The Hudsucker Proxy with Mike Mitchell & Nick Wiger

11:27David Sims:what the fuck is this? I thought it was about, I honestly genuinely thought it was about vacuums. And I think it was Hudsucker. And on the cassette box, his hair is kind of going crazy. So I was like, oh, this is a vacuum movie. The vacuum is in reverse or something here. And he's holding a hula hoop in a way where you almost at first wouldn't quite understand what's going on. Yes. Yeah, I knew nothing about the hula hoop until I saw it. But this was a huge blockbuster video. Like, hey, look at that movie. I should maybe see that at some point. Never did. This was the only Coen Brothers movie I've never seen.

11:58David Sims:I just think that that's wild. I think every bigger budget movie they make after this, and they've never made a huge budget film.

12:06Griffin Newman:Like what's their most expensive movie? True Grit?

12:08David Sims:I think True Grit probably costs like 50 or 60. Sure. I don't think they've ever gone over that. True Grit is listed at 35. This is what's crazy about them, right? Because like this still might be their highest budget film. At$40 million 25 years ago. 20 years ago. 30 years ago. Is True Grit or No Country a bigger hit for them? True Grit is their biggest hit. True Grit is a very good. Oh, my goodness. True Grit was a blockbuster. And then it's like No Country and Burn After Reading. Both were really big. Wow. Burn After Reading is right up there with wow. Burn After Reading weirdly made almost as much as No Country.

12:41David Sims:That's wild. By not having that much reputation. And then everything after that is sort of like, well, they keep their budgets low enough that the return on investment's okay. And like things like Big Lebowski that bombed at the time, but obviously it becomes so profitable through just being like now culturally ubiquitous. but it felt like this was the last time that they were like, yeah, if they give us like huge studio money, everyone will come see our movie and it scares them in a way where they maybe become like incredibly responsible after this. This is a miniseries on the films of the Coen brothers.

13:12David Sims:It's called Pod Country for no cast. We could have called it the Podcaster Proxy or the Podsucker Casty or many other things. Yeah.

13:21Griffin Newman:The Podsucker Proxy is a bad title. I've grown used to it. but I think it's a bad title it is a bad title I mean it confused child me I mean 14 year old me it confused child me as well it is basically designed to be remembered incorrectly right and it also doesn't even matter that much to the plot well he is the titular proxy it does describe the central premise but in the weirdest way possible but what should it be called I don't know yeah it's not like I'm like but it should have been called like the hula hoop man Like I don't know what you call this. Or dumb CEO or some like shitty. Dumb CEO.

13:58Dumb CEO is pretty good. Dumb CEO would have been pretty good.

14:01David Sims:Obviously Caratop had already made chairman of the board. Right. Well to compare. Norm had already suggested you spell it B-O-R-E-D-E-D-E.

14:09Griffin Newman:No actually this predates. Yeah that's 1998. So they could have called it chairman of the board.

14:13David Sims:They could have called it chairman of the board. Can I introduce our guests? Yeah. Because it's very exciting. For the fifth time on this show. Oh. Entering the fifth timers club. Oh wow. But first time in person. Wow. Wow. We finally done it. 10 years of our two podcasts coexisting. We have finally crossed the streams with all four of us in the same room on mics. This has never happened. This is wild. This is happening for Blank Check today and then tomorrow. And I think the episodes will be out in reverse order. Tomorrow we're recording. We're doing the opposite. Y 'all are coming to HeadGum, New York and recording an episode of Doughboys.

14:47Home and Home. We're doing a Home and Home. And then we're ending both of our podcasts, which is huge. It's over.

14:51David Sims:So exciting. We're doing it. It's so great.

14:53Griffin Newman:A murder or suicide. The Patreon, to be clear, stays turned up. Yeah, Patreon's on it.

14:57David Sims:We're doing a murder-suicide and we're placing bets. We're creating an online marketplace to place bets on who's doing the murder versus the suicide.

15:06Griffin Newman:Wow, yeah. Roger Rabbit. Roger Rabbit. They Live 7, 1941.

15:13David Sims:And now this. So three huge kind of classic landmark films for their directors. and then within this year, 2025, Year of Our Lord, a sort of themed doubleheader of like early whiffs, big budget comedies from legendary directors. Except 1941, I would argue, kind of stinks. And this, I would argue, was misunderstood at the time. This is much, much better than 1941, for sure. I think this is a legitimately great movie. I agree. I love that. It's 10 out of 10. I think it's great. And I've seen it probably a half dozen times. uh it's uh you know it it's so singular like like and i know that's a weird thing that's to say about something that's so clearly evoking like you know the the screwball comedies of of yesteryear but but it it does like it like i don't know it kind of has such a like it existing in 1994 as one of those makes it feel so distinct and there's other stuff that's kind of like of that era, but that's doing a similar thing.

16:16But it's things like the Tim Burton Batman or the Warren Beatty Dick Tracy. And those are like tied to IP. And they also don't have the same sort of like cadence of dialogue, which is such a characteristic of this.

16:29David Sims:I have a lot of thoughts on this on why this film transcends. I think at the time it was written off as being a bit of a pastiche. And I think that is actually an incorrect label for what this movie is doing and why this movie actually works. but it makes sense why people were sort of putting up a guard against it. I do just want to formally introduce our guests. Oh, right. I'm Googling pastiche as you do that. So this is perfect. Yeah. From the Doughboys podcast. Italian noodles usually served with sauce.

17:02I could spell it correctly. I just don't know what it means.

17:06David Sims:From the Doughboys podcast. Eden Cohen. Mike Mitchell How you doing? Did I peek? And the self-sucker proxy There we go. Nick Weiger Wow. Okay, so self-sucker proxy was submitted by AJ McKeon, our production coordinator Wow. And Eaton Cohen was... Eaton Cohen. Eaton. E-I-T apostrophe N Cohen was submitted by A-L-Z-A-N-D-Y-K on the Blankies Discord We probably have it. We probably know that person from Doughboys too, I'm sure. I'm sure there's crossover. Can I read a couple more? Yeah, please. Mr. Mooseburger. Okay, I like that. Guy who always needs the double stitch. That's good. Six-letter word for the condition of the hypothalamus.

17:56David Sims:Yes. The most liquid businessman on the street.

18:00Griffin Newman:Yeah, I mean, we're kind of just doing Hudsucker jokes now.

18:03David Sims:An extruded plastic dingus. That's funny. This one, out of respect, To Mike Mitchell being in such excellent shape, Trim Robbins. Wow. Trim Robbins.

18:15Griffin Newman:Hey, that's nice. You want that Tim Robbins part? Long. He's a long fella. He is a long fella.

18:20David Sims:He is so. He's too long. And out of respect to Nick's recent legal status, a man who isn't allowed near a hula hoop because they're, you know, for kids.

18:30Griffin Newman:Those are all from Hoffbeast. Very good. Paul Newman is 5 '10". He's not a short guy. He's a sort of regular set. And Robbins is just like a foot taller than him. Is Robbins 6 '6"? I think Robbins might be close to like de Blasio height. Yeah, he's a tall drink of water. He's listed at 6 '5". Yeah, but like, am I wrong that - He's the tallest Oscar winning actor ever. Wow. That is wild. I feel like when I generally am seeing Tim Robbins in movies, things are blocked to not, to de-emphasize. Right, because you don't want him to look insane unless it's part of the plot. And here the cones do the opposite where they're just trying to emphasize like how tall and how much he's sticking out.

19:13They tease his hair up.

19:15Griffin Newman:A big lumbering galoot. It's like when Bart wears the pinstripe suit and in The Simpsons to try and look tall. All right. It looks like they're making him this cartoon character. Yeah.

19:26David Sims:We're getting into Ferdahl. And he has the little chihuahua. It's a good discussion here. It's a great bit. We're getting into Ferdahl discussion. I just don't want to go too much further without remembering to play the drop. Ben, I think we have a little drop. Oh my God.

19:35Griffin Newman:Don't we have a drop? This is exciting. I never thought of Yoda as like a sexual creature. Until Yaddle, honestly. Did Yoda and Yaddle fuck? Yeah, I would think they probably fucked. You think they really fucked? That's really funny. Buddha man, Yoda man. Oh my god. Well, good. And that's canon. Until JJ came and fucking wiped it all out. You know what? hearing how much our podcast sucks on your podcast just makes me feel bad we're guests well these are two podcasts that have discussed Yaddle because we discussed plenty back when we did the prequels

20:15David Sims:first year of our podcast only prequel talk there's not enough Yoda and Yaddle crossover in the movies in my opinion I mean I'm sure and there's backstories and comics and stuff like that

20:25Griffin Newman:but that's why to me it's so funny that somebody George Lucas I guess was like should we just like put a wig on a Yoda puppet and have another one be there, you know, in the council who doesn't talk or do anything and like, sure. And then like the fans are like, so what's up with Yaddle? Like no one's just gonna be like, I don't know, man. We put a wig on a Yoda. It's wild for there to basically be.

20:48David Sims:She has a wig on. She has like hair. There are, they are the only two of the same species on the council and they never interact with each other. No, never once.

20:58Griffin Newman:She doesn't say anything. She never says anything. We don't even know what she talks. But she's not giving her a nod. in a fucked up way. Right. It'd be funny if she was like, hey guys, that would die. Wow. There'd be a lot of questions.

21:08David Sims:In one of the Disney Plus cartoon things recently, they did a standalone episode on her backstory and I think she was voiced by Bryce Tellis. That's all bullshit. Really? Yeah. But the backstory, the original official backstory to Yaddle was that she was like a youngling, a Padawan or whatever and then she was like kidnapped in some battle and she was a POW and she lived in a pit for like 150 years. She figured out how to turn the force into nourishment to survive. And then they saved her and all the other Jedis were like, I think she deserves to be made a master. And Yoda put his foot down. He was like, she doesn't have enough time in the field.

21:47And they were like,

21:48David Sims:she was in a fucking pit. Is this real? I swear to you. Now that's all. Now it's all wiped away. But the original idea was that Yoda was like, I don't want another one of my species coming in. Like, this is just for me. In canon, Dooku killed her.

22:03Griffin Newman:Like now in canon. Oh, wow. In that cartoon. Yeah, sexual jealousy.

22:07David Sims:And also they've never named Yoda's species. Yoda, Yaddle, and Grogu are all just Yoda's species. Oh, Grogu. I forgot about Grogu.

22:17Griffin Newman:How can you forget about Grogu? He's the story of 2026's The Mandalorian and Grogu. How did you forget about Grogu? He's probably going to play ping pong with a porg or whatever. It'll be great. God, this could be so big. Was it Iger who was Was it Iger who was like let me see that My billion dollar baby or whatever Wasn't that his thing about Yeah I don't care if you like the Mandalorian I'm like Whatever on the Mandalorian I think you're too much of a sourpuss about baby Yoda I think Grogu's good I mean look am I being a hypocrite

22:48David Sims:Has basically remained innocent while everything else About that show has gone up

22:51Griffin Newman:They kind of smartly never did much Grogu They've been Instead the Mandalorian became all about like do you want to learn about like Mandalorian politics. And I was just like, no, not at all. I am a hypocrite that I, I love the idea of Yaddle and don't like a Grogu.

23:08David Sims:Would you like Grogu if you found out that Yaddle was Grogu's mom? Yes. I would love to see a young Yaddle, young Yaddle story.

23:18Griffin Newman:A Yaddle childbirth scene? Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing a Yaddle childbirth scene.

23:23David Sims:You will like Grogu. You will agree to like Grogu. if Yaddle is Grogu's mom and they show the conception on screen. I need to see the conception happen. Was it another Yoda? No, it's just some guy.

23:36Griffin Newman:It could just be a man. Some dude in a truck stop. Has Lucas weighed in on Grogu? There's that photo of him holding the baby on set. Which is kind of cool. That's fun. Going back to what you're saying about Yaddle, this was a time, Phantom Menace comes out. This is a time before I feel like everyone knows the term world building. And so a creative decision of like that is like, oh, yeah, we'll just put another one like that. But, you know, another Yoda with a wig on, like you were saying, it's just like that becomes a thing that informs decades of fan theorizing. But I guess like world building sometimes is as simple as just like, hey, we'll just put some shit in the background and then let people speculate.

24:15Can I make a deal with you guys? I like Grogu, but Babu Frick can burn in hell. How's that?

24:21Griffin Newman:I think that's fine. Really? And I mean, I like Babu Frick, but like I could lose Babu Frick. It's OK. We can lose him. I never need to see him again. Babu Frick is from the bad movie, like the movie where it's like there's no way into defending that movie. He pops so hard. Yeah. He's good. He's funny. He's like, hey. Do you think. Yeah, maybe he's bad.

24:39David Sims:Do you think there is like a room of like 800 writers right now working night and day trying to come up with what is the Grogu version of Chicken Jockey for the movie next year? Oh, man. want you saying like oh he's playing ping pong like they're just what is the thing we can have grogu do that will go viral that's a great yeah oh boy question they must really that that is like a deeply cynical world that you are projecting that is for sure going to happen we're trying to calculate those moments what is our memeable moment what is the thing that grogu is going to do physically in relation to something else like him eating the eggs or whatever yeah maybe crawling back into Yaddle's womb.

25:20Right. You keep pushing that. Who made the drop? Was that Ben? No, that was the Drop King. Wow. How about that? Out of retirement. Hey, DK, thanks for making our podcast sound like shit.

25:35Griffin Newman:Thanks a lot. Yeah. Yes, of course. Nick and Mitch are joining us from the Doughboys podcast. If anyone doesn't know about that, I don't know.

25:44David Sims:I'm sure everyone knows. But yes, a northeast podcast mini tour conveniently create an opportunity for you guys to stop over in new york for a couple days he's we're thrilled to be here right my god what a treat to see i mean this sincerely the reason that we're here is probably to do this episode more so than do our tour i think that is probably accurate you wags is not a big travel person yeah no i'm not like it's a nightmare but i am a buddy i'm happy to be here like i'm happy i always love coming into the city when I and have a reason to do so. And so we're over here for some tour dates anyway.

26:20So, yeah, I'm glad we can figure out some studio time.

26:22David Sims:And to talk about a great New York movie. Wow. How about that?

26:26Griffin Newman:That's true. It is true. It is true. It's a, you know, New York, Art Deco, New York, fantasy New York.

26:31David Sims:I'm going to cite many things in this movie as being one of my favorite things of all time.

26:34Griffin Newman:There's no way one minute of this thing filmed in New York. No, absolutely not. It was in North Carolina.

26:38David Sims:Entirely in Wilmington, North Carolina.

26:39Griffin Newman:In the big studio there.

26:40David Sims:They went so hog wild on the buildings and the miniatures for this. And they basically were reused for the next decade. So the city of this movie is repurposed and obviously built upon, redesigned for both Schumacher Batmans. That makes so much sense. For Roland Emmerich Godzilla. There are like five other blockbusters that used this city as a starting point. That was like my first note was like, this is like Batman. Like that's exactly. Gotham mask. Yes. That's great. Yeah. There's. No wonder that movie's good. That went for it. Because it's built on the bones of Hudsucker. It's true. I'm serious.

27:18David Sims:No, I agree with you. It is funny, though, to think about it. We've talked so much about how bizarre it is that for like six years, the takeaway from the success of Batman was people love like art deco pastiche films rather than superhero movies. It was really like sort of nightmare dystopian cities. Right. and that this is kind of like a throwback comedy building off of, I guess, people like this vibe. But yeah, by the time this comes out, a bunch of those other movies were already bombing. Oh, The Shadow uses these buildings as well. Oh, sure.

27:52Griffin Newman:That makes sense. A great movie I just rewatched. And when you say pastiche, you mean an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period, correct?

28:00David Sims:Yeah. Hey, will you hand Mitch Beckett's phone? It's not nice to keep it from him. He's having to recite things like this just off the top of my head. I know. I just rolled back in his head like a mentor. Incredible. So everyone was like, when this came out, you read the reviews and there was this early Cohen thing of like, these guys are too good. Right. In a way where like a lot of the old guard critical community was like, we get it. These guys are like technically perfect and they're so clever and they've seen a lot of movies and they read a lot of books and all their stuff is really kind of like self-referential.

28:33David Sims:It's really sort of like, look at what we know. and we're toying off the history of narrative and film and whatever it is. And I think it reached an apex with this, which is like they're getting studio money to build this sort of like reproduction of like these screwball comedies they grew up loving. And everyone's complaint was like, it is like technically incredible. The production design on this thing, the cinematography and all of it's like unbelievable. But it's like in a hermetic glass case, it has no feeling. It's all ironic. It's all distanced. like it's all cynical it's all passionless which they've always pushed back against I think this is like arguably their single most sincere movie and in certain ways they're most like nakedly emotional but the other thing that I like push back on David's thinking that over

29:20Griffin Newman:I'm not sure about that but I know it's more sincere than people gave it credit at the time which is true of almost every Coen movie I think that often there was a critical element that was kind of like we get it with your references and you're sort of like you know this is so self-aware And, you know, and I think that's often unfair.

29:36David Sims:The thing that boggles my mind is the people who are pushing back on them the most. And I keep repeating this point, but it's a thing you always see when like young people come out the gate with big hits where a certain percentage of the community will push back and being like, let's not anoint them as masters too quickly. Like, let them prove themselves before we start like elevating people too high. Can I guess who was pushing back on it? A certain New York critic, Jay Sherman. He thought it stunk. He said it stunk. Sherman thought it stinks? I don't know. This is my pushback on the pastiche thing, is that people were like, oh, it's just them doing a Sturgis movie, or it's them doing a Preston, a Sturgis movie, or a Capra movie, or a Hawks movie.

30:22David Sims:People kept saying it's a different type of movie. Speaking of films that spanned a 30-year stretch, what I actually think they're doing in this movie is like mashing up 50 years of film. This is basically the first five decades of like movie making styles all put together, which to me is what stops it from being a pastiche where movies like this often feel airless if it's like the good German thing where Soderbergh's like, I'm going to try to make it exactly as if I'm going to get the cameras from 1941 and study Casablanca and study the framing and just redo this. And that becomes too much of a technical exercise.

31:00David Sims:this movie is like hear me out kind of closer to star wars and that lucas was sort of like what do i take from like westerns and samurai films and a three and legend and like combine all these things together but because what the cohen's are doing is just different decades of comedy i think it got smushed together to people of just they're riffing on one thing but they're actually picking and choosing from like different comedic movements in film in my opinion. There's also like a commonality between this and Star Wars and the presence of Yaddle. This is true. Yeah, Yaddle's one of the board members.

31:37Yeah. In that scene where they see all the old white guys. Yeah. Yaddle kind of sticks out.

31:47David Sims:David. Yes. I got myself into a real pickle. Uh-oh. I thought it'd be funny to put on some Groucho Marx glasses. Very, very funny. Very funny. Classic. I've been stuck wearing them for five years because it's such a hassle to replace your glasses. That once I made that commitment, now I'm walking around with the big schnoz, the eyebrows, the mustache, all times.

32:07Griffin Newman:I know what you're saying. Glasses cost hundreds of dollars. You know, you just kind of live with whatever you've got. Wait a second. What about Zeni Optical? I forgot about Zeni Optical. Zeni Optical is an online eyewear shop with stylish prescription glasses, sunglasses, and customizable lens options at prices that make it easy. Expensive prices. To own more than one pair,

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32:33Griffin Newman:Zenni.com you pick a frame you enter your prescription you customize your lenses and they ship right to your door no store visit no pressure at that price you're going to stop asking do I really need new glasses why wouldn't I just you know stick with this no you can get a few pairs a work pair fun pair pair that only goes with one outfit you don't have to justify it upgrade today with Zenni go to Zenni.com slash podcast and use code podcast15 for 15 % off your first order, plus free shipping on all U.S. orders over$65. The styles sell out, so don't sit on it. That's Z-E-N-N-I dot com slash podcast, promo code podcast15.

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33:58Their licensed therapists specialize in ERP, the most effective treatment for OCD. If you think you might be struggling with OCD, go to NOCD.com to book a free 15 minute call. They are here to help. Griffin, what was your way in for this movie? And at what point does it enter your personal top 10?

34:19David Sims:Yeah, Coen Brothers, Lover, No Country for All Men, I was like obsessed with. But that was sort of it felt like a culmination of me getting into them for years and years and years and being like, this is a masterpiece. This is their like crowning achievement in that like stupid 2007 competition. It felt like between like, are you a no country guy or there will be blood guy? I was it was my one fucking semester in film school. And I was like so defensively stumping. The real answer is no country, obviously.

34:49Griffin Newman:Hell yes. Wow. But I do have No Country right up there. It's an incredible movie.

34:53David Sims:I think the year after that, MoMA does a retrospective of all their movies up until that point. And I go and see this and Barton Fink in the same day, which at that point were maybe the only two I hadn't seen. And it was a chance to see them in theaters. And I was like, oh, I'm going to see the weird one that no one likes. And then after that, I'm going to see the one that's like their most critically beloved in a way. And this screens first and truly from the first moment is one of my favorite openings in movies of just like you have silent title, like seven title cards, and then just like the music kicks in, the most beautiful miniature shot with like just perfect little like microfiber snow and Bill Cobb going, that's right, New York.

35:39Griffin Newman:Wait, is the first thing the suicide or is it Tim Robbins in front of the job board? It's the suicide first.

35:44David Sims:The first thing the camera pushes through the entire city. to reveal him stepping out into the balcony. Then the clock goes backwards. Right, right, right.

35:53Griffin Newman:But then I think first it's, then it's Tim Robbins at the job board and then Hudsucker drops, yes.

35:59David Sims:But I truly, I think from that moment was like, holy shit, what the fuck is that? Like felt chills and then walked out, remember texting my dad, I think this is one of my 10 favorite movies of all time. Like it was kind of an immediate love at first sight thing. Yeah, this is a very Griffin movie. I mean, this is not surprising. I was going to say that it's riffing on are like my favorite era of movies and comedies and aesthetics.

36:21Griffin Newman:Like, and you wish like every woman was like, yeah, yeah. Like you want Jennifer Jason Lee. Like that's your kind of lady.

36:28David Sims:Everything about this is like the world I want to live. You kind of wish everyone was like, yeah, yeah. I'm getting really turned on. But yeah, it was like, right. A thing I had put off scene for a while because I was like, right, that's the weird left handed one.

36:44Griffin Newman:I knew it also right as the one, you know, the Empire magazine. So the world would be like, yeah, Hudsuckers. That's the weird one. It's the one no one liked. Going into this. Interesting that there hasn't been like a, like a more in recent years reclamation of this movie. I think it has happened in the last 10 years. Okay.

37:00David Sims:I think it's become more accepted. It's like, yeah, they, they never made bad movies. The Metrograph Theater here in New York now screens it every holiday season. It's a good holiday movie. Within the week between Christmas and New Year's. and that feels like there is some mild canonization happening. I did not realize it was a Christmas New Year's movie when I was first going into it. I always put forward that it's like this and Harry Met Sally are the two best New Year's movies because there aren't a lot of good New Year's movies.

37:28Griffin Newman:No. What are other good New Year's? Well, New Year's Day, obviously. Two Great Marshall. Two Great New York movies. Two Great New York movies, yeah. Strange Days at New Year's? Strange Days. Strange Days for sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes any kind of turn of the millennium movie Is sort of secretly a New Year's movie Rudolph's shiny New Year That's yeah that's I think that That's definitely that to me that's a New Year's movie

37:51David Sims:Little baby New Year big ears I Griff this does seem like such a Such a you movie in many ways Like I could see people Walking to this movie being very confused By it back in the day It feels like it could be a divisive movie And also just the fact that it is like an alternate. It feels weirdly, even still watching, it feels weirdly modern, even though, of course, it's whatever the... It is. I also, like, I think in a certain way, culture has caught up to this movie. Like, this is them combining the vibes of the 1900s through the 1950s into a movie in the 1990s that was a little prescient about, like, corporate culture that has only grown since then.

38:32David Sims:Sure. It feels like this film is, in certain ways, a reaction to them trying to make sense of how to be personal artists within like a massive industry. Like, I think that the oddly personal aspect of this film, beyond it just being like the two of them and Sam Raimi being like, what's the kind of movie we love? What's the kind of thing that would be so much fun to make is also like the idea of trying to make something pure within this like huge lumbering machinery is like trying to convince a board to sell a hula hoop, which is like standing up and being like, you know, and like there's sand inside.

39:11Griffin Newman:So I'm looking at New Year's movies. The problem is a lot of them are Christmas movies and that doesn't count. To me, if you're more of a Christmas movie, you don't count. But I do think Phantom Thread gets the New Year's title. Oh, yeah. Because it's got an iconic New Year's party in it that has become kind of like, I feel like people are always posting a picture of it. I agree with that. I don't know, man. Ghostbusters 2 is a New Year's movie. It is. Oh, wow. Okay. Can I say another one that isn't technically a New Year's movie, but I do think it is a New Year's movie. Go ahead. Gremlins 2. They're in the lobby and they're singing New York, New York and they're doing a countdown but it's not really New Year's Eve.

39:46Griffin Newman:But it's New Year's coded. It's New Year's coded. Especially with a countdown.

39:49David Sims:Yes.

39:49Griffin Newman:Because Gremlins 1

39:50David Sims:is Christmassy, right?

39:51Griffin Newman:Yes, yeah.

39:52David Sims:Gremlins 1 is explicitly Christmas. Right. Here's, I think, a reason why I love this so much as a New Year's movie. It starts with Tim Robbins about to jump at 11.55, right? And Bill Cobb just being like, a week ago this guy was the head of a company. How has he fallen so low that he's about to kill himself? And the movie comes back around to this guy, like, getting the girl at 12.05, right? Like, it's a movie about, for me, that feeling I always have on New Year's that is just, like, the idea— You're on a ledge. The highest highs and the lowest lows. Yes. Like, this forced kind of, like, introspection and retrospection combined with this notion of, like, a hope of something great happening.

40:31I'll just say for me my way into this movie was Mitch talked about it being a blockbuster film my parents rented this when I was a kid and I watched this I guess it worked I'm saying that yeah the cover worked yeah you're correct I thought you were saying something different the movie did not work on me as a kid because I was just baffled by it

40:55David Sims:I remember my parents laughing at it and me not understanding what was going on and just being like, this movie is weird. Why are they talking like this?

41:03Griffin Newman:Your parents didn't like it either? No, my parents did like it. They enjoyed the movie. But I revisited this movie in adulthood and was like, oh, wait, I actually really like this. And I've watched it a few times since. And again, I've mentioned my wife really loves this movie. So like, but it is kind of, it's unmooring as a viewer. Like if you don't know what you're getting into, you're unsettled. That sounds like that's what your viewing was, Mitch. For a little bit. I mean, I was shocked at what I was watching. I just knew nothing about it. And I had no idea what it was about at all. So it was a lot to take in.

41:41Also, do you think your parents will regret showing you that movie when you jump out of the podcast building in like 10 years or whatever when you pull a Hudsucker? When we're in HeadGum Dubai or where the hell we are.

41:55Griffin Newman:getting like blood there's some like withered husk of a you know head gum hunk and you're like getting his blood put into you do you remember when you saw it for the first time yeah college 100 % it was college DVD yes well there was a little service called love film I brought I brought this up before but it was the Britain's Netflix before Netflix bought it and consumed it but it was the original UK the old disc you get the discs in the mail and I was already obsessed with the Coens and so I was filling in my gaps I 100 % remember and just love at first sight watching it on my little 10 inch TV by my bed I watched a lot of great movies there

42:35David Sims:I had the miraculous thing of getting to see it projected on film for the first time and then I bought it on DVD and was obsessively showing it to people and I had to keep being like you can't imagine how good this looks as good as it looks on a 10 inch screen it's one of those movies where you're like the effects actually hold up the better resolution you see it in versus a lot of movies of this era where you're like it actually benefits from watching in lower res. Do you think this is the most most I wrote this down and I'm asking you guys because you're experts is this the most like kind of Lynchian Coen Brothers movie or Terry Gilliam kind of there's definitely some Gilliam in there.

43:16David Sims:Yeah it's interesting the lynchy thing i mean i i feel like lynch and uh the cohen's are both similarly obsessed with like um old eras of speaking right like the the time specific era specific dialects and that part of it i think evokes something like lynch movies will have one character show up and talk like this yeah and also i mean the the bellboy at time like the elevator boy seems like kind of like a nightmare sequence-y at some point. You know what?

43:49Griffin Newman:Barton Fink is very... Barton Fink seems so much to me, though, Phil, when I was watching this, I was like, Barton Fink seems so much more in the real world than this feels. Sure, which is true. It is. You're right. It's actually more about reality than this is. I was just going to say, if we're going to look for a director as a point of comparison, to me, and maybe it's just because Batman is right there, but it feels like a Tim Burton film. lot of ways, especially like it's just such a broad arch morality play. And then just with some light fantastical elements that also exists in a time and place that's both specific but nonspecific.

44:26David Sims:It doesn't actually exist. Well, it's what I love about the opening beyond it being such a beautiful shot and the score being so great and whatever. But the opening line of the movie being that's right, which I just find so funny as a joke to start a movie with a response to a thing that wasn't like asked and then just saying like that's right New York City which is basically the movie pointing and being like you need to accept that this is New York City this does not look like reality we're in like Fantasia everything about this movie I'm never gonna see the sun in a weird sort of way there's no like baseline normalcy that this movie's gonna veer off from we're starting in like a fairy tale picture book

45:02Griffin Newman:world uh elevator board of course Jim True Frost everyone know Jim True Frost or am I the only Wire fan here oh he's in the Wire he's Prez oh my god Oh wait The teacher That's wild He's got the fuzz

45:16David Sims:He makes the elevator Do what she does That's right That's wow It's funny because him On the wire I know you haven't Watched the wire

45:22Griffin Newman:Griff I think Right I've not I've been too busy Watching Greg the bunny Yeah right On the wire He plays like A third time Kind of a soft spoken Squirrelly cop Who's bad at his job Like he does not play A guy who's like Hey man boss How you doing Like it's like It's funny to see him Doing this I knew I knew him And I Like overly drawn out Like kind of sluggish on The Wire. He's really good. It's a great season four of The Wire is the Greg the Bunny perspective, Griff. So it's a good crossover if you want to watch.

45:53David Sims:When Sean Baker won all the Oscars for Enora, I was like, I should go back and watch Greg the Bunny because it's so incongruous that he created Greg the Bunny. And it's so funny to think back to like that's where he was 20 years ago and now he's like the king of indie cinema. And then I rewatched the full season of Greg the Bunny and realized, oh, he had nothing to do with the Fox show. He and the other guy created for cable access, and then that guy developed it for Fox. And I was like, well, I just watched 13 episodes of Greg the Bunny for no reason. You're just hanging out with him. It's okay.

46:25I think everyone said that when they watched Greg the Bunny, but you're not alone. Steven Levitan did it for Fox.

46:31David Sims:Well, he was the old hand they brought in with Dan Milano, who was the co-creator and the puppeteer. and then Dan Milano becomes a robot chicken guy. Okay. Yeah. I just completed the entire Greg Bunny family tree. I made sense of how it came into existence. Thank you. John Harkness, film critic, writing for Sight and Sound in 1994 when this film came out. Reviewed this movie in a real like, I'm going to reveal that the emperor has no clothes. These guys are like all flash and no substance. His headline was The Sphinx Without a Riddle. Sure. But they describe the movie.

47:12Griffin Newman:It's a really weird burn.

47:14David Sims:Yes. He describes the movie as Norval Barnes is a Preston Sturges hero trapped in a Frank Capra story and never the twain shall meet, especially not in a world that seems to have been created by Fritz Lang.

47:26Griffin Newman:Right. And it's getting at your mashup idea.

47:29David Sims:Right. That he's like it's two different styles of like kind of Hollywood drama D and Hollywood pure like screwball comedy in a sort of dystopian, almost German expressionist relic of an idea of city building and world building. Right. And he also says, obviously, the Jennifer Jason Leigh character is like a Howard Hawks character. And his whole read is that the movie's mashup is fundamentally wrong because you can't put a Sturgis character in a crap. Right, you can't just take all these things

47:58Griffin Newman:and put them together. I get that. He's also like,

48:00David Sims:they're incompatible worldviews. But I think he misidentified it. I think this movie, not to get too egg-headed, is Capra character in a Sturges world. His argument is, the character's too cynical in a world that's too pure, and it's the other way around. No, he's a sweetie pie. Right. My first word of advice to this guy is chill out, nerd. Agreed. You gotta chill out. Is he still alive? I don't even know.

48:23Griffin Newman:Unfortunately, he's passed away. He's passed away. All right, well, chill out. rest in peace and chill out. There's like even no matter what even if you have like some of these complaints or something like there's no denying that this movie looks beautiful and is like it's funny. There was stuff when I was watching it when I first saw Jennifer Jason Lee doing her thing and I was like this is a really big performance and as the movie went on I was like this is great. This is what the world is. I'm accepting it for what it is.

48:53David Sims:And people really singled her out as like she bombs the whole thing. Oh, that's not fair. I didn't let her do this voice. And they're like, she came in for the audition and had the voice and we were like, yeah, of course. Yeah, why wouldn't she do that voice? This character wouldn't make sense if she doesn't talk like that. Yeah, this character would be dumb if she didn't talk. Exactly. They were like, thank God she like prepped this. Yes, it is big. I mean, when I was first seeing it, I was like, this is big. But everything is big. Everything is big. It's a pretty astonishing performance. Yeah.

49:22On a technical level, it is insane. Who's your fave? who's everyone's fave well that my stack cast yeah my whole thought about it when so when i first saw it and she was being really big and then when it comes around and she like humanizes the character and and you know like uh what's his name who's the robins who's a hayseed is kind of like you put on this attitude and then at the end you kind of see it breaking but she's still remaining the same character you're like that is a good performance there's no denying it i think she is the best performance in the movie she is certainly my nominee yes that's your one nomination

49:53David Sims:yes yeah yeah yeah supporting or lead supporting can I tell you who I think is number one I think Yaddle

49:58Griffin Newman:is probably the best he is good I mean she's this is a hotness conversation obviously now there is Yaddle number one James Urbaniak Bill Cobb's number two friend of the show past and future guest James Urbaniak the great James Urbaniak who is who is capable of going huh I was gonna say this is a shared

50:18David Sims:favorite movie of ours and every time we hang out we just like talk about this movie again because we've always He could be he could plot you could plop him right into this. He'd be great fit perfectly. Yeah. And he always points out it's one of he says it's one of his favorite moments of like performance he's ever seen. There is the scene where Tim Robbins is explaining what he imagines Amy Archer looks like. Right. When he's like talking trash about her after she's published the slam piece. And he's like, she's probably one of those women who's gotten infected with the cultural idea that she doesn't need a man or whatever it is.

50:52David Sims:And she starts to get flustered like it's clearly kind of getting to her where she wants him to be attracted to her, even if it's only a version of her that he doesn't know whatever. Right. And she has this moment where she says, like, well, maybe she's one of those women who cares more about her work than her exterior appearance. But with her hands while she's saying work, she gestures to her hair and makeup. And when she says personal appearance, she mimes writing. a piece. Yes, yeah. Yeah, like writing down and like on a typewriter. And it's such a funny inversion. It's great. Yeah, she's great in this.

51:28David Sims:I mean, my other secret favorite in this is Charles Durning, who I think is unbelievable.

51:32Griffin Newman:He's so funny in that, you know, in the outfit too. I love his little halo.

51:36David Sims:All of it. But like when we, in the straight story episode, you were saying, is there an argument to be made for Harry Dean Stanton getting an Oscar nomination for saying one line 30 seconds at the end of the film because of how well he does it. The first time I saw this movie, when I didn't think Charles Durning was coming back, he's third billed in the opening credits and then immediately jumps out a window. I was like, he earned that billing just for the silent contemplation of the suicide. My favorite is... It's so good. He kind of goes into, like, Usain Bolt,

52:06Griffin Newman:like, into his stance where he's about to, you know, go.

52:09David Sims:He nails the comeback, but...

52:11Griffin Newman:He maybe is my favorite. He's such a hilarious-looking person.

52:15David Sims:He is one of my...

52:16Griffin Newman:I am not trying to body-shame Charles Durning. But God bless that body of his.

52:20David Sims:So he has this like great dance background. Right. We talked about a recent episode that I shamefully have never seen Best Little Horror House in Texas, but watch his number all the time. But he's got dance training. And you see in like the way.

52:34Griffin Newman:And also he like, to be clear, fought on Omaha Beach. Like, and I'm like, yeah, funny body old there, Durning. Like he's like a war hero.

52:42David Sims:Front lines of D-Day. There's an incredible YouTube video of Tom Hanks introducing him at a D-Day anniversary event. He fought on Omaha Beach in World War II? Okay, I didn't know if it was another. I've also been to Omaha Beach. Fighting a person, fighting some guy.

52:55Griffin Newman:Not during war. It'd be funny if I was like, I was on Omaha Beach. You know, get some rage.

53:02David Sims:Isn't there some movie where there's a joke? Oh, no, it's the SNL Goodbye Saigon sketch where Will Ferrell keeps having the Vietnam flashbacks. And one of the other characters, he served and they were like, no, he just went to Vietnam on vacation. Did anything bad happen? I think he lost his luggage. I have a boy like a true war hero. He's one of my favorites, but I do have a boring answer. My favorite lemonade maker. Yeah, Mr. Newman.

53:31Griffin Newman:He's just so good. It's a joy to see a great like that. A Titan. Yeah. Like be a silly guy. And just also agree to do this. Right. Exactly. Kind of amazing.

53:41David Sims:And this is that era where like. And he's hot, by the way. Oh, my God. He takes his shot off. His shirt off. His shirt off for the fucking massage. It's insane. It's insane how handsome that guy was up until his dying day. And probably still looks pretty fucking good. Yeah, let's get that.

53:55Griffin Newman:Is he in his 70s here? Let's dig him up. Yeah, we gotta dig him up. We gotta see how he looks. He must have been close to his 70s. He was born in 1925, so he would have been like about 70. Like about hitting 70 soon. He's getting the massage shirtless, and then he stands up and just, you know. Got the towel around him or whatever. My torso has never looked that good in my life. Nick. Looks fucking incredible. Come on, you look good. That's nice of you to say, Mitch, but I'm going to look like fucking Paul Newman. Nick is looking good. By the way, I've been in the room with Nick before, but never for the podcast.

54:26Griffin Newman:But Nick's looking good. Nick's looking good. By the way, you know who else is looking good?

54:30David Sims:Mitch is looking good. Well, I already told Mitch he's looking good. But I got to say on mic that Mitch is looking pretty good. It's too kind, but look, Nick, I think it's only fair. By the way, quickly, anything you want to say about David? David, Griff, you guys are looking good. In fact, I'll put it in terms I think you like more.

54:49I think you should take your shirt off I think we should see how

54:52Griffin Newman:This isn't a video podcast Let's see if you've got 70 something Newman energy

54:57David Sims:People will just have to take us out of work

55:00Griffin Newman:No, Newman is a babe It's that era of Newman Where I feel like In the 80s He gets all serious I mean he was always a very serious actor But he's playing like these really And then in the 90s it's like what if I'm like a rascal? You know, like Nobody's Fool, right? These movies where it's like, everyone loves old blue-eyed Newman, right?

55:22David Sims:But that's this run of him playing a grump or the verdict where it's a guy who's kind of lost his way. He's all fucked up in the verdict. And then Color of Money, it's sort of like, you know, he's hot. Let's just still admit that he's a hottie. But this is him playing an absolute cartoon villain. It is so funny to see him not be an anti-hero, not be a guy who's sort of at odds with himself. but just like a cartoonishly evil person. And they talk about that. They were just like, don't try to find any depth in this. Right. This is the same year as Nobody's Fool. Right. Wow. It's a good movie. Play it real, but like, do not try to humanize this guy.

55:59David Sims:Don't try to find a core of what animates him. He is an evil businessman who likes being evil and smoking cigars. He's great. He's so good. He's so good. He is probably my MVP. And I do hope that Blank Check can get a nod from the Newman estate to dig him up so we can see. I think we should dig him up. He probably looks good. Can we get like a sub license from them to label this a Newman's own podcast?

56:22Griffin Newman:Fuck, guys. He was cremated.

56:25David Sims:Fuck. Daster. Here's a real question. I bet those ashes look pretty good. Let's dig him up. Did they donate his eyes to science?

56:33Griffin Newman:I don't think so. I'm sorry. They burned the eyes? Jerry Orbach, you know, is the famous eye donator.

56:39David Sims:Yeah. Do you guys know this? that Jerry Orbach donated his eyes and for years in New York City, there'd be Subway ads promoting Oregon ownership.

56:48Griffin Newman:A true New York legend to be clear, Jerry Orbach, one of the great New Yorkers.

56:51David Sims:But they would just have these big ads that were like Jerry Orbach's headshot and it would say he gave his eyes to science. That's wild. I think my eyes are a little too tiny for science. I've got very tiny eyes. So maybe they would like to study them. I don't know. Yeah, maybe. Worth preserving. Newman only did I've seen some things.

57:10Griffin Newman:Excluding Cars, he only did four films after this year. So after this, Nobody's Fool is this same year? Same year. And he gets an Oscar nomination for Nobody's Fool.

57:19David Sims:You're counting that as one of the four? Yeah, so I'm saying after... Then it's where the money is. He did do that. Road to Perdition.

57:26Griffin Newman:Yeah, that was his final film role on screen. Right, Cars is his... Right, last theatrical release. He's the voice of a fucking car in Cars. He's really good in it.

57:36David Sims:Excuse me, he's the voice of the car.

57:38Griffin Newman:He's a judge.

57:39David Sims:Show him some respect.

57:40Griffin Newman:He is a judge. Yeah. But he's also,

57:42David Sims:he used to be one like the old cup, right? Cars contain multitudes. What do you mean? You can't limit him to one profession.

57:49Griffin Newman:He was 83 years old. The fourth movie he made was Message in a Bottle, right? Well, you've only named three of the live actions. Message in a Bottle, Indeed, which he's. Message in a Bottle, Nobody's Fool, Where the Money Is. No, no, I'm not counting Nobody's Fool. Okay, so then Where the Money Is. Message in a Bottle, and you're forgetting, Twilight. Sexy thriller Twilight. I always think Twilight was earlier. Yeah, it's Hackman and Newman being sexy together. Two sexy 70-somethings. Yeah. Probably a lot of burly chests in that movie. Yeah. And wiry chests. I've never seen Twilight. I've never seen Twilight.

58:24Griffin Newman:I've seen one scene from Twilight many times. There is a famous nude scene in Twilight. Oh!

58:31David Sims:Paul Newman shows Zach. No, it's Reese Witherspoon. Has one scene I've studied extensively.

58:40Griffin Newman:Never seen Twilight. Also Robert. Paul Newman shows off the twins. Benton did Nobody's Fool with Him and then he did Twilight with Him.

58:48David Sims:Yeah. There's a story, because Liev Schreiber's in that one scene I've seen many times. And he has a story about Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward visiting him on set and walking away when they were getting ready to do a take. And he just looks at her and then looks back to Liev Schreiber and goes, what an ass on her. on Joanne Newman?

59:09Griffin Newman:Yeah.

59:09David Sims:Joanne Woodward? And Stryber was like, this is like rules that this guy's still so fucking horny for his wife. He's so poor for his wife that he's like, come on, Leif, you want to take a piece of that?

59:18Griffin Newman:But he was like respectfully as if he was looking

59:20David Sims:at the Mona Lisa.

59:21Griffin Newman:Look at that ass. God, he should have won an Oscar for saying that. Yeah. Just for that line. Yeah, he's the best. Our buddy said... Now my wife's gonna be like, you never say anything about that like that about me. Why aren't you talking about me to Leif Stryber? describing my ass to other men. Your impression of your wife. She's a Southern? I didn't realize your wife owned a story.

59:48David Sims:Our buddies at the Big Picture just did, at the time of recording this very recently, did a Paul Newman. They did. They did an anniversary. Centennial. Yes, right. And they talked about the fact that he was an alcoholic until his 60s. Oh, wow. That he was a case of beer or six martinis a night guy. Oh, my God. And that's what they're saying. They're like, for a guy who drank that much for that many decades, there is no period of time in which he looked bad. Not only is there never like a run where you're like, oh, yeah, like three years where he's really bloated, but it didn't even catch up to him when he was old.

1:00:19Some people just have that. They can just do it. They can just do that every night and it doesn't affect him.

1:00:24David Sims:I don't know how they might have been the most beautiful man in the history of movies.

1:00:27Griffin Newman:He's he's up there. Yes, he's the best looking movie star of all time. I really think so. I think doing his filmography is a really great way to experience like how Hollywood changed. Yes. For, you know, for over the course of like four decades. And it's not like he made the best movies of all time, although he made a lot of really good ones. But it is very, very fun to watch a Paul Newman movie. Like, just pick one. Like, you'll have a good time.

1:00:51David Sims:Paul Newman is kind of a Forrest Gump figure that you can track the progression of American movies from the 1950s to the 2000s through. like it all kind of happens either he's in reaction response ahead of the curve I'm mostly talking about cars yeah well he was miles ahead in that movie he was y 'all seen cars? yeah I've seen cars

1:01:12Griffin Newman:you seen cars Mitch? is this the animated Pixar movie? Pixar's cars yeah that's real are they gonna do a Disney live action they should

1:01:22David Sims:oh that would be so good and they shouldn't talk it feels like the only one that they should do a live action version Just get some cars. Get cars. Slap some eyes on them. Well, no. You know how, like, when they'll show, like, oh, here's the live action cast of the Little Mermaid. And you're like, ugh, they made, like, Sebastian look like a real crab. Right. Fondra look like a real fish. They should literally just get real cars, not put eyes and mouths on them. I love that. Drive them around. Except for Mater. He is Larry the Cable Guy. Painted. Right. Just face painted and mounted.

1:01:56David Sims:Paul Newman is one of these guys who like really his career kind of charts the death of the traditional studio system. Right. And like New Hollywood, where he's like thought of as sort of part of this younger group of movie stars that he actually predated. But he didn't really come into his own until the old system was breaking down and he was kind of the countercultural old guy. and even to the degree that he embraced going gray earlier and sort of became this aspirational figure for a countercultural movement who was a little bit ahead of them. And this feels like him making a movie of everything that movies were right before he really figured out his career in a way where you're like, he was 10 years too young to have played the Tim Robbins character in a movie like this.

1:02:47David Sims:and now he has come all the way back around to playing the old grumpy guy. Yeah, and the thing referencing those kinds of movies. That's really interesting. I never thought about it in those terms, but it's like, it's fascinating that a guy whose name is Paul Newman to our generation was always thought of as an old man. An old man. Nick, that's a great thought. Nick, that is so smart and interesting.

1:03:13David.

1:03:14David Sims:Yes. Scott back from Spain. Okay, lovely. And I'm feeling it. What are you feeling? Too much jamon. Too much siesting. But it's the summer of jamon, Griffin. Well, I'm ready for the fall of less jamon, is what I need to say. I'm ready to get my nutrition into gear. And you know what I'm going to thank in advance? The fine folks at Huel. Huel! Because Huel is a complete food, not a supplement.

1:03:42Griffin Newman:You can have Huel instead of a meal. There's a black edition powder. Yes. 40 grams of protein. You just mix it with water and milk in about 30 seconds. Complete meal. You can have it instead of food. It's not a shake on top of food. It's got 27 essential vitamins and minerals, no artificial sweeteners, colors, or flavors. Or there's that RTD bottle. Grab and go. You know what it stands for? Ready to drink. Correct. Okay. 35 grams of protein in that guy. You can make healthy eating simple. Get Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15 % off online with my code. check at Huel.com slash check. That's H-U-E-L.com slash check.

1:04:20Griffin Newman:New customers only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show.

1:04:31David Sims:David! Yes? Oh no! I'm so tired from all this working out I've been doing. You're always doing that. I got this pile of sweaty workout clothes, musty towels. Are you planning on washing those anytime? Yes. Look, David, I'm doing a bit of a bit. I, in fact, do not work out much, but I do leave behind smelly clothes.

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1:05:08David Sims:Blueland! David, you're not telling me anything I don't know because I've been using Blueland products for years. Years! I'm genuinely so excited that they're sponsoring the podcast. Oh, that's exciting. It's true. They make dish, laundry, and other household cleaning products designed to reduce single-use plastic. This is what I like about Blueland. They give you a container that's reusable, and then you set a shipping frequency so you're not having to junk bottles all the time. Right. Their clean tablets are 100 % plastic-free and micro-plastic-free.

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1:05:59Griffin Newman:you guys are the doughboys this is true i do feel like he is the gold standard for lemonade for like a supermarket lemonade you are you are not i mean my introduction to newman is newman's own lemonade probably was his was it did not begin with the dressing that began with salad yeah that was the the empire was built on salad dressing guy was like you gotta put all of stuff, Paul. I don't know how good it was. He was probably trying to get a threesome going with him and Joanne where he's like, salad dressing's great. Can I stay the night? Because I don't know who it was. What he would do is he would give people salad dressing.

1:06:37David Sims:It was his version of the Tom He'd be like, I'm coming to your house.

1:06:41Griffin Newman:Except he actually made it. He had a good recipe. But right. Did he then go like, maybe we should lemons, sugar. What do you guys think?

1:06:48David Sims:He was already doing Hole in the Wall gang. He was one of the most philanthropic movie stars even before that point.

1:06:54Griffin Newman:Obviously, the charity stuff is great. I'm just saying the lemonade's actually good. The lemonade is good. The Newman products are generally pretty good. His frozen pizza is good. I was going to say, I love his frozen pizza. His frozen pizza is great.

1:07:05David Sims:When you guys had us on to do a Tombstone Pizza episode during the lockdown, and we were talking different frozen pizza brands, I said that, for my money, is the best frozen pizza on the market, and I stand by it. It's way up there. It's really, really, really great. I like the four cheese. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And the cured pepperoni. I don't know if I've had that. Well, you gotta. We could do an episode on Newman's Own. We've never tackled that. Yeah, I guess you're right. It's a big universe.

1:07:29Griffin Newman:You need to eat a lot of salad, though, because I feel like they've got a ton of bottles. It's got a lot of dressing. I'm out. Unless you just chug that. All right. Now you're getting me back in. I'll chug the dressing.

1:07:40David Sims:But that is like a company that now for decades in is still all post-tax revenue goes to charity. Yeah. Pretty great. All of it. Yeah. Kind of amazing. Yeah, he's great. Good for him. And Ryan Reynolds has the same setup for Mint Mobile, right? Yeah, all of that goes to him. Oh, that's great. Good for him. You know what, Ivan? Charity is suing Justin Baldoni, right? That's what he... Big charity. Do you know a brand I love, too? I don't know if you guys have this Yaddle Zone. Have you guys had Yaddle Zone? Did you hear? This is crazy because I heard on set there was a... Ki-Adi Mundi has told the story.

1:08:17Yeah. That there was a moment where Yoda turned to him while Yadda was walking away and said, ass on her checkout. I heard that. I heard that. Weiger did that as the crucified guy again. He put his arms out like the crucified guy.

1:08:33David Sims:Did you hear Coyote Monday on Jay Moore's podcast? He was telling some crazy stories. Because I think that's where that clip came from. It was. And he was just talking about all his former co-stars.

1:08:45Griffin Newman:I'm so happy Jay Moore has a podcast

1:08:48David Sims:I never realized that Sassy Tin was addicted to poppers and it's crazy that he still is so on point, like you watch that movie he doesn't miss a mark basically he was one of the when you call action he's just in it and there are people who work like that

1:09:06Griffin Newman:do you guys see that tweet that was like Bill Simmons watching Phantom Menace where he's like, kind of like Sebulba

1:09:19Griffin Newman:like just like 10 minutes and it's like i kind of like sebalda i just gotta come back i want i want to bring this up because sebalda i want to yeah i want to bring something i love sebalda there's sebalda was a great character like his sportsmanship and his general kind of like on-field demeanor yeah yeah also his personal life otherwise yeah it lines with my sports team in my life and how I treat things. I wanted to bring this up because we're just like Newman's Own where we come from a food podcast. We're sandwich guys, I guess. Yeah, we're sandwich guys. That is sad that we are just sandwich guys.

1:09:57I guess when you boil it down, we're fucking sandwich guys. And I went to the Nighthawk Cinema. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yes, I saw. How was The Accountant 2? The Accountant 2 is like very it's very it's a fun movie it's not a great movie but it is like it's it's fun john barenthal is having fun in the movie and uh and it's to not be insensitive here i'm trying to put this in a good way but affleck is playing it more like someone who's on the spectrum in two than he was in one

1:10:30Griffin Newman:which is kind of strange right in one it's i feel like a very thin gloss of like that's his superpower Yes. And in two, you're like, oh, he's like, you're really seeing more of the side that he's like on this, which is it's strange. He's going full bazinga. He's going, he's going, he's going full bazinga. He is. Griff, thank you for putting it into, into a good term.

1:10:53David Sims:I'm trying to think like, what is the most sensitive way? That is a hundred percent.

1:10:56Griffin Newman:Hollywood autism is actually, yes, right. He's, he's, he's really doing it. And, and I just, you guys gave me some suggestions on things to get there. And I just a great, they went to the night.

1:11:05David Sims:They got that interesting new sandwich, which you ordered, right? Oh, you didn't? You got the tendies. I got the tendies. Did you like the tendies? I thought the tendies were fantastic. Wow. What kind of different sauces were we talking about? They had a great, I think it was like a dill ranch, or I think it was buttermilk ranch, but there was a strong dill flavor to it. It was cornflake crust. The cornflake crusted chicken tenders, because I wanted to get popcorn too, so a sandwich, I was like. You get the regular or the Nighthawk popcorn? I went with your suggestion. I got the Nighthawk popcorn.

1:11:32David Sims:That seasoning's unbelievable, right? Citric acid, a little bit of salt? If someone gives me a food suggestion, I'm going to eat it. Wags will know that's true. I got the Fire Walk With Me cocktail. My favorite cocktail there, for sure. You said one of the best cocktails in the city. A frozen tequila cocktail. He said that. I do like it a lot.

1:11:51Griffin Newman:Yeah, yeah, yeah. A good time. Weirdly, a little chatty. The theater was a little bit chatty. We apologize for that. A movie like The Accountant 2, I guess you can't really hope for a totally devoted audience. I mean, you guys, Griffin Sims were sitting behind me and I was eating and they're like, I think he likes it. Like that's them.

1:12:11David Sims:They got the sandwich though, which I was recommending to you even though I think the attendees was the better option. You're coming off of a big food day. Yes. Johnson Bleeker. They got a celery root pastrami sandwich right now. Yes. That is like curing celery root in the style of pastrami. Okay. With that seasoning on multigrain with like the onions and it's is it a vegetarian sandwich it's a fully veggie sandwich wow yeah I think it's even vegan wow yeah I that place it rules it's such a cool it's it's wild to me that Los Angeles doesn't have I mean we have a lot look we're spoiled in a lot of different ways but there's nothing that checks the same the cool bar in there and everything it's really great yeah there is an Alamo in LA but it's you know there's one of them and I feel like it hasn't gone over that well in LA It's in an interest.

1:13:03It's so weirdly placed. Yeah. It's in downtown. It's right above a train stop, which is nice. It's directly upstairs from a metro stop. But for people who are used to driving there, it's a pretty inconvenient place to park.

1:13:17David Sims:Nighthawk has two locations in New York, and I think they kind of are what Alamo was in Texas 30 years ago. And then obviously when these things, it's what you guys talk about all the time, but when they scale up to become chains, you start having to make these like strategic concessions and tightenings. And I think they've done as good of a job in a certain ways as you can of still making things feel like cool and personal, but Nighthawk still has that. Like, right. It's close enough to the ground.

1:13:44Griffin Newman:It's right. It's like a nice local business. Right. And the Alma, like you'll be watching a movie and you'll hear like, Oh, the board, you know, you're here like the, the train, you know, the conductor yelling for the train. Yeah. It is weird that the LA Metro is steam train. we keep it old school I've still never ridden the LA metro I want to that's weird because you're out there all the time I've been to Los Angeles several times in my life when was the last time? 2019 or 2018 before the pandemic the D line right now so it was right before you went to Wuhan? sorry go on next I was sending to my pangolin farm is that what they're called?

1:14:24formerly the purple line is closed for 70 days right now as of this recording. 70 days is a very specific amount of days. It is. The New York City subway is kind of like,

1:14:35Griffin Newman:I don't know, spring. They tend to be pretty chill about it. Okay, it's closed for 70 days. That's the span they gave us. The ring times 10. Yeah. Oh, good point. I said 70 days, but the city announced it as the ring times 10. Yeah, because they know it's movie lovers. It's Hollywood. It's Hollywood. It's Tinseltown. but it's extending the D line all the way west from downtown and it will actually there will be a stop directly below the Academy Museum oh wow which is kind of kind of a rad place the D is the purple line

1:15:05David Sims:yes yeah yeah the D is the purple line yeah Fairfax and Wilshire see when they do renovations here in the city it is like three out of every five Tuesdays for the next seven years the train will be on fire it will last like that long

1:15:22Griffin Newman:Have you ridden the subway yet Nick I'm excited for you to ride the New York subway No I've not got the chance to do but I will today Have you ever ridden the subway Of course yeah Every time I'm in New York My daughter is getting really into the subway Because I've been pushing it so hard Does she have a favorite line Well the 3 train which is sort of our train But she's very intent on me taking the 7 train Or oh she wants to take it too It's not near us So I have to take a picture of the 7 I have to start taking pictures of every train I ride So I can show her

1:15:50David Sims:My friend who's got Alex Perlin, the great off-mentioned Alex Perlin, who has a son about your daughter's age. They live off the 7 train. And he's similarly public transit obsessed. But he's like, it is the best line to live off of with a train obsessed kid. Because it just basically goes back and forth. Yeah, that's true. A pretty controlled number of stops. And most of it's above ground. It's above ground. So it's really scenic. Yeah.

1:16:20Griffin Newman:yeah yeah i love this over and training it's a great line you reminded me of something could i pitch this to you there's a go to the mets there's a there's a there's a new scary movie coming out and and i was on the fat guy chain and we were pitching this around but uh uh you know it should clarify that the fat guy chain is it's a group of friends that are talking to group sorry yeah yeah john gabris stavros and uh and zach cherry we're all we're all on the the fat guy chain three of the greats we have a blast in there um but you know there's a new scary movie coming out and we were saying like you know like a ring good ring thing is like the curse tape is uh it's rust it's just uh it's a copy of rust and then all alec baldwin crawls out of the tv at the like uh at some point in the movie we were saying uh that's that's that's what i was thinking but uh i want to pitch this to the waynes i don't know how you i don't know if you can just pitch a specific bit to the waynes brothers i think they're blankies so i think if you just definitely probably the best way to do it is just to do what you just all right great so all right it's in

1:17:18David Sims:they're brainstorming six now they signed a deal to come back and do scary movie six yes yeah no that's saying he's saying they're bad yeah yeah this is I want this I want the curse they're gonna talk about Onora yeah I'm trying to think of like what scary movie will go after that's the thing like scary movie four has like 20 minutes on Brokeback Mountain yes I'm sure it's aged very well too I'm sure

1:17:39Griffin Newman:I guess there'll be a lot of sinners sinners will

1:17:41David Sims:sinners will be prime do you think they've been throwing pencils at the ceiling with a completely blank dry erase board for six months and then sinners came out the amount of pussy eating alone laptop keyboards on fire here we go okay all right so i'm gonna open the dossier realizing

1:18:01Griffin Newman:we're going all over the place yeah but we do have a dossier here and i do need to of course edify you to something you may already know which is that joel cohen and sam ramey are long-time friends who met working as an editor for edna ruth paul in new york when they were young up and comers. Joel Cohen

1:18:18David Sims:cuts his teeth doing low budget horror as an editor assistant editor and one of those movies he happens to work on. He basically talks about one of them was never released two of them had been forgotten forever and the other one was The Evil Dead

1:18:33Griffin Newman:Correct. It was one film called Fear No Evil, another one he got fired from called Nightmare and one called The Evil Dead. A good movie!

1:18:41David Sims:Basically that's the last time he edits for anyone else. But it like that relationship, him meeting him, like, it all starts to come together. Their careers start to roll.

1:18:51Griffin Newman:So they were pals, and obviously this is the only Coen Brothers film that Raimi has a writing credit on, right?

1:18:58David Sims:Well, the Coens have a writing credit, of course, on Crime Wave, which Raimi ends up directing, and then this is the opposite. But this is, in this early period, they write these two scripts together. And then Raimi directs one, the Coens direct one. Yeah, because this is written in like the 80s, right?

1:19:15Griffin Newman:Okay. Written about 1985, around the same time they wrote the XYZ murders, which is eventually what Crime Wave is. Ostensibly, they just were like, we will set it in a sort of mythical 50s, not a real 50s. And we wanted everything to be sort of fable-like. So things like the hula hoop and the frisbee did get invented in the 50s, I guess. The hula hoop has existed since like the Stone Age. but like the fad was in the 50s. Wham-O is the toy company

1:19:44David Sims:that has the trademark or whatever on popularizing the two things in the 50s and they were just like we're going to do no research into the actual thing. Right. The thing with the straw they did no research into that. I don't know when the straw was invented. That they pulled out of their asses. But it's this big thing when people were like critiquing the movie at the time where they were like we don't think this is an homage. It's like us being like we love these types of movies. Why don't people make movies like this anymore rather than being like, let's try to reconstruct one as tribute. And they said, and I just think it's so smart, and I think it speaks to the underlying sincerity of this movie, the way they land on Hula Hoop was they were like, we want to build a comedy around something that sounds so silly that everyone in the reality of the movie would mock it, and yet the audience knows, of course this is going to work.

1:20:33David Sims:And something like the Hula Hoop, which we've all grown up with as a given, if you try to imagine someone pitching it, you're like, everyone would be like, what the fuck are you talking about? And so many of their movies, especially the thrillers, but the comedies as well, they're really smart in story construction and building things around the audience being a step or two ahead of the characters. They don't quite know what they're getting into. And then what makes the Coen so great is that usually we're waiting for what we assume will be the blow up. And then they zag it and take it slightly off kilter of where you expect the outcome is going to go.

1:21:06David Sims:and this is a comedy with that inherent tension built in which is like you're ready for this guy to fail but you're like no of course it works it's the fucking hula hoop the it's a hit the hula hoop also gives it the miraculous joke of just a picture of a circle a drawing of a circle that's great you know for kids and so funny it's so funny that the moment where he takes it out uh to show it to paul newman and then he turned he realized that the circle is upside down and turns it around. It's so great. It is funny every time. Yeah. It is funny when they heighten it to the straw and the frisbee.

1:21:40David Sims:Despite having seen the poster, when I went to see this for the first time, I think I forgot it was a hula hoop movie. So when they introduced the circle drawing, I was like, oh, the bid is that they're never going to define what this is. That it's a dumb abstract pitch. But no, it's just for kids. And it makes the joke that much better that once he reveals it. I don't think I can do it. I'm not very good at it. I'm not very good at it. Now, my wife, again, like loves to hula hoop. She has a hula hoop and just like hula all the time. That little kid who does a hula hoop in the movie does a damn good job at it.

1:22:12Griffin Newman:My wife was like, where'd they find this hula hooping genius child? He was like so like pro or had a record or something.

1:22:18David Sims:You can tell in like the tension in his body that he's got like a lot of practice. He's doing very specific rehearsed moves.

1:22:26Griffin Newman:They got permission from Wham-O and its parent company Kransko Group, which is very litigious. apparently there is Kranz goes basically only big question was will the hula hoop hurt anyone in the film and when they find out no that's fine they're like okay there is a giant disclaimer at the end of the movie I don't know if you guys saw it yes where it says this is a fictional account of the development of the hula hoop and the big line is the hula hoop was actually developed by the founders of the toy company Wham-O a true American success story like they suck Wham-O's dick in the credits you know what I like it They deserve that sucking.

1:23:02Yeah, it's great. I like that they were okay with them doing it. Yeah, that's that whole sequence that ends with the little boy picking the hula hoop off the ground. And hula hoop. Yeah, it is. But it's also just so dazzling. Like just going from approval to, you know, they're taking it through all the various departments. They're taking it to accounting. They take it to manufacturing. They take it to marketing. And then it's in stores and we see it be a commercial flop and then be a commercial success. And it's all happening in like a two minute montage.

1:23:30David Sims:So Raimi was second unit director on this movie, which they had never really had before. And I don't know if they ever had again since because they're guys who are very big on like, we shoot everything. We want to have control of our inserts. But they obviously trust him so much. He had written it. That whole sequence is like his main project. Wow. Which makes sense because there is like. It's like Spider-Man. Yes. It is so like the Montez stuff in Spider-Man. Deep with details and control that it makes sense that it was basically treated as its own like eight minute short film. that has its own.

1:24:02David Sims:Our buddy Patrick Willems made a great video about it where he was just like, this is the greatest movie montage of all time because it basically functions as a mini movie. Yes. It has its own characters, its own arcs. Right. Complete the story.

1:24:14Griffin Newman:The guy with the, you know, price labels going up and down and all that.

1:24:18David Sims:And the fucking pitchman. Like, you have like four different narratives you keep checking back in on. And just following that, just following the hula hoop as it rolls along. It becomes a character onto himself. Yes. and Carter Burwell going out of fucking control Carter Burwell does black out

1:24:33Griffin Newman:making this movie it is crazy we haven't talked about the Carter Burwell score that guy rocked so incredible so the Coens don't have a particular inspiration they say you know yes kind of a copra-esque thing golden age of Hollywood sure but they're not like ripping off you know it's just like sometimes it's got a his girl Friday energy sometimes you know like when the film comes out as we noted it does get a lot of shit for kind of like you're just doing you know what they did back in the 30s better yeah and the Coen's sort of well they don't care

1:25:06David Sims:everything with the paper is very Hawksian right the Capra like kind of through line is the like one idealistic pure man who is able to like change the world around him which is kind of the Norville Barnes character in a certain way even though he's presented as a total dope and then And the Sturges, I feel like trademark, is this sort of like we're all stuck in the crazy machinery of modern life. That characters get kind of knocked around in a pinball machine through corporations and rules of society and all this sort of stuff. And I think it's those three things clashing together with this world building that does feel like it's out of a war film.

1:25:52Griffin Newman:Now, they write this movie in 1985. They know they cannot make a movie like this. Right. You know, early on, it's going to be expensive. Right.

1:25:58David Sims:Like wrote it, didn't think at all about how they would film it, finished the script, looked at it and were like, oh, no one will give us the money to make this and we don't know how to pull this off.

1:26:06Griffin Newman:They also do not write the ending. They could not figure out the ending. They just have him jump and they're like, we'll figure it out later. You know, he's on the ledge. An insane ending. I mean, it is an insane. I like it. That was one thing I like as a kid. I remember watching it and the moment when time stops and then the guy gets a character who's I guess essentially the devil like gets his teeth punched out I was like what the fuck what the fuck is this? It is quite a twist to reveal that the janitor is evil I guess if Bill Cobbs is good so that is crucial to them all the time though where they're writing it because apparently at one point I think it's Raimi Raimi's like well maybe should Musburger be more of a good guy and the co-ed's like, no, he is bad.

1:26:51Griffin Newman:Like, they're only good and bad. Like, this movie does not have shades of gray. It's black and white. It's so much more fun that he's just a bad guy. He gets caught in a big net and sent to a sanitary. It's so funny that that's what happens to him. It's also so funny that the double stitch, which is, of course, the best joke in the movie, he's the guy saying, oh, he's such a nice man.

1:27:10David Sims:I'm like, no, he's not. We'll circle back to the double stitch. Double stitch is 40 minutes of its own conversation. it. Ramey in the way that like when we covered him, we talked so much about how he loved to torture Bruce Campbell and like design sequences around putting him in physical pain and like embarrass himself when they would like the three of them would physically write together in the same room. Ramey would buy firecrackers. And if they hit walls, he'd like shoot firecrackers at them. Like, come on, guys, ideas. Don't slow down. Yeah.

1:27:40Griffin Newman:And throw firecrackers at them.

1:27:41David Sims:Our buddy Kevin Smith, when he was on the show in our Raimi days, for Simple Plan, talked about how he thinks the Buzz character is the Coens mocking Raimi in the way he speaks. Right. Raimi's kind of Midwestern gee willikers. He's like, really? He's like, this is Raimi's energy if you've ever met him. Like amplified into Buzz. He did say that. That's right.

1:28:03Griffin Newman:He said that's what Sam Raimi's like. You mentioned the flexi straw earlier and that buzz when he goes and pitches that. That's just like such an incredible performance. I mean, just like him, just like rattling off. Because he's doing it with every line of dialogue he's got. Everything is so crisp. Everything is so precise. His cadence is so rapid fire. But in particular there. And then he also has the emotional arc of when he gets fired and then he just collapses into tears and says, this job is all that I've got. But I don't know. It's so fucking good. I think, again, that's the sincerity. You know, like it's like and you are like, oh, no, you know, not just like, ah, fuck that guy.

1:28:43David Sims:You know, you do feel bad. He plays that scene so well for a character that is just kind of like comedic construction. Like, what if a guy talked this way? Right. that in that scene when Tim Robbins like lashes out at him, he's doing this balance of being like so personally hurt, but Buzz's core like tenet is to be friendly to everyone all the time. So he keeps coming like, oh, hey, come on, Kai, I tried my best. You know, he's like through tears trying to apologize to Tim Robbins for offending him with a bad pitch when Tim Robbins is basically just shitting on him because now he's been like taken down himself.

1:29:19David Sims:he needs to feel big he was the guy at first I was like what the hell is going on here when I was first watching the movie and then completely wins me over especially so loud

1:29:31Griffin Newman:even by this movie's standards I'm a guy who loves to say buddy I like that he says buddy a bunch so the Coens make they make blood symbol and they make three movies for the company circle films they make Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing fucking Martin. I know you both have talked about this before on other episodes, but what was everyone's first Coen Brothers movie? Mine was Raising Arizona, because I remember that just showing oddly on cable. I think we tried to

1:30:03David Sims:puzzle this out already, but go ahead. My parents rented Raising Arizona for me and I didn't get it. I think I probably have a similar reaction to you with Hudsucker, didn't make it to the end. I think, oh, brother was the first one I saw in theaters, and then I was like, I gotta watch all these movies.

1:30:16Griffin Newman:Oh, brother's definitely the first one I saw in theaters. I think Fargo. I don't know. Did I talk about this already? Yeah. Yeah, I figured we probably covered this in another episode. I don't remember, though. I don't remember anything anymore. Fargo was the first one. Apparently Griffin likes European vacation. That was news to me. Yeah, we were texting about it, and David was like, when did you say this? And I said, in the episode. No memory of that. But then apparently I saw all the people reacting, and it was like, apparently Griffin on that episode is just like, and I like that part. Me and Gabriel are still like, okay.

1:30:42Fargo was the first one I saw in theaters, and the first one that I liked, the first one I was like, oh, wow, wait, okay. So you're right.

1:30:48Griffin Newman:You were old enough to see Fargo. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did not see Fargo in theaters. Also, can you stop pointing your banana at me? Yeah, Mike's just holding a banana. He loves to have a piece of fruit. You're gesturing with it a lot. Look, I've had Chekhov's banana sitting here. I'm going to deploy it at some point. But I was trying to cue you up to say what your first Coen Brothers movie was non-verbally, but I was using the banana. I'm sorry. You used the banana. I didn't know if you were gesturing for me to eat the banana. I didn't know what the hell was going on. No, it's my banana.

1:31:15David Sims:When you walked in here, I thought you had a banana in your pocket, but now you're holding the banana and your pants are still tented.

1:31:23My first Coen Brothers movie in the theater. I'm going to have to do a little deep dive here to figure this out.

1:31:27David Sims:Or if you watch one at home first. Well, you were going through the filmography, so maybe that'll trigger something. I mean, Fargo is definitely, I think, the first one I watched. Yeah. But I did not see it in the theater. But the first one in the theater is like... Lebowski? Did you see Lebowski in theaters? I didn't see Lebowski in theaters, and Lebowski is one of the early ones I watched. So Fargo or Lebowski, like in like high school or college or whatever, renting it. Yeah. And then the first one in theaters, I'm like, I didn't see old brother in theaters. Maybe it maybe was Burn After Reading was my first.

1:31:55You didn't see No Country in theaters? Oh, I saw No Country. Okay. So No Country is, I guess, the one.

1:32:02Griffin Newman:I mean, Lady Killers, Tom Hanks is basically doing your like Southern, you know, Cajun gentleman character. Oh, so you're saying a very good representation of that. Okay. Tom Hanks basically plays a snow game. Oh my God.

1:32:15David Sims:Is dressed in all white. I am now thinking, is Lady Killers the first Coen Brothers movie? Maybe. What year is that? 04. Yeah, 04. Shit, Lady Killers is probably my first Coen Brothers movie. But you had seen their other movies on video. That's just the first one you saw in theaters. Yeah, you were already into them. It's also funny that in Lady Killers, there are like four separate scenes where he tricks you two guys into sucking him off. But you didn't remember that. He keeps he's running two cons. One is he's trying to rob a casino and the other one is to get you guys to keep giving him dome.

1:32:49Great early credit for us. I know. Huge. Get to suck Tom Hanks off. I guess we did. We should talk about how we were both in a Coen Brothers movie. Yeah. Also sucked off Tom Hanks. Yeah. Except those scenes didn't make the cut of the movie. Yeah. They're all deleted scenes. It was worth it, though. I really enjoy it. It was a great experience.

1:33:08Griffin Newman:Also, the cameras weren't rolling and it was in his hotel room. We can cut this out. We can cut this out. I think we should cut this out. Not this part. This part's fine.

1:33:14David Sims:So it wasn't Tom Hanks?

1:33:16Griffin Newman:What I'm about to say, I think I'm going to want us to cut it out. I'm just learning you, Ben. Yeah. I think this has to stay in, though. The stuff talking to us about talking about. Oh, that's got to stay. It has to stay in. Yeah. Do you think Tom Hanks has a good penis? Yes. Okay. Yeah. And also, I think it needs to stay in. By the way, we're keeping this in. All right, all right.

1:33:34David Sims:I don't think he has, like, a you got to write home about it penis. But like it's good. I think he's got an incredibly sturdy American penis. He's got a beautiful everyman penis. It does the job. It does.

1:33:46Griffin Newman:Competent. The job. Right. And it's almost like it's a little unremarkable at first.

1:33:51David Sims:And the kind of plainness is what sneaks up on you. Right.

1:33:53Griffin Newman:It sneaks up on you.

1:33:54David Sims:Yeah.

1:33:55Griffin Newman:All right. A grower. Not a shower. I think he's like a bit of a grower. A bit. Just a little bit.

1:34:02David Sims:You know, like it's just all good. You see it and you're like, that's okay. and then it grows a little bit beyond your expectations. Can I tell you my thought? I think he has a big bush. Like a weirdly big bush? Just from when he grows that beard, it's pretty wild. So I'm like, I think he's a hairy man. So you think he's got an upside down gump beard? I think he has an upside down gump beard. But he doesn't have like a hairy torso or particularly hairy. He's kind of hairy in Castaway. He's like a little hairy. That was quite a noise you just made. He went, whoo-hoo! Because the beard gets so out of control in Castaway.

1:34:35David Sims:but I do think he's just kind of got a speckling of hair. He doesn't have like a fursuit. I love this conversation. It's making me feel better about my scary movie pitch from earlier, which I think is a good pitch. I think Hank's is just an all-American in every way.

1:34:53Griffin Newman:Just like the best of us. Yeah. So they made these three movies. Joel Silver, the Hawaiian shirt-wearing. Wait, I'm sorry. The three movies again. You're still pointing with a banana. He can point with a banana. I'm sorry. No, no, keep it, keep it, keep it. So Blood Simple is their, obviously, indie movie debut. And then they make three movies for a company called Circle Films that basically gives them, like, a little budget to make something and releases it and it makes a little more money. So Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink. But then Joel, and those movies are well-received. Yes.

1:35:22Griffin Newman:But are hardly blockbusters. And then Joel Silver, who's the guy who made Predator and Die Hard and Lethal Weapon and all that, loves their movies and acquires this script from them, essentially. Basically. says he's been a big fan for many years. He wants to make a big budget movie for them, and this is their chance.

1:35:39David Sims:So they had the script. This sort of existed as their dream project of what if someday we have enough capital that we can get someone to give us the money for Hudsucker, knowing it's a big ask. And their agent is like, Joel Silver always is asking when he can do a Coen Brothers movie. And Joel Silver had this attitude of like, I think these guys have in them a blockbuster hit movie. I think he looked at them as having like a sort of Wolfgang Peterson type trajectory where like here's a guy who can make like really technically proficient but like bracing sober intellectual movies. And then maybe over time you can give him a really big paycheck to make something kind of dumber and they apply the same skill to it.

1:36:22David Sims:I think he probably misidentified that these guys are going to do their own thing forever. but he was like, I want them. And Joel Silver also like kind of is the nineties version of the Michael Lerner character from Barton Fink. Is that kind of like cigar chump and fast talk and studio exec. They talk about as being like the last of the kind of Louis B. Mayer archetype guys, a maniac, but he's almost exclusively doing action movies at this point in time. And I think he both like wants to be doing comedies and he's, Like a lot of these guys, at a certain point, you're like, okay, you've had like 15 huge hit movies in a row.

1:37:01David Sims:The only thing to still chase now is like prestige. Like now you want an Oscar. Can I jump over and get in bed with these guys? I should also mention that Joel Silver plays the director in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. That's true.

1:37:15Griffin Newman:He does. He's yelling at the beginning of the movie.

1:37:17David Sims:He's the one. Right. Yeah. But you're talking about this as a commercial play. Is this an attempt at? I guess. Everyone involved is like, this is going to be their commercial breakthrough. That these guys have been like the Coen brothers have been like percolating and they've been like getting their legs and now everyone's ready. And they were like, this is our calculation to make a broad comedy. And Silver was like, I'm not in the business of making like arty films. I want to make hits. We have designed this to win over audiences. Like in the press, they kept being like, what is this weird self-indulgent like pastiche bullshit.

1:37:54David Sims:And they were like, nope, we think this is for everybody. So this isn't an attempt because you said the word prestige. This isn't an attempt at like, hey, we're going to make a prestige picture that will also be commercially successful. This is like we're going to just have like a or is that what they're trying to threaten? I think he's like, I make a lot of big hit films that aren't taken seriously. Can I do both? But he wasn't looking to just like make a little arty film on the side. He goes to Warner Brothers and is like, we're doing this and we're putting like 40 million dollars. I think it was 25 and it went up to 40.

1:38:26David Sims:Supposedly it was 25, but right.

1:38:27Griffin Newman:I think it cost more. Yeah. Is there any point in time where this movie would be like a commercial success? Yeah.

1:38:34David Sims:1943. Like truly past that moment. Not really. Well, I do think that there's, there's a thought that maybe this sort of thing was a little ahead of its time. Sure. Because if we're going to talk about something that's like a, you know, like talking about an iconic American product and its fictionalized, you know, history, we can look at the recent mega hit Unfrosted as a modern counter exam.

1:38:58Griffin Newman:Right, absolutely. A totemic figure in the culture, Unfrosted. Yeah.

1:39:03David Sims:Can I just do that? David's going to sigh very loudly when I say this. But I truly just want to do this, okay? Joel Silver. 48-hour Streets of Fire, Brewster's Million, Weird Science, Commando, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Lethal Weapon, Predator, Action Jackson, Die Hard Roadhouse Lethal Weapon 2 Die Hard 2 Adventures of Ford Fairlane Predator 2 Hudson Hawk Ricochet Last Boy Scout Lethal Weapon 3 Demolition Man That is Without skipping anything Every movie he made Until Hudsucker Proxy I'm not like Cutting out That is wild Like oh And then he made Like a small indie What is the ardiest film Or he did a romantic comedy In that run

1:39:42Griffin Newman:Demolition Man? That's a good movie No it's probably Hudson Hawk Hudson Hawk yeah It's like there's the Hudson Hawks in there where you're like, okay, he has enough of a relationship with a star that the star is like, can I make something a little weirder? And he's like, yeah, sure, Bruce. I don't know what he sounds like. After this,

1:39:59David Sims:the same year as this, he also makes Richie Rich. Yeah. And it felt like he was trying to, in a way where like, Bruckheimer was like the king of a certain kind of blockbuster machismo action movie and then was like, I want to do Disney films. I want to try to make Pearl Harbor. Like these guys ultimately go like, don't box me in. I can make any type of movie. And this felt like the year where he was trying. And then pretty soon after, he just like goes back to his lane.

1:40:23Griffin Newman:Now, who does Joel Silver want as the lead of this film? Tom Cruise. He wants Tom Cruise. Wow. And I get it. I think just Silver's just like, well, we're going to make a star, you know, a big movie for you guys. This is a blue chip movie. We're going to get all the biggest people. Man, I love Cruise, but I cannot see that working almost at all. It's a little hard to imagine.

1:40:43David Sims:I'd love to see it. It would be very strange. let himself I think especially at that point in time play this dumb probably not uh he probably would have filmed the the you know the opening on a real ledge that's true he would have actually

1:40:57Griffin Newman:stopped time somehow he would have like figured out how to do that uh they the Coens do not want to deal with that they want a lower star a lower wattage star they picked Tim Robbins uh Paul Newman's obviously the most famous actor they've ever worked with up to this point uh Clint Eastwood was their top choice, which is hilarious to consider. He was too busy making, you know, four movies a year and having threesomes or whatever it is.

1:41:23David Sims:But this does feel like Paul Newman in a way doing a Clint Eastwood impression. There's a bit of it.

1:41:30Griffin Newman:Yeah, sure. I agree with that. Yeah, it's a gravel voice. The full grit kind of. Newman was kind of just like, yeah, it's an interesting script. I don't fucking know. Like his vibe was basically just like, what do I care if this doesn't work? Like I'm Paul Newman. I'm an actor for hire

1:41:45David Sims:and he was sort of like they have an interesting voice I'm at an age where like if this movie bombs they're not going to kick me out of Hollywood right like he had a quote

1:41:53Griffin Newman:some other good quotes they call this an industrial comedy what the fuck an industrial comedy is I have no idea and then he says I think the Coens have a perverted vision I think it's a good word they don't tell a story directly they move like crabs and it's refreshing to find something so eccentric

1:42:07David Sims:he also had a line where he was like they don't explain themselves well but you get what they want they have good eyes he was sort of like that's kind of really I mean that's as someone who makes things they have good eyes it's great it's a great description his coolness though that he was like these guys are unlike any directors I've ever worked with he's like half the reason I did it was I wanted to see what it's like working with two directors and they are like symbiotic it does not feel like you see two people fighting for control but also like I'd ask them a question about my character and they'd be like faster or more evil would be their direction and he was like, you could get frustrated by that or you could be like, let me look around the set.

1:42:49David Sims:Let me like look at the script and figure out what they want. Because it is specific. As an actor, Griff, watching the dialogue delivery, I was like, this is maybe too, I think I maybe just would never be able to do some of the stuff that's in. Some of the dialogue rate is just so fast. I don't think I could ever perform it that quickly. Basically, every scene in this movie is like a skill piece for at least one performer doing something where the timing is so exquisite. And a lot of this plays out in like long takes. Yeah, like what you did for the open there. I mean, that sequence of just like, because that's also a one-er and with so much movement.

1:43:24It's just like, you know, like background characters are just going all over the frame. And then there's just so many precise physical moments on top of the, just like the dialogue that's being, you know, rat-a-tat-ed out. It's just like, I can't imagine how much precision is required to actually execute that.

1:43:40David Sims:When he got to set, He said, like, these are the biggest sets I have been on since The Silver Chalice, which was Paul Newman's first movie, basically, which was a biblical epic in the 50s right before those kind of died. And he basically was like, here in 1994, this is like the biggest sets I've seen directors get to build since that thing went out of style. And he's just like, right, I get what kind of movie I'm in. And like, I get to play the asshole. Like, I don't have to worry about carrying the story weight.

1:44:09Griffin Newman:Winona Ryder and Bridget Fonda obviously in consideration for the role of Amy Archer makes sense

1:44:14David Sims:Ryder would have been too young I think it would have thrown it off Fonda makes a ton of sense yeah she'd be great

1:44:18Griffin Newman:instead it goes to the other single white female Jennifer Jason Leigh and Charles Journing was cast according to Joel Cohen because the idea of a fat person falling 40 floors is funnier than a thin person falling 40 floors but they liked that he had that dancer background so he could do all the physicality and all the sort of choreography. You have to convey a lot in his body

1:44:41David Sims:in like the first 60 seconds he's on screen. The moment just like when he is, the blue letter is finally being read that he takes it out of the apron and he's reading at the end and there's the paragraph about how, because you meet Paul Newman's character's wife earlier and then there's the, like talks about how, yeah, it talks about it being an affair that the way that their relationship started and then you learn that he's the guy who got cuckolded and then he just starts crying. He's like, ah, skip this part. It's so funny. He cries like a baby. Yeah, yeah. The fillings in his teeth. Yeah, yeah.

1:45:18Griffin Newman:They wanted Jack Lemmon in drag to play Paul Newman's wife. Wow. And they dropped that idea, but they should have done it.

1:45:25David Sims:That's the sort of gag we talked about in 1941 that makes you angry where you're like, there is like a gross abuse of like power and money.

1:45:34Griffin Newman:You have too much resources. Right. and pull that off. The Coens loved working with Joel Silver and had no problems. Yeah. Which is like rare. Usually it's like, oh, we classed with him or whatever. And like, they just had a great time. They found him funny. I think they like that he's a cartoon movie. Yes. They're like, this is like a guy we would write. Like this like silly large man smoking his cigar.

1:45:55David Sims:But also guys like that. Like, I mean, Rudin's another one who's like contemporaneous at the time. And I feel like Silver doing this movie is maybe him looking over at Rudin and being like, man, this guy, made big comedy hits and now he's like getting Best Picture nominations? Do I want to like branch out in a similar way? And Rudin later works with the Coens a bunch and all these guys are just like, here's my deal. I find filmmakers who I think are like fully formed artists after they've like cut their teeth on a couple movies and I come in and I go like, hey I'll just have all the fights for you.

1:46:26David Sims:You guys do what you want and just don't ask me how I get it done. You know? And I think like Joel Silver would just like yell at everybody and get them what they wanted. and they could just do their thing.

1:46:38Griffin Newman:Obviously, they build giant sets. The table in the conference room is so large that it had to be delivered in five separate pieces. They wanted everything to basically look like Mussolini's ex, Mussolini's room, office, Mussolini's conference room. And we never see home life. Everything is work. Everything is at the office or at the building or whatever. It's like cartoon Citizen Kane, I feel like, is what they're doing. right just everything's just so long so much depth of field yes and the ceilings are so fucking everything is ridiculously high and every character is

1:47:13David Sims:basically like being eaten alive by their spaces right yeah

1:47:16Griffin Newman:dwarfing the people they didn't actually want to use the guy Michael McAllister who's the big visual effects guy who's worked on a ton of blank check movies like won an Oscar for last crusade you don't want to listen no we just come on let's a couple. E.T. Return of the Jedi. Last Crusade. Yeah, you know. Can I quickly say that this is not helping at all to keep us on track, but the banana still holds onto this banana. We can talk banana. And the banana has oxidized. It looks like it was yellow when he came in here, and now it looks like an old banana. I'm handling it a little too much. It's getting a little bruised.

1:47:53It's getting bruised. I gotta set it down.

1:47:56Griffin Newman:This guy, Michael McAllister, loves the Coens, and the Coens are basically like, You can't use the Chrysler building. You can't use the Empire Stip building. No real landmarks. Right, exactly. Fake Art Deco New York. So they built this giant... Gotta get more wipes. Gotta get more wipes? I get texts from home over the course of the day, which is usually that a child of mine has pooped, which is always... I've gotten into the habit of just announcing if somebody pooped on my podcast.

1:48:26David Sims:Can I go Bill Maher mode for a second? New rule? Yeah. Anytime you get a text like that, as long as it is not deeply personal information, I think you need to read it out loud automatically like you just did. Three packs of wipes left, so we gotta get some more.

1:48:39Griffin Newman:Just please read these. It's crazy how many wipes you need. I mean, I know it's not crazy, like that's child rearing or whatever, but like you never think about wet wipes until you got two infant babies in your home.

1:48:51David Sims:This is like every time I go to Target to refresh on toilet paper and the employees there are like, what, a big family? I'm like, no, I live alone. Oh, you're like the person who's getting too much Chinese food and is like, oh, this is for all my friends. I like wait until they have a sale where it's like five dollars off three seventy two roll packs at once. And they have to like tape them to my arms to carry them all.

1:49:17Griffin Newman:I just got a text from Mike Mitchell here. Can you get me some white?

1:49:25I just I heard what I don't know. I figure I could use some.

1:49:27Griffin Newman:I'll get you some. I'll get you a box. Do you want the box? Yeah, give me the box. It's one of those things where Amazon is like, you've purchased this 108 times or whatever. They tell you. Deakins, Roger Deakins, the great cinematographer, says this is their most underrated film. Obviously, he kind of went off on this one. It's a good looking movie. It's gorgeous. It's beautiful. From an art direction standpoint, from a visual effects standpoint, which so often visual effects is talked about in terms of some sort of technical capacity. Does the dinosaur look good? Exactly. but like it's an art it's our it's an artistic craft and like the from the standpoint of artistic achievement this is an amazing visual effects uh movie and and then obviously the cinematography is so great uh deacons is a genius um obviously like breaking news or whatever do you have a favorite thing he shot it's a good question i mean um maybe a tough thing to pull off the top of your head yeah but now i want to look at his filmography like because my thing with deacons is he worked on a lot of amazing movies so it's sort of like yes he absolutely you know was unconscious fucking like on lebowski or whatever you're right you're like yeah no kidding but like something like that movie house of sand and fog which is like a forgotten movie looks of shit and you're like why does this look so good yeah right deacons like i like it when he i mean the jesse james stuff is kind of the best where like i think i don't think that movie's a masterpiece.

1:50:52Griffin Newman:I think it's very good. But it's like looking at paintings that have come to life in a way that isn't AI. I truly think The Company

1:51:01David Sims:Men, which is a dog shit movie, is the only one of his movies that kind of looks anonymously shot, where I'm like, I don't believe this is Roger Deakins. And outside of that, he's basically the cinematographer version of the Harry Dean Stanton role, where it's like, as bad as a movie is, if he shot it, that alone makes it worth watching. Right. Is that the Topher Grace one? Company Men? What's that?

1:51:25Griffin Newman:Company Men? No, you're thinking of In Good Company. In Good Company. Yeah, okay. It's like Up in the Air. Okay. It's Affleck. Company Men is directed by the creator of ER. He's not the creator of ER. I'm sorry. John Wells. The showrunner.

1:51:39David Sims:The former showrunner. Yes. Michael Crichton is the creator of ER. I'm sorry. And you are going to get a letter from an estate. I'm going to get sued. it is a movie that is about how hard the recession was for executives and it's like Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper and Costner well Costner is the blue collar guy Costner is I want to say Affleck's brother-in-law who's like you want me to feel bad for you because you guys have to try to get an entry-level corporate job I build houses and it's all of them just like playing golf together being really sad And I think two of them killed themselves.

1:52:16David Sims:It is like a truly...

1:52:17Griffin Newman:It was like a real Oscar play that nobody watched.

1:52:20David Sims:Wither the execs.

1:52:25David?

1:52:27David Sims:Yes. Red alert. Uh-oh. There's been an outbreak. Biohazard. Of a new Patreon series. It's contagious. Oh, that's so true. It's been cooked up in the lab for your pleasure. From the fine folks at the Umbrella Corporation, we are covering Resident Evil. The film franchise.

1:52:50Griffin Newman:Yes. We've got the first franchise. Six movies. Yes. That beautiful second franchise. How many? Six? Seven? It's got the one movie. Oh, it's got the one. We'll be covering all of them on Patreon, doing commentaries on, yes, the Resident Evil, Apocalypse, Extinction, Afterlife, Retribution, the final chapter. Welcome to Rack Room in Sydney.

1:53:10David Sims:This is an exciting time. Zach Craig, our friend of the podcast, has a new Resident Evil coming out. We thought this was a good opportunity to revisit the history of Resident Evil movies.

1:53:19Griffin Newman:Why not? Why not? Why can't we? Why can't we? We can. Check in for that August 1st. And it's going to be running all the way through November 1st. Followed by your March Madness winner, Dracula. Dr.

1:53:34David Sims:Acula himself. That's so fun. So that's great. That's great. Thank you. Thank you so much.

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1:54:41Griffin Newman:They are here to help. The film's good, okay? And let's talk about it. The Hutzucker Proxy. What haven't we talked about?

1:54:49David Sims:You have these kind of like multiple hold opens in a row, right? Like the film starts with a couple sequences that all feel almost standalone introductions and are largely wordless. The opening is all the Bill Cobb narration talking about the idea of a new year and the promise and what could happen. And the idea that this guy in such a short period of time has gone from the highest, has climbed from the mailroom to the top and now is going to fall all the way down. Right. This insane shot where you're like going through models, you're doing these like crossfade dissolves. And then at one point you realize, oh, this one is a real set because you're seeing human Tim Robbins walk out, walk across the ledge to the clock.

1:55:32David Sims:And then the clock starts spinning backwards and the camera goes up to the sky. You have these triumphant fucking credits. Carter Burwell going ham. This was the one time, I think, largely because of the influence of Joel Silver and Warner Brothers, where they were like, we need to test screen this thing early. They insisted on a temp score. So a lot of this is taken from the Spartacus opera. Do you have the name of the composer there? It's in the dossier. I will tell you his name is... I'm going to probably mispronounce it. Aram Kachurian. But the... Yeah, Sabre Dancing. That comes from this show, His Spartacus.

1:56:14David Sims:But also the main theme of this movie is like repurposed from that. And Burwell was like, I felt handcuffed and then I realized I could explode it and do a lot of stuff from there. but to go straight from like this like old Hollywood like triumphant grand orchestra opening to then this boardroom of this guy just fucking pat himself on the back for how successful they've been ending with like in short folks were filthy rich right and you're just watching David is going to take a shit I assume the wipes came the wipes arrived He had them delivered to the bathroom. Yeah, I think he had them delivered straight to the bathroom.

1:56:53David Sims:He had like pneumatic tubes installed in the bathroom so he could get deliveries there. God, what a great pneumatic tubes movie. I love pneumatic tubes. One of the best. I mean, the entire, just the mail room just being like a boiler room. It looks so cool. And everything is so packed with bodies. Yeah. That's just like another thing. I love watching any movie made before the 21st century when when, you know, like now everything is just crowd duplication, which fine. But it's just like just seeing so many people in a frame and interesting looking people on top of that. And also it's like, right, that that's sort of like the first Dolly shot through the mail room as he's given the docu speech.

1:57:35David Sims:It's like the the choreography of everyone crossing and the amount of different action and jobs. It's just like mind boggling to think about. And I do think whether or not people consciously clock it, there is like a magic to like getting one take where everything goes right that you do feel versus it having to be constructed later. And it just feels like spectacle when there's a high degree of difficulty. Yes. But I just love that like wordlessly Charles Durning, who to me is one of the goats in this sequence just shows like this despondency as all these fat cats are like evilly laughing to themselves at how rich they've gotten and just plays this entire arc briefly in like 30 seconds at a couple of close ups of like, what is this life of mine?

1:58:26David Sims:Right. Like you see him sort of like smile, then look off into the middle distance out the window, then like kind of ruefully wind his like stopwatch. And I genuinely, the more I watch, the more I think he only considers killing himself for the first time in that moment that you're watching a guy talk himself into it. I'm just like, what's the fucking point? I've made it to the top of the mountain.

1:58:46Griffin Newman:I have nothing else to do.

1:58:47David Sims:I built this. I have nothing to prove to anyone anymore. Why not just end it? And then he just so gracefully like runs across the table, digs his heels in. jumps out the window i think that's why people watched the doughboys video feed every week yeah they're waiting for that moment they're waiting for the checkoffs banana to go off finally the the uh it's gonna go off my mouth um the uh so that like the the moment he runs out he sprints and then it's like the reaction of the boardroom of just everyone is just immediately going on with business as usual, except for the one guy who is just so, like, he's just bawling and crushed.

1:59:27Like, how can you be like this right now? I love that guy. Who is also the guy who tries to kill himself later. Just kill himself later, yeah. Yeah, and the plexiglass is there.

1:59:35David Sims:It's also a great decision that I think Paul Newman is not visible. No. In the Durning. So the first time you're seeing Paul Newman... It's almost like he appeared on Noir. You're right. It's him looking out the window, unsentimental, having watched, who you later find out is like ostensibly his best friend, jumped to his death. But all that crosscut with wordlessly Tim Robbins, Norval Barnes going through the like literal fresh off the bus, looking at the job board, looking at the classifieds, like the immediate feeling of this guy coming to a new city with all this hope and optimism and within four minutes being like crushed by it.

2:00:15David Sims:And there's such a good little character detail of he gets his coffee at the diner he doesn't realize that the coffee has left the ring with the Hudsucker job opening that like fate is gonna like follow him out the door but he leaves like two um nickels and a penny and then he looks at his pocket and he's like should I give him that much and what he takes back is the penny of like this guy can't afford to give change and yet what he's taking back is the lowest amount yeah he's a good guy he's a good guy

2:00:47Griffin Newman:yeah he's alright David. He gets to be a bit of a jerk later on. He does. I kind of, I mean, like, what's great about his character is that he's not a secret genius. Like, he is just, like, kind of a dope. But he has, he sees things with such clarity and such simplicity that that's his secret weapon. That's his advantage. It allows him to come up with something, you know, like the dingus, like the hula hoop. And, but I don't know. I really just like a stupid character. I like a guy who's just like a dumb guy. It's funny. And he's good at it. He's very good at it. Isn't the chance that... I always feel like a movie, if it is like a dumb lead character, there's a chance that the movie can just be bad.

2:01:30And I think it's a higher chance that it's like, who cares about this movie? And I don't really care about any of the characters and this guy's just an idiot.

2:01:38David Sims:Well, there's also something too, I think, that the character so badly wants to be told that he's a genius, that he accepts a lot of things that don't make sense because they're flattering to him. Like as much as he is not the smartest guy in the world, they make clear that he did go to like a low level business school. And he will say to Musburger, like, shouldn't we be doing this? And he's like, the hula hoop is a good idea that he had.

2:02:04Griffin Newman:And he's like, yeah, when he says, you know, for kids, he's thought about it. Like this would be good for kids. It's cheap. It's like, you know, a gap in the market. that's probably all he's thought about he doesn't have any other particular right well you brought Forrest Gump and it's just another movie where it's not the smartest man but then like is the most noble guy in the world and he is they show him being kind of an asshole like you were saying Sims at some point in the movie but like comes a jerk still likable maybe that's the Robin's charm

2:02:33David Sims:I think that's like the sort of more of the commentary on the like the soul like crushing nature of pursuit of this kind of like endless growth and like corporate dominance is like that's what starts to destroy him is the idea that he needs to like become this kind of titan of business which he then needs to like learn the lesson from but basically the plot set up that we are getting to one hour and 55 minutes into a recording

2:03:06Griffin Newman:we've talked about a lot of the movie already but just keep

2:03:08David Sims:We're going to talk about a lot more. Is that they realized that in his will, Waring Hodsucker said that on January 1st, the year after his death, all the stock. No, he didn't say anything.

2:03:23Griffin Newman:He doesn't have a will. It's that because he doesn't have a will, all his stock will be public. And he owns 87 % of the company. The blue letter is, of course, his actual will. Which we'll get to.

2:03:32David Sims:Which we'll get to. But, yes. So they need to find a way one week before New Year's to tank the value of the company so greatly that they can buy back all the stock in advance of January 1st. So the public doesn't take over the company. It's a producer's thing.

2:03:48Griffin Newman:They need to make it bad to get what they want. It's a classic meme coin rug pull.

2:03:53David Sims:It's a classic. Talk to his cock coin. And their big play that Musburger puts forward is get some jerk. You need a hudsucker proxy. You need to put some fucking idiot at the chair at the end of the boardroom who you can blame everything on.

2:04:10Griffin Newman:Robbins, by the way, we should just note, on a crazy run, this is the same year as Shawshank. Same year as IQ, one of the great movies. Never seen IQ. Is Dead Man Walking the following year? Dead Man Walking is the following year. It's the same year as Shawshank. Same year as Shawshank. Because he seems so much young. Same year as IQ. Same year as IQ. He seems so much younger in this than he does in Shawshank. He seems like he seems like an olden... You're right. he's so boyish in this. And of course, Shawshank also is set over so many years and it ages them. It's years after The Player, which I feel like is him sort of graduating into a more serious leading man type.

2:04:49Griffin Newman:I mean, I guess Jacob's Ladder is that. Bull Durham is 88. 88.

2:04:53David Sims:Okay. Player's 91? Player's 92. Okay.

2:04:57Griffin Newman:But Jacob's Ladder in 90, which is a movie I like a lot, he's the lead of that. I mean, it's a horror movie, but still, he's good in that. Bob Roberts, which is his directorial debut and he's starring is 92 and the players that year. So he's like medium hot stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah, totally. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And it's like after Dead Man Walking is kind of when it gets weird for him where it's like he does. He writes and directs Cradle of Rock, which is a bomb.

2:05:29David Sims:Let's acknowledge Dead Man Walking. He gets a fucking best director nomination before he's ever gotten an actor. acting nomination. So now it's like, are you a genius auteur?

2:05:38Griffin Newman:Right, 100%. But then Cradle Will Rock...

2:05:40David Sims:you gotta make another movie.

2:05:41Griffin Newman:Jesus, I'm really struggling with it. Cradle Will Rock is sort of the end of him as a director. Right. And then he does Arlington Road, which does kind of rock. It does. And he's good in it. Mm-hmm. And Mission to Mars. Like, there's a couple movies he's doing where it's like, yeah, Tim Robbins. He's like above the title.

2:05:59David Sims:Like, four higher thriller. Yeah. Second lead. Antitrust.

2:06:03Griffin Newman:Right, yeah. Remember Antitrust? Where it's like he's evil Bill Gates or whatever.

2:06:08David Sims:But it's a lot of like big role and Tim Robbins parts. Yes.

2:06:12Griffin Newman:Truth about Charlie is that. Yes. And then he wins the Oscar for Mystic River. And then his career kind of goes away. Kind of goes away. Immediately. And obviously he's got a bit of a rep for being a bit of a tough cookie, I guess. But like. I didn't know that about Robbins. I didn't know that he's a tough cookie. He's a big personality, right? I don't know. Yeah. Maybe I'm telling tales.

2:06:30David Sims:I think he's got a lot of ideas. I know he's one of those guys. I think that rumor has been circulated by George W. Bush, who has famously taken down a peg in this many plays.

2:06:40Griffin Newman:He did dare criticize the president. I don't know. You know my thing. I won't watch SNL until Kanye apologizes about George W. Bush. That's my thing. Got it. So you want SNL to get Kanye back now. Yes. This is the moment to get him back. I'll say this. We're recording this. What's the date today? He also didn't say that on SNL, but you're like, but he needs to address it on SNL.

2:07:05David Sims:They called it back on SNL. I just want to carbon date this. We're recording this on May 12th. Yes. I think there is a reasonable chance that by the time this episode comes out, Kanye West has publicly says George Bush cares about black people more than anyone else. I love George W. Bush. I'm voting for him in the next election. Which would be the normal thing, the most normal thing he said. Wow, kind of a return then. Yes. Kanye West. He's not going to apologize. He's going to like endorse. Yeah.

2:07:36Griffin Newman:Okay. So, uh, Hudsucker gets hired. All the mailroom stuff is so that's the most Terry Gilliam just being in like the basements and like all with all the tubes and all the yelling and all the guys with the mail. You have, I like the guy who throws the mail. I think that's, uh,

2:07:49David Sims:what's his name? Patrick Crenshaw, who was blue and old school. I'm pretty sure.

2:07:53Griffin Newman:All right. Yeah. Yeah. Patrick Crenshaw at Crenshaw as ancient sorter. Yes. Indeed he was in old school.

2:08:00David Sims:Just another good character detail I like where I think, you know, they talked about when when this film was received that people complained that the Jennifer Jason Leigh character was too harsh and the Robbins character was too dumb. And they were like, why wouldn't you bring both of them towards the center and make them more likable? And they were just like, what do you mean? Like, this is so much more interesting to do it this way. but there are these small details I do like that they put in to be like he's not an absolute imbecile as much as he's kind of a dope and he is sort of like thoughtful and the bit with him getting the larger envelope that he doesn't know where to sort because you have like the two names the senior and the junior and the junior mailbox is smaller but it's smaller right and he like solves this problem in a pretty considerate way of like I'll write a note put in the dad's mailbox tell him to give it to the son yeah Like there is a little indication of like this guy can make decisions.

2:08:54Griffin Newman:Doughboys, I have a question. It's not to do with the hot dog proxy, but I have to ask. Yeah. Someone just posted in my work slack this question. Guys, is legal seafood in Boston famous, expensive, very good? Can someone explain it to me? Well, I know you're a legal seafood knower, Mitch. Why? The only reason. Wags is just one week away from knowing this. And I wonder what your thoughts will be. You're doing legal seafood on the pod. We are talking about legal seafoods, separate words and plural on the podcast. Yes, we're doing it for a live show in Boston. We're doing legal seafoods. A great question.

2:09:31I think that you can feel every way about every every you can feel like it's good. You can feel like it's expensive. It is expensive. I mean, there's no doubt about that. But also, I think sometimes you can go there and think it's not good. And I think the quality goes up and down. I've never been there. It's supposed to be an elevated chain. Yeah, it's like a 60 or 70, for my research, like a 60, 70-year-old Boston institution. And so I imagine it's the kind of place that people have a maybe complicated relationship with. Certainly, it's grown and expanded. It is now in airports. This is going back to something we said a while back on the podcast.

2:10:12But once you start to expand any of these franchises, the quality is tough to maintain.

2:10:18Griffin Newman:So it's not Boston's finest restaurant. It's just Katie Weaver, my colleague, the great Katie Weaver. Is it Boston's best high-end chain? Oh, sure. But what would be the competition for that? I mean, that's the issue that there is no longer any competition. They've got that market. I'm aware of their market. Yeah, that's true. They do have the market. Boston Market is not doing great. A lot of these chains are not doing great. I mean, these sort of like high end. The local is the local like the 99 restaurant logs you went to. That's like a local chain not doing great. So I say yes. I think it is.

2:10:53Yes. Okay. It's a step above.

2:10:55Griffin Newman:It's the best we got, I guess. Great. Katie Weaver. Shout out, of course, her masterpiece, which is the article she wrote when she went to TJ Fridays and only ate mozzarella sticks for an entire day. Oh, sure. Oh, my God. The greatest pieces of journalism in modern Internet history. I'm not joking. when it was when TJ Fridays did the unlimited mozzarella sticks. Like you can get as many as you want. Yeah. And she took it to the line. And Max, her editor told her like, if you do it for an entire day, I'll give you a week off. And it's great. You should read it anyway. Back to the Hudsucker proxy.

2:11:24Griffin Newman:Of course, that sounds like something we, you and I maybe would just do not even for the show.

2:11:34Griffin Newman:So he gets the blue letter. He gets the blue letter. Goes up to the top floor. to deliver the blue letter. That is how he gets into the Newman's office.

2:11:42David Sims:Correct.

2:11:42Griffin Newman:And I do just... That's where we meet the bell.

2:11:44David Sims:We don't need to call them out, but I do want to call out because the first, you know, seven or eight minutes of the movie play without a ton of dialogue, that then it really kicks in at the post-Muskberg death, where they do my favorite kind of, like, screwball comedy. Like, there are 10 guys at this table. Each of them, their only function is to do one bit and to heighten that bit, and the bits keep crossing over. There's the mezzanine guy. There's the sort of every step he took was a step up until the last one.

2:12:15Griffin Newman:All of those guys are funny. The guy with the big bushy eyebrows is obviously the funniest. I feel like I've seen that guy in other stuff. Right? Big bushy eyebrow guy.

2:12:23David Sims:I feel like he's going to come up in other Coens as well. Right. But yes, the blue letter is this idea of this like inner Hudsucker universe importance of a letter that must be handed over directly to the senior officer. and no one else wants to take it because if you fuck up a blue letter, you're done. Norval kind of gets stuck with it as like the last guy through the door, the newest hire. It does a great, the movie does a great job where I was like, did they just forget about the blue? I was like, they forgot about the blue letter. I was dumb. I fell for it until the end of the movie and I was like, oh yeah, the blue letter, they got back to it.

2:12:57It genuinely worked on me. I was just like, oh, it's just a plot device to get him to where he needed to be.

2:13:02David Sims:It's that improv principle though of like the moment to call the thing back is like one minute after the audience has forgotten about it. Yes. You need to wait out them keeping track of it. Yes, and it's great. And it's great. You basically get to a point where you're like, I guess the blue letter was just the excuse to get him into the room. It's not important to the story. Yeah. When in fact it is like the crux of the whole thing. The fact that they say that they got stuck on the script with him on the ledge makes me think that the blue letter must not have been a part of the story. Sure, they bring that back

2:13:33Griffin Newman:as the sort of...

2:13:35David Sims:That they're like, what is the thing that he can do once he's already about to jump that solves the problem? What is some way that he can like win back the chair? I just think it's very ingeniously seen. It's insane. It's truly... I asked this before, but I said, is there any time where this movie would be commercially a success? And you said in 1940s. But if this was released this year, do you think it would be like a... I mean, just... Well, it's being released

2:14:03Griffin Newman:with the Coens at their current level of fame. Yes. Yeah. It'd be more of a hit. Yeah. They've reunited and this is their like in the modern context. I think it would be. It's opening up against Final Reckoning. No. I mean, it's not going to be better than Final Reckoning. It would suplex Final Reckoning.

2:14:19David Sims:But it is funny that it does feel like a lot of the times that the Coens have made something that has pitched more as a comedy at the time people are like, why are they doing this? This is like a lark. Why can't they be serious? They're supposed to be serious filmmakers and then those movies tend to like age incredibly well but the comedies the straight comedies are usually the ones of theirs that are kind of dismissed in the moment didn't you i mean

2:14:43Griffin Newman:didn't you mention lebowski was not did not perform well on the back people were so mad about it wasn't just a bomb people were like they just made fargo why are they making this weird you following comedy like what is this like it's yeah it's very funny they've had and like even

2:14:58David Sims:this coming after Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink, they have these multiple arcs of moments where people are like, you were the fucking chosen ones. Like, what are you doing? Did you record the Barton Fink episode yet? Yes, we did. Did you reference the part of The Simpsons? Of course we did. Barton Fink! Barton Fink! And the runner of Bart and his friends continually, accidentally going to see art house movies and being disarmed. His naked lunch Yeah. And then there's, well, there was a dinner with Andre game, right? Was there an arcade cabinet? Yeah. Can I also just to go back to final reckoning for just a second?

2:15:37Wag said that he wished he could, he could be put in the entity coffin to fly to New York. I just wanted to bring that up that that's your way that you wish you could travel here as the entity coffin,

2:15:48David Sims:like checked in as like luggage coffin and dead reckoning. Part one. He does look like it doesn't seem like he emerges out of that. like having had an incredible nap. Yes. He seems totally rejuvenated. I mean, I want to see if I can add the entity onto my CPAP.

2:16:03Griffin Newman:Morales is looking hot in that room. Yeah. Yes. You got to credit the entity. Entity. Entity. I was saying that after one flight with the entity coffin, the entity coffin would be in therapy. It's the big entity coffin in a sit down therapy. And I also wanted to just point out, I don't know if this is spoilers. Please. You guys are seeing Final Reckoning tonight. We sure are. It's very exciting. It is exciting. I hope we enjoy it.

2:16:29David Sims:I will say this. I don't know if you've talked to them, David. We have two friends who saw it three days ago. Wow. Who's the other? Ehrlich is the one I know. And Esther. Right. There are people going to Cannes. And Ehrlich went thumbs down and Esther went thumbs up.

2:16:43Griffin Newman:Oh, my God. Ehrlich split. Ehrlich's a dingus. To use a hud sucker.

2:16:49David Sims:I'm just saying, let's put it on the record. By the time this has come out. That's true. will have seen it our episode will have been released but like Ehrlich did say it had like incredible action

2:16:57Griffin Newman:he seemed a little annoyed by complained that there weren't

2:16:59David Sims:enough action sequences I just also want to say we saw Dead Reckoning part one with Ehrlich we were like whoo and he walked out and he was like that sucks Cruz fucked it up and then I talked to him at Ben's wedding he came around last weekend and he said it's really disappointing because obviously Dead Reckoning is a masterpiece and I said you didn't like it he does this all the time and he went yeah but I've watched it 15 times since and now I know it's a masterpiece. Yeah, anyway. We're an exclusive club, do you know this? Married podcasters? Wives named Nelly.

2:17:34Griffin Newman:His wife's not named Nelly. Yeah, her name's Natalie. But it's close. Natalie. I think you heard Natalie as Nelly. I was hearing Nelly.

2:17:42David Sims:I heard it multiple times. Well, now I'm realizing the way you say Natalie kind of does sound like Nelly. Yeah, maybe that's a skill issue on my part. Lovely wife Nelly. You're kind of doing Hudsucker pace delivery Especially when I get riled up I go into a hudsucker You're a hudsucker You are a bit of a hudsucker Hey buddy God I can't even do it Maybe Watts is the one of us Who could successfully exist in a comedy like this And deliver the dialogue Hey buddy I can't see this issue I can't do an impression of it I would get in my head I'm a stuttering man I couldn't I couldn't the fast the rapid fire delivery of this thing I couldn't do it they've set a buzz by this point in the movie a little bit I love and this is just like the have you guys seen Preston Sturges movies yes yeah so like my mom when I was sick and I was a very sickly child and was homesick a lot would be like if you're sick in bed you have to watch like a classic movie yeah and would try to make me watch like serious films and I was a little fucking brat and would usually be like this sucks happy gilmore um which had not yet been canonized as a classic well as a child that feels like work and you're home from school and you're that you know you're not supposed to have work don't make me watch some black and white dog shit what do you think i'm gonna be a movie podcaster someday i don't need to watch this bullshit but sullivan's travels i have this very visceral memory of my mom showing me when i was like 10 uh renting and being like oh fuck this is funny this is like an old movie but it's funny and then uh film forum here in new york City would do like Sturge's rep series of all his films every couple of years.

2:19:24David Sims:So like over time, I'd seen almost all of them and grew to be like, this is like exactly what I want to have a comedy film. These are the funniest movies of all time. And one of the things I love about them is like every character has this sense of a deep inner life. Every guy feels like you could just follow them for the rest of the movie and something fascinating is going on there. And even if it's a character who exists to just execute one recurring bit. There are weird, like, gives or contradictions in it. And the Buzz thing where it's like, is this guy for real? He's got this whole fucking rehearsed routine and he's doing all this choreography with the hat and he's got these rhymes for every single person who steps onto the elevator and he's, like, calling out the rhymes with their names in the floors.

2:20:06David Sims:And then he says, like, Mr. Eleven, floor 37. And he goes 36. He goes, walk down. this idea that Buzz will fucking make people change their routines in order to fit his rhymes that is so on point that there's just I would love to follow Buzz if Max came out with Hudsucker proxies and you followed the story of all the Hudsucker proxy people proxies plural I'm saying and we got to see I would that's give me that give me that give me that streaming all the boardroom guys the eyebrow guy there's so many there's so many characters that you just get a glimpse of that you want to see more of Huttsocker proxy honey bunny they get so many beats out of the stakes of the blue letter including with Buzz in the elevator and just like that's when he finally is shaken out of his autopilot

2:20:57Griffin Newman:tell me you had a blue letter I love that and then the you know the woman who ends up on the feigning couch it's so great

2:21:03David Sims:that's like my favorite kind of Cohen joke which for a movie that is so verbal and they are they will do these visual gags that aren't even about like crazy physicality that are like this woman's ignoring him he finally like gets her to notice the blue letter the woman on the ladder screams and then the next cut he's in the office and in the background you see her getting so funny right it's like that's like Simpsons level of like visual like joke density

2:21:31Griffin Newman:Ben I forgot to ask you if you like this movie because you know I know with a multi guest pod you tend to take a back seat but what do you think of I loved it. Yeah, I'd seen it before. It's so silly and fun. It's like a film of theirs that I know I saw. Fargo first, Big Lebowski, but I think this might have been like maybe the third or fourth of theirs that I saw. And it still holds up. It's a blast. And I think you guys keep calling out The Simpsons. And that really does feel like the energy of The Simpsons is really in this. even down to just like there's so many fun little like word written jokes like what comes to mind is when um what's his name uh paul newman's character towards the end is writing different variants of what the company's new name will be yes very simpsons lands on sid sucker yeah yeah what was it what was the burger one there was a burger there was something burger uh I think it was maybe Hudberger.

2:22:38Yeah.

2:22:38David Sims:But also when you look at like when Norville's reading the classifieds and when he's looking at the job boards, it's like every single thing written there is funny. Right.

2:22:48Griffin Newman:Yeah. The job board thing is so cool. Do you think anything like that ever existed?

2:22:52David Sims:I hope so. OK. I want to believe it's based on something. He goes into Musburger's office to deliver the blue letter. Musburger immediately goes like this guy could be a good fucking.

2:23:01Griffin Newman:And then we have we have the stitch joke. This is the moment.

2:23:04David Sims:This is what I'm trying to tee up. Yes. But this idea that like Musburger immediately pegs him as like, you're an idiot, then decides that he's maybe a little too smart or a little too dumb or a little too arrogant, like almost passes him over. Another like just beautifully executed executed visual gag is, you know, he accidentally like starts setting the contract on fire with the cigar.

2:23:28Griffin Newman:Him with the foot, his foot in the fiery bucket

2:23:31David Sims:is so funny. But actually him removing the top of the water cooler in one sustained shot, holding it the wrong way, trying to get over there and the time he makes it over there, it's empty. And all of this leads to obviously the trash can on fire, him kicking out the window, the hole, the wind sucking him out, Newman falling to try to catch the contract and then Tim Robbins catching him by his foot. I, the last time I saw this movie before revisiting last night, saw it at the Metrograph with a friend of the podcast, Michael Taberski. I think

2:24:04Griffin Newman:Michael Dversky

2:24:04David Sims:two Christmases ago

2:24:05Griffin Newman:might be coming on the pod anytime well not anytime we should probably set up a schedule okay we'll set up and schedule a time I guess we'll get the fuck out of here and get Dversky bring him in what if we just never stop talking about this movie but every few hours we're like alright you guys go someone else is coming

2:24:23David Sims:we release it as Hudsucker Proxy Dead Reckoning Part 1 and Hudsucker Proxy Final Reckoning never mind it's not a Doughboys episode anymore we change plans. I, when I saw it that time, logged that I think this is my favorite gag, my favorite joke in the history of movies. Yes, I saw that log. And I stand by it as there is not to overly dissect the frog, right? But the internal logic of the joke and also the like construction and execution of it, of Newman's hanging out a window by his leg, right? we get the extreme close-up shot of the pants starting to rip you cut to Newman's face oh no like sort of Wayne's World flashback of him being tailored measured up

2:25:13Griffin Newman:a character that I think is always funny which is a little Taylor I think that's a great Italian Taylor I just think that's funny I love it to make it to pants he's just so just like the refinement of it And then also the kind of old fashionedness kind of the, yeah, it's so funny.

2:25:32David Sims:Now, when I see this for the first time and Charles Durning is third billed in the opening credits, right? And then immediately kills himself. Griff, I, I, I, this is the, my thought when I just watched it. I'm sure. I was like, that's such a funny joke to bill someone that prominently and then just have him immediately after the billing kill himself without saying a single line of dialogue. I know Paul Newman has the end. he's hanging out the window pants start ripping flashback to the tailor saying but the double stitch double stitch why to give a pad your account single stitch will be fine right and you cut back to Newman being like oh no fatal mistake and I go this is so funny they're gonna kill Paul Newman right away again they're gonna do this bit a second time and what a classic movie like this guy's fatal undoing he could have saved his own life if not for the fact that he told the guy and plot wise I was like oh it makes sense like it makes sense like Paul Newman's gonna die and then he will still be the head of the company or whatever that's what makes him be the head of the company is that Paul Newman right and then you cut back to a second flashback so funny

2:26:41Griffin Newman:so funny and the guy as you said

2:26:43David Sims:it makes no sense but the guy while sewing he starts doing the first 5 % of the waste with single stitch as Newman told him and goes, oh, what the heck? Mr. Musburger is such a nice man. I give him the double stitch for free. And then the pants stop ripping at exactly that point. Do you guys get a double stitch?

2:27:03Griffin Newman:Which is not a thing, of course, that I've ever heard of before and I only associate with this movie. But if I get a suit made, should I now be like, make sure double stitch in case you fall out in case you fall out a window? Exactly. By the way, Chekhov's banana did go off. I just wanted to let people know. I mean, because we've been podcasting for a long time because our show is ridiculous. No, I mean, I swear to God. Okay, so yeah, that's all funny. But it's just,

2:27:28David Sims:I like that it's playing with the fucking language of what we expect the bit to be. Yeah. And then undoing it in a way that is just like. It's so funny. And he's not nice to him at all. No, he's an asshole. No, there's no reason for him to do this. Right. He only does it because it's a funny gag. Yes, it's great. I love it. And also, who's getting that flashback? It's a memory of just the old Taylor. It is interesting to think about like this. The Simpsons are so influenced by the same eras of movie comedy that this movie is riffing on. And like things in The Simpsons, like the yes guy are like direct quotes of like Sturgis stock company players.

2:28:13David Sims:A lot of the like big archetypes of Springfield, even that notion of like this character exists to continually come in and just do this one bit.

2:28:21Griffin Newman:This movie has the Texan businessman for one scene who's so funny, which is like a Simpsons character. That's a Simpsons guy. Right. I wonder like. It's so funny that he says like, oh, you know, people run for cover and he's like, Yeller, you're calling me Yeller. Like that's where he goes to.

2:28:37David Sims:Yeah. But this notion of like, is there any era in which this movie would have worked? Right. You're like, at this point, there are five seasons of The Simpsons on air doing a similar style of comedy. And yet, I think it is easier for people to swallow an animation.

2:28:51Griffin Newman:Of course. This movie is off-putting to 90 % of its audience, like, first run, like, right away, I think. I think just most people are probably immediately like, now, fuck off. Like, right? I'm not saying because it's bad. No, yes, yes. Just because it's a lot. Yes. I don't think there's any. I can't believe that they ever thought this would be a success, I guess, is my thought. That's the crazier part. Yeah. Yeah, that's what's kind of and I guess it's like, you know, so much so many so many things like this that are so great and so unique exist because of a mistake. And that that's just like here, just like the wild miscalculation to think that this would connect with mainstream audiences on any level when it's so dense and so inscrutable.

2:29:33David Sims:the sight and sound review by the dead man that I quoted earlier that same guy said that the single funniest joke in the movie is that it was made for 40 million dollars at Warner Brothers with Joel Silver producing and he was just like the film is such a failure as a comedy that the only funny thing about it is why did they think this was worth making which is sort of true but I also like that there is this not I think like a deliberate self-knowing way but there's this self-reflexive quality to the movie of like this film existing is like pitching the hula hoop like how the fuck did this get all the way to the top office so what you're talking about so yes they the there's so much dialogue it's so like just absolutely jam-packed with verbiage up until the moment like like to up through this sequence where he's hanging out out of the window and then we go from that straight to crack like next in in chronologically in the movie is just a a totally nonverbal stretch of just character, like all the business laughing, right?

2:30:34David Sims:Right, which is very Simpsons-y as well. Like it's like three minutes of cutting from location to location as they groom him to be a CEO and present him to the press and it's just everyone laughing hysterically. But this is part of why, for me, this movie is immensely watchable is because it's not just like His Girl Friday, you know, style dialogue for its entire runtime. You know what I mean? like it has these moments where it just kind of like lets itself breathe for a bit and just sort of like it's communicated purely visually.

2:31:07Griffin Newman:And it's not a long movie. No. Like every Coen's movie, it basically like is in that sort of hour 45-y range. You know, it's not. Which at this era, most comedies are maybe closer to 90. Sure. I guess it's a little comfortably paced compared to Ace Ventura. Right. How long is Ace Ventura actually? Let's find out. an hour 26 that's how you do it with credits yeah with credits um we just had an hour we hit one hour over ace mature right now at the time sorry mitch i'm really sorry i'm not sorry well no no i'm sorry oh you're you don't have to be sorry but i'm sorry i'm we we knew we we're coming here like great people come on our show which i really love and appreciate that they do and then like you'll some not you guys you guys not today not us you know definitely not us no Yeah, this is just some trash that blew in.

2:31:56Griffin Newman:No, but like, you'll just see him. Like, I think you'll see it in their eyes sometimes, but they're like, oh, huh. This just keeps going. Huh? Like, we don't stop. You brought in two chair breakers today. Mine's yet to break, but it will at some point.

2:32:10David Sims:Thank God we got the double stitch on that. My chair got the double stitch. Mitch is such a nice guy. Griff making my chair before the. He needs a good seat. Such a nice podcast. I like when you, speaking of runtime, I like when you watch like a, like you put on a movie like Master of Disguise, which is like the runtime is like 78. Hell yeah. And then that includes like long credits and then like a post-credit scene where it's like, you're still here? What are you doing here? It's like they had to pad out this runtime as much. We were getting lunch before the record and Space Jam was playing at the TV.

2:32:43David Sims:And Mitch, you were like, I can't believe how long this opening credit sequence is. And I was like, the end credit sequence has like four whole music videos. and the movie with both of these credit sequences is like under 80. I fucking love it when something's short. It's so good. It was fun. I think it is the whole, I think it is the whole, I believe you can fly song, right? Is the opening credits. It's so, or. No, that comes in at the beginning. That's come on and jam and welcome to the jam. Okay, yes. But they play that entire song in the opening credits. It's so long. And credits, I think they do.

2:33:16David Sims:I believe I can fly again. They do for you, I will. Okay, yeah. We did a whole episode. I also said it was a masterpiece compared to the new one too. No disagreement here. David, any wipes updates?

2:33:29Griffin Newman:No, I bought the wipes. It's a pack of 12. It's a box of 12 wipes. It's one of the heaviest things that gets delivered to my house on a regular basis. Wipes weigh a lot.

2:33:39David Sims:Here's another thing I like in this movie. It is very unclear what the Hudsucker Company does.

2:33:45Griffin Newman:They make doohickeys, I feel like. They make widgets. Right.

2:33:48David Sims:But it's also sort of like they're a business company, right? The opening monologue right before Durning throws himself out the window is just him explaining how huge their business is. But it's basically just defining like our stock is doing so well, mergers and acquisitions, like all this stuff. They've just become this behemoth that like society rests upon and yet actually gives nothing back. It seems like. No, it's like the way like a, you know, like a sketch written by a 25 year old like UCB writer who's never had a job will try to like set something in a boardroom and approximate the language of the corporate world, but with no actual specifics.

2:34:25That's what that's going to say. It's like, yeah, I do. Hickey. No do. Hickey company runs that way. Waymo does not have a mail room where there is multiple mail slots. But that's right.

2:34:35Griffin Newman:It's like the metaphor is this is like society. Right. Right. Because it's like that's why the clock, I feel like, becomes it's like, yeah, all of reality is this building, basically, because when the clock stops, everything stops.

2:34:46David Sims:And obviously you don't see that much outside the walls of the building, but you don't get the sense that, like, everyone is using and loving Hudsucker products. Like, I think it is pointed that the hula hoop is the first thing that people seem to have any affinity for. Like, this movie is not doing the WALL-E bit of like, oh, everything has a by and large logo on it. Right. There's not this sense of like, oh, Hudsucker has a monopoly on every product. It's all like they make something. But who knows? It's funny. Yeah, it's funny to not see it. Right. It's great. Like, I don't need to see what what else they are doing.

2:35:18Like the fact that this weird company could make a hula hoop in a bendy straw is great. It's bizarre.

2:35:23David Sims:And it brings everyone closer together. Well, I should say it adds more value to the hula hoop. that's not just that's selling so well, but that people are, like, given joy from it. Minute 30, like, right after the laughing montage, you basically cut straight to John Mahoney.

2:35:42Griffin Newman:Yeah, so it's a little side plot. I mean, Mahoney never leaves this desk, right? Bruce Campbell never leaves his chair. The little newspaper, the Argus, the Manhattan Argus.

2:35:52David Sims:Obviously, you know, all the Daily Bugle stuff in the Raimi Spider-Man movies is riffing on the same kind of, like, Hoxian newspaper. comedies. But I do watch these sequences and especially his first monologue. If not, then since when, you know, all that sort of like back and forth talk feels like him seeing you could do this in a modern comedy and still have it work.

2:36:17Griffin Newman:You know, Mahoney's amazing in Barton Fink, obviously. And he's amazing in this. And he never did another Coen's movie. And it's sort of like there's a lot of guys like that who the Coen's clearly liked and used like two or three times.

2:36:30David Sims:And then they moved on to new guys and they had, you know, like they were they were doing something different. So got sucked into the Frasier sphere. And I think when he was off season, wanted to focus on doing plays. He did a lot of theater. Yeah. Frasier started in 93. So that's certainly a big thing of. Yeah. Yeah. But he's great. Bruce Campbell looks so fucking handsome in this movie. He looks like comically pretty. Yeah.

2:36:53Griffin Newman:He looks fantastic.

2:36:55David Sims:As does Jennifer Jason Leigh, obviously. But much like the Paul Newman reveal. as does Anna Nicole Smith yes as does Mike Starr Anna Nicole Smith reveal also great really funny genuinely really funny but like with Musburger it feels like Jennifer Jason Leigh appears from nowhere right like you have this whole extended monologue

2:37:15Griffin Newman:all these gruff guys I like the guys who bet on her Pulitzer you know that gag always gets me someone where they're like I won the bet and then the bet gets reversed that's always funny

2:37:25David Sims:and you it's funny yes you have the basic setup of no one has an idea of who this guy is. They need the story and she claims, she bets her Pulitzer on it. She stakes it that she will get to the bottom of this and so she's going to try to honey trap him in order to find out who he is, which then leads to my favorite scene in the movie, which is the light lunch scene.

2:37:45Griffin Newman:Wow, that's your favorite scene in the movie. Because, it's because of the Muncie High. The Muncie High

2:37:50David Sims:fight song part. No, that's before that. At the diner. Oh. I think it is such an ingenious way of them having their cake and eating it too of like the funny meet cute that everyone knows how it's going to play out so rather than have the audience roll their eyes at how cliched it is you have two characters who basically are just like we know the fucking rules of this universe we like sit here all day and we watch these other movies play out that we're never the lead characters in and we can predict every move of what they're going to do and they're betting just like the two guys in the newspaper office of like, is she going to do this or that?

2:38:29David Sims:And it's all framed as just these two guys have terrible indigestion, right? It's bookended by these two guys just needing to shit so fucking badly, asking for Bromo, and then this like genuinely kind of romantic like fucking con that she's pulling to trick him into thinking that he's like met a nice girl for the first time. I've never related to characters more than those two guys. The Bromo guys? Yeah. Me and you now, through this whole podcast probably. We ate a huge meal before we came here. We had smoked poutine. We had smoked. We did have smoked poutine.

2:39:01Griffin Newman:You had the poutine too? We got it for the table. Oh, you got it for the table. I loved that. It was a very funny interaction between you two that Griff is like, best poutine in the city. And you were like, yes, because in New York City, you really need the best poutine.

2:39:16David Sims:Famously known.

2:39:17Griffin Newman:400. I was like, I really come to New York for the Canadian food.

2:39:22David Sims:Look, I could amend that. You don't like poutine because it's French fries with a bunch of shit on it. That's the best food. They cracked the code on that one. No, I could have amended that statement.

2:39:30Griffin Newman:I'm like, guys, guys, do you want me to plug you into the best Malaysian food or whatever? And Griff's like, if you want poutine, just put micro-based cheese on your fries in the hotel. No, because you need the curds. You need the curds. Yeah, you need the curds. I love the curds. Yeah. To be clear, you do like the Muncie High cheer. I'm sure you do. I know you do. Love that. Yeah, yeah. It just came at a different time. To your point, they - I can't believe you guys haven't blown up this bathroom. if you guys had fucking myelin poutine. That's my Chekhov. My Chekhov. Chekhov's turd. Chekhov's turd.

2:40:03He almost called it that. It was almost Chekhov's turd. And then he's like, you should make it a gun or something.

2:40:09Griffin Newman:Joel Spielberg was there. Chekhov, make it a gun. Sorry, I was talking about the Muncie High. Yeah, that's the next scene, right? Because she faints fainting. And then he carries her upstairs. and then they have that whole interaction. Claims three for Muncie. She gaslights him into hiring her. Griffin said to my point, and I thought he was going to say something cool about something I said.

2:40:32David Sims:No, I like that the arc is sort of her realizing, being charmed by his sincerity.

2:40:39Griffin Newman:She's like, he's a small town Rube. And by the end of this, she's like, he's a small town Rube. You know, it's like she understands what's good about him.

2:40:46David Sims:It's also what I think Jennifer Jason Leigh gets really right in her performance. I think a lot of people misunderstood at the time of like, oh, she's doing this weird affectation of doing this very stylized performance that's very throwback-y and she seems a little uncomfortable in doing it. But the whole point of the character is that it's a fucking act, right? That like she needs to do this whole routine of coming in with these fast-talking monologues and like doing prop comedy, taking the cigarettes out of guys' mouths so that everyone takes her seriously in the office. And it's not like what she really wants is just to get married and have kids.

2:41:19David Sims:But this whole movie is kind of circling back to this idea that I think is like important for both of the Coen brothers being weird versions of wife guys that they're sort of like what's like if you just fucking chase success like as a end to all means then like what are you left with that all of these characters are sort of like if you don't ever find anything that actually makes you happy you're gonna end up on the top floor of fucking building want to throw yourself out a window it doesn't matter what you accomplish and that they both cut through each other in that kind of way. And it's like Hudsucker's final message that he comes back and delivers him of like, this is what ruined my life.

2:41:59David Sims:But yeah, that she is like slowly, even though the person she is with him is someone she's pretending to be, it starts to become a more honest version of her because he becomes the one person she can drop the act with. It starts with her doing a different act and then as it goes on, it starts with her becoming like an actual genuine in person with him. She takes, she takes, I mean, I was just, I was thinking of how this performance reminds me a bit of Hateful Eight a little bit and just the big, it's another, another big, it's another big, punching her in the face. Well, and just another big character.

2:42:35Not that there's a similar thing of she's a different person or anything like that, but it,

2:42:38David Sims:look, especially in the 90s, I feel like she was one of those actresses that would get credit a lot for being quote unquote brave. And even in the 80s too, where it was like, Like, oh, she does things that other big movie stars wouldn't want to do. And that's usually code for women playing like unlikable characters, getting naked, doing extreme violence, you know, all these things. It's never felt like that's something she does for like deliberate provocation. I just think she's not protective of her image in that way. She's a great actor. Yeah, she rules. Love her. A big part of the reason why the movie works, I think.

2:43:15David Sims:Yeah.

2:43:15Griffin Newman:Yeah. Yeah. and I do agree with you that like someone like Winona might feel more pastiche a little more playing dress up right because she's a little younger and she's a little

2:43:24David Sims:greener I also think there is like an inherent sadness to Jennifer Jason Lee that serves the performance well yeah even when she's playing very big but yes now she's implanted as his secretary and he's at the top of the company and he's going to make his big play which is sell the hula hoop he has nothing on his schedule except for like talking at like a kindergarten. Yes. Like he just is sitting in this giant office doing fucking nothing all day. It was very much a podcaster's schedule.

2:43:59Griffin Newman:It would be funny if as podcasters, we had to like clock in and out of work, but a lot of our work is just like sitting there. Wow, 12 hours this week.

2:44:13Griffin Newman:Still complaining. People are going to be so mad at us. So what else happens?

2:44:17David Sims:I will get into that conversation with people where they're like, and what did you do with the rest of your week? And I'm like, I don't know, read the comments.

2:44:23Griffin Newman:Well, I had to watch the movie for the podcast. Yeah, that's like an hour 45. And I had to find out where to rent it. That was five minutes. Yeah. Also, my co-host has three kids. So my life is pretty busy. I have so many fucking kids. It's crazy.

2:44:38David Sims:Right. So if you do the math, that's like me having a kid.

2:44:43Griffin Newman:is that what you're thinking about is that what is that what is that that's i am frequently thinking about my children yes that is part of the time crunch for sure of course no i get it tonight i'm seeing mission impossible so it's a night out it's a it's already in the cow and also we're having a gentleman's feast we sure are afterwards i mean we're doing it all today it's quite a day for me today um but i do have three children one of them just started crawling ah one of the twins yeah uh Bebop okay we call them Bebop Bebop and Rocksteady yeah

2:45:13David Sims:do you sense jealousy I

2:45:16Griffin Newman:the Rocksteady is right behind him I think Rocksteady is Rocksteady's just got a slightly more he's happier like chilling is Bebop the bigger one or the smaller the bigger one

2:45:27David Sims:he has fraternal twins but there's a bit of a size difference yeah one of them's bigger in a way that is funnier in my opinion

2:45:34Griffin Newman:yeah yeah I mean they've got very different vibes they do can I tell you something I have a comment

2:45:41David Sims:one's kind of more of a like pig man the other one's got kind of a rhino thing what were you going to say I was going to say I've also been called bebop and rock steady by people before dunking on me so I have that in common

2:45:54Griffin Newman:with them bulk and skull of course I brought up on a recent episode from the power rangers you know just like that was like in the 90s the children needed to see two large fools like side characters like cunk heads together. Right, who go, oh, right. And they would like, the B-plot is them, 20 minutes of them trying to buy groceries or something.

2:46:13David Sims:He-Man has my favorite version of that, which is the guy's name is Too Bad. Oh, right, yeah. And it's a two-headed henchman where they curse them by putting them together and they punch each other in the face. I don't think we should go in there, boss. Hey, come on.

2:46:27Griffin Newman:What else? So he invents the hula hoop. I mean, come on. Let's keep it going. He invents the hula hoop. We talked about that montage, but it is. I agree with Patrick's assessment. It's an incredible film within the film.

2:46:37David Sims:But you have, before that, you get to the ball with Peter Gallagher, which is when they... Is that before the Hulu? It is, yes. The fancy Christmas ball. Oh, right, because that's where

2:46:47Griffin Newman:the investors are yelling at him. Peter Gallagher, one of the great singers, an incredible, incredible singer, obviously, like, now everyone knows him as Sandy Cohen. Sure. But he's one of Broadway's great leading men.

2:46:58David Sims:And also owner of two of Hollywood's greatest eyebrows.

2:47:02Griffin Newman:he does have those pussy willows

2:47:04David Sims:he was on Conan and he referred to them as the Gallagher pussy willows and it is a term that lives in my head all the time

2:47:12Griffin Newman:he's the best and I've genuinely heard that he's quite a nice guy which is always great to hear but but yes it's Newman's trying to walk guys and dolls in the early 90s I used to listen to it a lot when I was a kid Sky Masterson it was amazing

2:47:26David Sims:he's playing a kind of Dean Martin-y guy Newman is trying to walk Robbins through sabotage, right? Like, he starts saying, like, keep your mouth shut and don't respond to any questions, you know, and then it's like, actually, never mind, reverse what I said. He's trying to give him the advice he would actually give to someone he wants to succeed and then realizes... Right, that he needs him to fail. Right, and so Robbins, like, steps in it, embarrasses himself in front of a bunch of people, says something offensive in, like, Swedish, and then goes out in the balcony with Jennifer Jason Leigh, and they have this bonding moment where it actually feels like they cut through to each other.

2:47:59David Sims:They kiss for the first time. it's like explosion score swells. And then you like hard cut to it is this movie being so mathematically constructed in the way it Coen brothers movies are hula hoop is explained at one hour. Exactly. It's like at the one hour mark, they kiss and then you go out from the blueprint in the office. And for the first time, you know what the circle is. Yes. And now here's the thrust of the second half of the movie. Right. He's really, he's really holding the fuck out of it for that whole scene to the neck. Yeah. ankle.

2:48:31Griffin Newman:Yeah. Has he already been reported as being a dummy in the newspaper at this point? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lee's already dragged him through the mud. Because there's an imbecile. Yeah. An imbecile heads Hudsucker and then the sub headline was, not a brain in his head. And I really liked that. It was very Simpson-y. Yeah, imbecile heads Hudsucker is like right up there with extra, extra Todd smells. Maybe newspapers should bring that back. Just like we've looked into it and this guy's a dummy like it's just like that's what the story is um yeah there's there's the just just that balcony scene because yes there is there is there's some newsroom sort of back and forth that we that we kind of uh you know are breezing by but but on that balcony there there have like some more dialogue back and forth and there is another of those moments where like she's starting to be like he's got the shiner from the being punched by the Finnish guy.

2:49:25They're talking about what you could have been in a past life. And he says karma. But there also is the part where they're talking about, I think you'd be a gazelle or maybe an ibex. And either way, could I call you dear? And he cracks himself up and it's so adorable. And then she starts talking about, oh, but maybe I was a hard sort of nosed reporter sort of like city girl, like, like tries, like projects about herself, right? She's talking about herself in a past life, herself in a current life, if that was her in a past life. And he's like, no, that kind of person would come back as a wildebeest or, you know, like it's, I don't know.

2:50:05I just really love all the, the, the dialogue through there. And it's just such great. It just like allows her to play the subtext so strongly and she's so effective at it.

2:50:15David Sims:I also think there's something in both of them have these kind of like preconceived biases against the type of person the other one is, right? That she's this like hard-boiled city girl who thinks a country bumpkin is naturally an idiot. And he thinks a person like that must be like a heartless, cynical monster. And that they're, in having these weird conversations, they both kind of quietly realize that like at their core, they are sort of the same in the things they value and what they care about. And, uh... And that's sincerity, like you were saying. there's a sincerity in the movie there is to that piece of shit reviewer from the 90s who's passed away rest in peace who died tragically but still

2:51:02Griffin Newman:I don't know anything about him

2:51:04David Sims:he gets them to approve the hula hoop and you have this unbelievable montage it's a hit you talk about sketch comedy logic business company the idea there being an entire room that's just how much will it cost on like a big banner up top and guys going back and forth and just naming prices.

2:51:24Griffin Newman:I think it's really funny. The dummy that they explode. The guy adds the one dollar. That does seem like how they figured it out.

2:51:30David Sims:Like stroking their chin. When you have the pitch room guys trying to come up with the name, the secretary at the front, every time they cut to her, is reading a different mammoth book. She goes through War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Funny stuff. I like when it's taking off and the price they they just the price goes up and up and the new sticker it's great all that stuff is

2:51:53Griffin Newman:fantastic i do think the second half it's really less than half but is a little less propulsive and awesome than the first sure because it's the fall yes yeah and it's like the comedy's still there and i think the ending of this movie is wonderful like just visually and dynamically and like the big fight with the janitor and bill cobs and all that and like the gears all that's great. I do. I just felt myself drifting slightly. I'm so engaged by everything up to the hula hoop being created. And it is partly because like you need him to suddenly become a jerk. So now he's this kind of withdrawn character and you need him to not do anything.

2:52:33Griffin Newman:The straw bit's funny. Like, you know, there's stuff that's funny. Like the asides.

2:52:37David Sims:I also like that there's sort of.

2:52:39Griffin Newman:The steepest shemmy as a beatnik is funny.

2:52:40David Sims:Acknowledging the like the life cycle of fads. right that this guy is so ready to coast off the success of the hula hoop for the rest of time and you're already seeing it fade right you have the original montage then you have the john goodman

2:52:54Griffin Newman:newsreel of like this is credited as carl munt his character barton fink the serial killer not

2:53:01David Sims:the nice guy uh and he makes the joke of like i don't see what all the hoopla is about and then you see him try it a second time and already it's starting to fall off and it's when you get to buzz pitching him the straw, he needs to shit on Buzz in order to reaffirm his own greatness. He goes, this is moronic. You see, the thing that makes an idea like, I don't know, the hula hoop, so great, where it's this thing that these guys need to do, which is tell you why they're so smart.

2:53:30Griffin Newman:Nah, capitalism's good. You're wrong. And he hits him with the, we don't crawl here at a hud sucker, just saying Paul Newman hits him. It's just a great callback. I like, yeah, it's interesting what you say about the second half i really do like the second half of this movie all right i'm wrong no no i'm not i'm not even saying i disagree with you i'm i'm now i'm more trying to like like interrogate in my own head is like is it is it a little bit less fun and is that just inherent to the the what you were saying of just like it being the yeah that it being the fall but but but one thing i will say is like there is an overall joke to this movie which is just how compressed the time frame is that absolutely everything is happening within a 30 day time limit and that that, you know, he's going from mailroom where he's being or he's getting from his orientation in the mailroom to being company president in the same day because somewhat because the company CEO committed suicide earlier that morning.

2:54:22What's the bellboy on the ride up that he was in the mailroom in the bellboy and then on the ride down with the bellboy, he is the president. Yeah, basically the president. It's very funny.

2:54:30David Sims:And the news hasn't even reached Buzz. Yeah, Buzz doesn't know. Like how'd that blue let it go? It's another one of my favorite jokes in the movie is when he brings Jennifer Jason Lee back and he's like, I'm going to get you a job here at the company. And I know just where there's an opening. And he buzzes down to the supervisor in the mail room. Yeah. And he goes like, hello, this is Norval Barnes. He goes, Barnes, where are you? I've been waiting for you for four days. And he goes, I don't know if you heard, but I'm the president of the company now. And he goes, I don't care if you're the president of the company.

2:54:58David Sims:That he emphasizes president. Right. That it's just the same thing repeated back. Yeah. Also, there was one thing we skipped over. It was a pretty good Eisenhower cameo. Oh, that is so funny.

2:55:10Griffin Newman:I thank you. My wife thinks Mrs. Eisenhower is proud of you, right? Because it's just it would be. It's just so funny that it's a picture of him like that. Just they just slide in the picture of him.

2:55:21David Sims:It's also so funny that like 20 plus years later, Aaron Sorkin basically tries to do the earnest version of that at the end of being the Ricardo's. That is what happens. Right.

2:55:32Griffin Newman:Where he's like, Hoover is like, there's nothing weird about me. I love Lucy. And then everyone applauds. Eisenhower rocks. What a weird guy. Yeah, I like Ike. I'm a fan. Yeah, I like Ike too. Great. What's your favorite thing he did? You're asking me specifically? Mississippi schools is probably the genuine answer. Or winning the war. But he did some bad stuff too. Or warning us about the military industrial complex, which he did. I was a fan of the White House physician announcing he had an unremarkable shit. Wait, really? he was just like yeah I looked at it nothing special there was like a whole thing of like he had a he was sick and they were like the they were being very cagey about it and so the White House released like the physician released an extremely explicit letter letter just like sort of detailing what what had happened and what was unremarkable about it sorry Arkansas yeah no Eisenhower like when he was leaving the office he was like by the way like it's kind of fucked up that the military and like big business are kind of like you know turning into this big evil thing that's going to kind of take over society.

2:56:38Griffin Newman:And I call it the military industrial complex. Anyway, I'll see you later. And everyone was like, I feel like he's right about that. And then no one did anything about it. You know what I like about him? I like him in this movie. I don't know. I just like his Hudsucker work. I don't know too much of his other work. I'm not really that familiar, but he's great. I like that picture where he looks really fabulous. Do you know the picture I'm talking about? Which one? There's this picture where he's like serving and the internet got kind of obsessed with it. Oh, I never saw this get memed. That's a great picture.

2:57:06Oh, that's great. That is a great photo.

2:57:08David Sims:It's just like a picture of him in his uniform. Yeah. Do you guys know about the Peter Principle? Explain. It was originally... Now, I did do an Eisenhower bit. Yep.

2:57:17Griffin Newman:It was a book that was originally meant to be satirical. Isn't it? It's like the stupider you are, the higher you rise. But it's something like that, right?

2:57:26David Sims:It's basically saying that everyone will succeed to a level of relative incompetence at the higher level companies. You get promoted.

2:57:33Griffin Newman:You get promoted to beyond your competency. And there you shall stay.

2:57:38David Sims:Basically, everyone gets overpromoted like one time in organizations like this past their actual ability. And then rather than ever getting demoted or fired, the people just stay there. So the higher up you get, the worse people are because that's where people kind of like hit their limit. Yeah, I've heard of this phenomenon. I haven't heard the Peter principle specifically.

2:57:58Griffin Newman:There was also the Dilbert principle, wasn't there? Tell me about it. I don't know. But wasn't that... All neckties must go. Oh, I'm sorry. Actually, remember how like first it was like they just put out Dilbert books of the strips. Right.

2:58:09David Sims:But then Scott, you would read them and go, God, this guy sounds like such an alpha. Whoever's writing these. But he's got a chiseled torso.

2:58:18Griffin Newman:The guy drawing Dilbert must fuck so good. But then he would also write like management comedy books. Right. Like text books. That was actually the early warning sign. The Dilbert principle. And it must have been like joking about like a riff on the Peter principle.

2:58:34David Sims:But we should have known at that moment, the second that the guy took the success of the comic strip to be like, but actually Dilbert's serious.

2:58:40Griffin Newman:Yes.

2:58:40David Sims:I have things I want to say about corporate culture.

2:58:42Griffin Newman:I know he's, you know, a bit of an online figure, Mr. Scott Adams. Was he always a weirdo or is he one of those classic, like 10 years of Twitter? Uh, always bad has only gotten worse. He was also always super online. Like, he was like, he was like a pen. Before no one was online. Like very, very early internet like Usenet you know But he wasn't like

2:59:03David Sims:a Dennis Miller hard swing after 9-11 guy Yeah sure Ron Silver Graham Linehan or any of those guys who like have a moment Graham Linehan is something up with that? Yeah he went from

2:59:14Griffin Newman:being funny to really funny Dilbert the cartoon Good Incredible opening credits Yeah One of the best That was Larry Charles Larry Charles That's pretty funny Yeah Dilbert was good

2:59:25David Sims:But yeah Great theme song Great animation in the opening

2:59:29Griffin Newman:I like Dogbert dog bird's funny he's a dog with glasses cat bird's like mean oh there's cat bird oh you never saw cat bird I didn't know about cat bird my whole thing is that I would read those comics and cat bird is the HR guy like that's the joke that's really funny and I'm just like what the fuck was like 11 year old David being like ah yeah HR always on your ass like what did I why was I cat bird remember cat bird yeah I remember cat bird yeah and then there was rat bird I can't remember rat bird specifically and then there was a dinosaur okay so this so this they started adding more new characters as the well I think a lot of the initially Dilbert was heavier on the animals and a lot of them got kind of pulled back oh he kind of built out the humans and there's then there's the pointy cast there's the boss and the lady with the triangle hair

3:00:20David Sims:and all that Jason Alexander was Catbert Chris Elliott was Dogbert I'm sure they were great yeah and Daniel Stern was Dilbert

3:00:28Griffin Newman:yes right yeah that's a damn good cast damn good cast bring it back yeah yeah bring it back money flowing to Adam like is Dilbert still running like can I read a new Dilbert great question and he like writes it great question yeah that is a great question and it's not insane it has to be insane yeah there's no way it's not insane is he just like phoning that in and then all day he tweets but then Dilbert is just like the pointy hair boss being like do those emails and Dilbert's like ah fuck this okay here's a question would this movie

3:00:57David Sims:have been a hit if Dilbert was the star if three years later the script was repurposed into a live action Dilbert movie that it's basically the same film but mapped onto the Dilbert cast so Paul Newman is playing cat Bert I guess he haired boss oh point your boss sorry I clearly don't know Dilbert as much as you guys do and I'm shocked that you guys know as much as you do about Dilbert oh my god Dilbert comics there is no

3:01:23Griffin Newman:Dilbert you know new Dilbert cartoons and if you go to the website there is a drop down why did Dilbert get cancelled? if you believe the news it's because I'm a big old racist context no news about public figures is ever true Jesus so you know he's doing great he's doing alright Hudsucker Proxy Griff any more on this?

3:01:42David Sims:any more on this? no you have like the rapid fall the only sequence every time I watch this movie that I bump on and question if it's a mistake is the weird Tim Robbins dream sequence that oh right feels like a guest jeans ad or something that's is that the dance sequence yes yes yeah yeah yeah yeah what's going on there exactly i don't it just feels like an odd stylistic swing yeah away i guess it's in the start of his spiral down and it might be one of those things

3:02:13Griffin Newman:again as an audience member maybe in 1994 where you're kind of like how many more sort of switches in format are you going to throw at me you had the newsreels right you had the big band sequence like where it does start to get a little overwhelming I love a buzz I love buzz chasing after him with a big mob that's all great stuff the ending is in the end the ending stretches and it's an insane stretch but I

3:02:45David Sims:I love it so I just checked it it's she comes in he's like hotshot they the people have the old timey hand massagers on his face love those Oh, I love that. You put on your fingers. Your little motorized gloves. Those are great. Right. And she slaps him in the face because of how arrogant he's become. Then he goes in the dream sequence. And when he wakes up, it's like everyone's gone. The office is dark. And that's when Buzz pisses him the straw. The straw thing. Right. And all that. But then he gets turfed out. Immediately after that. Right. It's him being called into Musburger's office or the big boardroom after the golf trip.

3:03:20David Sims:and he's like, Buzz claims that you stole his idea for the hula hoop, but that's not even the real problem. I figured out who the reporter is. You let her into the hen house. You're gone. We're going to have you declared insane.

3:03:31Griffin Newman:Right, and we're having you institutionalized and then he's at the beatnik bar with Buscemi.

3:03:35David Sims:A detail I love in that scene is that it feels like the most genuine moment from Newman and his performance in a way is he's saying, Buzz says you stole his idea. And by the way, there's no problem with that. You know, he's not like that need to be put down. There's this moment of him talking to him as if he were a real executive to CEO. He's like, by the way, if I respected you, I would tell you that the right thing to do is to start treating people like shit now, even though this has all been a setup. But yes, then it's like precipitous fall.

3:04:10Griffin Newman:Yes. And then we're we're on to Norville suicide. We know we're on to he he's drunk and he he's going to jump. It does happen pretty quickly. Oh, it's very rapid. Like the last half of plot in this movie is 10 minutes.

3:04:24David Sims:They send him to the head shrinker. They watch it on a film reel. He goes to the bar. He meets Buscemi. It's a good bit of like he can't get a drink. Yeah, they only serve juice, right? Right. Juice and coffee, I think. Juice and coffee, yeah. Carrot juice, maybe.

3:04:37Griffin Newman:What do we think of the device that clock... Thank you. The janitor is an all-knowing sort of godlike figure. Yes. Angel. Right.

3:04:49David Sims:So you have this earlier scene where Jennifer Jason Leigh's snooping around. Yeah. And she goes through the gears of the clock because basically the clock is the midpoint between the Musburger office and Hudsucker's office that Norval takes over. And he has this one sort of info dump of like, I know everything. I'm ahead of the plot. I know where this is going. Like, I'm all seeing. I think it's the first time you've seen them on camera since the open narration.

3:05:15Griffin Newman:Yeah, pretty much. So there's been chatting right in voiceover. Can we just talk about those gears? God, what big old incredible looking gears up there with Castle Cagliostro as far as like a Gears movie.

3:05:27David Sims:Mass Detective and all these. Mass Detective. Yeah.

3:05:29Griffin Newman:Bring back a big clock. TikTok clock from Super Mario 64. Yes. It's right up there with TikTok clock.

3:05:37David Sims:there's like almost nothing I love more than a big practical set where things are moving and you're like fuck this shit is rigged you know like this is motorized or like 20 guys are like pulling levers to make this set operate this like phony machinery

3:05:56Griffin Newman:is there a tick tock clock Mario Kart I think where there's like you know conveyor belts going one's going one way one's going the other I feel like that was I I know the Mario Kart canon last. Yeah, there is. There is.

3:06:09David Sims:When this movie was about to come out and they were doing press and it had not test screened well and they went back for reshoots and the press was like, is this about to be Joel Silver's costly flop? Why did he bet on the Coen brothers? He said, like, we do reshoots in all of our movies. They have Final Cut, which they did. There was nothing forced upon them. Warner Brothers wanted to change.

3:06:28Griffin Newman:Nothing about this movie screams studio.

3:06:29David Sims:I had their back. And they said, we've heard that you did reshoots to add a fight scene. Yeah. And he said, nothing was imposed on us when we were in the edit. We all collectively agreed that there was something that was missing. Right. I don't know if that means that the entire fight scene was added. I wonder. Or if pieces were added. It is the one thing in the movie that still feels like from their pen, but does feel like, do we need something more exciting at the end?

3:06:54Griffin Newman:It's a little out of nowhere that the guy who replaces the signs on the doors is the villain all of a sudden. Yeah. Yes. I mean, it's fine. I don't have a problem with it. I like it. It's funny. It's insane. And I like his teeth falling out and all that. It's cool. There is also the using them to stop the gears. Yeah, that's great. There is the moment earlier. Were you about to say something? No, I like the teeth in the gears as well. I love the teeth in the gears. There was the moment earlier where you see him looming over Musburger's shoulder as if he's the guy who's giving him the intel or approving the intel that she's actually the reporter, right?

3:07:28Which ultimately leads to his downfall. so I think that they are trying to seed at least some sort of shadowy figure but again just everything's so arched that I think I do think it feels like he is the literal devil like it's like we have one character who seems to be evil and Bill Cobb is like an angel

3:07:47David Sims:yeah exactly right he says like I know just about everything that happens at least within this building and it feels like him almost covering for the fact that he's admitting that he knows everything we only lost him last year. I know. He died at the age of 90. Yeah. Yeah, I like all this. I think the Coen brothers are like weirdly underrated as action filmmakers because No Country is one of the only films where they get to sort of do sequences.

3:08:11Griffin Newman:They didn't make a lot of action movies, but there is basically no one better at like visual communication than the Coen brothers. Right. The relationship between Steven Spielberg or whatever. Yeah. I mean, the Coens never tried to do I guess, right, a gigantic scale action sequence. Probably would have done a good job if they did. True Grit kind of has an anti-set piece Which is from the book It's not even like the Coens are peeling it back It's like yeah the whole thing with True Grit is it builds to something That's quite short and Sudden you know which rocks Fill your hands you son of a bitch It's the best fucking line in any movie Ever said He likes to pull the cork I did wonder if I was like Is he going to pull the hand of the clock back To get him back on the ledge Superman style Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah.

3:08:58Reversing time or whatever. And then it is just funny that it stopped at just a great time and he just can fall right to the ground. That's what I like.

3:09:04David Sims:I like the internal logic of it. Yeah. And that they realize that these kinds of comedies need the plotting of like two steps forward, one step back. Sure, yeah. Like Norval gets in the office, but then he fucks it up, but then he saves it. Yeah. Where it's like he falls, but they stop the clock, but it doesn't stop all the way. It's just enough that the fall doesn't kill him. It's great. And what actually saves him is Hudsucker himself. and the hud sucker as an angel come on you get to see how suckers come on halo i mean yeah the hula hoop turning's just incredible i know a lot of it is just like presence yeah and like this guy being such a pro at this point in time and the visual but he just nails this journey's good can i can i also say that jennifer jason lee when she has her when she says goodbye to the newsroom that whole scene is when she she keeps saying shut up like she says that over and over again i think very funny it's great it's great it's a great great moment for her too yeah um but yeah no uh hud sucker uh imparts onto him that like life is meaningless if you don't fucking care about other people if you're just pursuing success um and saves him just in time to be able to uh right the wrong and also just calls out like you fucking idiot you never open the blue letter right

3:10:18Griffin Newman:right it is him right saying like that is not a dangling like that's not a forgotten plot thread. That is a dangling plot thread. It is time for you to resolve it. Right. Open the blue letter.

3:10:27David Sims:Right. And that resolves the movie. But such a good touch within it is that he is like, I bequeath my stakes to whoever is appointed CEO in my absence, which I assume will be Sidney. But in the weird circumstance that for some reason you place whoever else in the chair, then it goes to that guy. That like Musburger, if he had done nothing, would have had control of the company.

3:10:51Griffin Newman:yes it's a good gag

3:10:52David Sims:yeah instead he gets caught

3:10:53Griffin Newman:with a big butterfly net and he goes to Looney Ben yeah how all movies should end pretty much yeah that's how Zero Dark Thirty

3:10:59David Sims:should have ended that Chris Pratt goes in with a big butterfly net that's how he gets he gets Osama put Osama in a stray jacket

3:11:07Griffin Newman:his eyes are like spinach remember how then it was it was like oh Chris Pratt's in like a soldier outfit yeah and now it's like yeah of course Chris Pratt's always in like military fatigue yeah like with a giant gun I just normal state of being. I served with him in the Tomorrow Award. And thank you for your service. Of course. Thank you. You did serve in the Tomorrow Award. Oh, boy. So the film didn't do very well, Griffin. I'm sorry to say it made one third of a black hat. I just want to just to close the loop.

3:11:41David Sims:He runs back to the fucking coffee shop after the stroke of midnight and does the fucking Muncie hand sign to her. And I find it very. Oh, that is. It's just like, look, it's it's. classic movie construction thing. I just love when you can like create something within the language of your own movie that did not exist previously and bring it back in and have it suddenly have gained greater emotional weight.

3:12:03Griffin Newman:Nick's just looking at his empty peel now. Wordless exchanges. Don't you think it's funny that the Coens have this early success? They win the Palme d 'Or. They get, you know, like then they make kind of like what they're like a comedy for like people, you know, for kids almost. right where it's like we made a big budget movie for you guys that's funny and like action packs and everyone's like and they're like I guess we'll make a movie about like Minnesota people pushing you bodies into wood chippers and shit and everyone's like yes thank you this is what we wanted from you this is what more of this the darker they go

3:12:40David Sims:the more people applaud them and whenever they try to make something funnier people are like what the fuck is this dumb bullshit like a divorce you know attorney comedy

3:12:47Griffin Newman:with like George Clooney burning up his screen The two sexiest movie stars. Yeah, and can like Javier Bardem murder people

3:12:53David Sims:with a cow pistol? Like, can we have that? Can Tommy Lee Jones like basically look to the audience and explain why maybe humanity should be eradicated? That's so funny. Yeah! Right, it's like anytime they try to make a crowd pleaser,

3:13:08Griffin Newman:people are like crowning and crossing their arms. I mean, they're two biggest flops because Intolerable Cruelty and Lady Killers. And it's like, are these sort of screwball things? Yes. And that's probably why I like them so much. I agree.

3:13:21David Sims:And I think Burn After Reading and Hail Caesar were both kind of dismissed in the moments as being like weird. I don't like Burn After Reading. Burn After Reading is a fucking masterpiece. And I hope you come around. I hope I do too. Hail Caesar, I love. I love Hail Caesar. I'm a Hail Caesar.

3:13:33Griffin Newman:Burn After Reading is the one time where I was like, ah, this is too dark or too black. Like, I don't like anything about it. And it's like setting. It's not like I think it's like terrible, but it always set my teeth on edge a little bit.

3:13:45David Sims:But Big Lebowski has undeniably become their biggest movie in the public consciousness and is basically their guarantor for life, I would say, at this point, retroactively. And at the time, people were like, they're making a fucking stoner comedy. Like, this is a movie where they admit the plot doesn't matter. Big Lebowski now just exists as Super Bowl commercials. It's going to be like Super Bowl commercials for the next decade or so. Yeah, like Jeff Daniels goes around wearing the sweater and doing fucking 96. Yeah, basically just doing Borat. Other Jeffs are able to cash in on this. Any Jeffs can do this?

3:14:18David Sims:Jeff Probst is drinking white Russians again. No, but like, I saw Jeff Bridges do some fucking like, talk at some 92nd Street Y-esque thing, and he was just wearing the sweater, and people were like, losing their minds, and it's not like, oh fuck, Adam West wearing the Batman suit, that's depressing. People are like, thrilled. He should wear the Iron Monger suit. He should come out in there. Yeah. Watch the script! I mean, you know, all the Coen Brothers movies are funny to some degree. Like, but I like as far as their straight comedies not connecting with audiences as much, I guess absent Lebowski, though, that's kind of its own thing.

3:14:56David Sims:Even though there was sort of a 50 percent. And I don't know Arizona. We're both in that zone. But oh, brother is so eclipsed by the soundtrack in its moment.

3:15:05Griffin Newman:Yeah. Well, that's the other weird thing where they're like, let's do. OK, finish your point. Oh, no, no. all I was going to say is that I like, I wonder if there's something of like, these are their comedies, but you like really have to pay attention to them. And I feel like the audience expectations for a comedy sometimes are just like, I'm just going to enjoy the ride as opposed to like, I really have to lock in and focus and like, you know, my attention. Yeah. That is true. Yeah. Right. They are very, yeah. And they also look too good. Like movies like, Oh Brother looks so phenomenal that you're like, this is a comedy.

3:15:32Griffin Newman:Like this seems like important in a way.

3:15:34David Sims:So we talked about this in our 1941 episode, right? This line of like, if a comedy gets too expensive, does it stop being funny?

3:15:40Griffin Newman:I don't want fop, goddammit. I'm going to do that 40 times on that episode. I don't want fop, goddammit. The way he says fop. He should have gotten eight Oscars. I'm a Dapper Dan man. I'm a Dapper Dan man. Clooney is... He's my best actor that year, my friend. He's your winner? Wow. Oh, yeah. Over Crow? Yeah. Because you would have given Crow the insider art? Crow is a winner for me for LA Confidential. My favorite Russell Crowe performance. the movie when he the moment in LA Confidential when he's holding the chair the back of the chair and he fucking snaps it off it's so good oh my god it's the best I love that movie LA Confidential I almost want like a tie to Crow and Pierce because I think they're both so amazing in that movie but yes no I have Clooney winning best actor in 2000 for O Brother Warat though I think he's so so so good

3:16:28David Sims:you put Jennifer Jason Leigh in your supporting for this year for this movie who else do you have in that category

3:16:32Griffin Newman:oh let's take a look Uma Uma Thurman for Pulp Fiction Diane Weiss for Bullets Over Broadway who won the Oscars you were doing a David Loder movie out there

3:16:41David Sims:because this was the year at the Oscars that he did that oh my god because she's there for Pulp Fiction Helen Mirren

3:16:46Griffin Newman:for Madness of King George who I think was also an Oscar nominee so good never seen that movie Brigitte Lynn for Chunking Express oh sure the best is there a while you've got the spreadsheet open did you nom this movie and anything else I nominated for for screenplay but I have it losing to Pulp Fiction. I mean Pulp Fiction is a big movie. I have it nominated for Cinematography, for Score which I have it winning for. You gave it the Score win. I gave it the Score win and the Production Design win.

3:17:20David Sims:I didn't realize how much of this was based on pre-existing material where it probably would have been disqualified even though... But that's a weird score year dude.

3:17:29Griffin Newman:It's a weird score year. 94? Yeah. Did Gump get a nomination? It's like Pulp Fiction is the biggest one. I have Gump in there. I have Shawshank, which is a lovely score. Incredible score. I'm saying in the actual Oscars, they nominated those three. Yeah, but Hans Zimmer wins for Lion King. Okay. It's an amazing movie year because I love Hudsucker, and it's not even a top five movie for me. Oh, no, it's fifth. I have a fifth behind Chungking Express, Pulp Fiction, Hoop Dreams, and Ed Wood, which are all movies I adore.

3:17:57David Sims:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they they are when they make comedies for me. I feel like they toe the exact line of how expensive a comedy can look while still being funny, where it feels like there is never like wasted costs like something like this. The money is all in service of jokes. Ultimately, even if the joke is look at how big the set is versus it feeling like an abuse of power or like, you know, hubris or whatever. I'm trying to even think of someone else who makes comedies that even look close to as good as what the Coen brothers do This is the problem Like we were talking about texting recently about how do you know the most brightly lit movie of all time James O.

3:18:43David Sims:Brooks's film that cost 120 million dollars and takes place in three apartments Right and you're like this cost like a fourth of that a third of that And I was working at the Simpsons while this movie was happening Like built an entire universe and has this like Swiss watch construction of every sequence is like so technically tight. And then even something like Raising Arizona, where you're like, how the fuck did they make this on this budget when every shot is like so intentional and has such a specific relationship to its cuts? But I think you're right, David, that there is this weird element of the movie, them kind of optimistically hoping maybe people receive this as the hula hoop.

3:19:24David Sims:And instead, people respond to it as if it's the drawing of the circle and being like, what the fuck is this?

3:19:28Griffin Newman:Truly, no one went to see it. It made two point eight million dollars. You know what I mean? It's like it opened fine, limited, probably in like arthouse places. And then it's just it did not expand at all. I do like this quote from Joel where he's like, we want the movie to be successful and make money. Obviously, it's not like they're making it for no good reason. but he's like but as far as being perceived as mainstream movie makers that's not particularly important to us it's not like we're doing this so we can go do beethoven 3 i like them thinking about beethoven at all it's just funny to me um but the movie did badly um and got kind of bad

3:20:01David Sims:when you get to the later direct-to-video sequels i just want to say that for wait really go on yep it has they're good you're saying they start alternating in the later sequels between movies about characters in a universe where the Beethoven movies exist and they own the dog who plays Beethoven and then the other every other movie is back to just people who own a dog that's so complicated we're gonna play the box office game wait they own Beethoven the dog we need to figure this out you can't be third is

3:20:30Griffin Newman:an American comedy film I can tell you that much that was released direct to video introduces Judge Reinhold Reinhold

3:20:38David Sims:was coming in for the third one? I think they start alternating between Reinhold and Dave Thomas as the owner. This is the thing. There were like two different creative teams who were making back and forth. No, Reinhold's in the fourth. What about five?

3:20:52Griffin Newman:Fifth, we've got Dave Thomas. Oh, well, well, well. I know, I know, but you're saying alternate. And what about six? Well, sixth, also known as Beethoven's Big Break, seems to feature neither of them. Okay. And then the seventh is Beethoven's Christmas Adventure, which doesn't even get its own Wikipedia article. Who's in that? That's how relevant it is. I don't know. If you don't know, then who would? That's the first one where Beethoven has a speaking voice. Okay, so then this is - Beethoven starts talking? Oh, boy. A third reality. What a swing. The eighth one, Beethoven's Treasure Trail, is about the little line between his belly button and his dick.

3:21:31Griffin Newman:No, it's about, it seems to be kind of like a pirate adventure. So this sounds like they started taking their cues from the Buddies franchise. Whereas you saw, you know, Air Bud started like as a basketball playing dog. And then he started playing different sports, you know, world pop and and then so on. The Buddies talk. The Buddies talk. And so they borrowed that. But then the Buddies also go on adventures. So they have Spooky Buddies, Space Buddies, Treasure Buddies.

3:21:59David Sims:But the Buddies start out as canonically the children of Air Bud, who is voiced by Tom Everett Scott. and then they start to write him out and don't acknowledge the parentage. Alex Ross Perry texted, time to call out Griffin. I told you a year ago about the absolutely insane circumstances that befall the Beethoven franchise when it reaches movies five to eight. And I told you that someday you drive David insane with this information at hour three of a podcast at hour three of Schindler's List. You talk Beethoven and do not mention that five and seven are connected and six and eight are a separate story.

3:22:30David Sims:It just had to be acknowledged. It's what he says, but I'm not sure he's right. A story in which Beethoven is a dog who has played Beethoven in all the other movies which exist. We're in the third hour. He's dropping you insane with it. I looked at you. This is crazy. I'm looking here. In Beethoven 11, Beethoven is a man. He's just like a guy. He's no longer a dog.

3:22:47Griffin Newman:Does he compose symphony? No, he's just like a regular guy. Beethoven 12, he is Beethoven. He's the man. Ludwig von. And then Beethoven 13, he's Beethoven. He's the composer, but he's a dog again. they finally got to the right thing

3:23:04David Sims:it was crazy also I'm seeing here that in Beethoven he's like like that and they're like yeah I'm seeing here that in Beethoven's 14 he's the composer but he is a dog and he tricks both of you guys into sucking him off so the film came out and then in 11 we're dogs that suck off human Beethoven by the way I want people to know who don't know our podcast we have a thing where a gator tricks us into so not only did you get to hear how bad our podcast is but now we'll explain to you our bit where we suck a gator off in our podcast the bit originated as a southern gator much in the stylings of Tom Hanks and Lady Killer who tricks you to suck him off the bit has now become just generally people keep sucking you into sucking them off It happens just globally now.

3:24:02David Sims:It's not just the Gator anymore. The film came out March 11th, 1994,

3:24:09Griffin Newman:after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. Okay. So I feel like there's already this sort of awareness of like, okay, this thing is not about to be an awards contender big hit.

3:24:20David Sims:Not Sundance. It didn't premiere at Cannes.

3:24:22Griffin Newman:The Hudsucker Proxy premiered, of course, at Sundance, January 94. Well, okay. I might have played at Cannes after this out of possibly out of respect. Out of respect. Because I was going to say. Because they won the Palme d 'Or for their prior film. The disparity between. Yep, it played at Cannes after.

3:24:38David Sims:Right. This playing at Cannes the same year that Pulp Fiction like hits and wins and causes the phenomenon of like the indie takeover of Hollywood for the next 10 years. I do think it speaks to the moment where it's like we don't want the fucking Coen brothers making a screwball comedy. It was. We want them making dark noir.

3:24:54Griffin Newman:it was the opening film at Cannes which is so weird because it had come out in America but back then I used to do that yeah you know it was a little different movies it is crazy how much older Pulp Fiction feels than this movie I mean I guess that's a testament to me not having ever seen it I guess it's new to me but it does feel like a very modern movie in a lot of ways and just I mean it's just so clean and beautiful looking too it's just such a pretty movie not that Pulp Fiction isn't of course but it's a rougher film

3:25:24David Sims:with a smaller project.

3:25:26Griffin Newman:So it's not in the top five, but we're going to play the box office game. It's opening on limited screens, obviously. So number one at the box office, Griffin, is a film I assume you've seen because it features an actor you love. Steve Martin? No. Bill Murray? But this is a guy where you've seen all his movies. Is it Beethoven the Dog? Nicolas Cage? Nicolas Cage. Wow.

3:25:45David Sims:Is it Guarding Test?

3:25:46Griffin Newman:It's Guarding Test. Oh, wow. Now that's the one where he's a Secret Service agent. That's a post-driving Miss Daisy. we need Tandy vehicle. The poster is very similar, but it's Shirley MacLaine.

3:25:58David Sims:But it's Shirley MacLaine. It's not Tandy. Shirley MacLaine is the first lady, the former first lady. Right. She's not even the first lady. She's an old, she's a sort of Mrs. Eisenhower type. I think it opens with her husband's funeral. Uh-huh. And it's like, she's still assigned a Secret Service guy. But so it is Driving Miss Daisy-esque. Is she kind of a pain in the ass? I will say this. Yes, ma 'am. Having recently seen Driving Miss Daisy for the first time, when I watched that film, I was like, oh, so this is like runoff Driving Miss Daisy. Now I can say it is wildly superior to Driving Miss Daisy.

3:26:27David Sims:It is improved Driving Miss Daisy. It is a perfectly fine comedy. It is like a five out of 10, but Driving Miss Daisy is like a fucking two. I saw it on video once, guarding Tess, and I remember liking it. You watch it and you're like, this is close to being really good

3:26:44Griffin Newman:and they didn't quite get there. It's a Hugh Wilson film who made like The First Wives Club and Blast from the Past and totally solid comedies. alright number two at the box office Griffin it's a film I don't think either of us have seen we have covered on this podcast a lot of this guy's output I thought you were going to say we haven't seen it and we've covered it on this podcast this guy has just not made that many movies oh so the majority we did a franchise of his which is you know like a big chunk of the movies

3:27:13David Sims:so it's a second tier Paul Hogan

3:27:15Griffin Newman:it's a Paul Hogan film

3:27:18David Sims:Crocodile Dundee himself it's not Flipper

3:27:19Griffin Newman:not Flipper

3:27:20David Sims:a film I saw in theaters did see that in theaters and had the Pizza Hut hand puppets I feel like you always talk about the Casper and the Casper hand puppets are huge to me yes Pizza Hut had

3:27:32Griffin Newman:the market corner I mean again the Flipper remake does feel like with like Hogan what could you do it's like I guess instead of like putting a cap on his head like you could you know could you do a Flipper movie

3:27:41David Sims:it's one of my favorite phenomenons when someone hyper specific weirdly becomes a movie star and they're like where the fuck do we play

3:27:48Griffin Newman:what the fuck do you do have you guys seen Crocodile Dundee slash do you enjoy Crocodile Dundee? I've seen Dundee and Dundee 2. I never watched in LA. Dundee, I think we were pleasantly You live in LA.

3:27:58David Sims:You don't need to see Crocs show up. We were pleasantly surprised by one. One's good. Two, the opening is so fucking funny that we were like... Fishing with Dinah. We're also this is like January 2021. We're losing our minds. And then Two just becomes bad Rambo. Stops having jokes after the 15 minute mark. Mitch, do you have a Croc Dundee take? Not really. I saw the first one, but But wait, he's eventually in Flipper? Is that what you're saying?

3:28:22Griffin Newman:He did do a Flipper remake with Elijah Wood. Okay, for a few years, two years after. 96? 96. This movie, though, is not Flipper. Is this like the Western one? It's the Western one.

3:28:31David Sims:With Cuba Gooding Jr. and Beverly D 'Angelo. It's not called Bronco Billy, but it's the character's name. Yep. And it is Thing Name. Yeah. It's not like Outback Jack.

3:28:44Griffin Newman:It's something, Jack. You're close. You're circling.

3:28:46David Sims:It's not Kangaroo Jack. No. No, no Give me the type of word that the first thing is

3:28:53Griffin Newman:It's a sort of a weather phenomenon

3:28:54David Sims:Hurricane Jack?

3:28:56Griffin Newman:Close It is Less, more common than a hurricane Wind Jack Less common than wind Rain Jack No, sort of more common than hail Less common than rain Thunderstorm? Lightning Jack Lightning Jack Lightning Jack. Lightning Jack. Lightning Jack. Written by and starring Paul Hogan. That's, yeah. Not a big hit. Your European Vacation was a big movie for my family, by the way. We had a good time. I haven't watched it in many years. Have you paid attention to what's going on with the Crocodile Dundee direct-to-video sequels? Yeah, he's a dog now. He's a dog. In six, he's a dog. And then in seven, he's an actual crocodile.

3:29:42Oh, yeah.

3:29:43Griffin Newman:They should have done that. They should have made that shortcut.

3:29:46David Sims:And they make it that the crocodile is an actor who played the dog in Beethoven. Yeah, that's the whole thing. Right. And his whole thing is that he tricks people into sucking them off. Right.

3:29:58Griffin Newman:Number three in the box office. Speaking of films involving blowjobs that I did not pick up on being a blowjob until I was much older. Okay. Because I love this movie. I saw it in theaters. Casper? It's a big comedy. No, does Casper have a blowjob? I was trying to think of the least appropriate joke I can make. I might know this one. No, actually, I think this is too late. I already invoked it on this episode. Oh, then I don't know. You thought it was a blowjob joke that you didn't pick up at the time? One of the first jokes in this movie is a blowjob joke. One of the first jokes? Well, the first scene ends with a blowjob.

3:30:29Griffin Newman:The first scene ends with a blowjob? But I didn't know it was a blowjob. Someone dips down? Yeah, you know. Give me any... And there's some comical overreaction.

3:30:36David Sims:There's a comical overreaction to a blowjob? That's good. You know, he likes it. Oh, he likes it. He likes it. Is it the life commercial? Is this,

3:30:46Griffin Newman:is it a hot shots type movie? It's a straightforward comedy, not a parody exactly, although it's kind of a parody movie. It's a very strange movie. It was a gigantic, gigantic hit. It made a star. It's very odd on rewatch. I cannot believe I was obsessed with this child.

3:31:03David Sims:In 1924, it's primarily a comedy star. It was very normal for me

3:31:05Griffin Newman:to be obsessed with it as a child. I literally brought it up on this episode. You literally brought it up on this episode. It's a famous movie. Primarily a comedy star. yeah it minted the biggest comedian of the 90s biggest comic actor Ace Ventura Ace Ventura Pet Detective

3:31:18David Sims:what's the blowjob joke in Ace Ventura

3:31:19Griffin Newman:the first scene ends with well so the first thing in Ace Ventura which is very funny is him with the fake package yeah where he's like breaking it and kicking it Mark Margulies

3:31:28David Sims:trying to kick him out and then he rescues

3:31:30Griffin Newman:the dog or the cockatoo or whatever the fuck he does and then returns it to the lady who gives him a blowjob and it's just Carrie going like like that and I as a kid was just like I don't know what's happening right now, but I love that he's doing all this funny stuff. This guy got an indoor roller coaster? What does he act like that? Eight-year-old David just being like, whatever this guy wants to do, I'm there for it. Is he tickling his feet? I just don't get what's happening. Have you seen the newest Ace Ventura? He's a human detective, but he's a dog. So he's a dog, but he's solving human crimes.

3:32:06He's solving human crimes. Sort of a grunt situation.

3:32:09David Sims:you know what's weird in the third one they recreate the opening of the first Ace Ventura except he's sucking you guys off finally we got our due

3:32:19Griffin Newman:he rewards you for him doing a good job who is there an Ace Ventura Jr. or something like that it's a it is also weird they show our hogs and we have like red rocket hogs which is very strange the little lipstick the lipstick hogs Ace Venture, Pet Detective. I've talked about it before. I don't know if I'll ever do it on this show because it's just kind of like it has this nasty, you know, undertone to it. Well, right.

3:32:48David Sims:Yes. And then the second one is perhaps incredibly racist. Right.

3:32:52Griffin Newman:Yeah. But it's just such an interesting movie because it is Carrie doing that shit on top of a hard-boiled noir with like not much embellishment. Like the plot of that movie is pretty dark.

3:33:03David Sims:We were saying that that movie was clearly meant to be the joke is it's Chinatown, but they're investigating pets and it's played straight. And he came in and was like, what if I just do all the bits on top of this?

3:33:13Griffin Newman:And it's so weird. It's such a weird movie. Alright, number four of the box stuff is a very good comedy, a black comedy that I like a lot. Starring Oh boy. Starring, yeah, normal guy. Normal guy? I mean, the main star is we like him. He's a stand-up comic who's becoming hot at the time. In this moment. Yep. And he does a lot of movies. And then there's a husband-wife in the movie and the husband's played by a normal guy. Gutenberg? No, no, way more normal than that. Oh, it's The Ref. The film is The Ref. It is... Dennis. Dennis Leary. Dennis Leary. Judy Davis. Judy Davis. And who's this playing the husband here?

3:33:52Griffin Newman:Nicholas Frank Weiger. You gotta let this guy be Frank. Kevin Spacey. Spacey. Oh, wow, with Spacey, right? What the hell were you doing over there? I was spacing out. You were spacing out. In a way, he was paying respect. he was getting spacey no I didn't realize you were teaming up what are you playing with but I was just I realized while I was talking about this I had fucking spacey's in it hostile hostages in Britain famously that's what it was called yep I don't know why I guess they were like Brits won't know what refs are I'm like I think they do that's a fun movie though that's a really good movie yeah a demi movie yeah have you guys seen the ref yes many years ago good movie yeah and just any movie where Leary's like ah you fucking guys complains about shit maple syrup in my coffee or whatever I'm just always like, yeah, this is great.

3:34:36Griffin Newman:It's in my, he's in my blood. You know, Leary, I love the guy. I do too. I'm a huge Dennis Leary defender, especially that he stole Bill Hicks's drugs. I think that's the best thing you did. Fuck that guy. Yeah. Number five of the box office. No jokes to be made about this one. It won Best Picture in 1993. Forrest Gump? No. Oh, 1993.

3:34:55David Sims:Before?

3:34:56Griffin Newman:Fuck. We covered it on this podcast. Yeah. It's like a four hour episode. So 90. That's what we're capable of doing these days. 90. Schindler's List. Schindler's List. Still in the box office, obviously. Wow. We've also got Steven Seagal's On Deadly Ground. Is that the one where he's like saving the forest? Yeah, that's like beginning of the end for him. Right. It's the one he directed. The environmental one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got that movie Greedy. What the hell is that?

3:35:25David Sims:Greedy is like Kirk Douglas and Michael J. Fox and James Wan always cites it as having one of his favorite twist endings in movies. and I've never looked up what it is because I'm like, I should watch it at some point if no one spoiled the ending of Greedy for me. Okay. I've never seen it. I don't know. Maybe there's a pleasant surprise.

3:35:44Griffin Newman:Number eight, most quotable comedy of all time. Hello. Of course, that's Mrs. Doubtfire. Mm-hmm. Wow. Number nine is a film called Angie. That was a hint I gave in a box office game many years ago.

3:35:59David Sims:He said it's really quotable and I said, give me one of the quotes and Ben's response was, hello. Hello!

3:36:06Griffin Newman:Angie, it's a Gina Davis movie. I was going to say. Never heard of it. Martha Coolidge movie, though. Yeah. And number 10, well, there's some rando movies in this box office. A movie called Eight Seconds, which is a John G. Oh, I remember this movie. Biopic about a bull rider. Yeah, yeah. Where it's like eight seconds is the length of time you have to stay on your bull to get a score. Starring whom? Luke Perry. Oh. As a rodeo legend.

3:36:31David Sims:Who's the second lead in that? Stephen Baldwin. That's why I was looking it up. Do you know Stephen Baldwin has a movie podcast now? Oh, is it good? Normal? It seems normal, but I keep getting... No, it can't be normal. What are you talking about? It seems very strange, but I keep getting fed fucking clips in the algorithm, and then I was like, I got to chart his career, and that's why I saw this movie. Hey, did you ever see the movie Nine Seconds? The Bull Rider?

3:36:57In nine seconds, the Bull Rider, he's not human anymore. Oh, that's wild. Do you know what he is? The bull rider? Can you guess what he is? What is he? A dog.

3:37:12You think he would be a bull, maybe. I'd love to see a dog ride a bull. That'd be amazing.

3:37:17Griffin Newman:You'd love to see that. You should see 10 seconds. One bad movie with Stephen Baldwin. Bad movies. We all love them. Does he talk like that, too? No, he talks like that. Because he's like Bernie Rubble. yeah right he was Barney he was the second Barney Rubble but that's what he sounds like his regular speaking voice was like yeah I remember I was making movies he's bad in Usual Suspects and everyone else in that movie is good and at the time you're kind of like oh well he's just being big and then you rewatch it like no he sucks in this they talk about

3:37:49David Sims:cause Alec was on recently and just dragged his brother for like two hours right I mean he's a shitty actor and was just like Usual Suspects blows up and everyone's big and Spacey wins the Oscar and everyone goes on to greater things and then you're Barney Rubble. And there's this notion he'll talk about in other episodes where he's like, you know, and everyone wanted me to be the next Tom Cruise and I want to go a different way. And it was just clear that everyone was just like, we know what your ceiling is. Yeah, you're not even as good as Billy Barber. Here's the script to bio, though. You're right.

3:38:16David Sims:But one bad movie is setting itself up like it's how did this get made and then like every clip I've seen is just him having other kind of middling 90s former movie stars on and them complaining about their falling career. That sounds good. It's like him and Jamie Kennedy and shit. Is he right wing or is he hardcore? He was like the first guy to endorse Trump. And super, super Catholic. And Billy is left wing. Billy seems to be normal. Billy is doing the best at all. Yeah, and he's a good actor.

3:38:43Griffin Newman:Billy Baldwin's a good actor. Is Billy the new Baldwin? I think it's the Baldwin.

3:38:47David Sims:I put forth the argument recently. What if I push my chips in on Alec now? That Billy has by default become America's top Baldwin. I think so, yeah.

3:38:55Griffin Newman:What about James? or no sorry Daniel. Daniel's a hero. James Baldwin is the legendary novelist of course but it's not a Baldwin brother. Adam Baldwin also not a Baldwin brother. Right. But and but politics. Yes he's great. That was Adam Baldwin was the first example of me following a celebrity on Twitter dot com back when Twitter was like you know posting pictures of your breakfast or whatever. And I was like oh I love that guy. I like it was just all day like tweeting right wing shit and I was like oh

3:39:22David Sims:what a bummer to learn this. I almost sent this to you guys but Deadline had a story the other day that was Daniel Baldwin joins cast of Jurassic Rebirth. And I was like, what? He was like, oh, they're making some fucking ripoff movie. David's playing the clock. Oh my God. Just called Jurassic Rebirth and they're like, if we take the word world out, wow, people mistakenly watch this. That's good.

3:39:45Griffin Newman:Yeah, that's good. He, I think he's the star of Cleaver. Oh, okay. Sopranos, He's the star. He's Tony Soprano. Yeah, no, Daniel is. Daniel is and it makes sense in world you're like yeah that's who they could get

3:40:00David Sims:yeah

3:40:01Griffin Newman:that's all

3:40:02David Sims:guys thank you for being on the show thank you for having me you guys got anything

3:40:05Griffin Newman:more to talk about so we I had a you had a coffee date like 45 minutes here's the thing I scheduled something with a mutual friend yeah we gotta go Griffin yeah we gotta go

3:40:18David Sims:we gotta get to Mission Impossible oh my god yeah texted me fully because we're supposed to meet at 45 minutes ago we were supposed to meet. Texted me fully 50 minutes ago. Any sense of how much longer you guys have box office game started at least? I replied that the box office game hasn't started yet, which it would not for another half hour. His response was, LMAO these motherfuckers. This is someone we work with, by the way. I'm really sorry.

3:40:45Griffin Newman:I wanted this to end. Speaking of us with utter contempt.

3:40:48David Sims:I'm going to pee again. Thank you for being here. Everyone should listen to Doughboys if they're not already. 10 glorious years. I mean, it's very funny. We come on the show and you guys are both very smart and we're like, duh. And then we go off about dogs for replacing humans in Beethoven movies. That's all we can really add to the conversation. We're very dumb. No, you guys are. And he likes to pretend like he's smart, like he's the wagger of the podcast. Oh, yeah. I know. We all know that. We figured it out. Mitch tries to pretend that he's dumb. He's actually a fucking genius. He's so fucking smart.

3:41:18And smart as shit.

3:41:19David Sims:You know who else is really smart? Ben. Ben's not smart as fuck. You and Ben are so fucking smart. What? He's so good at playing it, too, because he's wearing a cap and gown right now. Yeah. He's holding a diploma. Motherfucker's a genius. From, like, a really good college. I just want to say that I really liked Hudsucker Proxy. I'm really happy you liked it. Yeah, I loved revisiting it. Great movie. I wasn't worried you'd dislike it, but for me, it's such a vibe movie that I just enjoy so thoroughly that like I didn't want to run the risk of you being like, yeah, it's cute. Like, you know, I defy Jay Sherman to say that Hudsucker Proxy stinks.

3:42:02That's what I say.

3:42:03David Sims:I can't think of a more beautiful way to end this episode. I can also say to anyone who hasn't watched this movie that maybe there's one you're like skipping over if you're not. I think this one's worth watching. I mean, like all the Coen Brothers movies are worth watching, but like I would not skip over this one. It's visuals. You might. Yeah, you might end up absolutely loving it. I truly think there is no other movie that looks like this in history. And one of the best reviews I read that I'm now forgetting who wrote it and how to cite them said, like, the technology had finally cut up and the budgets of Hollywood films had inflated to a point where they could make a screwball comedy that looked the way the dialogue used to sound.

3:42:40David Sims:And everything was buzzing at that level. Thank you all for listening. Can I just one last thing? Oh, please. Absolutely. Have you seen Hotsucker Proxy 2? No, I haven't yet, actually. it just might be confusing to some people who haven't. It's weird that we've gone this long and haven't talked about the fact that there was a sequel. Okay, that's all. Is there anything you want to say about it? Just that you might be confused because the characters are dogs. The characters are dogs. Please tune in next week for Fargo. Coen Brothers' first Oscar win. And as always, and I know we've gone way too long, we've got to end the episode.

3:43:20David Sims:but can I just ask one final question? What's more famous, hula hoop or frisbee? I think frisbee. You think frisbee's today is more famous than hula hoop? Because it's part of games. No one's doing like hula hooping at college. Okay, but so then here's a question. People do frolf. What's more famous, games or toys? You're sleeping. He's handing in his resignation papers.

3:43:57Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in The Great American Novel. with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to BlankCheckPod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

3:44:36Join 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.