Fatal Attraction Ep. 07 - The Temp / Disclosure

We’re under a strict “return to office” mandate as we look at two films where the danger is in the workplace: THE TEMP (1993) starring Timothy Hutton and Lara Flynn Boyle trying to make that cheddar in the world of cookies, and DISCLOSURE (1994) where Michael Douglas and Demi Moore deal with Malaysian supply chain issues.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
you oh
you oh
and welcome to Get Me Another, a podcast where we explore those movies that followed inthe wake of blockbuster hits and attempted to replicate their success.

(00:20):
My name is Chris Ayanakone and with me is my co-host Justin Beame.
I think we are 100 % consistent on glass block walls, Chris.
I think we're there.
We are.
We have arrived at a second movie this week.
It arrives at Glass Block Nirvana.
It is.

(00:40):
It absolutely is.
It's amazing.
It's absolutely amazing.
Today is the seventh episode in our Get Me Another Fatal Attraction series.
And today we'll be exploring two films that revolve around the workplace.
Cause whether that stranger is coming from above you on the corporate ladder or below,

(01:02):
the office setting can add an entirely new dimension to the danger they present.
So first up today, from 1993, this is The Temp.
May I help you?
I work here.
This is my office.
Oh, Mr.
Derns.

(01:22):
I'm Chris Boland.
Oh, yeah.
The temp.
Hello.
Didn't you tell me you once fooled around with your secretary?
I have a temp.

(01:43):
Who the hell's that?
White attempt.
late
I don't get involved with my assistants.
Maybe someday I won't be your assistant.
Someone is leaking marketing strategy to our competitors.

(02:06):
Chris, you can get off now.
Ron, how are you?
She's got a hidden agenda, Rog.
Don't we all?
Do you think Roger was murdered?
In case you haven't noticed, we're running out of executives around here.
What are you doing?
Come on, you have doubts about her too.

(02:28):
So it's still me?
Tell me it isn't.
Is there a problem with your temporary?
No, just want to know a little bit about her.
The man tries to get ahead in business and he's ambitious.
The woman tries to and she's a slut.
She wants to be my boss.
I'm not sure about anything.
Can you believe it?
They made me a marketing manager.
You got a temp telling me what to do.

(02:49):
You find that you respond to someone who cares desperately about something.
Anything.
I'm not selling secret char- What are you doing?!
DRIVE IT!
It's time to wake up.
Stop doing this to me!

(03:10):
And smell the-
Very active imagination, Peter.
I see where it gets you in lot of trouble.
So, I want to say from the outset, The Temp was made by some people I really like.

(03:32):
It was written by Kevin Falls and Tom Engelman.
Falls would later go on to write for shows such as Sports Night and The West Wing andcreate one of my favorite TV shows from the aughts, the time travel series Journeyman.
And the film was directed by Tom Holland who wrote films such as The Class of 1984,
Cloak and Dagger and Psycho 2 and directed two of my favorite horror films of the 80s,Fright Night and the original Child's Play.

(04:01):
It's really weird that Child's Play was in 1988.
He didn't have anything else in the interim.
Yeah.
Outside of like an episode of Tales from the Crypt between 1988 and 1993.
Yeah, 1993 when this movie comes out.
Let me ask you, do you have any insight into that?
Because I think I have a theory.
I don't, but I'm very curious to hear your theory.

(04:22):
I produced the entire Child's Play series for Shout Factory, like all the discs, when theyupgraded them to 4K.
when I was doing the Child's Play one, I interviewed a producer on the film who told anabsolutely cataclysmic horror story about working with Tom on that movie.

(04:43):
Really?
And it's...
It's the special feature that I always point to when I say to people like, don't thinkreviewers really always watch these because if someone did, they would have pulled this
for headline fodder.
It would have been like click bait.
This story about Tom Holland that's told where on the set, I mean, just to condense it onthe set of child's play, he was absolutely terrorizing people oh that were involved with

(05:08):
that production in particular, a producer that he appeared to have a very, very badrelationship with.
At that time at least, and it involves, I'll just say, and maybe this is a little teaserfor people to go out and pick up that shop factory 4k.
involves.
it definitely is.
It involves thrown mugs.
involves someone pulling a gun on someone else.

(05:30):
What?
Yeah.
It is absolutely insane.
So I can only think that maybe he may have been put on the naughty list after theproduction of child's play wrapped, even though now history has been kind of whitewashed
with it.
And then as I was talking to other people that were involved with it, others weren't soopen, but they definitely said that there were challenges involving Tom on that film.

(05:55):
So I'm a huge fan of Fright Night.
My God.
I Fright Night.
So I like all the Fright Night movies to be honest.
Yeah.
And he wrote, mean, writing Psycho 2, writing Class of 1984.
Psycho 2, a movie that has no business being on paper.
my God.
It's one of those like how...
this shouldn't work at all and it works incredibly well.

(06:18):
it's an amazing movie.
It's in this weird class of like sequels to movies that shouldn't have sequels thatsomehow work.
Like 2010 and Doctor Sleep, which we've mentioned, know, it's just, it's really something.
But I mean, those stories about Tom Holland, mean, that's more crazy than some of thestuff that happens in these movies.

(06:38):
It is, it really is.
Like it's a movie that should be made anyway about that.
But if you look at this history, the things that really worked well for Tom are thingsthat he also wrote.
Right.
Historically.
And I'm not going to go to bat for thinner, which is the film that he followed this one upwith three years later.
Right.
In 1996, because I'm not a huge fan of that movie, but I will say that he's definitely avery good screenwriter.

(07:03):
And especially when he's working with his own material, he obviously delivers the goods.
But this film, The Temp, he was a hired hand.
He was the director only on this, didn't have a hand in any of the writing on it.
And I'm curious as we explore it, if you think that that may work its way up to thesurface in the mix a little bit, the fact that this wasn't his from ground.

(07:26):
I think it absolutely does as, is the fact that there was a lot of studio by all accounts,a lot of studio interference for this movie.
And I feel like it shows because there's just like, there's, there's pieces of this thingthat just don't quite fit.
And you're like, if they were doing reshoots and stuff, maybe that's why I have a lot ofquestions about the temp.

(07:46):
Like I end with more questions than, than I start with because it's crazy.
And, and like, I think there's,
To me, what I really like in Fright Night and Child's Play is this sort of strain of darkhumor.
And I think Tom Holland is really good at that.
And I think there's hints of it here.

(08:09):
But somewhere along the line, it evolved or devolved into a more straightforward thriller.
Right, right.
I think that really the, we're gonna get into it, but the real saving grace of this filmas a whole, I think is in
the performances of Timothy Hutton and Lara Flynn Boyle.
I mean, Hutton in particular is just outstanding in this movie.

(08:32):
Yes, he is.
This movie has got a heck of a cast.
Timothy Hutton and Lara Flynn Boyle.
We also have appearances by Dwight Schultz of the A-Team, Oliver Platt, Wing's StevenWeber showing up for the second time in this series, Maura Tierney, and Faye Dunaway.
And the film revolves around Peter Derns.

(08:52):
an executive for a baked goods company in Portland, Oregon.
Now, I think it's interesting.
This is the third film in this series to be set in the Pacific Northwest after the handthat rocks the cradle in the crush.
And in fact, both of our movies today are set in the Pacific Northwest, really becoming amore common place to set movies in the nineties.

(09:13):
Yeah, absolutely.
And they wear it on their sleeve too, especially when we get to the second picture today,Disclosure.
It very much makes Seattle
front and center.
I it is a character in the film for all intents.
And in looking at this, it wasn't like they were shooting in Vancouver trying to dress itup as Portland here.

(09:34):
They were actually shooting in Portland.
In Portland, for sure.
And some diverse topography throughout this thing too.
We're going into trailblazers games, we're going all kinds of places.
So it very much is in a way kind of a billboard for the city, which is kind of a neatthing, but that Eastern lean
with all of these, I think is a really interesting point, Chris, because it's becomereally consistent here.

(09:55):
It's so interesting to me that neither of the corporate intrigue centric movies are set inNew York, right?
Like particularly in like the Wall Street arena.
Instead, like the temp is set in the high powered killer be killed world of baked goods.

(10:15):
there's so much fun to be had with us throughout this.
portion of the show talking about this film in relation to this ultimately being aboutcookies.
when the film begins, Peter is seeing a therapist and he's apparently been struggling withbouts of paranoia that have led to a separation with his wife.

(10:40):
So the film from the get-go is setting up that Peter, perhaps not a completely reliablenarrator, not entirely stable.
Uh, and the therapist asked Peter if Mr.
Hyde has returned, which honestly, I'm not sure that's a term a real therapist would use.
Like it's not a medical, it's not a, a medical term like, yeah.

(11:02):
Mr.
Hyde returned.
Are you still Dr.
Jekyll?
It's like, well, that seems to be like really kind of sticking it to your patient there.
Yeah, no kidding.
No kidding.
Well, that therapist, whenever they pop in, it's almost like a comic bit because of theway that he talks to Peter.
throughout it, it's very, very strange.
And the fact that if he has a guy who's lost his marriage because of this, as they'realleging, that all this stuff in his life has been broken down because of this paranoia

(11:30):
that they're referring to.
And then the doctor's like, no, I think you're fine.
I don't need to see you for a while.
What?
What doctor says that?
What therapist says, oh, you're good, no more work to do?
Like honestly.
The fact that we never see the therapist's face, like you just see his handwriting notes.
Like I started to wonder if the therapist was not actually like in Peter's imagination.

(11:55):
Like that, that is, that is just me.
Like that, the movie does not bear that out, but I really started to wonder that if the,if the therapist wasn't real, maybe that's, maybe it's intentional Chris.
mean, that very much might be, I mean, the fact that they put this little scene first,which feels to me very much like an additional.
Yes to this film.

(12:15):
It feels like something they tacked on to try maybe and mislead the audience a little bitBut you know what?
But this therapist really is like Steinbrenner on Seinfeld where you just see him frombehind It was a reshoot and they didn't even bother to hire a second actor They just felt
like they got some PA to just sit with your hand in there right?
He's not sag so keep them off.

(12:37):
Don't show his mouth uh
Peter works for Mrs.
Applebee's bakery.
It's like a Sarah Lee Entenmann's type of company that sells baked goods in grocerystores.
And I want to point out as he's going into the office, like the second seat after thetherapy, he's going into the office and there's a cardboard standee of Mrs.

(12:58):
Applebee and she is absolutely terrifying.
Like she looks like Norman Bates dressed up as mother, but
played by Charlie Day from it's always sunny in Philadelphia.
it is, like it is just, how how about the layers of security on this cookie company'sbuilding?

(13:20):
have, they have more checks than like you go to the one world trade center.
You're not going to go through as many layers of clearance to get in there.
Like we're keeping ours.
And this is a running theme in this whole thing.
our cookies formula secret.
There's all sorts of foreign people around like the old security guard.
There's all sorts of foreigners around.

(13:42):
Yorkers.
New Yorkers.
And you can tell the New York, whenever you see the New Yorkers, you can tell the NewYorkers cause their hair is slicked back.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Like, okay.
Well, there you go.
It's so, so the new product that this is Apple is about to launch is cookies, whichhonestly I thought was odd that they were just getting into that.

(14:02):
Like did the bakery sells everything but cookies?
It's like, it's like if Dole sold every kind of fruit, but bananas, like it's, guess theydo muffins.
don't know.
And Peter's got this whole presentation about the new product, which will be available fora limited time only in a cookie jar container.

(14:24):
is oatmeal raisin classic.
And it is apparently the cookie jar containers so expensive to produce, they'll be losingmoney on every unit sold.
Doesn't it make you wonder if this was originally about something else completely?
Like this had to have been about some other kind of industry other than fucking cookies,because there's no way that this would clear so many layers of studio discussion and be

(14:50):
like, yep, we're hanging in there with the cookies guys.
We sticking put the kayaks away or whatever else they were discussing.
Electric vehicles?
No, we're going to talk cookies here.
Cookies.
We meet some of Peter's coworkers.
Faye Dunaway is the boss.
Dwight Schultz is her number two.
Oliver Platt plays like a typical corporate slimeball, but it's Oliver Platt, so he'sstill fun to watch.

(15:14):
And the company, Mrs.
Applebee's, is about to be bought out by this big conglomerate, Bart Foods.
And that is something that is happening immediately.
Like Peter learns about it.
during the presentation he's giving.
And I'm just like, that's not how these things work.
Like there's a lot of time that goes into putting together these kinds of deals.

(15:36):
Even like Dwight Schultz, who's the number two guy is like, I learned about thisyesterday.
And I'm like, really?
Like there is a major corporate merger buyout thing and you are the number two guy at thecompany and you learned it was happening like this week and you learned about it
yesterday.
I think everybody who works at Mrs.

(15:57):
Applebee's is totally and completely incompetent.
Which is how Lara Flynn-Boiled, like her character, could climb the ladder so fast becauseeverybody's a moron.
Well, they're completely mystified by cookies.
They have meeting after meeting after meeting to try and figure this out.
We need to pin this down and we can't let our trade secrets leak and all this is like,you're making cookies.

(16:21):
God, there's so much about the trade secrets.
They're getting into the cookie game and you know, they're, they're, let's put, let's justput in a, they're putting out an oatmeal raisin cookie and they're treating it like it's,
it's like an atomic secret.
It's like, we, we, we have it.
It's like Apple launching the iPhone, but it's an oatmeal raisin cookie in a jar.

(16:44):
Murders happen over an oatmeal raisin cookie.
Mouths are ruined by glass.
God.
of an oatmeal raisin cookie.
Is it glass?
I still don't know.
The whole bloody, we'll get there.
it's still a mystery to me.
I've watched the whole movie.

(17:06):
Okay.
I'll lose my mind because there's so many questions with this movie.
So, so Faye Dunaway orders Peter to work up like a big presentation for the next day.
And unfortunately for him, Lance,
His assistant is also incompetent.
I guess that's a prerequisite for getting hired at Mrs.
Applebee's.
The fact that Lance is still there, Chris, the fact that Lance would even still beemployed.

(17:29):
The office is a mess.
It's uh absolute disaster and no other place in the building looks like that.
And if he is to be relied on, like if Peter's career, his trajectory that he's been on isreliant on this guy ultimately, how is he anything?
And no wonder he's not learning about this until the day of the meeting.
Because Lance is a boob.

(17:50):
my God, Lance and Lance, yeah, like Lance has lost the receipts for Peter's expensereport.
And on top of that, Lance's wife is having a baby and his paternity leave starts today.
Again, like the corporate merger, a baby is not something that just happens.
Wasn't that planned in advance?

(18:11):
Wasn't that on the calendar of like, hey,
You know, it's not Peter's like totally dumbfounded.
It's like, I gotta, I gotta do my own presentation now.
Let me go home and throw out our city hall and try to finish it at home.
And it does seem like a bullshit excuse because if you genuinely didn't know that that'slike someone calling into sick to any job.
Right.
And that's like, uh, you're going to call in cause you're just bored.

(18:33):
You want to stay home and you're going to go, my, uh, my wife's having a baby.
they're like, Oh, well, I guess I can't say no to that.
Well, enjoy.
I hope it goes well.
What are you going to do?
And the way that Peter reacts is almost sets him up as a villain because he's kind of adick about it.
Like, he's not even like acknowledging that this kid just said, yeah, my wife's having ababy.

(18:54):
Right.
Right.
Like, Oh, I gotta get my expenses in and you know, it's, but it gets Lance out of thepicture, Chris.
And that's what we need.
Isn't it?
We needed Lance out of the picture because that incomes his new temp.
Chris Bolan played with perfectly sculpted eyebrows by twin peaks, Laura Flynn Boyle.
I thought for a good portion of this film that she was wearing wigs.

(19:19):
I'm certain she was wearing wigs.
Like her hair changes from scene to scene radically.
It does.
And in the beginning, it's fine.
It's almost like Ratchet in uh One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Yeah, it's kind of a cool thing.
does, whatever.
But eventually she does end up in the water after, in the wiggiest scene.
I'm like, and my note during that scene was, my God, she really is wearing wigs.

(19:43):
And then you see her come up out of the water and her hair is wet.
So it's like, okay, maybe she wasn't wearing a wig.
I don't know what's happening with her hair.
And you and I, the three of us talk about hair a lot.
A lot.
Because you have a very keen eye.
And I will say in this movie, Timothy Hunton's hair is amazing.
It's great.
Steven Weber's hair is shit.
And Laura Flynn Boyle is surely wearing a wig through 90 % of them.

(20:05):
There's no question she is wearing a wig.
It's at multiple wigs.
it, right.
Like I started to observe it's like it changes from scene to scene in ways that itwouldn't.
It's not just like, she's wearing her hair up one day and wear down.
It's like it's, it's a fundamental.
The mass on her hair changes.
That's what it is.
It's like a cotton candy.

(20:26):
Like you go to the fair and they put that thing in the cotton candy machine.
comes out.
That's what her hair looks like in certain scenes.
You're waiting for it to just either explode or for there to be some reveal that there'slike, like in Harry Potter, there's a head on the back of her head.
There's something that Laura Flynn Boyle is hiding as Chris throughout this whole movie inthat hair.
And it just never comes to fruition.

(20:47):
And I wonder if they had to cut that part out.
There must have been another story there.
Add that to the list of questions because I have, by the end of this, I have a list ofquestions.
are so add that to it.
my God.
So of course, you know, he comes into the office and, and, know, the first thing Peternotices is Chris's legs.
It's another guy reacting as if they've never seen a woman before.

(21:09):
It's like both films today introduce that character by their feet.
Yes.
It's the same shot, which was also used in Silent Night, Deadly Night part two tointroduce Eric Freeman as Ricky, because you see his foot tapping and it slowly pans up to
him staring at the psychiatrist.
So
I say now we officially can tie the temp and disclosure in with Silent Night, DeadlyNight.

(21:33):
I love it.
I love it.
my God.
Absolutely.
So, immediately launches into helping Peter get the report ready by noon, which basicallymeans she does all the work while he ogles at her legs and cleavage.
Like she cuts in line at the copier and then she meets him at the boss's office and shehands him the report.

(21:55):
and he slides it down the hall to the secretary for no reason whatsoever.
That's a great shot, too.
It is a great shot.
But it's like it's beyond any kind of real world logic.
Like, why would you do that?
As a hockey fan, I'm like five hole for the goal.
That was right down the middle, right between the posts.
And the executive, uh Faye Dunaway, isn't that who gets it?

(22:17):
Yeah.
She picks it up like, aha, we did it again.
Like, this is Peter's move.
And so his move is throwing reports at his boss.
And by the way, Faye Dunaway is great in this.
She's great.
Faye Dunaway is terrific.
Yes.
all of it, by the way, this whole, this whole sequence of getting ready, the report is setto a music score that is right out of Mrs.

(22:38):
Doubtfire.
Like it has that kind of jaunty we're, we're doing a thing.
We're getting, you know, it's.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, okay.
And also there's other things happening here.
One thing that's during this meeting of the executives is like in the nineties, everyonewants to go back to what guys?

(23:00):
What the fifties, the fifties, a simpler time, a simpler time.
And this is before we find out Lance is going to prance off to have his wife have thebaby.
And then Peter, we see him on the phone at home.
talking to someone, you don't know who it is, but you're seeing pictures of kids taped allover the cabinet door in his kitchen.
Like since when do people put pictures of their kids taped to cabinet doors in theirkitchen?

(23:25):
He's clearly a madman.
so he has, so before he turns our sinew on and then falls asleep, which understandable.
although Kane Hodder was once on our sinew as Jason.
I think was, I've seen that clip.
That's amazing.
It is.
think it was to either promote Freddie versus Jason or Jason goes that takes Manhattan orsomething, it's so gotta be Manhattan from the timeframe.

(23:49):
Cause Marc, our sineos like 89 to 94.
There you go.
And, and Kane is so brilliant.
He just sits there silently as our sineo tries to interview him.
just think it's so great.
those, those were the days.
my goodness of, of, promoting slasher movies like that.
That's amazing.
Peter falls asleep to our sineo wakes up late the next day, gets into the office.

(24:10):
And Peter's just a mess.
He's a mess.
It's one of these scenes where he bumps into uh Chris and his papers fall all over andshe's helping him pick him up.
And she says something there that I'm like, who speaks this way?
And I expected this to come into play at some point down the road.
Like there's a reason.
Is she from a different time?

(24:31):
Is she a time traveler?
Is that thing in her head a time travel machine under her hair?
And what she says to him is she goes,
You seem harried.
says you would say, man, you look tired.
You're late.
You look frazzled.
You're whatever.
You seem harried.
And then there's an assisting montage that you were talking about.

(24:52):
It's like shot after shot of her just assisting being an assistant.
And he looks down her blouse and in typical 90s style, she looks up at him and just grinslike, yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it's that's okay with me.
So, but they get the report to Faye Dunaway and guess what?
just happened, her first day just happens to be secretary's day.

(25:15):
So Chris gets to go out to lunch with all the other executives and assistants and we'rehaving this sort of big, and again, this is where like, as you mentioned, Portland is sort
of central because it's this outdoor thing and you get the river in the background andit's like, it's clearly not just, you know, it's not Burbank for Portland or something
like, it's not Chatsworth.

(25:35):
for Portland, like, oh, it really feels Pacific Northwest and you have a good sense of it.
But here we get Chekhov's wasp allergy when a giant wasp lands on the secretary's day cakeand Oliver Platt totally freaks out.
Like this thing is gigantic, it's huge.

(25:58):
is enormous.
is, and Jack, Oliver Platt is a schlub in this movie as Jack.
Jack the Shlub is what my notes say throughout.
he's eyeing Chris up and down from across the table prior to this moment with the Wasp.
he had been, I mean, it's like, uh, he, and this guy seems to be everywhere Peter is.

(26:22):
When Peter's walking down a hall, Jack appears, Jack is everywhere.
So he's the Michael Myers of this film.
we talked about sleeping with the enemy.
Yeah.
But what does he do?
He doesn't do anything except be afraid of the wasp.
mean, that's what we know about him.
That's what we know.
And admittedly, it is so large.
It is almost as big as Oliver Platt's reaction to it.

(26:46):
Like it's I mean, you know, I mean, gee, you think that wasp allergy is going to come intoplay later?
Like, I don't know.
You know, so that and then while everybody's standing around like a bunch of idiots, Chriscrushes the wasp with her hand.
It's like their hand.
It's like it's like a.
Ivy putting the dog out of her misery and poison Ivy.
It's like, it's just like, okay, she comes in and she's the only person in this companywho could actually do anything.

(27:10):
Yeah.
She's bareback in that wasp.
No glove, no paper, no spoon, no plate.
Nothing.
You're not putting in a cup.
Nope.
Barehanded.
And, you know, she, she basically gets Peter's office in order.
She, organizes his expense report and this was amazing to me.
She convinces Peter to give her.
the pin number to his bank account.

(27:32):
His access code.
That won't come into play either, Chris.
Shockingly does not.
like, it's just, like, let me repeat that.
it does.
This guy gives his pin to a temp.
And it does come into play later, but it's not as big of a thing as you think it's goingto be.
Like it's like, Oh, well there, there you go.

(27:53):
And, it's like, it, no, it's, it's, it's a minor point, which we'll, we'll come back toit.
Sure.
So what I do want to point out is that we get the photo on Chris's desk of her husband anddaughter that Peter takes notice of.
So Chris is a married woman by all accounts with a child.
And that's going to come into play later too.

(28:14):
So we also meet Peter's buddy Brad, played by Wing's Steven Weber, who appears to work fora rival bake goods company.
I didn't know that Portland was the center of the baking industry.
Like apparently that's where they all, it's like the Silicon Valley of cookies.

(28:35):
And boy are they intense.
And then the conversation they have, which has brought up a number of times throughout therest of the running time is like, I play rough.
I, I kill, shoot to kill or something like that.
don't take prisoners in cookies in the world of cookies.
We don't fuck around.
What are you saying?
And boy is Peter like, well, that's wow.

(28:55):
That's something else.
I thought you were my friend, but this is different now.
It's business now, buddy.
You know, you know, no.
And what's, what's amazing is they're having all this.
This whole conversation is happening at, at a basketball game at a, at at a, a PortlandTrailblazers game where, where Peter and Brad are talking about if, if Peter should bone

(29:16):
his hot new assistant with Peter's son, right there, right there.
it's insane.
temps a fair game, you know, it's like, it's like, this kid is going to grow up to be sodemented because of the, the, the, the guys that he's been exposed to.
do get a little bit of background on Peter.
That's valuable here though, where he talks about having you can afford it is, is whatBrad says you can afford whatever you, you can afford to lose your job to bone hers is

(29:47):
essentially what he's saying.
then Peter's like, no, I got a house that I don't live in that I'm paying for.
I off a mortgage for a house I'm not allowed to live in, pay rent for a house I don't wantto live in, dual car payments, loaded bank cards.
Dad, can I go to the festival?

(30:07):
What, me worry?
And then the kid immediately asked to go to basketball camp.
right.
You know, it's like, hey, hey, kid, read the room.
Yeah.
So Chris, meanwhile, has set her cell sites on redesigning the cookie jars for thepromotion and her, big, her big contribution, which, which Faye Dunaway loves is that they

(30:27):
should put a heart on the jar to fool people into thinking they are healthy and squarecontainers.
Because they take up less space on the shelves.
She she was Fiji-ing before Fiji was Fiji.
When you go to a set and someone says, do you want a water?
And you're like, I only drink water with corners.

(30:49):
That's kind of what they're thinking here.
It's like, I only eat cookies with corners.
If there's one thing in this movie that is absolutely realistic, it is the fact that thereis such a downgrade in the cookie jar container from the concept art to the actual
product.
Like the concept art looks great.
like, I'd put that on my, on my shelf.

(31:10):
And then the actual products look like a, like it's like a plastic tub of peanuts that I'dget at Costco.
these two are Peter and Chris are working.
This is one of those classic would be a montage.
I'm surprised it wasn't where they, they have papers all spread out on the floor andthey're on, they're just sort of uh sitting on the floor, drawing and working through
things together.

(31:30):
Like desks don't work when you have to really know things out.
You don't use a desk.
No, no, you can't use a desk.
You know, that's not where you got to get the real creative juices flowing, man.
That's, know, and, and, and, of course, Oliver Platt, he shows up like, like a littlewhile later and he starts to flirt with Chris because, know, he can offer her a permanent

(31:53):
position, which Peter can't do because he can't fire a dude whose wife had a baby.
after everything she's done for him, does Peter act like an adult and help Chris to get apermanent job?
No, he acts like a petulant child and tells her that Oliver Platt just wants to get her inthe sack, which admittedly he probably does.
And then Chris becomes the second person in this film to suggest that Peter is paranoid.

(32:17):
Yeah.
And he hates that word.
You are just paranoid about Jack.
That's not the thing to do with Peter is say you're paranoid.
Yeah, no, it's, it's, yeah, it's, one of those, it's trigger word for him probably becausehe is paranoid.
That's right.
And all the while I should say, we should also mention all the while,
The new owners are renovating the office to make it more modern.

(32:39):
just throughout the whole movie, you go into a scene and like walls have been torn downsince the last time you were in that office.
And then it's like, by the end it is completely different.
It's kind of cool, like the way the office transforms over the course of the movie.
Well, it also gives us the remodeling.
stuff that has been in almost every single one of these movies.

(33:01):
But instead of a home, it's an office case.
It's the office, which is where this movie exists is within office space.
Yes.
You're, mean, you have like one or two scenes in Peter's home.
Like that's it.
But like it's almost all in the office.
Both of these movies are largely in the office.
So Peter's old assistant, he returns Lance's back and that means Chris has to leave.

(33:24):
And this leads to one of my
absolute favorite scenes in this movie.
Like, like this is one of the places where you get a hint of what this movie might havebeen if they had kind of gone with the more comic dark bent.
And this is where Tom Holland flexes his Tom Holland muscle too.
Yes, absolutely.
So Peter tells his old assistant Lance to shred some documents about the marketing testsfor the cookies.

(33:50):
He's like, shred some documents.
And if the enemy gets them, take your cyanide capsule.
Dude, they're cookies.
Like it's...
We're talking cookies.
Can't let the Chinese get these cookie secrets.
So Lance takes these documents, the shredder, and he finds like a folder jammed in there.

(34:11):
And he's like, damn interns.
He tries to pull it out.
but you know, he has a moment where he's like, no, let me unplug it first.
And he unplugs, he unplugs it.
It's plugged into a socket that looks like the one from a
Christmas story with the Christmas tree.
100 % in my notes.
100 % that exact comment is in my notes.

(34:31):
Like it's just a thousand plugs into like, like one little two.
It's ridiculous.
It's like, first of all, it's an OSHA violation for sure.
But like, it's just, it's insane.
So he unplugs the thing and then he tries to remove the jam and the blades of theshredder.
He's putting his hand in there and it's honestly, it is so super tense cause I'm justlike,

(34:52):
These blades are just kind of like menacing there and his hand goes deeper and I'm like,no way.
wouldn't know.
There's not enough money.
There's not enough money for me to put my hand in there.
I don't care if I think it's off.
And then of course it turns on and blood just sprays over his face.
It's amazing.

(35:13):
It's great.
But then the, this weird thing happens that makes me think that they probably had morehere.
I could see him pulling his hand out and it's his bloody stump or something.
Because it never happens again in this movie where it fades out like we're going tocommercial break.
Right.
That is so bizarre to me.
It's almost distracting because it's, wait, what?

(35:34):
Why?
Like this intense scene happens.
It doesn't hard cut to the next one.
You don't see him being taken out on a stretcher or anything like that.
You just fade out and then move on to the next sequence.
Wait, what?
Yeah.
The next scene, which explains that he unplugged the copier and not the shredder.
And I'm like, and there's part of me that's like, there's no way we're supposed to thinkChris arranged all this.

(35:59):
Like that's too complex.
Yeah.
Cause, cause anybody could have ended up in there.
Right?
Like it could have been, it could have been anybody.
And it's likely to assume that he would have properly traced the cord from the machine tothe wall and unplug the proper thing.
Right.
So to suggest that this was a setup is absolutely ridiculous.
Yeah, no, I didn't think so.
But then there's, there's more stuff that is

(36:21):
that we are supposed to think is her, I'm still not sure what she's responsible for andnot.
There's a lot of, we'll get to that, we a lot of questions.
But Lance, he's out on long-term disability, so Chris is gonna stay on as Peter'sassistant.
The question though is, what is Chris's real agenda?

(36:44):
No, that's my question.
What is her agenda?
I've watched the movie and I don't know.
Like it's just like, does she desire Peter romantically?
Does she want to ascend the corporate ladder?
Is Peter a means to an end or is Peter the end enough?
I have no idea.
She keeps giving the evil eye to pictures of his kid.
Right.
And things like that when he sees, when she sees that.

(37:06):
you really think that, I just can't take anyone else being in his life.
But me, that's the, that's the road that this would go down in most hands.
But for some reason, this one doesn't ever really straight up address that.
And honestly, I mean, this is a movie.
This is a movie where a cookie executive is so pressed for time that he has to roll callsin his car.

(37:30):
Yeah.
He's like, he's like, let's do calls.
And I'm like, I have been an assistant.
have, I have rolled calls for my boss, but you know, they weren't making cookies.
And who's on the phone?
it's the, the, it's the therapist that we never see.
It's Steinbrenner.
Steinbrenner is talking to him on the phone again.

(37:51):
then this is when Peter decides to just sort of let his therapist, who by the way, ismaking free calls in the middle of the day, just to check in on someone that he just said
was fine and doesn't need any help.
Why is he even bothering first of all?
You don't even have to come back for your weekly session.
Right.
Yeah.
But, I'm to call you tomorrow at two just to see how things are going.

(38:12):
And then this is when Peter decides to reveal the fact that he wants to get back together.
with his ass.
Right.
Yes, he wants to get back together with his estranged wife.
I don't know if they're divorced.
I think they're just separated.
Maura Tierney plays his estranged wife, and she doesn't have a huge role, but this is whathe really wants.

(38:32):
And Chris hears it.
Yeah, Chris hears that.
And that's going to be a thing.
She also hears when he later makes an offhanded comment about wanting for.
Chris to kill off Oliver Platt, who is the main competition for his promotion.
Which I don't blame her.
Right.
But we have to talk about cookies because they're currently trying to engineer thesecookies.

(38:59):
ORC 1267 hydrogenated soybean oil, cholesterol, oatmeal, riboflavin, psoril, lecithin, andemulsifier.
Alright, have it ready by the end of next month.
How tough can it be?
I'm not asking you to splice DNA!
Do it!
Roger, Roger.
Lighten up.
We're in the cookie business.
You alright?

(39:19):
Yes, I'm alright.
Thank you.
It's missing something.
It's missing molasses.
My grandmother used to a pinch of molasses in her cookies, made them taste better, morechewy.
Uh, darling, I think it's a little late for that.
Besides adding molasses, but...
cost prohibitive.

(39:43):
Molasses would be a lot cheaper than the chemicals we put in our product to make themtaste like molasses.
I checked it out.
And what's more, molasses makes us more organic and more homemade.
She checked it out, why don't you check it out?

(40:04):
There's so much energy and effort that goes into these cookies.
Like first of all, it's the most insane unprofessional reaction from Dwight Schultz.
Like he's like, you just do it.
It's not rocket science.
You just do it.
God.
It's like, it's just, this whole company is just, everybody is incompetent and Chris isthe only one who seems to understand anything.

(40:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, thankfully the next scene is a dinner, like a lunch meeting.
in front of a bunch of people playing tennis in some kind of glass room.
think Faye Dunaway belongs to a tennis club because she spends more time there than theoffice.
Yeah, but it's just such a...
Like, that's not necessarily where you would go to...

(40:49):
Like, let's leave here.
If you're in business and you know how inconvenient it is to switch locations for meetingsand stuff, you're going to avoid that whenever you can.
Right.
You're not going to go to a tennis club.
And, and, this is another movie with tennis.
It's another movie with people, like people playing rich person sports have, they have tobe seen doing this.
They're not going to be having a meeting at a hockey rink or something like that.

(41:13):
Not where the low lives dwell.
It's going to be where people are playing tennis in a glass bubble.
And, then Rogers described during this meeting as a time bomb and he's not good underpressure, not good under pressure.
then Charlene says there's nothing worse than a reformed whore.
And like, wow, what a, what an intense line about cookies.

(41:37):
This whole thing.
They're throwing, they're bandying about these judgments on their coworkers.
Everyone's out for each other's throats and it ultimately comes down to cinnamon or Imean, molasses molasses.
We're going to use molasses.
That's the big, that's the big secret ingredient.
So then, okay.
So we have this extraordinary moment where Peter is driving to work.

(42:01):
driving to work, he's stuck in traffic, he's on a bridge.
Again, this is all shot in Portland and it looks great.
And then he sees a car stopped on the bridge, which is what's causing the traffic.
And he passes by and he sees it's Oliver Platt in the car.
by the way, his vanity license plate is pie dough.

(42:24):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he pulls over.
There's no rescue workers or tow trucks.
So this literally must have just stopped.
This must have just happened.
But it's on the news.
He's listening to it on the news.
But it's on the news.
But the cops aren't even there yet.
He pulls over.
And he sees dead Oliver Platt and a wasp crawling out of Oliver Platt's mouth.

(42:48):
Yeah, it's OK.
I thought the close-up effect of the wasp coming out of the mouth was really good.
Yeah.
Like that looked really good.
again, is the implication here that Chris made this happen so Peter wouldn't havecompetition?
But how?
And staged it on a bridge?
Yeah.

(43:09):
Like how?
Like even if she put the wasp in the car, how would she possibly know where it was goingto sting him so Peter would find the body?
Right.
Yeah.
Like, like.
It's just, it's, is it all just a coincidence?
Did he just happen to get stung?
Did it wasp just fly into his mouth while he was driving?
Like it's like, we still, I still don't know the mystery of the wasp.

(43:33):
And of equal interest is the conversation that was preceding him happening upon Jack's carwas with his wife, ex-wife, well his ex whatever.
And she's informing him that their son Nathan wants Reebok.
pump shoes.
Yeah, I remember those pump shoes.
Which at the time would have been the most.
So it's another example of like, well, first he wants to go to basketball camp.

(43:54):
Now he wants the world's most expensive shoes.
The pressure is too much.
The cookie world can't take care of me in this way.
And then he happens upon the worst scene that he could possibly see.
my God.
His schlub coworker who seems to only stock him and follow him around and stink it up withhis girl that they work with.
dead in his car, even a more bloated than usual with a wash falling out of his mouth.

(44:18):
It's absolutely repulsive.
What is this movie?
it's just like, I'm still, there's a lot of conversations about Chris and Peter andsometimes I think she just wants to rise in the company.
Sometimes does she want him?

(44:39):
Like she's got a line.
It's like, some day I won't be your assistant.
Well, you know, if you didn't, if you didn't put a wasp in Oliver Platt's mouth, thatmight've been the case.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And also Peter is kind of a man on an island throughout the whole movie because withoutdoing it deftly, the movie really alienates him where everybody around him, even his best

(45:00):
friend, Brad, Steve Weber is awful to him.
Ultimately.
Yeah.
Everything in his world from his.
I mean, the only real kind hand is what he and his ex-wife are kind of rekindling, whichis sprinkled throughout the movie.
And I think it's kind of sweet.
And there's some ups and downs there, you for sure.
Right.
But yeah.
And we do get some background eventually on what happened between the two of them.

(45:23):
he's this isn't a bad guy who has made some decisions that he's regretting.
It's a guy who's just kind of at the mercy of all these sharks that are swimming aroundhim for the runtime of the movie.
And in the next scene, he starts to talk about how he kind of feels bad about Peter andwhat happened to him.
And, but then we're cutting right into Brad being in the office, being a Dick.

(45:48):
Brad, who, you know, doesn't work there.
He works for a rival company and can apparently just come and go as he pleases.
we saw the security levels that these people have to go through to get into this place.
But Brad can just walk in with his awful hair and start flipping through confidentialdocuments.
He can just go in and out.
Like the wind.
Maybe there's like a silly subplot about him dressing as a maintenance man and he, like hekills a maintenance man before coming in and puts on his outfit and then comes and sneaks

(46:17):
in.
Maybe he's underneath Lara Flynn Boyle's hair.
That might be it.
He's crouching under there.
I mean, it's big enough.
Oh God.
So, but then, you know, Lara Flynn Boyle and, and Peter, they go out for drinks.
One night that's a, they, go out.
how you're just referring to her as Laura from boil.
Like her character.
So the actress, Laura from boil.

(46:41):
But, but here's it's they go out for drinks and, and, but, but she amazingly arranges forthe estranged wife to be waiting to meet Peter for dinner at a restaurant right next door.
she.
is so has such powers that she's able to make sure that she'll be seated at a table with aperfect view of where she and where Lara Flynn Boyle and Peter will stop and talk on the

(47:11):
sidewalk and that she'd be looking in that direction at the precise moment they weretalking outside.
Honestly, is she a wizard?
Could she remake reality like Neo in the Matrix?
Again, this goes back to Harry Potter and the face on the back of her head because he whoshould not be named was hiding out there.
He does have some supernatural power to him.

(47:31):
And I'm now convinced that Laura Flanboyle actress was playing Chris character in the tempwith the similar powers.
And by the way, they weren't just talking on the sidewalk.
They were like in each other's faces about to kiss.
Yeah, it's got very, yeah, it's, it's, yeah, it's not just over for the ecstasy.
Yeah.
But then, but then she slips up because that's, it's around this time that he, Peterdiscovers that she's using his account that he gave her the pin number for to purchase

(48:01):
like jewelry and a watch for herself.
And, there's all this stuff.
And it's like, I don't know how she wasn't fired on the spot for like, I would think thatwould be just an instant fireable offense of I use my boss's account.
to buy myself a watch.
But she had the receipt was her defense.
Well, but I have the receipt here.

(48:21):
I was just about to give it to you and all that, which is funny.
But this whole conversation that they're having here between Chris played by Laura FlynnBoyle and Peter, they're, they're having this chat and Peter's actually, this is where you
see that he really is a standup guy.
Yes.
Because in most of the movies that we've covered in the series, this is the moment wherehe would have taken the bait.

(48:43):
or where he would have run with his impulses.
And it doesn't happen.
In fact, to the contrary, Chris is trying to convince him of, it matter when someone's sopassionate about what they're into?
Doesn't that excite you?
And she says, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be with another man.

(49:05):
And then there's a long look between them.
And then Peter looks down and then leans in and you think this is the moment, right Chris?
But instead,
He says, I used to imagine Sharon, that's his ex.
Cause he admits by this point that he walked in on his ex wife cheating on him.
he thought she was cheating and you know, like he's so convinced that it was like a partywhere they like, they were with the neighbor.

(49:27):
was, it was like, screwed it up.
So some, yeah, something, but he, he leans into Chris and says, I used to imagine Sharonand another man in a bar where she was complaining about her husband, IE him.
And then I was at home.
waiting for her to come home.
And I thought that that was a pretty powerful statement for a movie like this, it's not areal cerebral film.

(49:49):
But in that moment, it's a real grounding moment of like, this is the reality of cheating,which is kind of the core of this whole series, is that the real victims are not the ones
that we're really seeing presented through most of the runtimes of these movies.
The real victims are often the ones who were at home, living their life and waiting forthat person to show up and their impulses are getting the best of them.

(50:11):
So to Peter's credit, he doesn't do that here.
And then Chris storms out and then they have that interaction on the sidewalk.
And so, but I think that's a neat moment for someone who had to have some moral, likestanding in one of these films, which he very much does.
agree.
I agree.
Uh, but, then he does learn that she's using as an expense accountant and, and while hekind of hems and haws for a while, he ultimately decides she's got to go, you know, cause

(50:39):
that's, that's, you know, so he takes her to the park.
to fire her.
Like, why not?
You know, take her to the park.
Surprised he didn't take her to the zoo.
But, you know, and instead she turns the tables on him because she tells him, yeah, we'renot going to be working together anymore because I just got Oliver Platt's job.
Chris, you've been an incredible help.

(51:00):
mean, for a while there you were a savior, but I think you need a job that's a little bitmore challenging, something that gives you more leeway, more input.
I'm afraid we're gonna have to part ways.

(51:20):
I know.
You
I knew yesterday after what happened with the watch.

(51:41):
I'm gonna miss you.
Must be down the hall.
again.
Can you believe it they made me work in

(52:11):
And her entire disposition shifts.
And that is probably the closest we've seen in similarity to their in Fatal Attraction.
she had those moments in that film, it was a similar kind of dynamic with that characterwho could just flip a switch and be overjoyed by a moment or be completely shut down by a

(52:31):
moment.
There's a line to be drawn between Chris in this moment and uh Fatal Attraction.
Yeah, absolutely.
And she gives, she gives Peter a very ornate letter opener as a gift that presumably willcome back later.
That looks like a prop from like, what is that from?
I don't know.

(52:53):
It looks, it looks like it's carved out of like whale bow.
Like it's a scrimshaw kind of thing.
It's got a nautical look to it.
It does, but it has things carved all over it.
And I thought, okay, she's a witch.
This is something, there's something happening here.
Because whatever this is, is not a letter opener.
Like, like you'd normally hand someone.
And then every time he pulls it out.
And I don't know if this was Tom Holland's influence or what, but here again, back toHalloween, does the shing when he pulls it out of its scabbard.

(53:21):
has a scabbard.
It's got a scabbard.
It's a letter opener with a scabbard.
Who has that?
A witch.
The most amazing thing about that scene where she gifts him the letter opener is the wholetime they're talking, like Peter's computer monitor is behind him.
And you can see it and the computer monitor, they're having this whole conversation aboutthe letter roper and everything.

(53:43):
And the computer monitor is absolutely freaking out the whole time.
Like boxes are opening, like windows are opening on the computer monitor.
Like it looks like malware got in and is tearing the entire system apart and nobody seemsto notice or care.
I never even caught that.
I was like, what is going on on this monitor?
It's so, ah but, we've arrived at one of my favorite.

(54:06):
fascinating scenes testing the cookies.
Yeah, here we go.
So they've set up a display.
They have like an employee who's like at a store.
Yeah.
At a grocery store.
Yeah.
And and then Peter and Dwight Schultz are, are watching from, from a distance and they'regiving out free samples and, and, the, they're watching, Oh, and I want to, this is where

(54:28):
you see the cookie jar for real.
And it looks nothing like the, the, um, like the actual concept art.
And I love.
that the new logo for Mrs.
Applebee looks like Chris.
So there's two customers.
There's an older lady and a teenage girl on a skateboard.
So you know this appeals.
is a four quadrant cookie.

(54:50):
And the teen shirt says what?
Question authority.
That's right.
You're right.
Question authority.
So they both try it.
And the older woman, she's kind of just chewing.
She's smiling.
She's enjoying it.
And then blood starts dripping from her mouth.

(55:11):
And the skater kid sees this, spits the cookie and blood all over the employee.
Everyone starts screaming.
It's absolute pandemonium.
And what's amazing to me is that at no point, the old woman, at no point does she sensethat anything's wrong.
Like she's happily chewing away there until the blood comes out.
Like if she bit down on a foreign object,

(55:32):
you'd think she'd notice, but there is no sign that the cookie even tasted bad.
It is the most bizarre thing.
Maybe she had dentures and so she wasn't feeling whatever was like burr, carving into hergums or something.
But this is really what you learn here, Chris, is that you should question authority.
You should, you absolutely should.
Especially when the CEO of the company, has the CEO of the company respond to this?

(55:55):
She takes a few minutes out of her busy tennis schedule.
to say that the woman must have bit down on a piece of glass from the cookie jar.
And she's immediately told that the cookie jar was plastic.
She's the president of the fucking company.
How did she not know that?
The whole company is writing on the fucking cookies and she doesn't know that the jar isplastic?

(56:17):
It's all they've been talking about.
All they've been talking about.
That she doesn't know.
Honestly, take some time away.
I know their tennis match is important, but holy shit.
Like the incident such a big deal.
makes cable news.
It's big deal.
And Chris is now, she's like the face of the company now.
And, and, God, it's, it's amazing.

(56:40):
And Peter says that Chris is going to walk out the winner of all this.
And I'm like, why do you think that?
Yeah.
Like if the company goes down, how is she going to benefit?
It's riding on the cookies.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It doesn't make any sense, but you know, it does make sense then when your company's incrisis.
And the major campaign that you guys are leaning into to save your company, torevolutionize the dreadfully intense cookie business, you need to have a corporate, a

(57:08):
corporate party event picnic and do some tug of war.
my God.
Like all of, all of this, like they, they say that products are being pulled from theshelves and they still go on this stupid corporate retreat where they do like team
building exercises.
uh
Oh God.
And Peter gets pulled into the mud by Chris.
She's on one side.
He's on the other, which subtle Tom Holland, subtle.

(57:32):
It's a metaphor.
think metaphor.
Yeah.
You know, and, and, and, know, like Chris makes a pass at Peter while he's floating aroundin the inner tube.
And you know, like, again, she's got, again, a different hairstyle in this.
Yeah.
She walks to the water and her hair is bigger than ever.
It's like, remember that show, uh, flow.
about the, the that diner.

(57:53):
was a spin off of, of, of, um, yeah, the Mel's Yeah.
Like the, the, was of course from, from the, Martin Scorsese it started as a MartinScorsese movie that became a sitcom, is insane.
Yeah.
And so, so here's Chris looking like that, walking toward the water and you're thinkingsomething's going to happen now.
Cause the hair has also moved forward at this point.

(58:14):
whatever hydraulics are underneath there are either off or they've shifted.
And it lends the audience, I mean, it makes us curious.
So, okay, so is she going to whip him, like hit him with that?
And she goes down into the water.
And you know my problem, Chris, we've talked about this on numerous series on this show,even back when I was just a guest.
I don't like the idea of people having sex in filthy places.

(58:38):
No, you're right.
There's no part of me that wants to be near a hot tub or a pool or anything, but the worstplace that you could ever.
engage in sexual activity is in a river or especially a lake.
lake?
Well, lake it's not even flowing water.
That's it.
It's stagnant, filthy water full of stagnant, filthy stuff.

(59:01):
And she swims up to him and she is telling him that she wants to have sex.
She just says it.
She just says it.
Let's have sex here in the water, right here.
And maybe people see us.
Ooh.
No one's going to know, right?
Yeah.
Oh God.
It's, but no, you're right.
It's more disgusting than the hot dog from Mad Men.
without a doubt.
Yeah.

(59:21):
Although that it's less awkward than that scene.
is one of the most awkward scenes in the history of horror.
But yeah.
And so the idea of, and of course he's going to say no on numerous fronts.
The first reason being it's, it's disgusting.
It's not right to do this ever, ever.
And this is Tom Holland.
I don't know what he was thinking.
I bet this scene was originally written somewhere else and he decided to put it in somefilthy Lake and give, give this poor woman an UTI.

(59:48):
which is exactly what would happen had Peter given into this.
But he didn't, he's a good guy.
He just kind of looks at her, sips from his beer and is like, no.
He's happy in his inner tube, like I would be.
I just want to float around in my inner tube.
Yeah.
You know, that's me.
But part of it is, again, I still don't know what she wants.
Right.

(01:00:09):
Like we talked about the hand that rocks the cradle.
What's so much fun about that movie is you know exactly what Rebecca DeMornay'scharacter's goal is.
And then the fun is watching how that plan unfolds.
Here, I have no idea what she wants.
Now it makes me think she wants Peter, but I don't know.

(01:00:30):
don't know.
uh The vice president, played by Dwight Schultz, Vice President Howlin' Mad Murdoch isfound by Peter dead in his office, hanging from the ceiling.
Collapses right down on top of Peter and the sprinklers go off, so that's not great.
Did Chris do that?
Or did he kill himself because of the bloody cookies that no one knows the cause of?

(01:00:51):
Yeah, well, prior to that, we cut to a scene where there's the children of the cornstanding by the shore of the lake and there's an airplane flying overhand overhead, crop
dusting water.
What would the plane possibly be dropping on water that close to people?
And why are the children of the corn there standing at the side?
There's a car that charges at Peter who walks behind the rows, man.

(01:01:14):
He walks behind the rows.
He walks behind the filthy lakes.
And so then we see Chris almost run Peter down.
Oh yeah.
And her LeBaron, she, she, she, like she nearly runs him down and stop short hitting himlike, like she's driving the goddamn Batmobile.
And smiles at him.
And then he goes into straight up umbrella destruction, which we're going to have to addumbrellas to the fatal attraction list.

(01:01:38):
Yes.
Because this is now, I don't know how many films it It started with Fatal Attraction andevery once in while it's like, it's not as prominent as Glass Blocks, but it's pretty
prominent.
It is, yeah.
And then the next scene is Peter and Brad playing basketball like bros do.
so has men playing It's getting little rough though.
Add that to the list too.
And then Brad shoves Peter into a bike.

(01:02:00):
And Peter's like, Hey, what are you doing?
He's like a personal foul or something like, This is very strange.
And then Peter's in the office creeping on Chris at night finds Chris has photos of Peteror a photo of Peter and Sharon folded in half to hide Sharon, which to your point, Chris,
what is her end game here?
Yeah.
Like, yeah, there's the snooping in the office.

(01:02:22):
And then you have this moment there's this other executive who's kind of been on theperiphery of things.
for like the whole movie and honestly though, here's the thing, this other executive, mthe whole movie I'm like, how do I know this woman?
How do I, I've seen this actress in something else.
And it was here when they both are kind of like, they kind of both catch each othersnooping on Chris's office.

(01:02:47):
And I realized it, she's the hot Coast Guard captain from the opening scene of Clear andPresent Danger.
my gosh, good eye.
It's a deep cut.
But guys, if you know, you know.
Good eye.
Wow.
yeah, Peter, yeah, Peter nearly gets run down by the LeBaron and Peter starts to look intoone of Chris's previous jobs.
Turns out her previous boss died from a heart attack.

(01:03:11):
Is Chris responsible?
We don't know.
But Peter's late for his kid's basketball game, you know, and then, you know, he tells hisestranged wife that, uh you know, somebody found out of his therapy sessions.
Like that's a whole conversation he has with his wife.
Someone found out at my therapy sessions.
We never see that happen.
No.
And then he leaves the game, the game he's linked to.

(01:03:32):
Then he just gets up and leaves.
Leaves.
But like we never see him find out that someone found out about his therapy first.
Second, who cares?
Right.
He's a cookie executive.
He's not Tony Soprano.
Right.
So what if he's seeing a therapist?
It's a thing.
You know, Dwight Schultz should have been seeing a therapist.

(01:03:52):
Yeah.
Yep.
And then Peter sees, he sees Chris and wing, Steven Weber together, leading them, youknow, leading him to think that they're in cahoots and maybe they are.
I still don't know.
Right.
he goes to his house and, and he goes to her house, excuse me.
He goes to her house.
being Chris.
Her being Chris.
goes to Chris's house, peeks through the window as she's in her very red bedroom.

(01:04:18):
Like her bedroom is.
bathed in red light.
It's called the Argento room.
Yeah.
Exactly.
She's got, know, she's, she's made her entire bedroom a tribute to Dario Argento for sure.
And then some guy comes out of the house, her dad question mark comes out, hits him with abaseball bat and, uh, and he's off.

(01:04:40):
And what is she doing in her room though?
And this is something else to be added to the list.
She's masturbating.
Yeah.
So he's watching her masturbate through the window, which is the second, at least secondtime in this series where we've encountered someone masturbate.
think it was Pacific Heights or something and single white female had a single whitefemale.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's the one.
Yeah.
So we got to add that to the list too.

(01:05:01):
So then fate out of way tells everyone, uh, that, the company that wings Steven Weberworks for is going to beat them to the market with a nearly identical product.
and that someone has leaked the marketing strategy.
Marketing strategy?
Maybe you should be solving the mystery of the bloody cookies because everybody seems tohave forgotten about that, but they have no idea what caused that.

(01:05:28):
never comes back around.
There's never any resolution to that.
Yeah.
Does it matter if your competitors coming out with a similarly packaged cookie?
If yours is making people bleed from their mouths?
It does, Chris.
It does.
Pina tries to invite Chris over for dinner and he gets real pushy about it.

(01:05:49):
And she ends up confessing very loudly to the office that her husband left her and tooktheir child.
And I mention this because it's one of my favorite moments in the movies.
Immediately after this, Hal happens and he's kind of like, oh, I'm a jerk.
There's a guy we've never seen before.
He passes by and just says, nice going, Dern.

(01:06:13):
...
Oh, so this, this, it's a series of, this movie is fascinating because it is a series ofrandom events that seemingly have no connection to another.
The events themselves are fascinating, but they are random.
Like Peter goes home and he finds that someone's gotten into his house and stacked hischairs on the kitchen table like in Pultrgeist.

(01:06:40):
The horror.
put Blair Witch, but yeah, this is very much like a, what?
is.
but there's so many things you could do.
So many, you have access to someone's house and you really want to get inside their head,stacking their chairs.
don't know if that's the chairs on the kitchen table.
That's what you go with.
But maybe that's like a normal play, like a heavy play in the world of cookies.
don't know.

(01:07:02):
It's like the Godfather with the fish.
Oh, this means he sits on the table.
Yeah, right.
It means the cookies are on the table.
I'm just a film guy.
I guess I don't get this.
I don't know.
So Peter.
Peter goes into the office and everybody's staring at him.
Which is weird.
Everybody's just watching.
You don't say a word.

(01:07:23):
And he finds Faye Dunaway in his office who tells him, and I swear to God, I swear to GodI'm not making this, sensitive information regarding a prototype cookie recipe was found
on his computer and she accuses him of cookie espionage.
That's right.
That happens.
Peter goes to Chris's office.

(01:07:43):
where he then physically assaults both Chris and her new assistant.
And then, you know, like, you know, then he gets thrown out and, you're thinking, youknow, he goes out, goes out, gets drunk and, know, he has a fight with, uh, with the wing,
Steven Weber.
Um, and the alley, the alley and he ends up in his own, like a puddle with money layingaround him.

(01:08:04):
And yeah.
And then you'd think that Peter's career is over now for sure.
Right.
But what happens?
The next scene, the next scene after he's in the alley, he gets a call telling him to comein the office and Faye Dunaway reveals that was all a misunderstanding and he was sent the
material by accident and he's actually getting a promotion.

(01:08:25):
Nice and easy.
Nice and easy.
Like this is, it's three beats.
It's one scene where he gets fired.
The next scene where he gets drunk and is sad for himself.
And then a scene where, where he gets reinstated and promoted.
now he and Chris are going to be sent to Salem.
oversee the production of the cookie.
Presumably try to figure out what's causing the blood thing.

(01:08:45):
But, but you know, I feel like that's a problem that's gonna, that's gonna come up whenthey try to sell those cookies.
So Chris and Peter are in the car.
They're driving down the coast.
But all is, but all is not well, Chris.
No, they're driving down the coast and Chris is LeBaron.
And it, first of all, now I don't live in the Pacific Northwest, but I have been there andI also have access to maps and I have learned something because they are.

(01:09:09):
They are driving along like the cliff, like it's a, it is a coastal cliff and you have theocean on one side.
Uh, first of all, if you're driving from Portland to Salem, you have to go really far outof your way to drive to the coast.
That is not a natural way you take.
And even if you did, this is even if you did, the water would be on the other side.

(01:09:33):
Come on, Holland.
If they're driving on the Pacific coast and the ocean is on their left, which it is,they're driving north.
Salem is south of Portland.
ah Fail.
All of that doesn't matter because all of a sudden the brakes stop working.
Yeah.
The brakes stop working and now, you know, they're near, they're like, there's a hole,he's dodging cars left and right and, and they're nearly killed.

(01:09:56):
They almost go over the cliff and, they, they're able to stop safely.
Peter looks under the car, there's brake fluid pouring out.
Maybe that's what was in the cookies.
I don't know.
He does take it in his hands like people always do in movies with blood.
You know, spot a blood on the floor.
You're like, Oh, that's blood.
No.
In movies, what they do is they pick it up and it's like, the only way to tell if it'sblood is if I rub it around between my fingers.

(01:10:21):
The viscosity.
So he knew this wasn't blood leaking from his car, which would have been pretty epic.
He knows his brake fluid because he rubs it around a little bit.
And of course the question now is who cut the brakes.
Right.
Presumably it was not Peter or Chris because either of them could have been killed in thecar, right?
And listen when I ask who cut the brakes, we don't know.

(01:10:43):
I don't I'm not being coy about it.
I still don't know.
We don't know.
We never learn who cut them.
So Peter gets a message seemingly from Faye Dunaway that you know like that called her atthe hotel that there's an emergency that he called her at the hotel saying there was an
emergency at the bakery.
Like so, so he rushes down there.

(01:11:06):
There's no security guard.
Chris's LeBaron is parked outside.
Presumably they got the brakes fixed pretty fast.
And this is the most dramatic bakery I've ever seen in a motion picture.
It reminds me of the factory in Batman.
I just, I had it in my nose.

(01:11:26):
It's Axis chemicals.
1989.
Like there's dark, it's there's catwalks.
There's steam shooting out of pipes.
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's amazing.
And then Peter finds blood dripping from above him.
And at first I thought, Oh yeah, the cookies.
it's actually another victim up there.
It's a dead security guard with the ornate letter opener Chris gave him.

(01:11:49):
in the security guard's chest.
So Peter trips over Chris, who is attacked, but is still alive.
She's bleeding from her head.
And then he's hit with a pipe and he kind of gets knocked out, he gets disoriented.
And then he comes to and he sees Chris and Charlene, Faye Dunaway's character, locked in astruggle on the catwalk.

(01:12:11):
So what does he do?
He leaps to Chris's aid.
He...
pushes Charlene over the edge.
She grabs his hand at the last minute and holds on just long enough to say, the picture,before she plummets to her death or to become the Joker, whatever, whatever, whatever it
is.
So Peter becomes the new president of Mrs.

(01:12:33):
Applebee's, although he's still answering to a New Yorker with slick back hair.
And as he's moving into Charlene's office, he finds multiple picture frames.
with the same photo of a man and a child that was on Chris's desk, which leads into thefinal scene of this movie, which I'm just gonna play right here.

(01:12:54):
week's report on the oatmeal raisin classic.
Looks to be a big success.
Congratulations.
Chris.
Thanks.
These were the pictures Charlene was talking about.

(01:13:21):
I didn't call her and tell her there was an emergency at the bakery.
You did.
On my behalf.
You were gonna kill her, pin the murder on me?
Because she was on to you, wasn't she?
She knew you didn't go to Stanford, she knew you lied about having a family.
Any higher here as long as Charlene was around.

(01:13:44):
was going to tell you about the picture I always keep on my desk.
To fend away office hounds, lots of girls do.
Or they wear wedding rings.
You always have an answer.
Come again?
I said you always have an answer!
Why don't you save them for someone else?

(01:14:05):
Peter, we're not gonna go through this again, are we?
No, we're not.
As president, it's time I start delegating some authority.
Rosemary, call the police and have security make sure Miss Boland doesn't leave thebuilding.
Thanks.

(01:14:27):
One more thing, Chris.
Clean out your desk.
You're fired.
That's the end of the movie.
That's it.
Like we just literally cut to the credits from there.
He fires her and that's the end of the movie.
That's it.
Like, first of all, he can't prove anything.

(01:14:48):
Like she did not fade on a way to her death.
He did.
I'm honestly, I'm not even sure you could fire her, not for cause.
Like she'll probably have a pretty strong wrongful termination suit.
Yeah.
Like it's just, it's, it's, it is.
That's it's the most shocking sudden end to a movie since French connection to.

(01:15:09):
I think they ran out of time.
And a film like it's just it's got stopped.
I don't know.
Like it's it's like that's it.
you fired.
there you go.
Now I want to mention that the ending was apparently changed substantially.
Like that, that so much so that the original film, the original release date was delayedfrom late 92 to 93.

(01:15:33):
So in the original ending, Peter and Chris have a fight in the bakery and Chris's hand ischopped off before she slides into an oven and is burned to death.
But this was deemed too violent.
apparently there were several endings written.

(01:15:54):
some in which Chris did it all, some in which Charlene did it all.
And the ending they went with was crafted without writer Kevin Falls.
It was actually written by Star Trek 2, the Wrath of Khan director and uncredited FatalAttraction co-writer, Nick Meyer.
What?
He wrote that last scene where he fires Chris and I'm like...

(01:16:19):
I am so just like stunned by the amount of stuff we don't know.
Like what exactly Chris did or didn't do and why?
Did she kill Oliver Platt?
Did she kill Dwight Schultz?
Did she maim Lance's hand?
She's probably good on that one.
Did she make the cookies turn to blood?
Did we ever figure out why they were turning to blood and correct it before it gets to thestore shelves?

(01:16:45):
Did she give the marketing information to wing Steven Weber?
Did she break into Peter's house and pull a poultry Geist on the kitchen chairs?
Did she stab the security guard at the Axis bakery?
Did she cut her own brake line of the car she was going to be riding in?
None of these questions are answered.
None of them.
I'm going to live with them for the rest of my life.

(01:17:06):
they had to bring in an outside rider to finish this thing.
the very least you would think that they would be like, all right, man.
So we got, we, have a few.
We need you to tie up a few loose ends here.
Can you help with this?" And they're like, no, just fix the ending.
Well, what's the end of?
Well, we shot like five different ones.
Well, why don't you use one of those?
Well, we want it to make no sense.

(01:17:26):
Okay.
All right.
Well, just end it.
Just end it.
You just made $10 million.
Cut to black.
It's fine.
Thank you very much.
I mean, it's like imagine if fatal attraction left it so maybe Alex boiled the bunny, butmaybe she didn't.
Right.
Maybe she did the fucked up his car.
Maybe she didn't.

(01:17:49):
This movie.
I, I, I.
The Temp.
So many questions.
So many questions.
But what's interesting is that The Temp was not the only erotic thriller of this era torevolve around corporate intrigue and a woman with impeccably manicured eyebrows at a
company in the Pacific Northwest.
Because our second film today also has those things from 1994.

(01:18:14):
This is Disclosure.
uh Today was to be the biggest day of Tom Sanders' career.
I didn't get it.
new vice president will be Meredith Johnson.
Meredith!
about this woman?
I do.

(01:18:35):
But now, oh his entire future you have a problem working for me?
Tom, what are you gonna do?
Granted and bear it like I usually do and hope it doesn't get any worse.
is about to fall into the hands I have a family now.
That's exactly why can trust you.
You have a lot more to lose than I do.
of a woman from his past Wait a second, wait a second.

(01:18:56):
Nobody has to know.
Nobody gets hurt.
Stop!
not gonna do this.
You said you sexually harassed her.
She harassed me.
Can you finish what you started or you're dead?
Do you hear me?
We just have to hope he's smart enough to see he doesn't have any options.

(01:19:18):
I want to know whether I can sue her for sexual harassment.
It's very dangerous game, Mr.
Sanders.
Are you willing to play it?
Don't tell me you're scared of me.
They set me up.
We pushed him too hard.
has nothing to lose.
Well, he hasn't told his wife yet.

(01:19:43):
between me and my wife.
right here
scene.
uh

(01:20:07):
Disclosure was one of a host of movies made through the 1990s based on the novels ofMichael Crichton.
You had Jurassic Park and Rising Sun in 1993.
You had this film in 94, Congo in 95, as well as Sphere and the 13th Warrior towards theend of the decade.
Along with John Grisham, he is one of the most adapted novelists of the decade.

(01:20:30):
And I remember seeing this movie when it came out movie theaters.
This was a big movie when it came out.
Like this was a big deal, although I'm not sure I've seen it in its entirety since.
The film was written by Paul Attanasio, who wrote the same year wrote one of my favoritemovies, Quiz Show, which is just an absolutely amazing film.
And it was directed by Barry Levinson, who rose to prominence with Diner and then followedit with movies like The Natural and Tin Men and Good Morning Vietnam and Rain Man, as well

(01:21:00):
as many, many others, including the previously mentioned Sphere.
Although originally Alan J.
Pakula was considered to direct.
He was originally going to do this film and we discussed his films earlier with PresumedInnocent and Consenting Adults.
Maybe they saw Consenting Adults and were like, yeah, we gotta, we gotta move on.
And right from the top, I'll say Disclosures are far more polished and like well puttogether film than The Temp.

(01:21:24):
It is.
Like it's trying to be like a classier sort of erotic thriller.
Like, you know.
It's interesting.
It's the first film in the series to be shot in a 2.39 aspect ratio like a cinemascopeaspect ratio But I will say it's more boring Chris.
Yeah, no, you're right.
You're right There's something about like it's it's it's a well-made movie, but there'ssomething about it that is It feels kind of calcified in the era that it was made

(01:21:54):
disclosure It stars Michael Douglas Demi Moore Donald Sutherland Caroline Goodall DylanBaker
Roma mafia and Dennis Miller as himself.
I hate Dennis Miller.
Not really playing him, but essentially he's playing a very Dennis Miller type of guybecause that's all Dennis Miller can play.
He's awful.
He's not transforming himself into like Winston Churchill or something.

(01:22:16):
Although I would watch that.
I wouldn't.
In comparison to the temp, it's more coherent.
It has a plot you can follow.
Plot points are set up and then followed up on in a logical way.
But it just, it feels a little dry.
It revolves around a software company called Digicom whose advanced products group isbased in Seattle where the film was shot.

(01:22:42):
And God, it makes Seattle look terrific.
wow.
Like it's, want to, I want to live in the Seattle of disclosure cause it looks fantastic.
And Digicom.
is in the middle of a merger that will make the top executives, including founder BobGarvin, very rich or richer than the second merger of the day.
Yeah.
Second merger of the day.

(01:23:03):
Both of these movies, at least here, like they clearly know the merger is coming.
It's not like something that gets sprung on them at the Monday meeting.
And like, Hey, we're merging tomorrow.
Like it's a big deal.
And Michael Douglas, he plays Tom Sanders, who's the head of manufacturing and he was inline for a big promotion to lead the CD-ROM division.

(01:23:23):
That's right, folks, the CD-ROM.
Now, if you're, if you're rushing to your computer to look up what a CD-ROM is, that was abig deal in the nineties.
It's like, Ooh, you can get computer programs on CD.
Ooh.
Of course.
mean, this whole movie is, it's a lot of tech talk.
Yes.
there's a lot of tech talk and dated tech talk.
Very dated.
It absolutely locks itself into the exact moment when it was made for all of eternity.

(01:23:48):
and from that point forward is
is going to be a challenge for any audiences down the road, like in 2025, to get into itand really engage without chuckling.
Yeah, it's funny because we've had a number of films in the series that could be describedas very 90s in terms of like fashion or the music choices, et cetera.
But this film, because it's the computer industry setting, as well as some other reasonswhich we'll talk about in a bit, feels particularly dated.

(01:24:16):
the email that pops up on Tom's home computer at the beginning of the film, it's thisgraphics heavy, like a big digital E.
And when you send an email, like a digital letter goes into a digital envelope.
And I'm just like, you know what?
Now we know to hell with all that.
Just make it so the damn thing works.
Well, and the emails throughout this whole thing, when they pop up, it's like Post-Itnotes that appear on the screen.

(01:24:38):
And I'm like, was that ever a thing?
Well, why is the daughter checking his email anyway?
And printing it out for him.
Let's print.
Is this what what and so really folks for this portion of the episode we've replacedcookies with tech with CD roms and tech CD roms virtual reality and it's not all the
virtual reality is amazing.

(01:24:59):
my god.
So she well, I mean it's but it's not like she answered the phone.
It's not like hey the kid answered the home phone.
Hey dad, it's someone from the office.
She's checking his email which is just sitting open for anyone to walk in and look at athome.
Yeah, and being printed out with
Why why why why would you do that?
That's a good way to lose cookie secrets is what they It's funny because this this movieit feels like it's it's really kind of trying to build off a fatal attraction in a very

(01:25:30):
specific way Like particularly with casting Michael Douglas in the lead role, right?
But it's almost as if they said what if we took Dan Gallagher from fatal attraction puthim in a sexual situation where he is Entirely the victim with no culpability
and go from there.
So it's like, what if we strip away the sort of shader shading and layers that FatalAttraction had and just make it good guys and bad guys?

(01:25:56):
And that's kind of disclosure.
Yeah.
And you no longer have a kite factory.
have the world of tech, which all of which looks like training video footage.
All of the screens in this film are constantly playing like Circuit City new hire videosfrom 1996.
That's what you're getting the entire run of this movie for the tech world.

(01:26:17):
It's incredibly exciting.
It's interesting.
You have this house that the, that, that the Sanders family lives in.
And I feel like the house at the beginning is sort of representative of the movie in someways.
Like you remember in fatal attraction, they had that New York apartment, which wasobjectively fantastic, but had grown a little claustrophobic because they, just had too
much stuff here rather than have the slightly overcrowded apartment.

(01:26:42):
They have this absolutely gorgeous, perfect house on the water with a view of Seattle.
It is right off of the cover of a 1994 issue of architectural digest.
There's no clutter whatsoever.
Like even when they're doing the usual domestic chaos thing and getting the kids ready forschool, it's just, everything looks perfect.

(01:27:03):
I'm like, you guys already have it.
What, why am I feeling anything for you?
Like the wife.
The wife gets this because when they're driving to work and Tom is talking about how thedeal could make him rich, she says, we're already rich, if you ask me.
I'm like, no shit, lady, I saw your house.
And then he goes, no, really rich.

(01:27:24):
It's just like where some of the earlier films in this series, you had people withobjectively good lives, but you could appreciate some degree of dissatisfaction.
Here, it's like this guy has everything he could ever want.
Why do you know?
there's less incentive to connect to these characters because you're just like, this guylives in the perfect house on the lake.

(01:27:46):
If I had that house, I'd live in that house for the rest of my life and never leave.
Yeah.
Just stare at, I'd get a telescope so I could look out at the boats on the water.
telescope.
I would, I'd get a telescope.
Absolutely.
But you know, know, Tom's a good guy because he's trying to get his wife to get Disneylandtickets for one of the guys who works for him.
ah he's not focused on appearances because he's got toothpaste on his tongue.

(01:28:10):
Don't worry about it, he says.
Don't worry about it.
That's fine.
And did you notice that the music composed by Ennio Morricone?
Oh yeah.
It's not like a distinctly Ennio score.
it's more, but it's like, oh, well, hey, there you go.
So Tom takes the ferry over to work.
Again, the most pleasant, relaxing way to commute to the office on a ferry.

(01:28:37):
And the ferry is huge and it's quite something.
This isn't the ferry from Jaws.
No.
Where they pull one car onto it and it barely makes it across and then they're told to goback.
Like this is a massive thing, which I'm sure is part of many people's lives there.
I'm sure it's like the Staten Island ferry, but kind of nicer.
Way nicer.
It's super clean and he talks to his pain in the ass buddy when he's there.

(01:28:58):
Buddy will shut I don't understand this guy's point.
He doesn't need to be in this movie at all.
He doesn't ever make any difference to anything and-
It comes up again later he's on the ferry and the dude is there.
Does he just ride the ferry all day?
Is he one of those ferry folk?
I don't understand what his purpose is in this movie.
You get the impression he does ride the ferry all day and he talks to whoever will listenabout how cell phones used to be bigger and it used to be okay to sexually harass women at

(01:29:22):
the office.
yeah.
That's his whole bit.
Like not in those words, but that's what he's saying.
Yeah.
No wonder he got fired.
Right.
Get out of here.
You and Dennis Miller get the fuck out.
This fella, God.
So Tom gets to the office and I have to say, the office is amazing.

(01:29:43):
It's all brick and wrought iron and glass blocks.
This whole series, we've been talking about how glass blocks are the signaturearchitectural detail of the era.
And in this series in particular, and my friends, we have entered glass block heaven.

(01:30:04):
1994 we are the pinnacle.
are well into the nineties at this point.
is absolutely essential that these movies have something.
And as the movie progresses, we move into more and more rooms that have more and more ofthe glass blocks.
It's amazing.
Like one point, like, yeah, first you see a few of them and then more and then more.
And then there's a scene where they're like walking across this bridge.

(01:30:27):
Like they're having a, it's it's, it's, it's,
It's Michael Douglas and Dylan Baker and they're walking across this bridge talking andglass blocks just fill the background.
is incredible.
It's like Minecraft, but 1994.
And it's glass.
It's glass.
It's really something.

(01:30:48):
And boy was I happy to see it.
That's the one thing I have for these two movies.
I have like 10 pages of notes.
The only thing in all caps with a lot of exclamation points is glass block wall.
Oh yeah.
No, absolutely.
Glorious Chris.
it is amazing.
And not only is the office aesthetically one of the most beautiful I've ever seen, butlike the windows and multiple floors, it actually really does give a ton of opportunities

(01:31:13):
for characters to watch one another.
There's a lot of like people watching other people in offices.
You can create compositions for the camera.
It's a really great set.
And it is sort of the central, like that's, where we're going to spend most of this movie.
And you see a lot that allows the backdrop to be Seattle from start to finish in thisfilm.
they're right across from some amusement park thing with this red roller coaster in it.

(01:31:37):
So it just gives you so much to look at.
It's clear that they weren't shooting this in sets where they were just trying to crampeople into a room.
mean, they really thought about it.
And some of the meeting rooms in this thing, Chris are remarkably
Beautiful.
Oh, yeah, there's the room where they have the mediation hearing.
Yeah, yeah.
With those like the glass, it's almost like a half dome.

(01:32:01):
Yep.
Glass half dome over it and like it's raining outside because it's Seattle, so sometimesit rains.
It looks amazing.
It's a beautiful, beautiful room.
beams holding the whole thing together.
It's opulence.
So these people are not dealing in cookies, folks.
No, these people are in the world of tech.
No, they're dealing in CD-ROMs.

(01:32:22):
CD-ROMs.
That's right.
It's interesting.
It's funny because a lot of the tech is dated.
Like the fact that the development of a CD-ROM is central to the story.
And somebody even makes a crack how, oh, it'll be obsolete in a year.
I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's actually kind of right.
And we get a peek at some like kind of early Zoom meeting here.
That was just what I was going to say.
Like it's almost unremarked on in the movie is Tom has this proto Zoom call or protoFaceTime, if you like.

(01:32:47):
with an employee in Malaysia.
And I'm just like, that's right on the money.
And the movie doesn't even like, doesn't even kind of mention it.
It's just sort of like, you know, out of hand.
That's very forward thinking.
then, but then immediately thereafter, he slaps his secretary in the ass with a file as hewalks away from her.
So it's like, okay, no, we're still in the nineties here.
Okay.
Yeah.

(01:33:07):
Yeah.
Cause cause well, Tom's a nice guy.
Like he's not a sexual abuser, but he's not quite woke either.
Right.
Like, you know, and he gives his assistant Cindy a pat on the, on the tush with the file.
Cindy is played by Jacqueline Kim, who the same year played Sulu's daughter in Star TrekGenerations.

(01:33:27):
Not the last Star Trek connection.
will point them out as they go because I want to.
that's what I like to do.
So Tom learns that a woman named Meredith Johnson, who works for Digicom, although Tomdoesn't seem to know that he's like surprised she works for the company.
And she's in the office and wants to see him.

(01:33:47):
And uh Tom has a long conversation with the company's hatchet man, Philip Blackburn, who'splayed by Dylan Baker, who basically tells him, dude, you're not getting the promotion.
It's like, you know.
And I do think this movie is, it presents like the intricacies of corporate politics, likein a.

(01:34:08):
really good.
Like the walk and talk with Michael Douglas and Dylan Baker is really, really good.
I really like The whole movie is that.
I this really is.
If you were to just hit mute and watch it, you would think this has to be the most barren,boring film that you've ever seen.
And it's, it certainly isn't a thrill ride, but the entirety of it is about officepolitics.
And it's about people who are willing to do whatever they can to rise and to climb theladder and sacrificing relationships and.

(01:34:36):
compromising the company in some cases.
I mean, it's all about that.
It's what's interesting is the movie purports to be about sexual harassment.
That's what like it's sold as, but it's not.
It's actually not about that at all, which is super interesting.
Right.
So we're introduced to the president of Digicom, Bob Garvin, played by Donald Sutherland.
And again, this is one of those Donald Sutherland, always great.

(01:34:59):
And this movie is no exception.
Like he brings to me, I think he just brings presence and weight.
Like you buy him as this guy who is this
corporate shark who puts on the mask of being a nice guy.
I really like Donald Sutherland in this movie.
He's really, really good.
And uh Tom walks into the office where he's basically ambushed by Meredith, played by DemiMoore in a performance that I can only describe as high camp villainy.

(01:35:26):
You want to see me about something?
Yeah, sorry about this morning, you know how it is with the kids.
Yeah, yeah.
Have you ever met Meredith Johnson, Tom?
Hi.
What's the matter, Sanders?
That's a hello you'd give to a rash.
I'm just a little preoccupied.
It has nothing to do with you.
Sanders and I go way back.
He broke my heart.
She's making that up.
Thought your heart was made out of that plastic they use for football helmets.

(01:35:47):
Sanders used to tell me I could be anything I wanted.
Well he f***ing broke.
I was a line, Bob.
It wasn't a line.
What's that line of wilds?
I like a man with a future and a woman with a past.
Somebody said you were in operations.
I don't know, Bob, am I in operations?
I know the last few years I've been trying to clean up the mess that Bob's made of thiscompany.

(01:36:08):
Ha!
If it's such a mess, how come I'm so rich?
Yes, but you're a lot richer now.
Well, maybe we should catch up.
Get together.
I'd love that.
I need time for that now.
Like she's amazing.
Yeah.
But she's not playing a real person.
Right.
Like she's, she's playing a Bond villain, basically.
She even dresses like a Bond villain.
Yeah.

(01:36:28):
And we learned that Tom and Meredith were once an item and they were pretty hot and heavy.
uh Tom breaks the news that he's not getting the promotion to the rest of his team, whichincludes Don Cherry, who is a young computer programmer.
Marianne Hunter, a female computer programmer, and Dennis Miller as himself.
And Don Cherry, worth a note, has to be a nod to Don Cherry of NHL fame, who was a coachand then a famed commentator on broadcasts for years on Hockey Night in Canada.

(01:36:56):
interesting.
Very famous for his outlandish suits and bravado.
He was a staple in the world of hockey for many, years until he passed away and a definitelegend in the rink.
you could say, but there's no way that name isn't a nod to him.
So I'm curious what the tie may be somewhere.
Interesting.
And Hunter is played by Susie Plaxen, who was Worf's Klingon love interest on Star TrekThe Next Generation.

(01:37:21):
Wow.
And started her career in a national tour of Stop the World I Want to Get Off oppositeAnthony Newley, whose film Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Hump and Find True
Happiness is one of the more
infamous movies we've discussed on this podcast.
So it all comes full circle.

(01:37:42):
Back to Anthony Newley.
That is a thread.
You just took us down.
That was great.
Donald Sutherland makes the big announcement that the company that that Meredith Johnsonis going to be the new vice president and in charge of the Seattle office, passing over
not only Tom, but another executive named Stephanie Kaplan, who the movie is hoping you'llforget about until later.

(01:38:03):
So
Yeah.
Tom goes up to Meredith's office for a meeting about the CD-ROM where she has wine readyand waiting.
And instead of talking about business, Meredith wants to talk about old times,specifically old sexy time.
Yeah.
I guess can be a bit inhibiting.

(01:38:23):
What's that?
Domesticity.
You'd be surprised.
Well, I don't imagine you can jump her from behind just because all of a sudden you getexcited by the way she bends down to pick up the soap.
You remember that, don't you?
Yeah, I remember that.
And you miss it.

(01:38:43):
I have my compensations.
Of course you do.
Life's series of trade-offs.
Isn't that what you tell yourself?
I wouldn't trade what I have if that's what you're saying.
I wouldn't want you to.
That's exactly why I can trust you.
You have a lot more to lose than I do.

(01:39:04):
You're up to speed on the problems we're having with the drives.
You kept in good shape, Tom.
Nice and hard.
Thank you.
Meredith, it's different now.

(01:39:25):
Okay, you're my boss.
It's different.
Okay.
Rub my shoulders and I'll listen to your problems.
rub my shoulders and I'll listen to your problems.
And he does it.
He does it.
He does it.
Uh, and pretty soon Meredith has to take a call.
So Tom makes a call on his cell phone at the same time.

(01:39:46):
And that's when she appears behind him and basically forces herself on him.
And I remember watching this scene when I saw it in the movie theater, you know, 30 yearsago, but I didn't remember it going on for so long.
Yeah.
Now we're entering back into the territory.
We saw this exact scenario play out in a film a few weeks ago with the not so resistantquote unquote victim of a forced blow job.

(01:40:13):
Right.
At least in Single White Female, he thought that was Bridget Fonda until like halfwaythrough.
And then it was like, shit, you're not who I thought you were.
Like here it's just like.
You know, she's pawing at him and he's saying no.
Not stopping her, but not scooting away, but not standing up.
not walking out of the room.
Yeah, exactly.
Again, I don't want to sound like I'm victim blaming because he is clearly the victim, butlike at the same time, it takes a lot for things to go as far as things go in this scene.

(01:40:41):
Like just get the hell out, man.
Yeah.
Instead, Tom gets angry and there's a few moments where we think that we're going to getsome angry sex.
He's like, you want this?
You want this?
know, he's, he's.
And again, it goes, and then he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and you know,he, comes to his senses.
have I done?
What have I done?
And then Merritt's like, you get back here and finish what you started.

(01:41:03):
And then he leaves and she chases him out screaming that, he's going to pay.
him out her cleavage spilling over the railing.
Yeah.
Like it's funny because the novelty of the computer stuff is part of what dates it.
But aside from that,
Like it's also some of the views about sexual harassment.

(01:41:25):
Like it's making this statement that women can be as abusive in the way that men can.
And that feels like a very bold statement for 1994, but it kind of feels obvious in 2025.
Like, you know, they say several times, sexual abuse is not about sex.
It's about power.
Well, no shit.
But maybe that wasn't as obvious, you know, again, in the nineties was like, you have tomake a thing about.

(01:41:49):
And there's a good speech later on that we'll eventually get to that Meredith makes aboutthis very point.
I think it may be some of the best writing in the film.
Once we eventually get there where she addresses this, this double standard about whatmen, oh what's okay for men to do within office politics realms and what's okay for women

(01:42:11):
to do within office politics realms.
And I appreciate her ownership of that in that moment, but that's a little ways down the
Yes, is.
no, but it's Tom goes home and he does the dumbest thing he could possibly do.
He doesn't tell his wife everything immediately.
Like he tries to hide the scratches and she left some scratches.

(01:42:31):
Like it's like freaking Wolverine.
Yeah.
Like, my God.
and, and, know, we have, uh, we have it, we have a dream sequence.
I really like this dream sequence.
So he goes to the office, he's going to the office.
gets in the elevator with Donald Sutherland.
and everything seems normal and then Donald Sutherland starts commenting on his body andthen he leans in and we get this big first person kiss with tongue of Donald Sutherland.

(01:42:58):
The reason I like this dream sequence is because I feel that dream sequences should go oneof two ways.
They should either not hide the fact that they're dream sequences or hide them well enoughthat I don't immediately realize it.
Like, what movie was it that we, Pacific Heights.
where it was trying to hide it, but you knew instantly he was dreaming and that it wasridiculous.

(01:43:22):
I'm like, if you're going to hide the dream sequence ball, you've got to do it well.
And I think this does.
Yeah.
So the next day Tom arrives at work to find Donald Sutherland and the executives, they'replaying with the virtual reality system.
Oh, the virtual reality system, which is simultaneously cool and stupid.
It really is.
it's both things at the same time.

(01:43:42):
I don't remember this being a thing then.
I mean, maybe I was just completely out of the loop on tech.
No, like there was never this level of virtual reality.
This is almost science fiction.
Yeah.
Like, and it's cool.
Like, but like it's also dumb.
And it looks just like it looks like the VR today though.
I Audiences of today would recognize this as the headset that you click your phone intothe front of, and then you can have a virtual reality experience.

(01:44:07):
And this note for note got that in 1994, which is strange.
But it's also dumb.
because it's used as the most overcomplicated file cabinet ever conceived.
Like what do you want to do in your virtual world?
You want to fly over Mount Everest?
You want to ride a wooly mammoth?
You want to visit an alien planet?
Nah, I want to walk down a hallway and open a drawer.

(01:44:30):
I want to do paperwork.
And the fact you can actually access like corporate
files through this thing.
Yeah, we're going to get there with that.
This is something to like sell people on.
It's like a toy for executives and you can actually like get like serious corporate dataon it.
It's insane.

(01:44:50):
Yeah, because it's so much more fun to strap this thing on, stand on this weird platform,have these lights installed in your room, do all this stuff and just walk down the hallway
and get it for real.
Like what is the benefit of doing this?
It's not like there's dragons swooping in that you're fighting.
Right.
Like if you're going to do virtual reality, you may get Dungeons and Dragons or something.
Something.
Not just, oh, file cabinet.

(01:45:12):
Oh, what's next?
Oh, let's check out the contracts.
So next Tom learns that Meredith is actually pressing sexual harassment charges againsthim.
That she is saying that he sexually harassed her.
And so then, you he's told if they accept, if he accepts a transfer to Austin, Texas,
he will basically, everything will be kind of let go, but that's a career dead end.

(01:45:36):
He'll lose his stock options and you know, he's kind of in a position where it's like, youknow, he's like, she harassed me, but nobody's going to believe it.
also worth noting two for two today on basketball, because in his office, what seems to behis stress ball, I don't know, is when he gets a little worked up, he picks up a
basketball and just kind of cradle it and rubs it.

(01:45:57):
Like, why do you, why is there a bad,
This is a very elaborate office.
It's not like he can run down the hall and play, shoot hoops with his buddies.
There's no outlet for that.
It's just the ball and his office that he grabs and fondles once in a while.
This guy is a ball fondler.
Well, so, so is Demi Moore's character apparently as well.

(01:46:18):
Truth, truth.
Oh, I should mention, I almost forgot.
He starts to get mysterious emails signed a friend, letter a the word friend.
And they give advice that is so cryptic as to be almost worthless.
Well, the first one he gets leads him to- It's not advice.

(01:46:39):
Yeah.
He leads him to this attorney, Catherine Alvarez, who may be able to help him in his uhsexual harassment predicament.
Well, the very first one that he gets from this-
Well, it's actually before we see a friend as the sender.
And this is another thing.
I have a question in my notes here, was this a thing at one point?

(01:47:02):
It's an email where the sender is not available to be seen.
Like you don't see who the email is from.
And it says, is your cock hard?
That is not from a friend.
That is from somebody else.
Yeah.
That's what I'm saying.
This is like one of the early harassment emails that he starts to get is that.
it's from an, and it's when he looks at who sent it, says unavailable.

(01:47:23):
Like, was there a time when we could send anonymous emails?
There might have been.
I don't know.
I didn't remember that ever being the case.
It's very I don't know.
It's one of those things where it's like, oh maybe it was for a time where if you were,and these are tech people, so maybe they know what they're doing in a way that I wouldn't.
Yeah.
Yeah, OK.

(01:47:43):
All right.
All right.
But he does actually end up at this, at the office of this, of this uh lawyer, CatherineAlvarez, who, is known for garnering publicity and you know, the company, basically says,
Hey, I don't need to actually sue.
I just need to threaten to sue because that will be enough to blow up this deal.
And the company will do whatever it can to keep that under wraps.

(01:48:06):
And the company agrees to mediation in order to keep the whole thing from, from becomingpublic.
I love.
how Donald Sutherland says the word,
I'm trying to get them to mediate.
Keep it quiet.
Mediate?
Like he just spits it out.
It's so good.

(01:48:27):
And all of this happens very fast.
Like over the course of a single work week, this whole movie takes place over five workdays.
And it identifies them by day.
So you see in full caps, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
But I feel like mediation, like obviously a trial would take even more time, but likemediation, I feel like it would happen more than, like it would take more than like a day.

(01:48:48):
for that to happen.
And then Tom's wife learns of the whole incident from Dennis Miller, because DennisMiller's a jerk and there you go.
They're at a benefit and he's like, oh, thought I'd get it.
Losing a few million dollars gets stuck right here.
That doesn't sound like Dennis Miller at all, but it's kind of a generic asshole voice.
And I have no problem with that.

(01:49:09):
That's pretty good.
That forces him to tell his wife, which is what he should have done in the first place.
And then we get a lot of mediation.
Like the whole second act is the mediating sessions in this beautiful room.
And thank God they put it in a beautiful room because it's so just uninteresting, any ofit.
Yeah.
It's basically like he said, she said, there's no real evidence presented on either side.

(01:49:34):
We get this whole thing about how Tom and Meredith used to have a very spicy sex life thatI feel like was supposed to be shocking in the nineties, but like doesn't really seem.
Right.
It's like, oh, they watch porn together.
Oh, in the context of a monogamous relationship, scandalous.
Oh, like not to mention that like if Meredith wanted to project any kind of sympatheticimage, again, why does she come to the mediation dressed like a Bond villain?

(01:50:03):
Like she's kind of, she's dressed like Dr.
No.
Totally.
Tom's lawyer makes a point about how rare the wine Meredith had for the meeting and youknow, like that's evidence that she planned the whole thing in advance.
But again,
The mediation just kind of goes on for a while.
get some more cryptic emails from a friend telling Tom to solve the problem.
What the hell does that mean?

(01:50:23):
Why don't you tell me what the problem, you're already going to trouble sending me emails,a friend, solve the problem.
know, and there's just, it's again, the middle of this movie is a lot of mediation.
At one point or another, Donald Sutherland offers to settle the case and he gives one ofthe more prescient lines in the film.
the legacy of the modern age is we have information, but no truth.

(01:50:46):
I'm like, buddy, you don't know the half of it.
Yeah, no kidding.
Here's the thing.
We're going to cut to the chase here because it all ends up kind of not mattering when Tomrealizes that when he was on his cell phone in Meredith's office that night, he dialed the
wrong number and the whole episode, the entire sexual harassment thing in Meredith'soffice was recorded on his buddy's answering machine.

(01:51:10):
And it's amazing.
Honestly, it's amazing that Meredith is so careless and stupid as to take the phone out ofTom's hand and just toss it aside.
Like, what did you think was going to happen?
Yeah.
Like the best case scenario is someone else might hear it.
The worst is that it's recorded.
And this continues the answering machine thread that has been throughout the series too.
And it's especially stupid when you consider what we're going to learn in the third actbecause the

(01:51:36):
This is where she gets, she has that great speech where she talks about the differencebetween like men and women in these kind of corporate settings.
You want to put me on trial here, let's at least be honest about what it's for.
I am a sexually aggressive woman, I like it.
Tom knew it and you can't handle it.
It is the same damn thing since the beginning of time.

(01:51:56):
Veil it, hide it, lock it up and throw away the key.
We expect a woman to do a man's job, make a man's money and then walk around with aparasol and lie down for a man to fuck her like it was still a hundred years ago.
Well, no thank you.
Yeah, she says, I'm a sexually aggressive woman and that's how she starts it off.
And then she goes on to explain and I, yeah, and I like it.
And this is okay for a man to do, but when a woman does it, I mean, it's really anoutstanding little speech that is given there.

(01:52:21):
the tape, you know, the, the whole thing is recorded on tape basically ends like sort ofthe sexual harassment portion of it.
But the movie's not over yet because the movie isn't really about sexual harassment.
It's really about corporate malfeasance and
So, Tom, gets another email from a friend telling him to solve the problem.

(01:52:43):
He overhears Meredith and Philip Blackburn talking about how they're going to pin theproblems with the CD-ROM drives because it's really about the CD-ROM, not about sexual
harassment.
But Tom needs evidence.
How's he going to get it, Chris?
The most amazing scene.
He goes to the hotel.

(01:53:03):
The virtual reality simulator has been set up.
for like the executives that are buying the company at their hotel.
In an unlocked room at the hotel.
Yeah.
So he goes in and we have this amazing and totally ridiculous sequence where Tom goes into Digicom's digital corridor, this virtual world to find proof that Meredith fucked up

(01:53:27):
the production line.
And it's a demo.
It's a demo.
early on that this is a demo.
So this is not.
a fully functional version of this.
This is just to show people, it's kind of show it off.
Yeah.
here's a cool thing that might be a real thing in 10, 20 years.
What are demos?
They are small, less intricate versions of the full thing.
So surely this is not going to be tied into their system of files, Chris, and allow himany kind of access.

(01:53:51):
And especially when you've sent it over to the hotel.
Right, right.
No, no, it's completely tied into all of their files and all of their like corporate like.
Secret corporate data.
love as he starts walking around in this thing, because the way it plays out shows you howto use your term dumb.
whole concept is because it literally is just walking down hallways in a building thatthat all looks like, like I said, circuit city training videos and circuit 1992 or

(01:54:22):
whatever, and finding your way to the right file.
Now, when he gets there.
It's kind of like a really exciting adventure game where there are files, but which one isthe one?
And he has to sort of pick and choose.
And eventually he taps on the one that he needs.
It opens up.
then in virtual, virtual reality fantasy, gets to lift a file out of a drawer and startreading it.

(01:54:46):
And Demi Moore, who's in on her like computer in her office, erasing stuff.
get this like wire frame avatar with Demi Moore's face as she's
She's taking the files and like erasing them.
is, it is incredible.
It's ridiculous, but it's incredible.
That is the best when she shows up in the background and she does again later, but it'salmost like they forgot she was in the shot.

(01:55:10):
She's not really in it, but the virtual reality Meredith, Demi Moore in this thing is
just incredible.
And she seems to have none of the arm movements and capabilities that he has.
No, it's just her face on a wire.
It's like her.
It's like her photo from her like corporate, like her corporate ID.
Like it's what it reminds me of.

(01:55:32):
If anybody out there has seen ghost adventures, which is the most hilarious ghost huntingshow, these guys have these, this tech where they turn this thing on and they look at it.
And it shows you if there's a spirit in the room by having an animated stick figure.
doing whatever the ghost is allegedly doing, which is usually like dancing or somethinggoofy like that.

(01:55:53):
It looks just like one of those.
So we've entered ghost adventures territory with this thing.
Just slap Demi Moore's CG face over the top of it.
Amazing.
Oh my God.
Honestly, between this and there's a similar scene in the Tom Clancy movie, Clear andPresent Danger with Harrison Ford, where he's racing to get-
like data out of a computer before the other guy, you know, before the other guy erasesit.

(01:56:17):
Like 1994 was really a year for dramatic data retrieval in movies.
Like that's the peak.
The oddest thing about it though is he doesn't get the information he needs.
Like she erases it.
Well, the oddest thing about it is that, do you guys remember when Microsoft office firstcame around and when you had a question, like, cause we didn't know how to use office at

(01:56:40):
that time.
And so you'd had this little key thing you could hit and an assistant would pop up and itwas a little paper clip that would talk to you.
Right.
I remember the paper clip.
And in this case built into the digicom corridor demo is their version of the paper clip,but it's an employee like a computer.

(01:57:00):
It's Cherry, the employee named Don Cherry.
Cherry dressed as an angel.
it's dead.
It's presumably dead Don Cherry, his, his angels spirit.
holding a harp, a harp.
And that is, and they say, angel, I need help is what Tom says.
And then angel appears like the paperclip guy and is like, well, I can't really help you.

(01:57:22):
can't help you.
Sorry.
can't do it.
Well, what good are you angel harp dead Don Cherry?
It's about as useful as that paperclip guy.
mean, let's be honest.
It's the paperclip guy.
So, but, then, you know, thankfully the guy he's able to get the things he needs from theguy he was getting Disneyland tickets for.
Thank goodness he was, he was willing to get Disneyland tickets.

(01:57:43):
Cause then the guy he's got, we got backup copies of everything.
Yep.
So the next day, Meredith tries to ambush Tom at the big meeting saying he's responsiblefor the problems with the production line on, the, on the CD-ROM drive, but he's got the
receipts showing that it was her who lowered like ordered the lower quality air filtersand other cost cutting measures that have ruined the drives.

(01:58:07):
Meredith is humiliated.
and she's quickly on her way to being out of a job.
So the whole sexual harassment thing was just a plot to get him out of the way so theycould pin the changes on the production line on him.
It's not really about sexual harassment at all.
That scene takes forever to get through.
my God.
As he's like unveiling all of this evidence and Demi Moore's character.

(01:58:32):
She's just glowering.
She's puffing and huffing like a cardboard villain.
She is and she's talking back to him from the front row and
And then she says things like, well, I've never seen the assembly line.
then he's like, the assembly line.
And like, it's just like all the, but the whole sexual harassment attempt was just likethis corporate political gambit to just get him out of the way.

(01:58:56):
But if that's the case, then why on God's green earth would she allow an open font?
Like wait till he hangs up the fucking phone.
Right.
Yeah.
Like it just, it doesn't make any, it's just, God.
It's at once satisfying and then completely not satisfying because it's satisfying becauseyou don't get to see a lot of like comeuppance in movies oftentimes happens pretty fast.

(01:59:20):
And it's usually in the, at the point of a climax of a film and you get a brief moment tosomeone as the Victor and then you have sort of the coda afterwards where they wander off
with their kids into the sunset or whatever.
But in the case of this one, it goes on and it's layered.
And so it's kind of multiple reveals that are made.
And that element of it is satisfying.

(01:59:40):
Yes, it is.
it feels good to see a character win.
Because it's ultimately not about the dynamics of sexuality in the workplace.
It's ultimately white hats and black hats, good guys and bad guys.
Yeah.
And the bad guy gets beaten and the good guy wins.
And in the end, Meredith is out.

(02:00:01):
And do you remember I mentioned that character Stephanie Kaplan, who the movie wanted toforget about?
She is the new, going to be the new vice president.
And we learned that her son is studying at the University of Washington and is theresearch assistant for a professor named Arthur Friend.
And we had never seen this kid before.

(02:00:21):
But that's where the messages have been coming from.
So like she set up a back channel.
She used her own son as a back channel to talk, which, hey,
I guess he's going to make a good vice president.
Question authority, Chris.
Question authority.
There's a certain thing, there's a certain sleight of hand in setting up a reveal that theaudience won't expect.
is a certain sleight of hand in writing where it's like, you want to set something upproperly, but you don't want the audience to be able to expect it.

(02:00:47):
And it's a difficult thing to do.
But in this case, the Stephanie Kaplan character is such a non-presence that when thereveal comes, you're kind of like, wait, who?
Well, who's that?
Yeah.
Like it's, I mean, it's better than the temp where they probably wouldn't have revealedwho was sending the emails at all.
Yeah.

(02:01:07):
Like at least they tell you, you know, but like, Tom doesn't get his promotion, but man,he gets to keep his job and he gets to go home to his already amazing house on the water
and live a great life.
And the final emails from his kid.
Final emails from his kid saying, come home.
We want to see you at home.
uh A family.
So presumably the kid was seeing all those a friend emails and decided to kind of mimicthat.

(02:01:33):
Which is, did the kid see the email saying that her father was a sexist pig?
did she see that email too?
Cause some of them just say that pig.
Like honestly, I think it's a well-made movie.
It's well acted, but there's just something about disclosure that feels dated in a way.
that makes it feel less relevant.

(02:01:55):
Like it just doesn't, it, feels like a relic.
The tech goes a long way to that end.
It really does.
Cookies are eternal.
This is a movie that suffers.
Yeah.
Cookies are evergreen, but this kind of tech, I mean, it's so instantly dated and you, andit's from the start.
And so then it becomes laughable by this time, this era, 2025, to see this kind of stuffat play in this and the virtual reality stuff.

(02:02:19):
I mean, it's amazing.
It is so funny.
There's no drama in that moment.
Like they're aiming for.
It's all.
Yes.
Uh, I honestly, you know, honestly, you know what I think we need here in 2025, we need alegacy sequel slash crossover where Chris and Meredith team up to get revenge on the men

(02:02:40):
who ruined their career.
The power of those eyebrows.
Cause both.
both a lafland boil and Demi Moore have impeccable eyebrows.
It would be unstoppable.
That'd be great.
uh Book it.
That is probably the place to stop for today.
It's interesting how many similarities these movies had even right down to the setting inthe Pacific Northwest.

(02:03:01):
You'd think one of them would be like wall street, know, power wall street power brokers,but no, no, it's cookies and CD roms.
Yeah.
One of those is still relevant.
One of them is not.
But we'll be back next week with one of the more unusual movies in this series.
One that asks the question, what if that dangerous stranger was a kid?

(02:03:25):
So we'll be joined by our friend, Jennifer Howell from the Every Rom Com podcast for amovie that is distinctly not romantic nor a comedy.
1993's The Good Son starring Macaulay Culkin and Elijah Wood.
is
So strange and we're excited to explore that and to have Jen back on the show becauseshe's terrific.

(02:03:45):
Thank you all so much for listening.
Again, we are your hosts, Chris Iannicone and Justin Beam.
If you've enjoyed the show, please consider subscribing and following us on Blue Sky,Instagram, threads, and Twitter at Get Me Another Pod.
In addition, check out the Justin Beam Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.
And you could find Justin's new book, Roadside Memories at JustinBeam.com.

(02:04:07):
or wherever books are sold.
I got my copy recently and it is terrific.
If you would like the show, tell your friends about it.
Tell your enemies about it.
Tell that woman with the perfectly sculptured eyebrows about it, but make sure to get thewhole thing on tape and join us next time as we continue to explore what happens when

(02:04:27):
Hollywood says, get me another.
you
you
It's going, Durns.