1941 with Mike Mitchell & Nick Wiger

Blank Jack with Griffin and David

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

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

Blank check the most explosive podcast ever made wait that's what you do okay so here's the thing is that the tagline or something?

I was digging through all the trailers and the posters last night, and there was one I was trying to find that was I can't quite locate, but all of the trailers kept using these taglines that are like the most explosive comedy spectacular.

I just know a comedy spectacular.

This is the thing.

That's the tagline I know from the one of the advertising materials I saw combined the two because a lot of the trailers kept on saying the most explosive movie ever made.

And the posters keep saying a comedy spectacular.

And one of them combined it, and it speaks to the inherent issues with this movie.

Okay, that their selling of it was, This is so funny and so big.

I mean, that's the movie at large, but okay, but they were just saying that as a statement and being like, Don't you want to see a movie that's really loud and expensive and has jokes in it?

And you're like, What's it about?

And they're like, Don't worry about that.

Uh-huh.

The most, it's the most movie.

Uh, what about this one?

Soon, the screen will be bombarded by the most explosive barrage of, and it looks like the word shit in Japanese

ever ever filmed.

So again, it's just like, right, like

most

screen-filled.

Like, there won't be a dull second.

No, and this is one of those classic cases of most equaling best.

Yes, exactly.

That's, that's, I mean, that's the story of 1941, Chris.

It's the most movie ever made, and we all agree that it's probably the great American film.

He took 10 minutes to do this.

Yes, it's awesome.

I did not talk to excess.

It's spectacle.

Like, it at least delivers on spectacle.

But my question for you is,

did you consciously avoid a quote from the movie because you couldn't find a line of dialogue that didn't have an Asian slur?

Nick, there was a quote on the INDV page I was close to, and then I realized it had an African-American slur on it.

Very good.

I think there are very few quotes from this movie.

There are very few distinctive lines that don't have something.

I don't think there are really a lot of distinctive lines, period.

And that's why I was like...

I didn't say memorable.

I said distinctive.

I was just like, what are you even looking for?

I don't really know what the killer line from 1941 was.

I was looking for this one statement, but it speaks to how this movie had six similar taglines that were used in alternation, all of which are just trying to get the same point across, which was big and funny.

Expensive.

There's the Ackeroid monologue, but there's nothing in that that really like I can even

remember specifically.

You know, like when he's up on the tank and he's trying to calm everyone down during the,

you know, the Zoot suit riot.

Well, I can barely understand what he's saying during that time.

He's like screaming at the wrong thing.

Just his weird, like fast, autistic computer speak, right?

It's like the most extreme version of, I'm dead, I've heard you have me or the tank.

I was shooting at you.

Everyone is acting.

It's car salesman shit.

Yeah.

Every line has the intensity of Christopher Lloyd and the Adams family.

Just like everyone is just shouting everything.

Here's a fun question question I thought of while watching this film last night.

If you were talking to someone who had seen this, but had no frame of reference for Dan Aykroyd as a person,

how would you describe to them who Dan Aykroyd plays in this movie?

He is first build.

I know it's because of alphabetical,

but his face is big on the poster.

He's one of the people the movie was sold on.

He's a huge fucking star at this moment.

Yeah, sure.

I don't think you could explain to someone what his character does in this movie in a way that really clarifies who he was amidst the 80 characters.

It's hard to even know his function in the plot, like exactly.

The closest you could say is there's a 10-minute stretch where he's concussed and is doing weird shit, but you're like, that could describe almost any character in this movie during any

kind of voice of reason

sort of at moments amongst the various people who are going crazy.

Right?

Yes, but that's also once again,

this is a terrible challenge.

I hate the challenge.

I just think it's fascinating that this movie is like, we got Ackroyd.

And you're like, how are you applying him?

And they're like, we don't really know.

My first note was not enough slurs.

So I.

So I

didn't realize you guys are right.

Now in hindsight, oh wait, those were really bad.

You gave it one star on Letterbox, but only for that reason.

You gave it

one star per hundred slurs.

It topped out there.

Hi, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David, the most explosive comedy podcast ever made.

I'm Griffin.

I'm David.

You look very worried.

This movie really bummed.

Well, bummed me out is too strong, but I was just kind of like,

I have never seen it in full.

Yeah, same.

And I really just had that thought of like, it's going to be like interesting.

Everyone thinks this.

and like there'll be like kind of you know a lot to excavate about, and there is to some extent, like, but it's just I was just kind of flabbergasted by how boring it was.

Do you mind anyway?

Reciting the thing you texted us yesterday while you were watching.

Let me find it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is a podcast about filmographies: directors who have massive success early on in their career, such as making Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind,

and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want, such as 1941.

Sure.

I mean a perfect example of like two mega successes followed by a no-notes disaster.

Have you ever had someone who's been so

like

so sure that they were making a disaster?

Because he was like, because this was like, I'm gonna, they're gonna hate this.

They're gonna, I'm gonna, this is gonna bite me.

That's a good point.

It's a bounce that he sees coming while he's making it, I think.

But what's also weird about it is we've maybe covered things that are like bounces that people see coming, but it's bounces where they're like, look there's some esoteric uncommercial thing i've always wanted to do i'll do and i have the cachet to do it and i'm leveraging it to get this out of my system but this is like him making something ostensibly in the trappings of what should be a popcorn movie and just doing it incorrectly and knowing he's fucking it up there was i i watched this there's an hour and 40 minute documentary on the blu-ray which has been carried over from the laser disc this thing has been ported over for like 25 years onto various editions, and it's mostly talking heads of just like Spielberg, Zemekis, John Milius, Bob Gale.

And he says, my, like, my operating principle on this movie was anything goes.

And he was like, I don't want anyone explaining to me that it's a bad idea.

We can do anything we want, and it doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense.

And I'm like, this feels like a guy who actually wants to like fuck up on purpose because he's feeling the burden of being seen as a golden shot.

He's like running headlong into the wall, being like, What happens if I hit my head against the wall?

Right.

And he's like, Either it works and I'm literally unstoppable, or I'm grounded in a way I maybe need at this moment.

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

It's called Podrassic Cast.

Today we are talking about his first bounce, 1941.

A World War II movie.

In a manner of speaking, yes.

Sadly, because our guest today would be very,

very well suited to talk about a World War I movie.

Go on.

Well, they host the Dough Boys podcast.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

World One War Off.

We were both scratching our heads.

You guys are like,

which one's that?

No, of course the Doughboys were the names of the soldiers.

Yeah.

The American soldiers.

Right.

And in World War II, they were called the action boys with a Z, right?

We should have got

Kristen References.

The British soldiers were called Tommy.

Okay.

That was like how British soldiers were referred to, like the sort of

in World War I.

The classic British soldier was called Tommy.

What were American Doughboys?

That's what I was saying.

No, I'm before World War II.

I don't know.

G.I.

Joe?

I don't know.

Google type away.

Mick Weiger and Mike Mitchell.

Hi.

Hey, buddy.

Thanks for having us.

Of course.

Can I say one thing to your listenership?

First off, I'm a huge fan of the podcast.

Mitch and I are both big fans of the podcast.

God bless you.

Always happy to be to guest on, always honored to guest on the show.

This is the first time, I feel like every time we've guested on Blank Check in the past, I think this is the case

how you tend to schedule your show.

We've been like 18 months in advance of when the mini-series comes out.

It's like

now we're close.

Exactly.

I was listening to the dual episode on the commute to the studio.

So it's like we're very, we're almost caught up to the present with the Spielberg mini-series.

Isn't this also kind of the first time you guys have not been on a movie that's like a really sort of big

kind of three previous movies you guys have covered.

Right.

Who framed Roger Rabbit?

They live and seven.

Yeah.

Right.

They're really good movies.

They're all at least in conversation for that director's masterpiece.

If not the undisputed one, they're at least in that talk.

And this is, you're getting what is like,

I don't want to say inarguably, but pretty widely considered his single worst film.

You'll find very few people who put something lower at the bottom.

Right.

It's like,

I mean, you know, it's like how whatever

George W.

Bush is a bottom five president, right?

Well, you know how people do rankings of presidents, these historians, they're always like ranking presidents.

Yeah, I always think it's really weird.

My well was sarcastic.

I want to state that because no one likes it.

I like George W.

Bush.

Sure.

I don't like him.

I love him.

No, what I was going to say is.

Dogface.

They were called the Dog Faces.

Dogface was a nickname for U.S.

Army soldiers, especially enlisted infantrymen in World War II.

Wow.

Kind of insulting.

I don't know.

Yeah.

This does seem insulting.

To use my

first wife served.

First wife.

To use my recent favorite word on the podcast, I do feel like this is kind of like inarguably Spielberg's greatest folly,

right?

This is like the biggest swing and a miss and the sort of public fallout kind of like humbling moment.

It is a big swing.

I mean, that's the thing.

He's trying stuff.

And yes, and my tebid defense of this movie, which I have seen before, Mitch, I don't know, had you ever seen this before?

No, I've never seen it.

This is the first time I've ever seen it.

I watched this movie as a child.

I saw this when I was in elementary school.

And along with another Ackeroid movie, Dragnet.

I don't know if y'all remember the Dragnet

comedy.

Yeah.

That was like

one of the first times I saw a comedy with someone I thought was funny where I was like, why is this not funny?

Like, I was like, I had a nine-year-old brain of not understanding how someone who was funny

was capable of being unfunny this is why i'm so happy you guys are on for this episode because i mean as you said because we're experts on unfunny

why are these comedians not making me laugh it's so weird

i got i the stanley kubrick tagged this as a comedy podcast

the stanley kubrick take is i i agree with maybe kubrick thinks it's a great movie but just is not funny at all yeah right you should have released it and sold it as a drama and which which i and And I'm sure y'all have some of this in the dossier, but I was shocked to find that this was originally developed as a drama.

But like the

thing I picked up on on, I watched it twice for this episode.

And the thing I picked up.

It was the theatrical cut both times?

Yeah, I just watched the theatrical cut twice.

I've maybe, I was realizing this, I've maybe saw the extended cut because I watched it on TV as a kid.

Maybe that's the version I saw.

Extended cut was the one that was large.

He was the mainstay.

Right, yeah.

And then was on home video for a while.

Now it's, it's optional.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so I watch it, but like the thing I picked up on, speaking of Kubrick, that I didn't pick up on as a kid, not knowing who Slim Pickens was, once Slim Pickens showed up, I was like, oh, he's trying to make,

you know, Doctor Strange love.

Like, this is an attempt at that sort of that level of,

you know, war satire.

Which, by the way, Slim Pickens plays, he's a dope, he's a doboy.

He's a former dope.

That's right.

He is a former dope.

He serves to me.

He serves me.

This is true.

And he does give Wendy's four forks in him.

Even though this has gotten bad.

Right.

Even though, right, and the app isn't as good anymore.

There's that scene where he keeps saying, cigarettes are back.

I don't know why my Slim Pickens impression is

goofy.

It was fine.

No, this is a perfect movie where you're like, why is none of this funny?

And you're watching it and you're like, there isn't like a clear, like, well, this is obviously conceptually doomed unfunny, but just every moment there's like a black hole of comedy.

I'm just kind of like, why am I not laughing?

Like, this is funny.

It's not like this, you know, vaudevillian, you know, big, silly, slapsticky stuff.

Why am I kind of like, is it too good in a way?

Like, is still too good at staging action.

And so I'm actually kind of just like watching what happens and it's not quite, you know, goofy enough.

I don't know.

Goofy things happen.

Yeah.

I have, I have a couple takes, but I, you know, we, the reason we're recording this closer to the date was we were trying very hard to make this an in-person record, you guys being on the East Coast, and then it didn't quite work out.

And there was a question of like, you guys are going to be doing a live show here in a couple months.

Should we wait and reschedule you for something later?

And I was like, maybe we do something later as well.

But you guys on 1941 really feels right.

And watching it last night, I was like, there is a larger conversation to be had here without getting academic.

A dumb version of this conversation.

We're watching this movie genuinely makes me step back and go, What is funny?

Yeah, right.

How is something funny?

Why is anything funny?

Because it's really weird to watch incredibly funny people in circumstances where you're like, I could see this being funny and things like that are not ineptly crafted, you know, and are certainly given all the resources and support they need.

And there's like anti-laughs without it feeling like anti-humor, without it feeling like disastrous failed humor.

It's just not not fucking funny.

Yeah, it's like John Belushi in

a fighter jet

cracking a Coke bottle in half and then gargling with it and then throwing it out the, you know, throwing it to the ground.

Like that could be funny.

Like that could be a bit of physical comedy.

You're watching this, like, okay, all the pieces are here, but you're watching and it just feels abrasive or like nothing at all.

That's I watched the extended cut, which is two and a half hours long.

Oh, God.

I had a notes app that was write down every time

you audibly make a sound.

And I believe I had five full laughs.

Four farts?

A lot of farts.

Farts were their own note.

I think I had five like, huh,

and like two like,

kind of half chuckles.

Not bad, honestly.

Yeah.

It was a little higher than I was expecting.

I will say they basically ended by the one hour mark.

Like at a certain point, the movie just wore me out.

I think there were none in the last hour, possibly.

But the Belushi Coke bottle is one that got me.

i will say anytime belushi is on screen it at least resembles there's energy it is comedy adjacent you're like i'm not laughing but i get this as comedy whereas other scenes you're like i don't even know what i'm seeing anymore but wait i do want to hear yeah what you so okay nick you'd already seen 1941 yes you you had some memory of it what did you guys and mitch you'd never seen what did you guys think of 1941 just broadest well reaction I think it's good that what Griffin was saying with the with the Adobe Boys are good guests to have on for this.

I can tell you why I think it doesn't work as a comedy.

You were afraid of me wagging my finger there again.

I'm getting riled up.

I am getting riled up.

I was about to say it's too woke.

I'm about to give a little Ackroid-type speech right here.

Hell yeah.

Ungapachka.

There's too much.

There's too much going on at once.

I wrote down Steven Speedberg.

That's what I said.

Because the

Mitch!

Steven Speedberg, he's going nuts.

There's a million.

It's a sort of thing with comedy where you're like, oh, you got to let things breathe a little bit.

And no joke.

There's not like, there's almost not a single joke that gets to kind of breathe in the movie.

It's all so deliberate, so fast.

And then also at the same time, people are falling over or yelling other lines at the same time.

It's like such an insane, like, maybe it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world or something.

He was trying to like evoke that or something, but it's, it's just too much stuff.

There's a,

it has, it's the unrelenting cacophony of like a, you know, the, the water world stunt show at Universal.

You know what I mean?

It just, it just like kind of, like things are just keep happening.

Yeah.

And you can take that for 20 minutes, but if you take it for two full hours, it just, it just, you get numb to it.

Yeah, it's like every single scene has a car exploding or someone getting punched in the face or a people getting knocked over by cars.

People getting knocked over by cars, a building collapsing.

There's like a, there's like Robert Stack just giving exposition outside the movie theater to a certain point.

In the background, a Jeep just flips randomly.

And

it's just hard to like track what's happening.

By the way, one of the funniest moments for me is him just going and enjoying Dumbo.

That's like

a trip.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The best moment in the movie is when anytime Dumbo is playing and I'm watching Dumbo locked the fucking Dumbo.

Being like, God, Dumbo is so good.

Thinking about like, should I show my daughter Dumbo?

And then being like, Dumbo is really sad.

Like, it really is upsetting.

Like, the mom.

And I'm like, having all these thoughts about the movie is by the way you know now like being like moving on from dumbo and i'm like still thinking about dumbo my friend alejandra used to have a stand-up bit about the reason why atlas shrugged is so long is in the middle of the book the main character reads another book

and he's like in great expectations just you read the full great expectations and then on page 500 it goes and she closed the book and said wow what a good book here's and it's like that with dumbo where you're like dumbo is like famously 50 minutes very short very short yeah watching the the extended cut of the movie, I'm like, you could have just given me Dumbo in full.

Yeah, just have people

sit down.

Look, Steven Spielberg, this is what I want to throw to you guys.

I'm sort of realizing as I look at my, I look at my Spielberg rankings.

Okay.

I think the worst five movies he's made

are his comedies.

I'm inclined to say you're right.

Things like, you know, like the Indiana Jones movies are fun adventure movies.

They have comic tones.

Like, so same with Tintin.

Sugarland Express is like sort of a comedy, kind of like comedy, drama, caper, right?

Catch me if you can is a comedy, but you know, it's again like a caper movie.

It's very melancholy.

I was going to say, I mean, Sugarland and Catch Me If You Can operate on a similar register of being kind of like...

dramedy.

Yeah, I'm keeping those with a chase structure to me versus straight comedy.

His worst films are 1941, The Terminal Hook Always, and

I'm sorry, The BFG.

No, I agree.

And like, I mean, the BFG is a kids' movie, but it is, you know, sort of a comedy.

Sungson is for losers.

Right.

1941, the terminal, and hook.

Yes.

But especially 1941, his two worst movies are his two

straightest attempts at a comedy.

But I feel like you hear people say this a lot.

And especially in discussion in 1941.

No, but I think I have the same five as you and maybe a slightly different order.

When people discuss like Spielberg, they're like, and of course, his Achilles heel is he can't do comedy.

And when this came out at the time, people were almost celebrating, like, thank God, this guy isn't invincible.

He's got a weakness.

He can't do comedy.

What's weird about it is I think Spielberg is incredibly good at putting comedy into non-comedic movies.

100%.

He can have such a light touch.

And it's part of his magic is his balance is like, even in something like Saving Private Ryan, which is like so relentless.

It could be so dire, he'll have stuff like Jeremy Davies doing like physical comedy where you're like, he's really good at the instincts of like, when do you like take your foot off the gas a little, have a little reprieve, something that doesn't feel flippant to the rest of the tone.

All the Indiano Jones movies are funnier than this movie without ostensibly being comedies.

Jurassic Park is funnier than this movie.

Both

he directed.

Yeah.

Right.

But it's like when he's like, you know what I want to do?

I want to just simplify and just do a straight comedy.

He like falls apart.

Yeah, he seems to be searching for whatever, a superstructure he can't have.

This movie also, I mean, this movie's real problem is, what is this movie about?

Well, this

is the thing to talk about.

Because I know the movie, what the movie is about.

It's about a genuine historical event that they're having fun with and supersizing.

What the fuck is this movie about?

Like, what am I supposed to walk out thinking?

Exactly.

Like, we're like, I truly don't really know.

There were two really interesting things I found out in this special feature documentary, right?

And like, I think at the beginning of it, Spielberg says, like, you know, they liked it in Europe.

Uh-huh.

And he's like, so I go to Europe when I want to feel better about 1941.

But he was like, basically, it felt like we made this movie that only like me, Milius, and the two Bobs enjoyed.

Right.

Like, he's sort of like, none of us have any shame.

We had such a good time making this, and it felt like our big fuck you to everything and everyone.

And we just had uninhibited fun, right?

But the two things they said that stuck out to me, one is they're talking about the development of this project, which, as you said, Weiger started out as a drama and then at some point transformed into a comedy.

And they're talking about how the two Bobs, Zemekis and Gale, discovered this real incident that they morphed and combined with a couple other things, the idea of there being a Japanese attack on California.

And they're talking about like that felt like a great starting point for a movie.

And then Bob Gale goes, I mean, in real life, the event happened in 1942.

And I'm like, wait a second.

So right off the bat, why the fuck is this movie called 1941?

That's a fair point.

It's a good point.

I mean, the Battle of Los Angeles did take place in 1941.

That is not the big problem, but it feels emblematic of like, you can't even explain to me why you're doing this.

Why is the title of a movie a different year than when the thing happened?

Why are we changing things willy-nilly?

The other thing was he talked about how the Robert Stack character, he originally offered to John Wayne.

That was his wild.

This is what I know.

Yeah, well, John

Wayne to do the film.

Right.

And he had like developed a friendship with John Wayne.

They get the script to John Wayne, and John Wayne is like, you shouldn't make fun of this.

The way Spielberg put it, he was like, I'm on the phone with John Wayne.

John Wayne pitched me a project he wanted to do.

I was like, I actually have a script.

Would you mind reading it?

He's like, absolutely send it over.

And he's like, John Wayne like.

called me within two hours of the messenger dropping the script off.

He clearly had read it immediately and was irated.

He was really mad.

And was like, how fucking dare you?

American soldiers that fought and died for this one.

I thought you were an American.

I thought you were going to to make a movie to honor World War II.

This dishonors the memory of what happened.

Don't even make this film.

I'll be very disappointed if you wind up making this picture.

And the way Spielberg,

at least call him Pilgrim at the end.

And then you throw out some racial slurs.

The way Spielberg put it, he was like, John Wayne was like, this script is a slap in the face to the U.S.

military.

And Spielberg's retort was, I don't think it's a slap in the face.

I think it's a pie in the face.

I have respect for the U.S.

military.

I just think it's fun to put pie in faces yeah and i'm like there's the whole problem right there this movie has no point of view it doesn't really have john wayne's like this is offensive because it's not taking the military seriously and spielberg's like i have nothing critical to say about the military i just think it's funny when pies go in people's faces but like right that it's a going back to you know the the kind of attempt at at making uh you know a doctor strange love it's like doctor strange love has a point of view like you understand what it's saying about like cold war hysteria this one I have no idea what it's trying to convey.

Doctor Strangelove is MASH.

Doctor Strangelove is anti-war.

MASH is anti-war.

These are movies with like 1941.

I kind of agree with John Wayne.

Like,

I'm like, I agree with him on a lot of things, Dan.

On a lot of things.

Mostly his Playboy interviews.

Where I'm kind of like, well, and I guess that we can talk about how it turned from a drama to a comedy because it's like, yeah, what it's about is like a paranoid on-edge nation

after pearl harbor kind of like you know exploding into suspicion and chaos and all that and the movie's like

i guess it's kind of like yeah these dorks and i'm like they're not dorks they're freaking out and it's causing problems like but that's it's scary something like the russians are coming the russians are coming right which is a movie that feels like a big influence on that that to me is the most obvious analog and that's a movie about paranoia that is that is funny the russians are coming is funny yeah and it's also like that movie functions more as social satire, where it's about the American public reacting to something rather than a scathing indictment of the military.

And it's like, that's a take, too.

Yeah.

I know.

And instead, this movie is just kind of like, everyone's dumb.

No, to me, this movie is like, we have lots of money.

Yes.

Also, but anyway, Nick, what are you going to say?

Oh,

I was just going to say, and Mitcho, I want to hear what you have to say as well.

But like, I was just going to say that it's

1941 is the movie, right?

So it's set before like the kind of the outbreak of the full-fledged American involvement in the European and Pacific theaters.

But like for this to work as satire, World War II would have had to be a big nothing, right?

Because it would have been like,

look at all this hysteria, these people getting worked up over this thing that was like this, you know, whatever, that was,

that was a false alarm.

But

it completely,

again, yeah, I kind of sympathize with John Wayne's perspective.

By the way,

how much John Wayne have felt like, you know, towards the end of his career, towards the end of his life, Spielberg makes close encounters in Jaws.

He hears Spielberg is making a World War II movie and he wants him.

And he gets this script delivered, reads it immediately.

And then like on page five, a lady's trying to fuck an airplane.

Hey, John.

I mean, I think John Wayne, who is a fascinating figure, like had, you know, he had this whole complex figure.

He's a political figure.

Well, how he didn't serve, right?

And he played all these servicemen and movies and stuff like that.

And he, I think, had a weird chip on his shoulder about like, you know, being a phony actor instead of a real

shoulder was like, it was a uh, he had like imposter syndrome.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

And the whole thing with John Wayne is, I grew up just thinking that he was this like super square, right?

Like, that was what I knew about him.

Then you start watching John Wayne movies and you're like, this guy really pops.

This guy fucking rocks.

The screen eats this guy up.

He's so good.

He's one of the definitive, I don't know if he's a good actor, but he's an unbelievable movie.

Like,

right.

I just want to watch this guy like pour beers.

Like, this rules.

But, um,

you know, yeah, yeah, like the Zoot Suit riots, which are part of this movie, big part, and by the way, the extended cut, I was like trying to look up what the differences are.

It feels like it's 90% that plot line

put back in.

That's like our

main thread of the version I watched.

That's like a really interesting, charged, scary part of history where, like, white soldiers started beating up black people and Mexicans and stuff in like the middle of the war.

And like, patriotism is curdling.

Again, not in Spielberg's like, well, it's like a big set piece where like a bunch of punching happens like this is great when I say that his take on the movie is everyone is dumb I don't mean that in a pointed way where he's like trying to comment on like human fallibility or whatever it's just like going against the adage like the comedy adage of like play to the top of your intelligence Like it's very hard to make audiences find dumb people funny, especially at like played at length.

And this is a movie where everyone is just low intelligence in a way that doesn't feel like it's commentary on anything.

That was exactly like another reason why the movie isn't funny.

It's just a comedy of misunderstandings where you're like, oh, they shoot, John Belushi shoots.

Treat Williams' plant.

You know what I mean?

It's like, and then the Japanese submarine is out at sea lost for most of the movie.

It's like, not, and I get that it's not a real threat and that they're just paranoid, but you're just like, the comedy of misunderstanding is bad.

It's boring.

There's no stakes in it.

Bitch, it's boring.

It's exactly

ass movie.

Because you get it right away, what the joke is, and then there's not really.

It's so much smarter than the characters.

And to your point, like page five, minute five, or whatever, you're like, okay, Nancy Allen really wants to fuck airplanes.

Where's this going?

It goes just there across 10 more scenes.

She just keeps wanting to fuck airplanes.

It doesn't

matter.

I was excited about

the solution.

When Slim Pickens found

in the Cracker Jack box,

when the the Japanese found the compass, I was like, thank God, they're going to go to like Hollywood now.

And then Slim Pickens swallows it.

And I was like, fuck, it sucks.

Like,

I want them to go.

I want something to happen here.

That's why I actually, I liked, I liked the Zoot Suit stuff just because

at that point, I was like, this is fun to watch.

You know what I mean?

It's fun to watch.

Yeah, he's a good director.

Like, that's what the Zootsuit rides thing.

I'm not mad about it in sort of a like, I can't believe he didn't remark on those seriousness.

I'm just, again, I'm kind of like, well, there is something to that, but the movie is not interested in whatever there is to that.

It's not saying anything

in its depiction.

I mean, it obviously completely sucks out, you know, it removes the racial element from the historical thing.

But like, it also is like, it's depicting it, but not saying anything.

But, but this, this goes back to a thing I was going to say earlier of like my tepid defense of this movie is

you watch that sequence and you watch it begins in the dance hall and that that that whole bit that big dance contest sequence that turns into a fight It's like that's pretty dazzling to watch It's it's it's an impressive bit of staging and to contrast it with another one 1941 versus red one like like two like action comedies that absolutely do not that that do not work Red one is just like a like a muddy made me mad to compare I actually do I am now I'm now I think I like the movie way more yeah because red one is like a muddy ugly mess there's nothing to look at in that that $250 million CG, you know, goop fest that that's at all like appealing visually.

And this movie at least has stuff where it's like, oh, okay, he's doing stuff.

I gotta, I gotta pitch.

Yeah.

1940 red one.

Yeah, there we go.

We pitched that to the rock.

It's, it's back.

It's a period piece with Callum Drift.

That's great.

To your John Wayne point, Wigs, like a thing I kept thinking about in that whole anecdote, Mitch, you killed it.

Bezos is fucking blowing your phone up right now.

John Wayne, similarly, in this period of time, a couple years earlier,

was Mel Brooks' first choice for The Waco Kid and Blazing Saddles.

Sure.

I mean, John Wayne died the year this movie came out.

He was also like

near the end of his life.

He obviously suffered from cancer at the end of his life.

Yes.

Sends him Blazing Saddles script.

John Wayne reads it, calls Mel Brooks back immediately, is like, this is the funniest thing I've ever read.

I could never do this movie.

Right.

Okay.

So he had good taste on Blazing Saddles.

That's the thing.

He was like, you know,

again, he was like, I love the slurs.

There's so many.

And I get to say all of them.

They're like, no, those are the other characters.

You're supposed to be a good guy.

To be clear, I'm slandering John Wayne.

We can say that.

That is a movie that is very pointedly commenting on.

American racism.

Sure.

Right.

God.

He did it.

He's a racist old man, right?

And was basically like, this script is really funny.

I think it'll be a great movie.

His famous line was, I won't do it, but I'll be first in line to see it.

Sure.

And he just was like, I think my fans will murder me.

And I don't think it will help your movie.

I think it will lend too much.

I think it would have fucked up the movie.

I think he's too right.

He's too big a deal for that.

He's 100% right.

But like, he read that script and was like, I get it.

I get what you're doing here.

Which makes like the framework of his absolute dead-on precision, this is the problem with 1941 on paper all the more like he wasn't just reacting to something being countercultural.

You know, he wasn't just being conservative, he was like, This sucks.

Do you know what John Wayne's tombstone says?

Lar Rip,

that's what I was on Yes's tombstone.

My favorite tombstone of all time.

His tombstone says, Feo fuerte y formal, Spanish for ugly, strong, and dignified.

He requested that be on his tombstone.

Uh, anyway, um,

Ben.

What's up, Griff?

This is an ad break.

Yeah.

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

It's just a fact of the matter.

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

Right.

They love it to get a little bonus Ben on the ad read, but technically, that's not what they're looking for.

But something very different is happening right now.

That's true.

We had a sponsor come in and say, we are looking for the coveted Ben Hosley endorsement.

This is laser targeted.

The product.

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

It certainly is.

And what is today's episode sponsored by?

The Toxic Avenger.

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

Macon Blair's remake of

reimagining, whatever.

A reboot of The Toxic Avenger.

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

Yeah, I'm going to see it.

We're excited to see it.

But Ben, you texted us last night.

This fucking rules.

It fucks.

It honks.

Yeah.

It's so great.

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

Peter Dinkledge, Jacob Tremblay,

Taylor Page, with Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon.

Tremblay is Toxie's son.

His stepson.

His stepson.

Okay.

Wade Goose.

Yes.

Great name.

Give us the takes.

We haven't heard of them yet.

Okay.

You got fucking Dinkledge is fantastic.

He's talking.

He plays it with so much heart.

It's such a lovely performance.

Bacon is in the pocket too, man.

He's the bad guy.

He's the bad guy.

There's a lot of him shirtless.

Okay.

Looking like a snack.

David sizzling.

Yep.

And then Elijah Wood plays like a dang-ass freak.

He certainly does.

He's having a lot of fun.

Tell us some things you liked about the movie.

Okay, well, I'm a Jersey guy.

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

Trauma.

Yes, yes, that's right.

The original film.

Yep.

I grew up watching toxic and trauma movies on porches

with my sleazy and sticky friends.

It informed so much of my sensibility.

Your friends like Junkyard Dog and Headbanger.

Yeah, exactly.

Making Toxic Crusader jokes.

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

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

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

They're playing with fire here.

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

And they knocked it out of the fucking park.

Okay.

It somehow really captured.

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

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

It's gooey.

It's sufficiently gooey.

Tons of blood, tons of goo,

great action.

It's really fucking funny.

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

Cineverse last year released Terrifier 3 unrated.

Yeah.

Big risk for them there.

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

And a huge hit.

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

Want to make that happen again here?

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In theaters, August 29th.

Yep.

And Ben, it just says here in the copy, Wants to call out that Elijah Wood plays a weird little guy who says summon the nuts.

Can you tell us anything about that moment without spoiling it?

Summon the nuts is in reference to a

psychotic new metal band.

Hell yeah.

Who are also mercenaries.

Cool.

And drive a van

with a skeleton giving two fingies up on the grill.

And that's all I'll say.

Okay.

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

I'm excited to see it.

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

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1941.

So in 1973, Steven Spielberg made a movie called The Sugarland Express.

He had a preview screening for it at USC's Film School.

And in attendance was Robert Zemekis,

who is attending film school and tracks down Spielberg and says, Please watch my 15-minute short film, A Field of Honor, about a combat veteran who's gone crazy.

And he'd written it with his friend Bob Gale.

It won the special jury prize at the Sudan Academy Awards, and Spielberg was blown away by it.

And we covered Zemekis years ago.

That short is notably like a pitch-black, hyper, like political, sort of like countercultural uh satire right it is the kind of tone that this movie is going for that's what first gets zemekis on spielberg's radar um and uh they those guys graduate as mechis and gail the two bobs as you call them uh they they write some tv uh they work on a movie called tank about oil protesters

who are going to blow up a building with a Sherman tank right they have Spielberg's ear his star just keeps on rising he's kind of taken them under his wing as protégés.

He's also introduced them to John Millius.

Yes, this is how they meet John Millius.

Spielberg once a week goes skeet shooting with John Millius, I believe.

I guess so.

They certainly, they go out hunting or whatever.

Sure.

And he introduces them and they're sort of like,

how do we write a script that one of these guys will buy?

And Milius had some sort of deal set up where he was guaranteed two pictures as a director and three pictures as a producer.

And this is coming off the success of Patton, where there was a big, let's valorize the military kind of like trend in Hollywood.

So the tank thing, I think, starts as them being like, how do we write something that would appeal to Milius and also would likely get greenlit?

They're just looking to get something off the ground.

Yes, they wrote a script called The Night the Japanese Attacked.

Initially, it had a slur in the title.

Then it was called The Rising Sun.

And they were like, Yeah, Wesley Snipes is going to want to make a Rising Sun movie.

So we'll, we'll hold off on that.

Yeah.

So it gets called 1941, this outrageous concept about hysteria on the home front after Pearl Harbor.

It is based on three events, none of which happened at the same time.

The Japanese sub being sighted off the coast of Santa Barbara in February 42, that happened.

That led to the Battle of Los Angeles, where people started shooting in the sky at probably nothing.

because they thought they were being invaded.

And in 1943, these sort of Zoot suit riots between sailors and Zoot suiters who were being seen as unpatriotic for not signing up.

You know, they were like anti-authority.

But they're like pulling all these pieces of like the whole Ned Beatty plotline of this guy getting a fucking like aircraft gun in his backyard did happen, but not in California and in a different year.

But they were just sort of like plucking.

I mean, Tank, I'm forgetting what the take on tank was, but it was some other pitch.

And then they bring it to Milius.

He's like, eh.

But what else are you guys thinking in terms of war?

They start talking about the Battle of California.

Then, then it morphs into try writing something like that.

They think to write it as a drama.

And then at some point, it shifts into comedy.

Well, Spielberg is looking to make a movie.

So Spielberg had made these movies, Draws and Close Encounters.

You guys like those movies?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like those ones.

I was, by the way, I just want to say that I might just get Fayo on my grave, just ugly.

Forget the strong and dignified.

I've been holding that in for a long time.

I want

to reach out to you.

Jaws is probably my top 10 films of all time.

You're a big Jaws guy.

I love Jaws.

I love Close Encounters.

Actually, maybe I have Close Encounters ranked above Jaws on my personal list, but they're both like incredible movies.

Jurassic Park to me is

the king.

I mean, like, that's the perfect age.

I saw that movie i just uh

similar yeah and and and but jaws is like

going down to cape cod when i was younger and jaws being on in the summer it's like what like the idea of movies even just came from jaws i feel like and that so that's like and they're the best it's the it's it's one of the best of all time and you know 1941 is uh it's a movie yeah

yeah so spielberg's thinking of how do i follow those two movies uh he circled a pirates pirate movie uh-huh that was being written by Jeff Fiskin that he wanted to be like an old-fashioned sort of Errol Flynn movie.

He exits that movie because pirate movies are just not hot.

He's briefly attached to something called the Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings.

That was made, was it not?

Yeah,

John Battam directs it, whatever.

He also

sounds like a Troy McClure movie.

Yes, he really does.

The concabulous fantraption of whatever.

It is a Robbins, though, right?

Matthew Robbins wrote it with Hal Bar with the Sugarlands express guys um

he also uh circled magic the yeah haunted puppet movie with anthony hopkins that richard attenborough ends up making all right uh he was gonna make it with de niro

uh imagine how that puppet would be yeah i don't know

uh but then he was like attenborough did a great job with it did a better job than me i whatever i don't know um Instead, he's sort of thinking like, what if I do a big swerve, right?

Yeah.

How about a comedy?

Milius, I think, was sort of initially going to direct this movie.

Yes.

So John Milius was obviously a very chill and normal guy who

was kind of older, I feel like, than the rest, maybe a little older than the Spielberg Diplomas, but was sort of friends with all of them.

There was a chain of sort of

Coppola mentored Milius.

Right.

And Milius kind of took him.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And Coppola kind of stamped him and verified him.

And then he kind of took Spielberg and Lucas under his wing and De Palma.

There was this chain in the way that Milius.

But then they pass him.

Yes, they all.

I mean, Milius's big best-known movie is Conan the Barbarian, if you've heard of him.

But all those guys talk about Milius as like the greatest writer amongst all of them.

Weiger took a banana out of his pocket.

I thought he was happy to see us.

And in fact, there was a banana in his pocket.

And now he's eating a banana.

We were enjoying your guys' convo.

You guys were, you were doing a better job than we could ever do talking about this movie.

And we looked at each other and we nodded and we took out food and we started eating.

We decided while you're on your John Milius tangent, we're like, we're going to deploy Chekhov's snacks.

So Mimi grabbed his kind bar and I grabbed my banana.

And we're having a great time.

But

we're having a great time.

And Jemmy's sitting on the couch, by the way, for all this.

Oh, yeah.

We should credit Jemmy in the title of the episode as the third guest.

Jemmy is Emma's dog for people who aren't regular Doughboys listeners.

MR producer.

So

what I was going going to say is, Milius has this deal at the time,

right?

Set up at MGM.

So, he brings the script to MGM.

The first note is, you got to change that fucking title, right?

That's when they changed the title.

And the head of MGM at the time reads it and is like, I don't get this.

Absolutely not.

Passes on it.

Then a year passes.

And when Spielberg's like, I don't know what to do next, which I get.

I understand how if you make Jaws when you're in your 20s and it is the biggest movie in history, then you follow it up by making this incredibly personal movie that is going over budget and over schedule and everyone thinks is going to be your folly.

And then that succeeds wildly.

You're like, what the fuck do I do now?

And you're reading a script like Magic that is good on paper, but you're like, is this too small?

Like, how do I outdo myself?

What feels like it's living up to the expectation I've set for myself?

Like, it is safer to do the thing that on paper seems more dangerous

in a certain way.

He's drawn to two things.

He likes the Ferris wheel sequence his spielberg brain immediately is sort of like i that'd be fun to do because he's originally just reading it as a friend of the kids yeah uh but then

secondly more importantly he's like yeah what if i did something wild and funny um you know like uh

i didn't approach it like as an experiment but i thought it'd be a great opportunity he says to see to break a lot of furniture see a lot of glass shattering it was basically written and directed as one would perform in a demolition derby yes i mean he's sort of saying his mistake right there, where he's basically like leading with the spectacle.

Right.

But it's like, this is his metal machine music where he's like, what if it's like all antagonistic and extreme and it's just chaos?

He doesn't have a passion project, so this becomes the clearest thing for him.

And Close Encounters felt like, this is my most personal movie.

This is the most personal film I'm capable of making at this point.

So he's like cashed in that chip already and it's worked.

This was the other, the reason I'm winding up this whole thing is when spielberg signs on he goes they go to columbia because he had just done close encounters with them to say this is the next movie i want to make and in the year that it passed the now head of columbia was the guy who had passed on the movie at mgm

and he rereads the script right and he's like i still think this isn't good i stand by my assessment this isn't good but i guess if steven spielberg wants to make it but it wasn't a columbia movie it was a universal movie so then he had a first-look deal at Universal still left over from Jaws.

And the budget was getting so big that he went to Universal and convinced them to team up on it.

And Universal ended up getting the bigger piece of it, but it was a co-production.

But I just like that everyone involved was like, we said no to this movie two years ago.

We stand by that you haven't fixed it.

But I guess if Spielberg sees something in it, that there's something we're not getting.

So everyone's kind of going into this movie being like, bad idea.

It makes total sense why why everyone would say yes to it given his recent track record and also makes total sense why he would feel a bit of hubris you know like it's i i come i i understand absolutely how everyone arrived at this it's a just to return to the ferris wheel real quick which i think is a good another good sequence like it's like you know again there's there's stuff to there's stuff purely from a visual standpoint um that's that's that's very engrossing in this movie i mean just even just a high angle shot he does uh to connect the uh you know the people in the Ferris wheel cart to the ground.

It's just like,

you know, like

we're talking one perfect frame.

I mean, it's like that,

it's a good shot, you know?

But I feel like the Ferris wheel becoming unmoored from its hinges and rolling down the boulevard, that feels like something Ben would like.

Ben, am I correct there?

Oh, this is what a great instinct, Weiger.

Did you like 1941, Ben?

Yeah, we haven't checked in with your opinion.

Well, okay, so I wanted to be comprehensive, right?

Going into this.

So you started from watching 1900 and worked a right one, exactly.

Actually, I started with year one.

Yeah, fuck.

Good, good.

Better joke, better joke, better joke.

No, it's okay.

I stepped on it.

But I'm familiar enough with the Ferris wheel, and to answer your question, Wikes.

Yeah.

100%, man.

Hell yeah.

Now, I think

Wikes is onto something here, which on paper, this should be your kind of movie.

Like, you loved Crimewave, the Raimi movie that Raimi's kind of disowned.

Yes.

That is similarly all kind of like live-action cartoon, like people bunking bunking each other on the head

and chaos.

Very slapsticky, yeah.

Right.

Done at a very small budget, but like at this kind of manic pitch the entire time.

This movie has elements that feel like they should be fucking catnipped to you.

Yeah, and even just like the kind of

porch-esque quality of it, right?

TV movie.

Yeah, yeah.

But no, this could just not grab my interest.

It's a real like eyes sliding off the screen thing.

That's how I felt watching it.

The thing I said to you, I already forgot.

I texted it.

Yeah.

Was I'm watching 1941 right now, and it's such a slog.

I think it's ruining my day.

Definitely that, not just Sunday with three children.

This anecdote I really like.

Spielberg's making close encounters.

He's talking to Francois Truffaut, one of the great filmmakers and an idol of Steven Spielberg's, who's in the film.

Just be clear, he is actively developing this script, overseeing rewrites while he's making close encounters.

Truffaut

says, and this is Spielberg quoting him, I like you with Keeds.

You are wonderful with Keeds.

You must do a movie with just Keeds.

And Spielberg's like, well, yeah, I've always wanted to do something like that, but I've got to finish this, and then I'm going to do 1941, which is this movie about the Japanese attacking Los Angeles.

And Truffaut just apparently said, you are the child.

And he's like, you're making a huge mistake.

So Truffaut was right.

And he takes Truffaut's advice and is like, yeah, I guess I'll knock out a kind of like Raiders ET double bill after this, just kind of fucking level it out.

That's the thing about Spielberg, where you're like, oh, 1941, what a bomb.

How do you follow that up?

It's like, I don't know, Raiders are a lost artist and E.T.

is.

Yes.

So maybe just go and like suck his dick.

But this is, well, I gladly.

But this is, this is what is fascinating to me.

Talking about this movie, just like the weirdness of it treating World War II like it was a canard, right?

Like this movie tries to like wag the dog World War II or like the thing that like Doctor Strangelove Strangelove does where it like creates an incident that never happened right based around like the Cold War and the missile crisis and paranoia and all this sort of stuff

he's like riffing on a thing that we know turned out horrifically right for like most of the planets yes bad right and then the movie he does right after this is a like adventure serial where the villains are the Nazis set during

the exact same time period true and he finds the right way to thread the needle and of course like post Schindler, he said, like, I couldn't do another Indiana Jones movie where the villains are Nazis because I took it too seriously at that point and I didn't want to make light of it.

But you're like, fucking Last Crusade and Raiders have this balance on like somehow keeping in mind the enormity of the tragedy and the villainy and all of that sort of stuff without it being distracting.

Whereas this movie, you're just like, Hey, can we just like remember what's going on in the background here?

Yeah, you're right.

Uh,

there's so much to say.

I mean, he also tried to make this movie called Growing Up.

I'm just gonna kind of move past that.

We can talk about it later, okay.

Episode.

Um, was Growing Up the original sort of Fableman's?

Yeah, kind of people sort of think that Zemekis and Gail wrote it

for him because he was like, Do you want to write a movie about kids for me?

Yeah, and they said, like, it kind of was like a nerd versus jocks thing.

It wasn't like a sensitive, like, divorce movie.

Yeah.

Uh, and that they like got some money, and Spurg was like casting kids.

And Caleb Deschenel, the the cinematographer, was like, this fucking sucks.

This script is ass.

And like, I don't think you have a good idea here.

And Spielberg is like, yeah, forget it.

I won't do this.

And he, E.T.

is what he sort of settles on later.

Anyway, instead, he decides to do this gigantic, you know, overwhelming, expensive movie, even though this is a comedy.

about, again, nothing in particular.

It just screams like money.

It's crowds, sets,

explosions, like you're saying.

Like it's like that Armageddon commentary where, you know, the iconic DVD commentary for Armageddon where Ben Affleck is like three sheets to the wind.

And like in the first scene, there's the helicopters taking off behind Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck on the oil rig.

And Ben Affleck's like, that just costs $250,000.

Like, it doesn't need to be there.

It's not part of the plot.

There doesn't need to be a helicopter picking off right now.

And that's just $250,000, like right behind us, just like drowning us out.

That's what this movie is all the time.

This movie feels like that is the explicit purpose of every scene.

Right, like the center of every scene is the most expensive thing that's happening in the scene, not just as a background element.

But also, who is the star of this movie?

Great questions.

Because I walked into this movie, I loaded this movie up being like, well, Belushi is kind of the star, right?

And it's like, no, Belushi is just punctuation.

Oh, it's a classic Ackroid Belushi two-hander.

And I'm watching it.

And like an hour and 20 minutes in, I was like, Jesus Christ, are they never going to interact in this movie?

There's the point where they're both on the same street, but I think Ackroyd's knocked out and Belushi's on the other end.

And I'm like, but they're physically in the same space.

Are they finally going to link up?

And then they like go off in opposite directions.

And at the end of the movie, they salute each other in coverage.

They literally never appear in the same shot.

It is so insane to make a Belushi-Ackroyd comedy in 1979 and go, what if they never talk to each other?

That's, that, that was,

I feel like it has that problem of like a Caddyshack or something, which, by the way, I love Caddyshack, of course.

Caddyshack's pretty good.

But

Wally is maybe, and Wally doesn't do a bad job.

That guy Wally.

I'm like, young guy.

A young guy.

He's the cat's name.

I love the name.

I just am like,

this is maybe the main character of the movie.

This is the character who wins the dance contest.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's kind of the Zoot suitor.

Yeah, I know.

Right.

Yeah, he's the closest thing there is to a lead, but even he's like kind of hard to track, and he seems like a peripheral character the way he's introduced.

The extended cut is mostly adding in the meat of his story.

Because he's in I Want to Hold Your Hand.

He's in the Zemekis movie, I Want to Hold Your Hand, which is the easiest thing.

This carries over Wendy Joe Sperber and Eddie Deesen and a lot of early Zemecas stock company people that we talked about when we did that series.

I think he's pretty good in this.

I'm actually surprised that he didn't, his, he didn't do too, I mean, he worked consistently, but nothing really huge.

Never got famous.

Did kind of just fizzle out.

He does, yeah, yeah.

I mean, maybe it's just sort of like there's other guys like him.

Yeah.

But they talked about like, as the script was getting unwieldy, Gail and Zemekis were like, we should identify a kind of like central viewpoint character that you can go back to with like an emotional through line to track as we're like cutting across all these storylines.

Sort of.

Sort of.

Look, he's not bad, but in the like cacophony of this movie, it doesn't like help clarify the movie.

And you're also like, this isn't that gripping against the scale of the other shit happening.

And Universal famously like freaked out like six weeks before this movie came out and were like, this thing is unwieldy.

And their expectations are another Spielberg blockbuster.

You need to cut 30 minutes out.

And they cut 30 minutes out like last second.

And unsurprisingly, they cut down the 30 minutes with the least famous person.

Right.

Right.

Which he is the most boring, though.

I mean, like, it also is like, I do want to see more Beluchia.

Yeah.

I want to see the other people, but it just doesn't.

Totally.

Yeah.

He's the most vanilla character, but

although vanilla is a flavor, but

he's like the most just kind of straight-lace, like, you know, like the closest thing the movie has to protagonist.

But even the way he's introduced in the diner, Glenn Miller's in the mood, is playing and he's doing, you know, the jitter bug.

Like, he seems crazy there.

The way that you're onboarded to this character, because they're making, like, he's washing dishes.

They're doing a little Hobbit dishwashing song.

And...

You don't even know if you're supposed to like him.

You don't even know if you're supposed to like him.

Like, and then another guy who's making breakfast is like dropping whole eggs with shell onto the flat top.

And it's just like, what is going on here?

Everyone's just bad.

The amount of shit that happens in the first 15 minutes of this movie, it is disorienting because you like cannot find a handle of like, what am I supposed to be focusing on?

Yeah.

Let's also just acknowledge the cold open of this movie is like, I feel like one of the most infamously hubristic moments.

Yes.

It is the thing where like Spielberg talks about everyone wanted to take him down a peg.

They were looking for like a way to ding his armor.

Everyone's going into this movie.

The expectations are unreasonable.

Even if it had been good, but not great, people would have had their knives out.

And the opening scene of the movie is Spielberg parodying himself

and people just take out machetes and they're just like, fuck this so hard right off the bat.

I look, we were, we talked about this a little before we started recording.

And I did that my first thing that I wrote down, of course, because the first thing that happens in the movie, but I was like, would the Jaws parody annoy me today?

Like, if it was a different director that was parodying his own movie, and I don't know if it I maybe would even like it, I can't tell, but it is there's a lot of hubris from Spielberg.

But I, yes, I, it doesn't bother me that much, I guess.

But also, is that through the lens of me being a child that was raised on Jaws and loving Jaws?

I can't I don't know.

I think it plays pretty, it like feels pretty obnoxious to like parody your own thing.

It feels a little, you know,

I understand as a way to way to start the movie, it's a little off-putting.

Yeah.

I was just saying

I gave it points for being hornier.

It is a little hornier.

It's the same actress, right?

Way hornier.

It's the same actress.

And part of this is maybe the weird Zemekis thing because Zemekis is, as we uncovered, maybe the horniest man alive.

But like horny in a very like old school, kind of like a GIS, like a sort of busty lady pinned up in his locker or whatever, where he's like, check a a load, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

You know, like that's his horny vibe.

Did I say this in our here episode?

I don't know.

That

I was communicated to by someone who had worked with Zymanchis on developing a project that didn't happen in the last five years and said that they had a meeting with him for three hours and the only two things he wanted to talk about were boobs and special effects.

What did he want to say about boobs?

Everything, apparently.

I don't understand.

But like had no like story notes, casting ideas.

He's just like, I'm thinking big boobs for this one.

He's just like, you know what?

I like areolas.

Jesus.

By the way, if there was like, if the shark was there and his fin got bigger after seeing the girl or something, I would have liked something like that.

Give me the naked gun version.

That's already funny,

give me the naked gun version.

Why are you holding backwards just a halfway point?

Spielberg is too smart, and I think Semekis and Gale are too smart to actually do the great great naked gun shit where it's like yeah this should have no rocks in its brains like it should be so dumb can I can I open a little naked gun tangent here please I do a yearly rewatch of the trilogy great the first second and third funniest movies ever made

uh did that pretty recently right naked gun two and a half which is the first one that David Zucker directs solo but Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams were still producers and writers on it.

So they were all involved.

Comes out after Ghost, which Jerry had directed solo, had been this big transition, I'm a serious filmmaker movie that's a huge blockbuster and an Oscar nominee and winner and everything.

Naked Gun 2 and a half parodies Ghost.

It is like the only other example I could really think of of the exact same thing you're saying it.

In front of your own movie.

Doing it that closely after, right?

There's the slight bit of difference of like, this is David kind of ribbing his brother, right?

So it's not quite the same director, but Jerry's still involved.

It's not the cold open.

It was the trailer for the movie.

Right.

It doesn't feel galling.

It feels like kind of funny that it's like this guy who went serious is cutting himself back down to size.

And also, it's within a framework where that is what is expected.

If you're going to make a naked gun movie after you've made a best picture nominee, you have to make fun of yourself, right?

Like everything needs to be on the table.

But watching that and thinking of other spoof movies and everything,

it hit me me while watching 1941 last night, is there a fundamental rule that if you're spoofing something, it has to cost less money than the real thing you're spoofing?

It should look a little jankier.

Yeah, it should look better.

I think that, I think that's, that's kind of like, just kind of like a sketch comedy sort of

rule.

Yeah.

And I feel like, you know, you guys have worked in the same kind of like sketch comedy doldrums that I have, and especially like, you know, 2000s video sketches.

Yeah.

There is a level where the production value is so bad that it actually fails to function as a parody.

I think of like a lot of like, what if Wes Anderson directed blank videos that are bad, where you're like, if you can't successfully approximate his style, the satire doesn't work.

But yet you need to get within spitting distance.

And like Mel Brooks movies, Naked Gun movies, like all of them hit the right balance of like, this is done with genuine craft.

They approximate the thing just enough, but it doesn't feel like you're thinking about how much it costs.

There's almost like a

sorry stuff.

Did this cost more than any other war movie that had been made up until that point?

I mean, that's a very cool thing.

It's possible.

It's kind of the Last Action Hero sort of issue, too, right?

It's just like that feels like kind of too, and Last Action Hero works better than 1941, but it kind of feels too expensive to be parodying, to be a parody.

Yeah, there's kind of like a weird like double uncanny valley with parody because it's like there's also, you can, though, have like

a TikTok where someone has like a paper bag over their head, and that kind of works.

But then, once you start making it feel like a real thing, it needs to have a certain level of

fidelity behind it to feel like a parody.

But then you go too far, and then it stops feeling like it's any fun at all.

Dead on, right?

Because you can get away with nothing, or you can get away with getting fairly close, but you can't go over.

And ideally, you want to exist in that like middle space, which is really hard to hit.

And you're right, precisely.

That whole sequence of her going up on the periscope or

like it looks great.

It looks impressive.

It looks impressive.

It does, yeah.

But then the payoff is like a Japanese man being like, Hollywood, like seeing the girl and truly doing like borat horny noises at her.

I mean, you're just like, oh, okay, cool, great.

Right, because the bit is you start with the same actress doing the same night swim scene from Jaws.

And then they're kind of mimicking the music, and then they're just doing the music.

Right.

John Williams' score for 1941 kind of goes.

It kind of goes.

He showed up.

It was, it was earwormed into my head last night when I was trying to fall asleep.

But, you know, rather than a shark, the thing that pops out of the water is this German submarine and she's riding on the like periscope and it feels very phallic.

And then as you said, these soldiers all come out.

The jaws opening is just this classic like, man, look at the fucking Spielberg magic.

They couldn't get the shark to work.

He had to design a sequence where you don't see the shark.

It's all suggestion.

You're like, that sequence costs so little money to construct.

True.

The moment the submarine starts coming out of the water and she's like straddling the periscope, you're like, too expensive.

Too expensive, too complicated, not funny.

You know, it's like you have made something more technically complex than the thing you're parodying.

There's another bit of self-reference in this as well, right?

Because I believe it's, is it the actress from Duel, the gas station operator who's also

in this snake selicity?

That's the snake slice.

So she fills up his plane and then

like I'm almost astonished this movie doesn't have a close encounters parody as well.

That sequence is kind of funny.

I think the plane, like, you know,

the gas are up and then like this, you know, the gas going everywhere.

It's kind of funny.

I guess the nozzle, the unwieldy nozzle kind of like, you know,

being similar to the snakes, I guess that's what it's trying to reference.

I don't know.

Maybe.

Yeah, it's that one's that part's okay.

I just like Sim so half-heartedly being like, it's kind of funny.

It kind of works.

Sort of chuckling, yeah.

But also, like, Spielberg says this on the fucking laser disc where he's like, This is something only dual diehards will pick up.

But I'm like, right, at the time of this release, it's dual as a TV.

If you caught it on television, right?

It's like you can go check out the VHS.

That's like not a thing that most people are going to pick up on.

Can I just read my full 1941 laugh list?

Okay, go ahead.

I love it.

Reveal of Japanese soldiers disguised as X-Mysteries.

Oh, sure.

Which is classic.

It's cut in the version I saw in the theatrical.

That's that's uh, yeah, that's cut.

That's an extended cut.

That's an extended.

Okay, and then I found out in watching this making of that's a direct lift from a Marx Brothers movie that he was like, I want to do the Christmas tree bit.

Number two, I wrote almost everything Slim Pickens does.

Yeah, I think this is the most wholly successful performance, but also like sub-sub-plot.

He's just Slim Pickens.

That guy is fucking funny.

But to Mitch's point, there's kind of like a clearer comedic game in his little section that makes sense.

We'll circle back to this.

Number three, I did put down Belushi with the Coke bottle.

Got it out loud, ha, for me.

Number four, Eddie Deezen revealing the ventriloquist dummy.

Insane.

By the way, I was.

The way it's revealed, it's really

good to it.

I have a question for you guys.

Please.

Because you said he almost did this movie Magic, and then I was like, was this a nod to that movie?

To be.

It must be, right?

Oh, wow.

Because the other thing is, they wrote the script where the two guys in the carousel were supposed to be uh

abbot and castle

art carney and jackie gleason oh that's okay the honeymoon sure and they even wrote it as like one guy's a mailman and the other guy's a like they wrote it in the script that way then they have spielberg on board they're like we can get anyone they want they reach out to jackie gleason's agent and they relay back jackie gleason refuses to ever work with art carney again oh damn okay right well jackie gleason was a yeah a bit of a tough customer and i want to hold your hand had come out at this point and spielberg was like Where did you find this fucking Eddie Deeson guy?

Right.

Rewrite it and make it Deason and an old guy.

So it's Deason and the Mayor from Jaws.

But, but, like, I don't think he would have given Art Carney a ventriloquist dummy.

I think you're dead on that.

That was like a weird him making jokes about movies he didn't direct.

But again, it just kind of feels like, you know, it's just, well, let's throw more props at this and more explosions and more.

Yeah, it's like, I'm not what I laughed at.

The physicality at the reveal of you see a blanket next to him and it slowly rises.

That's pretty funny.

And then the head lifts up.

I gave a half chuckle at Belushi as old man eating spaghetti.

The weird cutaway to Belushi's cameo as a second non-speaking character.

I gave a half chuckle to water coming out of the dummy's nose at the end of the film.

That's pretty good.

That was good.

Yeah, that's pretty funny.

And then two full laughs at the dummy getting its own credit and the end credit.

Yeah, that was good.

And the explosions during the credits, which are the most I laughed in the entire movie.

Joe Flaherty getting the width in the cast of all these people.

And Joe Flaherty's good.

He's good and clear.

He kind of crushes his C's game.

But let's also say, in terms of like this movie, R.I.P.

Joe Flaherty recently recently cast.

Yeah, it's

unfunny in a way that almost defies logic.

This is a movie that has like four cast members from Stripes, three cast members from Laverne and Shirley,

two SATV people, two SNL people.

Like it is pulling from all the groups of the peaks of comedy, both like commercial and in like snob circles at the time on top of like 10 dramatic film legends including toshiro mifune yes

his only like movie that he spoke english in or whatever yes every other american film he made he was dubbed over by paul freeze cool who i believe is the ghost host from or the narrator from the haunted mansion ride right victor freeze of course was batman's enemy fell in a pressure

ice cubes right yeah he's sort of a tragic figure because his wife nora freeze yeah right wait they dubbed over him?

Over Mr.

Freeze?

Yes, they did.

They would dub over Tashira Mofune in every other American film he did.

He's an English dialogue.

This is the only film, American studio film, in which he actually speaks.

Right.

Yeah.

I heard that he like yelled at all the extras off.

He got them in line for the movies.

I am DB Trivia says that he got all the extras in line and was like, that's not how soldiers act and like got them acting like soldiers.

That's cool.

God, if he yelled at me, I would melt into

water.

By the end of filming, those men would have died for him.

Hell yeah.

But like now

my wife walked out because she didn't watch any of the movie, but she came outside when I was watching it once and

she,

you know, she came to the living area during the credits.

And the credits when she was packing her bags.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just signed a new lease.

We're very happy for her.

So like every third card or whatever, there's just like a random explosion that comes up.

And she watches it and she does laugh at it because she's like, why the fuck are things exploding during the credits?

But it's kind of a microcosm for the movie as a whole, right?

You're just watching it.

It's like, why are there inexplicable explosions every like, you know, like every like four seconds?

Like, what is going on exactly?

I have that.

I have one thought on the credits as well.

First of all, there's two thoughts here.

One, the dummy is sentient because it notices things before the guy from Critters notices things.

I forgot his name already.

Eddie Deeson?

Eddie Deason.

Eddie Deeson.

Who's didn't have as big of a career as I thought either.

I was surprised by that.

He was in a lot of weird stuff.

He was a specific career.

Very specific.

We covered him when we were doing the Zymekis movies, but he was this discovery, and they were like, he's just like this, and no one else is like this.

And you put him on screen and he goes.

And then he started getting bigger opportunities.

And people were like, oh, he can't memorize dialogue.

He can't take direction.

He can't hit marks.

You can sort of just let him like spin out.

But it was hard for people to figure out how to put him in any other context.

I love watching him spin out.

He is very, when I first heard his voice, I was like, what is this character?

And then I was like, oh my God, it's just, it's Eddie D.

It's the guy from Cruiters, Eddie Deason.

He famously was also the voice of Mandark on Dexter's Laboratory.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, right.

It's a Dexter's enemy.

Yes.

His rival, the sort of Grimes to Dexter's.

Correct.

And he's probably old enough where his entire childhood was pre-D's nuts.

So he avoided that.

That would have been tough.

That's a really good point.

Yeah.

He is very active on Facebook, and he is often posting about how.

Never a good sign.

He is often posting.

Get ready.

Yeah.

He's often posting about how he's been banned from local LA diners because the waitresses got uncomfortable by his compliments.

Oh, boy.

He's one of these.

With the dummy.

Tell a lady to smile anymore.

I'm hoping the dummy is the one doing, which, by the way, the dummy is credited in

the end credits.

The dummy.

He got got a full laugh list.

I just mentioned that as one of his laugh lines.

Oh, oh, oh, that's what was on your.

Sorry about that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But just be clear, two of the laugh lines were things that happened during the credits.

Right, which you have to, especially if the director's commentary is two and a half hours

later.

I'm going to read something from the dossier that I do think underlines what we're saying, which is Zemekis and Gale are like, look, our script was cynical.

It was like a dark movie, like a dark comedy.

And then Steve comes in and, you you know his tone is very different and it becomes more of a screwball comedy and spielberg's like yeah i was just trying to max out visual gags my role models were hell's a poppin' with red skeleton preston sturgis screwball comedies uh you know basically kind of like there shouldn't be like every something should be happening every second right like that's sort of to me that's If you think that of a Preston Sturgis movie, you're reading it wrong.

But like, obviously, Preston Sturgis movies, the dialogue is very fast.

There's lots of jokes.

I get that.

It's so intricately set up.

Incredible.

Big laughs come from, like, oh my God, you put all the pieces in place perfectly.

And for 15 minutes, it's been leading to this very clear, understandable sort of like conflict or whatever it is.

I mean, here are a couple of things he said in this retrospective.

Looney tunes becomes the thing he's referencing.

He brings Chuck Jones

in during development and says, Chuck, I want you to come up with the wildest visual gags you can.

And like, Chuck Jones comes up with a gag that's sort of like an explosion of the moment where Tim Matheson drops the bomb and it's rolling towards the speech, where the bomb is sentient and it's like rolling through the town on Main Street and driving everyone crazy.

And it's like five minutes of the bomb rolling everywhere in town.

And Spielberg was like, I don't know how to achieve this.

And he was like, it was a great sequence and it would have been great in animation, but I couldn't even begin to figure out how to film it.

And then he says, and this interview is from maybe the early 90s or the late 80s.

He goes, you know, today you probably could figure out a way to do it with CGI, computer-generated imagery.

Right.

It's a new concept.

What a time capsule that he was like, oh, I used insider lingo.

Right.

The other thing he said was he was like, at the time, people complained that the movie was too loud and too chaotic and cacophonous.

And I look at it now and I'm like, it's no different than playing Doom.

Oh, wow.

Spielberg the gamer.

And then he went to the game.

By the way, not true.

Doom is very like kind of quiet and greedy.

Yes, exactly.

Aspire.

But no, but he was like, yeah, I don't think the movie is that different from one of the CD-ROM games that kids would play.

Dear God.

Well, he was talking about the current Doom is very similar, but he didn't have a pre-copy of Doom 2016 or whatever.

No, no, he's just an old stairway.

No, no, it's, yeah, there's, I mean, you're like, whatever.

There's some

demons.

Yeah, there's demons.

You know, there's, there's, but it's like, there are moments of just walking down corridors, you know?

Like, Doom is like Skinnamarink.

Like, the first doom is like liminal horror.

Yes, much better paced.

There's moments of quiet in it.

It feels much better than that.

Right, which this there's also a

moment.

There's also a BFG in Doom, but it has its own.

Yes, there is the big F gun.

Yes.

B F J.

Is Quake.

Is Quake just like kind of goth doom?

Is that all Quake really did to Doom?

Huge question.

I guess it's got some more Lovecraft in it, too.

Yeah, it's kind of like a little more

Yeah, but it's right.

But yeah, it's kind of, I mean, the big Quake thing was a fully 3D engine.

It was like this kind of two and a half D thing they were doing with

Doom.

You can't actually, right, you're strafing and stuff.

That's the difference.

Okay.

You still have Quake.

Anyway,

this is the most interesting thing Spielberg says.

Okay.

So he says, I sort of saw...

the movie 1941 as a big Hollywood musical, like an old-fashioned golden age musical.

And I had talked with John Williams about doing like eight big, big band numbers, like big, big numbers.

And the zoo, you know, the jitterbug contest is kind of the only thing that remains of that concept.

And he's like, I kind of regret not making it just a big musical.

Now, that's one of those things I hear where I'm like, that is a good idea.

Yeah.

But you're insane.

Right.

Like, if that's your idea, then that's a different movie and you should make that square one.

Start from square one, exactly.

Now, he frames it as.

It really just sounds like they're like, oh, could we have explosions and musical sequences and like boobs and yeah, money?

and you know it just it's just they're throwing everything in there he frames it in this interview as i didn't have the courage of my convictions at that time to follow through on that right and then he's like you know i had this anything goes principle and basically at the beginning of temple of doom i do the type of musical number i wanted to do in 1941 there is one other movie spielberg has made that was originally developed or at least temporarily developed as a musical and then he welched on it for the same reasons where he's like i got scared.

I didn't know if I could tackle it.

I took all the songs out.

Amista.

Do you know what movie that is?

Correct.

No.

Do you know what it is, David?

I feel like I do, and I'm going to be annoyed when I'm going to guess.

It is spoilers, the other movie I put on the same tier as this in Skilberry's filmography.

Correct.

Correct.

Which is also left with one song where the daughter sings on the ship.

Which is a nice sequence.

But I believe five songs were written for that movie.

I mean, just similarly said, I just, I got freaked out by doing it.

And you hear this thing across his career that he always wanted to make a musical.

And I do think it's fascinating that when he finally did it, he was like, if I start with Westside's story, right, I'll just make one of the most famous musicals of all time.

And then I'll

prove it.

Nail it.

I'll just do all the other stuff real good.

But he kept toying with trying to make his own original musical and then being like, I don't know.

I don't know if I can pull it off.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Y'all like his Westside story?

I'm a big fan.

I think it is one of the most jaw-dropping, incredible movies ever made, and Griffin thought it was okay.

I like it quite a bit, which gets framed as me hating it.

I've been setting you up for this.

Yes, I think some of it is extraordinary.

I think Ansel Elgord is kind of the Achilles heel of the movie, which feeds into a bigger Spielberg failing to identify good young leading men thing that hits the last 10, 15 years of his story.

What's he been up to?

Yeah, what's he been up to?

Where'd he go?

Hey, hiding.

Hey, Ansel.

Where's the boy at?

Ansel, come on.

Mitch, you like the Spielberg Westside story?

I like it quite a bit.

I'm probably in between

Griff and Sims, I would say, is probably where I went on it.

I'll say this.

Great place to be.

Because this made me think of it.

It's empty right now.

There's no one here.

I'd figure it perfect.

I'd fit in perfectly with the whole puzzle piece.

Jump through the screen.

My question to you, this is kind of a hot take.

The dance sequence in this, the punch fight dance sequence, if that came out this decade, would it be amongst one of the best dance sequences in the last 10 years?

This is the fucking thing with Spielberg.

You're like, I feel like we talk about this.

We use this as like a gauge or descriptor a lot, but the types of movies where like if you were at a bar and this was playing on TV or projected on the wall behind you with the sound off and you're catching glimpses of it, you're like, does this rule?

Right.

Do I need to watch this?

And the second you actually lock in and watch it sound on as a movie, you're like, this is a mess.

But if you just looked over your shoulder while you were drinking and saw that staging for 15 seconds, you'd be like, oh, so this is one of his masterpieces.

It looks rad.

And again, you know, I don't want to belabor Red One, but if you took the Krampus set piece in Red One, the slat fight,

you took Krampus Schlacht, Krampus Schlacht, and you removed that and instead substituted this jitterbug dance contest.

Like, it'd be like, hey, you know what?

At least Red One has blank.

At least that sequence is cool.

So yeah, I think you're right.

But I did feel very, like, it does feel like a proto-West side story.

Like, even the scoring there, the John Williams kind of simulacrum of like a Louis Prima sort of a big band number is kind of Leonard Bernstein-y.

It is kind of like, like, it's, it's, I don't know, that, that, that's one, that's one of the few times in the movie where I feel like everything just kind of comes together.

Hot take better than any dance sequence in La La Land, for instance.

Yeah, I mean,

I mean, I don't know how hot take that.

No, I mean, like, you know, that's, that's, I don't, I don't feel like that's a film that's like, its choreography is mind-blowing.

It's got some cool shit.

It's Fine.

I think that is the failing of almost all modern movie musicals.

Yeah, I think Lalin's even right.

I mean, that's why Better Man,

which is out in theaters right now.

Probably tonight.

Probably gone by the time we finished.

Yeah, I was going to say.

It might be gone by the time we finish recording.

Better man

three days ago.

Exactly.

Is really trying to solve those problems of like, you know, it's like, how do I shoot a musical sequence in a movie?

Do I just have a wide so you can see all the dancing and see the sort of choreography altogether?

That's boring, though.

It's static.

Or do I cut into the action a bunch and now I'm like, you know, messing up the rhythm of the songs and of the, you know, of everything.

And the CGI goop layer, though, never doesn't help the better man.

I saw Better Man.

I saw Better Man Better Man.

I saw it at Tiff, and I

don't hate Better Man, weirdly.

It's a very confusing movie, but I do think that this

dance sequence feels so much more authentic and real than almost anything.

It's a huge set.

It's a huge crowd.

Yeah.

I think you're spot on.

And like, it's the thing I always complain about is I see modern movie musicals and I either feel like the choreography was sort of an afterthought.

It was the last piece of the puzzle and the one they didn't devote enough time and practice and thought to, or the dance has been worked out and we can't see it.

There is not confidence in the way it is shot and cut.

We're just not getting to see it

in its sort of full form.

And it feels like it's always either or.

And it's part of what like makes you wish that Spielberg had made five musicals in his career where you're like the way he treats action and the basic staging and blocking of like dialogue scenes shows such an understanding of how you should approach a musical.

And you'll get those moments that are ecstatic.

Yeah.

But also to your point, Mitch, there is the moment in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

where like the Russian spies or whatever are like circling them and he's at the diner with Mutt Williams and Mutt like starts a fake fight between R.I.P.

Mutt and like the preppy college guys.

R.I.P.

Mutt.

A true kid.

Not canonically dead.

Of course.

I know.

I know.

He had the courage that John Wayne lacked.

Yeah, John Wayne did.

Yellow-bellied coward.

But do you know the moment I'm talking about where Mutt basically?

Sure, yeah, starts the fight at the diner.

He starts a fight between like the preppies and the bikers so that there's a distraction, they can break out.

And I'm like, that's like a version of Spielberg almost trying to do the same thing he does in the Zoot Suit sequence visually that he is able to contain within like 25 seconds where you're like, there is an economy and a cleanness to that.

He's the best at that time.

Whereas, this is the one time I feel like almost in his entire career where he's not doing the incredible Spielberg math: how do I simplify the sequence as much as possible?

His greatest skill set is to like show up on the day and go, How do we make this the fewest number of shots?

How do we like find the way to convey this information as quickly and cleanly as possible and with a little bit of charm and wit?

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I will say that so there's the C and I don't know how sequential we're going here, but the

I don't think we can because I don't remember the sequence.

Like, it's too boring.

It's not a coherent sequence of events.

It's just like a bunch of shit that happens.

Big sequences, right?

But they don't really knock onto each other that importantly anyway.

So Belushi, so Belushi going into the city, and you know, like they're his plane is pursuing the other plane with

the horny airplane lady and the guy who's trying to seduce her.

Which, God bless her.

God bless her.

Tim Matheson.

Tim Matheson.

Right.

The straight arrow.

She's as horny as her jaws opening.

Same animal house actors.

Oh, you're right.

As horny as the jaws opening is, I wanted the movie to be more horny, so I was happy with the horny plane stuff.

That is fun.

So they're like

titanium.

It's kind of a titanium.

The plane titanium.

Yeah.

So they're,

yeah, the birthing sequence at the end is really unsettling.

After she pretends to be a guy's dead son for an hour.

The movie's wild, man.

Anyway, so the...

There's the, there's, there's the two, there's like the dogfight, right?

The plane pursuing the other plane through the city.

And like his sense of geography, like he uses the Roosevelt Hotel

sign as like kind of a landmark.

And like there's like four consecutive shots where you're seeing the Roosevelt Hotel.

I think that's whatever the sign is.

Like from four different angles, just so you can get a sense of like where all the anti-aircraft batteries and where all the civilians on the ground and where the planes are in relation to each other.

And it's just like, this guy is just the fucking best at this.

Like this is so, he makes this

the 3D

environment.

is represented in a 2D plane in a way that makes complete visual sense to anyone who's watching it.

So you have, yeah, you do have stuff like that where she's like, again, this is just like really exceptional craft.

Which, by the way, there is a moment in that where I got annoyed where they're like, we're going to take Hollywood to Highland.

And I was like, you're at Hollywood in Highland.

Well, you remember when the tank guy is yelling at?

It fucking laughs.

It fucking annoyed.

Right, right.

Sorry.

To the point of what Sims just said, no, no, no.

What's crazy is that like he can't stop himself from doing that shit, from like the constant like geographical centering, like giving the audience the visual information to understand the relationship between images.

Story-wise, he is almost pointedly doing the opposite.

Like you saying it's hard to recount this movie in order.

It feels like there is very little relationship between scenes in this movie.

Yes.

And like, I understand part of it is that it's doing this kind of tapestry, like 10 different plot thread stuff.

Yeah.

But it's like actually hard to keep track of any level of cause and effect in this movie.

100%.

And part of it is just realizing this as we were saying it, like there are like

different fundamental misunderstandings in this movie.

Right.

Like unlike something like a lot of these sort of like satirical war movies, right?

Where you're like, the Russians are coming.

There's like one thing of like a Russian shows up in town and they think it's an invasion.

You know, like Doctor Strangelove, one wrong call is made kind of shit.

This movie just keeps stacking up misunderstandings.

And they don't really interact.

I mean, some interact and some don't.

But a lot of them don't, right?

Exactly.

So you're like.

Like a submarine thing kind of is a self-contained story.

And it sort of has nothing to do with Belushi, who's just on his shit, but thinks he's being attacked because Tim Matheson is trying to get laid because Nancy Allen only wants to fuck inside a plane.

Right.

And then there's like the Warren Oates character who's kind of like the Sterling Hayden character from Dr.

Street Love.

But we barely see him.

Yes.

And he's like only spoken of for a while.

And then when he shows up, it's kind of like an hour into the movie and you don't care.

Right.

And you're like, they're right.

Everyone's right that the Japanese do want to attack California, but also the Japanese have no understanding of geography.

So you have this whole misunderstanding based on where they are.

So it's like everyone reacting to a threat that is real, that they're misunderstanding, but also the people who are the threat are fucking up.

The threat is also not real, but of course, it is real.

In that World War II is real, right?

And will be a thing, just not here.

Right.

This ties into the Treat Williams character.

I didn't know if he was a good guy.

I was like, is he going to end up with a girl at the end of the movie?

He's an asshole.

He's somewhere between Bluto and the Hillside Strangler.

He's like,

he's either a fun villain or the worst man in the world.

He's like trying to grab.

He sucks.

Yeah.

He's kind of right.

Just a straight up sort of sociopath bully.

Like, I mean, Treat Williams is fine at that, but you're kind of like, what's this character doing here?

Bob Gale was saying that one of their big ideas they had when they were like, Spielberg saying it, like, keep on coming up with more, more and more.

And they were like, you know, it's a funny setup.

A guy desperate to lose his virginity in the middle of warfare.

Yeah.

And I was like, okay.

And they were like, so we had this whole scene written where they're like hiding out under tanks trying to fuck because the guy's so worried he's going to die before he loses his virginity.

And then as he's explaining it, I realize he's talking about the treat Williams like

in the movie.

There's the reveal of the tank moving and her running away in terror because he's been trying to sexually assault her.

And it's not just that he's been like a pushy creep the whole movie.

That moment is like he has grabbed her and pulled her under a tank.

Yes.

And she is like running away and pulling her skirt back up.

And I'm like, how did this go from this being a character you're kind of rooting for to get laid?

Well, I will say that like him being like a rapier blue dough.

Right.

But my understanding is, and I didn't watch the extended cut.

My understanding in the extended cut, there is a scene where he fucks a pie, right?

Yeah, there's also a big like glory hole scene where they're like spying on girls in the shower.

Yeah, and then a woman comes out and yanks it.

And then a dog jizzes into a

Nclair and being wilder.

They eat dog Clum McClaire.

Right.

Yeah.

There's also a scene where

Treat Williams is looking for hair gel.

Wow, interesting.

And he finds it right on the ear of a friend.

It's a fact.

It is Belushi's.

It's just one of those things where America was like, there's this great sequence with the hair gel.

Everyone loves it.

And I'm like, so what's the sequence?

Like, he jerks off and comes on his ear and it sticks there.

And I'm like, doesn't do that.

That's not a thing that happens.

It is so funny.

That's never happened to anyone in the history of society.

They talk about the Fairleigh Brothers.

Come on, glue.

The Academy Award-winning Fairleigh Brothers.

Yeah.

Talk about...

Well, just one of them.

Did they not?

Did Bobby not have any credit?

That's insane.

They talk about how when they were filming that on the day, Stiller was spiraling over the logic.

This doesn't make any fucking sense.

Why would it go all the way, like, just vertically into my ear?

And you're like, that's not how like cum holds.

It looks wrong.

Like, what are you talking about?

And there's the moment earlier where he like comes, she knocks on the door and he's he's like, Oh, hold on.

And it's like he's looking for where the cum went so he could clean it up.

And in that moment, he turns 360 degrees, and you see there's nothing on his ear.

And they were like, Stiller was freaking out over this.

And we were just like, Ben, you got to trust us.

It's funny.

And I feel like there's so many stories about Stiller that

something like that.

And it being like, he's freaking out over nothing.

Right.

He's overthinking it.

But this one kind of with him.

Yeah.

He was right.

And yet, the results were undeniable.

Yeah.

She put that fucking cum in her hair and that movie made 200 million dollars because everyone at every office was like you gotta see what this fucking hair gel is i remember when my mom and dad were just laughing so much at that moment i saw it with my mom and dad and sister and they were just going nuts and i was like that's fucking gnarly like like that was The poster for the movie was her in a red dress and like a Marilyn Monroe seven-year-itch pose with the hair flipped up.

And every article and review I remember about that movie is like, you're not going to believe what happens in the hair gel scene.

You have to see it for yourself.

By the way, another issue, Treat Williams, not a virgin.

No, he's not a virgin at all.

Rest in peace, Treat.

But like, he's like, he's a Chad.

He's a Chad.

He doesn't read as...

I mean, I guess you could buy it as like, oh, it's all, you know.

It's all show with him.

And he's thinking actually, right, like covering up for

this weird game of telephone of like this thing getting like so far away from the original idea.

Have you guys seen used cars, the Zemeccus movie that he made made shortly after this with um kurt russell i've never seen used cars i've never seen it but i think it is maybe playing at the at the vista right now it's worth seeing it's higher far better than this movie it is incredibly funny and it is the exact tone this movie is going to think it it's this movie is close to that movie in like just manic tone yeah but used cars is about something really stupid which is used car salesmen across the street from each other basically getting into like a prank war correct and this movie is about world war ii yeah you know and it's sort of like the tone is all wrong, and maybe there's a way to make it right for 1941 that they just didn't figure out.

But with used cars, it's like, yeah, just simplify a little bit, and then I can root for people and think they're stupid.

Without spoiling it, used cars also builds to one big set piece that is like a logistical production, like wowzer, right?

And that maybe was not really expensive because the movie didn't cost that much, but certainly is like a big to-do.

And it like earns pulling off this one sequence where the movie at that point has been so moderate in scale that you're like laughing at the excess of it because it's so out of nowhere.

You can't believe suddenly this movie's heightening to this level versus like 1941 starting at that point.

Right.

He also Spielberg in this fucking documentary, I'm quoting 8,000 times, says, like, you know, he's like, I'm proud of the movie.

I had fun making it.

I should have let Zemekis direct it.

Their voice and their sensibility was like, they're on the page and I didn't get it.

and I didn't have a take and they were much angrier and more political and like they maybe could have pulled it off.

But there's the incredible like ripple effect of like I want to hold your hand bombs, which they make while they're sort of developing this script, comes out before this, this bombs.

And then people are like, oh, those guys are.

trouble.

I want to hold your hand is great.

But it's like a flop.

And then they write Spielberg's first flop and they wanted to make Back to the Future next.

And Spielberg was going to produce it, and they were like, if you produce our next movie, we will seem like your cronies and no one will ever take us seriously on our own.

Wow.

So Zemekis like puts out, I'm a director for hire.

I need to just do a studio job and like impress people, gets Romancing the Stone, over-delivers on Romancing the Stone.

Romancing the Stone is a success.

Good movie.

And then that leads to him getting to make Back to the Future with Spielberg as producer and everyone like trusting that he's his own guy.

If they had directed 1941, it probably would have been better than this.

But

I don't think it would have, like, we would have not had the next 10 to 15 years of Zemekis we got, I'm guessing.

Wow.

Yeah.

And I also, like, I, I don't know if like a stronger directorial voice, I haven't read the script, but a stronger directorial voice or a more dialed in directorial voice to what the script is going for necessarily compensates for the problems in the script, which I think is a bit is the main issue with this movie.

It's just a little overstuffed and the narrative is hard to track.

Griffin, going back to Treat Williams real quick, did you feel seen up on screen seeing a character whose defining characteristic is he hates eggs?

Does hate eggs.

To a degree you can't imagine.

Wow.

Every time the egg shit was called out, I like physically held a thumbs up to the screen,

which I was not doing at any other point in the film.

I'm like, I hate that I'm rooting for this guy that I'm relating to.

Well, but he's right about eggs.

Zemek has figured out the Treat Williams character with Biff.

He basically, who also hates manure, the manure bit at the end is that same payoff as the eggs bit at the end.

He ends in a pile, ends in a pile of it.

And also, Treat Williams.

And he's like similar a date rapist who like in Back to the Future, you enjoy his comeuppance if he's vindicating.

And in this one, I guess Treat Williams also gets kind of like assaulted by the lady is kind of what his come up is.

But then, like that's a good point of like this the Wally character feels like uh crisp and glover in back to the future with like less of a take yes way less of a take right yeah um here here's the thing I want to throw just like into the the conception of this movie right

um and and like the idea that like Zemekis maybe would have directed this better but should this not have been directed by anybody Wigs and Mitch, have you had this experience as well?

Because I was thinking this while watching it of like reading scripts that come across as like potential jobs or just like things that are like floating around the industry that you get your eyes on and you're like, oh my God, this is so funny.

This is the funniest script I've read in a long time.

And then the movie comes out two years later.

It's a disaster, but the movie isn't really that different from the script.

And you like, the realization I've had sometimes of like, there are certain things that are funny on paper that just immediately fall apart if they are realized, where you're like, this is funny in mind's eye.

And the second you have real people doing it in front of like a proper set, you can't stop thinking about the fact that, like, oh, World War II is happening.

Shit, you know, like shit like that.

I know what you're describing.

I can't think of a specific example.

Well, it happens to us every week with dope.

We write the Doughboys episodes.

That's true.

The scripts are great.

Police scripts are really, really good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You have Rosenthal do a pass, and then you're like, this is the best one yet.

I know exactly what you're talking about, just with auditioning and stuff.

And like, for me, it's always more like, oh, this like kind of, this works.

Like, this is like, it seems like the person gets this or something.

And then

when you see it made, you're like, ooh, something was lost in translation or whatever.

But I can't.

But I think it's

also very often with like kind of high concept special effects comedies where I read it and I'm like, this one's actually well written.

It has good jokes and good structure.

Yeah.

And then like the execution of those things is so fine.

for like how it stays funny, but within stakes.

Like the one I kept thinking of while watching this, a radically different movie, but like the sitter, the Jonah Hill David Gordon Green movie was like this really hot script and it was like, oh my God, there are like 10 incredible lines on every page of this thing.

And then you watch it as a movie and you're like, it's less funny the second they're actual kids.

Yeah.

Sure, yeah.

You know, because you just can't stop thinking about like, is this like child abuse?

Right.

Like, yes.

I know, I'm trying to think of a specific version of that, but like, I mean, like, I know that there's been so many instances of it.

I, and I do have a couple in my head, I'm not going to say them, but, but, uh, because I don't, I'm not going to say them, but uh, sure, but I remember, I just remember when like year one was coming out.

You mentioned it earlier, like, how

excited everyone was about that movie, and the cast was great, and then that movie just fell apart.

But that was like the hottest script, yeah, that like the hottest people were attached to.

Old comedy legend directing it, new comedy stars starring in it, right, big concepts, like first like new project after knocked up

year one.

It kind kind of feels like an old Mel Brooksy movie, right?

Bringing greatness back.

Yeah, you know, Caveman.

Everyone was like, this script is funny on paper, but it's one of those scripts where you're like, cool, it'll take $60 million to mount because it needs like giant sets and extras and whatever.

And you watch it, and it just like falls apart in real time.

Can I throw out a theory?

Yeah.

Is the number one cursed?

Who gave fuck?

Okay, let's movies with one in them.

1941.

Either one, red one.

Red one.

Well, red one, sure.

Yeah, but that's three three stitches.

That's three bad one.

Look up movies with the number one.

Like, you know what I mean?

I don't know why to see a list here.

Transformers one.

I like that movie.

It was good, but it was a big flop.

Didn't do well.

Did not hit

Transformers One is

one of those movies where it's like, you know, it starts out with like, oh, I'm just like a ordinary Transformer working in the mines.

And I'm like,

he's a fucking robot that turns into shit.

Like, it's such a weird thing.

And then you find his charm.

That's the thing.

By the last 10 minutes, you're like, is this a perfect diamond cutscreen?

Did you guys see Transformers 1?

I did not.

Wait, can a one be in the title?

Like, 1917.

See, it's 19 and 17.

There's no one.

There's no one.

Atlanta, the one.

Yeah, Atlanta doesn't count.

But how about

said out loud?

Horizon and American Saga Chapter One.

I mean, certainly a big flop.

Quite a big flop.

Air Force One is the only title that's coming to mind as

a well-liked hit that has stood the test of time and has won in the third.

And I'm a huge fan of the airplane when a certain president is aboard, the current one, by the time this episode drops.

Ready Player One.

Wow.

I'm a huge fan.

I think

they'll fight over.

Yeah.

I think Ready Player One is a terrific film, but a lot of people don't.

Yeah.

And it's one of the...

Loaded weapon one?

I'm saying that's a flop.

I've never seen it.

I wonder if it's any good.

I have seen it.

I remember it making me laugh when I was like 13.

It's just funny that it's Emilio Estevez and Samuel Jackson.

You're like, oh, so it's like an action movie?

They're like, no, no, no, it's a parody.

And I'm like, but those guys could just be in an action movie.

That's right.

They could have actually been alternate casting in any of the Buddy Cop movies of the previous five years.

So are they funny?

And I guess I've never had the question answered for me.

I mean, Samuel Jackson can pretty much do anything.

Agreed.

Yeah.

That movie must have been Emilio getting jealous of Carly.

This is the thing of his fucking brother.

Yeah.

Yes.

That he was like, I can fucking make fun of you.

He could do hot shots.

I'll do this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Weiger theory is bad.

It starts to fall apart.

There's a ton of good ones.

I just looked.

You got Godzilla minus one.

You got

one was good.

You got Good One, one of my favorite movies a lot.

One for Robert Luka's family.

I'm not the biggest Rogue One fan, but it is a good movie.

That's a good movie.

It's a pretty good movie.

All right.

You fucked up bad.

Yeah, this is terrible.

This sucks.

I want to say about John Velushi, who we've talked about, but, you know,

we've never covered well, obviously, because

he makes a lot of movies.

movies yeah yeah um he was as as we've you know spielberg was like obsessed with snl he knew i guess you know like many people that it like had a lot of juice and he was like kind of a groupie for the first season he went to almost every table

did we talk about this in our group text okay yeah yeah so that's like

that's like much publicized is kind of dorky of him yeah

much publicized that during like those first five seasons he would go to almost every table he was hanging out and he was like entranced by the production and the machinery and everything.

What's crazier is that I have heard from people who currently work on SNL.

He still hangs out.

He still goes to more episodes than he doesn't.

Yeah, that's wild.

That he'll just show up and they'll be like, yeah, he like took it.

He's like giving Disney notes.

He's standing in the back.

No, he doesn't interact with him.

He's just like, I love watching this happen.

I mean, good for him.

If I'm Steven Spielberg, I would like to, I would just do the things I wanted to do.

Totally.

Wait, was that?

Like, was he at the infamous taping depicted in Saturday Night?

Was he

at tournaments at that real taping?

I'm not actually sure about that.

I mean, that taping was so crazy.

Everything

there is a moment where

Sammy Fabelman is in the background.

He's playing a dual role with Kalushi.

Yeah,

in one shot, he's actually playing Sammy Fabelman.

If you look really closely,

it's eagle-eyed viewers watching Reitman Saturday Night.

You can see an actor dressed like Steven Spielberg is laying one of the famous bricks

in those final seconds before George Carlin's monologue.

He finally did it.

Matthew Reese, kind of a curveball as Carlin, not kind of good.

Yeah.

This is the thing.

I'm going to say this.

I think I fully hate that movie.

Fair enough.

And I try to reserve throwing the H-word out at films.

But that movie drove me insane.

I think it basically has like 10 borderline

performances in it.

There's some bad ones, too.

But I did think this watching 1941 last night, where I'm like, if they announced tomorrow that Steven Spielberg wanted to make a movie about any version of the first five years of SNL, even just having seen Saturday Night, I'd be like, sign me the fuck up.

Sure.

I will say,

I'm seeing here in the notes that Steven Spielberg was the guy who told Adrian Brody to do the Rasta dance century, Sean Lee.

Yeah, he also told Ashley Simpson told Ashley Simpson and just lip-sync it, and he he did give a picture of the pope to Sinead O'Connor.

He was the only picture of his kind.

He was ever given notes.

Yeah, he was just like, hey, do you want this?

Yeah, it's probably.

He actually gives a picture of the pope to every musical guest.

She's just the only one who's got a picture of it.

Everyone just folds it up, puts it in their pocket.

You should rip up a picture of the two popes on Doughboys, see what happens.

You should.

You should.

Wait, have a Pope Month.

Yeah.

Two months is fun.

Conclave.

Conclave.

Man, if the Doughboys went to the Vatican.

Yeah, Doughboys go to the Vatican and an invisible force throws them out.

Like you try to cross the border and you're just like expelled.

What would Vatican Month be called?

Oh man.

Boy.

This is a pun master.

Is there like a McDonald's in the Vatican?

Like, is there like a

Vatican City Sparrow?

There's got to be something.

Yeah, Fatican's pretty good.

Vatican's pretty good.

Yeah, Vatican Shitty.

Wait a second.

Vatican shitty is pretty good.

Is there actually a

Sabaros of the Vatican City?

There's no no way they've seen it.

I don't know Sabaros.

No.

There's got to be some colours.

There's one at 33.

I haven't seen Conclave yet.

Do they show a Sabarro or anything like that?

Yeah, they get a big pizza in Conclave.

I mean, Two Popes actually does have a pizza sequence.

Oh, right.

Two Popes sequesters.

It does.

Yeah, where Hopkins says, that's my pizza.

That's a real sequence of Two Popes.

I did hear a rumor about the Vatican City Sabaros.

What's that?

That I just established may or may not exist.

I heard a rumor that someone I know went there, and they looked in the marinara tank.

Oh, God.

And they were doing a Jaws parody inside.

Oh, wow.

And then they went back the next day and in the marinara, they were doing a parody of the Open of 1941.

I hear that

the Sparrow at the Vatican City is where they store all the holy water.

Oh, I've heard that.

For the entire world.

It's wet.

Remember the joke is that it's wet.

Yes, no, he knows.

He knows.

We all know the joke.

And you guys should listen to Griffin Sparrow episode of Doughboys

for a moment where I was making dinner, I think, while I was listening to it.

And I started to have that moment with comedy podcasts sometimes where I'm like, am I having like a panic attack or a brain event?

Or have they just been talking about fucking water for a half hour?

Like, it feels like you've lost your mind.

It sounds like you hate us, which is the right reaction.

It was so funny.

Which, by the way, my reaction to anything Saturday Night Live does is like most comedians is that they can do no wrong.

I love Saturday Night Live

Saturday Night Live and everything about it is great.

You text us every Saturday night.

You were like, my review 8 plus.

It's another one for the record books, boys.

10 out of 10.

The streak continues.

Yeah.

Real quick.

Sorry.

I just, I heard at the Vatican.

I remember at the Vatican City Sparrow

that in the pasta water where they cook the tortellinis,

the shape of water guy hangs out in there.

The fish cut?

Yeah, he's in the back.

Wax, I was coming up with a Sally Hawkins take, and I think you had the better one.

I was drafting it.

She jerks off in the Tortellini one.

Yeah, exactly.

I was going to do.

Yeah, the Shaver Water guy got fully baptized in the Smarrow.

He's hardcore Catholic now.

He's like a J.D.

Vance, like late-in-life conversion.

Right.

He's weird about it.

Yeah.

Right.

He keeps saying ecumenical.

And you're like, relax.

Do you think, do you think, so go on a Saturday night live tendency, do you think Saturday, do you think it is like the most bulletproof of all shows still?

Because I still do think that people are not as critical as I know comedians are of it.

Like it remains.

Yeah, it means publicly.

What are you talking about?

It gets so much shit.

It does get shit.

But I think, yeah.

I think you're right, Mitch, that like I will hear people say like, oh my God, SNL is so irrelevant.

Like, why is that still on the air?

And I'm like, you clearly don't engage with it anymore, but you cannot deny that this show has basically stayed culturally important for like

the first like 20 years of SNL.

It's like, oh, they're obviously peaks and valleys.

I would say they've basically remained kind of center of the culture for like 25 years uncontested.

And it's also kind of one of those like, well, why don't you go do a better one?

And no one's ever like whatever.

No one can pull it off.

And also, this movie is kind of this, you want this movie to be an SNL feeling movie.

And it's, it should be.

And it's not.

That's probably the kind of anarchic feeling Spielberg wants.

And that's why, why, just to finish my point about John Belushi, that character was a minor character in the script, and they kind of beef it up once they cast him.

Right, his that character was only supposed to enter into the film basically at the point where he lands on the ground.

He was supposed to just be a last act.

Here's one final element of chaos.

Cast Belushi, they're like, We got to thread Belushi through the first two-thirds of this.

Belushi and Akroyd are both doing SNL.

They could only do three days a week of filming.

And Belushi, I don't know if you guys know this,

was very interested in using the drug cocaine all the time.

Does JJ have a citation for that?

And

Spielberg, I think, probably because Belushi died so young and so on, you know, it has always just been like, it was wonderful working with him.

It was a great time.

But I think on set, he was a bit of a nightmare.

And at one point, Spielberg yelled at him, like, you can't do this to me.

Like, for $350,000, you got to show up on time.

Because, like, Belushi was always late to set and didn't know his lines.

But, like, that's how Animal House was made, right?

Where he had like two to three days off per week, and he would like shuttle back and forth and was like delirious.

Right.

And it comes out the year before this and it's like a revolutionary.

He's amazing in it.

It's like culturally like shattering, right?

Do you guys like Belush?

I love him.

Yeah, I mean, I think he's like, I think all of us, he's like a little bit before our time.

But I think if you watch his...

you know, totemic like performances, it's like, oh, okay, this guy had the juice.

And, you know, obviously life tragically cut short.

It was interesting to see a movie that I like.

I see Belushi doing stuff that I haven't seen before with 1940.

Not that he did something different, but I'm saying like, oh, this is just footage of him I haven't watched because I'd never seen the movie.

And it was like, I got, I get it.

You know what I mean?

I get why he was a star.

And that's the thing, like, as I said before, every time he's on screen, it at least resembles a comedy, which you can't say for like John Candy and Dan Aykroyd.

And the other wildly funny people in this movie who are all basically at the peaks of their careers, Belushi is the only one who like actually has that level of juice.

To your point, there are basically, if you're like discounting small supporting roles, there are four Belushi like movies.

Even in Animal House, he's in a lot less of it than people remember, but it's Animal House, 1941, Blues Brothers.

It's five.

I'm sorry.

Continental Divide Neighbors.

And Neighbors, which I've never seen.

Those are the five movies where like Belushi is above the title.

His face is the biggest on the poster.

I was such a big SNL kid.

I discovered SNL when I was like eight or nine, and the video store across the street from us had a bunch of VHSs of the first five seasons of SNL.

So I was like rapidly watching first five seasons SNL.

Right.

And it was like canonized for me in this massive, massive way.

And like my father was such a big Belushi fan.

He showed me Animal House and Blues Brothers way too young.

And I was sort of like raised at the altar of this guy.

I remember at some point when I was young, my father saying to me, and then, you know, Steven Spielberg made 1941, which was this big flop.

Right.

And I was like, what's that?

And he was like, it's like a war comedy with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.

And I was like, how have I not seen this?

So it's the best movie ever made.

And he was like, no, it sucks and it's not funny.

And I was like, how is that possible?

But I think that's like the way in which this was received in a way that also doesn't help this movie upon release is like.

the no, the idea of like, oh my God, Spielberg is going to work with the most exciting people in comedy, like the people who are fucking burning down the institutions.

And the first, these trailers that I was searching for, that fucking tagline I wanted, the first teaser trailer for this movie, which is a year before the film comes out, was by all accounts directed by John Melius.

And I would say is funnier than the entirety of the finished film is, is John Belushi landing a plane and then doing direct address to the camera.

Sort of like war ad, like, I'm out there fighting for you.

I need to enlist you to come see my movie next year.

Like it's, he's pitching next Christmas, and it's just Belushi doing straight-to-camera chaos.

And if you see that trailer and it says, like, from the director of Jaws and Close Encounters, one year from now, there's a John Belushi comedy.

And then you sit in the theater a year later, and this is what you get.

Like, the poster is like his giant caricaturized head.

Right.

20 minutes of them total, maybe in the movie, right?

Maybe, maybe.

And a lot of it is silent.

Like, it's just him driving a plane.

But, like, that's what they were leading with.

Yeah, well, what else are you going to fucking lead right now?

The second teaser trailer, The second teaser trailer says

a model set of

Los Angeles.

Yeah.

And then just a big stone.

1941 letters, numbers rise out of the ground.

And then it just does like Superman flying credits of every cast member, which you go into the list of like Ned Beatty, Christopher Lee,

Shira Mifune, all this shit.

It's just giving you all the names and then says like the most explosive comedy event in the year.

Those first two trailers show combined zero seconds of footage of the movie.

And all they're doing is get ready.

This is going to be the biggest shit of all time.

Like, they like put a fucking target on their backs.

Yeah, they did.

They also meant to make it for 12 million, and it cost 31.

Which is so much slower than I even thought it was, honestly.

My guess with 1979, that's quite a bit, right?

But, but, uh, it's it's a lot of money, it would be over a hundred million dollars.

It basically made its money back domestically, barely, and that's it.

It made some more worldwide, so I don't think it was a total disaster, but it made Spielberg look bad because Jaws had gone over budget and over schedule.

And now, you know, Close Encounters, they kind of fucked around right, exactly, and like kind of made it seem like a low-budget movie and it turned into a really big budget movie.

Right.

And so it's by what by Raiders is when he's like, I need to demonstrate that I can like contain a budget.

Which is two where like you can get away with it if you keep making one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, right?

Uh, and then this time it's like, if you're just breaking even, you're done with your shit.

when it came out

like I said it basically turned a profit Pauline Kahle did like it Pauline Kale is like one of his earliest fans but then turns on him by race

next movie She's like fuck this.

It's kiddie bullshit.

Wow.

But largely critics hated it

and you know it would like you say Griff like they had just set themselves up for disappointment.

Like, you know, the audiences were just, I think, expecting the funniest and biggest movie.

And it's like, you're not getting funny.

I guess you're getting big.

Yeah.

But the big isn't funny.

I know.

And it feels like you're being yelled at.

Very, yeah, very strange.

That's insane to turn on of a Raiders.

Yeah.

So, I mean, like, I.

Yeah, Pauline Kale was basically like Raiders.

She was just like, boring.

This is like schematic.

He's like, lost the plot.

And she was the one person who, when Sugarland Express came out, her review is like, this is one of the greatest debuts by a filmmaker ever.

He's going to be one of the great American filmmakers.

Like,

called it dead on.

And then by Raiders, she's like this fucking kid playing with his stupid toys.

Yeah.

Yeah.

John Candy is like barely in this movie, but he does have

like one of the few hard jokes that worked for me, Griffin, which is when Dan Aykroyd gets knocked out, he gets hit in the head, and John Candy's like, oh, he always had a glass head.

I kind of like that glass head.

But there you go.

There's also, he also has the bit where him and what's the actor's name, McRae?

Yeah.

How McRae.

John John McCrae.

Is he an NFL player?

Hal McRae is a baseball player.

What am I talking about?

Frank McRae.

Frank McCairs.

That guy was a professional football player.

He gets soot on his face and he looks like a black man.

And then he throws flour.

So the flower part is like, why is he throwing flour at him anyway?

Yes.

And then they laugh at each other while Candy's panicking because they look like they're doing opposite minstrel.

It's like a very weird bit that goes on for a while.

It's weird bitch.

It's also in-use cars.

I actually liked that there was like, oh, yes.

Cause he's like, to the back of the, he tells Kane to go to the back of the tank.

And I think I actually liked that there was like.

a guy particip even though it's white people who wrote this joke i'm like there's a man participating in this these kind of racy jokes which before it's like we're pointing and laughing at like the movie of turning and laughing at people that that he's more active but it's like it's one of those things where it's like i'm i'm not even framing it as like a punching down like punching up thing.

It just so often in this movie, you're like, I don't understand who the target of the joke is.

Right.

And like for how much Spielberg would cite the Marx brothers and like Looney Tunes and these things that had this sort of like chaotic, a million things are happening and nothing's too big moments.

All of those things have a very simple, like innate setup of like the Marx brothers usually go into fancy places.

They're at opera houses or like dinner parties and you surround them with a bunch of, well, well, I never.

And you're like, wait, I want to see those people be taken down.

Yeah.

Right.

It's funny to see Margaret Dumont get taken down a bed.

Bugs Bunny can be an asshole to a hunter because a hunter is pointing a gun in his hole.

Yes.

And he has to like fight to survive.

Right.

And that way it's funny when he like is a stinker.

This movie is like everyone's just yelling at everyone and doing shit.

Yes.

And you're like, I don't know.

Like, I have no perspective on who I'm supposed to be.

I don't want to say who I'm supposed to be rooting for, but just sort of like who any joke is at the expense of.

Why did John Kenny throw flour at him?

It doesn't even make it.

We don't know.

It doesn't even make sense.

That whole, and

again, yeah, you're not sure who, like, who's supposed to be the butt of this joke.

And then within that tank, though, there's all sorts of shit like that happening.

Like, there's, there's also Dan Aykroyd, who's like, yeah, he Dan Aykroyd puts a sack of oranges over his head.

And then he puts the two oranges on his eyes and is like, I am a bug.

And that's the sort of thing.

It's like, if that's in the script, I like, I have no idea how they reached that point, but like, it's probably just not

just not in the script, right?

So, Spielberg is just pointing a camera at a funny guy and saying, I don't know, just something funny.

And so it just feels completely random.

I mean, it's very funny to think of being like interior, you cut back to interior tank off a bug, and it cuts back to whatever else.

Here's like a great encapsulation of the movie for any listeners who did not bother to watch it, right?

There are like eight major plot threads just within this one thread of the tank, guys, right?

You have John Candy and Frank McRae doing this like race swapping play, right?

Then you have Dan Aykroyd in the back.

This is all in the last like 20 minutes of the movie when it's reaching a fever pitch for everyone's on the street and it's starts at a fever pitch, right?

So like Candy and McRae are doing this.

Ackroyd is directly behind them with oranges on his eyes going, I'm a bug.

And then immediately after that, the tank runs through the walls of a paint factory

into giant vats of colored paint, making like huge colored explosions.

And you're like, there is too much going on.

This is far too early.

And none of it has to do with anything else.

And this is just one of the strings.

And then we're like cutting back to like Tim Matheson, like trying to get away from it.

Fucking in a plane or Ned Beatty like blowing up his own house or whatever.

Yeah.

You know, like shit where you're just like, fuck about the Ned Beatty.

Oh, because, like, what's going on with that?

I don't know.

And it's just sort of like, I want to shout out Greg Gene, I think is his name, who did the miniatures on this this movie.

He's a legendary miniature guy.

He'd done Close Encounters because, I mean, Spielberg says this, like, they did the most incredible job, like making Hollywood Boulevard.

Like, the details on all these buildings are amazing.

Like, it's an incredibly masterful technical achievement, like what they're doing, all in the service of the bullshit you're talking about and blowing it all up.

Greg Gene, I also want to say, did Star Trek the Next Generation's matrix.

He built the ships.

Yeah.

And there's a famous, my favorite episode of Star Wars, Star Trek, one of my favorite episodes is Cause and Effect, which is the episode where they get stuck in a time loop because a ship keeps coming out of a black hole and crashing into them.

And like then, the day, it's a Groundhog Day episode.

And when that episode ends, they avoid the ship.

And it turns out that it's the USS Bozeman, and Kelsey Grammer is the captain.

And he like calls in.

He's like, hello, how are you doing?

And it turns out he's from like 80 years ago.

He's been stuck in a time loop for 80 years.

And the USS Bozeman is NCC 1941 As homage to this film.

Wow.

There you go.

And when Kelsey Grammar falls into the time warp, does it go, oh my lord.

It's just so funny that it's Kelsey Grammar.

It's like Fraser-era Kelsey Grammar wearing an older.

It was very good.

Thank you.

Anyway.

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Gail said, Bob Gail, when they were just like running wild, just throwing any single idea at the screenplay, right?

And he was like, once we like were commissioned to write this movie, we just started doing a ton of research and looking into all the things that happened like in this area, in this time period, interesting weird stories from the war that we could fold into the script and the way that like the baby thing is based on something that happened.

They were looking for real-life inspiration.

And he was like, I found out about this incredible thing.

I'm going to speak about this very quickly and probably get a lot of the major details wrong, but just try to do a quick overview.

Cool.

There's, yeah, get ready.

There's this thing called the Boeing Wonderland, which was when the Boeing company was making all the warplanes, all their factory plants where they were being constructed.

They were worried were going to be targets by the Japanese to be, you know, bombed or whatever.

So they built faked hyper detailed force perspective miniature town a pretend town named the Boeing Wonderland atop the roof yes of this plant so that anyone flying overhead would think it was just another suburban neighborhood and it was basically a thing that only worked from the vantage point of someone in a plane from a reasonable distance that far above and he was like this is such an interesting thing I can't believe this is real people don't know about it because it was like kept top secret at the time and like wrote it in as a whole plot thread.

And was like, we had this scene where they're like touring the town, and then we decided like it was just one thing too many in the movie.

And I'm like, that sounds more interesting than 90% of the shit that ended up in the movie.

This is the whole thing.

It's just like, maybe that should just be a movie.

Totally.

Like, rather than whatever this is.

Before.

And 30 years later, we get Welcome to Marwin.

A better movie.

Is Welcome to Marwin better than 1941?

Yes or no?

This is really difficult.

Have you guys been welcomed to Marwin?

Yeah.

Do you weigh in on that?

I mean, Nick lives in Marwin Call, to be clear.

He's one of the action figures.

This is true.

I think I'd rather

I think I'd rather re-watch 1941 than Marwin.

That's fair.

I like 1941.

That's my big.

How much do you like it, Mitch?

Like, as we're winding up, it's a C on here.

I think it's a C.

Right.

So you're saying kind of like

it's over the border of enjoyable.

You give give it the light.

It's

a great movie, but you don't mind.

I want to watch the extended cut because

the, by the way, what happens to Holly Wood?

Holly,

what's his name?

Slim Pickens.

He's just kind of dropped from the movie.

I mean, that's the other interesting thing he said is that Spielberg wanted Slim Pickens in the film as a reference to Doctor Strange

explicitly, right?

Originally, he was going to be in one-shot non-speaking,

which is like very hubristic in the same way we're talking about him like referencing his own movies and pointing at the best example of what he's trying to do through a visual reference to one of the actors.

And Gail and Zemekis, very smartly, were like, hey, Slim Pickens is one of the best character actors alive.

Right.

You might as well use him.

You might as well use him.

This entire plot line didn't exist.

And that's why it's kind of separate from him.

Milius suggested they were like, we should come up with something for Slim Pickens to do.

And they were like, what if there's a who's on first situation?

This guy's

right.

You can do this whole thing.

And it's like, this is the strongest comedic idea in the entire movie.

It is the thing they came up with last.

He's funny.

It's basically reverse engineered from having the actor, but it's also the only comedic setup in the movie where I'm like, the game is really clear to me, the stakes are really clear, the interplay is clear, the sort of like culture clash between the two of them.

He plays it so well of like being terrified, but also feeling like, what is the patriotic thing to do to how to stay in my ground?

And then like interrogating him with prune juice because

prune juice is funny it's like funny and it's like they landed on it by mistake at the last how did they not have him come in at the end yeah it's like an extended sketch that's just like a like self-contained and then abandoned it doesn't even actually impact the plot because it's like the compass they don't get it out of him so they they figure out to use they're like tracking the radio to figure out where hollywood is right they should have had him at the end like shit out the compass they should have they should have from a toilet perspective you should have seen the compass coming out of his asshole i think that would have been good you mentioned i think that's a great solve i think we should have seen nickel boys but he shot from a toilet of a compass falling out of a man's asshole What if you do an upside down Nickel Boys and you shoot an entire movie from the perspective of a butthole?

Spielberg's like, it has to be in the movie.

And they're like, the film is unreleasable.

You have a naked asshole shitting on the camera.

It's now like an X-rated film.

I don't care.

If you got a brown compass falling on the camera at the end, I think that that's pretty pretty good.

Yeah.

No, I'm just like, you could build the entire movie out of this.

Like, there is something better about like, you know, just like a small town guy gets like abducted by like confused Japanese soldiers and they have this weird standoff within a submarine.

That's the thing, though.

There's half a dozen plot lines in here that probably would make a funny 90-minute, you know, not-as-big-budget movie.

And maybe you can like put two or three of them together and weave it into like a silly farce.

And this is just too much i've never

sims i've never seen you this uh with like you're like uh

you're just like we just need it sounds like you want to end this movie itself and end this episode it's just too silly for you really you've never seen him like

every time we've done the podcast he's

wrapping my daily existence i must end this episode but no no i but i kind of that's how i felt about the movie the whole time i was just like and it's a real basta guys let's rap

but i also just feel like i don't usually like these kinds of movies they're not usually good.

No.

Anytime anyone's like, oh, I want to do like my take on It's a Mad Mad Matt.

I'm like, have you watched It's a Mad Members yet?

It sucks.

Yeah, also not very good.

Like, is there one of those?

It has some funny stuff.

Yeah.

Like, you know, as all these things do, Rat Race has some funny stuff.

Rat Race is pretty good.

Rat Race, directed by Jerry Zucker.

Yeah, yeah.

Rat Race,

It's a Mad Mad Mad Met World gets a lot of juice just out of being the first time someone tried that.

And you can even feel it now, like living in the present and having watched all the things that have attempted to do it.

It has a certain energy from like the novelty and the ambition of what they're pulling off.

Yeah, and it also just like

it cast a wide net, they correctly got all the funny people, they let all of them do their funny things, but it is like an incredibly long, misshapen movie.

It's like three hours long.

Yes, you're just like, all right, enough, all right.

But also, I think it's also trying to be funny in a different way.

Like, this feels

confused about what funny it's supposed to be in Mad Mad, Mad, Mad World.

It doesn't, it isn't like the thing that's going to make you like fall over laughing, but it is like it knows the type of humor it is i guess and this one it just gets confused you also know what you're watching it's like oh they're all trying to get the money like it's like okay again there's there's a big w with money underneath it and they're all trying to get the

setup is incredibly simple and it's just like now we'll just have sketches essentially right and they're all on the road which means they can run into other funny people but you have the main five threads and you understand them in relation to each other because they're all working towards the same end goal weirdest thing about that movie is it sort of like Spielberg following up Close Encounters, even more seriously.

It is Stanley Kramer's follow-up to Judgment at Nuremberg.

Like that he was like, I'll do something silly after this.

Right.

Starring Spencer Tracy.

Which this, you know, should be.

And instead, it feels like

whatever.

Like, it feels like an epic in search of, you know, more jokes or a plot or a point.

I don't like it.

I don't either.

But I don't hate it.

It is just like, it is a confounding.

I found it like a chore.

I did as as well.

You know, like, kind of like, okay.

Not helped by the extra 30 minutes I committed to.

Yeah, I want to like that.

I want to watch that now.

I want to watch the extended version.

Is it not?

Maybe you're going to give it a B-minus.

Maybe you're going to like that even more.

Sims, which one did you watch?

I watched the regular version.

Mitch, I also feel like you...

Especially your sort of take on a lot of modern cinema is kind of like, I'm crying out for a Spielberg here.

Like, as much as you, you know, you're, you know, 1941 is flawed, you're just recognizing, like, there's craft.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, like, that's something that's just missing unless, you know, it's Red One, obviously, which is the best crafted movie.

No, I still haven't seen Red One.

I'm going to watch it.

This is reductive, but movies are things that you look at and listen to.

And at the end of the day, this is directed by Steven Spielberg, the DP whose name I forget, but it shot a ton of

great movies.

Let me double check.

William Freaker.

Yeah, great.

Legendary DP.

And it's got a John Williams score.

I mean,

it at least has that going for it.

it, which is good, yeah.

The John Williams score is genuinely

good, it's got like a lot of Eric Copeland in it, and it's yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's kind of I feel like it's on the right side of me.

It's got a really strong, hummable theme, like the the score is more in tune with the humor this movie is attempting than the movie itself theory of this film's humor, yeah.

But it's, I mean, it's like it is fascinating as a sort of like

um,

we'll talk about sometimes like uh uh people like uh who seemingly walk straight into a cultural cancellation where it's like, oh, there's some part of them that wants to be caught.

Spurlock.

Well, that's the most extreme version of it, right?

All right.

Hey,

we know.

We know.

We know.

We know.

We know.

You know.

But there's also like the version of people who will sort of like self-sabotage a career because they can't handle the pressure.

Is there someone in particular you're thinking of?

Well, you know what?

This is the first credited screen appearance.

He only appears at the very end is the only moment I clocked him of Mickey Rohr.

And he is someone who talks that way about his night.

Right.

I basically behaved in a way of like, get me out of fame.

But even just what he picked, like the projects he took on and how he behaved on set was partially that like he could not handle the pressure of everyone being like, you're the new De Niro.

You have it.

Right?

Like we're all looking at you.

And I think it's not quite the same thing, but like kinds of kindness.

I remember when you walked out, you were like, this is Jorgis being like, I need to fight back against the idea that I'm like automatic prestige.

Jorgas being like, I am not the next Tim Burton.

Fuck you, Jesus Christ.

Right.

I want to make people angry at me again so I can like reset the table and still feel transgressive.

I do think the way Spielberg talks about the making of this movie and the decision-making process and being like, I just like want to not hold myself to any standard is like almost consciously him trying to get his biggest flop out of the way so he can move on from it.

I like that.

Yeah, maybe there's something to that.

And again, he follows it up with his, you know, kind of his two biggest hits, right?

Apart from Joe, I mean, I don't know, and like Raiders is arguably his tightest movie, it is, it's his tightest movie in every way, and it's storyboarded to hell, and it came in under budget and on time, and all that.

And it's him being like, I learned my lesson, I'm a good little boy, right?

Before we play the box office game, is there anything else you guys noted in this bloated-ass movie that we have not touched on?

Sims, I want to say this: that as much as I say I do like it and I appreciate it, I did pause the movie and read the entire Wikipedia for Dumbo during the movie.

Hell yeah.

Much better movie.

And then read the entire Wikipedia for Trumbo because it just reminded me of Trumbo.

Yeah, sure.

So I was very distracted and took like an hour break.

I thought the second half of the movie, I thought once it gets to the Zoot Suit riot is basically when I was like, that was more when I was on board.

And all the big spectacle and the house sliding off the Goonie.

Is it the Goonies Cliff?

Cool.

I know David is always very skeptical about the notion of fan edits and the fan edit community.

I am, yes.

One of our listeners recently emailed us, and I scanned through it.

I haven't sat down and watched it, but we have our infamous, infamous battle about which half of the holiday is good and which half is bad.

Yes.

And a listener emailed him and was like, I agree with your take.

So here is my cut of the holiday that is just the Kate Winslet half of the movie,

where Jude Law and Cameron Day is never appear on screen.

Sure.

That cut itself is an hour and 10 minutes, which speaks to how long that film is.

But even at the end where the two like cross over,

he cut around any time.

So you don't even see them.

You never see them.

But this guy sent me down a rabbit hole of similar fan edits.

And there's one guy I found on Reddit.

I've been meaning to pass this along to you, Mitch, who was advertising that he did a cut of Romulus.

where he took out all the dumb fan service callback shit.

Oh, that's true.

So he took out that, took out all the lines, and people were like, this is a lot of people.

I would watch that.

So then I messaged this guy to get a link to it.

And he was like, I have a couple other edits you might be interested in.

And one was a similar cut of solo where he did a similar, like, take out the dumb fan edit shit or the dumb fan service shit.

Right.

And like streamline the story.

That's right.

There's not too much of, right.

And he did a cut of Miami Vice that he called Miami Nice,

where he was like, can you combine the superior aspects of the directors and theatrical?

Right.

And I'm like, this guy seems really interesting.

I like all of his thought experiments.

What I want someone, maybe this guy to do next is do a cut of 1941 where you just put in the entirety of Dumbo.

It's a clean,

it's a pretty light lift.

Yeah.

I'm just watching like the elephant, the mom elephant caress Dumbo while she sings Baby Mind.

And I'm just like, animation is so beautiful.

And then I'm thinking about like, in 1941, this must have felt like.

Really revolutionary to watch something like this.

Yeah.

Well,

then we're not watching Dumbo anymore.

And I'm like, boring, like, back to this shitty movie.

So you can obviously go, you can certainly go full frame with some of the Dumbo.

You've got some wides of the screen with the theater watching it.

You've also got some reaction shots of Robert Stack.

I wonder if you have enough to sustain the full movie just between like kind of, you know, cutting through existing quadrature.

I think it would be funny.

It's funny if we just occasionally click back to Robert Stack like 80 times.

Still good.

Yeah.

I was reminded, my thing is I was reminded of how good Robert Stack is in Beavis and Butthead Dua Barrett.

funny

movie, too.

He's good in this.

He's like,

he's so funny.

He's a leader.

Immediately after this, figure out how to use him in comedies properly.

He's pretty good in this.

He's good in this, but he actually just sort of seems like a serious person who's trying to clean up the mess.

And you're like, I support you, Robert Stack.

But right, airplane gets the straight arrow joke with him much better.

I want to call out the fan edit Redditor is username straight cuts no chaser.

And if they tell me that they don't want me saying their username on Mike, then I will have this cut out for the other.

I'm sure they would be happy.

I have one, I just have

one last, just two last thoughts, basically.

One, I was like, I like that it was, I like that it was lighthearted because there's like sirens going off and it's about the destruction of Hollywood, which is like, if it was a dramatic movie watching that this week, it probably would feel like too much.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah,

it's the timing of some of the things.

The other favorite movie we watched this week is Always, which is entirely about like forest fires

and guys trying to like

extinguish in planes flaming trees.

It's just a weird two Spielberg to watch in a very tragic week for the Los Angeles era.

So I was happy that it was lighthearted.

I, I, uh, the end, there,

I want to ask you guys this.

He's like, 42 is going to be an even bigger year.

Were they angling for, was that a sequel angle?

It feels like it.

Jesus Christ.

It feels like it.

That would be.

And they could watch Bambi.

They could.

Oh, that's fun.

That was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's just the, movie.

It's just like the guys who didn't go overseas are just like, should we watch a movie?

And they go watch.

They're an amazing franchise setup to just be like, yeah, we can make one for every year.

Yeah, Jesus.

We got these years on lock.

I have

38 years ahead right now.

Go ahead.

I have two more quick things.

One is, and

y'all may have the factual answer there, but like, so in this one, it's fictionalized where the land of Hollywood land is busted off by John Belushi's plane, right?

Right.

The famous Hollywood side used to say Hollywood Land.

Well, my understanding is because I always, what I learned is that the land was destroyed by the Rocketeer.

So, do you know which is true?

Yeah.

Oh, boy.

You're a Rocketeerist.

I'm a Rocketeerist, yeah.

Right.

Yeah, no, it was definitely

Billy Campbell.

Is that the Rocketeer?

Yeah.

Okay.

I feel like in the movie Hollywood Land.

The Ben Affleck movie.

Adrian Brody.

And Adrian Brody, right?

Yeah.

Where they use

the crumbling of the land as like a metaphorical.

Darkness.

right the darkness is so great this place isn't even a land anymore it's just an idea but i feel like they explain in that what actually happened to the letters what did happen i think uh to the adrian brody adrian brody in that movie uh as lazzlo tooth uh takes it down as an architectural uh experiment he does he pours water on yeah he runs his hang along there's a brody verse that uh that is slowly building up where his village character unfortunately is is gonna pop into the next

only one man who can stop it.

I have a buddy who.

Private Royce from Predators?

Sure.

Or what about the mean record executive from Cadillac Records?

I've just heard it?

Yeah, exactly.

I think it's Arthur.

It's definitely chess.

Larry Chess.

Chess records.

I have a buddy who confronted the Rocketeer outside of a hotel and he said that he didn't believe that he was the reason that the land went down and he punched him.

He punched it.

The Rocketeer punched him.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

I'm kind of with the Rocketeer there, honestly.

Yeah.

I mean, like, even if it was a thing that he, like, was made up, like, you'd still confront him.

Leave a man alone.

He's an old man.

you know did you read that op-ed where the rocketeer said he was voting for trump yeah

really disappointing yeah

i mean i guess i should have seen it coming from like an art deco 30s hero yeah who's like kind of ayn rand coded yeah and it's also just like i don't know he's an old man and like what's he done recently outside of dancing with the stars you know yeah and punching the guy um i have i have one more i have one more

he almost he almost did a movie a few years ago that he was going to do red rocket was actually going to be red rocketeer oh yeah I did read that.

He just didn't want to show dick on stuff.

Yeah, Sean Baker insisted.

Wait, what was your other thought?

Yeah, what's your other thought?

My other thing, going back to Trumbo,

fun fact,

the Wikipedia.

Of course, let's please go back to Trumbo.

I've got to go back to the Wikipedia entry for Trumbo was written in a bathtub.

All right.

Yeah, of course.

There you go.

The page itself is wet.

Yeah.

By the way, Los Angeles has an idea to help battle the fires in the future.

They're going to build a bunch of Sparrows.

Jesus Christ.

That's good.

You know, I actually heard, I heard,

I went to Sparrow last week because I was just like, we're dealing with fires out here.

And it's like, you kind of like, I just want some trashy food to kind of comfort me.

And it's great.

All these fast food workers are still on the job.

God bless them.

So I went to the Sabarro at the

Fox Hills Mall to get myself some comfort food.

And

they're boiling the marinara back there.

In the marinara is Trumbo with a typewriter in the screenplay.

But he's got a mustache and a chef's hat on.

Yeah.

Hey, I'm alright, my screenplay.

I'm Italian Trumbo over here.

Also, I know we finished, we moved on from our Adrian Brody little sidebar.

I don't want to offer spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen The Brutalist yet.

You know what my favorite scene was in that movie?

What?

When they go to Italy and the old guy pours the marinara on the marble, that is really reveals its beauty.

That was very touching and very sensitive culturally, I found.

From Sabaros, of course, you see them go to Sabaros, ask for a cup of marinara.

I went to one of those hydrants that wasn't working, and

I followed it back.

I guess we're ended up.

Is it Sparrow?

Oh, boy, that's all that's an issue.

That was

part of the issue.

I'm really glad he gave us the time to answer

rather than just telling us.

My only last thought is that, and this sums up this movie to me.

Yeah.

Please.

This sums up this movie to me, is that when they when they do the credit, I mean, I know we've talked about the credits a lot, yeah, but when they do the credits,

uh, and and maybe you said this already, the explosions we've had before the explosions, yeah, every character they show is just like ah, they're all skewing, just fucking mad out.

Because there's no clip of anyone being quiet in this movie that you can find.

And can I actually just say one more thing before we play the box office game?

Yeah, I think you need to.

I forgot to bring this up earlier, but Weiger, when you were saying that this movie has the manic energy of the water world stunt show,

which can sustain for 20 minutes, but not like a full two hours, did you hear the rumor that Universal is going to replace that with a Sparrow World stunt show?

Again, for any listener who doesn't know what's going on, please listen to Doughboys every week, a wonderful podcast, especially Griffin Smarrows episode.

The Super Nintendo adaptation of Sparrow World actually has an amazing soundtrack.

It's a weird thing.

Yeah, it does.

It does.

Yeah.

So this film came out.

This actually is weird.

This film came out at Christmas time.

I don't think this is a particularly good Christmas movie.

But as I said, that teaser trailer,

yeah,

this is where Baby is nailing the wreath at the end when he knocks his house into the.

Yeah, it's kind of like a very light Christmas movie.

I also think that, like, before Spielberg, you know, basically created the modern blockbuster with Jaws in a summer release, Christmas was the number one most desirable release.

Christmas is much more wide open.

You're right.

It was the best movie.

All of these movies are big.

So it's opening number three,

which is pretty decent, but

it wasn't like the success they hoped for.

And number one of the box office is kind of the biggest play of the year.

Sort of.

It's a big sci-fi movie.

It's a big sci-fi movie.

We've covered it on our Patreon.

In 1979.

We've covered it on our Patreon.

Is it 2010?

No.

The year we make contact?

No.

Is it Star Trek the Motion Picture?

Okay, there we go.

Star Trek the Motion Picture, which, of course, was a television show.

They were going to make Star Trek Phase 2.

And then Star Wars came out and they were like, fuck, this needs to just be a movie.

These are movies now.

And Star Trek the Motion Picture arrived and did well, but was also disappointed.

But it's all disappointing.

It's also like almost like if they announced tomorrow

that they were greenlighting a $200 million NYPD blue movie with the original

literally, yes.

I mean, maybe, okay.

It's not, I'm trying to think of

the X-Files is kind of a good analog, I guess.

But they've already done movies of that.

It would be the X-Files if X-Files didn't have two movies and a revival.

Yeah, like, or, yeah, I don't know.

I mean, some kind of big cult show.

Yeah, it just

isn't how massive the Star Wars Close Encounters effect was combined with like...

Trek being the original cult show that lingered.

Real quick, Sims, I know you've covered on the Patreon.

People have heard your take, but Sims, as a trekkie,

what do you think of Star Trek Motion Picture?

I am a huge fan and huge defender of, as it was known at the time, Star Trek the slow motion picture.

I think it just

or the motionless picture.

I've been, I saw it when I was a kid and I was just very taken with it.

It is objectively boring and it is objectively kind of like not very good at like the Star Trek stuff.

Like it doesn't really have a really good handle on Kirk and Spock and it's a great mood piece.

But it's such a cool, weird, moody movie and all the visual effects are so cool.

And I love the story, and I always will defend it.

But Khan is, you know, episode, you know, Star Trek II, Wrath of Khan, is them figuring everything out.

Like the formula for these movies, Kirk and Spock's dynamic, everything.

I mean, I love, I love that movie.

I want to shout out real quick while we're talking Star Trek, Nicholas Meyer, who is the director of Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country.

And of Wrath of Khan, yeah.

But Nicholas Meyer, when I was on the, during the WGA strikes, he was out on the picket lines like every day.

I'd see that guy all the time.

And he's, he's like, you know, he's a,

I believe it was born in the 40s.

So like, you know, he's still out there.

He's like in his late 70s.

He rocks.

I mean, I love him.

I love him rocks.

He's two things.

David, do you have the

Star Trek, the motion picture soundtrack on vinyl?

No, I have

Wrath of Khan on vinyl.

Okay.

I bought it and then a better version came out.

I'll give you the old version, the less good version.

Second thing, this episode's coming out on February 2nd.

Okay.

Yesterday, February 1st, on our Patreon, we finished the Jelly Trilogy conversation.

And we're about to start.

So it's now the next generation.

We're about to start doing all the Picard movies.

Wow.

Very exciting for that.

Great layers.

There's all four of them.

It was only four.

But then we have a little treat for number for movie three.

We can say it.

Yeah, Galaxy Quest.

We'll tackle Galaxy Quest on.

Why not?

Why not?

Why not?

Now, but listen to this.

Box Office game questions.

Sorry, okay.

1941 is opening number three.

No, I'm just saying, I didn't know this until now.

This is devastating for 1941.

Number two at the box office, new this week, opening against 1941, is one of the best comedies of the 70s.

Wow.

And like a shot out of a cannon, holy shit, like movie star movie.

Is it the jerk?

It's Steve Martin.

Yeah, that is devastating.

So, like, that movie is what, 85 minutes long or whatever.

You know what I mean?

Like, and like, so fucking.

A guy who had never been in movies before probably cost, what, five million movies?

Yeah, exactly.

Costs no money.

Yeah.

And just like, it costs $4 million and made $100.

Right.

And it's just like two generations of comedic geniuses, Carl Reiner and like Steve Martin just building a perfect comedy out of nothing.

Right.

So that's tough for 1941 where it's like, I can just go see the jerk.

Like that's much better.

Yeah.

Number four that pops up.

I handily outgrossed it.

Yeah.

I mean,

by far.

Number four.

is also a kind of 1941-esque movie, but it's a very serious war masterpiece, but it's also an out-of-control movie.

Is it apocalypse?

Apocalypse.

Wow.

So you could also just go see the real thing.

Oh my god.

You know what I mean?

That's insane.

Just fucking go see Apocalypse Now if you want to see a bloated amazing war epic.

Yeah.

Can I number five can I quickly interject here?

Isn't it weird that Billy Corgan doesn't sing about 1941 and 1979?

That's a great like the movie?

It is weird.

He should be like great not Mitch.

Yeah, cool.

Hot take that movie is good.

Something like that.

I give it a C.

Corgin's hard to do.

Ah,

that's a little Corgan, right?

1970.

Just keep doing that, right?

Wager and I will do it occasionally.

That's good, Mitch.

Yeah, that was good.

That was a good corgi.

But he should have sang about 1941.

It's his favorite year, but he should have sang about another year.

Yeah.

Let's go see 1941.

Like, that should have been in the song.

Yeah, let's go see 1941.

It sounded like Cartman.

Get some cheesy poofs.

Yeah, you know what?

He should have sang it like Cartman, too, honestly.

He should.

Why didn't he sing it like Cartman?

Can I turn a big take?

Like, what if Rick Rubin started doing that when he's brought in as a big budget producer for a new record?

He's like, you should sing it like Cartman.

That's my one note.

More butters, less timid.

I feel like South Park has strayed away from its real core, which is cheesy poops.

I feel like they barely mention cheesy poops.

I have not seen South Park in like 15 years.

I'll tell you what I missed.

Cheesy poops concept.

Oh shit.

Number five.

I just want to.

So, you know, we've got Star Trek the Jerk, 1941 Apocalypse now.

Number five

is a hit movie.

Okay.

But it's also a number movie.

So 1941's even getting outboxed in the number title realm.

Is it a year as well?

No, it's just a number.

It's just a number.

Is it a 10?

Blake Edwards is 10.

Blake Edwards is 10 with Dudley Moore and Bo Derrick.

Another, dare I say it?

And I know this term has been retired, but I think it applies too directly for this film.

It is a big tittied hit.

Big titty.

10 is a big tittied hit.

And it is another low blow to open against two comedies that are really sticking with the culture.

I've never seen 10.

I've either.

I just know it's got big boobs on it.

You guys seen 10?

I saw it many years ago.

I remember it being like.

It's just like, now, wait a second, it's one and then it's zero.

That's what I put in to go.

It just turned into Zebecca's ear.

You've seen it.

I think I remember it just like because I knew I liked Dudley Moore.

And so, but I don't, I think it might have been, I might have been too young for like the comedy, but like the right age for the raunch, if memory serves.

Right, right, of course.

That was the right age.

It's funny that the setup for that movie is Dudley Moore, who is two foot negative six inches,

is married to Julia Andrews.

Statuesque woman.

They go on vacation, and he sees a younger woman who is so fucking hot that the movie is basically like, cheat on your wife.

Right.

And Blake Edwards was married to Julie Andrews.

Also at the box office, we've got Injustice for All, the Pacino movie.

Oh, sure, which is silly.

Yep.

But, you know, not bad.

No, but

you've got the film Starting Over, which is the Burt Reynolds sort of romantic dramedy with Jill Cruz.

Jill Paper.

That's a good movie.

A pretty good movie.

Kind of one of his more serious, like actually pretty good movies.

You've got The Rose with Bette Midler, which was her kind of breakout Mark Rydell film.

Playing not Janice Joplin.

Playing a Janice Joplin-esque diva.

You've got

The Black Stallion with Mickey Rooney.

I got him the like late-in-life Oscar Nom.

Never seen.

Me neither, actually.

Yeah.

I saw the...

Carol Ballard did the remake, right?

It's Carol Ballard.

Yeah, I saw that one.

No, that's this one.

That's this one.

Oh, wait, that who did the...

I don't fucking know.

There's the 90s Black Stallion.

Uh, yes, there is.

Yes, I Carol Balor did the is it just about a

horse?

Like, what does it do?

Can I, can I, look, I, I know, I flopped with my our one movies cursed earlier.

Like, I know that didn't, that didn't take.

How about this?

Are horse movies cursed?

Interesting.

You mean, like, it has to be like, because there's other movies with horse stallion.

No, but yeah, no, it's centered on a horse.

Spirit, steroid.

Horse in the title.

Spirit, stallion, of the simar.

Yeah.

We don't like War Horse.

You and I both put that pretty low in our standards.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of War Horse.

What's the best movie with the horse in the title?

Dreamer.

Never saw Dreamer.

That's my favorite line in the movie Hamlet 2.

Oh, sure.

When he's introducing Kimba.

What's your name?

What's your fucking name?

Oh.

Elizabeth Shu.

Yes.

And he's like trying to get the kids excited about Elizabeth Shu and they're like, they don't know who she is.

And he's like, Dreamer with a fucking horse.

It always makes me laugh.

Spirit, I haven't seen Spirit Running Free or whatever the recent one was called.

The original Spirit is very well animated and a bit of a snooze.

I've been thinking about showing Spirit to my daughter because it seems kind of chill.

I was going to say,

it's a perfect, like, that age movie.

But no, I think, Weiger, you might have redeemed yourself with this tape.

Hidalgo, do we like Hidalgo?

No one likes Hidalgo.

Sea biscuit right off the bat.

You need to respond to a sea biscuit.

Oh, sea biscuit.

Sea biscuits,

sea biscuits, like as good as you can get.

That's like the ceiling for a horse movie.

And that movie is mostly not about the horse.

Yeah, but does anyone give a shit about what was the other fucking, the Malkovich one called?

They made a Secretariat movie.

Secretariat.

Oh, yeah, that one's even worse.

Sea Biscuit's not bad.

Seabiscuit's all right.

Number 10 of the box office is.

That's a pretty good take.

It looks like it's a re-release of a George P.

Cosmatos movie called Sin or Restless, starring Raquel Welsh.

This is not important.

We're.

Anyway, that's the box office game for 1941.

And I just think it illustrates how badly its lunch is getting eaten by better movies.

And like next week, Kramer vs.

Kramer comes out.

Wow.

Which is like one of the biggest movies of that year.

Is it number one?

It certainly is up there, and it wins the Oscar and all that.

So it's sort of like.

I've never seen Kramer versus Kramer.

I think it's coming to the Vista.

Never seen it.

I know.

Blind Spark.

It's good.

It's dated, but it's like a very watchable movie.

I think the sequel is better.

Go ahead.

Kramer versus Kramer versus Matt Locke versus Infinite Trump.

The fuck is that?

Someone's behind on Donald.

Oh, am I?

I am because I got addicted to Bramples.

I transmuted the joke a bit.

You've been addicted to band splaying.

I'm listening to her BritPop series.

I turned it to verses.

Of course, in Mitch's original joke, the purity of it is that they meet.

They don't fight.

They meet.

I appreciate you, Griff, even making a joke off of that joke, which I think no one liked when I said it.

It's a good joke.

It's a good joke.

I like it the more it has to be explained.

How about Kramer versus Kramer versus Kramer and then a Seinfeld movie underneath it?

How's that?

That's fine.

Right.

Yeah.

That's what they were doing.

Yeah, I like it.

Yeah.

You could do Kramer versus Kramer versus Kramer versus the Laugh Factory.

So are just

what are Hoffman and Streep doing in that movie?

Well, they're there.

They're like on the stand.

Okay.

Right?

And she's like crying about the wall with the clouds in the boy's bedroom.

Right.

And then we just cut to Richards.

No, they're on stage.

All of them are on stage at the Laugh Factory.

But she's like on the witness stand.

And then Michael Richards.

So it's just like the movie is just saying slurs.

And Dustin Hoffman's like, aren't you supposed to be defending?

You know what's still crazy?

What?

Michael Richards doing that shit.

Can I say?

It's so crazy.

I, at least once a year, watch the Seinfeld on Letters.

Oh, we were just talking about

a real bit of TV.

Stop laughing.

It's not.

Stop laughing.

We were just talking about this the other day.

Probably with the similar people you were talking to about it.

I'm sure.

Yeah, probably.

I watch it so much.

It's so fascinating because it is like the last moment culturally where the news travels slowly enough that the studio audience hasn't heard it.

That's right.

They haven't actually heard it.

They must have heard about it.

No, no, no.

Okay, okay.

That's the thing.

They start laughing because they think it's a comedic setup.

Right.

And you're like, today, if that happened, it would hit the internet so fast.

Yeah.

That the night before anyone going in to see Letterman would have heard this already and this like taping happening 12 hours after the event that's was a little too fast for people to have context i was saying it's the last new laughs at kramer kramer never gets up more the new new fresh laughs never happen with kramer ever again after that moment

wow

i think that's right

it's the truth it's the truth i think no i think it's right it was worth it we are done we're done we're done with 1941 guys thank you so much you guys did a great job thank you thank you so much for having us.

I'm so glad you're doing the first half of Spielberg's Filmography.

And yeah, it's really, again, always such a treat to come on the podcast.

I think we'll do it.

We'll do an in-person episode this year.

I think so, too.

If you guys are in New York, you know, at some point this year, it'd be great to finally cut it up.

IRA.

It almost happens.

It's going to happen.

It almost happens.

It almost happens.

It's going to happen.

So hopefully, hopefully.

You guys got some live shows scheduled in the area, and we have our designs on it.

And hopefully by the time we know far enough out on the schedule, what we can refer to.

It'll be in person to commemorate you guys joining the Five Timers Club.

Oh, that's fun.

Do we get jackets like SNL?

Do we get jackets or anything or no?

Fuck yeah.

I guess we'll get some jackets.

Fuck you.

We're going to do a pizza tour in Connecticut.

We're very excited.

Also,

we have a big text blank dough where

we get to get your movie takes.

We bother you and ask you for your movie takes every day on the daily.

Well, and vice versa.

And especially the takes we don't want to say on Mike.

I will say I did a show with Tammy Sager.

Oh,

frequent guest from their show.

Great person.

Upcoming guest on our show if everything works out.

Absolutely.

But I did a show with her and she came up to me backstage and said, what are the three most recent texts in Blank Dough?

Wow.

That was the first thing she said.

I want to see what the last three texts were.

And was it you guys explaining the end of the Brutalist to me?

Because it was pretty helpful.

Honestly, it made me like the ending more.

That was Pete performance from the Blank Dough thread when we were all talking about Top College.

That was pretty cool.

It was the thread

in there.

Yeah, absolutely.

It was us at this peak.

Yeah.

Can I shout out?

Someday we'll create the mutual million-dollar Patreon tier where you get to read that text.

We will only ever make it public if it's a $1 million

per person.

You get to join the thread.

You can't participate.

Right.

It's going to be only.

Yeah, exactly.

Can I shout out Griffin real quick?

Griffin, I don't know if you have a steel book-related nickname yet.

I don't.

I would pitch the Man of Steel,

but you could also be a green book riff for the Steelbook.

I don't know.

I'll just whatever you want to run with there.

I like Man of Steel.

The Man of Steel Books.

You want to get over the Steelbook?

The Steelbook unclear what it's referencing and what it's referencing is a bad movie.

The Man of Steelbook

connected me with

the site you sent me to did not feel like an actual retailer, but the Ninja Scroll Blu-ray, which the steelbook, which was in very limited release, and my pre-order got canceled.

I was like, Griffin, yeah, I'm in a jam here.

You got to help me out here.

Right.

You had pre-order from Crunchyroll, and then they ran out.

And I went to my Blu-ray message boards and was like, This seems to be a recurring problem.

I'm going to dig into who people say.

Because at this point, everyone else had sold out about it.

And the URL you sent me was like sent you to Bull Moose?

Yeah, whatever it was, it was like one of those weird, like, Estonian sites that like illegally streams NBA games, you know, that you find.

It's just like, it was such a weird vent, like like website that actually delivered and actually had, you know,

I ended up getting my steel book.

So I really appreciate it.

You got your steel book?

I did, yeah.

Yeah, this is why the way you told me.

This is why Natalie has had a go bag long before the fire started.

The way you confirmed that the steelbook had arrived, successfully been delivered, was you took a picture of your hand holding it and just wrote in all caps, Griffin Newman has a 10-inch cock.

And I said, That is the coolest way anyone has ever been given credit for knowing which e-tailers to get steel books from.

I stand by that.

Exactly.

A deeply dorky thing.

No, but it was, it was a, I was, I was happy to do that, mitzvah, and you guys are, are the best.

It's always a treat.

Griffin is hung like Sea Biscuit.

All right.

Jesus.

Let's start 16 years.

Sea Biscuit had a famously small peanut for a horse.

God damn it.

He could run real fast.

I called him C Peanut

in the locker rooms.

Anything you guys want to plug outside of Doughboys at large?

1941.

You should check out that.

Yeah, check out 1941.

Yeah, Doughboys podcast about chain restaurants.

Me and Mike Mitchell, Sims and Griffin, have both been on.

If you haven't listened, good jumping on points available in recent memory.

Yeah, um, and uh, people should watch on Mitch's show on Peacock, Twisted Metal.

Mitch plays stew in Twisted Metal.

Twisted Metal is really funny and it's got a lot of good action.

You know what, it succeeds in an action as an action comedy in a way that 1941 doesn't.

So, I would, I would strongly agree with that.

And season two is coming out sometime this year.

Season two is coming out sometime this year, yes, for sure.

Yeah, it needed more candy.

Oh, go ahead, Sargarth.

No, no, what were you going to say?

We talked about this a little bit, but 1941 needed more candy.

Yeah, needed more more candy.

I needed more candy.

I need more candy.

No, I was just going to say,

not to force your guy's hand.

You were calling out that you've had Sims and I on the show a couple times.

The person you got to get on

Doughboys is Mr.

Ben Hosley.

Wow.

I think there is a real kind of heater of an episode untapped.

I mean, it would be hard to get it.

The next time Ben's in Los Angeles.

It would be a huge honor.

Yeah.

For sure.

Yeah, let's make it happen.

He's got a pin.

Ben, you were great on it.

I loved your PTR episode.

So, yeah, definitely when next time you're in LA, we'll figure it out.

Yeah, well, yeah, come on.

All right.

I mean, it's not going to be fun for you, Ben, but come on.

Come do it.

All right.

I get something.

Thank you guys for doing this.

Thank you all for listening.

Tune in next week for Let Me See Another Stinker from Steven Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Art.

Wow.

It is just, I say it at the beginning of that episode, it's one of the greatest comeback movies of all time, if not the undisputed greatest.

We recorded that episode with great Brian Michael Bendis.

Yeah, legendary comics writer.

Yeah.

An Indiana Jones Super fan.

So tune in for that.

As we said,

Next Generation Picard Trek movies coming up on Patreon.

That's right.

We'll start off.

But also February 11th doing Spielberg TV movies.

Yeah, something evil.

And wicked.

Yeah.

Isn't that what?

Savage.

Savage.

No, wicked.

Anyway.

I had wicked on the brain.

It's kind of just a a

damp ending, but yep, that's true.

And as always, that ending was so damp.

I briefly mistook it for a surprise act.

Should I put pepperoni on it?

Sims, when's your out?

Oh, whatever.

Great question.

Okay.

I mean, I'd love to be done by in two hours, but we'll see.

I mean, this movie is less.

Casey just laughed at that.

Come on.

This movie is not

weighty enough, you know.

Right.

I think there's plenty to discuss, obviously, but it's not like a well, but wait, it's like, wait, it's like, you know, like where it's like fucking jaws, and you're like, did we, you know,

forget one of the 10 most famous movie sequences of all time, you know, or whatever.

Like, it's

the Jaws episode, we forgot to talk about like half of his teeth.

We only covered the top half.

What's the quote?

Fuck, I'm trying to find that.

Oh, yes, it does.

We're very much set up.

A subtle tip of the cap.

Yeah, very subtle.

More horny, though.

I like that aspect.

Is it a little horny?

This is cold, Griffin.

We're missing this great call.

That's true.

That's true.

We're recording it.