The Color Purple with Kenice Mobley

Blank Jack with Griffin and David

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

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

It's about life It's about love

It's about podcasts now This movie has a very thorough quotes page on IMDb, and I looked through every one of them.

You didn't think you could really nail anything? I failed to identify one that I could do without getting arrested. Cool.
I did a really thorough scan, and I thought about it from a bunch of angles.

I went, I don't think I should try one of these. I think the tagline for the color purple, which you just did from the, in my opinion, wonderful poster.
It's a very iconic poster. Yeah.

It's about life. It's about love.
It's about us.

Is such a like fucking terrible, like,

you know stereotypical 80s movie tagline where you're just like what does that mean and then you're like oh so what's the movie about and they're like well and you're and then if someone described what the color purple was about to you they'll be like what do you mean it's about life it's about love it's about i mean sure but that's not really setting me up for the color purple that's all i i like this movie but the other reason i thought it was uh i i'm gonna go with the tagline here is that being the tagline for this movie on this poster with all the other elements of what is being communicated in the poster is kind of the whole movie in a nutshell.

Like this movie's weird cultural object status of just like, here's this seismic book. It wins all the awards.
How are we going to make this into the movie?

Just get the best people in Hollywood and then try to sell this as like big tent entertainment and decades of people being like, was that the right way to do this?

Is like the goal to make it the biggest production you can. Well, it worked.
This movie was a colossal hit. That's the thing.

And I do think it was a sort of, yeah, big seismic, everybody went to see it kind of movie, i feel like and it's i had never seen it before this was the first time watched for me this is one of my only spielberg blind spots uh and i don't think i'd been avoiding it to any degree but i feel like it has a very weird status in his career and uh i just kept last night watching it and going it's so bizarre that steven spielberg made this That is true.

And we'll talk about it. What's weird about it is in every single solitary second, it both so feels like a Steven Spielberg movie and doesn't at all.

Wow, I just, I'm looking at the art. Do you want to see it, Kenny's? Yes.

For the mini-series. Wow, the mini series.

I'm just seeing this now for the first time. Yeah, it's good.
Yeah. I look fucking hot as Indiana does.
Well, you know, a lot of people look hot with that hat on, but yeah. You know what?

And I want to commend Pat Reynolds for also not Photoshopping any of us onto the cast of the color purple. Another great decision.

And what's going to be a very appropriate episode? 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, such as making Jaws, E.T.,

two Indiana Jones movies, and then are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. And sometimes they decide to adapt Alice Walker's

to a comic novel, The Color Purple. Who's our guest? Main series on the films of TV show.
Sorry, sorry, sorry. It's called Podrassic Cast.
That's true. That's not new information.

And today we're talking about The Color Purple. Our guest guest is the great comedian,

great comedian. I started combining your name and comedian.
Please don't. Knesse Mobley.
Hi.

The tonight show. Yes.
The founder of Netflix. I am the founder of Netflix.
Yes. I made it.
I have money. So much money.
You did, your tonight show appearance was in the pandemic, right?

It was the rooftop. It was the rooftop.
It was 28 degrees outside. Have you seen any of these, David or Ben? Knisse performs.
Knisse is one of my favorite comedians. Wow.
Oh, my God.

And we've known each other for a little while. We kind of overlap in circles.
We'll run into each other. And it kept coming up.

And every time I would cross paths with you, you're like, can I argue a point of something that you and David said on the podcast that drove me crazy?

I start increasingly finding out that you are a listener

through your like objections to how did we drive you crazy right this is what i was i can't remember it's happened multiple times but i you will reach out and go like good episodes yeah but then sometimes you'll come in and be like, I have an axe to grind.

What the fuck are you guys talking about?

So I was not a listener of your podcast.

And then I dated three people in a row. This is the thing you said when we met.
You said,

I need you to know I have a problem. I keep dating listeners of your podcast.
Someone just told me that her friend confessed to her recently that she and her boyfriend put our podcast on the TV. What?

Like, I guess through like YouTube or something like that, Spotify, and then like sit and and listen to it. That's chilling.

Chilling. And I was like, are they?

Do they like knit or cook or something? She's like, yeah, I assume they do. Did you do other stuff?

I can't imagine just sort of sitting there. It's horrible.

It was so strange because

I wasn't aware of this podcast, but then so many people kept,

it would come up on dates. And I'm like, what is this? Sure.
And so I started listening first for like a bit and then I became a fan. That's nice.
And I'm a fan of that.

Well, a fan of yours.

During 2020, you got to do Stand Up on the Tenai Show, which is one of like the thing. It's the thing I had been working for for my entire comedic career.
Did Carson invite you over to the couch?

Well, the dead Carson invited me.

Yes. It was complicated.

A couple interesting wrinkles in Canese's circumstances. One, Carson long dead.
Secondly, no one was allowed to be indoors.

What would Carson have made of all that? I don't know. Cannese had this great show outside.
Weird

stuff.

Cannes had this great fucking tonight show set, The Dream, that happened on a

rooftop in the winter. Yes.
I was crying because, like, if it's cold, I start to, my eyes water.

And so I had to like constantly figure out ways to like wipe tears away from my face while still telling my jokes and like being filmed. It was, it was an experience that I'll never forget.

But my memory is that it's like Fallon at home, right? Like in his cabin, and he's

in studio. So, like, some people weren't allowed to be in studio.
Okay, the roof

are in studio. Okay, so it was when he was back to in-studio, but there was no audience.
Yes. Yes.
And half the guests were Zoom. Yes.

And he's in studio and he goes, like, and now Knis Mobile, except instead of gesturing to his left, he gestures towards the roof. And then it just cuts to the roof of 30 Rock.

in again the winter the winter

yawn winter yes it was fascinating i will with carson it would have been carson was in la

so a rooftop

even in february or whatever why did that guy have to go and die and make your life more difficult well first he retired

it was about me yes yeah it was yes i won't i won't be there when she's performing no i i'm retiring and dying i mean a few people did it outside but somebody did it from uh like a drive-in in texas and that was like warm and he looked like he was happy and then Mark Normand I think did it from the Staten Island Ferry and it was very strange that that seems like maybe too much business also under those circumstances maybe you do want to just like be like look this is never going to be normal yes so why not try to do the weirdest version of it sure That's why I got married in my backyard.

I was like, I don't know when things are going to happen. You have a backyard? I went for the invite, by the way.
Well, it was COVID. Are you kidding me?

It was the whole election.

No, it was my parents-in-law's background.

What? You have access to grass and sky simultaneously? I didn't at the time. I lived at a fucking railroad.
I had a roof. We had a roof, but it was one of those sort of building roofs.

I was on the rails, just to be clear.

David his wife a bindle.

Carson retired 92.

Died in 2005. Oh, wow.
I thought he was dead way earlier. Just lazy.
What is this? This is 13 years just fucking cooling his hits.

This is my favorite thing to talk about carson used to retire in this country oh yeah it's so true

especially people in jobs that need turnover yeah but you know that need a bit of freshening up so like that's that's a huge part of it right just in general that doesn't happen this generation won't let go of their position that's why harrison ford at 80 is red hulk or whatever second part

you know who used to retire the hardest so funny that he's red hulk

do you know who used to retire the hardest who used to retire the hardest the most famous people in the world sure right oh yeah they would be be like i'm done goodbye right you're like yeah right audrey hepburn you know i guess well no well well no

hepburn are you talking about audrey hepburn right now because we're we're about to do always right last

movie she died shortly after then so she did not like you know i guess she's not as good as an example did she do an al pacino phase where it was just like anything that paid her she was there none of those people fucking did that no well i think that you know it was less of there weren't movies like that as much i guess back then either, right?

You couldn't just be like, hey, put me in any Bulgarian action movie that like is being made this year, right?

There are relevant threads within this, right? Like this is Mini series on the early films of Steven Spielberg, covering the first half of his career.

His first big official professional directing job was the episode of the Night Gallery with Joan Crawford. And that was the example of like, that's like an old movie star who won't retire, right?

And perhaps like didn't manage their finances enough to be able to retire slash needs the attention. But yeah, are they just bored?

But you'd end up there. You'd end up like, you're a very special guest star on television.
That would be nice. Right.

Or you like have a sort of like poignant cameo in a thing or you show up in a horror movie for five minutes to be like lend it some credibility, whatever, right?

There wasn't the sort of like cash out of Red Hulk. Yes.
But there's also the thing. Is he doing like five movies right now?

The Red Hulk thing is particularly galling. We have maybe brought up Red Hulk in every episode.
Red Hulk has definitely come up with a lot of people who are just

past.

Because it just keeps being so funny to me that they're like, there's a new Captain America movie. And I'm like, oh, what's it about? And they're like, there's a black captain.

Sam Wilson is Captain America. I'm like, what's it about? What does he do? And they're like, I don't know.
Harrison will be Red Hulk. Right.
And I'm like, what does Captain America do in the movie?

And they're like,

he's dialing something. He's investigating or something.
I don't know. He has wings.

Did you watch it in his Harrison? Half of the Winter Soldier? I watched every episode of it yes that was early covet too

we were watching everything i'll throw it on i'm right you know what i'm watching right now lord of the rings the rings of power season two yikes because i have this kind of seven to ten o'clock period where i'm not i can't sleep but uh that my my twin uh babies are trying to sleep, but that's when they're going to be the most rocky.

They'll pop up. They'll, you know, you're going to be like, oh, Rocksteady, Beep, and Rocksteady.
Their names are Bebop and Rocksteady. Oh, okay, thank you.

I was like, Rocksteady, like Gwen Stefani, or Rocksteady, like the other. Okay, cool, cool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm hip.
Um, so it's good to have a show that I don't

mind too much if it's gotta pause it or whatever. And Lord of the Rings of the Rings of Power is that show.
It's very plausible. Have you seen?

Yes, I watched all of the first season, and then I watched the first episode of the second season. And you were like, I'm finally, I'm, I'm, I'm beyond when they're when we're following like black

like gunk just rolling down a hill. That does happen.
I think I was a little out on that. That does have to be like young Sauron.
You are, Ben. Correct.
Wow. How did you get that?

You were doing a joke, but that's what that is. That's 100% the Sauron died and then he was gunk for a while.
Let's follow the gunk. And I'm like, mervinia of gunk.
Gunk? Yes. Up a hill.

Did Ben write this show?

Possibly. No, there's just there's whole episodes where they're like, should we make more rings? And they're like, I don't know.
And I'm like, I know you're going to make it.

You're going to make rings.

answer other questions no other questions answered they sit and they think about making rings and that's

they have this like proto gandalf where he's like should i be gandalf and they're like i don't know

he's like i don't know how to do it and they're like well you'll probably figure it out episode seven or eight is he literally gandalf or is he a gala he is literally gandalf he has visions of a staff or something oh my god someday it's truly my hand feels so empty i had something

off it's just one of those things where people are like oh they're gonna to do a prequel Lord of the Rings show, but like, you know, I know that there's a lot of token stuff that you can work with, but don't people kind of know, you know, the backstory enough to how could that be interesting?

They're like, no, we'll make it interesting. And like 18 hours in, I can tell you, they didn't pull it off.
They give him a really straight hat, and there's a scene where he decides to bend it.

So it droops.

I think that would be like the season finale of season three.

Not unless I watch it. True.
I will give it that. Like, I do.
So much money on that. It's an it's an expensive, fairly fairly handsome show yeah you know and

uh you know anyway uh whatever i can't even remember how we got on this topic people don't retire the person for it is red wolves

don't you think it's funny that they're like captain america what's it about i i had a whole long argument with my grandmother who's who's a woman of an advanced age and gets very touchy when I get into conversations about like

people need to retire, right? And I'm talking about from a sociological aspect. And she interprets it as you're saying that over a certain age, people don't have value anymore.

Got it, which I constantly try to delineate, you know. But we had versions of this argument with Joe Biden, running for president, a thing that worked out really well for everybody.
So well.

We're excited about the future. Totally.

But I was saying this about Harrison Ford, and she's like, who are you to say he can't work anymore?

He still has value. And I'm like, I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying maybe he shouldn't make movies for nine-year-olds anymore. Yeah.

I'm like, I want him to do whatever makes him happy, but I'm like a little depressed that we can't let go of him playing Indiana Jones. Right.

I was having this conversation when the last one was coming out.

And I'm like, that movie's trying to reckon with it, but it is just like, he seems very fulfilled by being unshrinking.

I'm not going to tell him he shouldn't play Red Hulk, but there is a larger aspect of like

let's step back. Like Red Hulk feels like this inflection point of like, we need to examine 10 different cultural phenomena that have led to this moment.

That have led to Harrison, do you want to step? You know what?

I was about to say, like it's beneath him to sort of step into a role right it's like this was william hurt and william hurt died but he stepped into jack ryan he's you know what he's just a guy who's just like look i was a carpenter and i just i do the work i show up they tell me i'm hulk i go

and then i go home i want to see him more in like um what lies beneath sized movies that would be great that would be great what if you married harrison ford right now i might be freaking i feel like might be weird we have to move about it a bit in doing this series but you're just like wouldn't it be so cool to see him and Spielberg work together in any other context?

You know, like rather than just Indiana Jones. They never worked together.
It's wild that they never did. That's a true.

And they remained like close friends and they speak very lovingly of each other.

And there was always like the rumor that he was, that he wanted him to play. I want you to direct six days, seven nights.
Sorry, I don't know. Just doing a bad thing.

There were conflicting rumors about him and Lincoln. Him and Lincoln.
I remember that.

I feel like both at some point maybe being the Tommy Lee Jones part, but also maybe being Grant in a smaller role.

And then there's been some like kind of questioning of the story of David Lynch ending up in the Fablemans

that was suggested by Mark Harris, but Spielberg said he had a different actor in mind. And people have been like, would that have been Harrison Ford for one scene?

Like all of those are interesting possibilities. Obviously, we got two great performances from other people in that situation.

And we're about to get a great performance from him in Captain America something something as Red Hulk, President Hulk.

I just think it's funny that he's the president. I think every part of it's eight hats on hats.
Yeah. They're like, we've cast hairs in front of them.
Like, that's okay.

That's an upgrade, I guess, or that's crazy. He'll be Red Hulk too.
He's going to be Red Hulk too. Okay.
And he's the president as well. Here's the funnier part.
They elected him. Yeah.

We're going to talk about the color purple. There's a lot to talk about.
First, we have to talk about the color red.

William Hurt, Academy Award-winning actor, plays General Thunderbolt Ross like five times, six times over like 10, 12 years.

A lot of times. And is basically always at most the 10th most important character in the movie.
And you're like, yeah, he's fine in these. He's like sturdy.

They get a little dramatic use out of helping, having him set up larger government stakes or whatever, but he's not that important. And then William Hurt dies.

And then they're like, here's the pitch for Captain America 4. Maybe the biggest living historic movie star.
Now plays him, shaves his mustache, and turns into a monster.

And the whole movie's about him. Yeah, they were like, okay, we were thinking, maybe we'll make a Marvel movie that's not Black Panther, but about a black Captain America.
No,

it is about the president. Be real, it's about the president, it's about Harrison Ford.
Please come to this movie. What if the president was a monster and he shaved his mustache?

Just the sort of like taking your whole dick out, too, right? Of like, Harrison Ford's in it. I'm like, okay, he's red hook.
I'm like,

are there any surprises left for me in the middle? None, right?

You just saw my whole dick.

The whole, that's my whole dick. Like, they tried to all be cagey about it for so long, and now the trailer is like, just the tip, tip, and they're like, Okay, we'll just

get a little angry.

Oh, will he? And they're like,

Look at him.

His face looks like Harrison Ford. We made it look like Harrison Ford.
We made it look like Harrison Ford. Oh, boy.
Anyway, why are we talking about this? I don't know. The color purple.
Retiring.

Retiring.

It is,

I don't know. How do I frame this? There were times I was watching this movie.

I felt this sense of sorrow of like, oh, this was a point in time where if a movie, if a book won the Pulitzer Prize, big best-selling book, studios would be like, well, obviously, we have to turn this into a big, serious movie.

There is a cultural obligation and the public is demanding it. There is interest in this.
Right. This book came out three years before the movie.
Like it was, it was, you know, book comes out in 82.

By 83, it is an award-winning, Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling book. By 85, the film has been released, directed by one of the big filmmakers of the era.
Like, you know, bang, bang, boom.

What won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction last year? I don't know. I should know.
I don't read as much as I should. I feel very guilty.

Something called Night Watch, Historical Fiction During the American Civil War by Jane Ann Phillips. Someone turned this into a movie.
Dwight Gardner called it Sludgy.

Sludgy?

I just finally saw Nickel Boys, which will be, have been out for a while by the time this episode comes out, but just came out here pretty recently. Well, that, which won the Pulitzer in 2020?

This is my favorite. the last, in fact, that is the last Pulitzer winner for fiction that has been turned into a film.
Okay. So that film is phenomenal.
Yeah. Thank you.
Right. The book's great.

I haven't watched the movie. Terrific film.

Movie's terrific. But I was just like, having seen that in theaters in the same week that I watched Color Purple for the first time.
Oh, man. You're real deep in Black Pain.

Hey, look, I'm not looking for a round of applause. Oh, no, I'm not giving it to you, but thank you.

We can agree on that.

I don't deserve it. Don't give it.
But yeah, you real

black people be suffering. A little bit.
A little bit. And it's just, you know, timing, chance, whatever.
But it was like interesting to see these two movies like 40 years apart, right?

In the same week, and be like, here's this book that is like seismic. And that like Amazon and MGM are just like, you know what?

We're going to give like a $25 million budget to someone who's never made a feature-length scripted film before casting largely unknown actors with like a very daring formal like conceit.

I've heard about this conceit and I'm like, wow, I'm just like, which is incredible. But that speaks to in that moment, them almost having the awareness of like, there is no big tent version of this.

If we try to make the version of this that appeals to like multiplex mall audiences everywhere, like

it's not going to accomplish anything, right? No, it's like the help, bro. Like

that's when it's like, hey, we need to make this a four-collagent thing.

Okay, we got to get the black people out the center center of it. Okay, we can't.

Get rid of that. But even the help is like,

that's more of a like an emotional beach read, you know?

It wasn't like, this is this like humongous, immediately historic piece of literature that needs to be treated with respect.

That also in the history of Hollywood was like, we have to serve two things at the same time.

One, like treat the material, but also two, we have an obligation to like win best picture, make $100 million.

And Nickel Boys is just clearly like, why would we even attempt to do that? Just do an artistic film. Right.

And I think that everything that's interesting about Color Purple is it like existing in tension between those two things,

you know, and like

being both better and worse than it should be and could be at the same time.

The really annoying thing is, when I'm looking at this Pulitzer list, all the light we cannot see the sympathizer and the Underground Railroad all turned into television. Right.

That's, that's now what more often happens. The Goldfinch was turned into a movie.
I was thinking about a bad one. I saw it.
I suffered through every second of that piece of shit.

But that's the other one I was thinking of in doing this sort of math in my head where I pinned that in my mind.

And I'm like, I feel like that was the last time that a book comes out, is a sensation, wins all the awards.

And there's like this feeding frenzy of like, which recent best picture director are we going to get with 20 name actors? Before that, it's The Road. Yeah.

And we're taking like eight-year leaps. The road also was like 10 years in development.
Yeah, no, this is the thing.

There's a lot of these sort of bestsellers that became classics, Cavalier and Clay, Middlesex.

Middlesex was made into something? No, no, where it's like development channels.

That's just what I'm saying is people keep saying, like, we're going to turn that into like an HBO series, or no, we're going to make a movie of that. And then it just kind of gets lost and developed.

All of those started this way, where it's like, it wins the award, and it's immediately like X, Y, and Z have all signed on to adapt this.

Here are the casting lists, here are the this, and then it keeps getting redeveloped and it never happens.

Okay. Because they're like not, I feel like that's why they make night pitch.
That's why they make crazy rich agents.

Like, hey, there are books that they're making and it's like going to make us more money. Why would we do this? Yes.
Yes. Yes.

There's like, there's less of this pressure to take a book that is important. and try to figure out how to make it more functional as a broad movie.

Whereas I think they're now like, if a book feels like a movie, make it into a movie. And if a book feels difficult to adapt, then maybe let's like slow our horses and like rethink this.

So

I've got a question for all the gamers out there, and I'm pointing at you, David. Are you seriously going to miss out on Alienware's biggest gaming sale of the year?

I mean, these are Cyber Monday prices we're talking about. So it's not just another sale.
Yeah, I took a look, and this is some pretty big bang for your book.

You know, it's Alienware with some of the most advanced engineering out there with systems at the top of every reviewer's lists. And what about a gift for yourself?

Give yourself a new Alienware 16 Area 51 gaming laptop. I mean, this thing's got performance at the absolute next level with Intel Core Ultra Process.
And even better, you can get it.

during Cyber Monday. Plus, you can save on all kinds of displays and accessories like the Alienware 32 4K QD OLED gaming monitor for ultimate visual fidelity.

These really are incredible deals on PCs with otherworldly performance, so I'd visit alienwear.com/slash deals soon and grab what you can before the lowest prices of the year go dark.

David,

this episode is brought to you by Mubi, the global film company, the champions, great cinema. From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there is always something new to discover.

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Anyway, the color purple is the movie we're here to discuss today. So Griffin had never seen it.
Ben, had you ever seen it? No. I'd seen it.
Had you ever seen it? Okay. Oh, my goodness.

Let's just let me finish. Okay.
So I am a black woman from the South. It was, I was raised in the Black church, went to a Black school.

I was certain that I had grown up with this film, that I had seen it so many times. There are cultural touch points.
It's in like rap music. Like it's, it's everywhere.

So I was like, when you were like, hey, color purple, I was like, yeah, I got that. I watched the movie.
I've never seen that movie in my life. Wild.

I had not seen it. And I had to be like, oh, fuck.
Had you seen like the musical or the musical movie or any of that? Like any later color purple stuff? Had you read the book?

I read the book yesterday. I'm the only host.
Now I read the book. I read the book long ago.
Oh, you're cooler than me?

Oh, pretty cool of me to have read a famous bestseller, The Color Purple, which I'm pretty sure I got on Kindle Unlimited. Wow.
COVID when I was just like, I gotta read something.

But yes, I have read The Color Purple. Okay, so you'd never seen it.
You had never seen The Color Purple.

Congratulations on watching it. What did you think? I am so worried about my street cred right now.

Only the coolest people, you know. No, it's like my black street cred, okay? Like, I could get like cards, could be revoked.
You don't understand. It's like the whole thing.

And so

like,

yes, this movie important.

Yes, it has some of the people who have defined blackness on camera for the last 50 years. I think it is important.
Quincy Jones did the movie, like the music for it and everything.

Super important. And like produced it.
And was by all accounts the one who really got Spielberg to sign on. Yeah.
I mean, we'll talk about it. Yeah.
I hate the music for this so much.

And I was like, what the fuck is this? Like, why are you shooting child rape like it's a day in the park? Well, this is what we're going to talk about. This is the weird tonal thing with this movie.

Absolutely. Yes.
We'll talk about it. Thank you.
I just, I feel like part of me has to say that I love this movie. You don't have to say anything.
Okay. Thank you.

You definitely don't have to say anything. But I, I definitely felt like the book

had more interesting things to say about the black community, our relationship with God, parents, and women specifically. And they took a lot of those edges off

and then had this ending of coming to Jesus or something. And I was like, please don't do, no, no.

As an adaptation of the book, it's. it's a it's a huge misfire.
I think all adaptations of the book are, actually.

I think the musical and the later musical movie also are bad adaptations of the book.

Those They're kind of just like adaptations of this movie in a weird way.

Like, it's like, but the book is very hard to build a weird like cultural reputation of the movie as an idea, which is sort of so different than what the thing is.

I watched it and I was like, oh, yeah. Cause like this is an important thing.
The first time, like a lot of like, oh, wow, it's about black women. We never get to do anything.

And then, oh, so we just getting beat down and assault. Okay.
Well, look, the whole thing with the color purple, though, the movie is what you're saying: of like, why was it made by Steven Spielberg?

And like, why? Great question. Yeah.
Why, you know, well, who else would have they gotten to do it at the time? And

that's what we have to talk about is right.

It's like, right, who was who is the project sort of what we and we could, I think Quincy Jones sought out Steven Spielberg in the sort of like, that gives it the biggest seal of approval.

Like, he's the biggest director there is. Isn't Oprah, though, kind of also very involved in the music? No, she's a middle later version.
She's a fucking nobody for this one.

She's like a local TV host. Like, yeah.
Oprah becomes like one of the main creative forces on both productions of the musical on Broadway and the musical movie. And Oprah, like, she becomes Oprah.

Right. Sure.
But she was an Oprah.

I mean, she was a local TV host. Like, she was the start of Oprah, but she was not a mogul.
Zero acting credits, right? I think. Yeah.
I mean, and that's the

cast of this movie

is a lot of people that you're like, well, these are famous people who were not really well known at the time. Like, Danny Glover was like a theater actor.

It's not Kines.

It's just like this movie, having lightning in a bottle, Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah, basically not existing prior to this moment, gives it a power that is kind of like never going to disappear.

So, this is, you know, it's an important movie. It's important that a movie like this was a blockbuster,

launched careers, you know, sort of displayed an experience that wasn't in movies much, but it feels kind of like first steps

on a lot of this stuff.

Very first step.

It's very tentative. I think being present is a step.
I think Spielberg himself would admit, like, he was somewhat cowardly in how he made the movie and, like, stand it out, stand it off the edge.

And right to the deep end of this, because this is the thing I really like, go back and forth on with this film that I think is interesting. Okay.

I don't say interesting a good way. I'm like, part of what makes it a fascinating, like a piece of work to dig into is

it feels like just, you know, we'll dig into this more, but like

there is almost the chess move, it feels like, where when you read Alice Walker, be like, do I want to like sell these rights to anyone? Do I trust anyone to make a movie of the color?

I could Hollywood make a good movie of this. Right.
And then she's sort of like convinced by people in her inner circle of like, there's a responsibility to like put this on a bigger platform.

There's like an opportunity here to make a movie of this size starring women of color, which doesn't really exist in the studio system. Like there are all the values of this.

And Quincy Jones comes in. Quincy Jones is this figure for decades who who is like deeply invested in like Black Hollywood and opportunities and like trying to create industries and this like that.

And it feels like he made this sort of strategic chess move of like, A, if I get Spielberg to direct this, that gives it the biggest stamp of approval. But B, does that also kind of protect it?

Like he is the one guy with enough cachet where if he says he wants to do it this way, they won't push back on him. which is interesting as a strategic move, right?

Then the flip side of that is all the stuff that you're saying that Steven Spielberg doesn't represent well in this movie feels like, to David's point, kind of cowardice of him being like, I know I don't have a handle on it.

Yeah, pull that off.

There's this weird thing of being like, you want to give him the credit for knowing that he would have fucked that up.

But yet, if you are the one adapting this material and you're not willing to touch that, then maybe you shouldn't be directing this movie. Yes.

Has he ever directed anything with even a hint of gay in it? Here, this is a theory that David and I have stewed on for a long time.

I threw out years and years ago, and that I feel like comes up a lot on the podcast.

But when Steven Spielberg was the head of the jury at the Conn Film Festival, he gave the palm d'Or to Blue is the warmest color. He's a jury.

But he was the head of the jury. He was the head of the jury.

Directed by

a really chill guy.

Okay, cool. Just wanted to clarify that.
Okay. A little bit of a similar situation.
Yeah, but at the time.

Adapting a very big, like, queer French, like, graphic novel by a man who maybe has a weird relationship to women. Yeah, but they don't know.
They don't know.

But my guess is it's like, what

Griffin is saying is Pielberg is watching this movie that is wall-to-wall sex scenes and lesbian sex scenes. It's just like, I could never do this.
This has always been my

is that when like filmmakers are the heads of juries of major festivals and you see what they give the awards to versus when it's actors or you know other people I think specifically when it's directors and some of those choices are really odd, I think usually you can pathologize it as this is the movie they can least imagine themselves being able to pull off.

That they are in awe, that there is something on screen that they're just like, I don't know how you get there.

And Spielberg like gives it to this movie and is like, and by the way, the award is split between the director and the two actresses. Yeah.

Because this couldn't be possible without the level of whatever. There's years of litigation of like, did he abuse the actresses?

Psychologically torturous set, whatever. But there's something there in Spielberg, like 30 years later, being like,

I wouldn't even know where to begin.

He chose one lady putting her hand on the other lady's shoulder. And that's a stand-in for all lesbianism.
You also have to remember, it's the 80s. This just isn't in movies.

Like, you think of a movie called like Desert Hearts, right? Which is, I think, the same year, 85. Have you ever seen Desert Hearts? Has anyone ever seen Desert Hearts?

It's a totemic early indie lesbian drama. It's awesome.
It's, uh, I think Criterion released it eventually or whatever. You know, know you can go watch it everybody

but like that's like an indie indie indie ass movie that like you probably could have only seen in two theaters like in america that's that's where like gay you know romance basically exists in the american cinema in the mid 80s right sure or you know it's it's like dog day afternoon or it's like wow sure right you know i but that's like that's yeah but that's not what that movie is fundamentally that's an element of the movie and that's a sort of sensationalist element of that movie that that movie handles very well but like

yes it is like kind of there's that degree of it and spielberg talks about interviews being like look i felt the movie had to be pg13 there was a responsibility to make the biggest version of this movie people i want it to be communicated that was a strategic decision but the other part of that is just like so crazy where you're like how does the movie begin it's like well you know

It's about this, this, this girl who's being abused by her father and he, you know,

fires two children on her and gives the children away. And you're like, that's the start of the movie.
That's the start of the movie. You're like, yeah.
Her on a bed in the snow pushing a baby out.

And you're like, what's the plot of the movie? And you're like, a procession of suffering across like multiple characters until they get like a little bit of respite at the end.

Which also, those types of narratives, which often are make like huge, incredible, important books, are really hard to adapt into like.

not even three act structures, but sort of like fixed time audiovisual narratives where it's just like watching characters go through the worst of it over and over.

This is why I want to open the dossier, but I do want to say this is, I think, the argument for why this movie is kind of good in a way.

Good in a way is exactly how I would put it. I mean, to be clear, all right, to be clear, I think that this is a very watchable, affecting movie.

Like, if you just like sit down and watch this movie, as many Americans did, it is hard not to be moved by it. It seems incredibly, incredibly well-acted.
He cannot make an uncompelling movie.

And, like, still works. There's a few performances where I could have adjusted some stuff.
But what's incredible? And like, you know, it's a, it's, yeah, well, wow.

You know, it's a, it's, and Spielberg's a good filmmaker. And like, you know, you're, you're in the hands of a good filmmaker.
And you watch this movie and you're like, yeah, wow.

I mean, like, what a, what a tough time. And what a, you know, somewhat, you know, note of grace at the end.
And blah, blah, blah.

As an adaptation, you can quibble. As like a white Jewish filmmaker who doesn't really know shit about like the South or women's experiences.

You know, like he's like, yeah, yeah, but I was mad as a child. Yeah.

It's like that because he keeps coming in there being like, I understand the experience of black women.

I was credit for not having the arrogance of that, but it's right. The weird.
Yeah.

But the fact that Spielberg is too shy or maybe just too sentimental to really depict things like with like utter brutality.

kind of makes the movie, you know, it's like there's a lot of movies that just lean into the misery and the brutality, like you're saying, and they're not really good. Like that's often a mistake.

They can become kind of numbing. It's kind of relentless and numbing.
And you're so, you know, it's really hard balance to strike how to depict, like, all.

And then at a certain point, I think in our culture, people started being like, can we just have less movies about this? Like, and have movies about other experiences.

Why are we

trying? But this was a bestseller. This is Salisbury's story.
Yada yada. Anyway, so that's sort of the argument for like

what was helpful about the color purple. You know, I'm like layering this in caveats,

but that, right like if you're gonna but then you know you read shit like you know margaret avery is like incredible in this movie right she gets an academy award

she plays shug oh yeah yeah i like her and then her like career completely kind of stalls out and you read you interview her like margaret avery shug avery yeah okay yeah yeah they've the her and the character both have the same last name cool cool cool um

uh she was just like this movie comes out again oscar nomination and people are like well she's not big enough for movies and she's probably too big for tv

Was just sort of like all

right. They were just kind of like, and I'm not even going to have a window of opportunity unless there's like another black star who needs a wife in a movie, you know?

And she was like, And meanwhile, I watched the next year, Danny Glover does like Lethal Weapon. Like it's an immediate launching pad, right?

And obviously, Whoopi Goldberg launches into like an insane film career off of this. A very nice one.

A really nice one, but it's also sort of bizarre to be like weird, like theatrical comedian, never in a movie, gets her breakthrough in a like purely dramatic role in a Spielberg film, gets an Oscar nomination for her debut performance, and then immediately is like, great, and now I make comedy vehicles.

Yeah. Like it's funny that she didn't get slotted into drama and that she was able to go back and

totally. Yeah.
But it's like, but Whoopi's career is a one-of-one. Like it's a very,

but like, that's, that's a weird example of like, and then, you know,

Oprah like doesn't really act again for like over a decade. We've, we've now covered like half of Oprah's movie career on this

covered beloved and we covered Princess of the Frog. Oh sure.

If you remove times in which she played Oprah Winfrey in a movie, it's like eight roles and I think we've covered four of them.

Yeah, we'll probably do Selma one day

and a Wrinkle in Time. I mean if we do Selma, we're doing a Wrinkle in Time.

Same director. But you're like this thing where it sort of like launches people and also like some people get totally stuck.
Yeah.

Margaret Avery should have won the Oscar and Woofie should have won the Oscar, in my opinion. If you guys want to talk about it now, or we can talk about it later.

Uh, if you want to talk about the 1985 Oscars, which are kind of a travesty, like almost every winner is wrong. Build up to that.
Okay, fine.

So, the color purple, 1980s, Steven Spielberg, Peter Pan himself, he'll never grow up. Yes.
He makes movies about space aliens and Harrison Ford with his whip, Temples of Doom. Sharks and stuff.

Sharks. Right.
He's quickly becoming. Oh, he wants to make a grown-up movie and it turns out to be Poltergeist.
It's just another silly movie for children.

And you're getting the narratives of like, is this guy holding back culture? Oh, he wants to make another thing. Oh, he's doing a movie based on his favorite TV show, Twilight Zone.

Well, I'm sure nothing bad will happen there. Oh, he started a production company, Amblin.
What's he going to make with that? Gremlins and the Goonies. I'm serious.

Like, this is the narrative of what you say. It's like, this person is infantilizing culture with his childish genre obsessions.

And, like, now Amblin is spawning like more Spielbergs, like that, will only, you know, do more. Right, right.

He basically, right, they poured water on Steven Spielberg, and now many Spielbergs are coming out of his back and wrecking trap.

But, like, at this point, he has made four of the highest-grossing films of all time, if not five. Oh, sure.
I don't know. Indiana Jones, Jaws, and E.T.
for sure.

Plus, accounts was up there. Whatever.
He's made like four of the highest-grossing films of all time. Here's the other weird thing that we've been covering, Knisse.

Sugarland Express, no Oscar nominations. right? Second movie, Jaws.
Big Oscar film, nominated for best picture, not nominated for best director. Seen as a snub.
Yeah.

For a film that was so culturally like Seismic.

Then Close Encounters, nominated for best director, not nominated for best picture. 1941's a flop.
Rairs of the Lost Ark, nominated for picture and director. Oh.

Indiana Jones is the first time that they're like, fuck, fine. Yeah.
We'll give you both, but it's felt like they've been a little like. I did not know that that was nominated for best picture.

Which is also crazy. Yeah.
Do you like Steven Spielberg? We didn't even ask.

I think so. I think I like Steven Spielberg in the way that I like Coca-Cola or Beyonce or

Football in America.

You know, just like that. He likes mac and cheese.
Yeah. Actually, I don't like crack.
I'm from the South. That's like offensive to me.
So sorry, sorry, but

I'm so sorry. Are you Velveeta then? What's your

earth are you talking about? She's saying that like she

doesn't need to make mac and cheese out of a mouse.

What on earth is Velveeta

over my head? I thought it was just you had another brand of

brand?

What are you talking about,

I'm so sorry. I'm now with you.
Yes, I genuinely was confused when you when the word Velveeta came out of your mouth, I was like, what is happening? You gave me

not a

disdainful look, and I understand

cheese once. It was weird.

I didn't know that Velveeta made mac and cheese because Velveeta isn't even.

Can we legally call Velveeta cheese? I don't know. It's the cheese product.
It's the goo, right? Yeah.

It's vegan. Macaroni.
It's vegan? I think it is. I don't know.
Maybe it's.

It's like the orange version of the Sauron goo. That's what Velveeta looks like.

No, it's not vegan. I'm sorry.
I take it back. Yeah, the vegans are going to come after you.
One of my exes who listens to this podcast and is a vegan. He's going to come after you.

Shout out to Knesse's vegan ex.

You know who I'm going to do if you're listening.

He should be. He fucking should be.
Sit down and listen.

How about that? No, I'm kidding. Turn it on.
You're a perfectly nice person. Just we weren't right together.
E.T. the Extraterrestrial becomes the highest-grossing film of all time.

Immediately, one of the most beloved films in history. I think is basically presumed to be the Oscar frontrunner.
And it's seen as like a bit of a shock that Gandhi beats it for picture and director.

And it's this element of like, they would rather give it to the very sort of like handsome, middlebrow, classical biopic than the movie that like made the entire world cry because it does feel like there's a bit of a like we can't fucking give spielberg everything we can't give him too much power right

off of et can be the box office king but that doesn't mean he gets oscars automatically and it is foolish because indeed he probably should have just won his oscars for et because that's where it's kind of like look man this is the whole package

yeah you made a huge hit it's a personal film it sort of appeals to everyone it's really fucking good but no gandhi i think gandhi was was the front runner.

We'll talk about it on that episode, but Gandhi was this, you know, the whole thing with Gandhi was like, they had 10,000 people in this scene, you know, where it was just like, how the fuck did they do this?

You know, I don't know. And they got this guy who looks like Gandhi.
Where'd they buy this guy? It's like, I don't know.

Anyway, he rolls straight from that into basically a contractually obligated second Indiana Jones movie, which people have a divisive reaction to.

And it's in that moment, that inflection point, that it does feel like we have this run run of years that Spielberg being like, you want me to grow up? Fine.

Like a slightly kind of like vindictive, like, I can do this.

So, well, as Spielberg puts it, for a long time, I'd wanted to become something involved, involved with something that had more to do with character development.

I wanted to do something that was not stereotypically a Spielberg movie. Try a different set of muscles, right? Sidney Lumet,

Sidney Pollock, a couple of Sidneys out here, right? Who he admires,

who are more guys who kind of do a lot of stuff, you know, like, right?

Like, those are not filmmakers where you're like, yeah, they're going to make the same sort of movie every time they make all kinds of dramas in a grown-up movie.

And also, like, you know, Spielberg growing up, like coveting people like Hawks and Ford, who made like six studio movies a year, and they'd finish one, and the studio head would be like, here's a book, adapt this, you know, and it's just like, this is the assignment you're handed.

Like those kinds of assignment directors who are able to elevate the material, but would just kind of serve it and be like, here's another one off the factory line. And some of them hit.

He's always had such a like,

he covets those people and those types of careers and the flexibility and the range of what they were able to make.

Color purple. You could see him going, like, this is my chance to do that kind of thing.
It's an epistolary novel, as we know, as readers of the book.

These two haven't read it.

Guess they don't want to experience literature. Alice Walker was letters.
It's a bunch of letters.

Which, of course, is in the movie that your discovery of letters and stuff becomes important.

Alice Walker, she was an editor at Ms. Magazine

and had written this big essay about

Nora Zeal Hurston that helped revive Nora Zeal. Zora Neale Hurston.
Okay, I was like, who is that?

JJ,

you are legitimately fired for writing Nora Zeal Hurston.

Zora Neale Hurston. Double fired.

And I guess, I don't, like, the book becoming a bestseller is somewhat of a surprise. It's, it's a tough book to read.
It's written in like a vernacular. The violence is very intense.

It's a very dark.

It has lesbian themes, which are, you know, maybe less controversial in literature, but still, you know, it's a little out there, I guess, for 1983. But it is a gigantic bestseller.

And Quincy Jones loves the book and gets Peter Goober.

Wait, this is the other other part. It's a Quincy Jones.
His last name is Goober.

We're just accepting that. I assume that's how you say it.
But Quincy Jones gets

Goober and Alan.

Goober

and Peters, John Peters to option the book because he wants to do he want Quincy Jones is like, I must do the music for this like

Quincy no.

Quincy no.

This is like the guys, he hires the producing team who four years later are shepherding Batman and Warner Brothers are just kind of like

the big like swing and dick Hollywood producers at the time. You know, that I don't know if swinging dicks were right for this project.

No, but

it speaks to it's just like, let's just get all the heavyweights. And so people want to be a part of it.
Kathleen Kennedy, legendary producer, also reads it and gives it to Spielberg. And Spielberg.

Says he falls very much in love with Seely and is sort of obsessed with the book and can't stop thinking about it. Kennedy wasn't

you have to make this or anything, but she was like,

you know, thinking of it as a potential thing for him. And he said, look, I'm scared to do it, but I kind of love that.

And Quincy Jones agrees.

They had worked, he and Spielberg had worked on some sort of unrealized musical together. I don't know what it is.
Not the Peter Pan thing? I don't know. Okay.

And Spielberg is saying to Quincy Jones, like, shouldn't a black person direct this? Shouldn't a woman direct this? This is all reasonable questions.

Quincy asks, and this is a good line by Quincy Jones.

You didn't have to come from Mars to do E.T., did you?

Pretty good line. It's a good line.
It's a good line. So E.T.
is not from Mars.

He's from the green planet.

Which one's that? That's what it's called. Okay.
I believe that's its proper name. The green planet.
Okay, cool, cool, cool. Yeah.

Isn't Quincy Jones

the one

he did the interview with Vulture a couple of years ago where he says Marlon Brando would fuck anything, you'd fuck a mailbox. Yeah, yes, and he fucked James Baldwin, he fucked Richard Pryor.

And the guy's like, Wait, how do you know that? He slept with those people. He says, Come on, man, he didn't give a fuck.
Do you like Brazilian music?

That's lovely. It is the greatest.
The greatest.

Do you like Brazilian music?

He's like, What? Uh, yeah, sure.

Anyway,

I just like to think about,

you know, be like, E.T., you're not from Mars and you made E.T. Do you like Brazilian Clinic?

But the most important person Spielberg has to sway, Chris Clincy Jones's on board, is Alice Walker.

And so he meets with her

and her daughter and her publishing partner and a literary critic named Barbara Christian. and filmmaker Bellevue Rooks and the activist Daphne Muse.

And this entire group apparently is like, we do not want Steven Spielberg to make this movie.

Would be hilarious if the names I just read to you were all just like, Steven Spielberg seems like a perfect choice. Would you sign our ET posters?

And especially the Spielberg we're talking about.

Like, it's like later, the guy who made like the sort of more complex, like, you know, 2000s movies that he made, like, you might kind of be like, ah, well, he's grown up and he's made a lot of different kinds of movies.

We're talking about the guy who just made. Raiders, Foster, and alien movies and shit.
Like,

it's a huge leap.

It's, it look, it is not a one-to-one, but in the 2000s, in this sort of similar quarter to what we're talking about, Spielberg for years came very close to wanting to direct memoirs of a geisha himself, right?

And developed it and then ended up still producing it when Rob Marshall took over. Okay.
I don't think. He gave it to an Asian woman, Rob Marshall.
Yes. I was like, Rob Marshall.

That's how we pronounce that, right?

I don't think that movie would have turned out well, but I'm also like, if he had, if there had been a Steven Spielberg Memoirs of Agesa geisha in 2006, it would not have been as strange as there being a Steven Spielberg color purple in 1985, where at that point he's like branched out and tried a bunch of different shit and some of it works and some of it doesn't.

Whereas at this point, you're like, Steven Spielberg's thing is figured out and he's taking like the hardest pivot where, and this is the other thing about him being like, I want to be like Sidney Pollock and Sidney Lamette and all these guys.

Those guys like do not have a dominant personality and worldview that seeps into every single corner of their film.

They're both like, right, my job is to figure out how to tell the story the best you can, right?

And like Quincy Jones is the person who I think kind of like convinces Sidney Lumet to direct The Wiz in the 70s in a similar way of like, this needs to be made by a major filmmaker.

I'll produce this. You didn't have to be a dog to make Dog Day Afternoon.
Quincy, it's not about a dog. Do you like Brazilian music? Yes.

But like every Spielberg movie is just like, we understand this guy's brain, his stylistic quirks, what he likes out of his collaborators. Do you like Brazilian music?

Like, the Steven Spielberg thing is so like codified at this point for better and worse that for him to then just be like, I'm just going to try to put it on something totally different,

as far away from myself as possible, is so strange. So, Alice Walker's take

in concert with this sort of group of like intellectuals and, you know, collaborators. What our experience had been with Hollywood and with what white people do to black work.

All you have to do is go to an average movie where you have one black person surrounded by a million white people and you see how artificial the black character becomes. And I just didn't want that.

So she's anti-Spielberg, but she likes Quincy Jones, probably because he's a fun hang.

And he's like, yeah, just meet with him. And then she sits down with Steven Spielberg and she really likes him.
Now, Steven Spielberg is a likable guy,

I think, right? And sits down, starts talking about the book, in her opinion, incredibly intelligently, clearly actually read the book and cares about it, I guess.

And, you know, she's very taken with him and has confidence that he's the one. And

she watches E.T. and she's like, this fucking rocks.
Yeah.

Not joking. Like, she's like, of all characters being produced in Hollywood at the time, E.T.
was the one I felt closest to. So.

Look, and I also get there is like a level of like.

emotional intimacy and sincerity to E.T.

that for how much people are like Spielberg, the manipulative, the big sweeping sweeping emotions, like there is like a smallness in E.T.

and him's kind of preserving the like emotional integrity of this like very delicate relationship in this big movie that to her, I'm sure she's just like, look, there is a feeling being conveyed here that this guy knows how to create.

And perhaps you could transmute this onto a wildly different story.

I don't know if I want the feel-good when I'm watching a child be assaulted. But I think the balance of just like, oh, E.T.

is able to go into places of darkness, never as dark as the color purple, you know, but like it has this range. He's not just dealing in like mid-tones.
It's very different.

She does set of circumstances with this particular.

She does say that at one point, Steven Spielberg later referred to Gone with the Wind as the greatest movie ever made. and said he loved the butterfly McQueen character.

And she said she slept poorly for a week after that. And

she thought she was going to have to relay to him, quote, to make him understand what a nightmare gone with the wind was to me. Yeah.

So, right, not like, she's not like he's perfect by any means. She is, however, allowed to write the first script.
Like, she is given the first shot at turning in a screenplay.

She turns in after three months a draft that gets rid of the epistolary structure. has more uh sugar in the narrative.
Spielberg likes the script, but

you know, it doesn't want to make it. I don't know.
She submitted with an alternate title, Watch for Me in the Sunset.

Spielberg's like, this is interesting, but then like brings in Melissa Matheson, who he's worked with before. Roadie T.

Yes,

and was married to Red Hulk. Was married to Red Hulk himself.
Walker rejects her. Spielberg brings in Meno Man Mayes.
How do you say his last name?

Mayhees? Yes. A rookie screenwriter.
He had like a spec script called Lion Heart, which eventually gets turned into a Gabriel Byrne movie.

but was kind of like a cast in situation of like spielberg finding this guy and throwing him on projects and having him do passes on stuff yeah walker likes him because he's dutch and is from like a part of holland with folk speech that is looked down on by the rest of the dutch And she said that he really understood like sort of like folk speech and like felt like that this was some common ground for them.

And so he, they work on the movie together, but he has sole screenwriting credit it is so weird again that you're like the color purple directed by steven spielberg written by a random dutch guy who'd never written a movie before

okay and so they have this script and uh

yeah you know i spielberg's

he's part of

it's it's a little exasperating because he's saying things like i wanted to bring saley's story to a wider audience than the one reading the book You know, the audience reading the book is more female.

Like, you know, I want to change that.

i get what he's saying like it's the only way he can defend it in a way of like yeah i'm i can i have a launch pad to bring a lot of attention to this right sure why why does he get a lot of the same sex intimacy in walker's novel uh i wasn't comfortable going beyond that he says well okay so marty scorsesi could do it not me he says

really

That's an interesting take. Yeah.

You saying, is there any Spielberg movie that has even like a hint of queer stuff in it, right?

There's that conversation and there's the bigger kind of tide conversation of like sexuality in Spielberg is a very limited spectrum, period.

There's a reason why the Munich sex scene comes up all the fucking time. That's weird.
As like the weirdest sex scene by someone who's never even like heard a description of sex. Oh, no.

And you watch that and you're like... Did he like look at a diagram and was like, okay, we're going, that's how we're going to show this.

But also that he like, you're like, is that the first time you actually see two people in any Spielberg movie? Like, maybe,

and it's like 35 years into his career. And even, like, you know, Marion and Indiana Jones have a more sexual relationship than exists in most Spielberg movies up until that point.

And even then, it's very like dot dot dot. And then she accidentally knocks him out and he wakes up with birds swinging around his head or whatever.

Like, it's just not a thing that really gets touched on.

You could argue some of this has to do with like the sort of original sin of spielberg capturing footage of uh seth rogan holding his mom's hand and thus having a very weird relationship to intimacy just picked on camera i do think there's something there not to psychoanalyze but it is just a thing he doesn't seem to ever have just any

facility

communicating yeah and here is a movie where you're starting with this source material that's like the greatest source of trauma in this is the repeated sexual violence perpetuated by the men and the greatest source of like comfort and joy joy and solace and belonging is the like sexual intimacy and like requited love provided by the other women.

There's a scene in the book where Shuge holds up a mirror to Celie's vagina and shows it to her and helps her understand her own body and whatever. And like that should be in the movie.

The moment where she goes, oh my God, you're still a virgin. Right.
It's such a profound piece of writing. And

that's the scene that Spielberg claims that only Marty's Christians. Yeah, what?

What? I assume he kind of means like Martin's Christace makes like r-rated movies and i don't i guess that's

movies with mirror scenes

he loves mirrors with mirrors yeah he knows how to make that you don't see the camera and he's got never figured out great relationship with vagina yeah oh yeah marty that guy yeah

super yeah yeah um but this

the like sort of i have responsibility to make this movie translate to a bigger audience there is this like and as he morphs as he stretches out some of of this gets knocked out of his system.

At this point in his career, Spielberg is still like an entertainer, first and foremost.

Even when he is trying to make a more serious, considered adult movie, there are like what you're saying, like some of the most traumatic sequences in this movie, he kind of shoots and edits like they're set pieces.

Yeah, because it's just how he thinks. And he's so good at just being like, okay, what's the emotion you need to feel here?

So then if the camera moves like this and I cut like this and whatever, then that gets that across. Does he have any say with the music? Because truly the music was killing me during this movie.

It's also so strange because, I mean,

am I wrong in thinking the only two scores that John Williams didn't do for him are this and Bridge of Spies? Correct. Right.
And Bridge of Spies was like, he's getting older.

He's doing the Star Wars movies. He just didn't have the time.
Right. And this was like, well, obviously Quincy wanted that.
He opted. It's like getting the contract.
It's speaking to him.

He has something to say. And you hear it in this score.
And I love Quincy Jones. Yes.
Feels like Quincy Jones doing a bad John Williams movie. Yes, exactly.
It's a horrendous score.

And it has these weird themes where you're like, that almost sounds like E.T. That almost sounds like Indiana Jones.
Like he's trying to match the Spielberg version of the movie, which doesn't help.

Not in this story, no.

But then like Spielberg needing to be like, well, look, the like root of all this movie is the sexual violence. So I have to find ways to depict this.

And maybe it's not going to be graphic, but it's going to be visceral and it's going to be painful. But the way he knows how to make his camera expressive also is like fairy pop art.
Yeah.

And then all the sort of like intimacy and romance, he's just like, can I reduce that to like one scene with a kiss? And I think that kiss scene is very well done on its own. I think that scene.

If we took it outside of the context of what it is. supposed to represent entirely, yes.
I think it's like beautifully acted and staged and conceived.

And if that were the first scene that leads to the start of the thread of their relationship, whether or or not that is depicted in an incredibly visual graphic way, but at least it's textually like

pointed.

Yes. I'd be like, man, he handled this well.
I'm watching the scene. I'm like, this is a kind of intimacy I don't see in his early films that we've been watching.

And then it's like, and that's enough of that. I get it.

No more. Aren't you happy? It's like, isn't that like the main way she gets any type of joy in her sad, sad life? And then we're just like, nah, nah, don't include it.

Burr. Ah.

Do you know what that's me reacting to, David? What? Cold mornings and holiday plans. Burr.
Ah!

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Now, usually, we're dragging you out on a leash to do ad reads, but you said, Oh, I got something for this.

Well, I recently shopped at Quince, which I do all the time, and I did get one of their Mongolian cashmere sweaters, which is mentioned here. Yeah, uh, in their ad copy, uh, which are only $50.

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Woofie Goldberg loved the book and had written to Alice Walker saying, if it's ever turned into a movie, I want to be a part of it, even if I just play a Venetian blind. Good line.

So Quincy and so Walker suggests Goldberg to Spielberg. And so Spielberg goes to see, he doesn't know her, he goes to see a stand-up performance

along with Walker, Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, and Lionel Ritchie.

Cool. Just a regular show.
Yeah,

just hanging. Was this, was she on Broadway at this point or was this? I don't

know.

I think she did this for them. I think it's, I don't think they like went to see, like, he was like, hey, do a set for us.
Oh, okay.

I was, genuinely, I was like, at like the stand, just like her kidding up. Comedy tip your bartender.
Yeah.

Well, she's such a weird. I mean, well, and he loves her.
It works, even though she apparently did a joke about E.T. getting hooked on doping in Oakland jail.
Spielberg is very charmed.

And despite the rumor that Diana Ross was the first choice for this, which is insane to think about,

he's like,

I want you to do it. Whoopi is like, I don't know if I'm up to that.
What if I played Sophia, you know,

sort of supporting character, Oprah. you know, Oprah's character.
And

then eventually she's like, wait, Steven Spielberg's trying to cast me as the lead in this movie. Like, what is that?

I should just do what he says. Like, I'll say yes, absolutely.
Right. And I mean, Whoopie is astonishing in this movie.

It is like one of the great debut performances in the history of film, I would argue.

And then launches, like, as you were saying, and we'll unpack one of the most unique careers in entertainment history.

Like, there is no parallel to her, really, when you like step back and go, like, she has done everything at least twice. You know, like it just covers all of it.
But it is

such an interesting, I don't know, I feel like this is what I was trying to get at earlier, but like, here's this woman who's like basically like kind of synthesizing a new form of comedy at the time, where when you're saying like, she's referred to as a comedian, but she was like more doing character stuff, but would also do monologue.

She like can recite jokes, but was very quickly doing like longer form kind of theater pieces and then becomes like a sensation, has like this one woman off Broadway show that keeps growing and growing.

But I think there was, like, you read the reviews of the time, people go, How could you translate this? Like, Whoopi Goldberg is so her own universe. She is so complete.

Just leaving her alone on stage for two hours, she can create like, you know, an entire reality. What is like the proper vehicle for her? You don't put her on a fucking sitcom, you know?

Like, what's the movie you make for her to then do this big swing to put her in this dramatic role that is so quiet and so reactive and is like 90% just her face? Yeah. And is so underplayed.

Right. And have her just like knock it out of the fucking park and now be like, great.
And now I'm Whoopi Goldberg and I have the cachet. No one can tell me what to do.

I'm going to do exactly what the fuck I want to do with my career. She's going to do Theodore Rex.
Right. Yeah.

I'm just going to like follow all of my own dinosaurs. Yeah.
Is that what happens in Theodore Rex? I think so. Yeah.
Yeah.

Whoopie, very intimidated on set. Doesn't say she really didn't know what the hell she was doing.
Said Spielberg and her had a bond over like movie nerdery.

So he would be like, hey, dooboo Radley when he gets caught in to Kill a Mockingbird. And she knew what that was.
Or like, do Indiana Jones finding the girl at the end? Like whatever.

He would like reference things for her. And she would be like,

she was as encyclopedic as he was of watching every single movie that would like air on television. And do gaslight.
Like when Danny Glover's being insane to her, do gaslight.

And she apparently would like be like, yep, I know what you're talking about. What's crazy about it to me is that like on paper is like, this is how you shouldn't direct something, right?

Hey, imitate other acting.

And I think it is like to Spielberg's credit that he is flexible enough to be like, What do I need to help this person? Here's someone

who is like undeniably as powerful a performer as anyone on the planet, but also has not had to act within this context and this structure, has not had to play a role like this before, has not been on a shoot like this before.

And he's just like, oh, you know what? If I point to a scene and go, like, you know, the face that Carrie Grant makes in that moment, can you do that?

She actually is able to replicate that in a way that isn't hollow, can access the real emotion from the surface level

request of what I want. That's fantastic.
Like, I know Whoopi Goldberg just as someone who's watched the movies and has seen the view. So to hear this stuff, I'm like, yes, she's cool.

I always compared to her. I went to film school.
I was the only black girl in my class. I had locks and they were just like, you're Whoopi Goldberg.

So they just called me Whoopi Goldberg all the time. What the fuck?

You must have loved that. Oh, it was definitely interesting.

And they also, because I lived in a decent apartment based on a scholarship thing, they're like, oh, the only reason you would have money is that your dad is Sam Jackson. So I would, they just

jumped to Sam Jackson as a black person they know that would have a daughter that looks like me.

Whose last name is Mobley? Yeah, his last name is definitely Mobley. Right.

They don't like to talk about it very much. It's a whole thing.
Sure. Yeah.

So to hear that she's like cool as hell, there is a bit of, I don't, like reclamation of that where I'm like, I don't know, she is pretty cool.

Okay, they could have called me whoopee, but if they had known that, not just because I had Loxin was black. What I find so interesting about Whoopee is that, like,

there are all these stories of like when she wanted to do Star Trek, right? Like, next gen is happening. And she goes to her agent and she's like, I want to be on Star Trek.

And he's like, you're whoopee gold.

You can't be on Star Trek. You're not going to be a guest star on the Star Trek.
No, I want to be on Star Trek. And she's like, Star Trek was important to me.

Like, I want, you know, her was important to me. Like, I want to be on the new Star Trek.
Right. And they were like, that will like damage your legacy.
That devalues you. You're a movie star now.

You have Academy Award winning.

Right. You and Liota, baby.
Right. Because it wasn't even like, I want to be a guest star on one episode.
She's like, can I have like a recurring podcast?

Like, we're not cutting you down to a fucking contract on Star Trek. I know.
Sounds pretty cool. Let's do it.
But she just totally was like, you know what I want to do? Shit, I want to do. Yeah.

And I feel like she'll do these interviews now, much like Quincy Jones, one of the best interviewers, will just say wild shit and now has a TV show where she just says wild shit every day.

And in, in some ways, that does sometimes abstract her of like, what's Whoopee's deal? She's just like some kind of like woman who just says crazy shit and then like pops up and does stuff.

But you're like, no, she's done everything. And like part of what is held against her is that she was not protective of her like prestige in that way.

I think that she was just like, I don't give a shit. I'm going to like host the Oscars.
I'm going to do this. I like cartoons.
I like whatever.

And you're like, she like broke 8 million doors, but in a way that just kind of makes it feel like, oh, yeah. And like Whoopi Goldberg is like the American flag.

She's just like an object that we look at. Yeah.
It's always there. It's always doing something.
Like, I feel like

our buddy Alex Ross Perry and I always talk about how when we were children, we were like, there are 10 famous people. Sure.
There are 10. He's one of them.
Right.

It's like Whoopi Goldberg, Danny DeVito, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Like, who are the people who could exist in both the Academy Awards and the Kids' Choice Awards?

Those are the 10 people where you're like, and a lot of them, part of it is just like, they don't look like anyone else. They have an interesting name.
Yes. They appear in all kinds of things.

You know, they'll be in commercials and also like cartoons and whatever.

Whoopi e-gotted. Whoopi egotted.
Yeah. Early in early egotism.
Is she in an episode of 30 Rock talking to she is the one? Yes. Yes.
She is the one he consulted. The Roger.
Roger. Yeah.

But I feel like that's kind of, I don't want to say taken away from her. But people are like, oh, yeah, I guess like a Whoopi Holberger will.

Yeah, but they don't put her on the pedestal that she deserves to be on. Yes.
And now she's just on the view, and I feel like she says something out of pocket every day.

And everyone's just like, ah, whoopee's crazy. I don't care.
She just cashes checks, takes a limo, I guess, to and from, and yeah, lives her life. Is it the greatest stage name of all time? Whoopi.

It is an incredible. What's her real name? Sorry, Elaine Johnson.
Karen Elaine Johnson.

Johnson. Yeah.
Yeah. Karen Elaine Johnson.
Yeah. I mean, Whoopee Goldberg is an incredible name.
How'd she get the Goldberg? Uh, I think it's part of her family. Like, there's some like forbear.

Although then she did the Henry Lewis Gates Jr. show, and he was like, we didn't find any gold.

But she claimed that it was. Okay.

We could all claim stuff. Let's do it.
Yeah. She got whoopee from Whoopee cushions.
Like genuinely. Yeah.
What? Yeah. That's lovely.

Love whoopee.

Danny Glover cast largely, he was in, he's in Pieces in the, Places in the Heart. Pieces in the Heart.
That's a weird movie. Places in the Heart.

Spielberg loved that performance casting without an audition. Glover says, Glover grew up in San Francisco, not in the South, but he was the first generation in his family to do so.

His family is from Georgia. He spent every summer going back to Georgia, working on the farm.
So he

was like, I very much understood like this environment, you know, this kind of childhood.

Quincy Jones. I just want to say, 84 places in the heart.

In 1985. Witness Silverado and the color purple.

But he basically, like 1979, inmate and and escape from alcatraz you know like three or four tales you've never heard of and then it's like he's in one movie that like gets on the oscar radar the next year he's in three big movies two years after that lethal weapon it's like it was this incredible he's nice he's 39 in this sure yeah like he'd been around mostly a stage actor but mostly a stage actor and then it's just sort of immediately identified as like yeah movie star I guess so.

He's a very interesting movie star in a way. I love Danny Lover.
He's one of my favorite movies. So wait, when he was too old for this shit, he was only like 43.
He's not that old. He's young.
Yeah.

He's like 41. Oh, God.

But he looks too old for this shit. You believe it.
You do. He's great acting.

The last 30 minutes of this movie, when they like shave his hairline back, you just see that execs were like, oh my God, we could make this guy retirement age. This guy could be too old for some shit.

Right. We'll have to figure out what it is.
Yeah. Be young enough to actually do the action scenes, but play like he's too old.

Also, when they age him up in this movie, you're just like, this looks like Danny Glover's 2000. That's right.
Virginia, I was like, Royal Tennenbomb's Danny Glover, right there. Boom.

Right, He's so fucking funny in the Royal Tennis. Yes, but like, there's the famous.
He calls him Coltrane.

He's so good. He's really funny.
This, the Max Von Saito thing, where the makeup was so good in the Exorcist that he was like, it fucked up my career because people thought I was 80. He's so old.

Right. He was 80 for a long time to me.
Yes. Totally.
And he was like, and then when he caught up to looking as old as he looked in the exorcist, he was like, let's get you back.

Danny Glover weirdly had the opposite thing where they like age him up in this and people were like, wait, do you want to to play older all the time?

That's the dream. Quincy Jones at one point is catching a red eye for something.
He's in Chicago, okay? He turns on the TV. He sees a show called A.M.

Chicago, has an exciting young new host, Oprah Winfrey, calls Steven Spielberg. Quincy Jones really was kind of wild for this one because like all of his choices make sense.

You're like, yeah, Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, Oprah Winfrey. These are great choices.

But like imagine being Steven Spielberg being like, all right, how do I get my handle on this like black lesbian drama set in the south?

And Quincy Joe's, like, I'm watching this local Chicago TV, like, fucking daytime host. She's perfect for Sophia.
We're gonna cast her. Spielberg's just like, okay.

Um, she'd never been in a movie, she found being in a movie really difficult. Like, it's not like Oprah Winfrey was like

a natural actor, like, you know, and she talks about like how tough,

like, hey, your role is like being insulted, being hit,

and then being like catatonic. Yes.
Like, you know,

all five. How much? Oh, the makeup in this movie is the way, like, they make

the

son of Danny Glover. Harpo? Harpo.
Yes. Oh, Harpo.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, first production company.
Yes. Yeah.
She just, she ran with that.

His makeup when he's supposed to be old made me laugh out loud at the movie. And I'm like, that is not what I'm supposed to be getting from this scene.

But they put a bald cap on him where you can see the seam of it. They just like kind of put wrinkles around their eyes to be like, look, they're old now.
And I'm like, but they're old. Okay.

So he looks insane. He looks truly.
I'm like, who put this wig on this man? Did they hire people that knew how to do wigs? Like,

you're like, what?

Well, and like the Oprah makeup looks very like.

Lanchaney.

Like it looks very like, you know, I understand we are trying to like show the lasting physical scars of this woman's like experience and the indignity she suffered, but it is like stylized in a way that looks universal monster.

It does like the substance. That's what I got from her eye prosthetics in that movie.
But she does this. She does Noble Sun and then doesn't do a movie until Beloved.
Sorry, Native Sun. And then

she becomes Oprah. Right.
Becomes Oprah, but also it's just like, movies are tough. I don't need to do that again.
So what is Doncy Jones to do Beloved where it's also Black Pain?

That's what's, it's, I find it interesting, right? Beloved is her doing the Quincy Jones thing.

It's her making kind of the same decision of I think I I can get this book is someone tough book made into a movie, I can protect someone else from fucking

my choice is this incredibly talented white director who's not like again connected to the south or like you know this sort of heritage or but he's got empathy in space, but he's a good director, and it's like the result again is a movie where you're like, This is well made, it's not bad, no, but why was this the truth?

Would anyone re-watch Beloved?

Why the fuck would you rewatch?

Yeah, I guess you could. It's a really interesting saw it in theaters.

This is important. We're going to go see these.
And so it was like, Jesus, do you hate me? What?

And it is. I mean, you must have been like 12 years old.
Yeah, I know. That's why I'm like, is my mom mad at me? Do the directors hate me? Does society dislike black women, which is a different thing?

But Jesus Christ, this is a lot.

It is a fascinating counterpoint to this movie where it's sort of like what you were saying, David, of like, that's a movie that is like, okay, we're not going to do like magical uplift. Yes.

And instead, it is just like punishing and like very difficult to watch. Uh, and thus like has no cultural permanence whatsoever.
Like, did not translate.

But then she like is so burned out by that experience that she's like, I'm not going to do a movie again.

It's just fascinating to me that it's like Oprah just like quietly gets an Academy Award nomination for her first performance ever, then becomes the most like important woman in media, right?

Becomes, I think, like the first black billionaire, period. And then like over 10 years later, is like, it is my responsibility to try to do this again, yeah.
And then was like, this sucks, I hate it.

Yeah, why are we doing this? I don't want to do the same thing, good for her. And it was like, oh, it's weird.
Oprah was in like two movies.

And then the last decade, she's just like quietly like done a handful of films. Yeah, she started acting and she's really good.
She's really good. She's probably a bit easier, though.

Like, I think so. Yeah, and some smaller roles.
Yeah. Well, hey, Wrinkle in Time is a really big role.
She's like a giant.

Have you seen that movie? No. Janice, tallest Oprah you'll ever see in in your life.
The tallest Oprah? Okay. The tallest Oprah you'll ever see in Europe.

I don't know, like 800 feet. 800 feet.
She's like a giant. Yeah.
Like a true giant.

Taller than a skyscraper?

Spielberg and Jones want Tina Turner to play Shook Avery. That's the only person, like top choice, that they don't get.
Fascinated.

Tina Turner is like, I fucking lived that shit, bro. I fucking was married to Ike Turner.
I do not want to make that movie. I'm going to go make Mad Max be off Thunderdome, literally.

Yeah, so she doesn't live in

Thunderdome yet. That's a new experience for me.
Um,

Spielberg apparently, uh, Spielberg had worked with Margaret Avery, she's in something evil, and uh,

like, apparently, didn't even remember, and no one was even that excited about her. But I mean, it's an incredible

TV theater actor at this point, yeah, it's incredible in her. Uh, the movie cost about 15 million dollars.
Uh, Spielberg accepted only a minimum salary, yay,

noble of him, yes.

Uh, it was shot in

North Carolina, where you grew up. It was set in Georgia, of course.
The colour purple set in Georgia, but as Kenny's told me, it was shot in North Carolina, and she's right.

And it was heavily storyboarded, just like all Spielberg movies. Alan Davio, who shot E.T., shot it.
His first instinct was to shoot in black and white. Then he was like, I'm being a coward.

That's me sugarcoating it more. Like, that's me fearing the violence even more, trying to distance it even more.

So he doesn't do that. So here's an interesting thing.

He talks a lot about on Schindler's List, which is the movie where he succeeds finally in like making the transition that he's trying to make on this film and on Empire of the Sun, right?

Where he's like, how do I make the movie that is actually like staring reality in the face that isn't caught up in like spiritual movie for run up candy coding. Yes.

And he's dealing with serious issues and pain and what have you, not entertainment first and foremost.

And that movie, he talks about that he was like, I had to let go of storyboards. I didn't want to be like

mathematical about it. I would like show up and I would feel it out.
And it was improvisatory.

And I think part of that for him was that he was just like, I need to like be connected to the actual emotions of this thing, which is not a thing he lived through himself, but a thing that happened to.

his people that he perhaps has a greater psychic connection to and he's filming in similar spaces and all of this right

it's exactly what you're saying of like spielberg sitting down with the script and being like okay so how do we shoot the father raping? Yeah.

And like storyboarding it might be like the beginning of the problem, where even if he's kind of making good choices,

thinking about it that clinically, which isn't to say he shouldn't have like planned out shots. Yeah, yes, but where it's like, this will match this exactly versus what is the feeling?

How do we best portray what is happening in front of the camera? Spielberg's problem at this point in his time is that he is too entertaining and he is too good of a communicator, right?

It is what makes people go, is this all just like manipulative bullshit?

When people are starting to tire of the Spielberg thing, of like, you know, what he's got to pull up the heartstrings every fucking time.

He's got to have the moments of awe and wonder and all this sort of shit.

That like he, he,

it is so hard for him to not turn something into

a moment of like grand ecstatic movie magic that he does need to like like figure out how to, I don't know, like tie his arms behind his back to something

and be more of an interpreter

versus an orchestrator. Yeah.
I mean, it just comes up right from the beginning because you're like thrown into the deep end of like some of the most extreme shit in the movie.

Like, to me, the thing that stuck with me most is this cheesy, sappy score plus the voiceover narration, which I'm like, I don't know, do they have to make her sound like that? Whatever. Okay.

But that over

blood,

baby being taken, a dad saying, don't tell your mom, like that. It just.
You have so much so quickly. There is a real like, you know, this character lives in hell.

And we're like speed running through it. Yes.
And even to a degree, you know, that it's like, this movie stars Whoopee Goldberg. We're still on the young version of her.

It takes 30 minutes, I think, I want to say, before you get to Whoopee.

And so you're just like, man, there's like a lot to get through. That little girl goes through a lot of pain.
A ton before the movie's really going to kind of begin in earnest.

And it's, yes, it's the kind of thing that in a book, you can take longer to sort of live with. And this movie needs to like

barrel through, which just is overwhelming. But yes, you set up this woman, her abusive father has

fathered two children with her, has taken them away,

and then is basically sold off into marriage to danny glover who is interested in her sister not in her who's like 12 yes uh and her abusive father is like take the older one yeah um

she's separated from her sister who's her closest tie in life her only friend yes her her her like kind of her entire life like her entire grounding force the guy who plays her father leonard jackson is very like indelible to me.

And I think it's because he's in like Sesame Street a lot and like

shining time station he was a lot of like yeah

as a little kid because i was watching it being like who is this guy this face is so familiar like i really know this guy and that's that's what i think i know him best from big anyway carry on well

they're split up there's this sort of like we'll communicate through letters that's how i'll let you know that i'm still alive uh the device of the book

But that's basically the 30-minute mark. Not to say we're past all of that, right? But like at 30 minutes, you get to like, here's Whoopee.

Now she's grown up she's stuck in a fucking horrible situation she hasn't spoken to her sister in 10 years she doesn't seem to do much of like

she doesn't have anyone she can relate to at all it seems like yeah no she's just

it is what she plays incredibly well i think is someone who basically as a survival mechanism has just kind of um

It's interesting. There's like the two sides of like, you know, Oprah plays Sophia as this sort of like zombie-like despondence, right?

Like as much as she is trying to like turn herself off to insulate herself from the pain of her reality, where she gets to ultimately in the movie, there is this feeling of like

great sorrow within her that she carries, that she's trying to like,

I don't, muzzle so it doesn't overtake her. Right.
Whereas Whoopi, it's almost just sort of like,

how do I put it? She, she's just trying to like disengage, right? She's shut herself off entirely. She's like completely closed down because it is only pain outside of that.
It's very sad.

It's my insight into that

situation. But there is this Spielbergian

nostalgia for the child's nonetheless. With hand clapping, the singing and the stuff like that, you know.

Visually, it reminds me a lot of, what is it, Daughters of the Dust? Oh,

an incredible movie. Yeah, which is visually striking and it comes later, but there's visual similarities.

And it's just interesting to watch Daughters of the Dust and be like, oh, look how this is evocative of a whole thing. And there, it's like, I don't know if this is like right for child rape.
I don't.

Yeah. Daughters of the Dust is an interesting movie to talk about because that's Julie Dash.
That's like one of the first movies directed by a black woman in America. Yeah.
Like that's theatrical.

Because I think the first movie directed by a black woman. is a dry white season, but that's

Eusen Palsy, who's French or whatever. But like, that's how unusual it was for a black woman to to make a movie.
Like period. Dars of Dust is amazing.
Yes. But it's,

you know, it's an art film. It's kind of light on plot.
It's very experiential. It's in this sort of gullah dialect.
So it's like, you know, it's, it's like not a commercial film.

It's like a memory piece. Julie Dash never gets to make another like, you know, movie like that again, really, you know, all that.

She should be making, like, or whatever. Like, you know, they should be finding Julie Dashes or using whatever.
like and

yeah instead like when there's the hand clapping the this motif that spielberg puts at the beginning and the end of the movie i'm like that's powerful that's getting me right here but i'm also kind of like is that kind of bullshit like you know i don't know like you know that it's kind of working me a little too easy i don't know there was i i i sent it to the group text but there was an interview from when hook was coming or it just come out on 60 minutes that's sort of a like checking in on steven spielberg the king of hollywood and the interview interview is trying to like,

not trying to soften it a little bit, but they're like, Hook doesn't seem to be like totally working, right?

It's like, here's this guy kind of on like a semi-victory lap, but this is the last movie he makes before he goes on to his Jurassic Schindler year, where it's like, undeniable Spielberg, you did it, you won everything, right?

And it's him at this inflection point, and they're kind of grilling the like permanent adolescence. part of it and asking him about his like obsession with childhood and all these things.

And he's showing this big office that Universal built for him where he has like fucking 80 arcade cabinets and whatever. Things I can't relate to, surrounding yourself with childhood ephemera.

I don't see that at all. At all.
Not in this very sober spare office. Yeah.

But the interviewer asked him some question about his childhood and like why did he want to recapture it? He's like, I don't have any fondness for my childhood. And he's like, you don't?

And he's like, I just have no good memories. And he's not being like, you don't understand how difficult it was.

But he's just kind of very soberly saying, like, when I think back on it, there's just like not a single happy thought. I just wasn't happy.
You know, it's kind of fascinating.

It's kind of fascinating because it feels like, if anything, that is the connection point he has into this movie.

It's just like some feeling of like deep existential sadness as a child that was not circumstantial in the way it is for this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right. Hopefully, yeah.

But like in that first 30 minutes, I feel him sort of connecting to something, if not in one-to-one experience, which is probably the thing where she's like, if you could translate the Elliot feeling NET to this, you know, is there like some parallel here?

But then it also makes it kind of odd when the movie is all about like

the power those like brief moments of connection and grace have in her childhood amidst all of this and trying to recapture that where it's like, is there any analog for that in his life?

No, he ran off and he joined the circus and he like looked back and was like, and now I make fun. Yeah.
I make fun in magic.

So you're saying that's why Steven Spoker is a perfect choice to make the color purple he's got a perfect tale that 10 out of 10.

uh the only one who was making art that black people would like or he hadn't done anything about abuse again it's not like that almost sounds silly of me to say because it's not like oh we need an abuse director for this movie we need someone to really miss

who would you count as a an abusing director

but like

i just sat on like five jokes i could have made I want to hear three of them. I want to hear three of them.
John Polanski. I was like, oh, okay.
I was going to go in that kind of like territory.

Yeah, John Landis. I mean, that's a different thing.
Going back to Twilight Zone a movie. Yeah.
Okay.

E.T. has trauma in it.
Close encounters has this kind of darkness to it.

Part of Spielberg's thing is like being able to make these things a little allegorical or being able to make them sort of like elliptical, where it's like, here is something like the one scene of the kiss that represents a sort of like notion of a thread that you fill in the blanks and I don't have to depict it.

Right.

You know, one of the movies I struggle with the most that we've covered on this show is Lolita, which is like another very bizarre book to adapt into a movie and try to make into a commercial studio film at that time.

Right. And part of what I find so bizarre about that film is that they're like, we are adapting Lolita.

Also, because of codes and regulations, we can never once directly acknowledge what is going on in this movie.

And it feels like this sci-fi movie where everyone is like talking around what's going on. Yeah.
And it's like, why bother making this if you can't depict this?

And there's this self-censorship in Spielberg where he's just like, well, the romance I'm going to take out, but the abuse I have to put on. Yeah.
You have to keep the pain in.

That's why people are coming to this. And I'm going to try to do the PG-13 version of it that isn't like inflicting suffering upon the audience in like a cruel or malicious way.
Yeah.

But then it's also like, then, then what are you doing?

What are you saying? Here. But the book is saying something interesting about humanity and pain and recovering from that.

And there's like the end has this recovery and this understanding of what God is in a really cool way. And they get rid of it.

Well, especially if you don't have anyone who's kind of like pulling her out and forcing her to connect other than in very brief moments, you know, and it's the movie.

He is so deliberate as a storyteller that he is not creating a world where you can imply what is happening in between the scenes and fill in the gaps.

It feels like he's saying like, no, in my version of the movie, they don't have sex.

Nope. Right? This just a shoulder touch is the love that she's getting.
That's truly the end of it. And it is going to be, it's sort of old school Hollywood stuff.

It'll all be in eyes and gestures and right feeling and emotion. And you can read things through.
Emails and the shit that's like whoopie nails. And Whoopee's really, really, really good.

You get to the dinner table scene and Spielberg said that he like encouraged Whoopee and Oprah to improvise a lot.

You know, that's the big scene because obviously Whoopee doesn't like talk that much otherwise. We're talking about quite late in the movie, obviously.
Yes. Yes.

but he knows this is someone who has that ability and i think also to his credit perhaps he's just like hey you know what if we've cast this movie well and these people are in this environment on the day they might find the language to say things that me and my fucking dutch writer couldn't identify at a desk right maybe let them feel it out and see if anything comes up was that shot do you know if that was shot later in the filming process that's interesting i wonder yeah i don't know like when they got the time to like like jive and jealousy

I don't know. The thing I just know is that it was like a repeated thing that she has said that he was constantly encouraging her to improvise and go, okay, if anything feels right, say it.

And same thing to Oprah. And that scene in particular is like the most ecstatic version of it.
I think in a lot of ways is the best scene in the movie.

A lot of it's just that like whoopee is coming in like

so fucking hot and it is so cathartic when we've had the

waiting. Yes.
She's got a knife in her hand. She's yelling.
And we're like, yes, these people deserve it. And I love, love, love.
And this happens in the book too, that she's like, I hate you.

And your kids are shitty. Yeah.

That was like,

I, because we, as an adult with no children, oftentimes it's like, hey, you can't comment on children. But I

you don't want to bring that, yeah, the further burden of like, you know what, actually, you're just sucking.

I don't like their vibe. Yeah.

I love that. We've been watching this movie for two hours and we're like, these kids do say it.
They do say it. Everyone in this movie is unbearable.

And she just like, it is, I think this movie would not have worked at all. Its success in its time, I think, hinges entirely on that scene delivering so hard of the emotional release of like, yes.

And now she's going to be able to fucking take her life into her own hands. And we end the movie with a little bit of uplift.
A friend. A smidgen.
A smidgen. Yeah.
And right. A hope of

better days ahead and at least right being, you know, being liberated from the worst of it and all that. It's not like it's like, yeah, and then everything was fantastic.
I don't know.

You at least have an opportunity to try to make a better life for yourself at the end of the movie, right?

She is finally given a little space and a set of circumstances where there is a possibility to rebuild a life. Yeah, and her sister's back.
And

we don't really get into that. Right.

But I think it is to Goldberg's credit that she nails that scene so fucking hard, as does Oprah, as does everyone at the table, right? The whole scene is kind of like perfect,

but it is such a wild switch flip when you just have this character barely be able to string together six words above a whisper for the two hours leading up to that.

And you have these small moments of connection, but they don't really feel like she has ever been given any space to be herself.

which as an idiot who hasn't read the book, I'm like, I understand the dramatic function of having this romance with with Shug in her life that like accesses this part of herself. Yeah.

That helps her discover herself that like builds a path for this kind of catharsis. I really like that.

And in the movie, they do maintain where, so they're all having dinner, which seems to be like a normal thing. And then Shug is like, hey, I'm about to leave.

BG Dubs, Seely's coming with me. And that is the thing that seems to open the floodgates and allows her like that that Shug was like, hey,

we are doing something that is not the norm. And now Seeley's like, Okay, I'm gonna curse all y'all out.
I'm gonna tell these children that they're stupid, that these people suck. Your daddy sucks.

I hope you die. I hope everything you touch turns to ash.
I hope you have pain until you do right by me. Nothing, nothing's gonna go right for you.
And I love that. I love it too.

And I love that it like sort of works, right? The implication is like she has has kind of messed him up in some way, but that it's also not like, and then he fell off a cliff like a Disney villain.

And he was dealt with it's like now he's still there and all this is still there and like you know it's not like there's some you know triumphant downfall of of the bad guys in this movie in this story right i don't know no but you have you have the suppression of the letters right yes the big the the big violation right right right the thing that finally breaks her above all else of all the indignities in her life yeah it's like he did a lot like he beat this woman but it's the letterkeeping it's the letter key that's the thing and also that the letters when she finally gets one are like, hey, by the way, you won't believe the incredible shit that's been going on over here.

I live in Africa. Right.
I'm doing stuff. Oh, I'm with your kids, BT Dubs.
They are totally alive. Right.
What a miracle. I'm with them.
They got great parents.

Everything's awesome. You know, life and how it could be nice.
I've been having that. Good luck with your terrible existence.
Right.

Which, like, basically she gets this letter that's like, we've been living in a Steven Spielberg movie that rules. I'm so sorry I haven't been able to get hold of you.

I'm worried that things are probably pretty bad, but I thought you might like to know that we're like kind of killing it over here.

There is something in

rather than

it gives her this sense of like

internal strength to for the first time consider that there is an alternate way her life could go

after you imagine assuming the worst, which is she's been dead for decades. Yeah.
Right. And now to get this letter that's like, and then you won't believe what happened next.

I found your children. Like all this stuff.
Right.

Um, that that like the betrayal combined with the sort of first like revealing of a window to another viewpoint. Yes.
But all of that is internal.

Like all of that is just kind of like, and and whoopie sells it, but like an arc the movie has not really built outside of like an ecstatic 10-minute sequence of Spielberg lovingly like shooting Africa and Quincy going hard and like whoopie just really playing the shit out of reading a letter.

And there's one moment and in the book, I feel like it doesn't go like this, but in the movie where she's being asked to shave Mr.

and

you can tell she's about to slit aside. She's like, maybe I kill him right here.

And honestly.

Maybe this says something about the way I was raised in the South and like the plays that I saw, but it was like, hey, if a man beats you, you got to kill him.

right you you're right you're just you got an earl had to die him and that's just like how it's gonna go so i was like i don't know man just kill like if the law isn't involved in you guys's life every day like that i feel like we should just slit his throat like you're are you referencing the dixie checks on goodbye

that you weren't raised like that you weren't raised with an earl had to die we as a like that is a thing that will get friends together like you want to really cement your female relationships kill a a man.

Like, that my favorite version of that is the Miranda Lambert song, Gunpowder and Lead, which I think is underrated.

One of her best songs, which is also about, she's like, I'm going to shoot this person who hit me. So fucking good.
His fist is big, but my gun's bigger. He'll find out when I pull the trigger.
Is the

bridge? It's really, really good. That's very

country Western Sims over here. I am.

People make fun of me. Right.
Like, Alex likes to do hip-hop sims. Country Western Sims rarely comes out, but he's there.

I love country music. music.

Ben and Griff exchanging a little look. Yeah.
It's just Decade of Dreams is.

Decade of Dreams.

I love country music. Maria Lambert, one of the great songstresses of our lifetime.

These shaving sequences are so insanely well done. Shaving is crazy.

Why do men, why did men? Why would you have someone else do that? Yeah, 100%.

I don't trust people to do my nails half the time, but you're saying you're going to hold

my important veins and arteries are? No one should have ever shaved until they invented like, you know, a decreasing when it was like, all right, here we go. Slice.

It's truly a weapon for murder. And then you're just like, yes, I trust often a stranger to just scrape that against my delicate neck.
That's wild. But it's a kind of a perfect Spielberg setup, right?

To have this guy be like, here, I'm handing you a murder instrument. And by the way, if you cut me, I'm going to murder you, right? But I could murder you first so quickly.

That's what's interesting about it for me is like, and I think these sequences work well because they are less verbal and he's able to just do kind of like Spielberg-like imagery and moments and looks and whatever.

But the weird like dynamic of like, you are holding the weapon and yet psychologically, he is still convincing you that if you try to kill him, you'll end up dead first.

And it's like, yeah, right. The first time she's sort of aware of the power, but wouldn't even consider it and is actually just afraid of the harm of accidentally nicking him.

And the second time she comes so close to doing it.

But, like, the way he just constructs those sequences and the tension of it, and it's like, it does, it feels very visceral and it makes you in the way that Spielberg can go, like, it is insane that we just hold blades up to our neck.

Well, it's just like, there's a lot of, you know, like, um, obviously, uh, Sarah, uh, Sophia, sorry, the Oprah character, the foremost example of like what Ceely is absorbing around her, where it's like, yeah, that's a woman who speaks up and is like, you know, destroyed for it.

Yeah. Right.
You know, like, she has one moment of sort of outspoken behavior that's justified, and literally, her life is ruined.

Like, and which is one of the craziest things in the color purple, that it's just like, we're just going to cut ahead to eight years later, she's out of jail and she's ruined.

And, like, that's, you know,

two minutes in the movie, right? Like, the, the leap just sort of happens.

It's really, I had to rewind it just to make sure I'd be like, right, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

We're not going to have to have like sequences of Sophie in prison, maybe, to understand what's going on. It's like, no, no, just like years gone.
Yeah.

And then they say, like, and eight years later, the Final Indignity, they made her go work for Judith Ivy. Right.
Which is the Christmas sequence is

Dana. Dana Ivey.
I'm a great Dana.

The Christmas sequence is incredible. That's, there are like, there are sequences in this

that are so undeniably effective.

He's able to, in this kind of odd Spielberg way, identify where the humor is in it, find the stakes, find the real emotion, like be this kind of like five-tool player filmmaker who's giving you a full feast and is giving you this kind of like old school like Hollywood weepy.

I just, I think that scene is so beautifully played out because you're already kind of unmoored by the jump in time. Yes, it's eight years.

She's been pretty like, holy shit, we're just here now and it's over. And now like, here's this woman who is unrecognizable, is wearing quasimoto makeup, has a very different physicality, right?

And then this moment of like bringing her back to her family, you know, I mean, the driving sequence is fun and you're like, right.

But then the realization of, oh, she's going to get this taken away from her. Yeah.
And Dana Ivey saying, like, I don't know her either. Yeah.
You're like, late, late, lady. Come on.

Love Dana Ivey. I, she's in Sabrina, which is the remake of Sabrina, yes.
With Red Holt. Yeah.
Yeah, with Red Holt.

And

I hate that I love that movie. Do you? Everyone.
Sidney Paul.

So many people have told me how bad that film is. And so intellectually, I know it is bad, but

I will have a crush on Red Hulk until I die. I'm not taking it back.
I mean it. Yeah.
Harrison Ford is a cutie-fatutie.

And

is it Julie Romond? Yeah.

I'm like, go for it. Sleep with a billionaire who you work for.

Do whatever you want, man.

I got to watch that movie. I've never seen it.
I've never had either. Because it was not like

no one likes it. Yeah, and I watched

the John Williams documentary the other day that was on Disney Plus that you guys have referenced, I think, on prior episodes, which briefly references that score. Oh, sure.

I guess, because it's like one of his forgotten sort of sweeping 90s scores. And I was like, huh, do I need to watch Sidney Pollock?

No, kind of, yeah. Just on a Saturday afternoon, just give it a shot.
All right, fine. But I, I, the whole Christmas sequence, I think he like, uh,

there, there is such a masterful control of like silence and body language and like him actually letting the performances sell it and letting it being a little bit unspoken just like the shoulders falling when it's like well uh it was nice seeing you once children and i'm uh gone forever yes yes yes it's what's weird about this movie is like yeah that he will

over deliver and under deliver at the same time and you're like there is like no ill intent in this movie right this is not a maliciously made film or whatever yeah no no no and there's also like no incompetence no yeah these people know what they're doing yes mostly they know physically like technically what they're doing yes right um but but like you saying the thing of like the the dynamic of the shaving right yes like obviously that's the tension of the scene but it feels like Spielberg has only internalized it to a like movie thriller degree, right?

Which he's able to express well, but I don't think if he totally understands

where that character is at that moment

for that to be like, because it's Shug's running to stop her from killing him because she can tell

from quite far off that this lady's going to do this thing, it it felt

contrived in a way that I didn't like similarly to when Shug is singing as she's walking like towards the church at the end. And there's a sort of like, oh, but God,

but God.

It's a black movie. We're going to put God in it, right? Right.
Right. Which, yes, that

it does. It does feel like that.
It does feel like Spielberg being like, and this is important. Yeah, right, right.
Right. I'm correct in that that's important.
Yeah. Yeah.

Right. I don't think Spielberg has a particularly spiritual side at this really ever.

Honestly, even when he talks about that, it's Schindler's List.

He talks about sort of getting Captain Jack converts.

And he's like, her going through conversion later in life made me relive it. And then I sort of became a better Jew in my 40s.
But I still, I don't think of him as like a spiritual person.

I don't either. That's like an artist.

Like, whether or not he's had a crazy job. It feels very cultural.
It's about traditions. It's about lineage.
And he's someone who understands, yeah, the power and the scariness of like family.

And this is a movie about

what a betrayal family can be, right? Like, you know, all of so much of Seeley's family is, you know, hostile and abusive and against her and like turns out to be not her family or, right?

There's like, you know, revelations. The Indiana Jones movies are the most explicitly theological movies yes, right? And they're all about like fighting this idea of it.

I think a lot of his movies kind of take place in a godless world.

I think a lot of his movies are about like these kind of like inexplicable, incomprehensibly huge acts and events that in a universe that refuses to sort of give you answers.

I, when I say that it's like, oh, we were throwing God in it, I don't necessarily mean there's any sort of theologic ideology behind it. I do think it is like black people church.

throw some black church in this movie. I, I agree.
Does that make sense? Am I being insensitive? I agree with you.

And I'm saying I think that's the exact thing that Spielberg kind of can't relate to, which is the sort of like turning to God for some sense of comfort or answers, right? Like to him.

And I think it speaks to his like sad, worried child thing. He's just like, when I grew up, nothing made sense to me.
And I felt like alienated and alone.

And what made sense to me were movies and TV shows. And so I made them.
And now I'm good at recreating feelings to make other people feel things. Right.
Right.

And the way that there are these sort of like huge acts in his film, the divine interventions, whether they're like a shark or E.T.

coming to the ground, if it's the worst thing or the best thing, right? Part of it feels like, and we don't really know what to make of this.

It's kind of the world is bigger than you can understand, right? They're inexplicably good and bad things, but there's no sort of like guiding light.

We struggle to find answers and anyone who tries to like pursue them is maybe like, that's not what it's about. It's about the internal journey of how you respond to this thing.

Where then the movie being like, and and then we found church feels really insincere coming from him. Yes.

And like, maybe I'm way out of line in my pathologizing of this, but like, we spent a lot of time thinking about this guy.

And you look at like, I, you know, I feel like when people mock like the end of

War of the Worlds, it's a similar thing. How did those kids live?

How did they? It feels sort of insincere where you're just like, that's not where these movies go. Yes.

That's not really his language of like, and then you make it and the Brownstone's in perfect shape. Yeah.
Yeah.

Sorry, I, I watched that movie also in theaters. Also, it was like, that girl had been dead so fast.
What are we doing? Justin Chatwin rubbing, running like into a tank.

And then later he's just like, hey, dad. Yeah, what's up? That's,

we've talked about it. Sorry, sorry.
But I feel like most, yes, most Spielberg movies kind of end with this note of like, and people have to live with shit.

For the degree. that it's like, here's like the king of like wonder and uplift.
Most of his movies, he's good at finding a good ending point to leave you feeling kind of good.

But if you actually dig into where his movies resolve himself, they're messy as hell in a way that's interesting and I think makes them stick.

You know, it's like you're putting the fucking Ark of the Covenant in a crate and being like, so what now? What are you talking about?

And the guys swim up to shore at the end of Jaws and you're like, they just survived a shark attack. And they're like, their friend was murdered, you know? And like

acquaintance. Okay.

They're not friends of acquaintance. I like this distinction.

Their emotions should be the clue. It was just an acquaintance.
It doesn't matter that much, right? You're right. But like, this is his first movie that is really kind of...

I'm running in my head if I can back this up. I think I can.
I think this is like his first movie that is really trying to contend with like human evils.

Right? Yeah, it's not a thing coming from the sky or the sea. It's not supernatural, but it's also not like bureaucratic.
It's not institutional.

It's that guy. It's an abstract idea of like the law chasing the like honeymoon lovers in Sugarland Express, which is also like a low-level, you know, like all this sort of stuff.

It's like, what if there is like an unfathomable level of like human suffering? And it is like not abstracted. It is like looked at directly in the eye.

It is perpetuated by people, is perpetuated out of basically their own smallness. I mean, that's what this movie really comes to, right?

What is so cathartic in the dinner table scene is like also the Adolf Caesar character needing to be like, You're right, I raised him poorly.

I'm bad and I fucked him up. Yeah, this is like a bad lineage of bad people who don't know how to do it.
I raised a bad son, his kids are shit, we're all bad.

And you look around this table and the collateral damage of all of this, and it's just like men

will literally do the color purple to avoid going to therapy, right? Like to a certain degree. I'm doing a little clap into the microphone.
That was great.

Loves to avoid going to therapy joke. It's a great joke, Structure.
But

I think that places him in a story that he has no idea how to actually end.

Yeah, because the end of the book is very much so like

her and Mr. kind of like develop a, not a friendship exactly, but like an

comfort with each other in a certain way and Suge and all these other people where it is like, hey, these people kind of rehabilitate and acknowledge the fact that the harm that they've caused each other and God and they smell pot and I'm like, good for them.

Yeah.

um but they don't of course they didn't do that in the movie in the 80s where they come to God or whatever but I really like that development that can happen in the book that Spielberg does not seem to have a handle on well that's the internal life stuff which he just is the stuff that like of course he doesn't know what to do with yeah right and but I but I also think I think the ideas of what this movie's like

grappling with are things that he just like doesn't know how to work through because you can't blow up the shark.

Yeah. Right.
Right. This is the thing.
You can't have a Danny moment where Danny Glover gets pushed off a cliff like Gaston. Right.
And even the sort of moment.

I would like to see it, but yeah, you're right. You're right.
You're right.

The moment of kind of grace of him like receiving the letter and sending the money and being like, I should do one good thing. The one.
Right.

Still doesn't like

resolve anything. It doesn't heal any wounds.
It's done in sort of like private, right?

It's basically just this one quiet, silent moment of his own reckoning of like, I can do one good thing in my life.

I will never have the ability to say I'm sorry or like own up to any of this.

But then it's like he's trying to push the movie's equivalent of the brownstone at the end of War of the Worlds where it's like, well, what if they have the house and the church and they're all together and they're happy and the kids had a good education?

Then they'd just be happy for the rest of time, right? Everything's fine. Right.
They got there. Yeah.
They to like,

I don't know.

They got to fucking Emerald City. Like, there's a degree of that, right? Yes.
I feel like, yes. I feel like we, I'm trying to think of what we have.

We haven't talked about Sug Avery enough, in my opinion. That's sort of the,

you know, plotline we've sort of talked around. Because like those sequences of her singing and of the club are very, very cool.

And

I don't know. I just want to know everyone's opinion on them.
Well, I think

you're saying there's sort of, you know, the three Shug

Sophia

SETI thing, right? See?

See, excuse me, triangle of the three of them and like understanding Seeley's pathology through seeing the examples of how the women who try to step out of line are treated in society. Right.
Right.

Sophia's beaten down and imprisoned for saying hell no to somebody, essentially. Right.

Like one time. And the musical, obviously, it's a big song.
It's a great number.

The movie. Well, Are you saying I should or shouldn't see the musical?

Some people like the movie. Did you ever see it? I never saw it.
No, I found the way. What Fantasia is in it? Yeah, I mean, the performers are pretty good in it.

It's not, it's, I found the way it was made a little hermetic feeling, like a lot of movie musicals where I just kind of like, this doesn't feel like it's set anywhere.

And like, but it's kind of, I mean, it's pretty watchable. I think it's a strange musical

fundamentally, like in a way, much as this is kind of a strange, but it's a tough thing to to adapt into a, you know, progressive, you know, Hollywood-y, but that felt like that was Oprah really getting behind it and being like, we need a new way to get the story back out to people.

Which I understand. It's again, it's, it's watchable.
I don't know. It's okay.
It's okay.

Do you like musicals?

No. Okay.
Well, then I don't think you're saying.

I like some musicals, but I have to realize like, oh, you like these three musicals that you grew up on and you're not really interested in any others so uh

oh my god westside story is one that we watched in music class in elementary school it doesn't make a lot of sense but i watch that one all the time

it's like did it win best picture it was okay i was like somebody you i you should know um

you should be able to answer these questions immediately i so west side story uh the sound of music and Oliver.

I mean, these are classic 60s, you know, big Hollywood colorful musical movies. I feel like all three movies I saw for the first time on VHS in school broken up into classics.

Yes, yes. Kind of fun classics.
I mean,

Oliver also won Best Picture, and that's the one where you're like, this wasn't best picture.

But it is fun. But it's not as, I mean, come on, please.
Gotten city.

I thought you were going to break out into the full song. Anyway,

so Suge Avery, right, so Sophia's beaten down. Shook Avery

is this independent and impressive figure in a way, but she is also somewhat, you know, marginalized and like a little tragic and like right there is a more sort of uh quiet suppression around her right like sophia is like really pushing lines and being like push back

whereas shug there's just this kind of like she's not a serious woman right yeah a little bit um

but uh it's but like she is this gateway to Celie considering whatever independence and sexual independence. Yeah, like I like

when

Shug is singing sister, which is a song I grew up with. And this is part of the reason why I thought I was like, I've seen this movie a zillion times.
Cause that sister, that one,

people,

I heard that throughout my childhood. But in that moment, in the movie,

it is clear that Celie is experiencing something and is being seen. as a human with thoughts and emotions and like potential in a way that she hasn't before.
And I really like that.

None of these men, right? Yeah, none of them have. I also kind of like, I mean, it's very, very silly, uh, but the

way that Spielberg shoots, oh, uh, Sophie's about to fight this girl. I liked that.
Yes. Yeah.
Yes.

No, I, I think, uh, it's, it's what makes Margaret Avery's performance so good is she enters the movie late and you're just like, this is the first person who actually like sees her and listens to her.

Yes. Right.
Right. Right.
When this person's paying any attention to her. We've been seeing this movie mostly from this character's viewpoint, who is the one who silently looks and listens.
Yes.

And I also think she successfully comes in, and you're like, this is the only person in the movie who has a bulletproof sense of self, right?

Just comes in like completely self-possessed, does not care what anyone thinks for how much Sophia is like brash and pushy and like won't take shit from anybody or whatever.

You see the hesitation in her. I think Oprah plays that well.

It is someone who is trying to fight against a system, but understands what she's up against, where Shuk, to some degree, is just sort of like, I'm me. I'm me.

I really like that in the book because she continues to, I'm me, her way throughout.

I feel like in the movie, and this was a little bit frustrating, they do have her interacting with the preacher character.

And at that moment, it doesn't feel as much like, I am me, I'm standing here, I am powerful, I am completely accepting of who. I am and think that I have worth.

It seems like she's going to the church to talk to the preacher guy.

And she's like asking for worth in a certain way. And then they reiterate that when she's like walking through the church at the end of the movie, singing and being like, I'm a person.

And then like she hugs the, and that's like her big moment when she hugs the pastor. Am I making any sense at all? Yes.
Movie Luce says sign to her. I should say yes, but yeah.

I think the other part of it is that she kind of

her gift is that she doesn't consider that she should be feeling limited in any way if that makes any sense. You know, like that,

let me word this better.

The scene, the scene, the kiss scene, right? Yeah, that word.

Having the conversation about sex and suddenly the entire act of sex is being discussed for the first time in a Spielberg movie ever.

But where she's sort of radicalized by like, what do you mean you don't get enjoyment out of it? Yes. Right.
That it's not that she's naive enough to think that all sex is positive.

but that she kind of can't consider a world in which it's only negative and you've never experienced any light versus like Sophia being someone who is like

making moves that have statements behind them of her trying to purposefully like push back against the idea of what she's told.

Shug seems a little bit like unencumbered by that line of thinking, which then reduces other people to be like, well, she's a floozie. She's a singer.
You know what Showbiz women are like.

She's not a real person, right? And you

see this with Sailor of like, oh, no, she's able to actually connect other people. She has an internal life.

She's not just some like whatever, but it does take a little bit away from her to have her need to consult someone else. Yes.

Which also then ties back into this like, what is this movie's like relationship to organized religion? I don't say in a conspiratorial way, but almost looking to it as an easy solve, right?

Like, well, isn't just like the ultimate solve for all of this if you just like know that God loves you. Yes.
And you can find love and acceptance here.

And like you find your way to the other side of the rainbow. Yeah.
I mean, an important detail, though, is the pastor is her father. Yes.

Which I think we should mention because that I think she's looking for acceptance. Yes.
Yeah. And you read about when this film came out and there was controversy and a lot of it was over like

this movie, every single man in this movie is the most like horrific monster who has ever existed. Yes.
That is also, I remember learning about that. We're like, hey, all the black men are mad.

This movie shows them as bad people and we don't like that. And I was like, I don't know, kind of like these these men are bad.

But, but then you get into this conversation where you're like, if there is like one studio film starring a black cast every three years,

then it's hard to not have it also feel like it's representing something larger because there's no counter argument. True, yeah.
I was like, Is there a good man in the movie?

Well, I'd say it's kind of that character, but in such a small way. Yeah, but I mean, Harpo is

not so bad.

He's terrible.

Yeah. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
He's kind of just an idiot. He brings that sweet girl around.
Yeah.

So the best we can say about men is that some of them are idiots and therefore harmful.

He's a sillier evil. Yeah.
Sillier evil. He's a bit more buffoonery or whatever.
But no, I mean, look, it's in the book. Like the book is incredibly skeptical of these power dynamics

between the genders at this time. There's one good guy in the book that I like.
Remind me. It is

the one that takes Nettie to Africa. africa right sure well he's good good job by him yeah he's the one

the one good guy and then they don't go into that there's one good guy in this movie steven spielberg who except for dga minimum no i don't know like it's just like this movie was a hit it got nominated for 10 oscars obviously it didn't win any which was a bit of a rebuke

at the time it held the record for the most nominations without a single win and notably did not get spielberg a nomination he won the dga which i think was the first time that someone won the dga without being nominated for an Oscar.

Like it was a weird thing. And in that hook interview I mentioned earlier, where the guy's like, so is Steven Spielberg bitter about not having won the Oscar yet? Do you sit there going, why not me?

When will it be my time? And Spielberg's like, you know, like he actually was pretty reasonable about it and was just like, look, I'm not going to like complain. I have my success.

I don't feel like they're saying not you. They're saying not yet.
It gives me something to prove, you know, like it makes me work harder.

And then he's like, the one that hurt me with color was color purple. Color purple, it felt personal that it was like the most nominated movie and I was the one thing left out.

But it does speak to the sort of weirdness of being like, okay, Stephen, good job. Like we brought this into existence.
Well, also, again, who nudged him out? Do you know?

In 1985. Talk Oscars in a second.
Yeah. Like where the other four director nominees directed the other four best picture nominees.
Sidney Pollock, Hector Babenko, John Houston, Peter Weir.

Hector Babenko, what was his? Kiss of the Spider-Woman. Okay, thanks.
Yeah. No problem.

Which talking about like that's another queer movie i was trying to remember when on timeline but like what exists in queer cinema at that point that was like a revolutionary movie but was also like made independent wildly outside of the studio system right

who who nudged him out akira kurosawa for ran the you know japanese master in his sort of final years it's not like it's like oh yeah they nudged him out for you know mr bullshit directing like

you know stupid but it's the same thing it's the same thing with the jaws year I'm sorry. I'm just visualizing a poster.
Mr. Bullshit.
Mr. Bullshit presents stupid.

I think that movie's underrated.

Of course you do. I do.
I think. No, you're right.
Mr. Bolshevik made a couple good movies.
He's not a great director, but he's made some great films. For Jaws, he was nudged out by Fellini.

Here, he's nudged up by Curosawa. These are, but

highly esteemed. Now, if I'm Spielberg, maybe in the back of my mind, I'm like, John Houston for Christie's Honor, that movie's a snooze.

I don't know, right? Like in all these cases, the person who snubs him is someone someone who is like humongous, right, and legendary, and the kind of person Spielberg reveres.

But then it's like, it's interesting that Hector Babenko makes the cut and he doesn't, considering how big his status was. But it was all this, yeah.

Hector Babenko, I'm sure it was the kind of that thing of like, hey, man, Steven Spielberg gets to make what he wants.

Good for him that he wanted to make something a little different than an alien movie or whatever. Hector Babenko like fought and scratched to make this little, you know, indie movie.

And here's a movie without concession that's right

about, you know, a gay man and a leftist revolutionary in prison chatting about Brazilian politics. Like, it's like, fuck, okay, yeah, that's hard to get across the line.
Good job.

Maybe that's what it was, or maybe it's just, because I just feel like if this movie was,

and I think, again, I do think this movie is generally good and watchable, but if this movie was great, like if this was like a really amazing movie, it would be a seismic film that was, that won all the Oscars and like was remembered like totemically to right.

Don't you know what I mean?

Where it's like, this could have been one of the biggest movies of the 80s kind of was a big movie that yeah I don't know but not as big as it could have been it could have been like his Schindler's list it's probably just not a Spielberg movie that's the thing you're like what were you gonna say

no it's just the way that you're describing it is almost like oh my gosh we have this dish it has everything that you like but it's missing one spice that would make it really come together and be a memorable meal and um i'm wondering what do you think that spice would be salt salt it's missing salt no that's like the joke is it's like, fuck, we forgot to put salt.

You know, it's like, it's like, sure, everything about all the elements here are great, except the director you've picked is a little off for it.

And it's like, well, the director of the movie kind of needs to be on for it. But the answer, I think, is just point of view.
Yeah, right. It is a well-directed movie in terms of like.

how it looks and what it evokes. You know, it's not, it's not like a badly directed movie.
No one looks in the camera.

It's always my joke. Spielberg forgot to tell what people get in the camera.
Look over there.

I forgot one thing.

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There was a time my wife made a cake without sugar. Like she forgot to put sugar in the cake.
How did that cake taste? It tasted

like a pumpkin cake or a sweet potato, you know, something like that.

And it was one of those things where like one bite in, I was like, this is the strangest sensation because this is what it's supposed to be. It has the texture and it tastes like pumpkin or whatever.

But what is wrong? They feel crazy right now. Then you realize, like, oh, right, it's not sweet.
It's supposed to be sweet.

Sure. But like, here's, here's the, I'm just saying, there's just the alternative to the metaphor.
It's like Spielberg's reading the recipe, right? Which is the book, The Color Purple.

Very well. Alex Walker was impressed by how well he read it.
Right. And he's like looking and he's like, am I reading this right? Four tablespoons of oregano and a birthday cake.

And the book is like, this cake has oregano. And he's like, you know what? I don't feel comfortable enough with oregano.
That's a really good point. I'm going to leave the oregano.

It's going to make a regular cake. Right.
I will put salt and pepper on it. I'm just not going to, I'm not going to, I don't know what that is.
Right.

And everyone's like, the oregano is the dicey part of it. Yeah.
But also if you're not putting it in there, maybe just

different recipes. Yeah.

I like that. Thank you.

It is interesting. I kept watching it.
I'm just like, this movie continually heaps landing just barely on the side of, I think this is good

with like humongous qualifiers. And you saying like, well, if it had been perfect, then it would be one of the most seismic American movies of all time.
And yet this movie like has a humongous legacy.

Yes. And even though that legacy continues to be like re-litigating it in a lot of ways, to the extent that you felt like you had seen it, I felt like I had seen it too.

And I grew up in fucking West Village of New York. Like it was not like passed on to me culturally in the same way, but I have this very distinct memory of like.

the school I went to, there was a bookstore that was like a block away that we passed by every day when my parents were dropping me off and picking me up from school.

That had a giant poster of the color purple facing towards the window.

And I would just see this thing every day for like 10 years that was like, okay, Steven Spielberg, color purple, Hewlett Surprise. This is a thing.
This is important. Right.

I was just like, this is 10 years after this movie came out.

And I understand you're telling me these names 10 years ago before I was born made something that still deserves to hang in like a bookstore window.

And then I asked my parents, I'm like, is that one of the best movies ever made? And they're like, It's okay,

it is, it kind of works.

I'll shout out when Seely leaves

and

Danny Glover's character is left to his own devices. The house is fucked up.
I mean, it was fucked up when she got there, and then it goes back to being fucked up.

Like farm animals, yeah, like it, it's it's like such an extreme version of

this has become a bachelor pad.

That is a level of dirt.

It's hard for my brain to wrap around.

I keep a very clean home. I don't like mess at all.
That you would have,

like, I don't even let people wear shoes into my home. Should you? That you would have animals that poop.
That, I mean, we all poop, but like, they poop and then they don't wipe. It's just.

Can I tell you about a rule I have? I want to hear it. No, like, outside pants in the bed.
yes yes like you can't sit don't on your outside clothes

like take yeah no pants for some reason or because your butt you know yeah and you're rubbing against where everyone else's butt was and butt sweat and it's like a combination of things that means that you are bringing that into your home and yet like where you sleep where you spend potentially eight hours a day you want to be rubbing against that that's don't do that okay can i run a couple simulations by you and ask what you would do in these circuit ways i'm putting on my vr gar

i want to yes please okay Okay. You're like, oh, exhausting day, right? I want you to just imagine a scenario in which you, David Simms, feel overwhelmed by life.

Are sleep deprived. My balls hurt.
Possibly have multiple plates spinning. David got snipped.
I think he's locked in. He's locked in.
Okay. All the way in.
And you're like, oh, okay.

I have like 10 minutes before I have to turn around and like leave the house and go somewhere else, right?

This is like a quick pit stop.

And you're sort of like, I just want to like lie down for five minutes. Do you, in that situation, go,

I need to change into sweatpants for five minutes to be able to lie on the bed? Or

the fact that I don't have enough time to change into sweatpants and out means I shouldn't be lying down. I'm just not.
These are not, these are not. The pants come off.
But you put them back on?

Later. The pants can come off and on, but you are acting as though the only surface in your home where you are able to lay down is I was going to say the next option, I was going to say,

but you will allow outside pants on the couch.

Outside pants are allowed on the couch. So the bed just has a level of sanctity.
I agree. I mean, that was, that's my proposal.
Keys, where are you from in North Carolina? Charlotte, North Carolina.

The great, the great city. So the city the Hornets.

Yes.

For a while, we weren't. For a while, we weren't.

But yes, we are the Hornets again. That is the team that I was very attached to as a child.
Oh, like, did you have a starter jacket?

I didn't have a starter jacket, but I had like a lot of big t-shirts. I don't know why, but like kids in my middle and elementary school wore like big t-shirts and umbro shorts.

And we were like, we look fucking good. Probably did.
Yeah, and that was, you know, the teal and purple, very cool. Like, and oh, they would come to like events.
Like, we had a,

I'm like, so cool, but in sixth grade, we had a trip to dendrology camp, and like a bunch of schools sent kids to a park and we learned about leaves and stuff.

And then the hornet came out and did a little dance. Can you say that word? Oh, like, like bring the mascot, the hornet.
Yeah, cool. Awesome.
What kind of camp? Didn't did

it.

I had to look it up. It is the study, the science and study of wooded plants.
Wow. You guys didn't go to dendrology camp? You know, I meant to, and I

fucking forgot. You had to make up songs about different types of leaf structures.
You guys didn't have to do that? Can you look at like bark and be like, oh, this is this kind of tree?

Do you still have it in the back of your head? I, oh my God.

Mostly, no, just like a few types of leaves. And somebody did a song to the thong song, but it was like, ooh, that chunk's so scandalous.

And I will remember that until the day that I die. Sounds like a good way to make learning fun.
Yeah.

Yeah. You are from exactly where they shot the movie, essentially.

Danny is from like rural South Carolina. So between North Carolina and Georgia, obviously.

And we went to black churches growing up. And then I would visit my hyper-religious relatives in Maryland, where I thought Maryland was the North, but a lot of Maryland is the South.

And they have some backward-ass churches.

No, yeah. Maryland is,

you know,

was didn't secede, but was a slave state and uh yeah you know that's where i learned about uh

white jesus on the wall of a black church uh thought that was very fascinating and then uh did you guys

like it was a black church that was like but we we

yeah and i'm like what's our

yeah sure um and then chick tracks have you heard of these i do yes i do that because they were they became like an internet phenomenon yeah even though they're from a long time ago but the internet like discovered them when i was a teenager they're very strange they are very strange and i i would take them because it was like hey i'm bored well they're comic books yeah

i'm born at church i need something to read so they had like a little container where there were different uh chick tracks in each of these little slots and i would take the the new ones because i needed something to read during church chick tracks

and they're like little comic books that are very of sort of evangelical but like very very hardcore uh uh whatever orthodox or right wing or whatever how i mean it's what taught me that even some

some evangelical christians don't just hate, you know, Jews and homosexuals, they hate Catholics. Like, you know, they hate there was a whole book on, like, no, you guys are worshiping Mary.

It's actually the devil. Catholics are bad.
Yeah, where it's like, oh, but because he was a Catholic, straight to hell. Yeah,

no way out. And you're just like, what?

The cartoons would be like, and so then he went to hell. And it's just like him roasting in hell.
And there's a little cartoon of him like, yeah, in hell. And they're like, he's not getting out.

Chick Tracks.

Yeah, they always just have a pretty there's not usually a way out like chick tracks aren't usually like but you know i think that there was one about a muslim character and he's like what i'm not worshiping god oh i'll just worship god then and then if you make the the switch the chick tracks are on board with you Yeah, very important to my upbringing.

Yeah. But growing up in the South, like, yeah, this was such a big part of it.
The songs. And my church did have really good music.

In fact, when I watch other movies about church and they don't have good music, I'm like, this doesn't make any sense. This does not reflect the

why are you going there if there's not good music?

This movie has terrible music. I mean, Quincy Jones, but I mean, like, I do think that hurts.
Like, when Suge is

on her way to church, she's singing. And I'm like, yes, this seems more like what people sang in church.

Just to kind of like go back full circle, I mean, it's the other part of this movie that's just like.

The fact that it successfully introduces Danny Glover, Oprah Winfrey, and Whoopi Goldberg to a wider audience all at once.

And then the three of them are so impactful, not just in the work they do, but also just as like cultural leaders in a lot of ways.

Like Danny Glover is maybe the most like overtly political movie star of all time,

arguably.

And like,

Oprah is someone who, like, at points in time could arguably win presidential elections. That's how they say that.
It's kind of the Joe Rogan of her moment, if you will.

I mean, Joe Rogan, we'd say like evil, lawful, evil. She'd be like, on the microphone.
Lawful neutral or

for looking at that grid. Wait, what did you say?

When he said Joe Rogan, I just got upset.

Ben, how are you doing? Ben's... It looks like Ben is rolling a cigarette.

I think he's just playing with a poster.

It's something I just do occasionally. No, it's right.
Do you have like a collection of rolled up pieces of paper over there?

He's showing us several pieces of paper. That is a 3D triangle.

Ben's Ben Origami. Yeah.
I feel like this is a movie that Spielberg does not not point back to that often when discussing his own legacy, which he is not loath to do.

It doesn't really come up in those sort of retrospective films about him or anything like that. And he doesn't talk about it with shame.
He doesn't talk about it with pride.

He's just sort of like, that's another one I think I did. Something's right.
I did something's wrong. He's usually pretty like unsentimental when he looks back on his work in that kind of way.

But there is something to like. Glover, Winfrey, and Goldberg all point back to this movie all the time because it changed their lives, you know?

And like, and so it kind of like has always remained in the conversation,

which is then also furthered by Oprah being like, I'm going to get this on Broadway. Like, I'm going to do, like, just, it's, I don't know.

It's, it's an odd thing where it's not just like, you know, there's certain, I feel like we've all had this experience, right?

Where it's like, you're reading like a huge like American book in school and they're like, we're going to show you the movie. The movie's not great.
But it is what it is.

And it might help you guys understand the book if you watch them. I think it's a full week here.
So you're going to watch the movie. Right.
That was the Scarlet Letter when I was growing up.

Wait, Demi Moore? The sexy one with Demi Moore? We watched that. You're allowed to watch that in school.
Also, the boobs. The Crucible.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.

That makes more sense because that's not an amazing movie, but at least that's it. That's the big exact kind of thing.
There was a big poster, and this is Daniel Day-Lewis going on.

Yeah, and all the women in my class, girls, were girls, we're under 18, were girls. So we sat.

There were some adult women. No, there were.
There were.

All the girls sat on one side of the class so we could stare at the Daniel Day-Lewis poster because he's looking in that movie. He looked really intense.
And he looked very intense too. Yes.

We're like, oh, that's what men are like. That's nice.
That might be kind of like peak, unvarnished, handsome from him. Yeah, it's that mid-90s, big beardy kind of phase for him.
Yeah.

No, my point was just, I feel like this movie is constantly talked about in that sort of context of like the good versus the bad and like what it got right and what we know today and what we, you know, yada, yada, yada.

But yet I don't think it's presented in that way of like, look, it's not a great adaptation, but it is what it is.

Like the movie kind of has its own reputation as its own work, not just as this was the time they tried and didn't really succeed in cracking the color purple, which is part of what's interesting about it versus maybe like,

I don't know, a more successful literal adaptation. Although, as you said, like, maybe this is a work that doesn't really translate to that form.
Yeah, it's tough.

Again, the book is nothing really like this.

Yeah, and because of the epistolary thing and because of the fact that it's all in the vernacular like i remember when i started reading it i was like very thrown by that because i think i had the spielberg movie in my head of like this isn't just like kind of a like let me take you back to this time with like an omniscient narrator like okay it's the deep south it's the early 1900s it's not like that at all instead you're like right with celebrity and like her trying to describe her situation and it you know begins in a similar way obviously her situation is bad yes and it's a lot of dear god and then dear Nettie.

And then,

so she thinks something happens, Netty. But I like that it is letters.
And I listen to the audiobook because

are we all like, are we pro anti?

I'm not anti-audiobook. I have never.

I shouldn't say this because God knows they'll sponsor the podcast. I've never really been an audiobook person.

But I'm a podcast person. I think I just read book.
I read book on phone and Kindle and stuff.

You read book on phone? But who narrated the audiobook? Alice Walker. Oh, that's it.

And I, so, meh, I had a stroke. It has affected my brain.
It is harder for me to read books,

but I love books. So I listen to a lot of audiobooks now.
This is why it's good.

Because I would ban audiobooks, but now that I've heard your story. No, no, no.
Thank you. Thanks, thank you.
This is why it's good there's audiobooks. I like audiobooks.
Okay, cool.

But the thing that is tough about it is when you're talking to somebody, it's like you feels weird to be like, I listen to a book. Yes, exactly.

Where I'm like, I want to say, like, oh, yeah, I read that, but I at least technically read it. And then I feel guilt about it.
And it's like a thing I'm holding inside. So let it out.

But yeah, I read the audiobook. I think Alice Walker does a good job.
And it is much easier for me to understand Southern vernacular English when it is spoken than having to read it. So 100%.

I think that my experience was probably a little bit easier.

Well, I read him.

This movie was. A big box office success.
Yeah, well, do box office came a second. I do want to acknowledge the Oscars.
It's really a terrible, terrible Oscars because no offense to this movie.

Well, some offense. It's the Out of Africa Oscars.
Right.

And it does feel like it's like they can't settle on something like the color purple because whatever they've, you know, it's not hitting quite big enough.

And instead they settle for an even sort of duller, you know, literary epic, like in my opinion. But we're sort of like, right, this feels the most like an Oscar.
Out of Africa was a big hit. I'm not.

Have you seen Out of Africa? I have not seen Out of Africa. I've never seen it.
Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. Yeah.
We like both of those people. I do.
and it's it's a very, very handsome movie.

You know, you've never seen it, I'm assuming. No, because they're in Africa, I presume,

unfortunately, yes. Um, and they're, I'm, I'm

guessing, Sabs in the dark. Uh, are there wild animals of some sort? Yeah, there's some wild animals and stuff.
Okay, it's a whole lot. Do we have a large sun going down? Big

vistas, etc. Isn't like the poster literally what Kanese is describing, but with like a tiger?

Pretty much. Pretty much.
Wait, is the sun, though, like vibrantly orange?

This is the movie. Look, I watched every best picture winner.
Okay. Like that, it was something I eventually decided.
I was like, yeah,

there's only like 15 or 20 at this point. I'm going to watch them.
I'll just go back and I'll clear off every. And when I got to Out of Africa, I was truly like, this.

should only be watched if you want to watch every best picture. It's like the most homework ass.
You're just like, but that's sort of

like it

shouldn't, you know. Like this year, 2025 Oscars, where people are like, it doesn't feel like there's a front runner.
You're like, something has to win by default.

Yes, something will be anointed, the best picture of 2025. The other nominees for best picture, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Pritzy's Honor, which is a movie I watched recently.

Have you ever seen Pritzy's Honor? No, I know you love

it. No.
Oh, really? You said that?

I put it on thinking I was going to love it. Yeah.
I was like, John Houston. Jack Nicholson, Angelica Houston, Kathleen Turner, mob comedy.
How is this going to be bad?

It starts up and you're like, this is like, I think I'm expecting like moonstruck with the mob, right?

Like, I'm like, that's a big 80s Italian movie where everyone's like, you know, being a, giving a big performance. Even married to the mob.
Even married to the mob. Even married to the mob.

And it is so like leaden and dull. And you watch it and you're like, what the fuck was everyone smoking that this was considered good?

Like, and again, all the people involved are good, although Nicholson is. sort of trying to do like a Brooklyn accent.
Oh, great.

And like, so Angelica Houston wins supporting actress that year and it was kind of this I think the narrative for her was like one we love Angelica Houston great actor but it was like she got her way into John Houston's movie he didn't want to put her in it and she fought to be in the movie anyway because he's her father

also the other narrative was that it was the this sort of like what was her first movie again

her uh angelica houston's first movie yes uh a walk with love and death i think she was so thoroughly trashed in that movie right so it was like a comeback for her ultimate nepo baby he cast his daughter he's so enamored with her.

She sucks in this. Fuck you.
Go away. Where, like, she kind of won the Oscar in like a kind of clapback of like, okay, look, she fought her way into another movie.
Right. She's fine in the movie.

Like, she's good, even, I guess. She's very glamorous and like, oh, Angelica Houston.
But again, I was watching it being like, and now she's about, there's going to be some big scene.

She's going to light the fire. And then you watch fucking the color purple and you're like, both Oprah Winfrey and Margaret Avery have like scenes where you're like, holy shit.

You know, like, you know, how did this not win an Oscar? Didn't win an Oscar. The answer is probably: if one or the other had been nominated, they probably would have won.
Maybe, right? Maybe. Maybe.

Obviously, both deserved nominations. Yes.
Whoopi Goldberg loses to Geraldine Page for the trip to Bountiful. What? Which is kind of seen as a shock.
Whoopi won the Golden Globe.

I mean, like, you read Ebert's review, and he's like, Whoopi Goldberg is going to win the Oscar. Like, everyone is sort of like, this is an undeniable.
Which she should have. Yes.

Who is this other person? And what is this other movie? I'm not sure. Geraldine Page is like this legendary old American actress.
And it was like a late late career movie.

And so, kind of like, you know, she's look, I've never seen it, so I don't want to make fun of it, but it's like

you don't want to make fun of it, but you, that's how you would describe the movie, of course.

It's a movie, man.

Okay, and that's the one that won best actress. Gotcha, gotcha.

Like, the 80s were not great for the Academy Awards, but I feel like this was in particular a real recurrence, which was like, what wins best actress or best supporting actress?

And it's like a legendary, beloved, like sort of like legend of the stage who had a movie career, but was never fully a movie star and was always a little bit like take it for granted, but everyone in the industry loved.

And then they like show up with a carpet bag in a movie at 85 and people are like, fine, here you go. Good to take it.

Because F. Marie Abraham gives her the Oscar, right? That would make sense.
This is the moment I remember. I've never seen Trip to the Bountiful, but

Trip to Bountiful. Weirdly, Anne Bancroft also nominated that year, like sarcastically goes like Geraldine Page when she's in that.
Like she knew it was going to happen, which is funny. Anyway, Karen.

Wait, what was Ann Bancroft nominated for? Agnes of God? Oh, sure. The Norman Jewish and Noir movie.
Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Never seen it.

Anyway, I think Whoopee was sort of seen as the front runner. Sure, yeah.
And F. Murray Abraham

is presenting his last year's winner, and he opens the envelope, and he like catches his breath.

And he says something for Klemp to the effect of like, it is my great honor to be able to bestow this act, this Academy Award, to, in my opinion, the greatest actor alive, Geraldine Page.

There is like this sense of like, we are finally giving this woman respect for a movie that will never be watched ever.

Right, right. She was a big actor who'd been nominated for a bunch of Oscars and she's a great actor.

Like I got no beef with Geraldine Page, just that the Triver Bountiful kind of looks like a movie where ladies go,

that's all. That's all I'm saying.
And I don't know if it's true or not.

For all I know, it's actually about Geraldine Page is like a badass action hero who's got to get to bountiful, the villain's lair.

I mean, Whoopee wins for Ghost five years later.

And that's obviously like a dynamite supporting performance that she might have won for anyway, but there is, I think, an element of like.

But the five years in between, she makes a lot of like comedy vehicles, becomes like a successful bankable movie star.

in the sort of like whoopi goldberg persona that she has crafted for herself and then talks about how hard she had to fight to get cast in ghost because they were like well you're not a serious actress now like within five years they were like whoopie goldberry is going to make this feel like a comedy and it's like she was in the color purple yeah it's just yeah the trip to bountiful is actually a revenge war movie

what

they killed her squad now he's gonna get them all

this is for the lieutenant

uh no i wait what is i don't know what the trip to bountiful is about

drama i'm gonna watch Sidney Pollock's Remaker Sabrina. I'm going to watch the trip to Bountiful.
I'm going to do the work.

Truly, don't, like, if you don't like it, I don't want you to be like, Canice doesn't know. Canice, you're going to have to give me your phone number and I will text you.

Give you my phone number.

You know what? I think you're cool. Let's be friends.

You're cool too. Okay.
But yeah, let's all be friends. But I hope that means

I'm going to say this to you in all honesty, Canise.

Sabrina is one of those movies that, much like you're saying, I just hear everyone go like, and obviously that sucks.

It's just stated as like well it's a given of course we all know that was terrible yes and every time i see like a clip from it i'm like i think i would like this she's a teenage witch

what's not the love i am not

there's a quiz master she's got two ants the cat talk the cat talks yeah

her boyfriend's name is harvey that's because that was the name of the comic imprint um no i have always thought like i bet i would like this if i saw this and i've been worried to watch it because i think people are so dismissive of it let yourself like it yeah you ever think about how in sabrina she's got the friend with the red hair in season one and then they recast the actor or they said their new character in season two she just gets a new friend are you talking about melissa joan harts brina the teenage witch because there was another one with that chick who was in madmen oh that's true there was the netflix one that was like dark sabrina the dark witch of the

gothicness

no i'm talking about the sitcom from okay cool cool cool cool there is an amazing like i tick tock that i found once of like you know,

out-of-pocket moments from sitcoms that no one noticed at the time. Where, like, you know, there's the aunts, Hilda and Zelda, right? Carolyn Ray and the other one.
Um,

and Hilda's like, oh man, we haven't fought this much since we picked opposite sides of the civil war.

It's like, what is that? How did that slip through?

So, wait, which side were you? Exactly, wait a minute. Which side did you choose?

Marie was working on the checkbook, the the blank check newsletter on Substack. Subscribe if you haven't already.

And was talking about in relation to our Twin Peaks episode 8 conversation, what are the most insane things broadcast on television, right?

And I was like, everyone was throwing out like obvious examples. And I was like, that night where TGIF traveled through time.

And everyone else in the thread was like, what the fuck are you talking about? And I was like, I don't remember this.

You remember that historic night where the entire TGIF lineup ended up time traveling? And I had to unpack this and be like, let me make sure I'm not getting this wrong.

There was an, I think Sabrina was the first. And Salem.
And Sabrina is a sorceress. Salem cast like a bad spell, and an orb created a time travel effect.
He eats a magic time ball.

Okay, he eats a magic time ball. And the Sabrina, yes, the Sabrina episode that night was set in the 60s with Sabrina leading second wave feminism.
Good for her. And has like bra-burning jokes.

And then all the like Boy Meets World was about like Corey shipping out for the Vietnam War. Am I wrong about this? For the Korean War? I can tell you that the episode was called No Guts, No Corey.

Every episode started with Salem walking onto the set of a different show and then it going do,

and then they ended up in a different time period. It sounds lovely.
It was insane. Salem had so much attitude.
That cat was silly. I love that cat.
Let's play box off this game.

This film came out Christmas time 1985 and limited release. So we're going to do this limited release, but semi-limited.
It's opening at number eight, $1.7 million on 192 screens.

They made $98 million domestic. Yeah, it was a big hit considering it's 94 million.
I mean, how much did the musical remake make? Well, you know what?

It was one of the weirdest box office performances ever, that musical remake, because it like made like 20 million dollars on like day one and then fell off really fast.

And it was one of those things where like lots of church groups and like community groups had bought tickets en masse for like Christmas or whenever Christmas Day.

They like they planned out really well. It's it's one of the weirdest disproportionate like 45% of its entire growth happened in 2014.
$18 million on Christmas Day. And it ends up at like $45.

It ended up at $60. Okay.
Okay. Okay.

But still not as much as its predecessor 30 years ago. And if you like, just for inflation, Color Purple performed like fucking American Snipers.
Yeah. Yeah.
Did like Transformer Snipers.

I like that that's the first one we get. It was the highest grossing PG-13 movie of that year, PG-13 being a new rating.
Number one at the box office is a sequel. It's been out for a month.

It is still number one at the box office. I think it might have been the highest grossing in this series.

It's not Star Trek 4 after the first one. Nope.
No.

It's the highest grossing after. Oh, it's Rocky 4.
Rocky 4. It is the highest grossing.

Is it the highest grossing even including Rocky?

Maybe. Unadjusted? Unadjusted? Yes.
Maybe unadjusted. Unadjusted is the highest grossing.
Have you seen Rocky 4? No.

Have you seen any Rocky?

Yeah, sure. And then I've seen Creed.
Yeah. Well, not the most recent one.

Well, okay,

I had a question on Jonathan Majors for a very long time, and then I, it turns out he's bad. So

now you're like, do I even want to engage with

a pre-cancel? Because, like, I know he's bad, but my pussy doesn't. And so you were allowed to say

okay. Oh, my check.
I mean, like, people can yell at you, but we'll stop them. Dave and I have talked about a lot how fascinating it is that that movie came out, was a really big hit, was well liked.

People were like, Michael B. Jordan's a good director.
He pulled it off. And like, Jonathan Majors, here's finally, they've been hyping him up for years.

This is the performance that makes him kind of undeniable. Uh-huh.
And then, like, all the shit goes down like within three weeks after the movie had already made $150 million. It was a huge success.

Basically, agreed upon that we were never going to acknowledge the movie

ever again. Yeah, like the movie talking about Quantumia camps as like a problem, but it's not forgotten.
I mean, Creed 3 feels like it's been memory holding. Majors is good in that movie.

He's very good in it. But like, that movie

is great outside of him. Will Michael B.
Jordan ever get to direct it again? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
he's doing he's doing a Thomas Crown affair remake,

which is the thing he's been attached to do for over a decade, and he's finally fucking doing it, which is exciting. They're making another Thomas Crown Affair.
Yeah,

so I think one of the times I wrote you the most enthusiastically was when you covered the Thomas Crown affair, and I was like, I posted that. I was like, truly, one of the best days of my life.

I love this so much. It's my interests converging in a way that causes me deep joy and happiness.

And then you had someone from Ringiverse on on who was. Amanda Dobbins.
Amanda Dobbins. Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.

Denise and I were chatting before you guys got here, and you said something about that movie that was really encouraging, which is it instilled to be excited about becoming 40. Yes.

Oh, yeah, because it's right. It's a 40-something.
It's a 40-something. And Russo gets out looking great.
I saw that as a young teenager, and I was like, that's the age.

I got something to look forward to.

I've always wanted to like, I brought truly in that, she wears two outfits that stuck with me to the point where i bought a powder blue pants suit and wore it with a white turtleneck folded down and she also this is the scene when she interrogates thomas crown oh my god this is i'm sorry um so there's still time for me to become a master thief there is still time for you to become a master thief in fact that was his like first time as master thief i think he like planned a few things practicing but then he did this art heist at the met and it was his first time so it could be your first time popped his cheering

i like you art thief cheering oh i like you too You're a cool guy.

You've given me like 18 compliments. It's like, I don't like it.
Too nice to me. Why? No, I'm joking.
Yeah. Well, if we start talking about Shamala, and then she'll flip in the opposite third.

Those are when I get the angry messages from you where you're like, what the fuck are you guys talking about? Yeah, you guys sound insane right now.

And also, you, because originally you wrote me and you were like, hey,

do you want to do

who was the last one that you guys released? David Lynch? Yes. You were like, is there a David Lynch film that you want to do? And I was like, oh, I'm so sorry.
I absolutely hate David Lynch.

I couldn't possibly.

I love you guys' podcasts. Like, I feel like

a kid with cancer who's been given a make-a-wish or something just here.

But then you were like, oh, but it has to be with David Lynch. And I was like, oh, I'm sorry.
I'm going to have to give that make-a-wish back. I absolutely couldn't, even if I tried.

We planned so far in advance. Yes.
That often when it's like, we are overdue. We need to get you on.
Can I show you what we have right now?

And if there's nothing here, I promise I'll circle back in like five months. But it does mean that there's often a long gap.

And then even if it's like five months later, it's like, great, the one you picked is five months from now. Hell yeah.
But I always prefer to like wait for what feels like. I really appreciate that.

Yes, I was never gonna. Yes.

What else is in the top five, David? Oh, back to the box office game. Number two at the box office is a sequel, a terrible sequel to a film we have covered.

We have not covered the sequel nor ever shall we. We never shall? I don't think so.
We never shall. We covered a maid feed? Yeah.
Covered the original. We covered the original.

I mean, is it a Jaws sequel? Nope. Hmm.
Because that could see us doing a Jaws Patreon. I mean, that's

a little deep, I feel like, for us, but you know, you never know.

This is number two. Two of two.
Two of two. Yeah, the series ends here.
The series ends here definitively. Same stars?

Yeah. Not the same director, though, obviously.
No.

And can you give me a genre? Adventure, romance. Oh, this is the fucking.
It keeps coming up. It sucks.

It does. Lewis Teague film.
The Jewel of the Nile. The Jewel of the Nile, the sequel to Robert Zemeckis's Romancing the Stone.
I remember Romancing the Stone. Does it still have Kathleen Turner?

Michael Turner. Both of them have been.
And Kathleen Turner? Devito's back? Yeah. It is so bad.

It is so bad. What happened to her after like Serial Mom?

Serial Mom is a good shout as like a great later performance for her. Like I feel like.
That is kind of the end.

She had already kind of run out of thread by that point. I feel like Serial Mom is John John Waters being like, Kathleen Turner rocks.
Like, why isn't she in a more?

She has very severe arthritis. She does, but that's, I feel like that came on later.
Like, I feel like she'd already kind of lost some movie star juice by the 90s.

I think a lot of that is, unfortunately, despite everything that Renee Russo tried to teach us,

Hollywood's well-established prejudice against women over the age of 40. There's shit also like the, what's it called? V.I.
Wachowski.

where she like adapted that book series that was like a long-running book series and it was like this is going to be her sort of like dirty hairy series, and that one didn't perform.

And it was like, Oh, people don't want women in action movies, kind of like they're, but then early 2000s, she did the graduate on Broadway, and I felt like first it was on the West End, and it was she got naked, and everyone was like, Wah!

Like, it was truly one of those things where, like, the British press was like, She fucking is naked in this thing, it's on

the Brits love nudity. Don't they have it on like channels?

Galore, yeah, the whole thing. You're British-ish as you move there.
I'm British-ish, And you're like, in Britain, and now this isn't true anymore because this finally got done away with.

But like in the old red tabloids, the red top tabloids on page three, there was a nude woman whose breasts were revealed. The page three girls.
The page three girls.

Literally, it was like, you sick fucks can only make it one.

You refuse to turn like

page three,

if you get past the cover. Yeah, then you get tits.
At least in your peripheral vision. Jesus.
And you were like,

you know as a little boy i'm like what is it and yeah at the same time right if you like say tits british people are like oh wait a second what are you talking about

crazy right now it's just the weird kind of their situation

but they were upset that she had her they weren't upset they were just thrilled

yes she did it on broadway and then she did

she also created it on broadway i believe so she did virginia wolf as well right did she yeah yes she did i think i feel like she had a 2000s like, you know, what Hollywood's turned their back on me.

I'm gonna like take on great roles on stage. And I believe one of Tony for something at some point.
At least was nominated for it. Yes.
I just like her voice so much. I did too.

She was supposed to do George Lucas talk show recently. Oh, really? She said she's going to reschedule and do it again soon, but I was very.
What was the connection?

Like, what's the is there a George Lucas project she wants to discuss?

Well, what Connor loves to talk about is that George Lucas produced Body Heat, but took his name off of it because he thought people wouldn't think a movie was sexy if George Lucas's name wasn't.

It was sort of the Mel Brooks thing. Aw.

All right. So number three, the box office Griffin.
Now, this might have been a Porch Classic, Ben. I got, I've got a Porch Classic alert for this one.
Never actually checked in.

Not a director, a director we already bad mouthed on this episode, but he's made comedy hits. John Landis? Yes.
Spies Like Us. Spies Like Us.
Chevy and Dan Aykroyd. No, I've never seen it.

I've heard of it. Yeah, it's not a good movie.
Yeah, I've never seen it. Great poster.
Great poster. They're wearing like furry hats? Yes.
Jenny Snows. Yeah, in the snow.
Yeah.

Yeah, I feel like

kind of like for everyone involved, like them sort of looking for better days, right? Like Landis, Chevy, Ackroyd. Yes.
I don't know. Yeah.
Spies like us.

Number four at the box office is the best picture winning. I already

lambda and out of Africa new this week.

Number five at the box office, I think we've discussed this film before.

So we must have done a, we must have done something in this time frame recently because a couple of these are very familiar uh it's a christmas film

and it's like about like like one of the main christmas guys is it santa claus the movie

what is santa claus the movie we because i feel like we recently talked about this that someone was like no one's ever actually just done a movie about santa the weird producers of the christopher reef superman movies were like we just had the greatest idea of all time Santa Claus the movie.

And you're like, what makes it the movie? And they're like, us saying it is.

Us putting a title on a poster that implies like we got the right disaster

for the first time ever official

santa claus okay what type of santa claus is this it's not like a the santa claus dudley more right but dudley more plays an elf oh okay and like john lithgow plays a businessman who hates christmas or some shit i'm sure he had to reach really hard to get that one who plays santa like a third of the budget was paid for by coca-cola and mcdonald's i think okay it's like a notorious disaster yeah i don't think it made a lot of money I just remember when I was a kid, some other kid telling me, like, you've never seen Santa Claus the movie?

It's like the movie about Santa Claus. And I was like, what are you talking about? David Hubbleston plays Santa Claus.
Okay. There we go.
You know, it's very Santa-like me. Yeah.

I soft-pitched recently a Patreon series called Christmas Cole. Worst depictions of Santa.
Who else is? My pitch for the four. Okay.
I'm not going in chronological order here. Santa Claus, the movie.

Fred Claus. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
What? Yeah, I've never heard that. Legendary Bean movie.
One of the the most insane movies ever made. I sampled it in one of my Slow Christmas albums.

There we go. And I watched a little bit of it.
It's very absurd. And of course, the reason for the season, the movie I walked out of and said, attention must be paid.

I must, I must break this movie down is Red One, the worst film ever made. The worst film ever made.

That was the inspiration, right? Red One. I think it represents an idea for culture.
I'm excited.

I don't think it's the worst movie ever made, but I think in a lot of ways, it is the greatest distillation of everything that is. I've been making a lot of pronouncements recently.

I was going to say that. Is it like some movies are, I know they're not going to be good, but I like to take like half of an edible and get the big tub.

I love that experience of watching a bad movie while eating caramel popcorn while a little bit high. Would this be good for that? Or would I even from that experience walk away like upset?

I disappointed. I think it would.

I think it would upset you. Damn.
I think it would upset you. I think there are things in it that would genuinely upset you, especially in a modified state like that.
Okay. Yeah.
All right.

um in six to ten we've got white knights the taylor hackford um ballet movie with uh heinz and baryshnikov the big two

um

we've got a disney re-release of 101 dalmatians one of your daughter's favorite movies she has she moved on huge phase with that movie she has not watched in a while but she loved cruella she was very i mean not to be clear not like

not craig gillespie's film corella she liked corella in the movie she called her the grumpy queen as well but she should see cruella then

We'll get to it. Right now, it's.
Doesn't your daughter have a bunch of questions about why did Cruella pretend to hate dogs? Yeah. No.
Where she came from, why her hair is dyed like that.

Where she got the coat. Yeah, she wants to know the origins of like, did a dog knock her mom off a cliff or whatever that happens in that movie.

My daughter, right now, unfortunately, it's all frozen. They watch it as one or frozen one and two.
This is what I want to tell you. So both.

She likes both, but she distinguishes them by there's the regular frozen, as she refers to, which is frozen one, and then frozen with the pants.

Because she one point told me that princesses wear dresses. And I was like, princesses don't have to wear dresses.
They can wear pants. And she was like, princesses wear dresses.

And I was like, Elsa wears pants in Frozen two, remember? When she runs into the water, she's wearing pants.

And she was like, Show me that right now. And I like, I like queued it up and I showed it to her.
And she watched it. And she was like,

she is wearing pants. I agree with you.
And so now she will specifically be like, I want frozen with the pants.

And I'll be like, but you want it from the beginning, right? Because she's not going to wear pants until an hour into this thing. Yeah.
And she's like,

right now, like Disney, Disney Animation Headquarters, they're playing this back and they're like, okay, fuck.

We never thought of this. What are we doing for part three? Because my daughter likes to sometimes put a dress on, any dress.
It just has to be, and then just dance around to music.

And then we clap and she bows. Oh, nice.
It's very great. Very cute.
But, you know, still trying to just get her, you know, get her away from the thought of like girls wear a dress.

Yes, and princesses. They just need to make a big bottom wear choice for Frozen 3.
And if they fuck this up, the whole thing is going to crumble. It's frozen, but tropical.
It's like a whole thing.

And then they have shorts on, yeah. And so, uh, 100, but she does love 100 Wandomations.
Number eight, color purple. Number nine, Enemy Mine.
A movie I've been thinking about a lot because

Andy Sandberg on the Lonely Land

podcast keeps talking about how you would try to work it into sketches. What is that?

It's like, I know, and they eventually got it in. It's this roller Wolf King Peterson movie about like a human and an alien get stranded on a planet together.
Quaid and Louis Costa Jr.

And Louis Costa Jr. is in like alien makeup.
Louis Costa Jr. like coming off an Oscar.
Yeah, it's like I definitely had mentally switched that around. Okay, so he's the alien, like bearded Quaid and

Lou, like, yeah, collecting his like post-Oscar, like,

and, and the crux of the movie is like these two different species stranded on a planet together, sort of surviving.

And then I think I can say this because it's what the cultural reputation of the movie is. The sort of twist is that it turns out that he is able to become pregnant.

The alien. Fuck.
I need to see it. I need to see enemy mine.
And he gets pregnant? They have a child, I believe.

So they fuck. This is what I'm trying to remember.
We don't see that, though. I don't think so.
You don't think so. I got to watch it.
All right. So, Sabrina,

Enemy Mine. What was the other thing I'm watching? Oh, Trip to Bountiful.
I got to check that.

Red one. The red one.
I am going to watch it. Number 10 is a chorus line, which I feel like was not the hit they wanted it to be.

That's Richard Attenborough post-Gandhi being like, I'm going to adapt the biggest hit on Broadway ever. And it like did okay, you know?

I need to piece so badly. Okay.
Yeah. Well, we've been talking for way too long.
Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, not way too long. That's very nice and kind of you.
I do want to say before we wrap wrap things up, no, I don't.

I didn't drink enough water to, so I intentionally dehydrated myself so that I wouldn't have to.

Yeah, because you guys, I listened to the pod. I know you guys go so long.
So I was like, do not fill up on water. You're going to have to pee.

The person who plays Nettie as a child does.

Some of the weirdest acting I've ever seen in my life. And I'm sorry.
It caught me so off guard that I felt irresponsible not mentioning it. Yeah.

I just needed to know, like, I needed to say when she screams, ah, waves her hands in the air. And that's supposed to be a big pivotal moment of emotionality from these two characters.

I said, I must mention this on the podcast. And that's it.
It's worth calling out, especially because he is historically very good with children. Yeah.

Yeah.

It might speak to the fundamental. He might not just totally have a grasp on the character.
Yeah. Yes.
Okay. So that's the.
No, no, I think. I want you to pee.

I want you to have the ability to go pee. Canese, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for having me. You guys are, this is, this is a dream come true.
Thanks again. You're the best.

It took far too long. Anything, anything specific you want to plug um follow me on the websites that we all follow each other on obviously if we've dated i'm sorry

come on actually i'm not sorry i was a nice lady to date okay yeah i don't use this platform to say

yeah yeah i was a nice lady to date i'm a good cook i do stuff i'm like a

reasonable person and you guys were fine we just were not compatible there we go i i want to hear all i i have and maybe even a you're welcome maybe let's throw a you're welcome out there if you're listening to this show, you dated Kinese, you're welcome.

Yeah.

And

don't write me about this on Instagram. Don't do that.
Don't do that. Okay, you can, but we're not going to get back together.
That's just not going to happen.

Are you doing a hot guy draft? Oh, I love it.

Okay, so this is my birthday thing, and I love it so much. And you guys are all invited.
Well, not the listeners. I'm talking to the people in the show.
Sure. Okay.

So every year we do a hot guy draft and I put polls up online and people vote to say who the hot guys are and what they should be ranked on a scale of one to five.

Then we take those people, we divide them into three tiers. Some people get like green, silver, or gold stickers.
They represent one, three, or five points. And you have to make a team of 15 points.

It's very, very silly. People who work in sports media do come and they are the commissioners for this draft.
Hell, love it. And it's really fun.
And we decide who is the hottest. We make teams.

We yell at each other. We have like very, it's, it's super silly.
It's my favorite thing in the world. Who won last year?

So this year for my birthday, or it was last year.

2024. Okay, so 2024, it was a team of Denzel Washington, Yaya Abdul Mateen,

Simu Liu, Shade,

and a fifth person that I can't remember, but that was the winning team of hotness. The lesbian team was really mad that every...

Are you okay? I'm fine.

It was a team of lesbians, and they made a team, and nobody else liked who they said was hot.

It was like they were on an island fascinating social experiment yeah yes you're doing the work canice i i i majored in psychology this is my experiments with human behavior and thought and i love it so much uh everyone everyone uh uh look out for that i'll certainly be following very closely this year uh thank you for being here thank you all for listening uh tune in next week for empire of the sun

Yeah,

kind of an odd double down from Spielberg. Yeah, it is.
A slightly better movie, but also, yeah, not perfect, in my opinion. Him striving for the kind of serious movie he will eventually make better.

I don't know. Have you seen it? Yes, I have.
Okay. Yeah.
Excited to see it again. I've only seen it once.

Over on the Patreon coming up in a few days, we have a bonus Spielberg episode we're doing about Twilight Zone, the movie.

Wow.

Just his part. Just his part.
His segments. But his part's really bad.
Yep. Okay.
And amazing stories. Which are better.
Yeah, his more amazing story segments.

And doing Star Trek next gen?

Yeah, we are in the middle of that. Star Trek Income.

Oh,

the one where they're on the planet where people don't age and Picard gets a crush. What is

Ringbreaking? F. Marie Abraham.
F. Marie Abraham.
Is there anything else? Do you like Star Trek and East? No. That's fine.
You just seemed interested.

I am interested. My mom loves Star Trek.
My mom's like this weird cool person where she likes Star Trek and she's on bowling and pool leagues. And so I like want to be cool to my mom, I guess.

Right, that's not automatically cool to all people. Oh, no, often.
But to your mom. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So like, sometimes I like try to pick up on things that are going on in the Star Trek world so I can like be cool to my mom.

Yeah, that's like how I'll say to my dad, like, I heard someone hit a ball yesterday, huh?

Another hoop. Did you know Kanesa is a twin? I did know this.
Yes. She just revealed that to me.
Anyway, where and when? What are you doing? You weren't here yet. You weren't here yet.
You were twice.

We were chatting. You're bye.
Goodbye. Thanks for watching.
We love you.

And

as always,

we've talked a lot about the color purple for nearly three hours, but I would just like to take this final opportunity on mic to recenter the real focus, the color red.

Red one? Red Hulk. Oh, yeah.

Hail to the chiefs. Hail to the chief.

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley.

Our creative producer is Marie Bardy Salinas, and our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by A.J.
McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J.
Birch.

Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds.
Our production assistant is Minick.

Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

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