Monkeybone with Justin McElroy

[00:00:01] 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 The woman I love is living with a horny little podcast that looks like me.

[00:00:26] What a lucky girl. She's more swoony when she says it. I don't know. I've only seen this movie once. What? What do you mean what? I don't know who I am. When TNT does their annual April 1st 24 hours of Monkeybone marathon, you're telling me you don't tune in?

[00:00:47] I finished Big Watch number 7 before coming in so it's kind of fresh still. You never did the annual Boxing Day watch of Monkeybone with your family? Are we recording or not? What's going on? This is the episode.

[00:01:01] The episode's happening. David, we're confused that you don't know every scene of Monkeybone backwards and forwards. It's Monkeybone. It's Monkeybone. Have we begun the episode or not? Yes! Yes! This is the episode. This is the episode. This is so bad. No! What's bad is you don't know Monkeybone.

[00:01:23] Griff didn't even say the rest of the line. He didn't say the end of the dialogue. That's the end of the dialogue. Wait, what? What a lucky girl? There's nothing else? That's the joke! Cut to... Wait, why did I have to say anything at all then?

[00:01:37] Your thing was fine. Because it's funny! It's a punchline. But I don't know... Oh my god. It's a funny punchline. What a lucky podcast doesn't make sense. What's funny is the girl I love is living with a horny little podcast. You go, what a lucky girl.

[00:01:53] The reverse is... To anyone else that sounds terrible. To Kitty in downtown? Yeah. Sounds lucky. I swear, I watched this movie yesterday and I think you... I don't know what any of you are talking about. This is the stickiest movie ever made.

[00:02:07] I can't believe you forgot a frame of it. I'm not like Justin watching it seven times. You're kidding, right? You're kidding. It's a joke. He's not kidding. A couple of those have been more of a watch at. Kind of let it wash over me.

[00:02:23] Yeah, just sort of an ambient watch. Ambient. Every time though I see something new and that's because it's really hard not to zone out while you're watching. It's hard to stay in the frontal brain with this movie where you're like dialed in and engaged with it.

[00:02:41] But if it's ambient, it's perfect. Right, because that would be like staring at the sun or whatever. You would just... If you lock into this movie too hard you will give yourself brain freeze or something. You'll just be like, ah, my teeth hurt. I have found, Justin,

[00:02:55] I don't know if you feel the same way, but I have found in my experience that sometimes you watch Monkeybone and sometimes Monkeybone watches you. I saw Monkeybone four times before I... I watched Monkeybone four times. The last three times I saw Monkeybone. Does that make sense?

[00:03:09] That makes sense. I didn't watch Monkeybone. I sat my ass down and listened to Monkeybone. You didn't look at... You missed a lot of stuff. I'd say it's a pretty visual movie. I sat my ass down and listened. That's all, okay?

[00:03:25] I think some of the weirdest shit happening in this movie arguably is. Is visual? Although there's some audio. There's some weird audio. Yeah, there's some great lines like what a lucky girl. Probably my favorite line, if I had to pull a line, my favorite line is Monkeybone as

[00:03:47] Brendan Fraser as Stu Miley when he announces to a crowd, ignore the man with the purple face. Ignore the naked man with the purple face. And then there's a rim shot. And then the whole audience laughs. It's like, what? Is there a... Okay.

[00:04:05] Yeah, the charisma on display here. Everybody's just really dialed into it. You know what Foley in the purple makeup reminded me of? What? Giamatti in the blue makeup Big fat liar. Similar time, similar you know, kind of gag basically.

[00:04:23] It was that era. Do you know that there was a bigger, fatter liar that was a directed video movie only in the last year or two where Barry Bostwick gets his face all blued, I believe? Barry? Oh, I'm here to tell you that he actually got white faced.

[00:04:41] It's quite alarming. I'm looking at it right now. Let me look it up. If you Google it, it's distressing. 2017. Yeah, and it looks like they initially went with bigger, fatter liar but then there was a video attempt to make it just big fat liar 2 that made me realize

[00:04:59] Oh, that is horrid. That is horrid. He looks like the grudge. Are you looking at this box art? Are you looking at this box art of him in the... Holy God! Right? Doesn't he look like a Japanese ghost of like mythic lore from like ancient time?

[00:05:17] Let's also say the proportions of this are odd because he's in the back seat. He's like facing out the rear window of a car. And the license plate on the back of the car says, Game on! With an exclamation point. Which is not really...

[00:05:35] It doesn't have to do anything with lies but sure, yes. The license plate is wider than he is with full outstretched arms. It is the world's longest... Either he's tiny or the license plate is huge. What's wild is like the cover of Big Fat Liar 1 is them

[00:05:55] in shades looking at the camera with a blue Paul Giamatti. It is a visual reference to a movie that came out 15 years prior. Yes. That wasn't that big of a deal when it was released. Yeah. And it wasn't really a big thing. Oh, was

[00:06:11] it Sean Levy? Did I know that? It was his first movie. Wow. That's how he got started. You know, and yeah, just imagine the meeting where they're like, look, we'll call it Bigger Fatter Liar. We'll make sure the poster is them peeking over their

[00:06:27] sunglasses while an older person is humiliated behind them. This thing's gonna make 50 million dollars. We're gonna be fine. Like, you know, they're just assuring the poster will be enough. Oh, Jesus Christ. I just looked it up. Yeah. He looks like a melted Ronald Reagan mask.

[00:06:45] So it's like Halloween. Yeah. It's like, yeah, perfect. You know what I'd say he looks like? He looks like one of these wacky denizens from downtown. All right. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, listen, this is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin

[00:07:03] and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who are experienced massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks. I'm Rusty. The first time recording in a month. Massive success early in their careers are given a series

[00:07:19] of blank checks make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear. Sometimes they bounce baby and sometimes they make just a wildly normal film. Yeah. I mean, that is my beef with Monkeybone. Yeah, it's so generic.

[00:07:35] You couldn't show up to work, Henry. You just want to cash in the checks. Anybody could have made this flick. Anybody. This is a rote by the numbers programmer called Monkeybone. It's a mini series we're doing called Ben Hosley's The Podmare Before Caspmas. There you go.

[00:07:53] And today we're talking about Monkeybone, his only live action film. And by all accounts, I don't think he will ever try to do this ever again. Yeah, I mean, of course, James in the Giant Peach has some live action elements and this has

[00:08:07] some animated elements, but this is a live action film, a black comedy fantasy that made, I'm checking here, $480 million at the box office and won four Oscars. Is that domestic or worldwide? Domestic. That's opening weekend, Justin. Yeah, right. And sparked a multimedia franchise that continues to this day.

[00:08:31] Stop any person on the street and you say Monkeybone, then they'll of course reply to you with whatever. They'll just shout father. Yeah, well, the classic lines show me the monkey. What a lucky girl. It's his world. We just live in it. Hey, super document shirts of that.

[00:08:47] It does feel like four years later, part of the atomic disaster of this movie's theatrical release would have been hearing that Fox scuttled plans for an open world online community where people could join Dark World. Yeah, right. But you're joking about it being a multimedia franchise. A

[00:09:05] couple years later, they would have pinned way too much on this movie. We sucked $20 million into a Monkeybone ARG. Yes. We're screwed. My Zoom background is very... Totoro's been in the booth for a month recording narration. He's so mad at us. My Zoom background is very blurry because

[00:09:25] you might be surprised here, I couldn't find any high-res pictures. This was a display from, I believe, the 2000 International Toy Fair where they were really bullish on the idea of Monkeybone merchandise. Would you believe that most of this never hit shelves? I just

[00:09:41] have to assume, and I say this as someone who basically enjoyed watching this movie, they had not seen Monkeybone, right? Like when they were like, let's go all in on Monkeybone. Great question. I wish. If I could have seen Monkeybone one more time,

[00:09:57] it would have been the first time that John Totoro saw it sitting next to John Totoro because the amount of faith John Totoro in the booth has these lines that are, I mean, incomprehensible. He has to sing a song about how Julie has a loose caboose.

[00:10:11] He has to debase himself in all manner of fashion. And he had to in his head be like, calling his agent like, John, trust me on this one. It's gonna be a genius. Once you see it all on the screen, it's really gonna gel. Wait.

[00:10:25] He's the voice of Monkeybone? John Totoro. I didn't look this up. No. Are you fucking serious? It may be. Guys, if a talent has been wasted in a more fantastical fashion, I really, I'm sure you guys can come up with some examples, but this

[00:10:41] one hurts because I like John Totoro a lot and this is brutal. I know we're going to talk about this you know, the development and the failure of this film and the plotting within it. But can I just, is this the end, Griffin, of that 90s, how

[00:10:59] do we define it? The aesthetic, it's like Rocco's Modern Life or Far Side where it's like I'm that weird mix of like, I don't know, Tiki bar and like sort of 50s throwback. I'm wearing like a fucking tie with like a cow print

[00:11:17] on it, you know, and I'm wearing like a gas station attendant jacket. Like, you know, like, you know, that is this is the end of that, right? How do you define that whole 90s vibe? Yeah. You know, like fucking the Drew Carey show, the Drew Carey show.

[00:11:31] Oh, I mean, Peewee's Playhouse, like Wayne White's stuff in there. Yeah. And that Peewee's and Gary Larson and all that, that's when it's like everyone's like more of this. We love it. Is Monkeybone like the last gas station? Right. You're like the Southwestern retro kitsch pop surrealism.

[00:11:51] Yeah, exactly. Slide guitar. How do you define that big ball of wax where it was like men can dress like this and behave this way and they should not immediately just be like ostracized for it. Comics with an X. Yes! Comics with an X. Yes!

[00:12:13] Thank you. I mean, looking behind you, the black and white check Yes. You know, that, you know, which is very Burton-y, right? That very throwback, you know, that, that. This is it, right? After this, they were like, no. We all listen to the propeller heads now.

[00:12:27] We're on prescription drugs. Okay? We wear leather and sunglasses. I'm gonna put forward a theory, but I do think you're right. It's like all of these things. It's like swing revival, ska, 50s diner culture. Yes, yes, yes. Tiki bars, the Mojave Desert.

[00:12:49] Who's the guy from Ellen? The kind of, the big guy with the glasses. Oh, fuck. You know who I'm talking about. I do, yes. You know, Ellen, she had all her friends, right? She had Jeremy Piven and Eric Gross and Maggie Wheeler, Jolie Fisher. Right.

[00:13:07] Oh, David Anthony Higgins. That guy. Yes, yes. That guy. He was on Malcolm in the Middle and he was on Ellen. I love him. I got no beef with him. He seems like a great guy. The human embodiment of what you're talking about. Yes. Okay. Here's my theory.

[00:13:23] Monkeybone, much delayed, long in the works, ends up coming out February 2001. Is that correct? Correct. But I think it was originally early 2000. Yes. Starts production in 99. This is basically Fraser's immediate Mummy follow-up? Well, the Mummy is 99. You mean like in terms of what he made? Probably, yes.

[00:13:51] I would not be surprised if he's wrapped on filming this before Mummy Returns even films, which obviously comes out a couple months after this. Well, Bedazzled is the other one. That's the other one in between Mummy and Mummy Returns. Similar vibes to this movie, just more commercial minded.

[00:14:11] And two other ones. Dudley Do-Right and Blast from the Past. We don't talk about Dudley Do-Right. Blast from the Past is before the Mummy. What about George of the Jungle? That's before the Mummy. Do you have a sense of whether or not Brendan Fraser was

[00:14:27] a Henry Selick pick or it was sort of foisted on him by the studio? Justin, we are going to get into this. Okay, good. I haven't looked up anything outside of the work. I'm just the art. The art and watching it seven times.

[00:14:43] Let's say that our guest today is not Dr. Julie McElroy. No. But we didn't even realize how well we booked this guest. I am married to a blonde woman named Dr. McElroy. Exactly. But I am not Smiley. And your name is J. McElroy. This is true.

[00:15:01] Yes, that's true. The connections are all there. But it's Justin McElroy. Yeah. Triumphantly returning to the show. Yeah. Justin McElroy sending the classic, Hey, can I come back on the show text? Met with the immediate reply, You ever heard of Monkeybone? I didn't get a movie last time.

[00:15:19] I got the Rare movie so good, you had to pair it with another non-movie to have an episode of your podcast. Those are the two movies that I got. You got Citizen's Band and Last Embrace. Last Embrace, such a hit film that I was, I saw

[00:15:39] the release on the exclusive Google Drive form where someone kindly uploaded it for me to enjoy. That was streaming on Google Drive for you. So non-movie. So I said, please, you gotta bring the real movie. And you can say a lot of things

[00:15:57] about Monkeybone, it is a movie. You can watch it. It's a fucking movie. That's for sure. Your text was truly, can I please I love you guys. I was grateful to be on. I would love to come back. Can I please come back and do a real movie?

[00:16:13] And Dave and I stroking our chins for five seconds, turned to each other and go Monkeybone. We didn't give you options. It wasn't a question. This feels like a Monkeybone. Nothing feels like a Monkeybone. Yeah, so I watched and I had the, I thought it would be funny

[00:16:31] to watch it multiple times, but I didn't really want to follow through on that until I watched it one time. It's like, I don't know what it is, but it is, I kept my brain, the brain loves puzzles. The brain loves patterns, right? And I'm

[00:16:45] watching it trying to reason it into patterns and puzzles that I can like, make sense of. And I've watched it seven times now. I can't. It's not there. Like the layer below where it's like, it all kind of makes it, there's individual bits that I appreciate more

[00:17:01] than others, but like I still don't it's not there. It feels like it should mean something, a lot of it, but it's just, it doesn't trust me. You're not kidding. You truly have watched this seven times now? Yeah, I watched it seven times. That's a lot

[00:17:17] of times. Yeah, I watched it seven times. I wanted to be the person who's seen Monkeybone more than anybody else, right? You're probably there. You might have probably summited the mountain. I've gotta be in the run. It's gotta be up there. Did you buy it on

[00:17:33] iTunes or whatever? No, Dave I rent it every time I want to watch it. I'm not a maniac. I just watched Monkeybone seven times. I'm not wasting my cash. I mean, I made the investment. I'm just worried you're on a watch list or something. It's like

[00:17:51] someone keeps watching Monkeybone there. This is not right. Can we dispatch a drone at the very least? It takes a long time for the Apple TV auto-complete to be like, do you want to watch Monkeybone? Do you really need Monkeybone?

[00:18:07] I got to Monkey and it was giving me that Rene Russo flick Buddy. It's like, did you want to watch Buddy? That would make more sense. Do you want to watch Monkeybusiness? Where the little girl has a monkey? Do you want to watch Dunstan Chexie? Get a Dunstan!

[00:18:21] Get a Dunstan real quick. Don't watch Monkeybone again, J-Man. You were attempting to do multiple rental transactions within the original 48 hour window and it's like, dude, you don't need to pay us again. It starts to subtweet you. It's like, you know, movies with a three-act structure. You sure

[00:18:43] you sure you want Monkeybone? Movies with directors who are proud of it. Right, right. You click rent and then like, Brendan Frazier, a video of him just appears being like Hi! I'm Brendan Frazier. I'm the star of a lot of good movies. School ties. You want to

[00:19:03] see that? That's a good one. I even, I picture it being like an earnest somber address where he's like, look, first of all, I want to thank everyone. This groundswell of love and support, reclamation of my early career recently has been so touching.

[00:19:19] Obviously I know I'm receiving the best reviews of my career. I'm Oscar tipped for the first time. There's an impulse to go back and rewatch the old work. You don't need to rewatch all of it. Yeah, not all of it.

[00:19:31] Do you think he has gotten a residual check from, like, what is this? Somebody's been repeatedly buying and watching Monkeybone? It's from like a bank that went under years ago. What the fuck? This is cold cash. What? This is like the rare example of a movie that I

[00:19:53] think truly never ever went into profit. Oh, no. No. No money has been made from Monkeybone. No. And this is like at DVD boom years where even when movies flopped you're like, you know what? Five years later it broke even on DVD. Did you all

[00:20:11] before you watched it or had any sense of it did you, because this was my like, did it have the vibe of like maybe this is like a secret cult like maybe this is great like on repeated view like further viewing like maybe this

[00:20:23] is like begging for a reclamation project where everybody's like revisits Monkeybone. Yeah, no when we ordered this to series, the Selick mini-grift. Yes. I mean we gave it a five episode order. This is why because like there's always it's always exciting when there's the director

[00:20:39] with that project where you're like Monkeybone, huh? No one's seen that. It's not normal bad. That's for sure. It's either really interesting bad or secretly good or combo, you know, often the answer is combo combo good bad, right? This is one of those movies that

[00:20:59] it came out when I was 14 years old, right? It started Brendan Fraser who I fucking loved at the height of his powers. One of your favorite movie stars at that time. I have to imagine that time exactly. It is directed by Henry Selick, who is a 14 year old

[00:21:17] I knew and was interested by right. It had an aesthetic and it was rated 12 so I could see it not a grown-ups movie that I did not see this film in theaters as a testimony to sound either well, how badly it was received and how quickly

[00:21:33] it disappeared both both. I've never seen it because it's like, you know, it's been hard to even think about Monkeybone David, maybe you can help me with this because I feel like I said a similar thing about another movie on the podcast recently, although who knows how

[00:21:51] recent recent actually is but this is a movie where I was not undeterred. I was not deterred by any of the negative press or bad reviews for this movie. I made my father take me to see it as a 12 year old on Saturday

[00:22:05] would imagine that right, right. I think even my brother James he tapped out it was usually, you know weekend movie with the boys and James was like I would rather play Nintendo 64 we go to see this and I was like good

[00:22:19] good. I don't know what all the critics are talking about good because your brain was probably like a million alarm clocks going off at once this is what I'm saying quieted the noise. This is what I'm saying screaming for his there is some other recent movie where

[00:22:37] I said this were like as a child as a young adult. I watch it and I was like good and normal. Why don't people like this make sense to me makes sense exactly and then rewatching it now. I'm like look I have an affinity for this

[00:22:51] movie, but it is insane that I ever thought this thing was clean. It's it's so far act from beginning to end and that's because that's right. I mean, yeah like and they're probably worth it. Yeah, what's another movie you're saying what was another movie that there's another

[00:23:05] one where I was like why do people not like this and rewatching it? I realize I completely understand why everyone dislikes this. Well, we can think about it. Maybe yeah, it was a Ramy I don't I don't know but like maybe I

[00:23:17] know what you mean in terms of like the only mind that could completely lock into this movie is the mind of a hyperactive preteen maybe like maybe they could sit down and watch it and just be like yeah, this flows. Yeah, and

[00:23:31] I know this is how I look at things. Yeah, I was at the exact fulcrum age preteen is key because it's like you need the weird infusion of like Fox ribald sex comedy. Yes I was yeah, this movie's relationship to sex is not a

[00:23:47] how should we say mature? No, you're you're just like there you understand that there's like, you know, the executive notes are like this has to function in some way on some fairly Esq level like that's the zone we're playing in in studio comedies at the time, right?

[00:24:05] Either you're doing like super broad magical Chris Columbus family comedy which Columbus is inexplicably a producer on this movie or you're doing like sort of gross out sex boys will be boys comedy. It's so strange because at the beginning like the very opening sequence

[00:24:25] is this animated bit supposed to be from the monkey bone cartoon series. Yes, and the way it approaches sex is like it makes it feel like one of those like all comic like we're going to take sex out. We're going to

[00:24:37] talk about it where that we're not a you know, we're going to openly discuss how I was turned on by the my my elderly teachers arm flaps and I couldn't keep my boner under control and it became monkey bone and it just got ordered to six episodes

[00:24:49] and it then spins the rest of the movie like recoiling from sex in like a like it's terrified of it like it there is the most disturbing shot of the movie which has many for me is Bridget Fonda wrapping her robe in an attempt to seduce Stu wrapping

[00:25:09] her robe around him in a seduction move no one's ever attempted in throughout history. I would imagine because it seems so like sort of afraid of of sex. It doesn't like is it that it's yeah, it's that whole sequence is profoundly profoundly unerotic like if I was on

[00:25:27] a date with you Griffin and you were like, you know what movie really kind of like opened me up in terms of like me coming to terms with sexuality is monkey bone. I would be like I got to go. I got it. I can't spend another minute

[00:25:37] here. This reminds me of when you Ben and I went to see Brewster McLeod at the Metrograph and at like, you know, been friends with you guys for a while. You've heard me talk about being my favorite movie. You're a big Altman fan and

[00:25:51] then the movie the lights come up and you turn to me go that checks out. I was like what you were like just all of it the weird sex stuff. Yeah, yeah, I think I was mostly thinking about the sex stuff especially. Yes. Yeah, that movie

[00:26:07] is approach to sex that movies approach to sex tracks with my personality. If my approach to sex was monkey bone. It would be the world's biggest red flag. I feel like we've talked about this but 1998 is something about Mary, right? Which is like a big shift

[00:26:26] in studio comedy that has come in it. It has come in it. It's like you cannot believe they're putting these things on screen. It basically becomes the like you can do a mainstream comedy with John Waters qualities. This can play in malls. Yes

[00:26:42] like your mom goes to see it and is embarrassed. She's laughing rather than this being a thing that has to play in like a seedy Art House theater and then that continues on to like American Pie. Now it's done through like the teen guys

[00:26:54] you're bringing back the teen comedy becomes hypersexual and all these movies start to have to do this like Rube Goldberg construction of like what's the craziest visual gag what can end up in the wrong place? You know, how can someone do this here

[00:27:10] and be seen by that or whatever it is, which I'd say basically like 40 year old virgin is Apatow and Corral knowing they can get a movie sold if the premise is sexual. And then when that movie works the shift goes back to like oh it's like a dirty

[00:27:28] language rom-com rather than it needing to be so visually sexually explicit. But to what you're talking about Justin the biggest thing with that era is so many of those comedies at this time where like sex was so overt in all the biggest films seem A. terrified of sex

[00:27:48] and B. seem exclusively written, directed, and performed by people who have never ever had sex. Yes. There's like a weird balance of like explicit and prudish Yeah. Sex is like terrifying This movie is horrified by the idea of sex. Horrified!

[00:28:06] So much so that the fact that he would be aroused is treated as like a this is a, he has to other it as like an other being. Oh no that's the part of me that is aroused so I've turned it into its own being

[00:28:18] that I'll attempt to choke throughout the film Yes. It's so bizarre. Yeah, no you think this thing starts out and you're like okay is this guy like Johnny Ryan? Is this guy gonna like push the line on everything? Is this whole

[00:28:32] movie gonna live in his fucked up head? And it's like, eh kind of. I know You can't really, if you watch any part of this and think is the rest of the movie like this? The answer is no and yes at the same time. Yeah that's a

[00:28:44] good point. There's no point of the movie where it's like okay and now the stakes are laid out and everything is clear. You know what I mean? Yeah. You're not like half an hour in like alright, alright I get it

[00:28:56] I get it now we're here and the goal is this. That's never the case in Monkeybone There's also, it's like one of these movies where the fun thing to do is just describe a solitary moment to someone who hasn't seen this

[00:29:12] where you're like I just need to understand that at one point in this movie Brendan Fraser is in the giant hand of a mech suit being piloted by Whoopi Goldberg as death itself in the middle of a city that in and of itself exists

[00:29:30] in the palm of a hand she asks him to stick his tush out so she can flick him so hard on the butt that he flies into the sky where a giant Abraham Lincoln busts mouth opens up he flies through and back into the body of a gymnast

[00:29:48] corpse My wife came home from work in the middle of viewing 7 just before we started I guess that's when he's going back into his own body I didn't want to correct you I've only seen Monkeybone three times She said is that Brendan Fraser? Is he singing Brick House?

[00:30:08] I said well, sort of That's actually John Turturro's character Monkeybone inhabiting the body of Brendan Fraser singing Brick House She said well where's Brendan Fraser I said well, his soul's with Stephen King but he's about to move into the body of Chris Kattan

[00:30:26] and then the two of them are going to fight Who do you root for? Neither? Both? I don't know Death, you're rooting for death I don't mean the character played by Whoopi Goldberg For your own death Yes, the sweet embrace of the abyss

[00:30:40] And then she looks up and she's like Is Bob Odenkirk trying to steal Chris Kattan's liver? He's like yes honey Come on! You act like you've never watched Monkeybone six times Well yeah but really He's a doctor trying to get an organ he was promised

[00:30:56] so he's not really a villain What? Monkeybone? He's gotta run across a football field and try to chase a liver before a kid catches it The last third of this movie is what feels the closest to maybe what it was a movie at some point Yes

[00:31:14] They have enough people I don't want to get ahead of myself anyway Let's dig into the development because it is fascinating You guys understand the shorter you leave to recount the events of Monkeybone the more insane it is Every second that takes my eyes

[00:31:28] like wilder the compression it's gonna have to get Okay so Jim Carler He's got um Hypnos, the god of dreams but he's the brother of death He throws like sex parties with bee ladies Henry Selick who Justin I haven't asked you but I assume you enjoy

[00:31:48] the other work of Henry Selick to some extent Yeah I've seen all of his other films Not that's a huge accomplishment No He had made A Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach and after Peach he's looking for something to keep his whole

[00:32:06] stop motion operation going That's the big thing is that like we've talked about this but so much of the cost and the struggle with animation is like you need to really build a studio and have them perpetually in production to build a good rhythm

[00:32:22] to build a good team to get the sort of like everything flowing So in Nightmare he sold them on very quickly let me make another movie let's keep this team intact let's hold onto these sound stages and then by the end of Peach Disney was like we're done

[00:32:38] before it even really comes out and is sort of unceremoniously dumped But he moves on to a Disney sub company known as Miramax a company where nothing bad ever happened in the 90s But this pressure is on him where it's like you need to find someone to start

[00:32:58] footing the bill immediately like the clock is ticking you're going to lose people you're going to lose your stages, your equipment unless you get someone else to immediately start putting something into development to keep everyone on payroll So he moves to Miramax

[00:33:14] and he makes a deal to produce three features with them talks about making an adult film for them just a movie for grown ups not a pornographic film Or maybe a little Call of Bailong Maybe a little Call of Bailong Yeah, who can say?

[00:33:30] And I think his hope too is that it's like it's a mini studio I will not only make films myself but I'm going to start having protégés I can build this out I'm not going to say insanity because Henry Selick is a maniac

[00:33:42] and the idea that he would be a mogul of anything is nonsense but he is working on an adaptation of the children's novel Toots and the Upside Down House I have not read this book I don't know if anyone has Nope, someone probably has

[00:34:00] I mean someone in the world has I mean someone here I don't know it sounds kind of cool you know girl discovers an upside down world and it's very Henry Selick-y Yes You know like when you sit me down and you're like Henry Selick has a new film

[00:34:16] Don't stand up because I'm going to knock your socks off with this It's about a shadowy world behind our world It's like yeah yeah, okay fine A young girl still grieving over the death of her mother goes to a fantasy world inside her upside down home

[00:34:28] where her dad still won't pay attention to her All these movies are this! I mean I love it to be clear Where goblins, fairies, and sprites live there All these movies are about fairies, battle, and the evil Jack Frost

[00:34:38] Yes, this is a fucking parody of a Henry Selick production So Steven Soderbergh is writing the screenplay because he is still deeply embedded with Miramax because he is one of their early 90s indie stars Yeah And so And he's kind of in his fuck up run

[00:35:00] where he's like He's in the weird wilderness mid 90s making like the underneath and Schizopolis I gotta just take jobs and earn goodwill Yeah You know, JJR Researcher is a Sodi is a Sodi head, not that I'm not but he really is

[00:35:20] So he put in like 500 pages into this dossier of him just quoting Soderbergh because he loves Soderbergh Soderbergh has those books where he's just like published his diaries Yes From all the early years of his career To the day

[00:35:34] The book that covers this is called Getting Away With It and it is an amazing book and I do recommend it to people But all of Soderbergh's diary entries on this are basically like that Henry Selick is going crazy that Disney is insane Miramax is insane

[00:35:50] and I don't know I think they did like toots They were enthusiastic about the draft they were producing but every meeting with every studio was disastrous like initially Miramax is gonna do it, they give up they kick it around everywhere else Universal, Fox, all this stuff

[00:36:08] It does land at Fox under Bill Mechanic who I think we talked about Yes and Fox is in this period of really trying to beef up their animation department go toe to toe with Disney They've brought Don Bluth in This is when they were bullish And then

[00:36:26] it basically falls apart right away There's a lot of stuff on this but it's a different project so we can't talk about it too much I think the two things to note weirdly, surprisingly it does sound like Soderbergh and Selick got along very well

[00:36:42] and Selick was like I'm constantly struggling with like a year and a half with ten writers and we got this to a good place with one writer in four months But Soderbergh also seems to say I think we did an okay job

[00:36:56] I think he could have made a good movie I don't think we ever totally cracked this story I think there was like dramatic, inherent dramatic issues with the book that we never really worked out. The other thing it's sort of the ultimate indignity is when they're maybe

[00:37:12] setting the film up at Fox Fox pitches to him can we make it Tim Burton's Toots and the Upside Down House They do say that and Selick has an aneurysm basically And Selick basically says Tim Burton's not involved with this project. He's like no, no I know

[00:37:30] what I'm pitching to you is we will call him like this if you can call him and convince him to put his name on it And Selick, I'm seeing here pulled out his own liver and painted eldritch runes on the wall in blood

[00:37:46] And then he threw it at Chris Gattan who was hanging on an adjacent rope That was his general feeling on that He can't get out from under the Burton thing. As this is falling apart however, someone anonymously sends him a copy of Kaia Blackley's comic book Dark Town

[00:38:06] which I believe Griffin there is only one issue of Correct. It was one issue It was intended as a miniseries or whatever. A 12 issue miniseries And there's only one issue And again It's just sort of like a person falls into a coma and ends up in another world

[00:38:24] It's very It feels like the thing that you would bring out at a pitch meeting for an ongoing thing. It's very much set up I bought a copy on eBay. I reached out to Kaia on Instagram just to see if he wanted to chat about Monkeybone

[00:38:40] I haven't quite worked out the details of that yet But he was open to it We just never quite The planets never aligned for us I don't know if I have that conversation Look, if you ever chat, send it along The last month I thought you were joking

[00:38:56] about the legwork you've put into this episode. I wanted to do a good job. I had a real movie I wanted to really prove myself This is just a side. We give Justin the assignment of one of the least watched blockbusters of all time that everybody hates

[00:39:12] And he went this hard on it What if we gave him like Lords of Arabia I'm not a leading scholar on anything I could do this If I made the niche narrow enough I could slide right in there and be like

[00:39:24] If you're talking The Bone, you gotta have the J-Man on your episode Whatever the project is, we gotta bring in In 20 years when they do the reboot We brought in Monkeybone historian Justin McElroy to tell us He's our lore keeper He sits on set Like, oh well, actually

[00:39:42] Anytime it comes up from now on It's fascinating though Monkeybone does not exist in the comic There is no sort of like id-ego sidekick character at all It's not even like, oh it's different than Monkeybone. That dynamic doesn't exist It's truly just the idea of like

[00:39:58] cartoonist falls into his own subconscious He's a puppeteer So he becomes his own puppet Right? Something like The vague idea Artist Of Monkeybone The creation. Yes Coma world, id-ego sort of stuff No but no, I guess Selick really adds the id-ego. Yeah

[00:40:20] I wanna mention Vanessa Chong who's the illustrator on that who I think when you look at the art for the book had, I would imagine maybe even more of an impact on Monkeybone than the like story fragments that are put forth there because there's like an aesthetic

[00:40:38] DNA that's like It's not a long walk from the book to Monkeybone It looks very cool. It looks very 90s but not in a bad way But the aesthetic is kind of Yeah, it is impressive Is it a good issue? It's so slight like there's so

[00:40:58] little that gets like achieved You know what I mean? If you're a boner It's interesting to you just to go back and like, you know Blow all the dust off the old When you're a boner, it's you know, it's an interesting cultural artifact but

[00:41:16] It's so wild because it was Mad Monkey Press which it seems was a publishing company founded by Kaia Blackley, I think All the stories of the thing being sent to him anonymously I wonder if that's, you know, I don't know I don't know but

[00:41:36] The thing is the comic is serious It is like not a comedy, right? I think when this movie starts being developed by Selick, they're thinking it's more of almost like a Dark City sort of noir thing Do y'all think Selick's funny? You think Selick's funny?

[00:41:54] I saw all of you just look up at the sky Did I write whether or not Henry Selick is funny on the ceiling because that is where I'm going to try to find that answer It's a tough question He's got like a mordant wit clearly

[00:42:10] And like obviously there's lots of visual like wonderful visual humor in his films But I don't know if he's like a wisecracker Like I don't get the vibe that like if I was, you know having dinner with him that he'd be like a cut up, right?

[00:42:24] Like that doesn't seem like the vibe I guess what I'm like, I feel like and I don't know because I don't know anything about the production of Monkeybone whatsoever Yeah A lot of it feels like very few people involved with the film understood what was funny

[00:42:42] Like what makes something funny And when you get people who are good at funny Yeah Later in the movie, it starts to gel a little bit Like you feel like Oh, you all know what, you all are funny See but you're forgetting that the monkey toy has

[00:42:58] its thumb and its butt And when you pull it out it farts That's good, that's good Let's also acknowledge I sent you guys a photo I did buy a used DVD of this movie and it has maybe the best DVD disc art, the actual art on the label

[00:43:16] It's very good The monkey is bending over and showing us his butt but then the little peg where you put the disc the hole is his butt hole I'm gonna say that by the way because by the time that DVD was printed Yes

[00:43:34] That person knew what Monkeybone was There was not a fucking human being on earth that if this person phoned it in was gonna walk into their office like Hey, what's up with the Monkeybone DVD? This doesn't look like anything

[00:43:46] But they were like, you know what, I'm gonna take the time They could have stamped the title in Comic Sans Yeah They could have just sold it in a paper sleeve No one would have bought it They could have just scribbled it in Sharpie

[00:43:58] I will say the humor of Monkeybone is by and large very loud Would you agree with that? Juvenile Yeah, and I often will say the louder you're getting the more I'm convinced you're not that funny and instead you're just trying to, you know compensate by just

[00:44:16] screaming at me So yeah, look Sam Ham is the writer of this film He obviously is most well known for writing Batman But for whatever reason he collaborates with Selick on this I don't really know why, Griffin I don't either I mean Sam Ham spent the 90s

[00:44:34] developing a lot of stuff Very little of it actually coming to fruition after writing one of the biggest movies of all time I guess they're both Burton collaborators Yeah I think he had worked a little bit on prior Selick projects, right? So maybe that's where it comes from

[00:44:52] Maybe he worked on Nightmare? I don't know, can't remember Yeah but also if you look at the original comic it makes sense to hire the guy who wrote the 89 Batman to do that It becomes surprising that he's the writer on this when you see the final product

[00:45:12] But by Selick's account it was like we tried writing this as a straight kind of dark thriller movie and the more we started digging into the rules of the internal universe we kept on making jokes about it and having fun riffing on it

[00:45:28] and then going like, well let's get back to the serious stuff and at some point they just realized why don't we just let this be a comedy if we're having more fun noodling on the silly possibilities Well, let me read you some

[00:45:40] quotes here in fact because this will underline that, yes, Sam Ham he says, we bounced around for a long time over what the fantasy world population should look like. Are they people who can't sleep? Are they monsters? For one stretch, we had the inspiration that

[00:45:54] they were retired TV commercial pitchmen like Speedy Alka-Seltzer and the Esso Tiger all these characters floating around in pop culture mythology who've been discarded by their sponsors. Fucking what are you talking about? What? Like if you come to me I'm, you know, in charge

[00:46:12] of a company that's gonna give you 75 million dollars and they're like I'm thinking like discarded 60s pop culture you know, the Esso Tiger I would just be like, you're so fired you're, I can't emphasize how fired you are. I don't want to see you Studios get a

[00:46:30] bad rap for no-do things to death but this movie could have used a firm hand I got a note for you Here's the note, N-O They realized that would be a nightmare It speaks so thoroughly to the sensibility you're talking about where you're like

[00:46:48] what if the fifth lead of our movie is the Quisp cereal mascot or whatever Put your Hawaiian shirt in the closet we are professionals, we make motion pictures, okay? Fucking imagine pitching that to Selznick he'd shoot you with a shotgun and no one, he'd cover it up

[00:47:06] he'd be like take care of this and like so then, but this is the quote that really boggles my mind, this is the end of this ham quote, then we realized getting the rights would be a total nightmare, no shit so we settled on using mythological

[00:47:20] characters who are hybrids part animal and part human I'm sorry, you settled on that? That's you being like alright, everyone calm down. Minotaur bartender What the fuck are you talking about? It's also completely unmoored That's part of what makes the dark town stuff or downtown in the film

[00:47:46] so like you don't really know what they're supposed to be, right? And there's no explanation given for why people look like this They're not people obviously because Stu's a person and he's down there and there aren't any other people so like what is just his private purgatory

[00:48:04] or it's baffling Yeah, I mean you see some of them are obviously representations of his drawings but most of them don't seem to match his art style Some of them feel like Picasso paintings or weird cubist creatures without explanation To be clear, I kind of love it

[00:48:24] but it is offensive to assume that anyone would be like yep, good, I get this Especially though, after listening to the episode y'all did about Nightmare Before Christmas where every background player in that film is like engaging in a way that you get it

[00:48:44] within a moment of seeing it and you want to know more about it. This just feels like is more akin to flipping through someone's sketchbook or something where it's like, here's a bunch of different ideas and it's definitely like there's a creativity there

[00:48:56] but they don't have that quality of them being their own sort of like encapsulated short story that's captured in just their character design. It feels like sort of off the wall for the sake of being off the wall When I brought up this

[00:49:12] Toy Fair display I have behind me you guys said, I assumed they had not seen the movie at the time You imagine just in 1999 someone goes to a toy company and gives them a physical file of production photos and concept art and you're like

[00:49:30] here are some of the denizens of this town in a Henry Selick movie by the way, remember how Nightmare Merchandise is still selling five years later of every peripheral character and I think people were just like, go all of these every one of these characters is designed

[00:49:46] looks weird, why couldn't you put that on a lunchbox? Maybe the merchandising is the thing that makes this whole thing make sense, right? Like, the less we interfere was that the plan? Okay, the movie's like whatever but maybe we're gonna make a boatload off the toys

[00:50:00] To look at him monkey bone is cute. Not him moving around or talking to be clear but like a little monkey with a fez who's mischievous, like yeah sure. A little stinker That's fine, yeah he's a stinker, I get it I just want to call out

[00:50:16] quickly, there's a guy named Mark Ryden who's like a pop surrealist artist He did the cover for Michael Jackson's Dangerous Yeah, yeah, yeah, very baroque He's sort of like the big eyes lady crossed with Tim Burton or whatever, right? Yeah, yeah. Yes And he was cited by Selick

[00:50:36] as a huge influence visually on all the downtown stuff Okay, well yeah, so initially Selick's like, well this should be like a horror film that's kind of the vibe of the novel the graphic novel and then eventually they move on from that and start to get

[00:50:57] more quote Dr. Strange lovey with it and decide that the character the title character should be a monkey, a cartoony animal sidekick. Here's Selick It wound up being a monkey because monkeys lend themselves best to parodying human behavior Okay, sure. And monkeys

[00:51:15] are funny. Monkey Bone is a brand new creation. The guy in the comic didn't have a sidekick and our concept was nightmarish at first because Henry and I thought this would be a great suspenseful horror story but the more we discussed it to flesh out the plot

[00:51:27] the more we cracked each other up we finally realized we were talking in such goofy terms about death and comas. We should go with the impulse and see what we could get out of it in terms of comedy. Again I mean they did that. You can't say

[00:51:41] they didn't do that It just doesn't make any sense to me. The way they're talking about it he's like, so I pictured this horror film and then we were kind of just cutting it up right in the movie and we were like, I don't know, 75 million

[00:51:53] dollar comedy? Let's do it, right? You know, like it's just there's not enough rigor here. They scary movie themselves. They skip the actual scary thing. The parody of the thing they were going to make originally. Yeah. And of course their first pick

[00:52:09] two voice monkey bone Griffin, I'm sure you know this. Yes Paul Rubens who they were, I believe when this movie was announced he was announced with it or at least is in talks or whatever. I remember for a very long time as a film

[00:52:25] nerd kid on the Internet tracking this movie and Rubens name being attached to it from the Stiller days into the Fraser days it is wild because the other famous example of this is a movie we've covered where Paul Rubens was announced as the voice of Roger

[00:52:43] Rabbits and was like in negotiations for a long time and then at some point Disney decided they didn't want to pay him. They hire why am I fucking blanking on his name? The stand up who played Roger Rabbit in the fight sure. Charles yes Charles

[00:53:01] yes and Rubens has always said like that's the greatest regret of his career that's like the thing that hurt him the most you just imagine him being like I'm not going to fucking lose this again. I'm not going to miss the chance to play monkey bone. This

[00:53:13] is once in a generation animation and live action is combined you get to play the title character Salek this guy's bulletproof he's making hit after hit yeah totally and then like in my memory fairly late suddenly there's this quiet announcement Paul Rubens out John Turturro in and you're

[00:53:31] like wait a second what like even as a child who has not seen a still image of this movie there is no trailer the racist pizza guy the right the Jew everyone hates in quiz show that's who your Paul Rubens substitute is. In what

[00:53:47] universe are these two guys interchangeable don't really apart from both kind of cutting the same physical you know they're both kind of like ready you know Jewish guys apart from that they're very different energies Turturro's Italian he is Italian yes yes he played many Jews

[00:54:05] but he is Italian and he's like actually tall and wiry and I think Paul Rubens is built more like me yeah Paul Rubens I can't imagine is a tall man right he's small I think if you zoom like it is impossible to Monday morning quarterback this

[00:54:19] film and be like it just changed one thing yes that is not possible but I will say that on repeat watchings I think the number one thing that keeps this from palatability is that a commercial palatability my palates been refined now by several sips from the bone but

[00:54:39] I feel like the fact that they have no relationship at all there is no charisma there's no chemistry there's no nothing between monkey bone and stew there's no it's not funny at any second for a moment these two like

[00:55:01] interacting with each other and I think if you had had that at least like funny to watch these two play off of each other a lot of the other stuff would have been that could have been a little bit of chocolate on the

[00:55:11] reason you know like would help get it down a little bit easier but that is it is grading from the like the first like show piece of monkey bone where he's in a cabaret yeah like a Marilyn Monroe thing 0% funny and then sorry not just a Marilyn Monroe

[00:55:25] thing he pulls off his ears inflates them like balloons wears them as boobs and then sings a song about his girlfriend how loose caboose do you think I was funny and unpredictable bugs bunny like yeah he sucks he's like a bad version of

[00:55:45] bugs bunny he's like a guy at a party where you're like oh god that guy saw me he's gonna come over and talk to me oh he's gonna do all his weird fucking bits I hate that guy he's fucking who's the comedian Seinfeld hates inside Oh Gary

[00:56:01] what's it banter you know where you're like ah shit he saw me fuck monkey bone oh he's gonna have a whole song he wants to do soups not a meal no and it feels like it makes you value Roger Rabbit even more where you're

[00:56:15] like this is such a hard job to like establish in a movie this character is right does not previously exist yeah right and like in Roger Rabbit you have to stack him directly up against bugs bunny and Daffy Duck or you know in the same movie

[00:56:31] along with Mickey Mouse and Donald and everybody like he's got exists on the spectrum and you're like this character did not exist prior to this movie and I buy him I find him funny I find him amusing as a character I'm ready to go

[00:56:43] monkey bone you're like I don't understand why the show got picked up the series Griffin you don't think that the opening of this film in which monkey bone is presented as the characters adolescent erection is enough to cement him

[00:56:55] in our hearts and minds for the rest of the film I'm sorry okay what's funny is I like this animated opening I think it's fun and it's kind of funny it's not like the funniest thing I've ever seen but like you're like okay yeah

[00:57:09] you know I get the energy as you said Justin it does feel like this movie is tapped into the weirdness of in the 90s post Simpsons suddenly like underground cartoonist being looked at as like potential oil wells the Ren and Stimpy thing

[00:57:27] yeah right like you know hey your weird brain man whatever's going on in there yeah right but these things that used to be seen as subversive or out or whatever it's like between Ren and Stimpy Simpsons and Ninja Turtles you're like these

[00:57:41] things have become so mainstream and profitable that you like put Duckman on national television you know this is the first this sequence though is the first warning sign because after the short bit from the cartoon you see Dave Foley get up in front of everybody he's

[00:57:55] like Stu's manager yeah and he gets up in front of everybody's like and I have great news we have been ordered to make six episodes and the entire place goes nuts right they're cheering and this is the first warning bell for me I'm in a very specific position

[00:58:11] here as one the person who's watched monkey butt the most and two a person who's made a six episode TV show let me tell you this is the thing they don't make toys of six episode TV shows absolutely not

[00:58:21] they do not come to you bagging down the door begging you to license yes I'll just say they made that many toys of monkey butt they didn't though Dave people were stupid you're right they didn't most of them never made to show

[00:58:37] no but that is like my fucking endless battles with like the licensing team at Sony and Amazon for the tech was they were like we don't lift a finger until season three and that's what 10 episode seasons they're like unless the thing explodes out of the gate

[00:58:51] we need three seasons to prove that thing is stable enough that we can start putting merch into production it's a really weird it really sticks in my head not just cause I've seen the film seven times but like you know what a successful

[00:59:03] TV order would be why not shoot for the news you're gonna have them pounded by press leaders pick a hybrid! tell me it's season two already I don't give a shit tell me they picked it up for three seasons at the go three seasons that's something

[00:59:19] they gave it to Drew Carey the comedy channel they gave them the order that they deserved a six episode order but it is so funny I watch this opening cartoon and I'm just like when it is just sort of like memory awkward boy dealing with sexuality

[00:59:35] and his own head and whatever I'm like this cartoon seems kind of fun and the second monkey bone pops out of his pants I'm like this show immediately seems great right yeah the second monkey bone shows up you're like okay fine Jesus

[00:59:47] I don't need monkey bone in this show yeah but they're just like everyone's seeing dollar signs at this fucking monkey this project monkey bone ends up at Fox under Bill Mechanic as you say this is during the Bill Mechanic era when he's bringing in Don Bluth

[01:00:05] and he's making all kinds of stuff some of the stuff Bill Mechanic greenlit Titanic heard of it? success there's something about Mary he came on his ear! X-Men that was kind of a big one but then he would also greenlight shit like Fight Club or Monkey Bone

[01:00:27] like he was one of those guys who's like I want to do weird shit I'm from an independent background I think it's good to take these big swings David do you think anyone has ever lumped together Fight Club and Monkey Bone as two examples

[01:00:41] of a thing that you're supposed to derive meaning from? stuff like Monkey Bone or Fight Club you know that sort of thing that we're talking about Fight Club was a bomb as you know people forget it wasn't just that it didn't do that well

[01:00:59] it was that it cost a fortune even though the pitch of the movie is I don't know hot men beat each other up because of capitalism I mean what is the pitch for Fight Club that was the problem they had they didn't know how to pitch it

[01:01:13] I think he also gets a fair amount of credit for not only pulling Malek out of retirement and getting Thin Red Line made and he ends up being after he's left Fox he is the producer on The New World it's one of the only films he produced

[01:01:27] independently along with Coraline fairly cool however Bill Mechanic departs Fox after Fox Animation Studios goes under because Titan AE is such a disaster so while this movie is spooling up I think Selick's protector is gone so that's part of the problem and I think the neither fish nor

[01:01:49] fowl quality of this movie where it's like this was developed as an animated movie predominantly with live action elements I think they thought more of it would take place in downtown maybe he's the main live action element I think as Mechanic leaves the thing gets pushed more into

[01:02:07] this is perhaps predominantly live action comedy with animated segments Ben Stiller original person for this movie makes total sense obviously he's right in that pocket in the year 2000 and like 90s Gen X alternative like he fits into yes Selick says he well the reason

[01:02:33] for him leaving was supposedly conflict with mystery men Selick says many years later that Stiller had a team of writers who wanted to work on the movie and Stiller as Selick says I chose to be loyal to the writer that was on it it actually would have been

[01:02:49] better to go with Ben and his writers there's a lot of variables looking back what ifs he's not wrong I imagine that Ben Stiller's crack team of writers might have taken a gander at the old monkey bone screenplay and been like guys

[01:03:05] what were you thinking here added a few audience to the bone broth yeah and there no wouldn't be bring back the Esso tiger that's what we're missing I think it would be I'm tearing this into pieces don't worry we're going to fix this

[01:03:19] Justin to circle back to your looming question is Henry Selick funny I'm running over my head and I do find all of his films funny but it is telling that all of his other films have like a key comedic voice in some way working with

[01:03:39] where like in nightmare you have Tim Burton and Danny Elfman who have like comedic sensibilities James and the giant peach he's working off of a raw doll book you know Coraline Neil Gaiman like has a good handle on comedy when he wants to do it

[01:03:59] they might be giants writing songs for you Wendell and Wilde is a giant peel you know he's always got someone he can sort of like help balance out that stuff this movie doesn't have a stiller and stiller would have made sense in that mold yeah yeah I think

[01:04:17] I think part of it could also be that the the difference between and like directing live actors versus something where you're able to microscopically alter facial you see people come in with takes in this movie and they're coming really hard like they're coming really hard

[01:04:37] and they feel you can get the sense of the desperation in them like I don't know what this is but I'm gonna try to do something that will make it seem Bridget Fonda comes in in the moments she's supposed to be sad this one looks devastating it's

[01:04:51] so upsetting Bridget Fonda in this movie is like the picture of grief and it's like oh that's not I don't think that's the tone that's really genuinely upsetting and I think that that is a pervasive issue with a lot of the live actors in the film maybe

[01:05:07] she's playing it so incredibly straight and is styled throughout the movie as like a Hitchcock blonde like she is like so immaculately lit and shot and then everyone around her is like goofballs banana McGillicuddy I mean this is essentially her last film Kiss of the Dragon

[01:05:27] the Jet Li action film she made came out after it and then something called The Whole Shabang which doesn't exist but that's it this is Bridget Fonda being like sayonara Hollywood she does a TV like Ice Queen movie the Snow Queen Snow Queen

[01:05:47] that's I think that's her like final final thing but those yeah those are her last theatrical feature films yeah and obviously she ends up married to Danny Elfman Danny Elfman exactly look the thing about Brendan Fraser is Selick actually is quite praise worthy of

[01:06:05] has a lot of praise for him but the way he describes him is kind of the way that Brendan Fraser seems to be which is like he's a pretty serious actor who's pretty lost in thought about how to do everything like he is not

[01:06:19] what you're talking about Griffin which they might have benefited from a Ben Stiller like big creative comedy mind who's going to have a lot of thoughts about how to do it Brendan Fraser is just sitting there thinking about like so I'm monkey bone in this scene like how

[01:06:33] will I represent that but yes he's not a creative collaborator in that kind of sense I think Fraser is a guy who likes being able to execute someone else's vision and works very hard internally to figure out how to realize that I mean I

[01:06:51] sent you David a couple weeks ago Brendan Fraser's like timeline of my career most famous roles whatever it was which is incredible and I just emailed you and said or texted you and said he's winning the Oscar so fucking hard I have rarely seen an actor

[01:07:07] speak this well about the craft of acting clearly and unpretentiously he is a guy who is I think because especially now as this like career reclamation is happening there's this attitude of like we took him for granted because he was in silly films

[01:07:25] he was doing sort of light entertainment a lot of his work was cartoonish and perhaps we didn't give credit to how skillful and precise what he was doing was and how difficult it was how few people can pull that off and he did on a pretty

[01:07:37] consistent basis across a couple different genres well also you know occasionally sprinkling in things like gods and monsters and quiet American and like you know really kind of yeoman's work supporting performances in the unshowy roles but doing incredible work against like some of the best screen actors alive

[01:07:55] but it does feel like you know he's a guy who is really tuned into the pitch of a movie the style of a director the tone of the thing matching the level of what the film supposed to be he is you know unbelievably good arguably one

[01:08:11] of the best in history at acting against nothing like he is so remarkably good at that and the fact that he and monkey bone have no chemistry is absolutely not his failing on that one level you're like he's a pretty perfect choice for this movie

[01:08:31] because A he's going to be willing to play the different sides of this character go as huge as he needs to go act off of a lot of complicated mechanics and stop motion x's and all this sort of shit but on the other hand like you need

[01:08:43] someone who's actually coming up with jokes in this role you might need that it's also a little bit hard I think to buy him as like the introverted artist that they want to play him off as early in the movie like

[01:08:59] he hadn't had a bit of good luck until he met Bridget Fonda and then he says like I'm looking at you bud and I actually don't believe that I think you did pretty good right off the bat in the old genetic lottery I think

[01:09:09] you did alright kind of look like a demigod but yeah I bet you don't like parties go off bud I bet you don't it's so tired people throwing themselves at you tossing drugs in your pocket electing you king of the party which is

[01:09:25] a thing where they just keep electing me to it because I'm so incredibly beautiful and charming I don't know if you agree with me Griffin but he does a better job of a similar thing in bedazzled he's also playing the kind of nice guy loser

[01:09:41] he's such a funny looking person even at the absolute height of his like ripped bod like it's just his big old noggin I guess yeah that he can do dopey if needed like he's got these expressive wide set eyes and everything

[01:09:55] that was always the weird thing with him where it's like this guy is so conventionally handsome but in a way that's kind of funny yes and it is funny because bedazzled is also a similar thing in that he plays he keeps you know he changes

[01:10:09] roles yeah he keeps reading so it's like monkey bone kind of does that he's playing multiple roles within monkey bone yeah but he doesn't feel like he has any real grip on any of them it's also hard because it's someone else in this film is tasked

[01:10:25] with doing that sort of like impersonation inhabiting the body the soul inhabiting the body we won't get to him right now but they do incredibly effectively I don't think he's got a lot to work with when monkey bone is inhabiting his body

[01:10:39] which happens through a for a good third of them but I also I think it's like this movie weirdly never beyond the fact that we all agree that monkey bone kind of doesn't work as a character right he's annoying fuck it's like they barely set him

[01:10:57] up so like has said like there was a cut of this movie that was 15 minutes longer and it was so much better it just like had a little more room to breathe he never claims there was a masterpiece cut of this movie but he's just like they

[01:11:11] got scared I didn't totally nail it they whittled this thing down to the bone I know that the cut of this movie that breathes a little more works a lot better it does feel like the same time at the same time an additional 15

[01:11:23] minutes is an additional hour and 45 minutes out of my life when you do the math so I'm actually relieved that's like a couple Fargo's extra monkey bone yeah right the strangest thing to me though is it feels like the place

[01:11:37] where this movie has been cut down the most is in getting him through dark town and monkey bone into his body like it feels like Stu and monkey bone have eight minutes together on screen at most before that swap happens which as you said it's like we barely

[01:11:55] understand monkey bones vibe enough to understand what it's going to be like when he's in Stu's body they don't have any banter set up you know it's it's like all the most expensive shit in this movie is what feels like it was cut down they also hate each

[01:12:11] other's guts immediately which is wild because he didn't it's just his his penis cartoon come to life you think there'd be a few minutes where you're like yeah this is so wild this is so wild that my penis came to life they just despise each other from

[01:12:25] the beginning I mean if my dick came to life and talk to me I'd probably immediately be like oh I hate your vibe you suck Roger Rabbit like Valiant hates Roger but Roger is so guileless and sweet and sincere it helps to have

[01:12:41] one or the other you know yes it's good to have some sincere energy it's also the performance feels a little bit embarrassed right like you can sense a little like when he's saying I think Ben gets it when he's singing that Julie has loose caboose which

[01:12:57] it's really rough it's a rough watch you can feel a little bit of embarrassment on Totoro's part like I listen I have faith that this will come together but I don't exactly know what we're going for here it's also just wild because it feels like it's just Totoro

[01:13:11] speaking as Totoro pitched up to the high heavens like it doesn't feel like he's committing to a voice as much as he is just giving high energy to Totoro and then you're just adjusting it in post here's some other quotes Selick has unintentionally revealing quotes about himself

[01:13:33] quote I can be too controlling because that's how I needed to be as an animation director so I've had to back off and open up to what the actors can contribute Brendan's show's incredible range is pretty shocking how much this guy can do if he just

[01:13:45] stopped making those Hugh Wilson films you know a little dig there at the end. An incredible quote yes a very good quote and then the other thing he says that I think is interesting is like my experience with Brendan is 90% of the time he's just right where

[01:13:59] I wanted to push him a few times I was generally wrong he knew the character better than I did so after a few weeks I learned to trust him a few weeks is doing a lot of work there what are we talking three seven

[01:14:13] long was the shoot Henry yeah but anyway Chris Catan he says on the other hand will do anything he'll do a million takes he's like a puppy that's wiggling and jiggling and going crazy he was the one I had to focus like an errant missile

[01:14:27] there are two totally different styles Brendan's more precise and planned and thoughtful and then he explodes into action he's always quiet between takes so that's interesting the way he's talking about actors I do think Selick is somewhat admitting to the fact that he's probably

[01:14:43] like a gigantic control freak who's terrible with actors hates having to speak to people yes and you know but like then everything you read about the making of this movie you know it sounds incredibly stressful because of the insane visual elements required right they have to build

[01:15:05] a Brendan Fraser motion control robot yes and would that they would match to the live action of his body on top of that they animated the monkey like what is that why would that be an approach I can try to explain some of this in dumb terms

[01:15:21] but you know he wanted to do James the Giant Peach this way right we talked about this in that episode but his original intent was that James stay live action the entire time and Disney was basically like this is going to be a fucking nightmare

[01:15:35] trying to combine the two and have them match have the peach stuff be stop motion have the live action stuff be live action we can get away with a couple of shots of the bugs in New York City at the end but let's not drive ourselves insane here

[01:15:51] but that remained like this thing that Selleck wanted to get at which I think was so inspired by Ray Harryhausen where he's just like when you can combine these two and the otherworldly quality of stop motion existing in a live action space

[01:16:03] that's the sort of like dream I want to get to the thing with the Harryhausen sequences is you know he didn't direct the whole movie they bring in the specialist to only focus on a couple key sequences that he can put all of his energy into

[01:16:17] and those sequences are usually pretty fucking static and clamped down when you see the classic Harryhausen shots of like Jason the Argonauts fighting the skeletons and everything it's like big wide master shots that hold for a really long time because basically you can just shoot this open plate

[01:16:33] and then hand it over to Harryhausen give him a lot of time to animate on top of it rear project it what have you right but Selick wanted to do like camera movements and stuff he's like we want to integrate this character like he's a real

[01:16:45] character so that involves not just having like a motion controlled camera that you know can replicate the same camera moves in stop motion frame by frame that you're going to have to do that you already did on the live action set but you also need to make sure

[01:17:01] if he's interacting with Brendan Fraser that Brendan Fraser's body is perfectly matching it so they had like a robot it didn't look like Brendan Fraser but like you know probably like a mannequin dummy that was mechanized to shift one frame at a time

[01:17:15] its movements relative to whatever was going on with Brendan Fraser's shoulders and Mikey Bone was also animated at like full scale so the puppets like three feet tall none of this makes sense this is madness I'm getting so mad I can't believe that anyone wasted their time

[01:17:29] on this yeah that's a lot of earth minutes that just flushed down the toyity man that's brutal whoa so how did your marriage break up? well I spent a lot of hours on monkey bone had to do it had to make my Fraser bot

[01:17:43] had to make my Fraser bot for monkey bone hun I'm sorry but it was all worth it if you just it's all there I mean the movie looks good yeah it does I think so yeah like it's very distinctive looking it looks like a lot it looks

[01:18:01] I don't think it looks cogent but there's a lot I don't feel like the design is very much like some of it feels like a distraction from the fact that the other elements are maybe not as well thought through it feels a little like

[01:18:15] overcompensating maybe visually it's amazing to see though and there are things in this movie that are among the most horrific images I have ever seen the shot of him there when he is having whose dream is it? it's her nightmare it's Julie's nightmare that he's invading

[01:18:33] about him coming the cord being cut and he melts and it's ghastly it is it is incredible that this image and how they accomplished that I don't know when he like deflates like a balloon it's the Fraser kind of skin suit left on the floor if I'm

[01:18:51] a 10 year old seeing this movie because I wanted to see the fun movie about the cartoon monkey I'm probably screaming in horror but whatever but that's the other thing it's like it fundamentally does not feel like this movie was ever intended for children it feels like they thought

[01:19:07] this movie was for teenagers and 20 somethings right I mean that's kind of the Rocco's Modern Life thing where you're like yeah wait who is at least kids could sort of like Rocco's Modern Life were you like this is so like disaffected and strange

[01:19:23] like who's supposed to relate to this it's like I don't know Stone College students like those people don't have any money wait a second what are you talking about yeah another thing weirdly inverse of what I was just saying is that like Selick wanted Fraser to not look

[01:19:41] human when he enters downtown so they like built a full body silicone Fraser they thought about making a stop motion Fraser so there's sort of a James and the Giant Peach thing and Fox was like we're paying Brendan Fraser his full quote is on screen the whole time

[01:19:57] right you are never putting a Fraser facsimile on screen but that makes it more complicated to shoot yes that is true but by and large Bill Mechanic seems to have been an umbrella protecting them from studio notes and then Bill Mechanic was gone and on post production apparently

[01:20:17] studio executives saw what Selick had made and were horrified as Selick puts it after the film was already here the adults showed up but it was too late these guys are smart people they're very clever but it's just outside their vision they know how to make

[01:20:37] standard films in five or six areas and this is so far away from that their first reaction was can we turn this into one of our movies and they tried the battered corpse was then thrown back at me and I resuscitated it

[01:20:49] so I guess they took the movie away from him re-edited it and it was so unworkable the re-edit that he's kind of got to release his movie they handed it to Chris Columbus who was the producer or one of the producers

[01:21:01] on this movie and said like you are incredibly commercial you have populist instincts can you make this normal Chris can you make this nobody can make things boring like you can Chris please bring some of that magic that Chris Columbus anti-sparkle make this turn

[01:21:17] hella normal and they screened it and it was one of those fascinating cases where the audience hated that cut even more and Fox throws their hands up. Me too. I would love to see the Chris Columbus normal edit of Monkey Park but it also feels like it sounds

[01:21:33] like this movie is somewhere in between like Selick's version being 15 minutes longer and Columbus's version probably attempting to be 20% more normal than this yes Rose McGowan who you know will pop off from time to time said on Instagram that Selick had literally been fired during production but

[01:21:57] it seems like that's not true and she probably was just sort of conflating what actually happened you know the sort of the edit was taken away from him but then kind of given back to him and then Fox decided that their 75 million dollar movie

[01:22:09] should just be pooped out with no fanfare in the middle of February and never spoken of again like that was really it was just like forget it it was one of those movies where they were like it's coming out on Halloween nevermind 4th of July weekend

[01:22:23] nevermind January like they kept on pulling it forwards and backwards in time and then it was like suddenly like nevermind it comes out a month just yeah just dumped yes you know we'll talk about that later but you know I think by a month after its

[01:22:39] release it's it's it's gone and yeah it's got early 2000s yes can we attempt to talk through some of the plot of this attempt we can attempt yeah absolutely it's easy it's clear it's obvious not a long one it's a tight 90 with credit we've gotten you up

[01:22:57] to yeah there's a premiere right and then there's he gets to do a car full of monkey bone merchandise right well he tells Dave Foley that he's gonna pop the question that night and he's like I'm gonna ask you to give me a relationship

[01:23:15] for Honda Julie Dr. Julie McIlroy his love interest there's sort of a big exposition dump of backstory rather than giving us any time invested in their relationship where he's like you don't understand she saved my life she's the one good thing

[01:23:31] none of this matters I don't believe in the commercialization of monkey bone the merchandise stresses me out this is what matters inflatable monkey bone in the back seat which then goes off causes him to crash the car into a telephone pole knocks him into a coma

[01:23:49] one of the cats I noticed on watch 5 I think one of the cats loading the toys into his car was the pizza delivery boy from home alone remember that guy yeah he's in there uncredited sadly but uh I recommend uh immediate medical assistance for Justin

[01:24:07] Harry I saw Harry knows in this one oh yeah oh yeah he's there he got his own coverage what an evil specter that is anyway you are like I can't believe he's held in the background of this shot for so long

[01:24:23] and then they cut to his close up they had to set up a different angle for him just everything we just explained happens in under five minutes it is how fucking like this is where I buy into Selick saying 15 minutes could have helped

[01:24:41] this movie because it is like breathless with how much it is asking you to buy into so fucking quickly he's in like he's in downtown in under 10 minutes and not establish as like a person you don't get any sense of him before it's all in retrospect

[01:24:57] there's a wild like conversation between Julie and her friend later on where she's like yeah he has been terrible nightmares and then he came to me and I taught him how to draw with his left hand and that made Monkeybone it's like what did you tell Zanis earlier

[01:25:11] why are we fighting this out now what's your job what do you do you're a dream scientist what do you do and then you started dating apparently the thing where he draws with his left hand that's a Selick thing he's like I would draw with my left hand

[01:25:27] no Selick was left handed and then he injured his hand as a child and then he trained himself to draw with his off hand they had a concept designer a character designer on Nightmare Before Christmas who their right hand was their dominant hand and everything they were doing

[01:25:43] they just kind of dizzy and everything was too clean and cute and he said just bear with me for a second when I was a kid I switched hands and it changed my art style can you try switching to your left hand

[01:25:53] and he was like immediately it was Edward Gorey Charles Adams and I was interested in this idea that your whole psychology would change from hand to hand it's a cool idea but like many ideas in Monkeybone it is introduced in a strange way and then not maybe

[01:26:09] quickly discarded it's just it is wild to me that it's like the two relationships this movie needs to work as any sort of engaging narrative are Stu and Monkeybone and Stu and Julie and both of them are basically like you get five minutes of those dynamics

[01:26:29] existing before the movie is putting weight on remember what they were like what their whole deal was and Julie is all like retroactive backfill explaining the relationship you didn't get to see and Monkeybone you spend more time with him by like many times over in the human

[01:26:47] body than you ever see even with the cartoon footage any sense of who he is as a character when he goes into a coma he enters downtown which is essentially limbo if limbo was that video game Grim Fandango where I guess so the concept Griffin is it's like

[01:27:09] there's mythical beings here but there's also like imagined things yes like if Monkeybone is out of your imagination well he's here like that's because like your dreams are here and your nightmares are here right is that the idea yes I mean look good

[01:27:29] I'm glad that cleared that up great okay the Yeti is in your background right now who is played by Doug Jones right yes there he is yep but there's also like a Ganesha type elephant piano player this is the thing it's a little confusing but then it's

[01:27:49] like the rules of downtown are also in this background is the Joe Camel surrogates who feels like a vestige of their rejected mascot idea where he's introduced like desperately begging for cigarettes trying to get him to smoke then you have this like there's this fella

[01:28:07] who Ben I have to imagine this is your favorite guy yeah he fucking is really effective and that he's so discouraging to look at right giant horned Cyclops head with tiny body walking around on his muscly arms everyone ever all of this looks cool would you agree

[01:28:27] yeah I mean these like like conjoined triplet devil lounge singers it's very trippy it's very psychedelic like very acid trip like freaking out kind of classic cellic imagery like beautiful is him like going I think the shot of Stu sinking down into the bed right I love

[01:28:49] very cool yeah and then you have him in the roller coaster like rickety wooden roller coaster approaching this hand that opens up there's a city there he gets off illuminated sign Stu's emotional baggage he opens it up it's all his childhood drawings the

[01:29:05] things that scared him as a child and then we're immediately introduced to the roadkill trio right and it's like oh this is one of those things he drew as a kid I get it he's gonna be in a world of all the things

[01:29:17] he came up with and then as you said immediately he takes one further step in and you're like oh no this town is everything this town is there's no rules to it which maybe is why I'm mad about it because I'd love some logic yeah

[01:29:31] and and it look it feels pretty fucking fertile to be like artist ends up in world with all of their creations versus a lot of these characters he seems to be like what's your fucking deal who are you and once you see humans you're like

[01:29:45] oh we're not in his head this isn't his reality this is a state a realm or some kind of pre-existing system like right because Stephen King Edgar Allan Poe and Lizzie Borden here three of the greatest artists let's get to it no we'll get to it

[01:30:05] as a boner I gotta speak up for the rest of the community it is established that everyone in in this limbo is a fan of Stu's Nightmares they love it could be in tribute like we are we are shifting the aesthetics of this place because we're such big

[01:30:19] uh boners ourselves they are but the vibe I guess is you are so fucked up that we enjoyed your subconscious showing up here but I mean this is all too staggering to if anyone's subconscious can appear how is it

[01:30:35] you know how is there any room to walk around it would be crazy but also David you saying the like that this movie represents the end of this aesthetic that's then replaced with the 2000s like take a riddle and chill out vibe it feels like

[01:30:47] that's what this movie should almost like plot wise be coming up against is like everyone has chilled out there's no like unbridled artistic chaos nobody wants to be hostage right lectured by a bipolar video store clerk anymore right no one wants to be a tortured artist anymore everyone

[01:31:05] wants to sell out you know like that almost feels like the stance this movie should be taking rather this makes more sense perfect sense the death of that gen x nonsense yeah like because that's what stillers career is yeah right okay but instead hypnosis like I'm just

[01:31:21] personally such a big fan like he's like fucking Kim Jong-un in the interview let's talk about hypnos played by Giancarlo Esposito I would say a god of sleep and death's brother a very very locked unsurprisingly for him he's a really committed actor very locked in

[01:31:39] in the pocket yeah he's good in the pocket is exactly how to put it and he knows he's at the exact right pitch with this movie he looks incredible he's got devil horns and a goatee and red skin much like Satan furry little goat legs

[01:31:55] he's got yes he's in this contraption that was a nightmare I think you read inside this quote please yeah I will I mean it just I've really feel for him how do you can you describe it Griffin because I'm sure not every listener will see monkey bone like

[01:32:11] he like what like what he looks like yeah well he he looks I guess he's sort of supposed to be like a Seder right satyr yes so it's like this fat little body he's got you know Giancarlo his head and right sort of a

[01:32:27] constructed body and then these tiny little hoof beat he looks like the Danny DeVito character from Hercules except he's wearing like a little scab laser he's like made out like the Danny Elfman devil from forbidden zone sure yeah he's got this sort of expressionistic makeup and

[01:32:47] then like a furry little belly feet and push you say not everybody will have seen this flick but like how do you listen to this episode and not go fire this up I mean I mean at least

[01:32:57] you watch the clips how do you resist the siren song of having to like I watched it seven you can crank out one bud come on there are times we talk about a movie on this podcast and we go look our listeners don't need to watch this maybe

[01:33:09] this episode serves as a substitute for spending the time watching this movie I implore everyone to watch this film I truly do I think this is a film that needs to be seen whether you like it or not I don't think you will regret having spent the time

[01:33:25] putting it you can rent it you don't need to buy it although it's a clean yeah it's iTunes I did buy it I personally bought it yeah you bought it David it's a write-off I'll own money I almost I almost tried to get the

[01:33:39] blue ray which goes for $75 on eBay that's insane that would actually be a cry for help if you bought that okay Giancarlo Esposito says I put on a green jumpsuit so the effects people have an exact outline for removing my real legs

[01:33:56] next I put on a 25 pound rig that creates a stomach and breast I had to pitch my own body forward to allow the body I'm carrying to hang straight down then I got into knee pads because I was walking on the very tips of my knees

[01:34:08] to get my upper body to project forward I've never had to integrate the kind of physicality into a body that's not mine it was exhausting so I need a lot of rest between shots but hey you got to make monkey bone and be

[01:34:20] in at the end of it monkey bones you can't argue with it this is one of those movies where you just and it's not necessarily a good thing although it does make it more impressive as an object you can feel the effort in every millisecond every

[01:34:36] inch of this movie like nothing in this film feels easy you know and I feel like a lot of stuff like this like you hear about the Muppets and they're like well we the puppeteers put ourselves in really difficult positions to make these things feel

[01:34:50] natural and casual so that when you watch a permit riding a bike you don't even think about it you accept it and this you're like Jesus fucking Christ this must have hurt so much you can't stop thinking about the strain and the toil

[01:35:04] of all of it but that's I think that that's like a key differentiator when you're looking at again to call it Nightmare Before Christmas where all those things are in support of an effect yes to an extent where you don't necessarily start pulling at the seams

[01:35:20] when you're watching it it's like this incredible like wash because it's all serving this one thing that's like working together and I feel like you can feel that effort from every aspect of this film because it's not congealing right there there's no sort of cohesive thread and even

[01:35:36] when you get to the sequences that are purely live action without any sellicky stuff as you said the performances are all so loud like it's just everyone is going so big and doing so much other than Richard Fonda well yeah actually other than Richard Fonda

[01:35:52] actually but okay alright so alright so Hypnos is in charge of downtown right that's his realm he invites them to his swanky nightmare party they have a sort of yes Merovingian esque party and he explains that to get out of his coma before he dies

[01:36:16] he's gonna need to steal an exit pass from death herself played of course by Whoopi Goldberg who I remembered being uncredited in this film does in fact get and Whoopi Goldberg in the opening credits was completely absent from all marketing on this movie I wonder if that was

[01:36:34] a contractual demand because it feels weird she may have seen the cut and be like please don't mention that I'm in this I think she's pretty good at it I do too I do too I think she is similarly locked in it's kind of a yeah

[01:36:48] but it's not that funny a performance even no you know it's just kind of like doing it she feels comfortable she feels comfortable in a way that the other people aren't right Whoopi at least feels like a professional that can is I have this

[01:37:02] it's okay I'm not gonna try as hard as everybody else it's like a welcoming presence it's the cool guest room at the party that nobody is in where you just sit and breathe for a second real steady hand you're right she's maybe the only

[01:37:14] performance that doesn't feel like it's taking a tremendous amount of effort you feel like she just showed up reported to set in this outfit felt at home in the set you know but it just remains so odd to me where you're like this movie is so

[01:37:28] hard to sell Fox is so terrified of this thing I cannot believe they had the restraint to not put Whoopi Goldberg on the fucking poster and in the trailer unless she was like I will fucking sue you if anyone who doesn't pay to see this

[01:37:42] movie knows that I'm in it anyway what happens next they attempt to steal the guests at the exit pass sorry yeah but when they do this monkey bone is the one who gets uses it to enter Stu's body and it is later revealed that this was all

[01:38:04] some sort of like complicated con that hypnos was in on why he wants to be down there to be down there to like you know come up with cool nightmare ideas and it's revealed that Stephen King is another person who has fallen prey to this

[01:38:20] scheme and his dog is actually in his body or whatever yeah basically they set up that like all the what's the fucking animal thing in the golden compass and dark materials Damon yeah yeah it's like basically all these great creative minds have a Damon who is

[01:38:38] their like unconscious like unbridled id who have been swapping out with these guys so like Edgar Allen Poe's down there the Edgar Allen Poe that we knew was actually a raven in his body Stephen King is now actually writing these novels while he's

[01:38:56] stuck down in hypnos lair and then some of the other people are not artists they are like Attila the Hun and Lizzie Borden and Jack the Ripper yeah it doesn't make any fucking sense it's also so distracting that all those people are dead except

[01:39:12] for Stephen King yes like why did you pick him no sense it's the wildest it's it may be the wildest edition in a film that is like all wild it is baffling to me he's played by a guy called John Bruno who's just kind of made

[01:39:30] up to look like Stephen King he's got like glasses and long hair he comes on he looks like Stephen King he's doing a weird impression he introduces himself as Steve you're like oh is that like a funny little in joke and then they

[01:39:42] underline it so hard he's like yes I'm Stephen King the writer Kujo is in my body he writes the books now in the real world though it bears mentioning that at the same time concurrent with this he's in a coma his sister Kimmy Megan Mullally wants to

[01:39:58] pull the plug because it's so sweaty like their dad had a long drawn out battle before dying so they promised each other that they would I guess pull the plug on each other but she gives him three months to come back yeah it also feels

[01:40:16] like she wants monkey bone residuals but that's not her made explicit like she sort of I wonder if in that extended cut this is like fleshed out a bit more right what her motivations are because the dad thing feels like kind of excuse

[01:40:30] and there's something so craven about her where you're like there has to be some gain to her pulling the plug but during this period of time Bridget Fonda and her friend discover the proposal he had set up at the home that he was going to give her

[01:40:48] the family heirloom ring she refuses to give up on him she explains the whole thing of how she met him in the nightmare dream the switching hands and all that sort of shit his nightmare the art style is really cool is really cool

[01:41:06] I don't even know how to really describe it it's like very different from anything else in the movie yeah look I'm in the recording this episode in Rochester New York where the local delicacy here is the garbage plate which basically came out of like greasy spoon diners and

[01:41:26] you know bar food places just dumping every extra leftover bit they had in a plate and it's truly just like ground beef and like chopped up chicken fingers and like cheese and gravy and mozzarella it's like it's truly that and the visual

[01:41:42] aesthetic of this movie is very garbage plate it's a lot of stuff I like all of these things separately have you had a good garbage plate yet I've been waiting because I have to be on camera I'm wrapping on Monday and I'm going to eat five

[01:41:56] garbage plates but it does feel like yeah everything in this movie I like the look of and sometimes when those things are next to each other it makes your brain short circuit whereas the nightmare sequences are cohesive for those 15 seconds there's like a singular sensibility

[01:42:14] so they're not going to pull a plug and Julie McElroy comes up with this great plan she's like listen I know he's going to come right now but we gotta try something because this is going to pull a plug here's how I propose

[01:42:28] why don't we jack him full of nightmare juice no wait I need a clean take on that please why don't we jack him full of nightmare juice because I know about this nightmare juice and I know he's trapped in a prison of his own thought but

[01:42:42] what I'm saying is maybe we chuck him full of nightmare juice and someone's like will that bring him back she's like I don't know I mean you gotta hope but I'm going to get a chuck of nightmare juice into this dude

[01:42:54] yes I believe she's like yeah like half a cc is what I've done she's like great let's do five and then just goes like you know it's also this odd point in the movie though where you're like momentarily wondering am I supposed

[01:43:08] to be taking downtown literally at all is this just like sort of a depiction of his internal life while he's in this coma what he's imagining versus it being a real place with these real rules the more she jacks him full of nightmare juice

[01:43:22] the more the world sort of like shakes around him and then monkey bone escapes and you're like no I think I'm literally supposed to believe that this is monkey bone in his body not that this like broke something in his brain you know yeah so there's two threads

[01:43:36] obviously after this happens and one is up in the real world monkey bone has become stew and turns into a little soul patch motherfucker who causes trouble yeah right and it's like green lighting bad merch there's the whole pig anus thing with the fast food

[01:43:54] but what is his deal like what is like I don't know I couldn't tell you what he's going for or what no like what this performance is trying to telegraph it's like it makes no sense even just the the sort of putting the kool-aid in the farting monkey

[01:44:12] bone plushes and trying to spray them in people's faces not having seen this movie in close to 20 years I remembered there being some sort of reason for that like oh he's trying to like dose people with something to trick them into doing something he's feeling that

[01:44:32] he wants okay so he was he he gets to okay so Justin took out a lot of breath just now okay just real quick yeah so what happens is monkey bone goes to the upper world and he takes over the Brendan Fraser's body and he's enjoying

[01:44:46] the fruits of his labor right right he's he's enjoying the money and the fame and the popularity and all that stuff and hypnos pulls him into a nightmare and he's like hey idiot you're up here to make nightmares oh right get the nightmare juice yes

[01:45:00] and so they get the nightmare juice yes and he puts it in the toys he's trying to create nightmares he's trying to create nightmares he's gonna spray a bunch of lights with nightmare juice I watched this this morning the toys fart they fart right like a

[01:45:16] chemical out anyway so it's gonna be that right the toys got the thumb up its plastic butthole when you take it out it sprays in your face yes which Dave Foley demonstrates this is how they fully get sprayed by it he just blast his face with the

[01:45:32] monkey fart just to see what happens this literally all the thought this guy put to do is like let's see what's up with this this is the one let's see what's up with this chemical particulate he blasts himself in the face it's not an accident

[01:45:46] it's not he's leaning against the wall and blasts himself also I love like future drugs I think this is how people should do drugs in a movie is get farted from a toy monkey out of monkey bones specifically yes it is funny that in the

[01:46:04] context of this movie I think this toy the farting monkey bone plush is positioned as if everyone believes it's gonna be tickle me Elmo yeah like they take it out of a case it glows like the briefcase from Pulp Fiction the code

[01:46:18] name is Jack Horner because he puts his thumb up his own butthole right but they're like this is the moneymaker this is the thing that's going to transform the world and then he views it as the vehicle to fill the world with nightmares the thing I forgot

[01:46:32] even though I finished watching this movie an hour and a half ago anyway so upstairs in the real world monkey stew is being bad and then down in the underworld stew is trying to escape and he gets the help of Miss Kitty a cat girl played by

[01:46:52] Rose McGowan and he's trying to I guess confront and out with death played by whoopie Goldberg also want to shout out Thomas Hayden Church who is yes credited as her assistant but is quite funny and is in kind of cool makeup like Kabuki makeup but I guess

[01:47:12] this was like like major wilderness years for Thomas Hayden Church right like I guess it's the only way post wings right I mean oh it's way yeah free sideways post wings because he's the villain in Georgia the Jungle and this feels like three short years

[01:47:30] later him begging Fraser like do you have anything in your new movie I believe talked about this in our spider-man 3 episode he is the only actor who returned for Georgia the Jungle 2 the only one direct to video and that's the same year that sideways comes out

[01:47:48] well that's that's tough but you know what he's in the one of the most successful films ever made so bouncing back yeah monkey bottom referring to monkey of course so what can how it's very tough to describe what the fuck is going on in the

[01:48:04] also just they cut back to downtown pretty rarely like once again it feels like they removed all the most expensive sellicky stuff from this movie or at least whittled it down to as little as possible cut down there I don't know what's

[01:48:18] going on but I'm at least like super engaged by yes like that's how I feel about it all I don't really understand how he ends up into in Chris but I'm also just kind of like whatever man like I just like looking

[01:48:30] at this death gives him a shot because she's a fan of the comic so he goes up there and they're stretching him out he's like she's like actually I love your shit get it get out there you get one chance she's also she loves love she's a

[01:48:42] big softy yeah he makes his plea about Dr. Julie he tells her that she's got a loose caboose and death get death gives him a flyer yeah so he gets to go back in the body of Chris Catan who is an organ donor who's

[01:48:58] on the poster what do you want to say no Ben just set the clock we're going to devote 30 minutes to Catan talk here because this is maybe the best comedic performance of the 2000s I refuse to do that I'm going to give you five

[01:49:12] I'll say this he is fucking up the curve it may not be the best but in terms of like you're watching a peak rise over the rest it's like he's definitely doing a lot of work there he's earning his paycheck can I read your

[01:49:24] text Justin sure you said I just never get tired of watching Chris Catan load an entire movie onto his shoulders like Jesus hauling his own cross to Golgotha and dragging it against its will to watchability he's not the thermostat performance he's the solar powered space

[01:49:42] heater FEMA issued you after the tornado that's how I feel when you see there's also a little bit of I'm also conflating the experience of seeing Chris Catan with the experience of almost being done with the movie so like I mean at that point it's

[01:49:58] like I'm coasting into home here's my thing I say this with I think he's really funny in this I think like he's he's making have I ever really liked Chris Catan anything else were you a fan of Catan during the SNL days no I was not rude

[01:50:20] I'm sorry course yeah I'm sorry guys want some cookies I don't think I've ever but you know what Griffin you doing that voice yeah is a great reminder of how when Chris Catan would be doing something I would usually be like oh I don't like this his

[01:50:38] vocal mannerisms are all in this movie meant to emulate Brendan Frazier yeah and it's not like an overt like impression he just it kind of seems like Brendan Frazier his body a little bit it's a little bit uncanny it's pretty fucking impressive at moments I

[01:50:56] was asking myself did Frazier dub over his dialogue and then you realize like no it's Catan doing a straight man Frazier impression yeah like doing just his sort of most neutral state who's not a guy you could think to impersonate it is this is what I

[01:51:14] find fascinating about this performance I loved Catan on SNL at the time you loved Catan so you loved what Mango yeah all of that I mean what Mr. Peepers the whole bit right I'm like I'm two years younger than you so I'm watching him on like

[01:51:30] 9 well yeah so like Night at the Roxbury he's mostly doing like fucking physical Jerry Lewis like that shit is funny insane shit but I don't think of that as even him really it's just the two of them and I think I don't know for somebody those

[01:51:46] are funny those are funny he was like very much kind of the guy on SNL at that moment in time like I think there was a lot of excitement around him there's the whole monologue in nope that's about sort of like how much people just can't believe Catan

[01:52:04] the energy the fucking physical shitty Mr. Peepers eating the apple that kind of shit but he was one of those guys Seth Myers I saw some interview with him where he was talking about like why do you think some people succeed in SNL and don't succeed afterwards

[01:52:20] in their career and he was like Catan is an example for me of a guy who just like absolutely crushed it on that show but his skill set is so perfectly suited to that show that it's hard to transfer it to anything else and they do

[01:52:34] the Night at the Roxbury movie where he's possibly the straight man like Will Ferrell is the big dummy in that movie and Catan is kind of playing the normal romantic lead of the film I think he's kind of good in it I'm a Roxbury defender that movie's

[01:52:52] fun I mean whatever but Corky Romano is one of those movies where you're like you cannot build a movie around him you cannot do this his persona does not sustain for an hour and a half on its own you cannot have Manic Catan for this long

[01:53:06] Monkeybone feels like the perfect way to apply Chris Catan in a movie where you're like just give him 15 minutes and go as hard as he fucking can with his body He's a special effect right? And I think that that's what is I think his performance makes the rest

[01:53:22] of it harder to swallow because you see him using a skill set to the goal of comedy like this is someone who knows how to get a laugh and he's bringing that full force of that to getting a laugh the rest of it is

[01:53:36] other people using the full force of their talents but they don't know how to get to where they're going so it feels a little bit more desperate whereas he I think it's a very ego-less performance right? He's not trying to throw it on himself he's like

[01:53:52] I am the VFX known as Chris Catan and I'm going to bring all of that energy for the time I have been given. The most impressive thing to me is that in those moments where he's trying to appeal to Julie doing a Brendan Fraser

[01:54:08] impression, he plays it pretty fucking straight like he understands that Bridget Fonda is taking this movie way too seriously and after all his goofy running when he shows up to her face to face he has to speak to her like a real human being and he actually

[01:54:24] does for a couple of minutes make a pretty good go at being like a stand-in for a romantic leading man. He's got a better chemistry with Bridget Fonda than Brendan Fraser does! It's wild. Like Catan's coming in so hot in this movie that you're like but it's gonna

[01:54:40] fall apart when he has to make the emotional plea and then he nails the emotional plea. He's just, he's on fire in this thing. He is very good. Maybe it is that he's like almost like acting with three hands behind his back right? That maybe that's exactly

[01:54:56] how you unlock him. Yeah! I don't know or maybe it's just like you say that it's just the kind of like look you got ten minutes here Chris. The physical comedy too, he feels more like monkey bones energy. Yes. Like Brendan, I don't know it's like

[01:55:14] he's, I don't know there's just something about the over top nature of it that I'm like oh he actually is kind of selling this in a way that I'm like Ben's close to the truth that was revealed to me on watch number four.

[01:55:26] This movie should star Chris Kattan. With Chris Kattan as monkey bone. If you put Chris Kattan in the lead role, you got Chris Kattan as monkey bone, have John Toturo as the corpse, then you got a film going. This is my argument. Yeah cause once Kattan

[01:55:40] nails the Julie plea I'm like he could have done the whole thing. Look here's the thing. If Chris Kattan is in this movie instead of Brendan Fraser, the budget is probably half the size at most. Yes, that's good for it. Yes, our budget better for this

[01:55:56] movie. Yeah. Second thing I mean no disrespect to Brendan Fraser. I think we all basically think that guy can be really an incredible performer. Yeah, I do agree that yes, he's sort of it's no, it's too rude to call him the problem because that again acts like

[01:56:12] monkey bone is something where like ah just one extra sprocket here. You know, it's not but yes, there's a world where that movie makes more sense. Now, would it have made any American cash dollars at the multiplex? No, no, no. Yeah, but guess what? This

[01:56:30] version didn't either. No, of course not. Yeah, right, right. Kattan was a lot more heavily promoted than than Whoopi was. I mean Kattan was on a lot of the posters. Well, it's wild. The main poster was like Fraser with downtown behind him and all the creatures coming

[01:56:46] out as sort of like menagerie of just all the sellicky imagery and then they like pivot late and the poster becomes what is now the DVD cover of just Fraser, Fonda, Kattan and and like Kattan is sort of the thing they're trying to spotlight which I get it

[01:57:04] no monkey bone on the poster or I guess he's in the corner maybe but it makes it look like an SNL movie and I mean that it does bad way. I remember some interview with millennia million years ago. I'm just thinking about Katan now or millennia's

[01:57:18] like, you know people tell you. Oh, you know comedy. It's all about like, you know, you want to write to the biggest audience and he's like but then again the hottest character on SNL when I was a teenager was a male exotic dancer who tries to steal people's

[01:57:34] you know partners essentially like Mango is the strangest. It's like it's inspired by like Marlena Dietrich or whatever like it doesn't make any sense that that that was a big deal, but it was it was like the hottest thing. You can't have the mango right? I

[01:57:50] was misremembering this so what it was the poster was at one point. There's the original poster I described then there's like a foreign poster that's Fraser in monkey bone sort of like big lapel shiny jacket mode and then Rose McGowan and sexy kitty mode

[01:58:08] and monkey bone standing between them holding two bananas one in each hand like they're guns and then that was replaced for the DVD with Catan filling in so it's Fraser Fonda Catan above the title no Fonda on poster Catan holding himself up. That's

[01:58:26] the shit for me that just the opening Catan shunk of him waking up on the bed and figuring out how to move like taping himself together finding the big like ruler that he can tape to his neck to keep his head upright. That shit is unbelievable. So good

[01:58:48] fantastic. I'm just going to read the Wikipedia summary of the end of this film. I'm just going to read it out loud. I'm sorry. I'm sorry David, David, I'm sorry I'm sorry. I want you to do this but Justin just shared a file in the zoom. I need

[01:59:04] you to open it and describe what it is people love the segment David tries to describe a poster and this is a really good one. It's what no, this isn't real. This can't be real. What is this? It looks like the French cover. It's from cinematerial.com website

[01:59:26] this is yeah. Okay so it says Brendan Fraser Bridget Fonda whoopie Goldberg you know is that and then you've got the elephant creature the sort of ganache character right is that piano player who's being like sort of you know there's like multiple images of looks like they're in

[01:59:48] a kaleidoscope or whatever. There's like a yeah in a sort of nightmarish lynchian collage it looks very lost way. Yes behind Brendan Fraser who's entirely washed out very lynching in general like yeah and then it says monkey bone Bienvenue show tunes. So welcome to cartoon house. Yes yes

[02:00:16] film to Henry Selick. Yeah, it looks it looks like a lynch movie in this post. That's a very nice poster much better than whatever Rose McGowan and you know monkey bone like we should get that poster frame for our offices

[02:00:30] here. Yeah. No, we're not going to do that. Here's the here's the description of the final act of the film Stu makes it to the banquet while monkey bone is about to propose to Julie while her that's Dave Foley is exposed to the one

[02:00:44] eric's in the monkey bone doll and sees his clothes coming to life in a mirror causing him to strip naked and flee in panic Stu finally confesses his love. Of course when we say Stu we mean Chris Catan possessed. I do and regrets to Julie

[02:00:58] his love and regrets to Julie for never getting a chance to propose to her Stu manages to use monkey bones origin characteristics. What cause him to panic? What which culminates in the two of them battling one another on a giant monkey bone balloon

[02:01:10] which is shot down by a police officer causing the duo to fall from the sky back to downtown where the citizens cheer on Stu and monkey bones fight as they descend from the sky before being caught by a giant robot controlled by death monkey bone

[02:01:22] is then placed back in Stu's mind by death claiming it is where he belongs before she sends Stu back to his proper body what? But also he's a little vanilla without the monkey. She has to smush monkey bone back into his brain in there, right. Once Stu is

[02:01:36] back in his body he and Julie were night in Cherokees as the still infected herb emerges from a nearby fountain telling everyone to remove their clothes so you're welcome nothing is learned that is the important thing. That is a good point nothing is learned

[02:01:52] and you know what? It wasn't his fault no. Yeah it's his fault. Brandon Frazier doesn't make peace with this side of himself he doesn't like learn to accept it. The two don't connect. There's no relationship between him and his, you know, the ego and the

[02:02:06] id. It's a nut it is, I mean ham-fisted in the sense that death squishes them back together and says I don't know I thought we had a point but I guess we don't back to Earth with you. Go on. No, the plot

[02:02:18] of this movie is just like he gets in a car accident and some fucked up shit happens to him. That's it. There's no yeah, he didn't do anything wrong from Bridget Fonda's perspective, this is the film I realized this on watch 3

[02:02:32] she gets in a car with his boyfriend her boyfriend's in a coma she chocks him so full of nightmare juice that it makes him insane okay that's what happens from her perspective. She doesn't know about monkey bone in the body. It makes him into like

[02:02:46] a pickup artist. Right, she injects him so full of nightmare juice that it makes him insane later, a corpse comes to her and helps her realize later, a corpse comes to her which she didn't put any nightmare juice into so that's kind of confusing to her

[02:03:00] and then she falls in love with the corpse but luckily the corpse fights her old boyfriend hanging from ropes tossing organs at each other. They both die and that fixes the everything. That fixes everything that's her movie. That's her journey. My

[02:03:18] wife said as she watched 30 seconds of it between her fingers like does the character have any does Julie McElroy have any characteristics? Like no she can't have a character because think about the absolutely insane experience that she's been having like this has been a

[02:03:32] really weird few months for her. Whoever she was before this, she's never going to be that person again. Yeah, that person is gone. There is no more. That Dr. McElroy is behind her. Man monkey bone my man. Monkey bone. Monkey bone was released on February 23rd 2001. It grossed 2.6

[02:03:50] million dollars domestically on its opening weekend and then it legged that out to 5.4 million total so really you know they really got less than a black hat less than a black hat. I don't think it even had a two multiplier with its $2 million opening

[02:04:10] No, maybe I think it may be just like that past 2x multiplier It's one of Hollywood's most notorious flops of the 21st century Fox apparently only ran a single print advertisement for the film during the week before its opening so basically

[02:04:28] yes as you said Griffin it was like October, Thanksgiving, Christmas Martin Luther King Day and then eventually they were like I don't fucking know just drop it. I guess they did run ads for it on comedy on Cartoon Network because apparently parents

[02:04:44] complaining about the ads that they were running on Cartoon Network is what led them to create Adult Swim. They could have an evening block that's what I've read online but I don't know how reliable the IMDb trivia page is. That is wild I did hear that

[02:05:02] Is this the biggest bomb you guys have ever covered? Bomb is such a relative term but in terms of gross for a major studio movie is anything lower? Hmm It's up there. That's why we always cite Black Hat because Black Hat's like $90 million budget

[02:05:20] $7 million gross but this is This is close to that but yeah that's a good question you know what fans figure it out. I'm sure there's a few that are kind of in that realm Be a good reddit Fred A.O. Scott called it the best comedy

[02:05:36] of 2001 although he was pointing out that the year was only 8 weeks old and the comedy competition was Head Over Heels and Saving Silverman but he still kind of liked it Better to say that it's a welcome antidote to the epidemic of witless, frenetic, second-hand

[02:05:52] low comedies that gnaw at our brains like antibody resistant what is this word? Spirachettes? Antibody Spirachettes If you feel numbed and dumbed by the onslaught of overblown scattershot mediocrities like Saving Silverman and Scary Movie, think of Monkey Bone as a homeopathic cure coherence is not amongst its

[02:06:14] virtues but its overstuffed look and lurching rhythm result from an effort by Mr. Selick and the screenwriter Sam Ham to make room for too many good ideas rather than struggling to compensate as is too often the case for having none at all It's quite a review Fair

[02:06:32] It's a fun review This is another incredible line Imagine if Louis Bonnewell had returned from the grave and hooked up with the Fairley brothers with access to $50 million worth of foam rubber and modeling clay That is describing the vibe of Monkey Bone in a way

[02:06:52] I'm not sure it describes what would happen if that happened But I like the thinking Mostly bad reviews, no money We played the box office game, I think we should Yes Ben wants out, okay It opened outside of the top 10 I'm sorry to say, it opened at number 11

[02:07:14] Insane, in February In February No competition It really didn't, the only other film There's only one new movie this week and we're gonna talk about it and it's a famous bomb Number one at the box office, Griffin, is a horror sequel It's a massive hit

[02:07:34] It's in its third week, it's made $128 million It's Hannibal? It's Ridley Scott's Hannibal Mm-hmm Which was a surprising Release less than a year after Gladiator A truly insane achievement Yeah, he hasn't even won his best picture yet Exactly It came out and it made a ton of money

[02:07:58] Right, because Silence of the Lambs It was released in January, it's like at this point in time no one's releasing big movies in February That was odd to release it then It was and yet it opened three weeks ago to $58 million

[02:08:12] in 2001, that would be a healthy opening now Yes So Hannibal crushing competition at number one It will be knocked off its perch next week by Gore Verbinski's The Mexican Mm Good movie The next movie we have in the box office is a comedy remake Comedy remake 2001 February

[02:08:36] This is not the new release This has been out for a little bit already It's been out for two weeks This is its second week, it's made $33 million on its way to $64 Hint This film was directed by a frequent guest of the well-known but little liked

[02:08:54] film podcast Blank Check Griffin and David This is the well-described This is a movie that I believe I saw two times in theaters I've somehow never talked about this with Chris but I was a very big fan of Chris Rock's Down to Earth

[02:09:12] This is a fun movie, it is Chris Rock's Down to Earth Yes A remake of Heaven Can Wait Chris Rock is a movie star Give him some movies I've seen a lot of Fargo It's great I never saw that season of Fargo It's good

[02:09:32] I've been watching a lot of Fargo I would have finished Fargo by now David had I not watched Monkeybone seven times Did you finish and Andor? I didn't watch Andor, I watched Monkeybone seven times It's a shame you have to watch it three more times

[02:09:44] after this episode ends too Why did you guys tell me I had to What's clear is that we did Griff just sent a bunch of Monkeybone toys that were actually produced but when we finish the box office game I just want to call them out quickly Okay, fine

[02:09:58] Number three at the box office is a new release this week It is a famous flop A Razzie winner or at least not a winner Just a nominee, nominated for five Razzies Big star vehicle for a major star who's maybe in a little trouble around now Is this

[02:10:16] Get Carter? No, that is a good guess though Okay This is not a Stallone picture This is a serious A-list star Oscar winner Um It's not Costner It is Kevin Costner Huh, huh Okay, 2001 Costner flop, it's not Message in a Bottle No It's not Dragonfly, I think that's 2002

[02:10:44] It might be It's 2001 500 miles to Graceland Well you better add another 2500 miles my friend because it was 3000 miles to Graceland Wow Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell They're Elvis impersonators who rob someone in Vegas or something? Correct Elvis convention David Arquette and Courtney Cox Arquette Correct

[02:11:12] Christian Slater, Kevin Pollack, I've never seen it No There's no way it's as good as it sounds because it sounds good It does sound good It does sound like a fun idea I also believe it's like a first time director who then never directed a movie ever again

[02:11:28] It's someone with like not a Wikipedia page Yes That's how anonymous the writer and director is Uh Okay, number four at the box office Griffin is a cartoon Huh, is it a Disney? Yes, but it's an adaptation of a TV show Right, is it uh Recess Schools Out?

[02:11:48] That's right That is the correct title, right? Yes, you nailed it Great, thank you Recess Schools Out, what do you think the final total on Recess Schools Out was? I'm gonna guess three monkey bones Uh, it did way better than three monkey bones Five monkey bones? $36 million dollars

[02:12:08] So that's like, you know, fuckin' six and a half monkey bones or something Seven! Uh, yeah, never seen it Griff, did you care about that? I don't know what that is I remember if it was still in the movie it was kind of overblown

[02:12:20] but the series is good I feel like our buddy Alan Seppenwald is a big defender of recess Okay, fair enough Good show Sure, number five at the box office in its 12th week Uh, is a pure golden liquid masterpiece We have covered it on this podcast

[02:12:40] It is one of the most incredible achievements in modern cinema It is, uh, uh, hmmm It's an action film It's an action film It's a period action film that came out when? How long has it been in theaters you said? It came out in December 2000

[02:12:56] Okay, so it's a 2000 holdover It's liquid cinema That's right, it is on its way to $128 million dollars It's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon The film is called Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Good movie And one of the wildest box office runs Yes, exactly

[02:13:16] I had to drive to Columbus to see that movie I had to drive three hours away from my house It wasn't showing anywhere in Huntington Wow, that rules That rules though Was it worth it? Absolutely They had big chairs Movies should be more difficult to see

[02:13:32] This is my new stand Just since like, didn't remember the film but these chairs Oh my god, let me tell you Drive, good chairs Some other films in the top 10 Steven Soderbergh's Traffic So Soderbergh jumps off the Selec train And gets onto a bit of a

[02:13:48] A bit more of a high speed train The winning Oscars train Sweet November Now that I always confused with the other one Autumn in New York Two movies about romance Ending in death Sweet November is Keanu Shirley's And Autumn in New York is Gear Winona That's right

[02:14:08] You nailed it on both Never seen Sweet November Probably one of the rare Keanu's I've never seen Yeah Number 8, Chocolat You will believe that a town eats chocolate I don't know One of the craziest movies ever made A nice lady moves to a French town And makes chocolate

[02:14:30] And they act like she has brought drugs To their streets They're like, you can't have chocolate here Their fucking mind Alfred Molina makes his Performance from the previous year As literal snidely whiplash Look muted and sensitive Yes, a crazy Molina performance As the town's chocolate-hating Mayor or Burgermeister

[02:14:52] It's Flesh and it's with chocolate It is an insane movie It was nominated for Best Picture Number 9 at the box office McConaughey and Lopez Bad movie, I hate to say it I love those two but it's not a good movie Number 10, Cast Away Just kick an ass

[02:15:10] And then behind all of that Is Monkeybone Wow Bring up the rear Bring it up that big old rear Uh yeah Bring up that loose The loose caboose on that train Is Monkeybone It's incredibly loose I mean, you say you've seen everything in theaters

[02:15:32] And like it's like, alright well let's do this week You have to choose between 3000 Miles to Graceland And Monkeybone Those are your picks There's nothing else Yeah look and this is still that period where you're like You got three Best Picture nominees In the top 10 In February

[02:15:50] Like these movies would linger Seeing this in a theater would have been too much I feel like It would have started to get pretty upsetting If you didn't have like an outside To look out every once in a while to the ground yourself

[02:16:02] I don't know, I think it chilled me out I think as David said It quieted the alarm clocks Yeah exactly Yeah that's what I've been thinking about What we just watched That's what's been on my mind I sent you guys

[02:16:18] The one line of Monkeybone toys that actually made it These are not Bobbleheads although they look like it They are bobbleheady They have the proportions They're sort of Funko Pops But they're realistically sculpted They're not stylized other than Their heads being

[02:16:36] The same size as the rest of their body Taking up 50% of their height And they're like small They're like 2 or 3 inches But the line is of course Stu Miley, gotta include him Monkeybone, Hypnos of course Miss Kitty, why not The other two characters they included

[02:16:54] Which shows I think what we were talking about That they hope this would have like Nightmare-esque every background character Is interesting potential There's of course BBQ Pig Who is the pig who yells at Stu Trying to get him to buy A pig to eat

[02:17:10] I wanna get that toy for Ben, the pig BBQ Pig? Yeah I mean I do like the pig And then Betty Bovine is Like a cow who tries to fuck him For a second, right? I believe so, yes

[02:17:24] Basically like flirts with him when he first walks into downtown So I'm gonna buy this First walks in there's the wolf That wants to help him with his luggage Yes You're buying a BBQ Pig for Ben The likeness of Brendan Fraser In this by the way

[02:17:42] They have his picture on the box But the likeness looks like Crispin Glover having an allergic reaction Absolutely That is a wild toy It is awful I wanted to say that, it's just straight up awful I got the Fraser and Hypnos and Monkeybone

[02:17:56] I ordered them off of Ebay I felt the need You did, you just did, you did that already I did that already, I got it, they've arrived Okay well I don't like that But I understand I look forward to Bringing them over to our office soon

[02:18:12] They will sit proudly on my desk God I like the reaction there You don't need it, that's true Anyone who needs those What's going on Well I need them There's no world Oh yeah you do need that Justin I don't even hate this movie

[02:18:34] I don't hate this movie I think it's kind of fun and interesting Yeah But I also, I can't defend it And I would never tell anyone to watch I would tell everyone to watch it I wouldn't say watch it in a

[02:18:48] So bad it's good kind of a gog way I just think it is A unique thing It is a unique object It is, I will say though I think we have a skewed perspective I've thought about this, I think we have a skewed perspective

[02:19:02] Because it is a very exciting movie To watch and generate Ideas to talk about There's a lot that you'll want to go out and share You'll watch this movie and want to talk about it Don't watch it alone

[02:19:14] That's what I was saying, you're going to have a lot of bottled up Monkeybone thoughts to get out in the world It should be a social activity You know we're all trying to reconnect Get offline And engage with other people in the real world

[02:19:26] Find a thing to do And maybe the thing to do is pop open Your DVD case of Monkeybone Stick your finger in his butthole And watch that baby play Justin As the man who has watched Monkeybone Seven times in the span of

[02:19:42] What amount of time are we looking at here Since the first play? It's been a couple months right? Whenever you guys ask me Are there any final thoughts Any stray realizations that hit you On any of the repeat viewings That you want to throw in here

[02:19:58] I feel like I've covered so much I got Harry Knowles, I got the pizza delivery guy from Alone Harry Knowles, non-speaking cameo but a lot of screen time Megan Mullally Is in there I'm not giving her all No it's The odds against this movie existing are so high

[02:20:14] That is what I feel like I'm shocked that it exists In the state that it is in It is well worth watching Don't watch it seven times I feel a little bit of sadness This is a chapter in my life I'm never going to watch this movie again

[02:20:32] I'll say I'm a little worried that having watched it so many times Of my personal brand That's terrifying to me I don't want to get t-shirts in the mail You're self-identified as such It's fine It's a very interesting movie I'm happy to have watched it

[02:20:50] But I'm putting that part of my life away now There's no more Monkeybone for me I'm ready to talk about our next film What's up next How did someone let this guy make a movie again It took a long time He went to jail

[02:21:06] A very bizarre set of circumstances I just want to read one other part of our text conversation You text Two days ago Justin Everybody should see Monkeybone It's so unlikely that Monkeybone exists Why hasn't everybody watched Monkeybone I said that's our job with this episode

[02:21:24] To make the world know David says to ask this question And then David, you, this morning Clearly having just watched it I text man Dot dot dot monkeybone Rare that something lives up to the expectation Of being insane Justin says Monkeybone delivers All caps

[02:21:44] I'm treating myself to watch number six This morning David says number six Justin says like a fine wine You really appreciate it after six of them David says or alternate theory You're drunk Yeah, I did a double header today I had six and seven Both today

[02:22:04] You watched it twice today I watched it when I was talking to you guys And I felt like I missed some stuff So I went back and gave it another watch I think you're probably seeing things at this point Yeah, yeah, yeah Seeing a lot of great jokes

[02:22:18] Is what I'm seeing You understand you're not really making the case For us ever inviting you on To talk about a canonically beloved movie But that's fine You got a lot of people for that Get your Alex Ross Perry here Get your good guess in here for that

[02:22:34] But you may need me Put me back up on a shelf You know what this isn't going to be the longest BlankChop episode But I bet it's the longest one that could have been made about Monkeybone I'll say that

[02:22:44] A lot of other people would have talked about Monkeybone this long This has to be the longest podcast ever devoted to Monkeybone Right Ben just walked out of the room And I appreciate That energy right now I'm with him and I understand him

[02:22:58] Buy the man a barbecue pig Yes Justin, thank you so much for coming back on Thank you for taking the assignment seriously Thanks for having me Come back soon Justin, you're the best Gentlemen and scholar, Monkeybone of course Is an inextricable part of your personality now

[02:23:14] Do you want to plug any of your 18 podcasts? When is this going live? Uh, pretty soon December 15th, is that right? Oh perfect, we're doing uh Candle Nights is our live Streaming show That you can watch, all the money goes to charity And uh

[02:23:32] It has lots of great guests Uh, I know Connor This goes up December 11th Perfect, uh yeah December 17th Perfect It's on VOD for a couple weeks afterwards If you go to bit.ly For it's like Candle Nights 2022 It's just a big holiday special

[02:23:50] With lots of guests and fun skits It's got skits The tickets are $5 and you can get more And all the money goes to charity So uh, check it totally out Let's also say, cause this happened in between Uh, the last time You were on the show and now

[02:24:06] When we did our first George Lucas talk show Live stream at like chaos point In the pandemic trying to raise money for the Former UCB staff Who were out of jobs when the theater shut down And we were like struggling To make it to our Uh, goal

[02:24:22] You swooped in at the last second like Han Solo And the Millennium Falcon And made a very very generous Donation that went a really long way And more importantly Allowed us to stop the live stream Which we could not end until we hit that number

[02:24:36] Yeah it was an act of mercy And I mean, we had been away for 36 hours at that point You don't even need to say anything cause you thanked me In the most profound way you could By getting me to watch and talk about Monkeybone Mmm yeah

[02:24:48] I will say this Cause we've had this problem in the past I don't need to say it Uh, listeners will fill in With whatever answer they want But there are times in the past That a guest has picked a movie We get to the record

[02:25:04] And we find out the guest hates the movie Yeah And we're either surprised, taken aback by the fact I'll throw a director at him And they'll be like, this movie please And we just assume And I'm like, oh you must love it

[02:25:18] You answered so quickly and so passionately And then we find out Either they had never seen the movie before Or saw it and disliked it And that was never expressed to us And we get on the episode And the person just wants to bag on the movie

[02:25:32] And it can be a rough go sometimes So we said, Justin It feels like Monkeybone would be a good fit But the one thing I beg of you I know this is a big ask Can you please just watch Monkeybone Far out in advance

[02:25:46] Of when we do the episode To just make sure that you like it And you multiplied that by seven Well I wanted Or make sure that you have anything productive Or positive to say about it, you don't have to like it

[02:25:58] I wanted to make sure that I liked I thought that I could make myself like And I wasn't wrong I developed an affinity for it by watching it enough times That it started to feel comforting So that worked, my plan worked Okay, my plan worked

[02:26:12] Monkeybone is like a Pavlovian thing for you now Yeah I mean not in the sense that I'll ever watch it again But like, yeah You do watch it again, text us Oh absolutely I'll text you before, during and after Okay good, good, good Thank you Justin

[02:26:30] And thank you all for listening Please remember to rate, review and subscribe Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media And helping to produce this show Thank you to Joe Bone and Pat Rounds For our artwork Truly, truly cursed Selick artwork

[02:26:44] At the time we recorded the other Selick episodes Bowen's, uh, Pat Reynolds' artwork Had not come in And every time Pat sends us New mini-series artwork There's an email that's like, I don't know guys I really struggled with this one, I don't know if this is good enough

[02:26:58] No hard feelings if you tell me That I need to start over from scratch And then I feel like my first response Is almost always, Jesus Pat And he says, that bad? No, we're using it obviously But, uh, incredible job on that Uh, Agent McKeon

[02:27:14] Alex Barron for our editing Layne Montgomery, The Great American Novel For our theme song, JJ Birch For our research, Monkeybone does not feel like the easiest film to research And he went very deep on this one As he said, he could find no

[02:27:26] Cast interviews from the time this movie was coming out They did not let anyone talk about This movie when it was coming out Uh, you can go to BlankCheckPod.com For, uh Links to some real nerdy shit Including our Patreon, BlankCheck Special Features Where we go through franchises

[02:27:42] We're doing the National Treasure movies in December And of course, Talkin' the Walk With our buddy, our mutual friend, J.D. Amato Tune in Next week for Avatar The Way of Water Monkeybone of course, the prelude to Woo! Avatar The Way of Water

[02:28:00] I see it in two days I'm so fuckin' jealous But Ben and I have already bought our tickets To see it high frame rate 3D It's gonna rip And as always Julie's got a loose compose