Blood Simple with Ray Tintori & Jordan Fish

12:44David Sims:Chigurh either and the second Brolin meets Chigurh the movie just jumps ahead and it's like conflict over you know this is a Blink Check of Christian and David there we go it's a podcast about filmographies woo directors who have massive success early on in their career, such as being nominated for the first ever Independent Spirit Awards and winning Best Directors, given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want, and sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they bounce. Baby, this is the beginning of a very long, but very exciting miniseries, as chosen by you, the listener, in our March Madness competition.

13:20David Sims:We're talking about the Coen brothers. the series is called Pod Country for Old Cast I believe so I was hoping you remembered I think I remembered correctly this is our first episode in the series we've recorded one before and today we're talking about their debut film Blood Simple joining us on the show, returning for the first time together but dear friends of the show family, I would say, I'd say family very much part of the Blank Checkman when I threw out having them on for this episode David's response was, they're family well because he said should we do guest lists exactly we often do the first episode

13:56Griffin Newman:with no guest and then you were like bye but Ray and Jordan and I was like yeah they don't count as guests in the same way they're family and when you're here you're family we like to think of this podcast as the Olive Garden it is Olive Garden you guys do have never ending breadsticks

14:12David Sims:we do which most of our guests don't call out considering how much we're spending that would rock if that was true like that's it's in our writer. It's like, by the way, unlimited breadsticks have to be wherever we are. They have to follow us. When I say never ending, I mean never ending. It doesn't end once I leave your restaurant. No, they just keep rolling out and be like in there. Yes. You actually have to eat them or it's a problem.

14:36Griffin Newman:Do any other chain, like fast casual chains, it's not fast casual, whatever you would call Olive Garden. Maybe it is fast casual. I don't know. Have like a tagline as ubiquitous as when you hear your family. No, I don't think so. Like those guys really did nail it with that. I'm loving it. No, that doesn't count. Like what's the Applebee's slogan? Have it your way. Eating good in the neighborhood? Well, he knows it. I know all of them. You can keep asking me. We got the meats. I want my baby back ribs. It's pretty good. Chili's. What is the chili? Currently, it is savor the moment. Well, that sucks.

15:10Griffin Newman:I agree. This is what I'm saying. This can be hard to get. Yeah. Outbacks is like, it's always good in the Outback. And I'm like, guys, try again. Come on.

15:17David Sims:isn't there something outback steakhouse what was the theme the song the jingle used to have a different line at the end of it outback steakhouse well there was the um who was that band of montreal the guy from of montreal recorded a jingle for outback steakhouse but then when people were like why did you do this this seems very commercial he was like i have no memory of of agreeing to or recording and the lyrics was it was a re it was a like redo of the lyrics of let's pretend we don't exist and it's like let's go out back tonight you know the world will still be here tomorrow. That's good.

15:54Griffin Newman:That's good.

15:54David Sims:I like that. Let me say outright that our guests are Rayton Tori and Jordan Fish. Welcome fellas. Excellent filmmakers, dear friends, family, but also co-hosts of the To The White Sea podcast. A years long project you guys have been doing. Perhaps coming back soon? Yeah, coming back this week. Oh. Like this week that it records. That we release. there you go we said it now To the White Sea is like the great unmade Coen's we will talk about it I'm sure later in this miniseries it is probably there

16:27Griffin Newman:I mean when I'm a teenage boy just think of that what a fun kid that was we all like to think about it reading my Empire magazines I was right on like To the White Sea that's the great unproduced Coen's movie we're all waiting for To the White Sea and like Aina Kool being like this might be the greatest screenplay I've ever read. Whoa. Right. Brad Pitt walking to the White Sea? Yeah.

16:51David Sims:Possibly? Gets very close to happening, falls apart, and then that basically directly leads into what is seen as like the Coen's weirdest fallow period before they have the no country come back. Right, right. Yeah, they dust off Intolerable Cruelty, which is a script that they had written. Basically just to be like we gotta make something. Right? Like I guess we'll direct this thing that had been a for hire job. and then they did Lady Killers after that right they do these two studio comedies back to back that I in my memory were kind of received by people as like are the Coen Brothers just trying to cash in now it seemed like it was over forever it really felt like it was over forever in a way where when No Country played at Cannes No Country for Old Men yeah I don't know and people were like you're never gonna believe this it's good there was this sense of almost astonishment of like, I guess we wrote those guys off too quickly.

17:49David Sims:We'll get to that.

17:50Griffin Newman:Yeah. But yes, there was a little bit of like the fear of had they finally lost the shine in the new country. Was it Cannes? Yes. I couldn't remember if it was

18:02David Sims:Cannes or not. But you guys have done this project that started when the Coen brothers sort of soft split and have been doing their solo projects of being able to like timestamp it and be like, here is the, at this point, complete filmography of The Coens, who knows if it ever resumes as a team, through the prism of this unmade movie and going through the script and doing a sort of radio play version of the script in which, of course, you had me play the Brad Pitt role. Had to. Obvious casting. A beautiful, nuanced performance. Thank you. He really does do a wonderful job. But then also using that to sort of like thematically go through The Coens and talk about different recurring themes.

18:42David Sims:The big point here is that you guys have been so deep in the trenches doing so much research, going through fucking personal archives and microfiche and reading and watching everything that we said, what a great opportunity to have them on for the first Coen's episode, host off of all the work they've already done for the last couple years and create a really good reason to fire JJ. Let's fire his ass. Let's fire JJ harder than we've ever fired JJ before. Well, all I want to say is that when I go to a... You look at his dossier and you laugh.

19:09Griffin Newman:When I go to a restaurant, I want legendary food and legendary service.

19:14David Sims:Okay, you're asking me to guess. You're doing the reverse. I am. Legendary food, legendary... Service. The service is legendary. Now, having been to this restaurant, which I enjoy,

19:25Griffin Newman:I remember the service being particularly interesting. It was fine. Medieval times would work. That would be... Medieval times makes sense in terms of legendary. It'd be incredible, but it's not. Michael Jordan's Steakhouse? That would be great, but I have to imagine the service there is awful. I have to assume this is a sit-down chain. Yeah. how

19:42David Sims:how wide is it this isn't like the palm one of the biggest one of the biggest it's one it's a Ruby Tuesday growing growing is it Ruby Tuesday no I don't think so well you you should know you're the one quizzing me it's growing what does Ruby Tuesday sell steak cool it's not Red Lobster I'm gonna abandon this in a second Ruby Tuesday slogan is

20:09Griffin Newman:fun between the buns this one is not joking that supposedly is their slogan I feel like they're more

20:15David Sims:steak than sandwich though it's not like Hillstone Group is it? no I don't know it's growing

20:20Griffin Newman:it's on an upsell it's just so weird that they were like let's name our song after that like lovely emotional song by the Rolling Stones like who listens to Ruby Tuesday and is like I'm hungry you know it's like it's a good song but it's this sort of like sweet sad song if I can circle back

20:34David Sims:the jingle I was trying to remember was let's do out back tonight it was the opposite it's leading in okay but legendary service growing chain.

20:43Griffin Newman:Yeah. On the upswing. I believe I read in an article by my colleague Yasmin Tyag, the great Yasmin, that it is the fastest growing sit-down chain in America right now. But it's been around for a while. It's just having an upswing. Yeah. I'm going to wrap this up. Sure. Texas Roadhouse. Oh, was never going to guess that. So topical. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is a real Texas Roadhouse of a movie. Could be the name of the movie. Main set. We are talking about Blood Simple, the Cohen's first movie directed, of course, by Joel Cohen and not Ethan Cohen. I'm going to do that bit until no con... Lady Killers.

21:15Griffin Newman:Right. Yeah. Which is set in Texas and is a rather stripped down neo-noir. Did you detect, Griffin, that this film is a bit of a neo-noir? You know what, David? You know, there's noirs, but they're black and white and Humphrey Bogart is there, but then there's the neo-noirs. David, I know that you are the film critic by trade, and I'm

21:33David Sims:not trying to one-up you, but here's some observation I made while re-watching the film. I'd almost called a neon noir because of how much goddamn neon lighting there is in this picture. It's a neon boot. It's a neon boot. That's the name of the bar. Yeah. Similar to Tech Noir. Yeah. The film kind of announces itself with the bar. Yes.

21:53Griffin Newman:So here we are, the Coen brothers. Griffin, I'll start with you, but I'm going to ask everyone. So Ben, you might have to steal Jordan's mic. Ben's here too, of course. When did you first get on board with the brothers Coen? those Minnesota Jews? It's a good question when I first got on board. Because, you know, if you're a cineast at the age that we are, a teenage film fan in the sort of mid to late 90s, the Coens are dominant in terms of like, that's a director you find quickly, I feel like.

22:24David Sims:Right. As you're growing up. I feel like I was told from a very young age about their importance. Right. I'll build to a story briefly. Yep. It's a synagogue, please. But then, try to think, my parents tried to show me Raising Arizona when I was fairly young and I put my foot down and said, I don't get it. It's not funny. And then I feel like a couple years later watching it and was like, I get it now.

22:49Griffin Newman:It's quite funny, actually.

22:50David Sims:I was simply a child back then. Pretty winning movie. Yes.

22:52Griffin Newman:Yeah, yeah.

22:52David Sims:But I was maybe a little too young to watch it. I feel like a brother must have been the first one I actually saw

22:58Griffin Newman:in theaters. I think it's the same for me. I think it has to be. I definitely, The Big Lebowski was rated 18 in Britain. I guess because of like toe severance I don't really know why else there's a lot going on I mean there's a lot of F words in that movie no but Britain in Britain you really only get an 18 for really extreme violence or any sexual violence if you say shag then they they're like oh we're all hot and bothered no I mean like God bless the British rating system like 18 really is supposed to signify like this is a really really violent movie yeah not so much like oh you might see a willy can you say can you circle back and repeat 18 because of toe severance?

23:36It was rated like 18, I think, because of the toe severance.

23:39David Sims:Stiller and Tarantino working on a picture together? Wow. Really good.

23:43Griffin Newman:An Apple series, actually. Oh, okay. Anyway, so yeah, I think the first film I would have seen in theaters was Oh Brother, We're Out There. I would have been about 14, and I loved it. I'm just trying to remember if I would have seen any of the other ones before then. Maybe Raising Arizona? The first time I was aware of the Coens is when Francis McDormand won the Oscar for Fargo. This, I was going to say, probably same for me. Yeah. And my mom was like, oh, well, yeah, she was going to win. And I was like, oh, really? Like, you know, like my mom was like, oh, yeah, she had to win. And I was like, why?

24:19Griffin Newman:And she was just like, I don't know, man, look at the clip. Like, she's a pregnant cop. It's just crazy. I'd never seen anything like that.

24:25David Sims:She did a really funny walk to the stage. Do you remember McDormand's walk for her first of three best actress wins? but she's not doing the like, oh my God thing. She does this sort of like, it's almost a postmodern sachet of playing being too cocky. Wow. And Nicolas Cage is giving her the Oscar. So that's a fun group. I think you're right that I,

24:47Griffin Newman:and but like, so the clips from Fargo and that's in the year that English Patient is dominating the Oscars. So that's the first year I watched the Oscars. And English Patient seems like a movie that wins Oscars to me where I'm like, yeah, it's set in the past and it's all orange. And there's like, you know, war and important things happening. And then they're like, Fargo. And I'm like, what's that? My mom's like, oh, God, it's hard to describe. You know, this is so, and it looked so different.

25:10David Sims:Even before her winning, the way they cut Billy, Mr. Crystal, into the Fargo clips in the opening montage, I think I had that same reaction of what is this movie? Like they were doing her puking on the side of the road.

25:24Griffin Newman:It is a strut.

25:25David Sims:God damn.

25:26Griffin Newman:She looks like she's about to like push Cage off the stage. It just felt like... looks like she's entering the wrestling doing like an elbow thing. Yeah, it burned into my memory. She's so hot. But I also I feel like it to your point like a standing. Oh, yeah. All the big ones. Jim Carey, Jeffrey Rush. I'm at this party. Yeah, that

25:48David Sims:my parents have brought me to. And there was that same feeling of like this was undeniable. This is her night. She's getting it. This is an anointment thing. And to a certain degree, also like an anointment night for the Coens. Right. And I think I'm absorbing this context around me. But also in the Billy Crystal fucking montage, you're like, I get the bits for the other ones. English Patient looks really serious and Billy Crystal's coming in and doing something silly. Fargo was the only one where I was like, this almost has a crystal tone to begin with. There are already jokes in this movie, but it's also violent.

26:20David Sims:What did he do for Secrets and Lies? That's a really good question.

26:25Griffin Newman:Now I gotta rewatch those Oscars.

26:27David Sims:My parents met at the Deauville film festival in the north of France where my grandmother used to work. For listeners, it's the French film festival that asks, what if we watched

26:41Griffin Newman:American movies in France? Correct.

26:43David Sims:It is. That's what it is. I will say, with as much respect as I can put on it, it is a festival that basically has no reason to exist anymore. Except to create you. Back in the day, it made more sense. But that's why I'm saying it no longer has a reason to exist. I've been made one time and that's one time too many. We don't need another one. Every year that festival is creating more Gryffindams. This is a problem. It's unsustainable. We're flooding the economy. It was basically in an era where movies did not have global distribution, were sold off more piecemeal. Even big studio films were often being released by local distributors.

27:20David Sims:And it was basically like this fulcrum point between the big summer blockbusters and what were going to be the more serious fall movies where the studios and independent films all went there and it was like this one-shot final leg of a press tour. Bring all your stars to the north of France to a beach and have them promote the movie and get enough buzz that maybe then you're able to sell off the smaller European rights to these other films or use it as a launching pad before there were kind of global press tours. It was like a way to trick stars into having a vacation and doing one last batch of interviews or whatever.

27:54David Sims:My parents meet there. My grandmother worked there for many years. I was trying to do the math on this. I think it probably would have been the second or third year my parents had then, after they met here, would go every year. Sure.

28:07Griffin Newman:Yes, yes, yes.

28:08David Sims:Basically for their anniversary, right? It is either the place where Blood Simple premiered or the second festival. IMDb lists something slightly earlier in the summer. The USA Film Festival? Which I cannot find any. Well, the USA Film Festival was the Sundance, the progenitor to the Sundance Film Festival. But it by all accounts premieres at Sundance the following January. Did it premiere there? Doville would have been, or I'm sorry, not premiered. Yeah, it doesn't premiere there. It plays at Sundance the following January.

28:38Griffin Newman:It had already done Doville, TIFF, and New York. Wasn't Toronto like a big turning point for the... Yes. It's early in Toronto's shift from sort of the Festival of Festivals, which is what it used to be too, like the powerhouse.

28:52David Sims:Doville happens like one week before Toronto, which is another thing that has killed that festival. as like Toronto and Venice have gotten even bigger. But it possibly was the first place it played and at least it was the second. And my parents and their friend Susan, who was their best friend in the early 80s, would tell me all the time when I was growing up, them being there, looking through the brochure of all the movies and being like, the Coen brothers? there's a noir film by Joel and Ethan Cohen. Hey guys we made a noir movie. And seeing these like guys walk around and for like five days this being their joke of like yeah we should go see Blood Simple.

29:37David Sims:And then they went to see it and were just like holy fucking shit. It is one of the most profound movie going experiences my parents ever had because they were like we're mocking the idea of these guys and how shitty this sounds on paper. Why have two Minnesota Jews made like a Texas neo-noir? and then seeing it and being like, who the fuck are these guys immediately? So I also grew up with that, where my parents would constantly just talk about the experience of like a thing that basically no one ever got ever again, of like going into a Coen Brothers movie without any reputation. Because right after this, it starts their run of basically playing, this movie playing festivals for like over a year and just building momentum.

30:17David Sims:And movies don't really do that anymore. They don't.

30:20Griffin Newman:So it looks like Billy started off with a Yoda scene. because it was like Empire Strikes Back. It was the re-release. Uh-huh. And then he's doing, he's on the phone with Jerry Maguire. He's shirtless. Uh-huh. I don't mean to stun anyone here. He's telling Michelle the money. And then he switches phones to talk to Brenda Blathen. Funny. In Secrets and Lies. You know, and she's like, oh! She's telling him some of the secrets

30:44David Sims:and some of the lies.

30:45Griffin Newman:Right. And then he's getting a hug from Armin Muellerstahl in Shine. Then we got Fargo. Uh-huh. He's got his, he's got the cop outfit on. she's puking then he's talking to Buscemi okay then he's back to cruise in the locker room okay did they do the wood tripper help me help you they did the toilet silence scene yeah they did that scene then they have him he's in the cave in the English patient with Kristen Scott Thomas nice work and then the thing I remember the most they do the plane crash from English patient but it's Letterman going like Oprah Uma Oprah Uma yeah which is funny yeah gotta bring it back My parents had to lean in and go, he did a bad job last year.

31:26Griffin Newman:It's what he did last year. I saw the Letterman Oscars. Anyway, Blood Simple. It is one of the most undeniable debuts in film history, I would say. Where you're like, well, these guys surely have made 20 movies. Yep. To make something this honed and precise and sort of confident. And instead, it's like, no, they're a couple of squirrely youngsters.

31:50David Sims:And yet, I feel like when asked, they continue, they forever say, this is obviously our worst movie. It's clumsy and amateurish. They say that? Yes. They rag on it endlessly. When they did the director's cut re-release, it was shorter. Yes. Because they were like, it was badly edited the first time. By them, obviously. Right. They view it as like, well, that's the last time we're not going to get everything right. Because we were still learning. Yeah, this is a great moment when they're going through like shot by shot with Sonnenfeld where they were like... uh gets is sitting in a chair at on the set of the apartment that the two lovers sort of on the run uh moved into and he's just like sitting in a chair and like the wall is sort of like grayish blue and he's wearing a grayish blue denim shirt and i think joel just stares at the shot and is like that wall is something that we're not going to be doing again.

32:49Wow.

32:51Griffin Newman:Ray, Jordan, your Cohen's experience. Maybe you have covered this on the podcast a little bit, but I don't. I'm trying to figure it out because Hudsucker was a big deal in my house. Okay. My mom's friend, Sheila, had one of the cable boxes where you could like where she got all the channels. Sure. and then she would tape movies off of HBO and give them to my mom in the mid-90s. Shout out to Sheila. Yeah. And Hudsucker was a movie that we would watch a lot. That was the first one you think you saw? The closest thing to a family-friendly movie they made. But I also saw Fargo in theaters and was really blown away by it and I remember just feeling like it was the first adult movie going experience in a theater that I'd had in a very distinct way.

33:42Like just walking out of it being like, I can't breathe. You know, like I've been holding my breath the last 30 minutes of this movie. I'm going to argue you were too young for Fargo and theaters, Jordan. You're probably a couple years older than me, right?

33:53Griffin Newman:Yeah. I was a minor. I was 10 when that movie came out. And it was rated 18 again. Jeez. Maybe also because of the severance. Leg severance. Fuck. But the thing is, I'm not sure. Again, I'm not sure which one of them we would watch, which I watched first. And I also don't think I knew that it was the same directors. I know that when Lebowski came out, I knew that was the next movie after Fargo. And I was excited to see that in theaters. And moving forward, I feel like coming into the city to see a Coen Brothers movie a week or two before it went wide was a big part of my early New York City experiences.

34:33Because I grew up right outside the city.

34:35David Sims:Yeah. To see the early platform release. Yeah, like Oh Brother or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was so aware of how much my parents revered them that even when like there was a new Coen movie coming out like Lebowski, I was absorbing the sense of like people seem cooler on this one. Then saw Oh Brother in theater, which makes sense is like their most family friendly movie since Hudsucker. and then after that, I think pretty quickly watched every one of their movies on DVD or started that project and then would go see every one that came out. Here's another thing about them. For a very long time, they were once a year, guys.

35:16David Sims:They were like clockwork. Oh, yeah. Where if you're a budding cinephile, it's really easy to be like, I can latch on to these guys. What's the next Coen movie? I'm filling in the backlog and I'm looking forward to the future. I would say they're kind of once every couple years.

35:31Griffin Newman:in terms of like the spacing between their movies. Yeah, they were very, very reliably working all the way up to, I guess... Mid-2000s, really. Yeah, like it's really... The 2010s, really. Even then, it's like, it's True Grit, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hell, Caesar, Scruggs. That's four movies in that decade. Each of them about three years apart. Like it's like, you know, they worked very consistently.

36:00David Sims:That's, look, when they announced their sabbatical from working together, I feel like that was the number one thing cited. Yeah. Was just like, Ethan feels burned out. It's been a lot. Right.

36:11Griffin Newman:And they would have side projects. They'd release fiction. They would do some stage stuff. Like, it's like, yeah, they were busy. One of them should make a video game.

36:18David Sims:Yeah, it's a great idea. Thanks. Ray, your history with the cons? I remember the, like, the Roma pizza on 7th Avenue in the 90s was just a shrine to the career of John Turturro. It was just all signed John Turturro stuff. So I remember the Barton Fink poster in there, seeing that as a little kid. And my parents being like, this is a movie about a guy who can't write and is being attacked by a mosquito. So I thought the whole movie was just him v. Mosquito. And then I remember seeing Hussaker Proxy in a movie theater in LA and my parents being like, wow, they blew it. Right. The general consensus on that one.

36:52And that being like an out-of-body experience, seeing that as a little kid, it's so heightened and cartoonish. and the whole hula hoop scene. I remember all that stuff for kids. That totally landed on me as an elementary school kid. Best joke I ever heard. And then, yeah, I saw Fargo in the movie theater with my mom and my sister. We were both super young, but it was just a cultural event. I think it was post-Pulp Fiction and there was a sense that we can take them to this. We can't take them to Pulp Fiction, but we can take them to Fargo.

37:24David Sims:Fiction created a new bar of what isn't child appropriate, which then sort of on a curve made Fargo seem like more quaint. I mean, it's also it's like, right, Fargo does have this weird amount of like Looney Tunes energy and as violent as it gets. It's sort of a comedy of manners in the same way. Yeah. It's a cultural portrait of like a particular type of like a particular part of Minnesota. like yeah but just just became obsessed with that saw a preview of big lebowski also everyone at big lebowski was like that sucked like at the first screening and people were like why wasn't that like fargo people don't remember that um i have this very distinct memory of like going over to dinner with my parents and my siblings to their friends a couple with a young kid we were all like eating pizza together or whatever and they had just seen big lebowski and we're just like we are befuddled what are they doing why did they blow it in the same way as Hudsucker of like everyone just took them seriously and now they're doing some weird lark I remember at the time there were like one to two critics in Britain

38:33Griffin Newman:who were like psst I kinda liked Lebowski like and they were saying it in this way of like I know this is crazy but I actually think there's some stuff to that way you know like and within really just three or four years it had completely turned around I mean it was like the DVD like yes the early DVD thing right but like that run of Lebowski to Oh Brother to Man Who Wasn't There you know like it's not like they were out of critical favor exactly but it was kind of like huh not another Fargo in these guys huh like I remember seeing this in the theaters for the first time the re-release Blood Simple 2000 I think 2000 the shorter version with the music that wasn't on the VHS put back in I saw it at the quad in an empty theater, just me, Joel Schumacher, and Joel Schumacher's assistant.

39:24Wow. The big three? Incredible. Well, Joel's got to keep their tabs on other Joels. They got to know what the Joels are cooking. One of the nicest directors I ever met, Joel Schumacher. I've told the story many times of him. He was not so kind to you.

39:39David Sims:I asked him for a direction on how to play a scene in a fourth fucking callback I had for him. And he said, I think acting is a lot like fucking where if you're asking for help for how to do it, you're probably doing it wrong. And you're like, I do that all the time. That's what I said. He didn't think it was funny. His hair looked incredible. His hair was unbelievable. He had really amazing hair. Yes.

40:02Griffin Newman:Yeah.

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41:35David Sims:I was thinking that I probably saw this for the first time on the DVD release after the director's cut re-release, which means I've never seen A, the longer version. Yeah. Which I feel like is totally out of circulation now. Or B, the VHS version of the longer version. How much longer is the longer version? Three minutes. Okay. Yeah. But it's not just like they cut one scene out. They like tighten sequences and change shots. But it's a three minute shorter. But the VHS version uses Neil Diamond, I'm a Believer. Yeah. Which is a great song. It's the same old song. Yeah. Quite haunting.

42:10Griffin Newman:Yeah. I remember that re-release. I was sort of vaguely aware of the movie. I'm becoming vaguely aware of the Coen brothers and all that. And the poster, obviously, for the re-release was The Shovel. And I was like, so I confused this movie and another debut by a crimey filmmaker, Danny Boyle, Shallow Grave. Oh, sure. Right. Where I was like, man, in the 90s or whatever, back in the day, people were digging Shallow Graves, I guess. Casino also. Casino. I mean, I just remember. Mystery Man. The Rashford Shovel movies. And hey, that's William Mitch Macy. Well, hang on. Cohen's favorite. Yeah. Blood Simple.

42:47Griffin Newman:I'm going to read from the dossier. Joel Daniel Cohen was born November 29th, 1953. A Thanksgiving boy. A plump Thanksgiving turkey. You think he was plump? No. I'm sure he came out of string bean.

43:00David Sims:He looks like fucking Spike from Peanuts. I know I invoked Spike recently on some other episode. I was trying to explain Spike to Ben, but I was watching all these fucking special features last night. I was like, who does Joel Cohen look like? And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Now he looks like Spike.

43:15Griffin Newman:Yes. So he was born in 1953. Ethan, Jesse Cohen, arrives in this world, 1950, September 21st, 1957. They have an older sister, Debbie, Deborah. Dad, Edward, was a professor at economics at the University of Minnesota. And they grew up in Minneapolis, right? Edward was born in the US but he actually grew up overseas his grandfather Victor so Edward's father was a barrister at the ends of court in London of course order see I had to do a gavel there for the listeners at home

43:57David Sims:David is wearing a powdered wig

43:58Griffin Newman:yep I remember when he retired my grandparents went to live in Hove which is a seaside town next to Brighton I can tell you exclusively JJ didn't look it up embarrassing for him. Yep. And we used to live in there. My father actually lived and grew up in London. I think he lived in Croydon. Pearlie is a neighborhood in Croydon, which is sort of South London suburbs. And he had very British tastes in movies. They would watch all the Ealing comedies and things like that. Cohen's mother, Rina, is a professor of art history at St. Cloud State University, which is another Twin Cities place. They're Ashkenazi Jews.

44:34Griffin Newman:They're from Poland, Russia. you know, Edward was in the army.

44:38David Sims:You must be looking at the wrong dossier. We're talking about the Coen brothers now.

44:41Griffin Newman:They are Jewish. I will tell you this now. Exclusively revealed to you that the Coens are Minnesota Jews. The directors of True Grit.

44:51Griffin Newman:Edward was in the army during World War II. And they were raised relatively traditionally, moderately strict. We, of course, will be wrestling with something I'm sure you guys have wrestled with a little bit when you did your podcast. The Coens are a little taciturn, not huge on kind of discussing their motivations and interests. They'll do a lot of interviews. It's not like they don't do press. We would like to gently debunk. Okay, go ahead. I would say that they're not film professors. No. You know, of their own work. But they've been pretty forthcoming over the years. I mean, there's many. You guys have been delving through too.

45:31Like you've been piecing it all together. I think it's interesting that there's this received wisdom about them that they won't explain their movies kind of on the same level as David Lynch or something where it's like, no, I'm not telling you anything. And it's like, I think it's mainly just because they sort of embed jokes and sarcasm into their answers a lot of the time. They're Jewish. This is interesting. Jewish humor. Yes, go on. Like in the preface to this book, they give some advice to writers where they say, keep going until the work is boring to you. And then that's when you know to stop because it's the sort of arena of the amateur who doesn't have the imagination to quit, who keeps going and going.

46:14And then the question would be, is that completely sincere advice or are they fucking with the reader? But I do think that they'll get on a Blu-ray and go through all of Blood Simple with Barry Seinfeld shot by shot by shot talking about how they made it, what they were going for.

46:35David Sims:Our buddy Sean Fantasy of The Big Picture was talking on some recent episode, but it was somewhere in the transition period coming out of Oscar season and going into 2025 movie preview where he was comparing Brady Corbett to Paul Thomas Anderson. right? And he was saying like, as we're getting out of this Oscar season, the thing I think that everyone's exhausted with is Brady Corbett like explaining the themes of his movie 8 ,000 times. And he was putting that in contracts as to Paul Thomas Anderson, who never explains his movies at all. That when he goes and does press and he'll do long form interviews, he will talk and he'll talk openly about stuff.

47:16David Sims:But the thing he doesn't want to tell you at all is how to read his movie versus Brady Corbett being like, here's everything. And this is exactly how I've intended it, right? And he was like, it's the thing that makes sense because Paul Thomas Anderson was totally like that when he started out. He was like such an early DVD commentary guy, such an early, I'm telling you all my ambitions for this and how I want it to be received. And I'm speaking of the frustration of the elements that are misunderstood and all that sort of stuff. And he's like, it makes sense if you're a certain kind of film nerd and you grow up like loving movies and then studying their construction and then like learning how to analyze them more deeply, that your greatest dream is to make a movie that people can read as deeply as you've read other films.

47:58David Sims:And when these guys get the chance where they're finally in that sort of spotlight, it's very hard for them to resist the temptation to start that conversation themselves, which ultimately doesn't do the movie that much of a favor. And most guys learn to, as time goes on, back off and get a little more elusive. And what do you say versus what don't you say? I think what is unique about the Coens is like they have consistently been in sort of like old master phase from the beginning. There is no point in time where you're reading clumsy interviews with them, where they're kind of exposing themselves.

48:32David Sims:I wonder if we'll dig up anything more. Like they have been from the beginning. And I think that's the difference is a lot of times when we do this show and JJ's digging through, you know, like the quotes from the first couple movies. He's digging through the shallow grave of quotes from the early films. He's putting the shovel on the ground. Sometimes you're like, oh, it's a lot easier to find more information in the earlier stages of their career where they like haven't been as media trained, right? And they're like less guarded and also they're willing to talk about these things like 25 years later with more distance.

49:06David Sims:And the Coens like recut their own movie and have spoken extensively about this film. It's not like they've disowned it or tried to make a mystery box around it. And they didn't massively recut it. Sorry to jump in. Yeah, yeah. They just, they tweaked it. They tightened it up. They didn't cut whole scenes or put whole scenes in that weren't, you know. It's this fascinating balance of them being like, yeah, we're like a little embarrassed by this, but we're also not distancing ourselves from it, right? And I was watching one of these things on the Criterion disc, and they just said the thing that they always say, which I think some people think they are using this to throw people off their scent.

49:41David Sims:I believe with them it's genuine. And they were talking about their sense of structure. and Ethan said like, I don't know what a three-act structure is. Like he makes a joke of like, I've heard rumors of this and I've never seen it myself, right? And he's like, I never think about that stuff at all. I think we've watched so many things and read so many things that to some degree we've internalized some innate sense of structure, but we never do that consciously. And then Joel says something to the effect of our basic writing process is let's come up with enough ideas that excite us that we're ready to start writing.

50:13David Sims:Then we start writing and we're like, I guess it'd be cool if this happened next. And then they go, wow, feels like about time to wrap things up. That they tend to write straight through from beginning to end once they just have enough ideas percolating and they're not thinking consciously about how to design these things like Swiss watches with the intent of people pulling them apart later.

50:35Griffin Newman:That's hard to believe.

50:36David Sims:It is because their movies are so good and tight. And they are very Swiss watch-like as well. That's why I don't believe them. I think I'm not calling them liars. I feel like the big story we always heard is in Llewyn Davis. There's this part where he's driving past Akron and there's like an off ramp to go to Akron where he knows he's just found out his son is living who he's never met. And they were like, we were writing it and we're like, oh, the off ramp for Akron's coming up. Is Llewyn going to take it? And they were like, no, no, no, he doesn't take it. And just as they were writing, they decided like that whole section of the movie is not going to happen.

51:10Right. I love that.

51:12David Sims:They're not idiot savants, but the way they talk about their process... No, but they sometimes present themselves a little bit as idiot savants. It's sometimes still maddening where you're like, are you guys just perfect instincts? How is that possible? And then they'll talk about how prepared they are in terms of shooting. Right.

51:26Griffin Newman:They have an excellent reputation throughout Hollywood for being incredibly good on time, under budget, all that kind of stuff. Like, very, very...

51:34David Sims:But also that they're like, right, very disciplined, very storyboarded. The two-headed director. Right. They're like, we see other directors who get the kind of buzz from showing up on set and not totally knowing what you're going to do and that sort of pressure inspires them. And that's our nightmare. And we'll change the plan if something isn't working, but we want to come to this set knowing exactly how it should work. In contrast to the script seemingly coming out of just like, I don't know. It just like flows out of us and we ask ourselves the questions like should he take the off ramp? And then we just go from there.

52:06Another good story in a similar vein is they wrote all of Fargo up until Steve Buscemi's character is, quote, humping the escort and then could not figure out what would happen next and basically put it in a drawer for six months or a year or something.

52:24Griffin Newman:Which certainly, that does seem to be sometimes part of their process. When they hit a wall, they don't ram into the wall. They're just kind of like, okay. If it's not coming to us, then we have to put it aside

52:34David Sims:until it makes sense. They wrote Barton Fink, I think, in the middle of trying to write Miller's Crossing. and said that that was kind of the birth almost of a new process where it was like instead of trying to create a mousetrap contraption type script, it was like this is one idea that just came out. Yeah. Now look, Ray, I don't know if you know this,

52:55Griffin Newman:but the Coen's grew up in kind of a boring suburban part of Minnesota called St. Louis Park. And Ethan said, I like this quote a lot. And this is a classic Ethan Coen quote to me. It was the suburbs, you know? I cannot think of a single seminal childhood event. I relate to that so much. Someone's like, come on, tell me something from your childhood that might inform, like, clearly your work is informed by your adolescence sometimes. And he's just like, yeah, I can't think of anything. 18 years, blank. Joel says, Bob Dylan got out of Minnesota at an early age and you can see why. These guys are really roasted in Minnesota.

53:31Griffin Newman:They don't live there, right? They live in LA, I want to say. LA, New York. No, they live in New York. I don't know. They live in New York. Yeah. Bicoastal. Okay.

53:39David Sims:I feel like they're more New York though, right? Maybe. I don't know. Where the winds blow. Recommend everyone check out Pedro Cohen's Instagram page if you want. I used to be on Pedro's.

53:50Griffin Newman:Because he was like, is he a bodybuilder, a model, or he's sort of like an aspiring kind of... He's living the life. He is living. That is the thing. I remember Katie Rich, our mutual friend. This is son of Joel and Francis. Yes. Katie Rich was the one who got me into Pedro McDormand Cohen's great Instagram years ago. Anyway, so when the Coen brothers are growing up, they watch a lot of movies. Ethan, we saw a lot of Tarzan movies and Steve Reeves muscle movies. Cool. They liked comedies, you know, kind of like British Farsi comedies. Boing, boing. Boing, boing. Yeah. Which is a great play and a kind of an okay movie.

54:32Griffin Newman:Bob Hope movies, Jerry Lewis movies, Tony Curtis they like Doris Day movies, they like Pillow Talk We didn't realize we were watching crap is what Joel says, like they just love movies they got their hands on a Super 8 camera, they remade a lot of bad Hollywood movies their most successful in their memory are Cornel Wilde's Naked Prey and Auto Premature's Advice and Consent they said they didn't really understand, they would edit in camera obviously they didn't realize they could edit film physically by cutting it up and stuff. I'm not going to read all of this. They also made a movie called Henry Kissinger,

55:09David Sims:Man on the Move. I was going to say. That sounds good. They bring that up at the Oscars when they win for No Country. I forget which of their three acceptance speeches. My guest is directing, if I'm true. But they say like, when we were kids, we'd run around in the backyard with briefcases and make movies like Henry Kissinger, Man on the Move. And what's weird to us is that what we're doing now still feels exactly the same as that. Yeah. And I do think that's part of their secret, and it's a benefit to being a team, and a team that knows each other so well and can communicate, like, wordlessly and has a shared reference base and interest base.

55:43David Sims:And they always talk about watching movies together and reading books together and, like, being in tandem like that, is that to some degree, I think they're trying to retain the purity of when they made movies as children and would just be like, what's interesting enough to us to be worth the effort of pulling together costumes? there's a lot of play acting like when they talk about question it yeah people describing seeing them write the script it's just the two of them one's playing one character one's playing the other and they're just doing scenes together when they talk about storyboarding it they're getting up with their storyboard artist jay todd anderson all acting out the scenes yeah when we interviewed jay todd he said that the reason he got the job or one of the reasons he got the job storyboarding raising arizona is because he was willing to act out the drawing with them yeah and there's even in this movie, there's like 40 to 50 shots, which are literally just starring the Coen brothers shot by Barry Sonnenfeld.

56:36There are, there's so many pickup shots in this movie down to like that little drip of water. That's the very last shot of the movie. All the burial scenes, these, uh, the fight scene out in the lawn. There, there was a lot of like, just like boots on the ground stuff. Like anytime. Yeah.

56:50David Sims:Well, obviously I imagine the dossier is going to get to this, but like they're meeting Raimi is so humongous. Okay. Well, okay. Let me hit the gas on the dossier. Okay.

57:01Griffin Newman:Okay, just because this is a big episode.

57:04David Sims:But that's like a real rainy filmmaking principle thing of just like, just get the shot.

57:08Griffin Newman:They go to Bard College at Simon's Rock for a minute, which is a sort of hippie early college where you can get in when you're 16 years old, but then Joel goes to NYU and studies film there. I wanted to keep making movies and that was an easy school to get into, he says. Another description of time at NYU is our professors weren't famous directors. They'd made a career essentially in teaching. Joel, I was cyphered there. I sat in the back of the room with an insane grin on my face. I mean, that's always funny. I do think, like, my mom has friends who, one friend I'm thinking of in particular, who would always say, like, I went to NYU back when it was bad.

57:43Griffin Newman:Yeah. Like, NYU only became kind of the, like, insane powerhouse. It became, like, the 90s. It suddenly was cooler to want to go to New York for university. It also needed a couple generations of successful graduates. And then the film school, right. There's a track record there. Right. And he does, Joel makes a short film there called Soundings, which is about a deaf person whose girlfriend fantasizes about someone else while she's making love to him. Have you guys seen Soundings? That is not viewable? Never even heard of it. Yeah. Yeah, this was new to me reading about it. Okay, well, JJ just got rehired,

58:17David Sims:and I gotta tell you.

58:19Griffin Newman:Then Joel went to a graduate film program at the University of Texas in Austin, and he married somebody and then got separated soon after and left the program after just a semester. Ethan went to Princeton and studied philosophy. Okay, King. Our comrade, Melissa Tuckman, who has some affiliation with Princeton, has put in a request for Ethan Cohen's thesis on Wittgenstein. So in three to four months, we may be able to read it from the archives. That sounds fun. It's 45 pages. It's the longest thing he wrote before the Blood Simple script. That's crazy. Well, that's like academic writing. You know, it's...

59:01Griffin Newman:Yeah, there's a lot of stuff about college. I'm going to move on. Okay, Trich is fired again. Yeah, they wrote the first scripts together while still enrolled in school. A movie they've written that was never produced was called Coast to Coast, which was sort of a screwball comedy. Ethan, for the plot details here, it had 28 Einsteins in it. The Red Chinese were cloning Albert Einstein. Okay. And then after they graduate, they move to New York City and they feel like this is when they actually start to get to know each other. Like, obviously, three years difference when you're a kid is big. By now, they're both grown up and they become real pals, apparently.

59:39Griffin Newman:And Joel works as an assistant editor for Edna Ruth Paul. Ethan works at a temp agency as a typist. You were telling me, Ray, I think the data entry. Data entry in Mises. Eventually, maybe. Right. And then Joel starts work on Sam Raimi's film, The Evil Dead. As an assistant editor, he'd been fired from another movie called Nightmare. And he says that Evil Dead's obviously an inspiration. A lot of stuff in her film, like the camera running up the front lawn, is Raimi inspired. Raimi's first impression of the Coens. Edna, our editor, says, you got to read these guys' scripts. And I go, oh, God. Joel's Brothers was just a statistical count in Macy's at the time.

1:00:20Griffin Newman:and I thought it was probably gonna be awful and then I read it and I thought, wow, these guys know how to write scripts. Okay, thank you, Sam. Really interesting.

1:00:27David Sims:Hey, I think it's interesting. It is interesting. What I think is interesting about thinking of that moment in time is like Joel has successfully started getting work in the industry. He's doing film work. He's bottom of the totem pole editing the lowest budget horror movies, but he is employed working on films. And then he's got this mystery brother with this day job who they keep saying like, they write scripts together who on their face I think were received the way my parents received the idea of like who the fuck are these guys making a neon noir. But Ramey was one of the first to sort of like give him the shot, read it, notice that they were good.

1:01:07David Sims:Yes. And then I think what they're getting from Ramey in such a huge way is like this guy just went out and fucking did it. That's the thing. He had financed his movies by like bothering dentists in Detroit or whatever it is that Sam Ramey did and they were like, well, we could probably do that. Right. Like, can you get like 60 financiers who each are contributing less than$10 ,000? And if you can just keep knocking on doors, you might have enough to make a movie.

1:01:30Griffin Newman:Now, Ramey had essentially made a short film called Within the Woods that was his proof of concept. They decide to do something similar. So over three days, they shoot sort of a trailer for Blood Simple. Right. Rent a camera. Did you watch this, David? Yes, I did. You guys, I'm sure. Legendary. Yeah. It's basically... And of course, most famously, Bruce Campbell is in it. He's playing the M.M. Walsh analog or is he Hedaya? He's playing Marty.

1:01:55David Sims:Yeah, he's playing the Dan Hedaya. But in it, it almost seems like they have the Visser character because the guy who's playing the guest character has this long fur codon. He's a cowboy. Yeah. He's like much more of a cowboy. Like he's got, kind of looks like the cowboy in Mulholland Drive. Seriously, yeah. You basically, Monty Montgomery, you basically don't see actors' faces in this. They were like, our thing is rather than make a proof of concept short film, let's make a trailer as if we have made the finished film. Because correctly, they were like, no one wants to read shit. Both like people in the industry and dentists who will maybe give me a couple thousand dollars don't want to read shit.

1:02:33David Sims:They said they had the script and only one guy actually read it, who was a urologist and he handed them back the script and it was covered in blood. I think he invested though. He did. He did invest. But he was like, if you say to people like, hey, can I show you something? and we showed up with a 16mm projector. They shot the trailer on 35. But then they like knocked it down to 16 so that it was in a format that was easy enough to then like prop up and show people. Super cool because you can walk in with a little 60 millimeter projector that's like a suitcase, like a little briefcase. And we're like, this will just get people's attention.

1:03:06David Sims:And they would like book screening rooms in New York City. And they were like, well, we know you usually charge by two hour blocks. How much can we get 15 minutes for? And then just like funnel people in and out and show them this thing. the trailer is even more Raimi than the final movie but they talk so much about I mean AI it's got the shovel

1:03:27Griffin Newman:it's got the bullet holes through the wall right the Raimi cam but I mean it has images that are gonna be you know pivotal to the feature

1:03:38David Sims:you don't really see any actors faces because they hadn't cast people but they're like showing you some of the images they have in their head and then they're doing kind of crazier Raimi camera work and what's also interesting is that It feels more horror than the final film. And they talked about like, Raimi was their model of this working, but we also saw other people getting to make horror movies at this number. It felt like the easiest way to get a little bit of money was horror was seen as a safer return on investment that didn't cost a lot. And so they're finding this midpoint in their mind between like, we're interested in like Dashiell Hammett type stuff.

1:04:12David Sims:Can we like find the way to mash that up with horror that will trick people into giving us money? The final image of the trailer is the moon. looms up and turns red.

1:04:23Griffin Newman:It's pretty cool. The tagline, just to clarify, is Julian whatever. What's the last name? Come on. They might have changed his name in the chat. No, it is. Julian Marty thought he had hired the murder. Thought he had hired the murder of his wife when in Texas you get what you pay for. Blood simple. Anyway, they do, and Sonnenfeld's obviously involved, raise about half a million dollars, which is pretty crazy. They say the movie eventually ended up costing about three quarters of a million dollars. Back in the day, to be clear, it was fucking hard to fund the tiniest movie because film shit is so expensive and you can't just put things on an iPhone or whatever.

1:05:07Griffin Newman:They raised the movie money in New York, the screening room thing you were just talking about. And they wanted to make an entertaining movie. Like this trailer is for an entertaining movie. It's not like we're going to make an art film. It's like we're going to make a fucking thriller.

1:05:25David Sims:This Eggers talk, he kept asking them where it came from and they were just truly like reverse engineered from what feels like the easiest to get financing for, what feels like the easiest to sell people on actually going to see in theaters, what gives us the greatest chance of return on investment. And they were like, our two overriding goals were make our first movie, just knock down that door and have made a film was one, and two was not fuck it up to a degree that we can maybe get to make a second film. But this isn't coming out of any burning, like, we had the most incredible idea for a story, or this is something we want to say.

1:06:05David Sims:It's what's so fascinating about this movie is that they were just sort of like trying to find the midpoint between what interested them and what they thought would work as a calling card.

1:06:14Griffin Newman:Now, I would say this film is coming out during a neo-noir boom. I don't know if you guys would agree with that. They're very conscious of body heat while they're prepping this movie. That makes sense. Things that they thought were kind of cheesy in body heat that they wanted to avoid. Yeah, they didn't want like halation filters on the lenses. They wanted things to look really sharp. Right, yeah. Because body heat, it's kind of a sweaty movie. Have you guys picked up on this with that one? It's kind of got this kind of like sweaty, sexy thing going on. Well, as a result of the body heat. So hot!

1:06:45Griffin Newman:Yeah. And, you know, the Bob Raffleson Postman Always Rings Twice remake, which is like, to me, the epitome of kind of a bad neo-noir, no offense to it, where it's kind of just like, you know that kind of like sexy noir? What if they like fuck and we see it? And it's kind of like, you know what? Sometimes things should be left to the imagination. Like that's the magic of noir, right? But there's lots of good noir and there's like Thief and then there's stuff like Blade Runner, you know, that is sort of adjacent or whatever. But they are like, we're not really inspired by those kinds of movies.

1:07:17Griffin Newman:We're more inspired by the literature that those kinds of movies are inspired by. So James M. Cain is obviously the number one guy they referenced for Blood Simple. Obviously, guys like Chandler and Hammett as well. But Cain is the big thing. But they're not making a whodunit. Like many a noir obviously has that as the driving plot thing. They're just making a double cross movie, I guess. Although in some sense, there is a whodunit aspect to it. just because characters are so confused. The characters definitely do not know who done pretty much anything in this movie.

1:07:50David Sims:It's not a who done it. It's a what happened.

1:07:52Griffin Newman:Yeah. Right. What the fuck is going on?

1:07:54David Sims:It's everyone trying to make sense of what's happening around them and then coming to the wrong conclusions about what they think led to that. Yeah, actually, it's the exact opposite of a who done it. It's like, you know who did it and they don't. But you don't understand what they did or why. And everyone's just reacting.

1:08:11Griffin Newman:So James and Kane, just to be clear, wrote Postman Oaks Drinks twice. Anyway, so they make this movie.

1:08:19David Sims:Oh, wow. Okay.

1:08:20Griffin Newman:And Emmett Walsh was written for him. They'd seen him in straight time. He said he

1:08:31David Sims:was... He'd gotten into a fight with his reps shortly before this because he found out about some other projects that had been offered to him that they passed on without telling him. So he said, any single thing that comes in for me, you have to send it to me immediately. I want to make the decision. But it's one of those things where like, the timing is perfect for this script to hit his eyes. A month earlier he never would have seen it. And maybe two months later he would have been like, actually you can start filtering shit again. But it's like right at the time where he's like, any single thing that comes in the mailbox for me, I'm looking at.

1:09:11David Sims:And he just says like why not like truly he's like why not he says they were horrible at directing actors

1:09:16Griffin Newman:because they never worked with actors before a way he puts it that i think is really funny is joel would be like why don't you look over there and he'd be like why am i looking over there and they'd be like just humor me just fucking look over there you know like they weren't good at like talking was i'm humoring you by being in this picture

1:09:32David Sims:he insisted that they pay him in cash because this whole damn movie is just to humor you he said

1:09:39Griffin Newman:it's just funny it's so Coen's or whatever it's like for them to be like I hope we can get M.M. at Walsh like that's that's the coup for them totally

1:09:47David Sims:but he's being paid in$100 bills most of the money you see him waving around in the movie is his salary for the movie where he was just like A.M. taking cash because I don't think these guys are good for it unless I have it in hand and B. I don't want to leave the cash they're giving me in my hotel room because I'm worried that the staff will steal it. Sonnenfeld having no filter was like, you were paying him four grand a week. So then you have to imagine by like week three, he's walking around with 12 grand in cash. But you see it. You can see the outline of like bills all over his wardrobe. He's wearing his entire salary in every shot of this movie.

1:10:29Griffin Newman:So Fran McDormand is in the film and Joel Cohen, I don't know if you guys know, that actually ends up marrying her. they have a long relationship you guys aware okay can we double check that and he was looking going to a lot of theater trying to find people who are interesting he sees Holly Hunter in a play called Crimes of the Heart and they want Holly Hunter good taste yeah and of course they'll end up working with her she's on the phone she's on the phone you might notice her voice she's got a bit of a distinctive twang and she's like I'm doing another play I can't do your dumb movie. But you know who you should look at.

1:11:07Griffin Newman:But I am roommates with Fran. They were living in the Bronx. Make me a movie about Holly and Fran in the Bronx, by the way. And? And Kathleen Bates.

1:11:15David Sims:The third roommate.

1:11:18Griffin Newman:And Fran had barely done anything. Dan Hedaya. Hedaya? Hedaya. I always say Hedaya. I got it right. Just came in and they were like, yep. Ethan says, quote, you know it when you see it. Joel, I don't think we could have imagined the quality that Dan would have brought to it. But I don't know where Dan Hedaya is in his career then. I think Cheers is in 84. I think 84 is a big year for Hedaya.

1:11:40David Sims:It's like all about to start happening.

1:11:43Griffin Newman:Yeah, because he's in Buckaroo Bonsai the same year as Blood Simple. And he'd just been in the Hunger. I mean, like he's a guy who plays a lot of cops. Like, hello, Jordan. You don't have to raise your hand. You can just interrupt us. We just talk all the time. We interrupt each other. Yes. They have said also that they wrote this character with Martin Scorsese in mind. interesting. If you imagine his entire character being an extrapolation of Scorsese's character in Taxi Driver.

1:12:15David Sims:Hedaya's my favorite performance in this movie. I think he is extraordinary. I find it to be like... I mean, Emmett Walsh is awesome. He's awesome. It's an iconic work. That's the... Right. Iconic is the thing. But I'm like... And no disrespect, no backhand to Emmett Walsh. I think what Hedaya is doing in this is so fascinating. I find it so deeply affecting. It's a performance that truly haunts me. He's on the ground and he's crawling around. I think we watched it on a big screen at Ray's office. And it was just like... Go off, big screen Ray. All right. I think Ray just turned to me and was like, what he's doing right now is so incredible.

1:12:58Incredible. Just how wounded he is, how pathetic he is.

1:13:01Griffin Newman:At the same time, he's like an animal. And I don't mean that in like, I mean, he's got a hairy chest. Okay, fine. But you know, like, there's something just sort of like primal about him. There's like taxidermied animals

1:13:16all over his house. And he has a dog. Like there is something like, it's an association with him. The Speedo shot or the still photo.

1:13:26David Sims:Yeah. What do you mean Speedo? He was wearing a two-piece wool, black wool bodysuit. He's wearing one of those old-fashioned bathing suits that covers your whole body. Just made out of Brillo pads. Yeah. We just did Clueless very recently on this podcast. And Amy Heckerling said her whole thought was, I want to cast someone who would usually play a hitman as Cher's father, right? It is like the inverse of this. This guy seems so intense and so menacing and so criminal to have him play a sweetheart lawyer, but speaking with that level of gruffness and intensity, to his daughter will be very funny.

1:14:04David Sims:Hideo just looks intense when he shows up, right? It's not just his physical appearance, but also like his energy, literally his eyes and everything. Cheers this same year, he's just like, come on, come on, like yelling everything. Speaking of criminal, his performance in Dick as Richard Nixon, criminally overlooked. Yeah, I was going to say, I hope you weren't accusing him of being a criminal because he tells you that he is not a crook, in fact, in that movie. Rewatching it this time, I had the specific thought of what is interesting about Hedaya, both the character as written and his performance, is that it's sort of an anti-Sydney Green Street, right?

1:14:40David Sims:Where it's like, here is the guy in the prime position of power within the structure of this movie. This is a very small movie with a very tight cast, and the most capital anyone has is owning this bar and also having someone legally tied to them in marriage, right? And yet from the beginning, this guy has no effect on everyone around him. It's true. He holds the power. He does undeniably. And yet everyone's like, shut up. Fuck you. Fuck off. Right? Like no one respects him. No one takes him seriously. And also he like the failed attempt to pick up the woman at the bar. Sure.

1:15:21Griffin Newman:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:15:21David Sims:Everything he does kind of fails. It fails. Right. It's like, here's a guy who actually, it's not that he's Sidney Greenstreet in his mind. It's that he is technically occupying that role. And yet, he is so uncomfortable in his own skin. He is so self-loathing. He is so sensitive, really, right? Like, everything, like, hits him. That he cannot, like, sell the confidence of his actual position in a way that makes other people allergic to him. Like, people are grossed out by him. That scene is a lot longer in the shooting script. And he's like, hey, do you want to go see the Oilers and the Rams at the Astrodome with me?

1:15:59And Maurice comes by and he's like, just give me the usual. And Maurice brings him a glass of milk. And he's like, no, come on. And then Maurice goes to pour out the glass of milk in the sink. He's like, no, pour it back in the bottle. It's just extended. Almost like a Mikey and Nicky kind of scene.

1:16:13David Sims:But it's also that he clearly goes like, I know how a guy like me is supposed to act. He walks into the bar and then just goes up to a woman and basically says, like, you're fucking me now. And he cannot sell it. And she just goes like, no, thank you. And he takes a second stab at it where he's like, I don't think you understood what I was saying. And she's like, yeah, I'm not interested. And you can see him short circuiting that he doesn't know how to, like, handle this. And yet this is probably every fucking night of his life, right? like this kind of archetype of like the gangster with the wife who hates him, who he finds out is having an affair and like sends him into a spiral of jealousy where the there is always the like, yeah, but this guy's fucking everybody.

1:16:57David Sims:He's not angry that his wife is disloyal to him because he believes in the sanctity of marriage. He's just jealous in a way that he can't control. And this guy's even more pathetic where it's like he wishes he was fucking other people and he can't pull it off. So part of it is just like, I'm jealous and possessive, and also, I can't make anyone else fall for me. I tricked this one woman. Right, he's the most small-time version of, right, like, yeah, he tricked one woman, yeah. So then Emmett Walsh says that when he got the script, he was like, oh, is this my chance to do a Sydney Green Street thing?

1:17:31David Sims:Right. So he reads the character as like, well, I'm in sort of like middle-aged, I'm like probably going to transition the latest start. I need to start thinking about who I want to be on screen in my 60s and 70s. Is this a chance to sort of do this? And it's the opposite where it's like, can you like have a guy who on the outside seems like Buffalo Bob from like the Howdy Doody show is dressed like the man in the yellow hat, right? But like inside, he secretly is this kind of like menacing heavy. And so you have these two guys circling each other who both have this disconnect between how they read to other people and their actual power within their lives.

1:18:08David Sims:and Hedaya is just like so sad. It is such a sustained like controlled angry sad coiled energy. It is my favorite moment in this entire film is just him having to walk past the like lover's rock lineup of teenagers all laughing at him. Incredible. With his finger in like the little sling. Yeah. And they notice it and they bully him. Right. And you're just like there's so much in the inherent dynamics of like why is Emmett Walsh asking this guy who's about to hire him to do a hit to meet him at like the teen makeout point and Emmett Walsh with his Beatles somehow is like able to at least get these kids to humor him this woman's like this young girl's talking to him for 30 seconds and like the second Dan Hedaya enters the space everyone's like what's your shut the fuck up fuck you

1:19:03Griffin Newman:he's a bit off-putting as much as I love Dan Hedaya, the actor, if I met this character, I might not want to hang out with him.

1:19:11David Sims:But it's the anger and the sadness and the fact that he's not able to even cover it up with bluster. He is uncomfortable because you're just like, Jesus Christ, this guy's an open wound.

1:19:23Griffin Newman:And it's all ugly. We haven't mentioned John Goetz yet. What do we think of John Goetz? I know, but we haven't really... This is one of his earliest performances, obviously. He does not go on to fame in the same way as everyone else, but he's a pretty reliable working actor. We talked about him on social network even where it's like he's become a pretty reliable older guy. He's always great.

1:19:44David Sims:Yeah, but it is funny because he's... He is ostensibly the lead of this movie. And yet it's... Yeah, sort of. It sort of is a cipher. I think his highest points are like post-burying Marty the morning, that look on his face like, oh my God, I've just buried someone alive. I think he's very, very good at conveying that feeling. But I feel like if you look at Brolin in No Country for Old Men, you just see like, okay, what is this like, like masculine guy, but like with, you know, some charisma, you know, with some like Burt Reynolds charisma added to it. They are obviously, you know, they have the benefit of starting with the Cormac McCarthy book on No Country.

1:20:28David Sims:But it's why I kept thinking about that movie while watching this one is like, by that point, 20 years later, they know how to make the guy at the center interesting. Even when it is this kind of blank slate tack turn, like, right. Yeah, because I didn't notice until the rewatch for this that like that first scene is them telling each other that they have an attraction. Like that's the beginning of their relationship is the first scene. That's the first time they hook up when he takes a photograph of them. And I don't feel like you feel that through the, like the way they're behaving towards each other.

1:21:01And it's important for the setup of the movie to know that they are, are tentative around each other. Yeah. So it's like, yeah,

1:21:06David Sims:he just inherently doesn't have leading man energy. And I don't say that in a negative way. There are movies. I think of like one from the heart where like casting Frederick Forrest is like a disaster because you're like he needs to be in the Harry Dean Stanton role and this guy trying to play leading man is like throwing the entire movie off its axis and like Getz is not like that at all. It feels probably like they wanted that out of him where it's like part of the intrigue for them is placing just some guy in the middle of a movie like this who is not carrying himself like a noir leading man that part of it is that this is the one guy who like halfway through is like what the fuck have I gotten myself into I don't want to be in this film but they also said like a big thing about this movie that makes it such a miracle and the way you were saying David of like where the fuck did this guy these guys come from how is this not their 15th film is that they basically establish their key crew all from film one right like they have Skip Levesay and they have Sonnenfeld and they have Carter Burwell and they have Francis McDormand

1:22:12Griffin Newman:like perfect Carter Burwell minimalist theme like that you can't shake. So melodic.

1:22:18David Sims:They find so much of the team like right there from the beginning. And Skip Leafsay, who's their like incredible sound artist and works on every one of their films. And who has a pretty cool name, let's just say. Phenomenal name. He is maybe the most established of everyone they're working with. He brings in Carter Burwell. Right. He knows Carter Burwell just as like a music friend. Is this just one of those... Half music, half animation.

1:22:41Griffin Newman:Right. Is it like everyone's coming aboard and the more people that get at it are kind of like, oh, these guys seem to know what they're doing. Hey, come aboard. Ray, no. Everyone's like surprised it turns out as well as it does. Yeah, okay. Everyone is kind of like, all right, maybe this is just a dumb lark that, you know, we're doing.

1:22:58David Sims:Because Leif says like working on big movies in lower positions, but he like actually has some stature as a sound guy, if not being the lead, like sound guy.

1:23:07Griffin Newman:He's got a resume. Right.

1:23:09David Sims:He had a little more of a like, I thought the script was interesting. It's worth taking a chance on these guys. I think the Carter Burwell thing is like, this guy's smart. Maybe I can like throw him a bone. I think they might get along well. Carter Burwell was doing animation and he was in this band called Thick Pigeon. I went and listened to the Thick Pigeon album that he recorded in the middle of doing this score. Thick Pigeon. With like guys from New Order and just really like an experimental. He said he just wrote all of the melodies off of watching 20 minutes of the film. And basically they tried to hire, I think, three other people first.

1:23:43And then they came back to him. Yeah. I mean, he showed up with that melody. I can't imagine. You know, like, it's interesting, though, because the music he made is like, like, what I listened to was a lot more like monotonous and intentionally atonal than his film scoring work, which is really very appealing.

1:24:02David Sims:Like, so melodic. They did this sort of like bake off audition thing, right? They asked him to come in with some stuff. He came in with like 10 different pieces. The melodic piano thing was one of them. but there was more electronic stuff and more conventional thriller score stuff and they were like we like that can we work on that more and he gave them a bunch of stuff he was just like there wasn't a traditional spotting section I was like watching a cut and they were sort of like I guess that's 60 seconds we need there I gave him a bunch of stuff and they re-edited it and placed the music in different places than I had intended and he was like I was angry at them I was too inexperienced to actually get upset about it but if that had happened to me on a studio film I probably would have made a bigger stink in a way that would have killed my entire career versus like trusting them long enough to see that it ultimately worked out in everyone's favor but it feels like everyone's relationship to them was like that and Mehmet Walsh was like I don't know what these fucking guys are doing but the thing Skip Leavsay said was like reading the script it was so sparse it was like so tight there was like no emotion in it whatsoever in the way the characters are written.

1:25:11David Sims:And he's like, any sort of emotional nuance in that film is what the actors brought to it. Like, there was kind of nothing on paper for Fran's character. And she came in and filled all this stuff. And it feels like it teaches them this lesson of like, A, we got to give actors room to work and like fill in those gaps. That strikes me as a thing that so much, so many young directors have to figure out

1:25:32Griffin Newman:how to actually work with actors.

1:25:33David Sims:And then, so they're seeing like, oh my God, she's finding stuff where we didn't give it to her. And then they said about John Getz, They're like, we watch the movie now and they're like, wow, we were doing him no favors. We gave him nothing to play. The character is basically just an audience surrogate and a thriller, which means he needs to be behind the eight ball. He has no idea what's going on. The whole movie is watching him walk into rooms silently and trying to figure stuff out. And they were like, we think he's really good. And as time goes on, we're more and more grateful for the favor he gave us of like doing that well in a way that informed us that we need to actually give actors more playable things from now.

1:26:08David Sims:to run out. He also has a really big challenge in the last third of the movie because they set up this idea that Yuri says to Abby, stay away from Rey, he's gone crazy. And so it's a challenge for the actor because he's got to seem completely bewildered, trying to reach out to her, trying to protect her from whatever sort of unclear threat there is. But also he has to play it in a way where he's giving her the like crazy hooks to grab onto where she can misread one of his signals and be like, oh, actually he might be the person who wants to kill me. So like that's tough. That's, that's, I would imagine that that's really hard.

1:26:49David Sims:And I think what he does very smartly is rather than playing like a movie version of crazy, he is playing the sort of slow burn shock of having killed a guy and watching a guy die, right? Like there's some sort of like delayed trauma bomb happening within him that is just making him seem a little unhinged. And the big thing he's playing is, you know, Marty early on goes like, at a certain point, she's going to say to you, like, I'm not doing anything funny. And it's like, when she says that to him, that's the moment that he stops trusting her. They lose faith in each other, basically. I mean, our beloved producer, Ben Hosley, always talks about, who's not on mic as much in this episode.

1:27:28David Sims:We don't have enough microphones. Adjust the microphone over to Jordan. but Ben you love to talk about the bag full of money movie that makes you think if I were in this I'd do everything right and I'd end up owning an island right?

1:27:40Griffin Newman:Right so you hire an assassin in this movie like I would hire a good assassin who would do his job and then we would shake hands and part ways. I mean I wouldn't hire this guy. You don't want to hire me? I can't do him either you don't want to hire like Porky? As soon as I saw like four flies on his face I'd be like no thank you

1:28:00David Sims:the movies that I feel like you often point to often point to and say, I would know how to do this better. Are the things like a simple plan where like a very kind of like all-American button-down milquetoast guy starts like his morals slip away. He starts losing perspective and judgment, getting caught up in his own like, how do I maintain this? How do I hold on to this? Now you're killing more people and all this sort of shit, right? And you're like, I would just be normal. Cool as a cucumber. John Getz in this feels like the opposite, where you're like so used to the movies like this making people get into this like Walter White-esque slipping into a like morass of evil to hold on to what they have.

1:28:44David Sims:And instead, this guy, the more things get bad around him, the more he's just like, oh fuck, I hate this. I hate being here, right? Like he's fucked up too deeply to ever fix it, but he's not doubling down on it and making it worse in a certain way. Obviously, he kills Dan Hedaya, right? But like the last 20 minutes, he's just sort of like, I don't know what the fuck to do anymore.

1:29:11Griffin Newman:Why does Visser do what he did? Do what he do? Because Dan Hedaya insulted him. Yeah. Because Dan Hedaya is just a pain in the ass. Yeah. Because I mean, like, it's just a lot of trouble in the 80s to be Photoshopping. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. He has to do that by hand. Like manual Photoshop, like drawing little blood stains on people. He might have even used his own blood. That's yeah, maybe he did. Drip drip. Because like this is a movie where nobody's like, hey, this is why I'm doing this, by the way. Not that I need anyone to do that. I don't want that. I don't want some monologue, villainous monologue or whatever.

1:29:44David Sims:And the first time I saw it, I remember being confused when Getz shows up again where I was like, I thought they were dead. Right. Where I fell for his thing.

1:29:54Griffin Newman:Ben, before you hand the mic back, I forgot to ask you, your Coen brothers thing. Yeah. Yeah. Where are your first Coen brothers guys? They are filmmakers my dad really loved. That checks out. Yeah. Yeah. Like Fargo was a favorite of his.

1:30:08David Sims:Look, all of us being like 80s, 90s kids, it checks out that we all have the same story, which is my parents told me these guys were important. Absolutely. The Coens were one of those filmmakers that they did talk about. Because also they're like, quote unquote, serious movies that are entertaining and funny. like as much as they were seen as like these guys are high artists and this is like highfalutin shit on the other hand it's like it's silly and it's exciting

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1:32:37David Sims:Here's the basic plot overview of this movie. Because it's not like it's told out of order. It's not like a Mento-style obfuscation. But they just withhold certain information from you at certain times. as much as it is like following into the basic thriller playbook of like the audience needs to be a step ahead of the character so the tension comes from us knowing the thing that they don't know and being worried about how it's going to go down this movie does withhold key bits of information from the audience as well so it takes a while to figure out even what has gone wrong but John Goetz is having an affair with Francis McDormand who is married to Dan Hedaya who is a pathetic man who owns a bar she wants to leave him for her.

1:33:22David Sims:He has hired a private eye who has found photos of them sleeping together in a fit of rage, I think, spurred on even more by the fact that he cannot fuck anyone else. That he's... Getting revenge. Let's say the man is Riz-less. There is an astonishing lack of Riz in this guy. Decides to put a hit out on the two of them to get his ultimate revenge. He makes this mistake of sort of lightly mocking M.M. McWalsh, who tries to present himself as almost like the Andy Griffith Show version of a private eye assassin, right? Like, he's couching everything in this sort of, like, folksy cuteness. So when Hedaya takes a swipe at him, you assume, is this guy so kind of oblivious and good-natured that it's just bouncing right off of him?

1:34:13David Sims:Instead, he breaks into their home, takes a photo of them sleeping, and manually, basically, hand-tints it. He photoshops it in the literal, original meaning of the verb. Yes. To make it look like he has murdered them in bed, that there are blood shots on the sheets. Which then, his plan is to then just rob Hedaya, take all his money, which he knows the location of, when he goes to get paid. He also steals Abby's gun, which is basically a frame. he's doing that to frame her and... That'll tie it all up, essentially.

1:34:51Griffin Newman:It's like, this was a lover's quarrel. That's what happened here.

1:34:54David Sims:But when you're asking why he does it, it's like the ego is bruised. He has the line later where he repeats the thing that Hedaya said to him about looking dumb or something like that. He says, now it looks stupid, which I've watched the movie a few times. I don't think that Hedaya ever actually calls him dumb. No, Visser is the one who says, you look like an idiot. Or I think you're an idiot. My read on it is, he just thinks that Marty is not trustworthy, that this is not a good guy to keep a secret with. And so it's actually cleaner to take the money from him, frame the lovers and leave. And then it's a totally tied up.

1:35:27David Sims:But also, and they have no idea who he is. Like, Hedea in that car scene isn't like flat out insulting him, but he is doing snarky under his breath trip. And he's giving him an attitude that is clearly, I think you're dumb and I'm smart. He's treating him like shit. I mean, he like, when he gives him the money, he pushes across the table with his boot. Yes. You know, and he's like, don't come for me. But it's also, it's the no country, it's the Fargo thing, it's the like all this for a little money that they're obsessed with, which is like the promise of such a small amount of money can make people lose their fucking minds.

1:36:02David Sims:Where you're just like, this is absolutely not worth it. The other thing too is, I'm not, I don't think this is the point where Visser fully decides to do it, but it might be the moment that makes him cross the threshold is when Hedaya says, I put a call in and the less you need to know about it, the better. And at that point, if I'm putting myself in the detective's mind, I'm thinking, oh, he's involved with the mob. He got funding from somebody who now understands the workings of this situation, which is funny too, because what he actually did is he put in a call to Murice being like, you stole the money from the safe.

1:36:43David Sims:Right. It's, yeah, it's one of those things where watching it the first time you think, is there a bigger conspiracy going on here that's slowly going to get unfurled? And instead you realize this guy just made too big of a play, right? Was just sort of like, I don't trust this dude. And I guess I could make five times as much money if I just kill him. And I think my plan is foolproof and no one will see through it.

1:37:06Griffin Newman:Don't hire a hitman.

1:37:07David Sims:Yeah. Because like, you know, they kill people. They do. So they could kill you. This is an interesting take, David. You know what I mean? It's like they're already comfortable killing people for no particular reason. This is very similar to the beat in No Country 2, where they go out to visit the scene of the firefight, and Chigurh just shoots those two guys that have hired him. And you're like, why? Why is this movie about this hitman suddenly about a hitman who's going total chaos mode? And I always forget that he kills those two guys. Although, the interesting thing about Visser is he doesn't really come off as that psychopathic.

1:37:43Like when you realize that they that he didn't actually kill them and he and he did these fake frame job photos. It sort of feels like, oh, this is a guy who will choose the sort of more weaselly fake out path as opposed to like actually just pick up a gun and shoot somebody. But then he immediately picks up a gun and shoots Marty.

1:38:07David Sims:Right. And and the other big mistake he makes is thinking that he's dead. Right. Which is another thing that Cohen said was like a big animating idea for them in this movie. And I think it comes a lot out of Joel editing horror films, watching what Raimi's doing, seeing that like grow as its own sort of cottage industry of the 80s horror films and whatever in the early part of the decade. He was like, all these movies presented like killing people is like one move and it's done. And obviously, sometimes you shoot someone point blank in the head and they like fall down and it's over. but even some of the like trailers and marketing materials for this movie used the tagline of like death takes a lot longer than you'd think or something like that that that was their big set piece idea was like can you have a guy who thinks that he's closed off the loose end and killed a guy but in reality it's 15 minutes of the movie that are going to have to silently play out with like fuck this is taking longer than I thought I think there's some versions of this movie that have an opening title card that talks about a quote from Hemingway or something about how hard it is to kill somebody.

1:39:14Griffin Newman:It's actually easy. Shoot him right in the head. Bang. Which I'm sure you guys know this,

1:39:19David Sims:but the opening M.M. at Walsh narration, which I butchered, was not in the script. They had him having the final line at the end of the movie. They put it together, and they were like, feels like it kind of needs something at the beginning. And he was like, we just wrote that. We just came up with something. we brought him in to do ADR handed him two pages of paper he read it cold one time and I think part of it was that like they don't tend to make movies with conventional narrative structures where you're following one character the entire time they're so into ensembles and they're so into sort of the arc of the movie is the incident rather than you following one character through incidents it's like how does this incident progress and affect everyone around it and Carter Burwell, when he lands on this, like, piano melody, they go, oh, fuck.

1:40:12David Sims:All these scenes of characters in silence and we have this movie that already has these open spaces and people looking and listening and considering. If we're playing the same theme across all these characters, it does start to bring them together. It, like, unifies them in a mood and a feeling and I think they have the same thought of, like, if we put M.M. MetWolf saying something at the beginning, what it is is almost irrelevant. it starts to bookend it and frame it a little bit more as this guy's worldview. Roger Ebert, when this film came out, not to put Hosley on blast again, but this is I think what is the most potent idea in this movie.

1:40:48David Sims:He said, a lot has been written about the visual style of Blood Simple, but I think the appeal of this movie is more elementary. It keys into three common nightmares. One, you clean and clean but there's still blood all over the place. A Shakespearean nightmare. Two, you know you have committed a murder but you're still not sure quite how or why. That is really true. That's great.

1:41:09Griffin Newman:Right. That you're like, I think he's dead and I think someone did it, but I don't know where the body is or what happened. Classic Ebert observation.

1:41:17David Sims:And three, you know you have forgotten a small detail that will eventually get you into a lot of trouble.

1:41:21Griffin Newman:You're obsessively overthinking, like, but did this, you know, yes.

1:41:26David Sims:The lighter, yeah. I mean, the viscer leaving his lighter, it's like. Now, Ebert's saying those are the three common universal nightmares seems to imply that we all think about killing people all the time. Oh, gosh. But what I actually think he's saying in a Hossley way is that we all watch movies like this and start to think, could we pull it off? And it's just about deceit, right?

1:41:48Griffin Newman:Totally. Even if it's not murder, right? Right, that's the whole version of it. Could I weave a web of lies? Could I get away with something? Can I end up with an island? And what would happen? And how would I do it? And where would it start to go wrong? And it's the postmodern riff of this movie is like, okay, this is how it actually would go down. Everything would just kind of be

1:42:05David Sims:sloppy and meaningless. Because like in a Coen Brothers movie like Blood Simple, you should

1:42:09Griffin Newman:you could watch this and be like, well, all of these characters are essentially kind of worthless. It's not like these are lovable characters. So what do I care what happens to them? Let them all, you know, shoot each other. And instead you're like, with them, you're not exactly rooting for characters always, but you're kind of just, you're in that experience that you're talking about of like, huh, what would I do? And huh, what would happen next if I, you know, whatever.

1:42:40David Sims:It's a movie designed knowing that audiences watch these types of movies that way. And when they're skipping over information, it's taking advantage of the fact where it's like placing you in his headspace of I don't know why I just killed a guy. You know, you have Getz walk into the office, see Hedaya there, step on a gun, think mistakenly that he's the one who just shot him when in fact he's been lying there bleeding out in a chair and it's just like everything spirals off of that. I think just one thing that I would just want to say about like all the performances in the movie is that I think something that's generous about the movie and possibly like related to the fact that it was their first movie where they wanted to give kind of juicy roles to everybody is I really do think that there's moments in this movie where every every character feels like they're the main character.

1:43:31Like, more so than I think any of the Coen's other movies. Although I do think that is kind of a thing that carries through her for most of their career.

1:43:41Griffin Newman:Fargo kind of has three leads and, you know, sort of three support, right? It's like you could argue, well, McDormand's the lead. Yeah, sure, but she's not in a lot of the movie and she kind of shows up late. You could argue the same with No Country. Well, Macy's the lead. Well, Macy's the lead. Well, Macy vanishes from the movie. It's the braid. they love the braid three lines well actually Buscemi's the lead Buscemi's actually maybe in more of the movie than you think he is or whatever yeah exactly I would just say though that like Marty coming back for an extremely extended dream sequence where he has this strange almost touching heart to heart like menacing slash touching heart to heart like that feels like a little bit like like why are you bringing this character back you know it's like the shot of the blood like out of a bucket it like hitting the floor is so good it's hitting it's hitting every part it is actually yeah you're right about that though like it's giving it's giving one extra crazy horror thriller moment that the movie maybe needed yeah it's a good pop for the movie energy wise and it's a good reminder of the thing you're talking about the sort of the guilty frenzy right builds up yes

1:44:46David Sims:yes yes griffin no i just i yeah i saw that ebert review and it hit me very hard where i'm like i do think that is... She's fucking good at that. She's boiling something down like that. But also, the admitting, we all think about this, right? Like, part of the buy-in of this movie isn't that we all sit around plotting murder, but we all, like Ben, read a noir novel or watch a movie or whatever and think about how you would handle it. And this is like a movie in which the people inside of it are trying to act like people in a movie, and they can't get it right. They're sort of like, I know my role in this story and I just have to do this and it will all work out.

1:45:25There's also just a doomed, it's like once you have the affair, it's like once you start a relationship where you threw someone else under the bus at the beginning of the relationship, like they're never going to trust each other. And that's the thing, like when he comes to see Marty, he's like, one day she's going to say, I'm not doing anything funny. And then when she has the dream, you know, they're saying, I love you. And he's like, you know, you're just saying it because you're scared. And that's what Ray says to her at the end. It's just their relationship is haunted in a kind of final destination way from the beginning.

1:45:52They like, they did, they touched the monkey paw. Hideo's totally in their heads. He's gotten into both of their heads.

1:46:00Griffin Newman:He's in my head too. And my heart. Okay. So, what else do we discover before the iconic famous ending of this film, which I feel like is the most famous part of the movie? I think the two most famous parts of the tour de force performances, there's the 20-minute burial scene. The burial scene. The ending. I feel like those are the standout.

1:46:23David Sims:There's no dialogue other than the radio. Yes. There's like 15 continuous minutes that play out without any of the primary characters speaking. Yeah. That is just kind of process.

1:46:34Griffin Newman:And that's what, when you watch this movie, you're like, yes, this is a Coen Brothers movie. It's about people on the edge and sort of idiot criminality spiraling out of control. But at the same time, we're like, it barely has any dialogue. Like, it doesn't have that kind of, the flourishes we associate with them later in their career. It basically only has five characters.

1:46:53David Sims:The only guy we haven't mentioned is Sam Art Williams, who plays Maurice, and I think is incredibly good in this. He's great. And is kind of the one neutral party in this movie.

1:47:01Griffin Newman:I was going to say, you keep wondering whether he's going to break in a direction and he kind of doesn't. Almost every scene of his in the script is cut in half, and the movie ends with an action sequence where he fights Julian. He fights the dog. That's how it's written? Yeah, he fights the dog in the room with the beige billiard table and he fights it with a cue. That's fascinating.

1:47:22David Sims:Because it feels like in the final product, his function is to remind you, like, these people are all caught up in some shit that is kind of in their heads, right? It's like a weird combination of, like, anger and, like, lust and jealousy and paranoia that's animating all of them. And he's just like a guy clocking in and clocking out and doing his job. Yeah, he's like, he's the uninvolved. These characters exist in a real world. Like, this world is not inherently evil. They're making decisions. This movie is not funny. Now, I'm not saying it doesn't have funny moments

1:47:55Griffin Newman:and there is that dark, dark black humor of the Coens, like, there. But, like, again, you don't watch this movie and see Raising Arizona coming.

1:48:04David Sims:No, it's a wild swing.

1:48:06Griffin Newman:Right. And you don't see... But, like, Fargo is an interesting contrast to this movie in that it is so funny. It has a luminously heroic character. are in the middle of it. Like pure good. Right. Right. And like, nonetheless has so much, you know, what common DNA. It's just like the arc of their career is interesting to think about. And it is interesting to think of them watching this movie and being like, oh boy, like, you know, because it's like Stanley Kubrick made Fear and Desire. And you're like, nice try Stanley, like maybe take another cut, you know, right? Whereas the Coen brothers are treating this like their fear and desire where they're like, this is so amateurish.

1:48:47Griffin Newman:Like, that's crazy. Please, Jordan. Well, the only thing I would add is that the Coens have different modes that they're in and you see it throughout their career. So there's definitely movies like Fargo where dialogue and character interactions and funny voices is a big part of the meal that they're serving up. But then if you watch No Country, which is probably in the long run, the movie they're going to be most remembered for. It's a great question. I think about it a lot. Very little dialogue. Obviously, there are memorable dialogue scenes, but huge stretches of that movie is just like a guy putting gear together in order to trick somebody else or do like cat and mouse stuff in a hotel room.

1:49:23Yeah, and the script, I mean, To the White Sea is nothing but that opening stuff from No Country or the 20-minute silent sequences where you're just watching almost like dialogue scenes that are happening silently between objects and a person's face, watching them build one version of a thing. Which I think they are better at than any other filmmakers alive. Yeah, and you can read it in the script. It's like that whole scene where he's cleaning up the murder scene. It's all like, you know, he tries the windbreaker and it says, this isn't going to work. And then it's like he adds the towel. It's like, this is going to work.

1:49:53It's all like step forward, step backwards.

1:49:55David Sims:It's very trackable. Silent conversations with objects is a great way of putting it, where I'm like, No Country is one of the best shot-reverse-shot between human face and inanimate thing movies I have ever seen, where you understand exactly what they're thinking and what they're looking to do. but I remember Wes Anderson always talks about on Bottle Rocket how he would lose certain arguments not even arguments but like producer, line producer you know, first lady whoever comes along go like Wes we're running behind schedule we have to move on or we don't have time to prep this we just need to shoot this rather than holding up and waiting for the wall to be finished you know painted the right color or whatever it is and he's like I watched that movie and it drives me crazy and it causes me physical pain.

1:50:44David Sims:That all I see are the things that I conceded at the final moment as good enough. And he's like, it makes me so physically, viscerally uncomfortable that I made this commitment to myself from that movie of just like, I am never letting something film until it's ready ever again. Like, I do not want to have a single second in any of my movies that irritates me in this way. Where I feel like I didn't get what I wanted versus owning the mistakes of misjudgment, but executing it in the way you had it in your head. And I think Blood Simple's like a little similar for them, where they just look at it and they were like, from this moment on, we were just never going to let anyone make us move on.

1:51:26But on the other hand, like something that they talk about in their sort of like, let's say contemporary or like, when they hit their stride, is that part of the process is as much as the movie is storyboarded to all hell and like, you know, every single moment is storyboarded. That's now what the actors are looking at. So when the actors get to set, they block the scenes. And like the way Deakins describes it is, and yet somehow the blocking ends up being exactly like the storyboards. Right. But I will say, maybe that's something they learned from this, where they're like... Possibly. The performances feel too chopped up or it's like it's not giving the actors room to breathe.

1:52:07David Sims:I don't know if you guys found this, but that the storyboard artists they hired kept drawing the Frances McDormand character naked, so she kept asking to see the storyboards. And they were like, just really go off of whatever you want because they were so embarrassed. Obviously, they start dating like right after this. But the last shot of this movie with Emmett Walsh's POV of the dripping of the faucet, right? You notice if you watch it closely that they have to replay the shot backwards. Joel refers to it as rock and rolling that frame. He said we had to rock and roll that frame. They just didn't get a long enough shot of it.

1:52:48They basically just make the drip go to the left and then to the right and to left to right and then it drops. And they do the same thing when he shoots Hedaya, actually. They do an optical to make him just like totally freeze for a second longer. Yeah. Yeah.

1:53:01David Sims:But there's stuff like that where I wonder if that came out of necessity. Oh, yeah. don't have the piece we need in the edit so how do we like fudge it to make it work it's hard to direct a drip totally but that probably drives them insane now versus like today they would just be like we spent three months figuring out how to film the drip before we got to set and there's lots of stuff like that in Barton Fink with like drains and drips yes

1:53:25Griffin Newman:I mean the famous drain shot that Robert Deakins makes fun of him for which we talk about on that episode oh as this series goes on you gotta check out the Deakins website every single film he publishes his lighting plans and you can really, really understand what he's doing. I know this is not a Deacons film, but as the show goes on, you got to get into the, you know, just the department heads, uh, Jane Muskie, Dennis Gassner, Jess Gunn Shore, just like the transition from their production designers, their DPs. It's so trackable with their movies because they they'll go through phases with like a production designer or they'll go through phases with a DP.

1:54:03But yeah, gets so excited for the Deacon stuff.

1:54:06David Sims:It is crazy that they only made three films with Sonnenfeld because it feels so impactful that these three guys like all started together. And then Sonnenfeld obviously figures out how to take the style he develops with them and puts it onto like the biggest studio comedies imaginable. And then they sort of transmute it into something new with Deacons and the other DPs they work with later.

1:54:27Griffin Newman:But like Sonnenfeld is such a designer. But I don't feel like his style with the Coens is ever quite as immaculate in the blockbuster. I mean, I guess he's still, he's got a lot of the rushing, you know, camera stuff. But also the like the big wide angle lens. Yeah. And really good sense. Yeah, a lot more money to throw around too for most of his movies too. Was there a lot of money in Men in Black? Was that, Wild Wild West, that was an indie, right? That one they made. The notorious thing about Sonnenfeld is on his studio movies.

1:54:57David Sims:His direction is always slower, flatter. Are you serious? Yeah, because it's like this thing that they developed with the Coens of like, can you develop this visual style where if you have a compelling actor in the middle of the frame, the least they're doing on this wide of a lens will end up amplifying.

1:55:15Griffin Newman:The Addams Family has Raul Julia and Christopher Lloyd in a like, not slower or flatter competition almost, right?

1:55:22David Sims:You know what I mean? I guess Men in Black is like the height of that for him where it's like, telling Tommy Lee Jones to do nothing.

1:55:28Griffin Newman:which is awesome and works and Tommy Lee Jones is what the hell is happening to me and then he sees the movie and he's like oh I get it yeah although Tommy Lee Jones is the Gene Hackman style actor where he's like yeah I hated making the movie and thought the guy was an idiot then I watched and I was like oh it was pretty good

1:55:42David Sims:well I think they had this they like developed this style together where no matter how seriously the thing was being played at the center things feel a little funny and off there is like some innate black humor just to the actual lensing of these movies that then Sonnenfeld carries over onto movies that are more explicitly funny, which then makes it less funny as his career goes on. Like, when you watch fucking Nine Lives and it's a Kevin Spacey talking cat movie that's shot like this. Normal movie, I bet. Right. Now you're like, well, we're just in, like, Bug Nuts world. Right.

1:56:18Griffin Newman:Yeah, the ending rocks, and it is funny. It's so, so intense in the theater. I've seen this movie in a theater, like, you are, like, truly, truly gripping your seat. And then him laughing being like, oh, you didn't even know who you were fucking shooting. Like, rocks. It's meaningless. Yes. And also, Emmett Walsh cracking up as he's dying. Like, it's just a great character detail. Like, early on when Hedaya, Marty, says, like, I know what rock to turn over to find you. He loses it and he says, that's very good. Yeah. What rock to turn over? good one. Does he blow out the mic on that? It sounds like it.

1:56:59He's blowing it. He's blowing it a lot. And then at the end when she says I'm not afraid of you, Marty. He has to get that last line in where he says what does he say? Ma 'am, I'll be sure to tell him if I see him.

1:57:14David Sims:Yeah.

1:57:14Griffin Newman:Yes.

1:57:15David Sims:Which is great. The image of she has pinned his gloved hand with the knife, right? That has crossed over into her room on the windowsill. All other parts of his body are still outside of her view on the other side. She's like, where are this guy here just by his bloody pinned writhing hand? And then he's shooting through the wall and this weird like, here's a physical reminder of the guy who you're fighting with, only through one anonymous appendage. And then the sense of danger that is like leaking through on the other side and this like weird like cackling laugh. Yeah, and just this like showmanship, it really does end with a sequence that feels like Terminator or Halloween.

1:57:55It has that great final girl feeling. And also just the ending is like someone who's wounded, who can't see you, who's shooting at you. It's so hard for her to know should I go to the left or should I go to the right? You can shoot in any direction through one of those walls. Yeah, and what's so great about the visual is that they put individual lights on each bullet hole pointing in different directions so that it looks like the basically like the light is the trail of where the bullet which makes no sense based off of how light works, but it's a perfect kind of Looney Tunes, like just escalation.

1:58:30David Sims:It's like swords going into like a magician's trunk.

1:58:34Griffin Newman:And that will carry over to Raising Arizona. Like that energy does recur. Oh, hey, Ben. Ben's leaning in. You're just deep in thought. Ben's kind of doing a neighbor and home improvement thing over his mother right now. Wilson. I've been on the record. I love dirt. This could be a good series for you, by the way. I know.

1:58:52David Sims:A lot of dirty bags of money. Yeah. If you're digging at night, something really fucked up is happening. If you're digging in the dark, he's like, uh-oh. This is why he's our finest filmmaker. A hundred percent. Two guests. I need to hold back. I pass the mic over to Jordan. I don't need to enter the conversation. And you're just sitting there like, this has to be shared. And it is a thought we would never get to in eight hours. But what a profound statement. You were right. Has there ever been a good night dig? No. No. I mean, unless, yeah, maybe you're like really desperate to make a shelter.

1:59:28David Sims:Well, yeah, this is what I'd say. It doesn't have to be nefarious. Right. But if you're doing benevolent night digging, your life's in a bad place, right? Like there's a reason they literally call it the graveyard shift. Like the worst kind of working position you can imagine is you are being paid to dig graves at night. And you're like, look, this is a job. whatever, I got to pay the rent, but yet this is the least desirable job anyone could possibly have. Right, so you're either trying to get away with a crime, something's gone horribly wrong, like you're trying to get out of a jam, an existential jam, a threat, or you've got bad options.

2:00:14Or you're like a woodchuck. I suppose if you're a woodchuck, He came up with the one exception to his own rule. But it's pretty limited. It's pretty bad. Yeah. Have you guys, we're all, I know we're all like grew up in the city for the most part.

2:00:36Griffin Newman:Have you ever dug? It's a good question. Why would I have ever been digging? I don't think I've ever really dug. No. Why would I be digging? What would I dig? I play dig dug. I know you buried some genes, Ben. I'm aware that you did that. We're very worried. It's come up on the show. And I've dug a lot of holes in my life. I have to say. Putting in fence posts. Sure. Never had to put in a fence post. Never had anywhere to put a fence. Helping my dad garden, planting a shrub. So I've done that. I think of that as, that's pretty, that's little dig. But yours is a trowel. The little trowel. But I'm talking big boy.

2:01:12Griffin Newman:I've maybe helped my grandma do that. Slamming it out with your boot. Yeah. I've chopped wood. yeah have I done much digging I don't know Ray no experience shakes his head Jordan every year my dad and I and whoever happens to be around before the Passover Seder Bernie Fish yes we go out to the side of the house and we dig up some horseradish which we'll then the horseradish for the Passover Seder the bitter herb yes wow like around 4pm okay so right before Sunday an evening dig you gotta get out an evening dig but not a true night dig I mean I could imagine though something messed up happening and having to do the dig at night.

2:01:52It'd be a bad sign. Yeah. Anyway, that was just a little dig corner. That's all I had. Okay.

2:01:59David Sims:Well, it was invaluable.

2:02:04David?

2:02:06David Sims:Yes. Red alert. Uh-oh. There's been an outbreak. Biohazard. Of a new Patreon series. It's contagious. Oh, that's so true. It's been cooked up in the lab for your pleasure. From the fine folks at the Umbrella Corporation, we are covering Resident Evil. The film franchise. Yes. We've got the first franchise. Six movies. Yes. That beautiful second franchise. How many? Six? Seven? It's got the one movie. Oh, it's got the one.

2:02:38Griffin Newman:We'll be covering all of them on Patreon, doing commentaries on, yes, the Resident Evil, Apocalypse, Extinction, Afterlife, Retribution, the final chapter. Welcome to Rack Room in Sydney.

2:02:49David Sims:This is an exciting time. Zach Kregor, friend of the podcast, has a new Resident Evil coming out. We thought this was a good opportunity to revisit the history of Resident Evil movies.

2:02:58Griffin Newman:Why not? Why not? Why can't we? Why can't we? We can. Check in for that August 1st, and it's going to be running all the way through November 1st. Followed by your March Madness winner, Dracula. Dr. Acula himself. That's so fun. So that's great. That's great. Thank you. Thank you so much.

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2:03:55Griffin Newman:I'm going to tell you a little about the release of the film. So M. M. Walsh, of course, says the film had a huge impact on his career. His price went up like five times, he says. I was the guy everyone wanted. Here's a funny call. At one point, he gets a call from Joel Cohen saying, Hey, M. I guess you call him M?

2:04:18David Sims:They say that that when they met him, they didn't know how to address him and they were like is he m is he emmett or is he michael emmett walsh to be clear

2:04:25Griffin Newman:uh but they called him m uh can you blow smoke rings and he was like i guess uh he tried he made himself sick he wasn't a smoker tried trying to he didn't really do it and they were like don't worry we came up with a little machine for it and he tells a different story in the criterion thing uh but then when they shoot the scene yeah okay yeah no here's uh the machine didn't work. Yes. And so a little prof girl was like, I grew up with four older brothers in the barn. Give me a cigar. I can do it. And she starts blowing beautiful smoke rings. And then she starts barfing. Yeah, profusely. Because cigars are pretty disgusting to anyone, but especially a little girl.

2:05:06And Walt throws that out as like, that's the movies right there.

2:05:09David Sims:Like a 20-year-old puking after getting to do big screen cigar smoke rings. A cruise spotlight. They had an overqualified key grip on this movie who they said was like an LA guy who had moved to Austin because he was afraid of the big one earthquake happening in LA. And he was doing sheetrock and he was so bored. But basically they were like, we had this small movie but we had like a big A-list key grip. So all those like flying, like when the camera moves over the drunk guy at the bar. I was going to say. All the kind of animated flying camera stuff is just like, they have this extra muscle behind them that is out of size with the scale of the movie they're making.

2:05:45I feel like... your camera up, I'll just say, is a big deal.

2:05:51David Sims:I feel like that shot in particular and that camera move of jumping over the drunk is like the moment where I have to imagine people at film festivals, like my parents, but also this fucking year-long run of them doing like a global tour of this movie. The moment where every screening people lean forward and go, who the fuck are these guys? But also, that's the moment where all the pieces have been set on the playing board and then And he's going back to the bar. And she's like, don't go back to the bar. And he goes back. So it's like everything is set up. And I almost feel like that moment is being like, you know, this mousetrap is perfect.

2:06:23And the camera is just like moving over it. So they don't want to disturb a hair.

2:06:27David Sims:It's just such a funny flourish with so much personality. And yet, if you're seeing it at a film festival and you're probably someone who works in film or studies it immensely, the second that shot happens, he goes, fuck, that's complicated. it. The fact that these guys would take the time to set that up when it just kind of feels like something to make themselves laugh immediately tells you a ton about them.

2:06:53Griffin Newman:The film was shot over the course of eight weeks. I haven't mentioned that. In Texas. Now, Joel had spent a little time in Texas because he went to UT, but I think just a little bit of time. But they kind of loved it as a sort of swerve from the urban feel of most wars. I mean, this is a thing they're always saying is like, these are just genre films. We're working in well-established genres, but we're just trying to make things off the hump and specific all the time. So they're just like, this is the opposite of rainy New York. So it's a great place to do a noir.

2:07:28Griffin Newman:Now, Joel is credited on this film as the director. Ethan's credited as the producer, largely due to DGA regulations. We talk about this a little bit on a Barton Fink episode, which is with someone who has run into these DGA regulations. they do become an established EGA duo by the time of the Lady Killers. JJ points out that the Farrelly brothers did this quickly. I do think sometimes you can just do it. My guess is they just didn't bother to sort of like make the effort to be like, hey, can we be, you know, right? They just kind of settled into this routine.

2:07:58David Sims:They got rejected at first and then I was, we're like, I guess we won't get approved and their ongoing success probably made it easier for other siblings like the Wachowskis and the Farrelys and whoever to hit the ground running and get approved the first time out.

2:08:12Griffin Newman:they say, they joke like, oh, Joel's taller. That's why he's the director. But they seriously say that the credits don't really reflect the collaboration and Ethan does plenty of the directorial stuff and Joel does plenty of the production stuff. You know, whatever.

2:08:27David Sims:Everyone who works with them calls them the two-headed director. The two-headed director. They're like, it is the most bizarre symbiotic. I'm a two-person school of fish. Right. They move simultaneously. Yeah. I was just going to say, it's funny that with Drive-Away Dolls, like as soon as you get into the interviews with Ethan and Tricia Cook, they'll just be like, yeah, we co-directed it. Just funny that they're recapitulating that exact thing, having the credit be a little bit wrong. Here's another thing we'll get into in the Barton Fink episode, not to tip the hand too much, but it sounds like if you successfully get the DGA to approve the idea that you are a true team, that's not a thing that can be untangled and retangled.

2:09:07David Sims:Yes. You can't make a new team now.

2:09:11Griffin Newman:so Barry did throw up a lot I think you referenced that briefly right because you've been throwing up a lot not to call you out similarly out of nerves right like Barry was very nervous but obviously the film does turn out to be pretty good they were very inspired visually by the conformist and the American friend right which is a great movie that movie is so well shot they also said they had a laser disc on location a Laserdisc player and they had just seen Road Warrior. So they were watching Road Warrior on Laserdisc. They talk about Road Warrior a lot.

2:09:46David Sims:That was one of their like evergreen biggest inspirations of just like this is just pure filmmaking. Right. Yeah, I don't know if George Miller broke through for like the American public like as a name at that point but you just see this time again like with James Cameron or any action director at that time just being like I want to do what George Miller's doing. Like it's just like it truly was your favorite director's favorite director. at that moment.

2:10:11Griffin Newman:They have this film. No one wants to release it. Every studio is happy to watch it because there really aren't a lot of like independent 35 millimeter films. You know what I mean? Like this is still an unusual American product. There's not much of an indie scene. Everyone sees it and is basically, how would I sell this? Like this is like an art film about murderers. And it has no stars. Right. Right. And it's like pitch black. Yeah. Yes. and at one point they meet with the Crown International Pictures, Mark Tensor and he liked it but he had no money and he said, don't worry about my screwing you I don't have time to screw you and Sam Raimi they went to Sam Raimi and they were like, should we do this?

2:10:56Griffin Newman:and he said, yeah, in six months he's going to come back to you and say, hey, I found the time an incredibly good line good line by old Raimi probably a good call, I mean, I don't know but it's just an interesting little like possible detour. That could have been how it went. Instead it goes into TIFF and Circle Films which distributes their first three movies. Which had started out as like a bunch of

2:11:22David Sims:different theater owners.

2:11:24Griffin Newman:Ben Barinholtz is into it and so they said it was the debut film that impressed him most since Eraserhead speaking of people who recently covered. And then it went to New York, which was a really, really big deal back in the day. Not that the New York Film Festival isn't a big deal now, but I feel like it used to have a more primo place on the festival calendar, whereas now New York is more like, yeah, you know, stuff's already been at Venice and Telluride, and it's like getting here. Well, that's the thing that's really changed

2:11:54David Sims:is the, like, film festival...

2:11:56Griffin Newman:The internet has flattened this, yeah.

2:11:57David Sims:If festivals wanting premieres and exclusives, the idea of a movie like this playing at festivals for over a year, and each festival not being possessive of like, well, that's damaged goods because this other place got to it first. That, right, it was like prominence in terms of like the headiness of the jury or the selection committee or whatever versus like this film is either good or bad based on what festival it's premiering at relative to which is the best launching pad for an Oscar campaign. Yeah. Right? Like now New York Film Festival has become like, These are movies that already are pre-approved, basically, by and large.

2:12:35Griffin Newman:After the New York Film Festival premiere, Janet Maslin of the New York Times, one of its film critics, gives it a good review. That, back in the day, is just huge. Obviously, that's important now, but back in the day, very important. Goes to Sundance, early Sundance, but nonetheless won the Grand Jury Prize there, which only helps its buzz. Pauline Kael took a big shit on it, as she did to any movie released post-1980, essentially. but Roger Ebert was a huge fan and it made money, like decent money. I think it made about$2 million, which is obviously a big return on investment for the investors.

2:13:15Griffin Newman:And everyone basically likes it except for Joel, who says it's pretty damn bad. And Sonnenfeld agrees, the pacing too slow, I could have shot it better. These days we do it for 10 times the price and it would be 8 % better. that's kind of a funny line from Sonnenfeld he knows he's actually a little being a little silly criticizing it like he's not it's not like Sonnenfeld it's like oh yeah the guy who made RV would have a better take on this and they don't they don't hate it they don't it's not like there's a lot of directors they have affection their first

2:13:44David Sims:like oh it's like cute we didn't know what we were doing yeah could I could I just real quick like the Pauline Kale pan is interesting just because her main take without the benefit of being able to read the future is it seems like these guys are just trying to make this movie as a calling card to make studio films. Yes. She's like, this is too derivative.

2:14:07Griffin Newman:It's like, I can see all of the influence. And I just think it's interesting in terms of thinking forward of where the Coens are going to go because as much as they are making films that are extremely to their own standards, they also do make movies that are commercially minded and audience minded. Yes. they don't it's a great way to think about it they make challenging movies but even Barton Fink which I think of as maybe their most challenging movie of pretty much that they ever made in a way like their ardiest movie and I am also thinking of it because we already did this episode is incredibly watchable and has velocity even though it's about a guy sitting in a fucking room going crazy and like I remember watching as a teenager and being like, wow, this is heady.

2:14:57Griffin Newman:And I watch it now and I still think it's so brilliant. But I was like, damn, this thing moves like thunderbolts. I love it. It kind of reminds me of like 90s, re-listening to 90s albums where you're like, oh yeah, this was so stripped back. And now you listen to it now and you're like, wow, that was extremely produced. Yes, right. There's a thing that Carter Burwell talks about, like him and Skip working together on this movie, kind of establishing a thing, which was like, we need to let the audience know by what we're doing with the sound that this movie isn't one thing or the other. It's not just this harsh, dark thriller.

2:15:26It's not just a comedy. And I do think they established that in this first movie. It's like, you're not going to be able to pin down exactly what this is, but you're going to be entertained.

2:15:36David Sims:They get even better at it as their career progresses. And I also think their most beloved movies are the ones that find the perfect balance between those tones. But it is my favorite thing about them that they always, in the most dramatic scenes, will find a way to put in something funny. and the funniest scenes find a way to put in something that's like very terrifying and heartbreaking they also talk a lot just process wise like they will take things to a point where it gets more locked down and they will walk it back yeah that it like there's that's interesting in barton fink they're like there was a scene in the script where you like there's a point in the movie where it's pretty clear you're going into his fantasy but then there was a beat almost like in brazil where you go outside of his fantasy and you see what's really happening to barton and they were like that just locks it down too much that makes it resolved and if you just leave it more enigmatic then it's something that stays alive in the audience's head right i was trying to find there was one review they were talking about that they remember hitting really hard that basically described the movie as having all the depth of a resume and the soul of a blooming dales window you know okay but i was trying to remember whose review that was i can't find it now.

2:16:47It's just Joel saying, I love this review.

2:16:49David Sims:Yeah, it wasn't Cale. Cale says, Blood Simple has no sense of what we normally think of as, quote, reality and has no connections with, quote, experience. And then she says at the end, nobody in the movie-making team or in the audience is committed to anything. Nothing is being risked except the million and a half. She's doubling the budget. But this is like, this was the strike against them. And then I found Rosenbaum did a piece like 15 years later, 20 years later, explaining why he's still thinks he's right about Blood Simple being shitty. And he wrote, remains mired in a smart-alecky film school sensibility.

2:17:24David Sims:Like, this was the whole thing that everyone threw at them when they didn't like them. It's like, we get it. You guys are clever. You're smart. You've watched movies. You know how to move the camera. You have nothing to say about humanity. You don't think there's anything personal about this film about a marriage falling apart that Joel wrote while his marriage was falling apart? You don't think there's some energy? I think they're sincere filmmakers. I think they're incredibly sincere filmmakers.

2:17:45Griffin Newman:But I think this is where their rep that I was referencing is tacit or whatever. It's like you do have to think a little around their jokiness and their kind of straightforwardness to dig into like, yeah, actually, right. These guys are not just kind of like, I don't know, we just sit down and write the movie. Who cares? I'm like, no, you're motivated by your own feelings and the conversations. I don't think they just sit down and they're like, what if a guy's name was Barton Fink? Oh, good idea. When would he have lived? I don't know, the 40s? Okay, let's keep going.

2:18:13David Sims:I guess there's this weird balance to me. Them feeling like incredibly earnest nihilists, if that makes sense. Like there is a real emotional sincerity to them being fascinated by this question of like, is this truly all meaningless? And so often their movies are built around that. These characters doing these, like making these decisions that make zero sense in pursuit of a thing that's maybe going to ruin their whole fucking life. and I think that got written off as being condescending and just like they don't care. This is all them like shaking up an ant farm and like laughing at stupid characters doing stupid things, which combined with their just like technical proficiency and craft is just like, okay, so these guys are just like jerking off.

2:19:00David Sims:They're just like torturing characters and showing me that they're good at making movies, which like over time, I think people calm down, But we also have been talking about any time a young filmmaker is like very quickly anointed as not just this is a good movie, but this might be a major voice. There is like 30 % of the community that immediately needs to be like, false idol, fuck you. I need to take them down. We cannot immediately put them into the firmament. Should we play the box-ups game? Sure. Do you guys have anything else you want to say? I just want to say, for some reason, the scene that's coming to mind to sort of respond to what you just said is the scene at the end of True Grit where Rooster just carries Hayley Steinfeld for the whole way and it's hallucinogenic.

2:19:52David Sims:Is it maybe their most nakedly emotional movie? Maybe. Yeah. But then at the end of it too, where she doesn't actually get to see him later. It's hard for me to imagine anybody seeing that and being like, Like these guys don't have like a sense of like heart. Well, that seems so emotional. Then the movie ends with her being like a bitter woman who has never gotten over these events. And the film basically cuts off mid-sentence. Sure. Yeah. No, they're aware of audience expectations and not necessarily wanting to give people like the Hollywood ending, so to speak. But that is also their only blockbuster.

2:20:29David Sims:That movie was so fucking massive. And it is. Especially by their standards. Yeah, but also by anyone's standards. Sure. It's like a fucking$160 million grossing adult Western that we made like 300 worldwide. Yeah. I mean, I'm not. I'm not. Right. Yes. I'm not. And it clearly is that there was like a level of emotion in that that people connected with more on top of everything else. Box office game.

2:20:54Griffin Newman:So this film came out 18th of January 1985, right after Sundance, I guess. It's just not open in the top five. Number one at the box office is a film we've covered. an action comedy.

2:21:08David Sims:Action comedy.

2:21:09Griffin Newman:It's been out for a couple months. Okay,

2:21:11David Sims:so that's Beverly Hills Cop. Beverly Hills Cop! Yep, uh-huh. Do you guys like Beverly Hills Cop? Love it. The best. Pretty good. Which came out at Christmas, so this is now like... Late January. Yeah. It's been out for about eight weeks. It's made$122 million. Yeah, it's running the table. No complaints. Yeah. Number two at the box office

2:21:28Griffin Newman:has been out for about three months. It was a Halloween release befitting its horror genre. Okay. Horror in quotes. air quotes. No, no, no. It's a horror film. Okay, so then put those quotes away. It's one of the most iconic horror films ever made. It kind of helps launch a studio. Is it the house that Freddy built? That's right. And the picture is called A Nightmare on Elm Street. Yes! The original Wes Quaven. Wes Quaven. Wes Quaven's Nightmare on Elm Street. Nightmare on Elm Street. Do you guys like that movie? I met him one time and he claimed that he did all his writing while he was asleep in Lucid Dreams.

2:22:03He was like, during the day, I have errands to do and I have a family and I have stuff to do. So I just go to sleep, start a lucid dream, build the world of the film around me, hang out in it for like six hours. I wake up, I write everything down in like 15 minutes and I have stuff to do all day. So is Freddy ghostwriting his movies?

2:22:20David Sims:This motherfucker went to sleep. Freddy Krueger just starts typing away with those fucking knife fingers and then he wakes up and he's just like, oh yeah, something came to me. Freddy Krueger's real. Freddy Krueger's real. He was looking to get into pictures. he invaded Wes Craven's dreams must be hard for him to type on the typewriter yeah do you think he only uses the other hand I love

2:22:42Griffin Newman:that film very much I think it's very scary and very very cool and you like Freddy Krueger as a person you endorse his personal life Freddy Krueger it's an interesting film in terms of the franchise it spawns a lot of it is not there right like the sort of the jokiness of freddy the like sort of like kind of buzzby like the musical sequence kind of vibe of a lot of the kills in the later movies i like both two and three more sure i like two and three a lot i think one is more scary and impressive uh yeah

2:23:21David Sims:yeah and then right when you get i like the whole series but when you get to to four or five you're like in goofballs McGillicuddy town. Yes. Right.

2:23:32Griffin Newman:Nightmare on Elm Street is number two. Number three at the box office is a we've mentioned it before. I feel like we've probably done a box office around this period because I remember this one. It's a drama with two big stars an Oscar winner and a younger male star who's he's pretty big at this point. It's not loose cannons. No. I don't even know what that is. That's a big swing. If I'd been right it would have been impressive. what's loose cannons Gene Hackman and Dan Aykroyd oh that's right no that's 1990 that film this film is 1994

2:24:06David Sims:bigger Oscar winning star like an older star old no

2:24:11Griffin Newman:no just older no no the Oscar winner is a stakeout no no the Oscar winner might be throwing you a little bit the Oscar winner is a lady the Oscar winner is a lady and the the man And, well, he's in a film we just discussed. There's a Cohen influence.

2:24:30David Sims:He's in a Cohen influence. And the man is the younger star? Yeah.

2:24:36Griffin Newman:Well, I feel like that. Yes, he is. Yes, he's eight years younger than her. Or seven years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's won an Oscar.

2:24:45David Sims:He hasn't.

2:24:46Griffin Newman:No, he's kind of at the start of his big run as an American movie star. he's, you know, like, he's just emerging in America as a big deal. This is not a really big remembered movie, but the Oscar winner does get a Best Actress nomination. For this film? For this film. She's already won one, but she gets another nom. Because she's a big actress. Like, she's a really respected actress. Jessica Lange? No. No. No. But that's a good guess. Yeah. Like, someone who, like, racked up, like, six noms, you know, over the career. Yeah. I'm not like Diane Keaton. No. But I'm getting close. It's not mayor role, obviously.

2:25:24No. I agree on being. This film was shot by Vilmos Jigmund.

2:25:29Griffin Newman:Okay. It's the director is one of those guys who made big movies, but I feel like is not as respected an auteur these days. Like a Mark Rydell or higher? Well, when you say Mark Rydell, you've really nailed it in that it is Mark Rydell.

2:25:47David Sims:It is Mark Rydell. So in fact

2:25:50Griffin Newman:So it's like a perfect comp for him in a way Because it's him We're looking for a Mark Rydell type It's kind of like right Yeah they were kind of when they made this movie They were like could we get Mark Rydell or a type And they're like oh we could just get him

2:26:01David Sims:So he's kind of Rydell-esque He's Rydell-ed He's Rydellian in his work Okay it's a Mark Rydell picture With an actress Fuck fuck fuck Fuck Alright I'm gonna give this You have to give me one more clue. Who's the distributor of the picture?

2:26:19Griffin Newman:The distributor. Universal.

2:26:22David Sims:It's a universal Mark Riddell picture where the actress has an Oscar. The lead man is eight years younger. Is it a romance?

2:26:29Griffin Newman:I think it is. It's sort of like a drama, you know, about like bad shit happening to working people in America. Oh, fuck. Oh, I think I'm not. I don't think it's a period piece. It might be. I don't know. I'll never watch it. You'll never watch it? Well, I never say never, but it's not high on my list. Give me one of the two actors. Sissy Spacek is the actress. Cole Miner's daughter? Nope. That's the movie she, of course, won. That's what she won for.

2:27:03David Sims:It's not Raggedy Man. No, because that's fucking, of course, that was her husband. That was Jack Fisk. It's Mark Riddell. Sissy Spacek. She's older. The guy's popping. The guy's... He's hot.

2:27:16Griffin Newman:Hot. Now he's a bit problematic.

2:27:20David Sims:It's not Mel Gibson. It sure is Mel Gibson. Sissy Spacek, Mel Gibson, Mark Rydell? Yep. The film is called The River. Okay. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. The second you say it, I picture the poster in my head. It's like they're in a river. They're like, oh, this fucking river. I could have done that for five hours and I wasn't going to get to the river. They're farmers and it's like about flooding. Yeah. like the Tennessee Valley.

2:27:47Griffin Newman:You're right. That's like a video box I remember seeing being like, wow, that looks serious. And like, right. It's just like, it seems very serious.

2:27:54David Sims:It seems very serious.

2:27:55Griffin Newman:And like the tagline is like an epic love story of today. I mean, unsurprisingly, it was a huge flop. Okay. I mean, I think it was like relatively well received. It's like his... Yeah, this poster is like him saving her from the river. Right. It's his follow-up to On Golden Pond. So like he had juice. That was huge. It was huge. The pond, but he was like, pond? What about a river? This water is moving! He cracked his knuckles and he was like, hold my pond. Yeah, but not a movie that's remembered. It's just one of those things like I'm saying, where I'm like, am I ever going to watch The River?

2:28:31No, you're right. You know what? In fact, I actually think you will never watch The River. Probably not. Yeah.

2:28:35Griffin Newman:Number four. Okay. At the box office is not a movie I know. I know the stars. It's a rom-com directed by a legendary comedic director who made a lot of movies with this guy, the star. Is it a Carl Reiner or Steve Martin movie? No. Okay. Although people got mad at us for not mentioning Deadwind Don't Wear Plaid during our Johnny Dangerously episode. And I didn't think about the fact that those movies came out around the same time and probably did kind of cancel it. Sorry for making a big deal out of that. Is that you? Yeah. Apologies. My alt.

2:29:07David Sims:You jerk. Okay, wait. So this is a different director and star work together a lot, Tim.

2:29:14Griffin Newman:Yeah, they work together a lot. This guy is a big comic star of this era, but he exists in many eras. He exists in many eras? But he's having like, he has a hot 80s. Is it George Burns? No, but who else has like a really hot 80s? Who booms in the 80s? Is it Rodney? No, we love him though. But is it a man of an advanced age? He's a little older, but no. Okay. I'll tell you what he's not advanced in. Height. Okay, so it is Dudley Moore? There you go.

2:29:45David Sims:And it's a Blake Edwards movie? That's right. And is it, it's not the one with him and Daryl Hannah?

2:29:52Griffin Newman:No. What's that one?

2:29:54David Sims:I think it's always called, it's called Crazy People or something like that.

2:29:57Griffin Newman:Sounds like a great title.

2:29:58David Sims:Okay, so it's not, it's not 10, obviously. No. It's after that. Yes, it is. And this one, is it Mickey and Maude?

2:30:05Griffin Newman:Mickey and Maude! There we go. Okay. And who are Mickey and Maude? Well, he is Mickey. Nope, he's neither. Okay, this movie sounds good. It's got two ladies One of whom has been on this podcast Amy Irving? Amy Irving Is Maude. Who's Mickey? Anne Reinking. Oh of course The legendary dancer. Yes Yeah I don't know much about it And what's Dudley Moore doing? He's an overworked tabloid Reporter. Great. Happily married to Mickey. Okay And then he interviews a young cellist, Maude And starts to have an affair

2:30:41David Sims:Dudley Moore has this huge 80s that were like a series of comedies mostly predicated on... It's just like, this guy fucks. This guy might be getting a dangerous amount of pussy. Right?

2:30:53Griffin Newman:Like, all of it was just like... Everyone's like, let me at you! He can't stop. Absolutely. This was Anne Rankine's last acting role in a film. Wow. It's been remade in Bollywood a couple times, or in India, I would say. Maybe not always in Bollywood. And yeah, not a movie. it was a box office the poster is him marrying both of them hey only Dudley number five at the box office this has been a great box office game is it's a teen movie I think okay you're not very familiar you don't sound certain I've never seen it oh right it has a bit of a odd trivial part of film history it was the first ever PG-13 huh everyone always says Temple of Doom and all that but they're the ones that inspired it.

2:31:41Griffin Newman:Now, it was not the first released because that, I believe, is Red Dawn. But it was the first

2:31:45David Sims:to receive it. It was the first to get the rating. Yes. So, team picture, which distributor? The distributor, of course, is 20th Century Fox. I find folks at 20th Century Fox. Mm-hmm.

2:31:56Griffin Newman:Okay. It's from a very established comedy director. Made a zillion movies. Kind of a Blake Edwards type. Kind of a Blake Edwards type. Just a comic director who made a ton of movies. Yeah. But he would make, this guy would make more of your emotional comedies. Comedy with heart? Yeah. He probably described it as like, a comedy should have heart. He'd probably like yell it. It's not Herbert Ross. No. It's not Gary Marshall. It is Gary Marshall. It is Gary Marshall. Is it the Flamingo Kid? It's Matt Dillon as the Flamingo Kid. People like that one a lot. I've never seen it. It's about a working class boy who works at a beach resort and learns valuable life lessons.

2:32:30David Sims:Hey, learn some lessons.

2:32:31Griffin Newman:I might stun you to learn that Hector Elizondo appears.

2:32:35David Sims:Wait a second. Security? How did this guy end up on set? you've also got Richard Crenna okay and

2:32:45Griffin Newman:Jessica Walter that's fun sounds fun I don't really know much about it okay anyone ever seen the Flamingo he's like a cabana boy is that what he's yeah he works at a resort okay that's the box office game the rest of the 10 is a passage to India new this week sure what have you done lately I forget when we referenced that story but it's somewhere.

2:33:10David Sims:Oh, get ready. It's a call forward. It happens in three episodes.

2:33:12Griffin Newman:A film called That's Dancing which was a compilation of dancing in film. Okay. Protocol. It's a Goldie Hawn movie. Yes. That's, it's, well. Herbert Ross. Yes. In which she's, it's like a DC thing. Yes. She like stops an assassination attempt or something. Great. Yeah. Starman, which we've covered. And the, the famous bomb. the Cotton Club.

2:33:40David Sims:Oh, sure. It is great that Goldie Hawn just had her thing carved out for like 15 years where it's like, Goldie shouldn't be here. I'm a dumbass. This is the last place you want her and yep, she's going to kind of figure it out. Well, it's simple.

2:33:55Griffin Newman:Yeah. An auspicious beginning to a great career for the Coen brothers. Are there things that you guys

2:34:02David Sims:want to seed in our heads to think about as men who have been deep diving for several years now into their work as we go on this journey chronologically. Well, I think we've touched on a lot of it over the course of this conversation. Like the first episode we did was about opening monologues, and that's certainly here. And then the second episode we did was called The Meticulous Montage, which you could also call like a methodical montage, which is definitely a big part of this movie and a big part of many other movies. It is fascinating how much it does feel like all the pieces are here. like we kept comparing this to other films their filmography and you're just sort of like all the interests all the obsessions right all the stylistic flourishes yeah and I think the goal is is like some interview where they're like why are your moves so violent and Ethan was like you mean dramatic right and they're just like we want to make this dramatic we want to make it specific anytime that someone's like what are the themes underneath this what are you trying to say about society or America they're like no no Yeah, no, we're Americans.

2:35:07We're expressing our American-ness through trying to make a film that's very specific and very dramatic. They talked about this in that Eggers interview

2:35:16David Sims:where they were like, foreign critics, especially in Europe, tend to have hugely political readings of our movies. And it is transparently just that we do not think we have enough of an understanding to set a movie in any other country but the one we've lived our entire lives in. And here, it's not viewed as some overarching statement about our country and our culture. But there, it is always taken that way. And there being any other country. And when they tried to write Gambit, it was just a complete, you know? Yeah. I don't actually stand by that. I think there's a lot more going on in that movie.

2:35:52Also, I think a thing to look out for, when we talked to their storyboard artist, he was like, it's basically two things at all times. It's either surprise or suspense. Like, we're just toggling back and forth between those, and that's basically the whole thing. Yeah, I think if you're watching their movies and you're and you're just watching like for suspense versus surprise or moments where suspense turns to surprise, I think you can get a lot out of it. I kind of just want to do the thing about the gun though. I kind of just want to like walk through the thing that I figured out yesterday. Say this.

2:36:21Can you say this? Will you please say this? So I've watched the movie a few times and I only put it all together on the very last viewing I did, which is just that early on in the movie, they go to Marty's house the two Abby and Ray and she goes there to pick up bullets from a box that fit the gun that he gave her and so she finds exactly three bullets that she puts into her gun which has is a six shooter so and then when Visser steals the gun from their house he checks the barrel and you see that there's three empty chambers and then three bullets when Visser shoots Marty he shoots one bullet sure when Ray hits the gun a bullet goes off yeah then when Marty clicks the gun when he's getting buried he clicks it three times and the last click is like right as Ray is taking the gun out of his hands like very gently and in a way that the Coens describe it as like the Michelangelo Sistine Chapel shot of like God and man touching their hands.

2:37:34But if you track that, you realize that by the end of the movie, when Abby takes Visser out, and she doesn't even know this, she had exactly one bullet left in the chamber in the revolver. It's just a great example, though, of the intricacies and the details of the plot that could actually make the movie a lot more thrilling. Because when I figured that out, I realized like Ray has no idea that he's like, he seems pretty, he thinks the gun's empty. Right. But when you're watching, you're like, oh, if Hedaya had gotten one more shot off, like he would have.

2:38:12David Sims:But that's also right. Like as meticulous as these things are, they're also sort of about how meaningless these things are. Like it is absolute happenstance that he doesn't get shot by Hedaya in that moment because he doesn't know that he's grabbing a still loaded gun from him. and that McDormand doesn't know that she only has one shot to actually hit the guy. Right. It's a mistake on his part also to not check the gun like several times throughout the movie. What was the other point you said you wanted us to tee you up? Well, we're not going to do it? No, we're not going to do it. But no, these are beautifully made poetic movies and they're made with a level of care that, I mean, me and Jordan have just found like basically every episode of our show, we do two pages of the To the YC script which is this like $200 million action film But every two pages, you can be like, okay, what's going on in these two pages?

2:39:02And then pull out scenes from other Coen Brothers films and everything tracks. Every detail is there on purpose. There's never a story about their shoot where they're like, oh yeah, we shot with this other actor for a long time. Or we shot for two weeks and we threw all this stuff out. These are intentionally made films. All their collaborators are really teed up to do good work with them always.

2:39:23David Sims:They never talk about a feeling of misstepping on any film past this. like regardless of what the public perception was they're never like we had this idea and then we got into the edit and it didn't work so we had to cut this whole thing out right that's what i'm saying i think you can just hold these things up to the light and even examine different movies against each other and the themes even though they're like we did a lot of this very instinctually like when they talk about their process they're not like oh we went and made notes on all these james m kane books and we're like oh let's make a master document where we can synthesize they were We read all those books at the same time, and then we just kept talking about them forever until we were able to instinctually kind of write in a James M.

2:40:01Cain mode. But just all of that intention together adds up to these films that just track. That just every piece is in its place for a purpose. That I think will lead to five months

2:40:13David Sims:of exciting conversation here on Blanktruck. No, these are, we were very excited that they won because it's just like, great. All of these movies are fun to talk about. They're the best. Can I just say that? Like, I just, the premise of my life is that they're the best. You know, these are the best directors. I like every one of their movies. Yeah. I find every one of their movies interesting to talk about, to watch, to think about. And to watch endlessly. Like, the rewatch value of these things, it's like every single time I've done a rewatch of all their movies. It's a completely different experience.

2:40:44Yeah.

2:40:44David Sims:Yeah. Excited to do it. Thank you guys for being here. Thank you for kicking this voyage off on a good note. Thank you so much for having us. Of course. It's such a pleasure. Hey, you guys are family. To the White Sea. To the White Sea. New episodes coming out. Everyone, check this out. This is like the most bonkers Bonanza action movie they ever wrote and we're going through it. But as you said, you'll like in excruciating detail. Jump into something in that script and be like, what is the recurring motif of the big guy and a little guy in Coen Brothers movies? Oh yeah, there's a scene where - Build an episode out of like these elements, right?

2:41:19David Sims:What is the through line across the career? We did a whole episode on distant fathers. We did an episode on sneaking around, an episode on teamwork. Yeah. Act breaks. What is it? Why do you sort of intuitively make this jump from act one to act two? David and I have Coen Brothers, big guy, little guy energy. Sure. Yeah. Coen Brothers also kind of have Coen Brothers, big guy, little guy energy. Well, they say Joel got to direct because he was the bigger guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. you and Jordan are basically the same height so it falls apart there Ray's got a few inches on me you got the hair height though you do a mini think you got a little hair height working for you I got a little eraser head when me and Jordan directed the Porches video we based our storyboards off of the Blood Simple storyboards really?

2:42:08yeah we did which is each page we had a little drawing of the frame and then we had a bird's eye view of the set and where the camera was going to go and where the actors went we love these guys We really, we model our craft off of them on almost a daily basis.

2:42:21David Sims:Such a good job on the porch of this video. But now I'm thinking, did we miss an opportunity by not having that video in with Ben discovering a bag of money under the porch? And it's spiraling out into a 90-minute narrative. Fuck, that would have been a nice payoff. Maybe that's our fundraising trailer, what we already made. Yeah, there we go. Oh, sure. Okay. Yeah, let's talk offline. Thank you guys for being here. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for Raising Arizona. Yep. It is wild that's their second. As wild as it is that this is their first movie.

2:42:53It's a masterstroke to go Raising Arizona in your second film.

2:42:57David Sims:Yes. Yeah. Right. They go to Hollywood, basically. They try to make a commercial studio picture. It has everything that this movie doesn't have in so many ways. Right. It's the counterpoint that then the rest of their career is like toggling between those two modes, usually within the same movie. so yeah tune in next week for that and as always David what's the email you're currently reading

2:43:21Griffin Newman:I'm not reading an email

2:43:22David Sims:you look very deeply in thought of whatever is on your screen

2:43:24Griffin Newman:I'm just I'm seeing bring her back tonight and I was just like what's that about so I brought it up we give a shout out this weekend we're all going to Ben's wedding oh hey yeah yeah getting married Ben

2:43:43David Sims:because I've horribly set up. Guys, let's be done.

2:43:46Griffin Newman:Then we have to end the show. This has let's be done energy. This is what I'm saying.

2:43:51David Sims:What I'm saying is because I have mangled this setup and we need to end on something strong. Ben, is there anything you want to say on the record your last episode as an unmarried man?

2:44:05Griffin Newman:Fuck. I don't...

2:44:10I had a lot of... I was up to a lot of nonsense and that was really fun. Do I remember a lot of it? No. But damn, did I shine bright as hell as a fucked up guy. And I'm glad that I made it this far and I met someone who really is great. Love can be, love can happen to you. Feel that in the bottom of my heart. It's beautiful. Beautiful words, man. Love can happen.

2:44:43Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in The Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to BlankCheckPod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

2:45:22Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at BlankCheckPod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.

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