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This is going to be the most important mini episode ever

Maybe she was... (pinkie to mouth) underwater on her houseboat payments?

This is a wild and fun conversation. My sense of the fundamental divide is: Team Fred says the film more or less succeeds on its own terms, Team Sanity says it fails on any terms. You can agree that a film succeeds on its own terms while disliking it, and you can agree that a film fails on any terms and still like it. As a Team Fredster, I’d love for Team Sanity folks to see that the film may, in fact, succeed on its own terms without at all expecting that to mean they’ll come to like it. Hence the debates about Fred’s status and whether the film is a zany comedy or an exploration of trauma, etc. We’re trying to work out what the film’s terms are. I’m happy to accept that some films I love don’t really work unto themselves, but just work for me. Like Hackers. I think DDF actually works for the most part and I like it. But it is very clearly not for everybody—and that’s okay!

I like how our sides now have official bands. We need to draw up official other things as well and just fully commit to this very odd version of the Jets and the Sharks we got going on here.

When it comes to liking the movie I'm Team Fred, but I can't agree with everything Jason and June were arguing. Yes, obviously, a child's imaginary friend is going to be an extension of their subconscious. But that's what an adult would say. A child *knows* their friend is imaginary but *believes* they are real, and being a children's movie (yes, it is) we're just expected to think in that way. Fred is absolutely a projection of Elizabeth's own mind - the green pills are killing him because they "neutralise that part of the brain" - but he is simultaneously a physical being capable of exerting force on the real world. As a child, I never doubted for a second that it was really Fred that soiled the carpet, sank the boat and made Elizabeth pour water on herself. Here's how I've got everything together in my head: An imaginary friend's job is to make unhappy children happy. They act like children, have a child's understanding of the world, and help kids do what they're supposed to do - laugh at farts and boogers, make messes, generally have fun being naughty. In a normal situation, the imaginary friend would be there for the child as they grew up and learned to be happy on their own, at which point they would no longer needed and would move on. By moving on, I mean they fade from the first child's memory and are re-imagined by a new child. Same personality, same bag of tricks, but born again in a new subconscious, possibly with no memory of their previous child (Fred doesn't acknowledge Elizabeth in any way, despite their emotional parting moments earlier). It's not like they're assigned by an agency. They just become part of a new child. Elizabeth's situation was not normal, though. Fred was there to help her be happy and grow into a happy adult, but her mother got in the way. By threatening to kill Fred, she forced Elizabeth to immediately begin *acting* like a grown-up, but denied her the learning and self-understanding that would have come from her growing into adulthood normally. As an adult she is emotionally stunted, and only understands happiness in the context of her abusive relationships with her mother and then husband. When Fred reappears he still acts and thinks like a child, because he is Elizabeth's childhood that was taken from her. She thinks she will only be happy if Charles takes her back. Fred thinks he can make her happy the same way he used to - be silly, make her laugh, and push back against her oppressors. His way doesn't work, but neither does hers. Together they hit rock bottom. He nearly dies, and she realises she can't leave her cheating husband. When they enter Elizabeth's subconscious, she runs to Fred for help, but while he guides and encourages her he never actually solves her problems for her. She banishes her own demons, and sets herself free. When Fred tells her he has to go, his demeanor has changed. He is speaking and acting like an adult. They both finally grew up. Together. He disappears because Elizabeth doesn't need him anymore. Natalie, living with a single dad and an oppressive nanny, needs help being happy. She imagines Fred, and they start having the same fun Elizabeth used to have. He doesn't remember or doesn't care about Elizabeth anymore because to him, that never happened. He's always been Natalie's friend and always will be. It's not perfect, but it's great. Team Fred!

On this episode, every time someone referred to Rik mayall as "the actor" it hurt me. He was a comedy icon in the UK starring in shows like: The Comic Strip, The Young Ones, Bottom and Blackadder It was a day of national mourning here when he died.

Totes, it’s a flaw in the writing one way or the other. My biggest problem with the movie is that it was written and directed by men. We fuck everything up. I’m acknowledging that this is an interpretive leap that speaks poorly for the writing. (One small scene would’ve done.) I’m not aware of any Team Fredster, starting with June and Jason, saying, “This movie works perfectly.” The debate can’t amount to whether it all comes together, because we’re not, I don’t think, arguing that it does. We’re arguing that it more or less works on its own terms, that it resonates powerfully for us, and that both of those things entail regarding Fred as imaginary—as insane and complicated as that makes things (welcome to our world) and even though the writing doesn’t always work. It’s a great point about the implication that the other IFs have moved onto other kids. Nevertheless, if you don’t take that scene literally, it just speaks to the internal logic of Fred’s imaginary existence. He speaks about the metaphysical reality of IFs, ergo such a reality must exist within Fred’s world, but that doesn’t mean it all isn’t still imaginary. My own imaginary friend implied similar things. A good representation of my encounter with him would include the seeming reality of his imaginary life outside of me as if outside my imagining of it.

The one reaction I really didn’t understand was Carrie Fisher’s excitement over the insurance check. She acts like it’s a financial windfall, but isn’t it just covering the cost of her home and possessions? If your home burns down, your insurance covers the repairs or whatever, but it’s not like you’re suddenly wealthy - you’re still homeless. Even weirder is she says that she had no idea her riverboat was “worth so much,” but wouldn’t she have to be paying the premiums in order to be compensated? Certainly she must have had some idea how much it was all worth. She acts like she was saddled with the property or something. Technically, she could have just sold it at any time and everything would have worked out exactly the same for her. Which leads me to wonder, is it possible that this was all an elaborate plan by Fisher to commit insurance fraud? After she’s collected her insurance check, we learn is that her home wasn’t listed as a riverboat but as a “river condominium.” There also doesn’t appear to be any other houseboats in the area - let alone house riverboats . Perhaps she tried to sell it only to find out that there just wasn’t much of a market for quirky homesteads in the early 90’s. Noticing that her friend was acting erratically and clearly on the brink of a nervous breakdown, maybe she gently encouraged Liz’s delusions of Drop Dead Fred, subtlety enabling and manipulating her behavior for her own nefarious purposes. Because, honestly, if a friend came to your house in the middle of the night talking a lot of jibber-jabber about imaginary people and then cut off half of their hair while you slept, would you really just leave them alone in your maritime manse with the keys in the ignition? Taking it a step further, who’s to say that she didn’t just hire someone who looked vaguely Charlie-like to speedboat past at just the right time, knowing full well that Crazy Liz and her hyperactive hallucinations would be unable to resist the temptation of chasing him down? In one fell swoop, Fisher rids herself of her ridiculous home and gets a sweet insurance payout all while maintaining a perfect alibi and avoiding any culpability in the “accident.” In my mind, it’s the only logical way to explain her behavior and why she would thank “Fred” for destroying her home.

I do remember seeing this movie as a child, but here's the thing: it made absolutely no impression on me. Like, I remembered seeing it. I remembered the basic premise, that it's about an adult woman's imaginary friend from childhood coming back to her. But that's it, I had no good or bad memories of it. It was just a movie that happened. Rewatching as an adult, I have to go with Team Sanity. I can see that the movie is TRYING to go for a metaphor about Fred representing childhood, mischief, playfulness, etc., and how the adult Lizzie needs to get that back, but the movie is so consistently confusing about what Fred is and what he can do that I don't think it lands. The other movies this has been compared to -- Monsters Inc., Beetlejuice -- are much clearer about how and when the supernatural creatures can interact with the humans, and also about what they want. One thing that may complicate everyone's reading: did anyone else notice that the child Lizzie has blue eyes, but grown-up Phoebe Cates has brown eyes? I suppose colored contact lenses are a possibility here, but it's very unusual for anyone to permanently wear contacts to make their eyes DARKER, unless it's for a costume or something. Are we even sure it's the same kid? What if the movie has pulled yet another fast one on us, and the whole thing is from Fred's perspective, and he is remembering Lizzie's older sister who died or ran away or something, the sister she never knew? Boy is that a dark story: Fred mourning for his previous friend, pushing Lizzie to act out, Lizzie's parents hiding the true source of their family strife. Yikes.

Fred categorically does not exist. He only manifest when Phoebe Cates is going through tough times. First when her parents are fighting and splitting up and again when her own marriage is falling apart. He is the manifestation of her having a mental breakdown. Similar to Fight Club, sometime she SEES Fred doing things (like looking up the skirt) but sometimes she is the one actually doing the things (the physical things) She does sink the boat and do all the other terrible things, but not consciously, she is basically schizophrenic.

Team sanity all the way! I watched this movie as a child and loved. I must have seen it 10-15 times on cable tv growing up. But, at some point I forgot about the movie. A few years ago I dated this girl that brought it up as one of her favorite movies, and I agreed, and decided to watch it for the first time in many years. Well less than halfway through I was like, “why did I like this?” I looked at her and could see a look of disappointment. We decided to pause the movie and get some food. When we got back home we didn’t restart the movie. I remember this night because it was when I realized revisiting some past movies that were loved should just not happen. I will add Batman returns to this list of movies not to go back to. You go digging up the past, all you’ll get is dirty.

BABADOOK SPOILERS AHEAD Team Fred here. At the end of the podcast I was thrilled that Paul made a comparison to The Babadook but he didn't come to the same conclusion I did. In The Babadook, the monster isn't defeated or killed - it still lives in the house with the mother and son. They acknowledge it and feed it but keep it under control so it can't hurt them. Fred represents Lizzie's spontaneous, fun-loving, confident side and, without that in her life, she becomes a timid, mousy pushover. Remember how self-assured and put-together she became after Fred's re-appearance in her life and how meek she became once Fred got weaker due to the green pills? It took her a while to control her wild impulses, but during the pivotal dream sequence, she finally comes to terms with Fred in her life. Like the Babadook, Fred isn't killed or eliminated - He becomes an integrated, positive force of her personality leading her to self-actualization. I'll concede that the movie doesn't stay consistent with its own rules (no one is saying that this is a sterling piece of cinema) but I choose to believe that Fred is a projection of Lizzie's mind. TEAM FRED!

Fucking Fred would love the Sex Pistols and their nihilism. Team Sanity however prefers The Clash because we want our punk music to stand FOR something not just be against everything.

If anything, "Fred" would be really pleased with all of this.

Hackers. I realize it's not a good movie, and gets almost every detail about computers wrong, and makes it seems like hackers are hanging out in cool clubs. But it has actors that are surprisingly committed to their parts, starred guys that I was into as a teen newly hatched from the gay egg, and had Matthew Lillard as a somewhat gender- and sexually ambiguous character when that was pretty uncommon for mainstream movies. And it has a great soundtrack. In a similar vein, one they haven't covered is Empire Records. Hack the planet! HACK THE PLANET!

Tall's kids may run around a flaming house in ill fitting pajamas, but they will be cruising around town in a car that is both safe and stylish.

I still see that as being an argument about quality versus enjoyability. Which, again, no one is arguing that the movie is flawless. June and Jason both agreed to that. However, knowing that it was the filmmakers’ original intention that Fred was a manifestation of Liz, and that that message still came through loud and clear for some of the viewers, means that it at least did an adequate job conveying that message, it just didn’t universally convey that message. And for our purposes, that’s the problem. Both sides seem to accusing the other side of either ignoring (perhaps willfully) the quality of the film or its message, but I don’t feel like that’s the case, and it’s just creating false equivalencies. Team Fred gets that it isn’t the best made film ever. Team Sanity gets what the film was trying to do. However, that’s why I’m hesitant to accept “it sucks because it failed to do A, B, C well,” as a valid argument, because for some people, it absolutely DID do those things well. How can one group tell another group that they’re wrong when they’re the group that successfully got out of the movie what the filmmaker intended? Or, to put it another way: (Team Fred and Team Sanity are sitting with the person who wrote “Roses are Red.”) Team Fred: “I like the poem because it takes three self-evident statements to convey its strong, favorable opinion about another person.” Team Sanity: “The poem actually sucks. The imagery is juvenile, the meter is simplistic, violets aren’t actually blue, and I don’t think it adequately conveys the emotion the writer intended.” The poet: “I’m sorry you feel that way, Team Sanity, but I wrote it with the intention Team Fred understood it to have.” Team Fred: “I mean, Team Sanity isn’t totally wrong, it could have been better. Still, I think it’s sweet and I will accept it for what it is.” Team Sanity: “I get what the poem is trying to do, and I get what Team Fred is saying, but it didn’t work for me so it must not work at all.” Team Fred: “But it DID work...” Team Sanity: “Bup, bup, bup - it doesn’t work at all.”

This movie I believe introduced Noble Heart Horse, who was the unhorsiest looking horse I have still ever seen in my life. He had hands! He was clearly a mohawked bear with a fake tail! That is a wiggy, wiggy bear!

Ah, I enjoyed the episode-- such passion on both sides of the aisle, LOL. Despite it being all over the place I think it was Paul who pointed out that this was essentially a modern day horror movie. YES yes YES. That was the vibe I got several times throughout the movie, in particular at the end of the movie with the creepiest girl ever. Get Jordan Peele on this remake! Like Us's dopplegangers, Fred is both autonomous and bound to his creator. It's a kind of monstrous take on a Tulpa. (Standard disclaimer-- i say "monster" for entertainment purposes of this post, as it springboards from actual Tibetan Buddhist religious practice.) A Tulpa is created from the thought-forms of an individual, but becomes its own being. If you want to get really mystical, modern-day occult stuff might label Fred as an Egregore, a kind of Tulpa born from a collective group consciousness, which maybe explains why Fred is born from Elizabeth but can interact with all kids' imaginary friends and can then "leap" to another girl. Freddy Krueger for kids, indeed! Forget Tom Cruise's Mummy! The Universal Dark Universe should have been launched with Drop Dead Fred!

This is suuuuuuch a bad movie in an otherwise incredible franchise. It stands out for all the wrong reasons. I would love it if they tore this movie apart.

Johnny Castaway, 1992, "the world's first story-telling screen saver."

Aaahh! When I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, my parents used to sit me down in front of this screensaver to calm me down/distract me when I was having asthma attacks. This dude!

If I click like on Dalton's post am I thanking him for posting or am I saying I like the episode? This is getting too meta.

robotam, no offense to you but i miss dalton. he just had such a way with words when creating the new threads.