The Tragedy of Macbeth with Dana Schwartz

Speaker 0 Blank Jack with Griffin and David

Speaker 0 Blank Jack with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect

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

Speaker 1 By the pricking of my thumbs Something wicked this way podcasts

Speaker 1 That's a pretty good Catherine Hunter. Thank you.
That's why I wanted to do it.

Speaker 1 I think my Hunter is better than my Denzel.

Speaker 1 We were just joking. Maybe you should do Denzel.
Denzel Macbeth. Maybe you should do it.
We were just joking that this is a quotable movie. And I made the joke, weird, there's no quotes page.

Speaker 1 And then I opened up the quotes page. There are only five quotes on the quote page.
Nobody bothered. Nobody writes

Speaker 1 afraid of failing. Right.
Yeah, no one was like.

Speaker 1 Someone did sit down here and write the tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow speech.

Speaker 2 Someone copy-pasted.

Speaker 1 But I'm saying, like, someone was like, ah, fuck, come on. It should be on IMDb.
It's good writing. You have to imagine the logic is, who's coming to the Tragedy of Macbeth page for Macbeth?

Speaker 1 IMTB page for Macbeth quotes. Right.
If someone wants Macbeth quotes, they're many places.

Speaker 2 There is like one or two lines that they did tweak.

Speaker 1 Give them to me.

Speaker 2 I don't have them off the top of my head. And we'll get to this because I think it's like a bigger, not issue, but like concern of the play, but something about Lady Macbeth having children.

Speaker 1 Oh, sure. Right.

Speaker 2 They shifted a tense that I was like, ah, they're

Speaker 1 making a choice. Yeah, they're right, right.
But that's fun to do. It's fun to make a little choice.
There's also that scene about the one-cent stamps that they add.

Speaker 1 Right. Where Macbeth is in bed with Lady Macbeth and he's feeling really down because his stamp art wasn't chosen.
What was a really popular song in 2021? Oh, here we go. Right? I don't care.

Speaker 1 Yeah, fuck. Did anything exist in 2021?

Speaker 1 Most popular song of 2021 was still

Speaker 1 Feel Like I Do by Vin Diesel.

Speaker 1 I'm like, do I remember any? Did Taylor release an album in 2021? Driver's license is the most popular song. Yeah, driver's license is so good.
You've also got Call Me by Your Name by Lil Nas.

Speaker 1 Oh, sure.

Speaker 2 Were we going crazy for Bridgerton? Was that the first season of Bridgerton?

Speaker 1 Probably around then. So, yeah, it'd be funny if Macbeth was like,

Speaker 1 away. I have to watch season one of Bridgerton.
Reget Jean Page.

Speaker 1 This

Speaker 1 future bond. It's going to pop.
I don't know if you folks are feeling this. And the two of you had marriages,

Speaker 1 children, things. Oh, you're having you don't you don't like the COVID movie, like the sort of...
No, no, I like this film quite a lot.

Speaker 1 It's more that we've now had enough distance that I cannot demarcate anything within 2020 and 2021 anymore. Yeah.
Not really. All of that stuff.
I'm not amazing in this.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I can remember the stuff that happened when I felt like I wasn't a person, but it's all just one soup.

Speaker 2 You know how I remember the beginning of COVID is because I had planned a trip to fly out to New York to record this very podcast.

Speaker 1 Was it Bewitched?

Speaker 2 It was Bewitched. It was Bewitched.
It was the first thing that I was like, I don't think I'm supposed to get on a plane right now.

Speaker 1 Oh, dude, I'll never forget those early like, huh? I guess we're not going to do our live show. Like, it went from us being like, well, the live show isn't like two months.

Speaker 1 I mean, like, two months is a long time. Well, the live show was supposed to be one week after lockdown, and then we kicked it to May.
Right. Right, right, right.
Definitely the other.

Speaker 1 They were like, do you want it further out? And we were like, May, this is definitely over.

Speaker 2 I was in a writer's room that they were like, okay, you guys are going to work from home until April. And we like left food in the writer's room because we're like, we'll be back in two weeks.

Speaker 1 Was that She-Hulk? That was She-Hulk. And everything turned out perfectly.

Speaker 2 And it turned out perfectly. The pandemic didn't affect it at all.

Speaker 1 Nothing. Nothing was affected by anything.
Do you know that this is a movie that was truly started filming in February

Speaker 1 in February of the 11th century? 2020. Okay.
I think it was January or February. And they truly just like did what you said, where they were like, okay, let's just like drop the lights where they are.

Speaker 1 They left their expressionist sets. We'll be back in like a week.
And then they resumed filming in July.

Speaker 1 That's correct. Like they did this movie largely, you know, three quarters or whatever.
Scott Rudin got canceled in between the beginning of production and the end of production.

Speaker 1 He was retroactively removed as producer.

Speaker 2 That's very

Speaker 1 doesn't come out till December 2021, but this is like a movie that is slightly pre-COVID and then mostly lockdown, which thank God they committed to this visual style that made it easy to be a bubble production.

Speaker 2 And people, there are no big like crowd scenes. It does feel like everyone is at least six feet away from each other.

Speaker 1 And yet, this

Speaker 1 people didn't like that. I was like, why is this vibe? Like, no one's even near in the same room with each other.

Speaker 1 But it doesn't feel like a COVID movie because it was, they came to those decisions organically. I'm not worried about it.
It's all good to me. You seem really worried.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, I'm just saying, a lot of the stuff I don't like to revisit. The thing I remember, I did see this in a theater, but it was at the peak of like the, what was it, Omicron? It was the second wave

Speaker 1 in December of 2021, where it was like, Jesus Christ, is this going to happen every year?

Speaker 2 Did you see it in IMAX?

Speaker 1 I did not. I forgot it got a limited IMAX.
That's the box office game week we're going to do. Okay.
Because we already did Christmas 2021 anyway. And it is funny that it was released in IMAX.
Right.

Speaker 1 Because it came out the same week and as Matrix was retrograde. Correct.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw it, I was dog sitting for my father

Speaker 1 in the Hudson Valley, and it happened to be during that dog sitting stay that the dog died. Oh, no.

Speaker 1 It was not my fault, but it was an emotionally intense two weeks that also were like, is there about to be another full lockdown? It felt like we were hinging right on the edge of.

Speaker 1 Is the government going to say like, hey, let's take another three months off?

Speaker 1 So I was like, maybe I just stay in this house forever. Maybe this is my new lockdown spot.

Speaker 1 And I took an Uber to the story screen beacon theater, which has since been renamed and saw this movie with like one other person in the audience. Sorry.
It's now, I believe, just called The Beacon.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 2 Yep. I was going to make a very bad importe's joke and just say, my lord, your dog is dead.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's what I had to call my dad and say exactly that. And he was like, can you say it in like normal language?

Speaker 1 Anyway, those are my memories about seeing this movie. A film I like quite a bit.
You like this film quite a bit? Yeah. I saw this film at the Neo.
Oh, wait, what's our podcast? Jesus Christ. This is

Speaker 1 a check with Griffin and David. I am Griffin.
Thou art David.

Speaker 1 Great.

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

Speaker 1 And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes

Speaker 1 doth bounce, baby. Yeah, they doth bounce, baby.

Speaker 1 All checks are, you know,

Speaker 1 a fucking poor player, a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets their hour upon the studio and then is heard no more. An hour? Geez, Shakespeare.
More like three hours.

Speaker 1 This is the first Shakespeare we've covered. Is that correct? Like straight up Shakespeare?

Speaker 1 It's not the interpretation. Has to be.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I guess you're right. Gee, why haven't we done a Shakespeare series?

Speaker 2 We've never done a Brana series.

Speaker 1 We've batted around sometimes. It's a lot of movies.
It's a lot of movies.

Speaker 1 It's a lot of mustache. It's a lot of mustache.
Double mustache per movie. That's six mustaches.
We've never really done Shakespeare. No.
Huh.

Speaker 1 This is a mini-series on the films of Joel and Ethan Cohen together and separately. Today we are covering to date Joel's only solo film.
Although making the second one, he's in it right now.

Speaker 1 Macbeth 2. Macbeth 2.

Speaker 1 The redemption of Macbeth.

Speaker 1 He's back! Macbeth Reawakening.

Speaker 1 It's called The Tragedy of Macbeth. This film is called The Tragedy of Macbeth.
What's the new one called? It's like The Queen of Hearts or The The Jack of Spades or something?

Speaker 1 It's like the Jack of Spades. Yeah.
And it's,

Speaker 1 what's his name? Josh O'Connor. Josh O'Connor.

Speaker 1 And Francis McDorman, that's like all we know.

Speaker 1 It looks like it's a good period piece. Yeah, yeah.
There was a photo of Josh O'Connor. Leslie Manville and Damian Lewis.
I mean, I'm not uninterested.

Speaker 1 Give me all that you got, but they're filming in the UK, and there was a paparazzi photo of Josh O'Connell looking fucking unbelievable. Looking very, very good in 19th century garb.

Speaker 1 But to date, this is the only Solo Joel movie that has been released. That movie is perhaps not based on anything as an original screenplay.
I don't know. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Unclear, but so much of the interest of this movie is that Joel's only solo film we have seen so far is him adapting a pretty unimpeachable work of drama.

Speaker 1 So this is really a showcase for him as a director.

Speaker 1 And it's called The Tragedy of Macbeth. And today, our guest joining us for the third time

Speaker 1 on the podcast,

Speaker 1 Maintaining a thematic trilogy. Is that true? Yes, because

Speaker 2 it's all witches, David.

Speaker 1 All witches. Oops, all witches.

Speaker 1 That's so true. Cause the great and powerful tragedy of Macbeth.
Yes. Dana Schwartz is our guest today.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 Of course. We gave Catherine Hunter Best Sporting Actress at the New York Film Critic Circle.

Speaker 2 She's amazing.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 And I was like, that's a cool win by us. And then no one else really bothered to award her anything.
So I felt even better about it. It was kind of an issue

Speaker 1 Oegata moment. Do you remember when he got the first, was it NBR gave him best supporting actor? And everyone's like, oh, fuck.

Speaker 1 Is he a contender in silence? Right. And then it didn't happen again.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Is the only sort of Oscar juice this movie gets is Denzel's nomination?

Speaker 1 Denzel gets nominated by the colours. He got nominated for three Oscars.
Cinematography Production Design. That's right.
Pretty undeniable. Sure.

Speaker 1 But they all did feel a little cursory in that, like, never really felt like a serious

Speaker 1 threat to win. No.

Speaker 1 It lost cinematography to

Speaker 1 Dune. Dune.
And it lost production design to... Dune.

Speaker 2 I really like the production design of this movie.

Speaker 1 Me too. And Denzel lost to Will Smith, who I think accepted his award quietly and with no real...
A normal way.

Speaker 1 I would love to live in some of these rooms.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Like aesthetics.
Not heavy on cushions, though. Not so true.
It's not cozy. No.
They look a little bit

Speaker 1 exposed to the elements, whatever they may be. They look a little bit like

Speaker 1 foggy. Do you remember Kanye and

Speaker 1 Kim's home that he kept posting photos of? Yeah. Where you were like, don't you have kids? How do they exist?

Speaker 1 There's a lot of sharp kids. They live in a modern art museum.

Speaker 1 All brutalists. But how do we feel about a puddle room? Incredible.
Yeah. I think just squashing.
Yeah. If you're feeling weird about the overthrowing you've been up to.
Throw some frog's breath down.

Speaker 1 Also, this concept of like, look, Macbeth, it's a cauldron forward drama, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. How can we put a new spin on an old cauldron? And they're like, what if the cauldron is the room?

Speaker 1 Pretty cool. That's why Denzel was at the Oscars and he told Will Smith, like, the devil comes for you

Speaker 1 when you're about to win an Oscar or whatever.

Speaker 2 You know, though, it is a good thing for all of us that no one put Lady Macbeth's name in their mouth. This is a guy who

Speaker 1 Dana. That's very true.
That's true.

Speaker 1 This is a guy who have liked that he would not have liked that one but sometimes i'm like he doesn't seem to really care he's like yeah whatever but that's i mean you talk about this movie's response which was polite where they were like of course it was a little

Speaker 1 it was a little cinematography and production design we can't deny right yeah this is one year after nomad land Frances has just won her third lead actress Oscar. True.

Speaker 1 I remember Mark Harris being like, she's going to win again. Well, that's silly.
And people were like, she can't win four times. If you're listening.

Speaker 1 And it was like, she's playing Lady Macbeth, and she is just like unstoppable right now and she basically didn't even get nominations she's not very good in this movie i i'm gonna have a hot take i am sorry to jump in with a hot take nope i think my two least favorite performances in this movie are denzel and frances interesting see i like i think denzel but i sort of know what you're hinting at i don't think they tonal the my the things that i love about this movie that the tone of this movie i think they're the least dialed into that tone i agree with you especially on francis mcdormant who is is straight up awful in this movie.

Speaker 1 It's also fascinating because who I generally love as an actress, to be clear. It's not as much of a collaborative effort as, say, Lady McClope and Tristram.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, she's 100% the creative push for Joel to do this. This is absolutely a movie made by the two of them.
It's a Lady Macbeth movie. Yes.

Speaker 2 She has Lady Macbeth Tim into making this movie.

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 And she just doesn't quite have the right handle on it. Who do we each think is the best performance in this? Alex Hassel.

Speaker 1 I mean, like, that's the performance where I was just like, who's this fucking guy? I mean, like, half of his family.

Speaker 2 But his face, his face is doing a lot of that work for us.

Speaker 1 He's a good face. I'll take 10 of it.

Speaker 2 You know who's good in this movie? It's Stephen Root.

Speaker 1 Stephen Root's great. Steven Root, I love that.
Did we get to the root of him?

Speaker 1 We're going to get to the Room Matter later. Let's maybe do a little tease of the theme there.

Speaker 1 I believe I get my putters in Mermaid. He's puttering.
And to put... Putter in Shakespearean English is pretty impressive.
Very fun. I think Corey Hawkins is like unbelievable.
He's great.

Speaker 1 I think Moses Ingram is great in her big scene. I think basically everyone

Speaker 1 does a good job. Like, except for Francisco, I think it's kind of off for some reason in ways I can't, we can investigate.

Speaker 1 Like, I think Harry Melling is awesome. Yes.
It's like so cool that Dudley Dursley like became what he became and that the Cohens love him. Love him.

Speaker 1 Gleason.

Speaker 1 Oh, Gleason. I mean, Gleason is great.
He feels like he can do it in his sleep, but like, he's great. His fucking creamsicle beard looks perfect in black and white.

Speaker 1 Again, Catherine Hunter, we literally gave her best sporting actress.

Speaker 1 The coffee's brewing. The cauldron.

Speaker 1 I asked Ben to reactivate the rarely opened collection of Nightmare Before Christmas themed coffees.

Speaker 1 It's a rainy day in New York, and I hate to say that sentence, but Ben has brewed up a pot of rough weather, which is the zero from Nightmare Before Christmas themed coffee, and I think it's cranberry-flavored.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. Some of us have a great time.
No, you are not. But Alex Hassel was the guy, but partly because I did not know who he was.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Cranberry is the Santa Jack coffee.

Speaker 1 That makes more sense. This is oatmeal cream pie.
Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. Dana and I already remarked on the fact that cream pie should not be in coffee like flavor names.

Speaker 2 Let's hang that from the rafters.

Speaker 1 This is the 21st century. Gonna have a great time.
I'm a little surprised that

Speaker 1 Zero's coffee isn't pumpkin flavored since he's got that dang pumpkin nose. What's Corey Hawkins up to recently? This is what I want to talk about.
Corey Hawkins. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 I want to talk about this for a little bit, but we've got a lot of stuff to talk about.

Speaker 2 Well, what I think is kind of one of the most interesting things about this movie is Alex Hassel's role.

Speaker 2 He plays Ross, who, if you see a production of Macbeth, you would be forgiven for being like, I don't know what that is.

Speaker 1 Because Ross is basically just the guy who says things to people. He's more of a functionary.
Yes. Yes.
Yes. Ross doesn't have his own Wikipedia page.
Right.

Speaker 1 Corey Hawkins has one of the juicy roles. Yeah, he's got the big fucking.

Speaker 1 I was from my mother's womb untimely whipped role. Okay.
Whipped. Like, I mean, he's got, he delivers the twist ending.

Speaker 1 I feel like the first time I clocked him was straight out of Compton, where even just seeing the trailer, I was like, holy shit, how did they find a guy that looks this much like Dr. Dre? Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's really good. Really fucking good in that.
I've never seen this, but the year before, he played Tybalt in the bad Haley Steinfeld, Romeo and Juliet.

Speaker 2 I saw that movie.

Speaker 1 And then it felt like right out of straight out of confidence, like he's getting cast in everything.

Speaker 1 He's in Kong Skull Island. No, he played.

Speaker 1 This is interesting. What? He played Tybalt in a filmed Broadway HD production with Orlando Bloom, but not Hailey Steinfeld with Condola Rashad.
Haley Steinfeld did a movie. She didn't do it.

Speaker 1 She was in a movie, but I think it's not Orlando Bloom. Because I was about to say, Orlando Bloom, Haley Steinfeld.
No, I think that's Douglas.

Speaker 1 That's no good age, Captain. No, Douglas Bloom.
That sounds right. I I was conflating the two things.
I apologize for that. No, it's fine.
It's fine. So he was Tibbleton, that podcast.

Speaker 2 What he just did was Voyage of the Demeter.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 He was in that.

Speaker 1 They make him the new lead of 24. He does a season of 24

Speaker 1 steak on everyone's. Black Klansman, he's incredible in.
That's Kwame Tour. Yeah, well, that's the one big scene.
Yes, but destroys it. Then like Six Underground, he's number seven.
Oh, interesting.

Speaker 1 In the Heights, another big, like, kind of co-lead role for him. He sings, he dances, he's great.
He's really good at it. Tragedy Macbeth.
I'm like, this guy is like waiting to explode.

Speaker 1 And even in this, where it's like, so many of his scenes are going to be him and Denzel. This feels like a kind of passing of the torch thing.

Speaker 1 And then it's like two years where he does something called Survive I've Never Heard Of That seems to maybe be a TV movie with him and Sophie talking about it. What dude is a Quibi?

Speaker 1 I ordered that one. It was a Quibi? Yeah, I ordered that personally.

Speaker 1 He doesn't do a movie between Macbeth and Voyager the Demeter. Well, that's only two years.
And then it's Color Purple. And COVID.
Yeah, and COVID. Piano lesson.

Speaker 1 Which, so in Color Purple, he has harpo. He's harpo.
That's the, you know, that's not the most enjoyable role, obviously. He is good in the piano lesson.

Speaker 1 He's not, to me, the one that pops. Thank you, Ben.
But he's totally good.

Speaker 1 He did also do Top Dog Underdog on Broadway and got a Tony nomination. Yes.

Speaker 1 With Yaya Abdul Matiyah Wonder Man, of course, the great Wonder Man.

Speaker 2 Did you see the trailer for that?

Speaker 1 Yeah. What's going on? I don't know.

Speaker 1 What's up? I don't know. How are we doing? I don't know.
We can't just do a whole Marvel show set in like audition rooms.

Speaker 1 That has to just be the first 20 minutes, right? Like, we do need Wonder Man to like, you know, shoot lasers or whatever he does.

Speaker 1 The problem with all these Marvel Disney Plus shows now, and Dana, this is something you couldn't possibly understand, is that all of them have basically been sitting on a shelf for three years and were conceptualized five years ago.

Speaker 1 Right, like Iron Heart. Right.
They're all just like totally out of shape. They can't even acknowledge our president.
Red Hulk. And please, Dana, if you wouldn't mind saluting.
Saluting.

Speaker 1 Does he have like two months in office? Like is his Wikipedia page just like fuck Thunderbolt Ross? He was a celebrated general.

Speaker 1 He was president, resigned in disgrace after turning into Red Hulk two months in.

Speaker 1 There was like one throwaway line in Thunderbolts where they were like, things have been a mess since our president hulked out, right? They say something. Yeah, they acknowledge it.

Speaker 1 You guys talk about it it should be congress should feel pretty stressed out that the president the president turned into right now

Speaker 1 i think if during a conference by the way it was televised it wasn't like they covered it in court right it wasn't like michael wolf broke the story he's like giving a speech in the rose garden in public you're right yes and then he rolled out and captain america fought him and he sadly like

Speaker 1 conceded naked he did it was and it felt like like a little sort of upsetting and he's in the fucking raft now? He's in the raft.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, his legacy is now going to be on like internet listicles of like shortest terms of president.

Speaker 1 He died. Red Hulk hulked out.
Like it's like, what happened to the guys? Right.

Speaker 1 Do you think in like history classrooms where they have like the wraparound like art of all the presidents or the poster or whatever? Does he get a hall of presidents?

Speaker 1 Is it red and is it red to like

Speaker 1 I think he absolutely makes those things, but do they have to be like, we must respect both forms of the president? Does the red hulk Trump, no pun intended, the regular form? I don't know.

Speaker 1 Well, Corey Hawkins is in an upcoming film directed by Bart Layton, a director I like.

Speaker 1 The Man in My Basement. No, it's called Crime 101.
But he has another. Well, but I'm telling you about Crime 101, and then I'll move on to whatever that is.

Speaker 1 Because listen to who's in this movie: Crime 101.

Speaker 1 Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Kegan,

Speaker 1 Hallie Berry, Monica Barbaro, Barbaro, Corey Hawkins, Jennifer Jason Lee, Nick Nulty. What?

Speaker 1 That's like a lot of guys. Yeah.
Yeah. And that's an MGM.
Is he the lead?

Speaker 1 No, he looks like he's about sixth on the cast list here. And then he's in the Odyssey.
The Odyssey is the big thing. That's cool.
Yeah. But I mean, maybe he plays like a rock.
I mean, I don't know.

Speaker 1 It's like a lot of guys in that. He hasn't stalled out.
He's one of those guys where, like, if he gives a good performance tomorrow, everyone's going to be like, wow. But even when he

Speaker 1 my basement was at Tiff. Okay.
I think it was,

Speaker 1 it got bad reviews. Even when he was on like that good growth run, I always felt like his name was not sticking with people as much as it should.
Yeah, I don't know. I love him.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I think he's great in this.

Speaker 2 He's phenomenal in this.

Speaker 1 He's great in this. Yeah.
Dana, what's your history with old Bill Shake a spear?

Speaker 2 I really like Shakespeare. I was in college a nerd who didn't have a lot of friends or go to parties.

Speaker 2 But I was a member of a group group called Shakespeare on the Green that sort of put on site-specific Shakespeare productions around campus.

Speaker 1 Where did you go to college? Brown. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Uh, I didn't even pay you to set that up.

Speaker 1 Okay, I just

Speaker 1 had a small college in Rhode Island, yeah, small college in Rhode Island.

Speaker 2 Uh, no, I actually directed a production of Arcadia with Shakespeare on the Green.

Speaker 1 Deeper Cuts. No, that's not written by the name of Shakespeare, so you fucked up there.

Speaker 2 But I, uh, I was in, I was in Winterstale, yes, Shakespeare, yes, I've

Speaker 2 The Old Shepherd. Cool.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I was in the story. Winter's Tale, Shakespeare's weirdest play.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Does not make sense. Kind of weird.
Have fun with it.

Speaker 2 I like Shakespeare a lot.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 2 have seen a few productions of Macbeth.

Speaker 2 I enjoy it. I think it's fun.
I like this movie a lot.

Speaker 1 David, did you ever perform Shakespeare? I did.

Speaker 1 I think I've said that on Mike. I was puck in a Midsummer Night's Dream in high school.

Speaker 1 I wore a sparkly green sweater. Yeah, you were like, I figured that is the only Shakespeare I did.
I did a little bit of drama, like high school drama.

Speaker 1 I was not good at it, but I enjoyed the camaraderie and the, you know, sort of spirit of collaboration. We were also going to an all-boys school, right? Yeah, but we would do our plays with the girls.

Speaker 1 That's what I was doing.

Speaker 1 You weren't going Mark Rylance.

Speaker 1 You weren't dressing up as girls. Flipping around.

Speaker 1 You weren't Rylancing? We never Rylanced. You know, when Mark Rylance did that, it was very controversial.

Speaker 1 Because so, what Daniel's referring referring to is Mark Rylance, who we all know, of course, as a big friendly giant who occasionally, you know, also as the Phantom of the Open Green.

Speaker 1 What were you going to say? Were you queuing me up to do the voice? Yeah, you could do the voice if you want, or you could do any Mark Rylance.

Speaker 1 Ribbon Robbins.

Speaker 1 He was also, well, he started out at the RSC, the Royal Shakespeare Company, but then he was the artistic, the first artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe for the first 10 years, which is they rebuilt Shakespeare's theater from, you know, Tudor times.

Speaker 1 You're aware of this? Yes,

Speaker 1 perfect reconstruction, but they added Dolby Atmos.

Speaker 1 It's a very, have you been to the Globe? I have. Have you been to the Globe? I haven't.
It's wonderful. I saw measure for measure there.
It's awesome. Ben, have you been to the Shakespeare's Club? No.

Speaker 1 Have you been to London?

Speaker 1 Realizing? Yeah. Okay.
I did go by the theater.

Speaker 1 Right. You can also just, it's on the south bank.
You can just go walk. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's crazy that's from Cathedral.

Speaker 1 You know, obviously it's not the original. No, and it's about 500 feet from where the original was.
They actually fucked up. It is really bad.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there was some other building that they couldn't move or whatever. But it's pretty close.
Sure.

Speaker 1 But crazy that it's just...

Speaker 1 I mean, London's so fucking old. It's just crazy.
It's just fucking old. It's crazy.
But he did try doing some all-male productions because that's what they did in Shakespeare's time.

Speaker 1 And then some people got mad because they were like, It's hard enough for female actors out here, and you're fucking taking our roles away again. But he was like, I'm trying to do a thing.

Speaker 1 I think they did all women's stuff too at a certain point. I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 He was in sort of a celebrated production, I believe, of 12th Night.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then I think Olivia. I think you're right, David, that to make up for it, they did an all-women's production of Ghostbusters,

Speaker 1 and people reacted to it very normally. Ben, how do you answer the call? How do you feel? He answered the the call.
How do you feel about Shakespeare in general? The bard. The bard.
Willie Shakes.

Speaker 1 Well, famously, I've said on this show many times, I'm not a fan of homework. I resist homework, and I'm worried that this was a homework-ass movie.
It is a little bit of a homework-ass movie, okay?

Speaker 1 Because it is guys in robes going like, dost thou? And it's, you know, like, there's a certain brain-turning off moment some people have. A little bit.

Speaker 1 I now, later in life, have come to somewhat appreciate Shakespeare. I think, you know, he's like, you know, contributed some stuff.

Speaker 1 Oh, you think, right, right, right. You know, the guy actually landed a couple darts on

Speaker 1 old Bill. He's done some stuff, you know?

Speaker 1 Do you think he

Speaker 1 that it wasn't really him? Because you do, you don't mind a conspiracy theory sometimes. Sure, I love it.
So you're just, I'm like, hey, maybe Shakespeare didn't write his plays.

Speaker 1 You're just like, I'm all in. He didn't do it.
Maybe it's three guys.

Speaker 1 Dana Strain on fake Shakespeare. No, it was a real guy.

Speaker 1 Oh, I love that. Maybe it's like three guys in a trench coat.
That's the dream. And they all, that's why, like, you know, one of them brought the comedy, one of them brought the drama.

Speaker 2 Do you know about the

Speaker 2 William Ireland Shakespeare hoax?

Speaker 1 No, what's that?

Speaker 2 I mean, I, this could be a full rabbit hole, but basically it was a guy in the late 1700s who was trying to impress his dad and like forged a Shakespeare signature autograph.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And the dad was impressed and then gradually reached a point where he's like, I found a lost play that Shakespeare wrote.

Speaker 1 This is like, can you ever forgive me?

Speaker 1 He's kicked something off, and then you started being like, well, if I can do the fucking signature, they put it on. They put on

Speaker 1 it's called, what's it called? Vortigern.

Speaker 1 Okay. Is it good? No.
No, fuck.

Speaker 1 It does make you wonder, though. Like, you know, they're constantly publishing new books under Dr.
Seuss, right? Yeah. It's like a Dr.
Seuss book. And you're like, we all know he died 60 years ago.

Speaker 1 Some other person's writing this, but Dr. Seuss has become a brand.
Yeah. And it's a part of it's the language.

Speaker 1 And so it's, is it like community season four where it's like, yeah, you kind of got the idea, but that doesn't mean it's good.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes, right, right. But I'm like,

Speaker 1 hop on hop, and you know, I'm almost surprised that no one's been like, hey, we bought the rights to Shakespeare. Right.
We're going to start publishing new Shakespeare plays. Right.
Like kind of

Speaker 1 AI. Like there's new James Bond novels or whatever.
Right. Right.
Right. That all the new born novels still say like Robert Ludlam in big letters on the top.
That's like actually written. Written by.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Is that covered on hoax? Oh, it is. That's a podcast.
Your podcast, podcast hoax.

Speaker 2 Brand new podcast, hoax. Exclamation point.

Speaker 2 Fun podcast I do with my friend Lizzie Logan where we talk about historical hoaxes, including that one.

Speaker 1 You have talked about it.

Speaker 2 I went down the rabbit hole. It's just, it's very fun for me to have a job where I get to go down a rabbit hole.

Speaker 1 What's the big, like, uh, upon Wingate? What's the name of the big hoax? I feel like there's the one that has some sort of like code name for what the truthers call themselves.

Speaker 2 Is it the Iron Mountain?

Speaker 1 I'm going to figure this out.

Speaker 2 That's like the kind of QAnoni.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't understand. Like, what's the hoax? I guess it's the one that Anonymous is built around the idea that Shakespeare couldn't have been a common person.

Speaker 2 Oh, a Shakespeare hoax. I feel like all those, like, it was Bacon, do come from sort of snobbery, this idea that

Speaker 1 Lovemaker's son. Right, seemingly regular have created this.
It must have been. It has to be fake.
It has to be Marlowe or Francis Bacon or whoever. Right.

Speaker 1 That's the thing with the Shakespeare authorship stuff, right? It's like largely like

Speaker 1 it's not like there's not enough evidence. It's more just people being like, I just don't buy it.

Speaker 2 And also, the argument that I've heard is like, well, how can someone be so good at tragedy and comedy and poetry?

Speaker 1 And I'm like, because he was a really good writer. Yeah.
There's a reason we, right, we still like his plays because he was good. Like, it's, it's circular.
Yeah. Like, you just have to, right?

Speaker 1 It's the Oxfordian theory, but there's some dumb name I've heard those people. They're called anti-Stratfordians, if that's what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 Like, because they're basically like it wasn't the man from Stratford because that's where he's from sure I guess um and of course he had a son called Hamnett and we'll learn all about that soon we're about to learn and cry

Speaker 1 about that son Ben and I uh last night went to go see uh house house full of dynamite oh did you like it I liked it I mean we'll we'll have talked about

Speaker 1 yeah I liked it I haven't seen it I have some hang-ups I found it a little stressful

Speaker 1 but Ben had just finished watching tragedy Macbeth it was storming up yeah it was raining this is real Tragedy of Macbeth weather. Yes.
And then walked into House of Dynamite.

Speaker 1 And we walk out of the theater, and Ben's just like, I feel bad. Yeah, for real.
That was an awful doubleheader. All right.
You probably needed to go see.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, what's the funniest movie in theaters right now? Probably fucking House of Dynamite. Yeah, my face.

Speaker 1 Oh, laughs to be had. I did the opposite.

Speaker 2 The Taylor Swift lyric.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Maybe Gabby's Dollhouse has a couple laughs, right? Yeah.
ARP argued that Wig is on fire in that movie.

Speaker 1 That's great. I love that for her.

Speaker 3 Griffith David, Ben, Ben, Bonesound Inc. Worldwide, in partnership with Plank Check Podcast.
I've heard with both of those companies. I've heard of both of those companies.

Speaker 3 I'm going to prove whatever's about to be mentioned.

Speaker 3 Are proud to present Ben Hosley's Slow Xmas V?

Speaker 3 Sorry. Slow Xmas has returned.
That's right.

Speaker 1 They slow now?

Speaker 3 For listeners out there living in a friggin' hole. Oh boy.
I've no shade. SX.

Speaker 3 Slow X-Mas is an annual compilation album of alternative and off-beat Christmas music. But it gotta be slow.

Speaker 3 Now this is not SSX. No.
The snowboarding. No, sometimes it's tricky.
This is just SX.

Speaker 3 It could be tricky. It could be tricky.

Speaker 3 Ben, you did in this copy that you've provided us. Written copy.
Written copy use SX as shorthand so you're trying to sort of coin an acronym here this is the first time you've done that

Speaker 3 testing it out can we call this sxv

Speaker 3 yes okay and now am i wrong is this the fifth time you've done this or is it the sixth because wasn't there like an episode zero or something i started with slow xmas zero okay right okay the second natural way to start it's a gozilla microphone counting up i'm like zero kind of situation

Speaker 3 right this the second year's installment was slow xmas volume one griff can i read the next line of the copy please This year, Slow Xmas 5 is being served cold. Brr.

Speaker 3 Bundle up and sip away them holiday season blues with wintry ethereal tunes. David Ben, our listeners might be going, yeah, I know, it's that time of the year, Slow Xmas.
What am I going to do?

Speaker 3 Go online and download it? Is that my only release option? No, because now in its sixth year, it is available on vinyl for the very first time. For the very first time, the slowest vinyl imaginable.

Speaker 3 That right, fiscal media baby, available exclusively through our friends over at Mutant right now. The lovely folks at Mutant have released such soundtracks as Sinners

Speaker 3 and now

Speaker 3 Slow X-Mas 5.

Speaker 3 It was pressed apparently on 140 GM. What does that mean? It's the Grams!

Speaker 3 The Grams, that's the weight. and iced out into a translucent ice blue variant.
I like that.

Speaker 3 That's limited to 5,500 copies. Offered him 45 RPMs so he can play a regular slow wear extra

Speaker 3 Isn't that fun? That's really fun. That's a clever.
That's really, really clever. Ben, can you tell us about the lineup this year?

Speaker 3 It's featuring holiday standards and rituals from the Meridian Brothers, Shannon Lay, Zach Cooper of Grammy Award winning, King Garvish, Eric Slick of Dr.

Speaker 3 Dog, Dave Hartley, friend of the show of the war on drugs. with his solo project Nightlands, among others.
Among others.

Speaker 3 And for the analog hogs, the analog hogshogs, the majority of the album artwork is practical with an original sculpture by matthew rosenquist to get your mittens on this record go to madebymutant.com also available is a special edition t-shirt featuring slow xmas 5 cover artwork Plus, we have a five pack of holiday greeting cards featuring album artwork across the last five years.

Speaker 3 So you can send along some holiday cheer to friends and family using cards featuring past Slow Christmas album artwork. Isn't that fun? You can explain to them what it is in the card.

Speaker 3 That's a good icebreaker. Ice, cold, brrr.

Speaker 3 And for any worldwide blankies interested, international shipping is available but for the vinyl record only.

Speaker 3 Once again, all three products are available right now at madebymutant.com. All right.
Anyway, thanks guys. Burr.

Speaker 1 Should we talk about tragedy?

Speaker 1 The tragedy of Macbeth. I love Macbeth.
I have seen, have you seen Macbeth performed Griffin Newman? I don't think I've ever seen it.

Speaker 1 I was trying to count how many times I've seen it on the stage, on the stage.

Speaker 1 Dana, when have you seen Macbeth?

Speaker 2 I think I've seen it two times, two or three times on the stage. Who were Macbeth? Chicago, Shakespeare.
Okay. Once in college.

Speaker 2 And I feel like once more that I'm not placing now. You, we were texting earlier and you were bragging that you saw Sir Patrick Stewart.

Speaker 1 I did see the Patrick Stewart production. Yes, which was,

Speaker 1 I think it was initially 2007.

Speaker 1 Right? Is that right? And it was, it's, you can see it filmed. It was recorded.
It did a pro shot. Rupert cool.
It's got this whole like like

Speaker 1 Romanian, like 60s sort of oppressive government thing.

Speaker 1 I also saw it with Samantha Bond as Lady Macbeth. This is what I was trying to remember who was Macbeth in this.

Speaker 1 I'm going to find it. Just relax.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I've watched the pro shot.

Speaker 1 Sean Bean, yes.

Speaker 2 The pro shot. There's a good pro shot of David Tennant.

Speaker 1 That one I was a little sad to have missed.

Speaker 1 I also, so I've been doing it. So I saw a lot of stuff when I moved to England when I was a kid.

Speaker 1 And the first thing I saw at the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican when I was in England was Julius Caesar when I was like nine years old. Okay.

Speaker 1 And I, you know, vaguely remember it, but like not really. And I, so I went back and looked at the programs because some guy collects screenshots.
Paul Bettany was in it. Wow.
What the fuck? Wow.

Speaker 1 I saw him on, you know, I didn't know. Like, I didn't know who he was.
It was Caesar. That was just a young Betany.
Yeah, he was. Brown Caesar.

Speaker 1 I can find out.

Speaker 1 Let's see. He played, Bethany played Brutus.
Okay. And Hugh Corshey played Mark Anthony.
And Caesar was played by Christopher Benjamin.

Speaker 1 Julian Glover was Cassius.

Speaker 1 I think back on this stuff that I saw as a kid, where I think I liked Shakespeare and I was into it, but I was still a little kid, so I would get a little bored. Or I would.
This is how I felt.

Speaker 1 And I was a, I was a, this is so long ago. And I just have no memory of these things that had the toast of, you know, later like british character actor shit you know what i mean like i saw in 96

Speaker 1 uh the rsc macbeth this is why i'm thinking about this which had roger allum as macbeth oh that he was good yeah and uh let's see who is lady macbeth bird brennan never heard of you okay

Speaker 1 um but the reason i saw that is that my friend from school was in it as one of banquo's children in like a scene where like all the children were like gathered on stage as part of the fantasy of the right?

Speaker 1 And so he had no lines, but he had to go be in the play every night. That's cool.
And I was like jealous that I was like, that's cool.

Speaker 2 Yeah. You know, like the

Speaker 2 historical sort of fun fact about the writing of Macbeth and why that scene is really included.

Speaker 2 What was happening in England at the time is King James of Scotland came over after Elizabeth of the House of Stuart.

Speaker 1 Of Scotland, also of the Bible. Of Scotland.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 Shakespeare was trying to suck up to him. So he was like, I'm going to write this play about a Scottish king.
And also, it was popularly believed that King James was descended from Banquo.

Speaker 2 Actually, he wasn't because Banquo wasn't a real person, but that was like sort of the popular understanding.

Speaker 2 So, even though, in the thing, in like the historical text that Shakespeare was basing this story on,

Speaker 2 Hollinshudd's Chronicles,

Speaker 2 Banquo was like involved in the assassination. In this version, he's like, no, Banquo, good guy.
And also, Banquo, you know, going to have a line of great kings, wink, wank.

Speaker 1 How are you as far as like the king knowledge legacy stuff? Definitely really good. Like, does that something they really like pushed on you in school?

Speaker 1 What do you think nine-year-old David moving to Britain thought about the fact that you could learn a big list of names of guys from the past?

Speaker 1 I'm going to guess there's like history about their dude doings. Knowing you.
Do you think like age nine David was interested in memorizing that? You might have have gotten a little locked in.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I can see that. But then, of course, there is the

Speaker 1 kings of Scotland before what Dana's referring to, you know, when the crowns are joined. And like, Macbeth is a real king,

Speaker 1 but I'm not, I don't know, how good are you at at the Kings of Scotland, Dana? Can you do it? Probably not. No, no.
I mean, it's pretty ridiculous.

Speaker 1 Like, there were a lot of kings of Scotland back then. Their names are too plain.
Yeah. They need like some kind of like extra like descriptor.

Speaker 1 It's a little rude given that there was like six King Davids in Scotland. And there's been zero King Davids in England.

Speaker 1 Well, James McAvoy, of course, was the last king of Scotland, but who led up to that?

Speaker 1 That's just facts. I don't know what to tell you guys.
Facts are facts. Facts are facts.
It's pretty weird that that's a movie. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That they're like, there's an Idiamin movie. Farrest Whitaker won best actor for it.
Oh, is he the lead? He's actually kind of not. James McAvoy is.
He's not even the titular character.

Speaker 1 Who does he play? The Last King of Scotland? Well, not really. He plays like a guy.
Yeah. Why is it called that? I don't know.
Idiamin was kind of into Scotland. Maybe.
I think.

Speaker 1 I think he called him a king at some point or some shit. You seen The Last King of Scotland.

Speaker 2 I have not seen that movie.

Speaker 1 I didn't even know James McAvoy was in it. He's not just in it.
He's all over it, baby. That's the crazy thing is they like shot this movie where like Edi Amin is the supporting character.

Speaker 1 And then people watched and they were like, fuck, this performance is good. And then the poster is just giant Forrest Whitaker face.

Speaker 1 Everyone, more people absolutely have seen like the Oscar clip of that movie than seen the actual movie in full. Right.
And assume the whole movie is that.

Speaker 2 That is exactly my understanding of that movie.

Speaker 1 No, it's mostly James McAvoy being like, God, I gotta get the fuck out of here. I'm like living with Edi Amin.
He's like a doctor stuck in Scotland. It's that Edi Amin needs to do a giant fart.

Speaker 1 I remember a real scene, of course. And he thinks he's dying.
He's like, I'm in pain. And he's like, oh, I'm a doctor.
I can help you.

Speaker 1 And then he's like, I think you just have gas pain and like makes him fart. And then Edi Amin is like,

Speaker 1 you rock. And he goes behind Edi Amin.
He places the baseball bat against his stomach and he like pulls really hard. This is a real scene.
This is like the movie's big first of me face.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. And then he's like, you're trying to kill me.
And James McFoy is like pulling the bat, and then he like lets out like a fucking blazing saddles fart.

Speaker 1 And he's true. You have cured me.
You are the last king of snakes. He's kind of analyzed this vibes where he's like, you,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 And then, well, then the rest of the movie, yes. James McFoy's like, I got to get out of here.
And Ediamin's like, I got to do more crime.

Speaker 1 It's like somewhere between like analyze this and funny people where he's like, you live in my house now.

Speaker 1 You help me with everything.

Speaker 1 But yes, Macbeth was, of course, the king of Scotland in 1040 for 17 years, which is not bad. Longer than I've been king of Scotland.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so far. By 17 years.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But he is based, so he's based on a real guy, but theater, theatrical character is kind of made up.

Speaker 1 But that's cool. Do you think in

Speaker 1 his time,

Speaker 1 because Shakespeare constructed so many plays around famous leaders that there was a kind of analog to Marvel speculation of being like who do we think he's gonna who's gonna do next what's he what's his take gonna be how much is he gonna deviate from the source material I know that like you're just that's like a very funny joke but I do think there's people people fully

Speaker 1 now like scholars think there's like quote unquote like lost plays where they're like I think he probably would have written a play about this guy and he didn't and no one so why are they lost because no one bothered to put them in the folio or whatever.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's like, I don't know, maybe, maybe they did them and no one wrote them down because they're like, we'll give him this one.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 1 Right. They're like, they removed all the bad ones from history.
They were like, what if we Zazlav a couple of these? So his legacy is pretty perfect. He did Zazlav it.

Speaker 1 But that's, it's just funny to imagine, like, where it's like, hey, I hear his next play is fucking Julius Caesar. And people are like, oh, shit.
But it must have been right.

Speaker 1 But then once in a while, people are like, it's like about a winter's tale. I don't know what he's doing.
The message board is literally a message board, right?

Speaker 1 Where someone is like pinning a piece of paper.

Speaker 2 Do I need to have seen 11th Night before I see this?

Speaker 1 Right. All right.
But when he did.

Speaker 1 When they announced something like Winter's Tale, it must have been like Nolan speculation where you were like, what does this title imply? Winter. Is it secretly an adaptation of

Speaker 1 Blue Thunder? I don't know.

Speaker 1 I believe that is what you're talking about. Yes, Blue Thunder.
Macbeth, let's go all the way back to Macbeth. Where's my dossier for Macbeth, JJ? The play.

Speaker 1 What do you know about Macbeth, Dana, apart from, I agree, I think that the historiography of like he's he's sucking up to King James a little bit, being like

Speaker 2 about Macbeth, sucking up to a Scottish king,

Speaker 2 giving us some classic, like Shakespeare themes.

Speaker 1 Some scholars, like normal guy, Harold Bloom, think that it was sort of influenced by the gunpowder plot. They did try to blow up King James I.

Speaker 1 Those rotten Catholics. Sorry, they're all right.
I'm sure King James had it coming. Wait, should I be sympathizing with Guy Fawkes? I don't know.

Speaker 2 It is kind of funny. I always find it very funny that Guy Fawkes, because of E4 Vendetta, has become this imagery that's like punk rock anarchist when he was a devout Catholic.

Speaker 1 He was a devout Catholic who wanted to kill James out of religious fervor. And then the holiday where we burn him in effigy is an anti-Catholic holiday.

Speaker 1 And the whole thing, in just 21st century Britain, you're just like, what's any of this about?

Speaker 1 Like, nobody here goes to church anymore like but with distance it's just become if they hated him he must have been cool i think he was all right what do you think about king james he was all right i mean yeah probably gay probably gay uh how often you know what he did is hunt what i find kind of interesting about this play which has you know witches he was a little bit obsessed with with witches okay right sort of the witch hunter king you wrote the demonstration fear you're saying yeah i think thought they were pretty real yeah but i guess people at that time were like there was a sort of a spectrum of how real do you think witches are?

Speaker 1 And he was close to heavy on reality. He wasn't goth.
He was like, we have to protect ourselves.

Speaker 2 Yeah. He was not into witches because he liked them.
He was like, we should put these women on trial and torture them.

Speaker 1 Did you know, right? Which is not woken cool of him. So maybe I take it back on James I.

Speaker 1 Did you know that in 1604, he wrote a treatise called A Counter Blast to Tobacco, which is seen as one of the first anti-smoking like publications ever, in which he says that uh like he doesn't like tobacco he hates that it's come from the new like that it's the hot new thing he says that it is hateful to the nose he's right i know he's just like in fucking 1604 he's like this why are we all smoking this it smells

Speaker 1 bad i'm just imagine him making people write his entire screed on the back of every tobacco leaf like it's the warning on a cigarette pack Hateful to the nose. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He basically is like, it's sinful and it smells like Satan to me as well. So he gets a little hard on the, you know, if you're smoking, it's like sort of devil smoke.
Right. Okay, sure.

Speaker 1 But still, he didn't like smoking. Yeah.
Anyway.

Speaker 1 So Macbeth, yeah, written in probably like 1602, somewhere around there.

Speaker 1 Can't be dated precisely. Maybe try to work harder.

Speaker 1 That sounds like a JJ failing. to me.

Speaker 1 There's basically, Dana, there's basically debate over is it like 1603 to celebrate James's ascension to the throne or a little after the gunpowder plot, which would put it like 1606? Okay.

Speaker 1 We don't know.

Speaker 1 They basically just like search the text to try and figure out like what could be a reference to like this.

Speaker 1 It seems like such a fun branch of history, but also very niche, you know, to like go through Shakespeare being like, what were they, what were they referencing here? Is this like a topical thing?

Speaker 1 Like him saying this?

Speaker 2 It's like how they reference driver's license in this movie, which dates it precisely in 2021.

Speaker 1 That's why they did that.

Speaker 1 Do you think that Paramount's about to green light a bunch of movies that are like Macbeth equivalents where like our greatest storytellers are pitching films about how good tech billionaires and their children are?

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. I didn't catch all of that.
Tech billionaire's their children. The idea was that Shakespeare was like, I got to be

Speaker 1 sucking up to his overlords.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 You think I'm correct? Yeah, I think you're right. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Of course, this is, you're not supposed to say the name Macbeth if you're performing it, right? Yes. Say the curse play.
It's a curse in the theater.

Speaker 1 It is, of course, a curse into podcast studios as well. We've always called it a Scottish play.

Speaker 1 Fucked ourselves, but the legend is always, if you say Macbeth in a podcast studio, you are trapped to endorse brain powders for 20 years.

Speaker 1 Gonna get caught in the manosphere. If you like that.
Say Macbeth in a podcast. Ben's not laughing.
I don't understand. Well, this is a very serious play.
It's a serious play.

Speaker 1 It's a very serious play. Talk about a serious curse.

Speaker 1 Michael York says that if you say the name name on stage or in a theater you have to leave immediately walk around three times walk around the theater three times which is like jesus it's like 20 minutes yeah yeah and then spit over your left shoulder say an obscenity and then wait to be invited back in the building you can't even go back in vampire roles um right uh patrick stewart says if you have played the role of the Scottish Thane, then you're allowed to say the title anytime, anywhere.

Speaker 1 That's convenient for him to say.

Speaker 1 Also, no, he's not saying it.

Speaker 1 So it's kind of one of those things where he's like i mean you know it's weird that you can't say this word and i'm like well you're not saying the word either man i've always found the loopholes of it confusing because it is right the the thing is oh only call it the scottish play right and basically there was a series of incidents during different productions that made people think it was cursed right sort of phantom of the opera style yes certain actors died or got injured you know like stage lights falling down and hitting people maybe some witches cursed the play are you allowed to reference the historical figure macbeth do you think?

Speaker 1 Well, this is my question. Also, if you're in Macbeth, you do have to say the word Macbeth.
And you put it on the fucking like marquee. That's true.

Speaker 1 They're like, if you're like working in a regional production of hairspray and you say Macbeth, you got to get the fuck out of here. You've just ruined everything.

Speaker 1 If you stage Macbeth on Broadway with Daniel Craig, you're saying Macbeth a trillion times a night. So if I went to a Broadway show and yelled Macbeth.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, is that worse than yelling like fire? Possibly.

Speaker 1 And we do do need to test this out. And you have to go to some Broadway show to start yelling, Macbeth.
Yeah. All right.

Speaker 1 Blank check.

Speaker 1 The business will pay for that.

Speaker 1 Sure. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Your bail

Speaker 1 as well.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think the reason for that superstition is because this is a tough play to do,

Speaker 1 weirdly. Oh, so it's more convenient to be like, I can't think of it.
That's why it got bad reviews. I think it's like sort of because like this is a weirdly straightforward play.

Speaker 1 And I think that for whatever reason, it like, I just remember almost every production I went to went, got kind of bad reviews.

Speaker 1 It's like a beloved role. It's famous.
Everybody knows Macbeth. And yet, it's kind of, for whatever reason, harder than Hamlet or King Lear in some way to like do a good Macbeth.

Speaker 1 Patrick Stewart accepted. We love Patrick Stewart.

Speaker 1 Like.

Speaker 1 Every movie version of Macbeth is kind of weird. There's the Orson Welles one, which is kind of good, but the sets are sort of falling down.

Speaker 1 There's the Roman Polanski one, nothing weird about that guy. I've never seen that one.
Normal. It's interesting.

Speaker 2 It's similar to this one in a lot of ways.

Speaker 1 It's the post-Sharon Tate murder movie, and it's very bleak. Uh-huh.
Which it's easy to lean into that with Macbeth. Yes.
There's the very dusky Assassin's Creed guy. I love that film.
Yep.

Speaker 1 Justin Curzel. Have you seen that one, Ben? No.
It's the movie that got him Assassin's Creed. A lot of smoke.
And it's Fastbender and Marion Coutiar.

Speaker 1 And they were just like, let's just move over to from one great work.

Speaker 2 About Assassin's.

Speaker 1 Yes, true. About assassination.
True. But you would love that movie.
Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's grimy as hell.

Speaker 2 There's Throne of Blood.

Speaker 1 Which is good. And you re-watch for this podcast.
I watched that. So we do have to shout that.

Speaker 1 That does rock.

Speaker 2 And it also feels like a lot of the fabric of that transferred over to the

Speaker 1 so many arrows in him at end of play.

Speaker 1 It's true. And if you haven't seen Assassin's Creed, highly recommend it.

Speaker 2 I haven't, but I did listen to the podcast about it.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 If you like the podcast, you'd love the movie. I'm looking at the Scottish Play curse thing.
It is built into the narrative that it is only

Speaker 1 a curse to say it when you're not performing it or rehearsing it. Okay.

Speaker 1 Which doesn't make any sense, but then my memory was. Now it's just a way to be annoying.
I'm like, someone says with Beth Woods like,

Speaker 1 it's like, sorry, I forgot we weren't rehearsing anymore. My memory was Origins of of the Curse was weird things befalling people working on the show.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it does seem like Origins of the Curse were just solely productions never went well. Right.
Bad news.

Speaker 1 This is what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 It wasn't a Spider-Man turn off the dark situation. It is.
They should now start a new thing where you can't say Spider-Man turned off the dark.

Speaker 1 You can't say Spider-Man, but you can't say Spider-Man. You can't turn off the dark.
People did think. A phrase that people love to say.

Speaker 1 That's the problem.

Speaker 1 People did think. Wasn't that phrase created by Bono's son?

Speaker 1 Yes, it was either Bono or The Edge's son was like, turn off the dark at like bedtime once. Right.
And they were like, brilliant.

Speaker 1 Our millions and millions of dollars of Spider-Man should be called this. Based on a three-year-old not understanding how a light switch works.

Speaker 1 The actual origin is that,

Speaker 1 yes, a series of poor productions, but noted, commonly put on by theaters already in financial trouble,

Speaker 1 or that high production costs put theaters in financial trouble, but it was chalked up to witches. They were like, the witches got angry that this fucking show pinned them down,

Speaker 1 read them for filth, and then they cursed all production.

Speaker 2 Although the witch is a very cool character in this play.

Speaker 1 Witch is a very cool role. I mean, what role would you want to play?

Speaker 2 I would want to, in this one, I'm like, the witch.

Speaker 1 Lady Macbeth's a pretty cool role.

Speaker 2 But I'm not a good actress.

Speaker 1 Right. You have to, right? You kind of got to bring it up for that one.
That's tough.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't, I would be too nervous to have a big part in this. You know what? In this one, Ross is just like close-ups of your face, not blinking.

Speaker 1 I mean, not sorry to say this word, but looking cunty. Like, I mean, he is serving it.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Like, which we love. I mean, I just love that Joel Cohn is like, like, you know, digging into the meat issue.
And he's like, I feel like Ross is just kind of serving. He's serving Cohen.

Speaker 1 Griffin, you're an actor. Is there a role? Kind of.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Have you done Shakespeare? I did.

Speaker 1 I did 12th Night. We love it.
What did you play? Pretentious, unbearable high school?

Speaker 1 It was reinterpreted. Oh, no.

Speaker 1 That's uninterpreted. No, come on, come on.
Being in a Dust Bowl-era circus.

Speaker 1 It was a real Carnival rip-off, like a year after Carnival.

Speaker 1 Everyone had Carnival fever. Dust Bowl era.

Speaker 1 Yes, our 80-year-old theater teacher with like translucent orange hair who dressed like a 20-year-old from like Search and Destroy was like, this weird thought came to me. So

Speaker 1 Fabian, who is kind of the Ross in that show, where he's just like a character that exists to be the fifth guy in the group.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I would say Fabian, he's one of the, you know, people in Olivia's household who also enjoys the pranks that are happening. He's not like sort of doing them.
There is just there for it.

Speaker 1 It's a defined character or game where everyone else kind of has a fun thing going on.

Speaker 1 And Sabina Friedman Seitz, who is a successful actor and a producer to this day,

Speaker 1 they double cast us as Fabian, which doesn't mean we were playing it in alternation.

Speaker 1 The character that is already underwritten, sorry, Bill, they were like, Why don't the two of you do it simultaneously? We'll split it into two characters, okay? Fabia and Fabian.

Speaker 1 And I was a magician, she was the magician's assistant. So, is this just sort of a way to

Speaker 1 make sure everyone participates? Yeah, it's high school, absolutely, whatever. But so I'm like, playing a character is like not a character, right?

Speaker 1 And then they also like split us in half, and it was absolutely random who had which line. And then we just did a bunch of magic tricks and shit.
Well, that's fun. I wore long johns.

Speaker 1 I just did a lot of business. Yeah, I played him like a fucking gremlin.
I say I play him like a gremlin. I was a gremlin and thus that's one boy.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Is there a Macbeth character that you would want to sink your teeth into?

Speaker 1 The Stephen Root part, but now it's just because I see what he did with it.

Speaker 1 It would just be copying Root. The muttering lunatic.
Yeah. But I admit that, like, I felt

Speaker 1 I have not attempted it since, but I, Shakespeare is a thing I can absolutely not get my head around as an actor.

Speaker 1 And I think, like, it's one of the reasons I think Denzel is very good in this is he is one of the only people I have seen work the dialogue so thoroughly that it actually feels like it is coming out of his mouth in real time.

Speaker 1 Well, that's out of his head.

Speaker 2 That's what I find interesting about the Denzel performance in this, it feels like a Denzel Washington performance.

Speaker 2 It's naturalistic, it's grounded, but the movie around him is very heightened and expressionist. And so to me, there's a want someone going bigger.

Speaker 1 I know what you're saying, Dana. Right, because he does feel very grounded, and no one else is really doing grounded.

Speaker 1 But maybe that's good to set him apart in some way, because Macbeth is so in his own head. Yeah.
I don't know. He's such a

Speaker 1 he really respects Shakespeare, right? Like Denzel Washington. He's done it twice on Broadway, both times to unanimously terrible reviews yes but not really for him more for just like the productions

Speaker 1 he's done it in movies twice because he's a much ado right yeah which he's wonderful in but mostly he's just fine as hell right like he's just playing one of the sexy guys yeah right

Speaker 1 uh he did

Speaker 1 richard ii

Speaker 1 at the public a very long time ago and i think he got good reviews for that but that was like when i was a child i love that he takes shakespeare so seriously yeah it to keep, you know, doing it.

Speaker 1 And I like this performance.

Speaker 2 Did you see the Jake Gyllenhaal Othello?

Speaker 1 No, I didn't actually, despite being a successful podcaster, have like $800 on me to sit, you know, in a hammock suspended from the rafters.

Speaker 1 So it was just like the insanity around getting a ticket and then the first wave of people see the first preview and they're like, yeah, it kind of sucks. Like, not just like, oh, it's not that good.

Speaker 1 They were like, it's bad. It's actually actively bad.
But I'm like, he's also way too old to be playing Othello. He's kind of too old to be playing Macbeth.

Speaker 1 Julius Caesar was the other one he did on Broadway. And that was like, he played Brutus in that, I think.
And that was, that was like, what, at this point, almost 20 years ago.

Speaker 1 No, it was like 2005, wasn't it?

Speaker 2 I mean, I, I never want to age shame anyone and be like, an actress is too old for a part, which is a thing, you know, that Hollywood loves to say.

Speaker 2 But I think it is interesting and noteworthy that this is a production of Macbeth where.

Speaker 2 Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are explicitly past childbearing age, which I think informs the text in an interesting way.

Speaker 1 Sure. And also past the age that most people lived to in this era.
Macbeth, King of Scotland, lived to the age of about 51. How old Zenza when he made this? 66? Something like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Although a 51-year-old in the 10th century probably looked like 85, right? Sure. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm going to open the dossier. Buster Scruggs is the last film that the Cohn brothers made together.
After that, Ethan said, I'm sleepy. I want to take a rest.
Yes. I'm tired of making movies.

Speaker 1 We've made too many. We made too many Westerns.
I'm exhausted.

Speaker 1 They are very on the, you know, they insist we did not break up.

Speaker 1 As Ethan puts it, it was just me going, uh.

Speaker 1 Right. That's, I'm trying to do.

Speaker 2 You know what I did see was an Ethan Cohen play around this time in L.A.

Speaker 2 play is a poem or a poem as a play.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 I did not care for it particularly.

Speaker 1 A play, a new play running currently at the time that we're recording this episode off broadway that i have heard is quite good from everyone i know who's seen it but that seemed to be the narrative at the time of you know ethan has all these other things he does he publishes poetry and writes books and does knights of one acts and whatever he's maybe going to go off and do all that he's tired of the machinery of film production and so it was taken as like maybe they're just on a hiatus until Ethan gets the bug again.

Speaker 1 And then this announcement comes out and it's like, oh shit, Joel's going to do stuff solo, which I think was not taken as a given at first.

Speaker 2 I have heard with the DGA, if you split as a duo, it is very, very hard to get back together. Maybe there's like a Cohen exception because they are the Cohen.

Speaker 1 They may, but who knows what will happen if they do reunite, right? If do they go back to the old school Joel directs, Ethan produces to avoid DJ business? I don't know. I'm going to say this.

Speaker 1 I think I can say this and we could cut it out later, but we talked about it in our Barton Fink episode in this series that our buddy Chris Weitz was talking about that being an issue where then he and his brother couldn't work together again

Speaker 1 and not understanding, like, fuck, is the solo movie going to prevent us from ever getting a proper Cohen collaboration?

Speaker 1 A new friend of the show, Seth Rogan, yeah, was telling me after listening to that episode. He's also, of course, been credited as a director with Evan Goldberg.
Yes, that

Speaker 1 Favreau has been pretty high on the DGA board for a number of years. Johnny Favs.

Speaker 1 And after their battle to get approved to co-direct on This Is the End, Favreau brought the two of them onto the DGA board to be like, we need to rethink all of this. Right.

Speaker 1 This is like an annoying rule. I think there's a great

Speaker 1 flexibility in the last 10 years only. They've become less rigid about it.
But yeah, I don't know. It's a weird moving target.
So

Speaker 1 in 2016, Frances McDormand, I guess, had been basically bugging Joel for a while to direct her in Macbeth on the stage.

Speaker 1 She did it in 2016. She played Lady Macbeth and the Witch.
Is that right?

Speaker 1 He just says Lady Macbeth. I'm not sure.
With Conliff Hill, great British actor, or is he Irish? I want to miss.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's Irish. Sorry.

Speaker 1 Wonderful actor.

Speaker 1 Who everyone knows these days from Game of Thrones. But I saw him in

Speaker 1 lots of British stage stuff back in the day.

Speaker 1 But Dan Sullivan directed it. Joel didn't do it.
He was not interested in live theater, basically. But he tells her, it's something I could get my head around as a movie.

Speaker 1 Like, it's not, I don't really want to do theater, but like, I'm not uninterested in Macbeth. So

Speaker 1 it's not like

Speaker 1 he's long wanted to do the Macbeth movie and like only his split with Ethan Cohen allows this to happen. It's more, as JJ puts it, He saw his wife do it on stage and was like, that's cool.

Speaker 1 Like, that's something I could do. Maybe I could build something around that.

Speaker 1 But that also makes sense at the moment that he doesn't have another movie lined up and Joel had been the guy who seemingly kept being like, come on, another one, another one.

Speaker 1 And it's such a non-Coenzy thing. Like, so it's sort of like, that's a great way to do something different.

Speaker 2 There's no humor in this, really? No. I mean, tiny bits, but it's not, it's not the tone of the Cohen brothers.

Speaker 1 My big take in my review at the time was Macbeth is a very Cohen'sy character. Like in that he is a guy who gets in way over his head on a scheme that he doesn't really

Speaker 1 have a plan, you know what I mean? And then, like, keeps trying to be like, okay, well, what if I do this?

Speaker 1 He does have a Cohency thing. And the cycles of death, like, that's another thing looming over the text that is just like, yeah, death coming for us all

Speaker 1 in meaningless ways.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Cohen's friends with Hanford Woods, who's an academic who had taught Shakespeare. What's going on with their brain? At Montreal's Dawson College.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 he helps explain Macbeth to Joel Cohen. Cool.

Speaker 1 And yes, he says it does prefigure a lot of 20th century tropes in American pulp fiction. A couple plotting a murder.
It's not

Speaker 1 dog outside. A dog hates murder.

Speaker 1 By the way, I just want to throw out McDorman was one of the three witches in that production. She was double cast.
That's cool. Which is interesting.
I like that. It's a cool one.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That seems like a cool interpretation of like who's influencing Macbeth here.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 and Cohen's, I mean, Cohen just says a lot of stuff about Shakespeare.

Speaker 1 A lot of people would say, which is like, yes, he was a genius of literature, but he was also a constant entertainer, entertainer, and he was alive to aspects of storytelling.

Speaker 1 And, you know, like, like people, I feel like dig into Shakespeare and realize, like, these plays are thrillers. They're exciting.
Like, it's not just boring homework. Right, right.

Speaker 1 They're sex jokes.

Speaker 1 They cut about there's some sometimes they make a sex joke, like their sword's a penis, you know um there's about 15 of dialogue cut macbeth is i would say the shortest tragedy uh already so it's not that hard to get it into like nice movie length you don't have to do a major excising the cohens love coming in under two hours that's true it's one of their favorite things and this is a pretty

Speaker 1 like This would be a tough hang if it was like two hours, 20 minutes. Yes.
Like this is not a high energy movie. No.

Speaker 1 JJ has copy-pasted gigantic amounts of text of Joel telling me what he decided to cut or not, but I cannot monologue for 20 minutes. I'm going to quickly

Speaker 1 copy paste the words, you're fired, into our group chat to see how he responds to that.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 to what Dana's saying, though,

Speaker 1 this is a postmanopausal Macbeth, Cohen acknowledges.

Speaker 1 It was interesting that at this point in his career and in Francis' career, they're older. He wanted it to reflect an older couple.

Speaker 1 He thinks, like, you know, there's only one really good marriage in all of the heterosexual relationships in Shakespeare, he says.

Speaker 1 There's only one good marriage, I guess, because most Shakespeare is about people

Speaker 1 who will be getting married later.

Speaker 1 And he's like, and it's the marriage of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Yeah, they're plotting to kill people, but they do, the union is fairly strong.
They listen to each other. Exactly.

Speaker 1 So he wanted it to be this kind of like

Speaker 1 substantial older couple. So they changed the line, I can tell you, the original line is, Macbeth says, bring forth men, children only, for thy understand metal should compose nothing but males.

Speaker 1 And Denzel says, should have composed nothing but males. So it's sort of acknowledging that they are past childbearing.

Speaker 1 The absolute lack of a biological heir.

Speaker 2 that they are doing all of this and there is no bloodline that can that to me made this a little bit harder for me to emotionally understand where if there is absolutely no possibility of a biological heir then why are you so mad that banquo's kids are going to become someone's going to have to become king after you right but what does it have to be banquo what about ross that guy looks great but i also think that kind of goes into the the Cohen of it, where it's like, this guy's just getting in over his head.

Speaker 2 He's just like overthinking everything.

Speaker 1 Well, someone just says to him, you should be the king. And he's like,

Speaker 1 I shouldn't be the king. His wife's like, well, maybe you shouldn't.
He's like, all right, I'll be the king. And now he's now he's the king.
And he's like, fuck.

Speaker 2 Is Macbeth a beta?

Speaker 1 Macbeth is a bit of a beta cuck. No, he's not.
Is Macbeth a beta? I mean, the thing about Macbeth is he gets told, not just the king thing. He gets told that no one can beat him.

Speaker 1 That's tough news to hear. You don't want a witch to be telling you that or whatever, right? Because like then you're going to start behaving real odd if you're like, I'm invincible.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And I do like that the Cohen interpretation is like he starts doing some equalizer shit in the final act when guys are charging at him with swords and he's just like, I'll just fucking like headbutt you.

Speaker 1 Like, you can't kill me. But the witch said so.
He also views everything and everyone as a threat to kill him. Yes, that is true.
Birds coming at his head. He's like, not today.

Speaker 1 So obviously, first actress attached is this sort of little-known actress named Francis McDorman.

Speaker 1 And they're like, okay, who's going to be like a worthy adversary?

Speaker 1 And they ponder this guy, they've also been like batting around his name once in a while, Denzel Washington. There is no physical release for this movie.
Hopefully they'll be corrected at some point.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that'd be nice. This is an Apple Plus original film co-produced with 824 and IAC.
On the Apple TV app, there is like one special feature they have attached to it. That's a featurette.

Speaker 1 where everyone talks other than Joel. It is all of the regular close collaborators.
It is most of the main actors.

Speaker 1 They're all talking about how great Joel is and what his vision was and how they serviced it. But Ellen Chenoweth, who's cast a lot of the Cohen's movies, was just saying, like, the project is

Speaker 1 Joel wants to do Macbeth and Frances is set for Lady Macbeth.

Speaker 1 And she's just like, it immediately becomes an incredibly short list of like who is in the right age range, can hold their own against her. and is classically trained, has experience with this.

Speaker 1 Jared Leno. Yeah, it was just Jared and Denzel.

Speaker 1 And Jared, you know, is the king of the box office. There's a reason we keep putting him in these.
$33 million guaranteed for whatever he fucking makes and no more.

Speaker 1 But really, give him troubled IP. Give him IP that's never quite clicked.
Stuff that isn't on its own two feet, he will keep it on it.

Speaker 1 And I guarantee you, it will open $10 to $15 million below projections.

Speaker 1 But here's why it's worth it, because he's such a good guy. And he's on an altar.
Everyone loves him. The performances are always so memorable.

Speaker 1 It truly is. He's a zero-tool player.
Yes.

Speaker 1 With this. You always make the joke that, like, when they keep greenlighting these movies with him, you're like, on paper, he looks good, but it's a canard.
Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 1 Because, right, you're like, he's an Oscar-winning actor. He's been in hits.
He's the Joker. Right.
The Joker, that's a role people have won Oscars for, not him.

Speaker 1 The Joker that everyone loves. Right.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He was a joker there was a joker sandwich where on either side the pieces of bread were people winning the oscar for playing the joker and it turned out in between the two pieces of bread was nothing

Speaker 1 what do you mean he had a mouth on his hand and so instead of his regular mouth he could also give you hand mouth he was damaged the tattoo said so it did say that it is funny that that is like far and away his biggest hit and they're like i guess the guy's got box office goods and you're like along with his oscar they cut his performance down to six minutes.

Speaker 1 He is barely in that movie. You can tell there's an hour of footage left on the cutting room floor.

Speaker 1 Um, no, they were like, if Denzel wants to do this, that's a fucking miracle that like solves all of our problems better than we possibly could have imagined.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, that's a guy you want signing on. Uh, they had had lunch, uh, Joel said, like, they had had lunch with him like five or six years prior.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And had a sort of general, like, it would be so cool to do a movie together someday chat. And then apparently, Ethan had said, Buster Scruggs, and Denzel was like, I have to go.

Speaker 1 No, that part didn't happen. Do you want to play all of them?

Speaker 1 But he loves Francis McDorman and said they have very, very similar work styles. Awesome.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so they have lunch again and they're like, Macbeth. And he's like, yeah, cool.
Denzel's favorite Cone Brothers movie?

Speaker 1 Lady Killers. Oh, brother, where art thou? Not Lady Killers.
That makes sense. He says, I don't even know why.
It's just so weird.

Speaker 1 But he likes the cone brothers um and he likes shakespeare uh he played othello in college he played it later opposite jake jillenhall um for one billion dollars you could go see it had he ever played macbeth on stage uh he had never done macbeth he had uh in later years played richard iii as i said and brutus and julius caesar he also apparently did coriolanus but he did not uh had never really read macbeth he said like he'd never really uh you know

Speaker 1 delved into that one.

Speaker 1 He said he turned on one of the films, doesn't even say which one, watched for two minutes minutes and turned it off and was just like, I'll, I don't want to like, you know, be affected by anything else.

Speaker 1 His take on

Speaker 1 Macbeth is tired, he says. Sure.
He says they're older. They're like, look, this is our shot, our due, give it to us.
Drastic times make for drastic measures and the clock is ticking.

Speaker 2 He's coming back from war. None of their chairs look comfortable.

Speaker 1 No. They had not invented comfy chairs.
They were hundreds of years before someone put a pillow on a chair.

Speaker 1 I don't know if this was intentional or not, but this is what I think is interesting about them being older. It does reflect a modern hell we live in of people refusing to retire.

Speaker 1 Wait, are you saying this is a Biden, Macbeth?

Speaker 1 Not even Biden as much as, I think, more like CEOs and shit, right? But even like senators and all this shit.

Speaker 1 Like our buddy Scott Gairdner always calls it filibustering, but he's just like, these people refuse to let go of their fucking chairs in any environment and this idea of like why would you go through all this fucking effort?

Speaker 1 Why retire chill out and instead these people just seemingly get hungrier and hungrier and hungrier when they're gonna have less and less time to even enjoy the fruits of their labor?

Speaker 1 Like, what's the point? Why are you fighting for this? You know, the Jay Leno thing of just like, you don't touch your tonight show money. You don't have kids.
You're 75.

Speaker 1 What are you saving it for? Why are you still on the road tumbling down hills? Don't catch yourself on fire. Right.
Like, just chill out, my guy. He didn't light on fire himself on fire.

Speaker 1 A car lit him on fire that he was in, or whatever, whatever that was. And the car yelled, stop collecting us.

Speaker 2 There's also a very like boomer sense of entitlement to

Speaker 2 where, you know, Brendan Gleason gives his son a title that Macbeth gets jealous and threatened by. And he's like, well, I just want to battle.

Speaker 1 I should also have that.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 there's a freak out at the younger generation and a fundamental condescension of you guys just don't get it yeah i actually need to keep doing this because there's no one who could do this in my stead yeah

Speaker 1 leno might be a good macbeth though that is an interesting thing to explore

Speaker 1 do you think leno's like a good tipper like he better yeah i think he is right does he like get good gifts he's sort of notoriously generous right okay i bet he's assistant gives good gifts he was yeah i assume he doesn't pick out the stuff.

Speaker 1 He was always,

Speaker 1 I feel like by reputation, incredibly generous to his entire staff for his entire run of Tonight Show.

Speaker 1 But it is a confounding thing where you're like, that's his fucking legacy, that he hosted the Tonight Show for 20 years, that he has never touched a cent of that, and that he lives off of touring money only.

Speaker 1 And so he still does like fucking

Speaker 1 150 dates a year.

Speaker 1 And that alone pays for all the cars. He also wrote a children's book despite not having any children.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know what it's called. What? Do you know what I'm talking about? No.
Gross Beef Could Fly. It's called.

Speaker 2 Jimmy Fallon also wrote a children's book.

Speaker 1 He at least has children.

Speaker 1 Jimmy Fallon has written like 15 children's books.

Speaker 1 I went down this rabbit hole. He's like.
I need looking it up.

Speaker 1 He's hitting every holiday. It's like one sleep till Christmas, one sleep till Halloween.

Speaker 1 I want to say he co-wrote a Spanish one with J-Lo.

Speaker 1 You talking about Fallon? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I will say you really realize when you're shopping for children's books how many celebrities will just slap their names on children.

Speaker 1 Just become the like fucking high-end liquor. All I know about if roast beef could fly, because I think Scott Ackerman talks about it a lot on Comedy Bang Bang, which makes sounds right.

Speaker 1 That sounds right. Is that it's like some childhood story where like his dad threw a roast beef out the window, but it's been turned into like a nice story.
Okay. That's sweet.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Jared Leto, just checking with him. I had that opened up.

Speaker 2 Should we get him to write a child?

Speaker 1 Jared Leto has made made one movie. Get him to write a children's job.
Absolutely. He has made one movie that's grossed $100 million domestic plus.
Is it Suicide Squad? That's it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Number two is what, Griffin?

Speaker 2 Did Fight Club not?

Speaker 1 No, not close. 37.
Is number two Panic Room? Yes. Yeah.
Which almost made 195. And of course, he's not the star of that.
Right. But there's a direct correlation.

Speaker 1 The higher up he is on the call sheet, the lower the grosses go. If you cast him, I genuinely think a witch's curse befalls you.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Because, like, Blade Runner 2049, people kind of wanted that to do better and it didn't quite, you know, it did okay. Morbius, obviously underachieved.

Speaker 1 Then Recent Haunted Mansion, obviously underachieved. House of Gucci, people were hyped.
It did okay. Yeah.

Speaker 2 How's Tron Aries doing?

Speaker 1 Poorly.

Speaker 1 Not so good.

Speaker 1 But either way. Now Tron Aries, the character, is doing great.

Speaker 1 It's also funny that those movies are called Tron. Tron is a character.
Yes. He is not present.
They've now made two films where Tron isn't really the one. He appears in the second one.

Speaker 1 He's not in the third one.

Speaker 1 But but they're hiding him in the second one you're absolutely right at the end oh that was tron yeah um i was going to it's a thin man situation yeah a little bit a little bit absolutely um

Speaker 1 what was i gonna say about jared leto i don't know you love him i love him he's really good you know no no i was gonna say blade runner 2049 i remember you seeing it and i was like how's leto in it and you were like he's actually not in it that much he's got like three scenes he's fine he's fine and i'm like why was he 60% of every trailer?

Speaker 1 You're right that I think the Leto bit them in the ass, but they were marketing as well. I know.
I know. I don't want to see Leto go toe-to-toe.
Toe to toe with full in that movie.

Speaker 1 He basically stays in one room. He's fine.
It's a better use of him than most post-Oscar movies have had. Right.
Right.

Speaker 1 Anyway,

Speaker 1 Cohen and McDorman had met Catherine Hunter all the way back in 1991. They'd always wanted to do a movie with her.
Feels like a classic Cohen back pocket.

Speaker 1 We saw this person kill it off Broadway or on the website. Literally, I'd seen her in like a Charleston production.
Someday we will put you in something.

Speaker 2 She famously, I think, played Richard III.

Speaker 1 That's a very famous Globe performance that she gave. That when you see pictures of it, you're like, that rocks.
That looks cool.

Speaker 1 I feel like she's best known for playing Arabella Fig in the Harry Potter movies, but otherwise, is mostly a stage actor. There's a big, there's some now she's kind of popping up.

Speaker 1 There's like a Harry Potter reunion happening in this movie. Who else we got? Well, Glee.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 All right. Melling.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Her post-Macbeth run is very cool. Like, she does poor things in Megalopolis and Andor and Heta.
She's so good in Andor. I fucking forgot about that.

Speaker 1 She definitely is the person who got the biggest bump from this movie. Because how do you watch this movie and not go like, who is that? Like, you know, whoa.
What would be a fun way to use her?

Speaker 2 How can we put her in a movie? She'll just give us... more juice.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Apparently in their first meeting, they said, how do you envision this physically?

Speaker 1 Catherine got up on a coffee table, took black pantyhose out of her backpack and pulled them over her head and started bending into the shapes she does in the film. Oh, she's that's amazing.

Speaker 1 She's doing some Sims

Speaker 1 in this. She really is.
She's fucking horrific, double-jointed nonsense.

Speaker 1 She wanted to evoke crows. She was thinking about like crows on a battlefield afterwards, like scavenging.

Speaker 1 You know, rather than that she did not want to do like, I'm a witch with a pointy nose at a cauldron, right? You know, she didn't want to do the classic witch stuff.

Speaker 1 Seems like a great hang. So So, a lot of like

Speaker 1 stuff. The witches, yeah, I mean, they are kind of cool.
They seem like they got stories, yeah. They'll tell you in like riddles, but they do have stories.
Right, that's the problem.

Speaker 1 You can't be like, so how's your day? Like, sure, what's up, guys?

Speaker 3 So, I've got a question for all the gamers out there.

Speaker 3 Are you seriously going to miss out on Alienwear's biggest gaming sale of the year? I mean, these are Black Friday prices we're talking about. So it's not just another sale.

Speaker 3 I took a look, and this is some pretty big bang for your buck. Yeah, you know, it's Alienware with some of the most advanced engineering out there.
They got systems at the top of reviewers' lists.

Speaker 3 And what about a gift for yourself? Yeah, you gift yourself a new Alienware 16 Area 51 gaming laptop. I mean, this thing's got performance at the absolute next level with Intel Core, ultra processors.

Speaker 3 And even better, you can get it during Black Friday. Plus, you can save on all kinds of displays and accessories like the Alienware 274K QDOL E-D gaming monitor for ultimate visual fidelity.

Speaker 3 I might need that. These really are incredible deals on PCs with otherworldly performance.

Speaker 3 Here's what I'd do: I'd visit alienware.com/slash deals soon and grab what you can before their biggest sale of the year goes dark.

Speaker 3 David,

Speaker 3 this episode is brought to you by Mubi, the global film company, the Champions Great Cinema. From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there is always something new to discover.

Speaker 3 And with Mubi, each and every film is hand-selected so you can explore the best of cinema, streaming anytime, anywhere. But also, David, no, that's it.
That done. No

Speaker 3 recommendation of Mubi. No.
What?

Speaker 3 Also projected upon the silver screen. Yes, Movie releases films too.
In physical movie theater. And they've got a humdinger called Die, My Love.
It's the new picture from Lynn Ramsey.

Speaker 3 Someone I have long maintained is one of our finest living filmmakers. That is true.
A genius, in my opinion. It is coming to U.S.
theaters on November 7th.

Speaker 3 It is a visceral and uncompromising portrait of a woman engulfed by love and madness. Who's playing that woman, David? Jennifer Lawrence.
Have you heard of her? This film is excellent. You've seen it.

Speaker 3 I sure have.

Speaker 1 I am dying to see it.

Speaker 3 I guess I'll be. Dying my love to see it.

Speaker 3 yes it stars jennifer lawrence and robert pattinson two of our very exciting stars as steak and batman themselves they are playing uh a couple who moves out to the woods to montana to uh raise their kid after they have a kid and feel normal

Speaker 3 everything goes regular for them in their brains when they do this This is her first film, since you were never really here, one of my favorite movies of the last decade. Yes, it was.

Speaker 3 It's very, very intense, very incredible performance from Jennifer Lawrence, especially in my opinion. Awesome soundtrack that I think Ben's gonna dig.

Speaker 3 I think Lynn Ramsey makes movies differently than anyone else on the planet. I feel like she is uniquely skilled at a kind of method she has created for depicting the inner life.

Speaker 3 through sound and image. Her movies thrill me.
And I will say, if you're a listener of this

Speaker 3 it might be beneficial to go see Die My Love sooner rather than later, Winky Winky. Die My Love is now in theaters.
Go see it. You can visit movie.com/slash die my love for showtimes and tickets.

Speaker 3 And to stream great films at home, you can try MubiFree for 30 days at movie.com/slash blank check. That's mu B I dot com

Speaker 3 slash blank check for a whole month of great cinema for free.

Speaker 1 Can we talk about

Speaker 1 the sort of narrative of the split, right? To date, we only have this one Joel movie. Ethan has been doing all of his shit.
It starts to feel a little too cut and dry that people are like, got it.

Speaker 1 Here's the takeaway. Joel is the visualist.
He's the mordant one. He's just like black-hearted, death-obsessed.
Ethan is all the like goofy, silly boys, dumb people fucking up shit. Right.
Right.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Um, but they're not doing anything to help dispel that narrative. It's why I'm very interested to see the next film.

Speaker 1 But it is like, I think it is the common complaint of this movie where you're just like, it's really got like negative humor going on. Yes.

Speaker 1 And it is so oppressively dark that as much as I think this film is like beautiful, an incredible object, like an incredible triumph of film production, even at under two hours, it starts to get a little relentless.

Speaker 1 Like, I feel pretty beaten down an hour into this movie.

Speaker 2 The score is also just very, like, to use what Jason Siegel says in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, it's just like ominous tones. Yes.

Speaker 1 I love that scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But that, right, Carter Burrow isn't like writing like an epic score.

Speaker 1 No. No.

Speaker 1 They...

Speaker 1 obviously never wanted to do a let's rent a castle, let's get some horses, let's go out into the countryside, classic Macbeth kind of thing.

Speaker 1 They always wanted to do something abstract. And beyond that, that Joel was like, I think this show works better if you tie it to the theatrical.
Right.

Speaker 1 I need to create something that is cinematic and visual, but is this fucking 10-minute special feature, the word abstraction or abstracted. Oh, they say that one?

Speaker 1 It's said 8,000 times as they're talking to every sort of above-the-line person. They're like, these were our marching orders, that he wanted something that felt otherworldly.

Speaker 2 It's It's artificial by design. Yes.

Speaker 1 And it's very German expressionist. It's very Murnau.
It might shock you to learn that this was actually all filmed on a soundstage. That's a quote from Joel Cohen.
Everything was built.

Speaker 1 Bruno De Benel, the amazing DP

Speaker 1 who shot a couple Cohen movies and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Prefers to shoot on stages, loves the complete control of being able to light his own universe.

Speaker 1 So he was just fucking thrilled at this.

Speaker 1 A surprising amount amount of this movie is CGI. Really? Yes.
And I feel like I was talking to someone who was saying they don't like Buster Scruggs because Buster Scruggs feels too digital.

Speaker 1 And that's a thing that the Cohens avoided. But basically, like

Speaker 1 from no country on, they are some of the best at doing invisible CGI. Like digital sort of like messing around.
Set expansion, removing things, adjusting things.

Speaker 1 I think they have all these like foam blocks, basically. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then they would like rehearse the scenes with Denzel or francis or whoever they would walk around and they'd be like great let's move the blocks now yeah to reflect whatever it is they want to do whatever they're sort of figuring out in rehearsal and then yes i imagine they just built everything else out in the computer basically sort of like the volumes and the mandalorian is also in this they had a lot of set pieces but they were more modular you can watch this featurette and they show you the like vfx breakdowns of the layers coming in but they were also like you know we've been working with joel and ethan for like i guess they just said Joel.

Speaker 1 We've been working with Joel for like the last 10 years. We have a good collaboration with him.
We understand the language. This is the most we've worked with a DP

Speaker 1 because it wasn't just someone else is shooting it and then handing it to us and saying, take this out or make this taller. That a lot of it was Bruno coming in and being like, the shadow is this.

Speaker 1 You know, the extension, the wall needs to go this high and the lights coming from here.

Speaker 2 And a lot of the shadows are like purposefully artificial, it feels like.

Speaker 1 Correct. So a lot of this is lit on the day.
You know, they were like, we tried to get stuff in camera as much as possible,

Speaker 1 but it is painterly. What I like about it, what I think is so successful is

Speaker 1 all the most digital effects. First of all, all the sets look like they're real.
You buy them.

Speaker 1 It helps that they have a design language that is so simplistic that it's pretty inexpensive to just build like a giant column with no real definition, cast in shadow.

Speaker 2 Holding nothing up. Right.

Speaker 1 You could just build that. It just makes life easier to like build it after after the fact but even things like the reflection inside uh the water right

Speaker 1 um i like that they use cgi to make something that looks like like an old fool's effect or something right cuts down on the smoke budget i imagine if they're not using digital smoke the smoke machines are running the smoke is all digital a lot of the things that look like those camera projections

Speaker 1 we've we've heard from people that joel is very into death metal

Speaker 1 Sick. That he's like into pitch black, super hardcore death metal.
And this definitely feels like the movie where Ethan removed from the equation. He's just going full, like, nothing fucking matters.

Speaker 1 Del Benel calls it a haiku, right? Stripping everything down to essentials, like his sort of visual approach.

Speaker 1 Big influence is Edward Gordon Craig, who directed a lot of Shakespeare at the turn of the 20th century, pioneered like big screens and geometric shapes, things like that.

Speaker 1 Obviously, German expressionism. Cohen talks about Metropolis a lot, the Frank Slang film with a big robot in it.
Now, this film was going to have a robot, and they took it out. It's a joke.
Cowards.

Speaker 1 Yes. And they have a bunch of other visual references that you can look up, but it's hard to describe visual references on an audio podcast.

Speaker 1 Sunrise, the Murneau film. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Geometric sort of, you know, qualities to even like fields and stuff in that movie.

Speaker 1 Yada, yada, yada. They actually.

Speaker 1 Oh my God, Richard Bell. This is.

Speaker 1 Okay, Deschant. Who's Deschant?

Speaker 1 JJ, you're so fired.

Speaker 1 So many fucking names in this thing. Why JJ make you learn things?

Speaker 1 Stefan Deschant, the production designer, had a friend. I'm just laughing at this because I had made a Mandalorian joke.

Speaker 1 who worked as the greens supervisor on Mandalorian and invented something called the Moss-O-Matic,

Speaker 1 which is a gun hooked up to a tank that makes like instant grass, basically. It shoots glue and moss, and you can like give your text, your

Speaker 1 set some texture.

Speaker 1 So that's fun. That's amazing.

Speaker 1 Here's another thing about this movie.

Speaker 1 Unlike most black and white films, everything other than the actors was black and white. The sets were black and white.
The costumes were black and white.

Speaker 1 What, they were too lazy to make Francis McDorman black and white every day? Paint black and white? That's how you save money on the budget. You don't put color into anything.

Speaker 1 But yes, most black and white films, you can see the behind-the-scenes photos. A, they were not actually shot in black and white, as we've discussed.

Speaker 1 I feel like a man who wasn't there in some other films, they convert them later.

Speaker 1 This was like shot in black and white, and everything on set was black and white. Yeah.
It's a very

Speaker 1 technical thing what they're doing. And there is oodles of stuff in JJ's research about just how methodical they were about approaching lighting and set design and all this stuff, right? Okay.
Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 That's cool. Yeah.

Speaker 1 At a certain point, you worry that your movie's going to get lost a little bit in your, in the, in the technical, right?

Speaker 1 Like that, if you're doing something so abstract, um, you know, does it just become sort of this pretty thing for you to look at? Like, can you connect with Macbeth? It's kind of this weird thing.

Speaker 1 It's a problem with Shakespeare, which I love Shakespeare to death, of course, but like,

Speaker 1 you know, I'm here to see Macbeth. I'm like, well, I I know what's going to happen.
And there's a little bit of like, you don't want to feel like the thing's just hitting checkpoints.

Speaker 1 I find this thing compelling. And I don't, I mostly enjoy this movie.
I find this thing compelling and engaging, but not very emotionally inviting. Well, that's what I was going to say.

Speaker 2 For someone who is unfamiliar with the text of Macbeth, I think a lot of Shakespeare productions will do a little bit of hand-holding, to do a lot of signifiers and signposts for someone who isn't familiar with Shakespearean language to like really communicate what's going on.

Speaker 2 Like, you don't need to necessarily know the poetry, but we'll tell you the story. This is not a movie that holds your hand, really.
Yes.

Speaker 2 You just sort of have to be along for the ride.

Speaker 2 I like it a lot, but I don't think I would like recommend it to someone who is like, I don't really like Shakespeare.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was pretty much kind of like, as soon as this started, like, what's up?

Speaker 1 And that was one of the poll quotes they used, weirdly. I mean, obviously, right.
Any geographical context has been stripped away. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 yeah the idea that he's king of a kingdom yeah which is already a little remote macbeth because macbeth is mostly just set in castles like it's not like you see him like

Speaker 1 meeting throngs of people or crowds or whatever but the cruzel movie is like very of the land that is a real we're in the marsh but you're like he's the king and you're like he's the king of what he sits in a chair and like

Speaker 1 apple store like cool okay right the whole movie just feels like a nightmare it doesn't feel like it exists in a tangible reality. I want to correct myself on something.
I had the sort of split wrong.

Speaker 1 This movie was basically three quarters completed before lockdown, and then the rest was shot in it.

Speaker 1 But 36 days in total of filming, even with you imagine the post-pandemic days being a lot longer and slower, which is the shortest shoot Joel has ever done.

Speaker 2 I will say this set does look easy to sanitize. All these surfaces look really easy to Clorox.

Speaker 1 There's like, pull a big lever and there's like sprinklers or whatever.

Speaker 1 Unless they're dueling, the actors tend to be pretty far from each other, too. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, Macbeth, it's about this guy, Macbeth. He's the Thane of Glamis.
Uh-huh. Y'all into that? Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1 Glamis is a tiny village in Scotland, in Angus.

Speaker 1 Sort of like sort of south. East Scotland.

Speaker 1 It's got a castle. It's still there.
You can go if you want. You want to see the castle? Yeah, sure.
Show it to me. Oh, that's a nice-looking castle.
That's folk. Nice.
The queen's mom is from there.

Speaker 1 Not that the queen's dead now, but you know, former queen Elizabeth.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's Thane Glamis. He's had a big victory.

Speaker 1 Am I going to do the plot of Macbeth? He's, you know, over the Thane of Cardor, and he goes to see

Speaker 1 some witches on a battlefield or he's like accidentally when he's with Banquo. The witches kind of come to see him.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And they do a whole thing where it's one actress and then there's a puddle and it looks like there's three of them. Cool.
And they say, ah, Macbeth, Thane of Cardor.

Speaker 1 And then they're like, he's like, I guess so. Not really, but okay.
And they're like, Macbeth, king of Scotland.

Speaker 1 Banquo,

Speaker 1 not king. And Bengal's like, fuck.
And they're like, but your sons will be kings. See you later.
Right? Is that what happens? Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I will say, if that witch delivered a prophecy to me, you believe what she's going to say.

Speaker 1 Yeah. She's very compelling.
It's a very arresting open.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And

Speaker 1 you start the movie with her untangling her body and speaking to you, the audience member. Yeah.
Which is the thing I wish this movie could sustain a little more is the like gothic horror of it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because that feels like

Speaker 1 an emotional element that it's able to actually kind of pull you in with.

Speaker 1 King Duncan, played by Brendan Gleason, is the king. And

Speaker 1 he meets Macbeth, he sees Macbeth. He's like, great job, buddy.
Dana Cardor, if I ever saw this guy fucking screams, Thana Cardour.

Speaker 1 Cardor, all yours. Gonna put in a good word for you.
And Macbeth's like, and he's like, and of course, my heir is Dudley Dursley, this guy right here. Good, good, good.

Speaker 1 And see this come and he's slimmed down. He's become a thespian.

Speaker 2 Compelling face.

Speaker 1 Interesting face. Good eyes.
Honestly, an awesome actor.

Speaker 1 It's like one of those things where I feel like a lot of people are like, he's Neville, right? And it's like, no, he's not even Neville. He's the fucking mean bully kid that Harry has to live.

Speaker 1 He's a shitty stepbrother. He's the one you almost kind of feel bad for him.

Speaker 2 You imagine in filming, like all the other kids get to go to Hogwarts.

Speaker 1 Right. You're right.
They all get to hang out in the castle and wear uniforms and play Quidditch or whatever. He probably never got to hang out with the other kids.
Yes.

Speaker 1 We'll shoot you out in five days. Yeah.
And bully Harry Potter. Okay, we're done.
We're done. The other thing is that, like, he slimmed down a couple of movies in.
So then he's wearing a fat suit.

Speaker 1 I believe that's right. Yeah.
The first thing I saw him in that wasn't Harry Potter was Lost City of Z, which he rocks, and he's in the scenes where they're all like fighting in the,

Speaker 1 you know, the Royal Society of Geographers or whatever the hell, Explorers, the Explorers Club, where they're all like, I'm the best explorer. All those scenes, which are so good.

Speaker 1 And he's so good at being like an evil jerk.

Speaker 1 It feels like he has to be an actor. Like, he couldn't just be like a waiter.
He's too like

Speaker 1 walking around with that face. Yeah.
You're just being like, ah, I don't know. I'll have soup, I guess.

Speaker 1 Have you seen Pillion? Is that what it's called? No, but I want to. Do you know about Pillon?

Speaker 1 A

Speaker 1 erotic.

Speaker 1 I mean, the description here is a directionless man is swept off his feet when an enigmatic, impossibly handsome biker takes him on as his submissive. Yeah, so Harry Melling is the...

Speaker 1 Sub and the Dom is Alexander Scarskar. Yes.
And it just premiered at New York Film Festival. And A24 picked it up.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But he's.

Speaker 1 A24. We're like, by the pricking of my.

Speaker 1 Yeah, sure. We want to make blockbusters now, but that sounds like one of ours.
He's incredible in Scruggs. We will have talked about that.
He's amazing in Scrugs.

Speaker 1 I love him in The Old Guard, a movie that is good. Yeah, he's the sort of Mark Zuckerberg in that.
Yes. He's the villain.
Yeah, but he's basically good in everything. I'm always excited to see him.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Totally.

Speaker 1 But yes, the exact guy you don't want to lose a job to.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Nepo Baby.

Speaker 1 Cast within a film. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, to be fair, in Scottish and most royal antiquity, Nepo babies did tend to get the crown.
It was sort of procedure. Well, Nepos really used to be a problem.

Speaker 2 I will also say, just like in Prince William, low-key and Nepo baby.

Speaker 1 No one talks about this. Sorry, I just found out who Prince William's dad is, and it is blowing my mind.
I am shocked. And I'm pointing at the text above my head.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, I will say, like, historically, the

Speaker 2 really laid in stone issue of like primogeniture, which is that your son is going to take over after you got to have a boy. Got to have a boy.
It wasn't explicitly set at this period in the same way.

Speaker 1 Because if your son, name a good heir.

Speaker 2 If your son is a dud, if he's a kid.

Speaker 1 You had a mulligan. You can't be someone.

Speaker 1 And because I have a dud son, instead my heir is Macbeth. This guy rocks.

Speaker 2 Well, it was just also easier for you if you're like a powerful lord and you know that the son is a dud. When the king dies, it like isn't impossible for you to gather support.

Speaker 1 What if you marry your dud's son to like some hot lady who maybe can spit out some fire grandsons for you or something? You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of absolutely. They're angles.

Speaker 1 They're angles. Yeah.
Yes, but okay, so Macbeth, of course, won't be a king of Scotland. Bummer.

Speaker 1 Unless he goes home and talks to his wife, the conveniently named Lady Macbeth. You think those guys swiped left on Tinder?

Speaker 1 I could do so many stupid jokes i could do them her name's lady macbeth this woman's made for me her parents named her lady

Speaker 1 she's just macbeth but with a with a bow yeah

Speaker 1 but the gameplay is a little stronger

Speaker 1 um her gameplay is a little stronger it is a little stronger right she's like

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 we could we could kill duncan yeah she gets word because he reported back like pretty weird like the witch said i was gonna become king king but i'm not going to become king right that's so funny i've been thinking a lot about murder recently and it's valuable

Speaker 1 yeah right yeah what do you think this knife is way too clean

Speaker 1 my sleep is so untroubled like i'd love to walk the halls being crazy i'm gonna shake it up a little bit and what's done can be undone right of course just in case of course that's what we all know about death um Now, yeah, so he does kill him in his sleep.

Speaker 2 A classic Cohen brothers thing is accidentally bringing the knife back to his room.

Speaker 1 That's true. He's already messing up.
Yeah. Yeah.
And also that it's kind of like an awkward, clumsy death. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That it's not a classic Shakespearean, like just blade goes in, man falls to the ground, that you have this like uncomfortable sputtering and him lying there in an ugly position.

Speaker 2 It's very like

Speaker 2 the shooting in Fargo and like the blood splatter is like more human than you in the car.

Speaker 1 I saw someone on the Reddit was saying that they've been struggling in watching these movies with how flippantly the Cohens treat death.

Speaker 1 And certainly their comedies, it can often be used as a punchline, the way that the deaths stack up. But I think they like really,

Speaker 1 and watching this film, you get the sense that it's more Joel than Ethan,

Speaker 1 are kind of obsessed with the weight of death

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 obsessed with how flippantly it can happen.

Speaker 2 Yeah, superhero and action movies to me make death weightless and frictionless. Right.
And I think Cohen Brothers movies, by contrast, make death feel very emotionally affecting.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes, yes. And like uncomfortable.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The real Duncan was, of course, slain in battle at the Battle of Pit Gavine. I'm telling you guys something you already know.
I got tattooed on my chest. Pit Gavine.

Speaker 1 That'd be weird to know if that visited a real kingdom. I think it looks nice.

Speaker 1 Was not killed in his sleep. What Macbeth is doing here is like violating the ancient sort of bread and salt thing, right?

Speaker 1 Like the sort of like, if you have someone in your home, you're kind of promising you won't do this to them. It's like the number one rule of like being a human.
Please don't murder me. Right.

Speaker 1 In like medieval times, especially.

Speaker 2 It's like, it's violating in the way that like the psycho, like killing someone in a shower. Right.
Like, well, I'm supposed to be safe here. I'm like, if you're, if I'm a house guest in your home,

Speaker 2 presumably they're not going to kill you in your bed.

Speaker 1 So it's kind of like, he's kind of doomed from the minute he does this, I feel. Yeah.
You know, it's like he's getting getting it the wrong way.

Speaker 1 He's fulfilling the prophecy in the most literal way of like, yes, he can become the king,

Speaker 1 but like, what is being the king if like you're basically immediately like, okay, who's going to try and kill me now?

Speaker 1 And like, Dana, as you called out, it's a classic Cohency story of a guy makes one bad decision and doesn't quite know how to deal with the fallout of it, right?

Speaker 1 Ben, we keep asking you because this filmography will tease up. Now, you're Irish, not Scottish, really, right?

Speaker 1 Ben Hosley, if I had been in the same,

Speaker 1 everything would have worked out great. You don't have a clan.
You don't have a tartan you've ever looked up or whatever. Everyone loves to look up their clan.
Yeah, no, I guess

Speaker 1 the Walsh side, which is my mother's maiden name, we do have a crest. Yeah, sounds pretty sad.
What's that crest? What does it look like?

Speaker 1 I forget now. It's just like a tube of toothpaste.
It's funny. That's pretty funny.
I don't know. I'm really tired.
Ben.

Speaker 1 It's Comic-Con weekend. That's why Dana's here.
That's why Dana's here. Gauntlet.

Speaker 2 Pre-order the book, The Arcane Arts.

Speaker 1 This is your newly announced book. You just announced it at the Comic.

Speaker 2 Cover reveal.

Speaker 1 You've got so many projects.

Speaker 1 I'm busy working. Dana's always texting me being like, when are you going to write a book? And I'm like, I'm busy, Dana.
And Dana's like, right, I don't really. I guess I don't really get that.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm always just doing another thing. You do so many things.
Oh, Ben is showing us the crest. That's a cool crest.
I like that. Cool.
Solid. Three arrows.
It looks like three

Speaker 1 roads almost roads pulling forward three like pc pointers yeah it's got three mouse pointers to honor his his skill as a mac user okay

Speaker 1 thanks all right but anyway what's your question to ben hosley ben yes if you were macbeth yeah how would things turn out for you what would you have done differently okay i i have a feeling i might this one up okay yeah unfortunately you think there's no way out on this way out of murdering now are you pro-murder hmm let me ponder that.

Speaker 1 Trick the chin on this one. I'm going to go ahead and say no.
Okay. Good to have that on record.
And I want to answer the sixth commandment over here. Yeah.
Right. Just biblical fuck.

Speaker 1 But you don't covet thy neighbor's wife either, loser.

Speaker 1 I don't. Oh, okay.
Well,

Speaker 1 there was an incident in Scotland. the Scottish history where like guest right was somewhat broken, I think.

Speaker 1 Right. It's, but it's later.
I think, and I think it's sort of post, I don't know, like it doesn't matter. I wonder if Shakespeare's referencing something.

Speaker 1 Ben, is your answer that you just simply don't murder the guy and feel comfortable with your position and just stay where you are? Yeah, just take your wife.

Speaker 1 It's nice.

Speaker 1 Happy fan. Nice work if you can get it.
Yeah, absolutely. It seems like if anything, he's moving up.
Yeah. And he should just chill.
You know what I mean? Or like retire, bitch. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 You know what he could do if he actually did want to become king? The non-murder strategy is to undermine the sun.

Speaker 2 Start like whispering to Brendan Gleason, like your son seemed kind of bad at being a king.

Speaker 1 I didn't want to say anything. No, here, I got it.
I meet the witches. They give me this prophecy.
I go, I don't know about all that murder stuff, but do you guys want to chill? That's what you do.

Speaker 1 By the cauldron puddle? Yeah. And you just become best friends with the witches.
And we just like have like kind of like a witch club. Now, do you bring your wife in on it or not? Yeah, sure.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. I think if you don't tell your wife that you got this prophecy, that's not a good marriage.

Speaker 1 yes also if you're like i met these cool friends they're witches she's gonna ask a lot of questions like so what do they look are they like pretty like what are they do they have like an instagram i could like check out do you find them attractive and there's three of them they're sort of triplets yeah right so like do they what does that imply is that like a thing you fantasized about i know you're telling me you're just friends with them but you never let me come along to the puddle room

Speaker 1 um robert the bruce killed john common in a church is what i was referencing guys can you can look that up that sounds like a no-no. It was seen as somewhat of a no-no, though.

Speaker 1 It helped him consolidate power.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 what? I just see... I've never seen this before, but apparently...
Uh-oh, is your clan canceled? It's just three fish. All right.
Well, not bad. They're probably going to get fish.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. You feeling bummed out about this? A little bit.
Hey, man, back in the day, life in Scotland, there's a lot of water around. You got to eat.
Got to get that fish.

Speaker 1 I was just hoping it would be like, I don't know, bones or something. Yeah.
That would be good. Fish have bones.
Fish have bones.

Speaker 1 Yeah. There are bones.
Top cat's always showing us the bones.

Speaker 1 And I do fish. I do love seeing the fish that way.
It's where it's the best thing.

Speaker 1 Topcat does. He really educates us.
He does us a service. Showing a skeleton.
If you took an x-ray to that crest, it'd be lousy with bones, Ben. You're right.

Speaker 1 But it would be cool if you were like, Let me look up my clan. I'd be like, the bone clan of the feared for a thousand years.
There's bones and then someone just screaming.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Anyway, they they kill Duncan.

Speaker 1 Sorry. And

Speaker 1 he flees.

Speaker 2 Macduff comes to visit the next day, and he's like, would love to see the alive king.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Right.
I'm here to see our greatest breath drawing guy, King Duncan. Where is he at?

Speaker 1 And so they kill some servants.

Speaker 1 McMalcolm flees to England over the border. And Macbeth gets that crown.

Speaker 1 And so immediately his gaze falls to Banquo because it's like, okay, well, the next thing is that you were in that fucking prophecy too. I got a bad thing.

Speaker 2 And Banquo also was with him for the witch prophecy.

Speaker 1 So he's like, well, he might, we kind of know that the king was murdered. He kind of knows I'm a suspect.
As much as Shakespeare made Banquo a not villainous character, he is culpable or whatever.

Speaker 1 Like Banquo is kind of just like a bystander. He kind of knows what's going on and doesn't like do anything about it.
Yes. Yes.
Now, the aforementioned crown, it rests easily upon his head, lightly.

Speaker 1 This shit is light.

Speaker 1 I'm going to do cartwheels. Gravity, not an issue.

Speaker 1 And so what's the next thing you got to do? You got to go kill Banquo, right? So there's two assassins. Do you know about the third murderer? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 2 The third assassin. This is a very, this is also one of the most exciting things about this movie specifically to me.

Speaker 1 Right. So.

Speaker 1 I believe,

Speaker 1 correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a scene where Macbeth recruits two murderers, right? Yeah, and then this movie

Speaker 2 happens in like the tent, right?

Speaker 1 The Menendez brothers, but there are three murderers

Speaker 1 who carry out the crime.

Speaker 1 Uh, and in this movie, it's Ross is the third murderer.

Speaker 2 And the other two murderers in that scene are like, Who are you? And he's like, Macbeth sent me. I'm also here for this.

Speaker 1 Um, sometimes I think in the stage productions, the character is literally just an extra and they don't think about it, but it's like an opportunity for you to like

Speaker 1 you know, know, like interpret something like more complicated happening, right?

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't know how else to describe it, yeah, like some because it's like it's kind of interesting, like, oh, why would Shakespeare have a third murderer in the murder scene, but not the recruiting scene?

Speaker 2 I've seen some writing about productions that have actually Macbeth be the third murderer, but then he's like late to his own banquet because he was making sure the job was done.

Speaker 2 But this movie makes the choice of taking the sort of side character Ross and not not only giving him this sort of meteor role as the third assassin, but kind of like making him like a

Speaker 2 mythic figure throughout this story. Right.

Speaker 1 Ross is like sees all and kind of participates, but isn't really like seeking vengeance. Like Uatu the Watcher.
He's kind of like an Uatu the Watcher type.

Speaker 1 I just got to bring this whole movie into my language. No, I think that's totally right.

Speaker 2 But also, I mean, while we're talking about Ross, not the master.

Speaker 1 The Polanski movie also makes Ross the third murderer. It's a thing that like some people do.
But sorry, carry on. Make the part bigger for a high schooler.
Right, sure.

Speaker 2 But what I,

Speaker 2 this movie kind of implies, not to get ahead with ourselves with spoilers, but like spoiling Macbeth.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It kind of implies that Ross kills Lady Macbeth

Speaker 1 a little bit. Did I? Well, so there's...
Did I misinterpret that? No, you didn't.

Speaker 1 So like Lady Macbeth before she dies, just to jump ahead to this, is, well, she's feeling crummy, feeling a little blue.

Speaker 1 And we see her like looking down the stairs, but we also see Ross turning on those lamps and gazing right at her.

Speaker 1 And it it is sort of like you can take away from it, like, does Ross like shove her down the stairs or something?

Speaker 2 It's not just that he's looking at her. He like, he has like a little sinister sort of like, hmm.

Speaker 1 He truly sees her for who she is.

Speaker 2 But, you know, famously, Lady Macbeth commits suicide. It's not on stage, but that's like the classic interpretation of the play.

Speaker 1 Can I ask?

Speaker 1 Because I just openly struggle to crack Shakespeare and understand how to analyze it. Okay.
Can Can the two of you explain what you feel like McDorman is getting wrong in this performance?

Speaker 1 Because I agree that doesn't quite work and I cannot identify why.

Speaker 1 It's a fair question.

Speaker 1 Lady Macbeth is such a weird character. She's like the greatest character, right? Like everyone wants to play Lady Macbeth because it's this opportunity for these incredible monologues.

Speaker 1 You can play this descent into madness bottled into whatever. The power behind the power, the whisper in the ear.

Speaker 1 It's so cool. But also she's a completely one-dimensional character in some ways in that she's just like plot motivation, right? Like she's just, she's the evil woman who spurs everything into action.

Speaker 1 I mean, please jump in. Don't look at me.

Speaker 2 I like a Lady Macbeth. You have to, I like a Lady Macbeth that's like, okay, I'm either existing in the

Speaker 2 11th century or like Shakespeare or the, you know.

Speaker 1 Because if it's the 11th century, you're like, this ambition makes sense. She would have no avenue for ambition.
She has to fall on through someone else.

Speaker 2 And, you know, if this is happening in the early 1600s, you're like, how does a woman have power?

Speaker 2 And what I don't maybe attach to so much in this performance for me is I don't think Frances McDormand has an interesting answer where it feels like a very modern marriage because they're both like in their 60s and they have like a very respectful marriage.

Speaker 2 She's just like, I don't know, you should do this. Where I think a lady Macbeth that's informed by either like the 11th or the 17th century, it's like, she's using her sexuality in interesting ways.

Speaker 2 She has to be more subversive.

Speaker 2 I think maybe because of all the Cohen brothers movies or roles that Frances McDormand has played in her career, I read her very much as just like a straight shooter good partner.

Speaker 2 And yes, she is like telling Macbeth what to do, but she's not like being really wily about it.

Speaker 1 I find her very subdued. Yeah.
I don't find their chemistry, it's not like it's like non-existent because they do have the kind of mutual respect thing. Maybe overly comfortable.
Yes.

Speaker 1 A movie where, or a story

Speaker 1 where she's like, you should fucking murder the king. Low-key, stab that guy.
That's crazy. You know, like, and it's, and everything just proceeds a little too sleepily for me.

Speaker 1 Well, especially if Denzel's going to be trying to root his performance in a modern naturalism. And he's heavy on the this guy's tired.
This guy's old. This guy is sort of like got a ticking clock.

Speaker 1 So he decides I'll make that decision like as my sort of last gas. That also perhaps works better if it's like he's literally like the sleepwalker from Cabinet of Dr.

Speaker 1 Caligari carrying out her mission. Sure.
And she is putting a lot more electricity into it.

Speaker 2 And there's something interesting about the, I've only seen the filmed version, but like the Patrick Stewart production where it's a much younger woman or an older man, which also has like this interesting friction.

Speaker 1 And Patrick Stewart wouldn't know anything about that. No, no, of course not.
Not implying his wife is a murderer. She's a slag in the middle.

Speaker 2 But there's like that friction to it of like this tired guy trying to like, you know, metaphorically get it up for his younger wife.

Speaker 1 Right, trying his first ever New York slice in quotes. Right, exactly.
But there's something to-to park slope or kill the king.

Speaker 1 What's the quadruple take video? Our muffins are the best.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I'm trying to remember.
It's some fucking double entente. Salt and papa.

Speaker 1 The greatest. Sorry, Danny.
Who fighters? Should we just keep doing that?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Patrick Stewart.
There's something to like the.

Speaker 1 Musical guests won.

Speaker 1 I didn't have my Romano ready to go.

Speaker 2 The way that Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are talking, it almost is like, I want to go see my sister for Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 It's a little low stakes. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yes. I just, and I don't,

Speaker 1 like,

Speaker 1 she's fine with the language or whatever. Like, I don't, it's not like I'm like,

Speaker 1 she's just reading it. Like, she's performing, but it's, I'm just, there's times in this movie, like, whenever Denzel's raising his voice and popping off a little bit, I'm sitting up.
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 I'm just like, it's okay, guys, to have some, you know, to have some sort of, it's not over the top, but just some like, you know, some more kind of energy for.

Speaker 1 The subdued works better for him, save for fits of music. He's got a good take.

Speaker 2 He has a good subdued. And I think that for me, the subdued would have worked better if it was a little more like

Speaker 2 blood and sex Lady Macbeth.

Speaker 1 Denzel is also such an established movie star, and we know how he can uncork. So when he is playing in a lower register, the performance still has the tension of, is Denzel going to explode?

Speaker 1 and it makes things more equalizer you're saying when he equalizes dana have you equalized yet i have equalized my husband made sure i equalized that was one of the movies where he's like you haven't seen the equalizer you made sure i was have you watched all three no i've watched two okay you ben have you now seen all three yeah do you know that ben knocked the equalizers out on our flights to and from la recently david he has finally equalized thank god And I gotta tell you, it was fun.

Speaker 1 We gotta do them on Patreon. We really should.
They will be so much fun to do. We gotta do them on on Patreon.
Are you going to talk to Equalizer?

Speaker 2 Are you going to talk the Queen?

Speaker 1 Go on. What do you mean? Queen Latifah?

Speaker 1 I don't think we can fire up Queen Latifah's The Equalizer television show. No, I don't think there's time for that.

Speaker 1 It's just so funny that that has just existed concurrent to this thing and they don't have anything to do with it. They don't acknowledge it.
No.

Speaker 1 But the movies are so good. And yes, it is that thing of like

Speaker 1 this, I mean, Equalizer does feel like the start of him trying to explore who is old man Denzel, right? Because Denzel aged so well for so long.

Speaker 1 And he finally, he didn't like hit a wall, but we crossed a threshold where it's like, he is an old man now.

Speaker 1 He is an old man now. And the last 10 years, he's had to like lean into it more and more and try to own it.
It is interesting that I feel like he goes out of his way to look even older in this film.

Speaker 1 Like certainly the gray and the hair and the beard. Yeah.
For a guy who tends to die, right?

Speaker 1 He's like. He's a scare, you mean? Yeah.
Yeah. He rarely dies on screen.
Although he does die. He does die in this.
We think. In this film,

Speaker 1 he doesn't D-Y-E, but he does D-I-E. Yes.

Speaker 1 No, he does some tie-dyeing as well in this movie. Sure.

Speaker 1 It just feels like he was always a very virile star. And he has finally tried to settle into, what is my elder statesman mode? Yeah.
You know, when am I supporting?

Speaker 1 Our buddy Connor Ratliff had a very good take, which is the highest to lowest. Have you seen that?

Speaker 2 Not yet.

Speaker 1 Feels like the first Denzel performance of him going into his late Pacino era. So true.

Speaker 2 Complimentary or derogatory?

Speaker 1 Complimentary.

Speaker 1 Complimentary, but yes, it's got that kind of like, what?

Speaker 1 Getting that. But it's the first performance where he's just like, I'm just going to follow every single instinct I have.
What if I have a dialogue scene with a framed picture?

Speaker 1 What if I start like yelling at a can of soup? You know, like.

Speaker 1 And all of it's engaging and I think it makes sense for the story, but you haven't seen him do something that undisciplined before, which is interesting.

Speaker 1 Like, even Denzel's like weird oddball rhythms and like his like explosive like moments always feel like that is earned, that is justified. Trained.

Speaker 1 People wouldn't have the courage to do that, but what he's doing makes perfect sense. Yeah.
And highest to lowest is like him doing a fucking jazz set.

Speaker 2 For better or for worse, in this movie,

Speaker 2 there's no crazy. He doesn't do anything nuts.
Not really. I think it's a very

Speaker 2 contained Macbeth performance.

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's a deliberate quote, but these sort of hallucinations, the like fit of violence, the moment with the bird in particular, I really like the way Joel shoots those, and it feels very similar to Cassavetti's opening night,

Speaker 1 where Jenna Roland's character is haunted by this young fan that got hit by a car.

Speaker 1 And she imagines these fights with her that are her coming backstage, and they're done in like extreme Paul Greengrassy,

Speaker 1 super up up close, shaky kind of like

Speaker 1 hand-to-hand combat. Uh, that it's like this is going on in her head, and the second you cut out to a wide, everything's fine.

Speaker 1 He thinks he's sword fighting, it's a bird that broke through a window, you know?

Speaker 1 And those moments are really exciting to watch because you're like in the middle of the fight, you're watching Denzel like joust at you from like two inches away.

Speaker 1 Because, right, so much of the middle part of Macbeth is just him being paranoid. Yeah, and it can be hard to dramatize.
It's coming for me. I think he visualizes that very well, Joel.

Speaker 1 Is this a dagger he sees before him? Is it? In the Polanski movie, it's just like a little hologram of a dagger.

Speaker 2 He definitely sees it before him.

Speaker 1 He does see it before

Speaker 1 him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so paranoid starts to get weird. He kills Banquo, doesn't kill Fleons, fucked up, messed up.

Speaker 1 He's not an equal opportunity murderer. You can kind of have the take that this.

Speaker 2 He tries to kill Fleons.

Speaker 1 They try to get him. Ross is the one who fucks up.
And that by casting Ross in that role, you can then kind of signify it as like this is where Ross's loyalty starts to wane. They're on a break now.

Speaker 1 Exactly. That's a roster joke.
That's like a friend's roster. I think that was a really good joke.
Did you see that David Fumer got a Paul Hollywood handshake on an episode of Bake Off?

Speaker 1 No, that's cool. Yep.
Yep. He made like a pie with tofu in it.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But I'm sure it's kind of like Celebrity Jeopardy, where the line breaks

Speaker 2 as much.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Would you do Bake Off?

Speaker 2 In a Harpy. Do you bake?

Speaker 1 I do. I bake a lot.
Dana's a good baker. I bake a lot.

Speaker 1 what's your specialty but could you make like a you know bake a cake that's also a readable book or whatever they do these days well she's also good at writing books

Speaker 1 maybe she could do it i i don't i think i would i'm good at studying and i'm good at like pract i like a i know because you have to practice all that but how's your like rough puff pastry i i've made it it's not great but if i knew i was going to be on bake off i would really throw myself into it what about um i'm trying to think all the other they do on that i don't know sugar

Speaker 2 you know what actually what i would have trouble with is sometimes they're like make a blah blah blah and it's some like british pastry that i've never heard of it is always good with like make the queen's muffin and then you're like what's that and they're like it's actually not a muffin

Speaker 1 well done

Speaker 1 i met kim joy at comic-con oh that's cool she's fun she was at comic-con i love her and that makes sense that she was a comic-con she has that moment where she really starts freaking out and crying do you remember this yeah and noel fielding comes over to her which like this happens on the do you watch bake off i don't okay well you know i watch mighty bouche though it's similar to that and the exact same it is so weird to watch it with say my wife who did not watch the mighty bouche yes and try to explain like who noel fielding is and why he's here right like how could he have ended up here yes because it always feels like noel fielding just like walked through a tunnel and was like uh like it is in this tent but also part of his magic was that he always had the comedy energy of an old lady Well, that's true.

Speaker 1 But there was this glam rocker thing, right? And this like party boy Lothario thing, but you're like, there is this like very delicate, like, kind of. And a kindness.

Speaker 2 He reads as kind.

Speaker 1 Innocent. Yeah.
Yes. And there's this moment where

Speaker 1 this lady, Kim Joy, who is sort of like, how to describe her, twee in a sort of

Speaker 1 nerdy anime,

Speaker 2 vibey bakes.

Speaker 1 She starts like freaking out about something and it's just like, I can't do it.

Speaker 1 Like, she just has the thing that I would happen to me probably five minutes in, where I'm just like, I can't fucking do this. Like, you know, just like staring at sugar and spices in the oven.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, ah. And Noel just comes and chills her out so beautifully.
And it's like one of those like your heart stops moments and bake off, ugh. Anyway,

Speaker 1 I'm glad she's doing well. I'm glad he's doing well.
He's cool.

Speaker 1 He's doing great. The listener, David is making a gesture as if there is money in between his fingers and he's rubbing that dollar bill.

Speaker 1 And it's like,

Speaker 1 I'll tell you that, it's not a $1 bill. Him and Allison Hammond are good at their jobs, but their job is mostly just going over to people being like, you cook it?

Speaker 1 This looks good. This looks good.
And the guy's like, I'm really stressed out. He's like, all right, well, see you later.
It's kind of the dream. It's kind of crazy.
You work what?

Speaker 1 Like fucking four weeks a year? You get to eat the cake. And then, right.
If you want to eat some cake, you can have it. It's up for grabs.
Yeah. Like Paul Hollywood, he has one bite.
He moves on.

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 2 those cameramen are eating well.

Speaker 1 I think that's what happens. They give it to the crew.
Yeah. There's so much left over.
It has to be.

Speaker 1 But it's like they're giving the crew, like I said, like a kid, it's like the entire Bible replicated in cake form.

Speaker 2 Tom DeLong's head.

Speaker 1 That was really. Do you know about that? No, they made a cake of Tom DeLong from Blink 182.
So it was like make... Was it music especially? No, it was just, I think, make a

Speaker 2 picture of any.

Speaker 1 Your idol. Okay.
Your idol? And the person chose Tom DeLong? Were there spiders on the cake?

Speaker 1 I'm showing Ben and Crypto. That's crazy.

Speaker 1 Unbelievable. I mean, SML now has that recurring sketch they do.
He's very funny.

Speaker 1 The one that Eddie Murphy Murphy did once. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It looks like one of those. Yes.
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 That is.

Speaker 1 I'm just laughing about it. If you love Tom DeLong so much that he's your first choice answer for Idol, that is a disrespectful thing.
Because

Speaker 1 the disaster was the Freddy Mercury.

Speaker 1 That at least is stylized. It looks like a bath joy.

Speaker 1 That at least. It's stylized.
It's kind of like a Funko pop. There's an artistic interpretation.
The DeLung seems to be going for realism and missing the mark.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 They've gotten bake off used to be very, like, very classic, where like the challenges were like, make a Victoria sponge cake.

Speaker 2 And I think they know now, like, I don't know, 20 seasons in in the Instagram era, they

Speaker 1 watch the show. So now they've all become geniuses.
Yeah, right. It used to be amateur old lady bakers who were like, I put some turmeric in this cake.

Speaker 1 And they'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I made

Speaker 1 one tart. Yes.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, it would be only amateur bakers, these like grandmothers who are like, this is my bakewill tart recipe.

Speaker 1 And they'd be like, this is great.

Speaker 2 Good job. And now it has to be, you have to fucking sculpt Blink 182.

Speaker 1 Just rain Tom DeLong's face now. 20 minutes.
There was some Food Network show when my sister Romley was growing up and was watching Food Network. You almost knocked Checkie.

Speaker 1 You almost knocked Checkie over. It's fine.
Checkie. He's very robust.
But he's safe.

Speaker 1 When my sister Romley was just watching Food Network 24-7, the one show I liked watching with her, and I forget what it was called, but it was like the Great Cake Challenge or some shit.

Speaker 1 And it was just that kind of like insane, sculptural, like multi-tier, mechanized 80% of the stuff that wasn't

Speaker 1 designed to taste bread. Right.
That was the thing that was fascinating. They'd be themed and they'd be like, it's NFL day here.
Everyone gets assigned a team.

Speaker 1 And you have to make a cake of that team. And then you're just doing like fucking engineering with a cake, which was fascinating, but you're also like, this looks like it would taste like paper.

Speaker 2 A lot of those like real sculptural cakes, they use like rice krispy treats to shape it out and then cover it in fondant. Like it's not even cake.
No, that's the thing.

Speaker 1 Right. They're like ostensibly edible, but they are not a cake and they're not elements that would taste good together.

Speaker 3 David? Yes. Have you ever fallen for a scam? Oh.
You ever get scammed? Once a week. Flim flammed? Long conned.
Some well-dressed fox tricks you into joining his circus. That ever happened to you?

Speaker 3 Uh, sure. Yeah, that happens to me all the time.
Why do you ask? Why do I ask? Because it's just,

Speaker 3 it's a plague of our modern world. It's a problem, and some people just accept it.

Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

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Speaker 1 The tragedy of Macbeth

Speaker 1 is that he never lived long enough to see cake competition.

Speaker 2 If he and Lady Macbeth could just like chill out in bed, watch the Great British.

Speaker 1 They would have retired if the food network existed. Paul Hollywood, Thane of Corridor.

Speaker 1 Paul Hollywood, King of of scotland and then paul hollywood gets a little glint in his blue eyes uh-huh um makes a knife cake so he he he does start seeing ghosts uh and ranting and raving uh and lady macbeth starts walking around you know talking about her hands being covered in blood and such they kill well the witches also warn him again to beware they give him a sort of double-headed thing they say beware macduff and also don't worry No man born of woman can kill you.

Speaker 1 And also, you're going to be fine until Burnham Wood moves to your literal fucking forest marches okay so he's like great i'm immortal as long as i beware this guy and if you want to make someone not a threat you murder their entire family yeah right easy i remember so i saw this at the new york film festival and uh uh i stayed for the q a with denzel because i was actually interested because i usually dash out denzel fran and joel or

Speaker 1 corey was there moses ingram was there who plays lady macduff yeah and is a great actor and denzel like more than once, shouted her out and clearly was like very happy she had been involved in the production.

Speaker 1 Was like, you know, he does seem to be a great scene. She's a great scene.
Like, someone who champions like younger black actors, right?

Speaker 1 You know, that's, you know, like, that's something he's good at. He's really good at throughout his career.

Speaker 1 He puts them in prominent roles. He lets them pop.
Of course, the black, young black actor he has championed the hardest is Austin Butler.

Speaker 1 He's explained. But

Speaker 1 he like, he's like Austin Butler's number one mentor because they did Iceman Cometh together

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 when Austin Butler was not famous to be when he was just like a carrier diaries like Disney

Speaker 1 Vanessa Hudgens and it was like his first real stab at serious acting and Denzel Denzel brags

Speaker 1 like you get caught stealing denzel brags about yeah that he always you know he's gonna work harder than anyone else he's got the hardest work ethic he was talking about with this that he'd like get on set every day at five o'clock in the morning and just run the soliloquies he's like i need to know these like the back of my hand they need to feel organic and he was like i felt competitive with bruno d'olbanel because he's like me and i kept trying to beat him to sit and he'd get there an hour before me bruno's shown up with like eight more lights right denzel's like fuck you and they're like running to the door together but i'm all

Speaker 1 half an hour earlier and there's this story that austin butler kept doing the same thing and denzel was like you're never going to beat me try to show up early i'm going to show up earlier and then one day butler beat him to the theater in the morning and he was like okay kid tell me what your deal is like i'm now ready to take you under my wing and denzel is then the one who like really brought austin butler around town right and was like this guy's a serious actor he must be kids you know how early he wakes up his alarms you would be 410 411 412 4 they keep going off i've checked i think it was part of it though that like when he was up for elvis denzel called Boz and was like, You don't understand how hard this kid's gonna work.

Speaker 1 Denzel called Boz. Like, I'm just trying to imagine that relationship right now.
I guess everyone wants to be friends with Denzel. I don't mean this to deflate it.

Speaker 1 You are right that Denzel has been really good at supporting young black actors, like finding them, identifying them, giving them roles. It's just funny that Austin Butler's like his number one guy.

Speaker 2 Who is famously, I repeat? What? He is.

Speaker 1 Oh, wait a second, Tana. You're telling me he's.
I've only heard recordings.

Speaker 1 Snowman, Frosty, Snowman.

Speaker 1 This snowman and this shall man.

Speaker 1 We got a Dubai. We got to do Boz.
Let's fucking do it. Is he working on something? Yes.
He's got a project coming. A Joan of Arc.
They just announced a Joan of Arc movie.

Speaker 1 That is always a bad idea. That would be normal.

Speaker 1 He discovered some like unknown 15-year-old. Yeah.
I saw Boz Luhrmann.

Speaker 2 I was at a Harry Styles concert a few years ago.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I was like in the section and he was there and he was having a great time.

Speaker 1 I've told this story before, but I saw him at Forbidden Planet. There was like a torrential downpour outside and it felt like he just looked for the closest store to like get out of the rain.

Speaker 1 And he was examining the shelves of Forbidden Planet, famous New York comic book store, as if he were on an alien planet, like tilting his head at everything.

Speaker 1 And then the only purchase he made was a Wonder Woman umbrella. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 He needed to get out of the rain. And I was at first just like, that's a distinct looking man with specific energy.
And then I was like, that's Boslar.

Speaker 1 We could do Romeo and Juliet if we did Boslarian. Excuse me.
One of my favorite movies. Excuse me.
I love that movie. Romeo plus Juliet.

Speaker 1 Sorry. That's just me being an asshole.
Being an asshole. You're in the right.
Being an asshole. You're in the right.

Speaker 1 So how do you say Mulan Rouge? Mulan Rouge?

Speaker 1 You got to say it that way. Every time.
Yeah. Mulan Rouge.

Speaker 1 Do you like Boslarin? I love Boslarin. I know you do.
Yeah, of course. What's his witchiest movie? What would he have you on for if we did Basil Levin?

Speaker 2 There's a fairy in Moulin Rouge.

Speaker 1 Sure. The green fairy.
Yeah. She actually represents absinthe.
Yes.

Speaker 2 I kind of think actually the most noble bloody would be the Joan of Arc. I mean, we'll see.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 she was burned at the stake. Yeah.
Pretty witchy. Yeah.
She was sort of a witch adjacent in some talking to God.

Speaker 1 Trading a witch.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what are some other big witch movies we could do with you, though? This is a real outside of Baslurman. your beloved practical magic love that movie i love that

Speaker 1 gonna be a sequel it's wrapped suzanne beer

Speaker 1 pop culture is so normal right now it's in the can it's done you've already done witches of eastwick we have to do that one yes uh

Speaker 1 movies

Speaker 1 witch movies witches hocus pocus of course yeah the witch uh-huh I love The Craft. Right.
We've already had you do an Oz. We did have,

Speaker 1 we did, of course, Robert Zimekus's The Witches. A very well-remembered film.
One of the most remembered movies.

Speaker 1 John M. Chu is

Speaker 1 inevitable.

Speaker 1 Player Witch Project?

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 1 Do that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Never seen that movie, actually.

Speaker 1 Are there any other witch comedies?

Speaker 1 Well, I married a witch. The

Speaker 1 player filmed, which I'm sure.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to say that about it. The Love Witch.

Speaker 1 But witches are cool now, Ben. Witches are cool now, Ben.
I mean, hey, it would be funny if I went back to to calling like women witches. Like I'm some fucking medieval guy.
You witch.

Speaker 1 Like I'm opening a mobile assembly. You come into the studio exhausted and you're like, sorry, my witchy daughter kept me up all night.
That would be cool if my daughter went into like witch mode.

Speaker 1 Right. She's not really, I mean, she doesn't mind witches.

Speaker 2 What's she going to be for Halloween?

Speaker 1 This year she wants to be an elephant.

Speaker 1 She wants to be an elephant. Ellie or just generic elephant? Elephant.

Speaker 2 You know what I saw a lot of at Comic-Con that I think is going to be the Halloween custom is all the K-pop demon hunters.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 I have heard this is brewing. A lot of parents are making panicked Amazon orders.
It does feel like under 20 K-pop demon hunters over 20 one battle after another. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's the new dude costume.

Speaker 1 It's really hard to like put together that Leo in one battle. Oh, oh, I have to find a flannel shirt and some sunglasses.

Speaker 2 Or a robe. You get to be so comfy.

Speaker 1 It's just going to be so funny when these film bros show up at parties and there are 10 other Leos already there. Totally.
They're the 10th Bob to arrive. You got to be penned.

Speaker 1 You got to just tuck a black shirt in too tight to like some camo pants, right? And just walk like Vince McMahon. Like that's what you got to do.

Speaker 2 Do you have a

Speaker 2 corresponding costume to the elephant? No. What are you dressing the baby

Speaker 1 clothes? Burt and Ernie? That's cute. That's good.
Good. Good.
Because they love a Burton Ernie book that they have, like a board book about them.

Speaker 1 And they've got kind of Burt and Ernie energy a little bit. Straight twin costume.
Yeah. And we already have like a rubber ducky and a toy pigeon.

Speaker 1 Are you going to dress your son up or is he a little too young?

Speaker 1 You've got to dress your baby up.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, Facebook.

Speaker 1 I do have a little, I have a little pumpkin costume. Okay.
Stay tuned on the grand. That is.
Pumpkin costume is just classic for a non-walking baby. He's a very.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you've seen my baby.

Speaker 2 He's a big one. He's like a pumpkin boy.

Speaker 1 He's given cheek.

Speaker 1 He's given cheek. He's given cheek.
He's given cheek.

Speaker 1 I got to say this. Baby in a pumpkin costume.
always funny. That's what we're going to miss.

Speaker 1 It's never not hidden.

Speaker 2 We live on the east side of LA and I was like, I don't want to to do like some like

Speaker 2 hipster

Speaker 2 showing off that we know some cool thing that will dress up. I'm like, I want to put this baby in a little pumpkin.

Speaker 1 Is anyone going to be unhappy to see this cherub-faced baby in a pumpkin suit? I hope not. No, everyone's going to love it.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So Macbeth.

Speaker 1 Does kill the entire Macduff family, except for Macduff himself, who runs away and he goes to England. He raises an army with Malcolm.
They cut down tree branches.

Speaker 1 They march on Dunsonane where Macbeth is holed up. And they, you know, fulfill the prophecies.
And they do eventually kill Macbeth.

Speaker 1 But I do think this movie implies, like you say, that Lady Macbeth maybe doesn't kill herself. Maybe he's killed by Ross, who maybe has switched sides.

Speaker 1 I think the amount of attention they put on Ross, right, is suggesting that, that he's like some sort of like...

Speaker 1 you know, fair weather friend.

Speaker 2 He's like

Speaker 2 the moral center of the movie in that scene where he's like, I'm going to write the wrongs. I'm going to balance the scales.

Speaker 1 Maybe I'm just a big fat dummy. Well, I am a big fat dummy, but I was actually quite trim.

Speaker 1 I'm rapidly expanding. Okay.
I'm not getting skinnier. Wow, none of us are.
You know how, like,

Speaker 1 old people are always like, back then when I was, when I was thin and beautiful, right? You're like, why is everyone focused on the fact that you were thin back then?

Speaker 1 And you're like, oh, because like everyone just bloats.

Speaker 1 Even if you don't get big,

Speaker 1 you look at yourself when you had like zero body fat and you're like, holy fucking shit.

Speaker 1 was like,

Speaker 1 my interpretation was, does she kill herself because she's like seen by him?

Speaker 1 That the look is less the intent to murder her, and that he's like, I fucking got your number.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's the more like classical interpretation. I think that that's like the more Shakespearean.

Speaker 1 She can no longer be perceived. Yes.

Speaker 2 Jefferson Mays as the doctor can only do so much.

Speaker 1 Jefferson Mays bring in the heat. It is fun to do like

Speaker 1 a Cohen Brothers Shakespeare movie and be like, can we get Tony Tony Winters to play literal like one-line characters, basically?

Speaker 2 Multiple years has done a, in Los Angeles, has done a one-man show of a Christmas Carol. That is one of the most extraordinary shows I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 I saw it one year. I saw it was coming back.
I'm like, I'm seeing it again. Jefferson May's playing every character.

Speaker 1 He's so good.

Speaker 1 Jim Carrey did it first and best, of course. So that's, you know.

Speaker 1 He only played half the characters. Carrie always played the others.

Speaker 1 This is coming out out November 23rd. So I'll make sure to include a link to the show in the show notes.

Speaker 2 Oh, is he doing it again?

Speaker 1 Let's see. Well, I'm assuming, but I'll double check.
He's also, of course, in the Daddy's Boy part of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, right? Yes.

Speaker 1 Which is

Speaker 1 one of my favorite gags ever, which is that it just cuts off and then you cut to fucking, what is it, the TCM guy. Yeah, Robert Osborne.
Right.

Speaker 1 Going like, and that's when the movie ends because the crew stopped filming it because it was so awful. And then he's like, anyway, next, Daddy's boy again.
What's going on?

Speaker 1 It's such a good double joke.

Speaker 1 That show had jokes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That was a funny show. He's also great in inherent vice.
Yes, yes, he is. That's right.
I saw him in on the stage in

Speaker 1 the play about the Oslo Accords, which was unbelievably called Oslo.

Speaker 1 That sounds like a laugh riot. No, it wasn't.
And it's so much yelling. Everyone was just like, we have to jump in on the accounts.

Speaker 1 And at a certain point, I started laughing because they wouldn't stop yelling in this like acclaimed play. Yeah.
Anyway.

Speaker 1 In Chris Patrol, does he play like the biggest goose and everything? Like, does it

Speaker 1 extend to the snowing role?

Speaker 1 It's snowing. He points at the gravestone, then he becomes the gravestone.

Speaker 1 That sounds like he'd be like out of breath. He's like running around.
He's like, that's what I want. Right.
You want him panting. If he's not collapsing on stage by the end, he's not.

Speaker 1 He's tiny Tim and the crutch.

Speaker 1 And I'm holding this.

Speaker 1 Like, he just goes crutch mode. Great.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so Macduff kills. And

Speaker 2 he says, you can't kill me because no man, you know, born of woman. And Macduff goes, C-section, bitch.

Speaker 1 He does say C-section, bitch, which was a Joel Cone addition to the plot.

Speaker 1 You can't kill me, kind of the worst final words you can have.

Speaker 1 It's the Twitter movie.

Speaker 1 What are you going to do, stab me?

Speaker 1 Quote from Stabbing Victim. I just simply would never say it out loud because it's not worth the risk.
I definitely wouldn't say it to anyone I was dueling with a sword.

Speaker 1 I just, I'm not going to say it to anybody. I guess so.
Unless it's inviting some tragic irony, right, no matter what.

Speaker 2 Why don't you walk down like the New York City street and be like, a piano is never going to fall off.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Right, right.
I'm not scared of air conditioners leaving their windows.

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 1 Okay, yeah, but he is doing it. Okay, I was looking it up.
Where is he doing it? At the Berkeley Rep.

Speaker 2 If anyone has the opportunity to see it, highly, highly recommend.

Speaker 1 It plays December 16th through the 21st.

Speaker 2 It's a seasonal treat. It's the, you know.

Speaker 1 It also, wait. No, maybe this was a past year.
It looks like he did do it at the old globe at some point. Goya.
It's a great production. Um, he should run it back forever.

Speaker 1 He should do it in the summer. Fuck it.
Yeah. Who gives a shit?

Speaker 1 Or he should do like Scrooge goes Hawaiian. He should like write a new

Speaker 1 sequel.

Speaker 1 What happened to Scrooge after he got his head screwed on straight? Oh, yeah, that's just Scrooge being chill. Yeah.
He's like, you want a turkey?

Speaker 1 Turkey. Mr.
Scrooge's holiday. Hey, Scrooge, I need some money.
Within reason, I can give you some. I'm a moneylender.
Summer, Scrooge.

Speaker 1 Within reason. I have no money.
I can give you all my money, but I'm not going to be an asshole about it like I used to be. I'm fair, but professional.
Right.

Speaker 1 Fucking Tiny Tim's dad, Bob Cratchit, that's his name. Yeah.
He's like, can I take some vacation? He's like, yeah, within reason, two to three weeks. I don't know.
And then more with experience.

Speaker 1 All that shit.

Speaker 1 Screw just being fairly reasonable. Fairly reasonable.
Fairly reasonable.

Speaker 2 This movie does do some sort of interesting stuff with the crown.

Speaker 2 It's a very metaphorical flying through the air crown. He kind of dies because he was reaching for it.
A little on the nose, but I liked it.

Speaker 1 It's a good death, though. I do like the, you know.
The full beheading. Yeah.
But also the duel. Do you get to see the head, which is fun? The duel is really good.

Speaker 1 Like, the choreography is like scary and intense. Yes, it is.
No, all the action at the end is well done, I would say. Denzel obviously very capable of such things.
Yeah, it is a movie

Speaker 1 where I just watch it and I'm like, this feels so close to greatness.

Speaker 1 There's something, there's an exercise quality to it that I cannot shake.

Speaker 1 I liked it more in the theater because it is quite. overwhelming visually.
At home, I was tired. I am a parent of three.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And I was squeezing this in between, you know, whatever my parental duties are. But I was having a little bit of a

Speaker 1 reverse Ben Hosley watching this after House of Dynamite. And I did feel like, man, this was a lot like easier to get into in a giant room.

Speaker 2 You can imagine a high school teacher showing this to their students.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yes, yes.
And I, you know, I was certainly a kid where anytime they rolled out the old AV card and said, like, the next three classes are going to be a movie, I'm like pumping my fist.

Speaker 1 But sometimes those movies

Speaker 1 better than regular class, but you're like, this one's a little bit of a snooze. Watching this on like a small school TV split up across days would be kind of deadly.

Speaker 1 You're not like, fuck, this one's awesome. Right.
Yeah. Right.

Speaker 1 No, I think you're right. It feels like an exercise.

Speaker 1 It's what makes the

Speaker 1 upcoming film very fascinating to see because I I feel like there isn't really a sense of who Joel is as a solo filmmaker.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he didn't write this script, he didn't. The script's famously already written for it.

Speaker 1 I'm assuming that it's based on a play. Oh, this one is right, but the new film one assumes he wrote that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. This one doesn't show who he is as a solo writer.

Speaker 1 It would be funny if the new one was like Lowell Gans and Babaloo Mandela or whatever. He was like, nah, it's just a good script.
I dug it up.

Speaker 1 But it is like you go on to the IMDb, it's the four actors you named directed by Joel Cohen, like no other credits. There's not even a screenplay credit.

Speaker 1 There's no one knows if it's based on anything.

Speaker 1 Bruno's shooting it again. Yep.
I don't know. It's like a total mystery right now.
Totally. But most of his usual collaborators.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 The film was warmly received. Yeah.
But, you know, not obviously best of the year type material, I feel. It is also funny that in the year 2021, it felt like, oh, fuck, Apple's getting serious.

Speaker 1 They've signed the 324 deal, and one of the films is going to be Denzel and McDorman doing fucking Macbeth. Right.
Like, this is a heavy-hitter Oscar player.

Speaker 1 And the movie kind of gets like a polite nod while Apple wins best picture for Coda.

Speaker 1 This is the Coda year. This is the Cody.
Look, it's just an

Speaker 1 the Coda thing.

Speaker 1 Obviously, it's partly that's a movie goes down smooth and like it's generally crowd pleasing.

Speaker 1 But when you look at that Oscar year, it's just a lot lot of like studios shooting their shot in a way where you're like, oh,

Speaker 1 good try. But like Netflix being like, can we sneak power the dog by you a little bit? And eventually voters are like, I think too weird.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 And like, could Licorice Pizza be the PTA movie? Like, it's like, that's his least accessible movie.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, Dune doesn't have an ending. Drive My Car was nominated for best picture, but is a three-hour movie about rehearsing Uncle Vanya.
yes, by and large, right?

Speaker 1 And then, like, Spielberg was like, I made Westside Story. Do you like it? And everyone was like, Yeah, we love it.

Speaker 1 Like, uh, Zero Oscar, right?

Speaker 1 Well, excuse me, yes.

Speaker 1 But, like, that it's funny that Spielberg was like, I have something for him. It's like a big treasure chest filled with jewels.
And everyone's like, Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then they walk over to the like glass of orange juice that is goda. Also, the fact that the language is just like, it's fine.

Speaker 1 The fact that he had shot it in 2019 and you were like, This is a pre-pandemic movie. It's It's Spielberg with like full control making remakes.
Right, right, right.

Speaker 1 It doesn't have any, yeah, yeah, of the COVID stuff because it was just delayed.

Speaker 1 You're like, this thing has just been locked away for two years because he wanted to wait until audiences could come back. Right.
And everyone was just like, yeah, good job. Good.
We liked it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Anyway, just a funny situation. She sings at the end.

Speaker 2 We get to hear a song.

Speaker 1 She does. She sings.

Speaker 2 Because West Side Story, they don't

Speaker 1 sun. There wasn't enough singing for them.

Speaker 1 Maybe they all watched it on mute by mistake. That's why they thought it was good.
They were like, this was weird. No one talks.

Speaker 1 We're going to do the box office game for January 28th, 2022, which is when this film was released in

Speaker 1 IMAX. A24 took advantage of a

Speaker 1 weird theatrical landscape.

Speaker 1 Quite a weird one. We'll see here.
As things were rebounding and they kept getting... Do you remember also that they did like one week of Nomad Land and IMAX? In IMAX? Yes, in early 21.

Speaker 1 I mean, look, man. A lot of these art house movies were getting like 10-day IMAX runs because they were like, we don't got fucking anything else.

Speaker 2 I would be interested in how this aspect ratio worked in IMAX.

Speaker 1 Yes, because this is a very boxy academy ratio movie. It's actually pretty well suited for IMAX.
Yeah. What are you laughing at, David? Ben sent a link.

Speaker 1 This is very interesting. So she sent a link about

Speaker 1 House Hosley, I suppose, or Clina, whatever. The preview text I got is check out the early notables of the Hosley.

Speaker 1 So if I can handle this, Griffin, because I want to want your genuine reaction to this. So apparently the surname Hosley, first found in Oxfordshire in 1190.
Okay.

Speaker 1 You know, been registered in the roles, various roles ever since, right?

Speaker 1 Early notables of the Hosley family include William Ostler. Just like a variation spelling.

Speaker 1 Died

Speaker 1 1614, an actor in English Renaissance theater, a member of the King's Men, the company of William Shakespeare. Well, well,

Speaker 1 So there you go. Doesn't say who he played, though, but he was one of the King's men.
Okay, that's cool. So it's in my blood, but I'm also kind of like, meh.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 The actual weekend this movie goes into limited release, as we say, is the Matrix Resurrections weekend.

Speaker 1 I mean, again, when we're saying went into theaters, I assume it was just a couple screens that were surprised. I was surprised it was playing at this beacon place in mid-January.

Speaker 1 It made less than half a million.

Speaker 1 I mean, it has a non-reported gross because they four-walled it. So I don't know.
Like,

Speaker 1 number one, on January 28th, though, Griffin, it's been out for seven weeks. It's made $735 million.
Spider-Man No Way Home. That's the one with all the Spider-Man.
Yeah. It is weird that like

Speaker 1 2021, the theater's reopened. Things are rough.
Things are weird. And people were like, maybe they'll just never go back to the theater again.
And at the... height of a surge

Speaker 1 like Omicron starts surging like a week before and they were like is this gonna to fuck up Spider-Man? Nope. Becomes one of the highest-grossing films of all time.

Speaker 1 And basically, there's another six months before something else hits.

Speaker 2 All of the Spider-Men are in it.

Speaker 1 All of them are in it. And then

Speaker 1 Andrew Gaulfield.

Speaker 1 Tom Holland. Tom Holland.

Speaker 1 Willem the Fuck.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Spider-Man No Way Home.
Dane DeHaan. They got Dane DeHaan in it.
No, no, Dane. He is not.
The Great Dane did not arrive. In fact, right.
Are there the lizards in it? And Electro. And Electro.

Speaker 1 But Electro's got got the new nib. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Electro's like, forget everything I used to be. I don't have the whole blue blobby.
What if we just reset

Speaker 1 Jamie Fox playing Electro?

Speaker 1 A bad movie, in my opinion, but undeniably enjoyable. That is how I feel about it.
It is one of the sweatiest screenplays of all time. It is constructed out of nonsense.
It does have juice in it.

Speaker 2 It has real chemistry between the two of them.

Speaker 1 This was your whole take at the time, which I really agree with, which is like the movie is actually an argument for movie stars. Right.

Speaker 1 That the last act of that movie works because you're like, here are three different guys in three different eras who had such unique takes on the characters that watching the three of them talk to each other is more exciting than like any fucking CGI fight.

Speaker 1 I completely agree. Those are the best.
I mean, especially, I feel like it was the Andrew Garfield moment, and obviously he was in tick, tick, boom, he gets the Oscar nomination.

Speaker 1 Like, it was Garfield is having a nice time.

Speaker 1 And you got all the fucking character actors in it. It's like, yes.

Speaker 1 Number two at the box office is

Speaker 1 a horror film. It's been out for three weeks.
It's a solid hit.

Speaker 1 It is the fifth in a franchise. It's a January 2022, fifth in a franchise.
It's a solid

Speaker 1 five. It's a five.
But the five is not in the title. The five is not in the title.
When does the franchise start?

Speaker 1 1996. It's a 96.
Oh, so it's Scream. It's Scream.
It drives me crazy.

Speaker 2 Well, the five is in the title, but it's a V.

Speaker 1 Only in the poster, not in the future. Which I hate.
I hate. It is one of my least favorite modern trends:

Speaker 1 horror reboot that has the exact same name as the original and has to be referred to with the year-end. The Halloween.

Speaker 1 I always tell you, you've never seen the film Scream, but that is literally addressed in the movie.

Speaker 1 Which makes sense because it's Scream. I'm hoping the new scary movie does the joke of calling itself Scary Movie Brackets 2026.
They should do that. Right.
That is not brackets 2026, brackets 2026.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Number three at the box office is an animated film.
I have not yet watched these with my daughter because I know she will love them and I don't want to deal with it. Okay, it's a franchise.

Speaker 1 It's the second. It's the second.
Of two. It's the second of two.
It's not, it's not, no. Crude's was a 2020.

Speaker 1 It's the second of two, but you think they're going to make more?

Speaker 1 I mean, these movies do well. I don't, no, I don't think so.
They've probably done. This one did less well.
The first one did very well. And is it a whole? Oh, it's Sing 2.
Sing 2.

Speaker 1 It actually made a good amount of money. The first one was huge.
The first one was a huge hit. The second one in COVID time, you know,

Speaker 1 sort of society opening back up times made 162 domestic, which is good. But the first one made like 300 domestic.

Speaker 1 And it's also like, how many fucking, like,

Speaker 2 it's just animal singing pop songs?

Speaker 1 I believe it's Animal American Idol, but it's also like, let's put on a show. We need to make a talent competition to sell tickets to not lose the theater.
I saw the second one and not the first one.

Speaker 1 I'm perplexed by those movies. It's Garth Jennings, who's good.
It was once. Yes.
I don't know. They're not like poorly made, but I just do not get them.
Number four at the box office is

Speaker 1 you're never going to get this. Or maybe you will.
It's a Christian movie. I like a challenge.
Okay. It's a Christian movie.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Is Greg Kinnear in it? He's not, although

Speaker 1 he should be. Good follow-up question.

Speaker 1 It looks like it's based on a

Speaker 1 historical romance novel from the 90s, set during the 1850s gold rush. Jesus.
Okay.

Speaker 1 It's got one of those posters where a man and a woman are doing like a forehead kiss and there's a big bright sun behind them. All of that.
I know.

Speaker 1 Are there any name actors in this? Yes, but like not huge. Can you give them to me, though? Abigail Cohen, Tom Lewis, Logan Marshall Green, Nina Dobrev,

Speaker 1 Pamka Janssen,

Speaker 1 and Eric Dane, who, of course,

Speaker 1 has recently sort of, you know, semi-retired or whatever, because he's suffering from ALS. It's one of his last films, maybe.
I'm going to guess that this movie is called God is Gold.

Speaker 1 The film was directed by DJ Caruso,

Speaker 1 which is crazy. Yes, he's basically

Speaker 1 pivoted to that space.

Speaker 1 Yeah, faith-based. And it's called Redeeming Love.
Yeah. Would never get that.
How could could you? Yeah. Number five of the box office, of course, is a prequel to a couple action movies.

Speaker 1 It's a pretty cursed movie. It's a pretty cursed movie.
It's a prequel to a couple action movies. See, prequel to two action films.
It's not like Transporter, but is it something in that kind of bent?

Speaker 1 Is it that? It's got a British bent to it, for sure. Is it that level of franchise, though?

Speaker 1 Oh, it's The Kingsman. There you go.
A film that ends, do you know this, Dana? Yeah. With introducing Hitler like he's Thanos.

Speaker 1 This is true. And I love that Matthew.
I've never seen it. Like, of course, we're going to make the sequel.
Yeah, we're working on it. Everyone's demanding it.
In fact, it might be a Hulu series.

Speaker 1 And it might be an Argyle as well, somehow. You've also got...

Speaker 1 Argyle's sort of in the Kingsman unit. Sort of, yes.
As we have discussed,

Speaker 1 but only vaguely. People made a really funny Reddit thread complaining about

Speaker 1 spoiling Argyle. Everyone was in on the bit of, I was truly about to watch it tomorrow.

Speaker 1 But the funniest thing is we did not talk about the central twist of Argo.

Speaker 1 We just talked about the two inexplicable mid-credits we were doing. And the main twist is that it's based on a book written by Taylor Swift.
Exactly. That's the main twist.

Speaker 1 Just to further illustrate what a weird time this was for the American box office. Matrix Resurrections is like out of theaters, right? Number 16.
Yeah. Number six is The 355.
Oh, remember that one?

Speaker 1 Yes. Where a bunch of women were spies.
That was the ultimate. This can't miss.
They cast five of the biggest actresses from different countries. Everyone will go see this.

Speaker 1 Number seven is American Underdog, the Kurt Warner story, in which Zachary Levi plays the quarterback and religious figure, Kurt Warner. Normal guy.
Yep, normal guy.

Speaker 1 Number eight, Ghostbusters Afterlife.

Speaker 1 Still in there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, after 11 weeks. This is what I'm saying.
It's not good.

Speaker 1 Because Resurrections is like week four.

Speaker 1 Resurrections was on fucking HBO Max Day, though. I know, I know, I'm just, I'm surprised Ghostbusters is hanging in there, but you're right.

Speaker 1 The answer is that like one new movie got released every three weeks.

Speaker 1 Number nine,

Speaker 1 Licorice Pete's and number 10 West Side Story, so two somewhat underwhelming, but good best picture nominees. What's Afterlife up to at this point?

Speaker 1 Afterlife has made 128 on its way to a robust domestic total of 129. It's all of them end up at the same fucking number.

Speaker 1 It is incredible how outside of the original Ghostbusters, not adjusted for inflation,

Speaker 1 Ghostbusters 2, Answer the Call, as staged at the Globe,

Speaker 1 Afterlife, and Frozen Empire all basically end up at an identical number. 130? Yeah.
And there's always this asterisk of like, Ghostbusters 2 was a genuine like disappointment, right?

Speaker 1 Like huge drop off from the original at the time. And then Answer the Call, they were like, well, the backlash.
Ghostbusters is still valuable as a franchise, but the backlash killed it.

Speaker 1 And then Afterlife comes out like in like shitty 2021 and they're like, it was a hit. And in normal times, it would have done better.

Speaker 1 And then they release Frozen Empire in a totally normal time and it ends up at the exact same number.

Speaker 2 I just don't think like Gen, and correct me if I'm wrong, it doesn't seem like Gen Z is like attached to Ghostbusters as a piece of IP.

Speaker 1 My little cousin really likes Ghostbusters, but I'm like, is that like

Speaker 1 speak more to him just being an obsessive kid who's really thorough with stuff. Sims always puts it,

Speaker 1 David Sims, who's the guy who hosts this podcast and is in the bathroom right now.

Speaker 1 He always puts it like, it is ultimately like a good concept with a great logo.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and a good song.

Speaker 1 Right. That like the song and the logo always are basically going to get you to 130 domestic.
And they keep trying to crack like, what is the way to make it super relevant to kids today?

Speaker 1 And they like, they can't do it.

Speaker 2 Stranger Things, kids.

Speaker 1 Isn't that the way to do it? Tried that. I mean,

Speaker 1 you name a character podcast. You name a character podcast.

Speaker 2 I will say I like, I think one of Ghostbusters' enduring cultural legacies is now that this will be posts when this podcast comes out, but currently when we're recording it, it's almost Halloween season.

Speaker 2 Spooky season. And I feel like on every like pre-made playlist for like Halloween songs, the Ghostbuster song is, and it's like, it's actually not a Halloween movie.

Speaker 1 But it rules. The song rules.
It's like maybe the best song of all time. This is the thing.
Like Ghostbusters will never be valueless because the song will never stop playing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the logo will never stop existing.

Speaker 1 it's cool and then like one step down from that like slimer and stay puff like basically should be on the back of money are like as important to american culture as most of our presidents and then beyond that you're like what is this did you ever watch um like the casper movies dana i talk about them all the time i love venturing into

Speaker 1 dana david dana just asked Griffin, did you ever watch the Casper movies? So buckle up. There's an hour left in this episode.
Was one of those put in theaters this week or something?

Speaker 1 I saw it on a box office list. They were re-releasing for Halloween or Halloween.
The 30th anniversary. The original.
The boy, the only theatre. Christina Richie with Brad Silberland.

Speaker 1 The Sexual Awakening movie. Yeah.
That movie fucked. I love that movie so much.
And then I. I remember I saw it in theaters and I remember not even liking it at the time.
I'd be interested to revisit.

Speaker 1 Your brain was not developing.

Speaker 2 Young preteen girl.

Speaker 1 No, I was 10. I think I was possibly too old for like true kid antic shit or whatever.
It's not true kid antic shit. I mean, dark.
The movie's dark.

Speaker 1 I do remember it being a little dark because, right, there's death. It's right.
It's like about death. And Bill Pullman dies and then they resurrect him.

Speaker 1 Casper's dad spent his entire life trying to build a machine to bring ghosts back to life. And they revive the machine, but only have enough ghost juice to bring one ghost back to life.

Speaker 1 And Casper's cousins murder Bill Pullman, and he makes the sacrifice of letting Bill Pullman have the ghost juice rather than himself.

Speaker 1 He was going to use it for himself because he's in love with Cat, played by Christina Ricci, but she would never date a ghost. And because of his selfless act,

Speaker 1 her dead mother, who's now an angel, grants Casper one wish, which is Cinderella rules. He's allowed to be a human boy for a day or two for like an hour.
So he shows up. He's going to take a party

Speaker 1 looking like Devin Sawa and she loves him. And he says, Can I keep you? He whispers it into her ear, and they're dancing and floating above the crowd.
And Oscar should have been thrown at the screen.

Speaker 1 Take a hike, English patient, or whatever.

Speaker 2 Did you ever see Casper Meets Wendy?

Speaker 1 Yes. I had that.

Speaker 2 VHS.

Speaker 1 I think a listener is perhaps

Speaker 1 because Shelly Duvall isn't there. Yes.
And a blank check listener went to the Shelly Duvall estate sale.

Speaker 1 And I believe purchased for us Shelly Duvall's copy of Casper Meets Wendy with a certificate of authenticity. That's showing up at the P.O.
box soon, Ben. That's a really nice listener.

Speaker 1 Casper a Spirited Beginning Beginning is one of the joke titles I will throw out if I can't guess something in box office games. So it gets said a film that was not

Speaker 1 released in theaters. No, it's a straight-to-dvd movie with Pauly Shore and James Earl Jones as the voice of ghosts.
Gutenberg's there. Gutenberg's there.

Speaker 2 One of them plays the stinky ghost.

Speaker 1 They're different ghosts. They're new ghosts because it's a prequel.
I think the

Speaker 1 ghosts can live forever. The uncles are still in it, the ghostly troops.

Speaker 1 The ghostly jerk is still in it. James Earl Jones is like some evil genie ghost.
He's called Kaibosh. Really?

Speaker 1 I'm not joking. And Paulie Shore, I'm looking up here, plays his weasel sidekick.
Wait, what?

Speaker 1 His character is called Snivel. Okay.

Speaker 2 That's a fun name for a Weasel sidekick.

Speaker 1 It looks like Casper Van Dien is also in it, and I imagine he was cast as a joke. Probably.
Because he plays a character called Bystander.

Speaker 1 So do you think they were like, there's an actual actor called Casper? Do you want to be in the new Casper movie?

Speaker 1 It's like the Bort joke where someone says Casper and he turns around and says, like, what? Me? Yeah. How's Casper Van Dian doing now? Isn't his...

Speaker 1 He was married to like royalty and his daughter is like a big influencer who also is in line for

Speaker 1 Casavandian.

Speaker 1 Yes. But I want to say he married like a princess.
Their divorce.

Speaker 1 He married the daughter of the

Speaker 1 princess of Yugoslavia, which is a country that doesn't exist anymore. So I don't know how much.

Speaker 1 Right, Yugoslavia has abolished its monarchy, but I guess some sort of courtly homes maybe in their life or whatever. Good stuff.
Good stuff. Dana, you have

Speaker 1 a thousand things to plug. Dana,

Speaker 1 plug.

Speaker 2 Listen to my podcast, Noble Blood, which is about history.

Speaker 2 New podcast, Hoax, which is about historical hoaxes. With Lizzie Logan.
With my friend Lizzie Logan.

Speaker 2 If you like sort of like gothic YA novels about grave robbers and surgery, read Anatomy, a Love Story.

Speaker 1 Available now on paperback.

Speaker 2 Available now on paperback. And if you want to pre-order a book about, you know, sexy magic and a professor and grad student

Speaker 2 going on, you know, a sexy little adventure.

Speaker 1 David's eye is bugging out. I've read it.
He's read some, yeah.

Speaker 2 Pre-order the Arcane Arts.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Which I wrote with a friend under a pseudonym. So if you see that, it's not by Dana Schwartz.
I'm there.

Speaker 1 Great. The Arcane Arts.
Right, right. You have a combined pseudonym? Yeah, it's like SA Hardbody or whatever.
I forget what it is. What is it? What is this? It's SD Coverly.
SD Coverly. There you go.

Speaker 1 What is the story behind deciding like we're going to write this together under a pseudonym, but not hide that we're the ones who wrote it? Because I just saw the announcement of like Comic-Con book.

Speaker 1 It's the two of us. Here's the name we wrote it under.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's because

Speaker 2 we like wrote it. We came up with the story together.
I would write the female character. He would write the male character.
We'd go back and forth chapters.

Speaker 2 And then we were like talking to our editor. And basically, because I had written like YA novels, this is like a little sexy.

Speaker 1 They were like, is it a branding thing?

Speaker 2 Is it a branding thing? And also, this is like fairly common. Like people are less public about it, but there are a lot of like co-written books that just use like one pseudonym.

Speaker 1 I'm only the only part that surprised me was announcing that from the forefront.

Speaker 2 I think the reason is because like I'm not, I like this book. I think we did a good job.
I'm like proud of it.

Speaker 2 And I think the publisher and editor know that I have like a promotional apparatus that they wanted to use.

Speaker 2 So they were like, we'll go with the pseudonym, but can you like push it on into But it's you.

Speaker 1 Right. We'll be public about the pseudonym.
Yeah. And I was like, yeah, I like this book.
I wrote it because I think it's good. It's public.
I could have, though, showed up in a trench coat.

Speaker 1 I could have. Or like with a mask and been like, I am

Speaker 1 S.D.

Speaker 2 Curly. S.D.
Coverly.

Speaker 1 I am S.D. Coverly.

Speaker 2 It's very clever. If you think about it, my initials are Dana Schwartz, which is TS.

Speaker 1 So we sort of, you flip them.

Speaker 2 It's a thinker.

Speaker 1 Very clever.

Speaker 1 Thank you all for listening.

Speaker 1 Thus concludes our one-episode series on the films of Joel Cohen.

Speaker 1 We should take a bow. It is fun that we'll have like a new Joel Cohen solo project, hopefully, to cover in 2026.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then whatever they might do in the future, either of them. I just want to get back together.
I do too.

Speaker 1 I'm all for this experimentation, but I'm certainly in re-watching all of their films and then watching the solo ones. It's like when they're together, it is the best shit on earth.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Tune in next week for.

Speaker 1 Next week we're doing Drive Away Dolls. With MXM Toon.
That's right. Great episode.

Speaker 1 And then, of course, we get to end the series on a bang with Honey Don't.

Speaker 1 A movie that I will admit kind of broke me. Oh?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I need to watch it again.

Speaker 2 It's the rest of the.

Speaker 1 It's okay to just not like it.

Speaker 2 The way the movie is titled is if your spouse is telling you they're going to watch this movie.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 10 comedy points. Thank you.

Speaker 1 My movie clear, David. I'm not at war with not liking.

Speaker 1 I've accepted that. Right.
It's not a good movie. I mean, or you can, it's a others agree it is not good.
Yes. You're not screaming into the wind here.

Speaker 1 No, but I do think it's interesting to talk about it, and we'll talk about it in

Speaker 1 two weeks. God, I'm going to have to rewatch it.

Speaker 1 I, I, sorry. I ordered the Blu-ray.
Oh, that's a

Speaker 1 breach. I shall not be crossed.
Gotta go on the shelf.

Speaker 2 Do you have the shelf space? You live in New York City.

Speaker 1 I don't have the shelf space. I've taxed

Speaker 1 the shelf space. So much shit in storage.
My life's a nightmare.

Speaker 1 Anyway, tune in next week for Driveaway Dolls.

Speaker 1 And as always, David, I regret to tell you, but because we must consider the witchy tradition in Dana's guest appearances, and she already invoked it, Casper meets Wendy locked

Speaker 1 on the feed.

Speaker 1 Dost thou

Speaker 1 dost thou have a quote? Save this for the mic, Ben. They're being recorded.
There are actually a lot of really famous quotes from the play Macbeth.

Speaker 1 It's not a very quotable movie.

Speaker 1 There's not, it's weird. Like, Ben, did you have moments

Speaker 1 where you were like, oh shit, like, because I feel like that happens so often when you watch Shakespeare, if you're not a Shakespeare person, where you're like, oh, that's like that phrase that exists in society.

Speaker 1 I mean, listen, I'm recording this. Yeah, this is all being recorded.
I had to read, and I've seen Macbeth before. Fair enough.
So it was not quite. So it wasn't as surprising.

Speaker 2 I like when they say sleep no more. I'm like, ah.

Speaker 1 And then they say, you know, it's closing soon. Okay, I'm just going to say doing a bank show.
It's about a bank.

Speaker 4 Blank Tech with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims.

Speaker 4 Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Bardy Salinas.
And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by A.J.
McKeon and Alan Smithy.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help.
Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

Speaker 4 Join our Patreon, BlankCheck Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

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Speaker 4 Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by BlankCheck Productions.