Miller's Crossing with Ari Aster

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 is Black Jack.

Talking about friendship.

I'm talking about character.

I'm talking about hell, Leo.

And I ain't embarrassed to use the word.

I'm talking about podcasts.

What's the word you're replacing?

Ethics.

Ethics?

That's the opening line of the movie.

That's Polito.

Yeah.

I'm going to give you the hi-hat.

No, I'm not.

I was trying to see if there was a, hi-hat is my favorite thing in this movie.

I think people need to say that more.

I think it needs to be said all the time.

Right.

Right.

Or I need to give people the hi-hat more and tell them I'm doing so.

But I feel like you actually can only say, are you giving me the hi-hat?

No, I think we need to be doing it and saying it.

I think you're right that you can't tell someone else you're giving me.

I'm giving you the hi-hat.

No.

You can accuse someone else of giving you the hi-hat, and you can give someone else the hi-hat, but you can never call it before you do it.

Uh, Lex G always talks about getting the hi-hat, which is why he's one of our finest film critics.

One of, not number one.

Uh, I was trying to find a hi-hat quote.

Uh, yeah, sure,

but it's mostly just him screaming, are you giving me the hi-hat?

Or like, you're giving me the hi-hat, yeah, yeah, uh, jawing,

keep going

last time.

We jawed, what calling women twists, Yes.

That's something that they do in this movie.

My stomach is seized.

I like everything he says.

I think he's a good man of good character.

Yeah.

He's kind of a nightmare.

No.

Okay.

No, no, no.

Good man, good character.

And he's letting you know from the beginning.

It's about ethics.

It's about ethics.

It's about ethics and game journalism.

That's what this movie's about, right?

No.

Motor Crossing isn't about ethics and game journalism?

I don't think so.

I think it is.

Do you think the Coens have played video games?

And you can talk, guests.

It's fine.

You can weigh in on this.

They do have kids.

they have children i'm mostly here to listen i just want to that's fine it's time for you to talk i think they have kids so they probably played a video game pants all he is yeah

have the coins played a video game you're doing that as a google do you think you could do a miller's crossing video game pretty fun like that video game where you were the guy from madmen and you would guess if people are lying Or was it was like a gangster video game.

Oh, L.A.

Noir.

Yeah.

I thought you were describing

a video game.

A guy would be like, yeah, I know, I didn't see nothing.

And you would like press X and be like, you're lying, you piece of shit, or whatever.

Like, that was the game.

Yes.

Yeah.

They should do that.

Those games that are basically like cutscene shoes your own adventures.

I never play any of these, but I'm like, this just looks like you're watching a bad animated movie.

Basically.

Yeah.

But you're telling me you're gaming.

Are you giving me the hi-hat right now?

Yeah, I'm giving you the high-hat.

Can you fucking introduce the podcast?

Hey.

Don't give me the hi-hat.

This is Blank Check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin.

I'm David.

It's a podcast about filmographies and ethics and game journalism.

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.

Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce.

Baby, this is a mini-series on the films of Joel and Ethan Cohen.

It is called Pod Country for Old Cast.

Today we are talking about Miller's Crossing.

Kind of.

Well, we said Raising Arizona is their guarantor.

I think so.

Raising Arizona is the movie, the big hit.

Raising Arizona gets them this movie, don't you think?

Like, they can't make a movie at this scale With Blood Simple.

Yeah.

With Blood Simple, because that, that was also a huge hit.

And that, and that, well, I mean, Blood Simple was a relatively.

It was a huge sleeper hit.

Right.

Yeah.

For a film that cost basically nothing.

And then Raising Arizona was like kind of a proper hit.

Like, you know, people really went to see it and obviously it was well regarded or whatever.

Talk about how they were chasing Raising Arizona for a while because there was the feeling of, are these guys ever going to make a profitable movie again?

And this is the start of them releasing a run of incredibly well-reviewed movies that don't make money.

Right.

It's this Barton and Hudsucker all kind of

cost much either.

They don't, they're smart about it.

Hudsucker costs a lot.

It's like their Joel Silver, you know, $40 million.

I mean, it's Hudsucker for me is maybe the one I've seen the most.

It's my favorite.

I love it.

I love it very, very much.

I would never argue it's the best.

And part of it being my favorite is just that every time I watch it, I go, I can't believe they got to make this.

I would say

from a like a directorial standpoint, it might be the high point.

It's up there with their most beautifully like realized films.

Yes.

I feel like their entire, well, I really like almost all of their movies, but that 90s Miller's starting with this all the way to Lebowski.

There's never a foot wrong visually.

There's never really a foot wrong at all.

No.

Although

this is Sonnenfeld and then Deacons comes right after this.

And there's a big difference between, I would say, the, you know, the looks of those films.

Yes.

And there's this sort of notable like shift, gear, shift sort of thing to Deacons coming in.

Every time the camera rushes in this one, you're like, Barry,

we're going for autumnal.

He's like, I want to run the camera one more time.

Let me just fucking run it out.

It feels like they're trying to push Sonnenfeld toward what they ultimately would do with Deacon.

Deacons is giving them more of the

class.

But there's still, you still got the, you know, the Evil Dead impulses.

Yes.

With the careening camera, which they only do

like once or twice, once here i think it's only once it's just it's just with the screaming and you know always put what in the head and you know the uh going into uh i forget the wrestler's name oh the the ape is that what they call him yeah the big guy uh i also forget it's it's boxing isn't it it's not it's it's yeah it's not wrestling i'm thinking of barton fink now but yeah

the wrestler wallace berry wrestling picture i'm gonna i'm gonna admit transparently because i got a bunch of plot stuff wrong on blood simple which our listeners have been haranguing me for

I'm not even going to pretend I can recount the actual inner workings of this movie.

This movie, I think this movie is simpler than Blood Simple.

Maybe I'm wrong.

I've seen this movie a lot too.

It has more characters.

It has more characters and more names that you have to memorize.

Like, you know, and like, you know,

you're right.

Rug Daniels, you've got, you've got one shot.

Right.

Or not, well, you got one scene.

You got one scene with Rug.

The moment at the end where Gabriel Byrne clears up like who shot Rug Daniels and why is real, like, Dash L Hammett stuff, where it's like, by the way, we know that wasn't just totally like a plot dead end.

Like, we do know why that happened, F1.

Which is something they love doing.

No, I mean, I, I think the magic of this movie for me is that it is really clear and easy to track the character story within this movie, even though every scene is them discussing deep inner workings of a thing I can barely get my head around.

I understand what every character is doing.

But it's pretty.

It's basically just there's just this side and this side, and one guy kind of flipping.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

I understand that.

I'm not sure how well I understand Mink.

Well,

you know, sometimes I love

a man loves a man.

I don't mean to.

Go on.

No, it is funny how Mink just swoops in and he has that one incredible, you know, like run of dialogue.

And you basically never see him again, but you hear about him a bunch, and his body is vital.

You hear him over the phone.

Right.

And his dead body is a vital plot point but that's it's i want to see him with with the dane i want to see you know what that reflects what they get up to behind closed doors all right well all right i little miller's crossing side equal with uh is jay freeman still alive i don't know he's not that's too bad uh i watched this with captions on as i'm wont to do and they could not keep up with mink's dialogue Yeah, they just started dropping every other sentence because they're like, we're not even going to attempt to do this.

Yeah, Buscemi can do the rat-a-tat.

Yes, this is the first show.

It is wild that this is the first.

Well, it's only the third movie.

I know, but it still feels like he comes on screen and you're like, This is a guy they've been working with for centuries.

But he's a brand, he's kind of brand new.

Like, Mystery Train's the year before.

I think of his first big movie as Parting Glances, right?

That's 86.

What year is Bouchemi?

When it was In the Soup, In the Soup, great movie is

when is In the Soup?

When's In the Soup?

It's 92, so it's after this.

Uh, New York Stories is 89, so the year before the same year as Mystery Train, and

yeah, those are the two big things.

I just feel like all of these like Slaves of New York, the James Ivory movie, which I have never seen, never seen the rare, like

James Ivory being like, can we do a contemporary movie in the 80s?

And no one watches, and he's like, fine,

get the dresses out, we'll do another one of those.

It just feels like this entire like spat of early Busami one-scene performance movies, he just arrives and everyone is like, oh, cool, I know what to to do with this guy.

Was just fully formed.

It's like this guy has ultimate utility.

Hit the ground running.

Our guest today, talking about Miller's Crossing, is Ari Astor, director of Eddington in Theaters Now.

Eddington in Theaters Now.

Eddington and Theater.

And that is the full title, right?

Eddington in Theaters Now.

Eddington in Theaters Now.

Yeah.

Hereditary.

Mitsumar, Rubo's Afraid.

I don't know.

Ari Astor's here.

Tina's Dick Fart.

Oh, yeah.

Was that a short film?

Yeah.

What's

Can you repeat the title?

Tina's Dick Fart.

That's a good title.

I'm in it.

You're in it.

Were you the titular Dick Fart?

No, no, no.

No, but

it's a product and I use it.

Okay.

You're a customer.

Yeah.

Oh, it's like a,

but it's one of those, you have, I'm watching it, just sorry to tell you, but it's one of the squeezy bulb things here.

that I use to suck snot out of my children's noses is a is a crucial part of the movie.

But you can also put it into your dick.

And that makes it far.

Anyway, no, that's a good credit.

That's a very good credit.

I don't actually want people looking for this.

I don't know.

A couple years ago,

you've long been a white whale to get on the show.

And

there are episodes we had talked about in the past.

And then a couple years ago, I don't know if you remember this.

But Marie, a producer on the show, and I ran into you and we're talking to you.

And you said, I'd only want to do a movie if it's a movie I have memorized.

And I said, give me some examples of movies just in case we ever get to them.

And I believe what you said was anything by Hannuka, anything by the Cohen brothers.

And I think the third was Scorsese.

Does that sound right?

You definitely love Marty Scorsese.

Yeah, well, I'm not sure.

I don't remember saying that,

but all of those sound right now.

The pics make sense.

More or less right to me.

I love all those filmmakers.

This is a movie that I have more or less memorized.

I wasn't able to re-watch it last night, which I intended to intended to do.

So

I'm a little rustier than I wish I was.

I had no fear.

You've memorized it.

You have in your head.

Yeah.

Yeah, this one's important to me.

But those guys make sense to me, too, as people that you could talk me into doing this for, especially

while I'm like...

In press mode.

In press mode, which is not a mode that I tend to.

Before you go back into hibernation.

Press hibernation yeah yeah I mean I fucking hate it but I but

I'm you know I was gonna say I'm happy to be here I don't that that also that also strikes me as not quite sincere but I but I

accepted it it could be worse I guess I feel that's I feel like that's how you feel being here you're like yeah it could be there is worse places I could be at least in press mode it could be worse and right and I uh and I I I'm happy to uh

just to have the opportunity to to to say publicly that i i love miller's crossing i mean it's an important stance to take in this day and it would be really

if you came on and you were like

miller's it's kind of a big minus yeah like not my fave cohen what's your history with them do you remember what the first movie of theirs you would have seen would be yeah what's your cohen's sort of right yeah like what would have been the first theater cohen's i don't know i think the first one i saw was i think it was actually just on television i think i saw saw it pretty young I think I was like 10

and I saw Raising Arizona and that that for me was like

whoa what the hell is this immediately lockdown uh yeah just like this is a language that you know like I haven't heard before but like I

speaking to me um

and

I kind of watched them all from there.

I mean, you're my age.

Like, I feel like we were both too young to have seen Fargo in theaters, probably.

Sort of me.

Yeah, but I was aware of it because I loved the poster.

I loved that like embroidered.

Yeah, the homespun mystery poster.

And also that was a movie that was at the Oscars and Francis won.

And I remember my mom, me being like, what's that?

And my mom being like,

you know, it's hard to explain Fargo.

Like almost every episode talking about Billy Crystal cut into Fargo

as a child being like, what is this movie?

But I don't think I saw Coens in theater until O Brother.

This is a point I've made.

Same for me.

Big Lebowski was rated 18 in the UK.

He grew up in England.

I did see.

I think the first one in theaters was Lebowski for me.

And I think it was because my dad thought it was so funny.

And then my mom, and so he recommended it to my mom.

And then she took me.

Was that 98?

So I guess I would have been 12.

Yeah.

So Fargo did come out when I was 10,

which is, I think, around the time I saw Raising Arizona, which makes sense that I would have kind of like

general early for you kind of like, I'm starting to understand what a director does.

I want to like watch a movie and then see more by ex-person versus just watch movies.

I can't trace exactly when those things were.

I do remember, I would say the first time I like really became hyper-aware of

the director was when I watched Goodfellas when I was really young as well.

And I remember just thinking, like, what makes this feel different than other movies?

Like, who, you know, what's he doing that's different?

Because this feels,

I didn't, you know, I obviously didn't have like, you know, I didn't have the language for it or, or, you know, but I, but I, but I just could see that somebody was doing something behind the scenes that was making this different.

Upraising Arizona, as you said, is the same and you locked in on that.

Same thing.

And at that, at that, at that point, I would, you know, I would have been still addicted to cartoons.

And it's like, whoa, this is,

you know, it's a straight line.

They're creating an on-ramp for you to.

Yeah.

Totally.

Yeah.

Just making these cartoon like miniature worlds.

Wait, who's your cartoon guy?

Yeah, let's get into this.

This is important.

Who's my cartoon guy?

Or your tune.

You know, it's like your favorite tune.

Someone points a gun at you and it's like, you have to make a feature adaptation of a cartoon character.

And let's be clear, the gun they're pointing at you is a big cartoon gun.

It's got a big cork in it.

If they shoot it, a flag will come out that says bamboo.

You know, it's like Daffy Duck, Woody Woodpecker.

I don't know.

Fucking Wiley Coyote, whatever.

Or my guys.

Or do you, maybe you don't have a guy.

You're doing WTF.

We have to prep you for this.

What are your tune guys?

Well, I'm talking about myself as a little kid watching Raising Arizona.

So I guess let's just go, let's take a little time machine

back to 1996 or 29.

Or whatever it was.

And I, and, you know, I'm watching Rocco's Modern Life.

I'm watching

Red and Stimpy.

I'm still watching The Rugrats.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're getting a little, they're getting a little whatever.

Yeah.

Crusty around the edges, those Rugrats, but they were okay.

But I'm still like, I'm still identifying with Chucky Finster.

I was going to guess that.

I didn't want to auto-complete.

Yeah.

I was was good at Angelica.

Rocco also has some bow energy.

Like character to character.

I think there's a little rock, the way Rocco engages with the modern life around him.

There's some Ren and Stimpy in there, too.

But I, but, well, Rocco's Modern Life has one joke that I identified as like, that's my humor when I was really young, which was the episode where

Heifer becomes convinced that, you know, that,

what is it?

I'm not sure what the chicken place is.

It's

choky chicken.

I can't remember, but something chicken is chewy chicken.

Initially called chokey chicken.

Oh, chewy chicken.

Chewy chicken is people.

Chewy chicken is people.

Sometimes the people are.

Soil and green.

Yeah.

And then, and so he, you know, he comes out screaming that, and then there's like a family of chickens going up the stairs.

And they're like, well, that's a relief.

And I go out.

I just remember really.

That's a good guy.

That's a good guy.

I remember just that had me laughing for like 10 minutes.

I was a really stupid kid.

No, no, no.

That sounds sophisticated.

Yeah.

We grew up in a perfect era for that of, you know, cartoon.

Like that was the, we had it best.

I really think we had it best.

Well, the Nicktoon Revolution.

Stuff was just slipping by.

You also basically doubled the amount of cartoons that were being made because of cable, right?

We need stuff.

Like, we've got to fill our cartoons was still us watching the things our parents grew up on.

And suddenly there's this wave of like cable channels making new shows.

And Nickelodeon in particular pulled a bunch of like underground cartoonists and were like, just do your thing.

So you had these shows that were, if not subversive, at least were quietly kind of like

for their own entertainment, which then could transmit a signal directly to the type of kid who'd be like, I get this.

This is doing something different.

That's, I mean, it's the thing I feel like we talk about on this show all the time, but that feeling of watching something when you're young and going like, why is this different?

The way you're describing watching Goodfellas,

it has to be the person who made this because this is doing something different than anything else I've ever seen.

But so then, all right, Miller's Crossing.

When do you get to Miller's Crossing?

I watched this in college for sure.

Like, I don't, you know, I had a long,

you know, I'd seen a bunch of Cohen's or whatever by the time I finally rented this on Love Film and watched it on my college like 10-inch TV.

I think this is the last one I saw, not counting like new releases that came out after I saw.

In my going backwards in Coen's, I think they played this at film form some point in the last 10 years, and it was my blind spot.

And I also had only seen it the one time before re-watching last night versus every other Cohen.

Really, so this isn't a big one.

I feel like I've seen five times.

I love it.

I was kind of surprised when I put it on.

Why haven't I re-watched this?

Because all their other movies are movies I tend to throw on if I can't fall asleep.

And this one I just never go back to.

Well, this was an early one for me.

This was really early.

As I was first digging in, this was one of the first movies that I rented of theirs.

And I remember this is around the time that I also was obsessed with Goodfellas.

And this came out the same year.

This is the year the big three gangster movies.

It's overshadowed by that.

And it makes sense because Goodfellas is the best movie ever made.

But I agree.

I agree.

But this is one of the best movies ever made.

I was completely

blown away.

And this is a film I just kept re-watching.

And, you know, and I, I was a kid who,

you know, I was a fat kid with like a debilitating stutter.

So, you know, I keep hearing about these kids who are making super eight movies with their friends.

Right.

But, you know, what do you do when you have no friends?

And so I, you know, instead of making movies, I just like wrote scripts.

And this was one of the scripts that I was completely obsessed with.

You know, I, I, I, I, would you get your hands on scripts to see?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I was printing scripts

from the internet, like Drew's scriptorama.

And

their scripts are, I feel like, unique, right?

Simply scripts.

Simply scripts are.

Like, don't the Cohens kind of write their scripts more narratively?

I feel like there's some

approach they have that's not typical.

Oh, the Cohens?

Yeah.

No, the Coans are, they...

They write them as like prose.

They don't do like, I think they do do interior,

but they are,

you know, they're, they're literate.

Um, and well, they're literary in a way.

And, and this, this film, especially, because you know, I mean, the dialogue is just, is so musical and so beautiful and has such like rhythm to it.

And obviously, you know, the film is like something between pastiche and homage.

Um, and it's specifically got its sites on Dashel Hammett.

Um, but one of the first scripts I bought was, uh,

one of the first script books I bought was this and Barton Fink's screenplay published together with the Roderick Jaynes introduction.

We have that somewhere here.

There's a third one in there, I think, as well.

No, it's just those two.

It's just those two, the Faber.

The Clapper

cover.

Those were the best.

If you were collecting scripts, the Faber series was, you know, was absolutely the best.

Is it titled as like collected Cohen screenplays, volume one?

No, no, no.

I know what you're doing.

You know what I'm thinking.

That came later.

But then there's no volume two.

There's a volume one that's three of them together that I got recently.

And then volume two never happens.

Is that right?

I mean, Faber published like almost all of them.

They did.

They started doing them solo.

And they did, they did.

Yeah, they did The Man Who Wasn't There again with another Roderick James intro, which those are the funniest.

Roderick James, of course, is their editor, who is them.

Who is them?

Although I think they didn't start doing that until, is it Barton?

Like, they didn't, they initially, or like Nose Crossing was edited by somebody else, right?

It was Michael Miller.

Right.

Barton Fink is Roderick Jaynes.

So that's where, but did, is Raising Arizona?

Did they edit that one themselves?

I'm going to check.

No, Michael Miller is there.

Right.

Is there an editor on that one too?

Yeah.

So.

But Roderick James, famously, they wanted to dress Albert Finney up as him one year when he was nominated.

maybe for Fargo.

They were nominated under that.

And they were like, we're going to put Albert Finney in a costume and have him like sit there.

I don't think it actually happened.

Who's the guy they use for

Forever Young films?

Oh, yes.

Which he shows up for Blood Simple and he goes, Forever Young.

Forever Young.

They've used him a few times.

He's there, absolutely.

Yeah, it's that guy is so funny.

So funny.

When you're young and you're reading this script and trying to like

pull the math from it to be able to apply to learn how to write your own scripts, what are the, are there things you remember latching onto or observing and engaging with it in that format?

Well, you know, I mean, the film is like, you know,

famous for its labyrinthine plotting, which was so complicated that they had to take a

break from it to write Barton Fink because they got confused.

Most productive writer talk of all time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But

when I first started writing writing screenplays and like kind of obsessively reading them, I was just obsessed with dialogue writing.

And

so I was really into, you know, David Mamet, Patty Chaevsky, and the Coens, really.

And there were a lot of other screenwriters that like still that meant a lot to me.

Like, you know, I was really into Paul Schrader when I was young.

And I was really, I, and, uh, and I got into Bergman pretty young, and I, I really loved his screenplays and, you know, and Kenneth Lonergan,

who's, who's still maybe the best best dialogue writer, you know, like living.

I'm with you on that.

I was looking at his IMDb the other day because I was like, how few credits does Lonergan actually have?

There's the early run of him getting the credit on Analyze This, which he says they basically totally rewrote.

Right.

And he showed up for Gangs of New York.

Yes.

He's sole credited screenwriter on Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, which is incredible.

No one else gets credit on that.

But the thing I always forget is he wrote two episodes of Doug

going back to nicktunes which makes a ton of sense yep he wrote series four he was in the writer's room for that one i guess i don't know doug a tough protagonist to write for i think a lot of

being animated by pork chop that's really who he dug in his and and his plays you know are incredible his plays are incredible i read his plays obsessively in high school i think in a similar way of just being like

what what is this and how does he do this i've also talked about this but the you know this is our youth was revived in london when i was a teenager as this like rolling like thing with celebrities.

Yes, like it was for the initial cast was Hayden Christian, Sonana Paquin, and Jake Gyllenha, but then they would just bring in all these other young hot Americans.

I found one the other day, which I have the Pope Damon did it, which is bizarre.

He was way too old to be doing it.

Freddy Prinz Jr.

and Chris Klein did it together.

Yeah.

And like, one of the worst titles for anything.

This is Our Youth is a very, very bad title.

I'm sure he regrets that title a little bit, right?

Like,

It's a very good play.

Yes.

With a with a horrendous title.

That's another thing.

I found this Playbill article where they were talking about.

But you can count on me as a bad.

Sorry, I'm bringing it.

No, no.

Just musing on

bad titles for great things.

You can count on me.

I remember being, because I love that film.

Incredible.

And I remember almost not seeing it because of the title.

And then being so.

happy that nobody said you can count on me.

Yes.

It's sound there the whole time going like, don't blow it, my guy.

It's

the final bust up scene where

it could come at any second Sundancey kind of movie I mean I know it wasn't

the title kind of no it's a totally fine title but now I'm realizing like actually he usually shits the bed with his titles no I'm kidding I mean Margaret is a great title for the movie it's a tough sell maybe right it also falls into the tootsy problem of like so who plays market right actually nobody it's a poem There's a Playbill article I found that was when You Can Count On Me was about to come out and they're saying like, everything's coming up up Lonergan.

He wrote the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie.

His first directorial effort, like, uh, This Is Our Youth continues to like sell out in London.

And he was like, My next thing I'm doing is This Is Our Youth as a movie.

Yeah.

Oh, it's just like, it is absolutely, as long as people don't think I shit the bed on this first film, I'm doing that next.

But it's not a doubt.

It's not cinematic at all.

Sat in a freaking dirty apartment.

Like, it's a play.

I don't know.

It makes sense because it was so beloved.

Yes.

And, you know, everybody likes young people.

Right.

He could, in theory get three big stars to do it damon affleck casey affleck and summer phoenix was that cast wild i gotta find the kieran kulkin one i saw it like three times i just kept i saw kieran i saw the kieran

michael sarah yeah i saw that and and uh

yeah yeah and tavy right yeah yeah yeah find out who played the female part against klein and prinz though Colin Hanks did it in London, I think.

Anyway, this is not important.

Now I'm seeing why these go for two.

Sorry.

okay, Miller's Crossing.

It's important because we talk about the important things that everyone else is afraid to talk about.

Here's what I want to ask about Miller's Crossing.

Or rather, a point I want to make.

Blood Simple does not have a ton of dialogue in it.

The dialogue that's in it is really strong, but there are extended sections that play out in silence.

Well, it's mostly

just the

private eye.

Yeah,

and M.

Mon Wall.

Who, you know,

was a real get for them in their first film he's a proper recognizable character actor you guys seen straight time

yeah heather burns the greatest the greatest oh oh yeah um love heather burns but yeah but that's a good point that like what they did for mm walsh a guy who was always kind of taken as sturdy but never got that good of a showcase I think immediately gives them so much clout with other actors of, well, I want them to do for me what they did for him.

And just from Raising Arizona on, they're getting great great people.

But Raising Arizona is so dialogue forward, but the criticisms at the time, as we read all the insane reviews when it came out, are people being like, why is this so fucking overwritten?

There's all this insane criticism at the time from

critics.

Yes.

Being like, no one talks like this, rather than getting that that's the point.

And you dive into that.

The critics don't really fully align on the Cohens until Vargo.

Like, I mean, obviously they were critically beloved in their way, but like every movie, there would be a huge swathe of usually older critics critics being like this is all sizzle like you know this is pastiche like you say like this is not well and there's that there's that like i'm always mystified by this one but the uh they judge their characters they don't like their characters right right they're patronizing like yeah they love their i've never understood i've well no i've just never understood that as even a criticism it's like it's like especially when you're making a genre film it's like i

I want you to destroy everybody you create.

Like, I, you know, like, that's, that's like, I've, I've paid for this movie.

Both of their movies are about cruel and indifferent universes.

Yeah.

And they, and they've all, they've, they've always been world builders, you know, and, and, and they're, they're people who are very

conscious of kind of all the traditions that precede them.

And what kind of distinguishes them is that they're, they're both like, like a reverential thing going on where they, where they absolutely like, you know, love these traditions.

And then they're also totally irreverent, where they're, you know, kind of blowing them up.

And, and, uh, and so you do have something like with Raising Arizona, you've got like a lot of like tech savery and all the, you know, but, but then, you know, with

Miller's Crossing, you have specifically Dashel Hammett.

You've got Howard Hawks.

You've got

this like really explodes with Hudsucker proxy, where it's like, okay, this is sort of Capra.

It's like Mr.

Deeds goes to town.

And it's like, okay, it's also like the big clock and it's and like you got sturgis and um it's it's mostly capra with like the speed of howard hawks

and then with miller's crossing you you've got i would say mostly hammet

with

uh again the uh like the the treatment of dialogue that you get from howard hawks and then

And then like a minimalism that

even just the rooms are empty.

Yes.

And after how how kinetic and sort of like thoroughly stylized Raising Arizona is, I think you're right that they didn't totally align until Fargo, but this is a movie where you see a lot of their critical critics swing back and go, maybe these guys have depth.

Not everybody.

This is the first of their films that feels, that has like an elegiac quality.

Yes.

And I, and I do feel that if you're one of the people who whatever was like saw Raising Arizona and was like weird enough to be like they don't like these people i don't like this you know yeah um this movie is really moving and it's a great film about friendship that's the i think you have to watch it a couple times to figure that out maybe because the first because it's so visually overwhelming and because the plot is ostensibly naughty and complicated that so you're like trying to keep track and then the more i watched it the more i locked in on like yes it's a film about friendship it's a film about a person

weighing whether there's any morality in in like what he does, right?

You know what I mean?

And like making a moral decision and then regretting it, essentially.

Like I'm reading the Ebert review.

The Ebert review is interesting because he is, he has the criticism I think a lot of people had where he's like, this is a gorgeous movie.

I don't believe that anyone would live in these rooms.

Like these rooms are too beautiful.

It's not a gangster movie.

And Canby in the Times, who I think of as like one of the kings of the old guard back then, like futzy kind of a whatever, bad critic.

Sorry, Vincent.

Was a big hater hater who is like this is like fucking dick tracy you know the warren beaty movie

toy train pest yeah this is just these kids playing with gangster action figures and you're just like

i'm just saying not to dismantle

but um but i think this movie is uh

even on a surface level more sincere and less ironic less right which broke down some of their detractors who get fully won over by Fargo.

And I think part of it is, to your point, when you're talking about all the different elements they're synthesizing in like, you know, Hudsuckers After This, but in Blood Simple and in Raising Arizona, they're getting the charge from putting disparate things together, right?

What if you combined Mad Max with Flannery O'Connor, with Wiley Coyote?

And to some people, they just short circuit and go, you can't put those things together.

The things that Miller's Crossing is synthesizing are all starting at a closer place to each other.

So I think people were just like, okay, this is a less manic thing.

A thing that I find funny, because I was trying to remember why I saw Miller, not Miller's Crossing, Raising Arizona at a young age.

And it was that I was obsessed with the AFI did their 100 years, 100 laughs list after their first 100 years of movies list.

They tried to do every year a new one as a TV special that I was obsessed with.

And then Blockbuster had a little pamphlet where you could check on which ones you had watched as a comedy-obsessed kid.

And in 1998, Raising Arizona was 30 on that list.

31.

But like barely 10 years later, it had gone from like, what is this overwritten stuff to we all agree this is one of the 50 best American comedies ever made.

Yep.

Fargo's also on that list.

Where was Fargo?

93.

And I'm sure Big Lebowski's on there now.

Now would be, yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Now, I wonder if Raising Arizona, no, well, who knows?

Um, just because I Big Lebowski sort of became their most famous out-and-out comedy in a way.

But.

Ben.

What's up, Griff?

This is an ad break.

Yeah.

And I'm just, this isn't a humble brag.

It's just a fact of the matter.

Despite you being on mic, oftentimes when sponsors buy ads based 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 coveted Ben Hosley endorsement.

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.

It's coming to theaters August 29th.

Macon Blair's remake of...

Reimagining.

Reimagining, whatever.

reboot of the toxic Avenger now David and I have not gotten to see it yet, but they sent you a screener link.

Yeah, I'm gonna 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 orders they asked, which I really appreciate.

Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Tremblay, Taylor Puttie, 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 them yet.

Okay.

You got fucking Dinkledge is fantastic.

He's Toxie.

He 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 a snack.

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.

Trump.

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 jokes.

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 Cineverse 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.

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 toxicavenger.com slash blank check to get your tickets.

Blank check, one word.

In theaters, August 29th.

Yep.

And Ben, it just says here in the copy, wants 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.

Hell yeah.

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 freaks.

I'm excited to see it.

And your endorsement, I think, carries more weight than anyone else's in the world on this list.

Seriously, get your tickets now.

Go to toxicadventure.com slash blank check.

Do it.

Do it.

Hey, Blankies.

I can't keep track of my financial accounts or what they are friggin' worth.

And by not knowing, I'm leaving money on the table.

And I don't know about y'all, but I hate leaving money on tables.

But with Monarch Money, I can feel organized and confident.

This all-in-one personal finance tool brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or phone or even the freaks using a tablet.

Right now, just for our listeners, Monarch is offering 50% off your first year.

Using Monarch helped me to identify, I'm not saving as much as I thought I was.

And it was easy to see all of my spending using just one finance app.

Plus, it's helping me keep track of the valuable genes I've buried in various locations.

Using Monarch, I can easily review my finances with a financial advisor and keep a clear view of my financial health week to week and long term.

Monarch is designed for folks with busy lives.

If you've been avoiding organizing your finances, then Monarch is for you.

With Monarch, you link all of your accounts in minutes and get clear data and categorization of your spending and genes.

Monarch is not just another finance app.

It's a tool that real professionals and experts actually love.

including being named the best budgeting app of 2025 by the Wall Street Journal.

Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks.

Use code check at monarchmoney.com in your browser for half off your first year.

That's 50% off your first year at monarchmoney.com with code check.

I'm opening the dossier.

We have research.

All right.

We don't just make stuff up.

Okay.

So obviously, right, they're pivoting out of Raising Arizona.

Joel says, We don't want to do another out-and-out comedy.

We wanted to do something that was a little bit morbid.

We've always liked gangsters.

And they talk about the visual.

The starting point is the visual is the hats, the long coats, the hat blowing onto the ground, Tommy guns, dirty town gangster stories is how Joel Cohen puts it.

More pulp-lit than movies, per se, right?

Like they're starting more with the sound of the cork being pulled out of a

skip leaf.

Once again, the goat.

No movies sound better than Cohen Brothers movies because every single action has such a distinct resonance to it.

Any like shifting of weight in a chair suddenly is the most visceral thing you have ever experienced.

I'll just say,

since I'm only able to talk on the Miller's Crossing podcast, but I've got a lot to say about all their films, I will say, for

sound design,

the road trip sequence in Inside Lewin Davis is

so mesmerizing.

The John Goodman.

Goodman, Gareth Adler.

Everything about it, it's so

just,

it is such a hypnotic, like

20, 25 minutes.

It might be their best filmmaking, but also the,

but just the sound design.

It's like the whole thing is like

almost underwater.

Yeah.

And it's really, it's really eerie.

And, and also just their like metronomic sense of like pacing reaches like a sort of apex.

That's them.

They have a lot of the rhythm.

They have a lot of like apogees.

Like, you know, they do.

They have multiples.

I can't talk on Hudsucker Proxy or Serious Man podcasts, but I will say.

You can share my thoughts here.

This is your space.

Yeah.

I will say Serious Man, the Goy's Teeth, and then Hudsucker Proxy, the Hula Hoop, which I know Sam Raimi was involved in

helping to to direct.

Those two are like, I mean, just, you know, as far as the medium has been like pushed.

Yes.

As far as montage is concerned, just

absolutely amazing.

And the hutsucker, right, the hutsucker sequence feels.

mathematical in the way it is interweaving different games that are being heightened and de-heightened.

You basically, within one extended montage, have like 10 different narrative tracks that you're keeping your tabs on yeah and and just like what they're doing in that movie with um the catchaturian you know uh it's uh i mean it's it's it's carter burwell kind of riffing on catchaturian's spartacus yes mostly the adagio but it's uh i mean just what they're doing with music there is so great it's like you know it's very it's like it's very rube goldberg and they're very rube goldbergy filmmakers the sort of serious man true grit uh inside lounin davis whatever apogee one of one of like several apogee is that does feel like drawing a circle like for kids like for kids yeah um that feels like where they're just like we can i'm not saying in an arrogant way it's just they're we can do it they can do anything right like they can work in any genre at that point without any kind of like oh let's see what this is like we we recorded our hot sucker episode quite quite a bit ago And I was trying to do some tidying around the office and I found this, which I don't think was shared on mic and never went acknowledged.

Ben,

I believe, drew this up, which is a chain, and it says, you know, for kids.

Was this your handiwork?

It's just like an idea I was playing around with.

Just pitching the idea of a chain to play with.

Oh, just

like a metal chain.

Ben likes chains.

It's a quality of something I love in film.

I'm sorry.

You know,

you know, for bad kids.

I missed the key word.

The chain is for bad kids.

There's no RE movie with chains, though.

You've never really done chain work in your

oeuvre.

Bo is afraid.

He breaks the chains, remember, in the play?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

That's right.

That's right.

Okay.

So you've done some chain.

It just must be fun to like, as a director, evaluate like piles of chains, right?

Like, is this the right chain?

It's more in my private life.

When you were visited by Jacob Marley.

Ari Sana, I got to say.

Yeah.

So, okay.

Miller's Crossing, as you already, you know, noted, National Hammond is obviously their biggest inspiration versus James Kane, Raymond Chandler, whoever else that they've also sort of paid homage to over the years.

Yeah, Chandler would be Big Lebowski.

Kane would be Man Who Wasn't There.

And kind of Blood Simple.

Definitely.

Yeah, Blood Simple for sure.

Kane the horniest, I would say.

Chandler kind of the coolest.

And Hammett, I feel like is the most emotional.

I don't know.

Maybe that's very broad of me, though.

Actually, I'm not sure if I would say Hammett was the most emotional because...

Glass Key is emotional, which is a book I love because that is about friendship.

That is about a guy being like, I can't be friends with you anymore.

But you're also outside of the characters

in Hammett.

Whereas, with, I would say,

is Kane the most emotional?

Not necessarily.

Kane's just so horny.

With Mildred Pierce, maybe.

But

Kane is like so just bare bones and

like nothing extraneous.

Whereas Hammett is like more colorful, I would say, and is having more fun with language.

And

then Chandler is,

you're just always

inside of like Marlowe's

goddamn point of view who like can't put his pants on, but also is so cool.

Just speaking to what you're saying, Ethan, this is a quote from Ethan, Miller's Crossing, definitely an exercise in doing a Hammo story.

It's that thing of not being in the character's head.

And part of the mystery is who is the main character.

So because with Sam Spade, who I feel like is the most famous Hammock guy, You are spending the whole thing being like, yeah, what does he want, actually?

Like, I don't get that.

He's cool.

Yeah, he's an enigma.

And

Gabriel Byrne in this movie, Tom, Tom Reagan,

he's

a character Irish.

Did you pick up on that?

Subtle.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's stoic.

Yeah, he's he's a stoic who's sort of man, a few words.

Yeah.

Stone-faced, often,

very red harvest.

And, you know, it's like he's doing something.

We know he's got a plan.

We don't know how much of a plan he has.

He seems, he seems to be a brilliant improviser.

Have ideas ideas for a plan?

What's the line?

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Something like that.

And I guess, you know, Red, Red Harvest is infamously the, you know, the sort of

the text for Yojimbo and then like, you know, and then those

Sergio Leone.

Yeah, the man with no name, but specifically a fistful of dollars, right?

And then,

yeah, just a guy who, in the case of like Yojimbo, like, you know, rolls into a town, a street, you know, like a drifter who then pits, you know, pits two warring gangs against each other.

But here, here, you know, it's somebody who, who's of the world and in the world.

And what's the line they used to describe him too?

He's like the guy behind the guy whispering in the ear.

This sort of notion of the type of guy who's not usually at the center of these stories.

The right-hand man.

Right.

And is so

reluctant to reveal himself in any way.

There's the...

Tough to date.

I feel like this guy might be tough to date.

Well, there's the exchange he has with Marsha Gay Hardin, where she's like, that's a hell of a long way to go to get what you want.

And then he says, what with Appy?

And she says, me.

And it's a thing he would never, ever say to her that she's basically pulling out of him of, I think you just got fired and got your ass beat rather than saying I love you.

which is the thing you would never do.

And yet the whole time, in almost every scene, I'm trying to figure out, is he manipulating this current situation to his own ends for what he wants?

Or is he battling back and forth in terms of what he actually wants?

I think what makes this character interesting to me is at different times, I think he's in complete control or complete chaos based on, is he cleaning up the messes of something he did wrong before, or is this all how he was trying to build it out purposefully?

Because I think there is some shifting of

at moments in this movie, I'm thinking he's planning all of this so he can get out or he's planning all of this so he can be on top or he's planning all of this to help

Albert Finney or just to get Marsha Gay Harden or all of them.

Does he think he can pull it all off?

And then by the end, it turned out he, you know, he

did have the plan.

Yes.

Do you think he the whole time is like, that's how it's going to unfold?

I'll switch sides and ferment chaos.

Well, of course not when he like lets Bernie Birnbaum like go in the woods, you know.

That's the one time he's letting the mask slip or whatever.

That's the sort of crux, right?

It's like it actually, and I would fucking let him go too.

He won't shut up.

I would struggle to shoot Bernie Birnbaum.

And then it's so great when he shoots him.

Yes.

It's one of the most satisfying murders of a person ever in a movie.

Yes.

What are having only seen this movie twice, admittedly?

Okay.

I did in this watch feel like there is a mid-section where his priority becomes Marsha Gayharden.

I mean, and then he's sort of trying to untangle the damage he causes by letting his emotions override that much.

I think there's a window where that becomes the dominant driving force for him.

And then he starts to close up again.

He's definitely, look, he's a compulsive gambler and he likes, he likes a drink or two.

He likes to pull the cork.

Yeah.

It's not like Tom is a completely straightforward person.

There's obviously a lot raging inside of him that is, you know, that he deals with in traditional 1920s gangster ways.

It'd be funny if he went off and like did art or something, but, you know.

He's actually a really good painter.

Right.

Yeah.

But yeah, he's not sentimental, I guess.

And he's, and Albert Finney, Leo, right?

Is such a sweetheart in this movie, which is so, he never stops being a sweetheart.

Like he's really not a cold blood.

He's a very warm-blooded guy, right?

Like he's a, and I feel like Tom

is like, I don't know how to be like that, or I don't understand like how to sort of handle this, like, you know, this emotional person, right?

I don't know.

Yeah, Albert Finney at the end of his career was

in those last like, you know, 15 years, was playing a lot of warm guys.

He's, yes, Aaron Brockovich and all this, but my favorite actor, basically.

I mean, Saturday night and Sunday morning is one of my favorite performances.

That is basically one of my

core movies.

That's where he plays like a brute.

He, as I've told, I've said on this podcast, that is, that's like my dad was always just like, that was me.

You were my dad in that movie.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was a very working-class British guy, like in that era.

He's sucking all the time.

He just

like, we just got food back, like proper, like, and I don't mean even good food, but Britain in like the late 50s is basically like, we're now allowed to eat regular amounts of food again.

We've basically just been drinking our brains out.

If a character was just beer, yeah, it would

he's a human piece.

What I love about that is that's 1960.

1963, the next movie he makes is Tom Jones in 1963, which is basically like, what if a guy fucked his way through like England in like, you know, whatever era.

It's coming out of the year.

The Oscars were like best picture, I think.

Like, this is the best picture of the year.

He always had that, like, not to be corny, but the twinkle in his eye.

And there was this like well of warmth that you could apply in different ways.

But there was something of like, and Aaron Brockovich, you want to see him be won over, right?

But something like this, what's funny about it is that he's not doing the tough layer on top of it.

I mean, it's one of the most insane things is that this was not only not written for him, but written explicitly for Trey Wilson, who dies two days before filming.

Right.

Who's obviously wonderful in raising Arizona?

And you get it.

I mean, like, you, you can see him in this, but then I also cannot imagine anyone else but Finney.

in the robe with the Tommy gun.

Like, you know, in that whole sequence, you're like, yeah, it's incredible.

Yeah.

And the weight of the history of what he provides.

Like, Trey Wilson clearly would have knocked this out of the park because he's

eager to have this kind of opportunity.

But scene one of Finney sitting there, you're like, yeah, I get that this guy's run this town for 20 years or whatever.

It's like production value and like weight, and especially because the movie basically opens on him silently, largely just reacting, you know, that's sort of like worth its weight in gold.

But it is wild that it only not only was not intended for him, but that he jumps in so last minute where you're like, this is Finney with zero prep.

Yeah, right.

Like if Trey Wilson dies two days before, like, how do they even get to Finney that quick?

Get an agreement out of him, get him on set within a week.

Yeah, it's a really soulful performance, but also he's so clearly tapped into whatever they're doing.

You know, I mean, like, there's the gag where Gabriel Byrne breaks into the ladies' room and

he's dressed in drag as like one of the attendants.

It's like, you know, which he asked to do.

It's just like clear that he has the same sense of humor as the right was into the idea of being Roderick James at the Oscar.

Like, I'm just like, it's so great.

Funny, but also this beautiful freak.

Feels like a movie, especially at this point in their career, that you imagine only gets green lit if they have someone like Finney in the supporting role.

Well, this feels like a classic like let me get back to the research then because, okay, so famously, yes, it usually they say they write very fast.

Like that's, I feel like their typical explanation.

on screenplay writing.

But as we said, the plot slows them down.

It takes them, they say, about eight months because they stop in the middle to write Blood Matt Barton Fink.

They get some distance from it.

They kind of go on vacation.

They come back to it.

They figure out the plot.

And

they also say they don't change the dialogue, but they rewrote part of the script during filming, which I don't really understand.

But maybe they just kind of restructured the, you know.

uh plotting in some way.

They obviously are not very into symbolism, explaining symbolism.

Barry Sonnenfeld says, like, they won't say, like, the hat represents this.

We're going to talk about that.

But they will say,

we wanted to make a movie with hats.

You know what I mean?

Like, that's the thing with the Cohns.

They're like hats.

Like,

we started with hats.

What do the hats mean?

And they're like, oh, I don't know.

We just like hats.

Right before we recorded, we were talking about how you were worried going into this series of like, isn't it going to be tough?

Because they famously don't want to talk in interviews and we're not going to get the context that JJ is usually good at digging up when he's not busy being fired.

And that you've been surprised that there is a lot of stuff they say, despite the reputation.

You can pin all of this together.

But I feel like so much of that reputation comes from the hat where this movie comes out and everyone's like, what does the hat mean?

And they kept on being like, we just thought it was kind of an interesting image.

They really downplayed any weight behind it.

And I feel.

Cody and Cohen, the hat doesn't represent anything.

It's a hat blown by the wind.

Yes.

It's an image that came to us that we like.

And then Barton Fink almost

kind of comes from the house.

I don't either.

I think that that strikes me as being right.

You know, I don't see that and think like, man, that hat represents, you know.

I agree with you.

I think that's the secret.

You got to just, I mean, look, I think you have made movies, I'm sure, where people are like, but Ari, what does this mean?

Like

that, that scene.

Come on now.

Explain it to me now, Ari.

You know, I'm like, I'm sure you get this all the time.

Totally.

And that's really fun.

And you love those questions and you love to answer them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

And sometimes you dangle stuff knowing that it's going to, you know,

it's going to waste people's time.

You're not a babe in the woods woods being like, la la la, you know, that's sure, like, okay, this will be a good thing.

Sometimes that's the joke.

The joke is the joke is like, you're gonna think this means something.

Because that's why the dick in the attic and both of these things makes my favorite thing.

Well, that's the whole point.

The whole point is like, the whole movie.

It's going to be up there.

There's the whole movie.

You're like, you know, you build the intrigue and you make it like an object of suspense.

And then you reveal like you've just wasted your time.

and your thought and your energy on this.

And it's the stupidest possible thing that could mean nothing but also it kind of completely like everything it's like isn't everyone's father's penis that's the trap you know like even i mean it's almost the it's almost like the one thing i regret where it's just like uh like i i are you having too much fun or such a well no it's just such a fuck you and it and and that was sort of the point was you know i guess to quote susan sontag please i uh it's a it's it's a a gesture that's against the very idea of interpretation right like just like try yeah, just try to interpret this.

I just gave Ari the finger.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, that's exactly right.

It is, it is a middle finger to anybody, you know, investing anything.

Like, sort of doing semiotics.

I mean, against everything we've just said, can I give my hat read?

Because something kind of clicked for me watching it this time.

Yeah, the hat is a penis.

The hat is a penis.

It's Bo's dad.

What's up?

The hat is Bo's dad.

It's a call forward.

Right.

What's the hat?

No, I think it is literally just a hat, right?

But I think the reason, not just the imagery, right?

But then also also the hi-hat being thrown out as the term.

Give me the hi-hat, sure.

Refers to symbols, but yes.

Yes.

And the first scene after

the opening credits and the hat imagery is them calling out that Gabriel Byrne lost his hat.

Yes.

And it goes back to the Leo.

They are very into knocking his hat off his head.

Absolutely.

And there's a lot in this movie of when people are wearing a hat, when they're not, when they take it off, right?

Which I think is just literally what it is.

And down to Polito talking about like ethics, right?

That this is a movie to me in many ways that is about this kind of like early 1900s, all the immigration happening, these different cliques from different countries coming to the major cities and trying to establish a social hierarchy.

You know, where did the Irish stand relative to the Italians and to the Jews and all these people trying to make a name for themselves?

But all of this was couched in this idea of like manners and ethics and gentlemanly behavior and who can you trust.

You know, the Sopranos thing of like, do you feel like we got in after all the good stuff had happened, right?

That that era of like mobsterism and even what Goodfellas is kind of addressing is like, this is starting to get tacky.

And the shit that they talk about being so animating to them is like.

these movies that have this kind of dialogue and the hats and the long coats.

And like they're fetishists.

These guys used to talk well and dress well, right?

That's absolutely right.

And the idea of what you did with your hat was shown could be an ultimate sign of respect or disrespect to someone else.

That the major thing in play here,

in many ways, the central tension of this movie is, can you do something that breaks the gentlemanly nature of crime?

Sure.

And if you do that, is this irrevocable?

Polito's hatred of the double cross.

We're all pretending to be gentlemen.

Exactly.

To what extent are we, really?

Yeah, no.

The hat is a meaningless thing that all this weight is put on.

It could be the ultimate affront if you do the wrong thing with your hat, or if you lose it, do you feel like you're no longer a man?

But it is just literally a hat.

It's nothing.

it's just a piece of poetry.

Yeah.

I got to say about tailors and haberdashers during this era.

They were fucking cleaning up.

Okay.

Go off.

They were making so much money because you got to think, like, these knuckleheads show up, they get a full wardrobe, then they get shot by a Tommy gun minutes later.

Call

out another henchman.

They're not just going to patch a hole.

They're going to give you a new hat from scratch.

Yeah.

If you go to the Shenandoah Club, you know, there's a lot of henchmen up on that

upper floor in that hallway.

They were working in quantity.

For sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was a good time.

Do you know also, Ben?

Do you know that

the reason the Mad Hatter exists as a character is because Hat Glue used to make people literally fucking insane?

Yeah, they would use mercury.

Right.

So they were cleaning up, but then they were also probably like hitting themselves in the head with a moment.

Everyone was crazy back then.

You know what I mean?

david what this episode of blank check with griffin david podcast balphimographies is brought to you by booking.com booking.y.

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 demands?

Bringing me in, and there's only one other person in the room.

There's one other person in the room.

This is so rude.

I sleep easy.

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

No, that's a that's a an example of a fussy person.

Look, 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 someone who wants a pool or wants a view, or I don't know.

Maybe any kind of demand.

Lynn, and I need a room with some good soundproofing because I'm going to be doing some remote pod records.

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, I 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,

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 studio?

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 Trumbo podcast.

You want to be Splish Splash.

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

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

I'm like, ah!

Like as I move to the

kinds of demands that booking.com, booking.

Yeah.

Yes.

You can find exactly what you're booking for.

Booking.com.

Booking.

Yeah.

Booking.com.

Book today on the site or in the atmosphere.com.

Booking.yeah.

Listen.

That's the sound of the fully electric Audi Q6 e-tron.

The sound of captivating electric performance.

Dynamic drive.

And the quiet confidence of ultra-smooth handling.

The elevated interior reminds you this is more than an EV.

This is electric performance redefined.

The fully electric Audi Q6 e-tron

as Ari alluded to, you got three big gangster movies this year.

You have Miller's Crossing, which is this sort of stately, almost to a point film, right?

Like where it's like, it's so painterly and beautiful.

You got Goodfellas, which is like Scorsese poking.

the gangster movie in the eye, I feel like, right?

Like he's like,

this is not the godfather.

These people were not classy.

They did not like all dress like beautifully and like have poetic conversations in dark rooms they were like weird little psychos is god bless them and it's about how being a gangster is fun it's super fun and then

someone might shoot you because you were annoying for one minute or said something in the godfather it's like may i have permission to shoot yes yeah you know i love the godfather to be clear but i feel like scorsese like come on like let's and then you have home alone no you have the godfather part three i picked home alone there i think home alone is kind of important important in this i don't know that the wet mandits were organized crime i think they were kind of just a sort of a slip operation that's the pointed satire of the film they're disorganized crime what were you going to say about the godfather part three well it's just obviously that's a flood movie i don't know if you agree maybe you think the godfather part three is perfect up and down but i i i do think it's flood it's a movie where you feel like copala is maybe not his heart isn't in all of it as much as the first ones.

There's lots of interesting stuff, but it's got a bit of a reality.

Right.

It's, you know, like,

and it is also kind of about like the gangsters of old who are so, you know, finally appointed are getting a little garish.

There's a lot of gross money, right?

There's the whole thing with the Vatican, you know, whatever.

It's just like tarnishing, you know, and the Miller's Crossing is more the sort of picture-perfect, like Norman Rockwell gangsters.

I don't know how to describe it.

Which is what they're obsessed with preserving, the sense of like this means something.

And the whole bushido, you know, of like, if Leo says so, then you got your marching orders.

I'm like, that's what you do.

Miller's Crossing is pastiche.

And

it's like, you know, like a tribute to a way of making movies and a style of filmmaking that, you know, that is very classic, but, but is dead.

And so, you know, it's, it, it's not a surprise that, that Miller's Crossing like wasn't a commercial hit.

But now for, now for me, I, I feel like it's such a successful tribute that

I put it with those movies.

I put it with.

Sure, it fits into the...

Yeah.

Yeah, with those gangster films of the gangster year, right?

Yeah, of like the

30s and 40s.

And, you know, films like...

God, I'm trying to think.

The Roaring 20s.

It's a little...

I mean...

Those Cagney movies are not quite this energy, I guess.

Yeah, I'm trying to think, like, what would I put this with?

Because it is so hammocked it's that it makes me think of those books more than it makes me think of any film, which is what they're saying.

Like, they are like our big inspiration is more books versus us doing

our version of the big sleeper, what you know, like whatever, you know, Key Largo.

I mean, I don't know, any gangster movie.

There's so many gangster movies that you could think of.

Well, and for how classical it is, I think it's hard to put it up against the films from the actual error because what it has is the distance and the perspective to be mourning the loss of this.

Yeah.

I mean, it feels like a Michael Curtiz film or something.

That's a good call.

As far as how they shoot it, how, you know, the dialogue is more stylized than anything.

Should I watch every Michael Curtis movie?

No.

400.

But there's so many of them, but there, but there are so many great ones.

I feel like I've seen so many great ones.

The only gangster movies I've seen is Angels of Dirty Faces, which is very, very good.

That's great.

But I don't, I'm not actually that up to on, you know, up on his like his vast amount of output.

I've seen Casablanca, which I'm

a fan of that one.

Yeah, it's good.

I actually think that movie's like Captain Blood.

I've seen, yeah, I'm not a big Michael Curtis.

I have seen that many years ago.

Breaking Point.

Don't see you seen that.

That sounds good.

What's up with that?

Is that a boat movie or a wolf movie?

It's another boat movie.

Michael Curtiz never made a talk and wolf movie, did he?

Like a talking animal picture?

No, I don't think so.

He was, what, Hungarian, right?

Yes.

Anyway, okay, Miller's Crossing.

This is their second Circle film,

uh which blood's uh bloodsip will also yeah circle just signs up and is like we get it we're in the the cohens business for the long term it's 20th century fox who funds most of the movie uh who had obviously done uh raising arizona uh ben barren holtz is the guy they're working with uh and basically like they had this arrangement early in their career where circle film is basically like do what you want we'll sell the movie and

you know i mean there's nothing like that arrangement now like the way things worked back then does seem kind of unique or maybe the art film scene was a little...

Well, you had, you know, you had home video and then

that just that made everything less of a risk, you know?

Like if it doesn't make its money in theaters, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's going to make its

money on video.

This movie was seen as a flop, but it also cost less than $10 million.

So

the budget's a little bit more.

Right.

They're like between foreign sales and TV and video.

I'm not worried.

I think their only meaningful flop was Huzz have sexy.

That's the only one that ever, you know, probably

like led to some serious discussions about like, how do we play the next one?

Yes, right.

We actually need to be sort of thoughtful of our budget next time.

Now, this also feels like a movie that today,

even if a studio were to say, sure, we'll make this.

it would be green light contingent on you getting one of 10 actors yeah fucking cancer squad that they could get people to sign up right that well that's contingent on you getting five of the biggest stars

Gabriel Byrne is not a star.

Exactly.

No, the idea that they could speak this up and be like, and by the way, this is our guy we're picking.

And they're like, the fifth lead from Excalibur?

Right.

A casting director turns them on to him.

Right.

He'd done Excalibur and like the Keep and Lion Heart.

You know, it's like, he's a guy.

He's not famous at all.

He's ever been the center of a movie?

Certainly not a Hollywood film.

Not a big movie.

And then he basically becomes shorthand for noir for the rest of the 90s.

Now, you've worked with Gabriel Byrne.

I have, and he's one of my favorite people.

He's a really, really wonderful man.

Famously, a guy I've seen on the street many times for some reason, to the point where I was like, say hello.

He's just a good guy.

He's great.

I am a big fan of what happens to him in Hereditary.

I think one time I interviewed you, I just think it's so funny that if you think about that movie, just from Gabriel Byrne's perspective.

He really didn't ask for any of that.

He asks for none of it.

Almost every scene, he's like, what?

Like, as some fucking insane, you know, further breakdown is occurring.

And then he just catches on fire.

And that's the, I'm sorry that I'm spoiling all your movies on this podcast.

That's fine.

I mean, but if you re-watch Hereditary and you're like, let me just get right into Burns' perspective.

He really shouldn't have married her.

I'm sorry to say.

Sorry to be rude to Tony, who's, you know, a luminous creature or whatever, but he should not have married into that family.

No, he, you know, he took a wrong turn somewhere.

Was Casting Him in Hereditary

partially inspired by this?

Is this just a performance of his?

Yeah.

I was super starstruck by him because of this.

And he's got an iconic face, like a low-key iconic face.

No one has anything.

He never really looks like it.

He's got a great face, great eyes, great presence.

He's just a very grounded,

like authoritative,

you know, you just, you take him seriously.

And like

deep well of bottled emotion.

You can just cut to him listening to a conversation and be

endlessly fascinated by what is this guy thinking right now.

He's, yeah, they love him.

He is the one who insists on the Irish accent, which they're resistant to, but obviously, I think good call.

It's also a light lilt.

Sure, he's not like, oh, hello.

You know, yeah, no, it's a chomping on potatoes.

But it helps in this way that like these people are the early wave of Americanization.

They're all kind of one-foot in, one-foot out.

It also makes him a bit of an outsider in the film.

Absolutely.

Even though, even though Leo, you know, the Albert Finney character is also, you know, ostensibly, you know, like Irish.

And yet, Finney has similar, he's putting a little tiny inflection sometimes.

Yeah.

He says, obviously, as you often will hear about Cohen's directing style, it would be fairly just kind of like,

you know, rudimentary or not, not too involved.

And one point he said, What's the significant of the hat?

And Ethan replied, Hmm.

And that was it.

Yes.

Another point he said, like, I think in this scene, I'll walk out of the room.

I'll put the drink down, walk out of the room.

And they were like, he would never leave a drink in the glass, finish the drink.

But that's good directing.

That's what I mean.

Like,

they're on those points.

Right.

That's a key detail of the character.

Yeah.

Obviously, right.

Trey Wilson dies right before the shoots start going to start.

They delay 10 days.

And Albert Finney pops in.

Like, how did they even get through to him uh i know they're at fox 1-800 albert no i don't i don't know uh finney says he also is finney apparently also got a little put a little more irish on it uh ethan quote from ethan cohen we got mugged by the irish albert finney of course is not irish but he is british and uh yeah he just really wanted to do it and he was really into the uh the attendant thing he begged for that they were like no and he was like please i mean british guys love to dress and drag like that is number one like you know, just to do some panto, essentially.

Yeah.

This is Marcia Gay Hardin.

This is the T over there.

Yeah, 100%.

This is Marcia Gay Harden's like first role, basically, in a movie.

She's in Angels in America on Broadway.

Okay.

But I she didn't originate it.

Yeah, she did.

But I think Deborah Messing originated this.

You thought very wrong, my friend.

Okay.

But that, I think, is actually.

maybe after this.

Yeah, that's in like 93.

This is one of those performances where

when I saw this for the first time, I went like, I kind of now understand better why she won the Oscar for Pollock.

It's also because she says in that movie, you've done it, Pollock.

You broke it wide open, which is something you have to do in a biopsy.

You have to say.

You have to have somebody say, this is history.

Sporting stuff for him.

No pressure, but if you fleck this paint correctly,

you might be remembered for the rest of time.

The best scene in Pollock is when he's biking and he's got all the fucking booze on the bike and he falls off the bike i don't i don't think she's bad in pollock but this is one of those things where you i haven't seen it the 30 years of this you want to 40 performances someone gives before they win the sort of surprise oscar and you're like oh this is everyone years later catching up and being like we probably should have given her more credit earlier um she's phenomenal in this she's a great actor she's great in this she's very uh she's very sexy are you allowed to say that we're allowed to say that yeah we don't tone police on this podcast okay We are allowed to call Marcia Gay Harden circa 1990 sensuous.

She is very sexy.

Very, very smoky, sexy.

I feel like, you know, they're, again, you know, like they're evoking.

Obviously, the sexiest performance in this film is John Polito.

I mean, Polito is one of the best actors to ever do it.

You know,

John Polito is so amazing.

He, I mean, apparently basically just walked in and they were like, great.

Like, you know, like they saw tons of guys and then he walked in.

And he continues to be amazing in all of their films.

As Creighton Tolliver he he feels like

they built these sets though and he just walked in you know what I mean that like the sets just summoned him in costume like they didn't even have to find out about him he's great and I love him in Lebowski yeah I think he's so funny in them as a brother Seamus yes exactly he's one of those great character actors because he just is a type like he's just he you know you couldn't get somebody to play Johnny Casper who wasn't Johnny Casper.

I'm trying to see if I can find this because it doesn't look like JJ put it in the dossier, but I think it's his random roles he did for the AV Club, where he talks about that he wanted this role really badly and the Cohens wouldn't see him for it because he had read maybe for Blood Simple.

And at that point, he was like, I was a heartthrob.

I had a full head of hair and I was like 40 pounds lighter.

And they were like, that guy's a pretty boy.

And he kept being like, you don't understand what I look like now.

And he was saying this all with this attitude of, I'm so glad I'm no longer a pretty boy and I could get to play guys like Johnny Caspar.

Like there was this part of him that this was always in his soul and the body was wrong for a while.

And then he aged like milk and walked in and they were like, as you said, holy shit.

You're right.

You're perfect.

And it was like finally unlocked for him of like, this is the guy I've always wanted to be.

This movie, it is astonishing to me that it didn't get a supporting actor nomination.

But then every time I watch it, having only seen it two times, I'm doing the math being like, well, who do you put?

Well, Toturo got critic awards and critic attention.

I feel like Toturo probably was the play because it's the showiest performance.

And Finny would make a star in your legacy.

Right, obviously.

But then Polito, I think.

Look, I love Polito.

The MVP of this movie.

Polito is amazing.

I love him.

Did somebody hit you?

Just the look.

What's a man who is in the Rizzler?

Yeah.

With the little sailor outfit.

This is the first Toturo collaboration.

He went to school with Francis McDorman, so they knew him.

Obviously, he also just sort of feels like a guy that's been in Cone Brothers movies that they built in a lab.

100%.

And I do think that he's amazing.

Like, yes.

He's, you just want to reach in the screen and punch him.

Like, he's so awful and slimy and like so satisfied with himself.

Yeah.

He's so unafraid of being a little douchebag.

The scene where he comes back.

And like, same in the spikely movie.

You know what I mean?

Like, I just feel like that was his, like, he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You did the right thing.

And this is the year after Journal Fever.

He's so nasty in that one.

Yes.

But that the scene where he shows up and now is like really feeling himself.

I actually hold all the cards, right?

I'm going to tell you what's up, Tom.

And then within that, he starts to break down

about his vulnerability of the actual reason he has to.

put his thumb on Tom is because Tom saw him break and he doesn't want Tom breaking his tough guy image and then he flips it back into

if you ever tried to shoot me again I just scored a few tears like this flip of I actually have the power because you know I'm not powerful but also if you ever try to get the power back on me I'll pretend I'm pitiful again when in reality that wasn't a fucking move from him no he doesn't want to die yes I mean

He's, I guess, the kind of guy that like if Tom has a gun pointed at him, he's probably just gonna like stoically be like, all right right i mean he's probably not gonna drop to his knees and go look into your heart you know he'd do it again he's bernie would do it

i'm saying i'm saying like that's in bernie's nature but no tom tom would just yeah he'd take it yeah yeah um steve gets to the part because he can say the lines essentially they were like we need someone fast ethan calls it a lost art like horseback riding which i like uh and uh of course sam raimi's in this film they're still very close with him uh they filmed the shoot in new orleans which i feel like is a classic place to film all the way up to now because it has all this old-fashioned architecture that you can still just use.

It's why Ben, like Fincher, uses it for Benjamin Button and all, right?

You know, like you just free production.

You already oaky.

Yes.

Right.

That's Hammond, Louisiana

is Miller's Crossing, the trees and all that.

But yeah, right.

The general look is brown.

Where did you shoot Eddington?

You shot Eddington in New Mexico and Arizona or like around there?

I shot Eddington in New Mexico,

primarily truth or Consequences, but also a lot of stuff outside of Albuquerque and in Madrid.

And I grew up in New Mexico.

This is my New Mexico movie.

My cousin lives in Silver City, which I think of as like the sort of wrong side of New Mexico.

Not in a bad way, but like not near all the sort of New Mexico stuff.

Like you're not going to go get...

you know, ceramics or see opera or like, like

visit the George O.

Keefe house or whatever.

It's all the way on the other side, but it is very, very, very cool over there.

Yeah, it's a, it's, uh, it's a very specific place.

A weird place.

It's a weird place.

I found the Polito interview.

It was, he had done death of a salesman, and they had seen him in that, and he was 35, 150 pounds lighter, full head of hair.

And they called him in and wanted him to read for the Dane because they were like, that's his physical type.

And he was like between 35 and 39.

I aged like 30 years, doubled my weight, lost my hair, and had to beg them to let him read for Casper.

And then when he walked in the room, they were like, oh, you didn't tell us you look like this now.

Very Sonnenfeld, this is the last time he works with them.

They wanted him, they just kept saying handsome, and he didn't like that word.

And they went back and forth and back and forth.

And finally, Sonnenfeld said, quote, what if we just make it look nice?

And they were like, yeah, that'd be great.

So they agreed on nice versus handsome.

But they, you know, I feel like they're, they want to be more conventional, less flashy, right?

like not as it's a deeply brown thing yeah not and the camera needs to be more stationary and it's a lot of conversation so we're gonna be you know being conventional their films with soonenfeld are you know the lighting is a lot more flat yes than what deacons brings he brings them like a lot more mood and a lot more texture and

and depth yeah yeah sonenfeld never shoots another movie again right like this is it Like Adam's family is what, 91 or 92?

And Sonnenfeld's films, once he starts directing, look look like these films.

Yes.

Like, get shorty, you know, kind of looks like a contemporary Miller's cruel class.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

He shot Misery the same year.

He shoots Misery for

Rob Reiner.

Rob Reiner, greatly.

And when Hermet Salis the year before this, yes.

And then that's it.

And Adam's Family is 91.

So it's like really much, you know.

And like, look, those early Sonnenfeld movies are so good looking.

Like, I love those 92 Sonnenfeld movies.

Like, they look fabulous.

Like, Adam's Family values adam's family values is a masterpiece men in black is wonderful and then wild wild west still looks good

sure i'd argue everything from the 2000s on stops looking good it's weird that they stopped looking good that's what i was trying to describe him and it's not like i hate barry sonnet and i know you've worked with barry sonnet but like i i'd never i guess you never worked directly with him he had a contractual position i i just i want to make clear with no description no i never met the man but it is odd that he went away from the really ornate stuff like and started doing more conventional kind of comedies and stuff rv looks insane okay he's doing a thing in that or whoever his dp is but it's it's i would say not successful and then uh you've seen rv yeah runaway vacation i have yes i've seen it um i i saw it in theaters and uh it didn't make the biggest impression on me fair enough it didn't make your sighting sound top 10 right No.

I'm trying to remember.

It was 11 on the list.

It was edged out.

Yeah.

That has like the widest angle lenses in the world and has the color palette of like a fucking bag of Skittles.

But then like Nine Lives looks terrible.

Sure.

Well, there were some challenges with that one, probably.

Carter Burwell's score, you could say this about half a dozen Carter Burwell scores for the Cohens, but it might be the best score you ever gave him.

Like it's great.

He's got so many great scores, but it's very romantic.

Right.

Using these Irish melodies and like all that stuff.

He can identify how in the middle of a piece, he can just hit one note that suddenly fills the entire thing with dread and melancholy.

They have Frank Patterson, the singer, like record a new version.

Like that's not a vintage Danny Boy.

Like that's an original Danny Boy.

That's probably the best sequence in the film.

Yeah.

It's pretty amazing.

It's transcendent.

What do you think of the guy going

the shooting the Tommy gun in a circle like five times while he's dying?

It's just the greatest.

I agree.

I agree.

I agree.

If you don't like that, then you can just take your toys and go home.

Different people.

And one of my favorite traditions in, you know, just in movies is, you know, the gun that has endless ammo.

And I feel like that's a gag that they kind of keep going back to, like when the bar is being shot up by all the cops and there's the just that, you know, it's just endless.

You know what's fallen out of favor when characters are shot by a Tommy gun and they go like this?

Yes.

Like the real gyrating.

They're still standing up straight, taking the bullet,

bullet after bullet.

It's the RoboCop boardroom.

Yeah.

The guy who does not lose his ability to stay upright while being filled with like hatred.

He gets right,

which also

happens to Peter Weller.

Yes.

Yes, he does.

He gets shot one gazillion times.

But you don't fall over until the squibs stop.

Was Eddington?

Can you stay upright and take the Swiss chief?

Eddington's your first gun movie, right?

Are there guns in Bow?

There are guns.

There are guns in Bo, yeah.

But like Eddington is like action.

Like, I feel like you'd never directed like gun action in that scale before.

Bow has action scenes in it.

They're just comic.

They're comic.

But they're, but it's the same.

It's actually the same.

It's actually the same challenge, which is like, how do I sustain this action for as long as possible?

You know, and action is just cause and effect.

And but the Cohens are

masters of prolonging set pieces,

which again is the Rube Goldberg thing, right?

You kind of can't believe we're still going.

Yes.

But Eddington is the first time I've done like maybe what I guess you might call proper action, even though it's meant to be funny as well.

But you have like, right, all the

Dennis Menochet chase stuff in Bo.

Well, exactly.

Right.

Which feels a little raising Arizona.

Yeah.

We've been saying this in other episodes that I'm sure will come out out 15 years from now, but they are like for not being thought of as action filmmakers at all.

Anytime they do an action sequence, you are reminded they are amongst the best on the planet.

I mean, obviously, like they have as good a sense.

They are better at establishing

spatial geography.

Yeah.

No,

they're incredibly lucid.

Everything they do is right.

In some ways, they feel to me like the true successors to Hitchcock.

And I mean, they're the opposite in that, in their method where Hitchcock would do,

or sorry, I'm saying, I said Hitchcock.

I actually meant Kubrick, but both, actually.

So now that I'm scrambled and I, and I said Hitchcock, but I, I, but I said Hitchcock for a reason, um, even though it was

an accident.

It was positive Freudian's life.

Uh, which is, you know, that they, their films are incredibly designed.

And when I was saying Kubrick,

and I was saying, you know, opposite methods, which is, you know, that he would do endless takes, and they tend to do very few takes.

I find that their films are immaculately made.

And then I think what really ties them to Kubrick

is their sense of humor.

Right.

This particular kind of sense of humor.

Which is like something, it's something between,

well,

it's sort of misanthropic, but then at the same time, it's also,

you know, they're just Jews.

It just very tough.

It does boil down to that.

Whereas Hitchcock is just British.

Like, and then like all of his weird shit, you're like, right, he's just a weird British guy.

And like, they are just Jews.

And this,

I mean, like, what I'm thinking are no country, like, no country is like, would you, would you take the money?

Right.

You know, like right at the start, like, there's a big briefcase full of money.

And like the Jewish mother in me or the Jewish like part of me is like, no, no, no, no, no.

Like, if you take that money, like, half your bread M is going to shoot you.

right you know like i can't yeah right well we're gonna we'll talk about it on that episode ben usually in these when he watches these movies like i would take the money and be fine

if i were in this movie it would end with me owning an island right and being happy i'd make the right choice like ben watched sam raimi's simple plan and was like yeah that would work out i could solve this

Welcome to Only Murders in the Building, the official podcast.

Join me, Michael Cyril Creighton, as we go behind the scenes with some of the amazing actors, writers, and crew from season five.

The audience should never stop suspecting anything.

How can you not be funny crawling around on a coffin?

No, that's true.

Catch Only Murders in the Building official podcast.

Now streaming wherever you get your podcasts and watch Only Murders in the Building, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers, terms apply.

Tires matter.

They're the only part of your vehicle that touches the road.

Tread confidently with new tires from Tire Rack.

Whether you're looking for expert recommendations or know exactly what you want, Tire Rack makes it easy.

Fast, free shipping, free road hazard protection, convenient installation options, and the best selection of BF Goodrich tires.

Go to tire rack.com to see their BF Goodrich test results, tire ratings, and reviews, and be sure to check out all the special offers.

TireRack.com, the way tire buying should be.

Leo O'Bannon is the mobster of a town, a city, whatever.

We don't need to, we don't care to know what it is, I guess, in the pro in Prohibition.

Yes.

He's the Irish boss of what I consider to be sort of like a mid-sized city, right?

Like this is not New York, LA, or Chicago, right?

Doesn't seem like it.

Like it's, it feels more just like Gangsterville.

Yeah.

Although

I'm not sure if it's not Chicago.

Maybe it's it feels it just feels like smaller than Chicago, if that makes sense, just because it is like, he has a nice house.

And he has a nice club.

It doesn't feel like he runs this like big industrial city.

And like the mayor is just a schmo that he knows.

And the chief of police is another schmo and all that.

But he really likes this girl, Vernia, Verna Birnbaum, I guess is her name.

Leo's twist.

And

she's related to, she's the sister of Bernie, who is a bookie who has been skimming off of the match fixing arranged by Italian gangster Johnny Casper.

And Johnny wants him dead.

And Leo doesn't want him dead because he doesn't want to piss off Verna.

And

Tommy and Tom is in this situation of like, do I give, you know, my boss really needs to kill this annoying Jewish guy.

God bless you, Bernie.

I'm Jewish, just to be clear.

But I do hate Bernie because he's Jewish, obviously.

Bernie Sanders.

Yes.

You backed yourself into that one, my brother.

You know, like Tom is like torn between like, I must show loyalty to my Gapo, you know, like, right, you know, like, I have to be like a loyal soldier.

And like, I'm watching leo piss it away and leo

maybe because he's old maybe because he's getting sentimental or whatever is just like i'll be fine like who cares like he has this like kind of suave like man who you know like like i deserve to be in love i don't know am i does anyone want to i'm just summarizing the plot of miller's crossing at this point i feel well you've left the dane out of it before we leave the jewish thing too early no just never leave

i just think uh i think there's also this really interesting uh thing thing that happens when they first start making films where especially Jewish critics like Jay Hoberman are

accuse them of being anti-Semitic, which is

so weird.

And

there is an interesting tradition among Jewish critics to

disdain Jewish filmmakers.

Yes.

I won't expound too much further on that because.

As a Jewish filmmaker?

Well, as a Jewish filmmaker who has recognized

that tradition playing out before his very eyes,

I think there can be this reactionary sense sometimes, like among, you know, of just like, don't get us in trouble or don't like

sort of like shine a spotlight on all our nonsense or I don't know what it is.

Or is it, why these Jewish guys?

I'm

a Jewish guy.

Maybe it's just rank jealousy.

They're also, there is a thing we've talked about, and the Cohn brothers are like a big, notable exception from this trend, but very often when the highest level, most prominent Jewish filmmakers finally make their sort of explicitly culturally Jewish movie, it feels like they are trying to go-wash it a little bit.

There is this feeling that I've always found fascinating within these studios that are often run by Jewish people and these filmmakers that are predominantly Jewish making Jewish family movies and being like, but it can't be too Jewish.

What are you thinking of?

I mean, we talked about a bit with the Fablemans.

Well, that's funny because, yeah, the Fablemans

and Serious Man couldn't be

further.

Like,

those are two very different Jewish.

Jewish American films.

Serious Man to me is like the ultimate film about being like Jewish American.

Right.

Like that sort of crazy dichotomy special.

The great movie about Jewishness.

Fail Women's film.

That's found your sight and sound top 10, right?

I think that was your

Serious Man.

It's another one that, well, Serious Man is there.

It is there.

Wow.

I have this right here.

It's there right under Shoah.

Right?

You're right.

They're the two.

Yeah.

It's the devil Fabe Woman.

But Armageddon Time was the same year as Fable Fableman's.

I love both of those movies.

Right.

But they both have that thing of not casting a single Jewish actor.

Well, with Armageddon Time, I'm very sympathetic to James Gray needs actors who are famous to fund his movies and all that.

But whereas Fableman's, it was kind of interesting.

But Fabelman's felt very honest to me from Spielberg in terms of like, this is about my Jewish identity and my upbringing, but we were also this kind of assimilationist family.

And it's like, it's very vital to that movie.

I love that movie.

The one I always love.

I love Armada Time's pushing bag is.

Armageddon Time is like we live on poisoned land.

I love it.

Yes.

A darker film.

The one I always throw as the punching bag is Sean Levy's This Is Where I Leave You.

Sure, sure.

A sitting shovel movie with a family comprised of Jane Fonda, Justin Bateman, Jason Bateman, Tina Faye, Adam Driver, Adam Driver, Corey Stoll.

Yes.

No, no, I've never seen that film.

It's deeply bizarre.

That's on my site in Soundtop Town.

Of course.

And there's like, you know, 10 Woody movies.

Yeah.

Who?

What?

Which guy were he?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But that becomes like his sub-genre, right?

Like, I feel like he's viewed as one of the few guys where it's like, this guy makes Jewish family movies.

Yes.

In a sort of sustained way.

But he didn't make a lot of movies about his childhood.

No.

Well, there's radio days.

There's radio days.

There's the stuff in there's a lot of stuff in any hall.

Right.

But he rarely did the, you know, he never made the fablemans, really.

Radio days is kind of

radio days.

Yeah, it's the class.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I do think there's some weird kind of like call is coming from inside the house thing with the way people reacted to this at the time.

But not Miller's.

Wait, wait.

No, when you were saying the sense of some accusations of this movie being anti-Semitic.

Or right.

Or their general.

Because also, again, John Toturo, who is 100% Italian, is like.

He's a classic.

He's in that Anthony Quinn mode of this guy has a lot of face, so we'll have him play every single ethnicity.

But also, it's like this quiz show, I feel like there's a Barton Fink.

He had a big Drew run, right?

He will, he was playing these kind of these Jewish characters who are often like perceived by the world to be very annoying in the movie.

I mean, that is what Quiz Show is about.

Yeah, quiz show is basically just the whole movie is them rubbing their temples being like, but he's so annoying.

Like, we can't have this guy on television.

TV executives will literally commit fraud in order to get John Tatura off television.

Yeah, yeah, if it were radio, it would have been fine.

Absolutely.

And this movie is just like, you know, the problem is if they just fucking shoot Bernie is like, we're fine, right?

Like, there's no plot.

I think so.

I guess Verna breaks up with Leo.

Or is Casper probably going to like cause trouble anyway?

No, I mean, there's, there's still

a movie, probably, but it would just, but, you know, but this is such a, uh, like a, there are a lot of dominoes here.

So that's just one, that's just one of the dominoes.

I, I think the world around

is acknowledging what you called out or sensing what you called out, which is like, is Leo getting a little complacent?

Yeah, and a little piss off.

Is there an ability to grab the chair here?

It just feels like there's an energy swirling around of like,

can the hierarchy of power change in the DC universe?

Right.

And Black Adam is just lurking around the corner.

No, what happens in this movie is like Leo

gets more power, knocks off his enemies,

I guess, gets married to the lady he loves at the cost basically of his buddy Tom being friends with him.

He really doesn't lose much.

Like it's actually everything works out great for him.

But also Tom is the one who Tom takes a bunch of punches.

Tom makes all this happen.

Right.

Through, and like Tom

sacrifices their friendship, I guess, or decides not to be friends with them anymore.

There's this feeling for all of the internal conflict that the movie almost circles all the way back to the starting point.

Obviously, a tremendous amount has happened at the center, but in terms of the key dynamics between the three people, they've all reset to where they were at the beginning.

Well, it feels like Tom, by the end, you realize that Tom was ready to sacrifice everything to basically just win Leo the war.

You know, it's like, like, to basically, like, like, Leo gets himself into this fix,

and Tom doesn't agree with it, but

everything that happens in the film is kind of revealed to be Tom, despite,

you know, having misgivings there,

like, you know, kind of putting himself in hot water to get Leo out of this.

He basically has two great loves in his life that are almost equal, who are Verna and Leo.

I would say his two great loves are booze and gambling, but yes.

Drink and game.

Right.

But I mean, his relationship with Verna is not loving.

He doesn't seem like a guy who's very good at being loving.

I don't think he's in love with her.

It's not like

he's definitely obsessed with her, right?

But that's what I'm saying.

In both cases, like the whole thing of him getting in the fight with Leo.

Well, he loves Leo more.

I think that's what it is.

Is that he

has really strong feelings for her, but he can't, you know, he can't allow it.

The moment we're despite the fact that he's doing it, right?

He's doing it, but

he gets in the fight with Leo to say to her, I love you, because he can never say that.

And even when she calls him out, he won't admit it.

Right.

And likewise, the entire movie is his way of saying, I love you to leo

which he could never say verbally and the moment he decides to actually shoot bernie is the moment that his love for leo trumps his love for verna that's true in my mind not to over he's also pretty fucking sick of bernie at that point a huge part of it but there is this kind of like also bernie has to die so that albert finney can go to the funeral and wear a yarmulke one of the greatest decisions which is just such a funny do you know what i love about that moment i love imagining this entirely dramatic scene playing out and the Cohens just laughing hysterically behind the monitor at We Got Albert Finney to wear a Yamaka.

That it was the only thing they were paying attention to.

It is the most justified,

the entire movie, you're right, is setting up just to get to that one image.

But it's also, I mean, the emotional decision.

Like, I don't think Tom makes a strategic decision in not killing Bernie, right?

Like,

that is his heart

or whatever getting the better of him, but there's no thing.

Yes, no, because if he was doing it for Verna, he would have told her much sooner.

He holds onto it for so long and lets her hate him.

Well, no, I think he's doing it for her in the truest sense.

When he says, look into your heart, that's literally what he's

in his heart.

But he's not letting himself get any credit with her for doing that.

Because, like, that scene is so iconic.

Obviously, it's the poster of the film and it's sort of the best.

It's the title of the movie.

It's the notion of what happens in this place in the deep water.

It's so funny because it's like, yeah, he throws his shot away and he's like, get out of here.

I'll never see you again.

Bernie is back in 10 minutes.

Right.

Bernie does.

Do you think Bernie even like goes to another town?

He just doesn't walk around the forest.

Yeah, he starts feeling embarrassed.

And he's like, I don't like this feeling.

Fuck him.

Right.

What am I going to do with my life?

Like, I know the ultimate threat is like, I'm going to start dating a restaurant.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That is a good threat.

Yes.

No, that's what's so stupid about it is like you can't trust this guy for a millisecond.

He's going to get so antsy, so quick.

Well, because ethically, he's kind of shaky.

Yeah.

Do you think Bernie?

Yeah.

He's not, he doesn't have like a rigid moral code that he abides by or anything like that.

I'm quoting John Polito, just to be clear.

Yes.

There's one moment where they use the word glitch in this movie.

Oh, interesting.

Oh, no, no.

I'm sorry.

That's in no country.

Sorry.

I saw him also write.

No, anyway, Carrie.

And Wreck-It Ralph.

That's the movie you're thinking of.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They use the term glitch.

They do.

You see Wreck-It Ralph are you a fan?

Wreck-It Ralph?

Never saw it.

Princess Finnish.

Isn't that John C.

Reilly?

Yeah.

I'm a John C.

Riley fan.

I mean, additional writing credit, John C.

Reilly as well.

I think he did a pass on his dialogue.

Maybe I'll watch it.

Ben's number one hero.

Dr.

Steve Brule.

Yeah.

So,

yes.

Okay.

So Leo is Johnny's basically saying, I want to kill this guy, Bernie.

Leo will not lift his protection on Bernie.

And so a sort of mob war heats up in the background, which is mostly like them just fucking with each other's clubs and Tom getting, you know, the shit beat out of him.

I think the scene where who's the big guy who Tom hits with the chair?

Forget him, who's the actor?

He's the guy from Dumb and Dumber.

Exactly.

Like that, that it's

a man.

He's the guy with the most annoying sound in the world.

Yeah, and he's the one who goes, Jesus, Tom.

Jesus, Tom.

There's a little piece of trivia there.

That gets cut out of the Criterion version.

What?

Why?

So,

my editor, Luke Johnston, is Joel's editor right now.

Luke's been working with him since Buster Scruggs.

I know that they went back into the cut and they just took out a few things.

And one of the things is him saying, Jesus, Tom.

That's so funny.

Another is the woman in the Shenandoah Club who's like

who screams.

That I can see them being like, we're being a little too silly here.

Like, I can sort of understand losing that moment because it's almost like a Raising Arizona moment in Miller's Crossing.

Raising Arizona, they do it in Hudsucker too.

When

he says that when the guy splats, yes.

There's the big lady who's there.

It's always a big lady.

Yeah.

But isn't there also a moment in Hudsucker at the party where he tries to speak, I forget what language it is,

and says the thing that offends the one so dearly?

They do the same moment again.

In the what?

In Hudsucker.

He's actually.

Oh, well, there's our catalogue party.

Yes.

There's the blue letter.

Right.

Right.

Where like he comes in with the blue letter and we push into the screaming mouth of

the greatest.

Of one of the women in the in the waiting room.

Yes, the Paul Newman's secretary.

Yes.

And then what's the one you're talking about?

You're talking about?

Maybe I'm confusing this, but there's at the Peter Gallagher ball.

Oh, Peter Gallagher, there are the two

rich women.

Yes, I think

he speaks to the woman in Dutch.

and says something that's

accidentally

and the yeah right he says something in uh

i don't know if it's Dutch, but uh

and then the woman is scandalized and she screams and the guy throws his martini in his face and punches him.

Right.

But it feels that's a very Raimi-influenced thing.

That feels like, right, the evil in the woods as the camera.

Those moments where they go off.

Yeah.

In this early chunk of the movie, you have this sense of like everyone's still with Leo, the cops.

And the political firm, but Tom is sort of pointing out over and over again, like your support is kind of weak.

The moment the cops come in and raid

Casper's.

Yes.

No, but even his weird like hideout.

Yes, right.

Right.

Or I guess they had been his warehouse, right?

The gambling.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just this feeling of there still are all these gentlemen agreements that are holding all these systems together.

Then they try to kill Leo, the Tommy Gunn sequence we talked about.

I mean, that sequence is perfect.

But it's after that that Tom admits to Leo, like,

you know, Bernie is not worth it.

Verna is not worth it.

For example, I am having an affair with this woman.

Right.

And they break.

There's the earlier scene with Leo where he keeps Verna in the room with the door closed and doesn't give it up.

And at that moment,

right, he creates the fissure.

So why does he say it?

Explain it to me.

I'm dumb.

I think in that moment, he is

considering the possibility of prioritizing his own happiness.

I don't think he's committed to it.

That was my read watching it last night.

Or is it him being like, I have to break with Leo to like

whatever, survive or have him survive or anything like that?

Like, is what why does he reveal the affair to Leo?

Or does he think Leo will be like, oh, well, actually, then I don't like her.

I love you.

I think it's because he wants, I think it's because he knows he has to.

Right.

He needs to push away.

Well, but

he also needs

he needs there to be a story.

Like, like he needs it to reach Johnny.

Yeah.

Right.

This is a real, like, I'm not an undercover agent.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

He can't just come over saying, Yeah, like, yeah, we got into it.

It's his departed.

It's his, like,

look, would a guy go this far just to right take down a whole system?

Man, the departed's so good.

When are we doing Marty?

What Marty would you want?

What's your favorite Marty?

I mean, I know what Marty would I want, yeah.

Uh,

maybe Age of Innocence, maybe Last Temptation of Christ, just because that one doesn't get talked about enough.

Or

I would say, I love Casino.

I love Raging Bull.

I love them all.

I love them all.

After Hours, King of Comedy.

Actually, Silence, I think, is

so fucking

so under.

Yes.

Like, that's one of the greatest films ever made.

And it doesn't get talked about.

It's an astonishing movie.

It does feel like it's weirdly been.

It needs like another 10 years for everyone to sort of, whatever, settle down and be like, right.

Yeah, I would say Silence for me is

his best film this century and you like basically all the films you made this century yeah yeah i i i love them all i love shutter island i love shutter island it's amazing uh irish that's a movie about irishman is incredible too irishman is just great great great there's that interview he did a couple years ago where he's like in retrospect i regret making shutter island just because i'm getting older and who knows how many films i have left

it is such a like that's the one you regret exactly like it's a proof of you were operating at such a high level that you're like, Shutter Island was maybe kind of a toss off.

I could have done something with my time.

So fucking good.

It's incredible.

But I really think that's a movie about friendship, too, because that's Ruffalo being like, I made all this because I'm worried about you, buddy.

I'm spoiling every movie.

All right.

So, okay.

So, yes, he goes over to Casper.

Casper is like,

prove you're, you know, make your bones by killing Bernie.

Uh, and

he just, he can't do it.

And we've talked about all of this.

I don't know why I'm going through through this.

He looks into his heart.

He looks into his heart and he sends Bernie on his way.

And then I do feel like they must have gotten stuck on the last, because that is when suddenly a ton of

contangle.

You have the sort of like the Dane who is Casper's right-hand man, but has a thing going on with the Mink, but Mink is obviously with Bernie now.

And that's probably the chain of information that is the problem more than, right?

You know, I want to call out something in the Miller's Crossing sequence, the first one, which is that it is the most iconic part of this movie.

And I feel like is a thing people cite as like a level up move moment for Toturo in his career of like, how did he access this level of like absolutely heartbreaking, pathetic vulnerability that is so uncomfortable?

And then watching it last night, realizing 80% of that sequence plays out on Gabriel Byrne's face.

So much of what Taturo is doing is not on camera.

Most of his pleading is off-camera dialogue over Gabriel Byrne weighing it.

And it speaks to how effective what Toturo is doing that in your mind, you almost correct it to being like four minutes exclusively on him.

It's a great performance and it's a great scene because you really have, I was watching with my wife and she was like doing other stuff.

And I was like, by the way, they're going to.

This scene is going to be impossible to ignore, if that makes sense.

Like you can't even look at your laptop.

Like if you're just working while that scene is happening, you're like, Byrne, can you just let him go?

Like, can you shut him up?

Yes.

Let him go.

I don't care.

I just can't listen to him anymore.

Isn't this the part in the movie where they start the whole like shoot him in the head kind of runner joke?

Yeah, one in the one of the henchmen is like, you got to do it twice.

It's got such a gallows humor.

It's, but it's very funny.

Uh, and I love that it just becomes this recurring line.

I'm going to say one in the brain specifically.

Yeah.

Polito really nails that part when he does it, when he kills, uh, always put one in the brain, yeah.

The Dane was written for Stormair, I've heard, which is crazy, yes, and he wasn't available because he was like, Peter Stormair was always like doing like the Swedish King Lear or whatever, you know what I mean?

Like, he has like this whole other life where he would come into America and be like, Yeah, I'll play some psycho for you.

And then in Scandinavia, he's crediting the brain.

Raymond's great in that.

And Fargo ends up being like the greatest role you could ever write for Storm Air.

I almost think Stormair would have been, he is so innately odd that it might have unbalanced this movie a little bit.

There's something about the Dane being fairly stoic.

Yes.

The Dane's just kind of this rock.

He's stoic, but he speaks more than Stormair in

Fargo.

Yes.

Than Grimsrood, where I think his only line is unguent.

Ungwent.

Right.

Where is Pancake House?

It's the inverse is like Freeman.

He's fucking hungry now, you know.

Fucking hungry now.

Freeman can deliver this much dialogue.

That's the most you've said of this entire cargo.

Freeman can deliver this much dialogue and still feel stoic and mysterious.

If Peter Stormer is standing somewhere, you're just like, what the fuck is going on with that guy?

But you have this like, the most vulnerable moment Tom is in, I feel, is when he gets Polito to kill the Dane instead of him.

Yes.

Right.

Like, it's like, that's the sort of like shakiest part of his entire scheme is, is Polito's the most volatile, Casper, Johnny Casper is the most volatile element here, right?

Yes.

And he has to basically convince him, like, hey, no, your guy who you've been with for a long time is actually the guy double-crossing you, not me.

It's also interesting that so many of their films are people getting in over their heads who don't understand how complicated the situation they're in is that they believe they have all the angles figured out.

And the movie is constantly pulling back to reveal like there are 20 things they're not considering.

This is all going to bite them in the ass.

Because all this stuff is very simple.

It's like he then handles Polito by being like, if I put him in the room with Bernie, one of them will kill each other.

But this is one of their only movies.

And he's like, and I figured it'll be Bernie because he's the more desperate and

he'll know what's coming.

Whether or not you believe that Tom has all of this figured out from the beginning, it is one of their only movies where the person at the center does have a handle on everything.

He seems to be a little bit more.

Even if it's evolving.

Right.

Yeah.

I feel like in minute one, you're like, this guy's smart.

Right.

He's as smart as hell.

Their other films are just someone immediately gets in over their head and keeps digging deeper.

They usually make movies about idiots.

Yes.

Or like you have like Francis McDorman and Fargo or Tommy Lee Jones in no country where you're like this person is upright but they're not really they're coming in and viewing what's going on will moss isn't an idiot but he does kind of understand what he's getting into i think

people thought i was too critical of uh the characters in blood simple being dumb but it's more it's more that they're oblivious you don't think will moss he's not an idiot josh broland in no country

He just makes some mistakes, you know,

bringing the water back out.

I mean, even if he didn't do that, though, he still would have the tracking device with the right.

He's fucked no matter what.

Yeah.

And also, the thing in no country is like, you could give the money back.

It doesn't matter.

And Tommy Lee Jones there is ineffectual.

Like, he's.

Or he's just like, I can't, I don't know what to do about this.

Yeah.

He's like, I can't operate on this level.

Like, this is exhausting.

I think the defining feature of a Cohen idiot, though, is the confidence that they have it figured out.

Yeah, then Llewellyn doesn't.

Macy, every clooney character, like whatever.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Pitt and burn after reading.

The sort of like, I have every angle.

Well, everybody in burn after reading.

Everybody in burn.

Like, even Malkovich, like, who thinks he's smart or whatever.

Like, yes, yes.

He's the one who at the end runs out of his house in a robe with a hatchet.

With a hatchet and chops George Clooney to death.

Right.

No, it's not Clooney.

It's Richard Jenkins.

Yeah.

Jenkins.

Poor Jenkins.

Jenkins is that classic Cohen.

Like they find him, I think, for, is it Intolerable or is it Man Who Wasn't There is the first time he works the Man Who Wasn't There?

He plays the lawyer, the alcoholic lawyer.

And I i feel like they're just like oh we we need to like just put this guy through the blender every like they love your

friends jam dorman brings him into olive kitteridge which is great yes whoever hasn't seen olive kitteridge that's listening in on this is uh uh that that's a great uh it's it's a mini series i watched it at the time it was on hbo yeah it's great yeah jenkins the king doesn't love richard jenkins

You've never used Richard Jenkins.

What's the matter with you?

He's busy.

He is busy.

That guy works.

He's been a little, he hasn't really done much recently, but he played Jeffrey Dahmer's dad in the Dahmer thing.

It's one of those things where you're like, where's Jenkins?

And then you're like, ah, fuck.

He was busy playing Jeffrey Dahmer's dad.

He's in season 12 of a CBS sitcom called Rich.

He had one leading role, like The Visitor, right?

Yes.

The Tom McCarthy.

He's great.

And there was one that came out during the pandemic that was a Sundance movie that then went straight to Drive-Ins.

That was him running like a restaurant.

It's called The Last Shift.

Yes.

And I I know that because Devine Joan Randolph is in that movie.

And when she won the Critic Circle Award for New York, she asked for him to introduce her.

And we were like, Why Richard Jenkins?

She was like, We did this movie together and we love each other.

And he gave the sweetest, like, most loving intro for her for a movie

rooted in a movie I've never seen.

The Last Shift.

That felt like a movie that people liked at Sunday Incident.

It was like, this is going to be one we'll talk about in the fall.

And then the fall was that.

It was 2020.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Could we just quickly shout out if we're going back into the plot?

I love

Polito's cousins, the twins, trying to get the position.

It's just such a stupid, silly line.

And the mayor and the mayor.

And they're just like, Tom, can't you tell him?

Polito kicking the mayor out of his own office so he can sit behind the desk.

Yes.

Yeah.

Polito's just extraordinary in this.

And it is,

you know, I'll keep talking this series about Ethan's line about he thinks the defining trait of a director is tone management.

And Polito is doing a different size performance than everyone else in this movie.

And yet there is like a core humanity to what he's playing that stops it from being a cartoon character.

And it's the biggest part he ever had.

I mean, even with the Cohens, you know, he shows up.

He's more of a sort of one-to-one.

He's pretty silent in Barton Fink.

They use him basically as a joke of misdirect in Barton Fink to be like, you're used to that guy yelling.

Yeah, but Michael Lerner comes in and

here's who yells at Polito.

That's a great performance.

Incredible.

He's amazing.

I had an experience working with Michael Lerner on Bo is Afraid.

Right.

I'll actually leave it at that.

Yeah, that was very near the end of his life, I imagine, because he died in 2023, yes.

Yeah.

But

yeah, he's amazing.

It felt like Lerner kind of got the praise that Polito should have gotten of the rolling effect of the Cohens building this type of character and the fun of watching a guy like this burst blood vessels and speak continuously.

Art Werner's only two Cohen roles, Barton Fink and Siri Man?

Like, is he in another Cohen brothers movie?

Because him and Sirius Man is such a funny end to his collaboration where he just walks in the room and kills him.

I think that's it.

I don't think he's in.

Yeah, he's not in any other movie.

He's got

like he's figured out that

he just fucking comes in with all the pipe.

He's one of my favorite gags of that movie.

So Miller's Crossing, yeah, you know, a bunch of shit happens.

I believe it will just do these like precision turns, though, within a monologue.

Like the density of the language, which is so precise and so often playing out in these long takes, and then he will have like six emotional swings within it, and it never feels like he's pushing.

And there are moments where he's doing like sketch comedy-esque moves of like sitting with his jaw hanging open in like disbelief, like sort of like cartoonish shorthand of a visual representation of an emotion.

And yet he's still making it feel like this is a real person and a person who is a credible threat.

He's just like extraordinary in this.

I love Olek Krupa.

He's the guy I could call him.

Olek Krupa, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's great.

Bernie's Ursat's roommate.

Right.

Yes.

Yeah, I don't know.

Michael Jeters in this movie.

Didn't clock him.

And Danny Aiello, I also didn't clock him.

No, no, no, no, no.

It's Danny Aiello the third.

That's why.

It's Danny Aiello's son.

Okay.

Who is is one of the cops?

Got it.

But not

senior.

Right.

No, I was looking for Jeter and I don't know where he is.

I don't either.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Apparently he's like one of the gangsters.

We just always like to do a Jeter corner.

I like that old

captain, the old guy.

The police captain.

The police captain.

That guy's great.

Yeah.

That guy really gets made fun of too.

And like, he's making a good fucking point.

And like, you know, Tom's too hard on him.

Even the way Tommy has a relationship with the cops, every time they show up is a funny gag, too, where he's just like, good to see you, bud.

And he just like strolls out.

It's also like the Irish.

Neither rain nor wind nor snow.

That's the mailman.

So good.

No, but there's like the tribalism vaguely of like the Irish cops are always going to side with the Irish gangsters.

It's better that they're running the crime.

They'd rather that be it.

Right.

This film, right?

Also, right.

I love this film was initially called The Big Head, which is supposedly like the nickname for Tom Reagan.

That is a good title.

Miller's Crossing is a better title for this movie.

Miller's Crossing is a great title for a Painter League gangster.

I would like to see a movie called The Big Head.

Sure.

I want that to exist.

Ari, is there anything in this movie we haven't touched on that you want to talk about before?

You know, I just, you know, I don't want to bring us into the box office game and such before, you know, because it is so rich with little details.

Yeah, I don't know.

Let me see.

The last scene is a, is like something of a nod to the third man.

Yes, no, definitely.

Yes.

yeah and that the third man is always a great way to end the movie yeah i think like you know having everyone kind of take stock and be like i guess we're not friends anymore is a great way to yeah yeah definitely just just like a long uh a long forest road where somebody's walking towards you and then walks right past which is a little different than it's a little different here but it's definitely evoking that but you also have tom tilting his hat down and then the camera kind of swooping up under him to be able to catch his eyes yeah and staying on gabriel burn with the saddest eyes eyes in the world.

What's he going to do now?

It is my favorite kind of thing.

He's not going to just drink like one billion gallons of whiskey.

My favorite kind of ending in movies, period, is character goes through a whole insane thing.

They've made it out the other side.

And then the ending is, what the fuck do I do now?

Yeah.

Anytime someone pulls that card, it works for me.

And Gabriel Byrne is like a perfect face to do that with.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think just going back to the third man, I do feel like that a lot of their DNA is there in that film.

They've talked about that film being important to them, but I, I, uh, I mean, even just the eccentricity of the score in that film,

yeah, the zither, and then the opening, uh, the opening narration, which I believe is Carol Reed speaking, oh, sure, which is, you know, Graham Green

writing, uh, the irreverence of that opening narration in The Third Man just feels like

it just, it just feels important

for them.

Yeah, and the friction of these elements shouldn't be put together.

This is not the normal way to tell the story.

Right.

There are a lot of filmmakers I would say are very important to them, like Lubitsch and Billy Wilder.

Preston Sturgis, obviously.

Like, they cannot shake Preston Sturgis.

No.

Nor should they?

No.

And then

The Third Man, especially, just feels important.

Carol Reed's so weird to me because he's made a bunch of great movies.

He also won Best Picture for Oliver, which is not a film.

That was a kid.

Right.

But I doubt one of his better movies.

I would say three especially great movies.

Like Third Man, The Fallen Idol, and what's the other one?

And Odd Man Out.

Right.

Yeah.

And they're all Graham Green.

Right.

And Third Man is correctly venerated, but I feel like he is not talked about in the sort of whatever great directors of his era.

The Fallen Idol might be my favorite.

Fallen Idol is so good.

One of the best kid performances ever.

I just remember seeing Third Man for the first time after hearing people talk about it so long and that so much the framework was also and obviously one of the greatest film scores of all time and i'm seeing these noir images and orson wells and the hat and the tunnel and all this stuff and in my head i'm like oh i can imagine what the score is and then the movie starts as you said with this like jaunty narration and the zither music and that immediate feeling of this is not what i think the tone of this movie is supposed to be How is that going to get to that point is the kind of thing that it feels like animates the Collins.

Also, Joseph Cotton's kind of like bumbling buffoon

as a like the audience surrogate being something of a

buffoon is

important for them as well.

Joseph Cotton, the John Goodman of his day.

You know why?

Why?

Never got an Oscar nomination.

Oh.

And it's like one of those guys where you're like, he's in like half of, you know, 12 masterpieces.

John Goodman of his day.

Yeah.

No, fair enough.

To the hat point.

I'm glad that I got you with that one.

Just, yeah, no, it was good.

I was trying to do the math on that.

Did he ever play Roseanne Barr's husband?

yeah

if you live long enough his last movie is heaven's gate i think like he doesn't live oh yeah yeah yeah uh just because you invoked uh lubitch there's the famous lubitch anecdote that i don't think ever made it into a movie is always retold as like a great example of the lubitch touch but i think was in some development session where they were had like four pages of dialogue of a couple fighting to show that the love had gone out of their marriage, an older couple.

And then he said, scrap all of that.

They're in an elevator.

He's wearing a hat.

A younger woman walks onto the elevator and he takes off his hat.

Oh, wow.

And you're like, it's one of the greatest

fucking show don't tell examples of a thing that maybe never made it to screen.

But I kept thinking this while watching the movie last night and the importance of the hat of just like, it's not that the hat represents something.

It's that the hat can be a communicator.

Definitely.

What people put on the hat is the point.

And if you get your hat knocked off, you're vulnerable.

Right.

You feel vulnerable.

You're exposed.

The movie kind of uses the hat in a similar trope of like, right, that's when you've lost your status.

Do you think Tom's good at sex?

I think he's really bad at it.

You think he's really bad at it?

Yeah.

He's not good at talking.

I think he just has to be good at sex.

He's not bad communicating.

I think he has to be good at sex.

Otherwise, no.

Do you think he cries for one hour after he has sex?

I think during, but he lasts the full hour.

So you got to weigh that.

Sorry for throwing that out late.

Okay.

Tom's a choker.

There's just so much buried in that man.

There's so much rage and some feeling.

I think he's a clean line.

Oh, yeah.

What you see is what you get.

Like, imagine fucking watching a baseball game with that guy.

You feel like, get me away from this person.

Imagine his like fucking manosphere podcast.

He just sits there and lets the other person talk.

He's like, that's his energy in the Tom likes to watch, I think, actually.

Yeah, you're right.

You're right.

And he actually.

He's kind of got the cuck chair in his apartment.

He does have a cuck chair.

Yeah.

I'm glad we said cuck chair on this episode.

Hey, it's part of the legacy of our show.

As I've said about the hotel cockchair, where else is the chair supposed to point?

Hotel rooms just have a bed in them.

Correct.

You know, everyone makes fun.

You know what I'm talking about, Ari?

Do you know what I'm talking about?

The one plus chair.

If you go to a hotel room, there's always a chair pointed at the bed.

And it's a good point.

And that joke on the internet has become like, that's the cuck chair.

That's the cuck chair.

That's the big way.

You got to paint face to the wall.

Like, I mean, like, it's just, it's not a big room.

Some hotels have like a Sibian and the bathroom.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Important.

Yeah.

The good ones.

We're going to play the box office game, Ari.

If you don't know, we're going to, Gerfind is going to try and guess the films that were the top five at the box office when Miller's Crossing came out, which was October 5th, 1990.

So when does Goodfellows come out?

Because Goodfellows is early in the year, isn't it?

Isn't Goodfellows like March or April?

It was September.

I should note also that this very Miller's Crossing opened the New York Film Festival this year.

Okay.

And, you know, generally, I think, was treated with, you know, a lot of fault or all.

So, was Goodfellas in the top five?

Uh, no, uh, yes, it's number five.

It's number five at the box office.

Where does Miller

crossing also?

Dances with Wolves, maybe?

That's theory.

That's December.

Dances with Wolves comes out December.

Dances with Wolves is not on this list.

Okay, so, okay.

Number one at the box office, Griffin.

It's new this week.

It's an action film.

It stars an action star.

A new action star.

Die Hard.

Not Die Hard.

Is it Seagal?

It is Steven Seagal.

And here's the challenge.

Name his third movie.

It came up in Box Office Game the website the other day, and it completely foiled me.

It's the one with Kelly LeBrock.

I think it is the one with Kelly LeBrock.

It is not.

Fuck.

It's not above the law.

It is not above the law, which is his first film.

Right.

It's very good.

And it's

not the one with Kelly LeBrock, which is his second film.

Which is called Hard to Kill.

Right.

Which is a great title.

This movie is called, Tell Me How Many Words It Has in Three.

He was a three-word title guy.

Is it Blank to Blank?

No.

It's Blank for Blank.

Out for Justice.

There we go.

That's a great guess.

Oh, it's wrong.

That's his fourth movie.

Fuck.

It's not Out for Justice.

Out for Justice is the next year, and that's the one with Jerry Orbach.

Yeah.

Good movie.

Or maybe it's bad.

I can't remember.

Is it Cars for Kids?

It is directed by Dwight Little,

who made...

you know, the fourth Halloween movie and Murder in 1600.

A lot of glorious

trash.

H.

Little.

Yeah, you're missing.

A rose for Emily.

And

I've never seen this movie because I feel like I would remember the movie where Keith David is the second lead.

He's probably having fun.

It's called

Marked for Dead.

Marked for Death is the name of the film.

There we go.

There you go.

I almost got there.

Number two, the Box Office Griffin is a re-release of a Disney film.

An old classic.

It's an old.

Yep.

Give me the decade of its original

40s.

40s.

Early.

Early 40s.

Early 40s.

So it's not.

Okay, so it's Snow White.

It's not Bambi.

Nope.

Is it a princess movie?

Nope.

No.

It's an animal movie.

Nope.

It's a weird one.

Fuck.

It's a weird one.

It's not.

It's not an animal.

It's not a princess.

It's a weird one.

It's not Fantasia.

It sure is Fantasia.

Okay.

Yep.

Fantasia.

Do you like Fantasia?

The movie does have animals in it.

I love Fantasia.

Do you like Steven Seagal?

I forgot to ask.

Do Do I like Stephen Seagal?

Not his work.

I like his personal work.

I like him as a person.

I think he's a good guy.

His values, his physical appearance.

Yeah.

I mean,

no, no, I don't.

I don't.

Let's just, let's face it.

Fantasia, I do love.

Fantasia is great.

Fantasia is great.

Fantasia is amazing.

Number three is a

psychological horror film starring one of your favorite actors.

Is it Pacific Heights?

Yes.

Michael Keaton is the scary guy.

Movie I I watched for the first time last year liked

quite a bit.

It's John Mode.

Questioner.

That's right.

It's got a stack supporting cast.

Everyone in that is like a fucking five-star actor.

NACO?

Yes.

Laurie Metcalf.

Yep.

Carl Lumbley.

Tippy Hedron's in this?

Yeah, everyone's in it.

You've seen this movie?

What's this?

Pacific Heights.

Yeah, I've seen Pacific Heights.

It's fun.

Pacific Heights is great.

Number five is good, fellas.

Number four is another of the big hits of the 1990, of the year 1990.

Giant smash hit.

Won two Oscars.

It won two Oscars.

Yep.

Is it City Slickers?

No.

Come Come on now.

Give me another romance.

It's a romance that won two Oscars.

Major categories?

Yep.

It's a romance.

It's not Pretty Woman.

Nope.

Duh, Weepy.

A weepy romance.

Sad romance.

Is it Ghost?

It's Ghost.

It's Ghost.

Oh, yeah, of course.

Jerry Sucker's Ghost.

So Ghost must have been out for a while then.

That was a July film.

That's at four.

That's a four month.

Because I know that that was crushing.

That was the movie of that year.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

All right.

You've also got Postcards of the Head from the Edge, which has been out for about a month.

Flatliners, Joel Schumerger's Flatliners.

You've got Narrow Margin.

Is that a JCVD?

Peter Heim's film with Gene Hackman.

Narrow Margin

is actually pretty fun.

What is that?

Is that like

a Gene Hackman thriller?

Okay.

Gene Hackman and Ann Archer.

Is he a lawyer?

Is he a cop?

He's an LA deputy district attorney trying to keep a murder witness safe.

I like the sound of that.

And I'm sure he's very even-keeled.

Yeah, right.

You've got...

bad but fun.

Right.

Ninth, you've got opening is a neonor called, oh, the Michael Chimino movie Desperate Hours, right?

Like late Chimino with Anthony Hopkins and a normal Mickey Rourke.

Huge bomb.

Uh-huh.

And then Funny About Love, the late Gene Wilder movie.

Directed by Leonard Bimoy.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a weird.

It's Gene Hackman.

Is the poster him with a clock on his head?

Yes, that's right.

Because the biological clock is ticking or something.

Yes.

I think he's an old dad is the premise of the movie sure you see that's one i haven't seen funny about love no i feel like that's one where uh the people who worked on it were like yeah he just seemed really sad like he didn't want to be in a comedy i think he did it right after gilda died maybe

um all right we're done

crossing open you didn't say this like number 50 it's like you know in one screen or whatever Okay.

Yeah.

It made like $4 million.

It was unfortunately.

Got zero Oscar nominations, which is crazy.

But

it's forever young.

It is.

Forever young.

But it is.

They're a few years off from their real Oscar breakthrough.

It is a forever movie, though.

And Barton Fink will get two.

Yeah.

But then Fargo is the breakthrough.

Ari, thank you for being here.

All right, you have to catch a plane.

You got to go.

Thanks for having me.

Sorry we got to go.

Eddington, one of the best movies of the year.

Ben and I saw it and had a great time.

And by a great time, I mean we were thrilled at the level of panic attack we were having.

I recommend it to everybody.

I think it's

especially in a theater.

Funny and exciting to be locked up with that movie.

I mean that like as the highest compliment.

Absolutely.

Yes.

And thank you for being here and thank you for doing this.

And I wish you a great long sleep as this press tour comes to a close.

Thanks for having me.

This is fun.

Can you take it easy?

You take it easy?

You're good at that, right?

Yeah.

I don't know.

You're kind of a mouth chiller now?

I probably won't.

Playing some video games.

You love video games?

Sorry.

I don't play video games.

Donkey Kong Bonanza?

I know.

Pauline is back.

Does that move the needle for you?

All right.

All right.

All right.

Let's get Ari out of here.

Might just go to that hotel with the

Sibian.

And that's your plug as well, right?

Yeah.

In multiple ways.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you all for listening.

Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

Tune in next week for Barton Fink with our friend Chris Weitz returning to the show.

That's right.

And as always,

bear stop giving me the fucking hi-hat, David.

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims.

Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostley.

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.

Our production assistant is Minic.

Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help.

Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

Join our Patreon, BlankCheck Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

Follow us on social at BlankCheckPod.

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack.

This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.