Ep. 236 skewers media hysteria over Russian election hacks, mocking MSNBC’s absurd conspiracy theories and the CIA’s shaky claims while contrasting Trump’s skepticism with Democratic demands for investigations like Claire McCaskill’s. It pivots to Michael Knowles’ "war on Christmas" rant—from Texas schools banning Charlie Brown displays to Kwanzaa’s controversial origins—and ends with a detour into cinematic flops, praising Santa Claus Conquers the Martians as the worst holiday film ever, complete with Martian children and Mrs. Claus’s bizarre debut. The episode blends satire, conspiracy skepticism, and pop-culture snark to question mainstream narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
MSNBC anchorman Brian Williams has launched an on-air attack against fake news.
These little satires crack me up.
They're so funny.
Oh wait, this really happened.
Williams told his audience that he has done extensive reporting on the fake news issue while heading an MSNBC investigative team made up of an explosives expert, a black computer hacker, a midget acrobat, and an alluring femmefatal.
Williams says his team trailed a group of conservatives to an abandoned warehouse in the waterfront district of Gotham City.
There, using the elaborate skills he acquired as a jewel thief in Monte Carlo, Williams says he managed to break into the warehouse unnoticed and hang upside down from the ceiling in one of those wire contraptions Tom Cruise used in the first Mission Impossible movie, or possibly the second.
They all sort of blend together.
Williams went on to tell MSNBC viewers that he witnessed a group of conservatives performing bizarre hypnosis experiments on left-wing virgins in order to convince them to seduce Russian agents of Vladimir Putin to hack into DNC computers and skew the results of the election by releasing a quote cheese pizza unquote which is dark web slang for a flat round piece of baked bread dough topped with spicy tomato sauce and melted mozzarella which is apparently impossible for American voters to resist.
Williams managed to break this story before he was kidnapped by conservative thugs and beaten to a lying sack of pulp.
Another crusader against fake news is Hillary Clinton, a former something or other.
I can't remember now what she did.
Mrs. Clinton says fake news is being generated by the same vast right-wing conspiracy that tried to convince her her husband had been serially unfaithful with an uncountable number of young, warm, vivacious, sexually welcoming women because he couldn't stand the sight of the ice maiden he married purely for political purposes.
Mrs. Clinton says she discovered this fake news conspiracy after flying into Bosnia under sniper fire, where she found a video maker manufacturing anti-Islamic YouTube videos that caused a riot to erupt in Benghazi, Libya, leaving four Americans dead through absolutely no fault of hers or President Obama's.
Mrs. Clinton said she would be as diligent in exposing fake news stories as she had been in releasing the government emails that somehow found their way into her private server along with the 57,000 emails about yoga, which you don't need to see.
So she deleted them, then washed out the inside of her computer with acid, and then killed anyone who might have read them previously.
Former something or other Clinton said she would continue her fight against fake news in her new position as the feminist conscience of the nation, a position conferred upon her by an international gathering of the most powerful op-ed writers at the New York Times.
Like Mrs. Clinton, the New York Times also used to be something, but I can't remember now what it was.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Annie's Terrible Stutter00:07:17
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunky-diddy.
Ship shape, tipsy-topsy, the world is a bibby-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
What is a poor satirist to do when Brian Williams goes on TV and says, all right, they answer.
Oh, wait, what happened?
There it is.
This is our, what is your job here, Austin?
You sit there every day.
I make cool stuff.
He makes cool stuff.
And one of the cool stuff is the 12 days of the Andrew Clavin Show on Christmas, where we have, I see we have a French hen.
She's wearing a French maid outfit.
I don't want to talk to you about Austin's private life.
A calling bird with her cell phone.
And what is this?
The five rings?
Is that the Olympics?
I have golden rings, of course.
All right, we're going to talk about the Russians.
We're going to have our Golden Globe-winning cultural correspondent, Michael Knowles, who's going to come on.
I do want to say first, just over the weekend, over the Clavenless weekend, my memoir, The Great Good Thing, a secular Jew comes to faith in Christ, The Great Good Thing, was named by two different people as their books of the year.
Both, yeah, in the Wall Street Journal, they asked all these famous people what books they liked.
And Mike Duran, the accomplished historian, I think he's from the Hudson Institute, he named The Great Good Thing, went on at length about it, which was very nice.
And John Lewis, Christianity Today, a very good book critic in Christianity Today, put me on his top list of the year.
You can get that book, and while you're there, you can pick up my novel, Werewolf Cop for only a buck 99 on Kindle if you live in the United States.
Some people have been complaining that they're not in the United States, but if you're not in the United States, you should complain.
All right, before we talk about anything else, I want to talk about, I have to talk about John Glenn.
This was the worst thing about the Clavenless Weekend was the death of John Glenn.
I mean, it was 95, it was time, but that's another thing altogether.
Normally, you go into the top news of the day and you get to these things last.
But John Glenn was so important, certainly in my life and in the cultural imagination of my generation, that I thought I just had to mention one thing about him.
When I was a kid, John Glenn, obviously, the great astronaut, one of the first of the Mercury 7, he was the first man, the fifth man in space and the first man to orbit the Earth.
Here is the famous, play the famous moment when he took off.
This is the famous moment at Cape Cannonville.
My latest check pressure is a shoe.
Locks tanking.
Have a blinking high-level light.
URCO.
Order systems.
Go.
Range operations.
Clear to order.
My mercury capsule.
Go.
All pre-start pile lights are correct.
The ready light is on.
Eject Mercury umbilical.
Oil evacuate.
Mercury umbilical clear.
Mercury is falling.
Lights on.
All recorders too fast.
T-modus 18 seconds and counting engines start.
You either we with a beer with you, farmer.
Good Lord ride all the way.
Godspeed, John Glenn.
Just a really moving moment.
Glenn joked that he was sitting on millions of dollars of equipment made by the lowest bidder.
He was a combat, he flew over 100 combat missions in World War II and Korea, won the Distinguished Flying Cross six times.
He was a U.S. Senator, obviously, and then the oldest man in space when he went back up on the shuttle in 1998.
When I was a kid, when that was being played, I was eight years old.
When I was a kid, there were three men who represented what an American man was to me, which was very important because if you read my memoir, you'll see I didn't have a lot of male role models that I could appreciate, and I needed people to guide me.
I looked in literature, and I obviously looked in pop culture.
And the three were Mickey Manle, who was the great center fielder for the New York Yankees, John F. Kennedy, who was the president, so we all admired him enormously, and John Glenn, who was the hero of the age.
I mean, he was just beyond imagining.
It's impossible to describe what a great hero he was.
And of course, as I got older and the news media started to tell more of the truth about people's lives, it turned out that both JFK and Mickey Mannell were not what they were cut out to be.
I mean, JFK was a philanderer and very, very sinister in some ways politician.
I'm not saying he was the worst president ever.
He wasn't.
He's the worst president ever is about to leave office.
But JFK was, you know, he was not a good guy.
He was not a good person.
And certainly Mickey Manle, who probably was a nice person, was a terrible drunk.
He said very movingly before he died when he came down with liver cancer, he said, you talk about being a role model.
I'm a role model.
Don't do what I did.
I mean, so he was.
So these were, John Glenn was who he seemed to be.
And that doesn't mean he was perfect.
You know, the press likes to make us think that if a guy isn't perfect, he's terrible.
You know, it has nothing to do with being perfect, but he was a great hero.
If you read Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, he was the epitome of the right stuff, a guy whose heartbeat didn't even speed up when he was launched into space.
He was married to the woman he met in his crib virtually.
I think she was two years old when he married Annie.
My favorite story about him is that Annie had famously had this terrible, terrible stutter.
She could barely speak.
And when Lyndon Johnson, then the vice president, wanted to meet with her in front of the camera, she panicked.
She said she couldn't do it.
And John Glenn basically told the vice president to get stuffed.
He said, Annie, if you don't want the vice president in your house, he is not coming in the house.
And the story that I just love about her, it was apparently one of the great marriages.
And she, in the 70s, I think maybe the 80s, they developed a new technique for improving stutters.
And she went into this program and she came back and she was able to speak better.
And she said to John Glenn, there's something I've been wanting to tell you for years.
Pick up your socks.
And I always thought, I thought that just, if my wife was kept silent for years, that would be the first thing she said to me, too.
Anyway, a great hero.
You know, when people are what they seem to be, when heroes are what they seem to be, you would think that people would love this, but they don't.
You know, one of the reasons I saw John Glenn in person when he was running for president, and he was boring, you know, he was not like, because he was a real person.
People want to know that their heroes have feet of clay.
They would much rather adore and worship some rock star slag because she doesn't hold them up to any standard higher than their own.
Next time they get drunk and wake up with somebody that they don't know, they can say, well, you know, Madonna does it, so it's okay with me.
When you have a real hero like George Washington or John Glenn and they really live up to those things, it basically says to you you can be better.
And nobody wants to hear that.
And nobody wants to hear that they can actually be who they pretend they are.
They would much rather be who they can laugh about with their friends while they destroy their and other people's lives.
But great men call us to a new level.
John Glenn did that.
Godspeed John Glenn.
I was sorry to see him go.
All right.
Trump's Claims Complicate Intelligence00:09:45
The Democrat National Committee has released their newest assessment of why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.
Here it is.
I ran out of gas.
I had a flat clear.
I didn't have enough money for cab fare.
My trust didn't come back for the cleaners.
An old friend came in from out of town.
Someone stole my car.
There was an earthquake.
A terrible flood.
Locus!
It wasn't my fault!
I swear to God!
Locus, it wasn't my fault.
This is insane.
You know, this is, it's Comey's fault from the FBI.
It's this, it's the Electoral College.
So now there's this new story from, it started in the Washington Post, the New York Times echoes it today.
The CIA, which had already, now you've got to be careful, you have to understand what this story is.
The CIA, which had already reported to Obama and senators and other people that the Russians had hacked, had had some role in hacking the DNC and releasing all these emails that made John Podesta and the Clinton campaign look bad because they were bad.
That they now, an anonymous source is telling the Washington Post, an anonymous intelligence source, is telling the Washington Post and the New York Times that Putin's aim, the Russians' aim in this, was getting Donald Trump elected.
This story is crap.
This story is 100% crap.
Now, I don't even know, I'm sure it's true.
I'm sure some senior official did say this, but who cares?
I mean, it is a story.
It was definitely a story when they said we think the Russians are hacking DNC and trying to mess with the American elections.
That an anonymous source will not come forward but says we now know what their motive was.
How the hell do they know what their motive was?
Plus, the New York Times reports that this anonymous source tells them that the RNC was also hacked, but they didn't release that information, whereas the RNC says we had the FBI in here to explore our computers and they were not hacked at all.
So the source is already questionable.
This story is crap.
One of the things I think they're aiming at, I really do think that they're aiming a little bit at the Electoral College, hoping some of these electors are faithless electors, which, by the way, would send the country up in smoke if somehow the Electoral College turned this election around and if they think that Hillary Clinton is going to be installed by Deus Ex Machina, that's not going to happen.
Now listen, again, it's important if the Russians are hacking computers, we want to know about it.
I'm not saying that, but this story, this particular story, is crap.
And I have to say, and of course, first let's take it from the Democratic talking points of view.
The Democrats are calling for an investigation.
Claire McCaskill was the spokeswoman.
This should be not only about protecting us going forward, but this is a form of warfare for Vladimir Putin, who is a thug and a bully and has the friends around the globe that we don't want to be friends with.
For him to be trying to impact our elections, we have to, there has to be, he has to be held accountable.
And that's why this has to, well, some of that's classified, I believe.
And I don't think it's something that we can discuss on TV.
But I've had briefings just this last week that indicate that this is a very serious issue for the American people to understand and for Donald Trump to dismiss out of hand.
The intelligence community's fact gathering is, frankly, doesn't bode well for him protecting our country.
I think he needs to not immediately react and wait until he gets all the facts.
So the irony here is endless.
I want to say, of course, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the two most useful idiots in the Senate, you know, the Democrat useful idiots immediately said, yes, we need a bipartisan investigation of the, you know, it's like they're just walking into this thing.
And of course, you have to investigate, again, the Russian involvement.
But, you know, the idea of the Democrats who have been cozying up, they have been run blind.
Vladimir Putin has run circles around Barack Obama.
He has made him look like a child.
Let's not go back to the Russian.
We don't even have to talk about the Russian reset.
Or remember Obama getting caught on the hot mic saying, tell Vladimir I'll have more flexibility after I get re-elected and all this stuff.
You know, and all of the, first of all, and the other thing is the CIA is basically accusing the Russians of doing the media's job for them.
They're accusing them of getting the news that the media wouldn't get.
But, you know, the other thing is the sudden confidence in our CIA and our intelligence service, who are the ones, as Trump was quick to point out, who are the ones who told us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
You know, these are also, here's the Wall Street Journal.
Let me read just one quick paragraph from the Wall Street Journal.
If the CIA really does have high confidence about Mr. Putin's motives, how they would know that, I don't know.
But this would also be the first time in recent history.
These are the same Sears who missed the Russian invasion of Crimea, missed the incursion into southern Ukraine, and missed Mr. Putin's foray into Syria.
The intelligence community also claimed high confidence in 2008 for its judgment that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program.
That judgment conveniently shut down any further Bush administration action against Iran.
But a year later in the Obama administration, our highly confident spooks disclosed Iran's secret Fordo underground facility.
So, I mean, you know, it's like they, what they do, what they do with Trump now, well, let's listen to Trump's reaction.
Trump just blew this off in a very refreshing way as far as I'm concerned.
I think it's ridiculous.
I think it's just another excuse.
I don't believe it.
I don't know why.
And I think it's just, you know, they talked about all sorts of things.
Every week it's another excuse.
We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College.
I guess the final numbers are now at 306, and she's, you know, down to a very low number.
No, I don't believe that at all.
You say you don't know why.
Do you think that the CIA is trying to overturn the results of the people?
No, I don't think they're saying somehow to weaken you in office.
Well, if you look at the story and you take a look at what they said, there's great confusion.
Nobody really knows.
And hacking is very interesting.
Once they hack, if you don't catch them in the act, you're not going to catch them.
They have no idea if it's Russia or China or somebody.
It could be somebody sitting in a bed someplace.
All right.
Is he getting oranger?
He looks like he's getting actually oranger to me.
All right.
We've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube, but our Golden Globe winning cultural correspondent Michael Knowles is coming on, so you might want to come over to the Daily Wire and listen to the rest.
If you subscribe, you can watch the whole thing on the website, which is a joy untold.
Plus, you can be in our mailbag.
So come on over.
So now the routine is, if Trump says this is malarkey, then he's not trusting our intelligence.
How is he going to be president if he doesn't trust our intelligence community?
And then you saw Chris Wallace trying to draw him out.
Is this a political move?
As if the CIA were somehow completely unpolitical.
But the CIA is a complete left-wing organization, which during the Bush administration sent out a lot of leaks to the New York Times and the Washington Post trying to undermine Bush's project.
John Bolton, one of the things that worries me in all this is that Trump has made these overtures about Putin, which I don't understand at all.
Let's work together.
Putin is a thug.
He's a murderer.
He's a bad, bad man.
And he runs rings around Americans because Americans are credulous and they want connections and they think he's going to help them out.
And he just makes them look, he made Obama look like a total child.
But John Bolton is obviously a clear-eyed, steely guy who will always say what's on his mind.
And here he is making an actual valid point about this entire investigation.
We have to know the facts here.
And it's not at all clear to me, just viewing this from the outside, that this hacking into the DNC and the RNC computers was not a false flag operation.
Let's remember what FBI Director James Comey said dealing with Hillary's homebrew server.
He said, we found no direct evidence of foreign intelligence service penetration.
But given the nature of this, we didn't expect to, meaning a really sophisticated foreign intelligence service would not leave any cyber fingerprints.
And yet people say they did leave cyber fingerprints in the hacks regarding our election.
So that is a really good point.
What he's saying is if they left fingerprints, maybe it wasn't the Russians, maybe it was meant to look like the Russians.
There's a little bit of conspiracy theorizing here.
But you know, I don't mind a little conspiracy theorizing because I think the whole story is baloney.
I don't think you run with a story from your guy, your New York Times CIA senior official who won't go on the record and is talking about the motives of people.
How do you investigate that?
What do you have satellite pictures of the guy's motives?
You know, this is nonsense.
Plus, this other thing that the Times says that they hacked into the RNC where the RNC says the FBI has confirmed that they did not, it just makes the whole thing stink.
It doesn't stink as intelligence necessarily, but it stinks as a news story.
This is the silly season.
The Electoral College is going to vote, I think what is it, the 19th.
War on Christmas Conspiracies00:07:29
They're being hammered.
They're being hammered.
Each elector is being hammered by these emails, repeated emails, hundreds and hundreds of emails a day telling them they have to change their vote.
You know, one of them today wrote in the Wall Street Journal that she's the mother of two kids.
She says she knows what to say when kids want something and they want it now.
She's just saying no.
But this is garbage.
As a news story, it's garbage.
And having the Sunday news guys come on and say, well, do you disbelieve it?
Do you think it's political?
What are you saying?
You know, it's just all crap.
And I think, again, again, the affection for the Russians in the Trump camp is something that we should look at.
Certainly, the question of whether they hacked into a computer, certainly.
This story as a news story is garbage, and the real hacks are our media.
All right.
It's time for our Golden Globe winning cultural correspondent, Michael Knowles, who is going to report on the reporting from Christmas, I believe, from Christmas Central.
I can't see him.
Do we have him?
There he is.
Hey, what a sweater.
It was called that in my closet.
You pulled, you're the old, you know, yeah, go ahead.
Well, actually, the little Drew on my sweater is actually wearing a sweater with a little Drew on the sweater.
If you can catch that.
I had a nightmare like this once.
It just went on forever.
That's right.
You have to say where you got the sweater.
This is an amazing sweater.
It is incredible.
I saw it.
I actually, I wanted to buy it as a prop, a make-your-own ugly Christmas sweater, but I don't have any artistic talent.
So I decided to bring the whole kit in to the only person who does any work around the Daily Wire, Cynthia Angula.
Oh, man, the artist.
She is the Daily Wire.
That's right.
And I asked her to do it.
I come in.
She's working on it on her lunch break.
She spent hours on this sweater.
And I think really to great effect because we'll get a day of laughs out of it.
It's a good use of the Cynthia.
Well, you brought it to my world-famous Christmas tree.
That is true.
Yeah, the best part of the season.
This is a big, the best party of the season.
All right.
You know, we wanted to talk about the war on Christmas.
This comes up every year.
And every year, the left tells us that we're out of our minds, we're being silly, there is no war on Christmas.
So we sent you out into the field, into Christmas, to find out if, in fact, it is under siege.
That's right.
Coming to you live from Christmas.
They always gaslight us on this.
The very people who are clearly the ones changing the tradition and changing the culture of a Christmas culture to this generic, boring, clinical holiday sort of culture are the ones gaslighting us and telling us that we're the ones creating the trouble.
And the latest uproar is coming out of Texas because a middle school administrator in Texas put up a little display of Linus and a display from the Charlie Brown Christmas special of Linus from the Charlie Brown Christmas special.
He had to take it down because of agitators about the separation of church and state.
Really?
Have they come out of tar and feathers in Texas?
That's right.
Yeah, I didn't know this was a big deal in Texas.
And, you know, across the country, there are Christmas trees that have become holiday trees.
And we did, at least we got our Starbucks cups back, you know, last year.
That was a victory.
That was a slight victory in the war on Christmas.
A slight victory in the war on Christmas.
And what's so offensive about it isn't that it's, you know, no one's asking for the crash or the nativity scene on the Starbucks Cup.
But if the little Christmas tree lights are so offensive to you, if you have enough time to be outraged by the Christmas tree lights, fuck get a job or a hobby or something in life, you know.
And nobody, you go into stores now and nobody says Merry Christmas.
They say happy holidays.
That's right.
The way that you know that the war on Christmas does exist is go down the street or into a store or something and first of all see if you ever hear Merry Christmas.
You won't.
But say Merry Christmas and notice the reaction.
It is shock and dismay.
You've said something rude, basically.
That's right.
And the question is, why do people say happy holidays?
if there's really only one major holiday at that time.
You know, people might say, well, there's Hanukkah.
But Hanukkah is a holiday that really only came into fashion as we know it today in the mid-19th century.
Before that, it was the miracle of finding oil in the Middle East, which might be a minor miracle.
It was a minor miracle, yeah.
But it was, yeah, it was actually, there's a good story on NPR, another fake news site, about this, which is that Hanukkah, in its present form, was developed by a rabbi in Cincinnati in the mid to late 19th century, and it was a response to an increased commercialized Christmas.
And it was to keep Jewish kids from envying Christmas, basically.
That's right.
I mean, Christmas is the best.
You have to have Swana.
You can't see.
So, yeah, I don't begrudge anybody their version of Christmas.
What about Kwanzaa?
Kwanza, yes.
Merry Kwanzaa.
Do you have a Kwanzaa push out yet?
I do have my Kwanzaa, but I set it on fire.
I just wanted to see if it would burn and remain intact.
That's right.
Kwanzaa is actually the most ridiculous one.
Kwanza was invented in 1966 by a convict, by a criminal named Milana Karenga, who was an African-American studies professor at Cal State Long Beach.
And it was founded as a Pan-African-American socialist holiday.
But the word Kwanzaa derives from Swahili, which is actually on the wrong coast of Africa.
All of the transatlantic slave trade took place on the west coast of Africa where they do not speak Swahili.
And actually, Milana Karenga went to jail for torturing two women, forcing them to strip naked, and torturing them with electrical cords and a hot solder iron.
That's it.
That's right.
Wait, did they send you to jail for that?
Uh-oh.
No.
Get ahead start.
We'll finish the show.
Wait, wait, wait.
The guy who invented Kwanza, I did not know this.
The guy who invented Kwanzaa was sent to prison for torturing women with a solder iron?
That's right.
I actually think the more shocking thing is he's an African-American studies professor at a small college in California.
Well, that was suspect right there.
So do they have like a little creche with like a solder iron or something?
I haven't delved nearly deeply enough into those traditions, but one wonders.
So is this, I mean, is this something that happens from time to time?
Or do people wage war on Christmas?
I mean, Christmas is a big deal.
Like you said, it's a very, very powerful thing.
It has some pagan roots, which I approve of, by the way.
I think Christians should take over good festivals and make them Christian festivals.
I think that's a terrific thing.
But people, I mean, the Protestants have always been a little bit wary of Christmas as opposed to Catholics.
But what about like real war on Christmas stuff?
That's right.
I mean, the first war on Christmas was even our ancestors, the Puritans, who thought Christmas was too much popery and Anglicanism, too much fun.
Who was it?
H.L. Mencken said that Puritanism is the fear, the haunting fear that somewhere somebody is happy.
Yeah, having a good time, right?
But yeah, I sort of see the reasons for that war on Christmas is they want to make it more Christian.
But there have been four major groups in modern history that have waged a war against Christmas to make it less Christian or to make it non-existent.
These are people who have tried to either ban Christmas or subvert all of its traditions.
Okay, four groups.
The French revolutionaries, the French revolutionary terrorists, the Soviet communists, Nazis, and Democrats.
That sounds about right.
It's getting company.
It's all of a piece.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 Parody00:07:48
All right, well, you know, listen, keep your head down.
I don't want you to get shot in the crossfire in the war on Christmas.
I'll keep my head down and your head down.
My head and my little head down.
Thanks.
Michael Knowles, our global, what is it, a Golden Globe Award winner?
And Nobel Prize-winning cultural correspondent.
Thank you very much, Michael.
I appreciate it.
All right, stuff I like.
We got to talk about.
I want to talk about the worst, best Christmas movie ever made.
And I can speak about this with authority because I have actually written one of the worst reviewed movies ever made.
This is true.
People do not know this.
Yes, listen, I have to say, I pour my heart into everything I write.
This is absolutely true.
And I worked very hard on this.
It was a remake of a really scary Japanese horror film.
Remember when J-Horror was very big because of the ring?
This was a film called One Missed Call about a haunted cell phone.
And I did the remake of it.
And the script, you know, what happened was everybody made a different film.
That's why it didn't turn out as well as I would have liked.
The film is a big hit, by the way.
The film really did well.
It did well in box office, did great on DVD, so like it wasn't, but it was the worst-reviewed film of 2008 and has received a rare 0% approval on Rotten Tomatoes.
I have a 0% approval.
Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Not easy.
Not everyone can do this.
So I, you know, what happened with this film basically is we all made a different picture.
I wrote a kind of satirical, scream-like film that was supposed to appeal to young people because it was funny and offbeat.
The director was a French director, very artistic and serious.
He wanted to write, make a serious, ha film, you know.
And then he hired all these actors who were really good actors, but festival actors, very serious, very sincere people.
And then, of course, the producers wanted to make money, so they wanted to cut a sort of blood fest, but keep it in PG-13 so people could come and see it.
So everybody made a different movie, and the result was a 0% rating.
Here's one scene that really drives me crazy because if you listen, well, listen to it carefully.
This is Shannon Sassiman, and I've forgotten the name of the other actress, but go ahead and play it.
Hey.
What was it?
It was a funeral.
It sucked.
From now on, I only go to parties where no one gets cremated.
How are Shelly's parrots?
Considering their 24-year-old daughter drowned in the backyard pond, they're great.
And you?
I knew Shelly.
We interned at St. Luke's together.
She was not crazy.
I know Leanne, but the way that she was talking at the end there was pretty.
Yeah, that doesn't mean she killed herself.
That's not my ringtone.
That's the thing.
The person who dies then calls you next on your ring.
That's Azura Sky.
Her name slipped out of my eyes.
Edward Burns was also in it.
Lovely people, by the way, all of them.
But if you listen, what always got me about that is if you listen to it, you can hear it's my dialogue.
You know, you can hear she says, from now on, I'm only going to parties where no one gets cremated.
You know, that's something that I would write, but it's supposed to be snarky and cynical, and she reads it with such seriousness, you know, because that's the way it was directed.
I was there just for the rehearsals, and at one point, I actually sneaked up to one of the actresses, and I would never get in the way of a director, you know, it's just not done.
But I just said, you know, the dialogue's supposed to be funny.
And she actually went, oh.
So, just to show you the reach of this film, there was another comedy, a comedy called Forgetting Sarah Marshall with Jason Siegel and Russell Brand and Kristen Bell.
They actually made fun of my movie in this movie.
I'm watching this movie and I'm laughing.
It's a pretty funny movie.
And here's the scene from it.
I see it's just ridiculous premise.
Oh, what would happen if your mobile phone killed you?
Why would a mobile phone kill anyone?
It doesn't make sense.
How can a mobile phone have an agenda and kill people?
I told her that when she read the script.
Yeah, you were the voice of reason, mate.
Tried to be, but she didn't listen.
Why are you going around killing people on mobile phone like doing murders?
Why couldn't you just take the battery out of the phone?
Right, that's it.
The battle's over.
Yeah, we've won.
I hate idiot.
Well, it's not for everyone, but it.
No, it's ridiculous.
Here is my favorite scene.
Bring, ring.
Hello.
No, it could never happen.
So ultimate humiliation.
This is somebody who rewrites.
I rewrite everything I write 20 times at least, 20 times until it's exactly perfect.
I always tell people you can only kid around like I kid around if you're really serious when you're actually doing your work.
Anyway, so that was my experience.
But, but we have to talk about Christmas, right?
The worst Christmas movie ever made came out when I was a little tiny kid called Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
If you have never seen this, it is worth watching.
What happens is the Martians have kids who are hyper-serious.
They're not allowed to play.
And an old wise man comes to them and says, you must bring a Santa Claus to Mars so that the children learn how to play and laugh, right?
So now the evil Martians get together.
You gotta watch this.
This is incredible.
You have to watch.
The evil Martians get together and discuss whether they're going to kidnap Santa Claus from Earth.
Santa Claus on Mars?
Will we get a Santa Claus?
There's only one Santa Claus, and he's an Earth.
Well, I guess that takes care of that.
Didn't I tell you it was a foolish idea to seek advice from that old man?
This is a serious matter, Voldar.
And desperate problems require desperate deeds.
Earth has had Santa Claus long enough.
We will bring him to Mars.
I'm against it.
Our children are fine the way they are.
I don't want any Santa Claus bringing them toys and games.
They'll start playing and laughing and running underfoot.
They'll become a nuisance.
I've made my decision.
We leave for Earth tonight.
Rigner, Lomas, prepare spaceship number one.
Voldar, those are the most threatening Martians.
If you're not watching this, if you're only listening to it, it's unbelievable.
The guy's mustache, which looks like it's about to crawl off his face.
But if you really want to enjoy this, what you have to watch is, remember Mystery Science Theater?
Mystery Science Theater 3000 did this.
And this was the film.
I mean, it was the pinnacle of Mystery Science Theater.
Here's just a quick cut.
Hello, Santa.
Get the hell out of my shop.
Well, we've never disappointed the kids yet.
Except for the poor ones.
We're going out the good old-fashioned way.
Guns are brazen.
Rancer and Dancer and Thunder and Blitz and Vixen and Nixon.
Yes, and what's in the pipes, Anna?
I always con Sonnet.
I get those names mixed up, but the kids know their names.
Yeah, because they're sober.
We're on television.
It's syllabone!
Why didn't you tell me?
Oh, my hair's a man!
When she thinks of the mass media, she talks to herself.
We're having her committed.
What is this strange little creature over here?
Meanwhile, at Oscar Wilde's house.
Meanwhile, at Oscar Wilde's house.
You know, the funny thing about that is that is apparently the first time Mrs. Claus ever appeared on screen.
Yes.
Anyway, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, especially as done by Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Stuff I like for Christmas, hilarious stuff.
That's it for today.
Tomorrow we will be back again.
The mailbag is on Wednesday, so you want to send in your questions?
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