FilmDrunk Frotcast

Vince is down in LA for a special edition Frotcast with Michael E. Peter, Michael Rousselet, and Alec Owen of 5-Second Films, whose crowd-funded magnum opus, Dude Bro Party Massacre III, for which they raised more than $200,000, plays the LA Film Festival this week. We talk about how you make a movie with 12-15 people involved in the creative process and how they scored all their magnificent cameos, from Larry King to Patton Oswalt to Andrew WK. We also discuss how much Larry King got paid ($8, seriously) and what Andrew WK calls his “character supplies” (mostly Doritos and Four Loko). Enjoy.

I know it’s probably not why people listen to the Frotcast, but this week, we talk about movies! Lots of them. We open with Kung Fury, now free on YouTube, which we all watched, and mostly enjoyed. After that, I discuss my experience seeing the Entourage movie, which organically leads us into Chet Haze’s spirited and similarly tone-deaf defense of using the N-word, aka “N-Star” (including a digression into Brent Weinbach’s “Gangsta Party Line”). After that, we discuss the Rashida Jones-produced Netflix documentary about amateur teen porn, Hot Girls Wanted. Which felt very local news scare piece to me. (“It’s CALLED amateur porn, and YOUR HOT TEEN could be doing it…”). From there, Matt and I discuss Love & Mercy, the Brian Wilson biopic starring Paul Dano and John Cusack, which Matt is well qualified to critique as a Brian Wilson freak and Beach Boys scholar. Should a biopic just be a dramatic retelling of what you already know or should it try to innovate? Finally, we finish up with your emails, including a bitter script reader’s take on “the two wolves story,” another reader’s rank of the frot crew by f*ckability, and yet another question about the best way to wipe your ass. Frot on and enjoy.   

This week on the Frotcast, aka Comedians With Microphones Talking Movies, I talk about San Andreas (my review), a film about a very muscular, chesty man’s love for his chesty wife and their busty daughter in a time of earthquakes. Bret continues his journey to shilldom (“I get #horny for #brands!”) and Matt Lieb tells us about his latest commercial, and why Alexandra Daddario is so attractive it makes him angry. About 30 minutes in, Kaseem Bentley, (SF Weekly Best of Award Winner for “Racial Humor You Don’t Feel Guilty Laughing At” and one of the Bay Area’s “Top 5 Comedians to Watch” according to the San Jose Mercury News) drops by. Kaseem spends the first 10 minutes or so making fun of me, my friends, and my past relationships, then dives down the rabbit hole of obscure San Francisco comedy references. At one point, he and Matt Lieb have a frank discussion about the existence of God. I dunno, man. Meanwhile, I try to ask him questions about his parents being in the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers, what the deal is with bean pie, and how it was he came to be San Francisco’s only insult comic/social worker. As always, Kaseem is really interesting in the brief moments you can get him to stop being hilarious.

Welcome to another episode of what we like to call “Comedians with Microphones Talking Movies.” This week on the Frotcast, our guest is Laremy Legel from Film.Com (and the upcoming movie ‘Lightweight’), and the topics are rape scenes in Game of Thrones and feminism in Mad Max: Fury Road. But before we get to that, we’ve got an update on the “Startup Castle,” which you may remember from last week as the folks behind the world’s most pathos-drenched roommate ad. It turns out, the guy who “founded” (aka rented) the Startup Castle is a former Chippendales dancer and castmember on a pirate reality show. Neat! After that we get to Game of Thrones, and whether departing from the books has made it open season on criticisms of being gratuitous/rapey/predictable. We move onto Mad Max: Fury Road and the great (misguided) “Is It Feminist??” debate. Also, we discuss Armond White’s review. Finally, we finish things off with your emails, including a question about honk shaming and a Smash Mouth story. Enjoy, and please continue Frotting.

This week on the Frotcast, Incompatent Thieves director Tom Dean joins Matt Lieb and myself (Vince Mancini) in the Frotquarters. We begin discussing the epic beef between Third Eye Blind’s Stephan Jenkins and Smash Mouth’s Steve Harwell, the most 90s beef since the Arch Deluxe. After that we discuss 80s sitcom theme songs and how bizarrely similar they all were. They were all somehow about a perfect family, that was an antidote to depression, bad news on the TV, and a general apocalyptic hellscape they implied existing outside the set. Then we get into the Kurt Cobain documentary, Montage of Heck, heroin addicts in general (a subject with which Matt is somewhat familiar), and why Courtney Love is so perfectly hatable. Is Courtney Love everything we accused Yoko of being? Finally, we finish off talking about “The Startup Castle,” and their ad for a roommate who doesn’t wear too much makeup, watch too much TV, drink, smoke, have too many tattoos, listen to songs with explicit lyrics, or drive too much – another perfectly insufferable illustration of everything despicable about the tech industry in Silicon Valley. Fun! Fun! Fun! 

This week, OJ Patterson of Courting Comedy/Super Trashed Bros is in the Frotquarters to discuss the #CONTROVERSY surrounding Jeremy Renner’s alleged slut-shaming of Black Widow. Is it okay to call a fictional character a slut? Did he ruin his original non-apology by trying to explain it? Also, why did Joss Whedon quit Twitter, or rather, where did Patton Oswalt & Co come up with their explanations for Joss Whedon quitting Twitter? After that, we talk about A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. Underrated? Overrated? Accurately rated? X-Rated? Is the setting supposed to be Iran? Also, BRET FINALLY SELLS OUT! “I want a slice of that idiot pie,” Bret says. “In a world of monsters and shills, I want to be a shill.” “I want you to be a shill with me,” Matt Lieb says. “People always try to make it about Batman and the Joker, but it’s not about Batman and the Joker. It’s about the Joker and Ronald McDonald, and I want to be Ronald McDonald. I want to feed you, but in a clownish sort of way.”

After losing a week to technical difficulties, we’re back! This week, we’re discussing the release of the Star Wars trailer and the people competing to see who can be the most nostalgic for Star Wars. The big question is, what’s the line between acceptable, earnest fandom for something that meant a lot to you, and cheering while a corporation sells you your childhood? We try to answer that, talk about “thug” as we solve race relations in Baltimore, listen to some of Joe Sinclitico’s stand-up comedy about koala hunting, and try to figure out if Matt Lieb actually likes us. As for the listener who asked if the Frotcast was dying, no, it is not, we just had some troubles upgrading our recording set up. We’ve come a long way, from shouting into a single mic to multi-track recording. Not successfully, mind you, but it’s been a journey. 

I was in SoCal this week for the MTV Movie Awards and Alison Rosen’s podcast, so the regular Frotcrew is gone this week (though Bret did still show up to the Frotquarters, poor Bret). Not to fear, though, because I was able to get a couple fan-favorite guests to record the make-up ‘cast, comedians Joe Sinclitico and Matt Louv (the museum of comedy). We talked about Joe’s righteous mustache and it smelling like a condom, the MTV Movie Awards, Furious 7, and discussed whether Vin Diesel is trying to bring up Paul Walker as much as Rudy Giuliani brings up 9/11. Enjoy.

There’s a new bus service in San Francisco that basically helps rich tech nerds pay a few more dollars not to see poor people. Is this a sign of the apocalypse or is it basically all capitalism in a nutshell? Either way, it seems like we the San Francisco residents are guinea pigs in an experiment to see what it’d be like if tech companies ruled the world. WE HAVE SEEN YOUR FUTURE, AND IT SUCKS. We discuss the infantilizing effect of tech before moving onto ‘Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief,’ with Ben back on the pod after two months in Central America. He talks where to go and what to spend and all that good stuff. We finish up with your emails and voicemails about your personal encounters with Name Of The Year contestants like Dr. Loki Skylizard, and Tokyo Sexwale.

We couldn’t get the Frotcast crew together for a proper Frotcast this past week, but I did interview Paul Fischer ‘A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator’s Rise to Power.’ While it’s not the same thing as a normal Frotcast, I did go all Teri Gross for a Fresh Air-style, hour-long interview. The book tells the story of Choi Eun-Hee and Shin Sang-Ok, who at one point were the most popular actress and director in South Korea. They were kidnapped by Kim Jong-Il in 1978, and after Shin tried to escape twice and spent five years in North Korean gulags, he eventually got out, was reunited with Choi (his ex-wife at that point) and they made seven movies for Kim Jong-Il, including the so-bad-it’s-good cult classic, Pulgasari. They tried to make movies good enough that they’d be in Jong-Il’s good graces, so that he eventually gave them just enough freedom that they were able to escape back to the west. Shin eventually went to Hollywood and made a few movies, including ‘3 Ninjas Knuckle Up.’ I talk to Fischer about North Korea, parallels betwen North Korea and Scientology, The Interview, his personal experience in North Korea, and all about himself, writing the book, Kim Jong-Il, and everything else. Enjoy.