The Man Who Wasn't There with Jordan Hoffman

Blank Jack with Griffin and David.

Black Jack with Griffin and David.

Don't know what to say or to expect.

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

He told them to look not at the podcast, but at the meaning of the podcast.

And then he said the podcast had no meaning.

Pretty good speech.

I last night.

I was like, I almost have a Billy Bob, and I lost it today.

Well, it's, but

he's in a specific moat.

He's in a very specific mode.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he wasn't usually doing this.

Usually he'd be talking about French-fried burtators.

Right.

Or as Andy Sandberg likes to do his impression, talk about Kangol caps.

Yeah.

He doesn't have much of a southern accent.

No, but

there's the slightest little.

There's the little, I was like, I was getting, I was trying to pick up on which syllables he'll like, but I couldn't.

It just kind of throws it all away.

I mean, look, this is in many ways, this is the ultimate power of the movie.

This guy's one-on-one.

David, you love to mount the argument

again.

Yes.

From 1996 to about 2003 or four, I would say, there's the argument that he's Hollywood's best working actor.

I think it's a passing argument.

I like to make it this case now more and more because it's like now he's not.

And he's so far from being thought of kind of as an actor.

Like now he's just like public kook Billy Bob Thornton.

Yeah, but also the star of like America's biggest streaming show, Landman.

Oh, that is true that he's on Landman.

That's the thing you forget is you're like, and he like fucking won awards for Goliath.

Right, Goliath.

And he won awards for Fargo.

Like, he's like spent 10 years.

He's great on Fargo.

He's incredible.

And you don't like that show, and you have to concede he is unbelievable on Fargo.

Would never, would never not.

Is Landman good?

Oh, many are arguing this.

Many are not.

I think with all Paramount Plus, it is Taylor Sheridan.

Oh, yeah.

All right.

With all those Taylor Sheridan shows, I feel like they are very enjoyable as sort of the ceiling.

Like, no one's out here being like, you know, this is the great American literature of our time because, like, Landman, you're always just getting served clips where, like, his daughter, there's the clip where his daughter's like, I only let him come on my tits.

Like, good girl.

Like, we're not, you know, we're not that serious.

And he's like,

and everyone's just like, what the fuck is this?

Like, it's huge.

I mean, this is one of those things where it's like, I don't know.

Landman's oil.

Yes.

And it's like Yellowstone is cat.

You would think of the oil man.

I know, but it's, well, you have to own the land that the oil is underneath.

Do you?

Or can you

do it?

Steal it.

I saw a flower moon.

You just steal it.

You know, when Bill, I'm curious about this for Mr.

Thornton.

And that when I really decided this guy's a dick, and it's a pretty famous moment.

it's when he was on that Canadian dude's

himself a deeply normal man.

Yeah, well, he's, yeah, he got, he did terror.

You know, I don't know what he did, but he

allegedly did lead to bad things.

But he,

that guy with the long last name, he, he, um, was doing a normal interview with Billy Bob, and Billy Bob was acting like a real jackass because

he was the only one on his record.

He only wanted to talk music.

We have talked about this on this show.

It was one of the 10 greatest moments in media.

I want to know what, but here's the point.

What year did that happen?

Can you Google that?

It was like kind of like 10 years ago.

I'm going to say it's like 2012.

It was on QTV, of course.

I remember thinking, wow, like, you know, I understand like somebody who goes in to do, like, as someone who has had an interview with Celeste.

It was 2009.

Jesus.

So it was a very long time ago.

That was when he just totally, I just, I turned my back on him.

But see, because

America did.

And yes, Griffin's right that yes, he has become a streaming TV star.

Sure.

But that is when he kind of stops mattering.

Yeah, he just became, he just announced the world.

Behold, for I am a dick.

I feel like we're rushing through so many things.

There's so much Billy Bob to talk about in this movie.

That's true, but we have done many Billy Bob talks.

Yes, but this is one of the

BBTs.

BBTs.

This is one of the Billy Bob movies.

We've talked about him as a side dish.

You want to see which times we've covered Billy Bob on the podcast?

Because we covered The Gift, the film that he wrote, which, of course, was, I think, very obviously an homage to his mother, who's a psychic.

Yeah, I don't know anything about that movie.

I know the Perry Farrell, The Gift, but I don't think that's this.

It's a Sam Raimi Picture.

It's the film he makes right before Spider-Chane Blanchett.

Southern Gothic.

Southern Gothic clairvoyant.

I forgot about that.

Thriller.

Oh, we covered Simple Plan.

That's obviously he's fucking incredible.

Incredible in.

Very good movie.

We did Tombstone with the Doughboys.

Yeah, but he's a small movie.

Princess Mononoke, we discussed his

infamous voiceover performance.

His very interesting casting in that project.

I'm not a fan.

In the American version.

We did an Armageddon Drive-In.

No, but

one day we'll do a proper

Armageddon.

By the way, that's a promise.

That's a promise and a threat.

I, of course, constantly bring up that he is actually very good in bandits.

Uh-huh.

But, okay, so like the 96, my, my, so obviously it's like before 96, he's in good movies.

Dead man, he's incredible, obviously, and One False Move, which he also wrote.

He was on board show called Hearts of Fire.

It was called Hearts of Fire.

He was on an NBC sitcom.

He played Billy Bob Davis.

He was kind of a James Carville, I think.

Yeah, it was like a John Ritter sitcom that was like a very, very lighthearted kind of Bill Clinton-y thing.

You know, like.

Who's the female lead of that?

Marky Post.

Oh, absolutely.

Great.

R.I.P.

But like 96, obviously, he wins the Slingblade Oscar and becomes a somewhat inexplicable movie star, sort of

sort of character actor/slash lead of a Cohen's movie.

I was talking to my brother about this, where we were talking about the Tim Robbins falloff, right?

Another man who's been the lead of a Cohen brothers movie.

And another man who definitely is like not prickly at all.

And he was like, but don't you feel like at his peak, he was like one of the 10 biggest A-list movie stars?

And I was like, he is a fascinating example in a way.

I think Billy Bob was like this.

Tim Robbins, to be clear, is who I'm saying notes.

Right.

Where Where he was just like, he was kind of the top of the B list leading man pile, but also near the top of the A list, second lead, third lead, villain, one small scene.

Like, and Billy Bob has

a major name.

And Tim Robbins, I mean, Billy Bob is a good looking guy.

And like, this is an example of a movie where you're like, yeah, God, what a face he's got.

But he was wearing the suits.

He's very handsome.

He wasn't, you know, traditionally handsome.

Tim Robbins is pretty handsome.

He is, but he's in that kind of baby.

And he's got the baby face and all this stuff.

Tim robbins was right he was sort of what you describe but he also did art housey stuff yes and directed as well yes he did so he had the kind of intellectual but the argument is like that's kind of what made them so valuable is that they were just like absolute swiss army knives of like just constantly demand for something because there were so many different things they could deliver and they were not easily defined what's the podcast The podcast is Blank Check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin.

I'm David.

It's a podcast about filmographies.

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

And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they weren't there.

Baby is a mini series on the films of Joel and Ethan Cohen, together and separately.

Today we are talking about their 2001 film, a film that I think is kind of forgotten.

I think this film is slightly unheralded at this point.

It's funny to think about that.

You're right.

It's a film that isn't there.

It's partly

a little bit.

But it's partly obviously that they've made a lot of very, very celebrated films.

They have.

So even a movie that is good and handsome like this one will be somewhat on the lower end.

Look, not to keep built in tension for the final episode rankings, but I'm just like, is this thing in my bottom five, even though I think it might be a masterpiece?

I don't think it's a masterpiece.

I do think it's good.

I think it's terrific.

And it's also not in my, like, you know, it's not in my.

Top tier.

But that just like

is only suffering from being in

insane, rarefied.

culture.

If somebody else directed, if Billy Bob Thornton directed or Tim Robbins directed it, it would be their crowning jewel.

Well, indeed.

But Davis, finish your thought here.

Yeah.

Well, our guest, of course, is.

Jordan Hoffman from The Messenger.

As you might remember in our last episode, Yentel from New York City talked about an exciting new job, an actual physical newspaper.

Can I?

Yeah, so this is kind of funny.

First of all, the last time.

I'm picking you up for this because you said you wanted to.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, the last time I was, first of all, the last time I was in this room was among the first times this room was used to record this podcast.

I don't think that's true.

It was one of the first.

No, it was one of the first.

I'll tell you why I know.

For Yentel?

For Yentel?

It was on the early stage.

Because I watched.

Here's what happened.

During the opening bit before we recorded, when we were waiting for Griffin to show up, I don't know what you're talking about.

I watched David.

pay his first rent check.

The podcaster who wasn't there.

Okay, interesting.

And he, and then he had to be like, oh, Christ, what's the rent on this place?

And he had to like look it up.

It may not have been the first so what no you were looking it up but the point i wanted to it doesn't no i think he doesn't he's don't worry about jordan

let me get to the point there's the point of like go on i think it was 2023 and we we moved in here in 22 i watched them but i'm saying that series kicks off i can't remember 2023 calendar year no it kicks off the 24.

so then it would have been fall 23 so i think we did move in here in 22 right we did i think david just doesn't know he doesn't know how much the rent costs i'm sorry i you know yeah i was but my point is he knows the rent is too damn high but he doesn't.

When I came here, I breakfast, dinner.

You know, I try to do it at home.

I try to do it at home in the morning, but sometimes the call of nature.

And I did have to go into your restroom.

The morning constitutional.

I had to drop anchor in your restroom.

And what happened?

But you weren't here yet and we were waiting.

And I went.

This sounds impossible, but go on.

And I was just floored, absolutely floored by the amount.

And I recorded the amount of spare toilet paper in the restroom.

And I dropped that I had just

stopped up like $30.

I bought like

because

there was a Target promotion.

Costco or something.

I got like 372 packs.

Yeah, yeah.

Of ultra gentle.

Oh, yeah.

You have to go ultra.

But my point is this, not to be disgusting or scatological, but I just went back to the restroom, only for a number one this time.

And I went back in there and I was flabbergasted to how much of that toilet paper still remains.

I mean, I'm not sure.

You don't live here.

So like, it's not.

That's like the Beatles.

You hang out and help.

You know, you hang out here all the time.

To be clear, that's not like, oh, we still have a lot left from what I bought in 2023.

Every time Target offers that deal, I jump on it.

Okay, so Billy Bubthorne.

No, no, no, no.

So here's what I really, the real reason.

How dare you?

I mean, the real reason.

The last time I was here, I was working at this other company.

And I was all like, hey, guys, guys, you know, I took the day off work.

You got to let me promote.

this new company

to bring paperbacks literal paperback i'm working for a new news outlet you got to let me push on the finger it'll make my bosses real happy and you graciously allowed me to waste the listeners' time.

And I talked about the glory of this new outlet.

And then two weeks later, they folded.

And well, I feel like, didn't they have like one week where they were like, AI slop only?

And then they're like, forget it.

Just fucking turn it on.

What if we print the slop?

It was.

It was a sort of clickbait.

What a finger-based.

It was a very

print-bait.

It was a very public dissolution.

I wrote an article about it.

The messenger was the name of the news outlet.

And I wrote something funny about how it was a disaster to work for.

So now I'm here to promote a new

outlet.

And you know what?

I like your boss a lot better this time.

Oh, and David knows all about it.

And now you're going to know about it too, the listeners.

It's a new sub stack.

Here we go.

Run by me where I publish what I want to publish.

And it's all great.

The only name you can trust to journalism.

It's called a Hoffstack, H-O-F-F stack.

Yeah, this is Hoff to table journalism.

Yeah, Jordan.

Yeah, I enjoy your sub stack.

Thank you.

It's wonderful.

It has very much

all of Jordan's interests.

But you got to get back to reviewing New York City's libraries.

I know you promised.

If you go look at the sub stack, it's promised.

You did a Sufian news event in New York City libraries as part of the sales pitch.

You know, Sufion was like, oh, doing all 50 states, babe.

And you were like, I'm doing every New York City public library.

I'm going to get in there and review the location.

And I did a few years ago.

I know you moved to New Jersey.

Well, that's the punchline is I don't live in New York City anymore.

But you got to catch that bus, baby.

Also, fucking NJ Library.

Tell me about them.

I know nothing.

I know even less.

The books are on the different shelves over there.

So I started doing write-ups of the different branch libraries.

You know,

which one has a smelling problem, which one has a this, where, you know, where you could sleep.

And then I moved.

So I haven't been doing as much of that, but I'm doing my usual shtick, movies, and life in general.

And please, for the love of God, I would hope that if 2% of the people listening, well, let's bump it up.

12% of the people listening,

how many listeners?

16% of the people listening could get a monthly subscription.

It would really help my bottom line.

He's just asking for 19%.

That's all he's asking.

Subscribe to Jordan.

It's not expensive.

It's $5 a month.

It's less than whatever.

You're not watching Landman.

You're not watching Landman.

Get off stack.substack.

Yeah, forget about your Paramount Plus Landman.

You got to watch Landman.

And look, we will settle for 22% of our listeners.

Jordan.

You are a Star Trek fan.

Surely Paramount Plus is one of your.

Oh, yeah, why are you throwing them under the bar?

That's a good point.

That's a very good point.

I can't for free them around.

How great is Strange New Worlds?

It's so good.

I love that show.

I love that show, too.

I just, I have a lot of concerns about, you know, this new

Starfleet Academy show.

Yeah, I'm, I am suspicious.

Starfleet Academy is.

The Giamatti Holly Hunter.

Tatiana?

Yeah, Tatiana, our friend of the show, will be on it.

It's just, you know, Star Trek Discovery.

He's going to, everything David's going to say

Jordan sort of coasts.

I agree.

David's playing with his baby Joey.

You know, Star Trek Discovery, when it was launched, was like, hey, it's set sort of in the Kirk era, even though it's much, you know, glitzier, modern looking.

And, you know, everyone was a little like, okay, you know, because like they've never really broached like what happened after like Star Trek Voyager, essentially.

You know, like, we've never seen more of the sort of Star Trek timeline, right?

Voyager is still the latest thing on the timeline.

I think Star Trek Nemesis technically was the last thing.

Basically, the answer to your question is sure.

Yeah, sure.

Voyager is the end.

You know, then obviously we had the Abrams movies, which were distinctly in their own timeline and all that stuff the kelvin timeline right and then uh star trek discovery uh was set in the kirk era and then uh the ship zapped to the 30th century or whatever the it is for the last sort of two and a half seasons of that show and it was set in this kind of like far future where starfleet is lost and they kind of rebuild it and blah blah blah blah blah and i sort of got it as like okay fine you're setting it in your own little corner where you're not really going to fuck with that quadrant indeed and now the Starfleet Academy show is also set in the 30th century and is like following on from that.

And I'm like, can we not just do Star Trek?

Yeah, they're going to go.

Strange New Worlds, of course, the show we like is the one show where it's like, what if there was a spaceship and it went on missions that were kind of like episodes of the week and the crew had interpersonal dynamics?

Everyone's like, we love this.

Do this.

And then they keep not doing it.

This also remains my frustration with Star Wars, where I'm just like, why do we keep going back to the the same corners specifically in between tight with areas in between others?

A little like wedge that they're like, you know, like a little shim.

There's two haters here.

There's only A BY.

Like, what was going on there?

There's an hour where Luke isn't accounted for.

And I know, just to acknowledge my listeners, I know Star Trek Picard was set

after, you know, it was where I wanted to be.

But of course, that show was,

and was very backward looking because it's about all the old guys going like,

okay, one more adventure.

You know, like Jonathan Frakes getting on the treadmill.

So he can kind of be like, okay, you know, let's put some green black back in the gray beard.

Whatever.

It was pretty rough.

And then the wonderful animated show

was so good.

And it was canon and it made an effort to be, but like, was obviously, you know, silly.

But I've heard that Star Trek is now a priority at the Sky Downs Paradigm.

The Lizard King, David Alcon,

will be creating a new Star Trek.

Yeah, they're just going to wipe the slate clean.

I think what I, you know, I don't, I can't predict what the hell they're going to do.

But what everything David just said is correct, which is a rarity, by the way.

Everything he said.

And two Star Trek fans agreeing about

the show.

Also, unusual.

This new show,

they've been wanting to do a Starfleet Academy since the 90s, you know, and it's a great idea.

David was always pushing for it really hard, right?

Didn't he

write those books about it?

No, that was something.

He wrote other books.

Tech War.

No, no, no, no.

He wrote, he wrote Star.

He quoted

with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Sevens were the actual authors.

Did he write books that were Kirk and Spock meeting for the first time?

No.

He wrote books where he dies in Star Trek generations and then he comes back.

I remember that when the JJ movie came out, Shatner kept saying, this was my idea, and I kept pitching it to Paramount.

And I wanted to say Shatner saying stuff is.

I want its direct prequel

young Spock and Kurt.

Well, it's possible that there is a new, I don't know.

I never read his books, you know.

It's crazy how they might end up making another like new Star Trek movie that William Shatner will still be alive and not involved with, where he'll be like, I'm ready for my cameo.

And they'll be like, oh, we're going through a tunnel.

Anyway, the Starfleet Academy thing is upsetting because they're going in with one arm tonight.

They're going in with one arm tied behind their back, though, because they're connecting it to Discovery, which they shouldn't.

It's an original sin.

They just shouldn't be doing it.

But Paul Giamani plays a new alien race that we've never seen.

Good.

Holly Hunter is the head.

She's the headmistress.

She's the, you know, great.

The dumbledoor, if you will.

And

others.

And then a bunch of hot young kids running around.

Yeah, which is like, that's fine.

Yeah, it's going to be great.

School stinks.

That is always because like there been raises some interesting.

For like 40, 50 years, people have been like, when do we do our Starfleet Academy show?

And I do feel like it's always bumped up against, like, doesn't school stink?

Like, yeah.

You know, they have to be at a school.

They can't go on adventures.

Space school.

They're going to like,

they're going to like go with, like, you know, they're going to do quantum realm and algebra.

They could do space algebra.

But it is telling that I feel like this.

The first JJ movie got through Starfleet Academy really fast.

But I mean, and it has three very fun scenes.

No, they're trying to make this like Riverdale.

They're going to be all shtub at each other.

Space stubbing.

They're going to shtup.

Space schtup.

It's going to be great.

Maybe zero gravity.

Can you imagine?

Space wedgie?

That could be fun.

Space.

I just want another show about a ship that.

Well, I think

God bless Strange New Worlds.

It's doomed.

They're wrapping it up.

No, they have

another season.

And the next season.

But, you know, Dianu, I mean, we got a lot of great stuff.

Sector 31 put some new kind of blood in the veins.

Didn't that get people rearing for more?

What is the worst thing in Star Wars?

The worst thing, the worst show, movie, what is the worst Star Wars?

You can ask me.

I'm a bit of a neophyte in this area.

In Star Wars.

Oh, in Star Wars.

He's trying to say that Section 31 might be.

Got it, got it, got it, got it.

What is the worst element of Star Wars?

It's a good question.

I mean, I largely tapped out of the last couple of years.

I still think Star Wars.

The worst thing is Episode 9, which you liked, of course, and we were raving

episode 9 and remember I watched it.

We were walking out of that screening and you were like, it had spaceships in it, Dave.

Episode 9 is better than Episode 2.

Sure.

No, it's not.

Well, no, wait a second.

No, I fucking fundamentally disagree with episode two.

What's wrong with episode nine?

They run around.

That's exactly what they're doing.

They go in like quicksand, chewbacca shows up, Lando.

You know what?

All of those things do happen.

You know what?

I like that.

I like those things, by the way.

I can point to some other movies you might really like.

People mock this.

I got a couple movies with Sand and Shewbaka that I strongly recommend.

There is a moment.

They are great.

There's a moment in the ninth Star Wars when the stormtrooper flies and they fly now.

And that's become a meme.

When the stormtrooper flew, I was like, holy shit, that's a flying stormtrooper.

This is cool.

I was in the moment.

I thought it was great.

I'm moderately surprised that you're the first episode.

I'm not too much of a nine defender.

I mean, I just think it's fine.

I thought it one time.

But I am extraordinarily surprised you're not an episode two defender.

Episode two is full of fucking Hoffman-coated shit.

Well, there's which, like, well, there's the one.

It's got the diner with the doctor's

Jeff 50 space diner.

He's in his own war movie investigating a rain planet with a clone space.

I like that.

You know, maybe I meant to say episode three.

That one's very boring.

Number two is fun.

And also, Timothy, Timothy.

Timothy Shalom.

Natalie Portman wearing a.

I'm sorry, Timothy went to Natalie Portman.

You know, they're

kind of similar.

Not Timothy Portman.

They have a similar vibe.

No, at first, she's wearing an outfit, and then the outfit gets ripped in half.

That is two.

two for the first time

how is that hoffman no that's good i meant to say episode three the third the the third prequel i've never i fall asleep every time it's very boring the whole thing with you right is that star wars as much as you're a nerd who likes space yeah like you're it was never your your primary thing i listens i remember the first time i ever saw the first star wars it was thrilling i i i love star wars

and job of the huddle job of the hud of course obviously i connected with the first one you know i just remember that Jordan and I both like Yubnub.

I love Yavnub.

And I love all the jizz.

I love all the jizz music.

I love Jabba's Palace song.

You've never wailed, though, right?

You just appreciate it.

No, I was not a jizz whaler.

Not a jizz wailer, but I'm just

enjoyed a nice shot of jizz.

And I

enjoy a nice shot of jizz at night before bed.

You pour yourself three fingers of whiskey and a shot of jizz.

Yeah, it's very healthy.

But the

David's doing the motion, which, by the way, I'm now realizing does kind of look like something else.

Yeah.

I think, though, that the Jabba's Palace scene of the third Star Wars movie is just when I saw that when I was outrageous.

It's so good.

So I love it.

Jordan, I have long contended.

That is my favorite thing in all of Star Wars.

Is Jabba.

The Jabba Palace sequence, the first 20, 30 minutes of Return of the Jedi, I would live in that.

That is my favorite shit

in the universe.

I wouldn't want to live there.

It's so hard.

I want to live in

there.

Come on, let's go.

I don't want to rent a room in the back it's terrible the dancing girl goes and gets eaten by the monster in the basement

and then hard work and then he eats a living frog and all that he's always eating a living frog salacious salacious crumb now salacious crumb is a truth teller he pushes boundaries sometimes he misses did you see him on kill tony recently there's just so many like dumb comedy podcasting jokes you could make about salacious crumb like most Austin-based comedy podcasters basically are salacious crumb

um did you see salacious crumb went on a breakfast club and talked about why he doesn't eat pussy?

I'm just going to keep making jokes of salacious crumb doing other podcasts.

He is salacious.

Billy Bob Thornton.

Billy Bob

Thornton.

In Slingblade, he does wins for Slingblade in 96.

And so he starts to show up.

And by the way, he's got like, you got fucking Poppin' in Tombstone.

You have One False Move, which he obviously wrote.

Like I said, he's an innocent proposal.

He does the Slingblade short film, but then a Dead Man.

But then obviously, yes.

96 is when we're doing this.

Do this.

97.

he's got stuff that he clearly made pre-Oscar.

He's in the apostle.

He's good.

He's in U-Turn.

I love the Apostle.

That's what I'm saying.

98.

You're right.

It's the first 98.

He's working with the Oscar in hand.

Simple plan, which he gets another nomination for.

He's wonderful.

Armageddon, where he's German, of course, down in the space base,

telling everyone where to point their drills.

Right.

And he was nominated for four Oscars for that.

He was nominated in all four actor categories.

He's fucking good at that movie.

He's in the Stephen Gyllenhaal film Homegrown.

Is that a movie?

You

I could see that being

a Hoffman.

What is home?

I don't think Jordan's seen it.

It's such a forgotten movie.

I forgot.

And he's fantastic, of course, as the James Carville of Primary Colors.

Yeah, that's good, too.

99, of course, one of the most forgotten movies ever made.

Air traffic controller, sex comedy, pushing tin

with Thornton, Cusack, Blanchett, Joe Lee.

Like just the most insane character.

It was a sex comedy movie that turned into a sex comedy playing out in our tabloids as he started pushing 10 with fucking Joe Lee.

Mike Newell directed it.

I think it was his follow-up to Donnie Brasco.

Yeah.

Weird movie.

I saw that.

Pushing 10.

It's not good.

I saw it in the theaters and thought it was okay.

It's just one of those things where everyone was like, everyone wants to learn the lives.

And it's like, no, no one actually cares.

It's

the same thing.

The movie that the Trinidad brothers made, right?

Who did Cheers and Taxi?

They wrote it.

Yes.

Glenn and Leslie.

Charles, right.

And Mike Newell directed it?

Yeah.

Oh, Oh, that's, and they did.

That's kind of dark because didn't one of them die in 9-11?

I thought it was the other Fraser guy who died.

I think so.

Okay.

Wasn't it David Angel who died?

That sounds correct.

Yeah, that was.

It's about near plane crashes.

Well, that's true, but neither of them died.

Okay.

I will just point this out.

But just another thing that, you know, any of our younger listeners might not understand that's important context for this movie.

For the first couple of years of the 2000s, the world was obsessed with Billy Bob Thornton's sex life.

That is true.

I thought you were going to say 9-11 because I actually do have some 9-11.

Worth noting, 98, he gave good performances in movies.

99,

less so, but he does at least become famous boyfriend to Angelina Jolie.

Right.

And there's like two years of them showing up on a red carpet, saying weird shit, and being like, We can't stop fucking.

Damn, didn't they keep each other's blood in a vial around their neck?

That's just a drop.

Just a drop.

Would you keep Angelina Jolie's blood in a vial around their neck?

I would do whatever 1999 Angelina Jolie told me to do.

So he's just goes

2000.

He wrote the gift, and of course, all the pretty horses kind of blows up in his face.

With Scarlett Johanna directed, no, no, she's not.

No, that's the horse whisperer.

Oh, I got my horses confused.

Sorry.

So that's a bit of a rocky year, but in 2001, this year, he's fantastic in Monsters Ball.

He's fantastic in this film.

He's fantastic, as Griffin has noted many times in Barry Levinson's Bandit.

One must acknowledge.

He does also write and direct the film Daddy and Them, which I've never seen, which he's also the star of.

Jim Carney's Texas.

Texas comedy.

Yeah.

And then it's like 2002.

He didn't really do anything.

Waking up in Reno.

Yeah.

But 2003, he had Bad Santa.

Oh, which was...

That movie's great.

Right.

Which is another one of those things where he's like, where it's like, fuck, he's making this work.

Right.

You know, like, and it was a hit.

And suddenly you were like, is this guy like mainstream comedy star?

He kind of do whatever he wants, even though he looks right.

Like he looks and he's like levity.

You're like, Bad Santa, love, actually, and tolerable cruelty, right?

Intolerable cruelty, love, actually, are both kind of extended cameos.

Right, but he kind of pops himself up.

It's very funny in both, and you're like, Has he unlocked a new chamber?

Is there a new era?

And then, like, Friday Night Lights is like he's fantastic in Friday Night Lights, agreed.

And then the Alamo

never seen, but everyone always says that he is the one good part of that film.

Play Davy Crockett in the Alamo.

And he plays him as a coward.

And then 2005, he had Ice Harvest, a movie you stick up for i stick up for really hard the uh harold ramers movie

remake yeah and this is where it starts to just go away well because there was just a few years there where it was like what can this guy do but that run of just being like we got to replicate the bad santa magic people love billy bob thornton being an asshole i just remember him is a little bit coarse when he's like she ain't gonna shit rat for a week

i mean it's just a little bit of a shocking joke but it's uh bad news bears school for scoundrels mr woodcock Oh, yeah.

Yeah, this is where

this is around the time when he starts the Boxmasters.

Let's not forget.

Yes, the Boxmasters was his group that was

which caused the fuss in Canada.

Right.

With, yeah.

Right.

They've released 17 albums.

I know.

I was going to share that.

Isn't that good?

That was the big thing.

Crazy.

Well, did he have like so heavy?

In that interview, that's part of his thing.

Is like, we released four albums this year.

Why are we talking about my movie work?

He should have said, like, well, baby, stop releasing so many albums back to this

interview just to explain it.

I talked about it on this show.

I'm not talking about it here than when.

We already did.

It's like Primo Levy over here.

You can't assume that everyone's listened to every album.

Are you just doing the bit where now you guys are replicating the interview?

Probably.

The interview is great because the guy, I can't say his name, Giancomashi.

He stands up for himself so well.

He's like, look, can I explain this quickly before you say this?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I really am putting a one-minute time limit on this.

Okay, do it.

I really am.

Billy Bob Thorne went on with his band.

And

in the introduction, Gian Gameshi goes like,

box masters have done this and 14 albums in the last two years.

Wasn't it a Canadian show?

Yeah, keep going.

Keep going.

Keep going.

That doesn't count.

And then he's like,

and you might recognize their bassist for his film work, Billy Bob Thorne.

And then he starts exclusively asking questions about the album and the music.

And the other bandmates respond.

And Billy Bob Thornton, every time, says, like, when I was a kid, I liked to paint models of monsters.

And he's like, oh, okay.

Then he'll like circle around and ask another question.

I'll be like, so tell me about the writing on this album.

And he's like, sometimes I would go on boxcar race.

And then like 40 minutes in, he's like, what's going on?

Yeah.

So finally, Gianna's like, and he says, well, apparently you're treating my music like it's a hobby.

so why shouldn't i talk about my other hobbies and he's like what did i do to anger you and he says you were explicitly told not to talk about my acting work and he was like i think it's relevant in the context of introduction i have no questions planned yeah and billy bob thornton just had flipped out he's just a dick and the other guys in the band

yeah he's talking about like family on and you can watch the video of the other guys in the band going like why are we with this asshole oh yeah because he's famous because by the way nobody on planet earth would ever listen to a damn famous guy he basically says and but he's just like what do you ask tom petty if he takes music seriously

about this that's the best part

because if tom petty wrote or directed a movie you'd for sure ask him about damn the torpedoes and by the way the santa sketch from i think you should leave is a direct parody of that I love how you said that.

Like, it's like, oh, of course, I think you should leave, which is very relevant to the man who isn't there.

Yes.

No, the reason I hate talking about this is that Gian Gameshi sucks.

He's very famous.

Bob Thornton wins.

And so it's like, he wins in the long run.

But now that guy, Gian Gameshi, who sucks,

on the record.

David, how dare you not let me

lay the table for this, for you to make this point.

I just alley oops.

I hate that guy.

I've allowed you to make this point.

And we have now twice, if not more, on this podcast, been like, he really got fucked over by Billy Bob Thornton.

And I'm like, good.

He should get fucked over again by him.

Now, I'd pay

30 bucks to watch it.

Okay.

Like, not 50.

Like on a POV.

Like a PPV.

Billy Bob Thornton is rude and kind of gnarly in a microphone.

What if Jane Gomeschki starts in OnlyFans?

No.

Artistically respectable people.

No.

Cut him down to size.

No.

I will not contribute money to him.

I think now it's true.

We've talked about this.

Enough.

Because

you know what's great?

Great.

What's great?

The man who wasn't there.

David.

Yes.

This episode is brought to you, The Listener by Mubi, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema from around the globe.

From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there'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

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.

The glove-to-hand pick.

Oh,

of course.

David Mussolini colon, son of the century.

It is, it is, look,

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

Here's what's funny about it.

Just to peel back the curtain for a second.

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

Yeah, here's the copy for the ad.

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

And I was like, Mussolini sponsoring the podcast?

What do you mean?

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

But we celebrate Joe Wright and his newest project.

The filmmaker Joe Wright

has created

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

And I will say, not to sound like a

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

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

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

I'm not trying to be a loser right now.

He's not 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 Transport.

No, you're right, unfortunately, sadly, tragically, frighteningly.

He's not a hugely

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, sequel

checking notes here, great.

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

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

That's imagine techno beats store scoring fascist rallies it just sounds kind of Joe righty it does Joe right 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 surreal stagecraft cutting-edge visuals

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, shirts, you know,

Critics are raving words.

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 already.

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, to 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.

In 2001, the Cone brothers released their ninth film, The Man Who Wasn't There, which is, of course, the 18th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

No, it's not.

But is the man who wasn't there ever going to reappear?

Or is he just sitting on the bench with fucking Star Fox and

could put some hair in the dirt?

When the Cone brothers are making the Hudsucker proxy, this is the whole thing with the Cone Brothers is anytime they make a new movie, everyone's like, oh, what did you think of it?

They always had their story.

And this one's interesting.

There was an old-timey 50s barbershop poster with all the model kids.

They said 1940s style haircuts.

Yes.

And they said, we started to think about the guy who did all these haircuts, and we wrote this character of a barber, and it all came out of these pictures of haircuts.

This movie feels like a bit that then starts being taken seriously.

He's a little bit their thing sometimes.

Totally, but it feels like an improv run of like, who's the funniest guy to be doing these haircuts and you're like what if it's like a billy bob thornton type who talks as if he's in an aware right right the stoic cigarette smoking and sociopath and really like albert camus character but just like in the 50s and but you know the the working title of this movie was the barber

which is cool if you know it and watch it again because they say the barber like 25 times in this movie.

Is that a better title?

I do like the title.

And I do think it's appropriate.

Like, it might be a barber might have been.

I think the barber is kind of a cool title.

I think Man Who Wasn't There is a better title for this movie.

The Barber sounds like a movie now that stars a 50-something comedian who is doing kung fu.

You know what I mean?

Like a Bob Odenkirk decided to do an action movie.

So, like, he was just a barber, and then he does like barber.

No, but you and I both know if that movie was made tomorrow, it wouldn't star Bob Odenkirk, it'd star John Cena.

And the premise would be, this guy is an everyday barber.

Can you believe he secretly has fighting skills?

And it's John Cena, who I think can be very funny, but like his arms are like this because his pegs are so many.

If more of these were Odin Kirks, we'd be fine.

I know.

You know?

Like, my problem is these movies where you're just like...

Yeah.

Mark Wahlberg's going to play a guy.

I'm like, let me guess he's a sleeper agent.

No, no, no.

He's a superb intelligent.

He has a kid.

You will not believe that this guy can hold a gun.

Did you see the union where he was a union delegate?

Is that Mark Wahlberg?

Yeah.

I did not see that one.

It's terrible.

It's him and Holly Berry.

Yeah, yeah, it's awful.

And,

but he, again, he becomes, he saves the day.

He has these

five of these where it's either connected to the bunch of streamers.

It's a lot of union jokes.

Or this guy's mistaken for.

Yeah.

Yes.

Now, when you say a lot of union jokes, which kind of union jokes?

Labor unions.

Like, it's all about they go to Europe and it's like, ah, the Plumbers Guild will help us with this.

And then all these plumbers come in.

And all of them are fighted by Hervey Village.

So, post-Lebowski.

The plumber.

The Cohens basically have two scripts ready.

They got The Barber, they've got O'Brother.

George Clooney apparently becomes available.

So they're like, great, let's do O-Brother.

But they go right from that to Man Who Wasn't There.

And it may shock you guys to learn that the sort of Pope novels of the 1940s were a big influence on this film.

But visually.

James M.

Kane, et cetera.

A thing I love about this movie is that they're like, no, visually what we were studying were like low-budget B-sci-fi films.

Yes, that's true.

That's absolutely.

And because it's black and white and shadowy, a lot of people were like, oh, they're just doing like Noirif.

And they're like, no, no, there's like a major difference here.

There are a lot of gray tones in this.

They're not doing the sort of like the dark black, dark shadow.

And it's their only black and white movie.

Yes.

And how many Roger Deacons shot it, of course?

How many black and white movies has Roger Deakins done?

That's a good question.

I wonder.

I don't know how many.

I mean, this was where I started.

I feel like it was a true novelty when this film came out.

Like black and white movies had really,

you know, gone out of style.

I guess Soderbergh had made one.

Like, I'm trying to think later.

No, the good German

film that was after it was around the same time.

It was, but like, was Copka black and white or cocked?

Was a cut of it black and white?

It's half color, half part white, but that was a decade earlier.

And Edwards, that's what I'm saying, right?

Edwards 95, and that was largely blamed for why the movie just bottomed out at the bottom.

The same for this one, but obviously very requested.

Well, I disagree.

I think the re, and I, I, I, I wanted to bring this up.

I, uh, I remember when this came out, and it is a downer of the film, even though I think it's really very good.

It's depressing.

This movie came out like five, six weeks after 9-11.

Yeah, yeah, and I remember talking to people,

like, I, I, like, my cinephile friends at the time, and everybody was like, It's so, I can't, like, I didn't want to see it, so depressing.

No, no one was in the mood, yeah, you're not wrong.

I think if it came out a year before, it would have been more of a substantial hit, don't you think?

No, no, not at all.

There's no way this movie is easy.

I think this movie is ever well, not a hit, but it would have been like nobody saw

Xanos.

It also originally planned.

This wins wins best director at Khan.

It did.

It tied with David Lynch from Mulholland Drive.

They both split the best director prize between Khan was before 9-11.

But so they were right.

They were giving it to Mulholland late and Man Who Wasn't There early.

Is that right?

No, it's the same year, 2001.

I always get confused about, for some reason, thinking Mulholland's fucking 2000.

It's not.

Yeah.

No, Liv Ullman gave the palm d'Or, of course, to Nanny Moretti's The Sun's Room over, which is an okay movie.

I do like that movie, but over Mulholland Drive, Man Who wasn't there uh fucking mulan rouge uh the piano teacher the mickey movie and

he was in competition he was in competition where he belongs and where he shall remain do you think streak five will be in competition i hope so if they have any respect then you're selfish

um no but i think you are right jordan that there's no version of this movie that's like a fucking slam dunk but i think there's something to not just like co-incredibility right?

But there's something to that movie playing at Canned before 9-11 than the response it got in the release afterwards versus Mulholland being a movie that weirdly in its sort of tapping into a deep existential sadness felt more

welcoming to the public

post-9-11.

So like we're going to look at the box office game for 2001.

It's so fascinating to see

how, unfortunately, you know, Hollywood could not meet the mood of the country because the stuff that they're offering definitely is not like, have you recently experienced the national tragedy?

Would you like to see a film?

We're going to talk about like, it's a lot of weird dark shit.

In 99 and 2000, you had a lot of very serious movies that did well at the bottom.

That's what I'm saying.

Like, you're, you're seeing like they're following that trend.

Yeah.

So, okay.

All right.

Um, it's the thing that everyone talks about of just like Lord of the Rings was the movie that met the moment and people were like, Thank God this thing got made.

Yes.

We needed this now.

So, obviously, James M.

Kane is the biggest biggest inspiration other but the kane is the big one because kane is always about like a guy makes a bad decision and he just like it shit gets worse right like it's always the narrative is always like postman always rings twice and that kind of yeah now mildred pierce is the most famous james and kane novel in a way and of course there is a uh michael curtis 1945 film uh that is well regarded but the cohens don't like it and they initially were like should we do mildred pierce should we like get the rights uh never knew that um because they're kind of fascinated by glendale which is where wildred pierce is set and they're like could we really like do like the glendale saga because the movie doesn't bother to get into any of that of course todd haynes eventually made his mini series version of it uh but instead they were like now let's write a weird thing about a barber

um and uh shadow of a doubt uh the hitchcock film obviously another big influence they say i'm not seeing another deacons black and white film by the way no i wasn't either i took a i mean i don't know some of those early ones but i doubt they were i and i do always forget that he did shoot The Siege and The Company Men.

There are some bad ones, but mostly

and the Buster Scruggs, the final chapter is not in black and white, but it's close, right?

They really play with the

saturated, but it's not black and white.

But as Griffin said, Cold War Buster Scruggs,

he doesn't shoot Buster Scruggs.

That wasn't Deacon?

No.

My God.

Cold War sci-fi

is another influence, especially visually, but like the sort of adult.

Yeah, who's a great guy?

He shot Louis Davis, too.

You said, yeah, as if it was obvious, even though you didn't provide that answer.

I was getting a little bit more.

Well, I don't know.

I'm looking at the dossier.

I'm not fucking looking at that.

I have multiple conversations at once.

Jesus.

Sci-fi, saucers, pod people, Adam Bomb anxiety, all that stuff, right?

You know, like, right?

That's, that does, you're right.

Like, absolutely.

The film I unfortunately thought about a lot when I saw this film in theaters when I was 15 years old was Pleasantville because it feels like it's set in Pleasantville.

Like, and it's got the black and white.

And everyone is kind of initially just sort of like a little, you know, stiff character before.

And the music in Pleasantville is, of course, Randy Newman.

The great Randy Newman.

And the music has Beethoven, and they're about equal in

reality.

Remember when you finally engineered the critic circle giving Randy Newman a special award and then he like hurt his hip and he couldn't make it.

He couldn't make it.

Which year was that?

It was like two or three years ago.

No, it was

a year of marriage story.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I had been campaigning to get him a Lifetime Achievement Award because the New York Film Critic Circle does not give music awards.

And

I took me a couple of years to get that Sisyphian

thing up the hill.

It fell on deaf ears a couple times.

And then finally, we gave him the award, and he had hip surgery and couldn't come from LP.

I was accepted on his behalf.

I did.

Me, yeah.

Because it happened.

He thought he was going to come at the last minute.

He couldn't come.

And our chair.

Sure, it was Wazowski.

It was Wazowski.

Our chair.

Um, but ironically, in the photos, he's blocked out.

You can't see it, but

it was Allison Wilmore, who we love, of course.

And she um had so much else going on, right?

There was a lot of chaos that year.

Was it happened to be the best year?

It was that was the Irishman year, right?

There was so much going on.

And she, at the last minute, was like, Randy Newman's not coming.

You're going to talk on his behalf.

He's going to send you, his people are going to send you a speech, and you're going to read on his behalf.

And I'm like, I am?

When is this going to be?

That was kind of a like, Jordan, yeah, you asked for this.

It was funny, you must.

But you know, it was a funny story because I get it.

You also must play his great American song book.

Sorry, I get that.

Well, let me tell you a story.

No, so I get up there, and it's the you know, this happened to be a big year.

It is like Marty, De Niro, and Pesci sitting right in front of me.

I go

up on the stage, and I go up there, and I start doing Hoffman shtick, and I kill him.

Good, I make a couple of good jokes.

Can I tell, can I repeat one of the jokes?

Also, in the

wait, salacious grumbling?

I thought it was, it was a good, yo,

Quentin was there, Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt was there.

He was.

And so I was like, hey, it's a great night.

Harry Tarantino is a big fan of Salacious Crime Podcast, by the way.

I said, it's a great night for movies.

It's a great night for New York.

We're all here.

And I said, listen, I know we're a little nervous because the film critics are here with the stars and you're worrying,

can maybe we meet one of these people?

Can we make an introduction?

So I said, don't worry.

Hey, Brad Pitt, don't worry.

If you want to meet Eric Cohen, I know him and I can make an introduction.

Eric Cohen, for those listening, he's a film critic and whatever.

Executive at a now he works for Harvey Carey.

He's a great guy.

Whatever.

But I picked Eric Cohen because Cohen is a funny name.

So he's got a K.

So everybody laughed.

Everybody laughed at my joke.

Brad Pitt laughed at my joke.

But I looked down front, dead center, three feet away from me, Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, stone-faced.

As if they could not wait to strangle me because I was wasting their time.

De Niro unsurprising.

De Niro Unsurprising.

Yeah, De Niro doesn't strike me as a big laugh.

Corsazian Lee love to laugh.

I don't understand it.

I was so impressed.

They're youngsters.

I've seen

the friend Fran Leibowitz documentary.

All it is is Marty laughing all the time.

He's laughing like he's a guy.

You're a cousin to Fran Leibowitz.

She and I are best friends.

So I gotta admit, when I looked down and I saw Marty and Spike dead, I was a little bit upset.

It's upsetting.

Sorry.

But I moved on.

I moved on.

I persevered, nevertheless.

Maybe Spike had just said, like, I don't like Kundu, and Marty had been like, well, I don't like how fucking, you know, he got game.

I don't know.

Anywho, the point I'm making is this.

Those came out the same year.

The man who wasn't there.

So we were talking about the man who wasn't there, right?

What's the point?

Or

yeah, the music in Pleasantville

is Randy Newman style classical.

The music in The Man Who Wasn't There is not

Ville Noir Brass.

No, it's all Beethoven, Waldo.

Beethoven.

You couldn't figure out why Spike Lee didn't like your shtick.

David, you're British, right?

Uh-huh.

You're British?

Yeah, yeah.

Was it?

Not his cup of tea.

Very good.

That is one of...

Pretty good.

It's one of those things where you're like,

he's clearly had it in his, you know, he's ready to go with it.

It's not like he's coming up with it off the top of his head, but it's so wonderful.

He's like little impish, Mr.

Six.

He's like Mr.

Mixix Pitlick.

He's like all in purple.

He's very happy.

You know, I just saw it, like literally last night.

There's this new documentary called Mr.

Score

Which I'm very excited about.

Which is

by the time this airs, it'll be on Apple Bless.

The whole Day-Lewis family is

the only one.

Three equally good films.

Everybody in the whole universe calls Martin Scorsese Marty, of course, obviously.

Yes.

Except for Daniel Day-Lewis, calls him Martin.

Never calls him Marty.

But Spike Lee has a great moment, almost as good as Not My Cup of Tea.

He just goes, thank God for asthma.

Such a great quote.

That's a good point.

Right.

Because he would have been a priest otherwise.

Okay.

A man Man who wasn't there.

They didn't write the protagonist with anyone in mind, but of course, they wrote Fran's part for Fran.

And they wrote Michael Battalucho's part for Michael Battalucho.

Fran Liebwitz, no, Fran McDormand, of course.

There is,

I could not find any substantiating of this, but there had always been whispers that they had wanted Bill Murray to do this.

I mean, that's a really cool idea.

It's a cool idea.

They would have beaten Lost in Translation to the Punch.

Obviously, Rushmore's happened already, but like, yeah.

The only reason I feel it is worth giving that that he was too busy talking to the other ethan cohen writing who wrote uh garfield or whatever right the old yes well i just want to tie this in

uh bad santa came because uh what are they requa and farrar the i always car and requa

yeah they were like obsessed with the con brothers sure and were like can we write a movie for you right and they said to me if you're obsessed with the con brothers you should probably know that you can't but anyway whatever that was their response yeah right right.

And they were like, We really like writing our own things, and they're like, Is there anything we could do?

And they're like, Look, we've always thought it'd be funny to make a movie about a mall Santa who robs people, but we never actually had

so funny that they're like, Here's our stupidest idea.

Did you like it?

They were like, We never had an idea past that rate, right?

If you guys want to run with that, we'll take 10 points, we'll do something,

right?

And they like brought it to them and they were like, This is good, we produce this.

And that movie was designed to star Bill Murray.

And Bill Murray famously would never commit to the contract.

And it was like on the runway with Bill Murray for a long time.

And Billy Bob Thornton slots in really late.

But it's that movie.

Can you imagine this?

Because of their working relationship on this, I have to think that they hooked.

Can you imagine the working?

But like they're behind the camera, right?

They're setting up a shot on man who wasn't there.

He's in his barber smock.

And then like Joel just like takes a little Santa hat and like starts holding it over the frame or whatever.

But I just think both of those movies were designed to be Bill Murray vehicles.

It did feel like the Cohens had some desire to do some Bill Murray sad sack thing.

I mean, I love the Bill Murray sad sack, obviously, but I think

it would have been too funny.

I think it would have been a tougher needle to be because Bill Murray is inherently funny because he has a funny-looking face.

And beyond that, it's like, I sort of more assume Bill Murray is going to make wrong decisions and get in trouble than Thornton, where you're like, the whole movie, you're like, is this guy like a psycho?

Is this guy like a damaged war veteran like what's going on behind we're gonna get all we're gonna get to all this but i i do think also like thornton has that like humphrey bogart thing where you're like this guy is such an unconventional star right everything about him is like odd and prickly and yet he is just the most compelling guy on screen yeah i like the thing is in this movie you're kind of like why is this guy such a loser like he's a handsome dude like why doesn't why isn't he why he's not handsome in a but this is the thing i'm like in this movie he is weirdly magnetic and attractive, but you're also like, Billy Bob Thornton can be the worst looking guy in movies, right?

Like, it's just, he's such an extreme visually in terms of his voice, in terms of his affectation.

Like, even if you're doing a subversion of the Bill Murray persona in 2001, you're playing with what is a persona that we've all gotten our hands around.

Versus Billy Bob Thornton, despite being at the end of this, like, run that you're talking about where he was on fire, still no one could really classify what is the magic with this guy.

Not as evidenced by him being this kind of like legit, austere like writer and movie star who also is like doing vampiric sex with Angelina Jolie and then like fucking clocking into like, you know, fifth leads and blockbuster films and killing it and not seeming above the material.

You're like, what is this guy's?

And especially because the first movie most people saw him in was Slingblade, where he's, you know, not

fully transformed.

Fully transformed.

Right.

Now, I would imagine at some point we'll talk about how there is a wide interpretation of this movie that he's a closeted gay man.

We'll talk about all that in a minute.

I'm going to finish the dossier.

Sorry, I'll kill Dossia.

Thornton and the Cohens had a mutual friend, a producer, I don't know, who, who apparently would throw Super Bowl parties and they met at a Super Bowl party.

Insane to think about.

Joel Cohen considers him one of Hollywood's true chameleons, despite his reputation as like, oh, he's a southern guy.

He likes French fruit potatoes.

But they had known him for a while, they keep saying.

They keep stressing like he was in our orbit, essentially.

Makes sense also just from his screenwriting days.

I mean, similar with tim blake nelson and you know yeah no that's you're right you're right absolutely and he makes like you know like one false move feels like a movie the cohens would love or whatever um

ed crane uh they're like he's a very passive character he's mostly reactive it's so hard for an actor you know to throw them a role like that uh and like we just thought billy bob would understand like the stillness and like saying very little and all that And yes, he loved it.

And like, apparently while they were shooting it, he would like sort of hint at a smile and he'd be like too much or he would like cock an eye like he knew like i can barely do anything uh thornton's like this guy and the guy in the simple plan are the closest to me

i agree i'm like okay billy bob but it's interesting there's also a lot of space between those two guys there's a broad spectrum but i kind of as we've noted what he's saying he seems like an odd interview so maybe he just kind of says stuff he's also infamously like one of the most neurotic men in hollywood beyond being like prickly, right?

And being very hair trigger, there are all these things about Billy Bob Thornton where he's like terrified of water.

He has like a well-established phobia of antiques.

Wait, doesn't he not fly?

He also has a crazy OCD that's like very, as he puts it, geometrical.

And there was an incident on set where he had to like.

drive around the set a certain number of times before he went to the coffee bean.

And he's like, fortunately, the Cohens were like completely amused by this, not annoying.

But it's like one of these things where like, you know, you read it online and you're like, like, that's not true.

And then you look for the interview where he dispels it and he'll go on some fucking morning drive time show and they'll be like, no, I read somewhere that you have a phobia of antiques.

And he's like, yes, I do.

I don't like being surrounded by old people.

You know what, Billy?

He's like, I get hives.

It freaks me out.

They're bad spirits.

Creepy things.

You know, like, I know there was a whole to-do.

Like, there's a, there's a big-like, they take a blindfold off him on some

antiques all he's like, no!

Grandfather clock, huh?

It's like one of those things he's like very severe about, right?

Like, he's not like, yeah, I know, it's kind of embarrassing.

His WTF is fascinating because Marin's kind of like going through his reputation with him

and like his sense of defensiveness, you know, and like all of this sort of stuff.

And he basically just keeps being like, I'm like an ugly dorky kid.

I don't want all this attention.

Why are people talking about me?

Don't be in the movies.

Exactly.

He has that inner conflict.

What is your illogical fear?

In life?

yeah like what what freaks you out that shouldn't what's your grandfather clock to billy bob thorn eggs yeah much discussed on this podcast yeah i'm i have a similar revulsion to being in a room with an egg any any style obviously yeah once it's cracked okay what about you david sims oh i don't know obviously uh not finishing the dossier is my big fear uh obviously this is their first collaboration with friends 10 000 things i'll give you the list after the episode yeah sure fine uh francis mcdorman since fargo yeah which is

and she's very much like, I am here to play like an image.

You know, she's like, I'm not an important character.

Although I do think she's very good.

She's great.

She's dexterous.

She has more to do in this than I remembered.

Yeah, I mean, because she's in a lot of like, you know, Gandalfini, this is like that sort of early Sopranos has just hit phase where he's still doing the voice.

He's, he's, he's closer to Tony in a little baby mouth.

Right.

And when he eats during a scene, and anytime Gandalfini eats, I just think it turns like it's like the.

But my memory of this film is so much that like, you know, the entertainment weekly previews and everything, you know, the long lead previews before 9-11 and everything, the hype on this movie was like,

Gandalfini, this is his first big movie move since Sopranos.

In a Coen's film, this feels like a perfect tee-up to a supporting actor, Nom.

And here's Frances McDorman.

She hasn't worked with him since Fargo when she won best actress.

Perfect tee-up to a supporting actress, Nom.

And then the movie comes out and people are like, oh, they really don't have that much.

No, I mean, they're both good, yeah.

Shaloub is amazing, Shalub is incredible, and like I remember him having brief sort of like

critics to pin it up, he got the AFI nomination the only year that the AFI did a televised award song with multiple categories.

Uh, he rocks, but yes, I think they tried too late to get a kind of he's doing his character from Barton Fink just times 10.

It's the same, he's great, he's so slick, and he is slowed down, you know.

It's it's less stylized.

Sometimes you need a little lube.

Thank you for that.

Producer Ben, thank you very much for adding something.

It's been too long since we added a new term to the glossary.

This is a film that decides to lube it up.

Yeah, they do.

They are lubing it up.

Is this the last shalub

Cohen's?

Because he's in Barton Finke on.

Our friend who runs the blank check meta account, I asked him to do a full tally of Cohen Brothers' repeated appearances.

I was going to save it for the Scruggs episode.

Okay.

But I have the full data.

We don't need no Scruggs.

But did Shalub ever.

Wait, no, what was the point?

He never did.

I interrupted your.

He never did.

This is his last.

Oh, this is his last?

Oh, yeah.

Too bad.

So this dome, of course, was shot in color and then, you know, they turned it into black and white.

Basically, both because at this point in time, the resources were so limited for shooting and processing

that they just basically always advise you to shoot in color and adjust it later.

And obviously, this is post-O-Brother, where like Deacons has kind of started to break down all the doors of post-FUDS.

There's also the classic, you hear this, and for this, it is true of like, we need a color version to sell to European markets.

It is always this thing that European markets are like, we will not.

The film was cheap.

Which is weird.

They're supposed to be so intellectual over there.

So bizarre.

And like, Ed Wood, I think, is one of the rare like post-90 examples.

I think Dead Man is what

actually shot in black and white.

There's nothing you can fucking do with this.

But like Nebraska is one that was shot in color.

And they aired the color version, European TV.

And then Epics made a big deal of like, we have the color version.

And Alexander Payne basically sent a cease and assist.

Oh, that's so funny.

There's a similar thing where the Clone brothers are like, not only do we not approve of Man Who Wasn't There in Color, but it like looks bad.

There's shit in it we did

that doesn't work.

Right.

It's not designed to be.

yeah all those scenes in in the in the jail with the right the shaft of light and whatnot that's got to be in black but deacons also says i

around with like you know existing black and white stocks and i felt they were too like grainy too documentary feeling like they felt like ghost movies is one way he puts it where he's like when i'm shooting in color i can adjust the light uh to give it like more of a noir feel less of one depending on the scene i mean deacons has been working with the cohens for years at this point deacons is like a obviously celebrated DP, and he had done condune for Marty, Scorsese, Martin himself.

But like, I remember this was the year where everyone was like, in my silly little cinephile world, like, he absolutely needs the Oscar for this.

And of course, the movie lost to Lord of the Rings for cinematography, which, of course, is a gorgeous show.

And the camera's flying all over and like all kinds of cool shit is happening.

But I remember it being that year where like Deacons cleaned up the critics awards and like all that.

And I think almost most telling, like, he gets the nomination, even though this movie completely blanks otherwise.

And it is the start of the bit of that run of just like, even if the movie doesn't hit with us, Deacons is basically getting auto-nominated.

Sure, sure.

Not even out of respect, but because like every year his work is so undeniable

that even if we bounced on the film, we have to pay.

Did did

assassination of Jesse James?

Did that get him a nomination?

So we talk about this in a future episode, but that year he is nominated against himself.

So he loses the Oscar to Ellswit for There Will Be Blood because he's nominated for both Jesse James and No Country.

I see.

I think he would have won that year had it been one film or the other.

Yes.

He does not win until Blade Runner, which is crazy.

Wow.

I would never have remembered that that was what he won for.

I knew that he did win, but I didn't know it was for that.

And yes.

So

you've also, right, in Beautiful Mind, as you mentioned, and, you know, Lord of the Rings.

It's a big, it's a crazy movie year and this was a like I would say

fairly warmly received small movie like in a pretty kind of loud noisy year it was their I saw the stat I saw was it was their lowest grossing film since odd soccer that makes sense it didn't cost a ton which is partly why they got to make it in black and white and all that but it just felt like the reaction at the time was a little golf clappy was a little kind of like there's nothing this is good it's handsome yeah interesting.

I'm not like another masterpiece from the Cohen brothers.

I was so recently Cohen-pilled at this time as like a 12-13-year-old, having just seen O'Brother and that being like my activation moment.

I'm starting to fill in the gaps, but so I was like so electrified by this at the time as a young and who's just like, you guys are telling me they've made better movies than this.

If this is my entry point, you know, there is an aspect of this movie that plays in my head fairly regularly.

It's a line from this film.

And it's a little, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to talk, because I'm a little older than you guys.

So I'm going to talk a little bit honesty here.

I was debating whether or not I'd bring this up, but I'm just going to go for it.

And now's the time.

You are not married.

I am unmarried.

I'm very unmarried.

David Sims is not only married, he has so many children, I can't even count how many.

Sometimes I look across the room here, and I feel like I'm tuning into Fox in the mid-90s because this guy's married with children.

It's true.

I've been married for a very long time, happily.

Married for I just want to say, I also recently got married.

Hey, Mazelto, that's very recently.

He doesn't have the years on you.

Well, so

loving, same effect, a loving and caring relationship is something that I have, and I'm proud to have it.

And, but when you've been married for really long times, I've been with the same woman for a really long time.

We met,

we met before this movie was in theaters, like by two weeks or so, but we met in July of 2001,

just before 9-11, we met.

And

her name is Muhammad Ada.

No, so the

salacious love says that.

So here's the thing.

Even when you're married to someone that you love and is still,

the line when Billy, Billy Bob says, my wife and I have not performed the sex act act in some time.

He does say that.

To a coroner who's telling him his wife is not an FYI.

It's not like he says that to a random.

Every now and then, I'll know.

Maybe, maybe David can, but I don't know that he does because he has so many children.

He clearly has the sex act all the time.

That's the thing.

He can't stop having the sex act.

So

when you do that for a

now and then in my life, I'll think to myself, gee, it's kind of been a little while.

I mean, not that this is any, we still love each other, we still care for one another.

But has it been some time since the sex?

But I might think to myself, gee, it's been a little bit of a stress.

And what's the horizon for Gandalfino?

What I immediately do, immediately, yeah, is I hear that line from this movie every single time.

And it happens.

And as one day, maybe, Griffin, a woman will be, will be wise enough to accept your hand in marriage.

If only I'm so lucky to go years without the sex.

I'm not saying years.

Can I ask, why are we discussing this right now?

Because it's the point.

Because our guest on this episode is Jordan Hoffman.

What do you mean?

Because

the thing about this movie that has lived with me,

I'm not the only one who applauds for himself and then jokes it.

No, no, no.

Probably.

The only part, the part of this movie that lives with me constantly, but not constantly.

I don't want to make it sound like it's constantly that I'm not having the sex act.

But the thing since that I play in my head the most is when I realize that it's been a little while.

And then I have a conversation between myself and the conversation between me and Billy Bob Thornton.

And he says, My wife and I have not performed the sex act.

Then I'm saying, Oh, Christ, all right, I better, I better shave.

You know, something's going on.

I better do something,

light a candle or something.

I don't know what's going on.

And put on the Barry White record, and then maybe I can break the spell.

And that's what it is.

And it's always that line from this movie.

It's just so funny that, because it's not like you watch this movie and you're like, this movie is about like healthy sexual relationships.

I mean, but sure, the sex act.

Yeah.

David.

Okay, okay.

I'll be quiet.

Oh, I'm used to it.

Producer Ben is sleeping.

Oh,

Hazzy, Hazzy boy is

getting some

with multiple dashes.

What's he sleeping on?

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

But this is a big opportunity for us.

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

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

Ben did a Wayfair ad for us recently.

You listen to past recordings?

Yeah, sometimes.

That's psycho behavior.

It is.

Look.

He did that when we were sleeping.

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

you might not think Wayfair, but you should.

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

Makes perfect sense to me.

Absolutely.

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

We don't have to go full whisper.

I just want to remind you that Haas is sleeping.

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

Yeah, of course, but Wayfair is also the ideal place to get game day essentials, bigger selection, created collections, options for every budget/slash price point.

You want to make like a sort of man cake style?

Easy, David.

Okay, fine.

Okay.

All right.

Sorry.

You know, Wayfair

stuff gets delivered really fast, hassle-free.

The delivery is free.

For game day specifically, Griffin, you can think about things like recliners and TV stands.

Sure.

Or outdoor stuff like coolers and grills and patio heaters.

Like that's, you know, that's all the winter months.

David, you have like basically a football team worth of family at home.

You got a whole team to cheer up.

This is true.

You need cribs.

Your place must be lousy with cribs.

I do have fainting beds.

I have cribs.

Sconces?

Chaise lounges?

I'm low on sconces.

Maybe it's time to pick up a few.

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 rib.

Don't wake Hausy.

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

Cleveland Browns, of course.

Bonte Mac, no matter what.

Okay, that's the end of the ad rig.

David, what?

This episode of Blank Check with Griffin David podcast balphimographies 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 demands?

Bringing me in, and there's only one other person in the room.

There is one other person in the room.

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

Maybe any kind of demand.

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

Sure.

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

You got air conditioning.

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

Yes.

You got to have air conditioning.

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

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

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

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

You do.

You love selfies.

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

Look,

again,

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

And I'm like, sounds good to me.

Yeah.

Please.

Can I check that?

You want one of those in the recording, Stu.

That'd be great.

You want to start?

You want to be.

I'll be in the sauna when we record.

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

You want to be Splish Splash.

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

And while recording, I'm on mic, but you just

like, ah!

Like, as I move to 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 atmosphere.

Booking.com.

Booking.

Yeah.

This is a film about a quiet barber named Ed Crane, the second chair.

He keeps saying it like he's a violinist.

Yeah.

At a barber shop in

the city of Santa Rosa, which is a city in North

North Bay.

He got kissed into the barber shop from his brother-in-law?

I guess so.

Is that Battalucho is his brother-in-law, right?

Right?

Yeah.

Am I wrong about that?

Yes, he's the brother of

Franz.

Yes.

Francis McGran, right?

And he is a barber who, it seems, like, says like two words out loud.

He's Calvin Coolidge-S.

You know, I finished watching this and I immediately said, I wish I had thought to

do the tally of the list.

How many lines?

Yes.

I truly would be curious, how many things does he say out loud?

He is, of course, narrating the film.

Yeah, yeah.

So you hear his voice.

His voice is across the whole thing, but I was thinking this might be a guy who has less than 20 lines of dialogue, which is also just interesting to consider in the production of this movie that Billy Bob Thornton is often just showing up, standing there, holding a fucking close-up for three minutes that later will be soundtracked by his own voice.

He might as well be wearing a Mandalorian helmet, for God's sake.

Might as well be wearing a Mandalorian helmet.

Um, this was the way,

and

he is

married to a

bookkeeper at a sort of department store, I guess it is, or whatever.

Yeah.

Who is a bit of a lush, I would say.

She likes to, dare I say, pull cork.

He's in some, he's in one of those marriages where they don't seem to like each other or talk to each other, but like they're not like fighting.

Well, let's do pin in this.

I think this is kind of the key to the multiple interpretations of this movie.

And it's interesting how wildly different I've seen

reads for this movie before

in the James L.

Cain style movies, where it's like the first half of it, the plot moves relatively deliberately, and then the second half, shit really just keeps happening over and over.

Because the first half is this kind of quiet will he, won't he, where it's like John Polito, who we have not yet mentioned, but is

kind of at his best in this.

Like, is this his best Cohen's performance?

There's, I mean, he's so good in Miller's Crossing.

Tolliver, he's amazing in Miller's.

It's such a fucking skill piece performance, but this is, in a way, it's his most rounded performance.

You're right.

He's playing a, he is playing an actual closeted homosexual, barely closed.

They'll call him the pansy.

Who is like a classic 40s guy, right?

Sort of a con artist who's like, dry cleaning.

It's the future of cleaning.

All I need is 10 grand.

It's a classic Cohen's character who's full of all these inherent contradictions where you're just like, he is this incredibly aggressive, sloppy con man man who is also desperately

lonely, barely closeted, right?

And is like his pants up over his belly.

I love that.

But you're like, this guy is constantly at risk of torpedoing his own hustle out of his desperation to be loved even momentarily.

You know, there's like so much going on with this guy, even down to sort of like the whole relationship to his rug that he's introduced in the movie, going into a barbershop, needing to get a trim underneath, but not revealing that, in fact, the hair on top is fake until the first chair leaves.

Yeah, he's remarkable in this film.

He's wonderful, and he is like, oh, if only I had $10,000 for my dry cleaning.

And I love the connection to Hudsucker there because Hudsucker, of course, is about the Hula Hoop, and then it becomes about the Frisbee.

And this is about dry cleaning.

Can you believe this thing?

Well, because in the context of this movie, you could see the Billy Bob character walking away at the end and being like, and I guess he was just making up that dry cleaning thing, right?

Like the way Polito explains it when he's in the chair, dry cleaning.

You heard that right.

Dry cleaning.

But it made me Google like

it is.

It feels like a 50s B movie science fiction plot of like they just spray it with chemicals.

No tear on the fat.

I mean, I will say that to this day, I am kind of like...

I don't understand.

I do not understand how that works.

It's basically like they just wash it in chemicals rather than in water.

I mean, that is, and the chemicals don't get it wet.

I don't know how else to describe it to you.

I've never actually seen dry cleaning.

cleaning.

No, because you give it to somebody.

Well, I mean, what do I get dry?

I got a suit dry cleaned once a year and you give it to the guy and then you pick it up a few days later.

If there was a Netflix series called What is Dry Cleaning?

1 billion views.

Yeah, 8,000 episodes.

I'd be watching all of them.

I would quit this podcast and just start doing a What is Dry Cleaning recap podcast?

Can I, can I just, for one moment, just, if not pull the brakes, just kind of slow the car down for a moment because I'm realizing, Jordan, what is your general relationship to the Cohens?

I think this is an important question to ask.

Huge.

I mean, I love, I've, I've obsessed, you know.

Are you calling out that you're a little older than us?

You were able to come up with their rise in a way that Dave and I are entering extremely.

I'm a little older than you.

So I discovered the Cohen brothers when Raising Arizona was on Cinemax 20,000 times a day.

And I discovered them and I did not see Miller's Crossing in theaters, but I was aware of it, but I was too young to that feeling.

But it feels like a very Jordan movie.

Oh, yeah.

So I saw Millis Crossing the minute it came out on VHS.

And then I, from there and on, I saw everyone in the theater.

So I saw the first one in the theaters was Barton Fink, which is a huge deal.

And I loved it, obviously.

And I, um, I, I, I mourn the schism, you know, because I feel that I've never been able to watch all of the Macbeth film.

It put me to sleep both attempts.

And I know, you know, fine.

It's a good.

I mean, I like that movie, but like, I was, you're not going to do it.

Yeah.

And then I thought thought that

Driveway Dolls was pretty bad.

And I haven't seen Honey Don't.

I hear it's awful.

And I didn't see Ethan's

Jerry Lee Lewis.

I haven't watched that.

I mean, that's maybe the most damning statement in the world that Jordan Hoffman has not watched Ethan Cohen's Jerry Lee Lewis.

Yeah, that's a little weird.

I should probably watch that.

Is that on the streaming?

I can stream it somewhere.

It's like not now.

That's the thing.

Oh, really?

I felt like I watched it on Plex for free, like three months ago, not on someone's server.

No, no, no, no, the Plex streaming library.

Wow, it's it's probably canopy, it's probably on canopy, but then now it's gone, and I was seeing it only available as like $20

purchase.

So,

it is rentable, yeah.

I've read what I bought, it's only 71 minutes long, so it's a breeze if you want to watch it.

It also looks like it took about 65 minutes to make.

I've read Ethan Cohen's short stories, yeah.

Um, I think they're very good.

Garden of Eden, I think the name of the book is called.

Um, and uh, so they were my favorites.

I, I, I have my own theories as to why they split.

I don't know if I'm going to get into that, but

I hope they get back together again because they can't do it on their own.

They always say we're still writing stuff together.

Yeah.

I mean, I needed to explore some side points.

I could understand the break.

I could understand it.

I mean, listen, I'll just say, if you were Ethan Cohen, would you want to hang out with Frances McDorman that much?

I mean, she's a pill.

She's very talented.

She's very talented, but your sister-in-law.

It's like a take for Jordan to launch an hour into this episode.

I mean, if you're, if, if your sister-in-law is Francis McCormick, you're like, oh, Christ, I got to hang around with Fran some more.

I think there are two very, very complicated marriages going on in that partnership.

I think they're just interesting dynamics

in all directions.

I would not want to hang out with Fran all the time.

I mean, she's talented as hell, but like every movie, and she's, you know,

I don't know.

She's too much, man.

And so that's my take, but.

I think that they should get back together because they don't have the juice on their own and everyone knows it.

It's certainly not the same.

And they're together they have more juice than basically anyone else on the planet.

I know.

They're one of the best.

Like if I had to name my all-time,

all-time favorite directors, you know, they're in the top five.

It's, it's them.

It's Woody Allen.

It's,

I mean, Tommy Tobacco.

It's not like a schmuck.

It's Kubrick and Square.

All the, all the plans.

Jan Gomeshi.

I think he's got a good movie in him, even if he hasn't technically directed yet.

He should cast Billy Bob.

No, I mean,

it gets a little cliche, but I think they're that good.

No, they are.

But there are some people that just

don't like the Cohens at all.

They are a little bit of like, if you don't like their shtick,

even though they have a broad palette, I mean, they're Inside Lou and Davis and Raising Arizona are very, very different movies, but you can tell they're the same.

the same authorship.

It is interesting to read the reviews of this film at the time.

And as we said, a lot of it came out at a bad moment, right?

But there was a sense of like, is there anything to this movie beyond shtick, right?

Yes, no, I know.

There was a response to it at the time, you see, that was not this sort of like, is this all a joke?

Is this all a lark?

But it was like, are they just kind of so obsessed with the idea of the vibes and the look and the character?

And like, what is this movie actually about?

I think it actually is.

What is driving it?

I, I personally come away from this film and find it meaningful.

I do too.

Which, which is funny because the whole premises don't look for meaning, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which, by the way, I once made Joel and Ethan Cohen laugh.

Well, I share this.

I made them laugh at a.

You shared your opinions on Francisco.

I made them laugh, and they don't like doing press, as you know, but I did press for a serious man.

I had to do a round table interview, which is awful.

They have you with the dregs, with the movie guru, and all these schmucks.

I don't even want to get into it.

I think it's more humanist or

an inside joke.

But so, so, so I agreed to do a roundtable because I'm like, I'm going to get to meet Joel and Ethan Cohen.

So, it's after Serious Man, so I got a chance to make a statement.

I said, hey, guys,

this film, The Serious Man, has a lot to do with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, you know, who's on the blackboard.

You know, he talks about the cat.

You know, even I don't understand the cat.

And I'm like, man who wasn't there hinges on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, this guy, Fritz, or maybe it's Werner.

I'm like, what's your third?

Are you going to do the trilogy?

And that made Ethan chuckle and made Joel smile.

So that's a major win as far as I'm concerned.

And then they didn't take it the fuck out of my roundtable.

They didn't give me an answer.

They didn't give me the hi-hat.

I got the hi-hat.

Okay, well, all right.

Like, okay, to briefly summarize what the movie is about, because I do think it is more interesting to talk about what do we think is actually going on.

You were throwing out the basic setup, right?

The basic setup is

he's the most passive, placid guy, but he makes this one decision that's kind of out of the ordinary where he's like, I will.

get 10 grand to give to this rando and i'm going to do it by blackmailing the man my wife is cuckolding my wife's boss who by the way is about to like expand his business and give her a prime role in the operation and essentially so essentially i'm fucking her over right and by the way fucking over his household right i'm essentially kind of dynamiting everything

for this kind of cockamame thing and his evidence is a husband knows he's not wrong right but it's not like he he doesn't have photos in the act no no but he knows right he's he's sensed a vibe he decides to leverage this to get ten thousand dollars to give to a con artist who also maybe just wants to fuck him.

And I love that when he shows up in Polito's room, Polito doesn't even recognize or remember him.

You get this reveal later with Gandalfini where you're like, he's throwing out 40 of these an hour.

And he's surprised if anyone follows up.

And when he almost gets away with it, but there's a couple problems.

One, of course, there is no dry cleaning business that will soon furnish him with this investment.

And two is that Gandalfini does eventually figure out that he's the blackmailer.

And so he murders Gandalfini, but then he almost gets away with that because the crime gets pinned on his wife.

And

she,

after, you know, a couple of twists and turns, is sent to the chair.

And before she goes there, she fucking kills herself.

Right.

And when he accidentally, he kind of accidentally on purpose kills Gandalfini.

There's the great shot.

He looks at his hands.

His hands do not have blood on them.

Cool.

And then the bizarre kind of final act of the film plays out where it's like he sort of has like all the knots have been tied up, right?

Like he's gotten away with it in a sort of way, but then he starts being crazy.

Like he decides he should make a piano star out of his lawyer friend's daughter played by Scarlett Johansson.

How awesome is Richard Jenkins?

He's amazing.

He's and obviously he's amazing and talking about his first film with them as well and said didn't want to audition because he'd been rejected by them so many times that he he was like, I can't go through the heartbreak of missing out on another Cohen.

I would love to know what parts he's auditioned to do.

I mean, there's a lot of parts in Cohen's movies that would use Jackson.

And they use him so well from this moment on.

Yeah.

And

then she makes a pass at him in a car.

He crashes the car.

And then when he wakes up,

he's accused of murder because they found John Polito's body, who I think Gandalf Feeney murdered.

Correct.

Yeah.

He beat the pansy to death for making a pass at him.

Right.

And, you know, and so then

he goes to trial, and then Battalucho, who put up like, you know, the barbershop as the mortgage to try and protect his sister,

attacks him in court.

And so the case falls apart.

He's declared a mistress.

And he throws himself at the mercy of the judge, who sentences him to the chair.

And before he goes to the chair, he sees a UFO, ignores it, and is executed for his crimes.

Right.

That is what happens.

Still in a lot of games here, of course, right?

I guess so, but like Gandalfini's wife has shown up at his door

after he's seemingly gotten away with the murder.

Yes.

Who is that actress?

She's got a great person.

John Taturo's wife.

She also plays the woman at the picnic on the beach in Serious Man.

Right.

Her name is Catherine Borowitz.

She's a great, great

face, but great face.

But those two performances, she is like two phenomenal.

I know she appears in a couple other moments, but basically what are...

killer one scene performances in Cohen's films that are wildly different.

And in Serious Man, Man, she's like the one figure of intense empathy and human connection where I feel like the great tragedy of that movie is you're just like,

just connect to her, right?

This guy's life is crumbling and this woman like sees him and hears him.

Yeah, it's a great scene.

And then she does the opposite thing in this film, which is basically shoves him over a cliff mentally.

Billy Bob Thornton's in this pocket of just being like,

why am I getting away with this?

Why is the universe lining up to escort me through?

I should be in a James M.

Kane novel where it's all going wrong for me.

And it doesn't seem to be.

We're going to circle back to my bigger take on the movie.

But she shows up at the door and he thinks this is like the wife who's put together the pieces and now she's going to blackmail him and kill her husband.

And instead she goes like, hey, I know your wife's not guilty.

I know what happened.

We witnessed an alien a year ago.

We saw a flying saucer.

It changed us.

We know too much.

Someone had to like close the loop.

You're good.

Your wife's good.

So I'm sorry for your loss.

Yeah.

For the, for the tragedy of your wife getting pinned with this.

The, the, you know, imagine, again, I remember seeing this for the first time.

The UFO thing does throw you for a loop the first time.

I had completely forgotten that was part of the future.

Oh, you had forgotten even on rewatch.

Because like, once I saw it, I was like, that's the movie where they throw in the UFO.

Right.

And the UFO, of course, visually, it's the same as the hubcap from the car crash and the surgeons.

Classic silver saucer ufo right out of plan nine from out of silver there's a movie called i think it's literally it had a couple different titles but i think its main one was earth versus the flying saucer yes great movie uh which was an early harryhausen film that is one of the movies this feels most matched to visually yeah even before you actually start putting flying saucers in it can i talk about because we we mentioned the the scarlet johanson character Because this is something that I wanted to bring up.

There were two things I wanted to bring up today.

One was I had to remind the listeners to subscribe to hofstack.substack.com the other thing was there's the great scene in this where um scarlet johansen is playing one of the uh beethoven sonatas there and the whole movie is like sonatas from beethoven they're beautiful and she mentions what i think is something that we all know beethoven was deaf when he wrote this and that's when you learn that beethoven when you're a kid and you seems impossible it seems like when you're i don't know how old you were but at some point some teacher said to you beethoven you know mozart beethoven bach they're the big three this guy was deaf You're like, what?

That makes no sense.

At this point, it sounds like a weird fucking like quirk, like he's a, you know, an X-Man or whatever.

Exactly.

But then, like, I think this movie also circles, you're like, A, it's impossible.

How could he do it that well if he couldn't even hear it?

And then this movie also circles the tragedy of like, and this guy didn't even get to hear it.

I know.

Yeah.

He wrote this.

Oh, but I, here's what I had to say.

Everybody, please, I need to.

Go ahead, I need the floor.

I got both my, I got to visualize.

I got both my arms up like I just scored a touchdown.

Just talk.

This is so important.

Give him space.

Let my man coach.

Ludwig van Beethoven is a man who everybody knows was deaf.

He was not just deaf.

His entire life, from the age of his teens until he died, he suffered from crippling diarrhea.

He had, and I'm not, you're speaking my language.

Google this.

I'm not joking.

I read an 1,100-page biography by Jan Swofford on Beethoven.

900 of those 1,100 pages are about him shitting.

Beethoven shat nonstop.

Now, here's the thing:

he, toward the end of his life, why this was a good guess book.

It always is.

Toward the end of Beethoven's life, he was writing, this makes me cry, the most sublime music anyone's ever heard, except for him, because he was deaf.

The Ode to Joy was one of the final things he wrote.

Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba.

Really like clean out.

A true bop.

Yes.

When you

joy is a bop.

bop.

There were

quotes of the people who would, like, in his apartment, towards the end of his life, there were bowls of shit at his feet everywhere.

He just, he was just shitting and writing music.

And

his aides.

And he hadn't lost a sense of smell.

So he was smelling shit while writing Old Tech.

They couldn't even visit here.

They wanted to go.

Have you seen Ludwig?

Is he writing?

Is he well?

We can't go in there.

It's too disgusting.

Yeah.

He was the most putrid and vile man that ever lived,

sitting in his own shit.

Yeah.

But he was creating these works of art that have stand and will continue to stand for centuries, the most beautiful works of art man has ever created while his body was falling apart, literally falling out of his ass.

And yet.

David looks really happy.

Yeah, go on, Jordan.

I'm just telling you that I find this to be so touching.

And I feel that people, people should stop saying, oh, Beethoven was deaf.

Scarlett Johansson should have said he was deaf and he was shitting for 20 years.

Shitting his brains out.

For 20 years.

Don't you hate when you have diarrhea?

Yeah, my friends.

It's not fun.

Preaching to the choir.

It's not fun.

The man who wasn't there.

Yeah.

And he was suffering and yet he still created.

What do we want to say about that?

So that's all I have to say.

Many, many things.

I'm just getting started here.

No, no.

Yes.

What do you want to say about the man who wasn't there?

Yes, yes.

I have many, many things to say.

There are people who think I'm making this up.

I'm actually going to tell you to please be quiet now.

now.

Can we discuss the film?

In the Hagameshi interview with the Boxmasters, 2009.

Which, by the way, letter about you.

Are you kidding?

Are you kidding?

Come on,

okay, fine.

Can we talk about comedy points?

All right.

Take a comedy point.

Let's talk about the movie, please.

Griffin, can we talk about the movie, please?

Yes, thank you.

I think this film is a little bit of a,

in certain ways, an answer key for their worldview at a point in time where they're at an interesting

transition.

I'm interested.

I think this movie.

I'm not interested in Feethoven's butt.

I think this movie is, in certain ways, a rebuke to the notion that they are nihilists who are mocking all their characters and don't care about anything.

Right?

I think this movie is an interrogation of a man who seemingly doesn't care about anything.

Despite the fact that he does end up murdering

and pulled crimes, I think this movie is kind of about,

despite his misdeeds, a largely benevolent sociopath, right?

It is almost a borderline sympathetic portrayal of someone who is actually incapable of feeling, or at the very least, is incapable of being able to have any healthy relationship to his emotions or express them to anyone in his life.

He's right.

He's so far gone in terms of like, he'll remark on things like the sex act,

having not committed it, and like, like, you know, whatever, like his relationship with his wife and how it's currently.

He knows it's not normal.

He knows his life is weird, but he doesn't seem to mind.

But he won't say like, and I didn't like that.

What's weird, obviously, right, is that he makes the decision he makes, the initial decision, where you're like, why,

if he's so mal, you know, like contented with just kind of like doing nothing and cutting hair and kind of just going through the motions, why does he do this?

I could give you, I could give you.

I'm not saying you need to explain it.

The only thing he doesn't like is people who talk too much, right?

That's the only thing that he ever expresses because he's surrounded by people who talk too much.

Like everyone's always fucking talking.

There's a part where he talks about

who is, oh, when he hires the new barber to replace Baldolushi, once he starts pulling the cork, right?

And he says, I hired this guy because he seemed quiet like me, but it turned out he was just nervous at the interview.

Just another gabber, right?

There's this term of like, it's just another guy who wants to talk all the fucking time and his disappointment at realizing that this guy's another one of those right

and and yet he talks so much about him meeting Doris his wife and immediately feeling this connection and

him being embarrassed that he couldn't speak to her and her saying it's fine I'll do the talking this sense of like there being a balance there right and when he has the moment where his life is flashing before his eyes in the car after he's rebuked Right, he seems Carlos.

Yes.

He says, my life flashes before my eyes.

And the memory memory he goes to is basically this one kind of innocuous exchange they had.

Chris McDonald as a door-to-door salesman, who he kind of didn't have the social acumen to send away.

And Frances McDonald was able to cut out and neutralize.

And then she sits on the couch and they don't know what to say to each other.

And you kind of feel her waiting for him to say.

anything, right?

That they rushed into this marriage, said, I know everything I need to know about you.

But you kind of get the sense, I think, that she thought at some moment he was going to be able to give her something that at some point would open up, right?

And even the moments of recognition, what he reveals, when he's making the defense to Shalub, you know, there's the scene where he confesses basically to Shalub to everything he did.

And Shalub responds as, that's an interesting legal strategy, assuming that he is making up a yarn.

To be able to take the heat off of his wife and Shalub's kind of giving it a test drive to see.

Yeah, I can see how that would work.

And she seems touched.

She seems touched.

And part of that is him revealing that he knew she was having an affair because a husband just knows and that he caught it and he did it.

And you see the look on her face of her kind of wanting to apologize for hurting him and yet being like, this happened because you don't fucking touch me.

You don't talk to me.

You don't hear me.

He's not inherently a bad guy or a dispassionate guy.

Well, he is dispassionate to a fault.

To a fault.

That is his core.

This is probably a great opportunity to talk about something that never dawned on me, but is a widely accepted theory among many.

I want to fold this in.

Yeah, fold it in.

Fold it in.

Okay, so I didn't know this was a big read, and I was finding a lot of this as I was looking at like Letterboxd vlogs and reviews and analysis, different pieces over the last

since last night, right?

Tressie, like what are people's reads on this movie?

And a lot of people read it as he's a closeted gay man at a time who could never come to terms with that himself.

He perhaps is not even cognizant enough to know.

It's not, well,

he knows a pass gets made Because when Polito makes a pass and he's like, was that a pass?

That's not.

I'm all business.

And that I feel like is way out of line.

Right.

If you're like, okay, that's what this movie's about.

That's where you're like, yes.

Okay.

He clearly, there's something demonstrative about where he's like, I am going to not have sex with this guy to prove the point that I am definitely not.

Also, Gandalfini responds to that by beating this guy to death.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, it is a movie in which you expect him to react in a more extreme way.

And he just kind of goes like, was that a pass?

I'm not here to have sex.

How do I give you money?

You know, like there's a little bit of that feeling.

I would be very curious to know how,

first of all, was this in Joel and Ethan's mind when they were writing this?

And,

or if they, I sometimes feel with their work, they are, they, they oftentimes are allowing, they know that, oh, people are going to interpret this all kinds of ways

and they just move on.

I agree.

So they might just be like, yeah, hey, like it might even after that they might say, Hey, some people are going to think he's gay.

Great.

Let's talk about this.

There are three big moments, right?

It's the Polito moment.

It's obviously the recognition of we have not had the sex act in several years.

And is Scarlett Johansson attempting to give him a sexual favor?

Yeah, but kind of out of this.

But she's also like 16.

She's 16.

We should applaud him for rebuking her.

He has like a very like, what are you talking about?

kind of response.

It's the most animated he gets by anything in the film.

That's true.

It's stopping her from going down down on him right and she's doing it out of this sense of you've done me a kindness i owe you the favor to repay you but also what i think is being what is unspoken in that scene is scarlet johanson's assumption that must be why you were doing this the whole time it's not just i feel like i owe you this i assume if my father stoic older friend starts wanting to give me a fucking correction.

It must be, I need to essentially.

And if I've gone along with it this far, I understand the agreement.

That's what I'm trying to do.

And his reaction is like, what?

How could you possibly read it that way?

Well, he's more.

Heavens to Betsy, he says.

Right.

But he physically recalls in a way that causes the car to crash.

It does, but it feels, it does feel a little performative.

Like, I do think he does, or like, much like with Polito.

Like, it's like, I mean, and again, look, I don't want to, like Jordan's saying, I do feel like the Cohens are like, look, make of it what you will.

But both times, it feels like he's like, no, I am not here for a pass.

And with Scarjo, he's like, I am not here for a blowjob.

And I'm like, I think you wanted to see if that one was coming.

I think he is obviously hyper-fixated on her in a way that he cannot process.

This is that era.

Well, yeah, because this is Ghost World and this are the same year.

She was probably not 18.

Because she's only like 18 in Lost in Translation.

She's so young in Lost in Translation, it is bizarre.

Right?

Yeah.

No, yeah, yeah.

She was pretty damn good.

She was born in 1984.

She's like two years older than me.

Yeah.

so she would have been.

She was 19 when Lost of Translation comes out.

I think she was 18 when they shot her.

I think she maybe turns 18 when they're filming it.

But yes.

She's actually a teenager in this film.

It is bizarre to watch her at this age now that we're just like 25 years later and she's a part of the world.

Oh, but this was the year.

This is the year where she...

Ghost World came out in 2020.

Yeah, this was the Ghost World year where it was like, oh, shit, like the horse whisperer girl is like going to be a star.

Manny and Lowe.

Manny and Lowe was before this.

I never saw Manny and Lowe.

Manny and Lowe's great.

Let me continue continue to try to lay these bricks, okay?

I think she's recognizing that he has some obsession with her.

It is driving him, right?

But we're also living in this guy's internal monologue.

I think this is him being as honest as he can possibly be.

And I think in the same way that, like, if he's gay, it's something he has not worked through.

He is almost in denial of whatever sexual attraction he has going on here in the same way that he still.

in my opinion, loves his wife.

And I think she would love for her to touch him.

And he cannot explain why he is not doing it.

Solid, I get that.

I don't.

I think it's why this title for me is the right title of the film, right?

Is there is a core emptiness to this guy that I think is both

an analysis of, A, the archetypes of the types of guys at the center of these types of noir stories, these sort of like hardened men who have seen it all and get a bad shake, you know, all the tragedies pile up on top of them and they maintain this stoic face.

And you're like, well, that's a psychopath, right?

Who can just sort of like smoke a cigarette and make a pithy comment and move along and walk off into the rain.

The other part of this is this is very much a post-war movie of men being defined.

And Gandalfini is a character who has lied about his service, right?

That men are defined by either you didn't go and you live with deep insecurity about the fact that you seem as less of a man because you didn't serve because of your fear or your physical

arts or whatever it is.

And he goes, that's a tough break, can fall in our Or you served in the war and something broke inside of you psychologically and emotionally.

Now you have to just go back and cut children's hair and act like everything's okay.

Or just be a total drunk like Richard Jenkins.

Right.

You just can't fucking work through it anymore.

And here's this guy where it's just like, I think the gay reading comes from, and obviously sexuality is this thing that keeps coming up in this movie in an interesting way, of just like, there is something that feels unsolved in this guy that he cannot figure out.

He is holding something within him.

And so it's obvious to go like, what is his secret that he, that is animating him that we are not solving?

But I think this movie is about the unsolvability of this guy, which is like the great tragedy of his life is he can't fucking say what he wants.

He cannot express what he wants.

He does not know what he wants.

Our friend Jordan Fish, who a recent guest on the episode, his letterbox log was, now I'm watching this film, my biggest takeaway is he loves his wife so much.

That this is a movie of like a tragedy of a guy who like literally just can't say it.

Wow.

Right.

He's a wife guy.

Can't say it in his actions, can't say it in his words.

Like any of them.

I do.

I think

the fact that he's such a conundrum is the Heisenberg kernel of the film.

The more you look for facts, and what does Tony Shaloube say is like,

and it's what you started the podcast with the quote from.

If you look for something, yeah, if you look for the facts, you'll find they don't mean anything.

And I find that to be rather profound.

However, I could see a Cohen's critic saying, eh, you you know, give me, that's a whack off type thing to say.

Like, you know, eh, if you look to, if you try to understand it, you never will.

Like, I could sort of see a critic condemning the Cohen's, like, ah, those tricksters, they're so smart, their heads up their ass.

They made a movie that if you try to figure it out, that's the point that you can't figure it out.

I think this movie has enough juice that you can come correct, as they say, and do something this pretzel logic.

Like, I think if a lesser director tried to make a movie, it's like, if you try to figure out the main character, it'll break your brain.

It's annoying.

but i think i think this actually works well because i think it's the point i think it's about a guy where there's no there there he's almost like a parody of the criticisms of them right this is style this is affectation yes this is mood this is energy this is confidence but is it just rooted in a sort of like cynical nihilism who gives a shit right and you're like no it's actually a fairly sympathetic portrayal of a guy whose great curse is that he can't fucking care yeah I buy it.

You know, I saw someone in Letterboxd say that there is like very much an autistic reading of this movie at a time where you could not diagnose this guy in that way.

And that they said, I kept thinking while watching this film of Temple Grandin's quote, that making it through daily life makes me feel like I'm an anthropologist on Mars, right?

Yeah.

Even just the way he talks about these haircut and all that.

What do we do with the hair?

Do you ever think about what hair is?

You know, like all of these weird, broken things inside of him manifest in this way that seems like a cool fucking noir character.

And you're like, this guy just literally doesn't know how to be a person.

That's kind of cool.

Like, yeah, I mean, forget, I mean, there's the gay read, and then it could be the asexual reader.

Just like you say, he's just, he's, he's, I mean, I don't know if the cohen said, let's make a movie about an autistic person, but just somebody who's not on, not vibrating on this plane, you know?

David, I feel like you have some.

Well, I've just been listening.

Yeah, so let me go.

He, it's just interesting that there's a film with a narration where the narration, in my opinion, is basically lies and misdirection or just unreliable.

And he says lots of stuff and explains nothing.

And he does not explain why, like, as I keep pounding, why he does the thing.

Why does he blackmail James Candle for you?

Well, because it's an insane thing to do.

It's weird because he doesn't look like he's somebody.

When he's describing, he doesn't say, you know, and I finally wanted to get one over on my way.

No, no, he isn't.

Or I finally wanted to be rich.

But he doesn't say that either.

No, no, he no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Because he says that he's stuck in a rut.

He's the second chair, and he makes it seem as if he were to get a lot of money from being dry cleaning, being George Jefferson.

He would

finally get a piece of the puppy.

Yeah, finally get no, it'd be like he'd be on Easy Street.

But the thing is, like, it's almost like he doesn't covet fancy clothes, cars, or houses.

Like, what is he going to do with that money if he gets the dry cleaning money?

It's a little bit weird.

We don't know what he wants, but i think he is kind of like do i want

sex do i want money do i want my wife to die or he's mad at thinking about these things may i may i give my retention yeah that's interesting specific question yeah dude please do i think he is in once again in a way he would never be able to work out even to say

internally, right?

These are things he could not even admit in an internal monologue.

We should mention, as you said, the narration is mostly lies.

The reveal at the end of the film is that he's writing this for a men's magazine.

His entire story is going to get turned into some tawdry, like, I killed my pregnant wife.

Why?

Right?

Like, he's going to become tabloid fodder that will then basically probably become a highly fictionalized B movie.

Right, right.

Right?

Like, that's what his story is becoming, and we're seeing the toniest version.

of it.

But I think he thinks he's telling the truth.

I think he is explaining stuff as much as he thinks he can.

I think this guy has no relationship to himself.

And I think he can't explain the dry cleaning thing for that reason.

I think what is going on, and I tied this back to In No Country, obviously a later film, but the moment of the gas station owner having inherited from his wife being this moment that Anton Shagur shows such disdain and terror at, right?

And obviously a lot of the Cohen films deal with the sense of different forms of cucking, right?

And men being defined by their relationships with their wives and living in fear of them or living through them or all these different things.

I think there is this part of Billy Bob where he feels like he is failing his wife by being a man of no ambition who is stuck at the second chair in a job that her brother handed to him, right?

And now her career is about to level up.

Now she is about to be even more the breadwinner.

And he is like, I am not worthy of her if I am not contributing more to this.

This is where you lose me.

But it's an interesting read.

He already knows his wife is slipping away from him.

But he also says when he's like,

I don't think he's putting money into this because he wants to buy her nice things.

I think he's putting money into her because he feels like if he doesn't have money, then what the fuck status does he have in the middle of the moment?

Does he plan to make a fortune

in dry cleaning and then buy her things?

He's not incredibly smart.

Well, that's not a well-thought-out plan.

No, it's not a good thing.

But I just don't buy that he likes his wife as much as you do.

I think he kind of

likes his wife as much as he likes anyone.

That's exactly it.

I mean, mean, when he has that death, they've had the death vision of the great scene.

He, he's watching her kick.

I mean, she's being awesome by telling the salesman to go F himself.

He doesn't smile and say, good one, hon.

He's still as stoic as ever, but you get, you project onto it when he's sitting in that chair watching her go to town.

He's thinking, wow, my wife kicks ass.

So she seems like an emotionally unregulated woman.

Sure.

And it makes it.

difficult for him to deal with her, but also she's one of the only people in this sort of vaguely polite picket fence society who like cuts through and says the thing that no one says.

She gets drunk at the wedding.

She gets drunk at the wedding and, of course, and then tells the woman who's about to get married how marriage sucks.

For a guy who like basically doesn't know how to talk, that's what he would want to say.

Exactly, he would put the thoughts together.

And his brother-in-law's riding a pig and eating blueberry pie.

No, like, I don't think his love of his wife is motivated by anything sexual, right?

No, no, no.

Like, I think he is largely an asexual person, but I think he feels a fondness for her that is the closest thing he has to a a motivating force in his life.

And yet, the whole point of this movie is: it's like, why does this guy do anything?

What fucking drives him?

So many of these noir films are like, why does this guy get fucking tangled up in this mess?

Because they want money.

It's always because they want money, but like.

But if he doesn't want money for himself, then who does he want it for?

I don't think he wants money.

I think he wants to ruin his wife.

Like, I just read it the opposite way.

Right, because, but he makes a decision that's destroying her, and then he takes

well, he is feeling pleasure in watching it happen.

He doesn't care for James Gandalfini.

That much is clear.

James Gandalfini is sort of an offensive creature.

Yeah, he wants

he's not, he's okay to stick it to him.

He doesn't want to kill him, but he wants to give him the works, right?

Right.

I kind of feel like in this type of situation where you find out that your partner is cheating on you, it makes you kind of not think rationally.

But he's not finding it out.

He knows.

He's kind of sensed, but it's even, it's so,

it's so outrageous that then Gandalfini would talk to him

about the hypothetical.

Such a musician.

So obviously.

Right, right.

But it's like everyone doesn't take him very seriously as like.

Right.

I'm having an affair with a married woman.

No one you know is what Gandalfinini's.

I feel like that would make you kind of crazy to like know that this guy thinks so little of you that he's going to do, he's going to disrespect you in this way, right, to your face.

But this is also the core of sociopathy, right?

Like where you hear these accounts of like horrendous crimes and they track down the person and they interrogate them for days and they just never get to the bottom of like, why did you do this, you know?

Right.

And they go through the checklist, like, did you get a sexual satisfaction from it?

Is it revenge?

Is it power?

And sometimes these people just go like, I don't know.

Yeah.

You know, sometimes these people have a whole fucking system in their head, right?

And it all ties together in a logic, a warped logic, but there is a chain chain within it.

And sometimes people are just like, I don't know.

I just started doing it.

It just kind of happened.

I mean, I think about the movie Detour a lot while watching this, which very much feels like a Grimm's fairy tale

version of a normal article, right?

And that is a movie where a guy who isn't that smart and isn't that interesting just keeps on fucking stepping further and further into shit.

And at times, it starts to feel like the character is supernatural, right?

Like mild spoilers, the guy seems to like murder people by accident.

Yes.

Right.

He is.

What is almost like final destination style setup?

Suddenly, like phone cords become tied around people's necks and they die in front of you.

Right.

I mean, that movie was kind of like, right, that was like very dark, even for the noirs of the era or whatever.

Yes.

But that's a movie where this guy is just trying to fucking outrun this thing that you know is going to catch up to him.

Right.

It is so fascinating that the structure of this movie is basically every time he does something terrible or something terrible happens in his vicinity, almost immediately someone shows up and like hand delivers him a mulligan.

Yeah, not like a white.

Even when the cops come to tell him the news that she's been arrested, he's ready to confess.

He's, he says, well, I guess we're going downtown.

I'm like, what?

You see it on his face the second they walk through the door, it's over.

Yeah.

Right.

And he's not going to fight it.

You can tell, I think, on his face that he's about to tell them everything.

Right.

And also, he didn't, he only

killed Gandalfini by accident.

I mean, he did kill him, but he was being strangled.

He was about to die.

I want to kill him.

And he happens to have that.

He's not looking to no he happens to have that that thing and

i think he would have been just as happy which they go that's a lady's weapon and he's like it's a cigar cutter it belonged to the guy right right and they're like no it looks like some lady but but he would have loved to have got him in a less lethal spot had he punched ganelfini in the cheek and ganelfini stepped back and then they would have taken a breath he would have been just as happy he didn't mean to kill him but he got him in the carotid artery and and thus uh the story progresses right but i mean right He more wants

to humiliate him, like publicly or whatever, privately, but he wants to humiliate him.

Can I mention now the second line that plays in my head all the time from this movie, other than my wife and I have not performed the sex act in years, which, by the way, my wife and I performed the sex act plenty of times.

Don't, don't, don't worry about that.

Um,

but the the uh the other line, and I actually find to be quite quite touching, is uh, Batalucci, what is how do you pronounce his last name?

Michael Bataluccio Battaluccio.

When when the trials go off the rails and he says is this procedure such a strange line reading because he's new to the court system and he's and earlier he's like don't don't let these rich guys fool you they're just like us they put the pants on one leg at a time they use the toilet just like us ed you know it's a great moment and then he's like ed is this what happens and ed doesn't say anything because he doesn't know ed ed is this procedure and i find that you know we all think of like

god forbid we should ever be in court but you do think that when you're doing something real professional, like a medical thing or a courtroom thing, like it's going to be by the book.

And it never is.

Like, if you've ever gone to get your tonsils out, you would think, all right, fine.

Like, you know, you know, you go to, you, you go to a medical thing and it's like, oh, we're going to text,

we're going to text you to have you come into the next room.

It's like, text?

What from text?

I mean,

years ago, there was no text.

This is how it's done.

Is this procedure?

Sure.

That's how I feel constantly.

Like, is this procedure?

Is this procedure?

Shouldn't yes.

You know, I recently, I recently moved to New Jersey.

I had to change my.

Congratulations.

You held for applause.

Recently, do you want to then, yeah, Ben's got it?

He loves New Jersey.

Grandparents used to live in Point Pleasant, which is a great spot.

Yeah.

Lovely town.

Just changing your Verizon account, just changing, you would think.

Well,

what's this thing?

You know, the.

What you're referring to is the enshittoning of modern life, I will say.

Well, this movie was written in modern times.

You know, Battle's character is representative of the past, but I think he speaks to me in the now.

Well, but Geico is the friggin' company.

You would think I was the first person ever to move from New York to New Jersey and get my.

It's so complicated.

It's so that you have to have four.

You know, I'm going to tell you something.

You're going to fall out of that very complicated channel.

Do you want to burn this entire chunk right now?

Because I know you're working on a comedy dynamic special, move into New Jersey.

To speak to Batalucho's character.

Well, I got to talk about Geico real quick.

This is what you can't just say hey Geico I'm David's taking out a cigar cutter this is so quick this is so quick you can't just say hi guys Hoffman here Geico how you doing I moved from New York to New Jersey okay bye no yeah you have to officially change your the license plates and go to the DMV wait wait no this is the funny part this is the funny part you have to call Geico 10 minutes before you go to the DMV.

Upstairs, he says to me on the phone, call me back when you're about to walk into the DMV.

You have to do it the morning of.

Why can't I do it after?

No, no, no, you could get a penalty.

So, why can't I do it two weeks before I go?

Why do I have to do it like a maniac in the parking lot of the DMV?

Do it right before you go.

No, it's true.

I don't care.

I want to talk about the movie.

But is this procedure?

That's what it was.

It's insane.

If I can speak to Botalucho's character, I had an thought 15 minutes ago about the movie.

Yeah, all right.

Shut up, Jordan.

All right, all right, all right, all right, right, right.

ben what's up griff this is an ad break yeah and i'm just i'm this isn't a humble brag it's just a fact of the matter despite you being on mic oftentimes when sponsors buy ad space on this podcast the big thing they want is personal host endorsement right they love that they get a little bonus ben on the ad read but technically That's not what they're looking for.

But something very different is happening right now.

That is true.

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

This is laser targeted.

The product.

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

It certainly is.

And what is today's episode sponsored by?

The Toxic Avenger.

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

Macon Blair's remake.

of

reimagining whatever reboot of the toxic Avenger.

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

Yeah.

I'm going to see it.

We're

excited to see it.

But, Ben, you texted us last night.

This fucking rules.

It fucks.

It honks.

Yeah.

It's so great.

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

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

Tremblay is Toxie's son.

His stepson.

His stepson.

Okay.

Wade Goose.

Yes.

Great name.

Give us the takes.

We haven't heard of them yet.

Okay.

You got fucking Dinkledge is fantastic.

He's talking.

He plays it with so much heart.

It's such a lovely performance.

Bacon is in the pocket too, man.

He's the bad guy.

He's the bad guy.

There's a lot of him shirtless.

Okay.

Looking like

David sizzling.

Yep.

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

He certainly does.

He's having a lot of fun.

Tell us some things you liked about the movie.

Okay, well, I'm a Jersey guy.

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

Yes, yes, that's right.

The original film.

Yep.

I grew up watching toxic and trauma movies on porches.

Yes.

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 drills.

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 fucking park.

Okay.

It somehow really captured.

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

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

It's gooey sufficiently gooey.

Tons of blood, tons of goo,

great action.

It's really fucking funny.

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

Cineverse last year released Terrifier 3 unrated.

Yeah.

Big risk for them there.

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

And 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 toxicavenger.com slash blank check to get your tickets blank check one word in theaters august 29th yep and ben It just says here in the copy, wants to call out that Elijah Wood plays a weird little guy who says, summon the nuts can you tell us anything about that moment without spoiling it summon the nuts is in reference to a

psychotic new metal band hell yeah who are also mercenaries cool and drive a van

with a skeleton giving two fingies up on the grill and that's all i'll say okay

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

I'm excited to see it.

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

Seriously, get your tickets now.

Go to toxicadvengure.com/slash blank check.

Do it.

Do it.

Battalucho's character is a guy.

He's the boss at the barbershop who has hit his spot in society and is like, I am so happy here, right?

And all he does all day is talk defensively about how great it is to be exactly him, right?

You know, it's like, yep, this is where I got to be, right?

No higher, no lower, small business owner, one employee.

That's it.

I own the store.

And there's a tragedy to what happens to him, which is he gives away everything to protect his sister who is, you know, he shouldn't do that.

But there's also something, again, with Ed Crane, where you're like, Ed Crane clearly is like, I can't stand this fucking stuff.

Yeah.

Right.

Like, and I hate that he thinks he doesn't say anything.

Now, maybe if you're 11 or 12 years old, Frank's got an interesting point of view that sometimes he got on my nerves, right?

I hate that he thinks, like, this is, you know, whatever, the best you can get.

So, that also comes close to an explanation for why Ed is like, maybe I should try to get some dry cleaning money.

Like, maybe I should escape.

And, like, why Ed is sort of so disdainful

quietly of all the normal people around him.

And it speaks to

sociopathy or whatever, a sort of antisocial antisocial kind of feeling that he's not really expressing.

But

that's all.

Just like Battalucho is kind of like a quiet, like little I mean, if you had to work with that guy all day, maybe he would

drive you fucking heat.

He would make you want to, you know, blackmail Jane's games.

But all of his lines that sound like kind of cool, stylized, like funny dialogue, when you actually look at the text, them are just like, I don't understand these people, right?

Like I'm confused by behavior, basically.

And I was just, I'm looking at some of the quotes here, but like the line where he talks about him and Doris getting married, he said, you know, I think her line was, I know you as well as I'm ever going to.

And she's right.

She was right.

You know, this notion of the relationship never got deeper from that moment.

This feeling of like absolute confusion.

Even the opening lines of the film are him talking about like the other people, right?

They're going about their day and I'm holding a secret.

And they're all those shots in the car of him just watching passers by like an anthropologist on Mars.

Yeah.

Exactly.

This like absolute confusion at it as we're saying things keep lining up for him so well right absolutely like in sync with tragedy that it feels like is cosmically this guy like blessed in some way like why is this the luckiest man in the world who keeps fucking dodging the car extent that at the end of the movie aliens try to abduct him and he's like no i don't think so but also that happens after he has now gotten pinned with the one thing he didn't do what takes him down what sends him to the electric chair, what makes the aliens decide that he's not worthy of their time, that they don't give a shit.

He's not worth studying, right?

There's just nothing really going on here is

that it's like the one thing I didn't do ends up being the thing that sends me to death.

And I'm just sort of like, I don't really know what's on the other side of this.

And he doesn't see, well, in a way, I was about to say he doesn't really seem to mind death.

He, in a way, is saying, maybe it'll be better.

He's definitely like, that'll be a place where things will make sense.

Yeah, no, he's kind of, the last lines is actually very touching.

He says, I'm going to be able to say something to Doris that they didn't have words for here.

It's touching and also psychotic.

But it's what I, why I think this film is a weirdly, emotionally sincere film, because it is like a sympathetic tragedy about a psychopath, right?

Maybe not a psychopath, but someone

is struggling with whatever

interacting with human people.

A little mishug.

And I think it speaks to the like Scarlett Johansson thing where he's just like, I don't know, something's animating me here.

I got to keep going here.

Do you want to blowjob?

No, what are you talking about?

Right.

She has that speech where she tries to give him the gift of being like, you know, they're people like you.

They're like patrons of the arts.

What's the line she uses?

You're saying it.

I mean, I don't know.

But she's almost trying to give him like, here you go.

Here's your label.

Here's what you do.

I know you're.

You're an enthusiast.

You're an enthusiast.

Yeah, which is fun.

I know you're confounded about the fact that nothing drives you.

Maybe this can be it, right?

But in exchange for what?

And then he goes and sends her to the expert and the expert's like, nothing.

And he's like, she's bad?

And it's like, no, it's just, there's like nothing.

She's like a girl who plays piano well.

And the experts played by the Chubby Rain guy from Bofinger.

Love that guy.

Who is musician?

Is that right?

Correct.

Okay.

There's another

parallel universe in this movie, which has a happy ending, which is he accepts the blowjob from the underage girl and he learns to love life.

And the car doesn't crash.

The car doesn't crash.

He's like, wow, blowjobs from Scarlett or Hansen are terrific.

I love life.

And the movie ends.

And then it goes into color.

Right.

And then everybody's happy.

But there's also no takeaway from that scene.

The movie goes into color.

Age of Aquarius plays.

There's no takeaway from that scene where he leaves that room and is like, fuck it.

They're wrong.

I know you're a star.

We're driving to New York City.

I'm getting you on the Ed Sullivan show, right?

Where he's a guy who's now fanatically devoted to proving everyone wrong and like, you know, fucking Colonel Tom Parkering her into what she means to be.

Yeah.

It just feels like he's like, I don't know, is this the answer?

And they're like, no, that's nothing.

And he's like, fuck.

Then I got nothing.

Yeah, yeah, that's funny.

Right.

And like, my life lashes before my eyes.

And the one thing I regret most is not saying to my wife, hey, thanks for that.

You know, or like, good job out there with Christopher McDonald.

It's shocking this movie wasn't a hit.

I was about to say, no wonder that it was not that well of the money.

But it gets back to the Billy Bob Thornton thing where you're like, is this guy like a pill or is he a genius?

Is he like completely out of touch with himself or more in touch with himself than anyone else?

Do you where he ever sort of spoke to these ideas?

It was on Canadian public radio or anything like that.

I don't know if you've seen the fits he has thrown at the recent Landman premieres.

No, I will say I have not been checking in with his.

He looks at Captain Jack Sparrow on Crystal Matt.

Cool.

Wow.

He is like...

Well, wait, to be clear, that doesn't actually sound too cool.

I don't think I want Captain Jack Sparrow to start sounding.

I'm just like, Google Billy Bob Landman Premiere.

Is it still season one of Landman?

Season two is about to debut in the fall.

Oh, so I got time.

I'm going in on Landman.

I think Christian becomes a man.

I'm going to be your landman.

Oh, wow.

It's interesting because, again, on Landman, he's just like a guy with glasses and a button down.

But yes, he is kind of giving like, you know, male Ani DeFranco or whatever.

Wow.

He's making late-stage Johnny Depp look minimal.

His beard looks like peeling.

He's got like a hat on top of a kango

and like the most.

Wait, that looks like that looks like

Aquaman.

What the hell's Aquaman's name?

Mamoa?

He looks like a deflated Momoa there.

All these guys.

It is the biggest earring, too.

And a big earring and a lot of chains.

And I don't mean chains like Ben chains, like a lot of, you know, peace and love and dog tad.

What a weirdo.

I find the WTF interview very interesting because he.

talks so much about how defensive he is, right?

And that his attitude has always just been like, I don't care.

I shut it all down.

I'm me.

And then you're just like, this guy is so hair trigger, right?

He cannot find peace within himself.

He needs to get Ed Crane in his life.

He's the opposite of Ed Crane in that, like, he cares too much about everything all the time.

He's the man who's everywhere.

Right.

The man who was there.

Do you know he was married five times before Jolie?

Yeah.

No.

I didn't.

Five before Joe Lee.

Was he married or dating anyone other in the public eye other than Jolie?

He was in a years-long relationship with Laura Dern, who he left for Angelina Jolie.

And then, after Angelina Jolie, he said, I'm never going to get married again.

And he ended up getting married to the woman he's been with for the last 20 plus years.

He met on that England, who's a makeup specialist.

She's the adopted daughter of Walter Merch.

And she is often credited as a makeup artist, but she was primarily like a special effects puppeteer.

She worked on a lot of the fucking full moon pictures.

She worked on like Puppet Master and Prehysteria.

She seems like similarly odd and

in her own interests.

Can you imagine what their home is like?

I cannot.

It must have.

I think it's normal.

No, I think their basement is like the greatest Halloween basement of all.

I think they have a well-decorated house.

Yeah.

But I just think there's an interesting kind of like thing between the two, the character and the actor here.

He doesn't really direct, like Slingblade, he wrote and directed, and One False Movie, he wrote, but Carl Franklin directed.

Right.

And all the pretty horses.

And then he did the aforementioned Daddy and them.

And he did a film called Jane Mansfield's Car, and both of those barely got released.

Both of those are kind of

Andromeda ensemble pieces.

No.

It's not about Jane Mansfield.

No, but there's a car she may have once owned or something like that.

Well, I would not want that car.

Oh, it's the car that she died in.

Yeah, no, that's of all the cars.

It's the one you don't want.

That film's 20 years ago.

Yeah.

So he stopped.

Yeah, you'd think he stopped.

He stopped.

And he writes,

he fucking put out 17 albums.

I mean, Jesus.

That's true.

And we're all outputting albums.

No wonder he was angry.

He put out 17 albums.

Yeah, listen to us.

You're like, he's kind of the king of these shows where you're like, who's watching that?

But also, apparently everyone's watching it and he's got a fucking mantle full of awards.

Landman is

the true hit, but Goliath, yeah, was

something of a hit.

And obviously he was good on Fargo, like, you know, playing a sociopath, like playing a crazy killer, man.

You know, he was in a very bad movie

with Shia LaBeouf.

called um Eagle Eye.

Yeah, and he's good in that.

Of course he's good.

He's so good.

He's the guy who says you're in a mess of trouble.

Yeah, that's like what he does.

That movie is so bad, but he was so good in that that I've actually watched that movie a few times.

That's the thing he stopped doing because of the TV work.

He doesn't need to.

He always

talks about that he would do the things that animated him, right?

A Cohen Brothers movie.

He'd write his own thing and his agent would go, it's been three years since you've been in a movie that's advertised at a bus stop.

And he'd show

that you're in a big world of trouble.

You're in a big mess of trouble, son.

Now, right.

And now he just like does the one thing.

Do you remember who directed Eagle Eye?

I remember it was like, what's that guy up to?

He made the Triple X movie, right?

The third Triple X movie.

I want to say Triple Excellent.

It's Triple Excellent.

It's the best of the trilogy, easily.

That is true.

He has made three movies since then.

Redeeming Love, a Christian movie.

Faith-based movies, I was going to say one of them was at least Shut In, which is sort of like a thriller that didn't seem to go anywhere.

And then yeah, another religious movie, Mary.

Wow.

So his Eagle Eye is

his masterpiece.

And it looks like Anthony Anthony Hopkins was in the one.

I bet he was working real hard.

The film came out November 2nd, 2001 in limited release.

But this is to speak to the sort of, you know, the box office offerings of the time.

I want to note that while this movie was not a big hit, it's opening the same weekend in limited release as Amelie.

And Amelie was a movie that obviously post 9-11 America was like,

We like this.

Whimsy, please.

And, you know, was like

the film that broke box office records in Europe in 2000.

You know, it took a long time to come to the States.

Yeah.

And then it landed at just the right moment in just the right climate.

I need a French pixie to tell me how to live right now.

And then, like, Billy Muffin is like,

and people are like,

no.

Where's the French pixie?

Now, number one at the box office this weekend, Griffin, is an animated film that is good.

We have remarked upon its possibly deleterious effects on animation.

It's called Monsters Inc.

as a whole.

It's Monster Zinc.

And it's also cited as one of the

first big 9-11, post-9-11 hits.

Yes, it made

opening weekend.

$62 million.

And the Pixar folks were like, we thought the film was good.

It was tracking well, but then it kind of like wildly overperformed.

And there was this feeling of like, oh, this is exactly what people want to see.

I paid to see it now.

You know, it's funny.

I mentioned that my wife and I first met right around this time period, how we,

I remember the first time I ever saw the trailer for monster zinc was like one of the first dates with my wife with whom i have the sex act perform the sex act it's not a little lady doth protest it's not it's not much of a performance

but we we performed the sex act and and and early on we did it more frequently and and i remember going to see at the zig field may she rest in peace we went to the zig fields and saw a funny girl they had a reboot yeah and and we saw the trailer for monster zinc and we'd been dating for two weeks and i'm like dying at the trailer because mike wazowski and sully

Dying at the trailer.

I go, I can't wait to see that.

Mike Wazowski, a bit of a spiritual animal for you.

I love Monsters, Inc.

The sequel, which was a prequel, not so good.

I like it quite a bit.

I've only seen it once.

But Monsters, Inc.

is fucking five-star.

It's very good.

I've seen it a bit.

So I applaud it being number one at the box office, and I think it should have been.

Thank you.

What did it open to?

50 or 60?

$62 million in 2001.

That was one of the biggest.

I think that was one of the 10 biggest openings of all time at that point.

Well, I don't know.

And we'll never know.

Number two at the box office is a science fiction action film starring a major star who is sort of trying to cross over and

start him.

It is James Welg's film, The One, starring Jetly and Jason Satham.

Jason Satham's kind of the two in that one.

You don't want to be the two in the one.

It's sort of like Highlander with like dimensions.

Right.

I've never seen The One.

It's multi-verse Highlander.

It's like almost every Jet Lee Hollywood movie.

There's stuff, but it doesn't quite.

The premise on paper, like just if someone hands you a slip of paper and it says, Jet Lee has to travel across the multiverse, killing other versions of himself so he can absorb their power.

Oh, that's it.

So the more that he kills, the more powerful he becomes.

You're like, great.

And you're like, congrats, $5 million.

We're buying you pitch.

You open up the fucking final draft.

You're like, what is this?

How do you write this movie?

Like, you feel it where you're like, the premise is so good, and there's kind of no good way to dramatize it.

It's got some cool stuff.

It's got some cool stuff in it.

It's James Wong's fallout to Final Destination, too.

Made 43 million in the U.S.

Not, you know, did okay.

And it indeed does have a young statham back when he was like a true martial artist.

Number three, also new, these are all new this week, is a thriller

starring actors.

And, you know, 2001 thriller.

Is it domestic disturbance?

Thank you.

I just somehow knew you needed nothing.

I can tell you why.

Travolta in his shoulder-ish length in the middle of the middle.

No,

he's pretty close-cropped in that one.

Let's see.

Let's see.

He's his wife.

If John Travolta

is dating Vince Vaughan, and he's convinced that his wife's new boyfriend/slash husband is a psychopathic murderer, and he's trying to protect his son, but it turns out Buscemi is actually the villain.

That's the reason.

This is his

sort of like

swordfish with the goatee.

So double Bushimi because he's in Monsters Inc.

as well.

That is why I remembered

and got it so quickly.

Yeah.

Because it was a big Bushimi wicked.

And also

Bussemi.

Bussemi weekend.

I got caught up on saying Bussemi and then stumbled on weekend.

I think it's Bushemi.

It was the one where he got like Bussemi.

It's Bussemi.

Seth Rogan corrected me.

And it's Scorsese.

Scorsese.

It's Scorcheesi.

it's scorchy

uh Bussemi got like slashed in the face in a bar fight while they were making that movie Vince Vaughan and Steve Boussemi went out drinking in North Carolina where they were filming the movie and Steve Boussemi was stabbed in the head that's terrible and they were trying to keep his character a secret because he was kind of the John Doe in the seven of the film Because if you know Bussemi's in it, you're like, I bet he's going to turn out to be the bad guy, right?

That's the misdirect.

But then it got all this news coverage because you're like beloved character actor

stabbed in the head head with beer bottle uh but yes busami was king of the box office this weekend number four at the box office is a film in which an alien is allowed to be frank

an alien is allowed to be frank letting him be frank it's a motion picture called k-packs film is k-packs wait this is so funny this they

let me tell you wait wait one thing that kpax ain't is funny no no no but this is funny right now the day we're doing this recording Like less than 24 hours ago, a friend of mine texted me.

They're doing like a special Blu-ray re-release in a steel book of K-PAX.

I'm like, who the fuck is going to pay for that?

Who wants that?

This is the disastrous endgame of steelbooks or whatever, where it's like, I guess we have to do K-PAX.

No, Ben, no.

I'm not doing it.

Griffin bought K-PAX.

I'm not.

He just did it.

I bought the rights.

I'm putting it on my own label, Griffin Select.

He's doing a banana with

a skin.

Did you know that there's five K-PAX books?

They only filmed the first.

Wild.

Wow.

I just want to bring up...

There's L-PAX and N-PAX.

In future episode, shortly, upcoming episode, Intolerable Cruelty.

Next week's episode?

Or is there one in between?

No, I think you're right, right?

We talk about how at one point, Jonathan Demi and Will Smith flirted with making that movie together.

K-PAX.

Well, they were trying to make Intolerable Cruelty together.

Came out of originally Truth About Charlie supposed to be Demi and Smith.

Demi was so desperate to work with Smith, they also flirted with doing K-PAX.

We've all flirted with K-PACs.

Demi Will Smith K-PAX.

I love Intolerable Cruelty, but Demi's Intolerable Cruelty would have been great, too.

It would be fascinating.

Yeah.

I'd prefer his K-PAX, too.

You know, I will say something to you all, listeners and people in the room.

I've never seen K-PAX.

Jordan.

When's your birthday?

Send me your new address in New Jersey.

That's right.

And I know you said that I can't buy the K-PAX deal book, but can I buy it for Jordan?

Do they get K-PACs in New Jersey?

I'm going to buy a K-Packs.

And J-PAX.

Why is he called?

Is that his name?

Is his name K-PAC?

No, his name is.

Planet.

He

claims to be from a planet called K-PAX.

He's crazy.

He's Mork from Ork.

He's Mark from Orgo.

Jeff Bridge.

Jeff Bridges was the star man.

Sure.

So it's Star Man meets Mork from Ork.

Sure.

In this, he's the therapist.

In this, he's the Robin Williams in the Awakenings.

Number five at the box office.

Yeah.

Is the rare Shalub starrer?

First build in this film?

He's first built.

Wait, no, that's ripping with Lube.

What, Big Night?

No, how would that make 12?

Year 2001, there's a movie where Shalub is first built.

It's a live-action picture.

Can you give me a genre?

Horror.

Oh, that's

okay.

Like the

2001.

It's not like 13 ghosts.

It is 13 ghosts.

Wow.

Shalub is the first build in 13 ghosts.

He's a lead character.

He's a ghost hunter.

Oh, my God.

I he's stuck in above Embeth Davidson, Matthew Lillard, and Shannon Elizabeth.

When will they bring us the 14th Ghost?

One of past guests and friend of the show, Pilot Virowitz's favorite movies, 13 Ghosts, I multiple times went to Pilot's house and was like, what's going on?

Watching 13 Ghosts.

And I was like, 13 Ghosts?

Yeah, Shalub's a ghost hunter.

Where has to wear weird glasses to see the ghosts?

Yeah, Blu-ray.com, a great resource, has some of the most deranged message boards.

And there's a thread that for me is one of the greatest American texts of the last 10 years that is a guy who is adamant that 13 Ghosts was released in 3D and keeps saying, Anyone have any word on when it will come out in 3D Blu-ray?

Oh my god.

And people respond, there is no 3D version of this movie.

It wasn't released in 3D.

And he keeps describing how strong his memory was of seeing it in 3D and saying, and the 3D was really good.

And then people are just pulling out, digital 3D doesn't happen until this point.

And that year, it would have been anaglyph.

It wasn't anaglyph.

There's no record of it.

It's an

today.

And then he starts going to other message boards and being like, These people shut me down.

Wow.

You must have the answers.

He's living in his own alternative reality.

13 Ghosts, The 13th Floor.

Remember that movie?

Yeah, 13.

Was that the same year?

No.

No, I feel like the 13th Floor is like 1999 because

that movie is sort of Matrix.

Was that in your Cyberpunk watch?

Sure, it was.

That is a movie that is based on a very, very dense hard sci-fi novel called Simulacron 3 and the Rainier Werner Fastbinder.

It's based on that same source.

I had no idea.

I've seen both of them.

13th Floor is based on both of those things, which are both.

And Worlds on a Wire is someone in the world.

World on a Wire is not based on that same source material.

It is.

No, it is.

But

it's using both.

That's great.

And it's got such dense ideas.

And at the same time, you're like, Craig Bjorko's the star of this.

It's Bierco and Maul?

It's Bjorko and Maul, baby.

Maul firm of Birco and Maul.

How did this go wrong?

It's a movie, and it's got like 15 twists.

You know, it's got all this like, what is it?

I'm comfortable enough to say I don't think I understood it.

I don't understand it at all.

I also know it's six hours long.

It felt like it was rushed.

So I can't imagine like the fucking Columbia Pictures 100-minute version.

Let me tell you, it feels a little rushed.

There's another

French movie called, I think it's called Jetem, which is also like about

brain universes and and whatever.

And I don't understand that movie.

Levels of consciousness.

I mean, a lot of the time, these things are.

That's an Alan Renee movie, I believe.

We,

you know, right, are about how we can't understand.

Much like the man who wasn't there.

If you look for the facts, the facts aren't there.

Number six in Box Office.

I agree with that.

Riding Cars with Boys, the solid Penny Marshall movie that I assume we'll be covering anytime.

Very soon.

Any day now.

Eminently.

You can start doing the math.

How many episodes until we cover that?

Number seven, From Hell.

Speaking of Johnny Deppon myth, not a bad bad movie on opium or something, but you know.

I like that movie.

Really?

Yeah, I like from hell.

I love the graphic novel, obviously.

I saw it in the theater and said, this is a nice way to spend two hours.

It remains insane that that graphic novel was adapted by the Hughes Brothers starring Johnny Depp, but yeah.

And was a moderate hit.

It did okay.

Yeah.

Number eight is Training Day, which did great, obviously.

That was the kind of thing, again, in the fall, people are like, we like this kind of darkness.

Like really, really kind of like over the top.

My memory also is that it was a movie that was supposed to to come out like September 16th, and they like kicked it like a month out of fear of like, is this too intense for people?

And then it overperformed.

Yes.

And people were like, solid programmer.

And then it wins Oscar.

It sure did.

Right.

Number nine is the

Bandits, the aforementioned Bandits.

So Thornton is

playing fire.

Although that movie underperformed, obviously.

You love to remind people.

Well, it did.

It did.

Because it was right after Sixth Sense and stuff where it's like,

Is Rilla's back?

And then 10 is Serendipity.

The

bad rom-com with QSEC and about the

Russian tea house.

Hot chocolate.

Yeah.

Serendipity.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Serendipity.

I never saw it.

It's not very good.

I've had their hot chocolate.

Those QSEC movies after High Fidelity where Hollywood is like, you're a rom-com star.

And he just seems so angry about that fact.

And yet I watch fucking America's Sweethearts and I'm like, he is on fire in this.

Can you tell he doesn't give a shit?

You have defended that movie on several episodes at this point because you've watched it sometime in the last six months.

Probably.

And your defense of it is like spread out over a few episodes.

And now I'm going to have to go and watch, like, who directed that?

Who's the studio executive director?

Joe Roth.

Joe Roth's America's.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which I remember being a two-star movie.

What was the last

thing John Cusack was in that wasn't that was

like that wasn't directivity?

What about Chirac?

Nothing's yeah, he's insane in America.

I forget that he's in that, but he is good in that.

It's an interesting performance.

Yeah, well,

it's notable.

Let's say he's notable in that shit.

But it's not a directed video shot in Boomeras.

I mean, Lee Daniels the Butler, one of the weirdest performances ever.

He sees Nixon in that one.

He's Nixon.

He plays Nixon like Lloyd Dobbler.

I'm not a crook.

Checkers.

But Love and Mercy, he's the less engaging part.

Although I do think he is quite good.

No, he's great.

But that movie's at least seven years old.

Love and Mercy.

That That movie is like

close to 10 years old.

It's really good.

It has been.

Who directed that?

He's a weird millionaire.

He's like, it's a...

I forget the guy's name, but he was like a film financier who was like, I want to make something.

And people were like, yeah, good luck with that, buddy.

Steve Bannon?

Well done.

Steve Bannon?

It's Steve Mnuchin.

That's who it is.

Is it real?

No.

No, no, no, no.

I forget the name of the guy, but I'm truly, I'm scrolling back and I'm not finding the last thing he was in, I would say, of any legitimacy was Chirac, which was now 10 years ago.

That's like 2016 or whatever.

That's 2016.

You know, F that guy.

He's got to get his shit through.

Since then, Arsenal, Blood Money, Singularity Distorted, River Runs Red, Never Grow Old, Pursuits.

I mean, like, and he doesn't even really have an excuse because when Nicholas Cage was doing this nonsense, he was in tax debt.

He had to do it.

It's a Bill Polad, who is like part of the Polad family, who owned the Minnesota Twins.

He's the one who did 11.

He mostly produces.

And he did the Casey Affleck one.

Yeah, Dreamin' Wild.

I believe that John Cusack could say to his managers, Look, I make 10 of these bullshit movies a year.

Let me do seven instead and give me one real movie.

There's a director out there that would love to chaos.

I think he's deeply cynical and doesn't care enough anymore.

No, then F him.

I agree.

That's only some five I've got.

Because there are people that want to work and he's talented.

He's wasting his time.

He meant so much to me.

And it's like, why I will defend shit like Serendipity and America Sweeter, where I'm like, this guy on autopilot had juice that people today wish they could conjure up.

Yeah.

That was him at his most.

What's a recent movie where

you could, like, Richard Jenkins shows up in The Man Who Wasn't There, where could you plop John Cusack and say, What a great performance!

I think he's truly like, Sure, my quote is five million dollars.

And they're like, You're not getting that if you do one good scene in a Cohen brothers movie.

Like, I think he's just got a huge ego.

He doesn't want to do it.

He is notoriously one of the biggest assholes in Hollywood.

I mean, Nick Cage had to do it because he was in tax, he had tax problems.

Of course, Bruce Willis, we know he was banking up because, like, all of Cusack's closest friends and collaborators no longer speak to him anymore.

So, it's pretty obvious how Steve Payne could tip robins.

He's on a right flow by himself.

All right.

You know, within enough about him.

His politics are normal.

Oh, he's not normal.

He was, he's posts

the swastikas on X, and then he deletes them.

I didn't know that was anti-Semitic.

I just wanted to share something.

Yeah.

So, Jordan, a running theme with these kinds of movies is that I watch it and I'm like, this shit would work out.

I would get away with all of it.

And so I just want to kind of walk through, if I may, how I feel like I could pull off a happy ending.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

All right.

I want to still blackmail that motherfucker.

Sure.

So you want to do that.

Right.

Okay.

But I don't invest in dry cleaning.

I see that coming a mile off.

Money.

Right.

Yeah.

I'm also going to say right off the bat, even before that point, I think just like a bed of 10 years of being open and communicative with your wife.

Sure.

I like that.

Having a healthy, trusting wife.

But he's the one built.

Having the sexual relations.

Yes.

Right.

But then, of course, black men.

Performing the sex act.

Yeah.

Okay.

We quit our jobs.

Me and Francis go to the happiest place on earth.

Disneyland.

Hey.

I like it.

Are this the 40s?

I think it doesn't exist yet, but I'm going to allow it.

Fuck, okay.

You go, you start buying land together.

They go to Wildwood, New Jersey.

We rekindle the marriage.

Okay.

So maybe Niagara Falls, let's say.

Sure.

Two salacious crumb laps.

Ride Playland.

Was that going?

Yeah, I think that one's really old.

Gail Feeney still gets in trouble for the embezzlement.

Okay.

Yeah.

Right.

Maybe he kills Polito.

I don't know.

It's not my type of, by the way.

This is where I had to work it out.

No, no, it's Rye Playland opened in 1928.

This is all you knew it was old.

Me and Francis moved to New York City, buy a brownstone.

Hey, that real estate, baby, that will pay off.

Now you're generation.

Right.

You've got investment

insight.

Okay.

I become a successful abstract expressionist artist because that seems easy.

Totally easy.

And also, it's getting deeply cynical.

Also, maybe Ben, buy some IBM stuff.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Also, place bets on Winners of the World series that you know about.

Yeah, right.

Be like, yeah, the Bulls are going to run the table in the 90s.

I like that this is the first time you're, if I had been in this movie, it would have worked out.

Basically, it involves you being a time traveler.

It's just like Googling stuff that will happen.

You're in the period the movie is, but you have the knowledge that you have last 2020.

If I fucking like Miro is like, wait, someone did dots before I thought of that?

Or whatever.

Copyrighted the term computer?

Jackson.

What if astronomers

had ice cream in the game?

Invest in Tang.

Buy Tang stock.

Okay, lastly, though,

I

see an alien.

They take me on their ship.

We become good friends.

Besties.

That's the thing.

Do you think Joel and Ethan ever had...

By the way, that was terrific then.

Do you think the Cohen's would

be saying all that?

For sure.

Yes.

Individually, though, though, not as a unit,

unfortunately.

Now, do you feel that there was ever a moment when they were spitballing the script where they said, and then Billy Bob gets on the spaceship?

No.

No, too bad.

No, no, if only because, you know, there's a clip that goes around a lot of Guillermo del Toro interviewing them for the Lewin Davis DVD.

It's one of the best extended talks they've ever done.

It's like 45 minutes

of talk and shop.

And he says, like, you know, the moment, to jump ahead, you know, we'll cover this in weeks from now, but where Lewin Davis sees the offering to the town where he knows his illegitimate son lives.

A devastating scene.

And all since that time, he drives past.

And you think you know, well, I, that's obviously where the movie's going.

That's going to be the next 20 minutes of not the ending.

And he said, did you ever consider that?

Did you do the exercise?

And he went, you know, it's funny.

We never once until this moment considered that we could have written that he drives there.

And I think that is just kind of the way they think.

Like the ends are, you write the moment of the person not choosing the thing.

They never do the mental exercise of what if they did the thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It just seems to be a pattern with them.

For sure.

Yeah.

And that's why they're great.

And I, I think this movie, if I just kind of conclude my read on it, is like this tragedy for them about the way that they think people perceive them as like, imagine if you actually didn't care about anything.

You know, well, yeah, because what a miserable way to live life.

They had, they had been now making movies for, for almost 15 years, right?

So they'd been around the block and they'd received plenty of criticism.

And even though they're cool guys and they're the smartest guys in in the room no but they it had to have gotten under the skin this i appreciate your your read on this as this is their rebuke to their criticism and they have this kind of steely deadpan vibe they don't want to speak much they're stone-faced in interviews yeah you know but they did make them laugh they are funny of course i'm forgetting uh uh that they are funny in interviews about this movie though where they're like of course labowski got ignored by awards bodies.

Of course, O'Brother was sort of like, you know, just this comic, you know, like, and then this, we take it to Can, we win best director because they're like, yeah, it's black and white.

Well, you know, like, we made an arty movie again.

Like, they

are always so deflective of any kind of like, oh no, we really care about what, you know, the critics think or what the voters think.

Um, and I believe them.

I don't think they really care.

They know that stuff helps.

Obviously, I think if this movie was meant to be like an aggressively defensive retort to their critics, it's not that it right.

They would have been more direct about it.

I think it's more them kind of interrogating the idea of how they're perceived, right?

This notion.

I think you're right.

And I think if they, if they had gone stronger, they would have said to themselves, Why are we care?

Like, you know, like, who are we to be upset about our critics?

Like, we get to make movies.

Like, let's shut up and make movies.

You know, I think they're too much.

It's like an imaginative exercise of like the type of person they're accusing us of being, how would that person even function in the world?

Yeah.

Right.

If you truly just don't give a shit and just kind of stand around looking cool, saying cool stuff.

David's checking his watch.

Is it time to go?

We've been yapping.

We come to our listeners with one simple request.

We just want 157% of you to sign up for Hoffstack.

Yeah.

Hoffstack.substack.com.

And your writing is elsewhere.

I write about movies and TV and stuff, but it's true.

The kids are going crazy for Hoffstack.

Kids are loving it.

TikTok is out.

Hoffstack is in.

We got any new Salsa reviews coming?

I miss you doing that work.

You know, it's funny because I've been, there might be some listeners who do subscribe to the Hoffstack saying, hey, buddy, when's your next update?

I don't write constantly.

I need to get back into that.

But what I predict is that when this episode airs in X amount of weeks, there will be a torrent of material and it's going to be great.

So if you buy now, right now, the low, low price of X amount of dollars per, I should probably raise the price real quick.

No, lower it.

I'll lower it.

Okay, yeah, lower it.

It's going to be great.

And the people listening, you know, the blog that was there is my hoff stack.

Oof, is it a good blog?

Let me tell you.

And vlog.

Occasionally I vlog.

Occasionally a vlog.

When I'm too lazy to write.

The camera loves.

The camera loves you.

I did a vlog about weapons.

I loved weapons.

That was a good movie.

Do you think weapons will be nominated for the best original screenplay nomination?

I quoted this on Katie's podcast, Katie Rich Financial Show, also Subtech,

where I was like, if that movie is a true phenomenon, you never know.

And it's kind of...

It's heading in that direction.

It's kind of heading in that direction.

We're recording this on the eve of its second box office weekend.

And she rightly was like, you know, there's a big, big sort of, you know, barrier to that kind of horror movie.

Something like what Kugler did with Sinners, where it's mixed with other genres.

I was going to say, it's also Kugler's at a little bit more of an anointment point versus Krager being fresh.

I could say that.

You can have Sinners and Weapons nominated for best original screen, but never much.

I agree.

It's too much.

One or the other.

I wonder if it's a bridge too far, but I also think Weapons...

has a stronger acting contender than Sinners does.

No, Sinners has the stronger acting contender.

Who do you think's the you think Jordan does double MBJ?

Yeah, he plays two people.

The Oscars love that shit.

And you don't think Amy Madigan's going to get nominated?

I mean, I would love to see that.

Truly would love to see that.

Wait, let me ask.

We got a long season ahead of us.

I think she did it.

Did Ruth Gordon get nominated for Rosemary's?

She won an Oscar, my friend.

That's why

she won.

So Amy Madigan could get nominated as a

person.

I really think that performance is very special.

I agree, and I think it's sticky.

And she's an Oscar nomination.

When I was

from a house, I think weapons, I don't think Anne Harris could yell at people for her.

I don't think yeller.

I don't think weapons is

anywhere arms crossed, not applauding.

Yes, exactly.

Mean mugging, looking like two grumpy cats.

Yeah, iconic stuff from them.

I don't think weapons is anywhere near as good as Rosemary's Baby, obviously, but I do think it's kind of like

the pinnacle of Hollywood film makes it.

Yeah, I think weapons as a horror film is is, it's not crazy to say it's, it's Rosemary's Babylon.

It's not wrong.

And you know what's so funny is that this gal who we both love,

Julia Gardner, she was in the Rosemary's Baby

prequel, which is nobody in apartment.

She was apart in 70, which I thought was pretty good.

You saw it.

Oh, yeah.

I never saw it.

I watched it.

It was good.

Should I watch it?

I love her.

It's one of those things where it's like, it's directed by the person who did Relic, which is a movie I liked, which is why I watched it.

And it's one of those things where, number one, you're like, I wish this just wasn't a Rosemary's Baby prequel, right?

Like, it would be fun if this was just a horror movie set in an apartment building.

Number two of it is obviously nice to see it in a theater.

I saw it on fucking Paramount Plus.

Number three is that it really just, it's not perfect, but it has two or three beautifully directed like sequences that are so cool.

Diane Weiss plays the Ruth Gordon.

The cascade.

I'm not too good.

I'm watching it tonight.

I'm watching it tonight.

But I love, if we're talking Julia Garnet talk, I love that Australian movie.

Now, David Sims does not like me.

You're talking right before record about the

movie.

It's called the Hotel New Hampshire or something.

I don't know what it's called.

The Royal Hotel.

The Royal Hotel New Hampshire.

It's very, very good.

The documentary is called Hotel Normandy, I think.

I get the name confused.

Hotel Rwanda.

It's based on documentary.

Yeah.

It's based on the documentary Hotel for Dogs.

By the way, the Yelp reviews of Hotel Rwanda are terrible.

We got to go.

Salacious Crumb is asleep.

Well, no Wi-Fi.

You know, that's

no free Wi-Fi.

He's looking at his phone.

Luckily, we already recorded our ads, but I think Griffin has to record like a radio play or something.

Thank you all for listening.

Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

Tune in next week for more podcasts.

In Tarbal Cruelty.

By the way, can I just say one thing?

This is kind of funny.

I'll make this so quick.

Once in a blue moon, I go on the blank check Reddit page.

Normal place.

I'm going to the battle.

No, no, no.

This is so quick.

I don't care.

All right.

I'll just talk to the others.

My man's about to take a number three.

He's going to rub one out.

Now, listen to this.

I will occasionally.

He's going to do the sexual act.

He's going to perform the sex act with the toilet paper.

I will occasionally go on Reddit and look up myself, of course, obviously, and look up myself on the blank check Reddit page.

And this is the comment that's always made.

Many fans on the stage.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

This is the comment made about me, Jordan Hoffman,

an underrated guest.

Now, that's an honor.

But when will I be a rated guest?

Why am I the Jordan?

Yeah.

I'm dubbing you now Blank Check's most rated guest.

I would like to be rated.

That is your title from here on out.

I feel in life, this is my entire, everything I do, whether it's going to work for a company that then closes two weeks later after I promoted on this podcast, whether it's performing the sex act with my wife,

it's always like, hey, that was better than I expected, you know, and I'd like for once to be expected to be okay.

Sims, we have dubbed Jordan Blankcheck's most rated guest.

Do you think I didn't hear that?

You think that was quiet?

I heard that in Queens.

I will say the way you come up often in the subreddit is like once a month, some user will make a post that's asking the question that people ask once a month, like clockwork.

What's the best episode?

What's the worst episode?

What's the funniest moment?

Who's the best guest?

What's the worst guest, right?

These same things.

And every time people do the what's the funniest moment,

very often

at the top of the list, and I'm quoting here,

Jordan Hoffman screaming, your mother's cunt, and David Sims responding, we are in a place of war.

No, it's Ben who said that.

Oh, yes.

I saw somebody.

One of the readers or Redditors, whatever the hell you call them, on New Year's Eve said, if you start, if you press play now on that episode, I will shout your mother's cunt at midnight.

And you could then usher in the new year on your mother's cunt.

And

what better way?

Thank you for being here, Jordan.

Thank you all for listening.

Please remember to rate and review, and subscribe.

I feel like I said this and then I got this rail.

Now I'm resetting.

Tune in next week for Intalbrucker Cruelty.

And as always,

I just want to end with the mirror of the quote I started the episode with because I started with Billy Bob paraphrasing

Shalub.

Yeah.

Shaluba does.

My friend Kai's masturbating a number three, by the way.

I think it's funny.

That was the joke we made when you were in the bathroom.

While you were doing it, we said

sex act with the toilet paper.

Frances McDorman getting her legs shaved and her hair on.

I think she'd be nice to be married too.

Sure, yeah.

Listen, the salute quote, which I do think is as much as an answer to this movie as the movie gives, is the more you look, the less you really know.

It's a fact, a true fact.

In a way, it's the only fact there is.

Your mother's content.

Oh, my God.

Salacious be crumb.

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims.

Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley.

Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas, and our associate producer is A.J.

McKeon.

This show is mixed and edited by A.J.

McKeon and Alan Smithy.

Research by J.J.

Birch.

Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell.

Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds.

Our production assistant is Minnick.

Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help.

Head Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

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This podcast is created and produced by BlankCheck Productions.