Raising Arizona with John Hodgman

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 Blank Jack

You're not that bad if I'm as bad as you what good are we what good are we to each other you and me is just a fool's podcast so you you like that because paradise and podcasts are so

I do.

I was doing the exercise last night.

I was like, I don't even know if I've ever attempted it, despite the fact that we've covered her so much and she is one of my favorite actors.

We've definitely attempted a Holly Hunter, haven't we?

Last night, I was like, I might have cracked it.

And right as I started to speak, I was like, I think I've lost

whatever Rubicon I created to get there.

Whatever I had figured out in my map, the map has been burned.

Yeah.

I don't know who that just became.

It's look, there's only one Holly Hunter.

There's this is why.

Look, this is for ultimate value.

Yeah.

There is, I don't think there is a Holly Hunter soundalike alive.

And I've certainly seen like skilled.

If you could do an incredible Holly Hunter.

I mean, you know what?

I just said there's only one.

Yeah.

But I would like this to be a life path for you.

To get there.

To get there.

To get there.

To get, like, I want people going, have you heard Griffin Newman's Holly Hunter?

Yeah.

They've got more than they can handle.

I even feel like I've seen good like sketch comedians, comedians,

attempt it.

Wait.

And the best I've ever heard it is like, you're 60% of the way there.

Women in comedy?

Funny women?

Women are funny.

And I want Vanity Fair to listen up as I announce this.

Women are funny.

World's greatest Holly Hunter impersonator shocks world.

Front page news.

Having stolen a job from a woman.

Trump steps down from office.

It's time for women who are funny to have a turn he's i know when i'm not wanted anymore holly hunter impressionist elected grand chairwoman of universe holly hunter

is

has

only made one movie

no she's made more

she's only made one movie david i was doing this math okay so as well before this year 2025 yes uh Her last credited film was Incredibles 2, in which she rocked the house as Elastigirl slash Helen Parr.

So are Incredibles 2 and Big Sick the same year as Big Baby?

Big Sick is 2017?

Two years old.

In which she is also in Song to Song and something called Breakable You, which I'm not too familiar with.

That's not true.

It doesn't exist.

But yes, Incredibles 2.

Big Oscar Snub is seen as sort of like, is this the start of the next era?

Yeah, it's kind of like, dang.

Right.

Put Holly Hunter in your movie, by the way.

Absolutely.

And then in 2018, she's in Incredibles 2, which is a voice role, but obviously she is.

I also admit that movie makes the men step aside and let the women take the lead.

But she is undeniably the leader of the lead character, and she's really awesome.

Now, of course, since then, she has done a ton of TV.

She was on succession.

Great ones.

She was.

She was great on succession.

She was great on succession.

I have always.

Okay.

She was in the

weird opinion.

You ready for it?

Yeah.

She was great in succession.

See, that's interesting you say it because I think she was great on succession.

She was in the

one, the showtime show where i think brendan gleason was donald trump you know there were so many like uh the comie the

play on the comey sally yates of course wow uh okay acting attorney general okay uh she was in that show mr mayer which was the ted danson right she was a regular on that for two seasons uh and

uh and she's upcoming in the new star trek show so she's been doing it's not like holly hunter like vanished from which is the new star trek uh the Starfleet Academy show with her and Giamatti.

Our friend

lives right now.

Our friend Tatiana Mazlani, I believe, is on that show as well.

Got to work with Holly Hunter.

Very exciting.

I think Tatiana has like a guest role or something.

Yes, but I

as does, I think,

Giamatti.

Sure, but I believe Hunter is the dispatches of Got to Work with Hunter today.

Yes.

Which was blowing my mind.

Holly Hunter,

elite in that show?

But she's the lead.

I think she's the elite.

I was just wondering, like, why has she not

led a prestige television did she do was it called saving grace she did a tv

years ago but yes but that was at a weird point where it was like the closer had gotten really big yeah and actual prestige tv was riding was rising but the other networks hadn't figured out how to make some things that were actually good three three seasons of state of grace which i'm sure was aggressively okay my i think it was okay whatever yeah my question was what is the film that she made this year that broke the streak of holly Holly Hunter not being in movies?

I can tell you that the character.

Has it come out already?

It's come out.

It's come out.

I can tell you that the character she played was named Madeline Vance.

Fuck, why do I know that name?

Madeline Vance.

You don't.

I don't?

No.

Was this a straight to streaming movie?

It was.

I mean, I believe it got some sort of

perfunctory theatrical showing.

Tell me the streaming provider, please.

Netflix.

Well, that could be anything.

Madeline Vance.

Netflix.

Give me the title.

I don't know.

I can tell you that the film's budget was $320 million.

So that seems like the kind of movie...

She's a voice in the electric state.

No, no!

Flesh and blood.

Is she like a senator or something?

No, you think she's a snow.

She was a senator in Drink Granny's History.

You think I, a paid film critic who's supposed to watch movies, has seen one second of the electric state?

But you have written The Nutmobile, right?

What is that?

Mr.

Peanut in the film, voiced by Woody Harrelson, rides around in what he calls the nutmobile,

which is a giant peanut with wheels, but also is what a lot of people call their private parts.

A lot of people, this is maybe not true.

Take a ride in the middle.

My nutmobile is very stationary.

The wheels are off.

I just keep on blocks in the yard.

Five below is just lousy with mountains of remote-controlled nutmobiles that I keep getting texted, people being like, have you seen this shit?

And I'm like, yeah, I was on this beat months ago.

Yeah, you were an early adopter.

Just insane that Holly Hunt's

movie.

It's called The Electric State.

It's a Russo movie.

Oh, that's the one.

Yep.

Oh, it was The Nutmobile.

Right.

Of the Nutmobile.

It was a big blockbuster starring Chris Pratt and

Bobby Brown, right?

Directed by the Russo brothers.

I ventured to say no blocks were actually busted.

The blocks remained unbustered.

There's a big pile of blocks.

Not even a chip.

No offense to anyone who worked in the film.

I would like to be, I would like to work again.

Not even a chip on the old book.

I'm not a smidge of offense at some of the people who worked on that film, actually.

But having not seen it, I'm not.

In fact, I'm going to put a little tiny bit of offense.

And in fact, I would say this.

If anyone involved with that movie at the upper levels felt good about what they did, they would not be returning to Marvel as quickly

and loudly as they did.

I see you.

Yeah, I see.

You know?

Holly Hunter, yes, I have actually recently, for whatever reason, gone on a couple similar rabbit holes of especially actresses over the age of 40, where I'm like, huh, quietly, that person has not been in a movie in eight years.

There are a lot of people who it feels like there is a pre-pandemic cutoff.

And I go, oh, fuck, did Hollywood kick them the curb?

And you're like, no, just streaming bullshit.

It's right.

It's the rise of a certain kind of television where it's like, they're not.

not working.

They're working.

It's just they've been diverted to this.

I think Catherine Zeta Jones has not been in a movie since Red 2.

That's what I'm saying.

If I am not mistaken, and yet she has done 10 10 TV shows that don't exist, including one for Facebook Watch.

She was the lead actress.

I don't know what you're talking about because it does not realize Facebook watches

streaming.

Correct.

I thought the name of the show was Facebook.

The last film was the platform.

The last film that she made

was, well, actually, it was the probably not released in America, Dad's Army in 2016.

When is Red 2?

Red 2 is 2013.

And that is the second most recent movie she's made.

She has done, of course, played Olivia De Havilland in Feud.

She played the Cocaine Godmother in some TV movies.

Was it not called Cocaine Godmother?

Yeah.

She was in something called Prodigal.

Is that part of the Cocaine Bear universe?

Yeah.

That was a Fox show that ran for two seasons.

She, of course, was on the National Treasure Disney Plus show, tying back into why is Disney going out of their way to make sure they never make a National Treasure 3?

Why are they not fucking begging Nicholas Cage on his hands and knees?

Oh, Nicholas Cage is in this movie, too, by the way.

Right, he is in this movie.

And, of course, we have to acknowledge she played Morticia Adams in Wednesday, but just in two episodes.

Yeah.

Because Wednesday's mostly at camp in that show or something.

We, right before this episode started, we're talking, giving spicy Star Wars takes that we never want to say on Mike.

We're just talking about

Star Wars on the Internet as a

writing.

It's a a wonderful trip to feedback.

But it was looping all the way back around and on ramp into discussion of this movie.

And I said, we need to start recording right now so we can take this energy and talk about it.

Oh, I lost it.

Sorry.

You referred to it as perhaps your favorite line in all of movies.

Certainly your favorite line in this movie.

David was talking about Yoda.

And he had some extremely hot takes on Yoda that I will not repeat.

Yeah.

Legendary stick, man.

Yeah.

Walking stick.

Speaking of Yoda.

it's funny you mention Yoda because it brings us around to this movie that we're going to talk about.

And one of my very favorite lines in movies.

What was he wearing?

Jammies.

What was on his jammies?

I don't know.

Yodas and shit.

Yodas and shit.

Yodas and shit.

They had Yodas and shit on them.

Shot through me like force lightning.

I have talked many times in this podcast about how one of my favorite lines in the history of movies is in Super Bad, where the two cops

Rogan and Hayler, are doing Star Wars impressions to amuse McLovin in the back seat.

And they're clearly not getting a big enough response.

And Hayder turns around and goes, you know, Yoda?

Yoda from Attack of the Clones?

It's a good joke.

And the specificity of...

From Attack of the Clones.

Not from Star Wars.

No.

Attack of the Clones.

Yoda from Attack of the Clones gets me, and it does.

I had a similar jolt to this line that I've had every time I've watched this movie, but it hit hard fresh again last night.

And I was just like, is any kind of joke that sort of

throws Yoda off the hump going to get me?

It's not like if there's a Yoda impression in a movie or someone does the backwards talk, or they go, your nutsack looks like Yoda, anything like that.

I'm immediately rolling in the eye.

Your nutmobile looks like

your Yoda mobile.

But there's some, there's a commonality between those two jokes, right?

Yodas and shit.

It's just, I mean, look, it's a perfect joke because it's like, yes, that's where Yoda has made it that far in the pop culture to sort of be in his brain.

Yes.

But like, not like, you know, Yoda, it's almost like how parents would call all video games Nintendo.

You know what I mean?

Thank you.

That's what the two jokes have in common.

They're both people who know what Yoda is.

But all that kind of.

Their understanding of what Yoda is is a little off.

Look.

And they assume that other people are on the exact same level as them.

I think my favorite line in Raising Arizona is: you know, these blow up in funny shape styles.

She's like, no, unless it's funny.

Really good.

Let me say this.

Let me take you on a trip back through time.

Please.

Hey, what is the name of this podcast?

Yeah, can we introduce the podcast?

It's a blank check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin.

I'm David.

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

Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby.

That is my favorite line in the movie.

It's great.

We talk about that.

There are a lot of lines.

This is a mini series on the films of Joel and Ethan Cohen, both together and separately.

It is called Pod Country for Old Cast.

Probably.

Probably.

Probably.

And today we were talking about raising Arizona.

Undeniably, their guarantor.

And I found an interview quote from them in 2000 before Oak Brother came out where they said, that's the last time we made a movie that actually made everyone an amount of money that they felt good about.

And it is interesting to think because they've been pretty consistent since that point.

Normally they would make probably enough that no one's mad at them.

They become, I would say, so minted.

after a while that even their less successful films, no one's losing money on them.

But after this movie, there is a run of like all of their movies basically barely break even or lose a little bit of money, but everyone's kind of like, yeah, but those guys are so good that they keep giving them small budgets.

And they were like, this was the last time a studio gave us money and the return on investment worked.

It's called Raising Arizona.

Raising Arizona.

Ask me if I like this movie.

Who's our guest?

Our guest, gentleman, John Hodgman of the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

And the brand new podcast on maximum fund

pluribus motto.

Janet Varney and I discuss all the mottos, mammals, monsters, and beverages of the states and commonwealths and districts of this country currently known as the United States.

What's a good word?

That's a good word.

We love Jana Varner.

Past and future guests.

Prison and future guests.

Yeah, season two is out now.

I should also list as a credit, of course, Dick Town, still streaming on Hulu for the time being.

Starring Griffin Newman.

And what about that podcast you did about iClaudius?

I'm just going to start bringing out Hodgman credits.

There is a whole podcast that I made with Elliot Kalen about the British 1970s historical miniseries, I Claudius.

I, Claudius.

And listen.

It's called iPodty.

I hate to list credits that are going to hurt you, that bring up open wounds, but of course, also the author of Medallion Status and Vacation Land, which sadly were never published in any format past hardback.

Library editions only.

I hate to jump in large print, obviously.

Absolutely.

I hate to correct you, Griffin, but they're both available in paperback.

If that were true, I would have heard it.

On a bargain table near you.

I would have heard about it now.

I listened to so many podcasts.

I had multiple copies in a little free library waterlogged with rain near you

john hodgman what were you going to say ask me if i like this movie john hodgman do you like the film raising arizona i love it so much

would be funny if you didn't like it and we were finding out right now that was that was a hunterline for the movie yes in case people didn't haven't seen this movie you should go see it yeah go see it go run out to your local multiplexes Go find a copy.

No, you have to run to find the copy, and the camera should kind of catapult after you in this kind of amazing way that you can't believe.

Right.

You wanted to take us back through time.

Yeah, I will take you back through time for a moment.

First of all, I just want to

put a pin in this.

Yeah.

You call this undeniably their blank check movie.

I call it their guarantee.

They're guaranteed.

The movie that gets them because this is only their second movie.

So creative freedom and more money.

I think financially,

there is an argument to be made.

Yeah.

Critically,

I would say that their guarantor was Blood Simple that allowed them to make this.

And after they made this, my memory at the time

was that people are like, I don't know about these guys.

Look, I agree with you.

And the career is kind of weird in how it built.

And a lot of what we keep talking about in this series is that they were given time to grow in a way that the industry does not really support anymore.

But I think it was the combination of the two of Blood Simple is like heralded as these guys are major.

These are careers that are going to be undeniable.

Right.

So we got to give them space to do something.

And they're given the freedom to make

raising Arizona, which then makes enough of a profit that even if people respond to this film, and I was looking at the reviews at the time, and they are so weird.

Well, it's reviews that I think they would get maybe all the way till Fargo of like some raves, but some people being like all flash, all style, like where's the movie?

The thing that surprised me and how stated it was is

this movie is so mannered, it like snuffs out any possibility of being funny.

Right.

Like rather than being like this style makes the movie funny, but the thing's frivolous, they were sort of saying like, it's so overdone that like there is a void of laughter.

Now, let me say this.

Yes.

To those critics,

I mean, it's true,

they went weird fast after Blood Simple.

And basically went, let's do the exact opposite of what everyone loved us doing last time.

Exactly.

And the people who were giving them money,

I wonder if they knew that they were basically going to try again to make Crimewave.

Possibly.

Possibly.

I mean, the great.

I don't think they did know, is my point.

No.

Like, I think that they didn't understand

that there was this element of wackadoo in the Cohens that is not apparent in Blood Simple, which I, by the way, watched at 2 a.m.

this morning.

Hey.

in preparation.

Thank you.

Sure.

And in honor of my insomnia.

Yeah.

But is not apparent in Blood Simple and is wildly apparent in this movie.

Yes.

And then it modulates between those two modes throughout their career in a way that I find absolutely compelling.

But I will go back.

I will say this to critics at the time.

I was there.

Yeah.

I lived it

1987.

Do you remember the crowd response going to see this movie?

Yes.

People were into it.

Very into it now.

I saw it at the Harvard Square Theater.

Yeah.

I'm a coastal elite.

A lot of smarty pants is in the room.

Charles Diggs, my high school pal, perhaps the smartiest of pants.

Yeah.

And I were like, what are we going to do of an evening?

Yes.

Let's go see a movie.

Went into Raising Arizona.

Yeah.

I can, I...

still get chills thinking about I had no idea what I was going into.

Yeah.

And that was a movie I wish I could have seen in theaters opening weekend where you're just like, really, like Nicholas K.

Jordan or Holly Hunter or John Goodman, or yeah, I feel like this movie doesn't really

William Forsyth.

Well, you know, I love Williams Forsyth.

Well, I know, yeah, you're a big fan of the God isn't dead series, yeah, and also Flat Top.

Forgot about that, he was flat top, but like, I'll just the electricity

with that Yoda's in line, Yoda's and shit line

was very, very powerful because you talk about on this podcast movies that don't exist.

Uh-huh.

1987, Star Wars did not exist.

We were talking about this, I feel like fairly recently with Geth.

A decade after the first Star Wars movie.

It's the most fallow stars.

The forgotten dead period of Star Wars where people are kind of just like scraping for it.

It's like the equivalent of making an old yellow reference or whatever, where you're like, yeah, that old thing that we use as shorthand.

And of all of the Star Wars references that they might have made,

there could have been anything and shit on there.

Yep.

Boba Fett's and shit.

Skywalkers and shit.

They knew Yodas was the funny thing.

Lobots and shit.

Not just lady.

Yeah.

Yes.

But even Joel and Ethan Cohen would look at Lobots and shit and go, no, it's dial it back.

Right.

Yoda's.

Right.

It has to be

making Yoda the butt of a joke in itself is really funny.

Yes.

And then also, I felt profoundly seen

by that line.

Yep.

And by, and this, I wouldn't even say that I was seen in this movie in terms of my love of this kind of storytelling

because I didn't know that it created that love in me.

And the only other moment of sheer electricity, and this is good because I'm bringing this to the beginning of the movie.

Good.

That long opening narration.

And then cutting to the credits.

And

the yodeling and the, and the raising Arizona hitting the screen at 11 minutes in.

It has that feeling that I felt, my memory is I stood up and gave a standing ovation in that moment.

But the theater truly was electric.

The Harvard Square Theater.

Wonderful.

I don't know.

I don't think it's there anymore, but it was an art house.

It's also where I saw Swimming to Cambodia and the Princess Bride.

Or late 80s classic saw.

It has the feeling of what I often only now get in the modern era from the good Mission Impossible movies.

Where when they light the fuse, you're like, fuck, right.

They haven't even done that yet.

Right.

Right?

That feeling that Raising Arizona is going at like 8 trillion miles per hour and 11 minutes.

It's like, by the way, here are the opening credits.

Yeah.

You're like, oh my God, you are like playing like you're pitching a perfect game so far.

I also think.

And can I just say this?

Cause I'll forget it.

Yeah.

Eight million miles, a trillion miles an hour describes this movie.

And yet at every point in the movie, you feel like they're taking their time.

Yep.

There's nothing crushed about it.

No.

No, the beginning of the movie, you are like, wow, is this going to be like this breakneck through?

Is it all a montage?

Right.

Is it truly a loony tune yes and then it does you know manage to sort of shift into a lower gear without it feeling whiplashy and that yodeling yeah i mean aside from being iconic yeah you you did it right one-year-old david yeah it was good i used to be able to hit those notes

iconic uh like dvd menu that you're like oh turn it off turn it off like it's just like

yep

i put my disc in and was like let me brush my teeth and then i'll like start watching it.

And I just, I had to hear that yodel a trillion times as I got distracted.

I was just walking around yesterday.

Yep.

I didn't even have my AirPods in.

You were just surrounded by Carter Burwell and his Yodling.

No, I had a boombox on the subway.

Okay, good.

But in the moment of seeing the movie, yes,

I laughed harder than I'd ever laughed in any movie.

It was genuinely funny.

My Charles Diggs felt the same way.

I dare say he probably does still.

And I remember the audience walking out of there just on

clouds.

My guarantee your point is more that

the, holy shit, these guys are for real, only goes so far if you've never made a return on investment.

And I think that they did the two parts separately kind of gave them

the ground.

And a lot of it, as we will continue to cover in this series, is they found a couple big champions early on who were just like, we'll keep making your movies.

Yeah,

an Important part of their career

is how closely attracts to the premise of this podcast.

Yeah.

And we should probably talk about that.

But like circle films and then working title films.

They got companies where they were just, they kind of cracked their model of like, you guys are pros.

You come in like on time, under budget, under schedule.

Great actors want to work with you.

Like the risk.

You have great taste in actors?

The risk here is low enough, and it feels like one of these is going to hit and break through in some way.

And when you get to Hudsucker Proxy, it's Joel Silver being like, from the moment I saw Raising Arizona, it was apparent to me that these guys were going to make the crossover to being hyper mainstream big budget comedy filmmakers.

Like he talks about making Hudsucker as if it was like, they were like two steps away from their Ghostbusters, and then they would continue to be Ivan Reitman, you know?

And I feel like, who knows whether those expectations were conveyed to them.

I don't know.

But like when Joel Silver comes in and he's like, I've been waiting for your big blockbuster, they're like, terrific, Here's Hudsucker Proxy.

Right.

Which is another example of like, it's the crime wave element.

Well, Hudsucker Proxy is a diff, you know, it is a crime wave spiritual sequel.

Yeah.

Joel and Ethan Cohen.

Who are they?

Made Blood Simple without any major investment, of course.

Mostly from local dentists and doctors.

Yes.

Family, friends.

Circle Films, however, distribute the movie, as we talked about last week, and they gave the Cohens an oral commitment to produce their next picture.

And the oral commitment, by the way, the way it sounded out loud was,

Jim Jax, who's been discussing on this show.

While you're narrating, can I do a little Ode to Joy background?

Yes.

Jim Jacks, who Kevin Smith very beautifully eulogized, but was this kind of key figure who had started out as

a film exhibitor and theater owner, and then eventually becomes a producer and was this guy who at Universal in the 80s and 90s kept plucking people from Sundance and being like, Are you ready to make your studio film?

And he is responsible for Raising Arizona, Mall Rats, Days of Confused, several of these.

You've impressed me.

Here's five to ten million dollars to make your strike at a studio comedy.

They present Jim Jax for the screenplay for Raising Arizona.

He's happy to see that not only did the Cohns plan to follow through on their commitment, but they wanted to sign on for even more circle films.

Jax was kind of afraid.

Okay.

What'd you say there?

Can I just do the dossier, please?

Jax was was kind of afraid that,

like, because Blood Simple was actually hot.

I feel like you guys should be listening to me.

We are listening.

We're listening.

We're multitasking.

Yeah, we're just adding

layers of mannered style that are distracting from the substance of

the moment.

Exactly.

He was worried they'd

go for something bigger, essentially.

They actually had enough juice that they probably didn't need to return to Circle Films at that moment.

But instead, they make a deal for four pictures.

Blood Simple, Raising, Arizona, Miller's classing barton fink are the total you know circle films uh deal

four yeah yeah

uh and essentially jax is basically like you can decide what you want to make and within reason we will fund it like you know like it's you know no

studio meddling whatsoever essentially film was uh made for about three million dollars i think and then Three weeks into production, 20th Century Fox put up another $3 million.

Yeah.

Which I don't, you know, I guess to get the distribution right.

Can you imagine spooling the dailies for this thing?

Yeah.

Right.

Like, if you're just seeing the raw footage, you're just like, who the fuck are these guys?

And also, who the fuck are Holly Hunter and Nicholas Cage?

Like, we should, we should pour more money into this.

They're onto something.

I mean, I agree with you.

Yeah.

I think you watch any like raw footage of this.

Yeah.

And you're like, something interesting is happening here.

Give them three more million dollars.

Exactly.

So So people made decisions based on different things then.

Very different.

Yeah.

So

Hollyhunters.

I think because people wanted to make movies.

People liked movies.

People who made movies liked movies.

People who made movies didn't hate movies.

They took pride, in fact, in having

to make a movie, they were like, yeah, let's do make that movie instead of finding 10 ways to not make a movie.

Right.

Sorry.

And sometimes now, these days, ways to unmake a movie that has been made and instead becomes a write-off.

Hollyhunter, Hunter, of course, is an old pal of the Coten brothers.

Former greenmade of Frannie McDormand.

And they had tried to cast her in Blood Simple and we talked about that.

But she basically is always

on their radar for this movie and their other big thing is just we want to do something that's completely different from Blood Simple.

We do not want

something tense.

We want something funny.

We want a quicker rhythm.

And we want Holly Hunter to be in it.

All great instincts.

They wrote the specific image of Holly in uniform hurling orders at prisoners.

That was like, whatever.

That's their germ of an idea of a role.

Turn to the right.

Yep.

But that's immediately identifying a like Holly Hunter can be the smallest, most like chipmunk-voiced woman in a room and yet command that level of authority.

Right.

And you can mine comedy out of that is like a very, very smart thing for them to locate before anyone else has captured that on film.

now

they

are sort of getting, I guess, already, pretty much starting with Blood Simple, the question that I feel like they get throughout their career, which is like, Are you making fun of these people or not?

Right?

Like, the sort of like,

you know, you're making these movies about like downtrodden folk or poor folk or criminals or right, you know, like people on the fringes, or then once you get to Fargo, like honest Minnesotans, or, you know, and it's like, are you guys elitist bullies?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And obviously, I think Raising Arizona is one of their most like plainly open-hearted and sympathetic films.

And it's like, it's all right here.

Look, we've recorded a lot of the episodes in this series already.

It is a recurring thing that we go back to of like the strongest sort of like

ideological vein you can find across all of their films is the belief in like individual people.

Right, right.

Right.

A massive distrust of systems.

Yeah.

But like that a good person is kind of the most valuable thing on the planet.

Yeah.

They value decency.

Yes.

Like for as much critique and shit eating that they were, I don't think they ever ate the shit, but they were offered shit to eat

for being arch, for being

satirical, which they never were.

Right.

And

for being mannered and reserved and stylized.

And these were their action figures they were playing with, not real people.

In fact, they're profoundly real people and they are all treated with incredible sympathy.

The Cohen's, a lot of interesting quotes that JJ's dug up here from like, you know, interviews over the years.

This is from Joel.

People have a problem dealing with the fact that our movies are not straight ahead.

They prefer that Raising Arizona was just about a couple of schmos in a trailer for a corner of a kid.

The arrival of Bounty Hunter from hell interrupts the comfort level people have with their world, but we feel a strong emotional connection to these characters.

We're not laughing down at them.

Yeah.

And

this is also from Joel, where he's like, you have a scene in a movie where someone gets shot and the scoop goes off and blood runs down.

You get a reaction.

It's movie fodder.

In a different way, a baby's face is movie fodder, too.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Like, they don't start with it's a baby getting kidnapped, but they start with it's a couple.

There's a circumstance.

They, you know, you know what I mean?

Like, and then they're like, well, baby, like, that will get blood running, right?

You know,

make people blood simple.

That's true.

And they did think about that at all times.

But I feel like.

And there's some incredible baby face acting in this movie.

That's what I'm saying.

And like the image of a car stopping short and almost hitting a baby

is so like it makes your the whole body sit up right you know like but also the image of the baby pulling its own hood down like i don't want to see this is just like on an animal level one of the funniest things you could possibly see absolutely what if a baby had a day out

well

The hijinks that would ensue.

Yeah, that's it.

The chaos that would ensure.

And I'm not saying a day out like at a nursery.

I'm saying like

a big apple.

Like a big apple.

Right.

But certainly he stays ground level.

And I don't mean a fruit.

He's not going to crawl his way up to the

tallest steel beams, would he?

That was a movie that as a kid, I was like, this is one of the eight or nine most important films ever made, right?

What is the country?

Is it Malaysia?

There is one country where Baby's Day Out is like still the highest-grossing film of all time.

And it's because it's universally, like, everyone's like, can get that.

The baby had a day out.

In one country, it has a disproportionate reputation.

It is,

it just says it's a popular film in South Asia.

Okay.

And it was remade several times in different

South Asian countries.

But I'm not seeing the specific thing you're talking about.

There's one country I'll figure it out at some point.

I do just want to call out: at the time of this film,

Ethan Cohen, I'm sorry, Joel Cohen, engaged to Mary Francis McDorman.

I believe they get married the year this film is released.

But obviously, in the time between Blood Simple and this, their love has flourished.

In 1995, they adopt a child.

Oh.

Sorry.

And we were talking with the great Ray Tentorian Jordan Fish last week, guess on our previous episode

about this whole feeling of like, oh, are the Cohens like dispassionate?

Are they elusive?

Are they making these movies at arm's length?

Aloof.

Yes.

Joel has this like first marriage that is rarely talked about, that falls apart before they write Blood Simple, right?

Which is all about

being stuck in bad marriages, right?

And obviously that situation did not heighten to murder attempts, but there's something there that feels like an extrapolation of an energy of an internal struggle, right?

In the same way where it's just like, he's marrying the woman he's going to be with.

to our present day.

Yeah.

And

seven years, eight years after the release of this film, they adopt a child.

There is something in the mix of this movie that is clearly, if not autobiographical, is at least like touching on on clearly conversations,

feelings of the future.

But here's the thing that makes that that story makes me think about.

Even to this day,

we among the people who love the Cohens a lot,

if not the most,

are still sort of making arguments that like, you know, they're human beings.

Yeah, I think.

Right.

And kind of being like, I think this is what's going on with them.

You know, not like, oh, they've talked about how this is what's going on.

But this was Ray's point of just like, you can like draw analogs to even the limited information we know about their lives, right?

There's still a lot of extrapolation there in the middle.

They're not particularly secretive about their lives.

No, but they're also not overly candid.

But I mean, sure, because they're, and they are literal human beings

who have emotions.

To not overshare shit.

Yeah.

And, but, you know, and yet, I think that one of the reasons that this movie and some of their other movies

were that they were, that they were held at arm's length

even to this day because people felt like they were being held at arm's length by them yes and that their virtuosity as writer director producer editors

the the absolutely innovative way that they approach story yeah structurally and then visually as well their ability to get these incredible actors and to spot them before people other people have spotted them it's all very intimidating yes and and i think that

and and they are very stylized and they are very mannered

and so i feel like we're still making this argument it's like well you know

uh

uh joel cohen and francis mcdorman i mean they have human souls i mean not to be not to be base about this but there is a degree to which they feel like space aliens where there's two funky looking guys who kind of stand stoically and the work is not one-to-one representation of what's going on with them emotionally it's being transformed and iterated and changed.

And

I interrupted you and I apologize.

No, no, no, but I think

it makes people assume,

and also what you're saying, like that they were so virtuostic from the beginning, where it was like, where did these guys fucking learn how to do all of this perfectly right out of the gate?

And even the way that people talk about them directing.

You know, the thing that all their collaborators talk about, the actors who work with them for the first time are like, they really are the two-headed director.

It is bizarre where one guy will come up and give you a note and walk away, and the second guy will come up from a different room and finish the sentence.

Yeah.

You know, and even that is like, what is this weird communication between them, between, you know, the fucking universe or whatever, that I think makes people feel like, are there movies like them studying mankind from a remove, right?

Are they looking at us through a telescope in space and then sort of like pulling levers?

Well, I mean, one of the reasons it really resonates.

David hates when we analyze movies on this podcast.

His two least favorite things are analyzing movies and talking about the career arcs of directors.

And I will say recently we've been button up against this as a little bit of an issue.

David, yes.

This episode is brought to you, The Listener.

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

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

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

The glove to hand pick.

Of course.

David Mussolini, Poland, son of the century.

It is, it is, look,

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

Here's what's funny about it.

Just to peel back the curtain for a second.

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

Yeah, here's the copy for the ad.

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

And I was like, Mussolini sponsoring the podcast?

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But we celebrate Joe Wright and his newest project.

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And I will say, not to sound like a

little nerd over here, but it is actually very interesting to consider Mussolini's rise to power in these times.

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

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

I don't try to be a loser right now.

You sound like me right now.

This is the kind of thing I say.

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

whatever, the history channel's favorite thing, you don't hear quite as much about Mussolini's family.

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

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

And this is a theatrical, hyper-visual tour deforest starring luca marionelli martin eaten himself remember that a beloved member of the old guard that's right a movie i love uh episode that people considered normal

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let's not litigate everyone checking notes here great

start calling it a towering performance of puffed up vanity it features an era bending score by tom rollins of the chemical brothers that's cool imagine techno beats store scoring fascist rallies it just sounds kind of joe right-y it does joe right you know he won't just do a typical costume drama he likes to you know think about things in a different way.

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

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Yeah.

No, it's Joe Wright,

one of the scarier people I ever interviewed.

I've told you that story, right?

He knows he's kind of a cool guy.

We've bad at him already.

He's certainly gotten interesting.

He's very interesting.

He's very interesting.

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

Totally.

That's really interesting.

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

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Yeah, they got lots of movies.

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Bye.

David.

Okay, okay.

I'll be very quiet.

Oh, I'm used to it.

Producer Ben is sleeping.

Oh,

Hazzy, Hazzy boy is

getting some

multiple dashes.

What's he sleeping on?

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

But this is a big opportunity for us.

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

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

Ben did a Wayfair ad for us recently you listen to past recordings yeah sometimes it's psycho behavior it is look he did that when we were sleeping look apparently we need to talk about how when you hear the word game day

you might not think wayfair but you should because wayfair is the best kept secret for incredible and affordable game day finds makes perfect sense to me

Absolutely.

And just try to, David, just if you could please maintain that slightly quiet.

We don't have to go full whisper.

I just want to remind you that Haas is sleeping.

I mostly just think of wayfair as some a website where you can get basically anything yeah of course but wayfair is also the ideal place to get game day essentials bigger selection created collections options for every budget slash price point you want to make like a sort of man cake

okay fine okay all right sorry you know wayfair uh stuff gets delivered really fast hassle free the delivery is free

if you for game day specifically griffin you can think about things like recliners and tv stands, sure.

Or outdoor stuff like coolers and grills and patio heaters.

Like that's, you know,

all the winter months.

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

You got a whole team to cheer up.

This is true.

You need cribs.

Your place must be lousy with cribs.

I do have fainting beds?

I have cribs.

Sconces?

Chaise lounges?

I'm low on sconces.

Maybe it's time to pick up a few.

That's the kind of thing that would make your home team cheer.

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Cleveland Browns, of course.

Fanta Mac, no matter what.

Devontae Mac, no matter what.

Okay, that's the end of the app, Rick.

I was thinking about delayed opening credits.

Yeah.

The legacy of delayed opening credits a lot.

I hope you're going to make the point I hope you're going to make.

Well, first of all, obviously this podcast would not exist were it not for Raising Arizona and the delayed opening credits

habit.

Yeah.

But you're wearing a hat.

John, thank you.

I was teeing this up and I got sidetracked.

The listener at home or in the car or wherever you are and the D-van where you recreate

can't see the Riven is wearing a very specific hat.

A very specific hat.

I wasn't sure if he was.

On perhaps the one-year anniversary or close to it.

Just about.

Of us going to the movies together to see a movie called Hundreds of Beavers.

You and I have an ecstatic in-theater experience, a film I talked about a lot last year and in our Blankies Awards this year.

Yeah.

But a similar, like, where the fuck did this come from?

Who are these people?

But that is a movie that takes, I believe, one full hour to get to the credits.

I saw that film twice in theaters, and both times the audience applauds because the magic trick of like, oh, fuck, I somehow

said that you hadn't done that yet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a great feeling.

And that's, that's a a movie that's similar to what I imagine seeing Raising Arizona in theaters felt like.

Yeah.

And Edgar Wright talks about this as like the most important movie of his life.

And you feel the influence of it so much on all of his work that he sees this and goes, you can make movies like this?

That's how I felt.

And I'd never made a movie, by the way, either.

But I know from seeing the movie, you can make movies like this if you.

aren't lazy and tired like me.

But I mean, like, you can do whatever you want.

I had never considered the possibility until this moment that movies could be made this way.

And even though Star Wars didn't exist at that time, we were already, I think, in the beginning of the stranglehold of the hero's journey on screenplay writing, both popular and artistic.

And here was a movie that was destabilizing precisely because doesn't follow a pattern that you understand.

You're getting a whole pre-story before you get to the credits.

Then it changes tone or it slows down.

it has these wild comedic sequences that are basically

loony tunes.

Your heroes of the film are ostensibly doing a pretty awful thing, yeah, for very emotionally valid reasons.

And then Randall Texcob drives a motorcycle from hell into it.

And, you know, I remember people critiquing it then and revisiting these critiques.

It's like, well, now I don't know if this is even real.

Yes.

I'm like, of course it's not real.

It's a movie.

I saw this in so many reviews at the time.

Well, I don't even know what reality this film takes place in.

I don't know if this is This is a fantasy or

something.

David, how was your P?

Yeah, exactly.

Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner are influences on them.

They say they specifically took the phrase

Warthog from Hell from Flannery O'Connor.

Preston Sturgis.

And then Kumba took it from them.

Preston Sturgis is obviously an influence on them.

They say Palm Beach story in particular, the manic energy of that film, a masterpiece in every single way.

Yes.

And you guys might not have realized this, but because you haven't mentioned it at all, neither have I.

Cartoons.

Cartoons.

Ethan Cohen says, we thought about those characters who rebound and collide.

Simply their speed of movement, we tried to refine the spirit of animation you find in pinball machines.

He's got the Woody Woodpecker tattoo.

The hairstyle is a very deliberate Woody Woodpecker homage.

Cage was very, very

disciplined, focused, intense about the idea that his hair had to match the relationship to the character's energy in the scene.

Yeah.

That there's a direct correlation between hair height and

how cartoonish he becomes.

And yet, I mean, like, even though he identifies as the outlaw, right?

And he's like, isn't my son a little outlaw and I'm a little outlaw and everything else?

He doesn't have it in him to be a Bugs Bunny.

Or a Woody Woodpecker.

No.

He's too nice.

He's too decent ultimately.

They can't say, am I a stinker?

It's funny.

Why aren't I a stinker?

I feel like when they talk about this movie now, both the Cohens and Cage.

I'm talking about the characters, yeah.

It's not Cage.

Yeah, yeah.

I feel like they talk about Wiley Coyote, right?

And Wiley Coyote is in pursuit of a thing.

Yeah.

That much like them wanting to steal the baby, you're like, isn't this going to harm other people when you do this?

And yet the pursuit seems so pure and not malicious and driven by these like unquenchable human needs.

And also they're just constantly getting fucked with.

Like even though Wiley Coyote is the aggressor, he is the pitiful,

empathetic character because you're just like, this guy's getting it from all directions.

And also, much like Cage, there's just some kind of inherent sadness baked into the design of this character.

Yeah, they made it the saddest eyes in cinema.

That's right.

I was just going to say they really made a lot of those eyes.

And then

what if Wiley Coyote, who is silent, instead has the inner monologue of fucking Flannery O'Connor?

You know, like that is the brilliant characterization of this movie is like, this guy's got like a poet's soul.

Yeah.

And, you know, David, to your,

as you were saying, like, people are like, well, how did they learn to do this?

I don't know.

They read books and saw movies.

Yeah.

And interpreted to say that?

Yeah.

Well, no, but you're like, that, you know, this is inspired by Preston Sturgis.

It's inspired by Flannery O'Connor.

It's like, you know.

I think the Cohen brothers have the juice.

I'm going to say it.

This is their first film with Donna Isaacson, who is an early casting director that they work with, works with them on the next three films too, also worked with Danny Boyle later on.

She made some quite good discoveries in the casting of this film.

Oh, really?

I didn't notice anyone in this movie that really had an enduring career.

That's interesting.

Donna Isaacson, this is a great quote, great, great quote from her.

I will say anytime I talk to a casting director, pretty much the greatest people on earth to talk to if you like care about movies in a certain way.

The thing about the Cone brothers is they embrace a concept and a place in a world, and they're completely faithful to that world.

If you don't hear the music of the script, you're not right for it.

You have to hear it.

That's dead on.

Nicholas Cage quickly takes the film story in tone, not shockingly.

Like truly not like, you know, really, like he heard it.

He says he understood where the humor was, what beats musically to hit.

Other people considered Willem Dafoe.

Interesting.

Right off of like Platoon, essentially.

Would have been too dark.

Probably.

Do you think?

It would have been a little too scary.

Yeah, I mean,

even Willem Willem in whimsy mode usually does have a hint of malevolence.

Willem holding a baby, your immediate thought is, is he going to eat that baby?

Yeah, I mean, it's like, and it doesn't matter the context the movie is built around the character.

It's like,

instead of casting someone with the saddest eyes in cinema, what if we had H.I.

McDonough have retractable jaws like Alien?

The meanest teeth in cinema.

Kevin Costner and Nicholas Cage had the same agent at the time as a discovery from JJ.

Of William Morris.

And the agent was like, both of my guys are too big for this movie.

Like, essentially, both of my guys are hitting right now.

They're about to be big stars.

They don't need to be doing a tiny movie.

And they certainly don't want to audition for it.

Exactly.

Kevin,

Cage essentially, a junior agent convinces Lamano to let Cage meet the Coens, but not Reed.

And I guess.

It's the status thing.

Yeah, it's so annoying.

I guess that was sort of enough

for the cohens but then costner is so determined he agrees to read without telling his agent he like surreptitiously reads costner really wanted this which is fascinating red opposite holly hunter then cage hears about this so cage is like fine i'll read you know like they start to fight for it and cage gets the role obviously he's a perfect like cage must have this oh absolutely i i don't Costner getting this role, his entire career is probably different.

He might be okay.

I don't know.

When we we did our Costner series, we talked about the Solverado thing, right?

And how much he loved playing that kind of Rapscallion character.

And basically, right after that, he is pushed, not against his will, but they're like, congratulations, you are the grand oak tree of America.

Yeah, you're the new Gary Cooper.

Right.

And I think he was still in this point where he's like, can I play the fucking fun dangerous?

This guy be ha ha Woody Woodpecker.

Yes.

Now, I think Costner would have been,

I don't want to say too sincere, but I I think it's the thing that Cage gets.

His whole, he would be too grounded.

Yes.

And the expression, I think Costner can be funny, and I think he can be big, but he's best at sort of understated, you know, kind of off the shoulder kind of stuff.

Look, Bull Durham, he's phenomenal.

Okay, here's a, here's a movie where obviously he plays a different kind of, like, he's not a rap scout.

Well, he is a rap scallion.

He is.

He's a rap scallion.

A movie full of verbal dexterity like this movie.

Yeah.

Like lines that are big meals.

Yeah.

And

also featuring Nathan Arizona is in that movie too.

Yep.

Before he died at the age of 40.

Incredible.

That is the hardest 40 that anyone has ever lived to.

Yeah.

But, you know, he Trey Wilson is the actor.

But Bull Durham is a great, even though it's a wackadoo film.

with some some real funny parts to it.

It's not a cartoon fantasy.

It's also built around Costner's stoic magnetism, which this movie needs to be fucking propulsive.

And I also think for how much Cage has been on the record talking about his theories and his principles on acting, right?

Yeah.

And how he thinks that

acting can be

impressionistic.

right right and that is his approach he thinks about rather than just like embodying a character in the reality honestly that he's like i'm i'm a piece of equipment i'm part of visual storytelling it doesn't need to reflect reality it needs to reflect a feeling or an idea yeah and i think that's the part of him that reads the script and not only gets the language of it, but understands visually what he needs to be in the movie and how to manipulate his body and do things.

There's a physical rubberiness because he

matches the Looney Tunes tone.

He's like, what I'm doing in relation to these fucking wide-angle lenses is a big part of it rather than like, what is my motivation?

My motivation is, I know what this shock should look like.

Right.

Now, the Cohens, as you guys may or may not know, are not the kind of guys who are like, yeah, do whatever you want.

They are like, read the lines.

We have a pretty autocratic sense of this.

Never work with Cage again.

Nope.

And it's not like.

I don't think they did not get along basically at all.

They kind of talk about it in this way of

everyone's like happy now.

Cage talks about it the same way where he's like.

you know, they have that meeting.

They're like, hell yeah, this guy gets it.

And then in classic Cage fashion, he shows up to set every day and it's like, here's 10 new ideas they had.

And they're like, right.

And what we want you to do is what we wrote and here are the storyboards.

And he's like, like, but what if I did that upside down?

And they're like, right.

And what we wrote and the storyboards are what you should be doing.

And they've talked a lot about, you know, they start out with $3 million.

They end up with $6 million, whatever.

The way they make this movie look this big and this great and this tight on that budget is they were just like obsessive, meticulous planning, which is their story of their success going forward.

And as things go on, they're like, we build a perfect plan and then we're still open to things changing on the day if a better idea comes along but at this early point and with them getting such a big shot at like the studio big leagues they're like we've nailed this down and the only way this movie is going to work is if we stick to our plan and cage coming in and being like what about this dreadlock wig i think they were just like nick

stand there have you ever seen the movie trading places i'd like to because ickroyd on the amtrak train the frustrating part of it must have been to them that they're like this guy gets it right We had the meeting.

He's locked in.

We're not having to trick him into this performance.

We're just like, stop throwing out other stuff on top of this.

People, look, it's really hard when someone says, I know better than you.

Yep.

And it's especially hard when they do.

Like, everyone hates to know it all, especially when they know pretty much all.

Cage is the one who puts the Woody Woodpecker tattoo on because he's like, I think my character is Woody Woodpecker come to life.

And you need the audience to understand, like,

the movie's telling you how to watch it.

The Cohen's cartoon character.

The Cohens probably tolerated that because they're like, if it's just going on your body and you're not going to, if you're going to say the lines as we wrote them, okay.

But they also repurpose it into something that then thematically matters at the end of the movie.

When he tears.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cage used to make little movies called Super 8, well, on Super 8 cameras.

And so did the Cohens when they were, you know, they had, and so Cage said they had this thing called a Super 8 feeling.

They would talk about together.

Interesting.

Like when they were doing something that they both were excited by the cohens and cage on this movie they would say i've gotten that super eight feeling that's so linked so that's nice to the fucking like uh raimi brothers campbell i mean

i want to circle back to this but there is like such a continuum even just within the history of this show of like road warrior evil dead and this movie you know uh or even you could say road warrior evil dead 2 and this movie all feel like a thing that was happening happening through connection.

Right.

Yeah.

The one time they claimed that they maybe were going to work together again

is this movie called 62 Skidoo, which was kind of like a hippie surfer movie that Cohens would talk about sometime that they would be like, we'd like, like, it's like a Cold War comedy with about like amnesia and it's like a funny mentoring candidate and like we want Cage to do that.

Yeah.

So like they never were like,

we'd absolutely, you know, this is in the 2000s that they're talking about this, right?

I mean, like they have the respect for Cage, especially when the guy becomes like a fucking $20 million movie star with an Oscar, right?

Right.

But it never came together.

And obviously, Cage's career kind of sputters out in the mid-2000s.

We'll talk about this.

Reviving, right?

2010 is really late, late 2000s is when it really hits a wall.

But well, he really hated bees.

He hated them.

Yeah, that was part of the problem.

Had to work with bees.

We'll talk about this in many weeks from now.

But Lady Killers was originally set up as a Nicholas Cage vehicle directed by Barry Sonnenfeld.

And it is when Cage, I forget what movie he ends up doing, instead of that, drops out that Sonnenfeld walks away and goes, I should ask my buddies, the Coens, if they want to do this.

I've never seen that movie.

I like it.

Holly Hunter calls it a very self-conscious movie.

She's not wrong.

But not in a negative way.

She says, Joel and Ethan function without their egos, or maybe their egos are so big they're completely secure with anyone who disagrees with them.

Either way.

sure.

Um, Frances McDorman's take is: I can't imagine Joel ever making a movie where that was actor-oriented, like a Sophie's choice where you set up the camera and two actors work together.

He sets up the mood, he talks about rhythm.

Like, I, yeah, she means that.

I think she's talking about her husband, of course.

She loves him and she's worked with him many, many times, right?

But she means that in a sort of like that's what he does, right?

Like, you know, if you want this experience, you're not going to get it at the Cohen Brothers.

Well, they're animals, they're animators in a way.

You know, we talk about as a cartoon, they think of

they're creating a visual and emotional landscape that has timing and performances that they have pre-visited.

It's similar to Wes Anderson, where it's not like, hey, actors, what are you thinking?

Let's do a blocking rehearsal.

And based on what you do, I will adjust and figure out how to film this.

They're like, here's my movie.

And if I hired you because I trust you and I know you're going to figure out how to bring humanity to this, but that's your job.

Speaking of that,

the big jolt of electricity that I had re-watching, I've seen this movie many times.

And it is a movie that one of the

my wife is a whole human being in right and I both love movies.

We share a lot of taste.

Humble bread.

But she doesn't like to watch movies a lot because they take time.

You love watching them.

You will text us once a week and go, guys, if I have three free hours, what should I see this afternoon?

Yeah.

Or what should I rent?

And, you know, like, it's just one of those things where it's like, do you want to watch something?

I don't care, put anything on in the background.

But there are a couple of movies.

where if I put it on, she'll tune right in.

She's like, I think I've seen this movie 12 times and I'll watch it another 12.

It's

an easy, easy, easy movie to rewatch.

Yeah, like, right.

You don't put this on and go like, oh, I'm so exhausted by recently.

I had a long day yesterday.

I got home late.

It's invigorating.

And I was just like, I'm thrilled to spool this movie up at 11:30 p.m.

But the jolt of electricity that hit me

this time watching was, oh, this is Wes Anderson before Wes Anderson.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I had never thought of that, but I'm sure this is very obvious to everybody.

But this is a decade before Russian war.

Yeah.

And it's very clear.

I mean, Wes Anderson has his own set of influences, his own set of preoccupations.

Obviously, I don't want to take any agency away from Wes Anderson, but it's like there is a shared DNA, obviously.

Yes, and I think the same to Sean of the Dead.

There is like, right, a generation of guys who are coming up like 10 years after who see this movie and it blows their minds.

It sits with them.

And especially making a comedy that is this visual.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the way Edgar wright describes is seeing it and going like if you can make a comedy look like this then why aren't all comedies like this and they said the first time he directed something he was like oh i get why they're not all like this now it's impossible and it requires you being a genius with the best collaborators in the world and it also goes against i mean it is a completely different kind of comedy that was certainly now and certainly then as well there is no we're talking about it there's no improvisation yep there's no like yeah let's just take a fun a fun run at this one this movie does not have many conventional jokes, even in a way that later on.

No, stuff like the balloon line, that's kind of a conventional-ish joke, but yeah, it's not a setup punchline kind of movie.

It's a joke in the sense that it's a silly thing that's said.

It's moments

that aren't like about build-up payoff, which so much of comedy is, you know?

I wish I knew something about it.

Join the club.

Only build up.

But I think someday payoff.

I think there is something we've been talking around this a little bit, right?

Okay, here we go.

But that this is sort of like the first generation of filmmakers

who grew up on Looney Tunes and such, where it's impacting their work.

There are people who are working simultaneously, and people like Frank Tashlin, who started out as a Looney Tunes director and then became a live-action director, who then works with Jerry Lewis, which then affects Jerry Lewis's directing style when he starts making stuff, which of course then radicalizes the French.

Like bleeds out in all this way, right?

But here's like the first generation of directors who grew up watching this stuff.

And there's the bizarre visual language of like manic 40s, 50s, 60s theatrical short cartoons baked into their brains.

Now, those things could do anything because they used a fucking pencil, right?

And you could draw anything you imagined.

But traditional animation

was very limited in terms of camera movement.

It was almost impossible to do.

Disney created the multi-plane camera, which was to be able to replicate the idea of camera movement within animation.

It was mostly used for establishing shots.

It wasn't really used for action or dialogue scenes or anything that was really moving the plot forward.

It feels like there are these three movies like George Miller with Mad Max, Sam Raimi with Evil Dead, and Blood Simple with the Coans, that are all them trying to infuse a little bit of that sensibility into something that's a little more dramatic.

And then on the second movies, they all, with the confidence under their wings, heighten and go, like, I'm going to try to make a live-action cartoon.

I want to capture the way those Looney Toons feel.

And the big key to all three of them, and they talk about how influential Rode Warrior was on them.

And obviously, watching Raimi do this stuff as their friend and working with him and seeing how it could be done.

And this movie has so much fucking Road Warrior in it.

Oh, Road Warrior.

Yeah, I was both.

And Raimi, too, obviously.

But I think there's something to all three of these director-director teams cracking the code on how do you use the camera, the thing that animation can't do, to convey the energy of what animation can do in character, right?

And in reality.

And like those three movies unlock something in terms of like.

This is how you can use the camera to make you feel action in a way that no one has before.

Horror in a way that no one has before.

Comedy in a way that no one has before.

The magic of those movies is all three of them have have elements of the other bleeding into them.

Right.

But you just watch this and you're like, some of the funniest jokes in this movie are just that this is shot that way.

And they know that.

It's not by accident.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And a lot of that is Sonnenfeld, who like, you know, you look at the early part of his career, one of the few guys to have any level of actual high-level success jumping from DP to director.

Right.

And the movies, at least the first five or six, that are so good that he directed and didn't shoot, you can see in execution everything he kind of like,

what he, the code he cracked with the Cohens of what's the funniest lens?

What's the funniest place to put a camera in relation to an actor?

What's the funniest camera movement?

Right.

And I think his innate sense of humor really helped them in that way understand how to translate that into a language.

Yeah, for sure.

That's my experience.

Put the camera under the bed.

Put the camera under the crib.

Funny.

Have a baby crawling towards the lens.

Yeah.

It's Baby Herman before Baby Herman, or around the same time, actually, I think.

Yeah.

Right.

Baby Herman's the following year.

80s were big for babies.

And then, and then the, and then have, and then put the, the, the camera under the car and have Nicholas Cage crawl towards it like a baby and be pulled back by his awful evil doppelganger.

Yep.

John Goodman.

Yeah.

John Goodman.

I'm going to say this.

He's a good, not just a good man, a good actor.

John Goodman.

He's a great actor.

Okay.

But I'll hear your argument.

Obviously, he's in, you know, he's got small roles in movies.

Revenge of the Nerds.

83, like Revenge of the Nerds, whatever.

But True Stories, which is the year before, which is a great, great movie.

Obviously, somewhat undersung at the time, I feel like.

Astounding in that functionality.

And if it's sung at all, it's sung with the lyrics of meow meow.

Because John Goodman did that in True Stories when he's trying to remember a song.

He goes, Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow.

And that was another great moment in my life when I saw that happen.

So True Stories is the year before Raising Arizona, but the Coens are very definitive.

Like we chose him before True Stories was shot.

Yeah.

Like they are basically like, we truly discovered John Goodman.

He came to you, David Byrne.

Right.

Parallel thing.

Right.

He came to our set.

And it is funny because, right, True Stories is Texas and this is Arizona, but both kind of tales of like lonely souls on the prairie.

You know what I mean?

Like that, they do have somewhat similar energies, even though True Stories is much less cartoony, I guess.

Although more emo.

Yeah.

Although it could be cartoony in a lot of ways.

Yeah.

True Stories is like based on a bunch of National Enquirer articles, I believe, was sort of the

semi-premise.

Those types of articles

as much as actual articles.

But they both sat in

a very established sort of cultural moment of kitschy Southwestern Americana, which

infected a lot of music and visuals and film at the time.

We were talking about this.

A fancy smarty pants hipstery type.

Oh, very smart.

Like it was fun to exoticize, for big city folk to exoticize.

Sure.

The American Southwest in particular.

And while it is not, in my opinion, offensive,

they are doing an invented dialect that does not exist.

Yes.

It's not.

It is a kind of funny exoticization.

Yes.

It's a cartoon.

They're cartoon characters.

And I even think I could

keep saying like this movie is making fun of

H.I.

McDonough by saying, why is this idiot having these sort of like faux literary profound thoughts, right?

Yeah.

That it's like a punching down of like, wouldn't it be funny if this dumb yokel

has this incredibly funny thing?

But I think it's the opposite of their

way of speaking.

The beauty of this guy having this rocky, a barren place where my seed could find no purchase.

Right.

They're like,

it is, it is an act of.

Yeah, because rural people can't be smart at all.

Right.

Right.

I think the implication is they're making comedy out of how unlikely that is.

Whereas I think their thing is, imagine a guy like this who no one takes seriously.

And what if there's like a universe of emotion and thought inside of him?

I feel like Moonstruck, this, and Wild at Heart.

I know he's also got like Vampire's Kiss and Valley Girl.

He's got other iconic movies of this year, but those three, which 87, 87, 90, he's doing the same thing in all three, where he's like, yeah.

He's kind of got the gift of the gab in this weird supernatural way about him.

Right.

He seems like salt of the earth or diamond in the rough or something, but then he'll he'll monologue in this romantic, sincere way that you can't believe it's coming out of this wackado's mouth.

The waters run deep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's so good.

He is so good.

Here's a Goodman thing I want to say before we talk about Cage a little more.

We were doing prep for the King Ralph show, and you made a point that has stuck with me as we've been talking about Goodman for months now.

Sure.

A year of Goodman for us.

A year of Goodman.

Right.

That he so

seamlessly, quietly, in such an unshowy way

adjusts his dialect around wherever he's playing.

Oh, yeah.

That you always kind of, when watching any movie, go like, right, I guess John Goodman is from Arizona, right?

Right, right.

Where you're like, he, for a guy, you don't think of as being like, oh, he's like an accent guy.

He's a guy who transforms.

He does voices or whatever.

He just like very, very subtly but accurately off the cuff adjusts to wherever the character he's playing is from.

Missourian, of course,

by birth or whatever.

But Missouri can be from anywhere.

You buy him in the bayou.

You buy him in the Midwest.

You buy him as a city guy, you know, a tough talker.

Yeah.

You buy him when he's eating fried chicken with you in an open field and he's about to beat you up.

Smacks you with a big old branch.

What if he wanted to tell you to go fuck yourself, but kind of with like,

you know, like adding in a little pun.

I think he would need to cross-reference with a kind of brash, old-school New York homer.

They'd have to build a room together, batting ideas back and forth.

Well, I'm at a complete loss.

Argo fucking better than that.

I mean, what if he was a king?

What if of England?

What if John Goodman was the king?

Have you ever considered that profound thing?

By the way, Ben, nice to see you over there.

It's great to see you.

Yeah.

Always a pleasure to have you on the phone.

Thanks for the friendly's hat, by the way.

You're so welcome.

I should have worn it today.

I forgot.

It's a hat, a rival podcast.

It's true.

Hollywood hamburger.

But I'm just going to

say to the listeners, Ben, send me a friendly's hat.

And I'm going to just say, I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

Jesus Cock, that's a hot hat.

Hell yeah.

Damn it.

I got to clip that.

I got to use that quote.

I really.

I think you need it as a banner on top of the side.

Yeah, I'd like to see it embroidered on the back over the ponytail hole in the back of the adjustable cap.

You know what I'm saying?

Really?

That's a hot hat.

Yeah.

Sims.

Take it.

What year is Valley Girl?

Valley Girl is pretty early in his career.

It's 83.

Okay.

And he's done at this point a couple of the Coppola movies.

He's in Rumble, Fish, and Cotton Club.

He's in Birdie.

Has Peggy Sue not happened yet?

Peggy Sue is the year before.

She's not yet married.

26,

which he is good in in like a sort of broad, you know, rolling.

Oh, but he's good.

I think he is phenomenal in that movie.

I have not seen that movie since I was a teenager.

I mostly remember Kathleen, obviously.

I think he's truly phenomenal, but it's the classic tale of like...

Coppola is like, Nick, I got great news for you.

I've convinced the studio to hire you for this part.

I've been giving you these little side, showy character parts, but you're the romantic lead of this movie.

I think I got good news for you.

Finally, in Hollywood, nepotism works.

Yes.

And he reads the script and is like, I find this character boring.

I don't want to do it.

And Coppola is like, what the fuck are you talking about?

And he was like, I have moved heaven and earth here.

Let me go to the lab and see if I can come up with a good take.

And he gets back to Coppola and he's like, I'm going to play him like Pokey from Gumby.

What the fuck are you talking about?

But it works.

It's genius.

It's like one of the earliest examples of Cage in a a sort of

leading man role, taking the least conventional route to something that then ends up affecting in a genuine way and hitting on real emotions and real thoughts, in my opinion.

But I do think that's kind of a turnkey for him.

I also think you talk about the Super 8 feeling, right?

There is obviously the Coppola family dynasty, you know, the mountain of nepotism that is that family.

But also, as he's always quick to call out, he was the son of the black sheep in the family.

True.

Like he was the son of the one guy who who kind of didn't figure it out and had the same aspirations in the entertainment industry as did his mother as well.

And so obviously he was close to the cousins who were going on to massive success.

Right.

But he was like, there was always this energy of like, we're the fuck upside of the family.

And they all almost treated me with a bit of pity.

It's like you had been placed in a cage.

A Nicholas cage.

Over to you, David.

The film shot for 13 weeks.

Certainly wouldn't, a $6 million movie these days would not be getting a 13-week shoot, I don't think.

No.

In Arizona.

Sonnenfeld, Barry Sonnenfeld, of course, the cinematographer here.

I feel like, I mean, as great a job as he does on Blood Simple, this is his like calling card movie.

Yeah.

And as I was saying to my wife last night, who's seen it before, but I was just like, everything about this movie is good, but the way the camera moves was so bananas.

Like people were just like, I don't understand how they did this.

Yeah.

And Miller's Crossing is a beautiful looking movie, right?

But it's him doing a much more kind of conventional constrained yeah and he he's doing other stuff constrained yeah he's doing other stuff in this era like when harry met sally that is also like gorgeously lensed but this is the calling card movie that yes i think like makes people trust he probably could direct as well and his entire directing career is really built off of the language he establishes in this movie uh like right you see adam's family and men in black in this movie much more than you do in yeah sure all of it yeah um

They're all, Son and Feld says like they're all a little nerve.

They got a real budget this time.

Like, this is nerve-wracking.

Like, you don't want to fuck this up in the same way of Blood Simple, the different way.

Blood Simplet's just like, ah, you know, we'll see if anyone likes this.

Big note they got at the test screenings.

They didn't like the rabbit blowing up.

Interesting.

I think this is something that Cohens run into once in a while where they're like, why do you guys care about us wounding animals?

And it's like.

It's like

the number one thing.

They didn't care about the lizard being shot off the rock.

Maybe they cared about that, too.

Yeah.

For all we know, that rabbit ran away as soon as that grenade hit the ground.

We don't know.

You're right, though.

It is a wascally rabbit.

A wascally rabbit.

Oh, excuse me, you're right.

They do work with Carter Burwell again, of course, you know, continuing,

obviously, one of their greatest collaborators, but initially they were like, this movie might not be groovy enough for you, which is, I don't know what that means exactly.

He's a rock and roll guy.

Burwell said the score is improvised using household objects like peanut butter jars and vacuum cleaner hoses.

That's fun.

Fucking, yeah.

And then, of course, the Yodelink.

What?

Improvised score using peanut butter jars?

No reaction from you?

I mean, I love it.

I love the inventiveness.

Sounds cool as hell.

Yeah, it does.

He's too busy ordering some hot hats.

And

an honest-to-goodness oakie named John Crowder did the Yodelink.

Wow.

Honest to goodness.

Yeah.

Oakie.

I always thought that it was Pete Seeger, but it's not.

Pete Seeger's on the soundtrack somewhere, but

I love Pete Seeger.

But Carter Burwell, I mean,

one of the only composers where I will just listen to the soundtrack at John Williams level, as far as I'm concerned, in terms of creating mood, tension,

world.

They feel like wordless operas, even listen to on their own.

What is your ringtone?

It's the theme from Tootsie, Peter Bishop.

Something's telling me it must be you.

That is

very funny, and I can't believe I have never watched it.

I've never heard this go off.

Well, that's because it's only keyed to one person in my life.

Your wife?

Who is a whole human being in her own right, and she'll remain unnamed.

Oh, Breg.

You know what is really funny that I think about a tremendous amount?

It's weird that that movie's called Tootsie.

Oh, she said it was a pocket dial, by the way.

Oh, wow.

So everything's fine.

We have talked about that a billion times.

It's not a character name.

It's one of like 40 nicknames.

I was just listening to this podcast and you can't say that.

So whatever.

Move on.

I just want to say also for the record that I was distracted yes but i was reading randall tech's cobbs wikipedia he's quite a character here's the thing about him

he was a professional fighter well yeah famous chin

in many ways and i could kind of tell by just his vibe he was he was a professional kickboxer in the 70s yeah and yeah famous chin that often paradoxically overshadowed his incredible nose

as though he were doing a headstand

because that's how the sun would cast a shadow.

But you see what I mean?

That nose.

And I don't know.

Are you going to talk about him later?

I mean, we must talk about him.

I'm sure we'll talk about Randall Texcobb.

Are we putting a pin in Randall Texcob?

Or pulling a pin out.

There we go.

We'll blow up this rabbit later.

Incredible droll quote about Randall Texcob.

He's less an actor than a force of nature.

Dot, dot, dot.

I don't know if I'd rush headlong into employing him for a future film.

Apparently, that's the only way you can employ him.

This does feel like you have to head-butt him five times before he agrees to be in the movie.

This film has Holly Hunter and John Goodman and Francis McDorman.

Lifetime, like Cohen folk.

But it also does have Nicholas Cage and Randall Dexkop where they're like, once was fine.

We let the genie out of the bottle and we did not try to recapture.

Well, even M.M.

Walsh, who appears in this and it's his final film.

A tiny role, yes.

Where he always had this kind of ship on his shoulder of like, why didn't they keep hiring me?

Right.

And their line was like, he was difficult.

Right.

We found our people who are very sympathetic.

And when you find a Goodman or a Hunter, you hold on to them forever.

Yeah.

I mean, it really does, it would say something to you as an actor if you do not get invited back because so many people are getting invited back.

Yes.

And of course, as we alluded to, the wonderful Trey Wilson was not invited back because he...

died tragically at a young age.

I would have hoped that they would use him again.

Yes.

He was supposed to be the Albert Finney part in Miller's Crossing and died so shortly before production.

Yes.

Kinney replaces him like a week before the movie starts.

Oh, well, then I'm lucky.

So that was supposed to be.

I don't mean that.

But also, clearly, that was them being like, we want to give this guy like a grand story.

I didn't mean that the way it came out.

That was a pretty brutal reaction.

It was tough.

I knew he is incredible in Miller's Crossing.

I knew what I was saying when I said it.

And I think I've been appropriately respectful of the talent of Trey Wilson, whose performance in this movie is outstanding.

And that's very good.

It reflects that they were like, you know what, we should do?

We should write like a

media ass role for Trey Wilson.

Because he really crushes the final scene of the film, which is very important to this film.

Like,

sort of, I don't know.

Feeling like more than a confection.

Everyone at the time who said that they were not human, that they were

making a movie about movies, or they were making an imitation Looney Tune.

Yeah, I mean, they were making an imitation Looney Tune, but then they took their Yosemite Sam and made him the most heartfelt voice of morality in the film.

Right.

That sets them on the proper path at the end of the movie.

How could anyone who isn't a humanist land there

and put that in your movie?

And that, I mean, you know, when I think about, look, I am, I adore Wes Anderson.

Very, very important movie maker to me.

I love so many of those movies.

Humble brand

that I like him.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay, fair enough.

And that he's

his own person in his own right.

Yeah.

A whole person.

But, you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about,

you know,

what are the differences between the Cohen's sense of manner and style and Wes Anderson's.

Wes Anderson had a lot more, I mean, we're talking about directors that create very specific visual compositions.

Yeah.

That sometimes they're, I mean, the Cohens are, in a way, they

initiated meta into cinema in the sense that they were making homages to other kinds of movies, yeah, genre, and the type of movie that constantly reminds you that it is a movie, that it is a movie, that we're referencing Preston Sturges and the Looney Tunes, or we're going to make a gangster film, or we're going to make this Barton Fink movie, which is itself about movies, that about-ness that so many people take as being cold

and reserved.

And even the camera joke in Blood Simple, where the camera is tracking along the bar and then has to jump up over a cast out patron

is a joke that like, to some people goes like, holy shit, who the fuck are these guys?

And to other people, you're like, why are you puncturing the reality of this movie?

Yeah.

You don't even see it.

You're making a thriller.

Yeah.

And now you're making a joke that's like, you guys know this is a movie, right?

We're going to make a joke about your understanding of how a camera moves.

And, you know, Wes Anderson movies have profound human emotion in them as well.

And my favorite of his is Moonrise Kingdom because I think so much of Wes Anderson's movies are preoccupations with lost childhood, obviously.

But I don't like, for me, this performance by Trey Wilson at the end

really, like

it grounded and humanized everything that had been going on.

It represented a theme of real emotion.

Yeah.

But just to be able to take that moment and move so seamlessly and

not

the word I'm looking for.

Like they weren't creating a contradiction.

Yeah.

Like, their movement between highly stylized and mannered and then highly human and naturalistic

was so beautifully done there.

Sometimes

the same frame within the same scene.

Yeah.

And, you know, and another reason people get a hard time getting a handle on them is like, by now, you know exactly what a Wes Anderson movie looks and feels like.

Yes.

But with a Cohen Brothers movie, you never knew.

They can mix it up a lot.

And they would do it on purpose.

Yes.

And they'd be virtuosic at every level.

This sounds like I'm picking winners and losers, like the federal government or something.

Well, I know.

But I mean, I just hadn't really appreciated

what this movie and what the Cohens did in terms of 90s cinema.

Yes.

You know what I mean?

Like, first of all, making a movie that could be about

or could be imitating cartoons and Preston Sturges and everything else.

The

stylistic or the narrative loop-de-loop that they do in this movie and in other movies.

There's no pulp fiction without that.

Yeah.

You know, agreed.

Another movie that banks on you understanding this is a movie.

Right.

And playing on your knowledge of how movies work and what they should or shouldn't be doing.

And, you know, meta was my language in the 90s.

And if you know anything about my work, mostly I'm just riffing on movies and television shows that I've seen.

You know what I mean?

And I hate to say that maybe the Cohen brothers

made that habit respectable for me for a period of time.

Do you know what I mean?

But I do think it's respectable.

I mean, all we do is make things about the things that we love.

I mean, look at the room we are in and the career that we have built for ourselves.

The other thing is that while this movie has a lot of babies in it,

it is not about lost childhood.

It is about parenthood and the fear of becoming a parent.

Yeah, I also think there's something interesting to like Wes Anderson doesn't talk about his childhood much.

He doesn't talk about his relationship with his father when he's like doing press.

Those things are kind of mysterious.

And yet you watch his movies and you're like, I understand that there is stuff that he is still working through.

It's weird because you, yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Even if I can't identify exactly what his experiences are in the same way that like everyone from the beginning knew Spielberg's parents got divorced and he never got over it.

Right.

And it took a while for us to get more, a fuller picture of what happened there.

Yeah.

It was like, there's a thing here.

I just like, I realized the other day, like, I know fucking nothing about Wes Anderson's dad.

And yet, we're all like, well, we understand the stuff that he's still frustrated on and needing to push through.

And the Cohen's, it is a lot more oblique of like, what made you want to make this now?

And is this truly just you riffing on some other genre, a type of movie you like?

Or is there some

animating idea within this that came out of some personal feeling or experience?

And especially because they're two separate people, it is even harder to identify that sometimes.

Yes, their only real thing is they wanted to do something completely the opposite from God Simple.

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

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

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Who's one other person in the room?

My wickedness is so rude.

I sleep easy.

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

No,

that's an example of a fussy person.

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

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Look, they're again,

they're specifying like, oh, maybe you want a sauna or a hot tub.

And I'm like, sounds good to me.

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Please.

Can I check that book?

You want one of those in the recording, Stupid?

That'd be great.

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

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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 ad space on this podcast, the big thing they want is personal host endorsement.

Right.

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

But something very different is happening right now.

That's 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 Advenger.

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

Macon Blair's remake of

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 going to see it.

We're

excited to see it.

But Ben, you texted us last night.

This fucking rules.

It fucks.

It honks.

Yeah.

It's so great.

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

Peter Dinklage, Jacob 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.

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 got to say, the original movie was shot in the town where I went to high school.

Yes, yes, that's right.

The original film.

Yep.

I grew up watching toxic and trauma movies on porches

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 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

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.

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Yep.

And Ben, it just says here in the copy, wants to call out that Elijah Wood plays a weird little guy who says summon the nuts.

Can you tell us anything about that moment without spoiling it?

Summon the nuts is in reference to a

psychotic new metal band.

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 film.

Seriously, get your tickets now.

Go to toxicadvengure.com/slash blank check.

Do it, do it.

This film is about H.I.

Hi McDonough.

Herbert I.

McDonough.

A convenience store robber by trade, I guess.

A low-level.

They have a name for him, and it's recidivism.

Yes.

Who meets Ed Edwina McDonough when she takes his mugshot over and over again.

Little firecracker.

Yes.

They basically have three meetings

over the course of

the three arrests you witnessed.

We got to it.

It's an hour and 20 minutes.

But the second time he's arrested, he sees her crying uncontrollably, right?

Is that the second time?

Yeah,

her fiancé leaves her during the fiance

leader.

I didn't like that.

Really?

That was one moment where I was like, you're not treating this character with respect.

And I was like, it was too funny to, it was too funny to not include.

Yeah.

But that's the one.

Joel and Ethan Cohen, I know you're listening.

Okay.

Go back and make Raising Arizona the special edition.

I think it's funny.

It's funny.

Of course, it's funny.

I don't think it's a slight on her intelligence.

I think it is more about how different dialects process different words, which is a thing I've noticed comes up a lot in their films.

Yes.

Like even in Fucking Hail Caesar, when the original title.

Yep.

When

Raymond's rare moments of studio interference about Alden Aaron Reich,

he goes, I work with actors, not Rodeo clowns.

And that's a joke about a guy being so pretentious, he says rodeo wrong, right?

And I view finance.

Rodeo drive.

Yes.

I view finance as the inverse of that joke.

They love language.

It's obvious from everything they ever do.

And it's another reason why I got so

such a,

well, there's a literary term for it.

I got a hard on

for their work because of their love of language and dialect, even if the dialect is invented, you know.

Now, we spoke about this,

you know, prologue.

A hard on.

I'm sorry.

Should have said.

I have a hard on.

David's really happy right now.

I can tell.

David, I'm happy.

This prologue.

I'm just going to turn away from Griffin.

I'll just look at you now.

We just.

He pulls me down.

We hate each other wrong.

Yeah.

This prologue that is breakneck and romantic

and sweet and sad.

And

in my opinion, just, I don't know how you don't, how you watch this and you're not like so energized by like the rest of the, you know, like.

the whole arc of them falling in love and, you know, getting together and she can't, you know, her womb is barren and his seed can find no purchase and they can't adopt and they, you know, like where you're just like, yes, they're going to be okay.

These like twin fires, right?

Like, well, I like that there's just some connection that keeps like

being tested every time they have one interaction

in between sentences, right?

It's like they have this moment, and then he's like locked up for six months, and then he comes back, and the moment continues.

Right.

And he has this moment of like lashing out at anger at the idea of her finance.

Who would ever leave a woman like you that sticks with hers that the next next time he's out, she's ready to lock it down and he has a reason to not go back.

Right.

Yes.

And that is so sweet and so powerful and is conveyed so quickly and so meaningfully, so much through these performances, right?

But then you have this thing.

It is such a good setup for the movie of like their earnest belief that like, well, yes, he's a criminal, but she works in law enforcement.

Doesn't that

balance out?

Doesn't that neutralize each other make them adoptable?

But you're like from this setup, you're like, like, yeah, you're right.

This is an unsolvable premise.

They are never going to get approved for a legal adoption.

Time to kidnap a quint.

Something has to be done.

So, local,

regional furniture magnate Nathan Arizona, played wonderfully by Trey Wilson.

37 years old in this movie?

Yeah, and you're right.

He's a 58-year-old.

He gives off older.

I cannot deny this.

I was shocked to learn that he died at the age of 40.

I know he technically

died

this year of like hemorrhage, but it does feel like he was the youngest person ever to die of old age.

He has had quintuplets.

Well, you know how I feel about him.

I'm glad he's dead.

Not as great.

You went back to that one.

I was going to set you up, and then I was like, maybe that's too mean.

You did it anyway.

I did it for you, David.

Thank you.

So they kind of have the.

about as altruistic of baby kidnapping ideas I guess you can have, which is like, well, they got a lot of babies on their hands.

We got more than they can handle.

I like that part of their rationalization is almost like that's so many kids, we'd maybe be doing them a favor.

They're probably stressed out with how many kids they have to handle.

Now, you are not actually allowed.

Yeah, Ben's gesturing at me.

You're not allowed to have all your multiple birth children in one crib, as this movie depicts.

So many things in this movie are a little outside of reality.

Let me ask you a question: Is it cool to put a loaded gun down in the

dude?

That is something that I think I don't think I really clocked as heavily as I did on this rewatch, where I'm like, he never picks the gun back up.

He just leaves it in the crib.

But when he's bending, he uncocks the hammer, but like, that's about it.

Like, I kept waiting for the beat of him, like, you know, like, I'm like, he does pick the gun back up, right?

And he's like, and one more thing.

And I'm like, oh, yeah.

And then he talks to them some more.

Then he leaves the room.

Yeah.

He leaves these home invaders and kidnappers.

Where are the other babies in that scene, by the way?

Because it is nighttime.

Yeah, they're probably going on some Rugrats style adventure.

That must be it.

Yeah, that's right.

David's it's four babies days out i just

i can't remember if you said this on mic or off mic but you were like now anytime you just have one of your twin boys in your arms you're like i this is so

i can't believe i ever complained about this with my daughter 100 i'm i'm so used to it having a kid for the first time to be clear to be sympathetic to people um who listen to my show having a kid is very hard and it's like you know i'm not i'm not trying to downplay that it's very hard to have have a kid.

But you're saying the intensity doubled by having two more at the same time.

Well, they always say it's like more than doubles, right?

Like it's like, yeah, but yes.

And so I think there is this sort of like perverse backwards altruism in the idea of their scheme, which is like...

It's interesting that you are able to have these characters be kidnappers and you don't lose sympathy for them.

They're sort of reacting to the imagined idea of someone like David being like, oh my God, I can't believe I have to feed two kids at once.

And assuming that means if you took one kid away, they would thank you.

When in reality, of course, that's not the case.

Cut out Griffin and I on top of a ladder looking in a window in David's apartment.

As whimsical.

I take the left one, you take the right one.

He'll thank us both.

As whimsical as this.

He's got more than he can handle, Griffin.

I mean, I do feel like this is a film when, even the first time you're watching it, you kind of know, like, no babies are going to die and everything's going to be okay.

And the tone of the film just sort of suggests, like,

there will be no sort of horrifying, sort of, you know, content in this.

And I feel like the thing the film identifies that makes it so powerful and is the beating heart at the center of it.

What is actually the real source of narrative tension in this film, more so than the demon on the motorcycle, right?

Or, you know, the idea of law enforcement catching up with them, the two breakout hooligans who are trying to rope him back into crime, is

that they get this kid.

They immediately form such a genuine emotional connection to him.

Not just the idea of finally we're parents, but they really immediately connect with, oh my God, I'm looking in the eyes of this creature and I'm feeling love, right?

And

we got a family here.

They are hearing on the news, not just like, I'm angry that someone stole my kid, give him back, but like the actual kind of bereft kind of

not bereft, the

grieving,

the the public grieving of these parents, where you see on both

Ed and HI, like, fuck, we've done something wrong.

Right.

That the level of love we immediately feel for this baby makes us understand the amount of pain that we're putting these two parents through and how is this solvable?

Because if we give this kid up, we're going to be missing him for the rest of our lives.

And yet, that is the exact thing we've done to these two other people.

Still, they had four more.

More than enough.

So, pretty quickly, quickly,

I mean,

the line you referenced a while back, John, where Holly, you know, Ed just starts sobbing the second she's holding the baby.

I think that's so brilliant because you're like, both, like, yes, she's somewhat cracked.

Like, you know, like, these people are crazy enough to be kidnapping a baby and like the intensity, like, her emotions are so in turmoil.

Yeah.

And but then you're also like, but she's right.

Like, all babies are beautiful and she loves this baby.

It's fully sincere.

It's what it feels like when you have a baby.

Like, this thing that you felt a a little bit ambivalent about maybe, or you were looking forward to, or but you know, reasonably scared about to, what the change is going to be.

And then you see it and she's like, I love it so much.

Who cries better in movies than Holly Hunter?

Uh-oh, totally.

Good question.

Right.

Basically.

I mean, this is the same year as broadcast news, right?

It's crying duo.

It is what is crazy.

It's when she takes the unplugs the phone and just sits there and cries.

They start filming broadcast news before this has come out.

Am I correct?

We did that episode so many times.

I don't remember.

I mean, obviously.

That is the case.

They're obviously both Fox films.

Right.

And they're similar time on.

Broadcast news was supposed to be Deborah Winger.

She gets pregnant, raising Arizona style.

Anti-raising Arizona style.

Anti-raising Arizona.

And they need a last-minute sub-in.

And I think Fox was like, the woman in this fucking Cohen brothers movie is unbelievable.

Take a look at her.

Right.

And we talked about in that episode that the, I'm forgetting her name, but the real

news producer who James L.

Brooks worked with to help develop the character

said,

I'll admit to you something really embarrassing.

Sometimes I just break down crying.

And he wrote that into the script.

So building that into broadcast news so much is like pure serendipitous magic that like

he had landed on that.

That's another one of our marital movies that we could just put on like everybody.

The best.

And I could easily go down that road, but look at David.

Yeah.

Right.

I know.

Look at David.

You already did a whole episode on that.

He's about to start crying while he hunters now.

Yeah, maybe I need to just schedule a 10 a.m.

cry or whatever it is she does in

Broadcasting.

This podcast is too long.

Pretty quickly,

high's former cellmates, Gail and Evil Snoots.

Yeah.

So Gail is, of course, John Goodman, and Evil is the great William Forsythe.

Did he ever do another Cohen's William Forsyth?

Oh, he was left behind.

He was left off the train.

Because it's like, he's so great in this movie, And I remember watching for him all the time.

In the 90s, William Forsyth is one of those guys who starts, he's just in like eight movies a year, right?

Like in like little roles and like straight to video movies and shit.

Like he has a long, busy career, but mostly doing like fun junk.

But you're right because he's standing next to John Goodman, who the Cohens both immediately lock in on and are like, this is the love of our life.

Right.

We have uncovered

a natural element that we will use to power up the rest of our careers.

I would say one of the great introductions to a character is how you meet these two.

Yeah.

Well, you have the first.

It's amazing.

You're saying in the opening project.

Oh, I guess you kind of see them in the movie.

But I do think the introduction to basically every character in this movie is as good as your, you know what I mean?

They're so good at delivering like a visual concept of a character to you where you're like, I think I get it.

And also, I will say, like, you're introduced to so many characters in that prologue, like M.M.

Wall and all the people in the prison cell.

If you're talking about their true entrance.

Who never repeat again?

If you're seeing this movie in 87 or these are unknown actors, you have no reason to believe that those guys are going to come back.

Right.

You might say their birth

because they are, this is a birth scene when they crawl out of that hole.

Yeah.

Out of out of the shit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like they're, they're, they're, they're being born out of a hole, crying, screaming and

covered in poop.

It might be,

he's a breach birth.

He has to be pulled out by his ankle.

It might have been a little bit too too

out of reality, but I would have loved if he pulled the map out and started trying to figure out which way to Albuquerque.

I didn't even think about that connection.

I'm so obsessed with the birth canal metaphor that I didn't even think about.

It was like, what's up, Doc?

Which way to Albuquerque?

Another one of the funniest things ever.

That every time it's map out of hole, which way to Albuquerque?

He's always trying to get to Albuquerque for no apparent reason.

It's just kind of like nearby big city, I guess.

It's far enough away.

He He had a meth empire that he

was trying to break bad.

You know,

when she's like, you bust out of jail, and he's like, we felt the institution no longer had anything to offer us.

I think it's so funny.

They're interesting characters in this movie in a way in that they don't really matter to the plot that extremely.

I guess they sort of just represent High's

recidivism, right?

Like his high opportunity for life.

They're like the equivalent of his frat brothers who are like, don't you want to crack open a six-pack?

Right, it's like, right, she just got with this guy, now they're trying to be responsible, right?

And the guys from the past are returning to be silly, also both hyperverbal in the same way.

Yeah, I mean, I guess all the characters are, but yeah, I think there was somewhere that I read that they they had this idea that these characters read a lot of magazines.

That's good, that they picked like they've been in prison, like yeah, just like

the whole, like, this is we this is our family unit.

Sure, some like magazine magaziney catchphrases of the day but they're all coming through that i think they're like

they're finding something interesting in the tension between the sort of like yokelism that is the primary language with which these types of people are expressed in movies usually as like in essential punchline characters right and also the grand tradition of this like incredible mastery of language southern literary sort of giants yeah right like the most profoundly emotional thoughtful sort of inner life work.

And being like, why are these two things so apart when we're saying they're both from the same region?

Right.

And we're compartmentalizing them in our culture.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I think the magazine thing is a really good take.

Like people end up in prison.

What are they going to fucking do?

Lose their mind, get ripped and read.

Yeah.

Absolutely so.

I have a thought about these two guys that is escaping me.

Or

no, it's right.

So like, right, they're the trashy, like, why don't we go knock over some 7-Elevens again?

And then you have

Sam McMurray and Francis McDormand

just as sort of repellent in a way as the like bougie, like, oh, no, have babies, like, enter the middle class, like, be like us.

Swing our couple harder.

With, excuse me, Polish people are not a race.

They are a nationality, I guess.

My race.

Sam McMurray bringing a lot of,

talking about cartoons, a physical goofy energy.

Sam McMurray is the best.

We cannot ever, right?

Like, I mean, like, he's the greatest.

Did he ever do another Cohen's?

He did Adam's Family Values.

Yeah.

So Sonnenfeld worked with him again.

Yeah.

I don't think that he did.

I was

never did.

He's obviously a huge TV guy, like did a zillion TV thing.

Well, he's lots of movies.

Neil's dad on

Freaksy Geeks.

He's so fucking good.

Oh, God.

I forgot about that.

That arc.

I don't know if he's talked about this publicly or other people have talked about this publicly.

Yes.

But he was part of the cast of the Tracy Ullman Show.

Yes, for like 60 episodes, like the whole thing.

Most of those main cast members got thrown in to do voices on The Simpsons, and he didn't get a family member.

And he has a couple guest appearances in the first season, but I think it has always kind of rankled him that he was like an inch away from the season.

He was left behind by both the Cohens and The Simpsons.

Yeah.

That's rough.

Yeah.

That is interesting.

That cast otherwise has Kavner.

It has Castellanetta.

Azaria, they find from the outside because the original guy they hired was an asshole.

Who's the original guy?

I always forget.

Aaron Shearer.

Mark Maron talks about him.

He was a stand-up comedian who then primarily became a voice actor, but was so bitter about it.

And he was like on G.I.

Joe and a lot of big children's shows.

And he was originally Burns, Mo, like all of those.

I guess some of the characters end up being Shearer, some of them end up being Azaria.

But Azaria talks about this when they hired him.

It was in a recasting, and he went, What was the other guy doing wrong?

And they said, You know what?

His performance was actually great.

He was just such an asshole that we couldn't imagine continuing to work with him.

And Azaria is like, That's the greatest fucking lesson in show business I ever learned.

I thought it was because the other guy couldn't do an Indian accent.

That was also the big part of it.

Can I just say something that I discovered, though?

What's that?

Well, so I was thinking about this dude.

What's his name, Sam McMurray?

Yeah.

Sam McMurray.

So they're the like Cage is Woody Woodpecker.

Yeah.

And a little bit Wily Coyote.

Obviously set in the American Southwest, so it's got Roadrunner vibes.

Right.

Nathan Arizona is Yosemite Sam.

Yosemite Sam.

This guy feels like goofy to me.

Carter Burwell did the score for a goofy movie.

Wow.

That score.

That's interesting.

That score is so fucking

good.

It's another score that you're going to be able to do.

Do you know this score?

I only know it because I was listening to Carter Burwell joints on Spotify.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden it popped up.

I'm like, wow.

It is also a score where.

suddenly like your phone was a little goofy.

It got a little goofy.

It is a score where if you played it for someone without telling them what movie it was, they would never guess it was a goofy movie.

If you extract that score from the movie,

it sounds like just a fucking classic Carter Burwell score.

I have a great super Yawki shirt that is music by Carter Burwell, his opening credit in the goofy movie font, which is just so funny to see.

You know what else is a goofy movie?

Raising Arizona.

There you go.

Bringing it back around.

On to the second half of Act One.

I like that so much of their justification of why they so desperately want to have a child.

I'm going to fucking paraphrase this and misquote it, but the notion that like we were so happy in love that once we landed on the idea of having a child, depriving them even one potential day of the joy we were experiencing.

felt cruel, right?

That there was a sense of like they have found such comfort in each other that they created a world that they felt like we need to bring someone else into this, which then hurts them so much when they can't.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But

it's coming from like a true place of like we want to create a zone of love that can extend.

It's beautiful and it's human and it's not arch and it's not mannered and it's not stylized.

Yeah.

So what happened to the movie?

They kidnap.

They have the baby.

Nathan Jr.

Yeah.

They kidnap and then and then the

cellmates show up and they're

going to show up.

Yeah.

I love, it is something that stuck in my mind forever.

John Goodman using the hand soap in the bathroom as sort of like pomade to fix his hair.

It's pomade.

Really?

Yeah.

It's just so white and foamy that I always

think he's putting hand soap in there as well.

It's also public pomade, which is gnarly.

And oh, these gas stations.

It's the third most famous men's men's hair pomade in the Cohen brothers universe.

Well, Dapper Dan and Dapper.

Dapper Dan and Fop.

And I want Fop.

God damn it.

I met the guy who designed the cans for Fop and Dapper Dan, and indeed all of those products.

Wow.

I profiled him for the New York Times magazine, not for that reason.

His name is Ted Hay, and on cocktail bulletin boards in the early 2000s, he was known as Dr.

Cocktail.

And his hobby was,

he's a production designer for films, but his hobby was going into,

was recreating pre-Prohibition cocktails,

ideally with pre-Prohibition liquor that he would source by going into the attics of old liquor stores in Chicago and finding stuff that was 100 years old.

That fucking rules.

We've been close friends to

nearing a decade now.

I dare say.

I cannot believe I've never thought to ask you, were you on high-end cocktail message boards in the early 2000s?

i was not and how did you know this

because i befriended and was briefly the literary agent to dale degroff

who was the bartender the famous bartender at the rainbow room yep who uh really here i'm gonna do a picture of him quick from any like magazine he's probably ever been like featured in

Davis has perfectly affected the pose of a man shaking a drink shaking a drink anyway

Dale deGroff was part of the big cocktail renaissance of the of the early 2000s Craft cocktails.

Yeah.

And then, in fact, his book that I represented, The Craft of the Cocktail, still in

the world.

Still available in hardcover.

No paperback?

Probably there's a paperback out there.

I'll search.

But he put me on to Ted Hay and David Wondrich, another big cocktail historian.

David Wondrich has some awesome books about the history of cocktails.

Yeah, David Wondrich is a cool dude, and he's a former punk rocker.

Oh, really?

Yes.

Big shit.

Big time punk rocker.

So cool.

But Imbibe and Punch are two of his books that are excellent.

Highly recommend.

I don't know that Ted ever did a book, but you can read my profile of it in the New York Times magazine.

I don't think I saw Fancy Cocktail Chat hitting the Racing Arizona episode.

They don't really have a lot.

I just had to talk about how

excited I was when I learned that he designed the Fop and Dapper Dan cans.

I don't know.

I know what FOP, goddammit.

Speaking of doctors, Dr.

Spock, we got to talk about it.

That talks so funny that that's the instruction manual.

Yeah, that is a good job.

Yeah.

My parents had that book.

That book brings me back to the, you know,

our baby years.

Our childhood, exactly.

Our own personal baby years.

Is that still a tome?

Or has a lot of his stuff been completely discredited and thrown in the tracks?

I wouldn't say that's true.

It's more just.

It's just outmoded.

Yeah.

A lot of his stuff is still.

He's not a bad.

He's not bad.

Like, Dr.

Spock is good.

Like, his ideas are largely good.

He was.

Well, he just wanted people to live long and prosper.

You know, he was politically, he was on the left and he was on the right side of things and stuff.

You know, wait, I'm sorry.

Was he on the left or the right side of things?

I teed me up there.

I know you're trying to get your point out.

But all I can say about Dr.

Spock is I'm glad he's dead.

Look, I have three points of personal connection.

1998.

So he saw Raising Arizona.

I wonder if he thought it was funny.

Right.

I like to have his book in there.

I hope he was like, I hope he got a big fat check out of it.

Yeah.

That's a very, very funny running gag.

I don't think anyone involved involved with this movie got a big fat check, just to be clear.

I think the checks were fairly freaking out.

What if Benjamin Spock, Dr.

Benjamin Spock?

$6 million budget, five to Ben's.

Yeah, what if it was that?

All right.

So I have three points of personal connection that I must raise before the podcast ends.

And the podcast must end.

Two hours from this episode, not the whole.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One,

regarding Dr.

Spock, my wife is a whole human being in her own right.

Her aunt was his assistant for years.

Wow.

And it is understood within the family that she was also his mistress.

Sorry, Spock family.

I'm dropping some bombs.

Who knows?

This could be the Fletcher family mythology, but

Ann Winter was her name.

Ann Winter.

Yeah.

Another piece of personal connection.

Yeah.

I met Carter Burwell at the TED conference.

That's all.

Starstruck.

Did he yodel at you?

No, he was a very sweet, down-to-earth dude.

Actually, came to

David Reese and I years ago worked on a thing for HBO that never went, and he came to the edit to look at it.

He is able to, obviously, this score is not an example of this, but I think in some of his work, he's able to tap into

a feeling, a musical feeling that feels like it is touching such an intense darkness

that I always wonder, like, is he one of these guys who is just like,

and he seems very chill and light.

What does he seem like to me?

What?

What?

A little goofy.

He's a little goofy.

Sorry.

Sorry, David.

You know what I'm saying?

I'm like, I could listen to some of his scores and be like, is this this man the Edgar Allan Poe of film composers?

Oh, because

he's so dark and he wasn't

in love with his 14-year-old cousin.

Well, I would not get that.

I also don't get the Edgar Allan Poe thing.

I think

he is able to convey a darkness and music that I cannot think of another composer who is able to hit that consistently where I'm like, is this a man who is spending all of his time wallowing in the deepest thoughts imaginable?

And he does not seem to be that way.

Not in the very brief time that I'm.

The third point of personal connection, and and I will not tell the story until we're ready to end.

Okay.

Not

just because I want to keep moving.

Pin is.

Is that I auditioned for Burn After Reading.

Oh, interesting.

For what role?

I'll tell you later.

Pin.

Okay.

So what else happens in the movie?

Lack of conventional jokes, but Forsyth and Goodman showing up does have more of a kind of classic comedy vibe of them having to cover for their lives.

Silly conflict here.

It's a welcome home sign for a baby, which is funny.

Right.

So they have to explain that the baby was visiting the grandparents, even though both the grandparents are dead and they're in different locations.

But it's also the conflict of high being tempted back to criminal life.

Yes.

This is where he has the nightmare about Leonard Smalls, where we're sort of, I feel, really introducing this concept of like, High is sort of connected to, you know, he has the sight in a strange sort of a way, in a way the movie doesn't have to think about very hard.

Well, here's the thing that Cohens have said in interviews, that the way they conceived of Leonard Smalls was not what is the ultimate villain that could exist in this universe, but what is the ultimate villain that would exist in H.I.'s imagination?

Yes.

If he had to fear someone coming and retrieving the baby, what is the worst thing he would think of?

Right, right, right, right.

And it is almost a cartoon version of an evil biker.

And it comes to him in his sleep.

Yeah.

And he looks like a monster.

He looks like one of those Looney Tune monsters.

He does.

Yeah.

There's a quote I want to read from him from Tex.

Randall Texcob.

Yes.

He was on David Letterman, 1987.

Must have been for the promote the release of this movie, perhaps.

I don't know.

And

Letterman says, How does your current job compare to your old job?

And he said, In the last job I had, if you didn't do it just exactly right, you got hit in the mouth.

In this kind of job, the worst thing that can happen, I mean, if everything in the whole world goes wrong, take two.

Nice.

It's really good.

That's really something to think about.

It's really funny.

I think he is magnificent.

Well, in the movie, he's so perfect.

It's crazy.

His voice and manner.

His little squinty face.

The squinty face, the high-pitched voice, the stained teeth.

The stained teeth, but it's like, you know, it is absurd that this monster has his voice like this.

Like, it's totally like a Looney Tunes gag.

That nose that has been so mashed into his face that his breathing is wrong.

Yes.

The fact that his name is Leonard Smalls is so funny.

It's somehow too damn good.

He's money to his his friends, but he doesn't have any friends.

But he doesn't have any friends, right?

Yeah.

He wears the shit out of a grenade.

Although it's only

until the grenade wears the shit out of him.

That's very well thought of.

He's got the little booties.

What else?

I like that, you know.

Well, he was trafficked as a child.

Mama Didn't Love Me is the tattoo, right?

Yeah.

He's got the sort of different sized guns.

Yes.

Which I think is very cool.

Right, but that's what's smart about it.

He's got that weird fur on his boots.

What's smart about the character is that the movie says, like, this is the end result of a child being taken out of its nature.

Right.

Right.

Like, in a very silly, heightened way.

And, you know, the connection between the Woody Woodpecker tattoos

to jump ahead in the final confrontation, it's it's like a...

It's like a fighting Darth Vader in the tree moment.

Right.

And Empires.

You know, you're the same shit.

We're not so different.

We're talking about Yoda's and shit here.

Yoda's and shit.

We're not so different, you and I.

It's like, so he peels back, or, you know, they're in this big, very brutal fight.

And Nicholas Cage peels back a layer of fur-covered leather, fur-covered leather or whatever.

Sees he's got the Woody Woodpecker.

If, and that connection has always, and I think to the movie's credit, remained a little bit ambiguous.

Like, what it's not a very on-the-nose indication of sameness.

Yeah.

It's like it invites you to wonder how they're the same, how they're linked, what it is.

Now, it is Woody Woodpecker, but to be clear, that is an off-brand

appropriation of Woody Woodpecker for a muffler company from the 60s called Thrush Muffler.

It's kind of the equivalent of Calvin Pissing on shit.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And it was a staple of like muscle car

iconography in the 60s and 70s.

Which then often became like biker gang iconography.

And unfortunately, Woody Woodpecker, not that particular design, but in general in prison as a tattoo, is a white, is a white supremacist.

Because this guy has got their paws on Woody.

Yeah.

Is Woody Woodpecker funny?

It's a really good question.

Because I think a lot of him.

I definitely know who he is, and I know the noise he makes.

I don't ever lodged in my brain.

Woody Woodpecker would make the run on

afternoon cartoons on WLVI Channel 56 in Boston.

And I saw a lot of it, but I never remember ha ha ha ha ha being at it.

I remember having a distinct sort of fondness for, oh, a Woody's coming on, right?

Different.

I'm watching these hours-long animation blocks, and I'd be excited to see, like, oh, it's a chili willie, you know?

Yeah.

Like, Woody was not one I was dreading when a Woody Woodpecker cartoon came up in the rotation.

And yet, I watch Lunatoons today.

I laugh, I chuckle, I guffaw.

Yeah.

I cannot imagine Woody Woodpecker doing anything that would make me.

He's an imitation.

I mean, yes.

Purposeful and considered imitation.

And even if he was Mel Blanc or Blanc, or I don't know how you say his name, right?

Yeah.

I don't know.

He's dead now, and I'm glad of it.

John?

Wait a second.

Everyone's getting bodied here.

All these 20th century icons.

Just acknowledging that we all are mortal.

We don't live forever.

And I'm glad.

I'm just glad that people are dead rather than being stuck on this myrtle coil long

past their due date.

Do you think Mel Blanc had to die so that Mel B from the Spice Girls could emerge?

Yeah, they're going to be one.

Right.

I forgot they were both Highlanders.

Yeah, good point.

But Woody Woodpecker was also ran, an imitation.

Yes.

Sorry.

Sorry, the estate of Walter Lance.

If Yoda told you to go into a cave of evil, would you do it?

Yeah, I'd do anything Yoda told me to do.

Because that might be when I'm peacing out.

I guess he doesn't have the X-Wing out yet.

Yeah.

Now, X-Files, Tex Cobb's in one of those.

Here's the difference.

I

would

say no workie, as the millennials say.

You've been sick for 17 years, it seems like.

You've had the endless cold.

When I watch Empire Strikes Back, my thought is always, I don't know if I leave Dagaba.

Right, actually, kind of, sort of a chill vibe.

I think Yoda's kind of got it figured out.

And I know it looks like, I got to go save my friends.

And part of me is just sort of like, I don't know if anything you can do at this point for you.

Yoda makes a good point.

Well, look, I know that we like talking about Yodas and shit.

Yeah.

We should not, because poor David.

Sure, I like talking about Yoda.

Are you kidding me?

You want to throw the rest of this movie away and just talk about Yodas and shit?

Sure, no, no.

Come on.

Sure.

What's up with Yoda?

I'll tell you something about Yoda.

He died pretty suddenly in Return of the Jedi, right, David?

Yeah, that was the point I made.

You're taking my point.

Yeah, but that was before we were on Mike.

Oh, you want me to make it?

He's old the entire fucking saga.

Why is he choosing that moment to tap?

And then, like, in Jedi, Luke's like, hey, Yoda, what's up?

It's been like

a year max since I last saw you.

Yoda's like, truly seconds from death.

He's just like, Luke, I'm walking in that bed and let me tell you, I ain't getting out of it, okay?

Yeah.

Luke's like, oh, I have a bunch of questions for you.

He's like, yeah, I think Leia's your sister or something.

Check in with the Obi-Wan ghost.

I am out of here.

He's got to marry on Kutiar or Dark Knight Rise's death.

Luke, it is actually hysterical that in Jedi, Yoda can't even give Luke a lot of the exposition.

And fucking ghost Obi-Wan then sits on alarm and is like, FYI, yes, we knew Vader was your dad.

Yes, Leia is your dad.

Yoda didn't cover any of this?

Are you fucking kidding me?

The guy couldn't have held on for 10 more minutes.

And Luke's like, why didn't you tell me about the Vader thing?

He's like, Luke, from a certain point of view, and Luke's like, just say George hadn't figured it out yet.

All I remember,

even though, even though I was

like, I can't believe I'm even in this one, I died two movies ago.

Even though I was only 12 years old, maybe when that movie came out, and I and I think John Wolfe convinced our teachers to let the whole class skip school.

Oh, that's like

to go see it as a field trip.

Right.

Brooks Ames was not allowed to come with us

because his parents said no.

We're Sith.

Even though I was young, in that moment when Yoda died, I thought to myself, two things.

One, that's how it is.

When a person gets old, if you're caretaking for an elder parent, they'll take a sudden turn for the worse.

And the other thing I thought at the time was, I'm glad he's dead.

I think the smallest thing is, right, like there is this fear of what feels like this

incomprehensible, otherworldly, if not evil, at least scariness, right?

Like a man who exists just to be a monster.

And yet his motivating force is, I was taken away by my parents and look at me now and I have to stop it from happening, right?

Which more than him being able to solve the problem himself, I think it kind of scares HI and Ed enough, combined with seeing the actual sorrow of the Arizonas at the child being missing, of like, if we love this kid, we actually can't do this to him.

Right.

This is like creating a problem that's going to hang over him for the rest of his life, whether he knows it or not.

But the fact, sorry.

And then the second part of it is, I think seeing the tattoo is less signaling that they're part of the same white supremacist group and more just like, oh, right, this guy was a person at some point.

It's not that we're the same there's emotion that's been kind of calcified or like, you know, scarred over with this guy.

Yes.

Yeah.

Like it is the raw, it is his raw flesh.

The last thing that High says to him is sorry.

Like High has to destroy him because he's a villain, an obstacle.

But High doesn't feel great about blowing him up.

Right.

But like every.

But there's also ambiguity about what the apology is for.

Like it is that.

Sure.

But what else is he sorry for?

And I love this ambiguity.

Like I, it, this is what I was thinking about before with regard to trying to figure out what is the emotional core of the Cohens that they're bringing to this.

It doesn't matter.

Then

I studied literary theory at Yale University, a four-year accredited college in Southern Connecticut.

And the first thing we were taught is the author is dead.

Authorial intention does not matter.

Yes.

What is left behind the text often reflects things that the author doesn't even think about on a conscious level.

So, even if they do have an intention and state it, that does not mean that they themselves, if they are alive, they're reliable narrators necessarily about their own work.

And so, and sometimes they're not allowed, they're not, they can't speak for their intention because they are dead.

And you know what?

I'm glad.

I'm glad.

But that said,

tell me how many points.

The effort to try to humanize or find an emotional core for what the Goans are going through is, I think, ultimately a dead end for this reason.

And I love the fact that they will put in these things that feel very meaningful and yet they have no precise.

explanation.

Well, the hat and Miller's Crossing is probably the ultimate one.

We'll talk about it next.

Sure.

And we'll get to Serious Man, which embraced the mystery is them yelling that at the audience, right?

At a a point in time where I think audiences had finally come to understand how to build a relationship to their movies and not bang their head against a wall.

But I also think a lot about, I believe it was on an episode of WTF where Pat and Oswald was on, and the two of them were talking about how much they both love the Cohen brothers.

And Marin says something to the effect of like, you know about like movies and shit, right?

Why are the Cohen brothers so good?

Explain to me why I think about their movies all the time.

Honestly, that's why he's a master interviewer.

I agree.

And

Oswald said something that I think about a lot in relation to their work, where I will probably paraphrase this in a way that is much worse than the way he put it, but something to the effect of

the thing about the Cohen brothers is they're not interested in giving you answers.

They just kind of casually open doors and let you decide whether or not you want to walk through them yourselves, right?

And there is that feeling of, I know there is something behind this door.

And now the door has been opened, but they're not guiding you through it.

And they're not telling you you need to walk through that door.

Exactly.

And that feeling of like, I might not have the answers, but I know there is an answer here.

And part of the joy is knowing that you're never going to land on it definitively, but that you can wonder about what's behind that door forever.

I mean, you know, so much of

movie quote-unquote fandom on the internet these days is breaking it down and figuring it out

and getting to a final answer.

And they don't design movies like puzzles of like, we're giving you the clues.

And if you put them together right, you will have everything.

They're not like Mr.

Policeman, I gave you all the clues.

They're not like

they're not snowmen.

And I think, you know, this movie has less of it than some of their later funnels.

I want to be clear that I thought that was funny.

That was very funny.

Thank you very much.

You might have heard on the audio David laughing uproariously at that joke, unless Ben chose to cut it out for some reason.

Sick guy.

Weird.

But I think, like,

you know what?

I love the ambiguity, you know?

Just let it, like, did David find it funny or not?

It's for you to interpret.

It's hard to think of another like broad studio comedy of the 1980s that would allow you to be like, and I don't know if I'll ever have an answer for that.

And I find that interesting.

Yeah, no, obviously.

In a way that doesn't feel like a plot hole.

Right.

It's just fascinating that even in their movie that's like, let's just try to make something that's fun, it still starts to like scratch at these corners of mystery.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I think we kind of left off discussing somewhat the couple, Glenn and Dot, stop by, meet the new baby.

I need to award 5 million comedy points to their son who just writes the word fart

on the inside.

I remember their wall.

That hits so hard.

It is incredible.

And then the callback to fart later is equally genius.

And I like how they're signaling just like the chaos of this family and how they're not really disciplining the children at all.

They're gently signaling that the family is chaos.

Yeah, they're not doing well.

The kids are all bandaged and hitting everybody with sticks.

But this basically leads to the-like when they cut to that shot and they're just like hitting the fucking car.

The girl's got the eye patch.

This leads like directly into the huggies heist.

Yes.

Yes.

Things are.

Tension is building.

They stop at a convenience store.

I need some huggies.

I need some huggies and all the cash you have.

I'll take these huggies and

whatever cash you have.

You and I agree, David, that the Cohen brothers are underrated as being some of the best action filmmakers on the planet because it's not their primary mode.

They don't have a movie.

Yes, absolutely.

Again, I mean, like, it is hard.

I don't really know how they did this camera stuff.

I've watched special features where they sort of explain it.

And some of its evolution of Raimi Cam show.

The way it rockets around.

Yes.

It's so cool.

Yes.

But yes, High knocks over a convenience store.

He can't help it.

He loves to knock over a convenience store.

I think a lot of its under cranking combined with like incredibly meticulously rehearsed and practiced runs on complicated dolly tracks and rigs and such.

It was the adolescence of its day.

I couldn't think of a better way to put it.

I will never watch that shit.

I will never watch it.

You haven't seen it?

No.

Oh, you have to see it.

Do I?

Oh, it's magnificent.

I've been too busy re-watching Disney's bonkers from the beginning, so that's going to take up the next four months of my life.

It is a.

Are you okay?

if you are not seeing it because of one of two reasons.

One, that it is emotionally devastating.

That's true.

Yeah.

And two, that the gimmick of shooting each episode is a single one shot

is distracting and mannered.

I don't, I don't believe that.

I believe it is well executed, yet I'm just like, I simply don't want to watch that mostly because of point one.

I would say that both of those things are true, and yet you forget about them

in a way that is astonishing.

Both the technique that it was filmed and the fact that it is, I mean, you feel the emotional gut punch, but you are on a journey.

It's great.

Just to resolve this question, David, my girlfriend asked me, are there cartoon characters that you grew up having like early formative crushes on?

And I was like, yeah, I feel like the obvious ones, you know, the generationally Spinelli and recess and whatever.

And I said, what about you?

And she went, bonkers.

And I went, well, that's very damning for me.

It feels like there's a real straight line to you being activated by bunkers as a child and dating me now.

That's sadly true.

And then I was like, I think we need to watch Bonker so I can solve this.

61 episodes and four special compilations.

I think we're 10 in.

I feel profoundly.

older than you.

I don't, this is a generational thing.

I don't even know what that is.

Bunkers was like a rip-off Roger Rabbit cartoon that clearly they deny it had been developed as the Roger Rabbit animated series and then realized we're going to have Semekis and Spielberg baked into these contracts and too much approval.

So it becomes about a different silly cartoon animal who is partners with a gruff, fat, real-world style policeman to solve cases in Toontown.

Oh, all right.

What's next in Raising Arizona?

What else do we need to talk about?

Huggies.

Huggies.

Heists, which is just like a Bervera fucking 10, 12-minute action scene.

The payoff when

he's giving her those directions

while they're having the monologue, you have a man for a husband.

You're not a real man.

All that convert, that subtext about what it means to be grown up.

And then you realize that he's giving directions to the huggies.

To pick them up, just count them

while speeding.

The dogs are so good.

I do not have any children.

You gentlemen both do.

I do feel like, and tell me if my read on this is wrong, this is sort of metaphorically them being like.

You become a parent and then suddenly everything in your life feels like this all the time.

Yeah, that's the pressure of fuck.

How do we get diapers?

Yeah.

Everything is really hard and high intensity.

Yeah, yeah.

You feel like you're being chased by a pack of dogs all the time.

Yeah.

And there's also that big dog, and then there's that little dog,

which I kind of felt was like a reference to that Looney Tomb where the bulldog and the one that jumps and Tom's them, hey, Rex, or whatever.

You know, all these guys I'm talking about.

Absolutely.

Then there's also Two Stupid Dogs, which was kind of a ripoff of that bunker style, which was another night.

So we're getting out of this.

All right.

So, what's next?

I thought, but here, I just thought John Goodman and William Forsyth were a riff on the big dog and the little dog.

No, I agree with you.

That's all.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, next is his former boss, the foreman, shows up with his broken nose and his neck in a brace.

And he's now threatening because he's figured out.

He's put it together.

Yeah, and they want the baby.

Right, which Goodman and Forsyth are also putting together.

Because they're hearing it.

Everyone around them now realizes they've done something wrong and I can benefit from it.

You know what's up, Doc?

The gig.

The gig is up.

And no one knows how to get to Albuquerque.

No one knows.

The place of salvation.

Everything's been found out.

Very fun fight between Goodman and Cage and the house and just the spinning

and it's three stooges.

Right.

Goodman's such a like a big beefer and like Cage is this weird string bean guy like with just like such unpredictable energy.

The other thing is that this is starting to severely strain their relationship.

The guilt of this.

is which is also parenting.

Like I get what you're saying.

Like right.

It's about the strain of parenting like and what it does

to people.

Like, of course, to a new relationship or whatever.

Yeah.

But also within this movie, there's the sort of ends justify the mean situation of this will make us so happy that maybe we have to do something wrong in order to give us the future that we want.

Right.

And by doing it the wrong way, it like eats at their relationship.

Yeah.

It starts to turn them against each other.

Yeah.

The guilt, I think, is really kind of getting to them, right?

And this fear of, are we going to fuck up this kid?

Right, yeah.

Um,

so they make up with the baby, yeah.

Goodman, Goodman, and Forsyth steal the baby, steal the baby, instantly fall in love, they love him so much, it's very they become, they become immediate surrogate parents, yeah.

That's when he's got to go buy the huggies from the old timer.

It's kind of a magic baby.

How do you put them on?

Like, and he said, Well, they have these tape pets, and it's fairly explanatory.

So that's also the balloon.

These balloons blow up into funny shapes.

And then they do the whole like countdown thing.

And I'll be back in five minutes.

I love that recurring.

They go rob the bank.

They forget that they've left the baby carrier on top of the car.

Huge reaction in the theater when they put that.

That was such a beautiful cinematic slide of the huge.

Just the very image of the baby in the seat, yes.

And there's by making the baby a little precocious, the sort of like hiding the face kind of thing,

it does,

I think it buffers the actual like discomfort of

yeah, you know, you're like,

I'm accepting that you're using the baby in a manipulative way that are fun movie stakes, while also being like, this baby could fucking baby's day out if it wanted to.

It's never really

smarter than anyone in a way.

Exactly.

And when Goodman and Forsyth realize they left the baby on top of the car, they pop out their birthing screams again.

So good.

Which is such a like, I remember, well, I don't remember what I remember, but it's such a

clue to the movie.

Like, we were dealing with very primal emotions here.

Yes.

Right.

Like, these are primal screams that these guys are embodying.

And Edwina is like sobbing in the car.

Yeah.

While, you know, HI has just kind of gone numb as they're trying to chase after both the baby and the

jail yard buddies.

At the same time, Smalls appears, presents himself to, you know,

Arizona,

who is basically like not interested.

And he's like, fine, I'll just do it anyway.

I'll just steal the baby and I guess sell the baby.

I guess that's his plan, like just not even claim the reward.

Well, he's saying, I'll do it.

I'll do it for what, what, what was the reward?

$20,000?

$50,000.

Yeah.

Yeah, but he demands $50,000.

Right.

It's $25,000 and he demands more.

He demands more because that's what the market will bear because he knows because he was trafficked as a child or whatever.

And I guess he's got the receipts.

But you also get to what is kind of the line of the movie for me, which is, if I'm as bad as you, what good are we to each other?

Right, right, right.

But it's really

Cohen Brothers' logic too.

To weigh down on her that she feels like they're both activating something bad in each other that has led to this whole situation and disregard our love.

Clearly, this doesn't work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, then there's a fight and then there's the end.

Yeah, I mean,

well, there's the die pack exploding.

Another primal scream.

Yes.

They do this sort of on robbery with the baby.

Yes.

Yes.

I mean, there's so much fun shit.

And it's also energizing and wonderful.

But again, to me, it's the last 15 minutes that make the movie make sense.

Yes.

Because you're watching this movie kind of being like, how can this end?

appropriately which i i love a movie that's that lays out a a deck of cards where you're like, there is no way for you to get out of this over here.

Right, right.

Because like, you're like, you're, you're like, yes, possibly they're just going to give the baby back.

But isn't that just kind of like,

doesn't that feel a little cheap or a little like a bit of a bummer or whatever?

Right.

Right.

You know, like, okay, can we give the baby back?

Yeah, no worries.

Just to be clear.

Like, well, then what was the whole movie?

The double layer of, I don't know how the characters are going to untangle this situation, and I don't know how the filmmakers are going to let that untangling feel feel like a satisfying conclusion to whatever I've been watching.

I mean, one

thing that Looney Tunes cartoons could do, or they weren't, they were never tasked with sticking the landing to a two-hour-long feature.

They don't have to resolve any sense of an emotional narrative.

Yeah, you just fall like the coyote falls off the cliff for the third time.

Yeah, and then Bugs Bunny looks at the camera and says, Fuck that guy, right?

That's the famous closing catchphrase of Looney Tunes, right?

Fuck that guy, right?

Fuck that guy.

The maturity, like defeating Leonard for high.

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It's hard to bring it home.

It is.

Yeah.

Feels like some sort of like...

siege perilous that high passes through successfully.

Yeah.

And in the sort of magic realism, magical thinking of this movie, because obviously what happens, just to very quickly summarize, is they return the baby.

Nathan Arizona is like, it's all good.

I understand that you did this out of love, even though you're stupid.

Yeah.

And then High says that he had a dream of first of.

Well, Nathan Arizona sees that they still have love, even though they have given up on that.

You guys shouldn't give up on each other either way.

And High dreams first of just watching Nathan Jr.'s life.

you know, from afar, right?

But then also dreams of being greeted by his own grandchildren in a a sequence that makes me

water comes out of my eyes.

And I'm like, what is this feeling?

And Arizona has also said to them, like,

he plays this so fucking well in the arcs of it, of him being like, who are you?

We brought the baby back.

Don't ask questions.

Can we say goodbye?

He from behind.

He's not even looking at their faces, sees the emotion and their body language, their relationship to each other, where he's like, you're the ones who took him.

And he's not even angry, even though they had framed it as we saved the baby from smalls originally,

where he's just like, Something profound and emotional has happened here.

And I'm just grateful that you came around to doing the right thing.

And then he is so quickly kind of bereft at the idea that they're about to torpedo the relationship, where he's like, Whatever's happened here is a sign of something honest.

Yeah.

And they're sort of like, her infertility has driven us crazy.

We don't understand how we have a future for this relationship.

One of the, one of the things about this movie that a lot of stylized mannered movies by different directors that came afterward that were primarily preoccupied with men's ambiguity about growing up, this movie is really about a woman genuinely wanting to be a mother.

Yeah.

In a very sincere way.

And

it's a stark difference from some of the meta sort of crimy,

like wackadoo movies that would come out in the 90s in its wake to a degree.

But Nathan says to them, like, you got to just keep trying, which is what my my wife and I did.

Right.

Despite this character, this actor only being 37 years old, he reads like a fucking 70-year-old man.

Right.

And so him saying, like, we kept trying and you hope that medical science catches up to you and it caught up to us with a vengeance, which gives HI the ability to dream of like, one way or another, we're going to have a family.

There is a way to make this happen.

You know?

Yes.

Yeah.

And I do feel like the magical thinking of this movie is like something has happened in defeating Leonard and saving this baby and making the like that like it's maybe things can be different for them we don't know extinguishing the dragon and returning back to your village yeah yes

um

it's really funny that gail and evil return to prison through the hole that they dug out so cute they gotta go back later but that's in his that's in his mind but well i believe that it happened for sure yeah they weren't ready to be born glenn gets arrested for being an asshole to polish people an excellent bit of come up for sergeant kowalski yes sergeant kowalski and i just i like this idea it gets at that like in some way this experience that could not be literally processed by a baby will have some lasting effect on nathan jr

that sets him apart from his brothers and sisters yeah yeah

i mean i and I think it's a valuable lesson for the baby.

And I wasn't a parent when I saw it.

I've seen it many times since being a parent.

And I realized, oh, that is why we drove around with our kids on top of the car so many times because we wanted to give them that experience.

And they don't remember it, but I think they benefit from it.

Absolutely.

Such a good parent.

Thank you.

And the final line of.

David, YouTube, by the way.

Yeah.

The picturing.

Let that horse in here.

Being old, having the grandchildren, Thanksgiving.

It feels like home, if not Arizona, someplace far away, right, where children and parents are loved or whatever and everything is warm.

I don't know.

Maybe Utah.

So great.

It's just such a good final joke.

Absolutely.

I mean, how do you not walk out of the movie just walking on air?

Yes.

Yeah.

I did.

I was living in.

Like basically 90 minutes soaking wet.

I walked out on air and I was completely as a creative.

I mean,

I think I was turning 16 that year.

Wow.

But I mean, it's like I've, I don't think I've ever stopped thinking about that movie since I saw saw it.

And it was incredible.

You are such a dear friend of the show.

And we often go like, fuck, we should ask Hodgman.

It's been a little too long, right?

About once a year.

It's like, what's up with Hodgie?

But there are things like Dune, where like the second Lynch won Mark's Madness, we were like, well, that it's, it's a no-brainer.

It's a non-question.

The first person I ask, right?

There are things like Evil Dead 2 who are struggling to find someone.

We were like, wait a second, Hodgman.

And you were like,

I don't know why that was a struggle, but okay.

But there's also, there have been things like a master builder, which many people cite as one of our best episodes, that was like, we cannot imagine anyone who would want to come on.

That was our raising

of the greats.

We went weird, hard.

And that we did not care about any

there are no rules in that

top memory Reddit thread that's like, you know, do us the solid show up, and we trust that with you in the room, we will figure out how to make this an episode that people will want to listen to without

hearing much of this time.

Our friends from the Flop House.

Yeah.

Stuart Wellington in particular.

Katie McCoy, Elliott Kalen, co-host of iPodias with John Hodgman.

Go on.

They had been trying to do some sort of New York movie podcaster and such meetup, which we'd done in past years and kind of fallen away by

pandemic school.

John Bar on 12th Street and Fifth Avenue.

New wife, but the

bar with his wife.

What am I saying?

Not new wife.

With his wife.

Long-standing wife.

But the We Hate Movies.

Matt Singer.

What are we doing here?

We have been struggling

with?

The Raising Arizona scheduling problem, even though this is such a big movie where we're like, it's weird.

No one's asking for this one.

And yet, it's such a big film that it feels like we can't just wantonly throw someone on it without it being worthy, you know?

Yeah.

And you're at the bar and you're heading out.

And I was like, by the way, we have to get you on.

We haven't done since Dune.

Cohen's.

And you go like,

I mean, Raising Arizona.

And I was like, yeah, great.

I text David.

I'm like, we've solved it.

Raising Arizona, right?

Yeah.

And then I tell you, like, scheduling this and that.

We figure out the puzzle.

You get back.

You land.

Two days later, you send a long text and you're like, gentlemen, I just want you to know I'm not trying to throw around my weight.

I don't want to be greedy.

I think of myself as a utility player in the

tapestry of your show.

I just figured people would be clamoring for all the Cullen movies and that two or three of your regs

were probably going for Raising Arizona.

I just thought it was such a gentleman's move move that even after we said, yes, please, you went, I don't want to take it away from someone else.

Know that I would gladly go on any episode, whichever one you're having the hardest time booking.

And I said, you are lucky that this is the one we are having the hardest time booking.

And also, that is one that you clearly have such a formative relationship.

I guess it was meant to be.

We just, we love you.

We thank you.

Let me say something.

I love you all.

Always been of such great value to us as a friend.

Thank you very much.

And I'm as a person and friend of the show.

I'm very glad you're all alive.

The ultimate compliment.

Thanks, John.

I hope it stays that way for a while.

Look, this film came out

in February of 1987, but we're not doing that weekend.

And let me tell you why.

Sorry, March.

Oh, no, that.

Well, I think it opened

small and then opened wide.

Yeah, it opened on one theater at March 13th, 1987.

We're not doing that weekend because that is the weekend of Evil Dead 2, an episode that John literally was on.

Wow.

Oh, wow.

So I'm going to do its wide weekend.

It's a big year for Hodgman.

It's big wide weekend.

in the world.

It's adding hundreds of theaters.

Okay.

April 10th, 1987.

Insane.

Where it thinks about these two movies being in theaters at the same time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was definitely April when I saw it.

I did not see it in March.

It hits $2 million.

The film ultimately ends up grossing $22 million, which is a lot of money.

Yeah.

And according to numbers, $767 whole dollars internationally.

My guess is they just don't have a lot of data.

But number one at the box office.

It's number seven.

Okay.

So number one at the box office, Griffin, is is a...

April 87th.

A comedy.

Sort of a youthful comedy, I guess.

But it's not a teen comedy.

Well, that's why I'm struggling to call this a teen.

It's this actor who's kind of transitioning from teen to

youngish,

you know, adulty guy.

Is it a Fraphacker?

Is it a Hughes person?

No.

No.

Who's the other one in that era who made, you know, who was like a star?

Star.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If not Cruz.

No, no, no.

Comedy.

Yeah, comedy.

It's not an Outsider's Boy.

I'm trying to think of who's the other one who's making the transition in the 80s.

He's mostly comedy, but he's trying to broaden.

This is a comedy.

This movie is a comedy.

This movie's a comedy.

He became a gigantic star, gigantic, gigantic star two years ago with a huge hit movie.

He's a big TV.

In 85, you're saying.

Oh, this is Michael J.

Fox.

That's right.

But what's the film?

Is this the Secret of My Success?

The Secret of My Success.

I could have seen my success.

Neither have I.

Herbert Ross, of course, sort of legendary director, but near the end of his career.

It's kind of a largely forgotten movie that you look at, its box office grosses, and you were just like, man, Michael J.

Fox was just

so beloved at the time that people were going to see anything he did.

And it had that Night Ranger song.

Sister Christian?

No, The Secret of My Success.

Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.

So that's opening to, it's new this week, $7 million, $7.7 million.

Number four at the box office is a sequel, comedy sequel.

Sure.

In 1987.

Comedy sequel.

Comedy sequel.

Is it a two?

Nope.

Is it a three?

Nope.

Is it a police academy?

It is.

Is it a four?

That's right.

Is it Mission in Moscow?

Nope.

I always get them wrong.

Fuck.

Is it Citizens on Patrol?

Citizens are on patrol today for the Police Academy for.

I just realized Citizens on Patrol spells out C-O-P.

There you go.

Fuck.

That is

good.

There's a lot to unpack in the middle.

I haven't seen that.

I've never seen a single police agabin.

Same.

I've seen scenes.

Sure.

I don't think I'm doing it.

I'd flip through and catch a squitz intent here.

There's one character who's a little bit of a has the gift of the gab.

Well, the gift of the gab or the gift of the sound.

Gift of the sound effects.

Yes.

Pew, pew, pew.

That guy.

I'd say that's not Gabbin.

I'd say that's...

But it's like his map.

Yep.

Magic mouth.

Meow, meow.

Number three at the box office is...

Michael Winslow is still alive, right?

Yeah.

Good, I'm glad.

Thank God.

Is he?

I am all but certain.

And if not, I'm going to have to come up with different evening plans.

He's alive as hell.

Thank you.

This guy is so alive.

I'm glad.

I'm glad of that.

Nice, lovely Wikipedia picture, full color, looks great.

I pray he doesn't die by the time this episode comes out.

Jesus Christ.

Okay, number three at the box office is a romantic comedy from a legendary director.

Okay.

A legendary star, but at this point, he's a fairly new star.

Interesting.

This is a movie that got very bad reviews, but I just did okay.

Is this one of the Bruce Willis movies?

It is a Bruce Willis.

Willis movie.

It's Blake Edwards' Blind Date.

With Bruce Willis and Kim Basinger.

Blake Edwards did the two Bruce movies back-to-back that were meant to be the moonlighting transition to movie stardom, and they both don't work.

Sunset, of course, means the other one,

which is sort of a crime, old-timey crime comedy.

Yep.

And then

Blind Date, which was kind of a hit, but was just sort of like, I don't know if this guy was.

These were pre-diehard, both of them.

And then the following year is Die Hard, and people go, holy shit.

People go, holy shit.

Number four at the box office is the re-release of an animated film.

I assume from the fine folks at Walt Disney Studio.

That's correct.

Okay.

I put this on for my daughter once, and she could not have been less interested in it.

Interesting.

Okay.

Sort of confirm

what I remember about it, which is it was never a movie I liked very much.

But

is it a classic, classic?

70s.

Is it like the Aristocats?

It is not just like the Aristocats, but it is the Aristocats.

I would almost say that no movie is more like the aristocats than the aristocats uh yeah a movie i put on because those ritherman movies are often interesting i put it on it has that very shaggy you know animation style but i would admit i too was always like yeah i never really loved writherman era is my favorite disney animation studios era and yet that is the one that i feel like i never revisit and have no inclination to i remember being at a young age where i had learned i'd started learning about how stories work and my parents explained to me what morals were, especially when you're watching children's entertainment.

Most movie try movies try to get you to the story.

I've told that story before, but it's a really good story.

And my older cousin walked in on me watching the Aristocats, and I got to the end, and I looked at him and I was like befuddled.

And I was like, So, what's the moral of this story?

And he went, I don't know, everyone wants to be a cat.

Yelled it,

which is just the song they're singing at the end.

But he was like, My disaffected, older, like fucking 20-year-old cousin.

I was like, I don't know, everybody wants to be a cat.

I don't think this is about anything.

101 Dalmatian, Sword in the Stone jungle book.

I feel like Robin Hood, those are the pieces of the rival ones.

Number five of the box office is a giant action hit,

first in a long-running series.

Talk about Crush Worthy animated characters.

That Robin Hood Fox.

Everyone goes hot.

You might be surprised to hear that Made Mary and Fox and Robin Hood was what I cited to my girlfriend.

Jesus Konk, those are some hot foxes.

Is it Predator?

No.

What was it again?

Is it action?

Lethal weapon.

Yes.

There we go.

Lethal weapon.

Richard Donner's lethal weapon.

You've also got Platoon still in the top 10.

From Winning Best Picture the Year.

From Winning Best Picture of the Year Before.

You've got a little film called Raising Arizona.

You got Barry Levinson's Tin Men,

which is fun.

Amanda Knox's dad's favorite movie?

It's a runner on big pictures.

They're doing their 25 for 25 where he keeps saying, where have you ranked 10 men?

And she keeps having to tell her dad.

You said Amanda Knox.

You meant Amanda Dobbins.

Amanda Knox, of course, is the woman who was accused of murdering someone.

I'm so sorry.

In a group text.

I was like, Amanda Knox's dad.

I was,

it's like, I swang in a ball.

I was all the way over there.

So sorry.

In a group text containing Sean Fennessy, we were all joking about the fact that her middle name is Knox.

And her son is named Knox for this reason.

Yes.

But

you're like, Amanda.

Knox is dad's favorite movie.

I'm sorry.

Huh.

But also, maybe it was.

We'll have to check.

The big picture is: he keeps going, where are you going to rank Tin Men?

And she goes, Nowhere.

And also, it came out in the 80s.

Right.

The assignment is movie since 2000.

Where are you going to rank Tin Men?

Yeah, a fun movie.

Fun little movie.

Never seen it.

Yeah.

This is a really mixed bag.

No wonder Charles and I went to see Raising Arizona.

I wouldn't have seen any of these movies.

What's the

lethal weapon?

Not so good for you.

Never saw it.

Okay.

Number nine at the box, it's pretty good.

Number nine at the box office is Nightmare Noma Street Street 3, Dream Warriors.

Great movie.

Do we both agree the best one?

It's a very complicated question.

Okay.

I think versus

the song from that one was a meow, meow, meow, meow.

Great song.

I think it's the best of the sequels.

I think the first one has...

kind of crazy magic to it and is actually scary.

I enjoy all other Freddy movies, but none of them are scary.

The first one is scary.

Yeah.

Like it's really disturbing and the way he films the dreams are so cool.

Yeah, uh, the third one, though, is the best of the hey, if these movies take place in the dream world, they should be wild and fantastic.

But you're right, it's starting to become almost a little more of an action movie.

Dream Warriors is where it, but the second movie is obviously so strange and this time it's

three is like, yeah, like let's get a fantasy movie, yeah, it just fucking rolls, it does roll,

does roll, that's so much fun.

Uh, number 10 is the uh Hugh Wilson comedy burglar starring with Goldberg and Bobcat Goldthwaite, a film I have never seen.

This is a big weekend for Bob.

I know, know, I was just going to say, two in the top ten.

I mean, he's out of control and he's burgling.

This is kind of

a peak, right?

Or, I mean, like.

Hot to Trot, I would say, was really the.

But that's also

going downhill.

Hot to Trot is a year later.

Yeah.

I'm only saying that.

I love Bobcat.

Goldthwaite, obviously, a wonderful guy, a wonderful director.

Yeah.

But he definitely is a guy where you're like, huh, when he was a movie star, things didn't always work out so good for Hot to Trot or Shakespeare.

Bob talked about that, too, where he's like, You really think a whole movie of this is gonna work?

And they were just like, Money!

I just saw a trailer for Hot to Trot of the Nighthawk.

That's what was on my mind.

I'm not thinking about it all the time.

I don't know why they were showing that trailer.

I should go see Hot to Trout,

David.

Uh, that's the 10.

Uh, yeah, I gave you the 10.

It's a pretty good 10, although John apparently is completely dissatisfied.

Embodied the 10.

I guess Citizens on Patrol and an Aristocats re-release is not the most thrilling.

That's the time's worst of times, right?

Uh, And I've never seen Blank Date.

This film obviously was a big hit and well received, but we have, as we discussed, some critics still looking askance at the Cohens for being a little slick and a little possibly patronizing, although I don't think they are.

Here's my complaint about the Cohens.

Are they too good at making movies?

Well, basically, that's what a lot of people are doing.

That is what a lot of Cohen reviews boil down to.

It's a little suspicious.

Honestly, even post-success.

Yes.

Like, once they're deep in their success, sometimes people are like, can they stop being so impressive?

Yeah.

Like, I want to actually watch the movie.

And I'm like, why don't you just watch the movie?

What are they up to making perfect movies?

There are some perfectly executed movies beyond perfectly executed, sort of like mind-bogglingly well-made and acted that I can't, they're a barren place where my seed will find no purchase

because I feel like they don't need a viewer, essentially.

Such as?

Well, this is my very controversial hot take that I was reserving for off mic later.

Okay.

But because of my love for you guys in the podcast and many, many people loving these films that I had never seen, I've been watching the later Missions Impossible.

And they're absolutely glorious, but I'm, I just, they're just bouncing off my eyeballs because I just feel like there's no need

for anyone in this.

That'd be a good stunt.

Exactly.

Hodgman, can you tell us the point?

Fern after reading, and then to finish your point.

Well, I was just going to say, like, all of the Cohen, even though they are virtuosic,

and even though they are sometimes very cold, I feel like there's room for me in this movie.

I watch all of their movies so much, and I find them very comforting, even the ones that are dark or intense.

Yeah.

And I do think it's because there is a core humanism to them that I find comforting amidst the chaos.

I, when I, my life was kidnapped by television and then by commercials for Apple.

How rude.

And all of a sudden,

all of my dumb, pretentious dreams of watching movies suddenly became like I could be in them.

And I said, when I got representation, they're like, what do you want to do?

Like, who do you want to?

They were like, you know, you can do anything now.

You were in an ad.

It's a different ad.

You were all over America.

But they were like, they were like, you know, we can, we can try to make some things happen for you.

What, what are your, and I was like, I'd like to be in Battle Circle Actica.

And if I were to make any movie, it would be with the Cohen brothers.

Anything.

I'll do anything.

And I was

invited to audition for Burn After Reading.

Makes perfect sense.

Several roles in that I could see you fitting.

There's a very small role at the beginning of the film where I Jeffrey DeMon is the doctor?

No.

Interesting.

Honestly,

I don't know that I've ever seen that movie because I was sad that I couldn't be in it.

Wow.

And that's a, and there's, that's why I was able to be be tricked later.

Okay.

So I auditioned for them.

They were like, it was really a big deal.

They were sitting right across from me.

Wow.

And I was playing some kind of Mormon FBI agent or something at the very beginning of the movie.

Interesting.

We will revisit soon.

And I did not get the role.

Sure.

I don't know who got the role because I never saw it.

Wow.

It's a little scarred.

It hurts too much.

And I was telling this story on the set of the Apple ads

after it was clear I was not going to get the role, but I was like, I was excited about it.

I was telling Justin about it.

Long.

And the, yeah, Justin Long.

And the guy who I get, Jeff, who operated the boom mic,

he was always getting on me.

Jeff.

Like, one thing I learned, and this is, you know, this is a big whistling movie, Raising Arizona.

I would whistle on set

just to keep myself company.

And Jeff would always say, and I understand this because he's the boom operator.

He's listening to everything.

He said, you know, it's funny about whistling.

The only person who enjoys whistling is the person who's whistling.

Good line.

I'm like, oh, Jeff.

So he heard everything I said about this.

And the next time I came in to work, he said, Yeah, I asked around and I found out who got that part.

Maybe the movie was filming at that point, right?

It hadn't even been released.

Uh-huh.

Because I had previously told a story about this actor running into this or seeing this actor in an airport.

So Jeff was putting things together, a counter-narrative.

And he said, Yeah, I found out who got that part.

Lonnie Anderson.

And then for a moment, I was like, oh, well, great.

I mean, if they wanted Lonnie Anderson, that's no comment on my acting.

Yeah.

Like, I understand they wanted to go in a different direction.

So thanks a lot, Jeff.

He's like, no, I'm just fucking with you.

With Lonnie Anderson.

He's actually someone called Hamilton Clancy.

Hamilton Clancy got the role.

So I was one of those who was left off the Cohen train and I never even got on it.

I just refrigerated, but I didn't get to read for them.

Question about Hamilton Clancy.

Is he still with us?

Oh, fuck.

He better be.

Hold on.

Jesus Cock, that's a hot setup.

It looks like he is.

Oh, as far as I can tell.

He doesn't have like a Wikipedia page.

I'm glad he's alive.

John, thank you for being here.

Thank you for being the ultimate utility man, serving our needs.

I know.

It's a stupid story to end on.

I apologize.

Is there anything additional you want to plug?

You talked about your new podcast with Jennifer Arne.

EPluribus Motto, available at Maximum Fun, along with Judge John Hodgman, always available on Wednesdays on Maximum Fun.

Dick Town is still available on Hulu.

David Reese, a friend of the show, we love him.

And we're working on a new secret project, but I can't say anything about it because maybe nothing will ever happen.

James Bond.

They're going to do it.

Evil Nove directing a script by John Hodgman and David Reese.

Reese is going to play Bond and John will be the villain.

No, I'm a fresh new take on Money Penny.

Yeah, oh, yeah, right.

Yeah, exactly.

Vacation Land and Medallion Said is out in whatever.

Hodgman.substack.com.

If you want want to listen to me read aloud from Moby Dick, that's something that's happening.

Hodgman.substack.com.

Whatever you can find.

If you go to there and you subscribe, it's free and you'll find out about all the dumb stuff I'm doing.

If you want, and that's a good place to be able to do that.

Everyone should want.

Ben has asked

to do the end as always.

As I

wind this show down, Ben, I want to hand you something.

It will have been a couple months past by the time this episode comes out, but Ben recently celebrated a milestone birthday.

Oh, yes, that's right.

And I commissioned a present for him from friend of the podcast, Kellen Jett.

Worked on the Ninja Turtle mute mayhem movie and Spider-Verse and did a piece for our art show.

Oh, and when we had the art show opening in March, he said, you know what, I thought would be kind of a good idea for a painting.

And I said, can you please do this for Ben's birthday?

And Ben is now getting a scissors?

A pair of scissors?

I think Ben will immediately be able to identify what he has done.

But I want to just shout out Kellen Jet for having this notion, seeing it through.

Sorry, it's well packaged.

Yeah, that's to his credit.

It's to his credit.

And when you're editing,

maybe mix in a little bit of David's cup of ice as well to cover the film.

Keep it in, do it like six times.

Maybe layer it in while he's opening the package again, kind of as an echo.

There's a very small role at the beginning of the film.

When I went into the audition,

I wore a suit

because I thought that's what you did.

And I can't remember whether Joel or Ethan said, No, you dressed up for the audition.

Yeah.

Oh, my fucking God.

Oh, here we are.

All right.

So, number one, we have.

He included some bonus sketches, I think, some test sketches to land on the final product.

It is, I pictured

as

the young man who I believe kind of opens gummo.

It's the rabbit ear wearing young man.

It is a painting of Ben.

It's a painting of me

sitting on a highway overpass smoking a cig.

Wow.

This is a really cherished thing.

This is awesome.

Thank you.

Very beautiful.

Wow.

Happy birthday.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Glad you're alive.

Thank you all for listening.

Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

Tune in next week for Miller's Crossing.

Absolutely.

Another movie that I love.

Pretty good one.

Ben, anything you want to say to end the episode?

Oh, yeah.

And as always.

Fuck that guy.

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims.

Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley.

Our creative producer is Marie Bardy Salinas, and our associate producer is AJ 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 Minnick.

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.

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This podcast is created and produced by BlankCheck Productions.