The Hudsucker Proxy with Mike Mitchell & Nick Wiger

Blank Jack with Griffin and David

Blank Jack with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect

All you need to know is that the name of the show with Blank Jack

You punch in at 830 every morning except you punch in at 730 following a business holiday unless it's Monday Then you punch in at 8 o'clock Punch in late and they podcast you Incoming articles get a voucher outgoing articles provide a voucher move any article without a voucher and they podcast you lettuce size without a voucher letter size a green voucher oversize a yellow voucher parcel size a maroon voucher wrong color voucher and they podcast you six seven eight seven oh four nine a slash six that is your employee number it will not be repeated without your employee number you cannot get your paycheck inner office mail code is 37 intra office mail 37 slash 3 outside mail is 3 slash 37 code it wrong and they podcast you.

This has been your orientation.

Is there anything you do not understand?

Is there anything you understand only partially?

If you have not been fully oriented, you must file a complaint with personnel.

File a faulty complaint and they podcast you.

And then in brackets underneath that line of dialogue, spoken at 160 words per minute.

You know, when you watch a screwball comedy on your modern television, and you have the subtitles on, you know, it's a screwball comedy when the subtitles can't include all the dialogue.

They have to cut out lines.

They're editing.

And just a note,

if you're going to scream.

Oh, sure.

After spending 30 minutes setting up levels.

Just give me a head zone.

Yeah.

That guy.

Maybe the most time we've ever spent perfecting levels before a record, then I immediately

fucked it all up.

No, you're fine.

You're fine.

You want it?

Hey, you want to dock me?

I'll think about it.

I made that sound sexual.

I'm saying you can dock my peg.

I don't think he thought it was sexual.

Well, I just want.

Our perverse is the same.

Is docking when you put your your dicks together?

I think there is an actual sexual connotation for docking.

Docking is when you put

the head of one penis into

the foreskin of another.

I think it's uncircumcised.

Right.

It needs circumcised.

Yeah, you need one uncircumcised.

To be fair,

both could be uncircumcised.

You just need at least one.

But you need one docking station.

Correct.

Essentially.

Correct.

Wages biting his lip, trying to get in the docking conversation.

That guy, the orienter,

actor's name is Christopher Darga.

I just looked him up because I was like, who is that guy?

He works all the time.

He has like 10 credits a year on TV shows and stuff.

There are like 30 people in this movie who have exactly one scene and I think give one of the greatest performances in the history of film.

The blue letter guy.

Uh-huh.

Musberger's secretary.

Okay.

The one who screams or the one who.

I don't see an appointment in the books.

She's funny.

Like everyone is just like a great face, a great voice, a great rhythm.

My favorite, though, is just like to get like two dozen bald, like middle-aged guys who are just like,

like, I love that.

Those, those guys are great.

So funny.

As far as stock characters go, though, my favorite is the lady who kind of talks like this.

And this movie has so many of those ladies.

That is a good.

Or, you know what I like when Hudsucker hits the ground?

Yeah.

You mean when the street is wearing Hudson?

Exactly.

Yes.

The lady who goes like,

like that's a good type of lady.

Like a big lady in like a sort of fancy outfit with like a little thing on her head, you know, like a little net.

I think it's the same lady.

I think it might be the same lady.

Just a different emotional point.

Yeah, it's good stuff.

God bless.

Different types.

Yeah.

No, it's good to have.

A lot of ladies like this and a lot of guys like this.

You backed away at the end.

I did.

I'm trying to be considerate towards Ben.

There's the blue letter guy.

Has two, it's the way he sells two specific words.

It's the third time I think he says blue letter when he tries to accentuate it and go, a blue letter.

And then he ends it with going, must be delivered to Musburger.

Muskberger.

Richard Schiff,

the great Emmy-winning actor, is in the cast as Mail Room Screamer.

I didn't even notice.

He must be a background screamer.

Exactly.

But like to be credited as a screamer in Hudsucker, that feels good.

This, like, the supporting, not the supporting cast, but like all the day players in this movie feel like they were pulled out of a time machine.

100%.

All the modern day actors who are recognizable, you're like, oh, that's like smart to think about a combination of people who would be able to approximate this old acting style, who had pieces of this in their modern screen personas.

And then every guy who's just like a face I've never seen before, my inclination is like they got a fucking phone booth and they went back to the 30s and they pulled a guy off the Paramount lot.

The guys at the fucking diner.

It's great.

I went into this movie.

I I had never seen it before.

And so in the first 15 minutes, I was like, what the fuck is going on going on here?

I had no idea.

And just so many great.

And like, at first, I was like, is this over the top?

Like, what is happening here?

You were worried that I wouldn't like this movie.

Let me clarify.

This is one of my 10 favorite movies of all time.

Wow.

This is one of my favorite movies we'll ever cover up.

So is this your number one Cohen's?

Just not to spoil our, you know, list.

I do not think it is their best film.

And I think when we get to the end of this series, I'll be wrestling with best versus favorite.

Rank this at number one.

There are better films I think they've made

and in a way where the distance between them is great enough that it would be absurd of me to put it higher.

And yet I have seen this so many fucking times.

It is one of my ultimate comfort food movies.

I like it more every single time I watch it.

It is a movie that is so squarely pitched at all of my interests, my sense of humor, my sensibility, my like dream movie aesthetics, all of that.

So I was just like very protective of this episode.

This is one of your re-watchables.

This is one of my ultimate top-tier re-watchables.

Should we get Simmons on?

We got to get Simmons on.

I'm also like, everybody.

John Mahony is like Eddie Houston in this movie.

Just raining threes off the bench.

He would have 10 minutes on the end of Nicole.

No, I agree with him.

That Eddie House thing is spot on.

No, I mean, Mahoney's good.

Mahoney's good.

Mahoney is really good.

Every other movie that I would put on this tier, I could like form more of an argument on the right day of like,

would I put that on my sight and sound top 10?

Whereas with this, I'd be like, that's silly.

I'd put a different Cohen's on.

But because it is such a specific flavor and I care about it so much, we were trying to find an episode.

You threw your hat in for this.

And I was just like, Mitch, I don't think you're going to dislike it, but I don't want to run the risk.

I just want to know you have seen it before we give you the episode for sure.

And I watched it early to make sure.

And I was then mad at you because I mean,

how could you ever?

Yeah, how could you ever think that I wouldn't love it?

Yeah, it's great.

But I'm a little bit curious, just you like knowing how much you love this movie and knowing that y'all do guestless episodes, and you were kind enough to fit us in when we were in town.

But I was like, that struck me as like, oh, this is just going to be a guestless one.

And we're just going to hear, you know,

there's a lot of potential guestless episodes for the Cohen Brothers, though.

And then everyone wants them.

Everyone wants to show up.

People want them.

And also, the other ones that we've done that are guestless, even if they're like personal favorites of ours, they're also movies that are like so culturally huge that you're like between our levels.

An ET, a social network, some big movie where there's plenty of

Back to the Future, these things where you're like, there's also so much cultural shit to talk about.

There's interesting production stuff on this movie, but this is so much closer to being a movie that doesn't exist in a weird way.

Even though its reputation has my wife was like, what the fuck is this?

Not in a mad way, just like, how did this get approved?

Right.

It's historically still the least known of all of their movies.

It's kind of a, it's kind of amazing that it exists and also that they were able to get this made like pre-Fargo, like before they were at a point where they had like

they weren't Oscar Williams.

We're going to get into this, but this is their first blank check and it's crazy because it's a blank check they are given based on just how good they are.

Right.

Even though they had yet to make a movie that made money.

Really?

On Letterboxd, which I always find interesting is a pulse of...

you know, the young, the young.

But just how many people have logged.

When you go by popularity, it is above everything.

below everything but Intolerable Cruelty and the Lady Killers, which makes sense because those are the least, those two are the least regarded.

But in terms of number of people who've logged it, not necessarily rating.

Right.

That's literally just

popular

have watched this movie.

So, I mean,

speaking of wives, my wife, Natalie, this is also one of her top 10 favorite movies of all time.

And so I had a, I had a per when you, you know, one reason we're talking about Hotsucker, I have a personal connection through her.

I'm putting this movie on at home and she's like reciting the opening narration.

Like, it's like that level of fandom.

You got a good one, Nick.

Yeah.

Hey, don't I know it?

You got to get yourself a good wife.

It's pretty important.

What was this?

A wife guy is basically being crucified, sitting down.

Is that what's going on?

Nick sort of like outstretched his limbs.

He leaned back and put his arms out in a T-pose.

Let's also acknowledge that Nick just broke a chair right before recording.

I did.

Look, here's the thing.

He basically spilled himself onto the floor.

I'm going to say this.

I was late to the record and then I broke a chair.

So like, I'm, I'm,

I think

you're starting behind.

You're trying to, and then you try to say that's like what I would be known for.

I think you were trying to say something on one of the doughboys is going to be late to the blank check record and break a chair at the studio.

Mitch and I.

I think that I would have Mitch and I thought.

I'd be like plus 850 versus Mitch.

We thought we were going to beat Sims here and we were so excited.

And it turned out Sims got here early.

But we thought like we're on track to beat him.

And then if we're both earlier than you guys,

we we win.

We win forever.

Let the record show.

And tomorrow doesn't matter when we record a Doughboys episode.

If Griff and I are 45, 50 minutes late, it doesn't matter.

Yeah, it doesn't matter.

They're going silent.

They don't like this.

I love it.

This is, look, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin.

I'm David.

It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

Hudsucker Proxy is a pretty good example of that.

I would say it is their most sort of,

it's their most obvious blank check, even though

it wasn't, you know, a $100 million movie or whatever, but right?

Totally.

Yes.

And we'll talk about it.

It was like the first time they consciously were like, can we make something that's more of a commercial crowd pleaser?

It is what is fascinating about this movie is like they don't think of it as a like one for us that we're getting away with.

They were like, it is time for us to team up with Joel Silver and start making like blockbuster hit comedies.

And this is their calculation of like, yeah, a movie that everyone will want to go see.

You saying it's one of the lesser-known movies, I'll say this from my perspective.

This was a huge blockbuster case movie.

Like the

cover movie.

Yeah, sure.

It was because, and I had no idea what it was about.

Because it's a really weird post.

You're like, what the fuck is this?

I thought it was about, I honestly genuinely thought it was about vacuums and i think it was hud sucker and in on and on the cassette of fox yeah his hair is kind of going crazy so i was like

oh this is a vacuum movie the vacuum is in reverse or something here

in a way where you almost at first wouldn't quite understand what's going on yes yeah i had no idea i i i didn't i knew nothing about the hula hoop until i saw it was but this was a huge blockbuster video like hey look at that movie i should maybe see that at some point and never never did and this is the only con brothers movie i've never seen i just think that that's wild I think every bigger budget movie they make after this and they've never made a huge budget film like what's their most expensive movie true grit I think true grit probably costs like 50 or 60 sure I don't think they've ever gone over that true grid is listed at 35 this is what's crazy about them right because like this still might be their highest budget film was at 40 million dollars 25 years ago it's true 20 years ago it's true 20 years ago is true grid or no country a bigger hit for them at true grit

true grid is the biggest oh my gosh True Gert was a blockbuster.

And then it's like

No Country and Burn After Reading both were really big.

Wow.

Burn After Reading is right up there with wow.

Reading weirdly made almost as much as No Country.

That's like having that much reputation.

And then everything after that is sort of like, well, they keep their budgets low enough that the return on investment's okay.

And like things like...

Big Lebowski that bombed at the time, but obviously have become so profitable through just being like now culturally ubiquitous.

But it felt like this was the last time that they were like, Yeah, if they give us like huge studio money, everyone will come see our movie, and it scares them in a way where they maybe become like incredibly responsible after this.

Uh, this is a mini series on the films of the Cohen brothers, it's called Pod Country for No Cass.

We could have called it the Podcaster Proxy or the Podsucker Castie or many other things.

Yeah, yeah, the Hotsucker Proxy is a bad title.

I've grown used to it,

but it's a bad title.

It's a bad title, it is a bad title.

title.

I mean, a confused child me.

I mean, 14-year-olds.

It's a child me as well.

It is basically designed to be remembered incorrectly.

Right.

And it also doesn't even matter that much to the plot.

Well, he is the titular prop.

It does describe

the central premise, but in the weirdest way.

But what should it be called?

I don't know.

Yeah.

It's not like I'm like, but it should have been called like the Hula Hoop Man.

Like, I don't know what it is.

Or dumb CEO or some like shitty.

Dumb CEO.

Dumb CEO is pretty good.

Dumb CEO would have been pretty good.

Karatov had already made chairman of the board.

Right.

Well, Jacob had already suggested you spell it B-O-R-E-T.

No, actually, this

is 1998.

So they could have called it chairman of the board.

They could have called it chairman of the board.

Can I introduce our guests?

Yeah.

Because it's very exciting.

For the fifth time on this show, entering the Fifth Timers Club, but first time in person.

Wow.

We finally done it.

10 years of our two podcasts coexisting.

We have finally finally crossed the streams with all four of us in the same room on mics.

This has never happened.

This is wild.

This is happening for blank check today and then tomorrow, and I think the episodes will be out in reverse order.

Tomorrow we're recording, we're doing the opposite.

Y'all are coming to Headgum, New York, and recording an episode of Doughboys.

Home and a home.

We're doing a home and a home and then we're ending both of our podcasts, which is cute.

It's over.

So exciting.

We're doing

a murder suicide.

The Patreon, to be clear, stays turned up.

Yeah, Patreon, of course.

We're doing a murder suicide and we're placing bets.

We're creating an online marketplace to place bets on who's doing the murder versus the suicide.

Wow, yeah.

Roger Rabbit.

Roger Rabbit.

They live.

Seven.

1941.

Yeah.

Now this.

So three like huge, kind of classic landmark films for their directors.

And then within this year, 2025, Year of Our Lord, a sort of themed double header of like early whiffs, big budget comedies from legendary directors.

Except 1941, I would argue, kind of stinks.

And this, I would argue, was misunderstood at the time.

This is much, much better than 1941, for sure.

I think this is a legitimately great movie.

I agree.

I love that.

It's 10 out of 10.

I think it's great.

And I've seen it probably a half dozen times.

It's,

you know,

it's so singular.

And I know that that's a weird thing to say about something that's so clearly evoking, like, you know, the screwball comedies of yesteryear, but it, but it, it does, like, it, it, like,

I don't know, it kind of has such a like it existing in 1994 as one of those makes it feel so distinct.

And there's other stuff that's kind of like of that era, but it, but that's doing a similar thing, but it's things like the Tim Burton Batman or the Warren Beatty Dick Tracy.

And those are like tied to IP.

And they also don't have the same sort of like cadence of dialogue, which is such a characteristic of this.

I have a lot of thoughts on on this on why this film transcends.

I think at the time it was written off as being a bit of a pastiche.

And I think that is actually an incorrect label for what this movie is doing and why this movie actually works.

But it makes sense why people were sort of putting up a guard against it.

I do just want to formally introduce our guests.

Oh, right.

I'm googling pastiche as you do that.

So this is perfect.

Yeah.

From the Doughboys podcast.

Italian noodles usually served with sauce.

I could spell it correctly.

I just don't know what it means.

From the Doughboys podcast, Eaton Cohen,

Mike Mitchell.

How you doing?

Did I peek?

And the self-sucker proxy.

There we go.

Nick Weiger.

Wow.

Okay, so self-sucker proxy was submitted by A.J.

McKeon, our production coordinator.

Wow.

Okay, thank you.

And Eaton Cohen was

Eaton.

Eaton

Cohen was submitted by A-L-Z-A-N-D-Y-K

on the Blankies Discord.

We probably know

that person from Doughboys too, I'm sure.

I'm sure there's crossover.

Can I read a couple more?

Yeah, please.

Mr.

Mooseberger.

Okay, I like that.

Guy who always needs the double stitch.

That's

good.

Six-letter word for the condition of the hypothalamus.

Hypothalam.

Yes.

The most liquid businessman on the street.

Yeah, I mean, we're kind of just doing hudsucker jokes now.

An extruded plastic dingus.

That's funny.

This one, out of respect

to Mike Mitchell being in such excellent shape.

Trim Robbins.

Wow.

Trim Robbins.

Hey, that's nice.

You want that Tim Robbins party.

Long.

He's a long fellow.

He is a long fellow.

He is so long.

And out of respect to Nick's recent legal status, a man who isn't allowed near a Hulu because they're, you know, for kids.

Those are all from Hoffbeast.

Very good.

Paul Newman is 5'10.

He's like, he's not a short guy.

Like, he's a sort of regular side.

And Robbins is just like a fucking shoot.

He was a foot taller than him.

Is Robbins 6'6?

I think Robbins might be close to like de Blasio height.

Yeah, he's a tall drink of water.

He's listed at 6'5 ⁇ .

Yeah.

But I like,

am I wrong that he's the tallest Oscar-winning actor ever?

Wow.

That is, so that is wild.

I feel like when I generally am seeing Tim Robbins in movies,

things are blocked to not to de-emphasize right because you don't want him to look insane unless it's part of the plot and here like the cones do the opposite where they're just trying to emphasize like how you know tall and how much he's sticking out like teases hair and

big lumbering galute it's like when bart wears the the the pinstripe suit and the you know in the simpsons to try and look tall all right yeah like it looks like they're making him this cartoon character yeah i we're getting into further all he has the little chihuahua discussion here it's a great bit we're getting to fertile discussion.

I just don't want to go too much further without remembering to play the drop.

Ben.

I think we have a little drop.

Oh my god.

A drop.

This is exciting.

I never thought of Yoda as like a sexual creature.

Until Yattle, honestly.

Did Yoda in Yattle?

Did Yoda in Yattle fuck?

Yeah, I would think they probably fucked.

You think they really fucked?

That's really funny.

Buddha Man.

Hello.

Oh my God.

Well, good.

And that's canon.

Until JJ came and fucking wiped it off.

You know what?

Hearing how much our podcast sucks on your podcast just makes me feel bad.

We're a guest.

Well, these are two podcasts that have discussed Yattle because we discussed

a lot of Yattle.

Plenty back when we did the prequels.

First year of our podcast, only prequel talk.

There's not enough Yoda and Yattle crossover in the movies,

in my opinion.

I mean, I'm sure there's backstories and comics and stuff like that.

But that's why it's to me, it's so funny that somebody, George Lucas, I i guess yeah was like should we just like put a wig on a yoda puppet and have one another one be there you know in the in the council who doesn't talk or do anything and they're like sure and then like the fans are like so what's up with yattle like and no one's just gonna be like i don't know man we put a wig on a yoda it's wild for there to basically be she has a wig on she has like hair like there are they are the only two of the same species on the council and they never interact with each other no never once she doesn't say anything she never says anything.

We don't even give it to her nod in a fucked up way.

Right.

Like, it'd be funny.

She was like, hey, guys, that would be wow.

There'd be a lot of questions.

In one of the Disney Plus cartoon things recently, they did a standalone episode on her backstory, and I think she was voiced by Bryce Dellas.

Dude, that's all bullshit.

They really do that.

Yeah.

But the backstory, the original official backstory to Yattle was that she was like a youngling, a Padwan or whatever.

And then she was like kidnapped in some battle.

And she was a POW and she lived in a pit for like 150 years.

She figured out how to turn the force into nourishment to survive.

And then they saved her.

And all the other Jedis were like, I think she deserves to be made a master.

And Yoda put his foot down.

He was like, she doesn't have enough time in the field.

And they were like, she goes in a fucking pit.

Is this real?

Now that's all it's all wiped away.

But the original JJ, you know, goes to the Yoda was like, I don't want another one of my species coming in.

Like, this is just for me.

In Canon, Dooku killed her.

Like, now in Canon,

in that cartoon.

Yeah, sexual jealousy.

And also, they've never named Yoda's species.

Gattle and Grogu are all just Yoda's species.

Right.

Oh, Grogu.

I forgot about Grogu.

The story of 2026 is The Mandalorian and Grogu.

How did you forget about Grogu?

He's probably going to like play ping pong with a porg or whatever.

It'll be great.

God, this is going to be so big.

Was it Iger who was it Iger who was like, Let me see that my billion-dollar baby or whatever.

Wasn't that his thing about

Krogu?

Yeah.

I don't care if you like The Mandalorian.

I'm like, whatever on The Mandalorian.

I think you're too much of a sour puss about baby.

Baby Yodis.

Krogu's good.

Yeah.

I think.

I mean, look, am I being a hypocrite?

Remained innocent while everything else about that show has gone.

They kind of partly never did much Grogu.

They've been.

Instead, The Mandalorian became all about like, do you want to learn about like Mandalorian politics?

And I was just like, no

not at all i'm a hypocrite that i i love the idea of yattle and don't like uh grogu what if you would you like grogu if you found out that yattle was grogu's mom yes i i would love to see a young yattle

young yattle and then like story yattle childbirth scene yeah i wouldn't mind seeing a yattle childbirth scene you will like grogu you will agree to like grogu if yattle is grogu's mom and they show the conception on I need to see the conception happen.

Was it another Yoda?

You know, is it?

No, it's just some guy.

It could just be a man.

Has he waited?

Has Lucas weighed in on Grogu?

Because I know of him holding the baby on, which is kind of cool.

I was like, very cool.

That's fun.

Yeah.

It's going back to what you're saying about Yattle.

It's this was a time that the Phantom Menace comes out.

This is a time before I feel like everyone knows the term world building.

And so a creative decision like that is like, oh, yeah, we'll just put another one like that.

you know, another Yoda with a wig on, like you were saying, it's just like, that becomes a thing that informs decades of fan theorizing.

But I guess like world building sometimes is as simple as just like, hey, we'll just put some shit in the background and then let people speculate.

Can I make a deal with you guys?

I like Grogu, but Babu Frick can burn in hell.

How's that?

I think that's fine, actually.

Really?

And I mean, I like Babu Frick, but like, I could lose Babu Frick.

It's okay.

We can lose him.

I never think that's the thing.

Babu Frick is from the bad movie.

Like the movie where it's like, there's no way into defending that movie.

He's so hard.

He's good.

He's funny.

Yeah.

Do you think?

Yeah, maybe he's bad.

Do you think there is like a room of like 800 writers right now working night and day trying to come up with what is the Grogu version of Chicken Jockey for the movie next year?

Like everyone.

You saying like, oh, he's playing ping pong.

Like they're just.

What is the thing we can have Grogu do that will go viral?

That's a great.

Yeah.

Oh, boy.

That's a good question.

That must.

Really?

That is like a deeply cynical world that you are projecting that is for sure going to happen.

There are 10% how you like those moments.

What is our memeable moment?

What is the thing that Grogu is going to do physically in relation to something else?

Like him eating the eggs or whatever.

Yeah.

Maybe crawling back into Yattle's womb.

Right.

You keep pushing that.

Who made the drop?

Was that Ben?

No, that was the Drop King.

Wow, the Drop King.

The drop.

How about that?

out of retirement hey dk thanks for making our podcast sound like shit

thanks a lot

yeah um yes of course nick and mitch are joining us from the doughboys podcast if anyone doesn't know about that i don't know i'm sure everyone um but yes a northeast podcast mini tour conveniently create an opportunity for you guys to uh stop over in new york for a couple days he's we're thrilled to be here right oh my god what a treat to see

home i mean this sincerely the reason that we're here is probably to do this episode more so than do our tour.

I think that is probably accurate.

Wyx is not a big travel person.

Yeah, no, I'm not like it's a nightmare, but I find it, buddy.

I'm happy to be here.

Like, I'm happy.

I always love coming into the city when I have a reason to do so.

And so we're over here for some tour dates anyway.

So yeah, but I'm glad we can figure out some studio time.

And to talk about a great New York movie.

Wow.

How about that?

That's true.

It is true.

It is true.

It's a, you know, New York, Art Deco, New York, fantasy, New York.

I'm going to cite many things in this movie as being one of my favorite things of all.

There's no way one minute of this thing filmed in New York, right?

No, it's in North Carolina.

Entirely in Wilmington, North Carolina.

In the big studios.

But they went so

hogwild on the buildings and the miniatures for this that they basically were reused for the next decade.

So the city of this movie is repurposed and obviously built upon, redesigned.

for both Schumacher Batmans.

That makes so much sense.

For Roland Emerit Godzilla, there are like five other blockbusters that used this city as a starting point.

That's like my first note was like, this is like Batman.

Like, that's exactly it.

Off the mask.

Yes.

That's great.

Yeah.

There's.

No wonder that movie's good.

Batman Forever.

Because it's built on the bones.

Built on the bones of Hudsucker.

Yeah.

It's true.

I'm serious.

No, I agree with you.

It is funny, though, to think about it.

We've talked so much about how bizarre it is that for like six years, the takeaway from the success of Batman was people love like art deco pastiche

films.

Rather than superhero movies, it was really like sort of nightmare dystopian cities, right?

And that this is kind of like a throwback comedy building off of I guess people like this vibe.

But yeah, by the time this comes out, a bunch of those other movies were already bombing.

Oh, the shadow uses these buildings as well.

Oh, sure.

That makes sense.

A great movie I just rewatched.

And when you say pastiche, you mean an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period, correct?

Yeah.

Weiger, hey, will you hand Mitch back its phone?

It's not nice to keep it from him.

He's having to recite things like this.

Just off the top of my head, I know.

I just rolled back in his head like a mentor.

Incredible.

So everyone was like, when this came out, you read the reviews, and there was this early Cohen thing of like, these guys are too good, right?

In a way where like a lot of the old guard critical community was like, we get it.

These guys are like technically perfect and they're so clever and they've seen a lot of movies and they read a lot of books and all their stuff is really kind of like self-referential.

It's really sort of like, look at what we know and we're toying off the history of narrative and film and whatever it is.

And I think it reached an apex with this, which is like they're getting studio money to build this sort of like reproduction of like these screwball comedies they grew up loving.

And

everyone's complaint was like, it is like technically incredible.

The production design on this thing and the cinematography and all of it's like unbelievable, but it's like in a hermetic glass case.

It has no feeling.

It's all ironic.

It's all distanced.

Like it's all cynical.

It's all passionless, which they've always pushed back against.

I think this is like arguably their single most sincere movie.

And in certain ways, they're most like nakedly emotional.

But the other thing that I like push back on, David's thinking that I'm not sure about that, but it's more sincere than people gave it credit at the time, which is true of almost every Cohen movie, I think, that often there was a critical element that was kind of like, we get it with your references and you're sort of like, you know, this is so self-aware.

And, you know, and I think that's often the fair.

The thing that boggles my mind is the people who are pushing back on them the most.

And I keep repeating this point, but it's a thing you always see when like young people come out the gate with big hits where a certain percentage of the community will push back and being like, let's not anoint them as masters too quickly.

Like, let them prove themselves before we start like elevating people too high.

Can I guess who was pushing back on it?

A certain New York critic, Jay Sherman.

Oh, he thought it stunk.

He said it stunk.

But after.

Sherman thought it.

He said it stinks.

I don't know.

This is my pushback on the pastiche thing: is that people were like, oh, it's just them doing a Sturgis movie, or it's them doing a Preston,

a Sturgis movie, or a Capra movie, or a Hawks movie.

Like, people kept saying it's a different type of movie.

Speaking of films that spanned like a 30-year stretch, what I actually think they're doing in this movie is like mashing up 50 years of film.

This is basically the first five decades of like movie-making styles all put together, which to me is what stops it from being a pastiche, where movies like this often feel airless if it's like the good German thing where Soderbergh's like, I'm going to try to make it exactly as if.

I'm going to get the cameras from 1941 and study Casablanca and study the framing and just redo this.

And that becomes too much of a a technical exercise.

This movie is like, hear me out, kind of closer to Star Wars.

And that Lucas was sort of like, what do I take from like Westerns and samurai films and Arthurian legend and like combined all these things together?

But because what the Coans are doing is just different decades of comedy, I think it got smushed together to people of just they're riffing on one thing, but they're actually picking and choosing from like different comedic movements in film, in my opinion.

There's also like a commonality between this and Star Wars and the presence of Yaddle.

This is true.

Yeah, Yaddle's Yaddle.

Yado's, she's one of the board members.

Yeah.

In that scene where they see all the old white guys.

Yeah.

She's the one that Yaddle kind of sticks out.

David,

this episode is brought to you, The Listener.

by Mubi, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema from around the globe.

From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there is always something new to discover with movie each and every film is hand selected so you can explore the best of cinema streaming anytime anywhere and here's a hand selection here's a here's a spotlight nothing more to discuss here everything's wait what's david what turn the spotlight on i've put my glove on to select by hand

Through the creak of the door, we have three different visuals going on.

The glove to hand pick.

Of course.

David Mussolini, Colin, son of the century.

It is,

look,

it's an exciting project, but it's really funny to be like, guys, Mussolini!

Here's what's funny about it.

Just to peel back the curtain for a second.

We get like messages that are like, hey, you guys good with this ad?

Yeah, here's the copy for the ad.

And as shorthand, it was texted to us as, you guys good with the Mussolini ad?

And I was like, Mussolini sponsoring the podcast?

What do you mean?

To be clear, we decry Ilduce Mussolini, Benito Mussolini, the terrible dictator of Italy.

But we celebrate Joe Wright and his newest project.

The filmmaker Joe Wright

has created

an eight-episode series about Mussolini's rise to power.

And I will say not to sound like a, you know, a little nerd over here, but it is actually very interesting to consider Mussolini's rise to power in these times.

You know, he was sort of the original fascist and the way that he sees power in Italy is

unfortunately something we should probably have on our minds right now.

I'm not trying to be a loser right now.

You sound like me right now.

This is the kind of thing I say.

It's a very interesting part of history, and I feel like because, you know, other World War II things became

whatever, the history channel's favorite thing, you don't hear quite as much about Wessel in these fashions.

Yes, no, you're right, unfortunately, sadly, tragically, frighteningly.

He's not a hugely this is a hyper-relevant time.

And this is a theatrical, hyper-visual tour deforest starring Luca Marionelli.

Martin Eden himself.

Remember that?

A beloved member of the Old Guard.

That's right.

Movie I Love.

An episode that people considered normal.

All right, well, sequel.

Checking notes here.

Great.

They start calling it a towering performance of puffed up vanity.

It features an era-bending score by Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers.

That's cool.

Imagine Techno Beats scoring fascist rallies.

It just sounds kind of Joe Wrighty.

It does.

Joe Wright.

You know, he won't just do a typical costume drama.

He likes to, you know, think about things in a different way.

Got futurism,

surreal stagecraft, cutting-edge visuals.

Guardian calls it, quote, a...

brilliantly performed portrait of a pathetic monster.

It's part political burlesque, part urgent contemporary warning about how democracies fall.

This is heavy ad copy, guys.

Usually it's kind of like, eh, shorts.

Critics are saving words.

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Financial Times.

Yeah.

No, it's Joe Wright,

one of the scarier people I ever interviewed.

I've told you that story, right?

He knows he's kind of a cool guy.

We've batted him already.

He's certainly gotten interesting.

He's very interesting.

He's very interesting.

And he's made some great movies and he's made some big swings that didn't totally connect.

Totally.

That's really interesting.

He actually is a blank check filmmaker, unlike a lot of some people.

I get suggested, you're like, sure.

It doesn't fit the model.

This one does.

This one does.

Look, to stream great films at home, you can try movie free for 30 days at movie.com/slash blank check.

That's mu bi.com/slash blank check for a month of great cinema for free.

You can watch Mussolini or you can watch not Mussolini things.

Yeah, they got lots of movies.

I got a lot of things.

Bye.

David.

Okay, okay.

I'll be very quiet.

Oh, I'm used to it.

Producer Ben is sleeping.

Oh,

Hazzie, Hazzy boy is

getting some

seasy

with multiple dashes.

What's he sleeping on?

He's sleeping on one of the new beds we got from Wayfair for the studio for our podcast naps.

But this is a big opportunity for us.

We get to do the first ad read for Wayfair on this podcast.

No, no, Griffin, you're clearly not listening to past recordings.

Ben did a Wayfair ad for us recently.

You listen to past recordings?

Yeah, sometimes.

That's psycho behavior.

It is.

Look.

He did that when we were sleeping?

Look, apparently we need to talk about how when you hear the word game day,

you might not think Wayfair, but you should.

Because Wayfair is the best kept secret for incredible and affordable game day finds.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Absolutely.

And just try to, David, just, if you could please maintain a slightly quiet, we don't have to go full whisper.

I just want to remind you that Haas is sleeping.

I mostly just think of Wayfair as a website where you can get basically anything.

Yeah, of course, but Wayfair is also the ideal place to get game day essentials, bigger selection, created collections, options for every budget/slash price point.

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Okay, fine.

Okay, all right.

Sorry.

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If you for game day specifically, Griffin, you can think about things like recliners and TV stands, sure.

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David, you have like basically a football team worth of family at home.

You got a whole team to cheer up.

This is true.

You need cribs.

Your place must be lousy with cribs.

I do have fainting beds.

I have cribs.

Sconces?

Chaise lounges?

I'm low on sconces.

Maybe it's time to pick up a few.

This is the kind of thing that would make your home team cheer.

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Don't wake Aussie.

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Cleveland Browns, of course, Vonte Mack, no matter what.

Okay, that's the end of the app, right?

Griffin, what was your way in for this movie?

And at what point does it enter your personal top 10?

Yeah, cohen brothers uh uh lover

no country for all men i was like obsessed with but that was sort of it felt like a culmination of me getting into them for years and years and years and being like this is a masterpiece this is their like crowning achievement in that like stupid 2007 competition it felt like between like are you a no country guy or there will be blood guy i was it was my one semester in film school and i was like so defensively stumping the real answer is no jack obviously hell yeah wow But I do, I do have no country right up there.

It's an incredible movie.

I think the year after that, MoMA does a retrospective of all their movies up until that point.

And I go and see this and Barton Fink in the same day, which at that point were maybe the only two I hadn't seen.

And it was a chance to see them in theaters.

And I was like, oh, I'm going to see the weird one that no one likes.

And then after that, I'm going to see the one that's like their most critically beloved in a way.

And this screens first and truly from the first moment is one of my favorite openings in movies of just like you have silent title, like seven title cards, and then just like the music kicks in, the most beautiful miniature shot with like just perfect little like microfiber snow and Bill Cobb going, that's right, New York.

Wait, is the first thing the suicide or is it?

Tim Robbins in front of the job board.

It's the suicide for the camera.

The first thing the camera pushes for the entire city

to reveal him stepping out into into the route and then it then the clock goes backwards right right yeah right but then i think it first it's it's then it's tim robbins at the job board and then uh hudsucker drops yes but i i truly i think from that moment was like holy shit what the fuck is this like felt chills and then walked out remember texting my dad i think this is one of my 10 favorite movies of all time Like it was kind of an immediate love at first sight thing.

Yeah, this is a very Griffin movie.

I mean, this is not surprising.

I was going to say...

That it's riffing on are like my favorite era of movies and comedies and aesthetics like and you wish like every woman was like

yeah yeah like you want jennifer jasonly like that's your kind of lady everything about this is like the world i want to live you kind of wish everyone was like

yeah yeah

wait i'm getting really turned on david

but yeah it was like right a thing i had put off seeing for a while because i was like right that's the weird left-handed one i knew it also right as the one the you know the empire magazine so the world would be like yeah hudsuckers that's the weird one it's the one no one liked i going into this thing that there hasn't been like a

like a more in recent years reclamation of the screen i think it's happened in the last happen okay okay i think it's become more accepted as like yeah they they never made bad movies the metrograph theater here in new york now screens it every holiday season

within the week between christmas and new year's and that feels like there is some mild canonization happening i did not realize it was like a christmas new year's movie when i was first going into it.

I always put forward that it's like this and Harry Matt Sally are the two best New Year's movies because there aren't a lot of good New Year's movies.

No.

What are other good New Year's?

Well, New Year's Day, obviously.

Two great Marshall.

Two great New York movies, though.

Two great New York movies.

Yeah.

Strange Days at New Year's Day.

Strange Days.

Strange Days for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sometimes any kind of turn of the millennium movie is sort of rightly a New Year's movie.

Rudolph Shiny New Year.

That's yeah, that's I think that.

Yeah, that's definitely that.

To to me that's a new year's movie little baby new year big ears

i i griff this does seem like such a

such a you movie in many ways like uh i could see people walking to this meeting being very confused by it back in the day and it feels like it could be a divisive movie and also just the fact that it is like an alternate it feels weirdly even still watching it feels weirdly modern even though of course it's whatever the it is i also like i think in a certain way culture is caught up to this movie like this is them combining the vibes of the 1900s through the 1950s into a movie in the 1990s that was a little prescient about like corporate culture that has only grown since then.

Sure.

It feels like this film is in certain ways a reaction to them trying to make sense of how to be personal artists within like a massive industry.

Like, I think the oddly personal aspect of this film, beyond it just being like the two of them and Sam Raimi, being like, what's the kind of movie we love?

What's the kind of thing that would be so much fun to make?

Is also like the idea of trying to make something pure within this like huge lumbering machinery is like trying to convince a board to sell a hula hoop, which is like standing up and being like, you know, and like there's sand inside.

So I'm looking at New Year's movies.

The problem is a lot of them are Christmas movies and that doesn't count.

To me, if you're more of a Christmas movie, you don't count.

But I do think Phantom Thread gets the New Year's title.

Oh, because it's got an iconic New Year's party in it that has become kind of like, I feel like people are always posting a picture of it.

I agree with that.

I don't know, man.

Ghostbusters 2 is a New Year's movie.

It is.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Can I say another one that doesn't, isn't technically a New Year's movie, but I do think it is a New Year's movie.

Go ahead.

Gremlins 2.

They're in the lobby and they're singing New York, New York, and they're doing a countdown.

That's not really New Year's Eve.

But it's New Year's coded.

It's New Year's coded.

It's New Year's countdown.

Yes.

Because Gremlins 1 is Christmassy, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

Gremlins 1 is explicitly Christmasy.

Right.

Here's, I think, a reason why I love this so much as a New Year's movie.

It starts with Tim Robbins about to jump at 11.55, right?

And Bill Cobb just being like, a week ago, this guy was the head of a company.

How has he fallen so low that he's about to kill himself?

And the movie comes back around to this guy, like getting the girl at 12.05.

Right.

Like, it's a movie about, for me, that feeling I always have on New Year's that is just like the idea.

of the highest highs and the lowest lows yes like this forced kind of like introspection and retrospection combined with this notion of like a hope of something great happening

I'll just just say for me my way into this movie was Mitch talked about it being a blockbuster film My parents rented this when I was a kid worked and I watched this well no they I we watch like well yes I guess it worked and the the

rent got them directed i'm saying that yeah the cover worked yeah No, you're correct.

I thought you were saying something different.

The movie did not work on me as a kid because I was just baffled by it.

Did your parents like it?

I remember my parents laughing at it and me not understanding what was going on and just being like, this movie is weird.

Why are they talking to it?

Your parents didn't like it either?

No, my parents did like it.

They enjoyed the movie.

But like,

I revisited this movie in adulthood and was like, oh, wait, I actually really like this.

And I've watched it a few times since.

And again, I've mentioned my wife really loves this movie.

So like, but

it is kind of

unmooring as a viewer.

Like, if you don't know what you're getting into, you're kind of, you're unsettled.

That sounds like that's what your viewing was, Mitch.

For a little bit.

I mean, like, I was, I was shocked at what I was watching.

I had, I just, I knew nothing about it.

And I did not, I hadn't, I had no idea what it was about at all.

So it was, it was a lot to take in.

Also, do you think your parents will regret showing you that movie when you jump out of the podcast building in like 10 years or whatever when you pull a hudsucker

when we're in headgum Dubai or wherever the hell we are.

Hell yeah.

Getting like blood.

There's some like withered husk of a you know headgum hunk and you're like getting his blood put into you.

Um, do you remember when you saw it for the first time?

Yeah, college.

100%.

It was college.

DVD.

Yes.

Well, there was a little service called Love Film.

I brought, have you ever brought this up before?

But it was the, the, Britain's Netflix before Netflix bought it and consumed it.

Um, but it was the original UK, the old discs.

You get the discs in the mail.

And I was already obsessed with the Cohens.

And so I was filling in my gaps.

I 100% remember, like, and just love at first sight watching it on my little 10-inch TV by my bed.

I watched a lot of great movies there.

I mean, I had the miraculous thing of getting to see it projected on film for the first time.

And then I bought it on DVD and was like obsessively showing it to people.

And I had to keep being like, you can't imagine how good this looks.

Like as good as it looks on a 10-inch screen, it's one of those movies where you're like, the effects actually hold up the better resolution you see it in versus a lot of movies of this era where you're like, it actually benefits from watching in lower res.

Do you think this is the most?

I wrote this down, and

I'm asking you guys because you're experts.

Is this the most like kind of Lynchian Cohen brothers movie or Terry Gilliam kind of a

there's definitely some Gilliam in there?

Yeah,

it's interesting.

The Lynchy thing, I mean, I

feel like Lynch and

the Cohens are both similarly obsessed with like

old eras of speaking, right?

Like

the time-specific, era-specific dialects, that part of it, I think, evoke something.

Like Lynch movies will have one character show up and talk like this.

Yeah.

And also, I mean, the bellboy at time, like the elevator boy seems like kind of like a nightmare sequencey at some point.

Barton Fink is very

similar.

Yeah, that's the thing.

Barton Fink seems so much to me, though,

when I was watching this, I was like, Barton Fink seems so much more in the real world than this feeling.

Sure, which is true.

It is.

You're right.

It's actually more about reality than this is.

But that's no, I, I, I mean, like, if we're looking for, no, no, I was just going to say, if we're going to look for a director as a point of comparison, I, to me, it, and maybe it's just, it's just because a Batman is right there, but I just, it feels like a Tim Burton film in a lot of ways, especially like, like, it's just such a broad, arch morality play, and then just with some light fantastical elements that also exists in a time and place that's both specific but non-specific.

It doesn't actually exist.

Well, it's what I love about the opening, beyond it being such a beautiful shot and the score being so great and whatever, but the opening line of the movie being that's right, which I just find so funny as a joke to start a movie with a response to a thing that wasn't like asked and then just saying like, that's right, New York City, which is basically the movie pointing and being like, you need to accept that this is New York City.

This does not look like reality.

We're in like Fantasia.

We're never going to see the sun in a weird sort of way.

There's no like baseline normalcy that this movie is going to veer off from.

We're starting in like a fairy tale picture book world.

Elevator board, of course, Jim True Frost.

Everyone knows Jim True Frost, or am I the only wire fan here?

Oh, he's in the wire.

He's Prez.

Oh, my God.

Oh, wait.

The teacher.

He's a little wild.

He's also buzzed.

He's got the fuzz.

He makes the elevator do what she does.

That's right.

That's wow.

It's funny because him on The Wire.

I know you haven't watched The Wire, Griff, I think, right?

I've not.

I've been too busy watching Greg the Bunny.

Right.

On The Wire, he plays

kind of a soft-spoken, squirrely cop who's bad at his job.

Like, he does not play a guy who's like, hey, man, boss, how you doing?

Like, it's like, it's funny to see him doing that.

I knew I knew him.

He was like

overly drawn out and kind of sluggish on the wire.

He's really good.

It's a great on that.

Yeah.

Season four of The Wire is the Greg the Bunny perspective, Griff.

So it's a good crossover if you want to watch.

When Sean Baker won all the Oscars for Anora, I was like, I should go back and watch Greg the Bunny because it's so incongruous that he created Greg the Bunny.

And it's so funny to think back to like, that's where he was 20 years ago.

And now he's like the king of indie cinema.

And then I rewatched the full season of Greg the Bunny and realized, oh, he had nothing to do with the Fox show.

He and the other guy created it for cable access.

And then that guy developed it for Fox.

And I I was like, well, I just watched 13 episodes of Greg the Bunny for no reason.

He was hanging out with it.

It's okay.

I think everyone said that when they watched Greg the Bunny, so you're not alone.

Because it was Stephen Levittan did it for Fox.

Well, he was the old hand they brought in with Dan Milano, who was the co-creator and the puppeteer.

And then Dan Milano becomes a robot chicken guy.

Okay.

Yeah.

I just completed the entire Greg Bunny family tree.

I made sense of how it came into existence.

Thank you.

John John Harkness, film critic, writing for Sight and Sound

in 1994 when this film came out, reviewed this movie in a real, like, I'm going to reveal that the Emperor has no clothes.

These guys are like all flash and no substance.

His headline was The Sphinx Without a Riddle.

Sure.

But they describe the movie.

That's a really weird purn.

Yes.

He describes the movie as, Norville Barnes is a Preston Sturges hero trapped in a Frank Frank Capra story and never the twain shall meet, especially not in a world that seems to have been created by Fritz Lang.

Right.

And you're getting at your mashup idea.

Right.

That he's like, it's two different styles of like a kind of Hollywood drama D and Hollywood pure like screwball comedy in a sort of dystopian, almost German expressionist relic.

of an idea of city building and world building, right?

And he also says, obviously, the Jennifer Jason Lee character is like a Howard Hawks character.

And his whole read is that the movie's mashup is fundamentally wrong because you can't put a Sturgis character in a crap.

You can't just take all these things and put them together.

He's also like, they're incompatible

worldviews.

But I think he misidentified it.

I think this movie, Not to Get Too Eggheady, is Capra character in a Sturgis world.

His argument is the character's too cynical in a world that's too pure.

Yeah, no.

And it's the other way around.

He's a sweetie pie.

Right.

My first word of advice for this guy is chill out, nerd.

Agree.

You got to chill out.

Is he still alive?

I don't even know.

Unfortunately, he's passed away.

He's passed away.

All right.

Well, chill out.

Rest in peace and chill out.

Like, even no matter what, even if you have some of these complaints or something, like there's no denying that this movie looks beautiful and is like it's funny.

There was stuff when I was watching it when I first saw Jennifer Jason Lee doing her thing.

And I was like, this is a really big performance.

And as the movie went on, I was like, this is great.

It's what this is what the world is.

I'm accepting it for what it is.

Views at the time, and people really singled her out as like

bombs the whole thing.

Oh, that's why they let her do this voice.

And they're like, She came in for the audition and had the voice, and we were like, Yeah, of course.

Yeah, why wouldn't she do that voice?

This character wouldn't make sense.

Yeah, this character would be dumb if she didn't target.

They were like, Thank God she like prepped this.

Yes, it is big.

I mean,

when I first, when I was first seeing it, I was like, This is, this is big, but everything is big.

Exactly.

It's, it's a, I don't know, it's a pretty astonishing performance yeah on a technical level it is insane who's your fave who's everyone's fave well that my

stat cast yeah my whole thought about it when so when i first saw it and she was being really big and then when it comes around and she like humanizes the character and and you know like uh what's his name who's uh the robbins who's a hayseed is kind of like you put on this attitude and then at the end you kind of see it breaking but she's still remaining the same character you're like that is a good performance there's no denying i think she is the best performance in the movie she is is certainly my nominee.

Yes.

That's your one nomination?

Yes.

Yeah.

Supporting or lead?

Supporting.

Can I tell you who I think is number one?

I think Yattle is probably the best.

He is good.

I mean, she's, this is a hotness conversation, obviously.

Now, there is Yattle number one.

James Urbaniac.

Bill Cobb's number two.

Friend of the show.

Past and future guests.

James Urbaniac, the great James Urbaniac.

Who is capable of going, huh?

I was going to say, this is a shared favorite movie of ours.

And every time we hang hang out, we just like talk about this movie again.

Cause we've always

fit perfectly.

Yeah.

And he always points out it's one of his, he says it's one of his favorite moments of like performance he's ever seen.

There is the scene where Tim Robbins is explaining what he imagines Amy Archer looks like.

Right.

When he's like talking trash about her.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

After she's published the slam piece.

And he's like, she's probably one of those women who's gotten infected with the cultural idea that she doesn't need a man or whatever it is.

And she starts to get flustered.

Like it's clearly kind of getting to her where she wants him to be attracted to her, even if it's only a version of her that he doesn't know, whatever, right?

And she has this moment where she says, like, well, maybe she's one of those women who cares more about her work than her exterior appearance.

But with her hands, while she's saying work, she gestures to her hair and makeup.

And when she says personal appearance, she mimes writing down.

Yes, yeah.

Yeah, like writing down and like on a typewriter.

And it's such a funny inversion.

It's great.

Yeah, she's, she's great in this.

I mean, my other secret favorite in this is Charles Derning, who I think is unbelievable.

He's so funny in that, you know, in the outfit too.

I love his little halo.

All of it.

But like when we, in the straight story episode, you were saying, is there an argument to be made for Harry Dean Stanton getting an Oscar nomination for saying one line 30 seconds at the end of the film because of how well he does it?

The first time I saw this movie when I didn't think Charles Derning was coming back, he's third billed in the opening credits and then immediately jumps out a window.

I was like, he earned that billing just for the silent contemplation of the suicide.

My favorite is

the piston.

He kind of goes into like Usain Bolt, like into his stance where he's about to, you know, go.

He nails the comeback.

He maybe is my favorite.

He is such a hilarious looking person.

He is one of my.

I am not trying to body shame Charles Derning, but God bless that body of his.

Well, so he has this like great dance background.

Right.

We talked about it recently that I shamefully have never seen Best Little Horror House in Texas, but watch his number all the time.

But he's got dance training.

And you see in like the way.

And also he like, to be clear, fought on Omaha Beach.

Like, and I'm like, yeah, funny body old there, Derning.

Like, he's like in a war gear.

On the front lines of D-Day, there's an incredible YouTube video of Tom Hanks introducing him at a D-Day anniversary event.

He fought on Omaha Beach in World War II.

I don't know if it was another FEC.

I've been told.

I've been fighting a person, fighting some guy.

Not during war.

It'd be funny if I was like, I was on Omaha Beach.

What's the, isn't there some movie where there's a joke?

Oh, no, it's the SNL Goodbye Saigon sketch where Will Farrell keeps having the Vietnam flashbacks.

And one of the other characters, like, he served, and they were like, no, he just went to Vietnam on vacation.

If anything bad happened, I think he lost his luggage.

I have a boring like a true war hero.

He's one of my favorites, but I do have a boring answer.

My favorite lemonade maker.

Yeah, Mr.

Newman.

He's just so good.

It's a joy to see a great like that, a titan, like be a silly guy.

Well, and just also agree to do this, which is kind of amazing.

And this is that era where like and he's hot, by the way.

Oh my god.

He takes his shirt off.

Shut up the shirt off.

His shirt off for the fucking massage.

It's It's insane.

It's insane how handsome that guy was up until his dying day.

And probably still looks pretty fucking handsome.

Is he in the 70s here?

Let's dig him up.

We got to dig him up.

We got to see how he looks.

He was born in 1925.

So he would have been like about 70, like about hitting 70 soon.

He's getting the massage shirtless.

And then he stands up and just, you know.

He's got the towel around him or whatever.

My torso has never looked that good in my life.

Nick.

It looks fucking incredible.

Come on.

You look good.

That's nice of you to say, Mitch, but I'm going to look like fucking Paul Newman.

Nick is looking good.

By the way, I've been in the room with Nick before, but never for the podcast.

But Nick's looking good.

Nick's looking good.

She's looking good.

Mitch is looking pretty good.

I already told Mitch he's looking good.

But I got to say on Mike that Mitch is looking pretty good.

It's too confident.

Look, Nick, I think it's only fair.

By the way, quickly, anything you want to say about David?

David, Griff?

You guys are looking good.

In fact, I'll put it in terms I think you like more.

Man.

Wages,

I think you should take your shirt off.

I think we should see how.

This isn't a video podcast.

You see if you've got 70-something Newman energy.

People will just have to take a look at the word.

No, Newman is a, he's a babe.

He is a babe.

It's that era of Newman where I feel like in the 80s, if it was like, you know, he, he gets all serious.

I mean, he was always a very serious actor, right?

But he's playing like these really.

And then in the 90s, it's like, what if I'm like a rascal?

You know, like, nobody's fooled, right?

These movies where it's like, everyone everyone loves old blue-eyed Newman, right?

Like, so like.

That's this run of like him playing a grump or like the verdict where it's like a guy who's kind of lost his way.

Fucked up in the verdict.

And then Color of Money, it's sort of like, you know, he's hot.

Like, let's just like still admit that he's like a hottie.

But this is him playing like an absolute cartoon villain.

It is so funny to see him not be an anti-hero, not be a guy who's like sort of at odds with himself, but just like a cartoonishly evil person.

And they talk about that they were just like, don't try to find any depth in this right this is the same year as nobody's fool actually wow it's a good movie play it real but like do not try to humanize this guy don't try to find a core of what animates him he is an evil businessman who likes being evil and smoking cigars he's great he's so he's so good i he's he is probably my mvp and i i do hope that Blank check can get a nod from the Newman Estate to dig him up so we can see how

I think we should dig him up.

He probably looks good.

Can we get like a sub-license from them to label label this a Newman's own podcast?

Fuck, guys.

He was cremated.

Fuck.

Disaster.

Oh, here's a real question.

I bet those ashes look pretty good.

Let's dig him up.

Did they donate his eyes to science?

I don't think so.

I'm sorry.

Jerry Orbach, you know, is the famous eye donator.

Yeah.

Do you guys notice that Jerry Orbach donated his eyes?

And for years in New York City, there'd be subway ads promoting

true New York legend, to be clear.

Jerry Orbach, one of the great New Yorkers.

But they would just have these big ads that were like Jerry Orbach's headshot, and it would say, like, he gave his eyes to science.

That's what you consider it.

I think my eyes are a little too tiny for science.

I don't know if they were.

I've got very tiny eyes.

So maybe they would like to study them, Rags.

I don't know.

Yeah, maybe.

Yeah.

Worth preserving.

Newman only did.

He's seen some things.

Excluding cars.

He only did four films after this year.

So after this,

Nobody's Fooled is this same year?

Same year.

And he gets an Oscar nomination after Nobody's Fool.

And you're you're counting that as one of the four yeah so i'm saying after then it's where the money is he did do that road to perdition yeah that was his final film role on on stage right cars is amazing right last uh uh theatrical release he's the voice of a fucking car in cars he's really good now excuse me he's the voice of the car he's a judge show him some respect he is a judge yeah but that's also he used he won like the old cup yeah cars could take multitudes what do you mean you can't limit him to one profession he was 83 years old.

The fourth movie he made was Message in a Bottle, right?

Well, you've only named three of the live actions.

Message in a Bottle, Indeed, which she's Message in a Bottle, nobody's the Costner movie.

Where the Money Is.

No, no, no, I'm not counting nobody's face.

Okay, so then Where the Money Is.

Message in a Bottle, Roach Medicine, and you're forgetting Twilight.

Sexy thriller Twilight.

I always think Twilight was earlier.

Yeah, it's Hackman and Newman being sexy together.

Two sexy 70-somethings.

Yeah.

And so there are a lot of like burly chests in that movie.

Yeah.

You know, and like wiry chests.

I've never seen Twilight.

I've never seen Twilight.

I've seen one scene from Twilight many times.

There is a famous nude scene in Twilight.

She.

Oh.

Paul Newman shows Sack.

No one's

Witherspoon has one scene I've studied extensively.

Never seen Twilight.

Also, Robert.

Paul Newman shows off the twins.

Benton did Nobody's Fool with him and then he did Twilight with him.

Yeah.

There's a story because Leo Schreiber's in that one scene I've seen many times.

And he has a story about Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward visiting him on set and walking away when they were getting ready to do a take.

And he just looks at her and then looks back to Leo Schreiber and goes, what an ass on her.

Yeah.

Joanne Woodward.

Yeah.

And Schneiber was like, this is like rules that this guy's still so fucking horny.

He's so Schriber's wife and he's like, come on, Leev, you want to take a piece of that.

But she was like, respectfully, as if he was looking at the Mona Lisa.

Look at that ass.

God, he should have won an Oscar for saying that.

Yeah.

Just for that line off.

Yeah, he's the best.

Now my wife's going to be like, you never say anything about that, like that from

me.

Why aren't you talking about me to Liam Schreiber?

She's describing my ass to other men.

Your impression of your wife.

She's a southern?

I didn't realize your wife owned a strain.

Our buddies at the Big Picture just did, at the time we're recording this very recently, did a Paul Newman

for his anniversary centennial.

Yes, right.

And they talked about the fact that he was an alcoholic until his like 60s.

Oh, wow.

That he was like a case of beer or six martinez a night guy.

Oh my gosh.

They've drunk what they're saying.

Sam felt.

Like for a guy who drank that much for that many decades, there is no period of time in which he looked bad.

Not only is there never like a run where you're like, oh yeah, there are like three years where he's really bloated, but it didn't even catch up to him when he was old.

Some people just have that.

They can just do it.

They can just do that every night and it doesn't affect him.

I don't know how they feel.

He might have been the most beautiful man in the history of movies.

He's

up there.

Yes.

He's the best looking movie star of all time.

I really think so.

I think doing his filmography is a really great way to experience like how Hollywood changed.

Yes.

For, you know, for the, over the course of like four decades.

And it's not like he made the best movies of all time, although he made a lot of really good ones.

But

it is very, very fun to watch a Paul Newman movie.

Like just pick one.

Like, you'll have a good time.

Paul Newman is kind of a Forrest Gump figure that you can track the progression of American movies from the 1950s to the 2000s through.

Like, it all kind of happens either he's in reaction, response, ahead of the curve, pushing

in the curve direction.

Yeah, well, he was miles ahead in that movie.

He was.

You all seen cars?

Yeah, I've seen cars.

You've seen cars, man.

Is this the animated cars?

Pickstar movies' cars.

Pick stars cars.

Yeah, that's real.

Are they going to do a a Disney live-action recreation?

They should.

Oh, that would be so good.

And they shouldn't talk.

It feels like the only one that they should do a live-action version.

Yeah, just get some cars.

Get cars.

Clap some eyes on them.

Well, no, you know how, like, when they'll show, like, oh, here's the live-action cast of the little mermaid, and you're like, they made like Sebastian look like a real crab, right?

Which Fondor look like a real fish.

They should literally just get real cars, not put eyes and mouths on them.

I love that.

Drive them around.

Except for Mader.

He is Larry the cable guy, painted.

Right.

Just

face painted and mounted

just

um paul newman is one of these guys who like really his career kind of charts the death of the traditional studio system right and like new hollywood where he's like thought of as sort of part of this younger group of movie stars that he actually predated but he didn't really come into his own until the old system was breaking down and he was kind of the countercultural old guy.

And And even to the like degree that he like embraced going gray earlier and sort of became this like aspirational figure for a countercultural movement who was a little bit ahead of them.

And this feels like him making a movie of everything that movies were right before he really figured out his career in a way where you're like, he was 10 years too young.

to have played like the Tim Robbins character in a movie like this.

And now he has come all the way back around to playing the old old grumpy guy.

Yeah, and the thing referencing those kinds of movies-that's really interesting.

I never thought of about it in those terms, but it's like it's fascinating that a guy whose name is Paul Newman to our generation was always thought of as an old man.

An old man, Nick, that's a great thought.

That is so smart and interesting,

David.

What?

This episode of Blank Check with Griffin, David, a podcast about filmographies, is brought to you by Booking.com.

Booking.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what I was about to say.

Booking.

Yeah.

From vacation rentals to hotels across the U.S., Booking.com

has the ideal stay for anyone, even those who might seem impossible to please.

God, I'm trying to think of anyone in my life.

Perhaps even in this room.

Ben, who's like, what's an example of someone I know who maybe has a very particular set of people bringing me in and there's only one other person in the room?

Who's one other person in the room right right now.

This is so rude.

I sleep easy.

I'm definitely not someone who insists on 800 thread count sheets.

No.

That's an example of a fussy person.

But people have different demands.

And you know what?

If you're traveling, that's your time to start making demands.

You know, you've got...

a partner who's sleep light, rise early, or maybe, you know, like you just want someone who wants a pool or wants a view or I don't know.

Any kind of demand.

You're traveling and I need a room with some good soundproofing because I'm going to be doing some remote pod record.

Sure.

Maybe you're in Europe and you want to make sure.

That's very demanding to be in Europe.

You got air conditioning.

Well, think of one person in particular, although it's really both of you.

Yes.

You got to have air conditioning.

I need air conditioning if I'm in the North Pole.

Look, if I can find my perfect stay on Booking.com, anyone can.

Booking.com is definitely the easiest way to find exactly what you're looking for.

Like for me, a non-negotiable is I need a gorgeous bathroom for selfies.

You do.

You love selfies.

As long as I got a good bathroom mirror for selfies, I'm happy with everything else.

Look, they're again, they're specifying like, oh, maybe you want a sauna or a hot top.

And I'm like, sounds good to me.

Yeah.

Please.

Can I check that book?

You want one of those in the recording, Stupid?

That'd be great.

You want to start.

You want to be.

I'll be in the sauna when we record.

I was going to say, you want to be the Dalton Trumbull of podcast.

You want to be Splish Flash.

You look good if I had a sauna and a cold plunge.

And while recording, I'm on mic, but you just go back.

Like, ah!

As I move to the

beach.

These are the kinds of demands that booking.com, booking.

Yeah.

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You can find exactly what you're booking for.

Booking.com.

Booking.

Yeah.

Booking.com.

Book today on the site or in the ad.

Booking.com.

Booking.

Yeah.

Ben.

What's up, Griff?

This is an ad break.

Yeah.

And I'm just, I'm not, this isn't a humble brag, it's just a fact of the matter.

Despite you being on mic, oftentimes, when sponsors buy ad space on this podcast, the big thing they want is personal host endorsement.

Right.

They love that they get a little bonus ben on the ad read, but technically, that's not what they're looking for.

But something very different is happening right now.

That is true.

We had a sponsor come in and say, we are looking for the the coveted Ben Hosley endorsement.

What?

This is laser targeted.

The product.

We have copy that asks, is the product a porch movie?

It certainly is.

And what is today's episode sponsored by?

The Toxic Avenger.

The new Toxic Avenger movie is coming to theaters August 29th.

Making Blair's remake.

of reimagining.

Reimagining, whatever.

Reboot of the Toxic Avenger.

Now, David and and I have not gotten to see it yet, but they sent you a screener link.

Yeah, I'm going to see it.

We're

excited to see it.

But, Ben, you texted us last night.

This fucking rules.

It fucks.

It honks.

Yeah.

It's so great.

Let me read you the cast list here in billing order, as they asked, which I really appreciate.

Peter Dinkledge, Jacob Tremblay, Tremblay, Taylor Page, with Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon.

Tremblay is Toxie's son.

His stepson.

His stepson.

Okay.

Wade Goose.

Yes.

Great name give us the takes we haven't heard of them yet okay you got fucking dinkled is fantastic yeah he's talking plays it with so much heart yeah it's such a lovely performance bacon is in the pocket too man he's the bad guy he's the bad guy there's a lot of him shirtless okay looking like david david sizzling yep and then elijah wood plays like a dang ass freak he certainly does he's having a lot of fun tell us some things you liked about the movie okay well i'm a jersey guy i just gotta say the original movie was shot in the town where I went to high school.

Yes, yes, that's right.

The original film.

Yep.

I grew up watching toxic and trauma movies on porches.

Yes.

With my sleazy and sticky friends.

It informed so much of my sensibility.

Your friends like Junkyard Dog and Headbanger.

Yeah, exactly.

Making Toxic Crusader drills.

And so when I heard that they were doing this new installment, I was really emotionally invested.

It was in limbo for a while before our friends at Ciniverse rescued it and are now releasing it uncut.

But I feel like there have been years of you being very excited at the prospect, but also a little weary.

They're playing with fire here.

Yeah, it's just, it's something that means a lot to me.

And they knocked it out of the fucking park.

Okay.

It somehow really captured.

that sensibility, that sense of humor, even just that like lo-fi, scrappy kind of nature that's inherent in all of the trauma movies and the original Toxie movies.

And they have like updated in this way that it was just, I was so pleased with it.

It's gooey.

It's gooey.

It's sufficiently gooey.

Tons of blood, tons of goo,

great action.

It's really fucking funny.

It just, it hits all of the sensibilities that you would want in an updated version.

Cineverse last year released Terrifier 3 unrated.

Yeah.

Big risk for them there.

I feel like it's a very, very...

intense movie.

And a huge hit.

More interesting, yeah, theatrical box office phenomenons the last five years.

Want to make that happen again here?

Tickets are on sale right now.

Advanced sales really matter for movies like this.

So if y'all were planning on seeing Toxic Avenger, go ahead and buy those tickets.

Please go to toxicaver.com slash blank check to get your tickets.

Blank check one word.

In theaters, August 29th.

Yup.

And Ben, it just says here in the copy, wants to call out that Elijah Wood plays a weird little guy who says, summon the nuts can you tell us anything about that moment without spoiling it summon the nuts is in reference to a

psychotic new metal band

who are also mercenaries cool and drive a van

with a skeleton giving two fingies up on the grill And that's all I'll say.

Okay.

And they are the most dang-ass freaks of dang-ass ass freaks i'm excited to see it and your endorsement i think carries more weight than anyone else is in the world on this seriously get your tickets now go to toxicadvengure.com slash blank check do it do it

you guys are the doughboys this is true i do feel like He is the gold standard for lemonade.

For like a supermarket lemonade.

You are not.

I mean, my introduction introduction to Newman is Newman's own lemonade, probably.

Did it not begin with the dressing then?

It began with salad dressing.

Yeah, that was the Empire was built on salad dressing.

Guy was like, he got a bottle of this stuff, Paul.

Like, I mean, I don't know how good.

What was his personal recipe?

He was probably trying to get a threesome going with him and Joanne where he was like, this salad dressing is great.

Can I stay the night?

Like, but because I don't know who it was.

No, no, what he would do is he would, he would give people salad dressing.

It was his version of the Tommy.

He's like, I'm coming to your house.

I'll bring us some salad.

Except he actually made it.

Right.

He had a good recipe.

But right.

Like, did he then go like, maybe we should, I don't know, lemons, sugar.

What do you guys think?

He's already doing like hole in the wall gang.

Like, he was one of the most like philanthropic movie stars even before.

Obviously, the charity stuff is great.

I'm just saying, like, the lemonade's actually good.

The lemonade is good.

The Newman products are

pretty good.

His frozen pizza is great.

I was going to say, I love his frozen pizza.

His frozen pizza is great.

You guys had us on to do a tombstone pizza episode during the lockdown.

And we were talking different frozen pizza brands.

I said that, for my money, is the best frozen pizza on the market, and I stand by it.

It's way up there, it's really like the four cheese, yeah.

Oh, yeah, and the end of cured pepperoni.

My men, I don't know if I've had that one.

Well, you gotta.

We could do an emp, we could do an episode on Newman's Own.

We've never tackled it.

I guess it's a big funiverse.

You need to eat a lot of salad, though, because I feel like they've got like a ton of stuff,

it's got a lot of dressing.

I'm out, unless you just chug that.

All right, all right, now you're getting me back in.

I'll chug the

dressing.

But that is like a company that now four decades in is still all pre post-tax revenue goes to charity.

Yeah.

Pretty great.

All of it.

Yeah.

Kind of amazing.

Yeah, he's great.

Good for him.

And Ryan Reynolds has the same setup for Mint Mobile, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

All of that goes.

Oh, that's great.

Good for him.

You know what, Ivan?

You know what?

Charity is suing Justin Belldoni, right?

That's what he's big charity.

Do you know, you know, a brand I love too?

I don't know if you guys have this Yattle Zone.

Have you guys had Yaddle Zone?

Did you hear?

This is crazy because I heard on set, there was a moment, Kiyati Mundi has told the story of that there was a moment where Yoda turned to him while Yado was walking away and said, ass on her checkout.

I heard that.

I heard that.

Wigger did that as the crucified guy again.

He put his arms up like the crucified guy.

Did you hear Coyote Mundy on Jay Moore's podcast?

He was telling some crazy stories, guys.

Because I think think that's where that clip came from.

It was.

And he was talking about all his former co-stars.

Yeah.

I'm so happy Jay Moore has a podcast.

Yeah.

I never realized that Sassy Tin was addicted to poppers.

Yeah.

And it's crazy that he still is so on point.

Like, you watch that movie.

He doesn't miss a mark.

Well, basically, he was one of those, like, like when you call action, he's just in it.

He just suddenly lost anything.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

And there are people who work like that, you know.

Did you guys see that tweet?

That was like Bill Simmons watching Phantom or doing a, you know, where he's like, kind of like Sebalba?

I got the pro Sebalda right.

Like just like 10 minutes.

And it was like, I kind of like Sebalba.

It's got to come back.

I want to bring this up because.

Sebalba.

I want to, yeah, I want to bring something.

I love Sebalba.

Sebalba's a great character.

Well, I feel like his sportsmanship and his general kind of like on-field demeanor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Also, his personal life.

Yeah, it aligns aligns with my sports team and my life and how I treat things.

I wanted to bring this up because we're like, just like Newman's Own,

we come from a food podcast.

We're sandwich guys, I guess.

Yeah, that's

so boys.

That's almost a term I would use.

That is sad that we are just sandwich guys.

I guess when you boil it down, we're fucking sandwich guys.

And I went to the Nighthawk Cinema that's right.

Yes.

I went.

I saw.

How was The Accountant 2?

The Accountant 2 is like very, it's very, it's a fun movie.

it's not a great movie but it is like it's it's fun john barenthal is having fun in the movie and uh

and it's fun

to to not be insensitive here i'm trying to put this in a good way but affleck is playing it more like someone who's on the spectrum in two than he was in one which is kind of strange right in one it's i feel like a very thin gloss of like that's his superpower yes and in two you're like oh he's like you're really seeing more of the side that he's like on this, which is, it's strange.

He's going full bazinga.

He's going, he's going, he's going full bazinga.

He is.

Griff, thank you for putting it into a good term.

I'm trying to think, like, what is the most sensitive way?

That is 100%.

Hollywood autism, essentially.

Yes.

Right.

He's, he's, he's really doing it.

And I just, you guys gave me some suggestions on things to get there.

And I, it's just a great.

You went to the night head.

They got that interesting new sandwich, which you ordered, right?

Oh, you didn't.

You got the 10 D's.

I got the 10 D's.

Did you like the tendys?

I thought the tendys were fantastic.

Wow.

I thought that

was what we were talking about.

They had a great, uh, I think it was like a dill ranch, or I think it was buttermilk ranch, but there was a strong dill flavor to it.

It was

cornflake crusted.

The corn flake crusted chicken tenders because I wanted to get popcorn too.

So a sandwich, I was like, you get the regular, the Nighthawk popcorn.

I went with your suggestion.

I got the Nighthawk popcorn.

That seasoning's unbelievable, right?

I'm going to, if, if you're tricky, a little bit of salt, yeah.

If someone gives me a food suggestion, I'm going to eat it.

Wags will know that.

That's true.

I got the Firewalk With Me cocktail.

My favorite cocktail there, for sure.

You said one of the best cocktails in the city.

A frozen Ela cocktail.

He said that.

I do like it a lot.

Yeah, yeah.

And

a good time.

A little, weirdly, a little chatty.

The theater was a little bit chatty, but we apologize for that.

Yeah.

So, yeah, yeah.

A movie like The Accountant, too.

I guess you can't really hope for a totally sort of devoted audience.

I mean, you guys, Griffin, Griffin Sims were sitting behind me and I was eating.

And they're like, I think he likes it.

Like, that's not them.

they got the sandwich, though, which I was, I was recommending to you, even though I think the tennis was the better option.

Yeah.

You're coming off of a big food day.

Yes.

John's bleaker.

They got a celery root pastrami sandwich, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

That is like curing celery root in the style of pastrami.

Okay.

With that seasoning on multi-grain with like the onions.

And it's, is it a vegetarian sandwich?

It's a fully veggie sandwich.

Wow.

Yeah.

I think it's even vegan.

Wow.

Yeah.

I, I, I, I, that, that place, it rules.

It's such a cool thing.

It's wild to me that Los Angeles doesn't have.

I mean, we have a lot.

Look, we're spoiled in a lot of different ways, but there's nothing that checks the same, the cool bar in there and everything.

It's really great.

Yeah, there is an Alamo in L.A., but it's, you know, there's, there's one of them.

And I feel like it hasn't gone over that well in L.A.

It's in an interesting place.

Yeah.

It's in downtown.

It's right above a train stop, but, you know, that, which is nice.

It's like directly upstairs from a metro stop, but for people who are used to driving there, it's a pretty inconvenient place to park.

Nighthawk has two locations in New York, and I think they kind of are what Alamo was in Texas 30 years ago.

And then obviously when these things, it's what you guys talk about all the time, but when they scale up to become chains, you start having to make these like strategic concessions and tightenings.

And I think they've done as good of a job in certain ways as you can of still making things feel like cool and personal.

But Nighthawk still has that like, right, it's close enough to the ground.

It's right, it's like a nice local business, right?

And the almond, like, you'll be watching a movie and you'll hear, like, all aboard, you know, you hear like the train, you know, the conductor yelling for the train.

Yeah, it is weird that the LA Metro is steam training.

We keep it old school.

Um, I've still never ridden the LA Metro.

I want to.

Wow.

You're never out there.

That's weird because you're out there all the time.

I've been to Los Angeles several times in my life.

I'll have.

When was the last time?

2019 or 2018?

Like before the pandemic.

Okay.

The D line right now, which is so it was right before you went to Wuhan.

Sorry, go on now.

I was tending to my pangolin farm.

Is that what they're called?

I forget it.

Oh, God.

Formerly, the purple line

is closed for 70 days right now as of this recording.

80 days is a very specific amount of days.

It is, it is.

It is a day.

New York City subway is kind of like, I don't know, spring.

They tend to be pretty chill about this.

Okay, it's closed for 70 days.

That's the span they gave us.

Spring ring times 10.

Yeah, it's kind of a point.

I said 70 days, but the city announced it as the ring times 10.

No, it's movie lover.

Yeah, it's Hollywood.

It's Hollywood.

It's tinsel town.

But it's extending the D line all the way west from downtown, and it will actually, there will be a stop directly below the Academy Museum.

Oh, wow.

Which is kind of a rad place to be.

D is the purple line.

Yes, D is the purple line.

Okay.

Fairfax and Wolfshire.

See, when they do renovations here in the city, it is like three out of every five Tuesdays for the next seven years, the train will be on fire.

It'll last

that long.

Have you ridden the subway yet, Nick?

I'm excited for you to write the new out here?

No, I've not gotten the chance to do it, but I will today.

But have you ever ridden the subway?

She's a leave for you.

Of course, yeah.

Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Every time I've been to New York, I just want you.

My daughter is getting really into the subway because I've been pushing it so hard.

Does she have a favorite line?

Well, the three train, which is sort of our train.

Got it.

But she's very intent on me taking the seven train and like, or, oh, she wants to take it too.

It's not near us.

But so I have to take a picture of the seven.

I have to start taking pictures of every train I ride so I can show her.

My, my friend who's got

Alex Perlin, the great off-mentioned Alex Perlin, who has a son about your daughter's age,

they live off the seven train.

And he's similarly public transit obsessed.

But he's like, it is the best line to live off of with a train-obsessed kid because because it just basically goes back and forth.

Yeah.

A pretty like controlled number of stops, and most of it's above ground.

Above ground, you can see.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love the 7 Train.

I think it's a great line.

You remind me of something.

Can I pitch this to you?

It goes to the Mets.

There's a new scary movie coming out.

And I was on the Fat Guy chain and we were pitching this around.

It should clarify that the Fat Guy chain is a group of friends that are talking in a group.

Sorry, yeah.

Yeah.

John Gabris, Stavros, and Zach Sherry.

We're all on the fat guy chain.

Three of the grades.

We have a blast in there.

But, you know, there's a new scary movie coming out, and we were saying, like, you know, like a ring, good ring thing is like the curse tape is rust.

It's just a copy of Rust.

It's pretty good.

And then Alec Baldwin crawls out of the TV

at some point in the movie.

We're saying

that's what I was thinking.

But I want to pitch this to the Waynes.

I don't know if you can just pitch a specific bit to the Wayne's, brother.

I think think they're blankies.

So I think if you just

probably the best way to do it is just to do what you just did.

All right, great.

So, all right, it's in.

They're brainstorming six now.

They signed a deal to come back or do scary movie six.

Yes, yeah.

No, I'm saying, he's saying they're bad.

Yeah, yeah.

This is, I want this.

I want the curse.

You're going to do it all.

Anora.

Yeah.

I'm trying to think of like what scary movies are.

What are the scariest?

That's the thing.

Like, scary movie four has like 20 minutes on brokeback mountains.

Yes.

I'm sure of it.

It's sure it's aged very well, too.

I'm sure.

I guess there'll be a lot of sinners.

Sinners will be sinners won't be primed.

Do you think they've been throwing pencils at the ceiling with a completely blank dry erase board for six months and then sinners came out?

The amount of pussy eating alone.

Laptop keyboards on fire.

Here we go.

Okay.

All right.

So I'm going to open the dossier.

I'm realizing we're going all over the place.

Yeah.

But we do have a dossier here.

And I do need to, of course, edify you to something you may already know, which is that Joel Cohn and Sam Raimi are longtime friends who met working as an editor for Edna Ruth Paul in New York when they were young, you know, up-and-comers.

Joel Cohen cuts his teeth doing low-budget horror as an editor, assistant editor.

And one of those movies he happens to work on, he basically talks about like one of them was never released.

Right.

Two of them have been forgotten forever.

Right.

And the other one was The Evil Dead.

Correct.

It was one film called Fear No Evil, another one he got fired from called Nightmare, and one called The Evil Dead.

A good movie.

And

basically, that's the last time he edits for anyone else.

But it like that relationship, him meeting him, like it all starts to come together.

Their careers start to roll.

So they were pals.

And obviously, this is the only, this is the only Cohen Brothers film that Raimi has a writing credit on, right?

Well, the Cohens have a writing credit, of course, on Crimewave, which Raimi ends up directing.

And then this is the opposite.

But this is in this early period, they write these two scripts together.

Yes.

Raimi directs one, the Cohen's direct one.

Yeah, because this is written in like the 80s, right?

Okay.

Written about 1985, around the same time they wrote the XYZ murders, which is eventually what Crimewave is.

Ostensibly, they just were like, we will set it in a sort of mythical 50s, not a real 50s.

And we wanted everything to be sort of fable-like.

So things like the Hula Hoop and the Frisbee

did get invented in the 50s, I guess.

The Hula Hoop has existed since like the Stone Age, but like the fad was in the 50s.

Whambo is the toy company that has the trademark or whatever on popularizing the two things in the 50s.

And they were just like,

we're going to do no research into the actual thing.

Right.

The thing with the straw, they did no research into that.

I don't know when the straw was in the movie.

Right.

That they pulled out of their asses.

But they, it's this big thing when people were like critiquing the movie at the time where they were like, we don't think this is an homage.

It's like us being like, we love these types of movies.

Why don't people make movies like this anymore rather than being like, let's try to reconstruct one as tribute?

And they said, and I just think it's so smart.

And I think it speaks to the underlying sincerity of this movie.

The way they land on Hula Hoop was they were like, we want to build a comedy around something that sounds so silly that everyone in the reality of the movie would mock it.

And yet the audience knows, of course, this is going to work.

And something like the Hula Hoop, which we've all grown up with as a given, if you try to imagine someone pitching it, you're like, everyone would be like, what the fuck are you talking about?

And so many of their movies, especially the thrillers, but the comedies as well, they're really smart in story construction of building things around the audience being a step or two ahead of the characters.

They don't quite know what they're getting into.

And then what makes the Cohen so great is that usually we're waiting for what we assume will be the blow up.

And then they zag it and take it slightly off kilter of where you expect the outcome is going to go.

And this is a comedy with that inherent tension built in, which is like, you're ready for this guy to fail, but you're like, no, of course it works.

It's the fucking hula hoop.

It's a hit.

The hula hoop also gives it the miraculous joke of just a picture of a circle, a drawing of a circle that's great, you know, for kids.

And so funny.

It's so funny.

The moment where he takes it out

to show it to Paul Newman, and then he turns, he realizes the circle is upside down and turns it around.

It's so great.

It is funny every time.

Yeah.

It is funny when they heighten it to the straw and the frisbee.

Despite having seen the poster, when I went to see this for the first time, I think I forgot it was a hula hoop movie.

So when they introduced the circle drawing, I was like, oh, the bit is that they're never going to define what this is.

That it's like a dumb, abstract pitch.

But no, it's just for kids.

And it makes the joke that much better that once he reveals it.

I don't, I don't think I can do it.

Like, I, like, I.

I'm not very good at it.

Yeah, I'm not very good at it.

Now my wife, again,

like, loves to hula hoop.

She has a hula hoop and just like hula all the time.

So that little kid who does the hula hoop in the movie does a damn good job

my wife was like where'd they find this hula hooping genius child yeah he was like somebody pro or had a record or something you can tell in like the tension in his body that he's got like a lot of practice he's doing very specific they rehearsed moves they got permission from whammo and its parent company cransco group which is very litigious apparently there is uh cransco's basically only big question was will the hula hoop hurt anyone in the film and when they find out no that's fine.

They're like, Okay, there is a giant disclaimer at the end of the movie.

I don't know if you guys saw it.

Yes.

Where it says this is a fictional account of the development of the Hula hoop.

And the big line is the Hulu Hoop was actually developed by the founders of the toy company Wamo, a true American success story.

Like they suck Wamo's dick in the credits.

You know what?

I like it.

They should.

They deserve that sucking.

Yeah, it was, it's a, it's, it's great.

I like that they were okay with them doing it.

Yeah.

That's that whole sequence that ends with the little boy picking the hula hoop off the ground and and huling, yeah, it is, but it's also just so dazzling.

Like just going from approval to, you know, they're taking it through all the various departments.

They're taking it to accounting.

They take it to manufacturing.

They take it to marketing.

And then it's in stores.

And we see it be a commercial flop and then be a commercial success.

And it's all happening in like a two-minute montage.

So Raimi was second unit director on this movie, which they had never really had before.

And I don't know if they ever had again since because they're guys who are very big on like, we shoot everything.

We want to have control over inserts, but they obviously trust him so much.

He had written it.

That whole sequence is like his main project in this movie.

Oh, wow.

Which makes sense because there is like a

Spider-Man.

Yes.

It is so like the montage stuff in Spider-Man.

It's so deep with details and control that it makes sense that it was basically treated as its own like eight-minute short film that has its own.

Our buddy Patrick Willems made a great video about it where he was just like, this is the greatest movie montage of all time because it basically functions as a mini movie.

Yes.

It has its own characters, its own arcs, complete

the guy with the

price labels going up and down and all that.

And the fucking Pitch Men.

Like you have like four different narratives you keep checking back in on.

And just following that, just following the hula hoop as it rolls along.

So it becomes a character onto himself.

Yes.

And Carter Burwell going out of fucking control.

Carter Burwell does blackout making this movie.

It is crazy.

We haven't talked about the Carter Burwell score.

That guy wrong.

That's so incredible.

So the Cohens don't have a particular inspiration, they say, you know, yes, kind of a copra-esque thing.

Golden Age of Hollywood, sure, but they're not like ripping off, you know.

It's just like sometimes it's got a His Girl Friday energy, sometimes what, you know, like when the film comes out, as we noted, it does get a lot of shit for kind of like, you're just doing, you know, what they did back in the 30s better.

Yeah.

And the Cohens

sort of, well, they don't care.

Everything with the paper is very Hawksian, right?

The copper, like kind of

through line is the, like, one idealistic, pure man who is able to, like, change the world around him, which is kind of the Norville Barnes character in a certain way, even though he's presented as a total dope.

Um, and then the Sturges, like, uh, I feel like trademark is this sort of like, we're all stuck in the crazy machinery of modern life that, that characters get kind of like knocked around like in a pinball machine through like corporations and rules of society and all this sort of stuff.

And I think it's those three things clashing together with this like

this

world building that does feel like it's out of like in a war film.

Now they write this movie in 1985.

They know they cannot make a movie like this, you know, early on.

It's going to be a film.

They basically

wrote it, didn't think at all about how they would film it.

Finished the script, looked at it, and we're like, oh, no one will give us the money to make this and we don't know how to pull this off.

They also do not write the ending.

They could not figure out the ending.

They just have him jump and they're like, we'll figure it out later.

You know, he's on the ledge.

An insane ending.

I mean, it is an insane ending.

I like it, though.

That was one thing I like as a kid.

I remember watching it and the moment when time stops, and then the guy gets

a character who's, I guess, essentially the devil, like gets his, his teeth punched out.

I was like, what the fuck?

What am I?

What the fuck is this?

What am I this movie I'm watching?

It is quite a twist to reveal, yeah, that the janitor is, yeah, evil, I guess, if Bill Cobbs is good.

Like, um,

so uh, that is crucial to them all the time, though, that when they're writing it, because apparently, at one point, I think it's Raimi, Raimi's like, well, should maybe should Musberger be more of a good guy?

And the Cohen's like, No, he is bad.

Like, there are only good and bad.

Like, this movie does not have shades of gray.

It's black and white.

Um, it's so much more fun that he's just a bad guy.

And they get him, he gets caught in a big net and sent to a sanitarium.

So funny that that's what happens to it at the end.

Uh,

it's also so funny that the double stitch, which is of course the best joke of the movie,

he's the guy saying, oh, he's such a nice man.

And I'm like, no, he's not.

we'll circle back to the double snitch film double sniffs is 40 minutes of its own conversation uh raimi in the way that like when we covered him we talked so much about how he loved to torture bruce campbell and like design sequences around putting him in physical pain and like embarrass himself when they would like the three of them would physically write together in the same room raimi would buy firecrackers and if they hit walls he'd like shoot firecrackers at them and be like come on guys ideas don't slow down yeah he would throw firecrackers at them our buddy Kevin Smith, when he was on the show in our Raimi days for simple plan,

talked about how he thinks the Buzz character is the Cohens mocking Raimi in the way he speaks.

Right.

Raimi's kind of midwestern gee will occurs.

Right.

He's like, really, like, he's like, this is Raimi's energy, if you've ever met him.

Like, amplified into.

He did say that.

That's right.

He said, like, that's what Sam Raimi is like.

Yes.

You mentioned the flexi straw earlier and that, you know, Buzz, when he goes and pitches that, that's just like such a such an incredible performance i mean just like him just like rattling off it because like he's doing it every with every line of dialogue he's got everything is so crisp everything is so precise his cadence is so rapid fire but in particular there and then he also has the emotional arc of when he gets fired and then he just collapses into tears and says this job is all that i've got um

i don't know like so i think again that's the sincerity to see you know like it's like and you are like oh no you know like you're not just like, ah, fuck that guy.

You know, you do feel bad.

He plays that scene so well for a character that is just kind of like comedic construction.

Like, what if a guy talked this way?

Right.

That in that scene when Tim Robbins like lashes out at him, he's doing this balance of being like so personally hurt, but Buzz's core like tenant is to be friendly to everyone all the time.

So he keeps coming like, oh, hey, come on, Kai.

I tried my best.

You know, he's like through tears trying to apologize to Tim Robbins for offending him with a bad pitch when Tim Robbins is basically just shitting on him because now he's been like taken down himself.

He needs to feel big.

He was the, he was the guy who

that, like, it was at first, I was like, what the hell is going on here when I was first watching the movie?

And then completely wins me over, especially so loud.

Yeah.

Yes.

Even by this movie's standards.

I'm a guy who loves to say buddy.

I like that he says buddy a bunch.

Yeah.

So the Cohens make

Blood Simple, and then they make three movies for the company, Circle Films.

They make

fucking Raising Arizona, Miller's Cross,

Miller's Cross, and fucking Barton.

I know you both have talked about this before on other episodes, but what was everyone's first Cone Brothers movie?

Mine was Raising Arizona because I remember that just showing oddly on cable a number of people.

I think we tried to puzzle this out already.

But go ahead.

My parents rented Raising Arizona for me, and I didn't get it.

I think I probably a similar reaction to you with Hudsucker.

Didn't make make it to the end.

I think O'Brother was the first one I saw in theaters.

And then I was like, I gotta watch all the other.

Oh, Brother's definitely the first one I saw in theaters.

I think Fargo, I don't know.

Did I talk about this already?

Yeah.

Yeah, I figured you probably covered this in another episode.

I don't remember, though.

I don't remember anything anymore.

Fargo was the first time.

I thought Griffin likes European vacation.

That was news to me.

Yeah, we were texting about it, and David was like, when did you say this?

And I said, in the episode.

No memory of that.

But then apparently I saw the people reacting.

And it's like, apparently, Griffin in that episode is just like, and I like that part.

Me and Gabe are still like, okay.

Fargo is the first one I saw in theaters, and the first one that I liked.

The first one I was like, oh, wow, wait, okay.

So you're right.

You were old enough to see Fargo.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

Actually, I did not see Fargo in theaters.

Also, can you stop pointing your banana at me?

Yeah, why exactly just holding a banana at me?

Tiger loves to have a piece of fruit.

I'm gesturing with it a lot.

Look, I've had Chekhov's banana sitting here.

I'm going to deploy it at some point.

But I was trying to cue you up to say what your first Cone Brothers movie was non-verbally, but I was using the banana.

You used the banana.

I didn't know if you were gesturing for me to eat the banana.

I didn't know what the hell was going on.

No, it's my banana.

When I walked in here, I thought you had a banana in your pocket, but now you're holding the banana in your hands.

You're still tensing.

My first Cohen Brothers movie in the theater.

I'm going to have to do a little deep dive here to figure this out.

Or if you watch one at home first.

Well, you were going through the famography, so maybe that'll trigger something.

I mean, Fargo is definitely, I think, the first one I watched.

Yeah.

But

I did not see it in the theater.

But the first one in the theater is like...

Lebowski?

Did you see Lebowski in theaters?

I didn't see Lebowski in theaters, and Lebowski Lebowski is one of the early ones I watched.

So Fargo or Lebowski, like in like high school or college or whatever, renting it.

Yeah.

And then the first one in theaters, I'm like, I didn't see O Brother in theaters.

Maybe it maybe was Burn After Reading was my first.

You didn't see No Country in the Theaters?

Oh, I saw No Country.

Okay.

So No Country is, I guess,

is the one.

I mean, Lady Killers, Tom Hanks is basically doing your like southern, you know, Cajun gentleman character.

Oh, so you're just saying a very good representation of the the factor.

Tom Hanks basically plays a snow game.

Oh my God.

Is dressed in all white.

I am now thinking, is then is Lady Killers the first Cohen brother?

Maybe.

What year is that?

That's 04.

Yeah, 04.

Shit.

Lady Killers is probably my first Cohen Brothers.

You had seen their other movies on video.

That's just the first one you saw in theaters.

Yeah, you were already into them.

It's also funny that in Lady Killers, there are like four separate scenes where he tricks you two guys into sucking him off, but you didn't remember that.

He's running two cons.

One is he's trying to rob a casino and the other one is to get you guys to keep giving him dome.

But they get great early credit for it.

I know.

Huge.

Got to suck Tom Hanks off.

Yeah, I guess we should talk about how we were both in a Conan Brothers movie.

Yeah.

And also sucked off Tom Hanks.

Yeah.

Except those scenes didn't make the cut of the movie.

That's right.

They're all deleted scenes.

It was worth it, though.

I really enjoy it.

It was a great experience.

Also, the cameras weren't rolling and he was in his hotel.

We can cut this out.

We can cut this out.

I think we should cut this out.

Not this part.

This part's song.

It wasn't Tom Hanks.

What I'm about to say, I think I'm going to want us to cut it out.

I'm just learning you back.

Yeah.

I think this has to stay in, though.

The stuff talking about talking about

it has to stay in.

Yeah.

Do you think Tom Hanks has a good penis?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

I think it needs to stay in.

We're keeping this.

All right.

All right.

I don't think he has like a, you got to write home about it.

Like it's good.

I think he's got an incredibly sturdy American penis.

penis.

It's got a beautiful everyman penis.

It just does, it does the job.

It does competent.

The job.

And it's almost like it's a little, it's a little unremarkable at first.

And that's the kind of plainness.

Right.

It sneaks up on you.

Yeah.

Sorry.

A grower.

But like, not a grower.

I think he's like a bit of a grower.

A bit, just a little bit.

You know, like it's just, it's, it's just all good.

You see it and you're like, that's okay.

And then it grows a little bit beyond your expectations.

Can I tell you my thought?

I think I think he he has a big bush.

Like a weirdly big bush?

And just from when he in gump, when he grows that beard, it's pretty wild.

So I'm like,

I think he's a hairy man.

I think he's an upside-down gump beard.

I think he has an upside-down gump beard.

But he doesn't have like a hairy torso or hairy, like particularly hairy arms.

He's kind of hairy in Castaway.

He's like a little hairy.

But that was crazy.

Because the beard gets so out of control in Castaway.

But I do think he's just kind of got a speckling of hair.

He doesn't have like a fursuit.

I love this conversation to make me feel better about my scary movie pitch from earlier,

which I think is a good pitch.

I think Hanks is just an all-American in every way.

He's great.

Just like just the best of us.

Yeah.

So they made these three movies.

Joel Silver, The Hawaiian Shirtwearing.

Wait, sorry, the three movies again.

You're still pointing with the banana.

He's still pointing with this banana.

I'm sorry.

No, no, no, no, keep it.

Keep it.

Keep it.

So Blood Simple is their obviously indie movie debut.

And then they make three movies for a company called Circle Films that basically gives them like a little budget to make something and releases it and it makes a little more money.

So Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink.

But then Joel Silver, and those movies are well received, but are hardly blockbusters.

And then Joel Silver, who's the guy who made Predator and Die Hard and Lethal Weapon and all that, loves their movies and acquires this script.

from them essentially.

Basically.

Says he's been a big fan for many years.

He wants to make a big budget movie for them and this is their chance.

So they had the script.

This sort of existed as their like dream project of what if someday we have enough capital that we can get someone to give us the money for Hudsucker, knowing it's a big ask.

And their agent is like, Joel Silver always is asking when he can do a Cohen Brothers movie.

And Joel Silver had this attitude of like, I think these guys have in them a blockbuster hit movie.

I think he looked at them as having like, a sort of Wolfgang Peterson type trajectory where like, here's a guy who can make like really technically proficient, but like bracing, sober intellectual movies.

And then maybe over time, you can give him a really big paycheck to make something kind of dumber.

And they apply the same skill to it.

I think he probably misidentified that these guys are going to do their own thing forever, but he was like, I want them.

And Joel Silver also like kind of is the 90s version of the Michael Lerner character from Barton Fink, is that kind of like cigar chomp and fast talking studio exec.

They talk about as being like the last of the kind of Louis B.

Mayer archetype guys, a maniac, but he's almost exclusively doing action movies at this point in time.

And I think he both like wants to be doing comedies and

like a lot of these guys, at a certain point, you're like, okay, you've had like 15 huge hit movies in a row.

The only thing to still chase now is like prestige.

Like now you want an Oscar.

Can I jump over and get in bed with these guys?

I should also mention that Joel Silver plays the director in Who Framed Roger Apple.

It's true.

He does.

He's yelling at the base.

It's the beginning of the movie.

He's the one.

Right.

Yeah.

Is that,

but you're talking about this as a commercial play?

Is this an attempt at

everyone involved?

Is like, this is going to be their commercial breakthrough.

That these guys have been like, the Cohen brothers have been like percolating and they've been like getting their legs.

And now everyone's ready.

And they were like, this is our calculation to make a broad comedy.

and silver was like i'm not in the business of making like arty films i want to make hits we have designed this to win over audiences like in the press they kept being like what is this weird self-indulgent like pastiche bullshit and they were like nope we think this is for everybody so this isn't an attempt because you you said the word prestige this isn't an attempt at like hey we're going to make a prestige picture that will also be commercially successful this is like we're going to just have like a

or is that one of those that he wants

to thread right i think he's like i make a lot of big hit films that that aren't taken seriously.

Can I do both?

But he wasn't looking to just like make a little arty film on the side.

He goes to Warner Brothers and is like, we're doing this and we're putting like $40 million.

I think it was $25 and it went up to $40.

Supposedly it was $25, but right.

I think it costs more.

Is there any point in time where this movie would be like a commercial success?

Yeah, 1943.

Like truly past that moment, not really.

Well, I do think that there's

a thought that maybe this sort of thing was a little ahead of its time because if we're going to talk about

something that's like

talking about an iconic American product and its fictionalized

history, we can look at the recent mega hit Unfrosted as a modern counterexample.

Right.

Absolutely.

A totemic figure in the culture, Unfrosted.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Can I just do that?

David's going to...

Sigh very loudly

when I say this, but I truly just want to do this, okay?

Joel Silver, 48 Hours, Streets of Fire, Brewster's Million, Weird Science, Commando, Jumpin' Jack, Flash, Lethal Weapon, Predator, Action Jackson, Die Hard Roadhouse, Lethal Weapon 2, Die Hard 2, Adventures of Ford Farolane, Predator 2, Hudson Hawk, Ricochet, Last Boy Scout, Lethal Weapon 3, Demolition Man.

That is, without skipping anything, every movie he made until Hudsucker Proxy.

I'm not like cutting out.

That is wild.

Like, oh, and he made like a small indie

artist of romantic comedy in that run.

Demolition Man?

That's a good movie.

No, it's probably Hudson Hawk.

Hudson Hawk, yeah.

It's like there's the Hudson Hawks in there where you're like, okay, he has enough of a relationship with a star that the star is like, can I make something a little weirder?

And he's like, yeah, sure, Bruce.

I don't know what he sounds like.

After this, the same year as this, he also makes Richie Rich.

Yeah.

And it felt like he was trying to, in a way, where like Bruckheimer was like the king of a certain kind of blockbuster machismo action movie and then was like, I want to do Disney films.

I want to try to make Pearl Harbor.

Like these guys ultimately go,

don't box me in.

I can make any type of movie.

And this felt like the year where he was trying.

And then pretty soon after, he just goes back to his lane.

Now, who does Joel Silver want as the lead of this film?

Tom Cruise.

He wants Tom Cruise.

Wow.

And I get it.

I think Joe Silver is just like, well, we're going to make a start, you know, a big movie for these guys.

We're going to ship the biggest stage.

We're going to get all the biggest people for man.

I love Cruz, but

I cannot see that working almost anymore.

No, it's a little hard to imagine.

I'd love to see it.

He would be very strange.

Let himself, I think, especially at that point in time, play this dumb.

Probably not.

He probably would have filmed

the opening on a real ledge.

That's true.

He would have actually stopped time somehow.

He would have figured out how to do that.

The Cohens do not want to deal with that.

They want a lower star, a lower wattage star.

They picked Tim Robbins.

Paul Newman's obviously the most famous actor they've ever worked with up to this point.

Clint Eastwood was their top choice, which is hilarious to consider.

He was too busy making four movies a year and having threesims or whatever.

But this does feel like Paul Newman in a way doing a Clint Eastwood impression.

There's a bit of it.

Yeah, sure.

I agree with that.

Yeah, like your gravel voice,

the full grit kind of.

Newman was kind of just like, yeah, it's an interesting script.

I don't fucking know.

Like, his vibe was basically just like, what do I care if this doesn't work?

Like, I'm Paul Newman.

I'm an actor for hire.

And he was sort of like, they have an interesting voice.

I'm at an age where, like, if this movie bombs, they're not going to kick me out of Hollywood.

Right.

Like, had a quote.

Some other good quotes.

They call this an industrial comedy.

What the fuck an industrial comedy is, I have no idea.

And then he says, I think the Cohens have a perverted vision.

I think it's a good word.

They don't tell a story directly.

They move like crabs.

And it's refreshing to find something so eccentric.

He also had a line where he was like, they don't explain themselves well, but you get what they want.

They have good eyes.

He was sort of like, it's kind of really, it's, I mean, that's a, it's

as someone who makes things, it's not, it's, it's, it's good eyes.

Yeah, it's great.

There's a great description.

His coolness, though, that he was like, these guys are unlike any directors I've ever worked with.

He's like, half the reason I did it was I wanted to see what it's like working with two directors.

And they are like symbiotic.

It does not feel like you see two people fighting for control.

But also, like, I'd ask them a question about my character and they'd be like, faster or more evil would be their direction.

And he was like, you could get frustrated by that, or you could be like, let me look around the set, let me like look at the script and figure out what they want.

Because it is specific.

As an actor, Griff watching the dialogue delivery, I was like, this is maybe too, I think I maybe just would never be able to do some of the stuff that's in some of some of the dialogue rate is just so fast.

I don't think I could ever perform it that way.

Basically, every scene in this movie is like a skill piece for at least one performer doing something where the timing is so exquisite.

And a lot of this plays out in like long takes.

Yeah, like what you did, you know, what you did for the open there.

I mean, that sequence of just like, because that's also a wonner and with so much movement, it's just like, you know, like background characters are just going all over the frame.

And then there's just so many precise physical moments on top of the, just like the dialogue that's being.

uh you know ratted tatted out it's it's just like yeah i can't imagine how much precision is required to actually execute that when he got to set, he said, like, these are the biggest sets I have been on since the Silver Chalice, which was Paul Newman's first movie, basically, which was a biblical epic in the 50s, right before those kind of died.

And he basically was like, here in 1994, this is like the biggest sets I've seen directors get to build since that thing went out of style.

And he's just like, right, I get what kind of movie I'm in.

And like, I get to play the asshole.

Like, I don't have to worry about carrying the story weight.

Winona Ryder and Bridget Fonda, obviously, in consideration for the role of Amy Archer, makes sense.

Ryder would have been too young.

I think it would have thrown it off.

Fonda makes a ton of sense.

Yeah, she'd be great.

Yeah.

Instead, it goes to the other single white female, Jennifer Jason Lee.

And

Charles Jerning was cast, according to Joel Cohen, because the idea of a fat person falling 40 floors is funnier than a thin person falling 40 floors.

But they liked that he had that dancer background so he could do all the physicality and all the you have to convey a lot in his body yeah in like the first 60 seconds he's on screen yeah the the moment uh just like when he is

uh have the blue letter is finally being read

that you know he takes it out of the the apron and he's reading at the end and it there's the paragraph about how because you you meet you meet Paul Newban's character's wife earlier and then that there's the like talks about how

yeah it talks about it being an affair that the way that their relationship started and then you learn that that he's the guy who got cuckholded and then he just starts crying he's like ah skip this part.

It's so funny.

He cries like a baby.

And then she's in his teeth.

They wanted Jack Lemon in drag to play Paul Newman's wife.

I mean, dropped that idea, but they should have done it.

That's the sort of gag we talked about in 1941 that makes you angry, where you're like, there is like a gross abuse of like power and money.

You have too much resources.

Right.

You can pull that off.

The Cohens loved working with Joel Silver and had no problems.

Yeah.

Which is like rare.

Usually it's like, oh, we clashed with him or whatever.

And like they just had a great time.

They found him funny.

I think they like that he's a cartoon movie mobile.

They're like, this is like a guy we would write, like this like silly large man smoking a cigar.

But also guys like that, like, I mean, Rudin's another one who's like contemporaneous at this time.

And I feel like Silver doing this movie is maybe him looking over at Rudin and being like, man, this guy made big comedy hits and now he's like getting best picture nominations.

Do I want to like branch out in a similar way?

and ruden later works with the coins a bunch and all these guys are just like here's my deal i find filmmakers who i think are like fully formed artists after they've like cut their teeth on a couple movies and i come in and i go like hey i'll just have all the fights for you you guys do what you want and just don't ask me how i get it done you know and i thought for you and i would

joel silver would just like yell at everybody and get them what they wanted and they could just do their thing obviously they build giant sets the table in the conference room is so large that it had to be delivered in five separate pieces.

They wanted everything to basically look like Mussolini's, you know, ex, Mussolini's room, office, Mussolini's conference room.

And we never see home life.

Everything is work.

Everything is like at the office or at the building or whatever.

They basically, it's like cartoon Citizen Kane, I feel like, is what they're doing, right?

Just everything's just so long, so much depth of feel.

Yes.

And the ceilings are so fucked up.

And everything is ridiculously high.

and every character is basically like being eaten alive by their spaces right yeah dwarfing uh the people uh they didn't actually want to use the guy um michael mcalester who's the big visual effects guy who's worked on a ton of blank check movies uh like

had one in oscar for last crusade you don't want to list list no we just come on uh list a couple yeah e.t return of the jedi last crusade yeah you know can i quickly say that and this is not helping at all to keep keep us on track but the banana wide still holds on to this banana.

We can talk banana.

And it's, and the banana has oxidized.

It's now, it looks like a, it was yellow when he came in here, and now it looks like an old banana.

I'm handling a little too much.

It's getting a little brick.

It's getting brick.

I got to set it down.

He, this guy, Michael McAllister, loves the Coans.

And the Coens were basically like, you can't use the Chrysler building.

You can't use the Empire Stable Building.

Like it has to be.

It's real landmarks.

Right, exactly.

Fake Art Deco New York.

So they built this giant.

Got to get more wipes.

Got to get more wipes.

I get texts from like home over the course of the day, which is usually that a child of mine has pooped, which is always.

And I've gotten into the habit of just announcing if somebody pooped on my podcast.

Can I go Bill Mar mode for a second?

New rule?

Yeah.

Anytime you get a text like that, as long as it is not deeply personal information, I think you need to read it out loud automatically like you just did.

Three packs of wipes left, so we got to get some more.

Just please read these.

It's crazy how many wipes you need i mean i know it's not crazy like that's child rearing or whatever but like you never think about wet wipes until you got two infant babies in your own this is like every time i uh go to target to uh refresh on toilet paper and the employees there are like what a big family

I'm like, no, I live alone.

Oh, you're like the person who's getting too much Chinese food and is like, oh, this is for all my friends over here.

I like wait until they have a sale where it's like $5 off three 72 roll packs at once, and they have to like tape them to my arms to carry them home.

I just got a text from Mike Mitchell here.

Can you get me some wipes too?

I just, I heard what, I don't know, I figure I could use something.

Oh, yeah, I'll get you some.

I'll get you a box.

Do you want the box?

Yeah, give me the box.

It's one of those things where Amazon is like, you've purchased this 108 times or whatever.

They like tell you.

Deacons, Roger Deacons, the great cinematographer, says

their most most underrated film he loves obviously he kind of went off on this one it's a good looking movie it's gorgeous it's beautiful from an art direction standpoint and from a you know a visual effects standpoint which so often visual effects is like talked about like in terms of like some sort of technical sort of does the dinosaur look exactly but like like it's an art it's our it's an artistic craft and like from the standpoint of artistic achievement this is an amazing visual effects uh movie and and then obviously the cinematography is so great uh

Deacons is a genius.

Obviously, like breaking news or whatever.

Do you have a favorite thing he's shot?

It's a good question.

I mean,

maybe a tough thing to pull off the top of your head.

Yeah, but now I want to look at his filmography.

Like, because my thing with Deacons

is

he worked on a lot of amazing movies.

So it's sort of like, yes, he absolutely, you know, was unconscious fucking like on Lebowski or whatever.

You're right.

You're like, yeah, no kidding.

But like something like that movie House of Sand and Fog, which is like a forgotten

looks of shit.

And you're like, why does this look so good in the guy right Deacons?

Like, I like it when he, I mean, the Jesse James stuff is kind of the best.

We're like, I think, I don't think that movie's a masterpiece.

I think it's very good, but it's like looking at paintings that have come to life in a way that isn't AI.

I truly think

the company men.

I've never seen that movie.

Which is a dog shit movie.

Right.

Terrible.

He's the only one of his movies that kind of looks anonymously shot where I'm like, I don't believe this is Roger Deacons.

And outside of that, he's basically the cinematographer version of the like Harry Dean Stanton rule, where it's like, as bad as a movie is, if he shot it, that alone makes it worth watching.

Right.

Like, is that the Topher Grace one?

Company Man, what's that?

Company Man, no, that you're thinking of In Good Company.

In good company.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's, it's like, it's like up in the air.

Okay.

It's acts like

Austin.

Yeah.

Directed by the creator of ER.

He's not the creator of ER.

I'm sorry.

John Wayne.

Showrunner, the former showrunner.

Yes.

Henry Crayton is the creator of ER.

Sorry, going to get a letter from him this thing.

I'm going to get screamed.

It is a movie that is about how hard the recession was for executives.

And it's like, yeah, that's right.

Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, and Chris Cooper is guys.

Well, Costner is the blue-collar guy.

Costner is, I want to say, Affleck's brother-in-law, who's like, you want me to feel bad for you?

Cause you guys have to try to get an entry-level corporate job.

I build houses.

And it's all of them just like playing golf together, being really sad.

I think two of them killed themselves.

It is like a truly

play that nobody watches.

Wither the execs.

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The film's good.

Okay.

And let's talk about it.

The Hudsucker proxy.

What haven't we talked about yet?

You have these kind of like multiple cold opens in a row, right?

Like the film starts with a couple sequences that all feel almost standalone introductions and are largely wordless.

The opening is all the Bill Cobb narration talking about the idea of a new year and the promise and what could happen and the idea that this guy in such a short period of time has gone from the highest, has climbed from the mail room to the top and now is going to fall all the way down, right?

This insane shot where you're like through models, you're doing these like crossfade dissolves, and then at one point you realize, oh, this one is a real set because you're seeing human Tim Robbins walk out, walk across the ledge to the clock, and then the clock starts spinning backwards and the camera goes up to the sky.

You have these triumphant fucking credits, Carter Burwell going ham.

This was the one time, I think largely because of the influence of Joel Silver and Warner Brothers, where they were like, we need to test screen this thing early that they insisted on a temp score.

So a lot of this is taken from the Spartacus opera.

Do you have the name of the composer there?

It's in the dossier.

I will tell you his name is,

I'm going to probably mispronounce it.

R.M.

Kachurian.

But the

saber dance.

That comes from this show,

his Spartacus.

But also, the main theme of this movie is like repurpose from that.

And Burwell was like, I felt handcuffed and then I realized I could explode it and do a lot of stuff from there.

But to go straight from like this like old Hollywood, like triumphant grand orchestra opening to then this boardroom of this guy just fucking patting himself on the back for how successful they've been, ending with like, in short, folks, we're filthy rich, right?

And you're just watching David is going to take a shit, I assume.

The wipes came.

The wipes arrived.

He had them delivered to the bathroom.

Yeah, I think he had to deliver them straight to the bathroom.

He had like pneumatic tubes installed in the bathroom so you can get deliveries.

God, what a great, a great pneumatic tubes movie.

I love pneumatic tubes.

One of the best.

I mean, the entire, just the mail room just being like a boiler room.

It's, it is so, it's so, it looks so cool.

And everything is so packed with bodies.

Yeah.

That's just like another thing.

I, I, I love watching any movie made before the 21st century when, uh, you know, like now everything is just crowd duplication, which is fine.

But it's just like just seeing so many people in a frame and interesting looking people on top of that.

And also it's like, right, that sort of like

first dolly shot

through the mail room as he's given the dockya speech.

It's like the choreography of everyone crossing.

and the amount of different action and jobs.

It's just like mind-boggling to think about.

And I do think whether or not people consciously clock it, there is like a magic to like

getting one take where everything goes right that you do feel versus it having to be constructed later um and it just feels like spectacle when there's a high degree of difficulty yes you know but i just love that like wordlessly charles derning who to me is one of the goats in this sequence just shows like this despondency as all these fat cats are like evilly laughing to themselves at how rich they've gotten and just plays this entire arc briefly in like 30 seconds and a couple of close-ups of like, what is this life of mine, right?

Like you see him sort of like smile, then look off into the middle distance out the window, then like kind of ruefully wind his like stopwatch.

And I genuinely, the more I watch it, the more I think he only considers killing himself for the first time in that moment.

That you're watching a guy talk himself into it of just like, what's the fucking point?

I've made it to the top of the mountain.

I have nothing else to do.

I built this.

I have nothing to prove to anyone anymore.

Why not just end it?

And then he just so gracefully runs across the table, digs his heels in, jumps out the window.

I think that's why people watch the Doughboys video feed every week.

They're waiting for that moment.

They're waiting for Chekhov's banana to go off finally.

It's going to go off my mouth.

So

the moment he runs out, he sprints.

And then it's like the reaction of the boardroom of just everyone is just immediately going on with business as usual, except for the one guy who is just so like he's just bawling and crushed.

Like, how can you be like this right now?

It's, I love that guy.

It was also the guy who tries to kill himself later, just kill himself later, yeah, yeah, with the plexiglasses there.

It's also a great decision that I think Paul Newman is not visible

in the durning.

So, the first time you're seeing Paul Newman, it's almost like he appeared on Noah, you're right.

Is him looking out the window, unsentimental, having watched who you later find out is like ostensibly his best friend jump to his death.

But all that cross-cut with

wordlessly Tim Robbins, Norville Barnes going through the like literal fresh off the bus,

looking at the job board, looking at the classifieds, like the immediate feeling of this guy coming to a new city with all this hope and optimism and within four minutes being like crushed by it.

And there's such a good little character detail

he um, he gets his coffee at the diner, uh, he doesn't realize that the coffee has left the ring with the hudsucker job opening, that like fate is gonna like follow him out the door, but he leaves like two um nickels and a penny, and then he looks at his pocket and he's like, Oh,

should I give him that much?

And what he takes back is the penny of like this guy can't afford to give change, and yet what he's taking back is the lowest amount.

Yeah, it's a good guy, he's a good guy, yeah, he's all right.

David.

David has to be a bit of a jerk later on.

He does.

I kind of, I mean, like,

what's great about his character is that he's not a secret genius.

Like he is just like kind of a dope, but he has, he sees things with such clarity and such simplicity that that's, that's his, his secret weapon.

That's his advantage.

It allows him to come up with something.

You know, like the like the dingus, like the hula hoop.

And

but I, but I don't know.

Like I really just like a stupid character.

I like a guy who's just like a dumb guy.

It's funny.

And he's good at it.

He's very good at it.

Isn't the chance that you, that

I've always feel like a movie, if it is like a dumb lead character, there's a chance that the movie can just be bad.

And like, uh, I think it's a higher chance that it's like, who cares about this movie?

And there's, I don't, I don't really care about any of the characters.

And this guy's just an idiot.

Well, there's also something to, I think, that the character so badly wants to be told that he's a genius that he accepts a lot of things that don't make sense because they're flattering to him.

Like, as much as he is not the smartest guy in the world, they make it clear that he did go to like a low-level business school.

And he will say to Mussberger, like, shouldn't we be doing this?

And he's like, the hula hoop is a good idea that he had.

And he's like, yeah, when he says, you know, for kids, he's thought about it.

Like, this would be good for kids.

It's cheap.

It's like, you know, a gap in the market.

That's probably all he's thought about.

He doesn't have any other particular right.

You brought up Forrest Gump, and he's just

another movie where it's not the smartest man, but then like is the most noble guy in the world.

And he is.

They show him being kind of an asshole, like you were saying, Sims, at some point in the movie.

But like, becomes a jerk.

Still likable.

He's still, maybe that's the Robin's charm.

I think that's like the sort of

more of the commentary on the like

the soul, like crushing nature of pursuit of this kind of like endless growth and like corporate dominance is like that's what starts to destroy him.

Is the idea that he needs to like

become this kind of Titan of business, uh, which he then needs to like learn the lesson from.

But basically, the these plot setup that we are getting to one hour and 55 minutes into a recording.

We've talked about a lot of the movie already, but just keep going.

We're gonna talk about a lot more.

Um,

is that they realize that in his will, Waring Hudsucker

said that on january 1st the year after his death uh all the stock no he didn't say any he doesn't have a will it's it's that because he doesn't have a will all his stock will be public and he owns 87 of the company uh the blue letter is of course his actual will which we'll get to which we'll get to but um yes so they need to find a way one week before new year's to tank the value of the company so greatly that they can buy back all the stock in advance of January 1st.

So the public doesn't it's a producer's thing.

They need to make it bad to be, to get what they want.

It's a classic meme coin rugpool.

It's a classic.

It's

all about this.

Right.

And their big play that Musberger puts forward is get some jerk.

You need a hudsucker proxy.

You need to put some fucking idiot at the chair at the end of the boardroom who you can blame everything on.

Robbins, by the way, should we should just note, on a crazy run.

This is the same year as Shawshank,

same year as IQ, one of the great movies.

Never, never seen IQ.

Is Dead Man Walking the following year?

Dead Man Walking is the following year.

It's the same year as Shawshank.

Same year as Shawshank.

Because he seems so much younger.

IQ.

Same year as IQ.

He seems so much younger in this than he does in Shawshank.

He seems like he seems to younger.

You're right.

He's so boyish in this.

Yeah.

And of course, Shawshank also is set over so many years and it ages them.

Like it's years after the player, which I feel like is him sort of graduating into certain more serious leaning man type i mean i guess jacob's ladder is that wool durham is 88 88 okay players 91 players 92 okay um but jacob's ladder in 90 which is a movie i like a lot uh that he's the lead of that i mean it's a horror movie but still he's good in that uh bob roberts which is his directorial debut and he's starring is 92 and the player is that year so he's like medium hot stuff

oh yeah yeah totally oh yeah oh, yeah, uh, and it's like after Dead Man Walking is kind of when it gets weird for him, where it's like he does he writes and directs Cradle Will Rock, which is a bomb.

Let's acknowledge Dead Man Walking, he gets a fucking best director nomination before he's ever gotten an acting nomination, so now it's like, are you a genius auteur?

Right, 100%.

But it's the priority, you got to make another movie.

I'm really struggling with it.

Cradle Will Rock

is

a bomb, is sort of the end of him as a director.

Right.

And then he does Arlington Road, which does kind of rock.

It does.

And he's good in it.

And Mission to Mars.

Like, there's a couple movie he's doing where it's like, yeah, Tim Robbins.

He's like above the title.

Four-higher thriller.

Yeah.

Second lead.

Antitrust.

Yeah.

Remember, antitrust?

Where it's like, he's evil Bill Gates or whatever.

But it's a lot of like...

Big role and Tim Robbins parts.

The truth about Charlie is that.

Yes.

And then he wins the Oscar for Mystic River.

And then his career kind of goes up.

up

immediately.

And obviously, he's got a bit of a rep for being a bit of a tough cookie, I guess.

But, like,

I didn't know that about Robinson.

I think he's a big personality, right?

I don't know.

Maybe I'm

telling you, he's got a lot of ideas.

I know he's one of those guys.

I think that rumor has been circulated by George W.

Bush, who he's famously taken down a peg in his many.

He did dare

criticize the president.

I don't know.

You know my thing.

I won't watch SNL until Kanye apologizes about George W.

Bush.

That's my thing.

So you want SNL to get Kanye back now.

Yes.

This is the moment to get him back.

I'll say this.

We're recording this.

What's the date today?

He also didn't say that on SNL, but you're like, but he needs to address it on SNL.

They called it backwards.

I just want to carbon date this.

We're recording this on May 12th.

Yes.

I think there is a reasonable chance that by the time this episode comes out, Kanye West has publicly says George Bush cares about black people more than anyone else.

I love George W.

Bush.

I'm voting for him in the next election.

Which would be the normal thing, the most normal thing he said.

Wow, kind of returned.

Yes.

Kanye West, he's known who people are.

Apologize.

He's going to like endorse.

Yeah.

Okay.

So Hudsucker gets hired.

All the mail room stuff is so that's the most Terry Gilliam, just being in like the basement and like all with all the tubes and all the yelling and all the guys with the mail.

You have I like the guy who throws the mail into the...

What's his name?

Patrick Crenshaw, who is blue in old school, I'm pretty sure.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

Patrick Crenshaw

as ancient sorter.

And indeed he was in old school.

Just another good character detail I like where I think, you know, they talked about when this film was received that people complained that the Jennifer Jason Lee character was too harsh and the Robbins character was too dumb.

And they were like, why wouldn't you bring both of them towards the center and make them more likable?

And they were just like,

what do you mean?

Like, this is so much more interesting to do it this way.

But there are these small details I do like that they put in to be like, he's not an absolute imbecile as much as he's kind of a dope.

And he is sort of like thoughtful.

And the bit with him getting the larger envelope that he doesn't know where to sort because you have like the two names, the senior and the junior, and the junior mailbox is smaller.

It's not smaller, but it's smaller.

Right.

He like solves this problem in a pretty considerate way of like, I'll write a a note, put it in the dad's mailbox, tell him to give it to the son.

Yeah, like there is a little indication of like this guy can make decisions.

Doughboys, I have a question.

It's not to do with the hot chucker proxy, but I have to ask.

Yeah.

Someone just posted in my work Slack this question: Guys, is legal seafood in Boston famous, expensive, very good?

Can someone explain it to me?

Well, I know you're a legal seafood knower, Mitch.

That's the only reason.

Wags is just one week away from knowing this, and I wonder what your thoughts will be.

I think You're doing legal seafood on the pod?

We are talking about legal seafoods, separate words and plural, on the podcast.

Yes, we're doing it for a live show in Boston.

Yeah, we're doing legal seafoods.

A great question.

I think that

you can feel every way about every every, you can feel like it's good.

You can feel like it's expensive.

It is expensive.

I mean, there's no doubt about that.

But also, I think sometimes you can go there and think it's not good.

And

I think the quality

goes up and down.

I've never been there.

It's supposed to be an elevated chain.

Yeah.

It's like a 60 or 70, from my research, like a 60, 70 year old, you know, Boston institution.

And so I imagine it's the kind of place that people have a maybe complicated relationship with.

Certainly as it's grown and expanded, it is now an airport.

You know, what's it?

This is going back to something we said a while back on the podcast, but once you start to expand any of these franchises,

the quality is tough to maintain.

So it's not Boston's finest restaurant.

This is Katie Weaver, my colleague, the great Katie Weaver.

Is it Boston's best

high-end chain?

Oh, sure.

What would you see the competition for that?

I mean, that's the issue that there is no longer any competition.

They've got that market.

I'm aware of their market.

Yeah, that's true.

They do have the market.

Boston Markets

is not doing great.

A lot of these chains are not doing great.

I mean, these sort of like high-end chains.

The local is the local chain, like the 99 restaurant wages you went to.

That's like a local chain, not doing great.

Uh,

so I say, Yes, I think it is, yes, okay, it's a step above.

It's the best we got, I guess.

Great Katie Weaver, shout out, of course, her masterpiece, which is the article she wrote when she went to TJ Fridays and only ate mozzarella sticks for an entire day.

Oh, sure.

Oh, my God.

One of the greatest pieces of journalism in modern internet history.

I'm not joking.

When it was when TJ Fridays did the unlimited mozzarella sticks, like you can get as many as you want.

Yeah.

And she, it took it to the launch.

And Max, her editor, told her, like, if you do it for an entire day, I'll give you a week off.

And it's great.

You should read it.

Anyway,

back to the Hudsucker proxy, of course.

That sounds like something you and I maybe would just do, not even for the show.

So

he gets the blue letter.

He gets the blue letter.

He goes up to the top floor.

to deliver the blue letter.

That is how he gets into the Newman's office.

Correct.

And I do just...

That's where we meet the bell.

We don't need to call them out, but I do want to call out because the first, you know, seven or eight minutes of the movie play without a ton of dialogue, that then it really kicks in at the post-modern.

Yep, yep, yep, yep, right.

Where they do my favorite kind of like screwball comedy.

Like there are 10 guys at this table.

Each of them, their only function is to do one bit and to heighten that bit.

And the bits keep cross.

crossing over.

There's the mezzanine guy.

There's the sort of every step he took was a step up until the last one.

All of those guys are funny.

The guy with the the big bushy eyebrows is obviously the funniest.

I feel like I've seen that guy in other stuff.

Right?

Big bushy eyebrow guy.

I feel like he's going to come up in other Cohens as well.

Right.

But yes, the blue letter is this idea of this like inner hudsucker universe importance of a letter that must be handed over directly to the senior officer and no one else wants to take it because if you fuck up a blue letter, you're done.

Norville kind of gets stuck with it as like the last guy through the door, the newest hire.

It does a great, the movie does a great job where I was like, did they just forget about the blue?

I was like, they forgot about the blue letter.

I was, I was dumb.

I fell for it until the end of the movie and I was like, oh yeah, the blue letter.

They got back to it.

It genuinely worked on me.

I was just like, oh, it's just a plot device to get him to where he needed to be.

It's that improv principle, though, of like the moment to call the thing back is like one minute after the audience has forgotten about it.

Yes.

You need to wait out.

them keeping track of it.

Yes.

And it's great.

And it's great.

You basically get to a point where you're like, I guess the blue letter was just the excuse to get him into the room.

It's not important to the story.

Yeah.

When in fact, it is like the crux of the whole thing.

The fact that they say that they got stuck on the script with him on the ledge makes me think that the blue letter must not have been a part of the story.

Sure, they bring that back as the sort of thing.

That they're like, what is the thing that he can do once he's already about to jump that solves the problem?

What is some way that he can like win back the chair?

I just think it's very ingeniously

insane.

It's truly, I did.

I asked this before, but I said, Is there any time where this movie would be commercially a success?

And you said in the 1940s, but if this was released this year, do you think it would be like a, I mean, just if I guess even at least with the Cohens at their current level of fame?

Yes, yeah, it'd be more of a hit.

Yeah.

They've reunited and this is their like in the modern context.

I think it would be it's open up, it's open up against Final Reckoning.

No, I mean, it's not going to be better than finalx final reckoning but it is funny that it does feel like a lot of the times that the coens have made something that is pitched more as a comedy at the time people are like why are they doing this this is like a lark why can't they be serious they're supposed to be serious filmmakers and then those movies tend to like age incredibly well But the comedies, the straight comedies are usually the ones of theirs that are kind of dismissed in the moment.

Didn't you, I mean, didn't you mention a Lebowski did not perform well on Lebowski?

people were so mad about it it wasn't just a bump people were like they just made fargo why are they making this weird you fucking bowling comedy like what is this like it's yeah it's very funny they've had and like even this coming after miller's crossing and barton fink they're they have these multiple arcs of moments where people are like you were the fucking chosen ones like what are you doing

Did you, did you record the Barton Fink episode yet?

Yes, we did.

Did you reference the part of the Simpsons or the

Barton Fink.

Go to an artist.

Barton, Fink.

No, of course.

And the runner of Bart and his friends continually accidentally going to see Arthouse movies and being disarmed.

His naked lunch movie.

That's right.

Yeah.

And then there's, well, there was a dinner with Andre Game, right?

Was there an arcade cabinet?

Yeah.

Can I also just go back to Final Reckoning for just a second?

Wag said that he wished he could be put in the entity coffin to fly to New York.

I just wanted to bring that up, that that's your way that you wish you could travel here is the entity coffin.

Like checked in as like luggage.

The entity coffin and dead reckoning part one.

He does look like, it doesn't seem like he emerges out of that

having had an incredible nap.

Yeah.

He seems totally rejuvenated.

I mean, I want to see if I can add the entity onto my CPAP.

Morales is looking hot in that.

Yeah.

Yes.

It's you got to credit the entity.

Entity.

Entity.

I was saying that after one flight with the entity coffin, the entity coffin would be in therapy.

It's the big entity coffin in a sit-down therapy.

And I also wanted to just point out, I don't know if this is spoilers.

Please.

You guys are seeing Final Reckoning tonight.

We sure are.

It's very exciting.

It is exciting.

I hope we enjoy it.

I will say this.

I don't know if you've talked to them, David.

We have two friends who saw it three days ago.

Wow.

Who's the other?

Ehrlich is the one I know.

And Esther.

Right.

They're people going to Cannes.

And Ehrlich went thumbs down and Esther went thumbs up.

Oh my God.

Ehrlich.

Ehrlich's a dingus.

to use a HUD sucker.

I'm just saying, let's put it on the record.

By the time this has come out,

we'll have seen it.

Our episode will have been released.

Ehrlich did say it had like incredible action.

He seemed a little annoyed by it.

He complained that there weren't enough action sequences.

I just also want to say we saw Dead Reckoning part one with Ehrlich.

And we were like, woo, and he walked out and he was like, that sucks.

Cruz fucked it up.

And then I talked to him at Ben's wedding

last weekend.

And he said, it's really disappointing because obviously Dead Reckoning is a masterpiece.

And I said, you didn't like it.

He does this all the time.

And he went, yeah, but I've watched it 15 times since, and now I know it's a masterpiece.

Yeah, anyway.

We're an exclusive club.

Do you know this?

Married podcasters?

Wives named Nelly.

His wife's not his wife's name.

His wife is not named Nellie.

Yeah, her name is Natalie.

But it's close.

Natalie.

I think you heard Natalie.

I was hearing Nelly.

I heard it multiple times.

Now I'm realizing the way you say Natalie kind of does sound like Nellie.

Yeah, maybe that's a skill issue on my part.

Lovely wife Natalie.

You're kind of doing hudsucker pace delivery.

I kind of like, especially when I get riled up, I tend to, I go into like a hudsucker.

You're a hudsucker.

You are a little bit of a hudsucker.

Yeah, I'm a little bit of a hudsucker.

Hey, buddy.

Hey, buddy.

God, I can't even do it.

Judy White is the one of us who could successfully exist in a conference like this.

Hey, buddy,

I can't see.

This is the issue I'm going to do.

I can't even do an impression.

I can't do an impression of it.

I I couldn't, the, the, I would get in my head.

I can't, I'm a stuttering man.

I couldn't, I couldn't, the, the fast, the, the, the rapid fire delivery of this thing, I couldn't do it.

Uh, they've set a buzz by this point in the movie.

A little bit I love.

And this is just like the, I, have you guys seen Preston Sturge's movies?

Yes.

Yeah.

So like my mom, when I was sick and I was a very sickly child and was homesick a lot, would be like, if you're sick in bed, you have to watch like a classic movie.

Yeah.

And would try to make me watch like serious films.

And I was a little fucking brat and would usually be like, this sucks.

Happy Gilmore.

Which had not yet been canonized as a classic.

Well, as a child, that feels like work.

And you're home from school and

you're not supposed to have work.

Don't make me watch some black and white dog shit.

What do you think?

I'm going to be a movie podcaster someday.

I don't need to watch this bullshit.

But Sullivan's Travels, I have this very visceral memory of my mom showing me when I was like 10,

renting and being like, oh, fuck, this is funny.

This is like an old movie, but it's funny.

and then a film forum here in new york city would do like sturgees rep series of all his films every couple of years so like over time i'd seen almost all of them and grew to be like this is like exactly what i want out of a comedy film these are the funniest movies of all time and one of the things i love about them is like every character has this sense of a deep inner life Every guy feels like you could just follow them for the rest of the movie and something fascinating is going on there.

And even if it's a character who exists to just execute one recurring bit, there are weird like gives or contradictions in it.

And the buzz thing, where it's like, is this guy for real?

He's got this whole fucking rehearsed routine and he's doing all this choreography with the hat.

And he's got these rhymes for every single person who steps onto the elevator.

And he's like calling out the rhymes with their names and the floors.

And then he says, like,

Mr.

11, floor 37.

And it goes 36.

He goes, walk down.

This idea that Buzz will fucking make people change their routines in order to fit his rhymes.

I, I, that is so on point that there's just, I would love to, I would love to follow Buzz.

Right.

If Max came out with Hudsucker proxies

and you followed the story of all the Hudsucker proxy people, proxies plural, I'm saying.

And we got to see all, I, I would,

that's, give me that.

Give me that, give me that streaming show.

All the boardroom guys, the, the eyebrow guy.

There's so many, there's so many characters that you just get a glimpse of that you want to see more of.

Hudsucker proxy honey bunny.

They get so many beats out of the stakes of the blue letter, including with Buzz in the elevator.

And just like, that's when he finally is shaken out of his.

He's like, tell me in a blue letter.

You know, I love that.

And then

the woman who ends up on the feigning couch.

It's so great.

That's like my favorite kind of Cohen joke, which for a movie that is so verbal and they are, they will do these visual gags that aren't even about like crazy physicality that are like this woman's ignoring him.

He finally like gets her to notice the blue letter.

The woman on the ladder screams.

And then the next cut, he's in the office and in the background.

You see her getting

funny.

Right.

And it's like, that's like Simpson's level of like visual joke density.

Ben, I forgot to ask you if you like this movie.

Because you, you know, I know with a multi-guest pod, you tend to take a back seat, but what do you think of Hudzucker Brock?

I love it.

You've seen it before.

Yeah, I'd seen it before.

It's so silly and fun.

It's like a film of theirs that I know I saw Fargo first,

Big Lubowski, but I think this might have been like maybe the third or fourth of theirs that I saw.

And it still holds up.

It's a blast.

Yeah.

And I think you guys keep calling out The Simpsons.

And that really does feel like the energy of The Simpsons is really in this.

Even down to just like, there's so many fun little like

word-written jokes.

Like what comes to mind is when, um,

what's his name?

Uh, Paul Newman's character towards the end is writing different variants of what the company's new name will be.

That's great.

Yes.

Barry Simpson.

He lands on Sid Sucker.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What was it?

What was the burger one?

There was a burger.

There was something burger.

Hudsburger.

I think it was maybe Hudburger.

Yeah.

But also when you look at like when Norville's reading the classifieds and when he's looking at the job boards, it's like every single thing written there is funny.

Right.

Yeah.

The job board thing is so cool.

Do you think anything like that ever existed?

I hope so.

Okay.

I want to believe it's based on something.

He goes into Musberger's office to deliver the blue letter.

Musberger immediately goes, like, this guy could be a good fucker.

And then we have

the stitch joke.

This is the moment.

This is what I'm trying to tee up.

Yes.

But this idea that, like, Musberger immediately pegs him as, like, you're an idiot, then decides that he's maybe a little too smart or a little too dumb or a little too arrogant, like, almost passes him over.

Another, like, just beautifully

executed visual gag is, you know, he accidentally like starts setting the contract on fire with the cigar.

Him with the foot, his foot in the fiery bucket is so funny.

Actually, him removing the top of the water cooler and in one sustained shot, holding it the wrong way, trying to get over there.

And the time he makes it over there, it's empty.

And all of this leads to obviously the trash can on fire, him kicking out the window, the hole, the wind sucking him out, Newman falling to try to catch the contract, and then Tim Robbins catching him by his foot.

The last time I saw this movie before, revisiting last night, saw it at the Metrograph with a friend of the podcast, Michael Tabersky.

Shout out Michael Tabersky.

Two Christmases ago.

Why is he coming on the pod?

Anytime.

Well, not anytime.

We should probably set up a schedule.

Okay, we'll set up and schedule a time.

I guess we'll get the fuck out of here and get Tabersky.

Bring him in.

What if we just never stop talking about

this movie, but every few hours we're like, all right, you guys go.

Someone else is coming.

We release it as Hudsucker Proxy Dead Reckoning Part 1 and Hudsucker Proxy Final Reckoning.

Never mind.

It's not a Doblox episode anymore.

We change bands.

I, when I saw it that time, logged that I...

think this is my favorite gag, my favorite joke in the history of movies.

You love that.

Yes, I saw that log.

And I stand by it as there is not to to overly dissect the frog, right?

But the internal logic of the joke and also the like construction and execution of it of

Newman's hanging out a window by his leg, right?

We get the extreme close-up shot of the pants starting to rip.

You cut to Newman's face.

Oh no.

Like sort of

Wayne's world

flashback of him being tailored, measured up.

A character that I think is always funny, which is a little Taylor.

A little.

I think that's a great

character.

Taylor.

Sona, don't you, you know, like, I just think that's funny.

I love it to make it the pants.

Like, he's just so

just like the refinement of it and then also the kind of old-fashionedness, kind of the, yeah, it's so funny.

Now, when I see this for the first time, and Charles Derning is third build in the opening credits, right?

And then immediately kills himself.

Griff,

this is my thought when I just watched it.

I was like, that's such a funny joke to bill someone that prominently and then just have him him immediately after the billing kill himself without saying a single line of dialogue.

I know Paul Newman has the and he's hanging out the window, pants start ripping, flashback to the tailor saying, but the double stitch.

Double stitch, why?

To give it pad your account, right?

Single stitch will be fine.

Right.

And you cut back to Newman being like, oh no, fatal mistake.

And I go, this is so funny.

They're going to kill Paul Newman right away again.

They're going to do this bit a second time.

And what a classic movie, like this guy's fatal undoing.

He could have saved his own life if not for the fact that he told the guy-wise, I was like, oh, it makes sense.

And like, it makes sense.

Like, Paul Newman's going to die, and then he will still be the head of the company or whatever.

That's what makes him be the head of the company: Paul Newman, right?

And then you cut back to a second

double flashback.

So funny.

So funny.

And the guy, as you said, it makes no sense, but the guy, while sewing, he starts doing the first 5%

of the waste with single stitch.

As Newman told him, it goes, ah, what the heck?

Mr.

Musberger is such a nice man.

I give him the double stitch for free.

And then the pants stop ripping at exactly that point.

Do you guys get a double stitch?

Which is not a thing, of course, that I've ever heard of before.

And I only associate with this movie.

But if I get a suit made, should I now be like, make sure, double stitch.

In

case you fall out a window?

Exactly.

By the way, Chekhov's been in a dig go off.

I just want to let people know.

Easy.

I mean, because we've been podcasting for a long time because there's a ridiculous thing.

I swear to God.

Okay, so yeah, that's all funny.

I like that it's playing with the fucking language of what we expect the bit to be.

Yeah.

And then undoing it in a way that is just like...

It's so funny.

And he's not nice to him at all.

No exactly.

There's no reason for him to do this.

He only does it because it's a funny gag.

Yes, it's great.

I love it.

And also, who's getting that flashback?

Not in the scene.

It's a memory of just the old tailor.

It is interesting to think about like this.

The Simpsons are so influenced by the same eras of movie comedy that this movie is riffing on.

And like things in The Simpsons, like the um yes guy.

are like direct quotes of like Sturgis stock company players.

A lot of the like big archetypes of Springfield, even that notion of like this character exists to continually come in and just do this one bit.

This movie has the Texan businessman for one season who's so funny, which is like a Simpsons character.

That's a Simpsons guy.

Right.

I wonder like it's so funny that he says like, oh, you know, people run for cover.

And he's like, yeller, you're calling me yeller.

Like that's where he goes to.

Yeah.

But this notion of like, is there any era in which this movie would have worked, right?

You're like, at this point, there are five seasons of The Simpsons on air doing a similar style of comedy, and yet I think it is easier for people to swallow an animation.

Of course, this movie is off-putting to 90% of its audience, like first run, like right away.

I think I think just most people are probably immediately like, nah, fuck off.

Like, I, right?

I'm not saying because it's not bad, yes, just because it's a lot.

Yes, I don't think there's any, I can't believe that they ever thought this would be a success, I guess, is my thought.

Like, there's that's the crazier part, yeah, yeah.

That's what's kind of, and I guess it's like you know,

so much, so many, so many things like this that are so great and so unique exist because of a mistake.

And that's just like here, just like the wild miscalculation to think that this would connect with mainstream audiences on any level when it's so dense and so inscrutable.

The sight and sound review by The Dead Man that I quoted earlier.

That same guy said that the single funniest joke in the movie is that it was made for $40 million at Warner Brothers with Joel Silver producing.

And he was just like, the film is such a failure as a comedy that the only funny thing about it is, why did they think this was worth making?

Which is sort of true.

But I also like that there is this, not I think, like a deliberate self-knowing way, but there's this self-reflexive quality to the movie of like, this film existing is like pitching the hula hoop.

Like, how the fuck did this get all the way to the top office?

So, what you're talking about is so, so, yes, the, the, the, there's so much dialogue.

It's so like just absolutely jam-packed with verbiage up until the moment, like, like to up through the sequence where he's hanging out out of the window.

And then we go from that straight to

like next in

chronologically in the movie is just

a totally non-verbal stretch of just character, like all the characters, the business laughing, right?

Right, which is very Simpsons-y as well.

Like, it's like three minutes of cutting from location to location as they groom him to be a CEO and present him to the press, and it's just everyone laughing hysterically.

But this is part of why for me, this movie is immensely watchable is because it's not just like

the His Girl Friday, you know, style dialogue for its entire runtime.

You know what I mean?

Like

it has these moments where it just kind of like lets itself breathe for a bit and

just sort of like

it is communicated purely visually.

And it's not a long movie.

No.

Like like every Cohen's movie, it basically like is in that sort of hour 45e range.

You know, it's not.

Which at this era, most comedies are maybe closer to 90.

Sure.

I guess it's a little comfortable, comfortably paced compared to Ace Ventura.

Right.

How long is Ace Ventura?

Actually, let's find out.

An hour 26.

That's how you do it, man.

With credits.

Yeah, with credits.

We just had an hour.

We hit one hour over Ace Ventura right now at the time.

Sorry, Mitch.

I'm really sorry.

I'm not sorry.

I'm sorry.

Oh, you don't have to be sorry, but I'm sorry.

We're coming here.

We're not these great people come on our show, which I really love and appreciate that they do.

And then like you'll some, not you guys, you know, not today, not us.

You know, definitely not us.

No, yeah, this is just some trash that blew in.

No, but like, I mean, you'll just see them.

Like, I think you'll see it in their eyes sometimes, but they're like, oh, huh, this just keeps going, huh?

Like, we don't stop.

You brought in two chair breakers today.

Mine's yet to break, but it will at some point.

Thank God we got the double stitch.

My chair got the double stitch.

Mitch is such a nice guy.

Griff making my chair before.

I like when you speaking of runtime, I like when you watch like a, like you put on a movie like Master of Disguise, which is like the runtime is like 78 minutes.

Hell, and then you, and then you, and then that includes like long credits and then like a like a post-credit scene where it's like, you're still here?

What are you doing here?

It's like, they had to pat out this runtime as much.

We were getting lunch before the record, and Space Jam was playing at the TV.

And Mitch, you were like, I can't believe how long this opening credit sequence is.

And I was like, the end credit sequence has like four whole music videos and the movie with both of these credit sequences is like under 80.

i love it when something's short it's so good it was fun i think it is the whole i think i believe i think it is the whole i believe you can fly song right is the opening credits it's so or they uh no that no okay comes in at the beginning it uh it that's uh come on and jam and welcome to the jam okay but they play that entire song in the opening credits it's so long and credits i think they do i believe i can fly Again.

They do for You, I Will.

Okay, yeah.

We did a whole episode.

I also said

it was a masterpiece compared to the new one, too.

No disagreement here.

Yeah.

David, any wipes updates?

No, I bought the wipes.

I mean,

it's a pack of 12.

You know, it's a box of 12 wipes.

It's one of the heaviest things that gets delivered to my house on a regular basis.

Wipes weigh a lot.

Here's another thing I like in this movie.

It is.

Very unclear what the Hudson Company does, right?

They make doozy pickeys, I feel.

Like like they make widgets, right?

But it's also sort of like they're a business company, right?

The opening monologue right before Derning throws himself out the window is just him explaining how huge their business is, but it's basically just defining like our stock is doing so well, mergers and acquisitions, like all this stuff.

They've just become this behemoth that like society rests upon and yet actually gives nothing back, it seems like.

No, it's it's like the way like a, you know, like a sketch written by a 25-year-old like UCB writer who's never had a job will try to like set something in a boardroom and approximate the language of the corporate world, but with no actual specifics.

That's, oh, that's going to say it's like, yeah, a doohickey, no doohickey company runs that way.

Waymo does not have a mail room where there's multiple mail slots.

But that's right.

It's like the metaphor is this is like society, right?

Cause it's like, that's why the clock.

I feel like becomes, it's like, yeah, all of reality is this building, basically, because when the clock stops, everything stops.

And obviously you don't see that much outside the walls of the building, but you don't get the sense that like everyone is using and loving Hudsucker products.

Like, I think it is pointed that the Hula hoop is the first thing that people seem to have any affinity for.

Like, this movie is not doing the wally bit of, like, oh, everything has a by and large logo on it, right?

There's not this sense of like, oh, Hudsucker has a monopoly on every product.

It's all like they make something, but who knows what they're doing.

Yeah, it's funny to not see it too.

It's great.

Like, I don't need to see what else they are doing.

The fact that this weird company could make a hula hoop in a Bendy straw is great.

It's bizarre.

And it brings everyone closer together.

Well, I should say it adds more value to the hula hoop.

That's not just that it's selling so well, but that people are like given joy from it.

Minute 30, like right after the laughing montage, you basically cut straight to John Mahoney.

Yeah, so it's a little side plot.

I mean, Mahoney never leaves this desk, right?

Bruce Campbell never leaves his chair.

The little newspaper, the Argus, the Manhattan Argus.

Obviously,

you know, all the Daily Bugle stuff in the Raimi Spider-Man movies is riffing on these same kind of like Hoxian newspaper comedies.

But I do watch these sequences and especially his first monologue.

If not, then since when, you know, all that sort of like back and forth talk.

feels like him seeing you could do this in a modern comedy and still have it work.

You know, Mahoney's amazing in Barton Fing, obviously, and he's amazing in this.

And he never did another Cohen's movie.

And it's sort of like there's a lot of guys like that who the Cohen's clearly liked and used like two or three times.

And then they moved on to new guys and they had, you know, like they were doing something different.

He also got sucked into the Fraser sphere.

And I think when he was off season, wanted to focus on doing plays.

He did a lot of theater.

Yeah.

Frasier started in 93, so that's certainly a big thing of, yeah, you know.

Yeah.

But he's great.

Bruce Campbell looks so fucking handsome in this movie.

He looks like comically pretty.

Yeah, he looks fantastic.

As does Jennifer Jason Lee, obviously.

But much like the Paul Newman reveal.

As does Anna Nicole Smith.

Yes, as does Mike Starr.

Anna Nicole Smith reveal also great.

It's really funny, genuinely really funny.

But like,

it feels like Jennifer Jason Lee appears from nowhere, right?

Like you have this whole extended monologue, all these gruff guys.

I like the guys who bet on her Pulitzer.

You know, that gag always gets me someone where they're like, I won the bet, and then the bet gets reversed.

That's always funny.

And you funny.

Yes.

You have the basic setup of no one has an idea of who this guy is.

They need the story.

And she claims she bets her Pulitzer on it.

She stakes it that she will get to the bottom of this.

And so she's going to try to honey trap him in order to find out who he is, which then leads to My favorite scene in the movie, which is the light lunch scene.

Wow, that's your favorite scene in the movie.

Because is because of the Muncy High.

The Muncy High fight song part.

No, that's before that.

At the diner.

Oh.

I think it is such an ingenious way of them having their cake and eating it too, of like the funny meat-cute that everyone knows how it's going to play out.

So rather than have the audience roll their eyes at how cliched it is, you have two characters.

who basically are just like, we know the fucking rules of this universe.

We like sit here all day and we watch watch these other movies play out that we're never the lead characters in.

And we can predict every move of what they're going to do.

And they're, they're betting just like the two guys in the newspaper office of like, is she going to do this or that?

And it's all framed as just these two guys have terrible indigestion, right?

It's bookended by these two guys just needing to shit so fucking badly, asking for bromo, and then this like genuinely kind of romantic, like fucking con that she's pulling to trick him into thinking that he's like met a nice girl for the first time.

I've never related to characters more than those two guys.

The Bramo guys.

Yeah.

Me and you now through this whole podcast, probably.

We ate a huge meal before we came here.

We had smoked poutine for you.

We had smoked.

We did have smoked poutine.

You had the poutine too.

We got it for the table.

Oh, you got it for the table.

I loved, I loved that.

That

this was a very funny interaction between you two that Griff is like, best poutine in the city.

And you were like, yes, because in New York City, you really need the best poutine.

Famously known for the 400th most.

I was like, I really come to New York for the Canadian food.

Look, I could amend that.

I like poutine because it's French fries with a bunch of shit on it.

Yeah, it's the best food.

They cracked the code on that one.

No, I could have amended that statement.

I'm like, guys, guys, do you want me to plug you into the best Malaysian food or whatever?

And Griff's like, if you want poutine,

just put micro, you know, micro-acea cheese on your fries in the hotel.

You need curds.

You need the curds.

Yeah, you need the curds.

I love a curds.

Yeah.

To be clear, you do like the Monty High cheer.

I'm sure you do.

I know you do.

Yeah, yeah.

It just came at a different time.

To your point,

they believe you guys haven't blown up this bathroom if you guys had fucking myelin poutine.

That's my checkoff.

My checkoff gun.

Checkoff's turd.

The check off's turd.

He almost called it that.

It was almost Chekhov's turd.

And then he's like, you should make it a gun or something.

Jersey Kilberg was there.

Check off.

Make it a gun.

Sorry, I was talking about the Muncie High.

Yeah, that's the next scene, right?

Like, because

Vane's fainting, and then he carries her upstairs, and then they have that whole arrow.

Claims to be from Muncie.

She gaslights him into hiring her.

Griffin said, to my point, and I thought he was going to say something cool about something I said.

No, that I like that the arc is sort of her realizing, being charmed by his sincerity.

She's like, he's a small town rube.

And by the end of this, she's like, he's a small town rube.

You know, it's like she understands what's good about him.

Yeah, that's the thing.

I think Jennifer Jason Lee gets really right in her performance.

I think a lot of people misunderstood at the time of like, oh, she's doing this weird affectation of doing this very stylized performance.

It's very throwback-y, and she seems a little uncomfortable in doing it.

But the whole point of the character is that it's a fucking act, right?

That like she needs to do this whole routine of coming in with these fast-talking monologues and like doing prop comedy, taking the cigarettes out of guys' mouths so that everyone takes her seriously in the office.

And it's not like what she really wants is just to get married and have kids.

But this whole movie is kind of circling back to this idea that I think is like important for both of the Cohen brothers being weird versions of wife guys.

That they're sort of like,

what's the, like, if you just fucking chase success

like as a end to all means, then like, what are you left with?

That all of these characters are sort of like, if you don't ever find anything that actually makes you happy, you're going to end up on the top floor of a fucking building when I throw yourself out a window.

It doesn't matter what you accomplish.

And that they both cut through each other in that kind of way.

And it's like Hudsucker's final message that he comes back and delivers him of like, this is what ruined my life.

But yeah, that she is like slowly, even though the person she is with him is someone she's pretending to be, it starts to become a more honest version of her because he becomes the one person she can drop the act with.

It starts with her doing a different act.

And then as it goes on, it starts with her becoming like an actual genuine person with him.

She takes, she takes, I mean, I was just, I was thinking of how this performance reminds me a bit of Hateful Eight a little bit and just the big, it's another, another big, it's another big pushing her in the face.

Well, another big, and just another big character.

Not that there's a similar thing of she's a different person or anything like that, but look, especially in the 90s, I feel like she was one of those actresses that would get credit a lot for being quote unquote brave.

And even in the 80s, too, where it was like, oh, she does things that other big movie stars wouldn't want to do.

And that's usually code for women playing like unlikable characters, getting naked, doing extreme violence, you know, all these things.

It's never felt like that's something she does for like deliberate provocation.

I just think she's not protective of her image in that way.

She's a great actor.

Yeah, she rules.

Love her.

A big part of the reason why the movie works, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's true.

And I do do agree with you that like someone like Winona might feel more pastiche, a little more playing dress up, right?

Cause she's a little younger and she's a little greener.

I also think there is like an inherent sadness to Jennifer Jason Lee

that serves the performance well.

Yeah.

Even when she's playing very big.

But yes, now she's implanted as his secretary and he's at the top of the company and he's going to make his big play, which is sell the hula hoop.

He has nothing on his schedule except for like, like talking at like a kindergarten yes like he just is sitting in this giant office doing nothing all day it was very much a podcaster's schedule

it would be funny if as podcasters we had to like clock in and out of work but a lot of our work is just like sitting there

um

wow 12 hours this week

um

still complaining people are getting so mad at us um so what's always get into that conversation with people where they're like, and what did you do with the rest of your week?

And I'm like, I don't know, read the comments.

Well, I had to watch the movie for the podcast.

Yeah, that's like an hour 45.

And I had to find out where to rent it.

That was five minutes.

Yeah.

Also, my co-host has three kids.

So my life is pretty busy.

I have so many fucking kids.

It's crazy, God.

Right.

So if you do the math, that's like me having a kid.

Is that what you're thinking about?

Is that what?

Is that what?

Is that the time crunch?

I am frequently thinking about my children.

Yes, that is part of the time crunch for sure.

Of course.

Tonight I'm seeing Mission Impossible, so it's a night out.

It's already in the Cal.

And also, we're having a gentleman's feast.

We sure are afterwards.

I mean, we're doing it all today.

It's quite a day for me today.

But I do have three children.

One of them just started crawling.

Ah.

One of the twins.

Yeah.

Bebop.

Okay.

We call them Bebop and Bob.

Bebop and Rocksteady.

Yes.

Do you sense jealousy?

Rocksteady is right behind him.

I think Rocksteady is.

Rocksteady's just got a slightly more, he's happier, like chilling.

Is bebop

the bigger one.

He has fraternal twins, but there's a bit of a size difference.

Yeah, oh, yeah, one of the bigger in a way that is funnier, in my opinion.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, they've got very different vibes.

They do.

They do.

Can I tell you something that happens?

We're going to be a podcast in the future.

It could be.

One's kind of more of a like pig man.

The other one's got like

a rhino bone.

What were you you gonna say i was gonna say i i've also been called bebop and rocksteady by people before dunking on me so i have that in common with it bulk and skull of course i brought up on a recent episode from the power rangers you know just like that was like in the 90s the children needed to see two large fools yeah like as who would literally like like kunk heads together right who go

right and they would like the b plot is them 20 minutes of them trying to buy groceries or something what p-man has my favorite version of that which is the guy's name is too bad oh it's a two-headed henchman where they curse them by putting them together and they punch each other in the face.

I don't think we should go in there, boss.

Hey, come on.

What else?

So he invents the Hulu Hoop.

I mean, come on, let's keep it going.

He invents the Hulu.

We talked about that montage, but it is, I agree with Patrick's assessment.

It's an incredible film within the film.

But you have before that, you get to the ball with Peter Gallagher, which is when they is that before the Hulu hoof?

It is?

The fancy Christmas ball.

Oh, right, because that's where the investors are yelling at him.

Peter Gallagher, one of the great singers, an incredible, incredible singer.

Obviously, like now everyone knows him as Sandy Cohen.

Sure.

But he's one of Broadway's

leading men, beautiful voice.

And also owner of two of Hollywood's greatest eyebrows.

He does have those pussy willows.

He was on Conan and he referred to them as the Gallagher pussy willows.

Oh, God.

And it is a term that lives in my head all the time.

He's the best.

And I've genuinely heard that he's quite a nice guy, which is always great to hear.

But yes, it's Newman's trying to walk guys and dolls in the early 90s.

I used to listen to it a lot when I was a kid.

He was Sky Masterson.

It was amazing.

He's playing a kind of Dean Martini guy.

Newman is trying to walk Robbins through sabotage, right?

Like he starts saying, like, keep your mouth shut and don't respond to any questions, you know, and then it's like, actually, never mind, reverse what I said.

He's trying to give him the advice he would actually give to someone he wants to succeed and then realizes that he needs him to fail.

Right.

And so Robbins like steps in it, embarrasses himself in front of a bunch of people, says something offensive and like Swedish,

and then goes out in the balcony with Jennifer Jason Lee.

And they have this bonding moment where it actually feels like they cut through to each other.

They kiss for the first time.

It's like explosion, score swells, and then you like hard cut to.

It is this movie being so mathematically constructed in the way Cohen Brothers movies are.

Hula Hoop is explained at one hour exactly.

It's like at the one hour mark, they kiss, and then you go out from the blueprint in the office, and for the first time, you know what the circle is.

Yes.

And now here's the thrust of the second half of the movie.

Right.

He's really huling the fuck out of it for that whole scene, too.

The neck.

Yeah.

Ankle.

Yeah.

Has he already been reported as being a dummy in the newspaper at this point?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lee's already dragged him through the mud.

Because

there's a

an imbecile heads hudsucker.

And then the sub-headline was, not a brain in his head.

And I really liked that.

It was very Simpson-y.

Yeah, imbecile heads hudsucker is like right up there with extra, extra Todd smells.

Dude, maybe newspapers should bring that back.

Just like, we've looked into it, and this guy's a dummy.

Like, it's just like, that's what the story is.

Yeah, there's, there's the, just, just that balcony scene.

Cause yes, there is, there is, there's some newsroom sort of back and forth that we, that we kind of, uh, you know, are breezing by.

But, but on that balcony, they're, they have like some more dialogue back and forth.

and there is another of those moments where like she's starting to be like he's got the shiner from the being punched by the finish guy they're

uh they're talking and about like what you could have been in a past life and you know he he says uh he says karma uh but they also is the the part uh where she like they're talking about

You know, I think you'd be a gazelle or, you know, maybe an ibex.

And like, either way, like, could I call you dear?

And he like cracks himself up, but it's so adorable.

And then she starts talking about like, oh, but maybe it was, I was a hard sort of nosed reporter, sort of like city girl, like like tries, like projects about herself, right?

She's talking about herself in a past life, herself in a current life, if that was her in a past life.

And he's like, no, that kind of person would come back as a wildebeest or a, you know, like,

it's, I don't know.

I just really love all the dialogue through there.

And it's just such great.

It just like allows her to play the subtext so strongly and she's so effective at it.

I also think there's something in both of them have these kind of like preconceived biases against the type of person the other one is, right?

That she's this like hard-boiled city girl who thinks a country bumpkin is naturally an idiot.

And he thinks a person like that must be like a heartless cynical monster.

And that they're in having these weird conversations, they both kind of quietly realize that like at their core, they are sort of the same in the things they value and what they care about.

And

and that's sincerity, like you were saying, there's a sincerity in the movie.

There is, there it is, um,

that to that piece of shit, uh, reviewer from the 90s who's passed away, rest in peace

who died tragically, but still, I don't, I don't know anything about him.

Um, he gets them to approve the hula hoop, and you have this unbelievable thing.

It's a hit, and like you talk about like a sketch comedy logic business company, the idea of there being an entire room that's how much will it cost on like a big banner up top and guys going back and forth and just naming prices i think it's really funny i think it's really dummy that they

add the one yes dollar like that is that does seem how they feel stroking their chin right and that uh when you have the the pitch room guys trying to come up with the name uh the secretary at the front every time they cut to her is reading a different like mammoth book she goes through war and peace and anna karenna

yeah funny funny stuff i don't know i like i like when the when when it's taking off and the price they they just the price goes up and up and the the the new sticker it's great all that stuff is fantastic i do think the second half it's really less than half but is a little less propulsive and awesome than the first sure because it's the fall yes and it's like the comedy is still there And I think the ending of this movie is wonderful, like just visually and dynamically and like the big fight with the janitor and Bill Cobbs and all that and like the gears.

All that's great.

I do i just felt myself drifting slightly i'm so engaged by everything up to the hula hoop being created

uh and it is partly because like you need him to suddenly become a jerk so now he's this kind of withdrawn character and you need him to not do anything the straw bits funny like you know there's stuff that's funny like the the the asides well i also like that there's steve bachemi as a beatnik is funny acknowledging the like uh the life cycle of fads right that this guy is so ready to coast off the success of the hula hoop for the rest of time, and you're already seeing it fade, right?

You have the original montage, then you have the John Goodman newsreel of like, this is credited as Carl Munt, his

character in Barton Fink, the serial killer, not the nice guy.

And he makes the joke of like, I don't see what all the hoopla is about.

And then you see him try it a second time, and already it's starting to fall off.

And it's when you get to Buzz pitching him the straw, he like needs to shit on Buzz in order to reaffirm his own greatness.

Like, he goes, like, this is moronic.

You see, the thing that makes an idea, like, I don't know, the hula hoop so great.

We're like, it's this thing that these guys need to do, which is like, tell you why they're so smart.

Nah, capitalism is good.

You're wrong.

And he hits them with the, you know, we don't crawl here at a Hudsucker with the same Paul Newman and it's just a great pullback.

I like,

yeah.

It's interesting what you say about the second half.

I really do like the second half of this movie.

All right.

right, I'm wrong.

No, no, I'm not, I'm not even saying I disagree with you.

I'm, I mean, I'm more trying to like, like, interrogate in my own head is like, is it, is it a little bit less fun?

And is that just inherent to the, the, what you were saying of just like it being the, yeah, the, it being the fall.

But, but, but one thing I will say is like, there is an overall joke to this movie, which is just how compressed the timeframe is, that absolutely everything is happening within a 30-day time limit.

And that, that, you know, he's going from mail room where he's being, or he's getting from his orientation in the mailroom to being company president in the same day because someone, because the company CEO committed suicide earlier that morning.

Which the bellboy on the ride up that he was in the mailroom and the bell boy, and then on the ride down with the bellboy, he is the president.

He's basically the president.

It's very funny.

And the news hasn't even reached Buzz yet.

Yeah, Buzz doesn't know.

They're like, had that blue letter go?

It's another one of my favorite jokes in the movie is when he brings Jennifer Jason Lee back and he's like, I'm going to get you a job here at the company.

And I know just where there's an opening.

And he buzzes down to the supervisor in the mail room.

Yeah.

And he goes like, hello, this is Norville Barnes.

He goes, Barnes, where are you?

I've been waiting for you for four days.

And he goes, I don't know if you heard, but I'm the president of the company now.

And he goes, I don't care if you're the president of the company.

That he emphasizes president.

Right.

That it's just the same thing repeated back.

Yeah.

Also,

there was one thing we skipped over.

It was a pretty good Eisenhower cameo.

Oh, him saying, like, that is so funny.

I thank you, and my wife thanks you.

Mrs.

Eisenhower is proud of you.

Right.

Because it just, it would be, it's just so funny that it's a picture of him.

Like that just slide in the picture of him.

It's also so funny that, like, 20 plus years later, uh, Aaron Storkin basically tries to do the Ernest version of that at the end of being the Ricardos.

That is what happens right when he's Dagger Hoover is like

so.

There's nothing weird about me.

I love Lucy.

And then after all applause.

Dwight Eisenhower rocks.

What a weird guy.

Yeah, I like Ike.

Yeah.

I'm a fan.

Yeah, I like Ike, too.

Yeah.

Great.

What's your favorite thing he did?

Are you asking me specifically?

He's like a Mississippi schools is probably the genuine answer.

Or winning the war, but he did some bad stuff too.

Or warning us about the military industrial conference.

Yeah, that was fun.

I was a fan of the White House physician announcing he had like an unremarkable shit.

Wait, really?

He was just like, yeah, I looked at it.

Nothing special.

There was like a whole thing of like he had a, he was sick and they were like the, they, they were being very cagey about it.

And so the White House released, like the, the physician released a an extremely explicit letter letter just like sort of detailing what had happened and what was unremarkable about it sorry arkansas yeah no eisenhower like when he was leaving the office he was like by the way like it's kind of fucked up that the military and like big business are kind of like you know turning into this big evil thing that's gonna like kind of take over society And I call it the military industrial complex.

Anyway, I'll see you later.

And everyone was like, I feel like he's right about it.

He was all pointing to it.

And then no one did anything about it.

You know what I like about him?

I like him in this movie.

I don't know.

I just, I like his

work.

I don't know too much of his other work.

I'm not really that familiar, but he's great.

I like that picture where he looks really fabulous.

Do you know the picture I'm talking about?

Which one?

There's this picture where he's like serving, and the internet got kind of obsessed with it.

Oh, I never saw this meme.

That's a great picture.

Oh, that's great.

It's just like a picture of him in his uniform.

Yeah.

Do you guys know about the Peter Principle?

Explain.

It was originally.

It was soft from the clock.

Now, I did do an Eisenhower bit.

Yep.

It was Family Guy.

A book that was originally meant to be satirical.

Isn't it?

It's like

the stupider you are, the higher you rise.

But it's something like that, right?

It's basically saying that everyone will succeed to a level of relative incompetence at the higher level companies.

You get promoted to beyond your competency.

And there you shall say that.

Basically, everyone gets over-promoted like one time in organizations like this, past their actual ability.

And then rather than ever getting demoted or fired, the people just stay there.

So, the higher up you get, the worse people are, because that's where people kind of like hit their limit.

Yeah, I've heard of this phenomenon.

I haven't heard of the Peter principle specifically.

There was also the Dilbert principle, wasn't there?

Tell me about it.

I don't know.

But it wasn't all neckties must be.

I'm sorry.

It actually,

remember how, like, Scott.

First, it was like they just put out Dilbert books

of the strips.

Right.

But then Scott.

You would read them and go, God, this guy sounds like such an alpha.

Whoever's writing these,

but he's got a chiseled torso.

The guy drawn Dilbert must fuck so good.

But then he would also write like management comedy books, like text books.

That was actually the early warning sign.

The Dilbert Principle.

And it must have been like joking about a riff on the Peter principle.

But we should have known at that moment the second that the guy took the success of the comic strip to be like, but actually Dilbert's serious.

Yes.

I have things I want to say about Port Peter.

I know he's, you know, a bit of an online figure, Mr.

Scott Adams.

Was he always a weirdo, or is he one of those classic

10 years of Twitter, rock?

Always bad has only gotten worse.

He was also always super online.

Of course, he was like a pen jump before no one was online.

Like very, very early internet, like Usenet, you know, use screen.

But he wasn't like a Dennis Miller hard swing after 9-11 guy.

Sure, no, Ron Silver.

Graham Linehan or any of those guys who like have online.

Something up with that.

Nick, he went from being funny to really funny.

Dilbert the cartoon.

cartoon, good incredible opening credits.

Yeah, one of the best.

That was Larry Charles ran that.

That was pretty funny.

Yeah.

Dilbert was good.

But yeah, great theme song, great animation in the opening.

I mean, Donbert.

Doc Bert.

That's funny.

Don't be like, he's a dog with classes.

Catbert.

He's like mean.

Is there?

Is there?

There's Catbert.

Oh, you never saw Catbert?

I didn't know about Catbert.

My whole thing is that I would read those comics, and Catbert is the HR guy.

Like, that's the joke.

That's right.

And I'm just like, what the fuck was 11-year-old David being like, ah, yeah, HR, always on your ass.

What did I, why was I?

Rat Bert.

Remember Cappert?

Yeah, I remember Cappert.

Yeah.

And then there was Ratbert.

I can't remember Rat Bert specifically.

And then there was a dinosaur.

Okay.

So this, so this, they, they started adding more new characters.

Well, I think a lot of the

initially Dilbert was heavier on the animals, and a lot of them got kind of pulled back.

He kind of built out the humans.

And there's, then there's the pink cast.

Like, there's the boss and the lady with the triangle hair and all that.

Jason Alexander was Cat Bert.

Chris Elliott was dog bird.

I'm sure they were great.

Yeah.

And Daniel Stern was Dilbert.

Yes.

Right.

Yeah.

That's a damn good cast.

That's a damn good cast.

Bring it back.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Bring it back.

Money flowing to Adam.

Like, is Dilbert still running?

Like, can I read a new Dilbert?

Great question.

And he writes it?

Great question.

Yeah, that is a great question.

And it's not insane.

It has to be insane.

Yeah.

There's no way it's not insane.

Is he just like phoning that in?

And then all day he tweets, but then Dilbert is just like the pointy-haired boss being like, do those emails.

And Dilbert's like, ah, fuck this.

Okay, here's a question.

Would this movie have been a hit?

If Dilbert was the star?

If three years later, the script was repurposed into a live-action Dilbert movie.

That it's basically the same film, but mapped onto the Dilbert cast.

So Paul Newman is playing...

uh catbert i guess pointy-haired boss oh pointy hair hair boss oh pointy haird boss sorry i clearly don't know dilbert as much as you guys do.

And I'm shocked that you guys know as much as you do about Dilbert.

Oh, my God.

Dilbert.

There is no Dilbert,

you know, new Dilbert cartoons.

And if you go to the website, there is a dropdown.

Why did Dilbert get canceled?

If you believe the news, it's because I'm a big old racist.

Context, no news about public figures is ever true.

Jesus.

So, you know, he's doing great.

He's doing all right.

Hudsucker proxy, Griff.

Any more on this?

Any more on this?

No, you have like the rapid fall.

The only sequence every time I watch this movie that I bump on and question if it's a mistake is the weird Tim Robbins dream sequence that

feels like a guest jeans ad or something.

Is that the dance sequence?

Yes.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, what's going on there exactly?

I don't know.

It just feels like an odd stylistic swing

away.

I guess it's in the start of his spiral down.

And it might be one of those things, again, as an audience member, maybe in 1994, where you're kind of like how many more

sort of switches in format are you gonna throw at me you had the newsreels right you had the big band sequence right like where it does start to get a little overwhelming i love uh i buzz i love buzz chasing after him with the big mob that's all great stuff um

the ending is in the the the end the ending stretches and it's an insane stretch but i i i love it so i just checked it.

It's she comes in.

He's like hot shot.

The people have the old-timey hand massagers on his face.

I love those.

Oh, I love that.

You know, you're like fingers.

Yeah.

Or they're like motorized gloves.

Those are great.

Right.

And she slaps him in the face because of how arrogant he's become.

Then he goes in the dream sequence.

And when he wakes up, it's like everyone's gone.

The office is dark.

And that's when Buzz pisses him the straw.

The straw thing.

Right.

Right.

And all that.

And then, but then he gets immediately after that.

Right.

It's, it's him being called into Musberger's office or the big boardroom after the golf trip and he's like buzz claims that you stole his idea for the hula hoop but that's not even the real problem i figured out who the reporter is you let her into the hen house you're gone we're gonna have you declared insane right and we're having you institutionalized and then he's then he's at the beatnik bar with buscemi a detail i love in that scene is that it feels like the most genuine moment from Newman and his performance in a way is he's saying, you know, Buzz says he stole this idea.

And by the way, there's no problem with that.

You know, he's not.

People like that need to be put down.

There's this moment of him talking to him as if he were a real executive

where he's like, by the way, if I respected you, I would tell you that the right thing to do is to start treating people like shit now.

Even though this has all been a setup.

But yes, then it's like precipitous fall.

Yes.

And then we're

on to Norville's suicide.

You know, we're on to

he's drunk and he's gonna jump it does happen pretty quick oh it's very rapid like the last yes yes the last half of plot in this movie is 10 minutes they send him to the head shrinker they watch it on a film reel he goes to the bar he meets buscemi yes it's a good bit of like he can't get a drink yeah they only they only serve juice right like it's like juice and coffee juice and coffee yeah carrot juice maybe what do we think of

the

device that that clock

that the janitor is an all-knowing sort of god-like figure Yes.

Angel.

Right.

So you have this earlier scene where Jennifer Jason Lee's snooping around.

Yeah.

And she goes through the gear to the clock because basically the clock is the midpoint between the Musburger office and the Hudsucker's office that Norville takes over.

And he has this one like sort of info dump of like, I know everything.

Yeah.

I know how to find this plot.

I know where this is going.

Right.

Right.

Like, I'm all seeing.

I think it's the first time you've seen him on camera since the opening narration.

Yeah.

Pretty much.

So there's been chatting right in voiceover.

Can we just talk about those gears?

God, what big

incredible looking gears?

Up there with Castle Cagliostro, as far as like a gears with the mass detective and all these.

Yeah, bring back a big clock.

TikTok clock for Mario 64.

Yeah,

it's right up there with TikTok clock.

There's like almost nothing I love more than a big practical set where things are moving.

Yeah.

And you're like, fuck, this shit is rigged.

You know, like, like this is motorized or like 20 guys are like pulling levers to make this set operate this like phony machinery um is there a tick tock clock mario kart i think where there's like you know conveyor belts going one's going one way one's going the other

i feel like that was i i know the mario kart canon last yeah there is a level

When this movie was about to come out and they were doing press and it had not test screened well and they went back for reshoots and the press was like, is this about to be Joel Silver's costly flop?

Why did he bet on the Cohen brothers?

He said, like, we do reshoots in all of our movies.

They have Final Cut, which they did.

There was nothing forced upon them.

Warner Brothers wanted to.

I was thinking about this movie, Screams Studio.

I had their back.

And they said, we've heard that you did reshoots to add a fight scene.

Yeah.

And he said, nothing was imposed on us.

When we were in the edit, we all collectively agreed that there was something that was missing.

I don't know if that means that the entire fight scene was added.

I wonder what pieces were added.

It is the one thing in in the movie that still feels like from their pen, but does feel like, do we need something more exciting at the end?

A little out of nowhere that

the guy who replaces the signs on the doors is the villain all of a sudden.

Yeah.

I mean, it's fine.

I don't have a problem.

I like it.

It's funny.

And I like his teeth falling out and all that.

Like, it's cool.

There is also using them to

stop the gears.

Yeah.

There is the moment earlier.

Were you about to say something?

No, I just, I like the teeth in the gears as well.

I love the teeth in the gears.

there was a there was the moment earlier where you see him looming over musberger's shoulder as if he's the guy who's giving him the intel or improving approving the intel that that she's actually the reporter right which ultimately leads to his as a downfall so i i think that they are trying to seed at least he's some sort of shadowy figure um but but again just this everything's so arched that i i think they i do think it feels like he is the literal devil like it's like we have one character who seems to be

evil

who's like an angel Yeah, exactly.

Right.

He says, like, I know just about everything that happens, at least within this building.

And it feels like him almost covering for the fact that he's admitting that he knows everything.

The great Bill Cobb.

We only lost him last year.

I know.

He died at the age of 90.

Yeah.

Yeah, I like all this.

I think the Cohen brothers are like weirdly underrated as action filmmakers.

Because no country is one of the only films where they get this.

They didn't make a lot of action movies, but there's basically no one better at like visual computer

than the Cohen brothers and the relationship between Steven Spielberg or whatever.

Yeah.

I mean, the Cohens never tried to do, I guess, right, a gigantic scale action sequence.

Probably would have done a good job if they did.

True Grit kind of has an anti-set piece.

Which is from the book.

It's like, it's not even like that as the Cohens are peeling it back.

It's like, yeah, the whole thing with True Grit is it builds to something that's quite short and sudden, you know, which rocks.

Fill your hands, you son of a bitch.

It's the best fucking line in any movie ever could ever set.

He likes to to pull the cork he does like to pull the cork i did wonder if i was like are they gonna like is a is he gonna pull the hand of the clock back to get him back on the ledge like superman style and then yeah yeah yeah

reversing time or whatever and then it is just funny that it stopped at just a great time and he just can fall right to the ground which i like i like the internal logic of it yeah and that they realize that these kinds of comedies need the plotting of like two steps forward, one step back.

Sure, yeah.

Like Norville gets in the office, but then he fucks it up, but then he saves it.

Yeah.

Where it's like he falls, but they stop the clock, but it doesn't stop all the way.

It's just enough that the fall doesn't kill him.

It's great.

And what actually saves him is Hudsucker himself.

And the Hudsucker is an angel.

Come on.

You get to see Hudsucker.

Come on.

It's Halo.

I mean,

yeah, the Hula Hoople Halo.

Durning's just incredible.

I know a lot of it is just like presence and like this guy being such a pro at this point in time and the visual, but he just nails this.

Durning's good.

Can I also say that Jennifer Jason Lee, when she has her, her, when she says goodbye to the newsroom, that whole scene is when she keeps just saying, shut up.

Like, she says that over and over again.

I think.

Very funny.

It's great.

It's great.

It's a great, great moment for her, too.

Yeah.

But yeah, no, Hudsucker imparts on to him that like life is meaningless if you don't fucking care about other people, if you're just pursuing success.

And saves him just in time to be able to right the wrong.

And also just calls out, like, you fucking idiot.

You never open the blue letter.

Right, right.

It is him, right, saying like, that is not a dangling, like, that's not a forgotten plot thread.

That is a dangling plot thread.

It is time for you to resolve it.

Right.

Open the blue letter.

Right.

And what's I that resolves the movie.

But such a good touch within it is that he is like, I bequeath my stakes to whoever is appointed CEO in my absence, which I assume will be Sydney.

But in the weird circumstance that for some reason you place whoever else in the chair, then it goes to that guy.

That like Musberger, if he had done nothing, would have had control of the company.

Yes, it's a good gag.

Yeah.

Instead, he gets caught with a big butterfly net and he goes to Looney Ben.

Yeah.

How all movies should end.

Pretty much.

Yeah.

That's how Zero Dark 30 should have ended.

That Chris Pratt goes in with a big butterfly net.

That's how he gets Osama.

He gets Osama in a straitjacket.

His eyes are like spinach.

I remember how

then it was, it was like, oh, Chris Pratt's in like a soldier outfit.

Yeah.

And now it's like, yeah, of course, Chris Pratt's always in like military fatigue, like with a giant gun.

It's just his normal state of being.

I served with him in the Tomorrow War.

And thank you for your service.

Of course.

Thank you.

You did serve in the Tomorrow War.

Oh, boy.

So the film

didn't do very well, Griffin.

I'm sorry to say it made one-third of a black hat domestic.

I just want to, just to close the loop, he runs back to the fucking coffee shop after the stroke of midnight and does the fucking Muncie hand sign to her.

And I find it very rough.

Oh, that is nice.

Yeah, it's nice.

It's just like, look, it's, it's a classic movie construction thing.

I just love when you can like create something within the language of your own movie that did not exist previously and bring it back in and have it suddenly have gained greater emotional weight.

Nick's just looking at his empty peel now.

Wordless exchanges.

Don't you think

it's funny

that the Cohens have this early success?

They win the palm d'Or.

They get all, you know, like, then they make kind of like what they're, they're like a comedy for like people, you know, for kids almost, right?

Where it's like, we made a big budget movie for you guys that's funny, and like action packs, and everyone's like,

and they're like, I guess they'll make a movie about like Minnesota people pushing bodies into wood chippers and shit.

And everyone's like, Yeah,

this is what we want from him.

This is more of this.

The darker they go, the more people applaud them.

And whenever they try to make something funnier, people are like, What the fuck is this dumb?

You want like a divorce, you know, attorney comedy with like george clooney burning up sexiest movie stars

and can like javier bardem murder people with a cow pistol like can we have that can tommy lee jones like basically look to the audience and explain why maybe humanity should be eradicated

right it's like anytime they try to make a crowd pleaser people are like

frowning and crossing their arms i mean they're two biggest flops because intolerable cruelty is and

lady killer and it's like are these sort of screwball things?

And that's probably why I like them so much.

I agree.

And I think Burn After Reading and Hail Caesar were both kind of dismissed in the moments as being like weird.

I don't like Burn After.

Burn Area is a fucking masterpiece.

And I hope you come around.

I hope I do too.

Hail Caesar, I love.

I love

Hail Caesar.

Burn After Reading is the one time where I was like, ah, this is too dark or too black.

Like, I don't like anything about it.

And it's like setting.

It's not like I think it's like terrible, but it always set my teeth on edge a little bit.

But Big Lebowski has undeniably become their biggest movie in the public consciousness and is basically their guarantor for life, I would say, at this point, retroactively.

And at the time, people were like, they're making a fucking stoner comedy?

Like, this is a movie where the like, like, they admit the plot doesn't matter.

Big Lebowski now just exists as Super Bowl commercials.

It's going to be like Super Bowl commercials for the next like decade.

Yeah, like Jeff Daniels like goes around wearing the sweater and like doing like fucking nice pay sexuals.

Yeah, basically just doing boring.

Even other Jeffs are able to cash in on that.

Any Jeffs can do that.

Jeff Probst is drinking white Russians again.

Paycheck.

No, but like I saw Jeff Bridges do some fucking like talk at some 92nd Street Y-esque thing and he was just wearing the sweater and people were like losing their minds.

And it's not like, oh, you fuck Adam West wearing the Batman suit.

That's depressing.

People are like thrilled.

You should wear the Ironmonger suit.

I mean, you know, all the Cohen Brothers movies are funny to some degree, like, but I, like, as far as their straight comedies not connecting with audiences as much, I guess absent Lebowski, though, that's kind of its own thing.

Even O-Brother was sort of a

50%

and I'm raising Arizona.

We're both in that zone, but O'Brother is so eclipsed by the soundtrack in its moment.

Yeah, well, that's the other weird thing where they're like, let's do, okay, finish your point.

Oh, no, no, I was going to say is that I like, I wonder if there's something of like,

they're comedies, but you like really have to pay attention to them.

And I feel like the audience expectations for a comedy sometimes are just like, I'm just going to enjoy the ride, as opposed to like, I really have to lock in and focus and like densely pack advance my attention.

Yeah.

That is true.

Right.

They are very, yeah.

And they also look too good.

Like, movies like O'Brother look so phenomenal that you're like, this is a comedy?

Like, this seems like important in a way.

So we talked about this in our 1941 episode, right?

This line of like, if a comedy gets too expensive, does it stop being funny?

I don't want FOP.

God damn it.

I'm going to do that 40 times in that episode.

I don't want FOP.

God damn it.

The way he says FOP, he should have gotten eight Oscars.

I'm a Dapper Dan man.

I'm a Dapper Dan man.

Clooney is.

He's my best actor that year, my friend.

He's your winner.

Wow.

Oh, yeah.

Over Crowe?

Yeah.

Because you would have given Crow the insider art?

Crowe is a winner for me for LA Confidential, my favorite Russell Crowe performance.

The movie,

the moment in LA Confidential when he's holding the chair, the back of the chair, and he fucking snaps it off.

It's so.

Oh, my God.

It's the best.

I love that movie.

LA Confidential, I almost want like a tie to Crow and Pierce because I think they're both so interesting in that movie.

Yes, no, I have Clooney winning best actor in 2000 for Brother Warrant, though.

I think he's so, so, so good.

You put Jennifer Jason Lee in your supporting

for this movie.

Who else do you have in that category?

Oh, let's take a look.

Uma?

Uma Thurman for Pulp Fiction.

Diane Weiss for Bullets over Broadway.

Who was that favorite thing they did?

You were doing a David Loader movie up there?

Because this was the year at the Oscars that he did that.

Oh, my God.

Because she's there for Pulp Fiction.

Helen Mirror for Madness of King George, who I think was also an Oscar Nami, so good.

Never seen that movie.

Brigitte Lynn for Chunky Express.

Oh, sure.

The best.

Is there a

while you've got the spreadsheet open?

Did you nom

this movie and anything else?

I nominated

for screenplay of

losing to Pulp Fiction.

I mean, Pulp Fiction is a big movie.

I have it nominated for...

cinematography, for score,

which I have it winning for.

You gave it the the score win.

I gave it the score win and the production design win.

I didn't realize how much of this was based on pre-existing material where it probably would have been disqualified, even though.

But that's a weird score year, dude.

It's a weird score year.

94?

Yeah.

Did Gump get a nomination?

It's like Paul Fiction is the biggest one.

I have Gump in there.

I have Shaw Shank, which is a lovely score.

Incredible score.

I'm saying in the actual Oscars,

they nominated those three.

Yeah, but Hans Zimmer wins for Lion King.

Okay.

It's an amazing movie year because I love Hudsucker and it's not even a top five movie for me.

Oh, no, it's fifth.

I have a fifth behind Chunk King Express, Pulp Fiction, Hoop Dreams, and Ed Wood, which are all movies I adore.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They are, when they make comedies, for me, I feel like they toe the exact line of how expensive a comedy can look while still being funny.

Where it feels like there is never like wasted cost.

Like something like this, the money is all in service of jokes ultimately, even if the joke is look at how big the set is, versus it feeling like an abuse of power or like, you know, a hubris or whatever.

I'm trying to even think of someone else who makes comedies that even look close to as good as what the Cohen brothers are.

We were talking about

texting recently about How Do You Know, the most brightly lit movie of all time, James O.

Brooks's film that costs $120 million and takes place in three apartments, right?

And you're like, this cost like a fourth of that, a third of that.

And I was working at The Simpsons while this movie was happening.

Like built an entire universe and has this like Swiss watch construction of every sequence.

It's like so technically tight.

And then even something like Raising Arizona, where you're like, how the fuck did they make this on this budget?

When every shot is like so intentional.

and has such a specific relationship to its cuts.

But I think you're right, David, that there is this weird element of the movie, them kind of optimistically hoping maybe people will receive this as the hula hoop.

And instead, people respond to it as if it's the drawing of the circle and being like, what the fuck is this?

Truly, no one went to see it.

It made $2.8 million.

You know what I mean?

It's like it opened fine limited, probably in like arthouse-y places, and then it's just, it did not expand at all.

I do like this quote from Joel where he's like, we want the movie to be successful and make money, obviously.

It's not like they're making it for no good reason, but he's like, but as far as being perceived as mainstream movie makers, that's not particularly important to us.

It's not like we're doing this so we can go do Beethoven 3.

I like them thinking about Beethoven at all.

It's just funny to me.

But the movie did badly.

And it got kind of badly.

Wait, for theory, go on.

Yep.

They're good, you're saying?

They start alternating in the later sequels between movies about characters in a universe where the Beethoven movies exist and they own the dog who plays Beethoven.

And then the other, every other movie is back to just people who own a dog that's so complicated

we're gonna play the box office game wait they own beethoven the dog sims we we need to figure this out uk

the third is an american comedy film i can tell you that much that was released direct to video uh

introduces judge reinhold reinhold was coming in for the third i think they start alternating between reinhold and dave thomas as the owner this is the thing there were like two different creative teams who were making back and forth.

Reno, Ryan holds in the fourth.

What about five?

Fifth, we've got Dave Thomas.

Oh, well, well, well.

I know, I know, but you're saying alternate.

And what about six?

Well, sixth, also known as Beethoven's Big Break, seems to feature neither of them.

Okay.

And then the seventh is Beethoven's Christmas Adventure, which doesn't even get its own Wikipedia article.

Who's in that?

That's how relevant it is.

I don't know.

If you don't know, then that's the first one where Beethoven has a speaking voice.

Okay, so then this is a little bit of a...

Beethoven starts talking.

What a decision.

What a swing.

The eighth one, Beethoven's Treasure Trail,

is about the little line between his belly button and his dick.

No,

it's about, it seems to be kind of like a...

pirate adventure.

So this sounds like they started taking their cues from the buddies franchise, whereas you saw, you know, Airbuds started as a basketball playing dog, and then he started playing different sports,

you know world pop and uh

and then so on the buddies talk the buddies the buddies talk and so they borrow that but then the buddies also go on adventures so they have

space buddies but the buddies start out as canonically the children of airbud who is voiced by tom everett scott and then they start to write him out and don't acknowledge their parentage alex russ perry texted time to call out griffin i told you a year ago about the absolutely insane circumstances that befall the beethoven franchise when it reaches movies five to eight And I told you that someday you drive David insane with this information at hour three of a podcast, at hour three of Schindler's list.

You talk Beethoven and do not mention that five and seven are connected and six and eight are a separate story.

It just

acknowledged a story in which Beethoven is a dog who has played Beethoven in all the other movies which exist.

We're in the third hour, and he's driving you insane with it.

I looked here.

This is crazy with you.

I'm looking here.

In Beethoven 11, Beethoven is a man.

He's just like a guy.

He's no longer a dog.

Does he compose symphony?

No, he's just like a regular guy.

Beethoven 12, he is Beethoven.

He's the man.

Oh, wow.

Ludwig von.

And then Beethoven 13, he's Beethoven.

He's the composer, but he's a dog again.

They finally got to the right thing.

So I'm seeing here that in Beethoven.

Like that.

They're like, yeah, yeah.

I'm seeing here that in Beethoven's 14,

he's the composer, but he is a dog, and he tricks both of you guys into sucking him off.

So the film came out.

Yeah, but.

And then in 11, we're dogs that suck off human Beethoven.

By the way, I want people to know who don't know our podcast.

We have a thing where a gator tricks us into sucking.

So not only did you get to hear how bad our podcast is, but now we'll explain to you our bit where we suck a gator off in our podcast.

He originated as a southern gator,

The film who tricks you into sucking him off.

The bit has now become just generally people

fucking you into sucking them off.

It happens just globally now.

It's not just the gator anymore.

The film came out

March 11th, 1994, after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.

Okay.

So I feel like there's already this sort of awareness of like, okay, this thing is not about to be an awards contender big hit.

Not Sundance.

It didn't premiere at Cannes.

The Hudsooker proxy premiered, of course, at Sundance, January 94.

Well, okay.

I might have played it canned after this out of possibly out of respect.

Out of respect.

Because I was going to say.

Because they won the Palm Door for their prior film.

The disparity

after.

Right.

This playing at Cannes the same year that Pulp Fiction like hits and wins and causes the phenomenon of like the indie takeover of Hollywood for the next 10 years.

I do think it speaks to the moment where it's like, we don't want the fucking Cohen brothers making a screwball comedy.

It was, we want them making dark noir.

It was the opening film at Cannes, which is so weird because it had come out in America.

But back then, I used to do that.

Yeah, you know, it was a little different.

Like, you know, movies.

It is crazy how much older pulp fiction feels than this movie.

I mean, I guess that's a testament to me not having ever seen it, I guess.

But it's new to you.

It's new to me, but it does feel like a very modern movie in a lot of ways.

And just, I mean, it's just so clean and beautiful looking, too.

It's just such a pretty movie.

Not that Pulp Fiction isn't, of course, but Pulp Fiction.

It's a rougher film.

Yeah.

With a smaller budget.

So it's not in the top five, but we're going to play the box office game.

It's opening on limited screens, obviously.

So, number one at the box office Griffin is a film I assume you've seen because it features an actor you love.

Steve Martin?

No.

Bill Murray?

But this is a guy where you've seen Michael Cage movies.

No.

Is it Beethoven the Dog?

Nicholas Cage?

Nicholas Cage.

Wow.

Is it Guarding Test?

It's Guarding Test.

Wow.

Okay.

Now, that's the one where he's a Secret Service agent.

That's a post-driving Miss Daisy.

We need Tandy vehicle.

The poster is very similar, but it's Shirley McClain.

But it's Shirley McClain.

It's Shirley McLean.

She is the first lady, the former first lady.

Right.

She's not even the first lady.

She's an older sized lady.

I think it opens with her husband's funeral.

And it's like she's still assigned a Secret Service guy.

But so is driving Miss Daisy-esque.

Is she kind of a pain in the ass?

I will say,

yes, ma'am.

Having recently seen Driving Miss Daisy for the first time, when I watched that film, I was like, oh, so this is like Runoff Driving Miss Daisy.

Now I can say it is wildly superior to Driving Miss Daisy.

It is improved Driving Miss Daisy.

It is a perfectly fine comedy.

It is like a five out of 10, but Drive Miss Daisy is like a fucking two.

I saw it on video once guarding Tess, and I remember liking it.

It's you watch it and you're like, this is close to being really good, and they didn't quite get there.

It's a Hugh Wilson film who made like The First Wives Club and Blast from the Past.

Totally solid comedies.

All right, number two at the box office, Griffin.

It's a film I don't think either of us have seen.

We have covered on this podcast a lot of this guy's output.

I thought you were going to say we haven't seen it and we've covered it on this podcast.

This guy has just not made that many movies.

Oh, so the majority.

We did a franchise of his, which is, you know, like a big chunk of movies.

Okay, so it's a second-tier Paul Hogan film.

It's a Paul Hogan film.

Crocodile Dundee himself.

It's not Flipper.

Not Flipper.

It's a film I saw in theaters.

Did see that in theaters and had the Pizza Hut hand puppets.

I feel like you always talk about the Casper and Pizza Plus.

The Casper hand puppets are hand puppets.

They're huge to me.

Yes.

Yeah.

Pizza Hut had the pot.

I mean, again, the Flipper remake does feel like with the like, Hogan, what could you do?

It's like, I guess instead of like putting a cap on his head, like you could, you know.

Did you do a Flipper movie?

It's one of my favorite phenomenons when someone hyper-specific weirdly becomes a movie star and they're like, where the fuck do we

do?

Have you guys seen Croc and L Dundee?

Do you enjoy Croc and L Dundee?

I've seen, I've seen Dundee and Dundee too.

I never watched in L.A.

Dundee, I think we were pleased to see it.

You live in L.A.

You do.

You don't live that.

You can see Croc show up.

We were pleasantly surprised by one.

One's good.

Two, the opening is so fucking funny that we were like...

Fishing with Dundee.

We're also, this is like January 2021.

We're losing our minds.

And then two just becomes bad.

Rambo stops having jokes after the 15-minute mark.

Mitch, do you have a Croc Dundee take?

Not real.

I saw the first one, but

wait, he's eventually in Flipper.

Is that what you're saying?

He did do a Flipper remake with Elijah Wood.

Okay, for a few years, two years after.

96?

96.

This movie, though, is not Flipper.

Is this like the Western one?

It's the Western one.

Cuba Gooding Jr.

and Beverly D'Angelo.

It's not called Bronco Billy, but it's like the character's name.

Yep.

And it is Thing Name.

Yeah.

It's not like Outback Jack.

It's something, Jack.

You're close.

Start circling.

It's not kangaroo, Jack.

No.

No, no.

Give me the type of word that the first thing.

It's a sort of a weather phenomenon.

Hurricane Jack?

Close?

Fuck.

It is.

More common than a hurricane.

Wind, Jack.

Less common than wind.

Rain, Jack.

Hail?

No?

No.

Sort of more common than hail, less common than rain.

Thunderstorm?

What's what?

Lightning jack?

There we go.

Lightning jack.

Lightning jack.

Lightning jack.

lightning jack written by and starring paul hoogan right that's um yeah not not a big hit your eurofp and vacation was a big uh movie for my family by the way

we had a we had a good time i haven't watched it in many years have you paid attention to what's going on with the crocodile dundee directed video sequels

yeah he's a dog now

he's a dog yeah what's it in six he's a doll yeah and then in seven he's an actual crocodile yeah

they should have done that it's like they should have done that before

and they make it that the crocodile is an actor who played the dog in Beethoven.

Yeah, that's the whole thing.

Right.

And his whole thing is that he tricks people into sucking him off.

Right.

Number three, the box of speaking of films involving blowjobs that I did not pick up on there being a blowjob until I was much older.

Okay.

Because I love this movie.

I saw it in theaters.

Casper.

Speaking comedy.

No, just casper of a blowjob.

I was trying to think of the least appropriate joke I can make.

I might know this one.

I don't know.

know, actually, but no, I think this is too late for me.

I already invoked it on this episode.

Oh, that I don't know.

You thought it was a blowjob joke that you didn't pick up.

One of the first jokes in this movie is a blowjob joke.

One of the first jokes.

Well, the first scene ends with a blowjob.

The first scene ends with a blowjob.

But I didn't know it was a blowjob.

Someone dips down?

Yeah, you know.

Give me

some comical overreaction.

There's a comical overreaction to a blowjob.

You know, he likes it.

Oh,

he likes it.

He likes it.

Is it the life commercial?

Is this.

Is it a hot shots type of movie?

It's a straightforward comedy, not a parody exactly, although it's kind of a parody movie.

It's a very strange movie.

It was a gigantic, gigantic hit.

It made a star.

It's very odd on rewatch.

I cannot believe I'm a star.

Maybe it's a star.

In 1924, it's primarily a comedy.

It's very normal for me to be obsessed with it as a child.

I literally brought it up on this episode.

You literally brought it up on this episode.

Famous movie.

Primarily a comedy star.

Yeah,

it minted the biggest comedian of the 90s, biggest comic actor.

Ace Manchura.

ace mentura pet detective what's the blowjob joke in ace mentura the first scene ends with well so the first thing in ace mentura which is very funny is him with the fake package yeah where he's like breaking it and kicking in stuff marklely is trying to kick him out and then he rescues the dog or the cockatoo or whatever the fuck he does and then returns it to the lady who gives him a blowjob and it's just carrie going

like that and i as a kid was just like i don't know what's happening right now but i love that he's doing all this funny stuff this guy got an indoor roller coaster i just love the actor like eight-year-old David just being like, this, whatever this guy wants to do, I'm there for it.

Yes, I just don't get what's happening.

Have you seen the newest Ace Ventura?

He's a human detective, but he's a dog.

So he's a dog.

So he's a dog, but he's solving human crimes.

He's not solving human crimes.

Serverland situation.

You know what's weird?

In the third one, they recreate the opening of the first Ace Ventura book.

It's a he's fucking you guys.

Yeah, we're getting sucked off.

Finally, we got our due.

He rewards you for him doing a good job.

Who

is there an Ace Ventura Jr.

or something like that?

Who did that?

Yes.

But also, it is also weird.

They show our hogs and we have like red rocket hogs, which is very strange.

Like the little, the little lipstick.

The lipstick hogs.

Ace Ventura Pet Detective, I've talked about it before.

I don't know if I'll ever do it on this show because it's just kind of like it has this nasty, you know, undertone to it.

Well, right.

Yes.

And then the second one is perhaps incredibly racist.

Right.

Yeah.

But it's just such an interesting movie because it is Carrie doing that shit on top of a hard-boiled noir with like not much embellishment.

Like the plot of that movie is pretty dark.

We were saying that that movie is clearly meant to be the joke is it's Chinatown, but they're investigating pets and it's played straight.

And he came in and was like, what if I just do all the bits on top of this?

And it's so weird.

It's such a weird movie.

All right.

Number four, the box office, very good comedy, black comedy that I like a lot.

Uh, starring, oh boy, uh, starring, yeah, normal guy, normal.

I mean, the main star is a he's a we like him, he's a stand-up comic who's becoming hot in this time.

Yep, uh, and he's does a lot of movies.

Uh, and then there's a husband-wife in the movie, and the husband's played by a normal guy, Gutenberg.

Yeah, no, no, way more normal.

Oh, oh, it's the ref.

The film is the ref.

It is Dennis, Dennis Leary, Dennis Leary.

Leary's having his moment, Judy Davis.

And who's this playing the husband here?

Nicholas Frank Weiger.

You got to let this guy be Frank.

Kevin Spacey.

Spacey.

Wow.

It was Spacey, right?

What the hell were you doing over there?

We said

spacing out.

You were spacing out.

He was getting space.

I didn't realize you were taming me up.

What are you getting over there?

I wasn't playing with.

But I was just, I realized while I was talking about the screen, I heard fucking Spacey's in it.

Hostile hostages in Britain, famously.

That's what it was called.

Yep.

I don't know why.

I guess they were like, Brits won't know what refs are.

And I'm like, I think they do.

That's a fun movie, though.

That's a really good movie.

Yeah.

Demi movie.

Yep.

Have you guys seen The Ref?

Yes, many years ago.

Good movie.

Yeah.

And just any movie where Leary's like, ah, you fucking guys.

Complains about shit.

Maple syrup in my coffee or whatever.

I'm just always like, yeah, this is great.

He's in my blood.

You know, Leary, I love the guy.

I do too.

I'm a huge Dennis Leary defender.

Especially that he stole Bill Hicks' drugs.

I think that's the best thing you did.

Fuck that guy.

Yeah.

Number five at the the box office.

No jokes to be made about this one.

It won best picture in 1993.

Horsecom?

No.

Oh, 1993.

Before?

Fuck.

We covered it on this podcast.

We did like a four-hour episode.

Right.

So what we're capable of doing these days.

90.

Schindler's List.

Schindler's List.

Still in the box office, obviously, you know, after months.

We've also got Steven Seagal's on Deadly Ground.

Sure.

Is that the one where he's like saving the forest?

Yeah, that's like the beginning of the end for him.

Right.

It's the one he directed.

The environmental one.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

We've got that movie, Greedy.

What the hell is that?

Greedy is like Kirk Douglas and Michael J.

Fox, and James Juan always cites it as having one of his favorite twist endings in movies.

And I've never looked up what it is because I'm like, I should watch it at some point if no one spoiled the ending of Greedy for me.

Okay.

I've never seen it.

I don't know.

Maybe there's a pleasant surprise.

Number eight, most quotable comedy of all time.

Hello.

Of course, that's Mrs.

Doubtfire.

Wow.

Number nine is a film called Angie.

That was a hint I gave in a box office game many years ago.

He said it's really quotable.

And I said, give me one of the quotes.

And Ben's response was, hello.

Angie, it's a Gina Davis movie.

I was going to say.

Never heard of it.

Arthur Coolidge movie, though.

Yeah.

And number 10, well, there's some rando movies in this box office.

A movie called Eight Seconds, which is

a John G.

Adelson bio play about a bull rider.

Yeah, yeah.

Where it's like eight seconds is the length of time you have to stay on your bull to get a score.

Starring whom?

Luke Perry.

Well, as a rodeo legend.

Who's the second lead in that?

Stephen Baldwin.

That's why I was looking it up.

Do you know Stephen Baldwin has a movie podcast now?

Oh, is it good?

Normal?

It seems normal, but I keep getting...

No, it can't be normal.

It seems very strange.

But I keep getting fed fucking clips in the algorithm.

And then I was like, I got to chart his career.

And that's why I saw this movie.

Did you ever see the movie Nine Seconds?

The Bull Rider?

In Nine Seconds, The Bull Rider, he's not human anymore.

Oh, that's wild.

Yeah.

Do you know what he is?

The Bull Rider.

Yeah.

Can you guess what he is?

What is he?

A dog.

You'd think it would be a bull, maybe.

You'd love to see a dog rate a bull.

That'd be amazing.

You'd love to see that.

You should see 10 seconds.

One bad movie with Stephen Baldwin.

Yeah.

Bad movies.

We all love them.

Does he talk like that too?

No, he talks like that.

Because he looks like Bernie Rubble.

Yeah, right.

He was the second Barney Rubble.

But that's what he sounds like.

His regular speaking voice was like, yeah, I remember I was making movies.

He's bad in usual suspects.

And everyone else in that movie is good.

And at the time, you're kind of like, oh, well, he's just being big.

And then you re-watch it.

You're like, no, he sucks.

They talk about because Alec was on recently and just dragged his brother for like two hours.

Right.

I mean, he's a shitty actor.

And was just like, usual suspects blows up and everyone's big.

And Spacey wins the Oscar and everyone goes on to greater things.

And then you're Barney Rubble.

And there's this notion, and he'll talk about in other episodes where he's like, you know what, everyone wanted me to be the next Tom Cruise and I want to go a different way.

And it was just clear that everyone was just like, we know what you're seeing.

You're not even as good as Billy Barney.

Here's the script to BioDo.

But one bad movie is setting itself up like it's how did this get made?

And then like every clip I've seen is just him having other kind of middling 90s former movie stars on and them complaining about their fallen career.

Sounds good.

It's like him and Jamie Kennedy and shit.

Is he right-wing or is he very?

He was like the first guy to endorse.

Super, super

Catholic.

Billy seems to be normal.

Billy is doing the best out of all of them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he's a good actor.

Yeah, he is.

Billy Baldwin's a good actor.

Is Billy the new Baldwin?

Billy Baldwin.

I think it's the Baldwin.

i put forth the argument recently what if i pushed my chipstone on alec now that billy has by default become america's top baldwin yeah i think so yeah what about james or no sorry daniel daniel's a hero james baldwin is the the legendary novelist of course but it's not a baldwin brother adam baldwin also not a baldwin brother right but and but politics a plus he's great That was Adam Baldwin was the first example of me following a celebrity on twitter.com back when Twitter was like, you know, posting pictures of your breakfast or whatever.

And I I was like, oh, this actor I like.

He was just all day like tweeting right-wing shit.

And I was like, oh, what a bummer to learn this.

I almost sent this to you guys, but Deadline had a story the other day that was Daniel Baldwin joins cast of Jurassic Rebirth.

And I was like, what?

He was like, oh, they're making some fucking rip-off movie.

David Sploy of the Carlos.

Oh, my God.

It's just called Jurassic Rebirth.

And they're like, if we take the word world out,

people mistakenly watch this.

That's good.

Yeah.

That's good.

I think Daniel Baldwin.

He's the star of Cleaver.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, of course.

And Sopranos.

Right.

He's the star.

He's Tony Soprano.

Yeah, no.

Daniel is.

Daniel is.

Yeah.

And it makes sense in the world.

You're like, yeah, that's who they could get.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's all.

Guys, thank you for being on the show.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You guys got anything more to talk about, Hudson Proxy?

So we, I had a

coffee date like 45 minutes ago.

Here's the thing.

I scheduled something with a mutual friend.

Yeah, we got to go, Griffin.

Yeah, we got to go.

We got to get to Mission Possible.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Texted me fully, because we're supposed to meet at 45 minutes ago, we're supposed to meet.

Texted me fully 50 minutes ago.

Any sense of how much longer you guys have?

Box office game started at least.

I replied that the box office game hasn't started yet, which it would not for another half hour.

His response was, LMAO, these motherfuckers.

This is someone we work with, by the way.

I'm really sorry.

I wanted to stand up.

Speaking of us with utter contempt.

All right.

I'm going to pee against you.

You aren't going to have to die.

Thank you for being here.

Everyone should listen to Doughboys if they're not already.

That's kind of the first.

I mean, it's very funny.

We come on the show and you guys are both very smart and we're like, duh.

And then we go off about dogs replacing humans in Beethoven movies.

That's all we can really add to the conversation.

We're very dumb.

No, you guys are.

He likes to pretend like he's smart, like he's the lagger of the podcast.

Yeah, I'm a lagger.

I know a lagger tries to pretend that he's smart.

Mitch tries to pretend that he's dumb.

He usually has muscle feelings.

You're

and smart as shit you know who also is really smart ben ben's right now smart as fuck so fucking smart what

this dude he's so good he's so good at playing it too because he's wearing a cap and gown right now

he's holding a diploma's a genius from like a really good college i just want to say that

I really liked Hudsucker Proxy.

I'm really happy you liked it.

Yeah, I loved revisiting it.

Great movie.

I wasn't worried you'd dislike it, but it's for me, it's such a vibe movie that I just enjoy so thoroughly that like I didn't want to run the risk of you being like, yeah, it's cute.

Like, you know.

I defy Jay Sherman to say that Hudsucker Proxy stinks.

That's what I say at the end of the day.

I can't think of a more beautiful way to end this episode.

I can also say to anyone who hasn't watched this movie that maybe there's one you're like skipping over if you're not watching it.

I think this one's worth watching.

Absolutely.

I mean, like all the Cone Brothers movies are worth watching, but like, like, I would not skip over this one.

It's visual stuff.

You might, yeah, you might end up absolutely loving it.

I truly think there is no other movie that looks like this in history.

And one of the best reviews I read that I'm now forgetting who wrote it and how to cite them said, like, the technology had finally cut up where and the budgets of Hollywood films had inflated to a point where they could make a screwball comedy that looked the way the dialogue used to sound.

And everything was buzzing at that level.

Thank you all for listening.

Can I just one last thing?

Oh, please, absolutely.

Have you seen Hudsucker Proxy 2?

No, I haven't yet, actually.

It just might be confusing to some people who haven't.

It's weird that we've gone this long and haven't talked about the fact that there was a sequel.

Okay, that's all.

Is there anything you want to say about it?

Just that it's that you might be confused because

the characters are dogs.

The characters are dogs.

Please tune in next week for Fargo.

Cohen Brothers' first Oscar win.

And as as always, and I know we've gone way too long.

We've got to end the episode.

But can I just ask one final question?

What's more famous, Hula Hoop or Frisbee?

I think Frisbee.

You think Frisbee's today is more famous than Hula Hoop?

It's part of games.

No one's doing like hula hooping at college.

Okay, but so then here's a question.

People do frolf.

What's more famous, games or toys?

You sleep like

He's handing in his resignation papers.

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims.

Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley.

Our creative producer is Marie Bardy Salinas, and our associate producer is A.J.

McKeon.

This show is mixed and edited by A.J.

McKeon and Alan Smithy.

Research by J.J.

Birch.

Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell.

Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds.

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Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help.

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