Oh, God. Oh, my God.
This is just so I could choose my options.
We wanted to give you all the flavor choices.
What if I wanted a suicide?
Oh, you could do on a pint glass.
That sounds awesome.
Yeah, I mean, I don't give a fuck.
Yeah, OK.
I mean, we'll finish them all at some point, anyways.
Absolutely.
Or I'll just have like four suicides.
You can only do the math.
You can only do one suicide as far as I know.
That's not how I've been working it.
Yeah, fuck it. I'll do it.
That's a weird place to join the conversation.
We'll do that. And then we'll start talking about his painless.
OK, brings on many changes.
We're going to have a good.
And leave it if.
Oh, shit, you're doing all four.
That's a suicide, baby.
I didn't do all the flavors.
I mean, I kind of want to.
I don't want to go upstairs again.
Sucker.
You missed your chance.
You didn't understand what a suicide was.
Did you have a childhood?
Oh, I thought we were just talking about killing ourselves for for our glorious God.
Like a regular childhood.
Did you guys did you notice that in matchstick men it was the oh, God?
Yeah.
Oh, God.
That's where that's.
Did you know where that was from?
No.
I think honestly, my favorite quotes from Nick Cage and matchstick
man is just going to end up being him being like, oh, oh.
You know what my favorite quote was?
Welcome back to cage matchup roundabout way of meeting Nicholas Cage.
Yeah, I'm just going to make it weirder from now on.
Deal with it, Nick.
Do it backwards next time.
You're not not Colin.
Nice. I'm your host, Sean, here with my co-host.
I'm Nick and our producer.
Hello, I'm Peter.
Which episode is this?
This is episode 30.
Oh, yeah.
We're almost done with round one.
There are bracket style Nicholas Cage,
where we're going to find out what the most cagey is.
Nick Cage film is as decided by us.
Some idiots in a basement.
I don't get a lot of you put all four flavors in one cup.
That's pretty good.
You know what I'm most excited for for this conversation?
Where that gets edited in.
I'm going to leave it right there.
That seems perfect.
About what what else gets edited in around it?
Well, you could talk about how sticky my end of the table is going to be.
I mean, everything is sticky at this point.
I spilled lime sparkle buddy all over everything already.
So excellent.
I'm glad I showered right before coming here.
Yeah, there it is.
Me too. Oh, it's everywhere.
Yeah, it's hot out.
We're in the basement.
It's cooler here, but it's still not great.
I don't know. This is actually pretty nice.
This is very, very acceptable.
I mean, we're going to hot mouth this thing for a little bit.
Yeah. It'll be a different story.
It's a good thing we all decided to take our pants off.
Well, yeah, that is tradition.
The real trick is never wear pants.
I mean, this is how you know this is how you have a comfortable conversation
with a group of guys in a basement.
This week, we're in our comedy category discussing comedy
in quotes, discussing matchstick men versus guarding tests.
Anyway, so guarding tests.
Let me take that again.
Guarding tests, guarding tests, guarding tests,
good in this.
Oh, I like that.
I watched a lot of Telemundo as a kid.
You can tell because of how Japanese that accent sounds.
I didn't watch TV. I don't know what people are.
This is going to be one of those episodes.
Yeah, we're nailing it so far.
So guarding tests are a Nicholas Cage as Secret Service agent
Doug Chesnick and Shirley MacLean is former First Lady Tess Carlisle.
And yeah, huge pain in the ass.
Former First Lady, huge pain in the ass.
Yeah. So the whole premise of this film is Nicholas Cage is
Secret Service security for former first lady.
He's done his three year stint.
He's going to go back to Washington.
He wants to guard the president, but she wants him back.
Not because she likes him or anything, just because she's kind of a bitch.
But then maybe she likes him.
But then she doesn't. But then maybe she does.
Well, Tess is a lot like an ogre,
which is to say she's like an onion, which is to say she has layers.
And those layers are revealed to us over the course of 90 minutes with no lead in.
I feel about as strongly about this movie as I do.
Kind of anything.
It's just I don't know.
This movie, it's such a movie of 1994.
Yeah. Like, let's talk about that.
It's like 1994.
It's times are a little bit slower.
Comedy movies, action movies like they just have a different pace.
It's like a Greek tragedy.
It's just you watch it and you hate it,
but you have to understand its historical relevance.
Did you guys? That's actually a really good way of putting it.
Did you guys look at that?
Fuck you. I've been drinking the director and writer Hugh Wilson.
Did you see what is one other big hit was blast from the past?
Brendan Fraser. Oh, the Bumble Boy. Yeah.
Yeah. I never watched that movie. I should watch it.
Yeah. I'll give this guy 100% of my support.
Gardening tests and blast from the past.
There you go. Full coverage. Yep.
This movie's fine.
Yeah. It was definitely the weirdest romantic comedy I've watched this week.
That you know what?
The same can be said for both of these films.
Yeah, that is true. I don't like that.
Well, we're going to get into that.
Yeah. So Nick Cage comes in.
He is, as you said, the Secret Service agent covering test Carlisle.
Her husband passed away.
So it's just her.
She's kind of become a recluse and it's become the dead end position
for a lot of Secret Service agents like nobody wants this job.
She's super difficult.
Everyone else seems to be fine with the job because it's easy.
And Nick Cage's character, Doug, he wants to be in the action.
Well, yeah, I mean, like he used to guard her husband, the president.
And now he feels like he's just getting shelved.
And she doesn't ever really give him respect,
you know, up until, you know, the beginning of this movie.
She's just difficult.
And it makes it hard for somebody who, like, really wants to
make a career out of his life.
They kind of have some backs and forth.
So they argue he quits a couple of times.
She manages to unquit him against his will numerous times.
I can't quit you, Bob.
Yeah. Through phone conversations with the president.
And that's yeah, those are like some of the best comedy moments that I read.
The president, Frederick or Frederick, the the nurse, the dietitian.
He's the nurse. He's the living nurse.
Gotcha. The hospice nurse or whatever.
I liked him. Yeah, he was good, too.
He was a Vernon from Harry Potter series.
The oh, yeah, she was uncle. Yeah.
And the president was voiced by the director of this film, Hugh Wilson,
Hugh Wilson, which is not Rainn Wilson now.
Or Luke Wilson. So I'm just going to.
Or Owen Wilson.
There we go. We got all the Wilsons.
Wow. Brian Wilson.
So for this film, I'm just going to say up front,
there's not really a way to discuss the plot of this film
in any roundabout way where we're just not going to spoil it.
This movie's not got a lot going for it.
It's a random series of events.
They hate each other.
They suddenly don't hate each other anymore because of whiskey, because of whiskey.
Yeah, they kind of rebuild their relationship and she, you know,
she actually starts to give a little she compromises.
She opens up and kind of lets him into her world.
So the crux of their relationship,
as it's kind of described in the film is he's leaving.
It is three years stint.
She wants him to sign off for three more years.
She has an operable brain cancer.
Allegedly. Allegedly.
It doesn't. It's not really a plot point is my kind of issue with it.
Like, is this a film about an old lady who feels isolated
and it has a hard time making friends and wants to have this connection
with someone she deeply cares for, which doesn't seem to be the case until it is.
Like, there's no build to them like having camaraderie.
He quits and then gets yelled at by the president.
To come back. She doesn't want him back.
And then suddenly they're drinking buddies.
Tess Carlisle, the character, is somebody who definitely like
holds a lot of things to themselves.
You see her connection to Nick Cage only through old movie,
like film from like her president or her husband's days as president
when he was guarding him.
And really you see the connection at the footage from the funeral
from the president where Nick Cage is visibly upset about the death of the president.
And he died from a heart attack.
It wasn't anything like Nick Cage's fault or anything.
And she's keeping him around because emotionally he cared about the president
as much as she did.
So they have that common bond.
See, this is why you keep me here for sensitive stuff.
OK, here's the thing, because I had another read on that,
because when they finally go and have their.
Finger on something.
When they finally go to have their drinks, their whiskey, she just straight up
asks them, were you aware of my husband's infidelity?
I'm like, oh, she just mad at him.
No, no, no.
I mean, I, I, I see your reading of it.
And I agree with you, but like I don't feel like the relationship
necessarily builds, but no, I, I miss that.
So thank you.
I mean, I'm, I'm seeing more subtext like this doesn't, it doesn't give you a lot
to like grab on to for these relationships, even like the brain tumor thing, like
that comes out in a moment where Nick Cage is pressuring her about something.
She just comes out with like, I've got an inoperable brain tumor.
And then she goes on to say two more things and she says, one of these things is true.
Yeah. Which one is it?
I bought all of your crew Scud missiles and we're going to go to the opera.
Yeah. And then they did go to the opera.
Was that things were true?
Was that just because that's what Nick Cage thought was the truth or was it
because she's dying and she's actually trying to get out and enjoy a little bit
of her life?
Peter and I kind of discussed this is just like that in and of itself
is a really interesting movie.
Person is dying and is trying to make a connection with the one
constant person in their life.
That's a cool movie.
And the one person who they feel had like a good connection with their husband.
That too, which deepens the connection.
Yeah.
The third act kidnapping twist kind of comes out of nowhere and makes his way
and makes us a very different film all of a sudden.
Yeah. They started to build it up earlier because Tess is so prone to like
these acts of rebellion.
She do a runner.
Yeah. She just like does things despite her secret service, because
whether she wants them there or not, I don't know.
Yeah. But I don't think there's anything that's like
necessarily out of place in this movie or pushing into like unnecessary.
I would challenge you to cut 10.
Yeah. Without like I could cutting anything.
I can actually give you that.
I think the presidential visit that gets canceled is about 10 minutes of content
and it doesn't really serve anything.
It shows like kind of how neglected she is, like and why she has the attitude
she does towards Washington because she calls it a dying city.
She talks about how no good like is where careers go to die.
Look at her. She's been completely discarded.
Her husband was the president of the U.S.
and he's died and now she's just like this puppet piece that they like to put out there.
The president was going to come and be a part of this dedication of a library
or a charitable wing or something.
And it just falls through.
And at the last minute, who do they get?
They get like a commerce chairman or secretary of transportation or whatever.
It's like, I think ultimately I would have.
Although Pete Buttigieg showed up to my thing, I'd be pretty cool.
Yeah, that would be cool. Yeah.
I mean, ultimately for me, I just I would have liked a little tighter
focused narrative on their relationship because I think those are the main beats
that they don't really build to each other.
The threads pretty kind of thin. Yeah.
And I mean, where I would cut is the visit from her son,
which is about five minutes of could call her son, like just coming to like
get her to invest in his shitty property and a property deal.
And she just says no. And then later during their conversation, she was like,
I'm not close to my kids.
And what her son showing up as a one off scene didn't doesn't.
I mean, it ties to Nick's point about like her loneliness and absolute.
Yeah, just insolent like the disenfranchisement of the elderly.
But then they talk about it later.
I mean, and then they pork. Yeah.
Again, we're going to talk about that.
Mastic man. Yeah.
What do you guys think of Shirley McLean's performance in this?
She was good. She was annoying as fuck, which I guess is good.
I mean, that's what she was going for. She irritated me.
Yeah. I mean, she's I think she's supposed to.
But as soon as like she warms up, she is quite likable.
Yeah. She plays a salty old bitty pretty well.
Yeah. I heard the term bitty forever.
I saw that like and as soon as they have their one on one, like,
I mean, that's where the turn is where she becomes really likable and kind of funny.
Yeah, there's no bill to it.
She's like, we're drinking buddies now.
The next day she comes out of her room and she's kind of like,
oh, everyone must be friends.
Yeah. Her general demeanor towards the rest of the staff
is strangely tied to how her relationship with Doug Chesnick goes.
Yeah. But and that's kind of weird.
I can understand like her and Frederick getting well her in the house staff.
It really is Doug Chesnick, Secret Service detail of like seven people
who you probably see two of at any given time.
The driver, the.
Who's part of the kidnappers. Yeah, the driver, the kid
kitchen staff, the cook, the nurse and her secretary.
I don't think we ever see her interact with the kitchen staff.
She comes down in one scene. I mean, it's very, very.
No, yeah, she just rolls through.
But like in terms of acting, they don't see we we don't see her interact with anyone.
But the driver and her yelling at her nurse to like putt.
But the rest of them are just. Oh, no, that was her secretary.
Secretary, but you can assume that because of her relationship with her secretary,
when the secretary comes up to Doug Chesnick later and she's like, hey,
she gave me a job when nobody else would.
It's like she is a big, big hearted lady.
Yeah. You know, she's just tough to get close to.
And now she's just tougher because like her husband's gone.
Yeah. No, I get it. I want nuance. Sure.
I mean, this this movie does lack some of the finer touches.
It could have been executed a little smoother.
The relationships are kind of I fill in a lot myself.
Yeah, there's a line, I think, in the sand between how much like relationship
talk you can have before a movie moves from being a romantic comedy
to just like a drama.
I think what I wanted is a little more.
It wasn't a romantic comedy. I want it.
It should have been totally by the way.
It should have been totally bowed down at the end.
Did you not see the after credit?
Sure. The wheelchair after credit. Yeah.
Oh, boy. Nick Cage is in the wheelchair.
She's like, put those brakes on.
You're not going nowhere.
I was I was wondering where the jokes were. OK, cool.
Well, that's right.
Speaking of his performance and geriatric sex.
Yeah. What do you guys think of him as Chesnick?
It's fine. Yeah, it's fine.
It's not a breakout role, obviously.
It was 94, 10 years after like his start.
Like every performance in this film is very serviceable.
If I'm thinking about it, it slots in really well with the like the roles
he was getting at that time because we're pre 97.
So he's not an action. He's not like a big A-list star yet.
Hasn't won his Oscar.
We're just kind of like a few years past like Birdie
and some of his art. He sue. Yeah.
His art stuff.
Yeah, like with Peggy Sue and probably it could happen to you.
It could happen to you.
He's like right in that kind of like romantic lead.
Right where he's like a little more restrained, but not totally.
They still want some of his wild card.
Wackiness. Yeah.
Wacky. Yeah.
He really doesn't have a big unhinged aspect on this one.
No, I mean, he plays exasperated really well.
Yeah, he's definitely like too old for this shit.
But as far as like a Nicholas Cage performance,
I don't think we have anything that like really screams like wild.
No. Like I don't think it's a personal role for him.
I agree with that.
And I think what's telling is that not a lot stood out in terms of quotable content.
Right. No, this like his portion of the script does not hold a whole lot.
I struggled to find anything.
I did find one just to have something ready.
And it's when Tess is now suddenly happy and a pleasant person to be around.
And they go grocery shopping because she's going to like have a dinner
before the president cancels.
And Doug is there with the store manager and he's communicating back and forth
with another Secret Service agent who's with Tess.
And Tess wants to know how much the price of peas are.
So they have a back and forth.
And it's what like 59 cents for like two for one.
And she's like, what if I want one?
And he just responds back with Bobby.
It's two for it's a two for one thing.
So I suggest you just go ahead and get both.
Yeah. Like that's his one comedy line in this movie.
Yeah, there really isn't a lot like in the end.
Like he kind of gets with the doctor when she's leaving the hospital
and the doctor is like, you have to leave like it's hospital protocol.
You have to leave in a wheelchair.
And Nick Cage is just like is showing his personal growth,
being like, are the rules that sacred?
And then he turns to Tess and he's just like
getting the goddamn wheelchair.
And that's growth on both sides.
Like he's allowing.
Yeah, he's compromising on the rules, but he's also like
making this relationship where they can be this kind of candid together,
which is kind of like that, you know, the the apex of their story.
Yeah. Well, I mean, maybe him saving her from being buried alive
is the apex of their story. Not that important.
Yeah. Like she would have been all right.
Give her the cancer story or give her the kidnapping story.
It didn't mean both. Yeah, that's true.
I mean, you needed some kind of inciting incident to make her
want to change.
And the cancer or tumor
is kind of like what makes her want to.
It's what changes her day to day life. Yeah.
If this movie was only about the kidnapping,
you could jump 60 minutes into the movie and just watch an episode.
Well, then just have the relationship after the kidnapping,
have the kidnapping be the second bit, have the relationship grill after that.
I'm just saying there's a way to clean this up where it's more focused on
their relationship, which is ultimately what I think this movie's supposed to be about.
You write me a 90 page screenplay that I will.
It'll be for the patrons. Yeah, I will.
We'll do a we'll do a table read.
Oh, oh, my God. It'll be you, me, Peter.
And well, we've got to get Marissa. Oh, yeah.
And she can go. She could be Tess.
I was going to say, I had her be Frederick.
Thank you, Frederick. Yeah.
This sounds like a fun experiment.
There's a podcast I like to listen to every once in a while with this guy,
Kyle. Yeah, let's plug other podcasts on our podcast.
There's nothing wrong with that.
It's cross podcasting and it's called Never Seen It.
And they better thank us for those seven extra views.
They're going to love this uptick.
But then they're going to realize they are Rico's listening to them.
And they're not going to like.
So they take a lot of you, Rico.
Random comedians and people come on.
Don't touch. They will have not seen a movie
and then will have written a spec script based on what they think the movie's about.
And then they perform it live on mic.
And it's usually pretty fucking funny.
That's good. This is a good concept.
This is similar, not dissimilar to my idea of a cold open. True.
Guarding Tess on the good cage, bad cage, good movie, bad movie,
good, bad, bad, good, bad, bad, good, good, bad, good.
Where do we put this one?
I think this is just a flat line, medium performance, no standout.
I don't know that he was given an inch on this one.
The movie's fine.
I mean, it's good enough. I'm glad I watched it.
Yeah, cinematically, I'm glad I saw it.
It's very 1994, as you pointed out. Yeah.
I mean, yeah, didn't really think about it in that respect.
And when you said like, this is just what comedies were like at the time.
And what? You know what? You're right.
They were simpler times.
Yeah, it is the pre-Ranchi comedy.
It is weird, though.
You think about the pacing difference between a movie from the mid 90s
versus what we get now, like ours are so frenetic.
Fast pace, two hours. I'm struggling.
Someone would have fucked that old lady.
The last comedy I went to was like completely excluding all comic book movies.
I mean, for me, it would be Barbie.
Sure. Yeah.
Yeah, I haven't been out in a couple of weeks.
So how about we talk about Mastiff Man? Sure.
So 2000. That's right.
I can segue motherfucker for 2003.
Three. OK.
So the year I graduated high school. Same. Yeah.
Yeah. You graduate high school.
2002. Yeah.
Oh, look at Mr. Smarty Pants.
Slightly. Look at Mr.
Look at Mr. Didn't fail the first grade over here.
Oh, loser. Yeah, I failed communion.
Communion as a Catholic.
Did you just not get the wafer?
Like, did it not go in the mouth?
No, the nuns were.
So did you have to were you raised? Oh, yeah.
OK, you went to like the class that preceded. Absolutely.
So the nuns were concerned by my behavior because
when they asked us to draw pictures and stuff,
this is straight from my mother.
I was drawing pictures of children doing bad things,
like a picture of a kid breaking dishes.
And then I would draw a picture of a kid like pushing somebody over.
It's like I only like would draw like pictures of disobedience.
So I was not allowed to pass communion.
I get that that would be a red flag.
It seems like a bad reason to not let you get communion.
Oh, it's a good that to bad people.
It's a continuing like pattern with me.
Like I failed hunter safety.
The whole reason you get communion is so you can have those spots and it's OK.
I wasn't even allowed to get to the point
where I could was up for communion.
Sean's not allowed in church.
You're not wrong. So my Sunday.
I was a boner thing, isn't it?
It 100 percent is.
I went to Sunday school all of three times.
And the third time after the third, the after the third mass, after Sunday school,
my Sunday school teacher asked my parents that I not return
because at the ripe age of six, I had questions.
About the feasibility of like the Garden of Eden, how many people came out of it?
The transubstantiation, transubstantiation.
Also, I was really into animals at the time,
so I knew like what continents animals lived on and for them, like to all
for them to be two by two on one arc didn't make sense to me.
And it wasn't so much that I had questions, it's that I had follow up questions.
Yeah, those are the ones that they usually don't plan for.
Other kids started asking questions because of my questions.
And rather than, you know, trying to indoctrinate me,
they were just like, get the fuck out of here.
So you and I have two entirely different methods of inciting rebellion.
You're going to try to like inspire the people and I'm just going to start a fire.
I mean, I'm mostly trying to both are effective subtleties on both ends.
Yeah, this is what we're friends. Yeah.
Do you smell smoke? I am really good at burning things.
We both just want to burn it all down.
You're trying to burn it all down.
I'm trying to get other people to burn it down for me. Yeah.
So were you not a Pangea guy?
Yeah. One continent, bro. Yeah.
Yeah. One love.
Not not when the Bible happened.
Why not? Because humans aren't that old.
Listen, dude, you can have a little
continent shift real quick. I'm it's like surfing.
I'm from San Francisco.
I know. Surfing USA.
You just take that tectonic plate all the way over, baby.
Ride that wave.
That's what the Beach Boys were really singing about.
The breakup of the Pangea continent.
It happened in 1915.
Which is why we were able to have a world war shortly after.
Yeah. New world. This makes sense.
Otherwise, it would have just been a Pangea war.
Fuck it. If it's Pangea, it's technically a civil war.
It's all one. It's all one landmass.
That's right. New world.
Just like tomatoes.
What? They're a new world like crop.
Yeah. Go back to our episode with Darrell.
Darrell, where you were talking about watermelons.
It was watermelons. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Well, that is to wait.
Way to call back your
own joke. Yeah, it's a good one. You can self reference.
Nobody else is going to reference my jokes.
I have to be the one to point out how clever they are.
I mean, some people still listen to us. Hi, Lance.
Yeah, we have a new patron, a new cage dancer.
Thank you, Lance. We'll talk about that later.
He doesn't get his moment till the end.
You can get a double dip.
I had a very like heart to heart.
Well, not heart to heart, but like face to face conversation with him.
And we talked about like the show and did you talk?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
He and I talked about that's part of the cage dancer tier.
Oh, it's like you get to talk with me.
Wait, do you have a foreskin?
I 3D printed one.
Smart. Yeah. You just slide it on the tip.
Yeah, because I mean, honestly, I think that's kind of my whole like
shtick and our friend group.
Your shtick is your foreskin.
Dick is I still have my turtleneck.
That's true.
I so rarely like to talk about my
I so rarely make Nick like turn from the microphone to like snicker.
80% of that was me burping because I don't do that on my.
Well, fart on Mike, but I will not burp.
Why can't you let me have this neck?
Yeah, why is one gas better than the other?
Ask gas rhymes.
All right. Everybody knows rhymes.
Listen, man, I can't argue with that.
Rhymes rule.
Ask gas.
Ask and gas do rhyme.
I can confirm. All right.
As two native English speakers.
Matchstick man, Nick Cage as Roy.
I couldn't tell because the pizza guy says Walker and he corrects him and says Waller.
I was just looking at what I wrote down.
I'm like, that doesn't look like a name.
And the cage is a con man with extreme OCD
who reconnects with his long lost daughter, Angela, played by Allison Loman.
And Sam Rockwell is Nick Cage's protege.
That's what I was thinking of Frank Mercer.
So to comment on and about trying to get that one last big score
that is all mixed up when Nick Cage finds his long lost daughter.
Directly by Ridley Scott.
And this is not Ridley Scott's best movie.
Definitely not monetarily.
Before we talk about like the rest of that, how about that editing?
Like all those fades, the wipes and the weird the intro credits.
Oh, no, like in the movie.
No, there's like weird wipes that go on like transitioning from scenes.
There's weird slow motion things that happen.
It's like did Zack Snyder.
It's recut. It's crazy, man.
And like the Hans Zimmer score paired along with that.
Do you do? Oh, do you do? Do you do? Do you do? Do you do? Do you do?
Do you do? Do you do? Do you do?
Baby's first procreate project.
Yeah. Yeah. Take that Ridley Scott.
All the names are just bouncing off the side of the screen
like a fucking 90s Windows screen saver.
Like a DVD player logo.
I could not figure out why that was what they went with for that.
Like it doesn't make any sense other than the fact that it's like
overlaid on his pool. Is that it?
No, I don't know. It blows.
On Mike, really?
Nick, rude.
Why would you do that?
Face gas on Mike.
Aimful. That doesn't even rhyme.
No more no more suicides for you, Nick.
Uh, pardon me. My mouth has been on all of these.
That's not true.
It's not. But it will be if you try to take them away from me.
Don't you dare touch this alcohol, sir.
So, OK, what do you think of this?
Well, our comment.
Ah, I enjoy Nick Cage.
I enjoy Sam Rockwell.
What I did not enjoy is the severe.
And this might be existing as a millennial
in the year of our Lord 2023
that I've watched a lot of adult documentaries about exactly this premise.
Whoa. No, Nicholas Cage.
That's not a stepdaughter, bro.
That's like, yeah, that's not his daughter daughter.
Well, not his daughter, but he thinks she is for the lion sheriff.
Yeah, but I know she's not not during the parking parts.
He's definitely being caught.
I don't like their chemistry in this movie at all.
Yeah, the fact that you could call it chemistry is probably the biggest issue.
Right. Yeah, I'm not here to yuck.
Anyone's young.
I know you can be here to yuck that young.
That's that's OK.
You know, there there are consenting adults who like the like the little scene.
Yeah, but not with their own kid.
And I mean, I don't think that's what they're going for,
but that's definitely the feeling that is the vibe that comes across.
I was uncomfortable. Oh, man.
All of it as somebody who doesn't like kids
for the most part, especially when they get to this age,
like she's playing 14 years old.
Oh, man.
If some 14 year old started like coming around my place
and being like, you're my dad, I'd be like, we are going to get DNA tests.
For sure. Like immediately, especially if I'm a con man by trade.
Like anybody comes up and says like, oh, there's that or nothing.
I wouldn't trust anybody.
I'm already very untrusting.
Yeah. And if you added in financial gain for not trusting people,
like I would never trust it.
No, it's it's so I'd wear a condom to record podcasts.
I wouldn't trust you guys that much.
Got it. Got a podcast safe.
I wouldn't trust myself either.
Do do do do do do do do do.
I don't know. OK, so I don't know why this made me cut that part.
Yeah, I don't know why this made me think of that, but you need to cut that part
but not cut this part. Right.
So when I was in Connecticut, I was with my brother
and we were talking about the song Riding Dirty.
Oh, fuck. Yeah.
What are riding dirty even mean?
Because I'm not thinking about you coming in here.
Go back to my previous statement. Fuck you.
That statement that has been edited out of this podcast,
but this part has not been edited.
But what the fuck is riding dirty? But stuff.
They see me rolling the hate in.
Yeah. Patrol and trying to catch me riding dirty.
What the fuck is that? That's a butt stuff.
Gay butt stuff. Oh, OK.
Well, now we're talking, which is what rappers are always like bragging about.
Yeah, they love talking about gay, but they're worried about being seen about it
because there's a weird only by haters.
That's true. They patrol in. Yeah.
So in. None of this.
None of this is usable.
Keep it all start fresh.
No. Guarding tests.
Grab the whole fucking episode.
I'm going back to cage.
Matt's going around about.
We need it. Nicholas, Kate.
I'm going to run back.
I'm your host. And slam a beer.
Slam a beer. Come back.
Yeah. We'll do another suicide. Yeah.
That's for suicides.
The maximum number of suicides.
There's only three of us.
I checked mathematically.
OK, so Alison Loman, the like dad, daughter stuff is a little creepy.
So undeniably, it's weird because we joke a lot about how like
a 40 year old will play a teenager and that's weird.
But somehow like she's 23, 23, 14, playing 14.
But it's like, no, you're an actress playing younger,
but you actually look like a teenager.
And there's a lot of like Danny talk.
And it's just I don't like any of it.
Yeah, it's weird how she looked young.
I don't know what she looks like now.
Probably less young.
Well, her career is really weird.
So she did this movie.
She was in Flicka and then she did Drag Me to Hell.
And then beyond that, she's done like little bit parts.
I did like Drag Me to Hell.
Oh, I did, too.
I haven't seen that since about 2000.
Whenever it came. Yeah.
Like whenever it came out. Yeah.
Kind of a good movie, though.
Yeah. So here's my Drag Me to Hell story because I have.
My buddies all went to go see Drag Me to Hell.
I wasn't there.
So this is actually a third party story.
But they all go, oh, it must have been like 2003
because you had to be 18 because it was rated R.
And they all show up at this movie.
My buddy Steve is only 17.
Like he hasn't turned 18 yet.
He's got a nine.
2009 Drag Me to Hell.
Jason Long.
Oh, no. What's the Jack the Ripper movie?
Oh, from hell.
Oh, OK. Never mind. Different movie.
Here's my from hell story.
So my buddies all go keep all of that.
Peter, the from hell story for Alison Loman.
Yeah. That you're talking about.
Who's not in that? Yeah.
Fuck her. We're not talking about her anymore.
No, that is my issue with matchstick men.
Yeah. So they all go to see this movie and Steve's not old enough.
So everybody else still decides to go see from hell.
And Steve's only choice.
He watches Corky Romano.
Oh, that poor fuck.
But his movie is like an hour shorter, so he gets done with it.
And then he just has to sit outside the theater for an hour.
Why didn't he just buy a ticket to Corky Romano and go into your theater?
That would be untruthful, Sean.
That's a con.
This is a flim flam.
This is why you're a fucking Leonardo, dude.
Hey, man, I'm just talking about Steve.
He watched Corky.
He's the only person I've ever met who's seen that movie to any side in theaters.
Dude, I saw that movie with like the worst case of the flu or pneumonia.
Just like on syndication on Comedy Central.
And like I.
Wait, which one is Corky Romano?
So it's it's it's like another pet detective movie.
Yeah, it was Chris.
Chris Caton. Is it?
Yeah. And he plays like a dude who's related to the mob,
but is like a total fucking moron.
And I don't know, crimes happen around him.
And he manages to be a hero accidentally because he's fucking stupid.
I forgot this movie existed.
Should we just watch the movie and do it?
You said you watched Corky Romano.
Yeah, no, that's it. Sam Rockwell.
What do you guys think?
He is very much Sam Rockwell in this film.
He very much is.
He has one. He has two performances.
It's this character or it's his character from the original Teenage
Meat and the Turtle film where he plays a teen who talks to a mutant rat.
Third role, Moon, that movie fucking rules.
Moon was a really good movie.
I've got no beef with Sam Rockwell as an actor,
like to be completely across the board.
I forget about him.
But when I see him, I'm like, oh, it's Sam Rockwell.
OK, I think that's a good distinction is I have no problem with Sam Rockwell's
acting, but I do forget about him.
And Sam Rockwell is in a weird, almost Nick Cagey place
where you're either going to see in a movie where like, wow, that was really good.
Or they just wanted Sam Rockwell.
Yeah, the Hitchhiker's Guide movie.
He's awful at it.
He's full Sam Rockwell on that.
Everyone's awful in that movie.
Who was he? Choke was kind of the same thing.
He was a Zafod Bebel Brox.
Oh, OK. But now that I think about it, I think the Hitchhiker's Guide movie,
I don't think any of them were in the same space at the same time.
Well, I think because no one has chemistry in that movie.
Deschanel, Mostef.
I mean, these people, these are all like dynamic actors.
Yeah, they do not act well together.
Alan Rickman.
Yeah, are you trying to tell me that Alan Rickman wasn't on set with everybody?
He was in the suit.
What about the voice of the doors?
Oh, they were there.
Yeah, every time it was you.
Yeah, it was. You caught me.
I'm self promoting.
We have to talk about this movie.
We can't have another episode where we don't talk about the movie.
Well, we're like three for three at this point.
All right. We can have another episode where we don't talk about the movie.
So long as we talk about one movie, we're pretty good, right?
Yeah. No, I mean, we make an arbitrary decision and nobody cares.
It's a mild heist film.
They are career con men.
Nicholas Cage doesn't go for long cons. Sam Rockwell has one set up.
Nicholas Cage, hyper OCD, drops his medicine down the garbage disposal
and his his shady anxiety drug dealer has skipped town.
So Sam Rockwell sets him up with a therapist.
He starts going to therapy, remembers he has like thinks about the kid he never raised.
Therapist finds the kid, meets the kid.
He gets conned.
I mean, the bigger question then is, did you guys pick up on the con?
Yes, 100 percent.
As soon as the daughter showed up like, oh, she's playing him.
Yeah. And the mark, I was just like, all right, he's in on it.
And the therapist was in on it. Sam Rockwell caught me off guard.
Ultimately, it made the most sense that he'd be the mastermind.
But they kind of play him so safe throughout that again, forgetting about some rockwell,
I kind of forgot he was a player in this film until he was ultimately the villain.
I think the scene where they show up at Nick Cage's place
and they do like the final bit of the con where they get him
was the best, most well orchestrated part of the movie.
Everything that happened with Nick Cage and the daughter leading up to that felt pretty
clumsy and honestly fucking uncomfortably cringy.
Yeah, agreed.
Well, as also somebody who doesn't have children and intends to have no children.
I thought the scene at his place was really the best.
Yeah. I thought that's where everybody sold their elements of the con the best.
Like you come in, the the mark, they've been sticking this guy
for like a money laundering scheme and they did a briefcase trade.
He figured it out, didn't run off, ended up back at Nick Cage's place
with Sam Rockwell, who's who he's abducted.
And so Nick comes into this place with his daughter after a very rough con.
And Sam Rockwell is like beat up.
He's bloodied.
Gets an ashtray thrown at his head. Yeah.
The who played the mark?
Oh, for sure. Bruce McGill.
OK, so Bruce McGill's character, he has a gun.
He's got everybody contained.
And you just see the the everybody's got like a reason to be anxious.
And yes, like in most of this movie, there's very low emotional stakes.
For a movie about like conning people, it seems very lighthearted
up until this scene where it's obviously gone wrong.
And I don't everybody plays it so well because Nick Cage is the only one
who's not a part of it at this point.
And Sam Rockwell had orchestrated this whole thing.
They have an imaginary Mark who we know is in on it because of how he references
things with like tracking down the daughter.
Well, it was never actually his daughter, so they couldn't have tracked her down
that way through the mom and everything to find Nick Cage's connection.
It's just I don't know.
It was the tightest part of the script, and it's probably what they based
the entire movie off of. Absolutely.
Making this spin.
So there is one thing pre the final con is
clearly Sam Rockwell was planning this for his characters, planning for longer,
because in the opening scenes, when a cage like takes his daily pill,
goes through his like uno dos tre, like his own total.
Yeah. Or whatever it is. Repetitions.
It was Italian. He takes and then he does it in Japanese as well.
But he like he takes it. He always takes a pill in the morning.
When you finally see the pills, when they're dropping down the sink,
they look like Benadryl. They are Benadryl.
Yeah. So it seems like Sam Rockwell's been setting them up for even longer
with another doctor that got him those pills. Right.
It leads into that like stress anxiety mode of needing to get this new doctor
figured out because the other doctor was also under the table.
Well, yeah, he establishes that like he was getting his prescription illegally
previously. And this new doctor is like, I'm not going to give you pills
until you tell me like why you need them, which is drilling the pills.
Why you need them, which is drilling Nicholas Cage for information about
former relationships and finds out that he had a child he never raised.
Yeah. It's a lot of leaps of faith in terms of a con.
But as a con man, you think you'd ask a question or two.
But if you look at it from the film of like a like through the lens of like
a heist film, it's on point. It's a decent.
They give you all the information leading up to it.
And then you have to connect the dots at the very end.
Dick move, though, is there's the confrontation at the house.
A shot is fired.
His daughter shoots the the mark, the mark who was holding them hostage.
And then Nick Cage sends Sam Rockwell off with the daughter, be like,
take her home, get the fuck out of the country, comes back inside.
Guy's not there anymore.
The kids gets cold clocked and then cold clocked, cold cocked.
No clock. What is it?
No, it's called cocked, cold cocked.
It's a leader, coldest clock.
Is it weirder than like somebody like bashing you with a frozen alarm clock?
I kind of love that.
Like a like an AMF radio alarm clock from a seven.
I just thought of like you know, six.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Getting clock does kind of make sense.
We're just getting cocked.
Oh, Josie's called us out on giving up the.
Ghost goat.
Yeah, the real term is giving up the goat, but you and I have said
giving up the ghost on Mike before you for that.
No, Josie has failed.
I've gotten sorry, Josie.
I've gotten so much shit for a lion's share versus lion's share
because I always heard his line as an assembly line
where you're doing the entire work of a line of people as opposed to lion's share,
which makes no sense to me because lions,
male lions do the least amount of work.
They fight hyenas, but they don't hunt or feed the pack.
So what's your problem with that?
As a male lion myself.
Yeah. Big pride right here.
Hardcore alpha in the hose.
Match.
It's a good episode. I'm proud of this episode.
Yeah, sure.
It's going to be some of us are.
Yeah. So I think that definitely that I mean, everything about that is the best.
Yeah, it's the the con itself.
The construction of the scene is the tightest.
The script is the tightest.
Him teaching his daughter how to con is a pretty fun scene.
Yeah. The lotto.
But then they give it up.
They give up the ghost at that moment.
I'm sorry, but I think.
Rude.
Ghost of the ghost.
But I believe you mean giving up the goat.
Yeah. Oh, give it up the goat.
See when Nick.
Don't shake your head.
You nod in approval, sir.
That's early Internet.
That is that's the earliest Internet.
That bathtub girl.
Oh, yeah.
Top girl.
Top girl and lemon party.
Yeah, baby.
I imply that Nicholas Cage and his daughter fuck in the film
and giving up the goats is the one that makes you not be pleased with me.
Yep. All right.
Line in the sand.
The best parts of the movie are that it's the last 30 minutes of it.
Yeah. Even like exiting that and going into his interviews
with the police and everything like that. Great.
Also part of the con.
Yeah. And well executed.
Yeah. Yep.
When he like when he leaves the hospital room.
So he wakes up after being cold cocked.
That's how we got on this.
It's going to be great is that I'm going to take out the original part
where we talk about cold clocking and it's just going to sound like
you are really weird thing.
Really cold.
Cocked.
But the emphasis on the wrong syllable.
Anyway, he got cocked.
You got cocked.
So but he wakes up and it was cold.
He wakes up in a hospital bed and the cops are there.
McGill's dead.
And they're like, you can go away for a long time.
You got a quote dead.
Calls this therapist.
All this stuff.
And then he like wakes up in the middle of the night and he's like, hey,
turn on the AC and he like gets out of bed to go find the cops.
Well, he I bet he's been handcuffed this whole time.
And as soon as he got up, I'm like, yeah, they're there.
There's the twist.
Yeah. And obviously, like that's for us.
That's like he would have been so out of it.
He probably wouldn't have put it together.
Yeah, because he was very groggy and kind of like fucked up
in the previous interrogation scene.
So he gets up without any handcuffs and like goes and ends up
just on the roof of a building.
And it's like, yeah, there's a there's your clothes with a little note set on top.
He has a safety deposit box where he keeps all of his cash.
We see how the con goes through.
It's a it's a good heist.
We're overdubbed with Sam Rockwell's like, I got you letter.
You know, I hope you appreciate the gift where you just leave some like
100 bucks. Yeah, two, 300 bucks.
But no, it's it's a sack.
So it's probably like 50.
It was in a thick stack.
So maybe twenty thousand dollars, like enough to not like die.
Twenty thousand dollars, a thousand bucks, twenty thousand dollars
in hundred dollar bills.
A thousand is only that thick.
It was pretty thick.
It was not that it was not that it was thin enough that it rested against the side
and then like delicately.
It definitely was more than 10 bills.
I bet he got 300 bucks.
That would have been three bills.
Yeah, it's more than three bills.
We're going to do this still frame one by one.
Either way, I own the Blu Ray, so I'm going to blow this up.
Yeah, I'm going to show you every.
Not the fucking point. He's broke.
Also, as as an adult living in this year,
20 thousand dollars wouldn't get me that far.
But in night.
Oh, you got to talk about inflation.
Josh, calculate this for us.
Yeah. Get our inflation calculator.
But that's what so how do you realize actually work?
They're just you pay to do work.
Yeah, you come on this show.
So what's more upsetting to me out of that heist is so he goes straight.
He goes to work for the carp, a carpet store where he runs into Angela,
where she like her boyfriend is coming to like they just moving together.
You want to buy carpet for the new apartment?
And they run into each other and they have an awkward
you fleece in the sky.
And she's like, no, that was like my only heist was you.
And he's like, well, you were good.
And it ends with a so are you mad at me?
Bye, Dad. Bye, Dad.
And I fucking hate the hair cans.
But I love the carpet.
He sold them. Oh, it's leopard print carpet.
Yeah. For their apartment, their single bedroom studio apartment.
He wrecked their asses.
Yeah, that's it. That was his revenge.
Also, who swaps out like a rental? Yeah.
I'm going to do as much damage to my place as I possibly can
because I found where my landlord stores the spare carpet.
And I'm going to just patch in all the things I've got.
So the only thing that I have of note for the end of this movie
is that the boyfriend is Francis Kranz or something like that.
I can't remember his exact name.
And in the first movie guarding tests, it's Harry Lennox,
Henry Lennox, Harry, Harry, Henry, Harkin, Hank, one of the bodyguards.
Yeah, one of the bodyguards in guarding the black character.
Yeah, he's super skinny because he was young then.
But he and Francis are in dollhouse.
I don't know if you ever watch that. Oh, yeah. I love dollhouse.
It was good. It had one season. Yeah.
It was kind of fun. It was pretty fun.
Maybe it had two. No, it had one watchable season.
One watchable season is correct.
Quotes. So Nick Cage shows up at this pharmacy
and he's been out of his meds that the faux doctor has been giving him.
And the guy who he yells at, said, I want to say his line was like,
Hey, dude, you ever heard of a line?
Yeah. So he's cutting in line and he's just being like very awful.
And he just turns to this guy.
He's like, Hey, have you ever been dragged in the sidewalk
and beaten until you pissed blood?
It's just good.
And he does apologize like two seconds later.
He's like, sorry, I yelled at you.
Yeah, sorry. I said, pissed. What?
So my first quote for this film is so Nick Cage, part of his OCDC doesn't swear.
He only actually swears one time in this movie and then like immediately regrets it.
It's true. He says Pygmies.
So yeah, that's that was my first.
Sorry. My first quote, my longer quote, which let me say I can do this one
in one go is the first time he visits his faux therapist
and his therapist is like trying to like get him to like open up.
It's like, look, Doc, I spent last Tuesday watching fibers on my carpet.
And the whole time I was watching my carpet, I was worrying that I might vomit.
And the whole time I was thinking, I'm a grown man.
I should know what's going on in my head.
And the more I thought about it, the more I realized
I should just blow my brains out and end it all.
But then I thought when well, if I thought more about blowing my brains out,
I start worrying about what that was going to do to my goddamn carpet.
OK, so that was a good day, Doc.
And and I just want you to give me some pills and let me get all my life.
That's a good one, too.
Good, bad, bad, good, bad, bad, bad, good, good, bad, bad.
But I felt like this existed about on the same level.
Like energy wise, he played the script
and I think that was his involvement in this one.
I didn't get anything like effort wise out of it from him.
I don't know. I kind of disagree in terms of like some of the
the Tourette's work that he was doing with the ticks.
I think he did a good job. I think that was a good performance.
I think that he wasn't insensitive, which is really easy to do with Tourette's.
That's true. Yeah.
He they didn't play it insensitively or like they played it pretty clean and honest.
And that's hard to come across naturally.
I would say I think he was given more to do in this film than Gardening Tess.
I don't necessarily think that he gave more personally of the performance
between the two. I think he was fine.
He was entertaining.
Again, this might just be the world we live in in terms of the Internet and planography.
I do not like a whatography, panography, panography.
I don't calligraphy.
Yes, I don't. This is what gets me going.
Panography. Look at that fucking pen stroke.
I don't I don't like his performance with Alison Lomond.
With Alison Lomond in this film.
It's it's just it's so uncomfortable.
It is very uncomfortable.
Like, obviously, he's a character who, like, wants so bad to,
like, retake this moment in his past because he had this terrible
like this relationship that he fucked up and he acknowledges.
And at the crux of that, there was the question of a child
and he could like retake that that portion of his life.
He could like make amends for the shitty person he was if he,
I don't know, was a good dad now.
So he like puts all of his effort into that and that blinds him to being scammed,
even though, like, obviously, there's the check off line of
make sure you're not getting conned by the person you're conning.
First lesson that he gives her as she cons him.
Yeah, I never liked the whole daddy daughter interaction.
Yeah. I mean, none of it played genuine to me.
No. As someone who is neither a dad or a daughter.
But it's not as this on the Internet today.
Yeah. And sees all sorts of dad daughter interactions.
Yeah. I think we're good on this.
We watched we watched adult documentaries.
I know you are documentarians.
I watched one today for posterity.
Good. What movie moves forward for me in terms of both these films?
I think they're both flawed.
I think one's a better film, but I think one makes me less uncomfortable.
Here's my opinion.
I thought that I thought Magic Men was going to like go down.
I thought it was like a hard no. After my first watch,
it holds up well enough after a second watch.
Like I thought the conceit was going to like make it unwatchable,
but I was still able to sit through it.
It kind of made more fun to watch for watch for those.
Yeah. I mean, they give it up so early that you kind of see it all
as it progresses anyways, but it doesn't it doesn't hurt to rewatch.
And it's still kind of clever enough to keep you going.
I think the performances are better.
But my problem with it is it's just so sloppily executed.
The movie itself is just kind of hamfisted.
And while guarding tasks like isn't as interesting to me,
start to finish.
It feels like a tighter movie all the way across the board.
I just feel better about the movie as a whole
and Nicholas's performance in the movie.
Yeah, we were dancing around Nick.
What do you what would you like to go forward?
I think it's still guarding tests for me.
Same for me. So I think this. Yeah.
Congratulations, Tess.
This week in cage, we're getting closer to long legs.
That's coming up soon.
Retirement plan at some point.
But also a eight twenty four releases coming up.
Oh, dream scenario where there's like a town of people
that are all having dreams about Nicholas Cage's bald ass head.
Oh, that's right. Yeah. And he looks so good.
Absolutely. As like lumpy grandpa or lumpy uncle.
He's really hitting like a new pocket.
Lumpal. Yeah. Lumpal cage. Lumpal cage.
Beautiful.
Beautiful. Thank you all for listening.
Please rate, review, subscribe.
If you are interested in helping us out on Patreon, we are at Cage Match.
Special thanks to our Sparkle buddies Josh, Sean, Josie, Rico, Matt and Adam
and to our cage dancers, Ira, John and Freeman and newest cage dancer Lance.
Here's a golf clap for Lance.
Yay.
And here's something that suspiciously sounds like a golf clap, but isn't.
You guys are disgusting.
So coming up next episode, we've got a special guest, Josh.
And we're finally doing finally doing the bad lieutenant colon part of call
hyphen New Orleans against eight millimeter, which is not a sequel.
Stop thinking it's a sequel.
It has nothing to do with any other bad lieutenant movies.
It is its own thing.
They live in their own universes, people.
There can be more than one bad lieutenant.
Yeah. So many lieutenants in the world.
Most of them bad.
It's a cop thing.
Bye bye.
Listen, this is just bro's bro around.
We all went to college. Winnie the Pooh and Donald Duckin.
Yeah. Yeah.
Whichever shirted non-pants animal you like to associate with.
I feel like there was a lot of Hannah Barbera stuff.
Or was that just that they all had neckties?
They all had collars.
Oh, yeah, they were all collars attached to the top to the bottoms.
God, they're either. Why?
Did you watch the old He-Man series?
Yeah. Forever ago, of course.
But yeah, did you?
I love all the times they just cut in like
stock footage of He-Man running because it's always the same run.
And it's just like he's doing it, people.
Yeah, that's the run.
We need to get us on camera for our patrons.
I really am just going to put
I'm just going to put Nick's head on He-Man's body.
It's the exact same thing.
It is basically the same body. Yeah.
They tried to get me for the original Masters of the Universe movie,
but I was already booked, so they settled for Dolph Lundgren.
You also too.
This is mostly Peter.
This is this is mostly me just recording shit to like
fuck with him when he produces this.
Peter's a great producer.
I know some of you are like, why isn't Peter a host?
It's because he does more work than us and he wants credit for that.
And we want to give him credit for that.
He's the main reason we have the podcast. So thank you, Peter.
So be nice to me.
Fuck you. You weren't supposed to hear that now.