Always with Richard Lawson

Blank Jack with Griffin and David

Blank Jack with Griffin and David.

Don't know what to say or to expect.

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

I know now that the podcast we hold back is the only pain that follows us here.

It's a good Dreyfus.

Thank you.

I was about to say, just fucking nailing that Dreyfus.

I mean, that's why I went for that.

Look at it.

It was a little more Krippendorf than always.

It was a little

bit.

How many times will we be saying Krippendorf?

Well, you're doing the whole Jen and Elfman season, right?

So

I talked about this in another episode recently, Richard.

I did a triple feature of Disney's

Walt Disney Pictures 90s culturally problematic comedies.

Jungle to Jungle.

Jungle to Jungle.

Sure.

Krippendorf's Tribe.

And the third one is.

The air up there?

Man of the House.

The Air up there is kind of too culturally sensitive to make close.

You know what I mean?

Crippendorf's Tribe makes the Air up there look like a document.

It's Margaret Meads, the air up there.

But the sneaky one is Man of the House, which is Trevi Chase tries to bond with Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who is the son of Farah Fawcett.

Right.

I have to.

It's all

weekend, like quote-unquote Indian group thing, where it's all like George Wendt explaining the principles of the Native Americans

and Trevue Chase being asleep.

But Krippendorf is the peak.

But speaking of series.

It's the peak of American culture.

Correct.

Speaking of series, this is

the second film in your Hap series, right?

After Insomnia?

Correct.

Okay.

Richard, this is why we bring you on.

Look at that.

David's threading his fingers together.

Hap good in

The Apprentice last year as Fred Trump Sr.

Hap.

That's great in The Apprentice.

Not an obviously big role, like probably just a few scenes, but he really nailed it, I think.

A classic, I mean, just like killer supporting turn.

Just pure hap.

Yep.

Happen all over the place.

Look, I was a little tempted.

Dreyfus is the one I have in the pocket.

It was kind of t-ball waiting there for me.

But this is a movie where, looking at the quotes page, you're like, you got a couple big swings on voices you could do.

Do you have a hunter?

Do you have a hunter?

I was trying to, I was last night, I was trying to do it a little.

Let's get in there.

I was trying to parrot it back.

but there's something about

her voice transforms within a sentence.

It does.

She has this almost like Betelgeuicy thing of like, she kind of has four voices or Pee-Wee Herman, you know, those characters where it's like, sometimes it's this, right, sometimes it's this.

Like, she's like, it's, it's tough to pin down.

It is.

And she's, and she's selectively southern, depending on the movie she's in.

Yes.

I think it was in the piano episode I talked about how odd it is that that is her like Oscar running performance and is so out of step with yeah the rest of her filmography she's like a firecracker i mean she's literally in a movie called i think i i referred to her as a texas firecracker yeah and then a bunch of our listeners said that she is from georgia georgia is that correct but she was in a movie called miss firecracker and then the texas cheerleader with the thing i just needed to address that those are the two holes i was a georgia peach she's a georgia peach yes yes um who used to live in an apartment with frances mcnorbund well we've talked about that apartment but do you know this Can we litigate this?

If you don't know this, I probably don't.

We can briefly litigate this.

There were three people who lived in that apartment.

Okay.

Fran, Holly, and Kathy Bates.

My goodness.

And the question we ask,

and asked, when did this come up?

I think at the Raimi series.

Must have been.

Because Raimi was friends with the Cohen brothers and all that.

Everyone's in that apartment.

That's the thing.

The Raimis and the Cohens all cross-pollinate with that apartment.

Why has Sam Raimi and the Cohn brothers never used Kathy Bates?

If they were like pals with her, we're like, did they keep

leave her hair in the shower?

Was she the best?

I started going through it.

And we're like, Holly Hunter and Frances McDorman have basically never worked with Kathy Bates.

Right, right.

Is everyone just like, don't let me know what she's doing?

Did she like shit in the shower?

Like, what the fuck happened?

Didn't Holly Hunter play Bill Clinton in primary colors, though?

I did not have sexual relationships with that woman.

Wow.

That's the most interesting thing.

And you're like, Kathy Bates, she must have been in four Cohen Brothers marriage.

All right.

This is a spin-off investigative podcast.

Matlock, get Matlock on it.

Kathy Bates Matlock.

That's not the real Matlock.

Just for Matlock.

Were the Ramey brothers and the Cohen brothers going over to this apartment and staying up late drinking with Holly Hunter and Francis McDorman and like Kathy Bates comes in with a broom?

She has her curlers in.

Yeah.

She's like, I'm doing Night Mother in the morning.

Will you stop dreaming up criminal schemes for idiots to get involved in in your stupid movies?

Okay, but what if a guy is really dumb and he has a

lesbian road trip comedy?

Let's backburner that for 40 years.

Yeah.

Wow.

How did we get on this?

Oh, Holly Hunter, of course.

Holly Hunter.

The star of always.

The star of always.

What's the podcast?

The podcast is Blank Check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin.

I'm David.

It's a podcast about filmographies.

Yes.

Directors who had massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby.

Yes.

I think it's

not a bounce, but it's close.

It is.

It's kind of a bounce, obviously, by his standardism, it's a bounce.

Yes.

But it's not a 1941-style actual bounce of like, oh, no, you've spent too much money and made not enough, right?

Yes.

Like, this is more of a sort of like, well,

that kind of got ignored and was a bit of a waste of your time, but it made some money.

I think 1941 is the only outright calamity.

Yes.

And even 1941 made money and

this absolutely came in under its budget and got bad reviews, right?

This movie.

I'm saying 1941.

Not under its budget.

1941 made less than its budget or,

but I'm saying the movie went over budget.

And then, of course, yes.

Yes.

Right.

I'm saying, like, always and Hook are kind of in a similar zone of like, it feels like sky-high expectations.

Sure.

And then people are kind of like, eh.

And then Hook has become the most beloved movie of all time.

And Hook also made lots of money, at least.

But I sent you guys that 60 minutes clip, and we'll, we'll talk about it when we get get to our hook episode.

But I watched, like, you read the press from Hook two weeks in, and people are like, it's doing well, but it's not doing really well.

Yeah, the man sets a high bar.

It's the thing.

And I think always was a similar thing where it's like, this didn't lose money.

Critics weren't like savaging it, but it does feel like it is his single most forgotten movie.

Without question.

And I was doing the ranking on Letterboxd and it is far and away, by some margin, his least watched feature film.

Or least long.

Yeah, of course.

It feels like the one that people actually just don't know exists.

Dawson has it hanging in the closet, right?

Yes.

Dawson's credit.

Dawson has every Spielberg poster in his room, but always is in a closed room.

It's in the closet.

Right.

Kind of a rainbow.

But the weird thing is for me,

it was one of the few VHS tapes that we owned as a child.

I think my mother had seen it and liked it or something.

So for me, it was like Spielberg's biggest movie other than Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park.

Yeah.

Do you want to get the bottom five feature just Steven Spielberg movies on Letterboxd in terms of like vlogs.

I know this because I checked the video.

Yeah, but tell me.

Okay, well, so we're not counting

Twilight Zone and not counting, obviously, any of the TV movies.

Right, Wicked or something.

Okay, so it's Sugarland.

So it always is the least.

Then 1941.

Oh, right.

Then Sugarland.

Then Sugarland.

And then the two above that.

Slightly more surprising.

Only slightly.

Yes.

No, because I know because I was.

One we did a perfect episode on with no notes.

Almost dead.

Almost dead.

And the other we did a perfect episode on but some people don't like the episode because we don't like the movie almost dead too

people don't like it because we it's not the war horse episode it is the war horse like as much as people generally like that episode of ours because we're having a lot of fun yeah some people sort of meekly i see sometimes being like i actually like war horse and i feel like they're not very nice to it look i think i the and i think war horse has spectacular stuff when i saw war horse such as that horse

god if i could get my dick on that horse

that's a callback that doesn't make sense.

That sounds like I made a huge leap if you haven't listened to the episode.

In the episode, we talk about everyone's really in love with that horse.

That would be a little too

sexualizing the horse.

All right, let's cut to a montage.

Let's cut to a montage.

I think Ben's right of like us yelling.

They really want to fuck that horse of that great episode.

Everyone in this movie really wants to fuck this horse.

Even in war, like we're all going to want to fuck the same horse.

You never made a movie where people were trying to cuck a horse.

It's just hot.

It's just like a hot horse.

This is the human condition.

You raise We want to fuck this fucking horse.

This hot horse.

What is the deal with the horse?

Fuckability.

He wants to fuck the horse.

Everyone wants to fuck the horse.

Right.

John Ford brings me into his office and he goes, I heard you want to be a picture maker.

And he goes, yeah.

And he goes, let me ask you a question.

You want to fuck this horse?

You want to fuck this horse?

Ah, yes.

Now that you have that context.

Great.

Let me finish this.

This is a clip show, by the way, Richard.

We're not going to get to the show.

Oh, yeah.

Oh,

I'm going to tell you ahead of time.

Decading dreams.

let's play the clips from all my appearances.

This is a mini-series on the early works of Steven Spielberg.

The first half of his career, we're calling it Pod Racic Cast.

Betting your head.

That's been your bottom dollar.

A lot of notes.

This is the first episode I want to say we've recorded since our work and the title was announced.

And people are not happy about it.

Why not?

Except there's a fucking problem.

Jerkastic pod.

They want pod encounters of the close.

Can I ask you?

Yeah.

Where are you seeing criticism?

Because I'll say the Blankie subreddit

honestly has kind of just become a movie discussion board, which is fine by me.

Fine by me.

Like it's not even, it barely touches on our podcast anymore, which is a-okay.

So, where are you even?

I'm not, I guess I'm not on Twitter anymore.

Ben Brantley took us to task.

Did you think about cast encounters of the pod kind?

Yeah, I thought about all of it.

This is the thing people don't understand.

I think about all of it.

There's never one that I'm like, oh fuck, I should have done that.

And a big part of the calculation is I just need to say, Yes, I type them out, I write them out, I go, what looks funny?

And then I go, let me say it out loud.

Yeah, right.

How does you're going to have to say it out loud several times?

And it's like sometimes there's one that's funny, but is actually going to be impossible to pronounce.

I want it to be clunky.

I don't want it to be too clean.

Of course.

I want a funny bit of attention.

Right.

But this is Podrassic cast, a really nice thing to say.

Just rolls off the top.

The first half of Spielberg's career, because two presidential terms ago, we covered the latter half of his career.

And now we've circled back.

In that series, our guest today covered saving Private Ryan.

That's right.

One of his absolutely most essential things.

And I believe we recorded that the week after a certain election.

Who?

There is an upsetting direct mirror on the timelines of these two series.

Yep.

Yep.

But today he is returning for

another one that loomed very large in your life.

Yeah, it was before Private Ryan.

It was like a big, yeah.

We had another guest booked, a friend of the show who will have on for something else, a friend of all of ours.

We're excited to have on.

Katie Rich.

You can just say it.

And we were just sort of like, we should just have Katie do always, right?

I don't think anyone cares that much about always.

Katie will probably be a good guest for always.

And then we booked it.

And then you texted me and were like, who's doing always?

Always is really important to me.

And I said, Katie, and you went, that'll be great.

That'll be great.

No, I support Katie being on this episode.

So goodbye.

Katie's New York.

Trip plans change.

Yes.

Windows.

You get to mount the case for always.

Richard Lawson, Avenger Fair, Little Gold Man.

Thank you for having me.

12-timer.

Oh, I think it's more than that.

Here.

But 10 years for you guys.

Decadive Dreams.

That's the biggest.

Decadive Dreams.

Saving Private Rhyme.

Lady in the Water.

Big Guys.

Yeah.

All right.

Wait a second.

I'm not going in order.

K-19, The Widowmaker.

I'll go in order.

I'll go in order.

Lady in the Water.

Verniller Skir.

Vanilla Skur.

Scherving pervert rural

totally forgot that you were on the K-19 the Widowmaker episode probably because my brain has erased that drama

I remember why you claimed that episode why did I a lot of my boys in it

that's right those my boys

who love the the fatherland yeah yeah springlers

yeah uh-huh big eyes as you say yeah so that's seven we're at seven there one two three

One, two.

Philadelphia.

Philadelphia.

Oh, another one my brain has erased.

The witches.

Robert DeMeccus is the witches.

That was our Richards drinking during this recording.

We were all drinking during that recording.

That might be.

the single least existent movie we have covered on true truly yeah right like he made pinocchio as a challenge yeah but it could not exist less than the witches it still exists slightly more than the witches

he was trying to get below the witches and he couldn't martin breast's afi projects exist more like the early ones that are lesser seen, at least they have like the story.

The shit I just took is a more seen movie that Robert Zebecus is the witches with fucking Ann Hathaway.

The purr of the dirk.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

Oh.

Spurtakirsch.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The curious case of Benjamin Burton.

And we met him.

We loved him.

Black.

Mr.

Black.

Mr.

Joe Montague.

Mr.

Joe Black.

Yeah.

So is this 13?

I think it's 14, isn't it?

That's amazing.

A Lawson's dozen.

That's more than one eight.

This is the 14th.

And of course, let's never forget that on our Patreon, you did experience the trolls.

You experienced the trolls.

We did.

Yeah.

Or experienced the trolls.

Experienced your trolls.

Yeah, I welcomed you into my world.

How many trolls have there been at this point?

I know you completely lost control of your trolls long ago, but

they unionized and it was a disaster.

You tried to crush them.

So World Tour and then they banded together.

Yes.

Not sure that I I saw Band Together.

I did see World Tour.

Band Together came out last year.

World Tour kind of underperformed finally.

I reviewed World Tour because that was like at the start of the pandemic.

Right, where it was.

I was like, we have to, I have to find something to write about.

World Tour was the first studio movie that had not gone to theaters that announced

$25 iTunes rental.

Like it was the canary in the coal mine.

That's like, does this work?

The answer was not really, but sort of.

Sort of.

Right.

Right.

But I remember World Tour being like a huge step up from Trolls One.

But I did not see Trolls.

I already forgot the name.

Band Together.

We have a lot to talk about, Tay, but I just want to say that I need to complain about this.

And this is why I refused to see Band Together at a protest.

Yeah.

The big thing was Justin Timberlake plays a fucking grump.

Branch.

In those movies.

Branch.

Yeah.

I know the character's name is Branch.

They're saying he's a grump.

He's playing against Timberlake tech.

Sure.

I think I've talked about the experience where my therapist related

my own psychology.

Outlook to branches.

Yeah, sure.

Said you needed some poppy in your life.

Right.

She said, it's just, because because my kids have been watching it a lot, but I'm hearing what you're saying.

And it's reminding me a lot of Justin Timberlake's character in Trolls.

And I went, yes, Branch.

I know what his name is.

That would be a gut punch if my therapist said that to you.

Yes.

And David's 10-point joke in response to that was, you need to stop going to Lightskimmer Jackson for therapy.

I mean, the drive to Albany alone.

Doctor, doctor.

Give me the news.

But he's a sourpus grump, right?

Right.

He's got a bad case of it.

It's kind of Timberlake playing against type.

Yep.

And the hook to band together was, we're going to do a meta-commentary on Timberlake's boy band pass.

You're going to find out that he was a member of a Trolls boy band with his brothers.

And the big announcement was: InSync is reuniting for this.

In Sync is recording five new songs for the Trolls Band Together soundtrack.

They're going to do live performances.

In Sync is back.

David, what are you looking at?

I'm just looking.

So NSYNC kind of passed me by slightly.

I was like a little too old for NSYNC, right?

By then, it was, I was a more poppy, poptimistic kid than some, the teen than some, right?

But I didn't really know InSync that well.

Chris Kirpatrick, the fuck is going on there?

I genuinely.

Yeah.

Because usually you see their look and you're like, I can see

what the idea was here, right?

If I can be mean,

sort of, is that that was the interesting innovation of One Direction, which was like, oh, all five are cute.

Right.

Yeah.

Because you always be like, two are cute.

One's okay.

Right.

One is tested in an interesting way, and the other one does not exist.

There's an old one, yeah, there's an old one.

And like, just that thing where it felt like they were like, we saw 80,000 people to be in this band, and we ran out of good ones after three.

This was like the together thing of like what the formulation is of the weird balance of the thing, you know?

Like, I mean, because like the better man read the Robbie Williams biopic, like, doesn't really touch on take that,

you know, lower members, no offense to them.

Are they depicted at all?

No, no, no.

Take that as a huge part of humans or other animals.

As humans, of course.

Only Robbie is a chimpanzee.

It's kind of offensive to the other members of Take That.

But like Gary Barlow is obviously the main part of the.

Have you seen Better Man?

No, I've not.

Actually, great movie.

Yeah.

Gary Barlow was the head, the front man, and Robbie was kind of the cute one off to the side.

Okay.

And there's another cute one.

And then there's the two other ones.

Now, no offense to the fans of the two other ones, but it's true.

Like, they would always just kind of have like two spare fucking guys.

I feel like the 90s version of that was.

Would Chris Kirkpatrick sing?

Was he because you

would turn out the kind of nothing one was a good thing?

It is my understanding that he was really instrumental in like bringing the group together and like he kind of like just dug out.

I think it was how he could wear dreadlocks.

Right.

Right.

I think that's really what he did.

Which he didn't initially, but then he brings those out.

He brings the outside.

I was going to say those groups all needed one guy who was sort of like a weird alt subculture.

He was the A.J.

McClain from Backstreet Boys.

But then in Britain, you would have Boys Owner Westlife or whatever.

It was truly just like, it looked like they just cloned people.

Yeah.

Like, it's just all kind of like blonde, thin-eyed action

with spiky gels.

And I think the reason I was, I would argue that was part of what didn't make them stick.

Yeah, because you need some spice or something.

And I also think having the weirdos would make the Nick Carter or the Justin Timberlake pop a little more.

But was it really tough to be like, I'm an 11-year-old girl and I love NSYNC, and I'm one of the 1% that's like Chris.

I was always fascinated because my sister, you know, well, I was into the bands too, but like her friends, they would talk about it.

And one of her friends was like, of the Backstreet Boys, she's like, no, I'm a Kevin Richardson girl.

And it was like, whoa.

Kevin was like finding a rare.

He's the one who kind of brought them together and held them together.

So Jamesy, my little brother, Jamesy Newman, was a big Backstreet Boys guy.

And I think had like the posters on his wall and was watching them.

We were a Backstreet Boys household.

It's like a Pepsi family.

The videos would be on the TV or james would be like you know having a poster my dad would just walk by and look at a j and go that guy's such a grease ball

never

not comment on it he goes what is up with this guy in my house we drank rc cola and listened to o-town okay that was

right we were ginger ale and backstreet boys canada dry and backstreet boys how did we get on oh because you're talking about trolls well because holly hunter was originally she worked with lou pearlman in orlando how did we even get on the fucking troll oh we were counting down your episodes yeah this is episode on always Always.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is the episode on Steven Spielberg's 1989 romantic fantasy pseudo remake, Always.

Yes.

Which starred Richard Dreyfus,

Holly Hunter.

John Coodman on the poster, although,

you know, kind of not a big character in a weird way to the movie.

Pin and that.

We're going to talk about it.

I have a lot of things to say about it.

Everyone's favorite movie star, Brad Johnson.

Ben.

I assume you weren't doing any kind of ancillary digging or checking of the dossier, and that this was your first time seeing him, that actor.

I watched the movie always, I assume.

Yeah.

Brad Johnson.

That's his name, right?

Brad Johnson, who plays the, you know, the new love interest after Dreyfus.

So this is kind of the himbo.

Right.

There you go.

To your awareness, this is the first time you've ever seen this guy, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you had to guess, and I told you this was his first movie,

how do you think he was discovered?

What do you think he did before they were like, hey, should you try acting?

Like in a movie acting?

Sure.

This isn't like a setup for a bit.

I just think you might get this right.

Chippendales.

You're close.

He was a literal Marlboro man.

Like an actual

put the hat on this fucker.

He was going to sell some cigarettes.

He was a rodeo performer

who then was spotted and became the Marlborough man.

For a chunk of years.

Sure.

You know, was one of many Marlboro men, but had it.

Well, because that was like being Lara Croft, right?

Or Ronald McDonald.

Right.

It would cycle.

Yeah.

But he was a Marlboro man, and then it led to a straight-to-video horror movie and then this.

And all the Marvel Men, they lived in an apartment complex together.

They had fun.

They would have fun.

They would do last two competitions.

Yeah.

They were dating and it was fun.

But it's so weird.

Like, it is a part of this movie.

I'd never seen this film before.

It's a part of this movie.

Oh, you've never seen it?

I'd never seen it before.

It's a part of this movie's legacy that always fascinated me was like part of the framing of this movie was like we're introducing a new movie star spielberg has found a guy yeah and there's like a lot of people magazine press of like the co-stars talking up like this guy's got a huge career we're gonna have him do impressions like we're gonna show a range of talents we're like crafting the role around this guy's innate sort of like charisma yeah and he does like a couple other movies and some tv yeah i mean he worked i think he mostly was in kind of you know

straight to video kind of stuff eventually and then became a real estate agent and died of COVID.

He did die.

He did die from complications from COVID in 2018.

And the real estate he worked in was specifically ranch real estate.

So he went back to the Marlboro roots.

Marlborough Man is one of those things that I will like explain to my kids and they will be like, The fuck are you talking about?

Where I'm like, so cigarettes started to get filtered, right?

And they're like, okay, I mean, if cigarettes are even still legal at this point, like you might as well wheel a penny farthing bicycle and still live.

And they're like, and people thought filtered cigarettes were feminine.

So Marlboro came up with this brilliant idea of of like, what if a cowboy was like,

so good?

And it was the most brilliant advertising campaign anyone ever heard of that a fucking cowboy smoked this shit.

Like, that's all Marlborough Man is.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, because you know what the rival campaign was?

That fucking penis-faced camel at like billiards holes.

It's just so funny how.

K.

Minim was like, what if it's a handsome dude?

They were like, yeah, that might push.

Seriously, it's what Madman, you know, the pilot is about.

But like, you know, like, right, all these companies are like, we all make the same basic thing, which is a deadly product that you're addicted to.

How do we find an angle on selling this to people?

Just eight different companies with just like, yeah, one guy's like, oh, you should have a camel.

Newports had the market cornered on people smiling while playing tennis.

That was because that was their market.

Yeah.

Yeah.

God, it's so fucking weird.

Anyway, we were a Marlboro household, so I was very acquainted with the Marble Man, and I had lots of sports illustrated, and he was Marble Man was always in those.

Was your dad collecting the points?

Were you having to do that?

It was a whole fucking moral dilemma for my mom because we would get free shit.

Yeah.

What kind of stuff?

I remember I had a sleeping bag.

I would take that thing to kids' houses, right, for sleepovers and shit, and it had a fucking Marlboro loco on it.

I will say this, in all honesty.

It was like a red sleeping bag.

It probably looked like a lit cigarette.

It was full of cigarettes when it arrived at the house.

I remember going to a friend's house with parents who smoked heavily and would have the catalog, and I'd look through it.

You might be surprised to hear this.

I like stuff.

To be clear, for people who don't know, you would like send in boxes.

Marlboro Miles.

Marlborough Miles.

And

you would get points and you could get free shit out of a catalogue.

And you could go to the Marlborough Dad to the two packs a day.

It was an expansive catalog that contained almost every type of product you could imagine branded with Marlboro.

And it was like, as you said, from like an ashtray to like a fucking motorcycle.

I think

you could save up and buy a private island or something.

And as a kid who loved catalogs, I'd like leaf through them at parents' friends' house and I'd be like, God, I wish my parents were chainsaws.

If you saved enough of them, you could get a part in the movie Always.

You couldn't always.

Spielberg's like, I'll cast you.

I mean, it was, no, I think I've said this to you guys before off-mic, probably, but right.

My mom would we would go through duty-free when we started living in England, um, and then we would travel to America, you know, and in duty-free, you could buy cigarettes so much cheaper because they were tax-free and cigarettes are taxed up the ass as they should be, right?

Uh, and uh, like walking out with long boxes, my mom would walk out with like right 20 cartons of Marlboroughs, and my mother never smoked a cigarette in her damn life, or whatever, barely ever did.

And uh, she would just, it was this,

he's gonna, your dad's gonna buy the fucking cigarettes.

Do we save hundreds, thousands of dollars right now and indulge his deadly habit, or do we not?

And in the process, also, get some fucking box stops, get a sleeping bag.

It was so, it's so evil.

This is what I'm saying.

My kids are going to be like, What are you talking about?

Like, how is any of this allowed?

But that's like part of this cultural moment where, like, fucking Spielberg's casting director sees a Marlboro ad and is like, What about this guy?

And this is a movie where it's like, I feel like at one point he tried for years to get Tom Cruise to play.

Yeah, yes.

Cruise was the, we'll dig into this.

It was such a big move for like Spielberg to be like, you know what?

I'm anointing

a face here.

And we talk about it in our later Spielberg series and when we've had to come back to him in like new release movies that it feels like from the 2000s on, Spielberg really kind of kept whiffing on picking new leading men.

Yeah.

He kept on trying to like identify people, none of whom had as little of a background as Brad Johnson.

I think you're Jeremy or Vines.

Yeah.

You're Eric Bannis.

You're Eric Bannis.

Which was a little

different.

But Eric Banna kind of almost got there, not just through Spielberg.

I think it's even more the younger dude, the Ty Sheridans, where I like some of Ty Sheridan's work.

He's still around a lot.

Yeah, he's not a bad actor.

But that was sort of framed as the moment of like Spielberg's about to elevate him.

Yeah.

And in fact, it caused him to go, like, I got to go back to smaller stuff.

What is the Belgian actor, Tintin?

What has he been in?

The boy reporter?

Yeah, the boy reported.

Well, he's currently on assignment There's a big asteroid with a mushroom on him.

Okay, he's checking that out.

His best pick in the 2000s was Shia, and then Shia attacked him.

Like, basically, Shia went tarol on him.

I mean, honestly, his best find of late is, well, Gabriel LaBelle is a great friend of mine.

We've talked about this in the family.

He's Rachel.

I mean, friend of the show, Rachel.

Like, that's untrue.

Like, I found someone out of New York.

When I'm talking about the male leads,

were the thing that he was kind of struggling with.

Remember this rando fucker that Ben's friends with called Dan for Lincoln?

I don't know.

Dan L.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll say we think Dan did a good job.

We were all just

at the New York Film Critics Circle.

We were all just at the New York Film Critics Circle together where David put together a very nice evening.

I did.

I mean, it went fine.

As this year's chair.

I was this year's chair.

And

the final award was Best Film for the Brutalist.

Yes.

And it was presented by Robert Pattinson.

R.

Pattens.

And we were sitting very close.

Yeah, you guys had the best seat in the house.

We were about two feet away.

And Ben just turns to me and goes, Bob looks great.

He did.

I will say this.

He was wearing a really nice suit.

His suit was out of control.

The ankles on the guy.

Oh, I mean,

if I can briefly rant about it.

I got a perspective on him, too.

I mean, we both did, where you could just see how pronounced his jawline was.

Like, we were seeing his profile.

It was crazy.

I've interviewed Robert Pattinson when he's in, you know, cash clothes.

Sure.

And even then, obviously, he's incredibly handsome and charming.

And, you know, you get

a star vibe.

Him walking into that room, the critic circle, where there's lots of famous actors and Hollywood people and such.

And he walks in there in that perfect, where you're like, this is another level of people paying attention to what he wears and how he dresses and what his hair looks like.

And just his inherent quality.

He has

a fucking A-list movie star.

He had Elvis entrance, too.

That was the first time.

He came in from the back.

If I can reveal, I guess, off, you know, I was telling Richard this already.

He was supposed to come at 10.

He was our big get, you know, and he's like, I'm going to drop in.

I'll just drop in to present.

And we're like, well, it's the last award of the night.

We're, we'll ballpark around 10 o'clock, show up.

The ceremony starts and I immediately am like, oh, shit.

Like, we're running fast.

No one's rambling.

No one's like,

whatever, like, whatever we'd budgeted for in terms of like, eh, one thing will go long or one thing.

I realize I'm not rambling.

Some, I I think, hosts ramble more than I do.

I'm kind of just like, now we're on to this award and now we're onto this.

You know, like, I'm not like, I

turned to each other and said, you were, your hosting had the energy of you trying to, in real time, edit JJ's dossier.

Yes.

This is what David's introductions felt like.

The movie was made for $5 million.

It came out, got decent reviews.

So anyway, let's talk about it.

We had to bring people on.

There's a lot of awards.

And then you start, so there was a frantic behind the scenes, like, we need to rush patents into, like, you know, know, he needs to get here a half hour earlier.

And he did, God bless him.

But, but here's the point.

It is fascinating that, like, Spielberg has identified, there, there are your, your Zeglers, right?

But I feel like, especially with male stars,

he has broken very few people in a way that's kind of interesting.

And in the 2000s, he started having more roles that felt like this is an opportunity for a young guy to pop.

Even like Justin Chatwin, War of the Worlds is another one we talk about, you know?

Sure.

And you look at like he was not like pinning Pattinson, Harris Dickinson, you know, Jacob Belorty.

Like, I, I mean, I'm saying the guys who did end up getting the right parts that made them.

Spielberg is in theory a guy who should be able to just like put the scepter on someone's head and have everyone just accept that they're real.

Yeah.

And the, the Brad Johnson thing is just kind of fascinating because this movie is sort of built around like,

we had caught lightning in a bottle.

We found this guy you've never seen before.

He is supposed to like bowl you over.

Like totally with his

coaster with like three like very familiar faces to American audiences.

The movie's like secret is all this kind of guy.

David, yes.

This episode is brought to you, the listener by Mubi, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema from around the globe.

From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there's always something new to discover.

With Mubi, each and every film is hand-selected so you can explore the best of cinema streaming anytime, anywhere.

And here's a hand selection.

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Nothing more to discuss here.

Everything's

David.

Turn the spotlight on.

I've put my glove on to select by hand

through the creak of the door.

We have three different visuals going on.

What?

The glove to hand pick.

Oh,

of course.

David Mussolini, Colin, son of the century.

it is it looks it's an exciting project but it's really funny to be like guys mussolini here's what's funny about it just to peel back the curtain for a second we get like messages that are like hey you guys good with this ad yeah here's the copy for the ad and as shorthand it was texted to us as you guys good with the mussolini ad and i was like mussolini sponsoring the podcast what do you mean to be clear we decry ilduce mussolini benito mussolini the terrible dictator of Italy.

But we celebrate Joe Wright and his newest project.

The filmmaker Joe Wright

has created

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

And I will say, not to sound like a

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

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

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

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

You sound like me right now.

This is the kind of thing I say.

It's a very interesting part of history, and I feel like because other World War II things became whatever, the history channel's favorite thing, you don't hear quite as much about Mussolini's family.

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

He's not a hugely

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.

A movie I love.

An episode that people considered normal.

All right, well.

Sequel

checking notes here.

Great.

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

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

That's cool.

Imagine Techno Beats scoring fascist rallies.

It just sounds kind of Joe Wright-y.

It does.

Joe Wright.

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

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

Got futurism,

surreal stagecraft, cutting-edge visuals.

Guardian calls it, quote, a brilliantly performed portrait of a pathetic monster.

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

This is heavy ad copy, guys.

Usually it's kind of like shorts.

Critics are 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 was, he was, he knows he's kind of a cool guy.

We've batted him already.

He's certainly gotten interesting, he's very interesting, he's very interesting, and he's made some great movies, and he's made some like big swings that didn't totally connect.

Totally, that's really interesting.

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

You're like, sure, it doesn't fit the model.

This one does.

This one does.

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

That's mu 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.

Shh.

Okay, okay.

I'll be very quiet.

Oh, I'm used to it.

Producer Ben is sleeping.

Oh,

Hazzy boy is

getting some exact

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 yes sometimes that's psycho behavior it is look he did that when we were sleeping look apparently we need to talk about how when you hear the word game day

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

absolutely and just try to david just if you could please maintain a slightly quiet we don't have to go full whisper i just want to remind you that hoz is sleeping i mostly just think of wayfair as some a website where you can get basically anything yeah of course but wayfair is also also the ideal place to get game day essentials, bigger selection, created collections, options for every budget/slash price point.

You want to make like a sort of man cake style?

Okay, fine, okay, all right, sorry,

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

Like that's, you know, that's all the winter months.

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

You got a whole team to cheer up.

This is true.

You need cribs.

Your place must be lousy with cribs.

I do have fainting beds.

I have cribs.

Sconces?

Chaise lounges?

I'm low on sconces.

Maybe, maybe it's time to pick up a few.

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

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

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Cleveland Browns, of course.

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Okay, that's the end of the Abraham.

All right, look.

So you'd never seen Always.

No.

Ben, you'd never seen this movie, right?

You weren't a big always guy.

You had seen always because you owned it.

It does.

I was a never guy.

Oh.

Yeah, that's good.

Five comedy points.

The guy at Blockbuster is like, how about always?

You're like, how about never?

And then Ben would have to go to a different Blockbuster to be able to make the joke again without it ever being able to go.

This guy fucking recommends always to me.

Why would he do that?

Nobody likes that movie.

I just hope he does.

Ben would go in and be like, I'm looking for a movie that's like ghost.

Sounds like firefighters.

It's like ghost cucking, kind of.

I guess you don't know what the word cuck means yet, but you'll find out.

Did you guys like the movie?

Clearly, Richard had some fondness for the movie as a youngster.

I think so

as of this recording, I've been working on something for work where I'm ranking all of Spielberg's films.

So I've been watching every single one of his films in chronological order.

I did not do that with always.

I kind of skipped past it because I wanted to save it for this.

A lot of movies are just totally different through the lens of Fabelman's now, a lot of his early stuff, in a kind of profoundly strange way.

It's been really interesting for us waiting this long to do the first half of his career and being able to do it with the Fableman.

That's what it was all about.

It changes every single movie.

I would argue, except this one.

Interesting.

This one feels like

its own little side thing that was just sprouted from a conversation or conversations with Richard Dreyfus.

It is less like big and sweeping than I remember it being.

It just, it really does feel like a kind of like one for me little project.

Yeah.

I like this movie quite a a bit i like half of it i was like do i love this that's the thing i don't think it starts really well it makes any major mistakes yeah but just kind of just kind of peter out it's a lot faster than i remembered it being like it just kind of arrives at its conclusions pretty quickly which i think it takes a lot of time setting up its dynamics like dreyfus doesn't die spoiler until like 30 plus minutes into the movie in a way that you feel like other movies would do that five ten minutes in and i was like getting excited by how deliberate the table setting was and feeling like this is really drilling into these characters.

And then the second half moves really fast and just felt like it lost a little of that sensitivity.

Here's what I want to say about it not changing with the context and the Goodman point I was making earlier.

I've always been fascinated by this as the attempted launching of the Brad Johnson thing.

Right.

But I always was just like, yeah, it's a remake of like a guy called Joe.

I've never seen that.

I know it's about like ghosts and planes and a love triangle and whatever.

I just always assumed from the poster.

Oh, right.

Of course.

I was like, and Brad Johnson, I guess, must be some like hunky romantic rival, but I thought this movie got about getting Hunter and Goodman together.

I thought it was G.

I thought it was Ghost Town.

I thought it was.

Dreyfus and Goodman are best friends.

Dreyfus dies.

Oh, and so Ghost Dreyfus is leading Goodman to romance his wife.

Right.

Instead, it's just kind of Ghost Dreyfus going like, hey, hey, hey, Hunter.

Come on, come on, come on, listen to me, listen to me.

she's like, oh, like, you know, and relaxing

at one point, talking to the guy, the neighbor guy from Home Alone.

Yeah, yeah,

Roberts Flossom.

Yes, right, who I think he says, what?

Hermits are like a radio to the who knows what the crazy old hobos.

He's just, I think he calls them crazy old hobos.

Crazy old hobos.

But I'm watching this and I'm like, I can't wait for Holly Hunter and John Goodman to fall in love.

And I think I thought like Brad Johnson was the sort of like Rick Rosevich in the

guy.

Right.

That she's attracted to this hunky guy, and Dreyfus is like, now that's just my fault for letting that narrative go in my head.

But I'm watching and I'm like, if this were that movie and that's what happened in the second half, I'd be like, go into the mat for this so fucking

the bro code would bar Goodman from well, but bro code was not in installed until 1990.

Oh, so it was

a H.W.

Bush brought that up.

Exactly.

You know what Brocode also didn't bar?

Spielberg's family Fablemancing out of control?

Like, that's the other part of it is I'm watching this being like, oh, the interesting Fableman's context of this.

What is Spielberg's?

A dude convincing his best friend to fall in love with his Spielberg's love.

On the Oscar press store for the Fableman's.

He's like, well, the thing that happened is my dad's best friend broke the bro code.

That's why I made this movie.

I needed to take him to Taz.

The bro code was violated.

What if the Fableman's had been called Bro code?

Do you think it would have made more?

Yeah, of course.

If the poster was

was like it was called dano with his hands like

seth rogan with like a will mill

and x through him with michelle williams and the monkey poking out you know from the diagonally from from behind yes and gabriel bell has like binoculars oh this sounds great from the dudes who brought you always

he's cooking him yeah um i think the problem with the second half in in terms of that griffin is that The movie so well establishes the rapport between this couple and their friend.

You see them in moments of suspense, moments of pleasure and joy,

a fight, you know, about something substantial.

You really get to know these people and their dynamic.

And then he dies, and then this other guy comes in and you're like, wait, but who's that?

And I kind of like in the abstract this thing of him being like, I saw a woman one moment a year ago.

Right.

That echoes the way that Dreyfus felt about her.

But I agree with you.

That is the exact structural problem with the movie.

Have none of us seen the original?

I haven't.

No.

I haven't.

Wait, I want to, Ben.

What did you think of always?

Yeah, all right.

So I think Ben and I are a little more aligned because it sounds like you're just out on it.

I don't like always.

I've seen it a couple of times, and I think I have.

You've never liked always?

You always dislike him?

I have a huge problem with always, and I think, I think a huge problem I'm discovering in myself.

Interesting.

I don't like Richard Dreyfus.

I think he's an annoying little rat fuck man.

I don't like his fucking face.

Because I feel like he's one of the most beloved people in the world.

it only grows i've ranted on this podcast a bunch about mr holland's opus which i think it's like one of the most demented quietly demented movies ever made because it's like an inspirational drama about a teacher but it's basically two and a half hours of this asshole yelling at everyone and then at the end he's like my opus

and they play it and it's drivel this is obviously this is the third Dreyfus movie we're covering in this series.

Of course.

But this is the first time.

And I think he gives it a wonderful performance in Jaws, obviously.

And a wonderful performance in Closing County.

And a wonderful,

although very nervy and kind of frightening kind of performance.

Yes.

But it just, I think this is the episode where we really have to unpack the Dreyfus thing.

And not that we haven't been talking about him, that is totally valid.

And I feel like the reviews I read of the movie at the time were just like, I don't want to watch Richard Dreyfus as a romantic lead.

Not really.

What

do you kind of like about the movie?

And Dreyfus.

He's sort of a pseudo-romantic lead because he starts out as a romantic lead and then agree, which is what kind of works for me?

Sure, yeah.

I also think this movie's take is very similar to your take, where it's like this guy sucks.

Does the movie have this?

This guy's like an annoying, arrogant piece of shit.

Like, this feels like the movie where Dreyfus is kind of, whether consciously or not, owning the exact thing that had like turned the American audience off of him at this point in time.

It is fascinating that this movie is 89.

This movie is 1989.

So, 75 is Jaws, 77 is Close Encounters.

79, he's the youngest man to win.

Best actor.

77, he's the youngest man to win.

It was goodbye.

You're right.

Right.

Right.

This is a little over a decade later.

And he's.

In his 80s, just to, you know, down and out in Beverly Hills, Tin Men, nuts.

Like, there are movies, but it's not.

Here's my point.

Bruce Valange did a very good episode of WTF, and he was talking about his history with Bette Midler and how when Eisner started Touchstone Pictures and we're like, Disney, we're going to make movies for grown-ups, their big thing was, let's find a bunch of dinged stars and get them in overall deals.

Let's get like Mazurski, who the other studios have kind of gotten bored with, but is like a solid,

steady hand, great with actors.

Right.

And their big thing was like, five-picture deal, Bette Midler, five-picture deal, Richard Dreyfus.

These are people who have like Oscars or nominations that the public I'm kind of tired of.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

And like bringing them back.

And he was like, downtown Beverly Hills was basically designed as four people who couldn't get arrested

in a movie that was just going to work.

Just say Midler Dreyfus and, of course, Lil Richard.

I was going to say Mazurski.

Lil Richard was popping at that point.

But then I looked at it and I'm like, the space between Goodbye Girl and Down and Out in Beverly Hills is kind of fascinating.

After Down and Out, he has a run of like mostly touched on movies, Stakeout and Moon Over Parador and whatever.

And these movies that are like solid hits are like reasonable hits.

The thing with Stakeout is that's the movie.

That's the star vehicle for Richard Dreyfus.

Yes, where he's

kind of a creep.

Yes.

Kind of an annoying guy.

Like, and always

is the wrong kind of role for him.

But anyway, yes.

I think the movie is hinged on his arrogance.

And

when I heard this Valange statement, I was kind of digging into it where he was just like, Dreyfus just couldn't get.

hired for anything.

Students just didn't want to fucking deal with him.

And I was like, that timeline is so tight to him winning best actor.

How to go that wrong that quickly?

You look at the actual movies.

They're not movies that have really lasted, but none of them were like calamities when they came out.

I can tell you what they were doing.

Give me the wrong.

In 1978, he was in a political comedy thriller called The Big Fix,

in which he played a police detective, good name, Moses Wine,

which was, yeah, a small hit.

Yeah.

In 1980, he's in a movie called The Competition, a Joel Olyansky movie with Amy Irving.

Yes.

It's like a sort of serious movie about a piano player.

You know, gets a couple like below-the-line Oscar noms.

In 81, he does Whose Life Is It Anyway, which is obviously like a big stage play that I assume makes no sense as a movie.

Because that's very much a stage.

Yeah, it's a hospital bed.

Yeah, exactly.

So I assume that's like an Oscar play that just doesn't work because nobody remembers that movie.

Then he's not in a movie for three years.

In 84, he's in a movie called The Buddy System.

with Susan Saranda, Nancy Allen, and Gene Stapleton.

It's about a single mom who forms an unlikely friendship with a school security guard.

Nope.

That's it.

Been down and out in Beverly Hills.

So that run you just listed is what comes directly off the heels of this guy being

the lead or one of the three leads of three of the highest-grossing movies of all time

in the span of seven years.

Saying American Graffiti, of course, along with Jaws.

Jaws and Close Encounters.

And then Wins and Oscar for a good boy.

And then Wins and Oscar.

And then immediately he's in this zone of like, none of these are like calamities none of these are like embarrassments a lot of them are small hits and get kind of middling reviews or whatever and then i was digging into interviews with richard rafas famously normal and chill things to read and he was just like i everyone just hated me right like he owns it where he was just like i was out of my mind on coke i was a nightmare and everyone was annoyed by it geez he's annoying sober imagine him okay

Right, but like by the time you're in this sort of like 80s comeback period, what he's trying to claw back from is understanding that everyone in Hollywood is like, it's not worth it to work with Richard Dreyfus.

And the American public is like, Jesus, this guy's a lot.

Like the public had turned on him.

Not even being able to do that.

Because he played people who are kind of cool a lot.

But it was like they were so into it for seven years.

And then it is kind of like the second he stops being boyish, people were like, this is just annoying now.

And I think in this movie, which I don't mind him in this movie, but I understand the complaints.

But, you know, in the context of what we're talking about, he does seem to be leeching off of his co-star, who's one of the most radiant, appealing movie stars maybe to ever exist.

And not only that, Holly Hunter is a very specific, magical thing.

And he's like drafting off that energy.

And you're like, no, that's hers.

Like, you don't get to take that.

So he's like, I don't know if I want to say I love you to Holly Hunter.

And I'm like, I hope you die fast.

Your plane crashes into the body.

That's right.

I think he's kind of well cast.

Sure, he's well cast as an asshole.

Other people could have done this better.

And I don't think this is like a great performance from him.

But I think there are other Richard Dreyfus comedies of this period where I'm like, Jesus Christ, can you cool it down?

And then this one, the frustration of like, this guy needs to fucking realize that he sucks.

You know, like he needs to eat shit.

It means a lot of the movie is him yelling

at people who can't hear him.

Frustrating to watch.

and annoying.

I agree.

Now, the counter to that is, as you said, like 10 minutes in, I'm like, you know what?

This movie is an automatic three stars for me because any vehicle built around Holly Hunter in this time period is just playing with house money.

It's unbelievable.

It's unreal.

And hey, Goodman essentially being blue from Tailspin.

Fine with that.

Nothing wrong with that.

Like, that's that's some great stuff.

If Goodman was romancing Holly Hunter, it maybe would be an automatic five for me.

If the, like, if the rest of the

physical mismatch

is part of what I found compelling in this mindset version, I'm kind of a Fred Flintstone.

Physics Alone.

Yes.

Kind of Baloo and Mowgli.

Who doesn't hook up with Mowgli?

No, but they're very good friends.

What version of you?

Is that in the Favreau one?

It's in the anti-circus one.

He went off the leash.

No, I was watching her in this last night and I was just, and I'd seen it before, and I, and I was like, oh, right.

When I was a kid, that, I mean, it was the plane stuff and her.

I was just like, so mesmerized.

I was like, who?

I'd never seen someone be that way.

Here's what's crazy.

I'm going to make an extreme statement, but I stand by this.

She's like kind of as good in this as she is in broadcast news, just in a movie that is nowhere near as good.

Like that was the part of me that was like, she is so powerful at this point in time that if you just give her this much runway, she will like motor an entire movie into feeling like it's kind of important anytime she's on screen.

Broadcast news is also giving her like a perfect screenplay and a perfect structure with perfect castmates.

A more interesting character, and also, like,

half of this movie is her having to interact with Brad Johnson, who is a less compelling scene partner than Albert Brooks or William Hurts.

That's why I'm like, she's like making this feel like something out of nothing.

Her character is not really written.

Look, this movie

features Keith David playing a character called Powerhouse.

It should be a five-star series, and it is not.

Yes, it's also a Steven Spielberg movie,

and he does set a high bar for himself.

Yeah.

And this thing is curio at best to me.

I've never, I've, every time I watch it, I'm like, come on, there's a gem in here, right?

Like, this is because the world is so interestingly rendered, like, the place, the setting, like the, the, the, the profession.

I just find like the way that Holly Hunter rides her bike from her cabin to the airfield.

Like, yeah, like, you're like, I want to live in this world.

And then the story kind of just drags you away from it weirdly.

I don't know.

Yeah, it's, it's maybe his most frustrating movie on that level but i feel like i hear a lot of people being like obviously his worst movie obviously i don't

it's like strenuously nothing certainly not his worst movie no yeah 1941 is his worst there are at least five movies i have like underlined bold and below this like i even think the other i only think i have a couple the only Other movie in his filmography I would argue is him trying to do this kind of thing again is the terminal.

Is the terminal, which I think is worse than that?

Greatly preferred this to the terminal although although i re-watched the terminals

and it actually like it's not as bad as i remember it being i don't hate it yeah but i do think i like the world this movie is building even if it feels like it doesn't but i will say land the plan if i will say about always i was watching it last night and i haven't written this this ranking that i'm going to do um that'll be long out by the time this airs but um I was like, for that first 20, 30 minutes, I was like, is this going to be in my top 10?

I wasn't.

I was, yeah, I was.

And then it doesn't, you know, then it doesn't, doesn't deliver.

But like, yeah, the opening is, and that's what Spielberg is good at: being like, you know, compared to Jurassic Park, where you're like, I buy that every one of these scientists actually works here and knows what they're talking about.

And like, I bought the world of always, you know, and then I just don't think he figures out what to do with that.

We should crack open the dossier, but I also just find within the arc that we're covering here, this is such a fascinating movie because A, it's the first time he tries to do the Spielberg doubleheader year.

Right.

This thing he loves.

Well, he loves, or he just kind of ends up doing it, but this came out the same year as Last Crusade.

Yes.

But every time he does a doubleheader year, it's like that, where it's kind of like two different types of movies.

It's not just two movies that happen to get finished around the same time.

Can we run through?

Because I know it's obviously Jurassic and Schindler, Amistad,

Warhorse and Tintin.

Warhorse and Tintin.

You're getting one in the middle there.

And the one in the movie is

Minority Report.

Cat.

That's right.

And War of the Worlds in Munich.

Right.

Wild.

Yeah.

So, I mean, they're almost always kind of like serious and popcorn.

Right.

You know?

Yeah.

And on varying levels.

Sometimes it's a really wide gap, but they're sort of like...

This is one of the narrower gaps.

Agreed.

But I also think this is him coming off of Color Purple and Empire of the Sun, where he's done this swing of like, I want to prove to you guys that I'm a grown-up.

And everyone's like, just fucking cool it, man.

Can you go back to being Steven Spielberg?

Yeah.

He makes Last Crusade, which is like seen as a total commercial triumph.

And it's like, you're back to just having fun.

Yeah, but not, that's, yeah, but it's right.

But he's not reinventing the wheel at all.

And, and like, yeah.

But it's a sort of like, welcome back.

You're doing the thing we've all wanted you to do.

Sure.

And then always feels like him being like, can I make a grown-up movie infused with the things that people like about Spielberg movies rather than the Empire of the Sun color purple, I'm trying to fight against some of my instincts?

Yeah, I think the answer is no.

You feel like he should be able to do this, and it kind of hasn't ever worked for him.

It hasn't ever really worked for him.

And this movie maybe was not as big an Oscar play as, say, The Color Purple or Empire of the Sun, but it's an Oscar play-ish.

It could be.

If this movie had hit, right, it would be an Oscar player.

December 1989.

Like it was positioned.

They shoot Holly Hunter in particular.

He shoots her in a way that feels Oscar-y.

I mean, like, you know, she's coming off a broadcast news nomination, award she probably should have won.

There is a feeling of, like, hey, if someone gives Holly Hunter another great vehicle like that, they'll probably throw her.

And I think Miss Firecracker had gotten great reviews and maybe got like critics prizes or something, but it didn't quite hit at Oscars.

She was like, not overdue yet, but she was ready to be anointed.

And then they said, then the industry said, well, let's just wait until she plays a mute New Zealand person.

She has to stop talking.

Such a bizarre Oscar year.

89?

Yeah.

So this is the Driving Miss Daisy.

It's the Driving Miss Daisy year.

Obviously, Driving Miss Daisy winning Best Picture is a mistake by the Academy Awards.

I don't think any of us can deny that.

That's the only one they've made, though.

They never made a mistake again after that.

Because it should have gone to Batman.

The other nominees that year are Born on the Fourth of July, which it's almost inexplicable that it hadn't won, but I assume it was kind of a like, we gave Platoon Best Picture four years ago.

We're going to give another Vietnam drama from the same guy.

Going in was sort of seen as the front run.

And it wins Best Director.

Right.

So like it definitely was.

It is the funny thing though that like people were like it's probably gonna win picture and actor and then it lost those two and instead they give stone a boss yeah exactly uh dead poets society which there's a world where that could win

it was certainly a big hit a big hit the beloved star beloved star big director but i guess maybe just a little too sort of small but then they gave it a fucking beloved star is robert chun leonard you're talking

field of dreams which only gets two knobs yeah picture and screenplay but is the best movie I've said so far, in my opinion.

Is actually rude they didn't give it more, but that was sort of their kind of like tip of the hat.

It was kind of numbed in the way they would numb a lot of Spielberg movies where they're like, we are acknowledging this is very effective.

This went over when Field of Dreams is that Amy Mannegan movie.

Right.

Keep going.

Just keep doing this

for every movie list of the movie.

My left foot, the original

Miramax has unearthed a European or British or Irish or whatever, you know, movie.

Yeah.

Like, none of those movies, in my opinion, no, I would nominate Field of Dreams.

Like, sure, I would nominate that.

But, like, you know, they're ignoring

Do the Right.

They're ignoring when Harry Met Sally.

That's too.

They're ignoring Crimes and Misdemeanors, kind of insane of them because that gets a bunch of other noms.

They're ignoring Batman.

Thank you.

They're ignoring.

Ghostbusters 2.

Ghostbusters 2.

Ghostbusters 2.

They're ignoring Henry V, which again gets noms, but not a best picture.

But they stole that score and used it in every trailer for 10 years.

I've never seen any of the other Henrys.

Is he the only guy who can pull off that joke?

Yes.

Yes, he is.

And I was charmed.

Not find it funny and charming coming from Beth.

Let me tell you, as an expert, or not, but as someone who knows about British history, Henry III, that'd be a very boring movie.

One and two?

Those are interesting.

Four, obviously, Shakespeare had his field day with that one.

Three, no, no, no.

He's been saying that he wants to get into playwriting.

Maybe you should take on one of the earlier Henry's best actresses.

Henry III was sort of a Richard Dreyfus figure, right?

He was crowned as like a nine-month-old.

Like, he's a weird anyway.

The point I feel like you're making here is this was like the actress don't know what to do.

But also, this is a field that if always had even a little passion behind it, raising to the top.

Who is an actress?

That's what I wanted to ask.

Okay, Jessica Tanny.

And then we'll crack open the dossier.

Yeah.

Jessica Tanney wins best actress.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that win.

She is number one good in the movie.

She's number two, an icon.

I've never actually seen it.

That's crazy.

It's entertaining.

It's quite entertaining.

That's what I assume.

She avoided it because I don't want to be like...

I mean, it is an incredibly dated and silly.

Did Dan Akray get nominated for this?

Yes, he did.

He's good in it.

He's not amazing, but he's good.

In the same year that he appears in the film always.

He's not as good in

1941, just word avoiding.

Sure.

He's had some peaks and valleys, old Akray.

Sure.

Tandy's really good in driving Miss Davis.

And like,

you know, she's playing a character who won't say her feelings.

Like, it's, you know, like, and so, like, you know, no, she's good.

And she's a legend, a living legend.

Right.

And she was the oldest winner ever.

The Oscar obviously, obviously, should have gone to Michelle Pfeiffer and the Fabulous Baker Boys, which is like one of the greatest.

And she had won every Medicine Prize.

Yeah.

Right.

But probably was just doomed with like, oh, she's young.

We'll get to her.

Tandy's got to win this year, right?

The other nominees are Isabel Ajani, the legend, for Clamille Caudell.

Wow.

Okay.

So a bit of a boring, you know, kind of tony, Frenchy movie, but like Isabelle Ajani, she rocks.

Pauline Collins and Shirley Valentine, the charming, you know, British, you know,

little movie that could, right?

Where she's like, ah.

I have, for whatever reason,

watched the 1989 Siskel and Ebert, if we picked the Oscar specialist.

They're just like, perplexed.

They won't stop harping on,

we're really going to to nominate this.

Like, they keep on going, like, it's fine.

We kind of need an early version of it.

But, like, what's going on here?

The Billie Elliotts and the, you know, these little British movies that could, like, they would just charm the pants off of you.

I don't remember who they were arguing.

It

should have been in that slot, but they were just like, really?

We couldn't find anyone else.

I should watch it.

That sounds fun.

Because the fifth nominee is Jessica Lang for Music Box, which is like a forgotten Costa Gavras movie, like a very serious movie about an attorney and like a war criminal in Hungary and stuff like that.

In between her two wins, right?

But like, does kind of feel like one of those ones where they're like, whoa, very serious.

Like, now, if I a hundred people out of a hundred have never heard music box.

I mean, like, you're Lewis for tells of the world who know every single nominee since 1930.

Even Lewis might like take 10 seconds.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, there would be a music box.

Yeah, the question.

So, does Jessica Lang play Mariah Carey?

Cute.

Thank you very much.

Well done.

And if I look at the

Golden Globes, right, where you're sort of like, who else is in there?

Okay, Sally Field for Steel Magnolia.

It's kind of weird that she whiffed on that.

Like, she's good in that.

But Roberts gets the nomination.

Wow, she fucking rocks.

Yeah, but it's actually weird, though, because they liked her.

Yeah, they really liked her.

They really liked her.

They really liked her.

Andy McDowell and Sex Lives and Videotape got a Global Nom, an amazing performance, in my opinion.

Meg Ryan got a fucking Golden Globes nom.

Maybe throw her a boat.

That's what they should have done.

And Meryl Streep got a Golden Globes nom for She-Devil, devil but that wasn't getting enough scanner yeah do you know she devil is one of the best movies she devil rocks but obviously was uh you know not a hit yeah but she rules in it and the reviews at the time were so fucking mean to her was she devil 89 yeah 89.

so so this is the movie goodman got after one season of roseanne and that's what she got

yeah that's interesting and kathleen turner for war of the roses which is a good movie that she's good in the movie it was just a little too like poisonous do you think if when harry met sally in i mean obviously it would be it wouldn't be as 80s but like if if that quality romantic comedy with that kind of central performance came out now, would Mega Ryan get an Oscar nomination?

I think, yes, assuming it was a big, big hit.

Because I think sometimes history, like Academy history, it was kinder to comedy, but in some ways it wasn't.

I don't know.

I think at this point, they're really starting to trend towards.

the more prestigey stuff.

It's the late 80s.

It's the Your Out of Africa's Your Last Emperor.

This is the era that defines what we still like shorthand think of as quote-unquote Oscar baby.

Right.

And Dryden is Days it is a comedy, sort of, but it's like a waiting comedy body shit.

She's

who is it?

Like in the 70s, is it Marcia Mason who got like three nominations for Neil Simon movies?

You know,

but then that in the 80s, no more of that.

We're not doing that.

Exactly.

Maybe we'll get like Diane Weist something in supporting, but like, right, and like broadcast news was just heady enough.

As good as it gets, it's just dramatic enough.

Walking girl was just dramatic enough.

That was the thing they loved: you start out like funny comedy of manners characters, and then it gets really dramatic at the end.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'm cracking open the dossier.

Please.

Steven Spielberg.

Now, I don't know if you guys know this, but he had a childhood and he would watch it.

I mean, it was great, right?

He was happy.

Hey, settle cooking.

Yeah.

And were there any monkeys?

No, right?

The graph of his child is like zero monkeys, zero monkeys, zero monkeys.

One monkey.

Uh-oh, things are really bad.

We had Brian Michael Bandis on for the Rares of the Lost Ark episode, and he just called out the monkey,

which we were like, holy fucking shit.

I can't believe

we never thought about it.

An evil scheming monkey.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

when young Steven Spielberg was a lad in Arizona, he would watch old movies, sometimes on the television.

And there was a movie called A Guy Named Joe, 1943 wartime MGM drama directed by Victor Fleming, who definitely never screamed anything at Judy Garland.

Scripted, as you may know, quite damply

by Mr.

Dolphin Troll.

Clickety clack, splishity splash.

Starting to put down the ducky for a moment in order to type out the rest of the script.

Spencer Tracy, who let me tell you, makes sense in this role.

Like, you know, like Richard Dreyfus.

It makes sense as the Richard Dreyfus of the time.

Yeah, Richard Dreyfus wishes his ass with Spencer Tracy.

Irene Dunn, the great Irene Dunn, and Van Johnson, no relation to Ben Johnson or whoever it is in all ways.

Van Johnson, let me say, I like Van Johnson, but it kind of was more the Richard Dreyfus of his time.

Sure.

And then Ward Bond is the John Goodman.

Anyway, it's about a World War II fighter pilot.

He dies, and then he comes back to Earth as a ghost and sort of tries to get his former lover together with her new beau.

And Spielberg.

said it was the second movie after Bambi that made him cry.

I didn't even understand why I was crying, but I did.

Like the Tracy character being powerless.

He's like this piece of furniture, but he's trying to affect things anyway.

As a child, I was frustrated.

Maybe I saw my own parents in it.

This is the part of it that I do think has the Fableman's lens.

The other thing that

says a lot.

There it is.

Is that like, you know, his father, who was kind of like a Paul Dano type.

It was a bit of a Paul Dano type, but fucking flew planes in dull war.

This is the thing.

And like, didn't want to talk about it

and didn't know how to relate to Spielberg on his own shit.

Yes.

Right.

That Spielberg would watch this movie and feel some emotional connection to, like, this helps me understand my dad.

Now, this, I'm sure JJ got this wrong because I don't think Richard Dreyfus would ever behave this aggressively.

But on the set of jaws, they're making Spielberg's working with Richard Dreyfus, and they find that they both love this movie.

My name is a guy called Joe.

My name is Joe is a Ken Loach movie, which is really good.

They've both seen it dozens of times.

And Dreyfus says, if you ever remake that film and cast anyone else as Pete, I'll kill you.

Now, that can't be true.

Dreyfus would never talk that way to somebody.

No, I can't imagine.

Was he wiping his nose

at the time?

Rubbing his teeth.

Yeah.

Was he smoking four cigarettes at once he was crying

right his body was like we're full

you're gonna start sweating it out buddy you want me to catch the runoff you can sell this

um

spielberg at mgm uh

does start to work on maybe remaking the film it was an mgm picture they had the rights dreyfus uh he spielberg in his infinite wisdom is like dreyfus makes absolutely no sense for this movie i want to to cast Robert Redford.

Yeah, no shit.

Good job, Steven Spielberg.

Well, but here was the problem.

His idea was great opportunity to do another Newman and Redford.

First, he wants to team up Redford and Newman, I guess, with Newman probably as the deceased pilot and Redford as the new

whole issue was

they both want to be the pilot.

They both want to be the pilot.

They couldn't settle.

Other actors considered Harrison Ford in the John Goodman role.

Interesting.

That would have been disorienting.

No, I mean, you also just don't want to let Harrison Ford near planes.

He's going to start just randomly picking people up.

That would have been how Audrey Heperon died.

Also, Deborah Winger makes a lot of sense early 80s.

A ton of sense.

The exact person that Holly Hunter replaces for broadcast news.

Yeah, and of course, another person who never ever did cocaine.

Could you imagine?

I know these are different versions, different eras, but could you imagine if Deborah Winger and Richard dreyfus made a movie together in the 80s

the poster is like covered in powder people have to like i can't what's the movie called

the director is still missing to this poster is a mirror you can just sniff off of all right

So first draft was written by this guy, Jerry Belson, who I think has the sole credit

on the movie.

Well, we'll talk about it.

Okay.

He did end up getting the sole credit.

There's a weird thing where in all their early marketing materials, it's a co-credit.

And then the final film, it's a single.

Diane Thomas, who wrote Romancing the Stone, does a

subsequent draft.

And as you say, some promotional materials include her name, but only Belson got credit.

Tom Stopper did passed it.

Yes.

Whatever.

We talked about Diane Nelson in our Romancing the Stone episode.

Has this like insanely tragic life story where she dies under horrible circumstances right after Romancing the Stone kind of makes her the toast of the town.

And you feel like she would have been one of the major screenwriters of the next four or five decades.

And she doesn't write Jewel of the Nile because Spielberg plucks her for this.

Suddenly, and then, like, she was the original writer on Last Crusade in a different version.

I should say on Indiana Jones 3.

Like, it was like, that was a much different plot.

It was a haunted house movie.

Right, sounds great.

But, like, Spielberg and Lucas basically did the Kazden with her, where they were like, it's a drunk driving ass, and it's very tragic and really funny.

It's like a horrible, horrible story.

But, but, yes, but I think a lot of her work does end up in the final film.

Sure, but she never got to complete it.

Spielberg says, no script, though, could really find the right balance between humor and sensitivity and romance.

Some are too funny.

Some are too sappy.

And so it takes him a while to find a screenplay he really likes.

In my opinion, he should have kept looking.

My point I want to make is I just almost feel like had she lived, she might have been someone who had gotten there eventually.

Maybe.

I mean, Spielberg's, an interesting thing is that the earlier elements scripts were like Spielberg-y.

So like he walks through walls and shit.

They were like, Let's give us a chance for some VFX.

Like, he's a ghost.

Yeah.

And

when he finally does make the film,

he is going through his divorce from Amy Irving,

which he doesn't talk about too much, but clearly was very, very hard on him.

And so on and so forth.

Also, just make it clear: obviously, the MGM version stalls out.

He walks away

from it for a while.

He has a big deal at Universal now.

And he just, he comes back to his thing he wants to do.

There's a rights acquisition.

Suddenly it becomes like we're fast tracking this.

I'm getting, I mean, it's interesting because he had, he had a weird 80s.

Yes.

Right.

Like not an unsuccessful one, but it's just interesting that he, I mean, I guess, what am I saying?

Of course he had the clout to get this made.

It's just, it just arrived at such a weird time in his career to be able to, for a studio to be like, yeah, sure, go, go.

This 160 Minutes interview, I'll keep referencing and I'll make sure we post on the social media, but it's in the hook moment, which is fascinating to me because it's right before the year.

It's the last moment before his Schindler Jurassic year, where it's like this guy can kind of never be questioned again, right?

And he's showing them this like giant compound that is the Amblin offices, this huge house that has like 80 arcade cabinets and multiple floors and just like looks like a luxury villa.

Right.

And

it's at Universal and they make it very clear that Universal just built this for him unprovoked and said, Hey, we don't have you under contract.

You don't owe us anything.

Just feel free to stay here on the lot.

If you want.

And anytime you want to do a movie with us, we'd love to hear it.

Like his power was so great, even within a weird 80s.

That's what they do after E.T.

Right.

It's that moment where they're just like, we just want to be closest to him geographically whenever he has a new idea for a movie.

We're even coming off of a few that didn't connect that hard.

Right.

If he goes to them and it's like, what if I want to make always?

They're like, absolutely.

Well, buy the rights.

Who do you want?

They're still just like.

Because I would imagine also they were like, well, that has some commercial potential.

There's plane scenes and explosions and shit.

It's coming off of him making like two very heavy dramatic movies.

Right, exactly.

You're like, this is like a supernatural romance.

Right, great.

Spielberg says he also couldn't find the right guy to play Pete.

And then he watched Stakeout and was kind of like, I guess.

Dreyfus has aged into the role.

He's kind of experiencing a second wind at this point.

Holly Hunter, he sees broadcast news and is like, that's definitely the person I want.

I would say that was a pretty good call on him.

That's a good call.

And he didn't want to make the movie with like, you know, big, glamorous stars.

No offense to Richard and Holly.

He wanted the more earthy, real-type peak.

Which is a great choice, I think.

John Goodman, obviously, he'd seen Roseanne and loved him in Roseanne.

I mean, had not seen Raising Arizona.

Interesting.

Or at least had not thought about Raising Arizona.

He said only once he starts making the movie he realizes like, oh, right, Holly Hunter and John Goodman were already in a movie together.

Yeah.

I mean, this is weirdly one of the other pieces of this movie's legacy.

One of the only reasons it ever comes up in conversation is John Goodman, one season of Roseanne, gets cast.

He's going to be above the title with his fucking face on the poster in a Spielberg movie.

He goes to the first table read.

He likes to feel so validated, like I'm being recognized by like the top people in the industry.

And he gets to the table read, and Spielberg stands up and he's like, I want to introduce my cast, Holly Hunter, Richard Dreyfus.

And ladies and gentlemen, I have found my live-action Fred Flintstone, John Goodman.

And everyone applauds.

And Goodman's like, oh my God, he only fucking called me because he wants to do a Flintstones movie.

And like Flintstones takes five years to happen.

Right.

But Spielberg had been like, would it be cool to do live action Flintstones?

And Goodman just talks up feeling so demoralized about like, he views me as a cartoon character, which this movie uses him in a very earthy way.

But

he like was like, I didn't want to to do Flintstones.

I had no interest in ever doing Flintstones.

And at that moment, when he made everyone applaud, I was like, I guess I can't not do this.

The world is telling me I have to do this.

Right.

And Spielberg was right.

It was very, very cool to do a live-action Flintstones.

Very cool.

What a cool movie.

Yeah.

So, Audrey Hepburn, in the original movie, Lionel Barrymore, it's a male,

whatever, angel voice of God character.

Male Hep.

Male Hep.

Right.

Who'd he want?

Sean Connery.

Sean Connery.

He's like, oh, that's Sean Connery.

Sean Connery's like, I'm under the sea right now.

He's making Red October.

Which he jumped on to like three days into filming.

And Audrey Hepburn.

I mean, when had she even last been in a movie?

They all laughed.

And like is basically just like a UNICEF ambassador, right?

You know, she got paid $1 million for this movie and gave that $1 million check directly to UNICEF.

Basically said, like, I have been soft retired.

Yeah, they all laughed, which is 81.

So, you know, it's eight years prior.

Yeah.

And, and the gaps have been big.

Like, she rocked.

100%.

She does.

Marianne is like 78.

That's 76.

She does like two movies in the 70s.

Like, you know, yeah.

She's good.

I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's all kind of just like, oh, shit, that's Audrey.

I was going to say, you know, it is effective stunt casting.

Right.

It is kind of the thing where he talked about like Connery doesn't want to do it.

And he was talking to Holly Hunter and was like, who like would represent like

God or like, you know, an angelic force on screen?

A calm, benevolent God.

And then it was just like, oh, duh, Audrey Hepburn.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, more weight lent to it by it, her being her final film.

Yeah.

And it's not like an incredible performance, but it is like, I find it to be remarkably effective stunt casting.

It's her final film, but she did two seasons of Roseanne.

She did do two seasons.

Yeah.

She played the lunchbox.

Yeah, she was on Bobby's World.

Just trying to think of the the most irrelevant cartoon I could have.

Hey, that's a very relevant cartoon.

You're right.

It is funny.

That's the first thing that forever John Goodman will have been in a movie with Audrey Hepburn.

Yeah.

It's a strange pairing, but it works.

Like, do you think they, like, obviously they don't have scenes together, but like, did they, did they, like, talk at Crafty?

I would hope so at the cast party.

My favorite anecdote I saw is Audrey Hepburn provided her own wardrobe.

Oh, sure.

And they were

called deeply tracks.

Yep.

And they were, Stielberg was very intense on, like, she has to have this heavenly glow around her, you know, and she's brought this delicate white cashmere and we can't sully it.

So crew guys would have to carry her to and from her marks on a stretcher.

Not because she couldn't walk, but they were like, you can't touch dirt on this.

It has to be a maximum.

The skins are in the woods, but you cannot touch the woods until the moment we roll.

Like, I just, I mean, she's 62 in this.

Yeah.

Is that right?

She's that young.

Yes.

And she died the next year, right?

Yes.

And she had already kind of like,

I mean, it's what we were talking about in the color purple episode of like legendary movie stars used to just kind of like slowly retreat.

Yeah, she had like a very rare kind of abdominal cancer, came on suddenly.

The big change he obviously makes is it's no longer a World War II movie.

They make it contemporary and they sort of make this interesting pick of like, yeah, fire, you know,

what else use as planes.

Right.

Yeah.

I love it.

I think it's very interesting and it's kind of like an odd niche.

Here's the thing.

It's got that like

this is like a very specific subculture.

i just don't see depicted let's also i'll just gonna call out not to be a bummer i know we're watching time we're recording this episode put la out it is the

of the tragic kind of uh incomprehensible uh uh situation going on in los angeles yes and there there is something it's it was there was no circumstance in which i could watch this movie especially the first 30 minutes and have

it it yeah sort of jolting it's jolting you feel such a catharsis and when they're able to put stuff out.

You feel the stakes of it so much.

For sure.

And I think it's such an interesting choice.

And it's referred to directly in the movie where they're like, you're not fighting in the war.

Where it's like, it's about hotshot ace fighter pilots without a war to fight.

Yes.

And how it makes Dreyfus a little more reckless.

And like, you know, I think it's, I think it's actually kind of about a generation in a way.

And I'm like, this Dreyfus would be disastrous casting if he had to be a military man in any way.

Right.

Yeah, no, he wouldn't fit that.

Right.

There's something about him being

the elder of a tribe, but not military.

Yeah.

And he, like, right.

He can't have that sort of like valor to him.

Right.

Yeah.

That's, that's the problem.

David, what?

This episode of Blank Check with Griffin David podcast balphimographies is brought to you by booking.com.

Booking.

Yeah.

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

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Yeah.

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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

people bringing me in and there's only one other person in the room?

There is 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.

Look, people have different demands.

And you know what?

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

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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.

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

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

You got air conditioning.

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

Yes.

You got to have air conditioning.

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

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

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

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

You do.

You love selfies.

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

Look, they're again,

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

And I'm like, sounds good to me.

Yeah.

Please.

Can I check that for you?

You want one of those in the recordings, too.

That'd be great.

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I'll be in the sauna when we record.

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

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

You would look good if I had a sauna and a cold plunge and while recording, I'm on mic, but you just were going back.

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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 ads based 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.

This is laser targeted.

The product.

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

It certainly is.

And what is today's episode sponsored by?

The Toxic Avenger.

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

Macon Blair's remake of

reimagining, whatever.

Reboot of the Toxic Avenger.

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

Yeah, I'm going to see it.

We're

excited to to see it, but Ben, you texted us last night.

This fucking rules.

It fucks.

It honks.

Yeah.

It's so great.

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

Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay,

Taylor Page with Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon.

Tremblay is Toxie's son.

His stepson.

His stepson.

Okay.

Wade Goose.

Yes.

Great name.

Give us the takes.

We haven't heard them yet.

Okay.

You got fucking Dinkledge is fantastic.

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

Trauma.

Yes.

Yes, that's right.

The original film.

Yep.

I grew up watching toxic and trauma movies on porches

with my sleazy and sticky friends.

It informed so much of my sensibility.

Your friends like Junkyard Dog and Headbanger.

Yeah, exactly.

Making Toxic Crusader jokes.

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

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

But I feel like there have been years of you being very excited at the prospect, but also a little weary they're playing with fire here yeah it's just it's something that means a lot to me and they knocked it out of the 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 and in this way that it was just i was so pleased with it it's gooey

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 one of the huge hits.

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

who are also mercenaries

and drive a van

with a skeleton giving two fingies up on the grill.

And that's all I'll say.

Okay.

And they are the most dang-ass freaks of dang-ass freaks.

I'm excited to see it.

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

Seriously, get your tickets now.

Go to toxicadvenger.com/slash blank check.

Do it, do it.

Uh, the big uh challenge for this movie is filming like forest fire sequences is fucking hard.

Yes, just as Cowie Long.

Yeah, they would bring in like fake trees to set on fire.

They would sort of, I don't know, like

reburn areas of the Yellowstone fire.

They photographed some actual forest fires, right?

They like go to Montana and like shoot actual forest fires.

A lot of it is sound stages, and they do have like fake trees that they set on fire and stuff.

I don't know.

The whole thing seems pretty.

There's something, despite the fire feeling very real and visceral and scary, there is something very kind of like golden age Hollywood to the way he films the planes and the cockpits.

A level of artificiality that I like.

I couldn't tell how much of it was sets, you know, on gimbals and how much of its models or whatever, but I liked that quality to it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think and it's like a good level of like Spielberg doing Spielberg whizbang without also turning it into too much of a Spielberg stunt show.

Yeah.

Right.

I think the sound design is really crucial for balancing the kind of artificiality with the realness.

The sound of the propellers, the engines, like when it when a plane crashes through a fiery tree, like it, it does register.

I mean, as a kid, I was like, it was like, I was in awe of it in a kind of terrified way.

Before we started recording, I asked the question, is this the movie with the most overhead plane sounds?

And I was like, it genuinely might be more than like shit like Top Gun because something like that has like peaks and valleys.

And this, it just feels like you're constantly hearing.

DP is Mikhail Solomon, who had shot the Abyss and was recommended to Spielberg

by Jim Cameron,

but does like backdraft out of this and then basically becomes a director.

He's directed tons of Spielberg television stuff and other TV stuff.

He did Band Brothers, Rome, Alias, you know, a bunch of stuff.

But it's funny that he only worked with Spielberg the one time.

Yeah.

Well, because I mean, right, because Yannish is about to

be as well.

Yeah, yeah.

And then, yeah.

But anyway,

always.

And yeah, then they make the movie and we'll get to its release, but it certainly is forgotten by current generations because it just kind of went over okay and was quickly forgotten.

Like,

I think, I don't, I don't think it was like the hardest movie he ever shot or anything, but like it was like, you know, it was a real movie and they, they had to figure stuff out and do stuff.

And then it comes out and it's just everyone's kind of like, meh.

It was, we were entering an era then when like earnest romantic dramas were kind of falling by the wayside.

Yeah.

It's kind of caught between two eras in a way.

And I do think it's like too sappy.

And Spielberg caught between like two poles.

A little bit.

Yeah.

So it doesn't like, it's like, who's this movie for?

It is funny to me.

I don't know if funny is the right word, but like

this sort of Spielberg, you're not profound.

You don't have serious adult thoughts.

Don't try to do this.

You're out of your depth, right?

And then he like immediately like cracks the code on Schindler.

And, you know, seven years ago, we covered the second half of his career where like no one questions when he announces, I want to make a World War II film or a film about the Munich Olympics or whatever, you know?

Yeah.

Like

the growth, like the internal development in him is fascinating.

And obviously he still is capable of making like super sappy, kind of sugary, emotional grown-up movies like this.

But it does feel like for the first half of his career, it's like there are things you were good at and things things where you added your depth.

And then even though he makes good and bad and great and terrible movies after that point, post-Schindler, it's like, you can do anything you want.

We trust you to work in any genre, at any size, at any tone, and also like at any visual palette.

Like you can make movies look very different.

Yeah, it's just, this is in some ways, I mean, there's a lot of technical skill in this one, but this, you know, right before his kind of, you know, King of the Universe thing, like this movie does not have a ton of brand identity to it as a Spielberg movie.

It's just kind of like a solid studio release from 1989.

Yeah, it almost feels like the answer should be this was directed by John Turtletop or whatever.

Is John Turtletop around right now?

At this time, I think it's a little early.

Like, if you had told me that this was like Ed Zwick or something, I'd be like, sure.

Swick.

That's true.

It's Zwickerooney.

And excuse me,

Turtletop is about to poke out of his shell with Think Big in 1990.

That's a sequel to

Music Box.

You know what it really kind of feels more like?

And I know the timing is just a little off because this is the same year that that guy activates in a certain way.

It really kind of feels like a Reiner movie.

Sure.

Right?

Yeah.

Like, you could just see this being a castle.

Carl Reiner movie.

Yes.

I could see Ron Howard making a movie like this around this time.

Again, like where it's like Ron Howard made sturdy,

sort of C B minus star featuring

movies that cost like a middle amount of money.

Yeah.

Um,

that could be sappy, yeah, but not like you know, so sappy.

Well, kind of sappy.

Yeah.

This movie is that.

Yes.

With some Spielbergian flair in the aerial sequences.

And even just in like the, the, his classic, the blocking.

The fucking.

Well, the blocking is good.

Yeah.

Oh,

it's also, because I'm, you know, I've been watching all of his movies.

I noticed this.

It's yet another of his movies, kind of from his era, where Mark Helgenberger is treated terribly.

No, I'm kidding.

There's no other movie that that gets in.

But she really forgets the business.

She really,

when she shows up, you're like, oh, Mark, it's a pleasure to see you.

And Marie's like, no, no, no.

It's not a pleasure to see you.

She's pathetic and no one likes it.

Don't lead her on.

You know,

the movie starts in this, I mean, like, what, Top Guns, just a couple years before.

Yep.

And Richard Dreyfus is the fucking maverick of this, you know, band of Oregonian, you know, fire, aerial firefighters, right?

Like, it's like, you're always, your plane's too close to the trees, you crazy man.

You always let your fuel tank run out.

This is the stuff I kind of like about Dreyfus and the role, right?

Is that

this guy's kind of like king of shit mountain, right?

Like, the work they do is important, right?

But you're not, he feels like he's a rock.

Under some of the things that you're doing.

Well, and she's like, you have gray hair.

Right.

And she says in the movie, she's like, she's like, if he was like saving actual people, like, you know, if they're actual lives, then maybe I could understand it more.

But, you know.

He's largely saving trees, I suppose.

I mean, the movie frames it more as a conservation effort than a right.

Right.

But he does do something that is daring, obviously.

He flies these big fucking things and, you know,

gets skilled.

You have to dump fire material.

I don't know.

It's kind of cool.

And there's.

A sort of pretty dazzling opening sequence that, you know, is him not dying.

I get one sequence of him seeming like he might not make it, but he makes it.

And scaring her as she bends a spoon in her hand from stress.

Right.

And

she's kind of like, look, I love you.

I want to drink Budweiser out of a champagne glass of you for the rest of your life.

And he's like, yeah, look, you're great, but...

My heart belongs to my plane.

I have some notes about that dress, you know.

I mean, I know, I know.

No, I mean, I don't,

nothing specific.

I just, I know it was 1989, but like, goof.

Well, she's rough.

Because the movie is like, va-va-voo, look at her.

Her girl clothes.

And like, right, there's that vibe too of like, did you know Holly Hunter could like look hot in a dress?

And everyone's like, yeah, fucking yeah, of course she was.

She just wore the best dress in the history of movies like two years ago.

So

she is kind of like, why don't you just take a teaching job?

We can settle down.

Like things can be a little less risky.

And he's like, ah, but I just love wearing sunglasses.

And she says, actually, well, okay, then I'm going to go become a pilot myself.

I mean, she can already fly, sort of, but she threatens basically to start doing what he does.

And he says, no, you can't do that.

And then they do one last run.

It takes a while, like you say, Griff, but it's also, it's sort of, you know, opening sequence and then let's get to know Richard and Holly.

And hey, Goodman's there having fun.

But like, I'm going to throw out a weird analog, right?

Sure.

A movie sequence where he dies.

Yeah.

A movie like Jack Frost, right?

Where the whole thing is like, this guy's going to die.

He's going to be a snowman.

Right.

And then he's going to have, he's going to be struggling to connect with the people he didn't quite love enough.

He's going to go into the fly machine with some snow and splooney.

Yes.

In my memory, he's alive for like less than 15 minutes in that movie.

There's like one scene where he's like, you know, I got to go on the road.

I got to play my jazz music.

I got a scarf.

She's a jazz music.

He plays like white man blues.

Yeah.

Oh, no, it's a white man boy.

He's a snowman.

He's a whiter man.

You see him do like one concert sequence

of Fabelman's-esque movie in 30 years in which a young Damien Chisselle watches Jack Frost

in awe.

Oh boy.

That movie just does the alternate like family comedy shorthand of like, this guy doesn't spend enough time with his family, right?

It's like one scene of him being like, I gotta go.

Then you see him play a bad fucking concert.

And then he's like, oh, shit, the snow.

Over

tour bus flips over.

Whatever the fuck.

It's like so quick where you're like, I mean, this is Michael Keaton.

I don't care about this guy.

You're like going through the motion so much.

Yeah, make him a snowman already.

Right.

I like that this movie basically spends, gives.

Treyfus's character 30 minutes to like provide him the rope to hang himself.

Well, here's my problem.

I don't like him.

But this is.

When he dies, I'm like, yes.

And then he comes back as a ghost, and I'm like, boom!

So banish him to the shadow realm.

I ask you,

knowing the promise of the premise, does that not kind of work in the movie's favor that you're like, this movie is ultimately going to be about this guy needing to fucking let go?

That we know we're not rooting for them to be together.

That this movie is kind of about him being wrong for her?

In my opinion, it should work in the movie's favor.

And I guess I kind of just get hung.

And to be clear, I think this movie's kind of like a five or six out of ten.

Like, I don't think it's like a disaster.

Yeah.

But like, and I'm also not saying this is like a great performance or even necessarily a particularly good performance.

Yeah.

But I think it

uses his weird status in a way that I think is kind of interesting.

Because as you're saying, it's like there's the moment you think he's going to die, he doesn't.

And then you, as an audience member, knowing what you've bought a ticket to, are so frustrated that you're like, this guy won't fucking admit that he loves her.

He needs to turn everything into some sort of snarky joke.

He needs to play cooler and above it all.

Yeah.

I just think the problem with hanging out with him is that he he

sucks.

The Dreyfus unlikability maybe carries that characterization too far.

And I think some of the way that

he talks to her

pretty, not misogynistically exactly, but like something close.

And maybe with a more like traditionally charming leading man actor, that would play a little bit better.

This is the era where Paul Newman is really successfully transitioning into being a salty dog, right?

Where he's really like loving playing kind of shitheel parts and broken men.

And you could certainly see if this movie was Newman and Redford, right?

Yeah, sure.

It would probably totally work.

I don't know.

Even though the script isn't perfect, I think it would totally work as just kind of like a movie movie.

I think Newman would be able to play the same kind of like glib arrogance where you're like, dude, get out of your fucking way.

But also, there is a base level charm from watching Paul Newman and being like, I know this guy isn't a monster in a movie star coded way paul newman would have been old though this is

what you would have cast holly hunter you'd need to put someone else in there yeah you would have the weird problem of

newman and redford being in scenes together but unable to interact it's kind of like a weird arm behind your back thing like like hoffman and hackman in runaway jury yeah well that's why they had to give him the urinal scene right exactly the urinal scene is the uh diner in heat scene of runaway jury yes They talk about that they were like halfway through filming and they were like, wait a second, we don't have the movie scenes.

What the hell are we thinking?

Yeah, it's, I, I mean, here's the other thing.

Dreyfus plays so old in this movie and then you do the math and you're like, he's 38?

Like, how old was Dreyfus when they filmed this?

That's a great question because Dreyfus's age is always kind of hard to pin down because he went gray early and all that.

But all right, he was born in 47.

So he's 40, he's in the early 40s.

Yeah, so

Goodman was like 35 when they filmed it, I think, 36.

Yeah.

So so dreyfus's early 40s yeah which yeah it doesn't and hunter was only what like 32 i think yeah good call hunter is redford and newman hunter's a full 11 years younger than dreyfus and redford and newman are like 10 years older than dreyfus right sure and goodman's kind of in the middle of them he was born in like the early 50s yes you'd have to you'd have to cast that part differently right right which but but in terms of like actor charisma you're right that it would work very well yeah Yeah.

Um, so the Goodman thing is also just destabilizing.

I mean, my mental movie is the most extreme version of that and is on me, but also, like, as you said, it's only one year into Roseanne, and yet this movie knows that America loves this guy so fucking much that it acts as if everyone is like deeply familiar with him.

But like the life is going to be more important than being the supportive friend.

He's certainly going to like exceed being the Harry Connick Jr.

in the Independence Day of this triangle, right?

Yeah, it's funny because it's like Goodman is

obviously good in the movie, yeah, because he's rarely bad, and that this is one of our finest screening, but especially at this point, he can't really miss.

And of course, Goodman made movies like the Babe Ruth movie that did miss, where you're like, John Goodman is Babe Ruth, that's like the easiest shit in the world.

It's like, yeah, but the movie stinks, you know, but like, right, but like, it's not like Goodman's bad in any of these things, Goodman's always good.

Yeah, is it a mistake to have someone who's almost too good?

Like, in a way, there's that thing where, like, I remember watching revenge of the nerds as uh for the first time on like comedy central and john goodman pops up like six minutes in and i was like oh my god cracking my knuckles john goodman movie and then the movie proceeds and you're like oh this must have been before he got famous I'm ready for John Goodman to be all over this movie, but the movie doesn't understand what it has yet.

Yeah, exactly.

But always in the way it is sold, clearly knew they had something.

And yet the part is like too small for him.

He is like too confused.

It's a problem almost right he's overheating the movie in a weird way to be a character trying to basically is just like a sounding board for the other characters and to have him in this supporting friend instructor role yeah and to have the new shiny guy who is supposed to sweep all of us off of our feet totally along with holly hunter to have him be like pretty inert

yeah he's fine i mean but he but it's it's not like you know i'm trying to think of like someone who walks on screen and you're like jesus christ like like those people do, I mean, you know, Brad Pitt and Thelma Louise or something.

Sure.

And, but to have like then Goodman, you're like, can we just go back to Goodman?

That's the wild thing is watching this, it almost feels like the movie is framing him to be a Baxter.

Right.

And when I get to the point where I'm like, oh, wait, no, this movie is working towards them ending up together.

That's where we're, what we're supposed to be rooting for.

It feels wrong.

Like it feels incorrect.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I, I, yeah, I agree.

The calculation is off or something.

And I'm like much more into

even

removing my projection of it leading in a romantic direction.

Goodman like reconnecting with her and being like, you have to come back to the world of the living.

Right.

Like I'm like, if you almost just remove the element of her falling in love with someone else.

And it is just like the best friend and the lover of this dead guy working through their grief as his ghost kind of hovers around.

That also maybe works a little better.

Right.

Yeah.

There is the part of this all coming from a movie that Dreyfus and Spielberg have watched 37 times and like live so large in their head that I don't think they were ever going to consider reworking

the story that much.

No,

whatever.

I mean, it's just sort of a quandary of like it's Steven Spielberg, he can get anyone.

So, of course, John Gobin wants to do it.

Yes, John Gobin will eventually be crestfallen that he thinks Spielberg just sees him as a big old, you know, guy in an orange and black.

He just wants him eating bronzaurus eggs.

Right.

But uh, you're not going to say no to Spielberg.

And so Spielberg can get kind of an overheated cast.

And I think Spielberg often wisely avoids that problem and has guys in his movie where you're like, well, that's a great actor who I don't know as well.

And like Spielberg's picked well, you know, for these small roles.

Like his casting is fascinating in that he, like, like, I'm just off the top of my head, like, watching Minority Report.

And you're like, dude, I was literally about to bring up Minority Reports.

Yeah.

Like, like, Catherine Morris.

Okay.

That's Francis O'Connor in AI as well.

Minority Report is a great example where it's like you got Cruz, so you don't need anyone else.

Right.

Max Von Saito, he wants, you know, this guy he rescued.

Well, he was playing, he's playing himself in that movie.

He is, of course, he was doing that.

True crime.

Right.

Colin Farrell, they paid for Colin Farrell.

$25 million.

This is a hot young thing.

And Spielberg's like, I get it.

But then everyone else, it's like Neil McDonough, perfect.

Peter Stormare.

Peter Stormerer, perfect.

But then also guys like Eric Gross and Daniel London, where it's just like, these are not guys who necessarily like you could get a bigger person for that role right but like they're perfect no he's usually really good at that and i also think he's usually good at it not being

destabilizing like he has such a big picture notion that he's like if you're putting an overqualified person in a small role it has to be like a small high impact role You know, it has to be like one scene in which a surprisingly big person shows up, but you understand why you cast Audrey Hepburn in that way.

Correct.

Because for those five minutes, the movie is all.

Well, they didn't have the budget for any white cashmere, so they were like, well, Audrey has some that she'll bring.

She fortunately has a briefcase for Phil.

She opened the door to a room and was all sweaters.

I'm watching this and like the moment when Dreyfus explodes.

Yeah, and he does blow up.

And I think that set piece is very effective before he blows up.

And the way he blows up is really, it's great because it's just like,

it's not overplayed.

It's just this moment where suddenly Dreyfus realizes like, oh, I'm for real fucked.

And then that's that.

And he's fucked himself saving Goodman's life.

Yeah, yeah.

He did.

He did the right kind of daring dude.

Right.

And he, like, suddenly just completely explodes, and they cut to Goodman, pushing his face against the glass of his cockpit, reacting to having just seen this guy die.

And that's why you cast Goodman.

And this is what I'm saying.

Like, there's the automatic Goodman warmth.

That's just like a fucking, it's...

It's like can heat a house.

Totally, right?

It's a hearth.

And the goofy sidekick is supposed to die.

Totally.

Not the big hero.

There's like a shock in his face where he's like, but that was not what was supposed to happen.

That part of it is fun.

And he's good at all of that shit and setting up.

And like, this is the warm, cuddly guy who you don't want to see die, whatever.

But then it is like moments like that, moments like him trying to sort of shake Holly Hunter back into reality.

It's almost like, as beloved as he was, people didn't realize how much depth he had.

Yeah.

Where you're like, oh, Goodman can actually sell any emotion you want.

He's not just a fun guy.

Clocking into work at the Rock Factory.

Absolutely.

Sliding down and tail.

Lunch bottles is made out of stone.

All those emotions.

Being near a bird that says it's a living.

So that sequence is crazy.

Ribs that are too big and they destabilize your ball.

Yeah.

Dreyfus dying is very not Yaba-dabba do.

We could say that.

It's a Yabba-dabba don't.

It's pretty Yabba-dabba-dyer.

And I like cutting right to the forest and he's just walking through there and then tenet.

Whistling.

All that Audrey has for him is a word.

I do love that.

Which is such a stupid layered joke that I'm only making because of Richard Flosson, that Hap also plays the guy in Tennet.

Of course.

Who says Tenet?

Executive Dreams.

I just love Donovan's just sitting there in his armchair.

And like 20 years later, Nolan's like, hey, can you say Tennet in my movie Tenet?

It's like, I've been waiting for this phone call.

I'm going to put forward, is Donovan another when's he bad guy?

Has he ever been bad in anything?

Not to mine.

I don't know that I've seen every Martin Donovan movie.

I mean, but I, what I love about Martin Donovan is that he's in like the Hal Hartley movies, right?

Like, you know, you watch early Donovan, you're like, fuck, this guy rocks, you know, and then he's great in like Portrait of a Lady.

I was going to say older character actor Martin Donovan.

Don Bruce movies.

He's like, he has a whole range of what he's been asked to do, and he kind of always fucking nails it.

Inherent vice.

Oh, yeah.

Love that.

Yeah.

So he blows up, and Audrey's there and she's sort of like,

you're dead, but you are here to sort of guide, I guess.

You can't really talk to people.

But you can kind of like kind of really throw a vibe.

Well, she's like, you'll become a spiritist.

You'll become inspiration.

Yes.

The divine breath.

Yeah.

And a cleverness, a clever, like sort of quiet thing that they do is like time has just moved on.

Yeah.

Because I think this movie would stink really hard if it's like the day after and he's just like sitting at his funeral right like and holly hundreds just crying and there's even an elegance to i mean what she says like five months and he goes it's been five months already and she's like wait sorry it's six months now that's going wait i said that the romantic drama was on the wane but actually ghost was about what what like a year away um yeah ghost is the year after and ghost it's 90 or 91 yeah

and that really digs into the moments after the death in a way that this movie kind of skips past right which i think ghost is a more effective movie than this movie ghost is also just like kind of stupid, but Ghost rocks.

Right, like Ghost is people get angry every time.

Ghost has rocks in his brains.

But also, Ghost is like,

it's like trying to be every type of movie simultaneously.

It is such a like kind of work of like

thriller, comedy, romance, drama.

Yeah, it's what a weird movie.

It's the movie you knew his Ucker Brother was going to direct someday, you know?

It also just has lots of subway, which is why I prefer Ghost always.

I just did my annual rewatch of all three Naked Gun movies.

Pretty good.

Yeah, the first, second, and third funniest movies ever made.

I mean, yeah, you're not.

And Jim Abrahams died, sadly, very recently.

That's true.

Very shortly after we, in an episode, talked about is there any way we actually could cover their combined works.

It is just so bizarre the kind of like

trifurcation that happens between the three of them.

And then all three of them, like the one who directs Ghosts and gets fucking like a best picture nomination, makes one of the highest grossing films, then just sort of like slows down to a crawl, makes two more movies over 10 years, never does it again.

Jim Iberhand slows way the fuck down, and the one you want to stop working won't stop making stuff.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

So

six months have elapsed.

So because,

you know, Dorinda's sort of moving past his death a little bit,

she's at the flight school now.

John Goodman took the job that Kate was supposed to take, Dreyfus was supposed to take.

And

who's at this light school, but Ted Baker, played by Brad Johnson.

This guy's pop acting.

Who we encountered briefly earlier.

We did.

He sees them dancing.

Who's kind of truly just a shitty Pete, like where it's like, he's also a bit of a hot shot, and he's also kind of like a little too big for his britches in the plane or whatever.

But like none of that reads.

No, also.

Like people are telling us that, but I don't get it from that guy at all.

No.

He just kind of feels like an empty guy.

But this is the part of him that makes him feel like a Baxter, where you're just like, there's something just a little blank about this guy.

You know,

he's pretty fucking blank.

The selling of him in the media in the lead up to this movie is like, you're not going to believe how sexy this guy is.

And it's like, he is incredibly handsome.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

And he's like charming enough.

He like holds the camera enough, but there's not like an electric.

charge there.

And here's, here's the thing.

I'm just kind of hitting me now is I don't buy Dorinda being attracted to him.

No, neither do I.

No, you know why?

Outside of it, I'm just sort of like, eh, I might as well.

Like he's hot.

She's like, yeah, he's beautiful.

He's good looking.

I don't think she'd be attracted to his personality.

No, and here's another reason why she wouldn't.

The first 30 minutes of the movie show her staying with Richard Dreyfus, who looks like Richard Dreyfus and is the most irritating

man in the world.

So I'm like, okay, she has very specific tastes in men.

I'm not saying she's only going to fall for someone else who fits the Richard Dreyfus type.

But if you're that hung up on Richard Dreyfus, I don't think your panties drop for fucking Brad Johnson.

No, exactly.

I think you're like, that guy's kind of boring.

You might fuck him, but I don't think you're going to be like, this is my next great love affair.

Yeah, she's clearly interested in difficult men.

Now, here's the other thing.

The rest of the movie is Dreyfus yelling very hard at people who can't hear him to kind of try to influence them.

And a kind of boring romantic drama playing out between Hunter and Johnson.

Goodman kind of vanishes from the movie, which is like a real problem.

To my great disappointment, like it's like, he should, there should be more space for him.

There's less.

I'm kind of into the Dreyfus yelling stuff just because it's sort of fun that the movie is cucking him, that it's like making Dreyfus.

That's your, I get your read.

Right.

Yeah, right.

For me, it's just like the moment where I go, like, oh, it's not a secret masterpiece is when the romance becomes the central thing.

Right.

And I do feel like the movie just kind of runs out of steam.

It does.

And he's not really interested in staging really more than one or two romantic scenes you know like there's the big there's the big dinner thing and then he's like okay like there's a little impediment to this relationship but i'm not really going to spend much more time on that you know and i think that's a problem because we need to fall in love with this guy and we don't um we do and

would a better actor who's a good actor for this role like who who fits is there someone who fits i think tim robbins would have been fun Tim Robbins.

Like, you know, he was kind of cute in Bull Durham around then, you know?

Yeah, I mean, that's sort of the vibe you want is a guy who's a little bit of a doofus, but in a way that is like bizarrely compelling.

Yeah.

I mean, so that's this is the role that he wanted Cruz for originally.

Is that right?

But in the earlier MGM version, right?

Before Cruz became look, it's not a Maddosier, but according to one book, yes, Cruz was considered for that role.

I mean, Cruz is obviously way too famous now, but right in the early 80s, you could, I guess, see it, although he'd be really young in the early 80s.

But he was hot.

Yeah, I do think you're onto something that he needs to be funny.

He can't just be hot.

Yeah, it's a really personality.

It's a really strange choice to cast like a stone-cold Marlborough man hunk.

Yes.

And I know it's supposed to be offset the Dreyfus settle, but like, it's just, he's too alien in the world of the movie that, like, someone like Tim Robbins or someone shaggy like that could, who also has an appeal, a youthful appeal, I guess, at that time.

Like, that works so much better.

Even it's complete opposite direction, but the reason I keep going back to the Newman Redford idea in my mind is like Redford's obviously one of the most beautiful men in the history of movies, but also is just like a prick.

Like, there is that, like, difficult, sort of thorny nature to him that, like, makes him more complicated.

Yes,

which, right, you need the guy to be like, right, goofier or more serious.

Yeah, something.

You need, you need it, you need a strong personality.

Yes, thank you.

You need a strong personality.

Yes.

And I also think you maybe need

something more dynamic in the plane sequences because the plane sequences get a little same-y.

And there's the sort of big water landing at the end of the movie is like the big sort of new set piece idea, right?

Yeah.

And it's kind of effective.

Uh-huh.

But, right, don't you feel like after the first part of the movie where the plane stuff is kind of arresting, you're sort of like, well, I'm kind of used to the plane stuff.

I don't, I also, as a kid, you know, because when you're a kid, like a two-hour movie feels like it's six hours long in kind of a cool way, like you're really in it for a long time.

I remembered like the build-up to Holly Hunter jumping in the plane and flying off on her own to be much bigger.

Watching it now, I was like, oh, she kind of just decides to do it and then it happens and then she crashes and then she's fine.

I wanted more of occasion.

Like, what is this particular fire?

Why is it so bad?

There's a slightness to this movie.

There is.

And maybe that's what did it in.

is like Spielberg's kind of like, well, I'm making kind of more of a regular person movie and like it's not a big epic, and it's in between two giant projects of mine, right?

I want it to be smaller, and it just kind of feels smaller.

Yeah, I think that's what I kind of like about it, is it's the first time he's able to really

try that, you know?

Yeah.

Yes.

I guess, yeah, like what's

the, yeah, there really isn't.

I mean, honestly, E.T.

is the closest example before this of him making a smaller scale movie, and he always calls E.T.

like a tiny epic, like because E.T.

really is.

I mean,

that's the miracle of E.T., right?

Exactly.

It takes place in a suburban house.

Yeah, and like, it's mostly just about kids, but obviously, E.T.

also does have like a spaceship and an alien and visual effects and flying and all this stuff.

Right, but it's in service of a very small and pretty story.

It's about putting a little alien in a wig.

That's what that movie's about.

Oh, God, he looks so good.

What if that's our bit?

Rewatching that movie.

Is E.T.

hot when he's in the movie?

Luga.

Oh, but Luga Rewatching

that movie, I was like, I cannot believe how funny this visual is.

It is astounding.

It is.

And it's so cute.

And I just.

You know what's crazy?

And look, we'll have devoted a full episode to it at this point that you'll all have listened to is probably 20 hours long.

It's the greatest movie ever made.

It is.

E.T.

in the fucking bed sheet dressed as a ghost is almost as funny as E.T.

dressed like a lady.

It's so good.

It's so simple, but just the weird E.T.

walk under a blanket.

And knowing that the whole time Drew Barrymore thought it was real.

It's just like,

yeah, you know what movie rules?

E.T.

is extraterrestrial.

It's good.

Yeah, that's a good one.

Yeah.

Always, on the other hand, is just okay.

Are there other things in Always We Need to Talk About Plot?

I'm true.

I want to point out

on Apple.

I don't know if this is on the Blu-ray, if this is on other streaming versions of it right now, but if you watch the Apple TV version of Always at the end of the credits, the very end, after the Amblin logo and such, in what is clearly a more modern font,

this is the final image on screen, just very dire black, white text, quote, caution, colon, inhaling of helium from balloons is dangerous

because they do that.

It can start cause serious injury or death, period, end quote.

Like a modern content warning as if it was Disney Plus being like, don't smoke cigars.

So the impressionable kids of today who no doubt have watched always

all through the end credits and were like, okay, now we're going to do the thing from with the helium.

They see John Kidman talking in a squeaky voice and they were like, this is going to become a fucking TikTok trend if we don't warn children.

You haven't, it already is.

Alwaysing?

I've done that.

I mean, you guys have done that, right?

Everyone's done.

I tried it once and it didn't work.

It was classic.

And I was embarrassed because I was the only one it didn't work for.

Can I say something?

Go ahead.

Real helium voice, not done in posts, but really actually sucking helium and saying something serious afterwards.

Yeah.

Almost as funny as E.T.

dressed up as a lady.

There's a really,

I believe it.

It kind of always works for me.

Always.

There's a

this is so obscure, but I'll just say it.

In the early 90s or the, there was like a BBC.

There was a rule that the Irish Republican Party, sorry, the Irish Republican Army, and then and thus Sinn Fein, its political wing, could not be like shown on the BBC.

Okay.

Because like the crown, I guess, you know, because Britain's state, it is Britain's state, whatever.

They were like, that is an enemy of the state.

We cannot.

So like they would have to have weird workarounds where like a shadowy person, you know, would be like, and this is what Jerry Adams said, would like recite his words, right?

Like they couldn't, and it was like this absurd kind of illustration of like how Britain did not know how to deal with Irish independence and all this stuff, right?

And in The Day Today, Chris Morris is brilliant.

Have you ever heard of the day today?

I have, I've never seen it, but I know satire of news from the early 90s.

Steve Coogan does Jerry Adams, and they're like, to combat the IRA,

Jerry Adams must take a hit of helium before he says, you know, anything on camera.

And it's just Coogan taking a hit of the helium and going, you know, Shin Fin is a legitimate political party.

And like in the Helium voice, and it's so fucking funny.

And it's a funny piece of satire.

And I always think about it.

I have bad news.

What's that?

Hold on.

What is happening?

As featured on the recent blank check Substack holiday gift guide, I purchased a new toy replica of Willem Defoe's pumpkin bomb from the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies.

Yes.

But the thing that activates it is if you roll it, I accidentally hit it with my finger.

And then it does a countdown and then has a fake defoe left.

You're saying that you pulled a bit of a denzel?

You rolled it?

You were feeling all right?

And then you were like, I'm going to roll it.

This just might, I'm realizing now for the first time, this might be be my version of you giving David the slinky, that I have a thing on the desk that at very little prompting can suddenly make a ridiculous series of noises.

Yeah, and maybe we move it.

Yeah.

To my lap.

So,

yeah, is there...

Treyfus is yelling at folks.

Like, what do you want me to say?

I was going to bring up that,

although maybe it's not worth it because it's depressing, but like

if you look at what what Holly Hunter's career was after this, I want to do Holly Hunter career rundown.

This is depressing fast.

Yes.

In a way that it was like, oh, she was an actress who they were like, you're how old?

You're 40?

Okay, goodbye.

I want to talk through this, okay?

Thank you for bringing this up.

First of all, can you gentlemen guess what Holly Hunter's last theatrically released film was?

Was it about memory?

No, well, Incredibles.

Credible.

Right.

Yeah.

Which was seven years ago.

2018, right?

She's not appeared in a movie in seven years.

She's done lots of television.

She's done a lot of TV.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She's done a lot of TV and has reprised the voice of Helen Parr in like seven different videos.

Has she done TV recently?

She did her work on succession that was great, but that ended in 2019.

Right, of course.

She did two episodes of The Comey Roll in 2020.

She did Mr.

Mayer.

The weird ill-begotten

officials.

A nice idea in theory, but didn't quite.

In 2018, she did Here and Now, which was that Alan Ball?

Here and now was the yeah, it was the Alan Ball thing, yeah.

But it's like Incredibles 2 in 2018 is her last theatrically released movie.

2017, song to song, which is obviously a strange case.

But then Big Snick.

She's in a bizarre movie with Carrie Kuhn.

Is it called Strange Weather or Breakable You?

It's called Strange Weather, and it's about a woman who's grieving her son who wants to get revenge on the person who stole her son's idea for a hot dog business.

Legitimately, that's what that movie is.

That I will agree with you.

That does sound bizarre.

It's not good.

But my realization watching this of like, does any movie with Holly Hunter in this era immediately gain a star and a half for me?

Right.

Right.

Her first film is The Burning.

Then like Uncredited Voice and Blood Simple.

Yes.

Swingshift, which she covered and she is incredible.

She's awesome in Swingshift.

Where you're just immediately like, who the fuck is this?

Raising Arizona.

Obviously, she is incredible in that.

Yes.

End of the line, a film my father worked on.

Oh, I don't know.

That I've seen the super sail.

You'd actually probably like it.

It's a a fucking railroad movie with Kevin Bacon, Holly Hunter, Wilfrid Brimley, and Mary Steenburg.

What?

And Levon Hale from the band.

You've not seen this book.

Yeah.

Then after that, broadcast news.

Yeah.

Miss Firecracker.

1989 is something called Animal Behavior.

Karen Allen, Armand Asante, Josh Mostel, and Holly Hunter are the four names on the poster.

The big four.

The big four.

And then Always 89, right?

91 Once Around.

I don't know what that is.

Once around

is a Lasse Hallstra movie.

Starring Richard Dreyfus.

Dickie Dreyfus.

About a woman who falls for and eventually marries an overbearing older man who proceeds to rub her family the wrong way.

I don't know who played that role, the older man.

Yeah, I can't imagine.

93, she wins best actress for the piano.

The same year she gets a supporting actress nomination for the firm.

And credit, great, great credit to Jane Cambion for seeing some of those remarkable performances that could not be more different from what the piano asks her to play and being like, oh, no, there's something in there.

She is the least obvious casting choice in the world for that film.

Fascinating.

And

the firm is very up her alley, which is wonderful.

It's an interesting, because she is not someone I think of as being chameleonic at all.

You hire her for the Holly Hunter thing.

Yes, exactly.

There is a wide range of how the Holly Hunter thing can be applied.

And within that, she can hit any emotion you want.

But she's not someone who transforms or disappears.

No.

And part of that is probably just how distinctive her voice is.

She has a voice and she's you know, got particular sort of physical, you know, you take that away in the piano and suddenly it like frees her up in this way that she, it's just, we, we talked about it for a full episode, but you're like, it is so bizarre that's her only Oscar win and there was no other performance in her career like that.

But then you're like still on this good fucking run of copycat, home for the holidays, crash.

I would say the moment where it starts to go a little pear-shaped.

Another film we've covered, A Life Less Ordinary.

Right, but what, but Crash is getting her in trouble as much as I like that movie.

Masterpiece, it's a right, a fascinating movie, but that movie at the time, people are like, you are insane for being in this film.

It pushes her too far into like esoteric, yeah, to be clear.

When was Living Out Loud?

Did you say that one?

That is the following year, 98.

Because she, there was like, she had like some mild awards buzz for that, and it never materialized.

So did Queen Latifah, I believe.

Yes.

But, and that was kind of it in terms of that for a long time.

I feel like she enters this phase, basically starting at that point, which has now continued for like 25 years years plus, where every couple of years, she will pop up again and people will be like, oh, right, Holly Hunter.

Holly Hunter is one of our best living actors.

And then immediately forget her again.

It was like, take her for granted.

She got the 13 nomination.

And then many years later,

fucking Holly Hunter, we should use this.

And then like the big sick didn't quite materialize.

But there will be these sort of like, and a lot of it is just like a lot of movies that kind of like don't totally exist.

There's not a movie where she drinks piss and then gets blood.

What is happening, girl?

I have some terrible news for you.

There is one.

There is one.

Is that what Living Out Loud is about?

In her defense, she thought it was Granny's Peace.

Can we discuss something about Holly Hunter that we think haven't discussed?

Maybe we have.

I can't remember.

Okay.

She was the original voice of Chicken Little, right?

And this sort of original formulation of Chicken Little of Mark Dindle's Chicken Little.

I'm excited about where this episode's going.

You just watched Chicken Little for the first time.

Is that correct?

I wouldn't say just, but I would say, like, so I'm at the mercy of Disney Plus's carousel sometimes, where like I'm trying to show my daughter X movie and she'll see a picture

of why movie and she sees a picture of a a cute little chicken with glasses wearing a shirt yes and she points at it and goes i want that and i was like you know what i don't think i ever saw a chicken little how bad could it be mark dindle yeah director of the emperor's new group i put it on what the happened dog

not just dog yeah is a movie yeah which it is yes Insanely terrible looking.

Yeah.

Everything about it is embarrassing looking.

Everything about it's bad.

She doesn't love it, to be clear either.

Which we watched a few times.

I am so happy.

I love Kid Logic.

She didn't really like it.

We only watched it seven times.

Pretty much.

I have terrible news.

My knee just hit the desk.

That thing

has got to go.

Okay, I'm going to push back.

I just, we have to let the laugh play out.

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Chicken Little only makes sense through the prism of its moment, right?

Which is

they're losing Pixar.

That is the moment where like Eisner had gotten cocky and been like, Pixar is going to have a flop.

And once they have one movie fail, we'll have them over the barrel in terms of renegotiations.

And then they kept succeeding.

And they hated Eisner so much that they were like, we are going anywhere else.

And that's sort of Eisner's last bid before they push him out, largely because of him fucking up the Pixar deal.

And that movie is then being like, we need to figure out how to make our own Pixar in-house.

Right.

And yes, it was originally supposed to be Holly Hunter with an entirely different premise.

I almost want to say a different design style.

Probably.

I think it was Dindle from the beginning, but Ember's New Groove is obviously like a very serious sort of like Mayan epic that wasn't working.

And then they bring in Mark Dindle and he's like, what if it's all funny bits?

Right.

And reworks the movie in one year and does this like a mage thing.

Yeah, so Holly Hunter Chicken Little had a big bow on her hair.

Right.

they like

subtle stuff they made dindle dindle his own movie stop using the word dindle and they just kept being like i don't know more aliens yeah who's on sitcoms right now it's not it's such a weird movie because it's like he thinks the sky is falling and then he's humiliated then richard do you know what the plot of disney's chicken little is i mean i know the story of chicken little okay right no he thinks the sky is falling he runs for everyone to save their lives he causes all this chaos and it turns out that like everyone thinks that potentially just like a tree branch landed on his head and he was just freaking out over.

No pebble or whatever.

Then 45 minutes of the movie is him trying to join the baseball team to impress his widowed chicken father played by Gary Marshall.

Yes.

Well, like original Bare Naked Ladies song play.

It's the era where Disney's like,

we can't do musicals.

Is this Bare Naked Ladies?

And I was like, it can't be.

Middle miss.

And Jessica Lang got an Oscar nomination for this.

She's a little

for writing.

There is an original Bare Naked Lady song.

There's a whole sequence that's like just them playing baseball.

You haven't mentioned that the chicken is Zach Brath, but

Peak Scrub Zach Brath is the chicken.

So you're watching this and you're like, where the fuck is this all going?

The hook to the Disney Chicken Little is that Chicken Little was right about the sky falling.

What he witnessed was a malfunctioning of one of the video screens that aliens have placed in the sky to obfuscate the fact that they're getting ready to invade us.

What?

And Chicken Little is the only one who's aware that there's an alien invasion happening and no one believes him.

As I'm listening to this, I'm just picturing an empty desert and just like wind blowing.

It's one of those movies.

Like Twin Peaks, like ominous wishing.

It's one of those movies where you're like, God, this is interminable.

And it's like 70 minutes long.

It's so short.

It sucks.

But yeah,

I feel like there are, you can see online the animation tests of Holly Hunter as Chicken Little.

That I would like to see.

I mean, I'm sure that was good.

Yeah.

But we just need more of her.

We need like another big movie role or something because she's like this movie,

a lot of her stuff is a reminder, but like watching this movie, I was like, I think that when she's really on, she's my favorite actress.

I

had the same thought.

Yeah.

Like I had the

same thought.

I was like, unquestionably, she's in my like.

Hall of Fame 10.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Easily.

Yeah.

Of course.

Yeah.

Look,

she, she,

the first time I watched this movie, yeah, I was like, I love this performance so much.

I would like nominate for an Oscar, like, even though the movie doesn't totally work for me.

And

like,

on rewatch, I think I got grumpier that it sort of doesn't do enough with her.

Yeah.

That she is kind of the girl.

Like, as much as they try to kind of get beyond that, like in the second half of the movie, she's always kind of defined by the boys.

She's, you know, quote unquote falling for or resisting or whatever.

And worried about.

And yeah.

I think that's the other part of it is like that

She has so much energy on screen and even if with Richard Dreyfus a lot of that is negative energy when the second half of the movie asked her to just go gaga for Brad Johnson, you're just like this makes her feel small.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, why is she becoming reactive to someone who's like sturdy versus like Dreyfus is at least conjuring emotion, even if the emotion is, I want to strangle this man?

Right.

You're like, you can't be passive about him.

Yeah, exactly.

And it's like, oh, just settle down with some boring guy, you know, and I don't know.

It's just, it's a bad match.

And it's weird that like,

I guess, I don't know.

I mean, maybe they did see it when filming and we were like, well, it's too late now.

Like we have this Marlborough contract and we can't get out of it.

But I don't know, but he did.

Yeah, but what if it is that Marlborough is like, this is the girl?

Like, you know, like the fucking actual Marlborough man comes in and Spielberg's like, I can't argue with big tobacco.

Is it Flight of the Intruders?

Sure.

That's a movie.

That's like the only other Flight of the Intruder with Danny Glover and William Dafoe and Brad Johnson.

That's right, I was going to say, it's like the one

where his name is above the title.

And I feel like was the one time after this that they were like, even though that wasn't a hit, I guess Spielberg

as a guy that Millius would be like, I love this guy.

Like, he's American as hell.

Even that name sounds sounds made up you know it's just every time i say it i i feel like i'm saying the wrong name right yeah yeah that i'm corrupting it to something more basic but it is like right he he does that two years after this is it and then he's basically immediately like a tv direct video guy it's one of spielberg's strangest bits of casting yeah uh it's definitely one of his biggest misfires because as you say griff like a ty Sheridan or a Jeremy Irvine I'm like you know those are guys who have been good in movies like Ty Sheridan obviously starting with Tree of of Life or whatever.

Like Jeremy Irvine, I don't think I

think Jeremy Irvine is like one of the worst actors who works.

I really apologize to him if he like ever hears me say that.

You know, because I feel bad saying it because I'm sure

blank check Decade of Dreams, right?

There's a part in which we still just feel like this show is only listened to by the people on our Reddit.

Oh, okay.

And increasingly we will find out people are listeners and immediately David and I do the calculus of what is the worst thing we've ever said about that person.

You need that, Tina Faye.

I don't think so, honey.

Like, you're too famous to be saying, just try not to take stray shots of people who aren't the explicit subject of the episode.

Right.

And most people who we say something negative about, I've always said we will also say something positive about in the balance of the thing because there's very few people we holistically disregard.

I agree with you.

I think Jeremy Yerevine is maybe the most boring.

But if you want to offset that, I think unfortunately you've just kicked open the door.

I am going to come on and do a Stonewall episode with you guys.

No.

Kidding.

Never.

I'm also like, they're finally making another Silent Hill movie.

Christoph Gunz, who made the first movie, which I think is like kind of a masterpiece is coming.

Yeah.

Because he didn't do the.

He didn't do the

truly execrable sequel, which is one of those.

Resurgence, Redemption,

Retribution.

It might be Retribution.

Reawaken.

I truly have to look it up.

Revelation.

Revelation.

Which is one of those, like, if we do it on Patreon one day, which, hey, if there's a third one, we probably could.

Sure.

It's one of those after the first movie, we're like, that was pretty, that was awesome.

Like, this is in.

And then you queue up the second movie in one minute and you're like, we've made a huge mistake.

Like, what the fuck is going on?

It's cracked all done D2.

Yes.

Yeah.

But fucking Jeremy Irvine's the star.

And I'm like, God damn it.

Like, we couldn't get someone better.

Anyway.

Look, this is what it boils down to, right?

Like, you saying people with personality, Dreyfus is such a good example of like, what an unlikely movie star in a way that, like, removed from context, I think it's just kind of confounding to people where you're like, why was this guy so big and so celebrated?

And it was like he was cast very well a couple times in seismic movies where he was kind of kept on rails.

And what you needed was someone coming in with a lot of personality, right?

Yes.

Like he is not an obvious movie star, but like those parts demanded someone with a weird energy that does just kind of make you lean in.

The complete unknown, like freak show thing.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

and I think sometimes in this like corridor of like when Spielberg falls into the boring boy problem, it's that he picks guys who like on a surface level are like, this guy seems like a movie star.

He's got good shoulders and a good jaw and a healthy voice and he works well on camera, but there is just kind of a blandness.

Yeah.

And sometimes it is like someone like Ty Sheridan who can really come alive in smaller projects, but when you put him in the machinery of that kind of thing, they can't figure out how to build a character in that structure, especially when the character on paper is just kind of like the hero or the cute guy, you know?

Yeah.

And it's why, like, Shia, it did feel like was him sort of finding a new Dreyfus.

Right.

He's like, this guy isn't a normal leading man.

There's something kind of annoying and manic about him.

Yeah.

You know, they both are people who seemingly have severe mental illness that can manifest in a way that is sometimes electrifying on screen.

But it does feel like he specifically has a problem whenever he's trying to cast, quote unquote, like a new movie star, like a new matinee idol.

And the LaBelle thing, beyond him being a good pick, is like, well, he's casting someone to play him.

He's a weird, complicated character.

He's not looking for someone to just be handsome and charming.

Right.

And like you can only find

And he didn't even find him.

Yeah.

One Harrison Ford every

fucking 50 years.

With established established movie stars, he can do it.

He's very good at seeing someone do something while another.

He's being like, I know exactly what project to give that person.

But he wouldn't be good at minting a Harrison Ford.

No, weirdly.

Weirdly kind of, right?

Because he's even like taking Dreyfus from.

You could argue he minted Harrison Ford in that like Star Wars obviously mints Harrison Ford, but there's a world, I guess, where it's like.

He was just Han Solo and no one could ever figure out what to do with the guy.

And it's like Spielberg using him correctly is what makes Harrison Ford Harrison Ford.

I think I would argue he is very good at solidifying people

right

like he can't kind of like build someone from scratch or like locate it in a vacuum but he can sort of go like you know what they should do they should go 20 degrees off from what they're doing right now and placed into this context they might come alive and expand right and he's done that a lot where he's helped movie stars unlock new chambers the lois smith before minor minority report is not the Lois Smith after Minority Report.

Right now, that's like guaranteed $20 million opening because people saw.

Yeah, because she's going to be the new king.

Yeah.

Actually, wait.

That sounds great.

Always, I'm just reading from the dossier's sort of release part.

Opens Christmas season 1989 grosses just 3.7 million on a thousand plus screens.

So it has legs because it ends up at 43.

I think it's kind of DOA in like

30.

Yeah.

So, you know, it kind of made its budget back worldwide, probably, you know, plus, you know, blah, blah, blah.

He received two Saturn Award nominations and nothing else from anybody.

David Denby, who used to, you know, fucking execute some kill shots, says, was there no one among Spielberg's associates with the intellectual stature to convince him that having cried at a guy named Joe when he was 12 years old was not a good enough reason for him to remake it?

Damn.

Critics used to be really mean, man.

Yeah.

Sheila Benson had the obvious, but I think necessary, a better title would be Forever, which is roughly its running time.

Okay.

You might want to set off the goblin bomb again.

Don't tempt me.

It's basically two hours on the nugget, right?

Yeah, it's like two hours, five minutes.

It's pretty much the exact same length as a guy named Joe.

Yeah.

I mean, there is this sort of subgenre it falls into, and I've been thinking about this recently because of the movie I'm about to cite, but like

remakes that are directors who have been obsessed since childhood with a movie and sort of make their own version of it to try to work through why am I so hung up on this?

Right.

And like, I think Edgar's Nasferatu is that.

I think Jackson's King Kong is that.

Like movies that almost feel like them expanding the lore of like, when I was a child, I interpreted it this way, or I didn't know why this movie made me cry.

Right.

And you're sort of doing this like very loving, faithful expansion, you know, and like blowing it up to a bigger scale in a way that almost feels like making a big budget like dissertation.

Yeah.

And I think it's why it, one, that's one of the reasons why

Spielberg's most profound and I think best movie ever, AI,

is saying goodbye to that.

Yep.

He's like, okay, you get to do this one more time.

You get to return to the childhood thing and kind of try to excavate something.

But then we're saying goodnight.

It's over.

I mean, he didn't quite do that with the rest of his career, but like, but you know what I mean?

Like, it just like he had, he did recognize that something like always was like, I was trying to grasp for something irretrievable.

And yeah, no, it's, it's like, it's just fascinating how completely the Schindler experience like just connects him to something deeper.

And I do think when we covered the second half of his career, the Times posts that he tries to go back to more of a like Amblini Spielberg.

are always, I'd say, other than Tintin, which is kind of its own weird beast, I think sort of being activated by the different technology when it feels like now this is kind of the insincere version of him versus the color purple where you're like, stop pretending to be a grown-up.

Right.

You know, it's like, it does feel like he is firmly in a sort of world of grown-up ideas now.

Right.

And when he's like, I want to make a classic movie for children, it feels a little hollow.

Right.

There's no, like watching Empire of the Sun, there's really not much indication that that same person would make Munich.

Right.

You know,

which maybe is a weird comparison, but like.

No, no, but I think, I think is a, is a good point.

Yes.

And like the version of always he makes after Schindler is

totally different.

But but then you're also just like, post-Schindler.

Because Schindler is so like, why am I trying to remake this?

Schindler forever complicated his nostalgia.

Yes.

Where he was like, oh, actually, all that, that era that I pine after

was horror.

You know, there was so much horror happening in the world.

Yes.

But yeah, and again, that's why I think AI is really like the key.

Not even, maybe even more than Fablebins in a way.

Although the two are in dialogue with each other, I think.

Yeah.

Should we play the box office game?

So I did see what was number one because in reading pieces about the movie at the time, I saw people being like, it's pretty embarrassing that the Spielberg movie was beaten out by this.

Okay, well, it always opens number five.

So it was beaten out by four things.

Okay.

Well, what are you thinking?

Tango and Cash.

So Tango and Cash is new this week, but it is number two at the box office.

Tango and Cash is,

is that Mel Gimson?

No, Stallone and Russell.

Stallone and Russell.

It's a really crass movie, if memory serves me.

It's crass, but a lot of fun.

And Stallone was coming off a bit of a bad run.

So people were, I think, underestimating that movie and overestimating, like, it's Spielberg making a weepy.

This thing's going to own the holiday season.

What's the joking community where

like Joel McHale sees Rob Cordry and they're like, Tango, Sundance.

And he's like, we were in two different like duos.

I can't remember what they did.

Something like that.

Yeah, I think so.

Anyway, number one, though, is a holdover comedy big hit.

Okay.

Big hit comedy.

Sequel.

It's not Ghostbusters 2.

That was a summer release.

Yeah, sure.

But it's a sequel.

It's not Beverly Hills Cup 2?

No.

Is it a 2?

I think it is the second, I'm pretty sure, but it doesn't have like a 2 in the title.

They dropped a deuce, but it's the second.

It's not Music Box 2.

No, not yet.

It's not Jewel of the Nile.

No.

No, but it doesn't have a 2 in the title.

No.

Huh?

Oh, you know what?

I take it back.

This is the third entry.

Oh, sorry.

Okay, well, thank you.

Sorry, I had to triple check because it doesn't have a number.

Appreciate you doing the work.

Appreciate you doing the work.

Doesn't have a number.

It's the third.

I'm sure Ben's seen it.

You're sure, Ben.

I don't feel like Ben loves this franchise.

It's not Chi Chin Chong.

No, but it's a star.

We've talked about how much you love it.

We've covered another movie with this star that Ben did love.

It's a Chevy?

It's a Chevy Chase.

Is it Christmas Vacation?

It is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

I mean, a big movie.

I love those movies.

Okay.

Yeah.

I wasn't sure where you were at.

Christmas is the best one, I think.

You think it's the best one?

Yeah.

Well, it's the one I've seen the most.

We will never talk about this franchise.

We'll never talk about this franchise.

Now, this one is directed by

Shiver will never be full.

Jeremiah Chechik?

Yes.

This is the movie that Chris Columbus famously quit days into filming or days before filming.

Basically, being like, I cannot fucking work with Chevy Chase.

And Chris Columbus seems like basically the nicest man in Hollywood.

I have only heard that he might be the nicest nicest person on planet Earth.

I have met Chris Columbus.

Like, he is a truly, you can just tell, like, a truly Menshee dude, like a really great guy.

Borderline Saintly.

Yes.

And you're talking about the Explorer?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And everything he did was good.

Yeah.

And all of his discoveries were his alone.

In my opinion, I think we should give him 10 days.

I think the credit to the Italian statues.

Columbus month.

And right, he quit it.

So it was directed by Jeremiah Chechik, who has like one of the most insane filmographies of all time because it's this

and then Benny and June.

Yeah, sure.

And then Diabolique, the remake of speaking of Isabella Johnny.

Yeah.

And then the not Marvels, but Britons, the Avengers, with Rafe finds Umar Thurman and Sean Connery, which is a

classic like

half the movie is gone, right?

Like where it's like, it's 82 minutes or whatever.

And you're like, what just happened?

And they're like, we don't know.

We don't know what just happened.

It's 82 minutes, but then you check your clock and you're like, were they counting the time I was online for concessions?

Are they baking the trailers into the runtime of the movie?

Like, just such a weird directoral career.

Anyway, and that basically ends his career.

Yeah,

he directed the like ESPN Bronxes Burning miniseries.

Like, he still worked, but anyway, that movie's number one.

Xmas Vacation.

Okay.

A hit.

Tango and Cash is number two.

Certainly, like, lasted.

Yeah.

I feel like has become a kind of a tradition.

It's a staple.

Yeah.

I watch it most Christmases.

Yeah.

Tango and Cash, I meant.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

Number three, it's a film I actually mentioned, a very, very dark comedy.

Directorial career.

Yes.

Danny DeVito's War of the Roses.

That's a great movie.

Yes.

And obviously, DeVito is someone we will one day do on blank check.

Yeah.

He's not like someone we're rushing to, but it's an interesting career.

It's a fun, short one.

That's the other thing.

It's a nice little short.

He is fun and short.

I mean, that's my friend Sarah Rubin, the great Sarah Rubin, past and and future guest said.

Rube sent the text, have you guys ever considered Danny DeVito colon short series for a little man?

Good call.

That's good.

I just watched the Abbott Elementary crossover episode of It's Always Sunny,

which really did a perfect job watching It's Always Sunny and kind of being like,

This is what every character would do.

And it's like, yeah, Mac would go with the principal because they're both schemers.

Yeah.

Like the nice teachers would try to teach Charlie how to read.

Like, and it's like, Danny DeVito, what does he do?

He gets in in a fight with a janitor and starts putting batteries in the garden.

Like it's like Danny DeVito is having fun.

I saw, I read an interview with Kinta.

I've not watched the episode yet, but I read an interview with her where they were like, were you worried all about how you make these two tunes compatible?

And that show is so much more explicit and has a very different audience.

And she was like, here is the thing we cracked immediately.

Our show is a mockumentary, which means these characters know that they're on camera, which means they're behaving slightly better.

The best version of that joke is that Glenn Howardin's character spots the cameras immediately.

He's like, I can't be filmed, and just like runs off camera.

Oh my god, wait, that's so exciting.

And then

every other time he's briefly on camera, he once again clocks them and he like runs away.

It's really funny.

Have you seen the Sunny episode with the I have not yet.

I think that doesn't air forget.

I think it hasn't aired yet, but I'm very excited.

If season's not until the summer, there's a weirdly long gap between

very excited for whatever that is.

And also, within the World of Abbey Elementary, it does make sense that they're just like, are you the guys who run that terrible bar in South Philly?

Like,

I've seen you on like, TV, on the news.

Um, it very much want to do DeVito.

DeVito is a real, like,

one year off of a March Madness winner.

We're going to look at the schedule and go, like, you know what?

We could just knock DeVito out in five weeks and then do this.

Yeah, it'll happen.

It'll happen.

Also, the fucking War of the Roses remake.

Oh, what's that?

Well, of course.

You're not a musical or whatever with Brian Darcy James.

You're forgetting the very obvious.

No, that was Dave Wednesday.

Yeah.

Yeah, sorry.

You're forgetting the very obvious announced War of the Roses remake starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman.

Okay.

That is real and not a thing that Richard made up as a joke

for the podcast.

I'm forgetting who's directing it.

It's the guy who made the British Avengers.

I think it's literally, they're calling it like the roses now or something.

It is called The Roses.

It's directed by.

Oh, no, he just made a face.

David?

He made a really sad face.

David?

Of all the names.

He did the deepest inhale.

Jay Roach.

Oh, my God.

What the fuck is happening in our culture?

Here's the thing.

Here is the thing, okay?

If you were like, Jay Roach is remaking War of the Roses with Ben Stiller and

fucking Reese Witherspoon or whatever, right?

I'd be like, sure, fine, whatever.

That makes sense.

To do the Tony British casting of it and then cast Jay Roach horrifying.

Yeah.

Feels so at odds odds with itself.

And it's going to take place during the 2008 election.

I don't know, man.

I don't know.

Maybe it'll be great.

Look, at least it seemingly stopped him from making oceans too.

Is that a thing that was going to happen with the gosling?

Gosling and Maria.

Okay, number four in the box office: a sequel.

We've covered it on this podcast.

It's a sequel that we've covered on this podcast.

It's a big movie.

In 1989.

1989.

It's once again, not Ghostbusters 2.

No, No, but it is a deuce.

It is a deuce.

They dropped a deuce.

It's a

what?

That's that's don't give me that look.

I'm rolling my eyes.

Don't poop joke.

Don't give me that look.

It's a big sequel.

It's a big sequel to it.

It was a big hit, not a hit on the scale of the original.

Do we cover it?

Main feed or paint feed feed feed feed feed main feed.

Main feed.

Main feed.

Main feed.

89.

You like it more than I do.

I like it more than you do.

Oh.

Oh.

It is back to the future, part two.

Part two.

Part two.

They dropped the dues.

Number five always.

Number six is Disney's The Little Mermaid.

Incredible movie.

Yeah.

How long is it?

Yeah, when did that end?

It's been out for six weeks.

Okay.

It's very early in its run.

It's made about $30 million.

It's going to make more than $100.

No, it ends up below $100.

I guess the re-releases put it above $100.

But back then, getting, you know.

No, it did well, but it's one of those things where you read the press at the time.

People are like, I know I'm going to sound crazy, but the new Disney movie is good.

And it just kind of hung in there for months.

Right.

And then, like, primed a pump for Beauty and the Beast to be a explosion.

Then the next four are all like mega hits.

Yeah.

Uh,

number seven is Steel Magnolius, another big hit of the fall.

Uh, number nine is the uh

um sort of satirical comedy Blaze.

Oh, sure.

The Ron Shelton movie with Paul Newman and

as Earl Long.

Yeah.

See, I've been interested in, I've been meaning to watch that in my interest of like old CAD Paul Newman, like Salt Salt.

I would like to fill in some Newman gaps.

That's certainly one of them.

Not like a hugely remembered movie.

I'm sorry.

I know this is moving back a film, but I'm doing the math in my head.

Is there a Patreon series that is like Steel Magnolia's Fried Green Tomatoes?

Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood.

Oh, like Southern

Ensembles.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think there's something there.

Right?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

You'd have to watch pretty bad movies.

Not the ones you named necessarily.

Yeah.

I mean, we curate.

Number nine is the, I would say, fairly forgotten City Lumat movie, Family Business with Connery, Hoffman, and Broderick.

Yeah.

Now,

if I were casting a movie in which I had to cast three generations of men in the same family, grandfather, father, son.

Yeah.

I think the first three names that would come to me who just fit really well well together are Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman, and Matthew Broderick.

Three people who absolutely shut down.

That related

to that.

It's almost as good as that movie where Glenn Close plays Mila Kunis' mom, which, you know, totally syncs up.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

No, there's the poster for that movie in my memory is sort of like one's at a desk.

Sitting and the other two are over the shoulder.

It's kind of a great thing's come in bears.

What is sort of a setup?

Is it like a crime thing?

They're like a media family.

Is that right?

Do they work in the news?

I don't know because the tagline is there's nothing like a good robbery to bring a family together.

So let's find out what this movie is.

I just feel like that's a movie where the poster just sets up: hey, one of these guys fathered one of these other guys and fathered the other guy, and America's just like, absolutely not.

We are not buying that.

That is, we refuse.

Uh, yeah, it's like uh, Sean Connery is

a gangster,

and his son Vito Dustin Hoffman

because Sean Connery has a Sicilian wife Sean Connery Scottish in the movie this you I can tell

my Italian son Vito

like going

look his

dad grandfather what are we doing here and Vito Again, Dustin Hoffman's Vito

has a son

Matthew Broderick who he's trying to keep away from the business.

But so Broderick doesn't know even that his dad is grandpa's exactly.

And his name is Miguel Sanchez.

Matthew Broderick.

His name is Adam.

Okay.

And I guess they all get involved into some like heist that they do.

Yeah.

This movie sounds insane.

People did not like the movie.

It got bad reviews.

Number 10 at the box office, a film we'll never discuss.

Look who's talking.

That's me looking at who's talking.

Yeah.

And none of us were talking at that moment.

That was me doing my Holly Hunter in the piano impression.

So really good.

You know, always.

Yeah, I have to say, I have very fond memories of loving it as a child that were a bit tarnished, but I still hold that those first 30 minutes are great.

I'm with you, and I kind of like,

I think Hunter pushes it over the edge to being a gentleman six for me.

Yeah, I think that's totally fair.

Yeah.

I would give it three stars on Letterboxd.

Yeah.

That's where I put, I'll say this.

Like halfway through the movie, I like logged it on Letterbox and gave it a heart.

Yeah, and then like 15 minutes later, I was like, I'm going to take the heart back.

Okay, fair enough.

Yeah, that's it.

I don't think it starts, but I truly was just like, you know what?

I'm enjoying this so much.

That heart is going to last an hour from now.

And then I was just

yoink.

Is anyone else craving the smooth taste of a Marlboro cigarette right now?

So badly.

You know what I would love to do?

I'd love to just, especially in this brutal winter, I'd like to get snug inside of a Marlborough sleeping bag.

Oh, God.

With a long time.

The lining is just crushed cigarettes.

cigarettes

that's so crazy what were the other do you remember other items you got that no the sleeping bag is the thing i remember and my guess is that most of the items were useless like yeah like to a family

exciting news there's some available on ebay ranging bags yeah ranging from 80 to even down to 20

what about like the motorcycles can you find motorcycles oh god and that is it that's it right the next one the next the next blank check live is just going to be everyone files into town hall, and David is just asleep on stage in a Marlboro sleeping bag, and that's the whole show.

What I want, you know, in my life is a used sleeping bag.

I mean, that's what I'm really trolling eBay for.

Yeah, a used cigarette sleeping bag.

How many people have slept in that?

What could go wrong?

How many people have slept in that?

Good.

I want, I just really want to associate cigarettes with sleeping.

Two things you should have together.

In my opinion, the cornerstone of a great sleeping bag is the my litter.

I have a cool

tent if you want to go camping

uh so i have to pee griffin wow

i'll be back because i know how long you take i i was i was gonna ask richard for his plugs and it's gonna seem really rude if you're pissing while he's i don't really have any plugs so pissing all over his plugs piss on ricky's plugs don't piss on my plugs and tell me it's

marlborough i don't know uh little gold man little gold man uh still going strong-ish uh wait i have a joke to finish oh Marlborough Gold's because piss is gold.

Oh, that's there you go.

I used to smoke this.

Marlborough's

this will come out after the Oscars have happened.

Do you want to put any bold predictions?

Oh, I think Tami Moore is going to win.

I think based on the SAG nominations, I'm swinging back to Timmy winning over Adrian.

There's just something in the water there.

Yeah, and also Bangold getting the DGA nomination.

I just think the reaction to Timmy's performance was like universally like, I didn't know he had it in him.

And I really think that's what kind of gets you an Oscar.

Can I say it on mic now?

And I might be proven very wrong, but I just want to say it because I feel like it's a position no one's taking.

I still think Rafe Ines is going to win.

This has been your take on the content.

Enclave is

lacking in buzz currently.

Look, what he needs to do in order to win is mounting a new wave of excitement in the time between this episode recording and the ceremony in two months, but I sort of think it's going to happen.

That would be fun.

And he, I was at the NBR's, the National Board of Review dinner, and I was at their table.

I didn't get to talk to Rafe much.

I mostly talked to Edward Berger, but on stage, they won an ensemble award, and Rafe spoke for a bit, and he was quoting D.H.

Lawrence.

He quoted T.S.

Elliott.

And I was like, oh, wait a second.

I want more of these speeches.

Like, he is like very nice on stage.

He's showing up at the fucking New Year's Eve thing.

I was like, oh, he's kind of maybe.

I think Chalamay.

If Chalamay doesn't win, I would not be surprised if he wins.

If he doesn't win, I almost think it's a like, do we want to Dreyfus him thing?

Right.

You know,

that is the thing.

Do we laud him this much this early when we know he's on a track to continue doing good work for Device?

But with Brody, it's like, do we give him the second Oscar for the second good lead performance he's given?

I don't think Brody wins.

I think it's probably.

They did it with Hillary Swing.

All right, that's what I'm saying.

And they, I think, regretted that.

And the Zellweger thing as well.

I feel like

they feel embarrassed when they do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

After a couple of years.

And like he won the globe, but then I reminded myself, like, right, he didn't win the globe for the pianist.

Not that the new globes really care about who won old globes, I guess.

I don't know.

And then

Saldana and

I doubted Seldania for a while because I wasn't sure what people, how the industry actually thought about Amelia Perez, but Odiard getting the DGA numb and stuff.

Yeah.

I think Selena's road has ended, though.

I would agree with that.

Don't let the stands hear you say that.

I mean, we'll never see it.

Yeah, exactly.

So that, those are my answer pods.

Oh, by the time this is up, I will, it'll be months old, I think.

I do will have a full ranking of Steven Spielberg movies, like a paragraph for each thing explaining my reasoning.

I'm excited to dive into the writing.

Can you spoil?

Do you know right now what your dead top and dead bottom are?

Dead top is AI.

I think.

I'm almost positive.

Yeah, that's my dead top.

I watched it again for probably the fifth time, like last week, and I cried for the last 30 minutes in a way that was like genuinely cathartic and meant something.

It wasn't just me responding to stimuli.

Where did Jiggolo Joe go?

Where is it?

It's an incredible movie.

And then number one or the last place with an absolute bullet is 1941, which is a complete catastrophe of a movie.

Yeah.

For some scheduling reasons, we have not gotten to that episode yet.

We've recorded almost all of them.

It's been the thing at the end of the road.

Yeah,

it is really his only fully irredeemable movie.

I have never been able to make it past maybe the 15-minute mark.

Well, because

a strenuous slapstick farce that is not for one second funny is incredibly painful.

It is the worst kind of like peanut butter and yeah and olives like where you're just like

yeah all right anyway that's that thanks for having me you're the best rich i'll see you for 15 whatever that might be yeah you're gonna text us like in an hour saying the episode was bad no i was thinking about i'm not gonna do it

yeah great app yeah let's just say that decade of dreams that you text us usually the evening of or the next morning after almost every episode and go guys i feel like i let you down i'm so sorry and then i wait for months for listen

and you did and you shouldn't yeah what are you talking about?

And the only reason I'm bringing this up on Mike, although David was the one who opened the box, is that

you are one of the most important people in the history of the show.

And you're always great.

100%.

And I always am so excited when you're coming on.

Me too.

And I really appreciate that you guys often do like get an annoying text message from me and actually are like, okay, you can do that, you know, because I know it's your show, not mine.

So but it always, every time, every episode you've ended up on feels like, oh, that makes sense.

And sometimes there's another plan that shifts.

Sometimes it was always from the get-go.

You were supposed to go there.

You think K-19 and you think me.

You know, it's the thing I always look forward.

I love the episodes.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Congrats on 10 years.

I just have one last thing to say.

Please.

Hap.

Hap.

Thank you for listening.

Tune in next week for

Hook.

An episode I predict our listeners will be really, really

normal about.

No one's going to get angry at me.

And as always.

Well, wait, over on the Patreon.

Oh, over on the Patreon?

Because when this episode comes out, it will be the last day of our March Madness voting.

That's wild to think about.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So hopefully...

Listeners have been following along with that.

Yeah,

you'll have had a high-value month of all the extra March Madness content over on Patreon.

As well as, you know, voting for our main feed.

Yeah.

And

we are in the midst of our

Star Trek card series on Patreon.

So that will be fun.

Check that out.

All right, now wrap us up.

And as always, please, please, do not murder me for what I say on the hook episode.

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and and David Sims.

Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley.

Our creative producer is Marie Bardy Salinas, and our associate producer is A.J.

McKeon.

This show is mixed and edited by A.J.

McKeon and Alan Smithy.

Research by J.J.

Birch.

Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell.

Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds.

Our production assistant is Minnick.

Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help.

Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

Join our Patreon, BlankCheck Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

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This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.