Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri

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.

Can't remember what my podcast looks like.

It's a really sad line from the movie.

Yeah.

Thank God we started out that way.

Look, I mean, I was like, oh, you know, it feels like any line of dialogue is going to be said.

Maybe I should do the tagline instead.

The tagline is, to survive in a world at war, he must find a greater strength than all the events that surround him.

I'd say also a bummer.

I mean, just try not to think so much.

Surely there's a, there's a that's a good line.

Maybe I, yeah.

I feel like I've always also

with Malkovich's.

I feel like we have not covered a lot of Malkovich.

Our main Malkovich talk episode was Portrait of a Lady, which we're like, that's that's a weird application of Malkovich and does it unbalance the movie in a way.

I was less into the movie, but more into his performance, whereas I feel like you liked the movie a little more and felt his performance was working a little against it.

He is, he is.

Look, casting John Malkovich is an aggressive thing to do.

Repeat your line.

You had your great line in that episode.

Oh, I don't remember it.

You have to tell me.

He's sun-dried tomatoes on a sandwich.

That's.

What it is.

I really agree with that.

And it's like, if you put five of those on a sandwich, you're eating a sun-dried tomato sandwich.

It doesn't matter what else is on that thing.

Now, I'm just, let's forefront this.

I think this is like a perfect application of Malkovich.

Obviously, a great way to use John Malkovich as an American fagan.

Arguably one of his best performances, but it's almost inarguably one of the smartest ways a movie has employed him.

Bilgawayan, I don't know your Malkovich take.

I don't know where you are on Malkovich.

You can speak.

Malkovich in this movie?

In this movie, but also Mark.

I love Malkovich.

Yes, John Movie.

Malkovich has shown up in some of my favorite movies of all time.

What are some of your favorite movies of of all time featuring John Malkovich?

Well, I mean, he's in the sheltering sky.

I bet you like that one.

You love your Bernardo.

Big fan of the Secretariat.

One of your favorite movies.

I feel like you see.

In the Line of Fire.

Well, he's one of the greatest action films of all time.

One of the coolest Oscar nominations.

In the Line of Fire is someone making you a ham and cheese sandwich and then like putting one sun-dried tomato on it in 1992 or whatever it is, three.

And you're like, what's this flavor?

Because otherwise that movie is like pretty straight down the middle and really well done.

And Malkovich is like, yo, this is a new kind of villain.

I feel like this is spicy.

But that's almost like putting sun-dried tomato-flavored potato chips on a sandwich.

Okay, Bill Good, what was your response?

No, I like that take.

Right?

Well, the other thing about In the Line of Fire is it's so much Clint.

It's good.

It's so much Clint.

Like it's no, no, I mean, it's great.

I mean,

that's, I believe, the same year as Unforgiven.

It's the year after Unforgiven.

It's a year after Unforgiven, but like when Unforgiven wins the odds.

Correct.

It's

a summer of night.

And Unforgiven obviously has one of those like infamously long modern box office runs

where it's in theaters for basically a straight year.

In the line of fire is the same vibe of like Clint being like, should I hang it up?

Should I do 30 more years?

Right.

I mean, everyone has said this, but it just is always interesting to talk about.

I know we're nestling like conversation topic and conversation topic here.

It is incredible that late period Clint Eastwood is going on 40 years now, that the demarcation point of when you're like, and Clint starts doing his like wind down sunset movies is like in its fourth decade.

It's almost hilarious.

Yes.

I mean, and I mean, you read the reviews of those films at the time, and not just those, but like the later ones, I mean, I'm a big fan of True Crime and True Crime The Absolute Power.

Well, no,

I don't love

blood work.

I do love it.

Blood work is interesting.

It's one of the best pre-Mystic River, O'Clinton O'Turre again movies.

You also love having blood work done.

You text me and you're just like, I'm right now.

They're taking taking six vines today.

True Crime, I remember being kind of overwrought.

That's the death penalty one.

That's the death penalty one.

It has,

it completely shits the bed at the very end.

Like,

the climax is just like, we got it.

We got to finish this.

Is that Lenny and Daniels?

Sorry, who?

Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels.

Am I right?

I'm going to look it up because I think Laura Linney for sure.

Have you seen Laura Lenny is in absolute power?

That's okay.

Well, right.

The witch is the one,

right?

Yes.

That's right.

The president who's getting his dick sucked.

And

Clint Eastwood is a cat burglar, which is my favorite part of that.

But True Crime is the one where

Daniels is really good in Bloodwork.

True Crime is the one where a major subplot is that Clint Eastwood, who's a newspaper reporter, I think, cucked Dennis Leary and cannot shut up about it.

And when Dennis Leary is like, can I assign you a story?

And Clint's like, sorry for fucking your wife.

And it's like, Leary's like, I'm just trying to assign you.

That specifically should be a plot point in two movies a year.

Which one is James Woods in it?

James Woods is in True Crime.

In True Crime, yes.

I cannot remember.

He might be either the good guy lawyer or the bad guy lawyer.

It's been a while, but anyway, these movies.

These movies I'm allegedly a fan of, and I can't remember who's in them.

But no, but if you read the reviews at the time, and I remember the reviews were all kind of like,

you know, harping on Clint's age and the fact that he's casting himself as, I mean, it's not, it's not really a romantic lead in those movies, but there is, I mean, you sense that, and it makes perfect sense that they said this.

And it's kind of like,

man, if he only looked like that, right?

He's virile as hell in the line of fire or whatever.

But it's the same thing of like looking at stills of Crystal Skull now.

And you're like, this movie has jokes about him being old.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, and like, same with like Rocky V.

Like, yeah.

What are some other Malkoviches you love?

Because I was obsessed with Malkovich as a young person because of being Malkovich, right?

And like

that movie i knew him from like con air or and rounders or whatever but like that movie is introducing malkovich as like the pre-package like this is the most interesting character actor right well i mean this of the generation this is another one of them i mean empire of the suns right which i didn't see until much later is it crazy for me to say i had this thought while i i'd seen it before while re-watching it just now I had the thought, like, if this movie were better received, I think he would have won the Oscar.

I know he didn't even get nominated, but it feels like this is, Malkovich has been nominated.

Oh, he was nominated in the line of fire.

Yes, and the only one places in the heart, he has two nominations.

Does he have two?

Yeah, okay.

He was not nominated for Dave.

Places in the Heart was like his breakout, right?

That was, yes, and he was nominated for David.

And that was a movie where a lot of people just didn't know who the hell he was.

Well, I think that's right.

That's basically his first movie.

Who is this guy performance?

And this coming after that, right?

And it's like on paper, this is a role that almost feels designed to win someone in Oscar.

And he is so good in it.

And it's like, is it a little too early in his career combined with people people being a little tepid on this movie?

But watching it now, and we'll get into who beat him.

I was like, it's kind of extraordinary he didn't get nominated, let alone Wayne.

Wasn't it Connery who beat him?

Was it Connery?

Is this the fucking I think the

Untouchables year?

Is that true?

I could be wrong.

Look it up, Dave.

Which year, sorry?

Who won Best Portning Actor?

Yeah, is this Connery?

87.

Connery, yeah,

so then no one was going to fucking beat Connery.

87 was a big year for my cinephilia.

And, you know, in terms of like the Oscars,

you know, Last Emperor is one of my all-time.

This is I was about to bring up.

What I consider your favorite movie of all time, am I wrong?

Last Emperor?

Or at least like the movie that sparked your cinephilia, you've seen a billion times.

I've seen it a billion times.

I've seen it a billion times.

And for you, that's you've seen it even by Bilga's standards a lot.

There was a period in 1988.

Bilgas doesn't.

It's a billion.

There was a period in 1987 when I was, and 1988 too, early months of 1988, when like alternating every week between going to see Empire of the Sun in the movie theater and whatever that Emperor

was in DC, they were playing in the two nicest theaters.

Last Emperor was at the Uptown, which is an enormous fucking screen.

It's where I think 2001 had its world premiere, maybe.

And then

Empire of the Sun was screening at this place called, at the time, I think it was just called the Cineplex Odeon Cinema, or maybe the KB, it might have been a KB cinema.

But again, these like single-screen, old-school picture houses.

And

after school, I would just, it just every week or, you know, every other day, it was kind of like, well, what should I see next today?

Yeah.

Empire or Emperor.

Yeah.

And of course, they were both shot in China.

So I look, I love how deep we are getting into multiple areas.

Right off the bat, I do want to just quickly say this is Blank Check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin.

I'm David.

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

Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce.

Baby, this is a mini-series on the first half of Steven Spielberg's career, repaying the balance of a thing we started seven years ago.

It is called Podrassic Cast.

Today we're talking about Empire of the Sun.

One of his kind of infamous bounces.

Would you call, I wouldn't call this a bounce, but definitely a

not the success movie.

Received at the time.

And I remember, look, we mourn the death.

of the old box office mojo interface and features very often on this show.

A thing I used to love to do was how easy their dropdown was to be able to adjust for inflation in various different ways in any year.

And I remember at some point,

probably in the late 2000s, being like, if you adjust to modern dollars, how many Spielberg movies don't make 100 million?

And I was surprised by how many of the films that are considered flopped would have made 100 today.

And in my memory, the only ones that wouldn't have made 100

were This,

Always, and Sugarland.

That like 1941 would make 100 million in today's dollars or whatever.

This is off of a memory, a thing I cannot source.

Well, there is it didn't lose money.

It was, it was, it was, it was coolly received.

I mean, I remember this.

It, it had kind of an initial wave of appreciation because the National Board of Review gave it best picture and best director.

Which is often a weird kind of death knell of like them

early.

They call it, people go like, does that mean it's a serious frontrunner?

And then the thing like Peter's, like, like, I think of like Burton getting the Sweeney Todd Best Director Award and people being like, holy shit, Burton's a player.

And then you're like, wipe out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a strange thing.

I mean, and I don't remember if the film had even opened by the time it won that award.

Because obviously Spielberg at this point is, I mean, as far as box office goes, he's God, right?

He's coming off.

you know, a number of Oscar nominations and things like that.

There is this anticipation that he's eventually going to make something that wins.

And I think Empire of the Sun initially looks like the kind of film that could be that movie.

Absolutely.

Right.

Because, you know, Color Purple,

I mean, I'm sure you guys have gone over all this stuff, but like Color Purple, you know, gets all these nominations.

He doesn't get nominated, even though he wins the DGA.

Right.

It is this weird,

and we should say our guest today is Bill Goberry, the great Bill Goberry, returning to the show,

New York Magazine.

And is this now Bill Gaz's induction into the Five Timers Club?

Finally, having been on this podcast, the average number of times he watches a movie that he hates,

the low end,

the fewest times he ever watches any movie.

This is your fifth episode.

Dunkirk, Black Hat, Lorenzo Zoy, Ferrari, and now Empire of the Sun.

I feel like these are all very important.

You've never been on a passive movie for you.

Yeah, you guys don't ask me for anything that I'm.

They're all like your major guys,

your favorite work by one of those guys or both.

My guys.

These are very much my guys.

Your guys.

My guys.

But

we'll be talking about

the color purple thing.

Right.

Cause yeah, it's like color purple is a big success at the box office, but it gets a ton of nominations.

He is snubbed.

And then it is historically up until that point in time, the most nominations without a single win.

And this weird balance that we've been charting of like Jaws gets best picture nomination, doesn't get director.

Close Encounters gets director, but not picture.

Raiders is the first time it gets both.

He's basically always only winning technical awards for his movies.

Yes.

And then it's like a great technician.

Right.

And he wins, he wins the Thalberg at some point, sometime around now.

That's true.

As kind of a like,

thank you for the business.

It's an insult from the Spielberg.

Right.

To Spielberg.

And he almost drops it.

I remember he almost dropped it on the puddy.

But Color Purple was like the first movie of his where they sort of did it.

Like the, here's, it's nominated in every category, basically.

We're treating it like a legitimate best picture contender, except for you.

Yeah.

except for you

clearly had nothing to do every time they were sort of going like not yet hold your horses he won the fellberg the year after color purple and the year before this right so yeah because i remember that was a i remember that felt like kind of a consolation prize in a way and there was this general vibe that somehow the oscars didn't like steven spielberg i mean you know how these like memes take over it's funny now because now there's this vibe that like any spielberg film will like get an oscar nomination at least in the in the 90s early 2000s there was definitely that vibe but even now it feels like they take him for granted a little bit where you like i i the gold only one film of his has ever won best picture yeah and the golden globes uh that is crazy the year of the post uh set myers comes out at the beginning and says like uh the post a film steven spielberg made about the importance of journalism against presidential crime starring tom hanks and meryl streep and then they have an actor come out holding like 40 awards.

And he goes, not yet.

We can't give them all the awards yet.

And then that movie blinks.

Yeah.

It doesn't want to be.

And by the way, I just re-watched it again.

That movie rules.

That movie does rule.

I love it.

I'm a huge fan of it, but I do feel like the reaction at the time was the reaction that he usually gets now.

Kind of the reaction that John Williams gets.

I watched that Disney documentary about John Williams where it's like, oh, he's so good.

And he's got all his Oscars on a shelf.

And it's like, he hasn't won an Oscar since 1993 because the Academy is always just like, yeah, you did a good job again.

Fine.

I mean, he did win a ton.

He won a bunch.

Yeah.

But like the thing was like, Williams won Oscars for, okay, Fiddler on the Roof, like a bit of an odd early Oscar where it's like adaptation of a song score.

But then it's like Jaws

E.T.,

Jaws Star Wars E.T.

Schindler's List, where it's like, he won for big iconic scores.

He should have won for Catch Me If He Can.

That's a miss.

Like, there's a couple other scores where, like, I think at that point, they were just like, well, we don't want to give it to him again.

Well, it's, I mean, when Munich was coming out, there was this Time magazine cover

announcing that film, which he had made on such a quick turnaround, like, started filming it after War of the Worlds came out, already had it done by December.

And he openly says in that, I kind of want the third best director trophy.

Like, he openly admits, like, I'm jealous of like sort of like Hawks and Ford and the guys who have gotten more than two and being in that realm.

And it feels like him saying that outwardly made the Academy go, like, if you want a third one, you really have to fucking prove it to us.

And Munich that year was like seen as the early front runner and then became like a picture director also ran.

Munich is too alienated.

Same thing with Lincoln, though.

A year out, people were like, well, he's going to win his first.

He should have won for Lincoln.

He should have won.

I loved Lincoln.

And

I was very missed on Munich when it first came out.

I've come to appreciate it more, but I do, it does feel like they shot the first draft of the script for me with Munich.

Lincoln is extraordinary.

Lincoln is wonderful.

And I was really surprised that Lincoln got so little

because it felt too obvious for them.

I think they were like, really?

We're going to give it to the sort of homework movie?

There's sort of a lot of people who are going to be able to

get the Oscar nomination.

I was surprised that

it got so little run in the critics awards.

That was my first year voting in.

At the Critics Circle?

Yeah, that was my first year voting in the New York Film Critics Circle.

And

there were almost no votes for Lincoln in this picture.

Lincoln, right?

Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor.

And that was the year Zero Dark 30 won.

Now, I wasn't a member then, but I feel like that's a movie that came on on very late.

And just like American Hustle the year after, which we,

in my opinion, shamefully gave best picture.

I remember talking about movie stage perfectly.

Were you there for America?

I have a good American Hustle New York Film Critic Circle win story for you, which I can't share.

I cannot share on microphone.

But like

two years in a row, the critic circle went for kind of the last movie to screen, right?

Like the movie that came in right at the end.

It's like, get our attention.

And it worked.

Yeah.

A strategy that I feel like doesn't really work anymore.

It does not work work anyway they they tried it with um i mean it's it's it's so funny because you we're always thinking oh they're they're scheming to do this but in so many cases the movies are like barely finished but they tried that with uh django unchained uh they tried it with scorses silence they did i remember i talked to that yeah i remember i that was like a movie screen that's a i saw it twice that day right that's like

five months to come around

people were away for thanksgiving and then the the i think we were voting like the next day or two days later or something and i remember talking to people and most people hadn't seen it because they were like, well, I was, I was like, you know, I was away for Thanksgiving.

And it's just not a movie where you walk out being like, well, I'm sold.

You know, like, I love silence.

I think it's a great movie.

I don't think it's a movie you need.

You need like two months.

But I talk about, we talk about this a lot.

I'm just staring into a pool of water.

I agree.

We talk about this a lot, but like, you know, the limited pool of like people who've won the palm d'Or twice or have won like more than two Oscars, right?

I'm like, I feel like there's this, whether it's conscious or not, sort of feeling from those boards of like, or at least this should be the standard.

If you've already won that many times, you know, it's like, it either should be, this is so clearly above and beyond what you've previously done.

It's just executed at an exponentially higher level than the last time we awarded you, or it is so different from what you've done before.

We didn't know you had this in you.

And I think at this point in our current day era, Spielberg is a little bit of victim of having proven that he could do anything.

Like Schindler, they were like, you know what?

We didn't know you could make something this somber and restrained.

And then Saving Private Ryan, they were like, we didn't know you could make something this kind of visceral and like disturbing, and you know, but still with the uplift.

Now, as opposed to the first half of his career that we're covering now, where it feels like you even just look at the 80s as a microcosm for him, right?

He makes E.T.

and the Indiana Jones trilogy, the like peaks of commercial cinema.

And then in between those, he's like doing experiments that the public is like, eh,

you know, color purple, always,

Empire of the Sun.

Like, it's a little like back and forth where they're like, we prefer you doing the Spielberg thing.

By the time he gets the 90s, people are like, you know what?

He can do anything he wants.

We don't question him.

We're not going to like every movie.

But there's no like guard up against he shouldn't try to make a historical drama.

He shouldn't try to make a film about adults, etc.

There's, there's, I think part of it is also Spielberg is himself a little unmoored during this time.

The other thing I remember from this period is, you know, Spielberg actually enters a period that, I mean, I don't want to call it a period of decline, but there is a period when he's not kind of the king of the roost, right?

I mean, it kind of starts with this one.

Always is

always is terrible.

I kind of like it.

I just saw it for the first time.

I kind of like it.

It does not.

Every time I watch it, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to like it this time.

I bet I'm going to like it this time.

And I'm like, no, sorry.

I've seen it three times.

But that's actually,

that's really, that's, that's, that's my equivalent of a Leonard Malton bomb.

That's like turning it off after 10 minutes for most people.

Um, first 10 minutes of always are really good.

It always starts pretty strong.

It actually, that's what it is.

It's every time I put it on, it's like, it starts, and I'm like, oh, this is really good.

I'm going to really like this.

And then it just completely falls apart.

Where do you stand on Last Crusade?

Last Crusade might be my least favorite of the Indiana Jones movies.

Because it's too kind of like straightforward.

See, that's the one where the ending doesn't work for me.

A lot of people hate the endings of the other ones, but like the

it just the cup.

I like, I like, you know, this is the cup of a carpenter.

Like I like, I love that.

That sense chills up my spine.

But like that whole finale and then with the night of the round table and all that,

for some reason, also because, you know, there was this period where it seemed like there was such a kind of weird religiosity in Spielberg's movies.

And that one kind of just brought it home.

I do like the movie.

I've seen it many times.

I've taken my son to see it at like one of his Metrop shows.

It's a very fun movie.

It is my favorite, but I'm also like, I don't think it's a particularly deep film.

I think it's just exemplary Spielberg Entertainment.

Yeah.

And it's very on my comedic wavelength.

Yeah.

And it's, I mean, it is, it is a comedy.

It's actually maybe the only time he's really pulled off a comedy.

You know, we were talking about this, and that is a great take.

That has

an argument on 1941.

Not argument.

I just sort of pointed out that like basically all of his worst movies are his cleanest attempts at comedies.

Like 1941, the terminal, arguably all

right.

He can't do comedy and he can't do romance.

Which is why always stinks.

We were saying what's weird is that he's really good at applying comedy to non-comedy movies.

Absolutely.

But when the assignment is full comedy, it doesn't work.

I think The Last Crusade, you are right, is his most successful comedy.

And I feel like a lot of Indiana Jones purists and people who are the right age to grow up with them talk about it in a kind of return of the Jedi way where they're like, that one comes out when I'm 17 and it felt kiddish and I was over it.

And I think a lot of that is, it's very silly, but it's successful at being silly.

At the time, it also felt to me like,

and, you know, whenever I have this kind of take about a filmmaker, I realize I'm totally talking out my ass because it takes them a long time to get these projects off the ground.

But it did feel like he had had a couple of blops and he was kind of going back to what worked.

And he's like, here's an Indiana Jones sequel,

which, you know,

maybe there was some of that, but, you know, knowing how these films get made and how long it takes, it's, you know, it's, it's more complicated than that.

I will say, I have this, I've probably, I've probably talked to one of you guys about this, but I have this unified field theory of Spielberg.

That's okay, that's the first place.

This is the place to debut our Spielberg miniseries.

No, I mean, I've written about this in a couple of places, but I have this theory that early period of his career,

you know, 70s, 80s,

that his films really can be best be understood as being from the point of view of a child.

And then there's this, this, the back half of his career,

they make a lot more sense if you see them through the eyes of a parent.

I, I,

and I think, and one of the reasons

I'm working and the fact that

I know you guys are not fans of Hook, but I think Hook

Hook is the pivot point.

Halfway through Hook, Spielberg realizes

that put away childish things.

Yes, and that's what Hook is about.

And I later found out, because I had this idea, and then later I found out, or I was told that it's during the making of Hook or right around then that he reconciles with his dad.

Right.

And kind of gets a fuller understanding of Seth Rogan's role in his dad's, you know,

marriage falling.

I think you are right.

And we will spend our time debating hook in a couple weeks.

I will say my exact problem with Hook is I feel like he makes that realization like halfway through making the movie.

And that realization comes with, I shouldn't have made this movie.

I mean, he does not like that movie at all.

Right.

And Jurassic Park is about a guy learning to be a parent.

Jurassic Park is the much better version of what the story that Hook is trying to do.

Well, because Hook is him like monologuing to his son being like, I should just play baseball with you.

And I'm just like, can we have a sword fight?

But like, if you look at, no, you're absolutely right.

I mean, Jurassic Park.

If you think about it, yeah, I mean, it's all about Sam Neal learning to become a dad.

Like, that's really kind of the full flower of

Spielberg's change in perspective.

And it's also so crazy because it's like this roller coaster movie that he was like, can I slip in like 10% of an emotional spine underneath this?

And it's so kind of underplayed and unspoken.

And it's, yet it's so personal and revealing and deeply felt.

10 years earlier, that movie would have been all about those kids.

Correct.

Right.

And in fact,

as I was rewatching Lincoln, there's that little moment I totally forgotten about where he,

where, you know, Abraham Lincoln slaps his son, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

And I was thinking about, there are actually a surprising number of slaps in Spielberg movies.

You could really do a fun montage on it.

But then I was thinking.

This has a huge one.

Well, yes, absolutely.

But I was thinking about

the slap in Jaws, right?

The mother who slaps at the hospital.

Yeah.

And it's a great, great, I mean, great moment in Jaws, iconic moment in Jaws.

But, you know, who do we identify with there?

I mean, we identify with Roy Scheidter because he's obviously the protagonist, but really what we're identifying there is his humiliation, right?

So it's very much like almost like the humiliation of a little boy who's been slapped.

And then the later films, it's like...

What are some other slaps?

Well, watching the Joseph Gordon-Levitt scene, I was kind of like, you don't really feel his, like, you don't really feel Joseph Gordon-Levitt's humiliation.

You feel Abraham Lincoln's

anxiety.

That's a pivot point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

God, Lincoln is so good.

But I mean, I mean, everything about Lincoln is good.

Every single thing, in my opinion, about Lincoln is good.

But all the best stuff is just all his cabinet.

I mean, I think I said this on our episode.

Anytime they're like, what should we do?

This is the most stressful shit in the world.

And he's like, there was an old mill and they're like, God damn it, will you stop with your fucking stories, you homie, stupid lawyer?

One time I found a pencil.

Oh, I was watching it.

A man at a bucket of water and they're like, it's a civil war.

Metaphorical or literal.

I was watching with my son and he had such a great time watching it.

It's so funny.

It actually is, it's another.

It's about dirtbags.

It's another instance of him applying comedy in a situation where comedy would not.

I mean, that's kind of the old Spielberg coming through.

He's like, let's make the Spader Hawks, like three Stooges, Tim Blake Nelson shit.

Yeah.

It's also the original.

I mean, it's not the original Oppenheimer, but like, it definitely has that Oppenheimer vibe of like.

What if every single person is someone deeply important as an actor?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love the thing you said about Oppenheimer,

Griffin,

on your episode.

I think it was you, where you said, everybody in this movie has at some point been number one on a sheet.

Yes.

Which is a great way to put it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love everything you're saying.

And

the sort of prism you're putting around this movie, because this is, I think, a big turning point movie.

as well.

He has not yet done the perspective shift to that of the parent, but this feels like the movie of him trying to kill the child inside of him.

Well, it's a big movie.

It feels like him being like, I need to move on.

Well, it's a movie about the loss of innocence.

I mean, it's a movie about the death of childhood, as is the color purple, but this much more explicitly.

But the difference to me is that in this one, it feels like he's recognizing I'm still like viewing this too much from the perspective of the child rather than being able to look back on childhood as an adult.

And that's what he's really trying to like change here.

I feel like we commit to doing this.

We put our schedule on the spreadsheet.

I like typed your name in from months before we even reached out to you where I was just like, that feels like a good fit.

And I know Bilga is one of the big, like, this is his most undersung movie defenders.

Well, it's also the formally the movie is so interesting to me because

Spielberg has his vernacular, right?

I mean, Spielberg has his language.

He has his

favorite shots, you know, he has the crane shots and the, you know, the tracking shots.

And, and this film feels to me like him

asking himself, How can I tell this darker, more mature story using

my stuff, using my language?

And because there's a, I don't know if you guys ever seen, there's a, there's a, there's a one-hour making of this movie.

Of this?

Yeah, available on like the Blu-ray.

I used to have this movie on Laserdisc, my Digibook here, which also has

Warner at War DVD.

I have not watched that.

That looks really interesting.

That is an ambulan production and 40, 47 minutes long.

I bet it rules.

Yeah.

But it uh

in this in this documentary you know you see him like directing these scenes and it's it's really impressive i mean the the way they completely you know made over shanghai to look like shanghai back then um but then you know you see him shooting the scene at the camp there's the kind of i the the big you know emotional moment in the film where jim sees the pilot you know the the plane flying by and the skies uh yeah like of the skies um and you see uh spielberg directing christian bale and

you know, he tells him, he tells him, you're in a real cool action figure shot.

Like that, those are the words he uses.

And it is true.

Like that's like, he's got that kind of, you know, that stance.

And it's so interesting to me that Spielberg uses that

language to define that shot because it is a cool shot, but it's such a dark moment.

Right.

And you see, you also, I mean, John Williams' score for this, obviously, which is magnificent, as it always is.

But in some ways, it's it's like his most,

it's his, it feels like his most classical score.

One, the biggest motif in it is one that he did not write.

Yeah.

Right.

It's, it's what, the hymn at the beginning of the film, which gets repeated in so many ways.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But then also, like, it's, it's kind of this, like, it has this very jaunty, playful theme, but then under it are these sort of very dark chords running through.

Like, it really is.

Spielberg and his people, including John Williams, trying to take like what they know about how to put together a movie and like just tip it just a little bit so that the story becomes a lot darker.

But then he makes Schindler's list.

And that, I feel like, erases this movie in everyone's mind because that's a sort of more successful or more broadly like.

Look back as this was the dry run before he totally cracked it on Schindler.

But he also said,

but the other thing I remember on Schindler's list was he really restrained himself.

Like, that's the thing that people.

He also says that.

I mean, he's a fucking liar.

Schindler's list is so liquid entertaining, even when it's so upsetting.

It is, but, but I will say at the time it did feel really restraining.

And I get that.

And they talked about how, I mean, he actually talked about how, like, technically speaking, he

limited the amount of weight.

Yeah, like he limited the amount of tracks he had.

He still has incredible winners.

Especially compared to the shit we get today.

Well, that's the other thing about Spielberg.

My whole two minutes

inside me thing.

Well, but that's the okay.

Well, pin in that.

But that's the whole wolves inside me thing about Schindler, where I'm just like, this movie is so goddamn entertaining.

And like, should there be entertainment about something?

Well, this is the Hanukkah argument.

But I mean, the whole thing with that movie is, and it feels almost like a reaction to people being like, not quite on Empire of the Sun, Schindler, the infamous thing is that he was like, I won't storyboard this.

I need to go there and be in the place and like engage with the emotions and feel it out rather than doing like a puppet show kind of controlling shit.

And that's the part of it that I think felt very restrained to him is he didn't allow himself the time to like math it out in advance.

We, we, we did our color purple episode very recently.

Great Kennesse Mobley as our guest.

And she said this line I thought summed it up really well, where she's like, the weird cognitive dissonance in this movie is like him shooting sexual assault scenes like they're E.T.

and to some degree, it feels like the locker room bully confrontation.

with the Fablemans, where he's just like, I don't understand why I make everything look like this, right?

That like everything becomes too magical if I shoot it.

This feels like the first movie where he successfully, to your point of what you're getting at, figures out how to shift his aesthetic a little bit so that it doesn't feel too like wonderful.

And even just, you know, the most recent episode in weird record order we did right before this, earlier this week was 1941.

And 1941 has that thing where you're just like, Jesus Christ, this is too expensive.

You can't stop thinking about how big the production is.

Hyperactive.

The resources, so much going on.

This has these insane long woners in like huge environments with hundreds of extras and planes flying overhead and knowing that stuff is logistically impossible.

And yet I think it is the first time in his career he can orchestrate something like that and not make it feel like he's playing with toys, not make it feel like he's showing off, make it feel like it's actually just kind of like immersive environmental recreation.

I had seen this once before.

Our friend Connor Ratliff had never seen it, and they were playing it at MetroGraph maybe like 10 years ago, a little less, very shortly after MetroGraph opened and was like, this is what I want to do for my birthday.

It is a very funny birthday movie.

But he was like, it's a Spielberg blind spot.

So everyone should come see Empire of the Sun with me.

And we all were just kind of bummed out afterwards.

But I was like, you know, I've heard this recent.

People are kind of revisiting it and reclaiming it.

And I saw it and I was like, yeah, that's interesting.

That's interesting.

I see what he was getting at.

It doesn't totally work.

Watched again today, like 15 minutes in, I was like, is this a masterpiece?

Do I now put this on his top tier?

Which Spielberg top tier is like, this is ridiculous.

It's ridiculous and also is big.

It's like, how many tiers are you creating of like unquestionable masterpieces versus near masterpieces or whatever?

But there were a couple of things that really like unlocked for me, especially watching 1941 and Color Purple recently in relation to this.

But the like Spielberg face, right?

The sort of famous image of the Spielberg wonder face, the overhead looking up at whatever.

His O face.

His O face.

This movie, even like thinking about him directing Christian Bale in that way, you have those moments where Christian Bale is doing the Spielberg face at the plane overhead, and yet he is now shooting him from below.

He's tilting up.

You're not in the perspective of the thing that the kid is looking at in wonder.

You are on the ground looking at a kid look up at something unseen ominously.

And it's like, fuck, he's figuring it out.

You're watching in real time him figuring out how to, as you said, shift his language a little bit, subvert it a little bit, successfully create different types of emotion without just making everything feel magical and entertaining.

It is the weird balance of him: like, he, he, it is hard for him to make something that is not entertaining.

He has like such kind of like showman storyteller bones in him that right.

It's his Midas Touch thing or whatever.

Like, it's a bit of a curse sometimes.

He wrestles with.

And I think in this movie, to a certain degree, he's working so hard to fight against that that that must have been frustrating to people at the time.

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 is 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.

Here's a

spotlight.

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.

The glove to hand pick.

Oh,

of course.

David Mussolini, Colin, son of the century.

It is,

look,

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

Here's what's funny about it.

Just to peel back the curtain for a second.

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

Yeah, here's the copy for the ad.

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

And I was like, Mussolini sponsoring the podcast?

What do you mean?

To be clear, we decry.

Il Duce Mussolini, Benito Mussolini, the terrible dictator of Italy.

But we celebrate Joe Wright and his newest project.

The filmmaker Joe Wright

has created

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

And I will say, not to sound like a

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

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

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

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

You sound like me right now.

This is the kind of thing I say.

very it's a very interesting part of history and i feel like because you know other world war ii things became

whatever the history channel's favorite thing you don't hear quite as much about wrestling these films no you're right unfortunately sadly tragically frighteningly he's not a hugely this is a hyper relevant time and this is a theatrical hyper visual tour deforest starring luca marinelli martin eden himself remember that beloved member of the old guard that's right movie i love an episode that people considered normal 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 Wrighty.

It does.

Joe Wright.

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

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

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

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This is heavy ad copy, guys.

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

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Yeah.

No, it's Joe Wright,

one of the scarier people I ever interviewed.

I've told you that story, right?

He knows he's kind of a cool guy.

We've batted him already.

He's certainly gotten 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, I get suggested.

You're like, sure.

It doesn't fit the model.

This one does.

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Yeah, they got lots of movies.

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Bye!

Okay, okay.

I'll be quiet.

Oh, I'm used to it.

Producer Ben is sleeping.

Oh,

Hazzie, Hazzy boy is

getting some

seasy

with multiple dashes.

What's he sleeping on?

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

But this is a big opportunity for us.

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

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

Ben did a Wayfair ad for us recently.

You listen to past recordings?

Yeah, sometimes.

That's psycho behavior.

It is.

Look.

He did that when we were sleeping.

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

you might not think Wayfair, but you should.

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

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

Yeah, of course, but Wayfair is also the ideal place to get game day essentials, bigger selection, created collections, options for every budget slash price point you want to make like a sort of man cake style easy david okay fine okay all right sorry you know wayfair uh stuff gets delivered really fast hassle free the delivery is free they 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.

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This is true.

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Vante Mack, no matter what.

Okay, that's the end of the act, bro.

I want to resolve a few pins.

Please take some pins out of the board.

But I think this movie's excellent.

I think John Williams should have won the Oscar

for best score on top of his wins that he, I think, largely deserved already.

I think he should have won for Home Alone over Dances with Wolves.

That might be my most controversial take.

John Barry, though.

The John Barry score for Dances with Wolves is very, very good.

And hey, by the way,

let's put a pin on Kevin Costner.

I've taken some pins out.

Let's put some other ones in.

Pin and Cosmo.

The Home Alone score, I think, has endured in ways maybe people didn't see coming in 1991.

Anyway, I agree.

And also, you and I say that might be the single greatest

power boost of a score to a movie ever.

Right.

It is a huge, yes, you're right.

It's a a huge help to that movie.

I don't think he should have won for Saving Private Ryan.

I think that score is very good, very sort of stately and, you know,

he should have won for the Thim Rim Rim Rim Rim Red Line.

That's what's crazy.

Hans Zimmer should have won for the Thin Red Line, although I think that score is sort of oddly deployed in the movie.

It's an amazing score, or it's unusually deployed in the movie.

Well, it's the clicky man.

The Metallic thing where it was like scored and then he recut it and put pieces where they weren't written.

Right.

And Zimmer's like, what the fuck did you do?

But you listen to that as an album and it's one of the most unrelievable pieces

and

becomes like the go-to story

there's a there's a funny story i don't know if you guys have read uh this new biography of terence malak that came out by john bleach

it's great it's a really really great and he got a lot of access uh but there's a very funny story in it about how uh disney uses the score for the thin red line um when they uh when they do the pearl harbor trailer it's part it's what makes the pearl harvard trailer look like a fucking best picture when people thought right and and and they didn't they didn't get permission to do this oh really and then years later there was something I wish I remembered this specific part of the story but years later uh there's something malik needs from disney and one of his assistants is like you know they're they're being pains in the neck about it he and he and he says like play the card right he says to them send him a message with two words pearl harbor yeah yeah and immediately he gets like the Ernie Sabella Pumba story I've told many times as if Malik isn't just some some wide-eyed innocent wandering through the wheat.

He knows how to play things.

This guy has been in the industry forever.

I just, Life is Beautiful won that year, which is like an odd win, in my opinion.

I think Randy Newman's Pleasmille score is better.

I think Saban Proud Right is better.

I think the Northern Line is probably your actual winner there.

He, in my opinion, all right.

He probably was never going to win in 2001 because Lord of the Rings wins for best score then.

Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Rings.

And that was for AI score?

He's nominated for both AI and Harry Potter.

It's like the kind of one-two punch of like, Williams can give you an iconic theme for like a big family movie.

He can also do his AI score, one of his most beautiful scores.

So sadly.

But that was never going to win at the time.

How people hated that movie.

And also, I would argue that the score isn't always that well used in the movie.

In the movie itself, again, it's a score I love listening to.

In the movie itself, sometimes it overwhelms.

It overwhelms the ending, I think.

In a way that I think caused people to misread the film at the time a lot of people who thought yeah it was i mean i was i was very mixed on ai at when i first saw it i i

i i i i i i i like it a lot now i still have some issues with how the two the cubers accessibility of the very strange frankenstein it's a very strange i mean that that's what makes it so unforgettable in a way um nothing like still as whenever i watch it i'm like that one doesn't that scene doesn't quite that scene doesn't quite we all agree he should have won for catch uh he lost to elliot goldenthal the great elliot goldenthal for for Frida, which is lovely and interesting and like sort of, you know, like, but like, this is a riddle effect.

If Elliot Goldenthal had won for Batman and Robin, then we wouldn't have been in this position.

Forever is his better battle.

I prefer the Batman and Robin score.

But that's an iconic year.

Well, his heat score is very cool.

Although, who knows how much of it he wrote.

Right, I was about to say.

But Far From Heaven, the Elmer Bernstein score for that is amazing.

The hours, very divisive, but the Philip Glass score for the hours is like,

I love it.

Philip Glass kind of is a king.

Yeah.

And Thomas Newman's Road to Perdition score.

Yes, Thomas Newman often kind of hits the same notes, but a really good score.

Yeah, not a fan of that movie, but I like Thomas Newman.

I don't remember that score.

I liked that movie and that score quite a bit.

I've only seen it once.

Anyway,

that's like not seeing it.

That's like me just pissing on a DVD of the movie.

Do you like Mendes generally?

Because I'm very upset.

You know, the Mendes I really do like is Revolutionary Road, which

I need to rewatch.

Fucking everyone hates that.

And I like, I think Skyfall is

the best.

He really is.

He's his best movie.

He's kind of

should have just,

there's some directors who I'm like, just do Bond movies.

Yeah, he should have become, what's his name?

Who was the guy who did like 10 Bond movies in those 70s?

John Glenn or Lewis Hamilton.

I'm like, you should have become one of them.

No, but the whole thing with Mendes doing Skyfall, which is a movie I love, is that helps Bond convince itself it's become a prestige

genre.

And it's like, maybe you you guys actually need to chill out a little bit and go back to basics a little bit, not be like two hours and 45 minutes long and have these

opposer movie, but it kind of needs to have

a negative effect on the direct poser movie, maybe.

One last pin, the list, the nine directors who've won the Palm Door twice is such a weird list of like masters and kind of like right place, right time guys.

Okay, so Osland Ruben Osland is a right place, right time guy, in my opinion.

Kustoritsa is one of my all-time favorites.

I know you love him.

Although he's like a monster now.

Oh, has he become a monster?

Oh, he has been for him.

For older European directors, it's always a crap show.

I mean, you don't want to give them Twitter.

It was already evident in Underground, which is a film I love.

But, you know, the breakup of Yugoslavia really sent him

a lot of people.

He's a little hard right on that stuff.

Yeah, he's a Dennis Miller effect.

I mean.

Kustarika Riccia, I've heard.

Kustarica.

Kusterica is I've not seen

When Father Was Away on Business.

I have seen Underground.

I don't know.

Have you seen Time of the Gypsies?

No, I have never seen it.

Time of the Gypsies is fantastic.

That's the one that's really, I mean, Underground, I really love.

I love When Father Was Away on Business, but it was seeing Time of the Gypsies, which I believe only won like Best Director or Grand Jury Prize or something, that really kind of knocked my socks off when I was a kid.

And then, okay, so Coppola, you mentioned, obviously,

he's up there.

Can you name the other?

Did Dargan win twice?

Of course.

Disconti won twice, I think, right?

No.

Does like Zinneman win twice?

Isn't there an old Hollywood director who won twice?

No.

I'll tell you the others.

Alf Schoberg that barely counts.

Miss Julie and Torman.

And Loach.

And Loach, that's a.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

Which he's a great director, a great filmmaker.

I think both of those wins are sort of viewed.

It's Barley and Daniel Blake?

Yeah.

I mean,

I really like

when the wind shakes the Barley.

I saw that film very late.

I remember at the time, people were really upset about it.

It's So

when I finally saw it, I was like, oh, this is actually really good.

i Daniel Blake, I was there for that can.

That was my first can.

And I remember, and I like iDaniel Blake.

It's pretty good.

That was

that, that, those can awards were a war crime.

And that was, you know, heartbreaking, George Miller's jury.

George Miller, great, great guy.

That was the year of Tony Erdman.

That was the year of The Handmaiden.

It was the year that Tony Erdman was obviously going to win.

And clearly, George Miller or at least a couple of people in the jury were just kind of like not into it.

Yeah, I mean, I was kind of, I was pulling for The Handmaiden that that year.

Another great film.

I mean, there were a lot of people who weren't.

Tony Erdman can't, and none of the big films won, and none of the really good films won anything, if I remember correctly.

I mean, Daniel Lake was fine.

I would not have given it.

I was going to say, Tony Erdmann, the character, the character in character, feels like he would fit in in the wasteland.

Like you would imagine George Miller would take to that.

Yeah, sure.

Like, this guy could be the mayor of fucking Bullet Town.

That was, yeah, because it's when Xavier Dolan wins the Grand Prix.

That's it.

Max Nicholson.

We get the Max Nicholson face.

And

what was it?

The guy who directed Son of Saul.

Sure.

Laszlo Nemes?

Yeah, Laszlo Nemesh.

He was on the jury that year.

And the Xavier Dolan film, everybody hated, even the people who really liked Xavier.

Xavier Dolan fucking hated it, probably.

But then was also angry that he had to share the award with Godar?

Was that a different year?

That was a different year.

I hated that shit.

At the press conference, somebody asked Laszlo Nemesh something

about that film, I think.

But like, the question was different, and he answered the question with the weirdest response, which was: yes, I know that some people think that because,

you know, because Xavier Dolan was on the jury last year and I won the grand jury prize, that I felt the need to give him the grand jury prize this year.

But I assure you that that's not true.

And it was kind of very much kind of no one.

It's very much at my t-shirt.

I did not fuck that cat.

Yeah, exactly.

I have never fucked a cat.

Yeah, because everybody was like, wait, what, really?

Oh my God, is this a thing?

I mean, I'm sure it wasn't, but it was kind of crazy that that movie won the fucking grand jury prize.

It's crazy.

Did we go through all this?

The others are Billy August, who won very close together.

Best intentions, kind of a weird winner.

Pell the Conqueror, more of a traditional winner.

Shohei Mimura, who's a great filmmaker.

And The Eel tied with Taste of Cherry.

So like, whatever.

And The Eel such a strange movie.

That is a very strange movie to give a palm to.

And

Michael Hanukkah.

You know, he's more in the master territory.

Although, like, I don't know.

Is he going to make another movie?

What's he doing?

Is he old?

Yeah, I guess he's pretty old.

I mean, he had a career before he became kind of.

Was he like a carpenter or something?

No, I mean, I mean, like, he had made like, you know, films for television.

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

I would love to hear that like John Carpenter style.

he's like yeah no i he's on xbox

the xbox right i'm playing with hanuka all the time we're doing halo together the last thing and we'll say this as we talk about empire of the sun right but it is very strange that the last emperor and empire of the sun these two movies that are like both kind of being sold with the like no one's ever filmed in china before like an american movie or you know are happening kind of at the same time and kind of about the same period in history, a little like 10 years off.

Is this not also, is Hope and Glory not also this same year where they kind of eat this movie's lunch on this sort of

from the perspective of a child thing?

Right, kids.

At least at the time.

I mean, critics, you know, critics liked Hope and Glory more.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's a big year for those types of stories, but I think China is also opening up during this period.

I mean, of course, that's why it's happening.

I mean, that's what happens with Bertolucci and Last Emperor, where.

But Bertolucci's kind of getting one on Spielberg, where Spielberg's like, I'm shooting in Shanghai.

No one's shot in American production here.

And Bertolucci's like, I got into the forbidden city.

The name is Forbidden.

And I got in, you bitch.

The whole first hour of my movie is, what, yours is set in some bombed-out hellscape?

Mine's in the most beautiful palace ever built by man.

That was a weird press conference, too, where Bertaluchi tells people at the way in.

He's holding up the belt.

Ruthless aggression.

I think The Last Emperor is a better movie than this movie.

But I like both.

I would agree because I love The Last Emperor.

You've never seen The Last Emperor.

You haven't seen a lot of the Tony 80s epic one best picture.

You've never seen Out of Africa.

You've never seen, well, Driving Miss Daisy isn't an epic, but another kind of like male brand.

The 80s best picture winners, I'm weirdly

kind of bad.

Last Emperor much better than Out of Africa.

Yeah, I mean, Last Emperor,

I love.

It's not my favorite movie of all time.

It's not even my favorite Bertolucci movie, but I

know what, Velga?

I'll just

fuck myself.

Well, no, 87 is, but 87 is the year I discover Bertolucci.

I was like 14 and I discovered Italian cinema and French cinema.

And then at the end of the year, The Last Emperor comes out, and I'm just like in Hog Heaven.

But also, you're the only person in Hog Heaven watching The Last.

I'm sure.

I'm sure.

I

don't even have to talk about how many times I discover it.

Everyone else is like seeing Repo Man or whatever.

You're like, I'm in Hog Heaven with The Last Emperor.

Repo Man is 86.

Yeah.

87 is also, I think 87 is also Alex Cox's Walker.

Oh, very chilly.

Which is very chilling.

Which is another favorite movie that, and that's a movie everybody hated.

What was your immediate response walking out of Empire of the Sun?

Knowing you ultimately would then alternate and see it every other week.

I loved it when I first saw it.

I mean, I remember.

You've probably seen most of Spielberg's big movies.

Yeah, because, you know, I mean, it's ubiquitous.

In the 80s, we were growing up with Spielberg.

Right.

And he's kind of growing up with you.

Like, he's making more adult movies at the exact age that you're ready to start seeing more adult movies.

Right.

That's the other thing.

As I was re-watching Empire of the Sun, you know, in preparation for this, it dawned on me.

I was like, oh, I like grew up with him, even though he's obviously much older than I am.

But there is this, like, he's making movies for kids when I'm a kid.

And as his movies grow up, I'm growing up with them.

And that really, you know, I'm like, that was, that was really fascinating to kind of think about.

But he,

you know, first of all, the first 30, 40 minutes of Empire of the Sun are masterful.

Even the critics who didn't like the movie were like, I mean, I think even Pauline Kale was just like, you know, the first 30 minutes, like the, you know, the invasion of Shanghai.

I mean, he stages that with such, such great control.

And so funny, you were saying

it's, it's like him learning to kind of give up his toys.

And the scene is literally a boy

dropping his toy.

That's where I think this movie is like, not self-critical, but like very self-aware and sort of like scathing of his whole persona and worldview.

Like this movie is this kid literally getting slapped to be like, fucking engage with the real world.

Your chauffeur's not coming.

You can't exist in your fantasy land of like Halloween costumes and toys.

Yeah.

I think I can't relate to.

And I'm going to actually open the dossier.

In the 1980s, Steven Spielberg befriended David Lean.

David Lean would have been what?

I'm looking up his age.

I mean, like

very old at this point, like in his 70s.

He died at the age of 83 in 91.

So he's in his like early 70s.

If I remember correctly, it's a terrible present.

It's 16th of April?

Yeah.

Wow.

No, but David Lean does.

He does Passage to India in 84.

And that's

his last movie.

So he's working on Nostromo for a while.

But this, in theory, would have been his last film.

I mean, obviously, not that he was fanning it as such.

But Passage to India, though, I do feel like

at the time is received by people being like.

This is a film from a person from another age.

Like, yes, of course it's impressive.

But David Lean is not exactly with the modern.

Yeah, I remember seeing Passage to India with my dad.

Alec Guinness is in brown face, and everyone's like, why is Alec Guinness in brown face?

Right.

So my dad, you know, has always been a huge cinephile, and I owe my cinephilia to him.

But I remember seeing Passage to India with him, and he was very mixed on David Lean.

He was not a big David Lean fan.

He leaned back.

As a viewer.

I was leaning in.

He was leaning back.

As we were watching, or maybe this was,

we wouldn't have talked during the movie, but I do remember this exchange, which is the scene where the doctor is like on the train where he's walking on the.

I had seen the passenger one time, like 15 years ago.

There's a shot of the doctor, whose name I forget, sort of walking between train cars on the outside of the train.

And it's an incredible shot.

And I remember saying to my dad, how can you not like?

a movie that has a shot like this and he and i remember he said i i dislike it because there's a shot like this.

Like, like he was like, this grandiosity is too much.

Is that the essential divide between you and your father as like film viewers?

Because you like grandiosity.

I like grandiosity.

He actually likes grandiosity too.

He just needs it to be earned.

It was often, we actually had a lot of really political disagreements over films.

My dad was kind of a,

at the time, I mean, he, you know, later changed his.

ideas on things, but he was kind of an old school communist back in the day.

And we actually had a lot of arguments over Bertolucci films, over which ones were like true to the revolution and which ones weren't, and stuff like that.

Like, he was very much a 1900 man, and I was much more of a Last Emperor man.

And he felt like Last Emperor, he liked the movie, but he felt like it kind of sold out a little bit.

It's too sympathetic to this imperial creature, right?

I don't know.

But this is the thing I genuinely love about you as a critic:

you are very discerning in what you will like wholeheartedly endorse as a fully functional, you know, masterpiece or whatever.

But I do like like your transparency in sometimes being like, there is an element of craft in this or a performance or a theme or a feeling that I like, it elevates this movie, even if maybe the movie isn't great, beyond some more functional films.

I can't throw this out because there's something here that is sticking with me.

Yeah, I mean, I imagine a lot of critics are like this, but there's like sometimes there's some, there's something you love in a movie.

And even if the rest of the movie doesn't work, I mean, you know, sometimes it's like just like the score.

You know, there's so many films I've seen where I'm like, oh, I love that movie.

And then I watch it, I'm like, I just like, I think I just kind of like the score, but I like how the score is used in the movie.

So I can't just listen to the score.

I kind of have to see the movie.

I'm not, I truly am not backhanding anyone in particular in my mind, but I do feel like, especially from like the experience of going to critic screenings and then reading those people's reviews, that sometimes you see people clearly enjoy a thing in a movie, but then their like analytical brain comes on and they're like, I can't fully endorse this as a thing that works.

I have, I have, I have said this about certain films where I, well, I did this about

That's My Boy, where I went, have we had this conversation?

No, but I'm not sure.

Like when I went to see That's My Boy at a critics screening, I sat in that room with all these critics laughing their asses off.

And I was sitting next to a couple of them.

I'm like, you laughed, you laughed, you laughed, you laughed.

And then the next day, you see their reviews and they're all trashing the movie.

I'm like, you guys are fucking lying.

You just sat, you sat there for two hours or hour and a half or whatever it was, laughing your asses off.

And my thing with the review was, listen, objectively, this movie is, you know, probably a piece of shit, but I laughed my ass off.

What can I say?

Same thing with vacation.

The vacation remake.

You've always stood up for the vacation remake, yes.

But speaking of the vacation remake, David Lean.

No, he's interested in J.G.

Ballard's semi-autobiographical novel, which had just come out in 1984.

He asks Spielberg to check in on the rights for him.

I guess Lean is just kind of like sitting in his estate being like, get that Hollywood guy on the phone.

The sort of string of great older filmmakers who somehow

collaborated with Spielberg only for Spielberg to wind up directing their movies.

Talk about the Billy Wilder Schindler thing in a couple weeks, but

AI and Kubrick.

Right.

Knowing that he was so high level.

He had good taste in these

things.

Him being so high level, being such a king of Hollywood, and also these guys knowing that he was such a cinephile and had such respect for the masters all of them are like if spielberg extends his like check to me i'm good and it's a little bit of like jordan pee being like i'm gonna hire spike lee to make black clansman so he can win an oscar finally you know yeah so spielberg checks in on the rights to this for david lean it's at warner brothers harold becker the not great the okay harold becker yeah that that's a that's a puzzling choice there director of sea of love and taps uh is

a solid journeyman

studio guy.

And so Spielberg says, like, yeah, it's tied up.

Like, it's sort of spoken for.

And then Becker drops out or whatever.

And so Spoofer goes back to Lean, at least this is how Spielberg tells it, and says, hey, it's available.

And at that point, Lean is interested, as you say, in Nostromo, an adaptation of the Joseph Conrad book, which never happened.

I guess Lean just said that.

Well, there was a

BBC TV version of it made.

And I don't know if it was, because I think Robert Bolt had written a screen.

I read that screenplay once, I think.

I used to work at the BBC and I remember I would just like steal all this stuff from them.

What did you do with the BBC?

Lord knows what he did.

It was like my first job out of college.

I actually had a very funny job at the BBC, which we won't get into here because it's very, but I had to prepare like little dossiers for all the productions that they co-financed.

Or the JJ.

Yeah.

So Lean is like, you, you do it.

You know, I don't want to do that anymore, but you go do it.

Lean said he lost interest.

This is a quote from Lean saying, this is a bloody well-written and very interesting diary.

I don't think it has enough of a dramatic shape.

Yeah.

But Spielberg also said from the moment that Lean brought it to him, he was like, fuck, secretly, I kind of want to direct this.

So I think he was thrilled when Lean threw it over to him.

Right.

Lean Spielberg also apparently was like, I'll produce Nostromo for you and started giving notes on a Christopher Hampton screenplay.

That's the Christopher.

And Lean was like, fuck you.

You don't give me notes.

And Spielberg was like, okay, okay, okay.

I just backed off.

It was just like, I don't want to piss you off.

so spielberg um is why do you think he's intrigued by empire of the sun it's through the eyes of a boy like you know an opportunity for him to make his definitive uh end of innocence movie right

have you guys read the novel no i never have i've read a lot of jg ballard never uh that one and and i've i've read all the jg ballard except for that one

the uh it's beautifully written it is beautifully written and it's so you know the landscapes and the action everything is so vividly described you can easily tell just by reading it, just through the language, why Spielberg thought, okay,

I can do something with this, or for that matter, why David Lean thought he could do something.

It's very dark, though.

I mean, they have definitely sanitized it for the film.

This didn't happen to him.

He did grow up in Shanghai, but he wasn't separated from his parents.

Like there is some dramatic.

Yeah, no, it's a novel.

I mean, it is a novel, although it's, you know, autobiographical.

Right.

He grew up in that period.

Yeah, I mean, suffered through the, you know,

the stuff described in the film,

in the book, is some of it is so gnarly and dark.

And

you know, you do wonder if, and I don't know if, you know, how

the script, you know, um,

transpired and how, what its journey was, but, you know, when we talk about how Spielberg is taking this like darker story,

and not doing some of the things that he's been accused of doing in the past, There is definitely a lot of sanitizing happening and a lot of kind of condensing of characters and turning them into

more of a Hollywood-y plot element.

But I'll say this, not having read this book and also not having read The Color Purple, shamefully, watching The Color Purple movie, you can tell in real time it's sanitized, even if you don't know the source material.

This, yeah, he dances around a lot of people.

I'm not surprised to hear that, but I don't feel it while I'm watching it.

Neither did I.

I mean, that's why I was so surprised when I read the novel to find, find you know that it was that it was so dark but horrible you can tell he's avoiding stuff yeah this it doesn't feel that way pen have you ever read me jg ballard i feel like

crash yeah i read crash high rise you'd probably dig atrocity exhibition like these are benny

tales what's the best one i mean i think high-rise is so cool but that it's a book that really i feel like i'm the only person that likes the wheatley movie i didn't mind that movie the wheatley movie is what uh of high rise movie of high-rise Rise.

Oh, okay.

High-rise is like these people move into a really fancy new apartment building in like 70s Britain, and it's like a weird nightmare zone that they can't escape from.

It's very clear.

That's sort of society.

It doesn't sound like J.G.

Ballard.

But I feel like you would dig it.

Yeah, you would.

I should check it out.

There's so many fucking books I need to check out.

Well, that's true.

You're a good reader, though.

I'm getting back.

In your 20s, you were a big...

Yeah, I mean, I originally went to school for creative writing thinking that was a smart idea that would lead to career opportunities uh so i did a ton of reading then and you know over the years i kind of fall off from time to time but yeah i'm getting back into the scene of things do you have a favorite novel

or that's a great question no i know it's an absurd question what's your favorite novel Grapes of Wrath, maybe?

That's a pretty good one.

I mean,

it's kind of my stock answer.

Do you have a stock answer for a favorite novel?

No.

I mean,

I would say

it's embarrassing at this point to say, like, on the road.

On the road, great.

But I was such a huge fan of the beats.

That was like a very important era for me when I learned the young man.

That's awesome.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Everybody keeps telling me to read the Dharma bums.

Did you ever read the Dharma bums?

Sure.

Yeah.

How was that?

Other Kerouac book?

No.

I mean, all of the other Kerouac stuff stuff can be hit or miss.

Trying to think,

The Subterraneans.

Oh,

great novel and very short, but I love that one.

David, what?

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

Booking.

Yeah.

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

Booking.

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From vacation rentals to hotels across the US, Booking.com booking dot yeah has the ideal stay for anyone even those who might seem impossible to please god i'm trying to think of anyone in my life perhaps even in this room ben who's like what's an example of someone i know who maybe has a very particular set of demands bringing me in and there's only one other person in the room

one other person in the room right now this is so rude i sleep easy i'm definitely not a someone who insists on 800 thread count sheets no that's a that's a an example of a fussy person.

But people have different demands.

And you know what?

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

You know, you've got

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.

Maybe any kind of demand.

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

Sure.

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

You got air conditioning.

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

Yes.

You got to have air conditioning.

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

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

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

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

You do.

You love selfies.

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

Look,

again,

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

And I'm like, sounds good to me.

Yeah.

Please.

Can I check that for you?

You want one of those in the recordings, too.

That'd be great.

You want to start, you want to be.

I'll be in the sauna when we record.

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

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

You look good if I had a sauna.

and a cold plunge and while recording, I'm on mic, but you just were going back, ha!

Like as I move to the

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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 adventure the new toxic avenger movie is coming to theaters august 29th macon blair's remake of reimagining reimagining whatever a reboot of the toxic Avenger now David and I have not got to see it yet but they sent you a screener link yeah I'm gonna see it we're excited to see it but Ben you texted us last night this fucking rules it fucks honks yeah it's so great let me read you the cast list here in in billing order as they asked which i really appreciate peter dinkledge jacob tremblay tremblay taylor page with elijah wood okay and kevin bacon tremblay is toxie's son his stepson his stepson okay uh wade goose yes great name give us the takes we haven't heard them yet okay you got Fucking Dinkledge is fantastic.

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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

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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.

Truma.

Yes.

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I grew up watching toxic and trauma movies on porches with my sleazy and sticky friends.

It informed so much of my sensibility.

Your friends like Junkyard Dog and Headbanger.

Yeah, exactly.

Making Toxic Crusader jokes.

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

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

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

They're playing with fire here.

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

And they knocked it out of the fucking park.

Okay.

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

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

It's gooey.

It's sufficiently gooey.

Tons of blood, tons of goo,

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It's really fucking funny.

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

Cinniverse last year released Terrifier 3 Unrated.

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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

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so um you know spielberg's interested he obviously had been trying to make a peter pan movie for a long time hook is the eventual peter pan movie he makes but he's kind of like this is the opposite of peter pan this is me getting to like strangle my peter pan movie A movie that literally opens with like a kid trying to goof around and someone being like, hey, stop it.

Yes.

So he's also a war nerd.

You know, he's like a history nerd, like so many baby boomers.

And the thing we've already touched on that he felt like being able to watch war films gave him an understanding of his father.

Right.

He had served.

He would not really talk about it.

And his father, I believe, was in the Air Force.

So airplanes in particular are interesting to him, I guess.

And he knows this isn't going to be a commercial project, really.

Like he's,

I guess, sort of aware of like, like, I'm not about to knock out a big hit, but he's also kind of working on like another Indiana Jones movie.

There's a Tom Stoppard script when he comes aboard.

He gets Mino Menhez, Mehes, Minnow Mehes, who wrote Color Purple to do a pass, but then Stoppard comes back in and, you know, does the other pass.

He's the only credit on the movie, right?

And Stoppard is kind of like, it's a masterpiece.

And I kind of learned how to write movies with Stephen helping me.

Like, you know, like, as much as Tom Stoppard is obviously

one of the most famous playwrights of his generation, like he becomes this kind of like Hollywood go-to guy, especially for rewrites.

And he's kind of like, I learned a lot working on that in terms of like where you don't need dialogue.

Like writing screenplays where like you can let the pictures take over.

I'm going to touch a sidebar very quickly here because now it feels too relevant to not bring up.

Do you know what I'm going to say about?

No, I don't know.

You were just talking about your creative writing degree and how you've moved away from that.

You did recently announce to us in group text that your Resi for 2025 is that you want to become a produced playwright.

Yes.

I always try to come up with a big resolution for myself.

You might remember 2018 when Ben said he was going to become a goog fell.

Yes, he was going to get a Guggenheim Fellowship.

That still hasn't material,

but working on it.

So, so these resolutions aren't always realistic.

But they're big.

They're always big, though.

But one year is to ride on a horse and you ride a dang horse.

You did ride a dang horse.

I rode the shit shit out of that horse.

I also made a fashion brand.

Yes, that you did.

Some of these have been achieved.

How's the sleep podcast coming?

Let's not talk about it.

Okay.

So you could write a play about riding a horse.

I mean, I'll add it to the list, the idea bank.

But yeah, I'm very much, I'm trying to, I'm trying to pivot to being a playwright.

That's awesome.

That's really good.

We still need you producing.

Of course.

Of course.

Okay, good.

So Ballard meets Spielberg, loves him.

Well, but wait,

I think there's a reason why you're bringing this up

with Tom Stoppard.

It just being brought up as one of the

great

most beloved modern playwrights, I was like, here's, here's an inspiration, Ben.

Here's someone because I was talking about him, though, and maybe this was in a conversation with Gariffin.

He technically produced like a spin-off prequel of Shakespeare.

Ross and Cranz and Gilderson.

And he directed, he directed the film version of it too.

Oh, really?

After this, a couple of years after this, and won like the big prize at i want to say venice venice i think it won venice venice right it's a play that i adore uh i've never loved the movie uh i saw it once i don't remember much about it but you're right it's kind of the lion king one and a half of romeo and

it's just a it's a

text that does not make sense as a movie hamlet it's fun to watch those guys do it it's just funny as you were saying

you were saying that stomp software kind of learned how to write movies from empire of the sun i'm like then he went

across the movie.

But doing your own play, it's often a bad play.

And then he, right, didn't he do like heavy, uncredited passes on both Attack the Clones and Revenge of the Sith?

He definitely, I think that's the thing.

He's in those

in the Spielberg Lucas.

Like, hey, you're going to say he's in those movies.

He's in those movies.

He played Darth Maul.

People forget that.

He's in the Galactic Senate.

You didn't see Tom Stoppard in the Galactic Senate.

And his character's name is Tom Stoppard.

And he gets up there and he goes.

Amy Irving had worked with Christian Bale in a TV film called Anastasia The Mystery of Anna.

So she had

that was his first acting job of any sort.

She recommends him to Chris to Steven Spielberg.

And this is his first theatrical film.

Spielberg still like auditioned 4,000 kids or whatever, but like, you know, obviously Bale is basically like...

the big find of the movie.

Now, I want to just, I need to say this.

Go ahead.

In a future episode that we've already recorded, I go on a long tangent about Spielberg's weird failure to identify and break new male stars.

This is your bugbear with him, him, but it's a more recent bugbear.

I don't hold against him, but I just think it's interesting that he has such a limited track record of it.

And then I put this on this morning and I'm like, oh, right, he fucking found Christian Bale.

This is the one huge exception to the rule that needs to be noted.

So keep that in mind when you listen to me five weeks from now, forget Christian Bale.

He's astonishing in this movie.

But it is one of those like Spielberg kid performances where you're like, what is the alchemy here?

Is Spielberg just so good with children?

And then obviously Bale became such a talented actor.

I was going to say.

But he also says that he hated making this movie and it made him feel like he never wanted to make a movie again.

And there is a period where it is not a certainty that Christian Bale will become a star.

No, no, I mean, in movies, he looks like he has guns trained on him.

Christian Bale had a bit of a parallel Henry Thomas arc, where for a while it was like he can't come out from the shadow of him being a kid that Spielberg discovered.

Even though he had a little less baggage than Thomas did and a little more success, it's not really until Batman when people were like, he's safe as an adult actor.

And he also

takes on such risky material.

You know, I mean, he does Velvet Goldmine and he does American Psycho.

He works with really interesting directors, a number of female directors, which is a thing that young male stars never do.

Nope.

And

even when the films aren't that good, there's like this body of work emerges that, where he's doing like really interesting work.

So this is one of my favorite actors.

Oh, he's.

I recently,

a couple of years ago, somebody asked me like, who's your favorite actor?

And I couldn't, I was trying to think about it.

And I realized of actors working today, I think Christian Bale is maybe the one person I will watch him in anything.

I agree.

And he's in a lot of movies I don't like.

He's obsessed with being in bad movies recently.

Right.

He's not had a great run recently, but I'm like, I do always

find him interesting.

And I do think he is a guy who is to a certain degree now just taken as a given.

For a guy who had such a hard time for a long time carving out his space, now it's like, yeah, well, Christian Bale's good.

And I'm like, he's always doing weird shit and oftentimes in service of bad movies.

He's almost like there's, there's a bit of the Adam Driver thing going on with him, you know?

Yeah.

But I also, I think he is,

if not more transformative, more flexible than Driver, who has such a specific, you know, energy and presence in all of this.

What I do find interesting, paralleling out to Henry Thomas, who has also had, you know, I love

a lot of his work as an adult.

His career is in general, but obviously not a Christian Bale type career.

Yes.

And it's also one of those cases where you hear about the making of of that movie and there's a certain degree of this kid just being like an intuitive, emotionally intelligent, natural, and Spielberg creating the right framework for him and Drew Barrymore and Drew Barrymore, someone who obviously has a major career, but you're like, this is a movie of like a little girl who's good on camera.

And then later when she becomes an adult movie star, that's a different thing, right?

Henry Thomas, I feel like I go through the tortures of the dance.

Totally.

And I feel like Henry Thomas goes through a bit of a wilderness phase where what he settled into as adult actors very different than who he was as a child.

What is fascinating about watching this movie is it is is just like Muppet Babies Christian Bale.

You're like, this is the exact actor he still is today.

As much as he talks about like having a difficult time making it, a thing I love about it.

I think it's just tough to be a teenager making a movie.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And it's the classic sort of child star pipeline where there was a lot of like his parents pushed him into it and he was like expected to sort of help support the household and all this sort of stuff.

And he had to go through a cycle of learning to love it himself.

And a thing I love about Bale is that he always talks about that, he like like deflates the idea of his sort of self-serious methodness.

And he always just frames it as like, look, this is a thing I did when I was a kid.

I had to go through an arc towards like respecting it as an adult because it kind of came to me naturally.

For me, I just need to put that much into it to feel like I'm actually doing a serious job and not doing something that feels frivolous.

Like he's like, it's my own justification of not being lazy about this in a way.

But you just feel that sort of intensity in this.

Obviously, this in this film, I think it's a lot more makeup, but it's like when the second half, you have the time jump and suddenly you're dealing with like gaunt, haunted Bale.

You're like, this is what we're used to.

Bale shows up and he's lost 100 pounds and his eyes are dead, you know?

And he has that, like, he's got the looks and the feelings.

And like, it is the first version of what, if he has any default mode as a movie star, the pieces of it are in this from the get-go.

I agree with you.

I think, right, it's, yeah, it's grown up bail.

It's, I'm, what's the, what's the best analog for this?

He doesn't play a lot of like sweet, relatable people anymore.

I mean, my quiet favorite performance of his is The New World.

I love him in The New World, which I think is one of the all types of

normal guy performances from him.

Right.

But also, it's like, it's a character who fundamentally exists to come in at the end and be like, hey, I'm relatively uncomplicated.

Right.

That's a movie with my favorite actor giving maybe his best performance.

Colin.

Yeah.

I was going to make a joke.

Why?

Why?

I mean, Ben Chaplin.

He is in it.

He is.

I forgot.

I'm pretty sure he was on set for like six months and winds up in like 30 seconds.

There are a lot of incredible acts.

Cut me corn.

I'll see you later.

I believe he basically gets decapitated at some point.

The

was I going to say about Bail?

Oh,

when you were talking about Bale's experiences with this, it sounds almost a bit like what Jeff Bridges went through.

Like Jeff Jeff Bridges went through this period after, I mean, he had actually like been nominated for an Oscar and stuff, but he

actually was ready to quit.

Kiri Wilkins has been talking about this too on his awards trail of like, I started doing this when I was four.

I never really felt like I had agency in that decision.

It came to me naturally.

And because of that, I kind of didn't take it seriously.

And it wasn't until succession that he was like, fuck, I think I actually want to be an actor for the rest of my life.

Yeah, yeah.

No, that is, I mean, with child actors, that's the thing, especially with child actors who come from an acting family or to whom it comes.

I mean, Jeff Bridges' whole thing was like, this was like the family profession.

And I lucked into it and I was easy around it.

It worked.

And obviously he does like last picture show and stuff, but then, but then he was like,

I want to do something else.

Like, this is like, I feel weirdly worthless.

I think, right, because it's like, I think they feel like I'm playing pretend and people are like lauding me.

and now I'm growing up and that feels childish.

If I was good at doing it when I was 10, how can it be serious?

I bet Joaquin Phoenix has a story like this too.

Like I wouldn't be so, I mean, he's, you know, you also just, he's a guy much like Bale, who the angst just exudes off.

Very complicated relationship to the thing he's good at.

And his methody shit is kind of similar, even though he's not good at articulating it in the same way as Bale, but it's just like, right.

And Bale also has like a weird sort of like family structure in childhood.

Like both of his parents were huge personalities without being actors in the film industry themselves.

Yeah.

I hope he's good this year in The Bride, which is his only upcoming project, but it does kind of feel like the kind of thing where he could just lay it on really, really thick and, you know, be fun, but, you know, maybe.

Do you know what's an interesting thing that I think about a fair amount?

I remember some interview with Kathleen Kennedy a couple years ago

where they're probably talking about how Star Wars was good and normal, and no one was complaining about anything.

And she brought up how much she loved Ford versus Ferrari.

Sure.

She obviously worked on this film

and said,

that is the closest to the real Christian I have ever seen on screen.

She was like,

obviously, he's doing things as an actor, but she was like, that is the closest to his personality.

That is his most revealing performance.

He's really good in that movie.

But that feeling of being so good at something and kind of fighting against it.

That might be why, because, you know, Mangold, obviously, you know, when he gets the call to do the Indiana Jones movie, I asked him, like,

why do you think they called you?

And he's like, I think it was because of Ford v.

Ferrari.

Yeah.

Kennedy like loves that movie.

So they shoot this film in China as discussed, 21-day shoot in China, which was completely unheard of back then.

And it was really complicated.

The most complicated thing being they couldn't process film there.

So they shot everything without access to dailies, which is insane to consider.

And especially for Spielberg, I'm sure that felt scary to lose that part of the process.

Right.

Like basically, like they would have had to like ship the film off, get it processed in America, shipped back through customs, maybe get access to

later at great expense.

One thing I remember hearing this years ago, and I don't even know how it would have worked, but I believe sometime in the 80s, they sold Technicolor sold all its labs to China.

So maybe it was, I mean, this film isn't shot in Technicolor, so that wouldn't have been an issue.

But

was this when when ron pearlman oh bought technicolor is he still on technicolor i don't know speaking of health this was a long time ago billionaire ron pearlman owner of prevalent um yeah but uh and the the there was speculation at the time of like the the fifth generation filmmakers of why those films were so vivid color-wise was because they had all these like technicolor labs i don't

i i i'm probably sort of misremembering history here but let's talk about the film empire of the sun set during world war II, during Japan's invasion of China.

Jim Graham.

Slightly more thoughtfully than the way he depicts it in 1941.

The same day as Pearl Harbor.

Yeah,

it happened on January 7th.

I believe December 7th?

I believe it's the same day as Pearl Harbor.

That's interesting.

Yeah, certainly.

It was pretty much concurrent.

Obviously, Japan had been

mucking around in China for decades and, you know, invades Manchuria in the early 30s and all that.

But Jim Graham is a British boy, right?

These are British expats living in the Shanghai international settlement because Britain, you know, basically during the Opium Wars, and I am not an expert on all this stuff, was just kind of like, we just get to have stuff here now.

And China was like, what?

And they were like, this is ours right here.

And our boats go here.

And we're going to build some fucking schools and shit.

And like, you know, like, that's just what Britain used to do.

And post-Pearl Harbor, Japan invades, and they just don't get out in time, right?

I mean, that's the sort of early part of the movie.

But you're starting from the perspective of these kind of oblivious, out-of-touch colonizers in a country that is now being attacked that they feel ownership of, but now the actual rightful sort of citizens are like, fuck you most of all, you know?

Like, it is a movie that starts with kind of like immediately dismantling these characters.

Yes.

And I think.

There's that the scene with the, where they're at the dinner party where the, the guy is kind of basically saying like, you know, you guys are just temporary here.

Like, you don't, you don't seem to understand that about like the, you British, like, right?

I mean, that's, they think that they're, I mean, that the British Empire will last for another thousand years, I guess, is sort of the vibe, the, the innocuous vibe.

Not innocuous, what's the word I'm looking for?

Passive

oblivious.

But also, like, the bail character's relationship to what, from his perspective, feels like his homeland because it's where he's being raised.

He's never been to England.

No, but he's like, perfect little English boy singing choral music

in his uniform.

The version of China he lives in is like a weird bubble that is disconnected from the reality of China.

And like from the get-go, even just that like choral sequence, you're cutting back and forth between like him fighting the resistance to like muck around, right?

His like,

you know, schoolmaster or whatever, conducting the orchestra and telling him to focus up, and then cutting to the reaction shots of like Chinese citizens in the pews who are like, what are we fucking doing here?

What are we watching here?

Why are we being forced to engage with this?

How much do you know about

early 20th century Chinese history?

Weirdly, we studied early 20th century.

We studied Chinese history in middle school.

Okay.

I don't remember a lot of it, but I

boxer rebellion, the, you know,

Sun Yat-sen's Revolution, Chiang Kai-shek, and then, you know, the

Long March.

I remember all this stuff, you know, I mean, I don't, you know, I haven't looked into it recently, but I remember I was, especially during this period, because, I mean, we'd studied Chinese history by the time 87 rolls around, and I see this movie and The Last Emperor.

So when I watched The Last Emperor, I knew exactly kind of the context in which it was taking place.

And you're watching it at a time when, like, Red China, you know, like this sort of block, is suddenly opening up a little bit to the Western world and like, you know, whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

It's opening up.

I mean, you know, I remember there was this, there was this kind of almost iconic

time cover of Deng Zhao Ping

and like opening up China.

So, yeah, I mean, I have, you know, I had some familiarity with the history at the time, but

not as much familiarity with World War II history, interestingly enough.

I mean,

I mean, through osmosis, you learn about things from movies and stuff.

And this is actually a thing I'm going through with my son now because, I mean, he's 15, he's a sophomore in high school, but there's so much just like basic American history and world history that

he hasn't been taught.

I don't know what I'm talking about.

We are really good at teaching our own history in an honest and unvarnished way to our youngest and most

I mean, vulnerable.

We're not even good at teaching the sanitized version of it.

No, you're right.

But,

you know, like...

Because, you know, now he watches some of these movies with me and I'm like, I'm like, do you know what World War II was about?

And he only has like a vague idea but i'm then i'm like well did i had i studied world war ii at this point i don't know that i had at this age but i but i'd seen casablanca i'd seen all these other like the and obviously the hollywood version of history is like this is a monstrosity it's not a thing you should ever use to teach anybody but through osmosis you kind of get this idea of what happened you know like my son is fascinated by presidential history and i'm trying to explain watergate to him these days and i'm like my my wife keeps saying oh you you know, show him all the president's men.

I'm like, You don't understand.

All the president's men is made for an audience that already knows what happened.

The president's men ends with like, and then Watergate.

Like, it doesn't, it's not about Watergate like unfolding in Congress.

Yeah, like, if you, if you watch all the president's men and you don't know what happened at Watergate, you will be completely lost.

This is why we were watching The Post, because I was like, all right, The Post is a movie that actually does kind of explain what it's about, you know.

I mean, it doesn't explain Watergate, but it,

you know, the political stakes are explained in a kind of clear manner so you can actually understand what's going on.

I mean, I always show Nixon?

Man, with Nixon?

I am going to show him Nixon.

Actually, we're thinking maybe Dick might be the way to go for it.

I want to show him Nixon too, but Nixon also like presupposes a lot of knowledge on the audience's part.

Dick is a good entry point and really accurate depiction of exactly how everything went down.

I always gently mock my grandmother for this, but her favorite thing to say is, you know, war is really important, especially World War II, and no one ever talks about it.

And I'm always like, what are you talking?

It's the most talked about thing in global history.

And yet,

it's not like I'm having this realization for the first time.

Most of my genuine understanding of World War II comes from me cobbling together the prism of depictions and movies and then being like, what if this is fake and what if this is real?

And what's the real info I need to like tie together the accurate pieces?

I mean, our whole culture exists in the shadow of World War II.

Totally.

In this way that is like very...

Understandably, to be clear, it was a world war.

It was

a massive, massive event in humanity.

And it's not even that it's like abstracted in the media, but it's like it's stretched in so many weird ways.

Also, one of those things that like, I feel like very few Americans know about the Sino-Japanese war.

And like, you look at like, you just sort of like start delving into that.

And it's like, yeah, like.

5 million dead, right?

Like, and that's just like the Chinese theater, right?

And it's like, no one even thinks about China in World War II.

They think about like D-Day and like Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima Nagasaki or whatever you know, like they don't even think about like, yeah, there was a, this, this tiny thin island invaded like the most giant country on earth like for 15 years.

Anyway, right, which you, you know, you can make the argument of like, why is like the biggest Hollywood sort of attempt to tackle that as a piece of this,

you know, historic period told through the the prism of a young white British boy.

But I also think that is the part of the movie that is Spielberg really trying to work through something, which is this character coming to realize where he stands in relation to this thing, which is especially interesting coming right after Color Purple, where he's going through this whole thought process of like, am I the guy to tell this story?

But that is him just trying to put himself in the headspace of a person he can't really directly relate to an experience.

He's not really the guy to tell the Color Purple story, I would say.

He's more the guy to tell this story, but this is certainly a story where like the Japanese character is entirely abstracted.

Like you're not, there's no characters there really that the kitty makes friends with at the end a little bit.

Yeah, who's kind of a conglomeration of various characters that Ballard encountered or Ballard's fictional Alter Ego encountered.

And like

you, yeah, you, I mean, I do watch this knowing he's going to make Schindler's list being like, it's interesting that he finally did kind of maybe have that moment of like, maybe I should make a movie that more personally relates to my history versus like, I, Steven Spielberg, will dramatize the invasion, the fall of Shanghai.

He's using the history almost allegorically to his own inner sort of life in this film versus Schindler.

And the reason why it is the one that finally connects with everyone of like, congratulations, you did it.

You made a grown-up movie is that he's like pulling from something that is like a cultural trauma that feels personal to him.

Oh, yeah.

And he has to go through the gauntlet of this movie to be able to make.

I think that's right.

Yeah.

But there's this movie's very good.

In my opinion, very very good there's stuff just in the first 20 minutes where you're just like he is like really taking the scalpel to himself of like this kid in his backyard setting a toy plane on fire and like whirling around and smiling his like smile when he sees the submarine out his window rising like all of this is fun look it's like the movies you know and i think a lot of critics at the time or a number of critics at the time

like misunderstood that yeah because they saw this stuff and they thought, oh, it's just Spielberg being Spielberg.

I remember somebody saying something along the lines of, when will Steven Spielberg give up making movies about children on bicycles?

And I was like, did you, did you, did you happen to notice what he's riding the bike through?

You know, totally.

And it's like, it feels very, like, not cynical, but very like, yeah, self-critical is the word I keep coming back to.

I mean, you have that moment where he's standing in front of the giant Gone with the Wind poster, right?

And we talked about that when he was meeting with Alice Walker on Color Purple.

Yes, he offhandedly told Alice Walker, like, well, Common with the Wind is one of my favorite movies.

And she wrote in her diary later, like, note to self, talk to Steven Spielberg about that horrible appearance.

And presumably, he had some long talk with him, explaining why he couldn't make Color Purple in that image.

And then, just like on his following movie, he sets this scene where this little boy is being like, I need to stay in one place.

My chauffeur is going to come to pick me up in one day.

And people are like yelling at him, trying to figure out like his actual value as like basically an object commodity yeah yeah there's just like shit like that and even just like him playing pretend in a like husk of a plane on the ground while wearing a halloween costume or you know a costume a party costume of a different cultural identity that he is taking on that is interrupted by actual troops coming up from behind the hill and acting like war for real and the movie takes like 45 minutes to actually disabuse this kid of like no, you're living through something horrible.

None of this is fun.

You are no longer protected.

All of your like creature comforts were an illusion.

And it's a collapsing.

He still is just like, well, I'm rich and I'm not American.

I'm English and these things mean something.

And eventually all of this will come back to me.

And it's interesting how at the camp, so many.

of the other characters are trying to do that as well.

They're trying to sort of maintain appearances, maintain some sense of.

Malkovich's, you got to watch after my stuff thing.

Right.

That's the whole thing.

That, like, not to jump away, I have a bail going to his bedside to talk to him emotionally while he's recovered from his injury.

And they have this wonderful scene.

After five minutes, he's like, wait, you said you were going to watch my fucking stuff.

Malkovich's pile of junk is like symbolically all he still has.

So, right, Malkovich, who, I mean, we don't really know who Basie is except for like some expat who is already probably something of a hustler before the fall of Shanghai, right?

He's a,

well,

in the novel, he's a plane steward.

Interesting.

I believe in the film they change it to a ship steward.

It's offhanded mention, but it's funny because he seems like such a badass.

I mean, you see, you know, he's basically

the picture of that.

image on the cover of that comic book that he has with his hat and his sunglasses and stuff.

And that moment when, I mean, I'm getting ahead of ourselves but um that moment when basy is beaten and his hat falls off and you see that he's totally bald which is a moment of such vulnerability you know he doesn't seem like a stud in that moment that that's why malkovich is such good casting because he is kind of unique but he is also already right this kind of odd balding like sort of you know i mean he could already play the vulture for sam raimi if he wanted to

he should have uh no and the like you know i feel like the malkovic superpower is the creepy calm, right?

Where you're just like, why is this guy so quiet and unrushed and patient?

And that can be equally well applied to having him play a menacing character or an endearing character.

But in either case, you're just like, his energy is a little odd in relation to everything else that's going on.

How many endearing characters is?

Very few.

I mean, a mice and men.

Yeah.

Sort of.

Obviously, sort of like a character tinge with, you know, some menace.

I put his a performance of his i think is fairly underrated movie i don't really like that i know you've come around on i think he's very good in changeling and that is a movie where it's surprising how much he is actually a figure of warmth in an otherwise hostile world yeah um i mean his character in the sheltering sky

i've never seen that that is a movie where you see his floppy penis right you do see his floppy penis i remember that very clearly because i watched that movie on the bbc you see his malcodec you sure do like you know as a young cinephile being like oh well well, this Bertolucci movie is being shown on the BB.

And I just remember his floppy penis very, very vividly.

There's a lot of floppy penises in Bertolucci movies.

But yeah, his character there is, I mean, tender isn't the word I would use, but, you know,

you really feel for him, or at least I do.

When he's playing villainous, the tenderness is the thing that makes it more interesting.

Well, yes, that's the thing about In the Line of Fire.

It's the creepiness that makes him a little more interesting.

The thing about In the Line of Fire is that you ultimately feel really bad for this guy.

Yes.

I mean, even though he's a total psycho.

The hater weekend update impression where I feel like he describes it as like,

I'm getting angry.

I'm going to do a

calm, bizarrely articulate rant, you know, like that kind of the Malkovich explainer thing.

But the build even of just like, you know, you're watching like this kid's normal disappear, him in denial about about it for a big chunk of the movie, him trying to like ride his bike like everything's normal.

Like the kid still thinks he's in a Spielberg movie, he's ignoring what's around him, right?

Then that gone with the wind scene where he's starting to like be seen as like,

uh, you know, and as loot, as an asset is what scares him.

Pantaliano pulls him out of that.

Pantaliano is the first person in the movie to be like, kid, shut the fuck up.

You are annoying, right?

A thing that I think is really

the value of Bale being such a good actor, even at this young an age, is that he can play someone who's annoying and oblivious and not actually be fully infuriating to the audience.

And yet, when Pantaliano says that, it's like so cathartic where you're like, yeah, this kid needs to fucking calm down and get in touch with reality.

And Pantaliano is like Joy Pants is like, you know, this like.

this force transitioning us to the next level of the movie.

So then when he brings him to Malkovich and it's like, oh, this is the real guy.

And Malkovich

is so much more calm and confident than like Motormouth Pants, who has been the guy telling Bale, you need to fucking calm down.

And he does such a great Spielberg kind of introduction of like, you know, we're sort of seeing Malkovich in the foreground as Joey Pants brings Bale up.

And you're just kind of hearing Malkovich do other stuff, his like body out of focus.

And then he turns around, but for a big chunk of it, his head is down.

You mostly see the hat, you can't see his mouth.

Like he builds up the reveal in a way that makes him feel so important, as you said, as almost this sort of like two-fisted hero.

Yeah, and there's so much in Spielberg's early films, especially,

you know, he's he's kind of a horror director at heart, too, right?

In terms, I mean, his, his, you know, so much of his style is so well suited to horror, even though he doesn't do that much of it.

But, um, but malkovich the way he reveals malkovich is almost like a character out of a horror no you're right it's the weird balance and it's getting at the malkovich persona where he he introduces him both like he's jaws and like he's indiana jones which similarly has the like spielberg taking five minutes to show you indiana jones in pieces before you really get the hero shot or three minutes whatever yeah and you don't and and like you said i mean we don't really know what basy's ultimate aim is you know even even when he's feeding jim it's kind of like

what's going on here?

He's being brought to this guy.

This guy is immediately sort of presented as like, here's your new surrogate father, or at least this is your new family structure.

And from the perspective of this child, it's like, I don't know whether to like valorize or like villainize this guy.

You know, I don't know whether I should be afraid or comforted now.

He is probably just going to abandon him.

He wants to sell him.

is probably going to abandon him and realizes he has

uh he's from a stately home he's like great let's go to the stately home turns the stately home is occupied by Japanese troops.

That's the crazy sequence with the truck where they all start kind of like bashing the truck.

And Pantaliano is like, it doesn't have a reverse.

And they have to like go forward.

Is this the slap in the face sequence, or does that happen earlier?

Slap in the face.

When he goes back to the home and the sort of home staff, he's like bossing them around.

And the woman just walks up and slaps him in the face and basically just silently says, like, that's not the structure of society anymore.

She's carrying a trunk with somebody.

They're like walking down the stairs.

And

i i don't remember what he says but it is very much a kind of like

what's going on here you know make me breakfast sort of vibe he was being such a brat to her yeah

so i don't feel necessarily in that moment very much empathy but i think this is all by design like this is a movie that is like dismantling this kid and attacking his like weird kind of blinded naivete but he's a kid i mean he doesn't know any better

how old is he supposed to be like 12 maybe 11 i think he ages from like 10 to 14 sure or yeah 11 to 14 light a plane on fire and is laughing and she's chasing after him like yeah he's a little brat like that's exactly what he is he's a little brat i think that's also one of the reasons why this film didn't quite hit the way

it's kind of not likable in the way that like entirely likable that's the thing you're absolutely right he's not you know Spielberg doesn't make him full-on annoying, or Spielberg and Bale don't make him full-on annoying.

But the idea is that we are a little alienated from this character, even though we're kind of embodying.

Parents are ripped from him, and it's so traumatic.

And you're like, who could, you know, not sympathize with him?

But you don't put that scene in of the woman slapping him in the face unless that's the point of what you're going for, right?

Which is like this kid coming back and being like, time to get back to normal.

And then being like, this has all been like a fucked up societal lie that we no longer need to go along with.

Right.

The bubble is gone.

Yeah.

And when the character finally does become kind of relatable is when he's like hollowed out.

It's when you do the time jump and you're like, this kid has just been beaten down.

He's in pure survival mode.

Yeah.

But right.

But first they go to the sort of, you know, it's not a camp, the processing kind of area and where they're all getting put on the truck.

And it's just, I think, again, very elegantly told from his perspective of like, he doesn't really know what the truck means, right?

Like he doesn't know where it's going.

He doesn't really know if it's good or bad.

That's very scary to watch as a parent when you're watching this movie oh yeah absolutely and like he doesn't even know if basy is good or bad like should he stick with him like should he not like no one's giving him like any guidance obviously there's that part where they're in like i i whatever that shelter is and basy says like here i got you a new pair of shoes it's the uh civilian assembly center yeah where uh yeah he stole them from a dead body and right he's like i don't want those he's seen it right and and everyone's just trying to say to him like This is the reality of the world we live in.

You need shoes.

They will likely come off a dead child's body.

It's a woman's body.

Oh, yes.

Sorry.

Yes.

Yeah.

Very upsetting.

But like that and also the scene where he's trying to resuscitate the woman.

Well, yeah.

I mean, there's a scene later where he's, I mean, that's echoed later in the scene where he's trying to resuscitate the Japanese, the pilot.

Right.

And that scene I've always loved because of the way, you know, Spielberg allows the light to sort of shine through.

I mean, it's beautifully shot.

But that's, again,

it's the kind of thing that in another Spielberg movie, this would have been ridiculous, but like he would have succeeded in bringing them back.

I mean, so many Spielberg movies turn on like almost a reversal of history, like close encounters, all the, you know, dead, all the missing flyers come back.

Totally.

You know?

Yes.

I mean, Justin Shawn at the end of War of the World, it's the thing I cite all the time.

Yeah.

Raiders of the Lost Arc, reverse Holocaust on the Nazis.

Right.

You know?

Right.

But it's like first 30 minutes of this movie is like, here's a kid who like lives in a bubble and gets to like like enact play scenarios, a safe version of war, and like giggles his way, you know, all through it.

And then there's like 30 minutes of him basically denying that his reality has changed.

And then at like the hour mark, you have the sort of like Bail

behind the barbed wire fence looking gaunt.

Something has changed in this kid.

Right.

There is like a new normal.

And even then, it still is.

him trying to fight it in these moments of like, I can bring someone back to life.

I understand the stakes of the world I live in have changed.

And the movie keeps and just, you know, the few Spielberg episodes that we have released at the time of this recording, a lot of the feedback has been like, it is fascinating to watch these early films, especially in a post-Fableman's world, and see how much early Spielberg is kind of about

some amount of

emasculation, right?

And this is happening to a boy, but I do think there is this chunk of the movie past the first hour where he's like, I get it.

I need to grow up.

I need to become a man.

And he is continuing to live in a delusion of him thinking that becoming a man and growing up means that he can sort of fix everything.

And he is constantly kind of being reminded.

Right.

You're not the center of the story.

You're not the most important person.

You're not in that level of power.

But he tries.

He tries to kind of...

you know, he becomes kind of the conduit through which everybody starts to get their stuff.

I mean, he almost runs the camp in a way.

Yes.

Or at least imagines himself running the camp.

And it's not a, like, he tries to make the best of it thing.

It's a, okay, I get it.

I have responsibilities now.

I'm going to do it really well.

And yet he's constantly told, like, you don't get how this works.

Well, and that's the other thing about Spielberg, and something he's always been fascinated by is the idea of sort of trying to learn to live by the rules of a world you don't quite understand.

And I mean, we see that obviously in

a lot of the films, but you know, later on, during that period when he's making these kind of more socially important films like

Amistad and Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan and Lincoln, so many of those films turn on

the idea of, I mean, Amistad and Lincoln obviously turn on the idea of like people as property, right?

And

they all become about like sort of.

Schindler's does too.

Yeah, I mean, they all become about sort of

people as items on a ledger, even Saving Private Ryan.

The idea.

Absolutely.

The whole point of Saving Private ryan is like, this makes no sense what we're doing objectively.

This is a war where thousands of people are dying.

Why the fuck would we commit any resources to this like lunatic?

Like, oh,

he has brothers who died.

Who cares?

But wouldn't it make a great narrative?

But also, just like, isn't that what being a human and like what the point of this war is, is to like have humanity?

Like, also, War Horse is kind of this with a horse.

Oh, yeah.

I love War Horse.

Something with War Horse, but I love it.

I'm kind of, I'm, I'm feeling a a temptation to love.

There's another portion of War Horse so unambiguously,

which I think Hiddleston is just astonishing in the movie.

And I think that whole, and I just, you know, that's his understanding of World War I so well, where it's all these guys are going to, we're going to rock this war, and then they charge into battle and are destroyed.

Right.

My

one entirely new war that I love is the Toby Kebble horse, like the two men in no man's land meeting in the middle to save the horse.

The whole movie is a process by which

by which kind of the

old world, the old world understanding of war is replaced by the industrial the industrial machinery of war and it's just this this process of just like more effective ways to destroy humans absolutely um i i my problem with war horse is mostly the beginning where it's like oh yep is that horse for sale and peter mullet

and you're just like

that it has to be like that so that the film can progress and then the ending you know everybody was always i remember there were some reviews at the time saying oh you know it ends with like a you know john ford sunset, you know, because it's like ending in red.

I absolutely said that on our episode.

Oh, did you say that?

But

I'm not saying they're crediting me for that.

No, no, no, but that happens to happen.

I was one of the many people saying that.

But it's like, well, I mean, a red John Ford sunset is a sign that something awful is about to happen.

You're not right.

Melancholy.

Yeah.

I mean, it's very much, I mean, you see that sunset in the searchers right before everyone's massacred.

So the idea that the film ends on that, you know, it's not, it's not the gone with the end, it's not the gone with the wind finale.

It's the kind of, it's the what comes next finale, you know.

Um, but or horse good,

I guess.

I don't know.

I should go back and listen to that episode.

It's a lot of us talking about how everyone in the movie wants to fuck the horse, that it feels like everyone relates to the horse

in a very sexual way.

Well, they're just in love with that goddamn horse.

It was a beautiful horse there.

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As I was saying, this idea of,

you know, kind of learning to navigate the rules of a world that seems fundamentally kind of unjust or out of whack.

You know, you see that here.

I mean, the idea of learning to sort of navigate the camp, right?

Even though he's not aware of it, like I think we're aware of it as viewers, but as a character, I don't know that Jim is aware of it.

But the time jump is interesting in that we sort of jump ahead to the end of the war where he's, you know, suddenly this much more gaunt, you know, hollow kind of boy, but like, he has now learned how to navigate the camp and he has this like alliance with Dr.

Rollins, the Nigel Havers character, who's like one of the most unambiguously good characters in the movie.

And he's an excellent performance.

He's excellent.

I mean, he's such a, that guy just gives you Englishman, you know, so well.

And, but then you've also got like Ben Stiller with the crazy teeth and Joey Pan, you know, like, you know, all the stuff.

That was seeing it at the Metrograph, that was a true jump scare moment where the audience just was like, am I hallucinating this?

It's crazy.

Which, of course, this is one of this movie's greatest, like lasting legacies is that this, this is what inspires Tropic Thunder.

Do you know this, Ben?

That Stillard, this is like one of his first things ever.

And he spends his time on this set.

And he's like, it is ridiculous.

The actors on set who are trying to be like, I need to get myself into the suffering of the character.

I need to get in the boot camp, like post-platoon kind of like, I need to really go through the gauntlet.

And being like, we're actors.

We have trailers.

There's craft services.

You're never going to experience something as bad as being in proper war.

And he holds on to that for 20 years to be like, I want to make a movie lampooning actors who are faking war and taking it seriously.

And Tropic Thunders directly from this.

I can see the inspiration for sure.

So it's just interesting that we don't, this is not a processy movie about like life, like building up these alliances or the sort of the way the environment develops.

The environment is fully developed by the time we jump forward.

Yeah, I'm trying to remember.

And it's the end of the war.

So it's

trying to remember if the book gets into, I mean, the book obviously gets into this stuff more.

But yeah, I mean, the time jump is fascinating.

Also, because,

I mean, it's always so hard casting kids in roles like this.

It's like, he doesn't, I mean, he looks differently,

but he doesn't really age.

You know, like, he's the right age.

They figured it out, I think.

They sort of split the difference with whatever age he actually was and kind of it works.

So, I mean, so, so, so much of Jim's growth, he basically just has to convey through performance.

Yeah, which is, which is really they found the right kid.

He was ready to handle it.

I mean, here's, here's my big post-Fableman's take on this movie, right

um when he sees nagas

the atom bomb that's like seth rogan cucking his mom yeah yeah exactly when he sees seth rogan holding hands with the atom bomb okay go ahead what's the take you know the the sort of misread for many decades based on spielberg's privacy over his family story what was known publicly and what was held back until his parents passed away you know and he mended his relationships with them was the notion like oh all these movies are just like him shattered in the wake of a divorce right right?

That it's just like his family unit was broken and he never got over it.

What I think first the Spielberg HBO documentary and then Fabelman's really clarified is like, no, the core trauma of Spielberg's childhood, which is not on the scale of, you know, being a child in German camp in World War II, but is the thing that emotionally rattled him that he never got over, is that he observes this thing, right, through filmmaking with his mother and his father's best friend, and

in that, he is pulled into the world of adults.

That his mother basically acknowledges, you share this secret with me now.

And now you have to kind of be an adult.

And now I'm like elevating you to basically being the third adult in this relationship, if not fourth adult in this relationship.

And him having this disconnect from his siblings who are still sort of protected and being seen as children while he holds the information.

And there is a 60s minute, 60 minutes interview I keep citing that I pulled pulled up and doing this series around the time of the release of Hook.

And I'm asking him, like, why are you so fixated on childhood, fond memories?

And he's like, I do not have a single happy memory of my childhood.

And it's not like my childhood was sad once my parents split up.

He was like, I felt sad and lonely and alienated my entire childhood.

And then I was brought into the world of adults prematurely and was basically told, this is where you sit now, right?

Which then accelerates Spielberg to this track of A, having this weird relationship with both the children and adults in his life, feeling neither fish nor foul, and B, accelerating for him, like, I just have to focus on work.

I'm going to learn my craft.

I'm going to be the youngest person to get a deal at Universal.

I'm going to show up on the backlot when I'm 17, right?

I'm going to like will myself into being an adult faster, but then doing this thing that's high-level pretend playing and like, you know, toys and like

giving a sense of control over the world that is false, that is illusory, but that he is able to sort of maintain.

And him just being stuck in this space where it's like he keeps returning to childhood stuff, not because he's fixated on it, but because it was kind of pulled for him before he ever really got to have any handle on it, that he is trying to recapture something that he never really had.

And I think the more success he has, the more it's like, Spielberg has an office full of arcade machines and he's buying the rights to Casper and the Flintstones is like, A, maybe these like superficial pop culture things were the only things that gave him some moment of happiness.

But B, he's trying to like mend the child who never really got mended because it was like, hey, too bad, you're a grown-up now, which is in a much more extreme way, what this character in this movie is going through and just keeps getting kind of knocked down over and over again every time he thinks, much like in this post-time jump, I got it.

I figured out the camp.

I'm in charge of everything.

And he has can save people.

I can't still.

I'm a grown-up.

You can't bring some morality.

Fair enough.

The world told me I need to be a grown-up now.

I'm a little grown-up.

And when the plane flies in, the Mustang, he still has the childlike excitement, you know, when it comes in.

And as you're saying, like, Spielberg doesn't get mended until he resolves stuff with his father in the like Hook Last Crusader, which then opens him up to be able to make Schindler a different level of adult movie.

Make Hook his best movie about my father.

Sure.

But this is the movie where it feels like he's finally kind of identifying all of the issues, if that makes sense.

I'd say in himself.

I think E.T.

does have a lot of this too.

I agree.

Which we have not,

for the listeners, is sort of

the biggest psychological piece of Spielberg's puzzle, but we have yet to discuss it because we've been holding off on that episode.

People have heard myself.

There's no roadmap to Spielberg's brain more than E.T.

I think these are very paired films.

Sure.

I do think they're like him sort of like at the front and end of the 80s, taking two stabs at a similar thing.

And I I think what's happened in the years in between is his own understanding of his own psychology has transformed a little bit.

E.T.

is, to me, the greater film.

I think that is like his masterwork, period.

But there's something really interesting in this as like

a sort of dark twin to that.

Sure, that's interesting.

There's also this, you know, what happens with his parents.

How fascinating is it that cinema is the crucible through which all of this happens?

Whole fucking life.

He made the films.

I was like, you crazy motherfucker.

This has been on your mind the whole time.

He's like this anxious child who sees a movie that keeps him up at night.

And the only way he can conquer that demon is to like replicate it and learn film craft.

And then that becomes his undoing because he recognizes in footage the dissolution of his family.

Right.

It's just like.

So the idea that within cinema, there are dark corners that can destroy you.

Correct.

And this is a thing that I think

powers that makes the bully even angrier at you.

And this is, I think, a thing that animates his career.

And also

for a long time, he's trying to avoid these dark corners.

He can't avoid the dark corners.

In fact, what's beautiful, I mean, when we were talking about how he's kind of a horror filmmaker at heart,

you know, sometimes you wonder, does he even realize that he's a horror filmmaker at heart?

And I've said this before in multiple episodes.

I think there is a part of him that is genuinely scared by how effective he is at manipulating people's emotions through this medium.

Oh, yeah.

That he can actually make people feel anything he wants and that he just kind of has that innately in him.

And that the movies of his that are criticized are often criticized for doing that too much.

And it's not something he's doing strategically.

It is something he has to work to fight against.

And I think in some ways it's why sometimes he, you know, he errs on the side of sentiment or, you know, syrupiness, because he is afraid of, you know, the dark potential of cinema.

So he kind of almost overcorrects sometimes.

Yeah.

Happens in Amistad.

It happens in Amistad.

It happens in his endings as much as sometimes.

I defend some of his later movies, you know, where people are like, why are there three endings to this movie?

I do think that's sometimes him doing that.

Being like, did you get it?

Did you, you got it, right?

I'll see you later.

One more scene so that you got it.

I mean, especially Lincoln, a movie I adore and I think is perfect.

The ending is

stupid.

I think that movie is great.

I love that.

I think the ending is exactly what prevents it from being perfect.

Yeah, just when they're all like, there he goes, off to the play.

We love you, Lincoln.

He's like, bye-bye.

And he loves the beaten of it.

But by that point, I'm so invested in it.

But it is kind of crazy that, like,

up until a point, all of his movies, we've been realizing this and focusing just on the first half of his career.

All his movies up until a point are like, man, he gets out at just the right time.

This movie is a perfect example.

He has the the restraint of the final scene is so devastating.

Muted, I would say, right?

Like not really laying it on too thick, him just being reunited with his parents.

And then it is truly like, yeah, goodbye.

Like, hope you like the movie.

And there's a restraint of him being like, I don't need the coda.

The audience knows I'm giving them the pieces and they can work out what the takeaway is.

And arguably the climax of the film is

that one Japanese soldier getting shot, you know, which is such a kind of small and intimate and

uncomfortable little scene, which is not kind of a big, I mean, it's a war movie.

You expect there to be some kind of big, big final sequence.

But the bombast is kind of often happening in the fringes in the background.

Nagasaki, you know, a thousand miles away being the most obvious example.

That scene is crazy.

Like God taking a photograph, which, you know, brings back to the dark power of cinema.

Yes.

I think this movie rolls.

I think it's really good.

I i wonder what he thought of oppenheimer spielberg yeah that's a good question has he i feel like has he talked much about like he doesn't really talk much about at all

because the thing was interesting about him was that he laid it on so thick for dune

uh and like did the dga sort of talk back with vilnev being like this is the best sci-fi movie i've seen in years right you know where like and vilnev is kind of like a cousin to nolan in terms of like modern epic filmmakers or whatever but yeah have i ever heard spielberg talk about i don't i don't i mean i feel like i don't hear spielberg talk about new movies that much, but I'm sure during like awards.

I do feel like he tries to not put his foot on the gas too much in terms of like he knows, you know, whatever.

I'll say I googled and the first result I got, and I think this was from the Nolan Villeneuve.

Yes, where Nolan says he sent.

You know, when I first got the 70 millimeter print, I showed it to Steven Spielberg of Oppenheimer.

He was the first person he showed.

He had called me about something else.

I just got the print as well, and I hadn't shown it to anyone.

I mean, the studio had seen it, but we screened it it for him on his own.

I sat behind and watched him watch the film.

It was an extraordinary experience.

It says he said some kind things.

The other part of it, obviously, also is that

Spielberg was like, B plus.

I'll see you later, Chris.

That

Interstellar was developed by Spielberg.

That's right.

By Jonathan Nolan, and then he

remains a producer, but I think mostly just because of his history title.

And I don't think he was a good person.

And also, that initial Jonathan Nolan script for Interstellar is interesting, but is more Spielberg.

Very.

It's him trying to write a Spielberg.

And the beauty of Interstellar is that those Spielbergian elements are currently.

That it's got the AI thing.

That it's got the.

Yep.

Yep.

That's why it's Nolan's.

But it is interesting.

Because you're right.

They do overlap, and yet it doesn't feel like it is communicated loudly.

And you sort of imagine that Spielberg, it feels like Spielberg should be publicly saying, he is obviously my heir apparent.

Spielberg.

We are doing events together.

Very different.

They are.

Yeah.

In some ways.

Very different sense.

I do feel like Spielberg, Scorsese, a lot of these kind of like benevolent old-timers who make great movies still should just once a year go on whatever Charlie Rose is now.

Not Charlie Rose, but whatever that is now.

Fucking Mark Maron.

I don't care.

And be like, here are my like, here are like the eight movies this year I really loved.

I guess Tarantino could do it too.

When I was on the set of the pilot for vinyl, the worst thing that Martin Scorsese's ever directed.

Possibly true.

By default,

there's an argument for like Shina Light.

I've never seen Shina Light.

I'll say maybe worst scripted thing.

has the has the tide turned on shine a light i did not like that movie at all i just think of shine a light as him in a little bit of his kind i'm kind of like marty there's nothing here yeah like i i like the rolling stones just as much as anyone but like the you know rolling stones in their late 60s like there's nothing here i think doc is a different category anyway but anytime he would be around set like sort of just like hanging out and he felt he would talk about

he would and i would turn to my my friend f from psyches who was also on the show and go like i just want to ask him if he's seen like X, Y, and Z.

I want to ask him what his top three movies of this year are.

I want to ask if he likes Edge of Tomorrow.

Like, what is he like in touch?

What is he watching on TV?

He's seen Den of Thieves 2.

All of it.

I was just like, I want to know his opinion on everything and what he is engaging with and what he isn't.

I agree with you that, like, the 10 movie brats who are still alive and are ostensibly now in old master positions.

Right, tell me, should be just

doing a fucking Soderberg list every year.

Alex Spielberg sees everything.

Of course.

Of course, he probably doesn't.

Coppola, Coppola shares a lot of stuff on his Instagram of like films that he's seen and likes.

Yes.

You know, it's actually very adorable.

But all of these Instagram is generally sort of adorable old man.

Like

I sincerely doubt it's actually him, but no way.

I want a podcast that's like the five of them once a week.

Paul Schrader

goes to see every single goddamn movie.

He says normal things.

Paul Schrader yelled at me for making him go see All We Imagine is Light.

He didn't yell at me.

He didn't didn't yell.

He did not like it.

He emailed me.

He's like, why did you make me go see that?

But the email wasn't all cashed.

Why didn't he like All We Imagine Is Light?

He didn't like it.

I mean, it feels like it's a different type of film for him, I guess.

You know, you know, it's got a little bit of whatever.

What did he love this year, old Paulie?

Paulie asks.

He's posted about something.

Oh, he really liked Conclave, I believe.

Oh, Conclusion.

He liked Honora, but he had that sort of gripe with Honora that

she negotiates for so little um he loved twisters that was oh yeah he did he went to see it in 4dx right yeah

that might kill him we don't need him in 4d no he actually went to see it in 4dx really i did yes he i he posted about it on facebook oh my god he posts so much on facebook uh

polyado he hated right did he he didn't even sit all the way through it right that's right he walked out of it yeah absolute

Empire of the Song.

Are there any other sequences we want to talk about in Empire of the Song, at least?

Before we start wrapping up, Miranda Miranda Richardson.

Very, very good.

Wonderful actor.

Yes.

Interesting, interesting career.

I was about to say this is kind of right when she's beginning to emerge, right?

And I feel like in the early 90s, Crying Game Damage is when she's kind of like has the most juices, like a big prestige actress.

Did she win Best Actress at Cannes for

Dance with a Stranger?

Did I imagine this?

You did imagine that.

That's her first big movie, the Mike Newell movie.

Mike Newell won the Award of the Youth at the the Cannes Film Festival?

She won Best Actress at the Evening Standard Awards.

Okay, no offense to them, right?

Award of the Youth.

That's like Cannes Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards.

Exactly.

It's a big French blimp.

They slime her.

Yeah, did Jacquel Diard get

slimed?

He's actually the MC.

Yes, it was an interview with Stick Stickly.

It's like coming up, like Crying Game is her biggest sort of breakout, and she wins some critic awards.

And then like Damage and Tom and Viv are when she's getting Oscar noms.

And then she's kind of three Oscar noms?

Three support.

Two.

Just the two

didn't get crying game.

It is fascinating that she is the poster for the crying game.

That's what

she's image her in that wig.

I know, but of all the characters in that movie, she is the one on the poster.

Crying Game is the movie that I think so many people who've only seen the poster turn it on and they're like, Vorrest Whitaker is like the lead of this?

No one told me Vorrest Whitaker was in this movie.

He's doing an Irish action.

That's a movie where like the cultural reputation, the meme of it has morphed into something very different than what it actually is to watch it.

Oh, yeah.

I don't don't remember one of the, you know, every two year New York different theater does a semi-complete Robert Altman retrospective.

And every time those happen, I try to go see some of my blind spots.

But one of them, maybe at MoMA, like 10 years ago or at Momi or somewhere,

I went to see Atlantic City, which I'd never seen before.

And there was one of those,

you mean Kansas City?

I'm sorry, Kansas City.

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

Very different.

And a very different movie.

I apologize.

And a film that's much harder to like watch.

Correct.

Now finally has a good blue.

Yeah, but at the time it didn't.

And

it was one of those great like rep screening things where like a new audience of strangers all has the same response to a movie in the moment and is kind of buzzing from it.

Or I forget who I saw it with, but I was just like, holy shit, the Miranda Richardson performance in this.

How did she not win everything?

And then I heard like 10 other groups of people all saying that.

Like just kind of blown away.

And you realize, even though that movie sort of had like more of a push for Jennifer Jason Lee and for Belafonte particularly in terms of awards.

It's also was not a successful film.

No, it was disliked.

That movie's pretty excellent, in my opinion.

But also like that's the moment when she's kind of cresting in the 90s and she's almost getting taken for granted.

And then she's become such a weird kind of like diffuse figure since then where she never has totally disappeared.

No, she's a very, very good working actor.

She'll pop up and you'll be like, oh, right, Miranda Richardson's incredible.

She's amazing in The Lost Prince, which I think is one of like triumphs of British television.

The Stephen Polyakov miniseries, The Lost Prince, has anyone seen it?

I have not seen it.

I highly recommend.

Have you ever seen any Stephen Polyakov?

He is a guy who does not have a reputation in America at all.

I know the name.

What are the...

Well, he hasn't done a lot of movies.

Like, the movies he made were like Hidden City and Close My Eyes in the early 90s and stuff like that.

He's a big

own, young Clive, but a big British TV like, you know, director.

And his best things are Shooting the Past, Perfect Strangers, which I think had a different title here because of the sitcom.

It was called Almost Strangers here.

And The Lost Prince, which is like this sort of triptych about memory and stuff.

And I highly recommend all of them to anyone, but they're hard to find, I think.

But The Lost Prince is the easiest to find because it like won an Emmy and is about.

the

youngest son of King George V, who had epilepsy and was hidden away from the public and died very young.

I think I heard about this.

And she plays Queen Mary.

She plays his mother, and she's astonishing.

It's so good.

She's such a good actor.

And this is a movie where

you see what she can do because she doesn't have a lot of screen time.

No, she doesn't.

And you barely understand sort of like who she is.

And she's so

the camera loves her.

Like,

like, she's so beguiling and sort of mysterious.

She has like translucent skin.

I mean, it's such a bright.

You know, she's a very.

Yeah, and there's something very otherworldly about her whole presence in the film.

So much so that when she dies, in the movie.

It's, it's, it's, yes, in the movie.

Uh, when she dies, it really does feel like, like, suddenly she becomes real in that moment, you know?

Like, like she's like, uh, as a corpse, more

earthly.

Yeah, it's weird.

Yeah, and I don't know if there are any other.

I mean, Leslie Phillips is Maxton, like he's, you know, he's, he's a British legend.

He's very good.

He's like a big carry-on guy.

Obviously, Miranda Richardson's best performance is Mrs.

Tweety and Trick and Run.

I just think that needs to be stated.

And Trick and Run?

She's the villain.

Mrs.

Tweety.

Yes.

Yeah.

Still haven't seen, should show to my daughter.

Oh, because

she liked the Wallace and Grommets.

Yeah.

Hey, you know what movie sucks?

Chicken Run 2, Dawn of the Nugget?

But how do you feel about

the new Wallace, which I haven't seen?

Liked it.

What's it called again?

It is called

Murder Most Foul.

Yeah, there you go.

I will say basically all the Feathers McGraw stuff is great.

That character just

undeniable.

He pops.

And it's just, you get the juice from like, he hasn't been on screen in 25 minutes.

Penguin-ass.

He's great.

He gives, let me say this, he gives an incredible performance.

You know what's so funny in the wrong trousers?

Whenever he has a gun, it's just this little penguin suddenly produces like a sort of human-sized profile.

It's basically funny anytime he interacts with any object and murder most foul knows that and it gets a lot of mileage out of that.

Boy, oh, boy.

It is incredible for how much people talk about, like, oh, it's amazing that Ardman gets such a great performance out of Grom, and he doesn't even have a mouth.

It's just his brow.

And then Feathers McGraw doesn't even have a brow.

No, he's got a beak that doesn't open and two beady eyes.

And a little round head.

Yes.

And it's truly just tilting the head that gives him characterization.

I think that film is in a weird space between feature and short.

Sure, it's like 60 minutes long or whatever.

Right.

It's a little padded for short without having enough space to make a denser narrative as a feature.

It's also like the first

post.

What's his name?

Peter Solace.

Oh, right.

It's He's Dead, right?

The voice of Wallace.

So it's Ben Whitehead did it, who did a very good job.

Right, but it's Nick Clark directed it, but he co-directed it and he didn't write it.

And there's a little bit of a feeling of like Lega Sequel from other people.

Have you seen the new Wallace and Gromit?

I have not.

I've heard it's fantastic.

Allison loved it.

I think it is solid.

I will say, without like preloading a thing, my complaint about it is I think they fail to, and you can tell they realize this at the end because they try to retrofit one.

They fail to make the

plot, the sort of like Indiana Jones-ass MacGuffin of what they're up against directly relate to Wallace and Gromit's relationship.

Sure, which is usually

the crux is the parallel of like the device that goes wrong, but really it reveals something about how these two relate to each other and Wallace's sort of ignorance about what grommet means to him and needing to learn that.

They like kind of tack it on at the end and you're like, it sort of hasn't been that up until this point.

I still think it is better than most things.

I really want to see it.

It's

my son is at that age when he watches most movies with me.

Yeah.

But also he's like, you know, a busy young man going to school with homework and stuff like that.

So it's, there's so many films where I'm like, oh, I need to watch this.

I should wait until he can watch it with me.

And, you know, so it's like

to watch that one with him.

Yeah, it's like there's a lot of movies where I'm like, oh, God, I should probably watch this for work.

But

it is much better than Dawn of the Nugget, which I think is basically wall-to-wall bullshit.

Oh, the chicken runs.

Yeah, it sucks for losers.

Because Gibson's not in it.

So you think, you know, but

and here's the problem.

They bumped him because of woke, and they replaced him with some clean-cut, uncontroversial figure.

Let me check my notes here.

Zachary Levi.

That's the funniest part is that they were like, okay, who's the staff?

Empire of the Sun was given a plum Christmas release, Award Z sort of released December 11th, 1987.

It made only $22 million.

It is the lowest-grossing Spielberg film at that point, except for Sugarland Express.

And I think Spielberg was a little, did not think it was going to be like blockbuster, but was a little taken aback by how sort of tepid their general reaction was.

Saris loved it.

Hoberman thought it sucked.

Hoberman.

Not the biggest Spielberg fan.

No, and Hoberman called it the sorrow and the pity remade is Oliver, which is pretty funny.

Eber really struggled with it, talked about that he thinks like the first 30, 40 minutes to hour is really strong.

And then he's like, and then it becomes like this kid playing games in the middle of a war with John Malkovich.

I don't understand what he's getting at, which I feel like is the way a lot of people talked about this, that it's like, oh, he can't get over the childlike wonder thing.

Paul Kale gave it the review.

I feel like she gave a lot of his movies at this point point where she's like, it's majestically made.

I don't really know what it's about or if there's anything going on here.

This was the standard line on Spielberg from a lot of kind of the high-end critics at the time.

Spielberg, you know, says, fuck you to the critics,

you know, in this way of like, basically like, stop trying to tell me what kind of movie I should make.

Which I think is what the critics would often do.

Like they would often be kind of like, stop trying to win an Oscar.

Stop trying to make a serious movie.

Go make the movies you're good at, you know?

But then he would make those and they'd be like, aha, that's kiddie bullshit.

it's how we do david it is how we do but it's especially how they did i mean god bless the the critical community of the 80s or whatever but they were some snarky snarky folks yes and like as critic circle chair i went on a deep dive because it used to be like you know we didn't tweet out our winners right the chair would just call like the new york times or whoever and be like all right here's who won And especially if the chair was someone like Pauline Kale or Rex Reid, they would also sprinkle in a little bit of spice in terms of like, we got in a big fight about this, like, you know, and

there's just a contentiousness to those days that there is not in our room when we vote.

And I think, I think it was a smaller group.

I mean, a much smaller group, and they're meeting at the Algonquin and they're getting drunk.

Right.

And I'm not even thinking specifically of the New York film criteria, but like the critical community is a smaller group.

These like newspaper critics.

And it's factionalized.

Yes.

Right.

I mean, we talk about the politics and stuff like that.

People will always talk about like Pauline Calendar would be like, all right, this is the movie we're getting behind.

And, you know, I mean, it wasn't sinister in that way.

It was like, you know, there would be a lot of things.

It was clicky as we were saying.

It's clicky.

It was clicky.

And

we still do it, but less, less in a kind of overt, clicky way.

It's just there are sensibilities that sort of gravitate towards each other.

And, you know, I remember from the days of like Cinemasters and stuff like that, there'd be certain films that like, obviously all these people are going to hate this, you know?

Like,

everybody hates Lost in Translation.

And it was like, you know, you step out into the real world where people actually seem to really like a movie like Lost in Translation.

But like my little pointy head friends were like, nope, you know, and that happened with Spielberg a lot.

Let's also call out with Spielberg.

There is this thing, and I think there are versions of this that still happen today.

I think Nolan is sort of a version of this where it's like, hey, you know what?

For better or worse, the kind of health of American films and the studio, like film as a commercial industry

kind of rests on your whims.

And there is this sense of like, you have a responsibility, which then turns into people saying, you should be doing this instead of that.

Why can't you evolve into this?

The sort of like push and pull of like,

there's a health of this as a business that you're responsible for, but also if you have everyone's ears and eyes, shouldn't you be using that to try to elevate understanding and the art form and whatever?

And it's impossible to please everyone in those positions.

I also think, you know, like when we come back and do new release Spielberg movies, which we've done over the last seven years, he and Shamlan are the two people who have made the most films since we've covered them.

Fuck them them out.

Right.

And very often people think that we're insane for liking Shamalan movies more than most people do.

And a lot of the Spielberg new releases we've covered, I have come off as like tepid to mixed on, right?

And people will go like, why is he willing to forgive all of Shyamalan's like clear weaknesses and yet he's more critical on Spielberg?

And I do think it is me falling into the same thing, which is like.

Basically outside of Ready Player One, which I also will rewatch, I like all of his modern movies, but I'm like rating them against the Steven Spielberg canon.

And every time I sit down to see a new Steven Spielberg, I'm like, is this going to be the best movie ever made?

It is hard not to go and preloaded with some version of that.

And in this era, it's the most extreme version of that because I think it is this bifurcation between like half the time he makes the most culturally impactful blockbusters and then sometimes he wastes his energy trying to impress us that he is a grown-up so he can win a fucking Oscar.

And I think people were really, really cynical about that.

As much as they were also criticizing him for like infantilizing culture, they were even more critical when he tried to like wear a suit and play grown-up.

It's a weird thing.

Which is also why Catch Me If You Can is one of his greatest movies.

Totally.

Because I agree.

I think that more than Fabelman's is like the autobiography.

Right.

But it's like Schindler finally shakes that off of him where people are like, you can do whatever you want and we will judge it on its own merits.

Maybe we hold you to a high standard, but

whatever.

You've proven yourself.

You're in the room.

You're settled.

I really, it's Schindler, but I really think it's Saving Private Ryan because after, obviously, Schindler wins in the Oscar and wins him so much respect, but then he makes Amistad and Lost World, which everyone is kind of like, eh.

And then he makes Saving Private Ryan.

Everyone is like, you are now the poet laureate of boomers.

Like, that's it.

You did it.

I think there's the other part of it, which is like Schindler is.

And I love Saving Private Ryan to be clear.

Yes.

Saving Private Ryan is, in my opinion the single biggest shift in his signature style up until that point which then goes like oh he can now change languages which then you get like minority report and munich and all these films that are very different than the usual spielberg thing that's like to our earlier point of like giving someone a second oscar it's like schindler is like this is the best you've ever made a grown-up movie and then saving private ryan is we didn't know you could do that And once he's proven he could do that, people are like, you can do anything.

Yeah.

Saving Private Ryan to me is

my response to Saving Pride Ryan is actually not dissimilar to some people's response to Empire of the Sun, where I'm like, you know,

first 30, 40 minutes, obviously, you know, incredible.

And then the rest is kind of like,

I like it.

I don't, I don't dislike it.

That's another movie we're going to rewatch with my son so he knows what the hell D-Day was.

There's no better fucking movie to why.

I hate to sound like Mike.

The weirdest thing, especially, is like I was shown Schindler's List, Amistad, and Saving Pride of Orion in high school.

All of of those movies are inappropriate to be shown in a high school like you know on a sort of like paper thing right but like yeah like

the rock yeah

and they're incredible communications of right so speaking of world war ii history

i have a little thing to share here i have no idea where this is going

so my grandfather

is a veteran of World War II.

Is he still alive?

No.

No, he's passed.

Okay.

He was a Marine.

Sure.

My grandpa was in the Air Force.

He thankfully was really good at typing.

And so he was assigned to

someone in leadership and never really ended up having to

way back.

Right.

Right.

Sure.

He spent most of his time.

He always talked about just being like stationed at a large base in Samoa.

Sure.

Yeah.

Just like acting as a secretary.

I don't remember their rank, but with someone in leadership.

My grandfather booked Talent for USO shows, which I've said before sounds like a bit.

He could not have been more dissimilar for me in personality.

And yet when I say that, people just picture me with a helmet.

My

being like, let's get some stand-ups.

My maternal grandpa was in the Air Force.

He was in France, but I think he was not, he was not like on whatever, the front line either.

He did a lot of like, but he was in France.

I mean, I don't know.

But anyway, carry on.

And so.

My dad, when he was cleaning out the house,

which is a family house.

And so a lot of times he'll discover stuff that my grandparents left at this house.

Has been in your family for like 100 years, correct?

Close to it?

It was a cabin that was built in 1880 and it's been in my family since.

Wait, this is way more than 100 years.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Pretty crazy.

He discovered this Japanese flag,

which was,

I'm going to totally not be able to pronounce the name of this properly.

Yosigaki Hinomaru.

But when Japanese soldiers were drafted into service, their family and friends would sign this

flag.

Yes, it would look like this.

Right.

Yeah.

So my dad discovered a flag.

And

we don't think it's from my grandpa.

We think it's from a relative.

But we found this really cool nonprofit called Oban Society,

who is set up where they reconnect the flags with the family members.

And we sent the flag in

to Japan.

Like to find the person that this belonged to.

So we just sent it in the mail and got confirmation true like a few days ago.

That is fascinating.

So it was essentially they found this, whoever was, found this flag.

and took it home being like, this is crazy.

And it's like, you know, in America, the flags were popular as badges of victory, often given to mothers, sisters, and or town mayors.

I just found that weird.

Why would you give that to your mayor?

Mayor's like, another fucking flag.

What the hell?

I mean, the person had belonged to

probably died

in the war.

Likely, yeah.

So this would go back.

I mean, but that's.

That's fascinating.

Yeah.

It's fascinating that that exists.

That's that there's like a service that finds, you know, reconnects these artifacts.

It's awesome.

I think it's great.

Interesting.

My dad, my grandpa, I have a giant bag of his shit from the war, but it's all like weird money and like the weird stuff that was given to servicemen of like, here's how to like behave in Britain or in France of like, you know, the cultures might seem strange to you.

Like, you know, do you, you know, you GI from New York City or whatever?

Yeah.

Which is fascinating.

That is fascinating.

Yeah.

My dad's dad was too.

He's like one of those in the middle guys.

Like he was

a service age in between the two world wars.

And my dad was born in 1941.

His first memories, of course, were being bombed, as he would tell me as a child that stuck with him

well honestly his first memories were like his sister taking him into the shelter like wild like right yes 100 and then his real memories are like post-war britain of like rationing and like all that you know

um we all grew up with these stories being told to us and bilga is right that like the next generation right there like yes the story is told to me by steven spielberg right they're a little disconnected right it's harder to be like now i feel like i'll tell my daughter like oh yeah did you know your great grandpa

was in France for, and she'll, it'll just sound like science fiction, right?

Like, it's sort of, yeah, sounds like you're begging for another world war almost, David.

Like, you're just take it easy.

And we should just mention: we're watching this movie, we're seeing these internment camp.

Yes.

Just a reminder: America did that to Japanese citizens.

Well, Japanese-American citizens.

Yes.

Yep.

Sorry.

But Japan did not cover itself in glory in World War II, certainly.

No, it's just a whole mess of a situation.

World War II, a real

one of my favorite pieces

of literature very hornily is Hurricane Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

I don't know if anyone's ever read it.

Have you ever read it?

No.

Which is a book about Japan's ignorance.

It's not a book.

I mean, mostly it's a book about a weird, horny guy who doesn't know what's going on, which is what all his books are, who like listens to jazz and is like, I can't find my cat.

But it's really a book about Japan's ignorance of the atrocities it carried carried out in China, which like as you read the book, you realize like, well, this is a book written in the 90s.

And he's like, basically, he's trying to be like, we still don't talk about this.

And like, it's such a trauma that, like, it's buried in our collective unconsciousness.

And it's fascinating to see, you know, that, but that's how I learned about that from a goddamn like fiction book.

Like, remember, come see the paradise, the Alan Parker movie about the Japanese internment camps.

I mean, that was, you know.

What's that?

That's Dennis Quaid, right?

Dennis Quaid.

Yeah.

That's another movie with one.

Noted Hollywood liberal, Dennis Quaid.

One of the most used scores in other trailers, right?

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah.

Randy Ellman score.

But, like, that's a

movie that came out in America.

And America was like, we don't want to think about a Japanese internment.

Like, we don't want to think about it.

Like, sorry, we're not showing up for that.

But very much a kind of, you know, mainstream

studio release.

Like, you know, you're going to learn about history from this.

Right.

Yeah.

A homework movie.

I mean, that's, you know, that's my joke about that, that, uh, movie with Ray Fienz is Odysseus or whatever.

What's it called?

The Return?

The Return?

That movie was created by the British government as homework.

Yeah, but I kind of really want to see it.

I reviewed it.

It just feels like a movie where the British government was like, we decree that a new homework movie be made this.

Okay, but here's the counterpoint.

The sell on that movie is also, what if Ray Fiennes was fucking ripped?

He's ripped.

He is ripped.

What if he was ripped and he had nothing to lose?

And traumatized.

Yeah.

But it was funny, though, when Nolan announced that he was doing The Odyssey and people are like, what the hell is The Odyssey?

And it's like, what a discovery is

that movie that is like literally in the middle cares.

Empire of the Sun got many technical six Oscar nominations, but none above the line, as they say.

The nominees for Best Picture that year are The Last Emperor, Broadcast News, Fatal Attraction, which is the big box office movie, obviously, Moonstruck, which rules, and Hope and Glory in what one might imagine is the Empire of the Sun slot.

I got to say, that's a nicely rounded file.

I do, I'm not going to say very solid for the best part, but like that's, there's a good balance of shit year for movies.

Full Metal Jacket also comes out that year, another movie that kind of is

underperforms in a way.

I would say

people are too hyped for and people are kind of like underwhelmed by at the time.

That's a movie year that, in my opinion, is transformatively good because all those movies are good, but it's also the year of raising Arizona.

So it's like the Cohen's explode.

It's the year of a little movie about a little metal guy with a heart of gold, RoboCop.

I mean, the great American film by a Dutchman.

It's also the year of like Evil Dead 2.

So it's like a lot of these young, you know, hungry future kind of like, you know, whatever poet laureates of American cinema, like emerging.

And that's, that's, oh, no, I was going to say, I mean, I've, I've, I have told this story many times.

It's entirely possible I've told it here on this podcast, too.

But Raising Arizona is my gateway into like heavy-duty cinephilia

because I had gotten into the habit of just like going to the movies after school and Raising Arizona.

I went to see Raising Arizona in the theater.

I come home.

And obviously it's Raising Arizona.

I mean, what 14-year-old doesn't love Raising Arizona?

And then I come home and we had an issue of film comment with Raising Arizona on the cover.

And I was like, oh, it's interesting.

I'll read through this.

And I'm reading it.

And somewhere, there's an essay in it called Praising Arizona.

And it's, you know, it's just a kind of

an article about how great Raising Arizona is.

Somewhere in it, they mention that the self-conscious style of the Cohens is not unlike the self-conscious style of Bernardo Bertolucci and the Conformists.

I mean, this is the shit.

We happen to have a VHS of the Conformist lying there.

This is like at the same time.

So the tools were there for you.

Yeah.

Yeah, everything was there.

It was literally all on the table.

Yeah, like my parents are like off at work.

I'm a latchkey kid.

But you're able to sort of connect the chain links in some like

literally, I take the VHS of the Conformist.

I watch it that day and I'm just like, or that night, and I'm just like,

I don't know what the hell this movie is about, but it's so gorgeous.

I rewind it.

I watch it again twice in one day.

And by the end of the week, by the end of the week, I've watched it like six or seven times, and I become obsessed with The Conformist, which then leads to Italian cinema, Bertolucci, and then Last Emperor comes out later that year, as I mentioned.

But yeah, like Raising, so like Raising Arizona is such an important movie for me in that sense.

No, that role.

I mean, not to be overly sentimental about, but I'm just like thinking about that oscar field and the other things buzzing around here right you have like some of the greatest examples of genre cinema ever like the highest level of genre filmmaking made by like emerging filmmakers like carpenter's prints of darkness totally yeah but then like even just the films they're awarding there is a balance of like commercial entertainments that they are respecting and respected movies that now are being elevated to commercial entertainment through the oscars where you're like the public was seeing all these movies.

And like the Academy wasn't too snobby to like acknowledge Fatal Attraction, but also could like kind of anoint films and still be like, if this gets nominated, the public will see it.

They'll go.

And there was a little controversy at the time because

The Last Emperor was not released wide

because it had been greenlit under

a different studio head for Columbia, right?

I think it was Putnam had been running Columbia, right?

And then, was it Don Steele came in?

And so there was this kind of,

you know,

they didn't want to spend a lot of money, you know, focusing on the stuff from the old regime.

I think Hope and Glory was also Columbia, maybe.

But,

but there was.

So you awarded a movie that the public actually doesn't have any relationship to.

Right.

And there was actually, I think it might have even, it might have been at the Golden Globes or at the Oscars, but one of the producers or somebody involved in Last Emperor was just like, now please release this movie.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, it was in limited release, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good morning, Vietnam, that year.

I believe that is the last time Sony Columbia won Best Picture.

That might be true.

I did a deep dive on that.

They have a long run.

I think that was the last time.

Yeah, I think you're right.

Every once in a while, they come close and wild to consider.

Yeah.

The box office that week,

Griffin, December 11th, 1987.

It's opening at number nine at the box office on 225 screens.

So, you know, not a super wide release.

Number one one that week is a film I think we will one day cover.

It is a black comedy.

It's the directorial debut of its director and star.

Is it Throw Mama from the Train?

Danny DeVito and Billy Crystal in Throw Mama from the Train.

DeVito come up a lot in this miniseries, box office games.

He was.

It's his era.

He was around.

Yeah.

A very funny, good movie.

The Bradley Cooper of his day.

And I do think

we will cover him one day.

We will.

As Sarah Rubin said, short series for a little man yes number two at the box office is i think the highest grossing movie of the year of 87 if not highest it's it's the biggest american hit of the year or whatever uh it's a comedy family comedy with a crazy premise it is three men and a baby right yeah it was the it was the highest grossing american film

based on a french film of course directed by leonard nimoy directed by leonard nimoy goots danson sellek just they have a baby

actors directing actors, that's right.

Another example.

But that's like a thing that actually just wouldn't make sense to like a budding cinephile now who's trying to understand culturally the decades before them, where you're like, there was an era where the highest-grossing film of the year could be handily out-grossing blockbusters and sequels.

Right.

Just like what?

Block directing

two TV stars and a midling comedy star in a very simple comedy premise.

Juggernaut.

Huge.

movie.

Because everyone can see it was a four-quadrant movie, as they say.

Those big, all three quadrants.

The three men end up apart.

Number three, Opening New This Week is a film that you're kind of like, well, why wasn't that nominated for Best Picture?

It was such a generational movie.

It made a lot of money and it won Best Actor that year.

And then you watch it and you're like, oh, because it's bad.

It's not bad.

It's pretty bad.

Are we talking about Wall Street?

We sure are.

Bobberstones Wall Street.

A very enjoyable movie that Michael Douglas is fantastic in.

Not only did it.

But it's a bit obvious, obvious, even by old Ollie's.

It is definitely obvious.

It's a bit on the nose.

So, so I think

it followed to Platoon.

It was one year later.

I know.

And

that's another case where people had very high expectations for that movie.

In between his two best director ones?

Yeah, he also made talk radio for this.

Yes, pretty much.

Wall Street.

I remember at the time I was not a fan of Wall Street.

And then over the years, Wall Street has become Wall Street and Any Given Sunday are the two Oliver Stone movies I re-watch the most.

Any Any Given Sunday is a movie, I will admit that at the time when I was a teenager, I was kind of like, this is a bit much.

And now I kind of have a quiet appreciation.

Yeah, it's like Wall Street is kind of like that for me.

It's such a great popcorn movie.

Not only was Wall Street not, you know, you're expecting

he makes Salvador, he makes Blatoo.

Yeah, Wall Street is just kind of like, ah.

It's a little bit of an indication of where things are going to go prematurely in his career.

And then he, you know,

then he drove back down, but then you catch up to all of his movies kind of become Wall Street.

Yeah, it's kind of like you kind of were always this director, right?

Right.

Yeah.

He's had a little hack in him.

Anyway, no, not only not nominated for best picture, but it wins best actor, and that is its lone nomination.

It is a weird, like, that movie was a big hit.

It wins such a major award for such a major star, it was just blanked in every other category.

He's also the star of Fatal Attraction, which is Best Picture nominated.

Oh, God, what a year for

Michael Ducker's playing really relatable chill dudes.

Number four at the box office is a great comedy.

A great comedy.

Probably cover this guy one day, too.

We'll probably cover this guy one day, too.

The director.

The director.

It's a great comedy.

It's not Tootsie.

No, because that would have been non-fair best picture.

That's early.

I don't like Tootsie.

Tootsie in the E.T.

year.

Yeah.

Tootsie's, I mean, I had a lot of...

This is a movie you love.

This is a movie Ben loves, I'm sure.

Is it Planes Trains?

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

Yeah, the movie that should have won Best Actor this year.

for Candy?

Candy's pretty amazing at it.

Great movie.

I didn't think to watch it for this holiday season.

It's something I try to the classic Thanksgiving movie.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you like planes, trains, and automobiles?

I do.

We just got the 4K of it.

Oh, yeah.

It's a weird transfer.

I don't know if you've.

Oh, I haven't.

I haven't watched the 4K yet.

It's a weird transfer.

Uh-oh.

They AI Steve Martin.

They did a little bit of

upscale and smoothing.

Oh, gosh.

But the thing is, on there is the hour of fabled deleted scenes that for so long were a rumor that are like, you know, because there was always this like, there's a mythical three-hour cut of the film.

And then it, his children finally opened the vault and they were like, look, there was never like a functional three-hour cut.

He just had so much good footage of Candy and Martin that his first assembly, he tried to use all of it.

And then he correctly whittled it down.

Everything he cut out should not be in the movie.

But as just raw footage of Martin and Candy, it is unbelievable.

That's the thing you all, I feel like that's usually the case when people talk, oh, there was originally a six-hour cut.

I'm like, I'm sure most of that was just, it was just assembled.

Right.

Yes.

Yes.

Assembly needs to be used more often than describing these or whatever.

Number five of the box office is the other biggest hit of the year.

We've mentioned it a bunch of times.

It's not my for Best Picture.

Fatal Attraction.

Fatal Attraction.

Fatal Attraction.

Which is a pretty good movie.

It's pretty silly, too.

The roller coaster scene.

It is funny how

Adrian Lyne has become kind of a, like, sort of retroactively inserted into the pantheon.

Imagine beaming through a time machine to 1993 and sitting down with the New York Film Critic Circle and being like, you know, Sliver is going to get like

critical attention and care.

I bought the new movie.

So did I.

Beatrice wrote an essay in it and I wanted to read it.

We were talking about this in our news and deals thread.

How much are you willing to spend on a split?

And I love Beatrice and I'm excited to re-watch Sliver, but Sliver fucking sucks.

It's terrible.

But it's fun.

It's terrible.

But I was like, I have to have this.

Yeah, me too.

But here's the thing.

Like, even at the time, Adrian Lynn movies were getting nominated for Best Picture.

I know they were.

Well, that one wasn't.

Also being seen as, like, from the critics of, like, that's the Academy, Academying.

And yet.

There was always kind of like one weird, like, okay, this was a hit.

And like, totally.

It was a little too swift.

If there were four slivers coming out in wide release a year.

We'd be doing cartwheels.

We'd be, I'm not just saying four fatal attractions.

Four slivers and we'd be in Hong

Hong Heaven.

I was going to say Hog heaven.

We've also got The Running Man, which is being remade this year.

It's an okay movie, a movie I've never loved.

I was going to say, that's a perfect example of a movie that should be remade.

I really would like that movie.

It's enough of a weird adaptation that there's a room to do a different one.

And the original is not.

It's not very good.

It's just a cool

stickiness.

Paul Michael Glazer is one of those guys where I'm like, I really want to like his movies because of the the man background, the Miami Vice stuff.

And every time I watch one of them, I'm like,

he just didn't quite have it.

Kazan?

He directed Kazan, among other things.

We've got a re-release of Cinderella, a film I've now seen 400 billion times.

My daughter is obsessed with Cinderella.

Cinderella, Cinderella.

Is that her favorite of the princess?

It's kind of the only princess one she's locked in with, I would say.

She's not gotten to Snow White or Sleeping Beauty.

Is there another one I'm missing?

Those are the sort of big princess movies, right?

And Cinderella is the most classic princess one of them all because it's about mostly about being friends with mice.

That movie is like 80% mice, but then it's just, yeah, about like vibing at a party.

Well, that's the wild thing about Sleeping Beauty is like 95% fairy aunt.

Well, Sleeping Beauty is so incredible.

I mean, it's gorgeous.

Did you see that 70 millimeter print they showed?

No, I wish I had.

I would love to see that movie.

I don't think I've ever seen a movie look that good.

I mean, it looked ridiculous.

Astonishingly,

they got amazing access to the 70mm print that's rarely shown.

Yeah, it's like it's they bring it out every once every seven years.

Right.

And they ran at the Museum of Moving Image in Queens a couple times.

And I went to see it.

And there was a father who brought a daughter, probably around your daughter's age, David, you know, between three and five.

And at some point in the movie, she like asked him a logic question as kids do during children's films.

Right.

And everyone was like, shh.

So, like, one guy scolded her so hard.

And everyone in the theater was like, let's step back.

Right.

Everyone right.

Think about what we're seeing Sleeping Beauty at 11 a.m.

on a Sunday.

We're not allowed to wait for it.

This is for her more than it is for us.

Everyone, chill the fuck out.

But it was, it came people yelling at the guy from darling and stopping living in our world.

Yeah, 100%.

It was just really funny.

Right.

If you bring your daughter to like, yeah, to Miami Vice, you know, at 10 p.m.

and she's like, so wait, where does Jose Yero get off?

Then you can shush her.

Yeah.

Eight is Nuts, the Barbara Streisand, Richard Dreyfus film, Nuts about Pleasant People.

Promising to see in Slack.

I like that movie.

I haven't seen it in a long time.

It's a classic to me.

I'm at block or not, I'm at the rental store, and I'm like, what is this?

I just take it off the shelf.

Leslie Nielsen's final dramatic role.

That is the last time he did drama.

Yeah.

Number nine Empire of the Sun and number 10, one of the best movies in 1987, and one of my favorite movies.

Dirty Dancing.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

God, another fucking

goddamn classic.

Another movie that was dismissed by critics, and now I watch it, and I'm like, again,

I wish there were five movies a year.

Yeah.

I don't know if that movie is about Dirty Dancing.

I like Dirty Dancing.

I mean, I wouldn't necessarily nominate it for Best Picture.

No, I don't think so.

I enjoyed it at the time.

My five for 87 are broadcast news, Raising Arizona, Moonstruck, RoboCop, Maytawan.

May to Juan, yeah.

Yeah, the Dark Sales movie.

Two of my 10 favorite movies of all time are released in this year.

And a couple others that are really close.

When Jason Bailey does that podcast, a very good year that I did 87.

I don't remember which movies.

I mean, obviously,

I'm sure we discussed Last Emperor, but

I think we discussed Walker, actually.

Incredible, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, other movies.

Hellraiser, Ishtar,

Maurice, the James Ellison.

Oh, my God.

Creditor is 1987.

Near Dorothy.

And RoboSob.

Oh, my God.

I'm like, there's at least five of my top 25 in 87.

Yeah, we didn't know how good we had it.

Yeah, we didn't.

We used to be a proper country.

Bilga, thank you for joining us.

Thank you.

Now, Bilga, we've already gone long, but I have to say this, and I asked you before we recorded if we could talk about this.

And I do feel like there is a responsibility to our listeners.

You have seen Horizon colon and American Saga colon part two.

I have.

You are in the limited pool of people who have seen it.

It did premiere at Venice.

It did.

It's not a 10-person pool, but it is limited.

We are here now six months plus.

from when our miniseries on Costner ended with us saying, hey, next week, Horizon Chapter 2 and American Saga, we thought that episode would come out the following week.

And the movie still is, at the time of this recording, no closer to being released.

It has had another sort of wind, a third wind from being put up on Netflix and being the number one movie on Netflix after being the number one movie on Max and being the number one movie on VOD when it went to all of those places.

Unsurprisingly, his audience has shown up in the homebound ways that people assumed would happen.

And yet it feels totally stagnant.

And I just feel like I would be remiss if we did not allow you to talk at least briefly about the film you have seen that we're all dying to see in our unresolved miniature.

I think it's a really great movie.

It is actually quite different, I felt, from Horizon Part 1.

Less of a spectacle.

This one focused more on the women.

And in fact,

Ella Hunt,

she's kind of the protagonist.

I mean, that was my favorite narrative thread in the first one.

And, you know,

this one is so much darker than the first one.

Oh, cool.

The first one wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs.

No, but this one is really dark.

There's a scene where Luke Wilson rips someone's heart out of their chest.

Make a joke about Templo Doom being the darker.

What's interesting is that the things you thought about a lot of the characters in Horizon 1, you start to think differently about them.

So

he's kind of playing off that.

This is what I want out of this idea of

experiments.

Right, and one of the reasons why I put Horizon Part 1 on my top 10 list for the year.

And in fact, in my mind, I'm putting the two of them together, but really, it's like, and as much as I liked Horizon Part 1, actually, part two made me think about part one a little differently.

I mean,

I think it's great.

You know,

so Costner was at the screening that I was at.

It was kind of a private screening.

The least intimidating man in the world.

The least intimidating man in the world.

And kind of a wallflower who just disappears.

And

I asked him beforehand, I said, so is it, you know, like, have you shot part three?

Or, you know, because I was curious, like, how far along he is in just shooting the stuff.

And he's like, oh, no, no, you know,

I still have to shoot part three and four.

And he said, you know, I'm looking for a studio.

And then

I don't even know if I'm supposed to say this, but if you need to cut that, we'll cut that all over.

So

part two ends much like part one does with like a montage of scenes from the next horizon.

Which I, from what I understand, that's basically what he shot for part three.

That he had said previously that he had done like seven days of filming on part three, but it's basically that.

Right.

So afterwards, I saw him again and I said, well, it looks like you shot some of part three.

And he's like, yeah, I only shot enough so that I could have that much time.

And I was like,

that's weirdly adorable to me.

Can you confirm to me, I feel like I had heard or at least seen from other people who have seen it, that a lot of the sizzle reel stuff at the end of part one is not really in part two or not in that form.

And that similarly, it was him being like, let me just get a taste of some stuff.

There's some stuff.

that I expected to see in part two that's not there based on what I had seen in part one.

Yeah, but I don't remember the specific things, but there were a couple of things where I'm like, huh, I vaguely remember a shot of this happening.

The stuff at the end of part one promises a very different film than what part two actually is.

The thing,

how much rubese in the printing press do we get without spoiling anything?

Very little.

Okay, so that's a great example of what you just said.

It's kind of building up to more of that.

He's the Thanos.

He hasn't assembled all the Infinity Stones.

No, it's happening.

It ends actually with more of him.

And there is the sense that okay now maybe now in part three he got his hands on some more ink now he's really gonna be able to fly her um the uh what was i gonna say um

it is

you know it's such a i mean i love the movie i love the project it's it's such an interesting inflection point now because if he if he can't find a studio or if he can't find somebody to like

allow him to make the rest of it this thing is going to be i mean because it is i mean it's an incomplete movie it is it is like it doesn't end there.

There's no kind of, there's no world in which you're like, all right, well, whatever.

We got parts one and two, and we'll just accept this.

It's kind of like, no, no, no, like the story isn't finished yet.

And it's just going to exist as such a weird little entity if people can't finish it.

We're angry that when we did our part one episode, that so much of our talk was like, it's hard to talk about this because it's an incomplete object, right?

And that we were sort of kicking the can on a certain degree of analysis.

But it is, it is.

And it's like, it's incomplete, but in a way that's by design, because part of his notion was like make them simultaneously and release them close together and We did this episode and in like reality We were like it's gonna be six weeks from when we're recording to when we see part two and do that but in release schedule they will be one week apart So next week you will hear our episode with a more complete take and much like the reality of watching these movies that didn't happen

And I find it fascinating that part two also does not give you like a clean cutoff point.

No, but that's what I was looking for is like a building sense of like the vision of where this is going.

And it's, yeah, I mean, which is a little hard to pin down watching the first one alone.

It's also weird because, you know, we are in the age of sort of the, you know, the bifurcated blockbusters where everything's a part one or a part two or whatever.

But those films do, even the ones that to me sometimes do feel incomplete.

do feel like they have some narrative shape, some kind of they try to have a mini arc so that there can be some sense of resolution at the cliffhanger part, even if if there's a bigger threat.

Right.

And Horizon's refusal to do that.

I'm not doing that, I think, is very off-putting in a way that's interesting.

Right.

And a lot of people have said, you know, understandably, why isn't this just a TV series?

Because it does have that, it does have that quality.

And like, it's not a TV series because he wants it big because it's a giant big screen western.

It's, I don't know.

I mean, if he ever finishes it, it'll be like no other movie ever.

I agree.

Now,

just big if.

Big if.

An even bigger if than Krasinski got.

That's a terrible joke.

I want to end this episode

by requesting.

We've been lucky enough through various means to acquire a couple signed posters from directors of movies we have covered.

We have Hanging in the Office.

An Anglian Seamus Hulk.

a Campion, Power the Dog, a Selic, Wendell and Wilde poster.

I did win as a trivia prize at Nighthawk, a Horizon poster.

Now, we obviously can't get Costner to sign it, but Bill Good, would you mind signing the Horizon poster and just writing, I have seen chapter two?

Why are you doing this?

I think this is worth doing.

I think an immortalization of attention was.

This is the end of the episode.

I said it was the end of the episode.

You're pointing at the clock.

It's the end of the episode.

What are we doing?

This is funny and everyone's going to like it.

You can sign that off, Mike.

But if you ever get poor Kevin Costner to sign your

clown that signs off.

This is what I like.

That's our clown.

Bill Gabberry is one of our finest.

And he'll continue driving.

We will, yeah, we'll do the signing after we wrap up the episode.

I'm just going to

do it on your own time.

Maybe Ben should finish our episodes.

We should just like.

I think this is worth doing.

I think people are going to like it.

And I think, in fact, the outrage at me doing it on mic is going to lend, it's going to add to the narrative.

Yes.

Because now it's a thing that needs to be resolved, much like Horizon and American Saga.

Vilga, thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Anything specific you want to plug?

When does this go up?

This will go up in March.

March 16th.

I just hope I'm still employed.

I'm always thrilled anytime

a new piece gets published of any sort from you.

It's always

an exciting day.

Always love to read what you write.

We'll link to your articles in the episode description.

Oh, there's a lot of them.

You can link to my writer page on Voltaire.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

That's what I was talking about.

Okay, well, then I'm stupid.

I don't know.

I'm stupid.

Oh, my God.

End the episode.

End it.

Maybe you should end it.

Maybe you think you're so good at ending episodes.

Okay.

So let's just then quickly shout out here at the end.

We're in the midst of our March Madness tournament.

Oh, I suppose that's true.

So please

get involved if you want to impact the rock the vote direct democracy

if you're online stay online if we're gonna cover that we're gonna cover as well as pokemon go to the march madness poem participating on patreon where we'll be voting for various different franchises the eliteaters it's it's you're voting on the past candidates who have gotten close but no cigar uh we also are currently in the midst of our star trek Picard era commentary series

with those films is our insurrection episode

about the heroes of January 6th.

Just a few days ago, we put out a Spielberg bonus episode.

We're covering his segment in the Twilight Zone movie as well.

Yeah, just that one.

As

amazing stories.

His amazing story segments.

Yeah.

Anyway, just get some housekeeping out.

I know, I appreciate it.

And thank you all for listening.

Tune in next week for

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.

Right?

Yeah.

And as always, I think the poster thing was good and worth doing.

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims.

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In this montage, John Houston is getting an award for, I think, Sierra Madre.

I think so, yeah.

And in the introduction, and I forget already who's introducing him,

but I think it's the critic, I think it's the critic is saying, like, and what a rare and interesting phenomenon.

He wrote and directed the film.

Like, we really need to celebrate the unique artistry of a director who wrote his own movie.

It's being treated like he's some savant.

It's being treated like he invented the camera.

Like, really?

And because it was just

a big deal.

That was a big deal.

Yeah.

You know,

part of what, you know, part of what gave rise to the all-tour theory was, you know, these directors who actually exerted more control beyond just directing.

And then it's John, Jack Houston just sucking our dick for two minutes.

Being like, oh, I think the New York critics shine a light on.

It's great.

You know, he's so nice to us.

I was,

the person I was sitting with, I was like, that's John Houston, right?

And he was like, he's like, is it?

Doesn't Doesn't sound like him.

I'm like, you have to remember, in our minds,

Jack Houston, right?

Yeah, in our minds, John Houston is still just like Chinatown, even though we've seen him in a million other comments.

But also, in our minds, he sounds like the impressions of him.

Yes, right.

When you listen to Connery and you're like, it doesn't sound like him.

And you're like, because it's Daryl Hammond Connery.

Right, right, right.

It doesn't sound like the bug in Men in Black.

He was just middle-aged, Jack.

It's like watching young Michael Caine.

It's like, oh, young Michael Caine.

That's a fine treat.

I know.

So hot.

Yeah.

Yeah, we might as well just kick off the episode reminiscing on my

episode.

Oh, okay, fine.

Well, we're recording it.

I know, but you put it at the end of the episode.

Things must be done in proper order.

How about right in the middle?

No context.

You want to throw it right in.

You want to place it 15 minutes in to give people time to finish their dinner?

That wouldn't make sense for the Empire of the Sun because the Empire of the Sun is not a movie that's like, let's mess with the formal, you know, storytelling approach, really.

Like, this is a pretty traditionally told film, I would say.

Okay, let me start.

Let me start the show properly.