Drag Me to Hell with Jamie Loftus & Caitlin Durante

[00:00:00] Blank Check with Griffin and David. Blank Check with Griffin and David. Don't know what to say or to expect. All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check.

[00:00:22] Christine Brown has a good job, a great boyfriend, and a bright future. But in three days, she's going to podcast.

[00:00:30] Is that the tagline? That's the tagline. She's going to podcast. She's going to podcast. Worse than hell. A worse fate than hell. A worse fate than hell. She's gonna start a podcast. Horrible. What a good tagline, though.

[00:00:44] It is a good tagline and it's the bold kind of multi-line tagline. So someone's gotta stop and pay attention and read for a second. But it's worth it.

[00:00:55] I just feel like when we cover older movies on this podcast, they have taglines that really tell you a story like that. And then any movie from like 1995 on maybe is just like a fucking quip. It's a joke, you know? Yes, of course.

[00:01:12] This is a tagline that makes you walk, as you said, closer to the poster and go, what's going on here? And they're telling you a whole little story. And look, spoiler right off the bat, it's maybe the greatest aspect of this movie that it fulfills the promise of the title and that tagline fully.

[00:01:32] Yeah, well, that's the whole thing with this movie, right? It's a promise fulfilled pretty much from minute one.

[00:01:39] It promises something very simple and that's what it delivers. That's why I felt revolutionary. People are like, is there more to this? Where's the B-plot? I don't understand. They're like lifting up the rug or whatever. They're looking in the kitchen shelves like, come on, there's something else? No, there's nothing else going on.

[00:01:59] No, also like five minutes before it ends, you're like, I'm a fucking idiot for taking the title literally. Of course, that's just an evocative title. That's a thing they call the movie. Who cares? I whatever. And then who? I mean, I don't want to be too hyperbolic here, but in that sense, it's kind of one of the greatest endings of all time. Just how abruptly it fucking pulls the rug out from you does the most extreme thing and ends.

[00:02:25] Spoiler alert, she gets dragged to hell. It is the ending. I mean, it's the best last minute of a horror movie that I can remember.

[00:02:31] Truly. I really think so. Yeah, because there are other horror movies that play this game of like, whew, it's all okay. We're in the clear. We're in the woods. And then usually the worst they do is like you see that the person still alive. Michael Myers comes back for one last stab or whatever.

[00:02:51] You can do the Carrie ending where you jolt someone to send them home, you know, laughing. Right. And that's fine. But this is I don't know. This feels more like it's breaking the rules. It's like surprise. Unhappy ending credits. Go away. Title again. And title card. Goodbye.

[00:03:17] There's nothing more. I do. I do remember the first time seeing this movie. I was like, oh, there's like getting kind of like annoyed at the end of like she's not even good. We're not even going to get her get like tea. Like, I thought at least we were going to see her foot dragged to hell or like she's going to be partially dragged to hell and then escape.

[00:03:36] But with two minutes left on the run time, like she hasn't even I say on the run tab. Yeah. On the run. Come on down to run town. Or I think maybe I thought that like the villain was going to pop out of a train because they're at a train station. It would be like one of those corny endings where you just like the Michael Myers like and there's and there she is.

[00:03:59] I wonder what I thought down because I had never seen this movie before. I thought because she had gifted the button kind of inadvertently to Justin Long by like leaving it behind in his car that he would get. He was going to get dragged to hell. Right. Is that what's implied? Is he going to get did she successfully gifted or is the curse now? No, because because she got dragged. I think the curse is no. I think it's not a ring situation where it's going to keep going. Right.

[00:04:28] But I mean this with absolutely no offense to Mr. Justin Long, who we will, I'm sure, discuss. But had that been the ending right? He was like, by the way, I have the button and then he gets dragged to hell. The audience just burst into cheers. Right. Like, I don't mean that in a mean way. I just feel like I was like, ah, right.

[00:04:47] I want to give him credit. I think he is perfectly deployed here and I think he understands how this movie is using him. I agree. But I think it's another incredible thing about this movie that it's like this is the stock character that exists in all of these films. That's like the boyfriend. That's a little too glib, a little too jokey. And this movie somehow frames him perfectly where it's like this character isn't annoying to the audience.

[00:05:15] This guy is annoying in the universe he's in. Yeah. You know, like I just feel like you're just constantly like, dude, you're just being a little disrespectful in every scene. Do you always need to make it into a joke? Yeah. Like I, it feels it felt kind of like a cool. I mean, I guess subtle is not a word you can really attribute to this movie in any way. But I think it's like using this the same kind of qualities that would be attributed to Justin Long in past movies.

[00:05:45] As likable. And actually in this same year, because I think this is the same year as he's just not that into you where he's playing a similar character. But in the universe of that movie, we love him and he's hilarious. And he ends up dating what? Jennifer Goodwin or something? Jennifer Goodwin. Yeah. God, what a disaster.

[00:06:09] He was in seven, eight, eight movies and a cameo in Funny People in 2009. Okay, can we do the list? Can we do the list? Can we try to do this? Yeah, some of them are, you know, smaller.

[00:06:22] Drag me how he's just not that into you. He's in redo the fake movie and Funny People where Adam Sandler turns into a baby. Right, right, right. That's his cameo. Yeah. There has to be a Vince Vaughn movie that year 2009. Is he in a Vince Vaughn movie that year?

[00:06:39] Not that I'm not that I'm seeing. No, I feel like Vince would always flip him a scene. No, the other ones are a bunch of garbage. Oh, well, I would say that there's one outlier in there. What which is you got the squeak will in there. You do have the squeak.

[00:06:55] Rising the role of squeak of Mr. Squeak. He's squeak alizing his performance in the original film. Yeah, wait. Who are the other chipmunks? Yeah. Just as long as Alvin Jamie, I don't want to cut you off here. I can see you're excited to share the news. Oh, okay. Well, okay. Here we go. Let's see. We've got well, who is it?

[00:07:20] Zachary Levi. He's he's the replacement for Dave Seville. He's he's Dave's like cousin or whatever. Jesse McCartney is yes, Theodore and Matthew Gray Googler of Criminal Minds. Of course is Simon. And then I believe that ship bets are Applegate, Polar and Ferris. That's right. That's right. Wow. Incredible.

[00:07:50] Yeah, across the board. I regret bringing up longs 2009 is actually a bunch of garbage. The other movies are serious Moonlight. The long the movie, the Adrian Shelley script. Oh, wow. I was directed. Yeah. Uh-huh. Apparently, as a small role in still waiting, though, the waiting sequel, this generous of him to come back.

[00:08:12] He's in a rom-com called taking chances with Emmanuel Shikiri. Is that how you say your name? I'm sorry. I apologize, Emmanuel. I don't know how to say your last name. He was in something called Beyond. No, that doesn't count. He was a voice in Planet 51.

[00:08:38] Oh, sure. And apparently Griffin and you can confirm this for me. He was in Old Dogs, a small role in old. Oh, oh, not only is film. Uh-huh. Not only is he an old dogs, I would argue he's the best performance in old dogs. Well, there you go. This is a big part of my uncredited. Yeah, it's kind of rude. He should he should be first billed. He's like the only guy in old dogs who understands how to thread the needle know exactly what movie he's in.

[00:09:07] I think he's very funny in old dogs. But yes, this this is a really interesting, I think, subversion of just, hey, Justin, can you do what you're doing in every other movie? But can we change the context around you to make you seem just like insufferable? And yes, having him be dragged out at the end of the movie would be like the satisfying thing to the audience. But but I'm not unhappy that. No.

[00:09:32] No, what is no, no, she should have been dragged to hell. That should have been have that should have happened in the that should have been the inciting incident. Honestly, there is I mean, look, we're getting deep into it really early before we've introduced the show or our guests. But there's a bloody disgusting interview that Sam Raimi did like three years ago, a retrospective on this movie.

[00:09:57] And they the first William Bibiani was the interviewer and he asked her if he thought she deserved it. And he said, no, I feel the poor girl was overpunished as it happens in life sometimes. It's a morality tale. She did do the wrong thing. But holy cow, give her a break.

[00:10:18] He said, but that's how this particular tale ends. And then this is like the whole movie in a nutshell for me. He said, I thought it would be shocking to title the film Drag Me To Hell and actually end it with giving exactly what the title demanded and still make it incredibly shocking. I thought that would be a really funny cocktail.

[00:10:36] I mean, I mean, I don't disagree. I would have left disappointed if no one if not a single person got dragged to hell. But then the interviews I was reading interviews he did in 2009 and he seems to really feel that she deserved it in 2009. But with the with the benefit of time, he maybe changed. It was weird. He gave a couple interviews where he says that she should have been dragged to hell, which I'm inclined to agree with.

[00:11:02] But then the reasons he gives, I was like, oh, well, that's not the reason I thought, you know, it's it's open. He thought she should be dragged to hell because she was like a good person on the outside. But when you really start to look at her, the real person comes out. But it made it sound like it was more connected to like the context of it is he's talking about her more like she's like an L.A. phony. Like she moved from a farm and she changed. I was like, well, that's not why I disliked her.

[00:11:28] No, that's why he doesn't like her. There are so many reasons to dislike that character. But it sounded more connected to like, oh, she's an L.A. phony. It's like, well, I get like, yeah, she does have a very nice place in Echo Park or whatever.

[00:11:44] She did leave her her pork queen or what was it called? The pork queen fair legacy behind. She moved to L.A. Now she's a cog in the corporate machine. And that and that's why I hate her. Yeah.

[00:12:09] Yeah, that's that's where I was like, there's so many good reasons to want her to be dragged to hell. But that just wasn't on my list.

[00:12:15] She, you know, we'll talk about it and Griff, you should probably choose the podcast or whatever. But, you know, this was 2009. This was the height of the recession. We were all, you know, ready to hate on anyone, you know, who is denying bank loans or whatever and foreclosing on, you know, crazy old ladies like that. Yeah, she's she's she's the villain.

[00:12:38] So I also yeah, I mean, I think it's part of the magic of this movie is that it's holding two things to be true at the same time, which is she deserves it. And also it's a little bit extreme.

[00:12:48] Yeah, well, no one deserves to be. I don't know about nobody. Most people don't deserve to be dragged to hell, I suppose. She should at least be given a talking to maybe or, you know, I don't know, something like that.

[00:13:00] Stern talking to her boss to hell. I would drop. I would feel comfortable. Her boss dragged down. Yeah, if anything, this movie makes an argument. You could drag four or five different characters to hell. True. Yeah, no problem. Stu Stu takes to to hell.

[00:13:17] Stu's not there's a lot of a lot of a lot of strong contenders. Power rankings of who should be dragged to hell in the way that like Broadway shows you get to end with the catharsis of the cast coming out and taking a bow individually and everything.

[00:13:34] It's more movies should like end and then the after credit scene shouldn't be some fucking cookie teasing the next movie. It should just be like we agree with you. Here are the characters were dragging to hell. You just drag a couple characters to hell at the end of every movie. Whoever the audience really dislikes.

[00:13:50] That'd be really satisfying. Introduce our podcast Griffin and our guests. Sure. Yeah, it's a it's a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. Thanks. I'm David.

[00:13:59] Thanks. And it's a podcast about filmography is directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they get dragged to hell baby.

[00:14:13] And this is an example of someone who did one of the most financially successful trilogies in history and then was truly given complete creative freedom to make the exact kind of movie he made at the beginning of his career.

[00:14:27] It's just like a perfect example of a blank check movie on a small scale. We're talking about Sam Raimi, the films of Sam Raimi. This is the titular.

[00:14:36] The namesake of this miniseries podcast me to hell. We're talking drag me to hell and our guests returning together for the first time. They both been separate guests but from the Bechtel cast Jamie Loftus and Caitlin Durante.

[00:14:50] Hello. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Great to great to be back. Great to be in hell with you guys. Thanks for dragging us into this hell with you. Yeah. We you asked us to do this like three days ago and we're like we don't know. But we got the buttons in the mail and here we are.

[00:15:07] Now you have no choice. That's how we book our podcast. We started sending people.

[00:15:13] Yeah. Yes. Welcome to hell everybody. This is a movie that is pretty good in my opinion. There you go. I'll say it. You texted me. I did. Your wording was him. It's like someone made a horror movie for Griffin Newman.

[00:15:35] I mean any horror movie where an anvil lands on someone's head basically and then their eyes pop out. Yeah. I just feel like that's what you want out of a horror movie. I'm not saying that in a negative way at all. I'm just saying like it feels like this is you know 100 percent Griffin Newman.

[00:15:54] No you know me well. I mean you love kissing in movies. What I love is when a toothless woman sucks on someone's lower jaw. And goo comes out twice. I got it. Did you so. Did you guys see this. Who saw this in theaters. I guess that's my question. I saw it in theaters.

[00:16:16] I did. I saw it like I think maybe a year or two after it came out because I and I'm not. This is one of the ultimate theater experiences I've had as like an adult. Yeah. Like this was just the perfect go to the local regal. I saw it at the court square or whatever.

[00:16:35] And just just the absolute astonishment of the audience. The loud astonishment of the audience at every gross thing. It was you know everyone was just screaming and cheering like pretty much for 99 minutes and then and then we all left like happy and chattering like it was. I'm sure exactly the experience Sam Raimi wanted me to have. It's just a good theater movie.

[00:16:58] Oh I'm going to sound like an asshole saying this but when this movie came out I was doing an acting program in France. So I know I know I know I know. I only bring this up to say I saw this in Paris and in Paris especially moviegoers.

[00:17:16] Bonjour. Yeah it's it's a lot of fun for that very reason. Well what do you guys think of Sam Raimi in general because yeah when we approached you long ago this is the movie you guys wanted to talk about. But are you guys Raimi fans Raimi skeptics.

[00:18:01] I generally like him. I like the first two Spider-Man movies. I'm not a huge. I mean Evil Dead is is fun. You know the Evil Dead one and then kind of Evil Dead 2 is just Evil Dead 1 again and then Evil Dead 3 is more money is them is the character time traveling which is the formula for all trilogies.

[00:18:24] Yes. The turtles for example. Precisely. Turtles in time. Men in Black etc. I think we talked about this last time I was on the show anyway. Well that's why you have to come back for a third episode of Blank Check and then you guys can travel through time.

[00:18:39] That's the time travel episode. Yeah.

[00:18:41] Exactly. So I you know I like what he I like that he makes bold choices. I like that he stays on brand. Do I think his movies are good necessarily. Sometimes I don't think Drag Me To Hell is good even a little bit. Ooh anti-drag me to hell.

[00:19:05] Caitlin and I got some got some gripes. I'm not a Ramy completionist at all. I mean Spider-Man 2 is truly one of my all time favorite movies of my entire life. I've seen it five trillion times. It informed my sexuality and a very direct way. Oh well sure.

[00:19:29] You're a fan. That truly I don't think I'm underselling it when I say that performance. I wasn't even thinking about that. The direction of my life in some way.

[00:19:39] Right. That movie has to be a Rosetta Stone for you. I mean there's no other movie with that much brightly lit shirtless Molina. Right. Every other movie where Molina is taking his top off. Oh and all greased up. Right is more sort of moody and shadowy and artsy.

[00:19:56] Yeah like species or whatever. But yeah. My only problem with the Da Vinci code was that Alfred Molina was wearing too many clothes the whole time. So many layers.

[00:20:06] Yeah I mean I like I appreciate the mystery but topless Molina was a touchstone for me. And so for a while just because I had such a big crush on Alfred Molina I was like Sam Raimi is my favorite director because he made Alfred Molina take his shirt off.

[00:20:23] Anyways I've been bopping around his filmography for the ensuing 20 years. I've seen the evil deads drag me to hell.

[00:20:33] I think when we were picking this episode was the Sam Raimi movie I'd seen the most recently that wasn't Spider-Man 2. And it's it's I struggle with this movie because like there's just one like the the treatment of Romani culture is so horrible and that like it makes it just a tough watch in general for me.

[00:21:01] But then as a horror movie like the scenes are so goofy the Roger Rabbit scene like I really wish I could have seen the Roger Rabbit and Vill Drop in theaters.

[00:21:10] So it's like this movie has a lot of what I like about Sam Raimi and then a lot of like a lot of stuff that I was like man you gotta talk to a second person that isn't you know directly related to you sometimes.

[00:21:23] But yes this movie has I would say a slightly broad villain that that one could maybe pick a few nits about.

[00:21:38] I would say the Sam Raimi's entire oeuvre basically right is it goes broad. He's yes you know like Griff we saw The Gift for example a movie that that you know is is a very like broad portrayal of sort of Southern Gothic horror.

[00:21:59] I was going to say a lot of the characters in that one take on all of the South is very similar.

[00:22:06] I'm trying to think of other Sam Raimi movies that are not just set in a cabin. Mostly his movies are set in cabins. I guess that's how he kind of right have not seen Oz the Great and Powerful recently enough to remember how that movie treats Oz people from Oz.

[00:22:22] It's more anti-witch it's strongly anti-witch. Sure right. Right. Yeah it is funny that this movie has the joke of Justin Long saying like look I know it's been a rough couple of weeks let's go up to the cabin.

[00:22:36] Let's take it easy. Like the worst thing anyone can offer in the Sam Raimi movie is like let's just take a weekend alone in the cabin.

[00:22:44] But in his career this is such like you say Griffin. Yeah. What's a good analog for this? Like how many other directors have sort of hopped off of whatever the franchise train been like I'm going to go back like like it'd be like George Lucas you know whoever being like you know actually going you're paying off the promise of like I'm going to make a movie for me.

[00:23:06] You'll see you'll all see except you know he's never done it like and Raimi actually sort of makes a small little horror movie that's evocative of his early career puts it out and then never did it again.

[00:23:19] Like that's the weird thing like you watch this and you're sort of like oh he must have a bunch of these scripts like rattling around in his drawer.

[00:23:26] I have some potential insights into that but I'll say also like I think an interesting counterpoint to this movie is that the exact same year is the Lovely Bones which is in theory Peter Jackson trying to do a similar thing being like can I go back and make Heavenly Creatures now.

[00:23:43] I've done my Lord of the Rings trilogy I've done King Kong can I find my my small good book and do an actor driven story and somehow Lovely Bones cost a hundred million dollars is really good. But it did it cost way too much money.

[00:23:59] True well remember there's a whole thing with the boat in the bottle and like she's because there's all that stuff where she's in Purgatory or the spirit world or what right like there's all that stuff that like he yeah anyway the in between plus Saoirse Ronan's rate was 70 million dollars.

[00:24:21] She had an Oscar nomination. Yes yes yes. Yeah no but that was like Lynn Bramsey was supposed to make that movie for like 15 million dollars and she had the rights and then Peter Jackson like swung around and was like please.

[00:24:35] And Alice Sebald was just like deal broken ripped up contract handed to Peter Jackson and Peter Jackson was like we spent like a year with weta trying to design the in between.

[00:24:46] And you're like it's so overblown it's so over thought it looks like a fucking Lisa Frank folder and Lynn Bramsey when I came out was like yeah I don't know I would have like shot her in the woods or something I wouldn't have made some fucking that's not the point.

[00:24:59] You're so caught up on the wrong details here and like it was so astounding that Ramey could actually go back and make a movie of this size and it didn't feel like he was overburdening it and it also didn't feel like he was.

[00:25:14] I think sometimes when people try to do this like make the film like they used to make in the earlier part of their career it sometimes feels like they're tying an arm behind their back and they're like I'm like trying to make a movie I made when I was younger and dumber and trying to forget everything they've learned in the in between.

[00:25:32] Whereas I think he's he's bringing everything to the table here. In the in between of their career or in the in between of Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones? Both. Well speaking of Peter Jackson let me give you some context with Drag Me to Hell Griffin.

[00:25:47] Post Spider-Man 3 obviously is when this movie is coming together. First he wants to make an adaptation of the We Free Men that Terry Pratchett Discworld book.

[00:25:59] Discworld is one of those sort of you know massive niche you know fan I love the Discworld books or I loved them when I was a kid you know like that's never really been done by Hollywood.

[00:26:13] I don't know if like I think the Terry Pratchett estate is fairly guarded about it or it falls apart because they Terry Pratchett hated the script so that doesn't happen. And then speaking of Peter Jackson, Rami wants to do The Hobbit.

[00:26:28] He's he put his name in for that like when Jackson leaves The Hobbit and then they hired Guillermo del Toro instead. It was pretty much between the two of them by all accounts right like it was they were the only two guys seriously in consideration.

[00:26:44] I mean I don't know what happens if Rami gets on board. I don't like I don't know if that thing was doomed no matter what or if Rami would have just been like sure I'll do my thing. What is are we pro Rami Hobbit?

[00:26:56] I can't even I'm having trouble with that. Yeah I'm not really I gotta be honest.

[00:27:03] I'm very pro del Toro Hobbit and I wish it happened as one movie and I wish when you see the first Hobbit right that it resulted the del Toro stuff in it is fun.

[00:27:14] The weird little creatures he had designed are like you're like oh that's cool like this would have been good. But yeah anyway obviously it's a tough question because on one hand it sort of felt like no one else could make it other than Peter Jackson at that point.

[00:27:31] But also the circumstances in which Peter Jackson came back around and ended up making it felt a little bit dispiriting. Right everything about The Hobbit is dispiriting. Those movies are funny though and I do kind of stick up for them but they are also bad.

[00:27:45] Like I would love to see a Sam Raimi Hobbit movie in a universe where the Hobbit rights were held by someone different and they could be entirely its own thing you know.

[00:27:56] Like if Sam Raimi just had the ability to adapt The Hobbit I think that's actually well suited to him as a book. I think having to tie it into what Jackson's pre-established is maybe like a little impossible. That's fair.

[00:28:10] So this is a script he wrote with his brother in the 80s. It was called The Curse. So it had literally been like just in his drawer basically Griffin.

[00:28:22] And it's what we said it's just he gets together with Rob Tapert, the guy, his producing partner who's been running Ghost House Pictures and making those you know horror movies. What did they have Griffin? Let's see. The Grudge remake. That was the big one. Boogeyman. What was Boogeyman?

[00:28:41] I mean this was the thing all of these movies would come out in January open to 20 million dollars quietly make 50 million dollars and then disappear into the ether. Barry Watson. Yes. The Messengers with Kristen Stewart. 30 Days of Night. That's Heartnet right? 30 Days of Night was Heartnet yeah.

[00:29:02] I don't remember The Messenger. That was the Pang brothers. Remember them? Oxide and Danny Pang. It's a Kristen Stewart like farmhouse movie. Yeah. Sunflower Farm in North Dakota is invaded by ominous darkness. Amen. Yeah it sounds pretty good. So apparently he's inspired by oh no no I'm sorry.

[00:29:28] It's that there was a trend piece written in the LA Times that tied together him Sam Mendes making Away We Go.

[00:29:34] Steven Soderbergh making The Girlfriend Experience and Ang Lee making Taking Woodstock which is basically like all these guys are trying to shrink it down like all these big shots are trying to go small again. I don't know. I don't know if that's a trend.

[00:29:48] Those movies are all very different. Yeah I was going to say those are very different films.

[00:29:52] The thing I do know I don't know if JJ pulled this up in his research but that Ramey after seeing Shaun of the Dead handed the script to Edgar Wright and was like you should make this. You're like a young me.

[00:30:06] And Edgar Wright was like if I made this it would be karaoke. Interesting. Like I could do an impression of you and make this movie but what's the point? Like you should make this.

[00:30:17] I think that was kind of the thing was that he pulled this script out of the drawer and said like maybe it's time to find a younger filmmaker to make this and I'll produce it.

[00:30:26] And I think Edgar Wright saying that to him was the thing that made him question like could I go back and make a smaller movie again? Apparently Edgar Wright says he later visited the set of Drag Me to Hell during shooting. Sam Ramey was shooting in the graveyard.

[00:30:40] He was wearing his suit as he famously always wears a suit on set and was covered in mud and saw Edgar Wright and shouted this is all your fault at him. So that's funny. Oh that's great. I did not know that he wore a suit on set.

[00:30:58] This is news to me. Every fucking day. Yes. That is fascinating. He has this whole I'm a professional doing my job. I should right? That's his thing right Griff? Right.

[00:31:08] There's something very like squeaky clean and like straight arrow about Sam Ramey where he's like well I make pictures for a living and I take the job very seriously and so I wear a suit to show respect to the cinematic arts.

[00:31:23] I was going to say that's very like grew up in Michigan of him. Yes. That's like I am at work and this is this is my suit. Was he wearing a suit when he was directing The Evil Dead when he was like 12? I like he was 12 years old.

[00:31:41] They called him the Wonder Boy. I mean I think he was I do think that is his I mean maybe not for like the early the first Evil Dead like you know there you see pictures of him in like a button down or whatever. David. David.

[00:31:59] In our quick in the dead episode. Roman Mars our guest was asking about the timeline of when Ramey starts wearing the suit. So JJ our researcher dug in and he sent us a thread. Okay.

[00:32:10] So he said he showed us a picture from Evil Dead 2 where he's wearing shirt and tie but like short sleeve white button down shirt with tie like he looks like Michael Douglas and Falling Down right?

[00:32:24] And then by Dark Man long sleeves tie by Army of Darkness jacket but it's not a proper suit. It's like upgrading red jacket shirt right he's slaps inching right. I mean the man knows how to build cannon over time good for him.

[00:32:43] Yes and then I think it's somewhere around quicker dead and Simple Plan where it's a proper suit. It is a grown-ups. So I don't know what I thought would happen. When you Google Sam Ramey suit it's a million pictures of the Spider-Man suit. Oh sure. That's that's rude.

[00:33:01] Yeah.

[00:33:04] Yes the only other thing he says about developing this apart from the fact that he yes he just tried to get someone else to make it I guess because he couldn't trust that he could make a small movie was that he he you know wrote it with Ivan a zillion years ago.

[00:33:17] It's all made up obviously it's all based on true story. No, no, but I mean like it's not based on anything.

[00:33:25] It's not like some piece of myth or what you're saying based on lore right sure right he was just like we just wanted a movie about character who commits the sin of greed and has to pay a price for it.

[00:33:35] It's in every mythology or whatever right like he's just like it's like we were trying to be as simple as possible.

[00:33:41] He calls it I want to find serving up spaghetti in meatballs but pretending it's a full course meal that is sure he just wanted it to be as dumb and stupid as possible is his apparently Marty Noxon who people probably know best from Buffy Vampire Slayer and other TV shows rewrote the script and then they decided not to use her rewrite because it was like smarter is the way he puts it.

[00:34:06] We like the direct dump stupid version is what he says. She wrote a movie that you and I defend a lot the Fright Night remake which is an example of like this movie is a lot smarter than it needs to be.

[00:34:19] Y'all seen the Fright Night remake with Colin Farrell? Oh yes, I have but I don't remember it very well. Do you like Colin Farrell's arms? Yes. I recommend it. Okay. With a lot of emphasis. If that's the bar for entry, I'm in baby.

[00:34:42] I'm just saying like there are other things to recommend about that movie. It's got poots. It's got sexy David Tennant. Really good David Tennant. Eyeshadow. He plays like Criss Angel mind freak essentially.

[00:34:52] Yeah right right but I mean like if I was like on the street trying to get someone to come to a preview of this movie with like a clipboard I'd be like hey do you like Colin Farrell's arms? Anybody? Anyone like Colin Farrell's arms specifically?

[00:35:05] You have a full theater in two minutes. Exactly. I got a movie that's about 80 minutes of that and then 20 minutes of plot so if you're interested. Right.

[00:35:13] If I could unpack that further I would say obviously the arc of Colin Farrell's career is he was like – they tried to sell him to us as like this is the hottest guy in the world, right?

[00:35:22] And never fully connected with the audience and then he sort of re-found himself as a character actor. And Fright Night is the one movie where he figures out how to make being hot part of his character acting. Like it's like weaponized hotness in modern character actor Colin Farrell.

[00:35:38] It's a special skill. Yeah. It's a very special skill. He's like traditionally hot in that movie but good. Oh, that's a Craig Gillespie movie. It is a Craig Gillespie. Such a weird career Craig Gillespie. One of the weirdest careers. Yeah.

[00:35:51] He is very hard to pin down because he also made the – what's it called? The Finest Hours. Is that what it's called Griffin? Yes. The Chris Pine – he's got the boat movie where he's in the boat. Man on a Boat. Ben Foster, Eric Bana, Casey Affleck.

[00:36:04] How does this guy pick his projects? It's so funny. Cruella, Mr. Woodcock. He did do Mr. Woodcock. That's right. Then there's the I, Tanya, Pam and Tommy lane which seems to be what he's doubling down on now. Sure. Right. Like biopic-y stuff. But then – The Finest Hours.

[00:36:21] I probably shut it down before. Chris Pine going like we got to get over the bar. We got to go rescue that boat. It's so good. Yeah. All right. So this movie got a $30 million budget and Elliot Page was going to be the star and I remember that.

[00:36:35] I remember the casting announcement and I guess – I think it was a SAG strike problem or there was some scheduling reason and Alison Lohman replaces him. It was – I don't know. There was whatever. It was not like some dramatic thing. What do you guys think of Alison Lohman?

[00:36:54] We have to have the Alison Lohman conversation. This is for all intents and purposes her last movie. She marries Brian Neveldine or is it Mark Neveldine? Mark? I get them confused. Neveldine Taylor who did Crank and Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance and all those wacky movies.

[00:37:12] She marries one of those guys the year this movie comes out and since then she has had three onscreen appearances that are all cameos in movies that he directed or produced. Do you know why that is? She was like I got married. I had kids.

[00:37:26] I didn't want to act anymore. Okay. Well, I'll say she's got a slightly problematic Twitter feed. I don't want to be rude about Alison Lohman and people can do whatever they want to do or whatever.

[00:37:39] But when I look at her Twitter feed, I'm like this is a lot of tweets about crypto and Elon Musk. For my liking. But that aside, do you guys have Alison Lohman takes? There was sort of a six-year Alison Lohman moment, I guess.

[00:37:57] Starting with white Oleander coming to this. You got Big Fish, Matchstick Men, Flicka. Flicka, I was a Flickahead at the time. Of course. She got flicked. I caught the flick and I love a horse girl with some horse hair horsing around.

[00:38:20] I don't know if I have a really strong take on her. I was like she's fine. I don't know. In my head, she could have been a bunch of people.

[00:38:29] Knowing that Elliot Page might have done the part, you're like, yeah, that would have probably been a better performance. I agree. But I think she's good at being upset and screaming. There is something to the performance.

[00:38:45] You do buy that she whatever kind of might sell her soul to be a middle manager at Citibank or whatever. Right? That's sort of the crucial thing. You can't just be like, oh, this is a wide-eyed innocent. You need a little bit of that to go with it.

[00:39:02] I love Alice Lohman in this. I think it's a pretty great performance. I think if anything, it's perfectly deployed. Her whole thing in this period and it is truly like a seven year career where she was everywhere. It's just like she was unbelievably gentle. Right?

[00:39:22] Everything about her, she looks like an Ann Gettys baby portrait. And her voice is so slight and everything about her just felt so kind of fragile.

[00:39:34] And so there was a lot of her playing deeply emotionally wounded people or playing kind of saintly, impossibly perfect love interests and things like that. And then this is Flicka's best friend. Flicka's best friend. I'm sorry.

[00:39:50] One of the other things she would get typecast sometimes as is Flicka's best friend. Specifically Flicka's best friend. Yeah, right.

[00:39:56] I remember the Ellie Page thing being really interesting at the time because that sort of position that an actor can get into like post Oscar nomination where it's like, well, you haven't won.

[00:40:08] But you had especially like for Page where Juno was such a big hit on top of it. But like your profile has grown so significantly. And now there's this question of like, are you a movie star? Are you like a leading star? What do we do with you?

[00:40:25] And Page, I think especially post Juno had like such a specific persona in people's minds. I think there was the assumption of just like you can make like three more comedies like that.

[00:40:36] You can be the like acerbic, fast talking, quippy person, which seemed to not be of interest. I have to imagine just in terms of timing that Inception is the thing that takes Page out of the running. Probably. Right. A different movie with Dilip Rao.

[00:40:54] Dilip Rao who had one of the most incredible 18 month runs for an actor who also seemingly like disappeared. Yeah. Well, James Cameron kidnapped him, right? I believe he's in Avatar 2. Yeah, he's in both of the. I think that James kidnapped, James Cameron kidnapped him.

[00:41:10] I think so because he's in. Maybe all four of the Avatar sequels. I think we only know that he's in the first two, but the next two are real mysteries. But yes, he is.

[00:41:21] He's been down there filming with every with Joel David Moore who tried to market correct Justin Long, of course. I hope for his sake it's worth it. That's a long time. It does seem tiring. He was in one episode of Mr. Robot. That's the thing.

[00:41:39] It's like, right, drag me to hell, Avatar Inception all in 18 months. And then it's like one episode of Mr. Robot, one episode of Children's Hospital, two episodes of Touch, one episode of Z Nation. A lot of short films and three movies I've never heard of.

[00:41:56] Remember Amnesia, kind of an oxymoron, extracurricular activities and Beba Boys. I'm looking at his Twitter feed. He hates Elon Musk. Good. I'm just going to tell you what everyone seems to think of Elon Musk. He's retweeting a lot of Avatar stuff, so I guess he's excited for that.

[00:42:16] I don't know. Thank God. He was dunking on Scott Walker the other day. He tweets a lot. Tweet less, Dilip. Come on. More movies, less tweeting. I think as much as I am an Elliot Page fan and probably prefer Page as an actor in general to Loman,

[00:42:34] I do think Page might have been a little bit too hard edge for this movie where I think the main game Rami's playing with this film is like, this is someone who is so sure that she is a good person. You know?

[00:42:51] Like there's something about how innocent Alison Loman reads where when she starts to get like angry and bitter stuff, it feels more subversive. But also that like her being cursed feels more subversive, if that makes sense. You know?

[00:43:10] Like especially coming right off of Juno, you're just going to be like, well, like, but Page is always going to be the smartest person in the room. You know? Right. I think, I mean, Alison's performance was a little hit or miss for me.

[00:43:23] And in some scenes I was like, wow, she's doing a pretty good job at this acting thing. And other times I'm like, I don't think she's doing a very good job. But I also think that might just be leaning into like the Sam Rami-ness of it all.

[00:43:36] I would grant her that. Yeah. Yeah. I think that was it for a lot of it for me. But yeah, I mean, I bought that she was on the precipice of being dragged to hell. So I believed that. Yeah. Her nosebleed performance. Oh, wow.

[00:43:54] You can't take that from her. Not just a nosebleed. She's also gushing out of her mouth. She's bleeding out of her mouth. Ever. It was a full face bleed. It is a full face bleed. David Pamer really kills that scene.

[00:44:05] There's a thing on the Blu-ray, the Shout Factory, Scream Factory release that I guess was a couple years ago where they did like a sit down interview with her,

[00:44:14] which is just kind of like rare because she's pretty much stayed out of the public eye other than tweeting pro Elon Musk, Johnny Depp stuff for the last 10 years.

[00:44:23] And she said that like this, despite the fact that this was a script that he had had for several decades, that it was like pretty much always in flux and Rami was very improvisational with it.

[00:44:35] And she'd show up on the day and he'd be like, today we're going to pour bugs in your mouth. And she'd be like, oh, okay. When does that happen? He's like, I don't know. We'll figure it out.

[00:44:44] Like there was a lot of, I think her just being told like we're going to do this thing now and you just have to react. And she's like, or I could just retire. You know, right. I mean, it does seem like it was a very intense filming process.

[00:44:59] Rami was very much like I really tried to warn her, you know, that it was going to be very physical and very insane. Right. And he's like, I threw her out of a car. I threw fake candy glass at her, whipped her around the room in a harness.

[00:45:12] I buried her alive. Like, you know, like he's he clearly feels maybe not guilty, but he was just like, I hope she knew what she was in for when she like read this script or whatever. I mean, I personally would not do this movie. I would say no.

[00:45:26] I might play David Pamer. I would take that role. You take the role. You can gush blood on me one time. Take a blood gush to the face. Right. And then I go, did it get on me? Stop it, he says. Stop bleeding on me.

[00:45:39] He's like stop it. Anyway, sorry, Jamie.

[00:45:41] I was fascinated by the story of Lorna Raver getting cast as Mrs. Ganesh where the anecdote that I read was so she's like the main antagonist and that she only auditioned thinking she was a little old lady coming into the bank because they're foreclosing on her house.

[00:46:00] And they didn't tell her what character she was playing. I was like that. I feel like she should have known. I don't know. She had two film credits in her career. She was a big New York and Chicago theater actor, I guess.

[00:46:17] And so that was mostly her background. But yes, she says she had no idea. Which I guess they didn't give her the whole script for the audition. And then when then they were like, here's the whole script, by the way. And she said, quote, Oh my.

[00:46:32] That's the end of the clip.

[00:46:33] But it's also funny, like even if you don't give someone the full script, usually like if someone's going to say turn into a deadite for most of the running time, you have them do one scene where they walk into the bank and ask for a loan.

[00:46:50] And you have them do a second scene where they like scream and puke eyeballs on you to not even in the audition be given any indication that that's a whole other part of the character you're going to have to play until you're hired is. I don't know.

[00:47:05] I get really a lot of trust in her, I guess. Yeah. Like maybe he saw her perform before. Like, I don't know. I mean, she she plays the hell out of the part. Like, regardless of what you think of the part she did, she does a great job.

[00:47:17] But it's like, yeah, that was I was like, they didn't give her the full premise before they hired her. I, yeah, I don't know.

[00:47:25] I mean, you know, Raver says like, look, they were great stunt coordinators and the doubles showed Allison and I exactly what to do without hurting each other. But she does.

[00:47:36] She does essentially say like it was a completely unexpected, insane thing to do all this stuff like and to have all this crazy makeup on and get your head crushed by an anvil, which I'm assuming was a completely practical effect.

[00:47:54] Yeah, that was there was no stunt double or anything. You got it. Sam Raimi was just on a ladder. He's like, all right, stand there. Yeah, I mean, the way Raimi talks about it is just like a joy. I think he loved making this movie.

[00:48:13] Griffin, are you reading these quotes? The most fun I've had in 20 years making a picture. Hired all the best technicians.

[00:48:21] I guess it's the $30 million budget thing where it's like he's making the evil dead again, except he has but comparatively a massive budget so he can just have every expert on hand and it's still a quote unquote cheap movie. And he has complete creative control.

[00:48:36] I think probably the assumption was because he made the three Spider-Man movies back to back. He didn't even do the thing that a lot of these guys do were like in between each movie you do a palate cleanser.

[00:48:47] You know, like Nolan does prestige and inception in between Batman movies or the guys who are like, let me make a smaller thing. You know, Taika Waititi is going to do a Jojo rabbit in between Thor's or whatever that he did three of them back to back.

[00:49:03] They all were so huge, even if, you know, three was unpopular. It was the highest grossing movie of that year. And it's like, OK, either he's going to make like a fucking Discworld. He's going to launch a new franchise. He's going to make some huge new VFX thing.

[00:49:16] Or the other assumption would probably be he's going to try to make like another prestige movie.

[00:49:21] He's going to go back to simple plan land and like try to win an Oscar now to be like, I just want to do a thirty five million dollar horror movie, especially when it's greenlit with someone who is like recently minted as an Oscar nominated star.

[00:49:35] Even though they replace Paige with someone who like is a lot less famous. I think it was still like you just you got it set up fine. You produced a bunch of these. Just fucking do whatever the hell you want.

[00:49:45] You know, like no one was messing with him at all. I heard a story that I cannot cite my source on this, but that the budget is on this movie was higher than it was reported.

[00:49:56] But it was because Rami started putting his own money into trying to like pump up the effects. Oh, that's cool. That he just like really was all in on this thing. I mean, the effects are the effects of the seance scene are so wild. Like there's the goat.

[00:50:15] Yeah, the goat. I was like, I forgot there's so many solid canonical movie goats. OK, so who we got? Black Phillip, obviously. You've got this. You've got the ghost, the goat in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. That was a personal goat fave of mine as a child.

[00:50:35] It went. What's his name? It's like Jolly. His name is Jolly and his only line is. What about the goats that the men stared at and the men who stare at goats, which I never saw? Yeah, it's in the title. Yeah. Do goats appear in that movie?

[00:50:53] I haven't seen it. There's goats. I don't remember the men stare at them. Yeah, yeah. Men do stare at them. What about like every Jeff Bridges performance since 2008? Yes, absolutely. Just shows up with a scrabble beard and chews on the can.

[00:51:12] I honestly do feel like I feel like I'm forgetting a goat. I feel like there actually is another demonic goat that I'm forgetting. Yes. Movie goats. Goats in movies. Let's see. It doesn't help that there's that movie called goat, but it's about like frat bullying. That's not helpful.

[00:51:28] Right? I'm seeing a movie here called goats, which does have a goat on a poster. There's the goat that they feed a dinosaur in Jurassic Park. I was about to say that's a big one. Okay, yes. And then I guess Pan from Pan's Labyrinth is sort of goaty.

[00:51:42] He's like a fawn, right? He's goat-like. Yeah. He's got goat legs. Yeah, you get a lot of goat adjacent characters. Sure. I'm on hypeable.com slash goats on film and TV. I think we were all three looking at the exact same list. That's what I was looking at.

[00:52:02] I got to cite my sources because I use the best sources. Scholarly Journal. What is it called? Hypeable.com. I love how these articles are written. It's my favorite. Even Harry Potter can't resist a great goat. They're like, what are you talking about? The Goat Tribune.

[00:52:22] There was apparently Aberforth Dumbledore has a real fondness for goats. Well, that's sure. Right. Of course. Dumbledore's brother likes goats. Yes, I forgot about that. I don't know if they weave that into the films though. They may have cut that out of the movies.

[00:52:38] There's the goat in The Big Green, right? I'm not getting it wrong. That's the animal. I think they have a goat. Never seen The Big Green. Well, I talk about it a lot.

[00:52:46] It's kind of rude at this point because we've been doing this podcast together for almost eight years. That's the soccer movie, right? Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah, it was a pretty big important film to me. Drag Me to Hell is in my top three goats. Wow.

[00:52:58] I would say just under Black Phillip. Same. Right. Yeah, The Goat required six puppeteers, FYI. Just telling you. See, this is what I find impressive though. Like, it's a puppeteer to goat where they clearly are doing some babe style CGI lip replacement.

[00:53:15] So they're able to get like a better mouth movement than you would out of just animatronic. And this whole movie, I feel like he is doing a very good job of combining practical and digital stuff. We were having this conversation, David, on our text thread with the Doughboys.

[00:53:30] And Mike Mitchell is like a big horror movie fan who tends to dislike CGI. And he was saying like what's the scariest movie that uses a lot of CGI?

[00:53:40] Like making the argument that most horror films when it gets too digital, it starts to lose some sort of like tactility and it becomes less scary.

[00:53:48] And I think this is a movie where it's like clear that he built a lot of shit and did a lot of shit for real on camera and then uses the CGI to like just amp it up in a really good way.

[00:53:58] And it all makes it feel kind of hallucinogenic. Yeah, I don't mind the CGI in this. You know, you guys go ahead because I think there's a counter argument. There's some questionable CGI moments. Most notably for me, the one where the anvil.

[00:54:15] OK, so the anvil seems pretty real. That's a practical anvil. I love the Roger Rabbit anvil. And then the anvil falls on the head and then we get the eyeballs popping out.

[00:54:28] And then the splatter of like the eyeballs and face blood guts that go into Christine's face is like some of the worst CGI I've ever seen in my life.

[00:54:39] But this is what I like about it is that I think he is incredibly disinterested in any of this looking realistic. It's more just like the weird feeling of like waking up from a dream and being like, I don't even know how to describe it.

[00:54:53] Like, you know, when you're trying to describe a nightmare to somebody and you're like, it's like she like puked blood onto me, but it didn't look like blood. It looked like chocolate pudding. Like everything has that odd otherworldly quality where you're just like this. This doesn't look right.

[00:55:09] Like the texture of this isn't correct. Yeah, I kind of I sort of maybe I'm like wrong, but I assumed when the when the CGI didn't look amazing, it was like supposed to look kind of weird. It didn't bother me.

[00:55:25] I liked the combination of like practical and CGI with like the full full awook eyeball. But I was like, I loved every single part of it. I right. I'm pro any of that just because it seems within the tone of the film.

[00:55:42] There's a world where this movie is trying to be more serious. And then that that's where your brain breaks because you're like, well, wait a second. This is obviously fake or whatever. And instead with this, especially because anytime something like that happens, then it goes away really quickly.

[00:55:58] And everyone's just supposed to be like, huh? Like, right. Like he wants the audience to then do the sort of the Yelp, the scream, the laugh, and then the sort of excited chatter. Right.

[00:56:10] Like that, that little that little the eyeball in the cake, like appearing and reappearing and disappearing eyeballs. Yeah. I mean, it was it is the kind of genius thing of him making a PG-13 horror movie where it's like fairly light on blood and gore, you know, in quotes.

[00:56:29] But like has snot and worms and eyeballs and like all kinds of stuff where you're like gooey movie. Right. Where you're like, well, I guess this isn't violent in the way I would associate with a horror movie.

[00:56:44] Like, you know, like it feels like he's pulling a little trick like on the MPAA in that way. There's not a lot of blood, but there is a lot of gross bile. But there is a scene where she throws up embalming fluid, question mark, all over her.

[00:57:00] Yeah, that's it, right? That's how I took it. That was supposed to be. Oh, that is brutal.

[00:57:07] That scene is really funny because it almost plays like someone, you know, like knocking over a bunch of glasses at a party or something that are filled with champagne where she like the fluid keeps coming out and she's like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[00:57:21] You know, like it's almost just like comedy of manners. It's Peter Parker trying to get the brooms back in the closet. It's just like this thing he loves of just letting everything go on for a little bit too long.

[00:57:33] Like there is so much fucking of the rhythms of like when something crazy happens in this movie and then it ends so abruptly versus the time where it's like, how can this still be happening 15 seconds later?

[00:57:43] It is interesting because I mean, I think this movie was seen as something of an underperformer at the box office. And I was reading like articles from the time where they were like, why didn't this thing do at least as well as like The Boogeyman?

[00:57:58] Like that was the, you know, they were saying like Sam Raimi's been releasing these movies in January and February that are mediocre. And this one's so much better. Why isn't it outgrossing those?

[00:58:07] And they were talking about how it sort of played against this movie that it was PG-13 because it was clearly esoteric enough that it wasn't going to be sold to like teenagers as here's your normal scary movie. Like it looked weirder than that.

[00:58:22] But to appeal to the more hardcore horror audience, they wanted to see like super extreme viscera blood and guts, which him doing a PG-13 movie to some people read as like, oh, is this a compromise?

[00:58:34] So I watched, which I hadn't watched before, the unrated cut of this movie that's on the disc. It is truly a difference of 10 seconds. Right. It's six seconds of difference between the two. What's the difference?

[00:58:47] The only scene that is different, like wholesale and it's really a scene fragment is her killing the cat is done differently. It's like a close up with her stabbing off camera, but the blood spatters onto her face. Oh, I saw that cut then too.

[00:59:03] Yeah. And then outside of that, that's a good moment. But it's like outside of that, it's literally like an extra frame here, an extra shot there. When she does the CGI puke of the eyeballs and the goo, it's more red. Whereas in the theatrical, it's more brown.

[00:59:21] Like it's like tiny, tiny differences like that. OK. I didn't I didn't bother. I mean, I'm not like a huge horror. Like I enjoy horror movies. I don't know the like when it gets too granular, I get lost.

[00:59:36] But like I didn't mind this as a PG-13 movie at all. No. Yeah. No. And I think watching the cut, the unrated cut makes it clear that it was like always designed as a PG-13 movie.

[00:59:48] It's not like he had to make any serious compromises and water down his vision. And he gets a lot in there. Like we watched the Evil Dead remake for Patreon, which the whole marketing campaign on that movie was like,

[01:00:00] You're not gonna fucking believe how bloody this fucking thing is. It's right in the heart. Like all the posters and taglines are like, It's fucking bloody. And I feel like this movie is more upsetting on a sort of like goo and viscera level than that film is,

[01:00:16] despite just using different colors and like non-blood substances and sound effects. This movie gets such good fucking use. The sound design. The fucking like Jell-O budget the Foley artist must have been given on this film.

[01:00:30] There's a moment where Mrs. Ganish like just squeezes the handkerchief that she has like snotted into. And it's like so squishy. It was like the grossest part of the movie for me. I'm also, yeah, I'm more gross. I don't want worms on my face.

[01:00:48] I'm not afraid of Evil Dead happening to me. That's not gonna happen to me. I'm not. Right. That's not gonna happen. I don't know. Worms on my face. You've seen Evil Dead so much at that point, especially by 2009. It's like, we know what that is.

[01:01:01] You've seen it happen. Yeah. But face worms, that's new. Right. There's stuff in this movie that's genuinely new. Like, I mean, we talk about the anvil, but leading up to that, the fist in the mouth,

[01:01:11] the amount of weird like shoving something into someone's mouth or something getting projected out of someone's mouth in this movie just feels like kind of new territory to play with in a lot of ways. I have not seen a person's eyeball get stapled shut.

[01:01:29] I have not seen a ruler be used to stab someone in the back of the throat. How does she not die by the end of that scene? But instead, she has the strength to pick up a cinder block and throw it through the window of a car.

[01:01:43] She's fueled by rage. She's fueled by rage. True. I lost everything to Madoff! And then she's just throwing the cinder block. That blows my mind, too.

[01:01:57] I don't know much about the if at all how much like revising of the script took place, but like how perfectly timed it was for a movie about a lone advisor going to hell.

[01:02:10] Like, I can't imagine a better time for that to happen except maybe like later this year or something. Right. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Except in three to four months. Because the film must have, when did this shoot? 2008. Right.

[01:02:28] But like probably pre, you know, Lehman Brothers or whatever, you know, like and so it is funny how it just I remember when it came out, people were like, oh, this is like. So timely. Quietly, accidentally, whatever, timely. It just kind of like perfectly met the moment. Yeah.

[01:02:47] I mean, so, you know, watching all of these and sort of trying to find the through lines as we cannot help but do. You realize how many of Sam Raimi's movies are like morality tales in one way or another.

[01:03:01] There's something very square about him in that sense where I think he's really fascinated by these sort of very pure, like someone is faced with a decision and they make one decision and the rest of their life spirals out from that one decision.

[01:03:15] And most Sam Raimi movies, it is a decision that curses them for the rest of their lives. Right.

[01:03:20] Like in the supernatural, Evil Dead, Dragging to Hell, where even in the simple plan way where it's like you find the bag of money and you take it rather than leaving it there. That fucks you up for the rest of your life. You never get over that.

[01:03:31] And Spider-Man is this weird outlier in his career where it's like those are the three movies where the guy has the moment and he makes the right choice. And then the rest of the film is defined by him being like such a moral good, you know, Boy Scout.

[01:03:46] But I think he's always sort of fascinated by like that sort of human temptation, you know, and these small decisions we can make in like a moment.

[01:03:57] And there is something I think just about how granular like, you know, you can put on her the sort of she's someone who's clearly very concerned with seeming like a nice person. I wouldn't throw Hollywood phony shit at her. Right.

[01:04:13] But like even in the scene where she talks about like, I'm a vegetarian, I foster cats. Like she's bragging about the things she does that shows that she clearly is a good person. Right.

[01:04:25] And has this whole complex about being seen as a higher class person and not being seen as the daughter of a drunk, as a farm girl, as all these things, you know, wanting to move up in social strata and all that sort of stuff.

[01:04:40] But it does boil down to this thing of like David Pamer is this incredibly banal evil. Right. This guy who just he's not putting too much mustard on it, very matter of factly says like, look, when she when people lose their house, we make bank off of that.

[01:04:56] Right. Like that's huge. And that's why we're here. That's why we're here. That's what we're here to do. Look, I respect you. You're good at what you do. You're a very nice lady. But like you need to be a little more cutthroat in this business.

[01:05:09] And I leave this decision up to you. Like, I love that it is a test that she could. It's not that he says to her, you have to go fucking kick this woman out. Right. That he kind of sits back in his chair and goes, I don't know.

[01:05:23] What do you want to do? This is your decision. And she looks at that fucking empty corner office and she just makes this decision of like, what if I try being an asshole for 10 minutes?

[01:05:33] What if I just try being an asshole on for size and it fucking ruins the rest of her life? Right. The three days she has remaining to live. Right. Until she gets dragged to hell. Yeah.

[01:05:45] I OK, so this is what really this is part of why I was like this. I don't know what this movie is trying to do or say exactly. Because on one hand, you have this character who makes this like capitalist, like corporate complacency choice.

[01:06:02] And from that moment on, I'm not on her side. I am not rooting for her. I'm like, I'm on Mrs. Ganish's side. Like, fuck, Christine. She sucks. But then the movie frames her as like any horror movie protagonist generally does as like the character that we're rooting for.

[01:06:20] Like, oh, no, she's being haunted. She's being tormented by demons. I hope she figures this out and it all stops.

[01:06:29] But then the movie does end in such a way where you're like, yeah, she got dragged to hell and deservedly so because she admits like I just made this choice out of corporate greed and so that I could get a promotion.

[01:06:40] But like I spent the whole movie being like, well, I'm not rooting for her, so I don't care what happens to her.

[01:06:47] I will say I think it's sort of like it's got the kind of film noir thing where it's like she makes a mistake where you're like, I don't think she should have done that. But you're also like, yeah, but people make mistakes.

[01:06:57] And then you're watching the whole movie of her being like, come on, come on. Can I can I fix this? Like, you know, like, hey, come on, come on. And then at the end it's like, no, crime pays. You're going to hell. That's it. I fixed it.

[01:07:08] I killed a cat. It's pretty harsh. There the moments that like, I don't know, there were like little moments with her where I'm like, ah, there's probably more of me in a moment like that than I would care to admit.

[01:07:23] Like when she shows up at Mrs. Ganish's house, not knowing that her funeral is actively taking place and is like, you know, there to apologize, but also gets defensive when she's like she just can't really handle being directly called out for anything, which I think is like a pretty human response to that sort of thing.

[01:07:47] But when Mrs. Ganish's granddaughter is like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like just doesn't buy her story at all. She like, you know, turns to pudding. Randomly fat shames Christine in a weird way.

[01:08:02] That was that was one thing I was like, Sam, like really the Raimi brothers are going to school us on this. All right. Well, there's right.

[01:08:11] There's a lot of readings on this movie that I doubt Sam Raimi intended that people are like, this seems like a movie about a girl with a massive eating disorder because so much of her like she discomfort is around eating.

[01:08:24] She refused and so much of the horror is around like stuff going in her mouth or coming out of her mouth and stuff like that. The cake scene. Yeah. Yeah. Like that. Like she seems to be almost like seized with like anxiety around.

[01:08:41] And it's like you see it with obviously her, her, her, you know, the photo, the swine queen photo, stuff like that. Right. Like all that. Like so God knows again.

[01:08:51] It's like I feel like if you sit Sam Raimi down, he'd be like, no, I was just trying to make a stupid movie. Like it's not like he's ever had any kind of highfalutin taken anything he's ever done.

[01:09:02] Like every interview with that guy, he's like, I was just trying to make a movie about a guy who's trying to do a thing. Like, you know, he's very simple about everything. But, you know, I have read takes like that.

[01:09:13] There is that school of filmmaker who avoids any accepting or sort of taking on any reading of their movies as correct. Right. And just goes like, I don't know. I just made a movie like whatever it is, which I sometimes find a little annoying.

[01:09:30] But I also think as a counterpoint, any time a filmmaker comes out with some sort of heady take on what they were trying to say in their movie, it immediately goes viral on Twitter is like, get a load of this fucking clown.

[01:09:42] Why won't they shut the fuck up? Don't tell me what your movie is. Let me judge that. Right. So it's hard to tell with Raimi because I do think first and foremost, he is like an entertainer.

[01:09:52] I think when we were watching for Love of the Game and The Gift, David, and it's sort of like, why is he making this? Why is his personality getting lost in this?

[01:10:01] It's because I don't think there's like he loves to put on a show and he loves to get an emotional reaction out of his audience.

[01:10:08] Right. I think his two favorite things are to like put his lead character in a vice grip and then by proxy put the audience in a vice grip.

[01:10:18] Like he loves having these characters he can torture and test in some way and making that feel very visceral and very emotional and very heightened so that he's really playing the audience like a like an orchestra or whatever.

[01:10:31] And I think what's interesting about him is excluding Spider-Man, who is this like almost biblical like Jesus like figure of like moral balance. Right. After he makes his like mistake.

[01:10:45] I think he like to what you're talking about, Caitlin, of like, am I supposed to like this person or not? I think that's so much the game he's trying to play with this movie of like, how do I get the audience to react to this?

[01:10:57] How do I constantly shift from scene to scene whether you like this person or this person is villainous?

[01:11:03] Like Jamie's saying, these scenes where like she comes in and here's Allison Lohman and she's so delicate and soft spoken and like looks like a baby, you know, and is sort of framed as the kind of person who in a movie like this is just, oh, how dare the universe burden them with these awful things.

[01:11:22] And then she has these moments where the facade breaks and she becomes a little bit unseemly. She lashes out.

[01:11:27] She shows something petty in her personality and it sort of like tests in a way that I think if it was someone like Elliot Page, who is more conventionally charismatic, right?

[01:11:38] You could sort of like in a Bruce Campbell way get into like, oh, it's like fun watching them go bad. When Allison Lohman like lashes out at someone, you're like this. This is weird. She doesn't really like she doesn't relish it at all.

[01:11:51] She's like resisting it the entire time. She's like, no, I'm good. I swear. Right. And then she protests that the more you're like, I'm questioning it.

[01:11:59] I really the degree to which you remain so convinced that you are good and like the cat scene is such a clear testing of that, you know? And then she gets so upset when she's like, I killed the fucking cat for you. Like I did your stupid thing.

[01:12:15] And what she says, like, keep your cat, you stupid pork queen or something like that. Which is a great line, great read of a piece of cinema. Yeah, read that line into more movies.

[01:12:26] It is. I mean, that does that does kind of support the whole like lone officer thing, too, of just like she has to believe she's a good person to continue showing up, making judgments. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.

[01:12:40] The exact wording was I don't want your cat, you dirty pork queen.

[01:12:45] Now, to that end. And I don't like I think this movie is messy in a lot of ways and you can question a lot of the readings or how things come off and all of that sort of way.

[01:12:54] If I could play Devil's Advocate for half a second, I do think some of like especially when you look at the first scene of her coming into the bank asking for the loan. Right. And as we said, it's like the fucking squishing sound of the handkerchief.

[01:13:10] Right. And that like she's like coughing up green goo even before anything supernatural has happened in the movie. Like it's so overcranked and Romani people are obviously like so demonized across all of Western fiction, like just like forever.

[01:13:25] It's been like, well, it's so easy to just make them these creepy, terrifying people in their wagons. Right. I do think this movie is trying to get at something of her self-assuredness that she's a good person versus her judgment of everyone around her at all times.

[01:13:41] That the way she is. I'm forget what is the Lorna Raver character's name? Miss Ganesh.

[01:13:48] The way she is. It's spelled. Excuse me, Mrs. Ganesh. I think the way Mrs. Ganesh is like depicted to the audience is sort of trying to reflect the way she sees her as like, oh, this is like an uncomfortable, gross old woman.

[01:14:03] Which even I just think there's a through line to like the scene where she goes to Justin Long's parents house and when she has her like freak out, the thing she does is takes a glass and throws it at the door to the kitchen where all of their like domestic workers are. You know?

[01:14:19] Yeah. Shout out to Hecubit the cat who's at that house by the way. I just think there's this like through line, this quiet through line to the movie of her being like, I'm a good person and constantly trying to maintain her very safe white waspy space.

[01:14:38] Right. She'll be a good person to a point.

[01:14:42] I think that would have worked more effectively if we saw like her perception of things and like how she perceives Mrs. Ganesh versus like how Mrs. Ganesh actually is. But because we only see one version of Mrs. Ganesh, which is like, yeah, she's got scary fingernails.

[01:15:01] She's got a weird eye. Yeah. Like all these things that like demon, like the whole like old women are disgusting and scary trope is like so, which is like a very overdone thing in horror movies in general. But like this is like fully leaned into.

[01:15:20] But that would have worked better for me if again, like we see Christine's perception of like, oh, like, yes, I came from this. Like I grew up on a farm and I used to be the pork queen and I have to, you know, I am leaving that past behind me and trying to, you know, quote unquote assimilate into like whatever bank culture and like LA culture and stuff like that.

[01:15:46] Bank culture, man. An aspiring bank.

[01:15:50] And that she sees like people who are beneath her. She like perceives them as like gross. But then if we see like Mrs. Ganesh is as like a different version of her, that would have all worked way better than me. But instead, this movie just leans into the yeah, I'm Sam Raimi and I agree that old women are scary.

[01:16:11] Yeah, it's kind of presented as fact. Yes, yes. The whole movie is like shot in Raimi vision. So you have to just like everything is from that perception. Yeah. Right. Everything is 11.

[01:16:25] I was feeling the same way, Caitlin, of just like I feel like it could have been it could have been and this would not have resolved the portrayal of Romani people in this movie or, you know, in obviously like that. Not one movie is going to solve any like everything.

[01:16:42] But just even like a small I was like at the funeral, if we could have just seen that she was like beloved by her community or if there had been like a moment of that. There's hints of it.

[01:16:54] Right. That there's people there having a good time and it seems like a sort of raucous wake. But that's about all. Right.

[01:17:02] Yeah. But if there was just some sort of indication or like more more. Because I think that, you know, you could argue there's seed planting that the way that Alison Lohman sees the people around her is really heavily skewed in one direction or another.

[01:17:20] But but I just yeah, I feel like it wouldn't have taken away from anything to just give a little more and it would have helped. I don't know.

[01:17:29] Also, OK, I'm just I'm thinking about this in real time, but because I had never seen the movie and I didn't know what direction the story was going to go in when in the first few minutes when you see the interactions between Christine and her boss and her co-worker Stu and it's between the two of them for this promotion and you see her boss and Stu be like pretty sexist toward her where they're like, yeah, we don't know about you.

[01:17:56] They literally say get us sandwiches. Yeah, get us sandwiches. And yeah, we're probably going to overlook you for the promotion in favor of this new guy who like is way more assertive than you. And I was like, right. Who knows how to play the game.

[01:18:09] Right. I was like, this is going to be a story about how like she's going to drag these dudes to hell, like these people who and I thought that was just going to keep escalating.

[01:18:18] But then all of a sudden it's about she's like, no, I still want to impress my horrible boss and I'm going to like shame this woman in public.

[01:18:31] And then I was like, well, I was so like I got so much whiplash because of the story, like the direction the story went in. Like I was like, huh?

[01:18:40] But what we've talked about, like the Evil Dead franchise is such an outlier in terms of letting the guy be the survivor, which is a thing that almost never happens in horror movies. Right.

[01:18:53] There's a reason why it's the trope is called the final girl. And it's like, here's the dumb doofusy boyfriend who is usually the first one to get killed off.

[01:19:01] And instead it's three movies of this guy being like he is cursed to live through the cycle over and over again. And as it goes on, he just becomes kind of dumber and more arrogant and is punished more and more and more.

[01:19:17] And this movie, I think, yeah, it's like setting up the type of character we're far more used to seeing at the center of a horror movie like this and then constantly playing with the allegiances and the perception of her.

[01:19:29] I think, you know, it's like in the sense that everything's made up and he's not pulling anything from any real like mythical culture or lore or whatever. It probably would have helped to not make Mrs. Ganesh explicitly a Romani person.

[01:19:44] It probably would have helped if he made up a fucking fictional country and a language and used an iconography that was not already tied to a group of people that have been demonized for centuries.

[01:19:54] But yeah, because she's speaking I believe she's speaking Hungarian. That was what I read. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. But I think there's something to that, like to this woman. The fact that Mrs. Ganesh is so disgusting right before anything supernatural happens.

[01:20:11] There's already stuff leaking out of her and she's putting things in her mouth and her nails. She looks like she doesn't belong in a bank. Right. This is a bank. Right. Only regular people are allowed in here. Only banks belong in banks. Right.

[01:20:25] As you can see, I am a bank. Hashtag bank culture. There is this thing of her being like, well, if I'm going to reject someone, it's not that bad if they're this gross.

[01:20:37] You know, like it's almost like she's justifying it to herself where she's like, I can reject. I know she's an innocent old woman who's going to be put out, but look at how disgusting she is. She's like spewing gack all over my desk.

[01:20:50] She has a thing with like, I mean, I guess in the context of like who am I going to pawn the button off on? Like she seriously considers giving it to an old. Like I was like, she has like an issue with old people.

[01:21:03] That's my favorite scene in the movie. She's like, let me kill this old man.

[01:21:06] Her bringing Stu in, Stu immediately getting so pathetic and her getting angry at Stu where it was like, I was going to fucking curse you and now you've made me feel bad for you, you asshole.

[01:21:17] Like she's like resentful of the fact that Stu has humanized himself to her. And then that long walk over to the guy on the oxygen tank at the corner of this Denny's or whatever where she's talking herself into it. And I love that there's like no dialogue.

[01:21:31] There's no interior monologue, but you can tell what she's thinking is look at this guy. This guy's life sucks so much. Who cares if I kill him? He's already suffering so much. And then his wife comes over with a cake and he goes like, what a lovely surprise.

[01:21:45] Thank you so much. And once again, she's like, oh, you made me fucking care about this person. Yeah. Like she's angry when she can't write people off. And Mrs. Ganesh was easy for her to write off because Mrs. Ganesh grossed her out.

[01:22:01] But also because her job demands that she write people off. Right. Like she has to have that ability to compartmentalize whatever her empathy to be like, well, this person just won't be able to pay their mortgage.

[01:22:17] So I'm just going to have to act in the interest of blah, blah, blah. You know, like, you know, like you have to have that element of your brain, I guess, which seems to be what Sam Raimi is sort of disgusted by.

[01:22:29] And, you know, in the diner, she does have a mean streak. Like, you know, when she's mean about tipping. She's mean about tipping. Yeah.

[01:22:38] And that is also like tied into her what I thought was like the bizarro clunky body metaphor of like when she gets mean, she eats ice cream and you're like, she has two sundaes. Yeah. It is bizarre how threaded it is throughout the entire movie.

[01:22:59] I'm laughing at the scene where, okay, so she learns that she has to pay $10,000 to do some like seance or exorcism or whatever.

[01:23:08] And she pawns off all of her items and it's only like $3,800, even though she lives in a huge house in Silver Lake and it's like wah, wah, wah. But she's crying and eating like Turkey Hill ice cream because she like can't afford the 10%. Out of the tub.

[01:23:27] Out of the tub. And I'm just like, yep, women be crying and eating ice cream. Women be crying and eating ice cream. I think the tipping moment. Sometimes.

[01:23:35] It's not only is she being an asshole about tipping, but she also like fucking like swings the envelope with a button in her face. She's like, I'll tip you this fucking button. Like she's immediately feeling so power hungry. That's what I'm saying. She jabs at her.

[01:23:50] But like power hungry. She's like, I have the power to fuck someone over who's rude to me now. I got this button. I'm holding a hot hand.

[01:23:58] I do think like what you're saying, David, about like part of this culture and David Pamer very like passively saying like you got to be more of a killer. You know, you got to be like tough in this business and whatever.

[01:24:11] I think part of the soup of this movie is that if the old lady who was there at that desk, who David Pamer told her to be tougher with, was Rosemary Harris as Aunt May, she wouldn't be able to do it. Right? As much as she's.

[01:24:29] There's groundwork for a brutal Sam Raimi bank loan rejection scene. Oh yeah. Joel McHale is like. She doesn't even get the toaster. That's that's that's the mean button. He's a classic snarky asshole bank guy, right? Like he's he's fucking enjoying being like, sorry, you're too poor.

[01:24:52] He's like Stu basically. Right. He's Stu. Yeah. And in this movie it's like I think she feels the latitude to be mean because it's just like, well, this woman isn't even human. You know? I think that's part of her being so monstrous.

[01:25:07] Now, when you tie that into the Romani shit, it's like, well, I think he's playing off the fact that's this demonizing that's happened for a long time. But it also unfortunately you cannot not play into it further by linking it again.

[01:25:20] I also think that Sam Raimi was just like, well, I need horror imagery in my horror movie. Where can I derive that from? And he's like, well, I have this old woman. Right. Exactly. So it's unfortunate that it had to be that.

[01:25:39] I mean, he's always been such a tropey filmmaker. And I think that's he's leaning into every trope. Right. Although I was going to say, I do think Daliberow playing the what is he sort of like a spiritualist? The mystic. Yeah. Right. I like his whole look.

[01:25:56] He's got like a blazer. He's got a very confident sort of energy in this movie, like kind of quiet, almost academic. I don't know how to describe it. That's kind of his vibe. That's kind of the part he played.

[01:26:11] I think of his incredible year and a half run, this is the least. That's what he's doing. Yeah. That's what he's really good at. I mean, I don't know. I don't go into a movie expecting it to be like a Daliberow picture.

[01:26:26] You never expect it because James Cameron kidnapped him and no one's seen him for 15 years. But I did like that in that scene you go into it, you know, where it's clearly framed of like, he's a fucking fraud. Like he's a scammer. The album cover. He knows everything.

[01:26:46] The album cover is great. That's what I love is that Justin Long's making these snarky fucking jokes. You see the album cover and you go like, OK, so this guy is some fucking like Hollywood sort of wheeler dealer con artist who's trying to start his music career.

[01:27:00] And then the second Daliberow walks out of the room, you're like, no, this is just a guy with like a lot of integrity. He's just like a very intelligent, soft spoken man who clearly is not trying to run any scam on anybody.

[01:27:13] And Justin Long is like, she's like he was wrong. Justin Long's like, he's a fucking con artist. He took your money. She's like, he didn't want to take my money. And Justin Long's like, but he did ultimately. Right.

[01:27:24] Like there's this constant judgment of like, this guy can't be for fucking real. This character I saw was written to be much older and they cast Daliberow. More of a classic wise old guy. Right.

[01:27:35] And Rob Tapper was like, do you think it works if the guy's this young? And he was like, he's got wisdom. Like Daliberow naturally projects a certain wisdom on screen that transcends age. And I think that's going to work for this.

[01:27:47] And I also think it works that he is kind of a contemporary of hers. That you have to heighten it by bringing her to Adriana Barraza and that feels like you're a whole different realm with these sort of like wizened aged masters of the dark arts and whatever.

[01:28:01] But that Daliberow is just some guy who's like, look, just trust me, you're fucked. Yeah. Although I did one of my favorite lines in the whole scene is like probably whatever when she goes back to him and she's like, what do I do? I killed the cat.

[01:28:18] Like, what the fuck? And he just very simply is like, I need you to give me $10,000 tomorrow. And I was like, OK, cool. Very clear stakes. Great. And then like next scene.

[01:28:29] Do you guys buy that you can just dig up someone's grave, put something in their corpse's hand and be like, here is a gift. Like I'm gifting this to you. I did not buy a single shred of any world building that happened in this movie.

[01:28:48] All the world building was so weird. It would be like it was inconsistent. It didn't work. So we can't exactly say the movie thinks it's true. But the movie seems to think it's true. Yeah. If you say something is a gift, I guess.

[01:29:01] Yeah, I guess they didn't specify and you have to really mean it. It has to be a real gift. It's not like the kiss of true love. It's just a kiss. It didn't work. She put the wrong envelope in her mouth.

[01:29:13] She put the coin and not the button. And if that was supposed to be a big twist that we didn't see coming. Oof. Really? Oh, I did not see that coming. I was like, what? I was like that coin in the envelope was planted.

[01:29:30] It's there in my memory. I know all about it. And it's going to be that envelope. She's going to mix them up. And that twist did not work for me at all. Skellington Ganouche takes some more hair. Like there are a couple things that goes.

[01:29:44] Yeah, she does get a few more bites. That's the last hair you're getting out of me. But no, but I like because I feel like movies will back themselves. Movies like this will back themselves into a corner where you're like there's clearly no way to stop this.

[01:30:00] What fucking bullshit deus ex machina are you going to come up with to like explain why she saved herself and averted evil or whatever? And the movie is like sort of making you think like, okay.

[01:30:13] I guess if she fucking digs up a grave and goes, I am giving this to you and she frames it. Happy birth that, you know, whatever. If she makes puts on the whole show of it being a gift, will that work?

[01:30:25] And then the movie goes to its artificial like everything's good. Fucking nailed it. Everything's awesome thing. And when she gets dragged to hell, I just immediately feel like, yeah, of course that didn't fucking work. Even beyond just giving her the wrong envelope. It's like what a dumb plan.

[01:30:40] And I do like the deal of brow pretty much from the first scene. He meets her is like, you're done. Yeah, right. He's like, I'm sorry. I don't see a way out of this. Right.

[01:30:50] Every time she goes to him, he's like, I have a thing I could try, but I want you to know. I think you're not running away from this. Yeah. And I feel like that ties right into her thinking that she's a good person.

[01:31:07] Then there's going to be a way out of like, oh, well, no, I'll be able to redeem myself because I'll just apologize to her granddaughter or like I'll do this or I'll do this.

[01:31:15] And it's like, nope, Sam Raimi doesn't think Sam Raimi doesn't think you can get a jacket. I don't know why. Why did she get a jacket at the end? What is so that so that Justin Long could be like, why did you get a new jacket?

[01:31:26] I found your button for your old jacket. And she's like, no, I stuffed the wrong envelope into the mouth of the lady. Serves her right for dating such a drip. Yeah, right. But that's her hubris.

[01:31:44] Like you're saying, she's like, surely this can all be explained away with an apology or a meeting or something like, right? Like, come on. Like, that's how that's how polite society works. Right. So, yeah, it's it's is there any other stuff?

[01:32:04] I really I really like the scene with Chelsea Ross. I really like the eye cake. The, you know, yeah, Pasadena rich family scene like that. That that's that's all perfect. Like queasy, like the double layer of horror.

[01:32:19] Right. Like the actual grossness of what's happening to her and also her trying to be like, I'm trying to, you know, present well for this rich family. Like they're just I love that. I mean, unless Chelsea Ross shows up in Doctor Strange, fingers crossed.

[01:32:34] I think this is now our final Chelsea Ross of this miniseries where we shot out a couple of times. But just a thing I was thinking about with him is for a guy who is so distinctive looking, right? He he looks like a happy otter.

[01:32:49] You know, he's got a very specific energy. It is kind of incredible how much range there is and how you can use him like to put him in this movie as like this waspy blue blooded asshole.

[01:33:04] And then there's like a Sam Raimi movie where he's like a rural kind of doofus sheriff, you know, like I think he is astonishingly flexible in terms of like he works equally well at being a figure of warmth and integrity in a movie.

[01:33:20] Being a sort of like bureaucratic asshole, being genuinely scary, being a goofball, being high status, being low status. Like I just always like this guy. Hard agree. Remember him in Buster Scruggs? He's a perfect example. Yeah, great imposter Scruggs. He's the fucking prospect. The trapper.

[01:33:41] Yeah, the guy with the big beard. Yeah. In the stage coach to hell. Yeah, final one. Yeah. Drag drag. That's that stage coach got dragged to hell. Got dragged to hell. No, that whole scene is so good.

[01:33:54] And I do think it's like this layering of the like she's getting these projections of these things that are causing her to freak out. But also even minus the supernatural Mrs. Gnush haunting, this is like her nightmare.

[01:34:08] Like she's already overheard the phone conversation where her mom is still trying to set Justin Long up with other people. She's aware of how they perceive her. They think she's a bank teller. She's trying so hard to impress them.

[01:34:19] The weirdness of the her confessing her mother being an alcoholic and then. And then that fixes everything for a second. I liked that scene a lot.

[01:34:33] I like and the moment where I don't know, I was like, oh, I don't know if I've ever seen this in a movie before.

[01:34:39] But it makes me feel like sometimes when I'm like on a zoom call at work where you're just like in another place having like a visceral nightmare. And then someone is like, right, Jamie? And you have to say yes or no. And then you say the wrong answer.

[01:34:56] And then the person's like, what the fuck are you talking about? We did meet at a bar. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, oh, God, that. Well, that's Jamie. That's when you should close your eyes so your avatar disappears on zoom. That's that's the move.

[01:35:10] I also think we did for us earlier. Yeah, we've talked. We've talked about it already at this point.

[01:35:16] But because you weren't on that episode, I need to I need to call out there are the two moments in Spider-Man 2 where he kind of does that with Mary Jane doing the play and looking at either.

[01:35:27] Peter not being in the seat or being in the seat where you can't figure out if she's forgetting her line. Right. Or she's thinking about something else. It's so good.

[01:35:37] Yeah, there should be a word for what that interaction is because it happens to me at least once a day in any like writer's room where I'm just like I just am in another place for a second.

[01:35:48] And then all of a sudden it's I am delivering a wrong answer that I'm guessing. I think you should just do what I do. And I say, I'm so sorry. I was not paying attention to you at all. Can you please repeat what you said?

[01:36:02] You have to emphasize at all. At all. A little bit and then continue because I don't think you're boring. Because I think you're boring. Yeah. My deepest apologies, but I fundamentally do not give a shit. It works every time. I have so many friends.

[01:36:20] By the way, we talked about it briefly. But the other sign of her villainy is just that she's like make a sacrifice. She kills a cat pretty much right away.

[01:36:29] She goes, which I do appreciate Sam Raimi breaking the holy rule of screenwriting or whatever where he's like, she's not going to save a cat. She's going to kill a cat basically on screen, basically at the drop of a hat.

[01:36:42] And then all cats know because the next cat she encounters is mad at her. I like the movie where every cat can tell. That's maybe my super favorite Alison Lohman performance moment in the entire film is when she's like, weird, I usually love Get Along Great with Cats.

[01:36:59] I had a cat. And it just hangs there and Justin Long's like, have a cat unless something happened to her. And he says it like a joke. And she just stares at him for like five seconds and then says, well, I don't know.

[01:37:14] You can't keep track of things. Who knows what's happened while we're gone? Cats, they come and go. It was good. Weirdly defensive. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:37:23] And I just like the way, as you said, Jamie, like admitting that her mother is an alcoholic, a thing that terrifies Justin Long that he thinks his parents are going to judge her for immediately fixes the situation for five seconds.

[01:37:34] And then when she freaks out and he runs after her, the first thing his mom says is like, she's crazy. There's nothing to fix there. And it feels like obviously she's had this blow up.

[01:37:46] But immediately the fact that she admits that alcoholism runs in her family is being weaponized against her. Like the second she does something uncouth, it's like, well, but she's a crazy person.

[01:37:58] Which is like another way that Alison Lohman, I mean, even in the space of this conversation, I've ping ponged back and forth so much and like how I feel about her.

[01:38:07] But you do get that like that element of like she's like the inbred, like she is going into this Pasadena situation being like I'm poor, like I'm not being taken seriously because of my class.

[01:38:21] But then she's doing the same shit to Mrs. Gnusch by being like, oh, poor, let me just, you know, like deny. But she doesn't seem to understand that at all.

[01:38:30] Like, you know, it's like being from a lower class is only sympathetic when it's her that is coming from a lower class. With everyone else, it's gross and her behavior is justified. Like, I like that. Right. You want to vault out of it and pretend you were never.

[01:38:45] Yeah. You don't want to act like you're one of them. There's a lot of like Starley in our gift episode was talking about how there's that aspect of Rami liking to torture people.

[01:39:01] Right. That like so much of his filmmaking was based around the idea of fucking with his best friend on camera.

[01:39:07] Right. And what are funny things I can get this big gloof Bruce to do on camera who was always just like ready and willing and able and all of that. And then he loves sort of like fucking with his audience in a similar kind of way.

[01:39:23] And re-watching Spider-Man 2 in particular, I'd forgotten how much that movie is just like the entire universe fucking with Peter Parker. Just nonstop. Like anytime that character bends down to tie his shoes, a backpack hits him, you know?

[01:39:36] Like he just he loves putting a character at the center of the movie who we can sort of just throw shit at and make look stupid and whatever. But I think very often they're sort of like they're naive, you know?

[01:39:48] They're sort of too innocent or they're hubris or whatever it is. And I think this movie is playing such an interesting game with constantly trying to get you to question the morality of this woman. How bad what she did is. What is the appropriate punishment for this?

[01:40:04] The scenes that totally push you away from her where you're like, I hate this person. The scenes like you're talking about, Jamie, for a moment you're like, fuck, I really relate to what she's doing here, you know? And just constantly playing that game of identifying.

[01:40:16] There's been so much like I feel tweeting I've seen recently about Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi. I think largely because everyone's just fucking amped that there's a new Sam Raimi movie and we're all hoping it's good.

[01:40:28] But there's this one tweet I saw that I just think is like perfect that I just want to read. The user is Danny Vegito. And it's like written like a script. He's Bruce Campbell, wistfully. Sam is my oldest friend. I can't imagine my life without him.

[01:40:45] Sam Raimi. Once a month I feed Bruce some poison mushrooms and nurse him back to health. As soon as he recovers, we go for a walk in the woods and I kick him in the dick.

[01:40:56] And then the follow up tweets are Sam Raimi is Bugs Bunny and Bruce Campbell is his Daffy. Bruce Campbell bleeding out of his skull. I was thinking maybe I could do an adult drama or something, maybe with another director. Raimi, nice try. Do another flip, clown.

[01:41:11] Sam Raimi does always seem a little bashful in these interviews where he's like, I really dumped a lot of worms on Alice and I hope she's not mad at me. Like, you know, like he does have that sort of Midwestern embarrassment about it all.

[01:41:24] But yes, he is always like, look, I mean, I gave them the script. I mean, I hope they read it because yeah, a lot of not nice things are going to happen. Right. Well, he did eventually. Eventually. Before they made it. The day of shooting.

[01:41:42] The day of shooting. After the premiere, he let them read the script. No, I do. I think there's that like fundamental shift where it's like there was something just so perfect about the Raimi-Campbell dynamic where you sense that these guys were best friend.

[01:41:56] You sense that Bruce Campbell was like ready for anything, that he sort of was a glutton for punishment, where like you purely feel joy at watching this guy go through this shit. As awful as it is, it does feel like Bugs Bunny fucking with Daffy Duck. Right?

[01:42:11] Right. Yeah. And this is a movie that's like digging into the weirdness of the Raimi torturing the character, torturing the audience thing a little bit more and questioning like, what are you rooting for here? Do you want her to be saved? And if so, why?

[01:42:27] But also, are you paying money to try to see this woman get barfed on a lot? Is part of the premise, the promise of a horror movie that you want to see horrible things happen to this person?

[01:42:38] And if so, why? Like he's asking both things at the same time, which I think is really interesting. And I do think that Mrs. Ganesh is like a really like, I mean, especially because of like the specific year that this movie came out in,

[01:42:53] it's really easy to like be rooting for Mrs. Ganesh to just like kick the shit out of the Alison Lohman character because of who she is, like, or what she, not who she is, who she like, what she represents is like the banal evil in 2009.

[01:43:11] It's like, yeah, that's the, anyone who's like symbolic of bank loans, we want to see get dragged to hell in that specific year. So, yeah, I don't know. I just think it's wild that it came out when it did. It's insane.

[01:43:26] I do agree with you that I feel like the movie could benefit from like, especially in the sort of Mrs. Ganesh memorial scene, someone revealing some side of her that we haven't seen. Like you want to hear from her granddaughter or someone,

[01:43:40] some testimonial of like, someone saying to Alison Lohman's face, you think she's this gross old fucking puking, like creepy crawlers woman. Like she's like a human being like years, like she loaned me a dollar, you know? But instead everyone in that scene too.

[01:43:59] Right, right. Yes. No, everyone in that scene, it feels like the fucking hunchback of Notre Dame. Right, right. It's like the Disney hunchback of Notre Dame where they're having the party in the sewers. Another very considerate movie towards Romani people. Yes.

[01:44:12] Exactly. It's like, look at the people from this other culture. And let's double down on how we think it's weird. Right. It's all super vague. Yeah. I like the whiplash of her going in there thinking she's going to be able to apologize to this woman

[01:44:27] and walking into a party and then seeing a dead body. And I like it puking all over her, the embalming fluid. I do just think somewhere in between there you want someone and maybe it is the granddaughter at the door rather than just being like,

[01:44:40] fuck you, you former fatty. Right. You do want her to be like, she was like a human being. She's not some like, right. This is her house, right? She doesn't just exist in relation to you. You're coming here to try to make yourself feel better.

[01:44:58] Yeah, which she is. I mean, and to stop being dragged to hell. But she does get dragged to hell. She does get dragged to hell. She gets dragged to hell. It doesn't work. She follows onto the train tracks and then she's dragged into hell.

[01:45:10] And her face turns into a skeleton right before she goes down. And then the screen goes black and it says, drag me to hell. And that's the end of the movie. I loved that. Before we play, I love that too.

[01:45:21] Before we play the box office game, is there anything else we have not, you know, any other bit we haven't mentioned? To that point, what you just said, David, I read an interview with Rami where someone asked him like,

[01:45:32] have you ever thought about making a sequel to Drag Me to Hell? And he was like, I mean, it ends with her being dragged to hell. I don't really know what you. Would it just be called Hell? Like she's in hell. Drag me from hell.

[01:45:45] Hey, you're in hell. And you're like, am I nice to someone? Drag me around hell. Justin Long. It's a trilogy. Drag me to hell, drag me around hell and then drag me from hell. Yeah. Wow. Drag me across hell.

[01:46:01] Justin Long has to do 100 good deeds and then Alison Lohman can come out of retirement, stop talking about Bitcoin and emerge from hell. Where she was banished. The sequel to this movie is My Name is Earl, but with Justin Long trying to do little mitzvahs for people.

[01:46:18] My Name is Earl makes way more sense. I was thinking of that Nickelodeon show 100 Good Deeds for Eddie McDowd. Oh, sure. Where the dog wants to be a boy again. Right. Or a man? I forget. I think he was a boy.

[01:46:31] I think he was like a young man. It's another thing I like about this movie is I do like that they are like young adults. Like they are not teenagers. They're not college students. They're also not like 45. They are not 45. They're not 45. They're famously not 45 in this movie.

[01:46:50] They might be 45 now. I don't really know. Griffin, when did this film come out? Do you know? I can tell you. I think it came out June 2009. May 29th, 2009. Wow, Memorial Day weekend. End of May. Yep, Memorial Day weekend.

[01:47:07] I was trying to find anything to support this and I couldn't. So maybe it was created in my brain. But my memory was that this was a thing that they had on like a less desirable release date.

[01:47:17] And then they got so bullish of how it played at festivals and at test screenings that they pushed it up to like a primetime summer date. And there it kind of couldn't. But you're saying you don't know if that's true.

[01:47:28] No, I might be confusing it with like I know there were a lot of examples of this at that time where like Land of the Dead, the George Romero movie was supposed to come out in Halloween and they were like, fuck it, 4th of July.

[01:47:39] And then it performed like a George Romero movie on the 4th of July. Right. Because this film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival a mere week before its release. And they screened it unfinished at South by Southwest. Yes. Right. And it went over really well.

[01:47:55] It got good reviews. And then people were like, why is this making less money than most horror movies? Right. Well, it opened to $15 million. It made 42 domestic, 91 worldwide. So yeah, it did kind of right.

[01:48:07] You would think it could do a little better just as like I think the summer release hurts it in that regard. I think so too. It's tougher to compete. Yeah. Most of those Ghost House movies came out in like January, February or September.

[01:48:20] And we've been asking for so long, like, why didn't Ramy make more movies like this? I think he felt kind of defeated by the fact that where he's like, this didn't even do as well as The Messengers. That movie I produced that no one fucking thinks about.

[01:48:35] It did better than The Messengers. That's surprising to hear. I mean, maybe it was because I was like in high school when this movie came out. But I felt like everyone I knew had seen Drag Me to Hell. Except for me. We all saw it. Us youngsters. Right.

[01:48:51] Yeah. I guess no one else did. We got Alison Lohman dragged absolutely to hell. And we got what we wanted. Kids only care about one thing. That's the problem with our generation. We get everything we want. Participation trophy. Alison Lohman being dragged to hell.

[01:49:09] Everything else in here is a blockbuster, basically. Like everything else is a big movie. Number one at the box office is a film for children. But it's one of those movies that everybody saw. And it got a Best Picture nomination. It's the motion picture Up. It's Up.

[01:49:28] In its first weekend. Yeah. Up. Which is not my favorite Pixar movie. Me neither. And any time I say that, people go, why do you hate Up? And I'm like, I don't hate it. I just don't think it's as good as the other ones. I don't know.

[01:49:45] What do you guys think of Up? It's the one where I just really felt my buttons being pushed. And I was sort of like, I'm not even enjoying this. That's what I don't appreciate about. I felt my buttons being stolen and put a curse on. Exactly.

[01:49:56] Just, you know, exactly. I felt like a button was being put in my jaw. And then they kicked my jaw shut. And they said, happy birthday, bitch, or whatever she said. Made out with my chin. That's what it feels like when I see the first scene in Up.

[01:50:07] I don't like, because if a movie tells me to cry, I will cry. But then I'll also feel like deep resentment. Because I'm just easily manipulated. I like Monsters Incorporated. Yeah, Monsters Incorporated fucking rules. Me too. That one's good. Perfect movie.

[01:50:23] But I've literally not, I've also never rewatched Up. I've never had the desire or whatever. It is one of the ones I rewatched the least. For someone who rewatches four Pixar movies a day. Yeah. Number two at the box office is, it's a sequel film. Terminator Salvation.

[01:50:43] No, no. It's a family sequel. Okay, it's Night at the Museum. But you just guessed number three. Number three. Night at the Museum Battle of the Smithsonian. Yeah. That's right. I remember this weekend. It's a pretty dire time. I mean, there's good stuff in this.

[01:50:57] But this is, the Marvel era is also one dimensional. And we keep getting the same movie all the time. But this late 2000s thing where they were like, more Night at the Museum? Like, you know, where you're kind of like, no. It wasn't great. No.

[01:51:16] Is this the second? The Smithsonian is the second Night at the Museum? That's the second. That's the Amy Adams one. She's Amelia Earhart? Yeah. Oh, right. It's a perfect example of that thing Roger Ebert used to say. Where like, when I watch a movie with a great cast.

[01:51:32] I don't even think he limits it to a great cast. But he says, when I watch a movie, I always ask myself. Is watching this film more or less entertaining than watching this exact cast of actors have dinner would be? That's a fun yardstick. Right?

[01:51:47] The effort they're putting into this. So this is like, Stiller, Amy Adams, Owen Wilson, Robin Williams, Hank Azaria, Christopher Guest. Right. Who's on Bernthal's in this? This is what I'm saying.

[01:51:58] The new additions for two are like Bernthal, Adams, Christopher Guest, Bill Hader, Alain Chabot, famous French comedian Alain Chabot. Rami Malek. Rami Malek's back. Dick Van Dyke. Yeah, early Malek. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently George Foreman is in this film too? I don't remember. Apparently he's playing himself.

[01:52:22] Famous museum exhibit, George Foreman. He just has the grill. Number three is Terminator Salvation, which is a real bummer of a Terminator movie. I guess. I don't know. Which one is that? It's the Christian Bale one. Mick G directed, Sam Worthington. It's all just future war stuff.

[01:52:46] Yeah, it's Mick G. It's a Mick G movie. It's the only one without Arnold. Right. There's no Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although they have weird, creepy CGI naked Arnold. CGI Arnold, yeah, I do remember that. Anton Yelkin is also in that one? Anton's really good in it.

[01:53:03] He is Kyle Reese. He is good. I remember him being the only performance that kind of pops in it and that movie is so wildly unfun. Yeah. Late 2000s reboot culture is all kind of uniquely joyless and weird and sad.

[01:53:18] I think right because they're learning the wrong lessons from the Christopher Nolan shit. Yes. Where they're like, right, so it should be completely realistic with no fun. Is that what we want? That's not the idea. But yeah, I don't know. That movie is uniquely bad.

[01:53:34] Also Mick G is a horrible match for anything Grimm and Gritty. A wild choice. Yeah, if anything you want that guy to be making the stupidest movie of all time. You don't want him making something where people are going to cry. Anyway.

[01:53:48] Yeah, he made the stupidest movie of all time. It's called Charlie's Angels Full Throttle and it rules. Right. Yeah, sure. Number four is Drag Me to Hell. Number five is another reboot which features Anton Yelkin, but it's a good one. Oh, it's Star Trek. It's Star Trek. Yeah.

[01:54:04] And then but then to continue with down this list Angels and Demons. No. You know, Dance Flick. Dance Flick is that that's a spoof movie, right? That's Damon Wayans Jr. Dance Flicka. Dance Flicka. Five comedy points. X-Men Origins Wolverine. Like this is this is dire stuff.

[01:54:26] These were dire offerings. And then Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Obsessed is the rest of the top ten. Oh, I saw Obsessed. Were you going to say the problem is?

[01:54:36] I was going to say the biggest problem with Angels and Demons is that Alfred Molina does not reprise his role. He's not back. As Bishop Aaron Garosa. They should have brought him back for Angels and Demons and let him take his shirt off.

[01:54:49] Yeah, I think that would have solved all the problems I had with Angels and Demons. I love Alfred Molina. I truly forgot he was in the Da Vinci Code. Who is he in the Da Vinci Code? He plays one of the priests. He's like a bishop or something.

[01:55:03] He's a bishop or something. He's one of the church guys. I remember seeing the trailer for Angels and Demons a thousand times and I had seen it in Da Vinci Code and I did not enjoy it.

[01:55:13] But the trailer, if you remember, it just has the word Illuminati with lightning flashing and Tom Hanks is like, we got to get them. And I was just like, I'll see this. And then I never did. It was so despised that I never even bothered.

[01:55:26] But I was on board for Tom Hanks fighting the Illuminati in theory. Man, I watched it in the pandemic for the first time and I could not believe how boring it was. It was just so uninvolving.

[01:55:39] Yeah, but you're right, Caitlin, that they should have taken a lesson a little further down on the box office charts and rather than just adopting another Robert Langdon book, they should have done – excuse me here. Let me get this right. Da Vinci Code origins Bishop Arringarosa.

[01:55:56] Bishop Arringarosa the squeak wall. The squeak wall. And that would have gotten butts in seats. It would have gotten at least a butt in a seat. It is funny.

[01:56:08] It feels like the two things that fucked everything up for a couple of years there were Batman Begins and Born Ultimatum or Born – Born whatever. And then Marvel sweeps in and everyone's like, oh, we'll just try this. It's not like that's better.

[01:56:23] I'm just saying this was also a sort of weird studio scrambling to be like, what is it you people want? But I think you look at Star Trek is actually doing well that summer. People are like, oh, this thing's fun.

[01:56:38] And the next minute we're in it's like, cry for me! Anyway, that's it. We're done. We did it. We did it. We got dragged to hell. We're all in hell now. I think we dragged some other people to hell in the process.

[01:56:59] Jamie, Caitlin, thank you so much for coming back. Thank you so much for dragging us to hell. We'll get dragged to hell with you anytime you want. Drag us back, baby. We'll drag you back. Do you have anything you want to plug aside from obviously the Bechdel cast?

[01:57:16] Jamie, you've got a thing. Thank you for teeing me up. Amazingly. I've got a new limited series podcast that is coming out through the end of June called Ghost Church that is about American spiritualism. Actually pretty fitting. Pretty kind of on theme with Drag Me to Hell.

[01:57:42] I kept my little mouth shut about it. But yeah, the seance scene in this movie is interesting. But yeah, it's all about American spiritualism. I spent a week with some mediums in Florida. So it's about that.

[01:57:58] If you're interested in that sort of thing, there's exactly one show about it and I made it. Hell yeah. All your shows are so great, Jamie. Also relevant but you did your incredible Lolita series and we're getting ready to do Stanley Kubrick this summer.

[01:58:16] And that is very much a movie I am dreading talking about and will be probably relistening to your episodes several times. Guys, if you really want to drag me back to hell, I've got you for being in hell.

[01:58:29] Seriously, we had the conversation and our question was does she ever want to talk about Lolita ever again? I would happily, I mean not happily, but I'm always happy to talk Lolita. Well, we'll talk about talking about Lolita. Yeah. What we talk about when we talk about Lolita.

[01:58:50] Sorry. Shouldn't have said that. Shouldn't have said that. Annoying. Yes. Anything else, guys? Caitlin, anything you want to plug? I teach screenwriting classes if you want to check those out. And yeah, otherwise, just listen to the Bechdel. Excuse me, I'm getting dragged to hell in that moment.

[01:59:11] Listen to the Bechdel. You're hurting me while I get dragged to hell. Oh yeah, you watchable fly. Sorry, I was spitting up goo and now I'm done spitting up my goo. Okay, please listen to the Bechdel cast and yeah, I guess follow us on social media.

[01:59:26] I'm at Caitlin Durante on Twitter and Instagram. Yeah, and I'm at Jamie Loftus Health or at Jamie Crey Superstar. You figure out which is which. Wow. Well, thank you both for being here. Thanks for having us, guys. Thank you. Thank you all.

[01:59:46] And now I'm shifting who I'm speaking to, the listener, for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media. Thank you to Leigh Montgomery and the Great American Owl for our theme song. Joe Bowen and Pat Reynolds for our artwork.

[02:00:03] JJ Birch for our research. Alex Barron and AJ McKeon for our editing. You can go to BlankCheckPod.com for all sorts of nerdy shit, links to all our things, including our Patreon. Patreon.com slash Blank Check.

[02:00:18] Blank Check special features where we do commentaries on franchises and we're doing hashtag not all Batman, all the Batman movies we haven't previously covered in the past. Tune in next week for Oz the Great and Powerful, everyone's favorite Sam Raimi movie.

[02:00:37] We have finally gotten to the movie that everyone always identifies with Sam Raimi. Feels like the peak of just his voice as an artist. A movie that definitely exists and is beloved. Very excited to talk about that. David, you've never seen it. I have never seen it.

[02:00:57] I didn't want to because nobody liked it. Well, get ready for it to make a major impact on you. Yeah. Well, super excited for Oz the Great and Powerful. Yeah, it's the Raimi I've never seen. But here we go. Thank you for not making us watch that.

[02:01:11] Oh, absolutely. Thank you. Oz blessed. That's actually dragging someone to hell is asking. That is the true drag me to hell. Just wanted to gauge your interest in appearing on an Oz the Great and Powerful episode. Anyway, tune in next week.

[02:01:24] I think we'll have a great guest for that. And as always, this movie just talking about this made me open up a new tab. So I just want to read for you a quick list of Mattel Gak products from 1992 to present. Ooh. Gak. Gak in the dark.

[02:01:41] Solar Gak, which changes color when exposed to sunlight. Smell My Gak. Okay. Well, let's see if we get there. Smell My Gak has flavors such as pickles, flowers, vanilla ice cream, hot dog, pepperoni pizza, baby powder.

[02:01:56] You could get a Gak pack, a Gak vac, Gaks alive, Gak inflator, Gak copier, Gak goids, Gak color mixer, Gaks flat, Gaks super stretch, mood Gak, Gak twisted, Galacted Gak.

[02:02:08] Then we go to Flome, Flome Sports and Flome in flight, Flome Shape Shop, Flome Factory, Flome Kit, Go Flome, Flome Dome, Zoglog, Smud, Sqland, Zand, Goose. Everyone on the call has a nosebleed right now. Gak Splat Ball, Slime Smatter, Squeeze, Splish Splat, Zyra Flome. Zyra Flome.

[02:02:37] How do you know when you've entered your Flome era? You've exited your Gak era, you've entered your Flome era. It was truly, it was a vibe shift. It was a great change. It was a true vibe shift.