The Cars That Ate Paris

7:27Griffin Newman:Fucking puppet man. Excuse me. Sorry, uh, James Henson. That miniseries would be comprised of two

7:34David Sims:puppet men, one of whom eventually put the puppets down. The ones I've pushed over the lineup until now as well, or like Lynn Ramsey and Tim Burton. Tim Burton, certainly. Yes.

7:46Griffin Newman:Like, okay, so when we did the, you know, we did our March Madness tournament a few years ago where we each got to pick eight guys, right? Yep. So the guys in my region, we have since done three of them. Okay. So we've done Peter Weir, It's happening now. Jane Campion and Danny Boyle, right? Those were three guys on my list. Give me your other five. Karen Kusama, who, you know, was an eighth seed and she's making in another movie I hear, you know, we could do her someday.

8:14David Sims:Yeah, she might be on the bracket this year?

8:17Griffin Newman:Can't remember. No, because she beat Peter Weir, remember?

8:19David Sims:Oh, right. Weird. Weird. The Archers. And by the way, we're going to make it Weir this whole miniseries. The Archers, Powell and Pressburger.

8:30Griffin Newman:blank check, Weir,

8:32David Sims:again. Yep. David, you're unhappy right now, but think about how happy you're going to be when those bumper sticker sales come in.

8:40Griffin Newman:They better come in high. Keep like They better come in Weird. Are we charging$400 per bumper sticker? What's our plan here? Yeah. Premium. Do a catchphrase too many times on podcast. Create bumper sticker question mark profit.

8:58David Sims:Ben and I covered in flop sweat. They're really premium. Look how shiny. We used a hollow sticker.

9:05Griffin Newman:Powell and Pressburger. Would love to do them someday. That's a shared dream for us. Yeah, exactly. That's not quite a solo Wong Kar Wai Probably the closest answer I have To your question Steve McQueen I'm kind of disinterested in Steve McQueen right now I haven't loved the last couple things he made Mike Lee Maybe my true answer But you know A hefty lift A big filmography A guy who you know Made challenging movies Big ish film

9:38David Sims:My big takeaway from Burton is if I'm pushing my guys up the hill, tight series. Right? Yeah, Burton really asked a lot. Where I'm like, double up the Keetons. Lynn Ramsey's five. Okay, wait, is that the rest of you? That's it. Okay. Who is on yours? Yeah, yes, please.

9:56Griffin Newman:He asks a very reasonable question.

9:59David Sims:And I said, please, like a gentleman.

10:01Griffin Newman:Thank you. That's a big thing in my house right now. So thank you.

10:03David Sims:Oh, you're teaching the please and thank yous? Well, we've been trying to teach it for a very long time.

10:08Griffin Newman:Feels like there's been some backsliding. From the boss baby? Yes. From my daughter, yes. Well, to be fair, time is money. I know, but maybe she doesn't need to, as she's almost five, point at her water bottle and go, empty. Maybe she could say, please, can you get me some water? Something along those lines. That's kind of funny. And I go like, what was that? And she goes, it's empty. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I wasn't asking for meaning. I was asking for maybe a different way, different tone. That is how the boss baby would act. That's some swimming with sharks shit. Your guys, so as with, you know, some of your guys we've now done.

10:47Griffin Newman:We've now done Martin Brest. Ding! We've now done Lynn Ramsey. Ding! And we've now done Buster Keaton. Ding! Your remaining guys that you had on your... It's wild that this is like an even balance. It is. This is the job we do, right? This is the job we do.

11:00David Sims:People think they pay us for the podcast. No. No. They pay us for the scheduling.

11:06Griffin Newman:You had Terrence Malick I think also a bit of a shared one for us Yeah We'd love to do And one that we've come close to We'll do it sometime We've thrown him on the spreadsheet Where's my Jesus movie, Terry? That's the real thing Where's my Jesus? He's making a Jesus movie?

11:20David Sims:He's been making it for 10 years Benny Principal photography wrapped February February February 2020 Oh shit It is the last completed unreleased film shot entirely in the before times. He's been tinkering away at it ever since. Because the guy doesn't really do reshoots. Presumably, he has shot no post-COVID footage. No, I think he's just... He's just in the edit forever. Finding his rhythms. But I just love that there's one movie that is still from the before times that we haven't seen.

11:55Griffin Newman:And so maybe that will be the moment for Terry. We've also got 70s Altman, of course, long of Pet Product Food. Cassavetes, similar. Joe Dante, who we're always in this liminal thing. I think, again, a guy we both kind of want to do, but we're just like, could he just make another movie, please? I transparently hate his most recent film, and I don't want to end on it. And then Preston Sturgis, another, I would say, shared one. A fun, exciting one. Ben, by the way, of your guys, we have only done... Because Ben won this year. He did. He won this March Madness with John Carpenter. A very, very strong contender.

12:30Griffin Newman:Yeah.

12:30David Sims:My number one seed. When we put the bracket together, we were immediately like Carpenter probably takes this. Yeah. Ben's winning.

12:37Griffin Newman:The other picks, I don't know if they're at the top of the list. David S. Ward, I feel, is never going to happen. We've ruled him out. We're kind of doing him piecemeal. Yes.

12:46David Sims:We'll do Major League. We'll do Major League on Patreon. Can I see if I can guess the other ones if I can remember correctly? Sure, go ahead. Okay, so David S. Ward, Carpenter, Ernest Dickerson, I remember vividly being in there. Yes. Correct. Penelope Spheris? Yep. Yes. Harmony Koran, I assume. Of course. Harmony Koran. Spike. Spike Jones. Yeah, Spike Jones. Another guy where I'm kind of like, can he make one more thing? Like, it's, you know. Yes, it would be. That's what it feels like. It would be nice. At this point, we'd probably have to combine Spike Jones and Charlie Kaufman. Sure, but that's kind of fun.

13:20David Sims:Yeah, it's kind of fun. But Spike's just working too infrequently. Yeah. I feel like you dropped Linklater at the last second, or was he on there? Linklater was not on there

13:31Griffin Newman:Mike Judge was Correct The other one I did not remember that Ben picked this guy There's one more Oh Danny DeVito How do you remember that one? I didn't remember that was a Ben guy I remember anything Ben has ever done Oh there you go And DeVito I would say out of the whole bunch Feels like the one that would be Something we could do eventually As a palate cleanser between miniseries. It's fun. It's a nice little like four movie short little series.

14:04David Sims:I would love to do it. As a shorty. As friend of my life, friend of the show, past and future guest Sarah Rubin said, Danny DeVito, short series for a short man. Yeah. And then there's some good stuff in the guest region.

14:18Griffin Newman:Yeah, we've never done any of those.

14:20David Sims:We've done none of them. Oliver Stone, Jackie Chan, Joe Johnston, Kelly Reichert, Gore Verbinski, of course. That's five. And then the other three would have been, I'm trying to remember who we asked, Yoshida picked... Oh, wait. Did someone pick Wolfgang Peterson?

14:40Griffin Newman:Richard Lawson did.

14:41David Sims:Richard Lawson did. Yoshida picked... Huh. Tell me. I'm blanking.

14:48Griffin Newman:Quaron, who's a big Yoshida favorite. And then JD Amato picked Jacques Dati. Of course. Obviously. Dumb. Haven't done any of those. dumb for me to not put those together. No, it's fine. Peter Weir is finally happening. Peter Weir is finally happening. And what is the title of this miniseries, Griffin?

15:06David Sims:The title of the miniseries is Podnik at Hanging Cast. That's so true. That is, of course, his guarantor. But it's a weird case where this is his first film. And yet, Podnik, excuse me, Picnic at Hanging Cast happens kind of like irrelevant of this. It does. that's true. We will discuss that on this episode. He is hired to begin developing this picnic when he has finished the script for this movie and is prepping it based off his short film work.

15:36Griffin Newman:That's right. And we can delve into all of that. But today on Podnick and Hanging Cast, we are of course discussing his first theatrical film. The Cars That Ate Paris.

15:45David Sims:I was going to say owner of one of the best titles in the history of film.

15:48Griffin Newman:It's a good title. And it's a more literal title than you'd think with a title

15:55David Sims:like that. Here is my history with this movie. I'm a movie-obsessed teenager. Can you believe it?

16:03Griffin Newman:We need some, like, you know, fucking ass Woody Allen music over this, right? Some, like, Drew Gershwin shit.

16:10David Sims:Yeah, some ass Woody Allen music. Like a clarinet played via butt. Yeah.

16:18Griffin Newman:You know, I'm a child in New York. I love the movies. You know, I can't do it.

16:24David Sims:the digital set-top box takes over for cable. Okay, sure. You're kind of TiVo-esque device is what you're referring to. Yes. And there's now also the ability to scroll through the digital guide. The guide. Yeah. And so what I do every day when I come home from school is I check out the next week of TCM programming. Very, very good little cinephile. Thank you. Because I'm getting activated. and I'm like, what's the furthest I can go ahead in the schedule and mark to record anything that feels like a good watch? And I'm going like, oh, Paper Moon, oh, this, oh, that, right? And then I'm like, the cars that ate Paris.

17:08Griffin Newman:Nom, nom, nom.

17:09David Sims:I see that title. I hit record. Family dinner. I go to my parents. Joe over here. I did hit record, Joseph. I go to my family dinner table and I say to my parents, I just found like the movie with the weirdest title of all time on TCM. You're not going to believe it. It's called The Cars That Ate Paris. I guess they're playing some weird junkie like genre movie. That must be what this is. And my parents are true. But then my parents were like, that's Peter Weir's debut film. Well, they knew. And I'm like, Peter Weir, the director of Mastering Commander, who at that point I just think of as like Tony Awards.

17:47David Sims:Sure. You probably knew him for Dead Poets. Truman Show. Mastering Commander. I'm like, this is like a sophisticated grown-up director who makes like popular films that are smart and literate. And so then I go, oh, the title must be metaphorical.

18:03Griffin Newman:Right, right, right, right.

18:05David Sims:When you say the Cars 8 Paris. Right. This isn't going to be like a Roger Corman movie. I'll watch it and it will be about like a divorce. And for whatever reason, that's the title. And then I watch it and I'm like, oh, it is actually about a town called Paris. it's not Paris, France it's a fictional Paris in Australia and a town where cars kind of eat up everything.

18:29Griffin Newman:So you watched this as a teenager eh? Correct. Because I didn't I did. I'd never seen it until Mad Max Fury Road came out which has the spiky cars and people were like ah as you might know that is an homage to fellow Australian new wave you know peer Peter Weir and his first film and I was like oh yeah right I guess I've heard you know and I like When I was in college, I famously did a course of New Zealand cinema, and I had dug deep into that. But I've never really dug into the Aussie.

18:59David Sims:Play some Peter Weir-ass music. Well, except he's from Australia. I was going to say Peter Jackson. I fucked up the whole thing. I should have said ass Peter Jackson music. Also, what does Peter Jackson music sound like? Howard Shore? You're lost right now. I'm lost in the woods. And I'm not going to help you.

19:16Griffin Newman:Go on with your story. I'm good well I'm going to open the dossier actually

19:21David Sims:I was going to say

19:22Griffin Newman:yeah but so I didn't watch until then and I think I sort of checked it off then being like

19:27David Sims:oh right I've never seen Peter Worsk when we cover George Miller it was a pre-JJ era a much lighter easier era for us right JJ our researcher who sucks and hate he sucks shit he's great we love him he's like the ass Woody Allen music of men I was going to say look JJ has done the podcast a great service with his research And when we did George Miller, we didn't have his help. Right. He just makes our lives a lot more difficult because we have the added burden of needing to fire him every day. It's a lot of paperwork. It's so... People don't understand. Our HR department is like literally on fire trying to process the firing and rehiring every other day.

20:06David Sims:Well, it's just a gerbil that Ben has. That's our HR department.

20:09Griffin Newman:We just stuff the papers in there and he just shreds them. It's just, you know, great for the gerbil. He's building like a nest, but it's no good for us.

20:16David Sims:Because then we have to hire an assistant to the gerbil as to tape the papers back together and file them. In theory, we should fire the gerbil. The gerbil is kind of the bottleneck of the whole process. No, we can't fire the gerbil. The gerbil is in a union. The intricate system we've developed. It's a close friend of his and it's like a whole interpersonal mess. What I was going to say. JJ, yes. It's the kind of context we probably would have had had JJ worked on the show in the George Miller era. But George Miller like basically fully cites this movie as the thing inspiring him to make Mad Max.

20:49Griffin Newman:Right. Because when he makes Mad Max, it's because he was out there doing like kind of DIY ambulance work or whatever, piecing together a little bit of money, making this movie over the course of months.

20:57David Sims:But it's both seeing Peter Weir and being like, fuck, this guy's from Australia. He just went out and made this. Right. I can do this too, maybe. Right. There's the sort of like kind of Richard Linklater slacker style activation that happened for a lot of young American filmmakers in the 90s. But also he sees like spiky cars and he's like, fuck, what he built an entire movie out of.

21:21Griffin Newman:But that's the thing. Because of the Mad Max connection, because of the Aussie new wave, Aussie exploitation, you know, I was like, right. So this is going to be like a gnarly car movie about fucking gangs and shit. It'll be Mad Maxie. And then it's not quite that It's an odd film It's an odd little sort of social comedy I like it a lot With a bit of car, you know, antics A bit Quite a bit A solid amount It's like the core of the movie But it has way more like fusty Australian guys Than like Mad Max does Although they both have Bruce Bens, of course I joke that you think of and talk about Australia

22:03David Sims:the continent as if it is really the world of Mad Max at all times. But in reality, I feel like this movie is what you think Australia is like. You're like, there's crazy spiky crashing cars. Sometimes,

22:18Griffin Newman:not all the time. Well, and also I think I have, I, we talk about this a little bit on the next episode because we just recorded that one. I was raised in England and I like, I think I have like their prejudices. You guys relax. towards Australia coded into me in a way that surprises me sometimes. Does that make sense? You know, England is so derisive of all like former British colonies or like, you know, whatever vassal states in a way that like is a little shocking sometimes.

22:51David Sims:It's the one time you activate like grandpa who fought in Vietnam mode and you're like,

22:56Griffin Newman:the fuck is this? The thing I remember was my father who was a very like tolerant and liberal man is disdain for the Welsh. I shouldn't laugh because it's not like he was like racist because of course the Welsh, it's a very tiny nation of people, you know, attached to England that are very obviously, you know, very, very similar in many ways. But he had this like little kind of like, oh, they're so silly, you know, where I was just like, what did they ever do to you? You've never had a bad experience with Welsh people. And it was clearly just from his childhood. It had been drilled into him like, oh, well, the Welsh are very silly.

23:39David Sims:It's one of my favorite bits in Austin Powers. Yes. I mean, that's what he's making fun of. There are only two things I truly hate. People are intolerant of other races and cultures and the Dutch. And the Dutch.

23:50Griffin Newman:It's 100 % what he's making fun of. Just that thing of just like, also, So it's like, you're English. You don't get to have this opinion. You know, like you need to sit down.

23:59David Sims:But that's why I'm saying this movie feels closer to your perception of the Australians. Because it's like sometimes they're wearing a mayor's sash and being like, we were on a proper town. And then a car comes in. This is a normal town where nothing weird happens. A bunch of swastikas in it. And they got ropes pulling into it.

24:16Griffin Newman:Oh, fuck. I'm going to open the dossier, guys. Please do. Ben, I assume you had not seen this before?

24:22David Sims:No. Did you like this? I did.

24:25Griffin Newman:Feels like a bad movie. It's very weird, though. It's weird. It's got a weird energy. It's got like a weird pace to it that, again, doesn't suggest exploitation movie exactly. Right?

24:35David Sims:It's a little weird.

24:37Griffin Newman:Boy, oh boy. Boy, oh boy, oh boy. So, Peter Lindsay Weir. Oh, interesting. Lindsay Weir, like from Freaks and Geeks.

24:47David Sims:JJ's rehired. That's the kind of shit we wouldn't have found out on our own.

24:51Griffin Newman:His middle name seems to be from his father. That is cool. His father was Lindsay Weir. as well. So his father was this kind of like disaffected Michigan teenager in like an army jacket. That's interesting. Yeah, Lindsay Weir. Was born 1944. Sydney, Australia. The capital. The capital. No, Canberra is the capital, but Sydney is the biggest. Canberra. Canberra. I'm sorry. I apologize to all listeners if I fuck up Australian pronunciations. I believe Canberra, which I'm sure I'm saying wrong right now, is one of those classic shibboleth words for Australian accents. Shibboleth words? You know, a shibboleth is like...

25:29Griffin Newman:Oh, for fuck's sake. I now have to explain this. It's from the Bible. It's like a password that you would say to prove your faith. It's like, what's the inglorious bastards where he holds up? Like, if you say Canberra wrong, which I think I am continually, it's like one of those words that you say a little different. I think it's around Cthulhu. Anyway, his dad is a real estate agent, served in Australian for the Australian army in World War II as an air raid warden. But obviously, Weir was born in 44, so near the end of the war. Both sides of his family are from Scotland, from the United Kingdom mostly, but they were Australian through and through.

26:08Griffin Newman:They were not like backwards looking. They were fourth generation immigrants. So, you know, very, very deeply Australian. He remembers at a certain point trying to dig through his family history just out of interest and was kind of astonished that they didn't have records on where they came from, where all this. And he feels like this is an Australian phenomenon. He's like, I've asked lots of Australians what records they have. And it's kind of like, no, they left their past, like tabula rasa. We left where we came from. Records are gone. We left our myths behind. He says, it helps me understand why many of our films are period films, why Australian audiences are so drawn to them because of this need for myth.

26:53Griffin Newman:we don't have lineage to be snobbish about, right? It's like kind of we're rebooting. All interesting. Moved around throughout his childhood, mostly in the Sydney area. It seems they settled in a place called Vaucluse. Not sure. Eastern suburb of Sydney. So his dad was a real estate agent again. So they would keep flipping houses. He was kind of a house flipper. No television. pre-TV kind of generation. So he says he grew up on the streets bouncing balls around and, I don't know, a gang of kids running about and jumping on trams and exploring caves. Sounds pretty fun. Spelunking. Yeah. Goonies-ass childhood.

27:40Griffin Newman:Yeah, seriously. They lived at the top of a little hill. There was a big suspension bridge. He says he was always in the water. He was snorkeling. He was fishing. that he would watch the ships go out. This is so similar to your upbringing, Griffin. By water, of course, for Griffin,

27:58David Sims:it was Fifth Avenue. Yes. The wild waves of Fifth Avenue. Also, obviously, never watched TV as a child. No, yeah, you weren't. Yeah, you weren't a big TV kid. My parents owned one and I said, no, thank you. Here's something

28:11Griffin Newman:he might have shared with you. He loved comic books. Okay, we're back then. He loved The Phantom. Okay. Our famous, the purple-clad hero of Pulp. adventure. He loved Scrooge McDuck. Well, the Carl Barks books. I guess so. I mean, it feels like he would have been too old for those, but whoever was writing Scrooge back then, maybe Carl Barks was. I think so, and if not, yeah. And he loved pictures. He loved to go see the pictures. He loved to go see the talkie pictures. Westerns, the serials, you know, all that stuff.

28:39David Sims:Can we throw out our buddy Sean Fennessy, past and future guests coming up on this very mini-series. Look out. Was in New York. We went to a bar with him. We got drinks at a hollow nickel. Yeah, we did. That's right. And they have a big screen projector. Yeah. And they were doing a Pope series. We walk in. I mean, I think they didn't announce it or anything. No, but we walk in they're playing Dick Tracy. Yeah. Cool. In the time that we're there nerding out about the dorkiest shit in the world.

29:09Griffin Newman:Yeah.

29:09David Sims:And my girlfriend was like, how many drinks did you guys have? And I was like, two. Two. And then we just sat at the table for an additional three hours after our second beer and we're just like, Have you ever looked at the box office weekend? It was... This is true. Incomprehensible. But in the time we're there, they play Dick Tracy. They go straight into the Rocketeer and then into the Phantom.

29:33Griffin Newman:Yeah, as we were leaving, the Phantom was really just starting to pop off.

29:36David Sims:But we're like, this is the fucking... I was like, is the shadow next? Exactly.

29:40Griffin Newman:Series we pitch in chronological order. I know. So if you work at the Hollow Nickel and you were programming that...

29:47David Sims:Well, the bartender did when I closed out, said, hey, man, love the cast. Oh, wow. And he snapped and pointed his finger at me. And I had never heard anyone say apostrophe CAST before. Oh, like drop the pod, it's cleaner. He just went, love the cast. And I was like, does it look like my arm is broken? And I made him repeat it four times because I didn't understand what he was saying, which then made me look like a narcissist.

30:14Griffin Newman:Sounds like a real Griffin story.

30:27David!

30:28David Sims:What? This episode, don't act so surprised because it's a familiar friend. Oh, okay. This episode's brought to you by Mubi. Yawn!

30:36Griffin Newman:Just kidding!

30:36David Sims:Comfortable! Secure!

30:38Griffin Newman:We love them! They are a global film company, a champion's great cinema, iconic directors, emerging auteurs, always something new to discover with MUBI. Each and every film hand-selected. So you can explore the best of cinema. Nothing more to say, I guess. Wrong! There's a new film coming to theaters. Yep, Movie Theaters. February 13th, the first Nigerian film ever in official competition again. That's pretty wild. This is a film by Akinola Davis called My Father's Shadow. It was BAFTA-nominated, poetic, tender portrait of a father-son bond framed within the political landscape of 1993 Lagos in Nigeria.

31:16Griffin Newman:It is about a father and two young sons as they journey into and around the vibrantly rendered Nigerian metropolis, reckoning with their relationship, navigating the city that's in the middle of a democratic crisis, written by real-life brothers, Akinola Davis Jr. and Wally Davis. Love it, brothers. Co-wrote this groundbreaking feature debut, and you've got Sofei Dorisu. Oh, from Slow Horses. I love him. I hope I'm saying his name right. But he's a really good actor and he's the star. It's worth seeing. It's in theaters. It's great to go to a theater.

31:53David Sims:It's in theaters. We love that Mubi puts Mubis in theaters before ultimately ending up on their wonderful platform. Dang right. I'm just looking at some of the stuff they got right now. Die My Love, of course. Yeah. An important watch, a necessary watch for any blankie. La Grazia, the new Paolo Sorrentino movie, which I missed in theaters. Good moment to catch up with it. The great Shall We Dance. Oh, the classic? The original. Oh my goodness. That's fun. Like a restoration? Yeah, and look what they got. They got a collection called Heartthrob Nicolas Cage. It's young, dreamy Cage. Well, still dreaming to me.

32:32Hey, you're very open-hearted.

32:34Griffin Newman:Anyway, to stream the best of cinema, you can try Mubi free for 30 days at Mubi.com slash blank check. That's M-U-B-I dot com slash blank check for a whole month of great cinema for free. And then go see My Father's Shadow in theaters. Please, thank you for listening. Thank you. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

32:50David Sims:Thank you. Very kind.

33:01David Sims:Peter Weir loved comic books. This is where you pick up the thing. Oh yeah, and he loved the pictures.

33:07Griffin Newman:He liked American movies. He liked Hammer horror films. He distinctly remembers seeing the great French film, The Wages of Fear. One of the greats. Did he watch a lot of Australian cinema? Not really, he says. He mentions movies like Bush Christmas and Jeddah. But I think like... This is pointedly a fallow period. Yeah, there's not a ton of Australian cinema maybe for him to even touch on. He loves Jacques Tati. Right, and that actually suggested what his earlier interest was, which is performing. He wanted to tell stories, but like, you know, by performing them. And then he liked to plan these sort of elaborate games.

33:48Griffin Newman:He would play like war games with his friends that he would kind of set up. He was very creative.

33:55David Sims:He talks about how he felt like he explored enough kind of

34:04David Sims:areas leading up to landing on film directing that helped him understand different aspects of it. That he worked in plays, he was doing sketch comedy, he was doing all these different things that ended up feeding into filmmaking.

34:19Griffin Newman:He went to a sort of all-boys boarding school, which he didn't really like. He did about a year at the University of Sydney and dropped out. You know, he was sort of into the student life, but it seems like he wasn't that into, you know, whatever. Friggin' hard work. Yeah, exactly. He did have a cool experience with some professor who was teaching about William Blake and he like took a poem apart in front of them and he was basically like deconstructing this William Blake poem and Peter Brick got really mad and was like, I love this poem. I hate how he's like dismembering it to show us the technique.

34:58Griffin Newman:And he's basically like, that's Dead Poets Society. I put that got it. That puts many years later.

35:03David Sims:Dismembering it, like taking apart the structure or like gerbil style ripping it into it.

35:08Griffin Newman:Who knows? I mean, there's no mention of a gerbil, but who knows? Call that a callback. He leaves college. He goes into real estate, the family business, makes a little bit of money, you know, basically like 18 to 20, buys a one-way ticket to Europe, wants to go just check it out, you know, and gets on a ship. I mean, back then, I think traveling by air from Australia was basically impossible because it was so fucking far. Right? You would have had to stop to refuel so many times. So you would travel by boat. You would get on a boat that would go for weeks to get you to, you know, wherever you're going.

35:43David Sims:My grandmother talks about this all the time. She is in her mid to late 90s. Yes. Right? Excuse me. Early 30s. She's maybe started to listen. But she is like, I don't know why you take all these expensive flights. It's so nice to go on a boat. I went on a boat to Australia. And it's great. You just go to the docks with a suitcase, and you wave at a man, and you give them just whatever money you have in your pocket. What? And they give you a room. And she just thinks that's a thing we could do tomorrow.

36:13Griffin Newman:Unfortunately, I think that truly doesn't exist. No, it doesn't exist. There's only one passenger liner left, which is the Queen Mary, which goes from New York to London. You know, whatever. Like, not even New York. It's like Southampton to New York or whatever. But that's the only ship that remains, the cruise ship that remains that's like, we go from one place to another. All other cruise ships are like, you know, we go to a bunch of vacation spots and then we take you home.

36:35David Sims:No, I think she went on the Queen Mary once and most of the time she just like waved down the King Kong ship. She brings this up all the time. Good for her. You should do it. It's fun.

36:45Griffin Newman:I mean, it's the theory. I'm like, cool, do you have a time machine? So he arrives in England and it's a cool time for England because it's the mid-60s. Flower power, anti-Vietnam, swing in London, you know. he meets some cool guys like Austin Powers cool no I'm joking

37:03David Sims:Mrs. Kensington

37:07Griffin Newman:the original the earlier Kensington quite groovy so he has fun but then he says at a certain point he just runs out of money and he decides to come back to Australia in 1966 with his wife to be he has a fiance Wendy Stites who he's still married to a long running marriage that's impressive and basically they you know they sort of wrestle with it but they decide the way he puts it is we decided we could just deal with the shortcomings of Australia my guess is it's just like Australia is a less like cosmopolitan place back then again just because like it's fucking far away and there's not jet travel as much

37:54David Sims:Well, we're also talking about a guy who's like the tip of the spear in the Australian new wave, which wasn't just, oh, here's like a new wave of voices in Australian cinema. It was basically, here's Australian cinema starting up again. A little bit, I think. You know, so like he, there's not really a culture supporting the thing he does yet.

38:16Griffin Newman:So he comes back, tries to do some TV work, starts writing letters and shit, starts working for Australia's Channel 7. And does like sort of news stuff, I guess, for them working. And he says he kind of like worked as a stagehand. Then he makes a tiny little short film, basically gets his hand on a camera that he can use on the weekends, right? a film called Count Vim's Last Exercise. Don't know much about it. Do you? No. Neither do I. Great. Moving on. It got him a promotion. He gets a job directing film sequences for a variety show called The Mavis Bramston Show, a sketch comedy show. I'm sure it was subtle stuff.

39:01Griffin Newman:I have no idea. Then he produces a second little irreverent short film called The Life and Flight of Reverent Reverend Buckshot, which is the story of a birder turned Christian evangelist. It has not been widely screened, but it won him a Young Filmmaker Award. And so he leaves Channel 7. He has no idea where his career is heading. He doesn't have like a grand plan. It's another job in sort of like government film unit doing documentary filmmaking. Does some of that. I mean, it's a real 10 ,000 hours thing of like, you know, he's really working with very little sort of money and like sort of semi-professional stuff and just like slowly like building his craft and all that.

39:47Griffin Newman:Makes some little documentary movies, makes a comedy television film called Man on a Green Bike. Jesus.

39:55David Sims:What, David? Are you angry that he paid his dues?

39:59Griffin Newman:So angry. You're so impatient. Very long dossier. Start making features already. Gets asked to direct a segment in an anthology,

40:07David Sims:television film called Three to Go, and his segment is called Michael. I have seen this because it is on the, there is a French Blu-ray of Cars that Ate Paris and The Plumber. That is, I think, the only high-def disc that exists of either movie in any country. But it has the Michael segment on there. I have not seen the full anthology, but it's like three different portraits of the young person in Australia at the time. And Michael is interesting because it's kind of a bit of... It's a little analogous to Ambling. Because it's about a countercultural guy? It's about a guy who can't hang with the counterculture.

40:50Griffin Newman:Right. He's trying to be a cool 60s hippie, but is a bit of a poser. He's a rich kid who feels like he should be engaged

40:57David Sims:with the sort of politically... And John Travolta is an angel? Yes. He chains smokes. He's a little unconventional. This guy hasn't shaved in two days. So this film wins an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Film. Can I finish my observation about this film quickly? Because I took the time to watch it. Of course. Amblin, you know, is like a very short kind of like poppy, funny, stylish, almost music video where the reveal...

41:25Griffin Newman:Spielberg. That's the Spielberg short. The reveal is... Has no dialogue.

41:29David Sims:That this guy's like a dork and a poser, right? And it's very much like, I can't do this. Even though the girl wants to sleep with him, he like runs off and the guitar case is empty. And it feels very telling of Spielberg being like, I'm a kid like playing pretend. Michael does not feel autobiographical. Michael feels kind of satirical of a type of someone who does a dalliance with performative politics.

41:59Griffin Newman:Right, okay.

41:59David Sims:It starts off kind of like docudrama style, a lot of like newsreel footage and sort of music, rock music and whatever. And then it goes into this guy trying to go to like meetings and protests and things like that. And he just like it feels interestingly kind of critical of people who don't actually give a shit. for a guy who I think retains a sociopolitical interest throughout all of his films. He does.

42:31Griffin Newman:Yeah. So the film does pretty well. And so he gets some money to make another film, which some sort of argue is his debut. It's a 50-minute film. It's called Holmesdale.

42:41David Sims:Yes, this is what gets him both the juice to make Cars Day at Paris, but also gets him on the radar to be offered Picnic at Hanging Rock. So it's the real Colin Card.

42:53Griffin Newman:Um, Holmesdale's 50 minutes, as I said, uh, it's about the staff of a hunting lodge. That's kind of like torturing their guests. I think they made it for like a few thousand dollars. It was an unhappy like process. Everyone was stressed out and tired and hungry and all this shit. Uh, but he says it probably kind of fed the story in a good way. Like that. They were all just like in this decaying estate, like at each other's throats. He says, uh, it's his closest thing to like a Hitchcock movie. Like it's like a, you know, weird little black comedy.

43:24David Sims:You can watch it on YouTube. I think it's quite good as well. It is interesting that his early work and this kind of stops at Cars that a Paris is more kind of like heightened comedic satirical. It's not straight up comedy and it's dark and there's still some grounding, but there's a sort of stylization to these movies and tone. Yeah.

43:46Griffin Newman:After this, he goes on another trip. He wants to visit both LA. you know he goes to America and London visits like film studio you know he's trying to get more info more skills more whatever exposure to big stuff he goes to London he works at Elstree Studios on Ken Russell's movie The Boyfriend the Twiggy movie yes God bless Twiggy we love Twiggy he meets Alfred Hitchcock who's making Frenzy normal movie

44:18David Sims:and Alfred Hitchcock, normal guy.

44:21Griffin Newman:But it's like, Frenzy is an amazing, interesting movie, but it's like Hitchcock being like, well, it's like the 70s and I was like, I can just kind of be out in the open with what a fucking freak I am. Nothing has to be coded anymore. Right, and he makes it and everyone's like, whoa! And he's like, oh, I guess I'll die! Code, go back to coding!

44:43David Sims:It's just so funny that he was like the king of like the visual metaphor. I'm hinting at things. It's all woven in. Yes, right. And then he sees Brian De Palma and he's like, oh, I can tell people what I like. This guy jerk gets off on fucking strangling ladies and people are like,

44:56Griffin Newman:relax! Sorry.

44:58David Sims:Do you know what's one of my favorite bits of all time? The great Steve Martin gonna put on a show tonight SNL opening monologue. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yes, of course I do. In the 90s where it's like, I've decided I'm gonna care again. Yeah. It's maybe the best SNL cold open, like non-political cold open ever. But all the cast members come out one by one are inspired by the fact that Steve Martin gives a shit again and they're like reinvigorated and Farley does his bit of the song about how he's not going to get drunk and everything and then Phil Hartman comes out and he's like week after week I put on these wigs and these makeup but tonight I'm going to let the real Phil Hartman shine through and Steve Martin goes that's not a good idea Phil and he goes alright it's funny it's pretty funny I like it I don't know it makes me laugh

45:45Griffin Newman:so he works on all these movies okay he meets Hitchcock I don't fucking know. You do know it's in the dossier. It's right in front of you. It's a formative trip for him. It's great for him to meet people like, you know, Hitchcock, even though he's just like, but how do you do? And he's just like, you know, but nonetheless, like Peter Weir is like, this is, this cements for me. I want to make movies.

46:08David Sims:To be fair, Hitchcock was attempting to answer the question, but he had a full roast turkey in his mouth.

46:16David Sims:The man liked to eat food. He was a big boy. God bless him. It's not just that he was big. The stories are that he would have like fucking four dinners in a row.

46:25Griffin Newman:That's the famous thing where you would have a big like multi-course dinner. Right. And then when the waiter were to come at the end, he'd go, let's do it again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just run that back, baby.

46:36David Sims:All the courses again.

46:38Griffin Newman:You go back to salad. You know, maybe people should do that more. Do kind of a like, we climb the mountain then we descend. You know, start and end with salad. I mean, our version, our contemporary version is the bang-bang. Yeah, but the bang-bang is just, that's just like, that's like people being like, I'm awful, but I found a word that, so now it's okay. I got a burger and then I got fried chicken. I'm like, well, that doesn't sound like a good idea. But it was a classic bang-bang. Yeah. No, but then again, I did a bang-bang recently. I did too. So, you know, I did a comedy bang-bang recently.

47:14David Sims:Well, I haven't listened yet. It's in the feed though. I'll say this Reddit is calling it an episode I had a great time

47:24Griffin Newman:Reddit has already ruled it out as a contender for the best stuff maybe one day maybe one day I did it but yeah I went to the Village Cafe which is a place in South Brooklyn it's Azerbaijani food got some lamb skewers some rice I was like this rocks but I know it's so deep in Brooklyn I was like you know there's this pizza place I've been meaning to go to. I'm like, I'm never here. And I went and got a slice of pizza. What are you going to do to me? What are you going to nail me to the cross? No. That's why they killed Jesus. Too many bang bangs. Bang bangs. That's why they killed Jesse Jay as well.

48:00While he's...

48:01Griffin Newman:Bang, bang. Oh, the song, right. Bang, bang. What happened to her? They killed her on the cross. You're right. Six months in London, he says he wrote the outline for the cars that ate Paris, the treatment for the last wave, and The Treatment for the Plumber. These are all movies he ends up making. I love these kind of like... It's like a creatively fertile moment for him. Yeah, yeah. It shows to him, yes, I am a director. I'm not... I don't want to perform. Right, you know, like cements that for him. It also shifts him away from comedy because a lot of the early stuff he'd done was a lot more, you know, openly, nakedly comic.

48:36Griffin Newman:He never made Maude Knight, but he did. Yeah. He did. I'm going to whip this at you. I'm joking. I would never do that. I would only throw something at David Early. Which famously, last time you threw a wallet at his hand. I threw a wallet at him. I needed him to be quiet. You still haven't gotten your credit card back from him, have you? Wait a second. He also, one reason he says he moves away from comedy is when he's in London, he sees Monty Python and he's like, these guys are pretty fucking good. I'm not going to do better than that. Yeah, I'm not going to do anything

49:04David Sims:remotely approaching this. It's also funny to imagine seeing Monty Python in TV and being like, oh, fuck. So they did it. They got sketch comedy on TV. guess that's no longer an option. Sure.

49:16Griffin Newman:They're the ones who get to do that. He returns to Australia and in fact, Graham Bond, who's an old collaborator of his, said, I'm about to do something called the Anti-Jack Show. I mean, truly, I'm trying not to be.

49:27David Sims:I think it sounds very good. It was, of course, a show where men had their hands taped to their thighs and couldn't jack off.

49:35Griffin Newman:I don't know what the Anti-Jack Show would have been, but it's something they had done on the radio sometime. Yeah. And he's like, we got like a 13 episode order. And Peter Weir is like, I'm out, man. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do sketch comedy. I want to concentrate on film. So he turns down what sounds like a fairly guaranteed thing. He makes one more documentary for the Commonwealth Film Unit, the sort of government group he was working for, which is called Whatever Happened to Green Valley, which is about an area, like a working class area where people have been moved out of the city into state provided housing.

50:08Griffin Newman:So he does a little documentary. Cars That Ate Paris, though. Let's get to that. The idea came while he's traveling through Europe. He's driving through France. He comes to a little section of road. There's a barricade. There's a heavy miss. There's two frightening looking characters behind this barricade. They had highway jackets with red crosses on them, whatever. They look official. And they stopped the car, direct us down a detour, and they go down this fucked up detour. And then as Peter's driving, he's like to his wife, like, why did we accept that? You know, like, we just kind of went along with what they told us to do, but like, why?

50:47Griffin Newman:Like, they barely presented anything to credentials or anything like that. You know, they didn't ask for the permit. They didn't tell us why we were, you know, not allowed to go down this road. And he just starts like inventing the crazy, you know, conclusion of that, right? He's like, what happens if it's basically like a town is doing that for like a nefarious reason?

51:08David Sims:Right. The sort of like core hook to this movie, if there is one, is a town that is somehow benefiting financially and structurally from people crashing their cars. Yes. It doesn't totally make sense.

51:26Griffin Newman:No. That is the idea. It's not a literal movie. It's sort of like, what if, you know, you wanted to kill people, but you knew you would get in trouble if you went around shooting them with a gun because you could get caught. But what if you just basically made them all have car accidents? Then it's just like, well, they had a car accident.

51:42David Sims:Not our fault. And then there are like, you know, corpses that can be experimented on. There are junked cars that can be rebuilt. Like basically the whole kind of societal structure of this town is built around the things they're able to pull from the wreckage of the car. They're scavenging. Yes, one inspiration for him as well. There's an economy built around. But it's also not just like, oh, they make people crash cars so they can steal their wallet. it. If they wanted to do that, they would make David upset. No, but yes, there's this whole complicated system of all the different things they extract from the cars and how it feeds.

52:15Griffin Newman:There's this lore that this would happen in Cornwall and the British coast, like, long ago, that they would, like, have lighthouses and then they would move them or turn them off to have ships wreck on the coast and they would go, like, loot the ships, right? It's the same idea. It's a weird kind of scavengy piratey thing. He writes out these, like, what he calls short stories, but they're basically treatments. They're intended to be turned into movies. He would record the scripts onto tapes, do all the voices and sound effects. Funny to think about because, again, I do think of Peter Weir as a serious guy.

52:49Griffin Newman:I was watching some special features

52:52David Sims:yesterday. You came into the office.

52:53Griffin Newman:Yeah, not deadly serious, but he makes these prestigy movies.

52:58David Sims:He seems very smart and sophisticated. I got this interview up on the big screen. We look at each other and we were both like, I find him very relaxing. He is relaxing. He's got a very calm tone. But he seems very like just kind of like straight, focused, blunt.

53:12Griffin Newman:So it's sort of hard for him to imagine him like doing bits into a type recorder, but that's apparently what he was doing. Yeah. And so that's how he's kind of processing this story. He thinks it's going to be more of a comedy. As it develops, it's like gets darker and darker.

53:31David Sims:You feel him pivoting within this movie? Like starting it out thinking that he's primarily going to be a comedy filmmaker and finding some other voice along the way.

53:42Griffin Newman:He takes it to Keith Gow, an old friend. They work on it together. They take it to a third writer called Piers Davis who'd worked on Homestale. And they all, you know, they're the three credited writers. You know, they all kind of build the script up together. He calls it eventually a thriller with an underlying social comment on capitalist way of life and motor cars and how we place this importance on them in our society. But above all, I want to make an entertaining story. Okay. Australian film production. It's hit a low point, Griffin, in the decades following World War II. Australian Prime Minister in 1970, John Gorton.

54:21Griffin Newman:Let me look up. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? he pioneers the Australia Australian Film Development Corporation to try and start making like homegrown movies again government subsidized and this is sort of the beginning of what you call the Aussie New Way basically slowed down to nothing

54:42David Sims:there's a real incentive to kickstart the industry back into gear yeah seems like he was kind of kind of center right guy Okay. I don't know. I can't really get into it.

54:55Griffin Newman:He's got quite a look.

54:55David Sims:He does. What was his opinion on Beef Tallow? That's the only position. I'm a single and he voter.

55:01Griffin Newman:I think in the 70s, everyone was pro. Yeah. Right? That goes away later. I mean, his vibe. His vibe is Beef Tallow. Look-wise is Beef Tallow. He's a bulldog. Yeah. He's got a bulldog kind of look. So the Australian Film Development Corporation invests about$125 ,000 Aussie bucks. The total budget was about$200 ,000. And small budget, but, you know, they get to make a movie. They made a movie.

55:27David Sims:They did, in fact, make a movie. And he talks about, and his producers on this talk about how they learned a lot from Hal and Jim McElroy, specifically, who work with him on the next couple of movies. How they learned a lot from how hard it was to pitch this movie, both in getting money and in getting an audience. That it's hard to explain. it's not really focused on a specific thing. And that's, you know, in a big way, like not you have to make a movie with the poster of mine first, but...

56:02Griffin Newman:A little bit. Like they want something that will sell and that will matter to people. They shoot it in New South Wales, about 250 miles from Sydney, you know, to a more sort of obscure or backwater part of the country, I guess. I don't know. And they make the film.

56:20David Sims:and we're going to discuss the film now. The lead actor in it, Terry Camilleri. It is his debut film. Sure. He's Napoleon.

56:29Griffin Newman:Damn it. Sorry. I took it from you. Go ahead.

56:31David Sims:Did you recognize this? Did you clock this, Ben? No. The lead guy in this movie is the man who delivered what might have been the finest supporting performance in film in 1989, Napoleon Bonaparte in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

56:45Griffin Newman:Nice. The only thing I remember is when he's... Piggy-wiggy? bowling. Yes. And he misses and he goes like,

56:53David Sims:I remember that being really fun. I'm not exaggerating. That performance is top to bottom fire. It is unbelievable. He is... Isn't it the water slide pushing past kids to go down first?

57:06Griffin Newman:Not to spoil way ahead, but he is the guy in the bathtub in the Truman Show. Big time. You know how the Truman Show has all the viewers that we keep cutting to. He's the bathtub guy. He's got an incredibly distinctive look. He does.

57:19David Sims:Weird to see him in this movie. It is. Because he's one of those guys where you're like... He's supposed to be sort of an everyman in this one. But also you're like, wasn't he born 45?

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57:57Griffin Newman:We're leaving today and entering a world of Mickey Mouse waving, princess meeting and greeting, lightsaber clashing, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror dropping, banshee flying, Space Mountain launching, galaxy rewinding, what's the whole deck with galaxy rewinding, fireworks igniting, World of Other Worlds. For whatever you love, infinite worlds await at the most magical place on Earth. Walt Disney World Resort.

58:27David Sims:You're like seeing him in like 30 and you're like, we're almost there.

58:43All right.

58:44Griffin Newman:So Cars They Eat Paris. So yeah. How do we describe this film? It's a 90-minute movie, although apparently there's a U.S. cut that's 74 minutes. What the hell is that? That must be just like trying to get all of it, you know, be as all action as possible.

58:57David Sims:I think that this was an early New Line release. They retitled it The Cars That Eat People. It was several years later. Yes. and they specifically sold it as a thriller. Right. The fuck is going on in this town?

59:10Griffin Newman:Right. The poster has so much information.

59:12David Sims:Yes. But there are many posters. David and I were just going through this that we've both become, as David put it when I walked into the office.

59:20Griffin Newman:On time, presumably. Griff was 15 minutes late.

59:23David Sims:I was on time. You're not one to raise your eyebrows today. That's all I'm going to say. I guess who can raise his eyebrows? Yeah, David's allowed to. Weird. His eyebrows just hit the ceiling. Yeah, my eyebrows are perma-raised, I would say. David said, I've gotten your sickness. And I said, what do you mean? We both now obsessively, methodically, choose the posters for every log on Letterboxd. Because Letterboxd gives you a default poster graphic, but very often it's not a true poster.

59:57Griffin Newman:No, it's a poster with all the words removed and all the title billing. It's sort of like an iTunes poster. It's not a theatrical one sheet. But then do you upload your own image? No, other people upload them.

1:00:07David Sims:We haven't quite gotten to the stage of uploading our own. I believe you can if you truly. You absolutely can. And sometimes I look and I go, these options aren't great. Do I go hunting? But the posters for this movie are wildly different. Some of them are very informational. That very long tagline I read. Some of them are super graphic. The new line one, the cars that eat people, is like a car eating a guy. depicting things that don't happen in a movie.

1:00:34Griffin Newman:But I feel like it's the spiky car. The spiky car is the big thing. Yeah.

1:00:38David Sims:Which is so fucking cool. It's very, very fucking cool. Because it's a car,

1:00:44Griffin Newman:but it's covered in spikes.

1:00:45David Sims:Yes, that is kind of the thing it has going on. The movie opens with a kind of picturesque drive, a happy couple, and then you watch them get into a big wreck, and you immediately see the way the town gets to work and extracting them and the vehicle, the wreckage.

1:01:07Griffin Newman:But the town doesn't cause, or sabotage. It seems like it's just a random accident. Am I wrong?

1:01:17David Sims:Um, it's not.

1:01:19Griffin Newman:Like, his tire pops. What is your read on it, David? I think it's all, I mean, you're right, that like it seems accidental but like we do learn that you know this is their whole ploy

1:01:33David Sims:right so it does feel I read it as not that there's like something supernatural going on but that they have perhaps put shit all over the roads or something I don't know twisty turns like

1:01:45Griffin Newman:they're rigging it in a way that it's sort of like a skill course they're closing roads I guess so that you have to go on the bad roads maybe and all that. They're just strewning nails about. Yes. Yeah, maybe they are.

1:01:57David Sims:Look, this is a good movie, but it also is like a first film and feels like a first film. And it's one of those things where I wonder if you talk to Peter Weir, he'd be like, yeah, I watched the cut and realized we didn't explain that.

1:02:09Griffin Newman:Truly no idea. Don't know what his, like, you know, I mean, I think he's fond of this movie.

1:02:15David Sims:I remember us seeing Buckaroo Banzai at Nighthawk,

1:02:20Griffin Newman:a movie we both like a lot. I like that movie a lot, but that movie is more extreme than this one in terms of like, you're like, oh, they just didn't know how to make a movie for some of this. Right, right.

1:02:29David Sims:And a lot of times when we cover first films on this show, there are varying levels of like fluency. And like Peter Weir is absolutely someone who already at this point knows how to put images together, knows how to work with actors. But like you hear these stories of like first-time filmmakers who then watch the cut of their movie and they're like, oh, I didn't explain that at all. Now I understand storytelling.

1:02:52Griffin Newman:You know, Buckaroo Banzai, which is a unique object, anyone can agree, is also just, right, a specific scenario where you're like, it's like someone trying to make a movie sort of five times more ambitious than Cars in a Paris in terms of the storyteller. Just in terms of like, there's aliens, there's government, you know, government secret societies, there's musical sequences, there's the, where you're just like, guys, this is a lot to put on your plate for movie one.

1:03:16David Sims:Complex visual patterns. Yes, right. This sort of like reveal of the true forms of the aliens. There's moments. Oh, there's...

1:03:24Griffin Newman:Just the looks. I mean... The rolled up sports jacket. Yes. The rolled up sleeves on a sports jacket. Cowboy Jeff Goldberg. Just the whole concept Buckaroo Banzai has of like, he's a sort of intergalactic secret agent and he has the coolest band in the world. What's his band? Well, it has three saxophones. You know what I mean? You forgot he's also a surgeon. Yeah, that's like... But I love the idea, of course, piling it on. But then they're like, And he's got the coolest band in the world. His band has three saxophones. And you're like, that doesn't sound cool. And they're like, does this look cool?

1:03:55Griffin Newman:And I'm like, yes, it does. It actually does. It's the coolest shit I've ever seen.

1:03:59David Sims:That is a true 50 years ahead of its time movie, where you're just like, now the culture has caught up to a point where you're like, here's the pitch. It's like it's the eighth movie. It's like we all know this character. We're just diving into the middle. Meet Buckaroo Banzai, but you already know him. It's funny that he's everything at the same time. I cannot imagine how insane that movie felt upon release. You know, I know like friends of ours, like, like Hodgman have talked about it, like being the weird kid at school and seeing it and being like, I get this. This is like a transmission from a future I want.

1:04:32David Sims:Right.

1:04:32Griffin Newman:Yeah. Everyone else is angry. Yes. I got it. Yeah.

1:04:37David Sims:But this has a little bit of that energy where you're like, you know, there are first films that are like the first album syndrome. thing of like someone's been waiting to make a movie their whole life. They've got all their bangers. And they know like there's a very specific story they want to tell. And then their first movies that feel like a drafts folder. And a little bit like you're still in film school in the sense where you're like, I got a bunch of ideas I want to try out. You know? Very interesting. And I think this movie is fairly cohesive, but it's also inscrutable at times.

1:05:10Griffin Newman:It's cohesive in that it has a you know, it has a good narrative engine, which is this guy gets trapped in

1:05:17David Sims:this town. Right. After you see this original crash, you see this guy and his brother driving. They get in a similar crash. His brother dies. He survives. Wakes up in the hospital. And it's him basically learning the fucked up

1:05:27Griffin Newman:thing about this town. This town sort of bringing him in closer. And then weighing, do I participate in the fucked up thing about this town? It's a little... Or whatever.

1:05:36David Sims:Right. Like, am I wrong? No, you're right. The narrative engine of it is like Twilight Zone-y, where it's like, you wake up in an accident. Something weird has happened. It's a normal town that's inviting you in and then you start to realize how many weird things are going on beneath the surface. It's just the weird things that happen are like varying levels of abstract.

1:05:54Griffin Newman:Do you think he's aware all along or when does the character figure out what this town is really up to? It's kind of when he starts working at the hospital maybe he starts to feel like, right? Like it's sort of there, right? It's unclear. I like

1:06:12David Sims:Terry Calamari a lot. He's a little bit of a dope. I was going to say, I like him a lot. I think this is a fun performance. It's another thing that you feel like you make one movie and then learn a big lesson from it, which is he's a really passive character. He's really quiet and he kind of goes with the flow, you know, he's sort of like in a trance with the whole thing. There's not a lot of him like getting seduced by the town, nor is there him being suspicious and like putting up his guard. So you don't feel like he's trying to solve a mystery. and you also don't feel like there's a clear sense of this guy that's getting corrupted.

1:06:49David Sims:It does just sort of feel like he's sleepwalking through the whole situation until things get very scary at the end.

1:06:56Griffin Newman:It is not a movie, right, that's heavy on action until the big climax, right? No, but there are crashes throughout. Yeah.

1:07:05David Sims:Yes, and they are excitingly constructed. You can see it's sparking Miller, not just, oh, look, someone shot a car in Australia. there's a language to the car crashes that is very visceral.

1:07:17Griffin Newman:Part of the thing he has to overcome is like he's now scared of driving. So he can't escape because he doesn't want to get back in a car because he was in a car crash. He reveals also that he hit someone. Right, right. He's got like trauma. I think he says he hit and killed an old man. So very traumatic experience. In Australia, that just would happen all the time.

1:07:43David Sims:I do think this is part of what I like about this movie is it does feel like it's textually engaging with how scary cars are. Oh, that's what you like, right? Because you're like, I don't trust them cars. They've all got spikes to me. Right. But also that he's just like, I shouldn't have this amount of power in my hands, which is the reason I don't drive. It's the number one reason I don't drive. Like my psychological anxiety about the act of driving is secondary to I don't trust myself to do it correctly and not cause damage.

1:08:12Griffin Newman:I love driving. It's so fun. Me too. It's all yours, right, Ben? The open road. It's all yours. Because my thing with driving is like, I don't, you know, I think cars are bad for society. I don't like the way that cities are built for cars. I don't like the way the country depends on cars. I don't like that they have eyes on the windshield. Very pro mass transit. Very pro. We need less cars in our life. But if I'm driving a car, I'm like, beep, beep. Vroom, vroom. Exactly. I'm like, here we go. Ka-chow. Like, I mean,

1:08:40David Sims:I guess I don't like being in traffic, but I don't hate it that much. I also just need to remind you guys that I grew up in New York City, the mean streets of Greenwich Village. My father was like pot committed to having a car in the city and driving, which is a terrible experience.

1:08:58Griffin Newman:Yeah, I mean, yeah, having a car in Manhattan that you actually want to use is dumb.

1:09:04David Sims:And he was, you might be really surprised to hear this, an incredibly anxious driver.

1:09:10Griffin Newman:Well, it's Meyerowitz stories, right? Yeah, it's the opening scene where Sandler's just melting down looking for a parking spot. I've been trying to get him to just watch that scene

1:09:18David Sims:since that movie came out. Yeah. But it's like the entire car became an extension of his tense body and every part of it was stressful to him. Like being in traffic was stressful.

1:09:27Griffin Newman:Anytime you've got some fucking hang up, it's just your dad was stressed out as your kid all the time about the thing. Yeah, buddy. But how does this relate to milk and eggs? No, you like milk. No, I don't like milk. Yeah, right, milk and eggs. Is your dad yelling about eggs?

1:09:40David Sims:No, eggs I just think are gross and all of you are insane. I'm just trying to see if there's like a childhood. I told you the milk thing, right? I don't know. I just did this on Dirty Laundry at SF Sketch Fest, the dropout show. Thank you for having me. Where you had to get people to guess whose dirty secret was whose. I loved the bottle. Much like your daughter, I'd tap the table, I'd go empty. Right? Yeah. and I wouldn't drop the bottle because I was such a creature to comfort and my parents were like you are too old you gotta drop this it is a classic moment that comes you gotta wean and they were doing anything to wean me and I was just I was immovable on this issue and one day I woke up and there was a glass of milk on the table and I was like the fuck is this and they were like this is milk and I was like I'm sorry no worries but you've made a mistake.

1:10:36David Sims:Milk actually comes in a bottle. This is a cup of some shit I've never seen before in my life. Milk has a nipple at the top. And they were like, no, this is what milk is now. And I was like, oh, cool. I'm never drinking milk again. How old were you? I was like five. You were still drinking from a bottle? This is the point. And my parents were like, enough is enough. And I was like, I'm not drinking milk. And they were like, okay, you're five. Let's see how that goes. And I haven't had milk in over three decades.

1:11:07Griffin Newman:I would say by the time you're five, you certainly do not need to be drinking milk anymore. It's a personal choice at that point.

1:11:13David Sims:I don't know. I'm five, six, and my bones are made of glass. Mistakes might have been made. When we were kids, the predominant thinking was,

1:11:23Griffin Newman:pump your kids filled with milk.

1:11:25David Sims:Yeah, every celebrity had the fucking mustache.

1:11:27Griffin Newman:Now you are very much told, like, do not do that, because then your kids won't eat food. Why am I tiny? Because your parents are tiny. Oh, so it all goes back to my dad, doesn't it? Your mother is the tiniest person I've ever seen. People don't understand how tiny my mom is. And your dad is hardly Dwayne the Rock Johnson. He's not a huge guy himself.

1:11:48David Sims:Although now it's funny to imagine my dad doing Dwayne the Rock Johnson shit. It's funny to imagine. It is funny to imagine.

1:11:55Griffin Newman:Ay, ay, ay.

1:11:55David Sims:What if they announce Rampage 2, but we're replacing Dwayne the Rock Johnson with Peter Newman?

1:12:02Griffin Newman:I'm into it. Yeah. So what happens in the Cars that A Paris? Our main character, as you say, it's Arthur, played by Terry Camilleri. The mayor is sort of taking him under his wing. The mayor is named Len Kelly. He's played by John Million, who's like, I think, a sort of legendary at the time, like Australian character actor guy. had done lots of theater, did, you know, British stuff as well. He's in Crocodile Dundee.

1:12:28David Sims:He is in Crocodile Dundee. He is in Crocodile Dundee. But he's also, he's in Billy Budd. He's in The Longest Day.

1:12:36Griffin Newman:In fact, Crocodile Dundee 2, I think, is basically his last performance. He's like the buddy. He's like the old buddy.

1:12:42David Sims:Walkabout. Like, he's in most of the iconic Australian movies. Oh, right. He's the dad in Walkabout, which is not an important role because they die. And a tremendous amount of TV. Yes. He's playing like a fucking cartoon idea of an old-timey mayor. Like top hat holding on to like his like jacket lapels. Big sash that says mayor. He's pretty funny. He's funny. Yeah. But he's got a wife and two daughters who Arthur finds out are not actually his. That they are children that they adopted from wreckages.

1:13:21Griffin Newman:Okay. Yes, that's right. Yeah, it's all part of the sort of weird scavenging that they're doing. One of the daughters has a scar. You can see that the mom insists she hide. That was clearly caused by an accident. Like however they got her. And then, yeah, and then they give him the hospital job. Can we acknowledge? Like you can work at the hospital. It's kind of like Doc Hollywood. Yeah, it's exactly like Doc Hollywood. You know the movie Doc Hollywood? Michael J. Fox is a big shot plastic surgeon or whatever. He's like a doctor. From Hollywood. And then he's driving his hot rod somewhere. And he crashes it.

1:14:01Griffin Newman:I mean, it's also the premise of cars. He crashes it in a small town and he wrecks some fence or a gazebo or whatever the fuck. And they're like, your sentence is you got to work off your debt by being a local doctor. And he's like, what? I mean, I'm cool. I'm a big shot. I'm Michael J. Fox over here. I got sunglasses. I got to fix this fence. And then he falls in love with the small town. He loves this one. Instead, they're like, OK, you can work here. You can kind of get your strength back. You can, you know, wait to be ready to drive a car again. But he's in the worst town.

1:14:31David Sims:Right. And the movie Cars, Ben, is about kind of a hotshot car who's a race car. He's driving too fast. He wrecks a fence in a town. He does. And the cars are like, you got to stay here. And he's like, what? I hate this. and then he comes to love the town and the cars don't eat Paris but they do eat food yeah so the town of course is called Paris

1:14:54Griffin Newman:that's why it's called that which is very funny and it's a thing we find in America as well of course where you'll I mean Paris, Texas New York is littered with it where they would just be like well we need names for these towns let's just name it after famous old cities Paris Hilton that's a person's name That's true. Yeah. But she's American. One of my favorite examples of this is in Pennsylvania. There's a town called Jersey Shore. That's really funny. And so you see this road sign like Jersey Shore, 50 miles or whatever.

1:15:30David Sims:Do you feel like you've gone through a wormhole? That's crazy. Didn't we pass that? We're so far away from that. I just want to call out one of the vehicle wreckage scavengers, kind of the main one in the film. Charlie is played by the actor Bruce Spence and I don't know if you put this together but he was the gyrocopter pilot in The Road Warrior.

1:15:53Griffin Newman:So that's one of our oldest bits because you said that to me I guess when we were talking about Matrix or was it Star no Star Wars Episode 3 Oh it's T on me done. Yeah. But then I bring it up again

1:16:03David Sims:in Matrix Revolutions.

1:16:05Griffin Newman:But the first time you brought it up to me I was kind of like okay. But then of course we have basically covered every iconic film that the unusual looking man, great actor, Bruce Spence, has been in But For One, Griffin. We have more coming out. Well, of course,

1:16:21David Sims:what do we have coming out? I'm not going to say it, but we have a Bruce Spence movie on the calendar again later this year.

1:16:29Griffin Newman:That's right. We do. We do. We do. But there's one guy, he's the voice of the mouth of Sauron in the extended edition of Return of the King.

1:16:38David Sims:Which, when we cover Peter Jackson, we have to do the extended, right?

1:16:42Griffin Newman:We do, although I think they are... It is very worthy of debate whether the extended editions are better. I think that's... It's not a debate, but we have to do them. We do, but it's going to be an interesting bridge to cross because, like, they're different. And it's interesting to consider the differences.

1:17:01David Sims:And Ben, you're going to have to do two cuts of every episode. I mean, I think...

1:17:06Griffin Newman:For six different episodes. There is an argument for something like that. I think we... The problem is that the Hobbits also have extended editions. Yeah. And no one's really out here being like, those are also good. Has anyone? I've never heard anyone say they're really worthwhile. I believe they exist because they were like, we'll just do what we did with Lord of the Rings, right?

1:17:26David Sims:Well, people love extended editions. What if Peter Jackson put out compressed editions of the Hobbit movies? I compressed it into one fucking movie. That might win people over. I know it's been said a thousand times and I have no new observations. it is one of the craziest things that's ever happened. It's like three giant books, three movies, and it was hard to whittle the books down. And they were like, you're ready to adapt The Hobbit? And he's like, yeah, three movies. And you're like, you know, Hobbit is like a third the length of Lord of the Rings books. And he's like, it's going to have to be three movies.

1:17:57David Sims:That it even went from two to three. That he shot two.

1:18:00Griffin Newman:We got Smaug. Smaug. You mean we got him? You mean we shot him? Yeah, we call it him. Yeah, but we got one of the finest performances. Mocap performances, maybe of all time. It is the funniest shit of all time. I watch that. You always say this on the show. I mean, you both do. You're like, I watch that once a year. Like next thing. I just, I watch the behind the scenes of Cumberbatch. Cumberbatch. The motion cap. The mocap scene.

1:18:27David Sims:But my favorite thing is all the people at wetter were like, yeah, I mean, it wasn't usable. They,

1:18:33Griffin Newman:they do say like, we, we did our best, but it's not, like the dragon's face is this.

1:18:39David Sims:Well, it's just like, they were like, look, Gollum is like, he's a hobbit, but he's got the basic anatomy of a human being, right? He's like a weird zombie hobbit, but he's got arms and legs and a head and eyes and nose and mouth in the right place. You can transfer those tracking dots, and you're like, Benedict Cumberbatch gets on his tummy, and you're like, well, his mouth is 15 feet long. He doesn't have arms. He's the dragon. His legs are tiny. I mean, and you know, you're like, you can't transfer that data onto the model we've already built. No, he was always a dragon. Right. He was like, so mocap, right?

1:19:16David Sims:And they were like, I think just like.

1:19:20Griffin Newman:We haven't even turned it on yet.

1:19:22David Sims:He was apparently so enamored with the idea of what Andy Serkis had done that he was like, I've always wanted to do mocap. And they were like, cool. and just let him do that. And we're like, it was helpful to like, we could reference it. We could look at it.

1:19:43Griffin Newman:I mean, they use the audio. Yeah, they did. And I'm sure that the audio compared to what you could have captured if he was just standing in a quiet booth. No question. No question. And he's superior. No question. He does the necromancer as well. Like he plays multiple like mocap parts in those Hobbit movies. Right.

1:20:03David Sims:Much like he played Dormammu in Doctor Strange. Remember he was a big head?

1:20:10Griffin Newman:Yeah. What's Dormammu up to these days? I'm sure we'll find out. I'm sure he'll pop up in Avengers Doomsday, be like, I'm still here.

1:20:18David Sims:Dormammu will return in Avengers Doomsday? Dormammu rocks.

1:20:21Griffin Newman:Yeah, Dormammu's good. So, the cars that ate Paris. What happens in this film? What do we need to fill in?

1:20:29David Sims:Bruce Spence is rad as hell in this, and it's important

1:20:32Griffin Newman:because it's like George Miller sees this. Yeah, and it's like, I want this guy because Bruce Spence is in Mad Max's one and two, right? Yes, he plays different characters.

1:20:43David Sims:Yes, I know. Yes. But no, but there's like 100 % a straight line to George Miller seeing this being like, oh my God. No, he's in two and three. I always think of this.

1:20:51Griffin Newman:Yeah, he's not in one.

1:20:52David Sims:George Miller had to feel like he had built up his bones enough to be able to ask the great Bruce Spence.

1:20:58Griffin Newman:The other films Bruce Spence is in just to shout him out. So the whole thing with him is that he's like, is he seven feet? He's not quite that, but he's really tall. He's got one of the longest heads. And he's got this elongated head. Yes. That just is so interesting. He's got this sort of big mouth. And he plays, like I said, the mouth of Sauron. He plays the train man in the Matrix Revolutions. And he plays, what's the guy in Star Wars called? Tian Medan?

1:21:27David Sims:Tian Medan. He's also, he's in Dark City. he's in Ace Ventura when nature calls

1:21:32Griffin Newman:yes that I cannot remember

1:21:34David Sims:he's in the good

1:21:36Griffin Newman:PJ Hogan Peter Pan right he was in apparently Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men Tell No Tales can't say I remember that one

1:21:43David Sims:I haven't seen that one

1:21:45Griffin Newman:Mayor Dix Gods of Egypt he's of course in I Frankenstein apparently he's in The Chronicles of the Narnia The Voyage of the Dawn Treader which I will be watching because I'm going to watch all three in my Narnia project this year yes I'm reading all the books yeah and he's the voice of Chum in Finding Nemo and he's done a zillion TV shows and stuff and he's just an interesting guy yeah he fucking rules and you should have been excited

1:22:08David Sims:the first time I brought him up you've never gotten over it it's taken you 11 years you acted like what the fuck are you talking about who gives a shit he's a legend

1:22:18Griffin Newman:yeah he is thank you he plays one of the freak guys in the city yeah guess what good casting he collects Jaguar the metal statues. The ornaments. The ornaments. I love how for the gang, the young people gang, their cars are all covered in graffiti, all fucked up. They look like they could be in a roller derby. Is that a roller derby? Absolutely. Yes. Do you mean like a destruction derby? Although there's another word for it, which is Gymkhana, which is like An Australian motorsport.

1:22:58David Sims:It's the sport of driving as fast as you possibly can. And it's an evolution of them, a history of doing the same thing with horses. And it's not that it's like specifically like Destruction Derby. It's that you're just like, you just go as fast as you can and whatever happens, happens. And then at some point, I think that evolves into like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if we just tried to wreck as much shit as possible and made it a little safer? it's just wild that there was a sport that's just like how fast can this horse go and then they create cars and they're like I mean obviously let's just push it to the limit really fun

1:23:34Griffin Newman:but what I wanted to say is the design of the young people gang they all wear car emblems that they've pulled from the various cars that have been destroyed what would my car be I don't know if you could design any hood ornament if I could design any horn hood ornament hood ornament I guess I would just do a pig or a big bone or a big bone but yeah no also like if you were going to steal a hood ornament and have it be your totem just want to put that right on the record that never happened do you want a jaguar do you want a little beamer shield I'm trying to think of like what the hood ornaments are.

1:24:23Griffin Newman:Yeah, I'm like a swan.

1:24:24David Sims:I mean, they're all the logos.

1:24:26Griffin Newman:Mercedes reprised just because when you're a kid, you don't know anything and you're like, that's fancy. I think it is pretty fancy, isn't it?

1:24:33David Sims:Yeah, it is. I found one of Bugs Bunny holding a shotgun. That would be mine.

1:24:40Griffin Newman:But I just mentioned it because I think it's so visually striking and feels very proto Mad Max.

1:24:47David Sims:Yeah, I don't, admittedly, know enough about Australian culture in the 1970s and what this movie is coming out of to completely parse what I think Weir is working through, but it does feel like there is a through line in all of his movies of this sort of clash of cultures that is very in conversation with the weird short history of Australia, as you said David, that it's like a hard reset town of people just landing there like pushing the indigenous aside and being like this is ours now and we're going to try to like model it off of other successful colonialist societies. And so this idea of there being this town where they're just like, yes, we know how to be a town.

1:25:34David Sims:This is a town where town things happen. And then there's this weird shit going on. Oh! Right.

1:25:40Griffin Newman:Right.

1:25:41David Sims:I was lifting my hat. It is this town that is like only in conversation with itself and hostile to the rest of the world, but also the town is at odds with itself. There is this kind of ongoing war between the older and the younger citizens of the town and the younger citizens feel more chaotic.

1:25:57Griffin Newman:They want to be crazy and the older citizens just want to have like a nice fancy town where they can have fancy parties etc etc.

1:26:04David Sims:But everyone's doing the crazy fucked up thing. Yes. The only disagreement is that the old people are like let people die rummage their bodies in their wreckages and then have a very nice dinner. Because

1:26:16Griffin Newman:it's all the whole movie is building to this like party that they are doing this weird pastiche of like a fancy high society British sort of ball or whatever. And like, obviously it's all ludicrous, but yes, that's what they want. But I think that's

1:26:31David Sims:a little bit of what was happening in Australia in the 70s at the time and what his early film seemed to be commenting on is this idea of like, much like in America, there is like a new wave of politically engaged, motivated, kind of like boundary pushing young people who are questioning the structures around them.

1:26:53Griffin Newman:You know, and sometimes you push boundaries

1:26:55David Sims:and sometimes you miss. Yeah, that's what the movie's about. This movie's really about getting fired from SNL. If you watch it really closely,

1:27:03Griffin Newman:he was a sketch comedian. These young people, though, are also part of the murders. Oh, no, they're guilty. No, they're very guilty. They're just... That's what I find interesting. It's more that the old people, to me, are pretending they're civilized and the young people really aren't.

1:27:21David Sims:That's the commentary. The commentary is that everyone's doing the exact same thing and they're having a philosophical disagreement about, like, being hedonist and owning the chaos versus, like, trying to put errors on top of it. which I think is like very in line with like hostily taking over a country, pushing the indigenous people aside and then being like, and we are a society of manners. We are now going to build nice houses and rules of like proper etiquette. And this is a moment where I think like younger Australians are sort of carving out their own identity and being like, why are we fucking doing these like impressions of like old British people from 200 years ago.

1:28:03David Sims:What is this shit? I don't know. That's my read.

1:28:06Griffin Newman:I think it's a good read. Thank you. I'm so tempted to connect it back to what's going on in America right now. Do it. It's very, I don't know, make America great again vibes. You have like the old guard people who are just like, we need to go back to when this country was racist. They're going along with it because they just have these, right, you know. And it benefited me and then you have like the psychotic people who are extremely online who are basically also supporting that but want to go even more extreme. This is my take. And they're black-pilled, one might call them.

1:28:41David Sims:Yes. My take is that those people, whether they're conscious of it or not, what seems to be driving them is a desire to go back to like caveman times. Like everyone is just looking backwards and being like, fuck, this isn't working, right? And there's like one side that's like, we agree this isn't working. Can we push past this? and like fix this. And the other side is just arguing about how far back they want to go.

1:29:06Griffin Newman:I disagree. I think all those guys just have our best interests at heart. Okay, so then everything's good. Don't you think so? Yeah. We should actually do an ad read. Young person's blood, if you put it into you, will make you live forever.

1:29:22David Sims:Great read. Yeah. We're so happy to be working with our new sponsors, Young Person's Blood.

1:29:32David Sims:they're a scrappy little startup. And here's what they do. But we trust them. They're based out of a small town with winding roads. People get in car crashes. They take all the young person's blood and you can get it shipped to your door once a month in a box the size of a mini fridge. They'll spin it right into your blood. It's a lot of blood. But my favorite part is unpacking it and the blood just all kind of like unfurls. It's an online mattress joke.

1:30:01Griffin Newman:Yes, that was funny. The conclusion of this film, the big party that I was referring to.

1:30:07David Sims:Yes. The young people show up with some swastika cars. It is a subtle indication that perhaps things are going out of end. Of the most sound line judgment of morals.

1:30:20Griffin Newman:Yeah, and it's called the Pioneer's Ball. It's like their dumb, you know, fancy dress party or whatever. everyone goes insane and starts killing each other I guess right and Arthur finally like gets the guts to go behind the wheels of a car again

1:30:35David Sims:yeah I mean we're not talking about Arthur much because he just kind of walked through the movie well I think

1:30:40Griffin Newman:they kill each other but because there's been so much tension that's been building because the young people have continued to kind of fuck with the town keep driving through honking their horns crashing the inciting

1:30:51David Sims:incident for the final like melee is the young guys damaging this aboriginal statue. And that is taken as like this great disrespect and offense by the old people who also clearly do not care about the aboriginal at all. And then that kind of leads to the all out war.

1:31:10Griffin Newman:Yes. It's exciting stuff. It's cool. It's cheap. I'm not mad about it, but like, you know, it does not have even the bravura of Mad Max, where Mad Max is cheaply made, but because it's like stark, dark, empty roads, deserts, you know, like where it's like the car action is so like striking.

1:31:31David Sims:George Miller does the exact inverse of this. Exactly. Like that's the point. Exactly. I'm designing this entire movie around that stuff being as high impact as possible. And I'm marrying it to the simplest plot imaginable, which is Guy Needs Revenge.

1:31:47Griffin Newman:Guy needs revenge because family dead. It's got one of my favorite things you find in low budget movies. There's a part where our main character, he finally gets behind the wheel and he's being told by the mayor to keep crashing into one of the gang members. and it's done in this way where the gang member could just get out of the car because he keeps like backing up and then like putting it, you know, it's like a manual and then crashing into him again and he's just doing that thing of like, no, stop. Oh, please stop. You can't do this to me.

1:32:25David Sims:It's a low budget film thing. I also think it's an inexperienced film thing. I've certainly been on productions where you're like rehearsing the scene and you go like, and just humor me for a second. Why wouldn't I just get out of the car? And the director...

1:32:41Griffin Newman:We have 10 minutes!

1:32:43David Sims:I swear to God! The director looks at you with panicked eyes and smiles and goes like, for this shot to work, I think they just won't even... The audience isn't even going to be thinking that. And then you screen the movie and the first question everyone has is, why didn't they open the door? When I'm talking about these things, you recognize only after you've made one film. film and then watch it back. And again, you can only budget so much time. And you start to get smart, just you have the instincts in you from going through that process of which things are an audience going to bump against and which things will they not care about.

1:33:25David Sims:When you want your spring break to feel like and your kids pool day to feel like and your hotel bed to feel like and room service to feel like because at Hilton, hospitality feels like

1:33:44Griffin Newman:your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels?

1:33:46David Sims:It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton for this day.

1:34:00Griffin Newman:Let me see if there's anything here in the dossier about the release of the film. Okay, right, okay.

1:34:06David Sims:A big thing about this movie is it goes to the Cannes Film Festival. It makes quite a splash. Roger Corman is interested. Cars that ate Paris, that sounds like the kind of movie I would put out. He sees it. They're sort of talking about a deal. It falls apart. and then very shortly after he hires the great Paul Bertel and he goes, I have a title for you. Death Race 2000. Great movie. And obviously this movie does not have a ton to do with Death Race 2000, but in much the same way that it sparked Mad Max for George Miller, I think Roger Corman saw this and is like, I could take this and try to recut it into being more the kind of movie that I put out.

1:34:46David Sims:Or what if I just made a movie where it was just crazy shit the whole time?

1:34:51Griffin Newman:Or just make fucking wacky races

1:34:52David Sims:with guns. Right, but I think this movie sparked him to be like, oh, you could do this in live action. So the Cars of the Day of Paris,

1:35:00Griffin Newman:you know, Weir says, I made this to be released internationally. Like, I'm trying to bust out of the Australian, you know, bubble a little bit. Film was shot in fall of 73. It premieres at 74. Probably the Sydney Film Festival opens in theaters. Was not a big commercial hit, but it kind of like, you know, just starts to play. Then it gets taken to Cannes. what you just described happens. If Corman gets interested, backs out of the deal at some point. New Line Cinema releases it in America in 1976, titled The Cars That Eat People. They recut it. They add narration. I think they cut it to the bone.

1:35:36Griffin Newman:Weir's pretty bummed out by all of that. But Picnic is already moving. Absolutely. Oh my God, right. At the bottom of this dossier, JJ has put our old employee and pal, Nick Laureano, who's now a lawyer, like went to law school, did like kind of a year of research for us and was like, I think it's time for me to go to law school, went to law school, graduated, passed the bar, is a lawyer. I mean, love you, Nick. Blank check, an incredible stepping stone. Seriously. What kind of lawyer is he? I'm actually not sure. I mean, like, I think he's like, he graduated maybe last year, so he's still doing, you know, he's still early in there.

1:36:15Griffin Newman:Didn't you have to write him a job reference? We got like emails from the bar. Yeah, just being like,

1:36:19David Sims:he says he worked for blank check for the, you know, and I was like, he did. Right. I just had to confirm. You had to respond and be like, they were like, we're just curious. We know there were some mistakes on the Elaine May series. Was he on staff?

1:36:31Griffin Newman:No, not at all. Not at all. He was not. Love you, Nick. Love you, Masha. They're living, they're doing great. Nick's doing great. But he did write a giant overview of the Australian sort of new wave in the film industry and all that. But I am not going to repeat that.

1:36:47David Sims:That would be crazy. Very kind of you. But, no, I just think it's an interesting case where he designs this to be a calling card film, but the picnic thing has already gone into movement because of the same short film he used to get this made. He makes two different calling card movies that speak to different skills he has. No, it helps him tremendously.

1:37:13Griffin Newman:Right. Because it's like last wave feels like him, you know, pushing off of cars that ate Paris. Yes. Right.

1:37:22David Sims:But also I've shown the range that now people trust me that I've done it. But then Gallipoli,

1:37:26Griffin Newman:you're like the big prestigy stuff he's going to do next feels like it's pushing off of picnic. And then when he arrives in Hollywood to make witness, he is a full package and he makes witness. Well, if you made witness,

1:37:40David Sims:I hang your head in shape. I am ashamed to say... I'm ashamed to say I've not made Witness even once.

1:37:51Griffin Newman:I'm going to play the box office game, Griffin. This film came out in America. So this is the new line cut. The cars that ate people. I suppose so. On the 11th of June, 1976. So. First of all, let's say happy birthday to America. Oh, that's true. It was the bicentennial year. Fun. I'm not seeing it in the top 10 here. America is not in the top 10?

1:38:17David Sims:America's always number one at the box office in my opinion. Number one, however is a movie with wheels. Okay. In 1976. Is it a... No. Wow, I just said wheels and he's guessing. Let's go. No, because I'm like smoking the band at 77. No, that's famously 77 of course. Because it's the second highest grossing film. Behind Ben? What was the highest grossing film of 1977? I thought if there was any Star Wars. He nailed it. I was right. That's the one you would know.

1:38:46Griffin Newman:Star Wars was the most successful film of that year, but Smokey and the Bandit, which I recently watched for what I think is the first full time, and Sally Field. Call him? Hot stuff. How's she going to call if she doesn't have your number? Okay. And my number is 123-4567-891011. The film, this film, I'm discussing though. It's not a bird. No. It's a car movie.

1:39:14David Sims:It has a vehicle in it. Oh, but it's not... You wouldn't primarily identify it as a car.

1:39:19Griffin Newman:I've never seen this film and I know it mostly for its sort of memorable title. It's a very interesting sounding movie in that like the director is interesting. The stars are interesting. And... It's not like Tulane Blacktop. No, that's an awesome movie. I've seen that movie. That's like a crazy, you know, exploitation movie. The stars are interesting. Yeah, well, so the first star is a comedian. Okay, good. And as with all comedians of yesteryear, nothing weird ever happened with this guy. Oh, actually, a bunch of weird shit happened to him. Okay, so is this one of the Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby movies?

1:39:53Griffin Newman:You're right on the second in that the star of this film is Bill Cosby. But no, it's not directed by Sidney Poitier. But they also, they did buddy films. I'm not talking about that, though. This is something else. Well, I was talking about it, and I needed you to tell me that it wasn't one of those. No, but Bill Cosby is the star. Can I tell you his other two stars?

1:40:10David Sims:Yeah.

1:40:10Griffin Newman:Raquel Welch Uh-huh And Harvey Keitel Yeah This movie is called Do you remember? And it's about them Running an ambulance service Yeah But like an indie ambulance service Yeah I know the poster Yes It's got a very memorable title And let me tell you That Bill Cosby's character Is called Mother And Raquel Welch's character Is called Jugs Interesting And what is Harvey Keitel's character called? I've given you two of the three words of the title. Gnome? Speed. Wow. The film is called Mother, Jugs, and Speed. Oh, of course. There we go.

1:40:48David Sims:Okay.

1:40:49Griffin Newman:Yes.

1:40:49David Sims:It took me a long time to put that together. Yes.

1:40:51Griffin Newman:I have not seen it. It's directed by Peter Yates, who's like, you know, a real director. And I assume it's a bunch of crazy car antics and stuff like that. But I mostly, I feel like I mostly know it because it's called Mother, Jugs, and Speed. Yes, same. It's a good title. What the fuck is that? Yeah. so that's number one at the box office it's crushing number two at the box office is the film that will win best picture in 1976 Rocky nope Rocky 75 oh you know wait a second I take it back Rocky wins best picture in 76 thank you however this film is nominated for best picture and wins other Oscars it wins other Oscars it does is it network nope good guess though because I think that is one the Rocky year is crazy the five nominees are all amazing

1:41:37David Sims:right Because Taxi Driver's in there? Taxi Driver's in there,

1:41:42Griffin Newman:but that's not this movie.

1:41:43David Sims:All the President's Men is in there? There you go. There we go. The fifth, of course, is Bound for Glory. Yes. Possibly the most forgotten, but still good movie. A movie I like tremendously. Hal Ashby.

1:41:51Griffin Newman:And famous for early Steadicam and all that. It's like the first

1:41:55David Sims:Hollywood Steadicam movie. I believe so. That camera's smooth as hell. Sure is. Yeah. But no, this is All the President's Men. Okay. A terrific picture. Have you ever seen it, Ben? No. It's, you're just like, why isn't every movie this? A little bit.

1:42:12Griffin Newman:Adding it to the list. All the President's Men. So that's... Do you know what it's about, Matt? Hilariously, a summer movie.

1:42:18David Sims:It's about what if we... It's the President's Boys. What if we couldn't trust the President of the United States of America? Oh. What if crimes were happening? Of course, journalists would be able to hold them to account. We'd fix the problem. David, what's next at the box office?

1:42:34Griffin Newman:So that's number two. number three at the box office this week is a Western, kind of a revisionist Western. It's not a Clint. No, it is not. No, it's two major movie stars. Oh, is it the... It's two major movie stars. Mm-hmm. Young or old? One of them's on the older end of his career, but in the 70s, he's had his big comeback. Okay. He's won an Oscar recently. Is it a Wayne? No.

1:43:07David Sims:No. No. It's not a Wayne. Not John Wayne. He's had a big 70s comeback. Yeah. He's not like a Western actor. Yeah. And then the other guy's young.

1:43:16Griffin Newman:Younger. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I would say he got his... He became a star a little later. Like he's probably in his 30s. But at this point, he's a huge star. At this point, he's a huge star. Certainly. Certainly. It is not a film I've ever seen. 1976. I think at the time it was seen, it was like a huge flop and then it became... Yeah, it's Missouri Breaks. The film is Arthur Penn's The Missouri Breaks starring Marlon Brando. Jack Nicholson. And Jack Nicholson. Yeah. You've also got Randy Quaid, Harry Dean Stanton, Frederick Forrest. Yeah. Must have been a dry set.

1:43:55David Sims:Good call. A joke about how all those people like to drink.

1:43:57Griffin Newman:Oh, sure. Right, right, right. I don't know. M. Night Shyamalan's old... We've got a second episode to record today. We do. M. Night Shyamalan's old. If you remember, Rufus Sewell keeps asking for the title of this movie. And it's like a sign of his dementia as he's getting old on the beach. Yeah. Just thinking about that recently. No one does it like M. Night. Missouri Breaks feels like a film I own on disc because like Radiance put out a gigantic box of it. I'm not sure if that's true. But even if it isn't, it will be at some point, right? You know what I mean? Yes. I'll look it up and I'll be like, yeah, this movie was a huge bomb.

1:44:31Griffin Newman:And I'm like, interesting. $60 you say number four at the box office how you doing bear how am I doing bear bear well wait that's the name no four at the box office is a film I've never heard of I'm looking it up it is a crime drama a prison drama it's got a young Tommy Lee Jones in it I can tell you that much and he still of course looked like an old hound dog he has looked like an old hound dog since he was born.

1:45:03David Sims:Is it the Tommy Lee Jones, William Devane movie? No, that's

1:45:07Griffin Newman:Rolling Thunder. That's the title I was looking for. No, it's a film I've never heard of. It's directed by Michael Miller, starring Yvette Mimou. The sort of ingenue of it's got Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Carradine. Is it called Lock Me Up? Why Don't You? That's what it's called. It's called Lock Me Up. Why Don't You? In the least surprising news of all time, it was at one point selected by Tarantino for the first Quentin Tarantino film festival. Doesn't sound like his kind of thing. The film is called Jackson County Jail. Oh, sure. Yes. And it's just one of those movies where I'm like, does Quentin Tarantino scroll, scroll, scroll?

1:45:42Griffin Newman:Yeah, he likes this one. Okay. It's like a drive-in movie, you know. And then number five at the box office is a film I have heard of but not seen. It is another sort of exploitation movie. It's like a rape revenge film starring Margot Oh, Hemingway. Not Mariel. Oh. But Mariel is also in it.

1:46:05David Sims:Oh, yes. Fuck. Because I think this is Mariel's first movie.

1:46:08Griffin Newman:I think so.

1:46:09David Sims:She plays Margot's sister in the film. I believe we talked about this in our Star 80 episode. Normal. That's an episode I definitely haven't erased from my memory at all. I remember every episode vividly. Part of that is obviously I re-listen to all of them every night. I cue them up. Like that one Flaming Lips album. on different players around my room and now I have a thousand players. This movie is called is it the character's name?

1:46:39Griffin Newman:No. It's something a girl might wear. Lipstick. That's right. The film is called Lipstick. And I've never seen it. Lamont Johnson movie was also quite controversial at the time I think because it's a lurid. You've also got One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest which won Best Picture the prior year, still hanging out in June. Yep. You have a film called and I'm going to guess this film probably wasn't an Oscar contender. Poor White Trash Part 2 Scum of the Earth. Hmm, who's got that IP? Is anyone working on that? I have no idea what the fuck that is. Wikipedia has like never heard of it. Stars Lawrence Olivier?

1:47:24Griffin Newman:So I see it was initially called Scum of the Earth and then it was re-released under the popular title poor white trash part too. Great. Anyway, it looks like it's a movie about like Beethoven or something. And then you've got new this week, the Dario Argento film Deep Red. Oh, yeah. Which I recently watched my disc of that. I got a new disc of that one. Pretty fun movie with David Hemmings and those big bushy brows. I've never watched any of his films. Argento? No. They're fun. They're a good time. You like colors, Ben? Do you like women getting impaled? I would say I like colors Okay Not a big and pale guy Okay well then you're gonna be You know Up and down on these ones Comsi comsat Right You've still got The Exorcist Oh sure Already hanging out Yeah And then you still have got A great movie The Bad News Bears A baseball classic That's what's in the box office When But But I mean It's a gnarly box office It is It's a lot of Fucked up 70s exploitation movies It's a grimy test Like as much as you're like Okay sure There's also all the President's Men, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

1:48:30Griffin Newman:But even those are, you know, edgier movies. And those are like disillusioned movies. Totally. And then you're like, okay, and then what was the kind of like, you know, sort of sillier affair? And it's like, it's a bunch of like really nasty stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Good times. Right.

1:48:44David Sims:Like movies, movies with the one-liner, what if a guy got shot? What if a person was bad? Entirely true. What if crimes happened?

1:48:57Griffin Newman:What if crimes happened? Well, next week, pretty different vibe. Pretty different vibe. Is approaching, right? We don't have anything in the way. We're going right to Picnic and Hanging Rock next week.

1:49:08David Sims:Yes, we're doing the vibe shift. We're taking a picnic. Gene Schoenbrunn, the great filmmaker, returning to the show. That's right.

1:49:15Griffin Newman:To talk about Picnic and Hanging Rock. So enjoy that. And then, of course, yes, going forward, we've got Peter Weir, Peter Weir, Peter Weir. We're going to take one little break for Mandalorian Grogu, but that's not till the end of May. So we're on the Weir train.

1:49:28David Sims:We're on the weird train. Should we announce our Mandalorian guest?

1:49:32Griffin Newman:Yeah, sure. Barring some, you know, future scheduling problem. He's on the spreadsheet. Chris Gethard.

1:49:39David Sims:Main feed, Star Wars movie. He's back. He's back. And I'm going to promise all of you that we will spend 40 minutes at the top talking about Spider-Man 2.

1:49:49Griffin Newman:We're going to stay on topic. Yes, we're bringing Geth in for that episode. and Griff is promising to watch all of Disney's live action Star Wars TV shows to catch up. I have watched Obi-Wan Kenobi. Yeah, he watched that one and weirdly didn't feel motivated to watch a lot more.

1:50:06David Sims:You know what's the worst feeling in the world? To like watch a third Obi-Wan Kenobi episode. Most boring shit I've ever seen in my life. And then be like, I'm still awake. Do you know what I'm saying?

1:50:19Griffin Newman:How am I not in my Odin sleep? My eternal slumber.

1:50:22David Sims:To be fighting insomnia so hard, put on the most boring shit anyone's ever made and then still be awake at three o 'clock in the morning.

1:50:29Griffin Newman:This is the mistake I made. I put on Antiques Roadshow last night when I couldn't sleep. Too exciting. Too exciting. Obi-Wan has the opposite problem. I'm going to do Obi-Wan.

1:50:39David Sims:Yeah. I know. Yeah. It's like eating a turkey Alfred Hitchcock style. Genuine question, what is next for you? Which one will you tackle next? I think it is... Is it Andor season one? I'm going through in release order. Oh, you're trying to go in release order?

1:50:55Griffin Newman:Okay.

1:50:55David Sims:I think that's right. Yeah, I would assume so. I think it's Andor season one, then Mando season three. Because you...

1:51:04Griffin Newman:Sorry. Wait, because like, is the idea we're doing live action only? Live action only. So you've seen Mando season one and two. Correct. And you saw the book of Boba Fett.

1:51:16David Sims:I opened the book and trust me, I closed it and put it back on the shelf. Yes.

1:51:20Griffin Newman:So the next thing for you to watch is and or season one. It's happening, folks. You can stop haranguing me. And then you're going to make the incredibly foolish decision of not just watching and or season two, which is what you should do. I'm going to space it. That's a terrible idea.

1:51:33David Sims:I'm going to watch man. It is Mando three next. Then it would be Mando three. Then it's a Soka.

1:51:40Griffin Newman:Then it's a Soka season one. Uh-huh. As someone who did watch it. Oh, my God. Then the acolyte you have seen. Acolyte I've seen. So you don't have to watch that.

1:51:50David Sims:Then skeleton crew. Yes. And then and or season two. And or season two carry on time. Look, I understand that I'm depriving myself of joy. I think you are. And forcing myself to crawl back through the fucking Shawshank Redemption poop tube. But I think it will make it that much more satisfying. The other side when I'm standing in the rain and the Thomas Newman music is blaring. My fear is you'll just give up. I'm not going to give up. He's not kidding. I never give up, never surrender. That's from Star Wars, right? Anyway, yes. Peter Weir. We're doing it just with a little break from our friends, The Mandalorian and Grego.

1:52:25David Sims:There you go. Yeah. Thank you all for listening. Please remember, rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for Picnic and Hanging Rock with Jane Schoenbrung. And as always, catch out.

1:52:41David Sims:David pushed his mic away in disgust.

1:52:47Griffin Newman:Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and The Great American Novel. With additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

1:53:25Griffin Newman: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 Productions. Okay. God. I'm rolling. Oh, wait a second.

1:53:45David Sims:I'm not ready.

1:53:46Griffin Newman:I don't give a shit. That's okay. Fuck you. But we're ready to go. Fuck you. I don't give a shit. Fuck you. This is the first in the minutes. It is. It is. God. Unfortunately. I'm happy to shame myself as a cold open. You know what? I'm kind of ashamed. No, no. That'd be a little shame. There should be a little shame on the books. And I... What was the... Shame... It was like a Channel 4, like Eyewitness News. Oh, sure. Shame on you.

1:54:16David Sims:Yeah, remember this? The big cartoon finger graphic. I do not remember this. You don't remember this? Oh, my dad was obsessed with shame on you.

1:54:22Griffin Newman:It was like one of those classic things where the local news has some correspondent who, like, goes to local businesses, struggling local businesses, and, like, yells at them because they have, like, a dirty bathroom. Right.

1:54:36David Sims:Or it'd be like, an old woman would be like, the pamphlet said bananas were 15 cents, and I went to the store, and they charged me 20. And then he goes in with, like, a camera crew. He just surprises a manager. What's the matter with you? On a mic. He's like, you've ruined this lady's experience with getting bananas. Shame on you. And then a big cartoon finger, like, please. Yes,

1:55:01Griffin Newman:that's what I want. I want you guys to burst in with the camera crew and shame me. A big cartoon thing. With a big cartoon thing.