Welcome to the Life's A Pitch Podcast, the show where we pitch the best movies that will never get made. I'm Tom McGrath. And I'm Matt Turner. This is the podcast where we ask you to listen to give us a title of a movie that doesn't exist.
Yet, we then collaborate to create a pitch for that movie, complete with casting, story beats, and sometimes even marketing. Without further ado, this week's main feature is... Toys and Games! Toys and Games!
Toys and Games, yes! So, we're back! We're back! Matt's back!
I'm back from the... Yeah, from the... From the wasn't here before. Yes.
I forgot. Because I never left from my perspective. And I was just here. And then I was still with me.
Yeah, yeah. Wherever I go, I am there. So I never left from my perspective. But I am back!
If a podcast is recorded and Matt's not the answer here, it is really really... So you're in an undi-slows location apparently. Yeah, it was France. OK.
Doing very classified things in France. Finding up a rock. Oh, right. Well...
OK, then. I'm imagining the opening scenes of Mission Impossible 2. Yeah, it was a lot like that. Yeah, through a pair of sunglasses.
And the camera... The camera, specifically the camera, yeah. I don't know why the camera was there. Hovering just off the rocks.
Yeah. But yeah, there it was. I exploded that shit. Because like, you know, what you're doing?
Watching me have a little climb. I throw my explosives to the glass back. Yeah. There was a bit where you slipped and then hung on back to the rock climbing wall.
Yeah, yeah. It was like clinging on there. Yeah. And then you looked at the camera and smiled.
Because you were doing your own stunts. Yeah. I was like, this is how I feel fulfilled. Yes.
Here's what I said. To the tune of Metallica's I Disappear. Yeah, apparently. Yeah.
So welcome back. Thanks. Welcome back. Excited.
I haven't seen any movies since I left. But I will say, I'm glad to be back. I'm looking forward to making some movies. Making some movies.
Putting some idea nuggets in everyone's brains. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, I've seen a few movies since you left.
Yeah. I've recorded some little reviews about them and put them on Patreon. Oh! Tom's popcorn hangover.
My popcorn hangover. Yeah, my new show, wherever a time I go to see a movie. Let's record a few little thoughts about it. I've got a little popcorn hangover about it.
Yeah, yeah. So you can find that on Patreon. Sure. Which we'll get to later on.
Yes. But, Toys and Games. Yes. That's what we're doing this week.
We don't really need to describe the genre to you. Do we listen to? It's Toys. And Games.
And you're the Transformers and your Fits and Bobs. Yes. And your Games. You're Super Mario.
You're Battle Shipsers. Oh yes, I forgot they made the movie out of that. Real Steel Rock and Sock and Robots. Yeah.
Your Pokemon. Yeah. Minecraft's a movie. Yeah.
A Minecraft movie. Minecraft's a movie now. The more to come on Minecraft. Obviously.
The movie. Yeah. It's a million pounds. Oh yes.
And this one we've got the exclusive rights for. We don't even have to ask Nintendo's permission. Oh yes. And then we can just run this one into the ground.
Minecraft the movie too. The return of Chicken Jockey. Oh God. Oh fuck.
We didn't even talk about that. We didn't talk about that. That's because I don't know anything about it at all. Yeah.
I don't know. You see clips of people doing this at the same time. I just stay completely away from it. It's like, I liken this to.
Because I was talking with, I think it was either Reese or Stuart. Yeah. I've been on the podcast recently. And I was like, the whole thing around Chicken Jockey and Minecraft and like basically an American audience Avengers Endgame level reaction to shit happening.
Like the most mundane things happening in that movie. I was like, what does this feel like? Just a bunch of kids go into a movie and pretending it's like. It's in order to make do the reaction.
Yeah. And it feels like to them it feels like a cinematic event. What I remember something like this happening a few years ago, but I could not for the like of the. Yeah.
I mean, was it the Freddie? Five nights Freddie's movie. No, it wasn't that. Okay.
It was kids sort of high school kids age dressing up in suits and going to see a movie. Now, was it Oppenheimer? No. Because I know the people who dressed in suits.
Oh yeah. Suits in for Doris. What are they going to see? Minions.
Why? The Minions movie. Why? It was cinematic gold or something.
I don't know what the reason for it was, but that's what they went in suits to see. I can't shout for a fucking weird Danny. That's so straight. I don't understand them.
I don't understand them. I'm not going to say that bad. I just think they're there with you. Yeah.
The like the microphone we think. Yeah. I mean, it is. It's going in in order to have to get to do something.
It's a meme. You get like, like we, I mean, our generation had planking. It did. It did have planking.
You know? That's the one thing we have and the fucking home shake and like, yeah, I mean, I just look at it. I just look at challenge. Like, it's cringe now.
You're like, we just can't really enter. I mean, I don't know if I did, but like, our generation got really into doing like a really, really cringe thing. Yeah. So, yeah, toys and games.
That's what we're doing this week. We've got it. We've got to ride on some good old fashioned like, like, children hyper culture. Look at these titles that people have given us.
Yeah. I'm not sure. Okay. So people got in touch with us on social media outlets.
So, yeah, mainly blue sky. Blue sky and Facebook are the ones that. That's where we post them. That's where we post them.
Twitter is gone. It doesn't exist. We're not posting on Twitter anymore because we got one person hosting. X social media.
Yes. I can't wait to do that. So, we're flying that away. Yeah, don't forget Patreon.
It's got one. Patreon. That'll place the give us titles when you want to. The one person who was supporting us on Twitter is moved to Patreon.
There you go. Right. Right move to do it. Right move to do.
So, yes, blue sky, Facebook and Patreon. There's a place you can go to Givers Film Titles. Like these, wonderful people did in the episode. So, yeah, without further ado.
Let's just pitch some toys and games movies. Toys and games is. Alright, so from Reese Hall, we've got grandmother's footsteps. Grandmother's footsteps?
Yes. Not grandmother's footsteps? No, they even put a full stop at the end of the set. To make sure we knew.
To make sure. This was not a typo. So, yes. Because the grandmother's footsteps has been done.
Yeah. Sweet game did it. Oh yeah. I forgot about that.
We had to sneak off on the weird doll and then it shot you. Yeah. That weird doll was my grandmother. Yeah.
Yeah. Cast perfectly for that role. Grandmother's footsteps. I think this is not a prequel but a new horror franchise in which we can make the sequel.
Grandmother's footsteps. Okay. Alright. You know what?
Aliens. Yeah. Is this sort of a movie in which if something perceives you moving, then you immediately die or get taken away? Well, this is funny because Ed Crawley has given us what's the time Mr.
Wolf? Which is I think which is exactly the same. It's a game. It's a game.
But I think in some countries it's called what's the time Mr. Wolf? I remember asking what's the time Mr. Wolf?
Yeah. But what was the function of the reply? I think it's just to say a time. Yeah.
And then you turn around? Yeah. Quarter 10. 945.
705. And then if someone was getting too close to a point where the wolf could go and catch them. Yeah. Then they'd say dinner time.
Okay. And then chase and then everyone would have to scatter. Yeah. And then if you got tagged before you got back to the safe point, then they'd be the wolf.
Right. And in that time. So it's slightly different from our most footsteps. Yes.
And I guess also you got the time. A bit in the weeds here. But like you got the amount of time it took to say what's the time Mr. Wolf?
And then for them to think of a time and say it before they turned around. You knew you had that much time. Yes. Yeah.
I think so. Because they had to turn around. If they saw anyone moving, then the person would have to go back. Yeah.
And if someone got to the end, they didn't have to do it anymore. That's what they won. Yeah. You won't really escape from the game.
Yeah. You got out. You made it out. Grandma's footsteps is you've got to get to grandma.
Yeah. If she turns around, you've got to go back. Yeah. And as you see, she's moving.
Sorry. Yeah. So would this be some kids have been sent to live with grandma for a couple months? Yeah.
Sort of my neighbor, Toto, over style. Yeah. Right. They are grandma's weird.
Okay. Right. Grandma does things all wrong. Yeah.
Right. She lives in a shoe. She lives in a shoe. She lives in a strange, topsy-turvy castle.
Castle. Yeah. Like it's like an old Spanish fortress. Okay.
Yeah. You don't see many films in old Spanish fortress. No, not enough. And literally non-sprintermind.
Which is a shame. Yeah. If you know any films that have been set in old Spanish fortress, let's know in the comments. So, yeah.
She lives in a weird place. She does things wrong. She does things in a very old fashioned strange way and the kids hate it. Yeah.
Right. And obviously the kids are like, we're going to sneak out at night, go down to the nearest town. Okay. We've seen some other kids down there.
And they have to, at night, sneak back to the house. Because grandma keeps coming out into the balcony of this old Spanish fortress. And looking out and saying like, mm, we're like, we're nice and she doesn't sleep very well. But like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Yeah. Her vision is based on movement. Kind of, yeah. It's, you know, like, I think it's the party of the grass.
Yeah. You know, there's these grasslands outside the fort fortress. And if you like are wrestling the grass, they'll see you. Because she's quite deaf, but she'd see the thing moving.
But the thing, the reason that she lives in an old Spanish fortress is because grandma was in the war. And she's, she still knows how to use those cannons. I was going to say, is that like an element of grandma being like a vampire or some strange folk horror thing? No, these are, these are war flags.
She thinks that the Germans are coming out. Oh my God. This is so much better than like a folk horror. I was like, let's get Robert Eggers on this.
I think he's still shut. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I think we, we, we make the World War II PTSD, the folk horror of this movie. She just got an old, an old rifle.
No, no, no, he's, he's a, like, cannon. More to cannon. Oh, wow. Yeah.
She's shelling them. But I like, I like how, when the kids have spoken to like the people down in like the town, the people in the town have been like, you cannot go past this boundary at a certain time of night. And they're like, why? And then they just, we just came from there.
Yeah. And then they realized it's grandma. Yeah. She's the cryptid.
Yeah. She's the cryptid of this, this Spanish countryside town. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. What happens, like, where does it end? Like, you know, do they, do they, do they, do they, presumably them and their friends manage to sneak up to the, to the, to the, uh, fortress? Oh, and because there's waterways and stuff, they sneak, they sneak in through there and they find out that like, there actually was, everyone thought that grandma was mad.
Yeah. There actually was a couple of eggs. Yeah. Yeah.
For the Nazis down, the fort waiting to, waiting to take over the world. So them and grandma have to team up to, to get the Nazis. Yeah. Great.
Grandma's footsteps is actually, if you, uh, turn that into, if you try to date it out into Spanish, that's the name of the, the fortress. Ah, nice. I like that. That's a really good movie.
Yeah. I like it. Yeah. We got it.
All right. So from Stuart woke both Dunlop with God. The taste of a Furby. The taste of a Furby.
Yeah. Um, all right. So, so Barbie did its thing. Yeah.
Right. Um, and what was important to know about Barbie is that it worked. The only movie they could have made that would get international actual acclaim, right, was doing a strange conceptual take on Barbie. Yeah.
It's like, it's the Lego movie meets Anchorman is, is Barbie. Yeah. With a little bit of magic policy fantasy in it. Yes.
Yeah. Um, now, right. You're an executive at Furby. And I've been, Stuart Dunlop has come to the office and gone, here's the title.
And then left. Yep. Um, no words spoken in this meeting. And you're like, that's it.
That's it. We have to go further than the Barbie movie did. Yeah. We have to make a movie so fucked up, but definitely about our products.
Yes. That it becomes the biggest name of the year and everyone buys Furby. Yeah. And it's got to be that we start a rumor that there is a movie that's going to be a movie.
It's a rumor that there is one really, really good. Someone invented a new flavor, brand new flavor. I don't mean like, oh, a new blueberry flavor. I mean, a brand new never before tasted flavor.
Mm. It tasted like dreams. Yeah. And they hid it on a Furby.
I'm thinking, you know how the Barbie movie wears its themes on its sleeve? Yeah. Right. I think we go full like, ochia with this one.
Right. Make it about animal rights, credit, the meat industry. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So, what I'm thinking about is that the first thing I can imagine is that the first thing I can imagine is just the worst thing I can imagine. Like that light, you know what?
Croll doll hair. No one ever did. They are 100% meat. No one ever found that out.
Yeah. It was meat that just never went off. Yeah. I mean, it did because like the Furby's ended up just fizzling out and stuff over time, you know, like plastic toys do.
Yeah. But no one ever bit into a Furby. Yeah. Like, but when this one child does, that's when they open a restaurant.
I think this is about a child discovers that Furby's are alive. Yes. Right. All the Furby toys are living creatures that only when adults aren't looking, they get up and they move around.
Oh, Furby. It's a bit of a toy story. Yeah. Exactly.
But then a child captures on video. Furby's getting up and walking around. A living Furby. Yeah.
And like, post it on the internet. I thought it's the parents. Yeah. And suddenly the adults are deciding how to boil and fry them.
This house has stripped them of their fur, take off the beak, carve them into strips. You know, I said this had ochia vibes to it, right? Yeah. Like, like all I'm imagining is Mark Ruffalo from Mickey 17.
Yeah. Lick in his lips. Yeah. I want to eat a Furby.
I really want, I just want to eat a Furby. Tony Collette being like, yes, and we'll make the sauce. I just want to eat a Furby. Mm-mm-mm.
So I think he's going around kids' houses. Like, asking if he can boil the Furby. I think all the parents are into this. Yeah, yeah.
I think the adults are the problem. For kids it's magic. Yeah. Right?
For adults it's just sustenance. Yeah, yeah. They've already got all this stuff and meat is, they're being told. Their parents have been told.
Meat's bad. Mm-hmm. You can't eat any more of it because of climate change and it's too expensive for them to buy. Right?
And what this also speaks to speaks to. Yeah. It speaks to how kids and adults view toys differently. Yeah.
I'm talking beanie babies. The questionable. Well, I was going to get to that. But like, when beanie babies were a thing, I saw more adults into beanie babies than I saw kids into beanie babies.
And adults were like, oh, well, collect them and they'll be worth like thousands of money. It's a practical thing, isn't it? It's like very practical, very like- A great investment. An investment.
This is how adults view the world. Yeah. Kids are like, oh, I've got a beanie baby of this bear. Oh, wonderful.
I've got this Princess Diana commemorative beanie baby. Like, I can play Princess Diana stories. There is. Adults are like, I've got this Princess Diana commemorative beanie baby.
The flank looks pretty good. I wonder if I could get a stake out of this. But like, my point being that I understand that you were applying that to real life. I'm just bringing us back into the world and we built one to eat the- one to eat furbies.
And I just think that we've really got to have this child, these children, running away from home, guiding like hundreds of furbies, Pikmin numbers of furbies. And just like Inocia, like, well, just like Inocia, when you let the furbies free, they are forced to be reckoned with. And the furbies like completely flay one of the, one of the McDonald's executives who's trying to- Oh, yeah, because they're the Happy Meal, isn't they? The McDonald's are the first ones to find out.
In the Happy Meal, a Furby fell into the fryer. Yeah. And they were like, Furby's are not only alive, but they taste incredible. Yeah, Alan Sandler is the McNals executive.
And there's like, well, yeah, and there's like a hundred year old man who tastes a Furby. Yeah. And then says to a camera, a news, news camera is like with the ticker at the bottom, like Mr. Alfred Hitchcock.
Yeah. Mr. Alfred Hitchcock. The last taster of the Dodo.
The last taster of the Dodo. This is pretty good shit. Yes. I think this tastes about 90% like a Dodo.
This tastes like the Dodo. It's been a hit song. This tastes exactly like the Dodo. Yes.
We should hunt them. I was there when the last Dodo was. And also the last I shared in the Galapagos turtle soup. I was the chef who cooked the last Dodo and the last Galapagos turtle soup.
The Furby is a culinary experience unlike any other. What you should do is you should buy my book on cooking the Furby's. How to cook Furby's? Tastes the Furby.
Tastes the Furby. Tastes the Furby. A book by the Nervous. The taste of a Furby and God against all.
So yeah, these kids, they lead a little rebellion. They break into... Can I eat tea? They break into McDonald's headquarters where they keep all the Furby's and they break them out.
Yeah. And it's like, was it Mitchell's and the Machines? Yeah. That's the Furby scene where they get attacked by those.
Yes. But what they actually learn is that Furby's can fly by the end. Oh my goodness. Get them off of them together.
They can fly. So it's like Hitchcock's the Birds at the end. Oh, they do a sort of like kaiju made out of them. I think obviously they do that.
They make a giant walking Furby creature. Yeah. Where do they go? Are they going to Furby land?
Yeah. Do they go to the Maldives? I think they're waiting to the sea. Maldives Mauritius Worthy?
Yeah. But they don't go there. They walk into the sea. Never to go.
Like Godzilla. Yeah. That's the end of the movie. That's the end of the movie.
They move into the sea. They will return to smash up Tokyo high. The vengeance of Furby. Yeah.
It's the sequel. Alright, so from Ross Originals we've got the Arcane Arcade. The Arcane Arcade. I like that.
I love this. This feels like a Saturday morning kids TV show. A little bit. Yeah.
Kind of like Tron vibes where there's a lot of like portals and stuff. Yeah. And I guess this is an arcade in the time of now. Yeah.
I mean, I think the arcade closed down years ago. Yeah. They are opening up now again in a kind of retro way. I think people of a certain age go to them.
Yeah. I mean, like there are arcade games that are still attracting plenty of people. Like there is a Minecraft legend. Is that right?
There's a kind of Minecraft like Diablo style game that has an arcade cab that like will like print you off a piece of loot. Like what's from the thing? It's incredible. It's taken home in Scanner and put it onto your account.
That's so cool. Yeah. I remember having some fun with Luigi's Mansion. Like Gun?
I remember that. I played on the Halo one in an arcade recently. That was a waste of money. It just looks shit.
Yeah. I mean, they do have a nowadays because they no longer like, you know, 25 cents. Yeah. And they're no longer like, you know, 50 p a play.
They have. They always were very exploitative, hmm, Lee made, but like these one like now we've got things at home. It's like this is the worst deal in the entire world. Yeah.
When it was something that you could only play there. Yeah. Yeah. And however I did go to an arcade in Manchester for my stag do and I got 10 points off the high score of the fact man.
Wasn't invited to that. Listen, I wasn't invited to that. No, no, no. We're going to see drop kick movies.
Yeah. You don't like the drop kick movies? I, um, I never dropped kick to Murphy. No, sir.
But like, I don't participate in grubilying time. Are we all? Yeah, we got to get to Murphy. Yeah, we got him.
Yeah. Yeah, no, we, we, I got 10 points off the Pac-Man high score. Oh, like classic Pac-Man. And I suddenly felt what that must have felt like.
Yeah, you returned back. Yeah. Way back to the, yeah. I put way too many tokens in there and got nowhere close to that foot.
Yeah. I said you were in performance mode. And suddenly you had pressure. Yeah.
Cause I was like, oh, like I just played like just getting back in Pac-Man. And yeah, just like, oh, shit. Like I can actually do this and then died. I was like, no.
Teenagers who spent like years trying to reclaim that sort of glory. Yeah. I felt like doing a ready player one and googling paths to Pac-Man that would get me the high score so I could get the coin to do the fucking, the game. Dungeon that you have to do in the way, the oasis or whatever.
Yeah, in a, in a way, sis. Yeah. Uh, wonderful. So, um, uh, so, okay, okay.
Okay. Right. I think, yeah, I think what you're describing though, like that kind of like, um, uh, what is the, what is the root, what is the way the secrets of the people who have the high scores. How do they get the high scores?
I kind of, I, I think maybe perhaps this is like a, a place that wasn't always an arcade. Mm. It is a place that now presents as an arcade because it's been there for, since the days of the store, right? It's been there since the 1600s.
It used to be. Yeah. It used to be, it wasn't an arcade then. It was like, it was like, I don't know, a gambling hall.
You know, it was something else. And as the, You were like, splat the rat. Yeah. Exactly.
You know, it was, it was carnival. Right. And then as the days wore on, it transformed, magically transformed into more acceptable incarnations as to, because our people's perception was like expecting like, gimangi. Yeah.
The original gimangi is like a kinetic board game with your rolled ice. Yeah. And then it transformed with the age. Yeah.
It was like, eight bit video game. That was never explained. Yeah. It was like the fact that it transformed to a games console.
When games consoles were around in the other time in Germanci. I find it quite interesting that like, yeah, it always presents itself as a slightly old piece of kit. Yeah. Like it never, it never presents itself as like a cool new thing.
It's not a contemporary thing. Yeah. It's always about 10 years. In the 1990s, it was an old battered board game that nobody wants to play anymore.
Yeah. In 2015, it was an old battered games console. What was the timeline to gimangi? Because in the films, so the Robin Williams one was like 96, something like that.
When did Colin Hanks get sucked into the game? Because that feels very like 80s when that happens. I'm not seeing that. They threw it into the river at the end of Germanji.
Yeah. And it turned upon a beach for Colin Hanks to pick up. We're getting off top. We are very off top.
We are very off top. But Germanji, it's like that this arcade. It's more than a new version. To a more content.
It was a few years behind. So this is now an arcade building that is now doing time crisis and stuff like that. And it's all like rain of fire. Time crisis.
Time crisis. Ice climbers. House of the dead. Yeah.
So they're all these games, right? And you play them. And each one teaches you, it's teaching you, it's like a school. It's teaching you how to control different kinds of magic.
It's preparing people for what is trapped underneath it. Which is a suitably video game themed. Baddy who's locked away for a thousand years. Oh, so I quite like this being like a Lovecraftian sort of like Pennywise kind of thing.
However, it turns out, right, it's not a sinister thing. The thing just wants to play. Yeah, okay. The thing just wants to like be put up with a good challenge.
Sure. Like you won't die. Yep. If you get killed by this thing.
Okay. Basically it's just game over. You get taken back to the arcade. Like but when you're in that like Germanji space, like you don't know, right?
Yeah. So like there's. When you're in the arcade, you are not in danger, but you really think you are. Yeah.
So a bunch of stranger things style kids. Yeah. But in the modern days, they're their strangest things style in that they're played by all the same actors. Yes.
They're all the same actors. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And they all get sucked into a video game, and but it's like beneath all, like one of the arcade machines like Tron moves out of the way, revealing like a dungeon crawl.
Oh. Cause they have to go through all right? Yeah, yeah. Like an old fashioned like D&D dungeon crawl.
And some of them are based on DND like dungeons. So like the. There's like Danny DeVito. Like my welcome you.
He's the sort of research to be and this. He's playing a Goblin. We pay. We spray painting green.
I got a welcome you to the arcade. Because that's just a part of my contract. I'm Wizard of Vito. You're a purveyor of sorts as we go through the magic realm.
And the strange things kids are like, oh my god, but the arcade is shut behind them. So like, right, well the only way out is to go and defeat the boss at the end. My boss at the end of the dungeon. That's what you say.
And so they made their way through and then like one of the kids like full on gets like fireball. Yeah, in Rain of Fire he explodes. Yeah, it's a kid you don't really get like a sort of bully kid. You don't really give a shit about it.
Or like maybe like a bully sidekick. Someone who's more drawn to the, to the, you know, volatile game. Because the bully and the nerds have to come together at the end to fight the thing. But at the end you realise everyone's still alive.
Yeah, I think even at the end part way through in becomes clear that like, okay, Tom. Yeah. The person who has been studying out of the dead raises them as zombies. Ah nice.