The Ladykillers with Connor Ratliff

Blank Jack with Griffin and David

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

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

Have you all decided?

Madam, we must have podcasts.

We must have podcasts forthwith.

We must all think and we must all have podcasts and think each and every one of us to the best of our ability i don't know why it went british it did go british i uh adam we must have waffle

i remember that being like a key part of the trailer it's one of two big touchstone comedies based on breakfast starches in their ad campaign that was the main push what was the in real life

god that that guy lady killers was going waffle forward dan was going pancake forward this may be the worst opening of an episode we've ever done absolutely not it's a good opening but i I want to, it's just Madam, we must have.

Can our guests, do you feel like you can do a professor?

No, not right now, I don't think I can.

Madam, I was watching last night.

Madam, we must have.

We must have podcasts.

Madam, we must have podcasts.

We must have podcasts full-width.

The fact that we can't do it proves that it's a good performance in a good movie.

Glad we settled that.

Thank you all for listening.

Please.

Do you like that you're starting off saying this is the worst episode that

you've ever done?

This is totally.

Stop putting it in people's heads.

Yes, this is the worst thing you've ever done.

This is completely normal for us this episode is off to a terrible start i think it might be the worst episode you've ever recorded and we're only we're minutes into it and that's also a webby award-winning podcaster set there you go that's true you know from pcast a real low point for me and

the webbies yeah no no the this is a low point for the webbies the webbies being like oh geez

one of our winners is on some bad podcast this is bad a bad day for the webbies i want to say that this is maybe the best episode we've ever done i want to i want to change the messaging right here.

I want to say you were correct, David, that the waffles were.

It was a big thing.

It was like the trailer was like, and just wait until Tom Hanks orders waffles in this funny voice.

It was the push.

Right.

I was looking for the monologue where he tells her that they are, in fact, criminals.

I wanted to change that, criminals to podcasters.

Was not on the RTV page, quotes page, which is quite long.

I think someone tried to transcribe it and fell asleep.

Fuck you.

No, Griff.

Criff.

I don't hate this movie, but let's not go to the bat saying we love this movie.

We don't love it.

I think it's good.

This movie made me, I gotta say, a little uncomfortable watching it in 2024.

There's stuff in it.

The movie is pretty racist.

There is stuff.

I'm just gonna lead with that.

No, I'm gonna agree with you.

Here's the thing: when I walked out of this movie in 2004, my first two comments were, that's not as bad as everyone's saying.

Sure.

Followed immediately by, pretty racist.

I'm not sure the Cohen should be just writing.

I don't.

When is this set?

2004.

Yeah, 2004.

What's going on there, my friend?

There was a moment, I don't know if you remember, when the Cohens were getting kind of ransacked in interviews with the Oscar So White's question.

Yeah, it was later.

It was later in their careers.

Like around True Grit, Lou and Davis era.

And Ethan had a comment that people thought was kind of snarky and dismissive, right?

And everyone was like, classic white filmmakers upholding white supremacy, refusing to consider black characters.

The corner of the internet for the right folks and i just wanted to tell those people maybe watch the lady killers yeah circle back and tell me if you think they should no i think it's primarily a corner of characters uh-huh

the marlon waynes character is a giant problem and it was another thing walking out of this movie where i was like man marlon waynes is bad in that and the two times i've re-watched it in the last five years i'm just like he was doing exactly what they asked him to do and what they asked him to do was not great i think so i don't know it's not like right i'm like oh they have

i have a question, though.

I have a question about

how tightly scripted Marlon Waynes' character was.

You always hear that the Cohen's, everyone is tightly scripted.

Everyone is tightly scripted.

Do we feel as if Marlon Wayne's character, if we were to look at the shooting script for the lady colours, which I am assuming none of us have?

None of us have.

Has been published.

How tightly scripted do you think that character is on the on the compared to most Cohen brothers?

Here's the thing.

I feel like there might have been some improv.

Interesting, because I watched this and I think

if they had just let him improvise, it probably would be funnier and less offensive.

I think this reads big time as hyper-literate, incredibly strong dialogue writers being like, how do those young black people talk?

It is overwritten, but it very much feels to me like he's trying his best to make it sound natural.

To make it his own.

And yet I was like re-watching it with the subtitles on, really kind of like wrestling with that question and i'm like i can see joel and oh ethan typing this out and being like i think we've hit it right

game of the character is that he just says the n-word a bunch that's one of his games i'd say that's what they thought was funny kind of kind of i don't think the character has much of a game which is almost more annoying because

the other criminals kind of do like have more of a specified fit

and week with Marlon Wayans, they're kind of just like, yeah, I don't know, he's just like a loser.

I'm so excited.

I'm honed in.

It's crazy.

It's loud, angry, black man.

That's just foul mouth, right?

You know, I guess.

But he's the one who is the inside man.

He keeps stressing that he is the inside man.

Well, that not only are they stressing it, it is actually a fact of the text.

It's what he's what's he works.

He works at the casino, so he is the one who has access.

So this is not like something that the characters are

spectating he loves big butts he loves big butts and he cannot lie he can't lie about it in fact

it is sort of his fatal character flaw is when he sees a big butt he must have a conversation with it he is he is honest to a fault we're building a good bed for me to mount to defense of this movie's okay this movie begins with the wonderful aura pea hall coming in to the police to complain about the hippity hop music to the wonderful george wallace would love to see him yeah to complain about the hippity hop music that you know her uh the tenant is playing.

And I'm like, oh, okay.

So this is set, maybe, is this set in like the late 70s when like hip-hop music would have been a sort of a new thing for a woman like this to reckon with?

It was set in 2004.

Right.

And they're listening to Tribe Cold Quest, a song that came out in like the fucking late 80s.

Yeah, I will say, I will say, as someone who came from the mid- But probably the last rap album.

I understand

it took a while for culture.

Part of the joke is transmit that things are on a different timetable.

That like

something that you hear that's like, oh, is that a new song?

And it's, and then it's like, well, it's new to her.

Now, where is this set?

I will also ask.

Alabama?

Because Bob Jones University, which of course is cited a lot, that's in South Carolina.

Oh, it's set in the South.

Okay.

Well, not a guess.

That I know.

Marlon Wayne's character, Gawain.

Is his last name...

It's not McKidd.

It's Mexam.

Mexam.

I don't know.

Gawain Mac Sam.

He is, I think, the turnkey that this film is supposed to be set in the present day.

I think this is their best approximation.

We have cultural references that can help us to narrow it that at this point.

He is the most of his time character.

The Bobbit reference is post-Bobbit incident, post-Bobbitt shooting porno movies.

Post-Franken penis.

Post-Franken penis.

Post-Franken penis.

And we can use that as a barometer for the rest of this podcast going forward.

Our movie set

pre- or post-Franken penis?

Uh-huh.

So, what's the podcast?

It's 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 and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want.

And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce.

Baby, we are looking at what has to be the single biggest bounce of their career, if only because

it is the only movie of theirs that really really has no reclamation project.

Not really.

It was horribly received when it came out.

I was looking at the numbers and it's like it actually didn't lose money and outgrossed many of their films.

And yet it was undeniably seen as a huge flop considering it was a Disney release

starring Tom Hanks.

It is the film that breaks Tom Hanks's decade-long $100 million streak.

Yeah, but also when this is his first kink in the armor.

I also think we have to look at this from the point of view that as a debut film,

you know, every, every, every, because it's the first film by the Cohen brothers.

It's the first film by the Cohen brothers.

Joel Cohen had a little experience under his belt.

Do you know this weird fact, Ben?

This is

the first Cohen Brothers movie directed by the Cohen Brothers.

As we talked about.

Oh, right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

With Chris Weitz.

Yes.

And

how difficult the DJA makes it to be recognized as a pair.

This one is the first time a movie is directed by Joel and Ethan Cohen.

And it shows.

It shows.

But

they're figuring it out.

They're figuring it out.

You can feel it in every frame of this film.

These guys are like, how do we do this?

Two-headed director.

This is a mini-series on the films of Joel and Ethan Cohen for the first time as a team.

Yeah.

This is the first time that these brothers say, let's direct a movie together, not just like, I'll direct a movie, you produce it.

Ethan's just standing back, crunching the numbers, just breathing down his neck.

That guy loves producing.

What do you do anyway?

It's a mini-series called No.

Pod Country for No Cast.

Oldcast.

God damn it.

Jesus.

We keep getting it wrong.

You keep getting it wrong.

Pod Country for Old Cast Singular.

Sure, whatever.

That's what the artwork says.

It's official now.

This is our episode on 2004's The Lady Killers, a remake of 1955.

Correct.

The Alexander McKendrick movie.

The Ealing comedy.

And today on the show, returning for the...

Well, the math here is a little tricky.

Oh,

let's get an accurate number.

Connor Ratliff.

Here he is.

Has appeared main feed.

As himself?

Well, who else would I be talking about?

I'm talking about Connor Ratliff

has appeared main feed.

I believe this is number three somehow only.

You appeared in a commentary episode in our Phantom Podcast Days, and then you did Twin Peaks the Return main feed.

You've also done Twin Peaks Season 2 with us.

That was on Patreon.

And George Lucas appeared three times.

Just twice, I'm seeing.

Just twice.

I believe

there was one time in studio where we had a talk with him.

There was a live show at the Bell House.

And then you're, of course, forgetting Denim Invasion live at the Dell Close Mara.

It's not listed on the Wikipedia, I will say.

Oh, wow.

How do you change a Wikipedia?

I don't know.

Just saying, it's not listed.

George was definitely part of it.

Someone needs to list it.

Hey,

we got a show.

And also both Broadway shows.

This is true.

It does say in the Denim Invasion entry, they note cameo appearances from Diana Kolsky, Murph Mayer, and George Louis.

But this is right.

This is true also

Peter Jackson.

And

two characters,

really.

Who then became Joe Check.

Yeah, I guess one character with an alias.

Sort of like Professor Dorr is

the producer band you were going to make a couple.

Season two episode for us on Patreon was a really like big

episode where you got a lot of new fans.

That's what they call it really?

A driver in the biz.

It was a driver.

I mean, it was very important for me to be a part of that.

That's a good one.

Yeah.

And if I can just digress, I know you don't like digressions,

but I recently saw about half of Twin Peaks The Return

at the MetroGraph.

Right, they played it all?

They played it all.

I wasn't able to

attend all of it.

It's weird because people kind of coming in and out.

Like, was it a...

Yeah, I talked to some people who went for the whole thing.

It was two days.

On the one hand, because of the sound mix, which is a theatrical sound mix, which apparently

the

David Lynch hated the sound mix for TV because it's all compressed.

So on the one hand, this is the way it is supposed to be seen.

This is like the way it sounded different to me.

Like there were times when it felt silent at home, but in the theater, it felt like, oh no, there's like so much sound happening.

But on the other hand, absolutely not the way it's meant to be seen.

Nine hours in one day and nine hours the next day.

Just absolutely.

Right.

The way it's meant to be seen is 18 hours in one day.

It is the parts that are great, but I will say this as just a follow-on comment from the season two episode, as a reward to people who liked that episode and just want a little bit more.

The Dougie Jones plot in Twin Peaks The Return, it never occurred to me anytime I saw it before this how true it is to the spirit of all the plot lines people hate in season two.

It is the most little Nikki.

It is the most Nadine, the superpowers, who thinks she's back in high school.

It is the most, like, it is just like all of those, like Ben thinks he's in the Civil War, all of those things.

Dougie Jones is like, let's do a version of the, I don't think this is intentional necessarily, but it's like, let's do a version of this, of those kind of dopey plots.

It's cantobite.

It's like Ryan Johnson's saying, we can't ignore the prequels.

Yes.

There has to be something that is on the same continuum as the energy of the prequels.

Yeah.

Like my favorite move from that being that.

What can we do that kind of nods to the inappropriate stereotypes, but doesn't actually do anything wrong?

So let's have like a little drunken leprechaun in the casino.

This is the one thing we can do that's a little bit like a Jar Jar kind of move.

We're allowed to make fun of the Irish, right?

Ben Hosley kind of rattling.

Yeah.

I think approval.

Yeah.

All right.

Anyway, end of that.

Can I speak to Tom Hanks's streak of $100 million grocery?

Yes.

And let's just call out the reason Connor is on this episode is over the last couple of years, Connor, you started listening to the podcast again.

And then you'll text me at Aaron Times and say, if you ever do this, or I'd love to come on to talk about this type of movie.

And you did a while ago, just pin for me, I'd love to come on and talk about Hanks.

So just let me know the next time you have a Hanks movie on the schedule.

And this felt like a particularly fascinating one to do.

You are currently wearing a big t-shirt.

Right.

You had your podcast.

Good eyes.

Well, specific eyes.

Good eyes.

Good podcast.

This guy's got good eyes.

And I want to be clarify: when you say I'm wearing a big t-shirt, he doesn't mean I'm wearing like an oversized shirt.

Like, oh, that'd be a good shirt to like go to sleep in.

No, although what it's an XL.

It's an XL.

Okay.

Yeah.

It is a large shirt it's an xl yeah it's a comfort extra large yeah but it is specifically and i love talking about penny marshall on the pod uh uh penny marshall is big that's what the shirt is yeah that's what um but uh now

do we count that thing you do which interrupts this run no that's the one qualifier it has to be leading role so if you take that out the run is from gump to cast me if you can there's one bump

uh if you could it can go even longer all the way to league of their Their Own.

Yeah.

But there's Philadelphia only made 77 domestic.

Yeah.

But if you go

give me the streak from, because what?

League of their own.

I'll give it from League of Their Own.

That's 91.

92.

92.

Okay.

Give me the.

90 Marshall's League of Their Own.

Yes.

I will say.

We'll have you all talk about it.

League of Their Own, Sleepless in Seattle.

100, 100.

Philadelphia makes 77.

Forest Gump, obviously a colossal hit.

200 Plus.

One of the biggest hits on the world.

Apollo 13, a gigantic hit.

Toy Story, a big hit.

That thing you do, we don't count, I guess.

Saving Briarion, a colossal hit.

Big highest grossing film of this year.

You've got Mail, a very solid hit.

Toy Story 2, master the movie.

Green Mile, for a movie that long and difficult, made a lot of money.

Made 130?

That's right.

Castaway, smuggling

hit.

Road to Perdition.

I will say, if I'm, you know, the seismologist looking for the earthquake and the, you know, that's where you start to be like

101.

104.

But was even like, oh my God, for a dark movie like that.

A murderer in July.

July.

It did all right.

In an austere period.

2002, Catch Me If You Can, obviously, you know, big hit back to, and then Lady Killers and Terminal in 2004 is where he crashes into the wall doing broad comedy for great directors.

In one year, he has two movies in a row.

Because even when this bombed, I remember people being like, yeah, but he's got a Spielberg comedy coming this summer.

He's going to rebound really quick.

And when Terminal ends up at 70, people were like, is Hank's cooked?

And I'll confess, as we're looking through those numbers, there's something we're not even accounting for, which is when I went to see Castaway in the theater, I didn't buy a ticket for Castaway.

I bought a ticket for a different movie and then went into Castaway because I was still feeling a little too salty.

So you're saying that Castaway's box office is low.

The numbers are

at least one

dollar.

Do you remember what you bought a ticket for instead?

I don't remember.

What else would have been out at that time, Griffin?

Well,

let me do this math, but just for listeners who don't know, the great Connor Atliff your podcast Dead Eyes was about the fact that coming out of drama school you got a big job uh one episode one scene role in band of brothers an episode to redirected by Tom Hanks you were cast the role was yours the day before they call you and say you need to meet with Tom They need to re-audition, essentially.

Yeah, I had already signed the contracts.

They had cut my hair.

It was ready to go.

We were ready to film.

He's having second thoughts.

Love that we're making you revisit this yet again.

I don't mind because Griffin's saying most of it.

So I'm not.

I'm not doing it it really quickly.

Yeah.

And

they ended up recasting your role.

You hardly audition.

It doesn't go well.

The explanation you hear from your representation is Tom thinks you have dead eyes.

Before I did the re-audition, I was told that.

So I went into the audition with like, holy shit, what do I do with this part that doesn't have a lot of dialogue, doesn't have a lot of opportunity to show off your emotional range.

You lose the part.

It's an albatross around your neck for many years.

It defines a lot of your sense of self and your relationship to your career and the idea of pursuing a life in the arts and all of these things.

But the thing you always talk about on the podcast, which is great and people should listen to if they haven't already, is that like...

And if you have apologies for all of this recapping, go ahead and hit that button that just moves you ahead 40 seconds.

We call it the ad break button.

Yeah.

That he should play the music under this part.

Was possibly your favorite actor.

At the time.

He's absolutely one of my favorite actors of all time.

And what was so damaging about it was not just that you were fired from a big job, but that it was by someone who was one of your personal heroes, and that it was also at the peak of Tom Hanks is undeniably America's favorite person.

He's the nicest guy in the world.

We all love him.

And this guy ruined your life.

And so

would Castaway have been the first Hanks movie that came out post-firing?

Well, when I got fired, Green Mile had just been released in England.

And that was one of the things about the day I got fired walking around London, seeing seeing this giant

police man.

I mean, he's a prison.

This Drew Scott.

He's just

an angelic, a beautiful portrait of a good man.

Glowing.

A movie that listeners get mad when I diss it.

Yeah.

But I think it's a very bad movie.

Yeah, maybe give that one a watch again.

I love it.

Yeah.

I will, here's a little trivia cue I have for you guys.

Read this sort of like Hanks, dominant figure of the 90s, right?

As we just sort of illustrated.

Post the lady killers.

It's not like Tom Hanks has ever left our life.

We love him.

We can do hit indie podcasts about him and we can have him get COVID to prove the seriousness of a pandemic.

Yeah.

And many other things.

But how many movies has Tom Hanks made live action?

Live action.

I'm going to cut out Polar Express and the toy stories and all that because you know those did.

Okay.

That made over 100 million domestic.

Domestic?

Okay.

So the first two Robert Langdons.

Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.

Because Da Vinci Code is definitely seen as a Hanks is strategizing how to have a surefire surefire hit.

Right.

What's this sort of more middle-aged starring role?

But that is very much, I think, a post-Ladykiller's terminal move of he needs to attach himself to IP and something that could be a huge.

DaVinci Code is a huge hit.

Angels and Demons is a very mild hit.

Right.

Inferno flops.

We're not even talking about it.

Captain Phillips did make $100.

It made $107 million.

Obviously, wonderful performance.

Sully makes $100.

Sully made $125 million.

Not only are you getting this, you're getting them in order, correct?

David, David, did you ever watch my crash cut of Sully that that i gave you last year yes i loved it thank you

and is there one more

one more there's one more there's one post and it's not a starring role elvis oh yeah there we go which he he noticed something about the fair singer elvis presley what was it his wife

santa claus what did you say what else

you'll sing here comes santa claus um a performance where the seeds are being planted in the lady killer.

I'm also going to put it out there.

I don't want to talk any more about Elvis on this episode because

I regret to inform you that's impossible.

No, I don't want to talk about it.

I won't participate.

I'm going to remove myself from the conversation.

You'll recuse yourself from the Elvis tangent.

Because I will say that I'll put it out there.

If Lerman ever wins one of the, I have put my name on the, that's one I think you want to frequently.

I want to do the Elvis episode because I have a lot to do.

Oh, I want to do

so if, you next March Man.

What's just interesting about looking at his career as I'm looking at it right now is it's like he still makes these kind of grown-up dramas that do pretty good, like Charlie Wilson's War did pretty good.

Bridge of Spies, Bridge of Spies did quite good.

Kind of grown-up triples.

Another one that did like, you know, the Post made 80 domestic, 180 worlds.

His zone kind of becomes more, he can take a grown-up drama to 60 to 80, which very few other people can.

A man called Otto made like a fair amount of money not that long ago, despite being not very good and about a man called Otto.

Like it's like in Bridge of Spies, you're like, this is set during the Berlin, you know, wall.

Like,

you're like, oh, and Man Caller, what's it about?

It's like, I don't know, there's a fuck called Otto.

It's a grim, dark.

It's quite a dark comedy.

That is a movie that really, you see the star power.

The star power is able.

Anyone else in that movie, it does not make that money.

Like Tom Hanks getting a man called Otto to 65 is arguably more impressive than Hanks at his heat getting Apollo 13.

That's the last time Hanks made a movie that was big in theaters, I will say, because

since then and sort of around then.

Two Wes Andersons.

Well, beyond that, I just want to point out

he's made some streaming movies.

Greyhound, Pinocchio.

News of the World was sort of like, that's a pretty good movie, but that was sort of a pandemic-y movie.

It was Finch.

Because his things were in this sort of like mid-tier grown-up movie zone.

With budgets, but I think Sony had both Finch and Green a Greyhound.

And like the moment the pandemic started, Sony sold both of them.

Apple.

He was like one of the first guys where his movies went straight to streaming rather than theaters holding.

And Greyhound is pretty good.

Those are

Greyhound and Finch are both movies.

I'd love to see in a theater.

I really want to see.

I keep waiting for there to be a moment when some of the pandemic streamies in particular get even the slightest of, I think it'd be a great film festival for some theater to do like like connor i think

the curated the streamies the streamy era but yes as you said those two movies got sold straight to apple plus greyhound is still i think their most popular movie ever making a sequel yeah pinocytic they decide is going to stream before it starts filming and then it turned out horribly news of the world was like a same-day vod thing that's a good movie pinocchio robert zomencus is

probably the worst film he's ever been on it's a tough movie and since then he's done two wes anderson movies uh which he's excellent in both he's got one great scene in Freaky Tales, a movie I'm the only person who talks about.

Freaky Tales, I ordered it sight unseen because there was a point when I was making Dead Eyes before we got to spoiler, spoiler for the most recent episode of Dead Eyes,

before I got to Tom Hanks and resolved everything with him.

We are now on good terms.

I want to say that.

You've talked to Tom Hanks.

We have.

We have had multiple interactions.

He has been very good to me.

Have you interacted with him much since you interviewed him?

Yes, yes.

What do you just text him?

in a no no i don't take it i have his email but i do not take advantage of that i i emailed him once when the episode came out but i've he put me in his audiobook oh that's um his audiobook which um he wrote a novel called the making of another major motion picture masterpiece in it is about the fictional making of a marvel style superhero movie and about all the things that go on in movieset there is an actor in that novel who gets fired and you voice the actor i voiced the actor who i voiced the actor who replaces the fired actor and they specifically says that the fired actor has dark eyes.

So that his novel is very much, I feel, in conversation in some small way with my podcast.

Yeah.

Sorry.

What

the email you exchanged you had with him after the episode was released.

I just want to circle back to that.

Yes, we can.

Absolutely.

But Freaky Tale, like I got into details of the Anna Bowden, Ryan Fleck that I like and it has

been roundly ignored and Lionsgate Limited put out a special VHS edition of the 4K.

It's on my two watch lists.

I like it quite a bit.

Hanks kills one scene in it.

And his casting is really interesting the way they use him.

It's really fun.

But when I was doing the podcast, I decided I was going to own every Tom Hanks thing on Blu-ray or on whatever format, the best format I could get them on.

Don't got to explain it to me.

It's how I interact with this podcast.

And I decided, well, this is a good news.

I'm investing in, like, I think I'm going to get to Tom Hanks.

It was my way of sort of manifesting.

I was gradually collecting all of his work.

and i have it on this little shelf in front of my desk i also started doing it with funko pops because i realized you have all the toms so many tom hank like a crazy number of tom hanks funko pops and variants he's kind of the anti-griffin newman in that sense i

i did this because i thought i was gonna have the podcast would go on for 10 years before i got to him and i had this vision of touring with live episodes where the funko pops would be like the set yes but instead i just have this insane wall in my apartment it is just one of the walls of your house it's just like five different forest gumps yeah uh also parts characters that don't have a tom hanks funko but he played walt disney so i have the wall

so i started expanding it to that but anyway freaky tales wait can i pitch something yeah bring the show back and then make it about getting rid of the funko pops i don't want to get rid of the funko yeah see this is that kind of like buzz kind of banana i sort of thought i i

think this is a weird stance of faith stop buying toys if i find out if i find out i'm sick or something and i have a certain amount of time left i will definitely do that show

yeah um well i hope then that it doesn't come back soon oh that's nice um i would love it to come back too but i bought freaky tales sight unseen um and i really enjoyed it yeah i like it a lot and i do think to bring it back to lady killers his performance in lady killers is part of this little

corner of tom hanks his uh filmography that i think of as weird hanks i agree with you and it might be the first i think it's kind of the first.

That's what is looking at it.

I'm like, oh, his career does start to change here.

It is.

Or he seems more interested in taking risks.

I feel like what you're talking about, which is what I found really interesting about this era of Hanks We're In, right?

Which is he did some really smart, like,

oh, Sully, Captain Phillips, who are real life figures.

Yeah, he'll still play in every man.

Like he was doing all the forms of transportation and the most heroic person involved in a mishap.

So like, who's the boat guy?

Submarine, plane, Captain Phillips, I guess what is it?

Polar Express.

He got the train.

Honestly, as someone who's now seen the movie a billion times, because of my daughter, he's malevolent in almost every form.

Even a Santa Claus.

It's a very strange performance.

I wanted to show here is the other film he made.

Oh, sure.

Remember here?

Yeah.

Okay.

Carry on.

Carry on.

I had a Griffin and I had a long conversation on a ferry boat.

Right after he watched Here, which I liked here more than you guys did.

Yeah, I struggled.

I promised a lot of close people in my life that they were going to hate here as much as I did, and then had to listen to you and Alex Ross Perry and several others be like, you're wrong.

Here is good.

I don't know if I said it was good.

I just felt like by the end of it, it had won me over on an emotional level.

It's certainly trying to do that.

I'll say I'm really considering importing that Italian 4K.

They're not going to do anything in the US.

There's a Blu-ray only.

And I'm just like,

am I really giving it a fair reconsideration if I'm not watching it with full pixels?

Yeah, you got to see all the case.

I got to see the the cakes.

To me, the apex of Weird Hanks is Cloud Atlas because that is just both a movie he talks about so fondly.

I love it.

Me too.

And a movie where he's getting to people.

Six weird characters.

Nothing but big swings.

The whole movie.

One of the swing characters is sort of a classic Hanksy guy, the guy with Halle Berry.

Everyone else is Hanks being like, let me do this.

Let me do that.

And this, Lady Killers feels like him beginning to open that tool.

It's part of

poke around.

If I were to consider like tom hanks's career like a map of a theme park like a like a disney world style map sure the kind of language i get you know her on this podcast the weird the weird hanks area the mayor of that area is david s pumpkins like he rules over all of the uh colonel tom parker and this is great okay so here's here's the point i want to make right you know what david s pumpkins still holds up Yeah, it's still fun.

I watch it like every few months.

The Halloween special?

That I have yet to check out.

I think, here's what I think.

I think the Halloween special is a little underrated.

Sure, it's certainly not overrated.

Nobody rated.

It's really slammed, and I think it's a little funny.

It's much like my take on the lady killers, where I'm like, I'm not going to argue this is a masterpiece.

To me, I think it's a little funny.

It's crucial that there is a sort of not very good sequel within the show to David S.

Pumpkins and a Halloween special no one remembers.

That's part of being a one-hit one.

I was going to say,

I think the second sketch was bad and was a mistake.

It was definitely a mistake.

But don't you think that's good?

It makes David S.

Pumpkins all the more special because you're like, right, this isn't something that gets to recur.

They tried and it failed.

I think they waited so long to do the second one.

I don't even remember the second one.

I don't, like, what even happens in it?

What is that?

I think New York City is having like negative emotions, and there's like this river of pink slime under the city, and David S.

Pumpkins has to deal with it.

And they let

Rick Moranis be Saved D.

Pumpkins, his brother.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like it's a jump scare attraction.

I'm trying to remember what the structure is.

I remember it was in the fucking, what's his name?

It was

Jack Harlow was the last.

That's correct.

And he fucks it up.

He's playing the Beck Bennett sort of reaction.

Yeah, and he's, but the, the joke is that he's into it or something.

Like they, they change the, because Beck Bennett is vital to David S.

Pumpkins.

Yes.

Like, I am so in the weeds with David S.

Pumpkins is the best line in David S.

Pumpkins.

Either that or Leslie Jones saying, I'm crazy, long beat for David S.

Pumpkin.

Long wait.

But Beck Bennett's got Swiss watch timing in that thing, which is so key to making it work.

And Jack Harlow continues to be offbeat.

Well, that's interesting because you think of early Hanks SNL, and he's the king of guest recurring sketches because you have Mr.

Short-Term Memory, you have him and Lovitz as the two guys who like the creeps.

And these things were Conan O'Brien written sketches.

They were sort of built to recur.

And then you have these classic late period Tom Hanks

Celebrity Jeopardy, Black Jeopardy.

And they are not built to repeat.

So like when they come back, they tried, yeah.

They tried, but they brought that character back on the SCP 60th, and they did the same beat, and it didn't get laughed.

And I'm like, my guy, you're copying the same exact dialogue.

People know the button.

They're trying to get Conan to come in and write the second, the recurring one.

It's even more fascinating because that was just a sketch they had that they would throw at everybody and everyone was like, eh, maybe.

And then remember, like Hank said, like that he was like, Chris Hemsworth feels like a David S.

Pumpkins.

Like, I don't know if I should do this.

Yeah.

Anyway, they also talk about that, like, he didn't have the take on the character until air, that he didn't have the voice and he didn't do the pointing.

Do a whole episode of Dead Eyes talking to Bobby Moynihan.

That if you want to go deep into the weeds on how it happened, it's right there, along with the oral history of David S.

Pumpkins, which you can find online.

He kept being like, I'll figure it out.

I don't have it yet.

And then it's just the one moment it matters.

His own thing.

It's still funny.

It's still funny.

It's still funny.

And the roots of pumpkins can be found in his performance in Lady Killers, I think, in terms of that theory.

I want to put out.

This is the theory I want to put.

I think he's good in this movie.

David,

this episode of Blank Check with Griffin David, a podcast about philographies, is brought to you by Booking.com.

Booking.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what I was about to say.

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God, I'm trying to think of anyone in my life, perhaps even in this room.

Ben, who's like, what's an example of someone I know who maybe has a very particular set of demands?

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

There's one other person in the room.

My this is so rude.

I sleep easy.

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

No, that's a that's a an example of a fussy person.

Look, people have different demands.

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

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You got air conditioning.

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

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

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

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

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

You do.

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As long as I got a good bathroom mirror 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 studio?

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 and what's going to be.

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

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

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Yeah.

This is the theory I want to put out.

In the way he talked to you on Deadeyes, right?

Especially about his early career and him being like a summer theater festival Shakespeare guy, you know, a guy who had ambitions, but it does seem like he is still kind of surprised he became as big of a star as he did, right?

That at some point he got slotted into sort of like inoffensive leading man territory in a way that got him sitcom guest roles and then TV movies and bosom buddies and all this sort of stuff.

You know, he was sort of like, I was a guy at the moment.

It kind of made sense.

And then he just keeps evolving into becoming like America's truest North star, right?

And I do not get the sense that he's a guy who feels imprisoned by what the persona of Tom Hanks became.

Everyone, I know whoever has worked with him, crew and cast alike, is like, that guy loves being Tom Hanks.

Like not in a self-centered way, but I have rarely see someone less burdened with their public reputation than Tom Hanks, who is happy to be Tom Hanks all the time.

And yet, I do think you sense in him a little bit in the 90s.

where it's like, huh, I'm a victim of my own success.

I can't quite get out of this lane.

In the sense that like, I wanted to be an actor and now I'm a little restricted in what I could do as an actor.

Like, what is his riskiest 90s performance?

Let's exclude Bonfire of the Vanities or whatever, like very early 90s.

League of Their Own.

It's like, it was him playing bad.

League of Their Own is my all-time favorite Tom Hanks performance.

It's the time capsule one because it has all of the ambition and the striving of him doing something different, but it also has everything that's great about classic Splash Hanks.

Agreed.

Because

one of my frustrations as a fan of Tom Hanks is how infrequent David's peeing.

All right.

You'll hear this.

He's going to make his own splish splash

in the toilet.

Oh my gosh.

And really project so he can hear while he's in the bathroom.

Or should this be just for us?

Maybe it's just for us.

Maybe this is.

Maybe let's let him catch up.

And let's keep referencing back to this, but not explaining what was said.

Connor, make your point.

Yeah.

So, um,

basically, uh,

David Sims, No, David, yeah, David Sims.

David S.

Sims.

Simpscus.

David S.

Connor's got to make his point before he flushes the toilet.

So

I think Tom Hanks, I'm going to have a lot of Hanks takes in this episode, but

one of the things is in his own natural voice.

Yeah.

Fuck.

I didn't make it.

He's going to feel completely caught up.

David, great news.

Connor waited for you to be able to.

Yeah, I wanted to, I didn't want to.

Please go ahead.

Leave you out of here.

He thought it'd be rude to keep talking.

Tom Hanks, in his own natural speaking voice, especially yelling, is one of like there's

there's no there might be some who are his match, but there's no one better at yelling at another person in a movie.

That yelling is 90% of Woody the cowboy.

The first thing that I'm gonna go out so long

are a toy.

Like that's all that stuff.

Yeah.

No one else is as good.

It really is.

And the first thing I remember him doing in a movie that really had an impression on me was the I am not a fish in Splash, where he's fully naked, cupping his genitals.

And I was just like, This guy is putting it all out there.

He doesn't put it all out there, though.

And I will call his cowardice out.

He's never turned on.

I don't think so.

I mean, I've not checked every nook and you haven't seen Freaky Tales.

No, I don't know.

Maybe he hangs dung in Freaky Tales.

You know, when I said he's got a really interesting small part, it's just him standing there naked.

Yeah.

60-something time.

How old is Tom Hanks?

He's the upper 60s.

69 years old.

Nice.

Yeah, brother.

Just turned 69.

But League of Their Own is that perfect thing.

There's no crying in bed.

There's no crying in baseball.

It has that tone,

it has that timper.

There's that little scratch in it, whatever.

He's getting mad.

And it's, and we are deprived of that in a lot of

his post-90s work or mid-90s and on.

He's doing a dialect or he's doing a different kind of voice.

Woody is one of the rare things where you hear that Hank's voice.

It's part of the juice of the Toy Story franchise.

It becomes the one outlet for kind of a classic Hanks that's frozen in time because it's a different physical representation, but he can still give it that energy vocally.

Here's kind of my master take I want to throw out, right?

Big is the moment that like completely mints him as a star.

He gets the Oscar nomination.

And then infamously, he kind of like missed steps for the next handful of years after Big.

He can't quite find what he's supposed to be doing.

He stays in the big lane of like doing kind of like comedy dramedy.

Big is a weird example of Turner and Hooch, Joe versus the Volcano.

A studio comedy that gets an acting nomination.

So it's sort of like, okay, so I'm a more serious comedy star.

But right, Punchline the Burbs, Turner and Hooch, Joe versus the Volcano, Bonfire the Vanities.

Bonfire the Vanities is the, is the nadir because he's horribly miscast.

I've, and like,

there's no bonfire in vanities.

I mean, it is.

Put out that fire.

You read the book and you're just like, how on earth?

Like, they should swap him and Willis.

Yes.

Is I guess the simplest solution because Willis is also kind of Miss Castle, although he actually, I kind of like by the time they realized that, they'd already done that one opening shot.

And they're like with the plan.

With the opening.

And so, right, League of Their Own, which is two years later, is him hitting a reset button, taking a supporting role.

And I think in those years, people were like, sort of, does he not get what he's good at?

Right?

League of Their Own was this ingenious, like, isn't the audience going to reject you?

They're starting the movie playing a son of a bitch.

Didn't this just backfire and bonfire the vanities?

But he's really smart of like the motor that movie needs is here's Tom Hanks having fun, playing washed out, playing angry, playing an asshole.

But you see the Tom Hanks goodness in him, which gives you the arc over the course of the movie of we want to see this guy get his act together, right?

Also, there's a shift I'll point out, and I don't know where you mark this exactly, but if you were to watch just go through his filmography, the first, let's say, act one of his film career is very horny.

Horny, horny Hanks.

No, you're not wrong.

80s Hanks is pretty horny.

80s bachelor party.

So horny.

Volunteers.

Yeah.

I mean, Dragnet, he's all over Ackroydna thing.

Yeah, I remember a shot from Volunteers.

I remember a shot from Volunteers where he's like having sex with someone in like the dorm room and it's on simulation.

just like yeah there's just so much stuff that you don't if you start watching from like big on

you don't find it no much no because he becomes like america's old oak tree right yeah

george washington of cinema and then uh the other thing is you're calling out dialects but i'd argue like 90s early 2000s he's basically always staying within 10 degrees of his home bass voice, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Like it feels like there's this conscious thing of like, I can do a little bit of a dialect, but if I try to sound less like Tom Hanks, the audience is going to reject it.

And you'd see him do talk show interviews or you'd see SNL, which I'd argue is actually the starting point of Weird Hanks, where like once a year, once every other year, he comes on.

He's a great host.

People are like, man, he's so game.

He can play all these different characters.

And then people in the movies are like, but don't get too far away from that.

I'm going to open the dossier.

Then catch me if you can.

He's doing a big swing Boston accent.

And people are sort of like, huh, that leads to Lady Killer's Terminal.

And as you said, Polar Express, which is a big hit, but all three of those movies are 2004.

Polar Express is him trying to do weird hanks in a movie.

Sure, sort of.

I mean, sort of.

It's part of why the performances don't work.

I mean, the hobo especially and stuff like that.

What's up?

I'm going to open the dossier.

And then from that point on, it's this balance between him finding sturdy adult fare and

opportunities for weird hanks, but it does feel like when he's doing shit like Saving Mr.

Banks.

He's a little, he's phoning it in in something like Saving mr banks i think he's not bad in it and that's another one that makes like 80 or 90 or whatever that's him like putting the twinkle on autopilot yes taking a nap it it is him feeling still i got to represent some idea of what tom hanks is i would argue in the last five or ten years he's like i fully do not give a shit anymore yeah and he doesn't do any calculation about like is it beneath me to do one scene in freaky tales the west parts aren't as big as you would imagine he loves doing the west parts and like when i interviewed wes anderson it was so obvious.

I think I said this, like, how proud Wes is that Hanks came to set.

And Wes is like, look, this is how we do it here.

There's no trailers.

We all live in the hotel.

We all eat dinner together.

Everyone is on set at all times.

And Hanks was like, this rocks.

I wish everything was like this.

And apparently can just sit down in a chair and go like this.

Like, just go to sleep.

But he's so good in those movies.

I still think.

He's concerned with boomer representation.

Like here, that's a boomer movie.

Greyhound, boomer.

Like, he's still like out there being like, don't worry, the boomers have their man on screen.

When he's the guy.

When he's the guy.

When he's trying to mount a movie under his name, but I feel an energy from him showing up for literally one scene in Phoenician.

Such a great scene.

And feeling so free.

The Phoenician thing strikes me definitely also as him just being like, I really enjoyed City.

Like, I like going

that vacation.

Also, I want to play.

I just want to act.

I want to not feel burdened by my reputation.

I I am so excited at the possibility that he might be part of the ensemble in all future Western vibe.

And eventually, like, we'll get our Steve Zizu.

We'll get our Wes will do a movie.

It'll be like, let's give Hanks a really easy.

Like Del Toro, where it's like, Wes keeps seeing him and is like, I keep thinking of you as like Aristotle on assist.

And Del Toro apparently was just like, I could do that.

And Western, like, hold that thought.

The last thing I'll say.

is that

I had a thing, and this is something I never, I always had it in my back pocket as like, oh, we could do a Dead Eyes episode that'll sort of explore this, but I never really talked about it because we never got around to it.

And it is that the Lady Killers, see, I'm tying it back in here.

The Lady Killers lands in an era where I had this observation about the movies that Tom Hanks was doing and why he was doing them.

And it was frustrating to me.

Connor take, and it's the main reason I wanted to make sure you're on this episode because this is a great example of it.

Well, the pre-part of the take is I always felt like the best Tom Hanks movie that Tom Hanks never made was The Truman Show.

Sure.

Because I always felt like Jim Carrey was too weird to be playing, and the way he plays it is like a weird guy.

And I'm like, that movie I think makes more sense to me if it's, it's like the ultimate Tom Hanks movie.

I'm just a normal guy.

And then I find out this neighborhood is a TV show as opposed to like, hi, I'm the guy who lives in the neighborhood and it's a TV show.

But I say that as that.

I always wished that was a Tom Hanks movie.

I started looking at this period of movies where Tom Hanks would show up in the movie after the one that would have been the slam dunk.

Meaning he sees Shaw Shank Redemption.

He's like, I gotta, I gotta do a film like that.

What's that guy's next movie?

What's Frank Dariban's next movie?

I want to star in it.

It's the Green Mile.

Everyone's less favorite of the two.

But so still a good movie, but like not Shaw Shank Redemption.

And you're like, Hanks could have played Andy Dufrane.

Like that was too risky a move for his stardom.

Then you have

American Beauty, American Beauty,

which I maintain, even before all of the Kevin Spacey news,

I maintain that that movie is far more subversive if it was Tom Hanks playing that role.

I think the whole movie works better because Kevin Spacey, even just his cinematic history, you're like, if he's like cutting off Gwyneth Paltrow's head, he's a good guy.

Like the bar is so low for.

Spacey was always a slime ball.

That was his thing.

Where's

Tom Hanks playing that role?

I feel like would be like, oh my God, he's like really going through this midlife crisis.

If it's in American Beauty, that movie would still have some juice.

Tom Hanks jerking off in the shower, which is the start of American Beauty, would actually sort of throw audiences out of their seats.

And when I picture the comedy, but it's actually not possible that movie couldn't be made.

I'm serious.

It would be too shocking.

Even a dream worker.

It would have been, I think it would have been a great movie, and the ending would have made sense.

You wouldn't have him being like, I don't, this isn't who I am.

This isn't who I am.

The decency of that last scene and the tragedy of that movie would have felt like I'd still

disagree with you.

I'd still be crying about that movie if that was a Tom Hanks movie.

But then he shows up for the next Sam Mendy's film, Road to British.

Which he's good in.

I think it's good in.

But when I think of what the Tom Hanks American Beauty would have been, I would have been like, that would have been a movie that actually said something.

Whereas when you cast America's favorite like sociopath as the main guy, you're kind of like,

okay.

Right.

I hear you.

I hear you.

And then you have George Clooney doing Oh, Brother, or Aren't Thou, kind of making the Cohen brothers like movie stars can star in Cohen Brother movies.

It has to be the thing that Hanks is looking at that gives him the security.

Why can't I do that?

I can do that.

And then you have this movie that has like T-Bone Burnett infused soundtrack.

We're going like Americana.

It is the closest cousin to O-Brother in their filmography.

And you could always feel this thing of like someone does something and then Tom Hanks will be like, I want to be in that next person's thing.

And it always ends up being a little bit like, it's not quite the thing.

And what is the movie that the Cohens make right after Lady Killers?

Three years later, but their immediate following film.

No Country for Old Men.

Correct.

Like,

this is the other part of your argument I like is sometimes he's a little early.

Right.

He, he's thought of the person to collaborate with, but he's picked the wrong thing.

They're at the wrong point.

Yeah.

Because any, like, he's kind of primarily a filmmaker first actor.

I weirdly can imagine Tom Hanks in any of those three roles in No Country for Old Men.

Like, there's a version of that movie.

I don't know if which of those is the best.

And it's hard to picture anything in that movie changing in such a drastic way and not feeling like a diminishment, but it is, there is part of you that has to feel like, oh, I do this movie.

And then their next one is the one that, like.

And if they announced tomorrow that the Coens were reuniting and making a neo-Western and Tom Hanks was one of the three leads, I'd be hooting and hollering.

If the implication was that Hanks was going to be in a Coen's movie in that mode at his current age, that's the other thing is he's got just like so much innate gravitas now that he can throw out.

The Lady Killers, of course, is an ealing comedy directed by Ealing legend Alexander McKendrick.

Have you guys seen The Lady Killers 1955?

I, in fact, re-watched it last night.

And how'd you find it?

I like it a lot.

It's not my favorite ealing comedy.

Me neither.

But

it's totally good.

Now, both of you.

And it has Alec Guinness doing this shit, you know, better than anyone can do it.

Alecinus, who is one of the sort of 10 guys I think, can make the argument for the greatest screen actor who ever lived.

No offense to Tom Hanks, who I like a lot.

Well, the thing that's impressive with Alec Guinness was how versatile and chameleonic he was, while also being able to do a really incredible home-based performance.

Right.

And also, he could sword fight like nobody else.

He could do everything.

Take that to Arth Vayner.

Yeah.

I only saw the original Lady Killers.

David's doing some lightsaber films.

I'm doing Obi-Wan's very forced lightsaber stuff.

I only saw the original lady killers last week and i watched it in preparation for this episode do you like the ealing comedies you have a base on the ealing comedies i don't know i watched a lot of those and i moved to england both have more of a relationship to british culture than i do so i i'm kind of looking to you for a little bit of understanding on the original i haven't seen i don't know if i've even seen any other ealing comedies you ever see

i also i lived in england for a while i went to school in england i didn't see any of the carry-on films and i didn't see any of the ealing comedies the carry-on films is one of those things where it's like watch carry-on camping or something and like you're you're fine.

The rest of them, the exact.

It's an easy week.

It's just 47 movies tonight.

What is Carry-On?

They're the epitome of like old-fashioned British comedy, which is basically like, you know, there's a bunch of situations happening.

I want to light the fire.

It's always like a lot of like, oh, you know, like, and like someone's top flies off and everyone's like, oh.

But they were also, they were like the early British equivalent of like the Friedberg Seltzer, like date movie, epic movie, where you're like, three of these are coming out.

How do they turn them out so quickly?

You know, and there's a posh guy who goes like, eh, you know, it's just, it's the epitome of like corny 40s

i want to light the fire for the blankies on the patreon this sounds like a great patreon yeah it only takes all of all of the carry-on every year for decades there'd be like three of them and they were like carry-on receptionist

carry-on shoe salesman

carry-on ancient groves speak to the sort of british tradition where uh uh

their dedication to like a ceremony is that if like you accidentally make something like a carry-on movie, then you have to keep making it has to take the piss out of every single thing before the series can be retired.

So the Ealing comedies, Ben, just to

give context for a little bit.

Who's the sophisticated counterpoint?

It's post-war, there's Ealing Studios, which Ealing is a neighborhood in West London, like that produces a lot of films that I really think epitomize Britain after the war.

This kind of like chipper sort of mordant, like it's they're very sweet, but they're a little dark.

Um, and like whiskey galore, kind hunts and cornets is obviously a famous one.

That's the one where the one I like the best, although I have not seen many of them.

Alecinis plays a bunch of roles.

I highly recommend to anyone, The Lavender Hill Mob, which is an amazing movie, really, really funny with Alec Innis and Alecinis is in a ton of them.

Man in the white suit, Barnacle Bill, The Lady Killer, you know, there's lots of them.

They tend to be, you know, funny, but kind of dark comedies.

And the Cohen brothers,

I let's, what I want to know is what's their relationship to it.

I guess a remake of the Lady Killers had been sort of

at Fox since the mid-90s.

Sorry, sorry, at Disney, since the mid-90s.

Perfect sense as a title to remake.

There is a sort of just like simple log line for this movie.

And especially because I think it is, it is kind of seen as one of the canonical classics in British comedy.

And it has a sort of simple setup of like a bunch of criminals are trying to get one over on this old lady and like she somehow is indestructible.

But it's not as well known here in the States.

I've always been a little bit.

But it's a piece of IP and Disney had it.

They had this.

We got this.

We got the Lady Killers IP.

I guess they bought it in some way.

Robert Harling, who wrote Steela Magnolia, Steela Magnolia.

Steela Magnolia.

Take them.

In 1998, was announced as the writer and director of a touchstone lady killers remake that was going to take the original London setting and bring it to the big, easy Narlands.

And yes, this cup of tea was going to turn into a pot of gumbo

snow gators

they're what

sorry um harling leaves the project and on comes barry sonnenfeld the cohen brothers cinematographer of yore

harling barriers here who had just made wild wild wild west

wild wild west wild wild west had not done very well nonetheless he is prepping men in black too he's also prepping big trouble uh he's the one who brings in the cohen brothers to polish the script because he's their old pal it was a writing assignment they obviously the cohens had an english father he's an american citizen who joined the army and like

but he was born in britain or something like the the edward cohen is the guy and joel and ethan had written together before they never directed a movie together they've been writing together as a writing they've grown up with the ealing comedies and uh they love them.

This is not a situation like True Grit coming up where they're like, fuck that movie.

They have plenty of reverence for the lady killers.

Yes.

But also, as we've said before, post-Big Lebowski, which was really like a kind of knockdown moment for them, they start taking four higher writing gigs in a way they hadn't before and being like, you know what?

Sure, we'll polish a script.

We'll do a pass.

We'll like on assignment adapt your material.

This was straight up just a gig for them.

Now, can I jump in for a a second?

Because this is not in the dossier, but I cross-referenced with JJ, my friend Barry Josephson, producer of The Tick and Disenchanted.

But end of this.

He was Barry Sonnenfeld's producing partner.

I think it's a little bit more of a title than when I talked to him about it.

He was not a very hands-on producer on this, but the

other would have been had Barry directed it, one assumed.

Exactly.

So he was developing it with Barry Sonnenfeld for a very long time.

He teams up.

This is the first time that they teamed up as DJ Barry.

So he had been the head of production, I think, at Columbia Pictures.

And then after Men in Black is delivered, he's like, this guy is going to be on such a hot streak.

I'm leaving my position and going into business with him as a producer.

And then they proceed to make three shitty movies like that.

Hot Rod West, Big Trouble, and I guess David listened.

So the wheels are already kind of coming off the wagon at this point.

Also, do the pilot of the War Burton tick show together.

The thing that Barry told me that is not on the record anywhere, but he said I'm allowed allowed to share here

was that the Sonnenfeld

Cohen's scripted Lady Killers was meant to be a vehicle for Nicholas Cage.

I think I might have said this in the Raising Arizona episode.

You can see that.

That makes sense.

He drops out of it, I want to say, maybe to do adaptation.

I mean, it's sort of the Nicolas Cage era of like him doing like Family Man and Weather Man, like these sort of like comedy.

I can see that he would seek this out.

But Nicolas Cage is a star who, even though he had become a little broad

realizing he did a lot of movies about men he loves men yeah he was kind of the original manosphere right yeah i'm sorry the manosphere um

but he makes sense as a guy who had become such a big star and yet being weird was part of his brand and if he had shown up with weird teeth and weird facial hair doing a voice in this movie people wouldn't have been like absolutely not my Nick Cage, right?

Cage drops out for some other project.

I think it was adaptation.

And when that that happens, Sonnenfeld's like, I really just wanted to do it with Cage.

If he's not doing it, I'm not interested.

And that's when the Cohens get the call-up.

The way the Cohens described adapting the film, they say it was fun to desecrate it, essentially.

This is Joel.

Frankly, the idea of despoiling a work of art kind of appealed to us.

So they're sort of having fun mucking around.

Well, another part of it is they're writing it, assuming they're not going to direct it.

So they're like, who cares?

To a certain degree, this is a film.

It's probably a little bit who cares.

They have the, you know, the original, the lady is a stereotypical old lady.

She's a genteel English lady, right?

And they were like, we want the lady to be more of like a kind of rock of faith type, like more of a sort of tough old broad, right?

And so they have this idea of the sort of Southern Baptist black woman.

And

this,

you know, similar to Intolerable Cruelty, which we just discussed, starts as a writing job.

So yes, maybe their passion for it is not not as initially intense as some of their projects.

Look, I think they liked the idea of doing it.

It doesn't feel like a movie they would have strategically developed from the ground.

Once Barry drops out, they decide they want to do it.

Like, it's not like they got forced into it.

No, no, it was their choice.

But this is that era.

It's the two movies in a row that feel like things that were for higher jobs at bigger studios that could be seen as broader, more commercial plays that they decide to direct themselves.

The third movie in this trilogy that never never comes to pass is their Gambit remake, which they had similarly written on a Spanish.

I think I'm making that.

I think it's Michael Hoffman.

That sounds really good.

Made it with Cameron Diaz and Colin Firth and Alan Rickman is an ultimate movie that doesn't exist, but is a movie that

did make a name for itself out here.

Just to complete both the New Orleans and the Gambit.

Well done.

100 Flaming Crimes.

They claim, and perhaps they're correct, that this is the first IBS movie.

They're kind of proud of how lowbrow the humor is.

Here's my big take.

At a certain point, they're like, we're doing like loser Oceans 11.

We're doing like an Ocean's 11 where everyone's an idiot.

This movie feels to me, it finally hit me last night.

This feels like if the Cohen brothers had directed a Happy Madison movie in this era.

And I think to a lot of people, that sounds like an absolute nightmare.

And it's a cross-section of two things I like that even if I'm like, this is not the best use of anyone's time, I'm kind of happy it exists.

But absolutely, like the amount of shit jokes in this combined with everything else.

Well, especially the fact that the

IBS runner

in the movie.

And it does run.

It does it ever.

J.K.

Simmons' character, to be clear, is the...

It all just builds to a very quick sort of bait and switch gag, which is you think he's having a bowel movement, but he's being killed.

It doesn't actually really impact the heist, which is sort of your expectation is that.

The heist in general is not that important in this movie.

It's funny, actually, though.

You're right, though, because it's like they keep setting it up as like, and here's another ticking bomb, right?

Right.

That's a complication.

And it like goes off twice, but neither time in a way that actually causes problems.

He both has to shit when they're on the riverboat and he needs to shit when he's in the tunnel.

But like, whenever, whenever he needs to use the bathroom, when they're actually in the casino, you feel like, oh, they're going to get caught.

Nothing goes wrong with it.

There's a lot of

the sort of sort of the way that like Lebowski

keeps defying your expectation of how one of these things is supposed to go, like how the way things go wrong will frequently be like, well, that's not the way I expected it would go wrong.

And there's a lot of things like that in this.

They set you up to know how things will go wrong and then they kind of don't happen.

Yeah.

And I think that,

I mean, that's one of the reasons why I think a lot of people initially were not satisfied by the big Lebowski because they're actively sort of defying the thing that we know will satisfy an audience, which is you set something up and then you pay it off.

And I think they're enjoying that.

And I think they also do that in like The Man Who Wasn't There.

There's a lot of like the Cohen brothers like doing that thing, which is like, you think we're going to do this, but that, because they know how to set up a joke.

And I think there's a part of them that likes like, we're going to set up the joke and then tell you a different punchline.

at a different time than you're expecting and you'll never get the thing that you were expecting.

Now, that having been said, when they do that in a drama, I generally, I think people receive it as, oh, it's kind of a profound statement on the unknowability of life, right?

And the lack of control these characters have.

When they do it in a comedy, there is often this response of, so they're just fucking with me.

None of this matters.

You know, I feel like there's this kind of knee jerk that Lebowski got of just like, oh, so they're just like fucking around.

This whole movie is a lark.

that I think then gets filed under people's like, are these guys arrogant?

The Cohens, while they finish their script and decide to take over the director's chairs realize tom hanks is their first choice they approach him um

foghorn leghorn yeah they they he turns out he's just a cartoon foghorn did test though yeah and that's when they realized he was just a cartoon also i believe this was what this was after back in action it was so his box office like

he was poisoned at this point foghorn leghorn in the in the early 2000s hollywood was like we are not in the foghorn leghorn business anymore people forget how much the failure of Looney Tunes back in action at the box office got pinned on Foghorn, which I don't think is fair because he's not.

I say that's not fair to Foghorn.

Yeah.

I'll say, I'll say, I'll say.

So

Hanks obviously is not drawn to We're Remaking the Lady Killers, but loves the Cohens, had never met them, likes their movies,

really likes Raising Arizona, Blood Simple, Farquhar.

And has every reason at this point to trust that this will be a fantastic film.

They have a great track record.

He's never seen the lady killers.

He says he's probably seen Kind Hearts in a Corners, but that's it.

So he doesn't have like a big grounding for the Ealing comedies outside of reputation.

He doesn't watch it.

He doesn't want like Alec Guinness entering his screen.

They do style him fairly similarly.

I mean, they come up with an American-ized Colonel Sanders fied version of it, but the paleness and the red around the eyes and the teeth.

Clearly, the Cohens are latching on to some element of this character looking sickly and like a zombie is part of.

I also think though, I think it was a good impulse.

Sometimes I think like the danger is that you'll accidentally do something that's that's uh stealing without meaning to because you'll just have parallel thinking.

I do think if it would be uh if you would just watch a bunch of scenes, just scenes of the character and put them in a, in a mix with a bunch of other scenes, I don't think you'd be like, oh, those are the those two are the same character in two different movies.

Sure.

He invented a whole backstory for him of like

he's on sabbatical from some university because there was a sexual harassment lawsuit and he's a boy, you know, like Hanks gets to work figuring out who Door is.

I love that the Cohens kind of just let him do that.

And

his first trip to the Cannes Film Festival is with this movie.

And it plays at the Cannes Film Festival after competition.

After it has come out in the United States and flopped.

Yes, because it came out in March in the U.S.

And so it was March or April.

Yeah.

And it wins the jury prize for irma p hal it's a very it's a special award for irma p hal outside of the two acting awards that they it's the tarantino jury the canned film festival ben usually just gives out two acting awards gendered right

and it's just it's two performances male and female they gave a special award created just for this extreme circumstance handed out by Quentin Tarantino to Irma P.

Hall in this movie six weeks after it flopped.

It's another canned triumph for the Cone brothers.

Is Samuel Jackson Jungle Fever the only other time that happened?

I don't know.

It's a time that it happened.

I don't know if I don't know every single time.

But his memory is that he had a great time at Cannes with the lady killer.

Big standing evasion.

Everyone enjoyed it.

Makes sense.

This is the kind of movie French people are like, yeah, this is what America's like, right?

And then he's like, and then the next year he went with the Da Vinci Code.

And obviously, we had a giant reception,

like, you know, red carpet and all that.

But by the time the movie was over, he was like, the theater was half empty.

Right now, and he's like, obviously that movie made a billion dollars or whatever.

But like, I had a better time.

David?

Yes.

Can I identify your single biggest issue?

You might as well.

Call me out.

I think I finally, it's been 10 years of the podcast, about 15 years of friendship.

I think I finally nailed.

Tell me.

What is it?

Your butt.

You're too much of a yes man, like the Jim Carrey comedy.

Okay, yeah.

Okay, so Zoe Deschenel's hanging around me.

Absolutely, Bradley Cooper.

You need to start being more of a Dr.

No, James Bond's first film entry.

Of course, and we all know who played Dr.

No, and you're going to tell me right now.

If you're still overpaying for wireless, it's time to say yes to saying no.

So maybe you actually need to combine yes, man, and Dr.

No.

Joseph Wiseman, just by the way.

Oh, of course.

We all knew that.

I was saying that.

At Min Mobile, I was just ramping up to that.

Their favorite word is no, Dr.

No, played by Joseph Wiseman.

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Oh, my goodness.

And

what's the yes that you get?

Here's why I said yes as in yes, man, the Jim Carrey vehicle to making the switch and getting premium wireless for $15 a month.

Wow, I know why you did it because it's $15 a month at Mint.

Well, yeah, sure.

Yeah, you can ditch overpriced wireless and they're jaw-dropping monthly bills, unexpected overages and hidden fees.

Jaw dropping is kind of like a thing from the mask, the different Jim Carrey movie.

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I was worried that I was going to say Robert Wise instead.

That's why I didn't have the courage.

I was like, I think it's Joseph Wiseman, but I was worried I was going to flip it.

David?

Yes.

I wear glasses.

Ah, to see.

I do, in fact, wear them.

to see.

I used to wear them as an affectation when I was a child.

Well, I did the same thing.

I pretended they were real.

And then people found me out to be a fake.

And then because of that, when I started actually needing glasses and wearing them for real, all my friends

were convinced that it is still just an affectation, but it is not.

I'm to see.

My vision gets worse.

By the minute, it feels like sometimes.

But...

I just stopped wearing mine.

Yeah, how's that going for you?

It sucks.

Yeah.

See, this is the thing, Ben.

What What do you mean?

Why'd you stop?

I just got lazy.

Ben, you got to get your butt to Warby Parker.

You're the one who's always telling me the value of throwing a good fit, right?

Yeah.

And feeling good.

It affecting your whole sense of self, right?

And Warby Parker is like throwing a fit for the face.

Yeah.

It is.

It truly, it immediately improves your quality of life.

It's like I'm bored with glasses.

Right.

Warby Parker used premium materials.

They designed frames in-house.

They've got silhouettes, colors, and fits made to fit every face.

I love the frames themselves, but let me, can I just talk about the experience?

Because David, I went through it again recently.

Okay.

I had an old pair of glasses that had been my mains for a while break on me

after several years of loyal service.

I salute them.

And I went and it was one-stop shopping.

I said, it's been two years.

Let me get a new vision test.

Get your eye exam.

We get examed, new prescription, eye pressure test and then immediately while i'm waiting for the results i'm going around i'm looking at frames i'm trying them on and there's a flexibility there right folks just want cool sunglasses you can get them cheaper at warby parker than a lot of other places but sometimes you see a sunglass frame you like and you go can i actually get this in clear vision lenses can i get this pair meant to be readers as sunglasses You can try on all sorts of crazy stuff.

This is my new thing I'm into, sunglass clip-on.

So you just got the one one pair.

Sure, can pull the um Chris Farley meme.

Warvy Parker has over 300 locations to help you find your next pair of glasses.

You can also head over to warvyparker.com/slash check right now to try on any pair virtually.

That's warvyparker.com/slash check.

Warvy Parker.com/slash check.

And if people want to flip it griff style, I'll just say I'm currently rocking the toddy, wide frames, and tortoise shell.

Marlon Wayans begged to be in this movie, he said.

You know,

he said, I begged and pleaded and hit the casting couch, and I did both of them.

JJ note, Jesus.

He hit the casting couch.

That's Marlon's quote that I'm sure is meant to be a joke.

And thank God JJ editorialized to let us know that he does not approve of that joke.

You know, he basically, you know, Marlon's like, I watched all their movies.

I found, you know, I sort of get the kind of like cartoonish Bugs Bunny and jerked off Ethan, then Joel.

See, this is why I do think that there is a kind of 1906.

When I hear that, because that is a Marlon original joke.

Yeah.

I detect some of that voice in his character in this movie.

Yeah, it's an interesting question.

I mean, Marlon is so interesting.

I think he is such a powerful performer.

And there is the swing between his own projects, which are not always exactly my cup of tea, but I can't deny deny he is like very engaging on screen.

And then anytime he like hands himself over to a director and is like, I want to do your thing, I think he's kind of incredible.

Okay.

Like he's great in Requiem.

He's good in Requiem.

I don't like that movie at all.

I don't either, but I think he's Requiem for a Dream.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Be excited.

B, B, excited.

Everyone in that movie is just dialed to 5,000.

He's

so badly for some of those characters.

But I'm not counting that as a real dormitory.

Do you find some of the characters in that movie, it ends badly for them?

Yeah, they don't have to.

That's my take on that movie.

I feel like a lot of those characters meet a bad end.

I loved him in air.

I think he's great in air.

I liked him a lot in On the Rocks.

Yeah, I thought he worked in that.

On the Rocks was mostly my takeaway was like, God, he's still hot as fuck.

This is the other thing.

Marlon Williams is so handsome.

He's a really good guy.

And he's aging impeccably.

And it's not like Sean isn't handsome.

Sean's also

naturally has.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But obviously, he doesn't do a lot of what we're talking about.

He largely is in other stuff.

I think he's really funny in Norbit.

He is really funny in Norbit.

I also think he's good in G.I.

Joe.

Yeah.

Is he?

I think he's kind of good.

Is he

just saying that because that's the other one?

I think he's kind of good in G.I.

Joe.

I don't remember him being much of anything in that movie.

Wallace Whipcord Weems?

That's Wallace Ripcord Weems.

Nobody in that.

Everyone feels, I enjoy that movie okay.

Everyone feels a little lost in it.

It's a lot of garbage.

So silly.

Yeah.

It's one of the silliest movies ever made.

I've never seen any of them.

Silly.

There's just two.

No, there's three.

Oh, no, there's three if you're not.

You're forgetting.

You got the origin of snake eyes.

I don't think I, I think I tried to watch that one and couldn't even finish it.

Here's the thing about it.

It's not very engaging.

No.

It is a classic like Patton Oswald joke.

You know that guy, Snake Eyes?

Oh, yeah, with the mask and he doesn't talk.

He's so awesome.

Here's a movie about who he was before he got the mask where he used to talk a lot.

Bad happened to him involving dice.

Wayans decides his character is the audience's point of view.

I guess I can kind of see that.

I don't really know.

Only in the sense that he's the only person who felt joking.

Yeah.

And he's in a modern world.

I also think that, you know, I also think that's a helpful thing for an actor to have.

Speaking to a point we made, this is a quote from Joel Cohen.

Marlon was funny as hell, and he improvised a lot of that.

Well, well, we were telling Marlon.

Well, well, I really,

it does seem that Marlon improvised a few of the lines in the movie.

And we shall get waffles.

Maybe I couldn't.

Of course, I I couldn't be in the movie because I was boxed off as poison at the time.

We were telling Marlon.

You should blacklist it, I say.

Really be given a writing credit because of what he does in some of those scenes.

He was great.

Irma P.

Hall,

kind of one of those, like, you know, actors with a million credits.

But much like, what was the name of the woman in the original Lady Killers?

She only started acting in her 50s.

Right, right.

And then the original that was her first major role.

She wins the BAFTA for Best British Actress and dies two years later.

It was

her only above the title role.

Irma P.

Hall, similarly, I think, doesn't have her first screen credit until her 50s.

Yeah, she's got like a couple things like back in the day, but Rush really, I think, probably starts acting in the late 80s.

She's very good in the film A Family Thing,

which she got like some critics' notices.

I didn't realize at the time that that was the same actor who was in when the Lady Killers came out.

Her performance is so different.

She's a, I think, generally.

Yeah.

Anytime you see her in a movie, you're like, right, this is like a very, very good character.

And just the briefest of moments to lament the loss of Billy Bob Thornton as a screenwriter, because there was that era where he was writing a bunch of movies.

And I feel like The Family Thing was my favorite thing he wrote.

He also wrote movies that were about like real life in the South.

And it was like, oh, yeah, this guy has like some grounding on that.

And now he's like, can I just put it all into his songs?

Can I just give a really quick armor rundown?

Cause I think it's interesting.

She was a high school teacher.

She taught languages, right?

Then she got side work during the summer as an interim publicist on an independent film that was filming in Dallas, where she lived.

It's called Book of Numbers.

Right.

Sort of like a early 70s crime movie.

The director saw her do a poetry reading and was like, Let me give you a little role in this.

She kind of gets the bug, but then she basically is like, I like acting.

Let me start a local theater company.

So she builds a very successful and I think still existing to this day theater company and then does little roles on the side.

She doesn't full-time act.

She's 90 years old.

She's still alive?

She doesn't full-time act until 1984.

Yeah.

And then at which point she's, she's like 50 years old.

Apart from a family thing, which I do feel like was her first sort of quote-unquote breakout.

Soul Food.

She's in Soul Food, which is a very fun movie.

She's in, she's apparently the grandma in Steel.

I'm going to watch Steel one day.

We are.

The Friends of Superman Patreon series.

Right.

I remember her in the, in the Clint Eastwood Midnight and Garden of Good or Evil, which is not one of Clint's best, but it's okay.

She's in Beloved.

Which we covered.

I don't remember.

No, I did not.

It's a pretty small one.

Patch Adams.

She's in Patch Adams, which I have seen.

Your favorite movie bad company.

That's a tough one.

What's she in that one?

She's pretty far down the castle.

She is Jamie Foxx's mom in collateral the same year as this.

Am I correct about that?

An incredible performance.

It's the same year.

It's the sort of the fall, you know, when this is coming out in the spring.

That's a great scene because that's the scene where she's so, Vincent's so nice to her in the hospital bed and she's going like, oh, my son, this and that.

You know, he has his own limo company and Vincent's realizing like, what a loser, Jason.

All the autographed photos on her and like

the whole dynamics of the movie start to shift, but like Cruz and her are so locked.

They're so good in that scene.

She's great.

And like since then, I feel like she's basically

retired for 10 years.

But at 80, she steps away.

She did the Werner Herzog double hatter.

Yeah, my son, my son, and Bad Lieutenant.

She's quite good, Bad bad lieutenant.

Yeah.

She's a great actor.

She's incredibly.

The Coens found her through casting.

They saw her almost immediately.

She was like the first person to walk through the door.

They were like, she rocks, but let's see some other people.

And they were like, no.

I do feel like she's the undeniable juice of this movie.

You know, I was talking to Barry about it, and he was like, by the time the Coens took over, you know, they handled their own shit.

So we were not very involved.

But he was just like,

she's just undeniably.

We would watch the dailies and be like, this is a home run because of her.

Her quote, it was a wonderful experience working with Tom Hanks.

We bonded.

I bond easily, I guess.

I say that I have all these Godchildren.

God sends them to me, and he's become one, as well as the Cohen brothers.

Film was shot in Mississippi, carried a budget of about $35, $40 million.

They built a lot of sets.

Everyone had a good time.

The Cohens had Final Cut, and they turned this movie in.

That was what was released.

Absolutely feels like a Final Cut movie.

movie it does not feel like it has odd rhythms yep you know it is not playing the conventional studio comedy game uh and uh joel cohen has this idea of like let's try to combine gospel music and hip-hop music for the score and for the soundtrack i think the soundtrack is incredible uh i listen the burwell score is very interesting i will say yeah uh and the there are the multiple uses of uh what is it trouble of this world uh yeah the hymn is called or yeah sort of, yeah, Trouble of This World.

You listen to this,

Ben.

I swear to you, I bought the CD at the time.

It would be a CD.

I would both carry it absolutely

on Surgeon Megasaur.

Such a weird movie.

I like this movie.

God,

it's a B-.

I will not stand here and let Griffin be bullied for this.

I do not think it is weird.

It's pretty weird.

He bought the CD.

I do not think it is weird.

Griffin, Griffin, look at me.

Look at me.

Look at me.

You are normal.

Thank you.

You are normal.

Normal person.

Am I big and cool?

You're big and cool and normal.

Big and cool and tough and normal.

Thank you.

All right.

It's a good CD.

If they re-release it on vinyl, I buy that shit again.

Record store day, limited color ray.

I buy the shit out of it.

He'd be lining up.

He'd be lining up at Rough Trade in Manhattan.

Yeah.

No, realistically, what I'd be do is I'd be texting Connor and saying, hey, are you lining up at Rough Trade?

Yeah, that does sound like a Griffin.

I do usually text you the morning of Record Store Day and go, are you lining up?

I just want to, because I don't think there's anything in the dossier.

There's a song I like by the band Lush, the UK band Lush.

They had an album and a song called Lady Killers.

Okay.

And I really liked that.

Is that inspired by the movie or is it?

No, not at all.

You're just bringing it up because

I'm on confessing to a horrible crime.

No, I'm on my, I'm on my disappoints a point of view song.

It's a character song, a la Randy Newman, sort of.

No, I don't think it is.

Actually, it's a stretch now that I remember the lyrics.

But it is dealing with a type of problematic man.

But I think you're right that it was

part of the calculation for this movie, especially them working at Touchdown again, is we're getting T-Bone Burnett back and we're going to do an unconventional soundtrack.

T-Bone first consulted on Big Libusky.

Oh, right.

Yes.

He put that, because that's why that has a really cool soundtrack.

And then, oh, Brother Were Aren't Thou was the soundtracks more successful than the movie.

And Lady Killers feels very much like we're going back to that like.

Surprise best-selling album.

And in fact, it sold one copy to Griffin Newman full-price Virgin Megastory.

I am in the Discogs app now because I'm almost positive, no shade to JJ, but I'm almost positive he did not go deep on the soundtrack release formats in the dossier.

Am I wrong?

Am I wrong?

Is there a vinyl?

No.

There are five CD editions.

Europe, Mexico, Canada, the U.S.

And then another one that seems like it almost might be unauthorized.

No, it was a reissue.

It was a reissue.

But unknown year when it was reissued.

Okay.

I didn't buy the reissue.

I got the original.

And it is, hold on.

I want to see how available it is

there are 76 versions of it uh copies of it available on discogs i'm i'm gonna get it so the film is uh

a contemporary story somehow sing that with your full chest uh about um a

lady and widow named marva munson she's got a big picture of her uh her lost her

former husband

storage move all the other other.

The portrait changes, which does very much.

Ninoshka does that with Len and I want to say that.

But I think there's at least one Sturgis.

Sullivan's travels.

There are a couple of Sturgis there.

By this point, you know, it was done on the Beverly Hillbillies, the TV series, where Mr.

Drysdale had a portrait of his dad, and it would always change its reaction.

I want to say it is a bit that I always like.

Portrait responding with faces.

Yes.

So she's got a house house and she

rents it to,

having complained about her former tenant playing hippity hop music to the great George Wallace, rents it to a classics professor named Goldthwaite Higginson Doerr.

She discovers him on her front lawn chasing a cat up a tree.

I love it as an immediate save the cat subversion.

of we're seeing the worst character in the world ostensibly saving a cat as an introduction.

Like it feels like their rebuke to this sort of of idea of schematic screenwriting.

Right.

Yeah.

But it does immediately endear him to her.

And then he sweet talks her.

He is the most flowery speaking man in history.

Yes, he is a mellifluous, you know, he's 10 words when one could do.

He looks like Colonel Sanders was sepsis.

And he ostensibly wants her seller, her root seller, to rehearse music in with an ensemble of weirdos.

church music of the rococo era and she and he says rococo like 400 times and every time i find it funny

for sure uh and uh

she um is mostly concerned with god and uh what's it called uh the university

university a real university of course which is like a very christian university she sends them five dollars a month right she's uh on their and their plaque and i think one of the more subversive jokes in the movie is the fact that you have this character that you are rooting for who is a well-intentioned person

and

that the

her monthly donation like ultimately any windfall that she gets at the end of this movie is going to go to this institution that has a history of racial segregation

but that's the joke like

oh yeah which i actually think in 2025 is a joke that plays really interestingly because there's so much of the kind of like i didn't vote for this there's so much of the sort of like people who like you're, we've had a decade now of trying to like parse the intentions of voters and like, are there good people who vote for bad people?

And then bad things happen and they didn't mean that.

The fact that you have a hero of the movie that at the end is going to be like, oh, good, I can donate them to this.

That's the win.

Poisonous.

Like, it's a very, that's, it's as dark an ending as the Corn Brothers have had in terms of like.

What looks like a sunny win for a good character is like, oh, yeah, but the money is going to go to this group that as of 2004 i know that i don't know that i know that there have been like some shifts i don't know how meaningful but at the time yes i don't want to get sued by bob jones university or whatever oh you don't want to get sued by them i don't know they feel like all right well then bleep me bleep me bleep me i just want to edit out what i said if if what i said was too hot

i get your gag of of like um they have controversies yeah

I just want to call out the original Lady Killers has the same exact kind of narrative bookend of opening with her going to the cops, saying something that they kind of dismiss as a little crazy, and ending with her going in and confessing and offering to give them the money, and then being like, This woman's making stuff up.

Why don't you keep it?

Right?

It's got the same thing.

The Cohens add the idea of

specifying where the money would go in such a specific way that's seated from the very beginning of the movie, which I do think is smart.

Like at the end of the original, she's just sort of like oh i guess i'll well we see her give money to like a panhandle a panhandler and the implication is like the money is going to go to a she'll be very generous she'll be generous and kind because she's a nice lady but you have this idea of this woman who doesn't have much already giving whatever she can to bob jones every month it's the other thing i like is like The character is funny in the original lady colors, but the bit there is more, this woman is incredibly oblivious.

It's all going on underneath.

She's daughty.

I like that Irma Pee Hall's character has

active.

I like that she's active.

It's a great performance, in my opinion.

And it's kind of like, to me, sort of the reason to recommend the movie.

My big problem with this movie is that it feels kind of lifeless and low energy, which makes no sense to me given the tone and like how heightened the performances are and how silly everyone is.

I find it kind of dreary to watch.

I want it to be like really goofy, really loony tunes.

And instead, it's not.

And at the end, it kind of picks up the pace a little bit.

Stuff's finally happening.

People are dying.

But a lot of it is just them sitting around.

One thing I had forgotten is that the in my memory of I've seen the movie twice, once when it came out, and then once recently for this.

And

we watched it all the time.

I think I've seen it four times.

My movie.

My memory of it was that

the runner of throwing the bodies over onto the barge

happened over a longer time.

And instead, it's kind of the last 20 minutes.

It's all bundled at the end.

They have the barge before then, I guess, is sort of funny.

I see the barge, but I'm like,

the movie was almost over, and they had yet to dump a body.

And I'm like, oh, I remember it being spread out a little bit.

But that is structurally exactly how the ealing one works as well.

I think this movie, I like this movie.

I think it's the worst Cohen Brothers movie.

Inarguably.

I think, inarguably.

Inarguably.

I think there's probably some people out there who'd pick and tolerable cruelty.

And to all of those people, I go re-watch it you're wrong about that i think i think the last

kind of has a a muddled reputation but i really like that movie that's partially netflix it's partially just omnibus stuff yeah intolerable cruelty the last solo film that uh joel cohens

well

yeah no it's joel joel until macbeth right um it was funny that in the interviews he was like yeah since intolerable i've been looking for a project that really found me that's funny that joel didn't direct a movie for like 20 years back yeah

But I do feel like

it's their, it's their worst movie.

But I also feel like I had this thought about it that if this movie hadn't been released, let's say that they, the, Disney looked at it and said, we're going to, we're going to Zazlav this.

We're going to take the tax right off.

We're never going to, no one's ever going to see this.

Imagine we had spent the last 20 years just please release the lady killers.

Why they made a movie with the Khan Brothers made a movie with Tom Hanks.

It's a remake of this classic movie and it's just hasn't been released.

I think if we saw it now, we'd be so excited by all the things that work in it.

Be like, why didn't they release this at the time?

It's not perfect, but it's, you know, I think there's, there's a feeling.

There are some things people might bump up against.

Sure, sure, yeah.

Sure, there are bumps.

I'm not denying the bumps in this movie.

But I do think that in the same way, I think a lot of the things that don't work in this movie.

are built into things that also kind of don't work in the original lady.

I'm a little inclined to agree with you.

I've always been, said with no disrespect, a little perplexed by Lady Killer's seeming status as like one of the 10 greatest British comedies of all time.

I would not put it above other Ealing comedies.

To me, it's a sort of like middle Ealing comedy.

I just feel like I often see it cited as like perhaps the pinnacle of the Ealing era.

To me, there's something about the way the story is structured that makes it feel like this trifle, this minor sort of little story.

It's not told with satisfying beats.

I think there are things the Cone Brothers actually improve in the sense that I think the original heist doesn't feel as interesting to me as the heist in this movie.

Agree.

The original heist is really uninteresting.

And it kind of, in this movie, they need her house because it's crucial to the heist.

It's another thing I like.

In the original, it's sort of just a happenstance.

They just, you know, I mean, they're like near.

They're near, but they could have, they could have, it's just bad luck that they ended up in this lady's house.

They could have done it in any number of places.

And I think there are certain things that feel a little bit more interesting to me.

When I was watching the original Ladykillers,

everything that was a little different about the heist,

in most cases, not every case, but in most cases, I felt like the Cone brothers had made it a little bit more interesting on the heist level.

Yeah.

And then the original film, it's sort of just, what a weird house you have.

They're sort of transients who seemingly are going to only rent the room for like two days a night that the original film takes place over only a couple of days the original is really concerned with guinness you know playing this character they move in like you know right

they rock in quartet stuff they don't got trust right and then they try to get out and they're immediately kind of like hot and busted this film does the sort of Ocean's 11 parody of they need to be here for the perfect plan, which we'll talk about.

Bring in their team.

Everyone has a role.

But they're going to be here for weeks, if not months, planning this.

Marlon Brainwayne is the inside man.

J.K.

Simmons is demolition.

Z-Ma is the tunneler because

he was in the Viet Cong.

Yeah.

What does Ryan Hearst do?

He's just

the muscle.

And of course, yeah, Mountain Girl, played by the great Diana Diane Dale.

Who just passed away?

Oh, that's sad.

She did just die.

Yeah.

At the age of 67 of cancer.

That's so sad.

I loved her on the show Popular.

It's such a weird reference.

Mountain Girl.

It's like pulling from Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test?

Oh, that's Jerry Garcia's ex-wife, Mountain Girl.

That's, I mean, that's a very Cohen Brothers reference.

Well, it's a, this movie is modern, modern.

It's something really grateful to, like, that's why, right, because there's the bit with Greg Grumberg where they're on set, you know, to introduce J.K.

Simmons' character, and you're like, Dog food comes.

We're on a movie set, like, that doesn't feel right.

Like, again, this feels like it's set in the 50s.

It is a thing I kind of like about this movie is that the team is made up of five guys who seem like weird out-of-time cartoon characters.

And you have these moments where they have to interact with the outside world and you're like, oh, even within this movie, they are strange.

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I'll also say that you talk about people's Cohen Brothers journey.

We haven't gotten into that.

You're a little older than us, so you can't.

Canoe down the river of the Cone.

The first Cone Brothers movie I ever saw was Raising Arizona.

I was taking a college credit course when I was in middle school, where in the summer I'd go and...

You were taking college courses in middle school?

I don't know why I did this exactly, but it was a thing.

It was college.

I think it was

Northeast Missouri State University.

It might be Northwest.

I can't remember, but it was a thing where for a few weeks you'd go, you'd stay at a dorm and you'd take one college class.

And I did this for two summers.

And one of the summers, the class was creative writing.

Looks like it was Northwest.

There is no Northeast.

Oh, boy.

I've been.

I've nailed you to the wall.

Oh, man.

People warned me about coming on this show.

It's a bit of a construction.

I can't believe them, but I have been.

this is like when, right, the presidential debate with the live fact checking.

Oh, shit.

Here I am.

I'm going to have to stop you there.

David and his infamous laptop.

I can't get anything past you guys.

The teacher of this class showed us a series of movies.

And when I think back to the movies he picked, I'm always kind of impressed that this guy had like.

They were interesting things to show us.

He showed us Raising Arizona.

He showed us radio days.

He showed us true stories.

Sure,

great movies all in.

And they're all kind of in that time period, like just to get like a young mind thinking about how you can tell certain things.

And like unconventional comedies, like they're different ways to be funny.

Yeah.

And Raising Arizona was by far the one that I was just like, this movie is so funny.

And like, I've seen that, there's a clip of Tarantino talking about Raising Arizona and talking about how it was filmed and the feeling at the time being that like, All movies will be filmed like this from now on because there's like someone figured a new way to film like funny chasing.

but it's it's what everyone who tries to do it learns is

so fucking difficult yes yeah that's a movie that has a lot of energy i would say a comedy by the con brothers is sort of madcap about a bunch of dirtbags that has a lot of energy to it yes uh a camera is electric it's just but i always think about the cohen brothers their movies as their first two movies laid this template down and i think of this spectrum where blood simple is at one end and raising arizona is the other because it's hard to think of a one-two punch from any filmmaker.

They are showing you everything they got with those first two movies.

Raising will exist between these two polls for which are wide polls.

Yep.

Raising Arizona feels like the people who made Blood Simple should have failed at trying to make a Raising Arizona.

It feels like you can't, no one can make

versa.

Like Blood Simple's a failure, and then they're like, you know what we should do is comedy.

And every movie of theirs, I feel like, is on that spectrum.

And

Fargo being one that lands sort of almost perfectly in the middle, that it's like a Blood Simple that's also got this crazy.

You're absolutely right.

That's why it's their definitive film.

And

another crazy thing is if you loved Blood Simple, if you're like, this is what I want from the Cohen Brothers,

you have to wait until No Country for All Men before you really get another movie that fully bites at that apple, right?

Like

if your jam is Blood Simple, you go to Raising Arizona, you're like, that's not what I wanted.

A man who wasn't there

was a sit noir, you know, like

still got a lot.

It's still got a little bit more of the kooky Raising Arizona aspect to it.

Even like Miller's Crossing has a little bit more of the crazy camera work.

There's like a

No Country for All Men is the first movie that feels like it's a proper follow-up to Blood Simple.

Lady Killers is closer to the Raising Arizona side, but it has that sort of like darkness and crime and

also a little bit of like the world of Blood Simple feels like a cruel world, a mean.

There's something mean.

There's something really, there's a mean streak in the lady killers that keeps it from, that I think when it works, it's great.

But I think there's a lot of places where the mean streak, and I'll start with like, I went to that website, the very helpful does the dog die

website for the lady killers because I genuinely wasn't sure whether the dog had died in this.

The dog or the cat?

The dog at the beginning on the on the commercial.

Oh, oh, yes, yes, yes.

And it says it's implied the dog in the commercial filming dies of suffocation approximately 15 minutes in.

And then there's another comment saying the dog is during filming an ad, the dog is made to wear a gas mask that suffocates him.

He is shown dropping into unconsciousness.

Then someone tries to resuscitate him.

You see his tongue hanging out.

But it's like, that's a joke in the movie that feels to me like mean in a way that it doesn't

doesn't buy you much.

There are people like Ben Hazard.

If you kill a dog within 15 minutes of the movie, you've you've put like a boot around your car tire.

It's like a tough thing to ask of an audience.

Yeah.

It's just immediately putting you in a bad thing.

I fucking hated that part.

Yeah.

Made me mad.

Yeah.

Like if you're doing it, how do you feel about John Wick?

It's what the movies are.

That's the end.

You're okay when you're like, as long as this movie takes it as seriously as I'm taking it.

One dog dies and 100 people die in response.

And it was justified.

Exactly.

Right.

It used to be justified.

Whereas the implied comedic death of the dog on the commercial set.

Well, it has no burial.

Right.

It's used as a storytelling tool to communicate to the audience he's bad at his job as props man.

And

these sets are not well run, I guess.

And I would say, arguably, if you were like, well, we need that moment to indicate to the audience that

J.K.

Simmons' character can be kind of...

sloppy sloppy kind of like bad instincts it is literally the thing you learn from that moment is the thing that you learn from literally every other thing he says or does in the movie.

Also, by the way, the introduction of that moment is, so J.K.

Simmons is introduced working at a dog food commercial that is directed by Greg Grumberg, and Bruce Campbell appears silently as the Humane Society rep.

Just always love when the Cohens threw Bruce in there.

Yeah.

But he,

the dog, what is it?

The collar is the prop that they're having an issue with?

We have to move on from this scene that does not matter.

No, it is important.

I'm just going to do it.

It is important as an encapsulation.

The mean-spirited aspect of the movie.

I will also say there's another question on the side of the I'm going to finish my point on this.

I must.

I must.

They go, hey, can you flow?

Can you fly in a new collar?

And instead, J.K.

Simmons puts a full fucking like World War I gas mask on the dog.

And Grungberg is like, the fuck are you talking about?

This is scary.

They need to see the dog's face.

The dog needs to eat the food.

And he's like, well, I just thought it was an interesting take.

We're already communicating he's bad at his job by him not thinking through it creatively.

And then while they're having the conversation, the dog dies, which is just a heightening of he's bad at his job that leaves a bad taste in people's mouth.

I do think that's important to the like, there is nothing gained by killing the dog.

The story beat is already accomplished by him just having the bad creative instinct.

And it is in line with what this movie is doing, which is, as you said, just kind of like unnecessarily mean.

One of the other questions that I really like the answer to on is the, does the dog die?

It doesn't have to do with the dog.

So it is a new point.

We're starting fresh.

Is someone gaslighted?

Someone is continually lied to throughout the film, but I don't think it is gaslighting is the response.

Interesting.

How do we, that's a, that's a fine hair to split.

It's a really fine hair.

I, we have talked about it before, David, on this podcast, Blank Trek with Griffin and David.

But I think in the 80s and especially in the 90s, it kind of tapers off in the early 2000s.

There was a run of people attempting the like pitch black dark murder comedy.

big studio comedy with movie stars, making a movie that feels kind of to its core evil and is about people trying to kill each other to get ahead, to pull off some con, to cover their tracks or whatever, that almost always plays like a fucking lead balloon with audiences.

Lucky Numbers is one that we talked about.

And I think in that episode, we talked about other movies that fit into the very bad things

is another one.

It's the meanness.

There's a like the degree of how funny you have to be to overcome a certain level of meanness.

It's just like, it's, I always think of it in terms of, because I think about this in terms of like performing improv as well, where

if you want to do a scene about certain things, it's just like at Chuck E.

Cheese, the, or at any carnival where you have tickets and prizes, that's like some things like, well, that's a million tickets.

Right.

And there are certain things where it's like, if you're going to make a joke about this thing, you need to hit the track.

Yes.

You better have a million tickets worth of funny in this joke or else you're, you don't have enough.

It's the same thing with this movie using the N-word twice in its first two minutes.

Yes.

Marlon Waynes is basically pretty much every single fucking line that that guy says in the movie, you're kind of like, all right.

And it's like not that funny.

If that shit's funny, I will forgive so much.

But he is the least funny part of the movie.

Undeniable.

Look, if you're going to use the n-word in a movie and it's written by you guys, like Joel Cohen and Ethan Cohen, that's what it says.

I, unless it really, really feels like, yeah, this is part of the story.

And I'm just going to think about you guys writing that on your computer.

Unknown.

And then like talking to whoever about how to deliver the line or whatever and even if it is a scenario where i'm not saying you can't use the i'm like i'm not trying to be some police i wasn't asking i wasn't asking to i was knowing if you thought i was about to use the word i'm not um no i was the

the

shooting the shooting script If we imagine that it's just like, this was word perfect, that they did it note for note.

But even if

I was making a movie and someone improvised and they used the n-word a lot, I would still be editing that movie knowing that, like, people don't know that.

It's not going to filter it through me.

It's not like a little warning comes up on the screen saying, Joel and Ethan were just including some pretty free.

I do want to say one more thing, just because it amuses me from does the doggy.com.

There is the and it does relate to this.

It does relate to the dog, but I'm the best episode ever.

I am confident that you will on some level appreciate that I included this.

One of the questions is, is there dog fighting?

And the answer is, a dog is dressed as a World War I soldier, but does not fight.

That's really good.

Ben, I want to say, I want to ask something of Ben.

The main archetypes of the gang in this film are transmuted from the main archetypes of the British film, but the characters are transformed pretty substantially.

Do you want to wager a guess who played in the original the role that Marlon Waynes plays in this film in 2004?

Wait, what?

What do you think?

Marlon Wayne played the British version of Marlon Wayans in the original.

And how much are you willing to wager?

He's probably willing to wager nothing.

I'm going to wager nothing.

I don't.

Mr.

Bean, I don't know.

Peter Sellers.

He's kind of close.

That's Peter Sellers.

Really close.

Mr.

Bean of his day.

Isn't that wild that in that movie it's cockney Peter Sellers?

It's not wild.

That's what do you mean?

That's like totally.

I mean, obviously, Peter Sellers, but he's an ealing standard guy.

Like, that's the guy.

Griffin, I'm I'm going to

decide on this.

Marlon Wayne's side.

That's exactly this movie.

I'm sorry.

The wild part is who's our generation's Peter Sellers?

And, like, I don't dislike Marlon Wayne.

I like him a lot.

But I think he's whatever.

I mean, I was going to say he's not pitched right, but I don't know that anyone's pitched totally right in this movie because

I really think it needs to be actually silly.

This is my thing, though.

Okay.

So, like, I cannot deny your truth, right?

And I know that i'm bernie sanders nightmare i'm in the one percent on this movie i'm up against the wall right and it feels a little bit like

500 comedy points i'm granting them to myself and taking out a loan

redistribution of wealth yeah after a bernie sanders joke it's it's a more extreme version of what i felt like on our johnny dangerously episode where i'm like i watched this and i laugh but johnny dangerously is 10 times the movie in my opinion like that's a pretty interesting and i know the defenders it's a much larger group on Johnny Dangerously.

It felt like that was a 50-50 split on this podcast, but also in our listenership, right?

This, I'm firmly Bernie Sanders' nightmare, the 1%.

But I feel the same way where I watch this and I'm like, I like the energy of this.

I'm laughing at this.

It doesn't all work for me.

There's a ton I bump on.

What's the funny parts to you?

I laugh like once a minute while watching this movie.

I chuckle.

I'm not convinced.

Yes, I do.

Once a minute.

I watched this yesterday.

I went like this.

Once a minute.

I don't laugh.

I did a little quietly to myself.

What's the funniest part of this movie?

What's the funniest thing that happens in Joel and Ethan Cohen's The Lady Killers, their debut film?

The funniest thing that happens?

Yes.

Number one.

Yes.

J.K.

Simmons' face when a green needs to poop.

Sure, that's kind of funny.

No, every, every time, every time that Tom Hanks and Irma P.

Hall are engaging directly with each other,

I am locked in.

I'm enjoying it.

Are you laughing?

I do.

No, but I didn't claim it.

I didn't, I'm not, I'm not a 60-second man the way that Griffin is claiming.

You're not Gage.

I am a one-minute man and I want that on the record.

You are, Mr.

Kelly.

Not just a one-minute man, an every-minute man.

That's a very different distinction.

I'm every minute.

Can I confess to a thing that made me laugh?

And it ties into a thing that is problematic about the film and that you don't like about the film.

When I believe that Marlon Wayans uses the N-word addressing Stephen Root and Stephen Root's reaction to that, I thought that was fun.

I think Root nails the discomfort of that scene quite well because Stephen Root is a Swiss Army knife.

That guy can literally do anything.

Talk about an ultimate when is that guy bad?

That guy

always nails it.

And he is one of the ultimate, he understood the assignment actors where it's like knows what movie he's in, knows what size the role is, knows what needs to be accomplished in that scene.

Can I tell a blind item thing?

I think I can't talk about, but it's Stephen Root-related.

Please, let's get to the root of the issue.

Oh, a new segment on the show?

The root of the issue.

The root of the issue?

Do we have any play-in music for that?

Yeah, Ben.

Ben?

Drop the root of the issue theme song.

Who is the guy in office space?

King of the hill and Josh Balteau.

I don't know his name, but I know his face.

But his name is Steven Root, and that's the root of the issue.

Okay, we just heard it.

Great.

I love it.

So every time we do this, and I'll come back to this segment.

We should press that on vinyl.

Oh, limited edition Red Record Day single.

Steven Root's character from O Brother could do it, press it on vinyl.

He could, Blind Man Records.

Singing it to the can.

Yeah.

All right.

I worked on a thing.

I can't talk about it.

So I got to be very careful here.

Oh, my God.

All right.

This item is as blind as Steven Roots character in O'Brother where aren't they?

It truly is.

Oh, classic Root of the Matter.

What is this segment called?

Root of the Matter?

But maybe it's Root of the Matter because Root of the Issue makes it sound like there's an issue with it.

Can we get a remix for the newly titled Root of the Matter?

I've told you at the ball, and I'll tell you again.

Steven's root is a god of all men.

I'm telling the truth, I'm not mean to flatter.

He's the number one character.

That's the root of the matter.

Ooh, that is tasty.

I like that.

Press that on vinyl.

Press it on vinyl.

Record story day single.

What color?

What color do you think?

What color?

Bruce, beep, root, red.

There you go.

What's up?

I was on.

I can't tell you what the thing is.

No, I'm just a fucking story for Christianity.

I'm going to leave this podcast.

There we go.

I was on a call sheet and I noticed, which is a thing in,

we all know what a call sheet is.

I was hoping, I was talking to your least informed listener.

Keep going.

And we're uniting one here for you.

I know there's one person out there who's like,

where were you on this podcast?

I don't.

Low.

Low, sure.

Double diggies.

I don't remember.

I just remember being on a call sheet and noticing that Stephen Root was also on this call call sheet and being very excited.

I can't tell you how this thing was made, where it was made, but I was.

If you want to know how this thing got made, you could listen to how did this get made?

I was in a situation, though, where I could hear him in the next room and I heard Root at work.

And it was really thrilling.

I never saw him, but it was, it felt like, oh, I've really arrived a moment.

I also put myself on tape for a role that I did not get in the movie paint paint oh the

yeah and i believe stephen root got that role he's in a film yeah you never feel bad about losing a role to root no it actually feels good it feels like whenever someone like that gets a role that you i just feel honored that there was even a point where they were like we're looking at other people i was running on the same route as root

i was on the root route is this story Has it happened yet?

Is it done?

What are we doing here?

What do you mean?

Okay, great.

Okay.

Wait, moving on.

I never saw it.

Did I say it was a story?

You said it was a blind item.

Yeah, it was an item.

And we got a middleware of the matter.

Let's just pause for the outro.

Oh, shit.

The outro's even better.

I like that.

It's like a great B-side.

So, what's the film about?

They need to tunnel into this vault from a river side, a river.

Ironically, the value of this house is that it has a root cellar.

Yes, it does.

It does.

And there's a riverboat casino in this territory.

Casinos cannot operate on land.

They have to operate on the water.

Maritime law, but they have

an underground on land vault where the money goes every night before they lock it up.

And the door is impenetrable, but if you were to dig through the back wall, and this house is the closest, you could go in.

Marlon Waynes is their inside man.

The idea is that, much like the movie Inside Man, they can

break down the wall and repair it so that it looks like the money magically vanished and no one was ever the wiser.

There's a little

spoiler for

a

if you don't like spoilers, get out now.

Jump ahead, 40.

Is this pre-Inside Man?

The spikely movie, and it kind of is the same.

Yes, it is a little bit.

It's a similar.

I want to point something out.

I'm looking at the Wikipedia page for this movie.

This is a four-paragraph plot description.

The first two paragraphs, I would say, are 80% of the movie, which to me, and the final long paragraph essentially is the climax where everyone dies.

Spoiler alert, everyone but Irma P.

Hall meets their end, Grizzly End.

Kind of speaks to me to how, like, there's not much once they've sort of begun their scheme, there's not much happening.

The original film is 90 minutes long.

This film is 104 and shouldn't be.

It should be more like 90.

Yeah.

So this film's - it wasn't made in the 90s.

It wasn't made in the 90s.

It was made in the early 2000s.

This film's about 15 minutes longer than that one, right?

I was watching the original last night.

The old lady

catches them at the exact halfway point.

And that movie has much less of a planning the heist.

The heist takes a while thing.

It's like they show up, they basically do a robbery of an armored truck.

They just block a street.

And

they block a street and are pretty lucky about nobody sees them anymore.

It's like a quick hit job, and then they're ready to immediately run out.

And it's the same gag executed in a different way where the money flies all over the place.

And she goes, where did this money come from?

And they try to come up with an explanation, a lie.

She says, you got to go return the money.

And then they all decide to take turns one at a time killing her.

But it's at the halfway point, 45 minutes that she catches them.

And even then, I still think it takes another 15 or 20 minutes before the first attempt is made.

So the original is structured the same way proportionately in the lady killing chunk of it is only the last 25% of the film.

And it's the same thing where it's the repetition of the death.

They do their own thing with throwing the bodies over a train track that's similar with the garbage barge in this movie.

But I'm just saying that's that's from the material.

Yeah, sure.

I think this movie.

You guys, I don't like that movie that much.

So that's not really a way.

I'm not a big fan of the Fitches Lady.

Now I got you.

You didn't get me.

I've seen that movie like once.

I got you to trash the E-Ling movies from your beloved homeless.

The defense of this movie can't be like, oh, well, the original isn't that good.

Because I'm like, well, then fucking.

I think a bunch of listeners are going to be like, what are these guys dismissing the original?

The original is incredible.

And I think the original.

I think the original was used as a cudgel to beat this movie with when it came out.

No, this movie is this movie.

This movie is not very good.

I'm sorry, guys.

I think it's pretty good.

Here are things I laugh at.

Five out of ten.

Any I think it's a six.

I think it's an ultimate gentleman six.

And a rude man seven.

To me, it's a I'm very politely extending the five because everyone tried.

I think it's a B minus.

Can I make a couple little cases for it?

And just explaining what I like about it.

Honestly, yes, because we're wrapping up soon.

Oh, what?

This is the first I'm hearing of this.

Yes.

I'm letting you guys know.

And I want to talk about Hanks' performance a little bit more because I like it.

I like it.

Anytime he has

a continuous paragraph of dialogue, I laugh at at least one thing he says.

I think that stuff's pretty funny.

I think that is the exact kind of language stuff that I think the Coans do better than anyone else on the planet is people getting caught in circular monologues that have jokes nestled within jokes, within jokes.

And then the character reacting the outside being like, I have no idea what the fuck you just said.

I does think it, I do think it grinds the movie to a halt.

It's kind of, it's funny to watch him do it.

He's having so much fun, and I do appreciate watching him have fun.

And he's unencumbered.

You feel him for the first time in 15 years being like, I can do anything.

But it does grind the movie to a halt.

It's sort of like, okay, let's stop and watch this funny thing sort of happen.

Okay.

And I would say that is both part of what's wrong with the movie and it's also so intentional in the sense that like

you not liking it is different than them like fucking up.

That part of part of what doesn't work about this movie is that it's a it's a very minor kind of movie.

It feels like

this is this is my favorite defense of a movie.

It's a lark.

This movie, no, but it's like, you have to acknowledge the most I can defend this movie is still like, I think it is all well executed on the George Marcus thing where suddenly Steward looks into the corner.

He's like, like, Star Wars is for children and nobody needs to like it.

Like, I'm like, okay, all right, George.

But I'm also.

This movie is pointless.

It's fine that it's bad.

No, that's not actually a defense.

No, what I'm not saying that.

It's not minor by design.

I'm saying that.

Sure.

Because I'm also defending the movie, saying it is undeniably, in my opinion, their worst movie.

But I also think as low points of filmmakers go, there's still so I there are there's no defense that this is a great low point to have there are a lot of

arguments.

There are a lot of low points for filmmakers where I'm like, I just wish they hadn't made that movie.

And with Lady Killers, I don't wish that they hadn't made this movie.

This is one of our

longest miniseries ever, right?

It is over 20 films,

including the films directed by Joel Cohen Solo, Ethan Cohen with his wife, and Joel and Ethan together, right?

Of which this is the first.

They're figuring it out, man.

But this is the lowest point.

Babes in the woods.

And I think this is pretty high for the worst film in filmographies and as we've covered on this show as far as reclamation goes when this movie came out i fully was and i know you've talked about this before i fully was of the belief that they had lost their ability to make movies and that they were on a decline that would never stop

I wouldn't go so far as are they cooked, but it's the closest.

I think the fact that this and Talbot Cruelty were both disliked and were both seen as them attempting to go more mainstream.

Mainstream with a big star and both times the reaction from the general public is negative.

Not only do we not like what they're making, but it seems like they've sold out their own values and now I guess they're just looking to get assignment jobs.

I think people were like, well, they're done.

The fact that it's like three full years before no country and it felt like it kind of came out of nowhere.

I feel like I'm, I, when I watch it now, I feel like there is pleasure to be had in another crazy Cohen Brothers movie that has its own specific thing.

I don't like the mean-spirited aspects of a lot of it.

There's a lot of things in it that don't work.

I think the structure of it veers intentionally away from satisfaction in places.

Yeah, except for right at the end.

I do feel like,

well, okay.

I think it is satisfying to watch all these guys get killed.

I think in some sense

it's smart.

Yes.

So like,

you know, they get rumbled.

They decide they have to kill Irmu P.

Hall.

First, Tom Hanks tries to win her over, which is a pretty fun scene.

And that's one of my favorite beats in the thing is when he's like, I'm just going to tell.

And you're sort of watching him almost, you know, knock her down.

By the way, I'm sorry, to circle back to your question of what is the funniest part of this movie, I can tell you what I think the funniest part of this movie is.

And it's the scene that almost for me represents its key value.

Irma P.

Hall trying to get George Wallace to meet the professor.

And Tom Hanks is eluding him.

And George Wallace increasingly thinks George Wallace plays a sheriff who basically is only sitting in in a chair.

This is an imaginary figure.

She's an old lady who's lost her mind and she clocks that he's hiding under the bed and Irma Peel has this conversation with Tom Hanks under the bed where she's giggling and going, Professor, why are you drinking tea under the bed?

And George Wallace looking at her like, this is like a weird

breakdown for a woman to have and him just making the shush finger under the bed.

I just find everything about that scene funny.

I think we should maybe call back something that came up in the Johnny Dangerously episode, which is that I would say drop the NY and it's fun.

I'm giggling.

But that is

why you're drinking TV.

I think we really hit on in that Johnny Dangerously episode where it's like, right, do you find something kind of fun versus actually funny?

If you don't find this movie funny, there's nothing I can say to convince you of its value.

I can see that that.

Most people did not.

Absolutely.

I want to say this, and no disrespect intended.

I've lived in New York for almost a quarter of a century.

I will never drop the NY.

It's a good point.

Thank you.

And thank you for saying that.

And you know what?

Zoe Rand Mamdami is happy that you're going to stay here.

Our future wonderful mayor.

Yeah.

I'm afraid.

Is he our mayor?

Oh, boy.

Let's hope so.

Anyway, lady killers.

Yeah.

The first half of the movie is the heist planning into the heist.

And then, right, an explosive goes off that throws the money all over the place.

She walks in.

So they think she's going to be at church.

She comes home early to make tea.

The deaths proceed in this order.

The first is Marlon, who is almost happy initially to kill her, but then flashes back to his childhood and his own mother.

Who used to sit in the living room in the same way.

Right.

And realizes he can't do it.

And sorry, just to circle back briefly, Tom Hanks first tries to sell her a load of bullshit.

She doesn't buy it.

Yeah.

No, she almost buys it.

He's like, we're going to, we're barely, we're just affecting.

Dude, first he says everything you saw was a misunderstanding.

The money was flying because he doesn't believe in banking, this and this and that.

That's one of my favorite moments because you have, I feel like both of those characters have to operate at a higher level of intelligence because it's like i don't buy this and he's like oh i have to i have to make my lives better to fool this lady it is my favorite hanks performance moment which is in that scene when he finally goes like let me level with you we are not musicians of the rococo era nor any other era right we are criminals and in one sustained shot the light behind Hanks's eyes goes out.

All of the effort he does to play charming, when he hits the word criminals, he starts looking evil without doing anything demonstrable

on his face.

And establishing the importance of eyes in film acting.

I got to be alive.

Got to be alive.

But then he admits to her, this is what we did because of the insurance policy.

It's not like anyone lost their money.

It's $1 added on to everyone's plan.

And we could cut you into this and give you money to donate to Bob Jones Universe.

Try and sell her on that.

She says it's not right.

She almost gets there.

Almost.

Yeah, and then she gives up.

We're going to

the stage mind, you're going to hand the money back.

I like thinking, it's never occurred to me that that moment where Tom Hanks literally drains the life from his eyes.

It was that he maybe thought back to my Band of Brothers audition tape and thought, like, I saw an actor do something once.

If I can pull it off in this moment, then maybe we got moving.

It truly is.

He goes Connor mode.

So Marlon flashes back to his mother.

Yeah.

He's trying to show

with a handgun and a pillow.

And so then he comes back and gets shot in a struggle with J.K.

Simmons.

With Pancake.

Pancake has been angling for a bigger cut.

A, he brings Mountain Girl into the arrangement, which was not agreed upon.

She enters the circle of trust, and they agree that she's going to have to split his share.

But then he also loses his finger in an explosion, wants Workman's comp,

is not granted it.

J.K.

Simmons, of course, at this point, he was just such a reliable

film with him.

Yeah, but I mean, like in any movie, the first year, same year of Spider-Man 2.

Right.

I love his character.

I love his mustache.

Mustache, great.

I love his repeated

Cohen brothers sort of cycle repetition of both images and dialogue.

And, you know, I like the rhythms of Cone Brothers films.

The way he keeps going, just a trial balloon, pitching bad ideas.

Easiest thing in the world as another good runner.

Yes.

But then he, yes, struggles with Marlon Waynes as they get into a fight.

They've been bickering the whole time.

So that's Marlon dies.

They throw him on the barge.

And we're like, okay, now we are in the, people get thrown on the barge.

Like, you know, this is the thing.

Right.

Then Zima is up next.

another thing that makes me laugh every time he swallows the cigarette uh well it only happens once or twice right he no well he hides the cigarette is what you're referring to and then he's able to kick it back at which is great zima is

part of the physical thing but he dies because he swallows the cigarette he's startled no what happens next is uh pancake tries to escape with the money and zima kills them And then he tries to kill her,

but is startled by a cuckoo clock, swallows his cigarette, falls down the stairs.

pancake tries to escape while the rest of them are disposing of Gwen's body there's a gag that I didn't remember noticing the first time and it feels like the type of gag it didn't make me laugh it's a little mean-spirited but I it felt like the type of thing that's like I bet the Coens enjoyed this detail which is that when uh JK Simmons and Mountain Curl are both killed so they have two bodies to dispose of and you see them holding these legs with boots and pretty hairy legs and you're like, oh, that must be J.K.

Simmons.

They drop the body.

And then you see the next body.

And the legs are even hairier.

Yes.

Yes.

The Z-Mod one is the one that I think is good because it's physical humor that's part of the story.

It's part of the house they're in.

Marlon Wayne's one is kind of an anti-climax.

The Ryan Hurst, the character we haven't mentioned, because he's not that interesting.

Kind of.

Although, I do think it's a good performance.

And after this, he becomes like.

He's the sons of anarchy guy.

Right.

And he was on Walking Dead.

Like, he becomes after this, exclusively like big, weird, bearded, soulful haunted men he basically has a change of heart and is like actually maybe we should turn ourselves in try which is the same thing happens in the original

that one round right hanks fake doesn't want to kill shoots himself yes by mistake i think it's a good gag execution physically it works like that and that he basically right just immediately falls over yeah and then uh

door thinks he's gotten away with it he's going to take all the money and then gets clocked in the head with a uh you know gargoyle with a raven on top he loves edgar allan poe and the gargoyle is the opening shroud of the movie.

And he breaks his neck, classic Gwen Stacey style.

And the anti-climax aspect of it, which also comes from the original, which is that these things sort of happen and are like, oh, they sort of just like one dies, then the other.

The problem kind of completely solves itself.

You have like a villain, a comedic villain who's set up in both versions where you're like sort of waiting for him to do the villainous thing.

He's presented as a criminal mastermind.

In neither movie.

You're like, is this guy just a total blowheart?

In neither movie does that character ever truly you never see him actually like kill somebody in a way that feels like oh, this is the moment we've been waiting for.

In the Ealing one, there's the bit with Herbert Lahm where he's crowbarring the

fucking ladder.

That feels like the closest to him sort of screwing a guy up.

But in this one, it feels like Hanks is going to have to kill the strong, dumb guy, and then he doesn't.

And it's like, oh, I didn't have to do that beat that we're sort of anticipating from the beginning.

But he's just a musician.

And then we're thinking, oh, now we're going to he's going to have to do the killing.

And then the movie takes care of it before you ever have to have a scene where he tries and fails to kill.

Yes.

Yeah.

You know, it's all right.

Deacons popping off at this point, I would say.

It looks pretty good.

A couple things here.

Okay.

First of all, I just think this movie looks incredible.

Yeah, it looks good.

I think Deacons is great.

If we're not viewing this through the prism of the Cohen Brothers filmography, which I know is the main exercise of the show, and we're thinking like this is just a touchstone comedy that is released in April.

I do the mental exercise of watching this movie of being like, what if this was directed by a first-timer?

Because, of course, it is.

It is.

What if this came out of the blue and it was like, oh, it's directed by some guy who did commercials before this?

I do think I'd be like, that movie isn't great, but who the fuck directed this?

It is like so well constructed.

Obviously, you think it's lifeless.

I think it's got energy.

Lifeless, but low energy.

Every time it does one of the like Trouble This World montages, I'm really kind of like in on the kinetic energy of the motion of this movie and the way it uses the music, the look of it, the performances, the styling.

Like I think on a basic craft level, it is not like markedly a step down from their best work.

You could just say all of that craft is applied to something that is less worthy of their craft than most of their films.

But it's not like they have a film in their filmography where it's like, that's a complete fucking drop of the ball fart.

It's incompetent.

It is lacking identity.

I think this movie benefits from going into it.

I think everybody who watches it at this point, I think it's to the benefit if you go in with a feeling of like, this is their worst one.

Absolutely.

Lower your expectations.

You've got to watch it that way.

And at this point, we also don't have to watch it with the fear of like, oh, fuck, have they lost it?

And it's like, hey, guess what?

Right after this, they won best picture.

They've continued to make great films.

This wasn't the end of a golden age for them.

This just becomes a weird blip.

And there are things they do in this film that it's not like they just made a film that's like, well, it's like a bad version of this other film of theirs.

There are

the things that I find pleasurable in this movie aren't just things where I'm like, oh, I could just go watch Barton Think Again and I'll get that out of it.

And I know you like Burn After Reading less than me, David.

That is a movie I love.

But Burn After Reading is actually weirdly similar to this one and feels like a much better version of this, even down to like the comedic deaths and the misunderstanding and all of that.

That movie, I would argue, has a point of view that this film does not have.

I, well, I tend to think, yeah, I think that movie has more, right, more driving its tone.

It has, yeah, it has ideas in it that are relate to the way that Joel and Ethan see the world, whereas this is a comedy about comedy.

Like, it's not actually about I'm going to push back on that slightly and say this, because I always tend to think of their next film as a trilogy, their next three films as a trilogy of sorts, because I always feel like No Country for All Men is about this sort of, it's the drama version of like there, there's an evil, there's a darkness in the world, and we're going to look at these systems that are trying to deal with it, but ultimately, like, can they?

Maybe they're not built for it.

Burn after reading always feels to me like the comic B side of No Country for All Men, the same world, the same fucked up systems, but instead it's all these ridiculous, bureaucratic fools that are sort of, they don't even know what's going on.

Both movies end with a similar thing, which is like, I don't know what's going on.

Maybe none of this map ever meant anything.

And then a serious man sort of like, in a, in a, takes an even like broader view of like the universe in a way.

And now I'm sort of for the first time thinking of lady killers as being sort of like

sort of like a pre

like those four movies, because there is a worldview to this in the sense of

you have a main character who is put forward as like a smart person.

who is well-intentioned, but in this world where you have these like bad men who are trying to to do something, she's ultimately going to like get this windfall of money at the end and donate it to, and I, I pray their lawyers aren't listening,

Bob Jones University.

Oh, this is a comedy podcast in many ways.

I gotta be allowed to joke and riff.

Comedy is about pushing boundaries for leaning.

Please do not sue this.

Please don't sue us.

Please.

And if you want to sue us, I want to remind you that the opinions expressed by Connor Ratliff do not reflect the opinions of Blank Check Podcast or Blank Check productions overall.

They are the opinions of one individual.

Please sue Connor Ratliff.

Oh, please.

But don't.

Don't sue him, but if you're going to sue us, sue him.

But I do feel like that is a subversive ending at the beginning of a series of, I think the endings of the next three Cone Brothers movies are all these like, oh my God, that's a way to end a movie.

And I love the fact that this kind of like broad Disney comedy ends with like a happy ending that also has like, if you know where the money is going, this is a movie about a bunch of criminals who all die and the money ends up going someplace that is not ultimately like a happy ending.

No, I also, it is a funny thought experiment to consider.

If

Barry Sonenfeld had made this in 2004 with Nicholas Cage, I don't think it would have been a big hit, but I do think people would have been like, kind of an upswing for Barry Sonenfeld

versus where it was at with the Cohen's.

Like if he had made, but this movie wouldn't be very good if Barry Sonenfeld made it, like, even compared to the Cohen version.

But I also think it would have been a little similar.

Of all of the films they made with Deacons, this is the one that feels the most Sonnenfeld-y to me.

It's true, but I just want to point out to you this thing in Barry Sonnenfeld's career where after Get Shorty and

Black, he makes absolutely abhorrently bad movies.

I agree.

And so it's sort of that thing of like, maybe he just didn't know how to make a good movie anymore.

But this feels like the kind of film he should have been making.

That having been said, Big Trouble feels like him trying to do Get Shorty again.

He couldn't pull that off.

Can I ask a question?

Please.

One of the things, one of the questions on does the dog die.com says we're doing good.

No, no, we got to answer.

I want to get out of here.

David, we got to answer.

If I, I'll tell you this, if I don't say what I'm about to say, your listeners are going to lose it.

Connor, you're saying they'll always wonder what was it.

You're saying it right now.

And also I have to do a merchandise spotlight.

Connor, go on.

The question under the under the category fear, it says, are there ghosts?

And the commenter says, no ghost appears, but I am pretty sure that all of of the stuff happens because of the ghost of the lady's dead husband.

I like this.

His portrait also continually changes throughout the movie, and there are flickering candles.

This movie has good, good, good.

What's the virtue of the fortune night spotlight?

First, I got to say the sentence,

David, your alma mater, the A.V.

Club, that has now gone through many different hands of corporate ownership and is a website that is like fucking nerfed to death.

And trying to read archives of the AV Club is

a headache, especially any article that originally used to have images.

They would do a yearly feature.

Do you remember swagology?

A feature I loved when I was young that was in an era before social media where people share this stuff all the fucking time.

The AV Club once a year would do a roundup of all the promotional items they had gotten from studios for TV shows and movies, new releases.

And they would rate what's the best and what's the worst swag we got.

And in 2004, they referenced that the fine folks at Walt Disney Pictures sent them a lady killers branded waffle iron.

To your point about the waffles being the main hook of the marketing, I think it's because, by the way, that scene in a microcosm is what, in theory, the comic juice of this movie should be, which is this guy acts like this and has to confront the real world, being like, why are you talking like that?

And why are you dressed like that?

The inherent comedy of him ordering waffles at the waffle house in a way that no one ever was finding a single thing about this on the air.

I was doing such deep Googling.

I found them referencing it in a later swagology.

I have been looking for years to find one on eBay.

I've never found an image of one.

I remember there being one at AV Club at the time, but in their 2009 swagology, they talk about getting swag from Gordon Ramsey's Hotel Hell and Kitchen Nightmares.

And they say, this will go in our pantry right next to our Lady Killer's waffle iron.

It exists.

And if any one of our listeners can find one or send me one, please, please.

I need to know I'm not crazy.

Can I just hop on real quick?

I know that Griffin put out the offer first.

If anyone has one, please send it one his way.

If someone has two, yes.

I'd really love that second one.

I don't want to, I don't want to rein on Griffin's praises.

Someone's like, I got two of these.

$26, $2,000.

First in the box office, Griffin is opening number two to $12 million.

It ends up making $30.

It made, domestically, it made 30?

It cost like 40.

$135,000 to $40, which is pretty crazy considering that Hank's probably got $20,000 or close to.

There's no way he got $20.

What do you think he got?

$10,015?

A lot less.

My man took a haircut on this one?

100%.

I'm sure he was way below his court on this.

And the budget was under $40,000.

It made $70,000 something worldwide.

Yeah, it probably, you know.

And how much money were they, how much money were they stealing in the heist

from the casino?

That's a great question.

I don't think the original is $60,000.

I'm guessing it's like $600,000 in this.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Because I'd love to know how much more money the movie made than the Heistwest.

Quite a bit.

That'd be like a fun sequence.

In that sense, it was.

Number one at the box office is a sequel.

Okay.

Sort of a family,

I guess.

It's a family-adjacent movie.

Sort of genre.

I'm sure you were there opening weekend.

2004.

Is it live action or animated?

It's live action with some animated characters.

You say I was there opening weekend derisively.

That means, of course, it has to be Scooby Doo 2 colon monsters unleashed.

It is one of my favorite subtitles, but it is also one of the worst titles of all time.

No.

Because they could have done Scooby 2, Scooby-T-O-O, Scooby-Doo.

There's so many opportunities there, and they whiffed on all of them.

Scooby-Dooby-Doo.

Scooby-Doo B-2.

Scooby-Doo B-2.

Any of these they could have done, and they did not.

It's just called Scooby-Doo Numeral 2:

Monsters Unleashed, a movie with a great premise and terrible execution written by James Gunn.

Um,

Scooby-Doo 2.

Monsters Unleashed.

Opening to a healthy $29 million for a movie that bad.

But the first one came out in the middle of the summer and opened to like 55.

It was the biggest opening weekend Warner Brothers had had.

Yeah, I mean, I think this one's

talks about that they felt like they dumped it coming off a big hit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it ends up at like 90?

It ends up at 84.

It does like half of what the previous.

Yeah.

Number three at the box office is the actual box office success of this year, this moment.

I believe it's called The Passion of the Christ.

That is correct.

One of the most movies

of all time.

In five weeks, it has made $315 million.

Number four at the box office is a collabo between the two most recent people to be involved with Superman.

Oh, it's Dawn of the Dead?

Yes.

So Gunn is two movies in theater fan palette.

Zach Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, which has a 60% drop after being number one last weekend, but nonetheless,

a decent hit, yes, in a good movie.

Number five at the box office, probably drawing a lot of fire away from Tom Hanks sort of having a bit of a a flop on his someone else's flopping hard is a huge flop a notorious flop i i would say somewhat notorious directed by some and someone who's been on this show multiple times who's been a guest on this show two times two-time guest a two-time guest directed a huge flop it's him swerving to a more sort of like uh kind of grown-up type movie doesn't work is it in good company no that's a good movie yeah that's why i'm confused oh and that was also paul solo right i believe so yeah okay um no it's uh but it's it's more, it becomes a, it's not a particularly big hit, but it gets a lot of press because of the star and another of co-star and the press around them at the time, unrelated to this movie.

Was there a romantic entanglement?

In 2004, and they were swinging seriously.

It's more grown-up.

It's a comedy.

Like

comedy.

Yes.

The film is called Jersey Girl.

Yes.

Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl.

Not a bad film at all.

It's totally fine.

It is so much better than its reputation suggests.

I do believe.

It's hammered by the press.

He at his Atlantic Smodcastle Theater that he owns in New Jersey, I think they have once or twice in the last couple of years done secret screenings of his director's cut that I've heard is quite a bit better.

That is a movie that obviously there was a lot of Weinstein panic cutting around J-Lo

after Geely bombed, where they were trying to hide her in the movie.

But either way, she dies in the first act.

Anyway,

not a bad film.

Number six of the box office is Taking Lives.

That's the Angelo

film.

DJ Caruso.

Yeah.

Not a good movie.

No.

Number seven is Star Skin Hutch.

Yeah, really kind of not a good movie, but terrible movie.

So we're enjoying it.

Skates Along.

Right.

It's got a couple of moments.

I do remember there was a point where I was checking out movies from the New York Public Library when I realized you could check them out on DVD.

And a movie that, and that was a movie that had such a long waiting list that you would never be able to, it had like hundreds of holds.

That's so funny.

So it's like, oh, you'd never be able to get Starskin Hutch from the New York Public Library.

They just didn't have enough copies to meet with demand for people who wanted that movie for free.

Touch Flops did an interview when that movie came out where he was like, we're not trying to do like a parody of the original show.

We're not trying to do a Brady Bunch movie thing.

Our pitch was like, this was the original pilot for Star Ski and Hutch.

And the network said, can you make it 10% less funny?

And then I remember seeing the movie and going, that's exactly what it is.

And that's a weird thing to answer.

It's not weighted, but it was a solid hit.

It did well.

Number eight of the box office, bit of a, well, it did okay, but a bit of a flop.

The Vigo Mortensen film, Hidalco.

That's a big flop well how much money do you think it made though it cost over a hundred million it was an expensive movie but it's 70 which is like you know it's like big flop uh number nine of the box office is a film about a window oh i'm seeing here that it's a secret window okay let me guess what this is uh give me a hint who's the lead actor johnny depp fuck is it based on the work of a famous writer probably

Stephen King.

You're fucking up my bed.

I know.

I forget.

It's a secret window.

Number 10 of the box office, and people forget how early this is.

I'm counting that as a win that I got that one correct because I would have if David hadn't spoiled it.

I got you.

Number 10 of the box office, people forget how early this film came out in the year, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind.

Yeah.

Which, of course, goes on to win an Oscar.

And number 11, opening just below all that, but a film we'll cover on the box office one day, the Ernest Dickerson film, Never Die Alone.

That's like, what if DMX is the lead rather than like kind of like the off-ball?

Well, but the movie opens with DMX's death, and then it's David Arquette investigating the life of a guy via Flash Rock.

Oh, so he, did he die alone?

I think he did.

And David Arquette turns to the camera at the end.

He's like, and that's why you should never die alone.

It's an interesting movie story.

I've never seen it.

It's a pretty good film.

Cool.

I remember going to see it with my friend in high school and being like, oh, this is going to be like exit wounds, like DMX just like being a badass.

And then it's kind of a character study.

Fascinating.

All right.

I'll check out Never Die Alone.

Save it for the series.

Maybe I will.

He actually has made quite a lot of movies.

It might be tough.

Ernest?

Yeah.

I did a count recently.

It's dude.

I think some of them are TV movies.

Yeah, I circle back.

I always check the viability of a Canada.

Connor, do you want to leave us with any final Tom Hanks thoughts?

Because I feel like we didn't discuss his performance enough.

David was rushing us along.

We talked about Tom Hanks for a fucking hour.

He seemed committed to the idea of this being the worst movie.

I don't have to go see the gay movie.

I have to go see a gay movie.

You have to go see a gay movie.

Yeah, it's the one where they kiss.

Sculland O'Connor.

Okay.

I think.

Is that who it is?

I didn't realize there's an artificial

shot clock on this movie in this episode.

Yeah.

Do we think that Pickles is the descendant of Ulysses from Inside Lewin Davis?

He's talking about animal.

David's leaving the room.

He doesn't want.

He says, David's scratching.

He literally says.

He's flaming the bathroom.

He was off mic.

He said, he's talking about animals.

As if that was somehow, did I miss a memo?

We're not allowed to animate.

And I just want to make it clear that

as he muttered this, he stood up and scratched his butt.

No wonder he got so, I didn't realize there was a no talking about animals rule in the podcast.

I am so sorry that I violated that.

Obviously, the dog stuff, I really like.

Connor, it's not your fault.

Shouldn't have brought it up.

She got so mad every time I mentioned that website.

He sent us an inner office memo recently.

No more animals.

I'm not hereby forbidding animal talk from the podcast.

Also, no poppins.

Do you remember no poppins?

Do you get the joke I'm making?

No Poppins, Mary Poppins?

There was a, Steve Harvey sent out a memo to the entire staff of his talk show.

And the first thing on it was no poppins.

Do not let someone come visit my dressing room before a show, but he described it as no poppins.

It sounds like something that Mr.

Banks would have said.

Yeah, absolutely.

We got to save that guy.

There's no, like, no record of this waffle iron on the internet.

I know.

I had to do such deep Googling to find.

I will screenshot

and we will post on social media the AV Club write-up that still acknowledges it.

But I searched really hard last night to find the proof because I was like, am I imagining this?

We got to get two of these.

We got to get two.

I'll be so sad if we only ever find one for Griffin.

I've just left with Connor, it was a delight having triples his best.

We should get three.

No, triples is best.

Oh, sorry, I accidentally felt like we were about to wrap up the episode.

That's a weird energy feeling floating around here.

I have so much more to say about the lady killer.

David, what if we only talk about humans?

Can we keep the episode?

You just don't know.

He needs to go to his screen.

I'm going.

We just keep going.

Yeah, you guys have fun.

Connor, it really is so much fun having you.

Thank you for having me.

I want to deliver you a true compliment.

Sometimes I'm coming to this show.

You know, we got a podcast podcast scheduled.

Maybe we have some guests that I don't know.

And there's the slight nerves of like, what's that going to be like?

Right.

You coming on this show, I truly was like walking into the studio.

Like, I'm going to have a good time this morning.

Did you have a good time?

Absolutely.

That's a lovely compliment.

And he hasn't given a compliment in a decade.

Wow.

To anyone.

I keep him close to the chest.

Can I?

Can I?

I actually have a bunch of letters that on my death will be released that are compliments for every flowery compliments for anyone.

That's a nice thought.

Ben, you're a good listener.

You're right.

It's like, that's the full letter he waited until his death to tell me.

He doesn't say that can i can i put that compliment into my press quotes and say it's from the atlantic absolutely all right um

i'll see you later all right see you later truly lovely to talk to you too bad i don't like this movie i wish i liked it a little more that's a great wish what if that came true what a waste of a wish that seems like a gigantic waste of a wish my my stance is i i give this film barely a pass in grade which means to me they have never made a truly bad film this is their absolute worst movie yeah i've seen worst worst that's awesome i would love it if like the blue fairy from the Zemeccus version of Pinocchio came to you tonight and was like, Your wish is granted.

You now like the lady killers.

I'm like, great.

No more.

No more wishes.

No more wishes.

My girlfriend and I were watching the Ealing movie last night and she was like, and everyone hates the Cohen one.

And I was like, yeah, let me just show you the opening scene of what Hanks does so you can see how weird it is.

I want to know what she thought.

And I put it on and she goes, like, this is funny.

I like this.

And I was like, right?

I'm going to take a shower, but if you want to keep watching, feel free.

I go take a shower.

I come out.

I'm like, what do you think?

She was like, um,

I like parts of it.

And I was like, really?

It's lost you.

And she's like, I'll admit, after two minutes of you in the shower, I started checking my formula.

And I was so ready for her to back me up.

And she immediately was like, I kind of get what other people are saying.

Yeah, I would, it's not a movie I would ever fight with.

If someone's like, I don't like it, it's not like, I'm going to convince you.

No, I did not break up with my girlfriend on the spot over there.

That would be weird.

But I do find pleasure in the things that work in this movie.

I do as well.

I find pleasure in so much stuff and I love all you guys and I'll see you on Thursday.

All right.

Did we get any of that on like

what's the huge projecting?

I like the way that it feels when someone leaves a podcast and you hear them go away.

It makes you feel like you're really in the space.

I mean, now we can actually.

It's like every now and then when you're in a movie theater and they make a really bold choice about having a sound happen in the back corner of the theater and it pulls you out of the movie in a way that you're like, that's a big choice.

These are also, these are the reasons I love this show not being on video.

Do you know what I'm saying?

They're sort of like theater of the mind and like you heard David get further away from the mic, and then a door shut, the flush of the toilet.

I'm kind of thinking maybe to mirror the movie, one of us should each get up and leave.

Oh, it's like he went on the barge that him leaving there was the first one.

Let me make sure my devices are synced in terms of uh Disney emoji blitz.

Just if I'm gonna leave abruptly, I have to, yeah, it does a good place.

I'm in a really good place, actually.

I really feel like, um,

and I hope that people have enjoyed, because I know that sometimes listeners, they're like, oh, well, I'll enjoy the movies that I like.

But it's actually sometimes that's not the case.

Sometimes it's more fun to hear people talk about a movie where there's a little bit more

interesting stuff to chew on because some Cohen Brothers movies, like I texted you at one point and I said, I don't want to do Lady Killers anymore.

You want to do Barton.

Barton Fank because Barton Fink is not just my favorite Cohen Brothers movie.

It's one of my top four favorite movies of all time.

And we had literally like just promised it to White's the day before you texted me that.

And I was just like, he wants to do it for a lot of reasons.

He feels really strongly.

We feel really strongly.

I'd still love you to do Lady Hill.

It makes, and it makes sense

for me to do this one, given all the dead eyes crossover and it's everything.

And he's stealing your moves in this movie.

Oh, yeah, my dead eyes move.

But like Barton, I just saw a quote about Barton Fink in that new John Goodman interview that's out and where he specifically said he wishes he could go back and redo some things about Barton Fink.

And I'm like,

what on earth could you be talking about?

This is, look, we've been doing a lot of Goodman this year.

And he, I say this all the time.

No actor of his stature is more publicly self-critical than Goodman.

It is incredible how unsatisfied he seems to be with everything he's ever done.

And I'm like, that's a guy who is so natural, makes it seem so effortless, and always hits for me.

And he's like, I watch Barton Fink and I like shudder.

As much as I think I fucked it up.

Oh, no, he's perfect it's I mean it's crazy I there's one part of that movie that I don't like

you guess what it is no but I just had a big thought tell me what it is I need to hold on to that there's one scene that I bump on it just feels a little bit like uh

always feels a little out of place to me and it's the part where he's at the USO dance and he's doing his like silly dance

and yelling at people.

And there's something about it tonally that feels like it's from another movie.

And

every other scene in that movie feels perfect to me.

And that one scene, I always, whenever I get to it, I'm always like, I like the sailors fighting with him, though.

I know what you're saying about the dance itself.

Yeah.

There's something about it that seems a little bit too like it, it looks like a scene that if you saw it as a deleted scene, you'd be like, I know why that didn't make it.

And it kind of doesn't.

I had a humongous thought just now.

This all just came together for me.

And I can't believe David's not here to hear this.

And I hope he never hears it.

I want to make it clear.

I hope he never listens back to this.

For everyone on on earth but David.

And if you're listening to the show, never and you meet David or you already know David and you see him again, never repeat this to him.

But maybe say, I know something from the podcast that you don't know.

Here's my biggest.

You refuse to explain it.

Yeah.

Would this movie work better with John

in the Tom Hanks podcast?

I was literally, that was my next point I was about to make that.

Hanks is kind of doing a Goodman performance in this, right?

In terms of like the bigness.

As much as I enjoy Hanks's performance in this, to imagine John Goodman in the role is to imagine an effortless seeming performance.

And John Goodman's kind of better at like charming menace than anyone.

Like, he would know how to make this character scary and funny

at the same time.

I think you would be more genuinely scared for Irma P.

Hall's safety if it was John Goodman.

And I think when he dies at the end, you'd be like, yes, we did it.

Like, you'd feel a relief that he had been wiped off the board.

Goodman in this would kind, Ben, if they don't kill the dog and it's Goodman and Goodman is doing foghorn leghorn.

I would like to see that.

I would like to see that.

It's hard for me to say that I

would maybe

like it.

Is there anything you liked about this movie or was it like a total?

You liked it when it was over.

You liked the tunneling.

It was a big part of the movie.

Huge part of the movie.

I like the tunneling.

You saw Ma with the cigarette?

That's quite impressive.

That's a good part of the city.

Were you amused when he was hiding under the bed and she was saying, what are you having tea under the bed for?

It's such a funny thing for someone to witness and imagine that this old lady has an imaginary friend named the professor who drinks tea.

And imagine that Tom Hanks hiding under the bed and getting caught under the bed would still work.

Right.

And that he's shushing her, right?

And that in her mind, she's like, this is funny that he's playing this game of saying shush.

Meanwhile, thinks he can get away with it.

It's a great scene in which each character is kind of correct about what's going on.

Like they all have to have their own version of what's happening.

And it leads to the ultimate victory of them not taking her credibly when she confesses and offers to give them back the money, which then leads to her giving all the money to Bob Jones University.

And Connor, is there anything you want to say about Bob Jones University on the record that is your viewpoint, not ours?

I don't know a lot about them.

Everything that I've heard has been unimpressive to me.

And if that's a crime, throw me in prison.

Okay, Ben's going to leave.

That's getting a little too hot for him.

And of course, I hope that my big, big hope always, and I tweet about it every few years or post about it on social media, that the one sequel, the Cohen Brothers, claim they're going to make Old Fink.

Old Fink would rule.

It's the best thing that they could reunite to make now that they're in this extended rum spring of working with their wives and not with each other.

And the last I heard of it was them saying that they thought that Trotruro was aging better than than they had hoped.

We're past the age because they wanted to be Barton Fink in the Summer of Love.

We're past the age chronologically

where that should have happened.

But I think they want their idea of what John Trotruro as an old man is is still.

The guy's aging great, but he doesn't look young.

Yeah, and I think, you know, that's

just a pleasure.

I want to see what the fink hair do in the late 60s is.

I can only imagine the fink hairdo in the late 60s.

I, um

you know it basically i i just can't believe the dial of destiny beat them to it we already got we got old indiana jones before we got old fink old jones yeah and i

and i don't even worry about like barton fink is a movie that just means so much to me it captures so much um

it's a movie i think about constantly And I'm not scared whether old Fink is good or bad because I'm not one of those people who thinks like, oh, it gets ruined if you don't like, like, I don't, I never think that way because I always.

you never think that way.

I never think that way.

That's not how I think.

That's not how I think, Govna.

It's not how I think.

I

always prefer the notion of like, just try it.

Try to do the thing.

If you have the idea, if you have the impulse, and if it doesn't work out.

No slate off the original.

It's the same way that, like, that's ultimately.

I know David really hated the argument of that we were, I don't remember exactly what he was objecting to, but

when I think about lady killers and what works about it and what doesn't i always just land on the side of i'm glad they tried this um because especially now knowing it wasn't a dead end for them well especially now talking in terms of moose porting boy because we're going to introduce the concept of moose porting this late well all right because i haven't said this on the pod i've only just said this to you in person right correct this is a great great place to introduce it so i With the recent passing of Gene Hackman, I had never seen the movie Welcome to Mooseport.

Yeah, let me make clear as well.

My father had prostate surgery on the day that Gene Hackman died.

I was in the hospital waiting room

for him to be released.

And you called me and you pitched the idea of mooseporting to me on the day of Gene Hackman's death.

The body, I was going to say the body was still warm, but of course, when they discovered him, he had been dead for a couple of weeks.

Yeah.

But this is the context in which I receive the idea of moose porting for the first time is hospital waiting room.

All right.

and it's as good a place as any to receive this idea.

So, if you're listening to this in a hospital waiting room, congratulations, you're pulling the same classic move that Griffin did.

If you're near a hospital, we don't want people overcrowding the waiting rooms of hospitals, but if you're near a hospital and you see the waiting room is basically empty, maybe walk inside, listen to this as part or

hit pause, go.

Uh, well, we also don't want people draining the wi-fi from people who need it, yeah, but only sign on if you need it.

I had never seen Welcome to Mooseport.

When it came out at the time, it was poorly received.

I just didn't see it.

I didn't see it.

But I always thought, I will see it eventually.

And then eventually it became sort of canonized as Gene Hackman didn't make any more movies.

People were like, I can't believe his last movie was Welcome to Mooseport.

It kind of has this reputation of like, I can't do it.

He lived for another 20 years and Welcome to Mooseport remained his final film.

And so he died.

And I thought, you know what?

I should see Welcome to Mooseport now.

And it occurred to me that maybe I will enjoy it more because now I have a different context.

Maybe I will appreciate now that there aren't going to be any new Gene Hackman performances.

I will just appreciate aspects of it that I, that wouldn't have been

as enjoyable to me back when it originally came out.

And I did watch it and there were a few things I really did enjoy.

And I do think it was enhanced by just appreciating seeing him.

Now, by happenstance, the day you're pitching this to me, the day of Gene Hackman's death, I had watched Mooseport for the first time within the two weeks leading up to that for whatever weird reason i got on a run of watching donald petri films donald petri directed welcome to mooseport he directed the macaulay caulk and richie rich he directed the first miscongeniality wow you filled up a whole dish and there was another

There was another Petrie I watched.

For some reason, I got in a Petri run and I was like, oh, you were filling up your Petri dish.

Right.

I was like, Petrie's kind of an interesting journeyman comedy filmmaker who had some big hits and some big misses, but never really had a defined identity, right?

And I was like, maybe it's time to watch Mooseport.

And I watched Mooseport and you were pitching Mooseporting to me.

And I thought the framework you were pitching was specifically watching a movie that was disregarded at the time because of the context in which it was released that now with some distance plays a lot better, removed from that burden.

right of however whatever was held against it at the time and i said to you and you said i think it should be a thing that we start doing and calling moose porting that moose porting should be the verb yeah for for going through that process of reclaiming a movie that was a victim of circumstance and timing and i said to you connor i have watched this film in the last two weeks and it is not very good i do not know how much of a bump you're gonna get from rewatching it in the wake of his passing and you said then maybe moose purding is just the term for filling in a gap in someone's filmography after they die.

And since then, I feel like you have morphed it again to just be filling in a gap.

Well, it's specifically a thing you, it doesn't like going back and seeing an old Orson Welles movie, something that came out before you were born.

That's not mooseporting.

It's something that you could have gone to see at the time.

You passed on it for whatever reason.

You missed it.

You maybe didn't even know it existed.

And that thing's kind of dismissed with a shrug.

Lady Killers is the kind of movie that a lot of our listeners might be moose porting.

A lot of them will be moose porting.

I also say this.

I want to clarify.

It's not, I just said something and I realized, no, that's not moose porting.

If you didn't know that a movie existed, that's that's not moose porting.

It has to be something that you actively like knew it existed, didn't see it.

Never bothered to watch it.

And then you go back.

I recently mooseported the movie It's Pat.

And I realized that a lot of the, a lot of the, well, it's better than its reputation.

Certainly, there's a lot to recommend.

We don't have time for that right now.

No, that's its own episode.

But I realized there were a lot of SNL movies that I didn't see in the 90s.

Oh, so you're doing a big I never saw Coneheads.

I never saw Stuart Saves.

Coneheads I really like.

I never saw Night at the Roxbury.

I never saw Superstar.

There's a lot of these stuff at the roxbury never saw the ladies' man on fire yeah any of those movies if I saw them now

they let's say they're all C-

there still might be a part of me now that is nostalgic for that era of comedy we don't get that kind of character comedy the last SNL movie was Magruber which is now 15 years old and that was itself the first one in about a decade if you go see a movie like that in the theater when it comes out and you think it's 25% funny you still feel like 75% of that was not worth it now in my dotage, as I near my 50th birthday, congratulations.

It may, well, I haven't got there yet.

Okay, humble break.

I think I might, those are examples of movies that are, they are on deck to be moose ported because I think at this age, there are certain things that, even if I don't love them, even if I don't really like them, there'll be an

an

element of appreciation.

Sure.

That wouldn't have been there.

I feel that way basically now whenever I watch any studio comedy, because we never get them anymore and we never get them theatrically, and anytime I watch a true, pure theatrical comedy starring real comedy stars

that has like production value and any degree of craft behind it, I'm just like, this is automatically gaining another half star for me just because we're living in a vacuum of these types of movies.

And I would say, in an era now where we are awaiting, will the Cohen brothers make another movie together?

I think Lady Killers is an ideal moose port

because

there's a limited number of Cohen brother movies.

If you liked the other ones and you haven't seen this one,

you're also getting to see Tom Hanks and these actors in this era.

And no matter what, they're not making 2004 era Tom Hanks movies anymore.

They don't, he's older than that.

This is a movie.

Well, they did with here.

They are kind of making.

But I think even if you dislike this movie as much as David and Ben did, I think this is a film worth moose porting and hopefully mooseporting within the context that we're helping to provide of how strange it was that everyone made this movie and how it's at kind of a fulcrum point of career best work for everyone involved on either side of it.

But it's interesting that they all met in this middle fallow sort of, they met, they met briefly in a pit and then all climbed out of it.

And I also think, to be honest, the one thing that I would definitely say about this is I don't think that you could accuse this movie of like, well, this is the Cone brothers just phoning it in.

It is not a phone in and it's not anonymous it is they are trying some things not all of those things work but it's clearly built around things that they personally find funny and repeated themes and visual ideas that are throughout their entire phonography and sometimes honestly like when you really like an artist their flawed deep cuts sometimes are more more interesting to revisit than some perfect movies that you there are some movies of theirs that i've probably seen so much this is the value of mooseboarding yes this is and and mooseboarding is also great uh as you get older because it is a form of time travel it is a way of revisiting things that you you you it's like a butterfly effect you watch it and you imagine what how would my life have been different if i had seen this in theaters at the time because you have to you can only moose port a movie that you were aware of when it was Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens knew about mooseboarding.

In a way, he may have invented it with a Christmas carol.

Christmas Carol is kind of the ultimate tale of mooseboarding.

Ultimately, it's like, you know, there's some stuff that you missed, Ebenezer.

And he's like i'm gonna and he's like oh i've seen some of this like you haven't seen this you haven't and he's like this feel this hits different for me now mooseport pass mooseport yet to come yeah uh connor spirit please no more mooseporting connor i have a podiatrist appointment uh but i'll of course just let you keep going uh is there you oh you're gonna go well is there anything you want to plug so i'm gonna okay is there anything you want to plug oh um

Connor Ratliff presents the acting class

on YouTube.

Griffin has appeared on a couple of twice now.

It's a one-person improvised show.

Occasionally, I have a guest join me in my one-person improvisation.

I was like, I was like, I was like, Jeff Heller recently.

It pretends to be an, it's a one-person improvised show that pretends to be an acting class.

You do them live.

You've been doing them in New York.

You've been traveling a bit with them, but all of them go up on YouTube eventually.

Most of them.

And if you, what I would ask people is please subscribe to the YouTube channel

because it is the thing that I want to

I'm going to give it another year and see if I can build it.

It's an incredible show.

I cannot endorse it enough.

Everyone I know who has seen it is blown away.

It is the kind of thing that I think only you can do and is a perfect vehicle for your unique mind.

And I would like it to eventually be a thing because it's basically like a talk show where I make the guest improvise when I have a guest.

And I really like the idea of

it.

I sort of want it to be like hot ones without the wings or the sauce.

So just what's left.

I will say also, by the time this episode comes out, it will be close-ish

to us doing the first George Lucas performances, George Lucas talk show in a little while, New York Comic-Con.

And I believe we have some New York show date

set.

We'll put the information in the episode description.

Are you allowed to plug the Stitch comic?

Oh, yeah.

James III and I

have written a series of eight issues of Stitch comics that Dynamite Comics is putting out.

So we're writing official Disney comics, and basically these are comics in which

Jumba, he's in danger of losing membership in one of his like evil guilds,

and that's where he has his dental plan.

And so he has to come up with a series of inventions to try to like gain enough points so he doesn't lose membership in this evil organization.

It's a really funny idea.

And in each issue, he has a new invention that could be used for evil.

Stitch usually does something that will then send things in a chaotic direction.

And I think they're turning out really funny.

I've seen the first two issues.

Show me a couple pages.

They were really funny.

First two issues with the art back, and it's really good.

So please check those out.

I think the first issue is out in early August, and then monthly for eight months or whatever.

Connie, thank you for being here.

I love you.

Thank you so much.

I'm going to wander away.

Okay.

And

yeah, and I guess I'll just figure out how to end the episode.

Falling onto a barge of garbage.

Yeah, very garbage barge.

Of course.

No, thank you.

Thank you for being here.

Talk to you soon.

All right.

I love you.

I guess it's just me left alone with my lady killer's thoughts.

It's like a six out of 10.

I acknowledge there are a couple major strikes against it.

So it's bordering on being like a 5.9, but I give it the 6.

I prefer the sound of a B minus over a C plus, even though I guess both are passing grades.

Just getting into C territory, even if it was a passing grade, always felt like

I can't hold my head high versus anything with a B.

I'm like, look, it's more good than bad.

Rotten Tomatoes, 60% positive reviews.

That's the cutoff.

I think this movie ended up at like 44.

I think that's rude.

It should have been 60.

Right there, 60.

It should have been barely fresh.

Or if it were rotten, it should have been like a 59.

Should have been

pretty high rotten or very low fresh.

It's not a great film.

It's deeply flawed, but

I think compared to a lot of the worst movies we've covered on show,

pretty good standing if this is your worst film, especially for how many films they've made.

Uh, tune in next week for No Country for Old Men, a movie I don't think we'll argue about a lot.

Uh, it's pretty, pretty fucking great.

One best picture.

It's not racist, which is definitely a feather in its cap.

And as always,

I think I'm just gonna go jump on this garbage barge.

Ride it all the way to my podiatrist appointment.

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 Bardy 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 Minic.

Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help.

Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

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This podcast is created and produced by BlankCheck Productions.