A Serious Man with Marc Maron

Lock the gates

Hello, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin

Newman.

Welcome to the pod

blankies, Blankstables, Blinkers,

Blankupie Wall Streeters,

Blankorecans,

Blankadians.

This is the pod.

This is me.

This is Griffin.

Big show today.

Serious Man, Mark Marin.

Serious Man's the name of the movie.

He is a serious man and a funny guy.

He's a nice guy.

He's a good guy.

We had a good talk, good chat, good episode.

Long time.

In the making, we'll get to that, but I think you guys are gonna like that one.

Pow!

Just shit my pants, Dunkin' Donuts, raspberry-flavored coffee.

What's new?

What's new with me?

What's going on here?

My dryer is broken.

It still gets hot, but it doesn't turn.

The drum doesn't turn.

Gotta get someone to fix the dryer.

I got clothes that are clean, but they're wet.

Not ideal.

Not ideal.

Cat update.

I don't have cats.

I still don't have cats.

No cats.

That's the update.

I'm allergic to them and I don't like them on a personal level.

Trying to keep my head on straight.

Trying to stay normal.

Trying to be healthy.

Do read the Reddit sometimes.

Probably a mistake, but some of the things I'm reading on the Reddit get me a little

worked up.

What else?

What else?

I guess, I guess, guess yeah just

here's our talk with Mark Marin talking a serious man he's been dream guest one of the on the ultimate our white whales

I think Mark didn't really know what to expect definitely had never listened to the show before was surprised how long we were going didn't tell him that this was probably the shortest episode we've done in years But it's still, it's a good length.

It's a good length.

It's a healthy length.

I think you're going to like it.

Are we adding these intros just to pat it out?

No, I thought it was a cool, stylistic exercise.

Anyway, here we are, serious man

with a serious man himself and a very funny guy, Mark Marin.

And I'm David.

So the way we usually start this podcast is I do a quote from the movie.

So go do a quote from the movie.

And I ham fist the word podcast into it.

But I sort of think at a tribute for this episode,

we should like cut it, like fade in on this

in the mid-conversation.

This part right now?

Right.

Yeah, okay.

The way you do.

Sure.

Where it's like, there's not the hard start to the conversation.

Yeah, it's true, right?

I think we're getting to the table set.

I've copped that.

Yes.

I mean, you're the king.

Everyone's copped every goddamn thing.

We don't do

abrupt start, and we've copped like 40,000 other things from it.

I've already done the...

Are we rolling?

Yeah, we've got it.

We're talking about it.

Yes.

So now we're doing it.

So now I'm going to do the quote, but now I've set up the quote.

Okay.

Okay.

So let me just.

Crazy you didn't have this queued up.

I had it queued up.

Okay, great.

I was getting into the character.

We've been talking about process for the last half an hour.

You got to let me find it.

I have it right here.

I have a screenshot.

It's right here.

Can you give me a moment?

I've had quite a bit bit of cirrus lately, marital problems, professional, you name it.

This is not a frivolous request.

This is a serious...

I've tried to be a serious podcast, you know?

There you go.

Right.

It just felt like the obvious thing to do.

I guess so.

There's so many things.

Could Sussman.

Toward shit my suspension.

I had to do it.

I'm sorry.

I had to do it.

I had to do it.

Justcoffee.co-op.

We did that for years.

We did not have the sponsorship, but anytime I drank coffee, I would say that and I'd give them the free plug that was worth a penny.

The other ones they were initially upset about that until they changed their business entirely.

Really?

Yeah, the original guy.

Oh, they were like, Come on, the association.

Yeah, yeah, they didn't love it.

This is a tooth that mail orders were coming in, right?

Yeah, yeah, right.

So, when we talks, when we started this podcast, it originally had a different premise.

It took us about a year to figure out what the show actually

was.

And when we started, I think we were trying to, in a way, the framing was more satirizing other podcasts.

Yeah.

So we were lifting from from every other podcast we listened to and then repurposing other podcasts, accidental and purposeful catchphrases into our own.

So I feel like we've eased off of them, but there are like six Maronisms that were in our lexicon for a very long time.

Oh, yeah.

So Pow, I just shit my pants.

Who are your guys?

We did a lot with.

The one I love, and I brought up with Brandon once, and he said he didn't remember it.

is the day you were working the door at the comedy store and Damon Waynes walked in and said, I'm just going to do a jazz set.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We repurpose jazz set a lot.

Yeah.

In context that no longer make sense.

Yeah.

And then lock the gates.

We do a lot of lock.

I mean, whenever we talk, because I feel like I also will reference people involved in the movie we're talking about.

If you have interviewed them, I will pull up things that they said on your show, but we will exclusively refer to that as like when Jeremy Strong locked the gates.

Yeah.

Right.

Right, that's on the gate lock.

Yeah, exactly.

And we also did Almost Famous Early.

Yeah, we did.

Cameron Crowe is one of our first blank check guys because he is

ultimate blank check career.

Yeah.

Right.

He gets to a point where he's making movies that don't make sense.

I don't understand what happened to that guy.

I really.

Yeah.

Because there's only really the two movies, right?

I mean, I'd give

first times, right?

Yeah, yes.

Okay.

Which is a masterpiece, but

say anything almost famous during the watch.

Those are the three undeniable.

But that's fine.

Yeah, totally.

I mean, I don't know what we expect out of these guys.

I don't love singles, but I think singles has its place or whatever.

You know, singles is to me.

It's so vanilla sky, but vanilla sky is more divisive.

Yeah, but what he did was so fine-line, right?

Of like, yes, it's going to have five acts and it's going to be very touchy-feely, but it'll be funny.

And it'll be, and it's just like the minute you lose your tone calibration on that, it's going to be just terrible.

I don't know what happens to certain guys when they lose their tone.

Is it that they get too successful, like too, you know, I mean, this was originally the premise of our show that conflict to their life.

like is blank check status kind of like a monkey paw it gets people in their heads and the first five or six people we covered all fit that paradigm of the success maybe was the worst thing that happened to them yeah but i i think but it's not in terms of that they necessarily get too comfortable i think they the buckling under the expectations that's and starting to think in terms of those expectations as opposed to the movie yes uh it becomes a a real struggle yeah and that to us now we've moved on and and we'll cover it with the cohens You know, they have little peaks and valleys, but it's not like the first half their career is good and then they lose it and never get it back.

But they're a film, the Cohens as filmmakers for me, and not unlike how I talk about, you know, literature or music, that there are certain works of art that if you go back to them at different points in your life, they deepen

and they take on different meaning.

And for me, that is the indicator of a true work of genius, that you have a lifelong relationship that evolves with the art, that evolves as you evolve.

I agree completely.

And I think they've done a good job.

Part of what we're talking about that I think fucks other people is.

People don't know how to handle it when they get to the stage where you become the blank thing as a proven formula, the Cameron Crow thing, right?

Once he had done it a couple times in a row, it was like, great, make a Cameron Crow movie.

We all know what a Cameron Crow movie is.

You don't need to prove it to us anymore.

You've like nailed it.

And that burden of expectation, I think, starts to get in people's heads where they're not fighting against a pressure while they're trying to find the thing.

Well, yeah, it's it, but it takes

you know, so people

appreciate or have the reverence for there's an expectation for people to keep delivering.

Yes.

No matter what.

And that's a it's a diminishing returns, if not a dead end

as a creator.

That was one of the greatest moments

in my podcasting experience was when I talked to McCartney and I threw him that curveball.

It's the greatest moment

for me because I really, I don't, I wouldn't say I have,

I definitely have the ability just out of my own ego to not have, like, to not audibly have an uncontrollable amount of reverence for somebody.

I couldn't, sure.

I couldn't hide it with Keith.

Yeah.

And that's fine.

We all know that.

People who listen know that.

Well, all right.

Well, Marin's just going to do.

When he takes out a cigarette on Mike in that episode and you just start giggling, it's the best.

It's incredible.

That was great.

But like McCartney, oddly, when I went into the McCartney interview, and I hold on to this, and it was really part of it, there was part of me that was sort of like, in my heart, I'm like, I'm a John guy.

But I'll talk to Paul.

But it's like, and everyone else is like, it's a beetle.

And I'm like, I know, but, you know, I'm a John guy.

David kicked his head down.

So that moment where I've talked to a lot of musicians of that generation.

and just because of their egos, they have to believe they're doing their best work ever.

You know, when you talk to Roger Waters and he's talking about his fourth or fifth solo album,

they're kind of saying, well, this is really what.

So knowing that, I asked.

Paul, and I imagine you heard it.

I said, so a lot of people I talk to of your generation, you know, think that they're doing their best work now.

And by the way, he was promoting a bad record.

Well, which record was it?

Egypt Station Station.

It's a pretty

late standard.

Yeah, I said, you know, they think they're doing their best work ever.

And he just said, I was in the Beatles.

Right.

That's a pretty highest attitude you can have.

The best.

It's perfect.

And I think the Coen's have done an incredible job as much as every single movie they have made in their career is distinctly a Coen's movie.

Couldn't be made by anyone else, right?

Yep.

Is in some way capturing that Coen brothers thing.

Totally.

What that could be is very varied.

They have stretched it in multiple directions, sizes, genres.

And

a a lot of the later movies, you know, we're paying homage to Hollywood.

Yes.

To being movie fans.

Yes.

You know, like no one talks enough about Hail Caesar.

And I never shut up about it.

Fucking masterpiece.

Fucking masterpieces, right?

A double feature of Barton Fink and Hail Caesars.

It's almost a sequel.

It's the same movie.

It's the same time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're both capital pictures.

The first time I saw it, I was like, yeah, it's good.

And David was like, no, it's a masterpiece.

I've always hoped

right to the map.

I've never seen it since then.

And every time I watch it, it's what you're saying.

Oh, my God.

It's only been fucking eight years or whatever.

Every time I watch it, I go, there's shit in this I did not see.

Oh, my God.

I did not get.

It keeps getting deeper.

And one of Clooney, one of his funniest performances.

Yes.

Like when he's in that armor in that communist meeting, trying to adjust on his chair.

Here's like, oh, come on.

Here's an indication of guys who know how to handle their career really well, though, right?

Sneakily.

And they always write it off as like, I don't know, we don't overthink these things right they make no country it is their highest grossing film up until that point in time they win three oscars win best picture right they're each walking out of there with three trophies they already at the time they're on the oscar stage have burn after reading in the can their follow-up to

No Country is something that is seen as kind of like a goofy lark.

Why are you doing that?

I had to rewatch that.

I love that movie.

I love it now too.

Yeah.

I just have a, I have some sort of strange issue with Malkovich sometimes.

Interesting.

That to me is like maybe the best application of him ever.

But with Mark, David, can you share your Malkovich?

Wait, what's my no, what that he's a sun-dried tomato?

He's a sun-dried tomato.

You know, it's like you put eight sun-dried tomatoes on a sandwich, and then you're like, right, I'm eating a sun-dried tomato sandwich.

Yeah, my son.

No, so you can't put him on any sandwich.

You got to build a sandwich properly.

That's the thing.

My take on him.

And I love him sometimes.

I really like him.

No, he's great.

I love Malkovich,

but the burden of Malkovich is that that how I usually frame it is that there's the movie

that's the movie, and then there's the movie he's in.

Yes.

Right.

And it's a separate reality.

Yes.

Benizio sometimes is like that too.

It's like he's great, but he's obviously in some other

he can do.

And Wes Anderson needs to sync up with him.

Because I just interviewed Wes Anderson for the new movie that Benico is the star of.

And he said.

while we were talking about Benicio, he's like, I know this is trite, but I'm looking at the monitor with Bruno, who's my DP, while we're filming filming it.

And I said to him, like, it's like we're watching a movie.

Yeah.

And Bruno was like, I know what you mean.

You know, like, it's like just his face.

Anything he does is just his face is crazy.

Yeah.

And the space they occupy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I re-watched Burn After Reading.

And it, to see those guys, to see, and Cooney does it in a lot of the Cohen movies,

very specific and almost broad comedic choices as actors.

Like that, the stuff that he and Brad Pitt were doing in Burn After Reading is some of the best comedic acting

on screen.

I agree.

And I think Clooney and Burn is like specifically underrated because he has so many other Cohen's performances.

Because that guy is so big in that movie and all that.

Such a guy that I've never seen anyone play before.

And you immediately go, I've met 20 of these dudes.

That scene in the restaurant where he takes a bite and he doesn't know if he's got shellfish.

He's like,

I'm okay.

And even

his initial, his character introduction is him having the hors d'oeuvres and talking about whether he's lactose intolerant or if he has

eaten reflux.

I always took it as him making fun of Pitt a little bit because Pitt's always eating or whatever.

And then he's kind of like, I could do some busy eating if you want me to do some busy.

I've been trying to do that as an actor lately, not be afraid to get involved with the food.

But then you have to eat it, like take after take or whatever.

That's where you've got to be strategic.

No, you get a spit bag.

Right, right.

You're a spitter.

No, I

don't, I haven't eaten that much, but yeah, I have spit.

That's the best story, that Tom Arnold story.

Do you remember that?

Where he was on a movie for the first time, or I don't know if it was first time, but he had to eat donuts and he didn't know about the spit bag.

So he was just like by the by the fifth take, he couldn't, you know, he was so full of donuts that he was sick and they didn't, he didn't know that that was an option.

It's, it's kind of funny.

My problem with food is, is that it's, it, it's, it's a continuity thing.

Like, you know,

you've got to do the thing.

And they can cut around it usually, but you do have to be aware.

Like if you eat once, if you've committed to that bite on that fork, you're in for it.

It's not so much to food, but you've got to time it.

It's another thing you have to think about it.

Now, do you enjoy that game?

Because I kind of like the additional stressor of

the game.

Does it give me a structure to my handle on this?

It can, but like, yeah, it's not my nature to, to, to think about those things.

I more want to be emotionally present or just present present.

But there are some dudes that love it.

Like I had Eric Stoltz on my show, Marin, and he had a salad and he was all about it.

Yeah, like he, you know, he was eating it, and then he was like, cat, you know, he was like storing it, and he knew like it was definitely a part of a thing that he loved about acting was the challenge of getting that continuity correct.

Well, and also, like, in meal scenes, by and large, you're seated, you're having a seated conversation, which is so static.

I'm big on putting the fork down.

That's

great.

For example, just put the fork down.

Oh, you do it at the top.

Just so I don't have to eat.

Yeah.

You know, but I'm noticing on stick, this new Apple show I'm on, that I do, I do the, I'm doing the mug work.

I'm doing

that.

Somebody loves the hotel breakfast.

Yeah.

But there's also just sort of like, all right, it's written in as a character.

Yeah, this character is something you can handle.

Let's try to work this other muscle.

Let's do the mug thing.

I just think, right, both to like sometimes use it as an exclamation point on lines and other times use it as a way to throw away lines.

But there's also, also, it does imply a naturalism.

Yes, exactly.

You know, like you can be aware of punctuating things

within the arc of any scene.

Yes.

But when you do do it, and I'm watching it, I'm like, it makes it seem more real

if you do that.

I mean, this movie has a very subtle version of that, which is, what's his name?

George Wyman,

the second rabbi who tells the story about the teeth.

The teeth.

And his fucking tea work.

Yeah.

His teacup work and when he chooses to take a sip.

Great.

When he's just holding it higher up in preparation.

George Weiner.

Weiner.

When he goes, yes.

The goy.

Yeah.

Well, that's, I need to talk about that line.

That's a very important line.

Where

the goy.

Who cares about the goy?

He's kind of taken off guard because he's refocused his attention so much to the teacup that the idea that this guy's still hung up on the story is surprising to him.

Yeah, because the story is a story he's told a million times that, you know, and the closure of that story, it's not about the story ending.

It's about some sort of strange,

I don't know if you would call it,

it's not really an allegory, but it's a fairly classic Hasidic tale where you're waiting for an end, but there is never an end.

It's a microcosm for the whole movie, and it's the same as the fake Yiddish tale at the beginning of the movie.

Well, those are all those stories, like if you know that, like that Martin Buber translation of the Hasidic tales.

And, you know, Woody Allen was definitely kind of preoccupied with some of that as well.

That

there is no conclusion, really, that is satisfying in the way of an ending no and and i tried to when re-watching the a serious man to talk to you guys like i was really trying to to understand on some you know uh story level why they opened with that with that uh that fable the fable oh that's what the fable that's the word i'm looking for and it does have implications for the the the the actual story yes of a serious man but it's still peculiar it's a peculiar story because, you know, when

the rabbi walks back out into the night with the ice pick in his chest, it is not conclusive.

Like he's saying

he's going to be dead.

Right.

And she's completely confident in her assessment of the situation.

But her impulse to kill him.

Resolution.

You don't know if this guy's going to die, if he's supernatural or not, and whether or not it's going to come back to them either way.

Yes.

And they've been very adamant when they talk about this movie that they were like, eh, this feels like the kind of thing that should open with a Yiddish folktale.

They looked around, they didn't find one they liked, and they wrote one.

They wrote one, and they've been like, it has nothing to do with the movie at large.

It doesn't link in.

A lot of critics at the time were like, I think they're being sneaky.

And this is some like ancestor of the family.

And everything that's happening to this guy is the long tail curse of that, which I don't think it is.

I think it's more just about the idea of these things happened to us.

There's no reason why it happened to us.

We did nothing to bring it upon ourselves and will have no sense of resolution at the other end.

Judaism is a search for meaning in darkness.

Yes.

And that often the story you will be told is one of suffering and you're like, oh, okay.

And then what happened?

And they're like, I don't know, more suffering later.

I'm sure the fact that all of Judaism basically was retroactively turned into the prequel for Christianity, right?

You never think about that.

The Old Testament.

And we're a bit of a retcon as a religion.

But also our religion is like Star Wars up until the ending of Empire Strikes Back, where everything's really bad.

And then Christianity was like, and what if a guy came along and kind of fixed it and slowly like taught us lessons that gave us like a sense of optimism?

But I think more than optimism, it's the humanness.

Yes.

Yes.

That bridges the gap between

the celestial and the human.

And it also makes it user-friendly.

Because,

you know, with Old Testament Judaism,

everyone always talks about the, you know, the vengeful God and this God, the, the angry man in the sky.

But I think in that same conversation with the T,

that was his name, Rabbit, was it Nussbaum that that rabbi that Wiener played?

Well, you know, what he says that I think is the key to one of the keys to

the to the movie is that it's not up to us to decide, right?

You know, what God is intended.

It's up to us to to live.

You know, he's not going to give us answers.

We just have to honor the rules.

And I think

that's sort of the key to the whole thing.

Which the building blocks of all religions are basically like children's tales to teach you lessons on how to behave.

That's right.

They're like just those stories and Grimm's fairy tales.

The Ten Commandments are just basic rules

for civilization.

They know that if you fuck your neighbor's wife, that that's going to probably end in murder.

Yeah.

Or somebody's going to lose their land.

Much of the Old Testament, right?

It's It's just kind of like practical.

Yeah, exactly.

Because that's the whole thing with

kosher stuff where you're like, that stuff will get you sick.

It's 4,000 BC.

That's right.

Don't be eating bottom feeding.

What the fuck are you doing?

It's crazy.

But they're just rules to maintain order in a community.

And then in the vacuum of a direct relationship or direct conversation with God and modern society and us spending thousands of years going back to the original texts, we keep trying to put more and more on them.

And this guy keeps on going to rabbis and being like, like, Explain to me why this is happening.

And they don't view it that way.

And he just keeps thinking, I'll get to a higher rabbi who's in touch with something deeper, who gives me the perspective.

And the highest rabbi who won't talk to him will only talk to his son.

Because he has to.

Because it's the only thing that's basically a ceremonial job.

The only thing he wants to talk about is like Jefferson Starship kind of slaps up airplane.

Excuse me.

Airplane.

But

he does the lyric and then he goes, Now what?

Yeah.

But

also, the Jesus thing is really, you know, you can talk to Jesus.

Yeah.

And, and, and there's a set of answers.

Right.

You can say, hey, Jesus, thumbs up, thumbs down.

Well, no, I, I, I fucked up.

Forgive me.

Right.

And that too.

It's that's the structure where they're like, this is how you talk to Jesus.

He's always listening.

Yep.

Right.

And, and, and I did a, I did a bad thing, forgive me.

And then the priest will forgive you, or the Jesus you have in your head will forgive you.

You're pre-approved.

Yeah.

But you know, you're flawed.

Yep.

And, and that, that also is fully Old Testament.

Yeah.

That, that, it's just chaos and nobody can follow these rules completely unless they're enforced by modern laws like murder and some of the other ones but but everyone's flawed everyone's gonna fluctuate and that's just the nature of people and and that's a given and I think people want more answers than that Yes, and the sense of forgiveness is not built into the same the old testament in the same way so the idea that you're flawed comes with the recognition of failure.

And the weight of it.

The weight of it.

And the constant conversation.

I've tried to to be a serious man.

That's right.

And the constant conversation, whether it's Talmudic or

it's just Jews argue with God all the time.

Yes.

Jews defy God all the time.

Yes.

And either they get what's coming to them or they don't.

Right.

But either way, they feel bad about it.

That is the cornerstone of Jewish guilt.

Or they succeed tremendously.

Yes.

And you have to assume that they'll feel bad, but they feel like something's eating them up inside.

Who knows?

But they might not.

That's the scariest part.

But the thing that struck me about re-watching it, because it's one of those movies I keep going back to, and I have a certain, you know, there is something familiar to the beginning of middle-class Jewry, you know, in terms of,

you know, the kind of once Jews are reluctantly invited into the community or the social circle, it's just

regular people.

So you were New Jersey and New Mexico, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, my parents are from Jersey, but I grew up in New Mexico and there was a, at the time we moved there, in my temple, there's probably 500 families, but you know, there was a similar kind of online middle-class culture within a culture.

Yeah, conservative middle-class Jewish.

And I've talked about this a lot lately, is that, you know, many Jews, you know, the identification, it's not that it's all cultural.

It is still religious, but most Jews were never taught, unlike Christianity, to sort of have an active and sort of practical relationship with God.

Yeah.

That, you know, usually it was more about Israel and about, you know, ritual and about, you know, you know, showing up occasionally in the community.

But that is the nature of Judaism.

Yes.

But we, you know,

even in terms of like, you know, is there a heaven or hell?

And it's never been made clear to me.

They don't know.

But he talks about it.

He talks about some of the deeper Talmudical stuff of the different possibilities of post-death.

And then you assume that the Kabbalah, which is this uncrackable code, has some sort of

a deeper understanding of the mystical, which is what, and in this movie, that that is what Richard Kind represents.

Yes.

Is that he is writing the Kabbalah.

Yes.

And there is a moment where you're like, oh, this is a schizophrenic.

This guy has mental problems.

And then he turns to the page where there's a Hebrew in the middle of it that he's trying to decipher in his, you know, either slightly schizophrenic sense.

You know, he's trying to make sense of the universe.

And he's obviously jealous of his brother, who is a mathematician, who is a guy whose job it is to get the answer.

So the control freak element of the main character is built into the mathematician thing.

That as a character, why wouldn't that guy want answers?

And the idea that he can't get answers for a guy that is, you know, has done the work to get the answers is kind of a great character.

And in the dream about,

what's his name?

The guy who's having an affair with his wife, where he's at the blackboard, the massive blackboardman.

Where he writes out the uncertainty principle.

The uncertainty principle.

Well, that is modern Talmud or whatever.

Like, that is like mathematicians being like, let me explain to you why nothing makes sense about the problem.

It was the other line of the world.

It's actually this great thing.

Yeah, but what a perfect piece of writing.

The uncertainty principle.

It provides we can't ever really know what's going on, so it shouldn't bother you not being able to figure anything out.

Although you will be responsible for this on the midterm, right?

Yeah.

And then in that dream, you know, Cy, who's now

a dybb with us.

That's a great point.

He has basically become a dybbick in this guy's life.

That's right.

And in the dream, you know, that what sort of eventually happens is, I know he's calm until, you know, he's like, I fucked your wife.

So

that is the human, like, it's all that, the whole movie is just different versions of that opening Yiddish scene.

That, that, these are all the stories.

Exactly.

That's the point of the opening.

Well, and I also think Judaism is like, what should we do?

Yes.

You know, like most conversations you're having.

Mm-hmm.

David,

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

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But what, David?

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Wait, this is a debate now.

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To mark the 35th anniversary, since the release of the groundbreaking television show Twin Peaks, the complete original series,

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It's very exciting.

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This film, My Mother, was.

It's a blank check with Griffin and Dave, by the way.

I'm Griffin.

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.

I like how this is whatever crazy professional podcast they want.

My mother.

Go ahead.

Sometimes they'll check clear and sometimes they bounce baby.

This is a mini-series on the films of the Cohen brothers, Joel and Ethan Cohen.

Yep.

It is called Pod Country for Old Cast.

Sure.

Today we were talking about a serious man with Mark Maron.

Hi, Mark.

As I was sort of setting up Burn After.

You don't have to use all that stuff.

All of this.

Oh, yeah.

We don't had it.

It's all staying in.

Burn After Reading comes out like six months after they win the Oscar.

This is the first movie they make with the Oscar success.

Correct.

One of their best movies.

I think it's arguably their best movie.

But it is certainly in the argument.

They're guys where you're like, there are five movies that would be undeniably the best film in anyone else's career.

And those five movies are fighting with each other.

I think they've got 10.

But they also,

they never buckled under what we talked about before.

That's what I'm saying.

And for this to be the post-Oscar winning movie when most people would go, now's my time to make True Grit my big Western epic, they wait to do that.

They're like, we got to tell this weird, small, kind of punishing story with theater actors, but totally no movie stars.

But

and with complete

meticulous control yes of the story and and it's still sort of totally a cohen brothers movie and but they but it's an interesting example they never and it seems like they've sort of stopped uh working together they're in a weird place but but there's rumors that they could be done why not go out you know like yeah how are you gonna argue with any other i even i watched the hudsucker proxy again one of my favorite movies it's a great movie i love it so much you you forget that you buckle to reaction without having the personal experience yeah to other people's reaction to it but when you you re-watch it, they did exactly what they set out to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is a perfect movie on the terms that they set out for themselves.

People were just confused by it.

Obviously, their interviews were always a little knit and cryptic, but they are not guys who are like, ah, that one.

We could have used another week on that one.

Or like, ah, we fucked that one in the other.

Complete control.

That's the only one where they're like, it feels a little amateurish to us because we didn't know what we were doing.

Which one's

simple?

It's great, though.

It's great.

Yeah, it rocks.

But that's the only one where they're like, I watched some of it and I wish I'd done it differently because I just didn't know.

But they were finding their

way.

I watched Miller's Crossing the other, like a couple of weeks ago.

Great.

It's great.

Yes.

It's great.

So your mother, Judaism?

Yeah.

You can get to that later if you want.

We got to get into it now.

My mother was raising Utica, New York.

I think you know that.

Upstate New York.

And I think it's similar to what you're talking about: like, there were Jews.

It's an Italian-Irish city at that time, but like, there's enough Jews and she's conservative.

It's the 50s.

This is the exact same shit, I think.

And I don't think I've ever seen a movie have a more profound, you know, Proustian, eaten the Madeline effect on her than this movie ever.

Yeah.

Because the whole thing is a poet, it's a meditation on the

picket fence Americanism of Judaism.

The struggle of Judaism at the same time.

And it's...

What about the goy is the line where she was like, you have to understand we didn't care about the goy.

Like the goys.

That's she, they get that so now the goys know it and they're angry.

And we're all going to pay.

Now everyone's living next door to the guy from this movie, but the guy next door isn't gritting his name.

I'm just going to sing it under his breath.

They named her Helen.

Like they picked the most American name.

They sent her to the public schools.

They wanted her to be as American as possible or whatever.

But at the same time, I feel like there was that, well, we don't really care about the guys.

So my dad grew up in Rye, New York,

lower

in the state.

But it was a similar thing where it was like three Polish families, cousin families that all immigrated together, bought like a row of houses and basically made their own neighborhood and then became friends with like three other families that had done the same thing, mega family groupings, right?

And my grandfather was like the dirty Hungarian who broke in and basically had to abandon his family in order for them to accept him.

So it was the Newmans, the Rabinowitz, and the Orlovskis.

And the Rabinowitzes were atheists.

in the like 1950s.

And that was this sort of like, don't say it too loudly.

Well, yeah, there were atheists.

There were communists.

Yep.

Like my great aunt and uncle were of the, you know, kind of communist bent.

Yes.

Old-timey commie Jews.

Yeah.

There was a lot, a lot going on in terms of Jewish identity then.

But I think one of the things that I take away from this film in watching it again is that it really documents in a very...

unique and specific way, you know, something that has been approached before, is that

the changing of the culture towards you know the 60s coming in.

Yes, because that Jefferson Airplane album is already out, so this has got to be what year?

It's got to be like what 65?

I think it's 67, yeah, 67.

So everything is on the precipice of change, right?

Yeah, and it's going to take a minute to get to Minnesota, but it's happening on the coast, but but it's happening in middle-class culture because they're picking it up from youth culture, yes, and the kid is on the pulse of it.

And the fact that during the uh, the dental story,

they're playing Hendrix's machine gun is crazy.

Yes.

Because that song is a very specific meaning.

And

whatever it indicates about signs or symbols.

But during that whole,

seeing the Hebrew lettering, help me, please help.

And

it's like, why that choice?

And I think that what they're exploring even at the end with

the old rabbi is that it's at that time where the chaos that has now reaped the social reaction that we're seeing now to the quote-unquote freedom of the 60s and the open-mindedness that it implied is that that was an embracing of a chaos that none of them could understand.

And that it was, it became a cultural movement

to sort of, you know, not just anti-war, but psychedelics.

Yes.

Right.

And the idea of pot.

And that like when he's up on the roof with that antenna and all of a sudden he has that moment where Hebrew's coming in, TV shows are coming in, you know, sounds of the Yiddish are coming in.

And then he looks to the sun that

you're caught in the middle of a tremendous cultural shift that's about to happen.

And that at the end of it, the old rabbi is, you know, he understands that.

Right.

He understands that moment when the truth is revealed to be lies.

Right, right.

But also, what's the only thing that matters?

You want somebody to love.

Like, basically, that hits a moment.

He doesn't get that far.

That's right.

That's true.

He doesn't get far far far.

But you have to imagine that's the thing that kind of locked in for him.

Is that the song is identifying?

Isn't that kind of the core need that all of us are driven by at the end of the day?

I guess so.

But I do like the idea that on the periphery of Jewish mysticism in general and Jewish stories in general is something unknowable, but something that must be sort of accepted as just life.

And now, you know, they're on all over this movie, we're entering this psychedelic era where

that unknown that was once terrifying is now going to be just embraced and you're just going to throw yourself into it.

And with that comes Vietnam on the other side.

But I think that the way that's suggested and referred to in the film as this slight, you know, kind of,

it's not meant to be menacing, but it is happening.

Yes.

In the scene where she smokes pot with him.

Yeah, absolutely.

And he's just looking at the glass.

Yeah.

And then he says, and that's the psychedelic moment.

Yes.

It's bona fide.

They shot it that way, and he's just looking at the glass.

And he says, maybe the young rabbi was right, the first rabbi.

It's just all my perception.

Well, they also do, they shoot that scene with this vignetting around the edges of the frame.

And I think the only other scene in the movie they shoot that way is the folktale at the beginning.

Interesting.

They're the two kind of hallucinations.

What were you about to say?

I was going to open the dossier.

Can I say a thing before that?

Okay.

What's the dossier?

Is this a bit?

No.

No, this is real.

This is a no-bit.

A A researcher who does great work for us, you know, digging up sort of production history and stuff like that.

I was just going to say, because

you talked about your mom made me realize, I don't think my dad's ever seen this movie.

That's insane.

I'm also realizing that he basically, I think, would have been Bar Mitzvah this exact year.

Same with my mom.

I mean, I think she was Bar Mitzvah.

Exact same thing.

That's another thing.

They used it there too.

Oh, when he's on the pulse.

You're right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

These characters are stoned.

He's got psychedelic moments

the same way.

A timeless psychedelic moment.

It so captures what it's like to be high on pot, especially when you're a teenager.

But to be a high on pot at that moment, that is crazy.

Yeah, in front of God, people speak

to the other, you're holding the yud.

Is that what it's called?

Yes, I think you know, the

screen

of the yud that they do.

My favorite thing is the guy going like to get the Torah.

Those things are fucking the old guy, yeah.

But the pressure of that moment, and then sort of like you know, realizing you're high.

One of the funniest beats of that movie is when he sees the buddy he got high with,

knowing that he's in that, it's not even hell, it's a mystical moment, and he taps into an ancient frequency,

which is really that is the God consciousness.

That's my implication with the who's the oldest.

Oh, I just had that realization that psychedelia, the chaos of psychedelic experience and the chaos of war in Vietnam, that is all in the God consciousness.

That's where Marshak is, supposedly.

He's He's above it.

Exactly.

Because the inspiration, as you said, Griff, they wrote this the same time as No Country and Burn After Reading.

They wrote them all at the same time.

Yes.

They've said they've never been so productive.

Which is in their three separate periods.

It's coming off of two consecutive flops.

They write three masterpieces, basically, all in a row.

What were the flops?

Lady Killers and Intolerable Cruelty.

which were their sort of Intolerable Cruelty I'll stick up for, but certainly their least critically successful movies.

I don't even feel compelled to go back to those.

Maybe I should.

Intolerable Cruelty is pretty funny.

Especially funny.

if you like Clooney in Cohen's mode.

Yeah, he's great.

It's kind of them doing a Preston Sturges movie.

Okay.

But those movies at the moment were absolutely flops.

That's all I'm saying.

And it was seen as them trying to level up and make more commercial studio films.

But that ended up being too idiosyncratic for audiences, and critics treated them as if they were selling out.

Scott Rudin is like, hey, I've got this Cormac McCarthy novel.

They're like, okay, well, look at that.

They start working on Burn After Reading at the same time.

They start working on this at the same time.

And the inspiration for this is what they call like an ancient rabbi that they knew when they were kids, who they call like a sort of a Semitic wizard of Oz or like this weird Yoda-like rabbi who

they all kind of revered, but he never spoke.

Like that's that's the genesis of a serious film.

But this film is set earlier than their childhood would have been, right?

Yeah, no.

No, no, they, they, they'll cop to this is pretty autobiographical.

Well, it seems like

I just remember when it was announced.

It's got to be like, he's got Joel's 70s.

He's going to be like 70.

They were born at correct.

Joel's 70.

Ethan's 67.

They were born in the mid-50s.

They're basically like

a couple years younger than my mom.

And they were Bart Mitzford in 67, I think.

Yeah.

Joel was.

When this movie was announced, and they usually do kind of an air of mystery around what the project is if it isn't based on some public.

What they say is not autobiographical.

It's like that's not their dad.

No.

That's not their family.

But that's just more than

that.

I remember them saying, like, they're going to follow up no country with a movie about a boy getting Bart Mitzford that's autobiographical.

and it really felt like, oh, they're going to do their like Avalon, their fablements.

Right.

And then when the trailer came out and it was like, it's about the dad, they talked about that at one point it was more split narrative, like the boy and the dad in equal measures, even though the dad was a complete creation.

And then the final product ended up swinging wildly in a different direction.

It's just like what's amazing about it, and I really, because the more I thought about it this morning, I do think that, you know, outside, I think that

the core character struggle of the main guy is

specifically 10 commandment shit.

Yeah.

And I think the rest of it, the brother is, is

a mystical interpreter that, you know, has a mental illness.

Because even as a Jew growing up, you always knew that there was a cousin that had problems.

Yeah.

But this guy who might be a genius.

This guy literally covets his neighbor's wife.

Totally.

He's a coherent screw.

He does hit on those commandments.

He's covered.

Yeah.

But like to sort of draft off what Mark was saying, the the Cohens do say like obviously 67, that's when Joel's 14, he thinks he's 10.

They like the idea of like Jewish liturgical music and Jefferson airplane were kind of like intertwined for them in that two different belief systems, basically.

Right.

Right.

Rock and roll.

And like

they're asking, were they?

Yeah.

American.

Were they different belief systems?

Isn't that at the end of all the Jewish stories?

There's just this chaos.

And there's like a shrug of like, we don't know.

We don't know.

It's magic.

Yeah, I guess.

But also like uh boomer sort of uh you know the sort of tail end of like conservative like post-war and kind of like the building of radical jewish american culture right this kind of assimilation post-war judaism that's assimilating with the sort of white doctor

like the old my dad's family

by michael lerner great incredible but like no one in my dad's sort of like cousin families right the rabinowitzes were like outwardly atheistic the other ones were like can you believe it but weren't casting them out no No one even pretended to have a relationship to God.

It was all, we got to do this stuff because

it's like the dinner scene in

Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Yes.

That's and like when my grandfather died, everyone was like, We don't care about this, right?

And even when he was alive, we do like the abridged seder.

Yeah, it was the sense of we got to do this because our ancestors did this.

We don't think we're communicating with anything.

Yeah.

What's the kind of ritual?

Right, but that's almost all of it.

Absolutely.

But part of that was, I think, them being like, we cannot be seen as Jews, period.

We have to be Jewish Americans, which means our culture needs to be meshed with theirs.

We can't be living in our own body.

But I'm just at my own time.

You see your neighbor.

I think this, you know, like your neighbor, the goy neighbor looking at you and you're like, right, they don't

trust that.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There definitely was a difference, but I remember.

I think it needs to be on a swivel.

And I remember as a kid that, you know, the bonds that I created with, you know, from second grade on with the Jewish guys, you know, that there was definitely a shorthand.

There was a shorthand about sex, about everything.

Like there was like an openness, an understanding.

Like I'm still friends with David Kleinfeld, who like I've known since second grade.

Yeah.

And, you know, and I remember because like these are just one of the, this is a good example.

Like when we were in second grade, his father was, I think, a, a, an ophthalmology and was killed flying his own plane.

We were in second grade.

Yeah.

And I remember David, you know, the weeks after that, you know, at Hebrew school and just, you know, the, and I remember seeing his dad sitting in this yellow car out in the parking lot, but there was no answers.

Right.

And, you know, and he had, you know, three brothers and sisters, and I know his mother and everybody else.

And life, you know, eventually went on.

Profoundly terrible and yet kind of meaningless.

But he had, we still, the community was still there.

And it was still there for all of them for the whole time.

Right, which is also this reactionary, like, we're trying to assimilate, but also we need to protect each other because we're not that far off from feeling like we are the target of the universe.

Right.

From the Holocaust, totally.

And it is sort of amazing that

there was no Nazi point of reference in this.

There was an American Jew hating reference in a dream, and it's suggested, but it's rare that you see a movie of this era that close to the end of the Holocaust that made no, there was no point of reference.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's kind of, that's, that's in and of itself kind of amazing.

I agree.

And it is a testament to passing and to integrating.

Yeah, right.

We don't want to talk about it.

We can't wear it too.

But just the way that he talks about that he can talk with his colleagues who are Jewish and they can use words with each other that they wouldn't use in front of other people.

Anyway, but they're writing this story.

Initially, it's a kind of father-son story.

And then as they're writing it, they're like, we really just like tormenting the dad.

Like, this is going to be a movie

about the dad.

Yes.

Yeah.

And as you say, they claim with the Yiddish folktale, the ghost story, they're just sort of, ah, it's kind of like an ambassador for the movie.

It doesn't have any connection to anything, whatever.

But in that, it does.

I agree.

It teaches you how to watch the movie because, as you said, every single scene after it is a version of it in a way.

And then ultimately, not unlike those tales, the entire arc of the movie, whatever builds the movie, you know, at the end, you know, it's not a happy ending, but it's an ending.

You know, it is tragic.

You know, that, you know, I was talking to Brendan before that, and there was a suggestion that as a consequence for him rationalizing, keeping the money changing the grade to help his brother the next thing that happens is you know you got to come in there's something on your exercise and then a fucking tornado is a pack

i feel all the time yes anytime i'm like should i like you know should i do and then you're just like yeah but no

wireless service provider but i but but because of the tornado to imply which is a real tornado okay really happened okay to to imply that there is consequences that are being delivered to you specifically by a God.

It is, it, it, it is ultimately in the conclusion of the movie, does not add up.

Right.

It is not, whatever that implication is.

You can't actually charge

this.

This happens.

You're a manufacturing.

And early on, when he's in conversation with the Korean kid, he's like, there has to be consequences.

And the Korean kid's like, no, there doesn't.

There are consequences for your actions.

Yes.

No, that doesn't have to be.

It doesn't have to be.

That's a choice.

And ultimately, anything you impose on this in terms of moral consequence is something that you are putting on it.

Correct.

And that's the nature of the movie and what it's trying to say, that it is all relative to your perception, that all you can do is try to be a decent person, and that you have no control over anything else.

Well, also, for movies that are so

fun to read into and analyze and search for meaning.

You could teach a course on this for

this movie.

The Cohens have always kind of made fun of people who try to break down the symbolism of their films or the intent or what they're trying to say but this one crazy accept the mystery but then yet the movie is telling you to do it to do it and also accept that you're never going to get answers to that

size accept the mystery it's never going to lie yeah uh look serious man so uh their last movie i'm just just just briefly touching on this research obviously burn after reading has a zillion stars in it uh they don't have a budget on this movie burn after reading is

a big hit which people forget 100 but they really want a lead actor who's basically unknown to the audience obviously michael stoolbar was sort of a broadway name ish face ish not really he was a tony nominee you know who auditions for this role right you can tell me mark mariner i did yeah yeah well it was i was it for was it for the it was

it was a very low level you know first did you meet with the cohens no no it was just like that first sort of you know throwing out the net you know i met with the casting agent ellen chenowath i think so and uh you know i went in and they they taped me.

And I remember I had a full Van Dykey

kind of beard situation, but I really wanted it.

Yeah.

You know, and I really read it.

And I thought that like I could do that, but I didn't have the chops to do that.

And I'm not thrilled with their choice of him.

Really?

Yeah.

Well, here's what I thought watching it again last night is that like

you would have fit perfectly somewhere in this movie.

And I think you would fit in so well in a Cohen's movie in general.

I think you innately would be too powerful and forceful.

I could have gotten to the speech of negotiation.

Yes.

But I think there's even just like a baseline level of indignation within you at the world

that you cannot totally diminish.

There wasn't really a part in this movie for me, unless I really had better chops as an actor than which I didn't.

You know, I imagine that I could play the lawyer.

I probably could have played

could have been Arthur.

It's a different Arthur, The Richard Kind.

Oh, it'd be a different Arthur.

But very good.

I can see that.

Again, the just sort of like

spectacular

beaten man.

Yeah, and he's so good because he's right.

The physicality of kind, like the shoulders, he's so good.

And also, like, I had, we had a cousin, Brent.

You know, there was just like, you know, there's one in every family.

Right.

That, you know, he's Mensa, but he doesn't do anything.

Yes.

You know, for years, I tried to make a joke work about that.

And it actually is sort of a Jewish,

you know,

open-ended tale joke.

Yeah.

Where like, I remember when I was a kid, my brother, my dad had this cousin, Brent, who was like a genius.

That's all we heard.

Brent's a genius.

He's in Mensa.

And at some point during the early 70s, Brent and Brent went on to do, he was a chef, like, you know, like, not even at a high-end restaurant.

The genius, right?

The disappointment.

Right.

It was always, that was the tone of it.

Yeah.

And I remember like knowing this about Brent.

And then him and his girlfriend stopped over in New Mexico when they were driving cross country, you know, to, you know, stay the night.

And I just remember it was like, this is the genius.

And he was just this like kind of hippie-ish dude with this woman.

And then when they left, before they left to get back on the road, they

made us breakfast.

And my punchline, and I really tried to make it work, was like, and I got to be honest with you, those are the best eggs I ever had.

The genius eggs.

But it never landed.

And I thought,

how else do you end that story?

It's a perfect end to it.

But I think you got to have the experience.

That is actually a thing you kind of can't communicate in a way.

Yeah.

And I think the kind character is such a heightened version of it that he works in a way that reads for the story, even if you don't have someone like this within your family structure.

It is also funny to consider that at the time this movie came out, he is undeniably the biggest name.

Sure, he's your most famous face.

I don't know if you remember this.

Bigger than, I guess, Fred was.

I think Fred was really just a guy who's in Woody Allen movies.

He had done like seven Woody Allen movies and voiceover roles.

Like, Amy Laniker had similarly mostly done voiceover.

Like, half the cast are like local people

found in Minnesota.

Adam Orkin was probably the second

biggest.

He's great.

Yeah.

Larry is not cheap.

He's just really good at that shit.

Do you remember when they announced this movie and all the fucking like Oscar Prognosticator websites were just like, I guess Richard Kine for best supporting actor, sight unseen.

Right, right.

Like he'll crush in some Cohen.

If the Cohens are making another movie and now they're Oscar guys and Kind is in it.

Let me tell you about story.

And this is like the least Oscar-y part ever, despite how great Kind is.

It's not designed to give someone

the kind thing.

No.

You know, the implied sort of competition between the brothers at one point.

Yes.

Like, obviously, they were both mathematics guys.

Yeah.

And Kind's life just didn't work out.

So he's doing this like massive schizophrenic project to beat his brother at the same game.

And also draining his cyst and like crying.

Spacious cyst.

That would have made me pretty mad.

But that's such a that like if that's what I ended up having to do.

I know, but I feel like that's another like thing, like the sort of 50s, 60s where it's like, yeah, people have like a thing.

Like, oh, it's so busy.

Like a big thing.

Yeah.

No, I know.

Yeah.

Like a weird 60s machine.

Right.

Just Joe Motor.

It gets boils.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In the story.

Okay.

That makes sense.

But he's also like, you know, there's a biblical dynamic, a biblical, you know, a biblical brotherly dynamic.

Yes.

You know, well, the Cain and Abel thing.

Right.

You know, but there is something about, you know, the nature of

two brothers and one is.

painfully compromised.

Yes.

Yet there's still like, and there's a resentment to him.

Yes.

That, you know, that, you know, he doesn't direct at his brother, but he directs at God.

Yes.

But ultimately in that moment at the pool, it's at his brother.

It's like,

Hashem looked out for you.

You have a job.

You have, you know, like the jealousy and the and this guy's life, by the way, is crumbling.

Like the guy whose life he covets is like absolutely crumbling, but he looks at like, you have the firmament of what looks like a normal American life.

And I have the homunculus or whatever it is.

The mentaculous.

The mentaculous.

It's a very

thought-provoking, deep movie, you know, in so many ways that like I'm surprised that it took me kind of moving through it again in the last few days because I watched it recently.

And I watch it primarily because it's familiar to me.

And I never really see it.

It is weirdly comforting.

Yeah, as a Jew.

If you live in our headspace, it is a weirdly comforting movie to watch.

But it's unlike any other Jewish movie.

It's unlike any depiction

of Jews.

And it wasn't until, you know, and I've always sort of half tried to figure it out, but to sort of, you know, put it into some sort of criticism around all the

not just the story, but the characters and also the changing of the eras and the nature of chaos and the nature of coincidence and the nature of trying to have control.

Like it, it's it's one of those movies, and the reason why it's a masterpiece is all of those are touched upon.

Everything is touched upon that that makes us human and questioning.

Yeah.

If you do that, yes.

Most people don't.

Yes.

David?

Yes.

Burr.

Chatter, chatter, chatter.

Shiver.

Those numbers be going down.

The weather is cooling.

Fahrenheit and Celsius.

It doesn't matter.

The numbers are still going down.

Down, down, down.

And you know what that means?

I don't.

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I don't know.

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I'm less concerned with this button.

i'm very concerned

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David,

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Oh, who's out there?

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I'm trying them all out.

Okay, great.

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Yeah, I love a citrus.

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So Stulberg, I just want to tell you, initially auditioned to play the husband in the Yiddish story.

Oh, wow.

He learned Yiddish.

He learned the entire scene in Yiddish, like how to do it.

He does the audition for them, and they're like,

and then months later, they ask him back to read for Uncle Arthur and then for Larry.

And then they meet with Richard Kind, who I think they're thinking about for the lead role.

And they just are like, we just really want, you know,

he would have made a meal out of it.

He would.

Right, right, right, right.

You also need someone like kind in the shorthand way for the brother because you're not going going to spend that much time on him.

Yes.

And the look gets you like half the way there to the characterization.

And yeah, like Kind had, I guess, auditioned for Burn After Reading.

They knew, you know, who doesn't know, Bruno.

But had never worked with them before.

Had never worked with them before.

They initially wanted him to maybe play a rabbi in this, and then they were like, no, he'll be able to do that.

Also, would have made a meal out of that.

And Fred Melamed had auditioned for them all the way back for Barton Fink for them for the Michael Lerner role for the studio head, which makes sense.

He's got that velvety voice thing, you you know.

But you look at his career before this and Julie's, it's like seven Woody Allen movies and three other credits until this.

As Joel says, Cy is the sex guy in this movie.

Every film needs one.

And I do just love that everyone in the movie is like, I mean, it's fucking Cy Abel.

This is a robust guy.

Cy Abel.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's like this guy.

But he's sexy up.

Right.

Right.

But

the idea that he's a sex guy, even in this film,

it was so grounded in something fundamentally Jewish and fundamentally not sexy in even the Jewish way.

Yes.

You know, you don't got it's not Elliot Gould you deal with it.

Right, right.

You know, he's not a right, you're right.

You're right.

And it's only that sort of that implication of like, you got to let it breathe.

Like, like, he's a sophisticated

charmer.

He is a serious man.

Yeah.

They made the movie for $7 million.

To quote Ethan Cohen, when you're making a movie about a Jewish Midwestern community in 1967 and Fred Mellimand is the sex guy, they don't give you a lot of money.

They shot it in Bloomington, Minnesota, which is where the Mall of America is.

They wanted, you know, they looked around for basically suburban neighborhoods that looked like their childhood neighborhoods.

Shot for 44 days, finish ahead of schedule, which is like the classic Cohen story.

It's like under budget

and finished early.

And they at this point have their thing worked out with working title, where most of the time they'll just let them do whatever they want.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And Deacons, Roger Deacons, their DP, shows up with all these what they call swing and tilt lenses that are, that just skew the focal plane and stuff, where he had just been doing them, using them on the assassination of Jesse James.

Right.

Yeah.

Which is so funny to think of him working on that incredibly painterly movie and then showing up to this and being like, this will be for the stone scenes.

But also Burn After Reading.

But also for the

roof scenes.

Yes.

Yes.

Burn After Reading was the first movie they hadn't done.

They'd done without Deacons in over a decade.

You know what's interesting is, oddly, in terms of, you know, psychological terrain and sort of

almost mystical interpretations,

the closest movie to this of theirs is Barton Fink.

Yeah.

100%.

Like in terms of the

liminal kind of like dream reality.

Yeah, what sort of feeling?

The unknown.

But a thing I find so interesting is like such a recurring theme of theirs is a guy who is so obsessed with a sort of outside perception of his own mediocrity that he needs to prove himself, punch above his weight class, do something demonstrably great in a way to win everyone's respect, and just gets in over his skis and torpedoes his whole life in the process.

This is not that guy.

This is a movie that starts with a guy who is pretty comfortable with where things are, and everything starts collapsing around him.

Well, also, he's looking for an explanation for why it's happening to him because he has done nothing to bring it upon himself.

Well, but what is, I think that's his probably his biggest sin.

Absolutely.

And also, like, he pulled pulled it off.

He became an American.

Right.

And maintained his Jewish identity, but he is living

what was presented as the American dream.

This is what we're here for.

Yeah.

We're not, you know, we're not the first wave immigrants.

We're the second generation.

We've now integrated into the middle class.

I have a house.

I have kids.

I have a job.

I'm about to get tenure.

I did it.

Right.

But Barton Fink is like a pretentious, elitist, self-centered weasel, you know?

And also a socialist Jew.

Yeah.

Yes.

Jerry Lundergarden Fargo is a guy who's like stacking up crimes in order to like get over the hill and prove that he's like a big man.

Right.

This guy is just comfortable tapping out at bare minimum, right?

But also he had, he believed he had principles.

Yeah.

And that he had artistic integrity and that his art meant something.

Which I'm

pardoned.

Yeah.

But Lundgarden is also the neighbor.

It's also.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, this movie is basically

centered around the guy who Lundergaard tries to sell the true coat to, calls him a fuck.

Right?

Yeah.

Calls him.

He's a fucking liar.

A fucking liar.

A fucking liar.

But it's an entire movie centered around a guy with that energy.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Who's just like, I'm on the receiving end of Jerry Lundergaard's every day of my life.

The, oh, the sweaty Goodman

in that book.

In Barton Fink is just the best.

And the bugs.

That movie is so good.

That's that's david's favorite right fink yeah yeah yeah fink's my favorite fink guy but this is i think right up there yeah and maybe yeah they're linked for me because of that movie stool burg already had a tony nomination i think he's in the pillow man the uh the mcdonna play i will say it's a great play he plays a developmentally disabled adult man in that it's a tough role it is maybe the only time i've ever seen someone do that where i was like this is 100 respectful and not embarrassing i saw it uh on the london stage not to brag and adam godley played that role and and he was one of the great actor.

David grew up in the UK.

Moved to the UK when I was nine.

Oh, that's nice.

It is nice.

It's wonderful.

They have some real history.

Yeah, they do.

To live in a place where there are walls from 600 AD.

I mean, yeah, it's lousy with fucking castles.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When they're designing this movie, Mary Zofries, who's their costume designer, finds a Sears Robot catalog that's called Deep Autumnal, she says, from the 60s.

And she's like, there you go, autumn.

I basically use all of that for Cy Abelman.

Yes.

And I like this.

She'd bought this Tahitian fabric for Leo DiCaprio and Catch Me If You Can, and she never used it.

And then for Cy Abelman, she was like, that's what Cy is going to have.

He went traveling.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cy's the kind of guy who comes back wearing some kind of like, it's like the lush shirt or that he's wearing or whatever.

It also, this movie, I think the Jolly Roger would be appropriate.

Griffin.

Yes.

Surely you just.

This movie has that smart art direction costuming thing of, oh, it's like 67, but everyone here is basically still in the legs of the 50s.

Right.

No one's at the tip of the culture.

And that's what Mad Men is.

Where you're just like, well, why does Don Traper still wear a hat?

Isn't it the 60s?

And it's like, yeah, but like, he's not going to start fucking dressing like a hippie to pull out, you know?

I grew up, you know, just on the cutting edge of, I guess, Gen X.

I'm the last boomer.

And we were still, you know, when I was in high school and

junior high in the mid-70s, it was still the crashing wave of the 60s, the late 60s, 71.

All the music.

All the furniture everyone still has in their homes.

It's not like 1960 hit and people

swapped everything out for peace.

Yeah, exactly.

There's a little bit of it going on, like in the, in the, in the game room or the family room.

There might be a bean bag in one of the kids' rooms.

It's fringes.

It's just starting to leave.

Yeah, yeah.

And you assume when these guys go off to college, it's going to be open season.

What's going on, though?

It's like the kid, the boy just wants to watch F-Troop, which which is like that, that shows just sort of a Western sitcom, right?

Like, that's a very traditional show.

Yeah, they had a Fort.

It was Wary Stork.

Yes.

Wary Stork.

And the guy with, let me say it, the famously huge hog, right?

Wasn't the other guy in F-Troop one of...

Forrest Tucker?

Forrest Tucker.

Okay.

I don't know that.

He's on the Milton Burrell list.

Oh, really?

Yeah, on the Liam Neeson list.

A lot of good it did him.

He was on F-Troop.

Yeah, I know.

David had to Google his name.

F-Troop's fuzzy.

Larry Storge was like a comic.

Kind of like quietly you could argue an early alt comic kind of yeah like him and professor irwin core yeah where i felt i feel because he was kind of doing character stuff yeah

there have always been weirdos yes yeah in terms of comedy there's always been a couple that were undefinable right but i feel like he was an early version of is this guy from mars sure not the sort of making jokes self-referencing how weird they are crazy guy yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but yeah the kid just wants to to watch F-Troop and listen to Jefferson airplane and get stoned girl just wants to go out with her friends to the mall or wash her hair wash her hair and get a nerve he does have to learn his half Torah he does which was a nightmare I you know I think if I go on to

think about this movie more I'll try to figure out you know what was the topic of that hoftorah bar mitzvah well I know what mine was oh yeah I did oh figure out what it is in the film what story is he telling what what portion is he reading what did you do I'm trying to remember now I guess it didn't really land to me.

I have to go look at my book, Jerusalem Syndrome, again, to remember what the topic was.

All I remember was that it was relatively short and I got lucky smart.

Yeah.

Or luck.

Yeah.

Look that up.

What was the Torah portion you read?

Well, I know I was never born misfit.

No, but I mean in the movie.

Okay, okay.

I'll look it up.

So,

but I wasn't born misfit because we'd moved to England and my mom, I mean, not to talk about my mom too much on this podcast, but we're just a serious man, I guess.

Was kind of like, I don't like the vibes of the Judeo, Jewish people here.

Like, she couldn't find the kind of reformy.

Oh, no, it's hard.

I remember I was always fascinated when I interviewed British Jews.

Yeah.

Because you just don't associate them or you don't really American middle-class Judaism is the stereotype.

Yep.

Right.

The closest she could find was American transplants in London.

Right.

We're like, oh, we have a little thing here for, you know, and also you got to figure that the Jews were there forever.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

You know, so it's a totally integrated thing.

It's like Jews from the south that were here that came over before that first European immigration, but, you know, first of all slavery business.

Yeah.

I mean, there were Jews in the plantation south.

Yeah.

That, yeah, it's, it's kind of crazy because we all have such a strong identity with this middle-class,

you know, 50s Judaism that kind of built us.

But there's like, I remember that going to the.

the Yad Vishem

in

Israel, the, the, the Holocaust Museum.

And there's just the, they showed like Jews from around the world because you identify, you think you know Jews.

And then they're just showing like, you know, Africans.

And you're like, oh my God, what a like a myopic idiot I am.

Yeah.

You know, but they're not Jews like us.

Right.

Right.

His Torah portion is Leviticus.

And like, I do think it is funny when you get handed this Torah portion where you're like, oh, what's it about?

And it's basically just being like, oh, if you have a farm, you better not have a farm too close to the other guy.

You know, it's just some rule.

Yeah.

Right.

And then, right.

Everyone in their bomitzer translates it to like it's like in school when you have to resist the temptation to cheat off of someone else's test

and everyone gives them like a round of ten commandments but like literally it's just like you shall count seven weeks of years seven times seven years so the time of seven weeks of years shall give you 49 years it's a bunch of math and i bet you the cohens picked it for that exact reason right

and it is just so funny when you read the bible and half of it is like yeah he's fed this fucker to a whale because he doesn't listen to him the other half is like if a lady has her period steer clear for her.

Yeah, yeah, which is things like that that they're about

right that causes the same kind of like spiral that this movie is about: of being like, How does this relate to my life?

What am I supposed to take away from this?

Yep, yeah, or what I don't even know it, right?

The stories, yes, like there's no implication in middle-class Judaism that anyone knows the Bible.

No, I have struggled with my relationship to Judaism, and not that it was, I wasn't even bar mitzvah, so it was something that pushed on me that hard, but you know,

um,

the only time when I'm in a temple and like people, the only magic to it to me is like people said this shit 3,000 years ago, sure.

The same shit we're saying right now, like these words.

The same as seeing fucking Romeo and Juliet staged or whatever.

We were like, this is crazy.

This text is there's some magic.

So you're singing in Hebrew.

I, you know, we did.

Adona lum at the end was always.

And then, you know, someone brought a new version in and it's like, what are we doing?

What's with the fact?

I like a donal lump.

Oh, yeah, you don't like the new music.

Right, yeah.

And then all of a sudden it's a donalam, a donalum, a share malum, a sharema, like I was off.

What's happening?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that, and that does happen.

And then

my mom reform synagogues.

Like, what's with the guitar?

Yeah.

Why is there stained glass in here?

Yeah.

My parents definitely tried to push that on me to be like, this one's fun.

They're puppets and an acoustic guitar.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Where the guy's like, you know.

Stories are like a little kind of like about the Avengers.

It's not about the fucking Avengers.

God can go about give it the weight it deserves.

Exactly.

Yeah.

That was kind of the original Iron Man.

Yeah, yeah.

So

Larry Kopnick, yeah.

You see, he lives in St.

Louis Park.

He's got a wife who pretty much first thing she says to him is, I need to get, I'm divorcing you and I'm marrying Cy Able.

You know how we've been having trouble.

So hanky pinky.

Right.

Like there's not, it's all above board.

Right.

So, and I believe her.

I feel like it is just that she's like, this guy's so magnetic.

It speaks to what a sex guy he is, that she's ready to leave her husband just at the idea of fucking Cy Ableman.

Because the idea is that Cyableman's wife just died, right?

Because later Adam Arkin is like, she's barely in the grave.

But it's been three years.

Right.

That's the thing they keep correcting.

Right.

Yeah.

But also, he's like an adventurous spirit.

Yes.

And he knows about wine.

He's expansive.

Right.

Yes.

He's cultural.

He's traveled.

The expansive thing, again, with the psychedelic, you know, undertones.

It's, it's, it's all about, you know, not being locked in to this pattern.

He knows about things outside of this enclave in Minnesota.

Yep.

Yeah.

um so that's kind of just that's all that's really going on in the movie is just that's the inciting thing

for tenure then it's right a series of sort of there is a young student who is blackmailing him because he's given him a failing grade what are the other things stacked up he's he's got his brother sleeping on his couch columbia house keeps calling

that's my favorite that's the that and and you you're with him every time he walks in and she's like he's on the phone again he's like i can't deal with that i i i when i was a kid

yeah i'd get my 12

dollar or whatever and my uncle would just like sign up false addresses or whatever i feel like it was so easy to fake it the ones that were that i got that made an impression it were uh aerosmith's first album uh joe walsh the smoker you drink the whatever you get um i don't want santana a braxas yeah that might have been one of them but the ones that do anything yeah yeah but then did you did you do cancel them or would you get locked in well eventually you got to get your parents to step up and get you out of it.

Right.

I mean, you don't have the money.

Yeah.

You know, because you would tape like a penny back in the morning.

Well, you know, you had to buy like three or four records at regular price.

Right.

You get the 12 for free.

And then you got to, you know, you got to buy a certain number of records.

The free thing was actually a brilliant business strategy to be like, well, kids just fucking take the initiative and mail it in, and the parents get stuck with the bill.

Sure.

They don't have to ask for permission the first time.

And also you get new music.

Yeah.

You know, like you're like, that sounds good.

Yeah.

Steve Park, who played,

obviously, Mike Yanagita.

Mike Yanagida and Fargo plays the student's father.

I'm trying to think of

Clive as the student.

Clive is the student.

Right.

Which is also right.

Like another form of assimilation is like, here is this foreign family that has moved here and named their son Clive.

Oh, that assimilation too is very interesting.

Yes.

Because like the one moment where the neighbor actually reaches out is like, do you need help here?

Right.

Because the guy was Asian.

Right.

Is there a problem?

He's like the the hierarchy

both hate them yes yeah that can bond us yes yeah yeah yeah and if that the if the movie has a structure it's just these three visits to rabbis that he makes that are him seeking answers i guess initially he's demanding

a get right yeah right a traditional jewish divorce right and and he's hoping he can also get some kind of clarity for why his life is in the place it is all at the same time yeah yeah yeah and he sees uh first uh simon helberg rabbi ginsler and then he sees marshak

this isn't a simon helberg film right then he sees knockner and then and he never sees marshak he doesn't get to see you see marshak you his son gets to meet marshak

uh and uh yeah there's not much uh

no one's saying anything about the actual politics of the time is there do they even reference vietnam maybe in the

i don't think so no

like and it's like like you're saying the sort of cultural shift is is on the edges all the time.

The reference is

machine gun.

Right.

The reference is art that's about Vietnam and other stuff.

But yeah, like...

You're not talking about who's president in this movie.

Right.

No.

Yeah.

No, it's Johnson.

It's all a biblical struggle.

Yes.

Yes.

And he is put upon in ways that...

you initially can keep track of and eventually you do start to kind of think like someone actually does need to intervene here yes but everyone he and it's a series of meetings it's all meetings yes he's meeting with say woman he's meeting with rabbit he's meeting with the lawyers right like it's always just him being like isn't there something we need one way or another yes right yes but i think interestingly if i think about it that you know the beginning of the third act is the bar mitzvah yes so you know what you have there is a coming together and an understanding that's the other thing everyone he keeps meeting with keeps like saying like pretty exciting bar mitzvah is coming up you know it's a big event culturally and and also that's the moment where there is if if there is any sort of reunification of the of the wife and him yes it's in that moment they're proud of their son that's right right but there it is fraught with expectation because he's stoned yes and they're all wondering they should be proud of him he's dancing on a pinhead i mean he is yes well they are in that hebrew

they don't know

i know i know he's hitting those notes like they were nervous because they didn't know if he was nervous or what but there's a moment like is he gonna pull it off right they do say they do keep saying to him, like, you got to cherish this, right?

You know, like the people will be like, ah, you know, you know, your kids are young.

Like, oh, cherish it.

And I guess there is the implication that Larry cherishes nothing in life.

Like, it's hard to know what Larry

likes.

He cherishes math.

I guess so.

But he also doesn't seem to derive great pleasure from it.

It doesn't seem like he's into teaching.

Right.

Everything feels like a burden on him to some degree or other.

I don't know if I, if I got that with the math.

I think that, you know, it was his salvation.

Right.

And and that you know the fact that he could share that i mean being a teacher i mean it's another important position you know biblically speaking that everyone's framed that way and that there was this the context of his teaching was uh if you knew how to do that you could be effective and and and share the wisdom but he also seems so beleaguered at the struggle of how to communicate it to other people right

he's teaching kids he's teaching schrodinger's cat right like really complicated abstract stuff and he's showing it easy to teach i think he puts value on this system this language that makes sense to him and helps give him a sense of

everyone's searching for meaning so

but there is sort of a a nebishy hubris yes to his position yes and all he wants is tenure he wants the minting of you get to be this guy forever yeah your status is not in question and also no expectation to like he hasn't published no yeah yeah he doesn't but like right that he is seeking now that I think about a rabbinical position.

Yes.

Of like, yeah, once you get tenure, you'll sit in your office.

Yes.

People will come talk to you and you'll be like,

you become an elder of the community.

But not so much.

It's just sort of like there in math, there's no wig over it.

Yes or no.

This is right or wrong.

Right.

Period.

And yeah, but life is not that easy.

It's solvable.

So he first goes to see Helberg, who tells him, look at the parking lot.

And there is a comedy to this that I feel like is so true in religion when you do have to confront someone who's like, hi, like I got to be a priest like 20 minutes ago, but I am nominally like a representative of God.

The three rabbis in the movie are like a guy who's younger than him, a guy who's a contemporary, and a guy who's his elder.

And immediately he's sort of sitting with this guy with the disappointment of, I really thought I was going to talk to the big guy.

But like, Kensler's not going to tell him.

He doesn't know about divorce.

He doesn't know shit about that divorce.

He's waiting for this guy to kick him up the chain.

You know, he kind of, you can tell that he goes into that meeting knowing he's not going to get anything that he's happy with but in but i do think he gets the best advice from that that's right he does the perception advice right yes like that that actually he should listen to yes of just like just look at the parking lot but he's pre-committed to the outcome of this guy has nothing he can teach me things aren't so yeah yeah yeah but that's what he goes back to right it's also funny that it's a parking lot which goes back to fargo as well where this guy's entire life is built on the idea of if i can get this parking lot deal my my father-in-law will respect me, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like the parking lot.

He's a climber.

It's the kind of most sacred cornerstone of a community in America.

David!

Yes.

It's beginning to look a lot like the holidays.

Oh, sure.

I'm being nonspecific.

There's lots of holidays down the road.

All holidays.

Whatever holiday floats your boat.

But as the holidays approach, you got to get what you need to personalize your home.

Yes.

With Wayfair.

Yes.

Oh, my goodness.

You need some Christmas trees?

Absolutely.

Look at them.

Here are some questions.

You need some wreaths.

Does your serveware need a refresh?

A better plate to put?

Cookies and milk out, perhaps, for a guest visitor.

That makes sense.

Does your guest room need a new comforter?

Say, perhaps a visitor wants to take a quick nap in between dropping off presents.

Guys, guys, sorry to interrupt.

I'm just, I'm wondering, where can I get inflatables for my front yard?

Day,

Ben!

Wayfair.

All of these problems can be solved at one place.

Wayfair.

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You can shop holiday decor for every room in the house.

Yeah, my whole thing with Wayfair has always been like, if you need like an item,

you just punch that into Wayfair.

You punch it in.

And you'll be like, oh, damn, they have that too.

I'm like, the holidays are a time.

Are you sure you need a table?

You need...

Girl tips come visit.

They need to stay.

You want to get them better bedding, linens, throw pillows, accent, chairs.

Do you need like an inflatable candy cane?

They probably got that.

They better.

Take a big bite out of it.

And look, we're using Wayfair right now.

We've been using them to buy some new furniture for the office.

What are we buying?

A little nook.

We're

currently shopping.

We're going to get ourselves a new couch.

We got a weirdly shaped corner.

They have like, what do we fit in here?

We have an inflatable candy cane.

I died triple.

So,

wait, what?

I missed what we're getting.

Okay.

We're getting ourselves also a little like a bench sort of area with a table to sort of take advantage of like a weird corner of the side.

Right, right.

We do have this funny little nook.

And hey.

And we were like, what could possibly fill this nook?

And Wayfair had the answer.

The latitude run simple and stylish five-person corner breakfast nook.

Okay.

So I'm going to do a little call to action now.

You think?

Well, well, I should point out, though.

Yeah, point out some things first.

That Wayfair does have free and easy delivery, even on the big stuff.

Sofas, dining tables, beds, and so on and so forth.

You can find your seasonal must-haves.

I feel like we've made that point already, but the free delivery thing is really cool.

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That's w-a-y-f-a-i-r.com.

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Wait, David, we made a big mistake.

I forgot to tell people that there's free and easy delivery even on the big stuff.

Even on the big stuff.

And then you got Nachner, who tells the teeth story.

I think this is the crowning teeth.

Every moment in the movie?

I mean, once again, it is a movie that has like four things that would be the undeniable crowning moment in any other film.

There's just something so wonderful about how involved you are in it.

Yeah, I think that that story is,

in a way,

is it the parable?

Is that what we call them?

Sure, sure.

Fable, whatever.

That is the fable that explains the movie in the context of the opening fable.

And

it is what the movie is.

And the fact that the reason I say that is because he did take the letters and break down the Kabbalistic math of what the numbers of the letters implied on a Kabbalah level.

Right.

He called the number.

So, Yeah, he did go to the supermarket where the number was for expecting something.

And that is the entire search of the movie.

That is the movie.

Right.

In

that parable form.

And we were talking about before recording the like the semiotics in visual storytelling in like the great movies.

Yeah.

And how a movie that's really humming, you're like, you could look at the back of the teeth and they would tell you something.

And this is literally a guy who's hyper-fixated on the back of the teeth, which are saying something so specific and yet nothing at the same time.

And the further he dug, the less answers he got.

And that also, the,

I guess the interesting thing is, is that there is a level of wanting coincidences to mean something.

Yes.

And wanting how you perceive things in relation to things that have happened before in your life or, or, or suggestions of things that happened before in your life as having some sort of arc or continuity to it.

And if you look at that, that story about the dentist, he never asks the guy,

how did this?

Do you know you have this on your teeth?

Right, right.

That there's a whole other side of this story.

He's not asking.

It's the essential question.

That's right.

Right.

To the essential person.

But also, like, this is how we read movies, right?

Like, you're saying like, you look for answers and meaning and things, right?

And purpose and all of that.

And yet, movies are like, this many people came together and put this much time and money and effort into something that exists in a fixed time, right?

That is a finished work.

So you want to look at it and assume that every single decision has some meaning behind it.

Whether purposeful or accidental, there's something to be inferred by the decision of every line reading, of every costuming choice, of every sound cue, of all of that.

Or sometimes it's just collaborative coincidence.

Echism it.

And we're watching a movie that feels so tightly constructed by these guys who make things that similarly open the same kind of questioning that keeps telling you, I don't know.

Yeah.

And also like the dentist you know obviously couldn't talk about it with anybody but the rabbi right and that when he tries to look at his wife's teeth it has to be why she's sleeping i thought that was sort of an interesting thing about you know how women are handled in this movie yes and and from the very beginning when the woman in just kills the guy the Dybbuk yes right and without you know asking the husband she just you don't know what the hell they're gonna do yes right and then there's a woman on the beach who's kind of flirting with him.

Yes.

That there is something in that

subtext and the way that women are handling these relationships, because once the dentist forgets about the teeth, the shot is he's telling a story to his wife.

Right.

Right.

You know, and it's clearly not the dentist.

He's not reconnecting with his wife.

That's right.

Yes.

And it's kind of interesting that

they hold sort of a mystical unknown space in this movie.

Yes.

Something that men are not going to get into and can't understand.

Larry's wife also basically disappears for close to an hour in this room.

She's really not back.

After Cy Abelman dies, her presence is anytime he goes over, you just hear her wailing, but you don't see her.

He's talking to the kids and you just hear her crying upstairs unconsolably.

And that's what the kid says when he calls.

He's like, dad, you have to come home.

Mom won't stop crying.

Right.

Doesn't tell him why.

They like throw it out to him as like background knowledge of like, well, yeah, Cy Abelman died.

And then she doesn't, I think, appear physically again until the bar mitzvah.

And then, you know, he's going to get her back.

He's going to get tenure.

He's going to get his wife back.

He's going to get his family back together.

And then he's going to die of freaking

yeah, it'll all resolve itself.

But that's really interesting if I think it out loud about the mystery of women in this movie.

Because it's, it's definitely.

Because Landecker is obviously the neighbor.

He's like a, you know, the name goddess.

Exactly.

Like she's like a mystical thing there.

She's a deliberated woman.

Then there's a woman, you know, kind of, you know, forwarding with him on the beach and ready to go in for the kill, you know, if he'll take her.

And then there's the wife, and then there's the daughter.

And he literally says that she, my daughter mostly washes her hair.

And it seems to be very many steps to the process.

Women are like seen as unknowable.

A total enigma.

That's why the answers are not.

And it's not our job.

It's just like unknowable.

It's like Hashem.

Right.

And like, as Nachner says to him, it's like, it's one way.

He owes us nothing.

We can't ask Hashem what's going on.

Yes.

Like, it's not like Christianity where yeah, but it's accepting that relationship, which is crazy.

But a teeth, we don't know a sign from Hashem, yeah, we don't know when he's always

the ending, yeah, couldn't hurt, yeah, exactly.

That's always it, that's right.

That's that's

that's the weird trick of Judaism and why we never shut up with it.

The more you overanalyze the text, the further you get away from the idea, which is like, don't be an ass.

It's not like some belief systems where they're like, you have to be nice, right, or you're in trouble.

Overanalyzing the text is the nature of judaism and it's it's it's the nature of jewish community it's the nature of jewish men sitting at a deli it's the nature of debate i do think that's why i've always struggled with very strict judaism which of course exists like mega earth where i'm like you guys think that's definitely it right yeah but the thing is is it like but right but it's absolutely in in the sense of that their knowledge of what you're talking about as being these weird stories about math right that's a week of conversation yeah with the Hasidim.

You know, like they're going to

read into that, they're going to interpret it.

They're doing five episodes.

It's going to be a couple blank check episodes a day.

It's just about single pages of the text.

That's right.

There's an endless amount of text.

It's not as simple as the New Testament.

So that, like, however, we're going to, and God knows, I try to compartmentalize, if not, you know, condescend or am outright anti-Semitic about the Hasidic community,

they have an almost infinite material for dialogue and debate outside of their ritual.

But an infinite well in a very fixed text.

A moving text.

Yeah, but middle-class Judaism becomes a fixed text.

Yes.

It's simpler and it integrates the possibility of democracy in America.

Right.

But, you know, yeah, and you don't have to wear the same outfit.

How do we translate this to a modern culture?

Gives them new things to analyze in a way.

Speaking of Mark's point about the things that go unspoken, there's also the unspoken thing that Arthur is gay and is sort of up to private hanky-panky.

Right.

You know, like, and when he's torment.

And that's obviously, right.

That's the dark thing he wants to understand more than anything, right?

Right.

And then when that is revealed, sort of obliquely revealed by the cops, it's never discussed again.

No.

I mean, I guess he talks to the lawyer about like, you're going to need a criminal attorney or whatever, but no one sits Arthur down being like, how can we help you or what's going on?

No, but

that conversation didn't exist then.

Right.

But there was acceptance.

There's no path.

There was acceptance.

Yeah.

But

they can't believe that in a weird way.

But with the brother.

Unspoken acceptance.

But with the brother, there was unconditional

acceptance and love.

Yes.

To the point where the dream is, I'm going to help you get out of it.

And I was going to say, I find the dream so affecting because the Carter Burwell score in this is incredible.

His scores for all the Con movies are incredible.

But this one is so ominous, so repetitive.

It It is so limited in sort of the motif of what it is repeating.

And the first major variation of it is in that dream sequence where he's putting the same baseline melody, but then he's putting this kind of like sweeping emotional

orchestral thing on top of it.

It's the end of a movie.

For the first time, there is this sense of possibility and uplift, which is he takes the kid's money and he buys his fucking brother a canoe and sets him off to Canada.

Just a sign that says Canada and the idea of if you cross the border, maybe over there you can live in universities.

Which also speaks to the Vietnam time.

It was a thing.

That's a gesture.

You go to Canada to get away from

America.

Get away from Canada.

It's the abstract kind of like bizarro America, which is us without our progress.

My uncle was going to go to Canada.

But that's a good point, though, because ultimately

you don't escape the violence.

No, the guy shows up and

he wakes up.

An anti-Semitic Jew hater.

Yes.

Yeah.

So the Jews are, you know, either way.

And the only other time the score repeats that sort of tone is at the end with the reveal of the tornado.

Yeah.

So why does he change the grade?

Is he just sort of like, is he affecting, feeling it like, things are starting to go better for me?

Maybe I shouldn't be so tough on this.

I think it's like the law bill and he.

Right.

He gets the law bill and he's like, maybe I can just.

He's so scared off by the nightmare of trying to help his brother escape to a different life that he, but he has the same compulsion within him to protect him.

I think, especially now that he understands the sexuality and understands the unspoken thing that's never going to be solved within this guy, that he feels like the ultimate mitzvah he can do is get this guy back down to zero.

Yeah, and who's going to be the wiser?

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

And then the minute that there was a real, it's called Black Sunday.

It was a real tornado system that ripped through Iowa and Minnesota

and killed lots of people who lived in Minnesota.

It's in 1967, like right then.

The order of it is,

does his

superior come in and give him the indication that he's about to get tenure right before the doctor phone call?

Yes.

And then the tornado?

That's tenure, then he gets the bill.

Then he changes the grade, and the doctor calls.

I love the thing with the tenure, too.

He's feeling

the fact that he's a little invincible because he's gotten the tenure.

Was Cy the one writing the letters?

Again, I know it's silly to ask questions of this movie when we should be accepting the mystery, but right, that's the

that when at the bar mitzvah, the wife says like Cy was writing letters to the tenure board for you.

And they go out of their way to say how eloquent the letters were,

how poetic they were.

Right, that they weren't.

This isn't someone who English was not the first romantic.

Well, so then,

you know, if you're going to believe that, then Cy is the devil.

Yeah, and Sai sort of is.

Or he's this mystical, dark beast.

No, he's saying he has evil intent.

Yes.

That Cy's whole thing is playing it all as like, look, this is just, just, it's an intellectual exercise, right?

It would make sense for you to go to the Jolly Roger.

It's the right thing to do.

This isn't emotional, right?

Larry.

The Jolly Roger with an empty pool.

Right.

And he, no, but he, biblically, he is

the, it's not even a Faustian character.

He is the only

representative of human evil.

Yes.

And he is also.

He took his wife.

This is his way of cucking him out.

He's literally cucked him.

He sucked him out of his home.

Yes.

Oh, my God.

You know, is trying to diminish his reputation?

What are you saying?

Oh, my God.

When he has that conversation and he's like, why don't you move into Sy's house?

And they have this look of like, are you kidding me?

It makes me so mad because it's so deeply unfair.

It's so like they've made this decision amongst each other and there's no like other alternative.

And that's when he says, surely you jest.

Yeah.

Surely.

And I don't even actually understand,

is there some kind of like religious?

No, I really don't think so.

No, no, no, it's not religious, it's societal.

It's like don't break up the family exactly.

She's the head of the family, right?

So she is defining to him, you have to leave because the family unit is changing with him moving in, right?

And the house is the continuity, and you're the part that's replaceable.

Not but also,

he might not even really care about her that much.

He doesn't seem to really have any level of intellectual intimacy.

He's

an instigator of chaos.

Yes.

He's a biblical bad boy.

Do you also get the sense?

I don't know.

I mean, my inference.

Who's your favorite biblical bad boy?

I don't know.

Got to think about it.

I get the inference in this that it was kind of one of these quiet, kind of like passively arranged marriages, right?

That this was sort of a, not that they were actually set up to like combine.

It's hard to imagine Larry taking charge.

Right, but you're just sort of like, this is probably like the girl he met when he was 14 and everyone was like, you should marry her.

Just trying to think of any other.

Oh, yeah, he's good.

He's got a good job.

I mean,

it's as arranged as expectations or

the rabbi is busy.

He doesn't look busy.

He's thinking.

I'm just trying to think of like any other, because this is such a...

quotable there's a part where he's talking about their relationship had you seen this before ben no i'd never seen it before.

And he's like, she's usually right about this stuff.

And it's in reference to like their relationship crumbling.

Yeah.

Like, I love that he's even not sure about that.

Yes.

That he's leaving it kind of up to her.

Right.

That he falls in line with what she's telling him with very little resistance and then has to do the work to actually make her reality of cucking him

tangible.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

That she's like, I need a get, you have to get the get for me.

Well, okay.

One other thing.

The bus scenes.

The bus scenes.

They're great.

They're so fun.

It really captures what it's like at that age to be on the bus with your friends.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I love the kid that keeps just saying fuck all the time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just really, it's like he's really at that age where you're like, I'm, I, I've learned this word and I'm going to fucking use it, man.

And also the

really kind of like, those are, those kids are American.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

First and foremost.

Like, even at the Hebrew school, like on the bus,

those are kids that are fully integrated.

And you have the old teacher guy who feels like he's.

And my mom would talk about that.

How you'd have these teachers who were Holocaust survivors.

Yeah.

Like, because that was her generation and that they were so from another world.

Right.

This doesn't relate to me.

And she's like, yeah, I watched like Leave It to Beaver.

Like, it's like she doesn't, yeah.

Yeah.

And F-Troop.

The movie starts at the cold open, right?

We got to shout out Fivish finkel true legend of the iris the

rules in this yeah um and this right this idea of saying like i ran into this guy you remember him and the wife is immediately terrified at like he died i swear to you he died there's no chance you saw that guy and he shows up and the whole question is was the the gossip wrong right or is this guy supernatural which she then takes the initiative stabs him another example of walks out into the cold taking charge and

right and and the question is did that doom them forever?

Yeah, like Adam and Eve.

And like, and gossip is another very specific commandment.

And Adam and Eve, the first gossip, right, is I hear feet that tree.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

But then you go into this like void of darkness, right?

The credits come out like really quickly, almost like Superman, the movie, flying at the screen with this weird humming that turns into the Jefferson airplane.

You see the small kind of like circle of light.

And as you push in on it slowly, you're coming out his ear canal.

You're going into the speaker.

You've been in the mind of the son who is so secondary to the narratives of this movie but here he is sneaking music the teacher takes it the money is tucked into the radio right which he needs to pay the bully back for for the lid he's running away every day he's just got this quiet subplot the whole movie which is just this big kid keeps chasing him down the street and he's got to figure out how to get the money

to give the kid the and the kid's like there's a tornado yeah we're about to die right all right we gotta play

Go ahead, Griffin.

We've not been going long.

I have to go to the Natural History Museum.

What are you doing at the Natural History Museum?

I'm going to look at the whale.

Hell yeah.

My girlfriend's never been there.

That is my favorite place.

And she's a dinosaur freak.

My phone picture is my daughter.

Oh, I can't wait.

In front of the whale.

Sorry to spoil the whale for you.

Yeah.

I'm sorry if I if I'm circular.

No, no, no, you're not.

No, absolutely not.

No.

I just, we have to play the box.

It's the last thing we do before we finish the episode.

Griffin, do you remember when this film came out?

This came out in September or October 2nd, 2009.

Mark, Griff's going to, I mean, and feel free to join in, but Griff's going to try and guess the movies that were top of the box off of this movie when this film came out.

When?

October 2nd, 2009.

Oh, I'm not going to have the answer.

So my...

This film opened it, I think, Toronto or.

Yeah, that sounds right.

You know, it had like a festival release.

My relationship to my father was largely solidified in that he shared sports with my brother.

I was the first child.

I had no interest in the thing that he cared about the most.

I'm the same.

Well, my dad didn't care about anything, but go ahead.

In an effort to connect and come up with an equivalent thing to my dad and my brother coveting the sports scores in the daily news and the New York Post every morning.

My dad tried to build the same ritual over checking out the box office top 10

every Monday morning, I guess.

And so it started this thing of all of these being locked in my brain.

So even though this movie comes out in a point in time where I'm ostensibly an adult and not living with my father.

You still care about this.

Most of our relationship is on Sunday being like, you see that number?

Oh, yeah.

The purse screen was wild on that.

So all of these things are just baked into my brain.

I'm a lunatic.

Yeah.

Okay.

So October 2009.

Yeah, it's opening.

It's the first screen.

It's not a massive sense.

Yeah, it's a nine.

It's a limited release, so it's not number one.

But number one is new this week, Griff.

It's an action

comedy.

It's an action comedy.

It's kind of a horror action comedy.

It's Zombieland?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good job.

Zombie Land.

Okay, so I remember there being three new releases.

There are three.

You're right.

There's actually four.

Well, I'm going to pull one thing right out of my ass.

Go ahead.

Toy Story 2 3D double feature re-release happens this weekend.

You're so fucked up.

I was hoping it was going to overtake Zombieland.

I had some personality.

Wow.

So that's number three.

I guess a re-release is.

You're saying it's of the first two Toy Stories?

They did a double feature because both those movies are under 90.

So it was like a right.

It was like a three-hour double feature with some,

probably one of the greatest movie-going experiences of my life.

So number one is Zombieland.

That's number three.

Number two is a children's animated film.

And is it also a new release?

No.

No.

It's a

coming down from number one.

Coming down from number one in 2009.

So it was a September

release.

You struggle with this one.

It's based on a children's book.

It's based on a children's book.

I've struggled with this one in the past.

I've seen this one in the past.

Which studio released it?

Sony.

It's a Sony release.

No, he struggles with this one.

Mark could have been.

Oh, it's Claudia with a Chance of Meatballs.

There you go.

Yeah.

I always just don't think about that because now you have a cartoon.

You're in the Bad Guys.

Is that your cartoon?

Yes.

Bad guys opens in August.

Hell yeah.

Can I say this?

I love every time you talk about going to the first screening and hearing that everyone else did kind of their regular speaking voice.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And wondering why you put so much effort into it.

Yeah, I got to do this every time I talk as a cartoon.

I just want to say to you, I took my little cousin, who's like

now 10, but I guess was eight or seven when the first one came out to see that movie opening weekend.

And I was like, God, fucking, Marin's locked.

in he's delivering he's putting in the work yeah i want you to know the vocal strain you put in that role is appreciated.

Oh, well, thank you.

He was laughing at the snake.

I'll say that.

Oh, good.

He doesn't know from WTF.

He's not laughing because it's you.

Yeah.

You also played Lex Luther.

Yeah, sure.

I didn't even know what that was.

But they just sort of ambushed you with my mother.

You just kind of come across in that performance versus the snake where I'm like, you got a handle on this?

Yeah.

No, I didn't.

Like, they, I didn't even know it was a big movie.

Is that the super pets?

The pup pets.

I'm like, all right, I'll do it.

Because when you do animated, it's like you drive to Burbank.

That's the dream.

And you just do the thing.

The absolute dream.

And I had no care about any of that.

Yeah.

But yeah, but I put it in with the snake.

And then, like, when did people stop doing cartoon voices?

I agree.

So, though, Anthony Ramos definitely steps up.

He does.

Everyone's good in it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ram is good in it.

But I just, I like that you came up with a full character.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Number three, Fort Griff.

It's a kind of a bomb.

It's a sci-fi kind of action movie with like a movie star who's getting to be in his dotage, getting a little older.

He's over the hump.

Yeah, he's retired now.

He's retired now?

He is, yes.

For sort of sad movies.

Oh, it's a Bruce movie, isn't it?

Bruce Willis.

Is it surrogates?

That's right.

The film surrogates.

Yeah.

A movie I've never seen.

Me neither.

Robots.

I don't know.

Jonathan Mostop, right?

And then number five, it's new this week.

It's a comedy from sort of a, I guess, a comedy auteur of sorts.

You said that with a bit of an eye roll.

You know.

I don't know.

I have a complicated relationship with the guy.

I think most people do.

It's not due date, is it?

No, no, he's British.

He's British.

And you have a complicated.

He's like starring, and he's directing, and he's writing.

Is it the motion picture, the invention of lying?

Ricky Gervais.

Now, I've heard

a scrurrulous rumor.

Yeah, speaking of movies about God, right?

I heard he doesn't believe in the guy.

No,

I swear.

Where did you hear that?

That was a bad movie.

Deep, deep gossip circles.

Demois was posting about it.

You never did Gervais, right?

You never talked to me.

Nope.

I'm not sure why.

I did go to the premiere of that movie with CK, though.

Right.

And CK ditched me.

Cool.

He just needed some, he just wanted to go with somebody.

But this is, you know, the nature of that friendship when it existed.

Yeah.

Like I was in LA.

He's like, you want to go this thing?

And then I go, yeah, okay, that sounds fun.

So I go over to his hotel, Beverly Hilton or something.

And then we go to the thing.

We go to the premiere.

We get out of the car.

He walks to the line.

He says, you're all set.

You know,

you've got a ticket.

He leaves in the car.

I sit and watch that horrible movie.

You didn't stay for the no, but then the car, you know, took me back to the, like,

I somehow lost my keys and I thought they were in his hotel room.

And I can't even remember how that resolved itself because I had to go back to the hotel, get them to go into the room to see if I could find my car keys.

And my car was at the hotel.

God, how did that resolve that?

What about the goy?

Yeah, that is like a serious man-esque trial of yeah, and I'm all indignant.

And the most indignity is that, like, I don't remember where, how that resolved itself.

Sure.

But I remember it was

horrendous panic.

Well, yeah, I got my car, but I don't think I ever found my keys.

CK is clean-shaven in that, and it makes it feel like the movie's a hallucination.

Right.

That doesn't have to go.

It's right before the show.

Sure, sure, sure.

When he sort of like ascends.

It's a terrible movie.

It's always a terrible film.

But it feels like watching Henry Cavill with the CGI'd-out mustache, where you're like, this face doesn't move right.

Yeah.

Number six of the box office is Whip It, the roller-dripping movie, really funny.

True Barrymore's only directorial effort?

Yeah.

And then you've got Fame.

I guess, is that a remake of Fame?

Yeah.

Big Tom.

Okay.

And then the Michael Moore movie, Capitalism, a Love Story.

Yeah.

So that was, what, up to 250 million domestic at this point?

Maybe 4 million.

Oh, interesting.

And then you've got the Soderbergh movie, The Informant, which is a great movie.

Very good.

That's good.

Yeah.

And then something called Love Happens.

What the hell is that?

That was Aaron Eckert, Jennifer Anston.

I think he plays like a Tony Robbins-esque motivational speaker.

You're right.

And she's a florist.

Yes.

And Love Happens.

Love does indeed happen.

But that's it.

Wow.

That's the box office game.

Wow.

We're done, Mark.

We're good.

I mean, we'll, we'll, we'll

send you off.

You have to

not to, not to.

That's his thing.

I'm

trying to beat my own.

Are we allowed to ask you that?

What?

Are we good?

Yeah, we're good.

It was great.

Yeah, I did realize during this conversation that I am definitely not a math Jew.

I definitely do not have the obsessive attention span of a film nerd Jew.

And

I am definitely more a mystically bent Jew.

Yes.

So you're more listening to airplane.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

All right.

All right.

Thanks, guys.

Well, this is dropped out.

It's coming out in a while.

Yeah, in the fall.

So well, yeah, I'll have the special out there.

Yes.

Is that on HBO?

Yeah, HBO.

The special is called Panicked.

You shot it at BAM, right?

I did.

I shot it at the Bam Sharp.

The Harvey with the

Bad Guys is coming out in August.

Hell yeah.

Can't wait to hear that sneaker album.

We'll see what happens with this feature film that I starred in, an Independent, called The In Memoriam.

And then the documentary.

The documentary.

Hopefully we'll have a home where you can watch Are We Good?

In Memoriam is the one that's about the guy who wants to make the In Memorial at the Oscars.

That's a great premise.

It's funny.

You guys are really like that.

That's all kind of the absolute.

I think I did all right.

Where you watch that every year and you're like, huh, it's weird.

That guy didn't make it.

Yeah, yeah.

Why does he chop liver?

you know yeah yeah there's politics involved that's the thing that people don't know is that like you basically don't make it unless someone submits you right someone's got to remember that you died right someone's got to make the case they all remember gene hackman or whatever but like never forget yeah yeah uh thank you so much for doing this thanks for having me thoughts uh yeah i mean i it's uh a real joy we're huge fans well i hope i i hate to say i uh stepped up enough no absolutely but it's also it's one of those things where it's uh hard to imagine that we would be doing this if you hadn't done what you did as much as the show was very different.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate that, and I'm happy for you guys.

At the end of the day, that's all that matters.

Yeah, I've been waiting for my dad to say that

for so long, but it brings maybe more coming from you.

Yeah, wow.

Thank you for saying that.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you, Brendan, for making this happen.

Yeah, thanks for

the part of the room, respectfully.

Enjoy the Natural History Museum.

Yeah, thanks for that.

I'm looking forward to it.

Yep.

Thank you all for listening.

Please remember to rate review, subscribe.

Sure.

I say that.

That's a thing I say.

Tune in next week for True Grit.

Yeah.

That was a hit.

That's right.

That was their follow-up.

You're right.

Yeah.

And as always, embrace the mystery.

There we go.

Mark Marin.

Serious man on the pod.

Long time coming.

I was happy with that episode.

I was happy with that episode.

He was very generous with his time, but then he had to leave because he had to go to the Museum of Natural History.

He wanted to see the squid and the whale.

That's what he wanted to see.

He wanted to see that.

That's not a bit.

That's real.

Thank you to Brandon McDonald for making that happen.

Total mensch.

Great guy.

Well, thank you for listening.

Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

Of course, the full archives, blank check archives, are available for free wherever you get your podcast.

We've talked about Mark Maron a lot in the past, we've stolen a lot of his bits.

Most of that really originates with our almost famous episode from year two,

2016.

So here's a little clip of that.

Our original Mark Maron conversation.

If you want to listen to that, you can go back and listen to the episode.

Lock the gates.

Great time.

Boom.

I just shit shit my pants.

Just coffee.com.

God, he says that all the time.

Remember when all the podcasts were just WTF?

That was like the only podcast?

Yeah, that was the only format that people wanted to do.

Oh, my God.

And then you were like, great.

Like two years in, you're like, I've now heard every comedian give an interview, a long-form interview.

Yeah.

To each of the other comedians.

Right.

Like, it got to a point where it's like, so you've been doing open mics for a couple of years.

Tell me about your process.

Like, what?

Why are you interviewing?

How much time have you got at this point?

You got what?

You got 40?

You got a tight 20?

It was one of those things where it's like,

you know, you were,

is there a saturation point?

Like, will they eventually do all the comedians?

And then you're after like a couple years later, you're like, yep, yep, they did it.

They did all the comedians.

David, let me ask you a question.

Yeah.

Who are you guys?

There you go.

So there is that.

Hope you liked the episode.

Next week, True Grit.

Stavros Halkius, the comedian, the rebel rouser, the podcaster, the man, the myth, the legend on the show, talking true grit.

Good app.

I think you're going to like that one.

Lean Montgomery.

Did our music

WTF version of the theme?

Extra noodly.

Macaroni.

Linguini.

I don't know.

I don't know what I'm saying.

Okay.

Catch you all next time.

Bye.

Bulmar Lives!

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 AJ McKeon.

This show is mixed and edited by A.J.

McKeon and Alan Smithy.

Research by J.J.

Birch.

Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell.

Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds.

Our production assistant is Minnick.

Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help.

Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

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