Flashback to 2019: An Academy Award-winning director is bringing a Tony-winning story to the big screen. The cast is stacked, with Oscar-winners like Dame Judi Dench. The film’s budget is $100 million, large by 2019 standards. There’s so much Oscar buzz and expectation around this film that the final edits and graphics work are expedited to meet an Academy Award filing deadline. 

Have you guessed the film yet? 

It is called Cats, and it was one of the biggest commercial and critical flops of the modern era. The Oscar buzz surrounding the Broadway hit’s film adaptation turned into Razzies for the film (the Razzies honor the WORST in movie making every year). At the Academy Awards telecast, Cats cast members James Corden and Rebel Wilson mocked their own movie, on stage, in full Cats makeup and costumes. 

Jason DeRulo said of the film’s floppage, “Any time you defy what an art form is, any time you defy all rules, there’s going to be some push-back, obviously.” Why am I quoting Jason DeRulo right now, you may ask? Because he was also in the movie Cats. Because, why not? 

But here’s the thing: As bad as this movie is, as bad as it flopped, I love Cats. I loved the experience of watching it day-drunk in a near-empty movie theater, opening weekend. I loved reading the think pieces about the missing cat buttholes and Jennifer Hudson’s cat’s snot. “The snot that was coming out, that was real,” Hudson told Empire. “Every inch of it. And I was like, ‘If people only knew. The depth of that emotion.’” The *depth.*

This week on the show – in honor of Cats, CGI snot, and Jason DeRulo showing up where he doesn’t belong – we’re going big on flops. Hollywood disasters. I brought on two of my favorite movie podcasters to run through a list of the biggest Hollywood flops of the last decade: Chris Winterbauer and Lizzie Bassett host the podcast What Went Wrong, all about what goes into making a movie — the good, bad and the ugly. Turns out filmmaking is very hard, and according to Lizzie and Chris, every movie is a miracle. I agree. 

Check out this week’s episode to hear us connect the dots between the four biggest flops of our current era. And if you’re looking to dig into What Went Wrong, I highly recommend starting with their episode all about Gremlins. It’s fascinating how close this movie was to never seeing the light of day.

What are your favorite movie flops? I’m curious. Reply to this email and lemme know. 

And to cleanse your palette from that, ahem, *catwalk* down memory lane, can I recommend an album I’ve been revisiting all week — one that could have flopped, but didn’t? 

After making the case on a recent episode of this show that Janet Jackson is the most interesting Jackson (I stand by this take), I heard from a LOT of Michael defenders, which was expected. So I dug back into the King of Pop’s discography and ended up falling in love with a Michael album I’d always kind of ignored: Dangerous. 

The album was the first one he made without super-producer Quincy Jones since 1975. After Thriller and Bad conquered the world and made Jackson the King of Pop, he wanted to prove to the world that he could be just as big without Quincy holding his hand. 

It worked. The lead single, “Black or White,” became a cultural touchstone, with the music video’s premiere being viewed by 500 million people simultaneously across the world. For the longest time, that’s all I thought about when I thought about Dangerous — that face-shifting, kinda cheesy music video for “Black or White.” But digging into it again over the last few weeks, I’ve realized it may be the greatest New Jack Swing album ever made? It’s worth a revisit, I promise. My favorite tracks? All the *uptempo* ones (I have a theory that most of Michael Jackson’s solo ballads are bad, if not also outright creepy), especially “In The Closet,” which features a cameo from… Princess Stephanie of Monaco.

Alright, enjoy, and lemme know what you're watching or listening or reading this week. See ya next Friday! 

— Sam

Did someone forward you this email? Subscribe to Sam's Newsletter for more.