FisterRoboto

Hey friends! It's been a minute since I've been here, but I figured this was as good a time as any to poke my head back in with a few thoughts about this episode. I'm a huge fan of The Room. There are a lot of people that don't like it and don't necessarily think it should be celebrated for reasons that I can totally understand. BUT I think it's the epitome of what I love about bad movies. Despite what Tommy has said over the years, it's a really earnest attempt to make something that came out totally campy and terrible. So naturally I saw The Disaster Artist last weekend, and it's straight up amazing. You don't have to like (or really have even seen) The Room to appreciate it. I was chatting with the couple next to me before the movie, and the woman said that her boyfriend had been telling her he was going to show her the movie for months and then they never got around to it. And she laughed her ass off through the whole thing. ANYWAY, without giving too much away for anyone that hasn't seen it yet, June plays Robyn Paris, who was the second actress cast as Michelle in The Room, as they mention in the episode (according to Sestero's book, the first Michelle was dating the first Mark, and when Tommy fired the first Mark so that he could give the part to Greg, he also fired the first Michelle...but none of that is in the movie). There's a scene where the cast and crew are having lunch, and they start wondering about who the fuck Tommy is and what he's doing. June's character says, "I have a theory..." and then gives a wonderful theory about the symbolism of the movie and what everything represents. After listening to the interview with the writers, I really hope they threw that in because of their love of June and her wild-ass theories. And the interview with Tommy might have been one of the more coherent I've ever heard. I went to a screening he was at that was preceded by a Q&A. He answered about 80% of the questions with some variation of "It doesn't matter next question" (which was all slurred together into basically one barely comprehensible word). He also rode around with someone that worked with the theater for the two days he was in town. I talked to his babysitter after he left, and the guy said that he rambled about a movie he wanted to make called The Foreclosure for which the premise was: "You know how bank forecloses on people? What if people foreclose on bank?!" Anyway, I re-listened to The Room ep right after I got out of The Disaster Artist, so I mostly skipped through the first half of this episode and just listened to the interviews, and they were 100% delightful. Now...on to things related to the thread: This is always fun. There's another podcast I listen to that does miniseries based on directors, and they do a "palate cleanser" between their miniseries. It's often something just completely terrible. Most recently, they just did an episode over the 1998 Lost in Space, and it's so much fun to just hear them talk about this movie that they watched a lot as kids but now realize is complete trash. That's one of my favorite shows right now! Previous HDTGM guest D'Arcy Carden is absolute wonderful in it. And I could watch Kristen Bell be totally horrible in flashbacks all day. The one thing that drives me crazy, though, is Ted Danson's pronunciation of the name "Eleanor." It's always "Ellener," and it makes me irrationally angry. ANYWAY HI FRIENDS I HAVE MISSED YOU

My high school put on a G&D production, and I absolutely fell in love with it. I don't even know how many times I've seen this movie, and I think it is incredible. I don't know how much time I'll have to contribute to the conversation, but this pick totally redeems your last one, Cakebug!

I've been a few weeks behind on my podcasts, so I just heard this one today, and it might be the hardest laugh I've had in a while. Things have been....not so great...in Fisterland for a lot of reasons, but being able to laugh at the absolute ridiculousness of this episode made them so much better for a bit. A few thoughts 1. I really love Mike the Janitor. It's such a great character that gives Paul a chance to be Paul behind the veneer of the character more than, say, JW Stillwater, and it doesn't get bogged down in the mythology as much. 2. Cameron and Paul are still a fucking power duo. I love anyone that can come on with either PFT or Zouks and give Scott as much shit as possible without it feeling really mean. It always feels like they are just riffing and good-heartedly ragging on a dear friend, and I think that's wonderful. 3. Rhea is the low-key star of this episode. Some of her deliveries had me laughing harder than anything else in this ep. It was almost always throwaway jokes or alley-oops to someone else. But she's so fucking delightful.

Look. They got them mixed up with that other band that does Tae Kwon Do while singing Chris Cornell covers.

Okay, I know English isn't YK Kim's first language, so it's not fair to complain about his mispronouncing words.... But did NOBODY on the set ever go, "Hey, man, I know English spelling and pronunciation can be reaaaaallllyyyy confusing sometimes. But the word isn't pronounced 'orp-han.'" I don't blame Kim for this. It's literally everyone else on the set that let him keep saying it like that that's just a real asshole.

It makes me so happy that Jimmy Shive-Overly's high-pitched giggle is legit the way Chris Geere laughs IRL.

My first response when I saw the guest: And then my second response was to tweet you. Also, I fucking love this movie. I'll have to listen to the ep to see how much they get into the story of this film's production, but it's straight up insanity. My friends and I saw it at one of the first screenings after Drafthouse Films acquired the rights, and we still quote it to each other all the time. "I never knew you had a father" is a line that kills me every fucking time.

And there aren't any fronts pushing it out of Texas, so it's just kind of hovering until it dissipates. And it's pissing me off that all of the news/weather reports are like, "ZOMG THIS IS THE MOST DEVASTATING THING EVARRR!!!!!" Like, can you just tell me how much more rain we're supposed to get without screaming in my face like I'm about to get blown away at any second? Kthnx. Hurricanes are scary enough without this exaggerated nonsense.

Thanks! I think Jammer and Sammich might be the only ones in the real problem areas, but even then, I don't think SA got hit too hard. I think their biggest concern is going to be river flooding (which is ours as well). I read earlier that East Texas is looking at the possibility of colliding weather fronts causing a bunch of tornadoes, but that's also kind of par for the East Texas course. I lived in Tyler as a kid, and it's tornado city out there. Austin has been mostly spared so far. We only have 38 low water crossings that have been closed so far (which is next to nothing for us). It's a bit windy, but the rain hasn't been nearly as bad as people were predicting. And the best news is that I found out yesterday that my family that lives in Corpus Christi evacuated to D/FW earlier in the week (they're mostly retired, so they just went and stayed with family up there), and the ones that live in Houston decided to stick it out as they usually do, but they checked in this morning and are all fine.

I have all of the thoughts to share about Russell. She's the absolute best!

Well, that's just crazy talk...

We talked about what everyone's favorite musicals have been recently, and I'm wondering what song everyone has listened to the most from the musicals we've watched. Is there one song that just keeps going around and around in your head? For me, it's been "The Tango Maureen" from Rent (followed pretty closely by "I'll Cover You").

Yeah, I was in the same missed boat. I still have Gigi on my list, but I didn't get a chance to watch it last week. You were a big Jane Russell fan as a kid?

"When we come to the audience, you can do your screaming then...question mark?" I kind of wanted Jason to go off on the people who were shouting dumb shit. Like, there's a part of the show that encourages audience participation, and it's not the first half. People didn't come to the show to hear you shout nonsense; they want to hear the people on stage.

Yeah, that's an unassailable, objective fact.

Agreed. Luanne Platter is the best part of the original series. Also, I just found out recently that people not from Texas don't know that she's named after the Lu Anne Platter, which is a combination plate served at Luby's. I also learned that people outside of Texas don't really know about Luby's.

That's why you watch trailers for A24 films. They are probably the perfect trailers in my book. And speaking of which....THE FIRST TRAILER FOR THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER CAME OUT YESTERDAY!" It's Yorgos Lanthimos' (The Lobster, Dogtooth) new movie, and it's supposed to be a psychological horror movie, and I can't be more excited for it!

But Hotel Transylvania is suprisingly decent...

He's great in Rocky IV, The Expendables 2, and Don't Kill It. There are far more apt actors to pin bad movies on than Dolph.

Me when someone other than Paul started talking during the Paul's Pick of the Week section:

I finally listened to this ep, and it's absolutely chaos in the best possible way. Everything is totally nuts from the word go, and I had to listen to it all the way through twice because there's just so much going on. Possibly the best thing that could have happened for the 500th ep!

They announce them on Facebook and Twitter about a week beforehand usually.

He's also kind of a really nice dude. I met him at a festival last year, and he was really polite to all the fans that wanted to chat with him. As part of the festival, they do a thing called "Fantastic Debates," where two people debate a movie-related topic and then box each other (the most well-known ones are Drafthouse Founder on whether or not Tai Chi is a "real martial art" and on whether or not World of Warcraft is cool). Unfortunately, I haven't found any video from last year's debates yet, but it was between two Drafthouse employees on whether Raging Bull or Rocky IV was a better movie. Lundgren stood in the ring to be part of the Rocky IV side's crew. On the Raging Bull side, another guy ran around ran around waving an American flag and giving Lundgren the finger the whole time they were debating. Lundgren played it up like he was incredibly pissed about it. But afterwards, he was super nice and said it was some of the most fun he'd ever had.

Well, that's the most 1999 sentence anyone has written in a while As far as movies go, my parents were weird. They were religious, and they had problems with some movies, but there never seemed to be any rhyme or reason. My mom took my sister and me to see Wayne's World in the theater when we were 11. My dad refused to let us see Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, but they took us to see On Deadly Ground when it came out a month later. But even then, I always had my youngest uncle. He's only about 10 years older than me, so when I would go visit, he would always let me watch all the movies my parents wouldn't. He's the one that introduced me to the wonders of Ol' Jack Burton; he's the one that took me to see the Michael Keaton Batman when I was 8 (and then Arachnophobia the next year). We watched Predator, Point Break, and both Terminators with him all the time. So I have a kind of fucked up perspective on when it's okay to show kids certain movies, I guess. Like, I used to watch movies that I probably "shouldn't" have watched, but I also knew they were works of fiction. For those of you that have been listening to Off Book, I identified strongly with the way that Jamie Denbo talked about how she knew swearing was a thing that adults did and that she wasn't supposed to do it (but, like, seriously, all kids do it when they don't think adults can hear them). Like, I knew these were adult-y type things and that I wasn't supposed to do any of that stuff, so I don't really see the difference between showing a kid Terminator versus, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark (which gave me WAY more nightmares than Terminator ever did), so long as the kid can handle it and the adult supervising makes sure the kid knows that this is all imaginary shit they shouldn't be doing. I'm not saying go show your 4-year-old 9 1/2 Weeks or anything. But I think a lot of parents get a bit crazy about what content kids consume when there are FAR worse things they should be wary of (e.g., casual racism is more of a problem to me than, say, violence or nudity). But then again, I don't have kids and don't ever plan to. So my opinion might not count for much.