Honey Don't with Mattie Lubchansky

Blank Jack with Griffin and David

Blank 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 Blank Jack

She only has two desires and one of them is podcast and what's the actual answer justice

and her And so the idea is that the other desire is sex with women? I would say the human vagina.

Episode's over. What on the movie? That's what this movie's about.
Great to be on, guys. That's what this movie's

about. I'll see you next time.
I guess so. Your letterbox log.

You know what? I'm already pumping the brakes at any statement that's like, that's what this movie is. Your letterbox log for this movie was just the word boobies.

And I would push back on that and say this movie is more about vaginas than it is about boobies. I think it has some naked breasts, right? You know,

that's a very surface reading, including Chris Evans. That's a surface reading.
I'm not denying it has naked breasts, but I think it's about vaginas.

Wow, this is the most our listeners' ship will like crash in the first place. Pointing at the stands, I'm hitting a home run.
This is our best episode ever. It's like pointing at the stands.

You don't even hit a foul ball, you like hit the bat into your face somehow. Honey, don't, but blank check do.

That's what I'm saying. This is our best episode ever.
This is our last

episode ever. Episode ever.
It is our last episode ever. This is our last episode in the Cohen's series.
It's sort of like an epilogue.

We're basically treating the solo films as bonus episodes on main

because they're sort of a half step in, half step out situation. We felt like we had to cover them.
We felt like covering them on Patreon kind of wasn't.

It was going to be weird because we would have to like space them out in a way that was going to be odd or

when they win March Madness and we commit to covering them. Honey, don't has not come out.
You have not even seen it yet.

No, but we, it was one of those things where, like, if we had thought about it for five seconds, we would have been like, oh, right, it is coming out. It was, it just, no, it was what it was.

Right, by the way, honey, don't. But we were like, there's a new release movie that will come out between when we start doing these episodes and when the series ends.

Do you know this is a matter of that can? I do, and it got a standing ovation, they claim. Look, everything gets a standing ovation and you know it's do they count people standing up i was not

do they have seats in the theater they they're

standing ovation everyone's standing and holding a bar or whatever like no i mean it's like they when when someone says in these ridiculous like cross ever can't general audience screening and just standing remotely

i like when they're like oh i got a five minute sit you know variety tweets at one in the morning like oh honey don't go five i'm like well, it takes five minutes for everyone to stand up and walk out of the, are we counting this as a standing ovation that people must

stand to exit? Also, the standing ovation bullshit used to mean something when it would happen rarely. And now, basically, if a movie gets a three-minute standing ovation, you're like, oh, shit.

It's like a decent scoreboard. Right, exactly.

Episode already out of juice. Listen, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David.
How are we Griffin? I'm David.

It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers, such as a run of movies from Blood Simple to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and are given a series of blank checks separately and with their wives to make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, this has been a mini-series on the films of Joel and Ethan Cohen together and separately with the aforementioned wives.

Today we were talking Honey Don't, which yes, is the last in this larger six-month discussion. I guess

we'll be discussing, what's it called, Jack Jack of Hearts or whatever the next

Spades, I believe.

Yeah, I mean next year in theater. Jack of Spades.
But also Joel takes his time with post-production. That might not.

It might be a 27 or a half. I got no fucker.
Who knows? We will have a new release of a Solo Cohen's movie next year. And of course, Ethan and Tricia continue to threaten to make Go Beavers

their riff on a college slasher film. So when I saw this movie.
You'll never get what the title

is implying. I don't, I don't understand.

You'll never guess it. When I saw Honey Don't, the film,

it was at the Museum of the Moving, Imagine Beautiful Astory, Queens, New York.

Congratulations. And the images do move.
The images do move. This film's got that colour.
Yeah, a lot of people don't know this, but actually, movies, it's not actually moving.

It's a series of images very close together. And your brain interpolates the motion.

And if people are talking, you call that a talkie. That's right.

But I saw it there with a talk back with Joel, or sorry, Ethan and Tricia.

And in it, they had said they had not even started writing it yet. And I feel like I almost stood up and started clapping.
Like, never do that.

And he mentioned like a little bit, like, oh, like, me and Joel have been talking a little more. And we're like, everyone in the theater was like, all right, let's just

keep talking. We definitely have a title, though.

And the title is subtle. I'm asking Joel for notes on Beaver Squad or whatever.
What's it called? Beaver. Joel, go Beaver.

Joel's weirdly not returning my emails. I don't know what's going on.
Joel's on stage. Joel replied, I'm going through a tunnel, but like in an email, Fran keeps picking up the phone on my call.

I was on the phone with my brother, Jamesy, and he was asking me if I had seen this. And I said, yeah.
And I was like telling him my problems with it and my frustrations with it.

And he was just like, it's just like so crazy. And these like don't make money, right? Like this and the last one.
And I was like, the last one did poorly and this one did significantly worse.

And he just went, how funny would it be if they made a third one? And he thought he was suggesting the most ludicrous comedic premise imaginable. Right, right, right, right.
And get this.

Here's my crazy idea. Yeah, they keep going.
And I was like, James, they are actively threatening. And I believe he laughed for 45 seconds straight.
Like an out of dress.

Like a belly laugher. He was like, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard.
They're actually going to keep doing this. That's like a 10-minute standing ovation at Cam to get him to laugh that long.

Yeah, but is it going to end up

like, fuck, what was the final Divergent movie supposed to be called? Oh,

Divergent Allegiant Part II or Divergent.

Like where it's kind of like, we're going to make it. And then they're like, it might be straight to TV.
And then they're like, eh, it's not happening. You can read the script if you want.
Here it is.

Like, you know, just have fun. Especially not having a script yet.
And we should say.

I mean, these scripts don't take long to write.

I was going to actually ask you guys before because I was going to say I am a writer of fiction, but I don't write screenplays.

What I was going to ask both of you is, should it take longer than the runtime of a movie to write it?

Because I actually not in the industry. Maybe that.
Two of you are. The challenge.
This is like a sort of

whatever, like,

you know, make a movie in a day challenge.

It's a 24-hour film festival. Yeah.

Would it take ChatGPT longer to come up with a Go Beaver script?

Would it be like... I actually need a week to really kind of work out?

I've actually got Act One problems I got to start over. Just to give you, it was going to be called Divergent Ascendant.
Okay. Based on the latter half, of course, the book Allegiance.

Okay, so they were making up a new subtitle, not doing a part two. Yeah, and then it just didn't happen.
It was going to be from the director of The Age of Adeline.

Yeah, Lee Tolan Krager, who has basically spent 10 years stuck, I say stuck in a gilded cage of Berlante and Netflix TV show pilots.

I have a very, very quick Age of Adeline anecdote.

Please give us that anecdote and then we're going to introduce you to the other one. Actually, we have so much to say.
I got to do 10 minutes on Lee Tolerance. That's figured.

Just very quickly, 10 years ago, me and my beautiful wife, Jaya, were in Italy. Humble.

Yeah, that's right. And we were getting dinner at this beautiful place, and we started getting chatty with this couple that was next to us.
And it was this older Dutch couple.

And the, um,

and the

husband and wife, um, because that can, that's how a couple can work sometimes. Sometimes.
Sometimes.

Not if honey has her way.

Honey O'Donoghue.

Honey O'Donague. Honey O'Donoghue.

That was a good Charlie Day. I don't know if that was intentional.
It was so getting there.

But

the husband was a KLM pilot, and he was like, I just like to stop at this restaurant, whatever. We start talking to him.
And they go, oh, our son is an actor. He lives in New York too.

And we're like, uh-huh, sure. Yeah.
Where does he live in the city? And they're like, in Union Square. And we're like, what's your son? Yeah, wait a second.

And they're like, oh, his name is Michael Huisman. Oh, Michael Huisman.

And we're like, Who is that? And they're like, He was on Game of Thrones. I was like, Oh, right.
He's the hot Dario in a hotel. He's the second Dario.
That's right. After Ed's screen

got kicked off, and he's in Age of Adeline. And then the wife looks at us because it just come out, I think, and she goes, And he's in Age of Adeline, like expecting us to be like, Wow, holy shit!

We're just like, oh, yeah. And she's like, with Blake Lively? And we're like, uh-huh.
David is miming someone freaking out. Yeah.
I've never seen The Age of Adeline.

In a film that our friend Richard Lawson has always mildly defended. Some people are always kind of like pretty good.
Right.

Like Harrison Ford actually giving like a committed emotional performance is like probably Michael Huisman grown up or something. Bursting? No, it's it's Harrison.
I think

I will not accept any kind of no, David. I think Michael Husman is maybe Harrison Ford's son.

And the whole bit is that she falls in love with him and she previously had fallen in love with Harrison Ford and he brings her home and Harrison Ford's like, you're the same woman. What's going on?

Why didn't you age? I haven't been this freaked out since David Blaine was in my kitchen. Get off, my son.

Both good jokes. They were great.

It's like we hit opposite field doubles in either direction. We're in sync today.
This is what I'm saying, best episode ever. Like, David and I are just fucking like, we're in the flow.

Well, it's been a minute since

it's been a minute. Speaking of, although we recorded without you, Ben.
Oh, yeah.

We went to the zoo. But speaking of going to Italy with your lovely wife, our producer, Ben Hosley, just got back from a honeymoon with his beautiful wife in Italy.
Yep.

And he was telling us how surprised he was by how much he enjoyed the experience of driving down the roads in Italy. Broom, vroom.
Oh, yeah. I really had fun with it.
Yes.

Taking those curves, taking contacts. And I said,

you were saying ciaobella and putting your hand out the window, doing the little fisting motion.

And then I said, it shouldn't have come as such a surprise to him with all the hours he's logged playing mario kart he knew what a great experience it was going to be to be a real italian driving down roads and of course i had a shell with me we had a shell i will say when we the same trip that we were in milan um We got off the plane, we went to our, where we were staying, and it was above the mechanics garage.

And the literal first thing I saw was an Italian guy in red overalls with a mustache. Wow, well, well.
And me and John just looked at each other like, we're really in Italy, baby.

And he was like loading banana peels into the front of his

car yeah now i don't want to spend too much time but i will share that i did plan on bearing jeans it didn't work out okay you did you did text about this yeah um there was a delivery issue with the the ceramic uh vessel like an urn yes like you're doing grave goods in ancient sumer well what i use is i use korean vermenting um

like uh vessels

whatever and so it didn't end up arriving at my hotel. I wasn't able to do it.
I also, though, had separately delivered a collapsible shovel.

I didn't take it out of the packaging. I brought it to the airport.
Apparently, you're not supposed to travel with a collapsible shovel. It doesn't shock me.

How are you supposed to bury jeans in other colours? That's why the shoveler has to stay within the lower 48.

Well, also, I mean, he respects the rules. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

So I tried to explain at the Rome airport why I had the shovel.

They They didn't really get it. Ben's lovely wife, Nellie, sends us a text at 4.06 a.m.

And it is a video taken from quite far away. You can't hear anything of Ben gesticulating with whatever the equivalent of a TSA agent is, right, at the airport.

Carbonieri. And the text is, POV, my husband's collapsible travel shovel gets flagged

at the airport in Rome.

That's beautiful. And Ben keep it, man.
Ben's response was they threw it out, said I shouldn't have it. I guess this was sent to Marie and I.
Rude.

Rude. Listen.

Apparently, that's a, I need to bury some jeans. Our guest today is a writer who doesn't just have titles.
She finishes books. She doesn't just say we have an idea.

I'm holding a finish. Do you hear this?

That's a hard comment. And that ain't her first book.
In the land of simplicity, a novel.

No, it's not. It's called Simplicity, right?

It is.

That is

a dumb affectation of mine that I insisted doing to make it look more like a book from the 19th century. I love that.
Because I'm insane. We love that.

If you look, the subtitle is like a paragraph long. So I should have listened to the meaning of the title and given into the simplicity of just the one-word title.

It is a gift to be simple. From the author of Boys Weekend, another book that you finished.

Maddie Lupchansky. The books are also good.
Friend of the podcast, first-time guest, but friend of the podcast, someone we've both known separately for a very long time. Yeah.
I suppose that's true.

I'm so glad to finally be here on Talk Tua, I believe, isn't it?

Hell yeah. Is she back? I saw she was like streaming for me.
She should be back. I saw she was back the other day.
And I was like, well, her back. Did she endorse Zohran? Is she going to have Zoe Ran?

Let's get Sally Hawkins in to bring her back.

Okay. So I see the joke there.
So I remember that, I know that she was in the Hulu show Chad Powers, starring Glenn Powell.

She's in an episode of that. Right.
Okay. Where they're comparing notes on being washed-up celebrities or some shit to like a medicasting gag.
So maybe she had

herself. Yes.
Had to,

you know, to come back after her mean courtesy.

There was a thing where she appeared at VidCon

and like 60% of the audience walked out in protest and complained to the organizers because they were offended by how lewd her material was. Oh, damn.
And I was like, she was going blue.

You got the part where she scammed everybody. You were not led into this

fucking like convention hall at gunpoint. You said, I'm going to sit down and listen to the talk to a girl in conversation.
That's a fair point. It's kind of a dead dove do not eat.

I don't know what you were expecting.

She is famous for an extremely illustrative and colorful, humorous explanation of blowjob giving. I want to ask each of those people, what is she famous for?

And why are you upset right now? She's famous for being America's sweetheart. I forgot.
I forgot about.

Why isn't she and honey don't why isn't she and honey don't five minutes a pep if she's talked to a if she's in go beavers are we excited sure if they announce i'm there yeah i'll buy a beaver coin you'll buy a beaver unseated day one for go beavers and scott

so seated couldn't be more seated it i it is nothing like can i'm in a chair exactly i won't be giving an ovation because i'm seated This movie comes out first week of September.

This film came out in the very hot late August corridor. Last weekend of August.
Yeah, August 22nd. 22nd.

It screens at Canada. It was at the Hun Film Festival.
You see it around then? I was shown it right then by the Good People of Focus features

who were like, Are you going to do like a simultaneous review? Are you going to let it? And I was like, oh,

maybe. I guess we'll see what I think of it.
And then I saw it and I gave a polite

boobs review on Letterboxd. We'll talk about it on my podcast in six months, glowingly.

i mean it was very much a sort of like hey i kind of like drive away dolls so fuck yeah i'll give it a sure i'll give it a whirl i like driveaway dolls that episode was recorded before i'd seen honey don't i feel like i had a very genuine defense of that movie on that episode sure after now seeing honey don't twice i i would even defend driveaway dolls more yeah sure i would agree i didn't like driveaway dolls at all when i saw it but i was like i'll keep i i i think mr cohen is has uh had enough i i he deserves a second chance from Ol Maddie.

Like, what do I know better than him?

So I'll go see the new one. Yeah.
And now I'm like, is Driveway Dolls good?

I like Driveway Dolls. Driveaway Dolls is

a movie more than anything else. It's a fashion as a film.
Exactly. It's a film where I really, like, the beats basically make sense to me.
I'm basically with it the whole time.

I think there's, you know,

there's something to the main couple, like, you know, where there's like a connection that's interesting. In it, that I find a fact thing.

Honeydone is basically a movie that I was kind of out on from the start, and then the ending was so bad, like that it really sort of hurt the rest.

I'm like, I'm kind of with it until the last 20 minutes. I think that's, yeah, that's and it's such a disastrous ending that it basically undoes everything I liked about the movie up until that point.

We'll get into all of this.

Here's the timeline I want to spill out. You see it, right? Yeah.
When I saw the trailer, I was kind of encouraged because I was like, okay, it looks a little formally tighter.

There's kind of a genre riff happening here. There's seemingly a central plot thread of a mystery.
This maybe looks like slightly more of a movie than Driveaway Dolls, a fun lark that I enjoy.

And David sees it and he's like, it is less of a movie than Driveaway Dolls. I did.
I did. I did warn you.

Okay, so we now have this on the schedule coming up six months from now. And he's like, kind of a, not an exciting way to end a six-month series.

But you know what happened?

And this is a great app, but we've had some, we've discussed some masterpieces. Yes.

We've had good times digging through big movies. So I'm just glad after a run of giving a lot of smaller artists and people a chance, getting someone really big on like me to talk about this.

Well, here's a match. Maddie?

Maddie, this is the road I'm paving, okay? Maddie. Maddie.
David's like, who should we have on as a guest? And I'm like, here's what I think we should do.

Let's wait until the movie comes out and see if anyone defends it. Or even just has a reaction, honestly, because it kind of felt like a movie that was going to go nowhere.

And it kind of was like it just came out to shrugs and negativity and was mostly ignored. And we don't need to like this movie.

No, despite what some people accuse us of, we never pretend to like movies for the narrative of a mini series. We only do that for money.
When the money clears, exactly. That's what the money's for.

Briefcase, dollar bills. Yes.
That's what I'm looking for. Right.
We don't do it to make the episodes better. Right.

But the movie comes out.

There are not really vocal defenders that rise, but I see you posting takes that are at least like considerate of like, I struggled with this. Yeah, I tried to like it.

And right before we started recording, you were like, we all dislike this, right? I'm not going to be the one who like yucks everyone's yum.

We're like, no, I just think you seemed very quickly like someone who would at least be interesting to have a conversation about this movie with, rather than just three people being like,

whatever, you know, because I do think there is stuff to wrestle with in this. I found this movie so deeply frustrating.
Immensely.

And I find it frustrating in a way that is very different from Driveaway Dolls, which I accept being its own thing, even if it is kind of a silly trifle of a thing.

I think that is what it's intending to do. And I find that movie charming and entertaining to watch and funny.

It does not like.

Go off the charts in any of those areas, but I think it succeeds at its very modest intent. This is a movie that feels like a bad Cohen brothers movie.

It is so much closer to what they do together in a way that is just lacking juice.

And for the first like 75% of it, I'm watching it and going like, okay, this is like, this is an all right approximation of a Cohen brothers movie.

It's frustrating because I know they can do this better together, but whatever. And then the last 20 minutes are just like, they feel like a shrug and and a panic.

And it kind of reveals that the movie had no idea what it was actually doing up until that point. Yeah.

And for me, I think it's so illuminating that, like, they really just think they're making the long goodbye a lot to the point where there's like lots and lots and lots of things pointing directly to it.

There's like a cat on an orange counter, and there's like a lady playing a piano in a bar, whatever. To the point where I went and watched The Long Goodbye again, because I'm like, oh, I have to.

Now I feel even worse about the movie because I watched The Long Goodbye recently. But like, that movie also similarly has a kind of ending that's like

the first time you watch it, you're like, oh, it's a little bit out of nowhere. And then you think about it, you're like, no, this is actually really

layered in and interesting. And like, you, and it means something for this character that this happened this way.
Like, he's sick of getting dumped on or whatever. Whereas, like,

this movie is just sort of like, and now it's over.

Here is what is most frustrating about it to me is that I think Joel and Ethan together are the kings of an ending that should be unsatisfying. Yes.
Right?

Of like constructing a story that feels like it's leading into one direction and then ending on a very messy, ambiguous note, letting plot threads completely dissolve, you know, or just like wander off screen, taking these hard left turns, these things that could be seen as frustrating and sort of flippant towards the audience, but I think are actually

kind of like

that that feel almost intellectually profound to me. Yeah.

And this movie, my first time watching it, I'm like, why is this doing the same moves except it's just making me mad? And I cannot find any rhyme or reason or meaning in what they're subverting.

Yeah, like you, I've been listening to the series as you guys have been doing it.

And you kept talking about like earlier in their career, the way people, critics, some critics would talk about their work where it's like just cruel or whatever.

This movie feels like that, the movie those people think they're watching. Yeah.
Where it's just kind of like tonally

mean in a way that I don't quite understand. Let's kind of a bad taste in my mouth.
It is a surprisingly mean-spirited movie, given that it is initially kind of not.

Initially, you're like, yeah, this is a romp. I get it.
It's like a very broad satire. And then at the end, you're like, huh.
There's like two pieces and weird edge to it. Yeah.

Like, there's the scene where,

was it Chris Evans? Like. He's there.
He finds out that that one guy died and they go out and the guy's like dead on the ground and like and they do again like a

a horrible mutated version of my favorite Cohen's thing which is two people having a regular conversation while something insane is happening behind them or near them yes and they're doing that but it's not funny it is like legitimately sad watching this guy weep over his dead son yeah and then there's the bit where the guy is like

oh like let me suck your dick and he gets run over by the car and i'm just like okay so you're just like showing a gig i get murdered by a car like I don't, you're, you're right.

That there's totally strange they, when they work together, that in many Cohen movies, that sort of these horrifying or shocking things happen, and you're like, very in it.

It's very in the flow of the story. They manage the tone right.
And that stuff does kind of feel like,

you know, some guy who's not a Cohen brother being like, I know what Cohen brother movies are like. And yet he is a Cohen brother.
That's he's one of the two.

This whole time, he's been one of the two Cohen's. I said to you recently, David, that this movie kind of broke me.
Yeah, you said that and I was like, this one? Right.

And you were like, it can just be bad. You don't need to be fighting over this.
And I was like, you don't need to be like in turmoil. I'm not at war with whether or not I like this movie.

I'm at war with like, why doesn't this work?

And it's easy to just say it doesn't, but it is bizarre because it's doing things that are so similar to the things I value in Cohen's films with, as we said, someone who is a Cohen brother. He is.

One of the two. On second viewing, I have some

true. It's hard to make the two.
But I think

Cohen movies are filled with these kinds of moments where you're just like, that's a story decision no other filmmaker would make, right?

Or that's, and on top of that, tonally, that scene is played in the opposite way of how I would imagine anyone else would approach it. In a comedy, this scene is suddenly very violent and dark.

In a drama, this scene is suddenly very funny and over the top, right? These things that feel like they should bump on you.

And with the Cohen's, I don't know what degree of it is just the trust they have like earned from us at this point.

When a moment like that happens in one of their movies, I lean in and I go, huh, why are they doing this? I like give them the benefit of the doubt.

And I feel like every other time it has paid off for me, whether at the conclusion of the movie where I suddenly go, I get it. This is what it was all about.

And this was the larger point they were making. This is why they were playing with narrative expectations and uncomfortable feelings.

Or if it doesn't work for me the first time, I go back and watching a second time and I go, now I get it.

And like, this is one of the only ones, if not the only one, where I'm like, I truly kind of don't get what's going on here. I think this movie has ideas in it.

There are things it is contending with that I find kind of interesting and sticky.

And certainly on the first viewing, and even giving it a second watch this morning and being like, I'm really trying to meet it. on its terms.

I was getting re-engaged in some of the things in the first half and then just like completely pushed off the bike again the second half maddie what is your history with the cons oh that's a good question i um i think in college in the early 2000s uh the movie theater near my college was playing the big labanski on a big screen another film another film that this film is maybe trying to be a little bit very indebted to the long goodbye as well yeah i mean this is like that movie is like what if philip marlowe is like a even stupider and this movie is like what if i mean this one it was just like what if philip marlowe was like a young lesbian?

And then they kind of stopped and they kind of just kind of walk away and hope that they came back in the room later in the script would be done. Um,

and then I just fell in love with it. And I had that stupid DVD that's like the bowling ball that untwists.
Take time.

And then I just got really into their movies from that point. I went back and I just filled in all my gaps.
And I, and I tried, I've seen everything, I think, first run since then.

Um, but I will say, like, especially,

I want to say Inside Lewin Davis and Hail Caesar,

and what was the one just before Lewin Davis?

True Group.

Oh, not true. Less true group, but more.
Burn After Reading. No,

serious man. There we go.
Those three. Burn After Reading.
I was the only person I knew that liked it when I saw in the theater.

It was very gratifying to listen to the episode and hear them correct. Thank you.
Absolutely.

But those three in particular, I watched them and I was kind of like, I don't get it. But like, and then I would just be thinking about them for months.
And I'd be like, I got to watch them again.

And now those three are like my my favorite three. I think.
I mean, this is what I'm saying. Like, that was my experience with Hale Caesar the first time.

I have seen that movie now, I think, 10 times. Like, I love it so much.
Like, same. And I, I, it completely makes sense to me now.

And it was, that was a movie where the first time saw the wrong footing. I was like, I don't get what they're doing here.

But when you go back to it, it rewards you. Yeah.

It starts to make sense when you understand.

what the movie isn't doing and you stop holding those expectations against it that were sort of are drilled into us by more conventional conventional movies. Yeah.

And, you know, and like for me, it's sort of like they are,

you know, they're like, it's not to sound so fucking basic, but like, they're like the first like directors that weren't Tim Burton or Steven Spielberg that I was like, these are directors that I've heard of when I was younger.

Yeah, they're one of the first directors that you have heard of if you're RH.

Yeah, it was like them and like PTA were like, okay, here's directors that now when they have new movies, I will go see their movie. I mean, I talk about it a lot,

but like Tim Burton does sort of make sense as the ultimate starter kit auteur for people of our generation yeah because it was it's so easy to understand what his hallmarks are right yeah and then spielberg is the guy you hear everyone in culture cite as shorthand yes for successful he's on the animaniacs right and he's the only director on the animaniacs you know the name you know the visual you know the hits and whatever and there's like spielberg magic but also as we've grown up the definition of a spielberg movie has changed a bunch sure but the cohens are like those directors that you can sort of feel like you're doing the work yourself to understand what their thing is.

Yes. Rather than it being like served up to you completely already by pop culture.
Right.

And their, and their movies are just so, to me, like, just so magical the way that they have so many moving parts that are like unlike anybody else. Yeah.

And I will say the thing about maybe like the, I was trying to get to the bottom of like, why did this movie leave such a weird taste in my mouth tonally?

And I think it's because the other of their movies, it's two things. I think it's the the attention to detail is missing.
Yeah. And the dialogue isn't there.

Whereas like other Cohen movies, the dialogue is so special

and sticky and compelling that when it's not there, when

Chris Evans is saying best sex ever or whatever, it's like the dialogue wasn't there. The jokes weren't there.
I wrote down. One of the jokes that was like driving me crazy.

It's like when in that scene where the, the, the, the kid dies,

um, the Australian guy says, my body's a temple you should see it with a shake weight

and i was like that's a joke in a cohen brothers movie

yeah like are you well not cohen sorry a cohen brothers a cohen cook movie but it is you know what i mean i know what you mean that it is it's somewhat disturbing to consider like them knowing about shake weights i don't want them to know about that it just feels like a lazy it's a lazier joke and it's way out of time it is but once again like driveway dolls

feels like it's playing

is a sillier movie that feels like it's playing an entirely different game. And I'm not pinging it for not nailing, like, raising Arizona-esque rat-at-at-tat dialogue.

Whereas this is getting so close that you become more aware of the gap between what it's trying to do and the literally 20 perfect versions of

you've seen one of these people do before.

Yeah, the other thing they also do in a lot of their other movies is like paying homage to stuff in a way that is not tired, that is interesting, that has something to say.

And this one is just doing big-time members.

Well, even like the home invasion scene of the young boy and his mother being attacked, right?

I think is pretty well directed. And I'm sitting there

and watching it. Usually it's good.
Right. And I was just like, okay, this actually like builds tension.
It's using like negative space and silence in this very like classically Cohen's-y way.

It remains specific to its character. It has like shocking moments of humor and of violence.

And I felt a little electrified being like, okay, so like Ethan, Ethan's like showing up as a director, right?

Like he's like doing something here cinematically. And the scene ends.
And I'm like, I have seen 15 better versions of this scene done by that same guy.

You know? And also like the way that the grandma gets killed is like another sort of like, to me, a taste level thing.

It just feels sort of like unnecessarily mean i don't know maybe i'm wrong there was this quote i brought up a lot throughout this series where ethan has said you know when people ask me what a director does i i don't have an answer and over the years i finally settled on one which is tone management

and you do look at most of their films and you're like that is kind of their ultimate man magic is the tone management of how can they hold these two things at the same time and how can they put these scenes next to each other with such a wide kind of variance of human emotion and tone, right?

Yeah. And this is a movie where it just does not coalesce.
And there are things in it.

If I'm like just watching it on a scene by scene basis, where I'm like, I'm kind of into this scene on its relative terms. Yeah.

And then I get to the next scene and I'm like, I'm feeling whiplash, but I'm going to trust them that this is all going to come together.

And then it has what our friend Sean Fantasy on their recent House of Dynamite episode referred to as a kicking the full paint can into the open street ending.

Like the person wanted to do that out of anger, is what you're saying. But it just feels like, I don't know, fuck you, whatever.
You know, like, like, and House of Dynamite has that too.

This ending where, like, the movie isn't totally working, but I'm like following, and some of the scenes are working. And then you're like, let's see if you can pull it together.

And then the ending is like, I don't know, fuck off.

The ending's like, okay, we're done. And you're like, oh, no, but what about the ending? And they're like, oh, no, these are the credits.
This is, I said, we're done. These people made the movie.

Yeah. And I'm like, oh, okay, did they? Like, the tone is basically just like,

almost like a bomb falling? Kind of. Just like

just fakes.

I heard on a podcast that we built House of Dynamite.

I heard that too.

So

I've got a question for all the gamers out there, and I'm pointing at you, David. Are you seriously going to miss out on Alienware's biggest gaming sale of the year?

I mean, these are Cyber Monday prices we're talking about. So it's not just another sale.
Yeah, I took a look, and this is some pretty big bang for your buck.

You know, it's Alienware with some of the most advanced engineering out there with systems at the top of every reviewer's lists. And what about a gift for yourself?

Give yourself a new Alienware 16 Area 51 gaming laptop. I mean, this thing's got performance at the absolute next level with Intel Core Ultra Process.

And even better, you can get it during Cyber Monday. Plus, you can save on all kinds of displays and accessories like the Alienware 32 4K QD OLED gaming monitor for ultimate visual fidelity.

These really are incredible deals on PCs with otherworldly performance. So I'd visit alienware.com/slash deals soon and grab what you can before the lowest prices of the year go dark.

Honey, don't. What does everybody think

of Margaret Qualey? Because I do think, outside of the stuff we're discussing, tone management,

Ethan, like minus, you know, like Cohen's facsimile feeling or whatever. And we should acknowledge that, much like Drive Away Dolls, this is a movie that, by all accounts, was completely

directed by Tricia Cook. In addition to being written and produced, but because of DGA guidelines, much like the early part of their career.
Trisha Cook is very much the co-author of these two films.

Yes, in every are very clear about that in the interviews, etc.

Margaret Qualey, who plays the character of Honey O'Donoghue in this film. Honey O'Donohue.
Private Dick

in Bakersfield, California.

White Bakersfield accent, by the way.

She's the queen of accents. What do we think of Margaret Qualey, who is having, I would say, a fairly sustained run at this point of being in movies? Yeah.

I

so that I think

that that noise that Maddie just made is right where I am with Margaret Kwa. I feel like

I liked her in the substance. Sure.

Otherwise, I'm sort of, I didn't like her in Driveaway Adults.

A very strong performance. Like a real, like, you know.
That's a Marmite performance that I defend, but I cannot argue with anyone who's like, that drove me crazy.

And I think the other thing is like, okay, so like the noir thing.

right? I've been watching a lot of noirs lately in preparation for this because I was like, I got to get back in the zone. Right.
And,

and I was like, okay, something, because like a thing that happens all the time in noirs is shit just starts happening and then it stops happening and the movie's over.

And maybe sometimes you're Philip Marlowe or whoever, you're Eddie Valiant, you're fucking

the dude, whatever. Like just sort of like, it's just like kind of like, okay, I'm going to go home now and the movie's over.

But like, and they're kind of like, oh, no, now the day in this crazy damn. Exactly.

But those movies work work because the people at the center you care about, or at least they're compelling or whatever. Sure.

And in this movie, for one reason or another, I feel like Quality is sort of like a charisma void. Well, let me...
Character feels a little cosplay to me.

Like not Margaret doing cosplay, like honey doing cosplay, like right where I'm like, this girl's kind of putting on like a shirt. She's a Rolodex.
Yeah. Yeah.

Like where I'm like, this is, what is this? I want to circle back to her in a second because I think you're raising an interesting point here. No, and then not Arizona, not raising that.

No, you have not to date raised one of Nathan Arizona's children. Well, those aren't mine.
Can I give them back?

That was a test, and you just passed. You should not be raising Nathan Arizona's children.
They are not. Unless he asks.
If he says you do,

then you can say yes. But you shouldn't take the initiative.
Yeah.

The Cohens are obviously very indebted to that kind of noir filmmaking. And also, obviously, like the history of American noir in novels.
Hard-boiled crime novels. Right.

And even in their non-noir films, I do think that is a thing they've really adopted across almost all of their work, which is very often the lack of resolution.

A conventional resolution is the point for them, right? Yeah. Things like

Burn After Reading or No Country or even Serious Man that feel like they're building and building and building and then completely veer off from the obvious blow-up, the confrontation, the moment of closure, work for me because they're not just misdirects.

It's like that is the thematic point to them. Much in the way that noirs are about these people who are broken down and cynical, realizing how powerless they are to actually change anything, right?

Yeah. The universe is cruel and more importantly, confusing.
Exactly. You can never really get your arms around it.
Which is really, I think, like the core issue of the Cohen brothers work.

That is the thing that all of their movies are really contending with of like, is this meaningless or not? And if it's meaningless, then what's the point?

What do we owe each other? What do we owe ourselves? How do you find some sort of peace within that chaos and the lack of meaning?

And so I think all their other endings work because the lack of resolution is the statement they are making, that life doesn't give you that kind of resolution. Right.

And this movie, in being a hard-boiled detective noir riff,

should be even more well set up to get away with that kind of ending. And yet it doesn't.
And I do think,

I don't think it's her performance that's the problem as much. I like her in this.
I was pretty resistant to her when she started out. Interesting, sure.

I just felt like, I don't know, I don't get what all the buzz is about her without having like a major issue. I wouldn't say I was allergic, but I was like, I don't know.

Look, she's, she's an incredibly attractive daughter of a movie star who is one of those people who was kind of like in magazines before she had credits, where it felt like there was a slight degree of she's being shoved down our throats as the next big thing.

And I always think I get a little defensive about like, well, let me decide with these people. Sure, sure, sure, with the hot young things.
And over time, I'm like, I like the choices she makes.

I like the people she works with. I think she has a lot of like.

I admire her bravery in terms of not feeling the need to define a thing she does and stick to it.

Even if you look at these two Cohen's movies and the the substance and all the other stuff she does, there's like a tremendous range of what she does.

She doesn't feel protective of any signed kind of like brand as an actress, which I always admire. Yeah.
You know, I liked her in was Kinds of Kindness. I liked her in Kinds of Knightness.

Never saw Kinds of Kindness. She's in it very briefly, and I like her in it.
She has a quadruple role in that. She did.

I thought she was great in poor things, even though that isn't a very large role.

I know that's another one that people making the same noise as David Holly. Yeah, I was pumped on.

My whole thing with her is I first saw her in the leftovers, didn't know who she was, and was like the the the girl playing the daughter like has such a look and then googled and was like oh it's Andy McDowell's daughter well right that'll give you a look it'll give you a look she's a looker yeah but she's very good in the leftovers and so I was like you know check noted like you know and then when she was in the sort of the the nepo uh maelstrom that is once upon a time in hollywood i was like oh that's i guess something quenton's going for right like because like there's so many daughters of uh, and sons of famous people in that movie.

Right. He feels pointed.
But he also, like, identifies like 10 of the next. He does.
I mean, it is crazy that they're all hanging out at the fucking Spawn Ranch, right?

Sidney Sweeney and all those people. Yeah.
Whoever else is in that. I can't remember.
Who else is in it?

Dakota Fanning. She's great.
Yeah. Love her.
That Leonardo DiCaprio guy in the middle of the moment?

He is in the movie. She's in the movie as well.
But she's very good in it. She's good.
Yes.

And then I have just been like, she is one of the most like coin flip actors for me since then. Sure.

Where I have like performances, others have bumped on Blue Moon this year, which is a movie I adore. She has this like 15-minute monologue in it that I think she does a good job.

And it's sort of supposed to make me feel on edge.

But it really

exemplified the Margaret Cauley experience for me where I was just like, do I like this? Like, she's pretty and she, she's holding the camera, like, but am I,

is this a good performance or am I just kind of like, is it just kind of sticking out? Sure. In a way that's me, whatever.
I don't know. It's hard to say.
I think hard to say.

I think her driveway dolls performance of Sandy Cheeks, the astronaut squirrel from

the land

is very broad and in quotes and is sort of

consciously cosplaying, right? She is not looking for any sort of like realism in that.

In this, just because it was another film from the same team with the same lead actress, I was expecting her to do the same thing. And I think she is, uh,

I was,

God, I don't want to say I was surprised by how grounded she was, but maybe just in comparison to the previous work, that I was kind of buying her in this milieu, playing it relatively straight.

I agree with you that there's an element to it feels like the character is doing an act and is kind of self-stylized as, you know, a hero of her own story. Yeah.

Which is why you want the movie to like unwind her a little bit.

I think that is the ultimate failing is not in her performance and that they actually don't give her fucking anything to play other than like an improv scene genre exercise of private detective. Yeah.

I, yeah, when I saw it on the on the big screen, I think I got a little fooled by the magic of the movies because I was like, this is, I actually think she's pretty good in it. And I was shocked.

Yeah. Because in general, I, I tend to dislike her in most things.

And maybe I'm just holding a grudge because she plays Anne Ryan King and can't dance and Fossie verdant drove me insane look fair

listen it's a capital offense where i'm from um

but uh

no i and and then i watched it on the big screen i was like oh she's actually pretty good i'm like shocked and then i watched it again the other day and i was like i actually don't am i seeing through this am i am i was i just like wow she's the size of a house but sure but also how much of that is like

you go into it knowing that there's no there there for the character, right? Yeah, maybe.

Yeah, I was like, I was just so hoping that something would coalesce more interesting about the movie that wasn't happening that I just found myself so frustrated that maybe I took it out that way.

I don't know. I was looking at your August 18th log of this movie, seeing it at Momi, the moment when I pinged David and said, Maddie seems to half like this.
We should have her on the show.

I don't know if we're going to find anyone more positive to talk about. Talk about having you on the show.
And you said, really loved the first half of this. Everyone was good.
Looks very good.

but feels a lot less than the som of its parts. Honey, just okay.
Honey, fine.

And then I messaged you and you said you were disappointed it wasn't worse because you had better letterbox jokes lined up that you then didn't get to use correct uh

remember any of those uh i think it was like honey won't

honey shouldn't things

honey shan't honey shan't my favorite was honey don't dot dot dot see it

yeah you would yeah honey third act problems

honey third act problems yeah yeah i think i think that's a that that's a solid one. Yeah.
Yeah. It would be funny if Honey's like, I've solved the mystery.
There's third act problems.

But I think watching it the first time, you're like.

Sorry.

I was doing a magnifying glass. This is going somewhere, and clearly at some point, this character will deepen.
Sure. Beyond just kind of an affectation.
Yeah.

Here's what I think this movie is actually sort of trying to be about. Okay.
Vaginas. No, what I actually sort of think it's trying to be about.
boobs.

The long good boob. Now you sound like David.
It'd be funny if we were like, the big debate, vagina versus boobs. No, no, okay, okay, what's it about? What's it about?

I think it's actually trying to be about examining the ways in which men hold power over women. If you look at the prism of everything happening around her in this movie, right?

It is sort of like,

here is someone who is a

private investigator. She works for no one.
Sure, she's a private dick. But she doesn't have one.
But she doesn't have. I don't understand this.

But she's dealing with...

A lady doing detective? Sorry, go ahead. A lady doing detective.
A lady doing detective. She's dealing with the law, you know.
She's dealing with her clients. She's dealing with the criminal element.

She is dealing with organized religion, you know, or perhaps cults that are sort of framing themselves as organized religion to become consolidations of money and power and sex and cults of personality and the relationship with the father, which is the point where I'm watching it the first time.

And I'm like, okay, is this going somewhere?

Is there thematically something here in this sort of like someone who has worked so hard to define herself, not in relationship to any man, not only because that is not how she sexually identifies, but also because she doesn't want to be part of these systems, right?

And like the early stuff with her sister, who's Kristen Connolly, who's an actress I like a lot. Love that actor.

And I like that scene, the two of them on the porch together, where it feels like there's actually some real emotion here. Like, where is this going? Her sister, who.
Answer is kind of nowhere.

Nowhere.

She's in the house. Her sister has many children.

There's like kind of no solid male figure in sight. She's pregnant yet again and makes a crack about her.

Her siblings can't even, her children can't even remember how many siblings they have right now. They're not excited for the new baby.

And her oldest child is played by Talia Ryder, who's in her rebellious teen phase, is dating a bad guy. Right.
Right. An obvious sort of future abusive husband if things go that way.
Right.

It's like a cycle is continuing.

You'll later find out that Honey's father, who's trying to make amends, was also abusive, that they've both distanced themselves from him, and that the daughter's lashing out.

that she feels like her mother is critiquing her too much and warning her about how badly things are going to turn out when she's looking for support. She's getting anger, you know?

And how do women end up giving power over to men? Which is the biggest fucking mess of this movie is

just getting into spoilers, Aubrey Plaza revealing herself to be like an 80s movie slasher villain who has gone insane victim blaming women who are victims of abuse because she thinks it's about women being weak enough that they let themselves be abused.

Yeah. So I'm going to solve that by kidnapping random teenagers.
And torturing them to death. That my father abused me.
Yeah.

And I now resent now other people who don't know how to correct that situation because she murdered her father to get out of it or he died independently i can't remember actually

what's what's the problem there

i would say it's not played very well so that was what i was about to say i would say that is a twist that would be tough to get across maybe anyway because it feels a little out of nowhere and a little convenient yada yada yada i also think plaza cannot do it like and that's another actor that I make a noise about when I'm like, do I like this actor?

She is way more that for me. And you had told me, like, watching this, like, I'm questioning if she can act at all.
So I went in watching it.

And until the final scene, I was like, I actually like her more in this restaurant. Like, I would think because she's liked her a lot in the rest of the movie because she's really good.

She's good at that. She's good at playing horny.
Good at playing horny, good at playing flirty, good at playing kind of temptress.

Yeah, she temptress thingy. She's so well into the last scene, the whole time.
Like, wow, Aubrey, like, put her in the screen. It's almost like they didn't tell her the twist until

like the minute they were rolling in there. Oh, and by the way, you've been the murderer the whole time.

By the way, I'm like, I'm sympathetic to her where I watch that final sequence and I'm like, this feels like an actor being

like, well, I'm going to try my best.

This is a tough fucking assignment they gave me. And I'm going to figure out a way and see if I have any end to playing it in a way that is believable.

My thing with Plaza had always been, I had struggled with some of the, like, I I didn't like her very much in Legion, but I didn't like that show much or whatever.

Like, I didn't like Ingrid Goes West as much as some people did.

But then I did like Emily the Criminal, which was a bit of an underseen little gem. And, like, there were certain things I enjoy her in Megalop.
I was going to say, she gets what movie she's in.

I love her more than any other actor in the cast. She sometimes exactly what movie she is.
Sometimes it hits, and then sometimes I'm like, well, this didn't work. And this was kind of a,

it was hitting and doesn't work all in one movie. It's all of it.
Ben, do you have a take here? I feel like, no, no, okay. I just kind of have a crush on her.
I'm

Aubrey Paza. Here's the first tier.
Sort of always in the bag. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Wait, Ben, pen, pen, pen, pen. You like someone who has a kind of could be mean to me vibe?

I don't understand this. This is not, this is not your track.

There's something about her cold cruelty

that just, for whatever reason, sparks something in you. Does that reflect your wife? No.
No, very much so.

Kind of one of of the million reasons we love your wife sort of a dating history yes that's that conjures up for me

a lot of wow a lot of wow's platinum in the past yes more emily's the criminals yes i would say wow's platinum okay okay because listen wow platinum has got some pretty nefarious motives if i recall correctly wow platinum is up to no good yeah do you know what's crazy what's up so her character's name is wow platinum right so true and wow is one of the words that is said most often on the doughboys podcast and the highest honor they can bestow upon anything is the Platinum Play Club.

So true. And so I was watching this movie and I'm wondering, does Francis Ford Coppola listen to the Dough Boys podcast? Which does make sense because they're a coppola goofball.

Thank you for saying that. And of course, that's something Nick Wager said about 400 times last year.

I think I'm the first one to say that on any podcast. Have any of you seen Megadoc? No, not yet.
Have you?

Because I am very invested in Nicola.

Absolutely.

A movie I liked. It rules.
It's great as a document. It's great.
Daddy, we're both interested in municipal politics and wacko movies made by mad men. Yeah.
Look, I've got both of us.

Hey, that's a really good point. I'm in the same boat as the two of you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that movie is fascinating as a supplemental document to understanding Megalopolis, but it's also like actually a good movie in its own right. Well, I understood it perfectly.
No problems.

Aubrey Plaza comes out of that movie. It's a coherent film.
A to B to C. Looking the best.
She does. She's one of the top, like

out out of Megadoc, I'm saying.

She looks the best.

I thought you meant maybe in the wig. She looks the best.

She does. She is looking pretty good.
But you watch that, and like both the behind-the-scenes footage of her interacting on set and rehearsals and whatever.

They show all the like fucking weird Frances Forcopola acting exercise improv stuff.

Like all this footage you haven't seen of her performing in character that's all great and you're watching raw takes.

But also all of her interviews, she comes off funny and smart and like the most transparent about everything that was happening in the ecosystem of that movie.

So I watched that and I'm like, she does kind of get it undeniably. And also she is someone who versus a lot of her like contemporaries has really been committed to movies.

Yeah, I, I, I completely agree with that. She, she tries stuff.
She does interesting projects. She, yeah, you're absolutely.
And honestly, same with Marco Cauley. Yeah.
I mean, it's like, what?

I'm, I'm giving people respect for working, but I like that they're working. Like,

I think I'll replace if I can even go a step further in a way that I just like, she gets brownie points for me forever for this.

Like, does a lot of low-budget stuff

with like first or second-time filmmakers where it feels like she's actually producing it, getting it off the ground, calling her friends in.

interested in taking like a fifth supporting part in something, you know, just to work with interesting people and has done a season of White Lotus and did Legion or whatever, but doesn't just feel like she's doing the fucking streaming prestige cash-ins.

Agatha all along, you're right, you're right. She's done a couple, but she's it's

largely, in my opinion, the best MCU thing since fucking Avengers Endgame or whatever.

She is largely not doing big payday streaming bullshit that doesn't exist, which almost all of the people from her generation got caught up doing. Wow.
Now, speaking of, Chris Evans is in this movie.

It represents Chris Evans' try-year 2025, where he decided to try giving a shit again. He got off his ass a little bit.

I will say he's been somewhat forthcoming, like, I'm aware that I made a bunch of dog shit after Knives Out, right? Like, he's sort of said it out loud, right? God.

Like, because his post, we've talked about it, but the sort of like gray man ghosted pain hustlers red one. Jesus Christ.
It's really that.

Is there a movie called Pain Hustlers? Are you saying two different movies? Pain Hustlers is a Netflix film. I mean, that honestly, that's the most

arty thing he did. It's like a biopic about

opioid hustlers. It was Emily Blunt and Chris Evans.
It was, you know,

it came and went. From 2019, when he has Knives Out and Endgame, and you're like, here we go.
This guy's unlocked. He's freed from Marvel.
Right.

And he just killed it in a movie playing a real person. Yeah, he's off the leash.
Here we go. And then for the next six years, or the, yes, yes, for the next five years.
Sure.

Because 2025 is when he gives a shit again. Yeah.
For the next five years, he only does streaming bullshit. And the only two movies he is in that go to theaters are Lightyear,

in which he played the real Buzz Lightyear. Well, in the universe of.

Not the toy, the man that the toy is based on.

A film that is, of course, disgusting and frazzled Snoop Dogg with its portrayal of lesbianism. It's endeavoring to Honey Downed.
I don't just figure how he's supposed to explain this.

He should never watch Honey Downed. He seemed to more be saying that he possibly is too stoned to literally explain homosexual relationships.

And that Lightyear was simply bothering him because it was prompting that.

He wasn't even like, get this woke off my screen. He was like, I am too lazy.

to explain anything. If you have ever taken a small child to see a movie, something I know you now do too.
I sure have, yeah. And my child has unfortunately seen Lightyear like seven or eight times.

Really? I told you, I've said this on this podcast before. She calls it Grumpy Buzz.
She doesn't even like it that much, but occasionally she's like, I want to watch Grumpy Buzz.

I don't know if you told me this before. I forgot this.
I've seen that movie a lot.

I mean, she definitely likes socks more than most of the movie because that's at least a cat that's cute. Calling Grumpy Buzz kind of underlines the core problem of that movie's existence.

She really zeroed in, right? She's writing what the movie is giving you. It's like

Buzz, but she's fun. He's kind of grumpy, right?

Have you seen Lightyear?

You didn't check that one out? Hey, I just have a real quick question for you. Why would I have seen Lightyear? Great question.

I watched that.

I've said this before in the pod, but I was dating a woman and

at the time that Lightyear came out and I went to go see it by myself and she found the stub in my pocket. And I think it's not unrelated

in your pocket, one use. She's like, what is this? What the fuck is this? I was just checking out Grumpy Buns.
She was like,

did you take your little cousin? I was like, no, I had time after record. I went to go see it by myself.
I mean, I'll watch basically anything. I'll also watch anything animated, basically.

Same. My ass back right now.
Yeah, I was going to say. Lightyear kind of looks all right.
It looks good.

Pretty expensive animated film. Yeah, Pixar kind of lost me is the thing.

I know shocking take I lost me. Pixar's not as good as it used to be.
The weird thing about Lightyear.

There are many weird things about it, obviously, but is that it is the plot is basically like diet interstellar.

It's got like this complicated like time dilation plot that's exactly what i was gonna say you take a small child to see any movie they will ask you a question every 15 seconds about what's going on at a certain age yes so first of all snoop dog's point is invalidated because it's like what i don't want to have to explain this and you also have to explain like relativity you're going to have to this is a movie that has such complicated concepts in it it does does anybody fold the piece of paper and put a pencil through it

science fiction movie since the dawn of time is this is what's so weird is that interstellar a movie for grown-ups, does that and everyone's like, oh, fucking Christian.

And then Lightyear is like, fine, we got it. You want to be treated like grown-ups and doesn't take the time to explain it to children.
Let me just say.

I'm going to tangent off this tangent because we don't need to discuss Lightyear that much anyway. Juicy fingers.
How are you supposed to explain juicy fingers to your children? Sorry.

The worst concept in Lightyear is that in their alternate reality or their future, their far-off future,

they eat inverted sandwiches where the meat is on the outside, the bread's in the middle. And Buzz said, Why would you do that? And they go, So you get juicy fingers.
That's the best part.

When the meat juices get on your fingers and you have to lick them off, it's like the kind of sex joke that would be in Honey Don't explain that shit to your grandchildren, Snoop.

I haven't explained anything that's happening in Lightyear to my child, who seems to have forgotten that movie exists recently, which is good. Juicy Fingers.
I had a pivot off of Lightyear.

I'm wearing a Juicy Fingers. Tangent off of Tangent.
Really threw me. Juicy Fingers.
You kind of put it for Gaspar. Relativity, not explaining.
Pussle through the game.

David Giasi, or Giassi, I'm not sure how you say it. Romilly.
Who plays? Who plays Romilly in interstellar

is now in Netflix's The Diplomat, a show that I watch and enjoy.

Is that the Kerry Russell show? Carrie Russell show, where there's a twist every fucking five minutes and it rocks and it's very silly and frothy. It makes me look up from doing the dishes.
Exactly.

And David Giasi is playing a hot British foreign secretary. And it's just always a pleasure to see that guy.
He's

so fucking good looking. He's also a good actor.
Great in Cloud Atlas? Yes, he is. Oh, that guy.
Yeah, he rolls.

He's just got like a really, really great draw, great way of talking, a great furrowed brat. Like, he's great.
He's great.

The only other movie that Chris Evans was in that went to theaters was, of course,

Free Guy, where he makes a three-second cameo, seemingly filmed on an iPhone, playing himself. He did do that.
He is, and Red One, I believe, did go to theaters.

You are tragically correct. I mean, like,

technicality. I did see Gray Man in theaters, but that was a four wall.
But Red Run got like a real release, I guess. It did, but it still is streaming bullshit.

Did he reprise his role as Lucas Lee on the Scott Pilgrim show? He did. He did.

And

that performance in that movie is so fucking good. He's awesome in that movie.
Chris Evans is a good and charming actor. He's been working on our screens for more than 20 years at this point.

I've always been a big defender.

And I think you look at stuff like Lucas Lee, like in another teen movie, where you're like, this guy does get it. Yeah.

Like he is able to poke fun at himself in a way that shows that he doesn't know.

He can't contend that he doesn't know what good material is. No, he's got taste because he's kind of in on the joke and he's worked with good filmmakers before.
I don't like materialists,

but I don't think he's bad in it. I think he's quite good.
He's sort of doing his best. I like him a lot.
Good material, I don't know. That's a movie I obviously

defend.

But I also think that movie has a core issue with his performance that I think this movie carries as well.

I have not seen the third film in his Tri-Gear trilogy is the Kent Jones film, Late Fame. Yeah, well, I think that hasn't actually, you know, that got like a festival.
Yes, it's played at festivals.

You have not seen it yet. No, I didn't see it.
I'd like to see it.

I don't know what he has lined up outside of seemingly returning to the Marvel Cinematic University. No, what?

They got their hooks back in us? Well, he's very much like, as his biceps and pecs are bulging out of his like t-shirt on the red carpet. He's like, I don't think I'm going to be in that one.

And he's like, God, a fucking Captain American Shield.

I mean, maybe if they call me briefly, I might be. He's wearing the mask.
They've tattooed it on his face. He shaved his head.

He's in the Romaine Gavras film Sacrifice, which is at Tiff,

which with Anya Taylor Joy. I don't know much about.
There's two festival movies that haven't pre-mored yet, right? Yeah.

Chris Evans, do we like him in this movie? The thing about him in this movie, in which he plays a sort of, as you say, religious cult leader, the televangelist-y sort of thing.

But the movie introduces you to him

misbehaving before you even see him at the pulpit.

It is front-loaded with.

He's naked a lot of times. You just gave me a look that I cannot describe.

That's why you said that. He's got like a fucking strip mall church that is really a front for a drug operation where they're funneling money from the friends, but also four-way church.

Oh, God.

Go ahead.

finish your thought and then i have a thought he also loves to fuck and he fucks everybody and it's basically a sex because he makes all the female prisoners wear like chain bikinis under their ring and he directs them during sex so like yeah you're like doesn't this all feel very like 80s 90s kind of humor about like televangelists and cvs and fairy time but this is and you're like that thing of like what you don't know is like religious people can be hypocrites.

And I'm like, yeah, we know that.

That is done and dusted. That is old news.
JJ did not do a dossier for this.

He is

fire. Exactly.

Because we told him not to do it, but it was reverse psychology. We wanted him to do it.
Yeah, and he failed the test. Exactly.
I was hoping to see the giant book get opened up, but I guess not.

Yeah, no, I'm sorry. It's on the shelf this week.

But

there were changes made to this versus the driveway doll script remaining untouched and kept as a period piece, right? This was a script that they wrote, that she wrote

at an earlier point.

I believe all of these, including fucking, you know, Beaver Parade or Go Beavers doesn't have a script. I have to remind you that it hasn't happened.
I know it told me personally, it's not written.

It's not.

There may be

a treatment or sketch out there somewhere, right? Like, it wasn't just that someone was like, Go Beavers and they were like, put a pin in that.

They said that they had the ideas down, but they hadn't cracked it yet. And I was like, what are you possibly going to crack?

That's my only question: is was this written in full in like 2002 and then dusted off and like COVID reference

updated? I have

the COVID reference. I talked about it specifically at the park box because it bothered me.
Yeah. Because that, it's again, attention to detail shit that was driving me insane.
Yeah.

Where it's like, again, and like in Driveway Dolls,

my lovely wife, who was a food writer, pointed this out to me.

They order a rose in the 90s. They would have ordered a plush wine.
That's a good one. That's the sort of mistake that the brothers together did not make.

And then it's like, I don't give that much of a shit, but it does like whatever. And then your wife is obviously one of the best food writers.
She's America's best food writer.

In my opinion, bless her for noticing these. Yes.

And then

in this movie, the COVID thing is like, Billy Eichner, if he's that guy that they say he is, which is like a weird joke that I don't care about and it's not very good.

This movie is introduced as a client who is methodically wiping off the chair in her office before he sits in it and he turns to her and goes like, can't be too careful. COVID is still everywhere.

And he's like, if he was actually... that kind of like very cautious person about COVID, he would be wearing a mask.
That is you're right that it is bizarre and lazy. Exactly right.

And the joke is in there, they said,

because

they wanted people to know that it was not a period piece off the bat. And it is there to serve a function, not to actually be funny.
There are other ways you can.

Nope, there's no other way, actually.

Does someone look at a calendar?

I'm always looking at calendars, paper calendars.

When I greet my friends, I'm always saying the dates to them. I'm always like, and as we all know, it's 2025.
How's your November 4th going?

You are right, David, that watching this film, you're like, this does feel like a script that has been sitting on a dusty shelf for 25 years.

And that you're like, yeah, we've kind of moved past this surface level takedown of, do you know that some Christians are actually bad?

Again, I'm not saying that Christians are good or that Christians are above reproach in cinematic satire.

I'm more just kind of like, did you know priests can be horny and nefarious doesn't feel shocking.

A lot of people this room really seems to think that I am going to be like, I cannot believe that Chris Evans is fucking ladies in this movie.

75% of his screen time is probably in that bed fucking somebody, right? Or nude arguing he is often in the buff or in tighty whiteies of some sort. Here's my core complaint.

And I buy it more for this character than Materialist, where he is playing a struggling theater actor with integrity who doesn't want to sell out.

I think Chris Evans has gotten too obsessed with the self-manicuring. I'm sure he's spending a million dollars on physical upkeep a day, right? He looks incredible.

Like it's improfit, not profitable, but he is

almost getting a lot of money.

He's almost getting to a point where I'm just like, it looks like $65 million. Jesus Chris.
It looks what? Sorry, what's that? It looks like his beard is being lined up in between worlds.

I think his beard is a little too perfectly cropped.

It's true this way, but everything I just

have two years of it. Every time he shows up, I'm just like, you look too good now.
It's not a genetic thing. The hair is too well maintained.
Your muscles are too perfect. Your chest is too shaved.

The beard lines are too clean. You know, whatever fucking dermatologist like regiment you have on or whatever work, I'm just like, you are starting to not feel like a real person.

It perhaps works for Captain America, but yet I would argue part of what was so successful about him as Captain America is he somehow made that guy feel a little earthbound.

And now he plays him so corny in a way that's like, whatever, dumb shit when he's like, oh, here's the movie, the list of movies I got to watch. It feels like, oh, like, here's like a human being.

He's like starting to look like an anime hunk. And I'm truly just like,

spend 15 minutes less in the makeup chair. Like if you're making an indie, just like let it grow out a little bit.
Yeah. Cool it a little bit.

I get that this guy is vain and self-obsessed and would be this.

Well, it makes more sense. In Materialists, it bugged me more.
In Materialist, it bugged me. In this, I'm just like...

But in Materialists, it didn't matter because it just went handheld when you were in his apartment, and now I know he's poor.

Sorry, that's my critique. It's one of my many critiques.
It's a good term.

But

I'm just like, this, Chris Evans, the actor, has access to treatments. that this character does not have.
And a shrimp mall. Yeah, in Bakersfield.
Yeah.

I'll believe that he spends two hours in the mirror every day. But I think what you're doing is nitpicking, honey, don't.
And you did it too. And I've done it already as well.
We've all done it.

And it's like with Drive Away Dolls tries this, and this movie tries this too. This kind of like, fucking, this is a chill movie.
Man, this is a ramshackle little delight.

Like, you know, we just threw this together. Stop being, taking this so seriously.
And in Drive Away Dolls, I kind of roll with it.

In this one, I don't so much, partly because, as Maddie pointed out, there's a lot of like grisly,

kind of lurid stuff

that,

you know, I'm bouncing up against much like harder. And so, I don't know.
Well, because you want there to be a point to it.

Every other time the criminals have done this, you're like, it is serving ultimately thematic concerns. Yeah, it felt a little bit like watching those like...

In the early 2000s, there were a lot of those like pitch black comedies. The post-Tarantino kind of crime, murder comedy.
We almost spent a night at McCool. That's correct.

And the whole time that those movies are always always going, like, staring at you down the barrel of the camera, being like, and we're having fun, right? You're having fun. It's wacky and fun.

What are you? Offended? I mean, honestly, are you bad at what happened to Smoochie? And I'm like, I'm.

Poor Smoochie. Death has happened to him.
Wow. Like, death is being threatened.
This movie is giving death to Smoochie a little bit to me, where it's like, it's a good idea.

A movie that I liked a lot when I saw it when I was. When you're did that come out? Yeah, 2002.
And Maddie, I was right there with you. I think we were very similar ages.

And I was was also, I was like, this is twisted. This is dark.
It's twisted. I get that that's, that's transgressive.
And I'm supposed to be like, good.

Good. I will say transgressive.
I re-watched it recently. I also hate society.
I rewatched it recently. I still like it.

There is no question that the best time to watch Death of Smoochie is when you are a teenager.

Never hit as hard as the ages from 13 to 18. Yeah.
But like, there's like, am I wrong here?

It's got like, I was trying to like think of more examples funitis, but like this is a thing that sometimes movies do and like I think driveway dolls also did it to some extent, which is just like it's fun.

But we butted up against this with uh uh lady killers, which is like another murder comic. Which I've not seen because I'm afraid of it.

But but is a movie that very much like maintains the like, this is fun energy. Yeah.
And like honey don't it like has these moments of like her talking to her sister, you know?

Like the um the runner having his mother attacked.

Like these things where you're like it's slowing down it's like investing in character it's not trying to maintain this like come on don't take any of it seriously thing which makes you want to believe it is building up to some ultimate point

you know what that's me reacting to david what cold mornings and a holiday plans

so you're cold and upset Upset, scared, stressed. This is when I need my wardrobe to just work.
It's the last thing I want to worry about when I'm dealing with my two greatest fears.

Stuff that looks sharp, feels good, and I'll actually reach for it. That's what I'm asking for, David.
And that's why I go with Quince.

Plus, it makes gifting easy when everything's worth keeping for yourself. Now, usually we're dragging you out on a leash to do ad reads, but you said, oh, I got something for this one.

Well, I recently shopped at Quince, which I do all the time. And I did get one of their Mongolian cashmere sweaters, which is mentioned here

in their ad copy, which are only $50. And literally, I gave someone a hug and they were like, you're so soft.
And I was like, I ain't soft, baby. Cashmere is.

They hugged you and they went, that must have cost $200 or more. And you said,

from rival retailers, but at Quince, only $50 plus wool coats that actually hold up. to daily wear and still look good.
Here's the other thing I got, though. Please tell me.

I recently upgraded my bed size

to brag because of another sponsor we had, which I won't mention right now. Crossover event.
And so I needed a new comforter.

And I was like, Quince has comforters. What if I got a down alternative comforter from Quince? And it's really, really nice.

So nice. I'm upset to be here today.
I'd much rather be under it. It's in my bed.
Alternative comforter. Does it have like a nose ring and it listens to like indie music? Yeah.
Okay, wait, hold on.

I've been hoping for that. I can also as well.
Okay, go ahead.

Comforter, because some of these rival companies, it's more like an uncomforter. So true.
Sure, just the alternative thing and then stop there. That was a better bet.
Yeah. Hugely affordable.

It was, it came right away. It's really nice.

Every time I shop at Quince, I am impressed. And I just want you to get your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with Quince.
Don't wait.

Go to quince.com/slash check for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada too.

Canada too?

That's q-u-in-ce-e.com/slash check. Free shipping and 365-day returns.
Quince.com/slash check.

David? Yep. Oh, wait, hold on one second.

It was just here. Where did it go? Griffin, what are you looking for? Well, it's just...
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And Wyatt Russell as young Kurt Russell. And maybe Anders Holmes as young John Goodman.
Uh-oh. And maybe Joe Morton as old Corey Hawkins.

Monarch exists in two timelines. I'm vaguely aware.
Yes. It is hard to keep, you know, your money,

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I wish it was as simple as raising Mogwai. Exactly.
They only have three rules. Money has like infinite rules.

A different kind of monster that you're bringing into the ad read right now, but it's just folded into the monarch room. That's a good one.
You're folding it in like, you know, like Bay Cake. Exactly.

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The end of this movie, just to like skip ahead, right?

The basic setup of this movie is

honey. I mean,

the premise is that honey gets a fucking case. People are dying.
Girls are getting killed. What's going on? The woman who had hired her shows up dead in a car crush.

It's a classic fucking Raymond Chandler-y kind of setup. It's like she, you know, like it's the case she does.
She should stop sniffing around, but it's because it's intriguing, right? Right.

Charlie Day is a local cop who has a big crush on her. Very nuanced performance for Mr.
Day. Nothing is about, I've been over 20 years of watching Mr.
Day on my screen, both large and small. Same.

I've inculcated to his fucking shit. And

every time he's on screen, I'm having a ball. He makes

a problem I have with this movie is that most of the jokes are not very funny.

He has the one thing that made me laugh so hard in the last scene of the film where he says sex hookers.

It made me laugh. And I was like, you know what? Against my better judgment, I laughed at that joke.
And you know what? I'm laughing. Thank you.
Ika Day, a.k.a. Luigi.
A.K.A. Luigi is, is a funny guy.

And

I'm pretty much always rooting for him. Despite the fact that he is insanely rich, and I do not need to root for him.
He's fine. He does not need to root for him.

If you are quiet for even a moment, he'll die.

If you listen to me, he's almost right now. Believe in Trelli Day, please client.
I'm not sure if Clive is going to make the same show.

I'm not trying to talk shit, but I do think he seems like the most sort of level and chill of the sunny guys. Like,

by a country moment. They all seem like they've got stuff.
You know, they're hardworking guys. They make their show.

Glenn Harris. They're like Waterloo, where the vampires hang out.
And he fucking crushed that shit. I love that.

And Rob Mack, I believe. Stop.

Don't say any more.

Heart breaks on that name. Do you know about this, Ben? No, I also don't know about this.
Rob McElhaney.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Not to dead name him, but he was born Rob McElhaney. And for the 25 years of his career, that is the name he has gone by.
Credited that way on many episodes of of It's Always Sunday in Philadelphia.

His good show. A show he not only stars in, but he created.
And owns. Yes,

he becomes best friends with Ryan Reynolds. They own the funniest.
You might have heard this, but they own a soccer team. He's married to that girl from Age of Adeline, right?

Yes. Sorry.
Yeah, I heard about the soccer team.

And it does feel like he's become somewhat infected by the mogul brain of Ryan Reynolds. A little bit.
And wanting to be like Ryan Reynolds.

Kind of like a sort of personality brand in a way that Ryan Reynolds also is. He's He's doing like the a more successful run of what Ashton Kutcher was attempting 15 years ago.
Yes. Yes.
Yes.

And

when he was the most followed person on Twitter? Yes, I do.

And you know, it was like starting tech companies or whatever. Yeah.

It's also funny that he was like the person who basically minted Twitter and then he had one bad tweet that was like, oh no, they fired Jopa. What happened?

Do you mean actually everything happened? Yeah. Do you remember the story?

I do not remember that he was going to the map for Paterno. Because he didn't know yet about the Sandusky.
He saw the headline, Joe Paterno, out, and he didn't read the rest of the story.

And people attacked him in the comments, and he went, got it. I will never tweet again.
He actually,

right? Where the first time Twitter bit him, he was like,

never mind. Log out.
Okay. But anyway.
That's really good advice. Over the summer.

Rob McElhaney, I think it's like People magazine or someone breaks that he has legally filed a name change position petition to be Rob Mac, period. Rob Mac.

And people are like, what the fuck is going on? And then he posts like a 15-minute video. A real, this is the real Ryan Reynolds-y energy.
This video where he's, I don't know if it's actually

fire. But it's one of those, like, hey, it's felt like an

Irish ancestors, and like, it's been spelt all kinds of ways, and it's confusing, and no one knows how to pronounce it. Like, right? That's kind of his argument.

His argument is: I now do a lot of global business, and people in other cultures have a difficult time pronouncing my name and I have lost hours of my life where I could be making money correcting people on my name.

That's actually the jokey kind of explanation he gives is like, if you add up every time I've been in a meeting with someone and I've had to say it's pronounced Mechelhenny.

Right. Over over years, and that is 500 hours that I could have been meeting with VCs

as someone with an actually hard to pronounce last name. Lubchansky.
It's Lubchansky. Lubchansky, sorry.
It's okay. Hey, you know what?

I don't care. I'm not changing my name to Maddie Lubb.
Exactly.

Well,

I was going to say, my culture is not your costume, Rob Mack. But his argument of time is money

and I'm missing out on deals. And then it's just that.
And everyone else and his wife, who he has multiple children with, is like, Our children have your name, and you didn't talk to us about this.

Sounds like a normal relationship with your name is Rob Mack and their name Matt Klenny.

It sounds like that video of that one entrepreneur guy that's like my days are cut into six hour chunks yes this is what it's like i love that guy i love that guy you've seen that video where he like takes six baths and he takes bottled water

by three weeks from now i've got i've killed you i've eaten you right the video incredible the video has the energy of like i inject my son's blood into my penis to stay young yeah exactly like these insane fucking like bio hacking like grind set tech bro shit he doesn't have to do the legal channel no change and just tell people nobody has to do anything honestly

the answer

the answer to most things of late is you didn't you don't have to do just call me rob this is um this is this is the the you know the worldwide phenomenon of everyone is 12 now i believe this is what they call it on of why can't i just be 12 why can't i just be 12.

um but anyway and again i want to be clear rob mack has made things that i that amuse me yes i enjoyed mythic quest i haven't watched the latest season i feel like everyone fell off with mythic quest but there was a time when i enjoyed mythic quest Yeah, I'm sure Wrexham FC is doing fine.

I haven't checked the standing. You're right, though, that Charlie Day seems to be very at peace with himself from the outside.

He just made his passion project, and everyone was like, eh. And he was like, yeah, I'll show up and be fine.
I'll be Charlie Day for five minutes in your film.

This feels like the kind of thing of like, again, if you'd gotten the call from E. Tan Cohen.
And he was like, hey, do you want to do some bullshit in my bad movie, Honey Don't?

You would have been like, absolutely. I just want to work with the Cohen brother.

I mean, his performance, Chris Evans' performance, and um, Aubrey Pablo's Aubrey Plaza's performance in particular have the energy of I've always wanted to be in a Cohen's movie.

I've always wanted to be in a Cohen brothers movie, and I read this script two seconds ago, right? I would say it's those two things, and I'm worried that this is the closest I'll ever get.

I could turn this together, take my chance. Well, what if they never get back together again?

And, like, you're playing a sleazy priest in a Cohen's brothers movie, a Cohen movie, rather, is like so if again, that part I think would be better if it had any jokes that were funny.

It's funny or any dialogue that was even medium, interesting, or good. It is such a first-draft character, it never goes beyond what he is revealed to be immediately.

And then it's just a repetition of the beat, which I think he plays fairly well.

I think the more they repeat it, kind of the funnier it is in a way, because you're especially as the movie gets darker, you're like, oh, here's Charlie doing that again.

Okay, when he show, when Chris Evans shows up in church and there's like the big photos of him behind him, yes, I'm like, it got a small chuckle

from me

the first time I saw it, same. Yeah.
I do feel like if he had figured out a way to add a

dollop of real menace to this performance, it would have been a little interesting. But also, this movie kind of shrugs and goes, this guy doesn't fucking matter.

He's shot off screen after being forced to perform the heinous crime of Conolingus upon a woman. Awful.
I do kind of like that scene. I'm sorry, I was going by the DJ Khalid playbook there.

I do kind of like that scene of his final

sex scene is with the French drug Nepo queen. Correct.
Whose name is French for honey, isn't it? What is her name? Is her name Miall? Miel. Okay.
Which is French Ross. That is French, you're correct.

You're right.

The last beat of the movie where they say that. She asked for sex American style, and he says missionary, which makes me wonder then, how do French

heterosexual people have?

Well, the joke is that missionary is the most boring position and americans are boring french people of course yeah they just kind of like blow cigarette at smoke at each other

right uh de chien

what's that what's that now he was trying to do a little he said a little death of dog he just said dog orgasm okay no what i

yeah that is what i said i tried to say sex doggy style well but you're right that what i said was

closer to that's not closer to it's the euphemism for orgasm kind of kind of

my my favorite uh french euphemism is and i'm not sure if this is still true people can let me know i haven't lived in france a long time is that uh you call it cumstain a carte de france because the map of france kind of looks like a

you could say that about kind of any map uh france is very hexagonal here it's very cumbstaining i was gonna say like you can't say that about like chile yeah

i think one could cumb a boot all right well all right we do a side podcast here it's like coming shapes

what's going on this is the patron 20 and side podcast no i'm not sure if that's sustainable maybe we go country to country also i would say coming in to country coming shapes is about the least podcast friendly thing possible sure like in audio form we're like kind of looks like a boot yeah guys i wish you could see this one uh Can I pivot to something way, way less controversial?

I just wanted to say... Damn it, I was going to do a good joke.
Okay, what's your joke? Have you ever seen I Love You Daddy, the Louis Z game movie? Charlie Day is is in that.

Charlie Day is in that playing kind of the same role. Sure, Charlie Day.

Exactly. Like, where it's just kind of like every why won't you fuck me?

Every so often he just shows up to be kind of lewd and like that. Yes.
And it's sort of the same like, hey, this movie kind of needs like a slap on the cheeks for 20 minutes.

Every time the camera fucking like tracks into the room and he's doing this with his hands and he yells her name, it's fun. Every time I'm like, I'm having a good time.

He does, he does, I will say, the least annoying version of his bit, that he keeps not, not even not getting the hint, but just refusing to accept that she is not sexually attracted to men every time he, quote unquote, politely asks her out on a date, right?

And he does play it so guilelessly that the bit isn't creepy or annoying. It is kind of harmless and funny.
It's kind of like, oh, you.

Yeah, like, as like, and sort of like thematically, it almost works as you were talking about before.

If like the thing is, like, the way in which men control women's lives, the first interaction you see her have is him hitting on her, right?

Right, and it's also the last interaction she has with someone who is not the girl on the motorcycle. But even in a non-threatening way, his relationship to her is completely transactional.

All of his kind of cooperation with her is based on when she will agree to go get dinner with me.

Yeah, and when she explains to him why she won't, he goes, You always say that, yeah, which is kind of funny. But yes,

it's all about yes, a woman trying to find an identity that is removed from all these situations.

Honey, kinda, kinda, honey, kinda chris evans final sex scene he is uh having sex based on her directions she is the one giving the commands telling him what to do and then he afterwards says that was the best sex ever i like a woman who can take charge

there's some subversion

and then

shoots him in the head bam while uh honey is parked outside or pulling up to his congregation. I should mention the other, the other plot I'm on here is Talia Ryder as her niece.
Right.

So you got this kind of like domestic plot line and this murder mystery plot line in parallel. So yes, Talia Ryder is the niece.
She goes missing. What's the character's name? Corinne.
Right.

She's running away from her abusive boyfriend. She doesn't want her mom to find out and say, I told you so.
Honey is kind of like helping shield her. She goes to a bus stop.

She's creeped up by an old man who she doesn't know is her grandfather.

Played by that actor is named Cale Brown. I think he's quite good in his face.
He is. He's got a good face.
He's got a real scene.

But she's now a a second missing person. Are these things connected? And Honey believes that she must have been abducted by Chris Evans and his sex cult.
But in fact, Chris Evans is

shot

by the French sort of emissary

for this drug. Drug operation.
It's clearly them being like, ah, them fatel, get it.

Yeah, I mean, having her be French does not make sense. And it's like the French are running this drug church out of Bakersfield.
I wonder if they wanted to be on the East Coast.

That seems like a long way to go.

I think the...

I'm just, I'm just, I'm just. I agree with you.
I'm sorry to poke on. They worked backwards from the Vespa, clearly.

They worked backwards from, like, here's a lady wearing all one pattern out of the Vespa.

Wouldn't that be funny? Wouldn't that be styling?

She holds the screen. I'm not.
It's a very hot lady. I'm not enjoying myself anytime she's in the movie, but it's adding to the where is all of this going, right? Honey pulls up.
She hears a gunshot.

Chris Evans has been shot. They don't show her discovering the body or anything like that.

She also sees a motorcycle pull away from the gunshot and she's not like, maybe I should see where she's going. She's like, huh.

And that's the second point in the movie where she's sort of like driven past this woman, right? But hasn't really engaged with her.

It's clearly blind to her as a suspect because she wants to have sex with her. Right.
And then I'm trying to remember how she figures out that, in fact, Aubrey Plaza is the one.

She just goes over to her house because she's like, I know a copy of her. She actually follows.
It is truly. Right.
She just checks in and Aubrey Plaza is like, FYI, it was me all along.

And Aubrey Plaza is like, You hate me because I'm poor, right? I bet you hate my house. Yeah.
And she's like, I'm from Bakersfield, too. Right.

And then Aubrey Plaza goes like full kind of like serial killer mode, like Pamela Voorhees. Quality sees honey, honey, qually, and sees two cups of tea and is like, who are you making tea for?

And honey, sorry, Quali and Plaza, honey and MG

have been fucking the whole movie, but it's this kind of like forbidden off-on, like, sort of

quasi-relation. I think those scenes are all very good and are kind of the closest this movie has to having any

emotion. There's the scene where they are like basically having sex in the bar in front of all the male cops, is like

good and like interesting. It's like, yeah, these men would not notice.
And it's like, it is interesting in a little bit and it is hot, I think. I agree.

But then it gets to the pro another problem I have with both this movie and the last last one is, does Ethan think gay people are funny? I don't know.

There's some things in here where it's like, there was a bit while they were talking, when I heard them talking after the movie that I saw, where they were like, there's that scene right after they have sex where Honey is like cleaning all the dildos and shit.

And they were talking about like the only argument they had while filming. It was like something they'd have, whatever, they were editing it.

And Ethan wanted to hold longer on the sex toy cleaning because he thought it was really funny. And then Tricia says, but he doesn't understand, as lesbians, sex toys are sacred to us.

And I was like, okay, one of you thinks this is too funny. And one of you thinks this is too sacred.
You're both horseshoeing over here. Like, let's

relax. They're just dildos.
I do have a lot of people. There's perhaps

a sort of double-pronged thing happening here, much like a double-sided dildo.

Great segue. Thank you.

In their split up, it does seem clear that Ethan's the horny one of the Cohen brothers, right? Yeah.

My stupid letterbox review of Driveway Dolls was like, okay, the big experiment's over, and now we know which Cohen is which. Like, let's get a pizza in here and get them back together.

It is frustrating how much this movie plays into the

narrative of now we can divide the interests and the skill sets. Yeah.

Which the whole thing was that they were supposed to be like this like complete singular unit that works so well without speaking, right? I think they are.

And I think to some degree, versus like, we will see what this second Joel movie is like, right?

But Joel feels, seems to be taking their sabbatical from working together as, well, let me explore parts of myself as a director that I never explored. Yeah.

And treat them with the same level of seriousness as our work together. Yeah.
And Ethan seems to be specifically on a mission of, I want to not take this stuff as seriously anymore. Yeah.

And, you know, and like, you know, Joel had the co-writer too, which William Shakespeare. He did.
He's from England, i think bill did a pass on that script yeah uh the new film

uh yeah big big bill big bill's a blasio himself the new script there's like not much known about i think everyone sort of assumes it's a solo writing credit but no one really knows what if he started writing it with a friend just to like even that

would be fun i don't know i don't know but i don't know

We talk about this in our Drive Away Dolls episode, which will have come out, but you have not heard that Tricia Cook was very outspoken when she was promoting Drive Away Dolls, that where that script came from and the sort of reignited passion to finally put this thing into production is that, especially at the time she started writing this in the 90s, if there was like gay cinema in America, and especially lesbian cinema, it was almost always very serious, very traumatic.

And she's right. I don't disagree.
Hard to live life,

coming out stories, getting murdered stories.

Even if it wasn't traumatic, it was about adversity you know it was about processing shame and fighting for happiness and whatever and she wanted to the whole thought experiment of these lesbian b-movie trilogy of riffs is can i like remove any sense of self-importance from lesbian storytelling can i make lesbian movies that are allowed to just be like dumb and messy right um but this movie is like

touching third rails or at least like trying to touch serious subjects. It's identifying where serious subjects are, pointing at them and saying, but I don't want to talk about that.
Yeah. In a way.

And I think it extends to the representation of sex, which she's just like, I want to show these things on screen in a way that is not the male gaze. Yeah.
and that normalizes it, right?

And that also allows it to be funny, but in a way that isn't a punchline. But I do think the balance is kind of off here.

Yeah, just something feels a little too much like you think the fact, just the movie seems to think that it is like a little bit funny when two women are having sex to me a little bit. I don't know.

Yeah, yes. And I think like

I think drive away dolls. Which is to be clear, it is deadly serious.
Of course. Sex is very serious.
It's very, I'm very serious.

Stone-faced. It's sort of like I'm like the emoji that's just like line, line, line.

I'm wearing the gloves that go up to your elbows and a full ball gown. Yeah.
Yeah. Very serious.
The whole time. Yes.
The whole time. I think Driveaway Dolls

like,

it abstracts its sex scenes to the point of almost feeling like Three Stooges routines. Yeah.

Where it is successful in being like, we are working past this being erotic, that this is just eye candy for like young dudes

by making it so silly. that it's hard to kind of objectify it in that sense.
And I think this movie,

by having scenes where there actually is some sense of palpable connection

between her and Aubrey Plaza that is played somewhat real. And there's sort of this sort of ticking clock within the movie of these are two women who are afraid of commitment.

They like, you know, they like fuck and move on. And they're acknowledging that they're worried about having to hit the end point of disconnecting from each other because they don't want to

accidentally land in something that feels more serious and committed. That these are people who try to live without attachments.
Yeah, and it feels like it's there already.

I thought they were pretty good together in a way.

And, you know, the introduction of honey is her in bed with a woman getting the call and saying like,

lock the door in your way. Right, right.
That she just is really like, I'm moving on.

And by comparing notes and revealing that they have the same kind of relationship to relationships, they are unlocking a new level of vulnerability in each other that sort of scares the two of them and is interesting.

And then the movie responds by saying, actually, she's insane. Right.

We're going to throw hot tea in her face and turn her into like a scarred bond villain. Yeah, she becomes kind of a bond villain.
Who you have to murder. Yeah.

I

feel like.

Yes.

They just don't seem to have that good of a grasp on her material. I don't know.
There is a version of this ending that does not redeem this movie for me, but where Margaret Quawley

shows up, puts it together, sees her, Aubrey Plaza just breaks down emotionally. Rather than going full fucking super villain mode, right, full like actual psycho.

And being like, you've discovered my scheme. I must fight you to the death.
Yeah, it's a little scooby-doo, except with it feels very lesbian murderer. Yes.

That she's sort of like, I don't know, it got out of hand. Yeah.
Right.

That you almost like try to deal with the delayed like time release trauma of this woman and what she's gone through and like her needing to confess this to someone who she's actually let in emotionally.

Yeah.

And that still needs more like

something earlier in the movie. Clue you in that this lady is perhaps kidnapping people and putting her in.

And it would be hard to pull off in terms of the aforementioned tone management that this movie does not totally have under control, but it feels like the kind of ending that would at least make this film feel like it had something to say.

Yeah. It would have functioned a little better.

Something on its mind versus it feels like such an easy out to be like, well, that didn't like mean anything. Chris Evans didn't kidnap her.
She did kidnap the honey's original client.

She solved that, but he's already dead. So there's nothing she can do about it.
She retrieved her niece, who's now back home.

You have the kind of one moment of her waking up in the hospital to her sister and the niece being like, thank you so much.

Bow tied on that. Honey drives off,

sees the French lady on a Vespa.

Basically, they're fucking each other with their eyes. Yeah.
Movie over. So now she's going to get in bed with a different criminal.
Yeah.

What was the point of any of this?

That's a really good question. Women be out here doing it for themselves? Women, okay.

That is true. It is true.
It's a crazy world out there, and Honey will always be getting a coffee with her trusty assistant, What's her pants, and solving the next case and fingering a lady.

And I don't know. I'm just gonna go

keep going.

I like the fact she's out there right now. The dust will be blowing down Bakersfield Avenue.
She'll be flicking through that Rolodex. It's not the only thing she's flicking through.

I like, I had to say, yay!

I like

the assistant character and I do like that dynamic to your cosplaying point of like, she's almost like, honey, like you're doing like the bit. Why do you still have a Rolodex?

Why are you asking me for coffee as if we're in like some fucking 50s TV show?

She looks like a lesbian from the year 2025 she's got like a wild fang shirt on like she's yeah her name is gabby beans good name yeah great name it makes that that makes sense because she's really obsessed with the coffee hey now that's a good point what were you about to say david uh she's incredible joke she was she's in the upcoming uh stevens bilberg film which we love to see okay and she was in um in romeo and juliet with um with our friend rachel oh the broadway production on broadway okay yeah

um even just like the opening credits for this which i think is kind of a cool visual idea of the cast appearing as signage on closed down businesses. Ripped that off from Fat City.

They said they might have. Yeah.
I think so. And I'm just like, it's kind of just executed sloppily.
Can I say something about that?

Not to keep being like, and I was at the talk back, but the only three things I remember have all come up. The last one is that.

They said they had to go film that twice because they fucked up the first time they filmed it.

And it's the things you always hear about the Cohen brothers when there's two of them instead of just one, is that they don't, they are like, they have like the tightest sets you've ever heard of, right?

And nothing, there's no mistakes, there's no wasted shots, there's no wasted time. And they had to go film, they wasted a day filming the wrong stuff the wrong way to make the credits.

Here's the shame. It also feels like they fucked it up the second time.

It feels like they should have done it a third time because I like the idea and it doesn't feel like they figured out the right way to make it

execute it. It feels like badly or something.
Yeah, I don't know what that was. Yeah.
And someone was

on our Reddit was sharing a story of working on a production with someone who worked on Lou and Davis and asking them about working with the Coans.

And he was like, I got so many stories about how they're the fucking best, right?

Like as guys, as filmmakers, as bosses. It's all fun stuff.

But the anecdote that really stuck with me was he said he remembered looking at the shooting schedule and in their notes, it would say like, you know, shot whatever, set up whatever, three takes.

And they'd be like, they're allotting three takes and they would get it in three takes.

That they're so good at this that they basically can guess in terms of like how they get these movies made under schedule and under budget which is always one of the most impressive things about them that they can correctly kind of eyeball that might take six takes to get right that one we can probably get in two and he was like they were basically always right about that that's wild and that's the about them that feels magic

magic right right or just experience but yeah and then they split up and you're like this is completely dissipated what's going on here Now, what's frustrating about the Go Beavers thing, if we can circle back here,

is that when they do interviews, not

solo. I just, what's frustrating is that kind of humor is sort of impenetrable to me.
Here's a spoiler.

I predict that movie will be about vaginas.

Or boobs. If you're naming that, would be a swerve.
Possibly. But the beaver movie was about boobs.
That's a twist at the end. The camera pans up.

Eyes up here, buddy.

A little lower. Boobs down here.

My boobs are up here, buddy.

When they do interviews,

which they haven't done a ton of since they've been split up, but they have both. I mean, like, Ethan and Trisha did nominal press for this movie.

They did more press for Drive Away Dolls because I think they wanted to really underline, like, Trisha was the co-author of this.

For Honey Don't, I think no one was really barking up the tree, anyways. I couldn't find a lot of reviews to that point.
I hate interviews.

I bought the fucking Blu-ray because I'm committed to the great project to blank check. This, this, I, I, I struggled to even define how

this feels like a bootleg.

The cover feels like it was printed out on like an HP NV900.

It's like the discard itself was like written on with a Sharpie. It has zero special features.
The menu says play setup. It doesn't have a scene selection option.
Scene selection?

Like it feels like it's a 1997 DVD. Love it.
Does it have a menu that does anything? It has a menu that's just play and set up, and it's just this still image.

And when you go to setup, the only option is English subtitles. Is music playing? No.
The song Honey Don't is not playing? Nope, nothing's playing.

Right, there's an original song in this movie that's co-written by Ethan, produced by Jack Antonoff, and sung by

Margaret Kuali and Talia Ryder.

There are actually two songs that follow. It's not a cover of the famous song Honey Don't.

That also plays, but there are two original songs in this movie that Ethan co-wrote. Like in the movie? Yep.

There's one in a montage where she's driving around, like, interviewing suspects. Okay.
And watching her. I thought that was just some bad song I'd never heard.

Well,

as wrong as that is, I guess it was a bad song I'd never heard. Watching it, I was like, this sounds like Margaret Cauley.
And then I looked it up and I want to say it's called Odd Wad Wankers.

Yes. Sorry.
The other one's called In the Sun, She Lie. There's also another one.
Her fake name is Lace Manhattan. The other one's called My Little Black Star, maybe? Lace Manhattan.

I'm not getting into sound. It's not enormous are the pen names.

We got to call it. Is this all fun? I'm playing the box.

I got so much more to say. This just feels like when you talk to like a 70-year-old and they're like, my humor is a little body.
Yeah. Like, it's all, I don't know.

It just feels like someone who thinks they are funnier than they are. I agree.

The thing I was going to say. He's famously funny.
He's one of the Cohen brothers. There's only two family.
I know. I got tickets to see this play he's got running off Broadway right now.

That's like 3-1 actually. Everyone Everyone who's seen it has said it is actually very good and funny.
Sure, funny. Aubrey Plaza says, Dylan's in it.
Dylan Galula, friend of the podcast. Yes.

It's got a good cast and everyone says it's good. And I've asked this two people who felt similar to me about Honey Don't, and they're like, yeah, no, it's actually good.

I'm not like grading it on a curve. So it's a little odd because he has done these side writing projects and they have.
worked on their own terms before. The thing I was going to say.

Sauce is grading people on curves. Honey and honey.
Hey.

In the interviews they have done, they're like, you know, we both felt burnt out. We took some time.
Ethan didn't really want to make stuff anymore.

Joel said, maybe I do something on my own, but that we've just been out of sync. That they've been writing something together, but then it was like, Honey Don't got green lit.

So then Joel started writing something else. And then by the time Honey Don't came out and Joel was about to go into production on his movie.

So now Ethan has to wait for Joel to be finished with his movie before they could make the next thing together.

Where it's like, if they did Greenlight Go Beavers tomorrow, it might delay the reunion for another two years. Right, which was the last thing we needed.

They've been like alternating productions in a way that has fucked us. I'm getting older all the time.
We all

which is breaking. I didn't realize that was going to keep happening to me, and it does keep happening.
I really thought that's going to beat the trend.

I'm hitting a big roundish number this Saturday. This Saturday.
Okay. What are you doing? Leaving the country.
Get the fuck out of here. You're not kidding.
I'm gone. No spoilers, but

is it an age that Judd Appetow is particularly obsessed with?

This is. Yeah, for his film, This is 29, yeah.

That's the roundest number.

The nine is pretty round. It's round.

I'm realizing he has two titles with that age in it. Does it?

Oh, he does. He does.
Four-year-old virgin.

Yeah. Wow.
You know what? How did that never occur to me before? Obviously, I know the four-year-old virgin was kind of Corell's idea, but it is funny that he's hung up on 40.

He's like, You better have even either fucked or become a millionaire by the age of 40. Two of his six movies are 40 pictures.
Huh. Anyways, you know what?

As it rapidly approaches for me, I kind of understand the man.

Sure. Yeah.
Your next book is going to be. Are you ready to add to the 40 camera? Actually, you know what actually is fucked up about the book I'm working on now? It's a lesbian road trip.

Well, I'm not kidding. Well,

so I'm challenging Ethan Cohen to single combat

with this book. I think this is a bar you can clear.

Yeah,

what I'm hoping to do is I've put in actual jokes.

So I'm hoping

that it does something about it. Interesting approach.

Sorry.

You were saying something leading up to as you approach. Oh, I'm just saying I'm getting older all the time.
They take two more years. Oh,

I'm going to even be around. And look, there's one interview I read with Ethan Antrician.

Ethan Nintrician, not Ethan Trician. What the fuck is going on with me? I thought that's kind of a cute couple name for them.
Ethan.

Right. Ethian.

Where, you know, they're asked, like, hey, so you're going to do that third movie. And they're like, oh, maybe.
Like, we, you know, we talk about that. We wrote a script with our kid.

So maybe we should do that.

Or maybe, and, and, and they also say, and Ethan works with Joel and they're doing something. And you're like, oh, that sounds good.
Yeah. And like, again, I do not want to be.

The audience is going like,

people enjoying working with their kids. And it's not like that has never produced something interesting.

It can, but it does sometimes feel a little bit

name a couple. I would probably have to do some strict googling and research to unearth the ones that are good.

The George Miller movie, where I always get the number wrong,

3,000 years of solitude. Oh, that's right.
But

his kid

is old. Sure.
No offense to that. You got to have an old-ass kid if you're going to work.
Yeah.

You know, it can happen. Of course, it's great.
Oh, you collaborate with your kids.

I want the Cohens and their families to do whatever makes them happy.

They have earned it.

But I also agree with you that they are soon to both be in their 70s. Yeah.
And the film culture has been lacking from their collaborations.

And when it was just the narrative of Ethan is tired, he wants a break. I'm like, by all means, take your break.
Take your break.

But now that we're on the second Lark movie, and in that time, he has also produced an evening of theater. I'm like, it's not like you don't want to work.

No, and I think he has said like, yeah, I'm over that. Like that exhaustion, I, I, I dealt with it and it was invigorating to make these movies with my wife and isn't that fun.

And I'm like, that is fun. Would love you to make something I like.

Perhaps a trite complaint of mine. And like, I do kind of have the thing of like, you owe me nothing.
Yeah. You've made a bunch of shit that I love.
You want to make things that don't work for me.

That's fine. If you can get the money, go for it.
It's not like this boobs. Boobs.

Vaginas. It's not like this movie

was shot back to back, but they were shot pretty close together, obviously with the same lead actor. And Working Title financed them both.
And it does feel like Working Title has benefited from

supporting the Cohens for decades.

They clearly are like, this is a rounding error for us. Exactly.
It's kind of like, it all evens out and maybe there's another interesting thing coming or whatever.

But like, I think Honey Don't was in the can before Driveaway Dolls even came out, if I'm not mistaken. Now that two of these have been released to pretty violent indifference from the public.

I don't know a single person that's not an absolute freakazoid that has seen it. Right.
Whereas Driveaway Dolls, some people were like, oh, sure. This one,

nobody was like, I saw Honey Don't and was disappointed by it.

The only person I know that like saw it, like that was like unexpected of me for them to see it was my friend, the drummer in my band Ivy that I took to go see it I have had multiple close friends and family members truly say you didn't see honey don't did you

when it came out like in the month after it came out and I was like yeah we're doing them on the podcast right now and they were like yeah but I thought you were gonna skip that one not just that we'd skip the episode but they'd be like that you would not feel a compulsive need to see it you would skip it because like you have to not see it people who know your health

and know that I couldn't skip it and are like but you must have skipped it. Is that one tweet about David Attenborough narrating Planet Earth is going, skip, skip, don't like this one, skip,

skip this animal.

It did feel like this was out of theaters within like less than two weeks.

I think it did two or three weeks in theaters.

Yeah. Yeah.
I saw it like a week into its release and I remember checking showtimes a week later and being like, it's down to like one time a day at one theater. Yeah.

It was, it was gone fast in New York City.

The thing I want to think about is, so when I when I did see it, they were introducing right after Honey Don't, they introduced the long goodbye on the same screen 10 minutes later, which is a film even episode.

Yeah, yeah, but I'm just kind of like imagine watching this and then sitting in your staying in your seatbelt. Not going to make Honey Don't look great in retrospect.

I mean, I had a similar experience of it'll pick you up. I, you know, I just watched this for the second time, but two days ago, I went and saw Wake Up Dead Man.
Oh, yeah.

The new Knives Out movie, which had a little preview screening at the Paris.

I guess we'll be out now by the time this episode comes out. At least in theaters or whatever.
I can never keep track of what Netflix rollouts are. But I saw that on Monday or Sunday night.

I greatly enjoyed it. Good movie.
And then I was like, that's going to make this Honey Don't Rewatch significantly worse. That's true in terms of...
Yeah, right. They're not the exact extreme.

No, but there's.

And even murders that are being solved. And even its relationship to Christian faith in America.

Yes. It's dealing with some similar stuff.
Well, Wake Up Dead Man has the Ryan Johnson thing of it is trying to run at topical shit that sometimes you're a little like, Ryan, this feels on the nose.

Or Ryan, you're almost too animated by like right now. Yes.
But at the other time, you're like, kind of respect you take in the swing versus honey don't being like.

Isn't, you know, Pat Robertson a hypocrite? You're like,

I will.

I will also say this to his credit. All three of these movies, the first time I'm seeing them, about halfway through, I'm like, I get it, this is good, this is fun, right?

And then that's all you got, and then they get you with the and then they get me. It's not even like a twist thing where I'm like,

oh, you're doing far more than I thought you were underneath the surface. And I feel like the first half of the movie, I was just like, okay, I get it, it's a Trump thing.

That's really all you have to like talk about. And then he's like, no, I'm talking about like 20 things.
Okay. And it's the kind of flowering you want a movie like.
What's the talk with J.J. Abrams?

Like,

that was. I thought that was a very interesting ploy.

I did too. There were two screens that talked.
Oh, so you didn't see that. The one I saw was moderated by Josh Horowitz.
Oh, sure. Well, he knows.
He was excellent. He's the king of that.

So he's good at that. They did a surprise of Daniel Craig coming out.
The audience exploded.

I just thought it was, when I saw it was Abrams and Ryan Johnson. I did the double take.
Like my first thing. I was like, oh, sure.
Yeah. J.J.
Abrams. I haven't thought about it.

And then I'm like, wait.

Didn't he fucking make episode nine, which is basically like taking a piss on episode eight? Like, is this like a grand healing moment? Is this a we've always been friends?

I would have loved to have seen it. It did feel like just them sitting on the stage together was meant to be some rebuttal to the like rock versus Undertaker narrative

that the internet has built for the last 10 years. But it's like the rock versus the Undertaker if The Rock was like lying perfectly still on the ground.

It's a bit of a hydrogen bomb versus coughing baby situation right now. I mean, I'm all for J.J.
Abrams.

Making's heavy nights. It's like a Twitter.
It's an incredible game.

i think i'm all for jj abrams making

first off anything he hasn't made anything since episode nine yeah second off would love it to be good

maybe

yeah that'd be cool it's it's by all accounts a back to the future riff it is time travel influenced in some way

okay hey the book i'm working on is also a time travel

there's nothing wrong with time travel time travel rocks

David. Yep.
This episode is brought to you by Mubi, the global film company, the champions great cinema. From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there is always something new to discover.

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look before we play uh we plug Maddie's excellent books, which this reminded me to do simplicity we should play the we should play the box office much like Rob Mack just stopped don't say simplicity rocks in the land of yeah August 22nd 2025.

Honeytone opens number eight three million dollars. I saw this movie in a double double feature.
It topped out at five.

Driveaway could not complete its black hat. I want to say DriveAway opened a five and ended at 10.

Sure, let's see. So this was already like completely 50% of something that already didn't.
What this bad boy calls. That's a great question.
No, DriveAway Dolls also only made five. Really? Yeah.

Okay.

They're saying they're like 15 or 20. Yeah, I think that's probably about right.
They don't seem like they would take that long to make.

Yeah, I just remembered another gripe I had. Please go ahead.

Very quickly. During the talk back, Ethan kept saying drive away dykes, which I know was the working title of the film.
And that's the sort of secret title of it. But I was like, hey, man.

Are you allowed to say that? Well, again, this is why they did the full court press of like, Tricia is a Joey quote.

I think that's also why the movie was not technically titled that. He said it so many times.
Right. And every time I'm like, okay, like

eight years ago, I'd be like, all right, whatever, man.

Right now. Right now.
Right now. Right here, right now.
Right here, like the song says. Yeah.

Bring back Fat Boy Slim. What's that guy doing?

It's a good question. He did the show with David Byrne.
That was good. Hear Lies Love.
Is that what it was called? Sure. That was a good show.
Yeah.

I saw this movie in a double theater. No, no, it wasn't.
Never mind. Really? There you go.
Sorry.

I was thinking about American. Oh, well, now we can tell you that was.

Hear Lies Love is very

strong reception. I had political issues with it, which I won't get into on your movie podcast.

i don't i i hear that and i respect that thank you um

i saw this in a double feature with uh highest to lowest

uh which was just interesting in terms of it being like uh two late movies from american masters that are kind of being dumped and disregarded yeah that are funded by well no actually honeydone isn't a streamer right it's a focus but yeah but yeah but honey don't i was like whew and then i went across the street with my girlfriend we got tacos we walked back into the theater we We saw highest to lowest, and we were like pumping our fists.

And we were like, this isn't perfect, but God, when it hits, it hits. More like lowest to highest.
Yeah, maybe. In that regard.

Well, it does kind of build in that order, but it was sort of like, I wish Honey Don't could have delivered some of this juice. Yeah.
What's number one at the box office?

It is, speaking of things that were on streaming, the streaming sensation of the year being pushed onto wider screens 10 weeks into its future.

So this isn't overseas because technically Netflix didn't report the weekend numbers for K-pop demon hunters. But it is listed here on the numbers as the number one

movie of this week making $19 million.

It's one of those, depending on what sets because it was estimates that were like sort of repeated off the record. It was certainly the most viewed movie of the week in theater.
No place, right?

No one could really deny this, and it had an insane per-screen average because it wasn't on that many screens.

But I believe some outlets reported that Weapons was, by technicality, the number one movie of the week. Fair enough.
So number two at the box office is Weapons. Yes.
One of my favorite movies.

I know maddick didn't like it i oh oh okay i know

i know

i saw maddie letterbox about it i thought or something i really really liked most of it you didn't you didn't love the uh i am

i thought she was great her performance is great i liked the movie immensely i was i was really locked into it for most of it i thought the ending was so good i was losing my mind screaming talk about sticking to land talk about paying off like a slaves it was more like i didn't like barbarian that much right and i felt he was was dipping.

I felt he was going back to repeated some of that. Have you heard? Yes, sure.

That I said this on a website I shouldn't have logged into, and I got yelled at for days and days and days and days and days and days and days. But did you know it's very scary when a woman is old?

And I think this movie was doing it less than Barbarian. I think I was more mad at the moment about it.
I think I would revise my stupid letterbox review to be a little higher. Sure, fair enough.

And maybe I'll do that. Fair enough.
So no one yells at me. Because now you've loosed them upon me.

I fucking logged a five out of ten for Frankenstein, a movie that I know Griffin liked, but like hardly was getting like universal praise.

And these days you do this on Letterboxd people are, there's whatever. There's a

gaggle of folks who come yell at you. I'll say, I'm not mad and don't put it in the newspaper that I got mad, but I was kind of like, Jesus, I'll say that.

David's holding up a little sign that says, I'm mad.

It's like a little wily coyote. It's pointing at him.
It's pointing at himself, which is hard because he's holding it perpendicular to his body.

I liked Frankenstein, but also like very much for me, a gentleman six with major issues

that also I went to see after hearing like all of my most trusted friends.

Nuke it from orbit for two months. And I was like, more of this work than I was expecting.
This is the Guerre Moldatoro special. Everyone I know hates it.
And then I go watch it.

I'm like, I had a nice time.

You were saying, I wish he would make in a text thread we're on, you were saying, I wish he would make something like Crimson Peak again. Fun.

And I thought watching Frankenstein was, this is what I wanted Crimson Peak to be. Crimson Peak, I totally bounced off of.

I do feel like you and I

and I land differently on GDT. We're both like hot and cold on him, but we tend to alternate on which ones.

I'll also say the Oscar Isaac performance in Frankenstein goes in the bucket I've created with his Moon Knight and apocalypse performances where I'm like three question marks. Like, what?

What? It is weird. Pedal to the metal kind of performance.
Not very successful casting. No.
Allurdy's fantastic. He's great.
And that's

what works in the movie, not just his performance. I'm the the first to notice.
Is he tall? Tall fellows. He's too tall to Blo Elvis, I think.
Tall fellow. You have not seen the film yet, Maddie?

Frankenstein? Yeah. No.
There's this bizarre thing, and I was very surprised. He's sympathetic to the monster.
Girl Tor seems to relate more to the monster character. That's what the book is.

Well, I would say the whole movie is a little bit. That's what the book is.

And

most depictions, most adaptations of the book don't really get at that.

I disagree with that. Yeah.

Well,

I'm not sympathetic in all the movies. A lot of, but like the classic, like universal monsters depiction is like he's just a beast.

Whereas like in the book, he's like wearing a tuxedo and writing letters longhand with a feather. Like, it's how to live your life.
That's how to live your life. Honey, don't need more

longhand feather letters. Stitched fingers.
Say that. That's a theater world.
Longhand feather letter. Number three at the box office Griffin is a film that did pretty good.
Okay. A Lega sequel

that I feel like came out, got meh reviews, and kind of like,

you know, cleared almost 100 mil at the box office, kind of almost quietly, despite one of its cast members being fucking the loudest person in the world these days.

Enough of her.

Maybe I'm being rude.

She's a legend.

Maddie, shut up. You're talking as much.

Legacy.

It's not Sidney Sweeney. No, not that.
I know what you did last summer. That I did not like.
I did not care for that film. When did it come out? What week is this?

This is its third week of release. It came out sort of August 8th.
Beginning of August. My wedding anniversary.
It doesn't quite hit 100, but it gets close. 94.
Loudest person in.

She's just, there's been a lot of her lately. She's.
And she's off the leash, as am I sometimes, so I respect it. But I do feel like she's felt very empowered to be, you know,

big poisoner. It is Freakier Friday.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh.

Yeah. Where she's like, should I fire off a Charlie Kirk tweet? I'm going to do it.
I, like, some PR PR person is like, Jamie, forget it.

I defend her Oscar running performance. I think she is quite good in everything everywhere all at once.

I do think nothing

from giving her that Oscar.

It certainly empowered her to go to lodge. Very, very broad performances, I would say, of late.
Yes.

I will never forget queuing up that bear episode that's just her and Abby Elliott's face in close-ups.

Me and my wife watching it for 10 minutes, and then me going,

I think the whole episode is going to be this. And my wife going, I mean, no way, come on.

And I sort of do the, I like track, you know, I hit the Apple remote to like see this the little screen as you try. And I'm like, just their faces, just their faces.
The whole thing shows their faces.

I will say, just like, do we have any double set change? I will say. I will say.
Hey, go poop. Come on.
Please give us a double.

The bear post season one. A lot of episodes, you're kind of like, is this going to be the whole episode? I don't think it's going to be this.
I don't know.

And I liked season two. I definitely did.
I liked season two. And at season three, there were things I liked.
There were episodes that worked for you. Get watched for.

Much like the lady killers, I'm afraid of it.

Same.

Or I watched some and then haven't finished it yet.

Freakier Friday, did you see Freakier Friday? I still have not seen it. Neither of you.
I will watch it when it's on Disney Plus. And you saw it.
Say what? I'm joking.

You probably didn't see Freakier Friday either.

I feel like everyone I know who's seen it is like. Everyone said it was like, it's fine.
It's kind of what you think it is. Yeah.

It looks like a shampoo commercial, but it's effective.

Who directed it?

What's her name? Garnier. The brand.
The woman who did Late Night and Blinded by the Light.

Nisha Ganatra. Yes.

Late Night,

the great.

She didn't do...

Come on. That's Garinder Chada.
Oh, that's a really nice. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.

But she did do Late Night, and then she did a movie, I think, called The High Note with Coda Johnson that was so far away from Tracy Ellis for Allison Ice Cube. COVID forgotten film.
Yes.

Number four, did you see Freaker Friday? No.

You didn't, you didn't.

I didn't get freaky with it.

Yeah. I'm happy Lindsay Lohan seems to have

a level out or she seems fine.

She is in a commercial that drives me insane where she's like talking about her children's toys or something that I get 85,000 times while I'm trying to watch my shows while I draw.

And for that, she's dead to me.

Accepted. Yeah.
Number four, the box office is a big superhero film of of the year that did

probably about the lowest acceptable amount that the fantastic four call in first steps. Right.
Like it squeaked over 500 worldwide. It just narrowly avoided

an embarrassment. But it was not, I think, the runaway bounce back up on it.
No, especially when you consider DePool and Wolverine aside,

that being their highest grossing film or their second highest grossing film in years is is faint. Crazy.
Imagine because it outgrows Thunderbolts. It outgrows

Captain America, Brave New World. All respect to our president.
Wow, I didn't realize he was here. He's right there.

He's been listening to me the whole time. Honor his highest shelf.
You gotta warn me. The film's before that.

I will appoint the leader to every position in the cabinet. The film's before that.
Adamantium.

Remember when that movie is about Japan and America negotiating an adamantium mining treaty?

That's the plot of that Stephen Sonomi's.

Yeah, it's the plot of a mouchette. One of the fallen celestials has become an island with Adamantium in its own.
Is there a problem

countries are fighting over it?

It also outgrossed the Marvels. It did not outgross Guardians of the Galaxy 3.
Okay. It did barely outgross Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania, but that's not what you want it to be doing.

I was going to say, just imagine being Peyton Reed and you are about to make your 60s Fantastic Forum movie and you make Down with Love one of the best movies in the last 30 years.

In my opinion.

Incredible movie. Shout out to my wife for making me watch it because it was her favorite movie in high school.
Anyways, great movie.

But imagine being him and you want to make your Fantastic 460s movie and nobody likes Down with Love, so they don't let you. And then 20 years later, they make it and

it looks like that.

Look, I partially defend first steps, but it must have been really frustrating to him to make Quantamania and then watch someone else make the kind of Fantastic 4 movie that he had always wanted to make.

He would have nailed it and not totally

would have done a better job with it. Yeah.

Number five at the box office is another animated film,

a sequel, but not a squequel.

No, not that I'm aware of. It's The Bad Guys 2.
That's correct. A movie that quietly kind of disappointed.
It ended up at 80? It ended up at the grand total of $82 million.

Yeah.

Like

first one outgrossed it, and that was 2022, I want to say, and also was

like when Peacock was putting movies on their streaming service three days after they were in theaters.

Take that for what you will. Went to see it with the Ehrlichs.
Oh, yeah. Ace on it.
It's his favorite movie? Sure. Didn't really

be displaced by whatever he's seen lately. But last time I went over there, he was watching it for the 80,000th time that day.

Number six at the box office this week was Nobody Too. It is a lot lot of like, okay, like stuff in the box office this August.

I do like, it gives me a little bit of hope for like the health of cinema going. Yeah.
That Nobody 2 is kind of what we need more of,

which is like you make a $15 million movie that makes like 50 worldwide. And Universe goes like, why not make a sequel? Who cares? It's fine.

You can make a movie that gets on like second base and people are like, okay, sure. Number seven, James Gunn's Superman, which in its seventh week is outgrossing Honey Don't.
Number nine, be great,

Naked Gun. Yeah.

You see Naked Gun? Yeah, I saw it. When it was funny, it was so funny.

The last act kind of lost me. I think there's great bits in the last act.
I think there's good, but it was like when the jokes were good, I was like having the time of my fucking life.

I will say I saw it a second time in theaters and I found it did not quite have the replay value that for me, I re-watched the fucking three original movies once a year.

I grew up watching, we had 33 and a third taped off of television. Yeah.

And I watched it until it broke. I think,

yeah. The jokes hit still on the 50th watch for me.
And I liked the Naked Gun 2025 a tremendous amount, but I did feel a little bit more of its creakiness the second watch.

Still, best studio comedy we've had in quite some time. I mean, the whole time I was watching it, and I was just like, oh, there's like a comedy with jokes in it.
I was,

can you believe it? So happy.

And even like, you know, just to be clear, watching it the second time, I was very happy watching it. I just wasn't in the ecstatic euphoria I was in the first time.

Yeah, I also missed it in theaters. So I watched it at home, which I think maybe two.

It was a very good movie to see with theaters. Yeah, in theaters with an audience.
I can imagine. Yeah.
Number 10 in the box office Griffin's favorite film, The Year Jurassic World Rebirth.

There you go.

Is that your review of the film? Numbering

much. It's

not a fan. Not a fan of that one, were you? Quite poor.
It stars people's sexiest man alive. I like him.
Yeah, I like him too. He gives the best performance in that movie.

Sure.

I mean, I suppose.

I mean, what's the competition? That dinosaur that's a mix of two different dinosaurs? I think Mahershala gives the best performance. That guy kind of can't be bad.

And that movie is like trying so hard. It's like weighing him down with bad.

And he's still like basically fine. I agree that he can't embarrass himself.
Yeah. Like he's just got like too much like legitimate presence.
Yeah. Yeah.

Y'all I was watching the other day was Alita Battle Angel.

Fucking good movie.

A good movie. Yes.
Two. He fucking rocks it.
Yeah. He looks cool as hell.
Remember how that movie is like, she's like, I'm a big-eyed crazy robot and I don't know what's going on with me.

And then she's like, I do remember what's going on with me. I was in a moon war.
And then she's like, I need to do rollerball fucking cyber sports. My dad is a rocket hammer.
Yes.

And then the end of the movie is like, Edward Norton lives in space. And And I'm like, yes, he does.

I can't believe they never made a second one of those. Christoph Waltz has a giant hammer.
Yes, he does.

I was genuinely so convinced in my like conspiracy theory addled brain that when Disney bought Fox, James Cameron was going to make it a contractual point that they had to greenlight a second Alita for him to keep making avatars.

Sure, right, right. No, because he had to avatar marketing.
Sell one of his submarines and they can make a new avatar, whatever he wants.

I was like, if he wants Alita to happen at Disney, now that they're so invested in the avatar business it'll happen it seems like he's just been like yeah public doesn't want it i i well i think there's a world where there could have been some momentum and then covet kind of killed it the momentum is absolutely gone yeah yeah the momentum was lost in a moon war yeah moon war it's just so good when she's like fuck i remember moon war and i'm like what remember how she has like bespoke porcelain yes i do it's i have the full i have this deal book that's her hand or personal in hand that one goes for pretty pennies i know baby okay it's all all mine.

Howdy, baby. Sorry.

We should mention also. That's a weird way to end our Cohen Brothers movie series.
Our friends at Super Yafi sent over very nicely some co-branded focus features, promo, honey, don't air fresheners.

I'm giving it one more sniff to try and get to the buying. Our windowless studio smells great right now.
I had to get it off my desk. It was starting to open.
I think it could sniff on the side.

They're strong. They're meant for cars and not podcast studios.
Well, I would say cars are smaller than podcast studios, but yes. Well, not all podcast studios, though.
Not that first one we had.

That's true. That was kind of car-sized.

That was like a van-sized

mid-sized sedan.

It's like a smart car or some shit. Remember, why does Honey, who is like so self-serious, have a Honey Don't license plate? It's a great question.

Well, it's her little twist of whimsy, much like ordering the coffee. I don't fucking.

I don't know. Sorry for mentioning the movie.
Ben's Honey Don't Thoughts.

Yeah, Ben, any

other thoughts apart from Crush on Aubrey?

Love it. That should be the review.
That should be what I said to the rep as I exited the theater.

As I could further in Ray, the air is still leaving my body. Eraser head noise? Yeah.

Oh, my God. The classic, what do you say to the rep thing of like, where you're like, it was interesting.
I gotta go.

The projector was on. They did a good job turning that on.
That seat was working it did not break i'll say this both arms for that passed the time while i did laundry oh

bush it up

if you

the oscars give this 14 nominations that'd be funny

you think it'll get an original song

Three. It'll get three.
Three.

It's done, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, K-pop demon hunters will be enough. Oh, yeah.
Imagine them getting an original song nomination for this and not for Mr. Kim.
That'd be great. That'd be great.
That'd be great. Deserved.

It'd be good.

Maddie. Maddie.
Yeah. Please.
When you publish it. Everything that you do, not just your wonderful.
Too many things. But yeah, please buy my book.

I have two books or three books out on the market, but the most recent one is called Simplicity. You can buy it at any

your local bookstore. any of the stores online.
Whatever. It's a somewhat tough story to sum up in a good way.
It is. It is elevator pitchless.
It has been out for...

You need that elevator to be going to like the 200. Like, it's fully.

Local. This book I finished.

I finished writing and drawing this book a year and a half ago. And I'm still like, people are like, what's the book about? And I'm like,

you got to sit down. It's really, I think it's, I'm really proud of it.
It's like, but it's about like revolution and love and sex and technology. And

a lot of, oh, I do know that they,

the first printer it was supposed to be printed at in China China rejected it because there were too many nude butts in it.

It's your in the night kitchen? It's mine. Correct.
And, um, yeah. And also I have two podcasts, myself.
One is about mayors.

It's called No God's No Mayors, NoGodsNayors.com, where every week we talk about a mayor because they're all maniacs. We're recording this on election day itself, not stressed at all.

I'm actually feeling really normal. I lack the ability to have faith in things, but hopefully

I'll feel good tomorrow morning. I would love to see it.
I would love to see one specific thing happen to one specific older man. Yes.

We'd all like to see Curtis Stewart become mayor.

I was going to say, in solidarity, don their red berets tomorrow morning as

a new era for this city.

Yeah, well, I'm going to be, well, you're going to know because you have to wake up and you've been conscripted into building a feral cat colony in a park to encourage cat colonies to take care of the rat problem.

But every week we talk about it, it's me and November and Riley from Trash Future, and we talk about Mayors.

And then I also do another show with my friend Clayton Ashley called Temporal Culture War, where we talk about the early 2000s while we watch Star Trek Enterprise.

Wait, how do I not know about this show? I don't know. I'm like, right up my alley.
That is rude of you. It's called Temporal.
We've been doing it for about a year.

It is so funny to me, just to tangent it that I'm sure you will agree, that they were like, we fucking need to go back to basics. The show will be a prequel.
It will strip things away.

It won't have complicated Star Trek because it's a prequel. It'll be about the Enterprise, the first one.
Scott Bakhilla, we need to be really conservative here.

Get the most ordinary, like, you know, straight arrow guy to play the captain. And then, like, two episodes in, they're like, there's a temporal war happening with the 30th century.

There's bug people. Like, it's so good.

They abandon the time war

after a season and a half. Because clearly, UPN was like, enough.
No, it's because 9-11 happens.

So the whole point of the show is we're watching it. And then every week we also talk about like the movies that came out that that week, music, TV, and also like the news that week in 2001 to 2005.

Yeah. And we're into like the second season right now.

But they drop all of it and it becomes 24 set in space. But it's like Republican Star Trek.
Yes.

It's like there's a fictional man called Lawrence Kansas, I say, is watching the show in his truck on a little TV. What's T-Pole up to these days? It is pronounced TePol.
TePaul. Jolene Blaylong.

I will say, I kept saying TePol on the show. And one listener wrote in, so angry at me and Clayton.
And now we have to say it a thousand times an episode to get it cracked. I wish I could relate.

I simply never have been criticized online for mispronouncing words.

I think Jillene Blaylock is truly one of those, like, you know, like makes most of the money just like doing the very consistent Star Trek circuit person.

Yeah, gets nothing to do on that show and does so much with it. She's actually kind of astonishing.
I think she's good. I like to pull.
I like that character. I'm always, I'm always pro-Vulcans.

I love a Vulcan. I need to end.
Who's your favorite Vulcan? Tuvac. I was going to say Tuvac, man.
I fucking love that motherfucker.

The episode where he mind-melds, the Voyager episode where he mind-melds with Brad Duriff and he goes crazy. Oh, he's one of my favorite.

It's Brad Duriff.

Remember the one? Brad Duriff plays a serial killer who's like on the Voyager. And then they're like, we don't know what.
Brad Duriff? No, you must be thinking of someone different.

They would never cast him and play a serial killer who goes crazy. Oh, God, he's really good.
Remember the one where he

comes back? He melds with Neelix.

Tuvix? Of course. Do you know about Tuvix? It's Mitch Gorfine himself.
Do you know about Tuvix? We talked about this episode. No, no, no.
We talked about Neelix, who's a character on Voyager.

Okay, I haven't finished that episode yet. You talked about...
I talked about even talking about Voyager on that episode.

But there's an episode of Voyager where Tuvok, who is the Vulcan on Voyager, and Neelix, who is the bizarre alien chef that they picked up while they're in the Delta Quadrant.

With his four-year-old girlfriend.

With a girlfriend who, yes, canonically is like three or four years old because she has a 10-year lifespan. He imprints it upon her.
Let's not even get into it.

Merge in a telecorner accident into one being called Tuvix.

It's like a mix of them, right?

And fly style, which is kind of fun and the episode is kind of about how everyone's like honestly kind of prefer 2vix to either tuvic or like tuvac or dealix like kind of the best of both worlds with this guy but then at the end of the episode the doctor's like so i figured out a way how to like separate them and janeway's like great news and tuvics is like oh hi that would kill me like i'm a new being like

you can't kill me like that's murder yeah and janeway's like got it got it got it think we got to do it and they do it and then the episode just kind of ends with them being like oh that that was kind of fucked up, man.

Like, it's kind of never addressed again. Voyager rocks

so good. I love Voyager.

My project while I drew Simplicity was: I watched all of Star Trek. Yes, hell yeah, all of it.
Like, from original series,

all the way through. Did you watch the animated show? I didn't want, I did not watch the 60s animated show.
I have never watched that, and I've always thought I should do that someday.

Um, yeah, would people prefer this podcast if it were hosted by Gravid?

Kind of like Graven.

I mean, it's like, again, the iconic Bluey episode Mini Bluey, in which Bingo, Bluey paints bingo blue and is like, here's how to be bluey and like, you know, essentially be obnoxious.

And the parents are like, God, this is so annoying. And then they're like, okay, well, there will be two bingos.
So bingo paints bluey brown. And then they're like, bingo.
So they're both being good.

And the dad's just like, honestly, this rocks. And Bluey is like, that hurts my feelings.
And they're like, oh, sorry. And then the episode just ends.
It's so good. That's good.

It's really good. Sorry.
Had to discuss that. Thank you for being here.
Oh, do you watch Bluey as a parent of young children? I watch three episodes of Bluey every single day.

I have seen every Bluey so many times, it is absolutely fucking crazy at this point. I can do the dialogue.
How many episodes are there in total? There's about 150.

Every parent I know is putting up me in 1998 watching The Simpsons numbers. Watching Bluey.

Exactly correct. Exactly the same vibe.
And honestly, Bluey is so good that I am never like, ugh. There's like three Bluey episodes where when my daughter picks, I'm like,

this one. Everything else good.
What's up? What's up, bud? Well, the one where they explain how Bingo got his tattoos.

It's a lost joke. It's a pretty good joke.
That was okay. I was trying to think of

a shorthand for famously bad episodes. That's a good one.

A famous skip. Yeah.
So, links to all of Maddie's plugs. Wonderful work.
Good, good work. Are available in the episode description.
Thank you for producing this podcast, Ben. I also have a plug.

Oh, hey,

oh, I know what this plug is for. I've been seeing some IGs.
It's the holiday season.

Of course, the holiday season.

This episode comes out on December 7th. So it's actually been about a week since Slow Christmas number five

released on all streaming platforms. Perhaps you've noticed shit slowing down around you.
Ho.

Ho.

Ho. Hell yeah.
Slow X-Mas V. Yep.
This year it's being served cold. Brrr.

What is that? Unlike the others? Bundle up and sip away holiday season blues with wintry ethereal tunes. Yummy.
We'll love it. I like the implication that the other ones were too hot to touch.

So a link to that album will be in the episode description as well. And then lastly here at the end of the episode, before you take us out, Griffin, we're just going to tack on at the end.

We, a few months back when we were in LA, we've mentioned it, I think, in past episodes. We did, we curated a screening.

American Cinematech, Friend of the Fest, we presented Hudsucker Proxy. And we just did a little intro.
They were nice enough to record that intro. Oh, cool.

And so we'll just add that here at the end of the episode. Enjoy that.
This has been the end of our Cohen's series. I think we did our rankings on the Buster Scrubs app.

Before the pomp and circumstance ending

business.

And yeah, here's my ranking of the Ethan Trisha Cook films. Driveaway Dolls, Honey Don't.
It's weird. I actually have in first Driveaway Dolls and in second, Honey Don't.

Haven't watched the Jerry Lee Lewis thing yet. My guess is it's it's probably in between the two or three.
No, I put it through. Okay.

Now let's rank our solo drools quickly. At number one, I have the tragedy of Macbeth.
Oh, interesting. Me too.
Okay. Okay.
Next week, we are going to do an episode on the new James L.

Brooks movie, Ella McKay.

Truly, of all the filmmakers we've covered who are still alive, the one I was least expecting would release another movie ever. Yeah, sure.
Well, here it comes. It's kind of an exciting treat.

And then the week after that.

This like indie project that's being put out by, I don't know, some student ever heard of

Avatar colon fire and ash. Now, Maddie, I know you don't like those movies.

Okay, which is fine.

I will keep seeing them in theaters as long as I live.

Because I enjoy a spectacle. I like them.
You've never vibed with them

as much as some. Yeah.
You don't like them yet. I have problems with Mr.
Cameron's approach. He's going to keep making them on one of these days.
He's going to.

Okay. I will say, watching the preview for the new one calls me the most like perhaps I will like this one because

you know what I think is pretty cool is

Verang

as a former pyromaniac. Naveen.
Oh, it was recovered, elapsed Pyromaniac.

I will actually Griff, we should say, and then in January. I agree.
We will be doing an episode on.

Is this thing on? Wait a second. Is this thing

on? Is this thing on? Bradley Cooper's sad, dad, stand-up comedy divorce film. Yes, completing our kind of in-progress Bradley Cooper.
Not completing. I assume I'll make more rooms, but continuing.

Continuing, sorry. And then we're going to do an episode on Park 10 Wooks: No Other Choice.
There's lots of blank check directors at this point putting out movies all around Christmas time.

It tends to happen this time of year. The timing is pretty good, though, because

these things will hopefully have been expanded enough that people will be able to see them blog.

So December 28th is our one dark week every year, but we have a block of four episodes across, five weeks that are all new releases. And then, of course,

as everyone knows, as everyone has guessed online, emotions are now battlefields. Yes.

Harrison Ford is Jaunt Book. Dig up your dead poets because the next mini-series on main feed is Lynn Ramsey, you motherfuckers.
You don't know shit. We do know Lynn Ramsey next.

You know, Peter Weir, you motherfuckers. Peter Weir is after Lynn Ramsey.
Peter Weir after Pinsworth. Lynn Ramsey.

We planned this long ago when we found that Lynn was finally doing another movie. One of, in my opinion, the best filmmakers alive.
And I've never seen that.

Griff has always said, whenever she does a movie, next, we're doing her. We're doing the five films, the five feature films from

that wacky Scott, Lynn Ramsey. That wacky Scott.
And then, indeed, we will be doing Peter Weir.

It has made me feel so big and special and smart when people reading the tea leaves are like, so Weir is definitely next, right? And we're like, these fuckers don't even know.

We're slipping in a quick five. They might know what I know.
I know. They're fucking Morvin Cowler or whatever.
Right. Hey, fuck it.

Since we're talking about 2026 over on the Patreon feed, we're going to be kicking off the year with a new commentary series. We are.
Oh, that's true. The films of Wizard of Oz.
Of Oz. Oh,

they don't all have the wizard in them. Although, I guess they all kind of do.
I think they might all, in some form or other.

Does Return to Oz have one? I'm trying to. I think the Wizard does not appear in Return.
That might be the only one.

But we are in a Patreon commentary series going to do Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz. Yes.
The Wiz,

Return to Oz, Wicked, and Wicked for Good. We are not revisiting Sam Raimi's Oz the Great and Power.

You can check that out. So you guys can't miss it.

I ain't going to no sphere. Maddie, I think we should.
As much as I ethically support what's going on, and

I just want to see Phil Dolan in it, my friend in yours.

I hear he's so good.

I hear his performance is so good. That harmonica.
Zazlav's in there. He should have known.
There's a part where he sings, I should have known about the wizard. All right.
We need to record ads.

I need to go to the bathroom and then go home to my love. James Demoley being friends with Harvey Weinstein and then releasing a pop song about his guilt.
Do you know about this?

I do, but we have to be done.

I think we could go another 20 minutes. Maddie, thank you for being here.
I would go. Thank you so much for having me on.
This is such a blessing. You're the best.

I love the show so much. It's very important for me that I got to come on.
That's very nice of you, and it was good to have you on. I promise you will return to the show not to do honey don't.

There will be better films in your future. You're at least more interesting.
Daniel, yeah. You can't promise that we won't ask Maddie to do honey don't.
It's possible we'll do another honey don't.

You never know. You can't promise that.
A honey double dip.

It could always happen maybe we've revisited Clifford's right and this film's definitely as good as that one maybe we just have to go back and do honey don't yeah uh Maddie you contributed an art piece to our uh Decade of Dreams art show earlier this year a really good uh bits uh retired bits hanging up the rafters yeah piece I just want I just wanted to make sure we vocally thanked you on my phone thank you so much that was such an incredible blast to draw it was so much fun I really enjoyed drawing some buried genes yeah yeah

uh

everyone should read your books and listen to your podcast. Thank you.

And thank you all for listening, and I hope you all have fun checking out these new releases with us and then Lynn Ramsey in January.

And then, of course, we're never covering Peter Weir. Thank you all for listening.

And as always,

Honey Don

is about vaginas.

Without further ado, please welcome from Blanche, Check Griffin, Ben, and Marie.

Oh, hello. Oh, wait.

Should we be color coordinating hula hoops with Mike Cordz?

Yeah, okay.

I don't think there's a purple one. Ben's got the

yellow. We could maybe can blind a couple colors.

Hello, everybody. Now that we got that important business out of the way, thank you so much for coming here.

maybe gonna try to attempt to do the first three-person hula hoop live intro simultaneous performance. I don't think that we had planned for wired mics.
That was not at all.

It was not a consideration. We'd asked for headsets, so we'd ask for a headset mic.
Okay, maybe let's try and get a little bit of diss today.

Maybe this is the solution. This is great.
We're just working it out on the fly.

Brie's husband said, However good you think you are at this, it's a lot harder than it seems. And I said, I think I'm terrible this,

so it's gonna be a real

okay. I read that you're supposed to put like one foot in front of the other, okay, and then like keep your top part of your body straight, and then just kind of like

this.

It's a this thing, it's

a hip thing, it's a it, yeah, it's a

hips, okay, all right. On three, one, two, three.

Yeah, that was really good, guys. That was really good.
That was really good. It's kind of an age effort situation.
Not as well as I thought I was. We spent $45 on this.

We bought them at the Grove.

It was kind of a markup situation. There was an activation happening for perfume samples.

Who here has seen this movie before?

And let's do the inverse. Who has never seen this film before? Woo! I'll do a hula hoop thing later.
Yeah.

It'll make sense. It's only a spoiler if you acknowledge that I just told you it was a spoiler.
He seemed to random.

This is one of my favorite movies of all time.

One of my 10 favorites,

which with our very, very normal listenership online, and when I say this, by the way, all of you are cool and normal.

I'm talking only about the Redditors who aren't in the room. But I've seen a lot of preemptive, is Griffin really gonna fucking rank Hudsucker above Fargo and no Cudsucker?

Well, you said on the episode, you said said it too many times. It's my favorite, but I wouldn't say it's their best.
They made Fargo. I know they made Fargo.
I'm not an idiot.

These guys have made like 15 masterpieces.

But this is a movie that is just so completely on my wavelength.

It's just like the pop song I can't help but dance to.

I saw it for the first time in 35mm at MoMA in New York City, and I went into seeing it being like, this is the one they think sucks, right? And from the first shot,

even those of you who have seen this before, if you haven't seen it, big screen, if you haven't seen it on celluloid, I do think it is like genuinely one of the great film craft movies.

It is like the one time they got to work on a really big budget with entirely analog models and sets and costumes and practical optically printed effects and all these things that just kind of make me cry thinking about them existing.

We used to make things in this country. And if I could just just

grant me a moment here,

this film was of course shot in

North Carolina.

It does feel like a New York movie, which is funny because we're in LA. Yes.
And Lebowski is our current episode, and that's an LA movie. Yes.

But I believe The Crow, which we just covered on our Patreon, also was shot in North Carolina. The same set.
The Super Mario Brothers movie.

I think at least one of the the Ninja Turtles, there was this weird rush in the 80s and 90s to build your fake. Like shitty New York.
A lot of them are

using these same things. And in particular, this movie, The Cohen Brothers tricked Joel Silver

into getting Warner Brothers to give him a bunch of money to build these buildings that were reused like a trillion times.

So if you're like, man, I can't believe they let the Cohen Brothers build these crazy sets. Joel Schumacher stole them.

Batman scaled these buildings many times.

Even since our episode came out,

I've had a lot of people be like, I really, just, I frankly don't get this movie.

And I think it's a really interesting one because it seems to split people on,

for Clan Brothers fans who have some hang-ups with them, they feel like this movie is emblematic of, oh, are they just pastiche? Is it just style? Is it just effect? And is this movie really cynical?

Is this movie movie making fun of all of its characters? Is it all a lark? And I have the read that I think this is quietly their most sincere film. I think they mean everything in it.

I think it's a fascinating midpoint between them and Sam Raimi, who they came up with.

It is what they tried to do with Crimewave, obviously one of the best movies ever made.

But making a tribute to the kind of films they grew up loving, but infusing it with a modern sensibility and combining different eras and different styles.

And I think it is, at the the end of the day, a very open-hearted movie about what if the dumbest guy had the best idea.

And it's a really, really fun conceit for a film to have the entire audience know that he's right from the beginning. And if you don't know what I'm talking about,

you'll learn soon enough. But thank you to the folks at American Cinematak.

Awesome to be here. But Dr.

sincerity and a really good idea. Yeah.

Actually, brought a prototype out here with me today. Right.

So just give me one sec. Yeah, Ben's trying to launch a new product here tonight.

Okay.

So what we have here is a chain for bad kids.

And you can do a lot of stuff with it. I mean, you look cool.

And just quick show. Just swing it around.

I mean, there's endless possibilities. It seems like easy to scale, you know?

Oh, for sure.

Quick show of hands out that the chain's been brought out. Who has never listened to the podcast? Blank check.

Again, once you see the movie, you'll get it. Yeah.

Maybe not the chain part, but everything else. Thank you for being here.

Thank you, everyone.