#212. 'Theater Camp' (Hulu)
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A two-man show, with Mike Warren off in Hawaii on a childless getaway with his wife, as Sonny and JVL review Theater Camp, the Hulu mockumentary about a scrappy Adirondacks arts program facing foreclosure. Both come away disappointed: Sonny calls the mockumentary conceit unnecessary and confusing (he compares its incoherent point-of-view to The Office vs. Modern Family vs. Blair Witch-style found footage), finds Ben Platt annoying, and mourns the total waste of Ayo Edebiri; JVL agrees the film "has it both ways," starting Christopher Guest-merciless toward its characters and then pivoting to unearned, hug-it-out sincerity in its final act, though both single out Jimmy Tatro's crypto-bro man-child Troy and a handful of scenes (the closeted-straight-kid gag, the "don't lose your virginity onstage" bit) as genuine highlights. The long opening runs through JVL's Costco DIY-shed odyssey (whether to assemble it himself, hire "a guy from the Home Depot line," or eat the 2x markup for professional installation), his son Flash's first cross-country meet and newfound joy at being merely average at a sport, and a sprawling tangent on the insanity of elite youth travel sports (competitive jump-roping nationals!), skyrocketing college costs, and how the scholarship chase has replaced "I want to play in the majors" as kids' actual athletic dream. They also run through a thin weekend box office (Dumb Money flopping, The Creator underperforming, Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie on top) before closing with an extended, affectionate remembrance of Michael Gambon, including JVL's retelling of Gambon's infamous "you're a cunt" breakfast encounter with Laurence Olivier and both hosts naming favorite Gambon performances (The Insider, Open Range, and his window-rattling narration in Hail, Caesar!).
From the show notes
We both really wanted to like this movie more!
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00Sad news, I will not be doing piercings anymore on the Hut because there's a narc amongst us. Cassie has narc'd. Totally fine. We're going to need to prioritize the musicals, which means the straight plays are going to have to be acoustic. Quick question, what's a straight play? There are musicals and then there are straight plays. So then what would be a gay play? I guess a musical. Oh, cool.
Sonny00:00:30Welcome back to the Sub-Beacon.
JVL00:00:37I'm sorry. I did not. I suck.
Sonny00:00:40What was that? I suck.
JVL00:00:42What are you doing?
Sonny00:00:43That was me doing this. Welcome back to the Sub-Beacon. I'm just going to talk over James.
JVL00:00:47Okay.
Sonny00:00:48It's a two-man show today. We lost Mike Warren to Hawaii. He's gone. I don't know that he's coming back. We'll see. Why would he? I wouldn't. I wouldn't if I were him.
JVL00:01:01He's in Hawaii sans children, right?
Sonny00:01:03Yes. I think it's him and his lovely wife. They're taking their first vacation on their own since, I don't know, since they got married,
JVL00:01:15probably.
Sonny00:01:16Amazing. So, good for him. Good for him. Enjoy Hawaii. We're going to be talking about Theater Camp. It's on Hulu. You can watch it there in a bit. But first, let's discuss how everything works. How everything has been since last week. JVL, how are you doing? What's up with you?
JVL00:01:34So, here's the thing. I, this Sunday, I'm getting a delivery from costco.com. And I'm sorry, you're going to pause a moment because I have to put a cough drop in because I'm still slightly recovering from being sick and I don't want to hack all over you guys. I ordered a shed. We needed a shed. We have this house in New Jersey. It is lovely. It is lacking in storage space though. And so stuff that I, in my old house, which was much smaller, but I did have two attics. And so it was easy to stash stuff in the attic. Here is just in one of one side of the garage, the garage. So I have basically a two car garage, but only one car fits in it because of all of the stuff. And winter is coming. And I want both of the cars in, in the garage. And so I've ordered a shed and I got it from Costco and it is a DIY assembly. So it comes in a 600 pound crate. And then I pop open the crate and carry individually all 600 pounds worth of the materials to the spot in which I'm going to build it. And then it says, it says assembly. For a competent two man team, normally about a weekend. What would you like to wager that I am able to have this thing assembled before the first snow? Because I'm guessing that this thing doesn't actually get built until like June of next year.
Sonny00:03:23If I were you and I'm not you, I just want to run it. But if I were you. I would simply return that to Costco before it even gets there. Because it's never going to get done. You're never going to build it. It's not going to happen. It's just going to sit there. You think?
JVL00:03:43It'll actually take up more space in the driveway.
Sonny00:03:46It'll take up space in the driveway. You'll have to drive around it every time. And you'll just get angrier and angrier until you go on a rampage. And I want you to avoid that. No, I mean, look. Do you have? I assume it's you and Flash that are going to be putting this together. Is he able to?
JVL00:04:04Me and Flash, although unclear how much he can do. Right. On his restrictions.
Sonny00:04:09He's still recovering from surgery.
JVL00:04:11And it is the right arm, which is under.
Sonny00:04:15I would just, you should really just hire somebody. Just go down to the Home Depot and grab two guys in the line of laborers and bring them to your house.
JVL00:04:24And they'll be able to build the thing for me?
Sonny00:04:27Is that how this works? I assume there are instructions. I don't know, man. Was there is there no like it was there no we'll send somebody to build it for you for an extra, you know, 500 bucks option on Costco? Was that?
JVL00:04:39No. And typically when I have looked in other places for the we'll send someone to build it for you. The price is always the it is the same cost as the shed to have them build it. So it is 2x in your cost. Yes. I don't know, man. That seems like a lot.
Sonny00:04:59But it'll get built.
JVL00:05:00This will get built. Eventually it comes with supposedly everything you need, although all of the reviews say that the first thing you have to do is you have to inventory everything because sometimes stuff doesn't wind up in there. And inventorying all of the hundreds of pieces is itself probably going to take me a weekend. Now, that is something I can theoretically do myself. I guess. Also, it doesn't come with with shingles. You got to do the roofing yourself. Then you have to paint it yourself.
Sonny00:05:40I I would like to know what I would like to know is what percentage of these things get bought and then never assembled. I bet I bet it's a not in sync. I bet it's better than one in five of these gets built and just winds up sitting somewhere for a long time.
JVL00:05:57That's possible. I really do. I want to be able to park my car inside the garage when it gets cold up here. I'd like that. I'd like that for myself. I feel like I deserve that.
Sonny00:06:09I work pretty hard. Deserves got nothing to do with it. The you know, the the.
JVL00:06:14How would I find somebody? So here's the here's the big question, right? So if if I am fully daunted by it, I am not undaunted. I am daunted. You're daunted. I am fully should be daunted. And I decide I need to outsource this work. Yes.
Sonny00:06:30How would you even do that? No, I do.
JVL00:06:33Do would you would you Google shed builder and like have a guy?
Sonny00:06:39And yeah, I bet if you Google come build my shed. You're going to get some you're going to get some responses that might work again. I my understanding I don't I am not a expert on the gray labor market in the United States. But my understanding is that that is like what the. You know, you got it. You got a bunch of guys who line up outside of Home Depot every morning. They got their tools and you just like it's kind of like, oh, it's kind of like, you know, I've seen those lines.
JVL00:07:15I've seen those in the eye. It makes me very uncomfortable.
Sonny00:07:19And it should because I again, I don't think any of this is legal precisely. But you're also not like you're not.
JVL00:07:26You're not in a state where things are all strictly legal.
Sonny00:07:29Well, this is this. This is the other thing. I feel like you have enough. There are enough weird, shady gray market. Again, things that happen near and around you that you could probably just ask Tony. Or whoever be like, hey, I need a couple of guys to come to my house and help me with a problem. And they show up with a carpet to roll up your problem.
JVL00:07:53I was going to say a bone saw and a carpet.
Sonny00:07:57They show up with a backhoe to dig a hole for your problem. And then the problem goes away. And that's where you end up burying the box, the 600-pound box of stuff.
JVL00:08:06Here's the thing. Once this thing is delivered, I find that I could pay somebody like $800 to build it. That's a level at which I'd be comfortable just writing a check and saying, great, fantastic, thank you so much. That would be fine for me. But the 2x number is hard to swallow.
Sonny00:08:33Yeah. No, look, I'm totally with you. I, myself, I'm about to replace another drain in my children's bathroom. And my daughter was like, why don't you just call the plumber? I'm like, do you know how much a plumber costs, kid?
JVL00:08:48Don't you know what a service call costs?
Sonny00:08:51Do you have any understanding of the dynamics of labor costs in this country? I could go to the Home Depot. We'll go together. I'll show you. We'll buy this for $50 and I'll replace it myself. If I called somebody out here, it would be several hundred dollars. So, like, I'm with you on the 2x or 3x or whatever it would cost just on general principle. Like, just on.
JVL00:09:17But this isn't even a principle. It's a, like, at 2x, this becomes, like, really expensive. Yeah. Right? It's, you know, you're spending a couple grand for the show. And to then, like, turn that, you know, like, two grand into, like, four and a half. That's, like, that's too much. That's more than I'm willing to spend on this project. Like, I want to sit in a warm car during the winter. But I want to sit in a warm car in the winter for $4,500.
Sonny00:09:47Yeah. No. Look. Again, my two cents on this is. If you don't if you don't get someone at the very least, you have to get somebody you have to get somebody to come help you who's not flash and injured. Because if you do it all yourself, you are going to hurt yourself. Like, it's it's you're going to you're going to, you know, drop a wall or something.
JVL00:10:11Well, I mean, it's just like a bunch of two by fours and then some plywood, right? I guess there's some window pieces. I don't know, man.
Sonny00:10:19I don't know how this how this. It's just wood.
JVL00:10:22I'll tell you this. It's just what if I do it myself. If I do it myself, I am going to wind up getting a nail gun or borrowing a nail gun for somebody because I am not going to with a hammer. No nail individually. Every fucking nail on this thing. That would take me three years. You can't. Then we'd be looking at June 2026 for completion. That would be that would be.
Sonny00:10:42That's untenable. You can't do that. No, I again, my, my, my. You got it. You got to find at least one guy you trust to come help you do this.
JVL00:10:52Handyman. That's what I was looking at. A handyman. Can I call a handyman to come and do this for like 800 bucks?
Sonny00:10:59Yeah.
JVL00:11:00There I would. Done. Eight hundred dollars, sir. For, you know, however long it takes. And I'll help. I'll come out and I'll spend the entire weekend with you. Like building it. You don't have to pay me, you know, and.
Sonny00:11:12No, I don't know. I look good luck. Good luck. My dad bought one of these, you know, 15 years ago and it took like three years to get the whole thing built. So that's funny. I don't know. It's it's you're you're in a you're you're in for you're in for fun. Yeah.
JVL00:11:30Yeah. I'll tell you something. Something else interesting. We had our flash had his first cross-country meet yesterday. And it was so he's he was, you know, middle of the pack runner. A large invitational. And we're on the way home. And I was like, so what was it like for you? And he said, it was. It was strange because this is the first athletic event in which I have like organized ranked serious athletic event in which I've ever participated. That wasn't baseball. And it was also the first time I've ever participated in something athletic and not been the best player on the field. I was like, so what was that like for you? It was kind of nice, actually. It's like it was. It's kind of cool to just be like an average guy in the middle of the pack, just like doing it like there's no pressure or anything.
Sonny00:12:29Just can you can he run fine with the elbow? He's not like in a sling or anything.
JVL00:12:34No, no. In fact, he's progressed all the way to weights. So he's now he's now cleared to lift. I mean, in very supervised ways, you've got to slowly rebuild muscle. But yeah, he's cleared for running. And he he enjoyed having a sport where. Yeah. Nobody's depending on him to do anything. And he's perfectly average and he can just go out and be average for an hour. And yeah, that was interesting.
Sonny00:13:00You you in one of your newsletters this week, you wrote about the the crazy world of cross-country. Right.
JVL00:13:07And I there is travel distance running.
Sonny00:13:10That's wild.
JVL00:13:11That's did you know that this existed?
Sonny00:13:13Because I mean, it makes sense. I when when you when you wrote it, I was like, oh, yeah, I guess that makes perfect sense.
JVL00:13:19But did you know that there is. Travel jump roping. This is a thing I discovered. It was buried in the footnotes of that piece there. So competitive jump roping is a thing. There are like the American jump rope nationals. Sure. And they they run from like ages five up through ages 18. And when you watch them, they're insane. I mean, the level of. You look at them. You're like, this is it looks like a magic trick. It looks like a special effect. It's not real. And people who do this belong to like competitive jump roping travel teams that do these sorts of things in this. And so we have gotten to a point where, like, everything is now Bella Caroli style insanity girls gymnastics. So this is what I was trying to say. This piece is like, I don't know when I was would watch the world of like, you know, Olympic gymnastics as a kid. And even as a young adult, I would think to myself, huh, this is interesting. There's no fucking way I would ever want my sister or my daughter or anybody who I knew or loved, like bought into that because it looks insane. You know, everybody's like the Soviets. We take these children when they're three years old and we ship them off to Siberia where they train with pedophiles for 20 hours a day. And. We've now built that system for ourselves with everything. Yeah. Whether it is drama and theater, which we'll talk about with the movie later on. Or, you know, I don't think we have it for robotics club yet, but for cheerleading, it exists for distance running. It's if there is an activity that children do, then there is an elite travel level club for 10 year olds. To do it in now. And I don't know what I think about it. I mean, I do know I think about it. I don't like it, but it's fucking wild.
Sonny00:15:27It's bad. It's bad. Do you have thoughts about it? Do you? I don't I don't like it because I don't like it mostly because I like. I just don't I just don't like the idea of having kids so focused on one thing so early. I hate that. I hate that whole concept. And, you know, like. And you still feel kind of the same. The pressure to do it like my daughter does does the Nutcracker, right? She does. She does a Nutcracker. And there's like a semi professionalish company of dancers here in Dallas that she kind of does it with. And like she does it and it's fun and it's, you know. But like the girls who who like do it, who like go on to do it, spend all of their time at this ballet. Oh, yeah. Like all of their time at the ballet doing like all of the ballet events. And like and I'm just like, I want her to be able to do it. I want her to be able to do other things, not not just that.
JVL00:16:22Yeah. And so much of it, like if if it was 100 percent driven by kid choice and desire, that would be one thing. But a lot of it is just driven by talent spotting. So there's a Disney Plus has a really good documentary about what's the name of the Balanchine Ballet School that's run out of Juilliard, basically. And they shake. There's there's. They show the tryouts for it. And a lot of the tryouts are these ballet instructors, you know, like these these Russian immigrants who are, you know, seventy five year old women manhandling three year old girls to see how far they can bend. Like, you know, like with their with their feet and stuff. And that's the tryout. It's like, you know, they see they look at the body type. They see how flexible they are. Then they ask them to jump to see how I think. And they're like, yes, you will take you. And this is. This is literally the.
Sonny00:17:20So this is what the Russians did for, like, all of their sports.
JVL00:17:24You know, they're like, oh, you, Nanooka, I can throw spear long. Will you come be Olympic Olympic champion javelin? And they pluck you off your farm and send you to their training facility in Leningrad or wherever. And that's what we now do with everything here. We built it ourselves. It's crazy. It's crazy. It is crazy.
Sonny00:17:46It is crazy. I mean, how much of this is driven by? How much of this is driven by the pressure to get kids into college? And like the idea that, like, if you have if you have especially in something like cross country or lacrosse or, you know, like these kind of like lower level sports that still have some scholarships, but also like even if it's not, you're getting it. Even if you're not going to get a scholarship, it's like I was captain of this team and did this, you know, blah, blah. Like, this is how I showed leaders. How much of that is is at play here? I feel like it's not a small. Amount.
JVL00:18:20Yeah, I, I think it's a fairly large amount, and I think it's actually more about scholarship chasing than than admissions chasing. I could be wrong about this. I don't have any data to prove it. And I when I look at it, I think it's all tied to cost of college, right? So cost. This is something I do know a little bit about college costs have since 1965. Really, since 1980. Have exploded faster in real terms, meaning like, you know, adjusted for inflation than any other good in America, including health care. Yeah. And this has created an insane amount of anxiety because coupled with it, we saw the divergence in earning power between college and non-college workers. Right. And so in order to gain entry to the middle class, you had to go to college and go into college became fabulously expensive. And then. And that's scared the living crap out of American parents for reasons which are entirely understandable. And so one of the things people have latched onto is the idea that, well, you can short circuit some of those costs by getting scholarships. And so how do we get scholarships? Well, that's you get on the crew. Maybe you'll get a cruise scholarship. Maybe you'll get a flute scholarship here. And one of the things that I I found fascinating. Watching and talking with the kids. And maybe I'm wrong. But my sense is, in 1950, if you talked to a bunch of kids who played baseball and asked them what they wanted to do, they would say, I want to be the center fielder for the New York Yankees. Right. Or something like that. I have not heard once in any conversation with any of Flash's peers the desire to play in the major leagues. Flash is the only one who's ever who ever talks about that. The rest of them. One hundred percent. One hundred percent of them have talked about, I want to get a scholarship for college. That's what the dream like the dream. Now, the dream used to be like, I want to play in the bigs. The dream now is I want to get a scholarship to college. And you know what? That isn't coming from them. That's coming from their parents. And they're picking up on their parents economic anxiety about the cost of higher education.
Sonny00:20:41Yeah, that sounds about right. That I buy that entirely. Yeah, I. Yeah.
?00:20:48Depressing.
Sonny00:20:49Not unreasonable, right?
JVL00:20:50It is depressing.
Sonny00:20:51Now, here's the other. Here's the other thing.
JVL00:20:53I don't know about you. I don't want to do too much of our personal finances here. But, you know, when Flash was born, we did the responsible thing. We started saving for college right away from birth. You know, we set up the five twenty nine accounts and we squirreled it away. And we are we've been contributing every single paycheck. Money goes into that. And we are now three years ahead of that. We are now three years out from college and we have saved enough to pay for, I think, one semester at a, you know, high level private college.
Sonny00:21:28Yeah.
JVL00:21:29And, you know, like I have a pretty good job, like the idea that anybody could, with all the planning in the world, save enough money to pay for one kid's college, let alone like two or three. Like, how the fuck is that supposed to. Yeah. It's insane. Yeah. And it's not sustainable, but the problem is the system won't break or reform soon enough for either of us. Yeah.
Sonny00:21:55I don't think. I, I mean, we did, we did the 529 thing in Virginia and we, we, for, for our, for one of our kids, we had like two years of, you know, two or four semesters of, you know, of money in that. Like, so if the, if they go, if she went to a public school, but like we don't live in Virginia. I don't know how that works. I don't, I don't actually, I'm not, I, I, I'm sure I could look it up and figure it out. And, you know, maybe, maybe we get, you know, the before semesters in state and then four semesters out of state. But like, I, like I, I, I have now, like, I have this, all this money sucking sunk into this thing and I like, don't know what to do with it. And that is like, that's kind of, I feel like that is a metaphor for the whole, you know, the whole, the whole system here. I, I, my, my big thing has always been public schools. Not, not private schools. Public schools are the way to go. Especially in Virginia when we lived in Virginia. Like, even the, the mid-tier schools are pretty good. You know, I, I, I am less sure about Texas. I, I don't know, you know, what's going on out here. But like, you know, I went to UVA and it was like 12 grand a year or something like that.
JVL00:23:05So is getting into UT like getting into UVA? Because getting into UVA is essentially like getting into a lower tier IV if you are in state and Virginia. Yeah. If you are out of state in Virginia, getting into UVA is like getting into the upper tier IVs. And that is not what Rutgers is like in New Jersey. No. Right? In New Jersey, if you want to go to Rutgers, you can go to Rutgers. Yeah. I think the same is true in Ohio, right? Ohio State has a spot for you so long as you can spell your name. Yeah. Is, but UT is a, you know, people love UT. I think UT is, UT is more competitive. Is it?
Sonny00:23:37UT is more, I mean, it's, I, I don't think it's quite as competitive as UVA. I don't think it's quite, quite as good a school. But it's, it's still pretty, pretty competitive. Yeah. I think. Again, I like, I, I am so, I, I need to start paying more attention to this again. I, I was paying more attention in Virginia than I was, than I am now. And that was three years ago. I should, I'm really falling behind here.
JVL00:23:58Yeah. I kind of wish that we still lived in a world where you can go do the minor league thing and do that stuff right out of high school and then go to college afterwards if it doesn't work out. Because that would give me more time to figure this all out. But that's not, that how, that's how it works for Latin American players. It's not how it works for American players. Yeah. With only a handful of exceptions. You know, there, there might be 20 kids who get drafted straight out of high school in the US. Everybody else goes to college now. Yeah. And spends at least a couple years. Most people spend four years there because the, the big league teams have realized that they can outsource all of that expense of training and maintaining players for a minor league system to colleges. Yeah. And so.
Sonny00:24:42I mean, college, college is basically single A ball at this point, right? Like. Yeah. More or less.
JVL00:24:48At the top level. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, well, what it is is it's like the low, it's low, low A, right? The low A ball is now college. And then once you get drafted out of college, you're now basically in the, the equivalent of high A. Yeah. So it's, yeah. Anyway. How, how are you? We're 25 minutes into the show. Geez. Yeah.
Sonny00:25:09I'm sorry about that. Michael's throwing things at their phones. I'm fine.
JVL00:25:12It's what happens when we don't have Michael here to keep us. Keep us, keep us on. Schedule. Keep us moving.
Sonny00:25:16Uh, I'm, I'm fine. I'm, uh, uh, I, I'm totally okay. I don't really have anything very interesting to say. That's why I let you keep going. Cause I was like, I got, I got, I got nothing for this, uh, for this episode really. Um, every, like we, uh, I, I, I got nothing. I got nothing. All right. Do we want to wrap this up? Yeah. All right. Do we want to wrap this up? Yeah. Yeah. Do we want to wrap this up? Yeah. Like, we, I got nothing. I got nothing. All right. Do we want to just go to theater camp?
JVL00:25:40Theater camp. Although, did anything happen in the box office? I guess dumb money died.
Sonny00:25:46Yeah, they, instead of just opening it wide, they kind of dribbled it out, and it did not do particularly well. And it's.
JVL00:25:55It's crazy, man.
Sonny00:25:57It's a good movie. Let me pull up Box Office Mojo here. The big weekend, Paw Patrol. The new, it was the Paw Patrol 2, the mighty movie.
JVL00:26:07First Paw Patrol did like 60 million, right?
Sonny00:26:08It did. No, no, it didn't. It did. Oh, I mean, maybe it did 60 on its, the whole thing. Like, but opening weekend, I think it was only 12 or 14 million. Remember, it came out in 2021. So it was still the pandemic, kind of. And it was also on Paramount Plus at the same time. So this is just in theaters. It's done 20, it did $22 million opening weekend. I'm probably going to take the kids this weekend to go see it, just because I wasn't able to get it.
JVL00:26:35I have aged out of Paw Patrol. G-Money is no longer interested. I was like, hey, Paw Patrol. He's like, what, you think I'm a baby?
Sonny00:26:42Yeah, I think my youngest is right on the edge. He doesn't really watch, he doesn't watch it on TV at all anymore, but he does like going to the movie theater. So I was like, do you want to go see the new Paw Patrol movie? He was like, yeah. I was like, all right, let's go.
JVL00:26:56Do I get to have candy, Dad?
Sonny00:26:58Yeah, do I get popcorn? Yeah, of course. Yeah. You can get popcorn. That's fine. So it's that'll be that'll be fun. The kids are home from school on on Friday in our district for some reason, because it's do you guys you guys have a four day weekend, too? We do for this for Columbus Day. It's so annoying. Why? Like the three day weekend is bad enough.
JVL00:27:21Yeah.
Sonny00:27:21Three days. That's that's a nightmare in and of itself. But four days for what am I supposed to do for four days?
JVL00:27:27You're not wrong.
Sonny00:27:28I got work to do on Friday. I got it. I got it right. But anyway, so the Paw Patrol, you know, we I assume when when Mike comes back, we'll do the creator. Was that out this weekend? But that was out. That was out last weekend. And it was nobody did not do well. It only grossed 14 million dollars at the box office.
JVL00:27:49Is this a Star Wars movie?
Sonny00:27:51No, it's well, it's by the guy who made Rogue One, Gareth Edwards. And he it's it's a big original sci fi movie. It only costs like 80 million dollars. And I will say the way the way I described it in my review is that it reminds me a lot of Avatar. Looks great. Incredibly generic bordering on dumb story like it has. It has those two things in tandem. The big difference is that it's cheap as hell. It costs 80 million dollars, which is not not a lot of money for a movie of this this size and scope.
JVL00:28:24You could make half of a Knives Out movie for that.
Sonny00:28:26Exactly. You can make or bargain. That's one fifth of the deal for the the new Exorcist movies. Universal paid 400 million dollars for those apparently terrible things. So anyway, that's that's all that's going on. Yeah. Dub money died. Saw 10 did fine. Saw 10. God, that series.
JVL00:28:53What's coming out soon? Anything. Is there anything on the horizon?
Sonny00:28:57Taylor Swift movie. Oh, yeah. That's this weekend, right? Taylor Swift movie. No, that's next weekend. It's next.
JVL00:29:02It was October 5.
Sonny00:29:04This weekend is this weekend is the new Exorcist Exorcist, the Believer or the Exorcist Believer.
JVL00:29:12One of the absolutely terrifying.
Sonny00:29:14Apparently, it's very bad. So you are you are not a horror person, which we've we've discussed.
JVL00:29:19I'm not, but I've seen this trailer in packed theaters a couple of times. And every time the people in the theater are palpably terrified by it. Yeah, they do not like it.
Sonny00:29:29I it was funny when when we when I suggested we do the Pope's Exorcist, which is actually funnier than it is scary. It's you know, that's not, you know, but you you were you were a strong no on that one, too. You don't you don't you don't want to you're you're not interested in messing with the devil. You don't want the devil in your life.
JVL00:29:49Unless it's Gabriel Byrne. Like I'll do like a Gabriel Byrne devil devil movie. But that's that's about it before. Just at some point, we got to talk about Michael Gambon. Maybe maybe we'll do it at the end of the show or something like that. We're going to do Michael Gambon talk. All right. Sure. Theater camp. Would you like to give us a big boy review?
Sonny00:30:08I guess I all right. Theater camp. It's a mockumentary from. Hold on. Let me pull up the actual information about theater camp directors and all that.
JVL00:30:21I have it right here. Ben Platt starring Ben Platt and Molly Gordon written and directed by Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman.
?00:30:29There.
Sonny00:30:31And Noah Galvin and Ben Platt. So here's the here's the thing about theater camp. All right. So theater camp. The setup here is it's basically a mockumentary. These these folks are trying to trying to make a movie, a documentary about theater camp in the Adirondacks. So you got a bunch of theater kids doing theater kid stuff. But before the taping of the movie begins, the founder of the school who is played. Amy Sedaris. By Amy Sedaris. The great Amy Sedaris has a has like a stroke or something.
JVL00:31:03And she or she goes into an epileptic at an episode of Bye Bye Birdie, which is using strobe lights, which is itself a layer upon layer here.
Sonny00:31:14See, I don't even understand. So this is my this is my I don't catch so many of the references in this. I don't understand anything about the world of theater or musical theater. I don't I don't get any of that. So the whole conceit is a little bit foreign to me. And I think it assumes a level of familiarity with musical theater in particular, but theater in general and also the mockumentary format that I I found myself occasionally I occasionally laughing very hard, but also very frequently lost. And here is my my big beyond that, beyond that, my big overarching critique of the film is that I don't think the mockumentary format thing that they're doing here is necessary. It does not work like a Christopher guest movie does because the the the style of it kind of comes and goes. It's not like a straight up documentary like sometimes they do like they will very occasionally do, you know, confessional style, talk to the camera stuff. But usually it's just like the cameras there and roaming around and nobody really seems to notice it. And it it represents a breakdown in point of view that has been. Growing in the world of filmed entertainment since the Blair Witch Project that drive that is like started to really drive me bananas. You know, in the in the world of TV, you had things like The Office, which was like it was structured like a documentary. And that's why things like Jim looking at the camera makes sense, right? Like it's like the cameras there and is constantly acknowledged. And then you start moving away from it again. I want to stick with TV here for a second because it's where you see it a lot. They start moving away from it in Modern Family, where Modern Family has the same like sit down and talk to the camera stuff. But like so much stuff is just happening all around that the camera being there makes no sense. It is. Yeah. Why is there a confessional?
JVL00:33:15This doesn't make any sense because we're in a we're in a third person point of view scripted drama. Right. And then all of a sudden we're in a reality documentary confessional.
Sonny00:33:24Right. Yes. Right. So so you see all you also see this in the world. Found footage films. Right. So in the world of found footage films, you have the Blair Witch Project, which is like still the a number one version of this format where you have people who are filming things and you only see what they film. And the things they are filming make sense for them to film. And other people are mentioning that they are being filmed and getting annoyed by it. Like that, that that is still the best version of this paramount paramount paranormal activity is pretty good because it's it's like kind of hidden cam footage. All mixed together and like that, that more or less works. But then when you really start getting away from it, where people are just doing ridiculous things on camera and nobody's mentioning it. And like the camera is being used to show you things that a camera would never be used to show in a found footage. And that is how I this this movie is kind of the culmination of all these annoying ticks for me, is that I like there's just no reason for it to be a mockumentary. Other than like, I think they couldn't quite figure out how to put the narrative spine together without that. You don't need it. You just don't need it. You don't need it.
JVL00:34:31It feels like a failure of writing that this is positioned as a mockumentary.
Sonny00:34:37So it is it's it's a very well written comedy in the sense that, again, it made me laugh pretty hard several times. But it is but it is a we will get to that. But it is a but it is a failure in storytelling just because it like does not it does not hang together as a as a. As what it is meant to be, which is as a mockumentary. So let's let's set all that aside again. There there are things I there are things I do tell people all this.
JVL00:35:09We got sidetracked before you even told people what the plot was.
Sonny00:35:11Yeah. So the plot is, again, Amy Sedaris is the she runs this camp. She has she has an epileptic fit, goes into a coma. And her son, Troy, who's played by Jimmy Tatro, who is great in this, again, a mockumentary on Netflix. God, I forget what the name of it is. I have really just not prepared at all for this episode. I'm sorry. American Vandal. American Vandal was the name of the Netflix show, which I liked a lot. He played like kind of the goofy bully type who gets accused of a vandalism on that. He plays Troy Rubinsky in this film. And he is a very, very much a highlight for me because he's this kind of idiot investor, bro, tick tock. Star who is trying to get people to invest in the camp to save it from foreclosure. He ends up getting suckered by the big, you know, hedge fund people who come in and want to buy it and take over the camp so they can buy the land. And all in the midst of all of this, the campers are putting on a play and the play is terrible, as one would expect from from a children's theater. Camp. But it's it's about the the life and times of Amy Sedaris, his character, and it ends up being kind of funny and sweet there. All right. So things that made me laugh. I really did. The biggest this film's biggest crime is the total underuse of Ayo Edeberry as the the actress. She is the she is the African-American actress who comes in as the teacher who lied on her resume and said, you know, she knows things like stage combat. And then she has the kids. Explain to her what exactly stage combat is. And then they start. But I find her very funny in essentially everything she is in. She is barely in this movie. I thought from the ad she was going to begin a lot of it. She she stars in The Bear. She was in the recent movie Bottoms. I like her a lot. She's barely in this movie. Total, total missed opportunity. I find Ben Platt to be incredibly annoying just in everything he is in and is is annoying in this as well. I don't know, guys.
JVL00:37:30So what made you laugh?
Sonny00:37:31I didn't. I didn't. You know, you know, the the gag that routinely every time made me laugh is the one straight kid in theater camp. Yeah.
JVL00:37:41Who's like wants to play football with the what's who wants to throw.
Sonny00:37:45Yeah. Who wants to play football with the kids from the next camp over and everybody accuses him, you know, is like, you've betrayed us. You're not. And then he comes out as heterosexual on the stage and the two, the two, I don't know, the two gay men. His two dads. We knew it. We knew it the whole time. We knew it. You know, I there were little things, again, that that made me laugh. But as it's it is underwhelming. Right. I thought maybe I was just maybe I was just lost because I wasn't catching all of the references. I thought. But am I am I? I guess I maybe I was right to be.
JVL00:38:21I did not. I'm not going to say I disliked it, but it is under underwhelming. Is yeah, I mean, it's lazy from a structural point of view. As you say, there's no reason for it to be a mockumentary. It also tries to have it tries to have it both ways in the sense that it begins being fairly biting and merciless about the characters and then within the last like 15 minutes does the turn where it becomes very earnest and everybody hugs and learns together and that is I believe wholly unearned, right? I mean, that's a hard thing to pull off, right? I mean, there's a reason Chris guest movies don't end with hugging and learning and this starts out in the Chris guest sort of again merciless towards the characters recognizing how ridiculous they are. There's a, you know, there's a cast. Casting the kids show up at camp and then they audition because the camp is doing like seven different productions all at once and one of which is lame is and you know, there's a scene where in the midst of the auditions Ben Platt leans over to Molly Gordon and says something something. I think they're auditioning for for lame is and she says something. He says something like I don't believe her at all as a French prostitute and the girl is like eight years old and that's like that's it's very funny, right? Because that's the level of because he's serious like he's not it's not a goof. Yeah, and then by the and here's here's the thing, which I think just does not work. The movie spends 90% of it laughing at the preposterousness of all of this and like Molly Gordon with her auto harp, you know singing and when they we see songwriting sessions because the idea is that the two main characters who are the camp counselors they write an original musical in a week every year and we see like how again how preposterous it is and you're expecting something like you're a crook Captain Hook from Arrested Development, right? And yet at the end when we get the actual production, it's amazing like right like it's actually very good all of the kids are tremendously talented and that is the like oh I'm sorry you did not earn that right because if if that's what this was all the time all along then this movie should not have been snarking and sneering at the characters right if this is do you see what I'm saying like you can't do a the bad news bears of drama and then at the end it turns out that everybody on the team can dunk and shoot three-pointers all day long. I'm mixing five different metaphors here but you yeah you know I'm saying like then it's
Sonny00:41:31like no no yeah totally it doesn't make sense yeah I there were there were things there were things about that final song that I did like like the fact that they use they use some of the lines that what's-her-name Molly had like made up these all the yeah yeah that that she so like there's a scene earlier in the film where she has clearly not done the trying to improv the song as she goes along and then they wind up incorporating that into the the big finale and that was kind of funny I was like I was like okay that's uh but no I I like I this this there's also there's also the issue that I just I have with musicals in general which is that like you say that this musical at the end was really good and it it could have could
JVL00:42:16have been really good I guess I don't I'm sorry I don't mean really good but like boy people would pay on money to see Broadway but for the purposes of we're giving you a four-minute representation of what the music it it's like if you're kids performed that at theater camp you would have been come along come away from that and balling that was great like all those kids could sing the songs were kind of catchy I can't believe somebody wrote that in a week right the dancing is very good the choreo all of that stuff the set the set design is good and again like that then why were we laughing at all this why were we like sniggering at how preposterous these people in the Adirondacks at their summer camp are yeah it doesn't make sense and I love these types of movies uh Magic Camp have you seen Magic Camp no uh starring uh what's the guy he was on game was it gamers or and he was in the Pitch Perfect movies and he's uh I gotta give me a minute to find this because he's he's an actor who you will know um in in Adam Devine oh yeah yeah right so Magic Camp stars Adam Devine and Jeffrey Tambor and it's the same it's the same thing it is kids who go to a Magic Camp and it is like preposterous and there's a thing they've got to do to save the school but it earns everything like it it it you know like the kids who are preposterous make their turn in a way so that by the time we get to the end everything makes sense and we like them right and like every everything works in it
Sonny00:43:57and this kind of doesn't and i suspect it was a passion project like i don't
JVL00:44:04i suspect that molly gordon and nick lieberman went to some version of uh acting camp theater camp and that this was like a love letter to their time there and that's that's fine but this i don't know it just doesn't it doesn't it's not a satire and it's not a feel-good movie yeah it's it's like a little bit of each yeah yeah
Sonny00:44:36but in ways which are not pleasing there's a total there's a total tonal mismatch here and i i again i i i think that's basically i i i guess i i don't know i i i struggle i struggle with this movie a little bit because i definitely didn't hate it i definitely i like i was i was amused i was like pleasantly amused the time the whole time i was watching it even as i was like kind of annoyed by some of the the again the point of view stuff in particular was was not great um but i do i do i did really enjoy just so many of the performances like again i i think uh the the the character of troy um is very funny and like it's a little bit broad as the as the like you know the bro who was dropped into the
JVL00:45:26theater camp and doesn't quite understand it i'm a crypto influencer yeah i mean it's it i like i
Sonny00:45:33i found i found that funny and like appropriately mean um uh but also you know he is he's trying he's trying to do uh the right thing i again i think a lot of these problems get solved if you just don't make it a mockumentary if you have it instead just be more like wet hot american summer um than what this is yeah which is
JVL00:45:56it doesn't it just it doesn't gel uh conceptually i didn't you know what like i i could see a version of this which is really for kids who did theater camp right for like you know a version of this movie which you would show to like 14 and 15 year old kids who've done this for whom it would then become a cult favorite but i think it's like pitched a little bit too adult for them you know what i mean like if it was like five i'm gonna say five percent disneyfied in a way which sounds dismissive but i don't mean it that way but like you know make it five percent more accessible so you you tone back a little bit some of the the snarky satire aspects of it and lean in a little bit more to the like loving aspects of it at which point this movie becomes a cult favorite for like every kid who's ever starred in bye-bye birdie in high school.
Sonny00:46:56you said that that's a joke on a joke the bye-bye birdie strobe light thing what i what what is the
JVL00:47:02bye-bye birdie is one of the most uh sedate classic musicals the idea that there would be strobe effects in bye-bye birdie is crazy and the movie is is littered with in you know theater in jokes uh which i'm sure three quarters of went over my head uh but you know like if you if you are a theater nerd in it or a theater kid i'm i'm sure you know like the fossies they're talking about the fossy kids who are there and all that like all of that stuff is you know right in your wheelhouse but like i don't know i wouldn't feel comfortable showing this like if if one of my kids was a 14 year old theater kid i would be like this is a little too mean to theater kids i wouldn't want to show it to them does that make sense or yeah totally yeah and i just whatever i could have been it this is just disappointment i wish i wish it was better yeah yeah because it's
Sonny00:48:03not bad just like it's not bad it the other the other thing is that it is it's the perfect running time it was like you know it's 95 minutes it's it's it just you get in you get out it does not it we don't linger uh or waste time on anything um yeah yeah i don't know i i i feel like theater
JVL00:48:26kids deserve a movie like this too that's the other thing which bugged me about it i guess is that i feel like this is a subculture which deserves a movie exactly like this and that that movie should be better yeah and not even like a lot better it's not so bad it's like a disaster they they deserve a movie that's 25 better what's better this or waiting for guffman uh waiting for guffman is better yeah right i mean the real question is what's better this or hamlet two which is the steve coogan do you remember this probably hamlet two uh hamlet two is very funny hamlet two is pretty funny i think hamlet two is probably funnier than this yeah uh but i don't know like they're whatever but like the joke about say one more
Sonny00:49:15thing you liked say one more because i feel like we've been too negative because we're both like
JVL00:49:19it was okay uh they're you know what the so there's a scene where they're talking about uh like love interests like you know that there's no chemistry between these these two actors you know like you're all up there like a virgin and they're like well i suppose they're all virgins and but we got to figure out a way to make them you know to make them be more passionate on stage and like well how are we supposed to make them each other and they're like no no no no we don't want them losing their virginity at theater like that's like a funny bit of like r.a camp counselor yeah type like yeah like we want them to plus tobias funke from arrested development or do you remember this they're doing romeo and juliet and he's castigating maybe and steve holt he's like you're not just a couple of kids playing grab ass in the shower you're adults with fully formed libidos and you don't remember that anyway no i don't know but there's that was again like a funny
Sonny00:50:13scene it was it was fine it was fine a collection of funny scenes that doesn't quite hang together
JVL00:50:22a few funny scenes with a collection of like okay scenes that doesn't hang together yeah yeah there fair enough there theater camp i feel bad i feel
Sonny00:50:32bad i feel like i like this more in the moment and then as i was coming away from it over the last few days i was just like none of this is sticking with me really you might be able to tell listeners uh from my my half remembered recollection of it but i again i like we need to we need to have a talk with the filmmakers of the world about the the mockumentary slash uh pseudo documentary format and when it should and shouldn't be used and i think we need to get away from a lot of what
JVL00:51:00we have been seeing here you know here let me conclude i didn't really resent the mockumentary format until the very end because at the very end they resolve everything by giving us uh title card explanations of what happened with the characters and that is so fucking lazy i actually wonder if the whole mockumentary thing wasn't just to be able to give us the ending
Sonny00:51:25right but i i do it does feel the whole the whole mockumentary thing now that you mention it is it
JVL00:51:33handled entirely in in title cards yes we never hear the the documentarians right sort of like that but do we get we get title cards in the beginning saying uh and i guess i guess there
Sonny00:51:49are a couple of shots where like where like troy is talking to the camera i guess i don't know how
JVL00:51:55many the confessional shots i you said like you know they have some confessional shots i don't know if they do there are a couple shots of characters talking to themselves but it's almost like we have a camera through a window catching them talking to themselves it's not a strict
Sonny00:52:10confessional interview no no you're right and that's like now that i think about now that you mentioned the title cards i do wonder if it was entirely i wonder if it was written not to be a mockumentary and then they they were like we need to we need to give it some structure here i don't
JVL00:52:25know well it's based on a short and i would be i did not watch the short but i wonder if the short was also set as a as a mockumentary yeah i don't know i'd have to go up with that which i'm not going to do sorry yeah but in the outtakes i have a good i have a good theater theater thing for you okay well do you want to talk about michael gamble it's a michael gambon thing we'll do it
Sonny00:52:47oh okay great uh all right well this is a this has been a terribly disappointing episode we were both kind of excited for this movie it's probably for the best that mike was out he didn't we didn't have to subject him to this we might have we might have another co-host it's this is mike's fault if he was here we would have watched the creator you know we would have gone we would have gone to see a proper movie would we or we could have gone to see saw x would you rather see saw x i'd rather do jbl i'd rather do would you rather would you rather go see uh talk to me the movie about the hand where you shake it and you see the movie instead no thank you let's see this is we're in october so there's there's a bunch of scary movies and there's a bunch of crap and sometimes that overlaps a little bit so uh all right uh thank you for listening uh we'll be back next week with another episode hopefully
JVL00:53:43all right so here is a so michael gambon the great michael gambon my favorite british actor of his generation which is a tough category that's a that right so that's a big bold statement i i'm not saying he's the best i'm just saying he's my personal favorite the one who's on screen presence i always enjoyed the most uh so i was going reading a bunch of remembrances of him and uh here is i'm this is a remembrance that was published in the guardian i mean this was published like 10 years ago uh and but it was written by one of gambon's friends nicholas heitner who is the artistic director of the national theater okay you ready uh gambon is a young spear carrier in the newly founded national theater at the old vic terrified as they all are of olivier this is me uh lawrence olivier founded the national theater and it was when he was a big deal and anyway uh he's having breakfast one morning early in the canteen all alone enter sir lawrence gambon quakes sir lawrence realizes that he has to sit with gambon to fraternize with the junior and do his bit as company leader so he takes his coffee and sits at gambon's table says good morning desperate for something to talk about gambon sees that sir lawrence is carrying an impressive leather document case embossed in gold with the letters norge norge says gambon what says sir lawrence norge sir lawrence says gambon what the fuck are you talking about says sir lawrence on your case sir lawrence it says norge sir lawrence that's very interesting norge it's norwegian for norway isn't it did they give that to you in elsinore sir lawrence for playing hamlet elsinore is in denmark says sir lawrence gathering up his coffee and hamlet was danish and you're a cunt that's the end of the story lawrence olivier picks up calls michael young michael gambon a cunt picks up his coffee and walks away that is theater camp but in britain that is i get the sense theater camp is a very different
Sonny00:56:08experience than it is here in the states well it's it is funny like i so i recently listened to uh brian cox's audiobook i prefer i prefer listening i don't i don't like reading memoirs from famous people but i love listening to them because they they usually read them brian cox is
JVL00:56:24for that generation it's brian cox and michael gambon and two others and brian cox has a lot of
Sonny00:56:30stories about british theater in the 1960s which sounds like a very different place from like american broadway in the 1960s and 70s because it's just like a bunch of working class guys who like go do their theater stuff and then just get absolutely blasted uh then all through the night and then like show up to the theater an hour before showtime getting ready to vomit uh before their before their next show uh which does again i maybe that is what broadway is like
JVL00:57:00and a lot of them are straight too that's the other i mean there's so many differences between british theater and american theater the straight male leads are one of the differences um another is the the amount of upper class like you do get people like helena bonham carter who is like related to a former prime minister uh yeah in which you don't get here really uh you get a here yeah yeah it's anyway all of it is fascinating michael gambon rip favorite favorite role i mean my favorite role is uh is as non-layer cake non-layer cake uh as sandiford mr sandiford in the insider and again it's a role in which he has one scene i think it's only one scene it's one day's work and he's sitting in an office and he you know he has that sing songy thing that he does with his voice and he manages to be menacing and posh and everything he does everything he does is great do you have a favorite michael gambon role i i've been heard that the singing detective is amazing but i haven't seen it
Sonny00:58:18i have two two that spring to mind and again it's it's a it's a one or two scene thing um his performance in open range he's the he's like the the old man boss in uh in open range who like has been you know running roughshod over the town uh and is is wonderful uh in the in the final shootout um but also this is just a very funny thing i was i i remember once i was um i was watching i was watching hail caesar at in my house for the first time on my you know just on on like a fairly standard soundbar subwoofer system like not i don't i don't have like a you know at home atmos you know system or anything like that it's just a it's just a video soundbar with a yet i'm not a sound guy so i probably will never um but the uh but he does the voiceover in hail caesar and it is like the definitional rumbling bass british voice to the extent that for like literally this is basically the only time this he starts talking and my window started rattling and i was just like what like i you know i've i've watched uh you know half dozen michael bay movies on that system and never once has has the the house started to shake around me but like his just the timbre of his voice was enough to almost like bring my house down on top of me it was uh it was something else that's amazing you don't you can't teach something like that that's just uh that's just how you are i'm sure it's fine
?00:59:53© transcript Emily Beynon
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