Hail, Caesar! with Shirley Li

Speaker 0 Blank Jack with Griffin and David.

Speaker 0 Blank Jack with Griffin and David.

Speaker 0 Don't know what to say or to expect.

Speaker 0 All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Jack.

Speaker 1 You're gonna do it because you're an actor and that's what you do. Just like the director does what he does, and the writer, and the script girl, and the guy who claps the slate.

Speaker 1 And you're gonna do it because the podcast has worth. And if you have worth and you have worth, if you serve the podcast, and you're never going to forget that again.
It's so good. I'm going to cry.

Speaker 1 Should we take it again? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I stumbled on the one line. Do you have any notes? Do you have any...

Speaker 1 What do you think? More tripping one? I think just like with more roof.

Speaker 1 Rufal. Rufal.
Okay, and I'll do a mirthless chuckle at the beginning. Oh, yeah, please.
Okay, ready? Yeah.

Speaker 1 That was a little too small. Let me try that again.

Speaker 1 You're going to do it because you're an actor and that's what you do. Just like the director does what he does, and the writer, and the script girl, and the guy who claps the slate.

Speaker 1 You're going to do it because the podcast has worth. And you have worth if you serve the podcast.
And you're never going to forget that again. Is that too rueful? No, that was great.

Speaker 1 And the cough was good. I think that was good that we captured it.

Speaker 1 David has been sick for six months, it feels like.

Speaker 1 Since the live show. Since the live show.
Yeah. I like got sick right after the live show.
and And then I was like, I guess I'm not sick anymore. And then I was like, I'm sick again.

Speaker 1 Is it the same or is it new? I think it's new. It's

Speaker 1 JJ brought it.

Speaker 1 You're right. It is JJ's disease.
You know what? Now that we actually have someone who knew JJ when he was

Speaker 1 an awful teenager, essentially. I just forgot this.
They went to college. Oh, the Lord.
Our guest went to his wedding.

Speaker 1 To whatever. Fool married him.
Which is the last time I've seen JJ.

Speaker 1 Shirley, here's my question. You guys have seen JJ before, I have.
Yes, but we've also only seen him two times ever in our class. Hi, JJ.

Speaker 1 I've shouted out JJ every time I've been on, and I feel like it led to this point.

Speaker 1 JJ literally, I literally got in touch with JJ because Shirley was like, hey, can my annoying friend like DM you on Twitter?

Speaker 1 Can my annoying friend ruin your lives forever? It was basically not annoying, but sort of like, hey, my friend's like a huge fan. Is it okay if I like.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Shirley was like, mind if I, what about Bob?

Speaker 1 I asked for

Speaker 1 adding people to group chats. Yes, we love JJ, but I have a question for you, Shirley.
Uh-oh. Because someone needs to take responsibility for this.

Speaker 1 Did you know that JJ was hot, or was he not hot back when we moved? Because you should have warned us and we shouldn't have hired him.

Speaker 1 He was telling me that his trip to New York has involved, what was it, like a startling number of people telling him how tall he is. People are thrust-strapped and he's a fucking tall drink of water.

Speaker 1 I mean, I always knew JJ was cute. JJ, you're a cutie.
He's just fucking

Speaker 1 all of my friends are hot, including the three of you. You feel better?

Speaker 1 I appreciate that. But here's the thing: you're a journalist, and so your responsibility is to the truth.
Yes,

Speaker 1 I am just going to say to my 20 million readers. Yes.
I appreciate you saying that, but I'm going to say this candidly. AJ,

Speaker 1 Alan Smithy,

Speaker 1 and JJ are all so much hotter than the three of us, and it sucks. They're good looking guys.
It sucks. It sucks that the three guys who are not hot married

Speaker 1 on Mike are so fucking healthy. Oh my gosh.
Editing just puts you in some kind of like great workout. Like they're all in good shape.
They all got great hair.

Speaker 1 They all got good posture. Yeah.
I don't know. It's not a competition, Griff.

Speaker 1 The whole thing with JJ. I serve the podcast because the podcast has worth, and that's what it's about.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you would agree with me or not, Shirley Lee, who we haven't introduced yet. That's okay.
We won't introduce the show yet.

Speaker 1 It's going to be awesome. Shirley Lee, my close friend.
Well, please don't even get close introduced. Right.
But that is the main question.

Speaker 1 I'm going to introduce my friend, Shirley Lee, who works with me at the Atlantic, but we haven't introduced her yet. Not to the podcast.

Speaker 1 JJ, you know, online and sort of in his communications comes off like a little shy or more introverted, I suppose. And then he's got that BDE.

Speaker 1 And then we're like, right, we're like, hey, so JJ, like, hi, nice to meet you finally from IRL. So the show's tomorrow.

Speaker 1 And like, just, you're cool with us like bringing you on stage and like doing bits with you. I'm imagining your mouths, like, agape, like, wide open.

Speaker 1 We were, we were worried

Speaker 1 that we were going to be just like, hey, doing something cruel by even asking him to appear. Are you actually

Speaker 1 going to be a nervous wreck? And JJ's like, yeah, I mean, it's fine. I'll do that.
I've lectured in front of people at college, and I'm like,

Speaker 1 oh, yeah, sure. I mean, I guess it's sort of like that.
And then, like, he walks on stage fucking Arsenio Wolf. He walks on stage.
Everyone's going ballistic. He does everything perfectly.

Speaker 1 And then, where I'm like, I'm like, this guy doesn't want to get off the stage. And not like he needs like the, he's drinking it.

Speaker 1 And he's just kind of like, yeah, I'm chill up here as long as you need me. We called Sandman to give him the cane and tap dance him off the stage.
And Sandman was like, no, I like this guy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Sandman tried to get me off. I'm like, wait, what's going on?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 then like he walks off stage. And afterwards, he's like, that was fun.
And then he's like tweeting, like, you know, what a great moment in my life. And I'm like, in a chillest IRL.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 JJ is the chillest per se. Texting with with him is not a chill experience.

Speaker 1 And I was just like, oh my gosh. Me in an airplane with a sweating meme.
Right. He's going to be fucking like Luca Brazzi preparing to eat with Son Corleone, having dinner with him.

Speaker 1 And then I show up and it was the energy of like, and you are.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 yeah, I don't want JJ to have the same fate as Luca. But JJ, yeah, is the, is the chillest person.
Oh, my God. And he lived a good life, right? Yeah, I suppose.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 How old's Luca Brazzi do you think when he fucking gets absolutely murdered i can't tell ages yeah and i'll tell you look jj's not going to have the same fate as luca brazzi luca brazzi was murdered and jj is only fired oh i'm sorry i thought this was a mob it is in a way it's true kind of i mean it's kind of like hill caesar it's like right does it take organized crime in a form a legalized organized crime rank context clues context clues according to google says it's reasonable to estimate he was in his early 50s okay

Speaker 1 okay so i was pretty sure he He had those city miles on him. Yeah, I mean, it feels like Luca Brazzi's had, like, exactly, like, kind of a crazy life.
Like, yeah. Yeah.
He's done some stuff.

Speaker 1 Have you seen things like the Cheers meme, though? If you had told me Luca Brazi was like 26. Right.
Who is it in Cheers? It's like Norm is like, right, Norm's five.

Speaker 1 At the start of Cheers. And graduated.

Speaker 1 Everyone's like 28 years old. Everyone other than Nicolas Conasanto was under 37.
Right. And even Coach is only 42.
Yeah. Right.
He's like, I'm old. I mean, it's kind of that vibe back then, right?

Speaker 1 I think he was like 52. He wasn't even that old.

Speaker 1 Ratzenberger was the oldest looking man who has ever lived. And you're like, they plucked him out of high school.
This is blank check with Griffin and Taylor. I'm Griffin.
I did.

Speaker 1 This is a really good intro. Colossant who died at the age of 61.
Okay. It's like such a bummer.
Yeah. He was just in his 50s on cheers.
Yeah. And he was already in bad state.

Speaker 1 They offered him the party. Didn't want to do it because he said, like, I'm too old.
My mind is going. I don't think I have the strength for it.
And they were like, you're 57. And he was right.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's incredible in that show. Wow, what a note to start on.
This is like a perfect intro to scare off any new listeners. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 Who's jumping on with straight into deep lore, our own internal fucking lore? But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 I'll build to this point. It's a blank check with Griffin and David.
I'm Griffin. David.

Speaker 1 It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

Speaker 1 And sometimes those checks clear. Sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they bounce, baby.
I was trying to think of a serves the picture thing, but I couldn't do it.

Speaker 1 It's a mini-series on the films of the Cohen brothers, Joel Ethan Cohen. That's right.
It is called Pod Country for Old Cass. Probably.
We assume. We assume.
We actually can't remember.

Speaker 1 There's no way to double check at this point. And people are just going to have to listen to four months of us second-guessing ourselves every time we say it.

Speaker 1 But this, today we're talking about Hail Caesar. Yes.
Which it's funny to think

Speaker 1 sort of feels like their last film together.

Speaker 1 Because of the weird nature of Scruggs and Scruggs being like, was this meant to be a TV show? Was this designed to short films? It was released as a film, but that was like a very last-second switch.

Speaker 1 And this does sort of feel like a retirement film in an odd way, even though it certainly didn't seem like it at the time.

Speaker 1 No, but I know what you mean in terms of like it's a sort of farewell to movies or whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The way Ethan and Joel has talked about Ethan's burnout and just being like, I need to take a breather. Right.

Speaker 1 This feels like a movie of guys who have just been like working nonstop and are sort of like, why do we care about movies? Why do we care about art? Is there any worth in what we do? Yes. Yeah.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And it like comes to a place of like.

Speaker 1 confidence, but also a place where it feels like, maybe I'm ready to step away. Right.
Is that my final statement? Ethan's like, yeah. What motivates me now? Lesbians.
Yes. Dildos.
So many lesbians.

Speaker 1 Just the more, the better. Yeah.
How many lesbians are in this movie? Like two. He's like,

Speaker 1 not enough. All right, we've added eight more.
Okay, okay, I'll direct it right now. Can I become the bizarro DJ Khaled of cinema?

Speaker 1 Hail Caesar. A great film.
A masterpiece.

Speaker 1 Yes, a wonderful film. I have a very distinct memory of you and I, we were at Ray's Pizza getting ready to go to the final showing ever at the Ziegfeld Theater.
We certainly did go to that.

Speaker 1 Force Awakens playing in its second month in January before it closed. And we went to that.
We were getting pizza beforehand. You told me you saw Hail Caesar earlier that day.

Speaker 1 You said it's really great. And I said, that's awesome.
I love when the Cohen brothers do their kind of just like fun romp things.

Speaker 1 And you looked at me very seriously and went, no, this is like a masterpiece.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. I mean, right, it was released in what, February? Right.
So it's like, I feel like everyone was kind of like, okay, so this is just a convection, you know?

Speaker 1 It's also sold in a very similar fashion to Burn After Reading of like, we've got a bunch of big stars doing silly stuff.

Speaker 1 And that movie, as I like to remind people, did bizarrely well, is completely forgotten. It felt like they were doing the exact same marketing tactic.

Speaker 1 And I was like, I'm on board for another one of those. And you were like, this is profound.
This movie is profound. It's about everything.
I saw it.

Speaker 1 I was not befuddled by it, but I was like, yeah, it's fun. I don't know if I quite see what David's seeing.

Speaker 1 I think you more had the reaction most people had to it of like fun fun yeah and some great stuff in it and then it was one of those movies that like two weeks later i was like i gotta go see that again yeah and i'm like hmm watch i think i saw it three times in theaters i saw it at least two if not three i've watched it at least five times since then uh it did it's a movie that rocks and rolls and speaking of rock and rolling our guest today you might know her best as should we hold off on this now listen friend and co-worker what if you never do it we've done that bit and it's fine, but I feel like it's sort of like, you know, it also works better when we do it to Hoffman because he gets more irritated by it.

Speaker 1 Oh, he wants to be introduced then. Yeah, and we've held off, and now he starts introducing himself

Speaker 1 from the Atlantic. Shirley Lee.
Far too long,

Speaker 1 one of the most requested. Why has it been so long since Shirley was on the show? And the reason why is people go, all-around great guest.

Speaker 1 Great personality, great jokes, great laugh. But more than anything, she unlocks David.

Speaker 1 David is in rare form whenever Shirley is on the left.

Speaker 1 Oh, Shirley Dog is off the lead. I feel like I.
You've only been on two episodes. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 I'm nervous being here. I feel the last episode here.
I don't know. It caused a ruckus.
Ponya? That's people want the ruckus. What was the ruckus?

Speaker 1 I remember that's a famous episode that got fucked up in the audioboom days. That's the ruckus.
Wait, what episode? Ponyo.

Speaker 1 I mean, I mean, it was mostly fun, but it was one of those episodes where chunks of it got messy. Oh, I don't remember that.
It's like Mad Max, Ponyo, Public Enemies are the big three, I remember.

Speaker 1 Yes. Where like after the fact, you were like, the system overloaded.
Jeez, Ben. You turn 40 and you forget.
Well, I think there's a reason why I've blocked them for you.

Speaker 1 And I think it's because it became an actual nightmare. Right.
That year, which is like sort of the last year at Audioboom Studios.

Speaker 1 It started to really be a problem. Right.
Because then we had our Mad Max episode that got all fucked up. That's what I'm saying.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then this

Speaker 1 was not my fault. Yeah.
2020. I wasn't accusing you.
You were pointing at me this entire time.

Speaker 1 Your honor, he's fine.

Speaker 1 2020? 2020. Something went on then.
And that was awesome. Called the Wild came out.

Speaker 1 David just saluted. Never saw that one.

Speaker 1 Never, never checked. I know Ben saw it.
I know he was. I remember us ruefully in the pandemic being like, can you believe we didn't

Speaker 1 get the opportunity

Speaker 1 to go see Call of the Wild? In a theater.

Speaker 1 We're here in our fucking bedrooms locked up in June 2020, and we could have been seen called a while in a sad bucket of popcorn surrounded by rowdy strangers. So this is your Eddington.

Speaker 1 So Shirley, you were on our Sense and Sensibility episode, of course, in which Ben was baffled by the concept of a deathbed, which I've never forgotten. What happened to that guy?

Speaker 1 You see him dying at the beginning of the movie and they never follow up. One of the greatest Ben questions of all time, asked in earnest.

Speaker 1 And I think you even said that guy's on his deathbed and then they never tell you what happened to him. Did he make it? Well, you said that in the first like two minutes, I think.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I needed to get clarity. Right.
It was, it's important. And it was framed as, I was so confused by this movie.
And we're like, list the things that confused you. And that was top of the list.

Speaker 1 You're on a Panyo episode, a movie that back then I had seen many times. Now I have seen such a staggering amount of times that I know like every single

Speaker 1 as much as you've brushed your teeth. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wait. And then we cannot forget Shirley.
His hygiene is not great.

Speaker 1 oh boy you cannot forget shirley that you did appear on our wendell and wild episode to recount oh yes a terrifying evening when i saw you as like as like one of the infected from 28 days later

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 he was infected with the way

Speaker 1 i was like i was like you're so pale like i was like hammering like a panel he was on all fours eating worms out of the ground

Speaker 1 and then we just went to some random room like in like like the middle of the building. We went to, they had like lounges upstairs and lounges downstairs.

Speaker 1 And we just like sat there looking at each other in our pajamas. Just like,

Speaker 1 what time is it?

Speaker 1 I tried to sleep and you just kind of continued to go. And she's like stared into space.
My daughter

Speaker 1 was at 3 a.m. a couple of days ago.
Nice work if you can get it. Seriously.
And I go up there and I'm like, what is it?

Speaker 1 You know, it's going on, you know, because you're like, okay, you had a bad dream.

Speaker 1 And she was just like, it's dark outside. And I was like, it's the middle of the night.

Speaker 1 That's what happens. How funny would it be if your daughter, you find her awake at three o'clock in the morning and she's just tapping a security panel to your eye?

Speaker 1 And we're like, fuck, she really isn't excited.

Speaker 1 I want to be clear. It was the tapping of the security panel while also trying to message the Airbnb hosts.
While also, I don't know how you did this. Both hands rubbing against each other in fright.

Speaker 1 Yes. But it was.

Speaker 1 The fire alarm was going off in the building. Yes.
Which was not our doing.

Speaker 1 I compounded it by activating activating like a security alarm on top of the fire alarm i mean it's funny thinking back right it's funny not for not for all it's funny it's funny it's funny i just remember that i couldn't see and this is a true tragedy darren aronofsky's the whale

Speaker 1 at tiff because i was so tired yeah because of that so i had to see it later

Speaker 1 uh and but i did get to see it though so don't worry while yeah while you were at tiff though the only thing you knew about it was that one image that one

Speaker 1 David, for the listener, is doing a perfect impression of the picture. And now can I?

Speaker 1 Can I make requests? Yeah. Can you do Leo at the Flowers Moon? Right, right.

Speaker 1 Isn't he looking up? Oh, is he looking up? I never

Speaker 1 felt it. Let's retake that.
Aren't the hands more forward on the table?

Speaker 1 You're correct. You're referring to, again, this is somewhat deep lore for our listeners, might not know.
One publicity still.

Speaker 1 Two movies that had, for what felt like a year, only one publicity still. Now, the Killers of the Flower Moon one was fine.
It was Leo and Lily Gladstone sitting at a table.

Speaker 1 It was a little boring, but there was nothing that odd about it. The whale one, of course, was just,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 Brendan Fraser in this makeup going like,

Speaker 1 and you're just, and like, it's called the whale. And at a certain point, you're like,

Speaker 1 this is starting to feel insulting.

Speaker 1 It was just, it was just that one image. And then they revealed the poster and the poster was that image with text over it.

Speaker 1 That was the funniest heightened to just be like, and the poster is once again, just the look. Just the look.
The look.

Speaker 1 Okay, so let's get the flowers of the killer moon face one more time. Also, it's called Killers of the Flower Moon, but I'll actually change it to Flowers of the Killer Moon.

Speaker 1 Did you say cut on your face?

Speaker 1 That's the horror version.

Speaker 1 That's the live die repeat. And then, of course, there's my favorite movie, Flowers of the Lazy Old Moon.
Oh. Lazy Old Moon.
Here's a conversation I want to pin that we're going to have.

Speaker 1 Which of these fake movies

Speaker 1 the best? Okay. What would you most want to watch? All right, so let's talk about.
I said pin for later, but I guess we're doing.

Speaker 1 David's trying to skirt the impression. Oh, what's the impression I have to do?

Speaker 1 Oh, let me get the image. Okay.

Speaker 1 I want to really study it. You know, I want to bring in my sense of memory.
Okay, yeah,

Speaker 1 it's this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, the hands are under the table. They're under the table.
And then I'll do, I'm going to do Lily Gladstone now. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 Good. Right.
And she's kind of bumped. She's got that shawl all over.
David is kind of

Speaker 1 cradled himself. He looks cold and he looks sweaty.
The thing is, and then I I saw that movie really early because of can. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it was the Leo pointing at the screen meme when they're sitting at the fucking table. You're like, yes, yes, here they are.

Speaker 1 Our buddy Siddhant, past and future guest,

Speaker 1 wrote a really good piece about how interesting that shot is in the context of the movie. I mean, that scene in the movie is so good.
Right. And it's so different than what as a...
like fucking

Speaker 1 online pilled movie obsessive you would imagine the scene was after 18 months of seeing it. The scene in the whale too, where he goes like this

Speaker 1 was also so good. Wait, again, again, again, 80% of the movie.
The look. Again, again.

Speaker 1 One more.

Speaker 1 You know what movie blows goats? The whale. The whale.
The whale is one of those movies that like my children will come to me decades from now being like, is this fake fitness?

Speaker 1 This one awards? Like people melted gold and put them in casts. It is an anecdote I've repeated so many times, but my younger sister, Romley, who was born in 1998,

Speaker 1 watched American Beauty for the first time like five years ago in the pandemic and was like, can you explain to me how this happened?

Speaker 1 Was like, I'm just actually befuddled. Explain to me what I was too young to understand.

Speaker 1 This came out and was a box office sensation and swept the Oscars in one of the most iconic years of all time in American cinema. She's like, what do you mean? American Beauty, it's got a great pitch.

Speaker 1 So there's this pedophile.

Speaker 1 And what are you talking about, Griffin?

Speaker 1 I mean, like, all she needs to do is just watch a plastic bag yes drifting in the wind yes it is so funny they're like what's the a plot it's like he wants to a high school like

Speaker 1 jesus okay what's the b plot these teens get really into a plastic bag like are you kidding me this is the b plot like this guy wants to his daughter's friend i don't know so that's the conflict no he gets what he wants

Speaker 1 that's the goal

Speaker 1 he's miserable that he has a career in a nice house I have no notes. I don't know what you're laughing about.

Speaker 1 He gets shot at the end and the audience cheers. No, they cry.
You know, they're sad about it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. We want the death of a hero.

Speaker 1 Wilson Berman said what we were all afraid to say.

Speaker 1 Best picture, best picture.

Speaker 1 It's also so weird.

Speaker 1 People were yelling.

Speaker 1 Best picture, best picture. But he like jacks off to fucking roses.
What a weird guy. That's so weird.
What a weird movie. Doesn't he say, does he say? That has so much masturbation in it.

Speaker 1 Does he say bashing the bishop or choking something? like that? He has the whole bit where he says, like, five.

Speaker 1 When that Benning walks in on him in the shower, I was doing this, doing that. You know, I bet I can't remember what they were.
But yeah, saying hi to my father. Spanking the monkey.

Speaker 1 It's sort of like an Austin Powers moment. Yeah, it is.
Right? Where he's like, oh,

Speaker 1 and of course, he would later become Dr. Evil in many ways.

Speaker 1 Hail Caesar.

Speaker 1 Yes, I have. I feel like we're bumming people out.
We keep going down. Lazy old moon.
Okay, yes, let's get back to this. When I'm on the lazy old moon sequence i am like

Speaker 1 it would be really fun to watch this whole movie it's it's hardest to imagine the scenes around it where i'm like this could go anywhere uh i don't what do you think happens

Speaker 1 i don't know because it feels like he lassoes the moon i hope so i hope he lassoes the moon oh my god I hope he lassoes that damn moon.

Speaker 1 So I opened the, you know, the dossier, which we can start looking at for Halo Season written by J.J. Bursch.

Speaker 1 And then I got a chat notification within the dossier from JJ Bursch saying, how are you like?

Speaker 1 Tell him he's fired. Tell him that Shirley has fired him.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Hey, Jage, miss you, Jage.

Speaker 1 What's the name of the No Dames movie?

Speaker 1 Do they do they're the homo eroticism?

Speaker 1 Because we have Hail Caesar, the tale of the Christ.

Speaker 1 We have

Speaker 1 right.

Speaker 1 I guess the main ones are Lazy Old Moon, The No Dames film, the new Lawrence Lawrence film that Hobie's doing. I'm trying to find the names of all of the

Speaker 1 aquatic. Merrily We Dance.
Esther Williams one. I think Merrily We Dance is the Tatum.
Yeah. Yeah.
I would assume. Right, which is that sort of an anchors away or on the town type movie.

Speaker 1 Obviously, Hail Caesar is sort of like a Ben-Hur movie. To me, that is the most transcendent sequence in the movie, which is

Speaker 1 No Dames.

Speaker 1 Every time I watch that, it is like Nirvana for me when we will talk about it. And that it smells like Teen Spirit.

Speaker 1 But I do, I am most interested in the idea of watching 90 Minutes of Lazy Old Moon, whereas watching the No Dame sequence, I'm like, that's a full meal. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I think it is that I want to know how the relationships evolve in Lazy Old Moon. And what

Speaker 1 I like the old guy, too. Yeah, a portly restaurateur.
Yeah. it's always good.
Like, here's, okay, going off of what you're saying, Shirley, I could imagine the plot of that movie being

Speaker 1 a crazy old guy. Lazy old moon, crazy old guy.
Right. Tell Hobie

Speaker 1 if this dang moon keeps eluding me. Don't you have a good lasso?

Speaker 1 You have to bring the moon back to me. And Hobie's character has to figure out how to satisfy his demand, right? And then in the process, like fucking romances his daughter or whatever.

Speaker 1 Okay, the movies are Hail Caesar, a Tale of the Christ, which has obviously been her Covadus, those kinds of movies.

Speaker 1 Lazy Ole Moon, a classical, what variety used to call an O-Tuner, I think, which is like basically like a

Speaker 1 cowboy film with music, exactly.

Speaker 1 Sort of a Roy Rogers-type movie. Jonah's Daughter is the name of the mermaid, Busby Berkeley type movie.

Speaker 1 The whale.

Speaker 1 Can someone say the whale?

Speaker 1 Do the look. I think there's literally a movie called Million Dollar Mermaid that's one of those Busby Berkeley.
Yeah, yeah yeah

Speaker 1 uh obviously on the town anchors away is sort of uh being done as um that that movie doesn't have a title so no dames i think is the best we'll make that the function merrily we dance is the kind of lubitchy you know uh society comedy right um

Speaker 1 it's complicated

Speaker 1 pretty funny there there

Speaker 1 That moment is another moment in this film that almost tears me up. Oh, like the final hammer of that joke dropping an hour later, basically.

Speaker 1 Or 45 minutes later. It's funny, and I love how they, yes,

Speaker 1 the patience and also the sort of circuitous way they resolve that storyline. But also, I'm like, I actually find it kind of emotionally profound.

Speaker 1 Like, I think that is not to get ahead of things, but like, especially that scene is Frances McDormand, right?

Speaker 1 Wife of one Cohen brother, playing an editor, the position that the other Cohen wife occupies, right? These two ultimate wife guys who love making movies with their wives, right, and love movies.

Speaker 1 And you have this scene where, like, she is playing an editor, showing this footage, and in it, I think they are quietly capturing the magic of, like, you have seen this fucking disastrous day of shooting where you're like, how is anything good going to come out of this, right?

Speaker 1 And they can't get this fucking line out. And even before the hammer blow of, oh, they cracked it.
They figured out what his movie star persona is. You need to adjust it around him.

Speaker 1 But if you change the line, he'll nail that delivery so fucking hard and it will convey something greater than what was the original plan.

Speaker 1 The sort of like living text of like, what they say that like movies get written three times, right? They're written on paper, they're written on the shoot, and they're written in the edit.

Speaker 1 And that's like a thing that I think the Cohens like love that feels like magical about movies.

Speaker 1 But also in the assembly, she's showing him before you get to that line, you see two shots of him closing the door

Speaker 1 and him walking from the door to the couch that when you see them play out earlier in the movie, you're like, this is horrendous. His walk is so awkward.
He's doing this cowboy walk.

Speaker 1 He's like clearly self-conscious about how big the door was and he looks behind him. And in that moment, it's like, these are laughing films of like, this guy can't pull this off.

Speaker 1 And in the way that they edit it, it suddenly has a new context where him looking back at the door behind him is because they placed the insert shot of the briefcase in the hallway before it.

Speaker 1 And his awkward walk, when framed from like shoulders up, feels like nervousness rather than this guy doesn't know how to walk.

Speaker 1 And like that magic of it, and he doesn't like fucking, Brolin doesn't overplay it. He doesn't have some tears in his eyes moment.
He doesn't go, that's the magic of the movies.

Speaker 1 But I do see on his face, he's like, yeah, these things,

Speaker 1 you give them time and they work out.

Speaker 1 I was right, you know?

Speaker 1 It's true. And then she nearly chokes to death.

Speaker 1 Well, no, it happens right before. That's the thing.

Speaker 1 He saves her from death and then he sees

Speaker 1 it's complicated.

Speaker 1 It's a miracle.

Speaker 1 Well, so much of the magic that is worked in this movie is sort of serendipitous. It's not Eddie.
Yeah. Eddie is often kind of like, oh, that figured itself out.

Speaker 1 You know, sort of burn after reading adjacent in a way. That fucking moment at the table too with Allison Pill, where he's like, wow, that problem solved itself.
Right, right, exactly.

Speaker 1 No, I find that moment very moving. And it ties the whole film together for me, right? It's like, it's like at home, at work.

Speaker 1 He has all these things that he needs to take care of, or he thinks he needs to take care of.

Speaker 1 But it's kind of like the magic of the movies that you're talking about also kind of bleeds into just the magic of working in the movies. Yes.
And it all

Speaker 1 works itself out. It does.
But does it without someone caring about it? That's surely that's the X factor, right?

Speaker 1 Like the moral conflict at the center of this movie, at least within the Eddie Mannix character and his arc, right? Is the like, is this job killing me? Am I like a babysitting

Speaker 1 lunatic children all day and like putting out insane fires for something that feels frivolous, right?

Speaker 1 Uh, at a time where like Hollywood is mostly into like distraction entertainment, escapist entertainment, light fair, because people need to like forget their troubles, you know?

Speaker 1 Got you guys this character post. David, pin in that.
We're going going to talk about that for, I do not exaggerate, 45 minutes. Pin in that.

Speaker 1 That's also the magic of the movies.

Speaker 1 David's doing the whale again. It really doesn't work for a bunch.
I know, but it's so funny when he does it. And by the way, guys, we're not going to video.
So

Speaker 1 it wouldn't be as funny on video. It wouldn't.
I agree.

Speaker 1 It's the theater of the mind.

Speaker 1 Eddie Manns is a real guy. Constantly, but also.
Semi-fictionalized version of a real guy.

Speaker 1 This movie movie is not attempting to represent the real Eddie Max at all, but they're using the name of a guy who was this type of guy, who's played by Bob Hoskins in Hollywood Land. That's right.

Speaker 1 Hollywoodland.

Speaker 1 I once had a, well, okay, I had a birthday party at a Lowe's theater and we watched Hollywood Land. And I, well, there was nothing coming out that weekend.
And how was it? When was it?

Speaker 1 Five or six or something? Like, when was that? My memory

Speaker 1 was very young. Yes.
We're not very young.

Speaker 1 But my memory is that all Lowe's theaters in New York

Speaker 1 became AMCs. Yes, they did.
Around that time. This one did.
This was in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Speaker 1 And I turned to look at my friends. Yeah.
And four of them had fallen asleep. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Four out of four.

Speaker 1 You're four. How dare you? Wait, so 2006, Shirley, I'm going to.
I'm going to say you were what, 17? How old?

Speaker 1 18?

Speaker 1 15. 15? Jesus, you're such a young person.
Although it's not like now, and Shirley's having to deal with this now at the Atlantic. Uh-oh.
Where I have people, and I'm like, and they're grown people.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Fully grown.

Speaker 1 This is the worst. And then I'm like, wait, when were you born? And they're like, you know,

Speaker 1 well, I'm this, or they say their age. And I'm like, were you born after 9-11? And they're like, no, no, no.
I was born two months before 9-11. And I'm like,

Speaker 1 the, the, I remember the first time.

Speaker 1 I remember the first time I had a conversation with a child who had been born after 9-11. And I had the thought of, oh, it's crazy that children born after 9-11 can now string together sentences.

Speaker 1 You should, my sister. And now they're talking to an eight-year-old.
And I was like, it's crazy that someone born after 9-11 could be old enough to walk on their own two feet without support.

Speaker 1 And now, yes, they're taking over our workforce.

Speaker 1 They have their own jobs. They have their own opinions.
I'm sorry. We're the last generation allowed to have opinions, right? Yes.
It's disgusting. They They should, right? Exactly.

Speaker 1 They should be silent. They should engage in the marketplace of ideas.

Speaker 1 Exit.

Speaker 1 They have a role. I cannot believe you saw.
Wait, so you said 15? Uh-huh. You saw Hollywood Land when you're in the middle of the day.
There was nothing else. I'm

Speaker 1 this is why Shirley is with us. I'm telling you why Shirley is on our show.
I'm telling you. This is some real blanket-coated TV birthday.
Hollywood

Speaker 1 high school Hollywoodland birthday. I was like, we're going to go see Hollywood land.
Do you like it when Adrian Brody's tired? Yes. Oh, he's so tired in that movie.

Speaker 1 Because it's like that, the jacket,

Speaker 1 Cadillac Records, Brothers Bloom, like this run of like, well, he's still an Oscar winner where he has to play a tired guy. But don't you love Ben Affleck trying to be Superman, trying to do like...

Speaker 1 I have never seen Hollywood Land.

Speaker 1 Is it any good? I remember. I remember Affleck was the one people talked about.
I remember not liking Affleck's performance in it. Cool.

Speaker 1 Liking everyone else in it, thinking the movie was overall kind of a snooze. Not bad, but you were one of my friends who fell asleep.
A little bit of a pleasure.

Speaker 1 I might have taken a quick nap in the middle middle of that. No, sure.

Speaker 1 Your birthday is early September. I know this because we often celebrate your birthday at TIFF.
Yes, we do. So I'm looking at movies you could have seen then.

Speaker 1 Just doing a little sort of micro box off of school. Oh, no.
You could have gone to see The Covenant. You think I want to see the Covenant? Come on.

Speaker 1 Are they not like hot boys doing magic or something? Yeah, Steven Straight. Sure.
Well, are you saying that Ben Affleck's not a hot boy? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Sebastian Stan, you could have gotten on this stage.

Speaker 1 I wasn't on the Covenant. No, I know.

Speaker 1 I missed that train. That was one of the poutiest movies of 2006.

Speaker 1 But that's when the Sebastian Stan train was like a guy operating a hidden, right? It's like, so now the Sebastian Stanley's push cart man from a brothers. Exactly.

Speaker 1 He's like a sleek bullet train that everyone's like, get me on that train.

Speaker 1 I mean, Fantasy put it so well beyond just like him having these two movies last year that were such good showcases for actual acting. Right.

Speaker 1 He was like, Sebastian Stan shows up in Thunderbolts and you're like, is this guy James Dean now? This is the 15th time he's played Bucky.

Speaker 1 And suddenly I'm like, Griffith, this dude is fucking liquid gold. Exactly how I felt watching Thunderball.
And he's in the first chunk where he's playing sad Congressman Bucky.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, that is kind of funny, but like, whatever. And then

Speaker 1 he rides in on a motorcycle looking like the Terminator. He finally has his own theme.
Yeah. His only theme before that in all his movies is just like a scream because he's the Winter Soldier, right?

Speaker 1 Did Sebastian Stan become

Speaker 1 a really nice burn on that mic. Did Sebastian Stan become like, I'm excited.
He's the CEO of Minute Maid because this guy has all the fucking juice. He really wanted to get that out.

Speaker 1 I just could not believe that like my blood pressure was going up at the sight of Sebastian Stan. Yes.
After years of me being like, yeah, C plus, B minus on that guy.

Speaker 1 You missed the train. I got on the train with Gossip Girl.

Speaker 1 But then did you ever get off the train?

Speaker 1 Did I? No, I didn't get off the train. I never got off the train.
I was on the train during Once Upon a Time. I'm so sorry.

Speaker 1 I was talking to a past and future guest, John Gapers, friend of the show, who I believe has a February birthday or January birthday.

Speaker 1 I'm a February birthday, but September is similar where in our childhoods, it was like, you are guaranteed. Slim Pickens.

Speaker 1 If you are a movie kid and your default is, can we do a movie birthday, you're going to go see some bullshit.

Speaker 1 And there was one year, I'm sure I've said this on the show, but despite being a February kid, in 2002, I was like, I'm going to make my birthday Spider-Man. And people are like, that's me.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, yeah, I'm just going to. Right.

Speaker 1 You're like the Queen of England. We're like 20 birthdays now.
Right. Yeah.
I'm just saving my birthday party until Spider-Man comes up.

Speaker 1 You could have seen the third weekend of the inspirational football drama Invincible.

Speaker 1 Not a bad movie. Saw it on a plane.
Oh, no. I'm so sad.
I missed Invincible. Directed by Erickson Core?

Speaker 1 Yeah. You never forget a name like Erickson Corps.
You never do. He sounds like a sort of thing you have to buy for your car.
Yes. You're going to need an Erickson Core.
Your battery is low.

Speaker 1 You know, it's burning out.

Speaker 1 I mean, you're not going to find a film that I'm going to be like, yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, wait, I saw Crank. So you'd already seen it.
You had already seen the week before. I had seen Crank with The Illusionist.

Speaker 1 I had seen The Illusionist.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 I had seen all other options.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I thought I was getting on a horse that would run far.
I don't know why. There was a lot of money.
It was the mild, quiet, kind of like,

Speaker 1 my friends will thank me when Affleck is accepting an Academy Award seven months from now. They will be so upset that they're missing 15 minutes of this.
No, because it's 2006.

Speaker 1 It's that he makes Gombaby gone the next year and everyone's kind of like okay affleck back yes but i'm saying

Speaker 1 it was in the summer oh was maybe he'll see surely his logic was

Speaker 1 my friends will judge me now but when he wins the oscar for best supporting actor they'll be like surely they're gonna be like she knows her

Speaker 1 shit so i'm gonna open the dossier instead i had to apologize to them

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think all of us in this room, Ben, probably not, but the rest of us, have had that screening we dragged our friends to where afterwards, you had to actively be like, I'm, I'm, I'm sorry that I made you come to this.

Speaker 1 Yep. For me, it was Alexander.

Speaker 1 Like, I got a lot of people ready, you know, like, and they were ready to feed me to a mob after that. Like, they like throwing me to the line.

Speaker 1 I had already seen Hulk and I told all my middle school friends, you don't understand movie of the summer. I'm going again.
We all got to go. Right.

Speaker 1 And I truly, I cannot believe I made it out of that night alive.

Speaker 1 They were all, they were all just as angry. Was the titular guest? What the fuck are you talking about? Was the energy

Speaker 2 Griffith David? Ben, Ben, Bone Sound Inc. Worldwide, in partnership with Plank Check Podcast.
I've heard with both of those companies. I've heard of both of those companies.

Speaker 2 Are proud to present

Speaker 2 Ben Hosley's Slow Xmas V?

Speaker 2 Sorry, Slow Xmas has returned. That's right.

Speaker 2 They slow now.

Speaker 2 For listeners out out there living in a friggin' hole, oh boy. I've no shade.
SX?

Speaker 2 Slow X-Mas is an annual compilation album of alternative and off-beat Christmas music. But it gotta be slow.

Speaker 2 Now this is not SSX. No.
The snowboarding. No, sometimes it's tricky.
This is just SX.

Speaker 2 It could be tricky.

Speaker 1 It could be tricky.

Speaker 2 Ben, you did in this copy that you've provided us. Written copy.

Speaker 2 Written copy use SX as shorthand so you're trying to sort of coin an acronym here this is the first time you've done that i'm testing it out can we call this sxv

Speaker 2 yes okay and now am i wrong is this the fifth time you've done this or is it the sixth because wasn't there like an episode zero or something i started with slow xmas zero okay right okay the second natural way to start it's a gozilla microphone whenever i'm counting up i'm like zero kind of situation one right this the second year's installment was slow xmas volume one griff can i read the next line of the copy please This year, Slow Xmas 5 is being served cold.

Speaker 2 Brr. Bundle up and sip away them holiday season blues with wintry ethereal tunes.
David Ben, our listeners that be going, yeah, I know, it's that time of the year. Slow Xmas, what am I going to do?

Speaker 2 Go online and download it? Is that my only release option? No, because now in its sixth year, it is available on vinyl for the very first time. For the very first time, the slowest vinyl imaginable.

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Speaker 2 Slow Xmas 5.

Speaker 2 It was pressed apparently on 140 GM. What does that mean? It's the Grams!

Speaker 2 The Grams, that's the weight. And iced out into a translucent ice blue variant.
I like that.

Speaker 2 That's limited to 5,500 copies. Offered in 45 RPM, so you can play a regular slow or extra slow at 33 and a third.
Isn't that fun? That's really fun.

Speaker 1 That's really, really clever.

Speaker 2 Ben, can you tell us about the lineup this year?

Speaker 2 It's featuring holiday standards and rituals from the Meridian Brothers, Shannon Lay, Zach Cooper of Grammy Award winning, King Garvish, Eric Slick of Dr.

Speaker 2 Dog, Dave Hartley, friend of the show of the war on drugs with his solo project Nightlands, among others. Among others.

Speaker 2 And for the analog hogs, the analog hogshogs, the majority of the album artwork is practical with an original sculpture by Matthew Rosenquist.

Speaker 2 To get your mittens on this record, go to MadeByMuten.com.

Speaker 2 Also available is a special edition t-shirt featuring Slow Xmas 5 cover artwork. Plus, we have a five pack of holiday greeting cards featuring album artwork across the last five years.

Speaker 2 So you can send along some holiday cheer to friends and family using cards featuring past Slow Christmas album artwork. Isn't that fun? You can explain to them what it is in the card.

Speaker 2 That's a good icebreaker. Ice, cold, brrr.

Speaker 2 And for any worldwide blankies interested, international shipping is available but for the vinyl record only.

Speaker 2 Once again, all three products are available right now at madebymutant.com. All right, anyway, thanks, guys.
Burr.

Speaker 1 In 1998, I'm opening McCutt dossier. Ethan Cohen said, I'm going to finish my Annie Manck's point later.
I'm just pinning that off.

Speaker 1 I just want the listener to know I haven't forgotten.

Speaker 1 Told the

Speaker 1 Los Angeles Times that he and his brother had done some writing assignments before, adapting other people's scripts on an unattributed basis.

Speaker 1 The Cohens say, We don't really want to put our names on stuff like that because we're not really in control of it. Yeah.
And I feel like movie fans know that.

Speaker 1 That occasionally the Cohens have done a pass on a movie you liked that much. They didn't get any credit for PTA.
Right. Just like PTA.

Speaker 1 Where now there's more stuff he gets credit for, but I think there's a lot of shit where people are like, PTA, can you spend a weekend and just make this dialogue more interesting?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 In the

Speaker 1 late, early to mid-2010s, they start to get some credit for some of these. So you got Gambit, of course, which was eventually released, sort of.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You have the Angelina Jolie film Unbroken, which they have a credit on.

Speaker 1 Bridge of Spies, of course. Bridge of Spies, which supposedly they really just did the sort of chunk in the middle.
Yes. Where he's in Berlin.
Yeah. Right.

Speaker 1 Berlin, Jesus. Yes.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 Unbroken, they came aboard late after Jolie was attached to Angelina Jolie directed that movie.

Speaker 1 And she basically was like, I want you guys to come aboard.

Speaker 1 I want the film to have structure and wit and playfulness between the men, you know, which is very interesting that, like, I don't think that movie's very good, but that Jolie, who I think is a more talented filmmaker than some credit her for,

Speaker 1 had the sort of like knowledge of like, here's the problem, like, here's what needs strengthening in the movie. And weirdly, I think the Cohen brothers will work for it.

Speaker 1 I'm not hiring you to do the Cohen brothers thing. I'm recognizing that you are multi-skilled and you're good technicians, and I want you to just help crack this.

Speaker 1 Of course, Lady Killers and Talbot Cruelty both start out as assignment jobs for them that they weren't going to direct and then become.

Speaker 1 When we've talked about those movies already,

Speaker 1 Brad,

Speaker 1 and she mentions that she knew them partly because Brad Pitt had done burn after eating when she was with him when that happened. And she was in notes, and that marriage ended perfectly.

Speaker 1 And she was with Billy Bob Thornton.

Speaker 1 People forget she was with Billy Bob Thornton when he did Man Who Wasn't There.

Speaker 1 So she had experienced

Speaker 1 the table.

Speaker 1 I don't want to be crass, but I'm just quickly imagining a life in which you wake up every morning next to Angelina Jolie. Sure.
You go to set and film The Man Who Wasn't There. Right.

Speaker 1 You have to play Cuck of the Year. And then you rap production for the day, and you go home and you have sex with Angelina Bob.
No, you can't.

Speaker 1 I'm sure he could not. It would have broken his character into a billion pieces.

Speaker 1 I think Billy Bob's got the range. Yeah, he does.

Speaker 1 I think that's what makes Billy Bob Billy Bob is that he could do that. That he would rap for the day, take off his toupee,

Speaker 1 put his violet blood necklace back on. Now, around when they're

Speaker 1 no, picture it, picture it.

Speaker 1 Around the time that they're working in Hail Caesar, these are certain things that's why JJ, I think, is giving us this color. This is the kind of stuff they're working on around Hail Caesar.

Speaker 1 And this is a nice kind of swanson for Trey J as he's fired. Yeah, exactly.
Um, they claimed that they were working on a sort of sword and sandals movie.

Speaker 1 I always wondered if that was a joke or not, because obviously obviously this movie has

Speaker 1 a parody of a Sword and Sandals movie in it. Sure.
They also claimed they were working on a musical where the main character was going to be an opera singer.

Speaker 1 Never has been realized. Another thing that happened around this time is that Suburbicon, which is a script that they had written back in 1986, essentially.

Speaker 1 uh starts to spool up with george clooney in the director's chair and george clooney added a little twist to it poop

Speaker 1 as long as you had shoe

Speaker 1 a movie I still never seen. Have you never seen Suburbicon? It is insane.
Yeah. Because it is half a Cohen brothers script and half a George Clooney script.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the Cohen Brothers script is like, you're like, yeah, this is like a Cohen Brothers movie. It's like, you know, dumb, dumb gangsters.

Speaker 1 Then the other half is this like really somber tale about like integration and like it's so weird. It's such a weird movie.

Speaker 1 It is just funny that I feel like, right, this era of their names actually getting credited on these things they wrote kept having this juice of like, holy shit, the Cohen brothers wrote Unbroken.

Speaker 1 Is this going to win best picture? And then people saw it and they were like, oh, they clearly were like skilled hired hands on this. This does not have Cohen Brothers identity.

Speaker 1 They screwed some nuts on this movie. And then like Suburbicon and Gambit, people were like, oh, I guess these scripts only work if they direct them themselves.

Speaker 1 And like Bridge of Spies, which we love, as you said, it's like they were kind of pinch headers.

Speaker 1 Suburbicon, I remember being one of those when I was still at EW, I don't know if this is sharing trade secrets, maybe it is.

Speaker 1 But it's like when we would do the fall movie preview, summer movie preview, whatever, insert season here movie preview,

Speaker 1 some people would see some of the films in advance. And I remember this one, because of the pedigree, it had a little bit more room on the page.
And then as the dies down, Clooney.

Speaker 1 As the bus died down, it got smaller and smaller. And I remember it was a tiny little piece of that preview.

Speaker 1 It was one of those movies where you were looking at the fall preview and you were like, I don't know if this is going to win best picture, but I am guaranteed to have a good time.

Speaker 1 You're like, Clooney's directing a coin script with Julian Moore, Matt Damon, and Oscar Isaac. Right.
I will have a blast. And everyone came back and was just like, huh, weirdly anti-fun,

Speaker 1 but opposite of interesting.

Speaker 1 So back when George Clooney first works with the Cohen brothers in a little movie called, Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou, they sort of fall in love. They're like, this guy is so good at playing idiots.

Speaker 1 We love idiots. They naturally want to do that.
We have a movie star who unlocks financing immediately. Also true.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And they, at that point, apparently tossed off an idea to him that's kind of like, what if like a matinee film idol who's making like a a ben-hurr type movie gets kidnapped sure that was sort of the intent that was like the entirety of the pitch there was also at some point they were teasing because they do intolerable cruelty which once again like kind of comes together weirdly sideways and they plug clooney into it and they're like now that we've done two we need to complete our idiot trilogy and they kept saying the third movie in the idiot trilogy will be hail caesar right they had the title they did they always had that title people would push them on it they were like it's basically a one-sentence idea there's no script We haven't really cracked it, but we like the idea.

Speaker 1 And the other thing that would always get thrown out was like, he's in a traveling company doing a production of Julius Caesar.

Speaker 1 That is another idea that they definitely explained as like, maybe that's what Hale Caesar is. I feel like, like you said, they were sort of like Hale Caesar set in past.
acting involved.

Speaker 1 They wanted Clooney Stupid. Him playing

Speaker 1 tiny dumb star

Speaker 1 in some kind of period piece.

Speaker 1 Apparently another thing they pitched at that time was called Adolf Terry Hitler, an alternate universe comedy in which Hitler's parents emigrated to LA in the 1900s and their son grows up to be a Hollywood big shot and the eventual manager of a Hitler agency.

Speaker 1 There's shit like that where I wonder if they're trolling us or if on their cloud drive there is the greatest screen. Right, they like

Speaker 1 or they wrote 30 pages and they were like, what are we doing? And then those 30 pages are very funny, right? No, no, no, guys. I think they were just, you know, their brothers playing Mad Lips.

Speaker 1 Adolph Terryover. They start generating.
generating.

Speaker 1 And they would always tell George that his character would, quote, be a gas baggy fathead. And for some reason, that really appealed to him.
Ethan, gas baggy fathead is George's forte.

Speaker 1 So Hail Caesar would come up a lot, but of course.

Speaker 1 What they call the numbskull trilogy, you know, they end up making a tall of a cruelty and then they do burn after reading. And like, I guess Hail Caesar was never a thing.

Speaker 1 After, right, after Burn After Reading, George said, like, have I played my last idiot for you guys? You know, it's sort of like, you know, but it was always on IMDb Clooney notes this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That because I guess they talked about it enough, there was literally just kind of like, Hail Caesar, Joel Cohen, Ethan Cohen, George Clooney, no plot, no nothing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so finally, they sit down to write the thing

Speaker 1 because they're like, everyone's going to get too old anyway.

Speaker 1 And they describe it as about the movie business and life and religion and faith, faith in the movie business. And

Speaker 1 they eventually decided to make Eddie Mannix the main character. And George is like an important character, but he's like Josh Brolin is the lead of the movie.
Yes.

Speaker 1 It is funny how this film, with its all-star cast, just settled its billing order by alphabetical, and yet that alphabetical ends up being Clooney. Brolin.

Speaker 1 Right. Aaron Wright.
I mean, it's serendipity outside of the movie and in the movie, right? Totally. But it's like the three guys are in the right positions.

Speaker 1 And you're right. You're right.
I just always, it's Kismet.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 you know, the characters they create, Scarlett Johansson's playing kind of Master Williams. Alden Eark is like Tim Holt.
Channing Tatum is like gay or Gene Kelly.

Speaker 1 Clooney is kind of like a Robert

Speaker 1 communist Gene Kelly. Right.
Robert Tatum. It's the coolest movie star moves for Channing Tatum at this moment of so much heat to be like, I'm doing deep supporting for the Cohens.

Speaker 1 It is only three scenes, but one of those scenes is going to require months of choreography. And I'm playing a gay communist.
He's just like king shit.

Speaker 1 I want to explore stuff. I'm not like trying to preserve a like safe career.
I mean, the months of training, because he wasn't a tap dancer, right? Right.

Speaker 1 Like, and tap, like, so he, he does hip-hop dancing performance.

Speaker 1 But yeah, tap, I mean, stick it.

Speaker 1 No, yeah, step up. Step up.
Stick it as gymnastics.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah.
You don't, you don't stick it in dancing. Yeah.
You're right. Stick it in the fantasy paragraph.
And it's and we love five-star masterpiece.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah.
Yes. And we love gymnastics.
We do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right. So he, he spent months training in tap and tap is like,

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't,

Speaker 1 I'm not a dancer. I take like adult ballet classes.

Speaker 1 I'm in Hobby City over here. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And it's just kind of like tap is sort of impossible

Speaker 1 to get within a couple months, but look at this guy. He did it.
Here's the thing, right? Like tap is like the skill of tap is relatively invisible.

Speaker 1 We do not have to go down this tangent, but like tap is one of those,

Speaker 1 you know, forms where it's kind of like, you can't really tell what the skill is when you're watching tap dancing.

Speaker 1 You hear the rhythms and things like that, but it's just like, it just doesn't translate well as like a really skillful piece of, I don't know, like a form of dancing. But the magic trick is that it,

Speaker 1 especially, I think, how it's been historically used in American movies is that it is this kind of like quietly graceful, off-the-cuff, cuff, I'm doing nothing sort of like that's the gene characteristic around.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Right.
And it's like you have to put so much work into getting it perfect and then additional work into doing it without showing any effort. Right.

Speaker 1 And it's like even beyond him having to learn tap on top of like what we're obviously trained like dance muscles and the right brain for it and all of that, this sequence is so complicated

Speaker 1 and just lays out in fucking like elegant wide shots. And he sells it like every second of it.
Yeah. Right.

Speaker 1 And you're you're just like, that guy had to do a ton of fucking work for a really small part. Yeah, I'm like, this is Olympic level where I want to give Channing Tatum a medal.

Speaker 1 I want to give him so many medals.

Speaker 1 I believe every second of that choreography because yes, he trained until he got it right. But at the same time, it's like there's, there's joy and delight in his face.

Speaker 1 The whole, the whole performance comes together. And it's, and that is so hard to do.
But this is the second to last good movie he made. That, okay, so this is what I want to call out.

Speaker 1 So this was, he was at this point of like ascension, ascension, ascension, right? Save for like a Jupiter ascending or two. We love those.

Speaker 1 He was on a real, a fucking masterpiece, but he was on such a hot run, and it was like, this is the guy. Yes.
And then he makes this. Yes.

Speaker 1 In 2016. In 2017, he does Logan Lucky, which I think he's great in.
But weirdly flops. It doesn't do that well.
And then he kind of disappears for like six years. No.

Speaker 1 Kingsman the Golden Circle, which he's bad in, and that movie's bad.

Speaker 1 In 2018, no, he's bad. I think he's good in it.
I think that movie is so insane because they clearly wanted him and he was too busy.

Speaker 1 And so his character shows up, then is on ice, and then comes back at the end. His character is, his character's name is Tequila.
He just said he's on ice.

Speaker 1 I just want to put an asterisk.

Speaker 1 But the Pedro Pascal character is clearly supposed to be him as well. And instead, the movie does this like.
You've done this rant on this podcast before, which is fine.

Speaker 1 In 2018, of course, he is Migo. Uh, because Ande is Michi, correct in Smallfoot,

Speaker 1 and then, yes, after that, it's basically like Cameo and Free Guy is pretty much it until, of course, he returns with Dog, Dog, and the Lost City, right? Which is a big hit.

Speaker 1 Which is a hit and charming, yes, yeah. And it was like Politran, like got it back, Politran's accepting,

Speaker 1 uh, and then Magic Mike's Last Dance, which is which is charming, a movie I love, but really kind of belly-flopped and was not not well received.

Speaker 1 And then Fly Me to the Moon, which is unfortunately not good. I respect him for trying that, and he is woefully miscast.
He's quite miscast. And then he was like,

Speaker 1 He's Gampet. Wait, do that again?

Speaker 1 What does he say?

Speaker 1 What's the line? We're about to make a name for ourselves. Whatever his thing is, the thing he does.
He also, he blinked twice. Yeah, I don't think he's a bad person.
He really doesn't quite work.

Speaker 1 I think he's good enough. He's totally fine in it.
I really hated that movie.

Speaker 1 I love him so much, but it is interesting that this felt like, weirdly, him doing this movie felt like such a show of power that it's like, I'm so above it. I can do anything I want.

Speaker 1 I'm not worried about the game. And then he kind of like completely like loses it, disappears, like waxes and wanes.

Speaker 1 Lost City felt like, oh, he's back in the pocket doing the thing everyone loves from him. And it was such a hit after years of no comedies connecting that it was like, okay, so he's unstoppable again.

Speaker 1 And then once again, he's stoppable. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But this, I watched this movie and I'm like, this guy is like one of the best raw movie star talents we have. All right, but okay.

Speaker 1 Back to the dossier. Yes, Alden Aaron Reich famously discovered when Steven Spielberg saw him on a video made for a friend's Bar Mitzvah.
Correct. It was a comedy sketch that played at a Barmitzville.

Speaker 1 His initial big role is in Tetro, a normal movie directed by Francis For Coppola that's normal.

Speaker 1 Highly normal film.

Speaker 1 And then he's also in Twixt, another normal one from,

Speaker 1 I believe, a small part, although I haven't seen that one. He's also in Beautiful Creatures.

Speaker 1 Because that's him and Zoe Deutsch being beautiful creatures.

Speaker 1 Alice Engler. Yes, it's Jane Campion's daughter.

Speaker 1 Yes. Beautiful

Speaker 1 creatures. That was an attempt to find him.
He's like the lead of that. Twilight.
Right.

Speaker 1 He's the Edward Cullen in the, I think it's like Southern Gothic fucking witches or some shit. He has a smallish role in Stoker, being a naughty boy.
boy. Quite good.
He's good in that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's in Blue Jasmine.
I honestly do not remember him in that. He is.
I saw that one time. I want to say he's Kate Blanchett's son, or he's Alec Baldwin's son.
Right.

Speaker 1 He's got like two scenes he's very good at. And there was this film that the rules didn't apply to that he happens to see.
This is the big thing. Which comes out this same year.

Speaker 1 Because Spielberg identifies him and marches him into whatever big agency he marched him into and was like, I'm telling you, this is like the discovery of a century.

Speaker 1 Which, I mean, Spielberg are kind of not wrong based on what we've just been talking about. The actual ability of this guy, right? But there was this feeling of like, he's got it.

Speaker 1 And I think I knew him a little bit back in the day.

Speaker 1 And it was very interesting because you could feel the sort of pressure he had on him of everyone around him was like, you're the first DiCaprio we found in 20 years.

Speaker 1 We have to game this out really, really carefully.

Speaker 1 And so there were like big things that he would pass on or that they would tell him to pass on because they were like, is that the move young DiCaprio would do? Right.

Speaker 1 We should position you for a tour. But then the auteur movies are like Tetron Rules and Apply, which was this really coveted part.
Interesting movies, but then they don't totally work.

Speaker 1 And then they were like,

Speaker 1 I guess we need to make you a teen idol so you have the box office cachet to get the better a-tour movies, but then beautiful creatures is the one that doesn't work.

Speaker 1 He like tested for Spider-Man multiple times. He tested for Harry Osborne.
There was all this sort of like runner-up shit.

Speaker 1 And he had sort of gotten into this place where there had been like so much energy around him for a decade, but he hadn't actually done that much because everyone around him was so overly cautious about what's the right move and it's better to do less.

Speaker 1 They should have been lazy old moon. Well,

Speaker 1 that's the magic of this movie being like, oh, I'll do it all Cohen movie.

Speaker 1 And like, it's just suddenly this miracle, like fully arrived, perfectly packaged, incredible, an incredible showcase role to launch a new talent. But it's about a guy who does it all.
Nails it. So

Speaker 1 fucking hard. So charming.

Speaker 1 One of the best movie performances of the decade, in my opinion. I believe I nominated as such.
I love his spaghetti lasso. It's astonishing.

Speaker 1 And people were so fucking rude to him after solo and were like, why the fuck did they hire this guy? Yes, but not his fault.

Speaker 1 He was hired by different directors. I know what happened.
To make a different movie.

Speaker 1 It doesn't work, but there was this energy of like, why'd they pick this fucking rando? And I want to be like, watch how caesar you integrates. It was the wrong move for everyone involved.

Speaker 1 Did you like him in Fairplay?

Speaker 1 I never saw Fairplay. I didn't like that movie.
He was already

Speaker 1 in Cocaine Bear. I actually liked him a tremendous amount in Cocaine Bear, a movie that I think is quite poor.
Yeah. It's fairly rancid, and I think he's very good.
Did you like him in... I'm senior.

Speaker 1 What is the name of a senator here, like Oppenheimer?

Speaker 1 He's good in that. I do think he's good, and he unfortunately gets saddled with the line.
Can I ask a question? What is Cocaine Bear about? Oh, it's about

Speaker 1 Reaganism, run them off.

Speaker 1 Guys, no, it's about a whale. It's about a whale.
Do the look.

Speaker 1 It's going to hit every time.

Speaker 1 So, one note on Channing Tatum. He had auditioned for No Country for Old Men for the Josh Brolin part, which is hilarious.

Speaker 1 He's like, I was far too young, but I was so desperate to just literally get in front of the Cohen brothers then. I just wanted them to see me.

Speaker 1 You know what I like also in a meta way about

Speaker 1 the use of Tatum here? Yeah. Is that Tatum does feel like he's a bit of a hobie, right?

Speaker 1 This guy that was sort of discovered without the aspirations of being a movie star.

Speaker 1 And it was just like, well, just dance on camera. And then people were like, you're pretty good on camera.
Can we give you words? Yes.

Speaker 1 And it was like, well, you're not a great actor yet, but there's something here. And then he just like built and built and built and developed and unlocked all these skills.

Speaker 1 This film was shot in, huh, Los Angeles? Crazy. That never happens anymore.
They sometimes call it on Charlie's birthday.

Speaker 1 Obviously, they needed it. You know, they needed to use these

Speaker 1 studios and back lots and all that fun stuff. It was a universal release, although, of course, Capital Pictures made it, as far as

Speaker 1 they used the Warner Brothers lot, though, mostly and Union Station and things like that.

Speaker 1 Which was a real, I mean, it was made for a difficult shoot because Yako, Wacko, and Doc kept escaping from the water tower and interrupting production. Jesus, and the good feathers showed up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that squirrel with the purse. Yeah.
What's her name? And there were hippos who were a couple or some shit.

Speaker 1 It's funny that, like... You know, when you watch Animaniacs and it's like, oh, it's the squirrel with the purse.
I'm going to zone out for five minutes. I hope they do the pigeon soon.

Speaker 1 The truth is when they have the shot of the water tower, that's immediately where my mind goes. Of course.
It is funny.

Speaker 1 Like, you'll be watching Oppenheimer and it's like the or tenant or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, but where's Wacko?

Speaker 1 It is funny that Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain were immediately and remain so sticky and everyone just forgets there were like five other segments. Yeah.
Good Feathers was good.

Speaker 1 Good feathers got saved. Well, it's good, but I do think it's undersung.
And then, what was the name of the squirrel with the purse? Slappy. That's it.
I think you're right.

Speaker 1 And she had a little kid or some shit. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Who'd she slap with the purse? She hit someone with the purse. There was a sidekick.
George Coody.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Elderly, grouchy, cartoon tree squirrel. Yeah.
But she had a little squirrel. Skippy squirrel was the

Speaker 1 goddaughter or some shit.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the Cohen said this was shot on film, and they were like, this is probably the last movie we're going to shoot on film. Sad.

Speaker 1 A little sad.

Speaker 1 Bruno Del Bonel shot inside Lewin Davis, of course.

Speaker 1 And then getting back to the Deke? They go back to Mr. D.
I think Deacons doesn't do Davis because of Skyfall. Yes.

Speaker 1 So this was Deacons returning to films, Elioloid, for the first time in a while. And he said, like, we kind of had to, we felt like for the era that we're, you know.
And I'll say this.

Speaker 1 This is one of the only modern movies I can think of that actually somehow captures Technicolor

Speaker 1 feelings. Like three strip, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like when you watch old movies and you're like, why does fucking nothing look like this anymore?

Speaker 1 And eggheads will explain to you the alchemical process that changed. And it's like, but why can't we with our digital technology make anything look this good again?

Speaker 1 And this movie like has so many different styles it has to emulate. And it emulates all of them better than I feel like most people are able to pull off with one focus.
They are the best. Yes.

Speaker 1 Re Tate Tatum's dancing.

Speaker 1 The Cohens offer him the part, and he's like, I don't sing or tap dance. Like, I want to work with you so bad, but I just FYI, I do not sing or tap dance.

Speaker 1 It became a six-minute song with tap dancing. In the script, apparently, it's basically just like they do a song or whatever.

Speaker 1 So they tried to embrace his physicality, Shirley, that you're mentioning because he can do things like flips and jumps, right? So they try to put as much of that.

Speaker 1 And as Gettelli, the tap coach, what's his full name? Christopher Gattelli says,

Speaker 1 it's a really hard skill. And he'd never tapped before, ever.

Speaker 1 He learned 10 years of tap training in three months. It was the most amazing thing to watch.

Speaker 1 I'm just kind of like, is this Johan Santana throwing a no-hitter?

Speaker 1 I know nobody gets that reference, but after he did that, he was never the same pitcher ever again. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's not like Channing's gone, but it's almost like, did Channing overload himself learning to tap dance for Hale Caesar? Those six minutes taken him years to recover?

Speaker 1 Truly, I'm like, it's, I don't know. I don't like in interviews with him, it doesn't feel like this guy lost it or he's washed.

Speaker 1 And I do feel like he talked about that, like, when he hit so big, when he had his like magic mic foul,

Speaker 1 what was it? There was the one year where he had three hits in a row. Sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. $300 million hits in a row, and he became the most in-demand guy.

Speaker 1 And I think he's like, I worked too much. I like all the opportunities came in and I couldn't say no to anything.
And I burnt myself out. And I like, my marriage fell apart.

Speaker 1 And I wasn't seeing my kid. And I was like, I want to take a break.
And the break felt like a good mental health like space that then was maybe also elongated by pandemic and such.

Speaker 1 But I don't get the sense from him that like, oh, there's something he lost that he can't get back or there's something broken. Yeah, I think it's circumstances around him, right?

Speaker 1 But like, if he had to do that. But not circumcision.

Speaker 1 We don't know. We don't know.
I feel like there was a time he talked about burning his penis on set and

Speaker 1 the production of The Eagle is a profile that I believe was an Esquire.

Speaker 1 I just want to say that the choreographer for that sequence, I'm reading here on the internet, he was also the resident choreographer for the Rosie O'Donnell Show. Hell yes.
That's

Speaker 1 important. Choreographs the arc of those iceballs.
I'm calling Congress. They need to know this.
The year is 2012, Greg. It's the Vow 21 Jump Street and Magic.
There we go.

Speaker 1 That's his sort of really, really insane. He has $300 million movies in the first six months of the year.

Speaker 1 And that's when they push back G.I. Joe, which was going to be his fourth movie that year, to be like, we fucked up.
We got to shoot new footage. And they split him up across the entire movie.

Speaker 1 Because he originally died in the opening scene. Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just think, I think you're, it's interesting what you're saying because you do watch this.

Speaker 1 And even though this is a small performance and a small part of the movie in so many ways you're also like

Speaker 1 the skill of what he's showing in the wattage and how hard he is selling just like multiple things at once while also like taking real chances it was like has this guy just unlocked like 20 new chambers yeah but here's the thing he unlocks these chambers i don't think

Speaker 1 i don't i don't think the opportunity is unlocked for that for him because they weren't available do you know what i mean like it's it's kind of like well it's kind of the argument that there aren't movie stars and that the real movie stars became superheroes And then he was lined up to do that.

Speaker 1 And then that didn't happen. Here's the thing I want to get your opinion on because we've talked about this in the past.
Is like part of the wheel of the weird where did Shannon go

Speaker 1 thing, similar to Swayze, where they were both male stars who were disproportionately popular with women and were very comfortable making the genres of film that are often seen as women's films.

Speaker 1 And is that an audience that perhaps then wants to refresh with the younger guy faster? Versus, like, did Channel ever totally

Speaker 1 ever totally win over like dudes?

Speaker 1 That is a good question. Not to be very binary.
No, no, I don't think so. Not really.
Channing Tannum was never cool. Yeah.
In that, in the way you're describing. And there is.
He was fun.

Speaker 1 There is a thing when guys are. People didn't take him seriously seriously.
He doesn't.

Speaker 1 By being a big old goofball.

Speaker 1 And then when he did Foxcatcher,

Speaker 1 when he's like, I'm making serious movies, it's like you're really suited to this role of like kind of a lunkhead. He's amazing in that movie.
I think he's crazy. I agree.

Speaker 1 I think he's the best performance in that movie, but there's a similar weird

Speaker 1 David's doing the Fox Catcher called

Speaker 1 My nose is so big.

Speaker 1 I think there's a similar weird Swayze drop-off where you're just like, how did this guy have fucking solid comic ghost dirty dancing point break?

Speaker 1 This guy's at the center of the fucking culture and he can do everything.

Speaker 1 And it's not like he has like three embarrassing flops in a row and it makes sense. You're just like, it just weirdly kind of tapers.
I feel like

Speaker 1 a little bit. Wait, Ben, what did you do? I was going to add, I feel like, though, he has pretty consistently done modeling and fashion-related work.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Chen remains a major celebrity, even as his like movie stardom

Speaker 1 goes through weird waves.

Speaker 1 There will always be headlines about him because he has one project or another. Like, I don't mean film or TV projects.
Like, he wrote like some picture books with his daughter or something.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so like... His personal life is part of his professional life, even though I just said that the circumstances outside of his professional life affected him.

Speaker 1 I know we're hyperfixing and shanging this episode, but part of what's interesting about this movie is how much it examines like the making of a movie star, right?

Speaker 1 And how much of it is like timing, circumstance, crafting of a team around you, you know, sort of like context, opportunity, but also these weird X factors that is like someone connects, right?

Speaker 1 They work well on camera and the audience forms a relationship with them. And then you're sort of like, what is this relationship?

Speaker 1 And the like success or failure to identify what is the thing that works about you and how can that be transmuted into other spaces so that you don't get repetitive.

Speaker 1 And some people, it's a real struggle to figure out like, what is the thing I need to keep track of while also not getting stuck in a rut. He's in Avengers Doomsday.
It's Gambit. Yeah, thank God.

Speaker 1 Did he get a chair? Yeah, he got a chair. He got a chair.
He got a chair. Oh, man.
Imagine getting a chair. Grocery.
Okay, I'm going to do a sidebar for a second. That's a gambling.

Speaker 1 Brian Reynolds did so many fucking emotional posts of like, I'm so proud of my friend Shanning Tatum.

Speaker 1 We had similar journeys of wanting so badly to play these Marvel characters and getting stuck in development hell.

Speaker 1 And I knew that feeling of fighting 10 years to get the Deadpool movie made when no one believed in it. Sure.
And I saw the same thing happen to him, but he never actually got to make it.

Speaker 1 And to see us finally find a way to let him play Gambit and the public react so strongly such a win from him. And I'm like,

Speaker 1 the whole fucking movie frames Gambit as being like a dumb fucking idiot. The bit is like, he's become a Howard.
No one understands that. But Gambit kind of is a dumb fucking idiot.

Speaker 1 I know, but I'm like, I mean, God bless him. I'm like, look, like triumph of like, yeah, he got to wear the costume and people cheered and like, you know, he's funny in it.

Speaker 1 I'm also like, this clearly isn't what what he wanted to do with Gambit.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's not really the return of Gambit if you don't have Anna Paquin back as rogue. And we really set that up.
I'm just saying I have opinions. But she's a woman can have opinions.

Speaker 1 I don't know. Did she go to chair? I didn't watch that.
I rely on you to tell me what you're doing. They'll do an adventure.
Surely rogue. It's a lot of chair recaps from me.

Speaker 1 I turn to you every day and I'm like, David. Chair news? Chair? Chair?

Speaker 1 What's chair? It would be funny if they restarted that then and added one more chair. Yeah.
Just like a random guy.

Speaker 1 Just like, oh, and the catering's been that's a good question is that feed still live and just hasn't been updated in two months

Speaker 1 so do you want me to do the chairs yeah you want me to read them aloud it's two minutes long now that sucks chris hemsworth the worst thing was when it was the live stream during the day and every 30 minutes they'd add another chair

Speaker 1 i thought i really thought there was five hours oh my gosh i don't know i think i watched two chairs and then i i don't know like what's your threshold

Speaker 1 right i kept going in and out and then i went to see a movie and then i came back and so you dipped you dipped with the chairs chairs

Speaker 1 chair was small it was a smaller chair the camera

Speaker 1 I think someone sent like a screenshot to that to a group chat or something and I was like well maybe I'll dip back into the chairs but then I thought they wouldn't do anything I was texting one of our group chats and everyone was like I can't believe you're still watching this and I was like just to be clear I refresh it once every 30 minutes I'm not glued to it I was glued to it

Speaker 1 I have control I have power also when you said group chat yeah I thought group chair Joseph quit that's actually really funny maybe we should rename it group chair

Speaker 1 it's just a Thunderbolt chair. I don't know what that is.
Here's an interesting thing, Duke. Here's an interesting thing in retrospect.

Speaker 1 They announced the entire Thunderbolts cast other than Olga Kort Lorenco. Tom Hitler.

Speaker 1 The real signpost of the fact that this person's not making it past the first trivia in Middle East.

Speaker 1 Do you think someone on Olga's team was watching the whole thing, just hoping? Yeah. Hoping they'd do a fake out.

Speaker 1 It was just a lot of fun. I think Olga's team was like, we'll happily take the fourth billion and $1 million for five days of work.
Steven, are you done reading the chairs? Shanning Tatum. Okay.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's kind of like, you know, she shows up, does one line, and it's

Speaker 1 holiday days work. Downey Jr.
And there he is sitting in the chair.

Speaker 1 And her one line is her superimposed, her face superimposed into a stunt woman's body as her mask retreats quickly and it goes back. She's like, I'm not here for you.

Speaker 1 And it's like, she might have done that in her life. I mean, I swear to God, I mean,

Speaker 1 how could you be mad?

Speaker 1 I take God's name in vain, yes. Just that where they were like, how many people in this team like fight with sticks? It's like, yeah, like four.

Speaker 1 It's like, okay, we gotta lose at least one of those guys. Like, Jesus.
How many like foreign ladies with severe personalities and masks?

Speaker 1 Um, and she has the skills everybody else has because she can copy right. That's the other problem with Taskmaster.
We're like, no, it's Taskmaster's power. He copies other powers.
Like,

Speaker 1 I think they were right to do it, but once again, rogue loses.

Speaker 1 It's such a funny, like, figures public handcuffing where they like make this big announcement of here's the cast of Thunderbolts three years ago.

Speaker 1 And they show the image and they bring them all out on stage.

Speaker 1 And at some point, they change the plot and they're like maybe we need to drop one person and they're like fuck we're still contractually obligated to give her fourth billing she has one million dollars and we have to put her all over the marketing to trick people into thinking she's a proper team member but the most half-hearted effort ever i took the fourth billing as an apology as a sort of like you know that's what happens in hollywood land griff this is true but also sometimes there's marvel you'll get fourth billing like fucking michael starboard getting like fourth billing in multiverse of madness

Speaker 1 sometimes there's like, hey, what's up?

Speaker 1 If you do a sequel, you move up in the billing. And even if we end up giving you a tiny part, we can't knock you down.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's kind of like, yeah, when you go from junior varsity to varsity and you've, if you've still stuck around, yes. Yes, what were you varsity?

Speaker 1 Volleyball. Did you let her? Maybe.
Yes. I found my varsity jacket over the weekend.

Speaker 1 Show. We don't eat yet.
Where'd you play?

Speaker 1 What do you mean? Front, back, middle. I was the barrow.

Speaker 1 That is like a defensive specialist, but not the DS, which is the defensive specialist. You know what my wife is? I'm the one who wears a different jersey color.
Your wife was a center? A center. Oh.

Speaker 1 I mean, great role. That's what most captains are.

Speaker 1 I thought you were saying a center in basketball. You know what I like to do? Shut the height.

Speaker 1 You like to smash. You're a Hulk.

Speaker 2 So I've got a question for all the gamers out there.

Speaker 2 Are you seriously gonna miss out on Alienware's biggest gaming sale of the year? I mean, these are Black Friday prices we're talking about. So, it's not just another sale.

Speaker 2 I took a look, and this is some pretty big bang for your buck. Yeah, you know, it's Alienware with some of the most advanced engineering out there.
They got systems at the top of reviewers' lists.

Speaker 2 And what about a gift for yourself? Yeah, you gift yourself a new Alienware 16 Area 51 gaming laptop.

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Speaker 2 Here's what I'd do: I'd visit alienware.com/slash deals soon and grab what you can before their biggest sale of the year goes dark.

Speaker 2 David, yes, this episode is brought to you by Mubi, the global film company, the Champions Great Cinema. From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there is always something new to discover.

Speaker 2 And with Mubi, each and every film is hand-selected so you can explore the best of cinema, streaming anytime, anywhere. But also, David, no, that's it.
That done

Speaker 2 recommendation of Mubi. No.
What?

Speaker 2 Also projected upon the silver screen. Yes, movie releases films, too.
In physical movie theater. And they've got a humdinger called Die, My Love.
It's the new picture from Lynn Ramsey.

Speaker 2 Someone I have long maintained is one of our finest living filmmakers. That is true.
A genius, in my opinion. It is coming to U.S.
theaters on November 7th.

Speaker 2 It is a visceral and uncompromising portrait of a woman engulfed by love and madness. Who's playing that woman, David? Jennifer Lawrence.
Have you heard of her? This film is excellent. You've seen it.

Speaker 2 I sure have. I am dying to see it.
I guess I'll be. Dying my love to see it.
Yes, it stars Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, two of our very exciting stars as Steek and Batman themselves.

Speaker 2 They are playing a couple who moves out to the woods, to Montana to raise their kid after they have a kid and feel normal.

Speaker 2 Everything goes regular for them in their brains when they do this. This is her first film, Since You Were Never Really Here, one of my favorite movies of the last decade.
Yes, it was again.

Speaker 2 It's very, very intense, very incredible performance from Jennifer Lawrence, especially in my opinion. Awesome soundtrack that I think Ben's gonna dig.

Speaker 2 I think Lynn Ramsey makes movies differently than anyone else on the planet.

Speaker 2 I feel like she is uniquely skilled at a kind of method she has created for depicting the inner life through sound and image. Her movies thrill me.

Speaker 2 And I will say, if you're a listener of this podcast, it might be beneficial to go see Die My Love sooner rather than later, Winky Winky. Die My Love is now in theaters.
Go see it.

Speaker 2 You can visit movie.com slash die my love for showtimes and tickets. And to stream great films at home, you can try Mubi Free for 30 days at movie.com/slash blank check.

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Speaker 1 hail Caesar is about Eddie Mannix

Speaker 1 uh sort of about it's set in the early 50s in Hollywood it's about a character named Eddie Manix right who is the Cohen said like the real Eddie Mannix was like a thug who beat people up and threatened people right we didn't look how you want that vibe right exactly but they do a lot of this

Speaker 1 like happy O'Daniel being 90% of the name of a real guy sometimes they'll like base a character on on a person and then be like, we're still going to name it after them, even though we've made it not actually one-to-one anymore.

Speaker 1 He works at Capital Pictures, which of course is the same studio from Barton Fink.

Speaker 1 And he is a fixer. So he deals with scandals and he massages egos and he basically just kind of like handles problems for the studio.

Speaker 1 In an era where, because of studio contracts, studios viewed stars as investments. They were property.
They were a thing that they had to like manage and build and maintain. And this

Speaker 1 weird, it's often when this is talked about, it's talked about in a very dark way of people like Eddie Manix who'd like maybe murder people, you know, and do these things by like force and like covering up the CD side.

Speaker 1 But the magic of this movie is this quiet Eddie Mannix arc is he is being courted by Lockheed Martin, a normal company that's never done anything wrong for a certain time.

Speaker 1 Saves at the dawn of the space age. With better hours and the promise that you would get stock options.
So even if you quit in a couple of years, you'd be set for life.

Speaker 1 And do you want a more normal life? They're also telling him that they're working on something really big, which happens to be the hydrogen bomb.

Speaker 1 Kind of a scary thing, but they're sort of like, aren't you done doing frivolous, like fucking singing cowboy pictures? It's just the most serious thing you could imagine. Babysitting divas.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 We do serious things like bombs.

Speaker 1 And the magic of this movie is this very quiet arc that Josh Brolin plays basically through looks and in between words, because it is classic Josh Brolin's stoicism with something kind of softer going on inside, where this guy is slowly kind of realizing why he cares about this shit, that he is, at the end of the day, kind of dirty show folk to his score, even though he is the type A normal businessman version of that.

Speaker 1 The reason he's here is because he loves this shit and he loves these people for as much as they drive him crazy.

Speaker 1 He would be doing something creative if he could, but he's doing this because it's the most creative adjacent thing he can do with his weird powers of like alpha dog, you know, negotiation.

Speaker 1 But yeah, it's like he ends up, what, the movie's set over like 24 hours?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
It starts at night, ends the next night. I guess it's 48 hours.
46, whatever. A short time frame, but

Speaker 1 just a kind of whirlwind of problems that he's trying to fix while also being courted for this job. Right.

Speaker 1 So here are the questioning why he's going to try and run down the problem.

Speaker 1 George Clooney plays Baird Whitlock, who's this sort of like aging movie star with a hint of lavender, a hint of lavender to him, as they used to say.

Speaker 1 Like the joke being that, like, there would be like Robert Taylor is the example they're drafting off of, like, guys where people would be like, he's secretly gay and maybe like slept his way to stardom.

Speaker 1 Totally scurrilous. Like, no, no actual

Speaker 1 evidence for this, but it would become a thing in the 50s. Yes.

Speaker 1 Because that's what on what's the on Wings of Eagles?

Speaker 1 On Wings and Eagles? Eagles?

Speaker 1 Like, that's what they're referencing. One of the best sound effects tricks.
Yes. Yes.
But I also think it could be read. On Wings as Eagles.
Yes. It's such a good title.
On Wings as Eagles.

Speaker 1 There's obviously ambiguity in it. I also think it could be.
I'm quoting the Cohen's when I say the lavender thing. Sure.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It could be read as this was one strategic. like casting couch decision he made to get his foot in the door versus closeted sexuality possible hanky panky something

Speaker 1 that seemingly happened everyone reacts with the intensity of

Speaker 1 there's a touch of truth to that.

Speaker 1 So he gets kidnapped by a bunch of Marxist writers, communist writers

Speaker 1 who wish to sort of rearrange his brain in support of their principles. They're deeply radicalized.

Speaker 1 They've been trying to smuggle communist ideology into the margins of their studio for higher work, but now they've decided they need to do something to change.

Speaker 1 the system because they're a great bunch of guys and each of them is more exciting to see than the last melamed patrick fischler fisher Stevens, Alex Karpovsky. Am I forgetting?

Speaker 1 There's a couple other guys.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's an incredible group. Greg Baldwin, who's the big guy.
Who's the British? Oh, with the Perma Pout? Right, yeah. Who wrote all the...
Who's the British guy who does most of the time?

Speaker 1 Yeah, who is the British? That guy.

Speaker 1 The best guy is the guy who keeps saying, shut up. Yes.
Oh, Max Baker.

Speaker 1 Max Baker. Yeah, I don't know where they found that guy, but he's so mellifluous.

Speaker 1 But they basically are trying to radicalize Clooney.

Speaker 1 They're using him as a hostage to get the cash they want, but also as a bargaining chip to try to change the system because they think if they can win him over while he's being held ransom, that he will be at the forefront of their argument, which is basically them trying to create some system of profit sharing.

Speaker 1 It is basically them arguing for like residuals and profit participation in the system. They don't actually have like insanely

Speaker 1 pretty silly. They're fun and silly.
They do want to hand a fucking briefcase of cash over to Dolph Lundgrid on a Russian submarine.

Speaker 1 But like they don't understand what they're doing with that basically. No, and ultimately.
They're a study group, guys. Ultimately, this is like what I love about it is like

Speaker 1 for how much they're espousing serious political opinion, the actual means to an end for them is they would like it if they had nice houses too.

Speaker 1 That here they are meeting at Shan Tatum's house, which is like the most beautiful Hollywood home you've ever seen. And all these guys are like, I get paid $200 a week to write scripts.

Speaker 1 And if one's a hit, I don't get any upside from it. You know?

Speaker 1 is the thing that allowed the destruction of the studio system is it gave actors the ability to build a career without career stability of a guaranteed contract because if you hit you'd hit big and it could cover the times where you weren't working the next most important character i feel like is alten aaron reich is hobie doyle who is in four movies at once essentially He's like going for movies.

Speaker 1 He's like shooting a Western. Yes.
A comedy, a cowboy musical.

Speaker 1 or a comedy musical is rapid. He's going to care.

Speaker 1 That's done.

Speaker 1 That's done. You're right.
Okay, so he's shooting right the western and

Speaker 1 society comedy. I think at the same time,

Speaker 1 the pivot point is, here's a guy who's a B star. He makes programmers in a sort of like

Speaker 1 shiny list genre.

Speaker 1 And they're going, like, does this kid have the X Factor? Could we like develop him into something more? He gets slotted into an A movie and all the pressure is on is like, this is the test.

Speaker 1 Which he's not doing very well at. And of course, he's being directed by Lawrence Lorenz.
Yes. Played by Ray Fiennes.
Which turns out to be the person that Baird Whitlock allegedly had. Yes.
Yes.

Speaker 1 I like just how tightly. There are a lot of hints and references.
Exactly. You're right, to how things crossed over in the past.
Or, yes. And it's almost structured like a mystery novel.
Right.

Speaker 1 You know, there is like. It's a who done who.
It's a who done who. Yes.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Well, well, well. Well, well, there's a touch of

Speaker 1 saucy hammett you know all these like kind of uh gumshoe books that they love and like hurt golden noir and whatever where like the answers kind of happen in the margins you don't have a scene where humphrey bogart like explains everything he figured out about the maltese falcon the footnotes are available to you if you want to look for them yes Yes, but it happens in and part of it's the fast-talking, constantly moving Hollywood thing that like stuff's just getting thrown out as like

Speaker 1 collateral. Right.

Speaker 1 I don't know exactly who Lawrence Lorentz

Speaker 1 because like people bring up like Vincent DeMinelli or like Cookor or whatever, but like those guys were American, but it's like, yeah, those sort of like Lubitch sort of make sense.

Speaker 1 It's one of these touch-a-class

Speaker 1 guy from Europe who's more urbane and literate. Any of these directors are one-to-one with anyone.
He says things like Mirthless Chuckle. Mirthless Chuckle.

Speaker 1 We can use Christian names, boys. This is a movie where you could have given it all five best supporting actor nominations.
I think we talked about that that year at the Blinkies, 100%. Yes.

Speaker 1 So you've got Scotland Johansson as Deanna Moran, who's a

Speaker 1 elegant Esther Williams bathing beauty who actually is

Speaker 1 like, hey, fuck you. Brooklyn Tuck Tuck.
That's her favorite accent, too.

Speaker 1 She's pretty good at it, and she has been knocked up by somebody. She thinks she knows the guy.
We believe it is the director played by Christopher Lambert. Right.

Speaker 1 Which I feel like is also this model of like these like kind of severe, brutish, alpha European men who would become like dictator directors of the studio system.

Speaker 1 The movie's so good at capturing the different types of like who were career directors at this point in time. And like you have your kind of like horsage, like

Speaker 1 champagne. But

Speaker 1 I can't say this word. Aesthetic.
Aesthetic. No, but aesthetic.
Yeah, aesthetic. Aesthete.

Speaker 1 But also a guy who's like, my name means something. I have a reputation to present versus like these guys who are like, I show up, I yell at five people and I get it done.

Speaker 1 And I show you a picture of me skiing because I am Macho. Right.
Yes. Then those are the three main storylines.

Speaker 1 And you have smaller characters like Frances McDormand as an editor who's sort of like a Margaret Booth, like lots of famous lady editors. Jonah Hill.

Speaker 1 Tilda Swinton is as twin, identical twin gossip columnist

Speaker 1 and sort of like the Heda Hopper, what like Luella Parsons. Yes.

Speaker 1 The name is Thessaly. The deep bucket of just simple pleasures in this movie, every time time either of her characters says Eddie, she's really,

Speaker 1 I transcend to a higher plane of existence.

Speaker 1 Channing Tatum, who really just has the one big scene. Allison Pill, who is Eddie's wife.

Speaker 1 Wayne Knight, of course, is that wonderful operative.

Speaker 1 He's extree.

Speaker 1 You can never totally trust an extree. You see him and you think sus.

Speaker 1 And I love that he says.

Speaker 1 Mind you, some of them are good. Jonah.
The one I paint with a broad brush.

Speaker 1 Who maybe we we want to talk about now as a sort of

Speaker 1 professional person is the thing that's not a professional person uh yes technically a sort of he's like a bondsman or whatever i still feel like an amateur person what about you guys same but it's also more than ever honestly

Speaker 1 it's also semi-pro it's part of the weird machinery of this of like the relationship that the studios have with the gossip columnists, right?

Speaker 1 Where like sometimes they are basically working them to carry water for them to help sell a fictional narrative.

Speaker 1 And sometimes they are working overtime to try to squash a potential narrative that they would actually want to crack journalistically.

Speaker 1 And so, all of this machinery of maintaining the images and the reputations of these stars.

Speaker 1 And yes, Jonah Hill is this guy who's like a bail bondsman, but also his real utility is they will pay him money to basically slide the crimes or misdiscretions, indiscretions, misdeeds of any major star onto him.

Speaker 1 And he will take the wrap or pay the fee fee or do the time or whatever it is. The fall guy.
And is paid handsomely to be the fall guy so that none of these stories ever stick to these people.

Speaker 1 Jonah Hill is on screen for 90 seconds. He has one scene.
Right. They use every line of dialogue he has in the trailer.
They put him all over the fucking trailer.

Speaker 1 Because he was hot stuff at the time, you know, 21 Jump Street era, Jonah Hill. I have often contested.
that this is the smallest role to receive a designated character poster.

Speaker 1 As David turned his laptop laptop around maybe one hour ago. It's low there.
It's down low. It's the funniest character poster, just big Jonah Hill head with owl glasses.
Oh, it also says hill.

Speaker 1 It says hill. It's humongous.
Yes. And then Hail Caesar is smaller.
So you are like, this guy is the star.

Speaker 1 That was the only poster you had seen for this movie. The joke, of course, is that he's...

Speaker 1 The scheme they work out is that Deanna will have the baby, give him the baby legally, and then she will adopt the baby almost immediately and act like she's doing it out of the goodness of her heart not because she's the mother of the baby.

Speaker 1 Right. But then the father of the child is the director of No Day.
Scandalous. Who has a wife and children back in his home country? Not acceptable.
So I can't break that up.

Speaker 1 But anyway, she ends up falling in love with Jonah Hill and they get married. Which is very sweet.
And it's something that basically happens off-screen and offhand comedy.

Speaker 1 They went on like one date and then went immediately to Palm Springs and then got married the next day.

Speaker 1 She just immediately locks in on this guy in a scene that's so funny where he's giving like anti-charisma very well. But he's reassuring.
Yes. And he's a, Dara said, he's a serious man.

Speaker 1 I think she respects that this guy's got like a focus.

Speaker 1 I think this film is such a fascinating counterpart to Barton Fink, which is like about a person who is outside of this bubble, thinks he's better than it. Yes.

Speaker 1 And will not like lower himself to the trash, you know, it represents or whatever, and never like gets anywhere essentially and is trapped in hell. And this is like inside the bubble.

Speaker 1 All that he's doing is dealing with problems, right? It's like this like big, complex clockwork machinery. And he's just sort of walking around like fixing shit.
Sure, like dark banging on stuff.

Speaker 1 Yes, often kind of nasty. And he has to just sort of be like pragmatic about everything.

Speaker 1 But I think it's important to point out that it's not always so in the bubble that it's like navel-gazy and insular about itself. He's literally like little, like he has to just like

Speaker 1 preschool teacher.

Speaker 1 You have, I mean, you have one, you have the Jonah Hill character, but I think he exists in a different, like that there's a Venn diagram here, but the two, the twin journalists, like one of the, one of the problems one of them has is that she considers herself an actual entertainment reporter, trade reporter versus a gossip columnist, right?

Speaker 1 And that feels like a little bit of like, it's both very inside baseball, but it's also the real world bleeding in with the judgment of the work that they do. Right.

Speaker 1 And people keep getting them confused. Yeah.
And I think, yeah, exactly. Saying the wrong thing to the wrong person or repeating it twice with an attitude.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I think without that piece, you get a film that's way too insular. I agree.
But because of this,

Speaker 1 because of this, it's delightful. I also think this movie has such a love of film history and a sort of recognition of like, not like

Speaker 1 things used to be better. It's weirdly, this movie is simultaneously more cynical and more romantic than Barton Fink, which is the fascinating juxtaposition.

Speaker 1 It is largely cynical, but then at the end of the day, it is about the system working. Yes.

Speaker 1 And then the one guy, the one real problem that Eddie actually has to solve, most of the problems sort themselves out.

Speaker 1 is Baird returning and being like, I'm a communist now. Like,

Speaker 1 we must, and him just being like, no, golden age of Hollywood works. You know, like, you are not allowed to defy this system.
But also in 20 years, it will be dead. 100%.

Speaker 1 But you can't fight the future. And the future is on the phone.
Eddie is just like, you will do what you do.

Speaker 1 You know, you're a member of this machine just like me. Right.
And Baird's like, okay. And he does it.
You know, and George gives the big speech at the end. Yeah.
And it's like, great. That's exactly.

Speaker 1 That's how this works and you're watching clooney magic of like oh right george clooney is george clooney we've had so much fun watching him play like a fucking idiot finding the eight ball trying to figure it out clooney's so well playing

Speaker 1 the the awkwardness of trying to be in casual positions wearing that costume he does so much good business with readjusting you know these like test plates that shouldn't be in like a lounge chair

Speaker 1 i think all of those physical bits are funny with a sword and well but then we get to this final moment where you see him deliver the big monologue, and Clooney, like a fucking movie star, holds the camera and turns it on and nails it.

Speaker 1 And you're like, right, Baird Whitlock might be a moron to a degree, but also there's a reason he's their top star. And here's the magic, and then he loses it, and the take is blown.

Speaker 1 And everyone's like, yeah, that's what the movies are. We'll just try it again.
Yeah. And you feel like you're witnessing a miracle and then the miracle falls apart.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But he understands the words, be a star. Yeah.
Right? Like, anyway.

Speaker 1 You think. David, go.

Speaker 1 Cohens are steeped enough in movie history to know

Speaker 1 that there is something so hilarious about you watch some old movie that's great, some you know, classic movie, and you're like, ah, God, this is great.

Speaker 1 And then you read the behind the scenes thing, and it's basically like the most sorted thing. Everyone was on fucking speed or gay or a communist or insane.
They were on jail,

Speaker 1 sleeping with each other. The whole thing was created through like blackmail and coercion and 20 people got murdered in the making of this film.

Speaker 1 And you're like, wait, just to create this sort of like delightful confection that I watch today, you know, on TCM? Like,

Speaker 1 to help you escape, they had to go through hell. It's like the movie Babylon, which is loud and obnoxious.

Speaker 1 And a movie I like a lot in many ways, but it's like sort of the loudest version of like, don't you realize how insane Hollywood was? This is a much more whimsical thing.

Speaker 1 I love Babylon, but I think Tone perfectly gets at a lot of the same ideas a lot. Without having an elephant defecate on camera.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which is great, I believe half the time i can't remember how long babylon was but it's long a couple of days at least um no i yes you're right and it's like the movie is making three hours and nine minutes good oh those nine minutes were necessary

Speaker 1 the people at parameters eating razor blades the desk but remember that two of those minutes were avatar that's so true so who's laughing t2 is in there too yeah

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 think that

Speaker 1 this is a really good, like, everything has has always been great and everything's always been terrible movie.

Speaker 1 These two things like exist in tandem, but also

Speaker 1 the sort of like Sullivan's Travels thing, which it makes sort of unspoken, but is like Eddie Mannix is like, I'm like losing sleep and barely seeing my kids and I'm so stressed out and I'm eating this fucking microwave plate of loose meat, you know, as I like try to unwind before I go back to the office for another night shift of dealing with nonsense.

Speaker 1 Right. Why am I doing this? And it isn't serious work.
Like, in the name of what?

Speaker 1 And the opposite is: Lockheed Martin will give you like shiny tchotches and a nice office, and everyone there will behave like a proper adult gentleman and you'll bomb people.

Speaker 1 But right, the gag is that Lockheed Martin also

Speaker 1 is like, We like what you do. We think it would be perfect for creating death that rains hellfire across the earth.
And is Eddie not at the lazy old moon premiere?

Speaker 1 But I feel like in that scene, you get the solar

Speaker 1 images moment. Eddie images, please.

Speaker 1 Not the real Eddie Mannix. Yeah.

Speaker 1 In that

Speaker 1 jump.

Speaker 1 Stop. You get the feeling of stop threatening me.
Never. How much people are laughing at this old coot falling into like a fucking water trough, right? And you're like, this is why you do it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, this might be the silliest movie ever made. Well, I mean, I want to go back to what you were saying about.

Speaker 1 When he's with Francis and they're editing that reel and he has that look on his face, that look doesn't say like, I have so much power. I could make this happen.

Speaker 1 That look instead is like awe and tenderness tenderness toward this strip of

Speaker 1 five seconds of a scene. But you're right.
He's not patting himself on the back for like, I always knew it. And he's also not doing this kind of maudlin tears in his eyes.

Speaker 1 Like, I love Moneyball, but there's the Moneyball moment where Jonah Hill shows Brad Pitt normal marriage, the

Speaker 1 clip of the guy who doesn't know that he's hit a home run. And

Speaker 1 Pitt has his incredible moment. Right.
And it's like, there's a version of this that is entirely unspoken because Eddie Mennix is a guy who would never let himself say say anything like that.

Speaker 1 But I also think it's the, it's, it's, it's very Cohen's for it to go like, like they never push it that far in this. Like, it's like it's, or, or ever.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, here's the thing, right? Like we're talking about the juxtapositions and everything working in tandem.

Speaker 1 And I think it's because there's, they clearly, now we're, we're many years removed from this, from this, and they have their own projects. Yes.
They have their own visions.

Speaker 1 And I think because their visions have competed. I don't know, without us really knowing it in these films, that's why there's this push and pull and a balance to what we're seeing.
I think so too.

Speaker 1 Now, can I talk about my favorite scene of the movie? I used to do a feature at the Atlantic where I summed up my 10 favorite scenes

Speaker 1 scenes of the year. Bring it back.
It's good feature. It's a lot of work.
Good feature. It's and comma scene.
What else do you have to do with your time?

Speaker 1 No, the problem is that it would always come at the end of the year, which is like an incredibly busy time for my editors where they're doing all these other top 10 shit.

Speaker 1 And yeah, anyway, never, I would love to bring it back. But my favorite scene in Hail Caesar is the scene where he talks to the religious leaders

Speaker 1 about the divine presence that they have yet to shoot in the movie.

Speaker 1 And it is the incredible Robert Picardo. Picardo is so good.
Just fucking raining. God has a son? What? Does he have a dog? As a rabbi who's willing to play.

Speaker 1 I haven't an opinion.

Speaker 1 The correct assumption, of course, that they would get a Protestant clergyman played by the great Alan Harvey, an actor I love, a stand-up, you know, very funny guy. Yeah, great on Mad Men.

Speaker 1 Incredible on Mad Men is that guy that fucking hated Don Traever so goddamn much. The fucking grumpy boss who secretly all he wants to do is draw

Speaker 1 a fucking comic strip.

Speaker 1 That's just like that's the shit that makes Mad Men the best TV show of all time is you're like, this guy is killing it as like grumpy boss who doesn't like

Speaker 1 Don'side. And you're like,

Speaker 1 I would have no notes about this and I would happily take this all day.

Speaker 1 And then the shameful secret of this guy is he spends all his extra time drawing a little fucking three-panel strip about a silly duck that isn't good. Wait, what, what is the name?

Speaker 1 It's so, I'm trying to remember

Speaker 1 the name of the comic book that he draws. But anyway,

Speaker 1 sorry, I'll find it later.

Speaker 1 And right, that they wouldn't, you know, they're not getting a nimam in here or like a, you know, they're just, it's like a Catholic priest,

Speaker 1 Greek Orthodox priest, and around. Who's closest? It's like checkbox one of each in the surrounding 10-mile area.

Speaker 1 And it's this perfect parody, I feel like, of, I don't even know if the Cohens were going for this,

Speaker 1 but of movie making, especially right at that time, like right pre-Trump. I would argue that it kind of presages it.
Like, you think about it. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 We need to calibrate our message so it appeals to everyone without offending anyone, but it's still going to be about a sensitive topic. Can you help us, please?

Speaker 1 This movie comes out six months before Ghostbusters answered the call.

Speaker 1 Like, I just think that's interesting that what you're saying is, like, this is, they were like meeting the moment of something circular coming around again that tends to happen in 20-year rotations of the entertainment industry being like we have to be important

Speaker 1 in everything we do and it's always this kind of hollow and yet diagrammed yes and yet in the work in progress frame it says divine presence to be shot

Speaker 1 so good

Speaker 1 i mean and because the scene itself feels like the setup to a joke right right like a rabbi and a protestant padre of some sort yes and a what's the other one they're basic walking to a bar what i like about it is he's framing it as like my esteemed man.

Speaker 1 Right. Hey, I just want to check.
We got to be able to do that. I want your blessing and your insight.
Yes.

Speaker 1 But they're squabbling so much that he eventually gets down to the brass tacks of just like, I just need to know that we're not accidentally doing anything offensive.

Speaker 1 But that's acting like he's bringing them in as like esteemed consultants. And really, he's just like, are you guys going to complain about any of this shit when the movie comes out?

Speaker 1 But it's also why this movie holds up where it's just kind of like he brought them in. And now it's like, well, that's enough.

Speaker 1 yes we've we did that right they came in right right we we can say in the marketing which is part of the machinery uh jeffrey cantor uh i just want to call out plays sid siegelstein who is the lawyer at capital pictures right who sort of facilitates the deal with jonah hill and scarlet johanson uh an actor i worked with on uh patrick willems uh short film which will maybe be out by the time of this release uh the the dinner plan um he is so fucking good in this right but he's like it's never been done before about the adoption or like, you know, yes, that guy.

Speaker 1 They're pitching him like, what's a way we can get Johansen's baby? And he and Mannix start to like piece together, like, is there a way to have her adopt it? We'd have to get a foster care.

Speaker 1 This and that. And he's reacting with the energy of like an artist being hit with inspiration.
He's like, huh, that's good. I like that.
And he's not, it's not like a

Speaker 1 dark energy. It's like all of these people are artists, right? Like Mannix loves figuring out how to talk to different people.
Right. There's what he needs to do.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of a joy in it or a skill or whatever. And this weird lawyer, who you just imagine, has been covering up some of the darkest, most criminal shit,

Speaker 1 loves being like, oh, what if we did this? It's a puzzle to solve. Yeah.
Right. And he underplays it, but it's so fucking good.
And this is all in service of making silly movies for us.

Speaker 1 And so that silly movies aren't ruined. They're not tarnished by the real world.
Right. Lazy Old Moon is the most serious movie I've ever seen.
Oh, that's so true.

Speaker 1 And actually, I've heard that they're remaking it for Modern Day, but it's woke.

Speaker 1 Well, you can't wake up the moon. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Don't disturb the moon. I don't know what the damage is.
This time it's going to be Lazy Old Venus.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 yikes. Chock full of women.

Speaker 1 You know, that's not a.

Speaker 1 It's a mostly gaseous planet. Excuse me.

Speaker 1 Trilly, I hate to big dog you on this, but I actually, I read a scientific textbook.

Speaker 1 that explained to me that

Speaker 1 men are from Mars and women are from Venus. And that's a fact.
And when I say I read the book, I mean I read the cover.

Speaker 1 It was exciting. I only looked at the pictures.
The no dame sequence

Speaker 1 is so triumphant as a performance from Tatum, who we've talked about a lot already in this episode.

Speaker 1 But the moment that I truly just lose my mind with joy is when they cut out to the wider shot after this like beautiful, kind of elegant, sweeping, long crane movement, and you see that the floor of the set is separated into blocks that roll away, that they had to move away in order for the crane to move in closer.

Speaker 1 And now, seamlessly, as choreography, not from the performers, but from the crew, they have to roll right back into position as the crane is pulling back.

Speaker 1 So when it goes back to its original angle, the floor is in shape. And I'm like, that's fucking magic of the movies.

Speaker 1 And that's the shit when you watch a movie from the 1940s where you're like, they had to fucking figure this out. It is amazing what they figured out for some of this stuff.
And they're right.

Speaker 1 They had this heavy ass cameras that can only do so many things. They didn't have steady cams back then.
Yes. Yeah.
You know, and they're athletes and scientists.

Speaker 1 And you watch this take that feels like perfect, that feels like a fucking miracle where everyone's just nailing everything.

Speaker 1 And the crane comes down and Christopher Lambert with his fucking dumb director bullhorn goes like, don't put the bar rag on the guy's head. You're too big of a star.
You're bigger than that. Right.

Speaker 1 Like gives him a direction direction that is not like you fucked anything up. It's sort of in the name of his star persona.

Speaker 1 I think a correct, he says it in a way that offends the bartender actor, right? But I think what he's really saying is, that's you kind of punching down.

Speaker 1 Do you think the Cone brothers talked to Christopher Lambert about how he played Raiden in Mortal Kombat? Absolutely.

Speaker 1 I hope so. It's the only thing they talked about.
Or do you think when he was in character, he's like, this reminds me of Mortal Kombat. Yeah.
Okay. Heather Goldenhirst.
Oh, I love her.

Speaker 1 You know what? You know what? She's kind of a mousy assistant. What? Can you guess? Badman?

Speaker 1 No, although... Was she? Yeah.
Because she does have the look. You're right.
Yeah. Let's find out if she was on Badman.
She's such a good fast talker.

Speaker 1 She never was. She was on the show, The Class, which is a show I think about all the time.
Interesting. It ran for one season.
It was a big CBS show. I watched it and I forgot that she was on it.

Speaker 1 Right, from the Creator of Friends. And the

Speaker 1 gimmick was that it was eight 28-year-olds who had been in the same third-grade class 20 years ago, and they somehow reunionized. And then they become

Speaker 1 a nice. But then they become a regular friend group.
But no, but it was Lizzie Kaplan,

Speaker 1 Tyler Ferguson, John Bernthal. This is why I wanted to bring it up.
It had an insanely stacked cast of guys who are about to happen. Andrea Anders, Lucy Punch.
Right. A couple of the guys.

Speaker 1 Andrea Anders had already done Joey and was kind of like, you know, in the sitcom mix. Jason Ritter had, you know, he was in the sitcom mix a little bit.

Speaker 1 But like Lizzie Kaplan, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and then insanely John Bernthal, who never did anything like this again, were all in it.

Speaker 1 But it was such a weird show because they mostly wouldn't interact. Yes.
Like it was mostly like four separate tracks of stories. Like, and they would only occasionally cross over.
It was so weird.

Speaker 1 But it was also

Speaker 1 David Crane, creator of French. It was the creator of French

Speaker 1 Philadelphia, and it had zero non-white people in the cast. And people were like, are you guys crazy? But also, you can't do this anymore.
Right.

Speaker 1 But it had been a winning formula up until that moment. Until it was right around then when people were starting to ask them.
Starting to push back on it. But the famous story they tell is that they.

Speaker 1 But anyway, she was really good in it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right before the first episode aired, Crane and Burroughs took the whole cast to Las Vegas. Have you guys heard the story before?

Speaker 1 All expensive. I'm just reading about this now.
And they were like, guys,

Speaker 1 we don't want to stress you out, but you just need to understand this is the last time you're ever going to be able to go out in public again as normal people, and especially as a group.

Speaker 1 We saw what happened to the friends cast. Right.
And I want you guys to have a great savor this. Savor this.
And Bernthal was like, for me, this is actually sort of true. Yes.

Speaker 1 And everyone else is like, huh? And then the show just collapsed immediately. But the confidence of this is it.
We are holding a hot hand. This is New Friends.
That's crazy thing about it.

Speaker 1 Anyway, she's great in this

Speaker 1 as the

Speaker 1 assistant to mana. She's constantly filling him in.
The thing is, I feel like that story probably happens a whole bunch. Right, we never hear it.
It's like the

Speaker 1 NBA champion, you know, shirts they printed for the other guys who then get shipped to whatever. It's just a particularly infamous one.

Speaker 1 And because most of that cast has then ended up finding success somewhere else, they all retell that story whenever they do press about like

Speaker 1 false starts of careers. Like if James Burroughs was directing a show back then, it was kind of like, okay, this must be the next big comedy.
Like that guy always directs.

Speaker 1 A 25-year run where he had not directed a single pilot that didn't go to series and last more than one season. It was insane.
Yes. Like was just a kingmaker.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But anyway, love her

Speaker 1 in this and liked her find in the class from what I remember. Don't really remember.
This is a movie where everyone is great.

Speaker 1 Wait, is anyone bad, though? No. No.
No. No.
No. No.
And there are people in it where you're like...

Speaker 1 You're going to hire Dolph Lungren to like stand at the top of a submarine for like a day and basically be art direction? It kind of nails it. That's the thing.
He was great.

Speaker 1 It doesn't feel like an abuse of power on the Cohen's part. Clancy Brown showing up for two seconds as Cloody's co-star.
Love to see him.

Speaker 1 Every one of these people who shows up, you're like, well, but could anyone do what they're doing better than them? I mean, Dolph stands so well on that subscriber.

Speaker 1 He's so imposing.

Speaker 1 I'm like, that guy's a commie. But it's like, it's presence, it's like history, it's reputational casting.
As we said, like the fucking, like the future is loaded with

Speaker 1 just incredible that guys where you're like, Melamed, you're giving him two lines of dialogue.

Speaker 1 Melamed, I feel like the other thing is like a lot of them are guys who haven't been in Cohen movies, but you're like, How have they never been in a Cohen movie?

Speaker 1 Right, this is the first Kremholtz, and then he does Kremholtz, uh, Buster Scruggs after. And then it's the, I don't think Fischler had done one, and that's another guy who feels

Speaker 1 like, right, like that he had popped up in a Cohen before. Karpovsky had done Lewin Davis.
I was just about to say Karpovsky, but does he have a line in this? He just takes the pictures, right?

Speaker 1 He just moves around,

Speaker 1 he just smirks. But I'm like, he's giving so much.
Had Ricardo? It's giving so much.

Speaker 1 I don't know. That's kind of.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You do have to just think about like True Grit was their biggest hit. That comes only a couple years after they sweep the Oscars.

Speaker 1 And then Inside Lune Davis is basically immediately greeted as a masterpiece, even though it doesn't become a big Oscar movie. It's like, this is maybe their best thing.

Speaker 1 They were just running so hot where like anyone would show up for one day for them.

Speaker 1 And we haven't even shouted out the narrator.

Speaker 1 Michael Cambon. We love to hear him.
Yeah, but this movie has a $22 million budget. Like, think about how much fucking value there is.

Speaker 1 This is a movie with like big sets and big costumes and like an all-star cast and everything. People just wanted to play.

Speaker 1 Do you think about how inside Lewin Davis wasn't nominated for any Oscars? I think about it constantly. That is crazy.
Or did it maybe get like a cinematography?

Speaker 1 It must have gotten song and cinematography.

Speaker 1 Sound and cinematography. And no song? No song? No, because remember they submitted

Speaker 1 the like, oh, you know, the please, Mr. Kennedy.
And didn't rather than fairly thought it was too silly. Right.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, that's some of the dumbest shit of all time.

Speaker 1 That movie is, I'm excited to rewatch it.

Speaker 1 We will have done it at this point. It's too hot in New York right now

Speaker 1 to watch that movie. Thank God we can't so cold.
It's like that I would just sort of be like, no, no, it's never felt like this in New York. This is science fiction.

Speaker 1 It's one of the great great coat movies. It is.
One of the great coat movies. I can't believe I come here and it's so hot.
It's so hot.

Speaker 1 You guys won't come to L.A.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 come gladly and with pleasure. I fly to L.A.

Speaker 1 with pleasure.

Speaker 1 We were just having a text conversation about a thing that David won't go to L.A. for.
No.

Speaker 1 It was a hard time.

Speaker 1 We assume you're not doing it. But I support it.
Yeah. I'll film a video message.
Train.

Speaker 1 You could just drive the whole way.

Speaker 1 great idea i would love to do that i would love it's not i don't like flying i know that's why i'm so i don't like and it's of course flying getting a bit of a bad rap right now i will say uh bad rap couple a couple of

Speaker 1 red flags in the the old news for airplanes but no i have it's not children not the flying guys children children you say this but the arguments were not very different pre-children

Speaker 1 I took planes pre-children.

Speaker 1 I did.

Speaker 1 I did. I took planes pretty well.
No, you you did. Yes.
I did cross-country train trip to California. It was wonderful.
You enjoyed it, didn't you? I had a grand old. Were there any hiccups?

Speaker 1 And I'm not talking about the star of hits, live-action remake, How to Train Precious Children.

Speaker 1 I didn't realize there wasn't going to be Wi-Fi on the train because you go to areas of the country where there is nothing and they were like, you will not have cell phone signal, let alone Wi-Fi on the train.

Speaker 1 And so I should have downloaded a bunch of stuff to my iPad before

Speaker 1 I got on. That was the mistake I made.
What did you do instead? Did some reading.

Speaker 1 Did some thinking. Staring out the window.
A lot of time in the whatever they call it,

Speaker 1 not the viewer car or whatever, but they have the one car that's in the car. And they know what it's like.

Speaker 1 That's like all big windows. And you drive through, drive through.
The train runs through these areas where you're like, there is

Speaker 1 no other sign of human life. Untouched beauty.
Anywhere. You're like, you only get to see this land if you're on this

Speaker 1 train. Is that the panoramic car or something? I think that's right.

Speaker 1 You know, if we had the internet, we could look it up. We could.

Speaker 1 And we don't. We are recording this episode on a cross-country tour.
In a bunker, because it is hot outside. It is a bit of a bunker that we're in right now.
Hail Caesar.

Speaker 1 What are things we should call out? Well, I'm sorry. Actually, that's

Speaker 1 time for a union break. I'm going to call it.

Speaker 1 Box lunch or hot lunch?

Speaker 1 Hot lunch.

Speaker 2 David.

Speaker 2 David? Yes. This episode, you didn't respond the first time, so I had to intensify.

Speaker 2 This episode is once again brought to you by our friends at AG1. Your best friend.
My best friends. I'm looking at this copy here, and they're giving you some notes, right? Make it personal.

Speaker 2 Talk to a friend. This isn't a read, it's a recommendation.
I don't need any of these things because I'm talking to two of my best friends in the world about one of the best products I know.

Speaker 2 And this is a personal endorsement, okay?

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Not to mention holiday travel. Good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good.

Speaker 2 It's not perfect out there, that holiday travel. So, yeah, you definitely want as much routine as possible within your body.
I got a couple trips coming up. Uh-oh.

Speaker 2 I got an increased amount of family time. You're going to the windy city.
I know that.

Speaker 2 I'm just saying, I need the AG-1 more than ever. And the thing I like about AG-1 is they give you options.
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Right.

Speaker 2 But then they give me the little travel packets that I can take on the road. And darkness and shorter days can throw off your rhythm.
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Speaker 1 The kind of shit as like students of filmmaking that you know they just love digging into the details of like the lunch strata.

Speaker 1 Almost leaning in to make sure we capture it in full quality.

Speaker 1 Again, again, but yes, that bit of like you never seeing the Jesus actor who they're just like, we found a guy who has the right look from behind and doesn't have to deliver dialogue.

Speaker 1 Seat-wise, but the movie also never shows us the guy head-on. And you just hear this meek voice of a guy who just kind of works as Jesus from most angles.
and that fucking just cut in.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, for a film that's about faith and art and faith in oneself's work and passion and purpose, like for Jesus to not be a principal is very funny.

Speaker 1 That's the other thing I think this movie captures really well is like the thing that kind of goes away with the death of the studio system is this sort of feeling of like, this is just a job.

Speaker 1 People clock in and clock out, right? Because you have like a contract and you know when one production ends, you're going to be put on the next one. Right.

Speaker 1 this back lot is your office right you're not like negotiating to be like oh god i hope i can get this grip job in bulgaria i haven't booked anything in 18 months and this sort of like kind of rote like banal routines of these things yeah and this guy just going up to the fucking guy who's literally like mounted on a cross and being like are you principal or extra and the guy's just like i actually don't even know

Speaker 1 and it's just a matter of which lunch do i give you right Exactly. I don't know.
It's work today. Yeah.
It's like, it's, yeah, but it's always loving or at least affectionate. Yes.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 there's a world where that's almost kind of glib, where you're like, come on, guys. Like, what are we glossing over? Like, but it never feels like they're glossing anything over.

Speaker 1 They're giving you the kind of nasty side. Yeah, absolutely.
Of hopping without it being hectoring or, you know. Yeah, it's nasty and nostalgic at the same time.
Just like me.

Speaker 1 Can I circle back to a couple?

Speaker 1 Yeah, big time.

Speaker 1 Can I circle back to a couple more Hobie things? Hobie? Yes. One, I love that Manix trusts him and tells him what's going on.
Hope, yes.

Speaker 1 It's like

Speaker 1 he's been getting Hobie goes like, this is bad, real bad, or whatever. Bad for movie stars everywhere.
Hope he's kind of a Tom Cruise. Like, he believes in protecting movies.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 And his speech about like, you should look at the X-rays, which is like, is this a sort of like classist, I'm a star, look at the lowest guys in the rung?

Speaker 1 But then he explains explains that he's just like you know i i i knew i know the gaffers you know like i know the script girls right you're like he is someone who like has such respect and love for everyone who works on these movies and understands that it's like we're all part of the same thing i don't have ego but just simply the extras aren't here every day so you just don't know and some of them i like quite a bit you know but some of them you don't know but yeah hobie like clocks the briefcase thing and you see this moment where brolin does the math and it's like is he just so tired that, like, this was what he had lotted to be his three minutes of closing his eyes and decompressing?

Speaker 1 And Hobie comes in and he's just like, fuck it. I'm going to tell you.
Or does he correctly read that, like, Hobie's smarter than people think? Right. He's like considerate.
He's thoughtful.

Speaker 1 He's observant. He might actually have good intel, which is rewarded in the fact that Hobie's the one who puts it fucking together and rescues Baird.

Speaker 1 Well, Eddie reads Hobie so well, also, because Hobie is like, whatever you need, I can get you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it's not like, but he's not saying it in this like cloying way or like he,

Speaker 1 Hobie never comes off as someone who wants to climb the ladder. No, they talk, they talk about that he genuinely wants to help.
The other thing I want to bring up, Veronica Osario,

Speaker 1 UCB alum is so phenomenal in this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Playing like a Carmen Miranda type who the studio is trying to, now that they're trying to make Hobie an A-list star, they're trying to set him up with one of their other stars to get more press to present him as a bit of a Lothario.

Speaker 1 And it is such a sweet little romance in this movie that they go on this arranged date and you can tell they actually

Speaker 1 connect. She's so cute.
They're catching

Speaker 1 a manufactured thing that is becoming real.

Speaker 1 And them having the two fucking sweat and stop by the table and they have the lines they've been coached to say and yet they're just sort of like, there's an actual energy here that isn't fake.

Speaker 1 It's so frankly. It's so good.
She is so good. It's endearing.
She's great. The chemistry is so good.
I love the brass tacks of them explaining their fucking routines.

Speaker 1 How do you balance the fruit on the head? How do you do the lasso shit? You know, like just like, this is the grunt work that goes into then making something look really effortless.

Speaker 1 And lassoing her finger is such an innocent move that then they have to like, that, that when they are confronted by the two tildas, it's like suddenly they have to be on, but then they're already on.

Speaker 1 Italian origami.

Speaker 1 I think he calls it Italian origami. Italian origami.
Spaghetti.

Speaker 1 They're so good. I believe them more than I believe

Speaker 1 Sean Mendez and Camila Cabello. I believe them more than other manufacturers.
Many people think. Who is Sean Mendez? Who's Sean Mendez? This is a great question.

Speaker 1 Wow. I've been too afraid to ask.
I don't, you know, and he never got a chair, so I also don't know.

Speaker 1 Canadian? Is Camila Cabello the one who is Cinderella? Ooh, yeah. Yes.
In the Amazon.

Speaker 1 Cinderella.

Speaker 1 She comes in a little package. That was a tough.
That was a tough one.

Speaker 1 I feel like

Speaker 1 that might be your least favorite movie of all time. I feel like you sometimes identify it.
And part of was also like deep lockdown. Yeah, it wasn't Amazon streaming bullshit.

Speaker 1 But that is like maybe the closest I've ever seen to, like, is David going to be okay? I like Kate Cannon. Like, I liked Walkers.

Speaker 1 And it was one of those things where I'm like, is this like you love James Corden and supporting roles and movies? I like James Acaster, who's also

Speaker 1 an atheist. We had good people involved.
Not enough.

Speaker 1 But it felt like the apotheosis of a sort of like, we can't just be like, guys, did you know Cinderella is kind of problematic?

Speaker 1 There has to be more than this.

Speaker 1 We cannot do this. Well, this

Speaker 1 must cease.

Speaker 1 But then I watched recently, and I want to say that I love and respect our friend Rachel Ziegler. I cannot wait for her to come back on the show.
Same.

Speaker 1 Yes, possibly will have happened recently if not cut the statement out, Ben. But nonetheless, but I watched that Snow White movie.
Yes, and it is stinky poo-foo. It's stinky poo-poo.

Speaker 1 Now, it is no good. I will say this.
She acquits herself just about as well as you could.

Speaker 1 And Rachel is a fucking movie star in the way that this movie is about, where you're just like, anytime she is doing something on screen is magical and she is so multi-skilled and smart about what she's doing that anytime it is a close-up of her face, you're like, this is a real movie.

Speaker 1 And then it cuts out to a wide shot of the eight worst-looking characters I have ever seen. I have never seen more hard dwarves.

Speaker 1 Every time these CGI dwarves were on screen, I wanted to eat glass and then spit it into my eyes. Well, let me tell you,

Speaker 1 Rachel, a star, so talented. CJ, this started.

Speaker 1 I'm not forcing anybody's mind. She

Speaker 1 yes. Yes.
But the dwarves showed up at my screening. The child behind me screamed.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They came out. They're like,

Speaker 1 they're shadowy, and then they walk out and they're like, hi-ho, hi-ho, whatever, or whatever. No, it's hi-ho with a bunch of new stuff.
Yeah, yeah. And the kid behind me goes,

Speaker 1 I turned to my girlfriend and I said, like 30 seconds into them being introduced, I said, I am physically suffering from having to look at them on screen.

Speaker 1 And I think this is going to be a big issue for the rest of the movie. Anytime they were on screen, I was like shaking.
You would think that they're a small issue, Griffith.

Speaker 1 They should be a little issue. And in fact,

Speaker 1 but is another example of what you're saying of like, okay, we want to make a big, expensive live-action Snow White. Obviously, Snow White is problematic now.

Speaker 1 So we have to address all the controversies head-on. And I'm like, or maybe you should take the lesson here, which is don't make modern Snow White.
Don't make modern Cinderella. Don't do that.

Speaker 1 They're so worried about these movies. Don't do them.

Speaker 1 It's also the new songs never mesh well. I never watched the Cinderella.
I mean, I'm always concerned about David, but yes, that period of time was no good. Really? No boy, no.

Speaker 1 Concerned about me? Yeah, of course. We're all worried about you.
We're all worried about you all the time.

Speaker 1 Snow White already only had like three songs to begin with in the original movie. And then this one.
One of them involves a lot of whistling. Right.

Speaker 1 This movie cuts out one of the three songs because it's woke.

Speaker 1 Unwoke. And you're like, so we're down to two and it's like dog fun to somebody and

Speaker 1 And you're just like, what's this song about? You're like, I don't know.

Speaker 1 They also

Speaker 1 don't want the dwarves to be dwarves, right? Because they think that's condescending. So they're like,

Speaker 1 it is them and they look like the cartoon designs and they have the same names, but they're actually some kind of weird magical creature.

Speaker 1 So they do hi-ho, and in the middle of hi-ho, they add three verses being like, we are a mortal. We come from sacred realm.

Speaker 1 I'm not shitting you. They do have a hope and they're doing like fucking mining as if they're like...
It's kind of like one of the reasons

Speaker 1 to start explaining, like, we're our own thing. We can detect jewels with a special sense.
And the jewels glow. You're not exaggerating.

Speaker 1 That's absurd. And I'm like ripping out my soup cushion.

Speaker 1 Children are crying. Children are screaming.
Rachel's like looks very good in that film. She is.
She really does acquit herself. Something else in the film I thought was no bueno.

Speaker 1 So there was another action. Oh, I believe she sings quite a bit in it.
And it sounds like it's a good thing. Something was happening in those scenes.
Yeah, I'm not sure if I'd call it.

Speaker 1 In her defense, there was such a warm reception to her singing the song Imagine on Instagram in the year 2020 that who wouldn't then follow that lead and say, I got to quadruple down on this.

Speaker 1 I mean, I thought that video was so powerful and meaningful, and it really turned my pandemic experience around. And right now, I really would love to lead us in a rendition of

Speaker 1 the shit.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 guys, just to pay proper tribute to the original video, let's make sure that none of us are in the same kitchen. That when we hand off from one morning to another.

Speaker 1 I vote not going outside where it's hot. And if you want to like jam some sort of sand into your iPhone microphone, you know, really making it hard for it to pick up the noise.

Speaker 1 Right, if you want to hold it up to your nostrils. Some people are doing it amidst whipping winds.
Some people have dogs barking in the background.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm also a part of the cast of the Wonder Woman 1984, so. Yes.
They should make Wonder Woman 1985. What if they did that? They were like, Now we're slowing it down,

Speaker 1 like not present, except it's not about 1985, it's about the bowling for soup song. Yes, please elaborate.
No, okay.

Speaker 1 Um, other Hobie stuff I want to say, yes, uh, in that in that date scene, she goes, So, how did you end up in this position?

Speaker 1 And he says this kind of story that's this thing that used to happen, it doesn't really happen anymore.

Speaker 1 But Chang Tatum is sort of one of these guys where he's like, I was a rodeo guy proper, then I got side work as a wrangler, Then at some point they just go like, can we throw you a line?

Speaker 1 Then they realized I could speak. I think he became a stunt person.
Then they threw him a line. Like this like slow evolution.

Speaker 1 And then they like they heard I could sing and then they decided I got to be the guy. You know, the line of, and then I get to be the guy.
Right.

Speaker 1 Is just, it's, I don't know. Channing is such a good comp.
I haven't thought about it that way. Yeah.
He's already.

Speaker 1 It's why I think his casting is so good. Alden himself, I suppose, a little bit.
This sort of, I mean, he's a little bit more of the like, right, we found this gem on a fully formed.

Speaker 1 That's the difference. Like, where do we place him? Whereas Channing, like, we all got to see him built.
Yeah, we can see that. At this point, Weapons has come out, and I hope he's really good.

Speaker 1 Very, very excited to see him in it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And of course, he's an Ironheart. Of course.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 The world's most

Speaker 1 on-time series. The most serious.
Being released exactly when it was originally planned.

Speaker 1 You know who he's playing in it, right? He's no, who's he playing? He's playing Ezekiel Stain. He's playing Jeff Bridges' son.

Speaker 1 And Anthony Ramos is the red hood. Oh, boy, they're pulling

Speaker 1 80th-tier characters, right? And assigning like wildly overall characters to pull it out. That is the marvel TV way.

Speaker 1 But, like, I occasionally will, I'll send any tweet I see about Iron Heart to my brother because we're like obsessed with Iron Heart. Not the Red Hood, the hood.

Speaker 1 The Red Hood's the fucking decent character, right?

Speaker 1 The Mendestar.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 like, there was some tweet that was like, Iron Heart will not use magic until later in the series. And I was like, what? She's using magic? Is that like the dwarves? Like, when did that get?

Speaker 1 Well, that's because she had a fucking suit. By the time this episode comes out, it will have been a long settled thing.
But isn't the rumor that Sasha Baron Cohen plays Mephisto in the series?

Speaker 1 Are you kidding me?

Speaker 1 I believe the show gets into the satanic arts, which is then you realize that he was pulling the strings on the hood. I think that's where this is going.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Perhaps that was five versions ago. Right.
No, I think you're right. Certainly that's rumored.
Right.

Speaker 1 Anyway,

Speaker 1 hey, L C, is there anything else you want to say about beautiful Hobie Doyle?

Speaker 1 We must just call out Would That It were So Simple, which is, for my money, one of the funniest scenes in the history of the world.

Speaker 1 I know that I like to make hyperbolic statements as such, but this thing hits so fucking hard every sentence. It's kind of like a brother thing of like

Speaker 1 doing the, you know,

Speaker 1 damn, we're in a tight spot four times of like, would that it's like it takes, it goes on for so long that you're like, this can't be funny anymore. And then, of course, course, it gets funny again.

Speaker 1 It's such a slow burn of just like him arriving on set, Lorenz immediately clocking, like, this isn't my kind of guy, right? I love the character detail.

Speaker 1 It's the kind of thing that Fiennes plays so well, but like, he is such a fucking pretentious snob that he's actually doing a bad job as a director in the process because it's like, dude, stop using the fucking $40 words.

Speaker 1 It's clearly not getting through to him and it's not helping your movement.

Speaker 1 I like the little jokes that get built in, such as when he's like switches from Mr. Lawrence to Lawrence, and Hobie's like, wait a second, I thought.

Speaker 1 And he's like, no, no, you can use our Christian names, you know, like, you know, things like that. Have you seen this before?

Speaker 1 No, I had never seen it. I want your overall opinions, but this scene in particular.

Speaker 1 It's the physical comedy of it, it is something that I've really dug in on. I think he just plays the physicality and just like conveying how out of depth he is.

Speaker 1 And just by a little bit, right? Like, but it's just subtly off enough, even in like the steps and the handling of the movie. I love when they

Speaker 1 pull out, and all you can hear is his shoes squeaking, echoing in the room.

Speaker 1 Here comes Obi.

Speaker 1 Who's playing the female? It's Emily Beacham. Right, right.
Very funny. They did a really good, and you have Agnes Dean in here as well, and Jack Houston.

Speaker 1 Like some of the fake movie stars they cast that you only get to see in snippets are correctly identified. These people have old-fashioned faces.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 These are like old school

Speaker 1 beauties with like old school kind of like,

Speaker 1 they hold themselves in a certain way. And they make the most of their two lines.
Yeah. Whatever it is.
I, I, I adore that she kind of like, what does she say?

Speaker 1 She says, um, Allegra can't make it or something. I can't remember the exact line.
Yes. But the, but the more frustrated she gets with Hobie, like you can see it little by little.
There's the moment.

Speaker 1 And Hobie's clocking it. There's

Speaker 1 where she has to react to him. And you see, I think they do a a close-up on her as he delivers his first line.
And you see it in her eyes of like this whole movie is going down the drain.

Speaker 1 And she can't totally blow it because she's got to stay in the scene. But she looks like they pulled her out of a time machine.
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 They also costumed her as such, right? Like the costuming. And then we haven't talked about the costuming in this.
It's also, it's so perfect.

Speaker 1 We still got a production to see. We are in 1951.

Speaker 1 God, even the hair,

Speaker 1 they really capture that era. Perfect beauty lighting in a way we don't get anymore.
We haven't shouted out, good luck, bar, rest in peace, good luck, bar, and Los Felas. That's the best.

Speaker 1 Oh, tell us about this. I don't know what you're talking about.
This is some L.A. nonsense.
This is not LA nonsense. The place is LA net.
It's going for the meeting with the Lockheed Barkey. Right.

Speaker 1 It's like the Chinese restaurant.

Speaker 1 It's a great old-fashioned Chinese restaurant. Great bar.
Went on a date there once. Great vibes.
Hey, how did they eat? How'd the date come? I'm not bragging. I'm all right.

Speaker 1 I've been to that restaurant as well. It's awesome.
There you go. Yeah.
I've never been there.

Speaker 1 But I feel like the locations they chose not only is like i don't know like like like you could see it as an equivalent of like the formosa cafe right where it's kind of like people went there all the time back in the golden age of hollywood and it's like the places they went were also just as much like facades as the studio yeah you know like it's and so this is their entire world and it is like them attempting to leave the studio but at the same time they're still in this like set surely very well formosas where la confidential where um

Speaker 1 yes where he's like you know you look like, don't, just because you're a whore look cut to look like blah. It's like, no, it is her.

Speaker 1 I love that all of these locations are like scattered around LA, right? Like, it's not, not, not just this. I mean, like, Formosa's near where I live.
Los Felas had Good Luck Bar.

Speaker 1 There's like in Koreatown, there's a bar called The Prince, which was used in Chinatown. It was also the bar in New Girl.
This is

Speaker 1 a control. I love it.
I love it. No, I know.
I know The Prince because I think our friend Allison Herman had her, one of her wedding events there. Oh, Pee-Wee Sister? Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 Have you ever thought that like Los Angeles, another term for it could be like the city of angels. Oh man.
Because it's like Los Angeles. You know?

Speaker 1 Do you remember that time that I won the Oscar for best actress and it hit me in that moment? It's true what they say about this city.

Speaker 1 It's full of angels. There you go.
I'm sorry, guys. I just got to say, can we skip, stick to the script, please? That really was just a matter of time.

Speaker 1 Can you give me any direction, anything you want differently this time? Try doing what you're doing okay but better okay

Speaker 1 it is true what they say about this city

Speaker 1 as fume doesn't melt steel beams um she did say that she did say that we never went to the moon um

Speaker 1 too lazy to go to the old moon uh

Speaker 1 you know what my favorite la bar is though

Speaker 1 it's a little place called chicken on a stick

Speaker 1 a little jazz bar the what just called it sticking That's where Jazz was created. That's where Jazz was created by this really shiny white guy.
The Copacabanstall. How shiny?

Speaker 1 How shiny. Very shiny.
The Copacabanistal Club where

Speaker 1 Hobie and Bron Carcero's character, Home Fringing and Carlotta. Carlotta go on the arranged date, right? There is that feeling of like, oh, this is living the big Hollywood life, which A.

Speaker 1 Things were so much cooler when fucking movie stars weren't going to the Viper Club or wherever the fuck they're going. Viper room.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And it was like, man. i don't think they go there anymore hard days

Speaker 1 hard day of work you got to go out and party you sit at a fucking white tablecloth place where some big band plays this most brightly lit room in the world and everyone has to dress nice and then just point at each other but like yes shanning tatum's also there with the suitcase like the two gossip comments are there like this is like their nightlife and yet this is all part of the machinery this is basically a nighttime version of the studio commissary.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
It is. It's it's it's so controlled, but it's supposed to not feel controlled.
Can I shout out another guy in this movie?

Speaker 1 Um, one of the actors in the this, the Roman movie, uh, Senator Asystimus, yes,

Speaker 1 uh, is played by a guy called Clement von Frankenstein. Quite a good name.

Speaker 1 Ooh, say it again. Clement von Frankenstein.
Faster. Clement von Frankenstein.

Speaker 1 Slower. Clement

Speaker 1 von Frankenstein.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Isn't that a cool name? He's a member of the Frankenstein family.
Yeah. I I would go by Frankenstein.
Well, Frankenstein is not like that. What if my name was like David Dracula?

Speaker 1 And I'm like, oh, it's Dracula, actually.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm saying. Right.
Just go with it, man. He died in 2019.
He did. And

Speaker 1 he's interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Did we know that? Also in L.A.
Did we know that Heather Goldenhirts was married to Brian F. O'Byrne? No, that's wonderful.

Speaker 1 That's a cool fucking couple.

Speaker 1 Right. Character, actor, legends there.
Yeah. I mean, Brian F.
O'Byrne, great theater actor. Yeah.
I love this. I think she has a a little accent over the eye.
Everyone knows this. Brian Effelburn.

Speaker 1 Anyway, everyone has great names. This is just a movie I find so relaxing for how much it is like a movie that really spins my brain and gets me thinking off about a bunch of different things.
Right.

Speaker 1 Your brain is thinking off.

Speaker 1 My brain is thinking off, but the aesthetic pleasures of this movie, the like tuning of every single performance.

Speaker 1 And that it does ultimately like reassert why I am so obsessed and build my life around these stupid things that are so hard to make and involve like so much pain and suffering and also involve like the worst people in the world ruining other people's lives.

Speaker 1 It just makes me feel very romantic. I love the name the future.
It's so dumb. The future is so extremely dumb.

Speaker 1 We are the future. I like that their ransom note is also just like somebody,

Speaker 1 you know, got on a typewriter, wrote four lines.

Speaker 1 cute, cute little note. Yeah, but none of this cutting things out of magazines.

Speaker 1 Also, that they're literally their plan is to hand a big briefcase of money to a submarine captain so that he like remembers them fine.

Speaker 1 You can just take it to the Soviet Union and be like, here's a, you know, demonstrably small amount of money.

Speaker 1 Compliments of the future. Right.
It doesn't feel like they want to go to Russia. I think they're more like, in case they take over, they'll like look kindly upon us or whatever.
I'm amused.

Speaker 1 Okay, that sequence does feel like, like, it's everything about it is hilarious to me. It's also like they all have the same raincoats.
It looks like a fantasy sequence. Yes.

Speaker 1 It also, it like looks like tank photography in this very traditional way, even though it is ostensibly a quote-unquote real-world sequence.

Speaker 1 It is as coded in the language of the genres of films that you're seeing in the productions.

Speaker 1 And even the look of the submarine having this kind of model, and then you're like, now we're just on a big balsa wood that's clearly only the topic.

Speaker 1 That's the one where I like, that's the one scene I feel like doesn't have that dichotomy that the rest of the film has. That's kind of like, it's fake, but it's real at the same time.

Speaker 1 We pull away, we see the set. It's a classic Cohen deflation, right? Of like, this is the big meeting.
And then, like, Channing does his like perfect like

Speaker 1 dancer jump. Yes.
But his, his foofy little dog

Speaker 1 jumps off and he has to catch him, which then causes him to drop the briefcase. And it was all for nothing.
Oh my God.

Speaker 1 100K. Yeah.
I think we're going to play the box office game, unless there's anything else. I just call it one tiny thing I like.
Please.

Speaker 1 Jonah Hill tells a story about the weekend that Super Bad came out. He went out to a bar with his friends and they were like, you're a fucking movie star overnight.
This is crazy.

Speaker 1 You got to have like the best weekend of your life. Right.
You've just like immediately made it. And they go to this bar and Scarlett Johansson's there.

Speaker 1 And they were like, you should go talk to Scarlett Johansson. And he was like, a guy like me can't talk to Scarlett Johanson.
And they were like, my guy, you just became a movie.

Speaker 1 You're number one at the bottom. Your thing's a hit.

Speaker 1 You can go talk to her.

Speaker 1 and he went over and talked to her and she clearly had no idea who he was and he talks about it as like the perfect immediate deflation at the moment he was riding high there's something kind of nice about this movie ending with them getting married off screen it's it is beautiful i like that she pruned his ego and then um you know off screen inflates his character it also feels like part of what attracts her to him is that he is some schmo where she's like this guy isn't gonna get caught up in some crazy fucking ego totally well she likes, again, that he's reliable.

Speaker 1 And he's, well, I, I don't know. Can I say one more thing about it? And it's, listen, you're not tired of me yet.
I mean, here's the, it's, it's like,

Speaker 1 I feel like re-watching this for me, I was kind of like, yeah, this movie is about, I mean, it's about a million things, but it is also squarely about whether, you know, to have passion for the job that you do.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And is it like, how much do you sacrifice in order to feel fulfilled to an extent at the, what you do day in and day out yes and and there is a way to read this film as like well the problem is he could do Lockheed and he would just be dead inside or he does this and he continues to not see his family and he's you know dying in some other way and there's no and there's no middle ground and that's such a bleak read but the film but but what I love about it is that the Cohen's kind of push you to see it as more optimistic than that they're reassuring they're like Jonah Hill to me well and also that Allison Pill is like it would be nice to have you around more but isn't like you better take that job.

Speaker 1 Right, right. And his children still love him.
And you, you can tell that he clearly wishes he could be there a little more, but he is so relieved that like, oh my God, his problem got solved.

Speaker 1 I'm telling you something. Please.
I was married to Allison Pill

Speaker 1 every night. No pay five walls.

Speaker 1 Knock, knock. Sure.
Open the door. I guess I would have keys.
Key and door. I got a prescription.
It says one pill. Exactly.
Exactly. Nightly.
Do not skip. And thank you for saying that.

Speaker 1 And I do think it's important. Take with water.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 the reason I said

Speaker 1 that there's this sort of like realization within Eddie that he is dirty show folk is that point, which is just like, it's not about just finding joy in a job, but the whole thing about the fucking entertainment industry making stuff is for all the like perceived glamour, if you make it all the way to the top, which is a fucking moonshot, a lazy moonshot, so much of it is so unglamorous, so annoying, so soul-crushing that the only reason you do it is if it, there's just nothing else you can do, right?

Speaker 1 Like to some degree, you're broken inside where you're just like, even just being the guy fucking handing out the box lunches who, once George Clooney is giving his speech, seems like the most checked out dude in the world until that moment.

Speaker 1 And you see him lock in and be like, oh, fuck, Baird's doing a good take, right?

Speaker 1 As does everyone else on set starts to look up with this like Spielberg gaze of like, we're witnessing something cool happening. That's why we do this job rather than work at a restaurant, right?

Speaker 1 And I think it's telling that there are the couple of moments where the Lockheed Martin guy guy is interviewing Eddie and he'll say, like, do you really want to spend all your time like babysitting children?

Speaker 1 You know, like carny circus folk. Like, he'll say these kind of derogatory things.
And every time he does something like that, it cuts back to Manix and he winces.

Speaker 1 But he's just kind of like holding it together, but he's like, don't talk that way about my people. Right.

Speaker 1 I know you think that I'm the serious grown-up who gets things done and they're the silly, petulant. But it's hard for them.
Yes. Yeah.
And I'm like, I am one of them. I just do it in a different way.

Speaker 1 Yeah. He cares.
He cares. Can I just share one final thing? Yes, please.
May two.

Speaker 1 May three.

Speaker 1 I don't know. We'll see.
But the water sequence is awesome.

Speaker 1 The Johansson. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I like when cameras get splashed with water.

Speaker 1 And I want to see that more.

Speaker 1 You like a wet cam. I do.
Yeah. I do.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Sometimes blood does that. Dirt does that.
Yeah. But you want the water.

Speaker 1 Stain the lens, yeah, mess with the lens and throw stuff on it. Yeah, don't check the gate, yeah, yeah, you want a dirty lens,

Speaker 1 keep the gate unchecked, and then I'll just say with the Roman kind of opening when you see Clooney,

Speaker 1 I think arches for pedestrians. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I want to see more of that again. I'm sorry, it's so epic to walk under an arch.
So you just want to be like on the street and like, here's an arch. It's not serving any real purpose.

Speaker 1 Yes, but now, do you ever feel that way when you're like walking under some scaffolding on a New York City side? No, I don't feel that way.

Speaker 1 I'm not an arch. I'm more like that's arch, like, right, that's arch in progress, arch in progress.
Yeah, do you go, do you ever arch to be shot?

Speaker 1 Like, go to Washington Square Park and just big arch that loop around, used to be crashed

Speaker 1 absolutely in laps, that's Grand Army Plaza. There's a few big arches around,

Speaker 1 you should go to Paris and then go into the middle of the Etrois

Speaker 1 and just go

Speaker 1 last summer. And I got a lot of crazy random things.
Oh, man. I got a taste of it.
Yeah. Fucking point me to the French triumphs of late.
Jesus. Got a whole arch for it.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 You're being so nasty and not nostalgic today. Oh, that's so true.
I should be

Speaker 1 ah, Parry.

Speaker 1 You're being more of a Thessaly Thacker when you should be more of a Thorothacker to revisit France in my most excited upcoming new movie, Ratatouille 2.

Speaker 1 Why don't they just call it Ratatou?

Speaker 1 I hope that by the time this episode comes out, that rumor has been quashed. Yes, definitively.

Speaker 1 But I also wonder if 50% of the meeting where they're batting about is just like, I mean, you put the two, numeral two in the title. The thing sells itself.
You can really put it anywhere.

Speaker 1 Our marketing department could take the year off. My guess is it's a cat that now cooks with the rat.
That would suck. Ben, I've liked every idea you've ever had.

Speaker 1 They have to figure out how to get along. They can't put a cat in a chef's head.
It's just the cat in the hat. Yeah.
You can't. And he's already got his own movie coming out.
He's already. Damn.
Okay.

Speaker 1 We got to workshop this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The film came out. Oh.

Speaker 1 Are you going to save it for Shirley? Tell me when the film came out. To the box office.
We love Shirley so much. Hey, I love you guys.
I've missed you guys. We've missed Shirley.

Speaker 1 Our listeners have missed you. Do you remember?

Speaker 1 I've missed hearing Griffin say totemic, which he hasn't said today. Totemic.
You use the word totemic a lot. I'm going to save it.
I do. Haven't I said that to you before? Never mind.
Okay, going on.

Speaker 1 No, no, I sure do have to. Do you remember? I was debating whether to say it now or save it for the episode make it count.
You were in town last year. Oh, yeah.
I mean, you're off. You're someone.

Speaker 1 You come into town somewhere. I come into town.

Speaker 1 We had dinner at Place Defett. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Nice work if you can get it. And then we walk out.
If you remember this, we're walking Clinton Hill. And then I see just out of the corner of my eye into the window of like a person's house.

Speaker 1 And what was happening on the television was something we had successfully blocked out, which was the Trump-Biden debate that annihilated Biden for good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, I think we had had been like, let's have dinner. And we're like, we won't worry about the, you know, like, ah, you know, so stressful.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then, like, I got home and like, my brother was texting me, you know, my wife, where they were like, it's the apocalypse. He's basically stood there not speaking for an hour.

Speaker 1 Even Trump seems concerned. No, that was the last happy moment.
Like, you went home to Ariana, was it? Like, one of your friends. I was staying at Ariana's, and I think she was like,

Speaker 1 I walk in the door and she goes, Biden's going to win.

Speaker 1 And you were like, oh, really? And she was like, no.

Speaker 1 I looked up because I knew I had deliberately planned something else. And then we all had the same thought of like, I can't be, you know, watching

Speaker 1 dinner after our very hard job. Romley and I went to see Little Shop a Horror for the third time.
And I walked out and I was like, little shop, little shop.

Speaker 1 And then I got like 40 texts that are like, it's all, it's a shop.

Speaker 1 It's all, that's collapsed. Truly.
It was one of those things where I was like, oh, I assume you would do bad. And they're like, well, you assumed wrong.
It's a billion times worse.

Speaker 1 I feel like 10 different people in my life texted me skull emojis. Wait, that's right.
I remember being like, oh, no, he didn't do well, did he? And she was like,

Speaker 1 it's understandable. I'm good.
Right.

Speaker 1 First minute was fine, I feel like. Pretty quickly went off the rail.
Yeah, he started off corn pop. Great opening.
Yeah. Oh, man.
They just kept telling him to say what that was.

Speaker 1 General Motors is live and Cornpop is dead. What if he started with that? All right.
The film came out on February 5th, 2016.

Speaker 1 Number two at the box office, opening to $11 million. It ends up at domestically, it ended up at $30.
Okay. And worldwide, it was $6.65.

Speaker 1 It is kind of crazy that the Cohen brand was so strong at this point that they can make a movie for $22 million that just gets to $30 million, even though most of the public is like, huh? Sure.

Speaker 1 On to the next one.

Speaker 1 But okay, yes. So number two.
Number two. Number one at the box office

Speaker 1 is an animated sequel, number two, like in its second weekend. It's a deuce.
It's in second weekend. No, no, it's not a number two.
Sorry, it's in its second weekend. It's an animated sequel.

Speaker 1 Is it a three? Yes, it is. It's a three.

Speaker 1 Is it Kung Fu Panda three? Correct.

Speaker 1 Kate Hudson. Is that right? I believe is Lady Panda in that.
Oh, Brian Cranson is that Panda? He finds all the other pandas. It's a movie set in the land of the pandas.
I have

Speaker 1 never seen it. I think I've seen it.
And you know so much. I think the only one I haven't seen is

Speaker 1 I haven't seen either of those. I know that one was a co-production with, like, I believe Pearl Animation Studios.
You know what? I've never seen it.

Speaker 1 I've only seen one and two, I guess. Dreamwork specifically launched a Chinese animation company to get funding from the Chinese government and be like, and we're going to make movies for your market.

Speaker 1 And it was called Pearl Animation Studios. And I think that one, they were like, we're doing something kind of interesting.
We're not making this one. Pearl is making it.
A different company.

Speaker 1 That really worked. Really worked.
Pearl was shut down five years ago.

Speaker 1 Three and four are holdovers from Christmastime, both very successful movies. Okay, from 2015.
I would have to imagine that one of them is Star Wars Episode 7, The Force Awakens. That is number three.

Speaker 1 Okay. At the box office.
It has made $906 million in eight weeks. Like to forget that it is still

Speaker 1 domestically the highest-grossing movie of all time.

Speaker 1 Number four at the box office is... I do like to forget that.
People forget that. People think that Endgame overtook it because it did worldwide.

Speaker 1 But domestically, it's Force Awakens by a good margin.

Speaker 1 The other one is a best picture nominee, won some Oscars. Big hit.
Star Wars counter programming. I guess so.
Grown-up movie for sure. Grown-up movie 2015.
It was a big hit.

Speaker 1 Oh, it is the revenant. Yes.
Which

Speaker 1 made a lot of money. And it was a big hit.
I think sox and is for losers. I've only...
I'm more of a fan of it than you, but I'm wondering if I were to watch it now.

Speaker 1 I'm incredibly expected more, but I, I, I, it's like sort of an unbelievable technical achievement. I will brag that I saw it early

Speaker 1 and I was like, this thing sucks. This is DOA.
And I had the opposite whole reaction where I walked out and I was like, this thing is making $0 and it's fucking coming up. empty at the Oscars.

Speaker 1 Like I had an unvarnished opinion before I had heard any reviews and that thing just completely bounced off of me. It is not your kind of movie, I would say.

Speaker 1 A sort of mountain man, serious, survivalist epic thing. But I also think Leo winning the Oscar for that is like a good encapsulation of a lot of what's wrong with the Oscars and their mentality.

Speaker 1 Definitely.

Speaker 1 You don't think actors should suffer? He ate liver. Exactly.

Speaker 1 I saw the Revenant with my dad, and he walked out and was like, that bear was too small.

Speaker 1 He fixates on like one critique. Yeah.
And it takes him out of it. Mostly because if there's a bunch of talking, there's a language barrier and he needs a minute.
But that movie

Speaker 1 was. I didn't have a ton of talking.
But the bear was too small. No, the bear was too small.
Number five at the box office is new this week. It is a romantic drama, a Sparks.
It's a Sparks.

Speaker 1 One of, I would say, the more forgotten Sparks. It's one of the more forgotten Sparkses.

Speaker 1 Interesting.

Speaker 1 Is it the one with Marsden? No.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Okay, I'm going to try to get to this

Speaker 1 by Star.

Speaker 1 It's not the Julianne Huff Josh DeMelle one. Yeah, you're going to struggle with star because I would say this one is a little light on, you know,

Speaker 1 stardust from the disguise.

Speaker 1 It was a Marsden, Michelle Monaghan, I think, were the one. You can talk about other Nicholas Sparks movies if you want.
But this kind of had...

Speaker 1 I feel like these are two guys who they are hoping, you know, a guy and a gal who they are hoping to make stars. It's not the lucky ones.
No. No, is it younger? Nope.

Speaker 1 And I looked this up and I forgot this existed. Are the stars stars young?

Speaker 1 No, they're in their 30s. Okay.
You know, early 30s. But they're trying to launch them as stars.
I think so. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The guy is someone that Hollywood for a few years is like, should he be a star? Uh-huh. And it was like, no.

Speaker 1 So it's not that. Did Patrick Schwarzenegger do one at some point, but it's not that.
I mean, he's about to be like Psycho. I know.
He's going to be something.

Speaker 1 Hollywood was trying to make them happen.

Speaker 1 I mean, sort of. I'll tell you that the film made $23 million on a budget of $10.
Okay. I'll tell you that it was directed by Ross Katz.

Speaker 1 It also made adult beginners. That does not help at all.
No, it doesn't. Who was the distributor of this film? The distributor was Lionsgate.

Speaker 1 So it was also kind of maybe a lower tier one. Yeah, and I feel like the spark shine is kind of going away at this point.
Like, this is a leader, you know. This one's tough.
Yeah. I mean, I...

Speaker 1 I completely forgot this. Give me one of the stars and see if I might not not even be able to get this title, but give me one of the stars.

Speaker 1 Benjamin Walker. Oh, fuck.
Yes. And it's Teresa Palmer.
Correct. And it is called...
Ah, fuck. You've also got...
Maggie Grace. I can picture the past.
Alexandra Dadari.

Speaker 1 You know, the truth is, you could just toss out any word. He's wearing sunglasses.
He's got a dumb smile. It's not called like the best of us, is it? No.
But the title's almost

Speaker 1 something like that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, just

Speaker 1 all of me.

Speaker 1 Is there an of in the title? No, is it the the blanks? It's called The Choice.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's one of the least existent movies we've ever had. That's pretty tough.
Alexandra Didario, Tom Welling, Tom Wilkinson. Humana humana, homina.

Speaker 1 That's the one getting you going.

Speaker 1 Panned by critics. Also new this week at number six is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, another sort of bomb.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Directed by Burr Steers, Steers, I believe.

Speaker 1 I went down a weird Wikipedia rabbit hole on how fucking hot the development of that movie was for 10 years before it ended up just getting kind of fucking dumped in theaters.

Speaker 1 But people forget that was supposed to be Natalie Portman starring and David O. Russell directing.
They dumped it. Right.
It was like the juice of that. gimmick had like long since vanished.

Speaker 1 And fucking Benjamin Walker as Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter had bombed. Had happened.
The thing was over. You've also got a movie I stand for, Craig Gillespie's The Finest Hours.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Yes, Kind, and getting over that ba. The guy got the boat over the ba.

Speaker 1 You got Ride Along 2

Speaker 1 film you tried to get in

Speaker 1 a part of, right?

Speaker 1 You were close. I was close.
Yeah. And then they replaced you with what, Ken Jong or something?

Speaker 1 I don't know if I've ever talked about this on Mike or if I've talked about it on Mike 80 times, but they wanted me to, I would have had to have quit the pilot of vinyl before it was shot.

Speaker 1 Yes, that was it. Right.

Speaker 1 Which was like... I mean, at the end of the day, I think it's better that you did vinyl.
It got directed by Martin Scorsese. That's what I mean right-along.
That's the biggest thing.

Speaker 1 And it did go to series, and it did pay my rent for a year when this podcast made no money.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, no one remembers Ride-A-Long 2.

Speaker 1 Do you know the other part of it is the casting director who was really kind of championing me for this part, which was written to be a fucking 20-something Zuckerberg-y, annoying guy.

Speaker 1 And it was me, Will Poulter, and Dylan O'Brien. Sure.

Speaker 1 And it was a test, and they wouldn't let me test unless I quit vinyl. And I came to trivia, and I hadn't slept in two days.
And I was like, this feels like the biggest decision of my career.

Speaker 1 What do I do? And it was an overlap of two days, but they between the two productions, but they wouldn't allow it. And I had to quit the one job.
And I chose vinyl, which was the right move.

Speaker 1 But the other thing that happened was that casting director had such a be in her bonnet of like, I want to fucking hire him that a year later, she gets hired onto a new series and says, this is my chance to hire Griffin.

Speaker 1 And it was the tick. There you go.
If I had done vinyl in two, I probably also wouldn't have done the tick, which is more important to me.

Speaker 1 And that's how I met you. That's how we met.
Yes. You interviewed him for the tick.
We're being nostalgic and not nasty, dude. Shirley showed up on

Speaker 1 what I'm not kidding was probably the hottest day we ever filmed. It was in a cooling tent.
The day before that, the tent was a cooling tent that didn't have a fan.

Speaker 1 They bought the fan because that previous day, Peter had fainted. And so Shirley at least got to be in a tent with a fan.

Speaker 1 And we met. Yeah, we love Shirley.
No, I love you, man. Griffin and Breaking Big.

Speaker 1 It was fun. I mean, I remember you guys were, yeah, you guys were doing your podcast.
I remember meeting you, and you were, and David was like, you're going to meet my friend.

Speaker 1 And I was like, I know this. But we've only been doing the podcast for a little over a year at that point.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were very neat.

Speaker 1 I still remember when you were, we were walking to Olive Garden. I was a fellow at the Atlantic, and you were like, I think my friend and I are going to do a Star Wars podcast.

Speaker 1 And I was like, that sounds fun. Yeah.
Sounds neat. That sounds right.
You should do that. Luck with that.

Speaker 1 Weird choice. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What, Olive?

Speaker 1 It was kind kind of a weird choice.

Speaker 1 Still the only time I've ever been.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I don't know why we did that.
You, Joe, and Kevin. Yeah, I think it was a bit because we were.

Speaker 1 Kevin being like, let's. Yeah, I love Olive Garden.
You've never been. Yeah.
Whatever. The breadsticks are good.
The breadsticks don't hit. Take it in dreams.
Nobody's taking it into dreams.

Speaker 1 Nobody in the box office.

Speaker 1 No one out of the box office. The boy, that movie about the boy with Jared Krishner.
Oh, right, of course, which then led to Brahm's colon, the boy too.

Speaker 1 Colonel's The Boy 2, of course, which is directed by Tarkovsky.

Speaker 1 It's one of the weirdest titles ever. Brahm's the Boy 2.
Is Katie Holmes in both of those movies? She's in Brahm's the Boy 2,

Speaker 1 but she is not in The Boy. How absurd is she? She doesn't get it up until Brahms enters.

Speaker 1 Number 10 of the box office is Dirty Grandpa.

Speaker 1 And that's the 10 of the Pale Caesar. And that's that.
That's over. February 2016.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Shirley, thank you so so much. Thank you for having me.
I'm so glad we made it happen. It's got to happen again sooner.

Speaker 1 I'll be back in time. Get David on a train to LA.

Speaker 1 David is asleep.

Speaker 1 No, he's just doing the whale again.

Speaker 1 He's too tired to even do the whale. Shirley, is there anything you want to plug?

Speaker 1 Oh, we got

Speaker 1 kind of a whale. It was like a whale post-heart attack.

Speaker 1 It's a tiny whale.

Speaker 1 It's the dead whale in the film, The Shallows. Baby Beluga.

Speaker 1 Anything I want to plug? Yeah. I don't know.
My iPhone in because it needs charging. 10 comedy points.
Great job. Thank you.
I don't know. I'm still at the Atlantic with David over here.
Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, great to always work with David. Can't believe when he's not here.
He's got

Speaker 1 how things have changed over time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 I'm around.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah. Thank you all for listening.
Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

Speaker 1 Tune in next week for the Battle of Buster Scrugs.

Speaker 1 That's right. Yes.
We don't know who's on that one. No.
Probably Buster himself. I think we're very close to booking Buster, but he also has thrown his hat in the ring for League of Their Own.

Speaker 1 So we don't know which one he's going to end up on. And as always, Shirley, thank you for another totemic episode of this podcast.
Wow.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. I'm honored.
Okay, that's a wrap on Shirley. Great girl.

Speaker 1 You two have to stay and record ads.

Speaker 1 Okay, all right, gang. All right, let's go.
I got my code ready to go. All right.

Speaker 1 I'd like us to have fun out there.

Speaker 1 All right. Thanks, guys.
Really bring your true self, feel authentic.

Speaker 1 Okay. I can't.
Is this your impression of a director? It does feel very soccer, coach.

Speaker 1 I'm suddenly nervous. I don't know what to tell you.
You need to have big director bullhorn nerds.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, listen.
I think we should get into it. Yep.
All right.

Speaker 1 Action. Yep.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Join our Patreon, BlankCheck Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

Speaker 1 Follow us on social at BlankCheck Pod.

Speaker 3 Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack.

Speaker 3 This podcast is created and produced by BlankCheck Productions.