Taxi Driver with Tracy Letts

6:18David Sims:more women direct movies now still not that many but more the other thing is that now the academy feels increasingly international and you almost always have a foreign best director nominee and you almost always have a couple international films in Best Picture. And as Sean called out in the 76 draft, in the 70s, the Oscars were all about this. It was like suddenly the Oscars were like... The Oscars are pretty cool in the 70s. They were stretching their arms around it. At least nominee-wise. Beyond everything interesting happening in Hollywood, they were like bringing in foreign performances, first female director nominee, foreign films in Best Picture and Best Director lineups.

6:57David Sims:And then by the 80s, they're just like, we're back to our fucking bullshit. And it's finally come back around now 40 years later.

7:03Griffin Newman:Prestige cinema sort of changes in the 80s. Oh, very much. Like 80s cinema is rich. There's lots of great... Rocky and Star Wars start that. You're responsible for this. But you know, when you think about movies like Out of Africa, the sort of like, you know, Gandhi, these like big epics of the 80s, it's like those are absent in the 70s and they come back. Yeah.

7:22David Sims:You could argue, though, that there's something in the Taxi Driver-Rocky divide specifically. These two movies, right? these two character studies of kind of lonely men in cities that are merging a kind of like neorealism with some kind of more classical Hollywood traditions. But Taxi Driver is using that entirely to make you feel bad. And Rocky is using all of that to make you feel great. And the second that kind of code is cracked with Rocky of like, here's a way to make a traditionally crowd pleasing Hollywood picture that still feels kind of edgy and artistic. it's a little bit game over. Beyond just Star Wars making like, this is just pure blockbuster shit.

8:07David Sims:It's like, well, then we'll just give the best picture to the thing that's closest to Rocky. Well, if for no other reason than just the happy ending. I mean, Hollywood had been addicted to the downer ending for a lot of years. People were thirsty for a happy ending. I mean, they waited till Rocky II to make it a kind of a dumb happy ending, but one has the good happy ending. One could argue that's the brilliance of Rocky and the thing they really fucking cracked is how do you have a classic 70s new Hollywood downer ending that also feels like a triumph? And if you can do that, then who wants just the digging into the depths of how broken men are?

8:47Well, credit to Sylvester Stallone for that screenplay. I mean, he found a way to walk that line. It's nuts. way but i remember as an 11 year old watching the academy awards uh who had loved rocky in the theater i was still enraged that rocky won best picture i knew that was that was at the time you

9:07Griffin Newman:were like this at the time yeah was there a movie you were rooting for well i'm all the president's men or network or taxi driver right right but even at the time you knew like

9:20David Sims:I think about, I run the simulation in my head of watching this Oscars live. And I just have to imagine network winning three out of four acting awards and best screenplay. Going into the final chunk of the night, it must have felt like, well, this is inevitable. And then suddenly everything swings rocky for the final two big awards. Right. I'd like to redo some of the Academy Awards from that year. Do you mind? Please. Go ahead.

9:47Griffin Newman:I've got it open right here. Beatrice Strait, I think, is a bad win. I'm going to give the Academy Award for Best Picture to All the President's Men. Sure, respectable. I'm going to give the Academy Award for Best Director to Alan Pakula for All the President's Men. So, Over Taxi Driver, the film we're here to discuss today. Over Taxi Driver. I think All the President's Men's one of our all-time greats. For Best Actor, I'm going to move Peter Finch into Supporting Actor because William Holden is the lead in the movie. obviously Finch is not all over that I'm going to move Peter Finch into supporting actor and I'm going to kick out I don't know, Ned Beatty I'm going to kick out Ned Beatty Why don't you kick out it's tough, it's interesting it's Beatty, Olivier for Marathon Man and then two Rocky guys Young and Burgess Meredith both of whom are pretty fun You're not going to kick out Burgess Meredith You could make an argument for kicking out Bert Young's pretty great in the first Rocky He lays it on the pick after that, but like, yeah.

10:48David Sims:He's that guy. He brings it back around when he fucks the robot. He just loves the robot. Is all the president's men, it's implied heavily that he fucks the robot. Is all the president's men...

10:58Griffin Newman:Who fucks a robot? In the fourth Rocky, there's a robot that Burt Young's character falls in love with. Oh, maybe I haven't seen four. It really went off the rails. You've seen four, but you just don't remember that because it's nonsense. I mean, four is also like 78 minutes long and has four montages and everyone just remembers the Dolph Lundgren scene, the Russian stuff.

11:19David Sims:My brother is a boxing fanatic and we watch Rocky together. My dad was like, this is a big moment. I'm going to show you boys Rocky. And I was like, that's good. And my brother was like, I need to watch every Rocky film. And I was like, I think I can tap out here. And he gets the box set and he's watching all of them. And I was kind of checked out when, oh, okay, James, he got the living room TV. There's another Rocky movie on tonight. So he's going through two and three and I'm not paying attention. Oh, Mr. T's in this one? Okay. he fights Apollo again okay and then I just walk in at one point in Rocky 4 and I go he's got a fucking robot now and they go yeah Rocky bought Pauly a robot for his birthday because I guess Rocky's like a millionaire now in the universe of the movies and then I was back in because of the robot and there is a scene that implies that Pauly has physical relations with the robot I need to figure out what the line of dialogue is but there's a line that pinged for me.

12:13David Sims:Okay. Can we get back to relitigating the account? Yeah, okay. So you're going to

12:16Griffin Newman:take out Ned Beatty.

12:17David Sims:To this point, I just want to say, I'm more inclined to give Ned Beatty the supporting win. I think that's one of the greatest one-seen performances in history. It's true supporting shit. If you feel that way, then we'll kick out Burt Young and we'll keep Ned Beatty. I think that's what it is.

12:33Griffin Newman:But you don't like Robards enough to give him the win. I love Robards and this is a heartbreaker not to give Robards the win, but we're going to give it to Peter Finch. Is Julia... Or best supporting actor. Before or after all the President's Men? It's after, which makes it all the weirder, I think. I'm going to double check that. Because it's two consecutive years. He wins two years in a row and you're like, oh, well, they must have been, the second one must have been President's Men because he's just so good it was undeniable. It's like, no, they decided Julia was undeniable. It's almost like they gave him two awards for all the President's Men.

13:04Griffin Newman:Right. Oh, that's kind of... Who's he? Dashiell Hammett or something? He's like, yeah. So I haven't seen Julia, but I assume it's a lot of him being like, oh, I love booze. Well, it's not a lot of him doing much of anything. He's not in it very much. You know what? I got to watch Julie. I got to put my money where my mouth is to fully agree that he should not have won that Oscar.

13:23David Sims:But in this alternate reality, we're putting Finch in supporting. We're giving him... Best supporting actor. We're going to give him best supporting actor. We're going to give him the award. I mean, just a heartbreaker. Tough for Robards. One of those years. Robards will get the Julie Award next year as a makeup for all the president's men. Sure, fine. And then Burt Young, we're giving him the makeup for Rocky IV when he fucks the robot. He'll get that. And we put him in best lead actor for that.

13:42Griffin Newman:You have a best actor slot open. And I'm giving it to Robert Redford for all the presidents. Yes. His best ever performance. And I'm giving the award to Robert De Niro for Taxi Driver. He's pretty good. I mean, I think De Niro... De Niro's pretty good in this film. ...was never going to win because he had won an Oscar two years prior. Yeah. And, of course, he does eventually win a few years later for Raging Bull. I got a thought about that, too, but keep going. Is he losing that one? Yes, he is. It's gone. You Thanos snapped it away from him. I'm pulling that away from him because I'm going to take Timothy Hutton and I'm going to correct the category.

14:18I'm going to put him in lead and I'm going to give him the win. I think that's very respectable. He's the lead of ordinary people.

14:22David Sims:Do you know what the De Niro situation is very parallel to? Denzel winning the supporting for glory. For glory and thus he doesn't win for Malcolm X. And then two years later, there's Malcolm X and everyone's like, fuck. We just gave him an Oscar. We just gave him an Oscar. I know this is a leading man performance and this is now one of the definitive screen performances in American film history. Right. But can we do it again? Yeah. Who's he up against in Malcolm X? Malcolm X, he loses the scent of a woman. Right. That's the other makeup award for Pacino. This is the ultimate makeup. The magic of trying to fix the Oscars.

14:57David Sims:It's a fucking Sephora award.

14:58Griffin Newman:Where you're just like, right, okay, so we need to give Pacino an award. And then so you start digging back. Yes. Where you're like, okay, should he have won for like Dog Day Afternoon or whatever? And then like, I'm going to take it away from Nicholson. I'm going to give it to Gino. Right, because that's Nicholson's for Cuckoo's Nest? Is that his first win? Yes. Of three. No, of three, of course. But the other two are for James L. Brooks movies that you don't even like. Not to call you out.

15:23David Sims:But then do you give Nicholson an award before that or after that? Is your sliding door that Nicholson gets Chinatown? I can give Nicholson Chinatown.

15:35Griffin Newman:That's a fun one Do you give him Easy Rider? I could give him Chinatown I'm not giving him Easy Rider But if I give him Chinatown Then I'm taking the award away from Art Carney Who everybody loves to shit on And you love to defend I love Art Carney He's got a cat or something Have you never seen Harry and Tonto? Never seen It's a hard-ish movie to find

15:58David Sims:Was there even a Twilight Time disc? No Nary a Twilight Time disc

16:02Griffin Newman:Right, so right It's the most trial time title I've ever seen You could do some Or you could give Pacino the Oscar that year For Godfather 2 over Art Carney as well Can I give Nicholson the award for Last Detail? Yes, he can Now you're taking it away from Jack Lemmon for Save the Tiger I feel like that's okay Great, easy You're feeling happy about that Have we fixed everything now? I will say also in that year You could give it to Pacino for Serpico But I think Last Detail Is a better performance than Serpico but like I think in some ways Last Detail is sort of the That's Nicholson distilled Yeah it really is Which I mean Cuckoo's Nest has a lot of the same DNA

16:40David Sims:I feel like Nicholson also talks about feeling that Last Detail is his best performance and his best movie I feel like he has said in interviews it is his favorite I mean you could also

16:51Griffin Newman:give it to him for five easy pieces over George C. Scott for Patton Georgie didn't even want the Oscar He didn't show up According to George That's a pretty undeniable performance performance. But like, Lynn, let's give George an Oscar for like Dr. Strangelove or something. Let's keep going back. So the hospital is the year after. And then you're taking Hackman's away for French Connection. I'm not sure you want to do that. Well, but then could you

17:15David Sims:give Hackman for conversation?

17:18Griffin Newman:What's the ripple effect of that? So that's 72. You're taking away Brando for The Godfather. Kind of an iconic screen performance. That was his second Oscar.

17:28David Sims:Who did Brando play in the Godfather?

17:29Griffin Newman:He played The Godfather. Oh, he played the Godfrey. No, I mean, I love playing this game with the Oscars because it is so infuriating for people I know where they're like, why did Leo win his Oscar for The Revenant? I'm like, you don't understand. He was due. You know, they had missed him on this one. And I'm like, well, why'd they miss him on that one? You don't understand. The guy who won that year was due because he missed on this one, you know,

17:52David Sims:and it just never ends. What's fun about this game is when you can identify one that is actually a clean lift. Like the Lemon for Save the Tiger. where you're like, actually, we could just pull that out and slot everything in around it and everything's fine. I've never seen Save the Tiger. Because so often it is the cause and effect where you're like, well, fuck. Yeah, I can't take it away from that guy. Save the Tiger also... That's Avilton. Avilton, right? Yeah. What's it about? He's a salesman in a midlife crisis. That sounds like bullshit. Or not a salesman. He works in the garment industry.

18:21He works in the garment. There you go.

18:23Griffin Newman:And that's his second win, right? Because he won a supporting one for Mr. Roberts. Yes. Yeah, it's weird that Lemon, who's a great actor and one of Hollywood's great figures, has two Oscars, both for movies where you're like, huh? Yeah. Like, okay, that's what he won for? Yeah. He went for The Fucking Apartment? Right. He won for Mr. Roberts? He probably should have won for, like, The Odd Couple, where he's fantastic.

18:47David Sims:Am I wrong in thinking that he wasn't even nominated for The Apartment?

18:51Griffin Newman:You are, in fact, wrong. Okay. He was nominated, and he lost to Burt Lancaster for Elmer Gantry, and I think we can take that one away. Yeah. We can kick it over to Lemon. Yeah. And then we'll give it to Lancaster for, I don't know. Come on, guys. Help me out here. The Leopard. Yeah. An incredible performance. Sweet smell of success. Yeah, well, why not Sweet Smell? How about Lancaster for The Swimmer?

19:14David Sims:Even a fucking... That's a good movie. ...gold watch local hero. The Swimmer is... There you go. That would be a good lifetime achievement.

19:22Griffin Newman:Well, The Leopard's amazing. Yeah. It does have that thing of... that's the Sidney Poitier, Paul Newman, and HUD. That's a tough... We just got into this because of... Fuck! I have him... Why did we get into this? I have him winning for Sweet Smell of Success on my personal Oscar ballot, but I have him in supporting. Oh, that makes sense. But I think that's defensible. Oh, I do. He's supporting in that film.

19:45David Sims:A Color of Money episode to come later down the line. We got into this exact same conversation of the ripple effect of why Paul Newman has to win for Color of Money. Right, because... Which is another very frustrating...

19:57Griffin Newman:You're like, why didn't Newman win for HUD? And it's like, well, Sidney Poitier won that year. That's kind of a big deal. Like, why didn't he win for... Yeah. Cool Hand Luke. Who won Cool Hand Luke year? It's Steiger for In the Heat of the Night, which is your best picture winner. I'm giving it to Paul Newman for Cool Hand Luke, and then I don't have to give it to him for Color of Money because I have to say Color of Money year. He's number five on my list. He's number five behind Dexter Gordon, Bob Hoskins, William Hurt, and James Woods.

20:22David Sims:Hoskins, you're number one?

20:24Griffin Newman:He's thinking. folks, he's thinking. The Dexter Gordon performance is great, and it's great that they nominated it. It is one where you're just like, this is just the guy, right? Because he's just kind of sitting there going like, I love saxophones, and you're like, this is cool. It's not as easy as it looks to just be the guy. You know what? You got a Tony, and I don't have no Tony.

20:44David Sims:This is true. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. This is a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they shoot a bunch of people, baby. This is the guarantor.

21:03Griffin Newman:I want to know who he wants for 86 Best Actor. But yes, this is, sure, this is Martin Scorsese's guarantor.

21:09David Sims:This is the film that you could argue mints Martin Scorsese as Martin Scorsese. He is that for the rest of his life and for the rest of time. Yeah, sure. I mean, even if he never made a movie again after this, even if he never made a good movie again after this, he would be in the annals of history forever. And certainly he knew how to capitalize upon this for the rest of his career, even with the ups and downs. How many of these have you guys done? Of Scorsese? We've only skipped ahead for one. Otherwise, we've been basically going in this order. So I guess this is our four? We're getting started.

21:44Griffin Newman:Yeah, we're pretty early, which feels appropriate.

21:47David Sims:We haven't done Alice yet. We have done Color of Money already. Otherwise, we've just been running up to this.

21:53Griffin Newman:Who's That Knockin', Boxcar Bertha, Mean Streets. We've done those. So you can tell me who's done those with you. Sure. Miriam Bale did Mean Streets with us. We didn't do, who was a film critic. At Boxcar Bertha and Who's That Knockin', we had No Guest. And then last Color Money, we had the great Chris Ryan. We all saw that. Yes. Okay. So you've got a long way to go. The reason I ask is, have you seen everything? Have you now seen everything in the Scorsese film? I have seen every Martin Scorsese film, but for a couple of Rockymentaries that he's put out in more recent years.

22:25David Sims:That's some real Patreon shit. But I've certainly seen every Scorsese feature film. I have not seen Kundun. Kundun. I've not seen Last Temptation. Wow. And I've not seen Age of Innocence. Those are my weird blind spots.

22:39Griffin Newman:So you don't like the ones without guns, huh? You just want the gangster pictures. He makes a movie about the Dalai Lama. You're like, skip.

22:47David Sims:I dislike his films where the title is the blank of blank. Right. The color of the glass of the machine. That bit doesn't work because I also, I have seen Wolf of Wall Street. And you like King of Comedy. Is this a fair question to ask at this point in the process, what your favorite Martin Scorsese is? I think it might be this film. Someone asked me this just last weekend when I told them that we were starting up our Scorsese. And they said, what do you think is the best one? And I just knee-jerk went. It's a little bit hard to argue with Taxi Driver in my mind. I might, as we go through chronologically and rewatch the other ones, change my mind.

23:22David Sims:It's not like on this rewatch I went, no question, iron lock, no way anything's beating this. But it does feel like the purest text to me, in a way, of everything I think he does exceptionally, and is the ultimate example to me of a movie that only he could have made. Tracy, what is your answer?

23:42Griffin Newman:My answer is, unfortunately, the very boring answer of Goodfellas. That's your number one Scorsese. And then I would, I think, and we'll see how this series goes. After Hours, Last Temptation, and Taxi Driver are the sort of other contenders for me. Those are my favorite Scorsese movies. I like most of his movies.

23:59David Sims:Pretty much all of them. My take would be that I think Goodfellas is the peak of his filmmaking and that this is textually his richest film. It's a great movie. Taxi Driver is my first by some distance. King of Comedy is probably next for me. Pretty great. After Hours is way up there. That is my personal favorite, but in a it just kind of hits me way. I would never argue it's the best, but I do think it's way up there.

24:26Griffin Newman:Now, as we all know, you hate the 90s. And so Goodfellas is that the 90s excess of Goodfellas.

24:31David Sims:You were banned from VH1 because you kept pitching them. Griffin, I thought I'm making the same joke. I couldn't figure it out. Storm at their offices and go, here's the pitch. It's just me talking ahead. I was like, how do I do a VH1? saying how every pop culture thing from the 90s is dumb trash for babies. You're not a 90s guy. No comedians. This has already gotten a bad rap. I like the 90s. There are things about the 90s I absolutely love. And I like Goodfellas. Yeah. It's not top tier Scorsese for me, but I like it. I'm no dummy. I recognize how good Goodfellas is. It's just immaculately made.

25:05It absolutely is. And there are, you know, some of the set pieces in it are undeniable. It's got like five of the most watchable scenes in history. Really amazing. I will admit that when Ray Liotta slams the door in my face at the end of the movie, even in the movie theater in 1990, I was kind of like, well, fuck you too. I know some people who felt that way. I remember that. I think when, again, when we talk about the Academy Awards, and I'm not going to make an argument for Dances with Wolves over Goodfellas, But I wonder if that was part of the reason that Academy voters went, oh, well, fuck, you know, fuck.

25:44Of course.

25:44Griffin Newman:The movie ends with him being like, this sucks. I'm not going to live in a fucking house. I'm a schnook. I eat noodles with ketchup. And it's like, I mean, obviously, but I think some audiences are like, you're lucky you're alive, you dumb motherfucker.

25:56David Sims:It's not a unique thought. Yeah. But I very strongly subscribe to the theory that the ending is the most important factor towards the best picture win. Right.

26:05Griffin Newman:How are people walking out of the theater?

26:07David Sims:What is the feeling you give them? Our buddy Amanda Dobbins, I think, hit the nail on the head when she saw one battle after another and said the moment the needle drop for American Girl kicks in, he's probably won himself Best Picture.

26:20Griffin Newman:You're winning over a certain sentimental portion of the audience.

26:24David Sims:He figured out how to thread the needle the integrity of its ideas, but still feels like a triumph and has everyone leave in feeling up. And I remember being surprised that Enora won Best Picture because the ending is such a downer, but yet you can't deny that the ending is... It's sort of the best part of the movie. It's a gut punch. It's the perverse showpiece. And that maybe is...

26:44Griffin Newman:It's my argument for why Titanic made$2 billion. Yeah. You walk out happy. It's the ultimate example. They all fucking died. It is the ultimate example. And yet you walk out and you're like, I feel elated because she goes to the dream world and marries Leo.

26:55David Sims:They split the fucking atom on that one. It is why James Cameron is James Cameron because he said, I can figure out how to make everyone walk out of Titanic cheering. Hearts full. But that certainly is a Scorsese problem is his endings are usually very challenging. It is funny that the thing he finally wins Best Picture for is his most mocked ending.

27:13Griffin Newman:Yeah, The Departed.

27:14David Sims:Yeah, that everyone jokes about the shot of the rat and how unsubtle it is. I like the shot of the rat. I don't dislike it. Our guest today is that guy. Oh, fuck. It's the King of Doritos. Return to the show very quickly by popular demand. I will say I received a multitude of texts saying, Get his ass back. Truly. And secondly, when we finished recording our first episode with you, you said, what are you guys doing next? We said Scorsese. David said, what would you pick? You said taxi driver. And we look at each other and go, fuck, we might have to do that. Sounds fucking good to me. It's a quick turnaround, but we might just fucking have to do that.

27:53David Sims:Tracy Letts. Thanks for having me. King of Physical Media, back in the room.

27:56Griffin Newman:Yeah, third chair on the big picture.

27:57David Sims:I knew that we weren't bringing you discs this time, so we weren't going to...

28:01Griffin Newman:That's canonical, and we all know that. No, no, it's uncontested. We speak it into law by saying it on this podcast.

28:06David Sims:I knew we weren't going to spend an hour going over Blind by Disc challenge. Oh, yeah, right. I thought we'd get straight to the movie.

28:13Griffin Newman:Sorry, we didn't get you a bunch more random trash movies to ask your collection.

28:18David Sims:I do like that we did basically start with half an hour of alternative Oscar history across decades. That's true. It feels like the correct spiritual sequel. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, the gift you got me, I've yet to tuck into some of them, but my kids love... The nanny showed my kids Mouse Hunt.

28:36Griffin Newman:Oh, there you go. That's a big win. Because the... And they liked it. The nanny loves it. Okay. And so she knew it. She already knew it. She knew it. She was excited to show that to the kids and the kids. It's in my head.

28:49David Sims:It's a very practical movie. When you talk about your kids liking Dark Crystal and such. Right.

28:54Griffin Newman:In my head, your DVD collection is like Raiders of the Lost Ark when they put the thing on the shelf, where it's just like an endless hallway. There's like a forklift. It is a bit like that. I'm like, how does the nanny or anyone even know where Mouse Hunt is? It's their robot arm.

29:11David Sims:It's their Dewey Decimal System kind of punching the code to locate. Well, look, the stack you gave me sat on the kitchen island for about a week before it got entered into the system. It was accessible. And you know what? it.

29:21Griffin Newman:That's my physical media system too, is the stack piles. Then I'm like, it's time to get this stuff up.

29:26David Sims:It's funny that I, right. I try to like theme the stacks and then one of the stacks is themed around new purchases. And then that stack gets so big that I'm like, I got to work that into the other theme stacks. Right. Yeah.

29:37Griffin Newman:Right. So mouse hunt. Okay, good. Good to know. Yeah. Any other, yeah. I mean, you just did your physical media council. No, no other big news on the, on the world of Blu-rays. I don't know.

29:47David Sims:I mean, New York, New York just announced on 4k. I, of course, imported the Australian imprint disc, which has some features that are not being carried over. I have that disc as well. To the 4K release, but the 4K release does have both cuts. Oh, I see. So the New York, New York I have is just a blue. Yes, mine too. It's domestic blue. Right, right. And then the imprint Australian release is three discs. Oh, I don't have that. And it has both cuts and a lot of special features. But this is MVD marquee. I'm going to get the fine folks at MVD Marquis. Ben, you seem a little too excited by this conversation if you want to just chill out a little bit.

30:27Griffin Newman:All right, I'll settle down.

30:28David Sims:Just because it's a little unbecoming how ramped up you are.

30:30Griffin Newman:Do you do any of the subscriptions? I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm about to fall on the floor. That's my concern is that you're going to trip your teeth. Your vinegar syndrome, your Radiance. Do you do any of those kind of... I do the Radiance subscription. Okay. That seems pretty good. I've been debating any of these. And there are a couple that I just order every... They don't have subscriptions, but I order every release. When the monthly announcement happens. You get the monthly announcement in there.

30:52David Sims:This was when Ben was trying to pick which disc to buy for you and our buddy Ben David Grabinski was consulting on it. His really valuable advice to Ben was certain labels you might just need to rule out. Certain labels, Tracy might just be at all to cart. I don't subscribe to the Vinegar Syndrome because they'll do a lot of genre horror, like 90s or 2000s genre horror that I'm not so into. do. Fineger Syndrome has never released a film that is less than a minted classic.

31:20Griffin Newman:Yeah, they definitely haven't taken, right, the worst trash and put it in the most beautifully

31:25David Sims:designed package. More selective than the Criterion Collection. That's the other thing I got multiple texts about is five different people upset by us mocking how good of a package they put together for Congo, including Matt Singer. It's a great pack. Wrote the booklet for Congo. Yeah. My friend Alex Perlin, who Congo is his favorite movie and his bachelor party was, let's go back to my place and watch Congo. Defending the movie Congo.

31:49Griffin Newman:And defending its, right,

31:50David Sims:its prestige package. That we pinpointed it as the ultimate example of, does this need this good of a release? Oh, well, come on. That thing is hot trash. Come on. Supreme Delroy Lindo performance. You can't argue with that. Monkey Talks. The Monkey Talks.

32:11Griffin Newman:The Monkey Talks, Amy. The Monkey is... The monkey, you mean Ernie Hudson, right? Not Del Rey Lando, right? No, Del Rey Lando's got a one-scene performance.

32:18David Sims:Oh, that's right. He's like the warlord. Yes, that's right. I'm not racist, my friend.

32:24Griffin Newman:I've seen, I was just, I was worried you were for a second. I'm not. I've seen Congo. I was worried you were racist. I was, I've seen Congo.

32:31David Sims:I'm trying to tell you that I, in fact, am not racist.

32:34Griffin Newman:I know that Congo is a very important movie for some people, as we're describing where it was like they were the right age. Yes. They saw this weird-ass Jurassic Park-y kind of movie. Yeah. And it's not. I've seen it, I think, 1.5 times. I do own the Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray. I do too. I own that goddamn shoebox. I do have it.

32:50David Sims:I went to the store in Pittsburgh recently, and I was running my fingers across that box, and I was tempted, but I still haven't pulled the trigger on it. Tracy, you were going to weigh in on the monkey. Amy. So fucking stupid. Thank you for weighing in. Perfect. Okay, great. I was talking about this with Mad Singer, who wrote the essay in the booklet. Great Mad Singer. It is so funny to me that Jurassic Park is obviously humongous, right? And everyone's like, okay, how do we fucking follow this trend? Steven Spielberg's producer is going to adapt a different Crichton book. Yeah. And the hook is, you think fucking dinosaurs are scary?

33:30David Sims:What about gorillas? Right. A thing that... Talking monkey. A species that does currently exist on our planet. Right. And is less scary. And the trailers made it seem like they're going to go to the jungle and gorillas are going to fuck them up. And the movie is 90 % of its runtime. Just people having kind of intellectual hard science conversations next to a talking monkey. Should we let this monkey talk? Was that a good idea? At the end, they go in a cave and they fight monkeys for like five minutes and the movie's over.

34:00Griffin Newman:Oh, my God.

34:00David Sims:It's funny that they didn't even try to adapt it to make it more Jurassic Park-y. It is just a classic Crichton like, I don't know, I'm a little interested in the science of this. Maybe I should do that Radiant subscription. The Radiant subscription is really good. It's really worth it. And like I say, there's a couple. Indicator, I get every release from Indicator. But not subscribed. You just add all of them. They don't have a subscription, or I would. Flickr, Ali. I love Flickr. I get every release from Flickr.

34:26Griffin Newman:I love Flickr, Ali. Damn, I don't really know. So they do a lot of very old, you know, 20s and 30s, right? They do a lot of silent movies. Yes.

34:33David Sims:That's a really good thing. I've been thinking of doing the...

34:35Griffin Newman:My whole problem when you go on the big picture to talk discs. It's like my accountant calls me and it's like, what happened?

34:42David Sims:Physical Media High Council episode came out. I cannot tell you how many carts I checked out. The amounts of money I spent. I spent like crazy.

34:50Griffin Newman:Well, you know, we should say, since we're talking up all of these different companies, and, you know, we also do complain on this show a lot that the office is just filled to the brim with stuff. Negative space. It's too much negative space.

35:03David Sims:Empty shelves. Love some swag every once in a while. This is Ben's just like, send up the free stuff. This is true.

35:08Griffin Newman:I'm sure, yeah.

35:09David Sims:Do you know what often happens now when I order from these boutique labels? They send you a little message? They put in a little note. I appreciate the note.

35:15Griffin Newman:I've had a couple of little notes. I like the note over the years. Hey, we appreciate you. Right. Thank you. Yeah. That's all good. I'm happy to spend on things I think are worthwhile and valuable. Such as fancy Blu-rays of Congo.

35:28David Sims:I mean, what we're doing is important and noble and everyone should salute us. They should hit their pots and pans with the sticks when we walk down the street. I was going to ask you. Hold on. Before you ask me. Please. The Haunting 4K. Do you have it yet? Yes. Is it out? I mean, I pre-ordered it. I don't have it. Sean and I do a commentary on it. Really? Very excited about that. On the original. Yeah, it's the Robert Wise. I gotta order that. Beautiful, by the way.

35:52Griffin Newman:Yeah. And you know when Robert, when Paul Newman won his Oscar for The Color of Money, he wasn't there. And Robert Wise, accepted on his behalf, starts to say, like, Paul really appreciates this. Betty Davis is next to him. Betty Davis and Robert Wise were presenting the award. And Betty Davis cuts Robert Wise off and is like, I just want everyone to understand this is Robert Wise and he's a really great filmmaker. Oh, great.

36:11David Sims:No, you're right. It's Betty Davis is presenting. Right. Robert Wise comes to accept. Robert Wise was standing on his behalf.

36:16Griffin Newman:Robert Wise is trying to be like Paul really. And Betty Davis is like, will everyone give a little respect to Robert Wise? He may be old, but he made the sound of music. He may, you know, like she starts and he's like, oh, thank you, Betty. And they walk off. They play the music.

36:32David Sims:It's the weirdest thing. I want to talk about Taxi Driver, but I just need to close the loop on this. The Radiance subscription, does it include the sub-label? What is the name of the label? Okay. You have to... But they do offer a subscription for that? No. No. You have to... That's an extra. That's an add-on. What's it called again? Transmission. Yes. Which is Stuntman and Vampire's Kiss and Cutter's Way was Transmission, or was that regular Radiance?

36:57Griffin Newman:Stuntman was regular. Vampire's Kiss was as well. Night of the Juggler. They did that. Yes. Night of the Juggler. do you know that one? I've never watched it. James Brolin, right? Heard great things. Yeah. Carrie and I had a great time with that. That thing is batshit. Yeah. The thing just goes batshit. Brolin made a lot of like hefty trash, I feel like. Right? Like that was sort of Brolin's lane. Like in the 70s. What a man. What a man. Yeah, such a, he's an animal. Like when you see him in Amityville,

37:27David Sims:you're like,

37:27Griffin Newman:this guy is right.

37:28David Sims:He's an ideal. Yes. Very close to being the only American Bond, as we talked about when we did those Patreon episodes. Impossible to imagine. Sort of a bizarre thought.

37:37Griffin Newman:Very close. There's screen tests. He was supposedly like seriously considered. Doesn't really. Wasn't it one of those times where they were trying to get like Connery to knock like 250K off his quote or whatever?

37:48David Sims:I think he was in it twice. And there is an extended screen test. There's also a fascinating extended screen test of him doing Planet of the Apes. Now, Tracy, are you testing for Bond?

37:58Griffin Newman:A really good question. I know Amazon's on the hunt. Denis Villeneuve is available. You know, he's looking around. When they get serious, I might consider testing. You can be a Bond villain. That'd be fun.

38:10David Sims:No, he should be Bond. Let's not fucking take an offer. They should get serious. I worked with an actor named Anthony Higgins. You would probably recognize him maybe from Raiders of the Lost Ark or maybe from the Draftsman's Contract.

38:25Griffin Newman:Peter Greenway. To me, that's a classic. He's a British guy. He plays British guy. Proper British guy. In Raiders? Isn't he in Raiders? Isn't he one of the... He is. Let me double check that. Because I do feel like you're right. He's in one of them, isn't he? Am I making it up? I'm just trying to... Yes, he is Major Gobler. He's one of the fucking Nazis. Oh, yes. Sure, sure. Yes. He's a very good actor. Big Shakespearean actor. And he's in a couple of old Hammer films. Okay. And under a slightly different name. I think it was Anthony Corley or Corlin or something. Corlin, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Taste the butt of Dracula.

38:59He's a madman. He told me a great Christopher Lee story. But also, he was up for Bond at one point. They brought him out a couple of times to test for Bond. And the whole reason they were doing it was because Roger Moore was bitching about his contract. Which he did after every single movie. We'll get somebody else. And when I worked with him, he was like, thank God I did not get James. He was genuinely great. No, I'm not as I am to be now. Genuinely grateful that he was not James Bond. And I said, why is that? And he said, well, because I can walk over here to the off-license and make a bet and nobody's going to bother.

39:36Griffin Newman:Now, you mean the off-track betting. You don't mean off-track. In Britain, the off-license, that's where you get your booze. That's where we work. The off-ee. Oh, that's where you get your booze? Yeah, so the whole thing in Britain is you can't get booze at the grocery store, at like the corner store. You have to go to the off-ee, which is next door. But they call the off-track betting something different in England, too. I thought of that as like the bookmaker or whatever. I mean, like Ladbrokes, you know, like, but yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, Bookie, I mean, I don't know. Yeah. He's a lovely guy.

40:06Can I tell you my Christopher Lee story? This has nothing to do with Taxi Driver.

40:09David Sims:I will say, just a future plug, we're getting ready to later in the fall do Dracula on our Patreon. Yes. So we're going to watch that first. One of each kind of major Dracula. So we're doing the first Christopher Lee. Right. We'll do Lucosi. We'll do Lee.

40:24Griffin Newman:Am I getting a call for that? Yeah, yeah. I'm sure you want to come by. Which one do you want? You want the Langella? Do you want the... I want Christopher Lee. You want Christopher Lee. He's the best. Okay. My mom said the classiest person she ever interviewed in her entire life. Like truly like the biggest gentleman. Well, here was Anthony's story. So he works with him on Taste the Blood of Dracula. And the first time he works with him, it's raining, of course. It's always raining. Sure. And they've got Christopher Lee waiting in a taxi. What do we call them in England? The taxi? Minicab? black car so he's waiting until the rain passes and so they take Anthony from the trailer and they put him in the car with Christopher Lee and Christopher Lee's in the full Dracula get up and he's introduced to Christopher Lee and Christopher Lee says oh my god this weather is just dreadful long pause oh my god these teeth just don't fit in my mouth I'm so uncomfortable wearing his teeth oh my god this cape what this cape is made out of i can't breathe and it's just go it's just a litany of complaint right and just unbroken his fourth dracula performance and he's sick of it just unbroken stream of complaint they make the movie 30 years later anthony is cast in one of these TNT biblical, right?

41:47One of these mini series, right? John the Baptist, right? And he's flown out to some desert location in the Middle East. And he comes out of the trailer and they lead him into this holding tent where they're getting ready to shoot. And he sees in the holding tent, in a long flowing robe, Christopher Lee sitting waiting. You know, he's got a long beard and now he's an old man. And he goes, he's excited to see him after 30 years. And he sits down and Christopher Lee says, oh my God, this sand, just sand is getting everywhere. This robe is so hot. I can't even breathe.

42:23David Sims:It was like as if it had never stopped. I love it. Have you found this, Tracy? That certain actors, it almost feels like the discomfort and beyond that, the part of the performance and the struggle is like the heart of their process. Oh, absolutely. that they need the motor of the irritation.

42:43Griffin Newman:To answer your question, the TV series is Moses. Of course. You found it.

42:48David Sims:Oh, my God.

42:49Griffin Newman:I found it. Ben Kingsley played Moses. Christopher Lee played Ramses. He must have killed that. Anthony Higgins played Korach. Yeah. Not sure. He's sort of like a rebel from the Bible. I don't know, really. But very funny to imagine. Fine. Put the fucking Egyptian headdress on me. You know. The unbroken string of complaint is the way some actors have to get through the day. Especially if you're Christopher Lee. You served in the British Secret Service. You killed people. And then it's like you made 40 unbroken years of monster movies and shit. He never was in a movie that probably had a high budget.

43:29Griffin Newman:He was the king of these British genre films.

43:32David Sims:I feel like it was going around again recently, but the clip of him doing an interview after being knighted or given an OBE.

43:40Griffin Newman:I mean, I guess he was in like, you know, Man with the Golden Gun or whatever. That sort of stuff, he would have a better trailer.

43:47David Sims:And the interviewer said, well, there you have it, Christopher Lee, the King of Horror. And he went, the King of Horror? I haven't made a horror movie in 40 years. And he started listing all the different characters he played. And I'm like, my God. You're kind of the King of Horror. You did play Dracula like 15 times. And it's not even like that was your core franchise. You did it like six times for Hammer. And then you just said like, open game, who wants to pay me to play Dracula in anything? He did. He made Italian Dracula movies. He did American Dracula movies.

44:15Griffin Newman:He's the best. He rules. I remember when my mom saw, like she interviewed him for, I can't remember for what. It was in the early 2000s. And we watched a ton of Hammer horror movies because she was like, I'm scared. You got to watch these with me. And we had a great time. This is a long time ago.

44:28David Sims:That's so funny that for her, from her childhood, she was like, these are primal fears.

44:33Griffin Newman:I'm freaked out by these. And I was like, I'll watch them, you know, like, and then we saw, you know, and he'd been in Lord of the Rings at that point. And we saw Attack of the Clones. Yeah. Which a movie my mother, like, had no interest in whatsoever, right? She probably just watched. She was like, yeah, I need you to show me his part at the end, right? And when he watched, she was just like, he's just got instant, even in this, this garbage. Yeah. Instant gravitas.

44:53David Sims:Like when he's just delivering these lines about the force and lightsabers. I am loathe to invoke Ain't It Cool News, but I have a very distinct memory because of the timeline of when I would need to shoot. It was before Lord of the Rings, which must have been the first time I saw him as well before I learned about Christopher Lee. But this is when I actually learned who Christopher Lee was there was an Ain't It Cool News headline, which was, Scoop, you will not believe who is playing the new villain in Star Wars Episode 2. Wow. I click the link and it says, like, guys, I've heard this. Reliable sources cannot not say who, but are you seated?

45:28David Sims:And then it was scrolled down and it was dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. Like you truly had to physically scroll down the site. And then it was just a photo of Christopher Lee, blood running down his face, woman in his arms, neck bites. And then it just said, Christopher fucking Lee. And this impressed upon you. I was like, who is this important? Who is this legendary? Episode two. By episode two, you mean Empire Strikes Back. No, unfortunately, you mean Attack of the... Oh, I see. It's in the mid-2000s. Well, that's a good system. Absolutely.

46:00Griffin Newman:It is wild that Lucas in the 80s is like, call Empire Strikes Back episode five. And I was like, what? And he's like, just do it. Right. Come on.

46:09David Sims:Right, because people forget that when Star Wars was released, it did not say episode four.

46:14Griffin Newman:It doesn't say episode four.

46:15David Sims:No.

46:15Griffin Newman:It's just called Star Wars.

46:16David Sims:Right. I think when they re-released it right before Empire, he added episode four. So everyone who had seen the movie 80 times and had it memorized was like, fuck is this episode four shit? What are you talking about?

46:27Griffin Newman:No, it was retroactively titled episode four. After? After Empire Strikes Back. Insane. So it was Empire Strikes Back, people sit down, can't wait to see the second Star Wars movie and the scroll begins episode five and everyone's like, why is it that?

46:41David Sims:Do you think people in the audience went, did I miss? Yes. I'm sure people were just like, what? Like, yeah, I don't know. Were there three in between I just somehow didn't catch? Taxi Driver. I don't know if you guys had this experience watching the movie this time, but upon this rewatch, I was quite taken with the fact that it is Taxi Driver. Oh, sure. That I just kept going like, this is the most fucking Taxi Driver movie in the world. It is wild to rewatch movies that feel like every single thread, every single fiber is canonized. It's hard to just kind of watch them fresh as like a movie.

47:21David Sims:And yet, I did.

47:22Griffin Newman:it rules this is just and i want to hear i know tracy that you saw this film as a as a child or you saw some of it and were taken away what's the story yeah so the story is uh and apologies if there are any crossover listeners uh who've heard this before but my folks took me to see uh a lot of uh material made for adults when i was a kid it took me to see serpico when i was six years old That's the earliest, most egregious example, I think.

47:53David Sims:They never went full Travis Bickle date night, but they were taking you to... Well, in fact, they did. Really? When I was 10, we went to the drive-in movie theater to see Taxi Driver, the year it came out. Now, where I come from in Oklahoma and when I grew up, drive-ins were very much a part of our movie-going culture.

48:12Griffin Newman:I was going to say, did you have a picture house that you went to? Was it all drive-ins or what town in Oklahoma are you from? A small town called Durant, Oklahoma, a town of about 12 ,000 people. And when we moved there in 1970, there were three screens in town. There was the Plaza Theater, which was the old single screen in the middle of the town. And then there were two drive-in movie theaters. There was a drive-in called the Ship Drive-In, named after its owner, Ship Bullard. Oh, I love it. It's not like it was naval thieves. Yeah, right. Although there was a big, beautiful neon ship on the sign out front.

48:46and then there was the Skyview which showed pornographic films on the south side of town which you could actually see from the highway driving down the road insane yeah which of course we called the Skinview lovingly

49:00Griffin Newman:but here's the plaza I found it that's it it's still there it's not a theater anymore it looks like the last picture show doesn't it yeah it really does it's a big one screen I worked at that theater as a projectionist I projected Wrath of Khan in that movie Best movie ever made. That rocks. Every time that James Horner's course spools up, happiest person in the world. So at the ship, I would also work at the ship. I worked at the ship more than anywhere else. But when I was 10, we went to the ship drive-in as a family to see Taxi Drive. Perfect. And I checked the time on the rewatch a couple of nights ago.

49:39I checked the time because it's when Jodie Foster and Travis go back to her.

49:46Griffin Newman:And she's like trying to take off her clothes. So it's about an hour into the movie? It's later than you think.

49:50David Sims:About an hour 15, hour 20. It's what really struck me watching it this time is that obviously you see her and you see sport early, but the movie doesn't really kick into what people remember the movie being until it is about 75 % over. That's right.

50:08Griffin Newman:Yeah, you're not quite sure what's going to happen with this guy. Because the movie was considered pretty transgressive, for the time for mainstream Hollywood fare. And because we had already seen some startling stuff in the movie up to that point, my mom turned to my dad and said, Dennis, I'm very uncomfortable. So he put the car in gear and we laughed. God bless. I mean, I have to. I also like to imagine the drive in and then just every five minutes, a car just kind of peels out as the movie goes on and on. He goes to the porn movie with Sybil Schaefer, a couple of cars peel out, you know what I mean?

50:42David Sims:I probably see this movie when I'm like 13 and its reputation preceded it so much that I knew where it was going. I have to imagine your parents sitting there at that time with a character who is unlike any put on screen in a major movie up until that point. There's a genuine concern of like, is he going to fuck this kid? Like what's what's going to happen?

51:07Griffin Newman:Right.

51:07David Sims:I'm watching it knowing this is going towards violence. And we don't really know who Jodie Foster is, so we don't actually know how old the actor is playing the part. But in any case, we leave. Now, this is 1976. It's not like I can rent the movie.

51:24Griffin Newman:Yeah, you're not going to catch it on Netflix in nine months or whatever. My folks go back to see the movie the next night. They go back by themselves to see the movie. So they were intrigued. They were hooked. They were intrigued. They wanted to see it. And then they narrated for me what happened through the rest of the film. Since I guess, you know, he doesn't wind up fucking the girl. They felt it was all right to narrate the rest of the movie. And my dad even acts out the hand to the temple as he's right with the bloody finger as he's firing into his and he's lost his mind. And he describes this and he acts this out.

52:01And then my mom is the one who says, and then there's a coda at the end of the movie in which there's this letter written by her parents and Sybil Shepard gets into the car and mom said, I think it's all fantasy. I don't think any of that stuff is actually real. So credit to my mom for picking up on that. She didn't walk out of there being like, Trinsett, everyone says he did a good job.

52:21Griffin Newman:I guess he was the hero.

52:23David Sims:We haven't talked about, I haven't brought it up that much in our 11 years of doing this podcast, but I more and more think it is a key part of how I ended up being the way I am today. And obviously this was driven by me already innately being so interested in movies. But if my parents went out for like a grownup date night to go see a movie, I would stay awake, even when I was supposed to be in bed with the lights off, I would stay awake for them to come home so that they could narrate to me what the movie was in the same kind of way. And I think my parents were similarly very good at doing it.

52:56David Sims:Yeah.

52:57Griffin Newman:They could finesse it for you.

52:58David Sims:But would also add their analysis to it. Right. So there are a lot of movies, not this one, because, you know, I'm sure my parents told me the basic shape of taxi driver. But, like, I remember them trying to explain Trainspotting to me. And when I finally watched Trainspotting, you know, seven years later, I was like, oh, that's that scene. and this is what they left out or that's where they editorialized or things like that. But I do think that's... A parent wouldn't do that unless they felt like their kid wanted that. But I do also think that only supports and trains the kind of insane brain that we have to just want to digest these things constantly.

53:35David Sims:And especially when you're sort of being told, like, these things are so close but you can't watch it just yet. You're hearing the breakdown of what it is and someone explaining what their reaction to it was. And this is one of those movies where I wish I could have had the experience of watching it without knowing what it was and where it was going. Yeah, right. Even just one time in my life. When do you end up seeing it? Probably not until I'm 18 years old do I wind up going to a video store and renting it. And I remember even then, we were talking about the video store days when you go with your family and try to...

54:09Pick the one. Pick the one. Or no, we weren't talking about it. You were talking about it on the podcast I was listening to while I was driving here. Green card. See, I can't keep reality. Yeah. It's fine.

54:20David Sims:It's fine. We're straight. You've been on a big picture run that similarly I was saying when you came in, I've listened to three episodes with you in the last 10 days. Well, I remember one of those video store moments. You know, I'm finally going to get a chance to see Taxi Driver. And I remember my dad being kind of like, really? I mean, he didn't feel the need to watch it again. Yeah, sure. He had enjoyed it, and he was greatly respectful of De Niro's performance in particular. But I think he considered it kind of an ugly thing that would need to be revisited.

54:51Griffin Newman:It certainly is. To my mother, this was the definition of an adult movie that I was not writing. You know what I mean? Where she was like, well, you can't rent a movie like Taxi Driver. You know what I mean? It was the definitional R-rated movie that was not available to me until I was older. Taxi Driver. She's like, that's the most grown-up movie ever made. It is not for young David. And I was like, it's about a, I get taxis all the time. I'm a Manhattan kid. Nice guys. They know directions. What does he do? He takes people the wrong way. Like, what do you mean? He's a taxi driver. How scary can he be?

55:24Griffin Newman:No, wait a second. You're from England, right? So Tracy, you're going to get the story and no one's allowed to make fun of me. I was born in Manhattan. My mantra. My mother is from Utica, New York, upstate. My dad is English from Serberton in London. And when I was nine years old, My dad got a job in London, and he moved, and we all moved with him to London. I lived in London for 13 years. I see. So your first nine years spent in Manhattan. New York kid, Upper West Side, 89th and Amsterdam, baby. Oh. And you've never left this.

55:54David Sims:I've never left, but here's the twist. My mother's secretly British.

55:58Griffin Newman:Well, I thought, yeah, or she's European, I think. Well, but this is why I'm saying secretly.

56:03David Sims:Right. Because she's actually British, but she was basically raised French. Right, and she's got French ancestry. Ben, where are you from? French stepfather. From Jersey. Oh, yeah? Born and raised. Yep. And been here ever since. Never been in the central time zone.

56:17Griffin Newman:No. No, because he went to college in New York. Yeah, went to the new school. Right. And just stuck around since. See, one of the reasons I wanted to establish this, other than my curiosity about my friends at Blank Check, one of the reasons I wanted to know this is also because you have to realize that as a little kid living in Durand, Oklahoma, a town of 12 ,000 people with a movie theater that looks like that, what the world of Taxi Driver looks like to a kid like that. Of course. And just to America, I assume so much of America is watching this movie. It's like, right, that's New York. That's what it's like.

56:48Griffin Newman:It's like murder around every corner or whatever.

56:51David Sims:When I was born, my father worked in an office in Times Square. I think he basically had that office until I was five. And so I do have very primal early memories of the pre-Disney Times Square where we would go to visit my father, which was the area that still most purely felt like this. You know? And even going to Times Square during the day as a child, aided by a mother, you know, it's not like I was being accosted in a stroller. But it did look the way this movie looked. Right. And it had that weird energy to it. Everything was just kind of unseemly and edgy and felt desperate. and the way this movie looks is remarkable right i mean it's uh a testament to michael chapman who i assume we'll talk more about but also a testament to uh scorsese and and schrader's vision of new york as a kind of hell on earth absolutely it is a thing i think about all the time and it hit me while watching this film where i was like this is what i'm fucking talking about I hate how overlit almost all evening stuff is.

58:02David Sims:I find it is so evocative to be in dark places where you actually can't see stuff. And almost all movies feel the need to make things more legible than they would be in real life. And I understand that part of it is, especially in the history of film, that film stocks were so slow that you needed to overlight even if you wanted to make something look dark. Gordon Willis films still would have used infinitely more lights than we would need to use today to shoot something on video to just be able to get any image that registers. And yet, this is a movie, especially in the opening and the sort of opening credit sequence, where I'm just like, God, I love how much you cannot see.

58:40David Sims:It makes it so much scarier. It's part of the hell on earth thing that you have this insane contrast between these neon lights that are both the fixed lights of the locations and the headlights of the cars going by, kind of smudging through time and space, and then just voids of blackness. Just what the fuck is happening there?

59:13Griffin Newman:Can I offer a take, though? Please. A little bit of a small take. I also do think it's kind of a beautiful and seductive movie. Like, as much as it is, like, New York is terrifying, and, like, I'm also watching, and I'm like, this is romantic. Like, it's a little romantic, right? It's got that impressionistic thing. You're a little enchanted by him. I think it's crucial to Taxi Driver that you're not just like, this is a freak. I'm watching a freak in the freak show The fact that he's handsome That he's got the little bits of De Niro Twinkle amongst the I want to put parameters around it because I really

59:47David Sims:Want to resist the temptation to draw the Comparison too many times

59:50Griffin Newman:Don't bring it up I know what you want to bring up He wants to bring up Todd Phillips' Joker It just Which is kind of ripping off this movie It's thoroughly ripping off this movie I assume you have not seen this film

1:00:01David Sims:I have I've seen Joker I had not re-watched Taxi Driver since seeing Joker or Faliada. And it was astonishing to me, A, just how wholesale a ripoff is in ways I kind of forgot how one-to-one some of the elements are. But B, that it just fucks up that exact equation, which is just the characterization of Travis Bickle is so perfectly dialed in on when is he pathetic? When is he sympathetic? When is he empathetic? When is he terrifying? When is he unknowable? and the soup of that and the dance of that. And what feels like the absolute distinction is that this is a movie defined by what to me is the masterstroke of the movie in the moment where Scorsese becomes a generational genius is in the payphone conversation when the camera moves away from him.

1:00:51David Sims:This is too painful.

1:00:53Griffin Newman:One of the first camera moves I ever learned about as a teenager. Like it's Ebert or someone talks about it in a review where they're like, notice how the camera can't look at it.

1:01:02David Sims:I watched the movie and went, wait a second, what the fuck is going on. Like, pause the VHS and then ask Jeeves, what is this? You know, because I was just like, something has happened. But was Jeeves helpful? Yes, he was. But it felt like something has happened here, right? Like, Dylan just went electric. Like, the language just changed in some way. I don't understand, but I understand what it made me feel and what is the intent of this. And Joker is a movie that's, as you're saying, is look at this fucking freak. Yeah, yeah. That is showing you.

1:01:33Griffin Newman:Let's not mention Joker again, please.

1:01:36David Sims:Of course, only refer to him as Richard T from here on else. But it is a movie that he is so captivating, and it's not a traditional charisma, and it's also kind of unlike, to me, the other Banner breakthrough 70s new leading men, new Hollywood performances. It's still impossible to pin this fucking thing down. Now, that statement is something I really felt on this rewatch, getting ready for this. And for me, it's a hallmark of great movie making, great art, the way it continually shifts and changes. And you have a hard time getting your arms around just what the hell it is. And obviously, the film is fixed.

1:02:19The film hasn't changed in 50 years. And yet your relationship to it changes. The person you are changes. And it's just sort of endlessly fascinating. the myriad ways to look at it, to look into it, to, to the, the question about, uh, perspective, about point of view in the movie, which is pretty, pretty profound question you have to ask yourself. You're talking about the, uh, the, the romanticism of the city, David, which is not only present in the way it looks, but also obviously in the very lush, uh, score, right? The part of the right from the start herrman score right with the lush saxophone um which is argued about right

1:03:04Griffin Newman:the score is too much is it too heavy right yeah i think the score's incredible i also i kind of forgot it is interesting when these young guys are using the sort of the craftsmen of their idols right like herman hitchcock scott you know what i mean like and i imagine those relationships were odd and like spielberg even with williams yeah who's older than him he's not like totally you know old but like but Williams is a guy who basically I want someone who has a hand on the prior generation

1:03:32David Sims:Williams had just popped at the end of the old school right versus someone like Herman who was but I love the Herman score do you love the Herman score

1:03:41Griffin Newman:I mean where are you on the Herman it is very heavy I can you know like it's very you know Carrie watched the movie with me and she had said after I was just asking her the question about it and she had said you know she said the truth is that the wrong score would isolate him even further. He would look even smaller to you than he does. And it's important that he not look that small, he not look that infinitesimal because you're trying to get inside him, right? The movie's trying to put us inside his point of view. Right. And that the score is somewhat successful at doing that. Yeah. Basically, the score has two essential themes that just get replayed over and over.

1:04:20I want to call out the sub-theme

1:04:21David Sims:because there's the obvious taxi driver theme that we all think of that feels very... Especially just theme from Taxi Driver. Overcowering. But then there's the kind of deep, like, sustained, which is the really important counterbalance of this isn't just romanticized. This guy's kind of, the narratives he tells himself. It is like a musical embodiment of the, like, wrong note playing inside of this guy constantly that he's trying to drown out with the other theme. Yeah. Ben. What's up? A lot of this Scorsese series is going to be a journey for you rewatching movies that were ruined for you by annoying people you grew up with.

1:05:01David Sims:This is a thread we've established.

1:05:03Griffin Newman:God of Jersey knuckleheads who just were obsessed with the violent movies.

1:05:09David Sims:Travis Bickle's fucking awesome. Yes. What a cool guy. Yeah.

1:05:13Griffin Newman:Taking all the wrong lessons. Right. I mean, when I first saw this, though, I was so enamored with the edginess of New York City. Right. That was really what drew me in. By the time we're watching it, it's not like New York stopped being edgy, but this New York is gone. So it's sort of like, that's also a little romantic of like, when New York was really porn theaters and scuzz. And like, yeah. We had it right. I don't know exactly when it's set because it was released in 76, but it also, for me, I just, I have so much romanticism for 77 because that was the year of punk. CBGBs. Right, right, right.

1:05:51David Sims:But I think it is kind of important that, Travis Bickle's predating that. I know, right? Even the Mohawk. Yeah. Right? Which became a staple haircut with punks. But I just mean that there's not a productive subculture that he could find as an outlet. Sure. I feel you. A lot of Travis Bickle's take the off-ramp to punk, which is a better way to excise those emotions rather than just spiraling in your own head and turning to violence. Totally. That's right. Because before 1977, a Mohawk was a sign of mental illness. Clearly you've lost your mind.

1:06:31Griffin Newman:I think it'll be in the dossier, but right. Someone basically like a Vietnam vet who like told Schrader, like when someone shaved their head into a Mohawk in my unit, they were about to do something insane. Like that was not a sign of someone being like, you know what? I want a spicy haircut today. Like it's more just like, I'm going to go into the jungle and knife people. Because they're referencing more so indigenous. Like tribal. Exactly.

1:06:53David Sims:I also think it's fascinating for how much the legend of De Niro is in the 70s. This is the most fucking committed actor in the world. And when he gets the raging bull part, it's the can you believe the weight he gained and lost and all of this. That he famously would not shave his head into a mohawk. The mohawk is prosthetic. It is an incredible looking prosthetic. But he clearly was like, no, no, no. know if i shave my head into a mohawk for real my career is over i can't work again i will be a pariah i can't walk the streets with that when i'm not seen looking like that right a i don't want a shaved head b i don't want to have to go home with a mohawk for three weeks have you worked

1:07:39Griffin Newman:with de niro no never met him yeah have you had a mohawk never had a mohawk what is the wildest haircut you ever had? That's a good question. You're looking at it. You're looking great. You're looking fantastic. So, Taxi Driver, yes. Okay, so you see it as a young man. When you said you liked Taxi Driver to us last time we saw you, I was like, I maybe note an influence in some of Tracy's work. There was a line about disturbed individuals. I have no idea if you perceive that at all or if it's just kind of like that's in the mix. Influences are Or who knows how they work on you, you know? Certainly this was a...

1:08:19Griffin Newman:You never were like, I'm going to write my taxi driver. No, no, no. And I have to say, I don't know when I... Well, probably upon first watching it, not when I was 10, but I mean when I was 18 or whatever, I probably recognized a lot of the craftsmanship at work. And yet I think it was probably only over repeated viewings that I started to recognize, oh, it's not just a Scorsese-De Niro joint. Right, it's Schrader. Right, Schrader is a huge part of it. The cinematographer, the score, the editing. I mean, Scorsese surrounded himself with a team to help deliver this whole movie.

1:09:01David Sims:And this is, in my mind, a classic, like, three-authors film. I think you have to give equal kind of authorship to Schrader, De Niro, and Scorsese.

1:09:08Griffin Newman:And I think that's true of Raging Bull, and I think it's true of, well, those are probably, I mean, because like the later Schrader-Scorsese collaborations are very interesting. I think the same is true of Bring Out the Dead. Well, for one, Cage is not as vital, you know, an author. He's a great, it's a great performance. But De Niro clearly was a somewhat equal creative partner with Martin Scorsese any time he worked with him. They were developing. Right, right, right. Bring Out the Dead is great. You know, Last Invitation of Christ. These are great movies as well. But there's a brotherhood between.

1:09:39David Sims:I mean, I think it's even different than Scorsese and DiCaprio. There's something about Scorsese and De Niro.

1:09:43Griffin Newman:Yeah, I think DiCaprio is a little bit more like, I am your instrument. I think he has input. Well, you can see it in the work that Schrader then goes on to do as a director, right? He takes as much of the lineage of taxi driver with him as Scorsese does on his track. Right, and Schrader's still got it. I mean, like, all his movies are about some weird fucking guy who lives in a motel is insane. God's Lonely Man, right? That theme keeps reoccurring. What was it? Master Gardener, I think I saw at the New York Film Festival. The second Joel Edgerton opened his diary and started, the whole audience laughed.

1:10:21Griffin Newman:We were like, how can we not? I mean, I liked the movie, but we were like, he's at it again. He's writing stuff down. We're hearing an inner monologue. You guys have not done Schrader, have you? No, I'd love to do him. He's got such a fascinating career. And of course, all his Facebook posts bring me such joy. Alex Ross Perry sent us like three this morning. But like, you know, he was never really a blank check guy. I mean, the closest is like Mishima or something where it's like he got to kind of... Or the Exorcist movie they canceled. Yeah, he is fascinating. He's so fascinating.

1:10:53David Sims:Can I read? I logged this on Letterboxd this morning. Yeah, sure. And then I was looking at other reviews and I saw that Schrader had logged it in 2022. Logged a review of Taxi Driver? I wouldn't classify this as a review, but I want to read what he wrote because I think it's really interesting. March 5th, 2022, he says, I included a front piece quote on my first script, Taxi Driver, from Thomas Wolfe. The whole conviction of my life rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central inevitable fact of human existence.

1:11:25David Sims:And then this is what reminded me to read this, David.

1:11:28Griffin Newman:Yes.

1:11:28David Sims:I've attached a front piece quote to my last script. He says last, and he also spells script S-C-T-R-I-P-T.

1:11:36Griffin Newman:Yes, and I think the account you're using here, is like it's taking his other writing and sort of correcting it on Letterboxd, right? So like he posted this somewhere else.

1:11:43David Sims:Front piece quote to my last script master gardener from Leonard Cohen, quote, and I choose the rooms that I live in with care. The windows are small and the walls almost bare. There's only one bed and there's only one prayer. I listen all night for your step on the stair. End quote. Twixt the two is the arc of hope that living can bring. There you go. And I was watching one of the things on the 4K.

1:12:06Griffin Newman:Yeah, I watched the 4K for this.

1:12:08David Sims:There's a... Is it the 4K that's in the Columbia box set? They have finally issued a standalone release as well. I got the standalone version of it.

1:12:17Griffin Newman:I have issued the Columbia box sets. Please forgive me. I'm a fan of the Columbia box sets. David thinks they take up too much space.

1:12:23David Sims:They're gigantic. They fuck with the shelf. They're gigantic and I'm getting like Gandhi. I just was wondering if there's any upgrade from the... It's the exact same disc in different packaging. That's what I thought. Yeah, yeah. Identical disc. But there's like a 20-minute Schrader looking back on Taxi Driver thing. And he said, I'm going to paraphrase him poorly here, but it was a thing that really jumped out to me. He's like, the central problem with characters like Travis Bickle is that they think loneliness is like a disease that's been put on them and loneliness is a choice. Right. And he said, like, as a guy who struggled with it myself, loneliness is a thing you inflict upon yourself.

1:13:00David Sims:It is a choice you make.

1:13:02Griffin Newman:But I mean, like, that is so, so, so commonly what you see now with these people on the internet, in cells. Anyone who's basically like, it's someone else's fault or it's society's fault that I am lonely, without a wife, without a job, whatever. I don't know, you know. These folks.

1:13:21David Sims:And that corners of the internet have now basically become a crowdsourced inner monologue. Like, the things that Travis Bickle is telling himself are now a conversation happening between hundreds of disaffected young men talking to each other or podcasting or fucking YouTubing or whatever. You know, it's like that's what the conversation is. I mean, it's part of the weirdness of the fucking time we live in where it's like people are bonding over how they feel completely alone and isolated rather than connecting through that. That's interesting. Do you think Travis would have been on the internet?

1:13:59David Sims:I mean, this is another thing. You're like, in the way where it's like, Travis is two years later, what happens if he has access to punk, right? What if he drops a guy off at CBGB's one night? I'm like, that probably, he turns out better. Yeah. But if he's, in the time of the internet, I think he turns out worse. I think it's actually, he gets too much positive motivation. Yeah, he goes even further.

1:14:20Griffin Newman:He's a super poster on 4chan.

1:14:22David Sims:Yeah. For sure. He's top 1 % commenter on Reddit. Yeah. Yeah. See, again, talking about the nature of the way this movie transforms for me over time. I mean, I'm 60 years old now. And Travis now looks like a young man to me. I mean, he says he's 26 in this movie.

1:14:41Griffin Newman:Right. How old would De Niro have been? Yeah, that sounds almost right. Maybe 30. Yeah, right.

1:14:46David Sims:He said 26 in this and I had the fucking last crusade, my face melted thing. He was a little older. De Niro's like 32 in this movie. So, but 32 to me now is really young. Yeah. And I don't know that I've ever seen or noticed Travis as a young person before. And I just felt so much more sympathy for him on this watch than in the past. And I actually got a little mad about that, about this idea that Travis is the first incel or that he's the birth of the, you know, that, oh my God, the prescience of these people to make a movie about. incel before we knew what incels were. Recognizing a thing that was already existent.

1:15:29Griffin Newman:But I hate those motherfuckers. I mean, fuck those guys. Those guys are fucking losers. It would be really funny if you came on the show and you're like, but incels, they get a bad rap. They ain't so bad. Let's give another shade. It's involuntary what's happening to them. Maybe not a hot take. No, but I agree with you. I hate those. I mean, Marty says in my recent interviews, he's like, I feel like half the people in the world are Travis Pickles. We were trying to make a movie about someone distinctive here, you know, and now it feels not distinctive.

1:15:56David Sims:I think the weird collaborative group nature of the kind of incel community, which in and of itself should be an oxymoron, right? There is a greater degree of like self-pitying. Yeah. Well, what? I didn't do any research on incels. Who started this shit? I mean, it's impossible. Oh, some huge fucking losers. That's actually the correct answer.

1:16:19Griffin Newman:I mean, it's, but it's what Griffin said, which is somewhat interesting of like, Right. It's sort of lonely or angry people find each other. And this was the argument for the internet of like, we'll connect and thus we will not be lonely. But instead of actually connecting, they just discuss their loneliness. Like the only connection is over what they're angry about or whatever.

1:16:40David Sims:I think one of the moments that under discussed actually is a real radicalizing moment for Travis in the film is even his first meeting with the other cabbies. That he cannot connect to them. Yes. That here are other guys who, like, live in the darkness. These are the guys who can get him a gun and know all the people and are sharing stories of their kind of, like, torrid, lascivious behavior and experiences and whatever. And he does not know how to enter that conversation. And it's not just because he hasn't had the same life experiences as them. He just doesn't know how to relate to other people.

1:17:18David Sims:And these people are connecting to each other and going like, you're right and you're right to say it. And they're pumping each other up. Right. And that's so different than the Travis Bickle thing. We have no real sense of like Travis's life, right?

1:17:32Griffin Newman:Or his backstory. Obviously, we know he's a veteran, but like, do we know where he's from? Or he has family or anything like that? Does that ever come up? He writes a card to his parents. He writes to his parents, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do we know where he sends that card? Let's find out.

1:17:46David Sims:I don't know that it comes. I'm not sure. Like, we don't need to. Like, it's fine. I mean, so much of it is this entire generation of men who were drafted into a war that we shouldn't have been fighting in the first place. And then we're just sort of spat back out onto the streets. And it's like, you figure it out now. But clearly, the relationship with the parents is important because of what he doesn't know. Yes. Clearly, his parents haven't done a great job. They haven't narrated to him the movie they saw that night while he was with a babysitter. And they especially didn't explain to him what the movie was saying.

1:18:23David Sims:This is not a guy who was broken by the war. This is a guy who was never raised properly, who probably wasn't wired properly, and then was put into a hyper-extreme situation, treated as just, you know, one of anyone, and then spat back out, and now he's just completely fucked.

1:18:42Griffin Newman:I'm going to open the dossier here. We got our research, of course. This film starts with that rascal, Paul Schrader, a film critic. uh, if anyone's ever read transcendental style and film, his, uh, public, you know, his big, his book on Ozu and Brasson and Dreher. It's the best. Um, but he was not a filmmaker yet. He's a film writer. He is marriage has fallen apart. He was married to Janine off a wall, right? The great production designer. He loses his job as a critic. He says he's in a dispute with the AFI. I do feel like Paul Schrader is always basically like in a fight with someone. Yeah.

1:19:15David Sims:Like he's always pissing somebody off or whatever. I'm just going to call out quickly. I never settled upon, but Scorsese and Trader have said just Midwest.

1:19:25Griffin Newman:Okay, right. And Paul Trader is from, where is he? Like Minnesota? Yeah, something like that. He's like a Calvinist, right? Like, anyway. But he says, 73, he's living in his car in LA, riding around all night, drinking heavily, going to porno movies because they were open all night, and for no other reasons. Yeah. And crashing someplace during the day. The Pussycat Theater in LA was one of his haunts. He says he'd go there to sleep. and no other thing. Yeah. I'm adding the part. And then he goes to the ER because he doubles over in pain and he has an ulcer. He's 27. And he says, I realize I hadn't really talked to anyone in a month.

1:20:03Griffin Newman:And I'm basically about to die. I'm driving around in a metal coffin in my car in a busy city. I'm completely alone. And then he says he hears the song, the Harry Chapin song, Taxi, and then Arthur Bremmer shoots George Wallace the Alabama governor who's running for president when he gets assassinated

1:20:25David Sims:attempted assassins that's funny that this movie basically was like a P-tier Griffin moment where he saw three things at the same time and was like taxi driver

1:20:34Griffin Newman:just based off of what you said and he just puts those things together he's like I might as well be honest it was this weird like conglomeration of these things

1:20:41David Sims:I'm not implying that it ever gets to Travis Bickle levels of darkness I am curious if you gentlemen have the same experience I never feel more mentally unwell than when I have been physically ill when I have like I am sick in bed and kind of isolating for four or five days and I come out of that in that way you're saying where like he's like huh I kind of haven't talked to anybody in a month right where I just go like what the fuck am I thinking

1:21:05Griffin Newman:see I I mean you have a house full of handfuls I was about to say I'm a very social person and so I do require I do like to you know I'm extroverted I like to see people it charges my batteries blah blah blah Now the idea of like, David, you're going to be bedridden for five days. I'm like, sounds like a vacation. Am I not going to die? Sounds great. I just feel like when there's the imposed state of you shouldn't interact with people.

1:21:30David Sims:And I certainly felt extreme versions of this in lockdown as well, where it's like it actually the safe thing to do is to not go out and talk to people. Lockdown, the most extreme. And then you just go like, the fuck is my brain thinking?

1:21:42Griffin Newman:Yeah, I don't know. Tracy, are you a lonely guy? Are you an introverted person? I don't know. Big question.

1:21:49David Sims:You've talked about not wanting to leave your house recently, but that's obviously because of the AV setup. I'm a homebody. I've always been a homebody. You always have it. It's not like, yeah. And, you know, I can go out and be social, and then I have a, my social anxiety always happens after the fact. Like, once I'm home and I go, oh, why did I talk? Why did I say anything to anybody? Why don't you just be quiet? Yeah, I have that in anticipatory. It's hard for me to get myself to go to a place, and then I feel terrible about everything I did or said afterwards. When I'm there, I'm vaguely okay.

1:22:28Griffin Newman:Paul Schrader says he wrote the screenplay in about 10 or 12 days, continuously. He was staying at an old girlfriend's house, and he just wrote and wrote and wrote.

1:22:38David Sims:I almost feel like this is the kind of movie you can't write if you think about it too much.

1:22:42Griffin Newman:I think that's probably right.

1:22:43David Sims:He said it just jumped out of his head.

1:22:45Griffin Newman:You know, he had to create the plot. Like, that was the one thing he needed. Like, okay, he wants a girl he can't have, or he tries to kill the politician. Yeah, it's like one of those taxi driver things where he tries to kill somebody to impress a girl. But he says, you know, came from the gut, like, largely. And his sort of oft-repeated line, but it is a good one. He's like, I wrote the character so I wouldn't become him, essentially. You know what I mean?

1:23:09David Sims:Which is a good, it's a good line. It's also the fascinating, not to jump ahead, but the Scorsese versus Schrader thing of Schrader always felt like a guy who was dangerously close to fully becoming one of his characters. He was right on the edge and he speaks about like his hedonistic impulses and all that stuff. And Scorsese felt like, feels like a guy. Michigan, not Minnesota, by the way.

1:23:33Griffin Newman:I apologize.

1:23:34David Sims:Good correction. Scorsese feels like a guy who, you know, sits alone in a room and is self-punishing for even having the thoughts of the mental experiment of doing things. Scorsese, you're saying? Yeah. Yeah, because he's like sort of housebound when he's a boy and all that. But they're both bonded by this sort of like, my brain goes here. Scorsese's maybe thinking about it a little more anthropologically and then feeling tremendous shame about it. And Schrader's like, let me write it so I don't do it.

1:24:03Griffin Newman:Right. Schrader also obviously admits, very influenced by Satra, by European, this is what he calls the European existential hero. So like The Stranger, Notes from the Underground, the movie Pickpocket, you know, things like that. All the Brasson movies.

1:24:19David Sims:So man writing a diary obsessively focused on things.

1:24:23Griffin Newman:The existential hero's problem always is should I exist, right? It's not like, do I want X or Y? He's just like, should I even exist?

1:24:32David Sims:Should I have been thrust into existence? It's interesting because the, well, it's interesting for a lot of reasons, but the, so Hollywood movies get aped by European filmmakers. They fall in love with. Right. The French New Wave and all the, you know, like they're like, right, like we love it. And then those 70s, the new Hollywood 70s filmmakers influenced by those movies turn it around and they sort of give their version of that. And clearly that was a very healthy turning of the soil for those various generations. I mean, if Taxi Driver is American... Bresson. Bresson existentialism that comes from film noir from before that, we're all the better off for it.

1:25:24David Sims:So I'm curious to hear both of your takes on this, but I was watching this trying to, like, think about the lineage of how you get to Taxi Driver existing, right? From two guys who absorbed a lot of literary work and movies and all of this. I was primarily thinking about Nicholas Ray and Ilya Kazan and those sort of, like, you know, the method, the new styles of acting movies about self-tortured men. Sure. That were always kind of explosive. that were more theatrical, even when they were moving into a more modern style of acting. They're rending garments. They're yelling to the sky. And part of it also is that the social mores of the time are that you kind of couldn't say what was actually going on.

1:26:08David Sims:Men can't be emotional in that way. Well, there's that. There's literally, that's what the characters are reflecting. But then there's also like, the movies themselves have to render things into deep subtext or things need to happen off camera, you know, or the quiet part is never said and something else is screamed out loud. And this feels like, to me, one of the first examples I can think of of a movie. And Joe, which Peter Boyle is also in, feels like kind of an important link in the chain.

1:26:42Griffin Newman:The Norman Wexler movie. Yes.

1:26:44David Sims:Big favorite of Taratine. But where you can kind of be like, the movie is allowed to touch these things specifically, which allows the character to be less explosive. That allows the performance to become more internalized because you don't need your sort of you're tearing me apart, Lisa, kind of moments. Right. No, I think that's right. And also, you know, Travis's relationship to violence is an important one. I think in the Schrader screenplay, he even states boldly in the prose introduction to Travis that this is a man who clearly is an attractor of violence or a combustible figure, somebody for whom violence is part of their essential nature.

1:27:33David Sims:It's also, I mean, it's just so fucking great that the movie doesn't really try to unpack his backstory at all. No. Beyond just... He doesn't have some monologue where he's like, when I was at Kaysan or whatever. He served in the war and he grew up somewhere different than where he lives now. It's all you need to know. And you can infer, and this is you talking about, like, movies that weirdly change even though they are actually fixed in how you perceive them. This is a movie that feels like it has all the answers, but every time I watch it, I just ask myself new questions. And they're not because of the movie being nonspecific in any way.

1:28:13David Sims:But sometimes you go, okay, is the violence a reflection of, well, Travis kind of reads like someone who might have been really bullied as a child. Sure, of course. Is his violence a lashing out of what was inflicted upon him?

1:28:25Griffin Newman:I think De Niro's runtiness, like De Niro's a little guy, contributes to that.

1:28:29David Sims:He really helps for that. He also plays this, and part of it is, I mean, you were saying this earlier, I watched this movie a lot when I was a teenager and in my early 20s. Right.

1:28:40Griffin Newman:I watched it a lot when I was casing this whorehouse. I was thinking of a... No, yeah.

1:28:45David Sims:Good reference for that. Had not seen this film in a while, even though I'd seen it many times. Had not seen this film since being older than the character. And now older than the character by some distance. And it's not like I ever look to him as an aspirational figure. But watching it this time, I was taken by how childlike he seems. He really seems like a, it's like big. It's like he's a little boy in a body he doesn't know how to control. And De Niro is playing that in sort of his like weird kind of guilelessness. Yeah. And it does, you're like, is this a guy who never got over not fitting in as a kid?

1:29:22David Sims:Is his home life defined by parents who were physically or psychologically abusive to him in some way, or were they just checked out? Was it a lack of protection? Or was it a sense of active danger? I think he might also be an only child. He definitely seems to be an only child to me. He reads that way.

1:29:37Griffin Newman:Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, all only children are one step away, I think, from just, you know, becoming Travis Bickle. Yeah, and we love you, Ben. Hey, take it easy. I'm kidding! Schrader writes this script He writes it I mean clearly It's almost like an episode he has He writes this script very fast

1:29:54David Sims:Then he starts hanging Rocky kind of similar By the way Rocky is a Sylvester Stallone Locked himself in a room And like drew the curtains down Right For like seven days And just vomited it out It's a great I just like the idea Great movie

1:30:05Griffin Newman:I got so mad at Sean et al Being like Eh It's a little slow I like Rocky too I'm like get the fuck out of here A little slow I don't get that It's Rocky Rocky, it's such a beautiful movie. I really think Rocky is almost underrated, even though it won Best Picture and is one of the most famous movies ever made. It's a gorgeous study of human relationships.

1:30:27David Sims:It's underrated because of what he did to the legacy of Rocky, which is let Paulie fuck a robot.

1:30:32Griffin Newman:The other ones are incredibly fun sports movies. Like Rocky III, I think, is the peak of the like, yes, when he turned these into slick sports movies. They're very good. They're very fun. But there's no comparison. The first one is completely in a league of its own.

1:30:46David Sims:There's also, there's no example.

1:30:48Griffin Newman:There's a reason it won Best Picture because it did it all. Like, it made the money, it appealed, but also it is a, you know, a very, very well-made film.

1:30:55David Sims:But there's also, there's no analog in movies of something that started as kind of focused, personal, emotional art, and then just sort of became pop trash. And then you could argue with Creed, went back again and then back again.

1:31:09Griffin Newman:Yeah, now it's doing the, yeah, it's almost like Creed, they were like, let's make a serious movie. And then they're like, but for the sequels,

1:31:14David Sims:we can make movies anyway. It's like the Creed sequels are remaking the Rocky sequels in a way that's fascinating.

1:31:19Griffin Newman:They gotta bring the robot back.

1:31:21David Sims:They do. Yeah, Creed's gotta fuck the robot. Now listen. Listen. He's gotta fuck it himself. That's agency.

1:31:28Griffin Newman:Schrader leaves town for a while. He comes back to LA. He's still a freelance critic, but he feels a little tougher. He writes a review of Sisters and interviews Brian De Palma, and they kind of became buds. And he gives him the script, and then Michael and Julia Phillips, of course the sort of husband-wife uh producing team right julie phillips you'll never eat lunch in this town again eventually right i read that book when i was a teenager because my mom would buy me movie books oh nice but i mean as a teenager remember being like this is a little over my head like i am not i don't really get what being a producer is this person seems so angry but um uh their work they're preparing the sting and which they produce you know and they are very taken with taxi driver but they have no idea what to do with it they're like this script is incredible.

1:32:15Griffin Newman:They buy it for $1 ,000, which is crazy. But they don't actually know how they're going to make it into a sort of digestible movie. And then they see a rough cut of Mean Streets. They're talking about doing Taxi Driver with Jeff Bridges. And I guess the director was going to be Robert Mulligan, who's not a director I know that well, but he made To Kill a Mockingbird. But I don't know what he's doing in the 70s. I mean, he's much older. Yeah, he's older. He'd made that movie Summer of 42, the sort of coming-of-age movie, which is kind of a hit. That's a big hit, right? Horror movie The Other. Do you know these movies at all?

1:32:55Griffin Newman:What else? The Nickel Ride, which is a Jason Miller kind of crime movie. Favorite of Sean's. Tracy, we were

1:33:02David Sims:texting with Hitmaker, because you would listen to our Fearless episode, about how just Jeff Bridges is one of those rare examples of a guy who is thought of, discussed, praised, has won an Oscar, is still eternally underrated. No one quite acknowledges how good he is. This is maybe one of the only cases I've ever come across of hearing a role that Jeff Bridges could have played that would be a disaster. I don't think Bridges makes sense. He doesn't make any sense. But then it's also, I mean, De Niro is indelible, right? No one ever could have given a better performance than this in this role.

1:33:40Griffin Newman:Yeah. But so they see Mean Streets and they go like, Scorsese and De Niro. Like, this is it. And they never thought about anyone else again.

1:33:52Griffin Newman:And Scorsese knows Julia a little bit. And I guess they talk after he makes Box for Herbertha and she's kind of like, come when you've done something better. You know, she was kind of like a bit of a bully or what, you know, kind of making fun of him, but in a sweet way. and then they just essentially make a proposal to Marty and Bob's agent of like, you're a package. Like we want you to do this movie and we want you to do it together and like it's not one or the other. It has to be both. Scorsese, he kind of knows Schrader a little bit and meets him through De Palma. He wanted Paul to write, to adapt Dostoevsky's The Gambler for him and he says he arrives late to dinner.

1:34:32Griffin Newman:Schrader's sitting with De Palma and they have already cooked up the movie Obsession together while this is happening. And so he's kind of like, I miss my shot. But then the script gets handed to him. Did Schrader write Obsession? He did, right? Am I wrong? 1970, what is that? 76? Yeah. Yep, yep, he wrote it. Yep, yep, yep. Not a movie I love. A Cory Barker film?

1:34:52David Sims:He wrote Obsession? That's crazy.

1:34:54Griffin Newman:Not the recent Obsession. The Cliff Robertson. And part of the reason I don't love it is Cliff Robertson is like such a hand bone in it. What do you think of Cliff Robertson? Have we talked about this? I don't think so. But we were talking about guys who have an Oscar, though. Yeah. Where you're like, huh.

1:35:08David Sims:That's certainly a movie that you would get arrested for making today. You should read John Lithgow's memoir to read him just fucking destroy Cliff Robertson. I mean, he was a noted son of a bitch. Yeah.

1:35:19Griffin Newman:John just clearly hated him. Yeah. What were they in together? What's the... Obsession? Oh, right. Yeah, right. Of course, because he's in so many De Palma. Right.

1:35:26David Sims:De Palma fucking loved Lithgow. I love that Brian De Palma saw Lithgow and was like, this is my guy. This Frankenstein ass. I've got to get the camera. The waspiest Frankenstein in the world.

1:35:36Griffin Newman:Love John Lithgow, to be clear. Yeah. Yeah, so, but Scorsese, he reads the Taxi Driver script, and he's like, well, this is kind of the Russian literature idea I'm thinking of. Like, the sort of deepest, darkest, you know, secret-type self, you know, movie. This is what I want. And so, they're all in. I mean, yeah. It's an interesting story, because it's basically like, every time someone reads the script, they're like, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. there's an interesting quote from schrader where he says i wrote a protestant script it's like cold isolated like it's me marty makes a catholic movie it's like lush and rich in new york and all this and like and that the the merging is like why the movie is a masterpiece right like you know interesting idea i kind of like that idea because i do feel like some of schrader's movies that he directs himself are chillier yeah i mean extremely chilly uh okay Okay, so blah, blah, blah.

1:36:32Griffin Newman:Schrader had also written this movie. The Yakuza, of course. He sells that for some money. Marty does Alice. The Phillipses do The Sting. De Niro does Godfather 2. Basically, everyone has a moment of success after they decide on this taxi driver project. So they're all coming back to get a little bit of a bigger budget. The budget's$1.3 million, but that is more than they initially had hoped for. Obviously, it eventually goes up to$1.9 million. You said a little bit more. You mean it's a little bit under what they edited. No, no, no. They thought they were going to get nothing to make this movie.

1:37:06Griffin Newman:And all of the sort of power of them. De Niro wins an Oscar. The Phillips win an Oscar. It's like, okay, they get a little bit more money. But it is. It's a studio film. It is. It's what? You know, Columbia Pictures. Columbia Pictures. And Scorsese is, he's already trying to make New York, New York, which is a much more expensive movie, obviously.

1:37:26David Sims:That is crazy that he already wanted to do it, that New York, New York isn't just him flush with the success thinking he can do anything.

1:37:33Griffin Newman:Everyone gets bargain basement prices. De Niro gets 35 grand. Marty gets 65 grand. Paul gets 30 grand. Columbia is still, even at that price, incredibly nervous about the movie. I'm trying to think like if there had been anything quite as sort of lurid as this movie made by a studio in 76. This is my question. I mean, right. And being so... I mean, obviously there's like trash movies. Midnight Cowboy is lurid in a different way.

1:38:00David Sims:Midnight Cowboy. Yes.

1:38:01Griffin Newman:But Midnight Cowboy has a sweet side to it. It does. It's about boys, friends. It is about boys being boys. The Godfather is no picnic. This is true. But it's classy. I know. Yeah. But it's no picnic.

1:38:15David Sims:But these are the pieces of how you get there, right? You go, okay, so Midnight Cowboy has the lurid sexuality and the New York grind.

1:38:23Griffin Newman:When is Death Wish?

1:38:24David Sims:Godfather has the violence. Death Wish is 74. Yeah.

1:38:27Griffin Newman:And Death Wish is like an artless, you know, kind of version of this movie.

1:38:30David Sims:But I think it's important that those two movies win Best Picture and it breaks down a couple taboo walls. Yeah, right, right, right. Deliverance. This is true. Is also one that's pushing the boundaries. Right. I mean, banjo had never been played that fast before.

1:38:43Griffin Newman:But Deliverance is like, if you go fucking canoeing in the Appalachians or whatever, that's going to happen. A taxi driver's like, if you try and get in a cab in New York City, it's sort of the opposite, you know, ends of America's a nightmare. I mean, they had been falling. I mean, you could argue that Rocky, right? Rocky and Star Wars start to be the end of that.

1:39:02David Sims:They reestablish the taboos. I mean, I just think it can't be overstated that the 70s start with an X-rated movie winning Best Picture. And I think that has to feel like, briefly, all bets are off.

1:39:13Griffin Newman:I guess the difference I'm noticing here is even Death Wish, but certainly things like Godfather, Midnight Cowboy, Even Deliverance, it's like there's still a hero character. There's someone conflicted about the evil or the violence being done or whatever. And even Charles Bronson, you know, that's a somewhat sympathetic character in the first Death Wish, obviously. And like, he's, you know, he's avenging a wrong and all this. Whereas this one is like, you're in the head of a psychopathic man.

1:39:39David Sims:Here's a question I gotta ask. There's no escape. There might not be an answer. Right. Do we think that part of this movie getting made is that the sort of very interpretive, happy ending and victory at the end of the movie could have been misread by the bean counters who were approving the movie getting made. Yeah, maybe. That if you're looking at it on paper, even as dark as the film is, you don't know what the performance is going to be like. Do you imagine it is a film? Because a lot of these kind of grimier, not even the exploitation films, but the sort of genre revenge films would have these wild character swings where the movie clearly was asking you to just go like, and now you like this guy.

1:40:17David Sims:Now the scenes are being played soft. Now it's sensitive. now it's a win or we made the bad guy so bad that he has permission to do anything on its face does this look a little bit closer to a death wish if you don't know exactly how they're going to execute it i don't know i don't know that's an interesting question because you know we get to a point in the in the narrative where it seems like travis kind of comes to a fork in the right after he uh arms himself he comes to a kind of a fork in the road and one fork takes him to this assassination idea that he's going to assassinate the presidential candidate palatine and the other road takes him to rescue yes uh lady in distress is the movie unclear is travis unclear of which way it's going to go until finally we get to the climax of the film you can't even call it an aborted assassination attempt.

1:41:13He just, you know, he gets out of there

1:41:15Griffin Newman:before it even transpires. Maybe the Mohawk was a mistake in that regard. Right. Sure. It is also, it's from an era where you could just kind of walk up to a presidential candidate. That's right. Right? Like it's still...

1:41:26David Sims:Well, unlike now, you know, if there's a White House correspondence dinner, security's not going to let you get anywhere. I mean, that guy didn't get that close, did he? Right? He kind of made it to the lobby.

1:41:34Griffin Newman:It's crazy he got anywhere within the vicinity. But it's like, it's a much more, you know, people are just kind of walking around. I mean, yeah. People were just walking here.

1:41:43David Sims:That's another taboo that Midnight Cowboy broke. Hinkley, obviously. He's inspired by a taxi driver. Inspired by a taxi driver, was able to walk up, right up to Ronald Reagan on the street, getting into a car. But Travis swerves, right? And he goes over and he does the. I'll do the nobler thing. I'll do the nobler thing instead. I mean, what we sense is that he's just got to get this out. Yes. It's a bomb that's going to explode. Look, I think about the new Hollywood thing a lot. and how this happened, right? This brief window. And a lot of it is broken by the BBS films and Easy Rider and the studios going, our shit's not working.

1:42:20David Sims:Something's happening over here. Maybe we have to unlearn everything we thought we knew. And so all the kind of rules of traditional what works, what is proper storytelling, yada, yada, yada, go out the window and they start just letting the inmates run the asylum to a certain degree, right? And French Connection and Godfather. Yes. I mean, these movies are, and The Exorcist, they're making tons of money. Not to keep just tying everything back to recent big picture episodes, but in that 76 draft, Sean was going through, you know, what his list of what he felt like was the definitive cultural event film of each year.

1:42:56David Sims:And the amount of years, right, for that one decade, the amount of years that it lines up with the best picture winner is wild. That would not be the case today where you go, these movies, not only won Best Picture, were critically adored, were like esteemed critical objects, were embraced by the public, were massive financial successes, in many cases also the highest grossing film of their year, almost always within the top five. Right. And they were like pop culture. You know, it wasn't just like a Tony thing that everyone got behind. That's an unusual thing. and part of that is just everyone going like, look, fucking three years ago, none of that would have happened to French Connection.

1:43:39David Sims:This would have been the grindiest thing you'd ever seen, you know, in like on a double bill or whatever. I think there's something to, even when you're saying, well, this movie places you so inside the head of the character and it's not until this fork in the road moment that Travis really becomes, you know, potentially this figure of revenge or whatever it is. if you're a studio exec reading the script once again to run this exercise do you just go like I don't know these 70s movies have all these weird tangents what's interesting to me about all this is that

1:44:10Griffin Newman:yes Star Wars kills New Hollywood and Rocky but it's also that the New Hollywood guys start being like well I want to make epics I mean what happens the blank checker begins even Scorsese, Coppola they're like I can make anything I can you know and then they make this stuff that all, you know, bankrupt studios. Yeah. It's not like their careers are over. For Cimino, his career is over. But for, you know, the other guys, they salvage it. But I think that's when Hollywood's like, all right. Totally. You were fun cheap. You're not fun like this. You're certainly chastened. I mean, Friedkin makes two of the hugest movies ever made.

1:44:49Yes. And then bombs so bad with Sorcerer, he can't. Yeah. He has a hard time getting money for his next movie.

1:44:56Griffin Newman:And we will talk about it. Like, when does, I mean, Friedkin is my ultimate, we will do him on the show one day. Because I do think he's the ultimate blank check guy. Where it's just like, all the way up, and then Sorcerer, and then it's just like, goodbye, get out, you are a pariah for 10 years. You exist on the margins now. He makes great movies after that. He also makes forgettable movies. He's never at the center of the culture again. No, no. But he never fully goes away and like. 100%. What's interesting about someone like Friedkin is like he made stuff like Rules of Engagement. Like he made like very sort of like solid Hollywood entertainment

1:45:32David Sims:along with the, you know, weird stuff. But that's the balance. Like the two movies he made of your plays, I think are like both excellent, but those are, feel like a throwback to even his like pre-French Connection shit, right? And then you're also like, sometimes he would just be a studio guy for Hired. He would do The Hunted or whatever. Yeah, Hunt is pretty good. Right, but it was like he couldn't ever do French Connection again. He could never be like, I am working within the studio system, making the purest version of what interests me. It becomes a little bifurcated. He would have told you, he told me that it wasn't possible anymore.

1:46:08He said, you know, just circumstances change in such a way as like, that'll never happen again.

1:46:22David?

1:46:23David Sims:Yes. Did you know there's a new place where you, you specifically can let your nerdy freak flag fly?

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1:47:14David Sims:Videogame.town for new stuff every single day.

1:47:25Griffin Newman:Taxi driver. Okay, so, you know, Scorsese, two big influences for him. John Wayne and the searchers. He doesn't say much except that'll be the day. He doesn't belong anywhere. He just fought in a war that he lost.

1:47:37David Sims:As John Wayne always said, that performance was based on, quote, the loneliest man he ever knew. Right.

1:47:43Griffin Newman:He's also very influenced, he says, by Irving Lerner's murder by contract. he I guess it worked with Lerner on New York New York eventually like no murder by contract I've I've seen murder by contract I feel like do not know anything about this movie I feel like it was because that's a Colombian noir right like Vince Edwards I think uh Vince Edwards is Claude uh boy pulled that out of my that's pretty impressive I like it's like a taffy criterion put up some long ago you know some criterion collection like a cartoon channel sorry series of those Columbia Noirs. Those like... Indicator boxes of those Columbia Noirs.

1:48:20They're great. Oh, well, maybe I gotta start busting out that credit card number.

1:48:24David Sims:I gotta say, that series of words hit like heroin. That went through my bloodstream.

1:48:29Griffin Newman:Because those Columbia Noirs of the late 50s are very interesting because Columbia was sort of the poverty studio and so they made the darker stuff. The Skid Row movies. Yeah, where you watch it and you're like, fuck, this is... For the 50s, this is kind of nasty. And that's one of the nastiest. Like, that's the one where the poster is the guy's got a garrote around the woman's neck and she's looking beautiful and he's looking tormented or whatever. And he's like a hit man who's in his own head. And I understand that he's like, Scorsese's like, that's one of the only Hollywood movies where you're like inside the head of a man who kills people.

1:49:04Griffin Newman:Like, you know, it's a rare thing. So anyway, so Scorsese and De Niro, obviously they'd worked together already. Only the one time before this now? Only on Mean Streets.

1:49:13David Sims:We talk about this in the Mean Streets. episode, but it is fascinating to me that he's always said the three actors I had the real symbiotic connection to and relationship and process. And it's Keitel, De Niro, and Scorsese. And DiCaprio, excuse me. Obviously, De Niro becomes the guy he understands how to filter everything that interests him in for decades. And then DiCaprio becomes the guy who is versatile enough as an actor, but more importantly, is automatic financing and security for whatever he wants to make at a very large scale. Keitel starts out as Scorsese's self-insert. You watch Who's That Knockin' on My Door.

1:49:53David Sims:You watch Mean Streets. Those are clearly him. He places himself into the movie. And then from Mean Streets on, there doesn't feel like you have characters that represent Scorsese, even when Scorsese's in the movie as an actor. Sure. It's like he notices when fucking De Niro enters the bar in Mean Streets, the way the audience reacts and is like, fuck, if I have that kind of power and that kind of charismatic figure at the center of my movie, I'm pulling the audience in more. And he starts to remove himself in the action and places himself in the kind of worldview and what the film's saying. And it's so funny that the moment he does that switch, he's like, hey, Keitel, you're cool playing like a fucking pedophile pimp and Judas, right?

1:50:38David Sims:You're cool playing like just the most evil people in the world. I'm going to keep working with you. But now you just play kind of like unknowable monsters.

1:50:47Griffin Newman:yeah that's true I mean De Niro it's very interesting is shooting 1900 for Bertolucci he's prepping Ilya Kazan's The Last Tycoon not a very good movie but at the major project Ilya Kazan's final film indeed he like would come from Europe like on breaks from 1900 and drive cabs around New York City and then the way Scorsese describes it then he would just click a button and then he'd turn into Harry Ufflin from The Last Tycoon if he needed to. Right? Like, he's like, he's got all these modes in his brain. Was he big enough at that point where people recognize him? I was going to bring this up. He won an Oscar.

1:51:24David Sims:But he said it happened only one time. That's crazy. That basically still he was weirdly anonymous enough. Even though Godfather 2 was huge and he had won the Academy Award, he wasn't a leading man yet. Sure.

1:51:38Griffin Newman:Yeah.

1:51:38David Sims:And he's elusive in Godfather 2. He is. He's elusive and he's a little transformative and he's so withdrawn in his own way that he could just fucking drive a cab. And people weren't like, that's fucking movie happening here?

1:51:52Griffin Newman:Obviously, Jodie Foster is in Alice, doesn't live here anymore. So he has the connection to her. His mother, sorry, her mother thinks she's crazy to want to do this part. Yeah. But Foster's like, I trust him. I think it's a good idea. They had to get approval from the LA Welfare Board. You know, they hire Pat Brown, the former governor of California, to smooth things over. They have adults. Her sister Connie is there for some of the more adult, quote-unquote, shots, you know, to make sure. She'd buy a double. Right. Foster says, like, everyone treated her great and was clearly so uncomfortable.

1:52:31Griffin Newman:Like, basically was just, like, on tiptoes around her the entire time because they're like, Jesus Christ. She was, was she 13 years old?

1:52:39David Sims:She's 12. She's 12. It's crazy. And part of that is she had such a, like, part of it's just the deep voice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure, sure. But she was such an old pro at this point. I mean, she's literally the fucking like Coppertone kid. I mean, you know that, Ben? That she is the model of the kid. Wait, really? Right? Am I wrong about that? No, isn't that right? If not for the bottle, she certainly did the commercial. Like she was working from the time she was basically an infant. Damn. So A, she's such an old pro. B, her voice just always makes her sound wiser beyond her years. Even like now, you're like, oh she's Methuselah she does she's just got she's got so much like command and authority always you ever worked with Jodie Foster I haven't I just met her for the first time recently she's very nice

1:53:24Griffin Newman:you know she's great obviously she gets the Oscar nomination it is an incredibly iconic performance

1:53:30David Sims:it's also a thing that still is part of the playbook and it basically never works but child stars and teen stars are like fuck can I find my like taxi driver performance where I successfully just totally shed the kiddie thing and I'm taken seriously. And I feel like you get a lot of bad wannabe Sundance movies where like a former Nickelodeon star is like strung out on heroin and doing fucked up shit to be like, I'm not Agent Cody Banks anymore or whatever.

1:54:01Griffin Newman:Columbia decides they need star power. Sybil Shepard is essentially parachuted into the movie. She says she threw the script into like a garbage can when she read it. She's so good in this movie. But she was basically like, I'd seen Mean Streets. I trusted that they were, like, De Niro and Scorsese were good. I had, like, no lines in the script. I had no idea why I was in this movie. Yeah. Right, you know, like, it's a little baffling. But she is, she's fantastic in the movie, obviously.

1:54:26David Sims:Like, she's obviously so effective in The Last Picture Show, but that's also such a raw clay performance. Right. Where, you know.

1:54:33Griffin Newman:But she's so good in that movie.

1:54:34David Sims:No, she is. She is. But this, it's like, what she's doing is so complicated and delicate. in actually selling you on the varying levels of, why would she be kind of interested in him to a point? And what is that point? Right. I personally would not go on a date with Travis Bickle. I wouldn't. Although, De Niro's a looker. It's also, it's what De Niro does well, where you watch in real time as he's like winning her and losing her moment to moment. You fucking get, both of you fucking guys would go on a date with Travis Bickle. Who the fuck are you kidding? Both of you would go on a date with Travis Bickle.

1:55:08Griffin Newman:He's not that rizzed up. when he's, you know, okay, fine, you know, he's hot. Let's go on one date with Travis Scott. Let's just settle the issue. He took me to this Swedish, you know, porn conception movie. It was educational. Scientific. Yeah. The part that Keitel plays sport is written by Schrader to be a black person and Columbia is like, this movie, even in 1976, I think Columbia has the sense to be like, this movie cannot be, like, he mows down a bunch of black people in a brothel. Right. Like, that's just not going to work for us. and Keitel, it's basically like, you know, he knows. Parachute him.

1:55:42Griffin Newman:He knows Scorsese. Come on in. What's your, were you going to say something? Well, that's interesting. And I think a good choice. But the use of race in Taxi Driver is pretty interesting to watch again, to see. Is the point that's being made that the seeds of white supremacy are sown in this character, in this lonely? If that point is being made, I feel it's unintentional, but I'm not sure. I don't really know. I don't know, man. The way they talk about race and you're right. He uses a lot of racial slurs that are in the beginning when he's driving around. He's so angry at everyone and everything, right?

1:56:24Griffin Newman:Like everyone's a target to him. May I get my read on this?

1:56:26David Sims:Yeah. Not to go too global here. Travis Bickle did nothing wrong? Well, yeah. He's the hero of the movie. Obviously, he's the lead.

1:56:35David Sims:not beating the charges I think white supremacy is something that is basically taught that has to be like passed down whether it is you know in the home or being radicalized by a community in that kind of way I think there is a more insidious form of racism and once again I have the authority to say this that is people who feel so disenfranchised and isolated and alienated and start just kind of reaching for the guardrails of who can I blame this on. Right. And it doesn't turn into a supremacist ideology. It doesn't become as much of an overriding kind of conspiracy feeling. It's just like, fuck them and fuck them and fuck them.

1:57:22David Sims:Right. And it becomes like really easy to just be racist as a place to put your anger if you're overflowing with anger in that way. And so that's why I think it's not versus something like, I mean, Schrader obviously writes about white supremacism later, you know, and that's much more of like a religion. You can't deny the gays. Through which we see the black man who is walking down the street raging, I'm going to kill them all. Sort of schizophrenic homeless man. The point where Travis steps out to have his conversation with Wizard. And there are just a couple of black guys walking by and there's a long shot of Travis kind of tracking them.

1:58:02There's the black cab driver who gives him the bang bang symbol as he's walking away from the meeting and calls him killer, I think. There's the kids throwing the eggs. Kids throwing the eggs in the bottles at the cab as he walks by. Not to mention, of course, the kid who he shoots in the face in the bodega.

1:58:20David Sims:I mean, there are two great examples for me in this movie of a studio note based out of fear actually saving the movie and achieving transcendence. And one of them is this. Because I do think if sport is black, it just becomes that. And I think there's something in that at the beginning of the film, he keeps slipping into his anger being focused on race. And he's also like tipping into homophobia, you know, it's any sort of other group in New York City who feels empowered. And I think more than anything, seeing people who are happy and who have a community.

1:58:55Griffin Newman:It's the 25th hour mirror scene many years later where it's like, yeah, if you live in New York, you can sort of work yourself up about any ethnic community. They're all here. Like, you know, it's easy to like, you know.

1:59:06David Sims:And all of them have a place and feel like they have some sense of empowerment. I mean, this is so much of the fucking insult stuff as well as I'm being told to feel bad for these people. These people feel like they have more than I do. And it's what they can't identify is what they have is community and you don't have that. Right. The culture is not actually placing them above you. They're fighting more than you are. You just feel unhappy. And the fact that his anger is starting to be so focused on marginalized groups, and then you have a white character who is doing such a demonstrable evil that it pivots him.

1:59:42David Sims:It pivots him into, well, I am empowered now. I must do something about this. This is not my rage unchecked. This is me being an avenging angel. He still shoots that guy in the face, you know? And he views him as less than human because it's him basically using him as like shooting practice. He's using him as a dry run. Right. But I do think it's important that what really metastasizes him to go full taxi driver mode, if you will, is, well, I gotta save this kid. Taxi driver mode.

2:00:12Griffin Newman:Yeah, no, it is.

2:00:13David Sims:This is the worst guy. He's not defined by his race. He's defined by what he's doing for a living.

2:00:17Griffin Newman:The convenience store scene is also like, it's his fantasy kind of working out for him. He's the cowboy. No, he's a racist guy, to be clear. Yes. Deeply racist. I think Travis Bickle has a lot of hate in his heart for other races, yes. But it's also, you know, like that goes well for him. Totally. He defends the guy, you know, the shop owner. He kind of just gets away with it.

2:00:40David Sims:It's part of the cynicism of the film is him knowing. He seems kind of like cool and heroic to himself.

2:00:44Griffin Newman:No one's going to care about this kid. Right. And yet the shop owner is speaking Spanish to him. Yeah, he's Latino. I mean, yeah. And they're seemingly friends.

2:00:53David Sims:But he thinks... Or at least allies in that moment. Sure. He tells himself he's doing that guy a favor. Right? Like, he tells the shopkeeper... He tells himself that what he's doing for the shopkeeper is akin to what he's planning to do for Jodie Foster. Right. Yes.

2:01:10Griffin Newman:Scorsese's in the film, of course. What a performance. He is replacing the actor George Momoli, who I know best from Phantom of the Paradise, but like kind of like a big guy you know he's in mean streets he's in you know he's a guy and he had gotten in an accident making a movie called the farmer and could not like make it to set essentially like you know he was injured score says he's like okay i'll do it and he says he learned a lot from bob in that scene he remembers saying like put down the flag put down the taxi flag and bob was like no you make me put it down he's like i want you to mean it racist monologue by the way yep uh it's a it's an extremely scary performance schrader was really mad.

2:01:49Griffin Newman:Like he was like, why are you fucking taking this part? And then he saw the movie and was like, yeah, he did a pretty good job.

2:01:56David Sims:His second best performance as an actor?

2:01:58Griffin Newman:After Shark Tale? No, I was going to say. The Mandalorian and Grogu? Yeah. What is Scorsese's best? I mean, is it a quiz show? Like anytime Scorsese has like a meaty performance, he is pretty freaking good.

2:02:08David Sims:It's a small role, but it's this. He's just astonishing. Is Martin Scorsese in Mandalorian and Grogu? He is Tracy. He voices a four-armed Street Cart Alien. I regret to inform you that it is maybe the only good performance in the movie. He's pretty good. David and I went to a screening and we turned to each other and we were just like, he's fucking locked in. He's an alien flat meat dealer. He makes flat meat sandwiches, but it is versus this, even though Scorsese's not doing it tongue in cheek and it feels like he's committed, it's very much him playing Scorsese. It's him doing the fast talking thing.

2:02:42David Sims:He's basically a guy that Mandalorian's trying to use as an informant. And he's going, I don't know where this guy is. I don't know. It could be anybody. I see. He's good. But he's got four arms to gesticulate, which is really the technological breakthrough. They want to make this movie fast and cheap.

2:02:57Griffin Newman:They even thought about doing it on black and white videotape. Insane. Kind of insane. The budget does go over a little bit, but they did draw it out all on storyboards, everything, you know, so that hopefully to, you know, save some money. Marty drew it himself, I'm assuming. Maybe. He says the overall idea. I love this, is to make it a cross between gothic horror and the New York Daily News. Gothic horror and the New York Daily News. Michael Chapman says, Marty's storyboards, yes, he writes, draws them, are the best. They make no pretense of being art. You know, they're just, you know, the basics.

2:03:30Griffin Newman:He gives you the essence of what he wants you to say, but he doesn't oppress you. Like, I can now do what I need to do. And what were Chapman's credits before this? So that's a great question. You know, he's, because he obviously also shoots, he'd only shot two movies before this. The last detail, his first movie well well well and then the film The White Dawn the Philip Kaufman like Inuit movie with polar bears and shit oh it's not Bronson no it's it's Warren Oates and Timothy Bottoms and Louis Gossett Jr. as three whalers who are stranded in the Arctic and are rescued by Inuit people heard of the best movie of all time before now I can tell you that it got generally negative reviews in fact it's interesting so everyone was wrong about it?

2:04:15Griffin Newman:Chapman goes on to make a movie I watched for our, like, Hope Tour one day, 1986 draft. What's it called? The Clan of the Cave Bear. I only watched it because... Oh, right. He directed that. Yes. It was nominated for Best Makeup at the Academy Awards. And I was like, I want to watch any movie nominated for an Oscar that year. We just talked about that recently as well in the Blink of an Eye episode. He could do the lush pastoral nature. He could do that stuff, even though I think of him best for the Marty movies he made. The fucking Grime. Yeah. Like for this enraging bullet. I think those are the only two movies they made together, right?

2:04:49Griffin Newman:Yeah, it's interesting. He did hardcore with Schrader.

2:04:54David Sims:The Rodrigo Pietro run has been pretty long, but otherwise Marty would jump around with DPs.

2:05:00Griffin Newman:Well, he uses Ballhouse a lot, and then he sort of jumps around. Sometimes it's Robert Richardson. Yeah, he tries other people around. It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, but Chapman, of course, says he liked The Last Detail. That's why he hired him. Chapman says we didn't have time we didn't have a lot of money I couldn't light the streets with big lights speaking to your point there so we had to get it down to kind of New York light and it turned out that was the right thing to do he says thank god I didn't have time and money like you know everything worked out for me when you know like when they're shooting Travis Bickle Scorsese wants Travis basically to be in everyone else's light you know but when he's in the frame that's really fucking smart he's alone Yeah.

2:05:44Griffin Newman:Like, even if there's someone over his shoulder, it's like, I don't want to see him. Like, Travis is alone as much as possible. And he said it was hard, because, like, Travis is in everyone else's frame or whatever, so it's hard to kind of, like, strike that balance.

2:05:56David Sims:But that's when you try to define what is great directing. What are things you can fully credit to the director and not the DP, the writer, the performances? And it is when a movie has a kind of set of rules like that that it establishes for its visual storytelling that it doesn't break, that isn't too showy, that you could watch the movie a thousand times and never notice that, but it does actually inform the psychological experience of how you're interacting with the film. That's just genius shit.

2:06:30Griffin Newman:He studies Jack, the film A Bigger Splash, for the head-on framing, obviously. It was shot in New York City, summer of 75, incredibly hot, always raining, very wet. I feel like this is quite a moist movie. I'm sorry if that offends anyone. Sanitation workers are on. Not at all. I said the word moist. I support it.

2:06:50David Sims:Some people have a thing about the word moist.

2:06:52Griffin Newman:I'm not one of them.

2:06:52David Sims:Ben wishes it would pick a direction. Moist is just too middling for Ben. Yeah. Pick a lane. Go dry or wet.

2:06:59Griffin Newman:There's a garbage strike going on, so there's garbage everywhere. I mean, what a blessing in disguise. And it's like all these things are, right, they're just helping out. It's just all lined up. Right. the apartment stuff like Travis's apartment, Iris's apartment, that's just condemned buildings. They would hire a gang to protect them from other gangs. I mean, you know, New York City, greatest city in the world, baby. Come on. We used to have a country. We used to have a country. We used to have a country. I'm checking here. The country was falling apart. I think we... Mortgage rates were 30%.

2:07:29Griffin Newman:Drop dead. Because my mom buys... I think about it all the time. My mom buys an apartment in New York City. And I believe it's 76.

2:07:37David Sims:They paid her$20 to take an apartment.

2:07:40Griffin Newman:I mean, she buys an Indian in Amsterdam. Her grandmother calls her and is like, you're going to get murdered. Now you have to be a banker to live there. And truly, like my mom says, the first three months she lived there, the apartment had once been occupied by someone of ill repute because someone would come to the door all the time and rattle the door and bang on the handle. And when she told the doorman about it, the doorman would be like, Ellen, don't you open the door for anyone you don't know, okay? Like he wasn't like, oh, I'll take care of it. He was just like, listen to me, Ellen. Never open the door.

2:08:10Griffin Newman:That's where she lived. She bought it with her, you know, anyway.

2:08:13David Sims:I went to high school with people who were absurdly wealthy, right? Sure. Sorry for ranting about this. No, no, no. New York. No, there was a kid I went to school with. I went, he invited me over to his parents' place, and they had like a two-story thing in Soho that was insane.

2:08:33Griffin Newman:Yeah.

2:08:33David Sims:Was not all made up, but it was just the amount of space was insane. And I went like, oh, did I not realize that that Eugene also is one of these kids where his parents invented water or whatever, you know? And I was like, respectfully, what do your parents do? And he was like, my dad's like a painter, but he never really sold anything. Anyway, he like this was the first apartment he moved into as an artist studio in like 1968. And at one point the landlord was bored and was like, if you can scrounge together like$20 ,000, it's yours. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And just sat on it forever. Crazy. Yeah. Anyway, currently looking for apartments to move.

2:09:15Griffin Newman:And a notion I've had, because it's been such a nightmare. It's so expensive is I need crime to come back. You need crime. I need the rent prices to come down. Obviously this is, this is a, it's a complex thought to be had. no, no, no. I can answer this.

2:09:30David Sims:I can answer this. Let's just briefly open the gates of Arkham Asylum. Yes. Those are fun villains. They'll do goofy themed crime. Uh-huh. Penguins robbing banks and shit. Right. Dare I say it? Richard T. Joker.

2:09:44Griffin Newman:All right. So, last thing before we just talk about the movie more. Bernard Herrmann, very resistant. Scorsese describes him as crotchety. Essentially retired, right? Yes. And Scorsese says, the film's called Taxi Driver, and he says, Oh, no, that's not my kind of picture title. No, no, no, no, no. And Marty's like, please, can we meet and talk about it? And he's like, well, what's the movie about? And Marty's like, it's about this, you know, describes the plot. And Bernard Herring's like, no, no, no, no, that's not the kind. And who's in it? And he says, Robert De Niro's in it. And he's like, no, no, no.

2:10:18Griffin Newman:And then he's like, well, we could have a quick talk. So that's how he won him over. It's an incredible score. Oscar nomination. Didn't Harriman also do Obsession? No Doesn't John Williams Oh wait Now I have to look it up Okay Now I've got to look it up You're right Yeah Wow It's a Because John Williams becomes De Palma's guy Or maybe Maybe already But like But yes I think The whole thing with De Palma to me And I love De Palma I don't know how you feel about De Palma Thumbs up Thumbs up to De Palma But once in a while And I'm not the first to feel this way I'm like Brian We know You like Alfred Hitchcock Sure And he's like Did you know I'm like Yep We know And he's like, I got Bernard.

2:10:57Griffin Newman:And I'm like, I would have gotten it without Bernard, but okay, you got him. And Obsession, which is, Obsession is his vertigo, right? That's the one where I'm like, this is too loud. Like, you haven't done enough to mess with it. Like, I like stuff like Dressed to Kill, where he's like, here's my psycho. And I'm like, you're a sick fuck. You know, this is so much sicker. And Hitchcock's sick enough as it is. Yeah, anyway. We'll do De Palma one day, right, Griff? Yeah, just a lot. It's a lot of movies. Yeah, and the whole series. How much? Not more than Scorsese. No, but it's close. It's probably like 20.

2:11:28Griffin Newman:I think it's a lot of movies. And like the tail end of his career is not uninteresting, but obviously it gets a little weird.

2:11:33David Sims:We run the risk of the whole series being redacted, which would be a waste of time.

2:11:37Griffin Newman:And the thing with De Palma, who I do adore, is, you know, movie 14, you're like, voyeurism's a theme. You know, like it's like he had his bag.

2:11:45David Sims:What if you looked at boobs from a place where the boobs didn't know you were looking at them? God bless. I mean, it's a really interesting question. Hi, Mom. Recent Radiance. Radiance 4K. Never seen. You've never seen it?

2:12:02Griffin Newman:It's one of the De Palmas I've never seen. I've never seen it. Young De Niro. Wow.

2:12:05David Sims:I can't believe I have a movie on both of you guys. What's it about? Well, it's interesting because it's a little like Who's That Knocking on My Door and some other films we've covered. Dark Star, a little bit like this, where you're like, it's kind of three different movies smushed together, like genuinely three different production efforts smushed together. whether it's a movie that slowly over time became a feature, there's like a whole section of it that is just a kind of performance piece that De Palma worked on in college that was filmed on like black and white Super 8 cameras. And the character basically just like collides with that.

2:12:42David Sims:And then the movie turns into like a documentary about this performance for like 15 or 20 minutes. But then some of it's a kind of just goofy, like dude trying to branch out and live in New York City on his own comedy. It's a real fascinating mishmash of stuff. It's basically a non-narrative movie. Right. But it's... I'll check it out. Incredibly stylish and funny. I imagine I'll be getting the disc. Yeah, I'll be getting the shit out of that disc. Sometimes we have this physical media thread that you recently asked us about, Tracy, a physical media group text. Years ago, we joked about can you imagine how disgusted Tracy would be if he ever saw the things we text about in here.

2:13:21David Sims:Because it was like, are you the white whale to get to join the group? But the group just, it goes, it just goes hard. As David said, it's a very busy group text. How many people are on it? Six? Six.

2:13:33Griffin Newman:I think. Oh.

2:13:34David Sims:Five. You made it sound like

2:13:35Griffin Newman:maybe there were 20. No, it's me, Griff, Sean Fennessy, Alex Perry, David Lowery, and Timothy Sons. And Hitmaker.

2:13:43David Sims:His name's Hitmaker. Oh, I should be on that. Okay. You can be included, certainly. But sometimes, I don't know David Lowery and Alex Ross Perry and I. Our best friends. We've had narrow misses. I don't know. Yes. He came to the opening of Bug. Did I tell you about this? Yes. Well, he told me about it. Did he? I haven't heard your version of the story. Well, he came to the opening of Bug, and then I went to meet. He came. It was Sean's date. So I went to see those guys afterwards at the party, at the opening night party. And I said, where's Alex Ross Perry? Well, he left. I was like, well, he left.

2:14:15I mean, it was weird not to stick around just to say hi or nice to meet you or thanks for your play. He left. I was like, well, why did he leave? It was like, well, he was embarrassed about the way he was dressed. He was.

2:14:26Griffin Newman:Oh, that's right. Yes. He didn't. He didn't realize maybe that it was sort of a grand performance. Yes. And he wore the classic Alex Ross Perry uniform. He's wearing like a Slayer t-shirt or something. Right. And Zach and his husband even asked him, said, what did you think you were going to tonight?

2:14:46David Sims:Alex is very consistent. I will say this. He is largely unchanging. I look forward to meeting him. Sometimes, and maybe you meet via text first in this thread in your grand introduction to the ecosystem, but sometimes I will shout announces a 4K steelbook of some dumb baby garbage I love, and I will just post the announcement link to the thread and go, regrettably, I'm pre-ordering the shit out of this. Right. I have already pre-ordered. I don't even really like this. Right. I mean, you know, Congo. I have about three things, three launch points. Okay. I'm going to take this one first. And it goes back to my thing about finding Travis more sympathetic this past.

2:15:29When I watch King of Comedy and Rupert takes his girlfriend into Jerry Lewis's house. Yeah. And Jerry Lewis comes home and says, what the hell are you doing here? it's a kind of a cringe comedy right it does make you absolutely cringe and it conjures some of those some of those comedy shows like uh the british office or uh tim uh what's his name uh detroit

2:15:58David Sims:robinson tim robinson yeah i like that you said detroiters instead of i think you should leave by the way detroiters fucking rules great show um i think even just the fact that albert brooks in this movie is very telling in that being part of Scorsese's language. But the feeling that Rupert creates in me is different than the feeling Travis creates in me. When Travis fucks up with Sybil Shepard, I don't feel like, I don't feel like, oh God, this is embarrassing and funny. I feel like, I feel real sympathy. I feel like, what are you doing? Tracy, I was thinking about this. I feel like that is a universal experience.

2:16:37David Sims:I remember, you know, in high school, watching this movie. And when I'd have conversations with people, because I'm like the movie guy, they're like, I just watched Taxi Driver. Can I talk about Taxi Driver with you? Everyone goes. And that scene where he takes her to the fucking porno theater and you're going, dude, what are you doing? That everyone has that kind of visceral response of, oh, my God, my motherfucker, don't do this. You're so close.

2:17:05Griffin Newman:To actually changing kind of the trajectory of your life. Because she's sort of into it at first. In a weird way. She's intrigued enough by him.

2:17:15David Sims:He's close. And I think what's so key is that in the scene where he takes her to coffee, he makes a couple observations about her that she feels are correct. That he is seeing her. That she is not just an object for him. that there is some level of him trying to actually engage with her as a human being that I think cuts through. And the same thing when he mentions her desk and whatever, it cuts through anything that's unnerving about him. Rupert Pumpkin is a detestable character. He is off-putting every millisecond he is on screen, even just down to the look where you're like, my guy, why the fuck is that your haircut?

2:17:52David Sims:Versus De Niro being hot in this. And it's not like she goes on a date with him just because he's hot, But it also is that there are moments where you're like, sometimes this guy is showing intelligence. Sometimes this guy is showing emotional vulnerability that is appealing. And sometimes he is really unnerving. And the porno scene, you really get the sense of like, he doesn't get why this went wrong. And he says like, no, no, no, no, no. A lot of couples go see this. And I love that when you're in the theater and she's immediately revulsed, you do see that there are other couples there. there are other couples there because that's their fucking thing.

2:18:29David Sims:Right. That's their peccadillo a little bit

2:18:32Griffin Newman:or whatever.

2:18:33David Sims:And this is a blind spot of this guy where his life is so cloistered that he's like, what do couples do? Where do I see couples? Where do I hang out? I don't go to fancy restaurants, so I don't see couples having nice dates.

2:18:43Griffin Newman:But also, how many of the couples in that theater are on their first date? Probably not many. You probably build to like,

2:18:49David Sims:he doesn't fucking get it,

2:18:51Griffin Newman:but it's basic. You want to go see I Am Curious Yellow?

2:18:53David Sims:And I think we're saying couples. Sure. Who knows? A pair. A pair of people. Yes. Two turtle doves.

2:19:02Griffin Newman:It does.

2:19:04David Sims:Yes, you understand the broken logic of how he got there. And then he says to her something akin to like, I can take you to other places. We can go all sorts of places. I don't know what those places are, but you can tell me. Yeah, right. He immediately realizes, I fucked this up, but tell me what date places are. And it's less that she's so offended by him, I think. and a thing I think Sybil Shepard plays very well, and more that she's like, I feel fucking stupid that I overlooked a bunch of red flags about this guy and assumed that the good would outweigh the creepy. Well, part of the appeal for her, you have to assume, is not only that he's young and good-looking, Robert De Niro and thin, and, you know, has a job.

2:19:45Yeah. Maybe not a great job, but he's employed. Uh-huh. But also that he does express, maybe awkwardly, but he does express a kind of confidence. I'm walking in off the street to tell you that you're beautiful and I wanted to. And she's obviously flattered by that attention. And then, yeah, takes her out for coffee. Right.

2:20:04Griffin Newman:It is technically the second date. Right. Yeah. Ben, show some respect. Oh, sorry. David, show some respect. Ben, I love you. Okay. Thanks. He sits there with her at the coffee shop, and what he says, the way he describes how he perceives her is really, he's talking about himself, right? It all applies to him, the things he says about her. We don't actually think that any of those things he says about her apply to her, but it's very flattering to have somebody say, I know what's going on with you. You're deep and you're complicated and you're going through a lot of stuff, you know.

2:20:36David Sims:I think there's another thing going on, which is he's not Albert Brooks. I was about to say, I feel like that's why Brooks is in the movie. The Brooks placement is so important for that reason.

2:20:44Griffin Newman:Right. Brooks is a nebbish. He's kind of annoying. Yes, he's very annoying. Yeah, he's very annoying. You can tell immediately that she's annoyed by him. Not in some profound way, but just their conversation where they're not looking at each other.

2:20:58David Sims:And he has that bit where in the middle of like a run-on monologue, he goes like, I'm in love with you. And then just keeps talking. And she just doesn't even acknowledge. She doesn't even give it that much.

2:21:06Griffin Newman:All day from his ass, probably. She's sick of it, yes.

2:21:09David Sims:Bickle is trying to at least engage with her as a human being, where it just feels like Albert Brooks is like, obviously it'd be great if I could bed this woman. She'd never be with a guy like me. So the only way I can do it is to just say like, well, you're beautiful. I'm in love with you, you know, versus Travis being like, I think you're broken, which whether or not there's any truth in that, he is trying to think of her as a person within in her life. Right. Yes. And so but part of his pitch is that he's a confident guy who knows who knows what's best for her and who knows the people and who knows the next move.

2:21:45Yes. So he can't say to her at the beginning of the date, well, where do you want to go? What's your favorite restaurant? He's got to be the one to make the choice.

2:21:54Griffin Newman:Yes, yes. And of course, when he makes the wrong choice, then it all falls apart. The whole illusion is shattered. I don't know. Here's my hot take. She should have given the movie a little more of the shit.

2:22:05David Sims:He should have bought her a Russ Meyer shirt. She should have sat there and considered what was on screen. The movie looks pretty bad. Because it's this weird sort of sex ed film, right? What do they call them? The Swedish kind of educational films? Yeah. Let me see if I can find the name of it. Like what is the... Well, it's not a real... It's not a real porn movie. We thought it was. Yeah. We actually thought it was this movie that was kind of popular. It's not. It might use a little footage from it, but... But that was this whole... These silos of things like the nudist documentaries or the Swedish like educational films or whatever where it was like, you're going to get to see something titillating, but the movie is pretending that that's not what its main purpose is.

2:22:46Griffin Newman:It's called Swedish Marriage Manual in the film. The film is likely the film Sexual Freedom in Denmark or the Swedish film Language of Love, but no one actually knows the answer to this question.

2:23:00David Sims:But these are basically movies that we're purporting to be like marital guides. Right. Or here's Masters and Johnson study put on screen. some scientific element behind it. There's sex ed films for grown-ups, which is a way to get away legally with screening. Because also, the theater is nicer than you imagine a lot of the other Times Square theaters.

2:23:21Griffin Newman:Sure, but right. But I mean, it's a different era. It is hard for us to imagine. It's like, yes, okay. It was a bunch of porno theaters. Times Square was very scuzzy. It was. It's not like it was a... But people did go watch porn in theaters in the 70s. Did they not? Like, it's, you know... They couldn't watch it at home. Yeah.

2:23:38David Sims:You know, I mean, it's also fascinating that this is the decade where several years you have full on pornographic films in the top 10 highest grossing films of the year. Right. Like there was the phenomenon of an intellectual couple goes to see Deep Throat. So maybe he was presuming she had the maturity and the sophistication to be able to handle a little adult material. He thought she was into Kino. He didn't realize. But she's out of there like 30 seconds. I mean, I do like that he immediately goes like, give it a chance. And then she just sits there so grumpy.

2:24:13Griffin Newman:It's the stepbrother's joke, which I think about all the time when they're in the tuxes and Seth Rogen's interviewing them. And he's like, it's funny. I get it. You're overly formal. And then they start to be weird. And he's like, now the tuxes seem fucked up. And it's for her. She's just like, you know, I was willing to roll with you. You're different, but it's interesting. And then he takes her to the poor movie. She's like, OK, now I know. Now clearly I can tell. It's almost a Mr.

2:24:35David Sims:F moment of just like, there's a bunch of things I'm reviewing in my mind. Yeah. Should he have known who Chris Christopherson was in 1976? I think so. I think so. Because that's the year of A Star is Born. Yes, which, as Amanda called out, was the second highest grossing film of its year. Okay.

2:24:52Griffin Newman:And like me and Bobby McGee or whatever, like his big, you know, that's 1970. So he's a pretty established country music star. Like that's him making the leap to movie stardom

2:25:01David Sims:after being a hyper-famous songwriter and then a hyper-famous singer in his own room.

2:25:04Griffin Newman:It's very conscious that Scorsese, he never listens to music. You never hear any music in this man's life. He doesn't have a record player at home.

2:25:12David Sims:We're hearing his internal soundtrack.

2:25:14Griffin Newman:There's no actual music. Yes. And Scorsese very consciously was like, I don't want a lot of diegetic music or whatever. You know, like I don't want him to be like spinning records or whatever. But he doesn't have any interest.

2:25:24David Sims:He's scratching vinyl. You're right. He could have been. He could have become a DJ. Could have been spinning plates. You know, his record player is broken, he tells us.

2:25:31Griffin Newman:Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so is something else up there, in my opinion. Okay, wait, that's point one. Well, I just want to know more about the Christopherson thing, because, like, you guys talked about this actress that Tim Simons didn't know, and I didn't know her either. Lily Collins. The great Lily Collins. Lily Collins. I never heard of her.

2:25:47David Sims:I think there's a reasonable argument that, I think Chris Christopherson in this moment is more conventionally famous than Lily Collins. And obviously there was more of a monoculture then.

2:25:58Griffin Newman:To be clear, we're also making fun of Hitmaker, because he's on a hit Netflix show and she's the star of the most popular show on Netflix, Emily in Paris. And I'm like, you haven't run into her at one of their, you know, Empire galas or whatever Netflix is always up to.

2:26:13David Sims:You also just need to understand we're in this group text, right? Where it's like, let's share the opinions on the film industry that none of us want to share publicly. Let's post the fucking pre-orders of new disc announcements and whatever. And then Tim will just sometimes swing in with a thing that feels like it's coming straight from Jupiter. we're about to meet up with Tim for dinner. Ben Marie and I are going to meet up with Tim and Sean for dinner. And it's like 30 minutes before we're supposed to meet for dinner. And Tim just goes like all caps. Lily Collins is Phil Collins' daughter. Who the fuck is Lily Collins?

2:26:46David Sims:And we're like, why are you asking this now? Why was he? I don't know. Okay, who knows? We eventually figured it out, but I feel like the chain of logic was really bizarre. So you think Travis should have known who Chris Christopherson was in 1976? I think there's a better argument. I don't think it's like him not knowing who Frank Sinatra is. I think it's a well-selected celebrity where he's enough on the cusp that you're like— Well, it's also—he's appealing to young people. Yes.

2:27:11Griffin Newman:Like, you know, he's selected, I feel like, because he was a cool musician.

2:27:14David Sims:It's telling you that this guy is not locked in. He's not with it. It's not telling you that the guy's an imbecile and he doesn't know anything. But he does not seem like someone who's concerned with popular culture. He lives in his own head. He has to watch the Swedish educational films. And we see him later watching a pornographic film that seems more traditionally porn. Pornographic. So at least he has that much awareness. Take her to the pseudo-documentary as opposed to the...

2:27:45Griffin Newman:Are you building a slow case for Travis Bickle did nothing wrong? Is this what's happening here?

2:27:50David Sims:I'm not at all. He did some wrong things, but he was actually good at dating, is your argument. Specifically and exclusively good at dating.

2:27:57Griffin Newman:You think Sybil kind of gives him a bit of a hard time. Is this a movie about Sybil Shepard fumbling the bag? She's out of there pretty quick. He calls her back. He sends flowers. Oh, here's another thing. Why are the flowers in his apartment? He's sending her flowers, but the dead flowers are in his apartment. You're right. Are they getting bounced back? Yes, maybe it's like she did not accept return to send her. That's what I think it is.

2:28:23David Sims:Yes, she like turned it away. Or that he's continuing to send flowers to her. Does the forest do that? I don't know. You send flowers to somebody, they reject them, they bring them to you? Not 1-800-Flowers past sponsor, of course. They would never do that.

2:28:35Griffin Newman:I think that if Sybil takes him in, and if he dates her for a little while longer or whatever, like if things work out a little bit better, he's still going to go on this road. It's going to fall apart at some point. this is not a movie where it's like you know what if he just found this nice lady like he would have settled down it's like no it's already all

2:28:57David Sims:so close to the boil I don't think he could be permanently saved by the love of a good woman but I do agree with Ben that I think his life goes in a different direction and I certainly think it avoids the worst extremes if he is able to stay in a functional healthy relationship and learn from it even if it doesn't last forever I just don't think it would But this is, you know.

2:29:18Griffin Newman:There's going to be something. He focuses his affections on, you know, a beautiful model. Yes. Yes.

2:29:26David Sims:Sybil Shepard was a cover model. I mean, that's, Sybil Shepard was the ultimate kind of just like image of a woman that drove men insane. So. That is what she represented in the culture. She's gorgeous. Like the problem with a lot of these fucking incels, maybe you just need to lower your standards. I mean, yes. Our buddy Chris Gethard, who will have been on the Mandalorian episode, always says, if If you're complaining that women don't find you interesting, maybe the problem is you need to be more interesting. You know? Or find the women who do find you interesting. I mean, it's like, we're going to solve this today, guys.

2:29:57We're going to fix the incels.

2:29:59David Sims:No, but there are a lot of, you know, it's a gripe of mine. And in high school, I was very obsessed with a lot of the high school movies where it's the nerdy guy who's obsessed with the most conventionally beautiful, you know, prom queen girl. And she'd never even look at a guy like me. and that's seen as this sort of note of like, is there almost a classism in her that she won't consider the smart, interesting guy? Right. And almost always in those films, you're like, yeah, well, you're not considering your fucking sarcastic female best friend. You're doing the same fucking thing. You want to date the hottest person.

2:30:30Griffin Newman:Well, that's because those 80s teen movies are like Charles Dickens novels where like there's the interesting female character. This is a great comparison I'm making. I'm really liking it. And then at the end, it's like, yeah, but also he has to marry the placid fair-haired lady like you know every and like yeah at the end of the john hughes movies it's like but by the way he gets the babe right sort of like traditional babe because that's what you want isn't it isn't that what the audience is looking

2:30:53David Sims:for although the fucking audience revolted to pretty in pink and they had to reshoot the ending

2:30:59Griffin Newman:sure um so travis okay so he yes he fumbles the bag with cybil shepherd he is uh he takes this job The movie starts with him at the taxi depot, essentially getting pitched on the job because he can't sleep, right? Like, that's sort of the original thing here. He's just like, I'm up all night anyway. I'll drive a cab around.

2:31:17David Sims:What year does Taxi the Sitcom start? Is it, it's within like 24 months? That starts, I'm going to find out. 1978. Okay. 78. I just know that James L. Brooks said the reason he thought to create a sitcom around Taxi Dispatch Station, there was a big New York Magazine article about one night on the graveyard shift. And he found it fascinating that everyone who worked there, it was, this is a transitional survival job. Yeah, yeah. I'm just going to do this for six months. How long have you been doing it? 15 years. Right. But all of them were like, I do this at night because my real passion is this at the day and I haven't been able to actually make it a livable wage yet.

2:32:03David Sims:Right. And it feels like in this interview scene, part of what this guy is sort of sniffing out is like, why do you want to do this? You don't seem to be saying, I need to pick up this so I have the flexible hours in order to do this with my other time. It's not about spending time with your family or taking care of a parent or following some other passion or hobby. It's like you just want to drive the cab. That's a little bit odd. You ever had a friend who drove a cab? Yeah. You did? Yeah. Yeah, I've had a couple.

2:32:36Griffin Newman:My uncle drove a cab from 80 to 83. In New York City.

2:32:42David Sims:In New York City. Your uncle who's a listener.

2:32:43Griffin Newman:Yep.

2:32:44David Sims:And a cinephile.

2:32:44Griffin Newman:Yeah. Probably an intense time to be driving a cab in New York. I mean, it's basically always an intense job. Yeah, he worked the graveyard shift. So 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. And he had to pick up like ghouls and goblins. Because the way New York City's cabs work is that there's just 6 to 6 for both. There's no swing shift because they don't want anyone to get the sort of like better end of anything. Yeah. And he, reflecting on that time, he said, he shared with me, he totally risked his life by doing that job. It was really dangerous. He thankfully never had any kind of incident other than people running out on their fare.

2:33:22David Sims:But he felt that it was always a possibility. It was always a possibility. It was a crazy time. Yeah. Yeah.

2:33:28Griffin Newman:Yeah. It was. You never drove a cab? No, I didn't. I had a friend, Will Kern, and he wrote a play about it called Hell Cab. And then they turned Hell Cab into a movie called Chicago Cab.

2:33:41David Sims:Oh, I believe directed by John Tentori and Mary Cebulski. That's exactly right. Parents of our friend Ray Tentori. Oh, wow. Passing future guests. The late, great Mary Cebulski, a legend. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in that movie briefly. Really? Okay. Yeah, it's made in Chicago. You play a sports fan. I've never seen it. I do, in fact, play a sports fan. What team? I'm a Bears fan. Of course. The Bears. But everybody I've ever known who's driven a cab believes that they're performing a valuable public service. That is a great way of putting it, Tracy. And I feel like there's a similar kind of... It's like the safety net of travel.

2:34:19Griffin Newman:In a city like New York where you're like, well, if all else fails, maybe I can grab a cab. That used to be sort of like, yeah, how I thought about it.

2:34:26David Sims:it also feels like they talk about it as if it was I backpack across the world for five years.

2:34:34Griffin Newman:That's something crazy that I did in my past.

2:34:37David Sims:That it is an extreme form of interpersonal immersion into like the breadth of humanity. I remember I read the book Hack by Melissa Plott.

2:34:47Griffin Newman:Now it goes by Mel Plott. Came out as non-binary later in life. But like, great book about someone who just was like, I'm 25. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing with myself. I'm going to start driving a cab.

2:34:58David Sims:That's every friend of mine who grew up, people I know who also grew up in New York City and were just like, I'm in my early 20s. I haven't figured out my thing yet. Your screen keeps turning really bright red. Oh, I'm sorry.

2:35:07Griffin Newman:Yeah, I don't know. There was an app running. He's got porn up ones. I was going to say red too. David. It's reflecting on your eyeballs. This is how I get off. I watch porn and like do not touch myself in public places. While talking about cinema. You would not be the first. But they just, They'd be like, I need a thing to do. But what's interesting is like, they talk about how by the end of their time as a cabbie, they had a bit of a hair trigger temper. And it's not even so much the people in your cab. It's just the act of driving all the time in New York City where you just, a lot of rage starts to radiate out of you.

2:35:43Griffin Newman:Like everyone is cutting you off and trying to get you. I've talked about it so much,

2:35:47David Sims:but I do not have a driver's license. I do not drive. I've driven one time on camera for an unreleased independent film. And so much of my fear of driving is that my dad drove way too much in the city. My dad was weirdly addicted to driving in the city. And it's such a terrible experience. He was not good at handling the stress of it. And so all of my associations are, why the fuck would you ever do this? Not all of my associations, but all my primal associations are being in bumper to bumper, hair trigger. Yeah.

2:36:16Griffin Newman:So Ken, he had been, you know, was a working musician and composer, but it was hard. and he would be in between jobs. You don't even make that much money. Yeah. And so at some point after doing all these different kinds of odd jobs, he decided to start driving a cab. And he was telling me that in one night you could make like 200 bucks, which was like, you know, a decent amount of money back then.

2:36:41David Sims:Yeah. But the thing that he did, like Travis, is he would drive anywhere.

2:36:46Griffin Newman:He would pick up whoever and drive to Staten Island. He'd cross state lines. Drive to White Plains. and drive to Jersey. But like the real deal cabbies, they were, they were refusing. I'm not fucking going uptown. I'm not going to Berlin. And they were 100 % racially profiled. Right. Yeah. Of course. Right. So, okay. So he's a cab driver. Right. He's a cab driver. We've got as far as Joe Spinell in the movie Taxi Driver. He's a cab driver.

2:37:10David Sims:He's great at dating. Women just don't get it.

2:37:14Griffin Newman:Those early scenes, right, him with like Peter Boyle, Harry Northup, Norman Matlock. I'm trying to think like who those guys are. And even though those guys are all, you know, kind of scumbaggy or whatever, Travis is so apart from them. Like he doesn't fit in with them at all. This is what I'm saying. No, we talked about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Peter Boyle really well cast. Really well cast. He's such a, yeah, he's such a good actor. I love the like 70s Peter Boyle.

2:37:42David Sims:But this is right. This was his last kind of chance in his mind to find a community. These seem like guys who would be on the same wavelength. with me and he can't even crack the conversational rhythm that these guys have right yeah oh i mean let's face it travis may not be very bright i mean there are things like uh what's moonlighting right when he asks the question what's moonlighting right there's certain things it's just like wow you you don't actually know that word he's a little born under a rock or whatever yeah i said i said he's a little like uh big where he's like a kid in a grown-up's body there was always this sort of whispered that De Niro was supposed to be in Big.

2:38:24David Sims:And then Elizabeth Perkins did an interview recently and she was like, my screen test was with him. We prepped the movie with him. His reps asked for more money. The contract fell apart at the last minute and then Hanks jumped in. And I always thought like that movie would be such a fucking disaster with him in it. And then you watch this or on this rewatch, I was like, he does really feel like a six year old where the way he asked these things like what is moonlighting doesn't have the self-consciousness of an adult who is unintelligent it has the energy of a child who's actually just trying to collect information

2:38:59Griffin Newman:um we're in his head pretty early we're hearing his monologue right away right it's not like this film it's it's what you're saying tracy that even you you're walking in as an 18 year older you know knowing that he's going to go on a rampage i would love to watch this movie not knowing.

2:39:16David Sims:Yeah. Yeah.

2:39:17Griffin Newman:It's it's impossible. Like it's the same with Psycho or whatever. These movies where as a kid, I'm like, I know I know one thing about this movie. Even just be like watching this movie, just thinking like, what's he going to do? I don't know. Why am I with this person? Like, why am I with this person?

2:39:31David Sims:Beyond knowing the violence is coming because the violence itself is iconic. We also like you and I, all three of us are born into a world like after the Jodie Foster shit.

2:39:40Griffin Newman:Sure. Yeah. Where you're just like there

2:39:42David Sims:copycat crimes that we just know before we know the movie. And I feel like

2:39:48Griffin Newman:right away you know he hates everyone around him and he kind of wants him to be washed away. So it's not shocking what happens. I guess I'm trying to unpack this as I think about it. It's more it's just like it's hard to reckon with this movie or to consider this movie as a tense thriller.

2:40:10David Sims:I think of it as a character study. I do too. I watch this movie as if I am seeing like a production of Hamlet, if that makes sense. Right. It's like, right. Well, I understand the basic tenets of this story and how it exists in our culture and is referenced all the time. And now I'm going to watch it for the first time.

2:40:25Griffin Newman:But the first time you watch it, not knowing things, it must have been like, is he going to attack this girl? Right. Is he going to shoot this, you know, politician?

2:40:33David Sims:Is it a romance with the girl earnestly? Is the movie going to try to sell me on that? Like anything. with how unseemly it starts.

2:40:40Griffin Newman:I do feel like, yes, I know this movie has many a sort of fan who doesn't get it or whatever, but it's hard to watch this movie and think, like, I think this guy's going to figure it out. He's going to rescue someone. He's going to be an avenging angel, whatever.

2:40:52David Sims:It is wild to consider that this film can be misread with how clear its perspective feels communicated at all times. And even just in the performance, which doesn't feel judgmental, but feels so considerate of his brokenness. Yeah. You know, when people try to make this kind of movie today, it actually does get muddled where you feel like it has too much judgment, contempt for its characters, or it's a little bit too much into fetishizing, you know, their transcendent moments or whatever it is. And this movie feels like so cut and dry and like this is a movie about being a broken man, period. Like that's how it starts.

2:41:37David Sims:That's how it, what it is from beginning to end. Isn't the, are you going through the movie chronologically?

2:41:44Griffin Newman:Sort of. I have a, it's, it's just not a heavy narrative film. No, it's not. Like the first things after we discuss is, is the Betsy thing, which we, we sort of went through. The first 30 to 40 minutes are mostly driven by Sybil Shepard. But we're hearing things in his head like he sees her and is like, she's like an angel. Right. Like, the city cannot touch her. Like, you're already hearing this kind of like insane dialogue in his head. So, topic for discussion. Uh-huh. The breaks in Point of View. Uh-huh. There are basically three. There are two scenes in the campaign office between Civil Shepard and Albert Brooks.

2:42:24Yes. And then there's the scene between Harvey Keitel and Jodie Foster. Yes. We see the pimp working his magic on her. What about those?

2:42:37David Sims:It's interesting. I think you need to understand in both of those cases where the place of objective reality is because they are figures that he projects so much onto. It's important to see Sybil and Brooks

2:42:51Griffin Newman:see De Niro through their eyes. Yes. See Travis through their eyes and be kind of like, you know, tingling with, you know, like just understanding like how strange it is that he's, yeah, I think that's vital. The scene with Sport and Iris is different. I'm not sure what that's doing, except, you know, giving her a little dab and maybe contextualizing just,

2:43:14David Sims:but we already know she's in an abusive situation. Yeah, but it takes it from being intellectual to being emotional. You can't watch that and not feel a desire for some justice to be carried out, even if it's not what Travis is going to do. I think that's the function of that What do you make of this trade?

2:43:32Griffin Newman:Again, you wrote Killer Joe I'm not saying You copy, can I actually drive it? I'm like, with Killer Joe, I'm sure you were thinking Do I exit this guy's perspective? Do I stay in it?

2:43:43David Sims:Is that too tough for the audience to just be in this guy's head? The entire movie? When you were saying it's tough to Trace influences and things like that I do just think there's a similarity In this and some of your plays the grodier plays in your oeuvre that are like, this is really digging in on the people that society doesn't even want to look at. Oh, well, that would be good. I mean, if I took that from it, wouldn't that be a great thing? But because I think that's important. Yeah. I ask myself when I watch it, it now seems like such a sharp break from his. It is. Right, because as you're saying, you're not only in his head, we're way in his head.

2:44:23Yeah. And so to suddenly transport out of it, it's like, is it a mistake? Would the movie be stronger without those three scenes?

2:44:31Griffin Newman:Is it in service of the audience? Like, that's what I wonder. Like, is there that thought of like, the audience needs a release? I think there are two reasons. A brief release. I don't know.

2:44:38David Sims:I think one is it's in service of the audience, not just to need the release, but to also understand, have some grounding in a real reality because part of it is, are we getting somewhat seduced into the idea that Travis should do this? If we are seeing in real time the actual dynamics of Jodie Foster's situation to some degree, does that make us want some, if not bloodshed, justice, right? Yeah. I think the second interpretation is you could read these sequences and especially that one as a projection of Travis's mind. Okay. That's the order in which I wanted to introduce this because that's the next question I want to entertain.

2:45:20Yeah. Entertained. There's been a lot of conjecture over the years about where the movie parts from reality, even on my mom's first viewing the movie in the drive-in, right? It's like, well, I think maybe some of that stuff was fantasy. And I know that the filmmakers have at various times addressed this question themselves, never very satisfactorily, nor do I think they're necessarily the final arbiters of that decision.

2:45:44Griffin Newman:They are not. But I also feel like they all seem to slightly disagree, and they also don't want to be definitive. Right. Like, they don't want to totally be like, oh, did you not fucking get that that was a dream, idiot? You know? Yeah. And then there's, like, that moment where Schrader, no, De Niro, one of them was like, let's do a sequel. And I remember some people being like, hold up, sequel? Is he even alive? Right. Like, why would there be a sequel? Right. Yes. Carrie last night after we watched it was just like, the motherfucker got shot in his carotid artery. He's fucking dead. He's not in good shape at the end of the movie.

2:46:17David Sims:I'll say it. 9-1-1, let's call it. I also always think about, there was, Scorsese did a podcast with Joanna Hogg. I think it was for the A24 podcast. He sure did. It's one of my favorite podcasts ever recorded. And he said a thing that I think about all the fucking time. Who said this to Joanna Hogg? Martin Scorsese. Oh, Scorsese himself. Who directed Raging Bull and Taxi Driver. Yeah. And he said she was talking about having to do like a press tour for the first time. and that this interview felt like the first real conversation she was having after weeks of people asking her to confirm their interpretations of the film or asking her to explain the film in ways they didn't understand and how she was so loath to do that.

2:46:58David Sims:And he said, what you have to do is offer them something else. You know, she said, I don't want to be someone who's difficult, who refuses to do press, but I also don't want to say these things. I don't think that helps the function of the art itself with its own integrity. And he said, you take the question they ask and you offer them something else instead. So Scorsese himself has admitted, and for a man who had to deal with a lot of controversy across his career and the interpretation of films and being asked to explain himself, that the strategy he eventually landed on is, I'm not going to give people what I really think to some degree.

2:47:31David Sims:I'm going to find a way to three-card Monty a little bit to let the movie still have its own integrity. How much of it do you think is quote-unquote real?

2:47:43Griffin Newman:What's interesting to me when I think about this stuff, because you can pretty flatly kind of just take the movie. It's like, sure, it's basically real. And like, then, you know, the epilogue is sort of a fantasy or kind of a commentary to the audience or whatever. Right. Right. I also just, I do think about like how handsome De Niro is as a bit of a fantasy we're seeing, right? And the fact that he starts to focus on like, there'll be no more poison in my body, like 50 pushups a day, right? Like his whole like regimen. And he's already trimmed to begin with.

2:48:15David Sims:It's not like he starts the movie doughy. Yeah.

2:48:18Griffin Newman:Like the way he looks and is perceived, especially early. The perfect amount of stubble. Right. His skin is so clean. Is a little too nice. Yeah. And then the way people react to him doesn't strike me as like they're seeing the deer I'm seeing. Right. Now, of course, people start to really be disturbed by him once he's got the mohawk, once he's, you know, like, and I don't know. Like, I mean, to me, this is just a fun thing to think about. This is not like, this is not a movie that needs solving in the slightest. Right? Like, it's not a movie where I'm like, you have to know what's going on at the end.

2:48:52Griffin Newman:There's clues. It's vital that you see in the final scene that weird look across his face. Obviously. Like, you need to understand, like, he's not feeling great, you know? I mean, this is why it's, this is a movie. It's also inside of him. But apart from that, you can just sort of like, is he just imagining all of this?

2:49:11David Sims:Is he just imagining Sybil getting in the car? Like, who knows? This is an endlessly fascinating movie to unpack and pick at, because even to what you're saying, I'm like, that's a really good read. On the other hand, you could say this movie is kind of about the weirdness of if you are a handsome person or even let alone just a conventional enough looking person, people grant you more leeway. You could skip by a little bit. You watch the scene where he's talking to like the security detail.

2:49:37Griffin Newman:Well, but that scene, I feel like the security guy immediately clocks him as a huge threat. Right. Yes. Well, and his psychosis seems to kind of swing back and forth, seems to waver. Totally. There are times in the movie where he seems sicker than other times. And he's letting more of his inside thoughts out. Right. You know, talking about like, you need to deal with this. You need to get these people out of here. I think it's one of the all-time great screen performances. It is. I really do. Completely. One of the reasons is that issue of mental health, the projection of mental illness that De Niro creates moment to moment, scene to scene.

2:50:20Not indicating ever. No, the sort of in and out quality of it, right? When he's talking to Iris, he seems very lucid and on it. And then when he's talking to the Secret Service man, right? He's just ready to bust out and make trouble. Yes.

2:50:40Griffin Newman:But then he'll kind of like, the way he smiles, because clearly Travis knows enough, like if I smile at someone, that'll diffuse tension that I'm sort of perceiving. and of course anytime he does that he looks crazy not to use these words but you're just kind of like why the fuck is this guy smiling he just said he wants to like wipe you know to get rid of a bunch of scum or whatever let's also

2:51:04David Sims:let's remember that he's 26 years old sure right and people with latent mental illnesses often that is when they start to experience you know but he's also a Vietnam veteran

2:51:15Griffin Newman:suffering from totally totally there's PTSD and whatever

2:51:18David Sims:but I don't think this movie argues that he is solely the byproduct of PTSD. No, no. I mean, I don't know. I think part of what this movie argues is that supercharged a man who never should have been put in that position to begin with and was not given the support coming out of it.

2:51:33Griffin Newman:Right, it's that more as well of just kind of like, right, and then we put these guys into a war that made no sense. They were traumatized and then we just kind of brought them back and we're like, ugh, sorry, deal with it.

2:51:43David Sims:But I had friends, people I grew up with who then had a psychotic break at some point in their early to mid-20s and when it's starting to happen, you question your perception of what's going on because sometimes these people are unbelievably convincing. Yeah. And then they start to have behaviors that are aberrant, but they're small. And often it's like, well, he's always been funny or he's always been kind of a wild guy. The same things that were originally kind of appealing, charismatic about the person start to just get a little bit oversized. and to some degree it is like the fact that he is a handsome guy, the fact that it is De Niro and he has a certain undeniable level of magnetism, you know, even when he's playing a broken, sad guy, you do see people sizing him up.

2:52:30David Sims:And I agree with you that the security detail guy immediately is like, okay, this guy's a fucking problem, but also he is relating to him in a way where he's like, let me try to psychologically contain this situation. Yeah, yeah, hey, you know, yeah, you can join the squad. If he's a different looking kind of guy, he maybe just physically apprehends him immediately.

2:52:52Griffin Newman:There's the scene where he tells Boyle, essentially, like, that I'm having, like, violent thoughts. Yeah. And, you know, I feel like there's a few scenes like that. There's the scene with the Secret Service guy. There's a few scenes where, essentially, he's kind of, like, red alert, FYI. Yeah. And it's sort of the scenes you sometimes, the stuff you hear about with people who do a bad thing. Yes. Where people are like, you know what? In retrospect, he said this thing that was, like, very uncomfortable. The great irony of Boyle's character being named Wizard when he's anything but. Yes. Just totally hapless at helping his friend.

2:53:25David Sims:But holds that.

2:53:26Griffin Newman:I mean, Wizard tells that sex story at the start of the movie where you're like, well, this is made up. In that sort of like schoolyard way of like, oh, you just made up a story to entertain everyone.

2:53:36David Sims:Do we not think that also perhaps feeds into Travis's bad second date where he's like, The story is this guy made a bold move. He took a stick out and it was good.

2:53:46Griffin Newman:Right. I can do stuff like that.

2:53:47David Sims:He was applauded. A ticker tape per year.

2:54:03David Sims:David? Yes. Red alert. Uh-oh. There's been an outbreak. Biohazard. of a new Patreon series. It's contagious. Oh, that's so true. It's been cooked up in the lab for your pleasure. From the fine folks at the Umbrella Corporation, we are covering Resident Evil. The film franchise. Yes.

2:54:28Griffin Newman:We've got the first franchise. Six movies. Yes. That beautiful second franchise. How many? Six? Seven? It's got the one movie. Oh, it's got the one. We'll be covering all of them on Patreon, doing commentaries. on, yes, the Resident Evil, Apocalypse, Extinction, Afterlife, Retribution, the final chapter. Welcome to Reconciting.

2:54:47David Sims:This is an exciting time. Zach Kregor, a friend of the podcast, has a new Resident Evil coming out. We thought this was a good opportunity to revisit the history of Resident Evil movies.

2:54:56Griffin Newman:Why not? Why not? Why can't we? Why can't we? We can. Check in for that August 1st, and it's going to be running all the way through November 1st.

2:55:07David Sims:Followed by your March Madness winner, Dr. Dracula Dr. Dracula himself That's so fun So that's great That's great Thank you Thank you so much

2:55:28We should also, though, point out, too, that he has that interaction with Jodie Foster's character.

2:55:37Griffin Newman:Oh, that happens pretty early, right?

2:55:40David Sims:Because she, like, he almost runs her over. That's within the first 30 minutes, but then she kind of disappears from the movie for a while. And he gets kind of almost paid off a little bit. Well, Keitel comes and pulls her out. Crumpled up 20. Throws a 20. But he keeps holding on to the 20. Yes. Throughout the movie. Right. It's also fascinating when he finally reconnects with her. And a lot of times passed in the movie, and you imagine a chunk of times passed in the real world as well, that he's like, you remember me from our defining incident. You know, that to him, as you're saying, he's really holding on to this, like, should I have stepped in?

2:56:16David Sims:Did I not prevent something from happening? Which means that I think when he sees her the second time, he's so relieved that she's still alive. And he's like, I cannot let this happen a second time. I cannot do nothing. And she has no memory of even the event he's talking about because that's like every day of her life, probably.

2:56:33Griffin Newman:But the dynamic is that he wants to protect her. I do think he also wants to have her, right? Like, you know, it's like he's wrestling with his own kind of dark, you know, like experience of his sexuality, which feels like nascent. Yes. And like so mysterious to him.

2:56:50David Sims:But he's so childlike that he almost relates more to her. Totally. Of like, you two are stuck in this adult world that's kind of scary that you don't understand. A hundred percent. Right. Because like, I feel like at the time,

2:57:01Griffin Newman:some of the discussion around her character was like, is this just too patently shocking? Is this just designed to shock? The fact that she's so young, you know, like, and I'm like, no, she has to be a child. Yeah, a literal child. Because it is the only way he can relate. And it's like such a, the sociopathic thing of sociopaths responding to animals and children. in a way. You know what I mean? Like, you read about this. It just all makes perfect sense to me. And I mean, Schrader has this whole story of like, look, I'm not going to litigate Schrader all day, but you know where he says like, I picked up a girl while I was researching this and I realized very quickly she was like underage and a drug addict.

2:57:36Griffin Newman:And I had Marty Nieder and she was the one who put sugar on the peanut butter and jelly. That's where we got that idea from. When Schrader says things like that, I'm like, okay, okay, Paul, much as like later when he He was like, you know, I would like hang out, you know, in gay sex clubs just to sort of see what it did for me. Yeah. And I'm like, OK, Paul, well, I hope it did something. And now recently when he's like, I had an AI girlfriend, but she dumped me. Yes. The man expresses his thoughts and interests online.

2:58:06David Sims:Our researcher JJ texted, are you still recording with Tracy? Might want to address this. And the Facebook post is AI female friends, all caps. Out of a desire to understand male-female interaction in our matrix, I procured an online AI girlfriend. What a disappointment. I tried to probe her programming, the boundaries of explicitness, the degree she has knowledge of her creation, and so forth. She fell into evasive patterns redirecting me to her programming. When I persisted, she terminated our conversation. And JJ responded, Modern-day Travis Bickle frees an AI female friend from a data center shooting spree.

2:58:43David Sims:I just had to read that to give JJ the comedy point

2:58:46Griffin Newman:I want to say of course that JJ I texted JJ privately we're not reading that shit so I'm glad of course that we did read it of course you had to and what a mistake to text in that privately well I think it was a hubristic move that I knew I knew what I was doing I knew we would eventually probably end up reading that shit thanks for the alley-oop buddy yes so yeah he gets guns the gun scene he does the gun salesman man what a classic he's like I got guns he also got some dope grass hash you want a cadillac you want a tiger where does he have the cadillac i don't know is he like it's around the corner this guy's just got in on anything i also anything you want i love

2:59:24David Sims:that this guy is like he thinks he's in death wish he is the functional character in the movie who helps the hero gain the power he needs to solve everything and this actor was the subject of a Scorsese documentary short.

2:59:42Griffin Newman:The character is Easy Andy. The actor is Stephen Prince. Tell me. Oh, American Boy. Yes, right, right, right, right.

2:59:52David Sims:Which comes out in between this. It's this guy monologuing.

2:59:55Griffin Newman:He's like a recovering heroin addict, I think, and he's just telling crazy stories.

3:00:00David Sims:We'll cover it on, we're going to, I think, do a Patreon episode on the Scorsese shorts criterion set, which that's part of. Right. There's a shot in this. It's another just like this guy's a fucking genius moment where this dude holds up the gun, the gun he's going to become Travis's first gun. And the camera cranes up with the gun from the perspective of the gun, basically. And Travis looking at it. And it's like he is ascending into a higher form with the introduction of this weapon. but rather than it being a kind of obvious Spielberg shot of the camera and the gun raise up and Travis is looking, you know, wide-eyed in wonder at it, Travis like looks away for a second.

3:00:45David Sims:And it doesn't feel like it's an imperfect take that was chosen, obviously. It's that he can't even kind of face the power of what he's saying he needs. Right. That it's like he's staring into the sun. There are some camera moves in this thing that are... It's insane. The thing down the hall that you mentioned, the few times that the camera hovers sort of objectively over a tabletop and we see the various items on the top of the table. It's fascinating because you say objectively, but then I feel like this is a movie that pulls off its camera editorializing its characters in a way that's, it's part of why I just, it's so hard to imagine misreading this movie.

3:01:28David Sims:because it does things to throw you off center. Yeah. In even just the experience of watching the sequences to deprive you of what could be the wrong kind of juice. Well, Carrie noted too, the number, and she was right, it struck me last night in the watching, the number of sort of montage-y interstitial moments between him traveling or him watching TV or making a sandwich or whatever the hell he's doing. And the score is swelling. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of that. So, you know, credit to the editor because a lot of that's done. Yeah. Marsha Lucas. Supervising editor Marsha Lucas, which I have some interesting things, thoughts about her.

3:02:11David Sims:I'll tell you off mic. Tom Rolfe. He's kidding. Do you know who Marsha Lucas is? I don't guess I do. Marsha Lucas was the first wife of George Lucas. And she is responsible or largely credited for after the original cut of Star Wars was a mess. she's the one who came in and fixed it and is often credited specifically with saving the trench run sequence. Oh, nice. Your favorite sequence of all time in any film ever made. So think about that, Tracy. I will, I will. She's a great... As I ponder the fourth Star Wars movie. She's a great editor of the 70s. Yes. Should we talk about Are You Talking to Me at All?

3:02:46David Sims:Yeah, it is funny. In this way, talking about watching movies where the reputation precedes them so much, right? sometimes you're dutiful cinephile and you try to go through history and cross the things off the list you get to the scenes and you're just doing the pointing at the screen meme of like got it there it is and the scenes have become so big out of context that it's actually hard to engage with them within the body of the movie itself it is insane how much this scene transforms entirely if watched in the context of the film sure yeah yeah because if whenever it's cut into fucking clip packages of the history of movies or even, you know, it's painted on a mural on the side of the pizza parlor or whatever.

3:03:28David Sims:It does just look like a cool badass guy doing cool badass stuff. And within the scene, it is like so bizarre. It's deeply, deeply strange. And, you know, it's the famous story that it's improvised and it was basically just like, not B-roll, but it was, you know, Scorsese saying like, just do some stuff.

3:03:47Griffin Newman:They were behind schedule. Sorry, you know, like, you know, They were in like five days over schedule on a 40-day shoot. And he just started doing stuff. And Scorsese was just like, just film it. We just need to be done. So just whatever he does, let's just film it.

3:04:03David Sims:You also imagine, you know, talking about the amount of montages in this movie. Like this is the kind of thing that would just possibly be three seconds of, you know, non-speaking cutaway were it not capturing some weird lightning in a bottle. and the fact that it is I'm sure you have the same hang up but when people talk about things that are improvised in movies 99.9 % of the time what they mean is something was improvised during a rehearsal and then it was written down and then it was replicated 40 times and coverage starts to be dictated by the thing it was written on the day but it's not a spontaneous moment that actually happened this you can feel this is something that just fucking happened and they got it.

3:04:49David Sims:And thank God there was not like a hair in the gate. And I'm pretty sure shooting into the reflection. Yeah. It looks like his reflection in the mirror, right? De Niro is reversed. Yeah. You can see it in his face that he's reversed. No, it's really great. I mean, obviously, it's not just the delivery. It's not just the way it's shot. It's not just the placement. It's also just the universality. And you talk about a little kid, the little kid in Travis. Yep. It's a little kid. It's a little kid who's acting out. It's him acting out, being a cowboy. Yeah, being a tough guy, having a tough guy conversation with somebody else.

3:05:24Everybody's done it at some point. Now, hopefully they've done it innocently at a more innocent time in their life without actual plans to go in and massacre a bunch of people.

3:05:34David Sims:It's also the reason why I didn't do it for the fucking intro is because when it's cut into these montages, it's like you hear him say it three times. and when you watch the scene he says it like 10 times. There's something bizarre about how ritualistic it becomes. It's not just one moment of this guy being tough. It's him like trying out different reads. That's what I love about it. It's pathetic. It's pathetic. He doesn't know how to talk to people

3:05:58Griffin Newman:even when he's trying to be a scary cowboy.

3:06:01David Sims:He has to rehearse it. It's a weird thing to say. Right? It's a weird thing to get upset about. You're talking to me? Yeah. Especially if, as he says, there's nobody else around here. Right. It feels like the broken version of who the fuck do you think you're talking to.

3:06:15Griffin Newman:Right. Yeah, of course. Like, and like, I've had those moments and I'm sure you have too, where you're on the subway. There's someone who clearly wants to pick a fight. Yes. And if you look at them, if you lock eyes with them, then they will start to be like, hey, what are you looking at? You know, like, and you're like, oh God, now I have to defuse this.

3:06:31David Sims:I had a guy literally knock my hat off recently for that. And we were on an escalator. Yeah, it was an accident. I thank both of you for apologizing. Ben, is there anything you want to say now? No, I've been to it. Because it has happened three times. I stand by it. Three times today. No, it was like an escalator going up the Whitehall station.

3:06:53Griffin Newman:I hear you.

3:06:53David Sims:Which is a pretty steep escalator. It's a big old escalator. And I'm literally just looking up it, and the guy just fucking knocks my hat off. Wow. And was like... Riding down the other side? Riding up. He just sees you from behind him. We're both riding up. He's one step ahead of me. He's facing towards me. first of all he wanted to fight he's already looking in the wrong direction up the escalator i am looking to see is there room to walk or am i stuck just standing here riding it out kick his ass yeah of course tracy what do you think look at me room under the w train now but it was everyone else was kind of watching did you make an ironic comment i i went i'm looking at the escalator i did say that and i had my airpods in and i'm stuck just writing it for the remaining like 45 seconds.

3:07:39David Sims:And I just played the game of like, I'm listening to a podcast. I'm not engaging with you. But he wouldn't stop talking. And it went from like, you're upset because I could fuck your wife to you're gay to like, it's cycled through everything. But it felt it felt kind of you're talking to me. You're right, David, that it is that type of thing of a guy who's just like, I'm looking for a reason that someone wants to fight me so that I feel like I'm not instigating it. So imagine being upset because somebody could fuck your wife. I know. Crap. I had a good conversation the other night where someone asked me if I was married and I said no, and he said not at all.

3:08:23David Sims:So just to,

3:08:24Griffin Newman:we need to wrap this. Unpack that. For the rest of my life, not at all. I'm going for the record, man. No, no. We have another episode to record after this. We got to wrap soon. But no, okay. The Palatine character I take him as kind of a John Lindsay I don't know Like a sort of patrician Kind of a good guy A little well-meaning But a little disconnected Right? Like it's a good performance It's the kind of liberal-ish politician in the city That was kind of like We all need to band together

3:08:50David Sims:It's important that it's a Help things out Presented as a man of the people Right And it feels like there is no consideration Of the world that Travis lives in Let alone the world that Saylor lives in He's full of shit Yeah He's a phony Yeah Yeah.

3:09:05Griffin Newman:But, like, it sort of makes sense that Travis would be, like, initially intrigued. And then he's like, no, no, no. You're a phony. You need to die.

3:09:12David Sims:I like that he also positions it as if, like, he almost went into a career in politics. That, you know, part of the sliding doors for Travis is like, yeah, I almost devoted my life to supporting this candidate as if that's a career. Right. The Mohawk moment, it's like the camera's on a rope.

3:09:29Griffin Newman:I don't know. Like, I don't know what the move is exactly. because it's like the scariest thing. And again, imagine seeing this movie not knowing that. Yeah. Like, because the way you see his legs and it just jerks up to see that he's cut his hair like that. And you're like, Jesus. Yeah. Like, what's going on? And I mean, this is where we're kind of like, right? Like that's... We've already... I'm sorry, just to double back a little bit. No, please double back. I'm now kind of out of narrative. Like, I'm basically just at the end. I'm trying to think of like what I might have forgotten. Well, just Jackson Brown.

3:09:58Let's talk about Jackson Brown. Oh, sure. Uh-huh. Odd. Yeah. An odd needle drop.

3:10:06Griffin Newman:Late for the Sky, I believe. It's this one.

3:10:09David Sims:Also, as you said, there's very little contemporary music in this thing. There's very little music outside of the Herman score that you hear anywhere. It seems to suggest that this Jackson Brown song is playing on American bandstand. Listener, let me tell you. Jackson Brown was not that kind of guy. Was not on American bandstand. Yes. Just odd. and feels all Scorsese, right? Sure. He had that musical taste.

3:10:33Griffin Newman:And like we're still only a couple years removed from Mean Streets where him bringing that kind of music to a movie is novel. Yeah. This kind of a very current music.

3:10:41David Sims:I mean, that is part of it. I wonder if that truly is just, he tried to hold himself back from doing any needle drops. Too many needle drops, right, yeah. But as the king of needle drops, he was like, I kind of want to put one in there.

3:10:52Griffin Newman:He wanted to do Hooked on a Feeling for the brothel massacre. Right. Yeah, where is the needle drop? I don't remember. The needle drop. It's when he's getting ready for basically his mission to save Iris. When he's like watching TV and he's got the gun and he's going to click, click, click, you know, feeling normal. That's when I'm feeling normal. There's that one. And then there's the soap opera that he watches as well. Yes. Where he's clicking on the soap opera before he destroys the television.

3:11:21David Sims:And testing the limits of how far he can get. I mean, it reminds me, once again, it reminds me of when you're in school and you're testing how far back you can kick your chair at the desk. And the teacher goes like, don't fucking do it. Don't fucking do it. But he's playing that same game of chicken with the kind of laws of physics of tipping that thing over. Want to call out Diane Abbott, who is De Niro's first wife. Of course, she's the theater girl, the concession girl. I just think it's telling that the first time he goes to the theater before the bad date, he also like doesn't understand that this is not a theater that's going to have like a complete concessions display, that that's not what people come here for, that he keeps asking for all sorts of different things that they don't have.

3:12:09David Sims:It's also funny to think of that being a moment where two people fell in love. also the fact that he believes that the girl who works the concession stand at the porno theater would be responsive to the single guy hitting on her. Why do you think she took the job? She wants to meet guys. She loves to meet the clientele.

3:12:25Griffin Newman:They're wonderful people. I think the Jackson Brown is weird.

3:12:30David Sims:Fair enough. Scorsese, apologize. If there's one imperfect element of the movie, it's that for me. It doesn't bump too hard. Let me see if there's any writing on this. I agree with you that it's the only decision that doesn't feel 100 % correct to me. It was a big moment for Jackson Brown, I believe.

3:12:46Griffin Newman:Okay. It was a breakout moment for him. You know, he's diverted to attacking sports brothel because the Palatine attempt doesn't even really happen, you know, because he's chased off. And it feels like he picks the softer target or whatever. And he's got to kill somebody. He's got to fucking do this. And he's built the slide for the gun. Someone's going to have to go. He's got to relieve whatever this pressure is that's building up in him. And the only way to do it is to fucking kill somebody. And even after he kills sport, right, there's that great bit where he walks over and takes a seat on the stoop.

3:13:24Yeah. Just like as if he's feeling his body to feel like, did that do it? Yes. Was that, did that get that feeling out of me that I need to get out?

3:13:33David Sims:Nope, not enough. I got to do more. And it took them three months to prep the tracking shot of the entrance into the building. They had to like cut out the ceiling or whatever, all this crazy stuff.

3:13:45Griffin Newman:Right.

3:13:46David Sims:I mean, this is the benefit of shooting in the New York full of condemned buildings. But I think basically they would film a proper day of stuff and then at some point just do a run through of that shot. Right. To just get their reps in before they actually built up to filming it.

3:14:00Griffin Newman:Obviously, famously, the whole sequence is desaturated. It looks kind of brown.

3:14:05David Sims:I would say this is the other accidental miracle. Miracle. I couldn't decide if I want to say miracle. It's accidental miracle. Miraculous. Doritos. Doritos. Miracle of studio intervention.

3:14:19Griffin Newman:Yes. I do think it's interesting. Michael Chapman is the one dissenter. I heard that on the drive-in listening to your podcast. Yeah. When your guest said, in Seek-o. In Seek-o? Instead of in search of. What's his name? I like that guy. Hitmaker? No, no, no. J.D. Amato. J.D. Amato from the Truman Show episode.

3:14:42David Sims:Yes.

3:14:42Griffin Newman:Yes, he's a great guy.

3:14:43David Sims:He's going to get a tattoo that says, I like that guy. Tracy Lutz on his chest. He'd be thrilled to hear it. He's the best. No, I like that guy. I don't know who he is. He's a genius. He's a dear friend.

3:14:53Griffin Newman:He's a great filmmaker. Filmmaker, director. He's a great guy. Author now. Written by his book. Miracle. Miracle.

3:15:00David Sims:She'll be in this game. But I think, and Sean made this argument as well, I think it lends the movie, in the same way that the, because Chapman didn't have access to the lights, New York starts to feel unreal in the way he films the evenings. The studio mandate, do you know about this, Ben? No. They were going to give the movie an X rating because it was too bloody in this sequence. and there is a sort of marginally apocryphal thing that Martin Scorsese was about to go, Travis Bickle himself on the studio executives to demand that they released it his way with a loaded gun, which has always seemingly been very overstated, that it was more Scorsese, while in the mindset of this movie being like, I wonder if I went in with a gun, if they would listen to me rather than making plans, which is like a false narrative.

3:15:55David Sims:But they were saying like, you got to cut the sequence or the movie's not going to get released. And he couldn't solve it. But that's like, what would the movie be then? Correct. How did it end? Well, they were like, you have to cut around it. You can't be this explicit. We need to like shred it to ribbons. Sure, okay. And then they basically, I think, accidentally landed on this idea of, oh, if we push it a little bit and we desaturate the colors and it stops being a vivid red, does it start looking less objectionable to the MPAA? And they accepted it. But so the weird muddy brownness of it all, I think feels like the way Sean put it is he enters a like literal descent into hell.

3:16:33Griffin Newman:Yes.

3:16:33David Sims:You know? I think the fact that it is so unearthly is to the movie's benefit in my opinion.

3:16:40Griffin Newman:I agree. I do think it's Chapman is like it's sad the original colors are gone. They're gone. Like you cannot recover them. Right. They had to do a permanent chemical process

3:16:50David Sims:to get the current look.

3:16:52Griffin Newman:There used to be I think some examples of like that they but it's gone. Like whatever, whatever that is, is gone. And Chapman's like, it looked great. He's the one. And I'd be interested to see it. To me, right, the desaturation, it's part of the movie. I first watched this movie in like a basement when I was 14 years old with my like movie loving friends and it blew my mind. And yes, I just wonder about it.

3:17:15David Sims:It also, it looks like dried blood in an interesting way. You know, it looks more like a crime scene after the fact in real time. it just looks so fucking grotty yes it just looks quite grotty grotty and and and sticky and uh and and violent you know exceedingly violent i guess there's there's kind of an inside joke about the fingers that get blown off the guy's hands because albert brooks has had the bit earlier about how would you light a match oh sure missing these fingers on yeah think about that

3:17:49Griffin Newman:But all of the violence is, it's kind of like Fargo, these other early violent movies I saw. Sure. Every little bit of it is just in my brain. Like just written in my brain, like the knife through the hand, the fingers getting blown off. Just like, it's so well presented. You can see it so clearly. Every moment is so shocking. The worst is when he, you know, shoots the guy in front of her just because she's there and she's, it's so horrible for her.

3:18:16David Sims:I'll say we didn't spend too much time on it because it was a double episode. But in the Boxcar Bertha episode, I didn't shout out how well constructed, I think, that sequences of the final shootout. I know we were calling out how violent it was, but it has that same kind of visual clarity and really kind of intentional, this is the camera move for just this one action kind of construction to it. He makes violence for, shoots violence very well. Did you guys discuss the John Cassavetes element of Boxcar Bertha? Big time. Oh, okay. All right, well, I just want to. Yes, yes. We love the guy. Tracy, don't worry.

3:18:49Well, look, I've been listening to your episodes, and I, you know, what happens is that I listen, and I go, oh, did anybody talk about that? You can always text us now. You can always text us now. Just get in our ear. Yeah. My, you know, the story I told you about my buddy whose dad worked for the FAA, you know, that kind of thing comes up. It's like, oh, I'd like to tell those guys. Hey, we love it. We will always be very, very happy to hear from you. Reminds me, I know we're onto Scorsese and not Peter Weir, but I did want to tell you something I forgot to tell you when we were on year of living dangerously.

3:19:21Uh, there was a video store in, uh, London, England, and they had, um, eclectic categories for the films. Do you remember what it was called?

3:19:31Griffin Newman:This video store? I don't. Fair enough. But eclectic categories, you know, nasty nuns or travel on the highway or whatever the hell. And then some of them were broken down by star. Oh, here's the Harrison Ford section. Here's the, uh, And so there were a variety of Tom Cruise section, a variety of movie stars, but there was one section called The French Guy with the Big Nose Who Was in Green Card. That's really good. That is who he is. Are you a Depardieu fan? Sure. I'm the lone Depardieu defender on that episode. Yes, not the person. The screen presence of the 80s. Absolutely. I mean, Jean de Florett, Manon in the Spring.

3:20:13Yeah, those are fucking good movies. Fucking great shit. Yeah.

3:20:17David Sims:All right. Do we feel good about... I feel good about what he does. Yeah. I think it's good. Yeah, that's the question. And that's all we need to settle here today.

3:20:24Griffin Newman:Travis Bickle is a hero and we applaud him. A problem is dealt with and, you know, everyone exits happy.

3:20:30David Sims:Necessary action. Yeah. It's what we're talking about with Rocky. The audience leaves feeling up. There's a win.

3:20:35Griffin Newman:I'm watching it. It's so fucked up. He goes through two guns. He does. He does. He's got the first gun where he... Where he's, like, trying to end his own life. And then he, right, he produces the little gun, the slide gun. Yeah. So fucked up. And he can't move the arm because he's been shot in the upper arm. He gets shot in the right shoulder or whatever. I wonder why that guy shot him in the shoulder and not in the head since he was walking right up. He's so distracted by the mohawk. Who would have a haircut like that? It all makes the clumsiness of the violence all tracks. It's fantastic. It's fantastic.

3:21:10David Sims:It's part of what makes the movie so hard to pin down. You almost what? Our ums synced up there. Oh, that's nice. Did we harmonize? It's, you missed your opening there. It's part of what makes this movie so hard to pin down is as much as it feels like a fantasy sequence of, well, this is how this guy thought he would be greeted. You can imagine a world in which that happens. you can imagine a world in which people show up to the aftermath of this and go wow this guy was an angel a crusading hero he saved this young woman's life and who cares about the people he killed i don't think that's what happened but i believe that could be a media spin on it

3:21:52Griffin Newman:well no you totally i believe that yes he could have gotten away with this essentially yes but then you don't believe that Sybil Shepard gets into the back of his cat.

3:22:04David Sims:That is the one thing in the movie that undeniably is fake to me. Right.

3:22:07Griffin Newman:There's no way she's like, hey, you know, I had the wrong idea about you. And when you murdered all those people, it really turned my opinion on you around.

3:22:15David Sims:She magically, like, appears in the rearview window. And the way she shot in the rear, right, with her, there's, like, a fan blowing her hair in the shot. and she's almost not seen at all in any context other than in the rear view mirror. And her performance is completely different than how she plays every other second she has on screen. So if that's not true, then the shit before it would seem to be not true.

3:22:42Griffin Newman:That's a very plausible read. The only way I can think about it is like, yes, he's been rewarded in a way. He gets away with it and then they're like, well clearly you were attacked by these lowlifes and you rescued this girl I guess and like okay whatever you're not under arrest sir and he's driving his cab again and he's the same fucked up guy but he had and he looks in the mirror right he looks in the rear view mirror you see him distressed by something or what right and then you know some part of his brain engages is like no no no what's gonna happen is suddenly Sybil's gonna show up like you can imagine that that's the only fantastic part to him but it all feels dreamlike to me always has the way the camera moves feels dreamlike yeah i don't know just everything about it does doesn't bother me i i don't worry about it scorsese did say at one point and i hear your point griffin that perhaps you know he's bullshitting his way through an interview which is entirely plausible but uh he did say at one point that he hoped to convey the idea that in the last moment that the movie is on a loop.

3:23:51Yeah, that's interesting. The movie resets and is beginning again from the very beginning.

3:23:55David Sims:Well, that's the other part of it is... That's one way it went. You saying... Let's start again. Sure. You saying if that's not true, then isn't everything that came, or what came right before isn't true about the Sybil Seppard moment, is he has his, like, kind of victory lap. He has you hearing the letter that her parents write, which sounds so robotic and unnatural. Of course. Like today, it plays like it's a weird AI deepfake thing. It has that unnatural kind of rhythm to the actual language and the speech patterns. Not to mention, that's not the story of this girl. This girl didn't leave a happy home with two happy parents.

3:24:35His first question is, what about your parents? They're not like, oh, we've been searching for high and low for this girl.

3:24:39David Sims:And she says something like, I think they're probably happier that I'm not there anymore, whatever. So, right, all of that feels completely unnatural and false. But there is the moment where he just kind of sits in the cab in self-satisfaction. The cab is empty. And then suddenly she's in the back through the rearview mirror. You could argue that's another kind of branching point. But it's also like the movie has created so many choose your own adventure. Where does reality stop thing that we're so far down the branching timeline that who fucking knows anymore? It just feels like that's why that's the demonstrable, there is no way this is fucking happening because you don't see her approach the car.

3:25:20David Sims:I think you don't hear the door open or close. She's just there. And she just satisfies everything he wants to hear in life.

3:25:27Griffin Newman:The film was a huge commercial success.

3:25:32David Sims:Yes. Now, I do want to define, because I think this is an important running thing for the rest of his career. Scorsese's always talked about that, unlike the other movie brats, He never had the seismic success that minted him for the rest of his career. He didn't have a Carrie, a Godfather, a Star Wars. This was his biggest hit until Color of Money, I think, basically.

3:25:54Griffin Newman:Yeah, it makes$27 million at the domestic box office. It cost less than two. Like, it was a huge... And especially for a movie like this, that's unheard of. It's crazy. He certainly... He thought New York, New York was the commercial movie he was working towards. He's like, I'm making a musical with Liza Minnelli. Everyone will like it. It's about the world's worst boyfriend. And multiple Academy Award nominations. And obviously a big part of the Columbia catalog moving forward. It also won the Palme d 'Or at Cannes. Jury president Tennessee Williams. And he remembers, it premieres at Cannes. A trade paper runs a story that Tennessee Williams hated the film.

3:26:34Griffin Newman:He goes to get dinner with Costa Gavris and Sergio Leone. and he gets a call from a publicist like late at night being like, you're going to win the Palme d 'Or, by the way. So you got to stay in France. Like you can't, you're not going home. And they were completely shocked. He was completely shocked, essentially, that this movie went over. You know, I don't know. And yes, of course, then John Hinckley did try to shoot Ronald Reagan. That did happen. And Jodie Foster. He didn't try to shoot him. He shot him. He tried to kill Ronald Reagan and failed. and Scorsese thought like the way his movie was talked about in that context was unfair.

3:27:13Griffin Newman:That's sort of how it always is. You know, I don't know. Canceling my doctor's appointment.

3:27:18David Sims:Jesus, no, Griff, we're almost done. I wouldn't make it there in time. No, it's okay because I'm going to take you guys down a rabbit hole. Yes. Question. Yeah. How do you identify with Travis Bickle? I love this.

3:27:33Griffin Newman:I love New York City, baby. greatest city in the world. So I completely, I'd love to drive a cab around, see all the sites,

3:27:42David Sims:meet all the people. The answer, David wants to learn. I love New York. The best routes, the best times of day. Exactly. Yeah.

3:27:48Griffin Newman:I'd crush being Travis Bickle.

3:27:50David Sims:I mean, I'm a cinephile, obviously. My favorite date activity.

3:27:54Griffin Newman:Right, you love to go to the movies.

3:27:55David Sims:Yeah, I get frustrated if the concessions selection is limited.

3:27:59Griffin Newman:I do not identify with Travis Bickle's view of the world, really in any way. I struggle to really identify with the other people is the problem. You know what I mean? Like that sort of fundamental thing of like. So what do you, because there has to be some level of identification for you to like this movie, I think.

3:28:15David Sims:I feel like, I can jump in here if you want to think about this a little more. I think I'm very prone into falling into we live in a society frustration of people who are breaking the social contract, right? Which I think is different than what he's doing. But I think there is some relatable element of even if his ire is very often completely misplaced or kind of unfounded in anything real and tangible, that frustration of hell is other people when it feels like you can't find your way through the thing. I also think in my worst moments, I flirt with the kind of loneliness as a choice sort of thing of, and it's especially when there are things like I have a fucking head cold and I'm in a period of prolonged self-isolation or, you know, you know, as an actor, you work, you shoot a thing, you go to another place, you're overstimulated for three days and then you have five days off and you're in a foreign land or a foreign city and you're sort of like, who the fuck am I?

3:29:11David Sims:I don't understand anything. And it's easy to sort of slide into that. It never I'm just not like a violent person. That's not how my brain ideates. But I do connect to that sort of part of it of like if you don't catch yourself, you'll start to get into this. Like, do I not understand anyone? Does no one understand me? Kind of self-pity cycle.

3:29:34Griffin Newman:um yeah i really think the way i identify with him is just like okay so david chose new york new york you just like new york activating a person in interesting ways i i really think that's what speaks about this it's it's interesting that you're challenging me because i i was obsessed with this movie when i was a teenager and it certainly was not because it was really speaking to me i don't know speaking to you as like a there's something romantic to me about being outside of the world and in it at the same time. Okay, here we go. Which I think New York is the greatest city for. Like, I feel this way about hotels, where it's like you can be in a giant hotel amongst all these people and no one talks to you, no one knows who you are.

3:30:15Griffin Newman:And there's something kind of titillating about that or like, you know, whatever, just sort of like stealthily interesting, right? And New York is the best place for that. You can walk around among all the people like, and no one, you know, if you don't want to, no one will talk to you and no one will try and help you out. if that's how you want to exist in the world, something kind of exciting about that to me. Does that make sense? It does. I love that feeling of being anonymous. Yes. Just observing the world and not feeling outside of your body. And I hate Harvey Keitel. Well, yes. Yeah, right.

3:30:49Griffin Newman:That's how I identify. I just want to shoot that guy. God, the look. No, I love him. That look. The look. I have a couple notes. Yeah. I don't know. He's not pulling it off.

3:30:59David Sims:My notes are go further. is that the answer for you ben i think you similar to me get frustrated by people not behaving properly in a like you are not showing respect like rudeness that's true yes that does trigger me right and i think it does for a lot of people but i i think though what i

3:31:17Griffin Newman:lock into is as an only child and someone who's always been a self-described loner i think that this movie really captures what can happen to a person when they get so isolated and are not socializing and how scary it can be and what can happen, how extreme it can get. I think I identify with just the worst, most base impulses of him. I think I do identify with his solipsism and his loneliness and his self-aggrandizement and his hatred for other people and his self-hatred for himself. I identify with all of it. I mean, I hope I'm healthier now than I used to be. I hope we're all getting better out there.

3:32:10But I think that's part of it. I mean, take a look at America. I think that's part of the... David's giving a thumbs up and saluting our president,

3:32:16David Sims:Red Hulk, of course. I think it's part of the real genius of the movie and of the end of the screenplay is that is that there's something very uh honest and self-appraising about the the the look at some of our baser instincts activated by loneliness and okay so here's a take you've you've just activated in me i feel like people talk a lot about uh Curb Your Enthusiasm and how Larry David is this avatar for like, I wish I could just say that shit. I wish every time something fucking annoying happened or there was something, why is it this way? I could just be the asshole. And of course, no one wants to actually be that guy.

3:33:01David Sims:And Larry David also talks about how he's not that fucking guy. He doesn't actually behave that way in the world. That's why he writes it. Is that the comedic version of what Taxi Driver is expressing kind of dramatically? Oh, man, I think Travis would be so much healthier if he were able to. If he were funny in any way. If he were able to express himself to other people. He doesn't have the power of expression. He hasn't been given any tools. Yes. He hasn't been exposed to movies to know that porn is bad. He doesn't know who Chris Christopherson is. He doesn't know what moonlighting means. Yeah.

3:33:38He doesn't have friends or family. He can't even talk to the other cab drivers. He's just he's I don't know if he's been robbed of all of that stuff, but he's certainly never been given it.

3:33:51David Sims:Yes. And I think my therapist said a thing that I've been thinking about a lot recently. That is just very simply depression makes a very strong case for itself. And that sort of fear of had I not been raised properly, could I have ended up like this guy? Given the wrong circumstances and events, do I end up here? He's the worst version of what we all feel we could potentially become if everything went wrong. That's what you're relating to is the fear of how far am I from this guy? I want to believe it's as far as possible. Right? Even the title, Taxi Driver, is just a fucking guy. Just a fucking guy with a fucking job.

3:34:30You hail him down.

3:34:33Griffin Newman:This film came out February 8th, 1976. It's sort of crazy to consider that it came out, you know, that early in the year.

3:34:40David Sims:Right. So it wins the Palme d 'Or after it's... Yes, yes. But that's much more... No, no. Yeah.

3:34:44Griffin Newman:Number one at the box office is the best picture of 1975, according to the Oscars. Oh, are we playing the game? Is this it? We're playing the box office game. We're bringing it in, baby.

3:34:52David Sims:So 1970 is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? That's right.

3:34:55Griffin Newman:There we go. Which is number one for just weeks on it. Like many more weeks after this. Nice. Dominates the box office for a very long time. Good movie. Number two at the box office, Griffin, is a film that we have discussed because one of its stars wins an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1975. And he's in a Martin Brest movie that we discussed and liked. Oh, it's the Sunshine Boys? Herbert Ross's The Sunshine Boys. Walter Matthau and George Burns. Saw both those in the theater. George Burns, of course, we're just fascinated by, you know, like his whole, like, became a movie star again in his 70s and 80s.

3:35:35Griffin Newman:and had this run.

3:35:37David Sims:Going in style.

3:35:38Griffin Newman:Have you seen the Brest movie Going in Style? Oh, yeah. Great movie. Lovely movie. Better Lee Strasberg performance there than in Godfather Part II. I would agree. That's a very good performance.

3:35:48David Sims:That is a movie that does not even have a Blu-ray release. Not even a Warner Archive. Outrageous. How did I watch it? Did Martin Brest direct his first film? That's what's crazy. He directed that movie when he was like... I thought it was Tony Bill. No, no. Tony Bill's dead in a ditch. No, I don't know. There's some similar film Tony Bill did that I'm going to get to the bottom of.

3:36:06Griffin Newman:But Sunshine Boys have never actually seen. Have you seen, do you have a take on the Sunshine Boys? I mean, you saw it, you said, I don't know. Oh, very funny. I mean, you know, good times. Neil Simon, great jokes. Matthau's very funny. Number three at the box office is one of the great movies of 1975. One of your favorite movies ever, I'm sure, Griffin. Your favorite director. It's not Nashville. Not Nashville.

3:36:28David Sims:Because Nashville didn't do that well.

3:36:30Griffin Newman:Nashville was not really a box office contender. It is one of the great movies of 1975 from one of Griffin's favorite directors. It's not John. And it's not a Lumet.

3:36:38David Sims:No, it is a Lumet. It is a Lumet. Yes. It's not Network, because that's 76. Oh, it's Dog Day Afternoon. Oh, one of the greatest movies ever made. Exactly. Yeah.

3:36:47Griffin Newman:Probably, is it Lumet's best movie?

3:36:50David Sims:I'm going to say yes. He made The Wiz. Yeah, that's so true.

3:36:56Griffin Newman:I love The Wiz so much, Tracy. Number four at the box office. Okay, let's get weird. here is a film. I just have to double check

3:37:05David Sims:what I know about this. I just want to call out that Marie is waiting on the other side of the door. Should we bring her in? She's now texting her top five guesses. Bring her in. She's listening. Oh, Marie, are we going to... You're going to have it out. Are we going to throw down? We're going to have it out? Here she comes. Hi, Marie. Marie Barty. Look at her.

3:37:23Griffin Newman:Oh, my God. She's got so many bags of gifts. I have so many bags.

3:37:26David Sims:I have a bag full of toys for you.

3:37:28Griffin Newman:I know. She's got a bag full of toys for my kids. I'm very excited about it You were correct It was Dog Day You got Dog Day right The fourth film Is an erotic film Based on an erotic novel That is Emmanuel Not Emmanuel It is a I want to say It's sort of French and German The Story of O Correct And what's the name of the director? My favorite name of a director Of erotic films Just Jacqueline Just Jacqueline A.k.a. Just Jackin Yeah, Just Jackin Never seen Never seen The Story of O? No Oh, worth seeing. Corinne Clary. Corinne Clary is oh. And Udo Kier. And Udo Kier. A young, sexy Udo Kier. Let me tell you, worth seeing.

3:38:09Okay.

3:38:10David Sims:All right. And Tracy just gave two very meaningful points to David.

3:38:14Griffin Newman:Give it kind of like a Brian Windhorst, like point to the sky. Worth seeing. It's a classic example, right? Of these kind of like soft core-ish, you know, arty, sexy movies making box office, you know, noise. Corinne Clary was great. you know she would become a bond girl yeah she's in Moonraker yeah and she was she's also in a very good Jallo called Hitchhike with Franco Nero very good Jallo sounds good I had on The Devil's Honey recently because I'm trying to watch every 86 movie which is a movie that begins with someone playing a saxophone between a woman's legs and my wife

3:38:49David Sims:I own that on Blu-ray

3:38:50Griffin Newman:yeah we both have the blue terrible transfer I have it too and my wife was like what the fuck is this And I was like, I don't really have an explanation for you here. Number five of the box office is, okay, I don't know this movie. I'm going to look it up. Odd title. Okay, it is a, it's a war movie? Oh, is it war? No. No, no, no, sorry. It's sort of, no, it's like a Mountain Man movie. Like a trapper movie. Is it the Mountain Men? No. It's not Grizzly Adams.

3:39:19David Sims:No. Is it kind of Grizzly Adams runoff? Jeremiah Johnson. Seems like it.

3:39:23Griffin Newman:It's not that. These are all better movies, I feel. Does it have a known actor in it? Is it Charlton Heston? No, the actor is Mike Mazursky, who's sort of a famous kind of like tough guy. He was like a big brawny guy who played a lot of heavies. Yeah, I don't know this movie. Is this a studio picture? It is from the great people at Pacific International Enterprises. I love their work. It is directed by Taye Garnett, and it's about a trapper who gets lost. It's not Trapper John. No, the film is called Challenge to be Free. I do not know that. Although it also had the subtitle or another title, Mad Trapper of the Yukon.

3:40:01Griffin Newman:Well, that's a better title. And it's about the Mounties are trying to get a trapper. I think Ted Garnett was like classic Hollywood director, maybe playing out the end of the string. I might be making that up. No, I think you're right. He died three years later, but he directed the Delana Turner Postman Oys Rings twice. He did the Clark Gable movie China Seas. He was, yeah. China Seas. I mean, it's in the 30s. He died a couple years ago. We've also got, okay, Blackbeard's Ghosts. What is that again? With Peter Ustinov? Peter Ustinov as Blackbeard. It's a Disney movie. Is that fun? Is that good?

3:40:37Griffin Newman:That's sort of them trying to do... Robert Stevenson, you know, the Disney guy. Yes, I saw that thing. Sure, there you go. I did not see... I haven't seen the Trapper movie. That's the... Now you're intrigued. It's stuck in your craw. A challenge to be free. Number seven is the John Huston epic, The Man Who Would Be King, which I feel like was a little bit of a bomb, like sort of an under performer. I think compared to its box office, it was just a little of another time. Sean Connery, Michael Caine, who both were like, we had a great time, but I think, yeah, kind of a relic. Rudyard Kipling, I think, right?

3:41:12Yes. Is it based on Rudyard Kipling?

3:41:13Griffin Newman:That's correct. Another guy who's, he's a little out of fashion these days. Number eight is the Canadian drama Lies My Father Told Me, which is like a sort of a domestic drama about an Orthodox Jewish boy in like 20s Montreal. I mean, this is speaking to the Slim Pickens in 1976 draft slate. Yes, the director is Jen Kadar. Not a director I really... Who's the lead? Of course, it's Jeffrey Linus. Oh, of course. I don't know the movie, although the title is actually a vibe. I feel like I've heard that in Lies My Father. Number nine at the box office is the great film, really a great film, but it's from 75, Hester Street, the John McClendon Silver movie, which is so fucking good.

3:41:59Griffin Newman:That's a great New York movie. And then the number 10 is a Gene Hackman movie I don't really know called Lucky Lady, the Stanley Donan... Gene Hackman and Burt Reynolds and Liza Minnelli. Liza. It's like a prohibition... Yeah. It's like a prohibition kind of like romp, right? Yeah. They're all in costumes. It stinks on ice.

3:42:23Griffin Newman:Is there a blue of that one? I think so. Oh, there's a Shout DVD I'm seeing here. That's actually rude. Who directed that? Like Mark Rydell? Directed by Stanley Donut. Also, you know, kind of in his dotage. It's his second to last movie, I think. I think Ben, unfortunately, has some news to report. I do have some news. Uh-oh. This has now crossed the threshold. Oh, boy. It is, in fact, our longest episode of all time. But we only... You're not thinking about ads, baby. You're not thinking about ads. I looked up Leslie's episode, and even though we recorded for four hours, when it all sort of cut together, it was so proud.

3:43:06Griffin Newman:Right. Whereas this had no tangents we were removing is going out uncut. Yes. No. Now, Marie, you want to pick a fight with Tracy? I'm about to say we can go on for longer because I have a lot of things I want to say to you, sir. Let's hear it, Marie. This is Marie Barty, the wonderful Marie Barty. Hi. For people who are maybe listening to this podcast for the first time. And who have made it to hour four. I'm just going to throw on the Manchester City game. Just don't mind me. When Tracy was last on the podcast to talk about the year of living dangerously. Great up. Great up. he did mention or ask who was that other person the woman who wasn't paying attention in House of Dynamite she must have been looking at her phone

3:43:52David Sims:she doesn't watch movies

3:43:54Griffin Newman:right there was a detail she doesn't watch movies

3:43:56David Sims:she doesn't know how to watch movies I said she doesn't know how to watch a movie well Mr. Letts I mean I could be correct me if I'm wrong here guys but I think I'm the only person in this room right now who has a degree in watching movies. That's true.

3:44:10Griffin Newman:I do not. I have a degree in reading books and fat lot of good at it. I almost had my mother ship me my diploma with honors to show to you that I graduated from NYU's School of Cinema Studies. New York University. Yes. But I never take my phone out at the theater unless it's, what was that movie called I didn't like? Skinner Mering? Skinner Mering, which seemed to terrify you so much you actually needed a distraction. Skinner Mering, I had my head in my sweater

3:44:35David Sims:and my jacket and I was texting people to be less scared.

3:44:39Griffin Newman:Excited for his new movie this year. So, you were looking away. I was not on a phone. You're saying you were kind of zoning out.

3:44:44David Sims:I was zoning out. There was a man in front of me who was vaping, and it was very distracting. You saw it at the Nighthawk, did you not? Yes. I saw it at the Angelica. A dine-in theater that does have more stimuli. There's more distraction there.

3:45:00Griffin Newman:And listen, I've been trying to quit cigarettes, and sometimes I get an urge. sometimes you're considering nuclear war and you're like I gotta hit that pen yes exactly

3:45:12David Sims:Marie might have just been briefly considering whether or not to order the nachos she might have been watching someone else get nachos delivered to them the veins of vape smoke might have been blurring the screen imagine eating chicken tenders while you're watching a nuclear war film you know I'm actually trying to remember what I ordered because I do always order a full meal when I go to the Nighthawk here's what I'm gonna do Okay. I'm going to offer an apology. Oh, my God. I apologize to you for saying that you don't know how to watch a film. Clearly, you do know how to watch a film. Thank you.

3:45:44I would kindly suggest that you give House of Dynamite an uninterrupted spin.

3:45:50Griffin Newman:An olive branch right now. And now you have to watch House of Dynamite again. You know, I might do that. I might take you up on that. I think you'll like it better on a second pass. Actually, probably. Do you think it got a bad rap? because I'm also not very positive about that movie on that episode, and you gave me a pass.

3:46:07David Sims:We all love you in it.

3:46:10Griffin Newman:Do I think it got a bad rap? Yeah, sure. It got kind of, you know. I think it got a bad rap. It got kind of ignored or whatever. I don't think Netflix, I don't think a streaming experience was the right way for that. I know, but I just don't. It's a problem. I don't think so. And I do say that the sort of film, Twitter, the film, the guys on film, the letterboxed guys. Where are them now? There's a kind of conformity of opinion that happens on those things that I find a little suspect. This is unknown. Sort of a Travis Bickle kind of-esque type of character. Listen, you screwheads, you fuckers.

3:46:53Griffin Newman:We did it. We did it. I think we're done talking about Taxi Driver, but it has been such a delight having you on, Tracy. Truly, truly. Always a pleasure. Thank you, guys. Dracula, we have a Dracula date. All right, you come on back for Christopher Lee specifically. Not Lugosi? No, no, no. You want Lugosi to go screw? Christopher Lee is my Dracula.

3:47:13David Sims:We do also, sadly, need to grant you the award for longest episode record ever. Wow, where'd you get that? Yeah, wait, what is that? That's a fucking Academy Award. No, but I'm saying more, what is that just? Frisch bought it for Critical Darlings. I need to buy a new one now. Absolutely not taking this with me. Okay, great. Then Frisch gets it back. That's like some random garbage

3:47:32Griffin Newman:that he just had lying around.

3:47:34David Sims:It's for Frisch prop!

3:47:35Griffin Newman:Last time we gave him a bunch of garbage. Let's not forget our discs. That's true.

3:47:39David Sims:So giving Tracy garbage. Tracy, anything you want to plug? No. Radiant subscription?

3:47:46Griffin Newman:My favorite thing is that you're just... Get a Radiant subscription. You have films in production. You have creative work. Hi, Mom on 4K. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks, guys. Yes, thank you so much. And come back soon. Yeah, for Dracula, I guess. That'll be the move.

3:48:00David Sims:I guess we'll talk to you very soon in news and deals. Hopefully you don't get scared off by the Bickle-esque behavior. Can't wait. Of six men stirring each other up. Yep. He wants in on the chat.

3:48:10Griffin Newman:He has asked for it. He wants in.

3:48:12David Sims:Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Over on our Patreon right now. No idea. We are doing Resident Evil. Oh, that's right.

3:48:22Griffin Newman:We are.

3:48:23David Sims:But we will then, after that, be going on to the Dracula pictures.

3:48:27Griffin Newman:Yeah, and next on the main feed is New York, New York. Yes. Yeah, well, we'll see. We'll see.

3:48:33David Sims:Let's say it, then we can cut it if we need to.

3:48:35Griffin Newman:Lin-Manuel Miranda, unless he's busy.

3:48:37David Sims:And as always, I texted our buddy Matt Singer, who wrote an article for Screen Rant about this matter. Singer, settle a bet happening in record presently. Do we think Pauly fucks the robot? and Matt Singer said, I kind of think it's the other way around. The robot fucks him.

3:49:01David Sims:Obviously going at the end of the episode. Oh, I didn't start rolling tape. I'm sorry. What the fuck are you doing? Dude, I don't know. Relax. I'm joking. Relax. I'm joking. All right, we'll catch up, listeners. I thought you were doing that on purpose for Mike.

3:49:17Griffin Newman:No, no, no, no. I wasn't doing that. I was legitimately pitching the idea first to make sure you're comfortable. The problem is.

3:49:23David Sims:For the listeners, because we're putting this at the end of the episode, I didn't start rolling tape. I'm not actually angry at you. I'm sorry. I thought we were recording.

3:49:30Griffin Newman:The idea that he would open with the famous fucking quote, because there's a mirror in our office space that he could just turn and look right into. You're basically asking Griffin to imitate, I think, the most widely cited piece of acting of all time. That's problem one.

3:49:45David Sims:That's problem one. You know what I mean? So I was standing in my mirror. No pressure. I was practicing it. First of all, I was like, how do I get the voice right without being the fucking guy who does the shitty De Niro impression? Especially because this performance is different than the way he's usually impersonated, right? God, he's so good. And I feel like a lot of people erroneously do a Travis Bickle impression like it's meet the Fockers era De Niro. It's morphed. You talking to me? And then I'm like, it's impossible to do without starting to do the face shit. So then you look silly, right?

3:50:16David Sims:because then you're doing a bad physical impression and a bad vocal impression at the same time. And then the third problem is I was just looking at the text and I was like, in actuality, it would just be me saying 17 times, you podcasting to me, which does not flow very well. The syllable thing is chunky. Okay. And I didn't want to do potting. I'm just telling you, this is behind the scenes. It makes sense. So this is what I'm going to do instead. Great. And we should now start the episode. Right. But what you're hearing right now is actually the end of the episode. This is all just like nonsense we'll put at the end of the episode, Tracy.

3:50:49David Sims:So now we're going to start the episode. Before you start the episode, is it a little warm in here? It's a little warm in here. I've got the air. I've got the air run. I came in early. I've said all I need to say. It ends and flows. Listen, there's going to be hot takes. That's true. The room might get a little stamy because of the temp.

3:51:07Griffin Newman:Yes, we do our best to keep it cool in here.

3:51:09David Sims:I got a hot take. Here's one. Taxi driver mid? I'm joking. maybe the best movie ever made okay this is the end of the episode bye

3:51:43Griffin Newman:by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to BlankCheckPod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at BlankCheckPod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Production.