Category Archives: movies

232: The Babadook, and Sony’s Leaked Power Points

comedy, movies

SF comedians Jane Harrison and Matt Lieb are in the Frotquarters this week to talk about Australian indie horror The Babadook. But before we get to that, we go through the leaked power points from Sony that show that movie marketing is apparently done by aliens. Seriously though, that company’s brainstorming sessions must be pretty f’d up. That of course leads us to Jonah Hill’s awesome email and North Korea’s insane propaganda. Of course, Sony’s marketing plans lead us to wonder, is North Korea the bad guy in this situation or are we?

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231: The Nostalgia Industry

comedy, movies

Have you noticed that the movie industry is trying to sell our childhoods back to us? Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Dumb and Dumber, Kickboxer, Encino Man, The Crow… the list goes on and on. Are these movies for people who lived through the 90s or those who didn’t? That’s the topic on our minds this week, as well as ‘Sheik,’ the documentary about the Iron Sheik, Bret saw Interstellar, Vince saw Exodus, Bret saw The Babadook, and more. Bret, Brendan, Matt Lieb and Vince in the Frotquarters this week, with Ben joining via Skype. Enjoy.

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230: Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976), With Jane Harrison

comedy, movies

Bret, Brendan, and San Francisco comedian Jane Harrison are live in the Frotquarters this week to talk Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood,
a 1976 film starring Madeline Kahn, Bruce Dern, Shecky Greene, Art
Carny, and a million other people, which I was sort of hoping would be
terrible in a hilarious way, but is actually just not something I would
ever recommend to anyone. Ever. Jane described it as “Sort of like a dark The Artist if the dog was trying to f*ck the girl.”

Other topics include:

    The survivorship bias as it relates to SNL and Peanuts nostalgia. Can we see through our childhoods enough to ever be accurate about whether something was good?
    Hey, what’s up with Vine stars? We need a tween to explain this.
    The Serial backlash and the state of god dammit why can’t you just let me enjoy this?
    Dave & Busters and the “No Juan” joke bitched about ’round the world.

Enjoy.

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229: Bad Turn Worse Directors Simon and Zeke Hawkins

comedy, movies

It’s just Bret and I on this week’s podcast, so plenty of room for nihilism and self-loathing. We open discussing Bret catching up with the stuff that’s “all that” in pop-culture, like Adult Swim’s Too Many Cooks and the Serial podcast. We discuss Serial and whether we think Adnan is guilty, and whether it’s all going to end with everyone horribly disappointed. At 25 minutes in, we bring on directors Simon and Zeke Hawkins of Bad Turn Worse, which opens today. They tell us about their favorite Texas crime movies, Jim Thompson, their screenwriter’s many pseudonyms, and then we talk famous filmmaking siblings. Turns out the Hawkinses got mad beef with the Duplass Brothers. The interview lasts until 53 minutes, at which point we talk about genre films, Kim Kardashian’s butt, and our favorite Christopher Nolan and Farrelly Brothers movies. Boom

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228: Listen Up Philip With OJ Patterson

comedy, movies

This week on the Frotcast, San Francisco comedian OJ Patterson joins Vince, Brendan, and Matt Lieb in the Frotquarters to talk about Listen Up Philip, the Jason Schwartzman celebration of navel gazing. We talk about Monique’s treatise on “Team Little Dick,” the Lena Dunham “molestation” drama, and rank our favorite Christopher Nolan movies, in honor of Interstellar. Enjoy!

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227: Coherence, The Three Stages Of Cat Call Thinkpieces

comedy, movies

This week on the Frotcast, we open discussing the Giants’ World Series win and the respective ways in which we as San Franciscans chose to riot. We discuss some film news, like Seth Rogen being cast as Steve Wozniak in the Steve Jobs biopic, and what an Aaron Sorkin Steve Jobs movie is going to look like. Then we get into the infamous Cat Call Video and the thinkpieces it has spawned, dissecting the three stages of Cat Call thinkpieces. We all saw Coherence, which we discuss (with spoilers) from about 59 to 70 minutes. Ben joins us via Skype, Matt Lieb tells us about his Linkin Park interview, and we finish up talking some Homeland. 
Frot on and enjoy!

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226: Zellweger Thinkpieces, Faith-Based Movies, the Time Matt Interviewed Linkin Park

comedy, movies, music

The whole gang minus Ben is in the Frotquarters this week, and we open talking about Renée Zellweger thinkpieces. That leads us into her new faith-based movie project, Same Kind Of Different As Me, in which a Texas couple seems to have manifested their own magical negro. We bring on Laremy from Film.com who saw Birdman and Fury, we argue about our favorite films of the year so far and whether Michael Keaton is going to win the Oscar. Matt Lieb talks about the time he tried to interview the Linkin Park DJ about his new film, and then he sings us a rap about what he’s been doing with his life since he became a Chobani yogurt pimp. 
Listen! Enjoy! Tell your friends! 

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225: Parry Gripp of Nerf Herder, Discussing Fight Church

interview, movies, music, sports

This week, we interview Parry Gripp of Nerf Herder and YouTube/jingle fame, and discuss the new documentary Fight Church. Bret (the Dark Lord), Brendan (future NFL hall of famer/human giant), and comedian Matt Lieb (yogurt pimp) are all in the Frotquarters this week, with Parry joining via Skype. We talk about Fight Church, about MMA-fighting Christian pastors, discussing whether the tough-guy pastor is a new phenomenon, and whether ‘is MMA compatible with being a Christian’ even the right question to ask. Brendan talks about the proselytizing he was subject to playing in the NFL/NFL Europe, Bret gets depressed, Matt remains Jewish.  
We bring Parry on at 26:50, and we ask him all about Nerf Herder, his new crowd-funding campaign, writing jingles vs. being in a nerd punk band, and everything we can think of. He tells us about pissing off Sammy Hagar, receiving Courtney Love’s blessing, the strange, enduring popularity of “Love Sandwich,” and whether he made more money being signed to a major recording label or writing songs about animals and putting them up on YouTube/iTunes. 
We finish with Parry at 1:15:00 and start talking about Kirk Cameron’s new hacking allegations and the anti-Christian Canadian travel company that turned out to be fake. Basically, whether the fundamentalists are doing their own false-flag operations or if there really is a community of atheist trolls dedicated to becoming the manifestation of fundies’ persecution fantasies. Enjoy!

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224: Gone Girl, and the time Bret thought Ben’s girlfriend died

movies

San Francisco comedian Jane Harrison joins us in the Frot-quarters to talk Gone Girl, as does Ben. In discussing Gone Girl, and crazy Amy, and how over-the-top the third act is, we remember the time Ben dated a girl who looked a lot like Amazin’ Amy and ended up lying about having inoperable brain cancer. Bret then reveals that before he found out she had been lying, he just didn’t hear about her for a while and assumed that she died. And never asked Ben about it, which to me says a lot about how guys deal with each other when one is going through a rough patch. The last act twist to Ben’s cancer-faking girlfriend story is that a year after they broke up, Ben actually got cancer himself. I will never get tired of this story. 
Other things on the Space Docket:- Dad stories, inspired by the ones collated by Mallory Ortberg, and including a few of our own. – Buzzfeed’s “women try whiskey for the first time” video. -Talking whiskey and answering your whiskey questions. – Ben tells us about his book. 
Gone Girl talk starts around 35 minutes. Ben’s cancer etc. story starts at 56 minutes. After that, we answer a few of your emails, and receive probably the best voicemail we’ve ever gotten. Great job! Ass pats all around! 

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220: The Room, with former Tommy Wiseau Employee Aaron Barrett

movies

If you’ve ever seen The Room, the biggest question on your mind is most likely: who is this Tommy Wiseau and where did he come from? Wiseau reportedly spent $6 million of his own money making the best/worst classic, and not only does no one really know where he made so much that he could afford this, they don’t know Tommy’s country of origin (a Redditor recently claimed Poland, which is entirely plausible). He has an Eastern European accent and seems to speak French, but claims to be from Louisiana. He says things like “As an American…” and his self-written critic blurbs for The Room raved “the new Tennessee Williams is a ragin’ cajun!”
I recently finished Greg Sestero’s wonderful book about the making of The Room and his relationship with Wiseau, The Disaster Artist. 300 or so pages later, I was still full of questions. As it happens, one of my friends from the SF comedy scene, Aaron Barrett, a comedian and rock drummer who moved to San Francisco in 1991, worked for Tommy Wiseau for 11 years (!!!!), making him one of the few people on Earth to have known Tommy Wiseau nearly as long as Greg Sestero. After taking away Bret’s The Room virginity, we invited Aaron Barrett into the Frotquarters to see if he could help fill in any of the gaps in Tommy Wiseau’s mysterious biography, and alternately torture him with bad “YOU ARE TEARING ME APART!” impressions. Enjoy.

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