Inside Llewyn Davis with Rachel Zegler

Blank Jack with Bridglin and David

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

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

If it was never new and it never gets old, then it's a podcast.

That's nice. Thank you.
I was wondering if you were going to sing. I can't.

And we do have a singer next to me. I'm going to put your attention to our guest today.

Who?

I know. Lenny Bernstein.
The dog Lenny Bernstein's been bark out the storm, and I daren't sing in front of him. I mean, technically, we have two dogs off the leash.

Oh, yeah, that's because we like to citizens off the leash.

Why are you off the leash? I don't know.

Hold me David Dogg. Here's the dog's nickname.
And then I recently gifted him his own leash. Oh,

he does have a leash. We could put in the way Lenny is like that.
You took the leash out, and Lenny immediately barked. Sorry, Lenny.
Sorry. Lenny's.
I am not trying to take you out.

I'm so sorry, guys. That's for David.

It's because David gets rowdy, Lenny. If I get silly, I'm off the leash.

Gotcha. Oh, Lenny, stop.
Sorry, guys. I shouldn't have said that.

I shouldn't have said it. Lenny's here.
Yeah. Two dogs off the L.
Oh, the ear. Oh, the L.
Oh, the L.

Yeah, that was, you did the line from the movie. That was great.
Sorry.

I love that line. Yeah,

there he goes.

Here's the other thing. He sings so well.

It's a little annoying what a good singer he is. It is disgusting.
It is distasteful.

Like, I have not, in the past, in the intro for this show, butchered songs from movies that are sung well, but because he does not sing that often, I was gonna say.

Every time I re-watch it, I'm like, Jesus Christ, he's actually this good at singing. Does he sing in anything else, really? I cannot.
He sings in a remember, putting on my Oscar Isaac hat, please.

Which is very annoying, and I'm very sorry. Ooh, what a charming hat.
He is. He has a great face on this.

He is in a film about like a high school reunion where he sings because he plays like somebody who went on from high school to become a singer. Okay.

And like, he was like, yeah, he's what is the one with Janet Tatum? Yes, with Channing Tatum. Rosario Dossi.
He's in this movie and it doesn't exist. Yes.
It's called, oh boy, really.

Is it called 10 years? It's called 10 Years. Yeah, because it's about a 10-year high school reunion.
It's from like his,

you know, like from like Robin Hood Drive, like his early Sucker Punch. It's 2011.

I imagine it's kind of like one of the first times he did sing publicly in a film.

And there's some great, I mean, he does a really great cover of Bob Dylan's song in it, weirdly enough.

What fucking song is it? He does have, I assume he sings in the still never released musical cut of Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch. Standing in the Doorway is the song he sings, supposedly.
No. No.

Okay, there we go. Well, then I don't know.
The problem is if you Google Oscar Isaac Bob Dylan, Google's just like, no, it's called Inside Lynn. Actually, that's true.
It's unfair.

And you're like, and Bob Dylan is depicted in

Inside Lewin Davis. But I'm looking, I'm not.
clocking any other movie that I can remember him seeing. Why not sing more, Oscar?

I honestly, I have to say, I kind of respect it because as somebody who has made her career on something like that, then it just becomes a thing that everybody wants you to do all the time.

Well, it's hard and you're good at it. So people want you to do it.
The thing is, I'm just so darn good at it.

I have two things to say. He dances, of course, famously and ex-machines.
Great dancing, yes. But he's never done a full-blown singing and dancing musical, which we know he can do both.
We've tried.

We've tried. There was the longest time he was rumored to be doing the funny girl revival

for the longest time he was doing. And like on stage? Yeah, on stage.
Right, right, right.

He'd probably be pretty good. And I certainly think he would be fantastic in literally anything that he ever tried to do.
I agree. And we're going to be good.

We're going to talk about him a lot because it's been an interesting career. God forbid a girl wants to talk about Oscar Isaac.

I was about to say, like, yeah, no need to threaten Isaac discussion on the inside Louis Davis did all the time. You do.

He did sing in his

sign in Sidney Bruce Stein's window that he did okay

that's right that's right i saw that and he was yeah that was good yeah he was fantastic

second act trouble but oh it was good no you weren't a fan i mean you were a fan i love everything he does

i'm just simply saying i'm a critic don't put words in my mouth

he's off the leaf right now

listen to this londoner she's saying leave i don't want to trigger lenny yeah he's oval he may have sung in moon night i did watch every episode i loved moon He didn't sing in it, but he was very, I'm still waiting on season two of that shit.

He loves it. He's ready for it.
One I want to say, it does make this movie retroactively even more special that it's like, this is the one time he sings, right? Yeah.

It feels like a thing proprietary to Louis and Davis. I talk about this effect so much, but like seeing High Fidelity when it came out and when Jack Black sings at the end, you're like, holy shit.

That guy can sing. And then I showed it to my sister, who's a little older than you, who had already seen School of Rock and and everything.

When I was like, you're 14, you're old enough to see High Fidelity. And I was like waiting for her response to the scene.
And she's like, yeah, of course, the Jack Black thing. Of course he can sing.

Right. Like Lewin Davis, it feels like Lewin Davis, the character, can sing, not that Oscar Isaac can sing, because it's not a given that he's going to sing and everything.
Right.

And you think that because of the point in his career that that film was, that it would be one of those things that kind of sets the standard for the rest of his career.

But he's been very choosy about when he's decided to sing. This is what we're going to talk about.
Lenny is eating the mic. Hi, Lenny.
This movie comes out. I'm trying to capture it.

And I was like, well, here he is. This is the guy.
This is the definitive leading man. Not

a single award. What the fuck? Absolutely.
That actually is crazy. But then also the ensuing career has not been like exactly.

But even more generally, like you're mad that he's not the most famous actor alive or whatever. Yes, I'm not about it.
He's obviously done a lot of interesting stuff in good roles. Yes.

He's good in everything he does. Now, here's the second thing I wanted to say before I introduced the podcast.

Speaking of good things and interesting roles, I was scrolling through the IMDb to try to find, is there any earlier singing role I forgot?

And I didn't find one, but I did find that his fourth ever credit is a TV movie called Lenny the Wonder Dog. Oh,

it's true. 2004.
Oscar Isaac Hernandez, he plays the role of fart man.

Excuse me, Griffin. Detective fart man.
I'm so

sorry. We have to get him on the phone.
And the poster, the poster, Lenny the Wonder Dog, looks quite a bit like

Leonard. Poor Lenny.
That's his face. And the tagline is, in quotes, I'm not a cartoon.
I really can talk. Wow.
Andy Richter's in this? Craig Ferguson? Oh, so it's an ink. Oh, my God.

In my brain, I was like, oh, this is something that probably came out and like was not.

It took a week. It was like it got an American release.
Directed by Baylor Tarr?

It was an English release?

It was a TV film, maybe directly. I think it went straight to Hungarian television.
Okay.

Like all the best films do. Oh my God, Lenny's famous in Hungary.

Oscar Isaac.

I'm sorry. Michael Winslow, of course, who is the sound effects guy from Police Academy.

All right, we all remember him, has a story credit on Lenny the Wonder. Sounds good.
Yeah. Sounds good.
I need to talk to him about this because this is actually such fascinating.

Like, let's throw this one out. Let's watch that movie and do a live reaction instead.
It's a more important movie to talk about.

Oscar Isaac often jokes about his involvement in the production of this picture. In a 2017 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he said, yeah, I was Detective Fart Man.
That was in Miami.

I was just out of high school. I played one of two bumbling officers.
No farts ever happened, though, so I'm not sure where the name fart man actually comes from. It's actually, right.
It's Swedish.

Fartman.

It used to be Fratar Swedish.

Oh. Oh, man.
He looks,

yeah, he looks like Oscar Isaac, I'll say. He looks baby-faced, but yeah, it's a good old man.
I need the Wonder Dog. We have two guests on the show today.
That's right.

And I have to introduce the show. It's Blank Check with Griffin and David.
I'm Griffin. I'm David.
It's a podcast.

David, my strumming a guitar.

And listen to those beautiful.

Can you sing again for me?

Me? No. I'm David.
You're just strumming a guitar and then sing. I'm David.

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

And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, this is a mini-series on the films of Joel and Ethan Cohen together and separately.

Today we are talking about, I'm ready to say it, upon this rewatch, my favorite film of theirs. Yes.
This is Cohen Brothers movie. Fuck yeah.

Inside Louis and Davis, which is kind of like a double blank check for them. Sure.
We talked about in the speed at which their work came out

that True Grit was kind of a true blank check cash from the success of No Country,

and then True Grit is such a blockbuster, right? They get to do this, yes, I guess. I mean, I think this was a pretty modest movie, like in terms of budget and scale, and all that.

Like, as JJ points out in the research, they had been like one a year on a clip, and then there's throwing down, yeah, yeah, and they took their time on this one.

They really gave themselves the space, and it shows it shows. Uh, it's my favorite film of theirs.
It's called Inside Louis and Davis. This is a mini-series called No Country, Pod Country

for Old Castle. For Old Cast.
There you go.

There you go. Who's our guest?

Our two guests today. Guest one.
Guest one.

He's known as Lenny the Wonder Dog. In alphabetical order.
He's finally calmed down. Yeah.
His head resting on the desk. And he's a cutie pie.
His name.

He's so cute. Is Leonard Bernstein.
Yes.

Is it actually Leonard Bernstein or is he just Leonard?

Well, so his name is Lenny, but he's named after Leonard Bernstein. And so he's Leonard Bernstein Zegler.
There we go. That's him.
LBZ. LBZ? Yeah.
And our second guest today, returning to the show.

Less important.

Well,

Lenny is also returning to the show. We were never going to be able to book Lenny without you.
So you're equally important in the show. You're right.
He can't walk himself here. You're his stage mom.

I am. I'm his mama, Rose.

Exactly.

It's me. Rachel Zegler.
First Lady of Argentina.

Cohen Brothers win our March Madness thing. We commit to them.
We're figuring out guests. I know you're doing a Vita in London.
You are truly doing a show in another country. Eight times a week.

Eight times a week. And you got to go on that balcony.
And London isn't warm. No.
Or was it sometimes a warm? We had a really nice summer, actually. Yeah.
And I didn't get rained on either.

Like outside on the balcony. Never got rained on.
That's wild. Like, at least not like in torrential downpour.
Yeah, maybe a little like a mist.

I mean, London's so misty. Yeah, but

I had the most beautiful weather for the balcony. So wait, you're during the show actually like outside every night.
Every night,

sometimes twice a day,

I would go out after intermission, and the act two openers, Don't Cry for Me Argentina. Heard of it.
So, I ever heard of that song? Yes. So, I

so I would go out on the balcony of the palladium and look over Argyle Street. And people showed up in droves.
So, the numbers performed to the people outside the theater and then streamed inside

the audience. That's awesome.
And it was such a hot topic of conversation.

Is this good? Yeah, is this better?

Is this better? That was the idea.

Yeah, I mean, narratively makes sense that she wouldn't sing the song to rich theater. She sings to the people.
She sings to the people.

And it was like TikTok viral immediately, terrifying every night. I always convinced myself no one was going to come.
Like, I was going to walk out. There'd be nobody.
Like, it's a farce.

That was your fear. It really was, you know, because

the crowd kind of made the experience on the inside even more amazing because the camera had them on it. Oh, right, right.

So people would always like, it would get applause inside the theater when the camera would pan to the amount of people. That's cool.

Because they don't know.

They don't know. Right.
Argo Street is. It's a half street.
Right. It's like the palladium.
It's like, it's basically just foot traffic. There's not a lot of cars.

And the way it's sort of perfect, it feels like an old town square kind of vibe. Yeah.
And also the palladium, the balcony on the palladium has this big gold crest that has a big P on it Peron.

So it actually really worked in our favor. Yeah.
It's for yeah, it's obviously for the palladium. No, it's for you.
But I was like, this is really, this works really well.

But yeah, so I was doing that when he texted me. You're doing that production.
Yeah.

The first show I saw on the West End when I was nine years old was Oliver at the Palladium. How old were you? Nine or nine or ten.
Yeah. And can I ask how many years ago that was? Great question.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It would have been about, it would have been about like 95 or 96.
Right. So 30 because

my sweet boyfriend, his West End debut

was Oliver when he was, I think he was 11 years old. Oh, he was.
He was like one of the little guys. Yeah, he was one of the kids, but it was after that.
Yeah. No, I saw, because

I looked up what was in the palladium while I lived in London. So it was Oliver from 94 to 98, and I saw that production.
Then it was Saturday Night Fever, which never made it to Broadway, maybe.

Maybe it was a bit of a double digit. It definitely.

It did. Not very successful.
Big hit in London, which I saw. He even did.
As well. I remember when he jumps off the bridge, he like jumps down.

You know, whatever. Trap door.
It was cool.

King and I, which I saw. Love.
Oh, with Elaine Page, probably. Yes.
Yeah. And then Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
I don't think I saw that. So that would be it.
But I have, you know, yeah. Cool.

Now they have a Vita, apparently. And I, I played the Palladium twice, too, which was pretty cool.
With your own

set and music. And pretty crazy.
What was your 11 o'clock number?

My Aman. Oh, yeah.
I'm funny girl from the last series that I did with you guys.

This is the other thing. So we put the Cohn brothers on the schedule.
Our Reddit were very normal. I'm sure they were.
Start wish listing guests. Reddit and normal in the same sentence.

And someone pings friend of the show, past and future guest, Rachel Zegler, very on the record about Louis Davis being her number one favorite movie. Of all time.
Yes.

And I say to David, Should we ask Rachel? And David says, first of all, she's in London. She's doing Avida.
She's doing eight shows a week. Secondly, he was like, It is very funny that we have

this young, like, future-facing star on our podcast. And all three times, she's done depressing music movies.
Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
Movies about how music will chew you up and spit you out.

It's true. So obviously, Cabaret, a star is guest.
A star is guest.

Right. Three movies basically about like depression and failure in the music industry.
Yeah. Or in musical theater.
Yeah.

And

or the pending war. Yes.

Well, it's true. Yes.

I text you, you respond immediately. Yeah.
I say Cohen Brothers on blank check and you just all caps go like Lou and Davis.

And I was like, yeah, absolutely. And it's just been months of trying to find like truly the three-day window.
She's here. I'm here.
She's here. No problem.
Dog here. Everything going

great. But it's been months of just like, without stress.
No. The date's going to arrive.
We're going to find the window. It's leading, it's all leading up to this.
It's all leading up to this.

But no, I mean, even when you texted me, like,

and we put down a date. Yes.
And I was like, at that point, I wasn't doing my two shows at the palladium. So

it was

going to have a big cushion. I thought I was going to be hard.
You were open. But then I fell in love with you.
But then I really fell in love with London in a way. Both directions.

Yeah, it was awesome. But you basically auto-completed the request before I even had the chance to ask you.
Yeah, you don't have to ask me. You said just when and where.
Yeah.

Because I never get, you know, like in these

interviews that you do when you have the job that I have. Yes.

You get asked what your favorite movie is, but you never get asked why.

And you never get to sit there and explain why it's so fucking genius. Loun Davis, I love it.
And they're like, that rocks. Oscarizer.
Yeah, cool. You love Oscar Isaac.
Anyway, like, yeah, exactly.

Shower at night or in the morning or whatever else. Literally that.
I literally can't live I had Jack Antonoff tell me that

it's not even in the top five Cohen Brothers movies in Cosmopolitan. And I was like, not only are you loud, you're wrong.
And it's like.

I mean, this has been the nightmare of this whole series as I try to like update the list in real time. I've seen all these movies many times.
Yes.

But upon these rewatches, things are moving around, right? And by the way, life comes with different perspectives. Absolutely.

And every Cohen Brothers movie plays different to me every time I watch it. I agree.
I like them all, but they all like unfold different things. I find different things in them.
Yeah.

That's not even top 10.

He says not even top 10. Is that what he said? Top 10? Yeah, he says that's not even top 10.
I'm glad it made it into the actual final cut of the article because insane. Yeah.

We're going to do our ultimate. I'll love to Jack A, but my God.
We're going to do our ultimate ranking in the Buster Scruggs episode, but I was trying to arrange my letterbox list in a prep, right?

Last night, like do some rough drafting.

And I was like, the shit that's outside of my 10 is insane I'm sorry and it looks rude but it's insane look how upset you are overpowering Antonoff in this I'm sorry you're crushing him he goes like I like dune who's in that Oscar Isaac and you say are you just gonna name all the Oscar Isaac movies

you're just slamming him that's the comment but that's how Jack and I we're from New Jersey it's like that's love it's banter that's us showing love to each other uh he says it's about you say it's about Javier's comedic timing which you're right and he says no it's about the ships and you say that's wrong it's actually about the worms it's not about the ships, it's about the worms.

No one watches dunes and go dune and goes, Great ships. I'm sorry, the worm showed up to the BAFTAs.

We love those. I was there, or was that the Oscars?

They were at

Conan had the worm playing the piano at the Oscars, which I love. Yes, was that this year?

That was this year. Yeah, I was there, yeah.
I can't fucking remember everything similar

too many Oscars. If you Google my year,

nothing feels real. Sure, but like you could, you could say in casual conversation with someone, what's the movie with the space worms? Yeah, it's going to be Dune.
Dune. It's going to be.

If you go, what's the movie with the spaceships? I'm going to say Star Wars. Dune is like the 40th answer.
You presented the Oscar to Dune. I did.
Because you did visual effects.

I've done it twice now. That's funny because

I've done special effects twice, like visual effects twice, and Dune has won both. Right.
All right. So Lenny's ass is now on the mic.
Let's be honest.

Do you know what's cooler than presenting an Oscar to Dune?

Presenting an Oscar to Dune twice? I was going to say Dune two times. Nice.

Did you see this movie when it came out?

Oh, sure. Did I? Yes.
Did you see it?

I couldn't see it in theaters because it was rated R and I was 12 years old.

This unfortunately is the question I had to ask.

Because I saw it.

But I was the same. When it came out on digital,

I saw it almost immediately, and I shouldn't have. I was too young.
But I was 13 years old. And

in my head, I was already a struggling musician, which is hysterical now looking back.

But so I saw it quite young and I was obsessed, and I watched it like every day of my like freshman year of high school.

One might say this is an interesting movie for a freshman in high school to become obsessed with.

Just because it's about a

guy who's gotten the shit beaten out of him, right?

Immediately. Yeah.
And you're just physically. Right.
Yeah. And physically, right, actually gotten the shit beaten out of him.
Yes.

I was going to say, this is the kind of movie that gets an R rating, not even because it's incredibly inappropriate, but just because it's like, kids shouldn't see this. Sure.

He says just for language.

I mean, like, I don't think, right, there's not much.

It really is just for language. There's no nudity.
And honestly, the content isn't even that crazy. No, no.

It's really just like language and suicidal ideation, but even though the suicidal ideation isn't in your face. It's a lot more subtextual.
It's the cult reality of pursuing the arts. Yes.

I would say that is rated R. That is.

Yeah. Yeah.
And that's why 14-year-old. Rated R for hard truths.
That's why 14-year-old you were. 14-year-old me was like, yeah, fuck yeah, dude.
This shit sucks. Tell me I'm doomed.
Do you think?

Do you think it helped you? Because you have weathered a lot of storms in your young career. What are you talking about?

I'm sorry. Let me check my notes here.
Everything has gone well.

We've talked about it in the past on and off mic, but you've had this fascinating career, like shot shot out of a cannon with like incredible high highs.

And then everything seems to have like an ensuing storm around it in one way or another. And I'm constantly impressed with how

well you were able to keep your head on your shoulders and like process stuff and weather stuff. Thank you.

Do you think like it is stuff like this that you were preparing yourself for like the harsh reality of it rather than some golden like version?

There is certainly there's an aspect of like lessons learned from movies like this that come out like you know stars warning cabaret and all that jazz like yeah the girl's movies really do prepare you for like rejection and uh feeling like you're in a rut and living the same day over and over and over and over again um

and yeah i think there's certainly aspects of that i think watching it during those storms were very was very helpful so it is a movie you will like revisit as a comfort figure i see it i watch it and an embarrassing amount of times per year the last time i watched it was like new year's eve this year like i ushered in the new year watching this movie which is not something you should do but it kind of makes sense yeah but i was alone on new year's i was like left behind by a guy what the and it was like one of those things where i went i'm just gonna go home i'm gonna watch my favorite movie and i'm gonna cry And I don't know if you remember this year, we had like that amazing like lightning and thunderstorm this year on New Year's.

Yeah, yeah. And so it was like watching it in the comfort of my like cozy New York apartment, lightning and thunder in the background, Oscar Isaac wailing with a guitar.
It was awesome.

It is a damp blanket of a movie. This movie is so comforting to me.

And yet I've seen so many times I had not seen in a couple years, but especially in the years after it came out, I saw this like three or four times in theaters.

I kept re-watching it once it came out on Blu-ray.

But I hadn't watched it in a couple years. And I forgot how intricate the web of his mistakes is.
Oh my God. Yeah.
And so I'm like so comforted by the movie and its rhythms and the beats.

And I was doing the fucking Leo point to my girlfriend and being like, here's the line. The line's about to come up kind of stuff.
Yeah. That too.
He doesn't see a lot of money in this.

But then there were so many moments where I would like grab my skull and squeeze it. And I'm like, oh, fuck.
I just remembered what he's about to do. Yeah.
He's about to say the dumbest thing.

He's about to ask Justin Timberlake at moment for money. Astounding.
For an abortion for his wife, he got pregnant.

Yes, it's crazy. Like, it's crazy.
He maybe got pregnant. He probably did.
But, you know, by the end of the movie, you don't know. You don't know.
And that's what's amazing about it. Yes.

I love this box.

It's one of the best movies. It really is.
I'm jealous that, like, I'm jealous for anyone who got to see it in a theater. I'm always waiting on a re-release.

When I finally get my ass in that Criterion closet, it's the first one I'll go to. Oh, we got to get you in there.
I know. It's my dream.
But I do have the Criterion Collection copy of it. Yes.

And I had a, my laptop case is like the cat on the

waiting on the stoop. It's like the criterion cover is the cat with the guitar case.
And that's my laptop case.

Have you watched the thing on the Blu-ray that is Guillermo del Toro talking to the Cohen brothers? No. It's like 40 minutes long.

I sent it to everyone in the blank checkroom text last night from some shady Russian website. It was the only place that's hard not to like be charmed by

Guillermo. I feel like he'll just get anything.
Have you seen that new tweet that he

sent out when somebody was like, Guillermo del Toro is like a, he's like just a girl because he makes all these things that he wants to make, blah, blah, blah. And he said, like, that is me.

Like, he responded, that is me. Then they were asking him about it on the Frankenstein carpet about why he's just a girl.

And I love him. He gets it.

He's so infectious and he's so knowledgeable. And he's so good at speaking about film.
And he's clearly so in love with the Cohen brothers.

And I watched the interview and it feels to me like the most open I have ever seen them be

because they're usually so cagey and don't want to like overanalyze their films. Yeah.
And the fact that it's like he's one of them and they're able to throw questions back at them.

But there's the key quote in that thing where they go, when it came out, people asked us, How did you decide to make a movie about an unsuccessful folk singer?

singer and they were like it was only being asked that question that for the first time we realized we had never even considered the idea of making a movie about a successful folk singer it never would cross our mind that's fantastic yeah yes um and automatic yeah uh so okay so rachel right you fall in love with this movie uh as a teenager griffin i assume you saw this in theaters i sure did too i remember getting in a big uh excited uh discussion about it with jdi amato friend of the show at lincoln park uh remember that bar yeah we all used to go it was called lincoln park right

lincoln park the bar named after the band

but not but not the town in new jersey

where you're from where ben is from where ben is from so lincoln park of course means many things to many people emo band yeah i've become so numb i can't feel you there you know how it is i'm crawling in my skin um uh but no where jd and i were like agreeing about like how it's like about how creativity is iterative and it's like you do so much and you accomplish so little but then things barely do change and like that you know and like that's i just remember very uh animated uh uh no i i that was the bar we go to after chris gethard show i remember having an almost identical conversation with jd at the creek in the cave i think after gethard's uh album taping possibly It's when he recommended film spotting to me for the first time because we couldn't stop talking about this movie.

And he was like, you should listen to their episode on this. I think that's when I first started listening to them.

But the same thing of like, you know, JD, who's very heady about this stuff, being like

careers are these series of like branching opportunities. You have these cycles of like, there's an opening and suddenly there's a path to be able to build your life and be recognized.

And this movie is all about that loop and a guy who keeps on making every incorrect decision over and over again. Yeah.

David,

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from December 12th. Kelly Reichhart, first cow, showing up, lots of great movies.
It's directing Josh O'Connor, the unforgettable Josh O'Connor, in her latest canned triumph, the mastermind.

In a sedate Massachusetts suburb, circa 1970, unemployed family man and amateur art thief J.B. Mooney sets out on his first heist with the museum cased and accomplices recruited.

He has an air type plan, or so he thinks.

Yeah, you like this film, right? Along with this one, Gabby Hoffman, John McGarra, Hope Davis, Bill Camp, it's a great Bill Camp. A Kelly take on a heist movie.

Yes, it's like loose and quiet and noodley and and kind of political. Elusive and yes, incredibly funny.
Joshua Connor's amazing in it. Josh Mike's really good in it.

He's the guy right now, as far as I'm concerned.

But this is a really fascinating vehicle for him. And I feel like it's Kelly Riker kind of dealing with a movie star persona in a way I haven't quite seen her do before.

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We love it.

We love it. It's a good movie.

Should I open the dossier? What should I do? I think let's go straight to the dossier. Okay, all right.
So, look, Cone Brothers, they make a bunch of movies. Do you like the Cone Brothers, Rachel?

I do like the Cone Brothers. This is a good question.
Burn After Reading is

there. You go.

Have you seen other films of theirs before you saw this? Definitely not. I feel like everything of theirs

made an R rating

before, right? Yes. Yes.
Almost all R. They don't.
Yeah. And I was certainly

certainly too young.

I feel like the first one I watched after Inside Loon Davis was Burn After Reading. Right.
Yeah. Which is so

great. It's such a great fucking movie.

So the Cohens,

after they do True Grit, are kind of chilling. They're pretty tired.

There was one report that they were going to do a TV show with Phil Johnston, the guy who wrote Cedar Rapids and Ralph Breaks the Internet. Ben.
Hey. Ben.
Hey. He loves Ralph Breaks the Internet.

Damn.

It was called Harvey Corbo. It was an hour-long single-camera comedy about a Los Angeles PI.
I don't know. Nothing ever came of this.
But they did. It's funny to think that they considered TV.

It's a likely thing for them to consider, though. Like that synopsis enough is enough for me to be like, yeah, the Cohen brothers probably thought they were going to do that.

They did four movies in four years, four movies in five years.

Sure. Yeah.

Four and four and four. I think, yeah.
Right.

So there is that sort of like, and it was this, as we've talked about, the spurt of creativity where like a serious Man and Burn After Reading are written around the same time that they're adapting no country.

When that's a hit, they're like getting automatic green lights on everything. Of course.
Then it's the real, if you could do anything, what would you do?

They pick true grit, but it's like they're just constant motion. But so they're sitting around as they do when they write.
And Joel says, all right, well, how about this?

A Folksinger gets beat up in the alleyway behind Gertie's Folk City.

And then they're like, well, why would someone beat up a Folksinger? But they can't let it go. And so they return to this idea every so often.

This thing that often happens with their films where they have an idea they can't resolve and they go, like, put that on ice.

And anytime we have writers blocked for something else, we'll go back to it and see if we can iterate on it. Yeah.

So they like the idea, this notion of someone who's not successful, but not because they're not good, right? So tell a story about like a folk musician who's like a failure, but is good.

And so that's interesting. Yes.
Because like, no one's, everyone like, thinks Lewin is talented, right?

Even

Bud Grossman.

It's just kind of like, yeah, but what's your thing? How do you fit into the world?

Going back to the it is surprising how good Oscar Isaac is a singing thing. It's almost within the structure of the movie that like, what, he performs maybe once every 10 to 15 minutes.

And in the time in between, the guy is such a self-destructive man. So rancid that you're like, lounge.
That you're like, he must not be that good on top of this.

And then he breaks out a guitar and you're like, fuck. This guy is just getting in his own way.
Yeah. The way Ethan puts it is we wanted a nice dick.

Now,

it's the guy's penis. Let her buy.

Whoa, whoa.

He means someone who blows his top, speaks out of turn, says something really dickish, and then three minutes later is like, I'm a dick for doing that. You know what I mean?

Like, it's like, is self-aware, but cannot help but be kind of a dick.

And Dave Van Ronk is the guy they quickly alight on, where they're like, right, this was the guy in the folk scene where everyone was like, he's talented. He's one of a kind.
He is a tough hand.

He is always making. Oh my God, he was so fucking talented.
Right. I brought the mayor of McDougal Street.
I brought Dylan.

Oh, Chronicles. Chronicles.
In the first chapter, he talks about meeting Dave for the first time. It's a really just short little moment here.

They're hanging out and he asks him, how can I get a gig like working at the gaslight? And Ben Ronk looked at me curiously, was snippy and surly, and asked if I did janitor work. Damn.

Bob Dylan famously easy to get along with. Yeah.
Both famously chill.

Very normal, chill men. Really easy to talk to.
Yeah. Right, right.
Yeah. But of course him something of a completely different.
Dylan played a song and he was impressed. Okay.

To be able to get like some gigs. And did Bob Dylan, how did that career pan out?

You know what? I just got

chapter one.

I'm not really sure how it panned out. Dude, I don't want to spoil it, but you're going to love what happened.

I will say Chronicles is, we don't need these things anymore, I guess, because we have phones, but that was an awesome bathroom book.

Because you just pick it up and you just get like, you know, five good minutes of Dylan music.

Anyway, it's like, it's like Joan Didion's The White Album where you're like, I'll get a couple essays about in the 1970s. Bull bite-sized.
Yeah.

Dave Van Ronk. Now, Lewin is nothing like Van Ronk really in the movie, apart from that kind of status.
Like Dave Van Ronk was gigantic. Yes.
He was Swedish.

If you've listened to him, he has this like really hoarse, kind of awesome, gravelly voice, not this like beautiful little voice that Oscar has. He's mostly Irish.
He just has the name.

I feel like that was something he like said about himself.

He was a Swedish guy. Right.
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Swedish stock, maybe.
Because he was big. Yeah, he was big.
When the Coin Brothers announce a movie, they usually do not explain a lot.

You know, you know the cast, you maybe know the title, but it's a working title. You know the setting.
A working title production.

And so there'll be rampant online movie nerd speculation from fucking idiots like us. And it feels like until the trailer comes out, you don't actually really know what the movie is.

And because they've been working at such a fast clip and then this movie shot and then they had a really long post-production. They were like, we don't want to rush it.

There was like three years of mystery around it that the early words were like, they've cast Oscar Isaac, this like young semi-unknown actor. It's about the folk music scene.
It's New York in the 60s.

I remember early. Dave von Runk being like thrown out there as like, it's maybe kind of based on him.

And people thought it was more of a biopic, or even if it was fictionalized, it was lightly fictionalized.

And I think that has created an issue, perhaps, for the Dave von Ronk legacy, where people still kind of assume the movie is more closely based on his

personality,

where he was difficult in a way that's very different than Lewin Davis. That they really use it as a jumping off point of like, who's the other guy, right?

That, like, I think what they're obsessed with is the idea of like reading Bob Dylan's biography.

And for 98% of the public, you're like, man, this name comes up 800 times and I've never heard of this guy before. Who's the one guy in the scene who didn't become totemic? Right, right.

And that's, I think it's a totally fair like jumping off point for a film to be made. And really, they just kind of based his look, you know, like beard,

shaggy hair.

This is the jacket he wore. And they have the same album cover.
It's jumping off. Yeah.
Yeah. Ca Van Ronk's album cover is the same as like the inside album cover that he shows to

F. Marie Abraham.
Yes. Inside Vigor Dave Van Ronk.
And there's a repertoire too. A lot of the songs that we're talking about.
Yeah, Green Green, Rocket Road is a Dave Van Ronk.

If you listen to his Dink song, his fairly well, it's so different because his voice is different. It's worth listening to.
It's very cool. It's so like

raspy and cool. But like, I'm pretty sure, I don't know if I'm fairly certain this is a true story, that Oscar wasn't super good at guitar before this job.
No, he was not.

And then he met Dave Van Ronk's, like somebody who had either learned from him or had played with him randomly at a bar in the village. And he took him upstairs and taught him how to play guitar.

And if you watch Oscar, I mean, if you've ever watched Oscar play guitar, it's insane. He's doing something weird with how he plucks it.

And that is because that is how Dave used to play.

You play the guitar. I do play the guitar.
And I also similarly learned for a film. Which film did you play? You play like double your Hunger Games.

My dad can. Really? Yeah, actually.

But no, I learned for the Hunger Games, Ballad of Song, Birds, and Snakes. I learned from a woman who did not speak any English.
So that was really fun.

Did you music the universal language in many cases? Because you shot that in. I shot it in Poland and in Germany.

But I did learn and I played live for the movie. So us Grice

was basically

he was like a dorm after we saw Gladiator together. I was like, remember that? Gladiator 2.
The story has shifted to after we saw

two of us together. After we we saw Gladiator 2, which was a movie that came out.

I just remember texting being like, Lucy Gray Baird would have kicked all these guys ass because it's all arena fighting. She was so good at arena.
And I did it in heels. That's right.

To correct the story. No, we just saw it together.
When Sims goes to see Gladiator 2, we saw it in the same IMAX.

Someone points to you and goes, Isn't that Rachel Zegler? And you go, oh, yeah. And you text her and then you talk.
Yeah. It wasn't like.

We talked over text. We'd also talked over.

Did we see each other in person, though? Like, I remember.

I stood up and I went. We said hi.
I cannot remember if we were with you. I was with Kit Connor.
You were with Kit. My sweetie pie.
Yes.

You're just framing it almost as if you

hung out. We went to the quad.

Want to go see Glad 2. He said, and that is.
I just did a GII.

It's time. And then sent her a Fandango link.
Exactly.

Enter the arena Coliseum, I bet. Sure.
Yeah, for sure.

Anyway, what was the point about this?

He learned how to play guitar for the first time. I was going to say, was he basically like a dorm room guitarist? Like he had like...

Yeah, like he, he had, because Scob Punk Band name, Blinking Underdog. That doesn't shock me at all.
That's a bad name.

No, that's a great.

Yeah. That's a great name.
Are you kidding? They opened for Green Day, so apparently

he had a little bit of success. That's amazing.
Yeah. Because obviously, DJ Katrona, who's

a friend of the show. A friend of the show, a friend of mine.

How has he not been on the show? King of memes. He actually wants to know why he's never been on the show.

Yes, let's hang out with him.

We're on an email thread with him.

I know. And he says that he's really upset that you guys aren't memeing back with him because he made

better at meme. He's so quick.
I know, guys. This is why we became friends.
We both suffer from fast brain is what we say.

Look, I don't think we're allowed to talk about Shadow League, but let's just say we're in a very active email

based around movie nerds. And I was the puppeteer for DJ last season.
I do know this. You know that? I know this.

I don't know if you want to take credit for what you helped him with, but I did reveal. He revealed me in in a very funny way.
I can't remember what it was, but

people make bespoke memes off of the thing that just happened in the email thread. He's disgusting.

Very fast and very well. He pisses me off.
Yeah.

But

he is very good friends with Oscar. He's the reason I've met him.
And

essentially, like, Oscar used to live on his couch. And in L.A., like, they were all just broke together in Los Angeles.

And so he's like, do you realize how many like fucking times I had to tell him to stop rehearsing for that fucking movie? Oh, for this.

Yeah, because it was just be like all the time playing green, green, rocky road. And so, like, and me, avid fan of this film, I have the record on my vinyl player essentially at all times.

I'm always playing it. And

DJ would just kind of stop coming over.

I can never because he's like, I just can never hear these songs and he can't enjoy the movie. I would, I would listen to Oscar pluck that guitar all day and night.
That's the thing.

You have no, I was like, you don't understand how lucky you were. You got to hear a Oscar-worthy performance.

I agree. Fucking disappointed that he was not.

Given a fucking or a golden globe.

He got a globe nom. But why didn't he win? Why don't you give him yours? Fine.
That's what you should do. I didn't get to accept mine in person.

You got it the one year the globes were canceled. It's just me too.
Over there too.

There's the insane fucking

SAG strike year. Oh, sure.
I think it's

like eight. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Where it was like a half hour entertainment tonight special where they showed photos and they were like and the winner is johnny depp anyway next time i'm so sorry i won via a tweet i win yeah that was you had it you had it weird yeah um lenny's sitting so the coins

really good boy

he's being very good boy uh the coens are like all right folk singer dave van rock this is all interesting the world is so interesting to us we can't really think of much of a plot

so we're writing something without an engine right there's no like narrative drive to this movie so we'll just follow him for a week and not much will happen.

And that's going to be okay, which is, I suppose, a bit of a risk. And when you think about like burn after reading True Grit, like these are very plotty movies.
Yeah. And so.

Yeah, like every five minutes, there's a new twist.

But it concerned them so much that they threw the cat in, is how they put it. Now, obviously.
David, Lenny, just

look, we're going to have to discuss a cat in this movie. Lenny loves cats.
Lenny loves cats.

Yes, they say that in the criterion thing that they're like, we got so concerned with the lack of a plot that they were just like, if we threw a cat in there, that's a good idea.

Angelicals can, angelics do. I mean, and so they threw in a cat.
They're not wrong. This is a good New Year's Eve movie because it's about a jellical ball.
That's so true.

But if an animal is in even the slightest danger or whatever, like it does kind of keep you engaged in that weird way. And it's saved the cat.

It's the hilarious thing that then the plot really did become the cat. Yes.
And like the phrase.

Yeah. And that's why my favorite thing when people are trying to figure out what the movie's about, there's a great scene where he's on the phone trying to get in touch with the Gorfines.

And he's talking to the, I guess, the office,

whoever it is at the desk. And

he's like, tell him that Lewin has the cat. And she goes, Lewin is the cat.
No, no, I'm Lewin. I have his cat.
And the plot is Lewin is the cat. Lewin is the cat.
It's fucking awesome.

There's much to discussion. There's so much, like, so many ideas of what the cat represents i feel like i know people people think

that it's yes people think that it's um mike yeah it's mike his departed grief it's his what you know anyone care you know no i think on a very simple level it's just that the cat is the only thing bigger than him it is the only thing outside of himself that drives him right it's the only thing he seems to care about In a weird way, it's like the cat.

He has literally knocked someone up and has a family elsewhere and has a career he's trying to start or whatever.

That is the only thing in the entire movie that supersedes whatever his impulses are at any given moment.

He'll be selfless to try to save the cat. It's not even, well, yeah, but it's almost like not even selfless.
Stop what he's saying. Just like some weird survival mechanism comes in.

Like, you know, I find the moment where he stares at the poster of the incredible journey outside the theater. Right.

The homework bound. Yeah.
Yeah. So, so like impactful

and very moving. And it's sort of this notion of like, this cat's been on this whole movie that I'm unaware of, right?

Like, he's looking at this, like, Disney movie poster and this tagline and being like, I've been caught up in my own shit and stressed about the cat.

The cat just went and did something and came back, you know, and none of it had to do with me. Cohens start casting.
They want a musician who can act. They don't want an actor who can sing.

Like, they're looking for a musician who can act. They say they only auditioned real musicians.
I wonder who. They don't.
Justin Vernon and Bonnie Ver is one that they do say. Bonnie Ver.

Which sort of makes sense. That does make sense.
Someone recently talked about having auditioned for this. I feel like now that it's been over 10 years on this movie,

people in promo tours will talk about it. And there are a lot of stories about people being like, I fucking bombed that audition.
Well, who you are talking about is

Ryan Reynolds. said literally that he bombed the audition for inside Lewin Davis.

There's no way it was for Lewin. It's what he said.
It has to be for, what is it, Jim?

Maybe.

That makes sense. My memory, and it was part of like this movie being like,

imagining a Ryan Reynolds Lewin Davis is crazy right now. Yeah.

And there would be a voiceover being like, yep, that's me.

Sitting on that stool here. Casey Affleck talks about bombing it.
I could see that.

I could see him bombing that. I could absolutely see him bombing that.
There's some options. He picked up a gun and said he couldn't do it anymore, and they had to wrestle.

Connor Overus says that he auditioned. That makes sense.

There's a lot of people auditioned. Right.
They took their net into the emo pool, the sort of like singer-songwriter pool. They didn't like anything they found.

But I think they had the sort of Armageddon problem of, is it easier to teach a musician to act or an actor to sing? Well put. And they started thank you with the like, let's get a singer.

And none of them were up for the acting part of it. And then they were like, fuck, I guess we go to actors.
And none of them could handle the singing. And it's the lead role in this movie.

It's the lead role. And the whole point is that, like, very similar, I mean, weirdly to bring it back to like a cabaret thing where it's like, why isn't Liza Manelli breaking out of this club?

She's so fucking good. Right, right.
Like, it's very much like that in this movie. That's the other thing is you're like, the vibe has to be so right.

I just, I'm sorry, I have to quote Ben Affleck on the Armageddon commentary now that you've invoked it, because obviously Armageddon is. The second Affleck mentioned.
Correct.

Is that like, it's easier to train oil drillers to operate a space shuttle than it is to train space shuttle operators to operate an oil drill? A space shuttle operator. Space shuttle pilots.

Astronauts. Astronauts.
There you go.

And

with Affleck on the commentary, it's just like, how hard can it be? Aim the drill at the ground and turn it on. Right.
And think about it all, but he's so disdainful.

Playing an oil driller, the lowest Boston thing ever.

But I think that's part of the problem of it is like

Materialists, a film I like a lot and defend with my whole chest good for you thank you very much your heart

has this core issue and i remember asking you this when you saw it where i was like

in what universe how does this get away with chris evans being a loser right that he's like a

an unsuccessful actor right

There's silence in the room. Yes, no, but right.
Like, it's a movie where,

you know, Pedro Pascal is the rich, successful guy, but Chris Evans is like, yeah, I can't get my life together. Right.
Right. How does he get away with this? Right.

And my thing with that movie is like

it needs to do a little more work to characterize the ways in which he's self-defeating, which you can do.

Because if he looks like that, people are begging him to do like a fucking LLB catalog shoot at the very least. He'll be all right.

I was begging Chris Evans to do that after Knives Out because of that sweater. Yes.
Sell me that sweater, Chris. I'll buy it off the bed.
And I did.

You can see that, though, if they're auditioning musicians. You're just like, you are so talented that it doesn't matter how difficult you are.
The audience will think this guy should be successful.

And you can also see actors playing the difficulty of it, but not being good enough as a musician where you're like, why would anyone put up with him for even a second?

It is such a tough balance to strike of this kind of guy we all know where you're like,

it sucks that he's talented. Oscar Isaac,

of whom you speak, though,

it also sucks that he's talented. Juilliard Grad.

Rachel. Juilliard Grad.
Is he actually? I didn't know that. Yes, he is.
Of course. Yeah, him and what? Trusting, testing.

Yeah. Oh, right.
They were most violent year. That was very distressing.
But they've done like four things together. Yeah, they did the scenes from a marriage

in that movie. Was that the show they did on Broadway? They did a show on Broadway.
I thought they did.

Because she popped a little before him. She did.
I mean, she did.

Give him a rest. He's doing his best.
Yeah.

You know, that's the thing.

He's also like not white. And it just takes us.
It takes us a second. Absolutely.
Shout out to Letters. Jessica Chestain.
Very white. God bless her.
I enjoy it. I like her.
You know what?

Good for her. A tremendous talent.
Very white.

Oscar auditions. He plays the guitar for them.

And they're like, oh, are you like, he's like, I've been playing it since I was a kid. And they were like, all right.

And T-Bone Burnett, who obviously, their close collaborator on all the music, was like, he's great. He plays the guitar better than some people I know.
And they were like, great. We're casting him.

My memory also in this period, just not to interrupt you, was that it felt a little similar to the true grit thing, where there was this feeling of like, they still can't find the guy. This guy's

getting a little sweaty of like, Jesus, like, we, we do need a lead actor for him. And they're actually not going to go ahead if they don't have somebody to clock it.

Studio Canal funded the entire thing $17 million. They were making it essentially kind of independently.
Yeah, 17 million. Right.
Wow. Pretty crazy.

Eric Francon is the guy you're talking about, Rachel, who who he met at the old gaslight. Yes.
And like. I love being right.

And like helped him prepare and taught him. It's called Travis picking, which is, according to Oscar Isaac, a very complicated, syncopated style of playing.
It's kind of like ragtime piano.

You use the thumb as the metronome. I mean, I don't know.
I don't play guitar. None of this makes any sense to me.

Sounds hard.

Hey, I get it. And of course, he was in the punk ska band Blinking Underdogs.
And he says, like, anytime that act looked like it was getting remotely successful, something would happen to fuck it up.

And it was like Lewin Davis-esque. So that's interesting.

I do think the Cones should do a Lewin Davis sequel set in the world of Ska.

Yeah.

And I'm in it. Yeah.
Everyone's like,

I don't, Ben, you help me. I don't know which one.
I think maybe Third Wave. Great.
For

that 90s. Place of the late 90s.
Like, yeah, mighty, mighty boss tones. Real big fish.
Yep. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Less than Jake kind of esque maybe band.

I will say when he got cast in this movie, obviously I'm obsessed with the Cohen brothers. And to me, he was like, yeah, he's like, I was like, right, he kind of popped in Robin Hood.

Like, I didn't know. I mean, he was in drive, but he's nasty in that movie.
He had been a guy who was starting to kind of pop in things.

You'd notice him. Like, he's good in my much invoked the born legacy.
He has a great part in that. Which, that is, uh, he was one of like 20 people on the list for the lead.

I know the story here. Please share.

He heard himself learning how to skateboard and showed up,

showed up to an audition to be the lead in an action film. Why was he learning how to skateboard? Ask DJ Katrona when you have him on the show.
Okay, it's happening. DJ, it's happening.

He and DJ were going to play skateboarding cops to solve mystery. Well, no, DJ's like a really, really great at skating.

And I think sweet Oscar just wanted to learn, but decided to do it right before a really big callback. Before they're so embarrassed, I just have to correct myself.

The third wave Scott started in the late 80s. Oh, Jesus, man.
I'm really

fucking fucked. It's more like the sweet.
We have to start over.

Yeah, there's the two-tone sort of

UK sort of. Is it Boston's fourth wave? How many fucking waves? I looked it up.
It's already. How many waves?

I don't think we've

firmly established the fourth. Oh, okay.
All right. We're waiting for

the third, I guess. I don't know.
It's like the Messiah. We're like, this fourth wave will come one day.
I just deliver it.

The one guy who cared, I corrected myself. Can I also quickly make a pitch a buddy movie starring DJ and Oscar Isaac called Scott Boarding? They definitely want to do it.

They're skateboarding Scott guys. You're getting a budget of $5.

Especially now in this

economy of filmmaking. Yes.
You get $5 and a dream for Scott boarding. Now, they rehearsed for like a week, but this, it's pretty intense because they, you know, the performances are live.

Like, there's, these are not dubbed lipsticks. No, they're really not.
Yeah. And, you know, it's fucking complicated.

Can we just do this, Oscar Isaac? Yeah,

okay. Okay.
His career. Yes.
So, like, he has some like young, like, teen roles. Then he goes to Juilliard, right? Then it's sort of like re-emerging as a serious actor.
He's post-fart man now, right?

Nativity story. May we all someday be in our post-fart man era? Yes.
Nativity story is Catherine Hardwick right after, or right before Twilight. I'm sorry.

But it's sort of right after Passion of the Christ. And they're like, these are now going to be all the rage.
I think Lenny's hearing people outside.

Lenny thinks he's guarding. Lenny also didn't like the Nativity story.
Which, yeah, Lenny's Jewish.

This makes sense. I mean, he is.
He's Leonard Bernstein. Lenny, come here.

The idea

that your dog. because of his namesake is culturally jewish enough to resist christmas He thinks it's a little suspicious.
He doesn't understand about Christ and Christmas.

He likes commercial Christmas. Right, where he likes like Santa Claus and ho-ho-ho and jingle bells and presents for pretty girls.

Post-Passion of the Christ, when that was such a phenomenon and everyone was like, this is the future, they make this big budget nativity story with Keisha Castle Hughes and Oscar Isaac as Mary and Joseph.

And there was a big push behind it, and it totally belly flopped. But that was kind of his first push as a leading man.

Then there's sort of this run you're talking about of like body of lies he's really good in and a small role is kind of like a scummy guy. Chape.
Yeah, he's good in that.

He's he was only someone where you would notice him. He'd pop in like the eighth or tenth role in a thing.

So then he starts to become one of these guys on these casting lists of like projects where they're maybe interested in like launching a new leading man and trying to bump someone up.

Born Legacy was that, where before they decide to go to then king of the franchises Jeremy Renner, there was a list of like 20 younger actors where they were like, do we we cast it with someone who's on the brink of breaking out?

Sucker Punch is one where people were like, who the fuck is this guy? He's, I mean, he pops in that movie. Right.
It's not a movie I love. Great in it.
Right.

But then it's like Drive, WE, like he's in this zone. I really enjoy him in Robin Hood, by the way, a movie I stick up for.
I think that's Tom Blythe's first film credit.

He needs to be a little baby. He's like a little feral child in it.

Wonderful. I'm fairly certain that's true.
I'm looking up. But he is very good in Born Legacy, but it's like,

it's a consolation price. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you liked you, we're going to have you like you get to kind of run the money. Literally,

but he's literally like a failed, you know, Jeremy Renner, right? Like, he's called outcome number three. Like, he's like one of the other ones that didn't turn into a born or whatever.

But that's basically right before. And you are correct that he, Tom Blythe, is literally credited as Feral Child

in Ridley Scott's Robinhood. Yes, angels.
I just imagine like Ridley Scott walking around with a big cigar, and then they open a door and they're like, These are the feral children.

There's just like a bunch of kids right here. He's like, That one and that one.
Are we moving on?

Oscar is not a method guy, but he is kind of infamously an obsessive research guy. So I'm just like, How does he get that good at the songs in a week? But I think he just goes turbo-merry.

Yeah, that's his way. They filmed this in 2011 or 2012.
I believe it's 2012.

Great question. The answer is

I don't know. Because I was pulling up some articles at the time from like...
Yeah, Principal Photography, early 2012.

Summer 2012, when the movie was in the can and people were like, is it going to come out this year?

And everyone had the note of like, the Coens don't want to rush this. They're sitting on it.
They're taking their time in the edit. It's done.
But they're not going to push it out this Oscar season.

And because they knew whenever they decided to release the movie, that would become Oscar season, Oscar Isaac season.

And one person clapped, and it was the person who made the joke.

They're going out on a balcony that's on his hind legs.

We're just seeing Griffin live stream that joke.

Tears in his eyes.

Big strong dog. Tears in his eyes.
To be fair, I am holding a giant bone in the air.

Oscar Isaac, good quote from him.

I thought a lot about the comedy of resilience and why sometimes we find someone going through hardship funny happens in chekhov a lot i thought about buster keaton someone who's constantly going through near-death experiences death experiences yet we laugh we root for him but his face is melancholic you know like i like that idea absolutely i mean like even though it's it's physical only in his body language this isn't a movie with like physical comedy the the uh the interpersonal situations he gets himself into have the energy of being like whacked in the back of a head with a board.

I also, here here comes the anvil. Yes.

I must, obviously, we don't really see him being romantic in this movie, but we understand that basically everyone at some time is kind of giving a thought to Lewin Davis, you know, tumbling the hay.

Although I do think because he's so hot.

His last scene with

Carrie Mulligan is so well modulated, in my opinion, because up until that point, you're like, so is the chemistry that everyone kind of gets off on how much of an asshole he is? Right.

And like berating him. And the final scene with her, he's a little charming and vulnerable, and you're like, oh, this is where he gets people.

What is that? Like, one out of every 20 times he's a real person and people fall for it. And then he punishes them.

You just want to move to the village in 1961 and have a spare room and just see who cycles in and out of that thing, you know?

Right? This whole movie really makes it feel like this was the place to be and the time to be there. Yeah, sure.
Yeah.

I think the food wasn't as good back then, though. Okay, go off.
Just saying, right? Probably less good restaurants. Right, Ben? I feel like

Sandwiches cost like a dollar.

There were like no ska bands, and there was that

zero,

absolutely zero,

eggs, ska, eggs, and a lot of folk music. So, why would we want to go? I mean, personally, folk music is my Spotify rapped every year, so

I would have a good time. I love folk music.
I might struggle if I'm at the gaslight and they're like, you know, here are the four Irish guys in sweaters. I mean, maybe not.
Those guys crush it.

Oh, no, come on. They crush it.
I love that guy. I know.

Squeeze. It's just funny that you're like, I'm here to see Bob Dylan.
Like, nah, he's fucking, he's on vacation.

Here are the four white cardigans.

It's so funny. The first time I watched it, I remember that scene coming on and being like, I like their sweaters.
And what does he say?

He says, I like their sweaters. They have good sweaters.
They go, they're not bad. He goes, I like their sweaters.

I tried to look up if they were like. referencing someone specific, but they're not.
It's just kind of like, yeah, that kind of shit would pass through. A lot of like ethnic quote-unquote.

There was some like notable like

Irish singer group that is talked about in the No Direction Home documentary. I can't think of who they are.
It makes

it like, this is folk music. So like, here's Celtic folk music.
Here's, you know, Polish folk music. Like people would be passing through from, you know, lands afar or whatever.

Well, it's also not incidental, and the Cohen's talk about this, that the acts that he is most hostile towards on stage are the ones that are actually the purest version of folk music. Yeah.

Are actually the most traditional version of folk music. Like that group and the harpsichord or the uh, what is it? Auto harp woman whose uh husband beats the shit out of him.
Good.

Are like, this is like traditional, culturally like historic folk music. Where it was born.
Right. Done in an unsexy way.
I think. And he's like, fuck this.
So what's the thing? It's not a zither.

What's the thing? She's sort of an auto harp. It'd be funny if he actually beaten him with the harp.
You know, if he just came out here, it's like

the old-timey music, huh?

They they were called the clancy brothers okay they sound charming makeup and the clan or clancy brothers and tommy makeup they were the handsen of their day yeah

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Oscar consulted with his Juilliard teacher, Moni Yakim.

This is what interested me.

Go ahead. Most famous for

being the movement coach who cracked RoboCop. Right, right.
So as Oscar says, a famous that he learned movement from him. Often invoked on this show, RoboCop, perhaps my favorite movie ever.

And RoboCop's got a specific gait. Peter Weller will never not credit Moni Yakim.
But I love that. Oscar also credits him for what he calls a walking

like a camel against against the wind which is how oh luin's always like a little hunched and like always feels like the wind is like blowing in his face yeah which i really love uh

that movie does look so cold doesn't it it does look it's one of those where you're watching it and you're free i'm freezing watching one of the great winter movies and especially like northeast winter movies yeah but like you're peter weller they put a difficult suit on you you go i can't move call moni yakim most people in oscar isaac's position wouldn't say i obviously obviously need to call in a movement coach for absolutely.

They would more be focused on the music or the whatever, right? But it's just right. His walk is like half of the movie.

And this is why he's not like, you know, a method actor, but somebody who loves to research. Loves

to think about the crap.

Timberlake comes to them through Scott Rudin, normal guy. Normal guy.

Curry Mulligan's obviously bubbling around. She's getting more famous.
I feel like an education is like two or three years before. And she's fucking 2009.
She writes. She's fucking brilliant.

She's got the best line reading in the whole movie. Which is.
She's got the best bangs in the whole movie. Ready?

Yeah. Give it to us.
Ready? Rachel's kind of coiling to me.

I'm preparing. I'm talking.
I just got off the phone with Moni Akeem. And I'm ready to.
No. I should have made you wear double condoms.

Well, we shouldn't have done it in the first place, but if you ever do it again, which is a favor to women everywhere, you should not.

But if you do, you should be wearing condom on condom and wrap it in electrical tape. You should just walk around always inside a great big condom because you are shit.

You should not be in contact with any other living thing being shit.

Lenny's tapping again. I need to listen to no, Rachel was looking at nothing.
Rachel ain't got no screen propped up in front of her. She just did that.
No, that's that is line reading of all time.

That's incredible. I love her so much.
She's so good at mass. She really is.
And she gets to a point where like the female lead in Cripple of Inishman, where it's like, girl, come on now. Come on.

But that is, that's a good performance, in my opinion, where you're like, you're mad at her for being so

negative towards what is already such a negative plot and negative situation and then you kind of end the movie

you love her for a second with her getting the gaslight for him but then you realize how she did it But also the two of them had just done drive together. That's right.

Of course, they did drive together. Married, but a very different vibe in their relationship.
They clearly have some

great marriage, I'll say. But she's in

drive. And Education's 09.
Public Enemies and Brothers are the same year, small roles. Wall Street Money Never Sleeps, normal movie, normal production.

Never Let Me Go are 2010. Drive and Shame are 2011.

I feel like Drive and Shame are her first post-Oscar nom like projects where she's popping. And then this and Great Gatsby are the same years.
Love Her and Great Gatsby. Very much in.

This and Great Gatsby being the same year is so what?

Because it's such like, it's really like Rachel McAdams doing notebook and mean girls, where you're like, these are two completely different films, completely different performances. Phenomenal.

She disappears into both, both, and she's fantastic. Agreed.
Love her and far from the Madding Crowd. I highly recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it.
I've never seen that. I've never seen it either.

Check it out.

So, John Goodman. So, Timberlake, Glaud, Mulligan, Blah.
John Goodman. Here's a quote from him.
You know this quote.

He had not worked with him since a brother. I do not know the quote.
I got an email from Ethan that said, quote, Madman, we've got something you might be interested in. That's all.

I think he's like the ghost of Christmas Future in this movie. Sure, of course.
He's sure. He doesn't know how to

come to this. Well, okay, fine.
But it's like, yeah, he's the curdled, like, he hates everything.

He considers himself a genius, musical genius. And now he's the guy in the back of the car yelling at everyone else for being wrong.
Watching the world pass him by. He's a fucking jazz snob.
Yeah.

One of the worst snobs. I'm like, scoff and

cool.

You're like, 25 years from now, Lewin could be the old grumpy folk singer in the back of the car complaining about the scoff organizations up front. It's kind of what Dave Van Runck became.
Yeah.

It's like, right, yeah, you sort of stuck here.

Can I say, though, Garrett Hedland? This was so hot in this movie. He's so hot.
And I feel like this is the first time he'd been around, right? Yeah, Hollywood was pushing him.

And it was very much like, we want this to be a guy. Was this pre-tron or post-tron? Post-tron.
No way. That had always been like, oh, yeah, he's fine.
He's handsome. Like, I get it.

Why is everyone so crazy? Like, this one, I was like, and he barely speaks, obviously. He literally has like one line in it when he's reading poetry in the diner.
I love him.

Or the roadstop, wherever they go. No, it is.
I had that exact same feeling, which was like, they've been pushing this guy so hard and he's fine. What's the deal?

And then you watch him in this and you're like, I get it. He's captivating.
I get it. No one else has captured this, but clearly the guy has the juice.
Yeah. Now he's the Tulsa King.

Now he's, well, he's, no. No, that's.
Sly is the Tulsa King. He's beautiful.
He's just on the Tulsa King. He is beautiful.
Big fan of him

in general.

They shoot this movie mostly in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. The actual village, of course, as they say, is basically too noisy, like visually for them

to do all the period stuff. Have you seen, you've seen the paparazzi photos from those shoots with the stuffed cat? Yeah.

The cat that looks like one of the Webkins. Like it's such.
It looks like a Webkins. Oscar is again his emotional support Webkins.
It's very cute. It's fantastic.

They talk a lot about, I feel like when Ethan Ethan talks about his burnout and what eventually caused him to be able to do that.

This was a really hard, annoying movie to make, and here is his Webkins. Look at that.
It looks like a Webkin. Yes.
It's so cute. Ben, of course, is the biggest cat person in the room, I would feel.

Yes. I have a cat named Pig.

Wait. Cutest name for a cat ever, actually.
Oh, my God. Inspired by Miss Piggy.
Oh, my God. Even better.

She's 17 years old. Years young.
Okay, there we go. She's asthmatic.
She's diabetic. No, she's 17 17 is

impressive. 17 is amazing.
God bless.

I was just going to say that I feel like Ethan points back to the process of working with the cat on this movie as one of the things that like broke him. Where he was like, hence the webkins.
Yeah.

Yeah, truly. But he was just like, oh, it'd be fun to put a cat at the center of the movie.
That kind of gives the story like an impulsive drive.

And you're like, oh my God, the amount of scenes that are driven by. a cat needing to start one place and end up in another place.

And it's just impossible. Have you ever worked with a cat?

I don't think so. It's a fucking nothing.
No, I've worked, you know, I've only like worked with dogs and birds and stuff. Snakes.

Snakes. I've worked with snakes.

Snakes are ballads to them. I did.

I did a multi-camera pilot with a cat where the cat was supposed to be a big part of it. And I genuinely think the process of working with the cat was 50% of why the show was not picked up.

That's wild. Because it was just.

They're not like trainable. That's the thing.
No, and the cat hand was there and they'd be like, so like the timing is on this line, the cat needs to go from here to there.

And the trainer was like, Yeah, that's not going to help you. I'll see what I can do.
She'll do what she wants to do. And the producer was like, who's this fucking cat wrangler we got?

Like, we can't get someone better than this. And they were like, that is the best.
That's the best cat.

She's just being honest with you that you're never going to be able to get them to do what you want. And that's why, what's his name on, was it, is it Salem on

Sabrina? It was an animatronic. Seamless.
Was it an automaton too? I never knew that was a robot. You couldn't tell?

It's basically like a broken clock is right twice a day process working with a cat on camera

you do 200 takes and eventually one of them will accidentally be

i like how salem was so busted and then they upgraded to a slightly less busted salem it was always funny by the way he was i always like the background though like when he leaves the scene it is a real cat and i kind of love that i i don't want to rein on anyone's salem parade here i should acknowledge that salem did just headline the riyod comedy festival You're fucking kidding.

And it was, it was the newer puppet. It's the better one.

And then when he walked off stage and it was a real cat

they were like ever look over there for a second and then when they looked back it was a real cat

funny every time not meant to be a joke

funniest thing on the show oh my god roger deacons does not shoot this movie guys uh they're a longtime cinematographer he was busy smacking the sky falls let it crumble

the sky falls

Let it crumble.

Can you? We will stand tall. Okay, we will stand tall.
And face it all together. We have have to face it all together.
Here's a pitch. What if you play James Bond, the Bond girl, and sing the song?

So the thing is, I feel like that's like hosting SNL and doing musical guests. That's all.

Yeah, which people do it all the time. So why not, right? I would love to be a Bond girl.
I'm just putting it out there.

But also be. I know Barbara Broccoli doesn't do it anymore, but girl.
Yeah.

Yeah, it's

Amazon now, right? It's in Pascal. And David Heyman.
Yeah. Come on, guys.
David Heyman. Come on.

David Heyman.

He's going to, if he ever hears this, it's going to be like, so I'm never working with her. I think as the toast of London, you should be considered.
Yes. Now that you are the toast of London.

London's all

an honorary citizen. So Roger Deacons didn't do it.
No. So Bruno Del Bonel, one of my favorite DPs, who loves to shoot things like this, all smoky and cloudy.
You know what I mean? Yeah.

The guy who shot Amalie way back when.

who

I always have to mention completely freaked it on Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

Totally fucking freaked in on that. One of the most gorgeous looking movies ever made about Dr.
Gorgeous franchise film. But he's the king of making live action look like watery pastels.
Like inky,

exactly. So

smudgy colors. I know the look of this movie is divisive, even amongst people who can charge

a masterpiece, but obviously very, very fussy. Winter Italy posts.
Yeah, and it's muted.

And people tend to not understand that just because it's not colorful doesn't mean it's not good. It's a movie that looks like slush.
Like that is what they wanted.

They were like, winter in the village.

The free will and Bob Dylan album covers.

Literally, yes. Yeah.
But also New York in January, February looks white. It looks gray.
It's really gray. Yeah.
Right. And this movie

somehow gets,

it somehow gets at some ecstatic truth of what the cold feels like more than what the cold looks like. Absolutely.
I love the look of this. It's shot brilliantly.
It's very stylized.

It's got the lighting in it. It's

good. Because the lighting in it is fantastic.
Incredible. It only got two nominations.
When he has sat at the Reggio waiting for Carrie Mulligan to come bring his

scene I always think. And he's staring out the window.
Yeah. He's beautiful.

He's beautiful. He's quite beautiful.
But Bruno does this. He does Buster Scruggs and he does Macbeth.
So as Deacon sort of gets caught mend his land,

he becomes

all the world's a stage. He shot the Scottish film.
McBitty. I appreciate you viewing this podcast studio as a theater all the world's a stage that we're cursing

the palladium balcony uh-huh the blank check offices all a stage it's all a stage

i have to go sing don't cry for me bye guys you're right we're halfway through bruno loves stage bound stuff though he loves shooting on sets he loves being able to control the light yeah this is a movie where he's mostly dealing in real environments a lot of locations yeah the lower east side is real unfortunately a lot of new york street shooting but also like shooting in actual tiny cramped apartments.

Yeah. Yeah.
And it's, you know, subway cars and still exquisite. Yeah.
Gorgeous. Carrie Mulligan is married to Mumford.
Mumford. One of the Mumfords.
Who's the voice? Marcus. There's the voice.

It's the voice of Mike Timlin, who's his passed away.

His

writing and singing partner. But it's not him on the album.
It's him on the album. It is.
It is. Okay.
Oh, we, I don't know about the album art. Yeah.
But he's definitely the voice.

I know he's the voice. I just can never remember if it's sometimes they bring Oscar on stage and they sing fairly well together, which is so cool.
Oh, that is pretty cool. It rules.
It rules.

I've never seen it because it never happens when I'm there.

So Marcus Mumford, if you're out there. I've told this story before, but my, my mom

wanted my sister to be bilingual when she was

13, 14. Okay.
Well, she had failed to make my brother and I bilingual. My mother's French.
Okay.

And so she decided to pull my sister out of school in eighth grade and immerse her in a school in France for a year to make her bilingual. I'm so sorry.

I would be so mad if I were your sister because like eighth grade, my last year.

Yeah, really normal, emotionally and psychologically balanced year to take a girl out of the environment that she knows and place her in a foreign country.

It's also too late to make someone bilingual. Yeah, you gotta do that when they were four years older.

I'm gonna say all of it was a disaster, but

I went to visit them largely because it was a disaster. My mom was like, five alarm fire.
We need additional support

like backup

and they were they were uh subletting this apartment in france and

just this one mumford and sons song was on a loop they had an ipod and a dock and they were playing this one song like little lion man four straight hours every night yeah and like three days in i was just like why the do you like this song so much i cannot believe you listened to this song so many times and my mom goes the ipod is broken we don't know how to change it to a different song song.

Cool. And within five seconds, I identified that they just had it on repeat and hadn't fixed it.

And I was like, Are you telling me that for four straight months, you have listened to this song? What song was it?

I couldn't tell you what it's called.

My dear, my dear. That one.
Wait.

It was not your fault, but mine. I think that's it.
That is Little Lion Man, isn't it? I think that's one of their most famous songs, right? Little lion man it was like

lenny doesn't like it

oh he's right to growl they are they're a little mid it was like advanced i love mumford and sons i will not sit here and listen to this sorry i bring this up only because i have a negative association with mumford and sons for the rest of my life because of this it felt like an advanced interrogation tactics I'm that is so funny and I was like why wouldn't you just turn the iPod off and they were like well we love music and I was like you love listening to the same song every night inside Lou and Davis that's the end of my story Inside Lou and Davis.

That was it. It's about a guy called Lewin Davis.
It's Welsh, but his mom is Italian, I believe he says. Yes.
And I love that somebody says

Pablo.

What are you? They call him Pablo. They call him Pablo.
Because he looks, because he is Latino.

I love that line.

But also, Bud Grossman says, what's the N stand for? Beautiful.

It's a great line.

And then once again, because he's Guatemalan, says, maybe if you stay out of the sun a little bit, maybe he's giving him the career advice.

Yeah. He says 18 hysterical, insane things and then promptly has an air an overdose and probably dies.

The two seconds of sympathy he gives him in silence when he says his partner killed himself. And he's like, anyway, George Washington Bridge is a terrible bridge to throw yourself.

Well, no, Crossman doesn't say that. No, no, no, no, no, John Goodman.
Yeah, yes. Like, just all the amazing things got goodman.
I was like, well, John Goodman's like, it's a brief performance.

He's only in like six or seven minutes of the movie. And then I'm watching it and I'm like, does he actually have 15 straight pages of diary? It's all gold.

He comes in, attacks the rack. It's so good.
But yeah, Louis Davis,

he is a folk singer.

It's okay, Lenny. Lenny, it's okay.
He's just practicing. You can let him let him.
What will happen if you let him rampage? He's just going to do this for like five minutes.

What are you mad about, Lenny? He hears people in the hallway.

He thinks he owns the blank check office. He thinks so.
He's the guard. He's the official guard dog.
This once, yeah.

If you live in like a busy apartment building with an animal, with a dog, like they will anytime someone like exits out of an elevator. Like, you know, it's insane.
He's crazy. They know.

Lewin Davis, his partner died. It's 1961.
He released a solo album. It did not sell.
The movie begins with him getting the shit beat out of him. Do you consider this a flash forward or not?

I feel like there's so much debate about this.

Of whether or not it's a loop because um it is presented differently both times but obviously it's very similar yeah i think of it as two different things interesting but i don't really uh care that much uh and i don't i'm not trying to reddit please calm down like offer some definitive take on this i like the idea that it is a loop with the mildest improvement at the end of he keeps the cat, you know, like in the house.

He's learned a little bit. I will say this, and I said some things to this effect at the beginning of this episode uh

it's a little frustrating sometimes talking about the cohen brothers right where people are trying to solve it yes right and i think we tend not to try to be like puzzle solving movie guys but a lot of our episodes there's been a lot of very loud like i cannot believe they got all of this wrong they forgot this part of the plot

art wasn't subjective right that's the thing forgetting plot stuff we do that all the time we're bad at our jobs but the sort of like that is a fundamental misread of the movie.

There are certain things where like, we got the fucking, of course,

it's not Tommy Lee Jones' dad at the end of no country that he goes to visit. Like, that's just actually on us.
That's a big mistake.

But there's other stuff where I'm like, every time I watch these movies, I flip opinions on certain reads. I really do think the Con movies are like that.

They really do feel like dreams where you wake up and you go like, why the fuck was I doing that? Like, what does that mean?

And the more I re-watch them, the changes in where you are in your life, like, sometimes I'm like, it's absolutely two separate events.

And sometimes I'm like, it's the same event from two different perspectives. And I don't think there's a definitive answer.
I don't think there's a definitive answer either.

I do think they kind of not spoon feed, but drop hints with the line about folk songs saying it's never new and it never gets old.

But, you know, a folk song is repetitive. A folk song is the same

like melody sung over and over again to different words this is a good point and so it's one of those where you go

and also if you pay attention to the way it's edited what's a hard cut versus what's a fade is also a very cool way to watch this film because it fades to him being back at the Gorfines the next morning and the cat waking up with the cat on his chest yes and it's a yes and it's a fade that time the first time it's a hard cut and the second time it's a fade i think that's brilliant and those are two distinctly different events.

Well, the cat wake-ups are absolutely different.

And the result is different. Yes.
One time he lets the cat out, one time he doesn't. I think you're right.
Sorry, finish your point. No, no, I'm just saying, like, there's so many ways to watch it.

There's so many ways to interpret it. I do think that something that we learn as we get older is that.

Whether it's God or the universe, you're handed the same situation over and over again to see how much you've learned. And I do think that the idea of this film is to,

it's weirdly hopeful, despite how depressing it is, that he's going to figure it out at some point because the first step was not letting the cat out. Yes, I agree with you.
That is my read.

It's that the multiple interpretations is the point. It isn't that one or the other is the answer.

This movie is very paired, in my opinion, to a serious man in a lot of ways, where it's the sort of like tests of Job, this guy who keeps being challenged by the universe.

And the point in the serious man is it really isn't this guy's fault. Yeah.
And the point in this movie is all of this is basically self-created and self-perpetuated by this guy.

But like whether or not they're the same event, it's meaningless to him.

He probably couldn't differentiate between them being separate events, a month apart, a week apart, a night apart. And also his takeaway would probably be the same.

What is frustrating about this guy is that he isn't learning, right? And then you can look at the ending and sometimes I think, oh, he's starting to get it.

And other times I think he's just just disregarding this the au revar is like him putting an ironic distance to a thing that he should actually be processing in a deeper way that's mental illness which is the other thing is like very much can't tell what was a month ago what was a week ago is like that's depression like 100 and that's living in a rut that's being an artist who's facing rejection But then John Goodman has this great line where he's like, essentially making fun of him, but also reading him for filth where he's like, oh, my life's this big pile of shit.

I don't remember making this big pile of shit. Right, right.
Which is like, you are the reason your life sucks. You can do something about it.

And those kinds of people are the most frustrating people to deal with where you're like, I have a solution. Do something else.

He, right, clearly thinks.

you know, maybe not the world, but the industry, the scene is against him a little bit, right? But there's, but he never rants about it or anything.

Like, there's no moment in this movie that's that on the nose. And he can't talk about the horrible thing, which is that he lost his partner.
Like, that's the thing where it's obviously like

the mere mention or waft of it sets him off and makes sense. Like that, it's like, that's the un, you know, that's the unsolvable riddle of like, how am I supposed to get another partner?

That was when I was probably at my best, which I, I think is why this movie is so personal.

And I feel like it's one of their most like overtly moving movies, because it is, I think it's really activating something about these two guys who work together trying to process the theoretical tragedy of losing your other half, right?

And they have obviously now at the time we're recording this been in their sabbatical split-off side projects, but like they didn't lose each other. No, you can't break up your brothers.

Very true. Right.

There's like a certain Twilight Zone nightmare scenario of like, what if they made Blood Simple and then one of them died? Yeah. Sure, right.
What the fuck would they do? Yeah. Kind of thing.

But I also think watching it this time, I really started to drill down on, does Luin want to be successful?

This is a big thing that in the past, I've read this sort of sense of resentment of, oh, fuck, why is no one giving me my break? Right.

And I started really like through the lens of just when does he indicate that he wants something more than what he has? And it happens so rarely.

And when it does, it feels like what he wants is for someone just to create an ecosystem where he can keep doing the exact thing he's doing right now with slightly less struggle.

Because he's not saying that he wants a ton of money, that he wants fame, that people aren't calling him a genius, right?

And he also, for how cynical he is, doesn't do a lot of why that guy and not me kind of shit that you so often sense. You don't see him grinding an axe.

You're right about bob dylan or whoever the fuck oh definitely the specter of bob dylan at the end of the movie i do feel he's clocking like oh is you know something changing is i'm not this guy right what's the troy the character that stark sands plays yeah he doesn't like there's a little yeah there's a little bit of like this is the thing that's that's getting bud grossman's attention like you got to play I mean at Bud Grossman's, like, that's crazy.

But then the Budline of like, he connects with people. Like, but he says it.

oh yeah 100 right he's a good kid yeah he's a good upstanding guy people read his goods but and like the you know the unspoken thing that bud is saying to lou and of like you on the other hand seem like a moody piece of shit and he like inadvertently i mean like he doesn't know he's telling him to kill himself but he's like you should get back together with your partner and that like to a depressive is very much reading, you should kill yourself too.

That's right.

There is an easy, symbolic read of this movie in which he is literally trying to pay a fare to cross, you know, to, and go in the ocean that he's like, you know, that the merchant marine are like Charon and he's like, that's the only step left before he enters the underworld, right?

Like, and he's just in this purgatory where he's like, do I do that? Do I fucking get on the boat?

You know, the merchant marine thing is what I find very telling within this sort of focus I was giving on this viewing, right?

Is like, he really bristles at Sark Sands, but I think a lot of that is, this has to be an act. This guy can't be for real.
Right. And he's,

does he have a higher function when he's watching him play in the bar?

He's this type of guy who wants to believe that he's operating like a samurai or something, right? That there's like an empirical code for artistic purity.

And that if you are more or less ambitious than that, then you're wrong, right?

He doesn't want people who are just kind of clocking in and clocking out and like this guy seems so untroubled and uncomplicated by it. And And it's like, that's not enough.

You need to be tortured by this. But also, if you're too mercenary, if you're too careerist, if you're too strategic, then you're not doing it for the right reasons, right?

And they keep on sort of asserting this idea that it's like, you could have a home to some idea, to some degree, you seem obsessed with the idea of being unmoored, sleeping on people's couches, not needing much to get by, you know, constantly struggling to just get $10 a head.

Like that's the thing. And I think all he ultimately wants is the idea of someone like Bud Grossman, who's a kingmaker, saying, you are good enough that I will give you just enough money to survive.

I will give you just enough attention to survive. I don't think he wants to be Bob Dylan, but Bob Dylan is a classic example of a guy who didn't play by the rules, right?

Doesn't get along with people in an obvious way, but his genius was so undeniable that the world warps around him and goes, you do it your way and we're all going to fucking support it.

I don't even think he wants that much attention. I think he's just like, can I enter a system in which I'm stuck in a loop, but a loop of comfort? That's what he wants.

And the Merchant Marines thing is like, okay, if Bud Gressman says no, I'll go back on the boat. He's not fucking bitter about it.

He's almost like, okay, it's over because even though he's lying to himself in that moment, right? I think what he's looking for is the three hots in a cot.

But every home he enters is not a welcoming one besides the gore finds he will never be happy it's so interesting though because if you if you watch the movie and focus on the times he's in somebody's home right you've got adam driver who's in this tiny tiny place

and he was also not

it is funny that kylo wren and fucking po dam and podam rener off a star wars movie two years later it's so funny two years later that's happening

and it starts with them faced like inch to inch apart you know I certainly think this is why

Juilliard, by the way. Isaac true.
Yeah.

I think this is why Isaac gets Star Wars, no question. Maybe.
I mean, obviously that part was also weird where it was going to be small and then it got bigger. But okay, no, so he's at Adam's place.

He's in Al Cody's place, who's also not selling any records. That's failure.
He has a home, but he's still a failure. The marriage between Jim and Gene is.
destined to fall apart at some point. Yeah.

Maybe with his doing, maybe without. That's a home that's falling apart.
His sister yelling at the kid. That's an an unhappy home.
The final home he enters is his dad in a nursing home.

Yeah, shitting himself, shitting himself having a moment of connection, and he's not. The double that is the most Cohen brothers,

you know, so Cohen brothers going into their bag moment. Yeah, like looking out the window as like Oscar Isaac just like plays his heart out.

Then he slowly turns his head to look at his son, and you're like, Oh my God, it's a cocoa moment.

The music has spoken through the senility. He says, Wow twice, and then walks out and goes, My father needs to be cleaned.
It's perfect.

When the second union guy is like, Oh, how's your dad? You know, like, he's great. He's been asking after you.

Also, the um, you can't join the military. What? Because I'm a communist.
And then the guy's like, Did you ever spawn something in Russian? It's the

word for like a fellow socialist. I forget what he's saying.
And he goes, Never mind. Andrew, that first guy, too, he goes,

uh, you're, you're not Hugh Davis's kid, are you? And he goes, why not? Why not?

Why not?

It's so good. It's so good.
And it really is this movie. The humor really is in a lot of the edit, as is with a lot of Cohen Brothers films.

Like their editing is really what makes their writing is funny on paper, but when it's cut so well,

it's fucking fancy. Well, because so often the punchline is like the repetition of these things in different environments and different people in these very short scenes, right?

Where, you know, him asking Al Cody, how's your place? It's a dump. Do you you have a couch? Hard cut to taking stuff out of the back of Al Cody's car.
Yeah.

The Gorfines, though. This is the, right, the warmest home he's brought into.
Do you think, what's this? Mike, I think Mike's son. I said fundamentally, Mike is not a Gorfine.

Right, but you were, were you kidding? I couldn't tell. No, I wasn't.
I think he's not. Right.
Right. It's like that, that I actually think is a misread of the movie.
I think it is interesting.

Like, I get why people flock to that because her reaction is so extreme.

It's not just that. To me, the read of that is like every time he's going in there, there's a bit of a strain to how they're behaving.

Like the way he answers both times, she's making her famous Musaka. They always have friends there.
It feels a little like they are also not looking something in the face.

That's why I like can see the reading of like, and also he wouldn't, he wouldn't use the stage name Mike Gorfine. He would think of a better stage name.
I agree. You know what know what I mean?

Mike Timlin. He's come up with like a folk singer name.
Right. You know, here is my read on that.

But then it's almost, if he is their son, like then it's kind of crazy that he yells at them because it's their son who died. You know what I mean?

Now Lewin Davis is a bit of a, you know, bit of a caustic fella. I think the number one reason I think he is not a Gorfine is in the father's, or I should say, the husband's response.

The great Ethan Phillips. Yes.
Neelix himself. Yes.
Not the father, but the husband, that he goes like, hey, look, we're all grieving in our own ways. Right.
Right. And which is great.

I mean, like, the way they let him back in is lovely. If it was his son, it feels a little crazy.
He would either be more emotional or he'd be angrier at Lewin.

It would be Bill Lewin and Rachel getting married. I think it is him.
Exactly. I think it is him correcting for

his wife kind of making it about her. Wait, great, Robin Bartlett.
Yes. My whole

movie. Where is his scrotum?

It's like what you're saying of, like, this is the only functional home he's allowed in, right? Yeah.

And they're like, you know, again, if you're reading them not as Mike's parents, like, they're just like patrons of folk music who love it. And they're like, you know, crunchy ever west side guys.

They are crunchy

liberal Jews who have become upper class or, you know, upper middle class, right? And feel the need to become patrons of the art

and support the people doing the real work, right?

And I think to him, there's something unseemly about that, that he doesn't want to be like a court jester, right?

He doesn't want to be

a performing monkey.

As somebody who like grew up as like the singer, even though that was the sing for everyone, and that's the way you make money and that's the way you put food on your table and pay rent.

You're like, I'm not, it's not, it's not a, I'm not a circus animal. This is not my party trick.
This is my job.

So it's like one of those scenes that I really do get, but I do have to skip it when I watch it sometimes because her reaction always makes me so sad.

They will give him the free home with nothing in return, but there's also the expectation of like, you belong to the kingdom now, right?

Like he owes them something, whether or not they're going to ask him to sing at every dinner.

There is some unspoken sense of singing for your supper because they're people who get off on the idea that they're patrons of the arts and they are supporting the people doing the radical work while they've settled into something more comfortable.

And I think the idea that he is being commodified in that way, even if they ask nothing of him, even if they are the most accepting and the most kind of like emotionally engaged with him, pisses him off.

And I also think her turning Mike's death into something that she has to grieve pisses him off because he wants that to be his. Unless she's his mom, which is why I think she's not his mom.

Ben, you seem to disagree. Oh, no, no.

I was going to more just add it. I really feel for him in that I think they're parating him around.
Well, and I think that's a good thing.

I mean, it's cool that they're friends with this guy or whatever.

I think they're, yes, giving him a place to stay, but there's something gross about it, especially even with the fact that you keep seeing different friends at these dinner parties.

And it feels very established that like he and these other musicians are always around and they're always like little like guest performers at these dinners.

Like these sit on these curated interesting minds things. And it feels like there's like a petting zoo element of like, we brought a guy with a camera to like look at you, you know?

And he's living this life of struggle. And they have the big bearded guy.
They have the comfort of academia.

And they, you know, like they've decided to go that route and i think it it would it would piss anyone but that's the part of him

that's the part of him that doesn't want success he wants to find a comfortable middle where he can stay in a loop because that doesn't piss him off though everything you know i'm saying what makes him happy nothing yeah he's fundamentally an unhappy person the most content you see him is the very last his very last like singing fare thee well without mike sometimes you see the spirit move through him in a way that's more comforting but obviously when he's performing for bud or whatever it's so powerful but it's angry and it's sad.

You know, it's yeah, he picks the death of Queen Jane to sing to like the most important like audition of his life. Such an insane decision.
Yeah.

But that this is a guy who, but it feels like a Lewin Davis decision. Right.

It is a Lewin Davis decision, but you think it's, it's such an interesting moment to then see how free and beautiful he sounds singing Dink Song at the very end of the

very end of the movie. After making that decision himself.
Yeah.

Like that it's like

rather than you know doing it in front of the the Gorfines and then she joins in doing Mike's part where it's like, you know, sticking, you know, like now it's like he's here's a new take on this.

And when he sings it in front of the Gorfines, he's singing like his part of a duel. He's not doing the it is missing something.

When he sings it at the end, he has finally found the way to sing it as a solo performer.

I think like part of his samurai code, though, is like, I only want to borrow money from people who don't have money to give me.

I only want to stay on a couch of someone who doesn't have enough room. Like the idea that the Gorfins, like the cup overfloweth makes it feel like dirty to him.

And how much it makes him feel more like a charity case. Have you watched Star Trek Voyager? No.
I know he plays an alien doctor. No, that's the thing I just want to for one second say.

He plays the character of Neelix on Star Trek Voyager. Okay.
Now, of course, Star Trek Voyager is about a spaceship that gets flung to the other side of the galaxy, right? So they're lost, right?

And so there's sort of a makeshift crew. That's the point of Star Trek Voyager.
They've got a captain. They've got a doctor.
The doctor is the hologram is, of course, Robert Picardo. Of course.

Your favorite. Yes.

You know, they pick up a sexy Borg lady.

But then there's also Neelix, played by Ethan Phillips. Who's he? He's like a weirdo, they find.
Okay. He's just like a guy.
He's like an alien they meet from over there.

And he's kind of like, I kind of know the lay of the land around here if you want me to like hang out. And they're like, okay, what do you do? And he's like, I can cook.
And so he's the cook.

But that's it. It's just so weird.
There's no Star Trek character like it. His design is really good.
His design's really cool.

He's got these crazy crazy spots and like this weird sort of tufty hair and it must have been such a pain to put it on every day but every episode that he's a part of jane way's like hey neelix what's up there he is yeah and neelix is like i'm trying to make like sort of scrambled eggs and she's like she's i'll see you later like everyone is annoyed by it anyway i always love to see him i think he's really good in this movie as is um uh robin bartlett well everyone is good i i everyone doing the one scene performing alex karpovsky funny for a second max casella such a good slime ball.

Like, you know,

Pin and Casella, I need to talk about him. But

there is something in, you know, this kind of person. They're not bad people, the Gorfins, right? No, not at all.
They're just a little annoying. They're a little annoying.

And they also, like, basically...

They want to launder their sense that they've sold out and have gotten comfortable and are no longer like skin in the game, right?

And I think her singing along with him is like an overly personal thing to do that she feels the need to do because she feels some ownership of the music to show how much she gets it.

Performative grief.

Exactly. Yeah.
Which is why

her husband makes that apology of like we're all grieving in our own ways. And to him, the insult is like, you don't need to grieve at the same level that I do.

You're a guy who brought him over for dinner and let him sleep on your couch. He was my partner.
My life will never recover.

But for him, it's just like

he basically wants to figure out a way to live the exact life he's living with 5% less difficulty. And he keeps thinking, if I could just solve these two issues, I'd be happy.

And he could solve the two issues and he's not happy. 10 new issues emerge and he fucks all of them up.

Well, but there's also stuff like he needs to pay for an abortion for Carrie Mulligan and her banks, her beautiful banks. And her bangs.
He goes to the clinic and they're like, no, it's fine.

You're paid up from the last fucking abortion you paid for that she decided not to do she carried to terms yes and like it's just the kind of like right exactly he all around town he goes to the merchant marine and they're like yeah you owe us some money you know it's like he just has these tiny little balances up and down that he can never quite balance out and if he balanced them out he'd be great no so he goes and records exactly he goes and records the fucking novelty song and they're like do you want royalties or the paycheck and he's like what the fucking pay i need money given the paycheck and then at the the end of the movie, they're like, that song, by the way, is going to make so much money.

It's such a good Cohen's judgment that I kept being like, right, does the song come on the radio when he's on the road trip? Does he have to hear it be a hit?

No, it's that at the Gore finds, they're like, that song's going to be a hit. You never see him face the success of the song.
You see him face the idea of, you probably fucked up.

It would be too on the nose if he was walking around town and there's like posters of Al Cody or whatever.

But But like, why does he take the money? He needs it for the fucking abortion. Exactly.
I know. It's like he's always trying to pay the Piper and then there's another Piper.

It's so well done to have sympathy for being a fuck-up. Yes.
Because the thing is, too, the other element to this is that his manager is this old inept man who he'll never get payment from. Right.

So he also just knows that like racist roadblocks. I think he's going to dump your manager and switch to Mel.
I think Mel is going to take you places. And you know what?

There's so many Mels on the Lower East. I was about to say, I mean, it would be, yeah.

It's Mel and his, whoever is his like clerk, she's

so funny. Who just comes out with the box.

You got it. Yeah, I got it.
So good.

Like that moment where, right, where he's like, has, you know, has Buck Grossman called? And she goes and lifts up her hands.

He's like, and she's like, no, I meant to tell you we're throwing it out of the car.

Yeah. And goes and gets the box.
But let's also call out. Mel is like, I can't give you money, but I can give you the jacket.

And Lewin hates the idea that he's seen as a charity case that needs the jacket. And then we watch the entire movie, him suffer from the lack of the coat.

And the, and the way that they, I'm saying, the way they depict the cold, even with like the shot of his feet at the diner

with his wet sock. It is so visceral, that feeling of my entire foot is wet.

I'm going to take my wet sock out of my wet shoe and rub them against each other to just try to make it some warm 1% warmer.

But can I say, like, the whole movie is kind of summarized in the one shot of him walking through the snow when there's clearly a snowless patch next to him. Yes.
Yes. Yes.
It's brilliant.

I don't need your coat.

I don't need your coat, but I'm going to walk in five feet of snow. Right.

And then be upset about the problem, but also not complain about it to anyone because I like the idea that I'm comfortable with the suffering.

I do now think now that you were saying, like, yes, he does not actively complain about anyone, but every man he meets in this movie, you do feel him bristling. Yeah.

So it's like Justin Timberlake, he's like, I hate this performative nice husband man, right? Who's like, you know, good at

everything he does. He doesn't like Adam Driver for being a buffoon, really.
And to him, like, a fake.

A phony, phony circus.

Exactly, right, right. Yeah, right.
He's going to change his name. Dark Sands, he's like, you're a disgusting square to me.
You know, he won't say it aloud, but like. The struggle is part of it.

How can you be this untroubled and make great music? Right.

It's like the famous Mark Maynard episode where he interviews Nick Kroll, which I think about all the time, where Mark Mariner is just like, your childhood was normal. I hate it.

And Nick Kroll's like, I'm sorry, I had a happy childhood. Yeah.
But his character is very mariny. And the last like.
Yeah, he's very mariny. Because you're like, you're talented.
I get it.

And things just aren't quite lining up for you. Maybe Lewin should get a podcast.
That's the answer. The thing is, he would if this movie were made

right now, he would just have a podcast. He'd be like, Do you think Bud Grossman likes me? I auditioned for him once.
He would not be enough of a go-getter to start a podcast.

If he did, he'd abandon after three episodes. He would be so active in the comments.
Lewin Davis.

He's a Redditor. A comment.

He's burning up the ABC.

But the

penultimate WTF, the solo

Marin monologue one,

I feel like was so emotionally affecting and was, I don't know if you've listened to it, but it was basically Marin talking about how the podcast got him to break the Lewin Davis cycle. Very much.

That he was this guy for 20 years and that through the act of interviewing people, which started out as a career move, but like taught him empathy and understanding and comparing other people's careers that he like got out of this.

And I just just think, and Marin talks about this, that throughout his 20s and his 30s and into his early 40s, that he always had this attitude of like, why this fucking guy?

And Lewin Davis does not do that once in the movie. I agree with you that he bristles with people, but like every other, he never rants.
He never rants.

And every other version of a movie like this with a guy like this who's stuck in the middle. is angry at the other people for how they're perceived.

The one person he takes it out on is the nice lady with the auto arc. Who's the most most legit thing? And right, exactly.
It's the most undeserving of being heckled.

She's like, I've literally never performed in New York before. He's being so mean.
In that Del Toro interview, they were like, that was one of our most complete ideas

in the movie is if this guy comes face to face with the real thing, he not only doesn't know what to make of it, but he's going to be an asshole. And they said the other like really complete idea.

that they write their scripts, they start out and then they go like, what happens to the next scene? What happens to the next scene?

They don't map out the plot in advance by by and large, unless they're doing really naughty kind of noir stuff.

And so they're like surprised as things are going along, as they develop them.

And they said, a complete idea for us that we never considered the alternative is that he's going to drive past Akron and not pull off the side of the road. Just notice it.
Right. Right.

That the entire idea for the movie is there's no scenario we could imagine going there.

And he said, if we do the thought experiment of he drives off and he knocks on the door, that's a bad scene from a bad movie. I don't want to see that.
right?

The complete idea is you look at this glowing CGI town, right? It looks magical. It looks like fucking Potter's beautiful.
Literally, the Polar Express

pulls into

this guy has no fucking home and there's literally a family ready to go right there. His two-year-old son.
His two-year-old baby.

He's never met that he's never met that didn't he didn't know existed until 30 minutes before

I think the movie brilliantly tricks you because you're like, well, the shitty move is that this guy pulled up on the side of the road and said, I'm really tired. I could use some sleep.

Can you drive me back to New Jersey? And you think he's going to be selfish and take the car to Akron and fuck this guy over because he needs to meet his child. And instead, he doesn't even do that.

He just looks at the sign. He just looks at it and keeps on fucking driving and hits a cat.

The wrong cat that he took off the streets of New York City. Yeah.
Right. And look, he shows up at her door.
She probably slaps him in the face, right?

She apologizes for not telling him that he didn't get, she didn't get the abortion, but also goes like, by the way, you're a fucking asshole. I don't want you in my kid's life.

But even still, that gives him a sense of closure and processing that he's actively avoiding. And there are decisions like.
What I was saying, John Goodman is like the ghost of Christmas Future.

Not only does he not know how to not become that guy, he refuses to acknowledge that this guy is a version of what he could become. He leaves him on the side of the road.
Yeah. I mean, probably

gonna die it's not a great situation in his defense i'm not sure what he should do at that point yeah it's a little bit of a tough but his his response almost every time is what am i supposed to do i'm walking away yeah i i don't know what to do here luin is the cat luin is the cat because the cat doesn't get actually get hit is the crazy thing is that he checks the he checks the car and there's nothing there's no sign of a cat having been hit the cat moves on Your point about the Appalachian performer and like how he's so rude to her, and yet she's the most legit she's she's literally what folk music is she is the real thing here is a person from a faraway place who is performing very regionally specific music who learned music as it was like right it's like an oral tradition a hundred percent and there's something too about like his like whole like you know samurai code authenticity and yet the music that he plays is traditional music that someone else wrote that he's trying to put his own spin on he should be doing sea shanties

because he was a merchant marine guy. Maybe he should do something cool.
Yeah.

But then with the Dylan of it all, too, like what Dylan really did, right, is he was the first one to be like, why don't we just take this music form and write original music? Yes.

And also comment on the now.

Total sponge. He was taking in everything and spitting out everything and mixing shit together.
And people are like, what the fuck's your deal? He was like, I don't know.

So when Grossman's like, I don't see money here. I mean, that's the thing is he's, it's so cutting, but it's kind of true.
He is correct. Like, what, what is the business?

Like, what is the success here? I don't think he actually, you're right. He doesn't really have a thing in mind.
Dylan had shit to say. Lewin Davis does not.
Or if he does, he's not saying it, right?

He just wants to impress people with his skill at the standards, right? And so Bud Grossman, like, he says there's not a lot of money here, which is the most cutting shit in the world.

And then he follows up by saying a bunch of things that are good about him, even when some of them are backhanded, where where he's like, you are talented, but like, what makes you different than 800 other guys I see every week?

And then he's like, could you be a Peter? Could you be a Paul? He gives him a path. He does.
He goes, stay out of the sun, cut that into a goatee. You could be the third guy.
That's a career.

And then you can go to fucking poppies and play your own shit wherever you want. But that's the version of it where that funds your lifestyle.
And he immediately goes like, no, not happening.

Well, he won't have a partner again. He can't, he can't like enter into that kind of emotional partner.
He can't open himself up to the possible pain.

And that's the difference between him and

the Gorfines, where they have performative grief and he has anticipatory grief. Yes.
Yes. And Lenny is also

doing it. Lenny's grieving.
I'm so sorry. But don't you think if Bud Grossman had said to him in that moment, I got an idea.
I got a songwriter who can't sing or play a lick.

Would you perform his material? Right. He would go.

No, I don't do other people's songs right probably if bud grossman offered 10 other versions of here's my pitch for how to sell you that weren't forcing him to be part of a duo or a trio again he still would bristle at it the idea is that he wants someone to go yup i get you move here live above the venue perform here every night i pay you a stipend it's the version of the merchant marines it's three hots and a cot you don't need to get more or less ambitious than you are right now what if bud was like

Do you want to be my toothbrush? He'd say yes, because this guy's full of bristles. He's bristling.
Oh, my God. Rachel, don't leave.
What are you talking about? Why are you opening the door?

Did it's holding a baseball card? I have my Pete Alonso card here. Oh, wow.
Oh, my boy Pete. Sorry, Mass fan.
Whatever.

My daddy built Yankee Stadium. What was that? My daddy built Yankee Stadium.

No. We were chatting before you did your dad work on this.
My dad actually did work on the construction of the new Yankee Yankee Stadium when I was a kid. With his bare hands, with his bare hands.

This is baby Joe from Superman. Sorry, I'm reaching to all my comfort objects.
Have you seen Superman?

Guys, I have it. It's good.
It's fine. It's good.
It's good, Gillen. You'd enjoy it.
You've not seen it out of loyalty to DJ Katrona, your one true Superman. Well, that's the thing.

You know me and my love of DJ as Clark Kent. But it's also that I was doing a Vita and I just simply

saw Sinners and then I went back into my tunnel. So then when I came out, I could only see what was in theaters after I came out.

And by the way, guys, this is the only reason I keep on turning down Broadway musicals. They're begging me, and I go, I can't miss these.
What's the last offer you got on a Broadway musical?

Oh my god, Death Becomes Her. They wanted me to play both.

And I said, The movies I'll miss. I can't.
You said I can do it. I said, I could.
I could. I could do it with my sleep.
And I have excess energy. What you left over on Broadway would you fit best?

You know, the one it's off Broadway. The one I'm

in.

Yeah, of course. I every year, go, is this the year I

hire a vocal coach and try to figure out if I could do it? Please don't do it. I mean, you can if you want.
No, he should. He should.

I'll be your Audrey. It'll be so fun.
Here we go. We've got a contract.
I mean, if you hit

these tales, you're going to go far.

I'm just imagining the producers of Little Shot being like, it's non-negotiable.

They have to take Newman. Jesus fucking Christ.
What if you were like Hermes? You said on podcasts or binding? You could totally be in Hades time.

I will say the Chris or Cyber part in Death Becomes Her is really fun. Yeah, but nobody beats him.
Nobody beats Chris. I love Chris Siebert so much.
He's the god. I agree.

He is a fucking legend, but because I have seen him do such insanely technically complicated things on stage, I thought.

the performance was going to level up to a thing I could not possibly ever consider doing. Right.
Like his fucking Lord Farquhar on his stage. He was on the snowball time.
Or I saw his Mrs.

Trunchbull and Matilda where he He was. He was amazing.
I was like, do you think he feels like Death Becomes Her is a nice break? It does feel like it's to work around in a suit.

Because Jennifer Simard and are you going to see him in Batboy? Oh my God. I just want to do that.
He's doing Bat Boy and Encore. He's playing the Reverend.
I assume so. That's exciting.

I love Encores. He is phenomenal in Death Becomes Her, but it does feel like a little bit of a princess part where I think

they get

it.

I agree. Have you seen it yet? I haven't.
I saw it recently. I just feel the need to acknowledge this because we covered Death Becomes Heroes.

paul taswell costumes that show is a tremendous amount of fun and is eric winterling built them they're just incredible pieces of costumes it is an astonishing production yeah it is like impeccably staged in ways where the scenes are introduced and i'm like i don't know how you pull this scene off yeah like no movie where you're like there's no way to translate this right now beyond even the kind of like magic like the beetle the beetle juice stuff that's been done yeah there there is just it is incredible can't put put a hole in a woman's stomach, and they do.

They do. Don't say Betelgeuse one more time.
I won't. Okay.
I could play Lydia. Sure.
Hey, mom.

I can't think of these stuff I could do. No, the only one I would do is

Little Shop. Yeah.

It does feel like that's never going to close, too. It's really crushing.
Yeah. It's a little.
Yeah. And unfortunately, there's no shortage of Seymour's.
All the most handsome men on planet Earth

above 6'3

are lining up to play Seymour. It's going great.
Um,

uh, other things I want to talk about. Uh, Justin Timberlake, who I have bristled at, just crazy that he's in maybe the two best movies of the decade.
That's all. Yeah, I know.

This and social network. This was this period where

it felt like he was like, I want to make a serious

actor. Right.
We're going to work with really serious guys. And he's not bad at it.
He's totally fine. I think he's a good movie.
He gets the job done in this movie.

And he's really good in social networks. He's great in social network.
And then he was like, great, thank you. I'll go be a movie star now.
And everyone's like, Justin. No.

you had it you got to be in shrek the third you have enough you the three movies of the decade honestly that there was this feeling of like don't do yeah time don't do friends with benefits don't do runner runner this isn't what we want runner runner oh my god time was money this that was that movie and social networks are like working with the best directors alive who are using your energy in such smart ways.

I think he's really, really good.

He's good in this.

I mean, he's also just, I think it's a, it's a very clever piece of casting to, you know, have such an established pop star, you know, play someone that Lewin would be chafing against.

I mean, it was the era of that, wasn't it, though? Like Adam Levine doing Begin Again and other films, you know? But he like really underplays this.

I mean, the moment that I think he really nails is when Lewin goes, who wrote this shit? And he takes the two seconds before saying me. Right.

And he's like, how defensive am I going to be in this respect? Given that I am eight levels above you in status at this point, anyway. Yeah.
But yet you can tell that he kind of looks up to Lewin.

Creatively, he knows Lewin isn't for real.

It's the magic of guys like this, where even when they're shooting themselves in the foot and like everyone else is lapping them, they still look at them and they're like, but I want this guy's approval.

Yeah. I want to be like him.
And more than anything, I don't want his judgment. Right.
I don't want him to feel like I'm part of the problem.

It's yes.

I want to call out some other cast people. I need to pull this name quickly.
Jerry Goldsmith.

Jerry Goldsmith is Mel. No, I'm sorry.
His name is. It's not Jerry Goldsmith.
That's a famous composer. Jerry Goldsmith is.

His name is.

Thank you. Jerry Grayson, who I worked with on Boy of the Gonzo.
Oh, sure. He played the ornery old diner owner.
Oh. I spent a lot of time with this guy.

Is he lovely? He passed away like months before this movie came out. This is his final performance.

He was. It's a great final performance.
Absolutely. It's really fantastic.
It's incredible. Yeah.
He was an ordinary old character actor who started out as part of a duo act.

He kind of had his own like Martin and Lewis thing. They played in Vegas.

He was a little bit of a like Lewin Davis of his generation. Comedy in the kind of like rat pack club era.
And then he transitioned to being a really good character actor.

He did a death of a salesman on Broadway and had a heart attack during intermission. This is his famous story.
He finally died of heart disease.

But

May 1st, 1995, a heart attack brings real drama to Broadway.

He died. They brought him back to life and he was back on in the second act.
You're fucking joking. I'm not joking you.
Do you think he was the one who was like, I have to go on stage? Yeah.

Yeah, I imagine. I feel that way too.
Yeah.

And the previously mentioned Sam Rogal, one of my best friends, I brought him to, this was like the first movie I was ever in back when I I was an actor.

And I brought him to the rap party and Sam got like buttonholed by Jerry Grayson, who monologued him for like an hour.

And Sam was in college in a film course and he was like, I have to make a documentary about someone. Do you think Jerry would let us do it?

And we went over to Jerry's apartment and just filmed Jerry talking for like five hours. He lived in like Tracy Letts's basement.

He had an apartment that was just like 20,000 Blu-rays and every photo of every show he did when he was like 25 going, look at how gorgeous I was.

And then we go see Lou and Davis together and we're like, oh my God, Jerry Grayson. It's the part his whole career has been building up to.
And then it was just last role.

And then we realized after walking out of the movie that he had died. But he's so fucking good in this.
And it felt like a beautiful capper to his career.

Him saying, get the fuck out of my office is a great line read. Yes.
It's brilliant. He's brilliant.
I'll say this too. He died with a full head of hair.
The guy had great jeans.

He shaved it for this. No,

oh, that's really cool. Because in my head, I picture him as this

bald guy. Beautiful, beautiful.
Not a rug, beautiful Bufana, man. Yeah.
Anyone else you want to shout out? His secretary is brilliant. It's so funny.

Was, let me get her credits here as well. Yeah, she seems like someone who would be a legend.
She

snuck in. She's one of these people.
Her name was Sylvia Caudders.

She's one of these people who basically didn't hit until she was 65. Love those stories.
And then was in like, she's in Witness. She's the tourist with the camera that Harrison Ford threatens to punch

uh paul giamati yells at her in a checkout line in american splendor

um uh she fights the predator with a broom and predator too good city hall comes and misses demeanors like this obviously she's like a classic the lead of your movie yells at her for one scene kind of thing um but she basically had two careers for 30 years she was philadelphia's director of special events and she did like the centennial, the bicentennial, and all the sorts of things.

The Liberty Bell, she worked with like seven presidents. She cracked the Liberty Bell, she cracked it herself.

She's pissed off. I never knew that it was her.
She didn't look where she was going. No, she didn't like the way it was looking at her.

She hit it with a golf club.

But she died shortly after this as well. It was one of her last performances.
Oh, man.

But yeah, just like lived a great life kind of supporting the arts and then finally like made it as a character actor. It's so funny when she was like 60 and was on fire until 87.

The two of them really do have such a funny rapport

in that office scene. Lenny, this is your space.
Get all over it. It's your podcast now.
Lenny's just having a time. Does Lenny have any podcast ideas? Does he want to pitch to us?

Probably like chicken.

Okay. Interesting.
Interesting. What's the format?

Chicken and open running in a field. Okay.
So

we have someone run after Lenny with a microphone in a field with a chicken

and record what happens between the two, yeah. But the chicken can't be spiced or salted, okay? It just has to be boiled to death,

yeah. Are we thinking audio only or video? No,

you have to have video. I mean, have you seen him? He's gorgeous,

the man is made for video. He's so beautiful, yeah.
He's Lenny the Wonder Dog, and it's the kind of content that should be up on Netflix. Can we buy

the Lenny the Wonder Dog rights?

I feel like if we talked to Oscar, yes, and we said, Look, Fartman will return. But the twist is

gender swap, you You play Fartman.

Oscar Fartman. Someone else.

It's like a sleuth thing where now he's returning in a different role.

Yeah, he's the Doctor Doom.

That's the move. That's the move.
And actually, he will be Moon Knight and Apocalypse. Yes.

Can Moon Knight be in Lenny the Wonder Dog with Rachel as Detective Fartman? Both of them.

But all three of them triplets.

Yeah. Good.
Oi oi. That's him being Moon Knight.
Oi oi oi. I'm just going to keep running through moments I want to call out because this is a movie of moments.

go ahead go ahead um in the bud grossman thing uh when he gets his performance moment right he already bombs the joke of asking for the five dollars for the record hysterical right and then the guy's like no i'm actually gonna test you you're fucking here you have to play for me he's unprepared right he goes here stage and bud goes not here

they're in an office yeah yeah yeah right but still they're not on stage they're performing in the audience with the overturned chairs on the tables beautiful scene and uh f murray abraham i feel like this is sort of at the beginning of his like renaissance period because grand budapest is the following year so good it feels like he sort of rediscovered after being dormant for a while he of course did ethan's uh almost an evening his off-broadway show many years ago and that felt like it was kind of in a fallow period for him so i think ethan's always been like a very big supporter of his um

But he's doing this kind of like Sphinx-like look of intensity, of active listening while Lewin's performing.

And even though he has chosen the absolute worst song to audition with, he is like crushing it, right? Sure. He's giving it his all.
It's just a bad strategic move.

And there's a moment where he looks up and makes direct eye contact with Bud, and Bud seems to be like very deeply affected. What he reads is deeply affected by his performance.

And Lewin starts putting English on it, where the last like 30 seconds of the song, he starts hamming it up. Like he's making swoony aisles and he smirks at him.
Yeah.

You know, and he's just sort of like, I got him in my crosshairs here's the moment where i go in for the kill and then the absolute deflation of i don't see a lot of money here which that of course is a cruel thing to say in a way and of course but he's just laying it out kind of plainly it means like it's not you're not good it's more i don't as a commercial agent for musicians understand how i would make money but that also that his biggest noticeable which is true is you don't connect with the audience you don't let people in and in that moment luwin's like oh now i'm gonna let him in that he's doing doing this very kind of like phony, schmoozy charisma thing at the end of the song to try to draw the guy in.

He's just going to straight through that. Right.
He's like, you don't have it. You don't, you don't have the thing that speaks to people.
You're a good musician.

And it's because it's, he's unresolved as a person. Right.
Right.

And I think there are people like Bob Dylan, say, right, who are kind of like unresolved and don't operate by the rules of society, but yet they cannot help but communicate something that means something to other people.

And those types of people drive the people like Lou and Davis insane because they're not able to point to them and go like, yeah, but that guy sold out. That guy's unpalatable.

That guy plays the game, right? That's how he wants to be received as just like, we're taking you as you are.

And yeah, I mean, it's like the beauty of the movie ending with him literally walking out on Bob Dylan playing because the guy's about to beat the shit out of him.

And the guy's about to beat the shit out of him because he doesn't know how to process his emotions at Hoppy telling him that he also slept with Carrie Mulligan, where he is possessive of her, even though he's an asshole.

And he is not her boyfriend. Right.
Husband. Or husband.
Right. And in that final scene where they actually have chemistry.
He wasn't a member of InSync. He wants to believe.
He never.

He was never an InSync. And Pop, their best song.
But he clearly wants to believe that in her mind, it's like Lewin's the great love of my life. And unfortunately, I can't ever be with him.
Right.

That I'm the only person who's not going to be a person. He doesn't want to be committed.

But he does want to be committed. He never wants to settle down with her.
He wants the

idea that she wants him more than her boring husband.

And the idea that she would sleep with someone else, even though the implication is perhaps she slept with him again recently, specifically to get Lou in stage time because she feels bad for him, pisses him off so much that his rage gets misdirected at the most genuine folk act in the entire movie, which then leads to the next night him missing the guy who will define folk music in America for the next century, forever.

And the idea, it's like, I got you on stage the night the Times is there. And you're like, great news.
The Times is going to write about the guy who went on right now.

Right after you, the moment Dylan goes on stage, everything before that becomes a footnote in the book. It becomes the prologue to what actually mattered.

And they write about that moment in this really great book by David Hadjew called Positively Fourth Street, which is about like Joan Baez, is it Carlos Farinha, Mimi Farinha, and Bob Dylan?

And they talk about like that first night and how absolutely no other act that night mattered. The first time Bob Dylan was ever reviewed by the Times.
And they weren't necessarily good reviews.

They created Farinha. Sorry, Richard Farinha.
Thank you.

They speak of him as if his voice, I think they say like a machete through

metal. Like sheet metal? Absolutely.
They like say that about his voice, but it still made such an impact. It was so special.
Undeniable. Different.

Something has happened here, and everything's been leading up to this and it was like a complete unknown to myself it's hard to know oh man i remember you complete unknown

i think there's a movie here

lenny don't growl at me jesus lenny knows that i also auditioned for that oh well you would have been good hey thanks monica was amazing

i was kind of dreading that movie because i love lou and davis so much and i remember you seeing it and telling me the thing that's kind of miraculous about it is it actually works as a companion piece absolutely yeah 100 because it that movie is about i mean not to get too much on but like it's about dylan you know is the opposite of luin he's charmed in this way that no one can understand where everyone's like what's your deal he's like

it all and they're like what the fuck and he's like i'm famous

it all lines up for him like people like pave the road underneath his feet right and then anytime anyone's like so what you do is great keep doing it he's like gonna do something else you know and they're like what the fuck but it's you know that's how he keeps it that movie's refusal to pathologize him is what is smart about it, that it views him like E.T.

and everyone else is trying to make sense of it. Why isn't there a scene where he like looks at a mansion on a hill and then you cut to him writing the song Mansion on a Hill?

What movie could I be talking about right now?

But Louis Davis is the opposite. Movie where he watches Badlands and is like, writes Badlands.
Stop. This land isn't very good.
Sorry, is that real? Sorry. What if this land is bad? You'll see it.

Fuck.

You might like it.

I know. And we love the boss.
And there's things about the movie that worked for me. And you auditioned for that part as well, right? You auditioned for Bruce.

I would have been amazing.

I was John with broken heroes on the last chess power drive. Come on.
Rachel's wearing a jean jacket and it's jangly.

I have a bandana in my back pocket. Corded and jingly thing.
Yeah.

Yeah, no, I just, I love that this movie is the inverse where it's like,

let's spend a lot of time getting into the headspace of someone who cannot fucking figure it out. Yeah.
Which is just always,

when well rendered, but it's always relevant. Drugs to me.
Yeah, I understand. I absolutely feel the same way.

I think that's why it was so moving to me, even as a young teenager, to feel like, oh, yeah, I mean, this is, this is what it's like. And that is such a, it's such a teenage feeling, too, to be like,

when am I ever going to get it together? And it's like,

not for another 15 years, bitch. Yeah.
Like, it's just, do you know what I mean? So I feel like it, it really does speak to so many audiences.

And to some degree, it is like

the worst thing you can do is trying to fight the why can't I get it together thing versus like trying to absorb lessons from everything that happens to you.

The aforementioned sitcom pilot with the cat that didn't go. I remember having an emotional breakdown to a comedy mentor of mine.

at a bar that New Year's Eve when I was like 23 and I was like, my life is fucking ruined. And she was like, the industry sucks.
And I was like, you don't get it, but this was the thing.

And she just looked at me and went, everything is the thing. Everything's the thing.
And I was like, no, but you're wrong. I've been in shitty fucking college humor shorts.
Those weren't the thing.

She's so right. With every passing year, I'm like, everything is the thing.
Everything is the thing. Everything is the thing.
It is the whole point of the kind of cyclical loop nature of the world.

It's not real as what passes you by is meant to. Until you learn the lesson, you will learn the same lesson over and over again until you actually learn it.
Right.

Because there's a framing of this movie that is he had one shot and it was to blow away the New York Times reporter at that show. But yet, the performance he gives for the New York Times reporter

is the best performance in the whole movie. And he gives in the whole movie.
And it's actually a moment of processing for him. He solves something in himself there in a mindset.

I think he has made some progress. And I think he's going to be okay in about like 20, 22, you know,

moving at this pace. I'm saying, like, it's a slow.

I think it's, yeah, yeah. I think 20, 22 more loops of the same week

is also just one of those. I'm just imagining he's like 95 and he's like, you know,

I think I'm actually pretty healthy at this point. I think you're like emotionally healthy.

I just need to call this out because you said you think this is why the movie relates to so many people.

Our researcher, JJ,

who I

first must call out, texted us.

By the way, most of the high school kids that I tutor don't give a shit about movies, but when they do, they have almost always said that their favorite movie star is Rachel.

Granted, this is a sample of like five students who actually care about movies. Five Wisconsin

listed her, but still. Okay.
Three of five Wisconsin Ice Love Rachel.

Rachel's making an appreciative face just for the latest.

I don't have the words. It's really, really sweet.
You matter. Now, that started with, by the way, because it was following up this anecdote.
Here we go.

I have this full sense memory of walking to a Trader Joe's in Evanston a few days after seeing Inside Lou and Davis.

And at one point, Julie, JJ's wife, and I turned to each other and were like, that's our favorite movie of the year. And we just talked about all the stuff we love the whole walk there.

And then we grocery shopped. And when we got to the cashier, unprompted, he immediately said, I need to warn you about this movie you should not see.
It's called Inside Louis and Davis.

And it's one of the worst movies I've ever seen. And they said, this is a Trader Joe's, right? Like he hadn't heard us talking about it.

He was just genuinely concerned we might see a movie that he thought was too sad. So the thing is, that's such a Trader Joe's employee thing to fucking do

where they all talk where they analyze your basket and go oh is it taco night none of your business yeah

i'm a new yorker i don't want to fucking talk to you about my i'm kidding i'm so joking but that is a likely thing where they see somebody who is has like a melancholic look on their face and be like warning there's a really sad movie out coming down

yeah and the idea that they were saying this to every person they rung up for hours yeah probably but i think this is a movie where either you see it it and like a lightning bolt to your brain, you're like, oh my God, that's the human condition.

Yeah. Or you're like, why the fuck would I want to spend time with this guy? No, quite literally, yes.
Right. It's exactly what it is.
People who are allergic to this movie, I can't even fault them.

I couldn't understand it. I don't get it.
I actually kind of don't really get it either. I don't get it.
But it's not. And I don't respect it.
It's not like a misery porn movie.

Like it'd be different if it was like it was a really wrenching movie about truly, truly awful shit. I'd be like, I get that you don't want to watch that.
Fine. But it's not really.

Like, and it's also, you know, it's short and like, yes, nothing really happens, but in Cohen's fashion, it does move. Every scene's really interesting.
It's great performances.

There's this really hot guy who plays Lewin Davis. His name's Oscar Isaac.
You can look at his face the whole time. So hot.
Can we talk a little post-Oscar? Okay.

Because he gets Star Wars. And he's in what is sort of designed to be the Han Solo equivalent role, right? As you said, JJ offers him the movie, and originally his character was supposed to do that.

The dumps to die, but they love him. And he said, that's what I just did in Born Legacy.
I can't keep being the kind of like fake out lead of a different movie who's done by the end of the first act.

And so they keep him alive. I think he's excellent in that movie.
He's kind of the best part of that franchise, in my opinion. When they announced that cast, I was like, here we go.

He is the guy who is going to pop from this because I assume that the major recalculation they're doing in the Disney Star Wars era is these things need to be funny again.

They have to stop being so self-serious.

And what we need is that kind of off-the-hump bad boy Harrison Ford energy. And Oscar Isaac is a really good analog for that.

And I remember seeing A Most Violent Year with my father, which comes out the year after this. Is that correct? It came out the year after this.
Good movie. So the year before Star Wars.

My dad and I walk out a most violent year and we both are like, we're watching 70s Pacino.

Pacino is the comp from that one for sure. 100%.
But Lewin Davis and Most Violent Year, and that's an okay movie that I think he's excellent at. He's really good.
I like that movie.

But it just felt like this guy is doing like Godfather, Godfather 2, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, back to back. This guy is on fucking fire.
We're about to watch like a generational run.

And then Star Wars comes out. And a problem I've identified before is Adam Driver basically takes.

Oh, oh, oh, oh.

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Tu mereces tis fruit favorites for menos. Ja sell na Bic Mac, McNuggets, or a sausage, egg, and cheese, McCriddles.
Pidetuanto Jocomo un meal, y a horra. Oof, nava como darte un gustaso por tam poco.

Los extra value meals están de regreso. Gana por la mañana con el extra value meal, sausage, mc, muffin with egg, hash browns, yun cafe aliente pequeño por sodos se dolaris.
Bara ba ba ba.

Preses y participación pueden varía. Los prees de la promión pueden sermonos que los de las comidas.

Everything good?

Uh

this thing's unplugged. Yeah.
Well, thankfully, I have a backup. Do we need to plug it back in?

Just keep talking. It's okay.
I got it. No, Rachel, Rachel, sit down.
Sit down. It's fine.

It's fine. You're not guilty.

You're innocent. No, I'm not.

It's not your fault that people are walking down the hallway. Whoa, he brought the whole Mac down.
Don't worry. It's just a little Mac mini.
It's all good. You say that, and then Reddit.

Reddit's going to go ablaze. Rachel Zedgar can't control her dog.
Reddit is ablaze.

Reddit ablaze. It's just

funny to me that there was also this notion that Star Wars was kind of a career dead end for people, right? That Harrison Ford was the only star birthed by Star Wars.

And even in the prequels, the people who had heat going in, it stalled out their career for a bit, like Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor.

And the people that George discovered, like Hayden Christensen, got a little cursed.

And then you're like, not only is the curse reversed here, but it's Darth Vader who becomes the totemic leading man. Yes.

And that Adam Driver's run for the next 15 years is it feels like he absorbs every

one-fourth of the roles that Oscar Isaac should have had.

And I'm not saying that Oscar Isaac would have done them better, but it's like he took every serious leading man role and there was no space left.

And Oscar Isaac's choices in the vacuum have been a little disappointing only because you're like, isn't this guy just just supposed to be like fucking like throwing no hitters over and over and over again i think this is the pressure you put on oscar i put so much pressure i don't put this because i love him so much agree with that

uh sort of i think oscar's doing great i love him but i know what you mean

the one thing you can always guarantee is that he's going to be the best thing in whatever he does i haven't seen frankenstein yet did you like him in frankenstein the deltoro

i know you just here's what i'll say i like frankenstein and i like him in it allorty is the best thing in it.

I love that for Jakey. He's incredible in it.
And Alordi now has a little bit of that energy of Oscar Isaac in this era. And it's just good.
And these guys do

interesting stuff. Yeah.

Jake's great. Yes.
That's a talented actor. I think he's an unbelievable actor.
Yeah.

That makes me really happy. But there's something kind of so unique and special that is captured within this movie that is such a complete performance

and feels so unique to him.

As much as I wish he could have done this like a hundred times, going back to the idea of like, why doesn't he sing more? There's something about this is just like one perfect document.

Well, that's the thing. You want it to be a special moment because then if all he ever did was sing, it just wouldn't be a special anymore.
We're going to play the box office game.

Rachel, is there anything else? We haven't touched on the movie. Obviously, talk to me.
It's just great. It's just fucking great.
A plus. Can we shout out the sister scenes?

Ah, because we didn't really touch upon that. And I just, because there's a quote here that I love that I think encapsulates the movie so well.

When she's talking to him about getting another job, he says to her, and what? Just exist? Is that what we do outside of show business? We just exist? What?

He said to his sister, too. Crazy.

Yeah.

Film was bought by CBS Films, of course,

who I think did a fine job releasing it and it made a little bit of money. They made 13 mil domestic 32 worldwide.
Like it did fine. That's actually really great for a couple of Oscar noms.

They don't have the two. It got cinematography.
Rapturously received, won a prize it can. But like, rudely snubbed in best original song, screenplay, obviously, Oscar Isaac, egregious snub.

The best original song category is very tricky, though, because it cannot have been written.

Like, the words could not have been written first. Please with Hunger Gamesman was the one to put up.
And I believe they did.

Yes, please don't case.

Sorry. Yes.
Hunger Games had that same problem. Yeah, because the lyrics were written in the book.
It didn't count as original. That's actually really funny.
That's really pretty. That's so stupid.

Even though the melody was new. Not written.
Yeah.

But yeah, so like that, that category can be very, very tricky. So if any of those lyrics had been pulled from something that was well known or known at all.

And of course, it's a lot of folk music that's already extant. CBS Films, I was looking it up last night, basically releases their first film in January 2010 and their last film in October 2019.

Interesting. They are like entirely a 2010s thing and are now completely defunct.
Sorry, who was this? What was the second nomination? It was cinematography and what? Sound.

I'll give it. Yeah, that makes sense.
It's deserving. It's a great, great sound.
Let's lost to gravity for both.

Yeah, that makes sense. Let's throw Carrie Mulligan in there.

What was the thing I was going to say? CBS definitely tried to do a kind of a brother thing with this. There was the concert film that's now harder to see.

They did a concert for the New York Film Festival that was filmed at Town Hall. We performed there and Rachel did the national anthem via

the ninth and all anthem

via phone. Yes, via phone.
That was a true, like, we are wasting this talented woman's time. Not at all.
It was so much fun. Okay.
Yep. Lenny was in it too.
Got a standing innovation from the crowd.

We made everyone stand up with their hands on their phone. They were already doing it.
Yeah.

This film came out December 3rd, 2013, mere days before my first date with my wife. Well,

that's cute. Unfortunately, we went to see Dallas Buyers Club instead.
She'd already seen this.

She'd already seen it. Number one at the box office is a film from the Walt Disney Corporation Griffin.

Oh, can I guess? Yes, you can. Iron Man 3? No, that is a great guess, but that was the summer of this year.
Fuck. What?

What was September?

September.

So it's not. okay.
Disney. Is this the frozen year? Frozen.

Oh, yeah, Frozen came out.

Yeah, in November of that year, right? Yeah.

So, Frozen's doing rather well. I'm checking my notes.

Quite a big hit. I mean,

Frozen is one of those things.

Insane. Just today, I dropped my daughter off at school.
And as was true, both, as is true, almost anytime you drop a child any place, someone was in an Elsa dress. Yeah.

One kid's going to be in an Elsa dress. Oh, I love that.
That's the kind of culture ubiquity you cannot, you know, recreate, right? It is one of the most culturally omnipresent things. Yeah.

Frozen has as much saturation as like bananas.

Yeah.

Number two, the box office. Interesting, Rachel.
What could this be? It's from

Catching Fire.

Yeah. Francis Lawrence's Hunger Games Catching Fire.
In my opinion,

it's the best Hunger Games still. I think it's the best of the original series for sure.
And it's got the trick where they expand to IMAX, which I think is really cool for games.

Very, very good movie. Number three, the box office is new this week

from a director. I was just making fun of his new movie.
Wow. You were just making fun of his new movie.
Mention on a hill.

It's a Scooper picture. Scott Cooper picture.
Is it Crazy Heart? No, Crazy Hearts earlier. Earlier.
Is it Out of the Furnace? It is Out of the Furnace, a film I've never seen with Christian Bale.

Rachel, it's weird. Chasing athletes.
What's the face you're making right now? Because this is a movie that absolutely exists that we talk about all the time. It's in New Jersey.
Oh, fuck.

It's about guys in New Jersey who are a little unsavory.

Crazy Heart wins Jeff Bridges the Oscar, and they announce like this is Scott Cooper's follow-up, and he's got like 10 of the best actors alive in it. And everyone's like, cracking their nuts.

I never heard of that. Absolute banger coming movie comes out.
And I actually quite like Scott. So, like, he's a really nice guy.

Just a movie that made everyone loves Scott Cooper, and I shouldn't be making fun of him. Zero impact,

zero impact movie. I've never seen it.
I've never seen it. It was a movie that made like not very much money and didn't get any Oscar buzz.
But number three.

three, but it's opening number three in December.

Number four, the box office. This is a film I did see on a date with my wife.
Uh, it is a Marvel film, the Marvel film of Current came out about a month ago. Oh,

sort of November, the November 2013 Marvel film. Just Thor the Dark World

starring Zachary Levi.

He is in there. I wouldn't say he's starring starring Shazam 2's Zachary Levi.
He's there. It is

that David and I vouch for very hard. Fun movie.
That we really like. That we put upper Marvel tier.
I really like that movie. I will say

I like Thor the Dark Girl. Most of the performance.
Rachel seems skeptical. Yeah.

I am a Marvel Girlie. I haven't seen Thor the Dark Girl to.
Check it out. It's Kat Denning.
Everyone's rude. I love Kat Denning.
Everyone's rude to it. Everyone's rude.

I know this about that film that people are rude to it. They shouldn't be.
I quite like the Thor franchise from what I have seen. Very fun.
Yeah.

It's the one that kind of takes the mythology seriously. And I'm not saying it in a nerd-jerk-off way, but it's like, what if we treated this like yeah

they're they're gods yeah uh it also looks good in a way a lot of the marvel movies don't number five at the box office is a comedy that uh kind of is it's a certain movie star comedy movie star comedy is kind of at the end of his comedy movie star era uh one of those posters where he's literally doing this

He's doing the face. Is it Vince Vaughan delivery man? Bam.

Oh, wow. David's impression for the

pretty good impression of the poster. He's like, fuck, I I have 53 children or whatever.

This is like

a sperm donor. Oh, yeah.
And it turns out he has like 200 children. 533 children.
Wow. Jesus.
Okay.

Strong swimmers. This is like

a bunch of Michael Phelps in those test days.

This is like Pete Griffin auditioning for everything, struggling actor, period.

You're one of the 500. I think I straight up auditioned for.
15 different kids because they kept being like, we liked your read on this. We went a different way.

We have six more kids we want you to read for. Because some of the kids are like leads, some of the kids are one scene, some of the kids are one line.
They just kept throwing more sunscreen at me.

Yeah.

Not in the film.

Not in the film.

The other films out Home Front. Is that the one with Franco that like Sylvester Stallone wrote? Yes.
It's this old Stallone script that was made with Statham.

Statham is the good guy, and Franco's the bad guy. He's an American patriot being hunted by Franco as a crime.
Right. I'm trying to.
Franco Franco is an evil meth dealer. Right.

Who plays Franco's wife in that?

Of course, Winona Ryder plays Gator's girlfriend. There we go.
Franco's playing a character called Gator.

And Kate Bosworth plays Gator's mean sister. Okay.

You've got number seven. You got the book thief.
Is that like an inspirational

film? It is a Holocaust film. It's a great book.
Great book.

It's a great bestseller. The movies lackluster, but you got Jeffrey Rush in there, which is really great.
But the PR is there. Is that Mark Forster?

It's

Mark Forster. Did Mark Forster? It's really great.

It's a Holocaust story told from the perspective of death in the book. Oh, I watched it.

Is it Mark Zusak as the author, I think? Really correct. Really, really great.

Zuzak, the director of this film is Brian Percival.

He never really made a lot of movies. Downtown Abbey.
Downtown Abbey. Yeah, okay.
That's so funny. Brian Percival.

Aren't those two of Dumbledore's middle names?

Rachel? I believe. Percival.
I believe you are correct. Wolfrick Brian Dumblore.
I think, and I am embarrassed to admit, I think without checking, I know you are correct.

Dumbledore. Remember in the fifth book when he's just like, Harry just experienced a great tragedy.
Watch someone die.

I think I'm going to ignore him all year. Exactly.
My strategy.

Number eight at the box office is.

By the way, when's the FBI going to release The Secrets of Dumbledore?

They have that list. They're sitting on the files.
All of Dumbledore's secrets. It's just so funny.
Those, there were three of those movies and they were like, and the secrets will soon be revealed.

Never, because this franchise is done.

Number eight is the best man Holiday.

The sequel to The Best Man, the sort of leg a sequel almost. Yeah.
No, definitely.

Then number nine, in my opinion, wildly underrated drama, Philomena. with Judy Dench.
She'll have her best picture. Guys, I have a note from Judy Dench.
What? And does it say what?

Like, sorry, I rear-ended your car. It's a post-it.
Yeah.

How did you know? What's this?

Can I just say this is the second time on this podcast that I'm revealing a note? Right, because you had a note from Barbara.

Judy came to see Avida.

And I went into my dressing room one day, and there was a beautiful blue note. And I was struggling to read it.

She's got very chicken scratch writing, but apparently it's because her eyes have given out.

She has very poor eyes. That was the point.
That was the line. The last line of the note was like, sorry for my penmanship.
I can't see a shit, essentially, is what she said. But it's the letterhead.

Oh, like from the desktop. I didn't look at the letterhead.
I was just trying to read this chicken scratch. Right, right.
It was duty to end.

And so now I have it in a double-sided frame. Did she like you? She liked it.
She liked it. Imagine she dropped it, but I thought you were.

In this, basic. Yeah.

Patty did it better.

What a queen, Junior. Yeah, that's it.
Thanks for so much. Philomena.
Philomena herself. And number 10 is Black Nativity, the Casey Lemons movie.
Oh, sure.

Which I've never seen another like big ensemble family movie. I mean,

it's the season. It's the season.
Tis the season. It was the season.
And number 11, Dallas Buyers Club, soon to be seen on a date by me and my wife. At the Williamsburg Theater.
What a time.

What a time. At the Williamsburg Theater.
At the Williamsburg Theater.

That's where I saw Megan. Cauldron of romance.
That is where it is. The law requires you see Megan there.
Mithregan. I was going to ask you to correct that.
Myth Regan. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.

Myth Regan. Mithregan.

Yeah.

I love this movie. Me.
Mithregan. Yeah.
I love Mithregan. No, I love Lewin Davis.
I could watch this movie every day of my life. And I did my freshman year of high school.

It's got really great re-watchability, actually, because

as you get older, as you go through different things, you notice different things about it. You have different sympathies.
You have different annoyances.

It's really fucking fantastic. And also re-watching it feels like resetting the cycles of his life.
Yeah. Yeah.

I said, I mean, I actually had to like stop myself from saying this to Ethan Cohen at a party once. Did you mean

I met him and I pretended that I didn't know who he was? Rachel. I was really nervous.
No. No, he didn't say like, I'm Ethan Cohen.
He said, my name is Ethan. I was like, cool, what do you do?

You know, that's quite a move. You have to.
You have to. I'm so sorry.
I can't. Like, I really, I got so nervous.
Because how do I explain that I've seen the movie like 300 something times?

I think you could say that to him and he would go,

or he'd go, why? What's wrong with you?

I do think that's how he could be complimented.

What perspective is that? I think Corinne would make that kind of joke.

How much soul-off do you take? I think you're right that this is, he'd pull out a list of alts and they'd be all the things you just said. I don't think that's a guy who takes compliments.

No, that's the thing. And that's why he probably deflects it with a joke.
You're right. And that's why I like wouldn't dare compliment him.
He's probably been complimented enough.

He does ask for, he was, he did ask my best friend for an opinion on his current play that is Playing with Aubrey Plaza. Yes.

And like, they all went out after my best friend happened to be there. And he was like, Should I change this? Like, asked her for like genuine advice.
And she said, I think you should keep it in.

And he did, which is really cool. These are, they're really cool people.
Like, they're just, I mean, you can't.

You can't deny it after watching one of their films. You're like, a really cool person out to have made this.
And like, they are cool people. It would be funny if they were total squares.

Total squares. They were like, I love J.
Crew.

And old Navy.

Just comm music.

Well, wait, well, hey, now Ben is right there. Yeah.
Well, I mean, I don't.

Right, right.

You're just a historian. You're an impartial historian.
Ben, you're just a Tuba player. I was going to say, there was a reach.
Don't you dare in front of Rachel.

I was a, hey, I was an Alto Saxophone player. There you go.
Shout out, Tuba. Shout out, Band.

Shout out, Band. Well, I was technically a Woodwind.
I guess the Sax is technically. Yes, it is.

It's got the metal on the outside. Okay.
I guess that's cool. Whatever you say.
I'm a ska appreciator.

But I also appreciate it.

I didn't want someone to come for me as far as my lack of ska. You didn't want some baggy trousered fellow knocking on your door.

He starts swinging around his fucking chained wallet and ropes me. What a nightmare.
Ties you up in some suspender. Kicking you with his checkerboard van.

Trying to think of other exact steel-toed checkerboard vans. Rachel, thank you very much for taking the time in your very busy schedule to come do this bullshit for two and a half hours.

I'm genuinely like so honored because I love talking about this movie and I love talking about movies with you guys. It's lovely to talk to you.

Time for me to plug the Avida album. That's what I'm asking.

Please. Evident album.
I'm getting because when does this drop, guys? When do you? Oh, pretty soon.

Let's find out.

It's going to drop on November 2nd. Awesome.
So the Avida album is going to be available. It's selections from the Avida album, it's not the full thing.

On October 24th. So by the time you are listening to this, it'll be out on all the platforms.
And I should listen to it on a Stairmaster, right? Going up and downstairs. To get the full experience.

And then you should go

and go outside on a balcony and like look up at the, like, don't be on the balcony. You've got to like go outside, look up at a balcony.
Okay. Oh, right.
And to listen to Argentina.

To don't cry for me, Argentina. Just find the nearest balcony in your highlight.

Absolutely. And also, tweet at Cash Patel, demand the release of the full Avida cast recording.
Oh, yeah, exactly.

I can't say anything on this matter, but just know that I feel the same way.

10 tracks, 10 tracks, the three-hour fucking musical. Release the full album.
It's sung through. And it's sung through.
It's an opera, yeah. At least the secrets of Tumbledore and the yeah.

Where are the Dumbledore files? Is there anything else you want to plug? Is there anything else coming up? Not really. Okay.

Let's just like, I don't know, call your senators and pressure them to bring Avida to Broadway.

This is a very good one.

It's a national matter.

Plaguing our country. It's a national matter.
There is a criminal lack of a Vita on Broadway. Go vote, Mom Donnie, guys.

Yeah, well, this will be a good idea. I guess election day is two days from now.
If you live in New York, please go and vote. His name is Mom Donnie.
And I will say

when I went to vote in the primary and I was going to my early voting location, I voted early, not to brag.

Not to brag.

The Zoran canvasser came up to me and said, are you David Sims for Blank Jack? And I said, yes. And she said, I'm a big deal.
I'm so sorry. Zora Momdani, friend of the pod.
Let's get Zorin on.

We could do it. What movie do you think he'd come and talk to you guys about? Well, not one of his mom's movies because that would be too funny.
I don't know.

I was thinking about this with someone. I was like, if we had done Mira Nair three years ago, it would have looked cool and it would have been easier to book him now.
Yeah.

If you would have been like, oh, you guys did that? That's like, that's cool. Right.
Now we can't do it without looking like we're trying to get it. Yeah, whatever.
What's his favorite movie?

Let's find out. We should find out.
This is a big voting issue. Yeah.
Yeah. We should be what if he doesn't like inside Louis Davis?

Cuomo's just like, my favorite movie is whatever the best movie is, whatever everyone agrees with. Who's the other guy?

Sleewa,

him being like, gangs of New York is about me.

Sleewa was spitting bars at that department. I cannot deny it when he was like 3-1-1 in his journey.

The parade part where they were like, did you watch it?

Where they were like, you know,

what parades would you do? What parade did you boycott? And both Cuomo and Sorina are like, what? And Slay was like, the mayor should be an oaker. Parades are the most important thing.

I will never say no to a parade. I'd be at a parade.
It was at three in the morning. I'd be at the fucking parade.

It's amazing. It's amazing.
He's like, I was shot at a 7-Eleven.

It's shit like that that really, I don't know. Maybe he'd be a friend of the pod.
Does Zoran like Jumpin' Jack Flash?

Oh, because Penny Marshall.

Oh, because Penny Marshall.

We always say the Penny Marshall's next.

Thank you again, Rachel. Hey, thank you guys so much.
Thank you all. I love you guys.
Hey, we love you. You're the best.
I am. You're three out of five tutored kids' favorite movie star.

I will take it. That's like two, two, three more than I ever thought I'd have.

Golden Globe winner and consensus favorite.

Thank you. JJ Burg's pupils.
Oh, thanks for that.

Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.
Tune in next week for Hail Caesar.

Next week is Hail Caesar with Shirley Lee. With the great Shirley Lee returning to the show.

And I'm going to say this very quietly because I don't want to get upset. David is very much O the L in that episode.
You're awful. Oh, am I?

I don't remember.

What'd you do? I don't know. I have no memory.
Shirley gets it out of you. Shirley gets the hell out of you.

I love it.

I absolutely really love Hail Caesar, so that's great. Really good.
It's a great movie. And as always,

Detective Park, man.

Perfectly timed bark. Lenny's like, there's a fucking guy in the office.
London is a wonder dog.

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley.

Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas, and our associate producer is A.J. McKeon.
This show is mixed and edited by A.J. McKeon and Alan Smithy.
Research by J.J. Birch.

Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds.
Our production assistant is Minic.

Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

Join our Patreon, BlankCheck Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at BlankCheckPod.

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