Martha Kelly Has More Thoughts Than You Might Have Realized About Alvin & the Chipmunks

Settle down now and get comfy You're about to sleep with a celebrity Let your weary mind be free There's someone kind of famous who you can't see It's time for sleeping with celebrities Hello, sleepyheads. Welcome to Sleeping with Celebrities. I'm John Moe. I'm glad you're here. As you know, on this audio program, we invite our guests to step out of the limelight and step into the nightlight. For one bedtime, they need not bring their A game, but we would appreciate their Z game. It is a show where you can sleep, you can just relax, you can take a break from all the stress and intensity of this stressful and intense world. Just ahead, we'll be sleeping with Martha Kelly. She's going to talk with me about the Alvin and the Chipmunks films. But before that, I invite you to settle in and get comfortable while I tell you about another show on the Maximum Fun Network. Sleepyheads, please know that Maximum Fun presents the finest of podcasts in comedy, culture, mental health, all sorts of topics, all made by real people, not robots, not artificial intelligence, people, and supported by you, people. Maximum Fun Drive, also known as MaxFunDrive, is coming soon. It starts on April 20th. 420. I know. It's the best two weeks of the year. You get bonus content, gifts, surprises, crossovers, all sorts of fun things happening in the MaxFunDrive. Follow MaxFunHQ on social media so you're up to date on all the pleasantness. And now for our guest. Martha Kelly is a comedian and actor. She has flat out killed on a variety of comedy television programs, including Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Premium Blend, Last Comic Standing, and the Laugh Riots National Comedy Competition. As an actor, Martha became well known for her performance as Martha Brooks on the Zach Galifianakis FX television show, Baskets. She was nominated for an Emmy for her role as Lori the drug dealer on HBO's Euphoria. Martha Kelly, welcome to the program. Thank you, John. Very happy to be here. Tell me about Lori the drug dealer on Euphoria. What is she all about and what did it take for you to find where and how to play her? From what I know about her, and I don't yet know everything, she is a drug dealer who started out as a drug addict because of an injury she used to be a college athlete she got an injury got addicted to pain pills kind of lost everything and then started selling drugs to be able to afford to maintain her own drug habit and then she also does some other human trafficking stuff as well in order to make enough money, I think, to support herself. So she's a terrible monster of a person. Okay. When you play a terrible monster of a person, do you, and I always wonder this with actors, do you try to find their justification for doing what they do? Or do you just say, terrible monster, go? I think probably people who are better at acting than me do try to find some way to know the character. I am really lucky that Sam Levinson wrote it so that this, one of the things that is scary about her is that she's just emotionally flat and mild mannered and calm and quiet which is largely what I sound like in real life and in every acting role so I think that he it was easy for me to just memorize my lines and then and then just listen to the feedback from Sam, who also directs it. And just, you know, that's probably... You are also appearing in the upcoming film Poetic License. And Wikipedia tells me that you play a professor in this role. Also in the cast is Method Man. Does this make you an adjunct professor of the Wu-Tang Clan? No, but I was very excited to get to work with Method Man to get to meet him. Yeah, it's a really great film. I play a college poetry professor who it takes herself very seriously and is kind of an odd duck. and it was super fun to get to do and it comes out May 15th and it stars Leslie Mann and Cooper Hoffman and Andrew Barth Feldman and their friendship that develops as a result of being in this poetry class together and the ups and downs of sort of a love triangle but not in a porky's teen romp kind of way more in a very realistic and sweet and funny just i love it i'm not great at promoting things so but that's i think people are gonna love it and it was directed by maude apatow and method man also stars in it and um and maude is great and i hope that she directs a lot more movies because it was she's really great so that's wonderful well since we're talking about films, let's talk about the Alvin and the Chipmunks oeuvre of films. And this is obviously a franchise that goes back to, I think the 1960s or 50s, way far back. But we're talking about the film series. And what draws you to these films with Alvin and his brothers? Initially, it was that my niece and nephew, especially my niece, liked some of the music from it and would play it in my car when I would be picking them up from school in 2016. So I discovered them in 2016, although the movies came out 2007, 2009, 2011, and the last one was 2015. After hearing her play the songs in my car, I had said, do you guys just want to watch the movie? And we did. And then I just kind of fell in love with them. It was partly an escape from the heaviness of politically what was happening in 2016. And also my mom was at the end of her life during that time and then passed away in December of 2016. And so I needed just a sweet escape of sorry, speaking of my one of my cats. oh what's your cat's name well the one who's trying to disrupt the podcast is named barry okay i love barry he's uh trying to jump up on my desk so i have to keep looking but anyway it was just a sweet escape and it is really funny to me that these chipmunks are supposed to be children and they cover all these adult songs in their little baby voices and it's just ridiculous excuse me you have to get out of here i i'm gonna um i'm gonna put my pats up for adoption oh because of their podcast disruptions i like i i put the one who normally disrupts gary i put him in my room and close the door and now the other one is here um so they just won't let me live my life they refuse to let me live my life and i don't they have no respect at all i don't impose a lot of um life on them like the majority of the time that i'm home i'm simply catering to their wishes and uh god forbid once in a while i try to do a a podcast. Barry, get out of here. I'm not kidding. Now, as I understand it, there are three chipmunks in the band Alvin and the Chipmunks. And Alvin, despite the name of the band, is also a chipmunk. Yes. And there is no answer to that question that a lot of people have is why is it Alvin and the Chipmunks when he himself is also a chipmunk? And why is he the only one that has a letter on his sweater, the letter A? A for adulterer? Yeah, nobody really knows. It'll probably be a mystery for the ages, I guess. Is Dion a Belmont? Is Tom Petty a heartbreaker? Exactly. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, so give me a rundown on the three characters here, just for people who don't know. And if you don't know, where have you been? The differences between Alvin, Simon, and Theodore. So Alvin is kind of the showboat personality hire. He likes to cause a lot of mischief, which can drive people crazy. Sometimes results in other people getting injured, but he is a very good hearted little guy. okay and a lot of it is just bravado he's actually quite sensitive oh okay then simon is the one who wears glasses and he's considered the brains of the outfit because of the glass because of the glasses he spends a lot of time trying to do damage control for alvin okay and then uh theodore who is my my favorite although it's it's close they're almost all tied for first place for my favorite. Theodore is the fat one who loves cheese balls, muffins, pizza, chocolates, and is a innocent, big, sweet baby. Okay. Okay. And they live with a human. Yeah. And is this human, is he a musician as well? Yes, although it kind of, they lose that after the first movie. So Dave Seville, played by Jason Lee, it starts out in the first movie that he is a songwriter and he pitches a song to a record company that is, the president, I think, is David Cross. And the song is terrible and he leaves sad. and then the chipmunks through a series of hard to believe circumstances are in the record building as he's leaving and jump into the muffin basket that he's stolen out of anger at being rejected for his record. Okay. This is their origin story. This is how they meet. What were they doing in the building in the first place? Well, they were living in a Christmas tree that got cut down and brought to the lobby of the record company. I see. And so they come down from the tree. They're going to exit the building. They get chased by a dog and then almost run over by a guy on a, I think some kind of an electric cart, which is weird to have inside a record building, almost like an airport driven cart. Okay. And then they just see the muffin basket and him walking out and they make a run for it and jump into it. He takes them home, doesn't realize it. They go into his kitchen while he's moping on his couch. And they start opening cabinets and finding food and making a mess and making noise. And then he discovers them initially. He kicks them out. Then he hears them singing on his windowsill. And he invites them back in on the condition that it's very exploitive initially. right it's not out of the kindness of his heart it's because he thinks he can make a buy yeah he says you guys can live here on the condition that you sing the songs that i write so that's how it starts and then like elvis and colonel parker right and they are they are babies they are little kid chipmunks and so they imprint on him and want him to be like their dad and it's it's right before Christmas, a lot of, uh, you know, hopes and dreams on their part as kids. And there's so much more to it, but I don't know how deep you want to go into it. Well, I just have some follow-up questions. Is this a universe in which, uh, all animals can talk and sing or is it, is he astonished when they are capable of speech and complex thought and sentience Yes he is shocked uh and as i am shocked that my cat keeps coming back into this room i could um i could get up and push it out i like the tension that it brings to things because it's a tension where we know that everything's really going to be okay up until they are spitefully rehomed um here comes my dog anyway um yeah he's shocked that they can talk and he asked them can all animals talk and i believe their answer is uh rabbits some rabbits can talk but no nobody else can. Oh, okay. All chipmunks also? I think so. Yes. Because in the squeak wall, we meet the chip bets. Right. Okay. So yeah. Okay. So he, he takes them in, they sing, um, they presume, do they become big stars? They do become big stars. They become huge stars. And, um, And then David Cross's character lures them away from Dave, largely because Dave refuses to admit they're a family. When they call, refer to him as a family, he gives them the, he gives them what people do when they're dating. Someone who likes them more than they like them, where it's like, look, yeah, I like you, but let's not get carried away. So he says, I'm your friend, I'm your manager, but I'm not your dad. And then Ian is able to wedge the door open to make them believe Dave doesn't care about them and lures them away and exploits them even more. And then Dave at the end comes in and rescues them. And then they are. And then they become a family. And Ian is the David Cross character. Yeah, Ian Hawk. Okay. Ian Hawk. Okay. Oh, interesting naming, like a predator to a chipmunk, a hawk. Yes. Yeah. Oh. Okay, so then we have the Squeakquel, 2009. Right. And despite all this realization of love and family, Dave's out of there. Jason Lee is no longer in the picture, correct? Well, he gets injured in the beginning of the film by a mishap that happens backstage because of Alvin being a little reckless. Although in Alvin's defense, he is a child and he was just trying to put on a good show. Yeah. And in his defense, Dave kept distracting him. If Dave Jason Lee hadn't kept yelling at him on stage, Alvin would not have been going, what? I can't hear you and reaching to hold on to something to lean in, which unplugged something, which caused breaking. And then a giant, a giant wooden, I guess, picture of Alvin hit Dave and knocked him across stage and he ends up in the hospital. Oh, wow. Okay. So then they go with somebody else. They go to Dave's cousin, I understand. Yes. So Aunt Jackie slash Popcorn Jackie, as Alvin knows her, and her grandson Toby come to pick them up from the airport and they fly back from the country Dave's in the hospital in. and then she gets an immediate mishap and so they end up just being watched by toby who i have to say is a terrible guardian should not be allowed anywhere near anyone's children including chipmunk children he just he neglects them he's terrible and then he makes them go to high school which if they were going to go to school at all which they really shouldn't but if they're going to go to school it should have been elementary school right right this is a recipe for a complex trauma disorder that these chipmunks have been through and they are they do get traumatized in high school and then did you hear that can you hear it when my cat yells no i can't okay good they get traumatized and then uh alvin joins the football team oh that doesn't sound like a good idea no because then he misses the um that was my cat then he misses the audition that they're supposed to do for a charity thing leaving simon and theodore to go out on stage and say alvin's not here we can't perform and they get booed it really hurts their feelings oh also more trauma yeah one of the jocks after alvin is on the football team one of the jocks pulls a prank on simon that is not a nice prank it's a ridiculing and embarrassing him by um asking simon if he wants to be the litter monitor and then they all just laugh at Simon trying to give out citations for people littering and then that really hurts his feelings. There's a lot of hurt feelings in the squeak wall. The Chipettes, Barry's currently trying to pull the printer off a table. Barry. The Chipettes, Brittany, Jeanette, and Eleanor are the counterparts to the chipmunks. So they become clients of Ian Hawk in the squeak hole. I see. Ian Hawk again. Yeah. David Cross picking up a check. Yeah. And they all end up... Can you see that son of a gun right there? Yeah. Yeah. He's walking around trying to... He looks like he's on the prowl for something. He's looking for different ways to make noise. Anyway. Why do your cats hate podcasts so much? I think what they hate is me paying attention to anything but them. Yes. I can guarantee you, though, if I were to anyone, not anything, anyone, because if I were just sitting on the couch looking at my phone, they would all be fast asleep. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's a problem. Yeah. So they compete against the Chippets in a battle of the bands? Yes, and they lose because they have to forfeit. But then at the charity show that the Chippets are supposed to perform at, Ian Hawk tells them they have to open for Britney Spears instead at the forum or the sport LA sports arena. And they say they don't want to. So he puts them in a cage and then they get a hold of his phone. They call Alvin who goes to rescue them. And, uh, and then they all end up singing together at the end and dave comes back at the end on crutches and a big neck brace to uh be reunited with them how does britney spears feel about all this i don't know and um we know on a side note unrelated to all this i saw an interview with her from when she was newly famous on like diane Sawyer and and just to see what a literal baby she was when these adults were putting her in positions that no young person her age should be put in should have been put in it made me really sad it kind of it kind of and I'm and I'm I sound like I'm being facetious but I'm not it kind of reminds me of Alvin and the Chipmunks I mean there are parallels and I wonder if a little bit that's why they did that. Yeah. Well, if one of the chipettes is named Brittany also. Yeah. Yes. So a couple of years later, Alvin and the chipmunks chipwrecked. Hello, sleepyheads. I wish to tell you about another podcast here on the Maximum Fun Network. It is called Free With Ads. It is a podcast that asks you the following question. Why pay for streaming services when movies like Time Cop and Grease 2 can be watched for nothing more than the cost of enduring a few loud, unskippable ads? Then this podcast says to you, join us every week for a dive into the internet's bargain bin. Emily Fleming and Jordan Morris are real friends, real comedy writers, and real cheapskates. They met working in comedy writing rooms and bonded over their love of trashy pop culture and saving a buck. They are combining these loves for the podcast Free With Ads, a movie review show dedicated to the weird, amazing, inexplicable movies streaming free on an internet near you. Free with ads can be found at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. So a couple years later, Alvin and the Chipmunks chipwrecked. Right. So Chip Rock goes, takes a new direction. Um, the original Alvin and the Chipmunks and the and the Squeakquel, the singing and performing of songs only happens at times where someone would realistically be singing and performing like on a stage or in a recording studio. Okay. So it's not like ongoing music whenever you feel it. It's more realistic. Right. In Chipwrecked, the movie opens with singing and dancing as they are boarding a cruise ship. And then just keeps rolling into more musical numbers throughout the movie that are, until the very end, they're never on stage. so it's not ever realistic. But it's quite a fun movie. Do they end up getting shipwrecked in Chipwrecked? Well, that's the other thing, is the ship doesn't get wrecked, but the chipmunks get wrecked in a way. They end up on an island. Okay. Alvin tries to go hang gliding using a child's kite, and all the other chipmunks and the chipettes are holding onto the rope but it's quite windy so they all get pulled off the boat dave wakes up from his nap on the deck sees it tries to use the hang glider that's on the ship that you can sign up to use he just impromptu tries to use it to go after them but ian hawk is on board as a as a mascot a giant duck in a duck costume okay he's fallen on some hard times he's not a record executive anymore right because he failed with the chipmunks and the chip beds so he's been run out of the industry sure so he intercepts dave They both get blown off the ship on this hang glider and then wrassle and lose the harness and fall into the ocean. So they end up swimming to this island that the chipmunks end up on as well. The chipmunks and the chipmets. Oh, OK. OK. Are they eventually rescued or is that the end of the franchise and we assume they died there? Well, no, they definitely, it's not the end of the franchise. The Ingmar Bergman, Elvin, and the Chipmunks ending. They definitely don't die. They do get off the island. There's a whole wild plot with Jenny Slate and trying to get some treasure that's buried in a cave. she kidnaps Jeanette and uh there's also Simon gets bitten by a poisonous spider and becomes do you remember on um Family Matters when Urkel becomes Urkel Stefan Urkel sure so Simon turns into a i think simone and it's a suave confident frenchman who's a uh adventurer type you know and this is from a snake bite from a spider bite a spider that causes like uh sort of mild psychosis okay and then he saves Jeanette and then they all the volcano on the island so Dave and Ian find them on the island uh a subplot is that Alvin is afraid that Dave doesn't love him because he causes so much trouble and so that's quite heartbreaking but then when they're reunited Dave reassures him there's nothing you could do to make me stop loving you you're my you're my kid oh okay it's been a long journey to really get that approval well wait till you hear about the road chip what happens in this 2015 the road chip so but they get off the island by taking a raft yeah jenny slate is a is a villain but she ends up sort of surrendering and they let her on the raft they all have to get off the island because the volcano is erupting okay no sure and then they get back to the ship and then they get to that international music awards where they all perform together and to be honest i cried because they sing a mashup of Born This Way by Lady Gaga and Firework by Katy Perry. Katy Perry, yeah. And again, my mom, when I was watching these movies, my mom was dying and then recently, yeah, I watched it from before she passed through the whole next year and into the following year. so i was prone to getting to crying at any slightly uh sentimental thing but yeah but it is a beautiful ending of the movie where they do the they all sing together and then uh and then i guess we can go on to the road chip which is the finale yeah and what happens there the road chip takes a very dark turn. Oh. And I will just say as a, to give you an idea, I'll tell you something that happens out of order. Theodore gets hit by a car and everybody thinks he's dead at one point. That's how dark it gets. Wow. It starts out with Dave dating a woman. no sorry let me back up it actually starts out with alvin simon and theodore throwing a giant house party in the mansion they all live in now dave is on vacation comes home to all these people in his house uh theodore has ordered like 50 pizzas and eaten many of them by himself oh theodore uh and dave comes home and is outraged of course they all get grounded uh but then because he's gonna be leaving town again they he says i want to spend time with you guys before i have to leave town again now i guess dave is a record producer and he has another client who's like a um Britney Spears type pop singer. Okay. And he has to go represent her at some show in Florida, there in LA. So he says, I'm going to take you guys miniature golfing. So we spend time together before I leave town. And then his new girlfriend comes with her son. and the chipmunks don't know that she has a son. This is the first time they're meeting her and they meet the son before they meet her because they run into him on the golf course and he bullies them and he's really mean about it. Is he also a chipmunk or a human? He's a teenage boy. Teenage boy. Yeah. Human. Okay. And he's a very damaged soul because his dad abandoned him and his mom. And so he's really mean to the chipmunks. Then they all come together and find out that their parents are dating. He pretends to be nice in front of the adults, but continues to torment the chipmunks when the adults are not around. Dave and his girlfriend the mom they leave town to go to Florida for this event and they leave the chipmunks with the teenager Miles oh no thinking he's an older teenager responsible enough to take care of them no torments them they all find out they think they find out that Dave is going to propose to the girlfriend. I'm sorry, I can't remember her name. They think that's what they're... We'll track that down for you. Yeah, they've discovered a ring, an engagement ring, and they take it to mean that he's going to propose to her. So the two... Is that Samantha? Yes. Okay. So the two monks and Miles decide to team up, even though they're enemies, team up, fly to Florida, and prevent the wedding because they don't want to be a blended family. They can't stand each other. So they go on this road trip together, and they end up being on the no-fly list because of an incident where... I know the point of this podcast is to help people fall asleep, but I am suddenly... We have to report the reality of these films. We've already dealt with the possible death of one of the chipmunks. I'm just suddenly afraid that this is even too boring for people who are trying to fall asleep. Well, we're a good 35 minutes in. So, you know, if they're still awake, they're on the break. Okay. They get on a plane. Simon hides in Miles's jeans. Okay. Alvin is hidden in his carry-on as a doll, a fake doll. Theodore is in a carrier and goes into the pet cargo area of the plane. Okay. them theodore because he's such a sweet innocent baby is manipulated by a monkey for some reason this plane has a zoo full of animals traveling and the pet cargo and i have flown my cats um not these cats but cats i had when i was younger flown them between california and texas and there is a limited i know from experience there's a limited number of pets they will take on each plane so in no world has any passenger commercial flight had a zoo full of animals in the pet cargo area this one does a monkey tricks theodore into opening his cage and as he's opening it theodore because theodore can open his own cage because he's a talking chipmunk he has some human abilities opens a monkey's cage and says okay Mr. Monkey just promise me you're not gonna let any other animals out. Monkey immediately goes and opens every other every other cage. Yeah yeah. And on the flight Tony Hale is a an air marshal flying undercover. Okay. And this is just now coming back to me he hates alvin and the chipmunks because he proposed to his girlfriend with alvin and the chipmunks playing in the background i think and she said no and he blames them for her thinking that he's a weirdo she doesn't want to marry so he sees them on the flight he's determined to get his revenge he wants to arrest them as he's trying to catch alvin and simon who are hopping from seat to seat theodora and this zoo full of animals come busting down the aisle they've somehow made it up out of the cargo department as if there is even a way to do that in real life as if there's a door between those areas i'm positive there isn't they all come down the aisle and that causes havoc. And so the chipmunks are put on a no-fly list. And they're about to be arrested, but Tony Hale leaves his office while he's telling them they're going to go to jail. And when he leaves his office, they all escape. Wow. And then it begins a cross-country chase. I think the next thing they do is i think they i think they hitchhike no they take a taxi they can't pay the they don't have any money they can't pay the cab driver when he finds out kicks them out yeah they walk to the nearest town which is a place in texas they shot it actually outside of austin they go into a country music bar and for some reason Miles it turns out knows how to play the guitar, the teenage boy Okay, okay, there's a redemption happening here, I can sense it Yes, they I forget how because I only got through Chipwrecked this week Okay But I've seen the road chip so many times I know almost all of it by heart Somehow the chipmunks and Miles end up impromptu singing a song on stage at this country western bar. And believe it or not, and I don't think you will believe it, the entire crowd goes and... Booze them. No? No. I assume. No. Because they're only chipmunks. The crowd breaks out into a synchronized line dancing as if they have been doing this kind of thing every night, every time anyone plays a song. Yeah, yeah. Tony Hale buss in, a bar fight breaks out. The chipmunks get away. They apologize to the bar owner. And he inexplicably claims that a good old fashioned bar fight is good for business, which is not something any actual bar owner, whatever. His place has been destroyed. The tables, the chairs are broken, glasses broken. Yeah. People could get hurt. Yeah. No bar owner wants any of that. But he says that. They get away. Tony Hale wakes up. Tony Hale gets knocked out. Barry's back. That's why I paused and looked irritated. Tony Hale wakes up with a tattoo of the chipmunks on his back that he doesn't remember getting. Nope, that's in New Orleans. Sorry. They get away. Okay. They get a ride to the train station. they get a train ticket tony hale goes after them but he's one step behind they get to new orleans they end up leading well no they what is it called uh is it called busking when musicians play music in public and take donations they do that to get to new orleans trying to make their way to florida and then in new orleans it's mardi gras they end up in a big uh mardi gras parade singing i go i go everybody loves it there is where tony hale gets accidentally too drunk and then gets a chipmunk tattoo macy uh-huh now my dog's um barking did you hear that did you hear I was distracted by my own dog's barking. So I don't think I did hear it. All right. Then I'm going to ignore her for a minute. Ma'am, can you sit down, please? Can you lie down? Sorry. She said no, by the way. Did you just call your dog ma'am? I said, ma'am, could you sit down, please? And she said, no, I cannot. Okay. So they end up in Florida. they tried to disrupt the wedding it turned the proposal it turns out dave is not proposing to samantha he was holding the ring for a client of his and you see simultaneously as they're arriving to say no no dave don't propose his client is at another table in the restaurant and proposes and the bride-to-be opens the jewelry box and there's nothing in it so she storms off they find out that uh dave and samantha are not getting married the chipmunks wildly celebrate and it hurts miles's feelings because they had started to bond on their way across country because he had revealed to them one night that his dad had abandoned him and his mom. They're like out in the desert sleeping under a tree. I see. He says his dad ran out on them and he says, it didn't affect me. I don't need a dad anyway. We've been fine without him. And then the chipmunks sympathize and kind of curl up next to him. They start having fun together. And so when he sees them celebrating that they're not going to be a blended family, he's like yeah you guys don't care about me anyway and he storms out and they they follow after him they run after him he storms across a busy street outside the hotel he's about to get hit by a car Theodore dives at him and pushes him out of the way like a little bowling ball but Theodore ends up getting hit by the car oh there it is And so they all think he's dead for a minute. And that's when they roll the credits. And they roll the credits and no one has ever recovered Millions of millennial and Gen Z kids scarred for life But he okay He's okay. He's okay. He wakes up. Okay. And then Miles says, is like, I can't believe that Theodore risked his life to save my life. And they say, Miles, we've been telling you this whole time, you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us, and you are one of us. And then it's quite moving. And you might think you're at the emotional apex in the movie at this point. I would think so. That was the third act confrontation scary moment. Yes. But no? No. No. it's quite moving they go to the um the show that dave's female britney type client is performing at by the way the whole times the whole time the chip outs have been judging american idol so they're not even in the movie they're not even there they in the beginning of the movie they go we're off to judge american idol we'll see you guys later right the chipmunks with this young woman and miles because he has a crush on this client of dave's who's a young she's a teenager too yeah they all go on stage and they sing a song called home for dave and it's about how no matter where i roam you will always be my home and on a personal note this is the song that my niece would play in my car on my phone before we started watching these movies but it's the chipmunks singing and in my heart it was not a conscious thing on her end but it was partly her being drawn to that song because I bonded with her and her brother for the first two years of her life first year of his I saw them every day I lived with my parents who were their daycare and I quickly lost interest in everything except the babies every day that they were there and then I moved when she was two I moved back to Austin and in my heart her liking that song was because in some ways she felt like she was home with me, whether I was living in the same place or not. Also, partly because when I lived in Austin, she said she also had a house in Austin. That was a running claim of hers for the years that I would live there and then come back for work and then go back to Austin. She would say, well, I also have a house in Austin. And when I moved back permanently in 2019, she told me, or before that, when I moved back permanently, she said, I sold my house in Austin. Oh. So I may have projected all of this about the song Home to me was about me loving my niece and nephew like they're my kids, similarly to how Dave loves the chipmunks. Yeah. The odds are that it probably wasn't that deep for my niece. She probably just liked the Alvin and the Chipmunk sound of music, their music. But anyway, they sing it at the end of that movie. It makes me get choked up. You think we're at the, we think we're done, but we're not because, because Macy, please sit down. I'm, we're almost done with this podcast, babe. You got to Just hang on a second, okay? She's right here, if I can. She's right here. Yeah, okay. Oh, hi, Maisie. She's a wonderful person, but she's irritating right now. Yeah, yeah. The very end of the movie is Dave Seville taking Alvin Simon and Theodore to City Hall in Los Angeles and legally adopting them as his children. After four films. After four films, they all are quite moved by it. Yeah. Can I let my dog out real quick? Yeah, of course. I'm sorry, John, one second. No, not at all. um listeners we are watching a dog that really wants to go out the door is being opened martha's telling the dog not to come back i'm not sure what that means about that okay sorry about that quite all right um so one thing i forgot to say part of why they the chipmunks don't want a blended family is because miles convinces them in the beginning of the film that if dave and his mom get married they will have human kids of their own and then dave won't care about the chipmunks anymore right so him legally adopting them at city hall is a big deal to them yeah it is sweet moving and maddening to think that any city hall employee would allow a man to take up their time legally adopting animals when you can simply have the have the animals yeah you can give They don't have social security numbers. No, you can give them your last name and you can leave your money to them in your will. Sometimes people leave money to their pets in their will. You don't. Yeah, you can do whatever you want. There's no legal basis for a city hall employee to do an adoption ceremony for animals. You have wasted taxpayer time and money. Yes, but it means a lot to the chipmunks. and then that's kind of the end of the movie. Okay, okay. Before we go, Martha, we sometimes play a game on this show in the card or on the shelf where I present products to you. You decide whether, you know, if someone was paying, you would want to bring this item home with you or leave it on the shelf. But in this case, I'm struck by the phrase manipulated by a monkey, which is a phrase you used earlier. I'm going to mention some iconic film characters. And just for a quick lightning round here, you tell me whether or not you think they can be manipulated by a monkey or not manipulated by a monkey. Okay. Okay. All right. The first Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone. Yes, because like Theodore, he is a big old softy. He has a soft heart. Okay. Okay. George Bailey from It's a Wonderful Life. So I'm probably going to get canceled for this, but in my opinion, George Bailey is not a very empathetic or compassionate man. And I don't think he would be susceptible to his heartstrings being pulled by a monkey. okay okay annie wilkes the kathy bates character in misery manipulated by a monkey or not manipulated by a monkey that is a tough one because on the one hand i want to say yes because some wacky animal people some of us have compassion and empathy for humans and animals there's a strain of animal lover who could give a shit about humans yeah and um frequently they're women some might call them karens i think it's fair to call annie a kind of a karen i suppose yeah so i want to say yes she would be because she's that type on the other hand she's a tough old bird i don't know if anybody could put one past her okay so i can't i don't know okay so that's an undetermined um hans gruber from the Die Hard film? It does get manipulated by Bruce Willis, who is a human and taxonomically related to monkeys. The truth is I only have seen that movie once, and it was in 2013, and I don't remember almost anything that happens. No, okay. The one thing I remember is that inexplicably, The policemen on the ground outside the building don't believe Bruce Willis saying, hey, we need help. We're being terrorists have broken in. For some reason, the police guy keeps going. No, I don't think so. I don't believe it. And then finally, we'll do a pair here. And you tell me, you know, how each of them break down. Maybe the same, maybe opposite. it uh clarice starling and hannibal lecter from silence of the lambs it's kind of a movie about manipulation but nobody's a monkey could either or both of them be manipulated by monkeys oof this is a tough one i'm feeling a lot of pressure um sorry hannibal lecter no okay um clarice starlin i'm sorry to say but yes despite her quite intelligent but yes she could be yeah she could be manipulated she has a lot of empathy we're just about out of time martha but uh before we go on on baskets when your character thinks that she's taking in a stray dog but it's actually a coyote did you have to spend time with the actual coyote well it was a half coyote half dog and we did have to ride in a car with her i think it was a female and we did all i think pet her but she was not not dangerous it was but the way the handler told us to deal with her was like don't be timid if you're gonna pet her just pet her don't don't hesitate because coyotes are more hyper aware on edge I guess than domesticated dogs so that part of her would be would be on edge if she felt you were on edge so but she rode in the back seat of the car and we filmed for quite a while with her back there and us in the front seat and she was very very she was so docile that for the scene where she was supposed to growl at zach she wouldn't she kept refusing to get riled up so they had to put peanut butter on her teeth to get her to raise her lips at all I always love that one they do that with that's something they do with monkeys to get them to talk in Lancelot Link's Secret Chimp really? yeah Martha Kelly thank you so much for sleeping with us I very much enjoyed hearing about the Elven and the Chipmunks films and Martha goodnight thank you John goodnight Well, Sleepyheads, I hope you enjoyed learning about the Alvin and the Chipmunks films as much as I did. You know, something I like to do at the end of my day is make a mental catalog of things that I experienced or learned that day. So, here are some takeaways from my conversation with Martha Kelly right now while it's all fresh in my mind. 1. In the cosmology of the band, Alvin is the showboat, Simon is the brains, and Theodore is the sweet chubby baby. They are all chipmunks, but as the front man, Alvin gets the headline, along with the letter on his shirt. In Chipmunks 2, also known as the squeakquel, Zachary Levi portrays Toby, the terrible temporary guardian to the chipmunks. He commits the unforgivable sin of sending them to high school, which as we all know, is the greatest of traumas. Three, in the third film of the series, Chip Wrecked, Simon gets bitten by a poisonous spider, resulting in him pulling a Stéphane-Herkel-Buddy-Love kind of transformation, but it's actually psychosis. Four, the fourth film, The Road Chip, gets very dark. Tony Hale gets drunk, Theodore gets hit by a car and there's a major subplot point involving child abandonment Five, the chipmunk's songs and films are very cathartic providing emotional solace in times of familial distance Okay, I'm going to turn in myself Thank you for sleeping with me and Martha Kelly You can follow Sleeping with Celebrities on Blue Sky and TikTok Talk with the handle at sleepwithcelebs. On Instagram, the handle is at sleepwcelebs. Our email is sleepwithcelebs at maximumfun.org. Music provided by the Winter Bowers. The show is produced and edited by Gabe Mara, senior produced by Laura Swisher. Swish. It is a production of Maximum Fun and Papuchik. I'm John Moe. Good night. Maximum Fun A worker-owned network Of artist-owned shows Supported directly by you