Hook with Lin-Manuel Miranda

Black 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.

So you're no, what the hell?

Your best.

I said your best magic.

I don't have a good one.

So your adventures are over.

Oh no.

To podcast

the podcast would be an awfully big adventure oh sure why aren't you scottish i don't know

i'm not

i'm not about to say that i did a good maggie smith no i did a terrible robin williams oh to podcast oh i want i want to gravelly too i want a little but you're you sound podcast scottish you are like podcast you sound like from you're from the mountains trying to find the oh oh oh to podcast now he's tough to do he's tough to do yeah in that he's an imminent like you know he has a specific thing i'll say this.

I think I can do an adequate, terrible impression of Robin Williams doing comedy runs, which is kind of what everyone can do.

Drama, Robin, is a little harder to do.

Say it's not your fault.

I don't know, David.

Just

Bravo.

Yeah, see, I'm going to.

Do the monkey with me.

Yeah.

It neesens on you every time.

It neesens.

It nissens.

Someone just called out that I basically only have three impressions.

Okay, so one of the things that one third of them get drawn towards Neeson.

Joseph Gordon Levitt, Neeson.

Uh-huh.

And I'm trying to remember who the third one is.

I don't know.

They're like, they're only three that he can actually do kind of well.

And everyone else, he's trying to draw them closer to one of those three pillars.

Oh, Verhoeven.

Oh, my

impression.

I think we both do Verhoeven.

Which means we both do Gold members.

It's just Goldman.

Do you know we somehow didn't talk about the entire Oscar season?

The Invisible Man would attack people.

What's that?

The Oscar-nominated director of the substance.

Her last name is is the way that Goldmember says father?

Caralee Farja.

Farja.

Farjah.

Farjah.

Okay.

Yes.

Yeah, I didn't know that.

Isn't it weird that we spent the whole Oscar season not talking about Goldmember?

I don't think it's that weird that that

came up.

I think it's weird.

Okay.

No, but Robin.

Oh, there I took one from Oscar.

See, I'm getting too...

I don't know what's happening here.

You sound like a...

troll guarding like a gem in a mountain.

Well, don't tell Jimmy Fallon he's going to put that in his SNL audition.

I don't get the reference.

That's a very specific reference.

Jimmy Fallon's SNL audition was him doing

troll, the troll company auditioning new celebrity mascots, spokespeople.

So that was his way to do a lot of impressions.

Yes.

And then I went to see when I was,

I guess, 12 or 13, the strokes play at the Roseland Ballroom.

And the opening act, an incredible concert to see at such a young age.

Although I saw the strokes around that same time and they were truly like, they came out for 35 minutes and then they were like we don't do encores and just left but carry on this was the this was the is this it tour they did a proper set yeah and i believe it was uh the strokes the moni suzuki and the opening opening act was jimmy fallon wow i think this was before maybe bathroom wall had even come out but but but he's famous oh he's very famous but he hadn't done the album so i want to say he didn't even do idiot boyfriend and he did the trolls routine and i was like where did this this come from?

Did people like it?

Yeah, like was that crowd into it?

I'm just saying,

doing comedy in front of a rock show can be

humongous.

But then years later, I saw, like, in one of those SNL, like, I bet you wonder what their auditions were like.

And I was like, that was his audition piece.

And he's now going and doing it at fucking rock concerts.

A thing that lives very large in my mind that for most people means nothing.

That could be the name of this podcast.

Read us for filth.

That could be the name name of this podcast.

That's why I like it so much.

Well, we have a lot of similar detritus in our heads.

Detritus in the head is another name for this podcast.

Exactly.

Just floating bits of garbage.

Mental spring cleaning.

You know what I mean?

What is the actual name of this podcast?

Blank Check, Griffin, David.

It's Blank Check with Griffin and David.

Yeah.

I kind of put some respect on the articles.

All right.

You're right.

Yeah.

You're right.

You're right.

I'm Griffin.

I shouldn't rush it.

I'm David.

It's a podcast about filmographies and detritus in our heads.

Directors who have massive success early 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.

Yes.

Do you ever think about how Robin Williams banning Peter Pan in Hook says that spoiler to live would be the great adventure, right?

And Hook says to Smee, like, death is the only adventure he has left.

Just interesting.

Peter Pan is such an interesting text.

We'll get into it.

Like the

big old

ball yarn that is Peter Pan.

It's a mini-series on the films, the early films of Steven Spielberg, the first half of his career.

It's called Podrassic Cast.

That's right.

What's wrong with that?

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

Nothing wrong.

Not a thing.

And today we're talking about Hook and our guest today returning to the show.

Long overdue.

Long in negotiations.

Yes.

Is that fair to say?

Yeah, yeah.

It just took a while to get here.

There were a couple things flowing around.

I think this was the right place for things to land.

You know him best as the man who asked us all, as a people to consider the coconut.

Something we somehow did not discuss.

Well, the last time you were on the show, something that looms so large in Dave's life.

Wait a second.

When was the last time?

It was quite a while ago, right?

All that jazz.

Well, I remember that.

I want to say it was 22.

Yeah, that's, I'm trying to remember that because, like, did I have a kid?

Yes, you had a kid.

Yeah, but was my kid maybe not?

So now I have seen.

I mean, obviously, I'm a big fan of a lot of you.

Lynn Manuel Morani.

Let's say our guest today here is Lynn Manuel Moran.

Hello.

I love much of your work, but now I have seen Encanto and Moana 4 billion times because I have a young daughter.

And I am now just so deep in the work there.

Like I just think about it all the time.

You guys don't understand how well this is structured.

Yes.

And we'll be like, yeah, no, we know.

And he's like, no, you don't understand.

I've watched this 6 million times.

If you watch, you don't talk about Bruno.

Right.

Like that many times.

You do have.

We don't talk about Bruno.

You know, you have to start just like thinking about every single moment of it.

Sorry, Lynn.

I know this is boring, but yes.

Anyway, I guess that didn't come up last time.

When we did Muskran Clements in 2020,

which I feel like was when maybe you started messaging with us that you had been listening to the show.

I feel like

it was in response to a lot of those episodes.

But when we had recorded them on episode, we did not, we were in no way aware you were listening to the show.

Yes, I'm aware that you were not aware.

But we're both so locked into consider the coconut as a line.

It's a great line.

We have a lot to talk about.

My little David David Foster Wallace nod.

This is my question.

Where did that come from?

Was that, were you thinking about considering the lobster?

I mean, listen, you get a lot of materials when you're learning about the world and the culture that you're writing about.

And one was this document that was all of the different uses of the coconut.

And

so, yeah, I think I pulled, I mean, I'm a big fan of the David Foster Wallace essays.

So I thought that would be a good opening line to,

you know, introduce the verse where we're going to use, we're going to tell you all of the uses of the coconut

in song.

There's also profundity to the, to the simplicity and the directness of it.

To just be like, I'm going to tell you the uses of the coconut.

And the way I'm going to open this door is just consider the coconut.

Consider the coconut.

And I mean, it's fun because it's one, just really interesting how many uses one can get out of a coconut.

Right.

And two, also like, man, is she going to be staring at the water and like getting out of there?

Because it's like, it's coconut for dinner.

It's coconut.

Are you litigating that?

Yeah.

she's a really good kid she's a good kid but right it's you know the coconut is very very crucial for the first act of moaning their coconuts aren't working right like they're getting the bad guys

this is true and then you got your whole little bad guy gang who who the kakamura the kakamura wear the coconut his armor which was giving lost boys energy kind of that's true that's true yeah i i mean i think it's as Fury Road inspired as it seems like it is.

Right.

It's very Mad Max.

But I'd say it's like half Fury Road, half hook specifically.

Something about the build of their ship looks like the hook lost boys.

That's a nice segue.

Right, I'll take it.

Yes, the hideout, yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, the thing about that hideout is, and I mean, we may go in order, we may not, but like it looks so fun in Never Neverland.

It kind of, it's, it's the thing that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie did by accident.

There you go.

When you get to the Foot Clan hideout and you're like, this looks dope.

It's a connection.

There's video games.

There's pool table.

Exactly.

Half Half pipe.

There's a half pipe.

Yeah.

They have, well, they have track, right?

If I were a wayward kid, I would end up here.

Our friend JD Amato, who you know, uh, directed the My Brother and My Brother and Me TV.

Yes.

We, there are a couple other times in the last couple of years we've reached out to you and you've gone, maybe I'd do this, but I don't know.

This is not that.

You know what it is?

I felt so overprepared for all that jazz because I had been working on Fossy Verden.

You came in with a lot.

You came in with the scripts.

I had like stuff.

And some of the movies.

That's right.

And so for the, you know, I just wanted to be prepped.

I will say this.

This is an issue we are starting to put up against.

I'd say specifically with filmmakers, where we will reach out to people and they'll be like,

I only want to come on if it's a movie I feel like I can talk about backwards and forwards.

Like I need to be this prepared.

And we're like, what have we done wrong in our framing of this show to make people think they need to be prepared.

Yeah.

I talk bullshit.

All I have is vibes and I re-watched the movie recently this time.

I did not come with source text.

I just

like every kid who was 11 in 1991, this movie

watched my story.

You know, we're like, this work was really big.

Is really big for you.

It's humongous.

It's totemic.

Reached out, I think, gave you like first crack of just like what's settled on doing this, anyone.

And you write back hook.

Hook.

Right.

It was just no question.

It was hook.

Finger pointed there.

JD had thrown out that he wanted to do hook.

It wasn't just, he said close encounters or hooks, to be clear.

He did not, he did not.

Correct.

Yeah.

And we said, well, you know.

And we were like, we're going to put you on close encounters.

Lynn wants hook.

And he was like, I can't believe I'm being bum for Lynn.

But the thing he immediately put his chip down on was, I insist that you guys talk about, and it's what I would have come prepared, loaded for bear, to talk about, is the 90s movie micro trend of the hideout that is a skate park.

Oh, yeah.

Right.

It's those, it's turtles.

He was linking those two immediately.

Sort of three ninjas kind of has that vibe.

Right.

Like that early 90s, like it would be fun to be a kid and a ninja at the same time.

And it's not quite the same thing, but I think Blank Check and Richie Rich both have this element of like, what if like a perfect kids play space that felt a little dangerous and humongous,

absolutely.

All-encompassing.

It's levels.

Levels.

Yeah, right.

Which

required skateboarding experts.

I think of Kramer in Seinfeld when he starts adding levels to his apartment.

It's a good, you know, levels is good.

That's ambitious.

I would say, though, what these spaces all have in common is no parents allowed.

No parents allowed.

Yeah.

All right.

So

your relationship to Hook, well, maybe your relationship to Spielberg first, though.

I don't know.

Sure.

I mean, I think I...

I think you're probably with me here that like for me, if you wanted to make movies as a little kid they'd say oh you want to be the next steven spielberg it was literally shorthand for

director yes and for like

vunderkind right like this sort of like yeah he started young like he was a movie nerd and he got to you know but also i think especially in the 90s if there is like a representation of a director in any other form of media yeah he was also playing himself as a lot of stuff like very often i think of him as a personality yeah he was in the goonies are good enough video where Cindy Loppett goes, Mr.

Spielberg, help us out.

And he goes, I don't know what to do.

And you're like, first of all, the fact that that video had both Nikolai Volkov, Andre the Giant, and Steven Spielberg, and the entire cast of the Goonies.

And it was like they didn't quite know how videos worked yet.

So they just do two videos that encapsulate the plot of the Goonies and play the song twice.

I believe Rowdy Roddy Piper and Captain Lou, like a lot of wrestlers are in there.

Right.

Yeah.

I have seen it.

The Goonies before my time.

So I've always struggled.

Like, hook a little bit more my time.

Sure.

The Goonies.

Down here, it's your time.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, yes.

All right.

So Spielberg on, right.

The first director any kid learns about in our generation, essentially.

Spielberg.

Oh, you want to be Steven Spielberg.

Do you remember the first one you see?

Like, are you hearing the name repeated before you're understanding who he is, or were you already developing a relationship with the story?

In the same way that you'd hear Westside Story as synonymous with musicals.

Yeah.

Spielberg was synonymous with the movies.

I think for me, probably the first one I saw was E.T.,

which probably not in theaters.

No, definitely on DHS.

And my grandfather owned a video store.

So I remember.

I don't think I knew that.

Yeah.

This is

like Governor Manhattan?

No, in Puerto Rico.

So when I'd go for the summers, I'd go hang out at Miranda Video and I would like see the different

Jaws covers.

Like there was Jaws and then there were like the subsequent ones he didn't make.

And then for some reason,

I associate

the big thing you also need to know is my grandfather owned a video store, so I was just unsupervised watching movies all the time.

And also my grandparents had cable and my parents didn't.

And so what was playing.

It was a summer thing.

It was a summer thing.

So like

what was playing constantly on HBO that those summers when I was a kid was Jaws 4.

was like Michael Cain and the shark following him to the thing and also Richard Jenna's stand-up routine about how dumb Jaws 4 is and how the shark follows this one one family.

So, so yeah, so I remember.

I have to ask quickly, were the VHSs dubbed, subtitled, or neither?

A little bit of everything.

Interesting.

And

usually they were just in English with Spanish subtitles.

Yeah.

And then my grandparents, I'm sure this wasn't legal, but they were always making copies, like with two VHSs on the movies in the back.

And that's where I saw the really inappropriate stuff because there was a porn section of the video store like

the 80s video store

and you would just hear you would just hear those movies being dubbed in the back of the oh my parents are going to be really upset when they listen to this you should I think you should open a video store now you should revive Miranda

video I mean it's kind of physical media you know it's getting hot again it's sort of this cold thing

you should bring back the porn section I get a lot of curtained off press listen I never went in like it was back in the day it was curtained off yeah I there was a double Dragon 2 console in the video store.

So I played a lot of Double Dragon 2.

I watched that poor four-bit girlfriend get punched so many times.

That's how the game starts.

Punch the girlfriend

over the shoulder, and then you got to go.

So we've really ventured from my smaller disaster since that part.

But so Hook 1991, you said you were 11?

I was 11.

So you saw this in the theater.

I definitely saw this in theater.

I also did.

I was but five, but I still, I think, was still whatever, like locked in enough with the, you know whatever I was gonna go see hook the Peter Pan movie right you clearly you wouldn't have you would have been very smart look I'm gonna get this out of the way he know like he hook I don't like hook okay

I struggle there so strongly with hook it's it's polarizing film no it's a tough movie it's because yes the parts that are good are so good and it takes a while to get there so I uh

I didn't see it like and you share that opinion with Spielberg I do which has always been my defense and I will say in the history of doing this show, right?

We covered the second half of Spielberg's career eight years ago.

We're finally getting to this now.

I've sort of like just taken strays at Hook over the years and been like, and obviously we all know Hook sucks.

And every time I would do that, our listeners would get really angry and being like, what are you talking about?

And what is this assumption?

This is not the like norm opinion, which I feel like I grew up with my parents went to see Hook.

I was

two, three when this came out.

Yeah, you would have been like two years old.

My parents definitely went on a date night to see it when I'm the one child before my brother is born.

And I just remember growing up in a household where Hook was used as shorthand for like folly.

And a thing I've sort of had to like

work through in doing this series is realizing that I grew up in a weirdly anti-Spielberg household.

Right.

Not just Hook.

They were generally a little skeptical.

But Hook is the turning point.

It it is like my parents just still and even recently like we had a family dinner and i brought up like lynn's coming on to do hook and they were like god that movie sucks and it's like this it's this very like raw thing for my parents they still are like man we've got a babysitter we went to see that and hook and they've just like anytime they have liked a spielberg movie since hook they say it almost begrudgingly wow they're just like it's weird how good bridge of spies is and i'm like that's not weird

right

But so I grew up in this house where hook is just this like clout.

I weirdly felt like I had hook toys growing up and they'd just be like, oh, that movie sucks.

Like they'd just walk by me.

So it was like not something that was like presented to me.

I'd see it at friends' houses.

Everyone else loved Hook.

Other friends would have the VHS.

That's for our generation's youth.

Right.

Certainly the film got mixed reviews when it came out.

It was seen as a bit of a disappointment by grown-up critics, but not us kids.

What was the movie he made just prior to this?

So it's a weird point in his career because it's the movie he makes prior to this is always probably his most forgotten film.

Have you even seen all

Richard Dreyfus, Holly Hunter, ghost

remake of Golden Hollywood rom copy?

Ghost Fire Pilot.

What's weird?

I have this awareness of being aware that Hook was over budget even when I was 11.

Right.

It became another thing.

So

it became a thing of like, they're having trouble making Hook.

And usually.

And I remember being a kid anticipating the movie being like, sequel to Peter Pan, like, let's go.

Look, I'm not reading Premiere in Movie Line magazine when I'm two.

But by the time I'm seven and I'm reading it, they're still using Hook as shorthand.

Yeah, I'm definitely reading Entertainment Weekly by this point and aware that like they brought in that they're like having trouble.

Right, Carrie Fisher's doing rewrites.

Right.

I don't know if I was aware of that.

Maybe you were.

But I was aware that it was over budget and that people were worried about it.

Like by many accounts, this movie, the ultimate budget was close to $80 million dollars right very high 91 yes and that's 80 million dollars with a huge asterisk which is

spielberg

the borg spielberg spielberg hauffman kauffman and williams all four with salaries and roberts no but those three no salaries oh really right the deal was they get zero upfront money And they get, was it, 40%

of first dollar earnings?

A lot of the money, the gross.

JJ has it in the dossier.

Break it down.

It was an insane structure.

So it was $80 million without paying the three biggest people.

I think Roberts was paid a lot.

Because she was newly hot stuff at the time.

So I wanting to be this kind of like savvy, wise movie kid was just like, yeah, we all know hook sucks.

My parents taught me that hook sucks.

You use hook as shorthand for like failed 90s blocks.

I'm actually flinching every time you say it.

Yeah, just, you know, take it easy on our guests.

Come on, easy.

I had seen it piecemeal over the years many, many times, but had like never really sat down and watched the whole thing.

Then I feel like, oh, you never saw it as a kid.

No.

Oh, wow.

Then I feel.

He received wisdom.

That is weird.

It's weird.

Yep.

When I'm in my early 20s, my friend Jake makes some reference to Hook, and I'm just like, Hook.

And he's like, You didn't grow up with Hook.

And I'm like, I actually don't think I've ever seen the whole thing all the way through.

And he's like, We're watching Hook tonight.

We watch Hook.

I'm just like, God.

Do you remember having time in your 20s?

Absolutely.

And like, you would be like, you haven't seen this?

Clear the next three hours.

We're doing this now.

It was also the era where Netflix was the only streaming service and it had every movie.

Right.

You just knew you could immediately go like this and pull hook up.

Watch it that night was just like, this is completely missing me.

Sure.

I just don't get this.

You don't have the kid grounding at all.

Nope.

And I had, I don't have the thud butt at a formative time in your life.

Right.

The world's biggest pin and thud butt.

We'll talk thud butt.

He'll come thud butt.

We better talk.

He's always coming.

And was just like, I struggle with this thing.

And then just went on making straight.

You've never liked Hook.

It's never stuck to you.

Three months ago,

four months ago, it was playing at the Nighthawk Theater in Prospect Park.

Lovely place.

And I was like, we got this series.

Come and do an episode.

I deserve, it deserves a proper reconsideration on a big screen.

It was advertised as a 35 print.

It ended up being a DCP.

I went to a weekend matinee of Hook.

I walk out fuming.

Fuming.

I go on Letterbox, I log it as half a star.

I log it as half a star and immediately the whole blank check text thread is like, Griffin, what are you doing?

What point are you trying to make here?

And I'm like walking down the street like harumph harumph harump.

Yeah, you're fuming.

Yes.

Yeah.

Now, admittedly, I had had dental surgery like 10 days earlier that had gone poorly and the recovery was bad.

Oh, yeah.

Hook is a good thing.

Ben and I are excited.

Yes.

I saw some other movies in that period that I liked, but I do think in a certain way where if you have a headache and then someone starts making a high-pitched noise, it's going to hurt twice as hard.

I was like, this movie has never worked for me, but when I'm in mouth pain, when my whole skull hurts, I was like, please make it stop.

Can and fire and dental work don't mix great.

The whole thing was just really rubbing against me.

So then I gave it another rewatch.

Sure.

To prepare for like correct.

And I'm now just back to just like, yeah, I don't know.

Well, I'm not angry about it.

Let's close the book up.

Hush.

Establish.

Establish.

Yes.

All right.

But that's my history.

I am like most

people my age.

I'm a little younger than Lynn.

But like I say, I saw Hook as a kid and I was like, this movie rocks.

It's got sword fighting and it's got Ruffio in it.

Like, this is great.

It is the only movie with Rufio in it.

Unfortunately.

Hoffman like made me laughs, me made me laugh.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Like, I remember as I grew up learning that like Julia Roberts' performance in this was considered bad and me being like, I don't get, I don't get that at all.

It's a best activity.

Yeah.

And then, yeah, I grew up and I, Hook's nostalgia has curdled for me slightly.

There's things in it I don't like at all.

I do think it's way too slow at the beginning.

I think it is a fascinating.

I agree.

Yeah.

I think it is a fascinating like Spielberg text.

Like it is a fascinating like moment in his life.

He, and look, you actually know Steven Spielberg, I'm going to say a little bit.

A little bit.

A little bit.

You've chatted with Steve.

You did a

screen meeting with him.

Yeah, we did a Raiders for Palace.

I don't know if you've ever talked talked Hook with Steve, but I feel like he's usually fairly dismissive of it.

He's kind of like, ah, that didn't work.

Right.

Like, have you, I mean, like.

Pretty much, yeah.

I mean, I'm just going by his own dock.

Like, he's just, yeah.

But have you ever brought it up to him?

Are you like, would it break?

It would break my heart to tell him I like Hook and have him make a face.

No, no, no.

I, uh, it's not my.

Also, it's like, I mean, if I have to list Spielberg favorites, it's not even that high up there, but of course not the most famous thing.

In the early Spielberg and where it landed on my life, again, and it's interesting to watch this as an 11-year-old in the theater and interesting to watch it as a 45-year-old father of two.

But the other micro trend that this falls into besides skate parks as clubhouses is

dads who just don't have time for their gosh darn kids.

Cell phone.

That cell phone duel.

Is this the first cell phone movie too?

You know, because like that might be such shorthand for like, oh, he's a workaholic.

He's like, this is 91.

Not a lot of people have cell phones.

Not a lot of people have cell phones.

It is an error that I actually think will be hard to explain and contextualize to younger generations.

Like, I couldn't even explain to my kids when I watched it with them that, like, oh, their computer's not even in there.

Right.

There used to be crazy that you had a cell phone.

Like, that was rare.

There's a period in family film where if a character takes out a cell phone, the movie is basically saying he deserves to be shot in the street.

This motherfucker

doesn't look at his kids.

A tough

doesn't know his kids' middle names.

Physically holding a cell phone is the same as if that liar lies.

Liar liar is a perfect example.

One of my favorite movies, One Fine Day, which the entire plot is the two workaholics switch cell phones.

Basically, the entire Disney live-action Tim Allen canon, which was big for me, is all predicated on this guy who spends too much time on his cell phone.

And then he wears suspenders, he goes to an office, he has a cell phone.

He's a huge part of it.

There's a baseball game and/or dance recital that he is late to.

I even had to struggle to justify the baseball game.

Here's a Christmas series baseball game.

It is one of the immediate things in Hook where I'm like, why the fuck are they playing baseball in December?

Catcher is wearing a Santa Claus beard.

It's a Christmas season.

Because, like, do they

in New York?

This movie's doing so much.

We don't really know where they are in America before they go to London, but like, if they're in the Northeast, they should not be playing baseball in December.

It's very cold.

That's cold.

Yeah.

Okay.

Anyway.

David, yes.

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Here's a spotlight.

Nothing more to discuss here.

Everything's

turned the spotlight on.

I've put my glove on to select by hand

through the creak of the door.

We have three different visuals going on.

What?

The glove to hand pick.

Oh,

of course.

David Mussolini, colon, son of the century.

It is, it is, look,

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

Here's what's funny about it.

Just to peel back the curtain for a second.

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

Yeah, here's the copy for the ad.

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

And I was like, Mussolini sponsoring the podcast?

What do you mean?

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

But we celebrate Joe Wright and his newest project.

The filmmaker Joe Wright

has created

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

And I will say, not to sound like a, you know, a little nerd over here, but it is actually very interesting to consider mussolini's rise to power in these times uh you know he was sort of the original fascist and the way that he sees power in italy is

unfortunately something we should probably have on our minds right now i don't not try to be a loser right now you seem like me right now this is the kind of thing i say uh it's just it's it's very it's a very interesting part of history and i feel like because you know other world war ii things became whatever the history channel's favorite thing you don't hear quite as much about mussolini's rise to press no you're right, unfortunately.

Sadly, tragically, frighteningly.

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

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

Martin Eden himself.

Remember that?

Beloved member of the old guard.

That's right.

The movie I love, the episode that people considered normal.

Very well.

Sequel.

Checking notes here.

Great.

Critics are calling it a towering performance of puffed up vanity.

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

That's cool.

Imagine techno beats scoring fascist rallies.

It just sounds kind of Joe Wrighty.

It does.

Joe Wright, you know, he won't just do a typical costume drama.

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

Got futurism,

surreal stagecraft, cutting-edge visuals.

Mm-hmm.

Guardian calls it, quote, a...

brilliantly performed portrait of a pathetic monster.

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

This is heavy ad copy, guys.

Usually it's kind of like, eh, shorts, you know,

Credit raving words.

A gripping, timely series, The Guardian.

Remarkable, The Telegraph.

A complex portrait of evil.

Financial Times.

Yeah.

No, it's Joe Wright,

one of the scarier people I ever interviewed.

I've told you that story, right?

He knows he's kind of a cool guy.

We've batted him around.

He's certainly gotten interesting.

He's very interesting.

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

totally connect.

Totally.

That's really interesting.

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

You're like, sure,

it doesn't fit the model.

This one does.

This one does.

Look, just stream great films at home.

You can try movie free for 30 days at movie.com/slash blank check.

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

You can watch Mussolini or you can watch non-Mussolini things.

Yeah, they got lots of movies.

I got a lot of things.

Bye.

David.

Okay, okay.

I'll be very quiet.

Oh, I'm used to it.

Producer Ben is sleeping.

Oh,

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 it slightly quiet.

We don't have to go full whisper.

I just want to remind you that Haas is sleeping.

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

Yeah, of course.

But Wayfair is also the ideal place to get game day essentials, bigger selection, curated 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

stuff gets delivered delivered really fast, hassle-free.

The delivery is free.

If you, 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 in 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 cards.

Fainting beds?

I have cribs.

Sconces?

Chaise lounges?

I'm low on sconces.

Maybe it's time to pick up a faint stick.

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 read.

Don't wake Hausy.

There's only one shame to this ad read.

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 all of my favorite football team Cleveland Browns, of course.

Dante Mac, no matter what.

Okay, that's the end of the ad raid.

Bye.

Yes, I watch it now and I'm like, it's kind of a movie that's similar to me.

There's other kids' movies like this where I'm like, kids do like this movie as we have discussed this.

Did you watch it with your daughter?

No, no, I have she would be baffled by this news.

She's a little too young for this.

Did you watch it with your children?

I watched it with my kids.

And they basically.

Have they seen it before?

Was this the first time?

No,

they've seen it once.

Yeah.

Okay.

And actually, I saw it way back when we decided we were doing this.

I was like, so this was like last summer, last fall.

The schedule is very far into it.

It's taken us a long time to get here.

Yes.

But yeah, I watched it with them and they were so into Neverland.

It takes a long time to get to Neverland.

It takes a long time.

It takes full 35, 40 minutes.

It's half hour to Neverland and they're still in pirate land for the first 20 minutes and it's 52 minutes till they meet the little host boys.

Which is, yeah, it's, you know, and beyond that, which, you know, the first half hour of this movie where it's just Spielberg being like, I'm such a workaholic.

And I'm like, you're making a movie about peter pan for children my friend this movie is rated pg like children are coming to see it they don't care about your cell phone like is my take now again kids like this movie but then just like the sort of like in the softness and the kind of like emotional like it feels too dad to me in a way sometimes i'm like we need more fun we need more like kid energy in this and less like sad dad energy in it

But it did also kind of work on me as a bit of a, is a bit of a sad dad.

You know what I mean?

Like, I'm watching it now and I'm like, and he's talking about his happy place or all that i'm like this isn't gonna not get me a you know come on yeah see it's it so doesn't get me but i also will say that like watching it again this morning with my mouth in good condition

a balanced set of teeth i i was digging into more the weird like messiness of how much this movie is him at odds and sort of like a crossroads point in his career.

I think the movie, I don't want to say the movie suffers because of that i think the movie is basically a monument to him being in this like i don't know and there's a quote that jj pulled up in the dossier that i'm like that's the whole movie for me now and upon reading that i'm a little more engaged with watching the film but your question of where he's coming from right just to like snapshot it he has this insane dominant run of blockbusters Then he has this 80s period that's very much him trying to like grow up and make serious movies.

He wants to win an Oscar, clearly.

And people are just like, get over it.

Right.

There's this like weird wave of people being like, Spielberg's a little boy who makes theme park rides.

And he's like, great, I'll make serious movies.

And they're like, go back to making your theme park rides.

Who are you kidding?

And

the one part of it that's weird for me, the existence of Hook, is that like Hook kind of makes sense to me as him being like, fine, I'll go back to doing what you guys want out of me.

Had he not just made Last Crusade.

Like that's the other part of the puzzle.

right which is the movie before always right is that like in between temple of doom and last crusade he does color purple he does empire of the sun he goes through the whole twilight zone calamity he has his first child he makes always which is like not a serious movie but it is ostensibly trying to be a movie for grown-ups sure like a soft grown-up movie like you know like drama but he like comes back and does another indiana jones that is a big hit and that people like and is him kind of doing like the spielberg roller coaster again So it always feels weird to me.

Man, Last Crusade is such a good rollercoaster.

I love Last Crusade.

It's my kid's favorite Indiana Jones.

And it's him being like, I'm still good at this, by the way.

And everyone's like, yes, you are.

I think.

And I think that's why I was so excited to just going back in time.

That's why I was so excited to see Hook in the theater because I had seen

Last Crusade on a thousand sleepovers.

The guy does action.

Yes, yes.

But this was probably your first theatrical.

Yeah, probably.

Yeah.

So that's huge.

Yeah.

But like right after this, which has its whole like, the press is having a field day over this movie, the expectations for it were basically either this is the biggest movie of all time or it's a disappointment.

And you read like the immediate press and they're all sort of like, well, it's a hit, but it's not a mega hit.

And he's at this sort of odd like junction point.

And then two years later, he does Jurassic Park and Schindler's List in the same year.

Right.

Right.

Just the most dominant shit.

Take that.

All time.

I'm like, it is a, it's a real, you know, sort of like, it's over.

He has nothing left to prove after that.

And Hook, he still has stuff to prove.

Right.

And it's, and he's not quite if it went from straight from Hook to Schindler.

I'd be like, okay, so he's like, you know what?

That's past.

I'm, I'm not doing that kind of thing anymore.

I've grown up.

Here's my kind of movie.

But the fact that he does Jurassic in the same year and he's like, I can still knock this out of the fucking park if I want to.

You want me to build a roller coaster?

I'll build a roller coaster.

I mean, it's hard to, it's hard for kids to understand now, but like at that time when you found out Spielberg was directing Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park was such a hitbook.

Like sixth graders were carrying around Jurassic Park when I was in sixth grade, and everyone was like, but how are they going to do the dinosaurs?

Like literally, like this is not possible because they'll never make them look real.

And so it was like he delivered on that in the most incredible way possible.

And then the movie still just fucking rips.

Like he actually did the, like it was like, it's hard to overstate how much Jurassic Park felt like you were watching the impossible happen in 1992.

I mean, is that right?

93, 93.

But he has talked about the fact that Jurassic was kind of an impersonal movie for him, and it's the reason he did Lost World, where he's otherwise been protective about not trying to do sequels.

He had the agreement with George where he had to do the Indiana Jones sequels, but otherwise he's always kind of backed off.

And he was just like, look, Jurassic Park was me just like having fun.

Yeah, just

having a good time.

Hook and

Hook and Said are both very personal and are getting through the couch.

A child who became a man, you know, going to war with a man who is a child, who is basically like, come be a child.

I only want to, you know, I want us to be children again and fight and play.

And Peter Pitt, you know, like it is, it is his

id and ego, like doing battle on screen.

Like, it is the most psychologically rich shit.

And yet Spielberg is kind of like, oh, the sets were too big.

And I should have made it a musical.

And like, you know, Julia Roberts was getting on my nerves.

You know what I mean?

He won't won't acknowledge this.

I read about that this was almost a musical, that there were these John Williams and Harsley Brickas tunes that got cut.

I mean, is this like I'll do anything level, this was a musical got cut?

I know.

Well, no, because I'll do anything.

They filmed the musical.

The sequences, right?

The musical cut of all the.

Hey, Lynn, you might get an interesting email at the end of this week.

Yes.

It's quite interesting.

Yeah, they still might.

They were a non-musical version of that movie, but they were fully recorded, mixed, rehearsed, and then cut.

They were never filmed right right right i think there was recently a limited cd reissue where the third disc was the tracks but like

as jj dug up one of the songs was supposed to be uh older wendy and they had gotten julie andrews to record it and maggie smith was going to lip-sync right julie andrews singing john williams musical numbers oh my god we could have had it all it got that far along fascinating to consider and he basically welched like i think a month month before film.

So that's too bad.

Steven Spielberg has always loved Peter Pan.

There is the sequence in E.T., right?

Where Peter Pan's being read to the children, right?

Peter Pan?

Yes.

But he's also just like

the idea of Peter Pan on screen being the depiction of flight is this sort of like leveling up in the imagination.

Anytime anyone flies in a movie, it's riffing on Peter Pan.

E.T.

flying on the bike is riffing on Peter Pan.

He has always said his mother is Peter Pan to him.

And obviously, if you've seen the Fable Woman's, like that makes sense.

This sort of like, she seems to have the energy of this kind of like fairy woman, right?

This kind of delightful musical person who would read him Peter Pan and all.

And you can see Heracut.

Yeah.

Yes.

And then, of course, as Spielberg becomes a famous filmmaker, everyone's like, this is Peter Pan.

This is the boy who won't grow up, right?

It's the easiest thing to tag him with.

So in 1984.

News breaks.

Steven Spielberg will be making a live adaptation of Peter Pan in London.

No one has ever done a Peter Pan movie at this point since like the silent era.

That's like obviously there's the Disney film, but no one's done a live action Peter Pan.

Yes.

His quote was, there has never been a live action picture except in 1924 silent version.

This is the first real motion picture version of Peter Pan, and I'm really excited about it.

Which will believe a boy can fly.

Right.

That's basically his pitch is like.

The Disney one is the definitive one.

If I can pull this off in live action and pull off the impossible, I make the definitive version of this story, which is insane to consider now where there's a new Peter Pan movie every 24 months.

Like post-hook, it has not stopped.

Hoffman is attached as Captain Hook pretty much from the beginning.

Michael Jackson is heavily interested in playing Peter Pan.

He really wants to do it.

Michael Jackson, as people know, may have had a bit of a thing about Peter Pan.

You might guys, you know, you know, they had the Neverland Ranch and so on and so forth.

Spielberg

waves him off.

Supposedly, Michael Jackson hired a witch doctor to cast a curse on him.

That is like one of the many Michael Jackson stories that's out there that may or may not be true.

Who knows?

Spielberg's response in an interview was, what else is new?

But

really good luck.

In 1985.

Say that to everything.

I'm sorry.

It was, this is bizarre, but what else is

Spielberg has a son in 1985, and Spielberg says his appetite for Peter Pan goes away once this happens.

I think partly because making it was going to be this giant London production, like, you know, whatever, like with sets and shit, where he's like, I don't have time.

I don't want to be away from my children.

I want to, right.

I want to be with my kid, Max, his first kid.

With Amy Irving.

With Amy Irving, a friend of the show, and past some future guests.

We'll get her back, right?

We'll get her back.

And so Peter Pan goes away.

But there's the other part of it.

Back burnered all the way to the back.

He's like, this has ended my permanent adolescence.

A child is born.

I look at it.

Suddenly, I have responsibility in the world.

And he sort of talked about.

It's Peter Banning's happy thought.

Basically.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Where he's just like, immediately, I found myself becoming my parents in the the way I told myself I would never be.

The transformation happened.

I couldn't stop it.

I no longer connected to Peter Pan as a character.

So James, Jim V.

Hart, who is one of the credited screenwriters on this movie, an interesting guy,

like his career is interesting.

He picks up the project as, you know, writing it and shifts it to what Hook is, which is sort of a sequel to Peter Pan, right?

Like, what if...

Peter Pan grew up?

What if Captain Hook wasn't dead?

Like, what if Captain Hook, you know, was merely

lurking in the crocodile and then escaped?

I don't know.

They don't really get into it, do they?

It was, look, it's, it's a good kid logic pitch where his little son draws a picture of Captain Hook and the crocodile.

And he's like, what's that?

And as the son's describing it, he's like, it's Captain Hook and the crocodile, but the crocodile didn't actually eat Captain Hook.

Captain Hook got away.

And he goes like, ping.

What if Captain Hook's still alive?

Somehow Captain Hook has returned.

Nick Castle famously plays Michael Myers in Halloween, but is also like a, how would you describe him, Griff?

Like a sort of low to mid-budget genre filmmaker at this point.

I just want to call out.

Makes the last starfighter, makes tap.

Yes.

I just want to call out heart.

It's a two-pronged thing.

There's the what if hook survived.

And then he's like, a year or two later, his son goes, Daddy, what happens to Peter Pan when he grows up?

And he's like, he doesn't.

And he's like, well, what if he did?

And he's like, are you a fucking exec?

It's like a broken street.

I'm spying the room.

Yes, truly.

Right.

Right.

Then immediately.

500 grand.

I I lined up the right.

That's a good fucking hook.

You're asking big questions.

Yes.

Nick Castle is

an interesting genre figure who obviously has the roots and the carpenter stuff, but then does last Starfighter, a film I adore, but kind of was one of these guys who was always like making movies that felt like they should have been huge hits, but always stayed a little cult.

were never making they were never bombs but he was never totally crossing over pictures at this point ended up at Sony TriStar and uh

Mike Medavoy, who's Spielberg's first agent, comes on as a producer.

And Spielberg is basically brought in to displace Castle.

Castle's bought out, given 500 grand to leave the project because Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman want Steven Spielberg.

Like they know he had sniffed this project before.

They obviously want Steven Spielberg.

It's kind of the beginning of the mega packaging where they were just like, what if we put all our biggest clients on this?

They go to Spielberg.

He's like, I would never want to be responsible for another director getting kicked off a project.

And he's like, well, great news.

I fired him a week ago.

It's yours.

They basically set it up so that they were just like, the toes have already been stepped on, my man.

You can't stop this.

And so Spielberg's coming aboard a project that isn't his project exactly.

He wanted to make Peter Pan.

At this point, it's now evolved into the Peter Pan sequel concept, right?

And he's like, that's a good idea for a movie.

I'm not sure it's my idea for a movie, but okay.

And

he brings in Malia Scotch Marmo, the other screenplay writer here, who reshapes the character character of Hook, I guess.

Carrie Fisher famously did a lot of rewriting.

I think a lot of other people did too.

Hoffman had basically always been aboard.

Spielberg had almost made Rainman with him a while ago, so I guess they'd sort of been circling each other.

She was so close to doing Rain Man, but was contractually obligated to do Indy 3.

And

unsurprisingly, Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise had a lot of script notes, and the development of that movie took a long time.

So it was all three of them together working on it.

And Spielberg had his like moment where it's like, if I haven't started filming Rainman by this date, I will not be able to then finish in time to go do Indy.

And he left Rain Man and then watches someone else win best picture and best director.

True.

Hoffman, which probably has to get to him a little bit.

Spielberg, Hoffman, and Williams all declined salaries, as you say.

Instead, they're going to split 40% of the gross from the movie.

Which is a lot of money.

But they get, there's a weird structure where it's like they get 40% of the first 200 million and then it goes back to Sony and then they get everything after that.

Who cares?

Julia Roberts, who's 24 years old.

Stevensburg Robin Williamson doesn't know.

Deadline.

Yeah.

Deadline.

Julia Roberts is only 24 years old.

Pretty woman obviously came out a year before her.

A thing that is insane to consider.

She had just gone through a very scandalous tabloidy breakup with Kiefer Sutherland, where she supposedly left him at the altar.

I think in actuality, she called off the wedding a few days.

JJ has four pages of notes devoted to the fact that she actually broke off the marriage three days before the wedding, not at the album.

Fair enough.

But like the most JJ has ever ducked into the world.

I think because Julia Roberts has become this very sort of gentle celebrity, like people are just like, yeah, Julia Roberts is chill.

She's like been married for a zillion years.

She kind of lives in San Francisco doing it.

It is hard for younger people to remember, to know how much insane scrutiny she was under in the early 90s.

Like the most insane press bullshit around her at all times.

She is 24.

She's already been nominated for two Academy Awards.

She's the biggest female star in Hollywood.

She's already had like relationship drama that's burning up the tabloids.

Yeah.

She was in a real life.

Certainly.

I think they, they had, they did not enjoy working together.

I think now they are like, we were both just not, it's too bad.

You know, it's not like they still hate each other.

Like they talk about it like this sort of like, hey, man, we were both in bad places and it just wasn't working.

And of course, almost all of her footage is just on on a blue screen with nobody around her, which must have been a huge bummer.

Like, once in a while, I think Robin Williams would come

to do lines with her, but that's about it.

I think the biggest nod to that era that you see in the movie is there's just these random cutaways of her just grinning that beautiful

smile.

Yes.

And it's like, you almost can hear the exec be like, where's the smile?

Do the move.

Do the move.

Because, you know, obviously she sold a lot of tickets on that dazzling and her incredible performance in Pretty Woman.

But she said basically it feels cut in.

Like, they'll be like, the Lost Boys will be playing, and then they'll just cut to Julia Rollins.

Like, well, doesn't it have, yes, a sort of right role in this film in a weird sort of a way.

You know what I mean?

It's a weird eponymy.

Like, she does.

She does have there.

She's playing this weird, unrequited

love.

It's, she's speaking the unspoken subtext of Tinkerbell and Peter Pan, which is that Tinkerbell is jealous of Wendy, but like, it's now these monologues.

It's now these monologues monologues and her gray fully sized and putting on essentially a wedding dress to talk to Peter Penn, where you're sort of like, we already knew this.

We didn't quite need it.

Well, it also, it needs to be that overstated because you've hired Julia Roberts to do it.

Like, now you need to justify why she's the third name above the title.

The title equivalent of, like, well, if she's singing in it, she's got to have a second act solo.

That scene is her second act solo that they wrote because Julia Roberts is playing the title.

The scene of her getting big for four minutes feels like her being like, Can I have one scene where I stand on a set

in front of a person and make eye contact?

Just a girl in front of a boy.

Right.

She basically was like, Hoffman did off-camera for me one time.

Robin did it a couple times.

I was mostly in a harness surrounded by crew guys in front of a blue screen.

As Spielberg put it at the time, this is 1991.

Her personal life fell apart and she reported to work on the same weekend.

It was a bad time for her.

And under those highly charged emotional conditions, she was a pro.

But in 99, Roberts did complain about Spielberg calling him a turncoat,

said that he basically didn't like defender in the press enough.

I think, like, I think she was getting so much shit.

She, and she wanted a little bit more backup from him.

She didn't like what you actually said.

She didn't like that his line became like, it was a bad time for us to work together.

Yeah.

And

she was going through a lot of shit.

So under those circumstances, she did fine.

It's true.

It's not, it's a bit backhanded.

I don't know, man.

They figured it out.

Everyone's doing fine.

They're all rich.

They're all successful.

They'll all have awesome.

Everyone's okay.

Because even 1999, Julia Roberts is different from like 2009.

You know, like she still hasn't won her Oscar yet.

She's still like just sort of putting this turnaround.

You know, anyway,

Julia Roberts.

Call out my favorite quote that Josiah found here.

New York Times interview when the movie is about to come out.

Spielberg says, I guess I had to get a little older to see that I wasn't done regressing.

I've given up trying to be Martin Scorsese, Kurosawa, or David Lean.

Maybe this film is about my finally growing up.

I guess I've given up avoiding me.

Everything I find technically interesting about this movie is this feeling of him being like, I guess you've got me figured out.

That's interesting.

Right.

Like him sort of being backed in the corner and it's like, I guess you're everything I say I am.

But you know what's fun?

I mean, when I think about the parts I love in this movie, it's none of that.

And again, like sometimes you have to wait a bit to get to these good parts, but like.

Man, the wonder he finds in Never Neverland when we finally get to the Lost Boys.

And the other thing I just want to call out is the fact that, like, it's pretty much all white people until Never Neverland.

True.

And that's very pointed, I would say.

The other thing that I think is so incredible about this movie is that, like, when he creates joy and like fun personified, suddenly the rest of the world is allowed to be in the movie.

And there's Hispanic kids, and black kids, and Asian kids, and

we have an Asian leader of the Lost Boys, and Dante Bosco as Rufio.

Um, and

it explodes in color in every single sense.

And that is, I mean, again, like it is hard to overstate how much Rufio meant to kids.

This, I wonder how much he knew.

Like, I spilled, like, do you, because it does feel conscious in the movie that, like, the lot of the lost, especially when you consider when in the scene in the, at the fundraiser, when they're honoring Wendy, all these old white men stand up and are like, you raised me, Wendy, you raised me, Wendy.

And then we go to the real Never Neverland and they're, you know, the United Colors of Bennetton.

And you're like, well, when did, when did Neverland start letting us in?

DJ Basco is.

I'll read his quote.

So he was from, you know, he was from basically like Compton.

He was from California.

Well, he was like, I'm a, I was adjacent to Compton.

Sure.

Okay, fine.

I think, you know, I'm not, but like, he, he says that like he grew up around like gangs and friends, you know, friends and gangs.

Like that, there were things about the Lost Boys that resonated for him as a young film.

I mean, how old is he in this film?

Like 14, something like that.

He only auditioned one time and then he read on tape and then he meets with Spielberg.

And apparently Spielberg said, out of all the kids he saw, DeFasco is the only kid who scared him, which is a great, like,

he does have, like, I mean, it's the, I think it's an incredible performance.

And I think that he's incredible.

Rufio became something of a sort of, like you're saying, like, you know, folk hero to kids our age.

Rufio is 50% of this movie having any stickiness and any legacy.

Yeah.

You watch it as an adult.

Cause as a kid, I was like, oh, Rufio's tough and scary and interesting.

And like, you know, then at the end, he dies and you're like, oh, this is moving.

As an adult, you watch and you're like, this poor kid, it's such an emotional.

We'll get into it.

But just like all the emotions of like the dad left and is back, like the way he loves Peter and resents him.

Absolutely.

He plays it so well.

He's a great, I mean, I love Dante Bass.

I mean, to me, that's one of the great moments in the films when he draws that line.

It's me or the pan.

And then, you know, I mean,

when I think back on this movie, if you were to, if you were to sum this movie up in one sentence, it would be, there you are, Peter.

Like, that's the moment.

And then John Williams comes in with that music and they all cross the line.

I mean, like, I'm like, why the fuck am I crying?

The fact that he later got to be Zuko and have this sort of like lovely second act to his career is so great.

I mean, I love.

Avatar, the last airbender, and all that, but uh, but he's, he's just amazing in this.

The reason I call out the Compton adjacent thing is because he made this point of being like, I wasn't in gangs, but I grew up next to kids who were in gangs.

Like he has this right balance of just sort of like, I'm not a tough kid, but I understand what tough kids are, which maybe makes me the right amount of scary for a Spielberg Peter Pan movie.

And also has that vulnerability.

I mean, exactly.

And also, I think, again, like.

That final battle between the Lost Boys and the Pirates is also what doesn't work about this movie to me is that like you never quite understand the rules of death and consequences in Neverland.

It's like what the Lost Boys are doing Home Alone and they're doing the Barbie Beach fight.

They have a chicken.

And the Pirates have guns and knives.

And like, by the way, like Painted Ladies for the record, like I did not catch Sami being like a friend to all the painted ladies in town the first time I've watched.

Smeehorny.

Like they're

adults and they're killing motherfuckers.

And everyone else is like the lost lost boys are throwing eggs.

And so, when Rufio dies, you're like, wait, that can

right, right?

The lost boys can die.

Is this not just like an eternal play?

Look, I don't want to be like nitpicky, but this is like a core

thing.

I do.

Clearly, I said badly.

To be fair, Peter Pan has this oddness to it as well.

Like, the core text that is Peter Pan.

But I'm pulling at this only because you presented it.

It is a core issue I have with this movie, which is like, I do not understand the way that Neverland operates.

I agree.

No, like you're saying of like, he has two giant sets, right?

There's like the pirate ship in the docks, and then you're like, this is pirate land, and this is the lost boys hideout.

And I'm like, what's happening in between them?

And what is their relationship to each other?

Just, I don't need like hard brass.

But you're thinking it like an adult.

It's a very terrible thing.

It's a happy thought and fly with us.

But I mean, like, also, yeah, Peter Pan is very strictly a fairy story of like, yeah, there's the pirates.

There's Tiger Lily, which this movie cleverly is just like, we're going to brush by that.

Yeah, they reference it, but they don't go there.

Yes.

There's the Lost Boys.

Like, how do you get there?

Second, you know, start on the right, fly onto, right?

It's all just like kid logic.

Yeah.

The whole thing of Neverland is kid lights.

But you're right.

One of the things that makes the film squishy and not quite certainly work for you is that like adult logic comes into it.

Right.

And have grown people from our world enterprise.

The system of adults.

Right.

Yeah.

That's what I'm saying.

But they have to let it go.

And it's a half hour of setup from Grown lands.

Yes.

I'm also not asking for like an explanation of the municipality.

But that's like, never like that.

That's why Hook is a good character because he is a kid's impression of a grown-up.

He's not a real grown-up.

He's a cartoon character.

Yes.

And like,

it's like one of those Star Trek episodes on the holodeck where the holodeck comes to life, where they're like, what is my, I'm Moriarty?

What's my purpose?

I just exist in opposition to someone.

Like, that's not a real person, right?

Like, Captain Hook is just, and the whole thing with Peter Pan is, as Lynn knows, and and I'm sure you guys know, classically, the same actor plays Wendy's father and Hook, and it's this insane Freudian shit

baked into Peter Pan.

The only movie that ever did it was the PJ Hogan movie had Jason Isaacs do it, which I always loved.

Yeah, like they actually obeyed that rule.

And I know, I assume it's partly just theatrical convention of like, well, we've got, we need this actor to do more than one thing, like, right?

Like, you know, yeah, we don't want to cast two people, but that hook is this kind of dark side, right, of grown-upness, like that she goes to this, you know, place where her dad is suddenly the mean villain who wants to, I guess, stop everyone and having fun.

Right, exactly.

But that, like, the concept of Hook is so clever of like Peter Pan's gone and Captain Hook's like, what do I do?

I'm fucking stuck here, like, just being Captain Hook against nobody?

Yeah, this blows.

Like, where's Peter Pan?

Like, I exist only to fight Peter Pan.

And, like, he just needs to, like, finish this hero's journey or villain's journey or whatever.

And I think I think the other squishy thing for me in this movie, and it really stuck, it was weird to me when I first saw it.

And it's even weirder now.

And I did a little reading on this and I understand why they did it.

But apparently Jay and Berry wrote in a later story that Peter Pan ran away from home as an infant.

Which makes...

Is in this movie.

But you see, like the characters running away.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

But the things we could have had if they hadn't done that, because it's the part that strains the most credulity.

Like every parent goes and gets the stroller back and you get your, like, no child has ever run away from home from being a baby helpless in a carriage that rolls away.

Like, that just, it doesn't.

It doesn't make sense in a literal or metaphorical sense.

Ecstatic sense.

If Peter Pan had actually been a 10-year-old kid who ran away from home to become Peter Pan.

Yes, to avoid puberty.

So he knows who to not grow up.

It needs to be a choice.

That's the problem.

And like

a baby cannot push his own carriage away.

Well, he sure does it in this movie.

I'd get to that whole extended sequence, right?

That basically starts with that through to like

him seeing Gwyneth Paltrow for the first time.

As we all do at some point in our lives.

Right.

We all

decide to grow up.

We will all be tempted

by Gwyneth Paltrow.

He imprints upon her like a fucking Twilight.

He's just like, I'm pulling dibs on that baby.

Oh, I'm really going to kiss her.

Move over, grandma.

Yeah, yeah.

But like that, through to what you said is like the thesis of the movie of having the moment where he sees his son and he's like, this is why I wanted to grow up, right?

I'm like, this should be the core of the movie.

And in a certain way, I think this sequence has the most power.

And yet I think it's basically botching every part of what it's trying to say.

And it starts with what you said, where it's just like two adults being like, and then he's going to go to business school and this and that.

And I'm like, I'm locked.

Baby rolled away.

This is the thing.

I'm so locked into that idea.

Like, that is something.

You should just be a kid, you're saying, you know, it's a little bit

surprised to hear that.

That is a thing I relate to very strongly of being a child and hearing adults be like, and when you're a grown-up, you'll do this.

And me being like, fuck you.

Right.

I'm out.

But the second it's like, I'm a baby, and I remember hearing them say that.

So I magically willed my stroller away until Tinkerbell came and flew me out.

And again, I think it comes out of a fidelity to a J.M.

Berry text, but that's the other, that's the other thing that gnaws at you while you're watching it.

You're like, your grandmother's name was Wendy Darling, and you've never questioned

like, and the movie starts with him watching his daughter playing Wendy Darling in a play.

Like, there's no examination of the like, so where, how are we, did just

a neighbor?

Right.

Here's another thing I find super fucking smushy.

So he's doing that, right?

Take Carbell flies him over.

He meets Wendy.

He goes back and visits her.

She becomes an old lady.

He falls in love with Gwynneth Paltrow.

He's like, I got to stay here.

Then it basically hard cuts to he's Robin Williams with the suspenders in the delivery room looking at the baby and going, Here we go.

This is why I want to be a grown-up.

What happens in between those two points?

When does he stop remembering that he's Peter Pan?

He says, like, he doesn't remember anything before he's 12 years old.

But you're telling me that he like jumps through the window when he's 12, sees this 12-year-old, is like, yes, please, erase my memory.

Kind of.

You adopt me, raise me next to your granddaughter.

By the way, I just want to restate Dibs.

No one else can date her.

They date all the way through having their first child.

And then he's like, there we go.

This is why I'm here.

Yeah.

I also, I mean, I rub up against the logic of like, if they took him away when he was a baby, how'd he grow up in Never Neverland?

That's right.

Why couldn't he have just gone away at the age when he'd be Peter Pan?

That's always been the Peter Pan logic, which, as you said, like, maybe the Jam Berry thing starts with him being a baby.

That's a good, like, note that other people came up with when they readapted it to be like, oh, it's actually better if he stays the age he ran away at.

That's the whole point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now, Steven Spielberg, just to just to finish out the sort of context here, this film was supposed to take 76 days to shoot.

It took 116.

So way, way, way over production.

It was supposed to be like 40, and then it ended up somewhere between 60 and 80.

It's this era for Spielberg, I think, where he's too famous.

People come visit at the set.

Obviously, there's all like the celebrity cameos in it.

It kind of, and he builds these crazy.

Although playing close is legit great as that one pirate.

She acts.

I mean, like, she's.

But, like, I think people, he has,

she's really funny.

People are swinging by.

Come see this fucking crazy set.

You see the Lost Boys Lair and you're like, I want to hang out there.

This movie looks like the best like theme park walkthrough attraction of all time.

And it does feel like he just basically half of every day was a party where he would give people tours and be like, don't you want to go down the slide?

The boat, it's the Jolly Roger, costs a million and a half dollars.

It's the most expensive thing ever built in a Steven Spielberg movie.

Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Michelle Pfeiffer, Warren Beatty, Annette Benning, Mel Gibson, Prince, and the Queen of Jordan, among the people who visited this.

I'm just like, no wonder he's getting distracted.

No wonder things are taking too long.

He's too kind of, you know, wrapped up in this madness.

And to touch on the musical thing, as we said, is

five to eight songs that Williams writes with Leslie Bricus.

Leslie Bricus, yeah.

Who is that?

I don't really know.

Leslie Bricus, who's the lyricist.

Yes, the lyricist.

Oh, man.

I'm going to forget, but Leslie Bricus wrote a lot for the theater.

He did,

I'm seeing here Dr.

Doolittle, like Talk to the Animals, stuff like that.

Goodbye, Mr.

Chips, The Pure Imagination, and the Candyman from Louis Wonk.

So a lot of like movie musical stuff.

Oh, it was like partners with Anthony Luke, Anthony Newly.

Right.

So, you know,

Spielberg basically chickens out, he says.

Like, I, you know, obviously he's always wanted to make a musical.

He finally does it fucking 30 years later with Westside Story.

But my guess is he's kind of like, if I'm going to make a musical, I really, really want it to be like something where I'm fully invested.

And maybe these songs feel like more of like an add-on.

And he's just like, I can't deal with it.

Like, I mean, it's already a lot of movie without it being a musical activity.

It's only like two hours and 20 minutes long, which which is insane.

But when you watch the theatrical cut of I'll Do Anything, you have the thought, how could songs possibly fit into this, right?

And when you watch the cut that you may or may not receive a Google Drive link to after this episode, you're like, oh, they fit in oddly.

This doesn't like solve the movie.

This is very weird and uncanny to watch, right?

Hook does feel to me like a musical that the songs were cut out of.

Like I'm like everything in its tone and its stylization and its level of performance and even just sort of like it feels weirdly stage-bound, even though it has these ginormous sets.

They are sets.

Right.

And it's sort of like two big locations that you're ping-ponging back and forth through where you're watching people jump around these like jungle gems.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie, uh, in terms of just like Spielberg operating on master level of visual storytelling is when hook is being introduced, where the hook is on the pillow moving through the set, and all the pirates are going like, hook, hook, you know, and like, you know, the music starts to go crazy.

And then, like, we go, and he comes out.

You know, it's, you're just like, right, Spoop is really good at that.

I like that sequence.

I like that.

I like the induction of the children.

Yes.

Obviously, my favorite image in the whole movie is just the fucking hook on the windows.

Those could feel like musical sequences without a song being sung, really.

Right.

But you know, those are all of those, by the way, like barriers to entry for younger kids watching this movie.

That looks like poltergeist when those blankets come off those kids.

That whole part is, I think I loved it.

The thing that freaked me out as a kid, I remember, is the nanny screaming, the children, the children, like when they get home.

Yeah.

It's a little like unnerving.

David, what?

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

Booking.

Yeah.

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

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

Perhaps even in this room.

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

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

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

This is so rude.

I sleep easy.

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

No.

That's an example of a fussy person.

But people have different demands.

And you know what?

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

you know you've got uh 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 traveling and i need a room with some good soundproofing because i'm gonna be doing some remote pod record sure maybe you're in europe and you want to make sure that's very demanding to be in europe you got air conditioning well think of one person in particular although it's really both of you yes you gotta have air conditioning I need air conditioning if I'm in the North Pole.

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

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

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

You do.

You love selfies.

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

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

And I'm like, sounds good to me.

Yeah, please.

Can I check that book?

You want one of those in the recording, Stupid?

That'd be great.

You want to start.

You want to be.

I'll be in the sauna when we record.

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

You want to be Splish Splash.

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

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

like, ah!

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Ben.

What's up, Griff?

This is an ad break.

Yeah.

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

It's just a fact of the matter.

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

Right.

They love it to 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.

What?

This is laser targeted.

The product.

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

It certainly is.

And what is today's episode sponsored by?

The Toxic Toxic Avenger.

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

Macon Blair's remake of...

Reimagining.

Reimagining, whatever.

A 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 Play 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 Dinkledge is fantastic.

He's talking.

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 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 and Headbanger.

Yeah, exactly.

Making Toxic Crusader drills.

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 Centiverse rescued it and are now releasing it uncut.

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

They're playing with fire here.

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

And they knocked it out of the fucking park.

Okay.

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

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

It's gooey.

It's gooey.

It's sufficiently gooey.

Tons of blood, tons of goo,

great action.

It's really fucking funny.

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

Cineverse last year released Terrifier 3 unrated.

Yeah.

Big risk for them there.

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

And a huge hit.

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

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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.

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Do it, do it.

So the first half hour of this movie, like we're getting into hook, Peter Banning, he's a workaholic lawyer.

Cell phone.

He's got this fucking cell phone.

Right.

He can quickly draw better than anybody.

Right.

These are the real pirates.

Gorgeous and charming Carolyn Griddle, who's really good in this movie.

Yes.

Like, she doesn't have much to do, but when she's crying at the end, she's so involved.

I agree.

Later, reused in

Schindler's list.

That's amazing Schindler's.

Mrs.

Schindler.

Yeah.

Is his wife.

They have two kids.

Charlie Corsmo, obviously, is adorable

of this movie.

I, however, love Little Amber Scott.

I don't really know if she ever did anything else, but she's so cute.

Maggie, the little kid.

When she sings the song and she's so cute, which is also the same melody as A Penny for Your Thoughts from Waiting for Goffman.

Oh, a Penny for Your Thoughts.

That's why we have Mr.

Miranda.

Your dreams.

It also, look, it feels like kissing cousins with somewhere out there as well, coming out of the Spielberg system.

Yes.

Maggie

has the incredible insult.

You need a mother very, very badly.

She really, she really puts the mustard on that line.

I think I just have a kid with her energy.

Maybe that's why I'm.

But

he's a work off.

Then I also want to speak up for Charlie Corzbo, who by the way, like left the business.

He's a lawyer now.

Yes.

And he is so good in this.

And he was also in Dick Tracy.

He's the kid.

He's the kid.

And he's great in Dick Tracy.

He's great.

he's also really good in uh can hardly wait yes he is his last role he had like an incredible run um he's just got a great face he's just got a great kid 90s kid face he's what a 90s kid looks like the ultimate 90s kid but this was this movie was festooned with our favorite child actors i want to point out um

uh jason fitcher fisher who is like just one of the lost boys but he was also the kid in the witches right right and he was

in parenthood which is what i remember when he lost his retainer and like flipped out.

Yeah, those are his three roles.

That guy was three and out.

Those are his three roles.

He was great in all of those.

He was great.

Yeah.

Charlie Corsmo had what about Bob as well?

Oh, he was just on a heater.

You know, I

did little league baseball.

You, did you do little league baseball?

I was forced basically at hook point.

I just like that.

So, like, I think Charlie's like little baseball obsession.

That's what it felt like, really.

I was just like, yeah, this is me.

You know, like, I am right.

I don't know.

I identified very strongly with little Jack Banning as a kid.

But Jack Banning

loves his dad, loves baseball, but his dad, no attend baseball game in Christmas time.

Yeah, but yeah,

he sent a cinematographer to catch all the action.

Yeah, a video.

That feels personal.

Send someone to film it.

Yeah, that's that'll really, really resonate with that kid when

you're scanning the bleachers looking for daddy.

Very quickly after this, though, they get on a plane to go to London, where Peter was raised as an orphan by Wendy from Peter Pan, who's now Maggie Smith in old age makeup.

It's one of those funny things where you're like, this is actually Maggie Smith younger.

You know what I mean?

Like they're aging.

They're aging off to McGonagall.

And right, we know what she's going to look like.

And they kind of nail it.

Yeah, they really nail it.

The mind glitches watching it now because you're like, how the fuck did she live another 40 years?

And the answer is she's like 57 in this, but they just absolutely correctly predicted the exact way she would age.

They nailed it.

They do agree.

And

she's really good.

And obviously, I'm sure she was just cast because she has instant mega presence.

Maggie Smith is the greatest.

Was she a dame yet?

She probably wasn't even a dame yet.

When did she get the key, the DVEs they go?

I'm going to speak a little bit to the hubris of this movie, though, where it's just like, he's Steven Spielberg.

For every single role, you're going to get the single greatest person you could possibly find for that moment.

You know, I think Bob Hoskins, as SME is maybe the best performance in the film.

She had just gotten her damehood in 90s, 1990.

She's freshly damed.

But in a way, she has two Oscars already.

Unbalances the film a little bit.

I'm a Miss Gene Brody one of my mom's favorite movies.

An incredible movie.

And then the okay California Sweet, her Oscar win.

But like when you have Bob Hoskins as Sme, just throwing fastballs.

Yeah.

See, my parents forced me to play baseball.

I understand what a fastball is.

I explained this to Ben for some unclear reason.

Yeah, Ben.

Right.

I'm just like.

Fastball is a ball that goes very fast.

Some of the balls aren't as fast as others.

And a curveball?

I'm going to guess.

Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you, the fucking Jack Banning can't handle a curveball for shit.

Yeah, he cannot.

Yeah, Robin.

He's like, no, not the curveball.

The scouting report of this guy is easy, like breaking balls.

He cannot hit them.

I felt it in that I was sucked at baseball.

Oh, you did?

And I especially was bad at batting.

Uh-huh.

I've talked about this before, but I was left-handed and like two-foot negative six.

And what my little league teams would do was they would put me up to bat when bases were loaded because they'd call me the walk-on kid.

Uh-huh.

And children could not pitch to me because you're getting no strike zone, and you were a lefty.

So they would throw the ball and it would hit me and it would hurt.

And then everyone would cheer and give me a thumbs up and go, Great job.

Great.

Good job.

And I would limp with tears over to first base and get them

a run.

Barry Bonds over here.

Great EOB.

See, my torture relationship to sports is just like, if you're willing to undergo physical pain, then maybe your dad will be proud for 30 seconds.

So, what I was going to say is that Bob Hoskins is so good at throwing fastballs as Sme that when he's on screen, I'm like, oh, right.

So, this whole movie is about Sme, right?

And it's like, no, he's Smee.

He's like one of the parts of this thing.

He's number two to Mr.

Hook.

Right.

But he's giving you so much that you're like, well, this film should be called Sme.

It's

Peter Pan retold from Smee's.

Smee and Rufio would be a very successful spin-off of this movie.

You know, Hoskins is

right at the peak of like, somehow, this guy has become a Hollywood movie star.

Like, you know, where it's like Mermaids

is the year before Roger Rabbit, a couple years before then.

Mario Brothers is coming up.

Where it's kind of like, yeah, I guess this like 5'6 Cockney guy needs to be the lead of movies.

That's what's crazy, though.

It's not just that he had become a Roger movie star, but it was like kids love Bob hoskins which which is so funny to consider like it i would see that guy and i would be like there's my friend bob hoskins like truly 100

yes and uh and like then only later do i realize like that was like a serious actor that's like an oscar nominated serious thespian i mean that's the the hoskins clip that i watch all the time of when he gets the mario role and his kids are like mario we've played mario and he's like what And

they load it for him.

And he's like, and I watched this little boop boop.

And he's like, I used to play King Lear.

I played King Lear.

But he signed on not knowing it was a game.

He's like, what a wild idea for a picture.

I mean, I think he signed on

with, like, you know, like, whatever the, you know, zeros on the chat board are like

making a sandwich

between million dollar bills.

Um, so, all right, but so Peter Banning, okay, so he goes to England.

It's this snowy, sort of fakey England, like this like total fantasy of England.

Like, it does not snow like that in England ever.

And, like, it just feels like they go to a Christmas card, right?

You know, like, they go to this lovely big home, this big kind of attic-y room, right?

Like, it's like they're going into Peter Pan world

already to throw out a thing that already drives me crazy about the movie at this point.

Um, is it uh, I do really like the plane scene where uh Jack's uh giving his dad the music

and uh and uh draws the uh picture of his dad dying in a picture of a pair of shoes.

Yeah, it's pretty funny,

um, which is a nice nod to this movie's pitch coming out of a children's drawing.

Um, uh, No,

Dustin Hoffman is the voice of the pilot giving the warning, turbulence, which is their subtle nod to the idea of double casting Hook in some way.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And Hoskins is a street sweeper very late in the movie as well.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's fun.

What do you not like?

I think

I'm saying nothing controversial here.

Robin Williams at his best, properly applied, one of the most effective actors in movie history, right?

But

the legacy of Robin Williams across many decades is sometimes going like, Robin, you shouldn't do that.

Come on, man, right?

That's not the right thing for you to do.

Like wrong instinct.

Robin Williams on paper playing Peter Pan in a Steven Spielberg movie.

You're like, well, that makes the most sense of anything

in the world.

Yeah.

But it's also part of the inherent tension of what I struggle with in this movie is that it's like, so what, what is the idea?

It's like, Peter Pan grew up and has to remember to reconnect with his child made by two people who kind of never grew up.

And this opening section, I feel like they do not totally know how to depict his boring normal life, where I'm like, I think Robin Williams has too much comedy energy in this section of the movie.

And then I think in the mid-section where he's in Neverland and is like, oh, I don't know.

I got a little close.

That was better.

Yeah.

That was better.

I feel like in the midsection, his energy just goes down to zero when he's lost.

And that's what I kind of want him to be at the beginning where I'm like, he's having too much fun being a shitty businessman.

The quick draw shit

and the bits.

And when he does like the fundraiser dinner, and he's like, oh, I'm nervous.

I'm not much of a public speaker.

Whoa.

I'm getting, I'm getting closer.

You're, you're warming up.

Good morning, my friends.

They fucking do the bit.

Smee does like, good morning, neverland.

Yeah.

Immediately, I'm like, this is the wrong story choice when it cuts to him at the banquet and he's delivering

his shitty jokes, but he's killing.

It's sort of the, it's a bit of a Robin Williams problem.

Like, it's very tough for that guy to not be on.

Like, he's

in the midst section, I think he turns it off.

But even in Robin Williams hits, there's just like the sections where they let him go full Robin.

And I feel like that was like the one they put him in front of an audience that I think that's just similar to a Jim Carrey where like Peter Weir later said, like, you had to make him

take over and over.

So he would just stop being Jim Carrey.

Right.

You would get it out of his system.

I just think the most effective version of this movie is you're watching the first 30 minutes and you're like, oh my God, where has Robin Williams gone?

There's none of that spark.

Well, I would also say come back feels like such an exciting cathartic thing.

But it should also be 10 minutes.

It's way too long.

It's just too long.

It's just crazy how long it is.

And it would make more sense if they were really like firmly setting up the lore.

Instead, as you guys are pointing out, the lore is pretty vague.

It's a little hard to parse what exactly happened.

Like finding Nemo problem, like this movie should open with Maggie smith narrating the explanation of how he ended up staying here and growing old and then it cuts to 10 minutes of him being a shitty dad because when it's 30 minutes he needs to have jokes in there because otherwise the audience is going to be bored to tears i want 10 minutes of him just being like oh da da da da da like kind of trudging through life because you also need to be like he's not even really enjoying this he's on autopilot and then when he gets to neverland he's sort of trying to find himself and then the last act is like we got full robin he's fucking swashbuckling and doing impressions of William F.

Buckley or whatever.

He's doing his genie bait.

Wait a minute.

You should be swagger in Neverland.

Yeah.

I just always feel like his performance is miscalibrated in the arc.

I understand.

Yeah.

His children are kidnapped by Captain James Hook, who leaves a note saying essentially, like, I took your children.

Come get me.

And then Tinkerbell arrives.

to sort of bully Peter into getting to Neverland with her, right?

Can I save out the note?

Yeah.

What a way to leave a note.

Hook on the door?

Knife.

Knife on the door.

Sorry?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've never done that before.

Oh, you haven't?

That hasn't come up?

You know what?

I haven't been like, you know, when to get milk.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Back in 20.

Boom.

Isn't that how you propose marriage to your fiancé?

No.

Will you marry me, dagger?

No, I used the ninja star.

And

we exit snowy London and enter Neverland, which is kind of tropical.

Like beyond the fact that it's like an island with water and shit, like it has this sort of like tropical energy to it.

Would you agree?

Very, very colorful, obviously.

I'll tell you what it feels like to me.

Well, it feels like the like water park adjacent to a major theme park.

Yes, it does.

It feels like a theme park.

Right.

Yes.

But all the like Disney and Universal have their sort of like, here's our fourth gate.

It's called like Water Island.

But it's

like weirdly like volcano themed and kind of half thought out.

And it's just got a bunch of like things that spin.

But it's also this like fake reality that doesn't know what to do with itself, right?

The pirates are there.

They be pirates, but they have nothing to, you know, go and pirate.

Right.

Right.

They're not setting sail and doing pirate stuff.

They're just kind of stuck.

Yeah.

I don't want hard shoe leather on this, but I do want the movie to give me a little more of like, what the fuck have they been doing for 20 years?

I think you're overthinking this.

I'm going to finally call it out.

You're overthinking this.

Time doesn't move for them like that.

They don't

exist in time.

They don't age.

But I think the fun thing is the idea that it's like, if Hook doesn't age.

And that there's this feedback loop of fun that's happening.

Right.

The boys, the boys hang out with the tiger lily.

Tiger Lily fights helps them.

Like, it's this feedback loop of endless adventure.

Right.

But the great unresolved thing in Hook is that he never got to defeat Pan, right?

That that's been driving him crazy in this like.

interim period, which then also deflates for me a little bit when he's just like, you're not Peter Pan.

Anyway, I'm going to go back to fighting the kids.

All of this, to me, is quite fun.

I enjoy just like the pirates being pirates and Hook being Hook.

Yo-ho-ho.

Yes.

Like, I, I, this,

yo-ho-ho-ho, and a bottle of fun.

Bottle of fun.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

The Glenn Close.

Uh-huh.

Right.

You know, like, that whole sequence of like, someone amongst us is not who he's that, you know, right?

Like, and it's Robin assumes it's him.

So fun.

I got to call out my favorite cameo in the movie.

The boo box.

Uh, who?

Well, you have Phil Collins as the detective

detector.

He's like, oh, it seems like Pirate took your kids.

It's a bit weird given that you're a fucking Peter Penn or whatever.

I'll see you later.

Yeah, something hooky in the air tonight.

Yeah, yeah, right.

There's something.

When Tinkerbell drags Peter through the sky, and there's like Aaron Pixie dust falling down, and you have like the very kind of matte painting-y bridge in front of Big Ben

that the couple's kissing and they elevate into the sky.

They start flying as they're kissing.

Do you know who that is?

George Lucas and Carrie Fisher.

Oh, isn't that weird?

I love it.

George Lucas.

I love it.

I love it.

Much and Leia.

But do you think that was just because they were on set that day?

Could that have been

David Crosby and the Queen of Jordan?

I guess 100%.

Yeah, yeah,

right.

If they had visited that day.

Slap a wig on the Queen of Jordan.

It's a pirate's flight for her.

You're kissing David Crosby, who is already dressed as a pirate.

David Crosby, obviously, is

that's David Crosby again.

He looks like David Crosby is 90% of the way to being a pirate in his daily life.

Yeah.

God bless him.

He swashes.

God bless him.

Is it actually insane that this is the only time David Crosby has played a literal pirate?

I mean, do you know that it is?

I'm asking.

I'm sure he's got other uncredited pirate roles that we just speak.

He hasn't told us.

Because otherwise, what a waste.

Yeah.

And it gets kicked in the nuts.

He gets full-on nut shock.

He gets kicked in the nuts.

Yeah.

So,

yeah, what is there to say about, I mean, like, so Peter is essentially, you know, this is the dismal failure of Peter.

They put a ticking clock on it.

Give me three days to get him into shape.

But it's a tough scene.

By the way, also, another cameo, Apollo Creed's

manager is one of the pirates.

He's the only black pirate that I clocked.

Duke?

Yeah, Duke.

That's Apollo Creed's manager in the Rocky movies.

He's in all six of the Rocky movies.

Tony Burton is the actor's name.

I did not like Tony Burton Hook.

Let's see.

Dang.

So everyone just kind of wanted to go.

Have fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, the Pirates are great.

The costuming is great.

Like, you know, like, everyone's having fun.

Oh, Jimmy Buffett is also one of the pirates.

What?

Because he, of course, is best friends, was best friends with Frank Marshall.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Those are the homies.

Those are the homies.

I know this in my professional life because of Frank Marshall.

Frank Marshall produced.

No, no, he produced the Jimmy Buffett musical escape.

Yes, I agree.

Yes.

And And now, Frank Marshall, who obviously had a long career as a producer and also made, you know, Congo and Arachnophobia and all that, like, he made movies, now just churns out music documentaries.

Like, that Bee Gee's one was so good.

He's since done Carol King, James Taylor, did the Beach Boys, and The Beach Boys, and something about like New Orleans Jazz Fest.

He's just like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

That's still what he wants to do now, guys.

That must be what it is, right?

That's a blank check.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like where he's just like, can I just interview people like and have fun?

Right.

Yeah.

Talking about.

Yeah, exactly.

But no, the shaming of Peter, again, like to get, you know, like where it's like, save your children, go fly for them.

And then he's humiliated in front of them.

It's, I think, as a kid, this is like quite transgressive to watch.

To watch a dad, like, get humiliated.

Like, yeah, you can't save your kids.

Right.

It's really kind of unsettling.

I think you're bumping on this again is having not seen this as a kid.

No, no, no.

Here's what Andrew's.

Here's a world of mom and dad save the world type of movies.

To see an emasculated dad basically be like, your dad can't do shit.

Captain Hook, like Bowser doesn't try to be Princess Peach's dad.

Like, it's weird that in Hook, Captain Hook, with the help of Smee, quickly lights on, like, I'll be their father.

Like,

the dynamics of it are so strange.

It's speaking to the original, like, Peter Pan mythos.

I do think that's the most interesting idea in the movie that Smee is like, you actually want to like fucking hurt this guy.

It's not going to be through a sword fight.

Right.

If you're fighting a kid, you fight with your swords.

But like now, right, the way to get at him is to like.

He grew up and he has emotions now.

So either you're going to like outbid him on the like merger they want to do.

Smee brought parental dynamics to a knife fight.

Right.

That's what I'm saying.

Yes.

He's and the hook's like, oh, good, good, good.

Like, let's just get them toys.

Stockholm syndrome his child.

Right.

And have them do good baseball.

This is what I'm trying to process.

Yeah.

In a childhood where my parents were saying, like, and most of all, remember hook sucks every morning.

Remember, let our legacy be.

Right.

My dad was saying, stay in school, putting your backpack on.

Never get a tattoo.

Hook sucks.

Right.

Those are like his three things.

I do remember as a child being like, that is a potent idea for a movie.

And I probably worded it the exact way.

I stroked my chin and I went, that is a potent idea for a movie.

No, but like as a child, you're like, fuck, what if Captain Hook never got over Peter Pan and Peter Pan grew up and he forgot that he was Peter Pan?

And when I would catch bits of it on TV at friends houses or whatever, this was the section I do remember sticking with me

of being like, this movie's bad?

That feels kind of interesting to have Hook be like, what if I raise them better than you do?

And listen, I mean, two things.

One, like as an 11-year-old whose dad did work too much and did have a fucking early cell phone, like that notion of I could get revenge on my dad.

My dad was

bound dad.

Yeah.

And

that's very potent and powerful.

Did your dad have a cell phone?

Oh, yeah.

I see.

The big brick.

I remember my dad had a big car phone.

Of course.

I love those car phones.

Because when, when should you really be talking on the phone?

I mean, the car.

And crazy.

No, but I do think that's the power at the center of the premise, right?

More than anything is

what if Captain Hook realizes the best way to get back at Peter Pan is being a good dad, not just trying to go after the kids, but like the scene I remember as a child catching glimpses, feeling like it had a little juice, was the baseball game and him watching Hook provide

the actual attention and support that he wasn't giving.

Right.

That it's not just that he's like, I'm giving you rubies.

Yeah.

Right.

He's saying, I love you, boy.

Yeah.

And you're going to succeed and you're going to be right.

Like paid attention to.

I like that,

you know, it's really all centered on Jack, though.

Maggie, they're just kind of like, eh, we'll figure her.

Maggie doesn't like me.

We'll lock her in a closet.

She's hard.

If they had caught her somebody, she would disappear from.

She's cute.

So Peter is given three days to become Peter Pan.

He goes off to the Lost Boys with the help of Tinkerbell, and he joins the Lost Boys.

He should have taken Duke with him because that guy's good at training people in the show.

He does get four mermaids.

A very strange moment in the movie.

He gets dunked into the water and a bunch of adult mermaids make out with him.

And then

they're breathing into him.

That's true.

That's a good point.

You added the tongue.

Resuscitation.

I didn't say anything about tongue.

I just said they kissed.

What do you call an open-mouth kiss with no tongue but a lot of breathing?

Where you're just kind of going like,

like oxygen delivery.

It is a really interesting.

It sort of feels like the nod to the rest of Never Neverland in this weird

grown-up.

That's what I think I'm more getting at.

Not that I'm like, how does this city run?

But that I feel like in all other depictions.

What's the economy here?

What kind of money do these people make?

I don't care about any of that.

It's a magical land.

I want to be a magical land.

I feel like every other depiction of Peter Pan has a little more of this.

And it's maybe part of what you lose by like removing Tiger Lily, which is the right decision.

But the sense that, like, there's a bunch of other shit going on here, too.

Right.

I've always liked in depictions of Pan where you're like, what goes on in that forest?

Here's this tribe.

Here's this clique.

Here's this species, whatever it is.

You sort of just have the 30 seconds of, let me admit, it's a pretty hot kissing.

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It's about an hour into the movie or a little before Lynn when he's finally yeah, it's 52 minutes when he finally gets to bang ring.

Right.

So the lost boys,

similar to Hook, it's like Hook has been stuck in like, I'm a villain with no enemy, really.

And the Lost Boys are like, we're having fun, but with no like whatever, like organizing purpose, I guess.

So

what do we think of the Lost Boys?

How, what, what can we say?

What more can we say about the Lost Boys?

We've already talked about how fun the set is, how the cool the tracks are.

It's this insanely diverse crew.

They are child star all-stars that we've seen in other movies.

I mean, and that there you are Peter scene is the scene.

Like that's, that's the moment where Spielberg like pulls like just magic out of a hat and like that music swells and you feel stuff.

Like that's.

If there's a metaphor for what Spielberg makes you feel when you're watching like his best movies, it's that.

He pulls your face back he goes there you are there's your inner child and everyone goes holy pot pockets it can feel like this isaiah robinson plays pockets i i he's maybe my favorite of the kids uh but i don't know how much of it is that moment i will say i am pretty allergic to thud butt oh man i i could not disagree with you thudbutt is a very 90s uh he's the most 90s like he feels like he should be on the mighty ducks later right like or whatever like he's just kind of like a 90s kid rashawn hammond maybe it's what I like the most about the Mighty Ducks

is that Thud Butt isn't on the team.

What do you think of Thud Butt, Lynn?

I love Thud Butt.

Thud Butt is A-plus all around for me.

He's very funny.

How about when he like sits on the bench, it moves the gravity of the bench over and he goes, don't crowd me.

I mean, he's getting effortless laughs.

Good luck.

David just solemnly nodding.

That's a good one.

I like Thudbutt's beret plus tie combo.

Like, I like that they have this kind of mix of like greaser energy but like dickensian child wardrobe like is sort of a funny way to present them i thought it was kind of punk and ruffio is completely it also it gives you the sense that different kids have wound up here at the different times different eras different cultures

like ghosts can be any century right he's got the triple mohawk thing he's got like the shark teeth or whatever like like whatever is dangling on his jacket He's got like ripped up.

He's got the vest and the ripped up pants.

He's a little older.

He's like the oldest, right?

He presents as the oldest.

This is why he's the leader.

He's got the coolest name in the world, Rafia.

I don't know where they came.

This is an entirely original character, right?

There's no

naming of the Lost Boys apart from the ones we know, like, and love,

which is funny.

Right?

I'm just like, yeah.

Yeah.

In the original thing, it's like Toodles, Nibs, slightly.

Yeah, that's the one I always remember.

Curly and the twins are the original Lost Boys.

And, you know, the disney cartoon basically hinges with that right uh yeah they're all they're all made up yeah i mean thud butt when he turns himself into a perfect sphere he does do that can we talk about this for a second can we talk about this for an hour we were texting with jd this morning and jd brought to our attention that in 2018 no no i i found oh oh you found it i'm sorry um

so here's the prop it was auctioned off in 2018.

it's a little ghastly this is thudbutt in ball form so obviously thudbutt has a special move.

All these could sort of like Pokemon, like they all have like a power.

Yeah, they evolve.

And Thudsbutt's special move is where he sort of folds his legs up to his shoulders and turns into a ball and rolls.

And it's a pretty obvious shift from actor to prop in the movie when this happens.

Gioberg is a postmaker.

Please post that.

We'll post it.

This prop, which was auctioned off in 2018, price undisclosed,

you know, age has not been kind.

I was going to say, it probably looked better in 91.

Kielberg's a a good filmmaker, so he knows what angles, how to light this

light it, how long to let the shot last, versus a head-on,

bright, direct-light photo of a 25-year aged prop has not been kind to me.

But he fully sonics.

He does.

He does fully suck.

That's so true.

I responded with the Mattel Thudbutt action figure.

Yeah.

which on the back has the illustration of the instructions of how to get his play feature activated, which is you can turn him into Thudball mode.

Thudbutt

is certainly, he's the biggest ask of all these kids.

The rest of the kids are most acute.

He hates so much.

You hate him so much?

No, I just said he is a lot.

He is a lot.

He's a lot.

I just basically bump on everything he's doing.

But his scene with Robin got me to, when he's like, mine's my mother.

Do you have a happy thought?

Mine's my mother.

Thudbutt making.

He's got chubby cheeks.

I mean, this is very much, it's sort of like the Ewoks and Jedi where I, right, like there's.

Yeah, if you were a kid, you liked it.

If you weren't, you didn't like it.

I love the Ewoks.

No, the Ewoks are, you know, the resistance would have failed without the Ewoks.

Yeah, they, they took out the power.

Yeah, you know, you know, the logs smashed in that.

Um, also, when Thudbutt realizes he can step on planks and hit people in the nuts, that's how we get David Crosby getting hit in the nuts.

That is true.

Now, I mean, like, I have to thank him for that.

I do.

As Lynn was saying, like, the logic of

They stab and shoot, but the lost boys are a little more like we knock you over like bowling pins, right?

Like that's more what they're aiming to do.

But death is present, but only so present.

It's never explained or it's never delved into.

Yeah, it's also interesting how

Rufio dies because obviously it takes 50 minutes to get to the lost boys, right?

But you could see the more obvious structure being Rufio dies at like the end of act two.

And that's what motivates Peter needing to like come into his own and really start to like lead the guys versus like Rufio being a sacrifice once Peter has all ready.

Rufio died for our sins exactly when he did.

He does die for our sins.

Yeah.

He does.

And

so Rufio, right, as I already sort of said, he's kind of the juice of the movie because he's not just a problem.

Like he could just be a script problem for Peter.

He's returned to the Lost Boys and the Lost Boys are like, hey, man, you left.

Like the leadership has changed.

Rufio's in charge now.

You have to beat Rufio.

Yeah.

But Rufio loves Peter Pan and misses Peter Pan just as much as more than anyone.

And he is Spielberg, like, you know, missing his dad.

And this movie is made when Spielberg is reconciling with his father, as we talked about on our Empire of the Sun episode, like right when Spielberg is finally realizing that his dad didn't abandon the family exactly, but sort of stepped aside from the family because the mom wanted to be with Seth Rogan.

Whether or not that was the right decision.

He's trying to see, right?

You know, he's trying to protect his mom a little bit.

Right.

And it's like this whole movie is about like the father returning, you know, and like stepping into the childish role, but also into the like, it's, and that is where like the juice is in the movie.

It's such a rich soup.

Yes.

Our friend Bill Gabiri on our and part of the inspired this one was saying that his big theory is that there is this like bifurcation.

He's the dividing line.

In Spielberg's career, that the first half of his career, he's making movies from the perspective of a son, the second half in the perspective of a father.

And it's basically just like clean, like a line is crossed and at one point past the other.

Right.

I always feel like Last Crusade is that pivot point movie because it's basically this guy being like, my dad hates me and I hate him, forced to go on adventure with him and being like, fuck, we are kind of the same person, aren't we?

Like, I hate that I now kind of get him, right?

And he has to begrudgingly be like, I understand the value in what you do.

Your silly Indiana Jones stuff has some power.

Right.

Right.

So then to me, I'm like, there is like a clear takeaway in that movie of Spielberg like processing some stuff and like finding some middle ground with his father.

And then this movie, I find it, I find the, the reckoning interesting.

I find the fighting with itself interesting.

I just like do not know what the end conclusion is here.

And I'm not asking for like an answer narratively.

And I'm sort of like, does Spielberg, is anything settled in him by making this film?

Which is not what I ask.

for from a film, but I also think a lot of the most interesting movies ever made are someone kind of needing to get something off their chest and realizing in that sort of James Lipton way of like, oh, fuck, I didn't realize Close Encounters was about me trying to talk to my mom and my dad.

Right.

And this, I'm just like,

if this is a therapy session, does the therapist go like, I have no idea what to make of this?

You've thrown a lot at me, but I actually can't tie any of this together.

Certainly all of it's being like fucked.

Like the simplest answer is, or whatever, like the most pat answer is it's like, Hook is like, you are afraid of dying.

And Peter Pan's like, no, I'm actually afraid of living.

But in confronting you, I have realized it will be great to live as a grown-up, like to be a grown-up.

Like it will be fine.

Because yes, Peter Pan had already become a grown-up, but he's bad at it.

But now he's like, no, no, no.

I understand that living and raising my children and, you know, growing old is going to be fine.

And like, so I no longer return, like, you know, long to return to Neverland and be an eternal child.

So that's, you know, what Spielberg, I guess, is realizing.

But I think.

And if you take this as the kind of dividing line of like, right, Jurassic Park and Schindler's List, those are movies made by a dad.

You know what I mean?

Like not movies of childlike wonder, but those are movies of, you know, right?

Like that's, that's, that's, yeah.

Yeah.

I just think.

Now, if I say this to Spielberg, he'd be like, I don't know, man.

That movie was annoying.

The sets were too big.

It was a headache.

Queen of Jordan was on my ass.

Like, I mean, maybe that's what he would say.

I don't know.

I wouldn't need him to be able to explain it.

Like, a lot of times you make a movie because it's something you couldn't say in words, right?

You were expressing something greater within you.

I think the best artists who are in touch with something like,

but I feel like, and it's part of the weirdness of the like Robin Williams, Steven Spielberg, Captain Hook, Peter Pan movie, that sounds perfect, is like, but these are two guys who kind of like defied the odds and had it both ways for most of their career, right?

Like these are two guys.

I think Brian got to be a kid forever in a sort of a way.

He always had the impish thing.

And same with Spielberg, where it's like, you both got to be kids forever and grow up, right?

They both like became parents.

Yeah.

Like, what's his family?

Does Spielberg have kid energy now?

Like, what's he like?

Yeah.

I can tell you the one time I ever was on a set he was on, he was filming Westside's Story in Washington Heights.

Right, of course.

The same summer we were writing in the Heights.

It was one of my all-time top favorite days.

We filmed the finale.

of In the Heights on 175th Street, and I walked two blocks to 177th Street where he was filming Maria, which is, and then I walked home.

Yeah.

I mean, because it was all in my neighborhood.

That's the best part of this.

I mean, it was truly a top five day for me, but I remember he was like a little, and he was filming like the balcony scene, but he was showing me like in the 10 minutes I got with him on set where he was like waiting for something to be set up.

He was like, look at this.

I did these tests with my camera.

And he's showing me like him trying to figure out how to film Krupp.

Yeah.

And he's like, I did this test with my phone.

And it was like a kid making his first musical.

And

by the way, that to me answers the question of why Hook wasn't a musical.

It was like, I wanted to do it right.

I wanted to do my favorite one.

And I waited till that was possible.

I think that's.

And I wanted to come at it like a student.

Do you like Westside Story?

It's tough for me.

Yes.

I love the original.

I think that is an incredibly made movie.

And I think it's even more incredible because Jerome Robbins got fired midway through.

Robert Wise took over and it still works.

Like there's still incredible filmmaking in that movie.

And what I enjoy the most about Spielberg's West Side Story is I can tell the sequences that made him want to do it.

Like when you watch Cool, you're like, got it.

This is why he wanted to make this movie so he could stage Cool.

Yes.

That sequence is crazy.

And then there are the ones that are just like, I think the first movie was more successful in doing it.

And that's exactly where I was.

And I also associate it with a certain high I got for seeing a musical for the first time.

Like seeing the American number for the first first time, like,

I'm sorry, even Spielberg can't meet my sugar rush or whatever that rush was in seeing, like, are you kidding me?

Like, this is what the best musical is about.

It's about like Puerto Ricans trying to figure out whether they should, like,

what?

So, like, nothing's ever going to match that sequence.

I think a lot about Rita Moreno on a rooftop.

Well, like, even Spielberg may agree with me.

I think a lot about what you said the last time you were on the show, where you were like, My goal as a filmmaker is to like only make movies of musicals that are not like canonically already sort of like elevated that you want to be able to like adapt the things that in a way you're sort of introducing to people.

And West Side Story for me, I'm like, that's like an eight out of 10 movie to me, which I think our listeners often think I'm really.

It's like great performances.

Like there's not a bad, like everyone's wonderful in it.

But it's like fucking.

And it's in the shadow of the movie.

That's my thing.

I'm like, A, my bar for Spielberg is so fucking high.

Yeah.

Where if a movie's not a 10 out of 10 masterpiece, I'm like, oh, it's a little disappointing, which I don't really feel that way with almost anyone else.

And then, secondly, it's like him riffing on a movie that already has this like insane power to it.

So it like has to fight this thing that like you're not fighting with tick, tick, boom, which is sort of like, there's a lot of room to interpret here.

Absolutely.

But what was I going to say before?

Are you talking about like Stephen and Robin is eternal?

I just think, yes, I think they're both these interesting guys who had this balance of like never losing the childlike glee and being able to connect to to that and being able to communicate that while also maturing, you know, becoming responsible parents, becoming like moguls within their industry and people who like move like the tenor of the entire like pop culture landscape with them and could like stretch into different types of work and do it in a way that didn't feel like a kid playing a grown-up in a school play.

And so I think a lot of the Captain Hook Peter Panth dynamic is based on an ideological binary that these guys in a weird way way kind of can't relate to because they've been able to marry the two.

It's connected.

And I feel like that's the conclusion that this movie needs to get to that they maybe couldn't quite figure out how to verbalize, which is like,

what is the version of being a balanced person, having your cake and eating it too?

And this movie basically goes like, he reactivates being Peter Pan long enough to defeat a hook and then he goes back to being a better dad.

Well, no, it's Peter Pan can be within him now without it being a problem.

He's merged, you know, like the he's he's one person now.

It's so fun.

I mean, it's again, because like I'm thinking back to like when Spielberg was just shorthand for you, you want to be an artist.

Sure.

And that's how it was presented to me as a kid.

And that's how I processed it.

Because I also, as an adult, I think so much about what I hold true to being an artist is.

keeping the channel to your younger selves open.

Like that's what the best acting is, what the best writing is.

It's like being connected to all the versions so that when I have to write from the perspective of a 12-year-old, I have to write Moana trying to get off land.

I have to be able to connect to who is Moana?

What is she doing there?

What does she want to do?

If I have to consider the coconut, I have to consider the

coconut.

The key to being an artist is what Peter Banning does at the end of this movie is like staying connected to your younger self.

and like being able to like access that channel whenever you need to.

Because you,

I think a lot,

I think a lot of the decisions we make as an adults are just like promises we're keeping to a younger version of ourselves.

And that's a big statement.

Yeah, I'm just thinking on that.

Yep.

And, and your job as an artist is to be able to access that and be like, all right, well, if I were 16, what would blow my, like, what do I want to make?

What do I want to see?

Like, that's a lot of, I think, how you form your artistic impulses.

It's like,

what did you like as a kid?

What did you not like?

And then like, that's how your tastes form.

Like, if our parents told me I hated hook, i'd be like you sitting in the corner nitpicking the economy of the greater never mind cell phone trying to acquire companies uh does bruno have a little hook uh peter pan to him he's an eternal child in a way bruno in the walls i'm just thinking about the skirt right yeah i guess so but he's funny bruno's funny

funny how john like wasamo like you know what when he does like when he puts the helmet on his head what's up we don't talk about bruno on this podcast we don't talk about him that much we don't do that we don't we don't talk about i'm not saying we can't i'm just saying saying we don't do it very often.

Just a Bruno aside, since you took us there.

Please, please tell me something about Bruno.

I love to think about that.

That was probably the, not easiest song to write, but it was crazy because it's quite a complex.

It's a very complex song.

And I was,

I knew it was come.

Like, I remember actually, we were in lockdown at the time.

So I was living with my in-laws.

and my brother-in-law.

That sounds fun.

That's a lot of the...

Oh, wait, is Encanto like bad?

A lot of the secret sauce of what's in there.

the juice in there is like stuck in a house.

What are we allowed to talk about in front of your mother?

This is making a lot of sense.

No, and someone who lives with his in-laws, I wonder if Kanto really resonates with me.

But I do remember like actually stealing away and going to another place to write Bruno and being like, Let me go write this somewhere else because I, it's a lot to work out.

But the idea for it of like, it's going to be a spooky Montuno, and every story they tell about Bruno is actually easily explained away because we're going to have to see it from another angle.

Now, when Dolores says that she can hear him, him, she's saying she can hear him.

Well, she has very big.

But she doesn't know that it's like she thinks she can just like, right?

Like Dolores doesn't actually know he's in the walls, right?

She's got the little aside where she's saying she can hear him, but I think she's more thinking of it metaphorically.

I like to think of it that Dolores is known.

She's known the whole time, but she also has learned like we're

talking about Bruno.

So it's just a Dolores my favorite character.

The power I would want.

Cursed with knowledge that everyone, you know, that's, you know.

Dolores the ultimate gossip because she can hear everything.

But that's the thing.

She could be the ultimate gossip, but she keeps all these secrets because she hears everything in the town.

Now, see, I have

neither seen this movie six million times nor written all the songs for it.

But my interpretation, and maybe this holds less water.

I will also say, I think Camilo's powers are crazy.

The fact that he can shapeshift, he mostly uses it to like hold other people's babies.

There's a lot to explore with Camillo.

Oh, he was much more nefarious.

Because he's like a little rattle.

And then they were like, we like this kid.

So then, yeah, well, it became like, we are in service of the town.

Of course.

Right, right.

So it's like a heroic duty kind of thing.

Yeah.

But yeah, he used to just, he was just doing it to fuck with her a lot in the early drafts.

I was going to ask, because her ears are so big, is there an interpretation that she can hear Bruno, but she doesn't think he's that close?

Like, she's like, well, of course I can hear him, but he might be like 40 towns away.

I can hear everything.

I think she echo locates him pretty exactly.

So she's although he'll have the weird magical rules in that house.

Like the fact that that

they're magical rules

i just mean in space

where in space he might be actually might be tougher

the rooms are bigger

inside right rooms are bigger than stars they're all very poppins

yeah now and is it true that when stephanie had to do the family magical live you were like i don't know how you do this live by the way right this is

the song was not written well so yeah i so again love that song i showed up to that you're talking about the hollywood bowl performance yeah

we'll do the songs live have fun I got there like as they were in mid-rehearsal.

And

I think Jamal Sims, who choreographed the sequences for the animated movie, staged that.

And I think he staged it unbelievably.

The one thing I would have said was, like, let the other people sing the chorus so that Stephanie can breathe.

Right.

Yeah.

Like, I think it's overwhelming.

Yeah.

I just, I, that's the one thing where I was like, we could have given her a break here and no one would have minded.

Like the company could have swept in and be like, welcome to the fan.

And she could have breathed so that she could get ready for the next

could make a big out of her breathing.

Yes, and like the run at the end with my sister,

you know, it's like, I don't know how you do that.

Anyway, it's really hard.

I hope we get like a, like, I get a crack at like figuring out what the theatrical version is.

I'd love, love to see.

There are more studies I have seen that are more

proper

food hits.

It's banning it to a location.

Yeah, but still, you know.

Yeah, it feels like a very obvious conversion.

Now, will my daughter ever realize that Maribel's name is Maribel?

She just calls her in in Kanto.

Everyone else's name, she knows.

They were like, there was like an interview, like, they got audio footage of Trump at the Kennedy Center, and he was like, and then Betty Buckley gets up and sings cats.

I was like, she doesn't sing cats.

She sings memory.

He's so crazy.

Anyway,

Broadway depth of knowledge is like both insanely off.

And you're kind of like, what?

It's like three years.

It's like people who like hyper-fixate on the SNL cast when I were Phantom and those are the right.

Those are maybe Limits.

Right.

Oh, boy.

Well, we all agree on Limitus.

Yes.

Good show.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we haven't discussed Hoffman.

Yeah, I think we should discuss Hoffman.

It's not like he's not a comic performer.

He has given other comic performances that are very complicated.

He's almost underrated as a comic performer.

Exactly.

Like Wag the Dog.

His reputation for being so intense was overwhelming that even when he made giant hit comedies, they were like, yeah, but Dustin Hoffman's the most serious man alive.

Tootsie obviously is this like big hit comedy, and he is funny in it, but it's somewhat of a dramatic performance that he's

playing a method actor.

Yes, stumbles in it, but he's both

funny in the self-parody.

And also, then, like, Dorothy Michaels is a very funny performance, which he plays with depth and integrity.

But when you think about Hoffman at this point, it's like he wins the Oscar for Rayman in 88.

That's his second Oscar.

Obviously, that's this like insanely big methody performance, right?

He follows it with Family Business, which is basically forgotten, the Connery Broderick, Hoffman.

A movie I'm obsessed with, the notion of a Sydney LeMette film in which the poster is, of course, these three people are related.

Connery

fathers.

Justin Hoffman fathered Matthew Broderick.

They all have the exact same voice.

Then Dick Tracy, in which he is mumbles.

And I think that was shot the day after he won the Oscar and he had like 103 degree temperature.

That's insane.

There's some story about that.

All that makeup.

Billy Bathgate, a sort of notorious flop of 1991, and then Hook is the, so like,

it's just like, it feels like he is going for something completely different post-Rayman, right?

You know, he is like, I want to do having a blast

to have fun.

And by the way, like his sword fights with Robin Williams are like legit good.

It's one reason I like the movie, like, you know, or I forgive the movie sometimes.

It has fencing in it.

Any movie with fencing in it, I'm serious.

It's how I feel about the Pirates of the Kribby movies.

I'm like, if you're going to give me fencing sequences, we don't get those in movies ever.

I just don't really care about fencing.

You don't like sword foot, but you like Star Wars.

I love Star.

I love Sara.

Do you like Saber Fighter back?

Which is just, of course, sci-fi fencing.

But maybe

you need the swords to glow.

So you don't like your classic Errol Flynny stuff.

Like you never got into your face.

No, I like

Ben Princess Robin.

I like Robin Hood, but I, but I've always been cooler on the Pirates movies than you.

I do.

I do love.

I like sword fighting.

I don't think I dislike sword fighting, but I'm just realizing it doesn't activate me

in the same way.

I like how there's two blades coming out of at the same time.

Like, I mean, that's not.

Duel of the Fates.

Right.

I think Hoffman's sword fighting, and this is also impressive because he's wearing that coat and stuff.

Like, and like the stockings and the wig and everything.

He's got so much presence in this movie.

It is a wildly committed performance.

How about the lip twitch shot where you just see the mustache like i mean there's great he's just he's acting

he's he's really going for living cartoon kind of similarly to mumbles uh right you know zoom out in this hoffman context for a second because there's some things here lynn is leaning back to zoom out yeah yeah

zoom all the way out

his 60s and 70s are obviously huge right he pops at the end of the 60s back to this thing of like him not being thought of as a comedy performer he breaks through in the graduates he's He's so funny.

Tootsie's like his highest-crossing films ever are Tootsie and Meet the Fockers, right?

And Kramer versus Kramer was like a gigantic hit.

Yes, you're right.

You're right.

But I'm like, Rain Man is a comedy.

It is.

That is like.

It's a dramedy.

It's a dramedy, but

a lot of it is funny and he farts and so on and so forth.

Right.

Like one of his two Oscars is for a comedy, you know?

Like a lot of his biggest films are comedies.

I mean, calling Rainman a comedy is interesting because I'm sure, I'm going to triple check, but I'm sure it won the Golden Globe for like drama or whatever, right?

It's very similar to terms of endearment in that sort of like, it is a very funny movie that then gets to some very heavy place.

Right.

Right.

Do you like Rain Man?

Rain Man's kind of an underdiscussed movie for our generation.

Yeah.

Uncomfortable.

Yeah.

I mean,

I mean, we know so much more about that than we did then.

Yes.

And it's treated as this weird, curious quirk.

But, um, but yeah, I remember like.

Weird, I actually weirdly remember the Oscar montage where they showed Hoffman's like clip of him being scared of burning the baby.

Like I remember that clip and then cutting back to Hoffman being like, oh yeah, I killed it.

It's me, Justin Hoffman.

There was exactly.

Yeah.

There was a clip I'm obsessed with and I sent the group chat and I'll have Marie reposted on social media, but it was 98 or 99, I want to say.

Golden Globes, they gave Dustin Hoffman the Cecil B.

DeMille Award.

And he's sitting there with his wife.

And they play a clip from,

why am I forgetting the name now?

Little Big Man.

And he leans over to his wife and clearly mouths, good makeup.

Right.

And he's just kind of like sitting there and they're playing clips and he's just kind of like making little commentary on it.

And then they play a clip from Hook and he looks frozen in his chair and he's like grimacing and he's like, ugh.

And I think it does sort of speak to in that.

Do you think he doesn't like that it's just that movie wasn't enough of a hit?

Or do you think he's like, oh, I'm going too hard?

I had a very strong memory of it in my childhood, especially growing up in a household.

We're not into Hook's household.

I think he's cooking in Hook.

Yeah.

I think he is doing a very committed work in Hook.

I think there was no reason for him to be embarrassed by anything he did in Hook.

And I was sort of like, do I have a false inflated memory of this?

Because I remember him having a really bad reaction.

And I re-watched it and it was bigger than I remembered it from childhood.

But he has this weird 80s.

After winning his first Oscar for Kramer versus Kramer, he does start to get in this period of like, is Dustin Hoffman too difficult?

You know, this like sentiment that people would repeat of like, life's too short to work with Dustin Hoffman for everything he gives us and famously ornery guy.

You're going to get stuck in like four years of notes and he's going to battle you on every single thing.

And he doesn't make many movies in the 80s.

He made four movies total in the 80s.

Right.

Yes.

It's it's um I can find it, but uh it's

a family business and rain man.

Yeah.

That's it.

Right.

And so like 90.

He also did his death of a salesman, which was then broadcast on TV, which is this like insanely polarizing performance.

Some people are like, one of the best Willie Lomans ever.

Others are like, he doesn't understand that role at all.

Like it's always being debated, that performance.

Yeah.

But like Tootsie was kind of like a comeback movie after he had only recently won the Oscar.

And then he disappears for a bunch of years, comes back with the movie that is shorthand for flop, even though we love Ishtar, or I always love Ishtar.

And he's really funny.

And then he gets his second Oscar.

And it's like, he's coming into the 90s.

Like, I'm here to stay.

Right.

He made a lot of movies in the 90s.

Dick Tracy, Billy Bathtick, Hook, Hero, Outbreak, Sleepers, Mad City, Waggad.

It feels like such a big swing for him to be like, can I do a whole movie where I'm the title character?

You're sort of framing the movie around, wait until Hook gets here.

Right.

Like that is the sell of the movie.

Yeah.

He's first build and Dustin Hoffman's going to go fucking hard as Hook.

He looks.

incredible.

I think, I mean, saying all that, I think the fact that he looks like he's having so much fun is even more impressive.

Like, he's got the veneers in.

He's got all the stuff on.

He's having this accent.

And he still looks like he's having a fucking black time.

I think he looks like he's having a great time.

Yeah.

Ben, do you look cooking?

He looks awesome.

This costume is incredible.

Yeah.

Good form.

Good form.

I think he really nails also the when Peter like humiliates him back near the end and robs him of his wig.

And suddenly he's like, you know, on the floor and it looks like an old man.

Right.

And he's like, oh, I am please, Peter.

My drug notary.

Like, he's, you know, you feel for him or whatever.

You know, like he's this odd, tragic, like, shadow to Peter.

Like, he only exists in opposition to Peter.

You're sort of rooting for him to get to play.

You want him to have fun.

There's the bit I'm biased,

but

our friend David Lowry's Peter Pan and Wendy, which I like a good deal.

has the bit that I love, which is spoiler for a movie that went on Disney Plus four years ago.

There is a mid-section where Captain Hook believes he has successfully killed Peter Pan and Jim Gaffiganists me.

And Hook's kind of like, so what do I do now?

And he's like, let's check the to-do list.

And the to-do list has one thing on it, which is just kill Peter Pan.

And I just, while watching this movie, I think

it's over and over again.

It just makes it like textual in this, but it's just like, the guy's got nothing else going on other than his hatred for this kid.

Other things I need to say.

The food sequence.

Yeah.

The, you know, you have to access your inner child to see the pretend food that we eat sequence.

What's up with the Day Glow pastries?

It's that that

feels very Nickelodeon coated.

It's just like green, pink.

But it's also just like bowls of frosting.

Now, I guess that's sort of the idea.

That's diet.

Kids like to eat turkey legs and then a big old bowl of frosting.

What are you saying?

Like Thudbutt's like clearly preparing a sandwich.

He's doing his object work.

He's layered in.

And then all anyone has is just globs of

thugbutt does his object work when he turns into an object to knock people out his ultimate object work yeah you think he did that in his mad tv audition here's my impression of a ball

um peter's uh uh insults to ruffio kind of largely don't hit except for near-sighted gynecologist which is one of the craziest things ever said in a movie that he's raiding you in here

it kind of i'm also just like what is the insult that i know but

it is funny i Yeah, I guess it's sort of like someone who's sort of like, well, wait a second.

I need to get closer.

I don't know.

Yeah.

I think Robin Williams came up with that himself.

Yes.

It is an example for me, though, of a scene in the movie where I'm like, he's maybe going full Robin too early.

Well, that is supposed to be when it's starting to bleed out.

Starting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is there other, you know, I'm just trying to make, you know, what, is there other things, Lynn, in your notes, are there any things we need to think about here?

Tending him to Wendy's house.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And all the sort of flashbacky stuff.

That's when he's finally Peter Pence.

That's when he remembers.

Yes.

That's such an important moment.

I know.

The emotion of you are my happy thing.

You know what I mean?

Like,

it's one of those things where I'm like, I find it treakly.

As a kid, I think I was sort of like, can we get back to the Lost Boys, please?

Now,

like I said, you know, I can't help but resonate with me a little bit.

But that's now.

It's different.

Pitt's different.

Yeah.

But, but it is part of my problem with Hook where I'm like, who is this for?

Right.

You know, like, I'm not sure.

Right.

But with the caveat that, yes, I enjoyed it as a child.

You know, so like, I should, I sort of defy my own logic there.

But as an adult, I'm like, this is this isn't for kids enough.

Like, it needs to be for kids more, maybe.

But I don't know.

And maybe I'm just,

you know, being a bit of a mud, you know.

But

can I call out a thing I do like in this movie?

Please.

I like Hook's closet or I guess secondary ship full of clocks.

His room of clocks, right?

His house of clocks.

That his way to blow off steam is to just beat the shit out of clocks.

Yes.

He hates clocks

as the original Captain Hook hates clocks, of course, because the crocodile has a clock in him.

Yeah, that's fun.

The clock smashing sequence is very fun.

The baseball sequence is great.

The final sequence is

interesting

because

it's goofy at times and it's like an episode of Nickelodeon's Guts at times.

And they have a chicken laying eggs into an egg shooter.

The chicken is the clip.

It's the gun.

The chicken is the clip.

Rule.

Yeah, it does rule.

And yet at the same time, you're like, Rufio died.

Rufio died.

He will never draw breath.

And it doesn't really make any sense.

And you just kind of have to wash your hands of him.

It's like taking into a gunfight.

Like, forget it, Jake.

It's never, never land.

Like, I don't really know what you're supposed to say like to all of this except that it's like this is actually just a psychodrama that peter is resolving within himself right you know what i mean like this is all fake peter just needed to learn to be a kid and a grown-up at the same time like he had to liberate his kid self and like return to never neverland a whole return to uh england england land a whole person with his children and right England, England.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like, don't think about Never Neverland too hard as like a real place that children are stuck in, right?

Because then you will go insane.

That's correct.

But then again, you do have toodles in like the real world being like, yeah, I used to live there.

Thank you for giving me my normal.

I left them there.

Who plays Toodles?

Arthur Mallet.

He's in Mary Poppins.

Oh, he's the

right-hand man to the next door neighbors who

Mr.

Dodd Jr.

My favorite bit.

Yeah.

It is crazy that in Mary Poppins they put up with a guy shooting a cannon every every hour or is it just at sunset is it just once a day that he shoots the cannon uh

you know where they all have to be like he's about to shoot the cannon and they hold all the paintings trying to remember yeah

i think it's once maybe it's just once i think it's at noon still nonetheless noon and midnight just noon and midnight yes uh you know what else is crazy that movie introduces them before it introduces the darlings Yeah, of course.

Yeah, because that's a slow entry, right?

Like, let's learn about the road they live on first.

It was the thing that, like, really stuck with me as a child like that's a movie that is like so deeply imprinted in me and went to see it recently screened i've watched it a lot with my dad and i was just like every single part of this is like tattooed on my brain and i've spent so much time like trying to unpack i love mr bank so much he's just funny one of the greatest performances so funny yes but like just that little detail of just like and just before we even get to our main characters we want it next to a canon guy

right it's just like

and this is never gonna like pay off in a bigger way but it's going to continue to be here.

Just texture.

Yeah, just texture.

Yeah, just anything else we need to say about Hook.

I'm just asking.

I'm just, I'm just, I'm just sort of just, no, Rufio.

Is Rufio important?

To the point where I'm on a rap song about Rufio with Dante Basketball.

Now, we said, we said we would talk about this, you and I.

So yeah, tell me more about this.

What is the song?

So my friend

with Kosh Ambutkar, who's on this, he's probably most well-known for the series Ghosts.

Always part of Freestyle Love.

Yeah, but I've known him since Freestyle.

He's in Whit Perfect.

He's in Born Spunge.

We've done a million things together and he's one of my best friends.

And he kind of just like does singles every once in a while.

And he was like, I'm doing a song.

He was like, do you want to be on any rap song I write?

And I go, I don't really do that.

I'm not like a rap.

Like, I write hip-hop music, but not really for myself.

And he goes, but it's Ruffio with, and Dante Basco's going to be on it.

I was like, okay, I'll do it.

Yeah.

Like, it was pretty much, it was pretty much the way you guys pitched me hook.

I was like, okay, I'm going to do that.

Yeah.

When we lied to you, you said that that Dante Basco was going to be.

Dante's on it.

Okay, I'm in.

I'm in.

And so we just wrote this song about how much Rufio rules and not going up.

And Dante has this kind of spoken word section at the end about what Rufio meant to kids: of just like,

you know, he was like what we had.

He's the kid when it comes to representation, just like this absolute fucking badass.

I think it's so crucial who dies young and for our sins, and

but rules.

He just rules.

JD in texting with us do we like the cockadoodle do I really like that moment sure okay fine look

this moment's not my cup of tea but JD JD was making the case in text this morning that like part of the interesting tragedy of Rufio is the idea that he has had to be the one to maintain this in Peter's absence he's had to be a quasi-grown-up himself right that there was a sense of resentment right in the fact that he was left to manage this and that everyone's just the whole time waiting for like and when is Peter yeah he's like the kid who's been told he has to be the man of the house, who has to be, he has to be the only grown-up in fucking Never Neverland.

Yes.

Yes.

And that is why when Peter returns, he's like, I don't believe it.

You're not Peter because he left.

Like, and it would just be easy, whatever.

Oh, Lassar Actor would do a worse job with it.

And Rufio, you just really feel like this is an abandoned kid who really has a ship on his shoulder about it, plays the emotion beautifully.

It's a wonderful performance.

My hat is off to the great Dante Vasco.

We did our very long episode on E.T., sure.

uh a film about e.t and my favorite steven spielberg movie but i think part of the power of that ending for me is the idea that it's like you are seeing on henry thomas's face the the notion the feeling that everything he has just experienced has like created a point of no return for him he has been forced to mature in a way that he probably can't even put into words or process but the intensity of the varied emotions and stakes he has felt over the last week or two that you have witnessed have like pushed him over a line in a way that I think is Spielberg expressing this feeling he felt of his parents divorcing, disillusioning that relationship, him starting to become more of a parent figure to his younger siblings, all these things.

As much as Spielberg got stuck in this permanent adolescence, he also was someone who was pushed into a kind of maturity, started his career very young, was like a young whippersnapper trying to convince old funny duddies that they should trust him with money.

That this interesting like one foot in both worlds thing, right?

Is like the core of Spielberg.

And I think there is a, there is a feeling of insincerity in this movie that ties back to that JJ quote that I think is probably what he bumps against in re-watching it, and that it felt like, I guess this is everyone telling me this is what I should be doing right now.

And versus Jurassic Park also being a theme park roller coaster movie where he's like, I just want to make something that's fun, that knocks audiences on their ass.

I don't need to get serious and nuanced.

And the difference between those two movies is structure.

Like,

Jurassic Park has an incredible structure.

This is so clean.

And this has like a mushy, how did we get here?

Don't think about it too much.

This movie has so much to explain.

Jurassic Park is like

the juice and the stuff Spielberg cares about is all still there.

He just doesn't, the structure doesn't support it.

Because Jurassic Park is obviously about

a guy who has to learn to be a parent.

This is what I'm building up, right?

He's got to be with these kids.

So I think Alan Grant is so unlike Spielberg as a character, and yet he is finding a way to express something more clearly through Alan Grant, which is like, hey, look, I'm just serious about my career.

I just want to do my work.

I don't have time for children.

Right.

And with Alan Grant, you could argue this is partially subtext, but Spielberg talking when he was younger about like, look, my parents did a number on me.

My childhood was weird and sad.

I don't want to start that cycle again somewhere else, right?

Yeah.

But the self-seriousness of Sam Neal playing Alan Grant with full intensity, doing a real little boy's dream thing of I dig up dinosaur skulls all day.

It's true.

And being like, please let me do my serious grown-up business.

I have no time for children.

And needing to just and the shots in that of like them seeing the dinosaurs, that's like the childlike wonder.

Like, and it's us too.

Holy shit, they did it.

They made dinosaurs real.

I'm looking at dinosaurs.

Right.

And he needs to walk around how to like relate

to children as people, which is the thing that's people talk about through like making E.T.

and working with child actors, starting to be like, oh, maybe I could be a parent.

I'm like understanding it now, not thinking of them as like an alien species.

Yeah.

Versus like Peter Pan on its face and Peter Banning even more so feels like more of a one-to-one to Spielberg.

And he was talking about this era.

He had made Amblin.

He had become a mogul.

He had 80 plates spinning at all times.

Anytime he makes a movie, it's a big production.

He's doing the math on how long am I going to be away from my kids?

Do I feel guilty for owning a cell phone?

A great crime.

Drag me to The Hague, right?

But I just think, and maybe is what makes this film interesting, but as someone with zero like childhood connection nostalgia to it, in fact, was predisposed to dislike it,

I'm just like, I don't know where he's landing here.

And I don't want resolution

or like a cleanness, but it just feels like confused to me.

Hook,

Ben, anything you want to say?

Obviously, the Lost Boys are very Ben-coated in general.

We've touched on most of them.

Yeah, we've touched on most of them.

They have skeleton armor that hangs from spider web.

Well, that's what I wanted to say.

When they get battle ready, that's pretty.

They put on their stick armor that is hung by spider web and they just go into it.

Yeah, they were waiting for this day.

That's how you get dressed every morning.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, spider web hanging.

That image has really stuck with me, that visual.

Another element that really stuck out to me was giant slingshot.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's fun.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah, they have fun.

A lot of practical stuff.

We're in a double dare era when this movie is exactly.

It is.

That's exactly cool stuff like this is existing.

It was the whole thing

that I all loved, which I watched, of course, with the aggro crag, you know, where it was like.

Kids don't know how to use bungee cords.

And they're like, well, they're going to use bungee cords on guts.

And some of them are going to be good at it and others are going to spin in the air, completely lost.

Well, my level of frustration.

There's a cast member in Hamilton, Gregory Haney.

He was also in a show I wrote called Bring It on the Musical.

He won global guts as a kid.

He's got the Agro Krag

statue, got a piece of that radical rock.

As a kid, I would have been like, the Agro Krag to me was like the fucking Great Pyramid of Geezer or whatever.

I'm like, that is one of the most important places on Earth.

It is.

It is indeed.

And it is the most impressive thing anyone has ever told me about themselves, full stop.

The Agro Krag and the Travelator from Gladiators.

I was just like, these are like right these have existed since time immemorial i assume our friends at podcast the ride had mo

from global guts on their show whoa and i reacted when i saw that episode title drop the way you she was the referee right she had let's go to mo at the leaderboard and she was talking about they filmed that show at universal orlando and during the day the rest of the week she just did various jobs around the universal orlando theme park And they were like, what do you mean?

And she was like, yeah, that show paid nothing.

And we would do like

15 episodes every year.

We were in years right and i'm just like as a child i was like well that's the most important person on the planet yeah one of the top five she's like the head of the un what do they pay her five million dollars a segment

she had to pick up work on the side well i was gonna say watching those shows as a child shattered my reality i know

when you When you would watch like Legends of the Hidden Temple or Nick Arcade and you'd be like, these kids are driving me crazy.

If I could get in there right now, I could do that so well.

And then you get older and you're just like, wait, they were like on camera in a set that doesn't make sense backwards, looking at the wrong side of the thing.

Nick Arcade, they can't see the fucking shit behind them.

They're like punching a blue screen.

Between that and like being able to correctly place every country in Africa in 60 seconds on Carmen San Diego.

These are impossible childhood tasks that we watched many times.

I was so locked into anything with maps and I never saw anyone beat that last thing of Carmen San Diego.

It was kind of like how the UltraZord never actually appeared.

It was like one time the Ultra Zord appeared.

And like there was no YouTube back then, it was just a playground.

I was like, Did you watch Power Rangers?

They actually did the Ultra Zord.

Remember, they had to like call in a third Zord from a volcano to do the Ultra Zord.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm just

watching it slightly because I never did see the Ultra Zord.

It was just fun.

I never saw it either.

I was so mad about it.

Now I watch it on YouTube.

Does that make me happy?

No.

Um, this film came out December 13th, 1991.

Unsurprisingly, it was a big Christmas release.

Yeah, a big family movie.

And it opened to $17 million and made $120 domestic and $300 worldwide, which was plenty of money.

The film was profitable and surprisingly also a massive VHS hit.

It just wasn't the phenomenon I'm sure Sony hoped for.

You read the press excerpts from the time, and they were doing the kind of hand-wringing that we're used to today, but I think was a little more unusual at the time: of being like, our back of napkin math says that the film won't reach break-even until it hits $500 million, which was not true.

No, but there was the opening weekend.

Okay, so it's a hit, but is it a big enough hit?

This is another interesting thing, just to quickly mention, is like this film is getting off the ground, bless you, very shortly after Sony buys Columbia TriStar.

Sony has just entered the movie media.

The flag in the ground that was part of the big maneuvering of like, we're getting Hoffman and Spielberg.

and uh Williams to do this movie together is like, we need a giant movie.

And you look at the 80s and the 90s, and it's just all the studios fighting over trying to get one Spielberg movie.

Like he didn't have exclusive deals anywhere.

And they were just like, if we could just get one fucking Spielberg hit, we'd be so good.

It was the fourth biggest hit of 91.

Like, you know, it was a big hit.

So the top film of 91 is Home Alone.

Terminator 2.

Terminator 2.

Home Alone comes out 90.

Home Alone's 90.

So is, and then Home Alone 2 is 92.

Don't ask me what Home Alone 2 is.

Yes, it is.

I think Terminator 2 is my oldest son's first R movie.

Hell yeah.

It's a good first R.

It does perfect.

I was like, let's do this right.

Yeah, exactly.

You're going to see one.

Let's make it.

Let's start with a really good one.

Let's fuck around.

Is number two Beauty and the Beast?

Number three is Beauty and the Beast.

Number two, you won't get it, is Robin Hood Prince of Thebes.

Oh, which is one of those things where you're like,

we forget how much of a phenomenon it was.

Not like we've forgotten it.

It's the song

all summer.

Everything he does, he does it for you.

Where's Silence of the Lambs?

Silence of the Lambs is number five.

Right below Hook.

Yep.

Wow.

And right above JFK.

And then you got Naked Gun two and a half, Adam's Family, Cape Fear, and Hot Shots.

What a 10.

What an era.

Number one of the box office is Hook.

Number two, the box office new this week is the opposite of Hook.

Talk about an R-rated movie, an action comedy

filled with swearing and guns and boobs.

Only some boobs.

Only some boobs, I think.

But it's just like, it's a lurid ass 90s action movie.

Is it like a Shane Black?

Yeah, you got that right.

Is it The Last Boy Scout?

That's right.

Okay, there we go.

Tony Scott's The Last Boy Scout.

Pull it through the football.

Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans.

Fun.

A really

peppy movie.

Feels like that movie really had some, you know, went to the bathroom and came out feeling really energized.

You know what I mean?

That movie took a very effective nap during its lunch break.

Last Boy Scout.

It's also new this week.

Interesting counter programming topic, right?

It's like, you know, you know, anyway.

Number three at the box office, it's a sci-fi sequel.

It's sci-fi sequel.

Solid hit.

And December 19th.

We've covered it on this podcast.

We've covered it on this podcast.

It's not a trek.

It is a trek.

It is a trek.

Is it the final frontier?

Nope.

It's the undiscovered country.

Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country.

Do you care about Star Trek one?

No, not.

You've got a lot of interests.

I feel like Star Trek would be like

that's my one big pop culture blind spot.

It's like Doctor Who and Star Trek.

I just, I missed the boat.

You know,

I've been trying to correct it slowly over the last couple of years.

Yeah.

Number four, the box office.

It's a big family comedy, big smash hit.

The sequel's way better.

The sequel is way better.

Oh, it's the Addams Family.

The Adams family.

Which is one of the best movies ever made.

But of course, Adams Family Values is the single best film ever made.

I like the Adams family.

It's just, I do feel like Adams Family Values just sort of has everything down.

It's incredible.

But I think sometimes you undersell the first one a little bit.

And you know what?

I haven't seen it in a long time.

It's really good.

It's got great stuff.

Yeah.

Values.

The greatest of all time.

I mean, do you agree?

I mean, like, I really feel like

he is one of those guys where it's like, if I had a time machine, I would like to go see every Broadway roller.

Absolutely.

I would want to go see him and Meryl Streep at the Delacour and Part of the Shrew or whatever.

It is the shame with him that you're like, there is a handful of fantastic film performances, but if you dig in, people are like, yeah, but like 90% of his important work happened on the stage.

And he was like, and you'll never be able to see.

He's one of the most important Puerto Rican actors to ever live, right?

Like one of the earliest Puerto Rican success stories in America, like on a, whatever, on that scale, on the sort of A-list.

Going to listen to him just singing some crazy charming shit is Two Gentlemen of Verona.

I just listened.

It's the same composers as Hare, the music.

It's like a rock.

It's like a rock version of Two Gentlemen of Verona.

And it's just Raul Juliet being charming as hell over like bang and beats.

Did I fire that up?

One from the heart.

That is

a couple of bottled liquid charm.

He's very, very charming.

He is.

And he's great.

And he's in that movie, which is out, and is making a lot of money.

Number five, the box office.

It's an animated film.

Is it Beauty and the Beast?

Beauty and the Beast.

Beauty and the Beast.

It's also good.

Do you like Beauty and the Beast?

I ate six eggs.

You must like Beauty and the Beast.

I love Beauty and the Beast.

Yeah.

The price is so good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, it's no, it's an absolute stone gold class.

I mean, look,

we talked about it on this show, but it's just like when you actually zoom into

it's a recurring theme in your work and the figures that you're obsessed with, with but the level of work that ashman put out in such a short period of time is crazy and the impact and the lasting like echoes of it it's just insane that's the one where he comes in late right where he's busy with aladdin and they're like can you come fucking take a look at this beauty and the beast that's not working like right like he like Yeah,

they brought Ashman and Mencken off, I believe, onto that already in progress.

And then they wrote this crazy opening number where by the end of it, you understand everyone and everything in the the town.

She fucking, it's just ridiculous.

She goes in there and it's like, let me tell you about Jack and the Beanstalk.

The guy owns the library and she's trying to tell him about Jack and the Bean.

He knows about it.

It's an uneducated town.

He's just in it for the money, for that sweet, sweet library money.

No, but he writes like those three movies in like 18 months, basically, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And basically simultaneously.

I recently watched Oliver and Company for the first time with my daughter.

I went to him quite a lot.

It's fun.

It's fun.

Yeah.

And he's got the

only Hispanic representation in the disney canon for many years cheat she's torture chain me to the wow

i've seen that movie i i that one i saw in the theaters for sure and of course it's very different now you also have cheech marinas ramon in the cars universe it's true it's true they brought him back i'm very happy to hear that also in the top 10 you've got my girl oh sure another family classic of our youth uh you've got kate fear not a family classic Well, it is, it is, or a family film is about a movie.

It's about a family.

It's a family film.

You've got For the Boys, the Bette Bett Midler James Kahn musical dramedy.

Ellen's saluting.

Absolutely.

You have a little movie about a little guy called Fival going west.

He's going west.

That was one of the earliest films I saw in theaters.

That I definitely saw in theaters.

And you have the adorable John Hughes comedy, Curly Sue with Jim Belushi, which I don't think I've ever seen.

And Sis Eisenberg.

That's Jesse Eisenberg's sister is Curly Sue.

Is that right?

Really?

Really?

I thought it was...

I thought Curly Sue was someone else.

Sis Eisenberg

was a Pepsi girl and the girl from Paulie, which I swear.

Her thought, also Curly Sue.

She's not Curly Sue.

Oh my God.

Callie Eisenberg.

I've conflated them all into one.

Delightful curly-haired girl.

Because I was sort of like, she is just curly.

She's too young, right?

Alison's

sister.

Yeah.

Is Curly Sue.

I've never seen Curly Sue.

What's the power have either?

I'm doing this in my mind purely for her.

She's a con artist?

She's like a cutesy orphan.

Yeah.

Allison Porter, original cast member of the Broadway Revival of a Chorus line.

Of the Broadway Revival of a Chorus line.

Okay.

That's someone who's not.

I don't know what the Broadway Revival is.

Okay, well, I don't have to tell you, though.

That's what's top 10 at the box office.

I love

the snobbery we've seen on display here.

We have the anti-hook household and the like a revival cat.

The original cat's pulling off.

Okay.

Kelly Bishop.

Lynn, this is what keeps the show fresh after 10 years.

Makes me so happy.

The dynamics are constantly switching away.

It's what keeps me listening.

Wow.

That's very nice of you to say.

And it's been very nice of you to join us to discuss hook.

Thank you.

I'm sorry I couldn't bring more primary sources this time.

I just really brought my own feelings.

Just that roof.

Bring your own feelings.

You brought your truth.

You brought your truth.

And that's all we asked for on this show.

Thank you.

I was talked out of bringing a hook to the recording.

Which I'm kind of bummed about.

I think we could have spent a little time just discussing hooks in general.

Ben, I don't want to embarrass you, but I just clocked something what did you hide the chains because lynn was coming no they're they're at the gallery okay yeah what chains i uh ben usually has a display of chains okay yeah my friend created um an a sculpture for the office which is it's a chain display It's various different sizes of chains

from some pipes.

Ben loves chains and pipes.

It's just an aesthetic that I've always really appreciated in cinema and six and tones may break your bones but whips and chains excite you yes

precisely

wow um well that's amazing what a word smith uh i wish i could take the credit that's uh pink but no i would have had a i would have had a spotlight on it if i okay i just want to make sure i just want to make sure

you'd be hiding your truth no no not at all um I'm I'm also, as we're saying goodbye, so I will keep it very short,

remembering my other connection to Hook, as you mentioned, whether we should have brought Hooks to this recording, I played Captain Hook in the sixth grade play.

Whoa.

I was Captain Hook.

And it was like, it's the old-timey Broadway version, which has a weird hodgepodge of like Rod Hammerstein

contributed some material, but then they brought in ringers to write other songs.

Like it's like actually a weirdly collaborative score.

And that was a big deal.

Like I got to wear a wig and I got to, I had a fake hook that I then had as a prop for many years in my house.

Did you paint on a goatee and go, wait a second, this looks good?

Yeah, I painted on the goatee and said, I think this is going to be my look going forward.

I'll wait till this grows in.

I'm almost surprised you didn't play Pan.

Yeah, well, Evan Newman was just a much better singer than me.

Oh, well, I mean, you're not going to be.

I'm not going to beat Evan Newman.

It was a lot easier to get financing with him as Pan.

That's true.

He was a great Peter Pan.

He's a wonderful actor.

I feel like classically, Peter Pan played by an adult woman, right?

Like,

that's true.

Yes.

That's Jay Allison Williams approach in Peter Pan Live.

Yes.

sort of notorious moment in puff culture i feel like

in peter pan history yes lynn i feel ridiculous asking this but anything you want to plug is there anything relative to when this is coming out that feels the only crossover i i have nothing to plug i'm here because i adore you guys um you're too kind but i uh I did have a chance to talk with Frank Marshall because I did write a musical adaptation of a movie early in his filmography, The Warriors.

Absolutely.

Yes.

Yes.

So I wrote it.

I will say The Warriors, the vibe of The Warriors does feel feel like

you are maturing up from Rufio and the Lost Boys to the Warriors.

I want to make it clear, the Warriors exist before Rufus.

The Warriors are also very stylized gangs.

But I imagine you watched this first and then discover the Warriors or were they about this?

I wish, again, I will refer you to my unsupervised childhood.

I saw Warriors when I was four years old.

Wild.

Like older brothers, VHS, like Friends Older Brothers VHS cassette.

And like that, I imprinted on that as like, oh, that's what where I live is like at night.

And like

I needed to write a whole musical with my friend Issa Davis to like work it out.

I saw

Sitting Lamets The Wiz again recently, which is one of my absolute favorite movies.

And one of the movies I've watched the most in my life.

I was an adaptive backup in The Wiz in sixth grade, too.

That's wild.

But I had a similar thing where for the first time, I think I unlocked why I'm so hyper-fixated on that movie.

And it was, I think this movie spoke to the way I felt as a child living in a city I love that feels inherently hostile.

Yeah, I think that's right.

Yeah.

If I'd seen the whiz sooner, I'd have been printed on that.

But I saw the Warriors first.

And so, so yeah.

So anyway, that's an album.

You can get it now.

A lot of amazing people are on it.

Miss Lauren Hill, Ghostface, Nas.

It's just crazy.

We got a crazy, because it's an album and not a thing people have to do at times a week.

We just got the all-star cast of our dreams to play different parts on it.

I mean, it's awesome.

I've listened to it many times.

And hopefully, if it goes to Broadway, you can book Eric Newman.

Evan Newman.

Evan wasn't crazy.

Evan Newman.

Evan would be great.

Evan would go on to play.

I directed Westside's story my senior year in high school, and he was my riff.

Hey, yeah.

No, no, Evan's the real deal.

He's great.

Excited for everything coming up, whatever it is.

Be it that and other things.

Excited for our next episode, Griffin, which is

Jurassic Park.

What's that about?

Dinosaurs.

With the great Sean Fantasy.

The great Sean Fantasy.

Enjoy.

Quite good.

That episode, I think.

It's quite good.

That was recorded.

18 years ago.

It was recorded a long ass five years.

Weirdly, that episode is when we first met.

We meet on mic in that episode.

And we're like, should we do a podcast?

I am actually excited to listen to it because I have no memory of that conversation.

I'm glad you frozen Amber and you will.

That's right, exactly.

That episode will be brought out

by Mr.

DNA or whatever his name is.

Yeah.

Thank you for joining us again.

Thank you so much for being here.

That's it.

Hook, come on, take us out.

Bang, bang.

Thank you all for listening.

Please remember to rate and review.

Tune in next week for Jurassic Park.

And as always, Lynn.

I'm sorry to do this, but one final piece of housekeeping.

I must ask this.

This is not, I just need, this is purely a question.

This isn't a request.

It's a question.

I need to close a loop that started on another podcast.

The Great Doughboys podcast.

I don't know if you're familiar, our favorite podcast.

They review chain restaurants, Nick Weiger and Mike Mitchell.

Very funny show.

I recently, when I was in Los Angeles, went and did an episode on Chuck E.

Cheese with them.

Okay.

There is a song that plays in the rotation at Chuck E.

Cheese now that is 100%

Chuck E.

Cheese doing Lin Mandel Miranda.

No shit.

I haven't been to a Chuck E.

Cheese.

It's called The Perfect Day.

And the Doughboys associate producer, Amelia Marino, said, I think they got the real Lynn for this.

It sounds so much like him.

I am so sorry to burst the spell.

I promised I would get named.

I have never heard of this song in my life.

So I just want to conclusively.

I try to avoid taking my children to Chuck E.

Cheese whenever possible.

I was just

losing them in the pits.

But we just need to settle this issue.

You have never written an original song for the Chuck E.

Cheese restaurant.

I have never had the pleasure of working with Charles Entertainment Cheese.

Yet.

Yes.

Never say never.

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 real nerdy shit.

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This podcast is created and produced by BlankCheck Productions.