Bonus Episode - BlockBuckster Movies, Ep 2 - Labyrinth

BUCK
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of BlockBuckster Movies. With me, your host, Buck. And today, my guest is the former sidekick known as Lullaby.

LULLABY
That's me.

BUCK
Yes, it is. When Lullaby was not singing criminals to sleep with her sleepy snoozy song, she was one of my really good friends, so I wanted to bring her in here to get her opinion on a movie that came out before she was born. Today we discussed 1986’s puppet filled classic, Labyrinth. Yeah.

LULLABY
(giggles)

BUCK
I guess that was an intro.

LULLABY
Yeah, I mean, it sounded like one.

BUCK
So we just finished watching the movie, and now we are…

LULLABY
Recovering.

BUCK
Yes, we are recovering from David Bowie's bulge.

LULLABY
(laughs) I can't get it out of my head.

BUCK
It's just, it's ingrained in there.

LULLABY
It's like looking into the sun. It just keeps flashing. Maybe if we distract ourselves by describing the movie, we can remove the image.

BUCK
I mean, I close my eyes and I still see it.

LULLABY
(laughs)

BUCK
It's there. So we have the Wikipedia plot, the plot summary that we're going to be reading out loud and then commenting on, because that seemed like the most effective way. And also, I'm lazy.

LULLABY
And this, this summary was written by some man living in his mom's basement with a bathrobe and then edited by another man living in his mom's basement, also in a bathrobe.

BUCK
Mmhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I admire them for their steadfastness and their, their trollishness.

LULLABY
The world's knowledge is built on the back of men in bathrobes.

BUCK
Okay, so I'll start. And for anyone that doesn't know, last episode we talked about Beastmaster with my co-host for that episode, Pitch, and we decided to stick with 80’s fantasy for this episode. So, Labyrinth is one of my favorite movies. I saw it when I was a little kid. Loved it. Lullaby here has actually never seen it. So let's get into it: “Labyrinth is a 1986 musical fantasy film directed by Jim Henson with George Lucas as executive producer. Based on conceptual designs by Brian Froud, the film was written by Terry Jones of Monty Python and many of its characters are played by puppets produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. The film stars Jennifer Connolly as 16 year old Sarah and David Bowie as Jareth, the Goblin King. In Labyrinth, Sarah embarks on a quest to reach the center of an enormous, otherworldly maze to rescue her infant half brother, Toby, whom she wished away to Jareth.” What was your initial reaction to the movie, having never seen it before?

LULLABY
Oh, it took a bit to take in. I'm wondering, does “musical fantasy film” apply to like, literally any other film? Like what other…

BUCK
Let's see, what other—

LULLABY
What other musical fantasies are there?

BUCK
The other 80’s fantasy movies I love, like Legend and Neverending Story and Dark Crystal, none of them have songs in them.

LULLABY
I mean, I feel like I want more… now. Like, it was new. It was new, was my reaction.

BUCK
Do we want, like, a Game of Thrones musical?

LULLABY
Oh, my gosh. We might.

BUCK
I feel like that would be better with, like, a Targaryen opera, right? Like, it'd be really, like dramatic and perfect.

LULLABY
That could be good.

BUCK
Yeah. So I guess if you want to take it away, we can go into the plot summary for the beginning of the film.

LULLABY
“16 year old Sarah Williams recites from a book titled The Labyrinth in the Park with her dog Merlin, but is unable to remember the last line. They are watched by a barn owl.” (laughs) This summary is great.

BUCK
So creepy.

LULLABY
“They’re watched by a barn owl. She realizes that she's late to babysit her infant half brother, Toby. She rushes home and is confronted by her stepmother, who leaves for dinner with Sarah's father. Sarah finds Toby in possession… In possession of her treasured teddy bear, Lancelot. Sarah is frustrated by this, and Toby's constant crying. So, she rashly wishes Toby be taken away by the goblins from the book. Toby disappears and the Goblin King, Jareth appears. He offers Sarah her dreams in exchange for the baby, but she refuses, having instantly regretted her wish. I don't remember that. Like, I think I was just bewitched by all the sparkles on his jacket. So I didn't—

BUCK
Yeah.

LULLABY
I wasn’t really focusing.

BUCK
The, the dreams must be his crystal ball.

LULLABY
Oh, yeah, he was like, here's his ball, and it has—I thought that was like a, like she could see the future in it. I didn't know it would give her her dream.

BUCK
It must have been her dreams. So we should talk about the crystal ball really quickly. The crystal ball is like fluidly, like dancing on his hands, back and forth. And I remember reading that it wasn't actually David Bowie moving the crystal ball with his hand. It was someone who was, like, trained to do that, who stuck his arms, like, under, like under David Bowie's arms and was doing it for him.

LULLABY
Which is crazy ‘cause then you couldn't even see what you were doing.

BUCK
Yeah, so the guy is just blindly doing crystal ball tricks while, like, spooning David Bowie.

LULLABY
I wonder if he dropped them on David Bowie's feet at any point.

BUCK
You mentioned his sparkles. We should talk about his outfit.

LULLABY
Yeah.

BUCK
Yeah. So his hair is like a pixie mullet? No. Like glam rocker… vibe.

LULLABY
Mmhmm. t's like Jem.

BUCK
Yes. It's like Jem and the Holograms. And he's wearing skintight jeggings? Leggings… Really, really, really tight gray pants. You can see the outline of his manhood. (laughs)

LULLABY
The persistent bulge that has been burned into our retinas forever.

BUCK
Yes, this is like the childhood version of the Battle of the Bulge.

LULLABY
Mmhmm.

BUCK
I'm gonna cut that. (laughs) Not funny.

LULLABY
Ohh…

BUCK
Oh, God.

LULLABY
Yeah.

BUCK
Let's see where, where were we on this description?

LULLABY
Oh, yeah. “Jareth reluctantly gives Sarah 13 hours to solve his labyrinth and find Toby before he turns—He is turned into a goblin forever. Sarah meets a dwarf named Hoggle, who aids her to enter the labyrinth. She has trouble finding her way at first and meets a talking worm who inadvertently sends her in the wrong direction.”

BUCK
So that description totally left out the fact that when she walks down to the labyrinth after yelling, Come on, feet.

LULLABY
Oh yeah, she’s like, oh, that's a long way. Let's go, feet. Or like, come on, feet.

BUCK
She first walked down and Hoggle was peeing in a fountain, which is gross.

LULLABY
It was a little awkward, yeah.

BUCK
And then, like, he didn't, like, wash his hands, and then he, like, immediately like—

LULLABY
Oh, no.

BUCK
Yeah, he, like opened the door. He was handing her stuff the entire time.

LULLABY
Yeah, and he was touching that jewel pouch with those…

BUCK
Yeah.

LULLABY
Hands. Yeah, he was touching everything.

BUCK
Yeah, pee is sterile, but still, like, stop touching everything with your pee hands.

LULLABY
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Now, I'm going to have to reevaluate the whole film in light of that.

BUCK
Mm hmm. It's not very sanitary.

LULLABY
Mmm mmm.

BUCK
So, yeah, Hoggle looks like a, like a mythological little dwarf character.

LULLABY
He has a lot of things dangling across him.

BUCK
Oh, and he was killing fairies.

LULLABY
Oh, yeah, I forgot!

BUCK
Yeah. Yeah, he had, like a…

LULLABY
Little spritzer.

BUCK
It was like a pesticide spray, essentially, that he was using to kill fairies that were flying around.

LULLABY
What do you think it was? What kind of spray kills fairies?

BUCK
Bleach?

LULLABY
(laughs)

BUCK
I don't know. Okay. So he killed fairies. My favorite part of the movie was the sound that the fairies made when they died.

LULLABY
Oh, yeah.

BUCKS
Oooo.

LULLABY
Oooo.

BUCK
I mean, one of them did bite Sarah, so it probably deserved to die, so…

LULLABY
Yeah.

BUCK
Oh, the talking worm. We, we didn't talk about the worm. You asked the question while we were watching about the worm, because he's like, come in and have a cup of tea and meet the missus. He lives in, like, a brick wall.

LULLABY
Like how? What are you doing that?

BUCK
I don't think that she would have been able to, you know, get in there. So that worm’s very stupid.

LULLABY
I don't think that was a practical, really, offer at all and probably not genuine.

BUCK
And this adorable little blue British worm is wearing a red scarf, which is very cute. But how did he get the scarf on? How did he tie the scarf? He does not have fingers. How does he brew tea? How does he drink tea?

LULLABY
Is he even married?

BUCK
Yeah, he says “meet the missus.” But, I mean, it's not like they wear rings on fingers ‘cause they don't have fingers.

LULLABY
He lied about the right direction to go, you know?

BUCK
Yeah, yeah.

LULLABY
And he's got a scarf that nobody knows how he got it on. Maybe David Bowie's coming by and putting his scarf on for him. Maybe they're tight.

BUCK
Yeah.

LULLABY
And he doesn't even have a home. He's just sitting on a rock. ‘Cause he's a worm.

BUCK
It's true. Yeah, it's very confusing.

LULLABY
Mm hmm.

BUCK
After she meets the worm, and then she goes in the wrong direction, the next thing in the description is that she ends up in an oubliette, where she reunites with Hoggle.

LULLABY
What’s an oubliette?

BUCK
It was like that dark pit that she fell into.

LULLABY
Oublie—Like, who even knows that word?

BUCK
They did say the word oubliette like multiple times in the movie.

LULLABY
I feel like that would have registered. Maybe it didn't make it past the retinal burn of the manhood.

BUCK
Mm hmm. Yeah, the bulge just overwhelmed our senses, I feel.

LULLABY
Yes. I was stunned. (laughter) I was psychologically paralyzed by it. Can I just say, okay, and this is the last thing I'll just say about the bulge, probably. Why—like you have a legion of little people actors on the show who are right at the height of the bulge and you're like, why don't we just put really, really tight pants and fully emphasize every wrinkle and, and bulge here, and you're, and then have him gyrate in front of you. Like, I feel like they should have gotten hazard pay for this ‘cause they're just right, they’re right there. And when they cut to these little people goblins, it's like bulge on one side, goblin on the other, ‘cause that's what's happening down there. And I just, I just really feel for them, is what is the point I want to make.


BUCK
Mm hmm.

LULLABY
I just want to put that out there.

BUCK
So it just says Sarah ends up in an oubliette, but it doesn't mention how she got there. She had to answer a riddle, which I still don't know if the riddle, if she, if she answered it correctly, ‘cause it was like one of them always tells the truth and one of them always lies.

LULLABY
Mm hmm.

BUCK
But, like, it still wasn't exactly sure if she answered it correctly, because… I don't care.

LULLABY
But yes. Yes. I feel like that's an important, an important aspect to this, because she was very certain and I was… very bored.

BUCK
She convinced me that, like I believed when she explained it, why she picked the, the door that she picked. I believed her and she convinced me. But then she still fell down into a hole, so… Oh, and also when she falls into the oubliette, she meets the helping hands. So the whole—the whole hole, like falling down into the oubliette, it's lined with hands that essentially, like, grope her, viciously grope her and throw her down into the pit. But they grab her halfway through and they're like, “Hey, we're the helping hands. Which way do you want to go?” And this dumb, dumb girl is like, oh, well, I'm already pointed down, so let's just keep falling into the dark pit. She literally could have just said, oh, bring me back up, and then she would have gone back up and walked on probably right to the castle. So maybe that was the right door to pick, but she just was dumb, and because—

LULLABY
Ohhh.

BUCK
The Helping Hands were there to help her go on further. But she was too dumb to realize that. And she just was like, Let's keep falling.

LULLABY
Oh, this is a lesson. Like a moral lesson, like, except the helping hands as they grope you.

BUCK
Yeah. And right before that, like, before she falls into the oubliette, they totally leave out the, the number, the dance number. The “dance, magic, dance” number. He's in a throne room with goblins everywhere.

LULLABY
Oh, yeah.

BUCK
Throwing a baby up into the air.

LULLABY
That's, that's one of my favorite parts, is this little sort of, like, plastic baby that's going ten feet in the air, and then he just turns away like, oh, maybe a goblin’ll catch it. Maybe not.

BUCK
Yeah. And it looked like he was, like, kicking a goblin across the room and, like, there's, like, chickens everywhere.

LULLABY
Oh yeah, the chickens are great. Like, who is just like, can we just add some chickens? Like—

BUCK
Yeah, they're like, let's have everything as a puppet. Except the chickens. Let's have real chickens. But there was like one like bird I saw flying that was like a goblin. It looked like a little dragon maybe, or like a little goblin chicken. That was like slow motion, like flying through.

LULLABY
Yeah, yeah

BUCK
Yeah. I don't know.

LULLABY
I noticed that too.

BUCK
But it sounded like one of the lyrics in that song was “Slap That Baby, Make Him Pee.” But I think it was “Make Him Free,” maybe?  I don't want to check the lyrics. I don't care enough to check. But it, I—Growing up, I always thought the lyric was “Slap that baby, make him pee”

LULLABY
Sounds right.

BUCK
 So when I sing along, that's what I say.

LULLABY
Wait, wait, wait. When you sing along?

BUCK
I, I—

LULLABY
What would you say the frequency is of this musical number coming up in your home where you're singing along to it? And what are you wearing?

BUCK
I'm wearing pajamas typically because I normally watch this whenever I'm in a bout of depression. And it brings me back to happy, nostalgic good times. But like the older I get, the more uncomfortable I become with David Bowie's bulge.

LULLABY
(laughs)

BUCK
When I was, when I was younger, I didn't even question it. I didn't even think about it, like and there was, I saw it before I came out of the closet. So I wasn't even like thinking about male genitalia on a regular basis. But like, especially like I went to see, like, The Nutcracker when I was young and I didn't even think like, oh, you can see that man's, you know, penis, penis outline. So like, I didn't even think of it. And I don't want to sexualize people doing their like, art form or anything, but like, they're sex organs. So, like, I can't not sexualized sex organs.

LULLABY
Mm hmm. Makes sense.

BUCK
But, I mean, I dunno.

LULLABY
I mean, it’s very visual, though, among the costume, like the lines of the costume lead your eyes down. And it's all very like, like there are all these different lines and crazy hair and sparkles and all this stuff that is just distracting. And then you get to the lower portion, it’s just streamlined, tight, gray, and the only interruption to that is the bulge. So it's like, it's very simple and clean and the bulge.

BUCK
Yeah. And the gray pants are very like smooth, yeah, like it's like one big smooth plane. And the only interruption in that plane is, is the shadowy indentation, right, twixt…

LULLABY
Put some sparkles on there. Twixt!

BUCK
Yeah, twixt the thighs. But, okay, so you haven't heard it yet because I haven't released any of them, but the whole last episode was pretty much just Pitch and I talking about Beastmaster’s thighs and, and all the thighs that we would see in the film. So maybe, maybe the eighties was just a bad time for below the waist for men in movies.

LULLABY
Could be, like the, you get into like a you know, like a theme or whatever, where everybody's like, oh—

BUCK
Yeah, we don't care about waist up. It's all about below the waist. We want to make you uncomfortable. We want to make you think, you know, we want to accentuate things that maybe weren't accentuated in the past. Okay, so it's my turn to read. “Sarah ends up in an oubliette where she reunites with Hoggle. The two are confronted by Jareth, escape one of his traps, and encounter a large beast named Ludo.

LULLABY
Ludo!

BUCK
But that whole, that was one sentence that they just describe like—

LULLABY
Oh yeah

BUCK
A big chunk of stuff. They didn't mention the guy with the talking hat.

LULLABY
Oh yeah, that guy was awesome.

BUCK
Yeah. Like between escaping the oubliette and meeting Ludo, they ran into this old guy with a bird for a hat. They kept arguing with each other, which I thought—

LULLABY
The bird was, like, really passive aggressive, and he was very tired.

BUCK
That was one of my favorite characters, though, was just like the bickering, like the moment between the guy and his hat and then the bird at the end was like, “You try being one of his hats,” It was—or something like that.

LULLABY
Yeah, something like that.

BUCK
And then yeah, like they escape a trap, which is really just like, two goblins, like on like a bicycle pedal seesaw, like behind this giant spinning metal thing that looked like a garbage disposal.

LULLABY
The cleaner!

BUCK
Yeah, yeah. And then they climb a ladder, get out, meet this guy with a hat, and then, oh, she gave him a plastic bracelet. Because Hoggle's really into jewelry. He has a kink or a fetish, I think. He collects anything that might be shiny or pretty or jewel related. So the plastic bracelet that she gives him just, like, makes his day. And, like, when she donates a ring from her finger into the old man with the bird hat’s, like, donation box, I thought Hoggle was going to, like, kill himself because he looked so miserable, he was like, oh, how dare you give away that jewel that probably cost you like three coins in a little machine somewhere.

LULLABY
It's true. What about Ludo? I mean, that's kind of a big thing. First of all, why is he being tortured upside down in a tree like poked at? Wait! Did we talk about the goblins with the fetus dinosaurs on sticks yet?

BUCK
No, that, that's this part. Yeah. So the description just says that, let's see, it says, “Hoggle flees in a cowardly fashion while Sarah befriends Ludo after freeing him from a trap, but then loses him in a forest.” Yes, it keeps skipping over the actual fun parts, like five goblins with oversize helmets, attack, attack him essentially with, what did you call them? Dinosaur fetuses?

LULLABY
Yeah.

BUCK
They have like giant, terrifying, like gaping maws of teeth.

LULLABY
They're horrifying and why, and then they keep, like, accidentally biting each other with their dinosaur fetus sticks. Also, why? Like what are they, What are they doing? Are they just torturing him?

BUCK
And why are they wearing a full body armor? But yet it's still thin enough for their own creatures to bite through with their giant teeth, like they're wearing, like, thin leather pants, I think, but full body armor.

LULLABY
That's an excellent point.

BUCK
Yeah. Like, what's the point of an oversize helmet if a monster bites through your butt?

LULLABY
Right.

BUCK
Oh, and you noticed something that I've never seen. I've seen this movie a million times, and I've never noticed that the helmets of those goblins with the demon sticks have numbers on them.

LULLABY
Yeah. Why?

BUCK
Like, one was like five. It was like three or something. And I never noticed that they had numbers on their helmets before. I don't know if there's relevance to that, but I kind of want to look it up now. Not now, now, I mean, like later, because no one's going to want to listen to me google something.

LULLABY
(laughs) I do.

BUCK
(laughs) Okay. So, “Hoggle flees in a cowardly fashion.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So it says “Sarah befriends Ludo after freeing him from a trap, but loses him in the forest.” So it says “loses him from the forest,” but they didn't say how they got to the forest. They had knockers that they talked to.

LULLABY
Oh, yeah.

BUCK
See? This plot summary sucks.

LULLABY
That was a whole thing.

BUCK
Yeah, there was a whole, a whole section where there are two door knockers that are really sassy and one of them has the knocker, like the knocking ring in its mouth, which Ludo pulls out and then puts in his own mouth, which is like the cutest thing in the movie.

LULLABY
It is.

BUCK
And then yeah, so then she has to shove it back in his mouth, which is really gross, if you think about it, because it was in Ludo's mouth, probably full of like monster saliva and then shoved right back into this knocker’s mouth for possibly all of eternity. So that leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

LULLABY
That’s depressing.

BUCK
Yeah. So , they talk to the knockers and I'm trying my best not to make like, a knocker joke, like, oh, look at those knockers.

LULLABY
Oh, God.

BUCK
It's a kid's movie. So I shouldn't. I shouldn't do that.

LULLABY
You— no, you shouldn't.

BUCK
So they go into a forest, Hoggle encounters Jareth. Oh, by the way, they like introduce his name as Jareth partway through it, but at the beginning they only call him the Goblin King.

LULLABY
Right, ‘cause then he's like, “ah, let's get this Jareth” and I was like, what? Jared? Like the Subway guy? And you're like, no, he's not a part of this movie, but I felt like that's possible.

BUCK
Okay, so yeah, let's talk about the peach. “Jareth gives Hoggle an enchanted peach and instructs him to give it to Sarah, calling his loyalty into question as he was supposed to take her back to the beginning of the labyrinth. Sarah is harassed by a group of creatures called the Fire Gang, but Hoggle comes to her aid.” So, yeah.

LULLABY
Yeah.

BUCK
So let's talk about the fire gang, the firies. One of them has the voice of Elmo, which I know from, I guess listening to Elmo a lot. I used to have like one of my cousins had a—

LULLABY
Did you have an Elmo doll?

BUCK
I didn't, but one of my cousins had a Tickle Me Elmo doll and like, that voice is just ingrained in my memory forever. Like David Bowie's bulge. (laughter) Umm, but yeah, so it's creepy having these, like, little orange fire monsters ripping their heads off and trying to, like, throw them at her and rip her head off while one of them is Elmo. I just, I just can't.

LULLABY
I felt like the movie was giving me drugs as I was, what, like I didn't know what was happening, like, did I just take drugs? Would… is there… what is happening?

BUCK
Oh, you said the goblins were like meth heads.

LULLABY
Oh, yeah. So we decided that the target audience for this film is, is drug, people on drugs. Right. So that, that made sense and suddenly really started to make sense and we decided, like each group of sort of creatures is a different kind of drug, person on drugs.

BUCK
Yeah, so meth head goblins.

LULLABY
Or, no, crack.

BUCK
Oh.

LULLABY
Meth head goblins. Yeah.

BUCK
Okay.

LULLABY
Crack head fire people. Right? Like they're ripping their heads off.

BUCK
Or were those bath salts?

LULLABY
Bath salts. Yeah.

BUCK
The firies were on bath salts. Okay. And then Ludo was just kind of like a friendly, big, dopey stoner.

LULLABY
Yeah, yeah. Ludo’s a stoner.

BUCK
Yeah.

LULLABY
“Smell bad.”

BUCK
Because it's so dank. (laughter)

LULLABY
He's hungry, too, as they’re walking. He's like, I’m hungry, and Sarah just ignores him. She's like, I have this peach. Suck it, Ludo.

BUCK
Yeah, but Ludo is really my favorite character in this, in this thing. He's just so cute and funny, but also big and adorable.

LULLABY
It's true.

BUCK
All right, so the next thing it says is that, “She kisses Hoggle and then they fall through a trap door that sends them to the—” I can't even read this. It says “it sends them to a flatulent swamp called the Bog of Eternal Stench, where they reunite with Ludo.”

LULLABY
So is this like, like stoner farts or something?

BUCK
So, okay, so I have a lot to say—

LULLABY
Like, you’re eating a lot of Cheetos and…

BUCK
Hmm.

LULLABY
I mean, sliders.

BUCK
Oh, god. I need to say a lot about the bog of eternal stench. So, first of all, the actual bog, looking at it, is like greenish brown, mucky water filled with, with sputtering rectums.

LULLABY
Mmm. That’s not good.

BUCK
No. Like the older I get, the more I, the more I watch it, the grosser it is.

LULLABY
And they keep zooming in, they’re like (fart sound).

BUCK
Yeah, it's just like sputtering, gross, like farting. It's, it's, it's not cool. Like fart jokes are funny, but this is, is too wet. Yeah, and too…


LULLABY
Mmm

BUCK
Yeah, so…

LULLABY
 I felt funny. I felt funny about it.

BUCK
Yeah. And I thought of the Bog of Eternal Stench as the Chekhov's gun of this movie. So, like, you know, like when a gun is introduced into something, like, it has to go off by the end of the, the play or, you know, whatever it is. So they keep mentioning the bog of stench. The bog of stench. So like, you know, it's going to come.cIt's like, you know, the stench is going to happen. So when they finally get there, it's grosser than I was anticipating.

LULLABY
So how is it that, you know, that guy, fox guy, Ambros—? No. Didymus.

BUCK
Didymus. Yeah.

LULLABY
So he has lived his entire life guarding this bog, right? He doesn't smell it. How is he never touched the water ‘cause he didn't smell when they left.

BUCK
Yeah. And his dog too.

LULLABY
His dog with his big hanging sheep dog hair.

BUCK
Yeah. They must reek of stench all the time. Yeah. Because they live there. So, next. Next, the trio, the trio of Hoggle, Sarah and Ludo, meet the guard of the swamp, who we just discussed, the anthropomorphic fox, Sir Didymus and his sheepdog steed Ambrosius, who is really just Sarah's dog, Merlin from the beginning of the movie, but like with a new name.

LULLABY
And sometimes a puppet and sometimes not.

BUCK
Yes. And with a saddle. And I want to know who knighted Sir Didymus.

LULLABY
Oh, good point.

BUCK
Like he's a fox with an eyepatch. Like, has he seen war? Has he seen a lot of battle? He's missing an eye. It says “Ludo summons a trail of rocks to save Sarah from falling into the bog. And Didymus joins the group.” Once again, they just summarized a whole thing. Ludo and Didymus fought each other and then Ludo kind of won, so Didymus was like, you are my, you know, brave, valiant compatriot.

LULLABY
Brother.

BUCK
Brother. Yeah, yeah. He says, you are my brother. Oh, we didn't even talk about Ludo summoning the rocks.

LULLABY
Oh, yeah. Which was interesting. Do we know any heroes that summon rocks? Is that a thing?

BUCK
I mean, we just. He says that “rocks friends. Rocks friends.” So we just have to believe it, you know, suspension of disbelief. We just have to believe Ludo summons rocks with, you know, telekinesis or geokinesis, would it be?

LULLABY
It was, it was his song. His rock song.

BUCK
So he's like you. He, he has magical song powers. You sing people to sleep and he sings rocks to… move.

LULLABY
I think I'd prefer that.

BUCK
I mean, you could probably do a lot more crime fighting with rocks than with, you know, lullabies.

LULLABY
Does he control them, though? They just sort of roll?

BUCK
Maybe he's like Magneto and, like, there's metal ore in the rocks and he can control metal, I dunno.

LULLABY
That's a good thought, because not all the rocks move.

BUCK
Yeah, that reminds me. I know, like, X-Men is just, like, a fake comic book thing, but there's a real life version of them in Rose City that I just learned about. They call themselves The Sex Men. They are a group of former porn actors and actresses that are trying to get into the superhero business. So, there is Professor XXX is their leader.

LULLABY
Oh, my.

BUCK
And then there is a guy with one eye named Cucklops. He either watched people creepily with with his one eye. That's why they call them Cucklops.

LULLABY
Mm.

BUCK
Yeah, I think that was it. And then there was this really hairy guy with dicks growing out of his hand. They called him Wolver-peen.

LULLABY
Oh, my God.

BUCK
Umm, yeah. When he’d get angry, like, they'd harden up and he'd use them as weapons on his hand.

LULLABY
Oh, my. I don't know. I have no words.

BUCK
And the last one was this, this telepathic lady who controlled things with her vagina. She called herself Vajeen Gray.

LULLABY
Wow. See, that's what I'm talking about with the rocks.

BUCK
Mm hmm.

LULLABY
She's, okay.

BUCK
Yeah.

LULLABY
So, similar power. Maybe we're related. Please, tell me, though, one of the Sex Men wears something similar to the David Bowie Goblin King outfit. ‘Cause that is too hot to waste.

BUCK
Oh, I can't think of anyone. I—there is a henchman that I remember Pitch telling me about named David Bowie Knife. Pretty much just looks like Dav— I don't. I'm not making this stuff up. He just looks like David Bowie, but he uses a bowie knife to, like, attack people.

LULLABY
Where did these people get their names from? I feel like we sat around talking about names forever.

BUCK
I mean, you used to be Snoozy Susie, so you shouldn't be talking.

LULLABY
Fair point.

BUCK
Ugh, I'm sorry. That was. I didn't mean to ever bring that up.

LULLABY
Low blow.

BUCK
I'm sorry.

LULLABY
Mmhmm.

BUCK
All right, let's keep going with this plot summary, because we're never going to finish otherwise.

LULLABY
True. True. So, “the group gets hungry. So Hoggle gives Sarah the peach and runs away, and she falls into a trance and forgets her quest.” Worth noting, the whole group is like, I'm starving. And she's like, I don't know, maybe there's some berries or something. And Hoggle's like, here's this big peach, and she's like, great. And she just selfishly was like (eating noise). It's so like, you know, that's what you get, I think, when you don't share with poor big Ludo. So, “she's in a trance, she has a dream where Jareth comes to her in a masquerade ball,” which, by the way, her outfit was kind of awesome. 80’s awesome.

BUCK
Mm hmm.

LULLABY
So he proclaims his love for her, which is weird, right? Because he's, like, in his forties and she's, like, 15?

BUCK
Yeah, she's a teenage girl, and he's a full grown man.

LULLABY
So. So, in keeping with that, she rebuffs him and escapes, falling into a junkyard outside the Goblin City near Jareth's Castle. That was, like, my favorite environment. Like, just like a bunch of wicker, for some reason, like there was a hurricane in Florida and all the retirees furniture just like landed outside of the Goblin city and then had cobwebs and sparkles on top of it. I was like, I was into it.

BUCK
Oh, my God.

LULLABY
“An old junk lady fails to brainwash her, and she's rescued by Ludo and Sir Didymus.”

BUCK
I was taking notes during this, and I wrote down that the junk lady is like the bizarro world Marie Kondo. Instead of, like, getting rid of things that don't spark joy, she actually just piles trash onto people and tries to get them to feel joy.

LULLABY
She's like, more, more. Don't you want this? Don’t you like this?

BUCK
She's a pusher.

LULLABY
(laughs) She was. What is the meaning of that, do you think? Like, what's the moral of this story?

BUCK
For me, like, I have trouble getting rid of old things, like stuffed animals, even, or because I used to, like before I realized that I could talk to them and they would insult me every day, I loved animals.

LULLABY
(laughs)

BUCK
I just, I loved animals so much. I had a ton of, like, Beanie Babies, like any animal stuff I would kind of hoard.

BUCK
But then like there are certain things I still have that I can't donate or give away or even throw in the garbage because like, I just get happy memories thinking about like, where I was, like if I was at like a craft fair with my mom and like I saw like a little wooden squirrel, and I was like, hey, I want that squirrel. So it makes me think of like when I was with my mom, less of like when squirrels attack me because it happens all the time now.

LULLABY
(laughs)

BUCK
So, yeah, I know. Laugh at me.

LULLABY
No, it just I find joy when the squirrels attack you because you're so big and the squirrels are so small and you are so scared. It brings joy to my heart.

BUCK
Thanks. I'm not that scared. Like I can handle a squirrel.

LULLABY
Yeah. You just kind of swat them away and scream, though.

BUCK
(laughs) Oh, no, I would never do that.

LULLABY
No.

BUCK
No, not me. Oh, have I ever told you about the Labyrinth drinking game? The drinking game is that every time that you see David Bowie's bulge, you take a drink.

LULLABY
Oooh, that’s painful.

BUCK
It's not, I think it's like taking a sip, though. Not like taking a shot, because if it was a shot, you'd be dead from, like, blood alcohol poisoning.

LULLABY
Yeah. I mean, is it like, every cut you see it or like every second it remains on screen and every time that you're zoomed closer? Um, that’s a lot.

BUCK
I think like it's whenever it just whenever it draws your attention.

LULLABY
Oh, so constantly.

BUCK
Yes. So just constantly sipping the entire, the entire film. Okay, let's get back to the summary. So what happens after Ludo and Sir Didymus rescue her from the junk lady?

LULLABY
Oh this was my favorite part. “They are confronted by a humongous robotic gate guard. But Hogle comes to the rescue.” Okay. It's one sentence for all that awesomeness. This robotic like transformer, but somehow medieval gate guard who's just, like, awkwardly swinging a giant ax that hits nobody, but is awesome at the same time. And then Hoggle comes, yanks his head off, and there’s, there's some little goblin in there who seems confused. And um, and then he pulls him out by his head and chucks him to the ground, and then he runs away.

BUCK
My favorite part of the sequence was when Sir Didymus was losing control of his steed, his, his dog, Ambrosius.

LULLABY
Oh yeah.

BUCK
Ambrosius. This dog like reared up, it bucked up and it neighed like a horse and then it, like whimpered and ran away. It was, it was really funny.

LULLABY
That was, that was a wonderful moment. And, and then it says at the end, despite his feeling unworthy of forgiveness for his betrayal, Sarah and the others welcome Hoggle back. And they enter the city together.

BUCK
So they forgave Hoggle for the peach incident.

LULLABY
And she gave him his jewelry pouch back and he was like, ooh.

BUCK
Oh, yeah, yeah, his, his jewels.

LULLABY
And she was like, your pee hands touched all over this, and I no longer want it.

BUCK
Oh, yeah, a callback to the pee hand comment. Okay.

LULLABY
I'm just. It's there. It's in, it's in my mind.

BUCK
And in her hands now. Gross. What—what was next? Oh, here it is: Jareth is alerted to the group's presence and sends his goblin army to stop them. Ludo summons a multitude of rocks. Whoever wrote this decided that multitude was the best word. He summons a multitude of rocks to chase the goblins away. And then they entered the castle.

LULLABY
Imagine the look of satisfaction on their faces. They type in “multitude.” Enter. Yeah, take that Wikipedia.

BUCK
Do you like how the entire long battle sequence was just summarized in one sentence.

LULLABY
Oh, that's true..

BUCK
It says he summons rocks to chase away the goblins and they entered the castle. That's the entire thing.

LULLABY
Oh yes. And that was an awesome, like we can not talk about the—

BUCK
Chickens.

LULLABY
Set. Chickens.

BUCK
So many chickens.

LULLABY
But do you think the chickens were written in to begin with, was on the script does it say, and chickens, or was someone’s like, you know what, this scene needs? Chickens. And then they happened.

BUCK
I mean, nothing makes something look more authentically as, like a lived in, sort of town or village, than chickens wandering the, the cardboard streets.

LULLABY
That's true. More chickens!

BUCK
Oh, God. And yeah, I mean, if Ludo was hungry enough, if he had the time, he would have maybe stopped and eaten one of the chickens, but—

LULLABY
I don't think he would. He's like a gentle giant.

BUCK
I feel like he's more of an herbivore.

LULLABY
Mm hmm.

BUCK
As in, like he's smoking the herb. Yeah, I say that, but I've never actually tried pot, so.

LULLABY
It's probably for the best.

BUCK
Yeah, I mean, I'm anxious and paranoid enough as it is, just my natural state..

LULLABY
Imagine if then squirrels came after you.

BUCK
Oh, my God. Yeah. No, not, not for me. Sorry.

LULLABY
Best not. Best not.

BUCK
No, no. Umm. Oh, God.

LULLABY
Where were we here?

BUCK
Okay, uhh, let’s see here.

LULLABY
Multitude of rocks, that totally derailed us. By the way, I have a clear picture of the man who typed “multitude of rocks” and hit Enter.

BUCK
Yes.

LULLABY
Continue.

BUCK
Yes. After they enter the castle, Sarah insists she must face Jareth alone and promises to call the others if needed. So they went all this way to fight to the castle, just to abandon her, be like, all right, teenage girl, we are seasoned, you know, battle veterans with, like, an eyepatch, but we're going to let the teenage girl go and fight the goblin king.

LULLABY
Yeah. What's up with that?

BUCK
I think they're just cowards. Yeah, I still. I need to know the backstory of Sir Didymus’ eyepatch, maybe he just, like, tripped and fell and he like poked his eye on his own sword.

LULLABY
What do you think is likely, that? Yeah, I feel like that's likely because it's a very pokey sword.

BUCK
Yeah. Mmhmm. Sarah insists she must faith. I can't say “face, Jareth,” because I wanna keep saying faith, faith Jerris.

LULLABY
I don't know. I mean, how do they go through like the, the read of this script without everyone just be like (gibberish sounds).

BUCK
Yeah, I mean, I already am insecure enough about being a, you know, a gay man, public like public figure. So saying Jareth makes me feel like I have a lisp sometimes, so I'm trying to, like, avoid that—

LULLABY
I understand that.

BUCK
But I'm not shaming people with lisps, I'm just trying to be a little bit more discreet with my, umm, flamboyance.

LULLABY
Maybe you could say the Goblin King.

BUCK
Yes. Yeah. I'll just change every Jareth to Goblin King.

LULLABY
‘Cause I don’t even know why he needs a name like, he’s—why does he have it? Like who is?

BUCK
No, the anonom— anon— Another word I can’t say.

LULLABY
He’s mysterious.

BUCK
The anonymity of Goblin King is kind of nice. Okay. This is when it gets trippy. Mmm. In a room—

LULLABY
Just here.

BUCK
Yeah.

LULLABY
Nowhere else.

BUCK
Just here.

LULLABY
Perfectly normal.

BUCK
All the drug induced fantasy numbers of throwing a baby and the talking hands, that was all fine.

LULLABY
That baby throw was awesome.

BUCK
But this part's trippy when gravity is, is played with. “In a room modeled after M.C. Escher’s Relativity, she confronts Jareth while trying to retrieve Toby.: So the babies climbing upside down, up staircases, and it's this whole musical number where he's, like, singing and flipping all around, walking on the ceiling and the baby is—

LULLABY
Isn’t he like, some, like, it's some love thing where he's like, ahh, you are—

BUCK
Yeah. I felt like a love song.

LULLABY
Put me upside down, and I was like ooooh.

BUCK
Yeah, he was like ooh, I love you.

LULLABY
It wasn't that creepy, though, even though he’s old and she's like a young teenager.

BUCK
Yeah, it didn't feel as creepy as it probably should have.

LULLABY
He didn't deliver creepy even though the setup was creepy.

BUCK
Yeah. If it was any other performance, it could have been really creepy, but I didn't get the creep vibe.

LULLABY
Right.

BUCK
So, she confronts him. Oh, it doesn't mention the costume change. So before I read this next line, we have to mention his costume change.

LULLABY
How could they leave that out?

BUCK
Yeah, I don't know. So there's a last minute costume change where he is wearing this, like, whitish creamish, almost brownish giant cloak that we thought was fur. But then we looked a little bit closer and it was hair. It's like a hair cloak. It looks like he's skinned Targaryens alive, and their blond tresses were just turned into a cloak.

LULLABY
It is. And then once we notice that, like, I don't even know what else happened in that scene because I was obsessed with the hair cloak. I was like, what is happening with the hair cloak?

BUCK
Mm hmm. And oh, but the lighting, too, it really, like, accentuated, it put a big shadow right on his bulge.

LULLABY
Yes. It was, I think it was a costume change for the gray leggings. Like, I feel like they got—

BUCK
Tighter?

LULLABY
They're like, can we get the smalls in these? Because this is a big scene. We got the hair cloak. Get the smalls.

BUCK
A big scene for a big peen. Just gotta—Just got to, got to show it.

LULLABY
Because we were both totally distracted. Like, I don't even know if you remember what happened. There was like, hair, cloak, bulge, like, what is going on?

BUCK
I don't, I don't understand. Okay. So after the costume change, “she recites the lines from her book that mirror her adventure to that point,” which is how the movie started. She was reciting lines and couldn't remember the last one.

LULLABY
Because of the bulge and the hair cloak.

BUCK
And then Jareth offers Sarah her dreams again with the crystal balls. But then she rejects his balls and, and remembers the line, finally, which is “You have no power over me.” And then he's defeated at the last second and right before the clock is about to strike, I was going to say midnight, but it was 13 o’clock because it was 13 hours.

LULLABY
Yeah.

BUCK
So I can't say midnight, but 13 o’clock. And then Sarah and Toby return home safe and sound. Jareth turns into a barn owl.

LULLABY
Which at that point finally, like explained the intro to me, I was like, oh, he's an owl. I like when he disappeared, too. It was like this flurry of fabric. I was like, What's—

BUCK
Yeah

LULLABY
What's happening to the hair cloak?

BUCK
I think the hair cloak transformed into barn owl feathers.

LULLABY
Oh, that makes sense.

BUCK
It was a similar color palette.

LULLABY
Yeah, yeah.

BUCK
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

LULLABY
All right. So then, “Sarah realizes how important Toby is to her.” That's sweet. She was a total B to him earlier. Like, he's crying. This poor kid. I'm like, I don't even know what they did to him. Like, as a, you know, like, did he have poos in his—? Like, why?

BUCK
It's been hours so like he's probably poo’d himself.

LULLABY
That’s true.

BUCK
I don't know. Do the goblins have diapers?

LULLABY
Mm. That's true. I can't imagine they would, like—

BUCK
That's why he was crying like the entire movie. Because he kept pooping himself.

LULLABY
Yep, he was full of poo.

BUCK
All right, so. So what does Sarah do after she realizes Toby is important—

LULLABY
“She then realizes how important Toby is to her, she gives him Lancelot and returns to her room just as her father and stepmother return home. She sees her friends in the mirror,” meaning her friends from this Labyrinth world, “and admits that even though she is grown up, she still needs them in her life.” So, some imagination, I guess?

BUCK
I dunno.

LULLABY
Whereupon… Whereupon? Oh, that’s multitude guy.

BUCK
Yeah. Multitude of rocks. Whereupon?

LULLABY
Whereupon the Labyrinth characters appear in her room for a raucous reunion party.

BUCK
A raucous reunion party. They use whereupon and raucous in the same sentence.

LULLABY
I mean someone was feeling ambitious. “Jareth, as an owl, watches their celebration from outside and then flies into the moonlight,” with a visible, like, green screen plate sort of situation around him, a visible edge.

BUCK
Yeah.

ELLIOT
(loudly mews)

LULLABY
Elliot!

BUCK
Yeah. Sorry you had to hear that. Our friend Recall’s cat, Elliot, is kind of being cat-sitrted right now. So, umm, he's begging for food and it's a little dramatic.

LULLABY
Hmm.

BUCK
Thanks, Elliot. It's not dinnertime yet.

LULLABY
Shut it.

BUCK
Yep. Okay. See, so that's the whole summary, right? Yeah, that's, that's the whole thing?

LULLABY
I feel like we've covered it all.

BUCK
Do you believe that it was real, or all a dream? Do you think the whole thing was just a fever dream?

LULLABY
Yeah, I think… I mean, I think it was.

BUCK
But the gall of this woman to believe that she has grown up from a child to an adult after a four hour dream, like, it doesn't work that way. You have to put in the work.

LULLABY
Mmhmm. That's true. And also during this dream, your brother is pooping himself and crying, and you're ignoring it while having this dream. Sarah might be a psychopath.

BUCK
Yeah, she's crazy.

LULLABY
Like he's just crying, right? Like he clearly needs something at the beginning. He's tears running down his face. Like, I don't even know how that, like, is, is okay, production wise. And she's just like, ughhh, I wish you would go away. And then as soon as he does, she's like, oh, crap, I,I  take it back.

BUCK
Okay. The other question I had was about a rating system. So, the last episode, we developed a rating system based on Pitch’s powers. So since she creates sonic screams, we rated it out of five shrieks. And so I guess out of five, what works for a sleepy…

LULLABY
Zs?

BUCK
Yeah, sleepy Zs. Because you make people sleep so out of five Zs, umm, what would your rating for this movie be? How many Zs?

LULLABY
Well, like what's good? Like one Z, because it didn't make me fall asleep? or like five Zs, ‘cause like, five stars?

BUCK
Like five shrieks was the best out of five. Typically, like if it's five out of five, that's the best, but five Zs would imply that it's more boring. So, I think, I don't know. Oh, sheep, let's do sheep. Because you count, you count sheep while you're sleeping.

LULLABY
Okay.

BUCK
And sheep are cute. So out of five sheep, how many, how many—

LULLABY
What about chickens?

BUCK
What? Yes. Okay. You know what? It doesn't even matter at this point. Let's just do—

LULLABY
Yeah.

BUCK
We can relate chickens to sleep because, because the crowing of a rooster in the morning signifies waking up.

LULLABY
Yeah.

BUCK
So it's all in there somewhere.

LULLABY
Chickens are really just the foundation of this film, as well. You know, I think whether people realize it or not.

BUCK
Yeah.

LULLABY
Without chickens, this is nothing.

BUCK
Okay. Yeah. So out of five, how many chickens would you rate this movie?

LULLABY
Well, I mean, on the whole, like, it's, uhh, I guess— I'd have to give it probably… probably five chickens.

BUCK
Five out of five chickens?

LULLABY
Five out of five chickens. It's just, it is a whirlwind of color and drug induced confusion, which I find delightful. I don't know how many drug filled weekends the people who created this movie had, but certainly at least five or six. So, I think it's great. It's pretty unique.

BUCK
So I never know how to end this.

LULLABY
Just end it with a squelching fart noise.

BUCK
Yeah. Let's just, let's just go out making far sounds.

BUCK/LULLABY
(A multitude of mouth-generated fart sounds)

BUCK
Have a great day, everybody.

LULLABY
Bye. Goodbye.

BUCK
Yes. This has been BlockBuckster movies, and (mouth fart sounds).

BUCK/LULLABY
(laughter)

FADE IN MUSIC