:41

like her cleavage.

38:44

Yeah. So that's the best

38:46

part. I think one of the things that maybe doesn't age

38:49

as well about his work, but which I actually

38:51

in some ways admire for its honesty is he's

38:53

totally open to when he's a perv. And it's

38:55

like, I liked this movie because these ladies were

38:57

naked in it. Like he's like,

39:00

that's a value too. And maybe because I-

39:02

He was a horny man who wrote a

39:04

movie for Russ Meyer, but also yes, that's

39:07

a weird lead for a movie. That's

39:09

true. So like the best part

39:11

of the film. I

39:13

also wonder if that's him, that's him trying to

39:15

take the classy way out of answering the audience's

39:17

question of, is Demi Moore naked in this movie?

39:20

Which at this point was I think the question

39:22

every male audience member was asking about every

39:24

movie that Demi Moore put out basically at

39:26

this point was, was she naked in it?

39:28

And he could be like, well, I'll mention

39:30

that she's in a Wonder Bra. And that'll

39:32

be telling my perv audience that she's not

39:34

fully naked in it. My perv followers that

39:36

I've cultivated. Yeah. It's a dog whistled

39:39

with a perv. Yeah. So

39:42

speaking of dogs, Michael Douglas goes

39:44

home. Michael Douglas, he has no dog.

39:47

That would be, oh man. Let's go

39:49

back on the calculator. That's the Rover

39:51

Doggerfield or Rover of the Fuck starring

39:53

Michael Douglas. Rover Dangerfield had been a

39:55

hit and then they're like the sequel,

39:57

Michael Douglas. Yeah. I

40:00

love it. Okay, so he goes home, he has

40:02

very noticeable scratches on his chest and he has

40:04

to hide them from his very understanding. It

40:06

looks like he was attacked by a jaguar. So,

40:09

yes. So my wife and

40:11

I watched this movie together and we both suggested

40:13

ways that he could explain

40:15

why his 50 year old man

40:18

chest is slowly healing from scratches

40:21

on his chest. Okay, I'm not gonna

40:23

say who proposed which suggestion. I

40:25

want you guys to vote on which one you think

40:27

you are the best. The first is the next morning

40:30

he immediately wakes up and goes to the animal shelter

40:32

and he buys a cat. Okay. Okay.

40:34

Or he initiates sex with

40:36

his wife and very early on he's

40:38

like, ow babe, what did you do to

40:40

my chest? I get it myself. Okay, so which

40:42

one do you think is the better of the

40:44

more peaceful options? I don't think either of them

40:46

particularly would be convincing, but I would have to

40:49

go with the second one simply

40:51

by virtue of the

40:53

size of the claws. The distance

40:55

between scratches is too small. Yeah,

40:58

you would have to get a very large cat. You'd

41:00

have to get a jaguar. I adopted this jaguar. By

41:03

the way, I adopted this stray jaguar. I

41:06

brought it back. What? You

41:08

have small children in the house. Oh, they're gonna love it.

41:10

They can ride it. It'll be fantastic. And then the rest

41:13

of the movie is actually a family in peril movie about

41:15

a jaguar that's loose in the house. Honey, your favorite movie

41:17

is bringing up baby, right? Well,

41:19

guess what? Had

41:23

Roar been made at this point? Yes, Roar had been

41:25

made at this point. But he does, I thought

41:28

this scene was so funny for, like

41:31

he's constantly not talking to her head on

41:33

while he's having this conversation while in the

41:35

shower. Then when he puts the towel on,

41:37

he's draping it in a way that no

41:39

person has ever put a towel around himself

41:42

to cover up the scratches. And yo, he

41:44

comes home late and he's like, the first

41:46

thing he says is, honey, can you get

41:48

me a beer? I know, that was, yeah,

41:52

he does not come off well. To drink

41:54

in the shower? And it's not like she's in the

41:56

kitchen. Because the shower beers are amazing. She's in bed

41:58

doing work. And he's

42:00

like, can you get me a beer, which means just to get up

42:02

and go downstairs. Like you just came from there. Plug

42:04

in his cellular as well. Yeah. Now

42:06

Meredith, have you had a shower

42:08

beer? I had this so lovely. I'm

42:11

curious about it. I drank it like

42:14

in high school once or twice.

42:16

I drank whatever alcohol I found,

42:18

like if they're in a

42:20

water bottle in the shower. Yeah. As

42:22

a long time night

42:25

bartender, they'll like get home from work

42:27

and drink a tall boy of, I don't

42:29

know, whatever gross, cheap beer I can drink

42:31

while taking a shower before bed was like

42:33

the best thing. Yeah. So I had this,

42:36

okay. Sold to

42:38

me is like a great experience. Like, oh, you gotta

42:40

get a cold beer. You go into the shower. And,

42:43

um, you know, I gotta

42:45

admit, I just, I kept too much work. All

42:47

I can think about was how much water was

42:49

getting into like hot water. That's what I would

42:52

think of that. I was having. Drinking shower water.

42:54

Yeah. That's cause you gotta chug it. The thing

42:56

you need in a, in a shower, which is

42:58

a time limit that you need, that you need

43:01

to really get, get done with, but just chug

43:03

that beer fast. Or you need, you need like,

43:05

uh, like a plastic, very big beer helmet. On

43:09

like an umbrella thing that you can put on

43:11

your head. So you can drink like a shower.

43:13

Yeah. It's a shower cap with beers

43:15

on it. Yeah. Yeah. So

43:18

we got to stop this podcast right now.

43:21

This is our millions. I do want to

43:23

point out that this whole time, his wife

43:25

is being very understanding and she's being very

43:27

supportive, especially when dealing with the fact that

43:29

he is, you know, he's, he's visibly

43:32

disappointed about not getting the promotion. She's like, you

43:34

should just quit. We'll figure it out. And he's

43:36

like, quit. But

43:38

every wife he's ever had in

43:40

every movie is wonderful. And

43:43

Archer and basic instinct, like

43:46

they're all the

43:48

greatest women

43:50

that are stunningly beautiful, but not

43:53

considered the hot ones a little bit.

43:55

Like anyway. Yeah. That's

43:57

Michael Douglas. I guess that was as a.

43:59

There's specifically a message, he

44:02

gets a message that the next morning's meeting

44:04

is being pushed back. This

44:06

message was relayed to him by his wife who

44:09

received a phone call from Meredith and

44:11

he just accepts this. He's like,

44:13

oh great, I get to sleep in. Now I would think pushed

44:15

forward. Pushed back

44:17

makes me think that it is, that the

44:19

meeting is happening earlier, which is actually what happens.

44:23

I would say push up is early. Wait,

44:25

you think that pushed back means earlier? Yeah,

44:28

back in time. The meeting's been pushed back.

44:31

Gotta go back in time. But

44:33

no, that doesn't make any sense at all.

44:35

Pushed up means it's earlier, back is later,

44:38

always. The meeting's been thrown forward.

44:41

This is good for me to know before I get

44:43

into the high stakes world of CD-ROM manufacturing. That I

44:45

know. So is what your CD-ROM career

44:47

has stalled out, Ellie, you've been missing

44:50

all these meetings. This could be it.

44:52

Also, I do think that the CD-ROM

44:54

stands for cats, dogs, rhinos, other mammals,

44:57

which is apparently not what it stands

44:59

for. And then

45:01

he has a nightmare about Donald Sutherland making

45:03

a move on him. That

45:05

was great, great scene. Very,

45:08

very telling. Now

45:12

we're on to Tuesday. Hey guys, what a

45:14

week, right? It's

45:16

only Tuesday. We get the, he shows up

45:19

late to the meeting. There's a VR demo.

45:21

Now we talked about this VR. It's pretty

45:23

cool, right? It's pretty cool. You're in a

45:25

hallway of files. There's an angel that looks

45:27

like the lead programmer who is not very

45:29

good at helping you with the things that

45:32

you need with the software. It is incredibly

45:34

underwhelming, but everyone acts as if this is

45:36

the coolest thing they've ever seen in the

45:38

history of science. I don't want to

45:40

insult this actor. He's kind of an

45:42

unusual looking fellow. And

45:47

then they put his face on an angel,

45:50

which makes it look all the weirder. And

45:53

it's like, this is like, they decided to like, I

45:55

don't know. I feel like if I turned around and

45:57

I saw this angel, can I help you? I'm like,

45:59

ah! Uh-huh, yeah. Ah! Yeah.

46:02

Bring Clippy back. Yeah, you're like, I didn't know I

46:04

was playing Doom. What?

46:09

I feel like they were trying to play that part

46:11

for Comic Relief. Yeah. I think

46:13

they were. I think that was supposed to be a joke. Quite hitting. That

46:15

was not a great face for an angel. Like, oh, you keep

46:17

putting your face on things. Like, it's

46:20

the only face we have right now. Like, I feel like

46:22

it was supposed to be slight of hand so you're not

46:24

noticing the plot points that come back

46:26

here. Yeah. I'll distract you. The

46:28

fact that like, Don Southerland's full

46:31

financial details are in the demo

46:33

for entertainment purposes only. He listed

46:35

his fears, his full schedule. Yeah.

46:38

His psychiatric report. The call sheet for the movie.

46:40

Mm-hmm. Pictures of him in blackface

46:42

when he was in college. All that stuff's there.

46:45

You know he has those. That

46:47

character, not Donald Sutherland's the real actor.

46:49

Yeah, of course, yeah. So Michael Douglas

46:51

is under fire for showing up late

46:53

to the meeting. And he's

46:56

also under fire because Meredith has spilled

46:58

all the beans for the various production

47:00

issues they're having in Malaysia. And

47:02

he is not prepared to answer some of these

47:04

questions. But partially because he brings

47:07

up the issues to her during their

47:09

initial meeting where the sexual assault happened.

47:11

And she tells him the best thing

47:14

to do is to say nothing. It

47:16

is. And then she, during

47:18

the meeting, brings it all up. And

47:20

he sticks to that story of the

47:23

advice she gave him. It's so funny,

47:25

yeah, that he's like, well, she

47:27

assaulted me and she lied about when the

47:30

meeting is, but I better stick with her

47:32

strategy and not throw things off. So

47:34

he's like quoting things she said to him. And

47:37

it's like, dude, she's obviously not your friend. Like,

47:39

why are you doing this? But

47:41

also, yeah, he could be like, yeah, no,

47:43

because I brought these up to you yesterday,

47:45

last night, and you told me not to

47:47

say anything. Yeah. Kind of

47:49

maybe, and then the credits roll. Yeah,

47:53

like one of the best bits is when he like

47:55

repeats one of her talking points verbatim and a guy's

47:57

like, oh, that doesn't mean what you think it'd be

47:59

like. She totally turns off, it's

48:01

so funny. So he- He's

48:04

a moron. He should not have been promoted

48:06

to vice president. Let's just say that right

48:09

there. Yeah, he goes to talk to Phil,

48:11

who's what, the guy from happiness, what other

48:13

stuff see? Oh, Dylan, what's his name? He's

48:15

Connor's in the Sam Raimi Spiderman movie. He's

48:18

in lots of stuff. Who has like

48:20

bad guy hair, Joe. Yeah, he was having

48:22

an American. His hair is very precise in

48:25

a way that you're like, he's bad. Yeah,

48:28

why am I? I also can't remember,

48:30

I keep hearing like- Dylan Baker. He's

48:32

married to someone. Is he married to

48:34

Jennifer Grey? Wow.

48:38

Is that right? It could be possible. We're

48:40

gonna, we'll get to the bottom of this one. So that

48:42

actor's Dylan Baker, who's also, he's

48:44

done a lot of good stuff, yeah.

48:46

Yeah, and he's like- He's a great

48:48

actor. He's kind of, he's Michael Douglas's

48:50

boss, I guess, and like a liaison

48:52

between him and Donald Sutherland, who's

48:55

the head of the company. Well, also, yeah, and

48:57

he is the one who pretends to be Michael

49:01

Douglas's friend at the beginning, but is like

49:03

plotting against him. And it is one of

49:05

these situations where you're like, don't you

49:07

understand that's Dylan Baker. Like

49:09

he's, and he's Dylan Baker with

49:11

like round glasses and his hair slicked

49:13

back. And slicked back hair. This guy's not your buddy.

49:16

Yep, he's got the bad guy hair, Joe, in. That's

49:20

so popular in the 80s and 90s, right? Nope, he's

49:22

not married to Jennifer Grey.

49:25

Who is married to Jennifer Grey? There's only

49:27

one way to find out, call her up.

49:29

Clark Gregg. Oh, right, right, right. Oh, that's

49:32

right, she's married to Becky Ann Baker. Becky

49:34

Ann Baker, who is on Freaks and Geeks.

49:38

Yeah, oh, that's awesome. She's great, and girls, yeah. I

49:40

knew he was married to someone awesome. They're a very

49:42

talented couple, the two of them. That's right.

49:44

Okay, so he goes to Phil and

49:46

he's like, wants

49:49

to make a claim against Meredith,

49:52

but it turns out she's beaten him to

49:54

the punch. She's already made a sexual harassment

49:56

claim against him. What? And he's like,

49:59

that's not what happened. And Phil, says he

50:01

lays out the plot of the movie, he

50:03

goes, a woman harassing a man, which

50:05

should have been on the poster. There's another one

50:08

that should also be on the poster. With an

50:10

interrobang after it. So he starts getting mysterious emails.

50:12

He's been getting a number of mysterious emails. At

50:14

this point, all emails are mysterious because how many

50:16

emails were you guys getting in 1994? I

50:19

was getting like none. And

50:21

these are ones that have no sender's address

50:23

on them. And they're just saying like cryptic

50:25

messages. It kind of

50:27

matters later, it doesn't really matter. This

50:32

made me scrunch up my face and be

50:34

like, is that a thing that was possible?

50:36

Did that hat like, because he kept going

50:38

to the, to see who was sending it

50:40

and it's like no sender available. And like,

50:42

I don't think that that was-

50:44

I bet there was a way to hide the identity to

50:46

hide, the same way you can use it. Like

50:49

a VPN or something. Yeah, you can use a

50:51

VPN. But you would get like an email address.

50:53

You wouldn't just be like, the

50:55

email program wouldn't tell you like, I don't

50:57

know, but yeah. Pretty dumb movie. But

50:59

the twist still, like

51:02

you could have had an email address based

51:05

on the twist that comes

51:08

later about it being from a

51:10

friend. I think they're just trying

51:12

to create suspense. You know, that's a good

51:14

movie. Just trying to make the audience ask

51:16

questions. So one of the, this email, like

51:19

does email do that? We're talking about it,

51:21

right? So it must have worked. This email

51:23

gives up, brings a link to a news

51:25

story about a sexual harassment claim that has

51:27

information about the lawyers who helped that claim

51:29

go through. So he reaches out to those

51:31

lawyers and meets with them. Those lawyers of

51:34

course are played by long

51:36

time character actress Roma Mafia. And

51:40

Donald Loeg, a very young Donald

51:42

Loeg playing the character named- Babyface Donald

51:44

Loeg. I love his name. Chance Gear.

51:48

Sounds like a fucking Cars character. I

51:51

don't think he's ever mentioned by name in the

51:53

movie. They're probably like, let's just give him a

51:55

crazy name. Or is he

51:57

like, dude, can I have a name? I'm just

51:59

called- other lawyer, what about

52:01

Chance Gear? And they're like,

52:03

all right, just let him have Chance Gear. He's been

52:06

talking about it. His own name is Donald Loges,

52:08

so he's used to strange names, so let's just give

52:10

him this one, yeah. Yeah, they're like, hey Michael, great,

52:12

you know high tech stuff, what's a cool name? He's

52:15

like Chance Gear. But she's basically supposed

52:17

to be Gloria Allred, right? Yes. Yeah,

52:20

that's her, who she's supposed to be, yeah. So

52:23

Michael Douglas just wants to settle, he doesn't want

52:25

his wife to find out about it, which is

52:27

fucked up, dude. He should have told his wife

52:29

a long time ago, right? He should have told

52:31

her the night it happened, which is hard, sometimes

52:33

you feel ashamed, you don't know, that happens. But

52:35

also that he didn't mention that for words. What?

52:39

But also the idea. I just gotta message your

52:41

wife real quick, that sometimes this happens to Elliot.

52:43

Sometimes it happens to me, I don't know how

52:45

to tell her. But the fact that he can

52:48

have a legal settlement with his employer

52:50

over a sexual harassment charge and his

52:52

wife is never gonna know about it

52:54

is a very strange, that's a big

52:56

thing to hide. Again, this is like

52:59

a clumsy attempt to parallel,

53:02

like, you know, women get

53:04

a hard time because

53:06

like, oh, you didn't document this, you

53:08

didn't like do the perfect, you weren't

53:10

perfect right afterwards, you know. But

53:13

it is frustrating as a viewer to watch it and be

53:15

like, man, like, you

53:18

are really making it hard on yourself

53:20

right now, Michael Douglas. The

53:22

wife had no idea that she was even a

53:24

former lover. Yes, yeah. I

53:27

mean, if they wanted to lean into

53:29

more about why he didn't say

53:32

anything, like they could have laid in a scene

53:34

where she's feeling insecure about being at, you know,

53:36

like something that where he's just like, oh, this

53:38

is not the time, like, I don't want to

53:40

bother her. That would be treating her more like

53:42

a human being and less like

53:44

a prop that exists to either support

53:47

or cause trouble for Michael Douglas. Right.

53:50

I did think it was very funny that she

53:52

becomes nicer as the movie

53:54

goes along, the wife, I think

53:56

for very like cynical,

53:58

like screenwriting. reasons of,

54:01

you know, we want to be less sympathetic to

54:03

her at the beginning. So we sort of understand

54:06

Michael Douglas. And then later on, she's like the

54:08

good wife he can go back to, but like she's introduced

54:10

being like complaining about how he's

54:12

nice to people who are lower

54:15

on the totem pole than him. Like, you're

54:17

the only one who sucks up to subordinates.

54:19

And it's like, wow, you're an

54:21

asshole. And then later on, she

54:23

becomes extremely understanding. She doesn't

54:25

drive him to the ferry though. That's always nice.

54:28

And he is asking her for a favor to

54:30

arrange for Disney tickets for his

54:33

coworker. So

54:35

it is putting her out a little bit, but as

54:38

someone who has a Disney worker in the

54:40

family and is constantly asking him for tickets,

54:43

I get both sides of the situation. I get why you

54:45

want that favor and also why you'd be annoyed by doing

54:47

it, yeah. So look,

54:49

Michael Douglas's access to the computer

54:51

mainframe is reduced. That's

54:53

gonna play an important role later in

54:56

a very exciting VR scene. Very

54:59

exciting. He goes to a charity

55:01

event where Dennis Miller blabs to

55:03

his wife that

55:05

Tom's sexual harassment claim might have something

55:08

to mess up the merger. His

55:12

wife immediately defends

55:14

Tom and shows solidarity.

55:19

When Michael Douglas then explains to his wife what

55:21

happened, he does it in the worst way possible.

55:24

He's like, oh, she started kissing me, I

55:26

guess, and then maybe took my pants down.

55:29

I was like, come on, dude. She was about to blow me and then I

55:31

was like, oh yeah, I got a wife anyway, I gotta get out of here.

55:35

But it's also, I feel like that

55:37

hinged so much on, did you have

55:39

sex as if nothing else matters?

55:42

Well, this was the worst. Yeah, a lot of stuff

55:44

doesn't cap, baby. I mean, this was in the 90s,

55:46

I feel like that was the debate, like when Bill

55:49

Clinton- Oh yeah. Cheat on his wife, everyone was like,

55:51

well, it wasn't really sex. And it's like, well, the

55:53

idea that if your penis was inside a body part

55:56

of another woman that wasn't your wife, it didn't count

55:58

as sex and therefore wasn't an affair. It

56:01

was an open question in the mid-nighters. It

56:04

is sort of like I didn't inhale kind of

56:06

the same argument of like, I didn't smoke pox,

56:08

I didn't. It's also like a super

56:11

heteronormative way of looking at it because then it's

56:13

like, okay, well, I guess then gay people never

56:15

have sex if it's just

56:18

like this one kind of

56:20

intercourse. Yeah, that's what that club,

56:22

the loophole is all about, it's it. Yeah.

56:24

That's what you do there. In

56:27

their argument, there is a scene where his

56:29

wife asks how attractive on a scale of one to

56:31

ten and Michael Douglas grudgingly

56:33

gives Demi Moore a nine. Okay, that's

56:36

not bad, right? He starts with

56:38

eight and then he and then when he sees his wife

56:40

doesn't believe that, he upgrades her to nine. And

56:43

then she says a line which again should be

56:45

on the poster, she says, nothing

56:48

happens until it happens to you. And that's like

56:50

kind of the message of the movie, right? Is

56:52

that men can't

56:54

understand sexual harassment until they themselves have been

56:56

sexually harassed. And I do think that... It's

56:59

also the plot of the movie, it could happen to you, right? Let

57:02

me double check, you're right. That is

57:04

like sort of like the

57:07

most charitable viewing of

57:09

this movie where it's

57:11

just like, okay, we understand

57:13

that you lack empathy. So like, let's

57:15

put you in this situation. I mean,

57:17

it's like all of the old science

57:20

fiction-y anti-racism

57:22

things where it's like, oh no, a white person

57:24

is black for a day, which is an offensive

57:29

weird science fiction black face thing that

57:31

we had to sort of get through so we could

57:33

not do it anymore. Or like Tootsie

57:35

or something, where it's like, until I dressed up as

57:37

a woman and pretend to be a woman, I didn't

57:40

realize that women have problems. The only

57:42

way to show it is to see a guy going through it.

57:45

Yes, because you have to take the default... Animal testing, we have

57:47

to do that for animal testing, for the

57:49

meat trade, for everything. You have to

57:51

take the default human being, a straight

57:53

white male, the original that God started

57:55

with, and is therefore the basis of humanity.

57:57

Of course, the basis. And just put them through it, yes.

58:00

Yeah, not one of the variants. Factory

58:02

setting, we know that. God's

58:04

like, let me get back to factory settings

58:06

on this, reboot. I

58:09

want like a regular human. God,

58:12

what an Italian do? I said a regular

58:14

default human. No, not a

58:17

macaroni rascal. Now

58:19

I wish there was a Ninja Turtles knockoff called

58:22

the Macaroni Rascals about hostile living mice.

58:25

I love that you guys know what that means. Oh

58:27

yeah. Is

58:29

there a macaroni rascals merch to

58:32

be found anywhere that's? No,

58:35

I can make some. I love to

58:37

make things. I make things all the time. I made divorce

58:39

dad, sweet lips hats. But you know that the macaroni

58:42

rascals is what they called in Japan, what

58:44

they called the Jersey Shore Show. It's

58:47

a better title in some ways. In some ways it's

58:49

the worst title. The real life adventures

58:52

of the macaroni rascals is how it

58:54

translates. I didn't know about the real life

58:56

adventures. That makes it sound like

58:58

a 1960s Disney live action comedy. Yeah,

59:01

yeah. Okay,

59:04

so enough about macaroni rascals.

59:06

We are on Wednesday. I gotta say,

59:08

this cut to Wednesday made me laugh

59:10

so much because like. Me too, I

59:12

laughed really hard when I saw that

59:14

too. It had this dramatic sting. It

59:17

felt like it was a shining cut

59:19

to a chiron. It

59:23

was so. And it is,

59:25

it was by that point in the movie that I had forgotten

59:27

they were naming the days as it went by. So it was

59:29

like, oh yeah, we're doing this. They didn't need to do that.

59:31

Oh yeah, so we. Just show that boat

59:34

going to work. You get what's

59:36

happening. Other markers of time and what's going

59:38

on, yeah. So we have

59:40

the start of mediation. This is not

59:42

a trial, it's just mediation. We get

59:44

Tom's side of the story. He

59:47

is being grilled by this evil

59:49

lawyer character. And this is probably my favorite

59:51

scene in the movie where the lawyer keeps

59:53

specifying, he very clearly lays out

59:56

the definition of boner, which I found very

59:58

funny. He's

1:00:00

like, you talked to your colleagues about how she

1:00:02

gave you a boner, and in that scene, Dennis

1:00:04

Miller is doing all the boner talk, like Michael

1:00:06

Douglas is just kind of like, come on guys,

1:00:08

come on. And so all he has to say

1:00:10

is like. I definitely have lift off, is what

1:00:12

he said. All he had to say

1:00:14

is like, no I didn't. The other guys were, and I was

1:00:17

trying to get them to step but instead he's like, you know

1:00:19

how guys talk to each other, you know how it is. Which

1:00:21

is the sleaziest thing you can say. You

1:00:23

know, we just play grab ass. Well, well, please

1:00:25

clue me in, but is it a boner? Is

1:00:27

that a term for an erection? Well, the only

1:00:30

thing that was kind of good, like the one

1:00:32

thing was like, yeah, but you laughed. It's like,

1:00:34

but he should have said, yeah, because I was

1:00:36

like trying to get out of the conversation. It

1:00:38

was a defense mechanism or something, because that's an

1:00:40

argument people use. Your Honor, I mentioned like the

1:00:42

Joker in that panel that gets put around on

1:00:45

the internet sometimes. Dan, they knew what they were

1:00:47

doing when they wrote that Batman comic. They knew

1:00:49

exactly what they were doing. Yes, he uses the

1:00:51

word boner like 15 times throughout

1:00:53

the story. We were talking

1:00:55

about the character from Growing Pains. What

1:00:59

is the character from Growing Pains? His

1:01:02

name, a reference to that. Oh, he got me.

1:01:04

I don't even watch Growing Pains. I don't even,

1:01:07

my story's falling apart. We

1:01:10

get her side of the story. I can't show you that

1:01:12

smile again. You

1:01:14

know, like in the song. We get

1:01:17

her side of the story and it

1:01:19

feels like everything that happened, every bit

1:01:21

of that interaction was, feels

1:01:23

like it was all part of a setup for

1:01:25

her to catch him and turn

1:01:28

the tables on him. She's woven quite

1:01:30

a web and she's caught her fly.

1:01:32

Uh-huh, thank you, yeah. And his lawyer

1:01:35

manages to, when cross-examining

1:01:37

I guess, points out that the bottle

1:01:39

of wine they were drinking was specifically

1:01:41

a favorite bottle of wine of his

1:01:43

and that she had sought it out

1:01:45

previously. She acted like it was just

1:01:47

a bottle of wine she had lying

1:01:49

around, but no, no, no. This shows

1:01:52

like premeditated behavior. But

1:01:56

one random question. Yep. How

1:01:59

did he not know? she was working in

1:02:01

operations for that company when she had worked

1:02:03

there for months. Another reason why he is

1:02:05

not good at his job. You

1:02:07

should know kind of the top brass of

1:02:09

the infrastructure of the company that you're in.

1:02:12

I think if they may have seen like a

1:02:14

bigger, if the company felt bigger, it's supposed to

1:02:16

be I think a huge company. And so it's

1:02:19

like he's in charge of manufacturing and he doesn't

1:02:21

know who does the other stuff. But the company

1:02:23

never feels that big. So it, yeah, he should

1:02:25

know. The idea that his ex-lover is now in

1:02:28

a very high position at the company, you'd think

1:02:30

he would hear about the name at least, you

1:02:32

know, or. I agree. Even if she was at

1:02:34

a different, like they, yeah, they mentioned that there

1:02:36

might be other branches. There's a branch in Austin

1:02:39

that's closing. Uh-oh, can't get

1:02:41

assigned to that. He can't take that

1:02:43

off. Oh, but also that felt also

1:02:45

very Catholic churchy where they're like, well,

1:02:47

if you've sexually harassed, what we're gonna

1:02:50

offer you is to move you to

1:02:52

Austin. But if you truly believe that

1:02:54

guy was a horrible sexual assault or

1:02:56

sexual harasser, you would fire him. Not

1:03:00

move him to Austin. Well, they have

1:03:02

this big merger and they don't want

1:03:04

to jeopardize it by being seen to

1:03:06

properly deal with a sexual harassment problem.

1:03:08

It's that it's better to pretend it

1:03:10

didn't exist. I do like, there's one.

1:03:12

No HR, I haven't seen HR. Yeah,

1:03:14

is transferring to Austin their version of

1:03:16

saying, go live on a farm upstate?

1:03:18

Yeah, I think so. There is a,

1:03:21

there are a couple lines I liked in it. And there's

1:03:23

one where Donald Sutherland, they go, we offered him the lateral

1:03:26

move to Austin, but he wouldn't take it. Donald Sutherland's

1:03:28

like lateral move to Austin. That's like a lateral move

1:03:30

from Duck to LaRange. And I was like, that's a

1:03:32

pretty good line. What was

1:03:34

the name of the lawyer? He

1:03:38

also had a hilarious line about her.

1:03:40

Change her name. Yeah, it's

1:03:42

like Claudia Alvarez

1:03:45

or, wait, what is it? Oh,

1:03:47

yeah, Catherine Alvarez. She changed her name to TV.

1:03:50

Yeah. You say it, you say it, you say it.

1:03:52

No, no, he goes, Catherine Alvarez, she

1:03:54

changed her name to TV listings if she thought

1:03:56

it would get her in the paper more. Yeah.

1:03:59

And it's like, it's. TV listings. That's

1:04:04

one where you have to annotate it for the

1:04:06

young people now. You're like, back in the day,

1:04:08

you didn't choose what you watched on TV. It

1:04:10

just aired at time and you'd want to know

1:04:12

when it was. And the newspaper would tell you

1:04:14

when the TV shows were. Yeah, for an evil

1:04:16

boss, Donald Sutherland seems like a fun guy. He's

1:04:19

got some good jokes. No face, no consequences.

1:04:21

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I mean, he skates

1:04:24

by on a lot of Donald Sutherland charm, but I'm a

1:04:26

big fan of Donald Sutherland. So maybe that's why he works

1:04:28

for me. I don't know. Also,

1:04:31

we find out that Demi Moore has

1:04:34

gone through at least 10 assistants, male

1:04:36

assistants have all quit in the last

1:04:38

few years. That is a

1:04:41

red flag. Although that doesn't really make

1:04:43

sense with the later revelations. No, it

1:04:45

doesn't. I mean, she could be

1:04:47

both a predator and someone who is maneuvering Michael Douglas

1:04:49

to become the scapegoat for the manufacturing problems. I mean,

1:04:51

she could be doing two bad things. She's like, I've

1:04:53

got just a move. Yeah, I've

1:04:56

been practicing for this all my life. I've

1:04:58

been training. We don't know how far back this goes. There's an

1:05:00

opportunity meets preparation. Yeah. There's

1:05:04

a scene where his

1:05:06

lawyer, Catherine Alvarez, takes his wife

1:05:09

for food at the Pike Place Market, which

1:05:11

looks great. I love the Pike Place Market.

1:05:14

But there's a weird moment where his lawyer says

1:05:16

something like, my husband asked me out many times.

1:05:19

These days he would be too frightened of getting

1:05:21

charged with sexual harassment to ask me out

1:05:23

at all. Like it's a- Or he would get

1:05:25

once and have to move on and that would

1:05:27

be it. So her whole life would have not

1:05:30

happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's her sliding doors

1:05:32

moment. But like,

1:05:34

yeah, it was this weird moment of

1:05:36

like, why are we doing this? The

1:05:38

movie wants to not, it does not

1:05:40

want to take any but the most

1:05:44

basic stand because it doesn't want to piss

1:05:46

people off or because it wants to seem,

1:05:48

maybe it's trying to go for complexity, but

1:05:50

it's failing really badly. But it feels like

1:05:53

the movie is like sexual harassment is obviously

1:05:55

wrong. But you know, sometimes

1:05:57

when it's romantic. Maybe.

1:06:01

But it also, it's not

1:06:05

a friendly environment to say you were

1:06:07

sexually, like at that time, there

1:06:10

weren't a lot of like places

1:06:12

to go where you would be supported and say,

1:06:14

hey, I have, so I was sexually harassed at

1:06:16

work. Like for that on

1:06:18

Demi Moore's first day to be

1:06:20

her move and everyone accepts it

1:06:23

internally as like, this is a normal thing

1:06:25

that a woman might do because that's like,

1:06:27

it feels more like it's more

1:06:30

like a male fear than

1:06:32

it is like at all, how anything

1:06:34

worked at that time. Yeah. Yeah,

1:06:37

no, this movie, the engine

1:06:39

of this movie is male fear. Yeah, I

1:06:41

mean, it literally. Demi

1:06:44

Moore is, she

1:06:46

gives that speech about like, now you

1:06:48

need, it's signed in triplicate before you have

1:06:50

sex or something like that. Like that feels like. The

1:06:52

UN has to. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

1:06:54

It feels like that's the movie really stating

1:06:56

its case. Like that's the

1:06:58

movie speaking honestly, which sucks. And

1:07:01

the, it reminds me of, was

1:07:03

it on, you must be the member of this. I mean,

1:07:05

it doesn't suck for me because I'm super into the UN

1:07:07

being aware of all my sexual activities. Either

1:07:09

way. You sent part of my kink. You send those

1:07:11

letters to them all about it, yeah. No

1:07:14

one takes my drawing. Anybody's allegation you sent

1:07:16

it to? Yeah, yeah, make a little drawing of

1:07:18

all everything. But I think it was on, and

1:07:20

you must remember this the other time about how

1:07:22

with Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone is basically playing her

1:07:24

character like a man acting sexually.

1:07:26

She's a woman, but she's doing the things

1:07:28

that men do. And the reviewers at the

1:07:30

time were like, what is this monster? Like

1:07:32

what is this mutant demon? Yes. Okay.

1:07:36

Absolutely. Other than murdering people. Most men do not

1:07:38

end up murdering their partners. Back

1:07:40

at work, Donald Sutherland seems to want to settle and they're

1:07:42

like, why would he want to do that? Then

1:07:45

they bring Michael

1:07:47

Douglas's assistant, Cindy in to do

1:07:49

some testimony. And she reveals

1:07:51

a pattern of behavior that is unsettling

1:07:53

on the part of Michael Douglas involving

1:07:55

back rubs and touching her tushy and

1:07:57

all kinds of baddies. She doesn't say

1:07:59

touchy. I'm not suggesting my time. No,

1:08:01

that's a stewardism, sorry. Yeah, there are a

1:08:03

couple of scenes in here that like

1:08:06

the one that you were talking about

1:08:08

earlier, Elliot, where like he gets grilled

1:08:10

or there's a scene where the lawyer

1:08:12

lays out to Michael Douglas like how

1:08:14

painful this is gonna be to like

1:08:17

try and fight this. Yeah, they're gonna wreck the line.

1:08:19

They're gonna try to wreck the line. They're like better

1:08:21

scenes of a better version of this

1:08:23

movie. And I like this scene where the

1:08:25

assistant, like Michael Douglas who has thought of himself

1:08:27

as a good guy has to face up

1:08:29

to like his assistant

1:08:31

being like, yeah, I felt uncomfortable sometimes. And

1:08:34

then later on, like there's

1:08:36

a scene where he apologizes and

1:08:39

then it's immediately undercut by like her

1:08:41

whacking him on the butt to be

1:08:43

like, ah, now, what's sauce

1:08:45

for the goose? How does it feel? This

1:08:48

is what an equal world looks like

1:08:50

is not nobody getting sexually harassed, but

1:08:52

everyone's free to sexually harass. We're all

1:08:54

honking each other all the time.

1:08:57

See, everybody gets to. It's

1:08:59

honking Thursdays. When we live in a free

1:09:01

use office, then we'll all be equals and

1:09:03

it's like, I don't like this. Yeah.

1:09:06

Honking Thursdays. Okay,

1:09:10

and then we get a big twist at

1:09:12

the end here at the end of Wednesday.

1:09:14

Wait, is it still Wednesday? Yeah, it's still

1:09:16

Wednesday. It's still Wednesday. It's a long Wednesday.

1:09:18

Yeah, a long week. Okay, the rest up

1:09:20

quick. So Michael Douglas realizes

1:09:22

that when he made a phone call right

1:09:24

before being assaulted, that he must

1:09:27

have dialed the wrong number. And

1:09:29

he uses some mental math and

1:09:31

figures out whose phone number and answering machine

1:09:33

he left his message on. And he realizes

1:09:35

that he must have just let that phone

1:09:37

run. So the whole encounter must be

1:09:40

caught on that answering machine tape. What's

1:09:42

an answering machine tape you ask? Well,

1:09:44

young'un, that was a thing that was from the

1:09:46

1990s. So, and

1:09:49

he reaches out to the guy who he believes he

1:09:51

called and that guy has the answering machine tape and

1:09:54

gives it to him in exchange after

1:09:56

making a couple of jokes. And he

1:09:58

has evidence, hooray. But

1:10:00

did we see missed calls from that guy? I

1:10:03

don't know. He's like, I've been trying to

1:10:05

find you everywhere. And it's like, did have you?

1:10:08

I don't think we did see missed calls. You

1:10:10

have, yeah. It would have been so

1:10:12

easy too, to just be like, I don't have time for

1:10:14

this right now. Unless they're trying

1:10:16

to make it a red herring

1:10:18

that he's the secretive friend who

1:10:20

is emailing him suggestions. Yeah, a

1:10:23

friend. So Thursday

1:10:26

at the mediation, they play the

1:10:29

tape. It is damning. At

1:10:31

one point the evil lawyer refers to his

1:10:34

lawyer as young lady. Although, weirdly

1:10:36

they cut the tape off before like, I don't

1:10:38

know whether the idea is like, this part wasn't

1:10:40

recorded, but they cut it off before like the

1:10:43

most damning part where like she's literally

1:10:45

like, if you don't come back

1:10:47

here and finish what you

1:10:50

started, like you're out. She doesn't

1:10:52

appeal you. You know, which is

1:10:54

like the most direct admission of

1:10:56

harassment from a boss. I

1:10:58

need sexual favors, or else you lose your job, but

1:11:00

they cut it off for that. I mean, it's

1:11:02

as if they were like, oh, we all heard it. We

1:11:04

know what we're talking about. Assume you heard the whole thing.

1:11:07

I mean, that's the thing. I think they're just trying to save

1:11:09

time in the movie more than anything else. I

1:11:11

know, but it's funny to me because like the next

1:11:13

thing that happens in the scene is like, all we

1:11:15

heard here is two consensual, consenting

1:11:17

adults having a consensual sexual encounter. And it's like,

1:11:19

well, but then later on. Right, so

1:11:21

maybe it didn't work for that scene

1:11:24

if they played it through. Yeah. They're

1:11:26

like, okay, just don't play that part. Just don't do

1:11:28

it. Yeah. Cool. We'll cover

1:11:31

our tracks. Hey,

1:11:33

we really appreciate it. If you could not play

1:11:35

the whole tape, just play enough to make your

1:11:37

case, but not enough to make it really bad.

1:11:39

Yeah, of course, yeah, we're coworkers. Yeah, of course.

1:11:41

I have to see you tomorrow, sure.

1:11:44

So, hey everybody, Michael

1:11:46

Douglas wins. He wins everything he wants.

1:11:48

He gets a bonus for pain and

1:11:50

suffering. His lawyer's getting paid. He gets

1:11:53

to keep working at this really cool

1:11:55

company. Doesn't have to go to disgusting Austin.

1:11:57

Doesn't have to go to gross. Hasn't gotten cool

1:11:59

yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He

1:12:02

hates delicious breakfast tacos. It's the worst thing in

1:12:04

the world for him. This is 1994. Seattle

1:12:07

is the coolest city in the entire United

1:12:09

States of America. People are saying that. It

1:12:11

doesn't have a bridge where there are bats

1:12:13

underneath it, huh? That I

1:12:15

don't know. That's a thing about it. Probably. No, that's Austin.

1:12:17

Austin has the bat bridge. No, no, no, I know Austin

1:12:19

has it. I don't know if Seattle has a bat bridge.

1:12:22

Seattle has so much cool stuff, they probably have it and they

1:12:24

don't even talk about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Austin has

1:12:26

moon towers, but Seattle has a

1:12:28

space needle, so I don't know which is better,

1:12:30

you know? Seattle has a little thing called coffee.

1:12:33

Ever heard of it, Elliot? Austin doesn't have it,

1:12:35

yeah. No. Okay,

1:12:37

so everything is- Seattle doesn't have barbecue. What

1:12:39

kind of food do they have there? I

1:12:42

heard about a Seattle sluice. Dungeness crabs and

1:12:44

shit? Yeah. Dungeness crabs

1:12:46

and shit. You throw fish. Oh yeah, they throw

1:12:48

fish around. They don't do that in Austin. They probably

1:12:50

cook up a Douglas fir for you. I don't know.

1:12:53

A Michael Douglas fir, so he- Michael Douglas

1:12:55

probably has some fir, yeah. He does. He's

1:12:57

gonna win everything. Meredith is gonna be out,

1:12:59

hooray. However, there's still like 20 minutes left

1:13:02

in the movie, so we know things are

1:13:04

just getting good. So unless the rest

1:13:06

of it is just Michael Douglas changing his

1:13:08

ways and making up with

1:13:10

his wife. It's not, yeah. Okay, so he

1:13:12

gets another mysterious email that's like, it's not

1:13:14

over, and he realizes there's a loophole in

1:13:16

his contract that he could be fired for

1:13:18

incompetence, and I'm like, yeah, he should have

1:13:21

been fired for incompetence. I love to see

1:13:23

it there, he's like, wait, they

1:13:25

can't fire me for this, but they can fire me

1:13:27

for incompetence. Just like any employee

1:13:29

anywhere. So of course

1:13:31

what he has to do- Oh, this is a job? Wait

1:13:34

a minute, hold on. I didn't know. Oh, I

1:13:36

thought I had double jeopardy immunity now. I couldn't

1:13:39

get fired for anything. He was like, when I

1:13:41

was raised, I was promised a job that I

1:13:43

could work at and then retire from. So

1:13:46

his only option at this point, he has now

1:13:48

been locked out of the computer

1:13:51

network. He has to sneak

1:13:53

into the four seasons and

1:13:55

break into the room of the

1:13:57

guys that are buying the company.

1:14:00

And he has to hook up the VR rig

1:14:02

that they have borrowed for some reason, cause they

1:14:05

think it's great. To play with. Yeah, to play

1:14:07

with. Where there's like so

1:14:09

many people that could have access to it,

1:14:11

like housekeeping, and it's got all these secrets

1:14:13

on it. I love, yeah, I love

1:14:15

you pointed out earlier Meredith, but I love that it

1:14:17

has this thing when he logs in being like, this

1:14:20

is just for entertainment purposes. You like

1:14:22

don't look at all of our secret

1:14:24

files that this is linked to for some

1:14:26

reason, even though it's a demo, but. It's

1:14:29

wild. And so he of course logs in

1:14:31

and this is where we are treated to

1:14:33

some high tech visuals. We

1:14:37

get to see a digitize Michael

1:14:39

Douglas digital corridors of it's very

1:14:41

much like what the halls of

1:14:43

medicine commercials. Yes. In

1:14:45

the room, he's like standing on a mini tramp. Yeah,

1:14:48

he's on the platform wearing a

1:14:50

helmet. There's a moment where walking

1:14:52

through these corridors of file filing

1:14:54

cabinets, he almost walks off

1:14:57

an edge and he's like, whoa, I'm gonna fall.

1:14:59

And they cut to him on the patch, just

1:15:01

to make sure you know, he's safe, I guess,

1:15:03

they cut to him in the hotel room

1:15:05

and he looks like anyone playing a VR

1:15:07

game, stupid, like looks dumb. Yeah, I

1:15:10

mean, this is a funny moment of like, I

1:15:12

think the movie itself undercutting, you know, it's like,

1:15:15

okay, but we know that, you know, like this

1:15:17

is what Michael Douglas actually looks like right now,

1:15:19

he's safe, he's not gonna fall about anything. But

1:15:21

I love that this is like, this is like

1:15:23

the vapor wave aesthetic in a nutshell of like

1:15:25

early like CD-ROM where it's just like, let's put a

1:15:28

bunch of like columns everywhere,

1:15:30

we're gonna make it all vaguely Grecian.

1:15:32

It's gotta look like mist, yeah. Why

1:15:35

do they put like a bottomless

1:15:37

pit in there? That's a good question, why

1:15:39

in their demo of a new filing system in online

1:15:41

space, they have a bottomless game. It's beta, it's

1:15:43

beta, it's like not done rendering the floor. They

1:15:47

put too much into angel wings. I'm

1:15:49

not sure if I would have liked it more or less

1:15:51

if they had built in something where it's like, if you're

1:15:53

in the system when it gets shut off, then you die.

1:15:57

So he has to like get out in time before someone

1:15:59

turns it off. but they don't have that. So

1:16:02

he is going through

1:16:04

the filing cabinets about the virtual

1:16:06

filing cabinets focusing on the business

1:16:09

in Malaysia because

1:16:11

he has a suspicion there's some evidence

1:16:13

there which while he's looking at it,

1:16:15

he's finding evidence that Meredith was involved

1:16:18

in the production problems in Malaysia. He

1:16:21

finds a video call recording between

1:16:23

the guy running the factory and

1:16:25

her. It seems like this

1:16:27

is something that's been going on for a while. All

1:16:30

of a sudden we get a digital Demi

1:16:32

Moore coming and lasering away evidence. Because she's

1:16:34

at her desktop computer deleting files so that

1:16:36

this evidence disappears. After she did the Stairmaster.

1:16:39

Yeah, it seems like the guy- Oh, yeah,

1:16:41

that's right. We missed the scene where Demi

1:16:43

Moore is at the office using her Stairmaster,

1:16:45

explaining to Dylan Baker all the bad stuff

1:16:47

they're doing. And Michael Douglas happens to walk

1:16:49

by and overhear it. And it was like,

1:16:51

this is, that she's working out at the

1:16:53

office after hours with Dylan Baker is strange

1:16:56

that Michael Douglas just happens to be there

1:16:58

to hear. It's like the movie got so

1:17:00

lazy for a moment. It was just like,

1:17:02

so get it. And also, the first thing

1:17:04

you should do is delete the Malaysian files.

1:17:06

Yeah. Or just in the hotel hanging

1:17:08

out. And while he's

1:17:11

spying on them, his

1:17:13

cell phone rings loudly and he's like, oh

1:17:15

shit, and he answers it. And he answers

1:17:18

it. And they do not pay any attention.

1:17:20

They just start whispering. That's what they do.

1:17:22

That's how they internalize it, they whisper. It's

1:17:24

so funny. Okay, there's

1:17:27

a little bit of a ticking clock in this

1:17:29

scene because Donald Sutherland and these businessmen who were

1:17:31

drinking in the lobby of the Four Seasons are

1:17:34

like, hey, let's go back up to your room

1:17:36

and play that VR rig. Let's go to that

1:17:38

hallway again. I'll look up some files. It's so

1:17:40

funny to watch these guys hustling down a hallway

1:17:42

so they can be the first one on the

1:17:45

VR rig. It's also like the worst acting I've

1:17:47

ever seen from Donald Sutherland because it's like he

1:17:49

keeps doing this, I can't wait, hand, where you

1:17:51

run something together. It kind of gets

1:17:53

my hands on those virtual files. They

1:17:56

needed to intercut that hallway walk

1:17:58

so many times. And

1:18:01

then like they're having trouble with the key

1:18:03

card. He's like, oh, these things. They never

1:18:05

worked without technology. Technology, you know? Okay,

1:18:07

so he, and he manages to get some, he

1:18:11

manages to find the evidence he needs. And

1:18:13

he also realized that he should, if he

1:18:15

reaches out to Malaysia, they might have more

1:18:17

hard copy information that they don't have on

1:18:19

this. I mean, speaking of this. But we

1:18:21

really learned that the key piece of evidence

1:18:23

is that all of the prototypes

1:18:25

of the drive that he was in

1:18:27

charge of were working great. But in

1:18:29

Malaysia, they took, they

1:18:32

made a bunch of shortcuts in

1:18:34

the manufacturing process that he did

1:18:36

not suggest or approve. And we

1:18:38

find out in that moment in

1:18:40

the virtual, you know,

1:18:42

in the corridor, that it

1:18:44

was Demi Moore who is the

1:18:47

one who authorized the shortcuts that

1:18:49

led to this drive being terrible.

1:18:51

Which is like the guy who's

1:18:53

always offering macadamia nuts to Michael

1:18:55

Douglas would have like talked

1:18:57

to Michael Douglas about this as like a

1:18:59

possible source of the problem earlier in the

1:19:01

film. My guess is that he, I mean,

1:19:03

he's not gonna do that because he doesn't want to

1:19:05

get in trouble. And he's been, he doesn't want, he

1:19:07

doesn't want Demi Moore's character to get in trouble. I'm

1:19:09

so glad that you guys can explain the ins and

1:19:11

outs of this because it was a little too high

1:19:13

tech for me. It was a little bit on my

1:19:15

head. My favorite part of this scene though is when-

1:19:17

Smaller, fast, faster, cheaper. Those guys walk into the room

1:19:19

and they find that, and it pans over, Michael Douglas

1:19:21

isn't there. And they all go to the VR. And

1:19:24

then around a corner, Michael Douglas just kind of

1:19:26

slips out of the room. Like he's a fucking

1:19:28

cat burglar now. Like what is, what is that?

1:19:30

That he knew is the exact moment, I guess,

1:19:32

that he needed to be done with the VR

1:19:35

system before they got there. It's all- I mean,

1:19:37

this was a time where Michael Douglas would have

1:19:39

been in like a wizard magazine for a solid

1:19:41

snake, metal gear solid. Yeah, that's true. But this

1:19:43

is the point of theory or something. They turn

1:19:45

on the lights, which I think changes,

1:19:47

even with the VR headset, changes the ambient

1:19:49

light enough that he's like, uh-oh, and that's

1:19:52

why he's able to slip out. I think-

1:19:54

He's also at the point in the movie

1:19:56

where he's the hero up against everything, and

1:19:58

he's smarter than everyone. He gets special powers.

1:20:01

He's been self-actualized by the hardship he's had to

1:20:03

go through. It reminds me of, there's like this,

1:20:05

at the very end of- Yeah, that's true. At

1:20:08

the end of sneakers, when the bad guy gets

1:20:10

defeated because one of the other guys just happens

1:20:12

to be right above him in the drop ceiling

1:20:14

and jumps out and gets him and it's like,

1:20:16

oh, so he was just waiting in that spot

1:20:19

in case the bad guy came, or Rambo in First

1:20:22

Blood, how he's like camouflaged against that tree and the

1:20:24

guy comes across and he kills him. It's like, so

1:20:26

he was, how long was he standing at that tree

1:20:28

waiting for someone to wander by that he happened to

1:20:30

need to kill? Or when he covers himself in mud

1:20:33

and hides in like a riverbank. Yeah, yeah. There's

1:20:35

a lot of things that don't make sense. Like

1:20:38

my favorite line I think in the whole movie

1:20:40

is when Becky

1:20:43

Ann Baker's husband, Dylan Baker, sees

1:20:46

that Michael Douglas is stressed

1:20:48

out and

1:20:51

he goes, he looks stressed. Do you need a Prozac?

1:20:56

Which does not work immediately. It

1:20:58

takes weeks, you feel better after

1:21:00

incrementally taking it? He should have said, you seem

1:21:03

stressed. Do you need a Zima? Do

1:21:05

you need a Zima? It's like a Xanax

1:21:07

or a Klonopin. Yeah, sure, it's not like

1:21:09

those didn't exist. A tranquilizer, not like, anyway.

1:21:13

No, but it's like Prozac's a thing from

1:21:15

the 90s. It's just like. It's 90

1:21:17

stuff. There's like a sock, sock, mumpy

1:21:19

in my, oh. Sock, mumpy.

1:21:22

90s kids remember. Sock, mumpy?

1:21:25

Yeah, whatever. Are sock

1:21:27

monkeys a 90s thing? I

1:21:29

feel like sock monkeys are like an 1890s thing. I

1:21:32

don't know, I think it's too time travel. He

1:21:35

thinks we're talking about the 1890s. Oh, okay.

1:21:37

Yeah, that's why I thought it was so high tech for the 1890s. Where

1:21:40

he gets all those muskles working on the railway.

1:21:43

Yep, so it's Friday,

1:21:46

baby, TGIF. So

1:21:49

Michael Douglas apologizes to Cindy, she

1:21:51

slaps his ass. We

1:21:53

have a, we have like a big

1:21:56

shareholders presentation to talk about the merger.

1:21:58

This is where they were going to.

1:22:00

reveal Michael Douglas' incompetence, but no, no,

1:22:02

no, he has already prepared it. He

1:22:04

turns the tables on them and plays

1:22:06

video evidence of Demi

1:22:09

Moore. He

1:22:11

plays video evidence that Demi Moore was at

1:22:13

the Malaysian plant, which is from a Malaysian

1:22:15

news story. I'm like, this is a news

1:22:17

day in Malaysia. American executive visits factory. But

1:22:21

it's also like, you also learn, and maybe

1:22:23

you already mentioned this, but like you

1:22:26

learn that the whole thing in

1:22:29

her office where she was gonna

1:22:32

frame him for sexual harassment later,

1:22:35

was a large plan by everyone to oust

1:22:37

him so he could be the fall guy,

1:22:39

and then we would blame him for the

1:22:41

manufacturing changes. And everybody was in on it,

1:22:43

right? Yeah, that's what it seems like. That's

1:22:46

what it seems like. I don't think Douglas

1:22:48

Sutherland was in on it, but I think

1:22:50

Jill and Bayford. They pivot when it doesn't

1:22:52

work. And then they go, well,

1:22:54

we'll get him on incompetence. But it feels like you

1:22:56

could have just done that from day one. It

1:23:00

really feels like the sexual harassment aspect

1:23:02

of the plan, yeah, seems like the

1:23:04

unnecessary complication that causes more trouble than

1:23:06

it's worth. And also she never needed

1:23:08

to do any of it

1:23:10

if she was just gonna make all of it up

1:23:12

anyway. Like she didn't need

1:23:14

to, but maybe she also

1:23:16

wanted to because of her last 10. This is

1:23:19

the only point. It's muddy,

1:23:21

it's muddy. The weirdest part is

1:23:23

after, okay, so she blows up,

1:23:25

she's out, she's fired. He goes

1:23:27

to her office and they have

1:23:29

a little bit of verbal sparring.

1:23:31

And he suggests that maybe it

1:23:34

was his plan all along to

1:23:36

trick her into this situation. He

1:23:38

makes this inference and I'm like,

1:23:40

wait, what? Yeah, that's nothing in

1:23:42

the movie. That's him just trying to be

1:23:44

cool, right? He did not have

1:23:46

that plan. Yeah, I think he's just trying

1:23:48

to leave her on a disquieting note where

1:23:50

she has to be worried about it. She

1:23:52

does, and she does say a line where

1:23:54

she's like, I've already had five offers since

1:23:56

the meeting. And the head hunters

1:23:59

have been calling. Yeah, and I'm like, what is? Is this

1:24:01

like the sequel? Like this is like Jason Voorhees isn't dead?

1:24:03

Like, what the fuck's going on here? Yeah, to closure the

1:24:05

sequel. But yeah, so she's out.

1:24:08

Yep, maybe he set her up. I don't think

1:24:10

so. Turns out Michael

1:24:12

Douglas doesn't even get the VP

1:24:14

job. That goes to Stephanie who

1:24:16

has been the mastermind all along.

1:24:18

She's been sending the mysterious emails.

1:24:21

A friend. From Arthur Friend's

1:24:23

email account, which I don't know why that had

1:24:25

to be part of it. That's

1:24:28

why I was saying like it could have easily been like

1:24:30

are A friend at whatever? And

1:24:33

then it would still work. Like you

1:24:36

don't need to say A friend if it comes from

1:24:38

an unknown sender. They didn't need to play that game.

1:24:40

And it's like earlier on he had tried to

1:24:42

track the emails and be like, oh, they're coming

1:24:44

from this professor's computer, but he's away in Nepal.

1:24:46

And you find out that Stephanie's son, who is

1:24:49

a student at that college, A friend is his

1:24:51

mentor. And so he was the one using that

1:24:53

computer. And it's like, it made me so mad.

1:24:55

Everything in this movie that gets mentioned, except for

1:24:58

maybe two things, has to play into this whole

1:25:00

plot. So like he's trying to get

1:25:02

these Disneyland tickets for his co-worker. Turns

1:25:04

out that's the co-worker who can get him the

1:25:06

video he needs from Malaysia. And back up. She

1:25:09

mentions earlier that her son is at college. Well, that has

1:25:11

to play into her scheme to help him through

1:25:14

the situation. It's just like movie. But

1:25:16

also why was he at that all hands

1:25:18

on deck meeting? Why was he, that son

1:25:20

there? Well, I mean, I guess he knows that she's

1:25:22

gonna be promoted and he wants to be there for it.

1:25:24

But did he know? Because it was never in 10 minutes,

1:25:28

Donald Sutherland is gonna announce this thing. She was

1:25:30

like, I'm about to get promoted. You need to

1:25:32

teleport down here. But yeah.

1:25:35

Mommy's mastermind scheme has come to fruition.

1:25:37

That is a much better title for

1:25:39

this movie. Mommy's mastermind. He has a

1:25:41

nice scheme. Mommy's mastermind

1:25:43

macaroni rascals, yeah. Donald

1:25:46

Sutherland says like, I was trying so

1:25:48

hard to break the glass ceiling, like

1:25:50

to hire someone who was a woman

1:25:53

that I overlooked and didn't

1:25:55

hire who was the best person. So he's saying

1:25:57

like Demi Moore was the woman who he was

1:25:59

just hired. for being a woman, but I

1:26:02

didn't see that there was the best person

1:26:04

for the job. And then he picks Stephanie.

1:26:06

And so you're supposed to realize that a

1:26:08

woman is a person, could be a person

1:26:10

too. I guess everyone. Stephanie is not

1:26:12

just a woman, she's also a person. It's

1:26:15

just an example of, well, throughout

1:26:17

the movie, the movie thinks that it's a very

1:26:19

smart movie, when it's actually a very dumb movie.

1:26:21

And so it keeps doing things like that, where

1:26:23

it's like, this will be an intricate little reveal,

1:26:26

or this will be a lesson, but it's stupid.

1:26:28

And the one thing I'll give

1:26:31

the movie credit for is, having

1:26:33

seen the way tech companies operate

1:26:35

publicly, I do believe that someone

1:26:37

like Demi Moore's character, who can talk a good

1:26:40

game and cannot back it up, could get to

1:26:42

that level of power, as we've seen

1:26:44

in so many tech companies now. And then eventually they'll be

1:26:46

going, oh, listen. What are you talking about? This

1:26:49

person's less flashy, but more competent. I guess we'll bring

1:26:51

them in now to clean up the mess. But the

1:26:54

whole glass ceiling speech is just the

1:26:57

final make you

1:26:59

think that Michael Douglas is gonna get the job

1:27:01

moment, when he's proved his incompetence throughout the movie.

1:27:03

The idea that he would ever get this job

1:27:06

is insulting to the audience. Also, why would they

1:27:09

promote him? He's got a chip on his

1:27:11

shoulder. He just went

1:27:14

through this whole disclosure nonsense. I'm surprised he

1:27:16

wants to stay at the company at this

1:27:18

point. Now that his friend

1:27:20

is his boss, maybe it's better, but

1:27:25

it seems like it's been a terrible experience.

1:27:27

He can take the ferry to

1:27:30

work. It also just feels like

1:27:32

nobody, the only person who went down was Demi Moore's

1:27:34

character. And I feel like there were a lot of

1:27:36

people that seemed to know what was going on and

1:27:38

how they were setting this guy up to fall. It

1:27:41

felt like there should be a couple more heads

1:27:44

that rolled. The movie clumsily tries to

1:27:46

make that point to turn

1:27:48

around and not be sexist at the end

1:27:50

and be like, see, it's

1:27:52

only the woman that takes the fall

1:27:55

for this, but it feels so disingenuous

1:27:57

at that point in disclosure. I

1:28:00

wanted to say it's a small point. I don't want

1:28:02

to be too hard on a young actor who's probably

1:28:04

directed to act this way, but

1:28:06

the kid- Dan hates young, inexperienced

1:28:08

actors. He's always in ragtime. I

1:28:10

mean, he's like college age. The

1:28:12

kid- Specifically minors. Dan. Who

1:28:16

sent the a friend emails, like

1:28:19

seems so smug in that scene. He is

1:28:21

very smug, yeah. Like I immediately, I'm like,

1:28:23

I don't like this guy. His

1:28:27

smug smile. It does come off as very unlikable,

1:28:29

that's true. Okay, and then

1:28:31

Michael Douglas, what? Gets a voicemail from

1:28:33

his family that his kids miss him.

1:28:35

Hooray, he wins the day. End

1:28:37

of the movie. And

1:28:40

then there's the mid-credits sequence where Samuel Jackson goes,

1:28:43

have you heard of the disclosure protocol? And he

1:28:45

goes, huh? And then we're assembling a team of

1:28:48

sexually harassment victims to stop

1:28:50

crimes. They did that after

1:28:52

all the bloopers and

1:28:54

outtakes from the sex scene, right? That's

1:28:57

not a sex scene, Stuart, that's an assault scene. Thank you.

1:29:00

All right, let's give our final judgments on this

1:29:02

movie, whether it's a good, bad movie, a bad,

1:29:04

bad movie, or a movie we

1:29:06

kind of like. I think those

1:29:09

are clear categories, but

1:29:11

Meredith, if you have any questions, please

1:29:13

don't hesitate to ask. I'm going to say that,

1:29:19

it has some like politics

1:29:21

in it that may be a stumbling

1:29:24

block for enjoyment of it. But

1:29:26

if you can look at

1:29:28

those as like relics

1:29:30

of the time, or

1:29:32

I mean, unfortunately not so much, but like if

1:29:35

there are things that you can laugh at because

1:29:37

they're so like poorly

1:29:39

handled, if you can get past

1:29:41

that part to the delicious, deliciously

1:29:44

dumb VR thriller that

1:29:46

then lies beneath,

1:29:49

I would say that this is a good,

1:29:51

bad movie because I think it is sort of

1:29:53

easy to watch in that it's got like good

1:29:56

actors and like slick

1:29:59

surface. and that nineties

1:30:01

vibe of dumb thriller that is,

1:30:04

is fun. But,

1:30:06

you know, I can understand if you can't get pets, the

1:30:08

other stuff, but I would say good, bad. Stuart,

1:30:10

what do you say? Yeah, I think I'm

1:30:12

with you. I kind of

1:30:15

like, I wish it leaned more

1:30:17

into a sleazy erotic thriller, but

1:30:19

on the other hand,

1:30:22

I do love all the VR and

1:30:25

email animations and

1:30:28

all that stuff. So I don't know, maybe

1:30:30

I'm just nostalgic for a

1:30:33

simpler age, but yeah, I'll say it's

1:30:35

a good, bad movie. I'm gonna say it's

1:30:37

a bad, bad movie. I found it kind of boring

1:30:40

and dull to sit through much of

1:30:42

it, but I think it's certainly worth, if you're

1:30:44

on YouTube, if you can look up like, disclosure,

1:30:47

old technology

1:30:49

super cut, like that would certainly

1:30:51

be worth watching because the VR

1:30:53

stuff is genuinely very funny because

1:30:55

it is how bad it looks,

1:30:57

but how amazing all the characters

1:30:59

think it looks. Meredith, what

1:31:01

do you think? I agree about the

1:31:04

VR stuff. Particularly the

1:31:06

first demo that the

1:31:08

guy who plays the Angel, I

1:31:12

think is demo more, is

1:31:15

just gold. Like when I

1:31:17

was trying to look it up online,

1:31:20

I kept finding the part where he goes

1:31:22

and breaks into the hotel room, and

1:31:25

Demi Moore appears behind him, which is funny,

1:31:27

but I think the first initial demo is

1:31:30

the funniest demonstration of

1:31:32

how stupid this technology is in a

1:31:34

file room. There's

1:31:37

also a lot of great mumbo jumbo when she's

1:31:39

making a presentation about like using, you

1:31:42

know, harnessing CD-ROMs, PDA devices and

1:31:45

facsimile machines. You're like, what are

1:31:47

you, it's his garbage gobbly-gook. I

1:31:51

would call this a good, bad movie because

1:31:53

I found it very

1:31:55

watchable. Just

1:31:58

the score, the whole, the- the

1:32:01

pacing, the actors, there

1:32:03

is sort of a certain familiarity to that

1:32:05

time period that feels like a warm sweater,

1:32:08

but then you watch it with 20, 24 eyes and

1:32:10

you're like, oh my God, this is fucked

1:32:13

up. And like, where was the,

1:32:15

I still am like, where is the lady

1:32:17

sexual, where the, why did it have to

1:32:20

be like, but what if it happened to

1:32:22

a man? That's the scary part. Like where,

1:32:24

I guess, yeah. We

1:32:26

got she said, at least a

1:32:28

couple of years ago about the Harvey

1:32:30

stuff, but. Which was shot

1:32:32

in what the Capitol grill down

1:32:34

on Water Street that I, and

1:32:37

scenes were shot at the same table. I ate at

1:32:39

once. Wow. Wow. Tales

1:32:43

of Stu's connection to. It was

1:32:45

a specific, we're celebrating. The Stu

1:32:47

shooting locations walking tour. Yeah. We're

1:32:50

celebrating and we had a great steak dinner and the

1:32:52

server like clocked us as being industry folks. So she

1:32:54

really did it up. And then she ended up taking

1:32:56

us on a walk through the, like

1:32:58

through the kitchen and we got to go into the

1:33:01

like steak aging room and they're like sticking

1:33:03

steaks in our face and shit. We get

1:33:05

home and Charlene's like, I don't feel so

1:33:07

well. She takes a COVID test immediately has

1:33:09

COVID. We're like, Oh no, all those steaks.

1:33:11

Clocked at all of them. You'd get it

1:33:13

from steak, but the, how

1:33:16

did they clock you as industry folk?

1:33:18

What exactly? We were. What was

1:33:20

the signal? Well, we were. Were

1:33:22

you holding writers Guild Awards? At

1:33:24

like 60 years. He and his wife

1:33:26

own a few bars. And we were

1:33:29

with our business partner who we also

1:33:31

own bars with. You mean the restaurant

1:33:33

industry folks. Oh, I thought you

1:33:35

meant showbiz industry folks. That's what I thought you

1:33:37

meant at first too. I thought you were like. People that don't know

1:33:39

me assume that I'm some kind of. Where it happens at awards season.

1:33:41

I thought you meant the aerospace industry.

1:33:43

That's what I misunderstood. No, I'm talking

1:33:45

about the food and beverage industry. Oh

1:33:48

yeah, yeah, yeah. First in my heart.

1:33:52

The, I will say going back to, not

1:33:54

to jump back to the more

1:33:57

germane conversation. Stewart's story. I

1:34:00

had lunch. But I think the

1:34:02

most damning thing about this movie more than any of

1:34:04

the other stuff is like you're saying, Meredith, that like

1:34:08

sexual harassment of women, I guess was considered

1:34:10

so like just assumed to

1:34:12

be so commonplace and so widespread and so

1:34:14

normal and would never change that the idea

1:34:16

of making a movie about it did not

1:34:18

occur to anyone really, except for nine to

1:34:20

five, which is a comedy again, until

1:34:25

they could say, well, okay, what if it happened to a man?

1:34:27

Then it's an interesting enough story to make a movie

1:34:30

of it. Whereas if it happens to a woman, what

1:34:32

are you gonna do? That just happens to women. That's

1:34:34

just what we all know. We're gonna make a movie about how people

1:34:36

get wet when it rains, like, come on, what are we doing here?

1:34:38

That's what it feels like, which is gross, yeah. Yeah.

1:34:45

Hello, sleepyheads. Sleeping

1:34:48

with celebrities is your podcast

1:34:50

pillow pal. We talked

1:34:52

to remarkable people about unremarkable topics,

1:34:55

all to help you slow

1:34:57

down your brain and drift

1:34:59

off to sleep. For instance,

1:35:01

we have the remarkable Neil

1:35:03

Gaiman. I'd always had a

1:35:05

vague interest in live culture,

1:35:07

food preparation, sleeping with

1:35:10

celebrities, hosted by me, John Moe,

1:35:13

on maximumfund.org, or

1:35:15

wherever you get your podcasts, night

1:35:18

night. You can't really

1:35:20

know if your own show is any good.

1:35:22

So I asked my kids about ours. Is

1:35:24

Jordan and Jesse Co. a good show? No,

1:35:27

definitely not. It's really bad. I

1:35:29

would say out of 10, maybe

1:35:32

like a four out of 10. It's

1:35:34

just really boring. Yeah, zero.

1:35:39

Subscribe to Jordan and Jesse Go, a

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also have

1:37:21

a j-j-j-j-j-jumbo-tron.

1:37:23

This message is for Nick. It

1:37:26

is from Emily and it goes

1:37:28

as follows. Happy

1:37:30

birthday, Nick, AKA John,

1:37:33

Buddy, Big Guy. You're

1:37:36

a good, good movie. His

1:37:38

name is Nick. Ah, finally.

1:37:43

Wait, finally what? I remembered his

1:37:45

name's Nick, he drinks at my bar. Oh, okay,

1:37:47

great. Now is the

1:37:50

part of the episode where I, Elliot Kalin, tell

1:37:52

you about our upcoming live shows. And I do

1:37:54

it at the same time we record the rest

1:37:56

of the episode. It's certainly not a message

1:37:58

that was recorded late. using information

1:38:01

we didn't have at the time we were

1:38:03

recording the episode. We're all right

1:38:05

here in the room together, just like normal recording the whole

1:38:07

episode, right Dan? Yeah. Right

1:38:09

Stu? Yeah, dude. So, let

1:38:11

me tell you about it in

1:38:13

this perfectly real-time explanation. On July

1:38:15

26th, we will be in Boston,

1:38:18

Massachusetts, doing a live show courtesy

1:38:20

of WBUR at WBUR City Space

1:38:22

now. As we know and

1:38:24

certainly didn't learn after recording the rest of

1:38:26

the episode, that show is sold out right

1:38:28

now. You can no longer buy tickets to

1:38:31

see it in person, but WBUR

1:38:33

has opened up the ability

1:38:35

for you to live stream it. So,

1:38:37

go to flophousepodcast.com/events and click on the

1:38:39

info and ticks button for that show.

1:38:42

It'll take you to the page where you can buy a live

1:38:44

streaming ticket. Now, I should warn you, this

1:38:46

is just going to be a pretty basic,

1:38:48

straightforward, in the moment, live stream.

1:38:50

It's not going to be the kind of

1:38:52

beautifully polished, beautifully edited, immaculately shot show that

1:38:54

we've been doing with Stagepilot lately. If you

1:38:56

saw our Speed 2 show, you saw how

1:38:58

gorgeous that looked, how well put together it

1:39:00

was. That's thanks to the fine people at

1:39:02

Stagepilot. This is not going to be as polished

1:39:05

as that. This is going to be a

1:39:07

little more ragtag. So, don't expect the level

1:39:09

of production that you've come to expect from

1:39:12

the Flophouse Stagepilot collaboration. This is just us

1:39:14

and WBUR live streaming a show that otherwise

1:39:16

you wouldn't be able to see because it's

1:39:18

sold out. So, please go to

1:39:20

flophousepodcast.com/events, click on the info and ticks

1:39:22

button for Boston, and it'll take you