The Flop House: Megalopolis, with Roman Mars

24:30We need to serve the people and this is the way we serve the people through this casino. And then Adam Driver offers, right, no counter argument whatsoever. So I was trying to get like, this is my, this is the beginning of my frustration with this movie. Up until now, you were totally on board. You were like, I love it, I love it. Yeah, you showed up wearing a Cesar Catalina t-shirt. Foam finger and everything. But if you're going to be broad stroke fables, then you have to present ideas. You know what I mean? Like if the characters are not going to make sense and they're going to be completely arched and not have natural dialogue, if the sets are all fantastical and stuff, that usually means that you're clearing the way of all this nuance so you can tell, you know, like a war of ideas of good and evil or whatever.

25:22And this is where I begin to like, what is the premise of Megalopolis? You know, like what does this utopia mean other than the word utopia? What is the casino? Like is it really about serving the people? Is it about corruption? Is it about both? None of these things are clear here. And I'm just like, I'm just at sea with this idea of like, and so much of it is like, is that the deflation of this moment of like, oh, it isn't that Caesar is a Moses -like figure. It's, oh, he is just a genius. Like, he's just great. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that kind of Elliot pointed out. Like it'd be one thing if the idea was that Caesar is this guy who he believes that people don't understand what they actually want or need.

26:11And that he's at odds with the mayor and there's an actual question as to which one – who's right. But the movie is like, nope, Caesar's right. Yeah, listen to the smart guy. I'm interested in that. I really think one of the – the way that it makes sense to me is just if I look at it as a metaphor for Francis Ford Coppola, the genius. And the mayor is a studio executive and he's saying, make me a superhero movie. We got to serve the people and that's what they want. They want a flashy casino. And Francis Ford Coppola is like, no, I want to build them the movies of the future that will create new ways to think and feel.

26:41And I have this new element, Coppola, I mean Megalon. Like that's the only way. And I don't know if it's that explicit in his head or if that was in his head. But that's the way I can read it as a metaphor where it starts to make sense. But that's the only thing that makes – that's the only way it makes sense. But he also seems to think that it makes sense on a political level of like this is a story about politics and populism versus – it's one of those things where it's like obviously populism is bad. We need a genius who can cut through things. And it's like, well, that's fascism. Like that's like – like the thing you present is like the mob gone unruly.

27:18Your only solution is that we all just trust Adam Driver's magic metal. you know. But that's the thing, like, as you're doing the synopsis, that the main thing that is, like, to be conveyed about this moment is that the ideas are almost there as if there's some kind of thing to be said or some point, but they don't connect. And instead, it just moves on, you know, like, and it's very, very weird. That's what I was like. I was like, what is it? What does it mean to serve the people with a casino? Who, I just, like, these ideas, like, none of them stick, none of them are consistent. And it just keeps rolling on.

27:55I think Giancarlo Esposito or Mayor Cicero, my mistake, his plan, actually, there is something, he's saying, we need to build a casino because it'll, like, the people want it. At least that's a concrete thing explanation. I can at least understand that. I mean, we learn more about what Magalopolis will be like later. You'll get to it, Stuart. The plant buildings and the glowing moving sidewalks. The plant buildings, a home for everyone with apparently tons of space now. I don't know. I'm like, did half the population died? Everybody get... I mean, you'll see there's a disaster that opens up quite a bit of extra space for building.

28:29We're like 15 minutes of this two and a half hour. I'm sorry for moving us backward when we should be moving forward. So this scene happens, you realize his relationship with WoW Platinum. With WoW Platinum. I kind of enjoy that name. That was one where I was like, I'm into that. I mean, everything about Aubrey Plaza's performance and character is on the level of a political editorial cartoon, which is kind of where this movie wants to exist, you know? And she knows how to play these characters, you know? Meanwhile, Julia Cicero bluffs her way into the office of Caesar Catalina. And we have a little bit of a verbal sparring between the two of them.

29:03She wants to get in on this Caesar Catalina department of this design authority stuff. And he is initially, go on. Well, she like sent him like a letter to insult him, right? And she wants it back because she doesn't want to embarrass her dad. And she also like, but she's also like, I think she's interested in him. She saw him stop time, for God's sakes. And he looks like Adam Driver. And he looks like Adam Driver, which is not to everyone's taste, but you know, most people. This is where he tells her to go back to the club, which is a moment that, in context, it does not seem as bonkers as it does when it's clicked out.

29:36It's a fun reading is what it is. It's a fun line reading. And he's trying to make fun of the idea of the cool club. He also, this is also where he says like, why do you deserve to be exposed to the riches of my Emersonian mind or whatever, which is also a very funny line. It's great. It's everyone on Twitter. Yeah, it's great. He then takes her to a probably not perfectly to scale cardboard model of the city and has her walk through it with her eyes closed, and she pictures the megalopolis that could be, with, again, floating walkways and streets and everything's glowing and looks like it's made out of plants.

30:19It's super bio-organic. It looks like every CGI rendering proposal of a skyscraper in New York when they're like, here's what we're going to do with this space that opened up. And it's always a CGI rendering where everything's super glossy and there's trees all over. Yeah, it looks like the cover of a super melodic Tech Death album cover. Yes, exactly. I also hate to slow this down, but in terms of like the look of this film. I hate to slow us down, but in terms of. I'd like to do the Bob and Ray Slow Talkers of America sketch. Great sketch. The look of this movie is all over the place. Partly I assume because, you know, some of it was filmed years ago and then some of it was filmed more recently and it was all sort of jammed together.

31:05And, you know, it's what affects. I mean even though this is$120 million of his own money it wasn't enough and like it's what he could afford in certain scenes like but I think that there's some scenes that are genuinely like beautiful and visually striking and some of them look like you know maybe a C tier CGI effects companies reel and some of it looks like they got it off of story blocks or something you know which is you know there's some beautiful stuff on there a former a former Storyblocks says it has a lot of great footage but it's not what you would expect from a major motion picture.

31:43Yeah, it's odd to see what seems to be stock footage just sort of interspersed in this thing This is definitely, there's a, so they were making a documentary about them making this movie at the same time they're making the movie and it hasn't come out yet and I'm so curious to watch it because I have to imagine there were huge swaths of the film that were changed at the last minute because of budget reasons and things like that Yeah So the mayor finds out that his daughter's been spending some time with uh caesar and he's not a big fan of this at some right around now he goes uh he has a parade and everybody's like mean to him and don't like him they're all booing him yeah uh i think also this is where a random guy gets recruited off the street to be one of claudio's henchmen i think that's the same guy in the marching band he gets recruited to go off with claudio and i'm like i guess this is going to be an important character but it's not really like they spend a surprising amount of time with the marching band wondering where this guy went to considering we barely ever see any of them ever again.

32:37Okay, fast forward a little bit. It is nighttime. Caesar jumps in his car and goes driving through the rainy streets of New Rome. He is pursued by Claudio and Julia in separate cars. We have like a little rainy street chase, I guess. And this is where we have one of the, there are a couple moments in this movie that I do think are brilliant and beautiful. And this is where he's going driving to the city and he's seeing the statues of the city, these huge kind of Greco-Roman type statues are literally sagging out of fatigue and dropping the things they're holding and leaning against buildings. And it's like – I think it's such a – it's a beautiful way of getting across the idea of a society that has exhausted itself, that is losing the energy that made it great once.

33:19And I'm like, oh, this is the kind of beautiful straightforward metaphor that he's not achieving through most of the movie in my opinion. Right. Well, it's a sort of directly expressionist look that I think part of the problem is it doesn't settle on one thing. If it was all sort of poetic in the same way, it would feel better. But there's a lot of disjointed different ways of doing it. Yeah. I had the same feeling when I saw this. This scene was the most where I was like, oh, this is what this kind of fantastical imagery is. This is where it's achieving what I think it's supposed to be achieving the whole time.

33:55This is where it hit me and I was like, I can deal with this artifice. I can deal with the fact that this all feels like green screen but not, you know, like purposeful, you know, kind of green screen. And it just felt – that was my favorite visual moment in the whole movie was the statues and the sort of dilapidated parts of New Rome. That worked on me totally. And it's a bit of a sledgehammer but I feel like it is very clear what it's trying to say. It's not as messy as some of the other stuff. But that's where it delivers being a fable is the thing. That's like I want it to, yeah. I want it to be a fable.

34:30Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you saw those statues, you're like, we have title finally. Roman, I have a movie for you called The Fablemans that you might enjoy more. Yeah, it's a real fable, yeah. Fable oriented. It's about a little mouse. That's right. That's Fable Goes West. I apologize. That's an American tale. Fable Goes West. Caesar's car stops in front of a mysterious glowing flower stall that appears in the middle of the street. Julia sees this and says, that doesn't make sense. And I'm like, it doesn't make sense. You're right. And then he takes the flowers he buys and goes up into a dilapidated apartment building.

35:07She pursues him. In his mind, he sees that he's walking into a well-appointed room with attendants and his wife is in the bed. But in reality, he's just like sitting on a bed, right? Like there's no wife there at all. He's like - He's hallucinating that his wife is still alive and is being cared for and he's visiting her. And Julia seems to see both reality and the hallucination. Like she both sees reality, but seems to understand, oh, he thinks his wife is there. And Claudio is also spying on this as well, but he doesn't see the hallucination, I don't believe. It's also, I never could quite figure out why, I know why Claudio gets mad later.

35:44I could never quite figure out why Claudio cares about Caesar right now. He has like a burn book of all the people he doesn't like, and Caesar Catalina is written down on that. Yeah, maybe that's it. This character doesn't need a motivation. I mean, Shia LaBeouf, I think he's harnessing his natural unlikability for this character in a really strong way. No, that's true. You don't need a backstory. You're like, oh, this guy's just, you know, he's just a jerk who doesn't like this guy. Yeah. I just assume that Caesar Catalina, like, I don't know, accidentally threw some logs in the fire when they were sitting around the fire and it burned off Shiloh Booth's eyebrows.

36:17So that's why he hates him. Because he has like painted on eyebrows or something, right? Yeah, just like Superman and Lex Luthor, yeah. Okay, so shortly after this, I guess it's like the next day or something, Caesar takes Julia up in his private elevator to the top of the design authority where he has his like, I don't know, like thinking area, which is like a clock on its side and a bunch of ledges and girders. It looks kind of like the, to me, it looked like a set for like a play, right? And where they can like gaze down upon all of New Rome and kind of see as everything moves. I mean, it's sort of like they're hanging out on top of like a mobile.

37:00Yeah. You put over either a baby or you'd have an art gallery on either side of the sort of spectrum of mobiles. I think it's, I think around now he kind of explains what he's doing or what he's thinking, but I don't really remember this scene outside of them just hanging out on clocks. Yeah. Meanwhile. I think there's a, there's, yeah, there's nothing in my notes. There's nothing particular. It just says clocks. Yeah. Meanwhile, we get a wedding between Wow Platinum and Crassus, the banker guy. Is that, I don't remember his last name. Is that his last name? I think Crassus is his last name. Yeah, that's John Voight.

37:42Yeah, John Voight, okay. So this is clearly, Wild Platinum, this is a power play for her. She wants access to his money. He's Hamilton Crassus III. Thank you, Hamilton Crassus III. Thank you. And so we have a big fancy wedding. It has, it's a wedding that has everything. It has gladiators. It has guys riding chariots around on the inside of a coliseum. Caesar shows up and a pop star shows up wearing a dress made out of. Yeah. To me, honestly, guys, I was just like, oh, they all went to the circus. And I was like, fine with that. As an explanation, I'm just like, they're at the circus now. I don't know if it's necessarily the wedding, but it's a celebration of their betrothal though, right?

38:27Maybe it's their reception, who knows? Yeah, but that's why they're doing it, yeah. Yeah, and there's a pop star wearing, I can't remember if this is the same pop star from later, Vesta Sweetwater, who shows up wearing a dress made out of Megalon, which is - Yes, this is Vesta Sweetwater. This Megalon dress is perfect camouflage. Does not matter for later. There's no moment where you're like, oh, you can use Megalon if you cover yourself like the predator can't see you or something. That doesn't matter. Nope, it's just a one-off idea that it's a dress made out of Megalon where there's cameras in the back that project what's behind you on the front so you turn invisible.

39:01And that's it. Just an idea, just an effect. There's a ton of Roman stuff. We haven't really even talked about the outfits and stuff. Like, everybody has, like, vaguely futuristic Roman outfits. You know it's futuristic because, like, men's suits have slightly different collar cuts. Yeah. That's right. Like, sometimes they don't have – it's like a severe suit cut, but they also have little – they have, like, little laurel wreaths behind their ear. You know, leaves behind their ears. So it's like – Kind of epaulets to make them, like, their shoulders very broad, lots of capes and stuff like that.

39:30The kind of stuff that has been done on stage in productions of Julius Caesar since at least the 1930s. Yes. Where it's like, hmm, we'll pull out how it's like modern political times by having everyone wear suits. But they still have like Roman haircuts, you know, that kind of thing. You know, Roman talked earlier about when the movie started to sort of lose him. And I want to present. I think he meant when he lost himself in the film, right, Roman? He lost himself in the moment. No, I want to talk about the inverse where the movie, which up until this point had only baffled and dismayed me, started to get me a little bit.

40:07And during this whole circus sequence, I'm like, oh. It started to engage me in spite of myself, partly because I was like, oh, I don't need to care what any of it means. At least the movie at this point was throwing a bunch of stuff at me. And I appreciated that. Like this is one of the sequences maybe, you know, before they started running out of money. It felt very like full of splendor and ideas. And none of it necessarily hung together in any thematic way that made any sense to me. But I'm like, oh, okay, movie. It's kind of delivering the bread and circuses to placate, you know, people in the audience.

40:49Yeah, I'm one of the idiot rabble. you're like finally i i can relate to someone in the movie the people screaming for blood it is throwing a lot it's it's but it's like it the i think the point which is easy to get into is the sneering at the at the at the wealthy and you know steering at their excess and stuff like that and it just it's it's totally i mean it works that works and and caesar seems to be doing his best to play along, but he is clearly kind of disgusted by this whole situation. He ends up getting very drunk and getting himself into trouble. Meanwhile, scheming little Claudio, who is, I think he's in drag at this point.

41:33He sneaks into like the control booth and he puts a, he frames Caesar and Vesta Sweetwater, who has been, who is a, like a Taylor Swift style pop star and the idea is that she is supposed to be a like a young virgin right yes she's both made a big deal out of like i'm going to keep myself a virgin and she's presenting herself as being younger than she is so this is learn later yeah this is like statutory rape it seems but it's not actually yeah but isn't the premise of all this like that these old men the old rich oligarchy is bidding on her virginity like bidding is that happening i believe that's true yes they're like betting that she's gonna keep her promise right like they're not auctioning off her virginity right i thought that's what that was happening there like that but but you guys took notes i did somehow the economy of this city is balanced on her promise of staying a virgin until marriage yeah yeah i thought they were sort of like bidding to keep her a virgin somehow but i don't know what the mechanics of that.

42:40I mean, it's ancient Rome stuff though, because it's like, right? Like the Vestal Virgins, their virginity was one of the things underpinning the safety of, the spiritual safety of Rome. And like, that's part of the issue with trying to compare, do a metaphor where you're like, ancient Rome is like nowadays, is that the basic foundational underpinnings of society are so different compared to ancient Rome. And like Rome, yeah, they had a Senate. Yeah, that's true. But also like religion and politics were the same thing. and like it was just taken for granted that if the city was having trouble, you'd make some sacrifices to the gods and hopefully that'll keep things right the way you thought.

43:15In a way, don't we do that these days? You're right, Stu. I'm the one who's being naive. But I did interpret this as way more sinister than maybe it was. Yeah, my notes say fundraiser question mark, pledging for purity question mark. Yeah, I think they are, I think it's like a marathon fundraiser fundraiser where like you're pledging someone to run a marathon i think they're pledging for her to just stay a virgin and so when they see her on tape supposedly in bed with uh with caesar uh catalina yeah they're like i wasted all that money yeah and everybody they're like the underpinning of our city is all wrong yeah yeah everyone is incensed by this like the crowd is is bang for blood this is after her big musical number though right yeah after her big musical number i didn't talk about it but you do want to talk about it she does this big musical number where there's suddenly like six of her singing all at the same time.

44:07And again, doesn't make sense. Doesn't really work thematically. Never explained, but it's a cool thing. Not bad. It's a cool looking scene. And I have to say, actually the Vesta stuff is, the last we see of her character is one of my favorite moments in the movie also, but we'll get to that. Yeah. Please get to it because I don't have it written down in my notes. That's where, okay. Well, I don't remember what happens here, but like the scandal comes out that this video has been shown to Shia LaBeouf arranged for this video to be shown on the Jumbotron of her in bed with Adam Driver. And then suddenly, like the screen fills with fire and there are headlines that are like, Vesta reimagines herself.

44:48And suddenly she is singing like a bad girl song. Now she's reimagined herself as like a sinful bad girl and she's a superstar again. And it's so, it feels so much like Francis Ford Coppola's like, who are the scenes into? Taylor Swift? What does she do? Okay, I'll do something. This is my understanding of what that is. And it happens so – it's like the movie suddenly turns into an advertisement for something else – for some other movie. Yeah, I think that's a little sequence that happens a little bit later. And it's done like a totally like classic MTV News-style like explosion bit and then like scenes of societal collapse.

45:18Okay, Adam Driver, Cesar Catalina, gets too drunk, gets beaten up by some guys. He gets whisked away. The cops arrest him for statutory rape because of the video. But then Julia goes into the archives and finds out, actually, Vesta Sweetwater is older than she's been telling everybody. So she exonerates him. Problem almost immediately solved. And don't we find out that the video is fake later on? And the video is fake. They double up the explanations of why this is fine. It feels like the movie is fainting towards, fainting F-E-I-N-T, not fainting like, oh, Stars and Garters. The Vapors, yeah.

45:59it's taking a faint towards this guy might be a genius, but he's not a good guy. But instead, the movie is very quickly be like, no, no, no, he's a good guy pretending to be a bad guy. And he tells Julia, you got to pretend to be bad or people lose interest in you or something like that. And they're like, not only was she not a minor, he also didn't have sex with her anyway. So it's fine. He's double good. He's nothing to do. He's a sterling saint, you know. So around now we have Caesar and Julia meeting on top of his girder watch ledge, and they have a conversation. And with her help, he's able to stop time again.

46:31He had kind of lost his powers for a little bit. Like Spider-Man, sometimes he loses his powers when he's in a bad mood or depressed. And then they have a kind of sloppy make-out session. I thought that was pretty great. And then we get, and they like decide to work together and we get a montage of them like kind of falling in love and doing some work at the design authority. Which, by the way, has really boring design. Like, I really wanted those jackets to pop a little bit more. I was really bummed about that because I was like, design authority? All right, let's spend some time with design authority.

47:06Nothing. Nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Mugler would be upset. Robert Moses would be upset. He was all about, say what you will about him. In his early work, at least, he's got a real design eye, you know? Yeah. Claudio, meanwhile, one scheme foiled. He's got more schemes to be had. He starts trumping it up. He sees what's going on and he's like – starts getting the masses all angry. They start backing him. Later on, there's a scene where he's giving a stump speech and the stump is literally carved into the shape of a swastika. Is that right? It's pretty messed up. Okay. I think the movie is pretty subtle.

47:43I don't know if something like that would happen in this movie. We find out that Julia is pregnant. Uh-oh. There's a baby on the way. Master Builder has built a baby. Um, Mayor Cicero doesn't like this idea. He doesn't like the idea that they're going to have a kid. So he tries to basically tries to buy off, uh, Caesar. Uh, he's like, Hey, you can do whatever you want. Just don't like leave my daughter out of this. Get out of this. Stuart, you're doing a great job of condensing this movie. Did you skip over the part where the mayor has a dream where a cloud with a hand grabs the moon and his wife, uh, accurately says that that's an omen?

48:20Yeah. Okay. probably i just want to make sure that we get the we're getting something the full yeah i'm sorry i don't want people to listen to this and be like this movie doesn't sound that crazy and it's like oh yeah what about the scene where the mayor has his dream about a cloud grabbing the moon yeah it doesn't it doesn't really figure into much but it looks cool i i don't know when it happens in the movie but so i just want to say the the visual that has stuck with me there's like they're under the water and there's some like people who are rocks they're like painted as rocks and then they sort of move and you see that they're people and I and it is like just like half a second but I was like that's a really gorgeous image right in the middle of this thing that I'm not sure what it's saying yeah and there's like tons of stuff in here like there's moments where Caesar is like has like a floating mirror that shows his memories made out of Megalon yes um And then – Megalon mostly – Megalon is like Herbie the robot from the Fantastic Four cartoon or like – who's the little alien that hung out with the Flintstones?

49:22What was that guy's name? The Great Kazoo. The Great Kazoo. The Megalon is just kind of a lump that kind of floats in the air around Caesar's apartment and does stuff sometimes. But he'll just be working and the Megalon will kind of float too close to him and have to push it out of the way because it's getting too close to his face. And it's like – it's such a strange, like goofy thing to have. It's like, oh, yeah, this is the miracle medal of the future. Anyway, I got a lump of it and it just floats around my apartment. It's kind of irritating. And they have like a family dinner at one point where they invite the mayor and his wife.

49:49And they're like playing cards in this like weird magical Megalon house, right? Yeah. And they're discussing string theory and shit. It's like a Megalopolis exhibit. It's like an exhibit of what Megalops would be like or something like that. Yeah. Does that come after the destruction of the city? That's before the destruction of the city. but after we learn that a Soviet satellite is falling to Earth and will crash into the city. Why? I forgot about that satellite. There's a Soviet satellite that, yeah, they're like, anyway, its orbit has decayed. It's going to hit the city. And they're like, whoa.

50:24And then they don't do anything about it for a while. I'm starting to realize that taking these notes in the dark, it was a lot easier to take notes on Madam Web. A more straightforward film that, you know, It follows a screenplay formula that has been entrenched in Hollywood. So, yeah. By this point, I think we've also – Adam Driver has also kind of shown us his – some of the visual visions of what Megalops will look like. And the buildings will look like plants. And the idea is like the buildings grow as people need them. Like there's homes for everybody because the buildings can grow and change with the needs of the people, which is a beautiful idea.

51:01Roman, how close are we to that? Yeah, I mean – Has anyone tried that yet, growing buildings? I mean, in a way, like Hunter Vassar was like really into like mold and letting things grow because it was like true organic space and the straight line is the godless line. And you're going to want like – Oh, Jeff Vandermeer. Of course, he died from the mold in his lungs, I assume. Totally. So there's a lot of – there have been big lofty ideals about a kind of like organic architecture in a – like in a literal way, like to make it. And then there's the term organic architecture like Frank Lloyd Wright style.

51:38That just means it's reactive and changes to people's needs. So that's all kind of – those ideas are out there. That is the closest thing this sort of dunderheaded movie gets to an idea.

51:54And it's the first time you sort of get to this – yeah, like what does this utopia mean? That it's like organic and reactive and serves people. is actually that that's an actual idea everything else has just been like glowing walkways and nonsense like where i'm like what is this for like what do you have to have like utopias like have to have a concept or something and this one like what is what is the you part of the topia like what does it do yeah it really is it's it's it was it's really weird but that's one idea like that'd be great like having uh a magical substance that requires like no thought or care or design or whatever, like politics.

52:35Creates no waste, requires no energy, and it just does it all. And this is like a huge problem, that you're going to use some technology that's going to save us rather than people coming together and actually coming with solutions and working stuff out. It's just a nonsense idea that you're exploring for a couple of hours. You say that until Megalon works its magic, yeah. Speaking of Megalon working its magic, At this point, Caesar Catalina, probably right on the verge of explaining everything about his utopia, meets with a young 12-year-old fan who actually turns out to be a hired assassin and shoots Caesar in the face.

53:14Yeah. Okay, so this is after—this is then after the city is destroyed by a satellite falling to Earth, right? Yeah, maybe. Like, this is an amazingly large thing to happen and then not really be addressed that much. Like, we get some, like, scenes of catastrophe, like shadows being cast on the wall. The reason I bring it up is just because that card game, I was wondering about, one of the things that strikes me about this movie is, as we said, this is a movie that Coppola has been writing for decades and decades. I can only assume that the screenplay grew and grew and grew. And at certain points, it feels like they just shot every other 20 pages of it.

54:00Because people's relationships to each other will change wildly between scenes without explanation. Like, Juan Carlos Esposito was, like, just saying, like, you know, trying to pay off Adam Driver to get away from his daughter. And then, like, in the next scene, they're all sort of, like, you know, they don't love each other. but they're having a genial card game together. I'm like, okay, well, what happened here? And the only thing I can think of is like, oh, the city was destroyed, so they all came together. But it's not said or anything. I'm looking at my, because I wasn't sure if I was going to have to do the summary today or not.

54:34So I took some notes also. Please, please, yeah. There's also, but you're right, Dan, because like Dustin Hoffman's character, who's an assistant to the mayor, he dies off camera. We hear about, oh yeah, he's dead now. We get one scene of like a thing toppling and falling on him. And I'm like, that had to have been a whole sequence. And Shia LaBeouf runs for his position of alderman and his guy – and then it's after that that the mayor goes to Caesar and says, if you leave my daughter, I'll give you the evidence that I lied when I was prosecuting you. And you'll be able to destroy me and I'll put my support behind your projects.

55:06And at the same time, wow, platinum approaches Catalina. It's like, hey, look, why don't you come back and be with me again and you can have all of Crassus' money. Everyone wants to be in the Caesar Catalina business. and he's like, no, no, no. And that's when she seems to hypnotize Crassus into giving her control over the bank. And then Caesar is shot in the head by this child who he should have been suspicious when a kid asked him to sign his book for him. Like there's no way this kid is reading Caesar Catalina's book. I don't know, man. Everybody loves Caesar Catalina. I think that's pretty clear.

55:39Okay. But Stuart, how do they heal him? How do they heal him? So he has this moment. At this point, I don't know about you guys. I'm like, wow, they killed him. That's crazy. And he has this like weird death dream, but then they end up healing him by fusing his head with some Megalon. They just stick Megalon on his head on the open skull that's there. And this truly is an amazing building material. So we, at this point, Caesar then goes - Oh, but then having the Megalon in his face gives him lots of like new powers and things like that. Like a marble man. Yeah, he shows up at Crassus, Hamilton Crassus' apartment.

56:13Claudio tries to harass him. WoW Platinum tries to make a move on him, but he reveals his Megalon, half human, half Megalon face, and it causes multiple images, and everybody is wowed by the majesty of his face. Especially WoW herself. Exactly. So he's going there because she's frozen all of his bank accounts, using her power at the bank, in order to force him to something. Force his hand, yeah. And then, yeah, she offs herself again, and Crassus kind of interrupts it, but now who does WoW set her sights on if she can't control Caesar Catalina. Of course, she's going to pick, I guess, the next best thing, and that's Claudio Carassus.

56:50That's right. And so we have a little sex scene. You were probably into this, right, Dan? It was like a Game of Thrones-style sex position scene. It was kind of like a Game of Thrones-style sex scene where it's all about power, and you feel like, is this what they think sex is like? Or she's like, stick your face in my butt. Okay, now go over there. Lie down there. I mean, it can be like that. Yeah, yeah, you're doing it, right? That's true. Yeah. By the way, I just really love being on this Zoom call and watching Roman's face as he relives the plot. Like he's like, oh, yeah, that did. That is a thing.

57:24Like what? I have been going through that where I was just like, the satellite. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, I'd forgotten about the satellite. That really is, oh, my God. This is a bunch of nonsense. Like I had streamlined it into like a much tighter movie in my memory than all this. I'm just like, it's like a complete gibberish. It's a long, winding road. Here's my note for that satellite. I wrote, the mayor learns the Soviet satellite may crash into the city, dash, and then it does, question mark. So it did happen, and I think the upshot of that is the idea that it now has opened up even more land for building on.

57:59In real life, the real Robert Moses had to evict people. He didn't have Soviet satellites doing the job for him. This is just a stew of really, truly problematic and nasty great man tropes that like he's canceled for like 20 seconds, but he's such a genius. Like obviously all that stuff that they say about him is fake, you know, and should be forgiven in the first place because he's so great or is all made up and a bunch of these Me Too made up nonsense is coming after him and trying to take him down. All the people are conspiring in these like horrible ways and there's no notion that Adam Driver is just wrong.

58:37You know what I mean? And also the idea of like how necessary destruction is to build something. And then there's this God particle that fixes everything so that no one has to have like actually hard thought and compromise. It's just bad stuff. I mean this is real like 13, 14-year-old. Like I can't believe an old man wrote this. You know what I mean? Like this is like, this is what. It feels like something made by somebody very young or very old. I know. I feel like I believe in either a very young man or a very old man. Yeah, I guess that's right. Or a very stoned man, which apparently he was.

59:15Or a Gary old man. A Gary old man? It feels a lot like somebody like. Gary old banana, Gary old banana, Gary old banana. Gary old bananas? It feels like somebody was like. Gary old man. I know what you're singing. Somebody was like, I want to, like Coppola's like, I want to make a movie about city planning. And then he got high and read like one Jodorowsky Meta Barons book. And he's like, I'm going to do it like this. Yeah, it kind of feels like he's like, should I read the Power Broker or the Inc. Call? I'll read them both. I'll just alternate pages. Exactly. Okay. So wait, I wanted to ask you guys, so this next part, I want to, so Stuart, summarize it and then I've got a question for everybody.

59:54Okay. Because I just want to let you know I have a question about. I was just talking about Wow Platinum and Claudio scheming to take over the bank. They do it over sex. And then Crassus collapses. A sex meeting. Yeah. I'd like two eggs over sex, please. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. My Google calendar says sex meeting at 10 o 'clock. Okay. So, yeah. So then Crassus collapses. He seems to have what, like a stroke or - He has a heart attack or a stroke. Yeah. And he collapses, leaving Wow and Claudio in charge. Now, then it seems like spring comes. You see flowers blooming. And Catalina and Julia get married in their car.

1:00:33Laurence Fishburne sits in the driver's seat and they sit in the back. Not Adam Driver's seat, but the driver's seat of the car. Thank you, yeah. And marries them. And then there is a montage of December holidays in this kind of Abel Gansel's Napoleon triple screen thing. And suddenly it's winter again. And I was like, did I hallucinate that it was spring and now it's winter again? I don't know what. And it can't be the next year because the baby is the same age as when they got married. But this, let's explain. Did you guys have any sense of why there's suddenly a montage of winter holidays? Well, I would have to remember.

1:01:07I also have to ask Elliot, my notes, I just wrote down Elvis. What does that mean? Yes. So an Elvis impersonator is out on the street singing America the Beautiful. I think as part of Claudio's like pandering to the masses. I'm not sure. Or maybe it's a busker and it's a statement about the plastic artificiality of American value. Yeah, that happens. I'm not quite sure. I love this new bit. Stuart just ciphers his notes, by the way. Jesus Christ. What did I write? Yeah, I don't know what's going on with that. I mean, I did write winter holiday montage in my notes. Yeah, that happens. So around now.

1:01:44And it goes on for a while. It goes on for a while that we're watching people opening presents, people spinning dreidels, people celebrating Ramadan. Yeah, everybody's represented. I love it. Well, everybody, I mean three religions. Now the city is inflamed with riots. The masses are rioting against the mayor, inflamed by Claudio, of course. The mayor's family has to escape through a secret train car tunnel. um yep they go through the antique subway car tunnels that have been closed off for for years in the city. You know, there's that, it looked like, I think it was the subway station that is beneath City Hall that has been closed ever since September 11th.

1:02:21I mean, it's not been in use for a long time, but it was closed to tours and things after September 11th. I think that it looked like that place. I wonder if they shot it there. It's possible. This is around when Wow Platinum and Claudio are celebrating their good fortune. They have successfully taken out their rivals. Nothing bad could ever happen to them. And they wander into the bedroom with Hamilton Crassus III. Pride goeth before more success. The old aphorism, yeah. So they go into Hamilton Crassus' bedroom, and it seems like he's pitching a little tent. So I want to get Roman's take on this.

1:02:59By far the best. I saw this movie in a theater. It was just me and four other people, not strangers, not people I know. They were watching the movie stone-faced, very serious. And when this line came out, I laughed so loud. And nobody else in the audience reacted, and I did not regret it at all. And so does anyone want to say what? Well, Elliot had been like, John Voight has the best line of the movie and the whole time, like, did I miss it? Was it one of those? Like, was it just a line that is silly because Elliot's smarter than me? Well, I haven't told you about that, but let's get Roman's. Well, I don't, I have to be refreshed to the exact line.

1:03:32I remember the moment. It's roughly, I'm not quoting a direct, I mean, I'm trying to quote it. I can quote a direct. Oh yeah, so this you wrote down in your notes. So turning to his son and wife, he says, what do you think of this boner I got? But then he reveals what the boner is. It's a crossbow. It's so funny. He whips the blanket over and he's got a crossbow. And it's like, it's so, this is, if the whole movie had been at this level, I would have been like, yes, a thousand percent. But the last thing I expected was him to say, hey, what do you think of this boner I got? Seemingly, totally sincere.

1:04:08You don't know it's a trap at that moment. And I was like, this movie, I can't guess it. And they're so shocked, he shoots Wow and kills her. And then he shoots Claudio and hits him in the ass. And Claudio manages to escape, only to eventually be beaten up by his own mob. Well, we'll get back to, of course, the most important thing, Roman's reaction again in a moment. To John Boyd's boner, yeah. Or alleged boner. He, interesting thing to me is, like, this is a world where guns exist. because we saw Adam Driver get shot in the head. So he made a real choice. I'm going to kill these people with a crossbow so I can do this boner bit, you know?

1:04:47You think a gun wouldn't have been able to make enough of a tent in the seats? I mean, he's a prideful man. No, that's true. So I think there is a, my guess is - The theatricality of it though is - I think it's the theatricality. I think my guess is he needed a way for Claudio to survive and escape. And an arrow to the butt is a classic slapstick way to get somebody to leave a room. But also, as we're recording this before our Caddyshack 2 Flop TV episode, a movie which also includes someone getting hit in the butt with an arrow. Somebody find out on Saturday. I mean, find out on Saturday before this episode comes out.

1:05:24But there's also a, I assume, I wonder if there's something he's playing off of. Some either ancient thing or some story he knows that involves an arrow that he's referencing. Since there's so many references in this movie to other things that are floating around in Francis Ford Coppola's head. Yeah, that's the problem with this movie for me. Well, one of the many problems. But I'm apparently an atypical man in that I think of the Roman Empire almost never. So I don't have the background in history that I would need to understand all of the... What about their turtle formation where they lock all their shields together?

1:05:58You don't ever think about that? I'm thinking about it now. It's pretty cool. They look like a turtle but with spears. Dan, how often do you think about the Civil War? Because that's the other thing I feel like American men think about a lot. Rarely. I think about ghoulies going to college a lot. Oh, ghoulies going to college. Okay, so that's your Roman Empire. Movies about small monsters, ghoulies and gremlins and munchies. Yeah, Frankie Frico, available on VOD right now. Some stealth marketing for Frankie Frico right there. Featuring the voices of the floppy. It's pretty open. to answer your question Elliot when this happened in the movie theater it was when Audrey Plaza got shot actually where I was like I was like oh I was like alright you know like something's happening like I was kind of delighted but it was like it was the real classic just this was so different and shocking I mean the you know when Cesar got shot in the face that was a little shocking because it had a real pop sound like a Godfather movie pop you know like a real like I was like I was like, oh, I remember that guy.

1:07:04I like that guy's movies, you know? Yeah, I mean, the guy who directed maybe the greatest person being shot in the head scene in any movie ever made, you know, that whole sequence. Totally, but the... And then the second greatest guy being shot in the head moment when Mo Green gets killed. The best. At the end of the same movie. He's really good at shooting people in faces. And he was in 1972. It's kind of wasted in this movie, to tell you the truth. But that was a moment of delight just because of the shocking violence. It's like I had no idea that that was what was about to happen. So it was kind of like, oh, right.

1:07:35This thing's a lot. But him talking about his boner just left you cold. Well, no. I mean, I think the boner part was like calm. It just – it really happens kind of all at once. There's not a lot of time in between. So I didn't have processing time. Yeah. I was taking a big slurp of my soda and just spit it all over everyone. Speaking of fearing missing this, I knew that there was this line. You know, all I'd heard about was this line about how John Foy had this great line. and the movie is very long. Yeah. And I - It's not, well, it's not that long, but it feels long. It is, it's like about two hours, a little less than 220, you know?

1:08:07Yeah, okay. It's longer than, to my mind, the ideal length of a movie, which is less than two hours. It's longer than train and comes into a station. Two hours. It's longer than the first movies. It's longer, the important thing is, it's longer than my bladder can stand. So all through this movie, I was like, I gotta wait out for this Jon Voight line. And then I finally, like, I'm in physical pain. Like, I have to leave the theater. Were you pinching it with your thing? It's not, no. You were literally pinching your urethra shut with your fingers? Okay, yeah, I was pinching my urethra shut. Like you're trying to control a fire hose?

1:08:41I had to pee so badly. I was hurting. Roman is really rethinking dropping this into the 99th VIP. I thought to myself, surely, surely it will not happen at this exact moment. If I run to the restroom, I will not miss this iconic line. And of course, it is exactly when this happens. Oh, no. And you came back and the audience was rolling on the floor last night. Well, I mean, fortunately— They were cheering, firing guns into the air, singing all that sign. Yeah, all this stuff. So I looked up the line, and fortunately, you know, someone had put most of the scene on TikTok. Not the boner line. Like, I saw the rest of the scene that I had missed.

1:09:20Leaving a lot of gold on the table. Well, then in the description, it was like, dude, right before this, the guy said this line about his boner. Because apparently they whipped out their phone. They're like, oh, man, I missed the key point. But something else crazy has got to happen with this setup. Because the other thing is it's not a funny line in and of itself. What is funny is that it is appearing in this otherwise serious-minded allegorical movie said by Jon Voight in a scene near what you have to assume is the climax. the film. It is such a, it's such a, it's, uh, there's something about how, um, it is the least eloquent thing I think a character has said in any movie I've seen in years.

1:10:03Yeah. Yeah. What a, what a performance. Okay. So, uh, so as we said, uh, Crassus gets his revenge. Uh, the riots are running wild around, uh, New Rome. Caesar appears as like a hologram or something. And he gives a speech uh talking about like time and things like that and calms everybody down and like talk and like shows visions of his utopia is that is that correct is that what happened yes this is this scene so this is the classic the man of genius comes out and he gives a speech that enthralls the crowd and calms their passions and wins them to side and the speech he gives is so it's such it's just such vaporware it's such empty conceptual nonsense and the and it does not speak to any of the actual needs that these people have shown up to this point and why they're reacting.

1:10:53It's like, say what you will about Donald Trump, the terrible, terrible person, just an evil, bad man. But when he speaks, he is directly reacting to the needs he feels in the audience members that he is talking to, the ones he wants to appeal to. Whereas Adam Driver, when he's giving the speech, I'm like, I don't even know. I don't know who you're winning over with what with this. And so to see the audience kind of, the crowd be like, you're right, you're right, what a true leader. Yay, platitudes! Yeah. As an audience member in the theater, I was like, I don't understand what he's saying. Like, I don't, this doesn't mean anything to me.

1:11:25And this is another part where I'm just like so, I'm so out with this movie where it's like, where it's like, it really tries to have it both ways. Like, it has great contempt for almost all the rich people, which is fine. Like, you can hate all the rich people all you want. The job creators from it? Crassus totally sucks and all Crassus' family sucks. Obviously, it has this exception for Caesar because it was sort of genius. And what it rests on is this idea that you have to serve the people, give the people what they need. But it has complete contempt for the people. They're just this dumb mass of people that follow Claudio or they're this dumb mass of people that are just like wooed by nonsense language.

1:12:09I mean there's no actual common people represented at all in the movie. There's no – the only characters we see who come close to being actual on-the-ground people are that one guy who plays the tuba in the marching band in that one scene. And the kid who shoots Caesar in the face I guess. But you're right. There's no like – there's no ordinary citizen point of view ever presented in this. a movie where you have to assume hundreds, if not thousands of people are killed by a falling satellite that devastates the city. And that is, and that's like, I just watched Life Force recently. And that's a movie that, about a space vampire, about a nude space vampire that sucks the life out of people.

1:12:49And that showed more feeling for the ordinary everyday English person than this movie shows for the people of New Rome. Well, it's ostensible ideas are about like serving people in the public and how to make a society. and society is completely unrepresented in any realistic or meaningful way. They're all just, they're all really just pawns who are like dumbasses who follow Claudio or sort of dumbasses that are wooed by nonsense language. It's just like, it's weird. Like, I totally get that. You can have Shakespeare plays that are all about kings and shit. You know, that's fine. Like, you don't, the commoner has to be represented in every, the tragedies and there is kings and shit.

1:13:27I'm so desperately trying to think of what Shakespeare title I can turn into it, pun about another word for shit. But it's... No, that doesn't work. I said King Smear. King Smear works pretty well. Toilets and Cressida? Does that work? Why did we go down this road of all the roads? Okay, speaking of roads, so C-Zero promises these magical floating glowing robes that are all like the Rainbow Road in Super Mario. Claudio's mob turns on him. Crassus is overcome by the glory of Caesar's vision. So he leaves all of his riches to Caesar Catalina. So that's going to allow him to build this utopia. Mayor Cicero and his family join Caesar on this voyage.

1:14:21They stand upon this glowing bridge. People are all very excited. They're celebrating, and he manages to stop time for everyone except for little baby Caesar, Julian Caesar's baby. And let's say that this is a very strange-looking shot, too. This is shot from below. They're all, like, standing on glass or something, and they're shooting through it. And there's, like, green screen behind them. This is also – this is such an upsetting moment. I think it's supposed to be a moment of, like, hope for the future. Like this ability to exist outside of time and be a creative genius is now in their child as well.

1:14:59But it's like time has stopped except for this baby. Who's going to feed this baby? Like who's going to unstop time? Not since under the skin have I been more worried about an on-screen child who's being abandoned in front of me. But the baby is the one stopping time, right? Maybe. It must be because the others are frozen. Because she's the one moving in every one. But I thought – doesn't Julius tell Caesar to stop time? Maybe I'm misremembering it. I don't know. But they're frozen. Like, I mean, I think she does, but it doesn't really— Oh, it's the baby that does it. Well, the baby doesn't know what she's doing.

1:15:27It's very upsetting to me. It's a very upsetting movie in the movie. The feeling I get is that they're leaving the future for the next generation. For the sequel, Megalopolis 2, Babyopolis? My notes then say Pledge Allegiance. Did something happen after this? Was there like a speech or something? There's a title card, and I think it's the narration read by children. Yes. Oh, yeah. And it's like we pledge allegiance to the human race or something like that. I pulled this up in front of me because I wanted to make sure we had it. It meant so much. You printed it out and laminated it. It put it up on the wall.

1:16:00I pledge allegiance to our human family and to all the species that we protect. One earth, indivisible, with long life, education, and justice for all is what the kids say. So stick that on a placard in front of your house for the next election about the values in this house. Yeah. I – look. The problem with that is that it comes at the end of Megalopolis. I do like the idea of a pledge that is not a nationalistic sort of just like pledge to us. We can all stand behind the values of the human race and everybody getting justice and education. It doesn't fit with this movie. No, no. The movie doesn't really.

1:16:42It's a real Robert Moses viewpoint movie where it's like the people don't know what they want. The people are sheep. They have to be shown by a genius what is best for them, and someone needs to make the decision. It is a movie that I think is – the person making it thinks they're making a pro-democracy, pro-equality justice movie. But they are making a – essentially in many ways a fascist movie about – because there is one man who understands, and he needs to take control, and you should not question him. And no matter what he does, and I'm just – and maybe I'm just mad because I realized I should have said Toilets Andronicus because Toilets and Cressida is a poem, right?

1:17:17Like it's not a play. No, Toy Listen Cress is a play. Is it a play? What am I thinking? What's his epic poem then? I don't know. I'm less familiar with this. Viewers, Shakespeare, if you're listening, write in and tell us which play you want to have a toy. Two English majors on this podcast? Yeah, I mean, we're getting into the Final Judgment sort of area, but like that's, that's, there's much that is striking about this movie. There are parts of it that sort of took me sort of in spite of myself But you're right. I was thinking of the poem by Chaucer and then Shakespeare. That's right. Yeah. But so toilets and Cressida work.

1:17:55Thank you. Okay. Let me just amend the scoreboard. Okay. Get it out. On further review, the call against toilets and Cressida has been overturned.

1:18:08You've crystallized something for me, Elliot. Like the only thing that makes sense to me about this movie as a statement, The only way I can read this is Francis Ford Coppola being like, geniuses are good and above everyone and they shouldn't be questioned and maybe I'm one. Because politically – I think you strike that maybe from the record when he's talking, yeah. Politically, it's all over the place. It doesn't make any sense. It's not staking out any particular understandable philosophy. It's just a bunch of stuff that happened. so instead of a fable it should say a bunch of megalopolis a bunch of stuff that happened yeah which is literally like the fifth chapter in every dogman book is called chapter five a bunch of stuff that happened or a bunch of stuff that happened next so maybe francis should have made that dogman movie um stuart what do you think uh dogman yeah i think he should have made that movie is is that is that where are those are those the guys the player character race you can play in rifts that have the body of a human but like the head and some of the traits of a dog, is that?

1:19:10I mean, that's kind of like a sinusopholic or kinosepholic. That's the kind of thing you see sometimes in Old Tales of the Saints. Some of them have dog heads. But no, that's not what dog... Dog Man is about a... He's a police officer with a dog's head. Oh, that's too bad. And it's a series of books for children. We should get into our final judgments. But before we do, I just want to give... Oh, I thought we'd started already. I want to give Stuart some plaudits for how he handled that... That's cool. Anyone else want to give me plaudits? earlier. All the products. No, I just, you know, I was keeping an eye on time and early on I'm like, oh man, we're never, this is going to be a four hour episode.

1:19:47But Stuart, you got us through. You went to play. You have to pass. You did it. The trick is forgetting things like satellites falling on you. But of course, this is where we give our final judgments whether we thought that Michaelopoulos was a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie we kind of liked. Is it a movie where you get some joy out of its badness, no joy to be found in Mudville, or did we actually like it a bit? I am going to say good, bad, in the sense that you so rarely get something this personal and big. Like, I kind of, in a weird way, didn't know whether we should do this at first, like, until, you know, like, we got so many people, you got to do Megalopolis.

1:20:35I want to hear what you say about Megalopolis. But part of me was like, well, I don't want to take someone down for a passion. I want to give the masses what they want. I'm a genius. I know better than they do. Well, I feel bad about taking a passion project down. Even if it's misbegotten, I do appreciate the swing. I don't think that this movie is successful and there's large chunks of it that are boring. but I say good bad in the sense that like I would not discourage anyone with any curiosity about curiosity about this movie from seeing this movie because it is quite an experience you know if you're interested if you're willing to commit the time yeah sure watch it because there's going to be some stuff in it that's going to have you grasping your head and and shaking your fist to the heavens uh so that's what I say Stuart what do you think uh yeah I mean I feel I have less of an issue with like targeting passion projects because I feel like passion projects often suffer from a certain amount of like great man syndrome and delusion of genius.

1:21:43But I don't know. I feel like this movie would fall somewhere in the like between a good bad movie and almost like there's parts of it that are a movie I kind of like. I mean, it's I feel like time is going to be kinder to this than at least current critics are. I feel like it reminds me in a lot of ways of either a Neil Breen movie or if Neil Breen had directed the Star Wars prequels, because it feels a lot like those movies. Like they're, they're like, at least it doesn't feel like mass produced garbage, but it is still kind of like garbage. So I guess that's not a direct answer, but like, I'm glad that this, I'm glad this movie exists.

1:22:26And I feel like if you're interested in it you should check it out it's got it's a mess i i feel similar to stewart it's a i think it's good bad with it there's some things about it that i like that are enough to make it a movie i am uh glad to have seen you know even if i'm i'm never gonna watch it again probably and i feel i think you're right that with your kids well eventually eventually dad can we watch megalopolis you're not ready yet you wouldn't understand meanwhile i'm trying to get them to watch metropolis another kind of politically mushy movie set in the city of the future and And they have no interest, even though that's a great movie.

1:22:59But I think the future film critics will look back on it knowing what it is and being able to pick out the few kind of pearls that are in the morass of sludge rather than us looking at it now expecting something different than it is, which is a – what we're expecting is a coherent story with interesting characters. and instead future generations will be like, well, that was a fascinating capstone to Francis Ford Coppola's career. And now we can look the same way that I just finished reading Patrick McGilligan's biography of Alfred Hitchcock. And in that he's able to treat Hitchcock's later movies, which at the time were considered abysmal and which are certainly not among his best.

1:23:40But now you can look at them and be like, here's the good things in them. Here's the not so good things in them. I think it'll be kind of like that. But at the moment, it's kind of nice to watch this movie now at a moment when you're, it's rare that I see a movie that has this level of production behind it and this level of artistic vision behind it, where I'm like, what? Like, what is he doing? Like, why is he doing that? And there's, that's something, I like you're saying, Stuart, in an era of mass produced, you know, casinos made for the people by the mayor, you know, that's something to be at least glad that someone's willing to put their, the shares they sold in their winery where their mouth is, you know?

1:24:16Roman, what do you think? You loved it, right? I think that, you know, what is it, like 15 years of watching bad movies has rotted y 'all's brain because this is a bad, bad movie.

1:24:31Roman, I've seen things you couldn't imagine. Crap movies glittering off the shoulder of the oppositorium. Here's the thing. I think this is a bad, bad movie and I think that if you compare it to other, this is a this is like a false premise of like it is interesting whereas all like superhero movies are boring at least this thing exists and it has some kind of vision whatever but that is not what you are what this thing is occupying space of it is occupying the space of like um take time to stare at a loved one's face for two hours or something like that roman if that's the way you think you're never gonna you're never gonna be able to make it i was never gonna do that that's the thing literally do anything learn a language i meant too deep certainly there are better ways to use you the limited time you have on earth for sure yeah i mean it's just if it if it had this vision and was messy and was um chaotic and and and whatever but it's just like as you dig into the ideas of the of the movie i think those ideas are bad and dangerous ideas like i think that they actually are pernicious, like, that make the world a worse place.

1:25:40That's why I, like, I kind of, I was almost wooed by this idea of, like, the Passion Project that you don't want to take on and criticize, except for that the Passion Project is kind of this weird, like, defensive, great man, genius, that this idea of this fake populism of, like, caring about the people and that even the movie cares about people and serving people, but then ignores them, ignores their needs. Like that there's this like phony, like kind of Me Too crisis in the middle of this thing that's completely dashed by like facts that exonerate this man. You know, like all that sort of stuff.

1:26:17Like if it was, if the underlying core of this was sort of more benign or innocuous, I would have more charity towards its big swings. But I think that it actually has terrible ideas at its core. I feel like that almost makes it more interesting to this guy. I get that. Yeah. And so like if you're like, again, if it's like. In case you're worried that this movie is going to sway people. I mean, I don't think it is either, but I just feel like, I feel like it should be held accountable for its dumbness. I would argue it does because he like spent so much of his money for a huge flop that is being publicly pillory.

1:26:57He owned himself. But you know, and I know this too, because we're all, like, I'm a little older than you guys are, but like, you've watched. You look great. Thank you. But like, you've watched like really misguided millennials in Gen Z resurrect the Star Wars prequel trilogy and talk about its secret genius. And you're like, no, you don't understand. We were there. It's fucking awful. Like, you have to trust us on this. The book is closed. on that matter. And you're right. This is going to be resurrected and people are going to find things in it. And it's just going to be just, that's going to be such an irritating process to witness in 20 years.

1:27:43Because it truly is like of the moment, just to take it in the moment, it is dealing with these ideas of, you know, populism and politics and, you know, like, and greatness and being sort of, you know, great men being sort of like somehow thwarted in their in their great, you know, like what's so crazy about the movie is like with all this crazy stuff that happens, like, you know, everything is just given to Caesar. Like he, you know, he has this magic particle that heals his face, like the richest man in the world gives him all the money needs to do his thing. A satellite clears the land for him to build his thing.

1:28:24It's just like, it is full, like this moment of like billionaires and so-called geniuses and bad populism and pretending to serve people. Like these are bad ideas to play with poorly right now. And that's what I think, that's the part that really like incenses me about it as a movie. So you've given the passionate swaying the masses speech that the movie fails to be. Yeah, that's fair. I'm one of the dumb masses. I want to follow this guy. Tell me about your utopia, Roman. But I want it to be so much better. Like I can deal with all the nonsense of it. In fact, one of the things I think it's the most the miracle of this movie is that I think Adam Driver at the center of this comes out pretty unscathed.

1:29:12Like he is – he commits to this nonsense in this way that is almost – I just don't even know how he does it. Like he sounds – like he just leans into it but he's not hammy. It's like that's the part where I'm like I liked him more coming out of this movie than – not than I ever have. But like it just added to my esteem of him. Well, it's something that we see a lot in the movies on the podcast is that when you are an actor who's in a movie that doesn't make sense or is not good. you never win points by being openly disdainful of the movie or by acting like you know it is like i think one of the things that helps with adam driver's performance is when he's saying nonsense or he's doing things that doesn't make sense he is still acting as if the things that he's doing make sense and are rational and coherent and i think you're right he comes out of it i mean i feel like there's there's most of the main performances come out pretty well you know they're goofy and stuff but i'm just surprised like how he comes out like he there's a lesson in here with like watching him and maybe that's worth watching which is like even in life or in a movie or as a piece of art or whatever just lean in and do the thing you will be cooler if you just do it rather than try to resist yeah well that's also like from what i understand from hearing people talk about it like he had a much better sort of experience on the movie because he leaned into the the working process of the movie and i understand that like you know if you don't want to lean into that, that's fine because it sounds like this was not a good working experience for a lot of people.

1:30:42If you don't want to be told to do something different every single moment and then it's a couple of months, suddenly kiss you when you don't like it. Or harass. Yeah, yeah. So I'm not necessarily making an argument to ignore that, but I am saying that he seemed to embrace like, okay, as an artistic thing, I'm going to roll with this and be collaborative and really commit to it, and that's probably part of why he does come out feeling like he... I mean, we also, I don't think we need to get into it, but I'm sure there's also an element of Francis Ford Coppola probably treating him better than he treated other people, you know, because he's the star that he identifies with in the movie, you know.

1:31:19And he saw, and he loved 65, so he saw that and he was like, you were shooting dinosaurs. No, no, Francis, those weren't real dinosaurs. He's like, I saw that movie you made where you got away from that comet that hit the earth with the dinosaurs, so I'm having a satellite hit the city, let's see if you can get away from that one. And then Francis Coppola's watching his own movie And he's like, son of a bitch did it again. He got away from another thing falling out of the sky.

1:31:42And Adam Driver's like, Francis, you made this movie. Like, you knew it was going to happen. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't know how you did it. It doesn't seem like my movie. Yeah. I mean, my movies are good. This one, I don't know. I mean, what if it was like Severance, where when he went to set, he had a different personality than when he left set. Probably. It would be.

1:32:05after the break more from the flop house

1:32:15let's answer a couple of questions from listeners uh this one is from nilo last name withheld this from ff coppola or perhaps nilo i don't know uh but they write intergalactic greetings floppers I have a gigantic projector built in space capable of projecting a movie onto the moon. What should I show on it? And of course, you know, the first thing that comes to mind is from the Earth to the moon. You want to see that moon man get, you know, a rocket in his eye. Yep. Yeah, everybody's gagging for it. Everyone wants that. Look up and be like, oh. You want to see it as big as, finally the real moon's going to get the just desserts that the film moon got.

1:32:57Finally the stand up and cheer moment of the year. But what else? Moonfall maybe? I was going to say Akira for that scene when Tetsuo blows up part of the moon. I mean, so I'm going to think about this a little more practically. We don't have sound, right? Because it's just being projected. Yeah, Akira works perfect. You have to tune your radio to a certain frequency. Oh, maybe, yeah. I'm trying to think of something that would be kind of like that the visuals would pull all of humanity together as one shared family once it's projected on the moon. One Week by Buster Keat. I don't know. Yeah, sure.

1:33:30Yeah. I mean, you're basically talking about the biggest movie in the park that you can imagine for the summertime. And so it's going to be like Toy Story. Yeah. I don't think it's going to work. Worse things you can go with than Toy Story. No, it's going to be some Pixar movie that you can bring all the kids to. And then, and that's it. Well, listen, I wanted to be family friendly because if my kids are out looking at the moon, I don't want them seeing something that they shouldn't see. Different kind of moon. What shouldn't they see? It's on the list. I mean, I don't think they're ready for Akira.

1:34:01Well, when are your kids going to be ready for Akira? Daddy, daddy, why is Tetsuo expanding into a techno-organic mass? I mean, why is he crushing Kauri when he's trying to love her? One of these crimes of the future. So, Dan, that's your vote is crimes of the future. What are you saying, Roman? I'm sorry. I saw Paris is burning and Lincoln Center outside, and that was a lovely experience. So, you know, that could be one that you could do. That'd be great. I like it. This second and final letter is from Anne-Marie, who writes, Hey, y 'all. And this is clearly in response to our recent break into Flop TV episode we had.

1:34:49Tickets and season tickets available now for Flop TV season two. I wanted to add an additional theory about how someone could dance on the ceiling. A few years ago, I played Dancing on the Ceiling for my then four-year-old niece, and she said it was her favorite song. I showed her the music video, and she kept asking, how did he do that? And then posited that he had sticky stuff on the ceiling so he could stick to it like a bug. So there's another. Yeah, that's how bugs stick to things. Alternative. That's a good theory. Well, it's not really, I don't think it's really how they stick to stuff.

1:35:20That's how it works in Inception, too, right? Is Chrissy Nolan just smeared sticky stuff all over the ceiling and Joseph Gordon-Levitt bounced off of it? Yep. So was there a question there, Dan? No. It's just sharing an idea. It's just a charming tale of a child's imagination. Sort of like, you know, I don't know. E.T., I guess that's not an imagination, but it sparks imagination. Anyway. I mean, I love old special effects are great. The greatest special effect of all time is Kermit riding a bike. It'll never be beaten. It'll be the greatest. Like that's the thing that's wowed me the most for all of my life.

1:35:58There's also a scene a woman goes from nice looking to evil looking in camera in a movie called The Octopus in a way that uses mic up that only shows up on certain colors of light. And they had a gel that were moving in front of the light. And that effect, it's from a movie from the 30s and the effect looks amazing. Yeah, I still think the best special effect is that scene where the guy falls over in the movie The Gate and he turns into a bunch of little guys. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good. And also there's the moment in Throne of Blood when Tashiro Mifune gets an arrow through the neck.

1:36:28And I'm always like, did they really kill him?

1:36:35On that note of credulity, let's move on. Actually, Elliot, I just checked. Tashiro Mifune's dead. Oh, no. They did it. officer arrest Akira Kurosawa. We've solved the cold case. Let us move on to our final segment, our final regular segment of the show, which is - Dan, I'm looking as you scan through your letterbox. I see Dix the Musical on there. That scene with Nathan Lane spitting lunch meat on those puppets, isn't that great? I appreciate the spirit of Dix the Musical. I didn't enjoy it as much as I think you did. So why are you recommending it, Dan? I'm not. This is, again, I haven't even introduced the segment.

1:37:13I'm just looking over Dan's shoulders. He scrolls through Letterboxd. We're recommending movies that we have seen of late or just like that might be a better use of your time than, say, Megalopolis. Take Roman's advice. Either stare at your loved one's face or watch one of these. Just stare at their face for the full runtime of Megalopolis, which is like two hours and 18 minutes. They'll be like, what are you doing? Can you stop that? Is Megalopolis showing on my face?

1:37:43I recently just, I just rewatched Lost Highway, which I hadn't seen since around the time it was new. David Lynch's Lost Highway. And, you know, because I'd seen it when it was new, it kind of had never struck me like, oh, how much this is a dry run for Mulholland Drive. Which is not to say it's not valuable in its own right, but it's like, oh, okay. Like, you're revisiting so many of the themes, and I didn't even think about that, of sort of, you know, Lynch's films, I think it's a bad idea to try and just decode them. But if you're going to go down that road, like, there's a lot about sort of— Is that road Mulholland Drive?

1:38:23Yeah. Disassociation after sort of a horrible event, trying to make sense of your life through these, like, sort of fantasies. Lost Highway was his first trip down that Lost Highway to Mulholland Drive. And you're going to want to go down Lost Highway. You're going to take a turn onto Mulholland Drive. Yeah. And it's going to get you to the Inland Empire. Yep. If you want to see Bill Pullman just wail on a saxophone as well. Yes. That's your best chance. I don't know. Some would say your only chance. There's not much to say about it. I mean, if you like Lynch and you haven't seen it, that's strange.

1:39:01If you haven't watched it, if you're not a Lynch person, maybe it's not a start with. What if you're like a huge Robert Blake fan? Yeah, but not his movies, more his personal life. Not his eyebrows. I love Robert Blake. I just hate when he has hair below his forehead. Have I got a picture for you? Is there a movie for me? That's one of those movies. I feel like Lost Highway is the opposite of Megalopolis in that it is a movie that when it came out, I remember the reviews were like, what? They were scathing. They were scathing because it had a nonlinear, not totally rational plot. But you watch it now and you're like, oh, now I know what Lynch does.

1:39:41I understand what he's doing. Honestly, the fact that film reviewers saw at the time and weren't like, oh, it's a David Lynch movie. I have to watch it through David Lynch glasses. Yeah. I don't know if I ever told this story, but I remember seeing it at the very small independent theater in my hometown. And it was a late screening. And we got out and I was driving my friends home. And I remember, you know, driving up to a red light, the light turned green, and then it turned red again. And I had just sat there the whole time because my brain was processing what I just watched. Let's go in the same order we did our judgments.

1:40:13Stuart, what do you think? Okay, I'm going to recommend a movie I saw a couple weeks back. I saw Onora, the new Sean Baker movie. It's a, I guess, a offbeat comedy love story. about a young sex worker who marries the son of an oligarch in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. It's a very New York movie in that way. There's a scene where they fucking go to Tatiana's in Brighton Beach, and I was like, whoa, I go there. And yeah, I mean, it has - I'm a Nora. Yeah, I'm like a Nora. It, yeah, I mean, I feel like it really captures the, like, rush and craziness of, like, love and hope. And also like hoping against the crushing power of capitalism and shittiness.

1:41:05And then of course, it's things start to, you know, come back to earth and things get a little bit rough. It's got, you know, an incredible central performance by Mikey Madison as the title character. Yeah, I think I thought it was great. I love it. Yeah, check it out. Cool. I'm also going to recommend an offbeat comedy romance, but not the same one. This is – I want to recommend the movie You and Me from 1938. This is a movie directed by Fritz Lang, director of Metropolis, the movie I mentioned earlier. But it's a very different movie than Metropolis. And Sylvia Sidney is a woman who works at a department store.

1:41:39The department store makes a point of hiring ex-convicts to give them a second chance at life. And George Raft is one of those ex-convicts, and they fall in love. She doesn't want him to know she's also an ex-convict because when you're on parole, you're not allowed to fall in love and you're not allowed to get married. And so she has to hide from him that she is also a convict and that the repercussions of that involve him getting back involved in crime. And it's a surprisingly sweet movie for a movie about criminals directed by Fritz Lang. And it also has some musical numbers in it with some of the music written by Kurt Weill.

1:42:14So it's a like – it's a real strange movie. it's this kind of somewhat anti-capitalist romance drama comedy crime movie uh with but with sylvia sydney george raft uh but i really loved it i really enjoyed it it's the kind of movie that you could crank out in the 30s because they were making so many movies that sometimes one of these popped out where it was like this is kind of a stranger movie than it had any right to be uh it could have been a pretty down the middle movie but there's some great scenes in it and uh and you know sylvia sydney's been on my mind since there's that new beetlejuice movie she's not in the new one but you know since she was in the old one you know so that's you and me played juno yeah i i was i was having a hard time thinking what to recommend but i think the one i'd settle on is um hearts of darkness of filmmakers apocalypse which is the documentary eleanor coppola made of francis for coppola making apocalypse now um the one of the things that ends the movie, Megalopolis, at the very end, it says, for Eleanor, which is sort of like this moment where I'm feeling kind of seething for this thing.

1:43:21And then there's a sweet moment of their long-term relationship and how she was such a gifted filmmaker, as evidenced by this piece, that did make me think, okay, he did what he wanted to. It's all okay. And that was a nice sort of like homage to her. But she was an extremely good documentary filmmaker. It made me appreciate Apocalypse Now so much more. It gave you so much insight into making a movie. It's just like has so much drama. It's so fascinating. I really love Hearts of Darkness. I saw it as a kid. Well, not a kid. I guess I was pretty soon after it came out. I guess I was 15 or 16. And Hearts of Darkness, not Apocalypse Now.

1:44:04I had not seen Apocalypse Now. I caught this like on HBO. or something. And then I saw it afterward. I'd kind of heard about Apocalypse Now. And it just, it gave me the blueprint for appreciating another sort of like good mess of a movie. You know, that's a, I think that's a good mess, Apocalypse Now, in a lot of ways. But I love this. It's one of the reasons why I love documentaries. I think it's just expertly and beautifully made. I think I also saw it before I saw Apocalypse Now. I saw it with my like college girlfriend we were at her house in Cleveland and we went to like we was like young like film buffs and we're like what arty thing can we get we'll get this I know it's a good documentary and it is a testament to like even without having seen the movie like this is this is fascinating in its own right and then gets richer once you've seen the film or like most people you've probably seen Apocalypse Now first and then catch up I mean it's weird I mean I think people take things in a lot differently now.

1:45:00And like, you never know, but, but I, I think this movie is great. I think it's actually better than Apocalypse Now, but, you know, but that's my own flavor of, you know, that, that, that to me is like, not defensible. That's just taste, you know, that's, that's just a personal choice. Dan, there are people who saw Spaceballs before Star Wars. People watch things in all sorts of crazy orders, you know? Yeah. Yeah. These days. I thought you were about to mention a documentary about the making of Spaceballs. That'll be fascinating. There are people who see May the Schwartz Be With You, a filmmaker's journey.

1:45:30That's not what Balls of Fury was? Yeah. How'd they rig up that bit where Rick Moranis goes flying through the – I don't want to watch the documentary to find out. Wasn't that real? Did they kill Rick Moranis? Did they kill Rick Moranis in that moment? All right. Well, we should wrap this up with a big thank you. No, I want to see – Sorry, now I want to see a comedy sketch in a show where they're like, okay. They're talking to the lead actor on a movie set and they're like, We saved this last stunt to the end of the shooting because you're going to die when you do it. The only way to get the shot is to kill you while you do it.

1:46:01Okay, that's why we shot all your scenes ahead of time. I don't know if that's a good idea. No, it's okay. We shot the rest of the movie already. We shot it already. We're done. We're wrapped on that. So this is your last thing you have to do. We'll be covered.

1:46:14Before we say goodbye, I want to just say thank you to Roman for being on this episode. we all know how busy you are and so we're always charmed when you make time for our shenanigans long time fan and supporter I'm so happy to be here it makes me very very happy if you want more shenanigans like this just tune into the 99 % Invisible Breakdown the Power Broker it's exactly like this show it's just like it just cutting it up before we go thank you to our producer Alex Smith he goes by the name Howell Dottie on the internet He does music. He does Twitch streams. He does a lot of stuff. Look him up.

1:46:55Thank you to our network, Maximum Fun. If you go to MaximumFun.org, there are a lot of great other podcasts you can listen to about culture, about comedy. You'll find something you like. But that's it for this episode. For the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kalin. I'm Roman Mars. I'm going to take that again. I'm Roman Mars. Look at that. That's it. what a professional bye bye professionalism undone Roman's like let me make sure I say that the right way and then Stuart's like oh good boy

1:47:40on this episode we discuss Megalopolis

1:47:46do you want me to have one do you want me to do one Let's start it over again. Stuart, you leaned in like you had one. I didn't say anything. We're embarrassing ourselves upon Roman. Okay. No, no, no. Roman knows we're cool. This is the whole experience.

1:48:04You can listen and subscribe to The Flophouse wherever you get your podcasts. And after all that, if you still somehow want to watch Megalopolis, it's now available on VOD.

1:48:18Thank you.