28 Years Later

Blank Jack with Griffin and David

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

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

120 podcasts later oh so you

it has been 120 episodes on main feed

since we covered the Danny Boyle 2002 in the UK, 2003 in the U.S.

release 28 days later.

Wow,

120 episodes.

Is it like a couple years ago then?

It's about it's about two.

2003?

Oh, oh, 2023.

Yeah.

2003 was the U.S.

release.

Oh, no, I was like, I forgot the two.

2023 was our podcast release.

So we covered 28 days later, 20 years later,

and now two years later, we are covering 28 years later.

And we were just talking off mic before we started recording.

We all love math here.

We're just all, well, Ben, are you good at math?

Looking at Gripa Math Heads.

You're listening to math heads right now.

Not really.

No.

I always thought it was cool, though,

the guys who got into like really abstract mathematics.

Goodwill hunting shit.

Yeah, I always thought that the

that this is the most bad answer like you just thought he's people writing in hieroglyphics yeah

totally i know some math you're good at ben fucking the ones and zeros hey so you only need to know two numbers that's the the kind of key thing there right you can tap out before you get to two two two that's not an audio number

no all right there you go he admit it he admit it

He admit it.

Good low energy start.

No, it's a great start.

I just had to start out with some math.

You said to me i don't even know if you know about that

talking about a bit that was set up right

and i came into the studio yesterday to uh pick up some stuff and noticed that our own producer ben had very carefully and deliberately placed bones on each of our desks

oh my god i didn't even have bones that's what you were referencing right david i didn't even notice that you guys had bones too we all had bones the reason that i thought griffin might not have noticed is that he's got and i'm not shaming him a little bit of stuff on his desk and it's a little more hidden from his vision i want to make my desk feel like home but i came around the other side when i walked in yesterday and i got a clear shot of the bones and ben has really he's made specific choices of who has what Yeah, what do I have exactly?

I arranged the bones on each station and I, you know, I tried to kind of match each bone to each person, but I wanted to make Marie feel special so she got the head of

the skull.

Let's just say these are not human bones.

I think the listener needs to know because they're not seeing this.

These are not human bones.

It also bet we played a bit of a guessing game where I tried to guess what animal these bones came from and I did not

worse.

Took a few swings out.

I'm worse at that than I am at math.

Do we have an answer?

Yeah,

we do.

These are pig bones.

And here's the other thing.

Not all of them, but the skull I can guarantee is.

If you saw this, would you think this is a pig skull no the problem is it looks like a giant rat skull i thought it was a fox but then once you say pig i it makes sense now i also would like to add that i consumed that pig what he had a whole thing yeah so okay let's just say this is blank streak with griffin and david i'm griffin we're not moving away from this i just think we need to do a little table setting on a fucking new release blockbuster movie episode before we get too deep in our own art we are recording this episode within the Bone Temple.

It is 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.

And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby

into the bone temple.

Two years ago, we did a May series on the films of Danny Boyle.

A very successful filmmaker, best picture, best director winner.

Has had hits, has had critically

films.

He's got an Oscar.

The only blank check director to have made an Olympic opening ceremony?

Well, Spielberg worked on the Chinese one.

He did a pass.

I think he, what, didn't he contribute to that in some way?

He did like a Sin City special guest director.

When I think of that, I think of the Beijing Olympics.

I think of Jiang Yimo.

Jiang Yimo was obviously.

He's the auteur.

Danny Boyle was the auteur of London 2012.

I'm backing you up here.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Well, I'm just, now I'm like,

now I want to know, though, who's done every Olympics opening ceremony?

Yeah.

My point here is we covered Danny Boyle, and at the time we covered him,

his career had weirdly kind of ground to a halt.

It's a bit of a sort of what's he yeah emblematic

of a larger issue in

the industry where it's like it's weird that he made yesterday.

And I remember saying that to you at the time when it came out and you were like, he can't get anything else made.

He's got to attach himself to a fucking

He was going to make that Methuselah movie.

There's a lot of things that have been announced.

He also did a lot of TV.

He he did two full seasons of fx shows that'll just that'll just eat time like what shows he did a sex pistol show yeah which was oh right i forgot i watched that that was okay remember the movie all the money in the world the movie devoid of controversy and scandal i mean we talked about this when we did the show he did right the same thing he did a tv show about the exact same thing that aired six months after that movie came out and bombed Well, yeah, that's

crazy.

It was just a weird thing because we've covered directors where it's like, there's clearly a reason why they're in movie jail.

Their career went off a ledge, right?

They're like fighting a perception they can't kind of overcome or directors who have died.

And we were like, it is weird that Danny Boyle should still be in like the prime of his career and he just kind of feels a little stuck and on the bench.

And we end that series by being like,

it feels like they should just do another 28, right?

And now here we are.

It's happening.

I mean, but it was also once Killian took the stage at the Oscars.

I do feel like everyone was like, all right, like making phone calls, being like, let's do some zombies.

And yet, today we are talking about 28 years later, a movie that Killian Murphy does not appear in.

He has an executive producer credit, but a thing that I don't think is being messaged very loudly to the public, and certainly Ben didn't know when we saw it, is that this is the first of a trilogy.

Right.

of new movies.

The second one is already in the can.

Yes.

And the third one is scripted and is basically waiting on this film having a good opening weekend to officially get the green light.

And since this film wasn't too expensive, I think,

like, it won't take much.

I think it's safe.

Right.

I think it's safe.

But Killian theoretically is

introduced in the next one.

I don't think theoretically.

They were confirmed.

He's in it.

He's in.

I think his role in it is smaller and that three

in the third one would be larger.

But there is not a whisper of him in this.

Well, yeah, that's true.

They had a scene where he found the Infinity Gauntlet.

Yes.

But they cut it.

And he went, I guess I'll have to do this myself.

I guess I'll have to do it.

Yeah.

As Killian pulling a fucking gauntlet out of a washing.

He did do it himself.

He did do it himself.

I'm just saying, like,

do we give him enough credit?

David, you said himself.

He did have his five children.

Of course.

Proxima Midnight.

Yes.

Ebony Ma.

Keep going.

Call Obsidian?

I think so.

And I'm Obsidian Call.

It's one or the other.

I'm tapped out.

I know they're all pretty good.

All of them have one word is a riff on black

and the other word is some other nonsense.

Great.

Yeah.

Anyway, Ben, pig bones that you ate.

Corvus Clave.

Yeah, I was never going to get that one.

Gun to my head, I wasn't going to get that one.

So my former roommate, Nate Patterson, who's also been helping out.

He curates playlists that we put together at the end of each mini-series.

Major friend of the show.

He also made the chain display.

Well, this is the thing.

He made this piece of visual art for you that was a chain display that then at our art show got modified by him into into being a chains and bone display.

I mean, it makes sense.

So it's not like these bones came out of nowhere.

These bones have been in the office, but as part of a very controlled installation.

This is art, baby.

It's art.

Wait, so these were, this was part of the

chain installation?

It's right there.

Look, you'll see it.

Are these brand new?

No, no,

it's pre-purpose.

I want a chain display.

It's low on bones.

I want to defend Spielberg.

He pulled out of working on the 2008 opening Olympics ceremony

in protest of China's support of violence in the Darfur region.

Okay.

But Ang Li apparently also was possibly somewhat involved.

He's an Oscar, but he wasn't the main auteur.

I'm going through.

Fernando Morels did 2016, but he doesn't have a trophy, just a nom.

But we also haven't covered

that.

That's the qualifier.

Oh, I was just talking about Oscar winners.

I'm just interested.

But both.

Both.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just interesting.

Proud of the money.

Remember the French one when it was like wet?

Yeah.

It was just like raining all day.

Yeah.

And then Kathleen Dion showed up in the end and you were like, all right, she took it home.

By the way, though, most French shit ever.

It was so fun.

It was.

It was so funny.

If they had like hired Godard to like do the French ceremony, he'd be like, Here's my pitch.

It's just raining.

Right.

And just do whatever you want to do in spite of the rain.

He would have made that happen in a controlled room.

Right.

He would have somehow just glowered enough.

Yeah.

He also would have said, fuck you.

Yeah, well, more likely.

was what were you gonna say marie bardy party

i'm here um no no i was just gonna say i i liked i i liked the french opening ceremony remember where they had like a threesome at one point yeah that's right and then all the uh the people got mad yeah it was it was too libby libby it was so libby they were cutting to the crowds and everyone was struggling to light their cigarettes yeah

they're the

little assassin's creed man with the torch i forgot about carcourtes cool.

Oh, you know what?

Good job, Franz.

France killed it.

Aren't we next?

Yeah.

That's good.

But do you know what we did as our show of like, all right, we're bringing it home to America?

We took the torch or whatever.

We did Tom Cruise fucking jump into the stadium and land on the Hollywood side.

Oh, wait, great news, though.

I'm seeing they've hired a major filmmaker.

Uh-oh.

No, I was going to say America's Greatest All-Tour, Rostin Marshall Thurber.

I just think it'd be funny if it was Macquarie and he was like, oh, I've cracked the ceremony.

I cracked it already.

It's going to have 18 flashbacks.

There's going to be no plan.

We'll figure it out.

We'll explain all the rings being united together over and over and over again.

Right.

Cut to four years later, 8,000 hours of podcasting that all also sound like therapy sessions.

Where he's like, the mistake I made was I was trying to figure out how to not do the torch.

There is.

I said, is there a way to skip the torch?

And then in post realized, we've made a terrible mistake.

I have to undo this.

Nobody has more turned into a corncob than Christopher Macquarie doing that fucking Empire Magazine, like Final Reckoning podcast.

And also, Happy, Sad, Confused, and also Light the Future.

Those I haven't listened to, but I listened to the Empire One, which I said I wasn't going to.

And then you were like, David, you got it.

And I was like, I think I got it.

I think I got to hear what's going on.

I basically now started taking the hits.

And then you just go text me the highlights.

Well, because you're doing all the other ones, right?

I mean, I can't listen to all the pigs.

Just fast.

I feel like I'm finally getting answers.

But, Ben, you ate the pig

right we we really need to close out that important

you ate the pig

we had a pig roast in our backyard uh and then

you know the next day i come home from work and the apartment kind of stinks and i'm like what the and then nate presents to me a clean wet pig skull Which apartment was this?

When I was in Williamsburg.

Oh, so these are old asses.

These are a long time ago.

These are old bones.

These are old bones.

Everyone else are old booms.

These bones right here.

Hey.

Jeez, don't get me started.

Waking up.

Someone's got a birthday coming up.

Yep.

Yep.

Well, look, very on topic because this is a movie that has some of the best on-screen skull washing I have ever seen.

Incredible.

Incredible.

Incredible.

Incredible.

This is probably peak wet skull.

Ben, am I correct in saying you did not know that much going into this movie?

I heard whispers.

Yeah.

What were the whispers?

Bone Temple.

Now, of course, as he walked into the Regal, the guy took the ticket and you were like, thank you.

He's like, this is Theater 17 bones.

I'm sorry, what's that?

Also, concessions are only on this floor.

You don't usually care about collectible popcorn buckets, but you were yelling at the Regal employees that there was no collectible Bone Temple popcorn.

I grabbed him by a shirt collar and lifted him.

Is there not a collectible bucket?

I don't think there's anything.

It does.

Maybe, did they like pitch that to Danny Boyle and he's like, you what?

What are we down here?

I think there's so much in this film that is like so profound

that it would like cheapen alma.

Yeah, there's always a risk with these popcorn buckets that you're interfering thematically.

David vessels.

We've changed the language.

Sorry, they're vessels.

But in a way, calling it a vessel makes it a little more respectful.

Like that feels more in tune with the way this movie feels about like death, the body, and what remains.

Yes, I, yes, I agree.

This is a movie,

you and Marie sat together, Ben and I sat together.

It ends.

I look over my shoulder.

I see that six rows behind us.

David is literally dancing in the aisle.

And I turn to Ben and I go, he's vibrating.

You were so pretty ample on Cloud9.

And I felt it.

Like 20 minutes in, I was like, fuck, he's going to be losing.

This is the Simsiest shit.

It's checking every box.

That's interesting.

I mean, I agree with you, but it's okay.

What are the boxes that you felt it check?

Extremely British.

It's so, this is so

British.

And not just extremely British, but it is like

in a way I need you to kind of parse because I could tell it was doing stuff and I knew I didn't have

the algorithm to solve all of it.

But in a way that I feel Danny Boyle does a lot, they have like a podkova.

It's about British culture.

Yeah.

Like is right.

Has like insight.

isn't just like depicting Britishness, right?

It was generally good at that.

Also,

it feels like a specific type of Britishness.

It felt very like northern.

Yes.

It's set where I went to college.

Although I did said that to someone, they went, You go to college at the Bone Temple?

I thought that was funny.

Full scholarship, right?

Yeah.

I just, I want to acknowledge my privilege in that sitting next to David for this movie really added like a 4DX experience.

It was a 4DX experience.

That, you know, I pity everyone else who's not going to sit next to David.

It's fun to sit next to Marie, who basically, anytime anyone like walked in one direction, was just like,

oh, yeah, what's going on?

Like, what's going to happen?

I was

pretty freaking out.

And he did it.

Like, David was like, it's okay.

You know, you can Bobaduke, not Bobaduke.

Yeah,

Skinamarink it if you need to.

Cause I like you are, as you famously watched Skinner Marink largely from inside your jacket, as you described it to me.

It's like, put, you can put your headphones in and just

you know hide inside your jacket and you'll be fine and i'm like i can't do that for this podcast like i have to pay my eyes need to be i need to witness this film i also i think this movie i mean maybe you're going to push back on this i think this movie is intense it is i don't think it's like profoundly scary it's it no i would agree well it's it can be disturbing that's disturbing when there aren't like the jump scares where it's super quiet like There's a few.

Yeah.

There's a few kind of the classic zombies.

Okay, the zombies.

Oh, it's quiet.

And then it goes,

I think it is very visceral, and it's also very like emotionally intense.

And the combination

of those two things, it's definitely holding you in a space of like an intense sensitivity the entire time.

But it's not a movie that's like doing things to make you go like.

ah it like once every 10 minutes it is a movie that is keeping you in that yeah well it's it's it i think we we were kind of trying to figure out why Sony kept the embargo on this movie for sure.

Yeah, it's a bit baffling.

Well, let's also say that we saw many of our friends, past and future guests of this show, were in attendance at the same screening we went to.

Thank you to the folks at Sonny Pictures for helping us see this a little early so that we could get this episode out quickly.

And

you're literally still dancing while we're outside on the street in Union Square.

And then like Ehrlich would walk by and he was like, Yeah, I'm trying to get my head around it.

And you'd go, like, fuck you.

Go out of it.

I mean, it's a problem.

Like, it's interesting.

And you were like, nope, bye.

That is the thing that I deal with a lot.

Right.

And you guys don't see me at press screenings.

We're like, if I am really high on a movie, I do not, right.

You've seen, like, I do not want, especially my good and dear friend who I truly love and sometimes I'm a bit too mean about on this podcast, David Ehrlich.

You did say out loud, fuck Ehrlich.

Coming near me and being like, sometimes David will outright dislike the movie and be like, oh, yeah.

And I'm just like, no, no, no, bad vibes.

They're like, shoot, shoot, shoot.

You know, because I really just want to walk out of there in a little egg, like Lady Gaga.

Yes.

And go home in my egg and then hatch out of my egg and write down my thoughts later or whatever.

Right.

Or like Mork from Orick.

But I think

I like this movie tremendously.

I have

one

pumping point on it that we'll talk about surely,

probably soon.

But it is incredibly weird.

It is a weird film.

It is an odd film in every sense, but especially within the framework of like, hell yeah, finally, Danny Boyle returns.

He's just not trying, it's not a victory lap movie.

It's not a like safe kind of, I'm going back to the proven franchise and doing the same thing again.

But I would say, obviously, he's done this once before.

He made T2 Train Spotting.

This movie is more straightforwardly entertaining

than that was.

That was a real kind of like, oh, you wanted this or that from a train spotting sequel?

You're not going to get it.

I also feel like this can exist.

I mean, maybe we'll see how Hilton's character.

100%.

I think you're right.

This movie does feel like it exists on its own without the legacy of.

My brother asked me this on behalf of a friend, being like, hey, my friend's never seen 28 Days.

Like, does he need to?

And I'm like, no, he needs to know.

No, I mean, he's sure he knows

rules.

But I was like, I'm sure he knows the other basics of like, there was a zombie thing.

That's all you need to know.

I ran into a friend of the podcast,

past, very recent past and future guest, Hillary Busis, online for popcorn.

We love her.

And she was there, of course.

And she said, like, I just watched 28 Days for the first time.

So I'm like buzzing about ready to go there.

Sandra Bullock movie?

Later.

And

she was like, I saw 28 days opening weekend in theaters.

But then was like, I didn't get to weeks.

Do you think that's going to be a problem?

And I said to Hillary, I would be astounded if anything in this movie directly ties into weeks in any important way.

And I was like, and by the way, I saw weeks in theaters.

We re-watched it for the podcast two years ago.

If they made a vague weeks connection, I don't think I'd pick up on it.

And this movie really does kind of stand on its own.

I just want, I want to say.

It makes one reference to weeks, which I think is mostly Garland cleaning something up that he doesn't like from undoing the Paris thing, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which that ending also felt very tacked on as a like,

totally.

It's just like, oh, yeah, if you want another one of these things.

Let's see something for the future.

That is, that is my only issue with this movie is I am like so fundamentally over the multi-part sequel thing.

I admire how much this movie really largely stands on its own.

And it tells a full story, I would say.

The actual ending of the movie is very much

a like Marvel post-credits teeing up the next case.

Is it better if it was post-credits?

I don't know.

We were having that discussion right now.

Because everyone's so sick of the post-credits, right?

I am philosophically sick of the post-credits.

And yet, once it happened, I'm like, I would kind of rather.

The movie has a really good emotional resolution that doesn't close any doors, that is clearly setting you up in a way where you're like, I'd be really excited to see what happens next with this character.

But then the ending is a direct tee-up of, here's what we're going to pick up from next time.

time that feels a little like the ending of an episode of Lost, right?

Like a crazy thing.

You emotionally resolve the conflict of that episode, and then a crazy thing happens in the last two minutes.

Ben doesn't know that they have a sequel in a can.

He turns to me and he goes, Well, that ending was cool, but I kind of wish I could watch a whole movie of that.

And I went, Ben, I got great news for you.

It's a pod in six months.

Directed by a friend of the pod, Nia DeCasta.

Nia DeCasta.

And not only that, I said to Ben, and guess what it's fucking called?

28 years later, part two, The Bone Temple.

And now Ben is in the aisles dancing, telling Ehrlich to fuck off.

I didn't have the 40x experience of the two of you being able to jam on each other's body energy.

I did have the moment where I turned to Ben and I hit him and I went, look, and the camera pans out as you see how significant the bone temple is, in particular the pillar.

And Ben just did like Spielberg face.

And I felt like he was on the verge of crying.

And then just kind of, maybe without breaking eye contact from the screen leaned over to me and said, that's a lot of bones.

It's a lot.

So many bones, but oh my God, to see them.

It's, it's just, it's so moving.

It's moving.

It's so moving.

It, that's why it rocks.

Yeah.

The, the route one take, obviously, is like mountains and skulls.

Cool icon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

You know, or also just cool visual idea.

They, it's prominent in the marketing.

It's like the centerpiece of most of the posters.

The trailer, which like kind of broke fucking YouTube records.

This trailer, like wireless.

I just want to shout out.

Someone sent us a DM on Instagram after I posted a story on our account from the screening saying that they're a listener and they helped cut the trailer.

Well, the trailer was so good that Boyle put that,

you know, piece of

radio, whatever you want to call it, the broadcast of the Rudyard Kipling poem in the movie because of the trailer.

Oh, interesting.

It wasn't like the movie.

That rocks.

Wait, let's just put it in.

Like, because that whole sequence in the movie where it's in there is just kind of him being like, well, I loved the vibe.

That's the interesting thing is that the trailer was,

forgive me for being a little lofty here, kind of just like a tome poem.

Like people were jamming on it, but when we sat down in the theater, I realized right as the lights went out,

I actually don't know.

I know the three

of the titles.

I knew there was the one thing I knew was that it was like a colony on an island.

And as good as the trailer was, I was not like re-watching the trailer going like, I wonder what this is.

I I like let it wash over me, and I was like, yeah, it looks cool.

And then I sit down and I'm like, I know Fiennes, Taylor Johnson, and Jody Commer in this.

I know Killian isn't.

And I know bones are involved.

I actually don't know how this is going to play out.

And it is a movie that is like kind of unconventionally plotted.

And I kept every 15 minutes going, like, I actually don't know what the spine of this movie is.

What's the next act?

Right.

I do think that's part of maybe their like embargo fee.

This is what I was going to get at is when we were trying to figure out why they held the embargo for so long it was it because they didn't want people to know that the main character of the movie was an unknown

i think there's some spoiler is it fear yeah it

studios can kind of talk themselves out of building buzz for a movie with that there are no like crazy twists in this movie but it is a movie that kind of plays off you being like, I don't know where this is going.

Right.

So I sort of get that.

And I like, right, that feeling of like, not only is the marketing not telling you that the little boy is the main character, the movie starts and you're not sure if he's the main character.

He's certainly central, but by the end of the movie, he is the guy.

I, I was like 90% sure as we were watching the first third of the movie that we would never go back to the island again.

That it would just be like a survival thing with Aaron Taylor Johnson and

the little boy.

And Jody Comer would, I don't know.

I found this whole aspect of it thrilling.

I'm watching it going, like, I don't know where this is going.

I don't understand

exactly what the utility of all these characters are yet.

The world building is so incredible, which is a thing where I'm just like, Sims must be buzzing.

But it's also

a salute to Garland.

Like, well, we have a lot to talk about here, but I just think Garland is so good at that stuff.

This movie, I was, so I was talking to a friend of the show, Chris Ryan, past some future cast, because he texted me being like, you've seen it, right?

We got to talk about it, you know.

And we were both saying, like, Garland, as writer for hire, essentially, I've missed it a little bit.

I like what he does, same.

I

he's doing interesting stuff.

I was mad, but I kind of like putting some genre guardrails around the guy and being like, You can still be weird.

I'm just gonna say it, like, there's some deeply disturbing shit in the text of this movie, and I feel like Danny Boyle does bring like a sensitivity and a hard time.

Yes, there's an emotional emotional filmmaker, which Which Garland doesn't do.

And that's what.

Well, I think Garland has a very bleak, dim and bleak view of you.

It is very clinical.

I feel like you gotta meet somewhere in the middle.

I agree.

But that's why I'm like, look, Garland, when he's doing his own thing, it's a totally different vibe, and that's fine.

Hey, I support.

We like it.

I think that, you know, privileged British guys who grew up in a lot of with a lot of culture around them should be making movies all the time.

No, I do like the movies a lot.

And, but then it's right.

It's so interesting to see this former collaborator of his taking on one of his works again and you're like right this was a secret sauce for a reason like and by the way like this movie starts it's 28 years later it doesn't spend time holding your hand and explaining to you what's happened in between i think it very elegantly it does it gives you what you need to know over the course of the movie very very well but it is my favorite kind of like commercial filmmaking where it's like it trusts the audience to be like we're gonna show you stuff and let you fill in the blanks And you can fill in the blanks really clearly, right?

But there's no fucking info dump.

No, but we do, but I do want to say we don't start on 28 years later.

We do have the prologue,

which we need to talk about.

We'll talk about it.

We'll talk about it.

No, because we need to talk about tell it.

Okay, do the joke.

And then we have to go and get it.

We're going to go to an aircraft carrier, though, and write down like, give an envelope that had like.

uh the first of november 2002 written down on it you know what i mean and they open it and it says that information is the death of emotion

This is my case, is this movie just hits the ground running and you're filling in the gaps and the things you don't have immediate answers to are engaging, where you're trying to suss out like, so what is happening here?

I think the core animating idea in this movie, which is so obvious, but I didn't think about it even when it was announced is like, if it's been 28 years later,

This means that like this is set in a world in which we didn't solve the problem, but we have figured out a way to rebuild culture around it, right?

The idea that we're trying to live with it.

That we're building this movie around a little boy, and you're like, this is the second generation of children to be born into this world.

Right.

You start the movie with a prologue set basically concurrent with the first film that is kids who are experiencing the rage virus overtake.

And then you jump ahead 28 years.

And here's a little kid who like theoretically is the children of the children.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

I guess, like, how old is A.T.J.

Mr.?

I think he and I are around the same age.

They're young parents.

I mean, right.

No, no, I know, I know, but right.

So it would be like, if you think,

he and Joe DeCommer, like, maybe they're playing younger, or maybe they're playing people who were five when the raiders.

That's what I'm saying.

If Aaron Dale Johnson is playing his age, he's playing someone who's about 10, 11.

And right.

And so he did live life before.

uh the apocalypse but only a little right they're like the teletopy kids yes so they sure are so teletopy and every every weeks also begins in the same way.

Like every movie in this series has begun with a vision of the apocalypse and then cut to black and then 28 blahs.

Also, I just found it like in our weird world and the weird years that we've lived through, right?

When people go like in a post-pandemic and people go like,

we're still in the pandemic.

And you're like, right.

That sounds like a teletupy noise.

That's what this movie is, of just like something seismic happens.

There's no actual hard endpoint to it.

We start to figure out like, what is the balance of like, what aspects of life can we bring back and what has changed us forever, you know?

And like, this movie just drops you into that and you're looking at all of what's happening, the things the characters are doing, the actual way the landscape reads on camera and you're going like, oh, fuck.

So this, they must have made this decision 10 years ago.

This stuff that just fucking animates the brain.

It's a movie about about how to live with death and pain and tragedy surrounding you and how

the ways in which

you can build a life around it.

You can resort to violence.

You can resort to like

militarism.

Or you can

resort to what?

To bone temples.

It's almost like a post-post-apocalyptic movie, right?

Yeah.

It's like, okay, so like societal collapse happens and then rebuilds, you know, and we're like starting this movie in the reset.

And when you realize that's the landscape and that the movie's not going to explain it all, you're like, I totally get why they said, hey, we got three movies ready to go because there's so much you can do here.

And this movie kind of focuses on one central emotional story that is a good prism for that.

as its spine.

But as we said, it doesn't even touch on Killian Murphy.

At the end, it tees up a whole nother idea of things where you're like, right, of course, this would happen too i think we all think it's quite a good film i think it's a total triumph and

i i really like it um for all the story stuff that you're talking about but it also just looks

so interesting and cool and it's like again the danny boyle thing which was slightly absent in yesterday i will you know we we all felt a little thrown by yesterday but generally his whole thing of like

okay

i want to think about a million cool ways to depict all this stuff that you're giving me right like i'm not just gonna to do, you know, whatever, whatever is expected of a zombie movie.

I want to, like, flip, you know, the visuals as much as I can.

Colors are so vivid.

Like, you know, that crazy motherfucker, Anthony Dodd Mantle.

Oh, my God.

Fucking Dodd Mantle, man.

Like, whoa.

This movie was exclusively shot on iPhones.

Which I find so funny.

Well, with, although they say, like, with

modifications, lenses and rigs.

Right.

But, but the base of it is all iPhones.

And of course, like, 28 years or or 28 days is one of the original like filmed on a potato.

Right.

Filmed on a potato movies that looks so fucking bad now.

It's so funny they announced a 4K steel book.

And I'm like, what is that going to be?

But it looking bad, as we talked about on that episode, it's so part of

that movie.

But even that shift of like, at the time, the aesthetic experiment was film on the worst thing possible.

And now, quote unquote, the worst thing possible.

It looks so fucking good.

It looks better than like 90%

of bigger budget digitally shots colors in this movie alone you're like what is the excuse for movies that are shot on like the most expensive cameras in the world all looking like fucking wet concrete and this is like a movie that's like set in the post-apocalypse and you and i were just outside the theater being like the greens the greens the yellows the reds the blues my god it's it's so beautiful but there was this it went viral but this image uh from filming of this insane rig they made where they surrounded one of the zombies.

This sort of, it's sort of like a budget bullet time.

And Ben was like, what was that?

And I was like, it's like broken bullet time on purpose.

Because it's very choppy.

Yes.

Well, because the idea of bullet time, obviously, is like they're in a green screen and they have a million cameras that takes a picture of every single contrained

fluid.

And then you also slow it down.

Right.

Yeah.

But this was like, right, if we basically just like take two pictures, you know, in a chain, the skipping is also so cool.

It felt like a Mortal combat it felt like video it felt like video games but it didn't feel like the last of us is a video game it felt like um when they do that scene in the beach

where he becomes like isn't there like a moment in the beach where it's like a video game style like leonard diCaprio is like running

the beach i thought you were talking about yes yes no like then it's very like game boy yes like this movie does it very video game inspired to me and i i i think that's a thing to talk about at some point but yes like that feels like and ben was like what was, what was that?

And I'm just like, Danny Bull is like fucking 65 now.

Who else like works at his level and is actually 68?

Wow.

Yo, bastard.

And he's still like getting cool music and right, like finding new visual tricks.

But also, not just visual tricks, but it feels like every time, maybe save yesterday, he's going like.

Why are we limited to like a set language?

Why are we trying to like discover

we can do this?

Break things and remake things and like explore like it always just feels like he's exploring yeah new boundaries and also you know to defend him on yesterday or whatever like dodd mantle didn't even shoot that movie and i'm sure he wasn't like i need to right put the camera in a blender for this one solve my problems with that movie that movie looks great fine it's just it's also just not a movie where you need it to look a little more straightforward

that's the work of the richard curtis and then t2 train spotting honestly i remember having some cool like ideas that has some great stuff yeah the ending shot in in particular is unbelievable.

Right, right.

But it's still a more muted, obviously.

He's also riffing on a kind of visual and editing language that he created.

Yes.

Right.

He's returning.

I feel like this is him being like, look, if I'm going to do another 28 Days Later, that movie was so visually challenging.

And I was trying, like, I can't just, I got to try stuff again.

And I can't just do like weird DV grain, you know, like I did last time because that would feel like.

DV grain was like, well, this makes it apocalyptic.

We're making a movie.

Right.

And then this is like in a way that syncs up with the themes of the movie.

Like society has moved on.

Nature has the consumer camera is now good enough to actually shoot a movie on that doesn't look like potato fashion.

That's true.

But also it's like a movie where like they're going back to the mainland and it's like, there aren't people here anymore.

It's beautiful.

And like, we and scary,

a little scary.

But like, I want to capture the beauty of like this like apocalypse of like, yeah, people are gone.

But this almost sort of

video game structure.

Except the occasional

right.

The only sort of title card table setting happens at the very beginning where they say like they quarantine the mainland.

People have built, rebuilt sort of society is on the fringes.

It is this weird sort of modern day medieval, sort of like small village

society.

Yes, yes.

Without like totally losing all our trappings.

So the kid still lives in a house with a bedroom that has posters on the wall and Power Rangers action figures and whatever.

All of that stuff is frozen in the right in the late 90s.

Right.

He's inheriting.

Right.

And also, like,

Boyle is cutting in these comparison points.

He's showing you footage of like depictions of medieval culture and movies, right?

The Henry V stuff.

That we've like kind of gone tribal a little bit.

And basically, there is this video game structure to society, which is like the quarantined area.

Like, are our children aged to a point where they can graduate, where they can elect to say, basically, I want to enter the battlefield.

And it's kind of like mowing the lawn, right?

These people go past the gates with bows and arrows and just try to see if they can knock down some zombies.

And also, you guys wouldn't know this, but essentially where they are is Lindisfarne.

This is what I need.

I need you to bring it up.

Which is like a tourist place in Britain.

It's a, it's called Holy Island, which, which in like, I think they show you on a map that it's Holy Island, but like, I think they tried and it's not really Lindis Farn.

I do think they shot at least some on the island, on the actual place.

They shot it all in the north of England, like where it's set, Northumberland.

But like, that is this weird fucking tidal island off the coast with a causeway that you can only access it every so often.

And famously, cars are always getting because there's a road you can drive down, but then cars will get stuck and they have to go rescue the cars.

And it's funny.

And

like

it is that like, it's hearkening to, I feel like what Garland is clearly interested in, what you're talking about, that like return to like feudal British, British life, where it's like, we have a fortress, we're on an island, Britain's like an island nation.

Yeah.

And there is that kind of like sturdiness to like old Britain, you know, where it's just like, nobody could fucking come here because like it's hard to get here, get all your shit here.

The last guys who did it, it happened in 1066.

It never happened again.

Did happen in 1066.

Here's the other thing, and we don't have to talk about this for long, but my.

No, so the Vikings came before them.

The Vikings would come all the time.

And for a while, if you might like this, most of Britain was under Viking control.

And it was called the Dane Law, like that part of Britain.

But then the Normans came and drove the Vikings away.

The Normans are the last to invade.

They're from like the north of France.

What about the Goths?

The Goths were fucking up the rest of Europe, but they never set their sights on Britain.

Okay.

No, they fucked England.

They came back around when, like, you know, Susie Sewe and

then Hot Top, it kind of gave them like a safe haven.

Yeah, it kind of like corporatized it, made it a little bland, right?

It's an old Mulani joke of like, do you think they wake up in the morning so bummed out?

Cause I gotta put all that shit on.

What I was gonna say is

this movie, and the way the great movies do kind of make you start thinking about a ton of other things, right?

They just sort of like launch off different uh streams of thought.

Um,

I, I, something was coalescing while watching this of like, and I'm not gonna harp on this, just let me say this for like

four sentences.

He's gonna harp on it.

There's something in the like

the messaging of all the weird, like Grifter Manosphere shit.

Oh my god, what?

Let me say this for four sentences.

Wait, where, how do we that?

That

is my egg.

That is about like do you have room for me and your egg?

That is about like, we gotta reset.

We gotta get back to our programming, right?

Like this shit, like fucking paleo diets and like we need to eat the way that fucking cavemen is.

I just explained return with a V to you before we got to the point.

It's funny that you don't know that one, yeah.

Yeah, but this is what I'm saying.

And like the obsession with the fall of Rome, right?

And this idea that we've like lost our programming and whatever.

This movie is kind of going like, okay, like, is this what you guys want?

I don't think

it's a retort.

I don't think it's a retort, but you know what I'm saying?

I do know

and I think we're stuck in this time that is very much about like you're beyond four sentences.

Are we

going off into a slight side tangent off of this?

Are we like living on the precipice of like the end

of existence, which we've been talking about, like the fucking Y2K canon having that kind of feeling, right?

And there's this other sort of version of it now, which this movie is just like, okay, here's like, if things actually collapse, here's what it's like, like two decades later.

We have to fucking like incorporate like feudal England into our daily routine while also having like pub hooliganism.

Well, indeed.

Uh, yes, I don't think there's no Roman Empire shit here, though.

I think, right, the nostalgia is for right, for medieval Britain, not in some kind of we need a king way, no, but more in that kind of like, yeah, the land and the sea and this.

Isn't this also like a Brexit thing, too?

Oh, for fuck's sake, is it?

Oh, God.

Well, it's like, we know.

What do you mean?

Well, just the whole European.

What do you mean, like the whole of Europe does kind of want to draw a line around

Britain and be like, don't go there?

This sort of return to like British, like British nationalism and like a specific identity.

And like, I don't know.

But I don't think that that is necessary.

This is not about a national identity.

I don't think it's...

Well, I don't think it's explicitly about a national identity in that, like...

I think there are

allusions to nationalism, the fact that they still have the portrait of the queen up, which I thought was kind of a funny.

Well, but that's one of the many gags Garland's getting at that you're not clocking until the final gag as a Brit of like, right, time stopped in 2002.

For the 2002, not now, right?

Yes, we're in an alternate timeline.

Yes, right.

Uh, and I also think uh now, did the queen get the rage virus?

She had to have.

Wow,

um,

but uh, I also like she ate the corgis.

Um,

I also like the sort of um

the long history of like British folk horror, yeah, which which Garland is obviously so interested by, and men is so interested in the green man and stuff like that.

And so, like, you have the some of the aspects of this new island society do feel very like the masks, it does seem very ritual-based, which is which to me feels like it's part of like that lineage.

But also, this sense of ritual ritual of like when you are a teenager if you feel up to it, they go like, okay, you've fucking practiced your aim long enough.

You can try to go take down some fucking zombies.

And they give this very bracing speech where they're like, you get what the rules are, right?

If you fall, no one comes back to rescue you.

We lost too many people that way.

When you walk past this point, you understand that you are ostensibly fending for yourself.

Yeah, it's like you're climbing Everest or whatever, whatever, where it's like, look, you'll probably come back, but we're not going to come get you.

But it's like, you know, it's a version of like

a draft.

It's a version of a like,

you know, cultures that didn't allow youth to have a youth, where they're like, at some point, we've just decided, like, you're a man now, and you got to fucking solve the problem.

And we're throwing you at it as a body.

It made me think of walkabout.

Yeah, sure.

Walkabout, any, any kind of right teenage

sort of ancient ritual of like, now this is how you become a man is like

going by yourself for a month or you go into the wilderness or yeah.

It's all of that, but combined with this, like, and by the way, this is life and death sticks.

You know, if it, they're being this weird sport to it because as we've said, it's like the thing is contained, right?

They're doing this like you, you have to question how much for fun, how much for pride, how much for identity, and how much do they still kind of believe 28 years later, okay if we keep chipping away at this maybe in 50 years they're all gone i don't know oh no i don't think so i mean i don't think so no no one on the island no one in this movie uh talks about like a way back to britain they're like we live on our island yeah

the first movie ends with the notion that the zombies will starve they mention this like that that like

If we just kind of wait long enough, we can starve them out and,

you know, stop whatever the pandemic is whatever the virus is and boyle has had to obviously with this be clear like no they figured out ways to survive they ate worms and shit sure

but also us trying to kill them means that we're constantly feeding them yeah but not in the numbers yeah there's not too many people left i mean the implication you get And we'll see what these future movies have, is that like the most there is are these little

towns, right?

Like these, like, that's like hamlets.

The extent of civilization that are isolated and if someone from europe shows up though just in well the rest of europe is still going right and they're basically the only place

that is still dealing with these conditions that's turned back that reset the clock basically yeah

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.

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This movie opens with

the Sony Pictures logo and the familiar sounds of the Teletubbies theme song.

A moment where I just immediately went, fuck, this thing's going to be dancing in David's brain.

Already Boyle is doing the like, what is British culture and what is our relationship with this?

David, please give me your interpretation of the teletubbies.

And then we have this prologue where a bunch of children are killed by their parents, like just sit here and watch this.

It is like a really insightful kind of like

a scene we didn't get in the previous two films.

But, like, yeah, if you have kids that small where they can't really wrap their heads around what they're doing, you put all the kids in a room and you go like, just watch the TV show.

Don't doesn't 28 weeks have 28 weeks has kids.

And then that whole scene

is so disturbing too, right?

Because it's like when they run to the boat.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But no, this is very distressing.

But indeed, I do think Garland and Boyle, maybe, you know, pick Teletubbies for a reason.

One, it's period appropriate.

But two, Teletubbies is post-apocalyptic.

I'm not the only person to have this interpretation.

It is like these weird creatures have built some new society on the

or something.

They feel like radioactive creatures because they're colorful.

They live in a bunker, right?

Like their home is.

Tummies are TV.

Their tummies are television.

So they've got this sort of like cyborg energy to them, right?

My best friend is like a fucking mutated vacuum cleaner.

That's what I love about Teletubbies is that there's no one here, but there's a voice that comes through the tubes.

Yeah.

And there's a face in the sky.

So there's this sort of sense of like friendly.

Yeah, something happened to Earth.

Yes.

And we all left, but we're sort of monitoring this weird situation.

It's like trying to grow new people, maybe.

It's like a beautiful

post-apocalyptic landscape.

You're like, right, this is the brightest sun

and the greenest grass.

And then they get these, you know, part of teletubbies is that they watch videos on their their tummies that are of real kids.

But it feels like transmissions from the past.

Exactly.

And that's what's so.

And then, of course, and they eat goo and pancakes.

You know, they eat this like sort of what feels like, you know, kind of bunker food.

Anyway, it's all great.

Naughty Nunu, of course, is their friend, the vacuum cleaner.

I forgot that was his.

Naughty Nunu.

I remember when Teletubbies debuted in Britain.

I was saying this to Marie.

You know, Teletubbies is this like

designed by child psychologists where they're like, Let's make a show that actually speaks toddler language rather than like English.

It's one of those shows where when it aired, every grown-up who didn't have kids was like, What the fuck is this?

And the media had a field day making jokes about how bizarre it was.

And then you put any kid in front of it, or even turn on a TV with a kid four rooms away and like a magnet.

It was just like, This is speaking directly to my brain.

Um, I will say, I put it on for my daughter once, and she did not respond to it very strongly.

And my wife was like, Turn this off, it's disturbing me, which I understood.

Like, it is a bit odd.

I was obsessed with it when I was 11 when it arrived for the, you know, this kind of like, what the fuck is this?

It's so weird.

Sister Romley was born in 98.

I think it maybe doesn't start airing on

98 or 99, but I would absolutely watch it with her because I was fascinated by how strange that was.

And obviously there were the dumb social controversies that emerged from it.

But the first controversy was more the kind of thing of like, should children even be watching TV at this age?

Because it's sort of what it's advancing.

Is this indoctrination?

Yeah, like, shouldn't HP

be in front of a screen at all, right?

And it's like a fucking show about screen tummy creatures.

Yes.

And it's also very boring to watch because they repeat everything.

And you're like, why do they repeat everything?

Again, the child psychologists are like, you know, toddlers like repetition.

Tag yourself, I said to Marie, who are you?

I know who you are, but tag yourself.

Marie.

Marie is obviously Lala.

That one is not in dispute.

Okay, you said you got stuck on me.

I'm curious to hear how.

So I am, I feel like, unfortunately, or fortunately, also

i'm very obvious 100 tinky wink that's not that's not those two are not tough so then we had dipsy

we agree that you're po you're and ben is obviously dipsy yeah so i don't understand what the confusion was

dipsy what's dipsy tinky winky

dipsy dipsy's

pow you know they all have a thing and dipsy's thing is that he has a hat that's a cow print like a sort of tough look him up you are so dipsy dipsy's into fashion dipsy's fairly extra like tends to have a lot of.

And so I was like, Dipsy's performative.

Dipsy's kind of like the curly cute.

No, Dipsy's got a straight point.

Okay.

So the thing about Dipsy is: like, if I'm thinking, like, which one?

Lala is curly.

Which one of these fucking

would be a skateboarder?

For me, that is Dipsy.

Dipsy would be this like the skateboarder.

Lala is like the little project.

Poe is the baby.

Poe is the baby.

But he also is curly.

It's a little girl.

Poe is

like the center of

the thing out.

And also, we were like poe can't do things you can't drive yeah poe can't drive right poe desperately can't drive yeah well i think poe has a scooter

yeah well we all know griffin did have a scooter i was into scooters and the inline skates poe's uh favorite object is her scooter which of course she calls poe cuter that makes sense

And Ben, are you looking at Dipsy now?

Yeah, I like his hat.

His hat's good.

I mean, his hat's good.

The only thing with Dipsy, I will say, and I will acknowledge this for all listeners, is Dipsy is black.

Like, Dipsy's skin is darker.

Wait, Dipsy's black?

And Poe is sort of Asian.

Like, they, they made what?

I'm sorry to blow everyone's mind.

They made some effort to acknowledge racial diversity when they created the characters, which is funny because they are aliens.

Yeah, I was going to say, it's one of those things where you're like, huh, but it's very, when you watch it, you're like, yes, Dipsy has darker skin.

I thought he was just tan.

Right.

They have, okay.

They have different tones.

I think to say they are black and Asian is to imply that

abide by our

society that race, the construct of race,

has made it to the teletubby world.

Yes.

Yeah.

I just don't know.

The creators of teletubbies have stated the dipsy as black.

I had no idea.

Yes.

It was, you know, again, they're like, we want this to reflect the kids who are watching, you know, for them to see things.

Yada, yada, yada.

I'm obviously Tinky Winky, who's an absolute unit, who is also a little fabulous, I suppose.

Do you you remember the Tinky Winky controversy, Beth?

I kind of recall.

Please refresh my memory.

Jerry Falwell was like, Tinky Winky is gay.

He carries a handbag.

He also, he wears a dress sometimes.

He'll wear a triangle.

Wears a dress.

And did they have a problem with the triangle?

Did they?

Yeah.

Some people thought the triangle was and the purple coloring was subtle coding.

Well, the purple, yes, but I'm trying to remember what they register.

The triangle, I think, is a sign of quick.

The pink triangle is always a sign of quarterback.

They were just basically every part of Tinky Winky's indoctrination.

Lala's object, of course, is a ball.

I just want to point that out.

Big ball.

You look a big ball.

Who doesn't?

This is a clean tag yourself.

I gotta say, I think it's pretty clean.

Yeah, I think we were just unsure if you would recognize that.

But also, Lala and Tinky, Lala and Tinky Winky were layups that like a child could do.

It was just a little bit more.

You know what?

Dipsy and puddle.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, the opening scene's quite distressing.

Now, I don't know if you guys agree, but I'm pretty sure the blonde child we see in this opening scene is Jack O'Connell, right?

Because of the cross necklace.

And so initially, of course, I'm watching the scene being like, okay, I guess this is the origin of one of the characters we're going to spend time with.

Is this Aaron Taylor Johnson?

I assumed it was Aaron Taylor Johnson, but it's basically a standalone coda that does not tie directly back into anything until the final scene, which is the T up.

But it does have this culty overtone when he goes to see the priest.

Which is his father.

I wasn't sure about that because he says father.

But this one does address the priest as father.

I read it as also being his dad.

I did too, but then I was second-guessing myself.

And then the fact that he's a little chaotic.

Movie doesn't give you clear.

The fact that the guy is like really excited about being, you know, mauled to death by rage.

Because he's basically like, this is God's will.

If this is happening, it's because.

That's fucking crazy, man.

And then he immediately turns and you're you're like, what a waste.

What a stupid thing you just did.

No, they all, but that's the thing about the rage virus.

It gets you within seconds, which is why it doesn't spread beyond.

You turn fast, but also then you get to run fast.

And you get to hang dong.

Yeah.

Well, if you're proof, you're very lucky.

We get out of this movie, we turn our phones back on, and our thumbs are catching on fire texting the Doughboys going, 28 years later is maybe the hog movie of the decade.

And I can't believe we've gone this long without calling it out.

This is

you know fucking wide release studio picture.

True.

Weird British studio picture, but you're not.

There are some absolute units flapping around.

At the point, I went to David.

I was like, forearm.

Yeah.

Forearm.

And then I did this.

I did this last year.

That big boy.

Yeah.

And I also, I said, as always, I said, by the way, sneaky sack movie.

Yeah, no, sure, you're right.

You spend so much time thinking about the dicks.

Let's not forget the sack.

And there's even a couple shots where Boyle's doing some weird camera angles and you're just like, you're really going to just let the sack get that close to the lens?

Do you guys know about Scrotox?

So it's that getting Botox in your ball?

Much like the world building of 20 years later.

I don't know about it, but I can start to fill in the gaps with the information I've been given.

Apparently, someone on this Bravo show, The Valley.

Why would you want to smooth out wrinkles?

You don't

want on wrinkles.

That's going to look weird.

worse so i thought scrotox so someone on this reality show got this procedure which is botox for your balls and i thought it was to remove the wrinkles the balls are for the sack i get i don't know it's for the sack the sack scrotum for the scrotum

but it's not just about the wrinkles it's about keeping them hanging low Why would you want to?

Okay, whatever.

Wait, that's temperature.

That's the temperature.

It's gravity.

It's gravity, but it's also your body heat.

You know, if you're like, you know, if you're warmer, they're not going to be able to get away.

But you know how, like, when you get under, you get women get Botox in their underarms so they don't sweat.

I think this just paralyzes the scroat

so it doesn't suck up as much.

Because I think people find that like, apparently, it's an aesthetic thing.

Okay, I'm taking out the gavel, and my ruling is all of this sucks.

You're not pro-Scrotox?

I'm not mad at you for bringing it to our attention, but I'm mad at it for being

three or four months.

So you got to keep going back.

Oh, fun

great so three times a year i get someone injecting my ball

sounds worth it

it's an outpatient procedure according to health health line here yeah and i bet when you walk out that's a clean walk with zero irrotation i'm glad they don't keep you overnight because it takes anywhere from two to four minutes rinsing out of there Wow.

They do recommend that you call a variety of licensed reputable providers before you get your Scrotox done to compare costs.

You don't want to just take the first price you're given, right?

Does Wirecutter have Scrotox recommendations?

Because it's not just like go for the cheapest.

It depends on what you want out of it.

Did you see Men?

Yeah.

Did you like it?

Yeah, you know what?

I didn't see.

Remember when he made a movie called Men?

I do.

Everyone was so normal about it.

I liked it okay.

I mean, I'm like, the thing with Garland is even when he doesn't totally hit for me, I find the ideas so provocative.

And I do think he's become a very good visual stylist.

And I'm like,

that movie feels a little bit, um,

it has a little bit of Twilight Zone Syndrome to me, but also he's throwing enough in there that it doesn't feel like it's just stalling one idea.

Like Twilight Zone Syndrome is this is something that can fill 30 minutes of TV, but yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, and I think most bad Twilight Zone Syndrome movies just stall for time and get you stuck in a middle, right?

And men, he's just like, well, here's my core animating idea.

And that's basically a short story.

Where was Angus T.

Jones?

Two and a half men.

The movie's not called Half Men.

No, it's a, it's a.

It's called Men.

It's a sequel.

It's, it's set one and a half entries before the sitcom.

And you might remember that

Ashton Kutcher, John Cryer, and Charlie Sheen all had prominent roles in the movie, man.

Angus T.

Jones was on the sidelines.

I like that movie.

I'll write it.

I was thinking about it.

I mean, I was...

Some of it I really loved.

I was thinking about the folklore thing that you said,

because that movie has the green man, which is similar, right?

Like, kind of like,

let's think about Britain even before the Normans came here, right?

Like, let's think about kind of Celtic Britain.

And it has the Sheilana gigs.

I'm so into that.

Yeah, I know.

He's into it too.

And I'm into it.

And I'm going to start a Manosphere podcast where I'm like, specifically

Stonehenge shit.

We need that.

That's the root to masculinity or whatever.

This is the thing that.

Actually, again, this movie doesn't have too much of that, but the Bone Temple stuff, the third act stuff,

has a strand of that in its DNA, although I also think it has this strand of like, essentially, Ray Fines doing like public art.

Right?

Like the Angel of the North, which is the biggest.

Just to be clear, I don't think this movie is commenting on the manosphere.

Watching this movie made me think about the manosphere in a different way where I'm like, is there this core underlying thing that there is this feeling that existence has become overwhelming and unmanageable?

So you're saying you relate to this now.

You're sort of, you're seeing it from their perspective.

I'm reacting very differently, but there are pockets where I think the core idea is this, like, do we got to get back to something primal, right?

And I think that's out of a panic.

And I think this movie is sort of like contending with those same instincts, not in the same way, but also guys we see at the end of the movie have a little bit of a manosphere energy.

Who fucking knows?

I don't know.

So we'll get to them.

We'll get to them.

We'll get to them.

Now, now, Ashton Koutra has won Screen Actors Guild Award nomination.

He's got one nomination?

Yeah, no, it's for an ensemble, you know, but even that sort of surprised at five.

For a movie ensemble, yeah.

It's crazy that they handed this one out.

You'll never ever get it.

Wait, oh, we're going to get it.

No, you're not.

He doesn't have five Razzie nominations.

That makes sense.

Yes.

He doesn't have that many movie roles.

So I'm like, it's not Dude Where's My Car.

It's not fucking The Guardian.

It's not

New Year's Eve.

I don't think it would be Butterfly Effect.

It's not Butterfly Effect.

You don't think it was Butterfly Effect?

It's not Steve Jobs.

Well, he's not in that.

Is it Cheaper by the Dozen?

He is.

Or he's in jobs.

He's in jobs.

It's not Cheaper by the Dozen.

No.

Is it one of the Valentine's Day New Year's Eve?

No, Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture.

David, is it a he his role must be small, right?

It's an ensemble film.

I'll tell you that much.

I've never seen it, but I believe everyone's role in it is.

Oh, oh, oh, I know what it is because it is one of the most absurd sag ensemble nominations

where you're just like, they've truly just went most ensemble cast.

Yeah, isn't it Valentine's Day or New Year's Eve?

It is Amioyo Esteves' Bobby, is it not?

Wait, what?

Correct.

Yeah.

Oh my God, I forgot about Bobby.

A movie that has four trillion actors in it.

Got Lindsey Lohan in it.

It does.

But that's why I was like, I don't know for a fact that Ashton Kutcher's in it, but he must be in it.

Correct.

I don't know what his role is.

I don't know.

Fisher.

Great.

That's a scary.

Mick Cannon and Harry Delafront.

Everyone's in that movie.

Yeah.

Trumholtz is in the movie.

Scoot McNary.

Of course.

He's been nominated for worst actor three times by the Razzies, four jobs.

In 2011, a combo of Killers and valentine's day and in 2004 a triple combo of butterfly nope treat cheap by the dozen just married and my boss's daughter wow that's kind of that was sort of the launch like i kind of were sick of you and then he also got a worse screen couple nod for just married and my boss's daughter shared with britney murphy and tara reed that also seems rude to me And he got a worse screen couple nod for what happens in Vegas.

Like, I'm like, none of those movies are that good.

But, like, I mean, like, did they hurt anyone's feelings?

Like, all those dumb kutcher rom-coms like they're fine look we talk about it a lot the razzies are

super chauvinistic they they hate women's movies and they hate male stars in women genres right like they they'll slam like dumb meathead stallone

but the amount of like across the board major nomination films that are romance films whether drama or comedy and especially erotic thrillers they hate yes yeah they don't like boobs.

Or they like to yell at people for having them or something.

So, 28 years later.

This movie jumps ahead after the prologue, the little table setting of the quarantine, the one title card.

I got so excited they used the same font.

28 years later, good for them.

And also, right, the exact same iconography, the fade to black.

The movie's building to like, right, a point of mania, and that just goes quiet, and the title card comes up.

And the main structure we're introduced to is this small house in a small village on an an island where Aaron Taylor Johnson and Jodie Comer are parents to a young boy he's 12.

What's the Spike?

Spike is his name.

This guy's played by

Alfie Williams or something.

Alfie something.

Alfie Williams.

He has very few credits before this.

I've certainly not seen him anything.

No, I think there's no credits.

I think this is his debut.

Boyle from Newcastle.

Sneaky good with child actors.

So good with

I said to Marie, I was like, millions, baby.

Millions and fucking Slum Dog.

Slum Dog, baby.

Like, how much of Slum Dog becoming a phenomenon was just that people couldn't believe how good the kid performances were for the first.

No, the kids are so cute.

Yeah.

And right, you're sort of slowly filling in the information of this kid is being prepped for some rite of passage, which turns out to be, as we said, this sort of like going past the gate, entering the mainland.

What's the fucking term for putting the fucking quiver?

Yes, or whatever.

Fuck you.

What did I do?

I don't know.

I just, I'm angry that I didn't have language at my feet.

I'm an archer, David.

No, I always found it very hard.

And like, I actually appreciated when they have him draw before he goes out.

And they're like, yeah, you're not wobbling.

Because that's the thing when you're a kid, you're like, yeah, it's easy, right?

It's a big string.

You just go like this.

And then you pull it.

You're like, huh, huh, this is kind of like a bad thing.

You just make it look like it's a rubber band.

And you just go.

I've never shot an arrow.

It sucks.

Have you shot an arrow?

No.

It hurts your hands.

Yeah, I think it sucks and is for losers.

Did something happen to you at summer campers?

This is screaming.

Dude, my parents made me go to fucking sports camp with my brother and I had to do all this shit and I hated it.

But I feel like archery is the one where like a kid like you would have a good chance.

No, I was bad at it.

I have no fucking arm strength.

I have thrown a bunch of axes.

Well, of course.

And that became such a bougie, you know, Brooklyn bar thing.

And I weirdly was so good.

What do you mean, weirdly?

I feel like you would be really good at throwing axes.

I mean yeah i don't know i took to it immediately yeah that's not surprising at all um aaron taylor johnson is this kid's uh young dad who uh

this feels like aaron taylor johnson trying to bridge the gap between he has in the past when i've talked about him he is one of the actors i am most allergic to and it was always when aaron taylor johnson is playing charming i shut down i'm like fuck off the last four or five years it feels like he's really started to lean into being a little bit of of a shitbag and being a little greasy.

And he's starting to win me over.

And this is sort of putting a like, he is fundamentally a good dad into a guy who just seems a little too slick, a little brash.

Slick, no one's really slick because it's a pretty dirty movie.

But like, I know what you mean in terms of like his charm or his kind of like, yeah, it'll be all right.

You know, like, you know, that kind of.

Yeah, he's a bit of a jack the lad.

Yes.

he's I liked him in the movie.

I agree, yeah, I think he's good in the movie.

I generally have just I turned around on him with Outlaw King, which was the first time,

yeah, nobody ever did, right?

The first time he played what he's doing now, sort of like big beardy guy, yes, who's like,

and then it was like Tenet, yes, um, Bullet Train, which he's, but he's really good in both of the Leech movies, but whatever complaints.

That movie kind of irritates me, but he's having fun.

Uh, I feel like there was another one, well, the other one's Nosferatu.

Well, yeah, I also just.

Him and Nosferat.

He's just every, I don't even know how to describe it.

He's oddly cast in that movie.

I didn't hate the performance.

I mean,

I thought it was really funny.

It's such a weird part of that movie is that part.

I mean, I'm thrilled at the notion that Craven the Hunter, which, by the way, I don't think he's terrible.

And

you still have not seen that movie, right?

Which one?

Craven the Hunter.

No, I keep, mean, it's on HBO or something.

I finally got it.

i'm gonna get

40 text from you yeah it is the kind of bad movie that you're gonna get hyper fixated on a bunch of elements being like

but crow's really good well i that's what i i want to watch have you seen by the way that crow is playing uh is it what is it himmler or no it's not himler it's uh some nazi right okay if they're they're making a nuremberg movie right which like it's like we perfect but

a lot yeah exactly but uh i believe for this fall we're getting a new nuremberg movie oh he's playing right Göring.

And that's what I just said, where they're like, Russell, we want you to play one of the Nazis on trial.

And he was like, was there a Husky Nazi?

Which Nazi liked to, you know, pound the Steins?

I just think that

blessing in disguise for everyone, including ATJ, that Craven the Hunter seems to have killed his Bond hype.

And I'm like, that's the worst thing.

we could do with him at this point in time.

He needs to keep the beard.

He needs to constantly play characters who are like two two points in.

The hair needs to be greasy as hell.

I agree with you that he shouldn't be Bond, but I don't think that him being Bond is out of the question because they, whatever, whatever watchmaker, like Omega or whatever, just signed him to a thing, which is they're like, this is the way that they people they're freaking about about the Omega thing.

I didn't clock the Omega thing.

I have, I mean, everyone assumes that now that Bond is fully in the hands of MGM, Amazon, that an announcement's coming soon.

Because they picked two like huge producers, obviously.

Prestal and Heyman.

They're very much trying to be like press D.

Like, we are putting our best people on this, you know.

It will surprise me if they pick him.

I think he's just,

just a horrible choice for me.

A horrible choice.

Like, I really like that.

Bad for him, but bad for him.

That's the thing.

If I'm his agent, I'm like, you better be really sure you want to do this because it will completely derail everything you've been doing.

And it absolutely felt like he

do.

Maybe you want to be James Bond.

He's like eight years actively running for it but it feels like in the effort for him trying to get that part he ended up identifying what he actually should be doing which is the polar opposite of bond unless james bond's about to yeah be a mad lad pounding pints rather than drinking martinis so that's this character right the mother is jodi comer who is

stuck with some sort of mystery illness is upstairs in bed she's almost like a fucking mrs havershim right she's hot like temperature wise she's somewhat delused

like she's having hallucinations, she's having mad, she's got kind of lewd swing, right?

She's sort of slipping in time or whatever.

Yes, uh, no one in else in the movie is really talking about it, although it does seem like people are aware because there's the older guy who comes and helps, that's his grandfather,

that's her dad,

right?

Yeah, yeah, who she talks about later in the film, but it, but it is like it's another good idea of like, hey, you know what would be the situation 20 years, 28 years later, we like have gotten rid of fucking medicine.

We've gotten rid of doctors

and healthcare, you know?

And like her dad, the grandfather, this elderly man, at some later point refers to a character as a GP.

And the kid goes, what is that?

Okay, but I'm stupid.

I also was like, I thought it was a military thing.

And then they explained that.

In Britain, that's what you call your, what do you call it, primary care physician?

Yeah.

And in Britain, you just call your GP.

I feel like I always say GP.

I used to work at a GP's office.

I was the receptionist.

Oh, my God.

I'm sure you you did a great job.

I think I did fine.

Did you have an accent at that point, or did people go like, Who the fuck are you?

I mean, I always like, hello, doctor's office here.

I did talk like the movie phone, man.

It was weird.

Well, that's how you had to talk on the phone at that point in time.

People want to know.

I was like 17 years old, so I had my silly accent that I had.

What accent did you have?

You had your fucking accent.

You've called it a transatlantic accent.

You're Mark Ronson.

If you want to watch like home videos of me at the time, I do.

I'll hold

them sometime.

but like you, certainly, British people thought I had an American accent, and I did.

I mean, I had largely,

but American people said, Why the fuck are you talking like that?

Did you sound like Madonna?

That's what I always say.

I sounded like Madonna.

Like, I just sounded like an English, an American person who just, for one, I spoke in so many British idioms, but for two, there is a weird tinge to my voice.

The mother is just kind of like fucked.

And as you said, no one really talks about it because, like, the nature of this reality is, well, there's like no way to cure her.

We're not going to like euthanize her.

So she's just upstairs.

Right.

And it basically feels like they're just sort of like,

well, she'll just run her course.

There's nothing we can do.

We have no answers.

And I immediately fell for, I think, a trick that the movie's playing of like, I start to wonder, like, does she have the rage virus?

This clearly must be connected in some way.

Slow acting way.

Right.

I didn't think she had the rage virus, but I thought, I'll tell you what my actual fear was.

Are they setting up some magic blood thing?

That she, that she is some weird evolution that they will figure out actually within her physical condition container.

That's what they kind of do in 28 weeks later.

They do.

Because in 28 weeks later, there's the concept of people who are immune or whatever.

Yeah.

Which again, I feel like.

Boyle and Garland are like, we don't want to deal with that.

Right.

But I was like, well, I could see them doing something where they're like, the immunity comes at a great cost, right?

Yeah.

The immunity is a sickness that takes away from you.

Right.

To spoil this movie.

It's not doing that at all.

I know.

Right.

To spoil this movie, I think it is the crux of what Garland is doing with the movie and Boyle is doing with the movie, which is basically like people still die in normal ways too.

Like even though the world has ended, she's sick and it's sad and it's a thing the kid has to go through.

But that's the fact.

Remember, you will die.

And tomorrow.

It is the inciting incident.

But it is not some plot magic and it is not some

what I was thinking the whole time that happened

when it was revealed that she had cancer?

Which Marie said to me early on.

I was like, she's got cancer.

She was, and Marie was like, she has brain cancer.

You know,

when we talked about Mission Impossible, we were talking about Luther and how we didn't like that he just didn't die from being ill, that he had to die in some like savior-esque way that was like connected to the plot versus connected to themes.

And I was like, that the reason he's sick is because in order to build the fucking poison pill, they have to build that room around him, which is essentially a giant Faraday cage.

So, him programming the thing that can stop the entity is the thing making, which is a cool idea.

And I can't talk about that in the movie.

I'm going to put that out of the movie.

Yeah.

Okay.

Wow.

Sorry.

Marie, finish your point.

No, no.

My point was just like, oh, this movie is doing what we wanted.

the other movies.

Well, because it's just, it's, it's telling the whole story through these characters, you know, and is like telling you what they know and not telling me what they don't know and like investing you in the same mysteries that like

drive their lives.

The real inciting incident of this movie is he goes out for this ritualistic first time on the mainland with his dad, which clearly kind of shakes him.

And I also love that it's pretty quick.

Yeah.

You know, we're on the causeway and then getting out of there within 15 minutes of like, all right, baby.

I thought that was going to be the movie.

I did.

I did too.

Right.

They get stuck.

Shit happens.

And I am thinking, which is what I am.

Then, what does Jodie Comer have to do in this film?

Right.

I also was sort of like, are they going to fucking Brian Cranston and Aaron Taylor Johnson?

Is the movie going to

because they set up the so much you can't go back and save people?

I'm like, the misdirect is you think the kid's in danger.

His dad's going to die, and the movie's going to be how does he make it back?

That's what I was assuming.

Instead, what happens is they go on a run.

He kills some zombies.

He's overwhelmed by some of it, a lot of it.

He kills the easy zombie, he struggles with the scary zombies are new.

The idea is that it's been so long that some zombies have gotten fat because they eat so much uh worm and they like walk on all fours, they're like pretty cool.

We also see they're like they're like worms themselves, they're kind of just like writhing on the ground, right?

Like moving really slowly, they kind of look like the whale.

Look, it's not

untrue that they kind of look like the whale, but they're also climby like slugs, right?

Yeah, and at no point does the whale in the movie The Whale go

on on the ground

just did a perfect impression

but um just imagine a horizontal and david remind me how does killer croc swim in the movie suicide squad i don't remember you have to tell me it was the movement you just

like the faster okay

so you got the you got the if you asked a hundred people on the street like remember killer croc was in suicide squad they would be like You don't know.

What are you talking about?

The movie won an Oscar for the Killer Croc makeup.

You could argue it was.

It was pretty good makeup.

It was incredible makeup, but people were like, they gave it a fucking Oscar for the Joker tattoos because everyone's gonna be David.

He does this.

And by the way, for the listener, we're all doing perfect impressions of the way Killer Crock swims.

Get David.

Get David.

I'm ordering myself some lunch, by the way.

Jesus Christ.

Because I'm realizing I'm doing another podcast after this, so I have to.

David, can you do the Killer Crock thing with your phone in your hand, like 28 years later style?

Oh, yeah.

Can we get like a human rig on this?

Oh,

Okay, that's good.

They make it back to the mainland, but they have like a pretty scary close call with what we were introduced to as an alpha.

Right, so right, we're learning things.

We're learning that the wilderness has come.

We've got really skinny, fast ones.

We've got alphas, which are the ones with the big dicks.

The roid-ed-up ones.

You can't take them down with a skin.

These guys got some real hoes on them.

We also

something is introduced where we see Griff.

A

man is being like hung from like the ceiling.

Letters are carved into his

say Jimmy.

Yes, although you don't see the J.

I think they, they kind of do a good job

teasing

what that is.

It does.

And then his head is in a bag that is has pulled up.

An anti-bitey bag, I have to interpret it.

They think, why was this human tortured?

and left for dead.

And then they realize that it has turned.

But I mean, I really liked throughout all of this that Aaron Taylor Johnson is not that careful

because I think partly he's like, wow, he's going to have to figure it out.

And also, partly it's just his character.

Because, like, in that scene,

you know, there's a way for you to be watching that scene where you're like, oh, this sucks.

Like, they're taking too long so that we get a jump scare, right?

But you're like, no, that's how you behave.

Where he'd be like, yeah, don't get too close to it.

Where I'm like, I would be a million miles away from that.

That's where I'm saying they're bringing in a little bit of the ATJ hotel.

It doesn't work.

I'm constantly walking behind him.

And And I'm like, this is terrible parenting.

You would want to keep an eye on him.

It feels like the parent forcing the kid to go on a hunting trip when he's far too young.

They're not a little too young.

It's like he's two years too young.

Yeah.

He can't go on the roller coaster yet, but the dad's like, eh, I'll sneak him on the roller coaster.

Yeah.

And the kid is, he's not that kind of kid.

He's really sensitive.

He is.

I mean, look, unsurprisingly, a character detail I love is when he's packing to go on the trip.

He looks at the action figure on the mantelpiece.

He's like walking out the door.

He goes back, he grabs it, and then he puts it down.

You related to that.

I did.

Every morning.

If you wonder why I'm late for podcast recordings, it's because I'm looking at the action figure on the mantle and I go, do I bring it?

Which one did you bring today?

Well, I have my

McRetty from the thing here, courtesy of reach.

But like, right, I mean, we all agree, like, the kid is a really good kid performance.

And if you told me going in, like, hey, yeah, the movie's the main character's a kid.

I love the movie.

I would have been like, look, Boyle is good at that.

I'm not automatically freaked out but i don't love i never love to hear that a 12 year old is going to be the big thing in a genre no but i 28 years it is the two generations later thing it is that like this kid is like two degrees removed from a world before this which is smart you're like that should be the center of the film it does make sense but it is obviously a risky proposition unless you find the right kid which they did and ball directs him to perfection they narrowly make it back the other side of the gate and then you're sort of like wait no what is the movie now?

No,

while they're there,

a couple more, couple more things.

So they clock that there is a

fire in the distance.

It looks like signs of human life.

And the intelligence is like, oh, it must be a fire.

And he's like, is it a village?

He's like, no, it's not a village.

It's like, what is it?

He's like, oh, I don't know.

And I don't want to talk about it.

It's covering a little too fast.

It's coming out of a pillar.

Let's say.

So there's that.

There's also the first time I think we see

infrared footage.

So that shit rocks.

And I also want to.

also when they're marching over the causeway to begin their journey is when, right, he cuts in the recitation of the Kipling poem, which was this like 1915 radio broadcast, right?

Is what that is.

And he's cutting in like all this footage of like Britain going to war, medieval, World War One, right?

You know, like, and I remember.

We're seeing like 40s movies depictions of nights.

And it reminded me a lot of the

opening ceremony where he cuts to like

the Olympic opening ceremony, we cuts to

each territory or whatever, scoring a rugby goal or a soccer goal.

Like this use of like, again, like tone poems, montage, using archival footage.

I was like, oh, this is fucking cool.

But this

is rocking.

Yes.

Because I was remembering our Olympics episode where you're just sort of like slamming your fist on the table and going like, this is so British.

He gets it, right?

And he's just saying like, this is the DNA, right?

He's not like making a statement on the nation in the same way as he's talking about the lineage of the people in a way.

We, we, we reveal this on social media, but we record an episode recently with Mark Marin, A Decade of Dreams Come True, that will come out in later months.

We locked the gates.

We locked the motherfucking gates, but I told Marin, because of course he does not know the backstory, that David grew up in England.

And I believe Marin's immediate response was, it must be nice to grow up in a place with old stuff.

That guy.

And he was like, like, he got walls there that are like older than 300 years.

We talked about castles for a minute.

That's true.

I forgot.

But that's like a thing this movie is getting at is like, this is a place that has history.

And these, like, it repeats itself and it echoes and it rhymes.

It's what to me is charming about America, but a lot of.

Europeans will make fun of, right?

Where America's like, look at this old house.

It's from the 19th century.

And everyone in Europe is like, all of us just live in houses from then i mean like what

this is why margaret is one of the best movies i've ever made about america because it's the one movie that identifies like we are teenagers who think we're grown-ups right right right right that's what that movie's about for me someday we will cover it anyway um they make it back and you're sort of like what is the movie now where is this going right which i love i love that feeling of i truly don't know i mean i know zombies will be involved i guess yeah But there's anywhere this could go, right?

Like this, it could go in any direction.

I also just want to shout out the sequence where they are running across the causeway back to Holy Island, where it's like the northern lights.

How is, yes, how is he fucking shooting that?

I have no idea.

I mean, I know there's like CGI.

There it is.

But it looks

so insane and it's, and it's so striking.

It took my breath away.

And you also just have a just giant penis.

That's true.

Just flapping in the wind like that.

He's got a fucking piece on it.

It's a prosthetic, I believe.

I mean, it was very rubbery.

No,

I don't know, but the physics and the sort of the sheen to use length.

I feel like we had a similar reaction to Yahya Abdul Mateen's giant blue hanger in Watchmen,

where you and I are texting back and forth.

And I'm like,

is he just fucking stacked to the high heavens?

And you were like, it's got to be fake but because the actors are already wearing makeup over their body right it's sort of it's hard to know where the reality is do they give billy credup a big dick in the watch average uh i would say it was it was a perfectly

yeah

blue penis but fucking hbl watchman he's got an absolute pringle scan on him

just leading you to this

Anyway, they narrowly escape the dick.

They make it back.

There's a party.

And in the, well, this is the thing.

In the same time where he's like doing this sort of tone poem, like cutting in historical footage, cutting in movies, reenacting different eras of Britain, the footage of them out on the hunt, right?

He's also giving you these images that are clearly new stuff from the movie, but you don't know what they are.

And you're seeing people wearing masks.

You feel like, is this some weird cult thing?

Is this a viable thing?

Where is this going?

And then finally, you cut into that space proper and you're like, this has been a preview of what's on the other side for him after his first hunt, which is basically, you're a man now.

You get to fucking engage with pub culture, right?

And it's like some weird version of like a bar mitzvah combined with like, now you get to like chug pints and like be yelled at by people.

That this is how they've maintained their like football hooliganism is by rebuilding it around the idea of hunting zombies.

It just

breaks my heart that, you know, that Aaron Taylor Johnson's johnson's like my son he you know killed so many he's clearly so proud of him he's crying

he's so violent you know he like smashed those guys he ripped them to shreds he's so brave and the kid is like very traumatized he's not into it he thinks he did a bad job he doesn't like that he was scared but he also is correctly like that was very up i didn't enjoy anything basically like maybe nailed two and there were eight where his dad had to step in and he's fixated on the ones that he couldn't i'm with or i'm sympathetic to aaron taylor johnson because it's like yeah we live on a tiny island like a little village town of however what do you think it's like a hundred people or something you know like whatever uh that's the where i'm alive you know like it's the only thing that we get to do gets a rush right yeah they don't even have the wordle they don't even have the wordle they don't even have old ones nari a cinematrix to be wordle didn't exist in this universe

it's so frightening to me to think about a world without wordle yeah i'm joking do you think they still have duty.com though

please tell me what that is d-o-d-d-y and every day there was a new flash animation about poop

is it still going um i

guess that that one might have died on the i did in the last five years go like i should check up on duty.com and i can't remember if i had to use internet archive to find it but they're definitely not posting new content what i was going to say is i like that you're getting this like preview imagery of the fucking pub party afterwards that is more terrifying to this kid to be in the center of than being on the mainland with the zombies, right?

He is so overwhelmed.

They're making him drink beer.

He's vomiting immediately.

I don't think it's more terrifying.

I think they're equating,

but it's so overstimulating.

Yes, it is.

And the major thing that happens at a time is

and he witnesses his father

go down on the local hoo-wah in an alleyway.

She's a nice lady.

She's a nice lady.

She's not the local hoo-a.

I mean, she could be.

Fucking Pantaliano has entered the gap.

Thank you.

That was exactly what I was going for.

But a thing that absolutely

destroys his idea of his father.

I think it definitely combined with him.

He was so freaked out by what he just experienced and being like, I'm sympathetic to MTJ.

Jody Coomberg is not

really with him anymore.

No, she and she doesn't really exist.

Also, the kid doesn't have all of the context.

Well, I also think the kids have to bring back the Manosphere thing is he's more of a DJ Khaled type where he's like, kings don't do that.

Crap.

Like, I think that's what he's thinking.

And even though he's still

seen where he actually says that, he's still finding a sense of self, but he knows.

without a doubt he self-identifies as a king and kings don't do that but okay so you did say, by the way, walking out, you went, what a year for Connalingus.

You did say pussy eating in mainstream studio horror film.

And I said, in mainstream studio Jack O'Connell horror film.

That's right.

J.O.C.

and sits in his ride.

Do you think that

in a movie, someone has to eat a pussy thing?

I don't have to do it.

In either case, he's doing it.

But do you think that's his first script note when he gets set up?

It's why he never made the MCU.

Being like, someone's going to get eaten out.

And they were like, what?

Yeah, they offered him him every eternal

kingo come on

i wish i could name another eternal uh kingo gilgamesh oh there you go druick oh boy icarus

can i name them all sprite sure

fastos yep that's uh brian tyree henry i'm getting hung up on gemma chan yep She's the only one I know because I actually, she's a well-known comic character.

Well, weller-known.

Well, she's not Cersei, right?

Angela Jolie is

Angela Jolie is

Laura Croft, Tomb Raider.

Oh, one of them is Ajax.

Yeah, that's Salmah Hayek as Jack.

I'm two away.

Remember how there were 10 Eternals?

There were a fair amount.

They may be over Ajax.

I think it's 10.

Angelina Jolie's character is Athena?

Is just Thena.

I think.

Because the idea is that all of them are names that were misinterpreted as.

Okay.

And then the only one I don't have is the fast one.

Makari.

Warren Red Lost character.

Makari.

You did have.

my brain sucks so much no you just love eternals i do love eternals and i watch it every night i'm a little like embarrassed for you i'm embarrassed for me icarus is the one that really amuses me who was who was uh who was the irish guy he was druig's a bad boy but he's actually a love

yeah right he probably is the one the most likely yeah let's let's be honest he might be taking a knee if you know what i'm saying

i do like that i do like that she's standing and aaron taylor Johnson takes a knee like a gentleman.

Yeah.

Okay, wait.

He bows before.

I just have like a little follow-up thing because I just listened to the, like everyone else who is listening to this podcast, I just listened to the loser episode.

You guys briefly bring up Saving Silverman.

I haven't seen it.

I have gotten five texts in the week since the episode came out.

Did I say that?

Saying

Saving Silverman is good and you are right.

So you're, you're, it's good.

And I was like, isn't it bad?

I said, I can't remember the saving Silverman is good.

And I believe you said, oh, fuck off.

It is not.

You refuse to even enter.

I mean, I remember that being like a one-star Empire magazine review, but that's not, it's been a little while since I saw Silverman.

I put it on last night.

Or saved it.

Yeah.

I will admit, I've been watching it in chunks every night when I'm trying to fall asleep.

I have not made it to the end yet.

Even though it is only 90 years.

I'm watching it at Instagram.

There is like a god-tier bit in the beginning where Jack Black is like trying to prove that he's good at training employees of Subway on how to make sandwiches, which is so fucking simple.

But the guy puts the meat on the outside of the bread.

That movie's a year after High Fidelity.

I do remember at the time where I was just like, I'm interested in Jack Black, like, like, Jack Black's being peppered into anything.

I want to know what it is.

My take on that movie is that that movie is chaos.

Like, what's funny about it is like, it is like one of the most deeply misogynistic studio films I've ever seen.

I remember, right?

Back.

So, I just want to go on the record as saying, like, Amanda Pete,

I get where she's coming from.

I think it's amazing that the only sexual activity she will have with her boy toy is

he just goes down on her.

That's the thing.

She doesn't ask.

She tells Jason Bakes to take an E.

And then, when he says, you know, there are things that one can do in return, she hands him porno max out of her bedside table, porno max, lotion, and a floral insane

that says have fun.

You're not making it sound good,

you're making it sound.

Marie, agree with me.

It's got some juice.

It's got some juice.

I was laughing.

You know, like weird garbage juice.

Yeah.

It's weird garbage juice.

Yeah.

But garbage juice, you're like, that must have started with a base of real juice.

Also, I know other things have gotten mixed in.

All of the Neil Diamond stuff is funny, too.

Neil Diamond's really good.

Song's really good.

I basically stopped watching it because my husband was like, actually, can we pause?

So neither of us have made it.

No, we haven't.

No, they just kidnapped her.

Oh, okay.

Where I stopped.

But like, we stopped watching the movie because my.

Have you seen this piece of shit?

No.

Okay.

My husband was.

That's actually damning that Ben hasn't seen it.

Even Comedy Central was like,

but no, we had, we had to watch the Neil Diamond Storytellers from SNL.

That's one of the greatest.

One of the greatest.

That is, I haven't seen that in a long time.

So good.

I like that we're bringing up deeper SNL cuts of like, because I got some Rocket Dog log and then Houston we have a dog.

The Seth Meyers Lonely Island podcast talked about it

the same week because they were discussing that.

Synchronicity.

I've been jamming on some sort of like forgotten side feral sketches, but I remember in a pre-YouTube era where I would go to SNL transcripts.jt.

And the Neil Diamond Storyteller sketch was one that I would read and laugh out loud because I was like, well, there's no way to re-watch this.

It's on Daily Motion.

Now, now.

but I'm saying, like, 2004, you were like, I just have to read it.

What is dot JT?

I don't know, but it was what that fucking website had.

I just, I just love like the SNL sketch sketches that are like not on YouTube, the ones that like the

most ones that have music.

Yeah, yeah, that because Rocket Dog It's Life as a Highway is the problem, I think.

Right, I think

I found it again on Daily Motion or somewhere, but just staying out there.

I think there's just some conversation that happens of like, do we clear Life is a Highway?

And they're like, what?

That's like a 1255 sketch.

No, No, there's a Paul Rudd Vilkeman sketch that aired once and has never been legally released.

I guess that makes sense.

But in my, in my head, it's like, okay, the ones that are like deemed too spicy for YouTube, like, we want to scrub them from the inner.

Part of it, but I literally.

I do think the music is more of it.

I mean, they talk about on the fucking Lonely Island podcast that when they started doing the digital shorts and they would sample songs, they were like, yeah, because you make a license that this just airs one time on late night and it costs fucking $5.

The second they started putting up on YouTube, they got sued.

I mean, my guess is it's also sometimes someone like Tom Cochran, who of course is the guy who's saying life is a highway, might be like, Yeah, life is a highway is my whole like income stream.

I'm asking for the maximum quote, right?

Like some guys might just be like, Yeah, whatever.

Fuck, you can have it.

Also, you have to remember, Rocket Dog is post-Cars.

So, Cars has been like funneling money into his pockets.

And he's like, You don't get this for free anymore.

I know my value.

Life is a highway.

You're gonna have to clue this man.

I wanna ride it all night.

That was Rascal Flats, right?

You're going my way.

And then I don't know the next lyric.

It might honestly be, I wanna ride it.

In my mind, it's I want to ride it again.

David, what?

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

Booking.

Yeah.

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

Booking.

Yeah.

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

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

God, I'm trying to think of anyone in my life, perhaps even in this room.

Ben, who's like, what's an example of someone I know who maybe has a very particular set of concerns?

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

Who is one other person in the room?

My name 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.

Look, people have different demands.

And you know what?

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

You know, you've got

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

Any kind of demand.

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

Sure.

Maybe you're in Europe and you want to make sure that's very demanding to be in Europe.

You got air conditioning.

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

Yes.

You got to have air conditioning.

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

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

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

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

You do.

You love selfies.

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

Look, 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.

Yeah.

Please.

Can I check that part?

You want one of those in the recording studio?

That'd be great.

You want to start, you want to be.

I'll be in the sauna when we record.

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

You want to be Splish Splash and what's going to be.

It would look good if I had a sauna and a cold plunge and while recording, I'm on mic, but you just

like,

like, as I move to the

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

Yeah, yes.

You can find exactly what you're booking for: booking.com, booking.

Yeah.

Booking.com.

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

Booking.

Yeah.

David.

Okay, okay.

I'll be very quiet.

Oh, I'm used to it.

Producer Ben is sleeping.

Oh,

Hazzy, Hazy 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.

That's psycho behavior.

It is.

Look.

He did that when we were sleeping.

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

you might not think Wayfair, but you should.

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

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 hoz 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.

For game day specifically, Griffin, you could think about things like recliners and TV stands, sure, or outdoor stuff like coolers and grills and patio heaters.

Like, that's, you know, that's 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 faint.

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

Look, I'm just going to say that Wayfair is your trusted destination for all things game day, from coolers and grills to recliners and slow cookers.

Shop, save, and score

today at Wayfair.com.

That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com.

Wayfair, every style, every home.

David, there's only one shame to this ad raid.

Don't wake Hausy.

There's only one shame to this ad raid that I didn't find out about this in time before I already purchased coolers, grills, folding chairs, patio heaters, recliners, barware, slow cookers, sports-themed decor merch for my favorite teams, and more.

If only

Cleveland Browns, of course,

no matter what.

Okay, that's the end of the Ad Reed.

Okay, so 28 years later, he's his sort of belief in his father is immediately broken, right?

In this storm of complicated emotions, here's something I appreciate.

We get moving pretty quickly.

Again, I can't, no offense to the town, which is an interesting environment, but every time we were in the town, I kind of had this fear of like, are we about to do 20 minutes to sort of tear out politics?

He runs home.

He has this long conversation with who we assume is the great grandpa, which is a lovely scene.

He asks him about the pillar and the fire that he saw.

And he's like, Oh, your dad didn't want to tell you.

And says that guy used to be a GP.

And the movie now starts tilting at the character that is basically the Colonel Kurtz of this movie.

Or at least you'll think he'll be Kurtz.

They're framing him that way.

Yeah.

And there's certainly parallels.

Right, because ATJ, what the fuck's the character's name?

I keep calling him

Jamie.

Says, like, right, we had one, I had one disturbing encounter with that person a long time ago where I just saw him lining up bodies and then he like waved it.

And he was so cheery about it, like nothing was going on.

And I was like, that's a psychopath.

And you see it.

You see it from a distance.

His face is covered.

You don't see the guy.

But we know there's a third name about the title on the poster.

I know who's coming.

And I think Ben doesn't know.

No.

You had a real kind of like positive jump scare when the actor shows up on screen, but I'm like, oh, fuck.

They're saving Rafe Finance.

David.

That is one of the first things you said walking out of the theater.

Third act Rafe.

Oof.

Third act Rafe.

Third act Rafe is huge in bruges uh hurtlocker harry pottery is there another one uh i was saying that the reader's kind of a third act wraith although uh most people don't make it to the third act

remember that movie if they saw it yesterday yeah there has to be another one though i don't know it's it's a it's a classy move it's a gentleman's move and it's a genius move especially because he's smeared yes he's he's really he is covered in iodine but i mean because so we don't know that at first we think it's like blood or something right i think I

guess I was,

I, I sort of, because they were setting him up so malevolently, I, I did sort of think, like, okay, I don't think he's gonna be as like the psycho that he's being portrayed as by Aaron Taylor Johnson because that feels too easy, right?

So then I was, I was trying to puzzle out, like, is it gonna be he was doing something with the bodies to

you know, ward off the zombies or whatever?

But we're getting there, and we're both, we're all like, they wouldn't do something that easy, but what's it gonna be?

And when Rafe appears on screen, the first six line readings, I would say the first 10 minutes he's on screen, the audience laughed at everything he did because it is so

he is somehow doing something that is so unexpected, and yet you still can't pin it down.

You're like, this is not who I thought this guy would be, and yet I still can't figure this guy out.

And it doesn't feel like he's just doing weird line readings.

No, he's, it's like, it's, it's a gentleness that's really surprising.

Yeah.

It's like macabre sentimental.

I was like, he's doing another actor.

Who is he doing?

And it took me a moment.

And then I was like, he's doing Bill Nae.

Sure, okay.

Not like ripping him off, but it felt like he's capturing that odd energy to Bill Nae where you're like, is this guy like emotionally disconnected or more connected?

He's kind of just on his own wavelength.

He's another take on.

He's gone not crazy, but he doesn't interact with people anymore.

Yeah.

And like, he's not malevolent, but he is odd.

He's still polite.

Yeah, well, that's the naive part of it is he sort of like makes jokes to entertain himself.

What Bill Nye performance are you thinking of?

I think it's not Bill Nye's like default kind of like

demeanor.

I don't agree with you.

I'm sorry.

I love Bill Nye.

I just think he usually plays really more than guy.

Are we talking about the science guy?

We were not talking about the science guy.

I was talking about the science guy.

And I love Bill Nye.

He, I have no problem with Bill Nye.

I don't know him very well.

I have no problem with him.

Give him some crap.

Flowers on that name.

Do I have to?

Yeah, I think so.

I think it's a little desperate that he's trying to appeal to the TikTok generation.

Well, I haven't been clocking this.

Bill Nye.

Anyway,

this movie

is

that he has this information.

Hell yeah, brother.

Maybe Bill Nye's taking a name.

I think so.

And for that, we salute.

This podcast should, Maybe this is it.

The last episode.

Yeah, maybe we got to wrap it up.

Wow, we recorded with all those celebs for the code.

Yeah, and we'll just never release them.

Fuck it.

We got like five A-listers.

We're just going to keep them like fucking day the clown cried.

Just be like, when people ask us, why?

And I'm like, I don't know.

We started talking about Bill Nye eating pussy.

Maybe.

We've run our course.

His grandfather explains that this guy was a GP

and he goes,

you know, I think all of this experience like brings him closer to his mother and this feeling of a need to protect her and a feeling that his father is not, that his father seemingly has kind of moved on and he doesn't want his mother to be seen as like a finished cause.

And so he convinces his mother to go onto the mainland with him.

There's a couple really good scenes.

She's kind of, I feel like she's almost in a fugue at this point.

She doesn't like, she's in the past.

She doesn't understand what is happening until minute-to-minute.

Yes, like he gets her, I feel like, out of there because she's just kind of like, Yeah, sure, where are we going?

She regains a cogency.

She wants to be outside

on the other side, right?

And he's like, Yeah,

yes, right.

But he does this whole kind of trick to convince the people at the watchtower that there's a fireplace to put out to get him off the guard.

He has this really good scene where he kind of like holds Aaron Taylor Johnson at knife point because he's so angry at his father.

Um, do you guys like Comer in in this movie?

What do you guys think of Jodi Comer?

Here's the thing.

I think she is a phenomenal actress.

Yeah, in your favorite movie, Free Kai.

But apart from that.

I feel like you sometimes feel like she goes a little ham sandwich.

And I think she is someone who knows how to make a great ham sandwich.

I think they're handing her a pretty extreme part.

And like some friends of mine who saw that I logged this on Letterboxd were like, how's Comer?

I know you're holding Comer stock the way I am.

And I'm like, It's not her best performance, but it's like, it's a really tricky part.

And I do think she does it well.

I think she especially nails the last couple of scenes.

She's phenomenal.

I think she's fantastic in this.

But I feel like Marie.

I was getting a little, I was getting, you and I loved bike riders, and you walked out of the theater and were like, fuck that, fuck the voice she's doing, fuck the whole thing.

Certainly how I felt.

This is high school play.

That's how I felt.

I think when we were still in the dark as to what her actual illness was,

I was not loving her performance because I thought it was a mental issue.

And to me, it was a little trophy.

Right.

There's the worry of like, right, are you doing a little too yet?

Like, she's the

yes.

I didn't think it was bad, but I thought it was a little too broad.

The more her kind of consciousness comes back, the better she gets.

Did any of you see Prima Fajri?

No, I wanted to.

It is just like one of the most impressive things I've ever seen an actor watching.

Fuck that.

I hate those one-person shows on Broadway.

And I think it's like, you know, it's impressive.

Like, it's like a cool trip.

I mean, I'm like, similarly, like, I don't really want to see Dorian Gray, but that I was like, it was one of the most technically astounding things I have ever seen.

I was, I bought all of my Jody Comer.

And I like, I did watch the first season of Killing E.

You never watched Killing E.

I thought it was really fun.

Yeah, I did what everyone did.

I thought the first season was good.

I watched like one episode of the second season.

Yeah, and then I'm like, come out.

Yeah.

Goodbye.

David's hitting a button.

But

I bought all of my Jodi Comer stock after the last duel, which I thought she was.

She's unbelievable.

I mean, everyone's in that.

You're right.

It was, it was that and Free Guy in the same year where I was like, Free Guy is rancid dog shit.

And I think she's kind of good in this.

Like I said, it's your favorite movie.

It's my favorite movie.

And then last duel, I think she is unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

Right.

Yeah.

Did I give her best actress that year?

I certainly nominated her.

Everyone's great in that movie.

She should have been nominated for an Oscar.

Maybe she should have won the Oscars.

Yeah.

People

won the Oscars.

People need to not sleep on that movie.

But you're right.

No, because I hadn't watched Killing Eve.

People need to not sleep on that movie.

People need to wake the fucking movie.

People need to need to wake up.

It's time to open your third eye.

You're right.

That that was my exact arc, which was I saw Free Guy without having seen Killing Eve and was like, huh, she's kind of interesting.

Then I saw Last Duel and I was like, she's fucking unbelievable is this like actress of her generation.

It is the reason.

Which I think some people think like that's kind of what she is.

It is the reason I went to see her.

You see Prima Fashi and you gave it to Rebecca Hall.

Oh, right.

Okay.

Yeah.

Which performance I know you love.

Yeah.

I, I, yeah, I adore.

Um,

but I think it's why I saw Prima Fashi, even though I do think I'm kind of allergic to that type of show because I was just like, I got to see her in person.

Yeah, sure.

I'm sure she was good.

She was incredible.

Right.

But yes, no, it's, it's, it's a tough performance.

I think she's really good in the movie.

I think she.

And I think, like you said, those final scenes, the big emotional scenes.

It's why you hire her.

And she underplays.

Right, exactly.

I will say, there is, there is a single look she gives in this movie.

It is a one-second reaction shot where I'm like,

that's worth $20 million.

You know, where I'm just like, it was, we'll get to it.

Remind me of this.

It's in the final moment.

But the movie then becomes act two is this sort of almost like Wizard of Oz quest to make it to.

yeah to the doctor yeah right to see this mystery man and you're like right they can't just get to the doctor so there do have to and i think the sidetracks are good we meet

we meet a character who we haven't mentioned yet eric eric the uh a swedish edvin riding a swedish soldier so we're also introduced to the fact that like they retcon the end of 28 weeks later like the they have successfully they don't even fully retcon it but they're like it was driven back yeah so whatever you saw there was not a problem.

Yeah, France is good.

They figured it out.

France is so good at reporting in video.

It rained and all the zombies went back to the EU.

But there's like an EU.

Or Macron just greeted them.

People are like, eh, don't love your.

Eric was getting big laughs in the theater.

Oh, Eric's fun.

He's fun.

They introduce a really fun element through this Swedish

soldier who is stranded after his quarantine boat.

Right.

And we see them getting annihilated by the zombies, which is cool.

He's the worst

There's the whole thing with the alphas where they like pull your head off.

Yeah.

That was so.

They go full like fucking predator mode.

Yeah, predator, board queen, whatever.

They like the full spine.

And then they use the spine as a fucking weapon.

Yeah, I mean, they'll do that.

As a weapon, but also as a piece of art.

I'm realizing this movie really feels like Ben.

was in the punch-up room.

A hundred percent.

There were like six ideas in this movie that like, it doesn't feel like ben wrote it from beginning to end but it does feel like they said like do you have any ideas and he threw them five and they used all of them if he's ripping out their heads with their spines on it let him use it yes but also make it an art piece yeah yeah yeah

um but the with the swedish guy they introduce this element of oh yes the rest of the world is exactly as it is Now yes, and basically they're just like, yeah, we just don't go there.

And Eric knows.

He does have an iphone uh eric knows it's my favorite i'm sorry it's my favorite joke in the movie when oh that he has the insane girlfriend the picture of his girlfriend and he goes what's wrong with her face and you're like oh right part of uk culture ending in 2002 is that they never had the modern horrors of love island face yes yeah or it had only begun the sickness had not spread i feel like i am going insane every time instagram shows me a person who has that face.

I feel like Ben, you and I have complained about this that now suddenly, increasingly, everyone has the same face.

Yeah.

And the face freaks me out.

I don't like the face.

And it's weird that everyone's sort of like starting to look identical in this pod person way.

And this movie just has the best in for a joke about that I have ever seen.

I'm trying to remember.

There were like three things that the kid.

that the Swedish guy referenced that the kid didn't understand because he was talking about radio, like he referenced radio.

Was that about the phone?

Like, literally, the phone itself.

He's like, oh, yeah, it's like a radio.

Because the kid's like, what is the way?

The kid's reaction to seeing a smartphone for the first time was amazing.

But the also seeing the picture of the ex-fiancé, he goes, that's what happens to my friend when he eats children.

It was, it was when he was describing his friend's an Amazon delivery driver.

Oh, yeah.

And he was like, I thought that was shitty.

So I signed up to join the Navy and that's how I ended up here in this shitty situation.

And the kid's just like, I have no idea what any of you.

What do you mean?

Like when you order stuff online, I don't know what that.

But also this guy's like, why the fuck did you bring your mom here?

Why does your mom seemingly think that you're her husband?

Well, you know, your dad or dad.

Or dad.

Right.

But I think it's interesting that Eric is like, I am doomed.

I'm not allowed to go back home.

Like the minute you set foot on this place, that's it.

Like you are considered contaminated and like you there's no you know escape right and he's just like you're a child your mother does not have her wherewithal why would you bring her here like what the is happening he's angry that he saved them because he's like you guys are doomed why did i bother saving you i wasted bullets like again like it would be too easy to make him an out and out villain and with

the nice guy with the fucking um yeah the eccleston and all those guys 100 and like but he's also not particularly heroic or nice.

Spends the kind of the whole time being like, Jesus, like, why am I even hanging out with you guys?

But he's also clearly, he's like, nothing else for me to do.

Right.

Like, what am I going to do?

Just walk into the woods.

And where it lands in the movie, it sort of settles you a little bit, takes the tension away for a little while.

Yeah, it was, it was nice to have that because they're really, because of the way that this movie is set up,

we don't have the,

I love the moment in the grocery store in 28 Days Later where they're playing the granddaddy song and there's like a moment of fun and joy.

And the closest we get to that in this film is when they're having a picnic and they're eating apples and they're talking about smartphones.

And it is like this nice little,

yeah, it's like a reset.

The membrane, right?

It's like bringing it back to our mentality for a moment by bringing in an outsider.

This is when, of course, the pregnant,

which we've already spotted her.

And I

wasn't sure if it was going going to be followed up on but i was like this is another interesting idea it's like 28 years later they would of course just basically settle into being their own species they would start like sexually reproducing it's the i am legend thing right like not i'm legend the movie i am legend the original story the element that every movie has failed to execute which is like this character realizing like am i the endangered species and it's not about me needing to eradicate them to save humanity they've become something else now

And I'm disturbing that.

I want to talk about something that is like Marie's Griffin morbid pandemic corner, but like not, I mean, it's not specifically that, but

I am a married 36-year-old woman who wants to have a child.

And that is something that I am like actively pursuing.

But I am constantly like

wavering on the the ethical implications.

Marie, you and I have this conversation.

A new life.

We've had it before.

Yep.

Into a world that feels like it's on the precipice of ending.

And to see this movie kind of make the argument for

new life will go on in the worst of circumstances.

We exist to live as long as the world's been ending.

The world's been ending forever.

And it was like, it was so

the baby is born.

There's this beautiful moment.

It's another scene that Jodi Comer destroys.

We've seen her sort of like weirdly, the further she gets away from home, the more she's out in the world.

She starts to, probably because she's no longer in a bubble.

Right.

It's sort of she's coming back to life.

She's going in and out, and they start asking her questions about her, you know, her comprehension and whatever.

But they end up in this like trailer where the pregnant zombie is and is clearly on the precipice of giving birth.

And rather than run into,

which is a very cool set, that overgrown trailer.

Jodi Comer walks over to her and grabs her hands and sort of like in this silent.

Helps her through labor.

Yes.

In this sort of through eye contact, gives the like, I get it, I know.

Offers her hands.

Right.

Helps her give like the pressure to push back against, right?

To like exert her

effort.

I thought the baby was going to be born like a little demon, Rosemary's baby, raised.

Yeah, I mean, Eric is having a rational reaction of like, fuck, shoot, destroy him.

It's a zombie baby.

Yes.

But they have this kind of elemental like, no, like, it's okay.

We have to, we can't, you know.

Percenta is strong.

Well, and the raid finds does shut that up.

When they, you know, at the checkpoint of the barrier to the mainland, it's like, check the eyes, make sure the eyes are clean, right?

Before you let them in, there's this great tension built into the delivery of the baby, which is the baby comes out, it's covered in blood, and its eyes are closed.

So at first, you're sort of like, I I don't know if the baby's fine, right?

And even if the baby is infected, how do you, how do they show?

I like, was like, are they going to show them killing a baby?

Truly.

I, that's the thing.

I was immediately like, no, like you kind of always know

when a property is going to make the like very, very daring

killing a baby.

Yes.

No, even a kid is.

That's not a baby, but you know what I'm saying.

When a movie is ramping up the, we're about to do something really inspiring.

It's very transgressive.

And you're like, yeah, no, this is not.

Cause that would just be, because, not because it's like, that's not alone.

It's just because it's like, yeah, you'll lose the audience.

Like, they'll just be so bummed.

Jodi Comer basically draws.

And it'll be kind of like, why'd you do that?

She draws the line before she can tell that the baby isn't infected.

There is the first, like, this is life.

We can't kill it.

It's an innocent.

It's done nothing wrong.

And it takes a little bit before they're just like, the baby's clean.

Interesting.

Eric does get fucking spined.

He gets spined.

He gets spined so far.

In just

A horror kill that I just always love.

Yeah.

Dragged away.

Yeah.

Blah, blah, blah.

Bullets firing down.

Piece of them returns.

Like, I just always love that.

Always.

It just always works for me.

So now they got a baby.

Now it's a sick woman, a little boy, and a big.

It's kind of like quiet place where you're like, there's a fucking baby?

It's just like, how are they going to get out of this scenario?

Because they are trapped in this train with the alpha with the big dead.

Right.

And it's pretty canonical.

Like, alpha cannot be killed by bow and arrows or any, you know.

And then all of a sudden, the alpha gets tranquilized by our new friend, Ray Fines.

Ray Fines, who immediately shows up, winks to the camera

and goes, Hey, Griff,

good luck not putting me on your best supporting act.

The blank is valid.

Not to backtrack, but I just want to quickly, because it did feel important.

There's the scene where they're hiding out in the church.

sleeping

during the night and the boy falls asleep.

Right.

They wake up

like trashes.

One of the

he wakes up and they see a zombie just lying there dead.

And he goes, How did that happen?

And she goes, I don't know.

And then it flashes back to her waking up in the middle of the night and bashing his head against a fucking like some kind of instinctual thing clicking for her, but she doesn't remember doing it.

I just

hit something important about that.

Well, see, but my question is: is it that she doesn't remember doing it or is it doesn't want to like ruin the kid by

exposing him because also our

first introduction to her at the beginning of the movie is her in this sort of daze she knocks over a glass of water they go upstairs to try to calm her down right

and she goes like why aren't you in school and aaron taylor johnson says like i told you remember today's the day i'm taking him and she flips out he's a 12-year-old he's a boy you can't take away his childhood like this they lie to her and they go do it with i interpreted it as she was aware of what she was i think so too just protecting i think it's a moment of cognitive clarity combined with like a mother's instincts that she in that moment makes the decision of like, I don't need to sully him with the notion of me having to do something that brutal.

I'm trying to still protect him in a way.

Do you think bigger splash?

He's more of a second act entrance.

I guess it's not really third act.

Yeah, he's so good.

On

fire in that.

I certainly gave that a nomination as well.

If not win?

Maybe.

I might have given him the win.

I don't know.

Look it up, davey look it up i'll do my best so we meet dr kelson he's covered in iodine he looks like he's covered in blood but he's actually covered in iodine which is a repellent prophylactic this guy has basically just been spending decades doing like r d right sure i guess so but it's not just that he's also been doing uh art land art there's a scene earlier in the you know where they find the angel of the north which is It's a whole movie set in the Northumberland region.

I went to school at Newcastle.

Everyone's got a Geordie accent.

Biting through my tongue right now.

Relax.

And the Angel of the North is this beautiful piece of public art that was built in like the 90s or the 2000s.

Like it's not bad at all.

It was built in the, I believe the early 2000s.

It was famously the most expensive valuation on antiques roadshow in the UK.

Someone had the original maquette.

Sure.

It was built in 1998.

Sort of symbolizes the northern, you know, sort of resurgence post in, you know, the minor strikes and and all, you know, it's a, it's a beautiful thing.

And I feel like that's what fucking Fienz is doing.

He's building this art that will last beyond him.

But it's also a memorial, right?

It is.

This is like this version of like a, it is, but, but it's like.

It's for like the people, whoever they might be, right?

Like who might one day come across these like cairns.

It's part of the tradition of like kind of all human civilizations, more or less, of leaving these monuments.

Yeah, it's like an AIDS quarter.

Because it it is about like each of these was a person now what is the medium it's the medium is bone yeah the medium is

the medium

bone

uh so the whole time they're you know being introduced introduced to ray finds they're carrying around the spine and head of Eric, our dearly departed Swedish friend.

Wow, Griff, you did not.

Oh, no, you nominated him in lead.

Yeah.

Interesting.

We thought about this.

I think I put him as lead.

Undeniably the lead because then he runs the table on the movie.

They're both leads.

I would put them both in lead.

Nope.

Well,

you're wrong.

I'm not wrong.

But

he kind of Ray Fiennes takes this.

Did I give him the win or I just nominated him?

You gave him a nom and you gave Tom Hanks the win for a little film called Sully.

Smart.

I, of course, gave Ray Fiennes my best of the decade win for Grand Budapest.

It's so good in that movie.

Marie, sorry.

Go on.

So they're carrying around Swedish guy's head.

Yeah, they hold on to it a little too long.

And Ray Fienz explains to Spike that what he's doing is he is,

he thinks it's important to sort of recognize that death is a part of this existence and recognize like it's kind of a beautiful tribute to these people to

you know

de-skin their spilt a whole system of how he fucking cleans them off and puts them

in this beautiful boy.

He's had time to

refine the process.

He really, I mean, he gets Comer's head back out there fast.

Yeah.

But it is like this weird balance of what he's doing is like he is friendly.

He is sophisticated.

He has clearly gone a little mad just in not communicating with other people, but not in a way that feels dangerous at all.

It's just hard to sort of figure out how to connect to.

And I think like

Fiennes is quietly one of the best chemistry actors.

Not even that he's a great listener, but he just knows so well how to really lock in with any scene partner and can adjust so beautifully to anyone and doing any kind of thing, like understanding what he needs to do to tell the story.

I think it's such a, it's a beautiful, um, he's like an additional male role model for this really sensitive kid who's only like example of what you're supposed to do with these creatures is kill them.

And

there's just so much violence and machismo.

This is one of the only people in the movie, if not the only one, who is fully engaging with the reality of their world, is really thinking about what has happened, what is happening, you know?

And he's just, he's so like sensitively attuned.

He's really to it.

Sensitive.

And it's, it's,

it's so nice.

He's phenomenal.

The longer longer the movie

spent setting him up, the more I was like, I don't have any doubt he's going to deliver, but I can't even imagine what he's going to do.

And it just, it was disarming.

And as I said, the audience laughs for like the first 10 straight minutes he's on screen at our screening because they're just like, what is this guy?

And I think there's also the classic horror movie thing of like, I'm so relieved that it's the tone is shifting.

It's comfort.

Yes.

Yes.

Even if it's odd.

I like the ending of 28 Days Later, the third act, right?

But a lot of people at the time definitely were like, eh, it loses in the third act.

I like the zombie movie stuff, I don't like the creepy soul.

The man is the worst of all, right?

And like, now you watch the movie and you're like, no, it was kind of

out of money.

Like, juice.

That was like a kid at the man of the world.

But I do like that he doesn't do that again.

No, the third act is emotional.

It's emotional, and it's not man is, you know, simply, you know, cannot be trusted.

They finally get a diagnosis for mom.

Well, he clocks like that the baby is pure and he says the placenta line.

Yes.

And then God,

the scene of him inspecting her is so good because he is not overplaying it, but you get this bit of he is so happy to be doing this again.

You know, like it is so comfortable for him to go back into doctor mode, a thing he has had to abandon in terms of the actual part of interacting with other people and trying to help them.

With people who are alive, yes, right, yes.

Um,

and he does the sort of very gentle, I'm going to have to feel under your armpits and under your breast.

Is that okay?

And you see her dealing with the intensity, asking the questions about, you know, like, are the phases Marie's like choking up just thinking about this.

Um, but uh, it's it's it's really profound stuff.

And then they're sitting by the fire and he just says, like, obviously, I don't have the equipment to do a proper test.

i can't say for certain it

all of the evidence point towards cancer stuff i don't know if it was cancer of the body that spread to the brain or cancer the brain that spread to the body but that explains the hallucinations and all of this and you're sort of like

what does the movie do now and it without wasting time he starts basically transitioning into the bedtight side conversation for the boy when she this it's the moment that i'm like criteria it's the moment that's the 20 million dollar reaction shot for me right is he says i i believe it's cancer and it cuts a jodi comer shifting eyeline from rayfines over to her son yeah and she gives him a look like well it's a very gentle sort of like smile of like well that's not great

but like we have an answer

she's feels that she kind of knew she kind of knew she kind of every all the adult her husband they all kind of knew and they just weren't telling the kid she's but she's giving him this look of like well we have an answer now like she's sort of trying to make it a little bit lighter while acknowledging like, not great news.

And she's conveying like 40 lines of dialogue in like the tilt of a head of a raise of her eyebrows.

And it speaks so much to her relationship to her son and why she's tried to protect him.

And even in this moment, doesn't receive the news.

Before she can even process what it means for herself, she feels the need to say something to him with a look, right?

Like she needs to to assuage him immediately.

And the movie just immediately gets into this dialogue of

everyone has to die.

There are many ways of dying.

We, we have the ability to choose the way we die in certain ways.

Yeah.

And it's not something to necessarily be scared of or to treat as like the fucking, you know, virus or whatever has not robbed us of that completely.

No.

Like as much as the world has ended and changed and all that.

Right.

And there's this feeling of like, how do you want her to die?

Like, are you going going to keep out running the alphas?

Are you going to let the cancer completely take her?

Right.

Like, her brain is obviously right.

She's already losing her sense of reality or whatever.

Or now that we know, is there like a humane, dignified to do it with agency and to not let her suffer anymore?

And also, like, not let him suffer anymore.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so they, she, you know, gives her son a big hug as he's hysterical.

He's hold.

She's holding him in order for Ray finds to trank him so he can't fight it.

He doesn't totally black out, but he is.

Lose it.

Yeah.

Lying down with the baby.

And we just see her.

It's like life, new life, death.

What is her final line to him?

I wish I had it.

But it might even be something simple as, I love you so much.

And then she like walks path like away from the fire.

And then the next thing we see is

he hits her.

he hits her with the trank.

Yeah.

And then he does what he needs to do.

And he comes back with the skull cleaned and hands it to the boy and says, you need to put it in a really important spot or something akin to that.

Yeah, choose where to put her on the

choices we have are how we die and how we process that death and how we pay tribute to it and all of it.

And he climbs up and he places the skull there.

And this is the moment where I'm just like, this movie rules.

Who else would fucking think to make this their fucking Lega sequel?

Well, that's why it's even cooler.

Right.

Like, it'd be cool anyway, but right.

The fact that it's kind of like, we got to make this sequel after years of like, nah, no one's interested.

And now it's like, okay, people are interested.

What do you want to do?

His career got stuck in a rut and he's got this magic key, which is like, you know, the reason why it was so hard to see fucking 28 days and 28 leaks at the weeks at the time we did the episode two years ago, where it it wasn't streamable and it wasn't rentable, they've been taken off of platforms.

Is like 20 years later, the rights reverted back to

Garland Boyle and McDonald's.

And they didn't resell them immediately because they were trying to do the auction of rights for the previous two, and we have scripts for three more, right?

And he knows like this is the hot hand he's holding to be able to get something green lit.

And with that hand, he's like making a pretty fucking profound movie about the human condition and our like relationship to the actual idea of life and death right right right right but you know who else has a hot hand they know swear he has the infinity gauntlet which he did himself he did it all himself he did it all himself it's really good in my opinion and it's also like as we're saying it's like perfect boil and garland stuff neither one of them could have done this without the other i agree with you Absolutely.

And I like the stuff that's going to be.

That's why they weren't set together.

Exactly.

Right.

Well, you know, I think of like fucking charlie kaufman as well where i'm like i love all the movies he has directed there is still a part of me that's like can he like sure let jones or gandry direct a thing again yeah because it's just fun to sometimes you get things that are the magic of movies this the whole is greater than the part

right um so and by the way boyle of course we should acknowledge has been in interviews acknowledging like oh yeah garland had like sunshine sequel pitches that were insane do you know this ben no like that in recent press he's like what we wrote was a triptych of three movies that were connected and that they were each centered around a different planet in the solar system.

They were not literally like Sunshine 2, but they had like a fucking Jupiter movie and whatever.

And they were like, and then Sunshine bombed and they were like, well, no one wants these scripts.

And he was like, but they were good.

Right.

That's the thing.

Boy's like, yeah, they were good.

I'll let Alex explain.

And people are like, what?

What?

No, you explain.

Now, what are you talking?

He's like, oh, I don't remember, but they were cool.

Right.

Anyway, nobody liked that movie.

And then people are like, no, we like it now.

And he's like, oh, that's nice.

He's also called out that, like, Rothman was the head of Fox at the time that Sunshine came out and mishandled the movie and hated it and fought him.

He hated it and thought it was too bleak.

Rothman is the guy who fucking bought the 28 package.

He's now at Sony.

Yes.

Yes.

Time heals all wounds, of course.

And also, it's like this guy supported us strongly in what we wanted to do, which was not the obvious thing to do with these movies.

What is the obvious thing?

It's the only thing that I like, it's like, I don't know what I expected.

The obvious thing is, I mean, obviously, open on fucking Killian Murphy.

Well, that's true.

Sure.

Eyes opening up, and he's like the fucking badass survivor or whatever, right?

Yeah, like, even like within this story, the obvious thing is the kid makes it past the other side, and rather than Eric finding them at the 30-minute mark, Killian Murphy is the one who finds them and guides them, or Killian Murphy is the fucking doctor, or, you know,

the fucking dead thing of like, right, you find some village where we're like, here's our deal.

Like, you know, we live this way.

But I think

wisely, like, they kind of fucking used Killian Killian Murphy that exact way in Quiet Place Part 2.

And I, I do think this movie, as you called out, has something in common with the Quiet Place movies, which I remember when you saw it, David, and you were like, Look, like, I didn't think I'd give him credit, but Krasinski locked into the right thing, which is like, this is a movie about how terrifying it feels to be a parent in a world where you don't feel like you can protect your children.

Right.

And this movie is doing the same thing from a different angle.

And it's, it's why it activated the shit you're saying, Marie, and why it like pokes these bruises is it's not like fatalistic about it but it is like it is scary that we don't ever feel like

there's any way to actually keep our children safe and in a world that is this intense those fears are

now

the stakes are intensified yeah

the movie does have a cliffhanger after all this wonderful stuff

And it does feel like the movie could close here, but I mean this emotional denouement, the music swelling, and he sends the baby back to the border

in a basket.

It's like fucking Moses style.

Basically, like, hi, dad, to his

explaining himself.

This baby is not infected.

I'm going to stay out here.

I'm going to stay out here.

I have unfinished business.

Right.

And then it does, and I'm like, great ending, right?

This movie could go in any direction.

And obviously, it's opening up: like, what does this boy do next?

But it does feel like this movie is a complete story.

Then it does another 28 days later.

And you're like, huh, what is this?

I'm saying the text flashes flashes on screen.

And yes, it literally does the title card.

And he's like fucking

throwing arrows at.

Yeah, he's improved his.

Right.

He's gotten a little better

within reason, right?

And

he sort of finds himself in a dead end where he's able to take down one, but there are more coming and he's not going to make it.

And who presents himself very loudly at the top of this wall, but

Jack O'Connell.

The grown-up version of the little boy from the Teletubby scene in the beginning of the movie.

Who I did not put it together, but it did blow my mind when you called it out, David.

He is dressed like Jimmy Sappho.

And all of his minions, he's with a bunch of other people.

They're called the Jimmies.

Are all dressed like Jimmy Saffle?

And they're all named Jimmy and they're called the Jimmies.

I'm watching this movie in an audience full of Americans.

I am American.

I was born in this country.

I'm not trying to say I'm, you know, fucking John Bull over here.

It's America's version.

Look, the audience reacts, they laughed, and they just go like, who the fuck is this?

It's so weird.

And there's no clocking of the semiotic.

Part of why I'm vibrating as you guys are like, oh, you like that, right?

I was freaking the fuck out.

He's dressed like Jimmy Savile.

And then I, then I took me a second to be like, right, right.

Alex Garland's, you sick fuck, has

is going like, yeah, they wouldn't know that Jimmy Savile was.

Do you know anything about Jimmy Savile, Ben?

So I feel like I know more about Jimmy Saville than most Americans, and yet I did not get this at all.

I actually re-watched, there was like a Netflix.

You re-watched whatever Netflix garbage.

I didn't re-watch it, but I watched it.

I re-watched

after this because I was like, we're going to go into it.

So I need to make sure.

We don't have to go into it.

Well, the thing that I like

forgot about is how important Jimmy Saville was to

the north of Britain.

The fact that he was like.

a former coal miner from Leeds.

He's from Leeds, yeah.

He's a Yorkshire boy.

He was like very much like identified with the north of England, which this movie also also is.

That is true.

I think he came up in like even once he started being a DJ and stuff, like he was still in the north.

He was in Salford or Manchester or wherever.

And like, but like the whole thing, I was trying to explain him to people who were like, who are you talking about?

And I was kind of like, I guess it was kind of like Mr.

Rogers was a pedophile or whatever.

But it's not combined with like Peewee Herman and also

so philanthropic and all these things.

He was this incredibly bizarre cartoonish.

That was the whole thing.

I was like, it's not quite right because Mr.

Rogers' whole thing was that he was super normal.

And Jimmy Staffill was always weird.

Like, he was cartoonish.

And he also did top of the pops.

He's like, presenter, a light entertainer, and all this sort of stuff.

And a personality whose persona was so bizarre, and his look was so bizarre, and his energy was so bizarre.

But he also had this show called Jim Will Fix It for many years.

It was just kind of like a make-a-wish show, right?

Like,

little kids, but they weren't like Mr.

Beast kind of like I'm making philanthropy.

But they weren't always like sick kids.

It would just be like every little kid would write in and be like, my My dream is one of the things was like, I want my duck to fly.

I feel bad that my duck can't fly.

So much of his cultural reputation is also like his supportive children's hospitals and things like this.

Like some of the stuff's entertaining.

He always downplays his status.

And like, he's fucking knighted by the queen and shit.

He was like the reason why, like, the

main spinal injury hospital in the UK, like, why they like the main source of their fundraising.

He was knighted.

He was really close with Margaret Thatcher and really close with Prince Charles.

Sure.

I mean, he was right.

Like he advised charity stuff.

He advised the

Prince Charles when Diana died on like in a very short period.

No, sorry, it wasn't Diana died.

It was Lockerbie.

It was how do we like respond to the British public after Lockerbie?

And so they're like in Jimmy Saville's papers, like all of these like notes to

Prince Charles about like how they should address the public.

Within very few years of his death, it came out that he was just a horrendous.

It was, but it was like Cosby, where people knew.

Yeah, there were always.

And there's the Louis Theroux documentary where he asks him about it.

Like it was one of those things that people had just kind of chosen to sort of not think about.

But like decades of child sexual assault just to say the thing.

Like be on talk shows in the 2000s.

where he would be like, someone would be like, oh, you, you were a wrestler, right?

And he'd be like, yeah, I'm the most feared, you know, man in all of the girls' schools in England or whatever.

Like he would joke openly and people would like a lifelong bachelor and they sort of like present it as a sort of a joke of like is this guy asexual and then there'd be the whispers of like it's kind of weird and he would always diffuse it with this attitude of like i hate children i don't like talking to children any look anyway the whole thing with this movie is like

saying

what if bill cosby was never exposed and you had a gang of people who were all wearing cosby sweaters and we're like we're the huxtables yeah you know where it's i it's but really

important to see so disturbing.

Yes, he was retired by the time I moved to Britain.

He was still known, he was still a figure, he was never that important, he was just sort of famous, like in a weird way.

He was just a weird, famous guy.

And like a light entertainer, like Britain has lots of light entertainer celebrities where you're like, what do you do?

Exactly.

It's like, I don't know, host TV shows.

It's just like this, Ben, where everyone in retrospect is like, why weren't we like raising flags about this guy all the fucking time?

And to be clear, like when he was exposed, it was part of also just this big sort of investigation of a lot of figures who had abused people.

And

it was a little similar to the culture of silence.

There's a little scandal here of just like right-house systemic.

What I think Garland is playing with, right, is that it's so disturbing.

They're so disturbing, but also, right, the sort of warped sensibility of Britain, like,

like,

had, like, and like they're weaponized, avuncular kind of like friendliness, right?

That is like feel cheery,

yeah.

It's so scary, but it is quite a third rail for them to be touching in Britain.

Everyone else will just kind of be like, whatever.

And let's be clear, the movie also ends at this point.

It sure does.

You're introduced to a whole new silo of culture, including the face of it being a known actor who is then third billed in the end credits of the movie.

And you're like, okay, so that's the fucking second movie.

But it is just like

there is a kind of period period at the end of a paragraph of him, the voiceover of the letter to the dad and the baby arriving at the gates and everything.

And then this is absolutely just a next week on lost.

I fucking love it.

It reminded me of like the filmmaking is kind of like Mighty Morph and Power Rangers, the way the action is.

They're all kind of like doing little jumping cartwheels and shit.

Like brightly colored jumpsuits.

It was so silly and ridiculous.

You have, what's her name?

Erin Kellyman.

Yes.

and there was another no emma laird

who i think is in uh whatever she's in the brutalist in a small role or you know she's she's coming isn't she the wife navola's wife am i wrong that's right yeah yeah yeah um but i that was why remember the brutalist no the savvy what was that i'm hearing about this for the first time the savil stuff is why i thought they kept the embargo Maybe.

I mean, yeah.

I don't think it would have made a difference in this country, but I have no idea.

I haven't read any UK critics.

How are people?

Look, I can't speak to how Sony does business, but in my opinion, they do business a little weird.

We're deep enough in the podcast that I can slightly cast shade on.

Yeah.

They do this a lot.

Like, I don't know why.

It's a really good movie.

Everyone was like, this movie must be bad because

they're not showing it.

There's instances of this, not just Sony in the last couple of years.

You see a movie like

you see, there are movies you've seen like 36 hours or less before they start screening publicly, commercially, where you're like, why the fuck weren't they showing this to us three weeks ago?

Everyone likes this.

I also think there's...

This movie's obviously a little more odd.

There's something about a lot of publicists who I

love and respect a lot of publicists that I work with, but we're like, they seem to think the closer to sort of release that a critic sees the movie, the better.

Like a kind of like, well, we need it to be fresh.

Like you need to write your review with, you know, needs to be this sort of excitement.

And I'm just feeling like a lot of people.

I know bane of your existence where you think a lot of it's not mine because I'm not like poor David Ehrlich, who has to hit every embargo

if you work for a trade.

When I say bane of your existence, I think not that you feel like you're struggling with it, but you feel like it's detrimental to film culture.

Yeah, I mean, sure.

I mean, look, we're all, we all want the best for movies right now.

But look, uh, uh, materialists, a movie i liked a tremendous amount you did not really like marie maybe is in between the two of us right marie and i were talking about last night it is one of the great conversational movies or rather let me say conversation movies in recent memory where every conversation i've had about this film in the last week has been fascinating to me and like not even argumentative i'm like you know there's shit like last jedi where i'm like i'm so tired i know what i think about this i'm not interested in litigating it with other people anymore Whereas materialists, I'm talking to people who I strongly disagree with.

And I'm like, this is interesting.

And I think the movie is kind of designed to provoke these conversations.

And yet I.

completely understand why they did not have that film play at a single fucking festival and went wide in the first weekend because they were selling it as a thing that it is absolutely the antithesis of.

It is one of the most antagonistic, like bite the hand movies based on the expectations that they sold people.

And I'm like, that's a movie that you don't want too many people writing about before the weekend.

They do that all the time.

It's just they've never done it with a comedy before.

28, it's.

I usually do with horror movies.

Exactly.

It is the first time they have successfully figured out how to do their horror thing on a different genre.

But

28 years later is not like that.

It's not like, oh, fuck, audiences are going to be furious.

I've had a lot of.

I am seeing stuff on Reddit.

Sorry, but like people being like, oh, I think people are going to be disappointed because it's not as much of a zombie movie.

The scares aren't there.

Yeah, that's a lot of zombie action.

I find that kind of an odd thing.

I was stressed out like for the first two-thirds of the movie.

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.

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

It certainly is.

And what is today's episode sponsored by?

The Toxic Avenger.

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

Macon Blair's remake of...

Reimagining.

Reimagining, whatever.

Reboot of The Toxic Avenger.

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

Yeah, I'm 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, Tremblay, Taylor Playette Page, with Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon.

Tremblay is Toxie's son.

His stepson.

His stepson.

Okay.

Wade Goose.

Yes.

Great name.

Give us the takes.

We haven't heard of them yet.

Okay.

You got fucking Dinklage 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 david david sizzling yep and then elijah wood plays like a dang ass freak he certainly does he's having a lot of fun tell us some things you liked about the movie okay well i'm a jersey guy i just gotta say the original movie was shot in the town where i went to high school

yes yes that's right the original film yep i grew up watching toxy and trauma movies on porches yes with my sleazy and sticky friends it informed so much of my sensibility your friends like junkyard dog and headbanger Yeah, exactly.

Making Toxic Crusader jokes.

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

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

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

They're playing with fire here.

Yeah, it's just 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.

Want to make that happen again here?

Tickets are on sale right now.

Advanced sales really matter for movies like this.

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

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blank check to get your tickets.

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In theaters, August 29th.

Yup.

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

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

Summon the nuts is in reference to a

psychotic new metal band.

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 one.

Seriously, get your tickets now.

Go to toxicadvengure.com/slash blank check.

Do it.

Do it.

This episode is brought to you by FXX and Hulu.

Futurama returns on September 15th, blending heartfelt moments with razor-sharp humor while accidentally saving the day.

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Can I go back to my popcorn line conversation with the great Hillary Busis and telling her I don't think the previous movies are going to tie in that much to this?

And I said, you know what I'm really hoping for?

Like in this moment of realizing I don't actually really know much about this movie, but I want it to be good, obviously.

I'm like, I just want fucking the Romero approach.

You know, like every 10 years, George Romero made a different zombie movie.

And the connective tissue was, this is is a zombie movie made by George Romero, right?

They are basically like anthology films.

They're tracking this culture and this world he's built, but we're not following characters.

They're not building off the plot of each other.

And he is just going, What's another thing I want to say about the idea of this happening to a society?

And I do think that's what this movie's doing, first and foremost, right?

It's like Boyle and Garland being like, you know what?

We got different shit we can say about zombies than the very specific shit we said in 2002.

That's what I want.

I don't know if people want this to be the kind of like, I don't know.

It's an odd question of like, what does 28 Days Later as like a brand represent in people's minds?

Yeah, what are they, right?

What are they, what's a service are they being denied?

You're right that it's Achillian.

Yeah, I guess.

But I think you, you kind of hit the nail on the head with like

my

reaction to re-watching 28 Days Later for

the Boyle series, where I remember it, I remember it being good and scary from when I first saw the movie.

And then as I saw it, I watched it again.

I'm like, this is profound.

This is political.

This is so interesting.

Our episode with David Reese, very great.

A great episode.

But it's also like a punishing movie, like a movie that keeps you in a miserable space.

But as I'm watching it, I'm like, this movie's really smart.

And it does not feel like a, like, it, it is now at the top of my Boyle rankings, but it was like it doesn't really feel like as much of a classic horror movie to me no but i also think that's the romero approach and you watch those films and they're less horror films than even like the other straight horror movies that romero made in his career and it's like it's him being like i have no interest in making night of the living dead 2 I won't make a different zombie movie.

Well, that's why I'm just like, if you talk about like, what is the fan, like, what are the fandom expectations?

Like, I don't know.

Because as much as obviously Killian is like, you know, in his like coronation moment, it's not like Killian Murphy in 28 Days Later is like Snake Pliskin, right?

It's not like we're dealing with like one of the great icons of horror where people are just like, I want to see him fucking rip and head.

That's like a, that's like a, like a 5D joke.

That's a joke riffing on.

Are we going to trap the entity in it?

That's a joke riffing on our 20-minute side tangent of, do you think Snake Plisskin is packed.

Does the tattoo go on the dick, too?

Is the other thing?

Wait, okay, so we can't really do the box office.

No, I was about to say we're going to be done.

It's going to open to around 30.

It's doing very well in pre-sales.

I'm hoping it overperforms, but 30 would be a total triumph for this movie.

Basically, it seems like this week's box office is going to be kind of like three movies making around 30.

Like How to Train Your Dragon, you know, second weekend, this, and Elio, which is not Italian.

Do you guys know about Ooh?

Disney Emoji Blitz just started its Elio event.

I've been introduced to a new character named Ooh.

Like, oh, oh, oh?

Five O's.

Ooh.

Yes.

And it is a tiny little blue supercomputer that looks like a bubble with eyes and a mouth, voiced by Shirley Henderson.

That sounds all right.

And I'm like, I'm getting excited about Elio for the first time.

I've heard Elio is kind of charming.

I've heard it's kind of charming, but Ooh might have the juice.

It just seems to me.

Is Ooh about to have a mini-me summer?

Is Ooh going to do what Claude couldn't?

I mean, one hopes can do.

He can at least do what Claude couldn't.

Claude did zilch.

There is one thing that's not related to Claude has a moment that we have to talk.

We have to talk about it.

Wait, wait, wait.

Just to say the other movie, I think Lilo and Stitch, I guess, is still hanging around.

Ballerina has sunk like a stone.

Mission Impossible held really well last weekend, but is that a Father's Day?

I mean, it's funny for how much they tangled themselves in knots to try to course correct from what they saw as the underperformance of Dead Reckoning, this movie is going to end up within a 10% difference of what Dead Reckoning did at like double the budget.

I mean,

the movie is good and normal, and they're not owned, and everyone who worked on it.

It's not owned, and you know, it has just the right amount of exposition to explain everything for the emotions.

For the emotions that pay off.

I mean, I made a dismissive figure.

We all remember that the last 20 minutes of Mission Impossible Final Reckoning are akin to Big Fish.

I mean, I feel like he thinks that's true, whatever.

But,

wait, I had a point to make about Mission Impossible.

Like, I don't need there to be another one, so I don't need it to do well per se.

I mean, I want movies to do well.

The great news is Macquarie's cracked it.

He knows what he would do for nine.

The actual great news is that Tom Cruise will be getting an honorary Oscar.

Now, you text us this and you go, does this mean they're shooting his chances of a competitive in the foot?

And I call out, they finally gave Paul Newman the honorary Oscar 12 months before he wins competitively for Color of Money, a film co-starring Tom Cruise.

And then we clocked a couple other examples.

Charlie Chaplin, they give him the very odd kind of multi-asterised

limelight award

one year before they give him, or one year after they give him a one year after.

And then Spike Lee wins.

screenplay for Black Klansmen after he was given an honorary career award.

I think the thing that is, right, it's bizarre that it feels like Tom is about to transition back into making O-Tour

serious acting movies again.

So here's a moment where he's maybe going to be gunning for the Oscar again.

Why give him the award now?

Also, the stunt category is being introduced.

Yeah, I also think, like, I'm sorry, like, I, I, they got to have this in the ceremony.

This is my fucking thing.

I'm like, you guys are demented.

If you're giving Tom Cruise an honorary award and it's going to be fucking part of a clip package that they throw to and go like, no, six months ago, we had a fun dinner.

Yeah, no.

And he's like

dancing with debbie allen on stage yeah yeah no um okay so dolly parton too i'm like fucking dolly part and tom cruise getting oscars put it put it on my tv don't don't i'm i'm i'm all for it i support you guys i'm interested in that production designer too give him 10 minutes yeah seems like a cool guy yeah everyone worked with spike wings i love i love honorary oscars me too but i cannot deny that back in the day even me who loves the oscars you know you would be kind of in the momentum of like okay, it seems like this movie.

And then it would be like, screech 20 minutes of Blake Edwards, where you're like, I love Blake Edwards.

But remember, when he came out and he did a physical stunt in his wheelchair,

I remember that, but then he talked for a while.

Remember when Stanley Donan did soft shoe?

Yeah, I mean, that's just great.

Robert Allman talking about his baboon heart.

I can't remember if it was a baboon heart, but

Griffin has a really important announcement.

For the listeners, everyone in this room knows.

Everyone in this room knows.

The David Lynch state auction was happening a couple weeks ago when JJ and AJ, our J's, were in town.

We were all hanging out and looking at our phones and being like, we should have something, right?

It just feels like we should get something from it.

And at that moment, the item with the lowest listed price was,

do you have to read it aloud because he doesn't know what the fuck it's called, even though he spent dollars on it?

Excuse me, we spent dollars on it.

I have to actually bleep.

Yeah.

How much I'm a little mad if you spent the company's money on that i will say i like a little well we will say we did look it up and face value i don't care more

msrp i don't give a the colo blue atmospheric gutter

generator it is a water cooler that makes water from the air it extracts the moisture in the air that's called a dehumidifier no it's not it's called a dehydrified

room that we're gonna i suppose store it in window no no.

Where do you think?

I don't know.

I didn't tell you to buy that.

I think this is where me and Ben are going to be like, you know what?

It's time to have a conversation about vitals being litigated.

We have the measurements.

It's not that big, but we're not taking it out of the packaging.

I don't care.

Because the packaging is addressed to David Lynch, care of David Lynch.

Yes, I'm aware of that.

He must have sent it to himself.

But isn't that cool?

No, this whole thing is scammy to me.

I find it distasteful.

This whole thing is scammy.

The Lynch auction thing.

I found it all a little like, ooh.

Sorry.

Sorry.

We bought the cheapest lot.

I'm aware of what you did.

Yes.

I'm well aware.

At cheapest by a good distance.

And to be clear, I put it on my own credit card.

Oh, okay.

Well, then I don't care.

You can do what you want.

Okay, but it is living in the studio.

Where?

Point.

Over there.

We can put, see the stuff that's like the

standy.

You know, like, we're going to have like a dirty box with like a weird.

It just.

Looks pretty clean to me.

Yeah.

it's people are going to be really, people are going to be like, oh my God, that's the David Lynch water.

Ben is like rubbing it.

Ben, please weigh in because I feel on an island right now.

I feel like I'm on Linda Spark.

I mean, what about like right now?

We've been trying to make small improvements to the office.

We've been doing a lot of stuff.

Yeah, we've got the porch now.

It looks incredible.

Ben's made it look so nice in here.

And I think there's a lot of

improvement here, for example.

Yes.

Yes.

There's a lot of other improvements.

I think at some point we maybe want to get the arcade cabinet.

Maybe.

i just think like about like right there in that little alcove right there yeah there are so many spots where the log is that could be the david lynch alcove we can put the log on top of the box for the water machine 47 by 20 by 20.

i don't know i mean sure 20 20 inches more than a foot almost two 47 by 20 by 20.

Ben, I need you to join me or else I'll give up.

Oh, okay.

I mean, I think, listen.

There's a reason we're talking about this a morning because we're going to have to

you, the listener, to weigh in.

We're at some point going to run out of room.

Yep.

It's not that big a space.

And there's, I have some, I have plans and I want to make some further improvements, especially because we're re-signing our lease.

Do you want to build a bone temple?

I mean, and we should talk about that.

We're re-singing our lease.

You know, there's certain investments and things I want to do.

So I would say, how about we compromise and we allow for it to live here for a select period of time.

That feels like quite the compromise on our side.

Here's like, where is it going to go eventually?

I'm saying that it's not permanent.

Here's what I will say.

I'm trying to find

a single spot.

Here's what I will agree to.

Okay.

A

provisional trial period.

If we all find it.

I don't want it baked in that it is temporary.

I will agree to

give it some time.

And if we all dislike it, I will figure out somewhere else for it to live.

I just want it to have its trial period

and to be given an honest shake.

That's all right.

I foresee.

Oh, they're shaking hands.

They're shaking hands.

I mean, I foresee this as a really important conversation piece.

I think people are going to come in to record and be like, oh, is that the David Lynch water thing?

And you go, yes, look at it.

Wait, wait, wait.

Can you continue the conversation or is it kind of wrapping up around me?

Oh, wow.

He delivered it to himself.

Cool.

And also, okay.

And then what's the next step?

By the way, if some fucking rage virus takes over,

and our fucking water system collapses, it's going to be guess what?

We got this fucking map

machine for $100

plugged into it.

Retail price.

Have you put this?

Have you updated your ball rankings?

I haven't.

I'm just curious if you have it.

Yes, I have.

And I put it fifth.

I put it.

So my top four.

I feel like is pretty ironclad of like jobs, sunshine, train spawning 28 days later.

And I put it fifth.

I put it above Shallow Grave, which I had sixth, and Slum, you know, like the sort of next package of like Shallow Grave, T2, Slum Dog, millions, 127 hours.

The kind of like good,

but not great sort of region.

See, I probably put it at the bottom of that tier, but I like this movie a tremendous amount.

It maybe has more to say about me liking wait, you would put this below like 127 hours?

I love 127 hours.

I put this, I put this.

Oh, no, I like this way.

I love this.

This is like maybe number three for me.

I put this below 127.

I definitely put it above millions.

Sure.

Slumdog?

I put it above Slum Dog.

Shallow Grave.

I put it above Shallow Grave.

Trainspotting 2.

I put it below Trainspotting 2, which I also love.

That movie hits really hard.

My ranking.

I have 28 Days Later.

That's your number one.

That's my number one.

The

Isles of Wonder opening ceremonies.

I included in my rank at number two.

I mean, great, great call.

I mean, we love it, obviously.

this movie number three 28 years number three.

I just really like this world.

Yeah

Steve Jobs Trains Botting Sunshine T2 Slum Dog Millions Yesterday Shadow Shallow Grave Lifeless Ordinary You have yesterday over shallow grave I liked yesterday I really liked yesterday

I just think it's really nice that there's a movie about how the Beatles are really special.

You know nice to acknowledge that the Beatles are special.

Can I say it?

I think our fucking episode helped the reputation of that movie.

I love that episode.

If you're not putting fucking

reputation was so poor that even a lowly podcast episode could be like a shot of a movie.

Zach Cherry's the magic man.

It's so hard to disagree with him.

As you put it, no one beats the Zachster.

People climbed on that movie for years.

I don't know.

He just helped rollerball.

I will help you.

Rollerball is.

But he wasn't

expecting anything to be clear.

He wasn't attempting to help rollerball.

No, he was sort of like, I had fun.

He was litigating his history with it.

Whereas I think he was making making the case and I think it made people watch yesterday who hadn't seen it before.

And I just increasingly will have people come up to me and say, you know what's quietly one of the best episodes you guys ever did yesterday.

And by the way,

I like that movie.

I've had that conversation a lot.

Right.

Strangers and friends, both.

Right.

President Trump said that to you.

He did.

When you had your summit with him.

And I said, I'm hearing this for the first time.

Wow.

Okay.

Here at the end of the episode, I just want to do a quick shout out.

Past and future guest Ben David recently

attended a wedding.

Yes.

Do you know about this?

Did I send this to the group?

I'm not sure, but I just wanted to shout out Taylor and Kyle.

Congratulations.

They actually met through their shared love of the podcast.

Taylor was the editor on

Different Man, one of my favorite movies of last year.

He's a wonderful editor.

But horribly edited.

Just kidding.

Met him.

I knew he was a listener.

I'm a fan of his war.

I love that, like this is an old episode where I'm like, love that movie, except for whatever fucker

cuts,

real weird reliance on star wipes.

Um, but I, he, he had not told me that they fucking bonded over the podcast, and that's just altogether.

So, yes, congrats to them.

Speaking of, and also to call out past and future guest friend of the show, as of right now, on the calendar, January 2026, 28 years later, part two, Colon, colon, the bone temple, directed by Nia DaCosta.

And we're going to do it, right?

We're doing it.

All right, cool.

Yeah, but it's just, it's funny.

I mean, I suppose we kind of have to.

I mean, it's not a Boyle film.

No, but I think we have to.

I don't think we got it.

If we do it on Main Feed or Patreon, we have to cover it in some way.

It is funny that we had fucking Nia on Trance.

All right.

That's true.

Talking Danny Boyle.

And then like six months later.

Did she know

him?

No.

No.

Did he listen to that episode?

Who knows?

I have questions, but I don't have answers.

Okay.

Well, Danny Boyle, let us know if you know who we are.

We love you, especially David.

David really loves you.

Can I say a really annoying thing in my life?

I keep getting emails inviting me to screenings of movies.

I am very eager to see.

This is not a thing that has happened often and it's been ramping up the last couple of months.

They keep sending me fucking LA screenings.

They just think you're a big Hollywood boy.

Who thinks that and why?

I try so hard to message to everybody.

I'm downtown Griffey Noobs.

I'm eating a dirty water dog.

I'm walking a pigeon.

I'm saluting the Statue of Liberty.

Hey, Griffin, do you like your bagel toasted?

Well,

I feel like I can't answer this.

Because you have the wrong opinion.

Oh.

I have the opinion that's not seen as the real New Yorker's opinion.

Right, which is you like toasted bagels.

I like I like toast.

Yeah, I don't fuck with toast.

But I think it's about the water.

Do you tell them white?

It depends on the place.

It depends on the place and depends on how fresh the bagels are.

I walk in, I do a sniff test.

I hold my hands up.

I see what kind of heat is raiding off the bagel baskets.

And then I lick my finger.

I hold it up to the wind and I go, 425, 90 seconds.

Didn't you grow up by Murray's?

Yeah, Murray's is a great example of a place where you don't, they have a no toasting rule.

And with them, it's not necessary.

Well, that because they do their job.

That was like, okay, the NY, Greenwich Village, the bagel spot.

So I go to NYU.

There's like, oh, New York bagels.

And that's where I'm like, oh, I could never ask for my bagel to be toasted.

Absolutely.

no when I walk into Murray's I'm not like oh god I hate they won't let me toast it I'm like yeah no toasting necessary but some

if it's a bad bagel yeah if I ever eat like a bagel outside of New York City sure I'll get it toasted because I don't know where that's fucking bagels in New York depends on the place look this has been our episode in 28

years later a movie about bagels and toasting preference in a way and it's so important wow we went long okay which is great so much to talk about oh i'm not mad i'm just new release.

It's a big movie.

It's a big episode.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's exciting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I hope it does well.

I hope there's more.

But as we said, they're saying that the all-in cost on this one was 60-something.

And I think they saved money by shooting one and two back-to-back.

It was like a straight-through production.

The new one has a different cast, I imagine.

But some rest.

Probably weren't that expensive.

Well, they've been

because they were hiding the kid in general.

But it seems like Rafe is not in the next one.

I think it's like the kid's in it for sure.

I think Aaron Taylor Johnson is in some capacity.

Obviously, Jack O'Connell has a much bigger part, which is why his billing is so high in this one.

Right.

Yeah.

And he's a name of sorts.

Yeah.

He's having a great comeback.

Before we sign off, I just want to wish

our dear Ben a very happy birthday.

It's about to be birthday, Benny.

Yep, next week.

Yeah.

And of course, for the record, he is turning 25.

That's right.

Forever 25.

No, he's turning 28 in honor of this movie.

That is what's nice about Benny.

And I feel really good it.

I'm just excited for the future.

I don't want to call my shop, but I got a great present coming for you.

My love language is gifts.

And I really, I think I will say you'll know it when you see it.

And we'll post it on social media because I think it does need to be shared.

But it was in conjunction with a friend of the show who was like, you know what's a good idea?

And I was like, yes, let's make this happen together.

Interesting.

I can't wait to find out what they say.

And then, you know, of course,

I'm going to have a barbecue on the roof coming up.

And I wonder if

someone might make it.

I'm not sure if this isn't a workday for me.

Right, exactly.

You know, I don't feel like a wall between work days.

I don't walk into someone else's office and try to do their paperwork.

Right, you know, knock the dick out of my mouth.

Tell me.

My favorite joke.

It's so funny.

I don't go to where you're asleep and I knock the dick out of your mouth.

Do you have something special prepared?

For Ben or for the barbecue?

For Ben's barbecue.

I do think

that about me.

The best way to complete this bit would be for you to become an expert smoker of meats why have a great news get you on great news update for you i'm just saying like that bit was completed a decade ago i know but imagine like i don't know how some event some podcast event where you successfully like you know smoke 10 pounds of break

like what is this weird framing of like a future hypothetical Do they sell like a little smoker at the Target?

I'm just going to buy one for the party and then we'll set it up.

Really limit the range of flavors on those guys.

That's That's the thing.

Yeah, I imagine some disposable.

It's probably not going to be.

You're not getting the full bouquet.

I'm just thinking about it from a social media perspective.

I feel like, like, that might get us more likes than merits.

Sort of like, is that me like fucking posting and bragging about the fact that I watched a movie for the podcast on my phone?

Do you know what I'm saying?

Like, that's not the culture we're trying to present here.

You know what I've been around with a lot lately is teak.

Oh, yeah.

Getting that teak on there.

I haven't cracked it yet, but it's interesting.

Thank you all for listening.

Next week, we return to and finish out our Amy Heckerling mini-series, Pod Times of Ridgeman Cast, with the final two films to date in her filmography.

Just reading here that apparently teak

vapors have a strong narcotic effect on the central nervous system.

I said I haven't cracked it yet.

I told you I haven't cracked it yet.

And I might not.

By the way.

I'm not saying that.

I don't think it makes it fully illegal, but I think it's a, it's a, it's a, yeah.

I got to figure out how to harness it.

And by the way, if I don't, I'll walk away.

It's not ready for public consumption yet, but I just, it's been interesting.

It's been interesting.

It's been, it's been a

fruitful spring of experientation for me, which is fine because I usually tend to lean on the fruit woods.

Next week, I Could Never Be Your Woman, one of the most normal movies we have ever covered in the history of this podcast.

Is this this one?

Is this one that I that's you just got to close your eyes and think hard?

No, I mean, like, is this?

I imported a Dutch Blu-ray.

You can rent it on radio.

It is on like like Tubi, Pluto, all regional.

I think I'm sure I might have watched it on like Peacock.

It might be on the Roku channel.

It's actually weirdly prevalent.

Are you willing to give Marie your copy or is it something?

I don't have an all-region player.

I know, which is like really embarrassing.

Yeah, and that's a shame because the transfer on this one is really bad.

They worked really hard on that.

They pressed a button and went to lunch.

Right.

To mirror the Vaseline rubbed on the lens in the filming of the movie, they rubbed Vaseline all over the bottom of the disc.

Greasy.

Next week, I Can Never Be Your Woman with the great Karen She returning to the show.

Wonderful.

She's so funny.

It's so funny.

It's a funny episode about a movie that is funny?

I guess.

Thank you all for listening.

And as always,

that's fine.

You're rage noise.

I was going to say, this zombie has the biggest dick I've ever seen in my life.

Have a big dick.

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims.

Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostley.

Our creative producer is Marie Bardy Salinas, and our associate producer is A.J.

McKeon.

This show is mixed and edited by A.J.

McKeon and Alan Smithy.

Research by J.J.

Birch.

Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell.

Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds.

Our production assistant is 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.

Join our Patreon, BlankCheck Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

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This podcast is created and produced by BlankCheck Productions.