BRAIN: I have “The Beaver” on in the background… it’s kind of a trainwreck
BRAIN: also the son character is named “porter”
BRAIN: weird
PJ: ‘The beaver’ as in the creepy mel gibson movie?
BRAIN: right
PJ: so porter is named after his character from Payback?
BRAIN: I imagine!?
PJ: ugh
BRAIN: Do you know what The Beaver is about?
PJ: it’s the one where he goes crazy and starts speaking through a puppet exclusively, right?
BRAIN: right
BRAIN: Mel is a jerk CEO, a failed dad, and a mess of a person…
BRAIN: his wife Jodie Foster asks him to leave
BRAIN: he tries to commit suicide in a hotel room… he fails and when he comes to, he is speaking through a beaver puppet
BRAIN: then a bunch of heartwarming healing happens
PJ: heartwarming healing like the time the main character rants about “the jews” to a cop when he’s pulled over for driving erratically?
BRAIN: I bet that’s in the DVD extras!
BRAIN: I want to see the scene where he fistfights Joe Esterhaz
MATT: I like Jodie Foster, but that movie was pretty insane of her. Didn’t she direct it?
PJ: she did
PJ: and as I recall, it came out like… really close after mel gibson’s implosion
BRAIN: yes it did
PJ: …which was probably why it grossed what… like $900k on a $21m budget
PJ: well, at least it contributed
BRAIN: that is the claim
BRAIN: 22 screens…
MATT: Even if he hadn’t had that meltdown, it’s not like it would have been a successful movie.
PJ: I’m not sure it was gonna recoup $21m for a movie about an asshole who goes insane and starts playing with a puppet
BRAIN: …which tells us they didn’t get good backing re: distribution
MATT: Yeah.
BRAIN: “The Beaver” has a Terry Gross cameo in it
BRAIN: I think Jodie Foster is obsessed with Terry Gross
BRAIN: since she basically plays her in The Brave One
BRAIN: the weird thing is people keep making this same movie
BRAIN: James Franco did “The Ape”
MATT: I missed that one.
MATT: Missed as in “Didn’t know it existed” not missed as in “Didn’t see it.”
BRAIN: it was an adaptation of a play James Franco developed and starred in
PJ: at least that synopsis looks more like the tv show ‘Wilfred’…
BRAIN: like I say! over and over and over again…
BRAIN: “The Id as plush toy”