The Last Wave with BenDavid Grabinski

9:37Griffin Newman:How old are you, Ben David? And we should introduce the podcast. I'm 42. I also set up a thread that I still need to pay off. I will be 43 when this comes out. Okay, well, I'm just going to... But I'm 42. I'm going to call you out.

9:47David Sims:I'm going to be 37 when this comes out. Yeah. Am I going to be 40? I think it's still short of it.

9:52Griffin Newman:No, no, it's still 39. Phew. Wow, wow. But as someone who's a little older than me, I think that's a little embarrassing. But it's fine. So it came out and I was like, I don't know, 20 and I saw it and it made me cry. And then... All the faucets turn off. Because he can't cry, but they can. This cute girl came over and we got really stoned and listened to the soundtrack on repeat for hours talking about the movie on CD. I mean, it was a simpler time. It felt really important at the time. I'm like, the symmetrical framing. It just captures what it's like to be 20. If there's one thing that movie has to offer you, it is quite a lot of framing.

10:26So I've not seen it since then. So I will, because I'm sure, I'm sure that I will have some more complicated feelings. The Last of the Mohicans? Good.

10:36Griffin Newman:The Last Samurai? Not so good. Go ahead.

10:38David Sims:We're setting up too many threads simultaneously. The Last of the Mohicans is a masterpiece.

10:41Griffin Newman:I also love Garden State

10:43David Sims:from the state of New Jersey. When's the last time you watched it? It's been a while. Yeah.

10:47Griffin Newman:But yeah, similarly, it was like we were like in the pocket age-wise. Right, right, right.

10:53David Sims:You ever yell at a dump? A hole. They yell into a big hole. They yell on top of a dumpster into a hole. Have you ever gone to New Jersey with Griffin and then got stranded there and we had to take a cab back? That's a whole other conversation.

11:03Griffin Newman:I'm pretty sure that all of you were part of that misadventure. That was a real classic. David's getting texts from multiple people about what's going down. Read Ben's text.

11:13David Sims:Yeah, of course. The Last Castle kind of meh. 11.43 a.m. Y 'all, this movie wet as hell. I just needed to get that out. I've been trying to say that for 10 minutes. I'm so sorry.

11:24Griffin Newman:Y 'all, this movie wet as hell. Transformers The Last Knight. Are we counting that one? Not one of the better ones. It's interesting how much... Solidly in the middle, but that's by Transformers. I swing between that

11:34David Sims:and Age of Extinction of like which one is more engagingly deranged. I think that one's more engagingly deranged. Mark Wahlberg being revealed as the last night of the round table and also Anthony Hopkins dying in a robot saying, of all the men I've ever served, you were the coolest. First of all, spoiler. Secondly, that's not just a robot that is Cogman. Anthony Hopkins, human-sized robot, butler that does not transform. Played by Jim Carter. And is a self-identified sociopath. Yes, who also sings opera. Which he says before he takes living fish and beats them on the ground on the fucking like grid of a submarine into submission so he can eat them.

12:17Okay, last night. I sort of forgot about that part. Good guy. Has a sequence that no human being alive, including Michael Bay or anyone who worked on it, can tell me where it takes place. There's a scene where they like take a ship up into the sky but then crash land in the sky in what looks like Iceland.

12:33David Sims:Oh, I can tell you where that takes place. In my wildest dreams. Well, it's wonderful. In my best imagination. They like crash land in the sky on Earth and then get up to race away from it to come back down to Earth. And I can't figure it out. Ben's showing Griffin something important. It's South America. I was trying to queue it up on the Criterion app and Ben got it before I did. He was born there. I see. Bridget Chamberlain is born in South America. Do we delete 49 minutes of us discussing it? No, it's all in. Or just leave it in? I feel so much better because I'm like, I've seen this movie a lot and I don't remember.

13:11Griffin Newman:You are the most views of this movie of my Letterboxd friends. Very few people have seen this movie total. You've seen it like four times.

13:20David Sims:And I told you we're finally doing weird. Knew you had a new movie coming out. It was a time to get you back on. And I feel like this was immediately. You said I would do anything. I basically would be happy to do any Weir episode but your passion for this one punched through really quickly.

13:35Griffin Newman:Especially since it's less requested. There's two Weirs in pop culture that really, really matter to me. Obviously, Peter Weir. Second, Lindsay Weir. Lindsay Weir. We've made a couple Lindsay Weir jokes. I probably love all the Weirs equally. Actually, maybe the dad the most. Sam? You're not a Sam guy? I mean, for life. But the dad, I mean, comedy legacy. Yes. It was the worst$15 I ever spent, whatever he says about losing his virginity. It's so fucking funny.

14:07David Sims:My favorite is the episode where he's trying to get them invested in the idea of family game night because the Weirs need to spend more time together. And he keeps on trying to convince them that the card game pit's really exciting. And at the end, Becky Ann Baker convinces him to loosen his grip and let them live their own lives. And then she's like, okay, well, let's finish the game. And he goes, I don't want to play this. It's a terrible game.

14:27Griffin Newman:Joe Flaherty is I mean RIP he died pretty recently money in the goddamn bank just can be angry about anything so in October I was doing this thing where I would like watch these YouTube blocks of like horror programming and they would there's a bunch of these where they find like all these anthology shows sort of like Tales from the Crypt that you've never heard of and they have an episode and they'd be like written by Andrew Kevin Walker and crazy and I'd sent you one where it was this horror show hosted by Joe Flaherty. And then it was an episode all about Catherine O 'Hara being a nun who if she fell in love with someone, they would like blow up.

15:05And I'm forgetting the details of it.

15:07David Sims:He had a character called Count Floyd on SCTV. He's iconic. That's why he dresses up as a vampire. Right. That was his local. Exactly. And then on the Ed Grimley cartoon show, which listeners might be astonished to hear.

15:19Griffin Newman:I'm sorry, Griff. There are no more listeners on this episode. They all just left. They rode the wave out of here 10 minutes. I'm hearing a flat line

15:27David Sims:in the distance. A thing that young Griffin Newman hyper-fixated on.

15:33Griffin Newman:It's a double wheel. Griffin, is it possible that I had a lunchbox of the Grimley cartoon? Did that exist? Or is that just some weird memory I have? No, probably.

15:43David Sims:There was merch. There's talking Ed Grimley dolls that are in the animation style. But Count Floyd would appear in live-action segments. They would cut to Count Floyd on Ed Grimley's TV. so conflict was very important in my childhood I mean

15:59Griffin Newman:that's just the kind of statement that only Griffin Newman would make these days but I completely believe it well because free speech is illegal you're not allowed to talk about on CTV anymore because of the tariffs I didn't know that there was a live action Grimly I had known the cartoon

16:13David Sims:that was my introduction as well yeah and I got very confused between animated Ed Grimly and live action Pee Wee Herman because they both had cowlicks okay well what about the Ace Ventures cartoon Thank you. Thank you so much. With Griffin and David, that's a whole other conversation about how in 1994, Jim Carrey had $300 million domestic grocers and by 1996, all three were converted into Saturday morning cartoons on rival networks. You've actually just set up a perfect transition to a thing I have to admit. Yeah, I still haven't introduced the pod, by the way. So last time I was on the show, we all agreed that I would not come back until you were doing a Tom Shady X series and I was going to do Dragonfly.

16:51David Sims:I had originally promised that if the podcast made it to 10 years, we would cover Tom Shadiac. And this, of course, is the 11th year of the podcast. And I want to promise that we will do it on year 20. Well, I wasn't sure what we were doing today. And I texted you for clarity and you didn't respond. So I watched both of these to prepare. You also watched Dragonfly. I watched Dragonfly yesterday and I prepared a bunch of talking points in case we want to get into both of them.

17:16Griffin Newman:Isn't Dragonfly one of those movies that's very hard to, like, it doesn't exist? Universal? There was a, I rented it on iTunes yesterday and watched it and took notes.

17:24David Sims:Universal has been doing a thing I really appreciate on their home entertainment channel. Once a month, they do a grid post that is new to digital. And it is, here are 20 movies that have been out of circulation that we're proud to tell you are now rentable on digital platforms. Oh, good. And mostly it's like 30s, 40s programming stuff. But they finally got Dragonfly back. Dragonfly in the grid. You just, you know how much That was a movie that was impossible to watch. Timing helped you with this bit.

17:50Griffin Newman:Because three weeks ago, this bit would have been impossible. I have something to say about Dragonfly or is it frequency? Fuck. It's probably frequency. What I have to say about Dragonfly so it's about Dr. Joe Darrow played by Kevin Costner and his wife dies because she's on a bus filled with school kids that drives off a cliff into a lake and they all drown.

18:08David Sims:Okay. And he can communicate with them? Where was Superman? Well this is the problem. He told Superman this. Okay.

18:14Griffin Newman:I'm just going to make my point and then we're going to introduce our guest. I just rewatched the Michael Haneke film The Piano Teacher. Okay. Okay. because I'm watching all of my discs that I bought, and I bought that umbrella set. You bought the umbrella, not the Curzon. Correct. Interesting. That's what happened. Okay. Good set. I bought it a while. Very good. Very well done.

18:35David Sims:I've been struggling to figure out which is the one to buy.

18:37Griffin Newman:They both seem good to me. I don't know. Hate to get it wrong. There's a scene in The Piano Teacher where Isabelle Uppel is sitting at a cafe or whatever, and there's a poster for the movie Frequency behind her. And I was like, that's so weird. in this like dour fucking movie about this woman who's like got a sadomasochistic relationship. It's like, oh yeah, Frequency. But Frequency is not Dragonfly. But they are both about like communicating across sort of a mystical barrier,

19:07David Sims:you know, similar ideas. Frequency is like CB radio field of dreams. It's Jim Caviezel. Talk to your dead dad.

19:15Griffin Newman:It's Caviezel and Craig. It's podcast time travel. Right, right, right. And Dragonfly is near death experiences. the doctor. Yeah, so he doesn't believe in the afterlife and they bring this person who OD'd in a way to try to kill themselves into the emergency room after his wife dies and he says, I'm only interested in saving people who want to live. So this person gets sent to another doctor. He talks to her and she gets really upset saying, why'd you bring me back? And he said, because there's no heaven and there's no afterlife. This is it. So you shouldn't kill yourself. And then he ends up believing in the afterlife.

19:48That's the big spoiler. Fuck you, Costner. And also, I'm very sorry for interrupting you, David. From now on, I'm like Michael Douglas at the end of Traffic. I'm here to listen.

19:56Griffin Newman:Is that what he says in Traffic?

19:59David Sims:I consider and concede for the first time that maybe drugs are bad. What is he listening to? It's because his daughter's like, hey. Well, it's because Harrison Ford was interested and they added a bunch of scenes to that character and then Harrison Ford decided not to do that.

20:14Griffin Newman:But he's like a really aggressive. It was not the kind of movie that his viewers wanted to see. Is he a DEA agent? He's the drug czar. Right. The idea in traffic is that he has been appointed drug czar and the war on drugs and then it turns out his daughter is a heroin addict. So is he like listening to the plight of addiction? No, he's at her drug thing. He comes to her like her AA or whatever it is. Right.

20:36David Sims:He's understanding the human struggle within a thing that he is viewed as a war.

20:41Griffin Newman:I recently read Ed Zwick's memoir. Congrats. Memoir. Yeah. And obviously one of the more interesting things about Ed Zwick is the two Oscar nominations he got were for producing movies that other people directed.

20:54David Sims:So it's Shakespeare in Love and Traffic. I mean, he may have gotten other...

20:58Griffin Newman:I think those are his only two not. I think so. And he won. He has an Oscar. He sure does, and he talks about that. For Shakespeare in Love. So he has to devote chapters to those movies that he did not make. And he's, you know, it's interesting. Anyway, he talks about Traffic, and yeah, apparently Ford at a certain point just sent a message being like, my fans don't want me in a movie like this right now. That's just...

21:20David Sims:Get off that heroin. That's Harrison Ford telling someone to kick their habit. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I am Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, sometimes they hate you like a giant fucking wave. Sploosh! Sploosh indeed. This is a miniseries on the films of Peter Weir. I regret to inform you, the miniseries is titled Podnik at Hanging Cast because I was overruled on...

21:56David Sims:Every week you complain. Podster and Castmander, the pod side of the cast. Has one guest agreed with you so far? No, this guest doesn't. Yeah. Every guest is like... Not yet. Not yet. Today joining us, returning to the show, a dear friend to talk about The Last Wave. he is the writer and director of the new just about to be released recently released that's actually the funniest thing about this is by the time this comes out it will have already been at South By and it'll have reviews and it'll be about to come out and I don't know how that's going to go I bet it goes so good but the last movie I made was supposed to premiere at Tribeca 2020 Yes.

22:41And some interesting things happen. Yeah. So I am like psychologically incapable of counting on anything happening between now and when this drops. But let's just assume it all worked out and it was great.

22:53David Sims:Ben David, you have nothing to worry about because everything at this present moment, the first week of February 2026 has been normal, coming off a normal January. And I can't see any scenario in which things would get crazier. The news is great. Nothing bad is happening right now at all. I love just watching the news and relaxing. and unwinding at the end of a long day. But if you're looking to get amped up and have a good time, you can watch Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice on Hulu. And Disney Plus. And Disney Plus. The main thing that matters is someday we're going to find out what Sims thinks of all the Gilmore Girls references in it.

23:27Griffin Newman:I mean...

23:28David Sims:You've yet to seen the picture.

23:29Griffin Newman:I have not yet seen it.

23:30David Sims:I want it. Hosley and I have seen it twice. It has a tremendous amount of Gilmore Girls content. That's a spoiler. Thematically interwoven.

23:37Griffin Newman:As I think Ben David knows, I'm a very, very, very deeply devoted fan of the television show Gilmore Girls. I've written about it quite floridly. Once on a date, a girl that I was on a date with realized that I was the David Simmons of the AV club, not a celebrity, to be clear. She was like, oh, right. And then she was like, wait, did you write that Gilmore Girls thing? And I was like, huh? And then she called it up and started like reading it to me being like, I can't believe a boy wrote this. Not in a bad way. She was sort of, she was positive, but she was also like, this is crazy.

24:10David Sims:That's like the When Harry Met Sally scene. Back then. Where Carrie Fisher quotes Bruno Kirby to him. Yes. And he's like, I wrote that. In a magazine.

24:17Griffin Newman:Yeah, I mean, this is a pretty sexy scene. She's like, I never quote articles. It's a good scene. Yeah. Didn't work out. But great, great, great moment for me. My condolences. Back then, Gilmore Girls, you know, people, people lived in the shadows.

24:30David Sims:Our guest today. Considering it great art. Is Ben David Grabinski, a.k.a. a joke we somehow didn't call out in your previous episode, Ben David Grabinski? Your name already contains two out of the three of us, and it requires very few letters to make it all three. If I remember correctly, it was a different time because I lived in Los Angeles then and I live in New York now. So it feels like lifetimes ago. I think it was hours into it when someone said, wait, your name's Ben David, and we keep saying Ben and David. This might be confusing. yes yes when I say you on the podcast it sometimes gets are you named for multiple people is that the great question I think like here in the same way that you guys had that uh we had a job we had a discussion about John Travolta on the podcast that ended up happening in a whole other podcast where it was almost like verbatim and I was like I feel like I've heard this conversation somewhere I realized like we had had it I bet you this was asked last time it may have been I'm sorry but But if it wasn't, I was named Ben David.

25:32I was born on Lincoln's birthday in Lincoln, Nebraska. And my parents were going to name me Abe. And when they were sleep deprived, someone thought, that's kind of weird. So we're going to name him Ben David. And there was never any reasoning given beyond that. No justification. My 42 years on the plan.

25:47Griffin Newman:Let's pivot off of Abe. Let's find something normal. And they kind of crashed two normal names together. There's been no explanation ever. That was just an impulsive thing someone thought of. So your birthday is in a week or so if you were born in Abraham Lincoln's birthday, which is, of course, February 12th.

26:03David Sims:Excuse me. Ben David and I, our birthdays are exactly one week apart and we're very close. All right, so I got... Much like when Marie sits at that desk, it is the desk that is closest to me and reserved for the person whose birthday is closest to mine. All right, so last year, Griff and I had a joint birthday party. We did. And then the bartender made a very special elaborate drink for the birthday boy. The great Tom Wolfson, who's a loyal longtime Blankie. The guy was amazing. Sunken Harbor Club in New York City, one of our favorite bars, if not our number one favorite bar. One of the great tiki bars in New York City.

26:35David Sims:It's incredible. It's a wonderful place. And it's a tiki bar minus all problematic elements. Yes.

26:42Griffin Newman:It is a thing I want to actually communicate to people. It's really more of a like nautical bar. It is. Right.

26:47David Sims:Like it's like an undersea bar. It is tiki style drinks in basically what feels like 20 ,000 leagues under the sea. It's like old British crusty men. It's closer to a Master and Commander bar.

26:57Griffin Newman:Now, listeners might be surprised to learn that part of the deal with some of the drinks is there's a little performance.

27:05David Sims:There's some performance. There's sugar. There's lights. There's music. The place feels like a high-end kind of Disney attraction. It feels like a theme park. You feel like you're underwater and that you hear the waves rustling. Shocking that Griffin Newman would gravitate to a place like this. I know that this is his favorite. We share many common interests. I should mention Ben David's other major credits, of course. Scott Pilgrim takes off the film happily, and most importantly, founding member of the historic group text, the 4DX Club, which despite Sims' jokes, is not a sausage party. And in fact, we are the comfortable male-identifying minority in the group text.

27:42David Sims:This is, the 4DX Club is a matriarchy. Wait, is 40 % of the 4DX group men? I think that's true. Correct. All right. Anyway, we got to get to the punchline of this drink.

27:51Griffin Newman:I don't think I've ever accused 40X of being too male. I called out the 40X club

27:55David Sims:and you went, oh, bet there was a lot of women in that group text. Sounds like a great gag by me. Wrong! This group text has binders full of women. Three. Three binders. Sunken Harbor Club. Tom Wolfson sets us up. A gentleman and a scholar. I will let you now deliver the punchline. So, um, at some point, they're like, well, here's the birthday boy. He calls me over. And there's birthday boys plural, but they behave as if there's only one, and you can explain what happened. He hands me an envelope with like a red light keychain to locate a hidden message that I then say out loud to the bartender.

28:36David Sims:And then I believe they start playing the Lalo Schifrin music, do an entire act out of being suspicious and trying to sneak around the bar, and then construct something and light it on fire and hand it to me. With like a lot of pomp and circumstance. and I go like, did you just fucking see that? How fucking cool is that? We get like a Mission Impossible drink for our birthday. You should go up and order it. And I hand you the envelope and I'm like, here's the password. And then what happens? And the guy's like, oh, we only plan one because it's his birthday. We have exactly one amount of money.

29:08And I have an IMF tattoo. I ran a Mission Impossible 2 website in high school and I didn't get the Mission Impossible drink. So I think the great thing about New York is it's just humbling. You know, ever since I moved here, every single situation just, you know, they're like, you don't get a Mission Impossible drink. And I'm like, well, that's good.

29:25David Sims:It's also funny that the left side of your tattoo is part one and the right side of your tattoo is something different. This is the final tattoo? It just is like, no, but it was always supposed to be this design. I think we should. Wait, I have one more thing about Tiki Bars. So, you know, is it Trader Sam's at Disneyland? Yes, correct. I was watching for the first time recently the Eddie Murphy Haunted Mansion. Oh, yeah, not a good film. They shoot a scene in Trading Sam's. Yes. It had just opened. It's kind of overlit. It is. That whole movie, I would say, is overlit for a haunted house comedy.

29:55David Sims:Well, Rob Minkoff, you know,

29:57Griffin Newman:he was a cartoon director. So yeah, had a big light on the cartoons as you drew them, maybe, and he never learned his lesson. Sims, that's an incredible insight. You're right. I say that in like an academic setting

30:09David Sims:and someone's like, fire this man. You can't draw in the dark so animators don't know how to shoot live action other than to just...

30:17Griffin Newman:Hey, it's me, David Sims. I'm here to teach Film 101. Why is the Haunted Mansion overlit? But, uh, I don't know. Cartoonists need big lights to see all the cartoons they draw.

30:25David Sims:Minkoff on set with a big bullhorn. I need 80 more desk lamps. Can't see everything. Pointing desk lamps that Eddie Murphy's had. That movie ends with a Nelly song that samples the theme from People's Court. Yes.

30:36Griffin Newman:Sounds pretty good. Yeah. Who else is in the Haunted Mansion with Eddie Murphy?

30:40David Sims:Well, there's one slam dunk piece of casting, which is Terrence Stamp as a creepy butler, like as a ghost butler. And then Wallace Sean is like a creepy horseman. Wallace Shawn

30:51Griffin Newman:Carriageman Wallace Shawn is indeed it seems maybe third build which I love the guy yeah maybe you're in trouble if if he's that high up

31:01David Sims:on the call sheet but he's Evers and Evers Realty he's trying to sell the haunted mansion he and his family have to stay there for a night so most of it is his wife and his two children Marsha Thompson is that maybe the name of the actress so you want a great transition please Marsha Thompson there we go from Lost which clearly was inspired by Fearless by Peter Weir. By Peter Weir. We're making it weird today. Today we're talking about The Last Wave, Peter Weir's third film. What is interesting about Peter Weir's career versus many other directors we've covered is like these three films kind of come out as like one movement of expression.

31:38David Sims:Right?

31:38Griffin Newman:Like he's sort of just like... Yeah, they sort of all... Right. It's not like it happened simultaneously, but he set several balls rolling and so it's not like he did the last, we'll talk about it, but he did the last wave based off of his success of Picnic and Hanging Rock. It was already well in motion by the time Picnic was in post-production or whatever.

31:58David Sims:Right. The success of Picnic got him a little extra money for this, but yeah, these three films just sort of like started rolling at the same time and then come out in very short succession.

32:09Griffin Newman:Certainly true and I guess it's sort of the breadth of, I mean, Gallipoli is probably the big thing for him, but like, and you're living in your sleep. But like the breadth of like genres, moods, tones that he's showing here. If I'm in Hollywood, I'm kind of like, this guy feels like he could do a lot of stuff.

32:27David Sims:A lot of, a lot of our favorite types of directors to cover talk about like early in your career, you start to strategize. How do I not get pigeonholed into being one thing? How do I prove that I can make all different types of movies? A lot of careers go astray when someone is like, I want to prove that I can make this kind of thing. And then their second film abandons everything their first film does well and their career stumbles. But Peter Weir kind of has the perfect version of it where the first three movies, he's like, here's a fucking tapestry. Let me work. When did you see The Last Wave for the first time?

32:59David Sims:Ben David Gravansky. Because for me, it's a couple nights ago. Yeah. You hadn't seen it before? No. I mean, I respect that. You said that very dismissively. No, no, no.

33:08Griffin Newman:I simply had not. I don't have to tell you. So, like, Weir is one of my guys. And based on actually what you just talked about, it was like a real accidental thing, right? Like three movies as a kid that meant everything to me, but I didn't know like what directors were besides like, I don't know who Tim Burton was and like Spielberg. But I'd seen Dead Poets Society, which I fucking loved. In school, they show me Gallipoli, which traumatized me. And I just watched it two days ago and it made me cry so hard I almost vomited. Things didn't go great in Gallipoli. But Gallipoli has, I think, it is maybe the saddest movie ever.

33:49I was like, I got so upset. I was like an adult and I cried so hard I almost puked.

33:54David Sims:Ben David knows me well enough that he texted the other night, I advise you to not watch Gallipoli right before recording because I think the ending will leave you in a bad mood. I was like, oh, good, night before.

34:05Griffin Newman:It ends with someone just staring into the camera being like, fuck Griffin Newman, by the way. That guy sucks. What the fuck is that? He's bad at podcasting. Anyway, roll the credit. Who the fuck wrote this?

34:15David Sims:The end of the movie. Kyle Chandler's character from early edition? He got posts from our Reddit? The end of the movie is Mel Gibson looking at the camera and saying, Griffin Newman's Arnold impression is terrible. Yeah, and I'm like, I'm not going to fight you on that. I wasn't arguing, it wasn't. It just feels like a weird use of your platform. But the other movie was Witness, which I saw on TV with commercials on like KUTP 45. And as a kid, like, you know, Raiders and Han Solo, like that was your shit. And I watched Witness and I'm like, this is the greatest thing ever correct correct reaction and that but also just that it i'd never seen anything like it because it's like you think you're watching like a cop movie but you're also watching this unbelievable sad love story and like this introduction of the world of the amish and i'm like this is like the greatest movie ever so like these three movies that i i really like um and i have no idea like they're the same guy until i'm you know like in my late teens or whatever and then the i say true i was obsessed with truman show like i had the score on cd and i would like listen to it all the time but what happened the reason i got into this movie is uh very dumb and weird but like garden state but in a different way uh my freshman year of college i saw donnie darko and i was so into it and the thing i couldn't put a finger on was like the vibe of like the world is ending and this is melancholy and but it's also not devastating it's sort of like this slow crawl where like a lead character sort of feeling like the world around him is like reaching the end but also the world around him is like revealing itself it's explaining what he maybe had always kind of felt and couldn't put his finger on and i i did this thing back then i was like very formative for me which is if i really liked a movie i tried to figure out what inspired the director which is how i ended up becoming such a huge demi fan was because like pt wouldn't stop talking about him and there was an interview with richard kelly where he mentioned the last wave i'm like what the fuck is the last wave so i got it from netflix dvd mailed to me and i watched it and it like fucked me up and i hadn't seen twin peaks yet uh i actually started what i think i watched twin peaks for the first time like actually right after that.

36:29And I hadn't seen a ton of Lynch. And there was a mood to it that felt very singular. And now I've realized that there's a few masters of it. But that thing of just the mounting dread, the reality and the things you're imagining or your dreams kind of bleeding into each other. And it just really clicked for me. And I think I realized later my love of both of those movies at the time and now is actually partially let's get weird is connected to like growing up super Christian like I was I went to like a Christian school from like age 5 to like 12 and went to way too much church and like Baptist church and they made you feel 24-7 like the world was going to end at any moment and if you're not saved you're fucked so it's like you need to like become a Christian before the rapture and the end times are real and all this stuff and I think I grew up really genuinely thinking that the world was going to end because of that omnipresent feeling.

37:28David Sims:It is wild that that's a thing. Yeah. It's like where I would have like nightmares thinking I was going to wake up and all my friends would be gone and I was like alone.

37:35Griffin Newman:Instead, you should just tell your kids like, I don't know, be nice to each other. Right.

37:40David Sims:Yeah. Almost all forms of Christianity have some underpinning of like, and if the apocalypse happens tomorrow, it'd actually be good news. I would disagree with that.

37:48Griffin Newman:I would say most forms of Christianity do not. I would say it's the more, well, the more kind of like we really read the book and everything and it is true types that are like, no, no, no, no, no. Like the world's got to end for shit to be really good. Well, the blander Christianity is more in the realm of like, be nice to each other. And that's the stuff I like. Right. You know, not to defend Christianity, which is bad. No, no, you love it. For sure, I love it. Well, I would say I think that there's something very escapist for me about movies about the end of the world. that are not like, you know, Judeo-Christian, where it's about like this separate thing where you can enjoy it and then it's not like a callback to some kind of weird childhood trauma about that stuff.

38:31David Sims:I also think this movie is kind of about the like peeling back of a Judeo-Christian societal structure that was imposed upon a stolen land, you know? Like part of it is this white guy, South American, in origin.

38:50Griffin Newman:I guess so. Who's kind of like...

38:52David Sims:He was at least born there.

38:53Griffin Newman:Maybe he's the son of a diplomat or something. Right.

38:55David Sims:Let's not contest it now that we know he certainly was born there. I've never been wrong on this podcast once.

39:01Griffin Newman:No, no, no, no, no, no.

39:03David Sims:Never.

39:04Griffin Newman:Certainly not.

39:05David Sims:And I want to make this clear. Anytime I've been wrong, I am reading verbatim from the dossiers of J.J. Burke. Right. It's all his fault. Who will never be fired, but will always take the fall. No, but that it's sort of him like recognizing that there has been a suppression of the rules of the land and the world and life that this Judeo-Christian movement placed themselves on top of and have been like smothering. Right? It's like him peeling back the layers to like what the fuck is actually going on here.

39:37Griffin Newman:It's definitely a, right, it's a little bit about whatever's up with his bland ass as well as the wider, you know, implications of colonialism and, and, the arrival of white people in this country that is not their own totally chill arrival, right? With no issues. And then possibly, yes, like, I mean, I think Peter Weir just loves the idea of like, what if this like really prosaic, really fucking by the numbers guy had to believe in magic? You know, like, you know,

40:06David Sims:had to confront the supernatural. As he put it, the whole hook for him on this movie was like, what if a pragmatist experiences a premonition? Like that was the core animating idea. And who's the most to kind of think like start thinking like is that was that real? That wasn't just a weird dream. But I think there's something to what you're saying of like you know white people showing up not just wanting to like reap the riches of the land and massacre the people and claim everything for their own but also be like and by the way we come from our country where we cracked society. We understand how everything works.

40:41David Sims:Here's the system. Everyone conform to us now. And the indigenous people of whatever country they have taken over hostily are sort of forced to figure out how they exist in relation to that being the dominant societal structure. It's very similar to the movie Dragonfly. It's very similar to the movie Dragonfly, which is now available digitally from our friends at Universal Home Entertainment. Thank you. Thank you, UHE. Big planet. We love that big planet, don't we? You know, that's the logo. The globe. We love that globe.

41:12Griffin Newman:Big earth.

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42:55David Sims:I'm surprised you had never seen this before, David. Because you love Weir, although I recently said Weir's one of your main guys, and you went, it's less that he's one of my main guys and more that he's made some movies that are amongst my favorites and that he feels like a perfect encapsulation of the type of director I like to cover on this podcast.

43:15Griffin Newman:Exactly that. But I do love, love, love, love, love, love, a handful of the movies he's made and then I tend to pretty much like the rest of them. Except for Dead Poets Society, which we will talk about. Not a movie I hate, but a movie I'm very mixed on.

43:29David Sims:Sims was the negative Nellie on that episode. No offense to your wife, Ben.

43:34Griffin Newman:She's positive Nellie.

43:35David Sims:Of course. I just don't want anyone to get it mixed up. That is always how I describe them. There's negative Nelly and positive Nelly in one of the Sims. Maybe it's no problem Nelly. Maybe that's the way just so it's...

43:45Griffin Newman:Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the cleaner version is. Positive works. Sure. I've never seen The Way Back is the other one. I haven't seen Green Card in The Way Back, but the rest I've seen a lot. A movie I adore. The Way Back, it's just kind of crazy that I haven't seen it because like Colin Farrell's in it. It's wild that you didn't see it because Colin Farrell's in it. And it was the follow-up to Master and Commander. Yes. But of course, when it came out, everyone was like, snooze. And I was like, oh, I guess I won't bother. It got a makeup nomination.

44:16David Sims:It sure did. It was like enough at the periphery of the Oscar conversation that I'm even surprised I didn't watch it that year because that feels like peak obsessive. What if I watch literally every single nominee?

44:27Griffin Newman:But it got those classic snoozy reviews where everyone was just like, oh, it's fine, I suppose. You know, like there was just no enthusiasm for it. I've heard a couple of whispers of people being like, you know, that movie's underrated over the years, but very little.

44:41David Sims:I also think it's interesting that Weir was kind of a perfect example of a director who was beloved within the industry. It felt like, you know, he had a handful of director and picture nominations. A-list movie stars clearly loved him, flocked to him with their passion projects. But he was not really a household name. When you look at his like 90s films, they're sold as from the director of blank and blank. But Peter Weir was not kind of like known to the public as an auteur as much. And it feels like outside of Australia, where I think the first four or five films are so impactful. And he's such an important figure in the Australian new wave that there was a real kind of hometown hero, immediate kind of like claiming of him.

45:28David Sims:but I feel like when The Way Back comes out the Master and Commander I've had not fully I was there but you were there but it was a little bit of an outside opinion yeah that it was like the best movie ever made yes but if like two years ago they were like Peter Weir has returned to the cinema people would be with a Serbian refugee drama called The Way Back people would be hooting hollering I'm not saying to make a hundred million dollars

45:53Griffin Newman:but there would be a sort of right Right. But he has long been a director who is taken seriously, who, you know, makes big movies, blah, blah, blah. But people do not stand in the way of, you know, some big auteurs.

46:09David Sims:No, I do think Master and Commander growing made certain people revisit and do what you're saying, Ben David, of being like, oh, fuck, he directed all five of those movies I love. And there's been a little bit more of a retrospective auteurist swing on him.

46:24Griffin Newman:Now, why did you, Ben David, vibe with this movie specifically? Well, you said already, basically. But I would say that... Did you catch it on DVD? What was your first thing? Yeah, Netflix. Got in the mail. There is a... Proto-Quickster. The funny thing about it, there's stuff that you gravitate towards that also is not at all... It's not your sensibility, the stuff you're making. But a thing to me that I think is magic, if you can do it, is the movies that make it where you're blurring the lines between what's actually happening and what's not. Yes. And making you feel like you're in the same headspace as the person.

47:01My favorite of all time of that is Perfect Blue. Yes.

47:04David Sims:The Cone movies are my favorite execution of that, which is also one of my favorite things. It's like, if someone can make me feel like I'm losing my grip on reality alongside the lead character, I think that's just like a real, there's almost like a sense, there's like a magic to it, like between editing and sound design and music. And this movie to me is one of the most effective. Like he's taking stuff that's in Picnic at Hanging Rock, which I think is a better movie. I'd say, I think it's one of the best movies ever made, but this movie leans really hard into the feeling you get in the first third of that.

47:39Like when they're on that trip, that thing where like nature and, you know, this cosmic, almost like a cosmic horror kind of thing. it's like a very very sophisticated prestige version of that

47:53Griffin Newman:it's also I will say not an easy movie to sell someone under scribe in any way

47:59David Sims:we'll get into it in the dossier but the fascinating thing is that the success and at least like the critical sort of notoriety of Picnic at Hanging Rock translated to United Artists putting up a good chunk of the budget for this movie because they felt like is we're someone who's about to translate over to the states Which was true. And when they watched the final film, they were like, yeah, you can sell it to someone else to release it. We don't want to put this out.

48:22Griffin Newman:They had put the money into it. It's a weird one.

48:25David Sims:And production was done and they were like, feel free to shock.

48:26Griffin Newman:I mean, I'm not shocked because I think they saw it and they were probably like, this is very Australian. Like, this is not something that's going to translate. And my wife was like, what's the, you know, she like comes in as I want. She's like, what's it about? And I'm like, well, and I really struggled to lay out

48:42David Sims:the setup of the movie. There is like a two sentence you could give on this movie that would not represent it well, but would actually be conveying the major movements of it, if that makes sense.

48:56Griffin Newman:I guess so. Yeah, it's like there's a white guy in a sort of town kind of in the outback who gets drawn into a crime or an alleged crime and discovers that there's maybe like a sort of supernatural thing going on or a sort of, you know, ancient religious, you know, kind of thing going on. And then maybe he's sort of involved with it. tax murder ask to represent

49:25David Sims:aboriginal murder in digging deeper understands that perhaps there is a supernatural phenomenon coming on that also points towards the end of days

49:36Griffin Newman:it's a bit right it's a bit hard to just kind of lay out to somebody

49:39David Sims:that's not wrong what I just said but also if you said that to someone they would not picture the movie that exists I think well I mean I didn't watch it because like I'd read the premise and the premise sounded amazing I watched it because I was you know being an idiot going down a rabbit hole of like oh like you know richard kelly said he liked it and blah blah blah there's another thing about it that it has that i love which is kind of the foundation of like jello movies which is like a detective story where it's not a detective and they're solving something that is kind of bigger than the thing where like i i love i love when it's like a lawyer or a journalist or like a saxophone player or something where like someone who doesn't traditionally every day wake up and try to solve some gigantic unsolvable thing.

50:21Like a movie about... Getting deeper and deeper and deeper.

50:23David Sims:Like a movie about like a white man jazz saxophonist who starts to realize there's a weird pattern relating to the number 23 and needs to get to the bottom of it. You're saying that's your ideal kind of movie. I've never seen it. I thought you were starting to say the movie Deep Red. There are actually so many movies about like jazz players who get involved in a big scary mystery. And no bigger mystery than 23. I've yet to hear a bigger number cause that much damage. I haven't seen it because I didn't, I fucked up and I didn't watch it when I was 23 and now I gotta wait till I'm 46. Someone very earnestly recently, I hope he doesn't hear this and think I'm mocking him, was talking to me and said, have you ever noticed how the number 23 is everywhere?

51:01And I was like, is this a bit, do you know about the movie number 23? And he wasn't aware that anyone else had ever said that before. He was just noticing it.

51:10David Sims:Oh, he hasn't seen the picture. No, yeah, he just was like, He thought he was the first guy to notice that number 23 was everywhere. It is funny movies like number 23 and pay it forward that are just immediately met with derision and bomb. But also, even before their release, they're like, we're just going to pluck this and put it into the vernacular. No one has seen the movie. Everyone's seen the trailer. We all want to make number 23 jokes for the rest of our lives. That's me being Jim Carrey in that movie. So prove me wrong. I think you were like 17 notes short.

51:43Griffin Newman:And for the listeners at home,

51:44David Sims:Dave is doing incredible sax work. Oh, it's so... The finger work is so specific and precise. So, the didgeridoo, I think, is the second best instrument after the alto sax, just because I played that. You played alto sax? You played didgeridoo? No, I'm just saying, like, I wish I did. Oh, sure. I think that it is... Anything that is both an instrument and also sounds like sound design, to me, that's sick, in my opinion.

52:08Griffin Newman:I'm opening the dossier. Crack of this film. Yep. Peter Weir's second film was Picnic of Hanging Rock. It came out in 1975. It was a huge success in the country of Australia. And then it was, it was a global success, but it took years. So it really only gets to America in 1979, which is two years after The Last Wave comes out. So that's how, you know, slowly things are going. Now, Stanley Kubrick was a huge fan of Picnic and Hanging Rock. He had very good taste.

52:33David Sims:Also, I can't remember if we called this out in the episode. He, at some point before he died, wrote a list of his 100 favorite movies of all time. People often obsess over said list. Cars That Ate Paris is on that list. He was specifically locked in on that from release.

52:49Griffin Newman:I'm sure we've called it out.

52:50David Sims:Okay, well, who knows? It's impossible to say. He recommended to Warner Brothers

52:55Griffin Newman:that they hire him to do the Salem's Lot TV, the sort of legendary TV adaptation of Salem's Lot, which of course was instead directed by... Mick Garris? Is that right? Did Mick Garris do Salem's Lot? Larry Cohen did the second one.

53:09David Sims:I think it's Mick Garris, unless he did one of the other... Toby Hooper. I knew it wasn't Mick.

53:14Griffin Newman:Fuck! That was really embarrassing. With the famous... I was reading off of J.J.'s notes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, J.J. wrote that down. When I interviewed Ryan Coogler for Sinners, he brought up Salem's Lot, the book, which is an incredible book, as like a book about like, you don't realize that everyone's fucking turning into a Dracula until like, you know, it's almost over. Blah, blah, blah. Right? And I was like, yeah. And then the TV thing. And he was like, I've honestly actually never seen the TV thing. And I was like, right. But and then at the same time, we were like the boy at the window.

53:46Griffin Newman:I was like, everyone's seen that. Everyone knows that one scene. Yeah. Anyway, he gets recommended for that. Weir passes. He's kind of skeptical of making the Hollywood jump at that point in time. Yeah. He's kind of like, perhaps wisely, like, I don't think I can handle like jumping from this quiet, indie, you know, off the grid Australian nascent film scene to like the horrors of harsh Hollywood, right? Makes sense. He's like, I like to write my own material. I know I'll probably film abroad one day, but, you know, I think I need to build up some more confidence. I mean, good for him. So, obviously, Australia is pretty still tough to make a movie.

54:27Griffin Newman:You got to really scrape your money together, right? You know, it's like a little bit of government money, a little bit of like, you know, random little companies and stuff like that.

54:35David Sims:But the Australia New Wave is also basically developing in like perfect tandem parallel with his career. Like he said, as he made each success of film in his career, the industry around him had leveled up. And the amount of money that people were willing to invest into movies and the government grants and all of that kept leveling up at the exact same pace that his ambitions were growing.

55:01Griffin Newman:he in 1971 made a little trip to Tunisia cool saw some Roman ruins and was very like sort of seized by it and was like digging up stone thinking like I'm gonna find like a head he felt a premonition right and then he says he he finds like a chunk of stone that was first attached to a head must have been part of a cupid he says he smuggled it out of Tunisia which is kind of a you know

55:28David Sims:I just wanted to alert you to this. Kind of a soft crime. I know you feel like anything in the dossier is homework, classic Ben Kryptonite. But in fact, this anecdote is about Peter Weir stealing ruins. So cool.

55:42Griffin Newman:He got it dated at the University of Sydney and confirmed he still has it, or at least at the time, it was like on his desk or whatever. So he's like, huh, I'm a pretty pragmatic guy. And yet I felt like I had like a weird premonition. And that's why I did that insane thing. So what if that's like the origin of an idea for a movie? What an odd guy.

56:04David Sims:That's a weird way to describe. Do you know what's a weird thing we've uncovered, Ben David, in doing these first couple of episodes? Do you know that Peter Weir was like very involved in sketch comedy? Oh. That he like performed, wrote, and directed sketch comedy when he was young. I think like started in college but extended outside of it. And it was his early work in filmed arts. So he's the original Jordan Peele? Kind of. And then his filmmaking is like, oh, this is like an interesting medium that can combine all these different things I've done. Like, you know, I've done photography. I've done I've worked with actors.

56:34David Sims:I performed. But it's funny because even the movies he has made that are comedic do not feel like they come from someone with a background in sketch comedy. In a way, I would argue like Craig and Peele have kind of like sketch comedy machinery built into their storytelling mode. But there's not comic timing built into the editing, even in a droll way of weird stuff. Like, you know, Truman Show is almost anti-comedy in a way where it's undercutting any possible laughs you could get. Correct. That's fascinating. You see like Kregor and Peele construct horror set pieces with a kind of sketch comedy brain for structure and timing.

57:16Griffin Newman:when he's making TV Luke's Kingdom which I don't think was sketch comedy but one of his early TV things he met and I want to get it I'm not totally sure how to say his name but David Golpillow I mean Golpillow is how it sort of looks it's Golipoli

57:34David Sims:that's the name of his next picture

57:37Griffin Newman:who had been in Walkabout obviously that's like his you know breakout role which is an incredible movie the Nicholas Rogue movie Walkabout but so he meets him there and initially Weir had been conceiving of this sort of mystical project of his as being about like Incan ruins or whatever and he starts talking to him about like you know aboriginal people and their you know their culture and their religion and like whatever and he's like I've never really fucking you know delved into this despite being Australian like I don't know much about this

58:13David Sims:The movie feels like him forcing himself to do the work that the character is doing. Right. Yes. Like the process of making the movie is like a self-imposed, like, I need to think more deeply about the land I'm standing on.

58:28Griffin Newman:He, he, this is, I'm quoting Weir here, but he gets drunk with a guy and he says, Gopal married a detribalized woman, moved her to the city, became an actor. He broke his tribal laws. In the course of our conversation, he said something like this. last week, my wife was very upset with me because of the great space. Because the great space had left me and there I stood. And that was because the moon was there. I thought maybe I'd had too much to drink. And I asked him to repeat that. And he repeated the same thing. And then he's repeated a third time. It turned out the premonitions were very ordinary for him.

59:01Griffin Newman:And I became very excited. And I was confronted by a basic error that made in my assessment of tribal aboriginals that they perceived life the way I did. So he's very suddenly drawn to collaborating with him and like writing it about, you know, people in Australia, the country he lives in.

59:19David Sims:And all the aboriginal actors he cast in this film were very involved in the script from the moment they were hired. He basically was like, tell me what I don't know. That actor was also on The Leftovers, which was heavily inspired

59:33Griffin Newman:by a bunch of weird movies. He's such a, I mean, he's in Rabbit Proof, and he's in Crocodile Dundee. Yes. You get a small role. He's in Australia, and Far Way Downs. He's in Australia, I think by law. I think everyone in the cast of that movie, they were like, get all the Australian actors. I thought Australia was a miniseries on Hulu. Well, that's Far Way Downs. It has a different title. Oh, does it? Yes, it does. He made a movie called Charlie's Country like about 10 years ago that he won like every Australian acting prize for. A movie that I think did not really cross over, but was a big deal in Australia.

1:00:04Griffin Newman:It was kind of like the Australian film industry being like, we recognize you're the wealth of your career and all this. It was kind of his fucking... Color of money. True grit. Sure, true grit. Whatever.

1:00:16David Sims:He died fairly recently? Yeah, he died in 2021. Richard Chamberlain died like in the last year at 90. Yeah, he killed him. David, David. I did it. David, this is actually... I took him down. This is the single worst place to confess that.

1:00:30Griffin Newman:What, being recorded? No, he died, never married and had no children. Richard Chamberlain? Yeah.

1:00:37David Sims:He came out late in life. But he was a kind of don't ask, don't tell Hollywood, barely closeted man who did in his memoirs, I think in the early 2000s, come out. He finally was sort of like,

1:00:51Griffin Newman:by the way, this is a thing. So anyway, he starts to crack this story, brings on Tony Morfitt, who'd worked on Luke's Kingdom to write it with him. And then Petru Popescu, who had worked with Weir before, was brought in to make the script more appealing to potential investors, make it more commercial, I think, basically. Like, maybe their script is too weird and he kind of cleans it up, although I think it's still a little weird. Yeah, he's got the McElroy brothers

1:01:20David Sims:who produced the first two movies on board with this. Sure. In between podcasting and tabletop campaigns.

1:01:28Griffin Newman:Indeed. And so they all get to work on it. He says, he admits, we're, admits, he could never really figure out the ending of this movie.

1:01:38David Sims:Well, I kind of cracked it by just ending with a big-ass wave.

1:01:42Griffin Newman:He said, I didn't really find a solution to the problem of how to end it. There is no ending. I was kind of painted into a corner. And you try to be clever. I tried a couple other endings that stopped short of a wave. They were too neat. And so he decided to end with a big old wave.

1:01:59David Sims:I think the ending works. I wonder for him. I do. I mean, he's just sort of like, I didn't have the resources to show more of an apocalypse.

1:02:07Griffin Newman:I think it's the kind of ending that is going to send a bunch of your audience out going like, oh, right. Not going out being like, you got to see this movie I just saw. Like, you know, like it's definitely a head scratcher.

1:02:24David Sims:But it's an ending that definitively answers something is happening, which is kind of all the movie needs to make good on. in my mind to conclude properly. I think the part of the ending that I struggle with is I don't really think they set up and pay off the cyclical nature of opening with someone, stealing these relics, and then him trying to steal them and then killing the guy in the process. It feels very out of nowhere that he's so determined to bring those things out with him. Or his intention behind doing it doesn't really track. I like the idea of that kind of biblical comeuppance where he gets trapped and the more he gets trapped, he keeps dropping the things until he has nothing left.

1:03:13That feels like a good idea. I don't love that stuff, but what I do love is the titular last wave. I like that.

1:03:21David Sims:I agree with that. That's a good point. I also would say my criticism of the ending would be knowing that they specifically brought extra writers in to try to help this movie appeal to American audiences. with a kind of Hollywood viewpoint. Big must, missed opportunity to not have Stitch hang in 10 on that wave. He's one of our biggest stars. The man's consistent box office gold. I struggle with this joke. You end with a Stitch cameo. I am right there with the big thing. The audience walks out cheering. It's not even a joke. It's a great point.

1:03:52Griffin Newman:The audience is cheering. He does not. He's king of the fucking box office. Sure, he doesn't. Look at 2035. The numbers don't lie. But then Peter Weir would have story credit on Lilo and Stitch because he created Stitch. Good, he deserves it. time works. Good. That is the way time works. The Last Wave. Weird does not see it as like an end of the world movie. It's more just like a catastrophe is what he's seeing. It's not a total... It's not like total apocalypse. He also doesn't think it's an occult movie. He's like, I don't want to sound pretentious, but it's spiritual. It's a spiritual movie.

1:04:23Griffin Newman:It's ambiguous. And here's on what he's going for, mood he's going for. I was frightened by a noise heard outside my window last night, a rasping inhuman sound which seemed to come from nowhere. That's a fear we've all experienced at one time or another. Some choose to forget such fears. I choose to remember them and use them in my work. I kind of know what he's going for there. And like the creepiest dream in this movie, the one where you're kind of going up the stairs, the noise is kind of like a noise like that. that like weird noise you're hearing. Very cool. Not like terrifying, but a little unsettling.

1:05:01Griffin Newman:Yeah.

1:05:01David Sims:Yeah. This movie, right. One of the key things, pillars of this movie is the idea that dreams are method of communication. That they are not abstract processing, but they are an attempt for the universe, for spirits, for souls, for what have you, to be able to communicate something to you in a non-literal way. Kind of like how frequency there's a radio that allows you to talk to dead people. So did frequency invent podcasting? Or did I just do a real Bill Simmons bit? No, no. Frequency invented podcasting, Peter Weir invented Stitch. Oh, but they used the CB radio from the past to connect to the future to find out who Stitch was to put Stitch in the finale.

1:05:44See, I thought the joke you were going to make is they should play the song Wipeout at the end.

1:05:47David Sims:Yeah, I'll make that joke too. Okay. They should play the song Wipeout at the end. wipeout right now. Audience would have left cheering. So, I don't know. Stand by it. I think we're making good points all around.

1:05:58Griffin Newman:Maybe it's a mashup and it's like, the final wipeout. So they get a bunch of money. I'm just steamrolling all this. They get some money. Janice Films, Southern Australia. It doesn't matter. Come on, Jesus. It doesn't matter. This is too much. Richard Chamberlain. Best known, I would say, is Dr. Kildare on NBC. They called him the king of the miniseries. well that's true I do feel like that is because he's in he's in the original Shogun right that was a huge show

1:06:26David Sims:he does the Yardbirds after this which I think comes out of him enjoying his time in Australia

1:06:31Griffin Newman:I think you mean the Thornbirds

1:06:32David Sims:the Yardbirds is like the band I'm gonna correct JJ's typo here hold on one second stop blaming JJ another

1:06:40Griffin Newman:another TV miniseries he did is called Centennial not one I know but that was like a big show in the 70s sort of. But the, I've, look, I have never seen Dr. Kildare, but that was like a show in the six, right? Like, that was like a, it was like a popular doctor show in the earlier days of television, right? Does everyone agree with me? Correct, but also the, this is,

1:07:02David Sims:you know, the miniseries, which has now basically just become the prestige TV show, was a very powerful thing in the 70s, and he was kind of the go-to leading man. Right. He's a good-looking guy. He's, he's a classically handsome, some broad-shoulder, steady-voiced man. Right. Yes. You don't see him and go like, holy shit, this is the best fucking actor I ever saw. No, but I think he's quite good in this and it's smart casting because there is something unnerving about watching this guy who just feels like really kind of on top of it just get a little frazzled

1:07:36Griffin Newman:and thrown upset. You know, he said, I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry? No, what does he play? He plays... He's pretty buried at it. Councilman Banks. He's not buried in it. he thrives in it.

1:07:47David Sims:Does he? I imagine he must be presiding over the court. There's definitely some I think he gives like a speech like where he's like you two have done great things.

1:08:00Griffin Newman:Thank you for solving the thing. Marriage. Because that is a movie that at the end they're like and you guys are heroes too for doing this. Yeah, people applaud them. You're not gay but you are heroes. The heroes is Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor for getting right getting credit on that. Yeah. So Richard Chamberlain, you know, he's an American actor, but the, and the Australian sort of press was a little grumpy. I think about the fact that this movie didn't star an Australian. And like, Weir is just kind of like, I don't know, like he's a famous guy and he was good in the movie. Like he does not, he's no hangups about casting Richard Chamberlain.

1:08:40David Sims:Yeah.

1:08:40Griffin Newman:He's got the right look.

1:08:41David Sims:Yeah. He does. It also does sound like he, in not wanting to try to make the jump over to Hollywood movies, he was trying to figure out the way to make his movies play more in the States. Like it felt like that was a defensive chess move of if my movies can have some North American box office pull, then perhaps I can stay in Australia for even longer. Right. I mean, which, cool. Right. Richard Chamberlain's like the cheapest version of a leading man you can get because he's not as much a movie guy while feeling very comfortable to American audiences. Yes. I think he's quite good in this. I think he knew that someday he was going to be in Twin Peaks and that was a good reason to put him in there.

1:09:20David Sims:Yes. That's also, yes. Well, Stitch told him.

1:09:25Griffin Newman:So, more important, I think, is that we're like, meets with the sort of Aboriginal Cultural Foundation in Darwin, Australia. And basically, like, the vibe he's like, he's like, you can't just like show up and be like, anyway, I'm making a movie. Can you like, show me some guys? Like, can you introduce me to the right people? like you got to be like here's the story I want to tell does this you know is this palatable is this interesting to people you know like you you want to be very sensitive and respectful and so he's you know introduced to people he attends a sort of dance group and you know he kind of just like keeps quiet and observes and talks and reads more look there's a lot of things in this dossier that I'm just not going to get it's just too much JJ just a lot of factual errors it's just I mean look he did a lot of work finding the right actors okay I'm sorry it's flooded with information there we go and obviously he already knew David Gulpilil because he'd worked with him before they shot the movie Russell Boyd shoots it you know his his go-to cinematographer.

1:10:39It's always Russell Boyd or John Seale.

1:10:41Griffin Newman:Right. John Seale is sort of initially, I think, Boyd's number two. That's how they meet. And then, of course, becomes a legendary cinematographer in his own right. Boyd, a relationship that runs through to Master and Commander. Yeah, he wins the Oscar. It's the only tech Oscar that Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King was not nominated for. No, I remember. Which was crazy. Because it won every single category. Yes. And Andrew Lesney is an Australian cinematographer. He is. And he has won, obviously, for Fellowship. And I think he was like, I don't know. It's so weird that he wasn't nominated for, it doesn't matter.

1:11:14David Sims:But I remember that night watching the Oscars. 11 out of 11. But cinematography having this weird tension to it where you're like, this is the only category we can't predict because it's the one you can't put Return of the King down for.

1:11:26Griffin Newman:Yeah, exactly. And he deservedly won an Oscar there. Obviously, with Last Wave, he goes blue. It's working quite blue. in that film. They're going for real blue look? Yep. That's actually something Peter Weir talks about in his interviews in the movie is that he wanted Picnic to have golden light and this one to have blue and light. I think Nailed it. Assignment nailed. Yep. The Raining Frogs they wanted to try and initially film like Black Rain. Like the phenomenon of Black Rain could not afford how to like they were like we don't know how we would do that and it's too expensive. Yeah.

1:12:00David Sims:They tried Chubby Rain but it just it felt like it threw off the mood the tone of the movie it was too funny.

1:12:05Griffin Newman:here's how they filmed the raining frogs.

1:12:07David Sims:Someone got on a ladder and threw some frogs on the fucking ground. Some fucking Magica movies. I can't believe they ripped off Magnolia. How many ladders were used? I know there's no film set without a couple ladders, but do you feel like you had any ladder-aided gags in your new movie? I had. Yeah, good question. So, the thing when I watch is what I think of, well, two things. One, I grew up in Phoenix, which had like severe monsoon seasons, and I was driving to see American Beauty at a press screening because I was a 16-year-old film critic for the Arizona Republic for a little bit. You were saying this, that you had a radio show as a teenager and you lost your slot when your voice broke and they no longer When my voice changed, I got fired because I no longer sounded like a kid and then I never got hired for work like that again.

1:12:56David Sims:Did you have a catchy name like Lights, Camera, Jackson? No, I had a catchy name, Ben David Grabinski. It is. It is. It launches in the memory. You know, you sort of, unless you get to the end of a pod and realize there's a Ben and David already. But it wasn't like Ben David, Grubin, skill versus green. Well, I was seeing American Beauty and I was driving and you couldn't see two inches in front of the windshield because the way the monsoon rain would be then is it feels like the rain scenes in this movie were like, it's completely obstructing your vision.

1:13:27Griffin Newman:I have driven in those kinds of conditions. I had to pull off the road and wait for it to stop raining. Right. But the other thing I think of is that I had a rain machine on a project, which I will not name. And they said we couldn't afford it because we were over budget. And I said, well, how much is my trailer? And my trailer was more than a rain machine. So they said, fine, we can have a rain machine. After I gave up my trailer, I found out that we were under budget by half a million.

1:13:52David Sims:God fucking damn it. So that's what I think of whenever I see rain in a movie is me being petty about someone lying to me about the budget. And then the problem is during lunch, you have to take naps on top of a rain machine.

1:14:01Griffin Newman:now I actually did when you don't have a trailer what do you do

1:14:07David Sims:where do you go I just answered he takes naps on top of the brain machine well I'm a man of the people so I'm just gonna he said he did I don't know what to tell you I'm gonna just you know sit and hang out you just have no place to nap you always have a place to go there's always chairs yeah sure I've never napped because I just if I napped then it would just be over not a good napper when I'm directing I have to like at lunch like if I'm especially if I'm writing it to like go over the pages and like work out stuff a place where like no one will find me but on that thing I was a showrunner and it was live action so I've already given away what it was but I didn't I didn't need the trailer and no one really does but in that case it was just like the finding out that's like the weird thing it's like oh a Ray machine costs like$36 ,000 for a day or something and so this movie I think they had infinity dollars for their rain budget it's a tremendous And the rain budget's insane.

1:15:01David Sims:You brought up Kugler Sims, weirdly, for unrelated reasons. Sure. I was thinking a lot, not having seen this movie before. The way water is depicted feels very similar to me to what Kugler does in Wakanda Forever. Movie I like a lot. A movie that is all over the place, but has stuff in it that I think about a lot. And the main thing is the way he uses the device of like when Namor and people are coming, that water just starts like pooling in areas. I love all of that shit in Wakanda forever. That shit's incredible. And this movie has the like, when the water is pooling out of the car radio, just the eeriness of like water flooding through in places it shouldn't with a looming dread.

1:15:44Did that remind you guys of the opening of 8 1⁄2? Like this car stuff? For some reason it reminds me of that. That's a movie I've not seen in a long time. Well, it's funny because 8 1⁄2 is a movie that I only really strongly remember two things. is the opening, like when he's in a car and he's like, the way that it's lit and shot where he's like surrounded by other cars and you sort of feel trapped and then the dancing scene that I think they also did in Brothers.

1:16:07Griffin Newman:I remember when he's a balloon. Yeah, circus at the end. Well, and that one he floats away and then someone like has to pull him down. But the way that the car stuff in the opening of Eight and a Half is shot reminds me of those scenes like when he's in his car and you feel like the world is so oppressive, you know. It's just funny that that's kind of like an early art film that a lot of people are shown because it's so famous. And so I was probably like 16 or something or 15 when I saw it. Probably the same, yeah. I'm like, oh yeah, I really relate to this story of like kind of a middle-aged Italian director being like, maybe I've made it too many movies.

1:16:39David Sims:The art movie I ever won. That is tough making your 20th picture after you've been heralded a genius for decades. And every woman alive from birth to death wants to fuck you. Fuck, that does suck. It's relatable. People keep trying to like smother me in their giant pendulous breasts. I'd say the don't I relate the two art movies that everyone sees as a teen is Eight and a Half and Clifford yeah

1:17:00Griffin Newman:yeah thought you were gonna say Seven Samurai but yeah Clifford

1:17:04David Sims:which are both kind of depictions of the burden of genius and success I mean

1:17:11Griffin Newman:they're both movies about a stinker they are Clifford is a burden we cannot deny this he's talented he's talented

1:17:18David Sims:he's very talented he's an artist he's an artist in his own way

1:17:21Griffin Newman:and where does he want to go? Dinosaur Land? that's right Both movies have a dinosaur theme park in them.

1:17:26David Sims:Thank God Clifford never came across a pair of giant pendulous Italian breasts. I don't even want to know what he would have done. That was the sequel, the entire premise.

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1:21:16Griffin Newman:In the last wave, the opening's actually super evocative where it's like just this little town, kids playing on the street, and then weird rainfall starts and then fucking golf ball hail starts happening. It takes quite a bit before the story starts.

1:21:35David Sims:It's a real mood setter. Yes.

1:21:37Griffin Newman:Immersing you in the various scenes. This is where we are. We're in this town. We're not in like Sydney. We're not in like, you know, sort of more built up Australia. And weird shit is happening. And everyone's, it's not like deadly, but everyone is a little like thrown. There's a weird amount of water. Yes. Shit's getting wet. Y 'all ever been in like true like golf ball hail? Yes. London gets it a lot. It's really weird.

1:22:07David Sims:There was a moment in between us traveling for shows that Connor Ratliff, Patrick Kottner, and I were in a car together going from one George Lucas talk show to another where it went from zero to 100. It was dry, and then suddenly the rain started coming down like last wave hard, and I cite it as the closest I've come in my life to feeling like I was about to die. There was a moment where all three of us tensed up. Who was driving? Patrick Kottner. Oh, dear. Well, if I was driving, we would have already been dead. Well, yes. He wasn't saying you should be driving. Patrick was driving and the rain started coming down really hard, really furious.

1:22:44David Sims:The windshield wipers could not combat it. And we were on a freeway and every car you could see was panicking at the same time. And it just felt like any one of us could kind of like lose control and then start like a 20 car pileup. And then like we just in silence all tensed up. five minutes later it just stopped cold out of nowhere and we all breathed and we're like oh I was ready to die I thought it was about to die you said you were gay I did it was also an almost famous almost famous yeah you have to respect the wind like Van Halen said in the song from Twister that was the problem that was the problem that was I wasn't right and I hadn't seen Twister's yet so I hadn't considered that you could ride it had you seen Lilo and Stitch I had that little alien they say he's all bad but actually I think there's some good in him so

1:23:38Griffin Newman:weird shit is happening heavy rainfall frogs other anomalies local aboriginal people in this town seem spooked and during one of these rainstorms there's a fight and somebody dies but it's all pretty mysterious and by town we're talking Sydney well the first like sequence is not in Sydney. This is the schoolhouse. The town, the bar fight, I think, is in Sydney, right? Yeah, I know the tunnels are in Sydney, like the underground stuff. And I know that Sydney is where they shot Mission Impossible 2.

1:24:13David Sims:Uh, sure. They shot this mostly in Adelaide. Is that right? But it seems like it was mostly a weather issue when they were planning on shooting in Sydney.

1:24:23Griffin Newman:I don't know much about Adelaide, but I'll admit, I don't know much about a lot of places in Australia. Let's see where it is. Wasn't that a Blake Lively Harrison Ford movie. I don't know much about Adelaide. Right, so Adelaide is in South Australia, right? It's on the sort of middle of the country on the southern side. I don't know much about it. Looks nice. Every Australian city always just looks so sunny and pretty.

1:24:46David Sims:I believe they had an issue where there was actually too much rain in Sydney, so they went to Adelaide so that they could control the fake rain more. Right, right, right.

1:24:55Griffin Newman:I mean, it makes sense. You actually do need to be able to control it. What's it with Australian directors having production problems because of rain?

1:25:02David Sims:I think probably the through line there is that Australia is crazy. It rains a lot. Is the spiky car from The Cars That Ate Paris, did that inspire the car in Fury Road? Did you guys figure that out? It's a direct homage. Oh, that is so sick. Inspired all of Mad Max. Yeah. George Miller sees it and is like, oh, what if you built a whole fucking movie out of this?

1:25:22Griffin Newman:Miller seeing it is inspired to make the first Mad Max, which is why in Fury Road, he's like, I want to pay homage to the goat. when that spiky car showed up I was like wow

1:25:31David Sims:those guys rock you know what's also crazy the fact that we forgot to bring up do you know that the doof warrior was a PA on the cars that ate Paris that was his first credit before he realized what he wanted to do he was just interested in films Ben has thrown his headphones down Ben's out he has handed in his two weeks notice Ben Hosley is out

1:25:49Griffin Newman:we'll miss you Ben he is serving me with papers so the character of David Burton played by Richard Chamberlain is a lawyer and sort of essentially is like assigned right to this murder case to defend one of the men. Maybe all of the men? Definitely to defend Chris. Yeah, all five of them because they say if one of them doesn't show up then the trial's over or something. There's something extremely sort of obscure and bureaucratic about Australian law that like he is a tax lawyer not a criminal defense lawyer but because of the divide between like indigenous people and European settlers or settlers, colonizers, you know, like he gets assigned the case.

1:26:35Griffin Newman:This is discussed in the movie. It was a little over my head. Same.

1:26:38David Sims:It's, it's, yes, it's the recork of the Australian legal aid system. I mean, this is sort of what I was getting at earlier.

1:26:44Griffin Newman:It's essentially just, that's why he's an outsider, like, especially an outsider.

1:26:49David Sims:But these like weird circumstances in which colonialists come in and pose their view of how a society should be structured onto a land that is not theirs. And then like a century later...

1:27:02Griffin Newman:They're bringing Western law to a dispute that, I mean, for one, all the accused just like do not want to talk about what happened.

1:27:09David Sims:But then like centuries later, these countries start to go like, oh, fuck, do we got to like own up to what our ancestors did? And then they start to carve out rules of like, well, this doesn't apply to you because we've been disrespectful to your customs and your traditions. So everything is sort of, yes, There's some weird quirk of the system where through the legal aid system in Australia, now a tax lawyer has to represent a murder case. Do we know why John Grisham never did cosmic horror? Incredibly good question. And besides the Christmas movie with the cranks. That is the answer. The book was called Surviving Christmas, I think.

1:27:43David Sims:Yes, but also in the book, they're not the cranks, they're the Cthulhu's.

1:27:48Griffin Newman:So David's having, I'm steamrolling this. Thank you. David's having weird dreams. on top of this case. And he is seeing Chris, the Gopla character, in his dreams. Sees him prior to first meeting him. Correct. Yes. And it is spooky. And that is the vibe of the movie until the end. I'm not saying other things don't happen. Other things do happen. But what I just described is kind of what the movie's about. It's David being like, something feels weird and I'm having weird dreams. what's going on and these people largely are sort of like we don't want to talk about it and it's kind of none of your business and he's like I know but I'm having these weird dreams and they're like well that is weird and that is interesting but I don't know man like it's like a lot of that

1:28:37David Sims:it is kind of fascinatingly a like anti-white savior movie or like inverted white savior movie in a way where it's like oh here's like a noble square draw very conventional white lawyer who is assigned to a case to prove the innocence of aboriginal men. And the worst version of this movie he's seen 20 times is he's like, I've learned that you are a person. And he gives some 20-minute monologue arguing that they have feelings and thoughts. And he teaches people how to end racism. And Linda Cardellini's the heart of the movie, right? Well, the only thing I want to bring up that I'm sure is already in the dossier is when Charlie comes over for dinner.

1:29:16Somebody says that law is like the most important thing in their culture. and the guy who played Charlie...

1:29:25Griffin Newman:Whose name is Nandjuara Amagula. Yes. When he... Because he was not an actor. When he agreed to be in the movie, his only stipulation was that they represent that within the movie because that was something very important to him to convey within the movie is that in his culture, the law of their tradition superseded everything, which I thought was interesting because that moment does feel very authentic to something when they convey that.

1:29:54David Sims:I was going to say, the moment where he meets the clients, and especially Chris, he basically goes like, what the fuck is going on here? I'm not crazy that none of this makes sense, right? Like, he just owns up to, I fucking don't know what movie I'm in. And they're sort of like, you're not ready for this shit.

1:30:13Griffin Newman:Right. The dinner scene that Ben David is referencing, according to Peter Weir, was sort of constructed by Gulpilil and Nandawara. And he put in all the lines about the law and all that stuff. And Weir was just kind of like, I kind of let them do it. And they're kind of just talking to Richard Chamberlain. And I kind of just let him talk and then called cut. You know what I mean? Rather than like, let's do the script. It was like, you guys just tell him. Try to explain this to him.

1:30:41David Sims:I say this from the perspective of a white man who knows nothing of what this movie is about in real life. You disgust me. Thank you. I'll take the hit. But this does feel like a good example of a know what you don't know endeavor. Yeah, right, right, right. Like it feels like everything you read and it is entirely possible. There are huge missteps in this movie that I am oblivious to. I think no.

1:31:06Griffin Newman:I think they sort of were taken away from making missteps by the actors.

1:31:11David Sims:And certainly when you read about the process, it felt like he was very open in that of, I can write the white man part of the movie. I do not want to impose something on here. You tell me what this should be and let them sort of take a lot of authorship over their scenes.

1:31:26Griffin Newman:Like Weir says at one point, they were like, hey, so what are some like tribal symbols we can use for all the like tribal symbol shit? And Nanduara was like, you absolutely are forbidden from using any real tribal symbols. We can make some up. Yeah. You know, like we won't be using anything real. That dinner scene in that subplot is something I always love in a movie. like in God Told Me To or Devil's Advocate or something when like the lead character thinks that there there's nothing about them besides just being kind of the guy and someone's like starts to say things about like their past and like where they came from and they're starting to be like wait hold on hold on what?

1:32:01Like I always love feeling like the ground beneath lead characters start to get unsettled where they feel like they understand everything about themselves and then they start to realize they don't.

1:32:10Griffin Newman:In Devil's Advocate I don't know what you're talking about the guy gets the job at a law firm when boss seems normal to me, very successful. Yeah, he learned something about himself and his heritage or something. Big personality, I guess. What's his name in that again? John Milton. Right.

1:32:23David Sims:Which I really love. Right, because Angel Heart is Lucifer. Yeah, that one was maybe

1:32:28Griffin Newman:a little on the nose. One of my favorite things about that movie is they shot in Trump's apartment and they picked it because it was so ugly and terrible. And when he was there... Only Satan himself would want to live here. And I guess Trump was like, I'm so glad you want to show the place and Tony Giroir's like, I don't know how to tell him we did it because it's like so fucking ugly.

1:32:47David Sims:I mean, it's the great like fucking Mulaney bit of Donald Trump feeling like the way a rail riding hobo in a 30s movie would describe a rich person. Imagining a rich person, yes. Everything in his house is gold and his hair is made of yarn. Yes. Or made of cotton candy. Fine gold silk. Fine gold silk, yeah.

1:33:08Griffin Newman:I've listened to that bit too many times. so they make the movie and it's good let's talk more about the movie so Ben David can you talk more about the movie please I feel like I've talked way too much already I can't tell if you're being facetious or not I don't know Ben keeps looking at me like mouthing shut the fuck up Ben's actually looking at his phone right now I think he's watching you know another movie or maybe no I'm watching the The Last Wave The Last Wave again well because I'm just scrubbing through the plot okay trying to, you know, be a good producer. Yeah, but we haven't gotten anything wrong yet, so.

1:33:43Griffin Newman:So, look, I mean, essentially, again, look. The rest of the movie is a bunch of cascading dreams and real life stuff, and then a wave comes. So there's this, you know, the first thing I ever, like many, I think, you know, non-Australian Western, especially, the first thing I ever fucking learned about Aboriginal people was the book or movie Walkabout. I read the book when I was like 12, and then I saw the movie and you know the whole thing in that movie and book is that the boy the aboriginal boy who finds these it's about these British kids who crash land in the outback and like their parent dies and they meet an aboriginal and they like sort of survive it have you seen Walkabout?

1:34:25Griffin Newman:I've seen Walkabout yeah I haven't heard the book obviously there's this crazy sexual undercurrent going on and like but like that very good director right that like the major plot point is that she kind of looks at the guy wrong. And he's just like, you've essentially sort of marked me. And he just goes to die. And like, that is sort of what Richard Chamberlain is putting together in this movie, right? Of like, did somebody die because someone pointed a bone at him, essentially? Is this a sort of ritual, mystical death that's rooted in a culture I do not understand? And everyone's basically like, we don't talk about it with you.

1:35:09Griffin Newman:Right. Rather than like, yes, yes, let's tell us the secrets. They're like, it's not for you to know. Stop putting us into your system.

1:35:16David Sims:He's sensing that there seems to be some kind of unified code to their silence. Yes. And their refusal to really even engage in conversation.

1:35:25Griffin Newman:Stitches get stitches. I mean, come on. Well, the offender we see steal some kind of stones and give them to some unidentified person. There's some kind of arrangement. And then he ends up at a bar. And this is where they have the confrontation. And then he has the bone pointed at him and ends up dying. Right. In a sort of, I mean, they say he drowned, but like it's very mysterious. because he drowned in like a puddle. He broke the laws of their world which supersede our stupid laws for the guy in the wig.

1:36:05David Sims:Well, also their whole attitude is just sort of like, throw whatever the fuck you want us. This isn't what's real. You know? They seem a little kind of like, they refuse to accept the Western rules of law that are being imposed on them. Yeah. Wait, so who's the worst lawyer? this guy or the lawyer in JFK?

1:36:27Griffin Newman:This guy. He's really bad. The lawyer in JFK is just crazy. God bless him. Jim Garrison. The worst lawyer is the lawyer and the judge.

1:36:35David Sims:I don't know. Troy McClure. I think you're confusing Troy McClure and The judge is about a lawyer? Ben, that's... Hold on. I'm sorry, Ben. David, just sidebar for one second. I'm so embarrassed. Ben, that's like rough because that's the first incorrect thing that's been said on this episode and you don't have JJ to take the fall for this. All right. I'll put on my dunce cap. No, I just think whatever we got to do in the edit, we can cover this up. We can all agree to just never speak of this ever again.

1:37:00Griffin Newman:I'm watching this movie and I do start to think like, okay, this is going to end up being a sort of a legal drama where this, you know, world that Richard Chamberlain's character does not understand kind of gets dragged into the courtroom and it's sort of like a lot of things get like sifted through in the courtroom. That is not what happens. Instead, he loses his court case. Like, you see there's a scene in the courtroom where he's trying essentially to kind of make that happen, and it doesn't really work. Like, and then the rest of the movie is him, like, increasingly being like, I am having weird visions that something weird is going to happen.

1:37:36David Sims:I feel like we landed on this in Picnic and Hanging Rock of saying, like, this movie feels so unique in his filmography. It's not really the vibe of the rest of his films. And then we realized he basically has four different versions of a reality collapse movie in his career. It's these two back to back. It's fearless, I would argue. And Truman Show is obviously one of the most extreme versions and now has become like a shorthand for a psychological phenomenon of this is fake. You live in a simulation. But this movie feels like in its own quiet way, very similar to Truman Show where like meeting these guys basically causes the light to fall out of the sky for him.

1:38:15David Sims:And then he's just hyper fixated on like, tell me what the fuck's going on. Because I've been kind of feeling this.

1:38:21Griffin Newman:We won't, but you do seem to be, they use the word, mulchural, right? Like it's sort of like you seem to be somehow descended from, you know, a shaman or someone who's connected to the dreaming, the parallel world, like whatever, like the sort of like our more deeper understanding of reality.

1:38:44David Sims:And he still wants to find a way to get them acquitted, but it does feel like it is a secondary concern in the movie to how do I get them to explain what's going on to me? Well, he thinks he's helping, which is that classic failed thing where he's like, they tell me they don't want me to do this defense. Everyone tells me not to do this, but I know better and no good comes from it. Don't you also think it's sort of a lie he's telling himself or he's saying, look, you need to tell me so I can help you be absolved of this crime. But in reality, he's just like, I need fucking answers. I do think he means well because he like makes that guy drop off who wanted him to plead guilty.

1:39:24But again, that could just be ego too of like that's like a failure.

1:39:30David Sims:The reason I notice the South American thing so much is there's the dinner table scene where his wife says, I'm a fourth generation Australian. I've never met an aborigin. Right? Which is such a like telling statement for someone to identify as a fourth generation Australian and being like, okay, you're like...

1:39:50Griffin Newman:I think in 1977, you're basically saying like, I mean, a fourth is probably about as far back as you go if you're a white person in Australia.

1:39:59David Sims:Right, and you're just sort of like, I'm a fourth generation Australian, considering the idea that Australia starts when my first relative landed here and that reality before that doesn't exist. And I have never engaged with the indigenous population of the country, the continent that my family has lived in for now over a century. And he is from a different place, but with a very similar energy that he even if he moved here very early and he does have like a nationalized identity and an Australian accent that I nailed in the introduction, that it's not his home fundamentally in the same sense that she's taking pride in the idea of being a fourth generation Australian as if that gives her some cultural weight and that it feels like he is never totally settled in this place.

1:40:48David Sims:ever. It's why I thought South African because I was like that's kind of an interesting analog.

1:40:55Griffin Newman:But I was

1:40:56David Sims:wrong about it and JJ will apologize publicly.

1:41:00Griffin Newman:Did you guys into folk horror?

1:41:01David Sims:JJ did a lot and he did the fucking Troy McClure thing. Yeah, we're just gonna fucking fix it in the edit.

1:41:07Griffin Newman:Does this count as folk horror? It's close. Yeah, I mean it's if you call this movie horror. I don't know what else. I think that this is too fancy to be like horror per se. but I think it's incredibly effective horror filmmaking. Wikipedia calls it a mystery drama, which is, I mean, is also a fair attempt. It's a bit of a tough one to nail down genre-wise. It's interesting. You said Two-Face theme. Because it's not really a thriller.

1:41:31David Sims:It's almost like an elevated horror. But this is an example, I always say, of like, I wish every fancy director made a horror movie and Peter Weir has a bunch of movies that almost qualify as existential horror. There's just something about someone who's just very good at their job tackling. that or not feeling like they're above those things. It's similar to me to Synecdoche, New York, coming out of Amy Pascal saying to Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, it'd be interesting to see you guys try to make a horror movie together. And then like two years later, he hands in that script and she's like, I don't know what the fuck this is, but good luck.

1:42:06David Sims:And this feels like you say, Peter, we were like, try writing your own horror movie. And he was like,

1:42:10Griffin Newman:here's what upsets me. That's the thing. He's kind of like, I, right, I am troubled by this idea. Is anyone else? Right. This is a movie about me feeling haunted. Kind of. Whereas Picnic and Hanging Rock is sort of the same vibe in a way. It's not his personal because it's based on a book and it's based on someone else's weird feeling. That one comes out and everyone's like, ooh, this is spooky in a way that's never been put on movies in film before. Yes. Wait, can I tell you guys a horrific thing that happened to me last night? Please. So I saw the movie Iron Lung. How is that? Well, let me tell you.

1:42:42When it was over, something really cosmic and insane happened. So I left. I saw it with my friend Taylor, a fan of the show. Hi, Taylor. The great Taylor. Taylor Levy. And I was leaving the theater and I reached into my pocket, the Village 7 AMC. Absolutely. On the fifth floor. A mildly haunted theater, I would say. I left the theater. I'm a couple blocks away. I reached into my pocket to take out these wireless soundproof Sony headphones. And in my pocket, we're not getting paid for that.

1:43:11Griffin Newman:There were two sets of headphones? The exact same headphones, same brand. Noise cancelling. these are in multiple colors and I reach into my pocket and there's two pairs and I like my brain almost explodes there's an actual photo of me reacting in real time because I'm like this seems made up and the movie is very kind of the last 20 minutes of the movie are very mind fuck thing and there's double headphones in my pocket I don't own another pair there's no one in my household has another pair and I have two and I'm like what the fuck happened so like I'm like what do I do now so I check and one of them is paired to my phone and one's not and I'm like these must be from the theater, but I don't know how.

1:43:50So we walk all the way back to the theater and find some young, like 20-something girl in the lobby freaking out because she can't find her headphones. Wow. Good for you. So what had happened was she walked by and dropped her headphones onto my coat that was on the seat next to me. And then you assumed. And then when I got up to pick up my coat, my headphones were there and I put them in my pocket. And then if I hadn't, I could have gotten all the way home with those and been haunted for the rest of my life about why there was two of the exact same model of headphones in my pocket. So I'm just saying I feel a lot like a character.

1:44:21I felt like a character in one of these existential movies.

1:44:23Griffin Newman:That would also spook me. I still want to know how the movie is.

1:44:26David Sims:I also want to know...

1:44:27Griffin Newman:I'm seeing it tomorrow.

1:44:28David Sims:I want to know if Amy Pascal asked you to write and direct a horror movie. Is that what you'd pitch? Okay, so what I would say about Iron Long is Iron Long has like... Iron Long has like a really, really dense kind of lore to it that felt very like, oh, well, this is from the video game. Sure, it's basically... And it's the storytelling of it is very kind of like outsider art and the way it like tries to explain the exposition and that's a nice way of saying I didn't understand 70 % of the exposition so afterwards I was like well this must be just directly from the game so I want to go watch a playthrough and a playthrough of the whole game is 70 minutes and the movie is more than two hours long and so Taylor watched the 70 minute playthrough and he said oh there's no lore in the game it's just you're in a submarine and you're just like trying to get a fish and sometimes the fish

1:45:10Griffin Newman:bites you and that is how I've got and it is like the whole thing is like a huge very very complicated future like Lovecraftian style thing that I didn't understand at all and I'm like well if I'll play the game and I'll get it and it was not from the game okay so this sounds like a mildly negative review I thought it was very interesting it was like 70 minutes too long it's quite long it is it is the one thing I'm seeing it tomorrow out of total interest in just like I'm really glad I'm really glad all that, but I do see 125 minutes and I'm like, now hang on a second. Your YouTube horror movie should be 85 minutes long.

1:45:47Griffin Newman:That should be a law.

1:45:48David Sims:I just want to say, if it's about being in a submarine and trying not to get bitten by fish, they should have sent fucking Cogman down there because shit wouldn't have gunned down like that. You were going to do another Stitch joke. No, why would I do that? This was a natural tee-up for Cogman. The Stitch joke only happens when it's super organic, clean and is met with gales of laughter. Is there ever a natural tee-up for Cogman? Yeah, it just happened. You know what's going to happen? He goes inside a submarine and he beats fish. Someone's gonna watch my movie now and be like, he thinks he's better than The Last Kiss and Iron Lung and I'm like, you're right.

1:46:17I'm sorry. You're better than The Last Kiss.

1:46:18Griffin Newman:Although if Goldwyn comes for you, I don't know what to tell you. They're also gonna be like... That would be a scandal.

1:46:23David Sims:They're also gonna watch your movie and be like, this is on Hulu. Why didn't he put Stitch in it? He's like in the family. Well, I do open with a song from Oliver and Company. You do? So. Dodger kind of the Stitch of his day. Can you tell David about your current movie watching project for 2026?

1:46:38Griffin Newman:Oh, I'm so interested

1:46:39David Sims:whatever this is.

1:46:40Griffin Newman:Exactly. I'm teaming you up

1:46:41David Sims:like Codman. Wait, which one is it? You're theatrical. If you have multiple, I want to hear them all. I'm seeing every horror movie that is released at my local AMC in 2026. And so far... Love that. It has been a choice. January and February are heavy, heavy months for that challenge. I've seen like six movies already this month. So I'm like an A-list and a legal guy. So you're going to see Whistle. Oh, yeah, I'm definitely going to see Whistle. So I just watched the first two Strangers, chapter one and chapter two, so I can see three and have it make sense. I'm sure it wouldn't make sense. Two has a part where a boar chases her around for a while and almost eats her.

1:47:15And then you cut to a flashback of a kid with a baby boar and said, someday I will teach this boar to do amazing things.

1:47:22David Sims:Is it the same boar from Send Help? It actually is. Good rap. It's crazy how they figured out how to do that between two different studios. I hope Strangers Chapter 3 ends with one of them saying, nice to meet you. Like as a full circle. Oh, fuck. The Strangers Factor one has the exact same opening as Cobra, where there's like, there's 57 deaths every 30 seconds. There's 12 rapes. It lists the exact amount of time and how often crimes happen. I love Renny. It's great. Sims, Ben David, and I saw Mercy, aka Chair of the Movie, in 40X.

1:47:56Griffin Newman:Are we counting that as horror or was this separate from that?

1:47:59David Sims:It is a horrifying experience.

1:48:00Griffin Newman:I saw your letterbox. It is one of the most insidious things I've ever seen,

1:48:04David Sims:even more so than the entire Insidious franchise. The opening line of that film, as I quoted my Letterboxd review, is millions had been affected by crime. Oh, no. I hope a guy in a chair can solve this problem. But this is like replacing the Dent Act for me. We're going to outlaw crime. The opening is just voiceover, random guy, never again. Do you know about crime? Millions had been affected by crime. So I saw, I've seen Night Patrol. We bury the lead. Primate. Return to Silent Hill. Iron Lungs. Send help. 28 years. Bone Temple.

1:48:34Griffin Newman:What was the first two? Night Patrol and Bury the Leaf? Night Patrol, where Justin Long plays a dirty cop vampire. And you heard? We Bury the Dead with Daisy Ridley. Oh, that one I heard. That one I heard was okay. Sort of like a zombie movie. It was interesting. Yeah. How is the Justin Long? It's interesting. Okay. it's, I like, I'm glad I saw it. But Return to Silent Hill, I just got to talk about. Okay. Which is in Return to Silent Hill. Sam has been talking about it. I love Silent Hill very much. The game. I do too. And Silent Hill 2, which I know this is specifically an adaptation of the game Silent Hill 2 which is the best of the games.

1:49:10Griffin Newman:Would we agree? Yes. Yeah. I love Christoph Gans' film Silent Hill. I think it is the best video game movie ever made. I think that if you make one change it is a 10 out of 10 movie. The second Silent Hill film I believe it's called Revelation is very poopy and bad. Did not see it. It's no good. Adelaide Clemens. It makes me sad if you say so. Yep. So then Christoph Gans is announced just making this Return to Silent Hill. No I haven't heard I haven't heard much from Kristoff recently. This is the first film in quite a lot. But I'm still like, hey, he understood the franchise in a way. I'm excited.

1:49:44Griffin Newman:The movie comes out. My letterbox starts flashing half stars. I'm seeing a lot of... You're getting Amber Alerts on your phone. I've seen a couple of people push against this trend. Where do you fall on this? I haven't seen it yet. I just have two things to say about it. I'm really glad I saw it. I think that there's some really cool craft and stuff in it. I just have two issues in it. Someone goes by a marquee that has Jacob's Ladder on it. And I think fundamentally, it'd be like if you were at McDonald's and they had like an advertisement for the world's best burger on the wall while you're eating a Big Mac.

1:50:19Griffin Newman:Because I mean, Silent Hill is very inspired by the Jacob's Ladder. It's like an asshole move to be like... Remember that other movie? Yeah, but don't remind me of a movie... Yeah, oh, terrible idea. That I just have to think and like, oh God, I wish I was going to see that in a theater. And then the other one was, the whole time I'm like, who is this lead guy? And I didn't realize he was the war horse. Jeremy Irvine. Yeah, and I was like, and that's always like an interesting thing for me when you're like, oh, me neither. Let's correct.

1:50:45David Sims:He was the war boy. Owner of the war horse. I thought it was very interesting. The first one, the issue is they keep cutting outside of Silent Hill to Sean Bean. They do.

1:50:56Griffin Newman:That was literally a studio note of there are no men in this movie. But it's like, if you're watching, one of the funniest thing I've ever heard. Like in Wizard of Oz, you can't cut to Kansas because then that makes it feel like these things exist simultaneously. I agree with you that that's a flaw with that movie. I just feel like that movie captures the atmosphere of a video game. No, I'm saying if it didn't have that, I would defend everything. Exactly. I would defend everything. We all have our flaws except for one guy. The Brotherhood of the Wolf, though, I think is perfect. That's a cool movie.

1:51:25Griffin Newman:I mean, I haven't seen it since I was a teenager.

1:51:27David Sims:I haven't seen Bury the Dead, but I really liked that Daisy Ridley horror movie from last year. The one where I read the news story that she was secretly married. That was good. I gotta tell you. That was good. That zagged.

1:51:42Griffin Newman:That buried the stitch joke and I'm feeling great. Am I back? Is Griffin funny again?

1:51:47David Sims:Christopher Hitchens has to rise from the grave to write a new op-ed piece. Griffin is funny. Question mark?

1:52:03Griffin Newman:Guys, it's time to believe in the Hail Mary. Project Hail Mary, that is. One of the most beloved adventure stories by Andy Weir. Big book. It's now a major motion picture. This has never been a better time to immerse yourself in the best-selling audiobook, right? The movie's coming out. Listen to the book. Yep. All right, so I'll tell you what it's about. There's a sole survivor of a desperate last-chance mission in space. Rylan Grace is the character. He's got to save the Earth from disaster in an incredible science-based thriller. the fan favorite narrator Ray Porter brings every moment to life with humor, heart and pulse pounding tension so let's get reading the book now the blockbuster movies finally arrived in theaters never been a better time to start listening to the universally acclaimed audiobook, part science mystery part dazzling interstellar journey Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation and survival, listen to the audiobook available on Audible and the movie starring Ryan Gosling is in theaters now that's Project Hail Mary listen, watch, save the world listen now at audible.com slash Hail Mary.

1:53:15Griffin Newman:The Last Wave. Guys, please try to help me understand what happens at the end of this movie. I will read to you like what the synopsis says happens after meeting with the shaman of Lee's tribe and learning more about aboriginal practices and the concept of green. Dreamtime is a parallel world of existence. Burton comes to believe that his dreams of strange heavy rain bode the signs of a coming apocalypse. He senses danger. He makes his wife and kids leave town. There's a crazy flood. And then he goes into subterranean tunnels under the city, which lead to a sacred ritual site. And he sees a lot of paintings that basically confirm the dreams he'd been having.

1:53:55Griffin Newman:then he leaves and sees a big wave.

1:53:58David Sims:You're forgetting also, first of all, beautiful reading. You're forgetting that he also, in a moment that very much feels like the weird inciting incident story he shares about having the premonition of the head and then stealing it from the cave, he finds a mask that looks exactly like his own face. Yeah, which, you know, would throw anyone off a little bit. Would throw me quite off my game.

1:54:21Griffin Newman:They keep calling him the Mokuru. Yes. which is a race, a separate race or an ancestry that comes from a different race. It's hard again. It's very vague, hard to define. I think they're purposely not descriptive. There's like priests on the wall who warned about the wave last time. So they're basically implying he's like one of those priests who did it on the last cycle. Sure. Yes. He's a descendant of these people in some way.

1:54:53David Sims:An interpreter of premonitions. a warner, not a warner brother, one who can warn. But yes, I mean, that scene I think is incredible where there's sort of this stare-down interrogation of who are you, who are you. And it uses Richard Chamberlain's kind of like very studied stillness to great effect because it's like a Meisner exercise where they just keep asking him who are you, who are you, until he kind of breaks down and then they ask like, are you Mokuru? And he nods. and he's saying yes to something he doesn't even understand. But he understands that he is something beyond his own awareness of existence.

1:55:35David Sims:That there's something else happening through him.

1:55:37Griffin Newman:Absolutely. Yes. David, how upset were you that there was no subway when they got in the tunnels? Great question. You know, I actually was not thinking about that because I actually... Good gag. And I love the subway. And we can talk about it for a second if you want. Because I know you love my love of the subway. It's my favorite thing about the podcast. 80 % of the phone exchanges we have, like text or DM or whatever, are about the subway. Also, that's true.

1:56:00David Sims:You know, a new son of New York City. Right. You're in the early days of your love affair of the subway. It's the 40X on the subway. That's what made me. Very similar. Very similar. This is what I haven't been able to convey to David. Very similar. You're usually surrounded by people who feel a little dangerous. I really... At the very least unhinged.

1:56:18Griffin Newman:I really love the tunnel stuff in this movie. I found it so cool and evocative. I loved how it looked. I loved how spooky and like, you know, interesting it was. There's so many different steps to get down into that too. Right. I loved how implausible it was, right? Where you're like, there's this much like, but I didn't care at all. And then he like emerges out of a drain pipe and you're like back in like seeing the wave. But yeah, it would have been cool to see a subway. We skipped my favorite part. Hey, we're skipping around. Yeah. It's all good. So the thing that I love so much when it happens in a movie is like when at the end of the second act, someone who's known you your whole life says like two sentences that they've never told you before that suddenly reframes everything where he's like, well, don't you remember how when you were a kid you had a bunch of nightmares and they ended up being exactly how your mom died?

1:57:08David Sims:That you were afraid of the cab driver coming to take you away, that you always talked about the cab driver. It's one of those things where it always works to me when like a character, someone just shows up and is like, But don't you remember this thing? And they go, oh my God. And then suddenly the entire movie makes sense. It's like, you could have told him before, but it's perfect that you told him now for dramatic purposes. People telling David Dunn about his drowning. Yes, that's exactly right. There is a little bit of a David Dunn thing in this movie of like, maybe it wasn't murder. Maybe it was just puddle drowning.

1:57:39I was going to make the same fucking joke. Well done. I was going to say, it's all about puddle drowning.

1:57:45David Sims:We forgot to go see Unbreakable last night. Unbreakable was playing last night. It was at the Nighthawk. Excuse me. Unbreakable

1:57:50Griffin Newman:Thank you I saw Die Hard with a Vengeance at the Nighthawk and I took the same train We did I was there Hey Wait Oh no we saw Die Hard Two No Die Hard We saw the first Die Hard I saw Die Hard with a Vengeance Fucking JJ Fucking JJ That's insane I took the train that the bomb is on to go see it at Nighthawk Yeah three trains That was like a religious experience where I realized I'm like that's the train I was on Which train is it? I think it's the two or the three It's the two or the three

1:58:18David Sims:That is the greatest New York movie of all time. I think we can all agree. You know what I call the three train? First round draft pick. What? The Red Rocket.

1:58:25Griffin Newman:I love that. Yep. And like anytime I'm going home on the three, I text my wife like I'm on the Red Rocket and she knows what I mean. Do you have nicknames for other trains? Yes, some. Not all. The Lonely F, of course. I call the F the Lonely F because it's so often separated from its track mates. I call the four the queen of the IRT because she is the queen of the IRT. I can think of others. Those are the big ones.

1:58:47David Sims:This feels like David sharing diary entries. This is, I feel like, the most personal you have ever gotten on the podcast. Can I tell you something else?

1:58:54Griffin Newman:Unrelated? I was just looking at what's coming up on Nighthawk. You reminded me.

1:58:58David Sims:Showed my daughter the trailer for Goat, the Steph Curry goat basketball player movie. As I've said many times, my little cousin George's most anticipated movie of 2026. He's been asking about it for six months. When is Goat coming out? She was pretty intrigued.

1:59:12Griffin Newman:She was like, I might want to see more of this, Goat. We were texting.

1:59:17David Sims:Our mutual friend, Sean Fantasy, was having a panic about how to schedule programming for the February on Big Picture because of the lack of big releases outside of Wuthering Heights. And we were just like, yeah, it feels like nothing's really going to hit between like Wuthering Heights and Mario and Project Hail Mary. And I was like, look out for fucking Goat. Goat might just sink an easy 35 mil. Because Zootopia is hanging in there so hard because nothing's really giving it a run for its money. Is Utopia still fucking like number three at the box office at the time we're recording this? Maybe four.

1:59:49Sean's not going to do an episode about Strangers Chapter 3.

1:59:52David Sims:Well, he is going to break off and do an entire new podcast just about the Strangers saga.

1:59:58Griffin Newman:Well, he's going to record a Strangers episode, but he has to do it by breaking into someone's house that he's never been there before.

2:00:03David Sims:Do you know what, Ben David? Actually, you're joking, but they had an open slot where they haven't been able to decide what to do, and they let people vote on the four ideas. and one of the four ideas was Amanda Sean movie swap. Sean has to watch Mamma Mia for the first time. Amanda has to watch the original Strangers for the first time. There is a chance that episode will have come out by the time people are listening to this. Goat might be about to shatter the backboard. We love it. Last wave, guys. What else happens? The thing about taking a train to see a movie where you just get off the train and walk right into a theater and you don't have to park your car.

2:00:37That was probably the biggest reason why. I was like, I might stay here for a bit. Oh, yeah.

2:00:42Griffin Newman:Courtroom scene.

2:00:44David Sims:What silly frigging wigs? What's going on? Ben asked if we had remembered to bring our barrister wigs, and embarrassingly, all four of us left them at home.

2:00:54Griffin Newman:Yes. Do you? Yeah, the barristers in the UK, I think recently, actually, maybe are now not required to wear wigs anymore. I think that's like an... Do they still have to go hrump, hrump? Hrump, hrump, hrump.

2:01:09David Sims:Uh... Here's my interpretation of the ending, and I cannot get into it deeply, but just sort of in larger strokes how I took the ending on a narrative level. The whole movie is the aboriginals warning him not to go deeper into this, right? And just being like, this is not for you, you cannot understand, exist in your world. and they all feel somewhat encumbered by the tension between the natural wavelength that they feel like they engage with reality and this sort of like Western colonial structure placed on top of them that they have to conform to to some degree or at least live in conscious like parallel with, right?

2:01:50David Sims:And the end of the movie is him literally just like going down the fucking rabbit hole going so deep down the tunnel which presented only with a series of new questions that make no sense to him. And then he walks out and he sees a fucking wave. And you don't know if it is, in fact, a dream, something that's happening. Is this a premonition? Right. Is this the thing the premonitions were hinting at? But it speaks more to, like, he has now gone through the tunnel and on the other side and he cannot return to the other world. And if he does, he has fully now exited the acceptance of that reality.

2:02:23David Sims:He will become, like, a stranger in the land that he used to live in.

2:02:27Griffin Newman:Again, I know very little about the sort of Australian Aboriginal mythology of the dreaming or dream time. But I believe if you read more and more about it, I really don't want to try and like some things like this up on this podcast. But I think that sort of barrier between what is real, what is imagined, or what is real, what is being dreamed is sort of sifted through in an interesting way in that mythology. That's all. I don't really know much. The question is, do they all know that the wave is coming and they just don't want him to have to deal with that stark reality? Because like... Possibly.

2:03:02Griffin Newman:I mean, it's like, what are you going to do? And he also is a figure... Build a wall? Where, because of his ancestral connection, that people like him show up ahead of an apocalyptic event. Right. They're sort of... They're like, yeah, you being here means it's happening. Yes. It's a sign. Yes.

2:03:21David Sims:So like Stitch. Quite like Stitch. If Stitch shows up, you know the box office is about to be rocked.

2:03:29Griffin Newman:Yeah, I just... What else do people want to say about this? I can tell you that when the film came out, let me tell you that, the reception and so on and so forth, it came out sort of Christmas time in 77 in Australia. It was like a hit and it did okay on the Australian art house, the American art house circuit. But like nothing like Picnic and Hanging Rock were like huge attention and a fair amount of money. I think more just like a modest hit. we're basically in retrospect is like i haven't checked in on that movie like he's like i don't feel bad about it he's like yeah it did pretty good i haven't looked at it in a long time in 2012 uh he sort of was yeah he's similarly kind of reflective about it like he calls it a graduation film you know it's kind of like him getting closer to the next stage of his career.

2:04:24Griffin Newman:But yeah, he doesn't he doesn't reflect on this movie as a failure or is like a special gem.

2:04:29David Sims:But it does speak to sort of how weirdly and like out of order and almost in one lump sum these movies are seen by Hollywood and America that this is the one that doesn't really function as any sort of stepping stone in his career in a clear way. He also said that like when he was trying to get money from like the Australian film funds that everyone was really against the idea of him trying to do a contemporary serious film. It was like contemporary comedy period drama. Yeah. But when you get to the end of Picnic at Hanging Rock which I just watched the other day because I was trying to watch these in order you feel like this guy is a god of doing period.

2:05:13And Gallipoli I feel the same way where it's like it's funny that he's very contemporary and very very effective at it and also very effective at doing movies that feel like you're time traveling.

2:05:24Griffin Newman:But I never, right, he never picked a lane there. He would sort of switch between them.

2:05:27David Sims:I, I've yet to watch Gallipoli. I'm excited to watch it the night before I record so I have proper time to process it Saturday. But that feels like a more obvious kind of, okay, I'm ready to make my version of some size of Epic now. And also he like, for the first time, identifies an A-list leading man at the center of his movie. I think Witness feels a little bit like a combo of the two in a weird way because the fish out of water thing functionally feels like

2:05:56Griffin Newman:you know he's very very modern and then it's like very very modern when he's doing the cop stuff and when he's there it almost feels like one of his period movies just by virtue of Amish culture. But Witness is interesting because it's about someone sort of falling in love with a culture that's not his own learning about it somewhat getting accepted. This is not that. But all of this movie It's about him trying to understand a culture, but it's not about them being like, you know what? You get it. I mean, at the end, he kills the shaman. Well, the shaman is being quite scary. I mean, but he's also...

2:06:31Griffin Newman:But he's also trying to steal stuff. Taking all the relics. Yeah, he's the one who's in the wrong. I would say that he's made a few mistakes, yes.

2:06:40David Sims:But this is a thing in talk about these movies, and we've recorded quite a few of the ones to come after this. they're all sort of about the friction between cultures and realities placed very close together in one way or another. That's like really a through line through his work.

2:06:58Griffin Newman:Yeah. Which is very, very interesting. And it's a very interesting evocative movie. I have a disc. What disc do I have it on? I bought it.

2:07:06David Sims:I got the last the Umbrella Last Wave. The 4K, is that what you got? There's a Criterion, but they haven't put it out since DVD. Yes, right. I did not Umbrella has a 4K. Wait, there's a 4K and I didn't know it. My friend. Umbrella. I'm going to go walk into traffic. The fine folks at Umbrella Entertainment. They're good guys, which is Australian company, right? Correct. Yeah. Yes. Our buddy Alex Ross Perry was the first to visit the Umbrella Closet. He went to their, right, to their... He has become the inaugural attendee of the Umbrella Closet, which basically they did not think of even presenting as a mecca.

2:07:42They did the Super Mario Brothers gigantic set, which is movie heaven.

2:07:47David Sims:Do you have that box, David? Which box? The Super Mario umbrella set. It looks as big as like an encyclopedia. No. Yeah, it's like the signs of a car.

2:07:56Griffin Newman:I think I have this. Like a phone book. I think Arrow put out a Super Mario disc, maybe? Well, this one is this big and it comes with, it's like 90 discs.

2:08:06David Sims:The shooting script, but also an original draft script. And it has like a book of art. Yes. It's got so much stuff.

2:08:12Griffin Newman:Sounds a little much. As much as I enjoy, of course. My review was it was not enough. It includes the King James Bible.

2:08:22Griffin Newman:And then there's a post-it on the Bible saying, Mario is better than this. Yeah.

2:08:26David Sims:It also, it comes with a chicken dinner. Sounds good. Yeah. The only time I've gone back. A Yoshi dinner. Since moving here. God, Yoshi's gonna fucking rule the box office this year. He's so lucky that Stitch is sitting this one out. What? Who's voicing him? I don't think they've announced anybody. I saw a joke post that I thought was real for about two minutes where they said it was Kendrick Lamar. And, but it's nothing.

2:08:47Griffin Newman:Or will he just like say Yoshi? I feel in the trailer he just says like, yeah. But Benny, the Safdie voice casting is still one of the wildest choices ever. I think that really, I was watching a trailer I was yawning a little bit and I was like, I wonder who's playing Baby Bowser, what do I care? And then when they said Benny Safdie, I was like, you mildly got me with that one.

2:09:05David Sims:It was the Nintendo Direct thing, right? Yeah, right, right, right. And I'm watching it and they play the trailer first and I hear the voice and I turn to my girlfriend and I go, God fucking damn it, Adam Devine. They cast Adam Devine in another animated movie because he's like, I'm Bowser Jr. He's his camp. I'm gonna get you plumbers. And I was like, it's fucking Adam Devine. Adam Devine gets another one off the fucking backboard and then it cuts back to like Miyamoto and he's like, we are proud to announce that of course Bowser Jr. will be played by Benny Safdie. The honorable Benny Safdie. And they just flash Benny Safdie's headshot and I truly was doubled over laughter.

2:09:40David Sims:It was so funny. Yeah. Of course. Of course. The only choice. Who else but the director of the Smashing Machine? No one else could bring Bowser Jr. to life. We've all been waiting for it. It's obvious. It's like fucking John Goodman playing Fred Flintstone. The culture has waited for this moment. I went back to L.A. after being gone for a very long time, and I was trying to see a bunch of friends at the same time because I was there for a short amount of time. So I invited everybody to go see Super Mario Brothers at New Bev because they're playing it for like a kid's matinee. And Hoskins not Pratt.

2:10:10Oh, I mean, yes, Hopkins. And so it was one of those things where someone's like, okay, how much do I really want to see this guy? And somehow so like 20 people went. I don't know if they, I think that I'd say 80 % didn't enjoy it as much as I did.

2:10:21Griffin Newman:It's a fascinating movie. I really like the look of that movie. I cannot defend every single story decision that it makes, but I just love how it looks.

2:10:30David Sims:Our buddy Patrick is a really good video of the contrast of the Illumination movie, which is so obsessed with being faithful to the games. Of course, it's the way our culture has and has nothing else going on is literally just pointing at things from the games and then the mario brothers hoskins movie is like what if we took a different fucking script we wrote i mean and map the character names onto it and you're like i miss it i miss that era

2:10:53Griffin Newman:where hollywood's like it's not like we're gonna make a real fucking mario brothers movie embarrassing that would suck let's shit on it with this insane thing anyway can hollywood

2:11:02David Sims:come back around to having complete contempt for all ip i agree rather than being like and now you

2:11:09Griffin Newman:will meet the Blue Ranger. I'm like, no, you should be humiliated that I have to meet the Blue Ranger.

2:11:14David Sims:Right. The horseshoe has come all the way around. I'm tired of Hollywood being like, do you like this? We made this just for you. Do you like it? I want them to be like, fuck you, you piece of shit. Here's your fucking drop.

2:11:23Griffin Newman:The wave that's coming of video game movies, that they're all just gonna be like Easter egg movies. Yeah. Yeah. I do miss the era of someone being like, this fucking sucks. Can you come up with something? you know and usually it was stuff that was actually really cool but you end up with something very interesting when someone has total contempt for this and as a kid I was still like they made a Mario movie I'm happy I was thrilled he's got a little red hat on

2:11:54David Sims:like that's all I needed four things happen in this movie that vaguely resemble things from the game what complaint could anyone have Miyamoto is like that brought great shame to our company like he was definitely

2:12:04Griffin Newman:not like

2:12:05David Sims:oh it was interesting but like there's like a fucking street musician busker who's a human dude with a harmonica around his neck and a guitar named Toad. And I like do the fucking Leo point to my brother and I'm like, it's Toad. They got Toad on screen. And I'm like, that's not fucking Toad. That's a dude. Then they turn him into a dinosaur headed motherfucker. They got Toad. He's the best part in the movie. Yeah, he was. He's crazy. I've had that song. He's stuck in my head forever. But I've been trying to make a bad dudes movie for like 15 years. So I hope someday a trend goes in that direction is all I care about.

2:12:42David Sims:So I'm going to play the box office game now. Is there anything else you want to say about the last wave or your general weird thoughts, Ben David? I genuinely feel like I've said way too much. You're crazy. You have not talked enough.

2:12:53Griffin Newman:Yeah, absolutely. You should be humiliated by how little you've talked. This film... Oh, wait. I just have one final thing I want to say. Sure.

2:12:59David Sims:Cue sounds of rain splashing, waves, water generally. Cool. And also place it in like 20 times up until this point, like any time after a joke of mine fell flat, put the waves in, so it sounds like... Maybe it's like a toilet flushing? No, like a triumphant wave. I have something to say about that, which is that I have a noise machine that plays rain sounds. I play it when I go to sleep, and I've had many days where I forgot to turn it off, so now the sound of rain becomes this thing that my brain kind of cancels out as if it's part of just the sound mix of my life, and that's only been something that's happened in like a recent year or so.

2:13:36And it's the first time I've revisited the movie since then. Was it, were you, there was a very odd kind of disconnect where it felt like I was watching a movie and had left my rain, sleep machine thing on. So I'm really glad I shared that.

2:13:52David Sims:Yeah, no, it was really good.

2:13:53Griffin Newman:Thank you. This film came out in America, it says in New York City, so in some small way, in basically Christmastime, December 19th of 1978. Okay. So still even before Picnic. So exactly. So what would have been at the box office on this random weekend? Okay. December 1978. Number one is a gigantic smash hit movie that we have covered on our Patreon. Lilo and Stitch. That is incorrect. Fuck. Good guess though.

2:14:22David Sims:We've covered it on our Patreon. We sure have. It's a gigantic smash hit. It sure is. Is it a re-release of Star Wars? No, it is not. No. 78, 78, 78. If it wasn't the biggest movie of 78, it was one of the biggest. Biggest movie of 78. It's not. Oh, it's Superman the movie. Superman! Superman! Richard Donner's Superman.

2:14:47Griffin Newman:The movie. You a fan of that one, Ben David? I haven't seen it. What is that one? Is it?

2:14:52David Sims:It's about a man who is super. He sure is. They sent him to Earth to teach us that boys can be big and strong and proud and shouldn't be ashamed. I actually watched the movies while you guys were covering them on Patreon. And I think they're pretty great. The one movie that I should never revisit, I think, is 2. Because 2, I thought, was literally the best movie I ever made when I was a kid. It's a good movie when you were a kid. It is great. It's perfect for kids. It is great. It's kid crack. I wish I could just live in that kid memory. Yeah. Where every part of it felt like the coolest thing I'd ever seen.

2:15:26Griffin Newman:Well, you and everyone in our generation, apparently. Like, you know, I'm saying a lot of people just wish they were 12 forever. Number two at the box office is... Can't wait for the Super Mario Galaxy movie.

2:15:39Griffin Newman:Is, it's an interesting one. It's a sequel to a gigantic film. It's a sequel to a gigantic film, but this film is less gigantic. Oh, yes. And it is, I would say, pretty forgotten. It's almost forgotten that this movie exists at all. Is it The Sting 2? No, but that is the vibe. That's the vibe. It is the sequel to like a box office sensation that won. It was nominated for best picture. It was like a big cultural movie. Shoot your guess. Is it Butch Sundance and Cassie the early years? No, it is not. Again, you're, you know.

2:16:11David Sims:But it's a two and done. This fucking ends the thing forever. Yeah.

2:16:15Griffin Newman:Yeah. But I mean, like there was no sequel to be made of the first movie. It was a bad idea. This is happening eight years later.

2:16:22David Sims:Oh, is it the love story sequel? Correct. And what is that called? Ryan's story? You're close. Ryan O 'Neill's the actor the character's name is that's a different movie David?

2:16:31Griffin Newman:yes no I was guessing the character's name is Oliver Oliver Story and the film is called Oliver's Story he falls in love with Buckets Bergen right he falls in love with Candace Bergen and of course the tagline was it takes someone very special to help you forget someone very special like who's like yeah no yeah who'd he fuck later you know like who watches Love Story and then comes out being like I sure want to know

2:16:55David Sims:who he later marries. Like fucking successful date nights across America. Couples walk out wiping away their tears and they're like, I just wish I could see him get over her.

2:17:03Griffin Newman:He was so young. I hope he... I'm like, I'm sure he will. What's more difficult? What's more difficult? Doing a story to Love Story or following up the tagline to the original? I know. The tagline writer was like, we want to be very respectful to the dearly departed Al McGraw. Right. I recently watched Love Story. You've watched this for the first time. Which I had never seen, obviously. that is a movie that was a colossal phenomenon that I would say close to forgotten.

2:17:30David Sims:It is the kind of movie you and I bring up where we're like these movies that were so big in their day that no one talks about anymore and feel like such a product of their time. And you and I will be like, is that secretly awesome? If we throw that on tomorrow.

2:17:41Griffin Newman:Throw it on, let me tell you. No. Snooze. Really, really actually quite bad. The first 20 minutes, which is the two of them just going at each other being so mean. It should be the good part. Where he's like, you're such a stuck up bitch. And she's like, you're a fucking rich man. You're Ryan O 'Neill. Your reputation precedes you. And then they're like, anyway, after 20 minutes of going against each other, so we're fucking in love with each other. And she's like, oh yeah, absolutely. And she's like, I'm so sorry I forgot that I'm dying. And then you're just like, it's so boring. But love means you never have to say you're sorry.

2:18:13That is a line in the movie. But that is the tagline of the original. And that's, they say part of the reason it was such a big hit was that people would hear that and go, what?

2:18:20Griffin Newman:Holy fuck. People go like, huh. And then later when you think about it, you're like, what does that mean? It's like, it doesn't mean anything. It feels like a Seinfeld bit. Total tautology. Does it mean never having to say your sorry? You're saying like, how does the second movie mean? His asshole dad is like, by the way, I'm sorry your wife died. And he's like, love never means never having to say your sorry. He says it to his dad? Yeah, well, he's repeating it. She had already said it to him. okay, okay. And, you know, the dad's like, oh, okay. And the dad should be like, fucking what? He should just be like,

2:18:47David Sims:huh? Parts that out for me, buddy. If they were trying to top the tagline of the first movie, Oliver Story's tagline should have been, sorry to that dead lady, but Oliver's got to get some.

2:18:59Griffin Newman:Look, time heals all wounds, all right? Oliver's got to meet someone new.

2:19:02David Sims:He's ready to say apologies to her memory as he fucks on top of her grave. Okay, guys, the tagline for Dragonfly was, when someone you love dies, are they gone forever? That's a good question.

2:19:14Griffin Newman:It's pretty good. I will say Michael Eisner, who was the head of Paramount at the time, the film, the studio that released Love Story and Oliver's Story, his quote on the movie was, let me find it exactly, one way or another, we're doing a sequel to Love Story. It doesn't fucking matter. Anyway, the movie came out, nobody liked it, and it was not a hit at all. And I think, you know, again, I'm making fun of the original movie, but I think it was a bit of a disgrace to the memory of a movie people like. I imagine people were just like, no, we're offended. Yes. All right, so that's number two. Number three is a film I've not heard of.

2:19:45Griffin Newman:So let me look this up. It is a... Is this first weekend of Superman or second?

2:19:50David Sims:It's the... Well, I don't know about that. Okay. I'm just wondering if we did this exact weekend on the Superman episode. Either way... I feel like we would have done these riffs. Yeah.

2:19:59Griffin Newman:Oliver Store sounds a little familiar. It does.

2:20:01David Sims:Go on.

2:20:01Griffin Newman:You're right. It does seem like it's kind of the first weekend of Superman. Anyway. Yeah. Because this is sort of familiar. An Iranian-American adventure drama directed by James Fargo starring Anthony Quinn. Look, it's called Caravans. Okay, yeah. And then number four is the movie about being in a Turkish prison. It's called... That makes Turkish prisons the thing you don't want to be in

2:20:21David Sims:for 20 years. We all know this film is called Oh, Heavenly Dog and it stars Benji and Chevy Chase. It's Midnight Express. You know, that might be the only movie where I know the score so well and I've listened to it 100 times and I've not seen the movie. That's another one where you're like, you watch fucking sitcoms from the 80s as I do, day and night. We have done this riff before. It's like Chariots of Fire. We're just fucking syndicating ourselves now. Yeah, seriously, we are. But like, yes, we're like in sitcoms

2:20:48Griffin Newman:who put like Turkish person, bad.

2:20:49David Sims:For 15 years, it's used as shorthand for worst thing you can possibly imagine. I've seen Midnight Express and now you're just like, no one has watched that movie fresh in 15 years?

2:20:59Griffin Newman:It's not a movie that's much discussed. See, I thought the bit was knowing music without having seen the movie. So that's why I said Chariots of Fire. Oh, sure. I just didn't want to. I want to explain my...

2:21:07David Sims:Yeah, I thought it was good. It was good. It was really good. You're talking. Keep talking.

2:21:11Griffin Newman:shut the fuck keep talking Griffin number five is a a very important comedy film of the year The Jerk no that's a better movie that's 79 but this is a good movie it's a good movie

2:21:24David Sims:it's not a Brooks it's important

2:21:26Griffin Newman:yeah it's like a big influential comedy movie giant hit it's not a prior wilder

2:21:30David Sims:no is it is it star driven or is it like director driven no

2:21:36Griffin Newman:it's a big ensemble but it it features a big star who's it's sort of you know he's already famous from TV and it's his big movie moment huh it's his big movie moment

2:21:47David Sims:it's an ensemble it's on Alan Alda

2:21:50Griffin Newman:no

2:21:52David Sims:TV famous big ensemble it's not Kimball Rand no

2:21:59Griffin Newman:it's like good

2:22:00David Sims:it's like a good movie it's good it's good we like it sure sure kind of

2:22:05Griffin Newman:it's never been a big movie for me but I mean it's very influential

2:22:08David Sims:and important who's the distributor of this picture Oh, my God. I'm asking you a very basic question. It's a fair point. Thank you. That's all I wanted. The film was, of course, released by Universal. The fine folks at Universal. It's Animal House?

2:22:24Griffin Newman:Yeah.

2:22:25David Sims:Yeah, there we go.

2:22:25Griffin Newman:National Lampoons. Yeah. Animal House. Yeah, very, very, very impactful. But like a movie where it's like, by the time I'm seeing that, I'm sort of being shown it as a bit of a relic, but like a good one, where they're like, you can see the seeds of the comedy you enjoy today here. And I'm like, yeah, but this is also funny. And I'm like, yeah. The difference for me is that despite having

2:22:46David Sims:very overprotective parents who greatly monitored what I watched and wouldn't let me watch Rugrats, my father probably showed me Animal House when I was six and was like, this is important. This is like more important than the Talmud in my eyes, in terms of you understanding where you came from. So, yes, it was like I almost learned what funny was by asking my dad, why is that funny? There you go. That's how I turned out normal. Anyway, what else is in the box office? The National Lampoon's did lead to everything. They led to everything.

2:23:15Griffin Newman:Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Halloween. John Carpenter's Halloween. Wow, wow, wow. Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings, which is very cool. The Anthony Hopkins film Magic, recently discussed, of course, on our Sam Raimi episode. Hoping Raimi goes through with that remake. A film we very recently discussed on our Patreon, The Wiz. The Wiz. Bombing. By the way, that movie is so good, and I watched it for the first time last week. And anyone who hates it is a loser. And maybe right. I don't know. It just blew me away.

2:23:47David Sims:Wrong. Gorgeous 4K. Fucking the best.

2:23:51Griffin Newman:And then... It's very short. It's short. Ben might be interesting to hear that number 10 is Cheech and Chong up in smoke. Which is kind of a good one.

2:24:01David Sims:Oh, yeah. Every year, Ben resubmits the idea of Cheech and Chong for Patreon. And David's like, how's that going to feel on the seventh episode?

2:24:08Griffin Newman:Right. I'm like, look, we're all going to be. I mean, it's like. Oh, I did think of a new one. Oh, sure. Yeah. Dangerfield. Yeah, sure. Yeah. How many is that? Well, what are we.

2:24:20David Sims:Star vehicles. You got to do the cartoon. No. Well, that's already been designated as part of stand up animation. Right. Oh, I voted for that when that happened. Yeah. It was kind of the Kamala Harris of last year. Oh, yeah. A huge disappointment. Yeah.

2:24:34Griffin Newman:I got a migraine. I got a migraine. I got a migraine on it. It didn't have. on that one. I guess you would do... Well, like, do you do Caddyshack? No, right? I think... Yeah. No, no, I think you want to do... Back to school? Rodney Dangerfield is the only guy on the poster movie. Back to school, easy money, lady back. First is easy money. Okay. Which, here's the poster. It's his face going like this. And then back to school, which is his face going like this. And in both of these cases, it's going back.

2:25:01David Sims:American audiences are standing to the side of the poster saluting him, right? Showing him the utmost respect. So, Number three is Ladybugs, where he's going like this.

2:25:10Griffin Newman:Yeah, a bunch of kids saluting him. Number four...

2:25:16David Sims:Meet Wally Sparks? Like, does it kind of show up to the 90s? It's Meet Wally Sparks where he's going like this. Yeah, he's holding a drink.

2:25:23Griffin Newman:And he's asking you to meet him. And I think that's kind of it. Like, for, like, true Rodney vehicles. I mean, and there is the cartoon. I gotta say, I don't know those two late ones. Imagine there. You don't know Meet Wally Sparks? You've never heard of Ladybugs? That's a porch movie. I've heard of Ladybugs. I've never seen it. You don't know Ladybugs was a big deal. It's like, what if Rodney was the coach of a girl's soccer? Yeah, it's Little Giant. I'm on board. Right, yeah. All right, but that made me think, you should do a series of movies with prominent Billy Joel songs because you have easy money.

2:25:53Sure, Oliver and Company. And then you could do Mike. I'm just kidding, I could do Mike. But the one joke I do want to say about that was I cleared a lot of my music in prep and at one point, a very stern person walked into my office and said, Are you aware that the song you have chosen is from an animated dog picture? As if this was news to you. Yeah, like, can you imagine if I, like, went to all this effort? I'm talking about Oliver and Company. Yeah, it said, why should I worry in a movie? And I'm like, it's from a what? Yes.

2:26:21David Sims:Do you succeed in being only the second film in history to use Why Should I Worry? That could be... Quite possibly? True. Yes. I am the second movie to have Cool as Ice, the theme from Cool as Ice, in my movie.

2:26:38Griffin Newman:I will also say that Rodney Dangerfield did apparently make his last basic movie is a movie called The Fourth Tenor. This is the poster. Oh, I remember this. I do think we'd have to track this one down, which may be illegal in some states. Rodney does opera. I love it. The glass he's holding in that poster, might be hard for you to tell this because it was a little grainy, is breaking because he's singing. And he's got a bad voice. Uh, Dangerfield gets no respect but at 80 years of age manages to get a laugh or two in this low-budget comedy found DVD and video guide. It's the only review listed on the Wikipedia page.

2:27:13Griffin Newman:Do you remember... Demand it, folks! A laugh or two is so mean. You're like, I can't remember if there was a second laugh. Dangerfield gets a laugh or two when he, like, is unconscious on fucking Carson. Like, that's not good news that in 90 minutes he rustled up a laugh or two. That's his lowest laugh average. That's not good.

2:27:31David Sims:Do you know or do you remember that when Dangerfield died which must have been close to if not over 20 years ago now. It was 04. Over 20 years ago. His widow when she was like doing the Larry King rounds and such to like eulogize him was like well don't worry Rodney's coming back. We cloned him. Okay.

2:27:52Griffin Newman:Okay. Rodney will be back soon. So she is that what's the status of that? My point is I don't think we've heard a peep since then. Well if you if not to go with this literally but if you had literally cloned him That would mean that there currently is a 24, 25-year-old guy. Which sounds pretty funny. I know, but I'm like, Rodney only got famous in his, like, 50s.

2:28:11David Sims:It's like a long wait. Right. There's currently a Rodney Danielsville clone who's selling aluminum siding. Right. And it's 18 years before he decides to focus on stand-up.

2:28:20Griffin Newman:Because, like, 25 years from now, we're definitely going to be able to just make, like, a Rodney hologram. You know, like, and the clone will be like, I'm ready. And it's like, you are getting no respect. Like, we just... You actually...

2:28:30David Sims:It's not a bit.

2:28:31Griffin Newman:We don't care. I was waiting to make that respect joke. And I should have known that it was going to happen anyway. With a sharp comic mind like David Sims on the ones and twos. I don't know, man. You made me laugh a lot listening to this podcast. But not the subway stuff. I take that very serious. You should. That's dramatic. Do you have any subway questions I can answer on here before we wrap up the show? What's your favorite movie that has a subway in it? Besides Jason Takes Manhattan. Taking a film. Oh, yeah. That's the only correct answer. It's the gold standard. And, you know, the original but I also I have a huge soft spot for the Tony Scott he's a god to me but the the streaming version of it is 16 by 9 instead of scope which is really

2:29:12David Sims:get the fuck out of here several Tony Scott movies I think when we do

2:29:15Griffin Newman:Tony Scott I mean not that we we love to watch a disc on this yeah we're really gonna have to go to the discs it's discs only they've been fucking

2:29:21David Sims:with his legacy I can't do that series because there's like eight movies I'd want to do and if I didn't get them I would be too upset so just automatically ban me from it only getting one

2:29:29Griffin Newman:would upset you you'd be like what about the other seven No, I'm saying all of them, it's like I feel like I really want to talk about it. You're doing the fam. I would bring his filmography to Desert Island before Ridley's, and Ridley's made some of my favorite movies.

2:29:40David Sims:I'd agree with that. I think it's a better survival tactic. Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice. Okay, I'm going to very briefly, because no one listens to this show for promo, but I have to mention, I have a movie coming out in the future, which I think is right after this.

2:29:57Griffin Newman:It's coming out, I believe, five days after this episode drops. Yes, on the huge one. It's uncanny timing given that we didn't really plan it that way. So get... Sometimes. Get Hulu without commercials. Yes. Invite your friends over. Turn off the lights. Turn it loud. Eat some pizza.

2:30:10David Sims:Mm-hmm. You watch it and try to have fun watching it in buddy action, comedy, gangster, time travel, rom-com.

2:30:18Griffin Newman:Emily Hampshire? Is she cool? She is the greatest. I love her. We've got good friends. I love her. Huge fan of Emily Hampshire. She plays a dirty cop in it. You have not seen

2:30:28David Sims:the picture yet, David. But can I spoil something for you? Here's the fucking headline. Keith David is in the movie owning bones. Not surprised to hear it. Ben David wrote some fucking meaty monologues for Keith David, who you might be astonished to hear. He gives a big monologue about my dead cat. There you go. So that comes out, and I'm very proud of it, and it's cool. And then also, my new Scott Pilgrim game will have just come out when this comes out. And then I think the week this comes out is the Blu-ray of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off starring Griffin Newman.

2:31:03Griffin Newman:Well, hey. Then that is also on Netflix if people want to watch it. Yes, but physical media has audio commentaries from me and Brian Newman. I'm just saying, you know. We love physical media.

2:31:15David Sims:I played a handful of characters on the show that you very kindly invited me in to do including Wallace's straight stunt double, straight Wallace. One of the most cursed characters in modern media who is not included in the game, but I believe there is any blankies getting ready to play Scott Pilgrim acts. Might notice a thing, a conscious nod. There is a nod to me as a person and to porch movies. Yes, that is also true. Brian Lee O'Malley, friend of the show. We love Brian. He's a huge hero of mine. I also just, not to fucking tee you up like Cogman on this, but partially some of the inspiration from, for Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice comes from us covering Mikey and Nicky on the podcast, correct?

2:32:09Partially, yes. I mean... That it like jostled your brain. Yeah, there's a...

2:32:13David Sims:Olivia Cricket? There's a... Olivia Cricket, the great Olivia Cricket. We love her. Yeah, the premise of the movie is a gangster goes back in time to try and... you can skip ahead of this if you don't want to spoil anything, but a guy goes back in time to try to fix a mistake he had made kind of betraying his friend. And I had sort of had this idea when there's a lot of these like nihilistic gangster movies, like these relationship things. And I always wonder, you know, you get to the end and you have that pitch black thing. It's like, what if that person could redo it? You know, that's kind of the kernel of it.

2:32:47And then the other thing was just the, I like the buddy comedy thing of like the redeemed guy and the unredeemed guy butting heads. So it's like Scrooge at the end with Scrooge from the beginning.

2:32:56David Sims:Right. What if it's two of the same guy at different points in his journey? Also a bunch of Gilmore Girls references. It's an excellent movie. Tremendously fun. Strongly encourage everyone to watch it. What was... I'm sorry.

2:33:07Griffin Newman:Are you a just guy, a dean guy, or a Logan guy? Important. There is a very long discussion about who the best boyfriend is. And I'll just say anything that James Marsden says in the movie about Gilmore Girls is my opinion. I think that you always give the correct opinion to, you know, the handsome James Marsden guy. Absolutely. So, in Q &As, I've already had people say, oh, so what is your take? Because there's a lot of different opinions. And you're like, you just saw the take. Anything Marsden says? Yeah, that's my take. That's me. I gave the take to the best pair of cheekbones. You remember when Dean gets married and then his wife tries to make him a roast?

2:33:40So, Dean's the worst boyfriend on the show, objectively. But who was the best?

2:33:45Griffin Newman:I'm a Jess guy. See, I like Jess a lot. But are you saying who's the best boyfriend to roast? Who's the best for her? There's only one answer. Uh, oh boy. I don't know if I agree that there's only one answer. I think that Jess in his more mature form is probably the best boyfriend for Rory. I think that if you take the actions of the characters on the show, it's probably Logan, I guess. But, Logan's kind of a dweeb. I don't know. It's complicated. Well, someone's gonna have to get on Hulu to find out my take. I'm very excited to listen. Uh, thank you All for listening. Yes. Jess really fumbles the bag with Rory, though.

2:34:24Griffin Newman:We all agree. I mean, season three just completely fumbles the bag. Right? So, here's the thing. Swan Song. Last Wave. I want them to release it in 40X and I want to drown in the theater. Ben, yes. Yes.

2:34:34David Sims:That was your response to when they should just fill the theater with water and you're slowly drowning while you're watching it. That's my big hot tip. My big hot wet tip.

2:34:44Griffin Newman:I mean, Ben, you have definitely proposed a theater that is you are underwater the entire time. Yes.

2:34:48David Sims:he proposed underwater theater he proposed upside down theater yeah that one was

2:34:52Griffin Newman:what if you watch Deep Rising in a theater that's filled with water

2:34:56David Sims:great idea

2:34:56Griffin Newman:I would watch Deep Rising

2:34:57David Sims:on my phone right now while you're on a jet ski in a theater filled with water yep you would watch it in a tree you would watch it yeah absolutely uh my brain is puttering out I'm excited for you and I to fucking dominate it trivia bandage oh you guys doing trivia today big time we are about to get trivia I really hope someone's gonna have a round that's all about the with or and actor credits. I got so mad at that. David had a difficult...

2:35:22Griffin Newman:My basketball chat heard about the trivia round. Yeah. And so they were like, come on now, do it to us. Come on, we all work in Hollywood. You know, because it's mostly like LA guys. And I did it and they got mad at me too. They were like, this is too fucking hard. And I'm like, I know, I know, I messed up. We kind of accidentally went Christian Grey on that trivia. Griffin and I have a trivia team that we do. And the worst we've ever done in a round is maybe getting like seven out of 10. On Sims round, I think I got two out of 14. Yeah. Sorry. It was tough. It was tough.

2:35:50David Sims:The ones that I thought were layups, I look back and I'm like, well, but those are, you basically have to guess that maybe you get it. We were running all our questions by each other. And I was like, yeah, good round. Fair.

2:36:01Griffin Newman:All these are gettable.

2:36:03David Sims:This is the kind of shit we just talk about all the time. I did an action figure round and I was sending all the pictures to Marie and she got all of them immediately. And I was like, good. So all of these are apparent. Everyone knows what all these characters dress like, especially if their faces are poorly sculpted. Ben's round was great. Ben's round was right there. Ben nailed it. Ben did a video round on holes. Yes, he did. Anyway, thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for Gallipoli. That's right. And as always, Ohana means family. No.

2:36:31David Sims:I'm looking for the ratings bump. That guy's the king of the fucking box office.

2:36:35Griffin Newman:I blame JJ.

2:36:41Griffin Newman:Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas And our associate producer is AJ McKeon This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy Research by J.J. Birch Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in The Great American Novel With additional music by Alex Mitchell Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds Our production assistant is Minnick Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to BlankCheckPod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

2:37:19Griffin Newman:Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at BlankCheckPod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions. I'm rolling and hey depending on your quote selection could throw a little bit storm sounds and post

2:37:47David Sims:I think you want to be throwing some splish splashes in here throughout the episode at your discretion I think there should be like soothing rain sounds under the whole episode I think you do what works well I didn't prep anything but I think in the final product at least the final product Can we license that song, Splish Splash, I Was Taking a Bath? Bobby Darin. Bobby Darin. Can Bobby Darin sponsor this episode?

2:38:11Griffin Newman:I'll reference if a storm moment feels right. Okay. But yeah, I didn't think.

2:38:16David Sims:I'm happy that it's fine to just be a post thing. I think this should be in the episode. This is a good discussion. This is after, this is the post credit cookie. So people can see how the sausage has made it. Okay, ready?