Hey, hey, you're still asleep. Why? Wake up. You're a chor- you have chores.
You have chores to do. Well, how's that never? Wake up, Daniel! What's that?
Can you give me actually Charlie Manks doing Chop Suey? Yeah. Thanks. Oh wait, hold on, should I do being Partridge?
So, how do you do- what's your being Partridge? I'll show you. M-O-L-N, that spells being Partridge. Not like that though.
Not like that. Do it. I'll show you. Alright.
Wake up! Looney Toon's dumb guy. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah.
I mean, really. You know, besides like the Looney Toon stuff that doesn't really age well, you know, some of the racial bits? Yeah, yeah. Per-O dice.
Yeah. Band cartoon. Uh-huh. Yeah.
I mean, they really locked in on some other stuff though. Like, the dumb guy voice? Like, don't- yes, the archetypal dumb guy. I- yeah, that's got to be rooted in something way more offensive, right?
I mean, probably. I'll tell you what, I once heard someone say that all of Looney Toon's is like sort of drawing on like, minstrel shows? All of it, huh? Like sort of, yeah, like a lot of the animation is meant to like mimic- huh?
Or like, oh yeah, I'd never heard that until recently. I don't know if someone's just like, trying to bum me out or what, but that's alright. I spent well- yeah, some to look into or not. I think Looney Toon's is the funniest, best cartoon in the history of civilization.
I have to agree, except for fairly odd parents. I like all of the episodes. When that rabbit says what's up, Doc? Yeah.
That's just, I don't know. Rob, that's what you need. Comedy gold. Yeah.
I think- here's the issue. Okay. Dear listener, I think we're off to a rocky start. Because- Well, hear me out.
Yeah. I think we're off to a rocky start because Rob and I started our session by doing business stuff. We were talking shop, we were getting organized, we were making lists and schedules. And so we are activating our left brain, our logic brain.
Yeah. Oh. Stupid. Instead of our right brain, our creative brain, we are being cyborgs when we should be Picasso and his friend, the paintbrush.
I would have said pig-casso as in porcupig-casso. Oh, dear. Oh, no. Something happened when we were being responsible guys where we seemed to have freaky Friday.
What? And you're saying things like, I like all loony tunes, porcupig-casso. And I'm saying things like, maybe we should move on. All right.
Well, you think it was when we were both peeing in that fountain at the same time? Yeah, it must have been, right? Rob. Oh, my God.
So if you've been listening to the show for the past year, you know Rob has my only question. Because he's had to invest in several mute buttons because they keep breaking due to the stress he puts on them. Too much wear and tear on these mute buttons. Like he just, he just, like there was that silence you heard was him muting his microphone, covering his mouth, his cheeks shooting out like dizzy fucking Gillespie.
Yes. And just the camera shaking like there was like a 5.0 Richter earthquake. Right. Yeah.
It was, he, he coughed with the force of five Andy Richter's. This is just my life now. I'm just a sick, sick man. What are your symptoms?
Tell everyone. I have chest congestion. Honestly, I woke up today feeling like garbage and I'm like, it feels like the beginning of bronchitis, which, you know, I used to get bronchitis at least once a year. It was like, yeah, but you put away such childish things.
I thought so. But you're approaching a midlife crisis maybe? I mean, I am turning 40 this year. So that's probably, that's fucked up.
It's kind of weird that no offense. It's kind of weird that you have a podcast with a 19 year old. Uh huh. Well, you know, I, and that's no cap.
It's no cap. Sorry. Sorry if this is a bit of a bromo for you, Rob. The show is mid and phase clan for life.
Oh man. I don't know what you're saying. That's e-sports. It's like a gaming team.
Oh, that's fun for them to do. I, do they wear fingerless gloves? Oh, they might. They simply must.
You got it. You can't get your sweat all over the controller. Dan, we're not here to talk about fingerless gloves or what is or isn't a cap. No.
Can I, can I make one recommendation for e-sports tournaments? Of course. The referees should be like their moms. And the penalty is you have to go eat dinner.
If you break the rules. I mean, that's- You have to have shake and bake pork chop cutlet. That's great. Velve mac and cheese.
Yeah. Right. That's like the only thing that's off in the book. Okay.
So, I'm going to your weekly kimmybaby. We're talking dollar babies and the short stories that made them. Yeah. Just kidding.
Short stories that inspired them. And this week, Rob, we're looking at a story that was written shall we say just after sunset. It's from the book just after sunset, isn't it? You bet.
You bet your ass. It's called Rest Stop. And the short film is from 2019. Now, they're actually- they're a couple rest stop adaptations from 2019, which is this one.
Wait, from all from 2019, you say? Yeah. If you look up like on IMDP, there's a few of them. This is- it's like none of the ones that come up immediately.
I had to look up. So, this is starring. It's got Randy Havens. Now, Dan, you're a big Randy Havens fan, aren't you?
Of course I am. You love that show that he's on. Yeah, definitely. I'll tell you what, he looks more like the average viewer of that show, if you ask me.
Now, Randy Havens- I don't know- Is on Stranger Things. Yeah, he's Scott Clark, famous TV character Scott Clark, probably has a Funko Pop and several variant Funko Pops. Definitely. Oh man, did you get the Scott Clark where he's wearing his Madras Plag button down shirt?
Yeah, he plays the- Oh man. The science Scott Clark with the left hair part or the right hair part. Oh man, those left hair parts, they're going for big money on eBay. These are going to be worth so much money someday.
Yeah. Yeah. So, right. Randy Havens.
The year 1975. The location. A college. Derry.
In Derry, of course. Everything takes place. In Derry, of course. You've got to make it take place in Derry.
You've got to pay- You've got to give Stephen his flowers. It's not enough that you're- Stephen Flowers. Yeah, he is. It's not enough that Stephen King wrote all these stories and people just are dying to adapt them, even though it doesn't really- It's not that creative a deal for them in the long run.
It is good to get people who are interested in filmmaking. They want to make their first film or something like that. But the fact that they can't really do much with it besides entering film festivals is kind of a drag. You waited until we were 24 episodes into address.
Address this. I feel like I brought it up before. Yeah, maybe. I guess it's a drag.
You know what though? There's a real for love of the game quality. Well, that's the thing. What I mean is they remind me of the Kevin Costner movie for love of the game.
You're a big Costner head, right? You're always going on in Yellowstone. I got into him through that speech he gave when- What's her name? One best director who did Year of the Dog.
Do you see that? No. It's very emotional about his own acting career for like five minutes. And then I'm blanking on her name.
But you know who I'm talking about. I know. Yeah. Yeah.
She comes up and she's like, wow, thanks, Kevin. That was a very emotional. Is that what you said? Power the dog?
Yeah, that's why I meant. Jane Campion. Yeah. Jane Campion.
Yeah, she's just like, she comes up. She's like, wow, Kevin, that was very emotional. Thank you. He's just standing there like bleary-eyed.
It's insane. I mean, there is nothing like normal about- Well, no, man. There's nothing normal about that. I just like to see older men, guys, you know, 60 and up who have suppressed their emotions for so long that they just cannot hold them anymore.
But he's got like that sort of like psychopathic expression of emotion where I feel like he's always performing. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know.
I'm thinking of, so the Major League Baseball, right? You're familiar? Yeah. They started, I think last season was the first year.
They started doing a field of dreams game. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know where I was talking. I did see it.
I know where whatever. Yeah, I saw like a part of it. I saw Kevin Costner like walk out of the cornfield with like, give a little look. Okay.
Yeah. That's the thing. So I'll admit, I'm a sucker for the whole concept of that. I think it's very cool.
The old time of uniforms. Yeah. Sorry. Sue me.
However, I thought it was very weird. It's okay. Well, it makes me feel like a rub. But he comes out and he like looks around as though he had no idea any of this.
Like he's basically performing field of dreams. Right? Yeah. But he's doing it.
He's doing he's doing don't stop believing with acting where everyone's like, he doesn't he can't believe it. He can't believe it. It's anyway, like, yeah, he's wearing the same outfit and everything. Yeah.
Yeah. He's like, he's like tossing a baseball as he's basically doing a Tom Lennon as Mr. Old Fashion from the state. Oh, yeah.
No, he is. That's exactly what he's doing. I feel. I don't know.
He's in like, he's in several baseball movies. He seems like just three. I think he's in three baseball. That's like a lot, right?
Uh huh. That's more than that's more than Charlie Sheen. Right? By one.
I mean, like, I, like, I'm not, I'm not a big sports fan, but I will watch any sports movie because they're fucking compelling. It's built into the fucking fabric, you know, good versus bad kind of a thing. It's great. Absolutely.
There's always emotional again, you know, you know, son versus father. Yes. In the case of field of dreams. Right.
Dad, do you want to play catch in this field? Do you want to play catch and make every man in the theater cry? Do you? You want to hear some crazy?
What? I've never seen that movie. That's, I mean, honestly, I thought it was crazy. You get, you get the gist of it.
You saw that baseball game with Kevin Costner walking out of the cornfield. That's, you got it. That's it. Yeah.
Well, I feel like, I mean, yeah, kind of right, like I've seen the end. So it's like, am I going to be satisfied? I honestly think that since you're like, you are a baseball guy. I think that you would probably like it.
I probably would. Yeah. It is a little like, it does get a little like, like, sappy and like, you know, whatever. Yeah.
James Earl Jones is pretty, pretty good. Jeez. Yeah. Right.
Jeez. J-E-G. Jeez. Yes.
Well, let's give the baseball talk a rest. Let's stop talking about field of dreams. Okay. Let's pivot back to strange earth things.
Guy, Randy Havens. Randy Havens. Rest stop from 2019 directed by Cameron Schwartz. No, Rob.
Uh huh. Thoughts on Cameron Schwartz. I thought he did a pretty good job with it. Yeah, I liked it.
I liked it. So it kicks. Yep, good. Okay.
Go ahead. Go ahead. No, I was just going to get background on Cam. You do it.
Cameron Schwartz, he's worked on like a lot of movies as a second unit, you know, camera assistant on quite a few projects like your dirty grandpas, your, your doom patrols, etcetera. You're foot loose remake. Yeah. You're foot loose remake.
You're scary movie five. Scary movie V. I didn't even know. I had no one to tell.
No. Nobody told me. Wow. This is wild.
Just looking at the poster for a scary movie V. Is it? I see just at a glance, the aforementioned Charlie Sheen. What appears to be a Michael Tyson?
That is a Michael Tyson. Sarah Hyland from Modern Family. Cat Williams. Yeah, we got Cat Williams and Snoop Dogg.
Oh man, maybe we should we should be talking about this movie because we also got Ashley Tisdale and Simon Rex. And well, he's like a mainstay of these movies as like three, right? Yeah, he's in the third one and he's pretty good in it. I like the third one.
You can't, you watch Red Rocket. No, I heard it was great. It is great. Oh, Lindsey Lohan is herself.
I can't. All right, that'll do. That'll do. All right.
Back on track. So yeah, Cameron Schwartz, he's he's in the industry as we in the industry like to say, but I mean, that's clearly why this looks so good. Yes. You know, the guy works on actual production.
Yeah. Which is not to say like, you know, the other ones, they, you know, this is like, this guy does it for fucking living. This is his profession. So we better fucking look good.
Yeah. You also got to imagine that like the people he's able to hire onto this, right? Yeah. They're also like people who work on professional H, Hwood style productions.
And so that just means like top to bottom, you're dealing with just like a sort of like higher Yeah, level of production. I mean, the fucking guy, Steve Coulter, who plays the Dean of the school here. The guy was on a show. He's on Jelly Stone.
Yeah. And Jelly Stone. And Jelly Stone. Please Mel Thompson.
Right. So he said she like that was like as though everyone who listens to the show watch your shares your Vore fetish and is going to be super excited to hear about you. Listen, it's not a Vore fetish. Okay.
It's a Gigantorous fetish. It's a being held in a giant bosom fetish. Exactly. I want to be cradled or stomped on by a big woman.
A girl. Big girls. So he's in a bunch of stuff. It's true.
I thought he was great in this. It was like, just like, I mean, he's got more dialogue than Randy Havens. And he's great as just like a slimy academic administrator. He's a shit.
Absolutely. But he plays it off his like, I'm not being a shithead. It's fine. So we're introduced to Randy Havens character who is John Dykstra or is it he's a college professor.
He is called into the Dean's office for a big meeting. Basically, this guy is up for a position to be like a chairman of the literature department, which he has worked as a lit teacher there for over 10 years, I say. And as he walks in, there's this other guy and like this yellow turtleneck who just fucking he's just being a real prick. Hands him his coffee cup and he's like, here, get used to doing my doing things for me.
Yeah, get used to holding my freaking cup of coffee for me. Yeah, get used to the grading thing you can do. Yeah, get used to feeding me my Baba of coffee. Hey, he should be on this show.
This is a show for babies. That's right. So he walks in and then there's a guy sitting on the couch who doesn't say anything, but he looks an awful lot like Randy Haven. Doesn't he?
He's like, got the same haircut. He kind of does. He kind of does. I'll give him that.
No, I have a question right off the bat for you. Okay. This film is set in the 70s, the 1970s, the American swinging 70s. Oh, man.
1975. The summer. Summer. Summer.
Sam, we're like, right? When was that? 77, right? According to your aunt the other day.
Oh, yeah. My aunt was talking about some. Yeah. Going to see Star Wars.
Specifically. The summer of Sam. Yeah, and specifically how afraid to be attacked by him in a movie theater. She was, and I'll tell you what, as she was telling that story, I'm bringing up at the time because she was, you know, in a groove.
But that was my exact experience going to see like movies after that shooting happened at the fucking dark night screening. No, totally. Yeah. Some things never change.
It's an American tradition. I know this episode has mostly been sidetracked so far, but one more. When she was talking about that and how scared she was of, you know, some Sam and him attacking in whatever in the theater that like, I don't know, the idea that there would be like one guy that a whole city was scared of, right? Which like, now we, you know, that's, you know, awful.
Now it's one type of guy. Yeah. Right. Exactly.
And then, you know, offs himself right then and there. And then, you know, we're all just kind of left with, all right. Well, nothing. We're not doing anything.
Okay. Moving on, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, like it's horrible. We're all, um, did you hear what happened at that football game like a night or two ago as if they're recording this? No. A guy got tackled and then stood up and then passed out and is currently like, intubated.
Yes. And the league apparently was like, they're like, all right, we're going to take five minutes and then it's game time again. And it took all the coaches and players being like, fuck you, for them to not do that. Which like, obviously guys, come on.
Yeah. I mean, just like that's the degree to which I think just like we've mostly become numb to and sort of like accepted the horrors of of just everyday life of our current moment. Right. I know.
When she was talking about that and being like scared in the theater and like, you know, just expanding on that, right? Like just being scared of like one guy in the city. I'm like, oh man, it was a better time. Was it?
Yeah. One guy. One guy. Oh man.
It's only being one play. You do one at a time. Right. It's not a group of the same type of guy who are everywhere who are on the internet at all time.
It's like the internet is just making sons of Sam all the time. Yeah. Oh boy. Anyway, any who let's take a rest from you having my aunt's name in your mouth and stop talking about my aunt, bro.
And resume talking about rest up. So yes, I was what I was going to say is 75. This is a period piece and I was very distracted by Randy Haven's glasses. They felt very contemporary to me.
Okay. I don't know. I mean, that's just me. No, I think you're right.
They're too small. Yeah, they are small size and shape. They should be much bigger. Mm hmm.
But maybe that's what nerds wear back then. Yeah, maybe. He should put horn rim glasses or something. I agree.
I also think the facial hair is all wrong. That looks like something you get as like a 2000s guy. Sure. Like I was very surprised.
Like to the degree that when you know the first thing you see is him having a conversation with the Dean's secretary, I was like, why shouldn't a typewriter. This guy's so visibly from now. Right. Well, yes.
So you hated this because the guy's beard was wrong. Yeah. Yeah. I actually closed my eyes for the rest of the movie.
So I'm going to need you to take the reins here. Yeah. So he's being considered for the the chair, the department chair position along with that sh** head who made him hold his coffee. Right.
And he, right, he's in a room with the Dean and a guy who looks like him, who is identified as the, see, that's how he should have been styled Rob. That guy's got big glasses. I know. He looks generally stupid in the way that people looked in the 70s.
But he basically, so that guy is like a psychiatrist or he's like a, yes, psychological profiler or something. Yeah. They're just like, yeah, he's just sitting there. I mean, he's just there to judge him, to judge our main character here.
And the framing is framing is sort of like, you know, you have the Dean behind his desk. You have John sitting across from the Dean and then behind John on a couch. Is this psychological evaluator? Right.
So this scene, basically, like, you know, the, our main character here, what's John, right? He, yeah, he's like making his case. He's got like, he's annoyed that, you know, he's, he's definitely has the experience and put in the time at the school and he should be getting the job, at least in his eyes. And the Dean is kind of, he's sort of tiptoeing around and like, yeah, you know, but I know that you're working on that book.
And I certainly wouldn't want to take any time away from that. And I kind of like, you know, kind of shit. Then he, so he leaves and he gets in his car and then there's, we see the man's boots, those black boots. Yeah.
Yep. He's putting on his boots to go to his meeting with his writers group because he writes under a pseudonym slash persona named John Dykstra. Now, no, that's his name. His name is John Dykstra.
Oh, sorry. The character is Rick Hardin. Yes. That's who he's in.
Excuse me. Yeah. I don't know why I'd pen name him my head. Anyway, this is a very kingy thing.
This is sort of like dark half-ish, right? It's very dark half where they, so he's like, it does seem like when he puts on the boots and he puts on a pair of dungarees, then he's like, he turns into this, this other guy, this, what's his name? Rick Hardin. Rick Hardin, which sounds like a porno name.
If you ask me, in my opinion, prick hard on. It's really that easy. It is. Shit, man, I could write porn.
You could write porn. You should just write porn, Dan. I should do it. I keep saying I'm going to do it.
I should just do it. At what point does everybody just have an only fans and nobody is subscribing to anybody? I mean, what are those in Glass House that should not throw stones? But hey, we have meetings now.
That's right. Change. So this, these, like, these other, I mean, it's, this guy, John Dykstra is getting harassed and getting shit from these other fucking eggheads. The world.
Yeah. I think that there is, like, yes. Oh, here's this meeting and, well, the one woman has seemingly, like, a genuine question for him, right? Yes.
Like, it's on about getting published and she's, like, asking him about, like, doing it for the money versus, like, doing it for the art or whatever. And he's sipping a beer, taking in her question. And then a guy who's the exact same type of guy as the guy from the college. I thought it was the same guy first, yeah.
I had to rewind to make sure it wasn't the same guy because they're, they're in the same lane. Yeah. 100%. Yes.
A guy just starts cucking the shit out of just the ever-loving shit out of him. I don't know how else to say it. Right. And it's like, he's like, everyone knows you're, you know, you're full of shit with your little cowboy boots and your dumb little stories.
And then what's that thing? They call him out for being like, you know, they're like, you think that you're your character, Rick Harden. And you're not, you're fucking John Dutcheter. Yeah.
Like the only, yeah, the only bad boy shit you do is sneak six beers into the library for these meetings. Right. Which is a pretty good burn, to be honest. It is pretty good.
The next scene is what, so he's going to the bathroom and he's standing outside the doors. And the men's room has an out of order sign on it. And he gets frustrated and he crumples it up and he throws it, right? Because he's fucking pissed.
And then because he's such like a, like a cuck, he picks it up and he puts it back where it was. Pretty good. Yeah. And the amount of times he has to re-tape it as he's like, uncrumbling it and trying to hang it back up.
It's pretty good. There's also a shot like right before that moment where he's like looking at the two doors, right? He's like, he's in the center of the shot. Yeah.
And on the other side of him there's a door and then sort of on the inner halves of those doors are like the gender signs for the bathrooms or whatever. And the camera pans down so that the, like the words men and women sort of like vanish behind him. And you get like a nice like angel on one shoulder devil on the other effect. That's fun.
It's a, it's a nice little shot. Oh, nice. Which one is which though? Oh, oh, don't get me sorry buddy.
I honestly don't know. So our main character, John Dijkstra. He, he leaves on his way home, presumably. He stops at rest stop because he got to hit the bathroom again.
He didn't go to the bathroom before, I guess, because it was out of order. And he stops at rest stop. And as he's going into, as he's about to walk into the men's room, he hears a commotion coming from the woman's room and it's, it's the sound of a guy, you know, like physically abusing his girlfriend or wife, like hitting her and whatnot in the bathroom. So he hears it and he goes, he goes, he goes, he pees, he washes his hands.
He's like, he's, he could see that he's like, I don't know, got something. He's like thinking a little bit, you know, then he goes outside and it's still happening. So then he goes to his trunk of his car and he gets a tire iron and he goes in there and he just beats the shit out of the guy. It takes, you know, it takes a few minutes of him like working up the nerve to do it, but that's ultimately what he does.
And then there's this weird thing where he like takes off one of the guy's boots and then like throws it like off to the side. What was that? I don't know. I'm not sure.
I thought he was going to. Then you hear in like, in like, ADR the guy go, Hey, where you do with my boot or something? You know what I mean? You know what?
He opens the door and he, he like wedges it open with the boot, but I'm not sure why that happens. Yeah. I miss that. So yeah, I thought he was going to kill the guy and take his boots, you know, it's what you did to.
Yeah, right. That's what you, that's your prize when you kill a man, you take his boots. But yeah, no, doesn't take his boots, just takes one off and leaves. And then we are back at college, right?
Oh, no, first he goes home and he pukes. Yeah. Sort of having realized what just happened. Right.
That thing we loved so much about it, chapter two, someone puking after committing a violent crime. Yes. Yeah. And then so he listens to, he has a voice.
We call them voicemails back then. It was just a message on his gigant answering machine, his real to real answering machine. And it's the dean of the university and he's like, sorry, I have to tell you this, but you didn't get the job, you know, whatever, Roger is getting the job. And you know, it, you know, it just, it seemed like a better fit and whatever, right?
So like some bullshit. Yeah. I do like that the, and then the voicemail ends with him being like, Diane, have you seen my car keys like it's leaving at the end of the day, just checking an item off his list. Totally.
Totally. He's like, it was a real nice touch. So then the next day is when he goes back to the school and he goes, you know, he's in his office and then Roger comes in. Roger is the fuck from earlier with the coffee cup.
And he, you know, he's like, he's got this like, I don't know, he's just kind of a bully. It's so strange to have like academic bullies, but that's, that's what we have here. Yeah, I mean, it's really how the characters written like there's, there's kind of no other way to play this. Like, of course, it should, it should be like a quiet arrogance.
It's just not written that way at all. He is just like straight up bullying this other, his fellow adult. Right. And the guy, you know, Roger, he picks up a, the book that's on John's desk and it's the book that he wrote about, you know, what's that?
Rick, a hard on. Yeah, Rick hard on. Rick hard on. It's funny, but also very erotic.
And then so Roger leaves and he fucking, John is just sitting there for a bit. Sort of like, I don't know which I'll add that is most of this performance. He doesn't speak a lot. He mostly stews.
A lot of stewing. A lot of doing is pretty good at it. No, no shade on his doing. And the camera does a, like, so in the, there's a lot of like the camera sort of like swiveling around his face from one side to the other throughout this film.
And then in this scene, we get like a really fast one. It's sort of like the same visual effect as like basically just having like a light bulb appear over his head. Yes. An evil light bulb.
Yeah. When the, when we get the shift in camera movement, that means that John has turned into another guy before he wasn't, you know, when he's John Dijkstra, he's not the kind of guy that would beat a man with a tire iron in a rest up bathroom. Yeah. But when he is prick hard on, that's exactly what the kind of guy he is.
That's what he fucking does. So that's, so when the camera shifts, which is like, yeah, that's, you know, pretty, pretty standard like, you know, movie trick, you know, movie. So he calls up Roger and he says, Hey man, you know, no hard feelings. We should get together for beer.
No prick hard on feelings. Yeah. And he, you know, he makes a, you know, he says, let me buy a beer later or whatever. And, and Roger agrees.
And then the camera like just sort of like tilts and shows the inside of his like messenger bag and the tire on him is in there. So you know, we're to presume that, you know, he's gonna, he's gonna beat Roger with that tire iron. The last shot is like him kind of into the camera with no glasses on. Yeah, it's almost like that, that Kubrick shot, if his head was tilted down a bit, then it would be the Kubrick shot.
Yeah, it's exactly like the Kubrick shot. It's just like this dead center, like he's just looking like straight ahead down the bell of the camera. That's it. Yeah, pretty much.
And the glasses come off so you know he's evil now. Right. The music, the tone, the music does a lot of the tone setting. Yeah, it does.
And I think it's not good. I think the music is a real, it reminded me of here there be tigers where it's like, it's very like playful and sort of like plucky strings and like it's stinging bells and stuff. It's too playful for what it is. Yeah.
Because like I don't think it's like, I don't think it needs to be like dower or whatever. No, it does. But I feel like you're overselling the humor of it when you lean that heavy on that kind of score. Yeah, I mean, it almost sounds silly at points.
You're like, none of this is really like silly, silly. Right. And it doesn't seem like they're going for like a comedic tone, even when like, you know, you could argue that like when the book club or whatever is like kind of giving them shit or when they're like, yeah, maybe they could have went for something like more comedic. I don't know.
It never, the short film is not in any way comedic. Like there's nothing really funny in here. Yeah. I think probably the psychological evaluator is the funniest guy.
Sure. And that's just because he's doing that thing, that device that like, I feel like is a cone brothers thing where it's like someone will say something and then some crony will just say the exact same thing. Standing in a different part of the shot. Yep.
Yeah. Yeah. It's one of my favorite cone brothers moves. It's a great move.
It's a great move. And I even liked in this. Again, yeah, it's not super funny, which is fine. It's fine.
I mean, like, it looks really great. This is probably one of the best looking, if not the best looking short film that we watched. Yeah. It's like it's a professional production.
I would include the episodes of TV series that we've done. But yeah, I don't know. It's kind of think that the story is this story is just okay. You know?
I would agree with that. Yeah. I saw like in the first minute or whatever when I saw like how good everything looked and like, you know, there's, you know, the camera is moving and it looks good. Right.
I was like, I was kind of excited. I'm like, oh, this is like, we're in somebody's capable hands here, like a storyteller, right? Yeah. And then like I watch them like it's fine.
Totally adequate. Tells a story. I get it. It's just I was expecting maybe a little bit more.
Yeah. It's very kind of one note. Right. Yeah.
There's no deep read you can really have on this. Not really. And honestly, like the short story, which we'll talk about momentarily, you can also kind of say the same for it. Like, yes, it's just not it.
It reminds me the story reminds me of the story Beach World in that way where it just feels like there's a lot of stuff left on the table. Yeah, it's it doesn't seem like there's anything deeper to it. Yeah. But also, but while also like sort of evoking concepts that like suggest there should be something deeper happening, like, right, you have this sort of like these like dueling identities, right?
Like you have the idea of like the writer and his and the like character he occupies or whatever, which is very, you know, we've mentioned dark half. It's also like um knee kind of thing where it's like a guy sort of like disappearing into his character and like the perils of that. Right. But like whereas um knee, there's that like added layer of like why he's doing that sort of the only why here is like the I don't know, just that he's getting cocked by life, which doesn't feel very satisfying.
Like, yeah, I don't know. I think the short story does a slightly better job of sort of like playing around with that. But in the short story, also it's the motivation feels different for the attack because it's sort of like a one off thing for that writer. Whereas here we've sort of like unlocked a serial killer a little bit.
This guy's gonna be a menace. Right. Yeah. And like it's sort of funny that it opens with like a psychological evaluator who's like yeah, just kind of sitting there not clocking.
And you know, everyone's just sort of like, that guy's kind of weird, huh? He's a bit standoffish, wouldn't you say? Um, but yeah, I get like you said, it looks great. It's like it's a fun watch because of how great it looks.
Yeah. I found the score distracting. But the acting like at its lowest points was still like totally adequate. Sure.
Like decent. Um, in addition to just like the framing looking good, I think also the set design looks great. It does. Right.
Like again, that shot that shot of the secretary, like the way her desk is sort of laid out looks fantastic. And then the reverse shot with like that painting behind it just like it all looks really good. Yeah. So Rob, yeah, I guess my only question for you is where would you rank this on your list of baby rankings?
I'm glad you asked them. Um, all right. So here, here my, my 10 through, I'm going to say 14 because it's five, uh, number 10, gray matter. And I have the last run on the ladder, strawberry spring, all that you love will be carried away and grandma.
I'm going to put rest up right between strawberry spring, right below strawberry spring and above all that you love will be carried away. Interesting. Interesting that you liked strawberry spring more than this. I did.