Mulholland Drive with Leslye Headland

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.

When you see the podcast in the picture that was shown to you earlier today, you will say this is the podcast.

The rest of the podcast can stay.

That's up to you.

But the choice for that lead podcast is not up to you.

Now, you will see me one more time if you do good.

You will see me two more times if you do bad.

Good podcast.

There's sometimes a podcast.

How many hosts does a podcast have?

There's so many more you could do.

Come on.

No, I podcast.

I thought you might do that.

Oh, sure.

A man's podcast.

A man's podcast goes some ways.

Oh, you just like the cowboy.

Yeah, I do.

But you're not doing his voice.

You're doing a more generic cowboy.

I'm doing more generic cowboy.

They're sometimes a buggy.

I wish I could do Monty Montgomery exactly right.

Monty Montgomery's Secret Legend of Blank Check.

He's come up before.

Do you know who plays The Cowboy?

Yes, the producer.

Monte Moretti.

Yeah.

But was the co-director of

Catherine Bigelow's first film, The Lovely.

Excuse me.

Which we covered on the show, and was also the producer of Jane Campion's Portrait of a Lady.

True.

And then produced several of David Lynch's films and appears in this as an actor.

Like, has now crossed three miniseries in a way, in a capacity that kind of feels like the role the cowboy plays in this movie relative to those people's careers where it's like, I just roll into town, I make a big impact, I disappear.

There's sometimes a buggy.

I'm working with you very intensely for a short period of time, and then I'm gone.

What were you going to say?

What were you going to say about the cowboy?

We've covered him as a director, a producer, and an actor.

That's true.

We have.

Well, he

in Room to Dream, he talks about how

he just

wanted Monty for the role and said, I would like you to play this role.

And Monty said, Absolutely not.

Yeah.

But then people kept calling him, being like, so here are your dates.

Right, which I do mean is kind of the lynch.

The funny thing to think about, he's in the TV pilot.

We're going to talk about all of this.

And you can just imagine the Twin Peaks thing of like, sorry, buddy.

Now, you're just going to be in every five episodes.

Right.

It's like

you're the log lady now.

You're just going to be showing up.

Yeah.

Like, it's not just you did me a favor for the scary log lady.

That's what I'm saying.

Because

the light flickers before he shows up.

Yeah.

I was just double-checking.

This is his only active.

It's his first and only actor.

Like, obviously, not only was he not a professional actor, but it's not even like he has a cameo in the love list.

It's not like he has cameos in his other films he produced.

No, he does.

Lynch saw him.

Yeah.

And

for like five or six years at this point, but do we think he came up with the character looking at him and thought

or he had the character and then was and then felt Monty's the only person

talked about him in our Loveless episode.

And this was before we had researchers as we were fucking scrambling for context on Mike.

We were like, who's this guy?

And we Googled him and saw a picture of him.

We're like, first of all, his name's Monty Montgomery.

Here's the picture.

This is his IMDb picture.

It looks like a tin type of a bank robber from the fucking 1870s.

We did like 40 minutes of bits of like, how did this man enter through a time warp?

So I kind of see David Lynch looking at him.

He wore his own clothes.

Yeah.

And so I tend to be like, you know what?

If I just put you in front of camera and you just say my oblique dialogue, that will have some power to it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And again in Room to Dream, he says that, or maybe Thoreau says that

he said, Do you want to run lines to Monty?

And Monte was like, I'm good.

Hell yeah.

That rule.

They start the scene.

He has no idea what he's saying.

So they just wrote the lines and then taped them on Justin.

We should cut to Justin just covered in inside.

Sometimes there's a buggy.

Have you guys seen that?

You're too busy being a smart Alec to be thinking.

The behind-the-scenes pictures from the filming of The Godfather, where Brando, of course, was in his PQ card era.

Right.

And every other cast member, there are photos from The Godfather where you're like, this is one one of the most iconic scenes in the history of movies, right?

And Michael Corleone just has cue cards around his neck.

There's a great one of Duval, where he literally has 10 different pieces of paper pinned to his wool suit.

But hey, yeah, I've seen this one.

It is, yeah, it's Robert Duvall looks like he's doing the love actually proposal.

He's just got like,

you are perfect.

It works, man.

If it works, it works.

I mean, that's so funny, though, though, especially, I mean, like Clooney, the famous thing with Clooney that I talk about sometimes is that in ER, he would put his sides on

his, you know, a little clipboard, right?

Because he's a doctor.

Yeah.

And so, and he looks down at them all the time.

And then it turns into a tick that he uses in all his movies, not to look at things, just to, because he knows it makes him look cute and vulnerable to go like, and there's the famous story when they're in the movie.

And it's the number one Clooney move is to look down.

There's the famous story when they're making the Peacemaker, the inaugural film released by Dreamworks.

Dreamworks.

And his sort of first star blockbuster.

And Spielberg had obviously been like part of the process of him getting on ER and whatever.

And he's now on the set of like the first vehicle that a studio is banking on.

Yeah.

And Spielberg comes out from behind the monitor.

That was pre-Batman?

Yeah.

It's this

year before?

Or maybe

the same year.

It's right around the same time.

But Spielberg comes out from behind the monitor and he puts his arm around him and Clooney thinks he's about to get complimented.

And Spielberg's like, I swear to God, you'll be a movie star if you can ever stop looking down.

You got to get away from it.

He was wrong.

And I think he knew like the backstory of it, but he was like, if you can just fucking nip this one tick in the bud.

Never.

You'll be a movie star.

No, he's going to look down for the rest of his damn life.

Yeah.

Please introduce our show.

I have so much to say about this film.

Really?

Had you seen this before?

Yes.

I've seen this one before.

Mid, where do you stand on it

this is basically my favorite movie of all i would say this was definitely my top 10 in david's sight and sound top 10 list that's true it was on his ballot have we covered

i feel like we went getting out of it we covered we did a uh i did have alien on my sight and sound top 10 we did on patreon uh which we did do on patreon and that is it yeah of my sight and sound top 10.

this is the first film we're covering well you're forgetting i love you to death yeah that was

You were forgetting because it wasn't part of a proper like director meaning.

But did it Kazden?

Then we didn't.

No, no, Ben sometimes.

It's a movie that he thinks is elemental.

That are usually kind of curated around what was on Comedy Central in the year like the early 2000s or the summer.

That's how they're usually curated by what are the most totemic films in American cinema.

It's sort of his own sight and sound balance.

What films start with a free stream of a spinning pizza,

which that movie does?

Blank tricks.

Freeze frame.

With Griffin and David.

I haven't seen it in so long.

Oh, it's normal.

I'm David.

It is normal.

It's a normal movie.

Aggressive.

Oh, normal.

Top to bottom.

Tip to tail.

This flick is normal.

Not to get derailed, but Ben, just give me like one or two other ones that you've picked.

Oh, sure.

You want some Ben's choices?

Yeah.

The Man Who Knew Too Little.

Under Siege 2,

Dark Territory.

We find out halfway through that episode that he had never seen Under Siege 1.

He has now since seen it.

I have.

Pretty good.

But at that point in time, it's actually kind of better than Diego 2.

It's one of his favorite movies of all time.

No.

We said, Ben, you could pick any movie.

He said, Under Siege 2, and an hour into the conversation, we were like, is this what the character's like in the first one?

He's like, I don't know.

Wouldn't know.

Never seen it.

Fletch.

That was the first one.

Fletch.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a solid choice.

Street Fighter.

Yeah.

This, I'm on a roller coaster.

Assassin's Creed.

There have been two video game movies.

You're a gamer, Leslie.

Do you like Assassin's Creed?

No, no.

Well,

here's what's fun.

Neither does Ben.

He never played the games before watching the movie.

What's like Under Siege?

I just got really into it and I was in a bad relationship and I just kind of kept re-watching in the middle of the night.

And then I got like up and watch it again.

He saw that 30 times.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I bought him the steel book.

It was a nice present.

Wait, are we forgetting one?

There's so many.

What do you mean, Joe Dirt?

Joe Dirt.

Joe Dirt.

Clifford, obviously.

Oh, of course.

Clifford.

We've done it twice.

We went back for seconds.

Clifford 2, Hyper Clifford.

Anyway, we're moving on.

What our show is sometimes, but what it's usually about is it's usually a podcast about filmographies.

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

Sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes your failed pilot is retrofitted into a feature film that not only makes David Sims ballot,

but ranks number eight?

That's a good question, actually.

What do you mean, like on the total?

I believe on the last Satan sound ballot, it is insane to go, like, what is this movie?

David Lynch made a 90-minute pilot for ABC that they deemed unerable.

Sure.

Oh, great.

So it's lost of time?

No, he got a French company to let him film an hour of new footage and edit two things together.

Eighth in the critics play.

Oh, so the movie's a disaster?

No, it's considered to be one of the 10 greatest films of all time.

That's true.

Didn't they something,

I don't don't know what it was, but something named it the greatest film of the 21st century.

Like shortly after it came out.

Yeah.

Like it was just in 2001.

Yeah.

It was like, this is it.

This is the bar.

I even look, it is the highest ranked film of the 21st century on the site in South Pole.

It's the only one that's not town.

It's actually not.

Fuck.

What's higher?

What is it?

It's In the Mood for Love is ranked higher.

Okay.

Okay.

Fair.

Which is another wonderful film.

Yeah, fair.

That

is the only other one that's ranked higher, though.

That's American Hill.

Well, I watched this movie last night with my friend.

I've seen this movie.

Oh, wait, have you finished the spiel, please?

This is amazing series on the films of David Lynn.

Thank you.

Sure.

We're blank check over here.

I said all the other stuff.

Yeah, chew check.

It's called Twin Pods Firecast with me.

Sure.

Whatever.

Our guest today triumphantly returns to the show.

I've been fist.

Oh, I'm ready to fucking go.

Oh, I'm ready.

I'm very regretful that our Zodiac, we only got, I feel like we barely touched the surface.

Sure, but

I'll say this.

We, we had like a little bit of a like, there's a problem moment with the response to that episode where people were like, I'm so disappointed.

It's only two hours and 45 minutes.

What went wrong?

And we're like, how have we gotten ourselves into a gilded cage where if an episode is only a little above two and a half hours, people feel like we're ripping them off.

I agree that I could talk about that movie for seven straight hours.

But also, hey, motherfuckers, if an episode's longer than 90 minutes, that's a kindness.

That's it.

And

usually they're way over that.

I feel like, but I specifically feel like

just a, this is why I had to come back and atone.

I had to atone because.

And you've cleared out your week.

I cleared.

I'm here.

I'm here.

We're going to, we're going to be sleeping here tonight.

Yeah, exactly.

Leslie did text me and, you know, like, hey, do you want to do?

Oh, Mohan Drive.

That sounds great.

Yeah.

When can you do it?

You guys need like all day, right?

And I was like, I mean, it doesn't hurt.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Leslie Hadland, the acolyte

of

Sleeping with Other People, my favorite romantic comedy of the 21st century.

Thank you.

Bachelorette.

Yeah.

Many other things.

Mole Holland Drive.

A show

that no one was ever going to watch.

Because they said, no, thank you.

This does not go to series.

I just can't get it.

It is the weirdest.

I know you can't get over it.

That is the most griffin.

I've never gotten over it.

Okay, well, it is so bizarre that this is the process that leads to this movie, and the movie turned out the way it did and has the reputation it does.

And I just want to state again: the only clear takeaway from this is that Moana 2 is going to be the greatest film

of the last 20 years.

It's the first time since then that someone's finally gotten the idea of we should replicate.

Is there any other example?

I can't think of one.

TV pilot replication.

Moana 2 is

the first time since Moholland Drive that someone has finally had the the bravery to say, fucking, these aren't episodes.

Add some new shit, re-edit, put it in theaters.

Sight and sound, here we come.

Oh, my God.

Well, it's sort of interesting.

It's interesting to think about it with Twin Peaks, and we're going to talk all about this.

But obviously with Twin Peaks,

he does the same thing.

He makes a 90-minute pilot,

shows it to ABC, convinces them that they are suspicious, but are like, okay, let's do it.

But he did then shoot the quote-unquote international version of Twin Peaks that has tacked on scenes that sort of explain what's going on in that you see Bob in a basement going like,

I like being crazy.

Yes, it doesn't explain much.

Sure.

But it's sort of what he does here.

Yeah.

Where he's like, well, let me tack on an act

where I go nuts.

I mean, I may be simplifying, but, you know,

I guess he thought like, well, I'll just do something like that again.

You said already that you like this as much as any movie ever made, that it's on that tier of movies you can comfortably call it your favorite movie, even if it's not, you know,

strictly your number one.

Yeah.

And like, as a lesbian in Hollywood who suffers from suicide ideation, this is a bio.

You find it hard to do.

This is a bio.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

No, this all happened to me.

Yes.

Yeah.

No, I was going to say, we were talking about a couple days ago getting ready for this episode, and I was much like I'm now doing on mic, just spinning out over like, I can't believe this is how this movie came into reality.

And you were like, and the craziest thing is you can so clearly tell while watching it what was part of the pilot and what he shot later.

Well, I can't see that.

I will reveal that.

That's really interesting because I can't.

I'll say, I don't know if I would nail it 100% of the time, but I was watching it and feeling like I could parse it out.

And it's like, there's even just like the sense of like some shit being shot a year later.

I will just

cut you off.

I have seen the pilot.

I found it and watched it this week

long avoiding it yeah out of fear not of uh just of spoiling my love of mulhole and drive sure yeah yeah um uh it's on the internet you can find it if you look you can go look and you can find it i didn't do the work uh it's fine i didn't want to do it honestly thank god uh

and uh we will talk all about this but the pilot is essentially the first uh it is the first 90 minutes of mulhole and drive that was without yes too much around the only thing that is added is the winkies scene which is not in the pilot at all the uh you know, the pedina.

Yes, that is not in the pilot.

And the sex scenes and the nudity are not.

No, that's what I'm saying.

So when they find the body, like

when they go in everything after that, that is the end of the pilot.

Yeah.

The only thing that's really added is the winkies scene.

A couple things moved around.

There are a couple extra scenes of Robert Forster in the pilot.

Love to see him.

Sure.

But literally just him kind of doing like, well, looks like something is going on here.

Where you're like, right, this is going to be

a continuing story.

That was my guess.

And the visual line.

Some of the scenes are shuffled around a little bit, but it it changes a little bit after that point.

But also, it's like that's built into the text of the movie.

That makes sense.

Right?

That like the movie's vibe changes, the characters change, the look changes.

It's because I

had no idea of the backstory the first time I watched the movie.

And the movie made such a deep impression on me.

I watched it.

I saw it in the theater.

It was the first David Lynch film I'd ever seen.

Wow.

Okay.

And I was

on ecstasy.

Not same.

Now our paths diverge.

And

ecstasy right after.

There was ecstasy.

Yeah.

But what do the kids call it now?

Molly.

Molly.

I was doing Molly either during or after.

Leslie, we're similar ages.

It's ecstasy.

It pisses me off so much that people don't call it that anymore.

I'm like, god damn it.

I grew up with everyone calling it.

And it's a great name.

Why are we brand?

Why are we brand?

It's a great.

It's euphoria.

It's ecstasy, right?

No benches of your lady.

It makes such an impression.

It's just, I know it's a little different.

It's different because the era of ecstasy was more, it was pills, and a lot of times it was cut with like weird stuff.

And it's actually better that nowadays MDMA is pure and it's referred to as Molly.

I'm aware, I'm aware of what happened.

And I grew up in the 90s where they were like, don't take ecstasy.

You'll die like this one kid did one time.

Everyone else seems to do fine, but there was that one kid.

Ecstasy in Dungeons and Dragons.

And you're like, there's one example, and maybe the story doesn't show down anyway.

Anyway, you, you, you.

No, I was just saying, it made such a deep, deep impression on me.

And I, when I was re-watching it for this, I felt like the best place to come from would be to really

do the sense memory of this is what I felt the first time I watched it.

And then re-watching it for this, this is,

but I, it, I had no idea the background of it.

I don't think I found that.

That's when you saw it the first time.

Oh, yeah.

I don't think I found out about that until 10 years later.

I was going to say, I think the same with me.

And when I heard it, I was like, that can't be true.

Yeah, that does not process.

I would have known that.

And the movie was.

What's so funny that you guys?

That's what's weird.

I don't remember when I learned it, but it certainly wasn't within the couple of years of the movie coming out and being fetted.

It was probably 10 years later.

I was 15 years old.

It's David's story time now for doing a Mohollen drive-up.

Wait,

you were 15?

All right, so you're a little older than me.

Oh, God.

It's fine.

Leslie, I'm 38.

What are you?

Like, it doesn't matter.

I'm 23.

Yeah, exactly.

We're similar age.

I'm 21.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Did you see this in Venus?

No, I watched this on DVD with my mom when she rented it

probably a year later.

Right.

And that was like super cool when the sex scene happened and everything.

You were just kind of like white-knuckling it

on the armchair.

The armrest had a big workout on that cash.

I was 15 years old.

If I had seen a Lynch film before this, that I actually do not remember.

I saw Straight Story, which we'll have talked about in that episode.

Yeah.

But that was my parents being like, there's a David Lynch movie released by Disney playing at the Angelica that's appropriate to take kids to.

We'll take the boys.

Right.

And he liked it.

And I was like, well, that gives me no sense of who David Lynch is.

Like it walked out.

My parents are just like,

it's a Disney film.

I've stoned her.

It says Walt Disney Pictures presents.

Okay.

The straight story.

It's on Disney Plus.

Yes.

And they couldn't like the acolyte.

It's so weird that he made that.

And I was like, like, what do you mean?

That's the most normal movie I've ever

seen.

It's normal to a fault.

Yeah.

So when I'm watching this a couple years later on DVD, at that point, I probably knew him by reputation, but also was like, oh, this is the weird David Lynch shit everyone's talking about.

Yes, yeah, yeah, same.

So I was 15 years old.

I'm a budding cinephile.

I certainly know I have to go see this new movie that won a prize at Cannes, that is the new David Lynch film that's his first four years.

Agnosticator lists.

I know that it, I do do know about the TV pilot thing.

There is an article in Sight and Sound, which, of course, later I would rank this for, you know, as a working film critic.

The dream of my life was to get to make it sight and sound top 10, which I then got to do, and I made a really boring one.

Good job, me.

But I did put them all in the drive.

David's process was borderline insane for trolling.

I was like, boring, boring, boring, boring.

But, and so I read Graham Fuller's piece.

Graham Fuller is in the New York Film Critic Circle to this day, of which I am currently the chairman.

Must be nasty.

I'm just, I just fancy.

Like, I read David Graham Fuller's piece on sight and sound on Mohan Drive and Sight and Sound 100 times.

You're saying this, this movie represents a lot of full circle stuff of your entire life.

I'm saying this is a

tunnel opening for me.

Yeah.

For my life, it is formative in my identity.

Like, it's

into my bloodstream, into the molecules of my body in a way that I

and I am not a lesbian who works in Hollywood and had suicidal ideation.

Nonetheless,

Nonetheless.

Drag me.

Drag me.

No,

I'm just using your words against you.

No, I went to see it at the Holloway Odeon with my friend Oliver Stevens.

Shout out Ollie.

He's now Ollie Kinderberger, actually.

I should use

his current name.

Yeah.

He did kind of a Mulholland Drive character name switch.

God bless.

And I've never been so scared by a movie in my life and never will I be.

Oh, same, yeah.

Because it's so elemental.

Like now I, whatever.

I go see Long long Legs, and I'm just like, All right, you know, we're scared, I want to ramble

bylaws.

Well, I didn't write that headline, but uh, but uh, but I was scared, but you know, it's now just funny for you to say that when this week

long legs is scary,

literally, the headline they gave David's review is like, it's true, long legs is as scary as everyone's telling you it is.

And then David's here going like, Yeah, long legs, whatever.

I'm just saying, I'll never have that elemental fear that I was of like, I don't know what's going to fucking happen.

And where did this come from?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, right.

Like, not scenes like the diner, of course, freaked me out, but then also just scenes where, like, they're just in their house.

Sure.

And I'm just like, I don't know what's going to happen.

Yeah.

Is someone going to come in?

Are they going to like, what's going to happen?

I'll never have that feeling quite the same way again.

Yes.

And it changed my life.

And I owned the absolutely shitty boulderized DVD that David Lynch put out that blurs

on the DVD.

Did you have it on DVD?

Yes, I did.

I did.

David was obsessed with his hatred for this DVD.

Well, it's famously bad.

It doesn't even have chapters.

It's nothing.

It's bad.

Yeah.

It's got those weird 10 clues.

It's got the 10 clues, which are very annoying.

And people have succeeded a little too much on.

I don't think that

there are no special features.

He censored the nudity.

Yes.

And there's no scene selection.

And he put in the fucking piece of paper.

And this is what you know he's saying.

Is he okay?

I think he was kind of whatever.

He was dealing with the dawn of of the digital era, you know, in his own way.

I feel like he's now kind of.

I feel like, I want to say his criterion just don't have scene selection still.

I think they do not, which is fine.

I mean,

I don't mind.

He's got a big, like, I don't want people jumping around.

Yeah.

Just think about it.

Like, what, right?

Like, even as I was watching it for this, I sort of started to go, okay, so.

if I could just get my thoughts together.

Yeah.

You know, this section and then this section.

And I got so lost in trying to make the bullet point outline that I just brought my laptop this time because I was I just noticed you have your laptop in front of you.

Yeah.

I mean, Zodiac I know so well that I felt confident coming in without it.

A far more linear movie that you can obsess over, Robert Gray Smith style, and be able to recount how many steps it took to get from scene one to scene two.

Yeah, exactly.

And break it up like in that element.

Confidential way of like, I know this section, then this section, then this section.

It is a very, yeah.

Yeah.

But this is no, no, no, no way.

Yeah.

So, but I know I watched the DVD over and over and over again.

I can read everyone's lines.

And every time you're fuming, you're white knuckling.

The quality of this is poor.

Yeah.

No, I was obsessed with it.

No, I had the 10 clues pinned to my wall.

Just, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that now.

Well, I had a big,

I would still, I would steal, we're not really steal, but like at the end of the day, I would take variety magazines home.

And this is back when they were like, you know, huge.

Humongous.

Humongous.

So all of the.

They were basically wallpaper.

They were basically, that's what I i did is i took out i know i did i took out leslie i took out the ads yeah no the fyc ads or the fyc ads

and just put them on my wall

and just you know it just became i think i had like not that many maybe like three or four yeah i had a lot more than that but you know what i would do i had this fyc ad for quentin tarantino best director for killbill volume one which he got no oscar nomination for uh that where that's him and his

i thought she was nominated though the movie got

zero numbers Both insane.

Across the two films, zero noms.

And she wasn't?

No, it's wild.

Was it a Golden Globe?

Is that what I'm saying?

She got a Golden Globe nom.

Yeah.

And it's him doing this and Uma's like looking at him in her yellow tracksuit.

I think about it.

What I meant was I had just Mulholland dress.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, okay, got it.

That was the only one I cared about.

Omelie, Amelie.

I had a couple Amelie.

2001?

It was 2001, baby, that accordion music?

Yeah.

Come on.

We had nothing else going on.

I keep trying to explain this to people who are younger, much younger than we are.

I'm like, you don't understand we

we didn't have the internet like we or it was the dawn of it was a it was we didn't have anything to do like it was like it was like that that wheel with the stick like we had that was what we were doing that's interesting my version of that was we we got the

trades like my dad had variety and hollywood reporter subscriptions i would certainly pour over those fyc ads

i would love being like two-page fyc spread for meet the parents and my dad would be like like, contractual obligation.

They don't think it's going to get anything.

Terry would have for supporting actress.

And he's like, it's baked into her contract.

But I would never think to pull those out.

New York Times would always do summer movie preview, fall movie preview.

Oh, God, remember that?

In addition to the art section.

Yeah.

For those two seasons, they'd be like, here's its own thing.

Yes.

Full New York Times-sized posters for all the things that are coming out this summer with the dates

basically in chronological order.

And I would pull those out for whatever movies I was most excited for and put them all on my wall.

And to your point of the internet not existing, sometimes I'd be going through that and movies, giant blockbuster movies that were coming out two months later.

Yeah.

That would be the first time I heard about it.

You're like, this movie cost $100 million.

Yeah.

I'm paying attention to everything.

I'm watching Entertainment Tonight.

I'm reading Entertainment Weekly.

And the New York Times in May is telling me what is going to be the biggest movie in August.

Like, what the fuck is the sixth sense?

Oh,

that is a movie that

does not exist with the internet.

No, and that internet is nothing.

That's a fair point.

It just doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist.

Not in the same way.

Not in the way of like six weeks later, people being like, I guess I should see that, huh?

Like, everyone's talking about it.

It's the Matrix, I think.

Same time.

That was a weirdly, obviously it was a huge hit.

Yeah.

But both of those were weirdly word-of-mouth movies.

And same year.

100%.

And both of them were.

Same 99.

Right, right.

And both of them have the same hit.

Who's the fucking idiot who was like, 1999, the film, the year that changed films?

Did not say the name on Mike.

Yes.

No, no, we can.

We don't know this person.

David thought about pitching that book.

But it was an entertainment.

Wasn't it an entertainment weekly?

Like,

that's who did that?

Yeah, I think he worked at Edinburgh.

I can't remember.

Like 10 years later, they were like, we're going to make this a thing.

Yeah.

But I feel like everybody already knew that.

Yes.

That's why it was a good pitch for

the thing with that.

You need to pitch something that lots of people know.

Cross-section between things.

Popular phenomenon and that culturally important.

Like, yeah, yeah.

It was Star Wars and Blair Witch.

You had The Matrix and The Sixth Sense and Fight Club and Magnolia.

That's making $300 million and getting nominated for Six Oscars and being critically beloved.

Good, good ass movie.

I just re-watched it.

I was like, this fucking movie is

those movies.

Yeah.

While being very mainstream blockbusters, had this thing where they like come out, they open a little better than expected.

And then the marketing campaign is people saying to you, I can't even tell you what this is.

You just have to have to watch it.

My word for it.

Yeah.

Just go.

Yeah.

Which is how Lynch movies usually tend to stick in the culture.

Or Twin Peaks, people just going, like, I can't explain this thing.

You just got to watch it.

Just got to go.

That's how you, you know, as like a budding cinephile, usually most people watch Eraserhead.

That's how people got into Twin Peaks.

Yes, Leslie, do you have a Lynch, a larger Lynch take or whatever?

Like, you know, if Mohan Drive was your first Lynch, like, do you like David Lynch?

I love him.

Have you seen all of his films?

Yeah, I have not seen all of his films.

I have oddly read a bunch about David Lynch, like Catching the Big Fish, Room to Dream, Lynch on Lynch.

I find his personality to be sparkling.

I mean, he's really

incredibly uncharismatic.

Not hot and not cool.

Oh, my God.

He's so hot.

He's really hot.

Jesus.

This is another thing we talk about.

Airpost

and Lynch.

Yes, you're right.

But you're right.

Lynch was always hot.

There's different kinds of Lynch or whatever, but he's hot in all types.

He's aging like Paul Newman.

It's that thing where you're like every version of him.

He feels like this.

This is not quite right.

And I think he's a superior artist, but he does feel like the cinematic version of Tom Robbins.

In terms of

everything that happens feels like this stream of consciousness of him.

Yeah.

There isn't sort of a setup payoff to

Still Life with Woodpecker.

And yet at the same time,

once you finish it,

you have the experience of, oh, that was holistic.

This is holistic.

Even though it felt like each step was so wild.

Yes.

But you had characters you could hold on to, you had themes you could hold on to, you were compelled by particular things.

Yes.

But then you're told other things

that, or you're shown other things, I should say, for Lynch that you're trying to place as

you're just trying to place.

I guess you're trying.

I love Lynch because you are always, you're, and this is what I mean by Tom Robbins.

It's like, you're always trying to find your footing and yet you're con, you are taken care of.

You, you don't feel completely abandoned.

What is so bizarre about him?

I don't say this in the framework of me patting myself on the back and being like, what are you talking about?

All these movies are easy to understand.

I figured them all out.

But it is fascinating for how much hand-wringing there is about interpreting meaning of shit in Lynch movies, right?

And this movie's Wikipedia page is the longest Wikipedia page I have ever seen for any movie.

It has 20 subsections of analysis and theories and fucking whatever, right?

And

I feel like was talked about so much as this puzzle box movie, this completely bleak, like people are obsessed with trying to crack a thing to the point of putting the 10 clues in.

And maybe it's just that like watching them in the context of this podcast where we are going chronologically and we're ringing.

This is true.

Yeah.

I'm like, all of these movies are clearly very representative of things that he's going through in his life.

Well, that's true.

They're all so personal and they make sense in the chronological order of like his wife fucking Willie for Cyrus.

Yeah.

That's what the thing's about.

No, it's about a girl who lost her keys.

I'm sorry.

I have to make that joke with this one.

Sorry, go ahead.

Go ahead.

I've been saying that every movie is about a guy who lost his keys, and this movie actually has a key in it.

Yeah.

Wait, you've been saying that?

It's like a joke.

Like, just waiting for David Lynch.

Movie easy to solve about a guy who lost his keys.

That's David's joke about how people are like, I can explain eraser head to you.

Okay, the guy lost his keys.

By the end, you got his keys back.

But I think people try to read them like he's trying to transmit some weird messages.

This is a clue.

This is a clue.

He's trying to work through his own shit.

He's inviting you.

This is what I mean.

Like he's inviting you into his brain.

Yes.

He's not going to apologize in any way for it.

It's going to be extremely confident.

Yes.

And he is gifting you the opportunity to have an experience

digesting it.

And the miracle of him as an artist is that he does that in a way that is compelling to people who don't have the puzzle pieces of what's going on inside his head or in his life.

But it can represent different things to different people and meaning and be gripping and be funny and be scary when he is also not really playing by any conventional rules of narrative cinema.

I remember the other thing, too, is it's the word that keeps coming to mind is experiential because when I think of David Lynch, I don't have

a beginning, middle, and end narrative that comes to mind.

What I think is I know exactly where I was sitting when I saw X scene.

Sure.

You know, like Laura Dern's monologue in Blue Velvet.

I know exactly where I was sitting.

I know exactly the feeling.

It's a physical sensation that you're remembering as much as remembering the film.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And you just like, I remember watching that and going,

how long has this been going on for?

Sure.

Has this been the whole movie?

Is the whole movie this scene?

Yeah.

Because I'm trying to,

usually with other films, you're watching the scene in relation to the scene you just saw.

Right.

So there's this quote.

I don't know who said it, that in plays, the viewer is thinking, this is what's happening now.

And in movies, they're thinking, what's going to happen next?

Interesting.

And I think David Lynch is.

You have to watch him with this is what's happening now.

Yeah.

You can't say, while you're watching Laura dern you're not going i wonder how where's this leading where's this leading you just think it is wow what am i watching right

you're never gonna predict where it's going

but i think that his third thesis statement might be because blue velvet comes out of the disaster that's doomed yeah so it does i like this movie better i consider this movie to be his masterpiece yeah but i do understand that blue velvet is what cements him as him yes eraserhead he no no no you're not there's nothing controversial about saying yeah so so with blue Velvet, I think if there were a thesis statement for him that he hasn't already said, I think he articulates his work extremely well.

I agree with you.

I think that it's when Isabella Rossellini discovers Kyle McLaughlin in her closet.

Yeah.

And then she's like, take your clothes off or whatever.

Yeah.

And she says, what do you want?

And he says, I don't know.

Yeah.

This guy is like trying so hard to figure himself out.

And that's what all of the movies are.

And that's what all of the movies are about.

And they're reflective of whatever the specific issue is he's dealing with at that point in time.

Yeah.

To some extent.

Yeah.

Right.

I think with Mohan Drive.

It's about a woman who loses her case.

It's about a woman who loses her case.

No.

That's genuinely true, though.

There is.

But like, I do think there is, I don't think it is a.

Say it.

I'm so afraid of making like any blankety statements.

But anyway, I think there is a you are representing your personal relationship experiences.

Well, no, no, I'm not.

I'm saying

is

a fairly not straightforward, but like there is a way to read the plot of Moholland Drive that's not that complicated.

I would agree with that.

It uses dream logic, obviously, and that's the idea of what's going on here.

There are other things that are a little more like, it's up to you.

But I also think David Lynch very happily wants anyone to bring anything to these movies.

Yes.

And so to all of his movies, right?

And so he's obviously certainly never going to sit down and be like, the thing that's going on is this.

You never do that to an audience.

Right.

And if I went up to David Lynch and I was like, Moha and Drive is about like something that happened to me, like, you know, he'd be thrilled.

Exactly.

He would be like, that's great.

I'm sure.

Or he would be like, you know, have you heard of Transcendental Innitation?

I'd be like, yes, I have.

He would.

Absolutely.

But,

but I do feel like this film came out at the dawn of the internet.

Not dawn, dawn, but you know, of like, yeah.

Where people would then go.

I would say mainstream of the internet.

Right.

Yeah.

Type in Mohawan Drive.

There is a website called Mohawan Drive.net that still runs, that has this kind of lovely early 2000s sort of aesthetic to it that has like theories and stuff that people were piling in.

There's a very famous salon.com article that I remember I would read over and over again that was like trying to explain what's, you know, like, it was the beginning of let's use the internet to collectively try and understand something that was confusing.

A movie that made $7 million

that was not like some sensation.

It wasn't like Twin Peace.

But was an abstract piece of storytelling, not like aggressively abstract, but still abstract enough that broke into a mainstream sense.

Yes.

And thus lots of people are like, what was that?

But here's what's fascinating about it to me is like Twin Peaks had that same cultural, we are in on trying to game this out, right?

Kind of thing.

It did.

But

in a pre-internet era, I know.

Yes.

In a pre-internet era where the way that happens on a peer-to-peer level is so much more bizarre and fortuitous and whatever.

And that's a phenomenon that stretches out, but also like rises and falls really quickly.

And then, as we've discussed, the stuff between Twin Peaks and this movie is largely reviled.

He goes through this period

where people are like, that's cooked.

He's gone too far up his own ass.

Yes.

And also, they're mad at him because,

I mean, I'm

they're just, I mean, I'm talking about people in the 90s and the broadest brush, but I think people felt betrayed by Twin Peaks.

You gave us a beautiful thing and then you killed it.

When you break through with a show that has such a wide cultural you know uh acknowledgement or whatever and people are like but you that up like i didn't like that twin peaks like didn't end how i wanted it to or didn't keep going how i wanted it to or whatever what about the i mean listen echoing a particular fan base

i may say the first season why didn't you give us the answer sure you know second season you gave us the answer we didn't like it right you know go fix the answer go fix the answer you're talking about young sheldon fans, right?

When you're talking about which fan base, I'm sorry, the Sheldon verse.

We need closure.

Here's the closure.

How did he get older?

As time passes, people grow up.

I don't like that answer.

Do we even have a lore director?

Sheldon wouldn't do that, even if he were young.

Okay, Sheldon is.

All right, fine.

Sheldon discovers an autism cube when he's 10, and that's okay.

What do you want from me?

Autism cube.

I just like the idea that someone's like, explain why he's like that.

I think somebody says, Sheldon legends should count.

Work them back in.

Reclaim Sheldon Legends.

I do think that is that is a sign of a fan base that has gone on too long and needs to be nuked from orbit, where they're like, I know you removed all this from Canon, but I liked that one.

And enough of us do that we've got to bring it back.

And they're like, all right, bring it back.

All right.

We're going to take that one thing.

Honestly, you're going to, in my opinion,

Timothy Zahn wrote Sheldon better than anyone else.

I don't even think Chuck Laurie really got, he created Sheldon by accident.

He never

Mohaw and Drive.

Mohaw and Drive.

Sorry.

Mohaw and Drive starts with Tony Kramps.

My point I was going to make.

Just to finish this off.

For me to do one sentence of the thing and then break in with some other shit.

That's funny.

I'm not helping.

I'm not helping.

Thank you.

What?

No, it's just this film, when this comes out, and as you said, in a much smaller way, 7 million domestic, one Oscar nomination, what have you.

It's not a cultural phenomenon on the level of Twin Peaks crossing over the mainstream.

The first time in 10 years that the public was like, let's lean in, crack our knuckles, and try to figure this thing out.

People were ready for Lynch to be back.

Yes.

They are ready.

Lynch helps fuel this to be like there's now a dialectic going on between the viewers of the movie and this other section of like pop culture and the text itself.

Tony Grant

is a CAA agent.

He is instrumental to the creation of Twin Peaks in that he sort of brings Lynch to ABC and somehow makes that work, which obviously must have been a little complicated.

Supposedly, Lynch recounts at one point

that he has this idea for Audrey Horne's character in Twin Peaks, Charlotte Fenn's character, Audrey Horne,

that one day she'll have like

a storyline where she goes to Los Angeles and starts a movie career and we'll make a movie about it.

Interesting.

Right.

We'll kind of like, because there's been a lot of talk over the years.

Not another show.

Right.

He was like, we'll do like an Audrey Horne movie that'll be about her trying to make it in show.

This isn't a war, or we'll do a TV pilot or something.

She's for years and years.

Yes, exactly.

Mark Frost remembers something similar.

Like, we were maybe going to do a spin-off show.

We were maybe going to do a TV movie.

We were maybe going to do a pilot.

Who knows?

And it's one of those like classic, like, we wrote on a napkin.

It's an idea.

We wrote on a napkin.

They may not have been written on a napkin.

They disgust it.

Sure.

Sherilyn Fenn, who is, I will say, insane.

So she can't be completely trusted.

Confirms this: like, like, yes, this was something they were cooking up.

Like, I would go to California.

I'm sorry to call her insane, but check out her Instagram.

It's insane.

David Lynch says, I don't know about that.

All right.

Well, thank you, David Lynch.

The answer is it's probably somewhere in the middle, right?

You know, like, I don't know.

Someone discussed this.

However, of course, Twin Peaks falls apart on the air and hotel room kind of turned David Lynch against TV for a while.

Right.

You said on the air?

On the air.

Yeah.

And hotel room.

Have you ever seen on the air?

I haven't.

I haven't.

So bizarre in how much it isn't weird.

Like, that's the thing.

You're watching it and you're just like, is this like sarcastic?

Are you?

I don't think it's bad.

I think that, okay, I was going to go to the bottom.

But it feels like him being like, I want to make an old-timey sitcom.

And then he just does that.

There's a, there's a, there's, Lynch is very attracted to the, quote, wholesome.

Yes.

He really likes that, you know, so it makes sense.

It makes sense that he would do that.

Are those

HBO is hotel room?

HBO is a hotel room.

Who's on the air?

On the air was also ABC.

Am I right?

Was on ABC in the summertime.

Yeah, in 1990.

In Real Birth.

Which is right when you know a network is confident.

This show will be debuting in July.

So, but however, Krantz and who now works at Imagine Television, the spin-off of

Ron Howard and Brian Graser's show.

Water be dropping production.

Ripple Effects.

Imagine.

Is still like, no, man, you should make another TV show.

Like, you know, it's over the years just kind of like, come on, any ideas, throw in.

That was your biggest success.

Yeah.

Why did you try to do that again?

Lynch, of course, says, yeah, here's my perfect idea for a movie.

No, I'm joking.

He says, I picture Mohal on Drive at Night.

You know, classic David Lynch.

Sure.

He doesn't even have a story.

I have one thought.

Right.

And that's like.

It's a road of mystery and danger.

But isn't blue velvet like the ear?

Yeah.

It's the

ear, and I've always wanted to crawl into a woman's closet and wash her dress.

I'm not joking.

Yeah.

That's something he said to me.

That's how he said that.

He pitched it to execs

when they said, you got any ideas.

What happens next?

I crawl into a woman's closet.

They're going to say that in the framework of, do you have any movie ideas?

Honestly, that's hot.

They were like, do you have any ideas?

He's like, I have always personally.

But also, Lost Highway is like, what if you got a videotape of yourself?

Exactly.

That was the whole fun idea.

Right.

It's all this was the street sign.

It's a mysterious road.

It's rural in many places.

It's curvy.

It's two lanes.

It feels whole.

You feel the history of Hollywood on that road.

Now, I've only driven a Mohan Drive once or twice.

It does, when I was on it, I am like, it is fucked up that this road exists.

I don't know.

I mean, you probably, have you ever lived in LA?

I have.

I lived in LA for

ballparking three years.

And I gotta say, I'm excited to get into it because he really pinpoints particular LA like corners of LA.

Right.

And they all amplify the characters so much.

I wanted to driven on Mohan Drive.

Well, I don't drive.

I've definitely driven up there and there is this like, it's...

it's especially at night, there's this sort of like dreamy feeling to it.

It's kind of cool.

And it's dangerous.

And you feel like, fucking dangerous.

I'm going to kill someone or someone's going to kill me.

It's the fury road.

But then

during the daytime, it is this, it has this,

like, if I'm remembering correctly, like one side of it is this kind of like Burbanky, we're in the desert.

And then the other side of it is like the richest of the rich.

Yes.

Right.

I mean,

like, fucking David Lynch designed a road to metaphorically represent his entire relationship to the entertainment industry.

Essentially, you look at a map of LA and you're like, here is LA, and then here is, you know, whatever, you know, the North Hollywood and Van Nuys and all the stuff.

And it's like in the middle, there are these mountains.

And you're like, oh, okay, mountains.

And then there's just the map just has this one road that's like.

Yeah.

And you're like, what's that?

Like, Mohan Drive.

And you're like, okay,

it looks like you're driving through the Pyrenees.

Like, it just, anyway.

I want to make it clear, I'm not making an empirical slam on the city that many people live in and love.

But much to the point of what you're saying, I watched this movie and I'm like, this is why I don't live in LA.

It's, I'm like, it's very, it is, I think it's very specific to like specifically a certain type of person who wants to work in the entertainment industry and doesn't like specifically the culture of living in that geographic place while trying to do this type of work.

Yeah.

And the way the city is built around it.

Yeah.

But I watched this movie.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, David, I fucking get it.

That's how I feel too.

I think that all of this feels weird.

It's one of those movies that I think people love to say, you know, it's a love letter to

this,

maybe they don't say love letter, but it's twisted love letter.

It's a twisted love letter to the city.

It's, it's, um, Los Angeles plays itself.

This is.

And I'm like, no, no, no, it is Los Angeles.

Right.

It's not.

This is certainly what I said.

He's actually not making any value statement on it.

He's not making any statement on it.

Right.

That's it.

You know what the love letter to Los Angeles is?

The fact that he still lives there.

I thought that when I was reading the book.

That's what the movie's saying.

This is a movie about him being terrified by this city, and yet he stays.

He stays.

He doesn't have to stay.

He's like, I moved there in the middle of the night.

Yeah.

I woke up the next morning and it was so bright.

Right.

He just loved it.

He never left.

Right.

And Twin Peaks, or not Twin Peaks, but Twin Peaks to an extent.

I was going to say blue velvet, but like the suburban section of his work is like, this is the environment in which I feel the most comfortable.

I genuinely get pleasure and that sense of security

from this type of attitude, culture, look, vibe, whatever.

And I acknowledge there's stuff right under the surface, right?

Right.

Versus this movie is him being like, this is fundamentally alien to me.

Yeah.

I choose to stay here, but all of this is weird.

This business is weird.

This city is weird.

People are weird.

The people in it are weird.

I'll say something else.

I think David Lynch is kind of weird.

In August 1998, Straight Stories in Pre-Production, Lynch and Krantz pitch Mulholland Drive to Jamie Tarsus, the then somewhat legendary head of ABC.

Inspiration for Amanda Pete's character on Studio 60.

Great character with

Tron.

Basically, pitches.

She passed away recently, kind of tragically, yes.

I thought Amanda Pete and nine.

No, we still have her.

Amanda Pete's still alive.

Amanda Pete's Studio 60 character, canonically dead.

She died filming season seven of the UN or whatever the show is that she's.

I'm joking.

She committed seppuku live

during

the day.

During the progress of Studio 60.

Will someone please end this?

Please, please.

Bradley Whitford chops her head off.

She's pregnant with Bradley Whitford's 10th accidental child.

All right.

Ben.

What's up, Griff?

This is an ad break.

Yeah.

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

It's just a fact of the matter.

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

Right.

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

But something very different is happening right now.

That's true.

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

What?

This is laser-targeted.

The product.

We have a 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 of...

Reimagining.

Reimagining, whatever.

A reboot of the Toxic Avenger.

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

Yeah.

I'm going to see it.

We're

excited to see it.

But, Ben, you texted us last night.

This fucking rules.

It fucks.

It honks.

Yeah.

It's so great.

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

Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Tremblay, Taylor Play Page, with Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon.

Tremblay is Toxie's son.

His stepson.

His stepson.

Okay.

Wade Goose.

Yes.

Great name.

Give us the takes.

We haven't heard of them yet.

Okay.

You got fucking Dinkledge is fantastic.

He's Toxie.

He plays it with so much heart.

It's such a lovely performance.

Bacon is in the pocket too, man.

He's the bad guy.

He's the bad guy.

There's a lot of him shirtless.

Okay.

Looking like David.

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.

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 Ciniverse rescued it and are now releasing it uncut.

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

They're playing with fire here.

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

And they knocked it out of the fucking park.

Okay.

It somehow really captured.

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

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

It's gooey.

It's gooey.

It's sufficiently gooey.

Tons of blood, tons of goo,

great action.

It's really fucking funny.

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

Cinniverse last year released Terrifier 3 unrated.

Yeah.

Big risk for them there.

I feel like it's a very, very intense movie and one of the huge hit more interesting yeah theatrical box office phenomenons the last five years want to make that happen again here

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They pitch essentially two pages, they say, which is basically like a woman who's trying to be a star in Hollywood finds herself becoming like a detective, digging into an underworld.

Jamie Tarsus, somewhat surprised to their surprise, is like, you have $4.5 million

and can make a pilot.

They get another chip.

Did she approve at 90 minutes?

She approves essentially.

They get a little bit more money from Touchstone TV.

And so they basically approve a $7 million budget for a TV pilot, basically feature length, 90 minutes.

They do demand.

25 years ago, at a time where no TV costs that much per episode.

That is crazy.

They demand the closed ending.

Yeah, for the international.

Sort of the same deal with Twin Peaks of like, you need to produce a cut that we could maybe like sell in Europe as a movie.

Okay.

All right.

Let's do it.

Krantz hooks up with David Lynch with Joyce Eliasson, I want to say her name is,

who is an experienced, she did the Jacksons mini-series, if anyone remembers it, with Angela Bassett, which is really good, actually.

But kind of like an experienced TV hand, kind of the same thing as Mark Frost.

Like, here's someone who can manage a lot of this sort of day-to-day TV.

If you think about it, it must have been such a weird moment to be like, look, we're 10 years out basically from Twin Peaks, right?

So now there's enough distance that everyone's calmed down a little from their anger over how it collapsed.

And everyone's starting to feel like, like it's an X.

Yes.

If we give you another try tomorrow, would it work?

Would it work?

So they're probably like, look, we don't know where Twin Peaks came from last time.

You got to do your David Lynch thing, but everyone's also like, Let's keep a little bit more attention on this.

Yeah.

Let's put some like steady hands around him with good taste.

No, no, no.

Exactly.

Yeah.

David meets with her a few times and they don't get along part ways.

He writes the whole thing himself.

He delivers a screenplay to ABC.

They ordered a pilot.

So it's not like he fucking comes out of nowhere with the thing he makes.

Yeah.

They have six pilots ordered.

They only have room for about three or four, but nonetheless,

strong contender.

The 99 or 2000 season.

This would be, I think this would have gone to Aaron 99, probably.

Okay.

A few other projects that Lynch passed on or sort of considered at the time, American Beauty.

Yep.

The Ring.

And Motherless Brooklyn,

which

was sort of kicking around at that time.

Wow.

All three make sense.

I mean, like, those are three separate parts of the Lynch worldview.

That's actually true.

Yeah.

The suburban discontent.

Correct.

You can see what someone saw for him in any of them, but obviously none of these went anywhere with him.

Right.

Jay.

Yeah.

And the like sideways detective story.

Yeah.

You're like, most of his movies are those three things happening simultaneously.

It's fascinating.

You see three movies on his desk that are all just like, you just do this for two hours.

David Lynch's casting process famously is he basically just looks at photos and just waits until until something, you know, strikes him.

Sure.

Well, he like really trusts Joanna right.

Yeah.

He's just like, I'm assuming this person can act if you're showing me a picture.

Sure.

Yeah.

Now me Watts intrigues him, Australian actress who had done some Australian stuff, but I feel like when she is in this movie is mostly, I'm mostly reading that she was Nicole Kidman's roommate when she was a kid, a teenager.

Yeah, someone, when I said I was doing this.

podcast, I was doing the movie for this podcast was like, is that the movie with Nicole Kidman's best friend?

Right.

And I was like, burn, bitch.

Yeah.

No, I think that's a lot of it is like they both are like, We're gonna go to Hollywood and try to make it.

And Nicole Kidman hits 10 years earlier than Naomi Watts does.

And Naomi Watts is wonder why.

So strange.

Some of these inexplicable things.

You know who I was thinking about.

Although it's so strange, isn't it?

It is.

It's not.

I think someone is serving the C word over here.

Somebody.

I understand what you're saying.

Somebody

gets married.

Yeah.

But yes, absolutely.

Yeah.

But also, I'm not saying she's not talented.

I'm just saying

it's interesting.

You're right.

Yeah.

You're totally right.

Yeah.

I do, I was thinking a lot while watching this, both in the real Nami Watts narrative of her career leading into this movie and, of course, the character she's playing, where there are a lot of parallels.

I was thinking that too.

What this movie represented for her as a chance to basically get off the bench.

Yeah.

This is your shot to make them take notice.

Right.

We probably talked about this in past episodes, but this insane stat that for both Brian Singer's Superman Returns,

if not additionally also maybe some of the earlier developmental Brett Ratner, Mick G versions of Trying to Revive Superman, and for Nolan's Batman Begins,

Amy Adams was the actress who screen tested against all of the candidates.

Amy Addams was playing the role that would go to Katie Holmes.

Amy Adams was playing Lois Lane.

When those tapes leak out and you can see Killian Murphy in the bat suit as Batman, it's Amy Adams over the shoulder, right?

Whoa.

And they talk about that and how, like, when she got cast as Lois Lane in the Spider-Verse, it was, or the Snyder-verse, rather, it was this full circle moment, right?

And you're like, okay, so Amy Adams was in this position where she had been living in Hollywood for like 10 years

and was respected enough

that John Papsadera, the studio, whatever, was like, oh, yeah, no, bring her in.

She'll give the actors good things to work off of.

Yeah.

Was nowhere near the conversation of getting either of those parts.

Getting the parts, yeah.

And in both cases, you're like, would have been better than the people they hired.

One of them was.

And if you're her, you're like, what isn't happening?

All right, all right, all right.

But you know what?

No, no, no, no.

But I think this relates to the movie.

I agree.

I was just like, I set the goods.

I'm here.

I'm in the room.

I'm having the conversation.

People are acknowledging me.

Yeah.

And yet it's not happening.

Yeah.

Which is the kind of thing that drives a lot of people crazy and leads to, let's say, a Mulholland Drive-esque psychology.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I couldn't agree more.

Now we watch it's the classic David Lynch thing.

He just, she's beautiful.

I want to meet her.

She's got quite a face.

She really does.

Yeah.

She's beautiful.

And

she was like, yeah, yeah.

Famously, the first time he met her, she was like, I look like shit.

And I feel like he wasn't that into, like, you know, I wasn't giving my

profile.

She's like, she'd just come off a plane or some shit.

Right.

So she asked to meet with him again, but she was basically like, this is like my story.

Like, remember, she's only seeing the pilot.

She's not seeing Diane.

she's seeing betty but that also i imagine seeds something in his brain where he's now seeing her at her most tired and worn down and then a second time and then a set comes back right

oh this woman has the rage the range to do both yeah i didn't think of that because i read that story too and i was like ooh i got a kind of icky feeling from that and then i was like oh you just pointed it out i was like oh right he she he did have to see essentially both versions and when i've heard her recount that story she doesn't make it sound like well he was judging me for looking tired i think a lot of it's her internalization in her head about it.

No, he does say,

When I meet her, she looked nothing like her picture.

She didn't look bad, but she didn't look like her picture.

And I wanted the girl in the picture.

I thought, this is crazy.

I'm imagining a person who doesn't exist.

Yeah.

So I asked if she could come back, made up, and she came back.

I guess I'm wrong.

Yeah.

He meets her.

He did need to see both.

Laura Elena Herring was Miss USA in 1985.

She's obviously like she is

married to the Prince of Denmark for two years and hasn't been

fucking

flirted with a European prince or two.

Yes, she was briefly a von Bismarck from like 87 to 89.

Wasn't that later?

I'm trying, but yes, certainly she was

in some royal family.

Let me find it.

Yes, Carl von Bismarck.

So actually, you know what?

He's just the fucking prince of Bismarck, Griffin.

And Germany abolished its royal family long ago about that.

But he's still probably a count or whatever.

He's got some castles.

She was a countess briefly.

10 years later, it's casting a David Lynch project.

Well, she met him at the 92 Cannes Film Festival where she's presenting Firewalk with me.

And 1999 years later, Johanna Ray is like, David Lynch wants to meet you again.

This is also the kind of person David Lynch loves to cast, where it's like they're carrying over some weird energy of like, you were Miss America, and then you were a countess.

And you're a countess.

And that's what he is.

And also, like, he loves people who have some weird metatexual history.

She is such a Lynch girl, image-wise.

And like, when you think about who he put in Twin Peaks,

and if you think about this as his next Twin Peaks, like she makes so much of just this throwback totally, like, totally looks like someone from 50s Hollywood.

She's got Rita Hagworth on it.

She really does.

She really does.

Yeah, yeah.

Because they're both Hispanic.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We will talk about it more, I assume.

And it like, it's certainly this movie is built in a way where, of course, it's more of a showcase for Naomi Watts.

And it makes sense that she's springboarded, but it remains wild, the absolute disparity between the Watts trajectory immediately after this movie.

Yeah.

Versus like kind of nothing immediately.

Yes.

You're like three years later, she's Travolta's wife and the Punisher and hasn't really had good roles in between.

I mean, I think Laura Herring is not the actor that Naomi Watts is, I guess.

If you made me, you know, be mean about it.

She's pretty excellent in this, and you at least think she should have had a better version of the career she had off of this.

She's just perfect for this movie.

She is.

And perfect for David Lynch.

Like, there's no question.

Justin Thoreau,

kind of nobody at this point, right?

Like, what did Justin Thoreau been?

That's a good question.

No offense to him.

I mean, he's had a great career.

You're throwing bombs left and right.

I guess, all right, you know what?

He's in Rome and Michelle's high school reunion, and he's so funny.

All right.

He's in American Psycho.

He's one of the Zills.

Yes, he is in American Psycho.

Yeah.

He's in the business card.

He's actually concurrent with this pilot.

That's true.

That's true.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know,

so I don't, there's nothing really on it.

There's definitely no, like, I saw his picture and I fell in love.

I mean, I don't know.

He's great casting.

He's a nice shot Andy Warhol.

Yeah.

Obviously.

A lot of the other parts here, Robert Forster, Monty Montgomery, and Miller, like that's more classic lynch of like, you know, I want these old Hollywood people like who it's a whole, it's a Hollywood story.

Or Monty Montgomery, my buddy who has a vibe.

He's old Hollywood, though.

Yeah.

And yes, we, we write the Monty Montgomery story.

You know, Dan Hediah, for whatever reason,

David has always thought that Angelo Botalamenti looks like Dan Hediah's brother.

Oh, that kind of.

And he's like, I want to do that now.

I would like you two to play brothers in Lohana Drive and Angela's Louis.

I didn't know that.

Yes, he's the guy who hates the espresso.

Yes, he is.

I did not know that.

Yeah.

If you could see my face right now,

listeners, I'm good.

It's fun to tell people that.

Yeah, I have no idea.

Apparently, Billy Ray Cyrus came in to talk about another part.

I'm not sure the name of the Swatz role.

I think he

Betty.

Betty slash Diane.

I got a real strong take.

And Lynch said he was Gene the Pool guy, which I don't know how Billy Ray should be taking that.

I know, no, I think he is kind of incredible.

So

we don't have to spend a lot of time time on it, but Billy Ray Cyrus has blamed him being on this movie for the disillusion of his family.

Excuse me.

When he and his wife were getting divorced, and Miley Cyrus was going through her, like, I'm trying to own being an adult and having sexual agency era out of like Disney stardom.

And Billy Ray Cyrus went to the press and he was like, My whole family is strayed from the path of good.

We were corrupted by Hollywood.

None of this would have happened if David Lynch hadn't cast it.

What he says, I will say, I do want to give Billy Ray credit, that he does say that David Lynch, I love him and he changed my life.

He doesn't believe that.

But right, but he's like, because it started the past.

I was in it.

I was right.

My kid was now in Hollywood when he was doing that.

Oh, I see.

And I remember feeling, quote, this is Billy Ray Cyrus, not me.

This might not be what God had in mind.

And then what he chooses to do is continue to write it out, make a ton of money playing her dad on her show.

Like, it's not like, he's not saying like Lynch cursed us.

Yeah.

But he's like, that was the siren song that called me over to Hollywood.

right right and then now my daughter can you believe it did not put that together has a body and my wife doesn't want to be married to me who is his wife

well now she's married to dominic purcell oh old potato head trish cyrus sure maybe uh he's amazing in mulholland drive billy ray cyrus he is fantastic yeah

i mean he cucks the

oh there's nothing if i ever get exact last game it better be billy ray cyrus and he better like as i walk in just be like, just

leave.

Just

get out of here.

Your attitude is: if, if, I'll just be pumping.

God forbid, you have to be cooked.

Yeah.

This is who you want it to be.

That'd be great.

I'm like, this would piss me off so much.

If it was this exact situation, you'd like be

his energy.

You would go paint mode.

Yeah.

Paint mode?

You're pouring paint.

He pressed shirt.

I'd paint a fucking drawer.

I don't know what this says about me, but now that we're talking, I never thought this watching the movie, but now that we're talking about it, what does it mean about me that I would just walk away?

Like,

you would be like, you know what, buddy?

10-4, I'm out of here.

I'm out of it.

You know what?

Like, I would just fucking

eternal sunshine, baby.

The pink can lid would remain on.

You're saying, I'm turning on the window, wiper.

Yeah, I would just get back into the Porsche.

Yeah.

I'd go golfing.

Yeah.

And I'd deal with it later.

Right.

Yeah, I do think to some extent, if I know what that means

on the love of my life in bed with Billy Ray Cyrus,

I don't know why she's not.

That was the other thing.

She doesn't seem that.

mad

point you know like she seems

let me no i think you're right and let me write crazy so funny too where she's like now you've done it

i kind of know why i would because of that because she said that i couldn't

fuck the pool guy in peace without you being here and it being a prophecy let me correct myself fair fair

if i were dating someone and i walked in

She was in bed with Billy Ray Cyrus.

That was her energy and that was his energy.

I'd go like, well, this was never going to work out.

Yeah, I got to hear it.

How can I feel offended?

It's insane that you were ever dating me if this is what you're going to hear from the lawyer.

I would be more here for the lawyer.

I will probably, iPhone time, just take a picture and leave.

Yeah.

I just would like to speak for the audience listening right now,

the ones who are thinking I would lose my fucking mind and scream and rage.

Just want to put that out there.

Ben would fucking

do 40 paint cats.

Yes.

What if Billy Ray Cyrus fucked your wife?

Fiancé.

Fiancé.

Oh, are they not married?

Maybe it's because.

Oh, I'm saying in Ben's.

Oh, oh, oh, I'm saying we're specifically going to be a little bit more.

I guess maybe I would light a cigarette, take a couple puffs, throw it on the ground, and burn the house down.

Wow.

Jesus Christ.

Maybe it's because I'm gay.

I just, I think it's just because I'm gay.

I think I would also just be like, I mean, I love.

I'm not this.

If you wanted this, like, all right.

Take a tumble with all beat.

My attitude is just my basic operating principle as a human being is if you break my heart,

break your heart.

Oh,

keep going, keep going.

I just don't think they'll understand that.

What's the next line?

I don't know.

I just have to make that show.

And if you break my heart, again, it just brings it back.

Yeah, a lot of repetition.

They shoot the pilot from Mohawan Drive.

Yeah.

Everyone has a really nice time making it.

And Disney does not seem dissatisfied with the dailies.

Jack Fist said he got a little trouble from Disney getting their money to build sets and stuff, but that just sounds like we're going to do anything.

Yeah.

Well, it's because fucking Scrooge McDonald was running payroll at the time.

He's not letting go of those fucking coins.

So the backstroke, in April 1999, Lynch delivers an initial cut.

He gave me a knowing look.

Go on.

An initial cut that runs over two hours.

Two hours, five minutes.

Jesus.

Oh, so they have to get it down to 80.

ABC is like, David, 88 minutes.

That is your, that is your E.

But that leaves, and then how many, how much, how, how much is ads?

That's what I'm saying.

I think they're like, if you give us 88 minutes, it can be two hours.

Yeah, yeah, got it, got it.

At a time where the longest any episodic show is, is 44 minutes.

Like, that's what's crazy to think about is he delivered something that was over two hours and they were like, we were being generous by asking for 88 minutes, 88 minutes, double what everyone else is doing.

Yeah.

So pretty quickly from Mary Sweeney, Lynch's editor and, you know, longtime sort of collaborator and partner, says.

In Life and in Work.

Yes.

I think they were, the minute they saw it, they were immediately kind of like, we're not going to do this.

It's right.

You don't

capture the magic.

It's not going to be Twin Peaks at the end.

88 minutes, whatever.

He did get it down to like the pilot that you can watch in very shitty VHS form.

It's sort of floating around is 90 minutes.

So he clearly, you know, he gave them what they wanted, but he didn't really give them what they wanted.

According to the network,

it's not that good.

It's slow.

The actresses are old.

That was, I think, something, I mean, which is funny because, right, with Twin Peaks, he smartly is sort of like, it'll be like a high school show.

So there's all these young people in it.

Yeah.

Along with my lovely collection of freaks.

Today, it's like, why are you

actresses who are already in their 30s?

These people aren't famous and they're older.

I have been in that position before in casting where

if you're looking for somebody of a certain age,

you do kind of get into this weird space where

you have to get, let's say, let's just say a male in his 50s.

Let's just say that.

Sure.

And

you need to either get an A-list actor, you know, somebody that has, if you're 50, you've either been working for decades or no one has found out about you.

Right.

Even if you're not presently A-list, they want someone who at one point was A-list.

Exactly.

And you could bring them back.

Exactly.

Like, because you don't, you it

discovering somebody at the age that Naomi Watts is

is odd.

And it's one of the things this fucking movie is about to a certain extent, this, this feeling of desperation, right?

And going back to sort of the Amy Adams thing, the Amy Adams and Naomi Watts, both people who seemingly didn't go crazy.

Yeah.

And when they got their deserved shot, we're like, great, I'll get to work.

I'm a professional.

And I'm not saying it doesn't happen because it happens to Naomi Watts with this movie.

You know, like, so it's not.

Of course it happens.

But it is when you're in that position, you're in David Lynch's position.

It's odd.

The industry does genuinely go, wait a second, if you are over 25 and it hasn't happened yet and other people haven't taken the chance on you.

Yeah.

What do they know that we don't?

That we don't exactly.

Exactly.

Fear-based.

Yep.

There must be a reason we have not yet uncovered.

I realize.

Why hasn't this apartment rented?

It's low.

The price is low.

It's been on the market for two years.

And this must have bed bugs.

And this.

Right?

Like that's sort of their thinking.

They're like, if you're 30 and you haven't gotten famous yet, then there's a problem.

And it does relate back to the movie because

what you're saying, which is absolutely correct, is it is a fear-based way of thinking.

And Hollywood, the main fuel of Hollywood is fear.

And those, right, the people who are making decisions deciding your fate.

It's few.

It's fear.

It's absolutely fear.

Yeah.

They're operating on a fear-based system, and then they are thus creating creating on the people whose lives they control an even greater sense of fear.

Yeah.

And so you end up in this state where you feel like you're in a fucking David Lynch movie.

And you're like, what is this reality I am in?

Does it ever change?

Do I ever become the other person I want to be?

The movie.

Like, what is the exchange of that?

What do I have to do in order to get that?

And that's literally what I need to protect and make sure I don't give up.

You just.

That's the whole fucking movie.

That's the log line of the movie.

Yes.

That's the log line of the movie.

Yes.

And that's why I'm only half joking when I say it's a biopic.

Like, it's like it's my.

Yes.

Because I, and I even think at the young age that I saw it, which was 20,

you know, I, I still sort of, as somebody that was in theater school and one that had aspirations, yeah, it just, it did cement in my mind, you know, this is what you're entering into.

Right.

It isn't Sunset Boulevard, which is like a big,

you know, he's got the car, he's got Paramount, he's got the street sign.

He wanted to put some of the score

in the movie.

So it's not going to be that.

It's also interesting to think about this movie being whatever it is, 15 years after Blue Velvet.

Sure.

And the amount of hand-wringing

in the press and such of people being like, is this movie exploitative?

Is it evil?

How dare he do this to Isabella Rossellini?

Is it abusive?

And it's like that woman becomes his

life partner for a number of years, wife,

long-term partner, you know, and has always been like, no, I felt completely treated properly.

Yeah.

And for him to 15 years later make this thing that is in many ways about his own experience coexisting in LA, but is also sort of him doing this act of like, what does it feel like to be on that side of it?

Yeah.

And is there a position where you can feel like, no, I have complete autonomy.

I want the guy to do the version of the scene where we get real close.

And I'm choosing to do this.

And I'm getting juice from it.

And my performance is great.

And then maybe 15 years later, do you back up and go like, what the fuck was I doing?

Exactly.

I think that's what I'm saying.

Well, anyway, we can talk.

I want to talk about that scene later.

We're going to go through Mohan Drive like a fine-tooth comb.

But I do want to tell you that ABC passed on the pilot.

I'm sorry to break your trust to you.

May of 1999, they said no.

I'm just hearing this for the first time right now.

Lynch now says it's a blessing.

Singing

a finger behind my ear.

Lynch says, look, I do think the first thing I sent them was too slow, the two-hour cut, but then I do think the finesse cut was kind of not good.

Like, yeah, compromise, right?

The rhythms of it were off.

And I look back on it now and I'm like, it was fate.

It's better.

The way it turned out was the way it was supposed to turn out.

The show that everyone assumed they ABC would put it on Thursday night at nine.

The show instead that they order is a show called Wasteland.

Wasteland.

A Kevin Williamson show, follow-up to Dawson's Creek, starring Sasha Alexander, Rebecca Gayhard, gets canceled after three episodes.

And doesn't it get canceled like

the day or the week that Straight Story goes into theaters?

That sounds right.

1999, fall of 1999.

It's hard to think about David Lynch at this point, just like deeply entrenched in two different sides of the Walt Disney company.

Like a movie he made

independently with foreign financing is now bought by them and released by them at the same time he's working at ABC and trying to get through their development process.

I also just can't imagine Lynch in the development process.

No.

It is hard to imagine any of this.

And I do think from what I've read about it, it's like he has a person who's usually good at like kind of right being a middle person between him and a studio.

Not that he's trying to say is.

Right?

Like, but the other, also like, hey, David, the studio said this, like, but maybe knows how to finesse that with him.

And also at this point, he is like a proven brand.

Like all these people who bring him in for the meeting are like, oh, he's doing the David Lynch thing.

David Lynch.

To some extent, they must be excited that they're like, where does he fucking get these ideas?

Who else talks this way?

Rumors.

Rumors circulate that HBO might pick him up.

He was playing the goofy was one of the execs in the room.

Okay, that's right.

Who's Kliel?

It's ABC.

Doesn't happen, sits on a shelf.

Pierre Edelman at Studio Canal, who has worked with Lynch in the past, finds out about it.

The French HBO, basically.

Yeah.

Sure.

I mean, Canal Plus is

TV.

He can have a film.

They produce the run for Studio Canal.

But just to create a

sloppy analog for people who who don't know he's basically like there's a david lynch project that's complete or almost complete

that's there that is sitting there right uh he finally hears about it and lynch is like look i don't you know i don't want to hear about that i don't want to think about that anymore like it didn't work out uh edelman raises four million dollars to buy back the right sorry not to interrupt you but he also hates that the pilot is out there.

He does.

He's very upset that I can watch it.

Yes, he's very upset about it.

Which I I had respected his wishes until I was like, I'm doing a podcast on it.

I'm finally going to see what it looks like.

And I know Mohan Drift so well now, but that will be okay.

Pierre buys it for $4 million.

$4 million.

The money against this movie at this point, what is it, $12 million?

That sounds right.

Okay.

I guess it's like, right, sort of $7 million of Disney's money, another $4 or so of Pierre's money.

Yeah.

They have to then essentially convert it from TV pilot form to cinema form.

So they have to deal with that.

What amount of time had elapsed from when they filmed the pilot?

I will tell you.

He gets $2 million more dollars, basically told,

go shoot a third act.

So $14 million.

Yeah,

we're piling on here.

Lynch is anxious.

Like, he's like, I don't know if I like, you know, if I have a third act.

Maybe he should have tried Transcendental Meditation.

I hear it works very well.

He's worried that the sets have been struck.

Like, how am I even going to do it?

And so there's a lot of anxiety about that.

But, you know, they figure it out.

Supposedly, Tony

Krantz, the agent guy who we've been talking about, who had sided with Disney, basically, and sort of, you know, helped fuck the project, threatened to sue him at one point.

Yeah, they had a big

falling out.

Seems very fraught.

Yeah.

But then finally, David Lynch sat down in a chair and the final act of the movie came to him LOL, as JJ put in the research here.

Beautifully said.

I sat down in a chair at 6.30 and at 7, all of the ideas were there.

They came out of darkness and made themselves known.

Cool.

Sounds good.

At 8 o'clock, he took himself.

But that's classic him.

It's just classic him.

He's just like, remember, there's one

interview with him where he says, if you forget an idea.

He's if I forget an idea, you fall in love with ideas.

And if I forget an idea, I want to kill myself.

Yeah.

Right.

He literally says, I'm going to commit suicide.

Every idea is valuable.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so he starts writing.

And yes,

they essentially, you know, almost all of the reshooting they do is the third act of the film.

They do a little bit, I think, of finessing for the stuff they already have, but it's basically they're just reusing it.

Like winkies.

But then they do also, of course, have to like call Naomi Watts and be like, good news, Mohollandrav is back.

Interesting news.

The third act is you as a new character.

There's lots of sex scenes.

There's going to be nudity.

This is going to now be a feature film in like, you know, Europe.

And so you're completely different than your contract completely changes.

I'm assuming there's some sort of renegotiation of the salary because it's so different.

Yeah, there has to be.

Right?

Yes.

Yes.

Oh, 100%.

Yeah.

I mean, I do think it's, it's one of the fascinating, just sort of like in the soup things about this movie is when her character shifts, it's not just that she is a skilled actress who is playing a second character, but it's like you feel like she is a fundamentally different actor.

Actor, I keep her ups and her approach is different to the parts

in terms of process, not in terms of interpretation of character, where I'm like, this is the difference of when she's shooting the pilot, it's that nervous pilot energy of like, this might be the next 15 years of my life.

Am I on this forever?

This is my big shot.

And then by the time they go and film the third act, she's gone through the process of like grieving for the thing that went away.

That's right.

That's like, I guess it doesn't fucking happen.

And coming back to do it, you feel her having kind of don't give a shit energy.

They also like magically fuck up her teeth.

It's incredible.

I don't know what they did.

What was that?

I don't know.

It's so weird.

It's so weird.

But you know what I'm saying?

I do know what you're saying.

There's a sense of abandon with how she plays the last act that is someone who doesn't have anything to prove.

So they shot it, just to answer your question, Griff, in October 2000.

So we're talking basically like close to 18 months after they shot, you know, the original.

Imagine the fucking cycles, it is a mindfuck, yeah.

Of like true, like creative career grieving in those 18 months.

Yeah, um, the film premieres at the 2001 Can Film Festival, Liv Ullman's Jury, Insane Journey Jury gives it to the Sun's Room, The Palm Door, which is like an okay movie.

Uh, Split's Best Director with me, wasn't there, which shares the best director prize with Joel

Palm Door?

Uh, The Sun's Room.

It's an Italian drama about a family.

Do you remember the film that beat Sun's Room?

Um, it comes out, it was released by Universal/slash Focus in America, came out October 2001, expanded to about 250 screens, made about $7 million domestic $20 million worldwide.

And let's think of it this way: well received.

It might seem like weird, like, oh,

the Sun's Room beat Mahal on Drive and Man Who Wasn't There, that feels like rude.

And then you step back and you're like, well, if you look at the Kan competition slate in 2001, Mohawan Drive did win one award over Shrek.

Shrek was a great question.

I just want everyone to think about they were

competition

the same year.

Zach Ken?

Yep.

Yep.

2001 Ken Film Festival,

a great slate, including Creata's Distance, Man Who Wasn't There, Millennium Mambo, a wonderful movie.

And people are like Rouge might win.

Mohaw and Drive, The Piano Teacher, The Haneki.

Oh my God,

The Sun's Room.

What Time Is It There?

One of my favorite movies.

And of course, Shrek.

Yeah, no, this slate, it makes perfect sense.

The Sun's Room.

I was was lovely, piano teacher.

I think The Sun's Room, which I have seen, was just, it's a weepy.

It's a well-made

drama that's well-acted.

Yeah, like Shrek.

Yeah, like Shrek.

Mohalland Drive come out, and yeah, people thought it was okay.

And so, Ben, do you want to hit stop on the recording?

We're done.

Thank you so much.

Let's talk about Mohaw and Drive.

Film begins with a jitterbuggy scene.

Jitterbugging scene.

My God.

When we did our Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon episode with David Ehrlich, he said, has any movie ever announced it's a masterpiece faster than Crouching Tiger does?

Which he said half as a joke, but he was just like, the title, the beginning of the score, the first image you see of the city.

I'm not saying the opening of this movie is bad, but if you were to pause it on the first 15 seconds, I don't think most people

would expect Flat Out Masterpiece widely accepted as one of the greatest

beginning like a masterpiece in an obvious way.

Well, okay.

I suppose so.

I love the.

I think it's a great opening.

I pointed out to my friend recently, like, that's the jitterbug competition.

And she was like, oh, I never thought about it that way.

I just kind of let that wash over me.

And I was like, oh, okay.

Well, that's the jitter.

She says she won a jitterbugging competition.

Sure.

Oh, shit.

See, I was surprised to realize a lot of people don't put this together because they're like, oh, I'm in a David Lynch movie.

Yeah, I didn't know.

I thought he was just, I thought he was just referencing swing.

That's what I thought too.

I thought it was swing dancing.

And like, doing like a single thing.

And I was was like, oh, it's like people changing positions and whatever.

I did.

I did think that was.

Well,

clearly, I didn't read the 10 clues clearly enough because, number one, pay particular attention in the beginning of the film.

At least two clues are revealed before the credits.

The most important thing before the credits, and the thing that makes me laugh every time I think about Mohaw and Drive and how people are like, what is going on?

Like, and when I say people, I realize I'm talking about abstract things.

Lots of people understand Mohaw and Drive very well.

You have the jitterbug.

Thank you, David.

I'm not saying you.

I'm saying, like, I just hate you.

Oh, so you think I don't understand?

You don't understand shit.

No, no, no.

I didn't know it was that.

Then there is a point of view shot of someone's head hitting a

pillow.

Shirt, yes.

That is like, it's like, it feels like a studio.

No, I know it wasn't like us.

I mean, like, I don't know that people are going to get that it's a dream.

Can we have like a shot of someone going sleepy time bed-buys on their big red pillow?

Like, I'm just worried.

Like, it's just funny

that the movie starts with someone going to sleep.

And people are like, I don't fucking get it.

What could this be?

To be clear,

lots of people get it.

It's a dream story.

Yes.

So it begins with someone going to sleep, and then we see the opening credits, which were the opening credits of the pilot, which are the car snaking through Mulholland Drive as that beautiful music plays.

The title shot of the, you know, the sign with the lights flickering on it.

Such a cool shot.

Credits rolling.

And Laura Herring, this glam bomb of a lady in a slinky dress,

is going to get murdered in the car, we assume, or right outside of it.

Driven to, it feels like nowhere good.

Right.

And then immediately get out of the car, like they have a gun.

And then some joyriding teens disrupt this assassination and cause a big car crash.

And then she's stumbles down the hills into

LA.

Right.

The city of angels.

And as she stumbles, her memories memories fall out.

Yes.

It's also very comical

that she travels from

Mulholland Drive on foot

to

West Hollywood.

Very much my experience, plus.

And it's still nighttime.

That was a nice day.

It's just, she would, that would take her a day and a half.

Yeah.

A day and a half.

It's also like, she's in high heels.

How's she scaling this?

It's just, it's just, I know, I know I shouldn't take it.

I was just a hint.

Right.

I got something was askew.

No, you're right.

You're right.

Pre-ride share apps, when I would go out to L.A.

to like pilot season, do auditions, fucking take meetings, whatever.

Yeah.

I'd show up at places and they'd be like, do you need parking validated?

And I'd be like, no, I walked.

Yeah.

And they'd go from where and I'd go Santa Monica.

And they were like, that would take five hours.

And I was like, yes, it took five hours.

That's why I'm caked and sweat.

I would just fucking walk.

I took the bus.

I straight up took the bus.

I would do that as well.

If I could take the bus, I would take the bus.

Yeah.

Sometimes the bus was so complicated in terms of the amount of transfers.

A lot of transfers.

Or you miss the time and you're like, the next one's in half an hour.

It's actually faster if I walk for two hours.

Yeah.

I'm surprised he didn't skateboard.

I'm not that cool.

Then

the next thing we see is the great Robert Forster looking like a Primo snack.

A million.

Yeah, he looks really like a million.

He really looks good.

The great Brent Briscoe, Brent Briscoe, who's

a Raimi favorite.

Exactly.

Great character actor.

But it is so funny where you're like, well, these two guys would be like Briscoe.

The sort of like Greek chorus of the mystery you imagine on a series version of this.

Not to talk about the pilot too much, but weirdly, Briscoe is in the opening credits, and Robert Forster is credited as a special guest star.

Now, I don't know if that's Forster just getting some kind of like special billing.

Can I tell you what my guess would be?

And Leslie, I think you'll probably back me up on this, especially at this point in time where people who were considered movie actors, there was a stigma against TV.

Yes,

it's like how Edward Herman is always billed as a special appearance on Gilmore Girls, even though he's in there.

Where they're like, even if you have like a contractual, you're guaranteed X number of episodes, you don't want to be locked into the regular thing where they actually own you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you're like seven seasons.

That's the thing.

That's the thing.

Yeah.

At Pilot Stage, you're signing up for seven seasons potentially.

So a guy like Forster is like, I will probably do every episode, but you need to structure my contract in a way where I could bail it out.

I could leave at any time.

Yeah.

So we see Laura Herring.

Her character is not yet named, but we'll take the name Rita.

She has amnesia.

She sees a guild of post.

Hiding.

Right, but she hides out in this woman's house.

You see this woman with red hair, who we actually see again at the end of the movie, but you know, supposedly Diane's aunt.

Sees a woman leaving the house and is like, great, open house.

And goes and hides out.

The next scene in the film is the Winkies Diner scene.

It comes quite early.

I really did not remember that it was that early.

I didn't either, in which Patrick Fischler, and who's the other guy?

That's a good question.

He's got, because he's also got kind of a recognizable face.

Yes.

Are sitting at Winky's Diner, which it's a Denny's.

Right.

At Gower Gulch, which is just.

Is it still there?

The Denny's,

probably not.

When I lived there, it was.

It's on

Cower and Sunset.

Gower and Sunset.

Gower and Sunset.

And it's this weird little, I mean, I know it has some history of like the copper penny or whatever, but like, you know, in the mid-2000s when I was there, the Denny's was still there.

And it was, it's like a little strip molly.

The actor's name is Michael Cook.

Okay.

Where's he from?

Just a bunch of shit.

Not much, yeah.

He doesn't have a Wikipedia.

No offense to him.

Yeah.

Embarrassing for him.

Now embarrassing.

He played Casino Letcher in Showgirls.

Well, hey, so he's one of our favorites.

Sorry, about about the Denny's, yes.

No, no, no.

It just, when I was talking about, you know, these kind of spaces in Los Angeles, this, this scene very much sums up that,

you know, shitty middle of, middle of nowhere, but in the midst of everything.

Yeah.

And by the way, these are the types of spaces where I feel most comfortable in LA.

But I think like these weird, like, what is this diner that feels like it's in the middle of the suburbs, but is actually

on sunset.

And feels kind of frozen in time like when i would take these fucking two-hour walks to appointments yeah and i could find a diner like that in between i'd go inside and i'd be like i feel safe now yeah well that's true well psychologically yeah not like from assassins i think what leslie said is

is interesting yeah because i know what do you guys think of the winky scene it's an incredible scene i've never been so scared in a movie theater in my life well it sets you off balance immediately and it's fascinating that

wasn't part of the pilot it's not i would have guessed it was because the the the something i noticed this time around it sets you off i mean i remember seeing this in the theater and just being like this is the most uh terrifying scene i can think of but it uh i hadn't lived in la yet so i didn't really recognize this as like the shithole

um safe safe haven that it is sure but the the real thing is the is the coverage with the jib doing figure eights basically the the camera never settles yeah ever in

in the overs.

Which just keeps you on edge.

You're like, why is the camera not

walking down?

Stop.

So you never get your bearings in terms of,

is someone going to stand up?

Yes.

And the rhythms of the camera do not feel like they are in sync with the rhythms of the performance of the actors.

You're like, what's motivating this?

The thing with Fischler, too, who had only been in like a couple movies at this point,

is one of my favorites.

He's so good.

He's got such an incredible face.

Yes.

And he's nervily describing to this.

The other guy, no offense to Michael Cook, the casino lecher that he is.

He looks like a regular fucking, you know, Hollywood guy in his 40s, right?

That's the point.

Yeah, Fisher's got these energy voices.

Right.

He's got this kind of, and he's describing to the guy, like, I had this terrifying dream and you were in it.

Yes.

I was here.

You were standing over there.

And there was something behind the diner that was so scary.

I woke up and I can't even think about it.

It's so scary.

I never want to see that face

in real life.

Now trying to confront essentially what happened.

Two things I want to call out about this.

Yes, one, Lynch is a guy who mostly makes films that, if not directly inspired by his dreams, operate on dream logic.

It is often used in shorthand that the most annoying, boring thing you're telling someone about your dream.

Sure.

Right, right.

Yeah.

And here this guy is like 20 years into his career, basically opening the movie with a scene he enters later after just like a prologue that you can't make sense of.

Here's the first scene that's on its face kind of straightforward, right?

And it's a guy explaining his dream.

True.

That's true.

Which is interesting to me.

It's the first time dreams have been like textual in his movies outside of dreams.

To the point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know what you mean.

He's like attaching that onto what's already pre-existing text.

I would actually disagree with you because dreams are very, very important to Twin Peaks.

Okay.

Because Twin Peaks is Cooper saying, I had a dream, FYI, and we have to now do this thing because I had this dream.

And of course, my love.

Harry Truman being aware of that.

It's basically about a guy who can't dream and wants the dreams.

I just had this.

I just remembered in Lynch on Lynch, he tells this story about that he would go to this Denny's.

I think it was this actual Denny's that he shot in.

And he felt, again, he's attracted to this like wholesome concept.

So you going there as a safe haven actually now makes a little bit, it like clicks for me.

I think I connect to the same things Lynch does that feel comforting.

Like there is this part of me, even as a weird city boy, that's like that kind of suburbia frozen in 950s aesthetic feels really comfortable.

How much should I say about what I think this scene is about?

Say everything.

All right.

can i make one second point very quickly before you say this because i think this is really fascinating i don't know if any of you know this in the lynch casting of like how he loves to use nepo babies or like former old hollywood stars people who have like some hollywood some weight in them right yeah patrick fischler's father ran, it just announced it was closing very recently, a legendary sort of like dive diner in Santa Monica called Patrick's Roadhouse.

He named it after his son.

his son was the mascot and says he basically fell in love with acting by being like the barker outside.

He hang out with these actors who would come hang out.

And it's this place if you're driving down to Santa Monica, you will always see it on the road.

It's got this green sign.

Yes,

and it's got all sorts of shit on the roof.

It's like, what if the aesthetic of like a TGI Fridays was on the roof instead of on the walls?

It has like a T-Rex and a statue of Liberty and shit on the roof.

It looks pretty good.

It's the kind of place that I guarantee you Lynch loves, right?

Oh, yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely.

And here's this scene in a diner

that is being carried by an actor whose father ran this kind of diner that is notorious within the industry and people who live there.

And that is his legacy.

Whether that's intentional or not, it's all

interesting, like meme.

No, I think it is.

Because he loves to cast people who are carrying something with them.

No, that's interesting.

Whether it's stated or not.

Yeah.

So, all right.

Well, give me your research.

Well, just to be clear, what happened, and Leslie, whatever you want to, but what obviously what happens is they have this conversation.

The moment that to me actually sort of sticks with me the most is he's like, so now you go pay

and, you know, go be where you were in my dream.

Sure.

And then he looks at him when he's standing there and looks terrified.

And then, of course, they go outside and Lynch does this amazing thing where he switches to the POV of him like walking down the stairs and you're like, Yeah, the study cam.

And then it's so like, and then weirdly, like he clocks the payphone.

You know, like

he's like tagging stuff.

He's like, oh, there's garbage over there.

Why am I going back here?

It's the middle of the day.

It's like first-person shooter of mundanity.

I was thinking, too, that, that it was just this weird kismet thing that this is that in Zodiac, the Lake Bereasa scene is the scariest daylight scene.

Right.

Daytime scares are hard to do, but if you pull them off, this would be like a

very close second of just like, there's no shadow, there's no cover, and yet this is absolutely terrifying.

And much like we talked about in that episode about that scene, you're like, what is unnerving is the weird sense of like normalcy around this horrifying scene.

He's walking.

He's walking.

Right.

There's.

Yeah.

And you're like, the tension of this is unbearable.

You can tell he's sweating.

Yeah.

The audience is like, this is a David Lynch movie.

What the fuck is about to happen?

And what happens is an insane noise plays and a weird, dirty hobo slides out.

And the guy seemingly kind of like has a heart attack and you lose your mind.

Played by Bonnie Aaron the nun.

That's right.

Played by the nun.

Played by the nun.

Of Blumhouse's The Nun.

Of the nun fame.

The tips of the role.

Famously, they built some prosthetic for her and Lynch was like, no, like, I just want, just put shit all over her.

I want her bone structure.

She has an incredible face, and the nun is basically the same deal where they like put a lot of paint on her, but they don't change her bone structure.

And she, I read an interview with her.

She says what she mostly rumors is that how hot David Lynch is.

Because she was like, it was a lot of him like staring at me and like, you know, us carefully putting together the look.

And I was, so I was looking in his eyes a lot of the time.

And he's so, he's so hot.

Gorgeous.

She says hot, which I really like.

Oh, yeah.

She was horny for Lynch.

Do you know what's interesting?

This is another like point about her bone structure.

There's this thing where like if characters are largely created through prosthetics, the studio can claim they own the likeness because it's not your underlying face.

And they have cut her out of like merchandise for the nun because they're like, well, it's our design we own.

And she's like, it's my fucking face.

It is your face.

It's just built on my face.

It's built on my face.

There's no rubber.

You just painted.

Right.

But

I don't mean built physically.

I mean, like, they took her face and they embellished.

But they can't argue, like, well, but the nose is ours.

Right.

Yeah.

No, it's her.

I just feel like.

Yeah, I want your take on this.

What you said about the winkies is so interesting to me about the diner, the actual location, that it's like this.

Because I do feel like this is some sort of like, it's a,

the movie is largely a dream, right?

For 90 minutes of the movie, we are in Betty's dream.

I want to go on the record and say I don't think it's a dream.

Okay,

I think it's about a dream.

I like this.

That's what I think.

We could talk about that.

Let's keep going.

Let's keep going.

I just want to make that clear about.

I'm going to describe to sort of the general theory of like, this is mostly a dream.

And then the back half of the movie, the back action of reality.

She wakes up.

But why do we think that's reality?

Why do we think that's because it's actually?

No, no, no, wait a second.

I kind of want to get it.

Okay, we'll get there.

We'll get there.

Let's finish your point first, and then we'll finish.

I'm not saying that this is like this is the definitive take on Moholl and Drive.

All the evidence is there.

There's a lot of them.

The 10 clues.

But

we are with Betty for most of the time.

We're with Naomi Watts.

Like this scene, this is a person she doesn't know, right?

But we are with

much later in the film.

This is where she, Diane, you know, the real Betty or whatever, the other Betty,

asks Mark Pellegrino to kill

Camilla.

Yes.

To do a bad thing.

And when she's doing that, she goes, she looks over and sees Patrick Fischler standing there.

Standing there, yeah.

And it's this moment of fucking his eyes are boring into her because he's Patrick Fischler.

God bless him.

His eyes bore into you.

He's got those pussy willows over those eyes

waving around those fucking caterpillars.

He looks like that meme of, have you seen this face, right?

In your dreams.

And it's like she was being

pasta.

Yeah.

Exactly.

At the lowest moment of her life or the, you know, darkest moment of her life, right?

And it's like we're, you know, the diner is this like liminal space, right?

It's like in between dream and reality,

which you're saying the real diner kind of is.

You're like, what is this doing here?

It's like the Surge Protector in Wreck-It Ralph.

It's where all the

right?

That's another Ben's choice.

Yeah, that was a big one.

Both of them.

Both of them.

We didn't, we dimmed together.

Like,

and what this guy is doing in this scene, be he a real guy or not, is he's kind of like, I had a dream about this place.

I want to go into it.

Right.

I'm trying to kind of recreate the dream.

I'm going into the liminal space of trying to think about this.

Sure.

Trying to recreate it.

Yeah.

And like.

Which is basically what Lynch tries to do as an artist.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, and it's like he's sort of crossing or he's like trying.

He's literally like stage directing.

Right.

And like,

shit is wonky.

Like you're saying, the camera work is wonky.

Like the perspective shit.

Who are these people?

What is that thing behind there?

Like, I don't know.

Like, that's the classic Lynch thing of.

Bob or all these creatures he creates where it's like some kind of representation of an evil or a force or whatever.

Like you can do whatever you want with it.

Well, what's your take on it?

That's my take.

Is that really clear?

What I just said

that, like, just that, like, you're in, that, like, that is, like, a, because of the thing that you're doing.

Winkies itself is the transitional point between states of consciousness.

But I'm not saying it in a way of, like, if you go there, you get to go into the dream world.

I'm just saying, like, it's just.

Well, that's what Rickett Ralph.

Well, I would say that my experience of watching.

There's like a blurriness to that place.

Right.

Yeah.

And that's, you know, what he, why he's drawn there and why it freaks him out and why the thing from his dream is there or whatever that's what i like about talking about dreams is that feeling where you wake up and you're like huh i have a weird feeling i can't shake it even though whatever i was just going through immediately now doesn't exist right you have some lingering feeling and then for me at least this is how it often works like halfway through the day something i will come across will trigger the memory fuck that's what the dream was right right and then i start reconstructing oh okay so that was that that was part of it and then what was the other things there and you're trying to understand, why was I dreaming this?

And why did it fuck me up so much?

Why is this still being held in my body, which is basically what he's trying to do?

Like, let me go back to the space of here in the diner, you stand there.

Can I like reconstruct this in a way where then I can deconstruct it?

I think that, I think as we go through this, I feel like I don't have, I think it'll be really interesting, this conversation, because I think I would love to hear, I really am dying to hear takes of like, this is what, but I also feel like what I can contribute to the conversation is the experience, again, the experience of it.

Like when I was sitting in the theater and I watched this scene, to me, first of all, I didn't understand what the fuck was going on until this scene was the scene that locked me in.

And I,

I went, boom, I'm in the movie now.

Yeah.

Like up until this, I mean, like the amnesia girl, I was kind of like, okay.

I mean, it's a setup.

You get it.

Yeah.

But this actually locked me somehow into the movie.

I was now, you know, for lack of a better term, like hypnotized into the movie.

And I think that the experience of it is everything that you guys said, the setting, the performances, the sort of odd

retracing the steps.

But to me, it's almost the thesis statement of the movie

rather than meanings.

Again, rather than meanings.

I like it.

Is that he's describing a dream and then the dream is now in reality.

So there is, there's a, so there, there are two things that are concurrently happening.

Yeah.

There's, there's the dream and then there's the reality.

Yes.

And that those two things actually do exist at the same time.

I agree.

So this is what's interesting to me.

Yeah.

And David's probably about to tell me that I'm wrong.

No, I'm not going to tell you.

There's no wrong with this movie.

With this movie, this is my fundamental belief.

You can think whatever you want.

No.

I watch this, and my interpretation more is that the last act of the film is the dream.

A lot of people

would make that up.

Yeah.

I fucking said it.

You're just going to be able to do it.

Why do you think the last act of the film is the the dream?

Why?

Because two tiny little people come out of a box?

Like, what?

That doesn't happen to you in real life?

What do you mean?

What are you talking about?

But to my point, I think you are the most right, even more right than big smart dudes.

Let's be, let's be, let's argue right now.

Because it's about the relationship between the two.

Yes.

That's yeah.

That's the actual truth of the movie.

Yeah.

Right?

Because I think one of the things that to some degree, it's about the blurriness of the relationship.

It's a woman looking at another woman and going, I wish I were her, and being both sides of her.

Yeah.

And you could read either way.

So that's why I say it, it isn't, I don't think the movie's a dream.

I think the movie's about a dream.

Because I think that he, Lynch talks a lot in, in McKenna's book

about how he believes the mind works this way.

He doesn't, he, he, he believes that the mind is not separating the dream from reality.

That, like you were saying, you can be walking, you can have had a dream, then be walking in in reality, see something, and then you're back in the dream.

I sort of know what he means.

I mean, he's trying to describe an indescribable feeling that i think anyone has had can i briefly tell a stupid dream story it is brief don't sigh that loudly you're right i think i should have sighed loudly not i agree actually ben if you could actually like put bump up i was upside up yeah yeah i put a little reverb on it all right

This story will make me sound crazy, and I swear that's the point.

I'm doing that on purpose.

Go ahead.

In clock,

I have a dream.

I think this is after I see Into the Wild, where there is the scene where

Kristen Stewart begs Emile Hirsch to sleep with her.

And he says, I can't.

You don't know what you want and leaves her.

I had a big crush on her as an actress.

I was like, I cannot imagine someone making that choice to leave the fucking train.

I've talked about this on the podcast multiple times.

That feeling.

Right.

Your revulsion at the very idea that someone would reject Key Stewart.

A week later, maybe.

I have a dream that is the most like emotionally mature interpretation of me being in a relationship I had ever had or felt in my life

in which the person is Kristen Stewart, but I am consciously in the dream going, God, Kristen Stewart's good in this dream.

She is playing a character.

Right.

It's a Kristen Stewart type performance in a different context.

She's not an actress, this and that.

And I go through this whole cycle of how we meet and how we date.

And then I'm going back to college.

She's in a different city.

And is it going to be able to work long distance?

And I wake up the next morning and I'm in college in California.

I don't have a car.

I beg my friend.

I'm like, you have to drive me to fucking Blockbuster.

And I go through the used DVD bin to find any Kristen Stewart movie.

And I'm like, I can't process this until I watch her in a film.

I'm now like hung up on this idea of this fake character she played.

And I need to somehow like create a separation of reality again.

And I like find a used DVD of In the Land of Women and I watch it.

And I'm like, okay, she exists back again in movies.

I don't know if I should build on this because I do feel feel like it will, we're,

we're 15 minutes into the movie.

Keep going.

Okay.

I think that that is an experience that I've had many, many times.

Many, many times.

I will cast actors in my dreams all the time.

Specifically Mark Hartz, Mark Ruffalo.

I, I, I, I, kind of the Kristen sort of man.

Mark Ruffalo, you can be in my dreams anytime before I get to that.

In a lot of ways.

In a lot of ways.

I in a lot of ways.

You know, saw you can count on me a year before this.

Yeah.

In the theater.

Yeah.

yeah that man dropped into my consciousness in a way that i could not shake yep i could not shake until he played the hulk and then i was like i'm free yeah i'm free he's gone maintain

he's always angry leslie that was my exact relationship with kristen stewart through the twilight it was when she got to twilight i was like you know what she belongs to the culture now this isn't about me i'm safe i'm safe you know i just i try the exact same art yeah i know exactly what you're talking about yeah yeah ben what does the winky scene mean to you if anything do you have any like the winky scene is about

cowards and buying the DVD of Analytica Women?

That's what it's about.

That is the one correct interpretation, Ben.

I

also find it terrifying.

Very scary.

I feel like.

It would be weird if you were like normal scene.

Happens all the time.

It's funny.

Well, yeah.

I mean, don't you guys have monsters that live in your dreams, come to life?

Ibes are immaculate.

I feel like I have dreams where

stuff

that takes place then come true.

And I am a little bit of a believer that I do think that sometimes your future arrives or like visions of your future arrive somehow in your dreams.

Like a deja vu kind of.

Yeah.

And I have that experience a lot.

Yeah.

But I also find it really terrifying how sometimes I'll be like, I feel like I've dreamt this before.

Like that experience is really scary and weird.

Throughout your 20s, you kept having recurring dreams about listening to idiots talk about movies for hours.

And then one day we rang your doorbell and said, Have you seen the Phantom Menace recently?

That's true.

Yeah.

So

I find this idea of

being like, you know what?

I'm going to actually follow the path and

see where this leads.

And then it's like real

is quite scary.

Own it in your waking life in order to process it.

Yeah.

In some way or another.

Yeah.

David, what?

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

Booking.

Yeah.

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

Booking.

Yeah.

From vacation rentals to hotels across the U.S., Booking.com

has the ideal stay for anyone, even those who might seem impossible to please.

God, I'm trying to think of anyone in my life, perhaps even in this room.

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

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

There's one other person in the room.

My weakness is so rude.

I sleep easy.

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

No.

That's an example of a fussy person.

But people have different demands.

And you know what?

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

You know, you've got

a partner who's sleep light, rise early, or maybe, you know, like you just want someone who wants a pool or wants a view or I don't know, any kind of demand.

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

Sure.

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

You got air conditioning.

Well,

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

Yes.

You got to have air conditioning.

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

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

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

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

You do.

You love selfies.

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

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

And I'm like, sounds good to me.

Yeah.

Please.

Can I check that book?

You want one of those in the recording, Stupid?

That'd be great.

You want want to start, you want to be

in the sauna when we record.

I was going to say, you're you want to be the Dalton Trumble podcast, you want to be splish-splashed.

You look good if I had a sauna and a cold plunge, and while recording, I'm on mic, but you just go back like ah, like as I move to the

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Yeah.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.

Winkies, it's this sort of picture-perfect diner, right?

It's a very, like you say, throwback-you all-American, and behind it is like this

monster, but also essentially the bum is just a homeless person.

Like, it's like a right, like the you can take it as you like, but it is basically an a dirty, unhoused person.

May I say that when this happened in the theater, I closed my eyes.

Yeah.

So I had no idea what they were doing.

You didn't know what they saw.

You just knew what they were saying.

You knew what they saw.

I knew it was something fucked up.

And finally, we, you know, I watched it.

I, by the way, watched it again, still did the same thing.

Right.

It was only when I was watching it with my boyfriend at that time where he said, you have to watch it.

You have to look at it.

And then he made me do it.

It came out.

She came out.

I screamed.

And I said, and I said, oh, okay, it's okay.

It's okay.

And he was like, yeah, but you didn't know it was going to be a gooblin.

And so now every time I see it, I think that's a gooblin.

That is a gooblin.

Either way, this guy sounds great.

I already like him a lot.

He's wonderful.

He's fucking fantastic.

I'm seeing him next week.

It's like, but it right, like, you know, like, just, again, if you're just thinking about this as like a weird liminal place where it's like there's sort of window dressing over something we like to ignore, right?

Like this kind of person in terrible circumstances or this

monster of an evil evil we can't understand or like someone who's in control of everything or just a person back there that isn't the real problem but you know i know i keep reading most lynch films as being about this but his sort of like

guy who lost his keys guy who has headache but no the incredulity of like what are these rules of society that everyone agrees to bide by this is so strange that we all just are like this is normal and this is what we do and this is how we act and all this sort of shit yeah talking about a diner like that as a place of comfort and security yes part of it is you're like, well, I just need to eat food and this is comfortable and it's homey.

But there is this thing of like, and there's this unspoken rule that unhoused people are not allowed to walk in here.

I'm not saying that is the number one value we put on private inside spaces.

Right.

Right.

But in theory, it's like if you're inside a business, there's an idea of like certain parts of reality are supposed to be kept at bay.

I also like that he keeps cutting, once she leaves, he keeps cutting back to where she was.

Yeah.

And there's nothing there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is for serving.

You're like, why are we cutting back?

Why are we still here?

Why is the camera still filming?

Slides out.

He goes,

you know, and then the music goes out and, you know, becomes this crazy sort of sound.

Right.

They play All-Star over the opening credits.

Right.

We see her slide away.

Trek kicks down the outhouse door.

There's a flush, weirdly, even though in theory there's no plumbing.

Go on.

The next sequence is Mr.

Roque, Michael J.

Anderson, the small person who played the man from another place in Twin Peaks in a full-sized human suit

that has been created for him to sit in.

In the world's longest room.

Like in this like crazy kind of Twin Peaksy room that's all curtains and stuff.

When you say human suit, it does sound like the Edgar suit for men in black.

What do you mean is a full-sized suit?

You're right.

I don't know how to describe it exactly, but right.

The sort of prosthetic of a, you know, six-foot-tall person that he's sort of sitting in.

And I guess one assumes if this was a TV show, we would have had more of him.

It's just such a cool, like they built this crazy rig for him to be in, essentially.

Oh, that makes.

Oh, I see.

You know what I mean?

Like, he's, he's, yes.

He, you know, he's sitting and he's playing a big person.

But he's also shot from a Ned Beatty and network distance where you can see that.

Yeah, but you see him quite sure what you're seeing for most of the time.

Right.

Oh, that's a good reference for the way he's shot.

Right.

Yeah.

And it's similarly dark and distant, and there's like nothing else in the shot really other than him, even though he's so far from the shot.

Also lit kind of similarly.

Yep, yeah, totally.

In shadow.

In sort of shadow, anyway.

There's a sort of like a stroke of light that's illuminating him, and a lot of the other room is a little abstract.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is the first time in a David Lynch project, Michael J.

Anderson gets to like speak

words that go forwards

the whole time.

They were never backwards at any point.

Calls someone, says the girl is missing.

Someone else calls someone else.

Someone picks up that phone and calls a red lamp shade.

Phone is ringing.

No one picks up.

I'm just mentioning that.

It's very important, in my opinion.

And it is one of his clothes.

It's one of his closest

clothes.

But no, it's very, well, if you got, you know, it's.

Notice appearances of the red lampshades.

Number two.

It's Diane's lampshade.

My favorite phone is the one that has the light right on it.

I love that phone, too.

A big sort of trucker hand picks it up.

It's going on there.

It's just wild.

And then we're with Betty.

Yeah.

Betty, beautiful Naomi Watts getting off the plane with these nice old people.

It's just the woman, woman, actually.

She meets her husband.

She meets her husband.

My immediate experience watching it for the first time and seeing Betty was, I hate her.

Well,

she's a pain in the ass.

She's like, oh, my God.

I just hate her.

You're just like, who is this optimistic about shit?

Who is this like unhaunted?

I distrust people like this who just seem like.

I also hate her sweater.

Her little pink cardigan.

Oh, my God.

It's the woman.

It just...

Beautiful woman.

It just annoys.

It's this tiny thing that annoys you.

Well, because it's the buttons and it's not really closing.

It's not the right size.

And she seems to have, again, this is why she sunk in.

Like, again, I'm going to keep using that word.

I would sink into the scenes and really sort of make, make a split-second decision of how to feel about it.

Sure.

And this one was immediately, I fucking hate this woman.

Yeah.

It also looks ADR'd, this whole scene.

The whole scene is ADR.

It's really, really fake.

There's a heightened artificial emotion in the scene that, unlike the Lynch, like weird, heightened uneasiness, it's just like, why are they acting like this?

Like, it's almost like fucking Verhoeven Starship Troopers.

Like, everyone be as broad

and as clean and as

that Watts is like that I would be like, I'm just so excited to be here.

And Lynch would be like, more.

And she'd be like, that's crazy.

I can't go crazier than that.

He'd be like, yes.

You need to be as outrageously sweet and simple as possible.

Beyond that, it's just like, it's all surface level.

It's performances that are not only really loud and large, but like have no subtext to them, right?

Seemingly, at least.

At this point, the subtext

is a kid

around.

She's a girl who says she won a jitterbug competition in Ontario, and on the back of that is like, guess it's time for me to go get cast in movies.

You know, like, I'm going to move to the moment.

She can obviously play great depth.

And as the film goes on, you start to see that bottom develop in her.

But at this point, it's like, this is top floor only.

Yeah.

She is saying the line.

She's opening her eyes wide.

Yeah.

It is text.

It's text.

You know, the subtext comes later.

It comes.

Well, I agree that it's the rest of the movie, but it's the scene where the old people are in the back of the car.

Yes.

So smiling.

It's the period.

No dialogue is the two of them in the car smiling at each other.

And that's, to me, that's the period of the scene, like the end, like the punctuation of the scene saying,

now here's the subtext.

Right.

And here's the other thing: they later in the movie directly say, like, you're not fresh off the bus, are you?

Here's this scene that's basically a fresh off-the-bus scene.

Absolutely, but they're like, well, but it's a plain,

you know, like, some details are a little different.

No, no, I'm, but they do make this distinction where someone says to her, like, you're not like one of these naive, I just want to jitterbug contests.

Like, they're basically saying, you're clearly not the kind of person that you are.

She shows up at her aunt's home.

I want to ping this.

This is very

a West Hollywood

architecture.

Meaning, I have been in so many of these.

Right.

These kind of like little housing courts, right?

Where it's like lots of apartments and this big courtyard.

Again, the old Hollywood connection.

I think this is where little starlets would live.

My friend just moved into one of these.

Yeah.

I think literally one of the ones in this lot that they found in.

Like when they mentioned Sierra, Sierra Benina, Bonita,

Sierra Bonita.

That was the first street I lived on when I came to to LA.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The iconic Ann Miller, who had basically not been in a movie since 1956.

She has a little break.

Yeah.

She has a tiny, tiny cameo in one other movie.

I remember telling my mom, Ann Miller's in it.

And my mom being like, what?

Ann Miller is alive and in the movie?

And I'm like, this is her last performance.

It's her only performance across those five years.

That is correct.

She remains alive.

The iconic and beautiful dancer, Anne Miller,

best known, I think, for Easter Parade and

On the Town and a million other, you know, Sarah, Kiss Me K.

Kiss Me K.

Playing a, again, if you're thinking about it in TV pilot form, kind of like a very lynchy supporting character, right?

This is great.

We have Patrick.

Like a connection, yeah.

Like we have, we have this old Hollywood lady.

Lord knows what she'll do, but she'll be around.

And I don't need Taprika, you know?

Weirdly, again, like Patrick, it's like, I don't need to, I don't need to give visual context for what this person is because they're just that person.

Exactly.

Right.

There's, I mean, I'm going to put her in pearls and all that, but like, I mean, I think Coco, the lovely Coco, who is the nice landlady in this part of the movie and then is this kind of imperious mom in, you know, in the later part of the movie, right?

Like there, it is the two sides of like the old legend, right?

Where you're like, oh, this is so cool.

This person who has all this history in them.

and then later like the way she's sort of scary you're like right that's like a gatekeeper like a jaded right yeah of like everything evil in hollywood is like this person who's like okay sweetie yeah well she's the person on the absolute other end of the experience that when you watch wishes she could start right that's right this is the end conclusion this is the end even in the best of circumstances even the best of circumstances

and miller being the iconic star that she was you make into the tapestry in film history.

My mom will hear and know.

Like, of course I know who Ann Miller is.

Yes.

This is the best.

This is the end.

This is the end.

Yeah.

And that you want to desperately get to that end.

And in both realities, it's like, this is where it ends.

Obviously, there are some shots of dog poop, which ABC was like, why the fuck did you film dog poop, bro?

I love him so much.

And he's like, I put another shot.

It's coming back to it.

And then, by the way, they got dog poop in an overall deal.

I just have to.

Spent like three seasons trying to slot it it into different pilots and it just didn't really stick into the popular.

I want to talk about the dog poop.

I want to talk about the dog shit because

I think, again, this thing about

Lynch that I just fundamentally disagree with is that he's presenting the ideal or the good, and then he's, and then he's, he's undercutting somehow by saying like,

I think it's that one shot from Blue Velvet that cemented everybody's sort of like, well, this is the take.

And the minder belly.

My personal opinion, the way that he talked, again, I've read sort of more David Lynch talking than watched his, I've seen this one a lot of times, but he constantly is sort of name-checking that these two things exist at the same time.

There isn't one that's better than the rest of the world.

That's the truth.

He's saying, no, yeah, you have your nice Hollywood courtyard, but the dog still shits in the fucking courtyard.

Like, and Miller says he's going to bake his little butt for breakfast.

These things are married.

And when they, exactly.

And then when she walks into the apartment for the first time,

it's also POV steady camp.

So it's the same, it's the same shot behind Winkies.

So again, you're immediately unsettled.

You're like, I mean, whether you realize it or not, he's using the same language.

Yeah, you're like, no, no, no, when she's walking through the apartment for the first time.

So you're like, at any corner, the gooblin could come out.

At any corner,

at any point.

And it's every now, because of Paul, that's the, that's every time I see it, I just think she's a gooblin.

Yeah.

Yes, indeed.

Right.

She's led into this apartment.

And who is in the shower behind the glass door, but Laura Herring as a

question mark

woman.

Yes.

And our mystery begins.

Who is this woman?

And without being cross, this is a body that reads with like a striking announcement through fucking tapered glass.

Yes, sure.

You're someone who looks like a Coke bottle.

Yeah, no, sure.

Abstracted, where you're like, what is this shape?

Yes.

She was Miss USA.

Yes, right.

And she sees.

She's crass to say that.

She sees the Gilda poster.

She decides to call herself Rita.

Because she doesn't remember who she is.

And

how she got here.

Here we are in this Hollywood dream, and we have these two like golden age Hollywood archetypes.

We have the ingenue,

you know,

the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed one, and the sort of like sexy mystery like what's going on dark noir on rita hayworth and ginger rogers well i also think that that the that their states of mind also sort of sum up your first experience going into hollywood which is one of um and again i think they can exist at the same time which is you know that exactly what you just said that the bright-eyed ingenue but then also this woman who has completely lost her identity right like actually enters hollywood going i don't know who i am in any way and you can yourself,

I'm literally going to be a Hollywood actress.

I'm going to keep my character.

I'm going to create my personality in real time.

Right.

Based on the stimuli that I'm getting from Hollywood.

Right.

Which to some people, they're like, that gives me a sense of autonomy.

Yes.

To be I am in control of deciding which of these things I'm going to do in order to become the person I want to be.

Yes.

Versus an Yomi Watts who's like, I still believe that my path to success and immortality can be much like me winning a jitterbug contest.

I show up and do what feels right to me and everyone will go, great job.

Thumbs up.

I think she is all we love your thing.

Like

don't change at all.

A Hollywood mystery.

Like, who's this?

Right.

Anyway, we move on from this to one of my favorite scenes in the movie in a movie fill up that's all my favorite scenes, which is Justin Throw being sat down, hot director, you know, being sat down and said, oh, yeah, the studio just wanted to have a meeting.

And in walks the two chillest people in the world, Silent Angelo Bottomenti, and Dan Hediah just looking into his briefcase.

So he's just all forehead.

Like, it's just like dark shadow forehead.

He's almost doing the clooney.

He's doing the clooney.

And he just,

you know, swipes over.

Now, I don't want to be mean about Melissa George.

Do you know Melissa George?

I don't know her personally, but I, uh, I was

those, um, what was it?

Three years that she was a

thing.

Yeah.

I sort of remember, vaguely remember remember that.

Yeah.

It kind of felt like the mob was trying to force Melissa George on us in real life.

I agree.

It feels mean for me to say this, but it is just funny that this is the girl is about Melissa George, who is someone called.

Don't you love Melissa George at all?

And it's like, I don't.

She's fine.

I don't know.

I have no problems with her.

I hate to be mean, but it's about these people, but it is so true.

It's like all you go through these like seasons of

faces, right?

It's like, and I hate to be, I hate to say this, but like, in my mind, it's like the Gretchen Moll, you know, the classical

Noah Finn, you know, with the Vanity Fair.

And then honestly, Ryan Phillippe.

Like, I just was like, why is this person?

I couldn't agree more.

Why is this person just here suddenly?

I feel like he is not discussed enough as the male version.

I mean, it's right.

And I have always been like, I didn't ask for this.

But even a great actor.

But again,

Hollywood marriage.

Yeah.

Around a little too long.

Around a little too long.

With someone who was legit.

A guy I love, like Colin Farrell.

The juice.

Yeah.

Like, you know, the initial backlash Colin Farrell face that he then, you know, he merged and evolved or whatever.

Was like people being like, we can smell you trying to force this guy on us.

We're not sure how we feel about it.

It's like, even though they have the juice in the talent, it's like they were sold in the way that makes you go, look, this has mafia vibes.

I do not want to go off on a tangent, so I'm just going to say this very briefly.

And I hate to be the person name-dropping.

Colin Farrell is probably the best Hollywood meeting I've ever had.

Look, a stunner.

A fan stunner.

I hate to tell you, you've now, there was an off-ramp, and David's going to welcome this conversation.

Class act, class act, beautiful, succinct, beautiful, succinct conversation.

David will not move on from this.

I will move on quickly.

A beautiful text.

After receiving the material,

a beautiful long text.

It was lovely to meet you.

Exactly.

Lovely to meet you.

You know,

you know what David has on his desk over there?

Tell me.

It's a little legal.

I got him a little legal.

cyclone minority report.

Colin Farrell's my favorite.

His number one guy.

My favorite guy.

David's number one guy.

And honestly, I will also say this.

You are the second person I know who had a general meeting with Colin Farrell that didn't end up going anywhere, but also reported to me, that's like the best fucking meeting I ever had.

What a guy.

Always.

What did he say to you about raising your daughter?

I can find the quote.

It's my pinned tweet on the normal website, X, that I never visit anymore.

It's such a trouble.

So you can get a picture of it.

It's such a great pinned tweet from the graveyard.

I told him that my daughter was a year old, and he said, They grow, keep watering her, and make sure she gets sunlight.

It was so cute.

Oh, he's a

penchant.

They grow, they grow.

It was lovely.

That was Coganata, a

friend of Leslie Hedlow.

Yes, yeah.

When I asked to interview him for After Yang, and Coganata was like, I know you love Colin Farrell.

You should just talk to Colin.

And instead, I interviewed them together because Colin was being an unselfish star and trying to share share the, but as the interview began, Coganata was like, Colin, this guy loves you.

I'm not going to talk.

Like, you should just talk to him.

And I was like, no, we have to, all of us have to talk.

But anyway.

Do you folks know that Melissa George?

Oh, God.

This is the girl.

This is the girl.

That's what the scene is, is the mob saying, this is the girl.

Throe being like, what?

What are you talking about?

This is my movie.

You can't pick my actress.

What do you, you know?

But what do you want to say about Melissa George?

I want to pull this up.

Get the name right.

Melissa George has patents for inventions, physical.

Shut the fuck up.

She created a thing called style snaps, quote, a device intended to allow changing pant hem length without sewing that was sold on like shopping networks in Australia and still makes tremendous money to this day.

And she's like, that's my main income.

It's never been acting.

Well, good for you.

She sort of like talks about her career in the way of someone on the business end of like a Mahalan Drive experience.

Where she's like, the one consistent in my life, the thing that's kept me above water is that I created style snaps when I was 22 years old before Hollywood tried to sell me on the show.

The aesthetics of this scene

are

if someone was having a dream about how Hollywood works a little bit like Justin Throw has his golf club laid out in front of him like a sword.

Right.

Right.

Hidaya has the briefcase from which he's just pulling headshots.

Here's a meeting.

We are deciding that this person's a star.

Batalamenti is signing.

And if you disagree, then you will be executed.

And then essentially, what looks like basically like a hotel bellhop, a giant man in a red jacket comes in with a tiny espresso, gives it to Batalamenti, who drinks it and will not let it profane his throat.

So it spits it onto a napkin and says it's shit.

And everyone loses their mind.

And they're like, this is really one of the best espresso in Hollywood.

Like, I don't know what's going on.

And Hideus screams at the top of his lungs.

The people in these corridor of power boardroom meetings.

who get to make the decisions that change the world or at least change the entertainment we consume, the tapestry of the public consciousness

and mainstream media are lunatics who spit coffee into napkins and act like blubbering idiots.

But also, all of this feels kind of completely random, right?

Like the core moment of this movie for me is Naomi Watts not to jump way ahead, nailing this audition, and then looking at this other woman and being like, I'm about to not get this part for reasons that have nothing to do with me.

And their decision of like, we're telling you it's this girl.

Yes.

There's a, there's like a controlled chaos of this scene.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, even though everyone's very tense, you're not really sure why.

Yeah.

Right.

Yes.

There's like this thing.

I, one thing that I wanted to ask you guys, there is like, what's interesting is that there's a hard iconography with some of the characters, like the bellhop, and then the sort of blandness of everyone else, not unlike the other guy in the winky scene.

There's this sort of

wash of white guys in a suit.

Right.

But I was curious, like, what's the visual reference for Thoreau?

Is it Tarantino?

I feel like it's that kind of a guy.

The black shirt, the glasses,

I think it's the guy who wants to pay the Tarantino.

Yeah, it's like, where did I wonder?

It's like, I love the idea of Lynch just sort of going, he's wearing these glasses, his hair is like this, he's got a golf club.

Like, there's something about it's a bit of self-parody as well.

I was going to say, Lynch with the up hair.

Yeah.

Right.

You know.

Yeah.

That he's not that he's a self-insert character, but it's like the design of the character feels like

extremely the younger 99 version of him, but also the version of him who is like, well, I got to play the game to some degree, right?

But he also, that you immediately clock him as the director.

That's what I love about Lynch is that he's just like.

He's down to the golf club.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But if he's like Lynch, go ahead.

So hot.

I was going to say, my distinct memory is watching this movie on DVD with my mother, and he comes on screen and she gets hot and bothered.

And for years after that, it was like Justin Thoreau was her number one celebrity for like, where's Justin Thoreau?

Why is he not in movies?

And anytime we were watching something that he was in, and my dad would walk behind us and go, really him?

And let's just say, kindly very handsome.

My father is about as far off from Justin Thoreau as that person could possibly be.

They're just very different types of men.

But it was this thing of my mom being like, Justin Thoreau.

Like, I saw him on the street.

I saw him at Citarella.

Justin Thoreau.

Like, she'd say it like this, and he'd be like, he's got like tattoos and spiky hair.

What are you talking about?

This is certainly Lynch parodying and working through hilarious, awful, evil Hollywood meetings he's had and putting them through his filter and his, you know, and this is the version of him that is 20% more amenable to the terrible Hollywood nights.

Right?

Right.

But then also.

It's a self-incer, but it's also like a kind of a shadow self-version of how his career could have gone astray, say, if Dune.

He didn't have Final Cut.

Like if he didn't have that again the blank check like if he didn't have that then he'd be this guy or he'd be stuck to it dune had gone okay

amen right and he was like i guess this is a partnership yeah sure i make movies that would meet in the middle dune is the best thing that ever happened to him that is our exact take i think i think it's his take too in a way i mean well he hates talking about it but like

if it had put him on the path he needs to be able to do it in room to dream in room to dream he says there when you have what the blessing of a massive failure yes is there the only way the the only direction is up Yeah.

There's only, you can only go up from there.

And also teaches you everything you never want to do again, rather than those being abstract ideas of maybe I could do something like this.

Yes, that's right.

That's right.

But within the text of the film, I do feel like, now, again, obviously in the TV pilot version, this is clearly just going to be a plot: is Justin Thoreau plays this director.

Sure.

He has to cast Melissa George.

What happens next?

How will he interact with Betty?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Sure.

But if you're thinking about, you know, this is the

sort of scenario of a scorned Hollywood starlet, right?

Or a person who didn't make it.

Yeah.

This is them being like, yeah, this is how the fucking system works.

Like it just, you know, in the wood-paneled office, suddenly a shadowy mobster is like, no, you can't cast her.

You're Amy Adams.

And why are you always in the conversation, but you never get the job?

And, of course, not completely out of reach.

Yeah.

It's within grasp, and yet somehow you never grab it.

Yeah.

Thoreau freaks out.

It has to be forces at play.

Smashes the window with his golf club.

Yeah.

And we cut to Mr.

Roque, then Michael J.

Anderson again, who's just like, shut everything down.

And that's that.

Yeah.

The next scene, which again, this is the one I was like, this isn't in the podcast.

You like this scene.

Okay.

Well, I like every scene in Mulholland Drive.

Sure.

No.

That was the joke.

Mark Pellegrino talking to another guy who's laughing.

Yes.

And the guy is clearly explaining what went wrong with the hit on Camilla, you know, Rita, whatever, you know, and this is crazy.

The Droid Riders and the Marxists.

This scene is everything I hate about LA is that LA has people like this in offices like this.

Well, then aren't you happy that he gets shot and his hair turns into like a sort of fried, you know, air?

It's a feel-good moment of the movie for me.

And then this insane

slapstick plays out where the hitman accidentally shot someone else in another room and has to kill her.

And then there's the cleaning man who's just staring blankly and he has to kill this guy.

Are you saying that you you?

There's no way that's in the pilot.

and it is

it was in the pilot?

Yes.

It's all in the pilot.

So I guess that was going to be something else too, right?

I'll tell you what I'm with this guy.

Sure.

What do you guys, anything you want to offer on Mark Pellegrino taking out an entire thing about this movie is just this thing of like the difference of, I mean, now it's fucking changed a little because TV shows.

are told to conceptualize themselves as 10-hour movies or whatever.

Right, right, right, right.

Yeah.

But it used to be like this thing is so scattershot, you have no guarantee of of how many episodes you get that when you're designing a pilot, the idea is how to put enough pieces in play that, like, there's open, expansive terrain of where this could go.

Yes, yeah, you conceptualize a character like Mark Pellegrino, and maybe there's a fixed end point you hope you get to, or maybe not.

Yeah, maybe you're just like, you know what, this show needs a type of guy like this.

I got a plot thread that exists in this kind of universe.

I got a real sense of, again, watching the scene for the first time in the theater.

Yeah.

I got this real sense of parody.

I got this real sense of like, because I feel like what was in the water then was this Cohen Brothers Tarantino.

Sure, absolutely.

Um, Elmore Leonard,

Barry Sonnenfeld.

Right.

This scene feels like it could be from Get Shorting.

Yeah, it just feels, and then the parody of it is the continuation of just like, it feels like his commentary, or maybe not commentary, but his experience of watching the temperature of Hollywood at that point.

Yes.

Genre-wise.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That it's like we see the.

Is the next scene Thoreau again?

No, the next scene after the big hitman thing is dead uh betty and diane like going through her bag and finding

honey yeah the key yeah you know and uh well i can't i said betty and i'm sorry i'm so bad with the names uh betty and rita

no rita

and rita crying and being like i don't know who i am like the mystery advancing basically can i can i ask the two of you as people who've studied this movie far more deeply than i have and seen it far more times than i have?

On the Lynch cluelist.

Oh, sure.

Number three is, can you hear the title of the film that Adam Kesher is auditioning?

The Sylvia North story, yeah.

And you hear it, you do hear it twice.

What is the meaning of that?

Explain.

Yeah.

I'm not going to do this with other things, but that was the one where I was like, I missed that and I don't understand what the importance of that is.

So the Sylvia, I mean, say it again, the title.

The Sylvia North.

The Sylvia North story.

Okay.

So the movie that he's directing,

Kesher,

right?

That's his name.

Yeah.

The Justin Throw character.

Seems to be this kind of like American graffiti 50s throwbacky thing, right?

Also, some biopicky.

Possibly.

I mean, the name is absurd, right?

Like the Sylvia North story.

She's some kind of singer.

Right.

The audition scene is like a singer.

Yeah.

I'm not, what I'm never really clear at on

is what the audition Betty does is because it's not for the Sylvia North story no that's because it's a different director right it's this like but but but later in the movie when it does get mentioned again

um when does it get mentioned again it gets mentioned again when she's at she's at the the house

in the uh other she they ask how how how um camilla and diane met she says i was up for that yeah and i had a smaller role and then she doesn't she say that

yes and but doesn't she say

she said the director didn't like me and he said, but he says Bob Brooker or Bob Booker or whatever it is.

And so that's the director at the audition.

Right.

The project has also like transmutated

what the project, the brass ring project, the star making project is has changed at the same time that the identities have changed, you're saying, basically.

Right.

Yeah.

So the project that's never getting made has become the project.

The project that got made and then made someone a star.

Yes.

So to me, it's not necessarily like a, I don't know, again, I don't want to ascribe meaning to the movie, but in walking through that, it does feel like,

and because we see the cowboy again in that scene

at the dinner party, it does feel like the

random fate of Hollywood.

Right.

Meaning

the line between success and failure is so thin and it's so ephemeral.

Yes.

And that's why I keep coming back to this idea about the movie that it's not

good or bad or better or anyway.

It's not real or fantasy.

It's that these two things are so close to each other

and almost indistinguishable and yet

they feel wildly apart.

Exactly.

Right.

And that's the whole experience of trying to live in a city like this that is run entirely on everyone's ambition or fear, right?

That it's everyone who doesn't have it trying to figure out how to get to the other side and everyone who's on the other side being terrified of it going away.

You're also metatextually looking, you know, where you're, you're watching a movie that David Lynch initially made for a television network.

Yeah.

Right.

And then when we exit the TV network version of it,

it's mutated into

European money.

Right.

It's like, so it's like, so I'm kind of with you on like, is that reality?

No, it's an entirely different way of story.

This is what's interesting, too, is like when we're talking about that's weird, why would he put the Mark Pellegrino version in the TV show?

Right.

You're watching it and trying to go like, so what would he have done for that character over X number of episodes or seasons?

Yeah.

Versus him them going, well, now this character is a closed loop.

Everything I ever want to say about this character happens within this.

No, no, there's more Mark Pellegrino in the movie.

Like, no, no, no.

That's what I'm saying, though.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But like, right, now this is what I have to work with.

Right.

This season

I want to say has to be in this movie.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's the same with every character in this film.

But obviously, you can sort of, you know, if you want to be more basic about it, I guess you can, right, you can sort of think of it as like, this is her rerunning something that didn't work out for her, you know, as, no, what I I did was I crushed that fucking audition.

Right.

I was going to be taken to him.

Yeah.

We meet, our eyes lock.

Like, this is my moment.

Then it's like, but Adam, you have to watch.

Melissa George is about to do our audition and you have to say this is the girl.

Well, I also think that there's also this feeling of like, when you compare those two scenes,

that there's this.

She is triumphant in this scene,

but the film is not getting made.

And the other version, she fails miserably.

And the director doesn't like her.

Yes.

And the movie is a success.

Yes.

You know, so there's this feel, again, who, this is why

I hesitate to say one's reality and one's not.

Right.

Because those two things are outside of her control.

We know she's a great actress because we saw it.

And the feeling of that audition room and the weird reality that's created within it that she like accepts and enters into and like wins the game.

And then you walk out the doors and the behavior of the three other women who should be her allies in this industry, you hold.

Aren't there three others?

No, two.

But they're like, doesn't that woman come in at the end?

It's a disaster.

Maybe someone else should be in the middle of the day.

Yes, well, when they get introduced, the old casting agent lady is basically like, that poor guy, he's never going to make that piece of shit.

But you were great.

Her first line walk out the door.

It's like their performance has changed.

Their energies change.

The second they leave that room.

What a disaster.

You're feeling the way Naomi Watts did.

What do you mean, didn't you?

What do you mean are you saying that to me?

And they're like, no, no, no, you were incredible.

None of that means anything.

Right.

That was nothing.

Yeah.

That's a bunch of people.

You're something and now will work out in some other way.

Yeah.

And I'll bring you across.

And again, that's the experience of being in Hollywood, which is like, you can do the best that any, I mean, that scene is transformative.

When I watched that in the theater, I was like, you know, I've been watching, you know, you're kind of experiencing it, experiencing it, experience it.

When she does that audition, you're like, who the fuck is this woman?

And it's the metatex.

It's a whole thing of like, fuck are you?

It is that for Naomi Watts as well.

And this is the thing in terms of like casting Ann Miller, casting Patrick.

It's like, I am going to, instead of going with the, he could have cast, I mean, I guess because of the TV of it all, he probably couldn't cast a movie star.

But even still, he could have cast someone who was more well-known in TV, but not in leading roles.

However, he could have, like, not unlike Kyle McLaughlin, he could have convinced an actress that he'd worked with before to say, like, this is going to be something special, et cetera, et cetera.

He's not a star, he could have found a more familiar face versus someone who really was new to anyone who hadn't watched Tank Girl, a futures Ben's Choice episode.

Oh, God.

So, yeah.

So, there's the, so he is, what's odd is that he over and over again relies on your public consciousness of something that you probably don't know about.

Yeah.

But he, it's weird.

He sort of trusts the fact that you experienced a cultural osmosis.

Yes.

Again, subconsciously, possibly, so that as you're watching Naomi Watts go through the experience that she has actually gone through in her life and knows that this is the audition that she must nail.

And to watch her,

I have never been so thrilled by a performance.

I mean, I've enjoyed performances, I've admired performances, but I was, I found it thrilling.

Well, you're watching someone make the argument for their worthiness

in real time.

Yeah.

And the character's doing that, and the actress playing the scene is doing that.

Yeah.

Where they're like, I need to be undeniable in this movie.

And the footnote

is the movie's not getting made.

Right.

The footnote, again, the punctuation on the scene is

none of that matters.

So quickly, they say at the same time, of course, none of that mattered, but also it mattered because you impressed us.

Because you impressed us.

And now we're going to impress it.

And then they go to the other room, and the other room is inaccessible to her for reasons, forces that are outside of her control of perception.

Yeah.

She looks in the eyes of this other woman and feels some sense of transference and it's like, I don't get why it's her and not me.

Yeah.

But there's something going on here that's unknowable, and there is no reason, correct?

You know, there's it's meaningless, they don't explain to fucking Justin Thoreau, they just go, This is what it has to be.

That's why I think that the arm, whatever, I don't know, the actor, the um, Michael J.

Anderson, the man from another yeah, the army is canonically the arm, the arm, you're right, he is the arm.

Well, he's kind of the arm here, right?

Like, there's just this image, not unlike the cowboy and the gooblin.

There are just these images of

chaos.

Like, there is no way

that you can control what is going to happen to you in life, but specifically in this particular industry.

Absolutely.

You know, like there's no,

and you know, not, I know we're kind of skipping over it, but to bring it back to the

to the Thoreau cucked scene.

I'm bringing this back.

Well, the cucked scene.

Because I have much more to say about the audition.

The cucked scene is next.

Yeah.

After the shitty day he has, he arrives home.

His wife gets fucked the pool man, Billy Ray Cyrus.

And he, in a very Freudian act,

despoils his wife's jewelry box with paint.

Yep.

In a very Freudian?

Yeah.

Graham Fuller said that in his review.

I've never forgotten it.

Interesting.

Where the jewelry box is sort of a vaginal, secret, metaphorical, he's dumping paint and dumps paint all over it.

Oh, that's so funny.

Like this destructive, odd sexual response to this bisexual children.

I felt it to be just another example of

his

powerlessness.

Sure.

And his, um again the whims of the fate and his um impotence yes impotence in every single way this very impotent act he can't choose the girl so he can't fight this man he can't he can't fight this man he can't he can't he has to he can't fight the mob he his acting out

he can fight the sort of theatrics around her of like this is your like play acting comedy to me it's a it's a mirror exactly it's a mirror of the golf club into the windshield the way he runs away another impotent act yeah it's just sort of these are objects of status The objects of status that I'm going to destroy.

Right.

And so it feels like this, this, uh, again, this kind of like odd acting out in a way that is never actually going to affect the

actions that have already transpired.

That's what I thought you were going to say about Freudian.

Like, I thought you meant like the,

yeah, that's what I thought.

Objects of status that he's going to destroy, but in both cases, he is basically causing surface damage.

Exactly.

Windshield's been blocked.

We should drive the car.

The car hasn't been destroyed.

We shouldn't drive the car.

Yeah, and you should get it.

You're going to get a replacement.

You're Ben and you maybe have a strong take on how it could fit into a fashion line.

But in both cases, he's affecting the most surface level of the thing in a way.

100%.

I also think Billy Ray Cyrus is very funny that his mode is basically like, hey, man, just leave and forget about it.

Don't worry about it.

And then when he starts acting up

and he like shoves the woman, Billy Ray goes into kind of like, all right, buddy mode, and then just finally balls him out.

I just think that's funny.

I think he's so funny.

It's a very funny

funny performance from Billy Ray Cyrus.

One of our finest actors.

And the last thing I'll say about the impotence of it all is that then when he goes through the rest of, or not the rest of the movie, but like for the next few scenes that he's in, he's covered in pink.

He is covered in pink.

He's not covered in blood.

He's not covered in blood.

The cool guy Hollywood all-black outfit is now this kind of weird, comical, like paint-stained thing.

Purely paint.

Absolutely.

I don't think David Lynch selected these things, you know, offhand.

But I think, again,

it's just fucking throwing shit.

I mean, I don't know if, again, I don't think he makes these like intentional things.

Again, it's not like I've left you a clue.

You better figure out the clue.

There's only one answer to the clue.

No, of course not.

But he's sort of just like listening to the muse and just being like, for some reason,

this is calling out to me, and I'm just going to do it without explaining.

And that's what I felt watching it for the first time.

I just felt like this guy's, this guy is.

He's tapped into something.

He's just, and that Justin Thoreau is just sort of a,

not that he's not talented, but that he's so, he's so hobbled that it to me i was like watching it and i was like god this guy's super hot and then as it kept going i was like god this guy's pathetic he seems pathetic and it's like right he thinks he remained undeterred as a director you're like i'm now in control right like that's the whole point you make one concession and it's like did i just give up the whole

thing he feels really gen x you're you're not wrong he's not wrong gen x is hell that's the reference that's what i was trying to figure out there's something about it that that was like that attitude.

Basically, right as that is dying, as we're on, like, you know, the slash

99, it comes out in 2001.

You're on two sides of Y2K.

Yep.

And it's like, this is the guy who used to be tip of the spear, coolest,

youngest, freshest.

Yeah.

And this guy's about to be phased out by whatever's coming up.

It's not just phased out.

It's more like, hey, I get to make a big movie.

I get to do what I want, right?

No, you get to do what we tell you to do.

Fuck you.

I'm going to do what I want.

Okay, well, now you have no money.

Now your life is falling apart.

Now you have to go to beg cookie.

God bless him.

Seems like a nice guy.

Big white mustache.

Sure.

For, you know, a room for the night.

Yeah.

This, you know, in between the cooking scene and the scene I'm about to talk about, we have more of Diane and Rita.

Betty and Rita.

Jesus Christ.

You know, they call

what they think might be her phone number.

Like she figures out her name.

Maybe my name's Diane because she sees it on a waitress's name tag.

Then these outfits are just psychotic.

Like, what are these girls wearing?

They just look crazy.

crazy.

It's literally like they went to Party City

or Claire's.

They don't know what's funny.

And they just fucking.

Except for in a bag.

Yeah, and they're hiding it.

Yeah, they hide them, which, you know.

They look like fake clothes in a way I can't describe any better.

That's correct.

They don't look like costumes.

Yeah, they feel like they're like fake clothes.

What are they made of fabric?

Do you know what I'm saying?

They're not even made of fabric.

It's beyond fast fashion.

It's like rapid, instant fashion.

There is a brief and comic scene in which the mob dispatches a person I can only describe as a golem, who is like 40 feet tall and wide

to the same house.

And he's just like, what's the guy's name?

Adam Kesher, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam Kesher.

And both

the wife and Billy Ray Cyrus like try to charge this guy and he just like shrugs them off.

There's that shot where he like turns his hand into a fist where he's like, I have to go fist mode to like punch one of them.

No, she's punching.

He punches her in the face.

Right.

Like she's like on top of him.

And that made such an impression on me the first time I watched it, too.

I was like,

but he doesn't even acknowledge.

He's still just going, Adam Casher.

And it's like, this is what they have.

They have these robot automatons that are strong.

Yeah.

Yes.

That's all.

They wrote his name on a piece of paper and fed it into his mouth.

Exactly.

But when you saw it, did this really disturb you, the scene?

Well, it disturbed me because of how funny it was.

Like the audience is laughing too, I feel like, at a lot of these scenes.

I think it is truly the X factor with Lynch's career where you're like, how can a guy make things that are this abstract and against the norms of Hollywood storytelling?

Yeah, that more often than not have hit to some degree and connected with the public, even if they can't quite make sense of the story.

And the answer is that he is inexplicably funny.

He really is.

And if people are laughing, they're a lot more willing to tolerate some shit they don't understand because they're being locked into a physiological response.

I also just remember the audience at this point, we're pretty freaked out.

We've already met the Winkies guy.

This is a weird tense movie.

So these scenes like the Billy Ray Cyrus scene, even the mob yelling scene, like you're kind of like, this is funny, right?

Like, this is weird and funny.

He's must upsetting it.

He's trying to calm down.

Disarming you with comedy.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Past and future.

Yes.

Kevin Smith has talked about past and future.

Yep.

When clerks like blew up at Sundance, and here's a movie that was made for no money

by non-professionals with non-professional cast, you know, with like threadbare production values and whatever.

And

everyone flips out over it.

And he's like, the answer is like the thing I was able to convey in that movie was something funny.

The audience was laughing.

And Hollywood cannot like buy that on purpose.

You know, you have to find someone who has the instincts.

And if like the audience is laughing, students are kind of like, I guess it works.

That's, I, I, I, I, I was, um, I was at a film festival and John, um, John Waters was interviewing Roger Corman.

Yeah.

And he said, what, what do you think the, you know, what, what genre,

you know, would you not do or the hardest genre?

And he immediately was like, comedy.

It is.

Because you know immediately whether it's working or not.

It's less subjective.

Yeah.

If you're like an exec who's watching a screening of a fucking thing, you're like, well, either people are laughing or they're not.

Yeah.

I can't fit with that.

Yeah.

And it's the same kind of thing where if like, if Lynch can nail five things in a movie that are inexplicably funny,

people are like, I guess there are like handles for people.

Right, right, right, right.

There was something too that, like, when I watched this the first time that this, you're absolutely right.

This scene kind of got me back in.

Yeah.

You're just so

confused and tense.

Well, the, well, the mystery.

A guy getting cheated on by Billy Raysa.

You're like,

well, it's more active.

It's more active than the A story.

You know, the A story has now sort of morphed into.

It's so elusive.

And it's kind of like you've seen it before.

It's like they're starting to,

the detective aspect of it is starting starting to

hit the familiar beats.

Yes, you know, you're not is this pastiche, yeah.

You don't and this, these scenes are actually the most energetic.

They're the scenes, I mean, again, the Mark Pellegrino scene as well, they just start to pop, they start to give you these shots of comedy.

Um, and like it's like the twin peaks back and forth, it's the dance of like, well, just the murder mystery of the girl isn't the thing, you have to go between that and a log lady or whatever.

You know, the soap opera of it, like twin peaks, all of it, but it's moving between these spaces, yeah, yeah.

Um, the yes, because the Betty and Rita is like

Betty, you know, being playing Nancy Drew and being like, Well, maybe it's this, you know, and then the occasional scene of like Lee Grant shows up at their door and is like, Someone is in trouble, and you're again, then as an audience member, you're back to like, that's

like something weird's about to happen.

And Lee Grant famously, like one of the most blacklisted actresses where it's like, Yep, career struck down, has 20 years of

fucking work.

Like a young up-and-comer gets an Oscar nomination, then is like benched

and then comes back and like wins basically the revenge Oscar and has like an incredible career, becomes a filmmaker lasting decades.

But like someone who comes in with that sort of baked in power of like

she's quite old.

Both of you know she's still alive.

Yeah.

But this is someone who represents both like the best and worst outcome.

Exactly.

For them disposing of you.

Well, that's the thing.

Coco shows up and is like, oh, don't worry about her.

She's just an old kook.

Like, don't, but like, right.

It's like, if Coco is this more put together, like, I'm an old Hollywood broad and like, here I am now running this little, you know, and it's the point from A, and then you have her.

Right.

And then you have this like weird ghost lady who's like,

you know, like, you're like, she's sort of, again, the in-between place, like, being good, but the movie gets canceled.

Um, being bad and the movie does well.

Lee Grant represents essentially, or again, not represents, I don't want to say that, but the, the, the scene.

It's also, it's a two-shot.

There's no coverage.

It's just, you have to experience both these women at the same time let's put it this way lee grant my opinion born the greatest screen actors of all time agreed i think incredible right yeah made it made it was in hollywood was getting oscar noms was validated yeah and then there's 15 years of them basically being like that's a crazy lady don't pay attention to her right get out of here we treat her like a ghost we don't care right the 50s and 60s you are dead yes she's on the blacklist we none of those credits she had before matter

right and you are i understand what you're saying absolutely that's the point that's the point of of her being.

There's some miracle.

And she's talked about it so much.

It didn't drive her insane.

No.

And she thankfully had this like incredible second act.

Yeah.

But that's how she was treated was like Coco being like, don't fucking.

Don't worry about her.

That's not a thing.

That's just, that's not a thing.

That's not a thing.

Yeah.

After this,

Justin Throw's character goes to meet a guy called the cowboy up in a ranch.

And, you know, like, and I do feel like that's also Lynch's like

in Hollywood, right?

There's a magic road at the top of the hill that like winds like a snake.

There are diners in the middle of downtown that feel like they're from, you know, the small town.

There's a fucking cowboy ranch.

Like you just drive 10 miles and suddenly you're in the desert.

And it is.

And there's a cowboy ranch.

But if you go to the top of,

I think it's like not Benedict Canyon.

You could say anything and I would go.

Yeah, Runyon Canyon or something like that.

There is a corral up there.

That's what I'm saying.

It's old Hollywood.

Like, let's go shoot the Western.

Is this a real ranch or a movie ranch?

Well, when it was a movie ranch, but now they don't really film this corner.

It's kind of a real ranch.

So it's kind of a real ranch.

Again, I think we can talk about what the cow.

I would love to know what you guys think the cowboy sort of represents, quote unquote.

But when, again, when I was my experience of watching this, and I was more re-watching it for this, that I did wonder, again, with the stilted language,

the stilted performance, the strange language, the fact that he's wearing this, literally the clothes of the first Western star

in silent film.

It feels the beginning of Hollywood to me.

The most elemental kind of

brute force, you know, icon, and then this stilted language that feels like a silent movie star moving into the talkies.

That's sort of here's where

to the obnoxious, impotent, yes, Gen X, admittedly hot,

you know, director.

There's another part of it in my reading, which is

here is this guy.

He's had like fucking actual, like sort of like mafia, tough guy, criminals, weirdos, yeah.

Like, this is fucking happening.

You're casting her.

Yeah.

And Justin Thoreau is still trying to fight against it impotently.

He's trying to pour paint in their jewelry box.

That's right.

Even though he knows they control the purse strings, right?

And guys like this are in this dance of like, do I stick to my guns and not get the movie made?

Or is there a way I can meet them halfway and make my dune and it works, right?

And those people think of themselves as fucking cowboys.

Yeah.

You're taking a last

year to the notes, or you choose the one battle.

I'll give them this, but I can, if I win everything else, then it's still my movie, right?

Which is basically what the cowboy is saying to him.

This archetype of not just movie history, but of the kind of renegade.

How do you meet in the middle between business and commerce, or rather business and art, commerce and art, right?

And what he's saying to him in a much more even-keeled tone than Hide or anyone is, if you cast the girl, you can do anything else you want.

Yeah.

But, I mean, there's just, look, it's classic Lynch in that there's lots of things you can project onto it, but I also feel like Lynch is like, I feel like he's going to meet a cowboy.

I have this idea that's cowboy.

Yeah.

And the cowboy will tell him essentially, your attitude governs your life.

Sometimes there's a buggy.

You know, we'll speak in these kinds of almost like Western versions of like Eastern aphorisms.

It's basically like, you need to

come over.

The Western movies.

As are all these cowboy people.

The moral reason of I stroll into a town and it's like, what is the empirical right that I have to do and I have to protect?

But like, he's also, he's this, right, this definition of old masculinity, like, you know, the people pulling the levers of Hollywood, fine.

But it's also like, it's very easy to read this movie as, you know, she, uh, the Diane, who, you know, whoever is dreaming the movie,

a bunch of the movie has made, has descended into maybe some sort of sex work.

We see her sleeping in a bed.

The cowboy comes in and says it's time to wake up.

He's sort of pimp-coated at that moment.

So I know, yeah.

There's stuff like that.

Like also the blurry line between literal sex work and the sort of like exchange of sex for power.

That's like industry fallbacks.

You're going to be someone's date exactly.

And do you have agency?

Are you choosing to do this or are you manipulated into a a broken system that actually has deprived you of agency by even putting you in the position where that's the choice and that's because and and then it's followed very followed very closely to what you guys are saying like almost you know like a scene or two later is the audition yeah which i want to talk about but the the cowboy says you'll see me once if you do good you'll see me twice if you do bad we see him saying it's time to wake up we see him once we see him again very briefly in the background of the party scene much much later in the movie after melissa george has exited yes he does a wipe.

He just walks by.

He is completely incongruous in that scene because everyone else is dressed for a party and he is dressed like a cowboy.

And that is like one of those things where you're like, this is the thing Hollywood doesn't like to think about, that there are like guys like that, right?

You know, like he clashes so much with the nice aesthetics of that party.

There's that fucking cowboy in the background.

It's like, yeah, well, you know, half the girl's here.

And I think in Los Angeles, you see people like that where you're like, how do you exist what has your life been for the last 40 years right you're like this all the time yeah yeah

um the cowboy is also i will say just it is a very funny scene like yeah the way he's talking is funny the whole bizarness of thoreau being like the

what are you talking about the cowboy's talking to him like just with no expression no eyebrows it's funny yeah no eyebrows yeah it's creepy and funny and cool and it's why people like david lynch yeah because he's fun.

Um, the next scene is um,

uh, the rehearsal of the audition, which is so crucial to the audition, right?

Is how shitty Betty is in the rehearsal, yes, exactly.

And that moment, the best moment where she's doing the lines, she's sort of selling them like I would sell them or whatever.

And by the way, and then she goes, and then I like cry, blah, blah, blah.

And I say this one last thing.

Here's the other thing.

And that's where her performance really comes to life.

She's doing the shitty, superficial performance, and yet you can see the difference of she is fundamentally an actor.

Yes.

In a a way that the Laura Herring character is not.

Right.

She is just reading.

She's her friend helping her read.

And you're like, well, undeniably she has more juice than someone who has no acting ability.

But yet you are not prepared for what she's about to do in the actual character.

I think, no, you're not prepared at all.

And you're absolutely right that it's crucial for us to know the scene before the scene happens.

Correct.

It's definitely the setup for the payoff.

How it's quote-unquote.

If you don't have the first part, the second part doesn't hit nearly as much.

Yeah.

And that's the thing that I think is so interesting is that, again, with the You're right that there are three ladies sitting there.

I don't know where the third lady ends.

Thank you, David.

When they're walking, there's only two.

This is Blackbird Gate all over again.

At the last part of the scene, like when everybody's leaving, I feel like one more lady comes in and you're like, who the fuck?

The audition.

So the audition, again, I think that when he puts these things in,

he says, here's the bad audition and here's the good audition.

What I think is interesting is that with Lynch's work, everybody sort of leans into the positive side of the dream?

Yeah.

And they say,

or

there's the negative side and then there's the positive side.

So if you want to be that.

If you're negative judgment he's making, you're saying people.

And then you have to make that value judgment.

So for example, we think of the Betty Rita as a dream because it is so heightened.

All of these good things are happening to everybody.

So in our mind, we go, that's not reality.

But why?

Do you know what I mean?

Like we think of this as fake, and yet in this storyline, in this quote-unquote dream that everybody is saying, that this is Diane's dream.

Sure.

We see this scene that is so realistic.

It feels so dropped in.

Again, like there was no part of me that was prepared.

with the tone of how she was behaving and how Reid is behaving and what their storyline has been like.

Yeah.

For her for her to drop in the way that she does.

I don't find this scene realistic.

I think her performance was.

The performance is realistic.

The context of the scene is as clear I would like to tell more cutting than anything.

It's not how I feel about this scene, which I think is an incredibly important scene.

I'd love to let you talk about it.

There's a bunch of stuff going on here.

One, it is this, again, Hollywood pastiche.

You've got the crusty, orange-faced, soap opera actory-y kind of guy with the, ha-ha, I'm going to do this one a little close.

Yeah, and let me tell you how acting works.

Right.

Yeah.

You've got the director.

I've been around the block a few times.

You got the nice guy producer in the sweater who's like, ah, meet everyone.

You know, right?

You got the ladies sitting there quietly.

And you're so unclear on the power structure of the ladies where he's like, she's the best cast director.

I wish we could do that.

I wish she was.

Yeah, but she's just

the ex-wife thing until later.

But you're like,

the power dynamics are difficult to, because really everyone's at the same level.

No one is blocked in a way that we would understand.

And it's so intimate.

It's so intimate.

The director's.

The director is this hilarious parody.

And the second you leave this room, your perception of every single person changes immediately.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Where you're watching and you're like, well, this guy's a big enough star that he reads with the the actresses and he gets to make the decision.

She leaves.

They're like, this project's not going.

You're like, so that guy's not a big enough star for this to actually mean anything.

No, he's a crusty old creep.

Yeah.

Offense to him.

But he is.

And I think he is an old soap opera actor.

Lynch loves that kind of guy.

Also, in the script, she's talking about her dad.

Yes.

Okay.

So this is where the music is.

It would make no sense for him to be the crux of everybody's theorizing about the film is this scene.

I agree.

It's like, why does she suddenly come alive like this?

If the winky scene is the thesis, then this is the turning point of like, you know,

that these things, yeah, continue.

Why is this cute, bubbly girl who shows no real sign of talent outside of being nice, suddenly

killer fucking noir,

like real actor?

She's crying.

The emotion is right, right?

Like, why is it so good?

Now, if you want to think about this scene one way, it's like we are in her dream, right?

We're in this failed actress's dream.

One, she's imagining she crushed the scene.

Great.

That's the same.

But two,

this is about, you know, this scene play, it comes close to her real life of like, she did something terrible.

She did something dark.

She acted out of revenge.

Like, suddenly we're seeing reality bubble into the dream, right?

Of like, now,

I don't, I'm just, I'm just talking.

I'm not saying this is a definitive reading.

I'm just

a lot of people think this film is about, much like much David Lynch stuff, abuse, like very, very dark abuse that happened to Betty, Diane, whoever, Naomi Watts, long ago.

What do the old people represent?

Like, you know, this terrifying like specter of her life, you know, long ago, right?

Like who then finally charged her before she dies?

The family past that she ran away from, but also is running back to.

And yeah.

Why does she suddenly like flip a switch when she's in this like creepy scenario?

Yeah.

Where this dad figure is suddenly has his hands all over her.

You know what I mean?

Like, what does the cowboy represent?

What does the best moment of the movie in Silencio, Club Silencio, not to jump a little bit forward,

when essentially the guy just, you know, makes thunder noises and she starts rattling in her seat?

What does that represent if not someone surfacing like some kind of trauma?

And the trauma can be, oh, this is the dream of a woman who had her girlfriend killed and like, that's it coming out, right?

Or it can be something else.

And like so much David Lynch, such as Twin Peaks, is about him trying to reckon with that like unspeakable darkness yes yeah yeah yeah right i what i would almost argue that for me this is the best scene in the movie as opposed to

no no i think it's amazing no i would listen i think it's weird to rank scenes in mohan right it would be strange i i but i would say that this was this was the scene that like that that moved the the film from intriguing.

Right, like what's going on here?

Into cementing it as a masterpiece in my mind.

Right.

You know, so maybe it's not the best or the most important but whatever this is the scene where you're right where you're suddenly like and what i felt was watching it for the first time what i felt was survival that's what i thought watching her was that she switched the the power dynamics and the the status of everybody yes for survival so it's not she's being thrown into the water kind of right

and the and that the way that she combats that is a weird mixture of uh acquiescence and agency.

I agree.

It's so weird.

This is my exact.

She's playing the role they all want her to play.

Yeah.

It is the diamond in the rub.

But she makes the, it's very clear that he, that with, with the hand going, pushing the hand further onto herself.

She's so close.

And for her to say, like, yes, we're doing this, but I am going to protect myself

within.

Yeah.

My read is, it is a Faustian bargain.

And the key part of the story of Faust is that Faust says, yes, the deal is presented to him.

Yeah.

And he goes, I think I I can make this work.

Much like at Hosley, he goes, I can make this play out in my favor.

Right.

He's sort of ostensibly not being tricked.

It's like, right, the deal's on the table and you know what it is.

Here's a guy setting up fake rules for a game, right?

He's saying, well, we're doing that classic thing where we play it real close.

You're a fucking creep and you want to touch my body.

You're disgusting.

You're giving them the look like, hey, I'm going to do the same thing with her I did with that other woman earlier.

You're like, okay, so when he thinks they're attractive, he plays the scene.

Especially as we now know, this is kind of a fake audition in a weird way.

Yeah.

then he's turning to her and saying, like, you know, because acting is reacting.

I need to be getting something to react off of.

Right.

And it's turning into this bullshit lesson to justify why he's acting like a creep.

Right.

Yeah.

But she actually takes that lesson.

She actually reacts.

Right.

Or she goes, fuck, if he's going to do something that is not allowed, then what can I get off of this?

What he's doing that unlocks a different part of the performance, whether it's unlocking something because it is tied to a memory of an experience she's had or

whatever how Hollywood is.

do she thinks well if you do this and especially if I can use this and turn it into art yeah make it into something ecstatic as someone in control again and as someone that has been very deeply abused in this industry yes your instinct is to somehow you have to survive it turn lead turn lead into gold the moment you have to survive it um and you just go into fight or flight yeah but i think what this scene is is

uh exemplifying is

like i was saying it's it's somehow you have to transcend

what's happening to you.

It's almost like because that's abuse, right?

Is that you just leave your body, you know, like, and you just go into a particular survival mode.

And what's so

awesome about this scene is that her version of that switches the status of everybody in the room.

Yeah, here's another thing.

As the last like eight years, there's finally been a more open discourse about like this sort of abuse of power in Hollywood and when there's literal abuse or when even just the abuse is people putting in this type of situation yes this kind of test yeah to offer this as a test it is a test it is absolutely a test it's a test like it's how bad do you want it which is the the fucking shorthand people use yeah when they play scenes like this out right yeah um it is this test of of uh if if you withstand this in this moment yes not not

you have to do it right now how are you going going to, how are you going to survive us?

Then,

if Hollywood runs on fear,

they are in that moment, you are asked to produce the fuel of this,

of this fucking city and this industry.

And the thing I find interesting in a way that's emotionally overwhelming, but the last eight years where suddenly it's like the black box has been opened and there's a landscape in which people can share stories as survivors.

And it's not just the most top-extreme, like monster, monster, monster shit.

It's the right, it's the low level.

Within one person, right, who suddenly now, like a ton of victims come out of the woodwork or whatever it is.

Let's, let's use like Kevin Spacey as an example, right?

You have stories where it's like he did this to this extreme, physical boundaries were crossed, and this and that.

And there are also stories where it's like Adam, Anthony Rapp, right?

Where he's like, he crawled on top of me and I pushed him off.

Yeah.

And some people would go, well, so he didn't rape you.

What's the problem?

Right, like you're like taking court, buddy.

The test of I'm trying this and seeing how you respond.

Yeah, your reality has forever been broken.

Something has changed in that room.

Yeah, the second the guy says nice and close, it's like, well, fuck, do you guys walk out of the room?

Do you play it?

It's even below, right?

Forget space hero.

It's right.

It's more just what you're talking about, just the general context of a casting.

It's before the scene starts.

Yeah.

Right.

Of just where no one would ever, you know, call the police

over, like, there was an awful

lot of people.

The shocking thing that I experienced, again,

being very intensely abused is

in this industry is it comes

out of nowhere.

It's even if you know the person is abusive, you're still surprised that it comes, that it's directed at you.

And you're shocked that they actually did it within that context.

Going back to what you were saying about winkies and just the understanding that, you know, unhoused person.

We just agree that she doesn't open the door and come in there.

That's her space.

There's a bizarre space.

There is a bizarre thing that happens when you are shoved or screamed at or

threatened.

Yeah.

That you are in a room full of people like this.

Full of people, usually men, usually, you know, older men.

And you are on, you are, there is no one helping you.

Yeah.

No one steps in and says, stop doing that to you.

And also sometimes it's three women sitting on a couch watching it happen.

Exactly.

And you're looking at them and you've been almost checked out.

Like, just like, and the feeling is, well, they're not acting like this is weird.

Well, that's something I'm weird for thinking something's weird.

Exactly.

And there's no, there's no reaction shot.

That's the other thing.

And I think that's how he expresses probably what he has experienced.

Yes.

Is that the abuse happens and then there's no reaction.

And so the audience is going, I'm expecting a reaction.

And it's like, no, it's only your reaction viewer.

Right.

That's you're the only person who's going to react to what is happening to her.

Yes.

You might just watch this movie and not think about it.

Like, that's the scene where she crushes the audition.

And then you see it a second time and you're like, oh, it's funny how they're arranged.

Like the, you know, the people in the room.

And then you watch it again.

You're like, oh, I see how the old guy is not acting, is trying something.

You know what I mean?

Like, it's like, oh, oh, oh, oh, you know, whatever.

Right.

It's, um,

there's more performance in the setup of the audition than there is in the performance that happens within the audition.

There's a lot of everyone playing their role,

being benevolent.

Yeah, performative kind of, yeah, absolutely.

And then it's like what we're saying of where the fuck did this come from?

What did she just drop into?

It's like the bail has dropped, and now she's actually in the context of I'm faking it, achieving a greater reality.

That is what's crazy.

It's like, oh my God, it's so triggering because you're right.

It's like you come into the situation and everybody is so like cordial.

Yes.

You know, everybody is behaving the way that we have all agreed that people behave.

And what's so shocking, and again,

my experience, it's this particular industry is that there is this performative aspect of this is a safe, not even safe space.

This is just a normal space.

Normal space.

This is just a normal

world.

This is just how it is.

This is just how it is.

We're all working, you know, and then all of the sudden this violence happens.

Yeah.

And you cannot,

you cannot process it.

Yes.

You, what, or what you're forced to do in that moment as a victim is you have to process it as something that is, again, what I think Lynch does so well in this movie.

You have to process it as something that is

probably

one of the worst things that has ever happened to you in this like horrible, horrific moment.

And yet you're also feeling this oppressive

normality coming at you.

Right.

You know, there's no, there's no, um How do you force yourself to cry in a controlled environment?

It's unnatural to be able to make yourself cry when you're not actually being punished.

Yes.

Or suffering.

Yeah.

If you cannot, you, you just sort of fall into this.

That's why this scene feels, like you said, the first time you watch it, you're like, what a, what a fucking brilliant actress.

Like, what, I don't even know what you're thinking about Naomi Watt.

You're thinking about Naomi Watson.

And it's only later, I mean, you have that kind of moment when he touches her.

And then and again i do feel like a lot of the people at the time probably ah old hollywood hanging out yeah you just gotta move over it yeah and watching it exactly like in the time that we're in even though we're not in a in the time this movie comes out even though it was a culture where people were not allowed to share their stories of their experience in this kind of way yeah it was so well known that movies like fucking toy story 2 can make a joke about stinky pete like having a private audition with the barbies yes and you were like this is shorthand in a kids movie everyone knows

but i mean but

it's just the most wonderful Griffin thing in the world that you're like, I mean, like, we all knew Sticky Pete was right there.

He's right there.

He's telling you it's normal that he's staying in the box and it's not.

And it's, yeah.

Yeah.

It's not.

That's not normal.

No, I think,

you know.

Acting is a great expression of this idea because it's an art form that is just about manipulating your own emotions in your body and brain.

Yeah.

Right.

But I think most artists who are able to work in grand emotion in any way, make things that make people feel and represent great feeling.

Yeah.

Not to make a blanket statement, but very often that either comes out of some trauma they experienced in their life up until that point that put them in touch with something dark and deep, right?

Or you are born with like an innate painful sense of sensitivity.

Yeah.

Even if your experiences in your life, as Lynch sort of describes his childhood of like my childhood was actually the white picket fence.

Right, right.

It wasn't.

I say to you, you, these things actually represent worth to me.

I was not living in the darkness underneath the grass.

Yeah.

But clearly as a guy who was born with like this innate, my skin is ripped off, my nerves are exposed.

I'm noticing everything.

I'm feeling everything.

And that allows me to then bring those feelings back up to the surface again.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

No.

Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

A.K.A.

Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

You crush the audition.

You get to go see Adam Kirsch.

But then, of course, it's like, no, it's too late.

He's already being forced to counter that's right yeah they have this they exchange this look again feels sort of like a TV pilot thing of like next week on Mulholland Drive we'll see whatever that is but in that fixed object it becomes this is the one it's this moment where it could have happened and then now we're moving on yeah she goes back uh and then the mystery resumes where she and Rita then like go to this house and they they sort of find their way in there's this sort of scorned other woman they think it might be her Correct.

This might be her house.

Instead, they find a rotting corpse in the bed.

And I just have to click.

The TV pilot, to be clear, ends here.

Wow.

That's it.

Oh, God.

I got to get it.

Yes.

I just have to clock

that Rita is wearing the craziest thing I've ever seen.

It just, she's like Morticia or something with those sleeves.

It's just wild.

And then right after that, of course, they make her seem even more normal by putting her in a crazy blonde wig.

Yes.

Basically being like, we're afraid for your life.

And then the scene after that, it is so funny to imagine the phone call of like Lynch is like, I started writing.

The next scene is you fucking a bed.

That's, yeah.

I mean, it's right to it.

You know, it's like, that's the next scene.

This movie's now rated R.

I was not out when I, when I saw this scene.

And I have to say, like, again, it was just so,

it was just, I just.

I don't know what to say.

It like, it, I do believe that when you're a queer person, there's sort of a moment where it it you get unlocked sure something something sort of happens my wife says like when she saw ellen you know come out you know like come out or or at some point watching ellen she was like oh that's that's what i am this is why representation matters a blue key

you know i like to sound

true though

because you oh

this mirrors something that speaks to something in me here's a blue key i'm opening a new door i'm opening a new door and it's so it is so it's i hate the phrase representation matters but it sells

the second i saw this and it's why everyone who complains about it needs to shut the

they just need to shut the up they just also the sex scene is so intense meaning like they feel like they have already been like that's why it's such an interesting sex yeah because it's like they get it i remember my audience laughing very clearly when you know it's like uh

rita gets in bed naked

there's this kind of oh no yeah you know chumminess that then they have this kind of kiss and

uh betty asks have you ever done this before and rita's like i don't know.

And I remember my audience laughing because it's like,

I mean, again,

it's like the girl getting punched by the golem.

Like, there's just this sort of pop of like, you know, a pun.

Right.

Yeah.

That's objectively a funny little thing for her to say at this moment.

But then, right, they have this moment where it's like, it feels like they've been doing this forever, but also they don't even know each other.

One of them doesn't even know who she is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like very intimate, but it's also very

Betty is coded very heterosexually.

Of course, like, I want to with you, she keeps saying, like this kind of like, you know,

this happens to me anytime I have sex.

The person then falls asleep and then wakes up and starts saying, no, Ibanda, Silencio, Silencio.

Yeah, no, Ibanda.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Very naughty.

I'm there smoking my cigarette and they're like, no, Ibanda.

And I'm like, here we are.

Okay.

Got to go to Club Silencio.

These are ball and shame, going off again.

What I like about her doing that, or I would say, again, my experience of watching her doing that and then going into Silencio is this sort of, and her, you know, and then Betty shaking is that there's this sort of breakdowns yeah obviously the the whatever we're in is coming apart at the same time exactly there's some sort of there's a feeling yeah that cultures your reality and club silencio is very different from like the the lodge in twin peaks but still there is a big red velvet curtain and it is a place where someone comes out and is basically saying this is a dream not to say that leslie's reading on the film is i have a reading on this keep going keep going um but you know but obviously this is a dream yeah beyond the fact that it's about maybe someone saying like you are in a dream dream, it's also about Hollywood, right?

Like, you know, this is all a tape recording.

This is for dreams.

Exactly.

Again, this is why it feels like it's about a dream.

Instead, if it's not, it is a dream because he's saying

there's no, there's no band.

There's no, none of this is real.

None of this is real.

None of this is real.

And then, of course, it's very real to them.

And even as a viewer, I remember seeing it for the first time and going,

when she falls, I actually had forgotten.

And I think that was the point.

I think when the guy from the motel comes out and he does something,

he says something or does something.

And you he comes out next afternoon.

And you do think, in some way, your brain just goes, this is a different scene.

And I don't know why.

I don't know if it's because you recognize the actor or you recognize it.

So suddenly there's this weird, like, I don't know if it's the, and then maybe it's the, he uses that blinking lights or electricity a lot to like signal some sort of transition.

So I think that the, it's the blue light on the microphone.

Is that what happens after the no ibando?

So he no ibanda, you know, the guy comes out with the muted trumpet, which I love, where he's

again, probably just you love this fun.

I do.

It's the best.

Yeah.

Because it's, it's silly.

It's very silly.

It's silly and scary.

It's kind of funny and also kind of profound.

Again, with the, with the, with the geographical location, I just love that he's pinging downtown LA here,

which is like honestly a part of LA that very rarely anything takes place in because it's so

does it?

Am I wrong?

Uh, you're right that G Lee is set in downtown Los Angeles.

Oh, okay.

And I'm glad that you brought it up on our own.

And that was part of Martin Brest's argument for why he was like, No one ever talked about this.

We're going to keep moving.

And he had a lot of interesting stuff to say.

The guy who plays the magician is Richard Greene.

The guy's called the magician in the script, which is sort of interesting to think about.

And he says that Lynch would not let him read the script, but built a full-body cast of him that he was going to set on fire as part of this scene and then decided that would look stupid and they didn't do it and instead he does the thing with the thunder and lightning right where betty starts shaking and then he vanishes in a puff of smoke oh right he does he sure does and then we have the blue light and then out comes cookie and is like uh please welcome rebecca del rio and she comes out and she sings roy urbanson's crying in spanish and it's the most perfect scene in history of film i i if i'm remembering correctly the blue-haired lady is the script supervisor or the

oh oh like who plays the

in the movie, she represents the script supervisor.

That's who she is.

She's the script girl.

No, it's it's somebody on the recruit.

It was somebody on the I thought that about the muted trumpet guy as well.

I think you're right.

You just, you get the sense that, like, I agree that it's silly.

It's like, you get this sense that he's just grabbing people.

Well, it's not the same, obviously.

Yeah, it's one of the things that helps maintain such an odd reality in all of his work is he like puts actors at wildly different levels together.

Yeah.

Right.

Where you're like, you have people who are naturalistic and people who are heightened and people who are from an old school, you know, like Coco, where you're just like, oh, wow, right.

This is someone who hasn't acted since the 50s.

This is a different type of movie acting.

And here's someone who doesn't think of themselves as an actor at all.

And it's just an energy and a look that he recognizes.

Yes.

And these people are all interfacing with each other.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

The magic of the song where she's singing, it's like, for one, the dreamy thing or like the things are being refracted, right?

Like an old 50s, 60s, whenever crying is from, my favorite Roy Orbitson song, song that's being like sung in another language by a different person, right?

And it's so intensely emotional, but maybe you don't know what she's saying, right?

If you don't know Spanish, and she's so in it, but then she faints dead away and the music keeps going.

So like the artifice is completely laid bare for you of it, but it's nonetheless so powerful.

It's not being made unfamiliar.

Right.

It is

this is why is she singing it in Spanish?

This movie isn't in Spanish.

And then, kind of the creepiest thing to me,

creepiest unspoken thing, is that they go back home and Betty just disappears.

Yeah.

And then it's just Rita in the apartment by herself.

And then she's like, I guess I'll

open the blue box.

Well, they get to the blue.

But Betty's just gone and no one says anything.

They get the.

Well, Betty takes out the

at Silencio, Betty takes out the cube.

And suddenly the cube

has materialized.

And

her manicure is terrible.

I just want to also say that.

Wow.

Not unlike all of their costumes.

Like, it's just bad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Fake nails.

But and then we are in

the

other part of the movie.

Time to wake up.

Where should we start with this?

I want to start with

Watts' 180.

Okay.

I mean,

the most powerful fucking shit.

Trick of the new world is how different she is in look and attitude.

But also the movie looks different.

It does.

Yeah.

Her apartment looks weird and creepy.

But beyond that, you have to think about

in the pilot, the footage that was shot for the pilot, you are still trying to conform to television standards, which is this pilot, despite being shot on phone by Peter Deming.

by a filmmaker, was going to be aired on standard definition 4x3 television.

100%.

I was wondering about that.

You have to light things pretty brightly because people's TVs aren't well calibrated.

yeah yeah and now it's I wonder how much right because they talk about how they sort of tried to adjust it that's the thing because you're unlocking now at this point in the movie him designing images that he knows will be projected on a bigger screen people are going to yeah actually be able to engage with this imagery in a very different physical form yeah and so suddenly it's like the texture of the film stock yeah the color palette of the movie the angles all these things become totally different while her performance is in an entirely different registers.

You're absolutely right.

This is why I think, and again,

I would never disagree with somebody saying that the first two-thirds are a dream and then the last third is.

I present that more as the

sort of basic reading, not consensus even, just kind of like that is a basic reading one can have of Mohollandride.

But there are two,

listen, there are two things.

I'm going to offer up

a reason why I don't think it is and a reason why I absolutely would agree that

someone would think it is.

The first one is that the reason I kind of get hung up on the whole first part is a dream is all of the changes of POV.

And I'm not saying that you don't dream.

Why are we suddenly with somebody else?

Why are we here and we're suddenly with somebody else?

It doesn't feel like only because, not that you can't be in different storylines in a dream, but they're so tonally.

We're dropped into the middle of things.

Yes, it's odd.

Yeah.

Things like the Hitman and it doesn't feel like Betty's, you know, anyway.

So that's one thing that kind of trips me up about it.

What I will say that the why

I think people immediately go to the place of this is the this is reality or this is who Diane actually is is Watts's performance is that she, but I mean, it is very, again, it's very over the top.

The way she behaves when she sees Camilla, that weird like,

you know, and then smiling and like, you know, this like, he came back.

Like, it's this horrifically pathetic

mirror mirroring Adam Kesher like like just and having been she's pathetic in every way like she's pathetic there so she sees not to be murdered

she does it at Camilla

she suddenly has this then she retracts and she kind of does it and then we cut to her looking at herself yeah that's like it's such a cool as you move on yeah so as you move on for the rest of the story there is this feeling of unlike Kesher,

there's this feeling that she has the self-awareness of her pathetic, yeah, but the fact that she's pathetic, yeah.

Um, because which is, I mean, all the stuff we're talking about, about the decisions you make in the industry to what you will accept to get ahead and whatever.

Yeah, it's like, but then you cross a line and you're on the other side of reality, which is just like, this is just who I am.

I've made this bed for myself.

And when I watched that, again, when I watched this in the theater, this in the masturbation scene,

and I really don't mean to get too dark here.

Please.

But when I watched her seeing Camilla and standing in that kitchen with that shitty coffee maker, and then the masturbation scene, I was like, this is me.

Like, I just, I, I related with it so.

And again, I mean, I also drove, I, I was just like, how has he, so I get awakened.

How does he know?

Yeah, exactly.

That's what it is.

I draw, I was like, the, the lesbian scene awoke something in me.

Again, it was so dream, not dream-like, but um,

you know, dream fulfillmenting that they were like,

beautiful, they already know each other.

And then you get dropped into this like horrifically lonely, desperate, pathetic place that I jerk off to pebbles all the time in my jorts.

Just FYI.

So I don't, I don't want, I have two pebbles here on my desk.

I pulled them in my shoe sole if you want them for later.

Not to get too warning on MAME.

The thing that blew my mind, too, in seeing this, and I constantly use this as a reference too, is that I just think it is the most, I know that it's very dark and the tone around it is very dark and the character is very dark and is in a very dark place.

Yes.

But the actual masturbation is so realistic to female masturbation.

Like usually when you saw it amazing.

Hard, sweaty work.

Exactly.

Like when you like, I'm not joking.

No, you would see, you would see very intense male masturbation in films.

Like you would, you would see this sort of emptiness afterwards, this kind of whereas with women, it's like this sort of thing

goes in their secret place.

It's It's an integrative dance.

Yeah, and it's like still beautiful.

And it, so it.

Joan Allen makes a tree catch on fire.

Just well, hey, wait a second.

It was pretty intensive for her.

Like, pleasant.

Like, her in a bath and she'll go,

and then like color.

Suddenly, like, she makes a color.

It just to watch this.

And again, I don't paint it every time.

It's like pebbles and like.

She could just be looking at something that's not just fucking cobblestones on the wall, in and out of photos.

Well, I felt like she's she's imagining

this sex thing.

She's trying to do that, and she cannot conjure it up.

That's why, again, about a dream, she's trying to recall and hold on to that dream.

She's like,

Yeah, somehow maybe.

She kept losing it.

Yeah, and then it's like, nope, shitty life.

Because the scenes are, it's like,

it's her making coffee and seeing she thinks Camilla, it's just herself.

And then it's her on set remembering, we assume,

Adam, like kissing Camilla, being like, this is how we're going to do this scene, right?

Where she's like dressed in this really dowdy costume as some like shitty tiny character, like watching, you know, sort of with MS.

Also, this, it's also and then the sex scene that she's remembering and the masturbation, yes, yeah.

I mean, the loneliness, the intense pathetic in all these scenes in different ways, and the intense fantasy, like to have those things.

Again, it's like, I just feel like he's trying to, he's trying to capture some sort of like all of this stuff is happening at the same time.

Your future, your past, what you want in life, what's actually happening,

the, the, the the dangerousness at daytime,

the dream of having a comfortable home, understanding that somebody can love you and also not want to be with you.

Again, I do get why when you drop into it, it does feel like reality.

But I think it's because we,

again, that first shot of Blue Velvet, I think just cemented him into this idea that the dream is good.

Everything that is good is the dream.

And everything that is bad is reality.

And that the dream is a lie.

And that the dream is a lie.

Right.

I don't think

it's.

But like the dream is not good exactly.

Well, that was weird and

that's what I'm saying.

It's weird and jarring.

Listening to him or reading his interviews about, you know, a lot of stuff, it just feels

like he's trying to, or not even trying, he's accomplishing.

I think that's why people are always saying it's a dream-like state because that's the only time we are actually aware that that's happening.

I think right now I'm having, I'm here, I'm having a podcast.

Having a podcast.

I'm on a podcast.

I'm obsessed with being here.

I, I, I love this movie.

You've been here for so long.

I've been here for so long.

I'm obsessed.

Like, this is so, but there's this, you know, as I'm sitting here, there's all kinds of things going through my mind.

Yeah.

Right.

There's things I have to do.

There's things that I did do.

There's like, they're just, they just, I'm, in watching images that he has put together, I am remembering being 26 years old, living in Hollywood and feeling absolutely desperate, and that I was never going to make it, and I was never going to get paid, and I was never going to get into the union.

You know, like you try to get it out in your head: if I were to make it, what do I need to do?

What am I fucking up right now?

And the only thing, what am I willing to give up in order to get to the other side?

And exactly.

And what I relate with so much in this section is the only way you can survive that level of depression, borderline personality disorder, whatever you want to call it.

In my experience, as a, as a, as a person with, with mental health, uh, you know, issues and having come out and addiction issues and having come out the other side, when you are in it, though, you have to hang on to the dream.

Yeah.

And usually the dream is other person-centric because that's much more tangible than like the dream of becoming famous, the dream of being, you know, Stanley Kubrick, the dream, the dream that's never going to happen because that's not what Hollywood is anyway.

But I think with aspiring for success, fame, whatever it is, notoriety.

Yes.

the other person-centric can be, and this is back to the core of what this movie is, but

it's a version of yourself.

It can be a version of a different person.

Yes, it doesn't have to be, I'm so in love with this person, and I'm building my entire dream around the idea of our relationship.

It could be your relationship to the version of me that has made it on the other side.

That's exactly right.

And if you can, if you're super, Kristen Stewart, Kristen Stewart, Super Revolut, these are so good we brought this up.

And David was scoffing.

David was scoffing.

He was trying to cut us off.

People are throwing awards at us.

I want to speak.

They did it.

I wish to speak.

But one thing that I noticed was I would have sexual partners at that time and at that very, very dark time in my life.

And my experience was

you do enter this weird liminal space where what's elusive is the approval of an entire industry, right?

What's elusive is, you know,

Bob Booker didn't like me in the audition.

You know, like what's elusive is I don't understand why this person person is making it and I'm not making it.

I don't get why, you know, I'm getting the chance to make the movie, but I have to have it be this girl.

And therefore, the monomania of if I got the approval from this one person, do you know what I mean?

Like then it would be a tangible,

that's why I think it's about a dream.

That's the dream.

If you could just blink, I'd be happy.

I'd be happy.

I'm not even saying I'd be afraid of it.

If I could fuck this person again, even if I'm begging, even if I'm begging for this person to fuck me again.

The other fantasy that she is indulging

in both sides of the story, but in the dark side, is

what if I fucking killed that person

who is the, you know, responsible for all my misery, right?

Right.

In fact, it's Camilla.

She took my parts.

She screwed me over romantically.

Yeah.

You know, she's the reason I'm not what I wanted to be.

I totally agree.

Yeah.

Because the idea of hiring Mark Pellegrino as your hitman, one, Mark Pellegrino is too hot to be your hitman.

Two, we've watched it this way.

We've all seen Netflix's Keystone cops routine and bungling the job.

We've all seen Netflix's hitman.

There's no such thing as hitman anyway.

But, you know, right?

The fantasy of like, yeah, I hired someone to kill her.

That's a fantasy, too, even if this back half of the movie is the real Diane or however you want to think about it.

But also, that's another Hollywood

creating a loop, which is like, why is she being driven in a car to get killed at the beginning?

But that's the thing.

Because the greatest wish is that you had never met her in the first place, that you stopped the first meeting from happening in a certain way but right you can kill her but what does that solve because you have the experience but it's also like right the imagination maybe of like ah but what if i what if i hadn't killed her what or what if she hadn't died right and she'd escaped and we'd found our each other again yeah in the city of dreams hollywood yes and we'd figured this out it would go great it would go great i would go great to grade at that audition which would be normal and not like actually unsettling if you think about it and it would be great and we would solve the mystery what's in the mystery It's it's a it's me in the bed dead of like a drug overdose.

Yeah, I can't escape, you know, like it's like it's like that's the lynching of like, I've made it to the end of my dream.

I've made it to the end of my dream.

Oh, God, I'm back where I died, essentially.

Right.

Because the end of this movie, you know, it's like we've the scenes we talked about, and then the party, its own kind of Hollywood nightmare of like, you're dolled up, you look good, no one at this party wants to fucking talk to you.

Yeah, everyone's doing better than you, right?

Which I think is the absolute core base reality of what drives most people insane pursuing a life in show business is it's actually never enough.

And one thing that I think that this last part of the movie is hitting so many specific pieces of pain, you know, that that were that occurred in the first two-thirds of the mitby.

You know, like they, they popped, they happened, the impotence, um, the abuse at the at the audition, like the

winkies, you know, there's just, there's all these kind of violent moments.

Right.

But the, there is this, When I saw the movie, again, later in my 20s, when I was in Los Angeles, there was this like

what I identified having experienced it then was there is a really specific, almost exquisite type of

pain being in such close proximity.

These people who are making it.

They are making the movies.

They're so famous.

They're so successful.

And I'm here for some reason.

I feel displaced.

I don't.

I'm in a dress.

I even look good.

I don't, again, I don't have my, like with Rita, I don't have my memory.

I'm making up my personality as we go along.

My North Star is this person I'm maniacally obsessed with.

Yeah.

You know, there's no, there's no, um, there's no way to anchor yourself

in those situations.

Year of me trying to audition and not getting callbacks, I was less miserable than when I had transcended to the point where I was testing for stuff and not getting the parts.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And everyone else was like, well, you're doing well.

You're getting further along.

Progress is being made.

And I'm like, no, the fact that I'm closer makes it harder.

Speak, Finn.

Isn't it the dinner party where the accident takes place?

Well, like,

you mean like

she's just getting dropped off?

Yeah.

It's kind of where we start.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

After the horrible dinner party, it's just her at Winky's with Mark Pellegrino and him saying like when I do it You're going to get this blue key and then we just go to the back of the diner.

The hobo is there, which is in the pilot.

That is in the pilot.

Just a shot of the hobo sitting behind the diner.

So clearly, it was this idea that

Lynch had.

He was like, I'll get to an episode 20 and instead had to add the earlier thing to set it up.

Exactly.

Why?

But then this is not in the pilot, which is then the hobo puts down the blue box and little goblin old people run out of it.

Excuse me.

You said that incorrectly.

Gooblin.

Goblin

People run out of it going,

and then they charge her.

Like, they're the fucking borrowers.

They're borrowers, but then they're full size.

And then she shoots herself and she's dead.

And

for whatever reason, when I saw it, and I, again, I'm just trying to like, you know, conjure that feeling.

The old people were so fucking scary.

They're like scary.

I mean, it was like, I mean, the top scariest things in this movie are like Gublin and

the small old people.

And I don't know why.

I mean, I don't even know if they represent anything.

It was just so,

so horrible.

And

well, part of it is I can't make sense of this.

Yeah.

It's terrifying how

deranged.

It's really deranged to see old people act this way and smile and look like

they could hurt you.

I think it's why it speaks to so many people who watch the movie as like, right, the original horrible thing whatever it is right it's something like that like this it's something so unspeakable that they represent right it's not just like guilt of like oh my fucking shitty life in hollywood it's like no this is all the way down this is some sort of yeah this is actually the word that's coming to mind is like demonic like this is demonic this is like it's all it's um I did want to come back to the, I know that we were like, Mark Pellegrino is too hot to be a hitman.

And then he leaves the key.

And I guess my

if there were one part of the movie I don't buy, it's that part.

And I wanted to ask you guys, like, what's the first thing?

That's what I was sort of saying about like it feels dream like it's too clean.

A hitman, a blue key.

Like, right.

Does it feel a little obvious that it's like

the blue key is kind of looped up for all?

Yeah, it's like it's it too neat because it's one of Lynch's clues.

Who gives a key?

And

that's right.

It's

like, I feel like he sat down for 10 minutes.

He's like, Lampshade, Lambshade, Katie,

Sylvia North story.

I think also

it just feels so

there's this abruptness to it that seems almost like it's trying to shift gears into like, you know,

like I'll run up to the end of the movie and the suicide.

He's like literally shifting gears on the notion of how this story was going to be told.

Yes, and Camilla and Kesher are about to announce something.

And I think it's really interesting that they don't.

It's like like we.

It's going to be there getting married.

One assumes.

One assumes, although this time when I was watching it, I thought they were pregnant.

Yeah, that was Myron.

Yeah.

I also love when she kisses the girl.

Yeah.

Do we want to talk about that or we don't care?

I mean, an iconic image.

Like, I feel like that was a still image that was used all the time.

Well, it was also.

What's the dynamics, though?

That's what I can't find.

I agree.

But I think it's all about the transference of her making love.

Contact with Melissa Leo on a sudden.

If it was Melissa Leo, that would rock.

Why?

That would be a good idea.

Melissa Leo wasn't that girl.

Let's consider.

Yeah, what if, wait a minute, let's consider.

It's like,

this is crazy.

I love Melissa Leo too, but the woman's a character actress.

She doesn't read for Sylvia Nord.

Do you guys agree that that, wait a minute, hold on, though.

Do we agree that Melissa Leo did have a moment?

Wasn't there a time where she was the girl and she was pushed, pushed, pushed?

Yeah, before second act is

character actress.

But all right, I'm sorry.

We have to move on.

Wait a second.

She locks eye contact.

It's like, what is the trade-off here?

I could be her with the part, but then does she end up with the person I want to be with?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Whether that's literal or the idea, it's like, what's the give and take of every decision, every opportunity?

I agree with Ben.

It's like, I don't know what the dynamics are, but the, the, again, what I felt was the, was the transference.

Yes.

I don't know if it was the transference of, it just felt like there was some sort of movement from

that she

she's being left behind in so in so many different ways.

But even

literally, her being part of a thrupple that New York Magazine will write a profile on.

And then we see the cowboy.

But in it, yeah, we do see the cowboy.

But it is also, I just feel like he so is nailing this scene of like, right, I'm here.

Nobody wants me here.

Like the way Coco talks to her.

This is the room you wanted to be in.

Right.

And it's like, this is nobody wants you here.

And like, there's this, I love that she's late.

Like that, that.

Yeah, I like that too.

I think it shows a lot of like integrity.

integrity.

Yeah, she was just like, I'm going to fucking

David is clear.

I was looking for somebody to throw you.

I was looking for somebody to throw you.

He's loading a gun.

I want to say that after the suicide

and the smoke rising from the bed, which is such an amazing just piece of imagery.

Oh, I agree.

Like, what

a bizarre kind of theatrical exhaust, right?

Yeah.

You have this image that makes me.

By the way, it reminds me of Silencio.

Yeah.

Well, right, we're entering Silencio.

Yes.

in that like the last shot will be the blue lady yeah haired lady yeah marge i call her um as you should but this image that kind of makes me well up uh which is this like bleached out uh slow motion shot of them in their wigs smiling in the car right like this kind of but it's like it's their dream yeah and now it's like so

whatever like lost or they've been dreamed over a million times or abstracted or whatever and it's sort of like fading away.

And it just speaks to everything he's thinking about, about Hollywood and like

how we feel about ourselves.

You lose your keys.

That's what I'm doing.

And then she just never gets her keys back.

And it's worse part of the movie.

And doesn't that really grind your gears?

And then the blue-haired lady says Silencia, which is Spanish for silence.

And what she's telling everyone is.

Right.

Huge if Ellen burst in energy.

And then, right.

And then the credits start rolling and the audience all stands up and goes, well, we understood that.

That made sense.

Let's get out of here.

Clean.

Or you go and take ecstasy.

When I go to fucking five guys?

Wait, so you hadn't taken it yet.

I don't think this is what's interesting.

Yeah.

The experience you're describing is its own weird mahal and drive loop of, did you take it before and watch the movie on it, or did you take it afterwards as a response?

No, you take it before a movie, then you're just to your like seatmate.

You're going to be like, hey, why don't I care?

Maybe the solid acts are the dreams or maybe the last act is the dream.

Listen, Springbreakers really fucking hit.

Yeah, it does.

When I was impaired, let's play the box.

Let's get one final point.

She was going to say that.

Yes, please.

No, no, no.

I'm about to say something.

No, I was just going to say that I couldn't remember.

I just, I think

that feels appropriate.

I mean, I guess maybe I would just, the only thing I might still say is like to wrap up this incredible conversation is like, I just, I was fundamentally changed by this movie.

It instantly entered my top 10.

I, I couldn't stop thinking about it for

days, weeks.

Again, it was my first David Lynch movie, and I feel like it actually bizarrely is a good entry point.

If anyone listening to this, it absolutely was for a whole entry.

The question I asked on Blue Velvet, it's like, right, that and Mulholland Drive, those are the two kind of like David Lynch-er movies.

Like, take your pick.

Right.

15 years apart.

Those were two entry points.

Agreed.

Yeah.

Or

Twin Peaks.

But that's.

Yeah.

And I think Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks are paired, and this and Twin Peaks, The Return, are paired of like the eras.

I love The Return.

It's pretty good.

What a fucking.

You haven't gotten to it yet, right?

No.

Well,

I love the fact that The Return is a...

This is like, this is why I love David Lynch.

The return is an unrecappable show.

It sure is.

Dude, I mean, in a world where it's very funny to watch the TV recap economy try completely break down to deal with the return.

Being like, we can do like kind of the Westworld theories thing with this thing, and then immediately being like, oh, maybe we can't.

Oh, God, they're going to be so sour when we do four podcast episodes on it and recap it perfectly.

I can't wait to see it.

Don't worry.

Don't worry.

We're going to recap it separately.

But I do feel like we live in

this consuming, you know, content moment era

where they, where, where

you basically can just read the recaps instead of watching the episodes.

But not Twin Peaks the Return.

But not, but not Twin Peace Peace Peace Peace.

But the thing with Twin Peaks the Return is it is like the back half of Mulholland Drive to Twin Peaks, right?

Where it's like David Lynch is like, oh, you want me to do more?

And people are like, yeah, can it be kind of the same?

And he's like, no.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely not.

No.

But I have plenty of ideas.

Yeah.

And the same people will be in it.

So will that make you happy?

We are so excited to say that this week's box office game is brought to you by our friends at Regal with the Regal Unlimited program.

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So, box office game.

This opens number one, $112 million opening weekend.

October 12th.

2001.

This is opening limited on 66 screens.

Number 14 of the box office.

Number one of the box office is an Oscar winner from this year, Griffin.

It's number one for the second week in a row.

It won a major Oscar?

It did.

It's not Beautiful Mind.

That hasn't gone wide yet.

How does he go?

2001.

Well, Training Day would have been.

It's training.

It's still...

Wow.

Say it again.

It's second week.

October 12th, 2001.

It's in its second week staying at number one.

Wow.

A great, you know, fun movie that I think is

a bit of a breakout, you know, surprise

for a dark movie like that.

Always incorrectly

incorrectly thinks that movie.

It came out in September because it was supposed to got pushed back only like two weeks because of 9-11 because they were like, maybe let people rebound.

You guys, I forgot this was in the fucking wake up.

Oh my god.

You know, because I was there, you know, I was like five blocks away.

I lived in the financial district when that happened.

It was fucking insane.

Talk about trauma.

Yeah.

But it was that weird, echoey period where everything

is.

Oh, okay and then comes out in theaters in October under like different realities.

This is two different.

I mean, honestly, it's kind of perfect.

I mean, it just, it is the perfect kind of thing to consume where you're like, I want my attention.

I want it.

I want wrapped attention on something.

Yes.

And I don't want it to be a straightforward narrative in any way.

There was a training day billboard on the West Side Highway that we would drive by every day when my dad drove my siblings and I to school that said, like, whatever, September 17th.

And I saw it for so many months that in my brain, I'm like, that movie came out in September.

This is our longest episode ever just a fun boy.

Right?

I mean, no question.

He fucking did it.

Yeah.

All right.

We got to wrap up.

Number two with the Bucks.

I'm so hungry.

It's a good time.

I'm too.

I need to talk to you.

Alex is going to be so mad at me.

I'm going to trash him every time I get him here.

Number two with the Bucks Off is new this week, Griffin.

I feel like it's a film you liked at the time.

It's a bit.

I don't like it now.

I don't know how you feel about it now.

I just feel like you were kind of writing for it.

It was a bit of an underperformer.

Big director

Panthers.

Which you're always rude to.

That movie's solid.

Yeah.

It's got great stuff in it.

I still have the 2001 Oscar Watcher.

Barry Levinson.

I still have the 2000 Oscar Watcher thing

back then, 2001.

That thing's going to be huge.

And instead, it was like, okay.

This is Billy Bob Thurton.

Yep.

And Bruce Willis and

Cape Blanche.

Three great performances.

All three of them.

Pretty excellent in that film.

A film that slightly underperforms.

Yes.

Number three at the box office is a film I wonder if Jan Ben Hosley saw.

I'm not sure if he did.

It's almost insulting for me to ask that question.

It is a comedy film

starring a member of the television show Saturday Night Live.

In October 2001, it's not.

It's a time when people need to laugh.

It is not an SNL spin-off movie.

It's not.

But it starred.

They were a cast member at this moment.

That's a good question.

It's not Corky Romano.

Yes, it was.

And yes, it is.

Chris Katan is Corky Romano.

Rude.

cookies.

I'm kind of amazed that Corky Romano opened to $9 million.

I'm like, that's a lot of money for a proper country once.

Wait, when was Zoolander at this point?

Zoolander had come out

three weeks ago.

It's already sank like a stone.

It came out last week of September and it's already out.

It's at number seven.

It did?

Yeah.

That's all we could talk about.

Yeah.

All we talked about was Zoolander.

I didn't realize it tanked.

It was the center of the universe and bombed everywhere else.

Truly, I think it was a very good thing.

It's pretty trigger, yes.

And America was definitely definitely not ready for Zoolander right then.

But my friends and I were quoting it obsessively.

We all went to go.

See Donnie Darko weekend.

Donnie Darko comes out August.

Oh, I thought it was fall.

I mean, Donnie Darko also.

And I believe Donnie Darko literally came out on September 11th, basically.

And

I might be wrong, though.

It might be a little bit different.

But for a collection of people, it was like, well, this is clearly the most important incident.

Number four at the box office is a rom-com that I've just never liked.

liked.

Serendipity.

You're always much like bandits rude to.

I just don't get it.

I agree.

It's a bummer.

I don't think it's bad.

It's the beginning of Cusack's turtled vibes.

That's the thing.

That's what it is.

It's tired Cusack.

He's good at playing mean Gen Xer, and they use it so well, right, in the high fidelities of the world or whatever.

By serendipity, you're like, he hates this.

Yeah, as he's coming off, and he's coming off Malkovich.

Like he's coming off like this, oh, cool.

I mean, maybe Lloyd Dobbler can do whatever.

And then he just goes to Hyperalities 2000.

And then 2001 is Serendipity and America's Sweethearts.

And it's like, this guy has fucking.

My sister loves America's Sweethearts.

Listen to the cowboy.

He listened to the cowboy.

The cowboy was like, sometimes there's a buggy and it's called American Sweethearts.

Jesus Christ.

At least he's not in Corky Romano.

That's what I would tell him.

Number five at the box office is a pretty solid thriller hit

famous for a line from the trailer.

I'll never tell.

Don't say a word.

Opened against Zoolander.

Fucking crushed it at the box.

I'll never tell.

People thought Zoolander was going to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Number six is Iron Monkey, the Hong Kong martial arts film with Donnie Yen,

which Miramax is putting out.

Presented by four years.

That's their kind of like let's get the crouching tiger thing going.

Anything we can get in the middle of the moment.

Tarantino is putting a stamp on movies from four years ago and releasing them wide.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Got it.

You've got Zoolander, you've got

Joyride, which is pretty fun.

The Paul Walker.

I did a Photoshop of Deadpool faces on the poster.

Sure.

Everyone laughed.

Number nine, you've got a film I'm sure Griffin saw Max Keeble's big move.

You know what?

I didn't.

I guess you were maybe a little too old for it, right?

I'd say a little too sophisticated.

I just have tastes.

Did I see Spy Kids three times in theaters this same year?

Spy Kids, of course.

That's my point.

Are you serious?

i saw

corky romano yeah that's excellent what about me says corky romano you've seen so many bullshit movies with snl guys

that's one of them all right i guess the other point did you see the one where jamie kennedy who i know is not an snow malibu's most wanted yeah that one malibu's most wanted

yeah that face says yeah

how much worse is corky romano ben ben fine i saw it ben i love you and i want to say that i don't mean this in a pejorative way at all yes You would actually love Corky Romano.

If you watched it tonight, you would enjoy it.

I don't know if I've ever met anyone that has the taste that Ben has.

That's why

he's the secret sauce.

He's the whole thing.

It's not the fucking brick scene.

He's the fucking Silencio scene.

You're just like, I'm never going to totally understand it.

How is he offended by you assuming he likes Corky Romano?

No, it's like, it is Silencio.

It doesn't crack with what I'm saying, but there is an internal logic and it's on.

That's the thing.

It is the Silencio scene because

it doesn't make any sense.

Friday, now it's away.

But it's the main thing you take away.

Yes.

It's the main thing you take away.

Number 10, the box office is Hearts in Atlantis.

Jesus movie that eats farts.

It's the shine guy directing Anthony Hopkins.

I remember convincing three friends, we should go see this.

I hear there's a lot of Oscar buzz, and they never let me live it, though.

They shouldn't have.

That's not getting shit.

That thing is fucking goose-egging.

Even in a light year, Hopkins isn't getting a fan.

Thank you for joining us on Blank Check.

You're so

I mean, this was absolutely

I can't wait.

I can't wait.

I was settled in.

I felt very bad.

I will say your body language is relaxed.

I'm very relaxed.

I feel, I feel, I felt bad about Zodiac.

I felt like we could have dug deeper.

I made a commitment to myself and I broke the record.

Here's the thing about Mohan Drive.

We could still keep digging.

There's plenty to do.

That's the thing.

I was like, I could talk about this for another hour.

Except we've been talking about it for four hours.

I guarantee a bunch of listeners are going to complain we didn't go 20 minutes longer.

They didn't even talk about it.

I wonder.

I'm actually, you're right, and I'm trying to think what it will be.

What is the thing that we didn't talk about?

It doesn't matter.

We can talk about it later.

We'll talk about not talking about it later.

Yes.

Leslie, Acolyte, Disney Plus.

Right, right.

Disney Plus.

You have a play off

on Broadway.

I have a play.

When does it start?

It's called Cult of Love, and we start rehearsals in October.

I'm not exactly sure of our previews start.

I think it's mid-December.

Okay, so when this is posting, it's starting in about a month.

Go buy your tickets now at the Helen Hayes.

That's right.

Second stage, Helen Hayes.

Oh, yeah.

Come.

It'll be fun.

There's music.

As I told you, I'm not sure.

Not a musical, but it has music.

As I told you, I saw Bachelorette when the second stage put it on uptown many years ago.

That's what you did.

And now you're back with the second stage.

That's exciting.

Yeah.

And I haven't done theater in like, I want to say eight years.

Wild.

So, yeah, I'm really excited to get into it.

I'm so excited.

And thank you both for having me again.

So great.

Come back anytime.

We, we, I said this to you before we recorded, but we had marked this episode as maybe this one guest list, maybe this is too big, maybe we don't need a guest.

And we had been wanting to find somebody to have you back on for.

And it was like, let's just throw one flyer and see if she has any interest in doing it.

And I leapt.

If she wants to do it, we'd have a guest.

But it was truly, we didn't offer it to anyone else.

We had, we had put it behind bars.

I leapt at the chance.

I, of course, wanted to come back.

I had such a good time on Zodiac.

I was very sad that it was only two and a half hours.

That's so rude that you only gave us two hours.

And I was thinking, you know, I want to come back, but it's hard to top Zodiac.

I was like, there's, it would have to be a movie that's also in my top 10.

And so next time we'll have you offer Corky Romano.

You'll wait until

we do Corky.

When Ben chooses it, because he's about to watch it and fall in fucking love.

I didn't realize that there's a timer behind me.

It's

part of intentional design that we put it behind the guests' heads so we're not making them self-conscious.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you all for listening.

Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

Thank you to Marie Barty for helping to produce this show.

Thank you to AJ McKeon for editing, being our production coordinator.

Joe Bowen, Pat Realms for our artwork, Lane Montgomery for our theme song.

Ben is rubbing his head like he's fucking Balthasar just to get it.

Just keep it going, Griffin.

Jesus.

JJ Birch for our research.

Go blankcheckpod.com for links to some real nerdy shit, including our Patreon, blank check special features.

We do franchise commentaries.

I think right now we're doing Andrew Lloyd Weber, finishing up tabletop games, something like that.

We're recording this episode 15 years in advance, and we've been here for so fucking long.

Tune in next week for Inland Empire.

Correct?

Yeah.

And as always,

Silencio.

There I go.

This is the girl.

To get back to the sort of original.

Sorry, I'm on my phone.

I'm just canceling something.

Please cancel.

I'm just canceling something that's happening in two hours.

Great.

We will be done.

But

I need to get home and I need to.

So I apologize.

I'm going to check my phone because I have a flight a week from now and I'm going to push that back.

Just keep going.

Just keep going, and I'm going to jump back in.

I'm going to push back the flight.