Blue Velvet with Jamie Loftus

Blank Jack with Briffin 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.

Don't be a good neighbor to her.

I'll send you a podcast straight from my heart, fucker.

You know what a podcast is?

It's a fucking audio program from a fucking player, fucker.

You receive a podcast from me, you're fucked forever.

You understand?

Fuck.

I'll send you straight to hell, fucker.

It's a very good hopper.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I had it a little more than I thought I did.

How do you describe a podcast?

That conversation.

Yeah, right.

You were me.

I could feel you halfway into that being like, oh, I have to now elaborate on what a podcast is as Frank Booth.

You know what my brain did in real time?

It was like, how do I explain it to my grandmother?

Right.

and it's like radio because she'll brag to people she'll go my my grandson he has a very successful podcast and then she'll turn to me and go what is a podcast she knows that she wants to brag about it

and then she says like what time does it air or like things like that sure yes sundays at uh 3 a.m right and i yell at her like frank booth sundays at midnight well is it midnight est yeah wow So those LA guys, they go to 9 p.m.

on a Saturday.

They kept getting pushed forward a couple hours.

Yeah, because people were complaining and I don't know.

That's what we landed.

It was like you would, you'd post it at time and then someone would email you and go like, you know, it'd be a lot better for my commute if you posted two hours earlier.

And then you would like acquiesce to that.

No, you would just get mad.

I would.

But then you would.

But then you would be mad.

Then you get it.

I believe it.

It's actually really funny.

I'm not saying that I respect when you're angry.

I understand it.

Yeah.

And you're allowed to feel angry, but it is kind of funny because you do kind of stomp around.

And sometimes you'll text us in advance and be like, I'm stomping mad today.

Yeah.

You'll like, remember, when's that time when he texts us?

He's like, I'm going to be arriving grumpy.

Or whatever.

Or whatever.

Some kind of warning.

Holy shit.

Ben has a gun.

Ben has like a very vivid, like emotional tapestry.

Like you feel things very deeply.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm a cancer in that way.

Wait, I wouldn't say you run mad, but I'd say when you get mad, it's, it's full-bodied.

I had a big breakthrough recently, Jamie, that Ben is all for Ninja Turtles.

Wow.

I think a lot of us are all for Ninja Turtles.

You really like that.

I'm excited to be for turtles.

As much all for Ninja Turtles as anyone I've ever met.

Yeah.

I can't tell.

That's kind of a beautiful compliment, right?

Yeah.

Sometimes he's on Raphael hothead mode.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sometimes he's just quietly doing his machines.

Yes.

Yeah.

He's pointing over to a monitor, producing the show, which is kind of like being the leader.

Right.

In some ways.

Yeah.

In a certain way, you know, there is the clarity of like, let's keep this running.

And then there's the party, dude.

Which turtle are you?

Tag yourself, Jamie.

I don't know.

Are you not a turtle girl?

I honestly didn't grow up with turtle culture, but I don't know.

I feel like you're not allowed to prescribe a turtle to yourself any more than you could prescribe any of the, whenever there's four people and you have to be one of them.

Well, sure.

Let's put it this way.

Inside each of us are four blue velvet characters, right?

There's inside each of us, a Dorothy, a Jeffrey, a Frank, and a Sandy.

Okay, I was wondering, right, who the, you know, you're not, you're not putting Ben in there.

Ben, speaking of.

Ben's not a character.

Dean Stockwell's character.

Oh, Ben.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess nobody really addresses him.

Is he the exact center point?

Yeah, I guess, or he's just, you know, outside of the matrix.

Sure.

Yeah.

I like to think of myself as,

how does Frank refer to him?

He's so chic.

Yeah.

A suave.

So you're so funny.

And I do think of myself as being a bit suave at times.

And I could, of course, course, at any time just

dab myself with powder, sink into a light bulb.

Sure, little eyeliner.

Yeah.

A Dorothy.

Are you, though?

No, I don't know what you are.

This is maybe the worst personality group anyone's ever thought of.

Thank you.

I want to be the little dog at the beginning.

Yeah, I'm the bird going.

I think we've identified what's funny about the bird is everyone's going to choose something outside of the four.

I mean, I guess I must have that person inside of them.

I think I'm a Sandy.

I'm a gossip, but I try to look on the bright side of things.

So I think I'm probably a Sandy.

Are you the lady that dances on the roof?

Possibly.

Are you the yellow man?

Possibly.

Just standing there at the end.

Yeah.

It's crazy when he's just standing there and he's dead.

Yeah.

What happened to his brain, do you think?

I think he got shot with a gun.

Oh, yeah.

I don't know.

Come on, Jamie.

What are you?

And then introduce her.

Come on, Jamie.

Come on, what are you doing?

Are you a turdler blue velvet?

Well, you can pick or you can't give me a sex in the city character.

I don't know.

I'm going to say

Michelangelo.

I think that's right.

And,

oh, God, I don't want to be Jeffrey.

It's okay to be Jeffrey.

But I just like, you know, Dorothy and Sandy, like, I'm not far enough in either direction.

Jeffrey has a little bit of your like.

podcast journalism tendencies.

Yeah, he's wandering around.

He's snooping.

And like none of his business kind of like weirdo journalist, like gonzo journalist.

Yeah.

But arguably a pervert.

Right.

Arguably a pervert.

Jeffrey's the closest one.

The thing I like about the blue velvet matrix that we have created, we're all perverts.

Like everyone on that, everyone on there is some kind of pervert.

Everyone's pervert.

Everyone's mommy.

Everyone's dad.

Right.

I also think, yes, you know, it's like, you're, it's like, you're like, I'm going to do this.

I'm going to go to Alaska.

And I would be like, well, Jamie, that sounds, that sounds like a really wild thing to do.

And like, Jeff is like, I'm going to sneak into the gangster.

Right.

Twice.

Right.

I love how passively he presents it.

And I love how quickly,

you know, that she's just like, yeah, I guess we should do that.

I think that's a good way to spend.

Oh, I love it.

I love it.

This is one of those timeline things where I always know what the reality is, but my brain flips it to like,

Lynch discovered him on this.

And then obviously, when he gets offered Dune,

he casts his guy in the lead role in Dune.

It is so much funnier that it's like he casts this guy as a leading man in Dune.

And then it's like, oh, you'd be better in one of my weirdo movies.

And he was right.

He was right.

You know, Dune, we will talk about it.

We haven't talked about it yet.

But like, there's these audition tapes you can see of Kyle McLaughlin shirtless, just like doing tumbles in a yard and kind of going.

you know, like being Paul and being like, yeah, I think I did like a good job in the audition.

And you're like, I can just see what Lynch fell in love with, both as the special boy who will save Arrakis, but also just like, oh, I want to mess this boy up.

But just normal enough to have like the studio sign off on him as like, you're not casting a crazy person in the heroic lead of your movie.

He's got the right jaw.

You know, he's got the right face.

I feel like Kyle McLaughlin's like one of the most successful examples of a hot guy that's rarely doing hot guy things.

Yes.

And people accept it.

Cause I feel like a lot of times people don't accept it.

Like Brendan Frazier, we almost killed him.

We almost killed him.

We almost killed him when he was a hot guy doing things that weren't hot enough.

But

Mr.

Kyle, he gets away with it and he's great at it.

His first movie is Jew.

That's his number one first movie.

Which is wild.

I didn't know that before

getting ready for this episode.

His second movie is Blue Velvet.

His third movie is The Hidden.

Have you seen The Hidden?

I haven't.

No.

Have you seen The Hidden?

Both of you would love The Hidden.

Ben, you probably also love The Hidden, which is about a cop who is chasing a bad guy who's doing some crazy stuff and gets paired up with another cop paid by Kyle McLaughlin, who's kind of like weird and slimy.

And it turns out Kyle McLaughlin is an alien, as is the guy they're chasing.

But Kyle McLaughlin's like a good alien.

Oh, people love this movie.

I did not know that was the premise of the movie.

It rocks.

Wait, when you say he's weird and slimy, you meant like physically?

I meant more physically.

Like he's not like personality.

There's just something like odd and shiny about him.

And you're like, what's the deal with this guy?

And you're like, oh, he's an alien and he knows that this guy's also an an alien.

Which is kind of Colin McLaughlin's vibe.

That's what he's so good at.

That's why it's so good.

And then you like, you so you see those three, and you're like, Man, Hollywood was doing right by Colin McLaughlin.

And then, like, I feel like Hollywood didn't know what to do with Colin McLaughlin.

His other mode is like buffoonish asshole, sure.

It's like, you know, Showgirls, or you know, I was gonna say,

you look at his 90s, like, Hollywood, what do we do with this guy?

And on two-year-olds,

yes, it's Flintstones and Showgirls.

It's like, here's the grown-up version and the kids' movie version of what we slot him into.

I also forgot that he was in the Flintstones, but I do like that he, yeah, he sort of pivots to like belligerent guy with erectile dysfunction.

That's like his entire like 90s into the 2000s

vibe.

I was thinking, like, it must have been so exciting.

Like, it must be such an exciting moment for a director when they find their self-insert guy

who is

slightly hotter than him and 15 years younger.

And you're like, this is is my guy.

This guy gets to be me for 15 years, but hotter.

That's so, that has to be such an amazing day.

I think that's why I flip it in my mind, because it's like, it's harder to believe that he could successfully cast Paul Atreides to the studio's wishes with his self-insert guy when that character does not in and of itself feel lynchian

versus this being a movie where it's like, and now I need to find me.

It's wild that he found a guy who fit both.

What's the podcast?

The podcast is called Blank Check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin.

I'm David.

The smile that washed across his face.

Curtains like blue velvet, kind of.

Well, our curtains are red.

Yeah.

But, you know, kind of like you could imagine putting some fonts over it.

Sure, you could.

Play an old song.

I think it would say red velvet instead, but yeah.

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

And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce.

Baby, this is a mini series on the films of David Lynch.

It is called Twin Pods Firecast with Me.

This guy really did have,

it's a perfectly structured blank check career in terms of what we do here.

It's true.

Right?

You go like, first movie is like total outsider object.

But gets him tons of builds a huge cult.

Then it's like, now we're going to try to fit you into like prestige studio.

slightly more traditional filmmaking.

Success.

Knocks that out of the fucking park.

They're like, great, you get to do a blockbuster now.

Destroys him.

And then the fourth movie, Rebirth, is the like beginning of the rest of his career, right?

This is when it's like settled in, where he's like, Dune has taught me everything I never want to do ever again.

I'm going to do things by my own terms.

I'm going to find the middle ground between the three modes I was in for the first three movies.

And here's the model of what a David Lynch movie is.

What I found comforting, like re-watching this, like in the context of this point in his career, was was that even though, like, I mean, Dune was like a catastrophe, like for him personally,

you, I feel like you can sort of see things he learned doing Dune in this movie.

So it's, I don't know, I feel like stuff like that is so often like, and it was all for fucking nothing and it was humiliating and I felt horrible, but it's like, you can see, you can see that, you know, it was not for nothing, even though it did seem like a humiliating, terrible experience.

He treats it as such, but it is, yes, it informs his career in ways he right may or may not acknowledge

finding McLaughlin and shit like that.

And his relationship with Dinon DeLorentis, this movie doesn't happen without him.

Like, he doesn't end up with Isabella Rossellini if this movie doesn't happen.

Everyone in this movie is fucking each other behind the scenes.

It's great.

Oh, man.

But also, the blank check thing of like, oh, Dune, he has a tremendous amount of money, but he doesn't have a lot of freedom, right?

He's getting like boxed in and overwhelmed by everything.

This is a movie where it's like, if you can get this done for $4 million, everyone will back the fuck off.

We'll talk about it.

Yeah,

that is the joy that is harder and harder to find these days, right?

Even at that level.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And having made a film at such a big budget, he perhaps had a better understanding of how to make this smaller now.

Now, I would fuck Stockwell if I had to pick.

No one asked you.

And I think I just need to.

It's an interesting answer to a question.

I was not watching.

To an unasked question.

A really, a deeply unasked question.

What I really want to tell you.

I was just seen to edit in

one of us us asking the question.

Now, David, I need to know

who was

fucking the cat.

I kept going, would he fuck Dean Sockwell or not?

I know you love Dean Stockwell and he's incredible in this movie.

Cliff Vandercave, who Kyle McCockland plays in The Flintstones.

I just want to say his name again.

I think it's so funny.

Say his name.

And his name.

Cliff Vandercave.

Say his name.

Some poster of him.

I just love the Flintstones writing process of like, all right, so he's like a rich guy.

So like built yeah so what do we do there vander cave job done yeah and then can we get jeploys evil secretary's name uh remind me sharon stone right yeah callie barry plays the role of sharon stone yes which was written for sharon stone yes and she dropped out and they were like we're still gonna call her sharon stone

we can't talk that i mean stone's in the name jesus christ can you imagine how weird that would have been if sharon stone were in the movie the flintstone playing a character with her own name i think everything about that movie is weird but never stop talking about how weird that movie is.

Maybe we should do it on the movie.

I have pitched it before.

Is it just that and Viva Rock Vegas?

Well, the question is: is there like a live action?

Would you do both?

There's a man called Flintstone, which is the fucking espionage girl, the James Bond parody, which was a theatrical release, or do you do a live-action Hanna-Barbera thing?

Okay.

Where it's those two, the two Scooby-Doos

and Yogi.

I was, I mean, I'm pro Scooby-Doo.

I'm James Gunn, Scooby-Doo.

James Gunn, Scooby-Doo, ruled.

Just the first one.

Scooby Doo, really special.

He wrote both.

He wrote both.

I've never seen them.

Second one, I would say, is not as good.

Monsters Unleashed, of course, one of my favorite subtitles.

Yeah,

I approve of it as a subtitle.

Inferior Product.

The first one, Rips.

I watched it last year and I was blown away.

The top top bottom ever.

Yeah, and my favorite.

SMG and Linda, my two biggest crushes as a kid.

Yeah.

It's, and they're perfectly cast.

It's so good.

And James Gunn, when we were covering that last year, year, James Gunn was really, and to this day was like so, like singing the praises of Shrek as Scooby-D was coming out.

He's like, I wouldn't have been able to make this the way I make it.

Like the tone.

Without the, yes, he's interesting.

I think the direct quote, if I'm remembering it correctly, was Shrek changed everything.

Holy shit.

What a wild thing to say the year after 9-11.

Like, that is so wild.

Well, Shrek was the number one biggest thing that happened in the year 2001 in terms of impacting culture.

And then you could say 9-11.

It changed everything.

It changed everything.

Steven Spielberg wanted to cast Dabney Coleman as Cliff Vander Cave.

Okay.

An entirely different idea.

But I guess just sort of like, yeah, just do nine to five, right?

Like, hey, Dabney, can you come in?

And Dabney Coleman turned it down.

Yeah, wild.

And so Kyle got to swoop in there.

Good.

And the world is richer for it.

No disrespect to Dabney, but yeah, that's the obvious choice.

Today we're talking about Kyle McLaughlin's second most iconic film.

Behind the Fun Sounds.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Blue Velvet.

Our guest today returning to the show.

She's back.

One of the best.

Wait, how many times have you been on, Genie?

Is this four or five?

I think this is four.

I don't know.

I think, no, it could be five.

The pandemic scrambles everything.

No, this is four.

This is four.

Dark Shadows.

Yeah.

Drag Me to Hell.

Yeah.

Seven Chances slash Go West.

And Blue Velvet.

It's a good short.

Who's our guest?

Jamie Loftus, the great Jamie Loftus.

Oh, Jamie.

Of many famous back.

Of the book Raw Dog,

of the Bechtel cast.

But I've been listening to your new show, which is so fucking good.

Oh, thank you.

Achievement of Fame.

Yeah, I've been having so much fun making it.

So good.

Did I get the title right?

Yes.

Yes.

I've been looking to rip it off.

I'm giving it.

I'm going to give it a shot.

Please, you've been looking to rip it off.

Come up with your own idea.

Yeah.

I got ripped off by a large news podcast last week.

It was

kind of fun.

But so I'm, I'm just, that inspired me to rip the embassy off.

You should do it.

And I think I'm going to do it.

I think what we've learned is it's easy to do and I won't push back.

No, you're right.

There's not much you can do about it.

So I think I'm just going to just go ahead, dive in and do it.

I mean, I'm going to announce it too.

I'm going to telegraph my intention.

Talk to the same two guys.

Go pitch it to cracked.

We kick those guys so hard when they are down.

It's like kicking a skeleton.

It's just still funny, dude, dude.

I know.

Jamie Kracked started a movie podcast when we were like a couple years in

called Cracked Movie Club.

Oh, yeah.

They were maybe like two years into our show.

And they were like, we go deep into the careers of directors, but they only would pick four movies.

They'd embody a director's career in just four episodes.

Cowards.

Cowards.

Lack of commitment.

Why?

But they did the same four directors as us in a row in the same order we were doing them in.

Why do that, Jesus?

I don't know.

And then we just decided that they were our enemies.

And then the show ended after the fourth season.

It was gone within five months.

And once or twice a year, I just come back around and kick it one more time.

Cracked has been sold to like Hungarian AI farms at this point.

They're like, I don't know what, you know, I just keep kicking skeleton notes.

I appreciate that.

I do the same thing.

I'm like, anytime someone's like, you should be like, it's a flattering thing.

You're like, well, it doesn't fucking feel that way.

Right.

It feels bad.

But I say this not to blow smoke up your ass, but I think that your, your podcast has a great book.

It is a great premise.

It is these people who had this sort of viral outsized internet sort of fame and then disappear from the culture.

And it's like, what happens in the 16th minute after they recede from the public eye?

And how does that sort of virality affect people in their lives long term and all of that?

It's a great idea that many people could rip off.

But I do think the thing that makes your show so good is very much like about your perspective and your attitude and the way you engage with.

Jamie does is good.

Yes, absolutely.

His personality and voice and intelligence.

That's so nice.

Don't you have a new book out too?

You freak.

Now I'm like weirdly hostile.

Now you're kicking my ass.

Charlie Rose should have done that more.

He's like, wait, you did Breaking Bad?

What's so good about that, freak?

It's a pretty fucked up show, don't you think?

He was like, I don't know, I have a bunch of Emmys.

And Charlie Rose's like, oh, that's great.

He comes right out of it.

It is wild how much new documentaries still use Charlie Rose footage.

It's really well lit, and people tend to be allowed to talk for a while because Charlie Rose was snoozing there in the other seat.

I just feel like anytime I watch any like making a monster documentary.

Yeah.

They all have the same same composer and it's a computer, right?

And they use a bunch of Charlie Rose clips, and you're like, Are you intentionally like double-loading this?

When your new book maybe is not out in time for this to come out, I'm trying to remember when your new book is out.

Oh, it's not coming out anytime soon.

Okay, okay, okay, but you do have another book sometime.

I do,

yeah, and it's uh, it's I, it, it's definitely uh influenced by this very movie.

Really?

I would say, yes, yes, there's some uh, there's some,

you know, some

psychological body horror stuff.

It's my favorite.

And is this a fiction book?

Yeah.

That's very exciting.

Yeah.

It's about a

objectum sexuals.

So like people who fall in love and have sexual relationships with objects.

Objects.

Yeah.

And so it's about an architect who starts cheating on her husband with a building that they're constructing together.

Yeah.

So it's basically it's like 21st century lefty Ayn Rand.

I There, I it's so scary because I have never read Ayn Rand, and you're not the first person to tell me that.

And I was like, Now I have to

think about Ayn Rand.

Look, I'll say this about Ayn Rand.

That book does have war horse vibes of like, does everyone want to fuck this building?

I, yeah, 100%.

I actually think it would be funny for me to just say, I'll say this about Ayn Rand and then never finish the sentence.

And then people go and say, start thinking like,

um, she writes some very impressive run-on sentences.

There's stuff in those.

I've never read

Atlas Shrugged.

I read The Fountainhead.

I read The Fountainhead.

This is, I have my, I have the same approach to a lot of books that I have to a lot of movies where you're just like, it's too long.

I'll never know.

It's too long.

I mean, her books are, Atlas Shrugged seems quite long to me.

Yes.

But everyone who loves it is so good and cool.

So everyone else is a little bit more.

Everyone who loves it is so good and cool.

Yeah.

That's right.

No, I think that's right.

It's 1,200 pages long.

It's very long.

Oh my God.

Could you describe what Ayn Rand has as a fan base or like something more sinister?

Right.

They actually aren't allowed to be called fans because they're behaving too creepily.

They're like, no, you guys aren't fans.

Although I guess all fan bases are

all fan base.

Einsteins.

That's what they should call themselves.

That's what they should call themselves.

Like Paul Ryan should get up in front of Congress and be like, I'm an Einstein.

David, yes.

This episode.

It's brought to you, The Listener by Mubi, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema from around the globe.

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

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

And here's a hand selection.

Here's a

spotlight.

Nothing more to discuss here.

Everything's waiting.

What's David?

I've turned the spotlight on.

I've put my glove on to select by hand

through the creak of the door.

We have three different visuals going on.

on here.

The glove to hand pick.

Oh,

of course.

David Mussolini, Colin, son of the century.

It is.

Look,

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

Here's what's funny about it.

Just to peel back the curtain for a second.

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

Yeah, here's the copy for the ad.

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

And I was like, like, Mussolini sponsoring the podcast?

What do you mean?

To be clear, we decry Ild Duce Mussolini, Benito Mussolini, the terrible dictator of Italy.

But we celebrate Joe Wright and his newest project.

The filmmaker Joe Wright

has created

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

And I will say, not to sound like a, you know, a little nerd over here, but it is actually very interesting to consider Mussolini's rise to power in these times.

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

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

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

You sound like me right now.

This is the kind of thing I say.

It's a very interesting part of history.

And I feel like because, you know, other World War II things became

whatever, the history channel's favorite thing, you don't hear quite as much about Mussolini's rise.

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

He's not a hugely

hyper-relevant time.

And this is a theatrical, hyper-visual tour deforest starring Luca Marionelli.

Martin Eden himself.

Remember that?

Beloved member of the old guard.

That's right.

The movie I love.

The episode that people considered normal.

All right, well, sequels checking notes here.

Great.

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

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

That's cool.

Imagine techno-beat

scoring fascist rallies.

It just sounds kind of Joe Wright-y.

It does.

Joe Wright, you know, he won't just do a typical costume drama.

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

Got futurism,

surreal stagecraft, cutting-edge visuals.

Mm-hmm.

Guardian calls it, quote, a...

Brilliantly performed portrait of a pathetic monster.

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

This is heavy ad copy, guys.

Usually it's kind of like, eh, shorts, you know,

critics.

A gripping, timely series, The Guardian.

Remarkable, The Telegraph, a complex portrait of evil, Financial Times.

Yeah, no, it's Joe Wright,

one of the scarier people I ever interviewed.

I've told you that story, right?

He knows he's kind of a cool guy.

We've added him around.

He's certainly gotten interesting.

He's very interesting.

And he's made some great movies, and he's made some big swings that didn't totally connect.

Totally.

That's really interesting.

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

I get suggested.

You're like, sure.

It doesn't fit the model.

This one does.

This one does.

Look, just stream great films at home.

You can try movie free for 30 days at movie.com/slash blank check.

That's mu bi.com/slash blank check for a month of great cinema for free.

You can watch Mussolini or you can watch non-Mussolini things.

Yeah, they got lots of movies.

I got a lot of things.

Bye.

David.

Okay, okay.

I'll be very quiet.

Oh, I'm used to it.

Producer Ben is sleeping.

Oh,

Hazzy, Hazy boy is

getting some

multiple dashes.

What's he sleeping on?

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

But this is a big opportunity for us.

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

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

Ben did a Wayfair ad for us recently.

Do you listen to past recordings?

Yeah, sometimes.

That's psycho behavior.

It is.

Look.

He did that when we were sleeping?

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

you might not think Wayfair, but you should, because Wayfair is the best kept secret for incredible and affordable game day finds.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Absolutely.

And just try to, David, just if you could please maintain it slightly quiet.

We don't have to go full whisper.

I just want to remind you that Haas is sleeping.

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

Yeah, of course.

But Wayfair is also the ideal place to get game day essentials, bigger selection, curated collections, options for every budget slash price point.

You want to make like a sort of man cake?

Okay, fine.

Okay.

All right.

Sorry.

You know, Wayfair

stuff gets delivered really fast, hassle free.

The delivery is free.

for game day specifically griffin you could think about things like recliners and tv stands sure or outdoor stuff like coolers and grills and patio heaters like that's you know that's all the winter months david you have like basically a football team worth of family at home you got a whole team to cheer up this is true you need cribs your place must be lousy with cribs i i do have fainting beds i have cribs yeah sconces chaise lounges

i'm low on sconces maybe maybe it's time to pick up a this is the kind of thing that would make your home team cheer look i'm just going to say that wayfair is your trusted destination for all things game day from coolers and grills to recliners and slow cookers shop save and score

today at wayfair.com that's w-a-y-f-a-i-r.com wayfair every style every home david there's only one shame to this ad raid don't wake hozy there's only one shame to this ad rib that i didn't find out about this in time before I already purchased coolers, grills, folding chairs, patio heaters, recliners, barware, slow cookers, sports theme decor merch for my favorite teams, and more.

If only I'm a football team, Cleveland Browns, of course.

Bonte Mac, no matter what.

Okay, that's the end of the Adri.

David, yes.

This episode.

Can you guess?

Movie brought to you by Movie.

Wow, the curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema from around the globe.

It's like when Norm enters the bar on share.

Look, movie's got all kinds of great hand-selected streaming cinema that you can watch that's really cool.

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And Dennis Quaid is a repellent studio executive.

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really cool.

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Goodbye.

Bye-bye.

But we are here to discuss David Lynch's film, Blue Velvet.

Does it?

This is a completely stupid question, but is this still the definitive Lynch film?

It was, obviously, forever.

Has Mulholland Drive sort of supplanted it with a younger generation?

Or is this still kind of like, look, if you want to J David Lynch's whole vibe in one movie you should probably watch blue velvet yeah boring question you know I think so not not to say it's the best film not best or whatever but I think if you're trying to like what's the definitive encapsulation I think the the suburban white picket fence aspects of this movie are a key part of the sort of Lynch psyche that's not really in Mulholland Drive as much.

Imagine seeing this movie, like without knowing what it was about.

I remember.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yes.

I want stories of people who went on dates to this movie going in cold.

It's got the guy, it's got Isabel Rossellini and the guy from Dune.

I don't know.

It's about blue velvet.

Well, let's go see it.

Sounds romantic.

This might be a slightly false compiled memory, but like years before seeing this movie, I remember seeing the segment of them talking about it on I Love the 80s when I was

Fucking 13 or 14.

Yeah, Charlie Rose, Charlie Rose.

I love that movie.

I think it was Molly Sims, the model, who was always on that show.

Okay.

On I Love the 80s.

Yes.

She was the one who was on Las Vegas.

Yes.

The show Las Vegas.

But it was someone like her who said something to the effect of like, Blue Velvet was one of those movies where it came out and there was this collective feeling of like,

We've all been waiting for someone to say this.

Wait, Molly Sims said this?

This is why it's such a specific memory in my mind.

And I was like, what does that mean?

I also feel like that's like a version.

Everyone who says anything on those shows says aversion of that.

Regardless, like they could be talking about easy squirt catch up.

And they're like, when that happens, things kind of just changed overnight.

It was one of those, like not framed as a joke, but was just like, it felt like, here's this thing that's been in the culture that has been unspoken.

And Lynch is the first guy to like put it up there.

Okay.

Well, I said this.

This is not to to do with Molly Sims, but I said this to Ben off mic and I want to say

watching Batman and Robin with a friend.

Must be nice.

Exactly.

Right.

And then, you know, up pops, of course, it's very funny to watch it right after Batman Forever, which I always forget.

Literally, the last scene is Bruce and Chase Meridian being like, and now we've solved all the barriers between us.

We're going to be together.

Batman and Robin begins, El McPherson's here.

No acknowledgement of Chase Meridian.

Someone should say, like, yeah, she went off and fucked Superman.

They at least do that with Vicki Vale in return.

Right.

She's not there.

El McPherson is here.

And I'm like, this is El McPherson.

My friend's like, who's that?

And I'm like, you know, she was a supermodel.

They called her the body.

My friend was like, what kind of a fucking nickname is that for a super?

They've all got bodies.

That's not even a nice nickname for his nickname.

It's not even a nice, gross nickname.

I couldn't, and I couldn't explain.

I was like, I don't, I don't, I just know they called her that.

It was like her wrestler name, El The Body McPherson.

That's what they called her.

Yes.

You know what?

The only thing worse is being called a body.

Like, that's, yeah, that would, that would be funny.

El A body mcphear yeah

yeah they just called her the body and she was like why and i'm like well she's very statuesque and she's like she's supermodel like was this not news sure they're all statuesque what is anyway i i just think maybe mcphearson also thinks blue velvet is when someone was saying what we were all thinking kind of but i did that there's ants crawling over the human ears crazy way to describe it is a crazy way to describe it and to not have seen the movie and hear that like i just it's always still the line i think about in relation to this movie and when I finally saw it years later, it was in my head of like, what was it that she felt he was expressing?

Look, we have enough fans, not bragging, I'm just saying

that maybe someone's gonna trawl for this clip and find whatever was Molly Sims's unconstructed thought on blue velvet.

But I think you look at the response to this film at the time, right?

And it's like eraserhead, cult phenomenon.

Then Elephant Man is just like beloved, a critically, you know, Oscar-fetid film.

Then dune is seen as just kind of like roundly aflop in all corners at the time of its release this movie comes out and i think some percentage of people were young molly sims sitting in the theater going like finally i've been waiting for someone to do it and then the other half of the culture is like fuck you which i think is what makes it kind of his definitive movie in a certain way where it really feel like it feels like this was the first one to really touch a nerve where people were fighting over like what how dare he excuse me getting over a cold yes uh jamie what's your relationship to blue velvet i was a um material no just removed i was actually i have a

nasty story about red velvet i'll save that blue velvet the the film i was a a latecomer to it i'm a latecomer to david lynch in general um i did not start i mean i i had like seen clips i've certainly lied about having seen movies of his.

I feel like he's, he's a great person to lie about.

Absolutely.

It's a rite of passage.

Yeah.

If you're, if you're cornered at a party, yeah, I've seen Blue Velvet.

Sure.

I actually watched it in high school.

I didn't.

I did not watch it.

Even now, having seen it, you lie retroactively about when you saw it.

My worst nightmare is someone digging up movies I said I've seen in other contexts over a course of years and quizzing me.

Like that is my version of hell.

It is.

It isn't.

Right.

But yeah, maybe, maybe that is what hell will be for me.

No, I saw this, I saw this a couple years ago.

I saw it uh during lockdown.

I was like, if not now, when?

Uh-huh.

And I really, I don't know.

I went into it.

Like, I wish I was like, oh, you know, but you, you're so familiar with what a David Lynch movie is.

It was, I'd seen enough of his work that it was weird that I hadn't seen Blue Velvet.

And so much of what happens in this movie is like, my brain is like, no, no, no.

And then at the end, I was like, I

really liked that.

And

I watched it twice in a row that night, which is maybe just speaking to my mental health at the time.

But I watched it twice in a row.

And then I went on a long walk.

And then I didn't, you know, and then I didn't watch it for a year.

I think this was like my fourth time watching it.

I just, I, and, and every time I watch it, it's, you know, I, I don't know.

I personally like Blue Velvet better than Mulholland Drive.

I can't even really articulate why, but I just, I, I, every time I watch this movie, I feel a different way or I like connect to a different part of it.

This, this watch, and it's just so reflective of like where you are at personally, but this time I'm always like,

you know,

is Jeffrey like just looking for something to do while he's worried about his dad?

Like, what is he, what is he,

you know, like, there's, there's so many different ways to, to watch it.

And

there was like, I was watching a ContraPoints video recently just about how, like, how lovely it is to watch a movie that is like not

desperate to explain itself to you.

And she was referencing like the end of Psycho and how she viewed it as almost like an insecure thing at the end of the movie to be like, so in case you had any questions about what was going on the whole movie, it was this.

Here's literally his diagnosis.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that like, this is a great example of a movie that you're like, who fucking knows?

That's not even the point.

I really appreciate this movie.

I like it a lot.

I was reading a lot of the recent

press that Glenn Powell has been doing on his campaign run for infinite president of Hollywood, his sort of lifelong run that he's he's now beginning.

And he's now just like getting on TikTok and being like, telling like stories that you tell at sleepovers.

Yes.

He's just like, crazy thing happened to my sister.

He's like telling these random.

He's doing story time videos.

Like Like he has that story.

And then you claim the poop on the couch on the dog.

So then the dad comes out.

And you're kind of like drinking it in because you're like, yeah, Glenn, that sounds great.

I think I like, I don't like, I, Glenn Powell does nothing for me, but it's only because it's like, I feel like I look at him and I'm like, I'm looking through him, you know, like he's just like the kind of handsome that you're like, he's just like so sharp.

And you're just like, huh.

All right.

I do think I like him a tremendous amount.

He is the kind of guy, it's almost a Kama-Glocklung thing where you're like, like, are you too perfectly handsome where you become uninteresting?

That's why I like Hitman, though.

Yes.

Because it's about how he's exactly.

That's why I think it's like a brilliant movie star-like vehicle for like.

Have you seen Hitman?

No, are you on board for Hitman?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I'm excited.

Hitman's good.

And like, if McLaughlin hadn't found Lynch so early in his career, who knows what it would have looked like where you were like, I just see through this guy.

Right.

Even if there was an inherent weirdness of him, you need someone to contextualize or whatever.

But Klimpao, one interview, was talking about how he's tried to strategize his career.

And he said, he feels like the mistake a lot of young actors make is they're just like, well, I'm going to go off and do the big fucking franchise movies.

And then my serious movies are like me showing how hard I can act and trying to get an Oscar and whatever.

And he was like, people don't really re-watch Oscar movies.

Yeah.

The kinds of movies that often win people an Oscar are like brutal one-time watches.

The worst biopic you've ever seen in your life.

And that's when it works out well.

Yeah.

That's the best version of it.

If you fail to make the good version of it, then you've made a shitty version of the kind of movie that people only like to watch once.

Yeah.

And he's like, part of movie stardom is making movies that people want to watch over and over and over again.

It's what makes people feel kind of like totemic in their mind.

Hostner, who we've just talked about so much, is a perfect example of that.

It's a thing that makes him kind of an infinite movie star as he has 10 movies that will be rewatched forever.

But Lynch has this weird version of that thing where like his films are wildly re-watchable for how uncomfortable they are.

Because there will be scenes where you're just like, I can't fucking explain why this has some weird hold on me.

This movie is profoundly upsetting.

It has like, you know, truly intense content in it, not to sound like the movie phone man or whatever.

And yet you're kind of like, I love everyone in this movie.

They're so random and cool.

It's my point.

Like, they look awesome.

They have cool films.

It differentiates him from so many other filmmakers like him.

Yeah.

That most people, you'd be like, that film's great.

I'm obviously never never going to watch that ever again.

Versus Blue Velvet, you're like, I can sit there and be uncomfortable while watching it and immediately want to watch it again.

That's what I like.

It's like, by all, and I think like, this is one of the few movies that I can really say this about, like, I, by all accounts, I should hate this movie.

And I love it.

And like, it's, I don't know.

And you, there's a million, you know, David Lynch imitators that you're like, nope, this is the movie I hate.

Like, this is the movie where you're just like, there's no rhyme or reason as to like why you're showing.

Yeah, you're smearing our face in this and it's not right.

Like for any reason except to upset

her right.

But there's going to arise out of us.

But there's like just enough dream logic that you can like follow it and I don't know, trust him.

And then, and then just like reading about the production of it, it's like, he's, you know, riding around the set on a pink bicycle.

Like, you know, and he fell in love with, like, they fell, like, everyone in this movie fell in love.

You're like, well, I can't argue with that, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, it's one of the things that's so interesting about this film is like the people who hate it at the time were like, this thing is like ugly and horrible.

And I cannot see how this wasn't damaging for the people who made it.

There was this hand-wringing in the press of like, how dare you do this to your actors?

Right.

What I just saw has such a like ugly power to it that there's no way you could have gotten that effect without actual human cost.

Right.

And then you talk to everyone who made the movie and they're like, absolutely not.

incredibly like warm, safe, supportive environment.

Yeah.

We all knew what we were doing.

And we like trusted the director because he was kind.

I don't know.

And all of the questions that I had about like, well, where did this come from?

Where did this come from?

I mean, he's so candid that you get the little threads of like the story when he's a little boy and there was a naked woman, you know, in his lawn.

You're like, oh, okay.

Just like searing, upsetting image that he never forgot.

Right.

He's a little boy and he and his brother see a naked woman walking down the street in their neighborhood.

Clearly, you know, not just like taking a stroll, like a woman who's like in some traumatic state.

Yeah.

Right.

And then she like disappears and it is a thing that haunted him his entire life.

And for how much he constantly says, like, there is no irony in my depiction of the suburbs and the white picket fences and the sort of like.

Americana and all of that.

This is a genuine warmth for me.

My childhood was warm.

All of this was warm.

He cites that as being the one moment in his mind

as a child where he's just like, there is evil like so close to the surface.

It is just barely underneath the veneer of civility that we live in where there's like profound darkness that might be happening that is inexplicable.

He obviously does not then go hide in a closet and try to solve this mystery himself.

But it, I think that's a key detail that this movie doesn't come out of him being like, what's the most fucked up shit I can put on screen?

Right.

It's this guy 20 years later never having gotten over

do i want to know the answers to how this woman ended up in that situation at that moment when did you first see blue velvet griffin newman i think i only saw it about 10 years ago maybe a little earlier than that i saw at the ifc center at some point in the 2010s when it was uh

playing revival there uh the voice of molly sims ringing in my head

what is this film about to unlock i'm about to see some a really relatable experience that we've all been waiting to see we've all been waiting for for.

But, like, you did say, Look, let's have a little less conversation and a little more action because that was the theme song to Las Vegas.

That's like,

I just want to pull as many things as I can about the forgotten James Conn NBC show, Las Vegas.

Josh Mell.

Yeah, he was there.

Who else was in the Castle Love?

Nikki Cox, Nikki Cox, or former wife of Jay Moore.

Yes, James Le Sure.

I always thought he had a good name.

Yeah.

Selleck.

Okay.

I've met James.

Sellic replaced Khan.

I think that's right.

Is that true?

He at least, he was a late.

No, he's like the villain in season five.

He buys them onto C.

But they were both on it the same time.

I think they were.

Khan was always in it.

Wow.

There was some twist where someone got blown off.

I think Laura Flynn Boyle, speaking of David Lynch.

Oh, sure.

Yes.

She gets blown off the roof by wind.

And like, that's her dead.

She's like three sweet.

She was like a big villain, right?

Exactly.

And she's like, I'm going to blow up the hotel or whatever that she was gonna do and then she gets blown off the roof by a gust of wind wow is it like a fun choice like the sex in the city lady falling out the window or is it like a i yes it was it's it's sort of for laughs it's and diana muldur walking into an elevator shaft in la law which is a very famous tv death which i feel like now this our younger people don't know about la la law they don't know that someone just walked into a goddamn empty elevator shaft died and then they like rolled credits and we're like see you next week and people had to go to the office and talk about it.

I think something similar happened on Pretty Little Liars at some point.

What if it turned out one whole season of Pretty Little Liars was just LA Law storylines and no one knew that?

No, it does.

There's no

LA Law.

I feel like this is the third time you've done a version of the These Kids Don't Know About LA Law monologue.

You did once about Larry Drake's character, I want to say.

That might be true.

He was a big deal.

Yeah.

I mean, I was too young for LA Law.

But you know, what you're saying is you did my homework.

You did the rest.

You watched every episode.

And David E.

Kelly's still with us, just churning out crap or whatever.

I guess he did like big little eyes.

He's had a couple of times.

He's doing something.

David Lynch makes the film Dune.

It drives him insane.

He makes the film with the cooperation of the Dina DeLaurentis group.

Yeah, who are normal and not weird and don't do anything weird ever.

Yes.

Right.

But before that, I guess in between Elephant Man and Dune, he takes a meeting of Warner Brothers.

Do you want me to read from the dossier?

Yeah, exactly.

Yes, obviously, Dune devastates him.

Meditation, he says, has saved him a lot of times, and that's one of them.

David Lynch will always, of course, remind you that, you know, in times of trouble, he turns to meditation.

But, you know, Dune, it's not just that the movie's bad, but like, he didn't have the freedom.

He didn't have the final cut.

It gets taken away from him.

He's lost himself in the thing.

Yeah.

But.

He does have this project called Blue Velvet that he's had since 1973, Griffin.

Okay.

Fragments of things, he says.

I'm a bad radio.

Sometimes the parts don't hook together.

It took a long time for Blue Velvet to emerge.

Because right after Elephant Man, his first instinct was to try to do Ronnie Rocket.

Was that the first time?

Right.

Yeah.

He met with producer Richard Roth

and he gives him the script for Ronnie Rocket, which is this, you know, never produced David Lynch concept, right?

I mean, sort of a buried gem, right?

Lynch fans.

It's his great unmade

life's project.

Is it like a, do we, how much do we know about Ronnie Rocket?

I feel like the script is pretty out there.

Yeah, I've never read it.

It's basically about, I don't know, a detective who wants to go to a dimension and he can like stand on one leg to do that.

And there's like a dwarf and a like, it's one of those things where you can feel like he tore stuff out of it and put it in other things.

Yeah, that feels like a David Lynch mad lift.

Yeah, yeah.

A little bit.

A haunted detective meets a dwarf to go to dimension.

Hilarious to think, right, of of course, Elephant Man.

He's like, what about Ronnie Rock?

And the guy's like,

yeah, maybe.

Do you have any other ideas?

Yeah.

And he's like, come on, do you have any other ideas?

And Lynch says, well, I always wanted to sneak into a girl's room at night.

And he was like, ideas for movies, David.

I'm serious.

This is what I'm doing.

Not like for what to do on a Sunday night.

And then he was like, and I've always thought, like, what if you did that?

And then it turned out to be like the clue to a murder mystery.

And to Richard Roth's credit, he's like, well, that sounds like a movie.

Like, that is the premise of a movie, sure.

Right.

You know, you're cooking with something there.

Yeah.

Like, just the image of someone like hiding in a closet, seeing a, you know, murder.

And did he have the ear already at that point?

And he went home and he pictured someone finding an ear in a field, is how he puts it.

I've seen that ear.

That ear is in a movie store in Portland, Oregon.

Oh, the actual

props ear.

It's wait, I wrote it down because I've been there before.

I went there.

Yes.

It's it's it's it's it's movie madness in Portland.

Yeah.

David, there's this place called Movie Madness in Portland that's like a Valhalla of like actual DVD rentals.

And it's got like VHSs.

And I see it here.

It's beautiful.

Everything.

It has the most insane movie memorabilia collection.

Very anxious.

You walk in and you're like, oh, cool.

They have like a couple things they bought.

Are these like replicas?

And then you're like, all of this is real and it's like extensive.

It's basically like a mini museum of moving image.

I love it.

It's so awesome.

Yeah.

And you can just walk in.

But yeah, they have the ear.

All right.

Well, I'm going to go get it.

I thought you were saying, Jamie, I saw that ear in another movie.

Like you recognized it.

Went like, they don't need fucking ear from.

It's like talking about like seeing like Jimmy the Crow.

It's more than one movie.

Yes.

Blow the ants off it.

They're like, fine, you can.

David, what?

This episode of Blank Check with Griffin David podcast about filmographies 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 state 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

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

There is one other person in the room right now.

This is so rude.

I sleep easy.

I'm definitely not someone who insists on 800 thread count sheets.

No.

That's an example of a fussy person.

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 want someone who wants a pool or wants a view or I don't know.

Maybe any kind of demand.

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

Sure.

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

You got air conditioning.

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

Yes.

You gotta have air conditioning.

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

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

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

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

You do.

You love selfies.

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

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

And I'm like, sounds good to me.

Yeah.

Please.

Can I check that for you?

You want one of those in the recording, Stupid?

That'd be great.

You want to start.

You want to be.

I'll be in the sauna when we record.

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

You want to be Splish Splash.

You look good if I had a sauna and a cold plunge.

And while recording, I'm on mic, but you just were going back.

Like as I move to the book,

these are the kinds of demands that booking.com, booking.yeah.

Yes.

You can find exactly what you're booking for.

Booking.com.

Booking.

Yeah.

Booking.com.

Book today on the site or in the end.

Booking.com.

Booking.yeah.

Ben.

What's up, Griff?

This is an ad break.

Yeah.

And I'm just, this isn't a humble brag, it's just a fact of the matter.

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

Right.

They love it.

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.

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...

Reimagining.

Reimagining, whatever.

Yeah, 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 Page, with Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon.

Tremblay is Toxie's son.

His stepson.

His stepson.

Okay.

Wade Goose.

Yes.

Great name.

Give us the takes.

We haven't heard them yet.

Okay.

You got fucking Dinkledge is fantastic.

He's talking.

He plays it with so much heart.

It's such a lovely performance.

Bacon is in the pocket too, man.

He's the bad guy.

He's the bad guy.

There's a lot of him shirtless.

Okay.

Looking like

David sizzling.

Yep.

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

He certainly does.

He's having a lot of fun.

Tell us some things you liked about the movie.

Okay, well, I'm a Jersey guy.

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

Truma.

Yes.

Yes, that's right.

The original film.

Yep.

I grew up watching toxic and trauma movies on porches

with my sleazy and sticky friends.

It informed so much of my sensibility.

Your friends like Junkyard Dog and Headbanger.

Yeah, exactly.

Making Toxic Crusader jokes.

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

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

But I feel like there have been years of you being very excited at the prospect, but also a little weary they're playing with fire here yeah it's just it's something that means a lot to me and they knocked it out of the park okay it somehow really captured that sensibility that sense of humor even just that like lo-fi scrappy kind of nature that's inherent in all of the trauma movies and the original toxy movies and they have like updated and in this way that it was just i was so pleased with it it's gooey sufficiently gooey Tons of blood, tons of goo,

great action.

It's really fucking funny.

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

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 hits.

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

Want to make that happen again here.

Tickets are on sale right now.

Advanced sales really matter for movies like this.

So if y'all were planning on seeing Toxic Avenger, go ahead and buy those tickets.

Please go to toxicaver.com slash blank check to get your tickets.

Blank check one word.

In theaters August 29th.

Yup.

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

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

Summon the nuts is in reference to a

psychotic new metal band.

Hell yeah.

Who are also mercenaries.

Cool.

And drive a van with a skeleton giving two fingies up on the grill.

And that's all I'll say.

Okay.

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

I'm excited to see it.

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

Seriously, get your tickets now.

Go to toxicadvenger.com/slash blank check.

Do it.

Do it.

So, what are his inspirations here?

He wants to spy on a woman.

An ear in the grass.

Bobby Vinton song cover of Blue Velvet.

Yes.

The kind of music you really liked.

Something mysterious.

It made me think about things.

I've thought about lawns, the neighborhood.

It's twilight.

Maybe a streetlight is on.

And, you know, in the car, there's a girl with red lips.

I mean, this is just what he just goes into some state and pulls out David Lynch's.

Like David Lynch chopped ingredients.

This is what you have to do.

This is why I think this is still the quintessential one,

right?

It has all the things.

Mulholland Drive is just the other side of his coin.

If this is the like, right, the small town America thing and Mulholland Drive is like LA is this poison.

That is now seen as his masterpiece, and this is still seen as his like definitive.

Yeah.

Which I totally get.

I just feel like

the by the time a haul on drive comes out, you like not that you can ever truly know exactly what to expect, but you that this is the one where you're like

he hadn't, it was unprecedented.

I mean, imagine being Molly Sims sitting there in the theater going, this guy isn't going to speak to the things that I'm saying.

That sounds related to me, but I don't believe that she is.

What if we found that out by the end of this episode?

Molly Sims.

Let's see, she was born to Jim and Dottie Sims

in May Murray, Kentucky.

Any Jim Sims?

No,

the Simses are all in Europe.

My dad, you know,

the Sims are English and Scottish.

He's married to Scott Stuber.

Cool.

Who was the head of Netflix?

Yeah, until he was fired for winning too much.

Let's have you spit in a cup, David.

But not for any other reason.

Just period.

I just want to see how strong your spit is.

Yeah.

I think not good.

But we'll send it out and then we'll see what ancestry.com has to say.

No, I don't want those guys having my DNA.

Why?

They probably have it anyways.

Yeah, they probably have it.

Your cousin did it.

I've licked enough lampposts in my life.

David.

What?

David.

Yes?

Aunts.

Aunts?

Aunts.

Aunts, aunts, aunts.

Aunts, aunts, aunts, aunts.

I hate getting cornered by him.

We all do.

I knew that was going to be a relatable conversation starter.

Why aren't you getting married?

What's going on with that promotion?

Why haven't you moved out of mom and dad's basement, Griffin?

Oh, those were directed at me.

Oh, now I feel attacked.

Get out of the basement, Griffin.

She doesn't listen.

She just judges, judges, judges.

You're getting together with your family.

You might have to be in a barrage with these kinds of questions.

Stand there and grin and bear it.

I don't want you feeling that way when you talk to your doctor about like a weird rash or that you eat pizza one too many times a week or something else.

Unfortunately.

We have Red for Filth by this head copy right now.

Unfortunately, the twist to this riddle is that the doctor is my aunt.

Oh, no.

But other people might have another one.

I can't treat this patient.

He's my nephew.

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David Lynch, Blue Velvet's the opposite of Elephant Man, he says.

That's about a Elephant Man.

He's like, you know, it's this terrifying, ugly exterior, right?

And there's a beautiful soul and a beautiful person within.

Blue Velvet is the opposite, right?

The beautiful sheen of the suburbs and like then the horror stuff within it.

You get me.

No, I get what you're saying 100%.

When I like Ebert in particular, I hated this movie.

We'll talk about it.

His review is iconic.

Yeah.

I remember reading it when I saw this film in high school after watching Mohan Drive.

I think I was like, okay, I need to, you know.

And I remember going to his review because I was a little Ebert boy.

I was like, what did you Ebert say?

And like, it's just like, it's the most upset review.

He's just like, I understand why people think this is a masterpiece.

I feel horrible.

Like, I'm, you know, I'm too upset by this movie.

And he, like, wrote follow-up pieces.

Right.

Where he's like, I tried to get back into it.

No, it still freaks me out.

Ultimately comes back around to being like, I do think Lynch is like a master filmmaker.

I think that movie is still evil.

Like he never

really changes his mind on Blue Velvet specifically.

I appreciate, yeah, I went through his sort of soul-searching journey to try to like Blue Velvet.

And I like, I mean, even though I don't agree with him, I can also see how, you know, it's easily a movie you could watch, especially right when it came out if you didn't know what to make of it and be like, yeah, this feels evil.

I don't want any part of it.

Well, the thing I found very interesting is a lot of the people who took that stance, Ebert Chief among them, had this attitude of like.

It's a film about just like kind of gross

depravity.

It almost feels like this fetish object of watching all this like humiliation and abuse and misanthropic sadness and what have you.

And then on top of it is this very like glib, kitschy layer of like 50s Americana pastiche.

That's his ideality of like satire.

Right.

But I think what was misunderstood at that time, and it's one of those things that like, it just there wasn't enough of an understanding of who Lynch was, that people thought he was putting that on top of it to mock.

Like, well, this is like people keeping up appearances in this phony bullshit way.

And he's doing all of this with this like side eye versus him looking back on that being like, these are genuinely the things that make me happy.

This is what I associate with my childhood, which I think of as being very nice.

None of this is done like cynically or sarcastically.

I understand where Eber is coming from.

If you don't know who he, like David Lynch fully is at this time, which no one really quite did, you know, he is the exception to the rule there where there's so many like directors with his level of creative vision and power that would take the opportunity to humiliate humiliate their actors and to subjugate them.

And like, I, I don't know, I mean, especially with regards to like how Isabella, like, Rossellini is like brutalized in this movie.

On my first viewing, I was like, what the fuck?

Like, what do, what do you make of this?

And so like, I went straight to like watching it again to be like, okay, was that what, was what I thought I saw and like.

what I actually saw parse that out.

And then it was just like, I just wanted to hear her talk about the experience of making the movie.

And like, listening to her talk about making the movie and listening to David Lynch talk about the creative choices he was making made it like, makes it an easier movie.

It's never an easy movie to watch, but it makes an easier movie to interact with.

But like, that wouldn't have been possible when it came out.

No, and I think the elephant.

You're seeing this thing pretty right, unvarnished.

The elephant man thing you said, right?

Which is the key to it for him of like, that's a movie about a guy who on the surface people think is very frightening looking and inside you're arguing for the humanity of this person.

That if you think the Americana stuff on top of the movie is all done tongue in cheek, then you're like, what the fuck is this?

There is no sincerity to this thing.

Versus what he's saying is like, I genuinely think these things are beautiful.

Like David Lynch is like, nothing is more beautiful and poetic to me than like a malt shop or like

two kids going steady or like, you know, a lawn.

And it does sound like a lie, but then when you know it's him, you're like,

it is real, which is what's fascinating about him and why anyone trying to make a movie like this by design it would be as ugly right as what people are accusing him of doing versus this film being like a very honest reflection of his worldview

so he gets roth is like look take this to warner i'll take i'll get you in a meeting with warner brothers he pitched this is pre-dune post elephant man

pitches it to warner brothers and uh the exec is like what is this like a true story and lynch is like no i made it up and the guy's like all right i'll do it like cool.

The guy's just like, phew.

Yeah, exactly.

Lynch says he wrote two screenplays that were horrible.

That were just the ugly stuff.

Right.

And that the guy Warners was screaming at him on the phone.

And so the film kind of got put away.

And then he went to work on Dune.

And even though it is so weird, he had a horrible time working on that movie.

Dino DeLaurentis.

is there and I guess he's like, maybe you're the guy for Blue Velvet.

Yeah, Italian freak, Dino.

Your worst.

And And he's like, the only issue is Warner Brothers, I think, has the rights to it.

And Dino is like, don't worry about it.

And

he doesn't, you know, he called Warner Brothers and got it back very quickly.

So it is funny that like Dino kind of makes it up to him in a way, this horrible experience he has.

This film for $4 million is far and away like the cheapest film he makes that year.

He's generally working on a much larger scale, if not always at a Dune scale.

Dino's doing Conan movies and shit like that.

Right.

He says, can I have the final cut?

And Dino says, no problem.

Just cut your salary in half, cut the budget in half.

Right.

He's like, you have to make it for under 10.

And Dino assigns him the producer, Fred Caruso, who he said was this like very disciplined, old school kind of Hollywood guy.

And he looked at it and he's like, you could make this for four.

Yeah.

Lynch said to Caruso, the budget's $10 million.

And he read the script a few times and he says, I don't know what this movie's about.

I'm happy to work on it.

I can get the movie down to $4 million easy, basically.

And Lynch loves this man.

Bless his heart.

Because he knows that Caruso turning back and saying, I can make it for less than half of what you're offering, it gives Lynch, by proxy, complete freedom.

At this point, De LaRantis is like, well, at four, that's a fucking rounding error.

Why not?

I won't say anything about this movie.

I won't even watch it.

Right, who cares?

Lynch says, Fred Caruso talks in a way that gives you a feeling feeling of assurance and safety.

And he would often say to him, I don't know what you're doing, but he was a really good producer.

So Lynch gives the script to Kyle McLaughlin on the set of Dune, maybe on Arrakis, maybe when they're on a worm or something.

He's like, you want to read this, my boy?

They're drinking.

I saw you as the pervert.

Jeffrey.

Highlighted the line to me.

What were you saying, Jeff?

I just, I haven't seen any Dune that's ever come out.

And is it, do they drink?

Okay, two questions do they drink their own piss yes okay but like not out of a cup their suit is doing it on screen

sorry not in not even in the david lynch one well okay so like in in dune you know in on the world of arrakis the harsh sand world of arrakis you're wearing a still suit that's recycling your water my brain just turned off i'm sorry okay i mean that's what a lot of people do in like page one of the book like before there you know where it's just like The quiz that's how to rock and people are just like, it's gone.

It's got to go.

I'm not reading that.

Jamie, you're not into this hard lore.

You just like opening shot: the mariner pisses into a contraption on his own ship.

We live in Water World.

Exactly.

He drinks the piss.

Just working that pump.

Yeah.

I was like, there's no, uh, there's no live dune show at Universal Studios Hollywood.

I mean, so that actually might happen.

Yeah, I mean, that seems more likely.

That would be so cruel and unusual if they got rid of the Water World show to replace it with oh, ooh.

I think the Water World show isn't going anywhere.

It's more implied piss drinking.

Yeah.

They do drink worm piss in a way.

Yeah.

It makes them go crazy

and like see visions and stuff.

Yeah, so you do see that, but it's, you know, it's not their own piss.

It's not, you know, and it's not the good stuff.

It's not the good stuff.

The spicy stuff.

I do.

Well, of course, they do ingest the spice.

I do like Lynch's quote about Kyle, where he's like, some actors, when you look in your eyes, their eyes, you can't see them thinking.

Kyle can think on screen.

Jeffrey is connecting different worlds.

He's looking to Sandy's world.

He's looking into Dorothy's world.

He can even look into Frank's world.

And I need like, you know, someone someone who can communicate that silently.

It's interesting, I think,

not that Colin McLaughlin's bad and Dune, but when they announced that Chalamé was doing the new one, and you, David, were like, that's so fucking spot on.

Yeah.

And it was at a moment when you were getting a little bit frustrated with Salamay.

And you were like, I cannot deny that that is the perfect application of him.

I called him a grading and mannered actor.

And someone said he's only grading and mannered when he's giving you extra parmesan at Olive Garden.

Maybe you and Shalamay were on the rocks.

That is.

Wait, who said that?

Sam Herbs.

Shout out to you, Sam.

That is very funny.

It was so funny.

I said that his performance in Beautiful Boy was grading and mannered.

And Sam was like, he is only grading and mannered if he is giving you extra cheese at Olive Garden.

That is one of the funnier things I've heard in a long time.

I was kind of like...

Also, I think with Timmy Chalamet, I was kind of like, yeah, but like, right, how does this guy translate?

And then he picked, you know, he's Paul Atreides.

And I was like, that is something about him being sort of unnerving that special boy.

the special boy thing.

Kyle McLaughlin, I think, is almost a little bit too adult for Dune.

Yeah, sure.

He's a little less boyish.

He's still pretty boyish.

We'll talk about it.

But then in this movie, you're like, this is such a perfect young man, which is what this movie needs.

He is so firmly in the center of like, this guy returns home.

There are women who are still in high school who remember him.

from being king shit in high school.

He has not quite transitioned into adulthood.

Right, but he does.

Right.

He's not a kid.

Like this is a and this whole movie is the journey of him being like, I've kind of left behind the like comforting bubble of the white picket fence world.

Do I want to go back to being like the guy who can pick up the girls at the school?

Do I want to venture into a darker world?

I know that his character and Lauren Dern's character are close in age, but there is something so Jerry Seinfeld coded about pulling up to a high school in a red convertible where you're just like, no, keep driving.

And also his bad boy 2.0 phase.

Let's acknowledge Ben, Comm McLaughlin, in this film, rocking a little ear.

You beat me to it.

I was going to make fun of Ben.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben has a little ear.

So I recently changed to a hoop, having had a stud for about a year.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, okay.

I knew something seemed different.

Yeah, the office, I know all the balances in here are off, but it's crazy.

We haven't recalibrated yet.

Yeah, Ben's been feeling more powerful.

He's been really happy.

Yeah.

You get?

No, sorry, go on.

Well, I just, I was saying before we started recording, too, that I really was influenced by all of his fits in this movie.

And I'm going to become a sports jacket guy and start wearing ties.

He dresses a lot like Lynch.

You're entering your new wave era is what you're telling me.

I also fully believe that

Lynch, you know, Lynch in his prime was doing the chicken dance on date one.

Like that's all autobiographical easily.

But I also like to think about all the things that, all the weird things that Jeffrey does early on where I'm like, maybe if he just didn't do the chicken dance, none of this would have happened.

Sure, like, what are little things?

I feel like he conjured this situation for himself, but it is like, I don't know.

Jeffrey is, and the, I felt a little vindicated.

I'd never looked into like the cut scenes or anything that was like removed from this movie, but I like Kyle McLaughlin is really, I don't know.

I think the most iconic Kyle McLaughlin role for me, formatively, outside of the Flintstones.

Sister Hood of the Traveling Pants, too.

Is that a close?

Okay.

Sorry.

Okay.

Blue Velvet is my no.

Number two.

Okay.

Well, come on.

Just it's not in the state.

Trey McDougal.

Yeah.

Would you rather measure my John Thomas?

I'll just always remember him holding.

Wow.

My John Thomas.

He's

alrighty.

It's just like, and the things that he's good at feel so consistent, regardless of like the genre he's in, where he's great at like being oblivious, but he's also great at, like, he's uniquely good at like guilty and shameful in like a very like baby way, like a baby who's been hit.

Um, yes, he's so good at being shameful.

That is very true.

He's played so many kinds of deviance over the years, which is great.

I support deviancy, obviously.

I'm not.

I mean, you sent him a bunch of Facebook messages and he had to write and apologize publicly that he's not his character.

Did you see that the Rictus erectus has to fucking be like, for the record, I don't actually live in the wasteland and capture children.

After some startling messages I've received from strangers,

we live in hell.

If he had just doubled down on us living in hell and been like, I would note Zap apology for the actions he did in Furio.

Basically, what he posted.

I know.

I know.

Poor guy.

Yes.

Like, so, like, right, in Sex in the City, Charlotte Mary is what seems like the perfect preppy guy.

Okay.

Wait, I do not know.

Trey McDuffie.

I've seen two episodes of Sex in the City.

Wait, I've never seen something that you haven't seen before this is really exciting it's really cool yeah and he trend watching a baseball game

no of course not right you guys have a lot of overlap to be clear right

um and right she marries like she's always wanted this like you know kind of picture perfect husband she thinks she's founded in this like preppy guy who wears a you know boating hat and is his mom's name is bunny right she's always walking in on them having sex an impotent mom obsessed freak who like you know cannot get it up in bed because he's got so much going on, you know.

But has no idea he has so much stuff going on.

And like, that's he's so good at, you're right.

Like, both head empty and head busy

with freak shit.

I love, like, it's that, I mean, in a different, but like, it's like Dale Cooper shit too, where it's, like, his head looks empty, but there's just like

it's unclear whether he knows how much is going on in his head.

I don't know.

I've never seen that specific kind of like eye glaze that Kyle McLaughlin can conjure.

Well, he looks so much like a mannequin without being vacant.

You know, this is why the Hidden used him that way.

It's why like Fallout this year uses him the exact same thing.

He's always instant path to that.

Where you're like, I can't tell if this guy is devious or is right, just like a mannequin come to life.

And like, Portlandia character is also doing that.

That's very funny.

Yeah.

I think the funniest thing in Portlandia was Steve Buscemi being celery.

Anyway, Kyle McLaughlin is given the script, likes the script a lot, is really, he's like, I think I understand this.

He takes it to his parents, which is adorable.

Yeah.

Something you do, I guess, when you've only been in one movie.

His parents are very upset by the script.

His mother apparently couldn't even talk after reading it.

And he was basically like, I think that David's going to handle this well.

Like, please don't worry.

Oh, when we covered seven on this show.

And reading about everyone's response to the script at the same time, it's one of those things that just like.

Which makes sense.

It feels quaint now.

I just think we are at a point now where it's hard to imagine any script being sent around Hollywood where people are like, how dare they in that same sort of way.

People will be like, this is offensive,

but you, you read how people received this on paper, similar to the seven script, and they were like, this seems illegal.

It's kind of fun to think about.

Are you going to screen this movie in prison?

I wonder how much of that could be like attributed to like just pre-internet where it's like now you can just, you can be like, here's a built-in audience for any fetish you could conjure.

Like, there are millions of people interested, and I have the data.

Where before, I mean, that's like, I guess, part of what the movie is talking about is like, you just don't know what people are into.

Now it's like, it's, it's, it's far too easy to figure out what people are.

It's like what Molly Sims said, that there's something in the culture that hasn't been spoken to.

No, I think you're right.

I think there's this knowledge now that at any point you could Google anything and probably see it.

And most of us are choosing at most times to not Google most things, but there's not that feeling of like, how dare you put that out into the world?

Cause you're like, I think it's all out there.

I'm just trying to avoid it now.

So, this is Lynch's first collaboration with Joanna Ray, who is his casting director going forward, famously the ex-wife of Aldo Ray,

and

someone where it's like basically just at this point.

I mean, she works on like Lynch Tarantino.

She casts showgirls, like her entire casting like credits on IMDb.

They're just all amazing.

Obviously, he has an eye for like freaks, deviants.

Again, I'm saying this with love.

Wow.

Frank Booth is the tough role to cast here.

Willem Dafoe was supposedly in discussions at some point.

Makes sense.

Eventually, obviously, he's on wild at heart.

Lynch absolutely offered the role to Harry Dean Stanton, who was disturbed by it.

I don't want to

go down that violent trip, he said.

Hopper was basically like, I really get this guy.

Hopper is campaigning for the role.

Yes.

Now, Hopper is not in like a sterling career place right like it's like he's not really a draw no but as lynch says he's like hearing rumors that hopper might have cleaned up that this is coming off of like over a decade where hopper became vaguely unhireable just because like this guy is so uh whacked out of his mind on any number of substances at any time that you're just not going to be able to control him.

And there's this question of like, has Hopper cleaned up?

I'm I'm so curious.

Is there like

footage of David Lynch and Dennis Hopper like working together?

What were they like having a conversation together?

It almost feels like a Klaus and Werner thing.

Like you're just like, what is this dynamic?

How could it possibly have worked?

But that's the fascinating thing is like you watch like the documentary about the last movie and you're like, this is a guy who is like unraveling, right?

By this point, I feel like there's like never a bad story about Dennis Hopper onset behavior from 1985 on.

No, he went on the wagon.

I mean, yes, it's like, and I think he had a really chaotic reputation.

And that's why Lynch even has to be convinced, even though apparently Dennis is saying to him, like, you have to let me play Frank.

I am Frank.

I mean, like, behavior aside, just someone who's yelling at your

can't not yell.

That's the thing, though.

Like, even when he's giving unhinged performances, I feel like from 85 on, the narrative is this guy went through it all.

And now he's able to, like, uncork it when he needs to in front of camera but like the thing that obviously appeals to lynch and then he talks about it is like he is such a 50s guy hopper because he does have this like motorcycle bandit thing basically the the rebel without a coffee exactly and like that's what lynch loves like that and so he says like there's a scene where dennis is watching dorothy sing and he's crying and it was totally perfect there's a side of these romantic 50s rebel things where guys could cry and it was totally okay and cool and then they would beat the shit out of somebody in the next minute macho guys don't cry now and it's false.

And the 50s guys had these poetry swimming through them, which is an amazing way to think about this.

Yeah.

And a guy like this who's had done like heightened studio melodrama, had done like countercultural, experimental, had done, had touched so many different eras of Hollywood.

Would do speed and water world back to back.

Would do speed, period.

Would do, yeah, and drink water back to back.

And you're forgetting King Koopa, of course, which I'm so sorry.

succeeded both of those roles.

Yeah.

An incredible run.

What a career in the 90s.

Dorothy Vallon's, Lynch really wanted Helen Mirren, who is a mega babe at the time, who's working with Peter Greenway and stuff.

And

it makes sense for this type of movie.

Yes.

And he says that she gave him lots of feedback on the script and really helps him.

Lynch says, I didn't know Isabella Rossellini at all.

I didn't even really know she acted.

I thought of her more as a model.

The son was entirely Helen Mirren's idea.

That when he was talking to her about the project, she was like, her behavior doesn't really make sense because she's doing it for a child.

There has to be a sense of something greater she's protecting that she's making these calculations in the name of.

And apparently when he met Isabella Rossellini, David Lynch said to her, you know, you look like Ingrid Bergman.

And someone was like,

that's her mother.

Like,

like, what are you talking about?

I don't know if it's apocryphal.

I feel like at times I've heard that story relayed as someone tells him, it is her mother, you idiot, and he literally falls out of his chair, which I could imagine.

You could see Lynch going, like, holy smokes, like falling backwards, losing control.

Yeah,

so he reaches out to Martin Scorsese, who is the ex-husband of Isabella Rosslini.

They were already split up at that point.

Uh, yes, okay.

Oh, no, I'm sorry, it's the other way around.

Sorry, Isabella Rosslini reaches out to Martin, her ex-husband, and says, What's the deal with David Lynch?

And he's like, Go see a racerhead.

And she was very impressed by it and

you know there it goes and lynch puts her with kyle mclaughlin and has them talk and do stuff like that and then gets the part obviously lynch is also like madly in love with her it's very obvious i was gonna say these quotes in retrospect that he was just so struck by her the reason i didn't think they were already divorced at that point there was some scorsese interview where he talked about rosalina asking him about lynch that he was interested in her and they had that conversation she walked away or hung up the phone or whatever and scorsese was like, She's going to fucking fall in love with Lynch.

Like, this immediate, like, I know exactly what's about to happen.

But I guess he had already kind of fucked it up at that point.

I mean, this is like Scorsese.

How long were they married for?

Uh, he, how,

uh, Scorsese or um,

Scorsini were married only for three years, and that's at like the absolute worst of his addiction issues.

She's married to him at the worst point before he could-89 to 82.

Right, sure.

It's it's the New York, New York digging himself out to come back the other side with Raging Bull era.

Gotcha.

Russellini dates Lynch from Blue Velvet on to like about 1991.

And

yeah.

And then Laura Dern, obviously, this is the beginning of long history collaborations for Lynch and Dern.

She was 17 years old.

Obviously, she is a Hollywood royalty, right?

And the daughter of Bruce Dern and Della.

And he loves anyone who has history with the entertainment industry in that way.

But also, like, people like Dean Stockwell, who are like former child stars, people who are legacy stars, people who have existed in different eras or mediums or what have you.

And

he just wants, obviously, this sort of like pure, you know, creature, right, who's not really like been in Hollywood yet.

Yeah.

To embody that.

Dern was incredibly good at doing without making it seem

uninteresting.

Right.

She'd already been in like

mask and smooth talk at this point.

It's like this is not her first movie, but I don't know, whatever.

All right, Blue Velvet.

What do you guys think?

It's about...

Yeah, a guy finds an ear.

Turns out there's some fucked up stuff going on.

I mean, for me, this movie is about a guy losing his keys.

This is David's take that we're going to solve every lynch movie with the same reading.

Right, but I'm like, no, no, no guys, I've solved it.

It's actually a guy lost his keys.

That's what's going on with him.

I forgot about that bit.

Thank you for reminding me.

That's what I'm here for.

Blue Velvet.

You open with incredible beginning right very classic always like sneaks up on me the credits literally projected on blue velvet curtains hacky choice

i'm joking i'm joking wow it's a joke it's a hilarious joke i'm not laughing that's sick what you just said and kind of lynchy in it's a joke um

you you play the song over the perfect idyllic sort of uh footage of the kind of thing that lynch does revere

The watering of the lawn and what have you.

God, yeah.

At the at the end with like the

image of the whatever, I don't know what flowers are flowers.

Roses, probably,

and sky.

Just, I don't know.

I think I like that this movie came out in the 80s and that for some reason, and I'm sure that there's plenty of them, that like this is a decade where this kind of movie could come out.

It was like in the middle of the Reagan years, you could make a movie like this, and Tim Burton could make his version of a movie like this, and everyone could make their version of a movie like this that is like playing on the suburbs um it just feels like they're getting away with something incredible back to the future that's the whole thing of like that movie only makes sense at the exact point in time they made it we devote an entire episode onto it but the relationship between the 80s and the 50s was something like very specific it felt like

because this movie feels like it takes place in both decades at the same time yes i was gonna say it isn't until whatever it is, maybe five or six minutes in when I'm watching it and I clock Confluence.

I'm playing Atari.

I'm trying to be like the most 80s thing we can do.

No, it's the earring.

There was a moment, and every time I've watched it, I have the same thing where I get to whatever point, however many minutes in, and I clock the earring for the first time.

It's not like the movie makes a point of revealing it.

And I go like, oh, right, this is present day.

This movie is supposed to be in 1986.

Right, but only when they need it to be.

Only when they need it to be.

Because like Laura Dern's fits, while great, are not taking place in 1986.

Like they're like weird poodle, like Grease costumes.

True, right?

She does not narrate, nothing is bedazzled or, you know, there's no neon or whatever.

But I love that.

I really love when

a movie just like doesn't care about the like.

about you knowing with specificity what year it is.

Oh, I love that.

Which is maybe just like a reaction to watching any like movie that takes place at a specific time that plays like the election results of that year and the background of the first scene so you're like oh okay i guess it's the year 2000 just not seeing enough stories set against the backdrop of the 2016 election anytime i read that from like a festival review oh god for some reason the filmmakers decided to specifically set this film against the backdrop

i wonder if they were trying to get at something there it's just like so annoying but i don't know maybe maybe it's because i'm i'm rereading a series of unfortunate events right now.

I saw that you're doing that.

Which is, of course, set against the backdrop of the 2000 election.

It is very important.

A series of unfortunate events.

There's so much more hanging Chad stuff in the Lemony Snicket books than you remember.

It's so great.

It's the VFD, a bunch of hanging Chads, where are the butterfly ballots?

A bunch of, yeah,

it's all Chad's.

The Sugar Bowl, hanging Chad's.

It's all, but, but just like another,

like.

They use the spyglass to find the Chads.

But like, they don't give a shit.

Like, it's only the present day when yes the author needs it to be the present day for the plot to work and it feels like he's like i would rather it be 1897 but we do need them to have a telegram or a phone or something in this book so it's whenever whatever year you need it to be should i read those have you never read them i was like a little too old for them i think i was like 14.

unsurprisingly and my brother loved them and i think i sort of was just like well they're joey's thing like he reads those i saw the movie yeah you and i just not the same same experience.

Not the same.

Wait, did you like it?

I don't think so.

No, I think you because I feel like you strongly dislike that movie.

That's too strong.

No, I just remember being underwhelmed by it, but while appreciating that at least had like design in it, right?

Yeah, I think that movie is like an astounding work of craft that is narratively

absolute mess.

I feel like you're both right.

Yeah, wait, I feel like, okay, I think my problem is Jim Carrey.

I think he's also kind of a problem.

The whole thing with him is you're just getting Jim Carrey working hard.

It's not an act.

It's, I don't know.

I've just said this to whoever will listen recently, and I'm so glad I found the opportunity to say it again because they made the same mistake in the second adaptation with Neil Patrick Harris.

He's not supposed to be funny.

He's supposed to be scary.

It should have been Christopher Lloyd both times.

But like, it could have been Jeremy Irons.

It makes so much sense, obviously, that some exec was like, right, this is a perfect opportunity for some comedic actor to be a goofball.

Oh, and he gets to play like six different characters.

yeah wonderful right he does costume changes yeah i don't believe that jim carry would kill a child i do believe that jeremy irons would kill a child well jeremy irons would kill a child to like you know get coffee faster or whatever like he would do it for the front of the line

i mean carry i don't know you know i just re-watched batman forever this is the same same series that i'm doing with this friend you never

It's the same thing in that.

It's like, you're getting Jim Carrey.

Like, he's doing his thing.

This is another.

Obviously, the man is given proper performances in his career.

Yeah.

Yes.

But not.

He's got this.

Hey, can you can it be Jim Carrey for a bit?

It's another way in which I feel very conflicted about that movie is I do think it is one of his best later comedic performances, but I think it's an absolutely horrible fit for the movie.

It's the wrong movie for it.

Where I'm like, I wish he was able to bring this to anything else in that 10-year period.

But and that's also the same year that Eternal Sunshine came out, I'm pretty sure, as both of them

are best performance.

Period.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's nuts that those came out the same year.

And outside of Jip Carrey, I think the movie Super Bowlcast, I love Meryl Streep as Josephine.

I like, I thought all of this.

This was fucking good.

It looks cool.

Timothy Spalles, Mr.

Poe.

Come on.

Cedric the Entertainer.

It's great.

I don't even remember that.

My thing with Carrie and Batman Forever, which I feel like I may not have said when

the commentaries almost suggest that we should talk about the movie Twin Peaks.

I know, I know.

Just one minute.

Just one minute.

Okay.

Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet.

Yeah,

we could talk about Twin peaks if you want to talk about it.

Oh, I thought we were just taking one more step to get back.

Nope, nope, nope.

I'm just

introduced to us as like squirrely odd scientist Edward Nygma who's like disheveled and weird.

Okay.

Then he becomes the riddler and he's like, it's like his id is unleashed and he's crazy and fun and charismatic, right?

But then he switches to a third persona that's just normal Jim Carrion of Tux.

Yes.

When he's like, now I'm Edward Nigma with money.

And I'm like, and I'm like, where was this guy earlier?

You're supposed to be this unhinged scientist.

I never connected that.

And then he's just suddenly in a tuxedo.

He looks hot and he's like, young Jim Carrey.

And you're just like, who this guy was missing?

Stop.

You found it.

This is the mid-stage way where you need to live.

And it's only for like one sequence when they're having a party for you.

His entrance was good.

Yeah, and you're just like, fuck, this is just Jim Carrey being a babe.

I, you know, and Drew Barrymore is just flirting with him.

Yeah, understandable.

Because she's probably like, this whole shtick where I'm half the guy's girlfriend and Debbie Mazar is the other half.

I can't do this forever.

Like, this is bizarre.

Are you single?

Depending on how the coin falls.

Drew Barrymore had to be so adjacent to a lot of guys doing their shtick.

Yeah.

So true.

Had to endure the shtick.

Oh, my God.

Take the check.

Including E.T., that fucking happened.

That guy.

Bugging it up, getting drunk on camera.

In front of kids.

Sick.

Waddling around without his pants on.

I'm so glad he died.

No, no, he came back to life.

Oh, hell no.

I haven't seen the actual

when E.T.

dies, you turn it off and

you're just like, great,

justice done.

Yeah, I am.

I am rooting for the government and E.T.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you're rooting for key guy.

Yeah, get his ass.

That guy didn't lose his keys.

Anyways, I like when a movie takes place

basically where, basically, in the two years that the director is interested in, except for when he needs something.

Yes, it's great.

You have this opening of Americana, and then you witness a man having a heart attack while watering his lawn.

As he falls to the ground, you go deeper and deeper into the dirt, and you have this sort of like mechanical, industrial.

And it's hold on, a little fucked up.

Oh, glistened.

Just under the surface, bugs are like doing shit.

There's nothing

freaking gross.

That is so cool.

But it works.

It's awesome.

Yes.

It's just also like the like the stock lynch noise.

They're like, oh, it's just great.

Right.

It's like

the ambient soundtrack of Eraserhead.

Right.

It's just underneath the surface.

Jeffrey Beaumont is summoned thus, a college kid, Jeffrey,

to attend to his father.

We basically have no sense of what his life has been like since leaving this town.

Outside of knowing he went off to college.

I know in a deleted scene, there's a scene of him just confirming the Jeffrey creepy guy allegations, if there were any doubt, of like him doing the same thing at college.

Like in closets, yeah, like where I think it's like a another

Jeffree voyeuristic moment where he's like watching a woman get either harassed or assaulted in some way at school, and then just being like, Well, anyways, um,

this is, I need, I haven't actually seen the scene, but I know that there was just so much of this movie that was cut.

Yeah, there's an hour of deleted stuff, which is fascinating because the movie is already two hours long.

Yeah.

I feel like this is often the case with Lynch.

Yeah, he had a much, much longer version of this movie that he, I think, you know, I prefer knowing less about Jeffrey.

I like, like, I like that you're sort of left being like, okay, who is this guy?

I don't, I, I don't need the confirmation that he is a fucking creep because you can kind of feel it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh, he comes back, his father is incapacitated, but it is one of those things where it's like his, his father's uh, health issues have nothing to do with the plot of the the film.

I had misremembered, like, oh,

he has a heart attack and then he finds the ear on the ground.

No,

it's completely unrelated events.

It just brings Jeffrey back home.

And as you said, it's almost like Jeffrey needs some other project.

He's ostensibly back there to take care of his father, except it's a thing he seems wildly disinterested in doing.

He's just kind of like, okay, he's there.

All right.

Now,

be a good son and stay nearby.

He also has the mind the hardware store, too.

I think that was somewhat of a motivator, too.

But even then, a thing we don't see see him do much in the film.

No, I have, and there's, but there's two guys named Ed that work there.

Isn't that like double ed?

I,

what I liked about, I don't know, I just feel like if we're thinking of him as like 19 or 20 or however old he's supposed to be, who's just very suddenly been asked to drop whatever his hopes and dreams may have been to leave, probably can't come back.

It doesn't seem like if his dad, if the hardware shop isn't like fully functioning, it doesn't seem like he can go back to school.

And like, I don't know, I think about people I know who are in a position like that where they had to leave school for whatever reason and had to go home and like sort of reneg on, like, okay,

what I thought was going to happen is not going to happen.

And then I think very often you'll just get really into

some other thing to distract from the fact that your life has been very suddenly derailed and you have no control.

And I like on this viewing, not the first couple of times I watched it, but I was like, oh, I like locked in to my pervert King Jeffrey

and was like, this is a guy who like is just searching for a sense of control because the things that are out of his control are very depressing and mundane.

Like he can't go to college anymore.

He has to work at a hardware store.

He doesn't seem like he wants to move home, but he can't deal with it.

So he's like, I'm going to be Harriet the spy.

And that's how I'm going to cope with my life very suddenly fucking sucking.

But also, I think there's this piece of,

and it's what I like about getting so little kind of like background on him, is he's never talking about how badly he wants to go back to college.

He's never talking about his father's illness

derailing a specific track he thought his life was on.

He's this guy who is like very deeply in some transitional state, this sort of young manhood, and is fighting against maybe all sides of of having to settle in any one place.

Is the coolest thing I can do to fucking take my car around to the high school and try Jerry Seinfeld the shit out of this town?

Like, what, you know, box full of pop charts?

Can I go on frosted on their asses?

It's the coolest thing I could do, have a 17-year-old girlfriend.

Or does that make me king shit of like, I'm the coolest version of what I wanted to be when I was 14 and lived here?

Yeah, I mean, it feels like his instincts.

I don't know.

I'm sure I'm like, project.

I mean, it's easy to project onto Jeffrey Jeffrey because apparently I'm a Jeffrey and that bums me out.

But like

you just wish you long for Nero when men were men, you know, you kind of like, you know,

whatever your Jerry sign felt about.

Just do a Jerry sign.

But that like, there's like a very like childish thing behind like, you know, I mean, it's terrifying to find an ear, but then to be like, it's my job to figure out.

what is going on with this.

He almost frames it a little bit at the beginning.

And obviously he uses this as a way to like get closer to Sandy of like maybe this is my calling maybe i'm the kind of guy who could like be a detective you know meeting her father and getting this sense of like how it invigorated him but the other part of it for me is just like it's almost like an alice in wonderland like rabbit hole thing where it's like here's the hole to adulthood Here's all this shit that's been out of reach for me when I was a child.

There's all this shit going on behind closed doors, underneath the surface.

Some of it's dark.

Some of it's exciting.

Some of it's sexy.

Some of it's terrifying.

And, like, do I want to just know what it is?

And he keeps on, he's trying very briefly to be like, what is the way to know without getting into it?

To hide in a closet, to just do the recon work.

I just find the ear, but I want to know what they find.

And then very quickly, he gets too directly involved.

I would be so bad at hiding in a closet.

I'm so terrible.

I'm so large and fidgety.

I'd be so shitty.

I'm so small and fidgety.

I'd be great at hiding in a closet.

Jamie,

admit it.

If you found an ear on your lawn, you would be like, I got to figure out the ear.

Of course I would.

You would go right into a closet.

You're such a Jeffrey.

And like what he's doing is, I feel like he has the same instinct that like anonymous Redditors trying to solve a cold case in their neighborhood.

Yes.

Yes.

Is trying to do

no.

actual skill here except you found the ear and now you've decided right you want to so i must be the guy there's a lot of like um horrible podcasters podcasters that do this.

Same thing.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Like us.

This pretty young girl who's like, I have like 10% more information.

Yes.

Right.

That's who I am.

Where I'm like, well, I know a little bit of gossip and I want to hear about this.

I am not touching any ears and I'm not going into any classes.

I'm staying outside.

I do know how to drive a car so I can beep the horn.

Yeah.

I'm great at beeping.

Yes.

And there is this game of her like being very upfront that she has a boyfriend, but continuing to spend time with him.

The idea that this is like an activity gives her the safety blanket of being like, I'm not cheating on him.

No, and she's near someone who's doing something interesting.

And, but without, yeah, like you were just saying, David, but like with the safety of like, I don't have to do it, but I'm a part of it and I get to be near it.

And

I don't know, it seems like her, her boyfriend, I love the scene when

Mike is about to beat the shit out of Jeffrey and then

like Isabella Rossling is there and then he's like oh I'm I'm sorry and then just retreats one of his friends like I thought you were gonna kick his ass man

Mike's a loser

Mike yeah I hope Mike was hit by a car that night but there's also there's the scene where because he I guess he goes uh first pretends to be the uh exterminator right and then they go to see your concert after that Yeah, he does some, you know, he does some air exterminating.

He sees this guy in a yellow coat.

He's like, that's weird.

And so then he decides, right, let's, and he steals a key.

Yes, right.

And so, but he goes to

Sandy and he goes, like, I want to see her sing.

And you can see that she's kind of just like, this is kind of fun.

It's like a day night with him.

Like, she's starting to get more into the idea of like, is this a backdoor relationship starter?

Or even if not, it's like she can sleep with this guy and then he'll just be gone.

Like, it's like he's, he's, he's the cool older guy moving through town and then he's going to go back to college.

Like it's low stakes.

You watch the energy of the way she has dressed herself up, the way she's holding herself at the nightclub, the way she is like putting date expectations on this and then watching the way that he is watching her perform.

And then when they're in the car afterwards, she's just like, this has veered off into a different direction.

I saw something change in you that you are getting involved in this to a degree that I no longer like,

that I am means to an end for you to solve this thing.

Right.

And I also get kind of jealous when my friends do stuff without me.

And so that's how I'm also like

the Sandy.

Dorothy's friend

at that age, she got so much further than I ever would.

And also, it's so hard to tell.

I mean, like with Jeffrey, when he's like, oh, you've never had beer before.

I'm like, is that him like posturing?

Is that him being a dumbass?

Or is that him assuming that she's more worldly than she actually is?

Like, you can't really tell.

But, you know, I don't know.

I dated a college guy for a little while when I was in high school.

And then I got in a car with him once and he was smoking weed and I started crying.

And that was then it was over.

He apologized to my mom at Dunkin' Donuts the next day.

Wow.

And you told JD, like, we need to meet on neutral territory for it.

Wow.

They had to go somewhere safe.

And I was at the Dunkin' Donuts across the street watching with my friends,

watch him apologize to my, for my, to my mom for like corrupting me.

Wow.

Was that the first first time you had ever been around someone smoking weed?

Yeah, I had a meltdown.

I didn't know what to do.

It was the least cool thing.

It was the least cool thing.

He's thinking, like, all right, let me right, knock it up, knock my game up here.

I'll be really cool smoking a J.

Drove us down high street while smoking weed.

And I, and he's like, do you want some?

And I just burst into tears.

I mean, you were, you were like a cheerleader, right?

And high street, right?

You were like a.

I was recently out of my back brace.

I was coming into my own, okay, right, right.

I was emerging, yeah, I was on the dance team, uh, and I think that, yeah, maybe, maybe that's why I was like, I don't know, I don't know if Jeffrey assumes she's more worldly than I think that guy definitely thought I had smoked weed before.

Um, and then, but you know, what happens when you make assumptions, you apologize to my mom at Dunkin' Donuts.

You shouldn't do that for a bagel twist.

Talking about him being I feel like a bagel twist right now, I feel like our whole life has been bagel twisted up by my actions.

That's what he said.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

Speaking of him being a sort of

representation of Lynch on screen,

his dialogue about Heineken

is his like Lynchiest moment in this film, like Lynch as a man,

where you're like, this kind of just like, this is the one good beer.

I love this beer so much.

And that just, I don't know, that he wrote for Dennis Hopper, like Pab's Blue Ribbon.

You're like, no, that's, that's real man beer.

Yeah, but it's just so funny.

Fuck that shit.

I don't think I had Pap's Blue Ribbon for years after because it doesn't exist in Britain.

It might now because it's like cool, yeah, you know, beer, but back then it wasn't, right?

Sure, and so I thought that was the coolest shit in the world when he said Pap's Blue Ribbon.

He's supposed to be 19 vaguely, Jeffrey, yeah, sure, 1920.

He's 19.

In the 80s, like people who are supposed to be teenagers looked 40.

Like, it's really confusing.

How old was he when anytime you see like a picture of a boy?

of six?

I think, yeah, he's okay.

Yeah, um, like you see, like a picture of a baseball player from back when, and they're like, ah, here he is, a rookie of the year at 23.

He looks like an accountant in his 50s.

Like, you're just like, who is this guy?

Pop.

Popeye is canonically 34 years old.

Don't get stuck on that.

Yeah, I know.

I know.

I've really fucking been getting him.

To be clear, oh, that's figure.

You're like, why am I not like Popeye?

I'm older than Popeye.

I haven't achieved as much as iterant sailor Popeye.

Popeye kind of had a child by the time he was my age.

Kind of.

I mean, there was a loose baby he sometimes tended to.

And what is your job?

Sailor man.

Like, it's like he's not a real job.

He kind of cared for a baby.

A loose baby.

How's it going to describe sweepy?

There's kind of just like a baby in play.

Because he's not fucking olive oil's kid either.

No.

He's got a girlfriend and there is a baby in the mix.

The baby belongs to neither of us.

I thought you were saying Sweepy has a girlfriend.

I was like, Sweepy has a girlfriend.

I wouldn't be surprised.

That guy.

The things I've heard about Sweepy.

No, what I was going to say is, it is just very funny to think of a 19-year-old being like, God, I love Heineken.

It's so

good.

It's sort of a cool European beer, right?

Back when, or whatever.

I don't know.

But not even do it with the energy of like, hey, can I turn you on to something really cool?

Heineken's like the great beer.

He's just sort of monologuing to himself, looking at this thing.

Not like I love beer, not like fucking Bud Light.

He's just like, Heineken is just like the most incredible beverage.

He's a weird guy, and you do wonder, right, like if he like has a penis.

Like, it's one of those things where you're like, Yeah, maybe he's just like a jerky college kid who's a little pretentious, or maybe he's like a smooth

lizard.

Yeah, yes.

Like, I don't, I don't totally know, but just the Kyle McLaughlin magic.

Absolutely.

Like, it snaps changes in him when they're outside her place that night.

They come up with a plan where it's like, I'm going in the closet, you're staying outside, then drive the car home, just honk four times before she comes in.

Insane that he pees in her toilet.

I know that that needs to happen, but it never does.

That for me is the most shocking part of the movie is that he has the audacity to pee in an apartment he's broken into.

It's key evidence of him being a dang-ass freak.

And also kind of an idiot.

Sloppy as hell.

Yes, exactly.

Not the Nancy Drew would not recommend, right?

The Hardy Boys don't go around peeing in random toilets.

Does he kick the seat up or does he leave it down i don't let me review the tape uh he obviously then hides in the closet and watches an insanely upsetting thing unfold i mean this is like a 15 minute and almost feels like sequel i mean it feels interminable while watching it which is by design It's like, you know, oh, you got what you asked for, buddy.

You know, like you, you know, you thought you were going to see something titillating or like lurid and exciting, like a crime movie from the 50s or whatever.

And instead, you see just like the most, you know, jarring, upsetting behavior from an otherwise great guy, Frank Booth.

You know, like, you know, in public.

Let's not say great guy, a great podcaster.

The whole thing with Frank Booth is that guy's never chill.

I will say this out loud.

He doesn't have an off switch.

Yeah, you don't see Frank Booth at any point.

It's like sometimes Tony Soprano is just sitting there being normal.

Sure.

Like Frank Booth's never just like, hey guys, what do you want to do today?

Should we like go to the movies?

Sometimes Frank throttles down into hysterical crying.

That's his

smoke.

He's got range.

I'm just like, how does this man run a criminal outfit?

All he does is scream at everybody and off gas, like he's scary and beat people up.

Yeah, he's scary, but he's also like weirdly, I don't know, I'm not harmless, but he's so vulnerable at so many points where you're like, why doesn't someone just push this guy over?

Yeah.

Like what he's, he's so fallible, but like is not, I don't know.

It's weird.

I, I wrote down during the whole, I mean, that the horrific sequence is just like Laura Mulvey aneurysm like scene because it's, it's horrible, uh, but it, it feels like there is intent behind the horribleness.

I, I don't know, but it's horrible.

I hate watching it.

It's tough to watch.

Um, it's arresting, obviously.

You do, you know, I think the lynch is putting you in the closet and you're like, I want to stop looking at this, but also like, I'm, you know, I'm compelled to look at this.

Well, and she finds him.

And his vulnerability is really frightening.

Yeah.

She finds him before.

So like she finds him because he's an idiot.

He's spying on her in her underwear, having emotionally intense phone conversations, the exact level of thing he thinks he wants to witness.

And then she finds him and makes him take his clothes off, which I feel like is probably also something he like.

has some dark desire, right?

Like that she's unlocking here.

And then it's like she's now starting to seduce him.

Frank is here.

You're back in the closet.

And now this horrible assault happens, knowing that he is watching it, and she knows he's seeing it.

And the whole thing does feel-I don't, I don't know, like, this is the point in the movie where for V, it's just you're just like, Oh, this whole thing is just like a bad dream that is not going to end.

He can't get out of it, he can't forget it, too, obviously, right?

He can't just be like, Well, that was weird.

No, and what he's basically pierced together at this point is that this woman's husband, who is probably the owner of the ear he found, and her son are being held captive

in order to control her into some form of sexual slavery.

And then it's like you see him like switch again to,

I don't know.

I mean, Jeffrey's so frustrating.

And that's why I hate being a Jeffrey.

He's, but like that, he has like his, his baby boy brain switches to like, I'm Harriet the Spy to like, oh, I'm a romantic hero and I'm going to save you.

And I definitely have the skills and ability to do so.

And it's going to be me.

I'm not going to seek out like the appropriate amount of outside help really outside of the detective, like outside of another cop.

Like, it's just, I don't know, he's, he's a mess.

But it's the other part of this movie that I think made a lot of people uncomfortable in trying to understand the psychology of the Dorothy character is it almost feels like she is trying to train him into doing that, into thinking that way.

Like she is trying to develop some sort of protector for herself.

Because at the end of the day, I do feel like she wants her husband back.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think she's like in love with Jeffrey.

I'm bummed out for, honestly, I'm bummed out for Sandy at the end.

I feel like she's gotten a real raw deal ending up with Jeffrey, especially and then you hear what's in the cutscenes and you're like, Sandy's fucked.

This, I, I feel for Sandy.

Her husband's a flop.

Yeah, he's a flop.

But with Dorothy, yeah, I guess it's,

it seems like she needs someone who's fucking fighting for her.

She needs an ally.

She has nobody.

Right.

Yeah.

She has some control, quote unquote, over Frank in that like he needs her, right?

Like, so that's how she's surviving.

But obviously he needs her in this depraved way that's very upsetting.

And right, Frank is, I mean, sorry,

Jeffrey is at least.

an uncomplicated hero for her.

Well, this like twisted sense of do-gooderism he has in his in his mind of what he's what's driving him is something I think she recognizes she could use to her advantage of

will then train him towards my needs and and how to best kind of tackle these she's also just like telling on himself it's just like

you know because he you know Jeffrey then has this like dual relationship neither of which relates like he's dating Sandy but he's got nothing for her obviously and she's just this like chaste object right that's like the noir side where yeah right and then Dorothy he has this like relationship with that's like completely just you know

upsetting again yeah but yeah he also used the word over and over again but like even the the concept of like here's an idea for a movie i've always wanted to hide in a closet like he's pitching something that is like a penthouse letter right like you won't believe what happened to me he's also just like pitching like Ed a piss guy.

He's just like, I've always kind of wanted to fuck my mom.

Well, they're like, well, no kidding.

But here's the thing.

He's pitching something that feels like some sort of dark fantasy, fantasy, right?

Some dark unspoken fantasy.

And then you're like, if that were to play out in reality, one of two things would happen, basically, right?

One is someone finds you and they hit you over the head with a fucking rolled up newspaper a thousand times and they call the cops on you.

And they're like, what the fuck are you doing?

And they kick you out of their apartment.

The second option is something sexual happens in the way you're fantasizing about, but that happening is probably an extension of there being incredibly complicated, fucked up, psychosexual dynamics already at play.

And you've now entered into a much darker world, which isn't to say a criminal conspiracy, but you're like entering into very complicated dynamics that have been built over years and different relationships.

And that's basically what he finds himself in.

It's like, oh, if you want the woman to like discover you in the closet and demand that you take all your clothes off.

and like control you, which is clearly this thing he wants, that doesn't just happen to fulfill your fantasy.

that is the business end of like 20 years of behavior right there i i don't know like i i it like takes me back to the

like ibert's original criticism of it where it's like

dorothy's character i can make it make sense in my head i don't think it intuitively makes sense i think that's what right people like ibert were bumping up against it's like what is this character this isn't a real person and does she exist just to serve the movie right this is this object of torture in the movie it seems terrible which i which i think because there's a strong case for that and there's also i i don't know like when i'm watching door i mean it's i don't know i'm glad that david lynch has inspired women to make their own movies inspired by him because you know i think all of the yeah everyone in this movie but it is particularly the you know the women are are operating on david lynch dream logic yes and i think that it's true all the way through his work yeah and

and it's like

maybe particularly egregious in this one, but that Dorothy is, I agree, Griffin, like she's looking, she desperately needs an ally.

And it seems like she's, you know, in the dreamy horror, like she has the world's worst life.

And she is both, you know, emotionally desperate for connection and also logistically desperate for an ally.

And like both of those things are happening at the same time.

And she immediately knows that Jeffrey's a mark and that he is like

a pervert who needs to be scolded and then, you know, like

exactly.

Like, it's like,

he's a tool.

He's in the, in the truest sense.

Which I do think is, there's an interesting, I mean, it is deeply uncomfortable.

And it asks questions of the audience that the movie's not going to answer, but that are uncomfortable, right?

Of like, is she telling him to hit her?

Because to some degree, she is trying to use her wiles, let's say, to train him to be menacing enough that he actually could possibly stand up against these guys, right?

It's not like this is her way to like fucking Mr.

Miyagi him and train him to be a great fighter, but she's trying to like weaponize some darkness in him to bring that a little more to the surface to make him less of like a weird blank boy.

Or there is just a nature of, and I think it's as Lynch's career plays out, as he explores these things in many of his films, it starts to be a thing that people bump on less because they're like, he's not using these elements wantonly.

These are things that he's clearly interested in and like actually psychologically engaging with.

But these like lines in sort of situations of like abuse and assault where wires get like inexplicably crossed between things that are done to you and things that you now need to reclaim and own.

Yeah, which especially like in

like cross over in dreams constantly.

Yes.

I like, why am I having a dream about that?

I hate that.

Yeah.

Right.

And like, why am I having a dream about watching something horrible and enjoying it?

Like that, just like all of these like horrible things that you're seeing, it feels like, oh, I've probably had.

a not not this dream yeah but a dream where i feel guilty for enjoying something horrible and so it's like it makes sense i don't know i it It's interesting.

No one does it like him.

And it's horrible to watch.

And I would understand if no one ever wanted to look at it and thought it was fucking disgusting.

And also, I just don't go to David Lynch movies for like an understanding of women's sexuality.

I feel like a huge through line in his work for me is that he obviously does not fucking get women's sexuality.

He's reporting that feeling.

He will never get it.

He's almost 80.

Like he's never going to understand

a horniness that is not his own.

own beyond that i just always read it as like a somewhat general befuddlement with women period like the way you look at his relationships and how they have played out across his life where almost every one of his marriages long-term relationships whatever ends with the woman just being like i throw up my hands right that there's not some horrible blow up or right right that they're like yeah i mean there's no way in with that guy right there's no way right and that his response is like i don't know why these women keep marrying me Can I have more tuna and feta cheese?

There's nothing we ate that every day for like years.

Snapping crisp bacon and black coffee.

I don't know what just happened.

I almost went to Linda Richmond.

Sorry.

Tuna and Feta, excellent separately.

Unbearable to consider together.

And also just like

stinky and punishing for anyone around.

When he was on Charlie Rose, our favorite interviewer, your favorite interviewer.

My favorite person.

Yeah, exactly.

You're still wearing a t-shirt with him right now.

A couple tattoos.

Yes, and you're surrounded by black curtains.

You're Charlie Jazz Penn.

Sleeve.

Yeah.

He told Charlie Rose, like, here's your rose sleeve.

I call him my rose curtain.

He's interrupting someone on your arm.

He's asking their name for the fourth time on camera.

And the show is called what?

He told him, I eat tuna, tomatoes, feta cheese, and olive oil every day.

Bravaunting.

Like that was his lunch.

That's what fucking Roger Ebert should have been upset about.

Roger Ebert should have written four pieces about that lunch.

He should have been struggling with it for 20 years.

Yes.

I just tried the tuna and feta again.

I still don't get it.

I understand to some people.

I feel the same way about tuna and feta as I did in 1986.

I'm sorry.

I wish I understood.

I think the meal is terrible.

I feel terrible for Isabella Rossellini.

I guess I haven't seen Mulholland drive in a couple of years.

So I can't speak to it in like a fresh sense, but I feel like what I,

for all of the horrific violence against Dorothy specifically,

it's not as if he, and this feels like a weak argument, but like, it's not as if he is adverse to showing that same, to show sexual violence against Kyle McLaughlin, too, which I know is shown worse in cutscenes where it's like explicitly

implied that he was assaulted.

But that

in the in Blue Velvet, I don't think he's at all pretending that he understands the women that he's writing.

I think the cheapest writing for

any of the women in this movie is when Sandy instantly forgives Jeffrey.

That's where I'm just like, come on.

She's 17.

She's 17.

But you have to have your mom take Jeffrey to Dunkin' Donuts.

Like you cannot just take

this lying down.

Like you don't need to be mature enough to have the conversation, but you got to call in a ringer.

That was the worst writing for women in Blue Velvet.

It's not like he has,

but those undeniable, cool bad boy vibes.

You're like, this guy has become so weird and broken that I think if you're her, it's like beyond forgiveness.

You're just like, I'm weirded out by him.

I don't want to be around him anymore.

I think I'm going to go to college.

Well, she should go to college, not his college, right?

But like, she's rescued him.

Obviously, this is at the end of the movie, everyone is kind of rescued, and there's this kind of you know, dream-like, like, oh, everything's better now yeah and it's not hard for someone to maybe put on their monocle and look at the movie and be like is everything better now like just because we got rid of like a couple bad apples in Wilmington North Carolina wherever the fuck we are like no Lumberton

real place yes it's a real place Laura Dern was such like a preternaturally gifted actor at the beginning of her career that she was able to help a lot of filmmakers get away with incredibly underwritten characters because she could take enough.

I think the woman in mask is the exact same thing where you're just like, just kind of perfectly angelic dream girl who represents some sense of innocence and kindness and whatever.

That movie is like

mask sucks.

Kind of dumb.

We agree on this.

Mask sucks so hard.

Few movies bum me out more in every sense.

Well, it bums you out because you like the director, and this is actually one of his better regarded movies, but it's like, it's Peter Brugdanovich, but like, it's not.

It's

a sappy, shitty movie.

I just think it's shitty.

Does she make the face in mask?

Is this the first?

My question was, is this the first time in her career she makes the face?

That's a really good question.

Does she like, I was sort of, I thought the movie, I kind of was like,

I forget.

Does she?

And then

she saves it and then she makes it for like 30 consecutive.

And not to be like, because I'm pro-Sandy.

I want her to, you know, not and not get stuck with it.

It just feels like watching someone from high school end up with some guy and you're just like, ah, but you're so great.

Well, I think this is sort of what I'm saying that I feel like she,

Laura Dern was good at taking a character that was sort of underwritten and idealized to serve the other characters of the story or whatever the fuck and playing it in a way where you're like, I know this type of girl.

Like she could single-handedly make it into the real version of that person in a way that elevated a lot of people's material.

Because unfortunately, Sandy is being kind of unreasonable.

Like I understand why she feels so betrayed.

Dorothy is also being unbelievably weird and like David Lynch wish fulfillment dialogue where she's like, you're, what is it?

Like you're, you're.

not your pee-pee is inside me.

Your poison is inside me.

You're whatever is inside me.

And, you know, it's just is standing in her living room naked.

But it's like, Sandy, you are cheating on your boyfriend, also.

Like, let's say there, there's faults on both sides.

Not, you know, you're not breaking into apartments.

And he put his disease in me.

His disease.

Disease.

Weirdly hotline.

Yeah.

Kind of not like a classic, like, but you have that quote on your Facebook page when you're in college.

When I was in college.

Well, okay.

I didn't have it on.

I'm just saying, like, I knew a couple of cool people who it's, it's also wild that this,

I mean, I I feel like this is said far too often, but there are only seven years between this and Jurassic Park.

Yeah.

And she basically continues to play some version of like a girl or a young woman or someone on the cusp of womanhood right up until Jurassic Park.

Well, no.

And then everyone's like, okay, fine.

She's a grad student.

We did it.

I mean, I guess that's sort of what she's doing in Wild at Heart, but it's also, you know, that's a grown-up version of it, I guess.

I don't know.

Can I ask questions to the group?

Okay, so a thought I'm having about behavior of Dorothy and of Frank and these other characters, something I don't feel like we've touched upon is the drug element.

Right.

Frank is a drug dealer,

which is largely what he's doing.

And I, you know, this is never answered.

Maybe it's in the deleted scenes.

I don't know.

But I always wondered, how did Dorothy get involved with Frank?

And I don't want to like blame, right, her, but I just, I always kind of have this sense she works in a nightclub maybe her and her husband at some point started buying drugs from him I mean I was you know what I mean like yeah there's there's they're never gonna there's never gonna be an answer to this but I do I sort of think that there's Frank has a hold over everyone because of his access to

the same thing with Ben like who is this guy right Ben Posley

turned it on him immediately he just asked a question David where we're like what is this What's this like lair?

And who is this person?

And it's like, it does feel like it's another of Frank's like thralls, right?

I think the answer is it is some connection through the nightclub, whether or not one or both of them at some point got involved in the drugs themselves.

Frank is absolutely the kind of guy who would have some very deep relationship with whoever was owning or running that club.

No question he was around.

Frank also just like kind of has a deep relationship with everybody in that he's so intense that like if he's talking to you, you're like freaking out and he's like ah and you're just you're you're in it attention all small biz owners at the ups store you can count on us to handle your packages with care with our certified packing experts your packages are properly packed and protected

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He's not avoidable.

I was almost thinking of this is like maybe a poor comp, but I was thinking about like Jennifer Tilly's relationship to Joey Pants and Bound, where you're just like, she's kind of like, she is

collateral.

Right.

Yeah, she's being treated like collateral,

but she's a person and she's like going to navigate her way out of it.

Yeah.

On top of the Molly Sims quote that will forever ring in my ears.

the other thing I kept thinking about while watching this movie is I feel like he says versions of this all the time, but Mark Marin always says when people ask him, like, why do you think so many comedians become drug addicts or have like addiction problems or whatever, that his response is like, that's everyone.

Like you, you frame this as like, well, there are a lot of notable examples of comedians, but he's like, do you realize how many like construction workers have drug problems?

Right, there's a lot of noted examples of people, sure, having addiction problems.

And in the same way, it's like Hollywood, there's so much perversion.

And it's like, they'd take years of like catch a predator and they'd go to any random town and people would not stop driving up to that house, you know?

And this is like the kind of thing this movie is about, which is like, you could basically go into any town and unmask some low-level crime ring.

There is almost always going to be in a town like this, maybe not as colorful, some Frank type figure.

and some horrible things going on around that guy.

Even in just a town that doesn't feel like, well, this is obviously a bad town or a bad part of town or whatever.

You're like, you're never too far from someone who is selling drugs because you're never too far from people who desperately want to be on drugs all the time.

And that person is always going to have this weird web.

I want to use this as an opportunity to step over to Ben, not Hosley, the character in this film, which I do feel like in a lot of ways is like the pinnacle of the movie.

where I think people go like, either this guy has just transcended to a plane that no one has ever hit before, or the people who are out on this movie are like, now he's just fucking jerking off.

Now he's just doing weird shit.

But the notion of like Hopper coming in, kind of like trying to Bigfoot Kama Glockland and just be like, oh, you want to live in this like crazy world?

Let's do crazy shit.

I got Jack Nance and fucking Chucky with me.

My posse is me, Eraserhead, and Chucky.

Let's, let's fucking have a night on the team.

Let's get in a car and go as fast as the car goes.

Yeah.

And it's like, here are my crazy guys.

You know who's the craziest guy I know?

Ben.

You're going to love him.

He's fucking splendid.

And you're talking up this, this exquisite guy, Ben.

And you're just like, who the fuck could Ben be?

Yeah.

And then to be introduced to like this very like poised, delicate, classy, like sort of like lizard-like Dean Stockwell caked in like makeup.

It's awesome.

Singing into a light bulb,

sitting in a cigarette holder.

Yes.

You know, yeah, wearing like a big big smoking jacket and it's this absolute zag from the movie where you're like somehow this guy has now become the scariest character in the entire film i don't think he's the most dangerous character in the film no but he is scary because this is where these this kid is being imprisoned basically

And he's terrifying because he's so nonchalant and he's so he's like a weird

animatronic.

This guy, why is Frank friends with him?

When he punches Kyle, you're like, oh, wow, this guy is actually also really scary.

I feel like that's a moment where it really turns and you're like, okay, wait, why are all these people living here?

They're, they're keeping the kid hostage here.

Like, what is this situation?

I, I'm, I guess, almost glad David Lynch did not like attempt to help us understand what the women on the fringes of this room were thinking or like how they get brought into this.

But there's other people there and they're, they're, you know, like

clearly fearing retaliation.

They're not going to come to this kid's rescue.

Um, and I, I want their uh, Rosencrantz and Gilden Sterner dead.

I'm just like, how the fuck, like, that's their deal.

Yeah, how are they stuck here?

You want a Ben's Place sitcom?

Is this town so boring that it's like, what do we do tonight?

Do we go to the bar?

I hate the bar.

Do we, you know, do you want to go hang out at Ben's?

It's just always such a weird vibe.

Someone's always trapped.

It's the fucking drugs, though, man.

If you get involved in these scenes,

and you get

off to people

you really do end up just trapped and once again it's the every town basically has some version of this

guys we have to step out

this is a realistic it is it's real i've seen it myself guys have any of us ever done drugs there i am

i have done drugs be honest i have definitely never hung out with

this with that

i just caught you dead to right i will say you know i i in I've usually just like a boring guy talking to you, not someone who's like, hey, can I do my Roy Harvest now?

I've definitely had moments in my 20s where I've hung out with a scene of people where we were all extremely high on goofballs.

What?

That you did goofballs?

I did.

What is in them?

What?

I still don't know anything about it.

They're a little, they're shaped like Koofi's head, obviously.

Oh, okay.

Uh-huh.

All right, Griffin, be quiet for a second while I speak.

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I've definitely been hanging around with really scary people being extremely intoxicated.

And like the way that everyone's acting.

I mean, it's like, it's so dreamlike and it's so scary.

And it's not like a specific drug.

It's like, it's not like you can define it as like they're all on like uppers or they're all on acid, but it's just this vague, scary, menacing kind of

like I've, I can, I'm so fucked up, I can go really far.

I am not a drug person, but I have had nights where like in my 20s, where I was like, I don't know how I ended up in this room and I don't know if I die here or if this is just goofy.

What you're saying of just being like everything that's happening here is not presented as being dangerous, but the vibes are horrible.

And I don't know any of these people and I don't know why I'm here.

The closest that I've ever gotten to that feeling, because I was like trying to search for it, like not with the threat of violence, but with the like, oh, I can't leave is like, uh,

in like 20, I don't know, sometime in the back half of the 2010s, agreeing to do a random guy's podcast, taking three buses to like deep North Hollywood

for no money.

And then realizing that I was going to the guy's house, recording in his bedroom, and the topic of the podcast was the worst thing that's ever happened to you.

Jesus.

And then you're just like, oh my God.

Like, and it was clear that it was like, I was not leaving this apartment until I told this guy the worst thing that it had.

Like, or it was just like the, I don't know.

Like, remember when there were podcasts that were just like traumatic moments.

They were oversharing in like the most insane way.

Every copy.

Kind of making it weird, if you will.

Yeah, just making it a little bit weird.

Except for like what the fuck vibes.

But like, what if that person was nobody?

Right.

They just messaged you and just like, I don't know.

I was like,

eight years ago, Jamie, David, cool.

She was just a kid.

No, I was like 20.

I was like 24.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I was like, wow, this is a great opportunity in Los Angeles, California.

She's all our dreams.

This guy has an address in Los Angeles, California.

That is the city of dreams.

He's in the Noho Arts District.

I better get down there.

But just, yeah, like a feeling of a full hostage situation with nobody you know.

Or like, or I feel like it's even scarier to be in a room with one person you kind of know.

Yes.

And you, you know them well enough, but like

you don't ended up here.

Right.

Yeah, but not well enough to not be sure that they would like to.

To take them aside.

Right.

And be like, what, can I get out of here?

I feel like that's always what it was for me of like, I thought I knew this person pretty well.

Yeah.

And now in this context, I'm questioning whether I know this person.

Honestly, to me, the scariest thing was always being in a car with someone like that, which happened to me a couple of times where suddenly you realize like, this person's driving.

I actually don't know them very well.

They're driving in a crazy way, and I can't get out of this.

Like, at least in a house, you usually, I mean, I guess there's this sort of pre-Uber era where you're kind of like, what if I like, you have to go and I don't know where the fuck I am?

Um, but uh, yeah, I think with Ben, to bring it back to Blue Velvet, is he's also he is like, he's effeminate and like kind of, you know, he's got this kind of like

queer vibe to him, right?

That is, i do feel part of the frank thing that is specific like frank is not this ultra masculine terror he's this odd sensitive poetic terror like lynch is saying and ben clearly like awakens the same feelings in him right like that's what he's seeking is some weird like transcendent emotion what's also so much and it's very interesting to see lynch kind of like you know poke at that not too intently i think so much about our friend chris gethard and the his scared scared straight story that has been part of his specials and albums and books at different points in time where he went and participated in a scared straight program in high school and all the tough guys were like, just fucking wait until you meet Crazy Chris.

And Crazy Chris came out and he was like 60 pounds and like seemed fairly a feat.

And there was the feeling of like, if these guys are scared of this guy,

this guy has just become the scariest guy in the world because everything I assume culturally is that those guys would beat the shit out of this guy.

And instead, they're all cowering in relation to him.

Where you're like, right, there's some power dynamic within Ben where he's the exact kind of guy you think that like fucking Brad Duriff would be punching and he's not.

That scene, like on paper, you're just like, what the fuck is happening?

This is ridiculous.

Yeah, but but we all have been in a room that feels like this room.

It's awesome.

It was kind of the coolest shit you can do.

The big news that I have to tell you guys is that Bulldog and Gil will be returning to Frasier for season two on Paramount Plus.

Okay, they got him.

Wait, did you just get that news?

Yes, I just got

the

colleagues at the university.

Wait, Jamie, what happened?

I just got, I've been sitting on this for 10 minutes.

Okay.

And

I know I've been checking my.

If it's that Bulldog and Gil have joined Fraser, I did.

David did, in fact, break that story.

That is really.

I am so thrilled they got a season two, I will say.

It's funny to me that they didn't get the first season.

Were those guys busy?

They were, there's no way they were busy.

I got,

I've gotten three texts.

All the same New York Post article.

Joey Chestnut is out of 2024 Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest in Beef Over Vegan.

Okay, so I also got this clever use of the word beef.

And I was worried about bringing it up in front of you because I felt like it's like, this is too much for Jamie to handle right now.

But he signed a deal with Impossible.

I think it's a brilliant move.

I think it's a brilliant move.

I love Joey.

I've been saying this.

I don't want him to unfollow me on Instagram.

I love the man.

I think he's an extra.

I just want the occasional slide with Joey.

Imagine it's going to, it's going to happen for me someday.

But no, I think it's a brilliant move.

I think that everyone needs to just get out of the contest.

Right.

Like the contest has become kind of like...

They're too big for it in a way.

Like it's like this petty dictator thing, right?

Yeah.

He can make more money outside of the contest.

Because before, I think his only sponsorships right now are pistachio pistachio nuts and dude wipes.

And you're like, he can, dude wipes is an amazing fit because he's a messy boy.

Dude wipes is also such a fucking successful company.

It drives me insane.

Wild.

It drives me insane that it worked.

I don't know how it worked.

They were on Shark Tank.

I saw the pitch.

Oh, right.

Yes.

And everyone else is like, so it's just baby wipes and they put food on the packaging.

No, I mean, they reek.

Have you ever taken a whip for the dude wipe?

But it was one of those examples where everyone else is like, this is silly.

And Cuban is sitting there silently.

And he's like, I totally get it.

You guys are brilliant.

I'm offering $80 million for 1%.

And everyone's like, the fuck are you talking about?

And then he wrote it all the way to the bank.

It worked.

And Joey Chestnut is one of our nation's messiest boys.

They wanted it.

I don't really see how pistachios come into it, but I mean, go off, Joey, obviously.

Is the beef,

as it were,

that Chestnut wanted to be able to use Impossible Franks in the competition and they said no, so he bowed out.

That is, I believe that's it.

Yes, yeah, because it's a Nathan.

He's like, I am now bound to eating these kinds of franks.

And Nathan's just like, we have to eat Nathan's.

And he's like, then I can't do it.

But right, Jamie, I think, is suggesting maybe that he was looking for a way out.

I think that that is it.

Yeah, I think it's a smart way for Joey to bow out, especially when, you know, it's it, in my insider opinion, uh, it's unlikely he will top his record of 76

anyways.

So he should just take the money around.

He's bigger than them at this point, anyway.

Yeah, he is the hot dog eating.

And he can change.

I think it's like Kobayashi retired.

Kobayashi retired.

He, I still, he

justice.

We love Kobayashi, but I hope he's enjoying his retirement.

And I like that Joey is in his like vegan era.

I feel like that just challenges who, who did we think Joey was?

You know, there's going to be backlash for Joey.

That's going to master.

Billy has power to change the conversation.

I know.

He's a powerful man.

Let's like examine masculinity in new ways.

I'm sorry that I just compared Joey Chestnut to Ben and Frank and

Blue Velvet.

No, no, you're right.

I just want to throw out that

Bulldog and Gil, of course, aren't the only major additions.

No, I mean, Perry Yelfin already announced

Roz.

But then here's the thing I didn't know.

Keer Grammer is being added to the cast this season as Roz's daughter.

Hold on.

So Kelsey Grammer's daughter, who I'll say it, looks a lot like Kelsey Grammer, is playing not his daughter on the show, is just going to be in scenes with him with his face.

Here's the fucking old dog.

I think she's a very pretty woman, but I think it is similar to old dogs where Travolta keeps pointing to this daughter who looks exactly like him and saying, hey, Revan Williams, what's the deal with your fucking daughter?

Wait, I need to look up.

Greer Grammer.

She looks like Kelsey Grammer.

Good name.

The good name.

Greer.

I just always think it's weird when a celebrity casts their child to play not their child.

She's not the one who's in Rick Marty.

She's the one who looks so much like.

Yeah, I was going to to say it's Spencer Grammar who has more of a Kelsey Grammar look.

I still think it's weird.

I just am like, they got Gil and Boltock, okay?

David's.

They got him.

It's thrilling.

Sorry.

I haven't watched a single second of the

plus reboot of Fraser.

I'm sorry.

Should I?

I've seen it at least five out of ten.

And you gave it?

About five out of ten?

I gave it.

Yeah, maybe generously, yeah.

They're back in Boston, but Cheers has closed.

They're back in Boston.

They go out of their way to go like Cheers.

No, that fucking place closed forever ago.

That had to have been a financial dispute because the bar they're at fucking sucks.

Yeah, it's uh, yeah,

he's set at a bar.

I'm like, exactly.

What the heck?

I mean, obviously,

yeah, no, Paramount Blast is like, set in Boston at a bar.

The Cheers bar, what are you fucking kidding?

You know how much that would cost us?

Then we have to start giving residuals to everybody.

And all the supporting characters from the original show come back?

No.

Except for season two.

Okay, okay.

Okay.

I think, and you know, no, you're right.

It's the kind of movie where people will get mad of us if we continue on this.

I just think the Bulldog News is pink.

I just think anytime we do an episode on a movie and end up talking for 20 minutes about an unrelated sitcom, people are thrilled.

Yes.

People are thrilled to be able to do that.

There's a story of

this specific thing.

Yes.

Being very well received.

Okay, so in the movie, we left off where we meet Ben, he sings the song, and then they go to a lumberyard.

David Lynch movies are so fun to just lay out narratively frank covers himself with lipstick yes kisses kyle a bunch a bunch and then beats the shit out of him sure obviously frank's relationship to everyone is like domination and submission right he just like keeps flicking between like daddy and baby

and so like he wants to come in and beat the shit out of you then he wants to like chew on blue velvet and cry while you sing to him or whatever the truth um yeah

uh so he's this right he's this like endless nightmare but yes what do you guys make?

Should I put that down as what I'm looking for in my dating profile?

The way you just worded it?

Sure, go ahead.

You know, all of this is great.

I mean, but it's just, it's this feeling of like, yeah, this guy going deeper and deeper and deeper into a thing that he's never going to be able to come out of, not even because he can't escape these people, but it's just like, you now know shit you can't unknow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's like, I mean, he's a Freddy in fucking nightmare.

He can't stop screaming.

He needs to do hallucinogenics in order to get access to want to be baby who wants mommy because he's too ashamed to be baby who wants mommy without

his little mask.

You're like, yeah, this is like everything.

Part of him wants to be daddy to a teenager.

Yeah.

Right.

He's a complicated man.

He's got range.

There, yeah.

In the it's like specifically in the space of uh Dorothy's apartment.

It's just like the Freud zone.

Like you're just exploring

like all of your most disgusting, like Oedipal feelings in this one kind of crusty room.

This room that feels like it has carpeted walls.

It reminds me of that apartment in North Hollywood, where I had to say the worst thing that ever happened to me.

And even, I just love there's something about like how well lit and sort of like tiled the kitchen is as this offshoot.

And then the rest of the room just feels like a dressing room.

Like her apartment feels like a backstage area.

Yeah.

I mean, it's just, yeah, in the, it's like having like a knife held to his dick is clearly something that excites him.

We're going backwards, though.

We don't need to go backwards.

No, you're so.

But like, it's just like the Freudian, right?

The Freudian zone thing.

That's it.

And, but then immediately it's like, no, now you're a baby and you have to go hide like and like run around naked, which feels like, again, like nightmare shit, dream shit.

Like, oh, God, suddenly I'm naked.

Like, suddenly I'm like unprotected.

Anyway.

But it's like, it's, I don't know.

Frank is funny because he's like, there's, it's nuts, but it's also like coherent enough that you're like, okay, David Lynch actually sort of does have a coherent idea of who this guy is.

And then if you try to like apply that same logic to Dorothy, the takeaway is like, I don't know, like he has no idea.

Yeah.

But like Frank feels weirdly

like, I mean, obviously deviant, but like

it.

It was more, I don't know, like re-watch.

I was like, it's more coherent.

Like you're just like, yeah, it's more coherent than I remembered it.

I would agree with that.

I have that feeling re-watching each of these for the podcast.

I was saying right before we started recording that, like, each of these movies has played more coherent.

I don't want to say traditional.

This movie is more straightforward than maybe straightforward.

Yes.

At least in terms of the story it tells and the way that it moves.

Obviously, there's stuff like the In Dreams sequence where, like, you say, people are probably standing up in the theater and being like, this is silly.

Like, um, but

uh, there's even, yeah, this discovery, you know, the twist that comes is like the guy in the yellow jacket works for Frank.

He's a cop, he steals drugs and gives them to Frank to sell and, like, you know, keeps rival drug dealers at bay or whatever.

Like, he has a guy inside someone that steals drugs.

He's a really bad guy, he's a bad guy.

You don't think it's good?

I think it's quite bad.

And

I don't think it's good, right?

And then it's good.

It says the guy who did goof balls.

You know, it means a lot.

From Hosley.

That's when you know you're with some when you're with the goof troop.

You're like looking around and you're like,

who am I in a car with?

And then there's the scene that we referenced earlier where it sort of all comes to a head.

Like,

like Frank, like, you know, chases them down, but then it's like Sandy's ex-boyfriend is there.

And then, like, Dorothy just like appears naked and beaten to hell.

Yeah.

And Mike, like, runs away.

And like, it kind of feels like everything, right?

Like, like the evil world is like coming into the normal world, right?

Like, you know, it's not like divided anymore.

Made sense to me.

I mean, we've talked about it before, but this feels like one of those historic examples of someone getting an Oscar nomination for another movie and it feeling a little unspoken that it's like, we all know this is like kind of a blue velvet nomination.

It was both.

It was both.

I mean, the Oscars have been talking about.

Have you ever seen Hoosiers?

I have, yeah, yeah.

He's amazing.

I mean, he's a good Hoosiers.

No, no, no.

I don't say this was any.

And it's the thing about Hoosiers, I think, that spoke to people is rather than playing like an ether huffing psychopath.

Right.

He's playing a guy who's getting over alcohol.

He's like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, who was happening with him one year felt like what a perfect sort of here is modern Dennis Hopper.

Right.

But it's also, it's about a guy drying out.

And, you know, then personal narrative of that was cool to people.

Hoosiers, right?

Have you seen Hoosiers?

I think you've seen Hoosiers.

Fucking rock.

I mean, I'm a big Anspa guy.

Rudy is my jam.

Rudy, to me, I like Hoosiers for being less cheesy than Rudy.

I mean, but I get it.

You know, it's the...

Check your height again.

How tall are you?

That's some real fucking six foot.

So I like the basketball movie.

Yeah.

But Hoosier's just the start of that movie where it's just like, it's five in the morning and it's just Gene Hackman in a farmhouse and there's like dew on the grass and he's just like every all you guys just start passing the ball to each other and you're just like.

God, this is someone's idea of America.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, that's just like so fucking exciting.

Even if it doesn't exist.

Hopper amazing in that.

But yeah, he got the dual knot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This movie was nominated just for best director, right?

Yeah, it was another loan.

It happened to Lynch twice, I think.

Yeah, because that happens with Mohan Drive too.

But anyway, what else happens

at the end of the movie?

Obviously, Sandy like dumps Jeffrey, realizing that he's basically been cheating on her with Dorothy.

My secret lover.

Yeah, but then you're also, you're like, Sandy, you've been, what of Mike?

Not that I'm rooting for Mike, but she's been cheating on Mike the whole damn movie.

I feel bad for Mike's Sandy.

I don't feel feel bad for Mike.

Mike stinks for Mike.

But I do appreciate that Mike is revealed to be a cowardly 17-year-old boy.

That scans.

Sure, sure.

It's not like he should have been heroic.

Yeah.

In the end, it's, you know, he's a flop, but so is Jeffrey.

I think that like Sandy is in the process of, you know, she's like a teenage girl.

She's not realized that there's more than one kind of guy who sucks.

And she's just, she's realizing the first, maybe this is like her first boyfriend.

She's like, oh, this guy is kind of boring uh he's kind of possessive he sucks i got to move on so what about a guy in a jacket and you're like no the guy in the jacket also sucks but i understand your instinct but give it a couple years he sucks as well you know so it's just i i i get it she's she's she's figuring it out she needs to understand the the range the tapestry at least she's not dating a guy in a yellow jacket

or the well-dressed man which is of course uh frank wearing insane eyebrows and a mustache and a wig looking insane.

That is, I feel like that is often cited to me when I was learning about this movie as like the big scary shot is when you see Dennis Hoffer in the wig

down the stairwell.

And people related that to me as like, it's really unnerving, like in that classic Lynch way.

I see it as more goofy.

Same.

But I get it.

Yeah,

the Ben lip-syncing one is the, you know, he'll often have this sort of like totemic power shot.

I mean, even like the

look of Robert Blake and Lost Highway, whatever.

Bobby Peru's a slightly more comical version of it.

But I feel like his movies almost always have this one villain who is simultaneously goofy and upsetting looking.

I also like that it just, I know that like drugs are, I don't know, I guess like on James.

Jamie, do you like drugs or not?

Let's just lay it out on the top.

Drugs are really interesting.

I could name at least five of them.

Hell yeah.

I feel like in different views of this, there's number one, goofballs, number two,

weed, the kind of that makes you cry.

Yeah, um, number three, weed gummies.

Does that count as a different drug?

Uh, number four, Advil, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, ibuprofen, the hard stuff,

right?

I get the liquor tabs, that stuff goes really fast.

Hit me with some PM and a little bit of my friends Adderall going, lactate.

Yes, uh, but like the drugs are like not that like they're, they are important, sort of, but they're also just like a thing to make to make the guys bad, which also feels like dream logic.

You don't know what the drug is.

You don't know where it's coming from.

You don't know who is really in charge of the drugs.

You just know that they need to be there in order for them to have this much power and control over people.

Well, even like Frank's tank

is like, at some times, it feels like this is the one thing that's like taking the pain away from him.

Other times it feels like, is this shit making him go turbo?

Is this him like baning up?

You know, like you're like, is he addicted to this?

Is this like the thing that takes the edge off?

Or is this the thing that makes him like level up?

Yeah.

And it's at times all three.

It's the scariest way to do drugs.

It is, yeah, with a little dentist mask.

It's, I mean, it's all, it's the scariest, but it's the coolest.

Fast.

Most, yeah.

Impractical carrying your drugs around like that.

That's why you, you got a grip of boys with you.

Yeah, Yeah, you get chucky.

You take boys.

You have like a cat, a caddy for your

freaky drugs.

That's my drug caddy.

That's actually good.

I like that.

Yeah, the final thing, the sort of nightmarish thing in the apartment where there are all these like standing dead men.

I don't know.

That's like, to me, the most freaky kind of image of the final bit of the movie.

Everyone's just nodding at me.

Yeah.

Honestly, I like that at that point.

At that point, I'm just like, well, I don't know.

You're just like, well, that's he would.

That's when I see that shot, I'm like, he would.

He would have this shot and it would be confusing.

And I don't know.

Maybe I'm like being

too

something by not.

I wasn't like super shocked by it because it just seemed like, well, yeah, that would be in a David Lynch movie.

That makes sense.

We're getting towards the end.

He's got to get this kind of stuff in.

It's burning daylight.

I have a big news update.

Is Bulldog out?

Griffin's news.

They lost bulldog

they thought i had him uh glenn powell has acknowledged that in fact the story about the cannibal massage lotion may have been an urban legend uh-huh he has revealed it in the sense of i can't believe i fell for it all this time oh me

can you imagine the handsome star of anyone but you glenn powell props to my little sister's friend Has he yet acknowledged that he is the one who demanded that someone show urethra in anyone but you because of market research he conducted.

Jamie, have you seen anyone but you?

I haven't yet, but I'm going on a plane next week.

So that's the place to watch.

You're going to see that P-hole on four-inch screen.

You're going to see that there is a direct close-up shot of a man's urethra in that film.

That Glenn Powell insisted on?

No, I don't know.

I just like to imagine him being like, I got two ideas, Sidney Sweeney and a P-hole.

For us,

we find it very important to talk about on this podcast because much has been discussed of the phenomena of that movie.

Okay.

And people do not acknowledge that there's a point of film in which a deep supporting character holds his penis straight up to the lens, hat on, and shows you his peehole.

His penis.

His penis.

There's also koala business, and I'll leave it at that.

Okay.

It is set in Australia.

I mean, there has to be a little koala.

I don't know anything about this damn movie.

Yeah, I genuinely was.

I'm like, I'm flying, JetBlue.

I'm going to go nuts.

I'm going to watch anyone.

Jet Blue just loads at you at noon.

It's like a Jonathan Demi, like Silence of the Lambs type shot where you're like, it's looking at me.

I also, I mean, that's like, I was really late to see Anatomy of a Fall, and I was shocked that I didn't yet know about like the Calypso big pimp.

Yeah, like that's some real Jamie Core shit.

Yeah, I was like, I would have seen this movie opening weekend had I known.

But almost kind of like, it's nice that the culture rallied around and was like, we just have to make sure no one spoils this for Jamie.

Let her get to this movie on her own time.

So surprised.

She hates reading at the movies, but she's going to be really feeling like she got like a return on investment every time.

She's lost.

I would love for my husband to die during a Calypso remix.

It's just so funny that she was like, I wanted Jolene by Dolly Parton for that movie.

That was her choice.

And then my obvious second choice.

That just someone's like, ah, what a second choice.

I don't know.

Steel drum cover of pimp.

I said big pimp and big PIMP.

I said Calypso.

It's fine.

Is there anything else wrong about it?

I think we want to talk about with Blue Velvet?

A film we have talked about a lot, but perhaps now Ben has me spooked.

You know, fans will be like, you didn't talk about this particular freaky thing.

The Robin.

Love that.

Sure.

The whole vibe summed up here.

This beautiful image that's also like kind of frightening and animatronic and off in this way.

Like, and like maybe someone would watch it and be like, well, that was weird.

That thing's obviously not a bird.

And it's like, yeah, bro, that's what he's doing.

That's this whole thing.

That's the whole fucking idea.

The first time I saw it,

I did

shout, grow up at

Sandy because

grow up.

But then, but, you know,

he's cooking.

He's going somewhere.

He's going somewhere.

And I understand why it is beautiful.

I just, God, 17-year-old girls,

they're the best and they're so frustrating because you're like, what are you talking about?

What are you doing?

Yeah.

Go to school.

Like, relax.

I think this movie is really, I don't know.

I didn't fully understand

exactly where this fell in David Lynch's filmography.

And it feels like it's just, it's an uplifting story of like, you should have let me do whatever the fuck I wanted the whole time.

I will make something near perfect if you just leave me alone.

And then this, there's such a straight line from this to Twin Peaks season one, which is his biggest commercial success.

Right.

Let me finish out the dossier, in fact, with that.

Right.

You know, he says Dino was making 13 films at the time this was being made.

They were lowest on the totem pulse.

So he really just did not check on them.

Apparently, on the first day, the dailies looked weird because the lens had broken.

Dino called and was like, why is it so dark?

And they were like, the lens was broken.

He was like, okay.

And the phone.

And they basically just didn't get checked in again.

Dino's like, I have a note.

I couldn't see the movie.

Too dark.

Frederick Helms shot the film, obviously.

I I think it was a crazy movie to shoot because it is largely a night.

Okay.

And like, it was just like a pain in the ass to light,

especially on no.

And they filmed it all in Wilmington, South Carolina.

North Carolina, which is where DEG had a studio.

Yes.

I think people know this, but just for people who don't, maybe

Lynch wanted

Ben to be lip-syncing to crying, which is a different and wonderful Roy Urban song, which, of course, he uses in Mulholland Drive.

And

then they switched to

In Dreams, which makes sense

because it's good.

Oh, sure.

That's an interesting take on it, David.

Yeah.

And he was going to use a table lamp as a microphone.

And

instead, Dean Stockholm picked up this work light that was hanging on the wall and flipped it around like a microphone.

And they were like...

That rocks.

And you provided your own lighting.

You saved us some time and setup.

Rossellini, you know, learned to sing Blue Velvet.

I mean, look, look there's a lot of stuff in here uh the score battlementi

amazing score they recorded it in prague it's kind of a lynchian score if you ask me oh i think is it is uh what what are the top three there it's lynchian uh that people use wrong all the time kafka s yeah gaslighting yeah

Right, where you get a direct line from Isabella Rossolini to gaslight.

David, what do you mean?

Everyone uses that word correctly.

What are you saying?

You sound crazy right now.

David, you sound insane.

You're the person who's been using it wrong.

Yeah, David, everyone but you has been using it correctly this entire time.

Here's your tweet of you using it wrong.

I didn't write that tweet.

Yeah, you did.

It's your account.

Or anyone who, like,

any bad comedian who just like runs out of ideas and takes their clothes off on stage, they're like kind of doing a Kaufman-esque kind of thing.

You know, you're just like, oh, sure.

Blue Velvet, controversial from his first preview screening.

It was just shown to some Randos in the Valley.

The reaction was negative.

People thought it was disgusting and sick.

Interesting.

But De Laurentis believed in the film.

He put it at the World Film Festival in Montreal and then at TIFF,

whatever TIFF was called, like the Festival of Festivals back then or whatever.

And then it was released commercially mid-September, which is kind of an odd spot to put, but I don't know where you put this movie exactly.

And it made about $8 million.

So it sort of like doubled its budget, kind of, and got an Oscar nomination for best director only.

But one of those movies that had sort of an outsized cultural impact to how widely it was actually seen at first.

Exactly.

It just had a long run.

Apparently, Lynch met Elizabeth Taylor at the Oscars and she said, I love Blue Velvet and made out with him, according to David Lynch.

I'm not joking.

Kissed him at least.

Well, that's a big difference, David.

Well, but she says for several minutes.

With tongue?

Did he specify with tongue?

God, the world's most beautiful women do love just like a weird guy.

Mac on Lynch.

It's, yeah, it's true.

He says he's kissed her several times.

Okay, fair enough.

Okay.

Time has obviously been very kind to the film.

It's very well regarded today.

And now everyone thinks it's cool and nobody thinks it's weird.

Right?

Joking.

I don't know.

I think people still think it's weird.

I don't know.

There's like so many cases.

Like I, there's five trillion essays about it.

I read one.

It's a good start.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it seems like people have found different ends to appreciate this.

I see a lot of like community.

It's definitely

one of those movies that also makes, has only made more sense retroactively as he has built the rest of his canon of work around it.

Totally, yeah.

Yeah.

Box office game.

Box office game for Blue Velvet.

We're going to do, it's mid-September 1986, Griffin.

What's number one at the box office?

It's pretty much the biggest hit of the year.

It's pretty much the biggest hit of the year.

Even I know what it is.

You know what it is?

Is it topic?

My biggest topic.

Okay.

It is, I think.

Yeah, that was the number one of the year.

Only two million more than Croc Dundee, though.

Okay.

They were very close.

Paramount.

Paramount.

Two huge mountains at the top of the year.

Number two at the box office is one of those movies that it's kind of like the goonies for me, where I've never really gotten it.

And it was kind of like a cult classic on release that a lot of young people liked of, you know, Jen Xer is more like, you know, and then when it was like presented to me as a teenager, it's like, this is a cult classic.

St.

Namo is fire.

No, that movie just stinks.

It's just a bad movie.

Adventures in Babysitting.

I've never seen Adventures in Babysitting.

I'm willing to believe that movie is a fun time.

That movie is a lot of fun.

Yes.

Where's the movie on the spectrum we're creating right now?

Is it more teen?

Is it more kid?

It's about, it's a coming-of-age film.

I guess they're supposed to be kind of, they're like about 12 years old and 86.

It's a director who is on an insane run before not being on an insane run, Jamie.

No.

Is it Stand By Me?

Stand by Me.

I've never seen Rob Reiner's Stand By Me, Will Wheaton, River Phoenix.

I think it was a very good film, but not one that was ever like transformative for me.

And that's why I saw it right, I think probably with a fair amount of hype at that.

And I was kind of like, oh, this is okay.

I mix it up with The Outsiders, which I also haven't seen.

Outside is a very good question.

Have you ever seen Rumblefish?

No.

Rumblefish, you would love, Jamie.

Come on.

Rumblefish is like German expressionist greaser boy movie.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Rumblefish looks very cool.

It's true.

Just like fucking huge black and white shadows and knife fights in alleys.

Was just addicted to not making more normal movies, even when he's like, I'll do this.

When he was actually addicted to losing money.

Yes, right.

Yeah.

Number three at the box office is a sequel to a big hit.

It's a franchise you often trip up on in the box office game.

It's Police Academy?

Nope.

Fuck.

but it's another one like that you just always kind of forget about dirty harry no i all

i don't know i feel like dirty harry is the one i always forget about it's more kid focused it's more kid focused

in 1986 it's a part two the karate kid karate kid part two there we go don't you always you always kind of you're always like it's like the last franchise you think of in the 80s i feel like

i think we've had a couple karate kids where you're psyched me out sorry no it's fine jamie did a good job number four at the box office Office is one of the great films of 1986.

It's a horror film.

It's a horror film of 1986.

Full of Lynchian, if you ask me.

Really?

No, but it's like what?

I mean, sort of.

It's a director whose name is also put with an Ian to just describe, you know,

his kind of shit.

Like, he is kind of, it's, is it Cronenberg?

Is it the fly?

Yeah.

One of my favorites.

Yeah.

Great movie for freaks.

Yeah.

Number five is a movie I've never seen.

seen and a movie that is uh has a very similar uh birthing process to lynch's um elephant man it's stuart kornfeld bringing this guy in

to mel brooks and being like we can match him with this material and then we'll maybe find a vehicle that's slightly more commercial but fits into all of their sensibilities and um obsessions Number five, I feel like we've talked about this before, a bit of a flop.

It's a young comic star and an old comic star.

The old comic star is his final film role.

Oh, it's Nothing in Common?

Yes.

With Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason.

Everybody's favorite pair.

Do you know this movie?

We've told this story before, but we were on our trivia team, our old trivia team, Videology, bar in Williamsburg.

And this movie came up, and I was like, oh my God, I can see the poster.

And it's fucking Jackie Gleason with the cigars and Tom Hanks and the two of them.

And what's the title?

He's old.

He's young.

Come on.

I think that's pretty much it.

I knew this was the movie and I couldn't remember the title.

It's not generic.

It's not nothing but trouble.

It's not like, it's nothing but, nothing but, and I was looking and I couldn't pull the fucking title.

And then I looked over at our friend Common, who used to play in our team, whose name was K-A-M-E-N.

Yes.

And I was like, it's nothing in common.

Yep.

And his name was what made me get the title.

And of course, we all remember that victory that week when we won trivia and has gone down in history.

The other rest of the top 10, we've got

Aliens.

Good movie.

Pretty fucking good movie.

Ruthless People, part of the Debido Apex round.

And the Zaz.

Yep.

Yeah.

Sucker Abraham Zazz.

A little movie about someone going back to school.

Which one?

Rodney.

Oh, Back to School.

The movie.

Yeah, yeah.

A film I don't know, The Men's Club.

Oh, boy.

No idea what that is.

Couldn't have that today.

It looks like it's.

Okay.

Interesting.

It's a Peter Medack movie

starring

Harvey Keitel and Richard Jordan, but then, and Roy Schneider's in this,

but then this is the tight, this is the poster?

The poster is just Jennifer Jason Lee.

Jennifer Jason Lee looking honestly like a stone cold babe, but I don't really credit it in the role of Teensy.

Okay.

I don't know much about this movie.

Do you know anything here?

I never heard of this.

Mem's

vaguely astonished by this thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's based on a novel, a band of friends going to drunken all-night spree, spending a night in a high-class brothel.

It is famed for Keitel's assertive denial of masturbation.

What the hell?

Now I have to watch it to find out what the hell that means.

Number 10 of the box office is Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A movie I don't like.

You're one of those.

Apart from Jennifer Jennifer Gray.

Show me her.

She's incredible in it.

That's what I'm saying.

Yeah.

How do you feel about Ferris?

I don't care about him.

I don't care.

I think everyone in the school is crazy about him.

The American.

The weeds, the burnouts, the weirdos.

I don't care about him either.

Okay.

I don't care about him.

He's a little bit more.

He's a little twerp.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is.

I mean, I get it.

It's kind of the point.

It's kind of the point.

Why am I hanging out with this dude?

I need to pee.

So we should end the podcast.

And we've also, we've done a good chunk of time.

Yeah, we did great.

We did good.

We did good.

I think we did good.

Yeah.

The bad sign.

And the fucking podcast.

Let's fucking do it, man.

Man's wearing a blanket.

We got too cold.

Our air conditioner seems to only have two settings, on or off.

It's just like, do you want this place to be sweaty as hell?

Or

the hot spots.

Fucking subway car in August cold.

Anyway, yes.

Griffin.

Jamie.

Jamie.

David.

Griffin.

Jamie.

This is the best.

Jamie's blank.

Thank you for being here, Jamie.

Thank you for being here, guys.

Jamie, it was really awesome that you were in person with us, obviously.

It was great.

It's always the best.

Hot dog season.

It's hot dog season.

It was nice to be with friends when I got the news.

I'm that

Joey Chestnut

sold out to the woke mob.

And

I have to leave and write a column about it right away.

It felt meaningful to get to witness you processing that in real time.

Yeah.

yeah.

It's really challenging.

People should listen to 16th Minute of Fame.

Hey, please do.

I love it so much.

It's so good.

Thank you.

And all of your other work, of course.

Yes.

But this is the new show.

This is the new guy.

You are such an incredible interview.

And it is, I was getting at this earlier, but the thing that makes it unique beyond just the premise.

The thing that people can't rip off is the way that you interact with your subjects from a place of real interest and compassion and humanity.

And you're asking questions that no, no hack could just do cynically.

Thanks.

I think it's the ethos of the show is actually who are these people once we leave them behind.

And the best version of the show can only be done by someone who is actually interested in people in a way you are.

Thank you so much.

It's really great.

I recommend it highly.

I just think you're funny.

I was trying to think of like the

dumb version of the compliment after Griff being so eloquent.

It's just a really great show.

That's so kind.

And uh and eat eat some hot dogs eat some hot dogs it's the season and eat some eat some vegan hot dogs eat some vegan hot dogs the god of hot dogs has spoken yeah meet is over uh thank you all for listening please remember to rate review and subscribe thank you to marie bardy for helping to produce the show thank you to aj mckan for our editing aj mckan is also our production coordinator thank you to jj birch for our research lane montgomery and the great american novel for our theme song joe bow and Pat Reynolds for our artwork.

You can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to some real nerdy shit, including our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, where we are doing tabletop games.

Yeah, sure.

That infamous Hollywood franchise that we've cobbled together.

We're doing movies on tabletop games, of course, because this episode's coming out on the 20th.

And so the next movie, of course, is Ouija.

Ouija.

Ooh.

Origin of Evil.

The good one.

Think of how many movies I said I haven't seen during this, and I have seen them.

You have seen them.

Yeah, yeah.

I haven't seen both.

One, the Great American Film.

I have seen them both.

Yeah.

First one is absolute garbage, but the second one rocks.

Yeah.

Tune in next week for.

Is it the wait a second, actually?

Because I'm wondering

what I'm looking at right here.

Okay, great.

Because, you know, there's new movies as well.

I forget.

Look, there's a fucked up guy who's tiptoeing around the perimeter of our schedule.

He's not going to quite be ready for next week's episode drop, but the following week, a little folly-deh.

You make us do a Joker episode, Jamie.

No,

yes, yes, yes.

That is so cruel and unusual.

And off in the distance, you might hear a chuckle.

And you go, what joke did he just hear?

It wasn't a joke.

Joke said

he heard the joke of crime and laughed.

He heard that crime was happening.

And that's his laugh in the distance.

Except this laugh is turning into a song.

Maybe we don't do it.

Do it.

Or maybe he just does it by himself.

We lock him in a room.

We're fucking doing it.

I mean, I have to be there.

Yeah, all right.

But

you could be like the therapist.

You could be like, so you're telling me you watched Joker Folly at Do and Griffin's like, and if I did,

you're not asking the right questions.

Everyone in America saw this movie.

Why aren't we talking about it?

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, say bye-bye.

Do you as always or whatever.

And as always,

fucking Ricky T is coming in two weeks.

I just, there's gonna be a lot of yelling, so I'm trying to make sure there's no right now, yeah, projectile.

There's gonna be a lot of yelling.

Yeah,

this microphone back a little, ready.