Finding Dory with Zach Cherry

10:54David Sims:Yeah. We're going to hold him to this. And I will defend her to this day over her sitcom. Great sitcom. I thought that was good. Yeah. We were talking about this in the Nemo episode of just like, Ellen was so fucking funny. Oh, she's so funny. I mean, she genuinely, there was a time when I was like, she's the funniest person on the planet. Like, I, you know, I sort of cycle through my, who's like doing it for me at the moment. And there was a time when I was like, I would watch her talk show and just everything she said would make me laugh. It was impressive that she was still funny on the talk show.

11:32David Sims:Yeah, she's hilarious. That there was, you know, she still was able to be kind of dry and cutting. And then off camera.

11:40Griffin Newman:Off camera, occasionally she had a bit of a sharp edge, possibly. Have we discussed the second Ellen sitcom, The Ellen Show? We talked about it in the Nemo episode, where she owns the bookstore. No, that's the first Ellen show. Ellen, she owns a bookstore. Oh, the second one is the radio show? It's set in the wake. I don't see that. No, it's set in the wake of the dot-com bubble bursting. This was a 2001 sitcom You know it's like really real And her internet company goes bankrupt She moves to her hometown She's got a crazy mom Played by Clarice Leachman Scatterbrained sister Played by Emily Rutherford I love that actress great actress Meets an old prom date Who thinks they can pick up where they left off But she's gay so he doesn't get that Played by Jim Gaffigan

12:26David Sims:This was the gay show This was the... Yes.

12:29Griffin Newman:Martin Mull plays a befuddled teacher. Oh, yeah. That's really hard for Martin Mull. The great Carrie Kenney on it as well? Yeah. And then she becomes a guidance counselor at high school. Yes. So it's like a very kind of like star-laden thing. Co-created by Mitch Hurwitz. Mitch Hurwitz of Arrested Development.

12:47David Sims:And Carol Leifer.

12:49Griffin Newman:Legendary comic writer. Yeah. But like one of those things where I feel like they were like, we got A-list talent. Yeah. Ellen is now a fully realized, like, you know, society's on board with, like, gay Ellen. Like, there's no shock here anymore. And it aired and everyone was like, no, thank you. It got canceled immediately. This is not... I think the dot-com boom of it all may have doomed it.

13:11David Sims:Who cares? Not to psychoanalyze too much, but it was interesting when she was doing... Her episode of the Letterman Netflix show was before the toxic workplace stuff came out, but was the first time where I saw the mask kind of fall of, she's really angry. And maybe she did a Marin, and I felt this as well. She has so much lingering anger of how much the industry threw her out while celebrating her bravery for coming out. And then all of the stuff she did after coming out was rejected. And then she has this incredible, like, Nemo comes out May 2003. The Ellen Show premieres, like, that September or October.

13:58David Sims:Like, within the year 2003, she has completely rebounded to the height of American pop culture. And yet it feels like the longer that success extends and the bigger it gets, the more her resentment brews of what happened in that five-year wilderness period. And it just like metastasized into this pit of like... Wait till you see the short film. It's called Dory Settles Some Grudges.

14:27Griffin Newman:Yeah, right. Dory's like, it's fine that I'm rich. Actually, it's good. Yeah.

14:30David Sims:She's just swimming back and forth really angrily. But I get the angle of she was sort of pressured into coming out. There was this feeling of good for you. Yeah, sure.

14:41Griffin Newman:And then everyone was like, but by the way, we're done with you. Yeah, you can't work anymore. Right. Come on. Like you're a gimmick now. I think Ellen's good. I'm pro Ellen. I think she's brilliant. I think her performance in Finding Nemo and Finding Dory is so good. I think she's very good.

14:57David Sims:We were making the case in the Nemo episode that she should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress. For that one, for sure. And when you look at the lineup of who got in that year, it's almost absurd that she didn't get in. Has anyone ever been nominated for a voice performance?

15:11Griffin Newman:Never. Never happened. She was bandied around at the time because I do feel like it was such a breakout thing, what she was doing. And the BAFTA Awards had nominated Eddie Murphy for Shrek,

15:22David Sims:which is incredible because... Oh, he's so good in that. He is. The BAFTA Awards have historically had such a bad track record with black actors manifesting in some weird things that happen at this There have been no recent incidents. What are you talking about? But like the BAFTAs have never nominated Denzel Washington one time.

15:41Griffin Newman:Is that really true? Of course they often snub him but I was like really? They never got him in there?

15:46David Sims:After the I swear thing I was like let me do like a full cataloging of this. They literally never nominated Denzel. But then also you look through like who are the black actors who get the Oscar noms and how often do they miss the BAFTA noms in their senior year. Yeah, no, it's... And it's crazy. It's telling. And then it's wild that it's like the only one of the major groups, if you go Globes, SAGS, BAFTA, Academy, the only one of them to ever nominate a voiceover performance is BAFTA, Eddie Murphy, Shrek. It's a great performance.

16:17Griffin Newman:It is. So like, I salute them doing it. Yeah. But at the same time, is it insulting where they're like, we loved you as Donkey? A little bit? There's a little bit of a like, is this backhanded? It's a makeup nomination for Mushu. This is true. So true. They didn't get him for Mushu. Disney definitely would do the exact same thing next time. We're going to do a big Chinese epic. Mushu is the dragon in Mulan. In Mulan. Oh, sure. Because in the 90s post-Genie, it was basically like, there better be a little guy and he better be voiced by someone. And it is genuinely another incredible performance.

16:47It is.

16:48Griffin Newman:He's good as Mushu. The live action remake had no Mushu, right? Correct.

16:52David Sims:I think there's like a statue at one point. Cool. That they point at. It's like an exclusively Mushu moment, but there is no actual living representation of Mushu. But yes, you're right. It is funny that they were just like... Might have been a mistake. We want to explore Chinese folklore. Also, there is a dragon who just sounds like 80s Eddie Murphy. And he's called Mushu. He's called Mushu. Come on! And the bit is that he's got a kind of inferiority complex. He's like a little dragon. Right, right. But he also kind of finesses everyone in conversation. we're not talking about Mulan, but we might talk about Mushu some more.

17:32Nobody from Mario was nominated for an Oscar? You mean the recent Super Mario movie?

17:37Griffin Newman:Now, who are you going for? Who's getting the trophy in your eyes? I've seen that movie, I would say, 15 to 20 times at this point. We're talking the first one. The Super Mario Brothers movie. Oh, I'm thinking of this. I'm thinking of Galaxy. Okay, Galaxy. It's not eligible yet. Yet. Yeah. Okay. Right, right, right. You never know. Who's getting the win for Galaxy? I actually haven't seen it. Now, I've seen it. I've seen it with my daughter. She loved it. She would give everyone an Oscar

18:02David Sims:if she knew what an Oscar was. In our blankies, we always try to do a best voiceover category.

18:08Griffin Newman:Yeah, sure.

18:08David Sims:If that existed at the Oscars, they would have nominated Jack Black for the first one. Oh, yeah, he's great.

18:13Griffin Newman:And not Chris Pratt. Yes. That would have been the lone nomination. Who have been some of your nominees in the recent years in that category? You know, like Ben Wishon Paddington is a good example.

18:24David Sims:A really outstanding voice performance. What are some good ones? I'm trying to think. I feel like Jake Johnson in Spider-Verse was one we called out. Yeah, now I want to look through the history.

18:34Griffin Newman:You know, I love Holly Hunter in The Incredibles movie. Yes. Right? Like, that's a really... I mean, honestly, there would be quite a few from both Finding Nemo and Finding Dory. Finding Nemo and... Finding Nemo's got great voice acting, and we're going to talk about Finding Dory. It does kind of the same thing as Nemo that I appreciate of, like, we're not getting the Super Mario route of just like, who's famous right now? Like, we're going to get character actors, sitcom actors, you know. Ty Burrell is great in Finding Dory.

19:03David Sims:He was the ultimate triumph of this movie for me, and I feel like this is rarely the case in a sequel. Every new character introduced in this film is excellent. Yeah. There is no like, ugh, you're trying to make this happen. Hank? Yeah. Or is he Frank? Hank. He's Hank. You got it. You got it. He's Hank. He's good. But I think all the new characters are great, well-designed, funny, well-developed, well-cast, don't feel like repeats There's also not that many. No.

19:28Griffin Newman:Like it's not

19:29David Sims:overwhelming you with a bunch of new. Yeah. Which often is the thing. They're like, can we throw 20 new darts at the board and see which one of these sells merchandise? Well, I have some issues with Gerald, but we'll get to him. Gerald. And not Becky. You're fine with Becky, but not Gerald. Becky, I have less issues with, but Gerald. There was touchiness at the time. Gerald and Becky, I have minor quibbles. Okay. Who's Becky? Becky's the bird with the bucket. oh right and Gerald is the sort of Gerald's the dumb massive eyebrow right this is Blank Check with Griffin and David I'm Griffin I'm David it's a podcast about filmographies David's giving me a thumbs up directors who have massive success early on in their career such as making Finding Nemo and are giving a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want such as WALL-E or John Carter sometimes those checks clear see WALL-E sometimes they bounce see John Carter I did like John Carter yeah you would have been good on that I mean, it was a good episode.

20:25David Sims:Sometimes a filmmaker is holding such an incredible get-out-of-movie-jail-free card that they can immediately recover from the most notorious flop of the decade, the century.

20:36Griffin Newman:Disney calls and was like, hey, by the way, John Carter's going to lose like$200 million. And he's like, I think I just found Dora. And they're like, we'll see you tomorrow, baby. You can do anything you want. I can cover that. I'm good for it. Yeah. Oh, my God. It's fascinating. I think the best voice performance in Super Mario Galaxy is Benny Safdie as Bowser Jr. That's the one where I was kind of like, well, he's doing something and this is interesting. Like most everyone else, I was kind of like, you're kind of doing what you're supposed to do.

21:01David Sims:Charlie Day has more to do in the second one and I do find him effective. I think he's good. But yeah, the first one spends 90 % of the movie in a fucking cage. He is in the cage. Who is Charlie Day? He's Luigi. It's Finding Luigi. The first movie is Finding Luigi. He goes missing.

21:15Griffin Newman:All I'll tell you is, I told you I think before, my daughter was very locked into Luigi both times because she really likes it. He's scared. He's scared. Like she identifies.

21:23David Sims:Is your daughter easily scared? I mean, like, I'm not saying maybe.

21:28Griffin Newman:I just feel like there's not a lot in life right now. I think all children are pretty easily scared. I mean, she's scared of dogs, but that's such a classic little kid thing. I'm trying to think like when else she gets scared. I mean, I'm going to say yes, because like the Halloween cat in the Disney Plus show Super Kitty scared her. And I've seen the Halloween cat and he ain't scared. He's mischievous at best. And she's like in bed at night being like the Halloween cat's going to get me and I'm like, the Halloween cat steals candy. Like, it doesn't even scare anyone. But mischief can be the scariest thing of all.

21:58This is true.

21:58Griffin Newman:I think to a kid, it's a little bit like the kind of like... Lack of rules, disrupting order. And they're like sneaking around like you're not supposed to. I don't know. And that's my candy. The rule of law is premised on a lack of mischief.

22:10David Sims:This is true.

22:11Griffin Newman:Yeah, she really does not like that Halloween cat.

22:13David Sims:I just always, especially when talking about like children's media or things that are designed to play for children, at least partially.

22:20Griffin Newman:Right, I saw some scary shit when I was a kid.

22:22David Sims:Like, because no one was really watching the store. I find it. This is a cartoon. Like, it won't scare you, right? People can be algorithmic about these things and design these things in a lab, right? And the Mario movies are a perfect example of that. But sometimes you just hit on something where you're like, this speaks to kids. Yes. You have developed this character correctly, cast the right person, the right design, and kids see this and they just go like, that's me. I get it. I'm going to ride with this forever. Dory. Yeah. You have said, David, that you have watched this movie many, many more times than Finding Nemo at this point.

22:51David Sims:because your daughter is hyper fixated on baby Dory.

22:55Griffin Newman:Yeah, and I just feel like also just generally, it's like this movie has more Dory. Yeah. Dory is the best. Yes.

23:02David Sims:So thus it's better. And makes Dory the vulnerable character in a way that Yes. Fascinatingly, I think kids ended up relating to harder than Nemo, the literal child in the first one.

23:13Griffin Newman:Nemo is fine because Nemo's very confident. Like, you know, it's like Nemo's going to be all right. and like Marlon like I mean I like Marlon we all like Marlon good job Marlon I don't know if I like Marlon even though I am Marlon maybe that's why you don't like him this was the first time he's holding up a mirror I watched Finding Nemo to prepare and it was the first time that I identified with Marlon straight down the mirror and had some hard talks with myself it's tough Yeah. And I did also watch Finding Forrester to complete the trilogy. Oh, perfect.

23:52David Sims:Thank you. You're the man. And I am not joking. I did do that. Our guest today is Zach Cherry. It's a cherry pick. Finding Dory, the 2016. It doesn't win Best Animated Film. No. It did.

24:04Griffin Newman:I'll find out.

24:04David Sims:In 2016, it would have...

24:06Griffin Newman:This is the Zootopia year, I believe. My question was, does it even get nominated for an Oscar? It does. Does it? Let me just find it. Hold on, the freaking M &M's commercial? Hey, well, actually, that sounds pretty hot. No, no Oscar nom. Snubbed at the Oscars. They snub sequels. They don't like sequels. I can tell you. Let's find out what the best animated film nominees were in, what, this is 2016? Let me guess. Beavis and Butthead? Hey. Okay, wait, 2016. Okay, I will say it's a pretty strong field. There's a reason this did not make it. Okay, so Zootopia wins. Yes, correct.

24:41David Sims:Tell me the distributors at the other four.

24:43Griffin Newman:one of them is Laika

24:45David Sims:so that would be Kubo which is an excellent film should have won good movie but Zootopia won rules Zootopia's good yeah I mean these are all these are good movies still kind of a crime that Laika has not won yeah never has

24:59Griffin Newman:an Oscar yet it should have won right because Coraline is the up year yeah Coraline is the one it's they should have been handed that one yeah and then Paranorman would have been a fine winner over fucking Brave

25:10David Sims:that's what's embarrassing Rick and Ralph I was really hoping. Wreck-It Ralph's in there too, obviously. Wreck-It Ralph going in was the presumed winner and it was sort of shocking. Wreck-It Ralph was the same year as Finding Dory?

25:19Griffin Newman:No, it was the same year as Brave. Oh, we're jumping all over here. We got it. It was shocking, but it was also an indication back then that they were like, I don't know, isn't the Pixar thing the best one?

25:27David Sims:Which is why it's interesting that so quickly they switched to we're willing to snub Pixar if they're going to do this sequel shit. Zach, you fuck with Ralph? Oh, I love Wreck-It Ralph. He's such a great guy. The first one is awesome. Yeah. He's like the only... Well, you were angry that he broke the internet because you were trying to use it that day. Yeah. I had to submit my taxes. The only Pixar...

25:49Griffin Newman:And it's like, what am I going to do? What the fuck, Ralph? Ralph, come on, Ralph. Could you have checked in with me before? Yeah. The only Pixar sequel that is nominated in between the two Toy Story sequels, you know, three and four, which they, you know, gave the trophy to. Incredibles 2. Is Incredibles 2. Yeah. Everything else, they were like, no, thank you. And that loses to Spider-Verse, right? Yeah. Yeah. Which is fine. Okay, so Zootopia, Kubo, another giant Disney animated film.

26:16David Sims:It's a second...

26:17Griffin Newman:Which is, this is also why Finding Dory didn't get in. It's like there's already two big Disney movies.

26:21David Sims:Was Big Hero the same year?

26:22Griffin Newman:No, come on, 2016. I saw this movie right after Trump was elected. You saw this movie right after Trump? Oh, it's Moana. Moana. Moana. And then there's two indie movies, like two small films. Are they both G-Kids? One is G-Kids, I think. One is sort of Ghibli-esque, but wasn't, I don't know if it actually was Ghibli. right it was a co-production with Ghibli and some French guys it's watery too

26:46David Sims:it's a watery Ghibli he says it's a French it's kind of not Ghibli

26:53Griffin Newman:it's kind of like half Ghibli it's called The Red Turtle it's very pretty Mac and Rita Mac and Rita that was my guess the other one is a French stop motion film That is really great. Oh, My Life is a Zucchini, which rules. One of the great titles.

27:13David Sims:And My Life is a Zucchini. I never saw that one. And fucking written by... Celine Chama. Mac and Rita is the fucking Netflix show. What's the thing I'm thinking of? Or no, that was a Diane Keaton thing. Oh, God, he's spiraling here. There was that... Well, there's Ernest and Celestine. Yes, that's French lovely animals. Frankie and Grace is the Netflix show. That's the Netflix show. But then there is something called Mac and Rita with Diane Keaton. I'm thinking of the one that was kind of sexy. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Let me find it. I want to say it was like... Chico and Rita. Chico and Rita it was like this tune that was the tagline they dance pretty close

27:46Griffin Newman:I do think that in a maybe a slightly less packed year it might have gotten the nom but that's a big there's already these two giant things in Moana and Zootopia so they're kind of like eh we don't need Dory I might nominate Dory did I nominate Dory? I like this movie I like this one a lot but I've grown to like it When I saw it in theaters, when it came out, it's not like I hated it or anything, but I was just sort of like, that's exactly what I thought it was going to be. It was totally fine. I don't remember it walking out the theater.

28:15David Sims:And also your daughter's experience, I've found, is not unique. A lot of our friends your age, with children your daughter's age, are like, yeah, my kid watches Dory way more than Nemo.

28:28Griffin Newman:Yeah, Dory rocks. And now this movie...

28:30David Sims:It was the second highest grossing film of its year domestically. It was beaten only by Rogue One. it made$486 million domestic. It made a billion dollars worldwide. It was a hit. It made a full billion. A giant hit.

28:43Griffin Newman:Big hit. And like that's great. But Moana which was sort of like slightly an underperformer at the time has like has out gained it in legacy by a lot.

28:55David Sims:That's a fascinating one where it only seemed like an underperformer because Frozen had been so humongous. And Zootopia. I feel like songs help your legacy a lot. They do.

29:05Griffin Newman:They do. Because they exist outside of actually watching the film. You can put them in the parks. You can put them on ice. You can put them in a whatever, right? Yeah, put them on a hit clip. You can make really good looking live action versions of these films

29:18David Sims:that just look the same. David, let me rephrase what you're trying to get at the idea. You could perfect them. You could finally get them right.

29:29Griffin Newman:like what if Disney just was like just tomorrow the guy just was like hey by the way we know that looks bad we're not gonna release it sorry it is or flip side what if they said James Cameron is doing a live action Finding Dory

29:43David Sims:oh that'd be great and he's doing it all for real yeah right it's all real he put the computers down

29:48Griffin Newman:he taught a fish how to act yes

29:50David Sims:we don't know how he did it

29:51Griffin Newman:yelling yeah right he just keeps yelling at this fish now she's fucking blue tang now she's good don't you know who I am right

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31:20Griffin Newman:Finding Dory. So did you see this film in theaters, Zach? I have no specific memory of it. But I'm positive I did. Because I was all in on Dory. I love Dory. Dory rules. June 2016. I assume you're living in New York. I saw this at the now dead Cineopolis Chelsea. Or whatever it was called back then. The Bowtie Chelsea. The Clearview Chelsea. You know, that theater. Which was the UCB movie theater. It was the UCB movie theater. You used to go there all the time. It was great. You could live there. That was one of those places where you're like, no one's kicking me out

31:52David Sims:if I never leave this place. What was also incredible about it was It was like one employee. It felt like a ghost town. It was like five floors. There was only one employee. There were never many people there. And then they did a really expensive restoration. And it was so nice. And still no one was there, but it stayed open for another four years. And there was a nice little burger shop underneath it. Yes, there was. I like that place. And there was the last remaining Boston market in the United States. Directly across the street. It was across the street, right? Everything was happening on 23rd between 7th and 8th.

32:22David Sims:I'm just also looking at the domestic box office. The top 10. Rogue One comes out in December. Finding Dory, June. Captain America Civil War was notably a spring release. Secret Life of Pets, I think July. Jungle Book, spring release. Deadpool, February. Zootopia, March or April. Batman vs. Superman, March. I can't believe Deadpool didn't make an appearance in Finding Dory. Suicide Squad, August. Sing, I think November or December. Like, Dory was so far and away the highest grossing film of the summer. because every other film in the top 10 basically saved for Secret Life of Pets came out spring or fall.

33:01David Sims:So what was the summer of 2016? Dory, Dory. I'm saying like Dory. Dory. It was nothing else? Dory ran the table so fucking hard. I mean, let me see. It was Suicide Squad ended it. And I mean, ended it. X-Men Apocalypse. Neighbors 2. The Angry Birds movie. I'm sorry. Captain America Civil War was the first week of May. Okay. So it was the kickoff. Alice Through the Looking Glass, Ninja Turtles, Out of the Shadows, Oh, man. Popstar, which rules but bombed, Conjuring 2, Now You See Me 2, Warcraft, Central Intelligence, Independence Day Resurgence. That one's so bad. Like, this is a rough line. The Legend of Tarzan, the BFG, like, these are kind of historic non-starter franchise movies.

33:49David Sims:Lady Ghostbusters, Star Trek Beyond, which is great but bombed. Or underperformed. The final Ice Age, the only one that didn't make a hundred million domestic, I believe, Jason Bourne.

33:59Griffin Newman:That one's bad too.

34:01David Sims:And then the summer ends with Suicide Squad and fucking Ben Hurl.

34:05Griffin Newman:It was also bad.

34:06David Sims:Right. So Dory was like so far and away, the queen of the summer. So where'd you see it,

34:12Griffin Newman:big man?

34:13David Sims:That's a good question. I'm pretty sure I saw it at AMC Lincoln Square. I saw it with my friend Scott Craterman who's one of my oldest friends and a regular movie buddy of mine and I have a very distinct memory of sitting there the first 20 minutes like white knuckling the armrest and being like, this is bad. And I have this experience every time I rewatch it.

34:32Griffin Newman:You were more invested in the Pixar movies being good. Like I feel like I was kind of at this age where I was kind of like, I don't really care anymore. If they're bad, which I sort of assume it's like, whatever. I was really... I wanted Incredibles 2 to be good because I like Brad Bird, but like generally I would be kind of like, eh.

34:47David Sims:I felt invested in the inshittification of Pixar. Right. And I was trying to think of an analogy because it wasn't like it went from being like great to being terrible. But it was kind of like the expansion of Shake Shack where you're like, this thing felt really special. And how are they maintaining this quality? And how does it feel different? And then it grew and you're like, it's still better than basically everything else. But what are we losing? And I'm worried about it falling further. and I think like the first 20 minutes of this movie are pretty aggressively bad and feel a little checklist-y like what do we need to do to like calm you down?

35:27David Sims:I assume, do you mean like post Baby Dory?

35:30Griffin Newman:Because Baby Dory is just right at the top. Do you mean the kind of like, let's reset with like where do Marlon and Nemo live?

35:37David Sims:We're going to bring Mr. Ray back and we're going to bring the turtles back. Like it feels like speed running the greatest hits from the first movie. Right, and introducing this conflict of like... feel like alts from the first movie. Right. It's like, is every character forgetting or pretending this didn't already happen? And this conflict of like,

35:55Griffin Newman:Marlon's like, ugh, Dory, she's like, she's kind of a pain. She's kind of like, tough to have around, whatever. Now, when you saw it, had you recently watched Finding, like, was Finding Nemo in your regular rotation? Because I don't think it was for me. And so this time, when I watched them back to back, you're like, that stuff did put me off. It's crazy how much kind of like double beat it. Yeah, I was like, oh, we're just kind of like running through like, hey, there's the turtles and there's this guy and there's this guy.

36:22David Sims:It felt like the worst version of what I was fearing this movie would be, which is just like, he jangling, can we just do it again and will you guys be happy? But I think when I saw it, I had probably not seen Finding Nemo since it came out. Like, I wasn't rewatching it. So I think I was just like, hey, my friends are back. I think everything from when it gets to the Marine Institute is basically uniformly very good. like I think the second it gets there, it works. Plot kicks in. But I have rarely had that experience of sitting there and for like 15 to 20 consecutive minutes being like bad, bad, bad, bad, fuck.

36:59David Sims:I'm spiraling. And then feel the movie just kind of like swerve, pull out a victory and stay good. But then I remember defending it at the time. It did feel like even though it was a big hit. You're there to defend. It was immediately greeted with this sort of like, what are they doing here kind of thing. Can we zoom out because I know you were asking these questions, Zach, but some of the things going on here.

37:22Griffin Newman:Okay, sure.

37:23David Sims:We'll get into the story specific.

37:25Griffin Newman:You go right ahead. This is all you, baby.

37:28David Sims:So a thing we're restating in all of these episodes. There is a one movie contract for Pixar to produce Toy Story, which Disney will distribute and retain the rights of the characters forever. That movie is such a hit that Disney swings back around and says, We want to make a five-picture deal. You are an autonomous studio. You are producing films for us. We will own those characters in perpetuity. They agree to five original films. They also demand, can you please do Toy Story 2? They said, we're a small company. We only have the energy to do one movie. We're trying to scale up to two at a time.

38:02David Sims:So they established a B team of younger guys to take on Toy Story 2, which is meant to be direct-to-video. Because that's the Return of Jafar model. You didn't put animated sequels in theaters. They devalued the brand. There was this real belief in the sanctity of that theatrical Disney movies need to mean something. And the sequels being on video help kind of keep them feeling clean of the legacy of the originals. Toy Story 2 is not working. Lasseter, Stanton, the A-Team, when they're done with A Bug's Life, come on and say, will you let us take this over and fix it? We don't think this is up to our standards.

38:40David Sims:We don't want it being released. and if you let us take it on and push it back, we will make it good enough to put in theaters. They do that. It's a massive hit. It wins Best Picture, Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes, an institution whose awards mean a lot. And they go, great, that was our third film on the contract. And Eisner goes, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. That was not the deal. The deal was five original movies. Toy Story 2 didn't count. You still owe me three more. This starts the bad blood between Pixar and Disney. They do Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Incredibles, Cars. And by the time Cars is coming out, relationships are beyond freight.

39:20David Sims:And they are self-producing, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up, completely self-financed, and they will just sell them to the highest bidder of whoever they go to. Every studio in town is bidding on them. All of this stuff's super relevant to how this movie comes about. Katzenberg gets pushed out. Iger comes in. Iger's first move is, whatever it takes, get Pixar. He gets them, they commit to releasing those three films, but then he also cracks his knuckles and goes, but guys, can we start talking about sequels? So Disney has now spent like$6 billion to buy Pixar. Stanton has been placed as the VP of creative.

39:58David Sims:He doesn't want to have to be a businessman, you know, or an administrative guy, but they're basically like, you're the king of story here. You oversee all of this. Lots of hugging John Lasseter, the founder of Pixar Animation, at least, is suddenly placed into three positions simultaneously. He is the head of Pixar. He is the head of Disney feature animation. And he is the head of Imagineering. So now Lasseter is wearing three hats, three offices, three times as many opportunities to hug people. Two more hats than I've ever worn. It's impressive. His priority starts to become, Disney animation's really bad.

40:35David Sims:I have to fix this. And what were they putting out at the time? So they had been putting out like Chicken Little. Okay. He comes on halfway through production on Meet the Robinsons and tries to sort of course correct that. He tries to course correct Bolt. The first one that's sort of like this worked, he was able to kind of help oversee rebuilding it from the beginning was Tangled. Bolt made me cry. Tangled's a big hit. And then it starts the run of like Tangled, Frozen, Moana, Utopia, Wreck-It Ralph. all these things we're saying where suddenly it's like, is Disney the rising studio? Right. Is Disney better than Pixar these days?

41:12David Sims:He's putting more of his energy and attention there because they had been the problem place. And Pixar seemed to have it all figured out. But the other part of it is, they're saying to Pixar, guys, we just spent a lot of fucking money. And we know that the sequels were a non-starter conversation because of the bad blood over the Toy Story 2 thing for so long. But now, there's so much fucking money on the table if we bring any of these characters back. And there's always this kind of polite, like, we leave it to you, the storytellers. We won't do it and we won't force it until you tell us you have an idea, but we'd really like you to try to come up with an idea.

41:53David Sims:And so that energy is like behind them. Toy Story 3, they were ready to do. They had wanted to do, and it was being held up by the bad blood. But with that in motion, then they're sort of like, can we revisit the monsters conversation? Can we revisit the Incredibles conversation? Can we revisit the Dory conversation? I feel like this is where you get to the sort of creative incubation of the idea. When it came out, Stanton was like, no. Right, right. We're not a sequel studio. That's not what we believe. They're always fucking going on about that.

42:23Griffin Newman:They're liars. They weren't for a while. Well, their third movie was the sequel. But I just explained this whole thing. I mean, this is all the... Yeah, I understand. but you know they've always had a little bit of sequel the Toy Stories feel different to me as well they feel like a whole separate thing they do and that's because right because the third Pixar movie was Toy Story 2 like it does kind of set it apart yeah so Stanton said he was always no sequel like basically and puts it that he says he had to get on board from a VP standpoint not a director standpoint exactly right Isn't this good for the company?

43:04David Sims:Right. Don't we want to keep Pixar afloat? I mean, this is the classic kind of intradification thing of you're the most successful movie studio in history. You get bought for a tremendous amount of money and immediately they're like, but don't you have to think about what's good for business? And you're like, what they've been doing has been good for business, but they start getting in their ear with this logic of, well, if you make the sequels, that helps pay for the originals.

43:28Griffin Newman:now the script for Finding Nemo 2 which was written back when Disney was like yes fuck you we'll just make what is it they started a company called Circle 7 Circle 7 and it's like we will make Toy Story 3 Monsters Inc. 2 Lost in Scare Dice yes love to know more and Finding Nemo 2 we're gonna make them

43:51David Sims:cheaper than Pixar this was a Katzenberg negotiation move he said they're so protective of their legacy that I will develop my own animation studio to the side. To the ones we're allowed

44:00Griffin Newman:to sequelize.

44:02David Sims:And make them. And the only way they can stop me is if they decide to make them themselves. And this created so much bad blood, but obviously, the second Iger takes over, he says, shut them fucking down.

44:12Griffin Newman:But I want to tell you about this script, which was written by Laurie Craig, the writer of Ella Enchanted. Okay. Now, is everyone sitting down? Yeah. Okay. Marlon's lost. Hold on. How old is he?

44:30David Sims:the hackery of them not even landing on dory should get lost first truly i mean it is so funny

44:37Griffin Newman:that like it's just like okay nemo and marlin are living together they're feeling that everything's good huh why don't we switch it up marlin's lost it's called finding marlin basically nemo's gonna find marlin dory gets her memory back by hitting her head nemo is given a long lost brother great I guess so there can be some sort of tension of like oh you're my brother all of these Circle 7 movies sounded horrendous there's some dolphins some polar bears that sounds good Zach my guess is they'd be voiced by you know somebody with quite an accent oh sure sure you know absolutely it is funny how this time they're like the fucking nature preserves in California we're not doing Australia again no I can't like...

45:27Griffin Newman:There's a magical tunnel that whips you all the way down to California. Yeah, it's just different sitcom actors. Yeah, right. So yes, as you say, Iger comes aboard and immediately is like, no more of this Circle 7 nonsense. Like, I'm shutting all of that down.

45:43David Sims:And this is part of Iger's great strategy, is he comes in, shuts them down, says to Steve Jobs, you name your price. I'm not negotiating here with you. I want to make you guys feel so protected that I'm doing everything I can to respect the sanctity of your characters. I'm not going to push you to do these things. I'm going to shut down any crass exploitation. I'm going to overpay you. But can you please try to organically come up with sequel ideas

46:13Griffin Newman:that you like? And the way Andrew Stanton puts it, and I think we mentioned this on a prior episode, is when the Finding Nemo 3D re-release comes out in 2010, which he obviously works on to get ready. He's watching it. And yes, he is kind of like, I mean, Dory basically is lost when the movie begins. I mean, they do find her being like, where are my family? I was looking for my family. At least I think I was.

46:35David Sims:He's like, fuck, I did put it in there.

46:38Griffin Newman:So he's like, I do stop. You know, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I will admit. Now, could he also not stop thinking about big bucks? I don't know. Like, you know, dollar signs.

46:48David Sims:The other thing is, he's now sort of got a foot outside of Pixar, focusing on John Carter wanting to make this John Carter-sized leap to live action. So what he says is, hey, I got a good idea. Because he jumps big. He jumps so far. He jumps so big so far, so high. That guy can really hop. On Mars.

47:11Griffin Newman:This guy hops. That's what they should say. You should call that movie Hoppers. Exactly. Did you see Hoppers?

47:17David Sims:I did. I liked Hoppers. It's a lot of fun. Hoppers very enjoyable. Moynihan fucking roll. Moynihan right now kind of pole position, in Best Voice Performance of the Year. Boydahan very good in Hoppers. He's the dory of Hoppers. King George. King George having a big year at the box office. Oh, yeah? Well, that's his biggest hit he's had so far. So far. Yeah. Plenty of months left. A lot of words. King George. Hamilton. Oh, sure.

47:40Griffin Newman:If they do that, sure. Still on Broadway.

47:42David Sims:Still bringing in Buffalo box office.

47:44Griffin Newman:Yeah. Who's playing King George right now on Broadway?

47:46David Sims:Interesting. I'm seeing it's King George from Hoppers. They got the beaver. they render him in real time. Originally, Stanton's like, well, I'm too busy on the John Carter thing. And John Carter is obviously going to be a trilogy that I have mapped out. And each of these movies is going to take two to three years. But here's an idea I like for Finding Dory. And I bless the development of this as a script.

48:12Griffin Newman:Right.

48:13David Sims:It doesn't originate with him. It's a hired writer first.

48:16Griffin Newman:Also, of course, then John Carter bombs. It does. And he says he went into kind of a lost weekend to purge himself. Only one weekend? Yeah, he might need a fucking head. That's pretty good. Yeah. It takes me about a week and a half to recover from a bad improv show. And this guy had a historic bomb and he was like, just give me 48. That's impressive. It is. Yeah, I mean, it is, yeah. To make a movie like John Carter where people are like, can we, can you get that Guinness Book of World Records off the shelf? And like, is this the biggest one yet? Like, are we going, like, you know.

48:53David Sims:He also, he did an interview that just came out at the time we're recording. Or it was part of a larger Entertainment Weekly piece about Toy Story 5. And he had, you know, he's a very self-deprecating guy. Sure. But he had a joke about, like, if you know me by name, I'm concerned. Oh, yeah. I saw that. Like, I understand, like, Pixar as a name brand is a known thing. But, like, only, you know, dang-ass freaks know Andrew Stanton by name. Is this podcast maybe fucking up that effort? Possibly. But I think there must be something kind of weird to having a failure that big that's also kind of anonymized.

49:28David Sims:Like, there's not even the personal sort of like, look at how hard fucking Francis Ford Coppola fell on his face with Megalopolis. And it's reckoned with within the story of a man's career. It's just everyone kind of being like, the fuck is this shit? Yeah, John Carter was the failure, not him. At least in terms of the public. I had no idea he directed that.

49:53Griffin Newman:No. You knew simply that Tim Riggins went to Mars and it didn't work out for him. Right. And he hopped. And again, I did like that movie. It's got its charms. It's got its charms. So Bob Weiger calls Stanton on the phone, apparently gives him a quote from Teddy Roosevelt about being the lonely man in the ring that has the guts to actually do it versus talking about doing it. I don't know. He kind of peps him up. Stanton works on Zootopia. His college roommate is Rich Moore, who's the director of Zootopia. So he like helps out with that.

50:20David Sims:He's got a creative consultant. Because that's the other thing was at this time, they were like, Pixar's got it figured out so much that should the Pixar brain trust. They're kind of like weighing on everything. Can they give notes on Tron legacy? And yeah.

50:32Griffin Newman:And then he goes to lots of Huggin' Lassiter. And he says like, I think I have a story for Finding Nemo too. Pitches that. They write up a treatment. And then he's like, all right, I'm going to call Ellen. Because I guess it's a different thing to call Ellen now.

50:47David Sims:Yeah. She's busy. Now, Ellen had for years maintained this running bit of why aren't they calling me to make a sequel? She would publicly do this. You know, Hanks would be on to promote Toy Story 3 and she'd be like, must be nice. Right. Must be nice. I don't have any money at all. Yeah. I'm only selling hundreds of millions of dollars

51:08Griffin Newman:of throw pillows a year. JJ found a very 2013 sentence too, if you want to hear it. Dory is Disney's most liked character on Facebook, had 24 million likes. People just were like, I want to like... Thumbs up. Give a thumbs up to the character Dory.

51:26David Sims:Right. And that's as important as where I went to college. Right. How can you not? It has to be one of the five things people see about me immediately.

51:33Griffin Newman:Ellen's statement on the announcement. I have waited for this day for a long, long, long, long, long, long time. I'm not mad it took this long. I know the people in Pixar are busy creating Toy Story 16, but the time they took was worth it. The script's fantastic.

51:47David Sims:Yeah, blah, blah, blah. You also just know, and I don't know if it's ever been reported, but I imagine she got much more love for this film. Are you kidding? What? I thought that she kind of just did everything for love of the game. I gotta stop bragging on Ellen. Ellen has become an incredibly savvy business person at this point in time. And Pixar and Disney notoriously, you know, pay an exposure the first time. Right, right. And then the second time. If you get a sequel. That's the big thing. Right. I think I've shared this anecdote before, but I met her a couple times. But Kristen Schaal said she did Toy Story 3.

52:23David Sims:They pay you what is scale.

52:25Griffin Newman:She's the fucking 17th character in that movie.

52:29David Sims:And it's like there is a scale number. Despite you being in a Pixar movie, it's the lowest amount they could pay you to be in an animated feature film. And she was like, I bought a house with the first year of residuals, theme park, video games, whatever. You know? Hold on. I need to talk to some people. But then if there's a sequel and you're the central character or you're the breakout character, suddenly you're holding a lot of leverage. Except maybe not so much anymore, right? Because Inside Out 2, didn't they not? It was a weird thing. But also they paid, I think Amy Poehler got$10 million.

53:08David Sims:And then they were like, Bill Hader, here's a sandwich. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

53:13Griffin Newman:So the film is co-written by Victoria Strauss. Really had no credits. She'd worked on an ABC TV show called October Road, but they wanted a female screenwriter.

53:23David Sims:It is a fascinating... She had a spec script they liked. Pixar thing, I was going to say, where a lot of the writers, once they ramp up production, right? And this was also a big part of, I think, them conceding to the sequel push, was it's been a big effort to get to a steadiness to be able to put out one film every year. Wouldn't it be great if we could do two a year? And they were like, if it's two a year and the staff is doubling and all of this, then maybe it helps if every other film is a sequel or a safer bet. But it also means they have to start reaching outside of their core brain trust and building a bigger talent pool.

54:04David Sims:And so often, these writers you see who end up being the co-writers with whoever the director is or the Pixar person is on these movies, you're like, how'd they get this job? And it's like, they were obsessively reading spec scripts. They were like checking the blacklist. They were going to plays. They were seeing independent films at Sundance. It's this fascinating thing. And I think Stanton was kind of important in sort of spearheading this of, let's not look at animation writers. Let's just look and see good writing and find young people. Because also it's a multi-year process. It's like if you sign on to a Pixar movie, you're moving to like Emeryville for three or four years to keep doing iterative work on it.

54:48David Sims:So it's better to get someone who's ready to like be an employee rather than just take on a project. Ben?

54:53Griffin Newman:Dory?

54:54David Sims:Mm-hmm.

54:54Griffin Newman:Facebook.

54:55David Sims:Currently? Currently. 20 mil. Huge. Wow, she's lost like seven mil. Wait, it went down. Went down. Well, I deleted my account, so that's one.

55:02Griffin Newman:That is maybe a sign of Facebook's kind of, you know.

55:06David Sims:Was it 40 or 50 before? 24. Wait, what is it now? 20. 20 mil. Oh, but surely lost four. Losing seems bad to me. I just think with the general Facebook thing. I guess you're right.

55:19Griffin Newman:Also, some weird follows. Oh, yeah? Who we got? Dory's follow. Oh, yeah. Dory's been liking some kind of interesting pictures on the internet. Dory's a huge Huberman gal. So, the big issue Strauss found is it's tough to write a main character who can't remember things. And has short-term memory loss. She pretty quickly comes up with Hank because she's like, she needs a foil and she needs someone who can move her places. It is. Hence Octopus.

55:48David Sims:The smartest thing this movie does is like, how without cheating do we like have someone who's her memory and her mobile kind of operator? Can we give these characters a little more latitude so it's not just a complete retread of the first movie of they're in the ocean and they got to swim really far?

56:06Griffin Newman:And like Hank has a little Marlin DNA in that he's like gruff and not warm. But like it's a different enough, I would say. Because he's not anxious. He's just kind of like cynical or over it.

56:17David Sims:It's an interesting kind of combination of Gil and Marlin from the first one. But it feels like he's a little more stir crazy. Wait, who is Gil? Gil is the Defoe.

56:26Griffin Newman:Oh, yes. The first one.

56:27David Sims:Because he's got a little bit of the like, you know, I guess he's also a little kind of one flew over the cuckoo's nest. Sure. I just got to get out of here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He just wants to go live in peace.

56:38Griffin Newman:Yes. I get it. I get it. We see him briefly in this movie, right? Like, they're all credited. Oh, they're the end credits. Post credits. Yeah, they're still in the bags. Right. They initially did want the parents to also have short-term memory loss to complete the joke of It Runs in My Family, at least I think it does. When you were watching,

56:57David Sims:when you walked into the studio today, I had the Blu-ray. You were watching deleted, quote-unquote deleted scenes. It has 50 minutes of deleted scenes, which is quite a lot. And even when movies cut that much material, they rarely make it public. And I would say of the 50, 20 minutes were four different strikes at the opening. And they all have Stanton intros where he's explaining the iterative process of what kept changing. And you do realize, like, they back themselves into a couple corners here. They're like, first of all, we want to make the Dory movie. But how do you give Dory the character agency to go out on her own journey and grow and change and learn if she can't fucking remember anything?

57:40David Sims:How does she do things of her own volition? So there's all this shit that you see them try where they're like, there's a muscle memory thing where her fins start like, she's sleep swimming. In her sleep, she starts swimming directions and then they lose her, but she doesn't know what's driving her there. It's the muscle memory, not a short-term memory. And then he's like, but then the first 30 minutes of the movie, she's not making any choices. It's like she's like fucking, Weekend at Bernie's 2. Right. And then there are multiple stabs at, well, the reason she got lost is because her parents also have short-term memory.

58:12David Sims:So that helps why they haven't found her. But then also, like, every scene, and they have, like, scenes, some of these are animated, some of them are roughly animated, some of them are just storyboarded. Most of them have the real voice actors. And you're hearing Eugene Levy and Diane Keaton do the short-term thing, which is incredibly funny. Sure. But then you're also just, like, all of these scenes get caught in a cul-de-sac. Yes.

58:34Griffin Newman:Stanton said essentially like they just they realized it would make everyone crazy. You cannot have any emotional catharsis. When I watched Finding Nemo, I was operating under the assumption that her entire species had this. I thought it was like a goldfish thing.

58:48David Sims:That was their starting point. Right. And so then I had forgotten that, oh no, this is just Dory. Like Dory just has this issue.

58:58Griffin Newman:So they ran into some complaints over the fact that it is set at a, you know, marine park. Because it was supposed to be black fish. Right. And so they consciously were like, all of the fish characters will be allowed to leave if they want in our story. Because we don't want to suggest that, like, they belong there or have to be there or anything like that.

59:21David Sims:Pixar's usually, like, pretty secretive about their movies until the last possible moment they have to volunteer information because their brand is so strong. Right. And that was a case where, in my memory, They kind of came out. A year before release, were like, we are making changes to our story. They preempted a potential controversy. They added that third R of release. Yeah. Right, right, exactly.

59:45Griffin Newman:So, you know,

59:47David Sims:those are the big things they kind of come across. I think that was a story present because if it had been to... It could have run the risk of just being a bigger version of the fish tank in the dentist's office. it helps that the problem isn't they're being kept here as much as it is like this is just an entirely different kind of space. And I think what they do smartly, and it gets back to I was saying in the Nemo episode that Nemo is weirdly feels very Indiana Jones coded in the way he constructs the sequences of what is the challenge and how do they get out of this. it does feel like the biggest gift they gave themselves in this film is just to be like, what if there is environment that is hospitable to fish, but also is largely above ground, surrounded by people, tanks are separated, and how do you cross these physical divides?

1:00:41David Sims:Nemo and Marlon don't have to be on the opposite side of the ocean from Dory, but if they're in a gift shop and she's in a tank, it's actually a harder puzzle to solve. yeah which keeps it from feeling like just a copy of the first movie

1:00:55Griffin Newman:there was a lot more Destiny and Bailey they say both those characters are great the whale shark and the beluga whale Bailey's my favorite character in the movie they just kind of like had to cut stuff but like that they all had like you know tons of material because they were fun to write there's an entire storyline where Marlon and Nemo gets separated from Dory early when the squid chases them and then they go into the tank gang and they meet you know, like Gil and all those guys. And it was funny, but they just sort of like kept being like, it is a Dory movie. This is just distracting from that.

1:01:29Griffin Newman:So they don't use that.

1:01:30David Sims:It is the thing, especially after watching all these like failed alternate openings and everything you're saying. I've come to peace with the first 20 minutes that also just feel like they never totally cracked it, but they were like, you know what? We just have to get there. The movie doesn't really start until she's at the Marine Institute. Right. they should be there with her you know at the start right and can we just kind of like jangle some keys for the first 15 or 20 minutes

1:01:56Griffin Newman:are we gonna have to ban that phrase we're using it too much we're using it too much yeah

1:02:00David Sims:it's become a totemic phrase

1:02:02Griffin Newman:you're jangling keys with it sort of I kind of am for casting though they would be like huh what about Ty Burrell Google Ellen DeGeneres Ty Burrell she's interviewed him like five times they could just listen to them talking oh sure Eugene Levy Oh, that's smart.

1:02:18David Sims:Diane Keaton, they can listen to that. Right, because Pixar will famously, now I feel like they do more of a traditional casting process, but they would locate an actor and then do a test animation to their dialogue from something else. And be like, how does it look? Right, yeah. Diane Keaton had never done animation before. Ever. When was Modern Family? Had that already started? It started like 2008 or 2009? Okay, yeah. Right, when was that? Or maybe 2010? We talked about this in It's Funny and John Carter that you're like, you can tell which TV show Stanton was watching when he cast that movie.

1:02:54Were you ever on Modern Family? No. We ran for 11 years. And I, you know, I honestly never watched it, but I, you know, when Ty Burrell popped up and Ed O 'Neill, I was like, oh, this is very much, okay, this was dominating the TV.

1:03:07David Sims:He was watching Always Sunny. And they were reliable. Yeah, right. And honestly, Dory, Marlon, and Nima are a bit of a modern family themselves. That's their found family.

1:03:18Griffin Newman:Sort of a nice wink at that.

1:03:20David Sims:You got two people from The Wire. You got Idris Elba and... Dominic West is the other. Dominic West is the other. That's pretty funny.

1:03:28Griffin Newman:Did you ever watch Modern Family? I never did. You've never seen Modern Family? I've seen a few episodes here and there, but I never committed to it. Yes, same. I watched that for two seasons before I was like, I think I get it.

1:03:40David Sims:It is funny that in my memory, like you thinking this movie came out like a year after Finding Nemo, I'm like, oh, right. This was like right after Modern Family popped and this is one of the first kind of like postmodern family glow sort of jobs for the cast reaching out. And I'm like, oh, this is closer to the end of that show than it was the beginning. It had been on the air for seven years. It would be off the air four years later.

1:04:02Griffin Newman:Alexander Gould, the voice of Nemo in Finding Nemo. Was a grown up. Was a grown up. He remembers the moment because he would do the voice for the toys. Yeah. Like the moment, like a couple years later where they were like, you can't do it. Your voice is getting too deep.

1:04:14David Sims:That must suck. Which he said was devastating. He was replaced by... To have that fucking Kristen Schaal. I know. I heard a story about someone cutting a house recently. But to just be told like, there's a ticking clock. Yeah. Sorry, buddy. You don't sound like Nemo no more. We will always need someone to voice Nemo. It is not going to be you. Once they catch on to my pitch for old Marlon, he'll be back in business.

1:04:40Griffin Newman:Oh, sure. Is that kind of like a sort of Logan-esque sort of legacy sequel? Right, okay. Marlon, honestly, that would be perfect because Marlon, if he... He is so brutal at times in these movies. If he starts to lose it so even his amount of politeness is gone, you could have some real savage Marlon moments. I'll say this.

1:05:02David Sims:Marlon just cutting loose, yeah. Brooks also sounds a lot older in this one. He does. And you're like... He has age. He's still funny in this, But he does feel harder edged in this. Just from the nature of him sounding more like a grumpy old man than a nebbishy guy. Yeah, but they really, like when he tells Dory, go sit over there and forget. That's the best. That's what you're best at. That's like one of the most brutal. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. And this is also post-Drive Brooks.

1:05:31Griffin Newman:Sigourney Weaver, they just thought that was funny. And it is. She's the voice of the blue planet in America. The American version of Blue Planet. And she's also the voice of the ship in Wally, obviously. She's the voice that... He actually doesn't mention that, but yeah, that's true. I'm going to mention that. It's relevant. She's the voice of the planetarium at the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. She's totally one of those people. She knows her way around water. She can just play herself. We don't know. They didn't ask her until near the end. Yeah. They just had a scratch voice and they were like, I hope she says yes, and she did.

1:06:00David Sims:I also just think every time they do the joke... She probably wanted a house. She probably wanted a house. She was actually weirdly without one. She had never found one. She was living in a box. Yeah. Every time they do the joke of someone invoking Sigourney Weaver by her full name, it gets me. Yeah, it was fun.

1:06:17Griffin Newman:Ed O 'Neill, there's an incredibly long quote that JJ put in. He realizes this quote is too long. So I'm going to try and just... He was like, this is newsletter fodder, but I'm just going to try and tell you that I'm going to boil this down. He gets a call. He wanted to do Finding Nemo. You know, he gets his agents like Finding Nemo. He's like, I've never seen animation. They're just cartoons. It's not my thing, but my kids like it, whatever. he is in Wreck-It Ralph he's Mr. Litwack he is he's the owner of the arcade and so he assumes they're like look you're playing an octopus called Hank you're being paid by the session and he assumes like great is it like Mr.

1:06:48Griffin Newman:Litwack like I did that in like one day right he shows up and he's like it was like really intense like the work is grueling the character is going through a lot of like you know motion and stuff so it's like a lot of like watch out and you know yelling and stuff and after three hours he was like, all right. And they were like, you're going to have to come back. You know, like, we're not like, you're going to keep coming back. And then after a while, he's like, is this like not a cameo? And they're like, no, this is like one of the lead roles. That's so funny.

1:07:17David Sims:He is so good in this. They have said. And he didn't know Ty Burrell was in it. Like, it's like his castmate, like they never talk about it.

1:07:24Griffin Newman:And then they watch a preview and he's like, what's the octopus doing? And they're like, oh, he's a mimic octopus. He can like, you know, blend with things. He's like, oh, that's cool. I didn't know that either. So that I feel like can be the experience of being in one of these movies. If you are not plugged into the Pixar world, but are famous. Yes. And you get the call of like, hey, offer. You know, we don't have to audition you. You want to be this octopus? And you're just like, sure. You don't know what you're in for.

1:07:52David Sims:It's just fun. It's also because it is such an iterative, evolving story process. You like do choose your own adventure versions of the movie. you know you go in and you do like 15 pages and then a year later they call you and show you something new and you're like how does that track and they're like well that previous thing is gone we've made him this and we took this out they've said it was the most difficult character they ever had to animate that it was i mean that makes sense a nightmare so crazy it feels like you know we've talked about how stanton likes these kind of self-imposed animation challenges a big thing he said for the first movie, Zach, is that he was like, I don't want to anthropomorphize the fish.

1:08:31David Sims:I don't want to give them movements that are like a human. Let's just push 10 % beyond what a fish could do, but try to get everything we can out of just fins and face and whatever. And it feels like, well, now you have a character who's hypermobile, and instead of there being a limitation, it's the challenge of do as much with him as possible. And the choice to make him just like constantly in Mission Impossible mode is really good. Also, he has no mouth, which is such, that's like a Stanton thing of like, oh, their mouth is at the bottom. Anyone else would be like, well, you can't have a character without a mouth.

1:09:10David Sims:We got to cheat. And you can tell that he's like, I kind of like the idea of just the eyes. And it's like the eyes and then sort of like a nose bump. But it's basically, it's like Gromit.

1:09:22Griffin Newman:Love Gromit too. We all love Gromit.

1:09:24David Sims:He's a great movie star.

1:09:25Griffin Newman:Angus McClain, who goes on to direct Wally. I mean, sorry. Lightyear, unfortunately. Yeah. Is the co-director. So, you know, he's doing a lot of work. The film does, you know, I don't care. The film does have a lesbian couple, as we know. This was the original Lightyear kiss. Disgusting, Lightyear kiss. We see two women pushing a stroller together for two seconds. Truly. Trump was elected months later. Obviously, all of that was sorted out. Fox News did genuinely get very upset about this and it was the most annoying shit in the world. But they were kind of a conservative couple because they were horrified by the octopus baby.

1:09:57They were.

1:09:57Griffin Newman:That is true. They can't accept that someone might have an octopus for a baby. They're sort of like, ugh. It's funny though. Right. You know what? Actually, we've all got our, you know, our kind of boundaries and we have to confront

1:10:08David Sims:them sometimes. Yeah. It is funny how much that was blown up. It also is funny to rewatch it and be like, I mean, I read it as two moms, but also. One of them's got like a short haircut or whatever. I get what they're going for. There are like a lot of context clues. You could be like, these are two moms who brought their kids out separately.

1:10:25Griffin Newman:Obviously, it is no big deal. Yeah. It would only have been annoying if they had done the Beauty and the Beast thing of like, we promise you gay representation is in this movie. Or the Avengers thing. Or the Avengers thing. What do you mean? The guy says something and Captain America nods. Yeah. He's like, mm-hmm.

1:10:42David Sims:Yeah, I'm so sad that my dead gay boyfriend is dead, but still gay. And I'm still gay, even though he's dead. One of the funniest things in the world is for a movie like that to pat itself on the back for finally presenting a gay character and the director to cast himself as the gay character, a straight man and be like, pretty impressive, huh?

1:11:13David.

1:11:14David Sims:Yes. I'm just speaking for myself here. Okay. I cannot speak for anyone else. Good. Me personally, in my lived experience, summer does change the way I get dressed. Oh, yeah. Right. You do it backwards all other times of year. I wear fewer parkas in the summer. That's true. The long underwear stays in the closet. Just some puffer jackets. I wear a couple. Do I wear the snow boots? Three days out of the week, not all seven.

1:11:42Griffin Newman:You know, at summertime, you want the pieces that feel lighter, more breathable.

1:11:46David Sims:I'm joking. Of course, I sweat so much. I need light breathable things and I love a weather that is conducive to that.

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1:12:27Griffin Newman:Can I share a product that I really love from Quinn? Please, Ben, go. Please, please, I beg of you. An organic Turkish waffle robe. That's right, fellas. I get out of the shower. Maybe I need this. Instead of just howling off, I'm throwing a robe over my ass. Yeah, your wife must love that. Yep. And I got it in the color. It's a green color. Moss. Moss. I like these names for the colors. Well, elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com slash check for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's quince.com slash check for free shipping and 365 day returns.

1:13:06Griffin Newman:Quince.com slash check.

1:13:17David Sims:David? Yes. Ah! Ah! Oh, God. This is life throwing another thing at me. Oh, no! Did you catch it? No, I got hit with it. I got pelted pretty hard. It's going to leave a bruise. How's that to-do list? It's tough. It's tough, and life keeps throwing more things at me.

1:13:33Griffin Newman:Okay, well, is there maybe something that we could take off your plate, have someone else help you out with? Perhaps a trusted tasker from TaskRabbit.

1:13:43David Sims:David, I would love nothing more. my ideal life is to do as little as possible. As much as can be off my plate, the happier I am. I have children.

1:13:54Griffin Newman:I have logistical responsibilities often of like, I need to build a piece of furniture. I need to whatever, you know. Hearing about this for the first time, but sure, I'll buy into the premise, the bit of this ad. And I've used TaskRabbit multiple times for it. It is literally always like, that is the best money I ever spent in my life. We here at Blank Check Productions, also recently hired a tasker to help us build. We purchased some new IKEA shelving. Now, why did we do that, Ben? The collectible collection that Griffin has been amassing over many years has sort of gotten out of hand.

1:14:30David Sims:Broken containment. More shelves were needed. Yes. More shelves need to be constructed. We needed more places to store the various cool things

1:14:41Griffin Newman:that Griffin has brought into this space. Important. And we were able to easily bring someone over. They did a great job. And it was so easy.

1:14:50David Sims:To record dang episodes. That's what we're meant to do. We're not going to make you listen to a Patreon building the shelves with JD Amato.

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1:15:51Griffin Newman:The film begins with this. It does. I just want to talk about it. It does. This feels like something designed in a lab to make money and make people cry.

1:16:01David Sims:This is another fascinating thing. Just one of those things. About the alternate openings, right? Where they're like, her eyes are the same size and everything else is tiny. The alternate openings, some of them I thought worked better than the actual opening of the movie. But the first half of them are sort of, there's one I really like, where you feel like, are we just watching Finding Nemo again? It's Marlin running into Dory in their first conversation, and then they run into the sharks. And it's a little bit of bridge, but they're literally reusing the same animation. and then Marlin starts beating the shit out of the sharks.

1:16:38David Sims:And you realize this is how Marlin tells the story to everyone now. That is kind of funny. And it's a sort of like visiting parent day at the school. We get a little whiff of that. He makes it four sharks instead of three. So he's telling the story. You get to see it acted out. It's really funny. And then Dory's there and the kids are like, what about you, Dory? So you're like Nemo's mom? And she's like, no. And they're like, are you her aunt? and they start asking questions about the family structure in a way that makes sense that kids would do. But I honestly do like that we don't ever get into that.

1:17:09No. But it pulls up the thread. They're just a family. We don't need to decide what it is. Yes.

1:17:15Griffin Newman:They're not hitting, right? We don't think? Absolutely not. I don't think yet. I also think this movie... Old Marlin? This movie suggests... Okay, we'll see what happens. I'm seeing it. I'm seeing it. This movie suggests to me that Dory is much younger than Ellen DeGeneres is.

1:17:32David Sims:Well, I mean, fish age less than humans. So. But in the first movie, I'm like, oh, this is like 240 something fish. No, I think she's probably in her late 20s in Finding Dory. Right.

1:17:48Griffin Newman:Okay. Yeah. How long do you think a blue tang can live? Is it really depressing? 12 years. Yeah. they can live more than 30 years in the wild. So they can live for a long time. It says 8 to 30, which is kind of a big range, but commonly they live between 15 and 30 years. So she could be, you know, like 10 fish years, making her sort of like early middle age or whatever. Because what I think about is also sort of like, how long, because they say it's been years. They do say when she finally makes it to the fish who know her parents, that was years ago. And we get three voice iterations. You do.

1:18:31Griffin Newman:There's a teenage teen. Which I do think they nailed the casting on. They did. The child is especially good. But the teen is the perfect bridge between the child and Ellen, I thought. Yeah. I was seeing like two scenes.

1:18:44David Sims:It's just interesting to watch all these openings that are all like, I haven't caught find it? How do you reset the board so quickly and also start to drive out why Dory is suddenly activated by the lack of her parents and all this sort of stuff? And he was like, you know, the classic Stan thing of like, I want it to be a series of flashbacks that reveal themselves gradually. Or is it one flashback that comes later? Does the movie open with the flashback and that's a dream and it all comes later? And there was one that I thought was really stylistically interesting that was like, well, what would your memory be like as a child?

1:19:15David Sims:and then on top of that, she's got short-term memory loss, so she's getting glimpses, but they're abstracted and it's not a literal scene playing out. And then it just feels like in the evolution, at some point, someone drew up a storyboard where the opening shot is Baby Dory and everyone was like, well, you've lost the argument. Unfortunately, you have just found gold and the movie now starts with that no matter what. He's not saying this, but it definitely felt like suddenly they're all, well as long as that's the first shot you can do whatever you want after that

1:19:48Griffin Newman:look I saw this film in theaters it did nothing for me I rewatched it with my daughter and I liked it and then I remember after my twins were born when I was a very fragile person I watched this with my daughter my daughter put this on my wife and I watch it we were like sobbing and holding each other at the end of the movie my daughter to be clear was just like but like my wife and I were like Jesus Christ like you're just so traumatized by the idea of a child losing their parents, by the idea of the parents waiting for years. Is it manipulative? I might accuse it of being a smidge

1:20:24David Sims:manipulative. I'm going to rip the band-aid off on this. With the little baby Dory with her big old eyes? I think this movie is obviously not as strong as the first one. It's not as tight as the first one. I feel some of it's sort of like searching construction. And I think this is part of the Pixar sequel shift thing is once they get them to agree to do sequels, these things get dates. Those dates are announced years in advance. Shareholders are promised we will have a movie that will make a billion dollars in this quarter. And like stickers are put on bananas with the characters and bathing suits are made.

1:20:59David Sims:And those movies become immovable, right? Basically, maybe if something's really going poorly, you can push it back six months. But also, if an original film is struggling, they'd rather push that back and go, sorry, bad news, Dory needs to come out four months later. And I think this is the kind of like Shake Shackification of Pixar a little bit is the movie starts sometimes feeling a little bit good enough in spots versus the classic Pixar thing being like, we will beat this like a drum until we get it as tight as it could possibly be. And I don't think everything in this movie works, but a thing I think it does incredibly well, which is the greatest justification for making this movie and making it distinct from the first one, is it's basically a movie about being a caretaker for a special needs adult.

1:21:46David Sims:Right. Right? Yes. That it is a special needs child who is lost and a found family, and this notion of the responsibility of having to care for someone and the fear of them not being able to care for themselves and it not being the Finding Nemo thing of, well, he's little, he's still young, he's not ready yet versus Dory be like will she ever be able to do any of this stuff on her own I do also think it's about finding it's about like figuring out how to care for yourself as someone who you know my reading of the film is that Dory is a bit neurodivergent she is and it's something I watched Finding Nemo with my wife when we were talking about the Dory character my wife has ADHD and she related so hard to Dory in terms of just like this experience of kind of not always knowing like what you were just doing and like blah, blah, blah.

1:22:42So I think it's a lot of that too where it is about the family, but it's also specifically about Dory like learning to be confident in herself.

1:22:51David Sims:It's doing all three sides of it really well. The parents with the concern of a child.

1:22:57Griffin Newman:Can we just shout out the design of the Eugene Levy fish with the sort of male pattern. As you put it, receding hairline fish. So funny. Yes.

1:23:07David Sims:And the casting also, when they announced like, it's Eugene Levy and Diane Keaton playing Dory's parents, you're like, yeah, that math works out. That makes sense. But I think their perspective of being parents, looking at a young child and feeling the concern of, will she ever be able to do this on their own? Then the chosen family going like, we know what we've inherited, right? This is part of the burden of our life. We love her. We want her here. But this is now an added thing on our plate. We always have to be concerned about her. And Dory figuring out how to do things on her own. I think all three are dramatically really well done and are tricky kind of landminding things.

1:23:48David Sims:And I also commend this movie for, as much as it was pushing its politics on our throat with that lesbian couple. Disgusting. It wasn't really doing buzzword-y representation matters shit.

1:24:00Griffin Newman:Well, no. I mean, they are all fish. Yeah. But this is... It's not like we're going to have a fish in a wheelchair or something. Maybe we could. I mean, look, yeah, I guess it could be a little more on the nose.

1:24:11David Sims:2016 is where everything starts to just break in society, right? Well, because you're talking about Ghostbusters.

1:24:16Griffin Newman:I feel like that's the most prime example of like... They're like, we're doing a girl Ghostbusters, and it became like a fight or like a, you know, an internet kind of touch point in a way that I think a lot of people like me were just kind of like, why, who cares if there's a girl? What does it matter if there's a girl ghost? Why are you all activated by this? Why are you angry?

1:24:38David Sims:What's happening? The beginning of the culture war as a defined thing.

1:24:41Griffin Newman:And then in retrospect, I'm like, not, you know, not that I'm like, there shouldn't be girl ghostbusters, but I'm like, I guess some of this stuff started to feel a little try hard of like, you know, you've all waited for girl ghost, Busters and I have the same indifference where I'm like, I haven't, honestly. Right. I'm not against it. I'm fine with it. But I also think, yes. But you also, you don't need to go like take a victory lap about this like per se. That's the thing.

1:25:04David Sims:And I think especially as it's like Trump is elected, everything becomes more divisive. Donald J. Trump was actually in 2016 elected president of the United States of America. I remember that. I remember that. Disney starts to do the preemptive back padding, you know? A little bit. Like Joe Russo starts to be like, I'm so fucking gay in this Avengers movie. I'm so gay in Avengers Endgame. It's crazy. Gaston's going to have an exclusively gay moment. Which means he dances with a boy. Right. And then becomes this feedback loop of these movies are annoying. They're shoving it down their throat. They're doing it disingenuously or whatever.

1:25:39David Sims:I just feel like this movie gets there very honestly and doesn't try to weaponize it in any manipulative way. As you're saying, it's more manipulative in the just basic. It's just that losing a child. Yeah, the kind of family peril stuff. But she's lost. They just took the character of Dory seriously. They did a smart kind of like, let's do the math on this. Here's the character we built. What actually makes sense if you kind of like spread the pieces out? And I know you've complained a little bit about how much this movie does the, we're going to explain every single random bit of Dory from the first movie.

1:26:18It was a bit Slumdog Millionaire. Why can't she speak whale?

1:26:22David Sims:That is a good comparison. It's like every one of these things, which in the first movie just felt like a miracle. Where did this come from? It just felt like Ellen had a good idea every time. I think most of them were that. Or a lot of them, certainly.

1:26:37Griffin Newman:And then they're like, no, no, no. You don't understand. She does speak whale. She had a whale friend. Where's the pipe? Okay.

1:26:43David Sims:She can read because she's surrounded by plaques, but also audio, narrating the plaques. Right. Yeah.

1:26:50Griffin Newman:which is fine. It's fine. It's fine. But I do like the movie because I think it's very visually inventive within the, you know, zoo, aquarium. Yeah, there's some awesome sequences. All of the kind of Pixar thinking of like, right, how do we get X to Y? How do we, you know, move characters through rooms and situations like, you know, the coffee pots, the octopus, you know, the floppy. I love the Nemo and Marlin using the fountain to travel. Like all that stuff. I'm like, you guys are just kind of, if nothing else, at the top of that game right now. Yes. You know, even if things are getting a little lazy with your sequels or whatever, like you're so visually adept.

1:27:30David Sims:I think I think Stan is also particularly good at is the and is credited for this within even the larger Pixar films that he's not ostensibly the main writer, main director on. That he was sort of the guy who could lock in on the like, OK, if you're Mr. Potato Head, how do you feel? You know, if you're Mr. Potato Head, that means your pieces are falling out all the time, which means you're probably angry. Is it Don Rickles? And I feel like Bug's Life, which he's very involved in, has that same sort of logic of like, what would the inner emotional struggles and psychological hangups of each Bug be based on?

1:28:04David Sims:The lady Bug's got a chip on his shoulder. It could have been Dennis Leary. But this movie does similarly, after doing so much of that in the first one, where you're like, what is there left to do in the sort of like inferiority complex of fishes. Do you like my impression of Dennis Leary as the ladybug? I really did.

1:28:22Griffin Newman:I really did. Hey, just, I just want coffee. Okay, just plain black coffee. Why is it going to have to fucking crunch in it? Whatever. Remember that? He was so good at that. That was Dennis. What's that from? It's from like Leary. So like Leary's first special, you know, No Cure for Cancer. Yes. You know, which is all his stuff that he's not famous yet. And he's, you know. I tried watching that recently. It was tough. You know.

1:28:44David Sims:I grew up a Leary fan.

1:28:45Griffin Newman:It's of its time.

1:28:45David Sims:It's tough to watch. It's of its time. Not even like, oh, this hasn't aged well, like culturally offensively. It's just, no,

1:28:51Griffin Newman:it's not that offensive.

1:28:52David Sims:The fuck were we going through?

1:28:53Griffin Newman:It's more just that. Exactly. But then Lock and Load, his second special, is the one where he's now kind of famous and has kids and like, and so it's more him being like, I go to fucking Dunkin' Donuts. They got maple coffee. What's going on? You know, that kind of thing. Wait, did he, did he ever do commercials with that as the premise? A hundred percent. Of like, whatever happened to - Did Dennis Leary ever do commercials? Yes. Yes. But I feel like there was a commercial one of him being like, whatever happened to this? That was his whole thing. He's pretty good at it. And the best thing in Lock and Load is when he rants about the Catholic Church because you're like, oh, he really hates the Catholic Church.

1:29:30Griffin Newman:And that's a little more motivated by childhood and family. It was still a pretty touchy thing to do at that point in time. Right. It's a little more hot. But the stuff I loved when I was a kid, I was like, yeah, Dennis, tell him. give it to me the like 12 year old person who's never had coffee in his life you know you used to just get a black coffee at the diner or whatever and then he just stopped doing comedy and just voiced ladybugs and saber tooth tigers and I guess did I mean I love rescue me in a lot of ways like that's another show where you watch it now and you're like oh they'd go to jail all this jail I'm gonna have to watch that it's got some good stuff Yeah.

1:30:13Griffin Newman:Yeah. He's not in this movie. No. Although, if they made it in the 90s, he probably would be the fucking octopus. I mean, right?

1:30:20David Sims:You open with the sort of core trauma. They end up, you know, after him trying to outthink himself, doing a version of what he ended up having to do in the first movie of just like, show the thing. Here's Dory. She can't remember shit. Her parents are worried all the time. They're trying to teach her things. just keep swimming and the shells that she can trace as like a Hansel and Gretel breadcrumb trail back to them. But she gets caught in the the overtide the undertide?

1:30:51Griffin Newman:Under undercurrent? No undertow is a different thing. It's the undercurrent I think they say. But she's in the display. That's what I was confused about that. That's what you find out later. Why would it have a current that pushes the fish into the pipe system. It's the vent.

1:31:09David Sims:It's the vent. That's what it is. I think ultimately it's the vent. It's like a filtering system. They're sort of misdirecting you at the beginning to not think that they're not in a natural environment. Which maybe they, because the fish all seem to know that they will get released, so maybe they're just training her for her eventual life in the true ocean when she's little. Yes. I buy that. Yeah. But then you basically run to, right, the section of the movie that feels like a Beatles cover band or something to me. Where it's like, waking up for school, going, Mr. Ray. Yes. Now, sure, it's not like the most original stuff.

1:31:48It still has bits that work. It does. It's like, when you have Ellen doing Dory, I'm happy.

1:31:55David Sims:Do you know what I'm saying, though, about how the bits all just feel like alts from the first movie? Because they're not doing... Yes. the sequel thing of, oh, we flipped this character's dynamic or they're in a slightly different way. I'm like, every line that the turtles say feels like something that could have been cut from the first movie. Well, yeah. The turtles are in it for like 22 seconds. It's so... Yeah. They're barely part of it. But yes. But for me, I was still having fun with Dory. Dory rolls. Ellen's line readings in this movie, almost every line, I'm just like, yep, that's the good stuff.

1:32:33I agree. I would agree. I will agree that

1:32:36Griffin Newman:when Ellen speaks, that is the good stuff. Yes. And like there, I guess there is a world where you could say like, you know what? Ellen has been not doing movies. She's been doing a chat show for 10 plus years at this point. This movie, she could phone this in. I do not feel that she phones this. No, not at all. Yes. Like I feel like she gets this character very well still. Like even in that early sequence that, you know, is kind of playing the hits. Just that bit where he's like, don't go too close to the edge, and then she pushes them so far away from the edge, and then she's like, no, no, no, that's too far, and brings them back.

1:33:13I could watch Ellen do that endlessly. Yeah, and the first movie,

1:33:18David Sims:that character's clearly meant to be more of a dilemma and just comic relief, and the whole surprise was that she brought as much emotional grounding and well-roundedness to it that you're like, you could make her the center of the movie. This will work. Putting the story weight on her won't stop her from being funny. There's a universe in which there's a concern of a Dr. Ian Malcolm problem. Uh-huh. If he's not the guy to the side and he's the guy who has to share the story, does he not? It's very interesting.

1:33:47Griffin Newman:Goldblum is the best because it's not just Malcolm even. It's also Dr. Ian Malcolm in Independence Day. I forget what it is. David, Dr. Scientist, Mr. I just rewatched Independence Day and forgot that he says must go faster in it. literally that they're just like, can you just say it again? Yeah. Say the thing you said in Jurassic Park. What if you just said it again? But can't we just make the whole movie out of this guy? Right, and then, right, when he's, Goldblum is kind of the lead of Resurgence, you're like, you know, he needs to be in the mix. Like, yeah, right. Obviously, Jurassic Park, Dominion.

1:34:18Griffin Newman:Fixed it. Oh, fixed it. He was so good in that. I don't even remember what he did in that, honestly. It's the live-action Moana of Jurassic movies. Wait, what does he do in that one? Because is he on Locust Patrol in that one? Yeah. Is he? Yeah. Because I remember Neil and Dern are. All three of them are. But he's in there too?

1:34:35David Sims:She brings them together to specifically get the locusts. And Sam Neill spends, like a 70-year-old Sam Neill spends the entire movie being like, I don't know how to tell her that I have a crush on her. And I'm like, weren't you fucking in the first movie? The whole thing is that like in three, they established that she married some other guy and had kids, right? Right, that they broke up or whatever. And in this one, Goldblum's like, you know, she's divorced now. And Sam Neill's like, oh, I wouldn't even know how to tell her how I feel. We're going to get to this in Old Marlin as well.

1:35:08Griffin Newman:Were you a Jurassic Park Dominion fan? I don't remember that one. I've seen every Jurassic Park movie. That's the one about the locust that barely has dinosaurs in it, which is a really good formula. I don't remember the locusts at all.

1:35:20David Sims:So they basically realized that the company that Wayne Knight smuggled the shaving cream can to in the first movie had been the one. We never, we never followed up on that. So they're a rival company that's been doing their own genetic fuckery. Is this the second world? This is the third world.

1:35:39Griffin Newman:Yeah. Yeah. The second world is the one that has like a haunted house movie inside of it. Right. It becomes an auction at a manor in the countryside. I don't remember any of this. But I will say all of them in theaters. You put dinos on a big screen,

1:35:51David Sims:I'm there. So that movie has Goldblum in it, but he just has a cameo speaking in front of Congress, being like, we should stop the dinosaurs. And then at the end, he says, welcome to Jurassic World. Ooh. And the premise is that the little clone girl has freed all the dinosaurs. Oh, right. That are now on mainland America. Yeah. And so we have to live amongst the dinosaurs. But then at the beginning of the next movie, they're all dying. Correct. Right. And they're like, they mostly just like hang out in the woods. They don't bother us. So what's this movie about? The rival genetics company used the shaving cream DNA to do other fuckery, but never try to do dinosaur shit.

1:36:31David Sims:And one of their things was that they also do like Monsanto style food fuckery, like artificially grown. GM food, whatever. And they were trying to defeat one of their competitors by creating super locusts that would attack their competitors' crops. Right. But the locusts got too big and now they're eating all the food and we will all starve interstellar style to death unless all of our main characters from both trilogies have to stop the locust. I think the reason I don't... Sometimes a dinosaur shows up for a minute. I don't remember the details of this one because I think I've been confusing you with the news.

1:37:12David Sims:Oh! I'm giving you profundity snaps. Thank you.

1:37:18Griffin Newman:There's this moment in one of those I think it's the one you said where he says, welcome to Jurassic World. Did you notice this moment where the character is handed this kind of rectangular piece of paper? And then he goes... Has a president face on it. Right. No, no. And he goes to a Bank of America and he has a little conversation with someone and they put it into a slot. And then he goes, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That was the uncredited thing. Right. I didn't know what was going on in that scene.

1:37:43David Sims:I don't know what that is. Yeah. Dominion ends with Laura Dern and she's got the Chase banking app open and she keeps scrolling it down to refresh. And then she sees the five million go up. It was a great after credits.

1:37:57Griffin Newman:Someone should just do that in a legacy sequel. Chris Pratt's like, we need your help and just has like an envelope of money. He's like, this is for you, by the way. I will say, actually,

1:38:05David Sims:I will be disappointed if the Spaceballs sequel doesn't do that. That feels like the perfect movie. I mean, that happens a little bit in the newest Jurassic. In the Scar Jo. Yeah. They kind of have to be like, like, all right, everyone, we're going to pay you a lot. Right, like, if you want to see dinosaurs,

1:38:23Griffin Newman:I'm like, no. Scar's just like, no, I've seen them. What do you mean? There's so many of these movies. He's like, I'll give you$20 million. She's like, all right, fine, whatever. You got a gun?

1:38:31David Sims:It's fascinating how openly cynical that movie is about, like, the only reason you would ever do this again is if they were paying you fuck you money. No one's heart is in it. Except for Jonathan Bailey, who they all mock. Yeah, he's like, I kind of like dinosaurs. Like, whatever.

1:38:45Griffin Newman:You fucking pussy. Call me Jonathan Bailey because I'm still, like, him to. Well, I'm excited for the what's it? The house on the end of the street with

1:38:53David Sims:the dinosaur movie? I'm so excited. Have you seen this trailer, Zach? It's from the director of It Follows and Under the Silver Lake and its suburban family, Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor. What's it called? The house?

1:39:02Griffin Newman:It has a kind of annoying title.

1:39:04David Sims:The house at the end of Oak Street? The end of Oak Street. Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, and their kids and their house. Oh, it's just called The End of Oak Street. Okay, there we go. There's like some sort of time dilation. They get transported to dinosaurs. Don't really know anything more than that. This one suburban street gets transported to prehistoric times. It looks awesome. I'm really into it. Me into it. Me into it, too. I'm also really just into the idea of, can someone please break the Jurassic franchise's monopoly on dinosaur movies? Can others do dinosaurs? Well, we have the Kongverse.

1:39:42Yeah. That's true. And they do have dinosaurs. They're dinosaur-ish.

1:39:46David Sims:I feel like as they've gone on, they've swung further away from dinosaurs and more to can we create our own creatures. Sure, but they're dinosaur - They are. Adjacent. But I always like King Kong just fucking punching a T-Rex. What if he had a glove? Beast. If he had a glove, it would be - He gets a glove and - It would be as good as it was when he had a glove.

1:40:09Griffin Newman:Did he get glove first, then axe, or other way around? Other way around. Axe first, then glove? Right. Right.

1:40:15David Sims:The axe is made out of like a Godzilla spine or something. One scale that he puts inside a big log. And then the second one, he's got the beast glove. And I'm hoping that in the next one, he gets shoes. I think he needs a hat.

1:40:30Griffin Newman:A little fedora? A little jaunty helmet. The Kong gets a little pretentious. Like Bruce Bushwick or something. But I mean, I was thinking more of a helmet,

1:40:40David Sims:but I'd like him in a little fedora. Sure. Helmet makes me think of like can we put him in like a cannon can we start shooting him out

1:40:49Griffin Newman:that's fun like Godzilla shows up and is like one second and then like rolls out a big cannon and is like get in right there's a big wick he has to light it with his atomic breath and then he puts his fingers in his ears his fingies have to go in his ears I mean now it sounds like we're just workshopping a Donkey Kong movie like I feel like

1:41:07David Sims:we're moving away from King Kong and towards Donkey Kong I did like that Super Mario Galaxy did put in the weirdly realistic T-Rex from Odyssey? Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. Right. The little baby Mario. The baby's fucked with a hyper-realistic, yeah, hyper-realistic T-Rex. Right. I just think maybe the greatest moment in the history of movies is in the Peter Jackson King Kong when he fights the T-Rex and he, like, breaks his jaw from the inside and then before he throws him off a cliff, he just plays with it a little bit like a fucking puppet. We got to get that back into movies. That's what woke took from us.

1:41:46Kong rips some, whatever the Skull Island guys are. He does that to them a little bit. Skull crawlers. Yeah, he rips some skull crawlers open.

1:41:53David Sims:He didn't play with it as much. The playing with it.

1:41:56Griffin Newman:Yeah, sort of like an animal, right? Which he is an animal. What do we want to say about Furnace? 20 minutes, yada, yada, yada. The Jewel of Moro Bay. Right, she's like, I got to get to California.

1:42:06David Sims:The whole first movie is how hard it is to get anywhere. And they're just like, let's just fucking use the turtles. It feels like such a like, guys, come on, I'm sorry. They insisted we put the turtles in for merch reasons. We're going to use the turtles as a shortcut. They basically make them like hyperspeed. And then the second they get off the turtle current, I'm like, the movie's good and stays good.

1:42:26Griffin Newman:Yeah, it does stay good. It moves along in the right way. Yes, yes. I think the turtles are sort of the writers of Rohan in my, in the, if we're sort of.

1:42:36David Sims:I thought the same thing. I was like, this is as kind of like what? and Eagle can just fucking show up and take him there. Yeah, but that works for me. But I think Hank immediately hits. I do like how sneaky he is. Yes. Is he the first person we've seen try to sort of use Dory's condition against her? Yeah. I feel like everyone else is kind of just like, oh, hey, yeah. Right. It's kind of like... He tries to memento her a little bit. There's a little moral dubiousness.

1:43:03Griffin Newman:There's a little moral dubiousness. Yeah, right.

1:43:05David Sims:Yeah, right. And it's another smart kind of like Pixar logic thing of like, oh, does that tag, is there a power in that kind of tag? He wants to get back out or he wants to stay in. He wants to go to Cleveland so he can live in peace. Yes, right. He wants to stop being bothered. Which I can deeply relate to. But yes, right. Throw me in a box. He's untrustworthy. He's sneaky. I love the way he moves. Yes, the way he moves is really fun to watch. And I love how frazzled he is.

1:43:34Griffin Newman:Sure. he's kind of me he is kind of me where he's just like Jesus Christ

1:43:39David Sims:yeah he's like I need to do all this stuff

1:43:42Griffin Newman:and he's like okay

1:43:43David Sims:his character is 90 % under eye bags

1:43:45Griffin Newman:yeah which is good design in terms of facial animation

1:43:48David Sims:yeah he's a septopus of course

1:43:50Griffin Newman:I like how touchy he is about that right and he helps her find Bailey and Destiny is the moment where she jumps in with the dead fish how she gets to them right because I like that too because that is it's just dark enough. Like, that's the amount of Pixar dark I want. Where she's like, just play Dead. I get it. You know, where you're like, let's, yeah, we can acknowledge this. She sees the bucket with Destiny written on it and she jumps in.

1:44:17David Sims:It's also this good line they maintain of like, Dory can't be too dumb. Right? Like, Dory misunderstanding things is funny. You're right. But especially in a movie, thank you, where... I think, I think. I appreciate your apology.

1:44:32Griffin Newman:Because I always think of the Undertow as a beach thing. Yeah. But there is a real thing that they address where it's like all the fish moving around does create like a kind of bottom of the sea current that humans don't think about. Right. That like moves shit around. Yeah. But that's what they call it. The ocean is scary. Yeah. Very scary. Yeah. I love it though. Get me in there. Yeah. Get me in there. I don't like to go down there. Do you ever do any sort of like scuba? Yeah. Almost. No, that never. And I know. But like snorkeling. I barely go in a pool. I love to go in a pool.

1:45:02David Sims:See, I feel like you're like me where we like traveling. It's like the greatest luxury of like work. When our careers are going well, they get to go places. It is nice to get to do it by accident, essentially. Right. But I feel like you and I are the same where what we like doing is being a city explorer. Yeah. Like, I don't want to necessarily go to the tour shit and I don't want to like fucking swim in some fucking thing. Wait, in the Severance episode where you guys went upstate,

1:45:29Griffin Newman:I mean, you went to, you know, the... To the parking lot. the Keir Park or whatever. Did you swim? Because there was a lot of water stuck in there, but you didn't get drowned. I'm just in the snow. Which snow I can handle. Sure. I know it's water, but it's less scary. Yeah, so come on. You can walk on it. It's easy. It's no big deal. You can eat it. It's fine. Avalanche, though. That's a lot of snow. Too much of one thing

1:46:00David Sims:is always bad. Interesting. I mean, finding Dory would argue otherwise. I suppose so. I mean, okay, so... Just that it gives you way more Dory than the first time, and it still works.

1:46:12Griffin Newman:So Destiny's deal is that she's nearsighted and is always bonking into things.

1:46:16David Sims:Right, which is another good reverse logic characterization thing. Bailey is embarrassed about his nose, noggin, beluga kind of thing. I love everything about how strange... I like his weird design. I like that they almost always keep him in profile where it feels like he's a 2D character, weirdly, in a 3D movie. And I really like Ty Burrell's performance. But the logic of he now thinks he's lost his echo sonar because he bumped his head. And that's why his head looks like that. And he's self-conscious about it, even though that's just the species he is, is really funny to me. Yeah, and it is fun that because they're at this sort of like rehab facility.

1:47:02Yeah. Everyone is a bit of a misfit. Yes. So it's like, it is really nice the way they all support each other and basically like hype each other up and be like, you can do this.

1:47:14David Sims:It's the other thing that post Blackfish stops it from feeling like they are stuck here. They're being held prisoners. Is the unifying thing is that all of these creatures are kind of like, I don't want to be out there. They're misfit toys. Right. That's scary. They'll struggle in the wild. And I'm not ready. Right.

1:47:32Griffin Newman:I like snot fish. That's a funny bit. Yeah. Fish sneezes. Yeah. Do they sneeze? You know what? I'm going to go to Google.com and find out. Do fish. My favorite, like, little. No. What? They don't have lungs. So they don't, and they don't really have noses. I know, obviously, in Nemo, they have these things. Yeah, the one sneezes. Right. But yeah, so they don't really have the ability to do that. Fair enough. Yep. Sorry.

1:48:00David Sims:My favorite little one scene guy is the overly personable clam. Oh, yeah. I think he's so good. Oh, when they're right. When Marlon and Nemo get, they get stuck with him, right? Yes. He was originally supposed to be their next door neighbor in the opening. And one of these fake openings or unused openings. I like that he's like a Muppet. Yeah, right. That he doesn't have eyes or anything else, that he's just a clam that opens up and is just like, this guy's not, it's not a bad guy, but I just really don't want to be stuck talking to him. Yeah, I gotta just, I gotta move on. He's like a guy at the table next to you at a restaurant who won't stop being like, that looks good.

1:48:43Yeah, and you try to use your sort of body language cues to slowly, you know, rotate to like decrease the interaction slowly over time, which is not really picking up on it.

1:48:53David Sims:And it's so funny to do that with a character that doesn't have a face. Yeah, that is a great little... Do you know what the... But yes, they wrote this bit in with him. And then even when they cut that opening, they were like, this guy's too good. We have to figure out another way they get stuck with him.

1:49:05Griffin Newman:Do you know the scientific term for the bulbous part of a toothed whale's head that contains its echolocation center? You know, the sort of big thing. What's it called? A melon. A melon? They literally just call it a melon. That's fun. Yeah, it's fun.

1:49:28David Sims:David, quick question and be honest. I solemnly swear, I will tell the truth and nothing but it. Thank you. When did you last actually think about how much fiber you're eating? I can't say I think about it enough.

1:49:41Griffin Newman:Actually think about it. I don't know. Not recently enough.

1:49:44David Sims:I'm not talking protein. I'm not talking calories. Fiber. It's important. Fiber. In the U.S., fewer than one in 10 adults hit their daily recommended intake. And fiber isn't a bonus nutrient. It's foundational. Fullness, gut health, something that certainly affects me, energy, blood sugar, it touches all of it. And as someone who struggles with, let's say, digestion issues, sometimes I try to be mindful of fiber. And that's where Huel comes in. Sponsor of the podcast, H-U-E-L. Huel! Huel! Huel. Huel is nutritionally complete food. One bottle or one scoop gives you everything a real meal is supposed to give you.

1:50:25David Sims:Protein, fiber, carbs, 27 essential vitamins and minerals. This is like the cast of Ocean's Eleven in terms of how star-studded it is. It's designed by nutritionists to be a full meal, not a protein shake. You have fuel instead of food when you don't have time for a healthy meal. As someone who's not good at scheduling and structuring his life, I will admit they sent over a big box, the chocolate peanut butter flavor, and I have a couple times realized, oh, I forgot to eat a meal. But you can also use powder when you want something more built, thicker, blended, more filling. It helps you hit your protein goals without needing to cook.

1:51:00David Sims:And certainly, I love the sound of that. It's a really easy routine for when you're sprinting through your day. You just pour the powder into a bottle of water and shake it. You can get Huel today with our exclusive offer of 15 % off online with the code CHECK at Huel.com. That's H-U-E-L dot com slash C-H-E-C-K. New customers only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show.

1:51:39David Sims:You got the two SEALs who are sort of the high status, we know everything. Yeah. But are assholes too. Gerald. Who you want to defend? Or do you want to interrogate the movie's positioning of Gerald? I think Gerald slightly undercuts the message of the film. Because the film is all about owning your differences and like...

1:52:05Griffin Newman:It's okay to have something up with you, essentially. Yes, and you can do things and you should be sort of accepted and affirmed. And then Gerald shows up and they're like, you fucking freak! Get the fuck out of here! What's wrong with your fucking eyebrows?

1:52:20David Sims:Don't touch our rock. Is Gerald a radio is the other thing. I don't know what's going on with Gerald. Yes.

1:52:27Griffin Newman:But by radio, you refer to the Cuba Gooding Jr. movie, of course, not the device for listening to audio transmission.

1:52:33David Sims:No, I am aware of the fact that he is not an electronic device. They don't treat him very well. They don't. They don't. And I think you're right. The characters and honestly, the film itself.

1:52:43Griffin Newman:But it's a one, you know, it's whatever. I mean, it feels like them trying to find a new version of the seagull joke The seagulls is basically like, doesn't it kind of sound like seagulls are saying mine? And so like with the sea lions, the way they bark, it's trying to do that again. They need to be an asshole to someone. And I would say it's not as successful. Right. I guess, devil's advocate. This is the stuff that feels similar to Neem. You know, it's like, we should have like these sort of side characters that relay information that are kind of like a big jokey thing.

1:53:09David Sims:It's a little like, right, because you're combining some of the Nigel, the sort of idea of the creature that can exist in both, but is the observer and the know-it-all and the go-between for information. Nigel's the Geoffrey Rush pelican. Oh, right. Character. Yes. So it's like combining that with like they sit on the rock and they see everything with also them being the seagulls. I think the performances are really funny. I like them being two blokes. Sure. You know? Yeah, I have no issues with them. I guess the argument is, couldn't he have been like a Donnie in the Big Lebowski trio? Could they still be an asshole to him while he is a character who can speak and isn't coded as perhaps developmentally disabled?

1:53:55Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think probably. But I think Becky they do a much better job with because Becky is very much like a microcosm of Dory's story almost. That's what they learn. Marlon is like, you can't do anything. and then they learn, oh, just trust her and she'll figure it out. Becky is a loon.

1:54:15Griffin Newman:A bird literally named for being crazy, essentially. Interesting. Do we never hear her do the loon call? I guess kind of. They are crazy. It is like I've vacationed on lakes with loons and it does sound crazy when they're just doing that at night.

1:54:30David Sims:It's another thing that I think helps with Becky is that the loons are all crazy, are all nonverbal, and Becky's just a little weirder. And she's hot. Someone finally says it. I mean, we had to get here eventually. I assume Becky would have a really big part in old Marlon. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, they have chemistry. She comes walking through that door again. They have chemistry. They have sort of a, like, Marlon almost enjoys the fact that she doesn't listen. Like, it's almost like they're developing a sub-dom type thing. Is it like a Burton and Taylor? Like, the fighting is the juice. Yeah. they're headed towards Phantom Thread basically of they have this sort of dynamic that he likes being like, Becky, you do this thing and she's kind of like, ooh, I'm not going to do it or whatever, you know It's also, I think, just like a smart refinement for them of Dory isn't lost They're close enough to Dory They're versions of the movie they clearly ran through where Dory swims off They know where she is but there's a parallel narrative of Marlin and Nemo needing to get there versus what we're saying of like, it's a very different type of environment.

1:55:42David Sims:It's harder to traverse, but they're never that far from her. It's more like a maze. Yes. And then I also think it helps create this thing where the tension isn't, how do we find Dory? It's what you're saying, the testing of like, you're applying your Marlon logic to this and it's not going to work. Marlon has to accept her line of thinking, Becky's line of thinking. Yeah, sure. Totally.

1:56:10Griffin Newman:I mean, and there's this sort of mystery element to the whole narrative of like she needs to remember like why the shells mean something to her. Why the, right, like, and it's very satisfying to sort of,

1:56:25David Sims:I mean, I feel like there are too many flashbacks. Like there's too many filling in the piece and underlining it. And then I remember that like your daughter has seen this movie 20 times. Maybe this narrative is not digestible for a five-year-old if you don't do that. It really...

1:56:43Griffin Newman:Shocker. It really changes your perspective on children's entertainment when you watch the movie with the children that entertainment is intended for. And you're like, right, of course. Like, it's on her wavelength. It's not on my wavelength. It shouldn't be on my wavelength.

1:56:55David Sims:A 37-year-old man seeing animated films. Being alone.

1:56:58Griffin Newman:Do I detect a plot hole?

1:57:01David Sims:Excuse me. You don't need to spoon feed this to us. and I'm like literally sitting next to a baby being spoon fed.

1:57:07Griffin Newman:It's like, you know, I was spoon feeding that girl her food more recently than, you know, whatever. Like, you know, she was eating it.

1:57:15David Sims:That was my experience watching Goat though, where I saw Goat and I was like, okay, it's a little overstated. And I looked next to it and there was like a woman feeding a baby mush in the chair next to me in the theater. I was like, maybe I need to shut the fuck up.

1:57:30Griffin Newman:When Goat was available for purchase for 30 whole dollars on iTunes, I was like, purchase. You didn't wait for the steal? No, I don't buy children's films on steal. It's all digital quick access. It needs to be on the iPad. It needs to be like, she's like, I want goat. And I'm like, gotcha goat. It's ready. Watch. There it is. You get that free digital code. Are you going to buy the goat steal? No, I'm not. I don't like goat. Okay. Come on. That's never stopped you before. Did you see goat? I didn't. Goat's good. You like basketball? Yeah. I mean, technically, the game is called Roar Ball.

1:58:04David Sims:Yeah, I was going to say, we might want to take a little dip into the logic. It's a little different from basketball. Rule one, animals can play it. Yeah, the ball is very different. It looks exactly like a basketball, except it has a million holes inside of it. So that any type of animal appendage could hold it. If you have like claws or paws or whatever.

1:58:25Griffin Newman:And the way it works, it's like you kind of need like a giraffe on your team to like, you know, protect the rim or whatever. right? That's the giraffe center? Yeah, the giraffe's like the center. There's an ostrich character who's kind of a wing. Okay, yeah. You know, like... It's all tracks. Yeah, she's good. So, has your daughter transferred her love of roar ball to basketball at all yet? No, because I'm so intently trying to brainwash her into liking baseball. Ah, So, she mostly cares about that. You're working on baseball first. Yes. But you know... But I am going to try and get her into the WNBA eventually.

1:58:55Griffin Newman:I was going to say,

1:58:56David Sims:I don't know if you've ever met Simms' wife, Zach. I don't think I have. She is similarly very tall. She's tall. She played volleyball. David's daughter is almost definitely destined to be. Oh, she's my daughter is in the 99th percentile. She's very, very tall.

1:59:12Griffin Newman:Yes. No, this could all happen. I mean, or softball or any athletics. The only issue is she's got those David Sims jeans, you know, moving around inside of her and they may limit her athletic ability. It just might be a hampering. My wife did play volleyball through college. So like she, you know, she could have. Yeah. But Roarball also, yes, the home team, which might be, say, like a team with like a jungle environment or an ice environment, right, is allowed to change the court. Oh. By like kind of like erupting a volcano. That's more like baseball. Yeah, exactly. The home game advantage is that.

1:59:47Griffin Newman:You're allowed to kind of like press a button basically and go like volcano mode.

1:59:51David Sims:Right. Your stadium mirrors your natural habitat, even though all the teams have multiple different species. That's very baseball. Yeah. And the environment can be unbelievably hostile. Bring that right field wall in a little bit. That is kind of the... There's like an Arctic team and their court is made of ice. So if you slam down too hard on it, it shatters. And then it's just like too fucking bad. You can't walk on that part anymore. It's good. It's good. I'll be watching. I'm going to get the Steelbook. I think you should get the Steel. Just to clarify.

2:00:19Griffin Newman:And I think also a very funny Nick Kroll performance as a Komodo dragon.

2:00:23David Sims:I own movies I don't like on Steelbook, but they are out of a specific sense of completism. They are something like Fast X where it's like, I own all of them. I hate this one. So if they make like five more goats, then you'll... I would need to opt in wholly on goat at some point for them to eventually get me to buy one I didn't like. If that makes sense. This is much like... Yes, me owning several Ghostbusters sequels I don't like. Okay, Touch Pool.

2:00:55Griffin Newman:That's fun. We like that sequence. Very funny. It is a fun sequence. It is the one where Dory's logic made the least sense to me of just keep swimming and then they... It didn't matter which part of the touch pool they made it to, you know? They sort of just like end up... What they call like poke... Poke at... What is the part they reach at the end? Oh, yeah. Poke something or... Sure, poking problem.

2:01:21David Sims:But it didn't matter. But it is a fun sequence. And I like the hands thing.

2:01:26Griffin Newman:Y 'all ever done a touch pool recently? I've done that a lot. because I've been to the aquarium a lot. Recently, no, but in my past. David goes to the aquarium like six times a day. I do go a lot. My daughter loves it. I go by myself. It's fun to go to an aquarium. It's really fun. Look at all the fish. Yeah. Vibe with the fish. But they do have touchables and they are kind of like, you know, they're very specific. It is not like in Finding Dory. Sure. They're like one animal at a time and we're being gentle with the animals.

2:01:51David Sims:That's good. It is funny. That's progress. I don't think anything nefarious was going on. SeaWorld, obviously, a rival of Disney's. it would be in their interest to take SeaWorld down. That's true. But after the first movie, there were all these stories of like, pet fish sales went way up. But then kids would beg their parents for a fish and then flush it down the toilet because they'd say like, all drains lead to the ocean. I'm trying to free them. This movie kind of absolves you of the guilt of being a child going to an aquarium. Yeah, sure.

2:02:21Griffin Newman:It's like they need that. They need the help. This is good. I've never been to SeaWorld. Have you guys ever been to SeaWorld? But the children are scary monsters. That's true. I wonder if kids grapple with that. That's a good point. I mean, my daughter's never really... Because it made me feel like I can't ever do a touch pool again.

2:02:35David Sims:It is interesting that, right, it's like this is actually a pretty good setup for them to save the kids. If the kids weren't here, they'd have it made. They like it here. Yeah, yeah. The kids are the problem. Yeah, the kids are scary. Yeah, so adults should go to aquariums alone and keep their hands on themselves. That I can agree with.

2:02:53Griffin Newman:Good. Since I have been to SeaWorld a handful of times because I would visit with my grandparents in Florida. They lived outside of Orlando.

2:03:02David Sims:Gatorland was obviously your preference.

2:03:04Griffin Newman:For sure. Love Gatorland. Gatorland is this shitty local park near where my grandparents lived that was just so trashy but great.

2:03:15David Sims:Location of...

2:03:15Griffin Newman:Probably also problematic.

2:03:17David Sims:Location of the final third action set piece in Bad Boys Ride or Die?

2:03:23Griffin Newman:Yes. The fourth Bad Boys ends at Gatorland.

2:03:26David Sims:Oh, yeah. It's a lot of fun.

2:03:30Griffin Newman:But SeaWorld was fun. I mean, the whale show was cool. They splash you.

2:03:36David Sims:Shamu. If you're in the splash zone. Right. Like that. It is so funny that in the 90s, one whale just became a major celebrity. Shamu. Like a household name. Yeah. And every SeaWorld location was like, yeah, yeah, this is the one.

2:03:50Griffin Newman:Yeah, we got Shamu too. We got Shamu. You like Shamu? He's Shamu. This is that guy from the commercials

2:03:55David Sims:and the movies and everything.

2:03:56Griffin Newman:is Shamu alive no

2:03:58David Sims:well which one

2:04:00Griffin Newman:I think Shamu might have yeah she died in August 1971 whoa so even before I was like Shamu

2:04:10David Sims:died 25 years before Free Willy but then how did I hear so much about Shamu exactly

2:04:17Griffin Newman:it's a very common name in the whale community can we pick an investigative podcast

2:04:23David Sims:oh yes oh I do I've never seen it have you never seen it See, I always try to get a picture and I can't get it fast enough.

2:04:34David Sims:Did you get it? Come on. I think so. My angle's not great. Damn it. It's the microphone arm. Ben, can you move the microphone arm before he... Oh, fuck. David pushed it on himself, but now he's smiling. He's lost it. Damn it. I think I got one. I think I got one. The effort of moving the arm took him out of it. It did. This is the problem.

2:04:54Griffin Newman:The whole thing about me doing my whale impression, my impression of Brendan Fraser, or the poster for the movie The Whale, is you really have to let your mind go blank.

2:05:03David Sims:Yeah. Because that's what he looks like on the poster. Zach, you're a tremendous actor. Thank you. And you just saw David transform in front of you. I did. But he's not classically trained. No. It's all instinct. It's a precarious process. It's very delicate. Sure, yeah. The trance can be broken very easily. You see him drop into it so quickly. Yeah.

2:05:23Griffin Newman:Have you seen Brendan Fraser The Whale? I have not. I've heard it described in detail on 70 episodes of Doughboys. I was about to say, 70 almost seems low. Basically syndicated on Doughboys at this point. But no, I have not watched. Doughboys, you could just sort of like piece together the entire movie through all of the various times we talk about it. It's a movie I was probably never going to watch. But when I heard he floats at the end, that was really what sold me on I Won't Be. I did out loud go, get the fuck out. When that happened, I was like, wait a second. I'm sure I was not like, oh.

2:05:59David Sims:I'm sure I've shared this anecdote before, but that happened and I went. Yep. And then I heard a sound behind me and I looked and the man sitting directly behind me was like sobbing and convulsing. I can't. I am interested in developing a live action version of the whale. Yeah. That implies it's a cartoon? No, we'll just do it without prosthetics. Oh, sure. So we'll just sort of, you know, live action it up. Yeah. but I'm that's we're in talks for that we're in talks right it is funny the way the Doughboys talk about the whale you could go well they're reducing it to like five things the jerking off the meatball sub the essay that's all I know that's kind of the fucking movie that's the thing you'd imagine like well they're being really kind of mean to it and if you watch it those things are those are like the A plots like the meatball subs you're like the whole fucking thing is this they read the essay

2:06:52Griffin Newman:like ten times they keep coming back to that damn essay It's the movie he's called The Whale because the essay's about movie Dick. That is why it's called that.

2:06:59David Sims:Yeah, David, the title does not refer to him and his body. It refers to the essay. And if you thought it referred to him, you're the judgmental one and maybe look in a mirror. Shame on you, Zach.

2:07:11Griffin Newman:What do you make of the fact that when Dory, I'm bringing us back to the end of this movie, to the final act.

2:07:17David Sims:This movie does have whales in it.

2:07:18Griffin Newman:Sort of learns that her parents did, you know, escape to search for her and never came back. leading Dory to think that they are dead. And Dory kind of, it's not like she tries to kill herself. She just kind of like throw herself. I guess it's like... She's despondent. She's despondent. And it's like Hank scoops her up. And then I guess he drops her. It's not like she throws herself out of the coffee pot or whatever. Right? But there is that kind of quite shocking, but like exciting moment where you're like, sort of Dory eye view of like crashing out of the... pot and like rolling down the drain.

2:07:57Griffin Newman:I don't know. It's effective. Yeah.

2:08:00David Sims:I mean, this is another like sort of...

2:08:01Griffin Newman:This movie, it has like two kind of darkish moments before it's finally like, they're alive and everything's fine and they found her and everyone's going to be okay. I'm re-watching it. The octopus scoops up Dory and then gets caught and drops the pot. Yeah, that's what it is. Right. Because he's like, where are the others? And she's like, I don't know. My parents are dead. And then, right. Yeah, yeah.

2:08:19David Sims:When they were supposed to be affected with the same level of memory loss, she was going to find them like halfway through. Because finding them wouldn't solve stuff because they all keep forgetting each other. And now it's like, how do we save all three of them? Right. Really annoying. But then I think they end up in this position where they're like, well, fuck. Then what is the explanation for why they haven't found her? They land on a good thing of they were trusting she would make it back to them. Yeah, I think it makes sense that they were like, we'll just wait here. And they were doing everything to stay in one place.

2:08:48Griffin Newman:Right. And we'll just keep building a map. I don't know if that was the healthiest choice, but it was effective. I mean, it's a little bleak if you think about it too hard. Because they're completely isolated. They're not near any other living creatures. Nope. It seems to be they're living in the dark. You might want to build a support network of other people

2:09:07David Sims:who can spread the word.

2:09:08Griffin Newman:Well, it's also, it is another fish family with one child. Yes. You know what I mean? After like, Finding Nemo goes to pains to be like, look, the rest of the eggs got eaten. This is an unusual situation. because it is true that like fish generally have like clutches of eggs. Staying in their zone.

2:09:23David Sims:I also think that it works largely because this is where they really get their fucking money worth out of Diane Keaton. Sure. Their SAG scale, but buy a house with the residuals a year later, money out of Diane Keaton, where she, I think, really dramatically sells the like, we just trusted you would find us and you did. To make it a moment of triumph, of like, look at you, you did it. I assume that's where you and your wife start sobbing. It is very effective shit.

2:09:56Griffin Newman:It's just, you know, like the fundamental thing that I think is very affecting to watch as a parent is when you see Dory as a child suffering from memory loss, it feels much more like profoundly awful, which is, of course, the drama of the flashbacks and all that.

2:10:11David Sims:But young Dory is much more self-conscious about it and worried about it. Yeah, it's just sad and you're anxious about it and all that.

2:10:17Griffin Newman:Right, right, right. And then, yeah, just the catharsis. Just like, dude, like all the, you know, TikTok's always serving to me like, watch, you know, the child see his soldier dad returning from the airport. And it's just within one second, I am just like on the edge of two, you know.

2:10:36David Sims:You watch that now and after two seconds, the child like lifts up the dad and throws him through a wall and you're like, this is AI. This is AI. Wilford Brimley starts like puking oatmeal. Have you seen these? No. There's some account I keep seeing where I'm just like, this is another Wilford Brimley interview from Larry King. I'd love to watch this. And then after three seconds, he starts like projectile vomiting. Quaker Oats. I can't even search for that.

2:11:03Griffin Newman:I keep falling for it. Because I don't want the algorithm. It's like when... You watch one of those, you're cooked. You're stunned. Emma Stefanski, friend of the show, was like, do you know about Hot Hagrid? And I'm like, what are you talking about? She's like, Hot Hagrid. And I Googled it. And it was like, there was a whole TikTok sub-sulture. trip, people were horny for Hagrid. But then, of course, immediately my phone was like, oh, you like that? You want as much of that as we can give you? This might be the only opportunity I ever have to tell this story. It's related to Hot Hagrid. Okay, go on.

2:11:34I don't remember how it came up, but I do remember that during shooting season one of Severance, I did tell John Turturro that people want to fuck Shrek. And it was fairly early in the season. And I remember him sort of being like, okay. And that was just like the end of the conversation.

2:11:56Griffin Newman:My impression of making the show, especially the way, like, I guess you would do the COVID for, but it's like, you guys are in that set for like forever. Yes, yes. Like for so long, it's just you're at these consoles. Yeah. We ultimately did get quite close. And I bet if I told him about it now, the conversation would go differently. I don't want to know more. But this was, it was probably in the first two weeks of shooting. I mean, Macy knew about Shrek. I guess Shrek's everywhere.

2:12:22David Sims:All our kind of elder statesmen Italians of the screen and stage are learning about Shrek later in life. Right, of course, Pacino's got the phone case. Totoro knows that people want to give it to him. Yeah, he knows now. Yeah. I mean, how many voices has Totoro done? Well, of course, he's Francesco Bernoulli in Cars 2. Ah, he is. I think I like to mention a lot. Is he in any of the Hotel Transylvania? Never. He's not, and that's actually a shame, especially considering how close he is in the Happy Madison.

2:12:50Griffin Newman:He was in Del Toro's Pinocchio. Who did he voice? The Torre. I don't know. Okay. I saw it one time.

2:12:56David Sims:Yeah.

2:12:57Griffin Newman:But yeah, I think he needs to do a little bit more.

2:12:59David Sims:Cars 2 sucks and is for losers and babies, and even babies should be embarrassed that they like it. It is one of the most insane movies ever made. I tried to give it another watch recently. I did watch it through, but I was like, will I have any perverse appreciation for just how insane it is now? and it still is more annoying than interesting to me even with all of its weirdness Totoro's very good in it he's like a Formula One car or whatever he's a Formula One car who's really like haughty I gotta watch and trash talking like on the Queen all the time

2:13:29Griffin Newman:that's a slam dunk for him

2:13:30David Sims:yeah yeah I do I do want to say one more thing about Finding Dory yeah my favorite part of the movie which we've maybe briefly touched on or whatever it's sort of happening at this part of the film is the moment where it starts with Nemo and Marlon when they're stuck in the fountain and yes, in the gift shop. And they start saying, what would Dory do? And then they reunite with her and they tell her that. And then for the rest of the movie, Dory starts saying, what would I do? And I found that quite affecting and very like, because I do think it's something, I think people who have a variety of issues, it's really hard to have confidence in yourself when you're like dealing with that kind of stuff.

2:14:15And so I think this idea of just like trusting in yourself and almost like making yourself a, a like heroic figure to, to look up to, I thought was really kind of, uh, beautiful,

2:14:29David Sims:honestly, to, I also, I think, I know, I think what it expresses very well is that Marlon is willingly bringing Dory into his family and taking on responsibility for her, but is clearly burdening him with a tremendous amount of stress. And more than being, like, neurotic around Nemo, he's clearly just like, fuck, I'm like, on the clock at all times, making sure Dory doesn't kill herself. And what Nemo, like, teaches him in that moment of like, oh, right, she is self-sufficient. And she helped you fucking find me? Right. My, you're lame ass. Not that he doesn't want to still help her. Yeah, no, I know.

2:15:06David Sims:I know. I think... Because there's that scene where he's like yelling at her that is genuinely effective. It is. Where you're like, he's being an asshole and he's not being an asshole in the way he is in the first movie of you're being annoying.

2:15:17Griffin Newman:No, it's in line with his worldview. He's being an asshole

2:15:19David Sims:because it feels like his weight.

2:15:21Griffin Newman:Right. Yeah. Right. And it's appropriate. Marlon is no fun in this movie, but, you know, it all lines up with the characterization. Hey, it's also nice when Dory's parents point out that Dory was able to eventually find. That's what I was saying.

2:15:37David Sims:It's like a really nice wind for Dory. Now, I was texting with JJ, our researcher, about this last night. Sure. What's his status?

2:15:49Griffin Newman:I don't know. He took a long time to tell us that a roof guy was coming to his house, and I was not happy. I really wanted to know that kind of information right away.

2:15:57David Sims:We texted him something.

2:15:58Griffin Newman:He thumbs up the text hours later

2:16:01David Sims:that I had said. And then said, like, sorry, I thought I had thumbs up that earlier, but my roof guy was here to look at the roof. And I said, thank you so much for filling us in, JJ. Was really worried. Yeah, I was like, you really, you got to be keeping me more updated. This is the first I'm hearing of it.

2:16:17Griffin Newman:Yeah. That's crazy that he didn't even text you about it. Right. That's actually yet to mention it. We might have to fire him for that. Because I feel like every time it hails in Wisconsin, JJ's up my ass being like, more hail. And I'm like, all right.

2:16:29David Sims:And yet I don't even hear what's happened to the roof. He sent us a series of texts about going to the local university library to take out a bunch of books on Martin Scorsese to start researching for our next miniseries and was texting us about how difficult it was for him to bike home in the rain with all the books. And we just necked him so fucking hard. We were like, huh, JJ, those books look pretty fucking dry to me. He sent a picture of a stack and I was like, I don't look wet. I don't see a single droplet. now we sound like assholes what I was going to say is that JJ while prepping this dossier texted me and said are you more pro on Dory than Sims and I was like I think we're both pretty pro and he was saying like good I just want to make sure it's a positive episode and I said yeah I think the first 15-20 minutes suck basically everything from when they get to the Marine Institute on rules and he said yeah that's right and it like rules rules IMO and then I think perhaps the most dead on profound point that JJ has ever made in his years of working for this show.

2:17:31Better be done

2:17:32David Sims:in the roof stuff. There's an octopus driving a truck. What the hell else do you want? Yeah, that part rules. It is the moment where I was like, Stanton still got the fucking magic and the chaos in him of just the audacity of being like, you know what I'm going to try to do? I'm going to try to construct an actual proper action sequence that can be driven by the fish that is affecting the human world that is pushing further than like, you know, the strain of the first movie is if the fish swim down, it'll turn over the boat, right?

2:18:04Griffin Newman:Yeah, sure. I mean, it reminds me of Toy Story. That's what I love. It's kind of just like, what if these guys were in our world? What's the craziest thing that they might be able to achieve? You know, like, could these toys drive a car? It's a push.

2:18:19David Sims:It's heightened, but it feels similarly affected by a logic of fucking once a year, we'll hear some insane story of a thing like this that happens, if not this crazy, you know? I saw a video recently of a dog honking a horn over and over. This is the thing. There's always some story of like... It's basically the same thing that happened. Right. A bear walked into a 7-Eleven and worked a shift. And you're like, what? And then you watch the video and you're like, this rules. There he goes. I feel good about the world for one hour. I just think this sequence is excellent and it feels like he keeps heightening how far you think it could possibly go in straining credibility.

2:18:56David Sims:And it's silly, but there is a really good worked out internal logic of, like you said, in a Toy Story way, like how much can they actually affect things? And we've already seen them sort of do a dress rehearsal with the stroller. Yes. So it's like you kind of are just bought into like, this octopus can move. He knows what he's doing, you know. And then weaponizing the otters is great. I feel like you want to talk about the otters, Ben.

2:19:20Griffin Newman:Who doesn't love an otter? I mean, I was just trying to move us along, but yeah. Who doesn't love an otter? They're cute. I'm with you man let's wrap up Finding Dory I don't remember what else happens anyway what's the song when the truck is like slow motion is it good I can't remember

2:19:36David Sims:um I don't know yeah the end credit song in this is unforgettable which is clever after the first one has that was nice beyond the city of course there's the closing little moment with Marlon and Dory looking out over the the beautiful yeah

2:19:51Griffin Newman:you know landscape right choral neighborhood. Yep. Totally.

2:19:57David Sims:But just, yeah, the serenity of that moment of them all sort of the peace and the comfort in their family. It's what a wonderful world. It's Louis Armstrong. Yeah.

2:20:06Griffin Newman:I see the tree. That's the song. On my way over here, I was singing the song Can you find me Dory?

2:20:19Griffin Newman:So that, of course, that is Creed's Can you take me higher? That's right. Right. Yes. Okay. But first, I just was, I couldn't stop doing it. Ken, now I'm going to be doing that. Now I'm going to be doing it. Yeah. It's beautiful.

2:20:34David Sims:Now, can we throw down the gauntlet for the Can You Find Me Dory challenge? So you were doing this walking over here? Yeah. Listeners, send us a video of you walking in public singing Can You Find Me Dory? Can you? But you have to do it in public while commuting.

2:20:50Griffin Newman:Do we want a third Dory, Nemo? You know, the doctor recently kind of said like, hey, it's a big ocean. Like he kind of hinted at it of like, we're thinking of ideas, like blah, blah, blah. And as you say, Ellen went from, I've retired from public life to, I guess I'm making a short film in which I star as Dory. Right. So like she's cracking the door open. It feels like something is... Albert Brooks is old. He is old. But he was recently in a film. Perfect world, Marlon. I think it's such a rich world where like, it doesn't have to be... about even these characters. Like, they do such great world building with each, like, the turtles and the sharks and the stingrays and the, like, I just would watch any more ocean life.

2:21:36Griffin Newman:It do be looking good if we're under the sea.

2:21:38David Sims:Yes, I will say, and this is just like a personal preference thing. The technology, the leap between the first film and the second film is obviously huge, not to mention, now they basically have unlimited budgets. It's these movies are so profitable. These characters are so valuable.

2:21:54Griffin Newman:The sequels, right, can kind of do whatever.

2:21:56David Sims:That they're truly like, just send us the bill when it's done. It doesn't matter how much it fucking costs. It helps us as a company to have Dory back out there. I was talking a lot in the episode of the first film about all the cheats in that movie of how they pull off the depth and the texture and the elements of the ocean and how a lot of it is kind of like the CGI version of old stagecraft, where that movie feels a little bit more like an Archer's film and it's sort of representational way of capturing that. And this, you're just like, they have all the money and they have all the technology and they could just render everything perfectly.

2:22:30David Sims:It does look beautiful, but I miss the sort of, I don't know, the movie magic of the first one. Maybe we do a Wicked-style reclaiming of Gerald. Okay. Gerald for good? Yeah. We kind of learned that, in fact, Gerald was right all along. He was a genius. Yeah. Yeah. Stan in that Entertainment Weekly article had this quote that has I've seen the internet immediately run with misinterpreting as Toy Story 5 director announces Toy Story 6 and 7.

2:23:01Griffin Newman:Okay. Everyone's been running this as a headline.

2:23:04David Sims:What he said basically was He said 6, 7? And he did his hands like this? And everyone laughed and Disney started like doing projections. Right. No, he was talking about how they came to him and said, do you have any ideas for Five? And he started noodling on it. He wasn't planning to direct it. And then he really liked the idea. He said, we'll start writing it, start directing it, whatever. And he said, you know, it's this whole thing of we had always been so concerned was three, the definitive ending. And then when we opened ourselves up to that's Andy's story, there are other things you can do.

2:23:36David Sims:We keep thinking the series is ending. And he said something to the like sort of effect of you sit down for two hours and start doing the mental exercise about other toys and what their lives would be. And immediately, you'd just come up with ideas for two more movies.

2:23:52Griffin Newman:Right. He was basically like... Oh, sure, right. And everyone just took that as, they have an idea for two more movies that will exist.

2:23:57David Sims:Right. And he was just sort of saying, and I think this is his superpower, that, you know, Toy Story 4 was notoriously a disaster forever that they couldn't crack. It was the one movie they kept pushing back even though they had all these big money deals because they were like, we don't have it. And then they finally went to him post Finding Dory and said, do you have anything? And he was like, what about this? And they were like, fuck, that's good. And then he took over kind of co-writing the movie. I think he's the guy who's really smart about locating something that feels kind of organic, that is just sitting there in the world that you've developed, and what the human story is there, the emotional story that you can like explode out of that.

2:24:38David Sims:I dread the notion of them announcing something literally like Finding Marlon, or Nemo's now grown up and his child goes missing. but I'm like, if they could come up with an idea that's just sit down and think about other things that could happen in the ocean with fish, even if it is led by these characters, I just think you can't do, since this movie is the flip, flipping it again. I agree. I don't think it needs to be finding anyone. Right. But do you know who does flip? Flipper. Flipper flip. Bring Flipper in. Flipper hasn't worked in a while.

2:25:10Griffin Newman:Yeah, well, again, there's some problematic life. He was on the shitty men in media list. this film was supposed to come out Thanksgiving 2015 they instead decided to give that to The Good Dinosaur I had a great meal that year

2:25:28Griffin Newman:2015 Thanksgiving? this is why nobody beats the Zack it would have been good to pair with Dory the only way that meal could have been better that's the only thing missing is instead you had to pair with The Good Dinosaur Good Dinosaur obviously didn't do very well

2:25:43David Sims:That was notably one of the first...

2:25:46Griffin Newman:I think it was the first Pixar movie to lose money. I think that was the first Pixar movie to ever confuse me. It sucks. It's really confusing. I remember watching it. I watched the whole thing as an adult, and I was just like, I don't know what is happening.

2:26:00David Sims:It's also... It's the first one where you're like, you guys never cracked this.

2:26:04Griffin Newman:Yeah, you guys have released this film because you had to, but you did not know what it was. Cars 2 sucks, but it is like poorly conceived.

2:26:12David Sims:And then it is a successfully executed version of their stupid idea. Good Dinosaur, you're like, where did this start? What did you think you were making? Can any of you take pride in what you release now? I was going to say, though, that was the first year that they released two. In 2015? I think it was Inside Out and Good Dinosaur in the same year. So it was sort of like Inside Out covered the Good Dinosaur's losses. Yeah, right. And that did so well. Right, exactly. And I think they flipped finding Dory and Good Dinosaur because they were like, Dory is a guaranteed hit. Good Dinosaur is a guaranteed flop.

2:26:50David Sims:Can we sandwich it with the flop in between successes?

2:26:54Griffin Newman:Right. So Dory comes out June 2016. It opens$135 million at the domestic box office, which is an animated movie record at the time, beating Shrek the third, which had held the record for a decade.

2:27:06David Sims:Zach just gave me a very funny look.

2:27:08Griffin Newman:John Turturro look.

2:27:09David Sims:Yeah.

2:27:10Griffin Newman:Hopefully that much. His majesty. Hey, sex sells. Sex sells. It makes close to $500 million domestic. It makes a billion dollars worldwide. Only the second Pixar movie to do that after Toy Story 3. It was snubbed by the Academy Awards, as I pointed out. And Stanton does not go on to make another animated movie until Toy Story 5, right?

2:27:38David Sims:Yes, we'll talk about it in the next episode. But he very much was like... He moves to TV. Well, he was like, the John Carter thing wasn't a one-off. I want to be directing live action. And what follows is like eight years of him signing on for a bunch of things, attaching himself to blacklist scripts, movies set up at various points in time that don't happen, and directing a tremendous amount of TV. He did a fair amount of TV.

2:28:06Griffin Newman:He directs two episodes of Stranger Things. an episode of Better Call Saul, an episode of Legion, an episode of Tales from the Loop. Remember that one? Four episodes of the excellent show For All Mankind, including one of its best ever episodes, in my opinion.

2:28:19David Sims:His Better Call Saul episode is also really excellent, I will say.

2:28:21Griffin Newman:Sure. And one episode of the well-remembered Netflix show, Third Body Problem. Three Body Problems.

2:28:28David Sims:He's a consulting producer on that. Sure. And he was a consulting producer on... There's more of that coming.

2:28:33Griffin Newman:There is by obligation. They're going to find a fourth body. I mean look those books are I've read them all I love them so much they're the greatest they're the greatest books ever and you read them and you're like anyone who thinks that they could adapt this is a fool like this is the most unadaptable shit in the world it has like 400 characters most of whom are Chinese like and so you just have to immediately start like messing with it which is what the show did over a massive timescale millennia yeah and like and like you read the first book and you're like, wow, that's hard. You read the third book, you're like, that makes the first book look like fucking Where's Spot.

2:29:11Griffin Newman:Like, that makes the first book look like a cardboard book for children. Anyway, they're so good. I've never watched the show.

2:29:18David Sims:Also a consulting producer and writer on Obi-Wan, a show I've recently watched and think is quite terrible. Not very good. But felt like a very much, I would imagine...

2:29:29Griffin Newman:Obi-Wan was just a swing and miss in the dirt. Like, the ball is nowhere near them. And they're like, no, we can get... And it's just not even close. I just find it interesting.

2:29:38David Sims:He didn't direct any episodes of it. It's not like he was the main creator. I have to imagine that was a play at that moment when suddenly it was like Star Wars production was ramping way up. They're going to make a bunch of shows. Is this a way to sort of get my foot in? Get my foot in there.

2:29:52Griffin Newman:Maybe I do a different Star Wars thing. I don't know. Deborah Chow was the director of that entire season.

2:29:57David Sims:She did it all. But instead, he does not make another live action film until 2026 when, of course, he released in the blink of an eye. Zach, do you know that Andrew Stanton released a live-action movie on Hulu months ago? No. And months from now... I haven't heard of it. Kate McKinnon is the star of it. Rashida Jones, Daveed Diggs. And very soon, Toy Story 5 will be released with him as the director. That one's gonna do pretty well. It's gonna do pretty well. He has once again replicated the same post-John Carter thing of you guys forgot I have another get-out-of-jail-free card. By the time this is out,

2:30:36Griffin Newman:Toy Story 5 has come out. So one assumes, unless it tried to assassinate the president at a dinner or something, it did great. I don't know what might happen in the meantime to derail Toy Story 5. It seems like it's on a good time. I have a Woody email dump that I've been sitting on. Woody might have gone to an island. Okay. Woody Long. He might have flown on a certain express. The Pizza Planet logs. Yeah, Pizza Planet actually used to be called Comet Pizza.

2:31:10David Sims:Let's talk about it. It is. Is there anything that could happen that would prevent that movie from making like a billion dollars?

2:31:19Griffin Newman:I don't know. I mean, I remember everyone felt that way about Toy Story 4. Yes. And then it slightly underdelivered box office wise.

2:31:27David Sims:Although in the end of the day, it made a ton of money. I was wrong when we were trying to talk about the box office and whatever episode it was. It basically ended up at the exact same number as three. Right. Just many years later. But it was also post the sort of Finding Nemo. Finding Dory had such a big jump. And Incredibles 2. Incredibles 2 had such a big jump. The Despicable Me movies were like rising on each one that people assumed, well, three was so big, four will be even bigger. and the answer is that like three is about as big as a movie can get. Ditto for the ceiling might have been established but it's also incredibly high.

2:32:03David Sims:Now speaking of box office

2:32:05Griffin Newman:it's June 17th Oh sure. Here we go. Yep. Finding Dory's opening number one. Number two is an action comedy. So is this Central Intelligence?

2:32:13David Sims:Yeah. I fucked it up by looking at the the rest of the summer lineup a little bit but I don't know what specific. So the rock he big. Yes.

2:32:20Griffin Newman:Kevin Hart not so big. Zach. What if they were in a movie again? You're smiling. What are your thoughts? Of course I love that movie. Now, I remember I saw that film at the Pavilion, which is now the Nighthawk Prospect Park, but it was in the dying days of the Pavilion. I had to see it to review it. And I missed whatever screen. They were like, the screening is, you just missed it. You know, like one of those things. And I watched it in probably like a freezing cold theater with like a garbage bag for a blanket or whatever. And I remember when The Rock was young, he was like, he's kind of like a nerd.

2:32:50Griffin Newman:He was like a chubby nerd. He's very overweight.

2:32:53David Sims:CGI him onto.

2:32:55Griffin Newman:CGI his face onto a CGI body. It's terrible looking. And I'm going to do a live action remake of that as well. Good. I love how you say live action remake of a movie that is largely live action. Yeah, I'm just doing it.

2:33:10David Sims:But does do this. Oh, natural. Right, God. And there's a lot of it. Don't remember much else about that movie. I'm a Kevin Hart mark. like anything he makes back then especially I laugh he could make it all he's funny I think The Rock is funny in that as well I don't like that movie but they're both good in it

2:33:32Griffin Newman:they're locked in the plot is whatever it was just one of those things where they were like Rock big heart small make a poster we'll write the script later

2:33:40David Sims:do you know what the tagline was

2:33:41Griffin Newman:for the film yes I do because it was the it was what my review was about it's so bizarre because the poster

2:33:47David Sims:does not have their names above the title sure Instead, the tagline is, saving the world takes a little heart and a big Johnson. It's rare that there's a tagline that's a joke about the actor's names. It's not bad. It's not. It's not bad. It's not bad. But that movie sold itself. That's the start of their partnership. That's the first one. And then what was the one they did right after that? Jumanji. Okay. Then they start also, like, they legally cannot make a movie without the other one cameoing. Yeah, right. And then they're also doing fucking commercials. Central Intelligence was a hit.

2:34:20Griffin Newman:It was a big hit. Made 127 domestic. Number three at the box office is a horror sequel. You did mention it already, but... Conjuring 2. Conjuring 2. Excellent film. Very good.

2:34:28David Sims:My favorite of the Conjuring.

2:34:29Griffin Newman:I'll always like the first one best, but I do like it. And I love the scene where Patrick Wilson sings. That's him playing Elvis by the campfire. Scene Conjuring 2? I've only seen the first Conjuring. Which is very good. I will eventually make my way through the Conjuring. The devil will make you do it. Yes. But I've only seen the first Conjuring. Last Rites is one of those movies that I already have forgotten if I watched it I think I did right like I waited like no one liked it so I think I waited for HBO and I'm pretty sure I watched it but it is not in there

2:34:59David Sims:with you I don't know if I ever saw it or not I think I did but I can't be sure

2:35:03Griffin Newman:this is why I have Letterboxd because you know I'm 40 years old parenting's breaking the old brain I felt sure I hadn't seen it I watched it but now I can't say one and a half stars oh right Haunted Mirror I might have seen some of the spinoffs. Well, there's a lot of them. La Llorona. La Llorona.

2:35:21David Sims:Annabelle. La Llorona. I think I watched Annabelle. Yes, watch out for her. You see, they're doing a La Llorona sequel like eight years later. Sure, why not? Apparently, that thing has just become like the most watched movie in the history of movies. I think that one did have a long like Netflix tale. Long tale.

2:35:36Griffin Newman:Number four at the box office is another sequel. It's a two. It's a movie that got a three many years later, more very much more recently.

2:35:43David Sims:And is it a three that finally landed on the right title. That is correct. This is Now You See Me numeral two, one of the most offensive movie titles of all time. At the very least, it should have been Now You See Me, comma, T-O-O. I agree. I agree. But it should have been called Now You See Me, Now You Don't. Right. Which they eventually did do. And then they made the bad boys mistake where by not using that title for the second one, they couldn't call the third one Now You Three Me, which is what it should have been. I guess so. And said the third one is Now You See Me, Now You Don't. I've never seen any of them.

2:36:15David Sims:And the fourth won't be called Now You See Me, Now You Revolution, Legacy. I've always heard that they are fun. They seem like silly. Insane movies.

2:36:23Griffin Newman:Number five at the box office is a huge flop based on a video game. Warcraft. That did make$400 million in like China alone, essentially. And like$5 in America. But like no money here. Yeah. That was a true also. I like went to the Regal Court Street just to see it like opening weekend with like four other people and watch it was kind of like, this is so good. I'm smoking an imaginary cigarette. That's also not something I do. Such a, I was going to call it out.

2:36:51David Sims:A very funny, specific moment where Hollywood was like, huh, maybe we just make movies for China. Right, right. Like there was half a second where they were like, it made so much money in China that maybe we make American blockbusters

2:37:03Griffin Newman:just for them. And then China was just like, no, we'll just make our own. Go away. Have you seen Warcraft? I don't think so. Have you played Warcraft? I, I, I, I'm more of a Starcraft guy. I had a deep World of Warcraft era. I never did that. In college. That's the MMORPG, you know, right.

2:37:20David Sims:I went to see it with Juan Nicolán, the great comedian, former UCB teammate of mine. And he's a big Warcraft fan. And at the end of the movie, I think the Toby Kebbel orc has a baby. And he turned to me and went, so like that baby is kind of the most important character in Warcraft lore. and I'm like, this is what everyone's fucking up. Why is the movie ending? Yeah, start with the baby. What are you talking about? What the fuck have I been watching then? It's like if Superman was born at the end of the movie. If the movie was called Superman, but the whole movie was about Jor-El and you're like, that baby's Superman.

2:38:01Griffin Newman:This is true. I'm no little Warcraft expert, but I do know that they did. Number six is X-Men Apocalypse, as you mentioned. Terrible movie.

2:38:09David Sims:The original Gentleman 6, which is embarrassing to admit now. It's crazy that, yeah, you were like, hey, it's a six. And I was like, I don't know. And then I called it a gentleman's six. And now once a month for the rest of our lives, someone on the Reddit starts a thread. Can you explain to me what a gentleman's six means? And it's just people trying to parse my definition.

2:38:29Griffin Newman:Number seven is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Out of the Shadows, which we've covered on our Patreon. Fun movie. Which is fun.

2:38:34David Sims:That's the one that's good. That's the good one. That's the Bebop Rocksteady one. Right. The better live action one. Dave Green, director of Cody vs. Acme. Right.

2:38:41Griffin Newman:The live action, I mean.

2:38:42David Sims:CGI. The bay. The platinum dunes. Is there any fat guys in that movie? Bebop and Rockstead. I'm going to be doing a live action. It's prime for a live action remake. You got two big guys. You could play both. You could clump it. I'm going to do a clump Bebop. I mean, you should also do a live action clumps. I would love to do that.

2:39:06Griffin Newman:Number eight is Alice Through the Looking Glass, which is terrible. Yeah. Number nine is Me Before You. That's the Emilia Clarke one. Sam Claflin? Yeah, sure. Oh, yeah. That's like based on a book. She's in a... One of them is a... A tearjer in a wheelchair or something. She's a terrible agent. Yeah, exactly. Who wants to do assisted suicide. Right. Right, right, right. Number 10 is Captain America Civil War, which obviously is a big hit. Yes.

2:39:33David Sims:The thing I love to call out about Alasdair the Looking Glass, it's the rare reverse spy who shagged me where the movie in total made less than the first movie made in its opening weekend. Is that like a horror, a horror, Alice? No, it's just the second Tim Burton, but without Tim Burton and everyone else. It's Depp and Houndabon Carter and Anne Hathaway and Sacha Baron Cohen plays Time. Yes, he does. He plays the concept of time.

2:40:02Griffin Newman:In a performance. It's not that bad.

2:40:04David Sims:That I feel like you've always stumped.

2:40:06Griffin Newman:I'm like, he's actually doing something in that one. Yeah.

2:40:10David Sims:Zach is like looks intrigued

2:40:12Griffin Newman:yeah I kind of want to toss it out the plot of that movie is that the Mad Hatter is bummed out and they have to figure out why he's bummed out it's sort of like he's lost his mojo thing

2:40:23David Sims:right what's the matter with Hatter he's in a grumpy mood

2:40:26Griffin Newman:was the tagline and so she has to use the time guy to go back in time to figure out that the Mad Hatter's dad was mean to him or something I think I'm remembering the trailers please the Hatter's dad I don't fuck. Oh, Jesus. Now I got to look it up. Keith Richards. No, that's pirates.

2:40:43David Sims:I know, but I can't do that twice. Who would Depp have cast to play dad?

2:40:47Griffin Newman:Hatter? I don't know. Reset fans. Of course. Reset fans. Does it? Yeah, that makes so much sense. Anyway, but this this film, Dory. Tori's a good time. That's a good time. She's not. She's not changing the world. this movie, but like, it's a good time. One thing we didn't talk about yet, and this is a good time for it because it was sort of in the credits, I fucking loved the sort of tableaus with Hank where you like don't know where he's going to be and then he pops up. I could have watched that for a full hour. I love when he

2:41:25David Sims:goes into the fishbowl and makes himself look like a plant. Yeah, it's awesome. That was great. They should do that for the Sphere. Yeah. You put a feature length just Finding Hank's slideshow at the Sphere? Well, you know, the Finding Nemo DVD, which is the best-selling physical media release of all time still, or certainly movie, had Aquarium Mode was its big feature, was you could press a button and it would just play an endless loop of like a Yule Log equivalent of Pixar animation, your TV screen is an aquarium. so you would love just I would a four hour loop of Hank in a room and he's sneaking into different spots yeah and you just don't know where he's going to be at first and then it's like oh there he is and then he hides again Hank's a really good guy Zach do you have anything you want to plug?

2:42:24when does this come out? it comes out July 12th okay I believe there's one more rat scraps oh yeah rat scraps is ended I believe there will be one more show. New York improv show. New York improv show at Caveat Theater. I believe our final show is in August sometime. So check it out. Ellen doing monologues? Hey, we don't know yet, but I'll certainly reach out. But yeah, it's an improv show I do or have done. We're ending our run after five years, I think. Yeah, so I believe the final show is in August. Caveat.com. Google it. you'll figure it out. Come to the last show. Come to the last show.

2:43:06Griffin Newman:You are in I'm just looking at your Wikipedia page now. You're in Jane's new movie. That's right. I'm very excited for that. That's out I think in August. Yeah. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. We got some I got a busy year on the You got a good slate. Coming up. Right. You're in Breadwinner. You're in the Breadwinner which is out at this point. Yes. The Nate Bargetti movie. That's right. Right. You're in Resident Evil. Of course. According to Wikipedia. Of course. Zach Greger's always in the room. Can confirm. Friends of the show.

2:43:34David Sims:Of course. Can confirm. You can. Very excited.

2:43:37Griffin Newman:You're in a Kevin Hart movie called 72 Hours? I am. Wait, what? That's a Netflix original. I got to work with my guy. Stunned to learn that Kevin is making a Netflix original.

2:43:46David Sims:Saving the World is going to take a little heart and a little cherry. Yeah. I tried to push that. They said I'm not really a main character. They said I'm more of a sort of minor supporter.

2:44:01Griffin Newman:Interesting. thing. It's a little rude. Yeah. You're in Lauren Miller Rogan's new movie, although I don't know when that's coming out, but that seems like that's a great cast. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Yeah. We got some fun stuff. You got lots of fun stuff. And there's Severance on Apple and

2:44:15David Sims:Fallout on Prime Video, and I don't know what else is out there. Yeah, you start filming Severance in a couple months, which means it will premiere next decade, right? No comment. There you go. No talking about Severance.

2:44:28Griffin Newman:Great show. I love it. You're the best, Zach. Best show on TV. And you're the best guest on the podcast. Always good to be here. It's very nice to have you. And whenever that 1517 to Paris comes into the station, like Clance, I mean, look, I know we're about to do nine months of Marty. Yeah. So like one year of Clint isn't exactly like the best follow-up. Yeah. But like, you know, if you want to give me the green light for a year of Clint.

2:44:53David Sims:But the Clint won't take that long because we can do each episode in one take.

2:44:57Griffin Newman:That's true. We should actually like commit with the Clint's to being like, we need to be done in 80 minutes and break for lunch or whatever, right? We have to honor him somehow.

2:45:07David Sims:I love that idea. That would actually be fun. The Clint bit is 10 minute episodes. Yeah, I mean, seriously. Let's not make a big deal out of it. It's good. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Next week, we are going straight into In the Blink of an Eye. Yeah, I think so. Just making sure there's no new release stuff with all the summer... Oh, no.

2:45:27Griffin Newman:Oh, wait, shit. It is the Odyssey. It's the Odyssey. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. This is why I asked. Yeah, yeah.

2:45:34David Sims:There you go. So the next two weeks, we will be covering the two biggest films of 2026. I'm hyped for that. The Odyssey and In the Blink of an Eye. Mm-hmm. How do we think Odyssey's going to be? I'm so excited for it. Consider me seated. Yeah. I'm so seated. I'm seated in a horse. And I love, I'm excited for Bernthal and The Odyssey. I'm really excited for that.

2:45:53Griffin Newman:Hey, can I fucking talk to you? I love that guy. Just like the idea of like, Anne Hathaway's like, when will my husband come? He's like, I don't know. Hey, I don't fucking know. You want to hang out? Your husband's on some sort of Odyssey or something. Okay, good cousin. Come on. Come on, long time. Cousin, you need to open your own restaurant. A series of small trials. He can't stop playing Mike. Test of man.

2:46:14David Sims:Yes. Anyway, tune in next week for that. And as always, Disney, make the call. Zach Cherry is ready and tech avail to develop Old Marlin. I'd love a house. a show about Marlin getting some strength. Even just give me, let me do a little voice in it. Do a little voice in old Marlin. I could be like, what's a, what's a sea creature they haven't done yet? Uh, star, no, starfishes. A tadpole?

2:46:45Griffin Newman:Snail.

2:46:46David Sims:Sea snail. Oh, I'm a little snail.

2:46:49Griffin Newman:That's pretty good. Wait a second. What's your, what's your deal? Blankjack owns that, okay? You come through us. I have some type of trauma as well.

2:46:59David Sims:We could tease this out after a couple seasons. Dory, I accept and love you. It's Dory's boyfriend. Yeah. That's my pitch. That's a good pitch.