Drive Away Dolls with mxmtoon

Blank Jack with Griffin and David

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

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

Marion you have got to have a good steamy podcast now what I wanted to do originally was is the word fuck yeah correct yeah What I wanted to do originally was, and then I realized I don't think the context clues are quite strong enough, was won't anybody podcast curly?

Yes, that's my favorite line in the movie. But I think if I put the word podcast in for save, it sounds like I'm saying fuck.
That's what's weird.

Won't anybody podcast podcast curly? But you can't say, won't anyone save podcast? David, that's nonsense. You're right.

And this is a serious movie with no

nonsense. This is one of the most serious films films we have ever covered on this podcast.

Such a heavy, weighty film. We've talked in the past, the many times we've covered the films of Holly Hunter, someone who has come up in this mini-series, my struggle to do a Holly Hunter impression.

And you think that Margot Qualy is struggling throughout this film to do a Holly Hunter impression?

I think I'm pretty well teed up to do a Margot Qualey in Drive Away Dolls impression because it's very close to my bad Holly Hunter. Wow.
Now, Margot Qualey.

And I'm not saying that as a slam against the performance it just is a convenient for me obviously her mother is a southern bell that's with a famous accent with a lilt i think she's doing some

has a lilt i think she's doing some of her mominess yeah but margaret qually

it's kind of like she's born in montana her parents broke up when she was five she lived in montana she lived in north carolina And then, like, they split up and then she moved to Asheville.

So she's like, she's got a lot of southern in her. Yes.
But she don't talk like this, I guess. She doesn't.

I guess in the interview, she's not like, well, yeah, park my keester and, you know, in the audition, and I got it. Like, she doesn't talk like that.
No, she doesn't pretend to. Right.

No, I do think she's doing a bit of her mom. I do think she's doing a bit of Holly Hunter.
I'm not the first one to make this. Do you know where I'm going with this? I think I have a sense.

Does it start with an S? Three, two, one. Sandy from the side.
Sandy squirrel. Yeah.

Yep. Sandy from SpongeBob.
Uh-huh.

Okay, right. So I don't have like the appropriate amount of SpongeBob

awareness. That's a perfect example of the minor age difference between you and I is missing the SpongeBob thing and

SpongeBob SquarePant. What's crazy is I'm younger than both of you and I'm actually closer to David though because I did not watch SpongeBob at all.
No, but I do know Spanish. Was you for SpongeBob?

No, I wasn't till like

I was kept from SpongeBob. I had crunchy granola parents that were like, it's going to rot your brain.
You can't do it. Could you watch any TV or was it? Oh, I watched PBS Kids.

So shout out to PBS Kids. So who should we be shouting? Obviously, Daniel Tiger, or were you too old for Daniel Tiger? Honestly, I don't know.
Just look at the back of my phone case. I've got like

so many stickers on the back.

We've got cartoon stickers. We have W

DW on there, Cookie Monster,

Hermit, etc. Dragon Tales.
That was kind of my Arthur in the mix. I wish I didn't have room for him, but also Representation for Sisters of All Kinds.
And DW is your first pick.

So I'm going to talk about this far too often on the podcast. That sign doesn't mean anything to her because she can't read it.
She can't read. Yeah.
See, I know a lot of these through memes.

You were not an Arthur kid either. I read the books when I was a kid, but I didn't have the show.
The show was that maybe I was too late for it. Or it was around.

It wasn't a big show for me. Yeah, it wasn't.
I mean, it also

quietly has as many episodes as like Gunsmoke. It's got 493 episodes.
No way. Yeah.
What? I mean, I think the episodes are like 10 minutes long, but they kept going. They only ended it very recently.

I did not realize that. 2022.
That's the other thing. It was weird.
Arthur got hit by a car. He just dies.
And they're like, roll credits. You joke about this.

My little sister Romley was obsessed with Caillou. Oh, man.
The French-Canadian animated show that was another PBS kid's staple. That was her favorite show.

It's the little boy who looks like, yeah, he's bald. He's got a little like sort of.

He's got a hat missing a propeller, but it looks like a propeller belongs on top of it. It's the most gentle, conflict-free show in the world, which my sister always really wanted that.

Like peanuts and Arthur maybe sometimes got a little too intense. Oh, yeah.
And Caillou.

And there was one day my dad woke us up and he was like, we have to do everything we can to make sure she doesn't see this. And it was in the New York Post, the voice of Caillou had been hit by a car.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

The image was like the face of the voice actor and the cartoon character and the car. No.
Where we're like, even if she can't read this, she's going to ask follow-up questions.

And we have to shield this. So it was awful.
It was like Arthur. Yes, she was the second voice of Caillou.
There we go. And she was hit by a car.
That's very sad. She died very young.

And she was replaced, of course, by

another Canadian French actress, Annie Bouviard.

Okay. Just telling you guys what's going on with Caillou.
I don't know why you lies are so hostile and furious. I thought it was Genevieve Boujol who took over the role of Caillou.

No, but Genevieve Boujol was famously, isn't she the one who quit Star Trek Voyager a week in or whatever? Oh, yeah. I think that, I think that's right.

it's like supposed to be Janeway.

She was cast as Jane Way. I don't know if you guys, if you're a Star Trek person, Maya, I'm probably not.

Another great famous French-Canadian actress. Okay.
And she,

there's like stories all over the place, but I think that the sort of settled version is basically like everyone was kind of nervous because it wasn't going that well.

And they started stressing to her like, you know, it's a lot of work. You know, like, this is a big commitment.
Star Trek, like, you're going to have to do this all year.

Like, and she was like huh maybe i want to quit and they were like oh

no

you should quit go go away now captain colombo's wife she was pushing them to do every line of dialogue two ways right we gotta do it translated and they were like that's gonna double that's crazy

oh

it's just because it was uh yeah it's just it's crazy that they recast their lead yeah um yeah she left two days into the filming of the pilot to close the loop on this

I had like trash monger father, crunchy granola mom, who very much was like PBS kids. That's it.
And was like, all the nick tunes are banned, right?

Like all the Saturday morning cartoons are banned, like tried to block me from all this stuff. It was Cartoon Network because that was old.
They didn't have original shows at the time.

And PBS kids. Yeah.
And then SpongeBob starts when I'm 10, I think. but my sister is nine years younger than me.
And the, the, she had given up by the time my sister was born and protecting anything.

So I was like just at the right age to be like, is it still kind of cool to watch SpongeBob? Cause SpongeBob's the cool one. And then watching it with her for a while.

But I feel like they have been very upfront about the fact that Sandy Cheeks was like, we want Holly Hunter as a astronaut squirrel under the sea.

And it feels like, okay, so Sandy is like a cartoon version of Holly Hunter.

And this character is cartoon version of cartoon squirrel. So it's just a loop.
So it's like kind of just a chain. Yeah.
Yeah.

Who the fuck are the character? Who is she? And SpongeBob? Yeah, who is she? David, she's very cool. I believe you.
Her name is Sandy Cheeks, and she's basically on a research mission from the land.

So she wears a little astronaut suit. It's like she's of course has to live under the sea.
And she's like a Texan squirrel

in an astronaut suit who lives in a bubble. Okay.
And she's like a main character? Or she kind of pops in? No, no, no. She's a main character.
Yeah, more than those. You got SpongeBob.

Okay, and he's a little sponge and he works at the burger place.

I'm going to try and give you everything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then his best friend is a starfish called Patrick, who's like dumb.

He's a little behind the

sample. Sure.
Yeah. And then their boss is...
Okay, okay. Their middle manager is Squidward, who's grumpy.
Squidward is like the more tenured employee who hates how hard SpongeBob tries.

Okay. He's been kind of clocking and clocking out.
All he wants to do is read books and play clarinet. He's very much a bird.
He's a bird. He like just wants to take it easy.

He doesn't want to get sucked into it. And SpongeBob is an earnie if they work together and they were never friends.

They don't even really like each other. No, no, but SpongeBob always wants to play with Squidward.
Right. And Mr.
Krabs is the boss.

He owns the burger place. He loves money.
Right. Right.
And his and his daughter Pearl, who's a big whale. We're

now deeper. That's not

that. That's a deeper.
That's not there.

And I guess I knew there was a squirrel, maybe, but I don't think so. She's main crew.
That's the the main tier.

Do you know from Plankton?

Is that the little guy? Yeah. And what does he do? He is a Plankton.
He is like an evil mastermind.

His thing is he wants to steal the recipe for the Krabby Patty because he runs the rival restaurant, the Chum Bucket across the street, which is not popular.

And he's married to a computer named Karen. I forgot about that.
And SpongeBob is a grown-up?

What is he? Ostensibly. Is he like adult or is he teen? He lives alone

in a pineapple. You see his parents.
Oh, they'll come to visit.

Like, what would you say if you had to guess how old Spongebob was canonically? He's a little in that trembling zone where you're like,

how old is he actually? How old is he playing? You know, like he, we might the SpongeBob.

How many female parents

are you see them? They're a little, I don't want to age Shane. Okay.
They're not in the prime of their life.

They're not cutting the same kind of figures as the time arrived.

1999. So I was 13 years old.
So I only knew a Spongebob is a thing that I might watch ironically as a teenager, being like, oh, this is kind of clever.

But like, obviously, my era of clever cartoons was your

Ren and Stimpy and Ah Real Monsters and Rocco's Modern Life and all that. And all of those were like, right, Gen X cartoons about like how boring it was to have a job.
Yes.

You know, like I loved Ah Real Monsters because it had monsters. But like the people who are making it are like fucking wage slavery.
Right. You know what I mean? Same with Rocco's Modern Life.

And they were getting like underground cartoonists and indie comics and whatever to make these shows.

And then SpongeBob, it feels like, does have the same thing of like, yeah, it sucks to clock in and clock out of the burger place, but it's a little more silly, a little more kind of cute.

And the thing is, SpongeBob loves it so much. Right.
He's a cheerful guy. He's SpongeBob is happy.
Yes.

I want to make an age answer. Oh, okay.
Yeah, how old SpongeBob is apparently you see SpongeBob's driver's license in an episode and it's listed that he was born on July 14th, 1986.

So, oh, he's three years, three months younger than me, basically. So he is currently 39 years old.
Yeah, that's my age.

Wait, but in theory, when the show premiered, he would have been 13 living on his own, emancipated. But like, this is, but like, what is the society?

When is the episode with the driver's license been?

It doesn't matter.

More information about how much of it is.

But, like, he doesn't live in America. He lives under the city.
Oh, he lives in a pineapple under the sun. Right.
So it's like, what's the government? 13 years old. You can get your driver's license.

Maybe you can.

Is there a president in spongebob like is there a you know how high does this remember there being a president i feel like there's a mayor so it was um bikini bob it was featured on sleepy time is the name of the episode and the air date was in 2000 january 17th so pretty early

he was 14 years old so the the mayor apparently is like a big green fish yeah sounds about right okay yeah well you're talking about new york city

go on

eric adams is like a big green fish see yeah i feel like your satire cannon kind of went off.

Look, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.
I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies.

Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby. In a way, this is one of the blankest checks we've ever covered on this show.
Well, I was going to say, right?

Then they clear and then they bounce and then maybe they evolve into right some new phase of their careers separate from each other and start to do even crazier passion projects.

Permanent revolving line of credit, right? This is your Ethan Cohen in any form will basically follow you to do anything you want. You can, I feel like that's a small enough size.

I was about to say, I think the thing with Ethan and Joel's solo careers is it's like, right, they can always get a cast. Anyone's going to want to work with them.
So that will give them a budget.

And Ethan has continued to work with Working Title, who bankrolled so many of their movies together for so long. They seem on board to just being like, anything you write, we want to do.

Right.

But this has been a mini series. This continues to be a mini series on the films of Joel and Ethan Cohen together and separately, sometimes with their wives.

It is called Pod Country for Old Cast. And today we're talking about Driveaway Dolls slash title.
I don't know if I can say. Henry James's Driveaway Dykes.
David said it. He went for it.

And when it was announced, I feel like it was announced as Driveaway Dykes. And they, then they, it was like, what was the, you know, fuck, no strings attached was called like fuck buddies.

And they were like, we're calling it fuck buddies. We're not budging on that.

It's called no strings attacks.

Or it was the other one. I can't remember which one it was.
No, that, it was that one. What's the other one called? The other one is friends with benefits.
And that one's bad. I agree.

I like No Strings Attached. Which is the good one.
I don't like that. That's the Liz Meriwether

fucking Ivan Reitman. Ivan Reitman, and I don't like Friends with Benefit.
I have to. Every time.
You're not the one with Mila Kunis. Milakunis and Justin Temberlake

versus various other people. Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman.
Right, but No Strings Attached has like Greta Gerwig. It has a fairly robust supporting cast.
Cindy Kalen, Guy Burnham,

Carrie Elwiz.

Of course. Kevin Klein is really good in No Strings Attached.
Klein's there.

Looks like Jake Johnson showed up and Ludacris. Jake Johnson and Ludacris are Ashton Kutcher's friends.
What? They're his.

Dude, I don't know about this. Whoa! How many strings are attached to it? This is a thing we've really lost in the death of the studio comedy and especially the dreams.

Well, that, but also specifically the casting of the best friends. Yeah.
Yeah, man. Just be like, okay, we need three guys.
One of them should be a musician. At least one needs to be a person.

We should cover and hang out with each other. Maybe one should be gay.
25 years apart for age.

But all have a little juice in different areas of the industry. Because in, okay, so in,

have you seen any of these movies, Maya? And we haven't introduced you. Well, hello.
And also, how do we introduce you? Oh, yeah. She said our guest today is MXM Tune.
That's perfect. That's great.

But you can call me Maya because that's, it's wordy to be like, so, MXM Tune, what did you think about the musical artist MXM Toon, who we will now be socially.

Yes, perfect. If you've granted us

curly permission to use the familiar name, I grant you familiar permission. Thanks, Maya.

Welcome to the show. Happy to be here.
Thanks for having me. We really appreciate you being here.
So no strings. Sorry, Friends with Leader.

Have you seen? I've seen Friends with Benefits, and I remember distinctly being like, This movie's ass. Like, this is a bad movie.
But I don't know if I've seen No Strings Attacked.

Now, Friends with Benefits. That's a Will Gluck joint.
Yes. Written in Dacten.
I believe you're right. But that was the one that was, I think, PG-13, right? Like, it was trying not to be.

I think that one's R, and the other one's PG-3. Am I wrong? Let me find out.
Okay. I mean, there's only one way to find out.
It's a fast. It's Googling.
Yes. But Friends with Benefits was R.

No strings attached was

also our. Okay.
Two R's. I give him credit.
Yeah. So Friends of Benefits had Jenna Elfman, Nolan Gould, Brian Greenberg.
It did have Richard Jenkins, Woody Harrelson, and Patricia Clarkson as parents.

And apparently Emma Stone swings in. I guess that's probably a sort of

Gluck.

She dumps him at the beginning, and I think Samberg is Mila Kunis' ex. Samberg shows up.
I assume that was a kind of a just-in-favor.

But those are the breakups at the very beginning because it leads to them creating the arrangement. Glock had just done EZ A.
He's cashing the EZA check. And then he moved on to do Annie,

Peter Rabbit, Peter Rabbit 2. It's a weird career.
And then Anyone But You, which was a hit. Yeah.

And starred a person that everyone's normal about, Sidney Sweeney.

And a movie that has actually historically bad best friend casting. I mean, that that movie is so bad.
I'm sorry.

As much as I was rooting for it to like, yeah, save our rom-coms and all that, like that movie stinks.

We saw that like five days into its release. So the opening weekend had bombed.
And it was before the second win started where it just inexplicably became a hit.

And we went with a bunch of friends and we're drunk and we're like, look, we got to support this thing.

This thing sucks, but like we're always bemoaning the lack of studio rom-coms and let's just have fun watching this and then we were just sort of like well that was a good experience of a terrible movie in a weird crowd.

We had a right. We had a really weird experience.
What was going on that made it so strange?

With threats in the theater who kept saying the n-word. Oh, it was the craziest movie.
It was the craziest movie.

Our friend Fran Hofner said this is the least real thing that has ever happened.

It was one of those things where we didn't totally clock what was happening at first, but something was happening.

And

like, clearly, I really think that person had booked that screening because they were like, who's going to come to like a 10 p.m.? It was like Thursday, December 29th. No way.
At 10 p.m.

And clearly was just like, oh, fuck, a bunch of hot violence came in. Bobby Dringer and Lindsey Weber and Fran Hoffner.
And we're like,

and she just said the N-word about every two or three months. And it intensified and it got clearer, and there was no deniability.

And just, I just, I probably should give that movie another shake just because

it really was.

Yeah, I'm like, also, it's

better watching it that way.

But I think, right. Like, my, my, my, uh, I, I don't know.
There was a certain like leniency I was granting the film for just like, well, they tried.

That the bigger a hit it became and the more people were eating it up, the more I was like, no, fuck that. This movie's a mess.
It's bad. Glenn Powell can't even save it.

I watched it on an iPhone at the gym and I was like, this is, first of all, it's a busted viewing experience to be watching that movie on a treadmill.

I was literally like, I might as well leave this gym so I can stop watching this movie right now. Yet, that feels like a movie that was basically designed to go straight to taxi TV.
Yes.

Like it should not be seen on a big screen alone. No.

It's bad. It's a bad movie.
You don't need to watch it again, David. You don't.
Okay, I won't do it. Maybe I'll watch it on my phone at the gym, though.
That's something.

So.

Driveaway dolls. Okay, we're here to discuss Driveaway Dolls, which I guess is the second Cohen, solo Cohen, right? Like Macbeth had already come out, or am I wrong? Macbeth has already come out.

We will have covered Macbeth. Yes.

The, of course, the tragedy of Macbeth. It was not funny.
From Joel Cohen. And I'm glad they put that in front of the title so I could adjust my expectations accordingly.

So the Cohens did not make a movie after Buster Scruggs in 2018. Then they break up.
Joel makes Macbeth. And Ethan, I don't know.
Ethan does his tricky

Lewis documentary. Which is bad.
It is very strange. It feels very high school film projects.
It's called Trump in Mind, and it's a documentary, a TV documentary, basically.

Or no, I guess it was at like the Cannes Film Festival. It played a Cannes 824 bought it, but then it went basically straight to streaming and VOD.

It's about Jerry Lee Lewis, who was a bit of a controversial figure. Wait, what did he do? Normal guy.
Normal things, always.

But David is... Married people at normal ages and stuff like that.
Yeah, but they were like related.

Oh, his balls of fire were a normal size.

It is wild for your Wikipedia personal life entry. Maya, you should aim for this.
Your Wikipedia personal life should begin.

Maya was married seven times, including bigamous marriages and a marriage with his underage cousin. No.

Oh, that's just the exact like compass of what not to do. It's always great when personal life has subsections.
Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Oh, man.
But you got to shout out, and this is something we discussed in our King Ralph episode. I love rock piano.
Sure. It's a kind of a lost form.
But you're being serious, right?

Yeah, I think it's so fun. I agree with you.
Would they bring it back?

That's it. I mean, that's stupid.

Put more stunts on stage. I want to see stunts with instruments on stage.
Have you considered doing this during any of your concerts? Rock piano? Working rock piano into the rock piano?

Not yet, but I mean, Ben is so enthusiastic about it. I might as well.
I mean, come on, this under the leg. Ben's doing under the leg.
It's good. It's good.
Well, what instruments do you play, Maya?

I know you play the ukulele. Yes.
That is, I mean, on my Wikipedia page, I'm sure there is mention of the ukulele. There are no subsections about my seven marriages yet.

Maya has owned seven ukulele, including a bigamous ukulele.

That is crazy. I play the ukulele.
I grew up playing like classical music and stuff, but I found the ukulele through like...

School and middle school, but then ended up learning more over YouTube and it became my job, which I'm grateful it happened, but I couldn't have predicted it not from a mile away. Yeah.

Apparently, according to your Wikipedia, you've played the cello and the trumpet as a classical musician. Yes.
I only did the trumpet to learn the Star Wars theme. That was literally the only reason.

Yeah. I love that big brass.

Do you ever just fire up the Star Wars theme just to get the first 10 seconds to just like fucking

be out the door? Yes. Yeah.

I do. Do you do it? Have you ever said it as a wake-up alarm? Yes.

That's how my dad would wake me up for school every day aggress it was it was like he was the biggest star wars nerd very sci-fi but it's also part of the reason why i never watched a cone brothers movie until drive away's doll drive away dolls was because this was the first movie that's horse that's why i think she's a great guest for this episode this is great it's it was nuts because i've only watched sci-fi your dad for oh i see like you didn't watch track i didn't watch track my parents watched track they were very into it but star wars and like lord of the rings were kind of my fantasy and like sci-fi whatever worlds that I was living in.

But my dad would show like anything that had to do with space to me and my brother. But like, because the Cohen brothers, and as I was

never. And I was doing my homework because I knew I would be doing the podcast with you guys.
And I had not watched many Cohen Brothers movies. My boyfriend.
I saw you logging. Thank you, Dad.

I saw some logs.

Some old Cohen's logs. Hey, I accredit that to my lovely boyfriend Jack who got me into it and he's a fan of the show.
But I

some people call you Messina because you'd be logging.

I'm trying to do a side version of this joke.

You're launching jokes. Thank you.
Yeah. Messina? Loggins and Messina.
They were a duo.

Kenny Loggins before he went solo. It was Loggins and Messina.
I didn't know that. The best part of the joke is when you explain it.

I've always said.

I've always said. Yes.

Jim Messina. He was from Buffalo Springfield.
There you go.

I think the best part of the joke is when you defend it.

Loggins and Messina? Yeah. What was their big song? Not just explain it, but defend that you were right.
There's multiple parts.

Let's see. It looks like Your Mama Don't Dance was one.
Well, let me put, you know what? Let me put him into Spotify and see what the top song is.

Did they do, am I wrong in thinking Logan's and Messina did Danny's song? Yes.

Even though they ain't got bunny. Yep.
I think that was Logan's end Messina. I think you're right.
I think Messina was in the picture at that point.

What happened to Danny?

You got to listen to the end of the song.

How's he doing?

You've naturally backed us up into this. Yeah.
But

met your lovely boyfriend. He came to the the Blank Shake R show.
We did introduce him. Oh, did he?

He did. Yeah.

It was a day when I was rocking the porch installation. You were not there.

And we had been messaging and I found out you were a listener. And he told me that he was a fan of the show.
The two of you started dating. He talked about the podcast to you.

And your response was, oh, that's the thing my parents listen to.

But I guess if all of you listen,

I should get into it. But I just brought this up to Ben and David as I think you are the first person we have ever heard of who's like, Yeah, blank check.

That's the thing my parents told me to listen to. My dad just loves podcasts about movies.
So you guys are like, obviously, one of the preeminent podcasts about movies. Thanks.
Yeah.

And so, shout out to your dad. Shout out to my dad.

My dad's name is Cameron. Shout out to Cameron.
Shout out to Cameron. Okay, he loves Star Wars.
He loves Star Wars. He grew up on Star Wars.
Exactly.

And grew up waking up to it, blaring over a speaker. And like, that was traumatic.

But truly because i think my dad was such a lover of like sci-fi and my mom she was like an english teacher most of my childhood and so she taught like english classes around like hitchcock movies and stuff like that so there was a real like gap between like a hitchcock and watching like star wars and then kind of what i discovered watching the cohen brothers movies this last like month was really just like oh that's why i never watched them was because it was just that's not what they're doing they're doing papers and yeah exactly so it was a lot of fun i had a lot of fun.

Which ones have you seen now? Okay. So I watched, we think I would need to pull up my letterbox.
Okay. Let me look at your letterbox.
Oh, thank you, Dorothy.

Because I'll say, we'd been messaging to try to find an episode to have you on, and there was some stuff next year that was like, oh, some of that might work.

And then we were looking for someone for driveway dolls. And I noticed you had a positive log.
You said to me, you were like, it was either you are one of the only or the only person with the like on

the movie. Possibly.
Certainly in the circle of people. I mean, your review was, I mean, yeah, this is a movie.
That was my most recent one. So I rewatched that on the rewatch.
Yeah, yeah.

You have seen No Country for Old Men.

You watched that. You watched Barton Fink.
You watched True Grit.

You watched Fargo.

You watched Raising Arizona. You watched The Hunger Games Catching Fire.
They directed that. They did.
Yeah.

I think that might be it, unless there's another one like that. But that's a lot of the Kind Caper ones, which are the interesting ones to watch

for this. And you watch all of them in the middle of a sandwich where the pieces of bread are you seeing driveway dolls two times in theaters.
Yep. Okay.
And then again, this week. And you saw it.

And I don't want to blow you up, but you did say you saw it because it had, and I quote, lesbians. Yes.
And it's because, I mean, like, I think I'm very interested. I identify as bisexual.

There are so many queer stories oftentimes in media where like, you know, I want to see a happy end for lesbians as much as the rest of the world.

And so I was curious because this is like, I don't know. I mean, there are, of course, lesbians and cars historically in cinema that you can watch on a screen, but I was curious about this one.

And I just, I have lived above an Alamo draft house when I was in New York at the time that this came out. And so I was just like, all right, let me see what's playing tonight.
And that one showed up.

And Margaret Qualy, I'm immediately sold to see what she's up to. And then I showed up and I was like, maybe I'm not immediately sold to see what she's up to.

I really like Cortman's. I like her.
I like Margaret Quauley. I think she went balls to the wall wall and did not care what the end result was.
I think that it just didn't land with me.

I also think, look, I think that is the approach the entire movie is taking.

And not to like pre-fight a straw man, but I anticipate this will be one of those episodes where a contingent of our listeners are like, what the fuck are they talking about? I get for liking.

Angry comments for giving this movie a mildly positive

letterbox rating

every time I log in, which is three times, which I do think is a lot of times to have seen this movie. That is wild.
This movie is a very breezy, it's not a tough wall. It's a wall, 76 minutes.

Exactly. It goes down.

It's short. You can't be pissed off.
It's a movie. You get to the end and you're like, that was, it had all the parts, you know? This, that was

this movie is very sloppy. Yeah.
In a way that is purposeful.

That is not me creating like an armor of defense of anything you think is bad about it is on on purpose but we'll talk about the intent behind this movie and i just think when i watched this movie which i've now seen twice i haven't caught up to david yet i saw it twice in theaters once at a press screening okay and then i took my friend molly to see it because your best friend my best friend molly who because she was like let's see a movie and it was kind of the most molly sort of appropriate movie out there it can be tough to find in a molly

this the the death of the theatrical comedy yes means there are

molly growing like she doesn't want to go see a superhero and she she doesn't want to see a horror movie. Yeah.
And that tends to be what's in theaters. Yeah.
Especially, and when did this come out?

This was February. Exactly, especially in those early months.
I think it was February of last. So I saw it again and I was like, yeah, still cute, in my opinion.

And I fired it up for this third viewing, and I was like, okay, I think I might be done with Driveway Dolls.

Not an angry way, but it's just sort of like, I think I've gone as deep as I can on this one. I was feeling very tired and congested last night.

I was supposed to go see weapons,

past and future guests Zach Krager.

Movie of the year. I refunded my preview night tickets because I was just like, I don't feel up for it.
I don't want to see weapons. I'm still in a bad bed mood.
And I got to watch Driveway Dolls.

And I got into bed. And sometimes.

Look, our job is very easy. Yes, it is.
But sometimes you're like, what's the fucking movie I have to watch tonight? Even if it's a movie I like. Yeah.

I'm like, I'm re-watching this and I got to watch it like closely to talk about tomorrow. And I put on Driveway Dolls and I'm like, I'm having a good time.
What the movie

it's not bad i'm having a good time and i'm still gonna get to sleep early exactly right like you can't be mad at that i feel like any movie that's like short enough that i can digest it like appropriately without being like dreading how long the watch time is i gotta give it a little credit yeah i certainly i get that some of this sounds like faint praise awards but i also think we'll talk about the intent of this movie which is like

A, I went to see this with my sister who is a little older than you, but generationally similar. And it was another like, we try to find movies that we can go see together.
Yeah.

She likes movies more than maybe Molly does, but also there's a lot of stuff she doesn't want to see. And I was like, let's see Driveway Dolls.
And she was like, yeah, that looks fun.

Like girls' road trip comedy. Yeah, exactly.
And then I think it was maybe not until we got into the theater that she was like, Ethan Cohen directed this.

I thought she knew that was part of the sales pitch.

But she was like, well, that's incongruous with what I thought I was going to see, which is I thought this was a movie made by like a 25 year old,

like someone just out of film school.

It does feel like that, I think, in a lot of the ways, which is kind of part of its charm is like, I think that the wackiness of it feels, it's obviously very intentionally supposed to be sloppy.

And I think that that is why I liked aspects of it. But it's also, I feel like it's Achilles' heel a little bit in a lot of ways.
We will crack open the dossier momentarily, but I think about

Connor Ralph, our friend on our Lady Killers episode made, kept making the joke how Lady Killers, what is basically consensus viewed as their worst film, is the first movie in which the Cohens both got credited as director because of weird DGA roles.

Okay, I heard about this. And because you guys, did you talk about it on another episode? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes.

So they don't start actually being co-credited as directors until Lady Killers. And every slam of Lady Killers, Connor said, but you have to remember, this is the debut film of a new filmmaking team.

So for a first film, it's pretty good.

And I do feel like, despite all of Ethan Cohen's experience and pedigree, this is like a debut film of a new

team and a new register, right? Like, this is him trying to do something, even though it has a lot of shared DNA, with especially the Cohen Crime Caper comedies.

It is very much the start of a new thing

that is continued, and we will see how long it goes on for, or if roads rediverge later,

David. Yes, this episode of Blank Check is brought to you by Square.
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You're going to be dealing with some square right there. When we do live shows, we use square to sell our merchandise.
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It makes it.

We use square. Yeah.
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David, do you want to crack open the dossier? Yeah, so drive away dolls. So, yeah, so it is, you're right.
It is Ethan Cohen's feature filmmaking debut in a way, but it's not really.

He'd actually made all those other movies. But

the point I want to make here is he has been very upfront the entire time of like, she co-directed this movie with me. Trash.
She cannot get that credit because

the dga she's not a member and i'm already pre-established as part of another team but much like the early coins films it is written by both of them produced by both of them directed by him edited by her but he's like we did everything together tricia cook tricia cook grew up in southern california in a town called la mirada

But since no one knows it, she usually says she's from Whittier, which is where Richard Nixon is from, of course. Got it.

Born in a somewhat conservative community,

but around the age of 15 or 16, she realized that she didn't like boys. And then she attended USC as a theater major and

then went to grad school at NYU, where it's easier to frequent a lesbian bar, perhaps. Yes.
And date other women. And she tapped into queer scenes and experienced her queerness in full ways.

And at NYU, she

remembers that Joel and Ethan came to screen Raising Arizona. And she remembers that she and her friends were not interested.
What'd they go to see and say? Koyana Scotsi. Boom.

Which, of course, is a movie that I love very much and that we've covered on this show. This is a little different from Raising Arizona.
Less dialogue. A little bit less talky.

But after her graduation, she sought a job in the camera department on Miller's Crossing, which was the third Cohen Brothers movie. She's like, I wasn't a big Cohen Brothers fan, but I needed a job.

At NYU, she'd trained as an editor. But it's the kind of classic.
You're out of film school. You've trained a little bit in everything.
You're looking for any position you can get.

She gets the camera position and has the boldness to sort of make the play to get into the editing room.

And because, right, she's working on, once she's in there, she's like, if you have any room, it's like an apprentice in the cutting room. And the Cohens are like, yeah, we'll make some room for you.

And she works as an assistant editor on Barton Fink and Hudsucker Proxy. She's an associate editor on Fargo.
She's a co-editor on the Big Lebowski. Oh, brother, where art thou? A man who wasn't there.

Of course, the Coens are essentially their own editors at that point under the pseudonym Roderick James.

And soon after they met, Ethan expressed romantic interest

in Tricia Cook. And she told him, I'm a lesbian.
I'm not interested.

And that's a story. They never got married or made a film together.
No, they got married in 1993.

Their marriage is non-traditional. They're very upfront about it.

She has a partner. Ethan has another partner.
They've been in this dynamic for over 20 years. They have two kids together.

She said that it was like she was very upfront with him. They continued being friends.
And then, at some point, to her surprise, she started developing romantic feelings.

But obviously, it is a multifaceted thing. Ethan's line that jumped out to me is he said he applies the Alfred E.
Newman philosophy to it, which is what me worried. That is correct.

That is how he explains his marriage. They have a son named Buster

Scruggs and a daughter named Dusty.

And so she slowed down. Once they had kids, she raised the kids a little bit, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Started writing more.

And

essentially, you know, she made, whatever. She's sort of like got like a bit of Cohen's.

She obviously like works with them and all that. Like she's got a little bit of the Cohen's in her, but she's got other interests that they don't really explore.

Not a lot of queer characters in Cohen brothers movies, period, right? I mean, Miller's Crossing has like,

you know, closeted.

They're a lot of coded closeted.

But yes, like it's not, it's not territory they've really dipped their feet in too much. No, it's another quote in the dossier that Ethan says, I'm dumb and straight and she's fun and queer.
Right.

And Joel and I could never make a movie like this because we're both dumb and straight. She worked on a documentary film called Where the Girls Are about the Dinoshore Weekend in Palm Springs.

It's a short. I've been trying to find out.
I've never seen it.

She came up with the idea for Drive Away Dykes with her friend Mara Molina when they were drinking at a bar. In the late 90s.
Early 2000s, but yes. Yeah.
Wow. That's really all they had.

But this screenplay, she

starts working on it with Ethan. They liked the title.
They were like, we'll just do like an exploitation movie, right? Like we'll just do like, what kind of movie would have this title?

It's also really funny where he was like in interviews, he was like, we want to make our like queer homages to like Roger Corman movies, even though I've never, neither of us have seen a Roger Corman movie.

And then Trish Cook's like, I've seen Roger Corman movies, uh, or not Roger Corman, I'm sorry, um, Russ Meyer.

And then uh, she was like, But I think in a way, they're more homages to like uh Doris Wishman.

Uh, and Ethan's like, even though we've never seen Doris Wishman, and she's like, I've seen Doris Wishman, the Jamie character in the film, who is played, of course, by Margaret Cauley, is sort of Trish's idealized, like, I wish I could be this liberated and sort of free-spirited and, you know, go to the bar and just like connect with people and like be carefree and have sex all the time.

But it's not exactly, it's not her at all, really. It's more of a sort of like, you know, fantasy hero.
And then Marion is the more extreme projection, the opposite direction of the self-hear.

This feels like an idio movie. Right.
Yeah.

So they write this thing together. They write it probably in a similar way to the Cohen's brothers, where they're just like in a room talking to each other, typing, whatever.

Yes. I think they write very similarly.
And then they put on a ship.

I never, I never like trained as a writer. It's not how I primarily think of myself, but I had all these ideas and characters that were things that Ethan would never come up with himself.

And he's so helpful with the dialogue and the structure. They write this together and it's sort of talked about in a way very similar to their process of writing Barton Fink to get them out of the

writer's block on Miller's Crossing. of Ethan being like, it's nice to be able to go off and do these side things.
And like Ethan's written fucking poetry in one act.

I read a short story collection with the ear on the cover.

He does a lot of stuff like this that feels like, I just want to get it out, work things through the system without the same pressure and seriousness of the movies. They have this script.

They pitch it to Allison Anders, who's sort of like a fairly legendary indie director of the 90s, I feel.

Like less known these days, maybe, but Gas Food Lodging was like a big early 90s indie

film about women. Yeah.

I think she is

a few narrative filmmakers to get a MacArthur Genius grant. Wow.
If I am not. She did get a MacArthur Genius grant.
Yeah. I'll tell you that much.
They pitch it to her. They call it a naughty comedy.

It is announced. Yes.
Allison Anders is into it. Yeah.

To your point, Maya, a big sort of birthing point for this movie

is that Tricia Cook is seeing like a tiny wave of lesbian stories being made by lesbian lesbian filmmakers in the 90s. And she's like, those movies all have some sense of self-importance.

They turn to be right, like sort of more tragic or issues drama or even something like, but I'm a cheerleader. Yeah.

Needs to be a movie that is like about coming out, about the self-identification, and is a comedy that is like so over cranked to sell that kind of thing.

And she was like, where is like the trashy like 50s B movie where that's just the stated reality, where that is not the conflict of the film in any way?

It is just the starting point for the world and the characters. The other thing is she's like going to NYU in the 90s, where there are a lot of lesbian bars.

There's a filmmaker, Alina Street, who I've worked with before, who's been doing this thing called the Lesbian Bar Project for the last couple of years.

That's a documentary series about how much they have disappeared. Yeah.
Where I think it's like low double digits for the entire country now.

And in the 90s and the early 2000s there were a lot is one of the reasons why even though it took 20 years to make this film she decided we should still set it in 1999 aside from like cell phone tech reasons she was like it actually just rings false to be like two women can make a road trip itinerary based on multiple lesbian bars in every town.

I did not know that. And that was one of the things that I was thinking about while I was watching the movie was like immediately you're hit with the 1999 timestamp at the very beginning.

And I felt like while watching it, I at least, because I didn't know about the the fact that there is such a lack of lesbian bars now presently in the United States. 1935 or something.

And I live near one of them in Nashville. Shout out lipstick lounge.
But I like didn't know that.

And so it makes a lot more sense, I think, to have it grounded in the understanding that she had too, of like a road trip planned around that being a primary function of why they were going to certain locations.

But for 1999, given the timestamp, I felt like while I was watching, I was like, what is indicative about this time period that's like present in the movie?

Just because because I don't know for me, it felt like it was hard to be like, What about this? Is specifically in the 90s?

I mean, whenever I see that, I'm like, first and foremost, I assume they don't want to have to deal with cell phones. Yeah, that's perfect.
Right, but but the bar thing makes more sense.

Totally, and I also think it's when she writes the script, and it's when it's like this. I wish this movie could exist now.
Exactly. Right.
Yeah.

And even when they're trying to like do it with Alison Anders and everything, they always talked about they couldn't get the financing because it was like

it wasn't tragic enough. It wasn't your,

you know, Mysterious Skin, a movie they love, which is sort of made around that time, Greg Iraqi. Now, Greg Iraqi made,

you know, more flippant films before then. Very small.
But a tiny budget. Mysterious Skin was a small budget movie.
They wanted a much bigger budget.

Like I'm sure Driveaway Dolls at this version of it costs, what do you think? They say like 20? Yeah, 15, 20 million dollars. Probably not that much then, but still they wanted

a lot too much more. And 2006 or 2005 is when Dirty Shame comes out, which is the last time he's gotten a movie made.
And that was the only time he's gotten a budget like that in the modern era.

And he is like, I'd love to make another movie, but I'm not going to make a movie for $300,000. I'm fucking 70.

So I think there was this feeling of like, even when they could get big stars attached, the studio didn't want to give them that amount of money for something that seemed kind of like a lark.

And I'm sure there were stars who were like hesitant to do it. It just felt like circumstantially they, this is not the time that we'll accept this film.

Now, the boys make Hail Caesar and Buster Scruggs, their last two movies together. But to be clear, they put this movie on a shelf, essentially.
They just have there.

They're like, we have two and a half scripts is how they described it that we just kind of put in a drawer and said, maybe the kids will find them. Honey Don't, which is.

Honey Don't is the second script. And there's some supposedly a Go Beavers.

It is called Go Beavers. Okay, cool.
It might be a college horror movie. Fine.
Okay. But yes.

Now.

They would just mention, oh, there's this trilogy of lesbian genre films. Yes.

Honey Don't, which is obviously by the time this is coming out, has been released and forgotten by society, is more of like a hard-boiled detective story.

It still has comedy in it, but it is not as like light as this movie.

And yeah,

I mean, it's still funny. It's still whatever.
You'll see it probably. Maybe not.
Maybe I'll skip that one. We're doing it on the podcast.
We might just skip it anyway. Tune in next week.

And but so so ethan says hail caesar and buster scruggs were very hard movies to make heavy productions you know like not dramatically so but just like you know they're big complicated people both of those movies are basically eight movies that's the thing he talked about is like buster scruggs felt like separate productions there's a bunch of stories that are not connected that had to keep resetting hail caesar has all caesar has all the movies within the movies right and also like they true grit not too shortly before that he was like we did too many westerns we did too many environmental things He always sort of talked about it.

It was just like, I felt burnt out. It was starting to feel more like a job than a joy.
I don't want to get stuck in that rut. I need some time away.

Joel sort of felt similarly, but maybe not as extreme as me. There was nothing dramatic.
It's been very clear that nothing dramatic has happened. They see each other all the time.

It's not like there is a schism exactly. It's more that Ethan got really

exhausted. Right.

Of the actual wear of the production and the pressures and the money and all this sort of stuff.

Now, Joel goes off to make Macbeth, which is like is so clearly what happens to Ethan as well, which is like Francis McDormand wanted to do that.

He wanted to do it too, but like it's a project that's generating with her. She's sort of challenging him to do something like that.

Ethan would never have wanted to do it. They were both very clear.
Like, you know, so basically

they're going to do projects with their wives that feel like very deep collaborations of the thing they would never do on their own or with their brother. Right.

But the timeline is like this sort of whisper, much like the Soderberg retirement of like people are saying they might take a break then they're being upfront in interviews right and they're just like we're just tired Ethan in particular is burned out he wants some space then Joel and Francis announce Macbeth and you're like okay cool interesting I guess that's the kind of thing that Joel does while Ethan is on hiatus then Ethan announces the Jerry Lee Lewis movie which comes about strangely as like their friend T-Bone Burnett had been working on some larger project that included a lot of archival footage that wasn't just about Jerry Lee Lewis, but never quite came together.

And he's just like, we have all this material. I know you're a big fan of Jerry Lee Lewis, his personal life, not his music.

Ethan,

to be clear, said the opposite thing.

Do you want to do something with this? And they were like, in deep lockdown pandemic, I think what happened to a lot of

filmmakers who were like, I'm getting tired. I'm slowing down.
Then there's like 18 months where they're doing nothing and they're like, fuck. Yeah.
What if I never make anything ever again?

So they start editing this during the lockdown and are like, this kind of got like Tricia and I are doing this together, working with pre-existing material. It's just sort of a construction project.

Movies admittedly very sloppy, but they're like, it got us kind of back into the rhythm of doing it. And so coming out of lockdown, they're suddenly like, do we try to get those scripts made?

So even though Ethan was the one who had sort of kickstarted the retirement or at least the hiatus, now suddenly it's like, we sold two movies and we're going to shoot them back to back.

So they decided to keep it a period piece because of course they could have spruced it up, I suppose.

When it was prepped in the early 2000s, oh, it's just shocking to learn that Holly Hunter was considered for a role. Doesn't say that.
As was Selma Blair, Christina Applegate, Chloe Savini.

I mean, we're just sort of naming actresses. People who make a lot of sense.
Indie movies and stuff.

When the project was revived, they cast Geraldine Bisswanathan pretty much right away based on Blockers, which is a movie she's very funny in. You know what she's very funny in?

Literally every movie she has. She's basically the most luminous

person in the world. I think she is with her.
She is one of those people who I just think is always funny without ever feeling like she's pushing.

Also, I never get over her accent.

She's a babe. No, but I'm saying that she's Australian.
I know. She's got a great accent.
She has the most immaculate American accent. Wow.

That's Australian power. They're always doing all the accents, but she's great in pretty much everything I've ever seen her in.

But it is interesting that they cast her in this role off of blockers because in blockers, she's sort of like the horny, chaotic one. And in this one, she's the straight-laced, you know, fuss budget.

But so she did audition for,

yeah, she auditioned for Marion. Yeah, whatever.
I don't know. Yeah,

I thought the research threw me. I thought it was, she was, yeah.
Margaret Quawley also auditioned for Marion. Okay.
Oh. But they loved Geraldine.
So she tried again for Jamie

and she got the part. Wow.
Crazy.

Jamie really finding gems here. Here's what What are you going to do? They all

auditioned and received the role. Beanie Feldstein,

who's very funny in this movie, I think.

Great. Yeah.

You know, she had a great time making it. Matt Damon shows up for a day.
Ethan had a great quote about Beanie Feldstein. What's this?

Which he said, there's nothing better than hiring a great actor and just telling them to play angry. Right.

And I'm like, that is so much of the Cohen's interest is someone they think is a skilled actor and then writing like pages of just furious dialogue. I mean, that's so fun.
It's always fun. Yeah.

They bring in

Miley Cyrus and are like, so I don't know if you've heard of Cynthia Plastercaster, who is basically who she's playing. And she's like, oh, I'm very worried about Cynthia Plastercaster.

And we were like, okay, great. So then she got it.
But yeah, I think Miley and Damon basically are just doing like a day. Same Patriot Pascal similarly, but they made his head.
Yes.

They probably got a lot of Domingo for a week or so. Yeah.
Right. I mean, I don't know.
Right. Everyone's just.
Damon Pascal above the title, front and center on the poster.

Miley Cyrus uncredited. Ben, you had not seen this movie before.
No. I assumed you are familiar with the Cynthia Plastercaster legend, or did you not know about it before this movie?

So the Miley Cyrus character is based on this real woman. The film is dedicated to her.
Yes, she died in credit. She was dying in 2022.
Yes. Dedicated to Cynthia Plastercaster, 1947-2022.

We remember is the dedication at the end of the the film but she was this like infamous uh groupie

uh expert in in very strong culture

person where her signature was every rock star she slept with she would take a cast of their erect penis yeah frank and i'm frank zappa gave her a lot of money but never got his dick cast he really liked what she was doing but he never uh he never did it uh himself he's a real dang ass freak um famously jimi hendrix jimi hendrix is maybe her most famous i remember that maybe jim Morrison, too.

Yep. Jim Morrison got his dick out for somebody.
Are you sure? That guy?

But it's like... I feel like every story about Jim Morrison is like, and then he got the concert ended early because he fucking got his dick out.
He took his dad.

That's just all he had to do. Their dick wanted to do a jazz set.

Rock piano. Probably.
Yes. Oh, my God.

I believe there's a famous museum in Iceland that is like a museum of penises, and I believe some of her most famous works are housed there. What do you mean?

It's called the Iceland Phallological Museum, and it is the world's largest display of penises. Have you been there, Maya? No, I haven't been there, David, but I have heard of it.

Yeah, is the Rasputin jar there? I don't know. There's the infamous Rasputin jar.
I don't think it's there. Okay.
I'll let you guess what's in the jar. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. It is funny that they took so fucking long to kill Rasputin, right? Like the whole thing where there's like they shot him, they threw him in the river, they stabbed him.

He was like, I'm still alive. And they were like, Jesus Christ.
And he's finally dead. And they were like, get his dick.

They're like pushing him into the incinerator. Hold on.
Hold on. I got a jar.

I think this is a very clever thing

to reverse engineer a noir caper around

like Cynthia Plastercaster style.

The twist of this movie that is hidden in the marketing is that the entire conspiracy around this movie is that a conservative politician is worried that his reputation could be ruined by

a mold that exists of his penis from

the one-time quote that he smoked marijuana.

And the idea of this briefcase that is five men whose reputations could be ruined as like conservative ball busters by knowing that they had promiscuous youths, I think is fun.

I just think it's like a fun twist on the like, what's in the suitcase thing. It's perfect.
To be like, it's the goofiest and most embarrassing thing that these guys are so in their heads about.

It's the weirdest form of blackmail

that i've seen in a story absolutely yeah but it also speaks to the sort of mission statement of this movie which is just like this is silly this movie is about people shooting each other over a briefcase full of dicks it's literally a briefcase full of dicks uh the kinsey institute also has uh many of her casts just fy i'm just really curious we're located academic voice here yeah

well it's funny because it's like i feel like this was this kind of weird underground whim of hers. And then culture and society shifted.

And by the 2000s, museums were like, can we get some of your dicks? Also, so many of these dicks died at 27 that it's like, we didn't know we were going to have them around for RIP dicks.

Anyway, so they made the movie together. Trish is basically co-director of the movie in every way but name because of, as we've said, DJA stuff.
Ethan is a DJA member.

He can't exactly be joining a new collaboration without a lot of work.

So, yeah, he really liked making this movie. To quote Ethan Cohen, as someone says in John Carpenter's The Thing, I'm all better now.

I think it's Wilfred Brimley right before he turns into a raving space monster.

It's the thing they kept saying was they were both feeling so run down and worn out that they were like, if we're going to make a movie again, we need to have fun.

And this is a movie that's clearly just people being like, eh, let's have some fun.

Yeah. No, I understand it is very

frustrating and perhaps perplexing to some people who are used to the very meticulous, intentional tight craft of the Cohen Brothers movies they know to watch a movie that has like every fucking iMovie special effect edit in it and like basically like fart sound effects and feels kind of like, I wouldn't say indifferently constructed, but feels loose.

But he very much like talks about this. It's his other stuff he does, like these books.

Like he'll do these Knights of One Act plays, his poetry, these things where it's clear, like, I need to let off steam and that stuff doesn't get as much spotlight on it.

And this is because it's a movie, more

studied, you know, in comparison to his canon.

The, you know, the crew, you know, Ari Wenger, Wenger? Wenger. Oh, yes.

You know, is the DP, incredibly respected photographer who did Power of the Academy Award nominee um you know like it's not carter burwell of course shows up to do the score like it's not like still skipped leaves say but a lot of their key collaborators are are different on this yeah um it's like half and half they make it clear that like deacons probably would not have operated the camera this way had they you know had they used him right uh they shot it in pittsburgh uh even though obviously it's a road trip movie uh the many of the bars uh in the film are inspired by real-life bars that Cook enjoyed, like Sugar and Spice, a bar in Brooklyn that doesn't exist anymore called Caddy Shack,

The Cubby Hole, which is a famous. That's one of the last ones still standing in New York.
Yeah, well, Ginger's course in Park Slope is the one I have been to, and I love that bar.

David put his hands over his heart. I've been going there since I used to live next door to it

in like 2008. And one thing you might not have noticed about this film, it's a little different from other Cone Brothers movies or whatever, is it's filled with lesbian sex.
Yes.

To quote Trisha Cook, I'm very sex positive. I think there's a lot of embarrassment around sex and shame.

And if you have too much sex, you're considered a slut, but let's just embrace love and sex, especially if it's good humor and not crass, though I'm not against crassness. Yes.
I will also say this.

I would say this film is not exactly crass, but it is, you know, you know, it's juvenile in good fun ways. It's silly.

I also think a lot of embarrassment and shame around sex is how sex is almost exclusively portrayed in the films of Joel and Ethan Cohen working together.

You know, like sex is usually something that is like embarrassing or is used as like a weapon or something that feels tortured.

It's just, it is very odd to watch this movie introduce characters like in like states of pure ecstasy, which is not a thing that's your usual entry point into the world of like Cohen Brothers characters.

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Let's talk about the film Driveway Dolls. Yes.
It's about a couple of girls.

Jamie and

Marion. We open.

I've said their names many times. Pedro Pascal.
We open with Pedro Pascal. In a gay bar doing full kind of like noir.

Wait, is it a gay bar or is he just in a regular bar, but he's a a gay man which is why i thought it flips later on in the movie i thought oh you might be right yeah you're right i was really thrown because i've never seen that guy in a movie before who is he i don't know what's he up to can we talk about because this is basically the start of the two-year run of pedro pascal being in everything He was

yes, he's in a lot of things in 2024 alone. In 2025, he's taken a break and only been in three movies that came out within a month of each other or whatever.

And then next year, of course, he will be in the Mandalorian Krogu all over it, I assume. Yes, all in it.
He's inside.

And then he is maybe either the most important Avenger or has five minutes in Avengers Doomsday, whatever they settle on for that one.

I just think there was this barrage of him getting announced attached to every single thing. Yeah.
And even the amount of stuff he's dropped out of, like the aforementioned weapons, right? Yeah.

Because his dance cart got too full. It was going to be the Brolyn role.
I assume. I find it funny.

And it started with this film that I kept being like, how does he have the time to do all these movies? And then other than Fantastic Four, the answer to every single one of those is he's not in his

He has been. It's true.
Like Materialist, he's very much the third leader at least screen time. And I liked him a lot in that, but like Freaky Tales, the movie that only I have seen.

I know, I watched it. It's good, right? I thought it was okay.
It bounced off me a little bit, but I liked it okay. I think he's really good.
He's good in it. I think his section's kind of the best.

It is. Yes.
But that's a pure omnibus movie. Yeah, that's he's only in 20 minutes of it.
Maya, what we did you like him in Materialists? I liked him in Materialists.

I think that I have like a lukewarm take about Pedro Pascal.

I feel like, I think maybe my take about Pedro Pascal is that I have a lukewarm feeling towards Pedro Pascal's performances in some of his movies. I really like him.

I think he is like fun to watch on screens, but I would say.

the people in the movies that he has been in have been people that I've been more interested in watching. Maya, I completely agree with you and i don't think i was

been good in a movie period um in a long

okay

and when i and i don't mean bad like maybe all right he hasn't been great if that makes sense like i think he's usually pretty good but when i ask people this question and i have been doing it because he's on everyone's mind of what is pedro pascal's greatest performance almost everyone says game of thrones which i think is the right answer but you're kind of like right five episodes he's still kind of dining out on that 10 years who the fuck was he on that?

He was, of course.

Did you watch Game of Thrones? Yeah, I did. I just have no memory.

Period. He played just

generally. Like every time.
He played Oberon Martel, the Red Viper. He's the guy who shows up in what is it, season three? From Dorn being like, you killed my fucking, you know, wife.

Like, I am, sorry, sister, not wife.

You know, I have a big spear. I want to have a fucking.
You don't remember him? And he's like, he's bisexual. He's got a paramour.
He's like, he's he's coming in. Do you care about Game of Thrones?

I haven't watched it. All right.
Well, I'm the only Game of Thrones fan here, I guess. I just remember.

I remember my brother James, who was very much like, who is this fucking guy? Who is this guy? Is this guy going to be a big movie star? Yeah. And he was already at that point.
Because what is he?

He's 50 now. Like, so he was already probably 40.
Yep. And like, he'd been bumming around in movies for years, not getting famous.

You know, being in stuff. Yes.
And then suddenly it was like he was like great to have as your like third guy, right? Like Great Wall, Kingsman 2.

I mean, Kingsman 2 is like, right, Great Wall, he's the second guy. Kingsman 2 is, we couldn't get Shanning Tatum for the full time.
So Kingsman's part.

Triple Frontier, he's like kind of the third guy in that. Right.
He does a couple seasons of Narcos.

You know, Golden Woman.

84, he's the villain. Beal Street, he's got a good small part, but it's sort of like...
He's always totally solid.

It's sort of like he's like high-level character actor with matinee looks and charisma.

I was talking about this with our buddy Mike Carlson of podcast The Ride, where he was just like, am I crazy in thinking he is the rare case of someone who exploded where you can't point to, and that's the moment where it happened?

Where it's like, exactly what you're saying. Game of Thrones, everyone's like, this guy's good.
Then there's like six years of him showing up and doing sturdy work.

And then in like 2019, everyone decided, I think he's the guy now.

But there was not the role that made everyone jump to him. I haven't seen the Cage movie, which I know everyone says he's fun in, the unbearable weight of masks.

He's really good in that, but I know that's sort of a jokey supporting role.

And I thought he was good in Gladiator 2, but that's a movie that kind of doesn't know what to do with it.

And that seems like the inverse of the Kingsman thing of maybe he wasn't available as much as they wanted. That's exactly what happened with that movie because he,

I mean, you know, spoiler dies. And I was told by someone, like, initially he didn't die.
And then they were like, oh, he's, he's got to go. Pedro's now kind of a Sean B

because of scheduling.

I mean, The Bubble is the worst movie ever made. Oh, God.

Don't talk about that. Right.
It's 20. Freaky Tales Drive Away Dolls, The Uninvited, Wild Robot, which he's very good in.
He's probably.

He's good in Wild Robot. That's the movie that fucking Walton Goggins'

wife wrote and directed that has every actor in it because of

being friends. He hosts SNL.
He does the SNL 50th. He does the fucking Spike Jones AirPods commercial.
Eddington. the last.
I think he's very well deployed in Eddington.

Like, I think that's a good performance, but it's not, again, it's not the crux of the movie in a way. Could we unpack the AirPods 4 commercial?

Just talk about some of our favorite standouts. You want to do a full like Denim Invasion on that? I think we might actually, yeah.
You know what? We should just do a separate act.

I feel like that's the moment when that commercial starts playing. That's the moment where everyone's like, okay, too much.
Yes. You can't also be in ads.

And it's also because since everyone loves him, and the weird answer to this is like, I think he's become more of a star because of press tours than performance. He's lovable.
He's good on SNL.

He's charismatic.

Yeah, et cetera. He's got a great mustache.
He does.

He's a good-looking guy. I think he's fine on The Last of Us, but I think he was not well cast.
And whatever, that shows just kind of what.

I think Eddington and Materialist cast him very well because in both cases, he's kind of a fake movie star in them. That's what I like about it, right?

Is I'm like, this is him acknowledging that the movie is about the idea of of him being the guy and he is good at showing how much of a kind of facade it is yeah i think fantastic four is like a pretty brutal miscasting he's he's oddly cast and or the movie isn't working to like fit the character around him or i was you know what i mean when they announced him i like that movie a lot more than you did but i cannot deny that like the movie's biggest issue in a way is that he is not the right motor for that vehicle or yeah or just change,

cast him and then, yeah, just change the part a little bit to, I don't know. He feels uncomfortable in that movie.
He does.

That movie also is just kind of like universe. If part of it is that that's the only movie that's asked him to like really be the guy at the center

in a certain way that is maybe not what he's good at doing.

Driveaway Dolls did. He's at the center of this movie.
For 90 seconds.

I mean, this is the thing. When he does stuff like this, I'm like, I love this guy.
It's cool that he showed up for a day and did this.

And used his cachet. Like, that's the part of him I really like.
Yeah. And I also think, like, in 90 seconds with almost no dialogue, you're like, he's having fun here.

You're like, this guy is like making comedic choices. I don't want to oversell this performance, but I'm just like, I thought it was good.
He's enjoying the broadness of it.

Yeah, in Cork. Like, it's good.
He's doing business. But this guy is basically chased down a dark alley with a briefcase and then killed.
And then we hard cut to Kunalingus. Is that correct?

Yeah, I hardcut to a sex scene. Yes.
And Jamie, our character, our hero Jamie, played by Margaret Qualey,

is

a free-spirited lady in Philadelphia who has

a girlfriend, Beanie Feldstina Suki, but their relationship is essentially imploding because Jamie sleeps around a lot, I guess. She's in the middle of a hookup.
Right.

And

with a cop? Is that what is the

cop?

This is a free.

Yeah, but I remember the the like, right, all the cop paraphernalia. Yes, yes, right.
I love a classic answering machine goes off

while you're home. Give you some exposition about the character and how their message is.
Another reason for this movie to be set in 1999.

You know, that it's just like a tape goes like beep. I mean, and there's no way to turn it off.
The fucking Big Lebowski, the dude is not in. It is a good way to, yeah, to set out the, yeah.

Have you seen Big Lebowski? I haven't. Wow.
Wow. I know.
I guess Big Lebowski is the second most sexual film in the canon behind this. And yet, right, but what's so funny.

They're all overwhelmed by sex. Yeah, but in Big Lebowski, I mean, I just, I love that movie, but like, it's like Julianne Moore being like, you know, so sexual at him.
And he's just like, uh-huh.

It's funny. And even his sexual fantasies, he has no agents.

But,

you know, Jamie's a free spirit and she barely wears clothes and she has a great time. And then she's got her friend.
She has the best look. Go ahead.
Her character. I just, I love the cutoff sleeves.

Yeah. I love the haircut.

It's, it's kind of like rocker chick.

Like all of her fits throughout. I'm just like, damn, I want to cut my sleeves off.
You can, man. Ah, I don't know.
It's not quite the gun show.

You're working on it. I'm working on it.
You're working on it. Yeah.
I just want to call out: Petra Pascal is credited at the end of this film as penis collector.

I think I saw that when I watched the credits for the first time, and I laughed.

There are a lot of characters in the movie that don't have proper names. You know, it's the goon, the goon, the chief penis collector.

But we're introduced to Marian

at her office job, being sort of hit on by a wet blanket dude. She is literally buttoned down.

She dresses like office Austin Powers. Yes,

she's very overdressed um

she's i think her intro scene is very funny just just her manner and the way of shutting the guy down and all that i i think if she has uh a fastball a special move uh she is better at doing high energy deadpan than almost anyone else you know she's working you know she's in stuff but What can we do to make her America's sweetheart or whatever?

Geraldine. To go back to earlier point, she is very much a star where you're like,

We don't make the movies that help her, yeah, you know. And when she like took over the role in Thunderbolts that Io vacated, you're sort of just like, I guess that is good for her.

Like, just anything to get her more expensive

that role was bigger than I thought it was going to be. When you hear, like, oh, she's the assistant, you're like, well, that sounds like I like that she's got like flirtation with Sebastian Stan.

At least they're letting her not just be a functionary.

She's going to be the songbird, right? Isn't that the idea? Yeah,

Anthony Kumaya the idea that you're all being just wanted to be like songbird? That was a lot of talking coming at me for just a second. Songbird.
She might be songbird. I actually, I do love the MCU.

I fell off.

Did you grow up with the MCU? I did. Like I had the encyclopedias.
I still have the encyclopedias for like were you a comics person or was movie

with universe the entry box. Okay, mostly movies.
I think like comics kind of came later, but I love the MCU.

I went and saw Thunderbolt just because it was like the first movie movie in a long time that I had heard like, yeah, it's different than what they'd been doing because I got tired.

It's different from what they have been doing, which was bad movies. Yes, exactly.
Did you see Fantastic Four? I didn't yet, but it's on my list. I have to do it.
I did my homework doing this guy.

Yeah. The music.

No, I look, I like that movie. And yep, I think you're better off watching seven Cohen Brothers movies in a month.
I had a great time, man. I was just rushing into the theater.
I'm not going to argue.

But yeah, my Geraldine question, right? There's a 10 years ago, hey, you're going to play Mel in this movie, but we have plans for you to be songbird in three more movies. That's exciting.
Who knows?

Now it's kind of like, oh, you're going to be songbird. And it's like, yeah, in what? Like, what do you actually have going on, guys? To what end? Yeah.
She works a lot. She does.

And I feel like she's. She's very funny in Ohio.

She made with Molly Gordon, who I think she's friends with. Yes.

She's, you know, she's great. I just want her to be in more stuff.
Like Broken Hearts Gallery was meant to be a theatrical movie. Stunk.
Sorry.

But I remembered the the reviews at the time being like, when is someone going to write a good vehicle for

that energy? Rom, let's go, baby. And it was pretty bad.
And she's so good in this.

And I do think she's like the best reason to see this is it is the best Geraldine Viswanathan vehicle we have gotten so far. Absolutely.
She is very much the heart of the movie. Yeah.

Even though it's sort of quality driving the story. Like the emotional arc of the movie is entirely her.
She's so big.

It's like so hard to have the Grumpy Sunshine Burton Ernie vibe of like Geraldine's character. Miriam is such a wet blanket.
She's tough. She's a tough tough age.

That's what I mean about the high energy deadpan thing. You know, like she's still just

feel like she exists in this world that is pitched at such a high register. Yeah.

David's hugging baby joy. Is there a point you want to make?

Margaret's character, Margaret Colli's character, whose name, of course, and I'm checking now is Jamie.

I keep forgetting the name.

It's like, yes, does she have an arc? Her arc is that she maybe maybe learns to be 5% less much, right? Like, it's just like, hey, Jamie, dial it down slightly. Sometimes you go a little overboy.

She is, you know, she represents my favorite Ethan Cohen thing, which is the character who takes 18 paragraphs to get across a one-sentence idea. She reminds me of Walter in Big Lebowski, but like.

in a positive energy way instead of a negative energy way. Yeah.

Not just in that she won't shut the fuck up, but also in that like she will start doing a plan without even checking with anyone like she'll fucking graffiti the car like she like she'll just sort of do stuff where you're like why would you do that that's even like actively harmful to what we're doing those characters are often a little evil or at least malicious and dark and she's not like she pretends her lady killers and all these people like i mean he's well-intentioned but um uh nick cage and raising arizona who's similarly kind of this like mischievous i mean the the i've had it with love i know bards and troubadours are high on it but i don't believe it's relevant to the modern 20th, soon-to-be 21st century lesbian.

That kind of like sentence that like goes off into side directions within that.

It's quite a challenge to love an actor.

And her arc is that she comes to realize that maybe she actually wants emotional underpinnings in her relationships with people.

I feel like, I don't know, I wasn't convinced by the end when you get to like, yeah. It's the big question.
Yeah.

Because this is a movie essentially about Jamie and Marion falling in love and finding happiness with each other.

It is two women of the same orientation who share a friend group, who've known each other a long time, but have never been romantic or sexual with each other, going on this road trip that is sort of driven by this kind of super bad, we got to get you laid tonight.

Right.

Initially,

Jamie's like, okay. forget me.
You need to be getting laid

to Marion. And Marion's like, I don't want to deal with that.
I just want to read Flaubert or whatever.

But there's a sort of surprising catching feeling

thing of

they never have seen each other that way. Then it's sort of like, do we need to do this just as means to an end? And then have we actually fallen into something deeper?

I think Geraldine plays that perfectly.

I think maybe part of what we're getting at is that like the scenes where you need to be sold that Kuali is going through the same kind of or her own parallel transformation

are still her just monologuing seemingly unaffected by what any other character is doing. Yeah.

Would you want to marry Jamie? Not marry. Fine.
Date Jamie. Like be in a serious relationship with Jamie.
No.

No. I don't think I would.
No, I think it'd be so annoying. I would want to hang out with Jamie.
Jamie's hanging more. Great hang.
Absolutely.

Someone to be crazy with and then be like, okay, Jamie, I'll see you next week.

Is there a slightly better version of this script where in the last 20 minutes, Jamie becomes a little more pulled back and Marian starts to be the one. Maybe, you know, like, yes, instead, sell that.

More if there's a transference of energy rather than them meeting a little bit towards the middle.

I don't think so. Go ahead, Maya.
Well, I mean, like, I was struggling so much while watching this movie because I feel like there's kind of.

When you get to the end of the movie, I was like, that's a fine movie, but like, it feels like there's something missing, but there's not inherently anything on paper that feels like there's like actually anything missing.

No. But when you look at the two main characters, I think there's like, you have Geraldine giving like an excellent performance to a wet blanket character who feels like is playing it.

She's playing it so straight, the whole movie with like the wackiness going on around her where Margaret Qualey character, Jamie, is like so zany and out there and kind of feels like, obviously they're thrown into this, the midst of something that they were not supposed to be involved in.

And that's the whole point. But I think like the performance from Qualey feels like it.

kind of does Jamie's character, makes it a little bit too left of center, but then Geraldine's character is such a wet blanket to the point that, like, you know, Miriam just kind of doesn't feel like she fits into the zaniness of like Jamie.

It feels like it's kind of like two things dancing around each other that never kind of meet up. And I think Miriam gets to the middle much more than Jamie.
I totally get the midpoint of them. Right.

And it's like, maybe that is the,

I don't know. Does this movie not have complete

character arcs? No, in a way.

And I, you know, the Cohens love in their work together, avoiding the obvious outcome and the kind of like clean cycle and whatever.

But when this movie is aiming for far less profound things, you're like, do I want the emotional catharsis of kind of the obvious thing happening at the end?

And I do feel like you want the scene at the end where when they're with the two goons, Marion is suddenly able to like fast talk her way around them the way Jamie has before.

Like that kind of thing does feel like it would be satisfying. Basically, Miriam wants to go visit her aunt.
Right. The purpose, they're both bummed out.
Jamie's bored.

Jamie's bored and just got dumped and kicked out of her house by Suki. And she knows about this.

The notion of the driveway, that there's a car that needs to be gotten from one drop-off point to another. They will pay you money.
A one-way rental, but right, you're basically being paid for it.

Right. But basically, I feel like this does not exist anymore in any way.
No, but it's a very good setup for a movie. Another reason

for a movie in the year it is. It's the same premise as blank check.
The film blank check.

They walk into the business one minute before the person,

you know, is supposed to get the thing, like the sort of criminal enterprise that's been agreed upon.

In blank check, it's you will be handed a million dollars or whatever as part of some mob payoff or whatever the fuck is going on in that movie. I already forgot.

The kid shows up a minute before, and so on. You know, there it goes.
In this one, they show up. We want to go to Tallahassee and Curly, best performance of the movie, obviously.

Bill Camp completely crushing it. Has just gotten off the phone.
He's like, okay, you're the people taking the special, you know, delivery to Tallahassee. Take the doctor.

They're also being so argumentative and unclear with him on the phone.

Like this sort of like, do we need to fucking repeat it for you again thing that when someone comes in 15 seconds later and says Tallahassee, he's just so frazzled by it. Joey Slotnick and C.J.

Wilson as two Coney heavy, you know, bickering.

I saw C.J. Wilson in recently.
Well, C.J. Wilson, I feel like, is

an exceptional theater actor. Yes, does a lot of Lonergan stuff.
Yes. Doesn't do a lot of movies at all or TV.
I feel like I saw him show up young in something and had that kind of shock.

Were you watching I mean, young? He's turned in Manchester. Yeah, he is in those.

No, you know what it was. I was watching.
What were you watching? I was re-watching Netflix's The Characters. Do you remember that?

Well, yeah, sure. Like when the comedians had like the.
Yeah. Yeah, because Tim Robinson had one.
Right. That's what I think you should leave comes out of.

But that 10 years ago, they were like, let's give character comedians the ability to make their own half-hour special and can be whatever format they want.

Tim Robinson's one has

the gambling guy. With the lady luck.
Lady? Have you seen this? I haven't seen this. Okay, so Tim Robinson.
He's playing a guy who's like a, you know, is he just like a classic Sinatra.

Well, he's like, hey, I'm a gambler. Lady Luck.
And he's like, put it all on, like, whatever. And he rolls the double.
Three minutes.

I lost all my money.

It's like three minutes of wind up. It's like,

they do like Google's Copa Cabana tracking shot of him knowing everyone at the club and being awesome. And then the first time he bets money, he's like,

And he just keeps doubling down on it. But this show was like a big flop, but that's

that his episode was so liked by comedy people

that like Lonely Island, some other folks were like, we'll back you up in doing a Netflix show that no one will ever watch. And that became a phenomenon.
Anyway, he showed up in that.

But this is a lot of the stuff that I love in Cohen movies of like these side characters who feel like they are living off entire stories that are happening just to the side.

The whole curly thing of just like this character getting a little more time and investment than any other movie would give him.

But also this like odd side narrative to the goons who are similarly going through a weird evil version of the main spot. It's a funny idea.
Right.

They have their own personal, they don't need to hook up, but they do have some dynamic they need to enjoy. But they have hooked up.
Right. That's the blow up at the end.
I know.

It's like these two guys are stuck in this car together, like this Fargo dynamic yelling at each other.

And the one guy, the classic Cohen's like big guy and little guy thing, yelling at the other guy for not being masculine enough, right? And sort of pushing this like sexuality and this like machismo.

And at the end, you realize they like hooked up and both are really freaked out about it and defensive and they shoot each other. Joey Slotnick

has come up on this podcast because Alex Ross Perry is kind of obsessed with him. He was a frequent Craig Kilbourne punchline,

which it's a classic Alex Ross Perry. You don't remember that? Everyone remembers that.
That was the biggest thing on TV in the 90s. I can't believe you don't remember Joey Slotnick.

You weren't watching Kilbourne every day. Everyone watched Craig Kilbourne every day.
Exceptional impersonation of Alex Ross Perry interrogating you about something.

The only time to take a shower is 5 p.m. You're a lunatic if you take a shower today.
That is the big argument I had with Alex once.

You weren't even at the table. I just remember that.
No, but I still repeat that to other people to explain, Alex. I just sit down and I'm just going to show you how to do it.

Empirically, there was only one shower. I'm like, what? He's like, when do you shower? And I'm like, in the morning after I wake up.
And he's like, insane. Insane.

When when do you shower maya you don't have to answer that question you're a night shower person i'm a night shower person joey slotnick used to have big buffonte curly hair and i feel like it was like a definitive part of his like on screen like when you would spot him in a movie you'd be like oh yeah joey slotnick there he is i believe did he not play larry in the three stooges tv movie there's a very austere austere Three Stooges TV movie produced by Mil Gibson that I think he played Larry in because he looks so much like Larry Fine.

You are thinking of somebody else because Evan Handler, the great bald actor Evan Handler,

played him. I feel like you know what I'm thinking of? What are you thinking? Joey Slotnick has been doing fucking Marks Brothers on stage.
Oh, interesting. He does Groucho.
Okay.

Oh, maybe he's good.

I think he did a stage duck soup.

Okay.

That sounds like something I wouldn't want to see. I'm going to be honest with you.

But I think he also played.

I hate to bring this up. It's so silly, but I must bring it up.

Steve Wozniak, inventor of Apple. Pirates of Silicon Valley.
In the TV movie, The Pirates of Silicon Valley, in which Noah Wiley played Steve Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall played Bill Gates. Yes.

I just had to say that. That was a big TV movie.
It had billboards all over the place at a time where TV movies were not Legion.

And I just remember walking by that as a kid and being like, God, the casting could never get better than this. Something about it felt faded

in the late 90s to be like Wiley and Michael Hall. Absolutely.
Anyway, but it's just fun to see him here. He's an actor I hadn't thought about much, and he shows up as a grouchy hitman.

I thought he was pretty good. So he and C.J.
Wilson are there. You've got Coleman Domingo as the chief, who's, I guess, the chief of this operation.

And he wears a suit and he has this kind of, I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but he's fairly arresting voice. Delivers lines in kind of a like melodic and interesting way.

He's very much a guy I could listen to say anything. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

And then who else is in the mix? I mean, Bill Camp, we shouted out. And Beanie Feldstein is the grumpy ex-girlfriend who's a cop.

That's kind of it. Coleman Domingo kind of has quietly been doing the Pedro Pascal thing, but it's totally working.
But I love him. I love anything.

But it's similar to think if that guy was around forever. I, for so long, have been like, this is one of the best actors on the planet.
And it felt like it's finally like growing and he's catching on.

This guy quietly without like leading man movie star pressure, has gotten two consecutive best actor nominations.

He has, you know, like this guy works perfectly as character actor, supporting lead, lead,

doing every genre, every type of thing. He's he's very, very good in Sing Sing.
I did not like Rustin

much at all, but I was happy when he got the Oscar Nom because it felt like a felt like this is a nice anointment. And then Sing Sing, I was like, oh, it's great.

He's been nominated for something good that he is great at. Right.
Yeah.

Yeah. So they get the, they, they get to go on their trip to Florida.
Right. They're, they got this carpet car just for fun.

They're not, they're not aware that they're transporting a briefcase of dildos, right? That's what's in the car. As well as Pedro Pascal's

box head

with on ice.

Why is that included? I

like what is the plausible plot reason to put a head in there? Actually, bring me his head. Yeah.
I think it's a classic. Just classic.
Just Just classic. Yeah.
Okay.

There's the part where she mentions.

I'm not sure I buy that, but okay. There's the part where she mentions like, you know, in her very flowery way, the like, don't look in the box.
I saw a movie where they keep asking what's in the box.

And when you look inside, something's terrible. That's meant to be seven, right? Yeah, I guess so.
I mean, that's what I think of when I think of a head in a box. Yeah.

It's just funny to think of like Ethan Cohen sitting down and being like, I'm going to make a seven reference when their movies don't really reference other pop culture, especially not contemporaries?

Not usually. Baby Joey's going to sit on my shoulder.
Okay, baby Joey is sitting on David's shoulder. So they go on a trip.

And of course, boring old Marion just wants to drive down the interstate and fun Jamie wants to go to every single like lesbian bar she can think of and see the world's largest Dixie Cup.

Is that what it is? Yep. Among other things.

And they're going to Tallahassee, Florida, which I've never been to, but I do like that

Marion is like, it has Spanish moss or whatever. And Miami is trashy.
They got to get away from Miami. Right.
Right.

And,

you know,

there's not too much plot. There's just happening.
This movie is truly 76 minutes long before the credits roll. And it has

long interstitials. Like it is a thing a lot of people threw out of like, how is it 76 and feels padded? Yeah.
Because multiple, like, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

empowers-esque psychedelic interludes. Crazy.
Yes.

There's a universe in which you're like,

I am loath to say this because I am all for the power of the movies and the movie as an art form.

But there's almost a universe in which you're like, hey, Ethan and Tricia Cook, you have like a pile of scripts and like side notes. Maybe make this like an anthology series.

Maybe do like a couple 45 minutes. Interesting.
You know?

We were talking about in one of our group texts there was the the 90s showtime series where they got a bunch of directors to remake like roger corman road pictures like dante and uh robert rodriguez and stuff you could like see them thematically fitting together more in that kind of way that having been said i don't feel like this movie is like Jesus Christ, an hour and 15 minutes and they're running out of steam.

No, it's not. I do think if it was a minute longer, I would shoot myself in in the head, though.
I don't disagree. Yes, like, it definitely needs to be done when it's wrapping up.

Can we talk about the editor? You're not like, I want more. Can we talk about the editor? Yes, we can.
Tricia Cook

is a little animated sequence really quick that has no connection to anything. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, and we're back. Call forwards to

the state.

of hallucination that Matt Damon's character was in when his dick was being cast.

I start to see Miley Cyrus appear in those before her actual appearance. Yeah.
That is the ostensible purpose. I mean,

I guess I did not read that. It's why you need to watch the movie three times, Ben.
It's a naughty text. I see.
Okay. It's a naughty layered text.

Okay. Well, we had that interlude, and here's how we're going to cut back to the main conversation.

That was me doing my impression of some of the transitions in this movie. That was really good.
That was super good. Yeah.

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You ever get scammed? Once a week. Flim flammed? Long conned.
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Uh, sure. Yeah, that happens to me all the time.
Why do you ask? Why do I ask? Because it's just, it's, it's a, it's a plague of our modern world. It's a problem.
Some people just accept it. Mm-hmm.

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Uh, this movie is co-directed by an editor

who is seemingly enjoying breaking every rule of respectable editing

um yes trisha cook edited it after working for many years as the assistant editor to the cohens right it's not like trisha cook had never edited any before

no this is an experienced person so i think there's a thoughtfulness to how the movie is being presented to us in terms of like this thing is rickety it's barely standing on its two feet like it's silly you're supposed to get that it's silly and i do get that it's so.

They make it very clear. Yes, I think, and I think that's fine.
I like the idea that it's ramshackle and that it's this car that's going to fall apart in a minute's notice. And that's like playful.

That's just trying stuff. Yeah.

I do understand perhaps some cinema goers sitting down and being like, you know, I paid like $18.

I hired a baby city.

I mean. Is this an affront to get it? You didn't want to just like think about some of this stuff like for a second.

Yes. But I do think that's that's the atmosphere of the film and you gotta but like not expecting this movie to have like a great show awesome job

vibe imagine

this is the first cohen brother movie i mean ever seen but i think that's ideal it was awesome right you're like oh so they're just guys who like

i literally was like oh so this is their deal like they're just wacky silly guys putting whatever they want in a movie and like truly i walked in i used my movie pass that movie cost me zero it was a last minute decision to go and and see DriveAway Dolls.

I walked out being like, yeah, I liked it. Like, it's great.
This movie is a perfect argument for movie going subscription programs. Yes.
Like, you're right, David.

If, if I recommend it to someone who does not see movies often to pay $18 just to see this, but I'm like, if you're spending $20 a month, make Driveway Dolls one of your two or three in February.

Yeah. When the pickings are slim.
Oh, God. The pickings are so slim when this movie came out, too.
Like, I remember feeling like, oh, well, I guess this is it. Yeah.
A little bit. I, I have this.

And you will see, like, what, what's that old tweet of like, oh, fuck, let me find the tweet. You, you say your thought, I'm going to find the tweet.

I have this theory, and this movie falls into this, right? But it's this sort of old master thing.

We were talking about this in one of our group texts the other day of like old filmmakers who contend. when people are like, why did you go to digital? Why did you like change your filmmaking style?

And they're like, I think this looks as good as any of my films. And you're like, your movies used to look immaculate.

And now you're old and people are offering you less money and you just want to get it over with quickly there's a lot of that vibe where it's just like i don't want to belabor this in the same way and you need to judge those movies differently of course it doesn't mean they're better than their best films but you're like this is the prism of like this person's at a stage in their life where they have something they want to say but maybe they're not as obsessive about the craft and the construction.

And I think when Megalopolis was coming out and there was this feeling of like, hopefully with normal editing is going to return to the main main stage and he's ready to make like, you know, it's been decades, but he's going to make another apocalypse now, another godfather.

David's hugging Joey very tightly. And then people were alarmed when they saw the trailer and they were like, why does it look like this? Why is it like

all of this shit? And you're like, this guy has not made a normal looking movie in 15 years. Right.

And I think there's something like late period Wachowski's has a lot of this as well, like senseate.

And what I think threw a lot of people off in Matrix Resurrections where especially people who like early in their career are so obsessive about like technical innovation and craft and visual storytelling and like perfect construction and whatever.

And then you get to a point where it's like, congratulations, you have made perfect movies.

You have made movies that not only will like go down to history forever, but people will study as every hair on this head is like perfect. How do you challenge yourself at that point? You don't.

You make driveway dolls.

I really think there is a point of like the only way I can actually push myself and challenge myself now is to sort of try to make something incorrectly on purpose. Absolutely.

Which isn't to say make a bad movie on purpose, but like I followed all of the rules and even evolved them and I got to the end of that.

And then I transmuted it onto lateral genre exercises and I did that as well.

What more is there to do other than to sit down and go, well, everyone knows a movie shouldn't be edited like this, this, but what if I try it? The tweet I'm referencing is by Mike Ginn,

G-I-N-N, not sure that's his name. And here's the tweet.
I think about it all the time. It's a very famous tweet.

Why must a movie be good? Is it not enough to sit somewhere dark and see a beautiful face? Huge?

And that is how I feel a little bit about Driveway Dolls. I'm like, look at all these pretty people.

Yeah. It's driving around, taking their tops off, being silly.
Like, everyone's having fun.

I sat in a room and there was a big machine behind me that projected a bunch of light onto a screen in front of my face, and then colors moved around. That's exactly what I was here for.

Nothing more, nothing less.

So, yes. Okay, what are some of the things? In this very short movie, it's basically the halfway point.

Like, the 30-minute mark is when they hook up, which I also like that is not something that is held to the very end. end.
It's sort of like they go to a makeout party with a soccer team.

High school soccer players.

Yes, yes and they make out a little too old to be able to sleep over right they're in a basement and everyone's making out and then someone blows a whistle and everyone moves one to the right or whatever

i chuckle too i think the whole thing is funny and uh obviously this is what right gets them to make out because they

the you know they have to move along And they're like, oh, fuck. We don't, you know, Paul's kind of like, this is no big deal.
It doesn't mean anything.

And then there's the moment where Geraldine pushes away and is just tearfully says please don't bring someone back to the motel room tonight because we've already set up this thing of like she's going to pick up a new partner for that night in every single town while viswanathan sits in the fucking lobby of this shitty motel and the european reading a novel right reading henry james yeah um right of course it's henry james because that's the joke henry james's driveway dykes at the end um so that happens they do hook up they found the head at some point she runs away and right collie kind of recognizes, oh, I think maybe an emotional thing happened that I need to reckon with.

Right. But then she gets picked up by the cops.

Yes. Geraldine does.
Geraldine gets picked up by the cops for what, like vagrancy? Because she's like walking around in the darkness.

I don't even know. Yes.
But basically, they get split up for that night, is the point.

And you have the flashback sequence to her sort of like activation moment, which I also helps make her feel like more of a character, even though these are not like super complicated scenes, that there is just just like a kind of uh viewpoint uh and perspective on it um and then

yes i the arresting thing is just that they get split up for the night but then discover back to like the police officer yes she's arrested for me mouthy that's right

discover the dildos

uh call up beanie feldstein to try to get her to help them because now they realize we're being chased. We're caught up in something bad.

yes and then they make it to tallahassee the greatest kind of course quicker than you think what's the greatest moment the goons going back to kill curly yes and beanie felt seen going to check in on him and this kind of like cruelty of the universe cohen's move moment in a movie that otherwise is kind of devoid of that yes of he is lying dying his final breaths and he takes all the sheets of paper around him and tries to throw them up just to get her attention before she leaves the window and it doesn't happen the paper falls back on his chair his chest and he says, no one's going to save Curly.

Won't somebody save him? Won't Curly saw. Do you think he dies or do you think he's just in pain?

I think he's just in pain. My first time I watched this, my letterbox review was rumor has it, Curly is still on the floor.
Right. So I like to believe he's still with us.

I think he's still doing fine. There's no Driveaway Dolls wiki yet, so I can't check in on Curly's individual character entry.
They need to come up with a name for what they're calling these movies.

Do you know what I'm saying? Because then we could make a bigger wiki for the universe. I assume they're not interconnected because we already have two qualities.
Correct. They are not.
Right.

Honey Don't has nothing to do with Driveway Dolls, except that it also feels like it was made

quickly

and has a bunch of famous people in it, which is fun, but right, being silly.

Driveway Dolls. Yeah, so they go to Tallahassee.
They go to this hotel. There's a lot.

I realized on my third watch, as I've now, you know, become an expert in this movie. I'm the mayor of Driveway Dolls.
Like they get to the hotel kind of fast.

And like, then we are in the last act of the movie for almost half of the movie, of this short movie. But that's

almost dropping your check. They are.
They are. Yeah.

I do like the decision that it's not about them getting to the hookup, that it's like there's the makeout, then there's the sort of like we have to reckon with these emotions.

The dinner at the hotel, which is Geraldine doing this, like

very overwritten,

what are you saying? I'm saying I want to try having emotions for once. Right.
I want to have emotional sex rather than just fun.

So both, I think we should sleep together, that I'm the person to get you out of your rut, but also maybe me living this life without letting myself get catch feelings for any people is depriving myself of something greater.

Falls asleep, wakes up.

Margot Cauley going sicko mode.

Yes, I was going to say, I was going to bring this up earlier where it's like Kwally's or Jamie's emotional depth or her evolution where she's like, I simply had to jerk off.

I could not contain myself. There's a whole suitcase of dildos.
I cannot wait 20 fucking minutes for you to wake up or whatever. It's not only that, but she plays that scene.

Physically, it feels like a cartoon character with their finger in a tongue.

Fuck it, right? Like, they're just feeling like her blade and like that she can't even stop to say, sorry.

Like, I couldn't contain myself, that she has to continue doing it that it feels like she's waking up next to someone in bed having a seizure like she's in danger yeah yeah yes but from that moment on in the movie they're like together yeah

and they start having more emotional sex yeah right like the shower sex it's like it's all shot in this kind of like not looney tunes way it's all very gentle and lovely it's fine and qually's been doing the making her own sidecasts backups there's a really funny moment in the shower where Geraldine is like, I would like to, and you think she's going to say something emotional?

I would like to also use the dildo. Yes.

Right. Everything is still very like point of fact with her.

And I like the fucking concierge at the hotel a lot. Yeah.
His name is Josh Fitter. Flitter.
No, he's the bellboy at the end who finds the dildo. Oh, that's right.

So, okay, so who plays the concierge? Because he is funny.

He's funny, and I just like it a lot as like the movie is setting you up to think that this guy is going to be like, well, I never about everything.

No, we accept the rainbow card. He just loves everything.
He's just super cordial. Yeah.

I'm trying to find his name or I'm trying to find the actor. What do we think his name is? I'm going to find it.
Okay. While we're looking, did we talk about the goons and their whole like sort of

we touched on it.

Just the game of them, sort of the one being like, I appreciate talking to people. You're so aggressive.

I think it's fun

with the two goons visiting the previous locations that they've come from, interacting with the cheerleaders is really fun. That was good.
They, you know, misdirect them.

They end up in this bar way out of the way from

Tallahassee.

Oh, yeah, that is a funny one. What is that?

And then it just is like a guy who's like, starts talking to them about nothing, and then it's done, and then it never comes back.

Well, then he distracts the other guys. Yeah.

John Menchion is that actor.

I'm so glad I looked up the conquistador desk clerk. Oh, here he is.
His name is Braxton McCullough. Braxton McCullough? What a fucking name.
He's only, it's his first role. Yeah, really?

Seems like he only did like short films before that. Correct.
Yeah, but he's very good. He's got a funny face.
Yeah.

But this is like getting to this point of just like, there is no scene in this movie that I don't find pleasant to watch.

Exactly. Totally.

It can be a bit of a chore on your third viewing maybe but it's it's pleasant um and it's fun and it's bubbly and it you know what get off my back three and a half stars on that are bucks can we talk my uh

comments on each blog it's like three and a half stars come on buddy this is why i i don't do the stars right i basically i will only give a star rating if it's a one or a five right

And then otherwise, I'm like, it's binary heart or no heart. And heart is basically liked it.
Yeah. Yeah.
I do the same thing. I used to actually give star ratings.

And then I was like, I think I don't know what I'm talking about when I give a movie like two stars, but if I like it, I'll give it a like. If I don't put stars, it doesn't mean it's a bad movie.

It's just like not worth being like, wow. I just never want the quibbling of like 3.5.
That's the same rating you gave this. Yes.
I love that.

So like 3.5 is either like the glowing review of like, well, you're rating this way too high. Or somebody's like, it's fine.
Right. It's just, yeah.

But I like giving star ratings precisely for this reason. You fuck with people,

and then I like that I'm constantly adjusting everything in my letterbox. Like, no, nothing is finite.
I'm always thinking about, like, okay, how's that movie settled with me?

Or how did it do on rewatch or whatever? Like, and I love fiddling with stuff. And I'll see now because people pay attention to me on letterbox.
I'm not bragging.

People being like, you took it down to a four and a half. What does it mean? What does it mean? I'm like, I don't know.
I just liked it a little.

Or I'll take a look at my year list and I'll be like,

maybe nothing's actually really reached kind of top for me. Right.
And like, actually, the stuff I like the most is has a bit of a ceiling on it or something. I don't know.
Yeah. I'm having fun.

No, I like doing that. But that's why I'm like, I can walk out of Jurassic World Rebirth and confidently be like one star.
No, you didn't like that one.

You know, and I can like re-watch Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and be like five, no question. Anything in between, I just kind of don't want to fucking deal with it.
Distortious Rex.

You think he's going to show up in something else? Did you see jurassic world rebirth i didn't oh no because it's as i hear a one-star movie it's a it's a it's a it's a bit of a

yeah it's a bit of a pooper yeah it's not a chore it's more than it's worse than a chore for sure i found it very boring and i did too there was a

in my in my superman patreon episode where i i went off in the rant the thing i forgot to mention was there was a moment where i felt like the movie was ending and i was like oh thank god at least it's almost over that feels right right and then i remembered oh, the big mutant dinosaur that they show you at the very beginning was all over the marketing

has not come back yet. And I turned to my friend and like defeat.
And I was like, oh, fuck. There's another half hour.

Another half hour. And walking out of that movie, I would have been like, that was three hours on the nugget.
And it's like 206 with credits. It feels, it feels longer.

Spikes. Do you like Jurassic Park? I do.
I love Jurassic Park. Yeah.
Cool.

This is what I want to dig into a little more. Okay.
Your, your Cohen's experience with now watching them later. Yes.

What has been your experience in watching a handful of the classics now, and especially the Crime Capers? Yeah. Really fun.

I, of course, have to mention my boyfriend has been a really good guide because he knew that I would be doing the Drive Away Dolls episode, and he is well versed in the Cohen's universe.

And so he was like, I think these are kind of the closest we can get based off of what their filmography is to what Driveaway Dolls ended up being.

And so we watched a lot of the the Crime Capers, but I truly like, every time we watched a new one, I was like, these guys love law enforcement being present somewhere in a movie.

Like it's very, but that is, that is it. But I, I, I had so much fun with it.

And I think that like, it was more fun for me to view these movies with fresh eyes at an adult age than like being, I don't know, introduced to them when I was younger and not necessarily getting to like understand the full scope of the characters or the worlds that were being crafted or something.

Yeah. I also, I think, you know, the Cohen's films are for me so much about like trying to find a way to live in a like cruel, merciless world that lacks meaning.

Like, they are not completely nihilistic because the characters are fighting to find something through that understanding of the lack of meaning.

But this is one of their few movies where it is like,

and then they ended up happily ever after. That

were like things can can be defeated?

Like the cleanness of, oh, Matt Damon is going to be doing the handoff at the same time that Beanie Feldstein is there with the cat and she can shoot him and his whole corruption can be blown open in a newspaper cover story that no one questions.

The newspaper cover, I want to find it because it is so funny. Senator Shot Outside of Lesbian Bar or something.
I want to read every single moment of it, every single line of it, but yes.

Verbatim, please. Yeah.
Let me find it. Okay.
As David looks.

keep talking everybody uh gotta sign into that i was watching the very limited special features on this blu-ray which are basically three three minute or under youtube featurettes they're like so bad and apathetic but one of them has like the three main actresses talking and beanie feldstein talked a lot about like the canon of the cohen brothers cop is so big it is such an honor to be like a cop in a movie exactly written by ethan cohen but then it's also so funny where you're like a lot of times it is like these deeply corrupt immoral immoral characters, or it is Marge Gunderson, who is like the ultimate moral good.

Yes.

One of the purest characters that has ever existed in film and feels like almost this rebuke to not just real cops, but also the way cops are usually depicted in movies.

But that is a character who is like working hard to like fight for some sense of light for like the value of like the three cent stamp, but also she can't solve shit.

And like, this is going to keep happening and it's happened before. You know, all she can say is like, why all this for a little bit of money?

And then in this, the stakes are sort of like, even when people get murdered, it is not landing with any actual weight. Even I would say the deaths in ladykillers feel more dramatic than this.

It's definitely some pretty lighthearted death. Senator Shot Outside Lesbian Bar, subhead.
Channel. Channel.
Oh, that's his last name, I guess, was carrying human head plaster penises.

I can explain this for coming.

It's a good show.

It's great. but the idea that they could like catch him all in one and be like

here's here's the weapon here's the motive here's the backstory he can explain wow peacock trying to start up love hurts for me that's what happened to me when i watched drive away dolls and i was like that's the craziest segue into trying to watch that does feel like a reach for peacock have you seen love hurts i've not seen love the kukwan uh actioner i have heard it is quite poor i have also heard this i have many friends who went into the film with very open hearts and were just like i want this to be right exactly

what it's being sold as

and they were like it so fails to deliver on the bare minimum of that idea that's a bummer i like him i just ruined for him i mean look he's the main villain in zootopia 2 i'm sorry i'm checking the title here zootopia snake in the form of a two

Told my daughter recently, I alerted her to her

there will be a Zootopia 2. Yeah.
And that we will be seeing it, I assume. Yeah.

She was excited. But now she's all in on Spider-Man right now.
Oh, wow. Watching

the Amazing Friends.

The baby ones. Is she watching the one with the dinosaurs now? There's one with dinosaurs.
Jesus Christ. There's a new one.
What does that mean? Where the Spidey and Friends team up with dinosaurs.

What? There's a

Spider-Man Rex and a green goblin Rex and whatever. The multiverse is getting too wide.
Yeah. We need a right.
We need a doomsday for

the Spidey friends. There's an Iron Man one, too, that I think.
There is. Okay.
And my daughter, he's popped up and my daughter's like, who's that robot?

And I'm like, it's hard to explain, Iron Man, I guess. This guy's got conservative eyes.

He's getting radicalized by baby Iron Man. He loves Hulk, or as she calls him, Hoke.
Hoke. Hoke.
Hoke. So it sounds like she's saying Hook

because he's green and angry. That's sweet.
Is that her favorite character? Yeah, she talks about him the most. I think she's kind of transfixed by how he's like kind of a good guy, but seems angry.

Yeah.

He'll be angry and be good he's he's like a toddler yes that's true that's right you're well i mean i would sometimes you just hulk out in the spidey friends verse he seems pretty gentle to me like he's not so much like ah my rage like but he's a little angrier david because i can already sense our listeners gripping their armrests needing the follow-up question Does Rolk exist anywhere in the baby animation?

I have not seen him yet, but of course I haven't visited the White House.

And maybe he's there.

He's a little baby president. Did you see that interview with Harrison Ford? Because he's doing interviews.
What's he for shrinking, I guess, Emmy campaigning or whatever?

Where they were like, has Feige gotten you to like

play Red Hulk again? Nope. Nope.
Did you see Brave New World, Maya?

No, I didn't. Okay.
So maybe not very patriotic. Rude often.
I know, guys.

Pay your respects to the office. I'm so sorry.
The position still means something.

It's been enough time that I feel like I can do a bit of a Brave New World spoiler here.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Please.

They spoiled the movie in the trailers.

I mean, basically. Yes.
Here's a non-spoiler spoiler. He does not die in that film.
Okay. Right.

And the movie called The Thunderbolts that has already now come out in the comics, that is a team led by that character, hence why they are called the Thunderbolts.

It's like he's doing the bad guy Avengers and he's the Nick Fury for the bad guy.

He's kind of the Amanda Waller. Red Hulk is? Well, Thunderbolt Raw.

That guy before he became Red Hulk, before when he was just Hulk's girlfriend's dad.

Uh-huh.

So everyone was like, oh, William Hulk dies.

They hire one of the biggest movie stars of all time. He's going to play General Ross.
And they announce a Thunderbolts movie, multi-picture contract for Harrison Ford.

And then I kept on hearing from people.

He dies at the end of Captain America. He has nothing to do with Thunderbolts.
They got him for one movie. He's never coming back.

And I i was like that's a weird choice liv tyler was photographed filming brave new world 18 years ago somehow was filmed doing that before she had been in armageddon or the lord of the rings shooting a funeral scene right paparazzi photos of her at a cemetery right

seemingly mourning his death her father's death right and it's a big plot point in the movie that he keeps trying to call her oh my daughter won't pick up how are you doing she hates i'm a rollk you guys are good at that thank you yeah i've been thinking about him a lot in that movie.

At the end of the movie, he need my pills. Yes.
At the end of the movie, he does not die. No.
In a sequence that feels like it was being reshot as you're watching it. Whoa.
It's not so good.

And then he goes to supervillain jail. Yeah.
And Liv Tyler goes to visit him in jail. And that's the emotional closure of the movie.

Liv Tyler in a performance that absolutely was not done by a physical person on a set. It is very clear that she was like, I can't do the reshoot.

If you can't rework that cemetery footage, you got to fucking construct it some other way.

And I don't understand why they end that movie with him being alive if they don't ever want to, they know specifically to use him again. And he's like, I don't want to fucking do that shit again.

And this probably were like, who knows? Maybe we can just have like computer Red Hulk smash someone.

Ben, just put like Rolk, like spoiler alerts in the edit points in and out of this segment. Roll.
You definitely

let's play the box office game for Driveway Dolls. Do we want to say any other things about Driveway Dolls? I don't have anything more to say on Driveaway Dolls, I don't think.
It's fun.

Of the coins you've watched now, which is your favorite? My favorite is probably,

oh man, I loved Fargo and I loved

No Country for Old Men. Those are good ones.

Those ones do be hitting.

Man, yeah, they're all good. It would be funny if you were like, Driveaway Dolls, I think.
Driveaway Dolls Five Stars with a like.

But those are both a bag of money ruins everyone's life movies, right? That are like spelled by like goes great for them. Right.
Right. You're right.
Well, it's bag of dicks.

Bag of dicks goes great for them. Ends up perfectly.
Need more movies like that.

Yeah.

But I liked it. It's fine.

I think people just got, I think people, it was marketed for a group of individuals that were showing up expecting something or not marketed, but I think the people that were expecting what it ended up being were obviously going to be disappointed.

Whereas people who have never seen a Cohen joint could walk in and walk away away feeling like they were happy with what they were doing. I think that's a great point.

And I think understandably the folks at Universal were like, we have a movie that was co-directed by a Cohen brother.

We should push that really hard, which maybe doesn't do the movie any favors in its framing.

I also just think there is this impatience of like, they are arguably amongst the best filmmakers on the planet. And people are like, are they really never going to mix something together again?

And it's like, okay, Ethan and Trisha did another one. And now, like, Joel and Francis have announced another one.
And then, like, can they get back together after this? There's right.

There's rumors that they are, the brothers are working on like a horror movie together. They have talked about it.
As of a year ago, they were writing it. Yes, there is a thing they want to do.

And I do kind of feel like,

not that this movie is ever going to be reclaimed in a serious way, but I think some of the intensity around like what the fuck is this will be removed if within the next five years, we get the Cohens doing their thing together again.

Yeah. And then it'll just be like, this was that weird exploratory period.
Yeah. Let him have some fun.
You know? I agree with that. Yeah.
I agree with that, Maya. Why, you know, again,

like, it's not right. It's not like he made.

sort of self-important drivel that i would really have a problem that would make me miserable right exactly it's like oh this is what you were sort of like and of course we've talked about it already probably and we will talk about it again but like it was so interesting to watch Joel go off and make something that is so visually distinctive and like beautifully presented, and then Ethan make a silly bullshit thing about a bunch of idiot criminals.

Right. And you're like, right, these are the elements of the Cohen's.
We've like split sodium and chloride into you know, two separate, right?

You know, like, so now we don't have table salt, we have two interesting things.

This is a good thing to talk about: is that like when this came out, I do feel people went, oh, so now I know who does what, yeah, right. And there was the this sense of- certainly felt that way.

All of their collaborators and the actors who worked with them forever would be like, no, they really are like a two-headed director. They do everything together.
They finish each other's sentences.

They're on the exact same page. It's crazy.

And then they made these two movies that felt very like, oh, this guy is adapting the most like proven source material in the world and just going visually ham on it.

And the other guy is doing the like goofiest version of his usual obsessions.

And they're both like, you know, through the prism of their their wives and collaborators showing the things they wouldn't do together.

And I think the takeaway from a lot of people there is like, oh, okay, so Joel's the director and Ethan's the writer, conclusive. And that Joel needs

Ethan to add humor and Ethan needs Joel to add like structure or discipline or whatever it is. And I think it's more that like maybe each of them certainly leans a little more in that direction.

And then left to their own devices, devices, they're just going to do the hardest, most hardcore version of that.

I also think in both cases, when people are like, even Macbeth, which was well liked, and we will have discussed, people were just sort of like, this isn't like a knockout in the way all their other stuff is.

This is sort of like handsome and impressive. That the juice with them is so much that you have two brilliant filmmakers working together.

It's not that I don't think, oh, they can't make things without each other. It's like, right, but they're twice as good as other people when they're working together.
David, what are you looking at?

The box office game, which we're going to now play. I'm also ordering myself some sushi.
Film came out February 23rd, 2024. And it opened at number eight.
It was

not ideal because that's open 300.

And I believe it opened to

$2.4 million,

which is not a ton of money. No.
Made

worldwide 7.9.

Okay.

Which I think was not good. When did they start production on Honey Don't? Oh, like, so you're like,

when do they maybe get their piece taken away? On the shelf for a little bit, because this was also a movie that got pushed back because of the SAG strikes and not having actors to promote it.

I think it was supposed to come out summer 2020. Honey Don't started production a month after this came out, March 2025.
Okay.

So I just want to quickly salute the fine folks at Working Title for being like, Ethan, Tricia, just keep doing this.

It speaks to the level of cachet that they have, that it does feel like similar to A24, not just doing Macbeth, but also buying the iMovie Jerry Lee Lewis documentary, that it feels like all of the film financiers and distributors in town are still like, we want to be working with you in case you ever decide.

to go back to doing your thing together again. Yes, we want to stay in the coin business.
Yeah. But a flop, number one at the box office is a somewhat surprising success.

Uh, I remember not huge or anything, but um, a music bio pick. It's its second week at the number one position.
Uh, is it uh Bob Marley One Love? Bob Marley One Love.

I couldn't remember what the order was, what was before and after the call. He nailed it.
The Renault, Renat, Reynardo, Reynardo, Reynaldo. There you go, Jesus.

Marcus Green film starring Kingsley Benadier, who is the guy who was Malcolm X in that other movie.

This is playing a lot of famous people.

This is one of my least favorite trends right now: the Top Gun Mavericking of music biopics, where I'm like, you get to pick either your title is the name of the person

or it's like the song lyric. I don't like Springsteen, colon, deliver us from nowhere.
No, certainly not. But they just announced that title too.

And I'm like, you're either calling it Bob Marley, but that's the Bob or Morley or

Root B, pick a song title. Yeah.
My, did you see Bob Marley one love? I didn't. I'm just not on the music biopic train like entirely.
I until they make one about you. Yeah, of course.
Yeah. Obviously.

Which, of course, it will be called like MXM Tune crying in a prom dress. Exactly.
And who will play you? I was going to say Tess.

Who will play me? I'm thinking about this.

I'm thinking about Washington women. in movies.

I'm thinking about

Chase Suey Wonders. Oh, Oh, yeah, that's actually good.

Yeah, I love that. I'd be very honored if Chase Sue Wonders was me.
She's very, she's very charming. She's great.
You have not seen I Know What You Did Last Summer

2025?

The new one. Have you seen that? I haven't, but I was watching the studio and my uncle texted me being like, her character reminds me of you.
And I was like, wow. Thank you.

Yeah, she's

successful. I don't know.
That's another trend I want to die is a Lega sequel that isn't a remake with the exact same title as the original movie. It's very annoying.

It's just very confusing for our brains. I agree with that.
But she is very good in that movie in a way where you're like, she might be kind of bulletproof because this thing is disastrous dog shit.

And she comes out unscathed. Wow.
Bob Marley One Love, the trend I thought you were going to bring up, which is a trend I do think is a problem, is this sort of, you know.

music biopic approved by the estate. So it's sort of like, we get to use the songs, yay, but unfortunately, like we cannot delve too deep on

this complicated person. Also, a huge issue is the reason the Scorsese Sinatra movie has not been made for 20 straight years because he keeps being like, I'll make this if you give me freedom.

And they just want it to be about like, what a gent. I think that is.
Never yelled at a lady. I think that is even more of a pox on documentaries now.

That is the thing that's driving me insane is the celebrity profile documentary that is completely produced by the celebrity and directed that you have to access, but it means.

means where I'm like, are we never going to get a crumb ever again? Right. Do you like Bob Marley, the musician? I like Bob Marley.

I'm less familiar with his whole discography and everything, but I, you know, I saw the trailers for One Love, One Yeah, Bob Marley, One Love. I haven't checked it out.
We also had the trailers.

It made a lot of money. Yeah.
It made a decent amount of money. It made almost $100 million.
I mean, in one way, you're like, yeah, well, he's really famous. Like, that's not that surprising.

But I just remember at the time, people being like, oh, people are showing up for this.

Are you the reggae guy david

i've had my reggae phases yeah i love reggae i like chris perry is just rubbing his hands together with glee right now i am no expert on reggae

i grew up in britain and i do feel like as respected as reggae is here it's

so ingrained in british culture

so I you know there's stuff

all this you know right the ways that the influence on other British music and all that stuff and I like like dance hall music and all this and then when I went to the Caribbean when I was a teenager, I remember at like the airport, I bought a bunch of like random discs, CDs, because like I was like, I bet you there's just kind of like, you know, basically like India, indie music, right?

Like, you know, just kind of like music that will never escape this country. And I still have those discs.

They rock because they are truly just, you know, guys making fun, silly, you know, dance hall music from the early sweets. We gotta, we gotta get, um,

we gotta get our hands on what these CDs are. I'll dig one of them up.
Okay. Um, I mean, my CDs, Jesus, where are those? I mean, that, that is something that truly has been like buried.

My uh, reggae, reggae, it's fine. It's not fine.
I don't want to say that in case there's reggae heads listening to this podcast, I'd be like, fine. Why'd you just say fine? I like reggae.

I enjoy listening to it. I don't know like too much in the weeds on the genre.
I'd say ska is more of my vein. Yeah.
Big no doubt fan. Yeah, yeah.

Do you listen to the Lonely Island Seth Myers podcast? I don't. It is excellent.
It is highly recommended. And of course, they delve very deep into this roster.

Yes, which is very fun. But it's just a, they go through that song and stop every three seconds and they're

in footnotes. Yes, yes, yes.
And they're just like, look, we are just white guys who like reggae a lot, but you're like, that song has eight trillion references in it that are all very specific. Yeah.

Number two at the box office opening new this week is a crunchy roll release making $11.5 million. You will never guess the name of it but you might guess the series is it spy x family no

do you think you know you might be more equipped to answer this i will say demon slayer correct okay

it is the i think the third uh theatrical release of demon slayer stuff

it is called demon slayer kimetsu no yaiba to the hari hashira training i'm sorry i don't know i don't know what's going on i don't know anything about this i'm so confused. I'm Tim Robinson.

Like, I don't know what any of this stuff is. And I'm confused.
And I'm scared.

I don't know. Car driving.
Yes. I don't know what Demon Slayer is.
What is Demon Slayer? I assume it is manga that was then became anime.

Yeah, yeah. I'm fairly certain it came from a manga and then turned into an anime.
I myself only watched the anime and I went and saw Moogen Train, which is another theatrical room.

Demon Train, right? Demon Slayer.

Yes.

Demon Slane was also such a big deal because it opened really big in 2021 when people are like, are theaters ever going to come back? And then Moogen Train made $20 million.

Wait a second. People are writing the Moogen Train.
That started the crunchy roll thing of like, we are going to put wide-release anime absolutely almost every other month.

Jiu-Jitsu Kaisen Zero was another one that I ended up seeing in theaters. I love Demon Slayer.
It's very good. Retro.

I lost a little bit of it. Okay, I love it.
I only made it through like the first maybe 10 episodes. And then I just like fell off.
But it's a great

demons,

they kind of there's a villain in it that almost looks like Michael Jackson. There's a

um, it's very what era of Michael Jackson? Oh, I don't know the eras of Michael Jackson, like that. Like, um, like, is he smooth criminal, like a wearing like a fedora type vibe?

He's got like kind of curly hair, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, smooth criminal.

Um, but it's great, but the premise is basically there's like one original demon who keeps then creating more demons, and and there's like like a special team that has to, you know, kill these demons.

Number three at the box office, also new this week, is a Christian inspirational drama film, but kind of a like vaguely legit one in that it has like, you know, Oscar winner in it.

And it was like, is it the Hillary Swank one? It's the Hillary Swank one. It was also pushed back because of the fucking strikes.

This is like the dumping ground of movies that were supposed to come out August, September 23. And we're like, we need to wait until stars can do talk shows.
It's called

Better Angels. It's called Ordinary Angels.
Ordinary Angels. What is so weird about it? It's her and Racher.
Yes, Alan Richson

is in it. I haven't seen it.
It's based on a true story about something that happened during a 1994 like cold

weather thing. Yeah.

Sorry to be dismissive of this real event that I don't know anything about. What's weird is that it was written by the actress Meg Tilley.
That is very strange.

Who people might know from like Agnes of God and the biggest. Kelly Warnani, sister of Jennifer.
And then, and co-written by Kelly Freeman Craig, who's the filmmaker who made, you know,

Adjut 17 and Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret.

So, you know, it's got like a bit of a like legit. Who directed it? John Gunn,

who directed a bunch of Christian, you know, movies, Christian Inspiration movies. What's it opening to? It's opening to $6 million.

That's great. It's going to make $20 worldwide.
What's the drop-off between Demon Slayer? Oh, yeah. Right.
So it's 13 for Bob Marley, 11 for Demon Slayer. Yeah.
Six for Ordinary Angels. Slow week.

Number four at the box office. I think your favorite film of 2024.
Are you joking? Probably the one you watched the most? Sort of. Sort of?

I mean, like, I don't think it really was, but you were kind of obsessed with this movie. I was kind of obsessed with this movie.
It's called Madame Webb. That's right.

I have seen it, I believe, five times now. I

was hovering over the purchase button on the steel book because it has yet to go on sale. And I'm like, my love for this film is not ironic.
And yet, do I want to spend $40 on a 4K steel book? 4-0.

And sometimes I'm waiting for, like, is there some deal where I could combo, like.

buy one, get one kind of thing. Have you seen Madame Webb? Oh, yes.
Have you seen Madame Webb? Madame. Have you gotten webbed webbed webs in the web? I have gotten caught in the web.

I went and I think I probably saw it opening weekend with my brother.

Our like favorite thing to do, as we all all do with our siblings, is find a movie that we want to go see in theaters, but specifically the shittiest movie that is accessible to us at any time in Madam Webb, one of the shittiest movies.

It's incredible. It's been accessible to me.
We went and saw it. We had the best time ever, rivaled only by seeing Morbius.

And I

when he came to introduce the story of Madam Webb. Exactly.

And we had a great time, but I didn't watch it after I saw it in theaters until I came back to my apartment when my family was in town in New York.

And I saw my grandpa, who is 81 years old, I think, sitting down on a couch watching Madam Webb by himself because he was like not wanting to join us for dinner or something.

And he looks at me and goes, this movie is so bad. And I just had to nod and agree.

There's a reality distortion field. I also feel like

you frame that story with an apology of, it took me this long to watch Madam Webb a second time,

which we just acknowledge culturally. All of us need to watch it a couple of times.
Absolutely. You cannot get your head around it in one viewing.
It's great. Maybe I got to see it a second time.

Do you still want to see it a second time?

I have not seen it. I'm being the villain for it.
David is doing his impression, though. The entire thing is overdubbed.

Number five at the box office is an animated film that came out in like December. It's been hanging out for three years.
Is it Migration? It's the film Migration, which made 127 million domestic.

It's a classic. It opened really fucking low, and then it just hung on there like a family of ducks just cruising.
Kamal

Nagiani, yes, Elizabeth Banks. Okay.
Now, I'm seeing here that Keegan, Michael Key, and Aqua Hina provided voice talent. They don't do that kind of stuff.
No, they are allergic to voiceover booths.

If you were to put them in a voiceover booth, it would be like Spock accepting the radiation at the end of.

You cannot get them to stand behind a microphone and do a silly voiceover. I have not seen migration.
Have I ever seen migration?

I think DeVito is in it as well. Yes.
All people that have never

been in a

Devido. It was written by Mike White, who, of course, created the White Lotus.
Right. Nice Survivor movie.
And it was on Survivor. Yes.
Yes.

And also wrote the emoji movie. Yes.
His live action canon is very good. It is.
I would say basically every live action thing turns out dog shit. Sometimes you need a check.

And that's just the reality. He's also credited on Despicable Me 4.
Really?

He's very much in the illumination wheelhouse. Number 60 box office is.

And then he's like right i want jason isaacs to poison his whole family and i want you know whatever also my dad and i are going to do the amazing race again or whatever

interesting life he lived

number six of the box office is argyle

which was a bomb but people forget did make 45 million dollars like it didn't make nothing like people went to see it this is the thing i feel like you and i need to push sometimes is like this movie was a flop but we must acknowledge that a millions of people

left their home right to go and see the movie

Argyle. I saw it with Friends of the Pod, Rachel Lang.
Have you seen that? I haven't, but I'm curious because, and I could be misremembering this.

I feel like there was a wave of this like semi-maybe it was a joke and I was totally misreading the situation. But people who thought Taylor Swift had written the book.

And I'm also curious if that was like why there were people showing up was because people were like, almost like, I'm supporting T. Swift.

Like a week before it came out when the reviews came out, they like gave up the goose on

the person who wrote the book is the fictional character, and here was the ghostwriter, and whatever. And then

it got kind of all because of the cat is Taylor Swift's cat, right? Like, that, like, she's got that cat in the movie, but the reason

the cat is in the movie is because that's the cat that Matthew Vaughn has, and he based on his real cat.

But the reason that's the cat he has is because his daughters are so obsessed with Taylor Swift that they were like, we want that cat. That is nuts.
It's nuts.

That is a movie that is infinitely more interesting to talk about everything around the movie. It's not even interesting to talk about the movie.

It's interesting to talk about the bubble around the film. The movie is dog shits.
The anti-Madam Webb is actually tedious to watch. I agree with that.

Number seven of the box office, hanging out after three months as well. Huge hit.
Wonka? Wonka. Paul Kings.
Wonka. Very fun movie, in my opinion.

Driveaway Dolls at number eight. Number nine, The Beekeeper.

Which I preferred to A Working Man, which I tried out last year, which I did this year, which is pretty bad.

maya have you seen the beekeeper i haven't i do remember that went up when it was rolling out have people spoiled anything about the beekeeper for you i'm gonna

beekeeper

i'm guessing there's bees involved and maybe a keeper of sort of but i don't really know here's all i'm gonna say i cannot strongly enough implore you to watch this film okay it's pretty fun it is truly a movie where every 10 minutes you could pause and write down what you think is gonna happen and you will never get anything right that's fun you can guess like oh, he'll get revenge on people.

Okay. But it has the craziest narrative turns I've ever seen.
The way this movie heightens, where it gets to by the end, is insane. We're recording this episode very far in advance.

All I ask is: if you watch the Beekeeper between when we're recording and November,

please send a voice memo

of just your feelings on Beekeeper, but I strongly recommend watching. That is the easiest thing anyone's ever assigned me to do.
Yeah, it's pretty easy to watch.

It's an easy watch, and the end will blow your fucking mind. Okay.

Hello, Blankies. This is me from the future.
I ended up doing my homework. I watched The Beekeeper the other night, and Griffin was right.

There was no way I would have ever predicted how high the stakes were going to be by the end of the movie. That was crazy.

But as a fan of the Hitman video game franchise, I was majorly rocking with an angry bald guy doing some occupational-based shenanigans on an assassination run. That was pretty fun to see.

I'll be tuning into more Jason Statham job-based cinematic universe movies in the future. I want to just shout out Minnie Driver for showing up for an hour and a half, getting her money and leaving.

And also Josh Hutcherson's Perm. Highlights of the movie for me.
All right. Back to the pod.

Number two.

Is the Chosen season four episodes four to six? I mean, it really is. There's still just a lot of that happening in the box office.
Are you aware of this phenomenon of the Chosen?

The Chosen is a self-funded TV series about Jesus that I think is now in its third or fourth season.

It was the biggest Kickstarter project, I think, of all time and now has outside financing. But every year or every other year when there's a new season, they release the season in theaters first.

So they'll be like this week, The Chosen, season four, episodes one and two, and it will be number three at the box office. And then two weeks later, the next two episodes will come out in theaters.

They release release them two at a time in theaters. They make millions and millions of dollars and then they go up on like Amazon Prime or whatever.
Whoa, I did not know that.

A bizarre thing that's been going on for years that no one talks about. Imagine if any other TV show was released that way.
It's very silly. Number 11 is Anyone But You, just to shout that one out.

Perfect.

We came back for it. It's still there.

What's it up to at this point? I made a healthy 87 to this point, and it ended up at, oh, 88. So it's almost done.

Anyone but you, where Sidney Sweeney's there, and she's got the, she's got the issues, I assume. I mean, you nailed it in your review of why does she always sound like she just came out of an egg?

That is my take on Sidney Sweeney. My take on Madame Webb was that every line delivery feels like it's on a Zoom delay.

And my take on anyone but you is Sidney Sweeney literally feels like she just hatched out of an egg. Or you can say beamed down from a spaceship.

Like it's just like, she just feels like she's never had a handle on dialogue sometimes.

She can be totally she has given really good performances and she and in a way where you're just like there are obvious ways you miscast her where she is not going to be able to do anything.

But the way the times in which she has been good, it can't be an accident. And yet it feels like it's a very narrow strike zone.
Yeah. Yeah.

But

normal person, I'll discourse around. She's not good in that movie being like, oh, my life is so crazy.
I mean,

she's not funny. I think that's really it.

No, she's not funny. She's just not funny.

Always be like a nun who's being terrorized. If you want to

cry, exactly. She's great at crying.

She's got those giant fucking eyes. She just goes,

if you want her to be funny in a movie, you have to frame the movie around what she's already good at and then have other characters comment on it rather than having her be like, it's

the David Boreanis.

I don't even have time to wash my hands. I think about it with David Boreanis all the time.
where like he's in Buffy as Angel, where like, what's your job?

It's to be good looking, to be mysterious and dark, and like, you know, yada, yada, yada. Then they're like, we're going to make a show about you now.
You're going to be the lead.

And I remember when Angel was announced, I was like, but Angel's boring. He's got to bounce off of.
And so, but they correctly were like, yeah, no, no, no, no.

Everyone else around him will be kind of goofy. And it'll, his straight man shit will be comedy.
Like, you know, and he's a bit of a man out of time. And you're like, that's, that makes sense.

That's good. And then Bones starts, right? And in Bones, he's a goof.
And I'm like, where was that

for fucking 10 years of your career? In Bones, he's like, ah, bones, you're so, you're a dumb nerd. That's very similar to when they offered 21 Jumpstreet to Tranning Tatum.

And he was like, I'm not funny. I don't know how to do comedy.
I shouldn't do this.

And they were like, we'll build it off of you being the straight man. And then you see him get comfortable in that movie and find his moment.

And then he's just like, I know exactly how to be funny. He's one of my favorites to watch.
I love him. He's great.
I love him too. What's he doing right now? Well, you know what?

I think Roofman will have just come out. Roofman.

We talk about him a lot in the Hail Caesar episode and wondering what the future of his career is. And we weren't talking about Roofman, which I hope Roofman's a hit.
Roofman looks fun. Yeah.

And of course, he's in Avengers Doomsday.

A film with a plot.

What's his fucking line? Oh, we got to do something.

Yeah, like

great. But yes, no, Comedy Channing's my favorite.
Yeah.

Oh, that's quite a top 10.

Yeah, that's the top 10. And you know who else is top 10 person? Is Maya, MXM Tun?

What do you want to plug, bro? Oh, my gosh. What do I want to plug? That's David Zoom.
I should do that, World. That's really good.
I like that. Will, bro.

Honestly, just hang out. I'm online.
I'm there. I'm on Letterboxd.
You do a lot of Twitch streams. I do a lot of Twitch streams.

I'm a big gamer and a big nerd, and movies have been kind of something that I have always loved, but I think I'm now more in the weeds on it.

I'm building the physical media collection, et cetera, et cetera.

You've been showing off some good disc stacks. I'm doing my best.
Especially when you're touring, you've been like finding local shops and posting some good stuff. Absolutely.
Yeah.

It's been really fun. So I have really enjoyed that.
You can find me on letterbox at M-A-I-A-P-O-G, Maya Pog,

and on Twitch under MXM Tune, but really anywhere. I'm MXM2.
What are you streaming?

What games? Literally anything. I feel like I'm the queen of side questing.

And that's why it's hard to plug stuff because I'm doing everything always. But I have been streaming a lot of Fortnite classically, but I play, I love indie games.
That's my bread and butter.

So if you know a game that's been made by a singular person who has a hyperfixer. You've played Blueprints yet? No.

What is Blueprints? Oh, you got to check it out, bro. I'm not going to tell you anything.
Just play it.

David exists in this world a little bit. Our researcher, JJ, every week is plugging some new

indie game made by someone with a hyperfixer. That's exactly it.
Those are the favorite.

We'll start passing along the JJ recommendations. The last thing he he needs, feeling like his knowledge has any value in this world.

What's your main Fortnite skin? My main Fortnite skin right now is Chun Li, but usually it's Xenomorph.

Fucking shout out Chun Li. That's my street cutter 2 main.
Yeah.

I do.

I haven't been playing for. You've been playing Fortnite? I didn't know.
I was playing a lot with my little cousin. I do remember.

I do remember. And then now he's gotten too caught up in baseball.
He doesn't have time to do anything. He likes baseball.
He's really good at baseball. Well, he should come to me.

No, No, you are not meeting him.

Okay. But now I haven't taken him to a movie in like months.
We don't play Fortnite because he's doing like baseball five days. Like his weekends are very occupied with

his calendars. I don't think he's on a professional MLB track, but he's like at that level where it's like, you're really good at this and you like this a lot.
He's got to help me. Yeah.
I don't know.

He's told me and I don't know. Well, is he a pitcher or not? I don't think so.
Okay.

I'll find out. But anyway,

come five with him. You know, the season will be.
We have plans to do a Superman Fantastic Four double feature at the end of the summer.

He's been away.

But

I was playing with him every Sunday and with our friend Sarah Rubin, a past and future guest. We would all do it together.

I was doing Chewbacca,

but I was using the accoutrements of the Wasteland.

I've never heard somebody?

They did a Marvel event. Yes.
And there was a really good Magneto, and you could get like classic Magneto, but there was also this Wasteland Magneto where he had like a tattered cape and shit.

So I think he gave like Chewbacca the tattered cape and the Magneto, like pickaxe and stuff. So it kind of looks like a fucking Mad Max Chewbacca.

It's pretty cool, David.

I haven't played in months. I played Fortnite once, and I didn't like it.

Come on, guys. There's four of us here.
It's not impossible to create a squad and reframe your enjoyment of Fortnite. Get you back into playing Fortnite.
Ben, have you played Fortnite? No.

Get my nine-year-old cousin into Fortnite.

I assume it's more fun if you're being social. I I would play with you any day.
It's more fun. I play with you guys anytime.

I just like loaded it and was like, okay. This is, I'm going to.
And it was also years ago. I know that Fortnite has now become

very common.

I'm going to get my nine-year-old cousin's schedule and we're going to figure out a squad. Yeah.
I'm so done. Squad night, a squad afternoon.

That's the thing I want to plug. That's it.
Great. Perfect.
Cool. Fortnite.

When are we going to get our own skins in a Fortnite? It feels like that's inevitable.

It's going to happen. Sounds good.
Yeah. Ben with bone pickaxe.
uh

thank you all for listening please remember to rate review and subscribe uh remember to tune in next week for honey don't a movie that david clearly

is calling in advance there's a lot to talk about oh boy you think honey don't is going to make more or less than driveway dolls it has to be less has to be less i guess it's a low bar so maybe not but like i don't think it's going to be a hit I don't either.

Yeah, but I guess it is. But the Driveway Dolls bar is low.
I don't know. Chris Evans.
I think it's gonna be Chris Evans. Is there we like him trying? We like him trying.
And he's there.

There is, he is not the problem with that movie at all. It's not like a Pedro.
He's like a popular movie. Completing the assignment.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

I mean, but it's kind of, it's not like a Pedro, but it is kind of the thing of these movies of like, you know, they clearly, yeah, they had him for a few days. He did silly stuff.

And like, yeah, right.

Yeah. I'll go for that.
Yeah.

Sebastian Stan will star in Radu Hude Jude. Yeah.
It's Frankenstein. Okay, wrap us up.
All right. Bye.
Another Frankenstein? Yeah, well, that's true.

Wrap us up. Oh, okay.
Well, you interrupted. Now I'm just spinning on the Frankenstein thought.

And as always, more movies should be centered around a literal bag full of dance. Yeah.
Yeah.

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostley.

Our creative producer is Marie Bardy Salinas, and our associate producer is A.J. McKeon.
This show is mixed and edited by A.J. McKeon and Alan Smithy.
Research by J.J. Birch.

Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds.
Our production assistant is Minnick.

Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

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