The Tragedy of Macbeth with Dana Schwartz

7:56Griffin Newman:This film is called The Tragedy of Macbeth. What's the new one called? It's like The Queen of Hearts or The Jack of Spades or something?

8:01David Sims:I think it's Jack of Spades. Yeah. And it's, what's his name? Josh O 'Connor. Josh O 'Connor. That guy's not in movies. And Frances McDormand, that's like all we know?

8:10Griffin Newman:It looks like it's a period piece. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

8:14David Sims:There was a photo of Josh O 'Connor. Leslie Manville and Damien Lewis. I mean, I'm not uninterested. Give me all that you got. But they're filming in the UK, and there was a paparazzi photo of Josh O 'Connell looking fucking unbelievable. Looking very, very good in 19th century garb. But to date, this is the only solo Joel movie that has been released. That movie is perhaps not based on anything as an original screenplay.

8:36Griffin Newman:I don't know, yeah.

8:38David Sims:Unclear, but so much of the interest of this movie is that Joel's only solo film we have seen so far is him adapting a pretty unimpeachable work of drama. so this is really a showcase for him as a director and it's called The Tragedy of Macbeth and today our guest joining us for the third time third time on the podcast maintaining a thematic trilogy is that true? yes because it's all witches David all witches oops all witches that's so true Oz the Great and Powerful Tragedy of Macbeth yes Dana Schwartz is our guest today Thank you so much for having me. Of course.

9:19Griffin Newman:We gave Catherine Hunter Best Supporting Actress at the New York Film Critics Circle. She's amazing in this. Yes. And I was like, that's a cool win by us. And then no one else really bothered to award her anything. So I felt even better about it.

9:31David Sims:It was kind of an Issy Oigata moment. Do you remember when he got the first, was it NBR gave him Best Supporting Actor and everyone's like, oh, fuck. Is he a contender in silence?

9:42Griffin Newman:Right.

9:42David Sims:And then it didn't happen again. Yeah. Is the only sort of Oscar juice this movie gets is Denzel's nomination? Denzel gets nominated by everybody. He got nominated for three Oscars. Cinematography, production design? That's right. Pretty undeniable. Sure.

9:56Griffin Newman:But they all did feel a little cursory in that. Like, never really felt like a serious threat to win.

10:02David Sims:No.

10:03Griffin Newman:It lost cinematography to Dune. Dune, Dune, Dune. It lost production design to Dune. Dune, Dune, Dune. I really like the production design of this movie. Me too. And Denzel lost to Will Smith, who I think accepted his award quietly and with no real drama. A normal way. I would love to live in some of these rooms. Yeah. Like aesthetics. Not heavy on like cushions, though. It's true.

10:30David Sims:It's not cozy.

10:31Griffin Newman:No. They look a little bit. But it's got drama. They're a little exposed to the elements, whatever they may be.

10:36David Sims:They look a little bit like Kanye. Foggy. Do you remember Kanye and Kim's home that he kept posting photos of? Yeah. Where you were like, don't you have kids? How do they exist in this state? They live in a modern art museum. All brutalist. But how do we feel about a puddle room? Incredible. Yeah.

10:53Griffin Newman:I think it's fun. Yeah, just sploshing. Yeah. If you're feeling weird about the overthrowing you've been up to.

10:58David Sims:Throw some frog's breath down. Also, this concept of like, look, Macbeth, it's a cauldron forward drama, right?

11:06Griffin Newman:Yeah.

11:07David Sims:How can we put a new spin on an old cauldron? And they're like, what if the cauldron is the room?

11:12Griffin Newman:Pretty cool. That's why Denzel was at the Oscars. And he told Will Smith, like, the devil comes for you when you're about to win an Oscar or whatever. You know, though, it is a good thing for all of us that no one put Lady Macbeth's name in their mouth. This is a guy who would have.

11:26David Sims:Dana? That's very true. Oh, that's true. Macbeth wouldn't have liked that. He would not have liked that one.

11:31Griffin Newman:Although sometimes I'm like, he doesn't seem to really care. He's like, yeah, whatever.

11:34David Sims:But that's, I mean, you talk about this movie's response, which was polite, where they were like, of course, Denzel is Macbeth. It was a little polite. Cinematography and production design, we can't deny, right? Yeah. This is one year after Nomadland. Frances has just won her third lead actress Oscar. True. I remember Mark Harris being like, she's going to win again. Well, that's silly. And people were like, she can't win four times. If you're listening, that's silly. And it was like, she's playing Lady Macbeth, and she is just like unstoppable right now. And she basically didn't even get nominations.

12:04David Sims:She's not very good in this movie. I'm going to have a hot take. I'm sorry to jump in with a hot take. I think my two least favorite performances in this movie are Denzel and Francis.

12:14Griffin Newman:Interesting. I like Denzel. I think Denzel's pretty funny. But I sort of know what you're hinting at. I don't think they tone... The things that I love about this movie, the tone of this movie, I think they're the least dialed into that tone. I agree with you, especially on Francis McDormand, who is straight up awful in this movie.

12:31David Sims:It's also fascinating because... Who I generally love as an actor, to be clear. It's not as much of a collaborative effort as, say, Ethan and Trisha Cook. No, no, no.

12:40Griffin Newman:She's 100 % the creative push for Joel to do this.

12:44David Sims:This is absolutely a movie made by the two of them. It's a Lady Macbeth movie. Yes. She has Lady Macbeth Tim into making this movie. Absolutely. And she just doesn't quite have the right handle on it. Who do we each think is the best performance in this?

12:59Griffin Newman:Alex Hassel. I mean, that's the performance where I was just like, Who's this fucking guy? I mean, like, Catherine Hunter's awesome. But his face is doing a lot of that work for him. Yeah, well, it's a good face. I'll take 10 of it. You know who's good in this movie? It's Steven Root. Steven Root's great. Steven Root I love. Should we get to the root of you?

13:16David Sims:We're going to get to the root matter later. Let's maybe do a little tease of the thing there. I believe I gave him my putters and murmurs. He's puttering. And to putter in Shakespearean English is pretty impressive. Very fun. I think Corey Hawkins is, like, unbelievable. He's great.

13:30Griffin Newman:I think Moses Ingram is great in her big scene. I think basically everyone does a good job. Like, except for Francis, who I think is kind of off for some reason in ways we can investigate. Like, I think Harry Melling is awesome. Yes. It's like so cool that Dudley Dursley like became what he became and that the Coens love him. Love him. Gleason. Oh, Gleason. I mean, it feels like he can do it in his sleep, but like, he's great.

13:58David Sims:His fucking creamsicle beard looks perfect in black and white.

14:02Griffin Newman:again Catherine Hunter we literally gave her best supporting actors the coffee's brewing the cauldron is bubbling

14:09David Sims:I asked Ben to reactivate the rarely opened collection of Nightmare Before Christmas themed coffees it's a rainy day in New York and I hate to say that sentence but Ben has brewed up a pot of rough weather which is the zero from Nightmare Before Christmas themed coffee and I think it's cranberry flavored I'm about to have a great time No, you are not.

14:32Griffin Newman:But Alex Hassel was the guy, partly because I did not know who he was. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

14:38David Sims:Cranberry is the Santa Jack coffee. That makes more sense. This is oatmeal cream pie. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.

14:44Griffin Newman:Dana and I already remarked on the fact that cream pie should not be in coffee flavor names. Let's hang that from the rafters. This is the 21st century. It's going to have a great time.

14:53David Sims:I'm a little surprised that Zero's coffee isn't pumpkin flavored since he's got that dang pumpkin nose. What's Corey Hawkins up to recently? This is what I want to talk about for a little bit I want to talk about this for a little bit But we've got a lot of stuff to say Well what I think is kind of one of the most interesting things about this movie is Alex Hassel's role He plays Ross Who if you see a production of Macbeth You would be forgiven for being like I don't know who that is

15:19Griffin Newman:Because Ross is basically just the guy who says things to explain things He's more of a functionary Yes Ross doesn't have his own Wikipedia page

15:27David Sims:Right Corey Hawkins has one of the The juicy roles Yeah he's got the big fucking

15:34Griffin Newman:I was from my mother's room untimely whipped Roll Like I mean he delivers the twist ending

15:41David Sims:I feel like the first time I clocked him was straight out of Compton Where even just seeing the trailer I was like Holy shit how did they find a guy that looks This much like Dr. Drip And he's really fucking good in that I've never seen this but the year before He played Tybalt in the bad Haley Steinfeld, Romeo and Juliet. I saw that movie. And then it felt like right out of straight out confidence like he's getting cast in everything. He's in Kong Skull Island. He played, this is interesting.

16:09Griffin Newman:What? He played Tybalt in a filmed Broadway HD production with Orlando Bloom but not Haley Steinfeld with Condola Rashad. Haley Steinfeld did a movie. She didn't do it on Broadway. She did a movie but I think it's not Orlando Bloom because I was about to say, Orlando Bloom, Haley Steinfeld. No, I think that's Douglas I think that's no good age. No, no, no. That sounds right. I was conflating the two things. I apologize for that. No, it's fine. It's fine. But so he was Tibalt in that. What he just did was Voyage of the Demeter.

16:38David Sims:Yes. But he was in that. They make him the new lead of 24. He does a season of 24. That was a mistake on everyone's. Black Klansman. He's incredible in. That's great.

16:49Griffin Newman:That's the one one big scene.

16:51David Sims:Yes. But destroys it. Then like six underground. He's number seven. Oh, interesting. In the Heights. Another big, like, kind of co-lead role for him. He sings, he dances, he's great. He's really good at him. Tragedy Macbeth. I'm like, this guy is, like, waiting to explode. And even in this, where it's like, so many of his scenes are going to be him and Denzel. This feels like a kind of passing of the torch thing. And then it's like, two years where he does something called Survive I've Never Heard Of. That seems to maybe be a TV movie with him and Sophie Turner. No, dude, it's a Quibi. I ordered that one.

17:25David Sims:It was a Quibi? Yeah, I ordered that personally. He doesn't do a movie between Macbeth and Voyager the Demeter. Well, it's only two years. And then it's Color Purple. And COVID.

17:36Griffin Newman:Yeah, and COVID.

17:37David Sims:Piano Lesson.

17:38Griffin Newman:So in Color Purple, he's Harpo. That's not the most enjoyable role, obviously. He is good in the Piano Lesson. He's not, to me, the one that pops. Thank you, Beth. But he's totally good. He did also do Top Dog Underdog on Broadway and got a Tony nomination with Yaya Abdul-Matiha, Wonder Man, of course. Great Wonder Man. Did you see the trailer for that? Yeah. What's going on? I don't know. What's up? I don't know. How are we doing? I don't know. We can't just do a whole Marvel show set in audition rooms. That has to just be the first 20 minutes, right? We do need Wonder Man to shoot lasers or whatever he does.

18:21David Sims:The problem with all these Marvel Disney Plus shows now, and Dana, this is something you couldn't possibly understand, is that all of them have basically been sitting on a shelf for three years and were conceptualized five years ago. Right.

18:32Griffin Newman:Like Ironheart. Right.

18:33David Sims:They're all just like totally out of sync. They can't even acknowledge our president. Red Hulk. And please, Dana, if you wouldn't mind saluting.

18:40Griffin Newman:Saluting. Does he have like two months in office? Like, his Wikipedia page is like, fuck, Thunderbolt Ross, he was a celebrated general. He was president, resigned in disgrace after turning into Red Hulk two months in.

18:52David Sims:There was, like, one throwaway line in Thunderbolts where they were like, things have been a mess since our president hulked out, right? They say something, yeah. They acknowledge it. You guys talk about it more.

19:00Griffin Newman:It should be a little, Congress should feel pretty stressed out that the president hulked out. The president turned into Red Hulk.

19:05David Sims:I think if, during a conference, by the way, it was televised, it wasn't like, They can't cover it up. Right, it wasn't like Michael Wolff broke the story. He's like giving a speech in the Rose Garden.

19:16Griffin Newman:He did do it in public. You're right.

19:19David Sims:And then he roped out and Captain America fought him and he sadly like conceded naked. He did.

19:26Griffin Newman:And it felt like a little sort of upsetting. And he's in the fucking raft now? He's in the raft. Well, you know, his legacy is now going to be on like internet listicles of like shortest terms of president. Right, William H. Harrison. He died. Red Hulk. Hulk down. Like it's like what happened to the guys. Right.

19:42David Sims:Do you think in like history classrooms where they have like the wraparound, like art of all the presidents or the poster or whatever? Does he get a Hall of Presidents? Is it Red Hulk? Does it Hulk out? I think he absolutely makes those things. But do they have to be like, we must respect both forms of the president? Does the Red Hulk Trump? No pun intended. The regular form? I don't know. How did you make that?

20:07Griffin Newman:Well, Corey Hawkins is in an upcoming film directed by Bart Layton. not a director I like.

20:13David Sims:The Man in My Basement?

20:15Griffin Newman:No, it's called Crime 101. But he has another... Well, but I'm telling you about Crime 101 and then I'll move on to whatever that is because listen to who's in this movie. Crime 101. Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Keoghan, Halle Berry, Monica Barbaro, Corey Hawkins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nick Nolte. What? That's like a lot of guys. Yeah. Yeah. And that's an MGM. Is he the lead? No, he looks like he's about sixth on the cast list here. And then he's in The Odyssey. The Odyssey is the big thing. That's cool. Yeah. But I mean, maybe he plays like a rock. I mean, I don't know. It's like a lot of guys in that.

20:51David Sims:He hasn't stalled out. He's one of those guys where like, if he gives a good performance tomorrow, everyone's going to be like, wow. But even when he was on. My basement was at TIFF. Okay. I think it was, it got bad reviews. Even when he was on like that good growth run, I always felt like his name was not sticking with people as much as it should. Yeah, I don't know. I love him. Yeah. And I think he's great in this. He's phenomenal in this. He's great in this. Yeah. Dana, what's your history with old Bill Shakespeare? I really like Shakespeare. I was in college a nerd who didn't have a lot of friends or go to parties.

21:28But I was a member of a group called Shakespeare on the Green that sort of put on site-specific Shakespeare productions around campus.

21:36David Sims:Where did you go to college? Brown. Oh, yeah. I didn't even pay you to set that up

21:41Griffin Newman:I'm an adult woman I went to college in Rhode Island No I actually directed A production of Arcadia With Shakespeare on the Green It's not written by William Shakespeare So you fucked up there I was in Winter's Tale Yes I've seen The Old Shepherd Winter's Tale, Shakespeare's weirdest play Does not make sense It's kind of weird. Have fun with it. I like Shakespeare a lot. I have seen a few productions of Macbeth. I enjoy it. I think it's fun. I like this movie a lot. David, did you ever perform Shakespeare? I did. I think I've said that on Mike. I was Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream in high school.

22:27Griffin Newman:I wore a sparkly green sweater. Yeah, you were. I think that is the only Shakespeare I did. I did a little bit of drama, like high school drama. I was not good at it. But I enjoyed the camaraderie and the, you know, sort of spirit of collaboration. You were also going to an all-boys school, right? Yeah, but we would do our plays with the girls. That's what I was asking. You weren't going Mark Rylance? You weren't dressing up as girls? Flipping around? You weren't Rylancing? We never Rylance. You know, when Mark Rylance did that, it was very controversial. Because, so, what Dana's referring to is Mark Rylance, who we all know, of course, as a big friendly giant who occasionally, you know.

23:06David Sims:Also, as the Phantom of the Open, Green? What were you going to say? Were you queuing me up to do the voice? Yeah, you could do the voice if you want,

23:14Griffin Newman:or you could do any Mark Rylance. I'm supposed to impulsate this.

23:18David Sims:Ribbons, Robbins.

23:21Griffin Newman:He was also, well, he started out at the RSC, the Royal Shakespeare Company, but then he was the first artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe for the first 10 years, which is they rebuilt Shakespeare's theater from, you know, Tudor times. You're aware of this?

23:38David Sims:Yes, perfect reconstruction, but they added Dolby Atmos. Have you been to the Globe? I have. Have you been to the Globe? I haven't.

23:46Griffin Newman:It's wonderful. I saw Measure for Measure there. It's awesome. Ben, have you been to the Shakespeare's Globe? No. Have you been to London? Yes. I did go by the theater. Right. You can also just, it's on the South Bank. You can just go walk. It's crazy. Yeah. It's crazy to think it's just, you know, obviously it's not the original. No. And it's about 500 feet from where the original was. They actually fucked up really bad. Yeah. There was some other building that they couldn't move or whatever, but it's pretty close. Sure. But crazy that it's just, I mean, London's so fucking old. It's just crazy.

24:23Griffin Newman:Fucking old. Yeah. Crazy. But he did try doing some all male productions because like, that's what they did in Shakespeare. time and then some people got mad because they were like it's hard enough for female actors out here and you're fucking taking our roles away again but he was like i'm trying to do a thing i think they did all women's stuff too at a certain point i'm not sure he was in sort of a

24:43David Sims:celebrated production i believe of twelfth night yeah and then i think olivia i think you're right david that to make up for it they did an all women's production of ghostbusters and people reacted to it very normally. Ben, how do you feel about... He answered the call. How do you feel about Shakespeare in general? The Bard? The Bard. Willie Shakes.

25:04Griffin Newman:Well, famously, I've said on this show many times, I'm not a fan of homework. I resist homework, and I worried that this was a homework-ass movie. It is a little bit of a homework-ass movie, okay? Because it is guys in robes going like, tossed thou, and it's, you know, like there's a certain brain-turning-off moments Some people have. A little bit. Now, later in life, I've come to somewhat appreciate Shakespeare. I think he's contributed some stuff. Oh, you think? Right, right, right. The guy actually landed a couple darts on the board. I got to give it up for him. Old Bill, he's done some stuff.

25:42Griffin Newman:Do you think that it wasn't really him? Because you don't mind a conspiracy theory sometimes. Sure, I love it. So you're just, I'm like, hey, maybe Shakespeare didn't write his plays. you're just like, I'm all in. He didn't do it. Maybe it's three guys. Dana, where are you on fake Shakespeare? No, it was a real guy. Oh, I love that. Maybe it's like three guys in a trench coat. That's the dream. And they all, that's why like, you know, one of them brought the comedy, one of them brought the drama. Do you know about the William Ireland Shakespeare hoax? No, what's that? I mean, this could be a full rabbit hole, but basically it was a guy in the late 1700s who was trying to impress his dad and like forged a Shakespeare signature autograph.

26:20Okay. And the dad was impressed. And then gradually reached a point where he's like, I found a lost play that Shakespeare wrote.

26:26Griffin Newman:This is like, can you ever forgive me? He kicked something off and then he started being like, well, if I can do the fucking signature. They put it on. They put it on. It's called, what's it called? Vortigern. Okay.

26:39David Sims:Is it good? No. No, fuck. It does make you wonder, though, like, you know, they're constantly publishing new books under Dr. Seuss, right? Yeah. And it's like a Dr. Seuss book. And you're like, we all know he died 60 years ago. Some other person's writing this, but Dr. Seuss has become a brand. Yes. It's a part of it's the language. And so is it like Community Season 4 where it's like, you kind of got the idea, but that doesn't mean it's good.

27:03Griffin Newman:Yes. Yes. Right. Right. Where they're like, hop on, hop.

27:07David Sims:I'm almost surprised that no one's been like, hey, we bought the rights to Shakespeare. Right. We're going to start publishing new Shakespeare plays. Right. We fed AI. Like there's new James Bond novels or whatever. Right. Right. That all the new Bourne novels still say like Robert Ludlam in big letters on the top. Right.

27:24Griffin Newman:And that's like actually written by.

27:25David Sims:Written by. Yeah.

27:27Griffin Newman:Is that covered on hoax? Oh, it is. That's a podcast. Your podcast hoax. Brand new podcast, hoax! Exclamation point. Fun podcast I do with my friend Lizzie Logan where we talk about historical hoaxes. Including that one.

27:39David Sims:You have talked about it. I went down the rabbit hole. It's just, it's very fun for me to have a job where I get to go down a rabbit hole. What's the big, like, upon Wingate, what's the name of the big hoax? I feel like there's the one that has some sort of, like, code name for what the truthers call themselves. Is it the Iron Mountain? I'm going to figure this out. That's, like, the kind of QAnon-y.

27:59Griffin Newman:Like, I don't understand. Like, what's the hoax?

28:02David Sims:I guess it's the one that Anonymous has built around the idea that, like, Shakespeare couldn't have been a common person. Oh, a Shakespeare hoax. I feel like all those, like it was Bacon, do come from like sort of snobbery. This idea that like a glove maker son.

28:19Griffin Newman:Right. Seemingly regular have created this. It must have been. It has to be fake. It has to be Marlowe or Francis Bacon or whoever. Right. That's the thing with the Shakespeare author stuff, right? It's like largely like, it's not like there's not enough evidence. It's more just people being like, I just don't buy it. And also the argument that I've heard is like, well, how can someone be so good at tragedy and comedy and poetry? And I'm like, because he was a really good writer. Yeah. There's a reason we, right, we still like his plays because he was good. Like, it's circular. Yes. Like, you just have to, right.

28:53David Sims:It's the Oxfordian theory, but there's some dumb name I've heard those people call themselves. They're called anti-Stratfordians, if that's what you're talking about.

28:59Griffin Newman:Because they're basically like, it wasn't the man from Stratford because that's where he's from. Sure. I guess. And of course, he had a son called Hamnet. And we'll learn all about that soon.

29:08David Sims:We're about to learn and cry about that son. Ben and I last night went to go see House Full of Dynamite.

29:14Griffin Newman:Oh, did you like it?

29:15David Sims:I liked it. I mean, we'll have talked about it a month ago. Yeah, I know. I'm just literally interested. Yeah, I liked it. I haven't seen it yet. I have some hang-ups. I found it a little stressful. But Ben had just finished watching Tragedy Macbeth. It was storming up. Yeah, it was raining. This is real Tragedy Macbeth weather. Yes. And then walked into House of Dynamite. And we walk out of the theater and Ben's just like, I feel bad. Yeah, for real.

29:37Griffin Newman:That was an awful double header. All right. You probably needed to go see. Well, I mean, what's the funniest movie in theaters right now? Probably fucking House of Dynamite. Yeah, might be. Oh, laughs to be had in theaters. I did the opposite double feature. The Taylor Swift lyric. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

29:52David Sims:Maybe Gabby's Dollhouse has a couple laughs, right? Yeah. Arp argued that Wig is on fire in that movie. That's great. I loved that for her. Yeah.

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31:19David Sims:David? Yeah? Ben and I are four-eyed cool guys. And here's the thing with glasses. I don't know if you know this experience, Ben. You're living a compromised lifestyle because it's so annoying to get rid of glasses and get a new pair. It's so expensive. It is. It's so time consuming. The tiny screws hurt your fingers. You got to get a new prescription. It's a whole to do. It's a production. So most of us just live with it. But wait a second. Zenni Optical fixes all of that, Ben. What? Yep. Zenni is an online eyewear shop. Prescription glasses, sunglasses, blue light lenses starting at under$30.

31:57David Sims:You stop asking, do I really need new glasses? And you start asking, why wouldn't I just get them? You do it in that voice. You go, why wouldn't I just get them? You're not agonizing over one pair that has to do everything for the next two years. You get the ones for work. You get the fun ones for when you're partying. You get the pair that only matches one outfit. Yet they got over 150 ,000 five-star reviews. And if you've never bought glasses online before, Zenni has a virtual try-on so you can see exactly how a frame looks on your face before you commit.

32:27Griffin Newman:I'm sorry, Griffin. They actually have 150 ,001

32:30David Sims:because I just left a five-star review that says, great. That is very, very kind of you. If your glasses are overdue for a refresh, now is the time. Go to zenni.com slash podcast and use code podcast15 for 15 % off your first order. The styles sell out, so don't sit on it. That's Z-E-N-N-I dot com slash podcast, P-O-D-C-A-S-T. Promo code podcast15. David, I'm sorry for excluding you from this act.

33:03Griffin Newman:That's okay.

33:09Should we talk about tragedy? The tragedy of Macbeth.

33:12Griffin Newman:I love Macbeth. I have seen, have you seen Macbeth perform Griffin Newman? I don't think I've ever seen it on stage. I was trying to count how many times I've seen it on the stage. On the stage. Dana, when have you seen Macbeth? I think I've seen it two times, two or three times on the stage. Who wrote your Macbeth? Chicago, Shakespeare.

33:30David Sims:Okay. Once in college. And I feel like once more that I'm not placing now. We were texting earlier and you were bragging that you saw Sir Patrick Stewart.

33:40Griffin Newman:I did see the Patrick Stewart production. When was that? I think it was initially 2007, right? Is that right? and you can see it filmed. It was recorded. They did a pro shot? Rupert Gould. It's got this whole

34:00Griffin Newman:Romanian 60s sort of oppressive government thing. I also saw it with Samantha Bond as Lady Macbeth. This is what I was trying to remember who was Macbeth in this. I'm going to find it. Just have me relax. I've watched the pro shot. Sean Bean, yes. The pro shot. There's a good pro shot of David Tennant.

34:20David Sims:that one I was a little sad to have missed

34:22Griffin Newman:yeah me too I also so I've been doing so I saw a lot of stuff when I moved to England when I was a kid and the first thing I saw at the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican when I was in England was Julius Caesar when I was like nine years old

34:37David Sims:okay

34:37Griffin Newman:and I you know vaguely remember it but like not really and I so I went back and looked at the programs because some guy collects sure screenshot Paul Bettany was in it wow what the fuck wow I saw him on you know I didn't know. I didn't know who he was.

34:51David Sims:He was Caesar. That was just a young Bettany? Yeah, he was Caesar.

34:55Griffin Newman:I can find out. Let's see. He played, Bettany played Brutus. Okay. And Hugh Corshy played Mark Anthony. And Caesar was played by Christopher Benjamin. Mm-hmm. Julian Glover was Cassius. Okay. I think back on this stuff that I saw as a kid, where I think I was, I liked Shakespeare and I was into it, but I was still a little kid, so I would get a little bored or I would. This is how I felt And I was a This is so long ago And I just have no memory of these things That had the toast of You know Later like British character actor shit You know what I mean? Like I saw in 96 The RSC Macbeth This is why I'm thinking about this Which had Roger Allum as Macbeth Oh Bet he was good Yeah And let's see who was Lady Macbeth Bird Brennan Never heard of you Okay But the reason I saw that is that my friend from school was in it as one of Banquo's children in like a scene where like all the children were like gathered on stage as part of the fantasy of the, right?

35:58Griffin Newman:And so he had no lines, but he had to go be in the play every night. That's cool. And I was like jealous of that. I was like, that's cool. Yeah. You know, like the historical sort of fun fact about the writing of Macbeth and why that scene is really included is what was happening in England at the time is King James of Scotland came over after Elizabeth died. Of the House of Stuart.

36:20David Sims:Of the House of Stuart. Also of the Bible. Of Scotland. And Shakespeare was trying to suck up to him. So he was like, I'm going to write this play about a Scottish king. And also it was popularly believed that King James was descended from Banquo. Actually, he wasn't because Banquo wasn't a real person, but that was sort of the popular understanding. So even though in the thing, in the historical text that Shakespeare was basing this story on, Hollinschitz Chronicles, Banquo was involved in the assassination. In this version, he's like, no, Banquo, good guy. And also, Banquo, you know, gonna have a line of great kings, wink, wink.

36:59Griffin Newman:How are you as far as the king knowledge, legacy stuff? Unfortunately really good. Is that something they really pushed on you in school? Well, what do you think nine-year-old David moving to Britain thought about the fact that you could learn a big list of names of guys from the past? I'm going to guess. There's like history about their dude doings. Knowing you that. Do you think like age nine David was interested in memorizing that? You might have got a little locked in. Yeah, I can see that. But then, of course, there is the Kings of Scotland before what David is referring to, you know, when the crowns are joined.

37:37Griffin Newman:And like Macbeth is a real king, but I'm not, I don't know. How good are you at, uh, at the Kings of Scotland, Danny? Can you do it? Probably not. No, no. I mean, it's pretty ridiculous. Like there were a lot of Kings of Scotland back then. Their names are too plain. Yeah. They need like some kind of like extra like descriptor. A little rude given that there was like six King Davids in Scotland and there's been zero King Davids in England.

37:58David Sims:Plain. Uh, well, James McAvoy of course was the last King of Scotland, but who led up to that? That's facts. Yeah. I don't know what to tell you guys.

38:08Griffin Newman:Facts are facts. Facts are facts. It's pretty weird that that's a movie. Yeah. That they're like, there's an Idi Amin movie, Forrest Whitaker won Best Actor for it. Oh, is he the lead? He's actually kind of not. James McAvoy is. He's not even the titular character. Who does he play? The Last King of Scotland? Well, not really. He plays like a guy. Yeah.

38:25David Sims:Why is it called that? I don't know.

38:27Griffin Newman:The Idi Amin was kind of into Scotland.

38:28David Sims:Maybe. I think. I think he called him a king at some point or some shit. You've seen The Last King of Scotland? I have not seen that movie. I didn't even know James McAvoy was in it.

38:37Griffin Newman:He's not just in it. He's all over it, baby.

38:39David Sims:That's the crazy thing is they like shot this movie where like Idi Amin is the supporting character and then people watch and they were like, fuck, this performance is good. And then the poster is just giant Forrest Whitaker face. Everyone, more people absolutely have seen like the Oscar clip of that movie than seeing the actual movie in full. Right. And assume the whole movie is that. That is exactly my understanding of that movie.

39:01Griffin Newman:No, it's mostly James McAvoy being like, God, I gotta get the fuck out of here. and like living with Idi Amin. He's like a doctor stuck in Scotland. It's that Idi Amin needs to do a giant fart. I remember that part. Which is a real scene, of course. And he's like, I'm in pain. And he's like, oh, I'm a doctor. I can help you. And then he's like, I think you just have gas pain and like makes him fart. He takes a baseball bat.

39:21David Sims:You rock. And he goes behind Idi Amin. He places the baseball bat against his stomach and he like pulls really hard. This is a real scene. This is like the movie's big first act thing. This is the meat cube.

39:32Griffin Newman:Yeah, exactly.

39:32David Sims:And then he's like, you're trying to kill me. And James McAvoy's like pulling the bat. And then he like lets out like a fucking blazing saddles fart. And he's like, you have cured me. You are the last king of Scotland.

39:44Griffin Newman:It's kind of analyze this vibes where he's like, you, you. Well, then the rest of the movie, yes. And James McAvoy's like, I got to get out of here. And he means like, I got to do more crimes.

39:52David Sims:It's like somewhere between like analyze this and funny people where he's like, you live in my house now. You help me with everything.

40:00Griffin Newman:um but yes macbeth was of course the king of scotland in 1040 for 17 years which is not bad longer than i've been king of scotland yeah so far by 17 years yeah um but he is based so he's based on a real guy but the theater theatrical character is kind of made up um but that's cool

40:21David Sims:Do you think in his time, because Shakespeare constructed so many plays around famous leaders, that there was a kind of analog to Marvel speculation of being like, who do we think he's going to do next? And what's his take going to be? How much is he going to deviate from the source material? I know that like your joke, that's like a very funny joke, but I do think people fully now like scholars think there's like, quote unquote, like a lost place where they were like, I think he probably would have written a play about this guy.

40:54Griffin Newman:And he didn't. And no one. So why are they lost? Because no one bothered to put them in the folio or whatever. It's like, I don't know. Maybe they sucked. And no one wrote them down because they're like, we'll give him this one.

41:05David Sims:Sure. They removed all the bad ones from history. They were like, what if we Zaslav a couple of these so his legacy is pretty perfect.

41:13Griffin Newman:He did Zaslav it. But it's just funny to imagine like where it's like, hey, I hear his next play is fucking Julius Caesar. And people are like, oh, shit. But it must have been that. But then once in a while people are like, it's like about a winter's tale.

41:23David Sims:I don't know what he's doing with this one. The message board is literally a message board, right? Where someone is like pinning a piece of paper. Do I need to have seen 11th Night before I see this one? Yeah, all right.

41:32Griffin Newman:All right. Dana, the door's over there.

41:35David Sims:When they announced something like Winter's Tale, it must have been like Nolan speculation where you're like, what does this title imply? Is it secretly an adaptation of what was the fucking Blue Thunder? I don't know.

41:46Griffin Newman:I believe that is what you're talking about. Blue Thunder. Macbeth. Let's go all the way back to Macbeth. Where's my dossier for Macbeth, JJ? The play. What do you know about Macbeth, Dana? Apart from, I agree, I think that the historiography of like he's sucking up to King James a little bit being like, you know, That's kind of what I know about Macbeth, second up to a Scottish king, giving us some classic Shakespeare themes. Some scholars, like normal guy Harold Bloom, think that it was sort of influenced by the gunpowder plot. They did try to blow up King James I, those rotten Catholics. Sorry, they're all right.

42:29Griffin Newman:I'm sure King James had it coming. Wait, should I be sympathizing with Guy Fawkes? I don't know. It is kind of funny. I always find it very funny that Guy Fawkes, because of E4 Vendetta, has become this imagery that's like punk rock anarchist when he was a devout Catholic. He was a devout Catholic who wanted to kill James out of religious fervor. And then the holiday where we burn him in effigy is an anti-Catholic holiday. And the whole thing, in just 21st century Britain, you're just like, what's any of this about? Nobody here goes to church anymore.

42:59David Sims:But with distance, it's just become if they hated him, he must have been cool. I think he was all right. What do you think about King James?

43:05Griffin Newman:He was all right. I mean, he's probably gay. Probably gay. Go off. You know what he did is what I find kind of interesting about this play, which has, you know, witches. He was a little bit obsessed with witches. Okay. Right. Sort of the witch hunter king. He wrote the demonology.

43:22David Sims:Obsessed in fear, you're saying.

43:23Griffin Newman:Yeah. I think thought they were pretty real. Yeah. But I guess people at that time were like, there was a sort of a spectrum of how real do you think witches are? Sure. And he was close to heavy on real. But he wasn't goth. He was like, we have to protect ourselves. Yeah, he was not into witches because he liked them. He was like, we should put these women on trial and torture them. Did you know, right, which is not woke and cool of him, so maybe I take it back on James I. Did you know that in 1604 he wrote a treatise called A Counterblast to Tobacco, which is seen as one of the first anti-smoking publications ever, in which he says that he doesn't like tobacco.

44:00Griffin Newman:He hates that it's come from the hot new thing. He says that it is hateful to the nose. He's right. I know. He's just like in fucking 1604. He's like, why are we all smoking this? This smells bad.

44:14David Sims:I'm just imagine him making people write his entire screed on the back of every tobacco leaf. Like it's the warning on a cigarette pack.

44:22Griffin Newman:Hateful to the nose. Yeah. He basically is like, it's sinful and it smells like Satan to me as well. So he gets a little hard on the, you know, if you're smoking, it's like sort of devil smoke. Okay, sure. But still, he didn't like smoking. Yeah. Anyway. So Macbeth, yeah, written in probably like 1602, somewhere around there. Can't be dated precisely. Maybe try to work harder. It sounds like a JJ failing to me. There's basically, Dana, there's basically debate over, is it like 1603 to celebrate James' ascension to the throne or a little after the gunpowder plot, which would put it like 1606? Okay.

45:03Griffin Newman:We don't know. They basically just like search the text to try and figure out like what could be a reference to like, it seems like such a fun branch of history, but also very niche. You know, to like go through Shakespeare being like, what were they referencing here? Is this like a topical thing? Like him saying this? it's like how they reference driver's license in this movie which dated precisely which is yeah

45:25David Sims:that's why they did that do you do you think that paramount's about to green light a bunch of movies that are like mcbeth equivalents where like our greatest storytellers are pitching films about how good tech billionaires and their children are i'm sorry i didn't catch all that

45:39Griffin Newman:tech billionaires are you saying the idea was that shakespeare was like i got we would do that now Sucking up to his overlords. Right. Yes. You think I'm correct? Yeah, I think you're right. Thank you. Of course, this is, you're not supposed to say the name Macbeth if you're performing it, right? Yes. In the theater.

45:58David Sims:It's a curse in the theater. It is, of course, a curse into podcast studios as well. We've already kind of fucked ourselves, but the legend is always if you say Macbeth in a podcast studio, you are trapped to endorse brain powders for 20 years. gonna get caught in Manosphere. You like that? Say Macbeth in a podcast studio. I don't understand.

46:21Griffin Newman:Well, this is a very serious play. It's a serious play. It's a very serious play.

46:24David Sims:And I'm talking about a serious curse.

46:25Griffin Newman:Michael York says that if you say the name on stage or in a theater, you have to leave immediately, walk around three times, walk around the theater three times, which is like, Jesus, it's like 20 minutes. Yeah, yeah. And then spit over your left shoulder, say an obscenity, and then wait to be invited back in the building. You can't even go back in. Vampire rules. Right. Patrick Stewart says, if you have played the role of the Scottish Thane, then you're allowed to say the title anytime, anywhere. Oh, that's convenient for him to say it. Also, no, he's not saying it. So it's kind of one of those things where he's like, I mean, you know, it's weird that you can't say this word.

47:01Griffin Newman:And I'm like, well, you're not saying the word either, man.

47:03David Sims:I've always found the loopholes of it confusing because it is right. The thing is, oh, only call it the Scottish play. Right. And basically there was a series of incidents during different productions that made people think it was cursed, right? Sort of Phantom of the Opera style. Yes. Certain actors died or got injured, you know, like stage lights falling down and hitting people and shit. Maybe some witches cursed the play. Are you allowed to reference the historical figure Macbeth, do you think? Well, this is my question. Also, if you're in Macbeth, you do have to say the word Macbeth. And you put it on the fucking, like, marquee.

47:35David Sims:That's true. They're like, if you're, like, working in a regional production of Hairspring, and you say Macbeth, you got to get the fuck out of here. You've just ruined everything. If you stage Macbeth on Broadway with Daniel Craig, you're saying Macbeth a trillion times a night. So if I went to a Broadway show and yelled Macbeth,

47:53Griffin Newman:is that worse than yelling fire? Possibly. And we do need to test this out. And you have to go to some Broadway shows and start yelling Macbeth. Yeah. All right. Blank check. The business will pay for that. Correct. I'll get you Foxy. Your bail? as well. Yeah. I think the reason for that superstition is because this is a tough play to do. Weirdly. Oh, so it's more convenient to be like, I can't do it because it's gross. That's why I got bad reviews. It's like sort of, because like this is a weirdly straightforward play and I think that for whatever reason, it like, I just remember almost every production I went to got kind of bad reviews.

48:33Griffin Newman:It's like a beloved role. It's famous. Everybody knows Macbeth and yet it's kind of for whatever reason harder than Hamlet or King Lear in some way to like do a good Macbeth. Patrick Stewart accepted. We love Patrick Stewart. Like every movie version of Macbeth is kind of weird. There's the Orson Welles one, which is kind of good, but the sets are sort of falling down. There's the Roman Polanski one. Nothing weird about that guy. Never seen that one. It's interesting. It's similar to this one in a lot of ways. It's the post Sharon Tate murder movie, and it's very bleak. Uh-huh. Which it's easy to lean into that with Macbeth.

49:14Griffin Newman:Yes. There's the very dusky Assassin's Creed guy. I love that film.

49:19David Sims:Yep. Justin Kurzweil. Have you seen that one, Ben? No. It's the movie that got him Assassin's Creed. A lot of smoke. And it's Fassbender and Marion Coutillard, and they were just like, let's just move over from one great work. About assassins. Yes. About assassinating. True. But you would love that movie. Okay. Yeah. I'll check it out. It's grimy as hell. There's Throne of Blood. Which is good.

49:41Griffin Newman:And you rewatched for this podcast. I watched rewatched. So we do have to shout that out. That does rock. And it also feels like a lot of the fabric of that transferred over to this one. Into this. He gets so many arrows in him at end of play. It's true. And if you haven't seen Assassin's Creed, highly recommend it. I haven't. But I did listen to the podcast about it. Hell yeah.

50:01David Sims:If you like the podcast, you'd love the movie. I'm looking at the Scottish play curse thing. It is built into the narrative that it is only a curse to say it when you're not performing it or rehearsing it. Okay. Which doesn't make any sense. But then my memory was... Now it's just a way to be annoying.

50:21Griffin Newman:I feel like someone says McBethan, it's like, sorry, I forgot we weren't rehearsing anymore.

50:26David Sims:My memory was Origins of the Curse was weird things befalling people working on the show. It does seem like Origins of the Curse were just solely productions never went well. Right. Bad reviews. This is what I'm saying. It wasn't a Spider-Man turn off the dark situation. It is. They should now start a new thing where you can't say Spider-Man turn off the dark.

50:45Griffin Newman:You can't say Spider-Man, but you can't say turn off the dark.

50:47David Sims:You can't turn off the dark. People did think. A phrase that people love to say. That's the problem. People did think. Wasn't that phrase created by Bono's son?

50:57Griffin Newman:Yes. It was either Bono or The Edge's son was like, turn off the dark. Right. Like bedtime once. Right. And they were like, brilliant.

51:05David Sims:Our millions and millions of dollars of Spider-Man should be called this. Based on a three-year-old not understanding how a light switch works. The actual origin is that, yes, a series of poor productions, but noted, commonly put on by theaters already in financial trouble. or that high production costs put theaters in financial trouble, but it was chalked up to witches. They were like, the witches got angry that this fucking show pinned them down, read them for filth, and then they cursed all productions. Although the witch is a very cool character in this play.

51:44Griffin Newman:Witch is a very cool role. I mean, what role would you want to play? In this one, I'm like the witch. Lady Macbeth's a pretty cool role. But I'm not a good actress. Right, you have to, You kind of got to bring it for that one. That's tough. I wouldn't, I would be too nervous to have a big part in this. You know what? In this one, Ross is just like close-ups of your face, not blinking. I mean, not sorry to say this word, but looking cunty. Like, I mean, he is serving it. Okay. Like, which we love. I mean, I just love that Joel Cohn is like, you know, digging into the meat of Shakespeare. He's like, I feel like Ross is just kind of serving.

52:16Griffin Newman:Serving cunt? Griffin, you're an actor. Is there a role in Beth? Yes, kind of. Yeah.

52:21David Sims:Have you done Shakespeare? I did Twelfth Night. We love it. What did you play? My pretentious, unbearable high school. It was reinterpreted. Oh, no. That's uninterpreted. No, come on, come on. Being in a Dust Bowl era circus. It was a real carnival ripoff, like a year after carnival. Right, everyone had carnival fever.

52:45Griffin Newman:Dust Bowl era.

52:46David Sims:Yes, our 80-year-old theater teacher with, like, translucent orange hair who dressed like a 20-year-old from like Search and Destroy was like, this weird thought came to me.

52:56Griffin Newman:So what world did you play?

52:58David Sims:Fabian, who is kind of the Ross in that show where he's just like a character that exists to be the fifth guy in the group.

53:03Griffin Newman:Yeah, I would say Fabian, he's one of the, you know, people in Olivia's household who also enjoys the pranks that are happening. He's not like sort of doing them. He's just there for them.

53:13David Sims:There is no defined character or game where everyone else kind of has a fun thing going on. And Sabina, Freeman Seitz, who is a successful actor and producer to this day, they double cast us as Fabian, which doesn't mean we were playing it in alternation. The character that is already underwritten. Sorry, Bill. They were like, why don't the two of you do it simultaneously? We'll split it into two characters. Okay. Fabia and Fabian. And I was a magician. She was the magician's assistant. So is this just sort of a way to make sure everyone participates? Yeah, it's high school. Absolutely. But so I'm like, playing a character is like not a character.

53:52David Sims:Right. And then they also like split us in half. And it was absolutely random who had which line. And then we just did a bunch of magic tricks and shit. Well, that's fun. I wore long johns. I just did a lot of business. Yeah, I played him like a fucking gremlin. I say I play him like a gremlin. I was a gremlin. Right, you're a little gremlin boy. Yeah. Is there a Macbeth character that you would want to sink your teeth into? The Stephen Rue part. But now it's just because I see what he did with it. You would just be copying Root. It's fun to be the muttering lunatic. Yeah. But I admit that, like, I felt I have not attempted it since.

54:30David Sims:But Shakespeare is a thing I can absolutely not get my head around as an actor. And I think, like, it's one of the reasons I think Denzel is very good in this is he is one of the only people I have seen work the dialogue so thoroughly. that it actually feels like it is coming out of his mouth in real time. Well, that's what I find interesting about the Denzel performance in this, is it feels like a Denzel Washington performance. It's naturalistic. It's grounded. But the movie around him is very heightened and expressionist.

55:02Griffin Newman:And so, to me, there's a... You want someone going bigger. Yeah. I know what you're saying, Dana. Right, because he does feel very grounded, and no one else is really doing grounded. But maybe that's good to set him apart in some way, because Macbeth is so in his own head. Yeah. I don't know. He's such a, he really respects Shakespeare, right? Like Denzel Washington. He's done it twice on Broadway, both times to unanimously terrible reviews. Yes. But not really for him, more for just like the productions. Right. He's done it in movies twice because he's in Much Ado. Right, yes. Which he's wonderful in, but mostly he's just fine as hell, right?

55:40Griffin Newman:Like he's just playing one of the sexy guys. Right. Right. He did Richard III at The Public a very long time ago, and I think he got good reviews for that, but that was like when I was a child. I love that he takes Shakespeare so seriously to keep doing it, and I like this performance. Did you see the Jake Gyllenhaal Othello? No, I didn't actually, despite being a successful podcaster, have like$800 on me to sit in a hammock suspended from the rafters.

56:11David Sims:So it was just like the insanity around getting a ticket and then the first wave of people see the first preview and they're like, yeah, kind of stopped.

56:18Griffin Newman:Like not just like, oh, it's not that good. They were like, it's bad. It's actually actively bad. I'm like, he's also way too old to be playing a fellow. He's kind of too old to be playing Macbeth.

56:27David Sims:Julius Caesar was the other one he did on Broadway.

56:29Griffin Newman:And that was like, he played Brutus in that, I think. And that was like, what, at this point, almost 20 years ago. No, it was like 2005, was it? I mean, I never want to age shame anyone and be like an actress is too old for a part, which is a thing, you know, that Hollywood loves to say. But I think it is interesting and noteworthy that this is a production of Macbeth where Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are explicitly past childbearing age, which I think informs the text in an interesting way.

56:58David Sims:Sure. And also past the age that most people lived to in this era.

57:03Griffin Newman:Macbeth, King of Scotland, lived to the age of about 51.

57:06David Sims:How old stands out when he made this? 66? I'm just telling you.

57:11Griffin Newman:Although a 51-year-old in the 10th century probably looked like 85, right? Sure. Yeah. I'm going to open the dossier. Buster Scruggs is the last film that the Coen brothers made together. After that, Ethan said, I'm sleepy. I want you to take a rest. Yes.

57:27David Sims:I'm tired of making movies. We've made too many. We've made too many westerns. I'm exhausted.

57:33Griffin Newman:They are very honest. They insist. We did not break up. As Ethan puts it, it was just me going, ugh. Right. I'm trying to do who. You know what I did see was an Ethan Coen play around this time in L.A. Either a play as a poem or a poem as a play. Yes. I did not care for it particularly.

57:56David Sims:He has a play, a new play running currently at the time that we're recording this episode off Broadway that I have heard is quite good from everyone I know who's seen it. but that seemed to be the narrative at the time of you know Ethan has all these other things he does he publishes poetry and writes books and does nights of one acts and whatever he's maybe going to go off and do all that he's tired of the machinery of film production and so it was taken as like maybe they're just on a hiatus until Ethan gets the bug again and then this announcement comes out and it's like oh shit Joel's gonna do stuff solo which I think was not taken as a given at first.

58:31I have heard with the DGA if you split as a duo, it is very, very hard to get back together. Maybe there's like a Cohen exception because they are the Cohen brothers.

58:41Griffin Newman:They may, but who knows what will happen if they do reunite. Right. Do they go back to the old school Joel directs Ethan Produces to avoid DJ business? I don't know.

58:51David Sims:I'm going to say this. I think I can say this and we can cut it out later, but we talked about it in our Barton Fink episode in this series that our buddy Chris Weitz was talking about that being an issue where then he and his brother couldn't work together again. And not understanding, like, fuck, is the solo movies going to prevent us from ever getting a proper co-incolaboration? A new friend of the show, Seth Rogen, was telling me after listening to that episode... He's also, of course, been credited as a director with Evan Goldberg. Yes. That Favreau has been pretty high on the DJ board for a number of years.

59:24David Sims:Johnny Favs. And after their battle to get approved to co-direct on This Is The End, Favreau brought the two of them onto the DGA board to be like, we need to rethink all of this.

59:36Griffin Newman:Right. This is like an annoying rule. I think there's a greater flexibility in the last 10 years only.

59:43David Sims:They've become less rigid about it. But yeah, I don't know. It's a weird moving target.

59:49Griffin Newman:So. So, in 2016, Frances McDormand, I guess, had been basically bugging Joel for a while to direct her in Macbeth on the stage. She did it in 2016. She played Lady Macbeth and the witch. Is that right? He just says Lady Macbeth. I'm not sure. With Conliffe Hill, great British actor. Or is he Irish? I want to miss. Yeah, he's Irish. Sorry. Wonderful actor. who everyone knows these days from Game of Thrones. But I saw him in lots of British stage stuff back in the day. But Dan Sullivan directed it. Joel didn't do it. He was not interested in live theater, basically. But he tells her, it's something I could get my head around as a movie.

1:00:36Griffin Newman:I don't really want to do theater, but I'm not uninterested in Macbeth. So it's not like he's long wanted to do the Macbeth movie and like only his split with Ethan Cohen allows this to happen. It's more as JJ puts it, he saw his wife do it on stage and was like, that's cool. Like, that's something I could do.

1:00:57David Sims:Maybe I could build something around that. But that also makes sense at the moment that he doesn't have another movie lined up and Joel had been the guy who seemingly kept being like, come on, another one, another one.

1:01:07Griffin Newman:And it's such a non-Cohen's-y thing. Like, so it's sort of like that's a great way to do something different. There's no humor in this, really? No. I mean, a tiny bit. but it's not the tone of the Coen brothers. My big take in my review at the time was Macbeth is a very Coen-sy character. Like, in that he is a guy who gets in way over his head on a scheme that he doesn't really, like, have a plan, you know what I mean? And then, like, keeps trying to be like, okay, well, what if I do this? You know, he does have a Coen-sy thing.

1:01:37David Sims:And the cycles of death. Like, that's another thing looming over the text that is just, like, yeah, death coming for us all in meaningless ways. Right. um

1:01:48Griffin Newman:Cohen's friends with uh Hanford Woods who's an academic who had taught Shakespeare what's going on with my brain at Montreal's Dawson College and so uh he helps explain Macbeth to Joel Cohen cool um and yes he says it does prefigure a lot of 20th century tropes in American Pulp Fiction a couple plotting a murder it's not dog outside

1:02:14David Sims:a dog hates murder by the way I just want to throw out McDormand was one of the three witches in that production she was double cast that's cool I like that

1:02:25Griffin Newman:that seems like a cool interpretation of like who's influencing Macbeth here and Cohen I mean Cohen just says a lot of stuff about Shakespeare a lot of people would say yes he was a genius of literature but he was also a consummate entertainer and he was alive to aspects of storytelling and you know people I feel like dig into Shakespeare and realize like these plays are thrillers. They're exciting. Like it's not just boring homework. They're sex jokes. They cut about, there's some, sometimes they make a sex joke like they're swords of penis, you know? There's about 15 % of dialogue cut. Macbeth is I would say the shortest tragedy already.

1:03:05Griffin Newman:So it's not that hard to get it into like nice movie length. You don't have to do a major excising.

1:03:11David Sims:But the Coen's love coming in under two hours. That's true. One of their favorite things

1:03:15Griffin Newman:And this is a pretty Like this would be a tough hang If it was like 2 hours 20 minutes This is not a high energy movie No JJ has copy pasted gigantic amounts Of text of Joel telling me What he decided to cut or not But I cannot monologue for 20 minutes

1:03:34David Sims:I'm going to quickly copy paste The words you're fired Into our group chat To see how he responds to that Now to what Dana is saying though

1:03:45Griffin Newman:this is a post-menopausal Macbeth, that Cohen acknowledges. It was interesting that at this point in his career and in Francis' career, they're older. He wanted it to reflect an older couple. He thinks, like, you know, there's only one really good marriage in all of the heterosexual relationships in Shakespeare, he says. There's only one good marriage, I guess, because most Shakespeare is about people who will be getting married later. and he's like and it's the marriage of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth yeah they're plotting to kill people but they do the union is fairly strong they listen to each other exactly so he wanted it to be this kind of like substantial older couple so they change the line I can tell you the original line is Macbeth says bring forth men children only for thy understand metal should compose nothing but males and Denzel says should have composed nothing but males.

1:04:44Griffin Newman:So it's sort of acknowledging that they are past childbearing.

1:04:48David Sims:The absolute lack of a biological heir. They are doing all of this and there was no bloodline that can... That to me made this a little bit harder for me to emotionally understand where if there is absolutely no possibility of a biological heir, then why are you so mad that Banquo's kids are going to become, someone's going to have to become king after you. Right. But what, does it have to be Banquo? What about Ross?

1:05:16Griffin Newman:That guy looks great. But I also think that kind of goes into the Cohen of it where it's like this guy's just getting in over his head. He's just like overthinking everything. Well, someone just says to him, you should be the king. And he's like, I shouldn't be the king. He's like, I don't know, maybe you shouldn't. He's like, all right, I'll be the king. And now he's the king. And he's like, fuck, what do I do now? Is Macbeth a beta? Macbeth is a bit of a beta cuck. No, he's not. Is Macbeth a beta? I mean, the thing about Macbeth is he gets told not just the king thing. He gets told that no one can beat him.

1:05:48Griffin Newman:That's tough news to hear. You don't want a witch to be telling you that or whatever, right? Because then you're going to start behaving real odd. If you're like, I'm invincible. Yes. And I do like the Cohen interpretation is like he starts doing some equalizer shit in the final act. When guys are charging in with swords and he's just like, I'll just fucking like headbutt you. Like, you can't kill me. But which said so.

1:06:10David Sims:He also views everything and everyone as a threat to kill him. Yes, that is true. Birds coming at his head. He's like, not today.

1:06:18Griffin Newman:So obviously, first actress attached is this sort of little known actress named Frances McDormand. And they're like, OK, who's going to be like a worthy adversary? and they ponder this guy. They've also been like batting around his name once in a while, Denzel Washington.

1:06:34David Sims:There is no physical release for this movie. Hopefully they'll be corrected at some point.

1:06:38Griffin Newman:Yeah, that'd be nice.

1:06:39David Sims:This is an Apple Plus original film co-produced with A24 and IAC. On the Apple TV app, there is like one special feature they have attached to it. That's a featurette where everyone talks other than Joel. It is all of the regular close collaborators. it is most of the main actors they're all talking about how great Joel is and what his vision was and how they serviced it but Ellen Chenoweth who's cast a lot of the Coen's movies was just saying like the project is Joel wants to do Macbeth and Frances is set for Lady Macbeth and she's just like it immediately becomes an incredibly short list of like who is in the right age range can hold their own against her and is classically trained has experience with this Jared Leto Yeah, it was just Jared and Denzel.

1:07:28David Sims:And Jared, you know, is the king of the box office. There's a reason we keep putting him in these.

1:07:33Griffin Newman:$33 million guaranteed for whatever he fucking makes. And no more.

1:07:39David Sims:But really, give him troubled IP. Give him IP that's never quite clicked.

1:07:44Griffin Newman:Stuff that isn't on its own two feet, he will keep it on its own two feet.

1:07:48David Sims:And I guarantee you it will open$10 to$15 million below projections. But here's why it's worth it. because he's such a good guy. And a great actor. And a great actor. The performances are always so memorable. It truly is. He's a zero-tool player. Yes.

1:08:06Griffin Newman:With this.

1:08:07David Sims:You always make the joke that, like, when they keep greenlighting these movies with him, you're like, on paper, he looks good, but it's a canard. Yeah, it's crazy. Because, right, you're like,

1:08:17Griffin Newman:he's an Oscar-winning actor. He's been in hits. He was the Joker. Right. The Joker, that's a role people have won Oscars for, not him. The Joker that everyone loves? Right. Yeah, he was a Joker.

1:08:28David Sims:There was a Joker sandwich where on either side, the pieces of bread were people winning the Oscar for playing the Joker. And it turned out in between the two pieces of bread was nothing. What do you mean?

1:08:40Griffin Newman:He had a mouth on his hand. And so instead of his regular mouth, he could also give you hand mouth. He was damaged. The tattoo said so.

1:08:47David Sims:It did say that. It is funny that that is like far and away his biggest hit. And they're like, I guess the guy's got box office goods. And you're like, along with his Oscar, they cut his performance down to six minutes. He is barely in that movie. You can tell there's an hour of footage left on the cutting room floor. No, they were like, if Denzel wants to do this, that's a fucking miracle that like solves all of our problems better than we possibly could have imagined.

1:09:14Griffin Newman:Yeah. I mean, that's a guy you want signing on. They had had lunch. Joel said like they had had lunch with him, like five or six years prior. Okay. And had a sort of general, like, it would be so cool to do a movie together someday. Chat. And then apparently Ethan had said, Buster Scruggs? And Denzel was like, I have to go. No, that part didn't happen.

1:09:32David Sims:Do you want to play all of them? But he loves Francis McDormand and said they have very, very similar work styles.

1:09:39Griffin Newman:Awesome. Yeah. And so they have lunch again and they're like, Macbeth? And he's like, yeah, cool. Denzel's favorite Coen Brothers movie? Lady Killers? Oh brother where art thou Not lady killers That makes sense He says I don't even know why It's just so weird But he likes the Coen brothers And he likes Shakespeare He played Othello in college He played it later opposite Jake Gyllenhaal For one billion dollars He could go see it

1:10:06David Sims:Had he ever played Macbeth on stage?

1:10:08Griffin Newman:He had never done Macbeth He had in later years played Richard III As I said in Brutus and Julius Caesar He also apparently did Coriolanus But he did not Had never really read Macbeth he said Like he never really, you know, delved into that one. He said he turned on one of the films, doesn't even say which one, watched for two minutes and turned it off and was just like, I don't want to like, you know, be affected by anything else. His take on Macbeth is tired, he says. Sure. He says they're older. They're like, look, this is our shot, our due. Give it to us. Drastic times make for drastic measures.

1:10:45Griffin Newman:And the clock is ticking. He's coming back from war. None of their chairs look comfortable. No. They had not invented comfy chairs. They were hundreds of years before someone put a pillow on a chair.

1:10:57David Sims:I don't know if this was intentional or not, but this is what I think is interesting about them being older. It does reflect a modern hell we live in of people refusing to retire.

1:11:09Griffin Newman:Wait, are you saying this is a Biden, Macbeth?

1:11:12David Sims:Not even Biden as much as I think more like CEOs and shit, right? But even like senators and all this shit, like our buddy Scott Gairdner always calls it filibustering. But he's just like these people refuse to let go of their fucking chairs in any environment. And this idea of like, why would you go through all this fucking effort? Why would you retire? Chill out. And instead, these people just seemingly get hungrier and hungrier and hungrier when they're going to have less and less time to even enjoy the fruits of their labor. Like, what's the point? Why are you fighting for this? You know, the Jay Leno thing of just like, you don't touch your Tonight Show money.

1:11:50David Sims:You don't have kids. You're 75. What are you saving it for? Why are you still on the road tumbling down hills? Don't light yourself on fire. Right. Like, just chill out, my guy.

1:12:03Griffin Newman:He didn't light on fire, himself on fire. A car lit him on fire that he was in or whatever. Whatever that was.

1:12:09David Sims:And the car yelled, stop collecting us. There's also a very, like, boomer sense of entitlement. And this is what I'm talking about. You know, Brendan Gleeson gives his son a title that Macbeth gets jealous and threatened by. And he's like, well, I just want to battle. I should also have that. Yes. There's a freak out at the younger generation and a fundamental condescension of you guys just don't get it. Yeah. I actually need to keep doing this because there's no one who could do this in my step.

1:12:40Griffin Newman:Yeah. Leno might be a good Macbeth, though. That is an interesting thing to explore. Do you think Leonard is like a good tipper? Like he better be, right? Yeah, I think he is. Right?

1:12:51David Sims:Does he like get good gifts? He's sort of notoriously generous, right? Okay. I bet his assistant gives good gifts.

1:12:56Griffin Newman:Yeah, I assume he doesn't pick out the stuff.

1:12:59David Sims:He was always, I feel like by reputation, incredibly generous to his entire staff for his entire run of Tonight Show. But it is a confounding thing where you're like, that's his fucking legacy, that he hosted the Tonight Show for 20 years, that he has never touched a cent of that, and that he lives off of touring money only. And so he still does like fucking 150 dates a year. And that alone pays for all the cars.

1:13:24Griffin Newman:He also wrote a children's book despite not having any children. I don't know what it's called. What? Do you know what I'm talking about? No, I don't. The first beef could fly. It's called a first beef. Jimmy Fallon also wrote a children's book. He at least has children, but yes. I have.

1:13:38David Sims:Jimmy Fallon has written like 15 children's books. Has he? I went down this rabbit hole. He's like. Benny looking it up. He's hitting every holiday. It's like one sleep till Christmas, one sleep till Halloween. I want to say he co-wrote a Spanish one with J-Lo. You're talking about Fallon? Yeah. I will say you really realize when you're shopping for children's books how many celebrities will just slap their names out to children. It has become the fucking high-end liquor.

1:14:06Griffin Newman:All I know about If Roast Peep Could Fly, because I think Scott Ackerman talks about it a lot on Comedy Bang Bang, which sounds right. That sounds right. Yeah. Is that it's like some childhood story where like his dad threw a roast beef out the window, but it's been turned into like a nice story. Okay. That's sweet. Yeah. Jared Leto, just checking with him. I had that opened up. Should we get him to write a children's book? Jared Leto has made one movie. Get him to write a children's book? Absolutely. He has made one movie that's grossed$100 million domestic plus. Is it Suicide Squad? That's it.

1:14:36Griffin Newman:Yeah. Number two is what, Griffin? Did Fight Club not? No, not close. 37.

1:14:41David Sims:Is number two Panic Room?

1:14:42Griffin Newman:Yes. which almost made$100,$95. And of course, he's not the star of that.

1:14:47David Sims:But there's a direct correlation. The higher up he is on the call sheet, the lower the grosses go.

1:14:52Griffin Newman:If you cast him, I genuinely think a witch's curse befalls you. Yes. Because like Blade Runner 2049, people kind of wanted that to do better and it didn't quite, you know, it did okay. Morbius, obviously underachieved. The recent Haunted Mansion, obviously underachieved. House of Gucci, people were hyped. It did okay. Yeah. How's Tron Ares doing? Poorly. Not so good But even like Now Tron Aries the character is doing great It's also funny that those movies are called Tron Tron is a character He is not present

1:15:22David Sims:They've now made two films where Tron isn't really the thing

1:15:25Griffin Newman:He appears in the second one He's not in the third one

1:15:27David Sims:But they're hiding him in the second one You're after the fact Oh that was Tron I was going to It's a thin man situation Yeah a little bit Absolutely What was I going to say about Jared Laro I don't know. You love him. I love him. He's really good. Oh, no, no. I was going to say Blade Runner 2049. I remember you seeing it. And I was like, how's Leto in it? And you were like, he's actually not in it that much. He's got like three scenes. He's fine. He's fine. And I'm like, why was he 60 % of every trailer? You're right that I think the Leto bit them in the ass, but they were marketing. I know. I know.

1:16:04David Sims:People want to see Leto go toe to toe with four. He's not bad in that movie. He's not great. He basically stays in one room. He's fine. It's a better use of him than most post-Oscar movies have had. Right, right.

1:16:15Griffin Newman:Anyway, Cohen and McDormand had met Catherine Hunter all the way back in 1991. They'd always wanted to do a movie with her.

1:16:21David Sims:Feels like a classic Cohen back pocket. We saw this person kill it off-Broadway or on the West End.

1:16:27Griffin Newman:They literally had seen her in a Charleston production.

1:16:30David Sims:Someday we will put you in something. She famously, I think, played Richard III.

1:16:34Griffin Newman:That's a very famous Globe performance that she gave that when you see pictures of it, you're like, that rocks. So that looks cool. I feel like she's best known for playing Arabella Fig in the Harry Potter movies, but otherwise is mostly a stage actor. There's a big, there's sort of. Now she's kind of popping up. There's like a Harry Potter reunion happening in this movie. Who else we got? Well, Gleason, Mad-Eye.

1:16:54David Sims:Harry. Melling, yeah. Her post-Macbeth run is very cool. Like she does poor things in Megalopolis and Andor and Hedda.

1:17:05Griffin Newman:She's so good in Andor. I fucking forgot about that.

1:17:09David Sims:She definitely is the person who got the biggest bump from this movie.

1:17:13Griffin Newman:Because how do you watch this movie and not go like, who is that? Right. Whoa. What would be a fun way to use her? How can we put her in a movie? She'll just give us more juice. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently in their first meeting, they said, how do you envision this physically? Catherine got up on a coffee table, took black pantyhose out of her backpack and pulled them over her head and started bending into the shape she does in the film. Oh, that's amazing.

1:17:34David Sims:Yeah, she's doing some Sims moves in this. She really is. It was just fucking horrific double-jointed nonsense.

1:17:41Griffin Newman:She wanted to evoke crows. She was thinking about crows on a battlefield afterwards, like scavenging. Rather than that, she did not want to do, I'm a witch with a pointy nose at a cauldron. She didn't want to do the classic witch stuff. Seems like a great hang. So a lot of bird stuff. The witches? Yeah. I mean, they are kind of cool. They seem like they got stories. Yeah. They'll tell you in like riddles, but they do have good stories. Right, that's the problem. You can't be like, so how's your day? Sure. What's up, guys?

1:18:16David Sims:David! Yeah? If I'm being honest. What? Don't lie. Radically honest person in America. It's time for radical honesty. Okay, honesty is on the table. Sometimes it is 1 p.m. Sure. And all I've had is coffee. Uh-oh. No breakfast, no lunch, just caffeine. and whatever movie I'm three rewatches deep on. That's actually... That sounds like you. Yeah. I can't believe that's in the ad copy. A little tough on the tummy. Lately, I've been keeping Huel around to stop myself from doing exactly that. Huel is sponsoring the podcast. Tell me of Huel. Well, here's what Huel saves me. It saves me time on recording days when we're deep in a director's filmography.

1:18:52David Sims:This is customized ad copy. Well, yeah, and that's why you're right on time to every single episode. Of course, a screening marathon where you forget to eat.

1:18:59Griffin Newman:No, totally. I think this is an actually relatable condition of like, oh, no, I haven't eaten enough today. I've had a slow morning. I've got something. I've got a busy afternoon.

1:19:10David Sims:Huel has the Black Edition ready to drink. It is a bottle that is just a meal inside that bottle. I got chocolate peanut butter. It tastes good. It just tastes like a nice little milkshake. Whoa, it's got 35 grams of protein,

1:19:24Griffin Newman:7 grams of fiber, 27 essential vitamins, and minerals, and minerals.

1:19:29David Sims:You're actually impressed by that rundown.

1:19:31Griffin Newman:I thought of protein.

1:19:32David Sims:That's like an Ocean's Eleven. That's a hefty amount of protein. Style line-up.

1:19:35Griffin Newman:And then they got the powder, the Black Edition powder, which is the customizable. That's 40 grams of protein, same complete nutrition, mixed with water or milk. No artificial sweeteners, colors, or flavors. Yes. It's gluten-free. Mm-hmm. My wife is gluten-free.

1:19:50David Sims:Well, that's nice to know.

1:19:51Griffin Newman:Good for her.

1:19:52David Sims:No, in all honesty, I often try to watch the movie right before the episode because my brain cannot retain anything. And then I rush over here and I'm like, all I've had is four cups of coffee and zero food. And it's nice to just shake a hule down it and just feel vaguely like a normal person. It's under$5 a meal for the RTD.

1:20:12Griffin Newman:You know, ready to drink.

1:20:14David Sims:Of course. There's also, you know, there's a powder for when you're home and you want to control the texture, whether you want to shake that up with water or mix it into something else. Right. But the RTD, you can just grab one of those bad boys when you're sprinting out the door to a record on time.

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1:20:55David Sims:If you're the kind of person who forgets to eat until you're staring down a six-movie day, this is the fix. and a six-movie day. That is impressive. And our hats are off to you. Very good.

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1:21:40David Sims:Can we talk about the sort of narrative of the split, right? To date, we only have this one Joel movie. Ethan has been doing all of his shit. It starts to feel a little too cut and dry that people are like, got it, here's the takeaway. Joel is the visualist, he's the mordant one, He's just like black hearted, death obsessed. Ethan is all the like, goofy, silly boys. Dumb people fucking up shit. Right. Right.

1:22:07Griffin Newman:Right.

1:22:09David Sims:But they, they're not doing anything to help dispel that narrative. It's why I'm very interested to see the next film. But it is like, I think it is the common complaint of this movie where you're just like, it's really got like negative humor going on. Yes. And it is so oppressively dark that as much as I think this film is like beautiful, an incredible object, like an incredible triumph of film production, even at under two hours, it starts to get a little relentless. Like I feel pretty beaten down an hour into this movie. The score is also just very like, to use what Jason Segel says in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, it's just like ominous tones.

1:22:51Yes.

1:22:52Griffin Newman:I love that scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. But that right, Carter Burwell isn't like writing like a an epic score no no um they obviously never wanted to do a let's rent a castle let's get some horses let's go out into the countryside classic macbeth kind of thing they always wanted

1:23:12David Sims:to do something abstract and beyond that that joel was like i think this show works better if you tie it to the theatrical right i need to create something that is cinematic and visual but is this fucking 10-minute special feature, the word abstraction or abstracted... Oh, they say that one? ...is said 8 ,000 times. As they're talking to every sort of above-the-line person, they're like, these were our marching orders, that he wanted something that felt otherworldly. It's artificial by design. Yes, and it's very German expressionist. It's very Murnau. It might shock you to learn

1:23:46Griffin Newman:that this was actually all filmed on a soundstage. That's a quote from Joel Cohen. Everything was built. Bruno DeBanel, the amazing DP who shot a couple of Coen movies and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

1:24:00David Sims:He prefers to shoot on stages, loves the complete control of being able to light his own universe. So he was just fucking thrilled at this. A surprising amount of this movie is CGI. Really? Yes. And I feel like I was talking to someone who was saying they don't like Buster Scruggs because Buster Scruggs feels too digital. And that's a thing that the Coens avoided. but basically like from no country on they are some of the best at doing invisible cg like digital sort of like messing around set expansion removing things adjusting things i think they have all these

1:24:35Griffin Newman:like foam blocks basically yeah and then they would like rehearse the scenes with denzel or francis or whoever they would walk around and they'd be like great let's move the blocks now to reflect whatever it is they want to do whatever they're sort of figuring out in rehearsal And then, yes, I imagine they just built everything else out in the computer. It's sort of like the volume. And the Mandalorian is also in this.

1:24:55David Sims:They had a lot of set pieces, but they were more modular. You can watch this featurette, and they show you the VFX breakdowns of the layers coming in. But they were also like, you know, we've been working with Joel and Ethan for like, I guess they just said Joel. We've been working with Joel for like the last 10 years. We have a good collaboration with him. We understand the language. This is the most we've worked with a DP. because it wasn't just someone else's shooting it and then handing it to us and saying, take this out or make this taller, that a lot of it was Bruno coming in and being like, the shadow is this.

1:25:27David Sims:You know, the extension, the wall needs to go this high and the light's coming from here. And a lot of the shadows are like purposefully artificial, it feels like. Correct, correct. So a lot of this is lit on the day, you know? They were like, we tried to get stuff in camera as much as possible, but it is painterly. What I like about it, what I think is so successful is all the most digital effects. First of all, all the sets look like they're real. You buy them. It helps that they have a design language that is so simplistic that it's pretty inexpensive to just build like a giant column with no real definition cast in shadow.

1:26:04David Sims:Holding nothing up. Right. You could just build that. It just makes life easier to like build it after the fact. But even things like the reflection inside the water, right? I like that they use CGI to make something that looks like an O 'Fool's effect or something. Cuts down on the smoke budget, I imagine. If they're not using digital smoke, the smoke machines are running. The smoke is all digital. A lot of the things that look like the camera projections.

1:26:31Griffin Newman:That was actually just Joel Cohen smoking weed offstage.

1:26:34David Sims:We've heard from people that Joel is very into death metal. Sick. that he's like into like pitch black, super hardcore death metal. And this definitely feels like the movie where Ethan removed from the equation, he's just going full like, nothing fucking matters.

1:26:52Griffin Newman:Del Bonnell calls it a haiku, right? Stripping everything down to essentials, like his sort of visual approach. Big influences Edward Gordon Craig, who directed a lot of Shakespeare at the turn of the 20th century, pioneered like big screens and geometric shapes, things like that. obviously German expressionism. Cohen talks about Metropolis a lot, the first Lang film with a big robot in it. Now this film was going to have a robot and they took it out. It's a joke. Cowards. Yes. And they have a bunch of other visual references that you can look up, but it's hard to describe visual references on an audio podcast.

1:27:30Griffin Newman:Sunrise, the Murnau film. Yeah. Geometric sort of qualities to even like fields and stuff in that movie. Um, yada, yada, yada. They actually, oh my God, Richard Bell. This is, okay, Deschamps. Who's Deschamps? JJ, you're so funny. How many fucking names in this thing?

1:27:52David Sims:How dare JJ make you learn things?

1:27:55Griffin Newman:Um, Stefan Deschamps, the production designer, had a friend, I'm just laughing at this because I had made a Mandalorian joke, who worked as the Greens supervisor on Mandalorian and invented something called the Moss-O-Matic, which is a gun hooked up to a tank that makes, like, instant grass, basically. It shoots glue and moss, and you can, like, give your set some texture.

1:28:22David Sims:So that's fun. That's amazing. Here's another thing about this movie. Unlike most black-and-white films, everything other than the actors was black-and-white. The sets were black-and-white. The costumes were black-and-white.

1:28:35Griffin Newman:what they were too lazy to make Francis McDormand black and white every day painter black and white

1:28:40David Sims:it's how you save money on the budget you don't put a color into anything but uh yes most most black and white films you can see behind the scenes photos a they were not actually shot in black and white as we've discussed I feel like a man who wasn't there in some other films they convert them later right uh this was like shot in black and white and everything on set was black and white. It's a very technical thing,

1:29:03Griffin Newman:what they're doing. And there is oodles of stuff in JJ's research about just how methodical they were about approaching lighting and set design and all this stuff, right? Okay? Uh-huh. That's cool. Yeah. At a certain point, you worry that your movie's going to get lost a little bit in the technical, right? Yeah. Like that if you're doing something so abstract, you know, Does it just become sort of this pretty thing for you to look at? Like, can you connect with Macbeth? Who's doing this weird thing. And it's a problem with Shakespeare. Yeah. Which I love Shakespeare to death, of course. But like, you know, I'm here to see Macbeth.

1:29:39Griffin Newman:I'm like, well, I know what's going to happen. And there's a little bit of like, you don't want to feel like the thing's just hitting checkpoints.

1:29:44David Sims:I find this thing very. And I mostly enjoy this movie. I find this thing compelling and engaging, but not very emotionally inviting. Well, that's what I was going to say. For someone who is unfamiliar with the text of Macbeth. I think a lot of Shakespeare productions will do a little bit of handholding to do a lot of signifiers and signposts for someone who isn't familiar with Shakespearean language to like really communicate what's going on. Like, you don't need to necessarily know the poetry, but we'll tell you the story. This is not a movie that holds your hand, really. You just sort of have to be along for the ride.

1:30:20I like it a lot but I don't think I would like recommend it to someone who like is like I don't really like

1:30:25Griffin Newman:Shakespeare yeah I was pretty much kind of like as soon as this started like what's up and that was one of the pull quotes they used weirdly I mean obviously right any geographical context has been stripped away yeah the idea that he's king of a kingdom yeah which is already a little remote Macbeth because Macbeth is mostly just set in castles like it's not like you see him like meeting throngs of people or crowds or whatever.

1:30:52David Sims:But the Cruzel movie is like very of the land. That is a real, we're in the fucking marsh.

1:30:57Griffin Newman:But you're like, he's the king. And you're like, he's the king of what? He sits in a chair?

1:31:00David Sims:He's the king of this white field. Right. Apple store? Like, cool. Okay. Right. The whole movie just feels like a nightmare. It doesn't feel like it exists in a tangible reality. I want to correct myself on something. I had the sort of split wrong. This movie was basically three quarters completed. before lockdown and then the rest was shot in it. But 36 days in total of filming, even with, you imagine, the post-pandemic days being a lot longer and slower, which is the shortest shoot Joel has ever done. I will say this set does look easy to sanitize. All these surfaces look really easy to Clorox.

1:31:41David Sims:There's like, pull a big lever

1:31:42Griffin Newman:and there's like sprinklers or whatever.

1:31:44David Sims:Unless they're dueling, the actors tend to be pretty far from each other too.

1:31:49Griffin Newman:So Macbeth, it's about this guy Macbeth. He's the Thane of Glamis. Uh-huh. Y 'all into that? Yeah, I love it. Glamis is a tiny village in Scotland, in Angus. Mm-hmm. Sort of like, sort of southeast Scotland. It's got a castle. It's still there. You can go if you want. You want to see the castle? Yeah, show it to me. Oh, that's a nice looking castle. That's cool. Nice. The queen's mom is from there. Not that the queen's dead now, but, you know, former queen, Elizabeth. Yeah, he's Thane Glamis. He's had a big victory. Am I going to do the plot of Macbeth? Please. You know, over the Thane of Cardor, and he goes to see some witches on a battlefield.

1:32:31Griffin Newman:As one does. Accidentally, he's with Banquo, his buddy.

1:32:33David Sims:The witches kind of come to see him.

1:32:35Griffin Newman:Yeah. And they do a whole thing where it's one actress, and then there's a puddle. It looks like there's three of them. Cool. And they say, ah, Macbeth, Thane of Cardor. And then they're like He's like I guess so Not really but okay And they're like Macbeth king of Scotland Banquo Not king And Banquo's like fuck And they're like But your sons will be kings See you later Right? Is that what happens? And I will say If that witch Delivered a prophecy to me You believe what What she's gonna say Yeah She's very compelling

1:33:09David Sims:It's a very arresting hope Yeah And you I mean you start the movie with her like untangling her body and speaking to you the audience member. Yeah. Which is the thing I wish this movie could sustain a little more is the like gothic horror of it. Yes. Because that feels like the one emotional element that it's able to actually kind of pull you in with.

1:33:32Griffin Newman:King Duncan played by Brendan Gleeson is the king and he meets Macbeth. He sees Macbeth. He's like great job buddy. Dana Carter if I ever saw him. This guy fucking screams me to Cawdor. Cawdor, all yours. I'm going to put in a good word for you. And Macbeth's like, and he's like, and of course, my heir is Dudley Dursley. This guy right here. Good, good, good. We didn't see this coming. He slimmed down. He's become a thespian. Compelling face. Interesting face. Good eyes. Honestly, an awesome actor. He rules. And it's like one of those things where I feel like a lot of people are like, he's Neville, right?

1:34:06Griffin Newman:And it's like, no, he's not even Neville. He's the fucking mean bully kid. that Harry has to live with.

1:34:13David Sims:He's the shitty stepbrother.

1:34:14Griffin Newman:He's the one, you almost kind of feel bad for him, you imagine, in filming, like all the other kids get to go to Hogwarts. You're right. They all get to hang out in the castle and wear uniforms and play Quidditch or whatever. He probably never got to hang out with the other kids. Yes. We'll shoot you out in five days. And bully Harry Potter. Okay, we're done. We're done.

1:34:32David Sims:The other thing is that he slimmed down a couple of movies in.

1:34:36Griffin Newman:So then he's wearing a fat suit. I believe that's right.

1:34:39David Sims:Yeah.

1:34:40Griffin Newman:The first thing I saw him in that wasn't Harry Potter was Lost City of Z, which he rocks, and then he's in the scenes where they're all, like, fighting in the, you know, the Royal Society of Geographers or whatever the hell, Explorers, the Explorers Club, where they're all like, I'm the best explorer! All those scenes which are so good, and he's so good at being, like, an evil jerk. He feels like he has to be an actor. Like, he couldn't just be, like, a waiter. He's too, like... There's too much going on. Walking around with that face. Yeah, you're just like, ah, I don't know. I'll have soup, I guess.

1:35:14David Sims:Have you seen Pileon? Is that what it's called? No, but I want to. Do you know about this, Dana? I hear it's good. No. A erotic, I mean, the description here is a directionless man is swept off his feet when an enigmatic and possibly handsome biker takes him on as his submissive.

1:35:31Griffin Newman:Yes. So Harry Melling is the sub and the Dom is Alexander Skarsgård. Yes.

1:35:37David Sims:And it just premiered at New York Film Festival. And A24 picked it up. Yeah. but he's

1:35:43Griffin Newman:A24 we're like buy the pricking of my yeah sure we want to make blockbusters now but that sounds like one of ours

1:35:53David Sims:he's incredible in Scruggs we will have talked about that he's amazing in Scruggs I love him in the old guard a movie that is good

1:36:00Griffin Newman:yeah he's the sort of Mark Zuckerberg in that

1:36:03David Sims:yes he's the villain yeah but he's basically good in everything I'm always excited to see him

1:36:07Griffin Newman:yeah totally

1:36:08David Sims:But yes, the exact guy you don't want to lose a job to. Yeah, Nepo Baby. Cast within a film.

1:36:15Griffin Newman:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, in Scottish and most royal antiquity, Nepo Babies did tend to get the crown. It was sort of procedure.

1:36:23David Sims:Nepos really used to be a problem. I will also say just like in— Prince William low-key a Nepo Baby. No one talks about this.

1:36:31Griffin Newman:Sorry for the go-up.

1:36:32David Sims:I just found out who Prince William's dad is, and it is blowing my— I am shook. And I'm pointing at the text above my head. No, I will say, like, historically, the really laid in stone issue of primogeniture, which is that your son is going to take over after you. Gotta have a boy. Gotta have a boy. It wasn't explicitly set at this period. Okay. The same way. Because if your son. Gotta name a good heir. If your son is a dud, if he's a kid. You had a mulligan. You could opt out.

1:37:01Griffin Newman:And because I have a dud son, instead my heir is Macbeth. This guy rocks. Well, it's just also easier for you if you're like a powerful lord and you know that the son is a dud. When the king dies, it like isn't impossible for you to gather support. What if you marry your dud son to like some hot lady who maybe can spit out some fire grandsons for you or something? You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of angles. They're angles. Yeah. Yes. But OK. Some of meth, of course, won't be a king of Scotland. Bummer. Unless. Unless he goes home and talks to his wife. Yeah. The conveniently named Lady Macbeth.

1:37:37Griffin Newman:You think those guys swiped left on Tinder? I could do so many stupid jokes. Her name's Lady Macbeth? This woman's made for me.

1:37:44David Sims:Her parents named her Lady? She's just Macbeth but with a bow? Yeah. But the gameplay's a little stronger. Her gameplay is a little stronger. It is a little stronger.

1:37:59Griffin Newman:Right. She's like, hmm, we could kill Duncan. she gets word because he reported back like pretty weird like the witch said I was going to become king but I'm not going to become king right

1:38:11David Sims:that's so funny I've been thinking a lot about murder recently and it's values I've been thinking a lot about this knife I have

1:38:15Griffin Newman:what do you think?

1:38:17David Sims:this knife is way too clean

1:38:20Griffin Newman:my sleep is so untroubled I'd love to walk the halls being crazy I'm going to shake it up a little bit and what's done can be undone right? of course we all know about death now yeah so he does kill him in his sleep a classic Coen brothers thing is accidentally bringing the knife back to his room

1:38:41David Sims:he's already messing up yeah and also that it's kind of like an awkward clumsy death that it's not a classic Shakespearean like just blade goes in man falls to the ground that you have this like uncomfortable sputtering and him lying there in an ugly position it's very like the shooting in Fargo and the blood splatter is like more human than you in the car I saw someone on the Reddit was saying that they've been struggling in watching these movies with how flippantly the Coens treat death and certainly their comedies it can often be used as a punchline the way that the deaths stack up but I think they like really and watching this film you get the sense that it's more Joel than Ethan are kind of obsessed with the weight of death and obsessed with how flippantly it can happen.

1:39:35Yeah, superhero and action movies, to me, make death weightless and frictionless. Right. And I think Coen Brothers movies, by contrast, make death feel very emotionally affecting.

1:39:46David Sims:Yes, yes, yes. And, like, uncomfortable. Yeah.

1:39:49Griffin Newman:Yeah. The real Duncan was, of course, slain in battle at the Battle of Pitt Cavany. I'm telling you guys something you already know. I got tattooed on my chest. That'd be a weird thing to have. Visited. A real King Duncan. I think it looks nice. Was not killed in his sleep. What Macbeth is doing here is like violating the ancient sort of bread and salt thing, right? Like sort of like if you have someone in your home, you're kind of promising you won't do this to them. Like the number one rule of like being a human. Please don't murder me. Right. In like medieval times especially. It's like it's violating in the way that like the psycho like killing someone in a shower.

1:40:25like well I'm supposed to be safe here I'm like if I'm a house guest in your home presumably they're not going to kill you in your bed

1:40:33Griffin Newman:so it's kind of like he's kind of doomed from the minute he does this I feel you know it's like he's getting it the wrong way he's fulfilling the prophecy in the most literal way of like yes he can become the king but like what is being the king if like you're basically immediately like okay who's going to try and kill me now

1:40:53David Sims:Dana as you called out It's a classic Coency story of a guy makes one bad decision and doesn't quite know how to deal with the fallout of it, right? Ben, we keep asking you, because this filmography really tees up. Now, you're Irish, not Scottish, really, right? The classic Ben Hosley, if I had been in this movie, everything would have worked out great.

1:41:14Griffin Newman:You don't have a clan. You don't have a tartan you've ever looked up or whatever. Everyone loves to look up their clan. Yeah, no, I guess the Walsh side, which is my mother's maiden name, we do have a crest. Yeah, it sounds pretty Scottish. What kind of crest?

1:41:28David Sims:What does it look like?

1:41:30Griffin Newman:I forget now.

1:41:32David Sims:It's just like a tube of toothpaste. It's funny. That's pretty funny. I don't know. I'm really tired. I'm so tired. It's Comic-Con weekend. That's why Dana's here. That's why Dana's here. It's a gauntlet. Pre-order the book The Arcane Arts. This is your newly announced book? You just announced it at the con? The cover reveal. You've got so many projects. I'm busy working. Dana's always texting me like, when are you going to write a book?

1:41:55Griffin Newman:And I'm like, I'm busy, Dana. And Dana's like, right, I don't really, I guess I don't really get that. Like, I'm always just doing another thing. You do so many things. Oh, Ben is showing us the crest. That's a cool crest. I like that. It's pretty cool. Solid. Three arrows.

1:42:08David Sims:It looks like three. Yeah, roads almost. Roads pulling forward. Three, like, PC pointers.

1:42:14Griffin Newman:Yeah, it's got three mouse pointers to honor his skills. As a Mac user. Yeah.

1:42:19David Sims:Okay.

1:42:20Griffin Newman:Thanks. All right. But anyway, what's your question to Ben Hosling?

1:42:22David Sims:Ben. Yes. If you were Macbeth.

1:42:26Griffin Newman:Yeah.

1:42:26David Sims:How would things turn out for you? What would you have done differently?

1:42:29Griffin Newman:Okay. I have a feeling I might fuck this one up.

1:42:32David Sims:Okay.

1:42:33Griffin Newman:Yeah.

1:42:33David Sims:Unfortunately. You think there's no way out on this one?

1:42:35Griffin Newman:No way out of murdering a queen in her home? Are you pro-murder?

1:42:38David Sims:Hmm. Let me ponder that. Strip the chin on this one. I'm going to go ahead and say no.

1:42:43Griffin Newman:Okay. Good to have that on record. And I want to have that on record. That's for the sixth commandment over here. Yeah. Right. Just biblical fuck.

1:42:51David Sims:But you don't covet thy neighbor's wife either, loser.

1:42:55Griffin Newman:I don't.

1:42:56David Sims:Oh, okay.

1:42:58Griffin Newman:There was an incident in Scotland, in Scottish history, where, like, Guestwright was somewhat broken, I think. Right. But it's later. And I think it's sort of post... I don't know. Like, it doesn't matter. I wonder if Shakespeare's referencing something.

1:43:12David Sims:Ben, is your answer that you just simply don't murder the guy and feel comfortable with your position and just stay where you are.

1:43:18Griffin Newman:Yeah, just take the promotion. It seems nice. Yeah, it's not bad. I'll be thamed.

1:43:22David Sims:Nice work if you can get it.

1:43:23Griffin Newman:Yeah, absolutely. It seems like, if anything, he's moving up. Yeah. And he should just chill. Or, like, retire, bitch.

1:43:30David Sims:Yeah, absolutely. You know what he could do if he actually did want to become king? The non-murder strategy is to undermine the son. Start, like, whispering to Brendan Gleeson, like, your son seems kind of bad at being a king. I didn't want to say anything.

1:43:43Griffin Newman:No, here, I got it. I meet the witches. They give me this prophecy. I go, I don't know about all that murder stuff, but do you guys want to chill?

1:43:51David Sims:That's what you do. By the cauldron puddle? Yeah. You just become best friends with the witches. And we just have kind of like a witch club. Now, do you bring your wife in on it or not? Yeah, sure. Okay. Absolutely. I think if you don't tell your wife that you got this prophecy, that's not a good marriage. Yes. Also, if you're like, I met these cool friends. They're witches. She's going to ask a lot of questions like, so what are they, are they like pretty? Like what are they?

1:44:18Griffin Newman:Do they have like an Instagram I could like check out?

1:44:20David Sims:Do you find them attractive? And there's three of them. They're sort of triplets. Yeah.

1:44:23Griffin Newman:So like do they, what does that imply?

1:44:25David Sims:Is that like a thing you fantasized about? I know you're telling me you're just friends with them, but you never let me come along to the puddle room.

1:44:34Griffin Newman:Robert the Bruce killed John Common in a church is what I was referencing. Guys, you can look that up. That sounds like a no-no. It was seen as somewhat of a no-no, though it helped him consolidate power. Yeah. So, what? I just see, I've never seen this before, but apparently. Uh-oh, is your clan canceled? It's just three fish. All right. Not bad. They're probably going to get fish. Yeah. Yeah. All right. You feeling bummed out about this? A little bit. Hey, man, back in the day, life in Scotland, there's a lot of water around you. You got to eat. Got to get that fish. I was just hoping it would be like, I don't know, bones or something.

1:45:08Griffin Newman:Yeah. That would be cool. Fish have bones. Fish have bones. Okay. Yeah. There are bones underneath. The cat's always showing us the bones. And he eats the fish. I do love seeing the fish that way. It's one of the best things. Where it's just the head and then the bones.

1:45:19David Sims:Top Cat does. He really educates us. He does us a service. Showing us bones. If you took an x-ray to that crest, it'd be lousy with bones, Ben.

1:45:27Griffin Newman:You're right. But it would be cool if you were like, let me look up my clan. I'd be like, the bone clan that feared for a thousand years. There's bones that someone just screaming. Right. Anyway, they kill Duncan. Sorry. And Macduff comes to visit the next day and he's like, would love to see the alive king. Yeah. I'm here to see our greatest breath drawing guy, King Duncan. Where is he at? And so they kill some servants that Mac Malcolm flees to England over the border. And Macbeth gets that crown. And so immediately his gaze falls to banquet because it's like, OK, well, the next thing is that you were in that fucking prophecy too.

1:46:14Griffin Newman:I gotta deal with this. And Banquo also was with him for the witch prophecy. So he's like, well, he might, we kind of know that the king was murdered and he kind of knows I'm a suspect. As much as Shakespeare made Banquo a not villainous character, he is culpable or whatever. Like Banquo is kind of just like a bystander. He kind of knows what's going on and doesn't like do anything about it.

1:46:34David Sims:Yes. Now the aforementioned crown, it rests easily upon his head, lightly.

1:46:40Griffin Newman:this shit is light I'm gonna do cartwheels

1:46:43David Sims:gravity not an issue

1:46:47Griffin Newman:and so what's the next thing you gotta do you gotta go kill Banquo right so there's two assassins do you know about the third murderer no do you know what I'm talking about third assassin this is a very this is also one of the most exciting things about this movie specifically to me right so I believe correct me if I'm wrong but there's a scene where Macbeth recruits two murderers murderers right yeah and this movie happened in like the tent right the menendez brothers but there are three murderers oh okay who carry out the crime uh and in this movie it's ross is the third and the other two murderers in that scene are like who are you and he's like mcbeth sent me i'm also here for this um sometimes i think in the stage productions the character is literally just an extra and they don't think about it but it's like an opportunity for you to like you know like interpret something like more complicated happening right I mean I don't know how else to describe like some because it's like it's kind of interesting like oh why would Shakespeare have a third murderer in the murder scene but not the recruiting scene I've seen some writing about productions that have actually Macbeth be the third murderer right but then he's late to his own banquet because he was making sure the job was done.

1:48:04But this movie makes the choice of taking the sort of side character Ross and not only giving him this sort of media role as the third assassin but kind of like making him like a mythic figure throughout this story. Right.

1:48:19Griffin Newman:Ross is like sees all and kind of participates but isn't really like seeking vengeance. Like Uatu the Watcher. He's kind of like an Uatu the Watcher type. I just gotta bring this whole movie into my language. No, I think that's totally right. It also, I mean, while we're talking about Ross. The Polanski movie also makes Ross the third murderer. It's a thing that, like, some people do. Sorry, carry on. Make the part bigger for a high schooler. Right, sure. But would I, this movie kind of implies, not to get ahead of ourselves with spoilers, but like

1:48:47David Sims:spoiling Macbeth, it kind of implies that Ross kills Lady Macbeth?

1:48:52Griffin Newman:Right. A little bit? Did I misinterpret that? No, you didn't. So, like, Lady Macbeth, before she dies, just to jump ahead to this, is, well, she's feeling crummy. Feeling a little blue. And we see her like looking down the stairs. But we also see Ross turning on those lamps and gazing right at her. And it is sort of like, you can take away from it like, does Ross like shove her down the stairs or something? It's not just that he's looking at her. He like, he has like a little sinister sort of like, hmm.

1:49:18David Sims:He truly sees her for who she is. But I, you know, famously Lady Macbeth commits suicide. It's not on stage, but that's like the classic interpretation of of the play. Can I ask, because I just, I openly, uh, struggle to, uh, crack Shakespeare and understand how to analyze it. Okay. Can the two of you explain what you feel like McDormand is getting wrong in this performance? Because I agree that doesn't quite work and I cannot identify why.

1:49:48Griffin Newman:Um, it's, it's a fair question. Lady Macbeth is such a weird character. She's like the greatest, like, character, right? Like, everyone wants to play Lady Macbeth because it's this opportunity for these incredible monologues. You can play this descent into madness bottled into whatever. The power behind the power. The whisper in the ear. Right. It's so cool. But also she's a completely one-dimensional character in some ways in that she's just like plot motivation, right? Like she's just, she's the evil woman who spurs everything into action. I mean, please jump in. Don't let me. I like a Lady Macbeth.

1:50:21You have to, I like a Lady Macbeth that's like, okay, I'm either existing in the, you know, 11th century or like Shakespeare

1:50:28Griffin Newman:Because if it's the 11th century, you're like, this ambition makes sense. She would have no avenue for ambition. She has to follow through someone else. And, you know, if this is happening in the early 1600s, you're like, how does a woman have power? And what I don't maybe attach to so much in this performance for me is I don't think Frances McDormand has an interesting answer where it feels like a very modern marriage. because they're both like in their 60s and they have like a very respectful marriage. She's just like, I don't know, you should do this. Where I think a Lady Macbeth that's informed by either like the 11th or the 17th century, it's like she's using her sexuality in interesting ways.

1:51:09She has to be more subversive. I think maybe because of all the Coen Brothers movies or roles that Frances McDormand has played in her career, I read her very much as just like a straight shooter good partner. and yeah she is like telling Macbeth what to do but she's not like being really wily about it

1:51:27Griffin Newman:I find her very subdued I don't find their chemistry it's not like it's like non-existent because they do have the kind of mutual respect thing going on but it's maybe overly comfortable yes for a movie or a story where she's like you should fucking murder the king low-key stab that guy that's crazy you know like and everything just proceeds a little too sleepily for me

1:51:51David Sims:Well, especially if Denzel's going to be trying to root his performance in a modern naturalism.

1:51:56Griffin Newman:And he's heavy on the, this guy's tired. This guy's old. This guy is sort of like got a ticking clock. So he decides I'll make that decision like as my sort of last gasp.

1:52:05David Sims:That also perhaps works better if it's like he's literally like the sleepwalker from Cabinet of Dr. Caligari carrying out her mission. Sure. And she is putting a lot more electricity into it. And there's something interesting about the, I've only seen the filmed version, but like the Patrick Stewart production where it's a much younger woman for an older man, which also has like this interesting friction.

1:52:27Griffin Newman:And Patrick Stewart wouldn't know anything about that. No, no. Of course not. Not implying his wife is a murderer. She's a slimy. But there's like that friction to it of like this tired guy trying to like, you know, metaphorically get it up for his younger wife.

1:52:39David Sims:Right. Trying his first ever New York slice in quotes. Right. Exactly. But there's something to like. Let's move to Park Slope or kill the king. What's the quadruple take video? It's having a midlife person. Muffins are the best.

1:52:51Griffin Newman:I don't know.

1:52:52David Sims:I'm trying to remember. It's some fucking double entendre.

1:52:54Griffin Newman:Salt and pepper.

1:52:56David Sims:The greatest. Sorry, Dan. Foo fighters. Should we just keep doing it? Patrick Stewart. There's something to like the - Musical guests won. I didn't have my Romano ready to go. The way that Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are talking, it almost is like, I want to go see my sister for Thanksgiving this year. It's a little low stakes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:53:16Griffin Newman:Yes I just And I don't Like She's fine with the language Or whatever Like I don't It's not like I'm like She's just reading Like I She's performing But it's I'm just There's times in this movie Like whenever Denzel's raising his voice And popping off a little bit Yeah I'm sitting up Absolutely I'm just like It's okay guys To have some You know To have some sort of It's not over the top But just some like You know Some more kind of energy

1:53:43David Sims:For these But some dude works better for him save for Fitz and Maynara. I think he's got a good take. He has a good subdued. And I think that for me, the subdued would have worked better if it was a little more like blood and sex Lady Macbeth. Denzel is also such an established movie star and we know how he can uncork. So when he is playing in a lower register, the performance still has the tension of is Denzel going to explode? And it makes those moments... Kind of like the equalizer. You're saying when he fucking equalizes... Dana, have you equalized yet? I have equalized. My husband made sure I equalized.

1:54:17That was one of the movies where he's like, you haven't seen The Equalizer? He made sure I was equalized. Have you watched all three? No, I've watched two.

1:54:23David Sims:Okay. Ben, have you now seen all three? Yeah. Do you know that Ben knocked The Equalizers out on our flights to and from L.A. recently, David? He has finally equalized. Thank God. And I gotta tell you, it was fun. We gotta do them on Patreon. We really should. They will be so much fun to do. We can do them on Patreon. Are you gonna talk the Queen?

1:54:42Griffin Newman:Go on. What do you mean? Queen Latifah? I don't think we can fire up Queen Latifah's The Equalizer television show. No, I don't think there's time for that.

1:54:51David Sims:It is just so funny that that has just existed concurrent to this thing, and they don't have anything to do with it. They don't acknowledge it. No. But the movies are so good. And yes, it is that thing of like, this, I mean, Equalizer does feel like the start of him trying to explore who is old man Denzel, right? Because Denzel aged so well for so long, and he finally, he didn't like hit a wall, but we crossed a threshold where it's like, he is an old man now. He is an old man now. And the last 10 years he's had to like lean into it more and more and try to own it. It is interesting that I feel like he goes out of his way to look even older in this film.

1:55:32David Sims:Like certainly the gray and the hair and the beard. Yeah. For a guy who tends to die, right? His hair, you mean. Yeah, yeah. He rarely dies on screen, although he does die in this. We think. In this film, he doesn't D-Y-E, but he does D-I-E. Yes. No, he does some tie-dyeing as well in this movie. Sure. It just feels like he was always a very virile star. And he has finally tried to, like, settle into, like, what is my elder statesman mode? Yeah. You know, when am I supporting? Our buddy Connor Ratliff had a very good take, which is the highest to lowest. Have you seen that? Not yet. It feels like the first Denzel performance of him going into his late Pacino era.

1:56:13so true where he's complimentary or derogatory complimentary complimentary but yes it's got

1:56:18David Sims:that kind of like what getting bad but it's the first performance where he's just like i'm just gonna follow every single instinct i have what if i have a dialogue scene with a framed picture what if i start like yelling at a can of soup you know like and all of it's engaging and i think it makes sense for the story but you haven't seen him do something that undisciplined before which is interesting. Like even Denzel's like weird oddball rhythms and like his like explosive like moments always feel like that is earned. That is justified. Trained. People wouldn't have the courage to do that. But what he's doing makes perfect sense.

1:56:58David Sims:Yeah. And highest to lowest is like him doing a fucking jazz set. For better or for worse in this movie. Yes. There's no great. He doesn't do anything nuts. Not really. I think it's a very contained Macbeth performance. I don't know if it's a deliberate quote, but these sort of hallucinations, the fit of violence, the moment with the bird in particular, I really like the way Joel shoots those and it feels very similar to Cassavetes opening night where Jenna Rowland's character is haunted by this young fan that got hit by a car and she imagines these fights with her that are her coming backstage and they're done in like extreme Paul Greengrass-y, super up-close, shaky kind of like hand-to-hand combat.

1:57:45David Sims:That it's like this is going on in her head and the second you cut out to a wide, everything's fine. He thinks he's sword fighting. It's a bird that broke through a window, you know? And those moments are really exciting to watch because you're like in the middle of the fight. You're watching Denzel like joust at you from like two inches away.

1:58:02Griffin Newman:Because, right, so much of the middle part of Macbeth is just him being paranoid. Yeah. And it can be hard to dramatize that. Who's coming from me. I think he visualizes that very well, Joel. Is this a dagger he sees before him? Is it? In the Polanski movie, it's just like a little hologram of a dagger. He definitely sees it before him. He does see it before him. Yeah, so paranoid starts to get weird. He kills Banquo, doesn't kill Fleance, fucked up. Messed up. He's not an equal opportunity murderer. You can kind of have the take that this is... He tries to kill Flanns. They try to get him. Ross is the one who fucks up.

1:58:37Griffin Newman:And that by casting Ross in that role, you can then kind of signify it as like, this is where Ross's loyalty starts to wane.

1:58:44David Sims:They're on a break now.

1:58:46Griffin Newman:Exactly. That's a Ross joke.

1:58:47David Sims:That's like a friend's Ross joke.

1:58:48Griffin Newman:I think that was a really good joke. Did you see that David Fumper got a Paul Hollywood handshake on an episode of Bake Off? No, that's cool. Did he? Yep. He made like a pot pie with tofu in it. But I'm sure it's kind of like Celebrity Jeopardy where the line for a handshake is much... Which, yeah. Would you do Bake Off? In a heartbeat. Do you bake? I do. I bake a lot. Dana's a good baker. I bake a lot. What's your specialty? But could you make like a, you know, make a cake that's also a readable book or whatever they do these days? Well, she's also good at writing books. Well, maybe she could do it.

1:59:19I don't. I think I would. I'm good at studying. And I'm good at like, I like a. I know because you have to practice all the fucking.

1:59:25Griffin Newman:But how's your like rough puff pastry? I've made it. It's not great. But if I knew I was going to be on Bake Off, I would really throw myself into it. What about, I'm trying to think all the other shit they do on that. I don't know. Sugar. You know what? Actually, what I would have trouble with is sometimes they're like, make a blah, blah, blah. And it's some like British pastry that I've never heard of. It is always good with like, make the queen's muffin. And you're like, what's that? And they're like, it's actually not a muffin. It's a steak. What?

1:59:49David Sims:Well done. I met Kim Joy at Comic-Con. Oh, that's cool. She's fun. She was at Comic-Con. I love her.

1:59:57Griffin Newman:That makes sense that she was at Comic-Con. she has that moment where she really starts freaking out and crying do you remember this? and Noel Fielding comes over to her which like this happens do you watch Big Off?

2:00:06David Sims:I don't

2:00:07Griffin Newman:I watch Mighty Boosh though

2:00:09David Sims:it's similar to that

2:00:09Griffin Newman:it is so weird to watch it with say my wife who did not watch the Mighty Boosh and try to explain who Noel Fielding is and why he's here how could he have ended up here? because it always feels like Noel Fielding just like walked through a tunnel and was like

2:00:24David Sims:oh like it was in his tent but also part of his magic was that he always had the comedy energy of an old lady. Well, that's true. There was this glam rocker thing, right? And this like party boy Lothario thing. But you're like, there is this like very delicate, like kind of. And a kindness. Yes. He reads as kind. And innocent. Yeah.

2:00:42Griffin Newman:Yes. And there's this moment where this lady, Kim Joy, who is sort of like, how to describe her? Tui in a sort of anime. Nerd-y anime. Anime vibey bakes. She starts like freaking out about something and it's just like, I can't do it. Like, she just has the thing that I, what happened to me probably five minutes in where I'm just like, I can't fucking do this. Like, you know, just like staring at sugar and spices in an oven. And Noel just comes and chills her out so beautifully. And it's like one of those, like, your heart stops moments and bake off. Anyway, I'm glad she's doing well.

2:01:18David Sims:I'm glad he's doing well.

2:01:19Griffin Newman:He's cool. I think he's doing great.

2:01:21David Sims:To the listener, David is making a gesture as if there is money in between his fingers and he's rubbing that dollar bill. And it's not a one. I'll tell you that.

2:01:30Griffin Newman:It's not a one dollar bill. Him and Allison Hammond are good at their jobs, but their job is mostly just going over to people being like, you cook it? This looks good. This looks good. And the guy's like, I'm really stressed out. He's like, all right, I'll see you later.

2:01:41David Sims:It's kind of the drain.

2:01:42Griffin Newman:It's kind of great.

2:01:43David Sims:You work what? Like fucking four weeks a year?

2:01:45Griffin Newman:You get to eat the cakes? Isn't that right? If you want to eat some cake, you can have it. Yeah.

2:01:49David Sims:It's up for grabs. Yeah.

2:01:50Griffin Newman:Like Paul Hollywood, he has one bite. Good. He just moves on. He's got to eat 16 cakes. Those cameramen are eating well.

2:01:57David Sims:I think that's what happens. They give it to the crew. Yeah, because there's so much left over. It has to be.

2:02:01Griffin Newman:But it's like they're giving the crew, like I said, it's like the entire Bible replicated in cake form. Tom DeLonge's head.

2:02:08David Sims:That was really, do you know about that? No, they made a cake of Tom DeLonge from Blink-182. So it was like make, was it music is special? No, it was just, I think, make a sculpture of any, your idol. Okay. Your idol? and the person chose Tom DeLonge? Were there spiders on the cake? I'm showing Ben and Griffin. That's crazy. Unbelievable. I mean, SNL now has that like recurring sketch they do.

2:02:37Griffin Newman:It's very funny.

2:02:38David Sims:The one that Eddie Murphy did once.

2:02:40Griffin Newman:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2:02:41David Sims:It looks like one of those. Yes. Jesus Christ. If that is, if you love Tom DeLonge so much that he's your first choice answer for Idol. Yeah. That is a disrespect.

2:02:54Griffin Newman:Because there was the disaster was the Freddie Mercury. But that at least is stylized.

2:03:00David Sims:He looks like a bath toy. That at least. It's stylized for sure. It's kind of like a Funko Pop. There's an artistic interpretation. DeLong seems to be going for realism and missing the mark. Wow. They've gotten, Bake Off used to be very, like, very classic where, like, the challenges were, like, make a Victoria sponge cake. And I think they know now, like, I don't know, 20 seasons in, in the Instagram era, they've upped their games.

2:03:26Griffin Newman:Everyone's watched the show. So now they've all become genius. Yeah, right. It used to be amateur old lady bakers who were like, I put some turmeric in this cake. And they'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I made one tart. Yes. Yeah. No, it would be only amateur bakers. These grandmothers who are like, this is my Bakewell tart recipe. And they'd be like, this is great. Good job. And now it has to be, you have to fucking sculpt Blink-182. Yes, right. Tom Delong's face now.

2:03:53David Sims:20 minutes. There was some Food Network show when my sister Romley was growing up and was watching Food Network. You almost knocked over. You almost knocked Chucky over. It's fine. Chucky. He's very robust. But he's safe. When my sister Romley was just watching Food Network 24-7, the one show I liked watching with her, and I forget what it was called, but it was like the Great Cake Challenge or some shit. Right. And it was just that kind of like insane sculptural, like multi-tier mechanized 80 % fondant cake. Which are not designed to taste good. Right. Right. That was the thing that was fascinating.

2:04:25David Sims:They'd be themed and they'd be like, it's NFL day here. Everyone gets assigned a team. And you have to make a cake of that team. And then you're just doing like fucking engineering with a cake, which was fascinating. But you're also like, this looks like it would taste like paper. A lot of those like real sculptural cakes, they use like Rice Krispie Treat to shape it out and then cover it in fondant. Like it's not even cake. No, that's the thing. Right. They're like ostensibly edible, but they are not a cake and they're not elements that would taste good together.

2:05:20David Sims:Laundry in about 90 minutes. Shop top brand appliances now at The Home Depot. Offer valid June 17th to July at the U.S. only C-Store Online for details.

2:05:30Griffin Newman:This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome.

2:05:32David Sims:You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. The tragedy of Macbeth. Yeah. Is that he never lived long enough to see cake competition shows. If he and Lady Macbeth could just like chill out in bed, watch the Great British Macbeth.

2:06:06David Sims:They would have retired if the Food Network existed.

2:06:09Griffin Newman:Paul Hollywood, Thane of Cawdor. Paul Hollywood, King of Scotland. And then Paul Hollywood gets a little glint in his blue eyes. Bakes a knife cake. So he does start seeing ghosts and ranting and raving. And Lady Macbeth starts walking around, you know, talking about her hands being covered in blood and such. Is this my fault? Well, the witches also warn him again to beware. They give him a sort of double-headed thing. They say, beware, Macduff. And also, don't worry. No man born of woman can kill you. And also, you're going to be fine until Burnham Wood moves to your castle. A literal fucking forest marches, okay?

2:06:44So he's like, great. I'm immortal. as long as I beware this guy. And if you want to make someone not a threat, you murder their entire family.

2:06:52Griffin Newman:Yeah. Easy. I remember, so I saw this at the New York Film Festival and I stayed for the Q &A with Denzel because I was actually interested. I usually dash out. Denzel, Fran, and Joel? And a few other people. Corey was there. Moses Ingram was there who plays Lady Macduff and is a great actor. And Denzel more than once shouted her out and clearly was like very happy she had been involved in the production. He does seem to be someone - She has a great scene. She has a great scene. Like someone who champions like younger black actors, right? Absolutely. That's something he's good at.

2:07:26David Sims:He's really good at it. Throughout his career. He puts them in prominent roles. He lets them pop. Of course, the young black actor he's championing the hardest is Austin Butler. Can't we explain? He's like Austin Butler's number one mentor because they did Iceman Cometh together.

2:07:44Griffin Newman:Right, right, right.

2:07:46David Sims:And... When Austin Butler was not famous. When he was just like a Carrie Diaries, like Disney Channel star. Dating Vanessa Hudgens. And it was like his first real stab at serious acting. And Denzel... Denzel looks at him and is like, you're gonna get caught stealing.

2:08:00Griffin Newman:Denzel brags about that he always...

2:08:03David Sims:He's gonna work harder than anyone else. He's got the hardest work ethic. He was talking about with this that he'd like get on set every day at five o 'clock in the morning and just run the soliloquies. He's like, I need to know these like the back of my hand. They need to feel organic. And he was like, I felt competitive with Bruno Delbanel because he's like me. And I kept trying to beat him to set and he'd get there an hour before me.

2:08:25Griffin Newman:Bruno's shown up with like eight more lights. Right. I was like, fuck you. And they're like running to the door together. But I'm always like curls at the light half an hour earlier.

2:08:32David Sims:And there's this story that Austin Butler kept doing the same thing. And Denzel was like, you're never going to beat me. Try to show up early. I'm going to show up earlier. and then one day Butler beat him to the theater in the morning and he was like okay kid tell me what your deal is like I'm now ready to take you under my wing and Denzel is then the one who like really brought Austin Butler around town and was like this guy's a serious actor he must be considered

2:08:59Griffin Newman:Do you know how early he wakes up his alarms you would be 410 411 412 they keep going off I've checked

2:09:08David Sims:I think it was part of it, though, that like when he was up for Elvis, Denzel called Boz and was like, you don't understand how hard this kid's going to work. Denzel called Boz.

2:09:18Griffin Newman:Like, I'm just trying to imagine like that relationship. I know. I guess everyone wants to be friends with Denzel.

2:09:22David Sims:I don't mean this to deflate it. You are right that Denzel has been really good at like supporting young black actors, like finding them, identifying them, giving them roles. It's just funny that Austin Butler is like his number one guy. Who is famously, I repeat, what? He is. Oh, wait a second. Dana, you're telling me he's. I've only heard recordings.

2:09:39Griffin Newman:What?

2:09:41David Sims:Snowman.

2:09:42Griffin Newman:Snowman.

2:09:44David Sims:The snowman and the showman. We gotta do Bob.

2:09:48Griffin Newman:We gotta do Bob. Let's fucking do it. Is he working on something? Yes. He's got a project coming. A Joan of Arc.

2:09:54David Sims:They just announced he's doing a Joan of Arc movie. Is that cool, younger?

2:09:57Griffin Newman:That is always a bad idea.

2:09:59David Sims:It's gonna be normal. He discovered some unknown 15-year-old? Yeah. I saw Baz Luhrmann. I was at the Harry Styles concert a few years ago. Yeah. And I was like in the section and he was there and he was having a great time. I've told this story before, but I saw him at Forbidden Planet. There was like a torrential downpour outside and it felt like he just looked for the closest store to like get out of the rain. And he was examining the shelves of Forbidden Planet, famous New York comic book store, as if he were on an alien planet, like tilting his head at everything. And then the only purchase he made was a Wonder Woman umbrella.

2:10:34David Sims:Oh, yeah. he needed to get out of the ring and I was at first just like that's a distinct looking man with specific energy and then I was like that's Basler we could do Romeo and Juliet if we did Basler

2:10:46Griffin Newman:excuse me excuse me I love that movie

2:10:49David Sims:Romeo plus Juliet sorry

2:10:52Griffin Newman:that's just me being an asshole you're in the right you shouldn't apologize so how do you say Moulin Rouge? Moulin Rouge! you gotta say it that way every time yeah Moulin Rouge! Do you like Baz Luhrmann? I love Baz Luhrmann. I know you do.

2:11:09David Sims:Yeah, of course I do. What's his witchiest movie? What would he have you on for if we did that? There's a fairy in Moulin Rouge. Sure. The green fairy.

2:11:18Griffin Newman:Yeah. She actually represents Absinthe. Yes. I kind of think actually the most noble bloody would be the Joan of Arc. I mean, we'll see. Yeah. And she was burned at the stake. Yeah. Pretty witchy. Yeah. Pretty witchy. Right. Witch adjacent in some people's eyes. Talking to God. Pretty witching Right Yeah what are some other Big witch movies We could do with you though This is a really good question Outside of Baz Luhrmann

2:11:41David Sims:Your beloved Practical Magic Love that movie I love that movie It's gonna be a sequel Yeah Gonna be a sequel It's wrapped Suzanne Beer

2:11:52Griffin Newman:Pop culture is so normal Right now It's in the can It's done You've already done Witches of Eastwick We have Yes we did do that one Yes It's a big witch movie Witches, Hocus Pocus, of course. The Witch. Uh-huh. I love The Witch. Right. We've already had you do an Oz. We did have, we did, of course,

2:12:12David Sims:Robert Zemeckis' The Witches, a very well-remembered film. One of the most remembered movies. John M. Chu is, it's inevitable. Player Witch Project? Sure. Yeah. Could do that?

2:12:24Griffin Newman:Yeah. Never seen that movie, actually. Are there any other witch comedies? Well, I Married a Witch. Sure, sure. That's a great movie. I'm sure there's many. The love witch. You shouldn't say that about your wife. The love witch. But witches are cool now, Ben. Witches are cool now, Ben. I mean, hey. It would be funny if I went back to calling women witches. Like I'm some fucking medieval guy. He's like, you witch! Like I'm hoping a mob will assemble.

2:12:49David Sims:Or if you just come into the studio exhausted and you're like, sorry, my witchy daughter kept me up all night.

2:12:52Griffin Newman:That would be cool if my daughter went into witch mode. Right. She's not really. I mean, she doesn't mind witches. What's she going to be for Halloween?

2:13:01David Sims:This year she wants to be. Great question. Must be an elephant. Ellie or just generic elephant? Elephant. You know what I saw a lot of at Comic-Con that I think is going to be the Halloween costume is all the K-pop demon hunters.

2:13:11Griffin Newman:Yes, I have heard this is brewing. That a lot of parents are making panicked Amazon order.

2:13:16David Sims:It does feel like under 20 K-pop demon hunters over 21 battle after another.

2:13:22Griffin Newman:Yeah. It's the new dude costume for men. It's really hard to put together that Leo in one battle. Oh, I have to find a flannel shirt and some sunglasses. A robe. You get to be so comfy.

2:13:32David Sims:It's just going to be so funny when these film bros show up at parties and there are 10 other Leos already there. They're the 10th Bob to arrive. You got to be Penn.

2:13:41Griffin Newman:You got to just tuck a black shirt in too tight to like some camo pants. Right. And just walk like Vince McMahon. Like that's what you got to do. Do you have a corresponding costume to Elephant? No. What are you dressing the babies up in? Human clothes. Burt and Ernie. That's cute. Good. Good. Good. Because they love a Bert and Ernie book that they have, like a board book about them. And they've got kind of Bert and Ernie energy a little bit. Great twin costume. Yeah. And we already have like a rubber ducky and a toy pigeon. Are you going to dress your son up or is he a little too young? You've got to dress up, baby.

2:14:14Griffin Newman:I'm sorry for even asking. I'm going to throw something on that guy. I do have a little pumpkin costume. Okay. Stay tuned on the gram. Pumpkin costume is just classic for a non-walking baby. You know what I mean? They are pumpkins. I don't know if you've seen my baby. I've seen him. He's like a pumpkin boy.

2:14:28David Sims:He's giving cheek. He's giving cheek. He's giving cheek. He's giving cheek. I gotta say this. Baby in a pumpkin costume, always funny. That's what we're going with. It's not really gonna miss. It's never not hitting. We live on the east side of LA, and I was like, I don't want to do some hipster showing off that we know some cool thing that we'll dress up. I'm like, I want to put this baby in a little pumpkin. Is anyone going to be unhappy to see this cherub-faced baby in a pumpkin suit? I hope not. No.

2:14:56Griffin Newman:everyone's gonna love it yeah yeah uh so macbeth does kill the entire mcduff family except for mcduff himself who runs away and he goes to england he raises an army with malcolm they cut down tree branches they march on dunsinane where mcbeth is holed up and they uh you know fulfill the prophecies and they do eventually kill mcbeth but i do think this movie implies like you say that lady mcbeth maybe doesn't kill herself maybe he's killed by ross who maybe has switched sides I think the amount of attention they put on Ross Right is suggesting that That he's like some sort of like You know fair weather friend He's like the moral center of the movie In that scene where he's like I'm gonna right the wrongs I'm gonna balance the scales

2:15:39David Sims:Maybe I'm just a big fat dummy Well I am a big fat dummy You're actually quite trim I'm rapidly expanding I'm not getting skinnier Well none of us are You know how like old people are always like back then when I was when I was thin and beautiful right you're like why is everyone focused on the fact that like you were thin back then and you're like oh because like everyone just bloats even if you don't get big yeah you look at yourself when you had like zero body fat and you're like holy fucking shit um I I was like my interpretation was does she kill herself because she's like seen by him. That the look is less the intent to murder her and that he's like, I fucking got your number.

2:16:26I mean, that's the more like classical. Right. I think that that's like the more Shakespearean.

2:16:30Griffin Newman:She can no longer be perceived. Yes. Jefferson Mays as the doctor can only do so much. Jefferson Mays bringing the heat. It is fun to do like a Coen Brothers Shakespeare movie and be like, can we get Tony Winters to play literal like one line characters? Basically. Multiple years has done a in Los Angeles has done a one-man show of Christmas Carol. That is one of the most extraordinary shows I've ever seen. I saw it one year. I saw it was coming back. I'm like, I'm seeing it again. Jefferson Mays playing every character. He's so good. Jim Carrey did it first and best, of course. So let's, you know.

2:17:07Griffin Newman:He only played half the characters. Carrey Elwes played the others. Hey, this is coming out November 23rd. So I'll make sure to include a link to the show in the show notes. Oh, is he doing it again? Let's see. Well, I'm assuming, but I'll double check. He's also, of course, in the Daddy's Boy part of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, right? Yes. Yes. Which is one of my favorite gags ever, which is that it just cuts off and then you cut to fucking, what is it? The TCM guy. Yeah. Robert Osborne. Right. Going like, and that's when the movie ends because the crew stopped filming it because it was so awful.

2:17:40Griffin Newman:And then he's like, anyway, next, Daddy's Boy again. What's going on? It's such a good double joke.

2:17:46David Sims:That show had jokes. Yeah. That was a funny show. He's also great in Inherent Vice.

2:17:51Griffin Newman:Yes, yes, he is. That's right. I saw him on the stage in the play about the Oslo Accords, which was unbelievably called Oslo. That sounds like a laugh riot. No, it wasn't. And it's so much yelling. Everyone was just like, we have to do the Oslo Accords. And at a certain point, I started laughing because they wouldn't stop yelling in this acclaimed play.

2:18:14David Sims:Anyway. way. In Christmas Charles, does he play like the biggest goose and everything? Like, does it extend to the non-speaking roles? He's like, it's snowing. He points at the gravestone, then he becomes the gravestone. That sounds like he'd be like out of breath. He's like running around. He's like, that's what I want. Right. You want him panting. If he's not collapsing on stage by the end, he's not. He's tiny Tim and the crutch.

2:18:41Griffin Newman:And I'm holding this. Like, he just goes crutch mode great um yeah so uh mcduff kills um and even though he says you can't kill me because no man you know born of woman and mcduff goes c-section bitch he does say c-section bitch

2:18:56David Sims:which was an ajol cone addition to the plot you you can't kill me kind of the worst final words

2:19:02Griffin Newman:you can have it's the the twitter what are you gonna do stab me quote from stabbing victim i

2:19:09David Sims:I just simply would never say it out loud because it's not worth the risk. I definitely wouldn't say it to anyone I was dueling with a sword. I just, I'm not going to say it to anybody.

2:19:19Griffin Newman:I guess so. I don't want them to surprise me. I guess it's inviting some tragic irony, right? No matter what. You don't want to even walk down like the New York City street and be like, a piano is never going to fall on me. Exactly. Right, right. I'm not scared of air conditioners leaving their windows. So. Okay, yeah. What are you guys making of it? Okay, I was looking it up. Where is he doing it? At the Berkeley Rep. If anyone has the opportunity to see it, highly, highly recommend. It plays December 16th through the 21st. It's a seasonal treat. It's the, you know.

2:19:52David Sims:It also, wait. No, maybe this was a past year. It looks like he did do it at the Old Globe at some point. Anyway. It's a great production. He should run it back forever. He should do it in the summer. Fuck it. Yeah. Who gives a shit? Or he should do like Scrooge Goes Hawaiian. He should like write a new sequel. What happened to Scrooge after he got his head screwed on straight? Oh, yeah. That it's just Scrooge being chill? Yeah. He's like, you want a turkey? Turkey. Mr. Scrooge's holiday.

2:20:21Griffin Newman:Hey, Scrooge, I need some money. Within reason, I can give you some. I'm a money lender.

2:20:25David Sims:Summer Scrooge. Within reason, I'm a money lender.

2:20:31Griffin Newman:I can give you all my money, but I'm not going to be an asshole about it like I used to be. I'm fair, but professional. Right. Exactly. Fucking Tiny Tim's dad, Bob Cratchit, that's his name. Yeah. He's like, can I take some vacation? He's like, yeah, within reason. Two to three weeks. I don't know. And then more with experience. All that shit. Just being fairly reasonable. Fairly reasonable. Fairly reasonable. This movie does do some sort of interesting stuff with the crown. It's a very metaphorical, flying through the air crown. He kind of dies because he was reaching for it. A little on the nose, but I liked it.

2:21:02Griffin Newman:It's a good death, though. I do like the, you know.

2:21:05David Sims:The full beheading Yeah But also the duel You get to see the head Which is fun The duel is really good Like the choreography Is like scary and intense Yes it is

2:21:14Griffin Newman:No all the action At the end is well done I would say Denzel obviously Very capable of such things

2:21:20David Sims:Yes It is a movie No slouch Where I just watch it And I'm like This feels so close To greatness There's something

2:21:28Griffin Newman:There's an exercise Quality to it That I cannot shake That's I liked it more In the theater Because it is quite

2:21:36David Sims:overwhelming visually.

2:21:38Griffin Newman:At home, I was tired. I am a parent of three. Yes. And I was squeezing this in between, you know, whatever my parental duties are. But I was having a little bit of the heavy lids. I was doing the reverse Ben Hosley

2:21:51David Sims:watching this after House of Dynamite. And I did feel like, man, this was a lot easier to get into in a giant room. You can imagine a high school teacher showing this to their students. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And, you know, I was certainly a kid where anytime they rolled out the old AV card and said, like, the next three classes are going to be a movie, I'm like pumping my fist. But sometimes those movies. Better than regular class, but you're like, this one's a little bit of a snooze watching this on like a small school TV split up across days would be kind of deadly. You're not like, fuck, this one's awesome.

2:22:31David Sims:Right. Yeah. Right. No I think you're right It feels like an exercise It's what makes the The upcoming film very fascinating to see Because I feel like there isn't really a sense of who Joel is As a solo filmmaker He didn't write this script The script is famously already written for him

2:22:49Griffin Newman:It's based on a play Oh this one is right But the new film one assumes he wrote that Yeah but that's what I'm saying This one doesn't show who he is as a solo writer It would be funny if the new one was like Lowell Gans and Babalu Mandela or whatever

2:23:02David Sims:He was like, no, it's just a good script. I dug it up. But it is like you go on to the IMDb. It's the four actors you named directed by Joel Cohen. Like no other credits. There's not even a screenplay credit. There's no one knows if it's based on anything. Bruno's shooting it again. Yep. I know. It's like a total mystery right now. Totally. But most of his usual collaborators. Yeah.

2:23:26Griffin Newman:The film was warmly received. Yeah.

2:23:30David Sims:But, you know, not obviously best of the year type material, I feel. It is also funny that in the year 2021, it felt like, oh, fuck, Apple's getting serious. They've signed the same 24 deal and one of the films is going to be Denzel and McDormand doing fucking Macbeth.

2:23:46Griffin Newman:Right.

2:23:47David Sims:Like this is a heavy hitter Oscar player. And the movie kind of gets like a polite nod while Apple wins best picture for Coda. This is the Coda year. This is the Coda year. Look, it's just the Coda thing.

2:24:01Griffin Newman:Obviously, it's partly that's a movie goes down smooth and like generally crowd pleasing. But when you look at that Oscar year, it's just a lot of like studios shooting their shot in a way where you're like, oh, good try. But like Netflix being like, can we sneak power of the dog by you a little bit? And eventually voters like, I think too weird. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And like, could Licorice Pizza be the PTA movie? It's like, that's his least accessible movie. And then, you know, Dune doesn't have an ending. Drive My Car was nominated for Best Picture, but is a three-hour movie about rehearsing Uncle Banya.

2:24:41Griffin Newman:Yes. By and large.

2:24:43David Sims:Right.

2:24:43Griffin Newman:And then like Spielberg was like, I made West Side Story. Do you like it? Everyone was like, yeah, we love it. Like zero Oscars. Right. Well, excuse me. Yes. But like, it's funny that Spielberg was like, I have something for you. They even use a big treasure chest filled with jewels. And everyone's like, yeah. And then they walk over to the glass of orange juice that is Coda.

2:25:03David Sims:Also, the fact... We're just like, it's fine. It comes down easy. The fact that he had shot it in 2019 and you're like, this is a pre-pandemic movie. It's Spielberg with full control remaking a Best Picture win. Right, right, right.

2:25:16Griffin Newman:It doesn't have any... Yeah, yeah. The COVID stuff because it was just delayed. You're like, this thing

2:25:22David Sims:has just been locked away for two years because he wanted to wait until audiences could come back. Right. And everyone was just like, yeah, good job. Good, we liked it. Yeah. Koda.

2:25:32Griffin Newman:Anyway, just a funny situation. And she sings at the end? We get to hear a song? Yeah. She does. She sings. Because West Side Story, they don't, there's no songs. There wasn't enough singing for them. Maybe they all watched it on mute by mistake. That's why they thought it was good. They were like, this movie's weird. No one talks. We're going to do the box office game for January 28th, 2022, which is when this film was released in IMAX.

2:25:55David Sims:A24 took advantage of a weird theatrical landscape. Quite a weird one. We'll see here. As things were rebounding and they kept getting Do you remember also that they did like one week of Nomadland in IMAX? In IMAX? Yes. In early 21. I mean, look, man. A lot of these arthouse movies were getting like 10-day IMAX runs because they were like, we don't got fucking anything else. I would be interested in how this aspect ratio worked in IMAX. Yes, because this is a very boxy Academy ratio movie. It's actually pretty well suited for IMAX. Yeah.

2:26:29Griffin Newman:What are you laughing at, David? Ben sent a link. This is very interesting. So he sent a link about House Hosley, I suppose, or, you know, whatever.

2:26:38David Sims:The preview text I got is, check out the early notables of the Hosley family.

2:26:42Griffin Newman:So if I can handle this, Griffin, because I want your genuine reaction to this. So apparently the surname Hosley first found in Oxfordshire in 1190.

2:26:50David Sims:Okay.

2:26:51Griffin Newman:You know, been registered in the roles, various roles ever since, right? Early notables of the Hosley family include William Ostler. Just like a variation spelling. Died 1614. An actor in English Renaissance theater. A member of the King's Men, the company of William Shakespeare. Okay. So there you go. Doesn't say who he played, though. But he was one of the King's Men. Okay. That's cool. So it's in my blood, but I'm also kind of like, meh.

2:27:24David Sims:The actual weekend this movie goes into limited release, as we said, the Matrix Resurrections weekend.

2:27:29Griffin Newman:I mean, again, when we're saying went into theaters, I assume it was just a couple screens that Christmas released.

2:27:34David Sims:I was surprised it was playing at this Beacon place in mid-January. It made less than half a million in theaters.

2:27:40Griffin Newman:I mean, it has a non-reported gross because they four-walled it, so I don't know. Number one on January 28th, though, Griffin. It's been out for seven weeks. It's made$735 million.

2:27:52David Sims:Spider-Man No Way Home. That's the one with all the Spider-Men. Yeah. It is weird that like 2021, the theaters reopen. Things are rough. Things are weird. And people were like, maybe they'll just never go back to the theater again. And at the height of a surge, like Omicron starts surging like a week before. And they were like, is this going to fuck up Spider-Man? Nope. Becomes one of the highest grossing films of all time. and basically there's another six months before something else hits the head. All of the Spider-Men are in it. All of them are in it. And that had not been done. Andrew Garfield.

2:28:25Griffin Newman:Tom Holland. Tom Holland. Willem Dafoe. Spider-Man No Way Home. Dane DeHaan? They got Dane DeHaan in it? No, no Dane. He is not present. The Great Dane did not arrive. In fact, right, are there the lizards in it?

2:28:40David Sims:And Electro. And Electro.

2:28:41Griffin Newman:But Electro's got the new new. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

2:28:43David Sims:Electro's like, forget everything I used to be. I don't have the whole blue blobby thing happening. What if we just reset to Jamie Foxx playing Electro? A bad movie, in my opinion, but undeniably enjoyable. That is how I feel about it. It is one of the sweatiest screenplays of all time. It is constructed out of nonsense. It does have juice in it. It has real chemistry between the two of them. This was your whole take at the time, which I really agree with, which is like the movie is actually an argument for movie stars. that the last act of that movie works because you're like, here are three different guys in three different eras who had such unique takes on the characters that watching the three of them talk to each other is more exciting than like any fucking CGI fight.

2:29:28Griffin Newman:I completely agree. Those are the best. I mean, especially, I feel like it was the Andrew Garfield moment and obviously he was in Tick, Tick, Boom. He gets the Oscar nomination. Like it was Garfield was having a nice little time.

2:29:38David Sims:And you got all the fucking character actors in it. It's like, yes.

2:29:41Griffin Newman:Number two at the box office is a horror film. It's been out for three weeks. It's a solid hit. It is the fifth in a franchise.

2:29:52David Sims:It's a January 2022, fifth in a franchise. It's a solid hit. Five. It's a five. But the five is not in the title. The five is not in the title. When does the franchise start? 1996. It's a 96. Oh, so it's Scream. It's Scream. It drives me crazy. Well, the five is in the title, but it's a V. Only in the poster. Which I hate. I hate. It is one of my least favorite modern trends is horror reboot that has the exact same name as the original and has to be referred to with the year in the Halloween.

2:30:27Griffin Newman:As I always tell you, you've never seen the film Scream, but that is literally addressed in the movie. Which makes sense because it's Scream.

2:30:34David Sims:I'm hoping the new scary movie does the joke of calling itself Scary Movie Brackets 2026. They should do that Right

2:30:42Griffin Newman:That is funny Brackets 2026 Brackets 2026 Yeah Number three at the box office Is an animated film I have not yet Watched these With my daughter Because I know She will love them And I don't want to deal with it Okay it's a franchise It's the second

2:30:55David Sims:It's the second Of two It's the second of two It's not It's not No Cruise was a 2020 It's the second of two But you think They're going to make more

2:31:06Griffin Newman:I mean these movies do well I don't No I don't think so They're probably done This one did less well. The first one did very well.

2:31:13David Sims:And is it a whole? Oh, it's Sing 2. Sing 2. It actually made a good amount of money. The first one was humongous.

2:31:20Griffin Newman:The first one was a huge hit. The second one, in COVID time, you know, sort of society opening back up times, made 162 domestic, which is good. But the first one made like 300 domestic. And it's also like, how many fucking, like, how many times were you? It's just animal singing pop songs. I believe that is.

2:31:36David Sims:It's Animal American Idol, but it's also like, let's put on a show. We need to make a talent competition to sell tickets to not lose the theater. I saw the second one and not the first one. I'm perplexed by those movies. It's Garth Jennings who's good. It was once. Yes. I don't know. They're not like poorly made, but I just do not get them. Number four at the box office is, you're never going to get this. Or maybe you will. It's a Christian movie. I like a challenge. Okay. It's a Christian movie.

2:32:05Griffin Newman:Yeah. Is Greg Kinnear in it? He's not. Although it feels like he should be

2:32:10David Sims:Good follow up question

2:32:11Griffin Newman:It looks like it's based on a Historical romance novel from the 90s Set during the 1850s gold rush Jesus, okay It's got one of those posters Where a man and a woman are doing like a forehead kiss And there's a big bright sun behind them That's like all of them I know

2:32:30David Sims:Are there any name actors in this?

2:32:33Griffin Newman:Yes, but like not huge names Can you give them to me though? Abigail Cohen Tom Lewis Logan Marshall Green Nina Dobrev Pamka Janssen And Eric Dane Who of course has recently sort of You know semi-retired or whatever Because he's suffering from ALS One of his last films maybe I'm going to guess that this movie is called God is Gold The film was directed by DJ Caruso Oh Jesus

2:33:03David Sims:Which is crazy Yes he's basically swung Because he's like pivoted to that space Straight to Yeah Yeah, faith-based.

2:33:07Griffin Newman:And it's called Redeeming Love.

2:33:10David Sims:Yeah, would never get that. How could you? Yeah.

2:33:12Griffin Newman:Number five at the box office, of course, is a prequel to a couple action movies. It's a pretty cursed movie. It's a pretty cursed movie.

2:33:24David Sims:It's a prequel to a couple action movies. It's a prequel to two action films. It's not like Transporter, but is it something in that kind of bent? Is it that? It's got a British bent to it for sure. Is it that level of franchise? though. Oh, it's The Kingsman. There you go. A film that ends, do you know this, Dana? Yeah. With introducing Hitler like he's Thanos. This is true. And I love that Matthew Bond's I've never seen it. Like, of course we're going to make the sequel. Yeah, we're working on it. Everyone's demanding. In fact, it might be a Hulu series.

2:33:53Griffin Newman:It might be on Argyle as well, somehow. You've also got Argyle. Argyle's sort of in the Kingsman universe.

2:34:00David Sims:Sort of. As we have discussed. Yes. But only vaguely. People made a really funny Reddit thread complaining about I can't believe they spoiled Argyle. Spoiling Argyle. Everyone was in on the bit of, I was truly about to watch it tomorrow. But the funniest thing is we did not talk about the central twist of Argyle. We just talked about the two inexplicable mid-credits scenes. And the main twist is that it's based on a book written by Taylor Swift.

2:34:24Griffin Newman:Exactly.

2:34:24David Sims:That's the main twist.

2:34:26Griffin Newman:Just to further illustrate what a weird time this was for the American box office. Matrix Resurrections is like out of theaters, right? Number 16. Yeah. Number six is The 355. Remember that one? Yes.

2:34:38David Sims:Where a bunch of women were spies. That was the ultimate. This can't miss. They cast five of the biggest actresses from different countries. Everyone will go see this.

2:34:48Griffin Newman:Number seven is American Underdog, the Kurt Warner story in which Zachary Levi plays the quarterback and religious figure Kurt Warner. Normal guy. Yep. Normal guy. Number eight, Ghostbusters Afterlife. Well, it's still in there. Yeah. After 11 weeks. This is what I'm saying. It's not good.

2:35:05David Sims:But that's kind of, because Resurrections is like week four. Resurrections was on fucking HBO Max. No, I know. I know. I'm just, I'm surprised Ghostbusters is hanging in there, but you're right. The answer is that like one new movie got released every three weeks.

2:35:22Griffin Newman:Number nine, Licorice Pizza. Number 10, West Side Story. So two somewhat underwhelming, but good Best Picture nominees. What's Afterlife up to at this point? uh afterlife has made 128 on its way to a robust uh domestic total of 129 it's all of them end up

2:35:39David Sims:at the same fucking number it is incredible how outside of the original ghostbusters not adjusted for inflation i have to pee so bad ghostbusters 2 answer the call as staged at the globe afterlife and frozen empire all basically end up an identical number 130 yeah and it's there's always this asterisk of like Ghostbusters 2 was a genuine like disappointment right like huge drop off from the original at the time and then answer the call they were like well the backlash Ghostbusters is still valuable as a franchise but the backlash killed it and then Afterlife comes out like in like shitty 2021 and they're like it was a hit and in normal times it would have done better and then they release Frozen Empire in a totally normal time and it ends up at the exact same number I just don't think like Jen and correct me if I'm wrong, it doesn't seem like Gen Z is like attached to Ghostbusters as a piece of IP.

2:36:31David Sims:My little cousin really likes Ghostbusters, but I'm like, is that like, speak more to him just being an obsessive kid who's really thorough with stuff? Sims always puts it, David Sims, who's the guy who hosts this podcast and is in the bathroom right now. He always puts it like, it is ultimately like a good concept with a great logo. Yeah, and a good song. Right. That like the song and the logo always are basically going to get you to 130 domestic. And they keep trying to crack like what is the way to make it super relevant to kids today? And they like they can't do. Stranger Things kids. Isn't that the way to try that?

2:37:08David Sims:I mean, you name a character podcast. You name a character podcast. I will say I like, I think one of Ghostbusters' enduring cultural legacies is now that this will be post when this podcast comes out. But currently when we're recording it, it's almost Halloween season. Spooky season. And I feel like on every like pre-made playlist for like Halloween songs, the Ghostbusters song is, and it's like, it's actually not a Halloween movie. But it rules. The song rules. It's like maybe the best song of all time. This is the thing. Like Ghostbusters will never be valueless because the song will never stop playing.

2:37:40David Sims:Yeah. And the logo will never stop existing. It's cool. And then like one step down from that, like Slimer and Stay Puff, like basically should be on the back of money. Are like as important to American culture as most of our presidents. And then beyond that, you're like, what is this? Did you ever watch like the Casper movies? Dana, I talk about them all the time. I love venturing into Dana. David, Dana just asked Griffin, did you ever watch the Casper movies? So buckle up. There's an hour left in this episode.

2:38:12Griffin Newman:Was one of those put in theaters this week or something? I saw it on a box office list and couldn't understand.

2:38:17David Sims:They're re-releasing for Halloween. It's the 30th anniversary.

2:38:19Griffin Newman:The original.

2:38:20David Sims:The boy. Yes, the only the guy. Christina Ritchie one. The Brad Soberlain. The sexual awakening movie. That movie fucked. I love that movie so much.

2:38:29Griffin Newman:And then I... I remember I saw it in theaters, and I remember not even liking it at the time. That's dumb. I'd be interested to revisit. I'm sorry. But you weren't a young preteen girl? No, I was 10. I think I was possibly too old for like true kid antic shit or whatever.

2:38:43David Sims:It's not true kid antic shit.

2:38:44Griffin Newman:I mean, when I... The movie's dark. I do remember it being a little dark because, right, there's death. It's right. It's like about death. And Bill Pullman dies and then they resurrect him?

2:38:56David Sims:Casper's dad spent his entire life trying to build a machine to bring ghosts back to life. And they revive the machine but only have enough ghost juice to bring one ghost back to life. and Casper's cousins murder Bill Pullman and he makes the sacrifice of letting Bill Pullman have the ghost juice rather than himself. He was going to use it for himself because he's in love with Kat, played by Christina Ricci, but she would never date a ghost. And because of his selfless act, her dead mother, who's now an angel, grants Casper one witch, which is Cinderella rules. He's allowed to be a human boy for like an hour.

2:39:30David Sims:So he shows up at the party looking like Devin Sawa and she loves him. and he says, can I keep you? He whispers it into her ear and they're dancing and floating above the crowd and Oscars should have been thrown at the screen.

2:39:42Griffin Newman:Take a hike, English patient or whatever. Did you ever see Casper Meets Wendy? Yes, with Hilary Love. I had that on VHS.

2:39:50David Sims:I think a listener is perhaps, because Shelley Duvall is in that. Yes. And a blank check listener went to the Shelley Duvall estate sale and I believe purchased for us Shelley Duvall's copy of Casper Meets Wendy with a certificate of authenticity. That's showing up at the P.O. box soon, Ben. That's a really nice listener. Casper, A Spirited Beginning is one of the joke titles I will throw out if I can't guess something in box office games. So it gets said all along.

2:40:18Griffin Newman:Which is a film that was not released in theaters.

2:40:19David Sims:No, it's a straight-to-DVD movie with Pauly Shore and James Earl Jones as the voice of ghosts. Gutenberg's there. Gutenberg's there. One of them plays the stinky ghost? They're different ghosts. They're new ghosts because it's a prequel. I think the... But ghosts can live for... The uncles are still in it, the ghostly true. Dana? The ghostly true is still in it. James Earl Jones is like some evil genie ghost. He's called Kai Bosch. Really?

2:40:44Griffin Newman:I'm not joking.

2:40:45David Sims:And Pauly Charm, looking up here, plays his weaselly sidekick. Wait, what? His character is called Snivel.

2:40:52Griffin Newman:Okay. That's a fun name for a weaselly sidekick. It looks like Casper Van Dien is also in it, and I imagine he was cast as a joke. because he plays a character called Bystander. So do you think they were like, there's an actual actor called Casper? Do you want to be in the new Casper movie?

2:41:07David Sims:It must be like the Bort joke where someone says Casper and he turns around and says like, what? Me? Yeah. What's Casper Van Dien doing now? He was married to like royalty and his daughter is like a big influencer who also is in line for a throne movie.

2:41:22Griffin Newman:Grace Van Dien.

2:41:23David Sims:Yes. But I want to say he married like a princess. They're divorced.

2:41:27Griffin Newman:He married the daughter of the princess of Yugoslavia, which is a country that doesn't exist anymore. So I don't know how much. Right. Yugoslavia has abolished its monarchy, but I guess some sort of courtly homes maybe in their life or whatever. Good stuff. Good stuff.

2:41:45David Sims:Dana, you have a thousand things to plug. Dana, Dana, plug. Listen to my podcast, Noble Blood, which is about history. new podcast Hoax which is about historical hoaxes with my friend Lizzie Logan if you like sort of like gothic YA novels about grave robbers and surgery read Anatomy a Love Story available now in paperback and if you want to pre-order a book about you know sexy magic and a professor and grad student going on you know sexy little adventure David's eyes bugging out. I read it. He's read some, yeah. Pre-order the Arcane Arts. Oh, yeah. Which I wrote with a friend under a pseudonym.

2:42:32So if you see that, it's not by Danish words. I'm there.

2:42:35David Sims:But the Arcane Arts. Right, right. You have a combined pseudonym? Yeah, it's like S.A. Hardbody or whatever. I forget what it is. What is it? What is the story? It's SD Coverley. SD Coverley. There you go. What is the story behind deciding, like, we're going to write this together under a pseudonym but not hide that we're the ones who wrote it? Because I just saw the announcement of, like, Comic-Con, book, it's the two of us. here's the name we wrote it under. Yeah, it's because we like wrote it. We like came up with the story together. I would write the female character. He would write the male character.

2:43:03We'd go back and forth chapters. And then we were like talking to our editor. And basically because I had written like YA novels, this is like a little sexier.

2:43:11David Sims:They were like, is it a branding thing? Is it a branding thing? And also this is like fairly common. Like people are less public about it, but there are a lot of like co-written books that just use like one pseudonym. I'm only, the only part that surprised me was announcing that from the forefront. I think the reason is because, like, I'm not, I like this book. I think we did a good job. I'm, like, proud of it. Yeah. And I think the publisher and editor know that I have, like, a promotional apparatus that they wanted to use. So they were like, we'll go with the pseudonym, but can you, like, push it on Instagram?

2:43:42But it's you. Right.

2:43:42Griffin Newman:We'll be public about the pseudonym. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, I like this book. I wrote it because I think it's good. It's a public pseudonym. Could have, though, showed up in a trench coat. I could have. Or like with a mask and been like, I am SD Coverley. SD Coverley. I am SD Coverley. It's very clever if you think about it. My initials are Dana Schwartz, which is a DS. So we sort of, you flip them. It's a thinker.

2:44:06David Sims:Very clever. Thank you all for listening. Thus concludes our one episode series on the films of Joel Cohen. Should we all take a bow? Solo director. We should take a bow. It is fun that we'll have like a new Joe Cullen solo project hopefully to Cover in 2026 And then whatever they might do In the future either of them I just want to get back together I'm all for this experimentation But I'm certainly in re-watching All of their films And then watching the solo ones It's like when they're together It is the best shit on earth Yeah Tune in next week for Next week we're doing driving driveway dolls with mxm tune that's right great episode um and then of course we get to end this series on a bang with honey don't a movie that i will admit kind of broke me oh yeah i need to watch it again it's the it's the response to just not like it the way the movie is titled is if your spouse is telling you they're gonna watch this movie yeah 10 comedy points uh let Let me be clear, David.

2:45:15David Sims:I'm not at war with not liking the movie. Right, right. I've accepted that. Right.

2:45:18Griffin Newman:It's not a good movie. Yes. I mean, or you can, it's a, others agree it is not good.

2:45:22David Sims:Yes. You're not screaming into the wind here. No, but I do think it's interesting to talk about it, and we'll talk about it in two weeks. God, I'm going to have to re-watch it. I, I, I ordered the Blu-ray.

2:45:34Griffin Newman:Oh, that's a, a bridge I shall not be crossing.

2:45:37David Sims:It's got to go on the shelf. Do you have the shelf space? You live in New York City. No, I don't have the shelf space. I have stacks of things on the floor. So much shit in storage. My life's a nightmare. Anyway, tune in next week for Drive Away Dolls. And as always, David, I regret to tell you, but because we must consider the witchy tradition in Dana's guest appearances, and she already invoked it, Casper meets Wendy locked on the feed.

2:46:14Griffin Newman:Dost thou have a quote. Save this for the mic, Ben. I've been recorded. There are actually a lot of really famous quotes from the play Macbeth.

2:46:23David Sims:It's not a very quotable movie. There's not. It's weird. Ben, did you have moments where you were like,

2:46:30Griffin Newman:oh shit, like, because I feel like that happens so often when you watch Shakespeare, if you're not a Shakespeare person, where you're like, oh, that's like that phrase that exists in society. Save this. We're recording this. Yeah, this is all being recorded. I had to read and I've seen Macbeth before. Fair enough. So it was not quite. So it wasn't as surprising. I like when they say sleep no more. I'm like, ah. Yeah. And then they say, you know, it's closing soon. Okay. I'm just going to sleep. Doing a bank show. It's about a bank. Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims.

2:47:03Griffin Newman:Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley.

2:47:06David Sims:Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon.

2:47:12Griffin Newman:This show is mixed and edited by A.J. 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. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack.

2:47:51Griffin Newman:This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.